The plot was discovered, and Judas, with his ten fellows, was hurled over the ramparts at the feet of the Eomans. It was then that Josephus, whom of all men the hesieged hated, was wounded in the head, but not seriously, by a stone. The Jews made a tremendous acclamation at seeing this, and sallied forth for a sortie, in the excess of their joy. Josephus, senseless, was taken up and conveyed away, but the next day reappeared and once more offered the clemency of Titus to those who would come out. The hatred which his countrymen bore to Josephus, as to an apostate, natural enough, shows remarkably the love of justice which in all times has distinguished the Jew. His father and mother were in the city. They were not, till late in the siege, interfered with in any way: and his father was set in prison at last, more, apparently, to vex his son than with any idea of doing him an injury.* The miserable state of the city drove hundreds to desert. They came down from the walls, or they made a pretended sortie and passed over to the Eomans ; but here a worse fate accompanied them, in spite of Josephus's promises, for Josephus had not reckoned on the expectation that the Jews, famishing and mad for food, would, as proved the case, cause their own death by ο vet- eating at first. And a more terrible danger awaited them. It was rumoured about that the deserters swallowed their gold before leaving the city, and the auxiliaries in the Eoman camp, Arabians and Syrians, seized the suppliants, and fairly cut them open to find the gold. And though Titus was incensed when he heard of it, and prohibited it strictly, he could not wholly stop the practice, and the knowledge of this cruelty getting into the city stopped many who would otherwise have escaped: they remained to die. * Josephus narrates how his mother wept at the false report of his death, and quotes with complacency her lamentation that she had brought so distinguished a man into the world for so early a death.