And finally, even if we assume that such a wholly unprecedented and inexplicable incident occurred, how are we to explain the immediate and wholesale enfranchisement of so large a number? Ransom by wealthy coreligionists at Rome is excluded by the hypothesis. Similar action by Jews outside the city would demand a much longer time. The reasons generally assigned are based upon the assumed uselessness of Jewish slaves for ordinary purposes because of their dietary laws and religious intransigeance. But that is a purely dogmatic assertion. Papyri and inscriptions have shown that in spite of a bitter racial opposition and perhaps economic strife as well, Jew and non-Jew could live quite peaceably together. The dietary laws would not render his master’s meals obnoxious to a Jewish slave, because he did not eat at his master’s table, and might consume his scanty vegetable food where and how he pleased. If a master actually chose to force attendance at the sacrifice, the compulsion of necessity would have been a valid excuse for all but those of martyr stuff, and we cannot suppose that every Jewish soldier had in him the zeal of a martyr. Besides, for such compulsion the slave would in no sense be responsible, and it is with disadvantages moving from him that we are concerned. It is simply impossible to imagine what could have induced Pompey’s soldiers or those who purchased from them to enfranchise immediately slaves transported from such a distance and at such expense. Philo’s statement is at best a conjecture, made without any better acquaintance with the facts than we ourselves possess, and contradicted by the necessary inference from Cicero’s words. We must therefore assign the settlement of Jews in Rome to a much earlier date. The tradition that some of the train of Simon’s embassy had remained in Rome is, as we have seen, probable enough. To that nucleus there was added, by a perfectly natural and even inevitable infiltration, a group of Jewish freedmen, artisans, and merchants who were establishing themselves all over the Mediterranean. Jews are met with at Delphi a hundred years before the delivery of this speech.[244]