[780] Jerusalem was taken, sacked, and burnt, by Titus, after a two
years' siege, on the 8th September, A.U.C. 821, A.D. 69; it being the
Sabbath. It was in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, when the
emperor was sixty years old, and Titus himself, as he informs us, thirty.
For particulars of the siege, see Josephus, De Bell. Jud. vi. and vii.;
Hegesippus, Excid. Hierosol. v.; Dio, lxvi.; Tacitus, Hist. v.; Orosius,
vii. 9.

[781] For the sense in which Titus was saluted with the title of Emperor
by the troops, see JULIUS CAESAR, c. lxxvi.

[782] The joint triumph of Vespasian and Titus, which was celebrated
A.U.C. 824, is fully described by Josephus, De Bell. Jud. vii. 24. It is
commemorated by the triumphal monument called the Arch of Titus, erected
by the senate and people of Rome after his death, and still standing at
the foot of the Palatine Hill, on the road leading from the Colosseum to
the Forum, and is one of the most beautiful as well as the most
interesting models of Roman art. It consists of four stories of the
three orders of architecture, the Corinthian being repeated in the two
highest. Some of the bas-reliefs, still in good preservation, represent
the table of the shew-bread, the seven-branched golden candlestick, the
vessel of incense, and the silver trumpets, which were taken by Titus
from the Temple at Jerusalem, and, with the book of the law, the veil of
the temple, and other spoils, were carried in the triumph. The fate of
these sacred relics is rather interesting. Josephus says, that the veil
and books of the law were deposited in the Palatium, and the rest of the
spoils in the Temple of Peace. When that was burnt, in the reign of
Commodus, these treasures were saved, and they were afterwards carried
off by Genseric to Africa. Belisarius recovered them, and brought them
to Constantinople, A.D. 520. Procopius informs us, that a Jew, who saw