When it might have been imagined that severe repressive measures had delivered Judea from this pest, it reappeared in a yet more formidable shape. At the festivals, when a great concourse of people from all parts were gathered together at Jerusalem, bandits known as _sicarii_, that is “men of the knife,” mingled with the throng and stabbed their victims, without any being able to see whence the blow came, for the assassins were the first to cry murder. “The first whom they assassinated on this wise,” says Josephus, “was Jonathan the high priest, and not a day passed on which they did not kill several in the same manner. The panic that prevailed throughout the city was worse than the evil itself. Men looked for death at any moment, as in time of war. They saw none approach without trembling, they did not dare to trust their friends. These precautions and suspicions did not put a stop to the murders, so great was the daring of these villains and their skill in hiding themselves.” Josephus does not ascribe anything of a religious character to these assassinations. But according to the author of the _Philosophumena_ (Origen[f] or St. Hippolytus) the _sicarii_ were identical with the Zealots, and were connected with the sect of the Essenes. “When they hear any of the uncircumcised speak of God and of His law, they seek to come upon him by stealth in a solitary place and threaten to kill him unless he will be circumcised: if he refuses to obey, he is slain. This is wherefore they are called Zealots, and by some _sicarii_.” Josephus, in his _Antiquities of the Jews_ accuses Felix, the procurator, of having procured the assassination of the high priest Jonathan by the _sicarii_, an accusation which he does not repeat in the _Wars of the Jews_. Felix was a brother of Pallas, the freedman and favourite of Claudius. Tacitus speaks of him in even harsher terms than Josephus. “Claudius made Judea into a province which he abandoned to Roman knights or to freedmen; among these Felix distinguished himself by every sort of cruelty and license, he exercised the authority of a despot in the base spirit of a slave.” The Jews caused him to be accused before Nero, who had succeeded Claudius, but he was saved by the influence of his brother Pallas.