n with the greatest zeal; and
in three days the wall, nearly five miles in circumference, was
completed. Thus there was no longer any chance of escape to the
inhabitants; no more possibility of going out, at night, to search
for food.

Now the misery of the siege was redoubled. Thousands died daily. A
mournful silence hung over the city. Some died in their houses,
some in the streets. Some crawled to the cemeteries, and expired
there. Some sat upon their housetops, with their eyes fixed upon
the Temple, until they sank back dead. No one had strength to dig
graves, and the dead bodies were thrown from the walls into the
ravines below.

The high priest Matthias, who had admitted Simon and his followers
into the city, was suspected of being in communication with the
Romans; and he and his three sons were led out on to the wall, and
executed in sight of the besiegers, while fifteen of the members of
the Sanhedrin were executed at the same time. These murders caused
indignation even on the part of some of Simon's men, and one Judas,
with ten others, agreed to deliver one of the towers to the enemy;
but the Romans--rendered cautious by the treachery which had before
been practised--hesitated to approach and, before they were
convinced that the offer was made in good faith, Simon discovered
what was going on, and the eleven conspirators were executed upon
the walls, and their bodies thrown over.

Despair drove many, again, to attempt desertion. Some of these, on
reaching the Roman lines, were spared; but many more were killed,
for the sake of the money supposed to be concealed upon them. Up to
the 1st of July, it was calculated that well-nigh six hundred
thousand had perished, in addition to the vast numbers buried in
the cemetery, and the great heaps of dead before the walls. Great
numbers of the houses had become tombs, the inhabitants shutting
themselves up, and dying quietly together.

But, while trusting chiefly to famine, the Romans had laboured
steadily on at their military engines--although obliged to fetch
the timber for ten miles--and, at the beginning of July, the
battering rams began to play against Antonia. The Jews sallied out,
but this time with less fury than usual; and they were repulsed
without much difficulty by the Romans. All day long the battering
rams thundered against the wall; while men, protected by hurdles
and penthouses, laboured to dislodge the stones at the foot of the
walls, in spite of th