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[164]
In the mean time, the Jews were so distressed by the fights they
had been in, as the war advanced higher and higher, and creeping up to
the holy house itself, that they, as it were, cut off those limbs of their
body which were infected, in order to prevent the distemper's spreading
further; for they set the north-west cloister, which was joined to the
tower of Antonia, on fire, and after that brake off about twenty cubits
of that cloister, and thereby made a beginning in burning the sanctuary;
two days after which, or on the twenty-fourth day of the forenamed month,
[Panemus or Tamuz,] the Romans set fire to the cloister that joined to
the other, when the fire went fifteen cubits farther. The Jews, in like
manner, cut off its roof; nor did they entirely leave off what they were
about till the tower of Antonia was parted from the temple, even when it
was in their power to have stopped the fire; nay, they lay still while
the temple was first set on fire, and deemed this spreading of the fire
to be for their own advantage. However, the armies were still fighting
one against another about the temple, and the war was managed by continual
sallies of particular parties against one another.
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