the foreign subjects of Rome forms the best testimony to the nobility of Rome’s greatest son. Caesar might well claim the title of Father of mankind. ♦44 B.C.♦ The end of Caesar’s life proved also the end of the consideration enjoyed by the Jews under his aegis. Augustus, indeed, unbent so far as to order that prayers for his prosperity should be offered up in the Temple of Jerusalem, and even established a fund for a perpetual sacrifice. But this was only an act of courtesy dictated by reasons of policy. His real feelings towards the Jews and their religion are better illustrated by his biographer’s statement that, while treating the old-established cults with the reverence to which their antiquity and respectability seemed to entitle them, “he held the others in contempt.” Among the gods deemed unworthy of Imperial patronage were those of Egypt and Judaea. During his sojourn in the land of the Pharaohs Augustus refrained from turning aside to visit the temple of Apis. Nor was he more respectful towards Jehovah. On the contrary, “he commended his grandson Caius for not stopping, on his passage through Palestine, at Jerusalem to worship in the Temple.”[11] The ancient writer’s juxtaposition of Apis and Jehovah, linked at last in common bondage, is as significant as it is quaint. Under the successors of Augustus the Jews of Rome had more than neglect to complain of. Their suppression appears to have been now regarded as a public duty. The biographer of Tiberius, in enumerating that emperor’s virtues, among other proofs of patriotism, includes his persecution of the obnoxious race. After describing the measures taken against “outlandish ceremonies” generally, and how those given to Egyptian and Judaic superstitions were compelled to burn all their ritual vestments and implements, he proceeds to inform us calmly that “the Jewish youth, under pretence of having the military oath of allegiance administered to them, were distributed over the most unhealthy provinces, while the rest of the race, or those who followed their cult, were banished from the city under pain of perpetual servitude if they disobeyed.”[12] The indignation which these arbitrary measures must have stirred up among the Jews found vent in the following reign. The immediate cause of the explosion was Caligula’s order that his own effigy should be placed in the Temple of Jerusalem and that divine honours should be paid to him throughout the empire--an order which, however natural it might have appeared to a Roman, outraged the vital principle of Hebrew monotheism. ♦41 A.D.♦ The result was stern and unanimous resistance on the part of the Jews, bloodshed being only averted by the imperial lunatic’s opportune death.[13]