Titus began the siege of Jerusalem in April, 70, and at once the internal feuds ceased, the besieged doing their utmost to defend the place. Titus had to take the city step by step. Finally on August 10th the Temple, the last retreat of the patriots, was stormed and destroyed by fire. Those who survived intrenched themselves in the upper city and continued their resistance until September 7th. According to Josephus, 1,100,000 perished in the war and 97,000 were made captives and sold as slaves or taken to the circus, where they were torn to pieces by wild beasts. Seven hundred, selected from the noblest families, were taken to Rome to be shown with the holy vessels captured in the Temple in the triumphal march. An arch of triumph was erected as a memorial of victory, which is still standing in Rome. Titus left the siege of the three remaining fortresses to his captains. They spent three more years in reducing them, Massada, the last one, falling in 73. The last defenders of the place killed themselves in order to escape being taken alive by the Romans. Thus the last vestige of the independent Jewish kingdom, founded by the Maccabees, disappeared. CHAPTER II FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM (70) TO THE COMPLETION OF THE MISHNAH (200) The destruction of Jerusalem had thrown the Jewish people into a terrible crisis. Although the Jews, as individuals, did not fare worse than during the preceding one hundred and thirty years, Judæa was now a province of the Roman Empire. The only new law, enforced after the destruction of Jerusalem, was that of a special tax of two Drachmæ, which every male had to pay. This tax, called “Fiscus Judaicus,” took the place of the half-shekel formerly paid by every male Jew into the treasury of the Temple, according to the Rabbinic interpretation of the Law in Exodus xxx, 11-16. Some of the Jews were sold into slavery; some went to Rome, where they swelled the congregation existing there since the second century B.C., and where they had several synagogues and catacombs used as cemeteries. Others again emigrated to Babylonia, where a Jewish settlement existed since the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, or settled on the northern coast of Africa, and on the islands of the Mediterranean.