text: Having held out for some three years , the Zealots could only watch in horror as the ramp neared completion , knowing only too well that , if taken alive , their women and children would be horribly brutalized , their men would be butchered in the ring by animals or gladiators , and the survivors would be sold as slaves .
  
  ###
  
  The Zealots devised a plan to sabotage the construction of the ramp .