towns of Hippicus, Pliasaelus, and Marianrne. Ananias, found hidden in an aqueduct, was killed at once ; and Manahem became so puffed up with his success that he became intolerable. It was easy to get rid of this mushroom king, who was deposed without any trouble by Eleazar and tortured to death. And then the Eoman garrison yielded, Metilius, their commander, stipulating only for the lives of his soldiers. This was granted ; but no sooner had they laid down their arms than the Jews fell upon them, vainly calling on the faith of a treaty, and murdered them all except Metilius. Him they spared on condition of his becoming a proselyte. On that very day and hour, while the Jews were plunging their daggers in the hearts of the Romans, a great and terrible slaughter of their own people was going on in Csesarea, where the Syrians and Greeks had risen upon the Jews, and massacred twenty thousand of them in a single day. And in every Syrian city the same madness and hatred seized the people, and the Jews were ruthlessly slaughtered in all. No more provocation was needed ; no more was possible. In spite of all their turbulence, their ungovernable obstinacy, their fanaticism and pride, which made the war inevitable, and in the then state of mankind these very massacres inevitable,—one feels a profound sympathy with the people who dared to fight and die, seeing that it was hopeless to look for better things. The heads of the people began the war with gloomy forebodings ; the common masses with the wildest enthusiasm, which became the mere intoxication of success when they drove back Cestius from the walls of the city, on the very eve of his anticipated victory—for Cestius hastened southwards with an army of twenty thousand men, and besieged the city. The people, divided amongst themselves, were on the point of opening the gates to the Romans, when, to the surprise of everybody, Cestius suddenly broke up his camp and began to retreat. Why he did so, no one ever knew;