Ere the flames reached
the Sanctuary, Titus went into it, and was so much struck with its
beauty, that he did his utmost to save it, but all in vain; and the
whole was burnt, with 6,000 poor creatures, whom a false prophet had led
to the Temple, promising that a wonder should there be worked for their
deliverance. The city still held out for twenty more days of untold
misery; but at last the Romans broke in amid flames quenched in blood,
and slaughter raged everywhere. Yet it was a still sadder sight to find
the upper rooms of the houses filled with corpses of women and children,
dead of hunger; and indeed, no less than a million of persons had
perished in the siege, while there were 97,000 miserable captives,
12,000 of whom died at once from hunger. As Titus looked at the walls
and towers, he cried out that God Himself must have been against
the Jews, since he himself could never have driven them from such
fortresses. He commanded the whole, especially the Temple, to be leveled
with the ground, no two stones left standing, and the foundation to be
sown with salt; and he carried off the Candlestick, Shewbread Table, and
other sacred ornaments, to be displayed in his triumph.
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