Now they were surging round the feet of a great wooden tower filled with archers.

Here the fight was desperate, for the soldiers of Titus rushed up by companies to defend their engine.

But they could not drive back that onset, and presently the tower was on fire, and in a last mad effort to save their lives its defenders were casting themselves headlong from the lofty platform.

With shouts of triumph the Jews rushed through the breaches in the second wall, and leaving what remained of the castle of Antonia on the left, poured down into the maze of streets and ruined houses that lay immediately behind the Old Tower whence Miriam watched.
In front of this building, which the Romans had never attempted to enter, since for military purposes it was useless to them, lay the open space, once, no doubt, part of its garden, but of late years used as a cattle market and a place where young men exercised themselves in arms.
Bordering the waste on its further side were strong fortifications, the camping ground of the twelfth and fifteenth legions.

Across this open space those who remained of the Romans fled back towards their outer line, followed by swarms of furious Jews.