The Romans were now within the city.  Only Zion and the Temple held against them.  A wall built with the thoroughness of David, the ancient, and solidified by the mortising of Time, ran directly from Hippicus to the Tyropean Valley, joining the tremendous fortifications of Moriah and so cut off Zion from the advance of the army.  Securely intrenched within that quarter and the Temple, Simon and John began the last resistance which should tax Roman endurance and Roman patience as it had not been taxed before.

Titus no longer lagged.  Famine had long since become a powerful ally and the honor of the Flavian house rested upon his immediate subjugation of the rebellious city.  He no longer expected capitulation; yet he did not neglect to be prepared for it and to encourage it.  Though the heart of the historian Josephus broke, he did not fail to serve his patron as mediator, though without hope.  Titus himself, as from time to time the horror of his work impressed itself upon him, made overtures to the factionists, neglecting no art or inducement which should convince the seditious that their resistance was foolhardy, even mad.  At such times, Nicanor’s face became contemptuous and Carus himself frowned at the young general’s attitude.  But the spirit of a Roman and the traditions of a soldier even could not prevent the young man from weakening at times before the charnel pit in Tophet where countless thousands of vultures fattened with roaring of wings and hissing of combat.

But under an ever-thickening veil of horrid airs, the struggle went on.

The Roman Ides of July arrived.

Titus had erected banks upon which his engines were raised to batter the walls of the Temple.

From Titus’ camp, the Romans on sick leave, the commissaries, those attached to the army who were not fighting-men, and old Momus, saw first, before the attack on the Temple began, a soft increasing dun-colored vapor rise between the Temple and Antonia.  It issued from the cloister at the northwest which joined the Roman tower.  As they watched, they saw that vapor grow into a pale but intensely luminous smoke, as if fine woods and burning metals were consumed together.  In a moment the whole north-west section was embraced in a sublime pall of fire.

John was burning away the connection between the Temple and the tower and was making the sacred edifice four-square.

As soon as it became confirmed, in the minds of the watchers in the Roman camp, that the Temple had been fired, the old mute among them seemed to become wholly unbalanced.  Without warning, he leaped upon the nearest sentry who, not expecting the attack, went down with a clatter of armor and a shout of astonishment.  The next instant the old man was making across the intervening space between the camp and Jerusalem as fast as his stiff legs could carry him.