Amongst the personages of this period, Akiba ben Joseph was unquestionably the most talented, original and influential. His youthful days and mental development are shrouded in darkness, as is often the case with characters who leave their mark in history; but legends have cast sufficient light to show the obscurity of his descent. According to one legend, he was a proselyte, and a descendant of Sisera, who fell through a woman's deceit. Another legend represents him as a servant of Kalba-Sabua, one of the three richest men of Jerusalem, who, by their provisions, wished to prevent for many years the famine occasioned by the siege. The legend adds that the daughter of one of these wealthy men of Jerusalem, named Rachel, had bestowed her love on Akiba, on the condition that he should follow the study of the Law. In those days this meant to acquire culture, and thus, in his fortieth year, Akiba entered a school, in order to take his first lessons to obtain the knowledge in which he was deficient. During the period of his studies the daughter of Kalba-Sabua had remained faithful to him, living in the greatest poverty, to which her father in his anger had reduced her by casting her adrift. Of these stories so much is certain, that Akiba was very ignorant until he was well advanced in years, that he and his wife lived under very straitened circumstances, and he related later on that during the period of his ignorance, he hated those who were versed in the Law. Meanwhile his slumbering mind did not develop so quickly as the legend relates. One source declares that he was one of the pupils of Eliezer during many years, without ever showing himself worthy of receiving an instructive reply from him. His teacher appears to have regarded him with a certain amount of contempt. Perhaps the peculiar system, pursued by Rabbi Akiba with regard to the newer Halachas, also excited Eliezer's disapproval. Akiba had learned this new system under Nachum of Gimso (or Emmaus), under whom he studied, not, indeed, for two-and-twenty years, as the legend relates. Akiba raised what was incomplete and fragmentary in this school to a complete system, and thus he stands at a turning-point in Jewish history.