"This strong faith in the superior wisdom of God's doing was the elixir that preserved them during their indescribable sufferings. This it was that established unconsciously a bond of union among them, scattered though they were, and whithersoever they went, however near to or however far from the land where once stood the cradle of their nation, their temple and palaces, where ruled and sang and spoke their princes and bards and inspired orators of deathless fame, however removed from this dearly beloved center, one past and one future, one hope and one aim, characterized them all and planted within them the seeds of indestructibility. What wonder then that soon after this terrible national calamity, a disaster from which no other people on the face of the earth could have possibly survived, we hear of large Jewish communities in Asia, Africa and Europe? Some of these were established even before the dissolution of the Jewish kingdom. At the time of Titus numerous Jewish communities existed in the countries bordering on the Euphrates and the Tigris, in Asia Minor on the north coast of Africa, in Greece and in Italy. The Jewish community in Rome was large and influential long before the reign of Titus, having been brought thither as slaves by _Pompey_, after his conquest of Jerusalem. After the terrible siege of Jerusalem, crowds of exiles wandered to them and swelled their number, and these destitute exiles must have diminished the community's opulence and respectability and popularity, for before the _Diaspore_ Latin authors speak of them as a wealthy and respected community; after this period, the notices of them by _Juvenal_ and _Martial_ are contemptuous, and imply that many of them were in the lowest state of penury, the outcasts of society. Whatever city in Asia Minor and Greece the Apostle Paul enters he seems to find a synagogue. In some of these cities the Jews seem to have flourished; in most of them, however, they were proscribed as an odious people, and were objects of hatred and abhorrence. The rule seemed to be, in localities where Christianity predominated the Jews suffered; where the Heathens were in power the Jewish communities flourished. In Italy they were permitted, with few exceptions, to live in peace. Even though _Theoderic_ wrote: "Why should we give them peace in this life, when God will not give them peace in the life to come?" and even though _Cassiodorus_ piously bestowed upon them the flattering appellations of "scorpions, wild asses, dogs," etc., it never came to very serious persecutions, and the valiant defense of _Naples_ by the Jews against the great _Belisarius_, for which History gives them their deserved credit, clearly shows how the Jew can be patriotic for his adopted fatherland.