At these words, the Jews cried out that it was a calumny, and that they had three times offered for the prosperity of the emperor the most solemn sacrifices known to their religion. "Yes," said Caligula, with a very comical seriousness, "you have sacrificed, and so far, well; but then it was not to me that you sacrificed. What advantage do I derive from it?" Thereupon, turning his back upon them, he strode through the apartments, giving orders for repairs, incessantly going up and down stairs. The unfortunate deputies, and among them Philo, eighty years of age, the most venerable man of the time, perhaps--Jesus being no longer living--followed him up and down out of breath, trembling, the object of derision to the assembled company. Caligula turning suddenly, said to them: "By the by, why will you not eat pork?" The flatterers burst into laughter; some of the officers, with a severe tone, reminded them that they offended the majesty of the emperor by immoderate laughter. The Jews stammered; one of them awkwardly said: "There are some persons who do not eat lamb." "Ah!" said the emperor, "they have good reason; lamb is insipid." Some time after, he made a show of inquiring into their business; then, when speaking had just begun, he left them and went off to give orders about the decoration of a hall which he wanted to have furnished with polished stones. He returned, affecting an air of moderation, and asked the deputation if they had anything to add; and as the latter resumed their interrupted discourse, he turned his back upon them to go and see another hall which he was ornamenting with paintings. This game of tiger sporting with its prey lasted for hours. The Jews were expecting death; but at the last moment the claws of the beast relaxed. "Well," said Caligula, while repassing, "these folks are decidedly less guilty than pitiable for not believing in my divinity." Thus could the gravest questions be treated under the horrible regimen created by the baseness of the world, cherished by a soldiery and a populace about equally vile, and maintained by the dissoluteness of nearly all. We can easily understand how so oppressive a situation must have taken from the Jews of the time of Marcellus much of that audacity which made them speak so proudly to Pilate. Already almost entirely detached from the temple, the Christians must have been much less alarmed than the Jews at the sacrilegious projects of Caligula. They were, moreover, too little numerous for their existence to be known at Rome. The storm of the time of Caligula, like that which resulted in the taking of Jerusalem by Titus, passed over their heads, and was in many regards serviceable to them. Everything which weakened Jewish independence was favorable to them, since it was so much taken away from the power of a suspicious orthodoxy, maintaining its pretensions by severe penalties.