In the mean time Antiochus Epiphanes came to the city, having with him a
considerable number of other armed men, and a band called the Macedonian
band about him, all of the same age, tall, and just past their
childhood, armed, and instructed after the Macedonian manner, whence it
was that they took that name. Antiochus with his Macedonians made a
sudden assault upon the wall; and, indeed, for his own part, his
strength and skill were so great that he guarded himself from the Jewish
darts, and yet shot his darts at them, while yet the young men with him
were almost all sorely galled, for they had so great a regard to the
promises that had been made of their courage, that they would needs
persevere in their fighting, and at length many of them retired, but not
till they were wounded; and then they perceived that true Macedonians,
if they were to be conquerors, must have Alexander's good fortune also.

Now as the Romans began to raise their banks on the twelfth day of the
month Artemisius [Jyar], so had they much ado to finish them by the
twenty-ninth day of the same month, after they had labored hard for
seventeen days continually, for there were now four great banks raised,
one of which was at the tower Antonia. This was raised by the Fifth
legion, over against the middle of that pool which was called Struthius.
Another was cast up by the Twelfth legion at the distance of about
twenty cubits from the other. But the labors of the Tenth legion, which
lay a great way off these, were on the north quarter, and at the pool
called Amygdalon; as was that of the Fifteenth legion about thirty
cubits from it, and at the high-priest's monument. And now, when the
engines were brought, John had from within undermined the space that was
over against the tower of Antonia, as far as the banks themselves, and
had supported the ground over the mine with beams laid across one
another, whereby the Roman works stood upon an uncertain foundation.

Then did he order such materials to be brought in as were daubed over
with pitch and bitumen, and set them on fire; and as the cross-beams
that supported the banks were burning, the ditch yielded on the sudden,
and the banks were shaken down, and fell into the ditch with a
prodigious noise. Now at the first, there arose a very thick smoke and
dust, as the fire was choked with the fall of the bank; but as the
suffocated materials were now gradually consumed, a plain flame brake
out; on which sudden