Those who had remained in the town and surrendered peaceably, trusting in Roman honesty, had even more bitter fate. After long and cold-blooded deliberation, Vespasian had twelve hundred of the aged and weak put to death; six thousand of the strongest were sent to help dig the ditch which Nero was trying to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth; more than thirty thousand others were sold as slaves. This deed of Vespasian, as Milman says, “tarnished his fame forever.” The harshness, however, led to the instant surrender of all the rest of Galilee except the towns of Gamala, Giscala, and Itabyrium. Gamala held out four months, and its fate was as curious as it was terrible. Josephus describes the town as clinging to the side of a mountain with the houses very thick and close to one another. The Romans made a breach in the walls and gradually forced the Jews up to the top of the town, where they made a sudden rally and charged fiercely down upon the Romans, who being able neither to resist the impetus of the Jews nor to press back the Romans in their rear, took refuge in the houses. The houses were so lightly built that they collapsed under the weight of the crowded soldiers and the whole town came tumbling down the cliff-side like a pack of cards. The Romans suffered a great panic with heavy loss and the Jews drove them out of the town, Vespasian himself being saved with great difficulty from slaughter. Gradually, however, the city was overcome and a bloody massacre followed. Hundreds threw themselves over the precipices with their wives and children. Hundreds of others the Romans flung over the cliffs. Nine thousand corpses marked the vain courage of the people of Gamala. Itabyrium had fallen in the meanwhile and Giscala was abandoned by its commander John of Giscala, who took his troops and his ambition into Jerusalem, though hotly pursued by Titus.