pon another in heaps, so
were they slain. Thus the greater part were driven together by force, as
there was now no place of retirement, and the murderers were upon them;
and, having no other way, threw themselves down headlong into the city;
whereby, in my opinion, they underwent a more miserable destruction than
that which they avoided, because that was a voluntary one. And now the
outer temple was all of it overflowed with blood; and that day, as it
came on, they saw eight thousand five hundred dead bodies there.

2. But the rage of the Idumeans was not satiated by these slaughters;
but they now betook themselves to the city, and plundered every house,
and slew every one they met; and for the other multitude, they esteemed
it needless to go on with killing them, but they sought for the high
priests, and the generality went with the greatest zeal against them;
and as soon as they caught them they slew them, and then standing upon
their dead bodies, in way of jest, upbraided Ananus with his kindness to
the people, and Jesus with his speech made to them from the wall. Nay,
they proceeded to that degree of impiety, as to cast away their dead
bodies without burial, although the Jews used to take so much care of
the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and
crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun. I should
not mistake if I said that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the
destruction of the city, and that from this very day may be dated the
overthrow of her wall, and the ruin of her affairs, whereon they saw
their high priest, and the procurer of their preservation, slain in the
midst of their city. He was on other accounts also a venerable, and a
very just man; and besides the grandeur of that nobility, and dignity,
and honor of which he was possessed, he had been a lover of a kind
of parity, even with regard to the meanest of the people; he was
a prodigious lover of liberty, and an admirer of a democracy in
government; and did ever prefer the public welfare before his own
advantage, and preferred peace above all things; for he was thoroughly
sensible that the Romans were not to be conquered. He also foresaw
that of necessity a war would follow, and that unless the Jews made up
matters with them very dexterously, they would be destroyed; to say
all in a word, if Ananus had survived, they had certainly compounded
matters; for he was a shrewd man in speaking and persuading the p