Catapult and ballista upon the eminences outside the walls kept up an unceasing rain of enormous stones which whistled and screamed in the air and shook Jerusalem to its foundations.  The reverberating boom and the tremor of earth were varied from time to time by the splintering crash of houses crushing and the increase of uproar, as scores of luckless inhabitants went down under the falling rock.  Giant cranes with huge, ludicrous awkward arms, heaved up pots of burning pitch and oil and flung them ponderously into the city to do whatever horror of fire and torture had not been done by the engines.  Hourly the rattle of small stones increased, merely to attract the attention of the citizens to an activity to which they were so accustomed that it was almost unnoticed.  At times citizens and soldiers rushed upon a threatened gate or segment of the wall and lent strength to keep the Romans out; at other times the defenses were forsaken while the besieged fell upon one another.  Back from the broad summit of Olivet, which was the mountain of peace, the echoes gave all day long the shudder of the struggling city.

The sun daily grew more heated; the cisterns and pools within the city began to shrink so rapidly that the inhabitants feared that the enemy had come at the source of the waters of Jerusalem and had cut them off.  Hundreds of the wounded were allowed to die, simply as a defense of the wells and store-houses.  Burial became too gigantic a labor, and John and Simon ordered the bodies thrown over the walls to prevent pestilence.

Titus riding around the city on a day came upon a heap of this outcast dead and turned suddenly white.  He rode back to his camp and within the hour there approached the walls under a flag of truce an imposing Jew of middle-age, with a superb beard and a veritable mantle of rich black hair escaping from his turban and falling heavy with life and strength upon a pair of great shoulders.  He was simply dressed, but his stately carriage and splendid presence made a kingly garment out of his white gown.

Those upon the wall knew him and though they were obliged to respect the banner under which he approached, they gnashed their teeth and greeted him with epithets, poisonous with hate.  He was Flavius Josephus, one time patriot and enemy of Rome, but now secure under Titus’ patronage, abettor of his patron against his fellow-countrymen.

The Maccabee, among the fighting-men on the wall, saw his approach and discreetly stepped behind a soldier that he might not be singled out as a familiar toward which the approaching mediator would logically direct his appeal.  He had no desire to be addressed by his name before this precarious mob already mad with rage at a turncoat.

And thus concealed the Maccabee heard Josephus appeal to the Jews with apparent sincerity and affection, promise amnesty, protection and justice in his patron’s name; heard his overtures greeted with fury and finally saw the Jews swarm over the walls and drive him to fly for his life up Gareb to the camp of Titus.