The little scene is so significant that we shall have to dwell on it. One unescapable inference is that the Jews in Rome were numerous, and that a great many non-Jews participated wholly or partially in their observances. Fuscus need not be taken seriously about his own beliefs, but his excuse would be extravagant in the highest degree if the situation of the Jews were not such as has been suggested. Indeed, the terms of intentional offensiveness which Fuscus uses indicate the serious annoyance of either himself or Horace that that should be the case. The “thirtieth Sabbath” will probably remain an unsolved riddle.[265] And whatever the day was, the extreme veneration expressed by Fuscus in declining even to discuss profane affairs is of course absurdly out of keeping with the words he uses. Fuscus is simply assuming the tone of a demi-proselyte, a _metuens Sabbata_, whose superstitious dread of the rites he has half embraced would make him carry his devotion to an excess. Horace thus obtains an opportunity of sketching a new type of absurdity, in the very act of girding at the one which is the subject of the _sermo_. And Horace makes still another reference to the proselytizing activities of the Jews. “You must allow me my scribbling,” he writes to Maecenas in another Satire. “If you don’t, a great crowd of poets will come to help me. We far outnumber you, and, like the Jews, will compel you to join our rout.”[266] This is explicit enough in all conscience, and gives a very vivid picture of the public preaching that must have brought the Jews to the unwelcome notice of every saunterer in the Roman streets. Horace, despite his slave grandfather, is a gentleman, the associate of Rome’s aristocracy, a member of the most select circle of the city’s society. The Jewish proselytes, whether fully converted or “righteous strangers,” must have been very numerous indeed, if he was forced to take such relatively frequent notice of them. Horace has no pictures, like those of Juvenal, of presumptuous Syrians, Egyptians, or Greeks swaggering about the city. It is only these Syrian _Iudaei_ whom he finds irritating, and wholly because of their successful hunt for souls. It is true that all this may be due to personal circumstances in his own surroundings. Some of his acquaintances, or men whom he occasionally encountered, may have been proselytes; others may have been impressed by certain Jewish forms or ideas. Horace is taking his fling at them in his usual light manner. There is something ludicrous to a detached philosopher in the eager striving to save one’s soul, and still more absurd in the earnest attempt to gain adherents for an association that promises salvation.