But there never was any real peace in Judæa for long together. The national sentiment, as we should call it, of the old Jewish party, the Conservatives, who are called Pharisees in the Bible, was too strong for them to be at peace for any length of time under foreign rule. King Agrippa, of whom we were speaking, was a personal friend of both Caius Caligula and of Claudius, the two Roman Emperors who succeeded Tiberius. We may speak of them as Emperors (imperators) by this time, for it was a title which they took without dispute. Agrippa made himself very well liked by the Jews, and it seems to have been to please them that he had St. James beheaded and St. Peter cast into prison, as is told in the Bible. The Bible, too, in the Acts of the Apostles, tells us of his death in the year A.D. 44. He was the last king of the Jews, and at his death Judæa fell again under the government of the procurators. [Sidenote: The procurators of Judæa] The procurators all seem to have been oppressive in their government. Probably their task was a very difficult one. They had to govern a people who all through the story had shown themselves stronger in the independence of their spirit and in following their own ways of life than any other. The force of Roman soldiers of the legions and of allied troops that they had at hand to uphold their authority must have been very small in comparison with the force that the Jews and their friends could muster at short notice. They must have depended a great deal on the fame of the {216} Roman power, and on the knowledge which the Jews must have had that if Rome really cared to take serious measures against them they could have no hope of success. Rome's power, if she cared to exert it, would be overwhelming. But Rome was far away. Perhaps she would not take the trouble to exert that power. That is how the Jewish party probably thought about it all; and the procurators and even the kings of Judæa had to try to uphold the Roman power as best they could, and yet to do what they could not to drive the Jews into the rebellion that they were always on the point of making, and now and again actually did make. Pontius Pilate was procurator at the time of Christ's trial. You know how he gained the execration of all the Christian world ever since by sacrificing Christ to the hate of the Jews. He had sent Christ to Herod Antipas, because Herod was ruler of Galilee, not of Judæa, at the time, and Christ was considered, from his birthplace, to be a Galilæan. Pilate no doubt would have been well pleased if Herod had taken the responsibility on himself of judging the case, but Herod sent Christ back to Pilate. The Christians were already many enough to be a formidable body, and the rulers of Judæa had now to deal with three parties bitterly opposed to each other, the Jews who held to their old traditions, the Jews who had become Christians, and the small governing class of Romans and their friends.