the
door: the whole building was in flames in an instant. The blinding smoke
and fire forced the officers to retreat, and the noble edifice was left to
its fate.

"It was an appalling spectacle to the Roman--what was it to the Jew? The
whole summit of the hill which commanded the city, blazed like a volcano.
One after another the buildings fell in, with a tremendous crash, and were
swallowed up in the fiery abyss. The roofs of cedar were like sheets of
flame; the gilded pinnacles shone like spikes of red light; the gate
towers sent up tall columns of flame and smoke. The neighboring hills were
lighted up; and dark groups of people were seen watching in horrible
anxiety the progress of the destruction: the walls and heights of the
upper city were crowded with faces, some pale with the agony of despair,
others scowling unavailing vengeance. The shouts of the Roman soldiery as
they ran to and fro, and the howlings of the insurgents who were perishing
in the flames, mingled with the roaring of the conflagration and the
thundering sound of falling timbers. The echoes of the mountains replied
or brought back the shrieks of the people on the heights; all along the
walls resounded screams and wailings; men who were expiring with famine
rallied their remaining strength to utter a cry of anguish and desolation.

"The slaughter within was even more dreadful than the spectacle from
without. Men and women, old and young, insurgents and priests, those who
fought and those who entreated mercy, were hewn down in indiscriminate
carnage. The number of the slain exceeded that of the slayers. The
legionaries had to clamber over heaps of dead to carry on the work of
extermination."(46)

After the destruction of the temple, the whole city soon fell into the
hands of the Romans. The leaders of the Jews forsook their impregnable
towers, and Titus found them solitary. He gazed upon them with amazement,
and declared that God had given them into his hands; for no engines,
however powerful, could have prevailed against those stupendous
battlements. Both the city and the temple were razed to their foundations,
and the ground upon which the holy house had stood was "plowed like a
field."(47) In the siege and the slaughter that followed, more than a
million of the people perished; the survivors were carried away as
captives, sold as slaves, dragged to Rome to grace the conqueror's
triumph, thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheaters, or scattered as