Similar conditions prevailed in Palestine. There also Hellenic language, manners, feasts, games, and philosophy effected an entrance through the influence of the Greek colonies on the coast, and a party of Jewish Hellenists was formed. In the land which once rang with the prophetic utterances of an Isaiah and a Jeremiah were now sung the love-poems of Sappho, and were quoted the witty sarcasms of the Athenian Voltaire, Euripides. But the Torah, or Jewish religious law, was bitterly opposed to all innovations, and the anti-Greek section of the people, termed the “Pious” (Chassidim or Assideans), regarded with deep misgiving the inroad of the foreign culture. Hence arose an implacable feud between the Liberals and the Conservatives, who hated, anathematised, and later crucified each other as cordially as brethren only can do. But the Chassidim, though politically worsted, were all-powerful in the affections of the community, and the time was not distant when they were to assume the supreme command. In 198 B.C. Palestine, after a hundred years’ struggle, passed under the sway of the Graeco-Syrian Seleucids, who, unlike their predecessors, initiated a policy of forcible assimilation, and, aided by the Hellenistic party among the Jews themselves, compelled their subjects to adopt their own civilisation and to pay homage to their own gods. However, neither the tolerance of the Graeco-Egyptian nor the violence of the Graeco-Syrian kings succeeded in reconciling the Jew to the ways of the Gentile. ♦175–164 B.C.♦ Antiochus Epiphanes might banish Jehovah from the Temple of Jerusalem and enthrone Zeus in his stead; he might set up altars to the pagan deities in every town and village; and he might exhaust all the resources of despotism in the cause of conversion. The timorous were coerced into a feigned and transient acquiescence, but the bulk of the nation, baited into stubbornness, preferred exile or martyrdom to apostasy. The defiled temple remained empty and the altars cold, until the smouldering discontent of the outraged people broke out into flame, and passive resistance yielded to fierce rebellion. ♦166–141 B.C.♦