permit the Romans to raise their banks in quiet; but they
shrewdly and boldly exerted themselves, and repelled them both by night
and by day.

4. And now, upon the finishing the Roman works, the workmen measured
the distance there was from the wall, and this by lead and a line, which
they threw to it from their banks; for they could not measure it any
otherwise, because the Jews would shoot at them, if they came to measure
it themselves; and when they found that the engines could reach the
wall, they brought them thither. Then did Titus set his engines at
proper distances, so much nearer to the wall, that the Jews might not
be able to repel them, and gave orders they should go to work; and when
thereupon a prodigious noise echoed round about from three places, and
that on the sudden there was a great noise made by the citizens that
were within the city, and no less a terror fell upon the seditious
themselves; whereupon both sorts, seeing the common danger they were in,
contrived to make a like defense. So those of different factions cried
out one to another, that they acted entirely as in concert with their
enemies; whereas they ought however, notwithstanding God did not grant
them a lasting concord, in their present circumstances, to lay aside
their enmities one against another, and to unite together against the
Romans. Accordingly, Simon gave those that came from the temple leave,
by proclamation, to go upon the wall; John also himself, though he could
not believe Simon was in earnest, gave them the same leave. So on both
sides they laid aside their hatred and their peculiar quarrels, and
formed themselves into one body; they then ran round the walls, and
having a vast number of torches with them, they threw them at the
machines, and shot darts perpetually upon those that impelled those
engines which battered the wall; nay, the bolder sort leaped out by
troops upon the hurdles that covered the machines, and pulled them to
pieces, and fell upon those that belonged to them, and beat them, not
so much by any skill they had, as principally by the boldness of their
attacks. However, Titus himself still sent assistance to those that were
the hardest set, and placed both horsemen and archers on the several
sides of the engines, and thereby beat off those that brought the fire
to them; he also thereby repelled those that shot stones or darts from
the towers, and then set the engines to work in good earnest; yet did
not the wa