caverns where in the fatherland, their ancestors were laid. The catacombs in the neighborhood of the Transtevere, the district where the Jews mostly lived, are plainly associated with them. The seven-branched candlestick appears on the wall, and the inscriptions bear witness to the pious constancy of the race.[3] They made proselytes among the pagans weary of their decrepit and moribund faiths, and thus extended the religious ideas which they so tenaciously held. Among themselves there was close association, partly from tradition and partly from race. Some semblance of their ancient institutions was kept up; their general council; their tribunal of laws. Circumstances alone prevented them from maintaining their ancestral religion in its grandeur. Seneca, about the middle of the first century, represents Jewish usages as having pervaded all nations; he is speaking of the Sabbath. Paul found thriving synagogues, wherever he went, and wrote to some that he could not visit, before the destruction of Jerusalem made the final dispersion. [Footnote 3: See Milman's Jews, II. p. 461.] The Messianic hope was strong in these people; all the stronger on account of their political degradation. Born in sorrow, the anticipation grew keen in bitter hours. That Jehovah would abandon them, could not be believed. The thought would be atheism. The hope kept the eastern Jews in a perpetual state of insurrection. The cry, "lo here, lo there!" was incessant. The last great insurrection, that of Bar-Cochab, revealed an astonishing frenzy of zeal. It was purely a Messianic uprising. Judaism had excited the fears of the Emperor Hadrian,[4] and induced him to inflict unusual severities on the people. He had forbidden circumcision, the rite of initiation into their church; he had prohibited the observance of the Sabbath and the public reading of the law, thus drying up the sources of the national faith. He had even threatened to abolish the historical rallying point of the religion by planting a Roman colony on the site of Jerusalem and building a shrine to Jupiter on the place where the temple had stood. Measures so violent and radical could hardly have been prompted by anything less alarming than the upspringing of that indomitable conviction which worked at the heart of the people. The effect of the violence was to stimulate that conviction to fury. The night of their despair was once more illumined by the star of the east. The banner of the Messiah was raised. Portents as of old were seen in the sky; the clouds were watched for the glory that should appear. Bar-Cochab, the "son of the star," seemed to fill out the popular idea of the deliverer. Miracles were ascribed to him; flames issued from his mouth. The vulgar imagination made haste to transform the audacious fanatic into a child of David. Multitudes flocked to his standard. "The whole Jewish race throughout the world," says Milman, "was in commotion; those who dared not betray their