t of the higher ground, some being
flung from the hand and some hurled by means of engines. They likewise
made night and day sallies as often as occasion offered, set fire to the
engines, slew numerous combatants, and by digging out under the wall took
away earth from beneath the mound. As for the rams, they lassoed some of
them and broke the ends off, others they seized and pulled up with hooks,
while by means of thick boards well fastened together and strengthened
with iron, which they let down against the face of the wall, they turned
aside the assaults of the remainder. The Romans' chief cause of discomfort
was the lack of water; their supply was of poor quality and had to be
brought from a distance.

The Jews found their underground passages a source of strength. They had
these affairs dug from within the city out under the walls to distant
points in the country, and going out through them they would attack
parties in search of water and harass scattered detachments. Consequently
Titus stopped them all up.]

[Sidenote:--5--] In the course of these operations many on both sides were
wounded and killed. Titus himself was struck on the left shoulder by a
stone, and as a result of this accident the arm was always weaker. After a
time the Romans managed to scale the outside circle, and, pitching their
camps between the two encompassing lines of fortification, assaulted the
second wall. Here, however, they found the conditions confronting them to
be different. When all the inhabitants had retired behind the second wall,
its defence proved an easier matter because the circuit to be guarded was
so much less. Titus, accordingly, made anew a proclamation offering them
immunity. They, however, even under these circumstances held out. And the
captives and deserters from the enemy so far as they could do so
unobserved spoiled the Roman water supply and slew many men that they
could cut off from the main force, so that Titus refused to receive any of
them. Meantime some of the Romans, too, growing disheartened, as often
happens in a prolonged siege, and furthermore suspecting that the city was
really, even as report declared, impregnable, went over to the other side.
The Jews although they were short of food treated them kindly, in order to
be able to exhibit deserters to their own ranks.

[Sidenote:--6--] Though a breach in the wall was effected by engines,
still the capture did not immediately follow; the defenders killed gre