He worked swiftly, sparing his men daily to the defense of the city against the Roman and daily sacrificing precious numbers of them to the pit of the dead just over the wall.
They were weary days--days of increasing storm and multiplying calamity.

Famine in some quarters of the city reached appalling proportions.

Insurrections in these regions were so vigorously suppressed that the victims chose to starve and live rather than to revolt and perish.

Pestilence broke out among the inhabitants near the eastern wall, against the other side of which the dead had been cast by hundreds; and a general flight from the city was stopped in full flood by the spectacle of some scores of unfortunates crucified by the Roman soldiers and set up in sight of the walls.
Simon and John had a disastrous quarrel and during the interval, when the sentries and the fighting-men were killing each other, the Romans possessed the first fortification around Jerusalem, the Wall of Agrippa.

The following day Titus pitched his camp within the limits of the Holy City, upon the site of Sennacherib's Assyrian bivouac.
At sight of this signal advance, tumult broke out afresh in the city and for days Titus lay calmly by, merely harassing the Jews while he watched Jerusalem weaken itself by internal combat.