Soon afterwards, when Galba came to be emperor, he was sent to congratulate him,
					and turned the eyes of all people upon himself, wherever he came: it being the
					general opinion amongst them, that the emperor had sent for him with a design to
					adopt him for his son. But finding all things again in confusion, he turned back
					upon the road; and going to consult the oracle of Venus at Paphos about his
					voyage, he received assurances of obtaining the empire for himself. These hopes
					were speedily strengthened, and being left to finish the reduction of Judea, in
					the final assault of Jerusalem, he slew seven of its defenders, with the like
					number of arrows, and took it upon his daughter's birth-day. Jerusalem was taken, sacked, and burnt, by Titus, after a
						two years' siege, on the 8th of 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. So great was the joy and
					attachment of the soldiers, that, in their congratulations, they unanimously
					saluted him by the title of Emperor; For the sense in which
						Titus was saluted with the title of Emperor by the troops, see JULIUS
						CAESAR, c. lxxvi. and, upon his quitting the province soon
					afterwards, would needs have detained him, earnestly begging him, and that not
					without threats, "either to stay, or take them all with him." This occurrence
					gave rise to the suspicion of his being engaged in a design to rebel against his
					father, and claim for himself the government of the East; and the suspicion
					increased, when, on his way to Alexandria, he wore a diadem at the consecration
					of the ox Apis at Memphis; and, though he did it only in compliance with an
					ancient religious usage of the country, yet there were some who put a bad
					construction upon it. Making, therefore, what haste he could into Italy, he
					arrived first at Rhegium, and sailing thence in a merchant ship to Puteoli, went
					to Rome with all possible expedition. Presenting himself unexpectedly to his
					father, he said, by way of contradicting the strange reports raised concerning
					him, "I am come, father, I am come." From that time he constantly acted as colleague with his father, and, indeed, as
					regent of the empire. He triumphed 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 them, told an acquaintance of the emperor that it would
						not be advisable to carry them to the palace at Constantinople, as they
						could not remain anywhere else, but where Solomon had placed them. This, he
						said, was the reason why Genseric had taken the Palace at Rome, and the
						Roman army had in turn taken that of the Vandal kings. Upon this, the
						emperor was so alarmed. that he sent the whole of them to the Christian
						churches at Jerusalem. with his father, bore jointly with him the
					office of censor; A.U.C. 825 and was, besides, his
					colleague not only in the tribunitian authority, A.U.C.
						824 but in seven consulships. A. U. C. 823, 825,
						827-830, 832. Taking upon himself the care and inspection of
					all'offices, he dictated letters, wrote proclamations in his father's name, and
					pronounced his speeches in the senate in place of the quaestor. He likewise
					assumed the command of the pretorian guards, although no one but a Roman knight
					had ever before been their prefect. In this he conducted himself with great
					haughtiness and violence, taking off without scruple or delay all those he had
					most reason to suspect, after he had secretly sent his emissaries into the
					theatres and camp, to demand, as if by general consent, that the suspected
					persons should be delivered up to punishment. Among these, he invited to supper
					A. Cacina, a man of consular rank, whom he ordered to be stabbed at his
					departure, immediately after he had gone out of the room. To this act, indeed,
					he was provoked by an imminent danger; for he had discovered a writing under the
					hand of Cecina, containing an account of a plot hatched among the soldiers. By
					these acts, though he provided for his future security, yet for the present he
					so much incurred the hatred of the people, that scarcely ever any one came to
					the empire with a more odious character, or more universally disliked.