s likely to give way, sent some
chosen horsemen to support them. Hereupon the Jews found themselves not
able to sustain their onset, and, upon the slaughter of those in the
forefront, many of the rest were put to flight. But as the Romans were
going off, the Jews turned upon them and fought them; and as those
Romans came back upon them, they retreated again, until about the fifth
hour of the day they were overborne, and shut themselves up in the inner
[court of the] Temple.

So Titus retired into the tower of Antonia and resolved to storm the
Temple the next day, early in the morning, with his whole army, and to
encamp round about the holy house. But as for that house, God had, for
certain, long ago doomed it to the fire; and now that fatal day was
come, according to the revolution of ages. It was the tenth day of the
month Lous [Ab] upon which it was formerly burned by the king of
Babylon; although these flames took their rise from the Jews themselves,
and were occasioned by them, for upon Titus' retiring the seditious lay
still for a little while, and then attacked the Romans again when those
that guarded the holy house fought with those that quenched the fire
that was burning the inner [court of the] Temple; but these Romans put
the Jews to flight and proceeded as far as the holy house itself. At
which time one of the soldiers, without staying for any orders and
without any concern or dread upon him at so great an undertaking and
being hurried on by a certain divine fury, snatched somewhat out of the
materials that were on fire, and being lifted up by another soldier he
set fire to a golden window through which there was a passage to the
rooms that were round about the holy house on the north side of it.

As the flames went upward the Jews made a great clamor such as so mighty
an affliction required and ran together to prevent it; and now they
spared not their lives any longer nor suffered anything to restrain
their force, since that holy house was perishing for whose sake it was
that they kept such a guard about it.

And now Caesar was no way able to restrain the enthusiastic fury of the
soldiers, and the fire proceeded on more and more. He went into the holy
place of the Temple with his commanders and saw it, with what was in it,
which he found to be far superior to what the relations of foreigners
contained, and not inferior to what we ourselves boasted of and believed
about it. But as the flame had not as yet r