It had moved him to look upon this most majestic fortification, embattled and begirt for resistance against the most majestic nation in the world.  But he who came as a stranger could not feel within him the tenderness of old love, the sanctity of old tradition, and the desperation of kin in his blood as he gazed upon Jerusalem.  Yonder was a roof-garden; to him, no more than that.  But the inspired Jews beside him knew that in that place the sun of noon had shone upon Bathsheba, the beautiful; and in that neighboring high place the heart of the Singing King had melted; to the north was a stretch of monotonous ground overgrown with a new suburb; but that was the camp of Sennacherib, the Assyrian whom the Angel of the Lord smote and his army of one hundred and four score and five thousand, before the morning.  Yonder were squalid streets, older than any others.  But the Kings had walked them; the Prophets had helped wear trenches in their stones; the heroes and the strong-hearted women of the ancient days had gone that way.  No house but was holy with tradition; no street but was sanctified by event.  Small wonder, then, that these who came to this Passover, the most momentous one since that calamity which had occurred forty years ago on Golgotha, wept, cried aloud to Heaven; became beatified and made prophecies; railed; anathematized Jerusalem’s enemies; assumed vows and were threatening.  Julian of Ephesus was shaken.  He looked about him on the tempestuous host, then touched his horse and rode down to the city.

On the Hill Scopus over which he approached an inferior number of Romans were camped, and these had maintained a semblance of siege only sufficiently effective to close all the gates on three sides.  The Sun Gate to the south of the city was therefore the most accessible point of entry for the pilgrims.  Following the people who had preceded him, Julian approached this portal, left his horse with the stable-keeper without and prepared to enter Jerusalem.

Collecting at the causeway of the Sun Gate the pilgrims came with such impetus that the foremost were rushed struggling and protesting through the tunnel under the wall and forced well into Jerusalem before they could control their own motion.  Once within, the host spread out so that one looking at the immense space they instantly covered wondered how so great a mass ever passed through the circumscribed limits of a fifty-foot gate.  At times stopping was impossible.  Again there were momentary lulls, as when the sea recoils upon itself and is stilled for an instant.  They who stood to watch, wearied of days of such invasion, unconsciously wished that the interval might endure till they could rest their number-wearied brains.  But, as if the stagnation were the result of congestion somewhere without the walls, when the wave returned it came with redoubled height and power and the Sun Gate would roar with the noise of their entry.