The word ξένος, which is the root of the words for “hospitality” and its opposite, has no equivalent in English. A ξένος was a man of another nation, who approached without hostile intent. The test of civilization was the manner in which such a ξένος was dealt with. The Greek traditions, even their extant literature, have a very lively recollection of the time when hospitality was by no means universal, when the ξένος was treated as an enemy taken in arms or worse. The one damning epithet of the Cyclops is ἄξενος, “inhospitable.”[197] The high commendation bestowed upon the princely hospitality of the Homeric barons itself indicates that this virtue was not yet a matter of course, and that boorish nations and individuals did not possess it. Legally, of course, the ξένος had no rights. Such claim as he could make for protection rested upon the favor of the gods, especially of Zeus, who was frequently addressed by the cult title of Ξένιος, the Protector of Strangers. The uncertain aid of the gods was soon displaced by personal relations between individuals and groups of individuals in different states, who were mutually πρόξενοι to each other, a title that always created a very definite moral obligation and soon a legal one as well. So, when Alexander destroyed Thebes, he spared the πρόξενοι of his own family and of the Macedonians in general.[198] The institution and the development had practically gone on in similar ways all through the Mediterranean world. The Bedouins still maintain the ancient customs of their fathers in that respect. The Romans had the word _hospes_, of which the history is a close parallel to that of ξένος. Of the Jews the same thing may be said. The Bible enjoins the protection of strangers as a primary obligation. They were the living symbols of the Egyptian bondage. So Exodus xxiii. 9, “Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” One of Job’s protests of righteousness is his hospitality (Job xxxi. 32). In these circumstances just what could the charge of μισοξενία, of “inhospitality,” have meant? We shall look in vain in Greek literature for an injunction to hospitality as finely phrased as the passage just quoted from Exodus. To understand the term as applied to the Jews we shall have to examine the words that are used for the acts connected with hospitality. In Homer the word ξεινίζω[199] is frequently found. Strictly of course it means simply “to deal with a stranger,” but it is used principally in the sense of “entertain at dinner.” The wandering stranger might as such claim the hospitality of the people among whom chance had brought him, and claim it in the very concrete sense that food and lodging at the master’s table were his of right. Indeed it would almost seem that he became _pro hac vice_ a member of the family group in which he partook of a meal, protected in life and limb by the blood-vengeance of his temporary kinsmen.