18
endure it, and so went out of the way; others had their hearts so set upon booty that they rifled the very carcases, and trampled upon the dead bodies as they lay soaking in their corruption, but avarice sticks at nothing. They brought out several prisoners also, that the two tyrants had laid in chains there; they kept up their cruelty to the last: but God's justice overtook them both in the end; for John and his brethren, in the vaults, were now driven by the distress of an insupportable bunger to beg that mercy of the Romans, which they had so often despised; and Simon, after a long struggle with an insupportable necessity, delivered up himself. The latter being reserved for the triumph, and the former made prisoner for life. The Romans after this burnt the remainder of the city, and threw down the walls.
The power of God on the one hand and his goodness on the other was very remarkable on this occasion; for the tyrants ruined themselves by quitting those holds of their own accord, that could never have been taken but by famine; and this after the Jews had spent so much time to no purpose upon other places of less value. By these means the Romans became masters of three impregnable forts by fortune, that could never have been taken any other way, for the three famous towers before mentioned, were proof against all battery.
Upon Simon and John's quitting these towers, or rather upon their being driven out of them, by the impulse of judicial infatuation,
