It will, perhaps, hardly be believed that there is not a word of this in the "Oration for Flaccus," nor in any of Cicero's works. Flaccus, who had exercised the prætorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in Rome at the very time when Pompey, after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem, and hanged their petty king, Alexander, son of Aristobolus. Flaccus had forbidden the conveying of gold and silver specie to Jerusalem, because the money came back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly as Pompey. Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words: "Each country has its religion; we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free, while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the splendor of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever, by the strength of its arms, what it should think of the Roman Empire. It has shown us, by its valor, how dear it is to the immortal gods; it has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and tributary."--"_Stantibus Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum religio sacrorum, a splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri, ma jorum institutis, abhorrebat; nunc vero hoc magis quid ilia gens, quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis; quam cara diis immortalibus esset, docuit, quod est victa, quod elocata, quod servata._" It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the Phœnicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated. _Did the Romans Take Their Gods from the Greeks?_ Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the Greeks? For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring Coelum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and Chronos. They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter. Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favorites, Mars and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names resemble.