per palace, and shut the gates immediately; among whom were
Ananias the high priest, and the ambassadors that had been sent to
Agrippa. And now the seditious were contented with the victory they had
gotten, and the buildings they had burnt down, and proceeded no further.

7. But on the next day, which was the fifteenth of the month Lous, [Ab,]
they made an assault upon Antonia, and besieged the garrison which was
in it two days, and then took the garrison, and slew them, and set the
citadel on fire; after which they marched to the palace, whither the
king's soldiers were fled, and parted themselves into four bodies, and
made an attack upon the walls. As for those that were within it, no one
had the courage to sally out, because those that assaulted them were
so numerous; but they distributed themselves into the breast-works and
turrets, and shot at the besiegers, whereby many of the robbers fell
under the walls; nor did they cease to fight one with another either by
night or by day, while the seditious supposed that those within would
grow weary for want of food, and those without supposed the others would
do the like by the tediousness of the siege.

8. In the mean time, one Manahem, the son of Judas, that was called the
Galilean, [who was a very cunning sophister, and had formerly reproached
the Jews under Cyrenius, that after God they were subject to the
Romans,] took some of the men of note with him, and retired to Masada,
where he broke open king Herod's armory, and gave arms not only to his
own people, but to other robbers also. These he made use of for a guard,
and returned in the state of a king to Jerusalem; he became the leader
of the sedition, and gave orders for continuing the siege; but they
wanted proper instruments, and it was not practicable to undermine the
wall, because the darts came down upon them from above. But still they
dug a mine from a great distance under one of the towers, and made it
totter; and having done that, they set on fire what was combustible, and
left it; and when the foundations were burnt below, the tower fell down
suddenly. Yet did they then meet with another wall that had been built
within, for the besieged were sensible beforehand of what they were
doing, and probably the tower shook as it was undermining; so they
provided themselves of another fortification; which when the besiegers
unexpectedly saw, while they thought they had already gained the place,
they were under some co