The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

While the holy house was on fire everything was plundered that came to hand, and ten thousand of those that were caught were slain; nor was there a commiseration of any age, or any reverence of gravity, but children, and old men, and profane persons, and priests were all slain in the same manner; so that this war went round all sorts of men, and brought them to destruction, and as well those that made supplication for their lives as those that defended themselves by fighting. The flame was also carried a long way, and made an echo, together with the groans of those that were slain; and because this hill was high, and the works at the Temple were very great, one would have thought the whole city had been on fire. Nor can one imagine anything either greater or more terrible than this noise, for there was at once a shout of the Roman legions, who were marching all together, and a sad clamor of the seditious, who were now surrounded with fire and sword.

The people also that were left above were beaten back upon the enemy, and under a great consternation, and made sad moans at the calamity they were under; the multitude also that was in the city joined in this outcry with those that were upon the hill. And besides, many of those that were worn away by the famine and their mouths almost closed, when they saw the fire of the holy house they exerted their utmost strength and brake out into groans and outcries again. Perea did also return the echo, as well as the mountains round about [the city], and augmented the force of the entire noise. Yet was the misery itself more terrible than this disorder, for one would have thought that the hill itself, on which the Temple stood, was seething hot, as full of fire on every part of it, that the blood was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain more in number than those that slew them, for the ground did nowhere appear visible for the dead bodies that lay on it; but the soldiers went over heaps of those bodies, as they ran upon such as fled from them.

And now it was that the multitude of the robbers were thrust out [of the inner court of the Temple] by the Romans, and had much ado to get into the outward court, and from thence into the city, while the remainder of the populace fled into the cloister of that outer court. As for the priests, some of them plucked up from the holy house the spikes that were upon it, with their bases, which were made of lead, and shot them at the Romans instead of darts. But then as they gained nothing by so doing, and as the fire burst out upon them, they retired to the wall that was eight cubits broad, and there they tarried.

And now the Romans, judging that it was in vain to spare what was round about the holy house, burned all those places, as also the remains of the cloisters and the gates, two excepted: the one on the east side and the other on the south; both which, however, they burned afterward. They also burned down the treasury chambers, in which was an immense quantity of money and an immense number of garments and other precious goods there reposited; and, to speak all in a few words, there it was that the entire riches of the Jews were heaped up together, while the rich people had there built themselves chambers (to contain such furniture). The soldiers also came to the rest of the cloisters that were in the outer (court of the) Temple, whither the women and children, and a great mixed multitude of the people, fled, in number about six thousand. But before Cæsar had determined anything about these people, or given the commanders any orders relating to them, the soldiers were in such a rage that they set that cloister on fire; by which means it came to pass that some of these were destroyed by throwing themselves down headlong, and some were burned in the cloisters themselves. Nor did any one of them escape with his life.