plies which they might have concealed. And these cruelties were not
infrequently practised by men who were themselves well fed, and who were
merely desirous of laying up a store of provision for the future.

Thousands perished from famine and pestilence. Natural affection seemed to
have been destroyed. Husbands robbed their wives, and wives their
husbands. Children would be seen snatching the food from the mouths of
their aged parents. The question of the prophet, "Can a woman forget her
sucking child?"(42) received the answer within the walls of that doomed
city, "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they
were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people."(43)
Again was fulfilled the warning prophecy given fourteen centuries before:
"The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set
the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her
eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and
toward her daughter, ... and toward her children which she shall bear: for
she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and
straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates."(44)

The Roman leaders endeavored to strike terror to the Jews, and thus cause
them to surrender. Those prisoners who resisted when taken, were scourged,
tortured, and crucified before the wall of the city. Hundreds were daily
put to death in this manner, and the dreadful work continued until, along
the valley of Jehoshaphat and at Calvary, crosses were erected in so great
numbers that there was scarcely room to move among them. So terribly was
visited that awful imprecation uttered before the judgment-seat of Pilate:
"His blood be on us, and on our children."(45)

Titus would willingly have put an end to the fearful scene, and thus have
spared Jerusalem the full measure of her doom. He was filled with horror
as he saw the bodies of the dead lying in heaps in the valleys. Like one
entranced, he looked from the crest of Olivet upon the magnificent temple,
and gave command that not one stone of it be touched. Before attempting to
gain possession of this stronghold, he made an earnest appeal to the
Jewish leaders not to force him to defile the sacred place with blood. If
they would come forth and fight in any other place, no Roman should
violate the sanctity of the temple. Josephus himself, in a most eloquent
appeal, entreated