Of course the soldiers had to be paid for their bloody day’s work, and they were paid by the plunder of the city. The houses were stripped, and the plunderers, when they had carried away everything that had roused their cupidity, often, out of sheer wantonness, completed the work of devastation, by setting fire to the desolated houses. Altogether Jerusalem presented such a spectacle as had not been seen since the days of the Babylonian conquest. The spirit of the people having been, as it would seem, thus effectually broken for the present, it remained to provide against its possible revival in the future. Long gaps were made in the line of wall, so long that it took not a few days to make them, and would certainly require as many weeks to repair. The town thus made defenceless was further overawed by the erection of a fort in the City of David, this fort being held by a strong garrison of Greeks and Asiatic mercenaries. The means of repression thus provided, the next thing was to extinguish all that was characteristic of the national life. First, the great centre of that life, the Temple, was formally desecrated. Already it had been subjected to such indignities that the pious Jew could scarcely bear to enter its precincts. But the final horror, the “abomination of desolation,” was yet to come. On the 15th of the month Chisleu (December) an altar of a Greek pattern, and consecrated to the Olympian Zeus, was placed on the great altar of sacrifice, and ten days afterwards a huge sow was slaughtered on this. Her blood, caught after the Greek fashion in a bowl, was sprinkled on the altar of incense and on the mercy-seat within the Holy of Holies—a hideous mockery of the sprinkling which the Law enjoined to be performed once in every year. From the animal’s flesh a mess of broth was prepared, and this was sprinkled on the copies of the Law. The Temple, thus dishonoured, was as if it had ceased to be. The meeting-houses, in which, as we have seen, the people had found a substitute for the Temple worship, were summarily closed. An edict was issued commanding that every one who possessed a copy of the Law, or of any one of the sacred books, should give it up without loss of time. To call in cupidity to the aid of fear in enforcing this edict, the King’s officers were instructed to pay a reasonable price for the manuscripts thus produced. It was made a capital offence to read or to recite any part of the proscribed writings. Then the practice of circumcision was forbidden. Death was to be the penalty for all who should take any part in performing this rite—for the circumciser, the mother, the father, even the babe itself.