The war having ceased awhile on the outside of the gates, revived within the city of Jerusalem. It being now the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, when the Jews hold the feast of unleavened bread, Eleazar and his party opened the gates of the inner court of the temple, to admit such of the people as were desirous to worship God.* But John made use of this festival as a cloak for his treacherous designs; and arming his own party with weapons concealed under their garments, sent them with great zeal into the temple, in order to seize upon it,

These men were no sooner admitted, than they threw away their garments, and appeared in their armour; whereupon there was a great disturb ance about the holy house. For the people who had no concern in the sedition, supposed that the

* We here find the reason of the vast multitude of Jews that were in Jerusalem during this siege by Titus; for it began at the feast of the Passover, when such prodigious numbers of Jews and proselytes of the gate were come from all parts of Judea, and other countries, in order to celebrate that great festival. Thus 1,100,000 perished at the siege, besides 97,000 captives.

assault was made solely against them; while Eleazar's zealots, on their part, thought it was only against them. The zealots, deserting the gates which they had been guarding, leapt down from the battlements, and fled away into the subterranean caverns; while the people that stood trembling at the holy altar, and around the holy house, were rolled on heaps together, and trampled under foot and beaten without mercy. When the guiltless had been treated with the greatest cruelty, they granted a truce to the guilty, and let those go off who came out of the caverns; while John seized upon the inner temple, and all the warlike engines that were in it, and then opposed himself to Simon,-and thus that sedition which had been divided into three factions, was now reduced to two.

Titus intending to pitch his camp nearer to the city than the site of Scopus, gave orders for the whole army, except such as acted as a guard against the Jews,--to level the distance as far as the walls of the city. So they threw down all the walls, gardens, hedges, and fruit trees, and

filled up all the chasms and hollow places, and broke the rocky precipices in pieces with their iron instruments, and levelled the whole way from Scopus to Herod's monument, which adjoined to the Serpent's Pool.

When the space between the Romans and the wall had been levelled,-which was done in four days, Titus brought the baggage of the army, with the rest of the multitude that followed him, safely to the camp, guarding himself in such a way as to prevent the Jews from sallying out of the gates, for he set the strongest part of his army over against the wall which lay on the north and west quarters of the city, and made his army seven deep, with the footmen placed before them, and the horsemen behind; each of the last in three ranks, while the archers stood in the midst, in seven ranks. Now, as the Jews were prohibited by so great a body of men from making sallies upon the Romans, both the beasts that bore the burdens and the rest of the multitude marched on without fear. But as for Titus himself he was only about two furlongs from the wall;

but the other part of the army fortified itself at the tower called Hippicus and was distant, in like manner, about two furlongs from the city. The tenth legion continued to occupy its own encampment upon the Mount of Olives.

G 2

CHAP. VI.

"Walk about Zion and go round,
"The high towers thereof tell;
"Consider ye her palaces,

" And mark her bulwarks well,”

The city of Jerusalem, which was built upon two hills, was fortified with three walls, wherever it was not encircled with impassable valleys,—in such parts it had but one wall.

The upper city was built on the highest of these two hills, and was called the Citadel, by king David. The other hill, which was called Acra, sustained the lower city, and is of the shape of the moon when she is horned, or a cresOver against this there was a third hill, which was originally lower than Acra, and divided from it by a valley. But Acra, was lowered and the valley filled up. These hills are, on

cent.