‘What was meant,’ he asked, ‘by a “foreign superstition”? Was the worship of Isis a foreign superstition? Was the worship of the Pessinuntian Cybele a foreign superstition? Was the worship of Iaô--if that were the secret name of the deity--by the Jews a foreign superstition? The State was entirely unconcerned with any of these private beliefs. When, indeed, the votaries of any strange cult were guilty of riotous, licentious, and dishonest conduct, they were justly punished. Referring to the precedents quoted by Regulus, he said that the priests of Isis had deserved the vengeance which fell upon them for having betrayed the stupid credulity of a Roman lady. The Jews, who had been guilty of cheating and embezzlement in the matter of purple hangings for the Temple, were rightly punished. Claudius had been justified in driving all the Jews from Rome when they made tumults at the instigation of one Chrestus; but on the other hand, Julius Cæsar had always been favourable to the Jews, and Augustus had by public edict protected their Sabbath. The priests of the Syrian goddess were for the most part worthless vagabonds, and no one was sorry when they were detected and executed for their nefarious practices. The State took no cognisance of opinions, but only of evil practices. A Roman matron, by way of supposed purification, had gone down to the wintry Tiber, had broken the ice, had plunged into the freezing waters, and had crawled across the Campus Martius with bleeding knees. In such acts we might see the workings of a foreign superstition[*8]; but of no such act--of no secret visit to the base temple of Serapis--of no dealings with the mutilated priests of Cybele--of no lightings of lamps at Jewish festivals, had Pomponia been guilty. And who, he asked, can allege one immoral deed, one malefic practice against the noble wife of the conqueror of Britain? Is it to her discredit that she differs from so many of the noble ladies in Rome? Do we blame her or rather admire her, that she has never betrayed a friend, or changed a husband, or exposed an infant, or plundered a province, or ruined a reputation? Is it to be her destruction that her life has ever been simple, and her words sincere? Or is she to be banished because, through long years, she has continued to mourn for a friend, when so many forget their dearest relatives in less than a month? Cicero mourned the death of a slave, though he was half ashamed of his sensibility; Crassus wept for the death of a favourite lamprey. Is it a crime to cherish a beloved memory? What evidence is there against Pomponia? Have not her slaves, though Regulus has tampered with them, shown themselves entirely faithful? And what wonder? Most of us treat our slaves as though they were enemies--as though they could not claim the rights of human beings. She has treated her slaves as men and women like ourselves; as sharers of her home; as heirs with her of the common slavery of life and death. She has asked their aid; she