Page:Jerusalem's captivities lamented, or, A plain description of Jerusalem (2).pdf/15

 Simon were sent prisoners to Rome, with 700 of the Jews: the book of the law and the purple veil of the sanctuary were taken in triumph to Rome, at that time neither sun nor moon appeared for fifteen days, as Christ foretold.

St. Jerome writes that in his time, on that day of the year wherein Jerusalem was taken by the Romans, you might have seen aged men and women, and several other wretched people, who with blubbered cheeks and dishevelled hair, went howling and lamenting for the ruin of the temple and sanctuary, wearing and bearing in their habits and bodies the sad character of divine veangeance, of whom the soldiers exacted a fee for liberty of weeping: and they who formerly sold the blood of Jesus, were now forced to buy their own tears, without being pitied.

The Roman soldiers being now quite spent with doing execution, and having a great deal more of their work yet to do. Titus ordered his men to hold their hands, saving only to those whom they found armed, or in a posture of resistance, and to give quarter to all the rest. But the soldiers went beyond their commission, and put the aged and sickly to the sword promiscuously with their companions; and for those that were strong and serviceable, they shut them up in the temple in the women's quarter. Cæsar appointed Fronto, one of his friends and freemen, to inform him of the people, and to do by them as he deserved. As for the ruffians and the seditious, that impeached one another, he had them all put to death; but for men of comely