(perhaps 1,000 men) in the city, which thus fell entirely into the hands of the fanatical party. The Roman governors, selected by emperors like Nero, were no doubt both corrupt and incapable; but the hatred of Semitic peoples was a survival of the ancient hatred of Carthage. The Romans despised a civilisation and a religion which were far more ancient and more lofty than their own. The Jews, when governed honestly, were content to remain under the empire; they only asked for freedom to follow their own law, as they had asked the Greeks in earlier days. But Roman prejudices against them can best be understood by reading Tacitus, who hated them, or the poets, who knew only the more degraded class of Jewish hucksters crowded in the ghetto in Rome. Tacitus says that “the Jews were the only people who stood out, which increased the rage” of the Roman race. He supposed that they came originally from Crete, or from Libya, or from Assyria, and he repeats the libels which are attributed to Manetho the Egyptian priest. He had heard of Moses as a law-giver, but his belief that the image of an ass was adored in the Temple may have arisen from some distorted account of the Cherubim, if these may be regarded as having had animal forms, as in the vision of Ezekiel. He admits that “among themselves there is an unalterable fidelity and kindness always ready at hand,” yet adds, “but bitter enmity against all others.” “The Jews have no idea of more than one divine being,” is his comment on the religion of the race, and he contradicts himself when he says, “They have no images in their cities, much less in their temples.” But the enmity felt against Israel was political rather than religious. Jerusalem was the last stronghold of a nation which refused to be absorbed in the cosmopolitan system of the empire. [Sidenote: ROUT OF CESTIUS]