Throughout those days of predatory warfare he made careful selection
of material for his army. As yet, while famine had not reduced
Jerusalem to a skeleton, he could select for bodily strength and
mental balance. He worked swiftly, sparing his men daily to the
defense of the city against the Roman and daily sacrificing precious
numbers of them to the pit of the dead just over the wall.
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.