Josephus regards the great rebellion of 68 C.E. as the direct consequence of this insurrection of Judah. He is therefore very bitter against this “fourth philosophic system,” which spread among the younger men and brought the country to ruin. It is at least curious that in his earlier work, the Wars, in which the recollection of Jewish disaster would be, one would suppose, vastly more vivid, he does not ascribe to this rebellion any such far-reaching effects (Wars, II. viii. 1); nor is it in any degree likely that this insurrection was after all more than what it appears to be there, a sporadic outburst in that hotbed of unrest, the Galilean hills, noteworthy only for the special zeal with which the theocratic principles were announced. No riots or disturbances are mentioned in Judea till the famous image-riots of the time of Pontius Pilate. However we may wish to discount the highly colored narrative preserved in Josephus, there can be no doubt that these riots did take place. It may even be that the representation of influential Jews induced the much desired concession on Pilate’s part of removing the “images.” But what these images were does not appear with any clearness from Josephus’ account, and of course we are under no obligation to take literally the “five days and five nights” during which the ambassadors lay prostrate, with bare necks, at Pilate’s feet. Josephus speaks of the “images of Caesar which are called standards” (Wars, II. ix. 2; Ant. XVIII. iii. 1). The Roman standards, _signa_, σημαίαι, often contained representations of the emperor. But these were in the form of medallions in flat relief, hung upon the standard. They would have been noticed only upon relatively close inspection. There were also statues in the camp. But it is quite unlikely that if the Roman provincial administrators were instructed to issue no coins with the imperial effigy, they would be allowed to carry into the city actual statues of the emperor. They may well have forgotten that the military standards would be themselves offensive, if they bore, as they always did, the representation of animal forms. All legions at this time carried the eagle, and most of them had other heraldic animals as well.[305] Now it may be remembered that the chief legion permanently encamped in Syria, of which detachments must have accompanied Pilate upon his transference of the praetorium from Caesarea to Jerusalem, was the Tenth Legion, called Fretensis (Leg. X Fretensis), and that its standards were a bull and a pig.[306] To the mass of the Jews the carrying, as though in triumph, of the gilded image of an unclean animal must have seemed nothing less than derision, and can easily explain the fury of the populace.