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Next day he sent again for the high priest, and told him that as a sign of the loyalty of the people, and their sorrow for the late tumults, he should expect them to go forth and meet the two cohorts who were advancing to Jerusalem with every sign of joy. The seditious part of the citizens refused. Then the chief priests, with dust upon their heads and rent garments, brought out the holy vessels and the sacerdotal robes, with their harpers and harps, and implored the people not to risk a collision with the Romans. They yielded, and went out to welcome the cohorts. But the soldiers preserved a gloomy silence. Then some of the more fiery Jews, turning on the Romans, began to abuse Florus. The horsemen rode at them and trampled them down, and a scene of the wildest uproar took place at the gates as they pressed and jostled each other to get in. Then the troops marched straight on Antonia, hoping to get both the fortress and the Temple into their hands. They got into Antonia, when the Jews cut down some part of the cloisters which connected the fort with the Temple. Florus tried to join them, but his men could not pass through the streets, which were crammed with Jews. And next day Florus retired to Cæsarea, leaving only one cohort behind, and the city boiling and seething with rage and madness. And now, indeed, there was little hope of any reconciliation. Both Florus and the Jews sent statements of their conduct to Cestius Gallus, and begged for an investigation. And it must have been now, if at all, that Florus became desirous of fanning the embers of discontent into a flame and making that a war which had only promised to be a disturbance. But nothing can be discovered to prove that Josephus’s assertions as to his motives are based on fact. It is easy, of course, to attribute motives, but hard to prove them. Nothing advanced by Josephus proves more than that Florus was rapacious and cruel, and the people discontented and turbulent. Cestius sent Neapolitanus, one of his officers, to report on the condition of the city. Agrippa joined him. The people came sixty furlongs out of the town to meet them, crying and lamenting, calling on Agrippa to help them in their miseries, and beseeching Neapolitanus to hear their complaints against Florus. The latter they took all round the city, showing him that it was perfectly quiet, and that the people had risen, not against the Romans, but against Florus. Then Neapolitanus went into the Temple to perform such sacrifices as were allowed to strangers, and commending the Jews for their fidelity, went back to Cestius. Agrippa came next. Placing his sister Berenice, doubtless a favourite with the people, in the gallery with him, he made a long harangue. He implored them to consider the vast power of the Romans, and not, for the sake of a quarrel with one governor, to bring upon themselves the ruin of themselves, their families, and their nation. He pointed out that if they would have patience the state of their country should be fairly placed before the emperor’s consideration, and he pledged himself that it would receive his best care. “Have pity,” he concluded, with a burst of tears,—“have pity on your children and your wives, have pity upon this your city and its holy walls, and spare the Temple; preserve the holy house for yourselves.”