rderous rebels also. Nor was there any place in the city
that had no dead bodies in it, but what was entirely covered with those
that were killed either by the famine or the rebellion; and all was full
of the dead bodies of such as had perished, either by that sedition or
by the famine.

So now the last hope which supported the tyrants and that crew of
robbers who were with them was in the caves and caverns underground;
whither, if they could once fly, they did not expect to be searched for;
but endeavored that, after the whole city should be destroyed and the
Romans gone away, they might come out again and escape from them. This
was no better than a dream of theirs, for they were not able to lie hid
either from God or from the Romans. However, they depended on these
underground subterfuges, and set more places on fire than did the Romans
themselves; and those that fled out of their houses thus set on fire
into the ditches they killed without mercy, and pillaged them also; and
if they discovered food belonging to anyone they seized upon it and
swallowed it down, together with their blood also--nay, they were now
come to fight one with another about their plunder; and I cannot but
think that, had not their destruction prevented it, their barbarity
would have made them taste of even the dead bodies themselves.

Now when Caesar perceived that the upper city was so steep that it could
not possibly be taken without raising banks against it, he distributed
the several parts of that work among his army, and this on the twentieth
day of the month Lous [Ab].

It was at this time that the commanders of the Idumeans got together
privately and took counsel about surrendering up themselves to the
Romans. Accordingly, they sent five men to Titus and entreated him to
give them his right hand for their security. So Titus, thinking that the
tyrants would yield, if the Idumeans, upon whom a great part of the war
depended, were once withdrawn from them, after some reluctancy and delay
complied with them, and gave them security for their lives, and sent the
five men back. But as these Idumeans were preparing to march out, Simon
perceived it, and immediately slew the five men that had gone to Titus,
and took their commanders and put them in prison, of whom the most
eminent was Jacob, the son of Sosas; but as for the multitude of the
Idumeans, who did not at all know what to do, now their commanders were
taken from them, he had them watche