Some other memorable places of the city.

Josephus hath these words, "In the new city there was a wool-market, and braziers' shops, and a market of garments."

VII. "At Jerusalem was a great court, called Beth Jaazek, where the cities were gathered together,"--namely, that they might testify concerning the new moon: "and there the Sanhedrim took them into examination; and delicious feasts were made ready for them there, that they might the more willingly come thither for the sake thereof."

VIII. Some courts also were built upon a rock, under which there was made a hollow, that by no means any sepulchre might be there. Hither they brought some teeming women, that they might be delivered there, and might there also bring up their children. And the reason of that curiosity was, that those children, there born and brought up, where they were so secure from being touched by a sepulchre, might be clean without doubt, and fit to sprinkle, with purifying water, such as were polluted with a dead carcass. The children were shut up in those courts, until they became seven or eight years old. (So R. Solomon, who also cites Tosaphtoth, where nevertheless it is, "until they are eighteen years of age.") And when the sprinkling of any one is to be performed, they are brought with the like care and curiosity to the place, where the thing is to be done, riding upon oxen, because their bellies, being so thick, might defend them the more securely from the defilement of any sepulchre in the way.

IX. There were not a few caves in the city, hollowed out of the rock, which we observed concerning the hollowed floor of the Temple. Into one of these Simon the tyrant betook himself with his accomplices, when he despaired of his affairs. Of whom you have a memorable story in the place quoted.

X. Besides the pool of Siloam, of Bethesda, of Solomon, (if that were not the same with Bethesda,) there was "the Sparrow-pool," before Antonia; and "the Almond-pool," on the north side of the city.

XI. We cannot also pass over "The stone of things lost": where publicaiton was made concerning any thing lost or missing.

XII. We conclude with the trench brought round the city by Titus, wherein he shut it up in the siege. "Beginning from the tents of the Assyrians, where he encamped, he brought a trench to the nether new city" (the Upper was the hill Bezetha, the Nether was a place somewhat lower on the east of Sion), "and thence along Kedron to mount Olivet. Thence bending to the south, he shut up the mountain round, to the rock called the Dove-cote,--and the hill beyond, which lies over the valley of Siloam. From thence bending on the west, he came even into the vale of the fountain. After which, ascending along the sepulchre of Anan the chief priest, and enclosing the mountain where Pompey pitched his tents, he bended to the north side, and going forward as far as the village, which is called, 'the house, or place of turpentine'"; "and after that ,taking in the sepulchre of Herod, he came eastwardly to his own intrenchment."