ghting on both
sides of it; and that almost all that corn was burnt, which would have
been sufficient for a siege of many years. So they were taken by the
means of the famine, which it was impossible they should have been,
unless they had thus prepared the way for it by this procedure.

5. And now, as the city was engaged in a war on all sides, from these
treacherous crowds of wicked men, the people of the city, between them,
were like a great body torn in pieces. The aged men and the women were
in such distress by their internal calamities, that they wished for
the Romans, and earnestly hoped for an external war, in order to their
delivery from their domestical miseries. The citizens themselves were
under a terrible consternation and fear; nor had they any opportunity of
taking counsel, and of changing their conduct; nor were there any hopes
of coming to an agreement with their enemies; nor could such as had a
mind flee away; for guards were set at all places, and the heads of
the robbers, although they were seditious one against another in other
respects, yet did they agree in killing those that were for peace with
the Romans, or were suspected of an inclination to desert them, as their
common enemies. They agreed in nothing but this, to kill those that were
innocent. The noise also of those that were fighting was incessant, both
by day and by night; but the lamentations of those that mourned exceeded
the other; nor was there ever any occasion for them to leave off
their lamentations, because their calamities came perpetually one upon
another, although the deep consternation they were in prevented their
outward wailing; but being constrained by their fear to conceal their
inward passions, they were inwardly tormented, without daring to open
their lips in groans. Nor was any regard paid to those that were still
alive, by their relations; nor was there any care taken of burial for
those that were dead; the occasion of both which was this, that every
one despaired of himself; for those that were not among the seditious
had no great desires of any thing, as expecting for certain that they
should very soon be destroyed; but for the seditious themselves, they
fought against each other, while they trod upon the dead bodies as they
lay heaped one upon another, and taking up a mad rage from those dead
bodies that were under their feet, became the fiercer thereupon. They,
moreover, were still inventing somewhat or other that was