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[548]
Hereupon some of the deserters, having no other way, leaped down
from the wall immediately, while others of them went out of the city with
stones, as if they would fight them; but thereupon they fled away to the
Romans. But here a worse fate accompanied these than what they had found
within the city; and they met with a quicker despatch from the too great
abundance they had among the Romans, than they could have done from the
famine among the Jews; for when they came first to the Romans, they were
puffed up by the famine, and swelled like men in a dropsy; after which
they all on the sudden overfilled those bodies that were before empty,
and so burst asunder, excepting such only as were skillful enough to restrain
their appetites, and by degrees took in their food into bodies unaccustomed
thereto. Yet did another plague seize upon those that were thus preserved;
for there was found among the Syrian deserters a certain person who was
caught gathering pieces of gold out of the excrements of the Jews' bellies;
for the deserters used to swallow such pieces of gold, as we told you before,
when they came out, and for these did the seditious search them all; for
there was a great quantity of gold in the city, insomuch that as much was
now sold [in the Roman camp] for twelve Attic [drams], as was sold before
for twenty-five. But when this contrivance was discovered in one instance,
the fame of it filled their several camps, that the deserters came to them
full of gold. So the multitude of the Arabians, with the Syrians, cut up
those that came as supplicants, and searched their bellies. Nor does it
seem to me that any misery befell the Jews that was more terrible than
this, since in one night's time about two thousand of these deserters were
thus dissected.
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