for a long time now have public speakers avoided running counter to the opinion of these wretches, for fear of their insults. Obstinate in the observance of their barbarian law, they wish to subject others to it, and they find adepts among the Asiatics, and even among the Greeks. And, what is hardly to be credited, they impose their customs on the Latins themselves. There are, in the City, whole quarters where all the shops are closed on their Sabbath day. Oh the shame of Rome! And, while corrupting the lowly folk among whom they dwell, their kings, admitted into Caesar's palace, insolently practise their superstitions, and set to all citizens a detestable and noted example. Thus do the Jews inoculate Italy on all sides with an oriental venom."
Annaeus Mela, who had travelled over the whole of the Roman world, sought to make his friends realise the extent of the evil they deplored.
"The Jews corrupt the whole world," he said. "There is not a Greek city, there are hardly any barbarian towns where work does not cease on the seventh day, where lamps are not lit, where their keeping of fast-days is not followed, and where the abstaining from the flesh of certain animals is not observed in imitation of them.
"I have met in Alexandria an aged Jew not lacking in intelligence, who was even versed in
