There is no direct confirmation in the Jewish sources of this association of Nero with a restored kingdom at Jerusalem. The very late Talmudic legend which states that Nero became a convert and was the ancestor of Rabbi Meïr[327] must, of course, be disregarded. No notable heathen sovereign escaped conversion in the Jewish legends. To the Christians, Nero was Belial or Antichrist for reasons obvious enough, and the Sibylline verses which so represent him are probably of Christian origin. But since the Messianic idea of the Jews was well-known throughout the Roman world (Suet. Vespasian, 4), the prediction made to Nero meant nothing less than that he was the promised Messiah, a conception startling enough, but perhaps less so to Nero’s generation than to ours. It may further be possible to find an association between Nero and the Jews in the words that Philostratus[328] (Life of Apollonius, v. 33) puts in the mouth of the Alexandrian Euphrates. The Jews, Euphrates says, are the enemies of the human race almost as much as Nero, but it is the latter against whom Vespasian should direct his arms, not the former. Whether, however, it was Nero or someone else, the intense force of the Messianic idea of the time of the revolt is attested explicitly by Suetonius in the passage alluded to above. _Percrebuerat Oriente toto vetus et constans opinio esse in fatis ut eo tempore Iudaea profecti rerum potirentur_, “Throughout the length and breadth of the East there was current an old and unvarying belief to the effect that it was decreed by fate that supreme power would fall into the hands of men coming from Judea.” If to Tacitus the insurrection was merely the expected outbreak of a turbulent province, repressed with difficulty in previous generations, and inevitable under all circumstances; if, to Josephus, the revolt was the foolish attempt of deluded but unfortunate men, driven mad by the oppressions of officials and led by selfish rascals, Suetonius, who retailed the gossip of the seven seas, had clearer insight when he referred the actual outbreak of hostilities to the general conviction that the result of the war would determine the fate of the empire. The Law would go out from Zion: _Iudaea profecti rerum potirentur_.