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.