le among all men,
both Greeks and Barbarians, with their own blood; till the dead bodies
of strangers were mingled together with those of their own country, and
those of profane persons with those of the priests, and the blood of all
sorts of dead carcasses stood in lakes in the holy courts themselves.
And now, "O must wretched city, what misery so great as this didst thou
suffer from the Romans, when they came to purify thee from thy intestine
hatred! 'For thou couldst be no longer a place fit for God, nor couldst
thou long continue in being, after thou hadst been a sepulcher for
the bodies of thy own people, and hadst made the holy house itself a
burying-place in this civil war of thine. Yet mayst thou again grow
better, if perchance thou wilt hereafter appease the anger of that God
who is the author of thy destruction." But I must restrain myself from
these passions by the rules of history, since this is not a proper time
for domestical lamentations, but for historical narrations; I therefore
return to the operations that follow in this sedition. [3]

4. And now there were three treacherous factions in the city, the one
parted from the other. Eleazar and his party, that kept the sacred
first-fruits, came against John in their cups. Those that were with John
plundered the populace, and went out with zeal against Simon. This
Simon had his supply of provisions from the city, in opposition to the
seditious. When, therefore, John was assaulted on both sides, he made
his men turn about, throwing his darts upon those citizens that came
up against him, from the cloisters he had in his possession, while he
opposed those that attacked him from the temple by his engines of war.
And if at any time he was freed from those that were above him, which
happened frequently, from their being drunk and tired, he sallied out
with a great number upon Simon and his party; and this he did always in
such parts of the city as he could come at, till he set on fire those
houses that were full of corn, and of all other provisions. [4] The same
thing was done by Simon, when, upon the other's retreat, he attacked the
city also; as if they had, on purpose, done it to serve the Romans,
by destroying what the city had laid up against the siege, and by thus
cutting off the nerves of their own power. Accordingly, it so came to
pass, that all the places that were about the temple were burnt down,
and were become an intermediate desert space, ready for fi