soon they should die themselves ; for many died as they were burying others, and many went to their coffins before that fatal hour was come ! Nor was there any lamentation made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful complaints ; but the famine confounded all natural passions; for those who were just going to die, looked upon those that were gone to their rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths. A deep silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city ; while yet the robbers were still more terrible than these miseries were themselves ; for they brake open those houses which were no other than graves of dead bodies, and plundered them of what they had ; and carrying off the coverings of their bodies, went out laughing, and tried the points of their swords on their dead bodies ; and, in order to prove what mettle they were made of, they thrust some of those through that still lay alive upon the ground ; but for those that entreated them to lend them their right hand, and their sword to despatch them, they were too proud to grant their requests, and left them to be consumed by the famine. Now every one of these died with their eyes fixed upon the Temple. Children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants; and when those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last drops that might preserve their lives ; and while they ate after this manner, yet were they not concealed in so doing ; but the seditious everywhere came upon them immediately, and snatched away from them what they 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