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While this work was proceeding, one day, a considerable body of the Jews was seen to come, as if driven out, from the gate near the tower of the Women. They stood cowering under the walls, as if dreading the attack of the Romans. It seemed as if the peace party had expelled the fiercer insurgents, for many at the same time were seen upon the walls, holding out their right hands in token of surrender, and making signs that they would open the gates. At the same time they began to throw down stones on those without; the latter appeared at one moment to endeavour to force their way back, and to supplicate the mercy of those on the walls; at another to advance towards the Romans, and then retreat as if in terror. The unsuspecting soldiers were about to charge in a body, but the more wary Titus ordered them to remain in their. position. A few however, who were in front of the workmen, seized their arms and advanced towards the gates. The Jews fled, till their pursuers were so close to the gates, as to be within the flanking towers. They then turned, others sallied forth and surrounded the Romans, while those on the walls heaped down stones and every kind of missile on their heads. After suffering great loss in killed and wounded, some of them effected their retreat, and were pursued by the Jews to the monument of Helena. The Jews, not content with their victory, stood and laughed at the Romans for having been deceived by so simple a stratagem, clashed their shields, and assailed them with every ludicrous and opprobrious epithet. Nor was this the worst; they were received with stern reproof by their tribunes, and

Cæsar himself addressed them in the language of the strongest rebuke: "The Jews," he said, "who have no leader but despair, do every thing with the utmost coolness and precaution, lay ambushes, and plot stratagems; while the Romans, who used to enslave fortune by their steady discipline, are become so rash and disorderly, as to venture into battle without command." He then threatened, and was actually about to put into execution, the military law, which punished such a breach of order with death-had not the other troops surrounded him, entreating mercy for their fellow soldiers, and pledging themselves to redeem the blow by their future regularity and discipline. Cæsar was with difficulty appeased.

The approach to the city was now complete, and the army took up a position along the northern and western wall. They were drawn up, the foot in front, seven deep, the horse behind, three deep, with the archers between them. The Jews were thus effectually blockaded; and the beasts of burthen, which carried the baggage, came up to the camp in perfect security. Titus himself encamped about a quarter of a mile from the wall near the tower Psephina; another part of the army near the tower called Hippicus, at the same distance; the tenth legion kept its station near the mount of Olives.

Jerusalem at this period was fortified by three walls, in all those parts where it was not surrounded by abrupt and impassable ravines; there it had but one. Not that these walls stood one within the other, each in a narrower circle running round the whole city; but each of the inner walls

WALLS OF JERUSALEM.

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defended one of the several quarters into which the city was divided-or it might be almost said, one of the separate cities. Since the days in which David had built his capital on the rugged heights of Sion, great alterations had taken place in Jerusalem. That eminence was still occupied by the upper city; but in addition, first the hill of Moriah was taken in, on which the Temple stood; then Acra, which was originally, although a part of the same ridge, separated by a deep chasm from Moriah. This chasm was almost entirely filled up, and the top of Acra levelled by the Asmonean princes, so that Acra and Moriah were united, though on the side of Acra the Temple presented a formidable front, connected by several bridges or causeways with the lower city. To the south the height of Sion, the upper city, was separated from the lower by a ravine, which ran right through Jerusalem, called the Tyropoon or the valley of the Cheesemongers; at the edge of this ravine, on both sides the streets suddenly broke off, though the walls in some places must have crossed it, and it was bridged in more than one place. To the north extended a considerable suburb called Bezetha, or the new city.

The first or outer wall encompassed Bezetha. Agrippa the First had intended, as it has been mentioned, to make this wall of extraordinary strength; but he had desisted from the work, on the interference of the Romans; who seem to have foreseen that this refractory city would hereafter force them to take arms against it. Had this wall been built according to the plan of Agrippa, the city, in the opinion of Josephus, would have

been impregnable. This wall began at the tower. Hippicos, which stood, it seems, on a point at the extreme corner of Mount Sion: it must have crossed the western mouth of the valley of Tyropoea, and run directly north to the tower of Psephina, proved clearly by D'Anville to have been what was called during the crusades Castel Pisano. The wall then bore towards the monument of Helena, ran by the royal caverns to the Fuller's monument, and was carried into the valley of Kedron or Jehoshaphat, where it joined the old or inner wall under the Temple. The wall, however it fell short of Agrippa's design, was of considerable strength. The stones were 35 feet long, so solid as not easily to be shaken by battering engines, or undermined. . The wall was 17 feet broad. It had only been carried to the same height by Agrippa, but it had been hastily run up by the Jews to 35 feet; on its top stood battlements 3 feet, and pinnacles 5; so the whole was nearly 45 feet high.

The second wall began at a gate in the old or inner one, called Gennath, the gate of the gardens, it intersected the lower city, and having struck northward for some distance, turned to the east and joined the north-west corner of the tower of Antonia. The Antonia stood at the north-west corner of the Temple, and was separated from Bezetha by a deep ditch, which probably protected the whole northern front of the Temple, as well as of the Antonia.

The old or inner wall was that of Sion. Starting from the south-western porticoes of the Temple, to which it was united, it ran along the

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ridge of the Tyropoon, passed first the Xystus, then the Council house, and abutted on the tower Hippicus, from whence the northern wall sprang. The old wall, then ran southward through Bethso to the gate of the Essenes, all along the ridge of the valley of Hinnom, above the pool of Siloam, then eastward again to the pool of Solomon, so on through Ophla, probably a deep glen: it there joined the eastern portico of the Temple. Thus there were, it might seem, four distinct towns, each requiring a separate siege. The capture of the first wall only opened Bezetha, the fortifications of the northern part of the Temple, the Antonia, and the second wall still defended the other quarters. The second wall forced, only a part of the lower city was won; the strong rock-built citadel of Antonia and the Temple on one hand, and Sion on the other, were not in the least weakened.

The whole circuit of these walls was guarded with towers, built of the same solid masonry with the rest of the walls. They were 35 feet broad, and 35 high; but above this height, were lofty chambers, and above those again upper rooms, and large tanks to receive the rain-water. Broad flights of steps led up to them. Ninety of these towers stood in the first wall, fourteen in the second, and sixty in the third. The intervals between the towers were about 350 feet. The whole circuit of the city according to Josephus was 33 stadiarather more than 4 miles. The most magnificent of all these towers was that of Psephina, opposite to which Titus encamped. It was 122 feet high, and commanded a noble view of the whole territory of Judæa, to the border of Arabia, and to the sea:

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