There they laid the twisted old burden before the young general and shamelessly told how he, thrice the age of the vanquished men, had finished them with despatch.
It was evident that the old man was a Jew; it became also apparent that he was dumb and partly deaf, and further to their amazement and admiration, they discovered that his right leg and arm were too stiff for ordinary use and that he had done his wonderful execution with terrific left limbs.
This saved his life and gave him a partial liberty. Titus, however, admitted to Carus that the old man's distress at being kept out of Jerusalem was pitiable enough to urge the young general to deport him and get him out of sight.
For it was manifest that the old minotaur was in deep trouble. But his paralyzed tongue would not serve him, and his menial ignorance had not provided him with the means of telling his desire by writing. Titus was unable to understand from his signs anything further than that he wished to get into the city. The young general in one of his outbursts of generosity would have permitted this, but that Nicanor happened in at an evil moment and drew such pictures of calamitous effect in passing the old servant into Jerusalem that Titus was forced reluctantly and irritably to be convinced of the folly of his kindness. So here, through the terrible days of the siege, old Momus at times desperate and savage, at others piteously suppliant, wore on the sentries' peace of mind and stood like a shadow, for ever watching the white walls of the besieged city.
The Romans were now within the city. Only Zion and the Temple held against them. A wall built with the thoroughness of David, the ancient, and solidified by the mortising of Time, ran directly from Hippicus to the Tyropean Valley, joining the tremendous fortifications of Moriah and so cut off Zion from the advance of the army. Securely intrenched within that quarter and the Temple, Simon and John began the last resistance which should tax Roman endurance and Roman patience as it had not been taxed before.
Titus no longer lagged. Famine had long since become a powerful ally and the honor of the Flavian house rested upon his immediate subjugation of the rebellious city. He no longer expected capitulation; yet he did not neglect to be prepared for it and to encourage it. Though the heart of the historian Josephus broke, he did not fail to serve his patron as mediator, though without hope. Titus himself, as from time to time the horror of his work impressed itself upon him, made overtures to the factionists, neglecting no art or inducement which should convince the seditious that their resistance was foolhardy, even mad. At such times, Nicanor's face became contemptuous and Carus himself frowned at the young general's attitude. But the spirit of a Roman and the traditions of a soldier even could not prevent the young man from weakening at times before the charnel pit in Tophet where countless thousands of vultures fattened with roaring of wings and hissing of combat.
But under an ever-thickening veil of horrid airs, the struggle went on.
The Roman Ides of July arrived.
Titus had erected banks upon which his engines were raised to batter the walls of the Temple.
From Titus' camp, the Romans on sick leave, the commissaries, those attached to the army who were not fighting-men, and old Momus, saw first, before the attack on the Temple began, a soft increasing dun-colored vapor rise between the Temple and Antonia. It issued from the cloister at the northwest which joined the Roman tower. As they watched, they saw that vapor grow into a pale but intensely luminous smoke, as if fine woods and burning metals were consumed together. In a moment the whole north-west section was embraced in a sublime pall of fire.