hey had gotten from others, for when they saw any house shut up this
was to them a signal that the people within had gotten some food;
whereupon they broke open the doors and ran in and took pieces of what
they were eating almost up out of their very throats, and this by force;
the old men who held their food fast were beaten; and if the women hid
what they had within their hands, their hair was torn for so doing; nor
was there any commiseration shown either to the aged or to the infants,
but they lifted up children from the ground as they hung upon the
morsels they had gotten and shook them down upon the floor. But still
they were more barbarously cruel to those that had prevented their
coming in, and had actually swallowed down what they were going to seize
upon, as if they had been unjustly defrauded of their right.

They also invented terrible methods of torments to discover where any
food was, and they were these: to stop up the passages of the privy
parts of the miserable wretches, and to drive sharp stakes up their
fundaments; and a man was forced to bear what it is terrible even to
hear, in order to make him confess that he had but one loaf of bread, or
that he might discover a handful of barley meal that was concealed; and
this was done when these tormentors were not themselves hungry, for the
thing had been less barbarous had necessity forced them to it; but this
was done to keep their madness in exercise, and as making preparation of
provisions for themselves for the following days. These men went also to
meet those that had crept out of the city by night, as far as the Roman
guards, to gather some plants and herbs that grew wild; and when those
people thought they had got clear of the enemy, they snatched from them
what they had brought with them, even while they had frequently
entreated them, and that by calling upon the tremendous name of God, to
give them back some part of what they had brought, though these would
not give them the least crumb, and they were to be well contented that
they were only spoiled and not slain at the same time.

It is impossible to go distinctly over every instance of these men's
iniquity. I shall therefore speak my mind here at once briefly: That
neither did any other city ever suffer such miseries, nor did any age
ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, from
the beginning of the world. Finally, they brought the Hebrew nation into
contempt, that they