The Fall of the Upper City

The remaining warriors withdrew into the Upper City, where the forces of Yochanan of Gush Chalav and Simon ben Giora still held out. With the loss of the Temple, the Jews had lost their passion to keep fighting the Romans, but Titus would not allow them to surrender. The defenders did not want to fall into the merciless hands of the Romans, so they continued their preparations for defense.

First the Romans finished razing the Lower City. The Romans found mostly corpses there, as anyone who could join the fighters in the Upper City had done so; whoever the Romans found alive they slaughtered and fed to their dogs. They burned all the houses filled with the starved dead.

On the seventh day of Elul, the Romans applied their battering rams to the walls of the Upper City. The fighters defended it courageously, but in the end, the Romans captured this last stronghold.

Whoever they found alive they killed or took captive. They also found countless dead bodies. Many of the Zealots took to underground tunnels, but the Romans tore up the streets and found them too, along with the dead bodies of two thousand fighters who had either succumbed to hunger or committed suicide. Yochanan of Gush Chalav and Simon ben Giora were taken alive.