Under Nero the hostility towards the Jews was temporarily diverted against the Christians, and, while the latter were ruthlessly made to pay with their lives for the Emperor’s criminal aestheticism, the former enjoyed an immunity from persecution, partly secured by feminine influence at Court. But, while the Jews in the West were purchasing a precarious peace and a miserable triumph over the Christians, their brethren in the East were preparing for one of those periodical struggles for independence which move at once the horror and the admiration of the student of Jewish history. The Jews could not bear the sight of the foreign despot in their country. His presence in Jerusalem was a daily insult to Jehovah. The reverses which they had hitherto sustained in their single-combat with the masters of the world had not damped their desire for freedom. Disaster, far from crushing, seemed to invigorate their courage. And for the sake of the Idea they were ready to jeopardise the security and material comfort which they generally enjoyed under the equitable and tolerant rule of the Romans. In the eyes of the zealots the sensible attitude of the higher classes, which acquiesced in the existing state of affairs,--an attitude shared by famous Rabbis such as Jochanan son of Zakkai who re-founded Judaism when the Temple fell--was nothing less than treachery to the national cause. It was felt that, if no attempt were made to check the “seductive arts of Rome,” the whole race would gradually sink into spiritual apathy. Bands of irreconcilables were, as in the time of the Seleucids, scattered about the country and set the example of insubordination by frequent attacks on the Romans and their partisans. These patriots were bound by a vow to spare no one who bended the knee to the hated foreigner, and they fulfilled it with all the scrupulous cruelty which characterises the vows of enthusiasts. The pursuit of personal profit, as not unfrequently happens, was combined with the pursuit of patriotism, and there soon appeared a secret revolutionary association whose emissaries insinuated themselves into the very precincts of the Temple and there struck down those who had incurred their wrath. Sporadic assassination was gradually organised into a regular conspiracy, and the murderers of yesterday were now ennobled by the appellation of rebels. The voices of prudence and moderation were drowned in the clamour of patriotism; the peace party was terrorised into a zeal for liberty which it was far from feeling, and the standard of rebellion was unfurled. ♦66 A.D.♦