Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/146

 vanquished. As they came nearer the sanctuary they pretended not even to hear Cæsar's orders and shouted to those in front of them to throw in the firebrands.

The (Jewish) insurgents were now powerless to rescue (the Temple). On all sides was carnage and flight. Most of the slain were civilians, a weak and unarmed mob, each butchered where he was caught. Around the altar a pile of corpses was accumulating; down the sanctuary steps flowed a stream of blood; and down the same decline slid the bodies of the victims killed above.

Cæsar, finding himself unable to restrain the impetuosity of his frenzied soldiers and that the fire was gaining the mastery, passed with his generals within the building and beheld the holy place of the sanctuary and all that it contained—things far exceeding the reports current among foreigners and not inferior to their proud reputation among our own nation. As the flames had nowhere yet penetrated to the interior, but were consuming the outbuildings of the sanctuary, Titus, rightly supposing that the structure might still be preserved, rushed out and endeavoured by personal appeals to induce the soldiers to quench the fire; at the same time directing Liberalius, a centurion of his bodyguard of lancers, to restrain, by resort to clubs, any who disobeyed orders. But their respect for Cæsar and their fear of the officer who was endeavouring to check them were overpowered by their rage, their hatred of the Jews and the lust of battle, an even mightier master. Most of them were further stimulated by the hope of plunder, believing that the interior was full