This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[363]
On the next day the Romans drove the robbers out of the lower city,
and set all on fire as far as Siloam. These soldiers were indeed glad to
see the city destroyed. But they missed the plunder, because the seditious
had carried off all their effects, and were retired into the upper city;
for they did not yet at all repent of the mischiefs they had done, but
were insolent, as if they had done well; for, as they saw the city on fire,
they appeared cheerful, and put on joyful countenances, in expectation,
as they said, of death to end their miseries. Accordingly, as the people
were now slain, the holy house was burnt down, and the city was on fire,
there was nothing further left for the enemy to do. Yet did not Josephus
grow weary, even in this utmost extremity, to beg of them to spare what
was left of the city; he spake largely to them about their barbarity and
impiety, and gave them his advice in order to their escape; though he gained
nothing thereby more than to be laughed at by them; and as they could not
think of surrendering themselves up, because of the oath they had taken,
nor were strong enough to fight with the Romans any longer upon the square,
as being surrounded on all sides, and a kind of prisoners already, yet
were they so accustomed to kill people, that they could not restrain their
right hands from acting accordingly. So they dispersed themselves before
the city, and laid themselves in ambush among its ruins, to catch those
that attempted to desert to the Romans; accordingly many such deserters
were caught by them, and were all slain; for these were too weak, by reason
of their want of food, to fly away from them; so their dead bodies were
thrown to the dogs. Now every other sort of death was thought more tolerable
than the famine, insomuch that, though the Jews despaired now of mercy,
yet would they fly to the Romans, and would themselves, even of their own
accord, fall among the murderous rebels also. Nor was there any place in
the city that had no dead bodies in it, but what was entirely covered with
those that were killed either by the famine or the rebellion; and all was
full of the dead bodies of such as had perished, either by that sedition
or by that famine.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.