is it that you
would save such a holy house as this was which is now destroyed? What
preservation can you now desire after the destruction of your Temple?
Yet do you stand still at this very time in your armor; nor can you
bring yourselves so much as to pretend to be supplicants even in this
your utmost extremity. O miserable creatures! what is it you depend on?
Are not your people dead? is not your holy house gone? is not your city
in my power? and are not your own very lives in my hands? And do you
still deem it a part of valor to die? However, I will not imitate your
madness. If you throw down your arms and deliver up your bodies to me, I
grant you your lives; and I will act like a mild master of a family;
what cannot be healed shall be punished, and the rest I will preserve
for my own use."

To that offer of Titus they made this reply: That they could not accept
of it, because they had sworn never to do so; but they desired they
might have leave to go through the wall that had been made about them,
with their wives and children; for that they would go into the desert
and leave the city to him.

At this Titus had great indignation, that when they were in the case of
men already taken captives, they should pretend to make their own terms
with him, as if they had been conquerors. So he ordered this
proclamation to be made to them: That they should no more come out to
him as deserters, nor hope for any further security, for that he would
henceforth spare nobody, but fight them with his whole army; and that
they must save themselves as well as they could, for that he would from
henceforth treat them according to the laws of war. So he gave orders to
the soldiers both to burn and to plunder the city; who did nothing
indeed that day; but on the next day they set fire to the repository of
the archives, to Acra, to the council house, and to the place called
Ophlas; at which time the fire proceeded as far as the palace of Queen
Helena, which was in the middle of Acra; the lanes also were burned
down, as were also those houses that were full of the dead bodies of
such as were destroyed by famine.

On the same day it was that the sons and brethren of Izates the King,
together with many others of the eminent men of the populace, got
together there, and besought Caesar to give them his right hand for their
security. Upon which, though he was very angry at all that were now
remaining, yet did he not lay aside his old moderatio