OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE . 3
obscurity under the successors of Alexander; and, as they multiplied to a surprising degree in the East, and afterwards in the West, they soon excited the curiosity and wonder of other nations.?2. The sullen obstinacy with which they main- tained their peculiar rites and unsocial manners seemed to mark them out a distinct species of men, who boldly professed, or who faintly disguised, their implacable hatred to the rest of human kind.? Neither the violence of Antiochus, nor the arts of Herod, nor the example of the circumjacent nations, could ever persuade the Jews to associate with the institutions of Moses the elegant mythology of the Greeks.4 According to the maxims of universal toleration, the Romans protected a superstition which they despised.6 The polite Augustus con- descended to give orders that sacrifices should be offered for his prosperity in the temple of Jerusalem ;° while the meanest of the posterity of Abraham, who should have paid the same homage to the Jupiter of the Capitol, would have been an object of abhorrence to himself and to his brethren. But the moderation of the conquerors was insufficient to appease the jealous prejudices of their subjects, who were alarmed and scandalized at the ensigns of paganism, which necessarily introduced themselves into a Roman province.’ The mad attempt of Caligula to place his own statue in the temple of Jerusalem was defeated by the unanimous resolution of a people
last of those empires, slightly mentions the Syrians of Palestine, who, according to their own confession, had received from Egypt the rite of circumcision. See]. ii. c. 104.
2 Diodorus Siculus, 1. xl. [2 sgg.]. Dion Cassius, 1. xxxvii. p. r21[c. 17]. Tacit. Hist. v.1—9. Justin, xxxvi. 2, 3.
- 3 Tradidit arcano queecunque volumine Moses.
Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti, Quzesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos. [Juvenal, xiv. 102. }
The letter of this law is not to be found in the present volume of Moses. But the wise, the humane Maimonides openly teaches that, if an idolater fall into the water, a Jew ought not to save him from instant death. See Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, 1. vi. c. 28.
4A Jewish sect, which indulged themselves in a sort of occasional conformity, derived from Herod, by whose example and authority they had been seduced, the name of Herodians. But their numbers were so inconsiderable, and their duration so short, that Josephus has not thought them worthy of his notice. See Prideaux’s Connection, vol. ii. p. 285.
5 Cicero pro Flacco, c. 28. :
6Philo de Legatione. Augustus left a foundation for a perpetual sacrifice. Yet he approved of the neglect which his grandson Caius expressed towards the temple of Jerusalem. See Sueton. in August. c. 93, and Casaubon’s notes on that assage. ‘ 7 See, in particular, Joseph. Antiquitat. xvii. 6 [§ 2], xviii. 3, and de Bel. Judaic. i. 33 [§ 2599.], and ii. 9 [§ 2, 3]. Edit. Havercamp.
