The City of Delight

Throughout those days of predatory warfare he made careful selection

of material for his army. As yet, while famine had not reduced

Jerusalem to a skeleton, he could select for bodily strength and

mental balance. He worked swiftly, sparing his men daily to the

defense of the city against the Roman and daily sacrificing precious

numbers of them to the pit of the dead just over the wall.

They were weary days--days of increasing storm and multiplying

calamity. Famine in some quarters of the city reached appalling

proportions. Insurrections in these regions were so vigorously

suppressed that the victims chose to starve and live rather than to

revolt and perish. Pestilence broke out among the inhabitants near the

eastern wall, against the other side of which the dead had been cast

by hundreds; and a general flight from the city was stopped in full

flood by the spectacle of some scores of unfortunates crucified by the

Roman soldiers and set up in sight of the walls.

Simon and John had a disastrous quarrel and during the interval, when

the sentries and the fighting-men were killing each other, the Romans

possessed the first fortification around Jerusalem, the Wall of

Agrippa. The following day Titus pitched his camp within the limits of

the Holy City, upon the site of Sennacherib's Assyrian bivouac.

At sight of this signal advance, tumult broke out afresh in the city

and for days Titus lay calmly by, merely harassing the Jews while he

watched Jerusalem weaken itself by internal combat. The Maccabee,

steadily training his picked Gibborim, saw these lulls as signs that

Titus was still in the hope that the city would submit to occupation

and spare him the repugnant task of slaughtering half a nation. In his

soul he knew that at no time would Titus be unwilling to receive the

voluntary capitulation of the city.

So, composed and intent through struggle and terror, he continued to

prepare for the day when an organized army could take the unhappy

inhabitants out of the bloody hands of the two factionists, Simon and

John.

During one of the casual attacks on the Second Wall, a lean,

lash-scarred maniac that had not ceased to cry night or day for seven

years, "Woe unto Jerusalem!" mounted the Old Second Wall, and there

pointed to his breast and added, "Woe unto me also!" At that instant a

great stone struck him and tumbling with it to the ground, he was

crushed into the earth and left so buried for all time.

With the hushing of that embodiment of doom, silence fell upon the

city and after that, panic; and during that Titus heaved his four

legions against the Second Wall and took it. Simon was seized with

frenzy, and with a body of crazed Idumeans rushed out upon the banks

of the Romans and in one hour's time overthrew the army's work of days

and so thoroughly set back the advance of the besieger that Titus

resolved that no more insane sorties should be made from the gates.