=8. Eastern Jews.=――Whilst the Goths and the Vandals were overrunning Europe, and the Jews of the West were turning into pedlars, the Jews of the East were also beginning to have a history apart from their schools. For nearly 500 years the history of the Babylonian Jews was almost that of the happy nations who have none. From the time when Jerusalem fell, till the beginning of the sixth century, the troubles of the Jews who were settled on the banks of the Tigris and of the Euphrates had been but slight; occasionally irritating, but very rarely serious. In Mesopotamia, for a very long period, Jews as citizens were undistinguishable from other citizens, and they on their side, as a certain Rabbi Samuel expressed it, ‘respected the law of the land no less than the law of Moses.’ Their Judaism was absolutely uninterfered with, and they had leisure for little scholarly quarrels among themselves. There was, it is true, a fanatic sect among the fire-worshippers, who were often trying to disturb the pleasant and peaceful terms on which the Jews lived with their Persian masters, but they seldom succeeded. Unluckily, however, neither the peace nor the pleasantness was secure; both depended on a good many causes, among which the disposition of the reigning ruler counted for much. At the beginning of the sixth century troubles began for the Eastern Jews, and speedily grew formidable. In the year 530 their reigning רֵישׁ נְּלוּתָא Prince of the Captivity, was hanged by order of the State. This act was followed by other persecuting measures. Many Jewish religious rites were prohibited, and the schools were closed. Luckily, by this time the great work of the schools was accomplished, the Babylonian Talmud having been finished by Rabbi Aschi some forty years before.