They were weary days—­days of increasing storm and multiplying calamity.  Famine in some quarters of the city reached appalling proportions.  Insurrections in these regions were so vigorously suppressed that the victims chose to starve and live rather than to revolt and perish.  Pestilence broke out among the inhabitants near the eastern wall, against the other side of which the dead had been cast by hundreds; and a general flight from the city was stopped in full flood by the spectacle of some scores of unfortunates crucified by the Roman soldiers and set up in sight of the walls.

Simon and John had a disastrous quarrel and during the interval, when the sentries and the fighting-men were killing each other, the Romans possessed the first fortification around Jerusalem, the Wall of Agrippa.  The following day Titus pitched his camp within the limits of the Holy City, upon the site of Sennacherib’s Assyrian bivouac.

At sight of this signal advance, tumult broke out afresh in the city and for days Titus lay calmly by, merely harassing the Jews while he watched Jerusalem weaken itself by internal combat.  The Maccabee, steadily training his picked Gibborim, saw these lulls as signs that Titus was still in the hope that the city would submit to occupation and spare him the repugnant task of slaughtering half a nation.  In his soul he knew that at no time would Titus be unwilling to receive the voluntary capitulation of the city.

So, composed and intent through struggle and terror, he continued to prepare for the day when an organized army could take the unhappy inhabitants out of the bloody hands of the two factionists, Simon and John.

During one of the casual attacks on the Second Wall, a lean, lash-scarred maniac that had not ceased to cry night or day for seven years, “Woe unto Jerusalem!” mounted the Old Second Wall, and there pointed to his breast and added, “Woe unto me also!” At that instant a great stone struck him and tumbling with it to the ground, he was crushed into the earth and left so buried for all time.

With the hushing of that embodiment of doom, silence fell upon the city and after that, panic; and during that Titus heaved his four legions against the Second Wall and took it.  Simon was seized with frenzy, and with a body of crazed Idumeans rushed out upon the banks of the Romans and in one hour’s time overthrew the army’s work of days and so thoroughly set back the advance of the besieger that Titus resolved that no more insane sorties should be made from the gates.

He retired to his camp and in a short time soldiers appeared with tape, stakes, sledges and spades and laid out an immense circle, all but compassing the great city of Jerusalem.

The Maccabee saw all this.  He stood on the wall above the roar and frenzy and looked across bleached stretches of sunny, rocky earth toward the orderly ranks of soldiers, the simple business, the tranquil speed of Rome making war, and understood that peaceful despatch as deadly.