Although they had this commiseration for such as were destroyed in that
manner, yet had they not the same for those that were still alive, but
they ran every one through whom they met, and obstructed the very lanes
with their dead bodies, and made the whole city run with blood, to such
a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with
these men's blood. And truly so it happened, that though the slayers
left off at the evening, yet did the fire greatly prevail in the night;
and as all was burning, came that eighth day of the month Gorpieus
[Elul] upon Jerusalem, a city that had been liable to so many miseries
during this siege, that, had it always enjoyed as much happiness from
its first foundation, it would certainly have been the envy of the
world. Nor did it on any other account so much deserve these sore
misfortunes as by producing such a generation of men as were the
occasion of this its overthrow.
Now when Titus was come into this (upper) city, he admired not only some
other places of strength in it, but particularly those strong towers
which the tyrants in their mad conduct had relinquished, for when he saw
their solid altitude, and the largeness of their several stones, and the
exactness of their joints, as also how great was their breadth and how
extensive their length, he expressed himself after the manner following:
"We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war, and it was no
other than God who ejected the Jews out of these fortifications, for
what could the hands of men or any machines do toward overthrowing these
towers?" At which time he had many such discourses to his friends; he
also let such go free as had been bound by the tyrants, and were left in
the prisons. To conclude, when he entirely demolished the rest of the
city and overthrew its walls, he left these towers as a monument of his
good fortune, which had proved his auxiliaries, and enabled him to take
what could not otherwise have been taken by him.
And now, since his soldiers were already quite tired with killing men,
and yet there appeared to be a vast multitude still remaining alive,
Cæsar gave orders that they should kill none but those that were in arms
and opposed them, but should take the rest alive. But, together with
those whom they had orders to slay, they slew the aged and the infirm;
but for those that were in their flourishing age and who might be
useful to them they drove them together into the Temple and shut them up
within the walls of the court of the women, over which Cæsar set one of
his freedmen, as also Fronto, one of his own friends, which last was to
determine everyone's fate, according to his merits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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