Severus, on his arrival, found the condition of things so unfavourable to the Roman arms that he did not venture to meet Barchochebas in the field. The latter was in possession of fifty fortified places, and nearly a thousand villages and towns. Rufus had done little but exercise the most merciless severities on all, even women and children, who had fallen into his power; thus, without really diminishing the strength of his enemies, increasing tenfold their exasperation. If he had continued in command, it is far from improbable that the yoke of Rome would, for a time at all events, have been cast off. But Severus had learned the art of war in his campaigns in Britain; and the consequences of the change of the general in command soon became evident. Avoiding, as has been already intimated, any decisive engagement, he harassed the Jews by an endless succession of petty conflicts, in nearly all of which they were worsted, driving them into their strongholds, which he then besieged and captured,[32] until nearly all that had revolted were reduced to submission.[33] By the end of the third year of the war, the rebels were driven into the strong city of Bithor, or Bethor, the situation of which is uncertain, but is generally believed to have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bethhoron. Here Barchochebas and Akiba sustained, we are told, a long and terrible siege, ‘the rebels being driven,’ says Eusebius, ‘to the last extremities by famine.’ But there is no historian of this war to record its particulars with the minuteness and accuracy of a Josephus. The Rabbins have indeed given many details; but it is impossible to rely on their statements. Thus, they relate, that when the prospects of the besieged became gloomy and threatening, one of the most zealous of their body, Rabbi Eliezer, the son of Hamadai, following the example of Moses at Rephidim, remained on his knees in prayer during the whole time that the fighting was going on; and the result of his prayers was, that the Jews fought with signal success, everywhere driving the besiegers back. To avert the disaster which seemed likely to result to the Roman arms, a treacherous Samaritan pretended to be discovered in carrying treasonable communications between the Rabbi and the Romans. Barchochebas, without inquiry, ordered the Rabbi to be slain; and from that moment, it is said, the courage of the besieged gave way. Bithor was at length taken by storm. Barchochebas, according to some, was killed in action, according to others, put to death with cruel tortures by the conquerors. The slaughter that ensued is described as exceeding anything on record. The streams of blood were so great as to carry heavy stones the whole way from the city to the sea, and the ground for eighteen miles round is said to have been covered with corpses! These flights of Rabbinical imagination may be dismissed as worthless; but the more sober historian, Dion Cassius, reports that more than half a million