But the haughty historian throws no light on one difficulty--namely, the circumstances which led to the _Christians_ being thus singled out. The Jews were in no way involved in Nero's persecution. To persecute the Jews at Rome would not have been an easy matter. They were sufficiently numerous to be formidable, and had overawed Cicero in the zenith of his fame. Besides this, the Jewish religion was recognized, tolerated, licensed. Throughout the length and breadth of the empire no man, however much he and his race might be detested and despised, could have been burned or tortured for the mere fact of being a Jew. We hear of no Jewish martyrdoms or Jewish persecutions till we come to the times of the Jewish War, and then chiefly in Palestine itself. It is clear that a shedding of blood--in fact, some form or other of human sacrifice--was imperatively demanded by popular feeling as an expiation of the ruinous crime which had plunged so many thousands into the depths of misery. In vain had the sibylline books been once more consulted, and in vain had public prayer been offered, in accordance with their directions to Vulcan and the goddesses of Earth and Hades. In vain had the Roman matrons walked in procession in dark robes, and with their long hair unbound, to propitiate the insulted majesty of Juno, and to sprinkle with sea-water her ancient statue. In vain had largesses been lavished upon the people, and propitiatory sacrifices offered to the gods. In vain had public banquets been celebrated in honor of various deities. A crime had been committed, and Romans had perished unavenged. Blood cried for blood before the sullen suspicion against Nero could be averted or the indignation of heaven appeased. Nero had always hated, persecuted, and exiled the philosophers, and no doubt, so far as he knew anything of the Christians--so far as he saw among his own countless slaves any who had embraced this superstition, which the _élite_ of Rome described as not only new, but "execrable" and "malefic"--he would hate their gravity and purity, and feel for them that raging envy which is the tribute that virtue receives from vice. Moreover, St. Paul, in all probability, had recently stood before his tribunal, and though he had been acquitted on the special charges of turbulence and profanation, respecting which he had appealed to Cæsar, yet during the judicial inquiry Nero could hardly have failed to hear from the emissaries of the Sanhedrim many fierce slanders of a sect which was everywhere spoken against. The Jews were by far the deadliest enemies of the Christians, and two persons of Jewish proclivities were at this time in close proximity to the person of the Emperor. One was the pantomimist Aliturus, the other was Poppæa, the harlot-empress.[31] The Jews were in communication with these powerful favorites, and had even promised Nero that if his enemies ever prevailed at Rome he should have the kingdom of Jerusalem.[32]