senate and
people of Antioch earnestly entreated him to come upon their theater,
where their whole multitude was assembled, and expected him, he complied
with great humanity; but when they pressed him with much earnestness,
and continually begged of him that he would eject the Jews out of their
city, he gave them this very pertinent answer: "How can this be done,
since that country of theirs, whither the Jews must be obliged then to
retire, is destroyed, and no place will receive them besides?" Whereupon
the people of Antioch, when they had failed of success in this their
first request, made him a second; for they desired that he would order
those tables of brass to be removed on which the Jews' privileges were
engraven. However, Titus would not grant that neither, but permitted the
Jews of Antioch to continue to enjoy the very same privileges in that
city which they had before, and then departed for Egypt; and as he came
to Jerusalem in his progress, and compared the melancholy condition he
saw it then in, with the ancient glory of the city, and called to mind
the greatness of its present ruins, as well as its ancient splendor,
he could not but pity the destruction of the city, so far was he from
boasting that so great and goodly a city as that was had been by him
taken by force; nay, he frequently cursed those that had been the
authors of their revolt, and had brought such a punishment upon the
city; insomuch that it openly appeared that he did not desire that
such a calamity as this punishment of theirs amounted to should be a
demonstration of his courage. Yet was there no small quantity of the
riches that had been in that city still found among its ruins, a great
deal of which the Romans dug up; but the greatest part was discovered
by those who were captives, and so they carried it away; I mean the gold
and the silver, and the rest of that most precious furniture which the
Jews had, and which the owners had treasured up under ground, against
the uncertain fortunes of war.

3. So Titus took the journey he intended into Egypt, and passed over the
desert very suddenly, and came to Alexandria, and took up a resolution
to go to Rome by sea. And as he was accompanied by two legions, he sent
each of them again to the places whence they had before come; the fifth
he sent to Mysia, and the fifteenth to Pannonia: as for the leaders of
the captives, Simon and John, with the other seven hundred men, whom
he had selected out of