(of disaster). So it was when a star, resembling a sword, stood over the city, and a comet which continued for a year. So again when, before the revolt and the outbreak of war, at the time when the people were assembling for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the eighth of the month Xanthicus,[1] at the ninth hour of the night, so brilliant a light shone round the altar and the sanctuary that it seemed to be broad daylight; and this continued for half an hour. By the inexperienced this was regarded as a good omen, but by the sacred scribes it was at once interpreted in accordance with after events.
At that same feast a cow that had been led by some one[2] to the sacrifice gave birth to a lamb in the midst of the Temple. Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner court, which it took twenty men to close with difficulty at even—it was of brass and very massive, and was secured by bars shod with iron, and had bolts which were sunk to a great depth into a threshold consisting of a solid block of stone—this gate was observed at the sixth hour of the night to have opened of its own accord. The watchmen of the Temple ran and reported the matter to the captain,[3] and he came up and with difficulty succeeded in shutting it. This again to the uninitiated seemed the best of omens, as they supposed that God had opened to them the gate of blessings; but the learned understood that the security of the Temple was dissolving of its own accord and that the opening of the gate indicated a present to the enemy, interpreting the portent in their own minds[4] as a symbol of desolation.
Again, not many days after the festival, on the twenty-*
