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 their people; and this he did out of a desire to give Nero to understand that the Jewish nation was not so despicable as he imagined; so that they took their time to enter upon the computation, at the celebration of their paschal feast; when offering up a sacrifice to be eaten afterwards, in the 9th hour of the day to the 11th; and the sacrifice to be eaten afterwards in their families by ten at least, and sometimes 20, to a lamb, they reckoned upon 260,500 oblations; which, at the rate of ten to a lamb, amounts to 2,665,000 persons, all pure and sound, for neither lepers, scorcubites, men troubled with gonorrhœas, women in their monthly sickness, or people labouring under any malignant distempers, were admitted to any part in this solemnity; no more were my strangers but what came thither for religion. So that this mighty concourse of people from abroad before the siege, were afterwards by the righteous providence of God, cooped up in that city as in a prison; and the number of the slain in that siege was the heaviest judgment of that kind that ever was heard of. Some were killed openly, others kept in custody by the Romans, who searched the very sepulchres and vaults for them, and put all they found alive to the sword. There were upwards of 2000 that had either laid violent hands on themselves, or killed one another by consent, besides those that perished by the famine. The putrid corruption of dead bodies sent out a vapour to poison as many as came within the reach of it. Some were not able to