and groves of trees,
and cut down all the fruit trees that lay between them and the wall
of the city, and filled up all the hollow places and the chasms, and
demolished the rocky precipices with iron instruments; and thereby made
all the place level from Scopus to Herod's monuments, which adjoined to
the pool called the Serpent's Pool.

3. Now at this very time the Jews contrived the following stratagem
against the Romans. The bolder sort of the seditious went out at the
towers, called the Women's Towers, as if they had been ejected out of
the city by those who were for peace, and rambled about as if they
were afraid of being assaulted by the Romans, and were in fear of one
another; while those that stood upon the wall, and seemed to be of the
people's side, cried out aloud for peace, and entreated they might
have security for their lives given them, and called for the Romans,
promising to open the gates to them; and as they cried out after that
manner, they threw stones at their own people, as though they would
drive them away from the gates. These also pretended that they were
excluded by force, and that they petitioned those that were within to
let them in; and rushing upon the Romans perpetually, with violence,
they then came back, and seemed to be in great disorder. Now the Roman
soldiers thought this cunning stratagem of theirs was to be believed
real, and thinking they had the one party under their power, and could
punish them as they pleased, and hoping that the other party would open
their gates to them, set to the execution of their designs accordingly.
But for Titus himself, he had this surprising conduct of the Jews
in suspicion; for whereas he had invited them to come to terms of
accommodation, by Josephus, but one day before, he could then receive
no civil answer from them; so he ordered the soldiers to stay where
they were. However, some of them that were set in the front of the works
prevented him, and catching up their arms ran to the gates; whereupon
those that seemed to have been ejected at the first retired; but as soon
as the soldiers were gotten between the towers on each side of the gate,
the Jews ran out and encompassed them round, and fell upon them behind,
while that multitude which stood upon the wall threw a heap of stones
and darts of all kinds at them, insomuch that they slew a considerable
number, and wounded many more; for it was not easy for the Romans to
escape, by reason those behind t