Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/126

 with suspicion. On a former occasion a man of Jotapata who had been taken prisoner held out under every variety of torture, and, without uttering a word about the besieged to his enemies who were trying him by fire, was crucified, smiling at death. Probability, however, lent credit to the traitor; and so, thinking that the man might be speaking the truth and that even a trap, if it were one, was not likely to lead to any serious reverse, Vespasian ordered him into custody and made ready his army for the capture of the city.

At the hour named they advanced in silence to the walls. The first to mount them was Titus, with one of the tribunes, Domitius Sabinus, at the head of a few men of the fifteenth legion. Having cut down the sentries they entered the city in silence, and were followed by Sextus Calvarius, a tribune,[1] and Placidus with the troops under their command. The citadel had been taken and the enemy were moving to and fro in the heart of the town, before the vanquished inhabitants, though it was now broad daylight, were aware of the capture. Most of them, worn out with fatigue, had fallen fast asleep, while a thick mist, which happened at the time to envelop the city, obscured the vision of those who started up. Not until the whole army had poured in, were they fully roused only to realize their misery; the discovery that they were being slain was the first assurance of their capture.

Remembering what they had borne during the siege, the Romans showed no compassion or pity for any one, but thrust the people down the steep descent from the citadel in a general massacre. And here the difficulty of the ground deprived those still able to fight of the means of defence. Crushed in the narrow alleys and