and those that were slain more in number than those that slew them, for the ground nowhere appeared visible for the dead bodies that lay on it ; but the soldiers went over heaps of these bodies as they ran from such as fled from them."* The really guilty among the Jews, the fighting men, had cut their way through the Komans and fled to the upper city. A few priests either hid themselves in secret chambers or crouched upon the top of the wall. On the fifth day they surrendered, being starving. Titus ordered them to execution. And so the Temple of Herod fell. The Boman army flocked into the ruins of the Temple which it had cost them so many lives to take ; sacrifices were offered, and Titus was saluted as Imperator. An immense spoil was found there, not only from the sacred vessels of gold, but from the treasury, in which vast sums had been accumulated. The upper town, Zion, still held out. Titus demanded a parley. Standing on that bridge, the ruined stones of which were found by Captain Warren lying eighty feet below the surface of the ground, he for the last time offered terms to the insurgents. He explained that they could no longer entertain any hope, even the slightest, of safety, and renewed his offers of clemency to those who should yield. But the offers of Titus were supposed to be the effect of weakness. Again the insurgents, now indeed possessed with a divine madness, declined them. They demanded that they might be allowed to march out with all their arms, and what would now be called the honours of war. This proposition from a handful of starved soldiers surrounded by the ruins of all that they held dear, with a triumphant army on all sides, was too monstrous to be accepted even by the most clement of conquerors, and Titus resolved with reluctance on the destruction of the * Joseph, vi. v. 1.*