hat had formerly offended any of these plotters were now known,
and were now led away to the slaughter, and when they had done abundance
of horrid mischief to the guiltless they granted a truce to the guilty
and let those go off that came out of the caverns. These followers of
John also did now seize upon this inner temple, and upon all the warlike
engines therein, and then ventured to oppose Simon. And thus that
sedition, which had been divided into three factions, was now reduced to
two.

But Titus, intending to pitch his camp nearer to the city than Scopus,
placed as many of his choice horsemen and footmen as he thought
sufficient opposite to the Jews to prevent their sallying out upon them,
while he gave orders for the whole army to level the distance as far as
the wall of the city. So they threw down all the hedges and walls which
the inhabitants had made about their gardens and groves of trees, and
cut down all the fruit trees that lay between them and the wall of the
city, and filled up all the hollow places and the chasms, and demolished
the rocky precipices with iron instruments; and thereby made all the
place level from Scopus to Herod's monuments, which adjoined to the pool
called the Serpent's Pool.

Now at this very time the Jews contrived the following stratagem against
the Romans. The bolder sort of the seditious went out at the towers,
called the Women's Towers, as if they had been ejected out of the city
by those who were for peace, and rambled about as if they were afraid of
being assaulted by the Romans, and were in fear of one another, while
those that stood upon the wall and seemed to be of the people's side
cried out aloud for peace, and entreated they might have security for
their lives given them, and called for the Romans, promising to open the
gates to them; and as they cried out after that manner they threw stones
at their own people, as though they would drive them away from the
gates. These also pretended that they were excluded by force, and that
they petitioned those that were within to let them in; and rushing upon
the Romans perpetually, with violence, they then came back, and seemed
to be in great disorder. Now the Roman soldiers thought this cunning
stratagem of theirs was to be believed real, and thinking they had the
one party under their power, and could punish them as they pleased, and
hoping that the other party would open their gates to them, set to the
execution of their design