"
This creature was a gnat, and is called insignificant because it
must receive and discharge what it eats by one aperture.
Immediately, therefore, he landed, when a gnat flew up his
nostrils and made its way to his brain, on which it fed for a
period of seven years. One day he happened to pass a
blacksmith's forge, when the noise of the hammer soothed the
gnawing at his brain. "Aha" said Titus, "I have found a remedy
at last;" and he ordered a blacksmith to hammer before him. To a
Gentile for this he (for a time) paid four zuzim a day, but to a
Jewish blacksmith he paid nothing, remarking to him, "It is
payment enough to thee to see thy enemy suffering so painfully."
For thirty days he felt relieved, but after, no amount of
hammering in the least relieved him. As to what happened after
his death, we have this testimony from Rabbi Phineas, the son of
Aruba: "I myself was among the Roman magnates when an inquest
was held upon the body of Titus, and on opening his brain they
found therein a gnat as big as a swallow, weighing two selas."
Others say it was as large as a pigeon a year old and weighed
two litras. Abaii says, "We found its mouth was of copper and
its claws of iron.
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