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[452]
But so far were the seditious from repenting at this sad sight, that,
on the contrary, they made the rest of the multitude believe otherwise;
for they brought the relations of those that had deserted upon the wall,
with such of the populace as were very eager to go over upon the security
offered them, and showed them what miseries those underwent who fled to
the Romans; and told them that those who were caught were supplicants to
them, and not such as were taken prisoners. This sight kept many of those
within the city who were so eager to desert, till the truth was known;
yet did some of them run away immediately as unto certain punishment, esteeming
death from their enemies to be a quiet departure, if compared with that
by famine. So Titus commanded that the hands of many of those that were
caught should be cut off, that they might not be thought deserters, and
might be credited on account of the calamity they were under, and sent
them in to John and Simon, with this exhortation, that they would now at
length leave off [their madness], and not force him to destroy the city,
whereby they would have those advantages of repentance, even in their utmost
distress, that they would preserve their own lives, and so find a city
of their own, and that temple which was their peculiar. He then went round
about the banks that were cast up, and hastened them, in order to show
that his words should in no long time be followed by his deeds. In answer
to which the seditious cast reproaches upon Caesar himself, and upon his
father also, and cried out, with a loud voice, that they contemned death,
and did well in preferring it before slavery; that they would do all the
mischief to the Romans they could while they had breath in them; and that
for their own city, since they were, as he said, to be destroyed, they
had no concern about it, and that the world itself was a better temple
to God than this. That yet this temple would be preserved by him that inhabited
therein, whom they still had for their assistant in this war, and did therefore
laugh at all his threatenings, which would come to nothing, because the
conclusion of the whole depended upon God only. These words were mixed
with reproaches, and with them they made a mighty clamor.
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