re the most accessible point
of entry for the pilgrims. Following the people who had preceded him,
Julian approached this portal, left his horse with the stable-keeper
without and prepared to enter Jerusalem.

Collecting at the causeway of the Sun Gate the pilgrims came with such
impetus that the foremost were rushed struggling and protesting
through the tunnel under the wall and forced well into Jerusalem
before they could control their own motion. Once within, the host
spread out so that one looking at the immense space they instantly
covered wondered how so great a mass ever passed through the
circumscribed limits of a fifty-foot gate. At times stopping was
impossible. Again there were momentary lulls, as when the sea recoils
upon itself and is stilled for an instant. They who stood to watch,
wearied of days of such invasion, unconsciously wished that the
interval might endure till they could rest their number-wearied
brains. But, as if the stagnation were the result of congestion
somewhere without the walls, when the wave returned it came with
redoubled height and power and the Sun Gate would roar with the noise
of their entry.

After the Ephesian had been swept in with his own company of pilgrims,
he saw that which even few of the new-comers had expected to see. The
immediate vicinity of the gate was laid waste. Up Mount Zion opposite
Hippicus and along the margin of the Tyropean Valley where the
Herodian and Sadducean palaces had seemed so fair from the north were
great blackened shells of walls and leaning pillars, partly buried in
ruin and rubbish. Far and wide the streets were littered with debris
and charred fragments of burned timbers. At another place on the
breast of Zion was a chaos of rock where a mansion had been literally
pulled down. Somewhere near Akra pale columns of pungent, wind-blown
smoke still rose from a colossal heap of fused matter that the
Ephesian could not identify. About it were neglected houses; not a
sign of festivity was apparent; windows hung open carelessly; the
hangings in colonnades were stripped away entirely or whipped loose
from the fastenings and abandoned to the winds. Numbers of dwellings
appeared to have been sacked; others were so closely barred and
fortified that their exteriors appeared as inhospitable as jails.

Confusion prevailed on the smoked and untidy marble Walk of the
Purified leading down from the Temple. Here those who held fast to the
Law met and contested