The visits paid to the Temple by the Judæans who lived out of Palestine, strengthened the bond of unity, and these visits must have been of frequent occurrence, for they necessitated the creation of many places of worship in Jerusalem where the various foreign Judæans met for prayer. The capital contained synagogues of the Alexandrians, Cyrenians, Libertines, Elymæans, and Asiatics. One can form some idea of the vast numbers of Judæans existing at that period if one considers that Egypt alone, from the Mediterranean to the Ethiopian boundary, contained nearly a million. In the neighboring country of Cyrenaica, there were likewise many Judæans, some having been forcibly transplanted thither from Egypt, whilst others were voluntary emigrants. In many parts of Syria, and especially in its capital, Antioch, the Judæans formed a considerable portion of the population. The kings of Syria who succeeded Antiochus Epiphanes had reinstated them in all their rights, of which the half-insane Epiphanes had robbed them. One of these kings had even given them some of the utensils taken from the Temple, and these were preserved in their synagogue. About ten thousand Judæans lived at Damascus, and one of their nobles was made ethnarch over them by the Nabathæan king, Aretas Philodemus, just as in Alexandria one of their most distinguished members was elected chief of the community. To the great capital of the world, Rome, the point of attraction for the ambitious and the grasping, the discontented and the visionaries, the Judæans returned in such masses after their expulsion by Tiberius, that when the Emperor Claudius determined, from some unknown cause, upon expelling them again, he was only deterred, by fear of their great numbers, from endeavoring to carry out his intention. Meanwhile he forbade their religious meetings. Towards the end of his reign, however, on account of some disturbances occasioned by a certain Christian apostle, Chrestus, they were probably, but only in part, banished from Rome. Even greater than in Europe, Syria and Africa was the number of Judæans in the Parthian Empire. They were the descendants of former exiles, who owned large tracts of country in Mesopotamia and Babylonia. Two youths from Naarda (Nahardea on the Euphrates) called Asinaï (Chasinaï) and Anilaï (Chanilaï) founded in the vicinity of that town a robber settlement, which spread terror along the bordering countries. Just as Naarda and Nisibis became the central points for the countries of the Euphrates, there arose in every land a central nucleus from which Judæan colonies spread themselves out into neighboring lands, from Asia Minor on the one side, towards the Black Sea on the other, towards Greece and the Islands. Athens, Corinth, Thessalonica, and Philippi contained Judæan communities. There is no doubt that from Rome Judæan colonies went forth westward to the south of France and Spain.