ed; and on the feast of unleavened bread, which was now come, it
being the fourteenth day of the month Xanthicus, [Nisan,] when it is
believed the Jews were first freed from the Egyptians, Eleazar and
his party opened the gates of this [inmost court of the] temple, and
admitted such of the people as were desirous to worship God into it.
[9] But John made use of this festival as a cloak for his treacherous
designs, and armed the most inconsiderable of his own party, the greater
part of whom were not purified, with weapons concealed under their
garments, and sent them with great zeal into the temple, in order to
seize upon it; which armed men, when they were gotten in, threw their
garments away, and presently appeared in their armor. Upon which there
was a very great disorder and disturbance about the holy house; while
the people, who had no concern in the sedition, supposed that this
assault was made against all without distinction, as the zealots thought
it was made against themselves only. So these left off guarding the
gates any longer, and leaped down from their battlements before they
came to an engagement, and fled away into the subterranean caverns of
the temple; while the people that stood trembling at the altar, and
about the holy house, were rolled on heaps together, and trampled upon,
and were beaten both with wooden and with iron weapons without mercy.
Such also as had differences with others slew many persons that were
quiet, out of their own private enmity and hatred, as if they were
opposite to the seditious; and all those that had formerly offended
any of these plotters were now known, and were now led away to the
slaughter; and when they had done abundance of horrid mischief to the
guiltless, they granted a truce to the guilty, and let those go off that
came cut of the caverns. These followers of John also did now seize upon
this inner temple, and upon all the warlike engines therein, and then
ventured to oppose Simon. And thus that sedition, which had been divided
into three factions, was now reduced to two.

2. But Titus, intending to pitch his camp nearer to the city than
Scopus, placed as many of his choice horsemen and footmen as he thought
sufficient opposite to the Jews, to prevent their sallying out upon
them, while he gave orders for the whole army to level the distance, as
far as the wall of the city. So they threw down all the hedges and walls
which the inhabitants had made about their gardens