The Second Wall Taken Twice

Caesar took this wall five days after the first. As the Jews fled before him, he went in with a thousand heavy infantry and his own picked troops, at the point in the New City where the wool shops, the coppersmiths’ shops and the clothes market were, and where the narrow streets ran slantwise down to the wall. Now if Titus had at once torn down a larger stretch of the wall, or had gone in and laid waste what he had taken, as the law of war allowed, his victory would not, I think, have been mixed with any loss. As it was, he hoped to shame the Jews by refusing to harm them when he could, and so he did not widen the breach to give himself an easy retreat; he did not suppose they would plot against men who were doing them a kindness. Once inside, he did not allow his men to kill any of those they caught or to set fire to the houses. To the rebels he offered safe passage out, if they wanted to fight, so long as the townspeople came to no harm, and to the people he promised to restore their property. For what he cared about most was to save the city for himself and the temple for the city. [a]

The people he had long found ready to do what he urged; but to the fighting men his humanity looked like weakness, and they supposed Titus made these offers because he could not take the rest of the city. They threatened the townspeople with death if any of them so much as mentioned surrender, and cut the throats of any who let slip a word about peace. Then they fell on the Romans who had come in: some met them in the narrow streets, some attacked from the houses, while others dashed out through the upper gates and attacked outside the wall. The guards on the wall were thrown into confusion, leaped down from the towers, and withdrew to their camps.

There was shouting on all sides: from the men within, surrounded by enemies everywhere, and from those outside, in fear for the men left behind. The Jews kept growing in number, and with the great advantage of knowing the narrow streets, they wounded many, pressed on, and drove them out. The Romans held out as best they could because they had no choice; they could not escape in a body through the narrow breach, and it seems all who had gone in would have been cut down if Titus had not come to their aid. He posted archers at the ends of the streets and took his stand himself where the enemy were thickest, and held them back with his arrows; and with him stood Domitius Sabinus, a brave man who proved himself so in this battle too. Caesar stayed there shooting without a pause and kept the Jews from coming on until all his soldiers had withdrawn.

So the Romans, after mastering the second wall, were driven out of it. The spirits of the fighting men in the city rose, and they were carried away by their success. They thought the Romans would never again dare to come into the city, and that if they did, they themselves could not be beaten. For God was darkening their minds because of their lawlessness. They saw neither how much greater the Roman force left behind was than the part that had been driven out, nor the famine that was creeping up on them. As yet they could still feed on the public miseries and drink the city’s blood. But want had long since gripped the honest people, and many were dying for lack of food. The rebels took the destruction of the people as a relief for themselves. They thought only those deserved to survive who did not seek peace and had chosen to live in defiance of the Romans, and they were glad to see the rest of the populace, who thought otherwise, wasting away, as though they were foreigners. [c]

That was how they treated those within. Against the Romans, when they tried again to force their way in, they barred the way, walled up the breach with their own bodies, and held out stoutly for three days. On the fourth day they could not withstand a vigorous assault by Titus, and were forced to flee back where they had fled before. Titus, master of the wall once more, at once threw down the whole of its northern stretch. He put garrisons in the towers of the southern stretch, and began to plan his attack on the third wall.