Page:Jerusalem's captivities lamented, or, The history of Jerusalem.pdf/12

 doing execution, and having a great deal more of that work yet to do, Titus ordered his men to hold their hands, saving only to those that they found armed, or in a posture of resistance, and give quarter to all the rest. But the soldiers went beyond their commision, and put the aged and the 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 quarters. Cæsar appointed Fromo, one of his friends and freemen, to inform him of the people, and to do by them as they deserved. As for the ruffians, and the seditious, that impeached one another, he had them all put to death; but for men of comely and graeefulgraceful [sic] persons, and in the prime of their youth, he reserved them for the triumph; sending away all of above seventeen of the remainder of them, in chains into Egypt, to be employed in servile offices and drugery: besides those that were distributed up and down the provinces for the use of theatres in the quality of swords men or gladiators; and all under seventeen he exposed to sale.

In the meantime while the prisoners were under Fronto's charge, there were eleven thousand of them starved to death, betwixt the churlishness of the keepers that would give them no meat; and the squeemishness of their stomachs, that would swallow none. But in truth, the mouths were too many for the provisions.

The number of prisoners in this war was ninety seven thousand. The number of the dead was eleven hundred thousand; the greater part of them Jews by nation, tho' not natives of Judea: for it was only a general meeting of them at Jerusalem, gathered together from all quarters to celebrate the feast of the passover; who were there suprised into a war. There was such a prodigious multitude, and they so