Vespasian employed the whole first campaign (67) in bringing into his power the fortresses of the small district of Galilee and the coast as far as Ascalon; before the one little town of Jotapata the three legions lay encamped for forty-five days. During the winter of 67-8 a legion lay in Scytopolis, on the south border of Galilee, the two others in Caesarea. Meanwhile the different factions in Jerusalem fell upon one another and were in most vehement conflict; the good patriots, who were at the same time for civil order, and the still better patriots, who, partly in fanatical excitement, partly from delight in mob-riot, wished to bring about and turn to account a reign of terror, fought with each other in the streets of the city, and were only at one in accounting every attempt at reconciliation with the Romans a crime worthy of death. The Roman general, on many occasions summoned to take advantage of this disorder, adhered to the course of advancing only step by step. In the second year of the war he caused the Transjordanic territory in the first instance, particularly the important towns of Gadara and Gerasa, to be occupied, and then took up his position at Emmaus and Jericho, whence he took military possession of Idumaea in the south and Samaria in the north, so that Jerusalem in the summer of the year 68 was surrounded on all sides. [Sidenote: Stoppage of the war.] The siege was just beginning when the news of the death of Nero arrived. Thereby _de iure_ the mandate conferred on the legate became extinct, and Vespasian, not less cautious in a political than in a military point of view, in fact suspended his operations until new orders as to his attitude. Before these arrived from Galba, the good season of the year was at an end. When the spring of 69 came, Galba was overthrown, and the decision was in suspense between the emperor of the praetorian guard and the emperor of the army on the Rhine. It was only after Vitellius’s victory in June 69 that Vespasian resumed operations and occupied Hebron; but very soon all the armies of the East renounced their allegiance to the former and proclaimed the previous legate of Judaea as emperor. The positions at Emmaus and Jericho were indeed maintained in front of the Jews; but, as the German legions had denuded the Rhine to make their general emperor, so the flower of the army went from Palestine, partly with the legate of Syria, Mucianus, to Italy, partly with the new emperor and his son Titus to Syria and onward to Egypt, and it was only after the war of the succession was ended, at the close of the year 69, and the rule of Vespasian was acknowledged throughout the empire, that the latter entrusted his son with the termination of the Jewish war. [Sidenote: Titus against Jerusalem.]