directed against the converts, and by the vivid touches in the Acts of the Apostles[175]. 'Victi victoribus leges dederunt' is the strong phrase of Seneca, and it was a very persuasive influence which could cause it to be said that in Damascus 'nearly the whole female population was devoted to Judaism': which could give S. Paul's Jewish opponents in the towns of Greece and Asia Minor the power at one time of raising the mob, at another of working upon the 'chief' and 'honourable women,' the ladies of the upper classes: or which could bring 'almost the whole city' together in a provincial town because a new teacher appears in the Jews' synagogue[176]. This influence had its results in a considerable number of actual proselytes who through circumcision received admission, somewhat grudging indeed and guarded, within the Jewish pale, but still more in a much larger number of adherents (the 'devout persons,' 'devout Greeks,' &c., of the Acts[177]) attracted by the doctrines, and acquainted with the Scriptures of Israel, who formed a fringe of partly leavened Gentile life round every synagogue. We hardly need evidence to shew us that to this picture of the influence of Jew over Gentile, there need to be added another which will shew how the subtle, persuasive, and powerful culture of the Graeco-Roman world made itself felt upon the Jews of the Dispersion. The contrast between the Jews of Palestine and those of the Dispersion, the translation of the Scriptures into Greek, the rise of a literature which in different ways tried to recommend what was Jewish to the heathen or to fuse what was Jewish with what was Greek, the single figure of Philo at Alexandria, are all evidences of an influence, which must have told continually with penetrating power on all that was ablest and most thoughtful in the Jewish mind. It was not the least considerable result of this that all the great thoughts and beliefs of Israel learned to talk the language of the civilized world, and so acquired before the time of Christ an adequate and congenial vehicle.