e
enemy's cavalry, and those of them that came behind such as crowded to
the wall fell upon their own party's weapons, and became one another's
enemies; and this so long till they were all forced to give way to the
attacks of the horsemen, and were dispersed all the plain over, which
plain was wide, and all fit for the horsemen; which circumstance was
very commodious for the Romans, and occasioned the slaughter of the
greatest number of the Jews; for such as ran away, they could overrun
them, and make them turn back; and when they had brought them back after
their flight, and driven them together, they ran them through, and slew
a vast number of them, insomuch that others encompassed others of them,
and drove them before them whithersoever they turned themselves, and
slew them easily with their arrows; and the great number there were of
the Jews seemed a solitude to themselves, by reason of the distress they
were in, while the Romans had such good success with their small number,
that they seemed to themselves to be the greater multitude. And as the
former strove zealously under their misfortunes, out of the shame of
a sudden flight, and hopes of the change in their success, so did the
latter feel no weariness by reason of their good fortune; insomuch that
the fight lasted till the evening, till ten thousand men of the Jews'
side lay dead, with two of their generals, John and Silas, and the
greater part of the remainder were wounded, with Niger, their remaining
general, who fled away together to a small city of Idumea, called
Sallis. Some few also of the Romans were wounded in this battle.

3. Yet were not the spirits of the Jews broken by so great a calamity,
but the losses they had sustained rather quickened their resolution for
other attempts; for, overlooking the dead bodies which lay under their
feet, they were enticed by their former glorious actions to venture on
a second destruction; so when they had lain still so little a while that
their wounds were not yet thoroughly cured, they got together all their
forces, and came with greater fury, and in much greater numbers, to
Ascalon. But their former ill fortune followed them, as the consequence
of their unskilfulness, and other deficiencies in war; for Antonius laid
ambushes for them in the passages they were to go through, where they
fell into snares unexpectedly, and where they were encompassed about
with horsemen, before they could form themselves into a regular