It may be put down to the credit of Josephus that amid the court society at Rome he to the end professed loyalty to his religion, and that he did not complete his political desertion by religious apostasy. His loyalty indeed is less meritorious than might seem at first sight. The Romans generally were tolerant of creeds and cults, and the ceremonial of Judaism, especially its Sabbath, appealed to many of them. Within the _pomoerium_ (limits), of the ancient city none but the city gods might be worshiped, but in Greater Rome there were numerous synagogues. In the time of Pompey, an important Jewish community existed in the cosmopolitan capital of the Empire, and later we have records of a number of congregations. Philo expressly mentions the religious privileges his brethren enjoyed at the heart of the Empire,[1] and save for an occasional expulsion the Jews appear to have been unmolested. The Flavian Emperors, satisfied with the destruction of the sanctuary and the razing of Jerusalem, did not attempt to persecute the communities of the Diaspora. For the old offering by all Jews to the Temple, they substituted a tax of two drachmas (the equivalent of the shekel voluntarily given hitherto to Jerusalem), which went towards the maintenance of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Later the fiscus Judaicus, to which every Jew and proselyte had to pay, became an instrument of oppression, but in the reigns of Vespasian and Titus it was not harshly administered. Domitian indeed vented his indignation on the people which he had not had the honor of conquering, and instituted a kind of inquisition, to ferret out the early Maranos, who dissembled their Judaism and sought to evade the tax. But his gentle successor Nerva (96-98) restored the habit of tolerance, and struck special coins, with the legend calumnia Judaica sublata (on the abolition of information against the Jews), in order to mark his clemency. Save, therefore, for the short persecution under Domitian, Judaism remained a _licita religio_ (legalized denomination) at Rome. More than that, it became a powerful missionary faith among the lower classes, and in small doses almost fashionable at the court. A near relative of the Emperor, Flavius Clemens, outraged Roman opinion by adopting its tenets.[2] It has been suggested, and it is likely, that the chief historical work of Josephus was written primarily for a group of fashionable proselytes to Judaism, to whom he ministered. He mentions members of the royal house that commended his work.[3] Some scholars have sought to associate him with the philosopher at Rome that was visited by the four rabbis of the Sanhedrin, the Patriarch Rabban Gamaliel, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Eleazar ben Arach, and Rabbi Akiba, when they came to Rome in the reign of Domitian.[4] But apart from the fact that he would hardly be described as a philosopher--a term usually reserved in the Talmud for a pagan scholar--it is as unlikely that the leaders of the Pharisaic national