ong
them, yet did the number of those that were come to Mount Gerizzim, and
their conspiracy together, give ground for fear what they would be at;
he therefore sent I thither Cerealis, the commander of the fifth legion,
with six hundred horsemen, and three thousand footmen, who did not think
it safe to go up to the mountain, and give them battle, because many of
the enemy were on the higher part of the ground; so he encompassed all
the lower part of the mountain with his army, and watched them all that
day. Now it happened that the Samaritans, who were now destitute of
water, were inflamed with a violent heat, [for it was summer time, and
the multitude had not provided themselves with necessaries,] insomuch
that some of them died that very day with heat, while others of them
preferred slavery before such a death as that was, and fled to the
Romans; by whom Cerealis understood that those which still staid
there were very much broken by their misfortunes. So he went up to the
mountain, and having placed his forces round about the enemy, he, in the
first place, exhorted them to take the security of his right hand, and
come to terms with him, and thereby save themselves; and assured them,
that if they would lay down their arms, he would secure them from any
harm; but when he could not prevail with them, he fell upon them and
slew them all, being in number eleven thousand and six hundred. This was
done on the twenty-seventh day of the month Desius [Sivan]. And these
were the calamities that befell the Samaritans at this time.

33. But as the people of Jotapata still held out manfully, and bore
up tinder their miseries beyond all that could be hoped for, on the
forty-seventh day [of the siege] the banks cast up by the Romans were
become higher than the wall; on which day a certain deserter went to
Vespasian, and told him how few were left in the city, and how weak they
were, and that they had been so worn out with perpetual watching, and as
perpetual fighting, that they could not now oppose any force that came
against them, and that they might be taken by stratagem, if any one
would attack them; for that about the last watch of the night, when they
thought they might have some rest from the hardships they were under,
and when a morning sleep used to come upon them, as they were thoroughly
weary, he said the watch used to fall asleep; accordingly his advice
was, that they should make their attack at that hour. But Vespasian had