It took eighteen days to complete the siege-works. At last the hanks were ready to receive the batteringrams, and these were placed in position. But little defence was made. Panic-stricken and cowering, the hapless Jews awaited the breach in the wall, and the incoming of the enemy. Simon and John, with what force they could collect, abandoned the towers, and rushed to attempt an escape over Titus's wall of circumvallation at the south. It was hopeless. They were beaten back ; the leaders hid themselves in the subterranean chambers with which Jerusalem was honeycombed, and the rest stood still to be killed. The Romans, pouring into the town, began by slaying all indiscriminately. Tiring of butchery they turned their thoughts to plunder ; but the houses were filled with dead and putrefying corpses, so that they stood in horror at the sight, and .went out without touching anything. " But - although they had this commiseration for such as were destroyed in this manner, yet had they not the same for those that were still alive ; and they ran every one through whom they met with, and obstructed the streets with dead bodies, and made the whole city run with blood to such a degree, indeed, that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with their men's blood." And then they set fire to the houses, and all was over. As for the prisoners who remained alive, they were destined to the usual fate of slaves. To fight as gladiators ; to afford sport among the wild beasts in the theatres ; and to work lor life in the mines, was their miserable lot. Woe, indeed, to the conquered in those old wars, where defeat meant death, whose least cruel form was the stroke of the headsman, or, worse than death, life, whose least miserable portion was perpetual slavery in the mines. It would have been well had Josephus, after narrating the scenes which he tells so well, gone to visit these his miserable fellow-countrymen in slavery, and described for us, if he could, the wretchedness of their after-life, the un