plunderers by swallowing every atom, were treated still more cruelly, as if they had wronged those who came to rob them. Tortures, which cannot be related with decency, were employed against those who had a loaf, or a handful of barley Nor did their own necessities excuse these cruelties; sometimes it was done by those who had abundance of food, with a deliberate design of husbanding their own resources. If any wretches crept out near the Roman posts to pick up some miserable herbs or vegetables, they were plundered on their return; and if they entreated, in the awful name of God, that some portion, at least, might be left them of what they had obtained at the hazard of their lives, they might think themselves well off if they escaped being killed as well as pillaged.

Such were the cruelties exercised on the lower orders by the satellites of the tyrants; the richer and more distinguished were carried before the tyrants themselves. Some were accused of treasonable correspondence with the Romans; others with an intention to desert. He that was plundered by Simon was sent to John; he that had been stripped by John was sent to Simon; so, by turns, they, as it were, shared the bodies, and drained the blood of the citizens. Their ambition made them enemies; their common crimes united them in friendship: they were jealous if either deprived the other of his share in some flagrant cruelty, and complained of being wronged if excluded from some atrocious iniquity.

The blood runs cold and the heart sickens at these unexampled horrors, and we take refuge in a kind of desperate hope that they have been exaggerated by the historian; those which follow, perpetrated under his own eyes by his Roman friends, and justified under the all-extenuating plea of necessity, admit of no such reservation. They must be believed in their naked and unmitigated barbarity.

Many poor wretches, some few of them insurgents, but mostly the poorest of the people, would steal down the ravines by night to pick up whatever might have served for food They would, most of them, willingly have deserted, but hesi

tated to leave their wives and children to be murdered. For these, Titus laid men in ambush: when attacked, they defended themselves: as a punishment, they were scourged, tortured, and crucified before the walls; and in the morning sometimes five hundred, sometimes more, of these miserable beings were seen writhing on crosses before the walls. This was done because it was thought unsafe to let them escape, and to terrify the rest. The soldiers added ridicule to their cruelty they would place the bodies in all sorts of ludicrous postures; and this went on till room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses for the bodies.

These executions produced a contrary effect to that which was contemplated. The Zealots dragged the relatives of the deserters, and all they suspected as inclined towards peace, up to the walls, and bade them behold those examples of Roman mercy. This checked the desertion, excepting in those who thought it better to be killed at once than to die slowly of hunger. Titus sent others back to Simon and John, with their hands cut off, exhorting them to capitulate, and not to force him to destroy the city and the temple. It cannot be wondered, that as Titus went round the works he was saluted from all parts, in contempt of the imperial dignity, with the loudest and bitterest execrations against his own name and that of his father.

The extract which follows relates to a much later period of the siege.

CAPTURE AND BURNING OF THE TEMPLE.

ROCEEDING by gradual approaches and successive assaults, the Romans had now captured the tower of Antonia, and were threatening the temple itself. In the mean time, the famine continued its fearful ravages: men would fight even the dearest friends for the most miserable morsel: the very dead were searched, as though they might conceal some scrap of food. Even the robbers began to suffer severely: they went prowling about like mad dogs, or reeling, like drunken men, from weakness, and entered and searched the same house twice or thrice in the same hour. The most loathsome and disgusting food was sold at an enormous price: they gnawed their belts, shoes, and even the leathern coats of their shields: chopped hay and shoots of trees sold at high prices. Yet what were all these horrors to that which followed?

There was a woman of Perea, from the village of Bethzob, Mary, the daughter of Eleazar. She possessed considerable wealth when she took refuge in the city. Day after day she had been plundered by the robbers, whom she had provoked by her bitter imprecations. No one, however, would mercifully put an end to her misery, and her mind maddened with wrong, her body preyed upon by famine, she wildly resolved on an expedient which might gratify at once her vengeance and her hunger. She had an infant that was vainly endeavouring to obtain some moisture from her dry bosom: she seized it, cooked it, ate one half, and set the other aside. The smoke and the smell of food quickly reached the robbers: they forced her door, and, with horrible threats, commanded her to give up what she had been feast