very
great, that they were in want even of corn for their sustenance.

3. Now the number [32] of those that were carried captive during this
whole war was collected to be ninety-seven thousand; as was the number
of those that perished during the whole siege eleven hundred thousand,
the greater part of whom were indeed of the same nation [with the
citizens of Jerusalem], but not belonging to the city itself; for they
were come up from all the country to the feast of unleavened bread,
and were on a sudden shut up by an army, which, at the very first,
occasioned so great a straitness among them, that there came a
pestilential destruction upon them, and soon afterward such a famine, as
destroyed them more suddenly. And that this city could contain so many
people in it, is manifest by that number of them which was taken under
Cestius, who being desirous of informing Nero of the power of the city,
who otherwise was disposed to contemn that nation, entreated the high
priests, if the thing were possible, to take the number of their whole
multitude. So these high priests, upon the coming of that feast which
is called the Passover, when they slay their sacrifices, from the ninth
hour till the eleventh, but so that a company not less than ten [33]
belong to every sacrifice, [for it is not lawful for them to feast
singly by themselves,] and many of us are twenty in a company, found
the number of sacrifices was two hundred and fifty-six thousand five
hundred; which, upon the allowance of no more than ten that feast
together, amounts to two millions seven hundred thousand and two hundred
persons that were pure and holy; for as to those that have the leprosy,
or the gonorrhea, or women that have their monthly courses, or such as
are otherwise polluted, it is not lawful for them to be partakers of
this sacrifice; nor indeed for any foreigners neither, who come hither
to worship.

4. Now this vast multitude is indeed collected out of remote places, but
the entire nation was now shut up by fate as in prison, and the
Roman army encompassed the city when it was crowded with inhabitants.
Accordingly, the multitude of those that therein perished exceeded all
the destructions that either men or God ever brought upon the world;
for, to speak only of what was publicly known, the Romans slew some
of them, some they carried captives, and others they made a search for
under ground, and when they found where they were, they broke up the
ground a