One of those who kept the register of burials and paid the bearers of the dead, told Josephus that out of his gate alone 115,880 bodies had been thrown since the siege began, and many citizens, whose word could be depended on, estimated the number who had died at 600,000. Banks, meanwhile, were gradually rising against the fortress of Antonia. The Bomans had swept the country clear of trees for ninety furlongs round to find timber for their construction : they took twenty-one days to complete, and were four in number. The besieged no longer made the same resistance. Their courage, says Josephus, was no longer Jewish, " for they failed in what is peculiar to our nation, in boldness, violence of assault, and running upon the: enemy all together . . . but they now went out in a more languid manner than before . . . and they reproached one another for cowardice, and so retired without doing anything." The attacks of the enemy were, however, courageously defended. For a whole day the Bomans endeavoured with rams to shake the wall, and with crows and picks to undermine its foundations. Darkness made them withdraw, and during the night the wall, which had been grievously shaken, fell of its own accord. But even this calamity had been foreseen by the defenders, and, to the astonishment and even dismay of Titus, a new wall was found built up behind the old, and the Jews upon it, ready to defend it with their old spirit. Titus exhorted his soldiers, who were getting dejected at the renewal of the .enemy's obstinacy, and offered the highest rewards to him who would first mount the wall. His exhortation, like the rest of the speeches in Josephus, is written after the grand historic style, and embodies all those sentiments which a general ought to feel under the circumstances, together with a verbosity and length quite sufficient to deprive it of all hortatory effect. One Sabinus, with only eleven others, made the attempt. He alone reached the top of the wall, and after a gallant