[397] On Isa. ii. 8 and Matt. xxi. 15. [398] See my drawing in “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” Jerusalem vol., p. 406. [399] The Latin is given in “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” Jerusalem vol., p. 427. [400] Dion Cassius, lxix. 12. [401] They are reproduced by Madden, from de Saulcy, “Numismatique Judaīque,” plates xv.-xviii. [402] Jerome, “Epist.,” 49, _ad Paulin._; Eusebius, “Life of Constantine,” iii. 25. [403] Eusebius, “Demonstr. Evang.,” viii. 3; Cyril, “Catech. Lect.,” xvi. 18; Mic. iii. 12. [404] The ancient wall south of the Holy Sepulchre Cathedral may be of this age. It is of large stones, some of which are drafted. It runs east and west, but is not founded on rock, though the base is 18 feet below the present surface. Probably the rock is 20 or 30 feet lower still on this line, and the wall is described as standing on debris. _Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly_, April 1894, p. 146. It is not of necessity a wall of the city. [405] Bliss, “Excav. at Jer.,” 1898, pp. 228, 249. [406] “Mem. West Pal. Survey,” Jerusalem vol., p. 424; Waddington, “Inscript.,” Nos. 1829, 1854, 1897, 2032. Another occurs in the Tombs of the Prophets, “Courage, Eutherius, no one is immortal.” _Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly_, Jan. 1901, p. 22. [407] See back, p. 63. [408] See back, p. 161, and _Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly_, Oct. 1904, p. 296, Jan. 1905, p. 74. [409] Cypr., “Epist.,” 75; Euseb., “Hist. Eccl.,” vi. 11. CHAPTER X THE BYZANTINES The Romans policed the western world for the benefit of Italy alone. We have made them our model, but the progress of higher thought in the past was due to the Hebrew, the Greek, the Norman, and the Frank, rather than to the Roman, whose only culture was Greek, or to his Saxon disciples. Before Marcus Aurelius died, in 180 A. D., the empire had become cosmopolitan. Signs of decay then appeared under Commodus, and the heart of Italy withered. Constantine substituted the hereditary principle for the elective method dear to the old free republic, but he only delayed the doom to which Roman supremacy and centralisation now hastened. An ignorant plutocracy, corrupted by luxury, destroyed the ancient yeomanry by absorbing the small holdings of the “coloni,” and ruined agriculture by laying the land under grass. They sapped the sources of their own power, and substituted foreign slaves for native freedmen. The plebeian settled as a legionary in distant lands, forming colonies, military and civil, of crossbred descendants, and the colonial emperors had little regard to the selfish prejudices of Rome.