The fact of the expulsion is confirmed by that passage in the Acts of the Apostles in which the meeting of Paul and Aquila at Corinth is mentioned (Acts xviii. 1, 2): “[Paul] found a certain Jew born in Pontus, lately come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome).” The testimony is late,[339] but it will be noticed that Aquila is an Asiatic by birth, and so very likely had no legal right of residence at Rome in any circumstances. Finally, expulsion “from Rome” may have meant only exclusion from the _pomoerium_, the sacral limit of the city that followed an imaginary line not at all coincident with its real walls. To escape from the operation of the decree, it would merely have been necessary to cross the Tiber, where as a matter of fact the Jews generally lived, since the Transtiberine region was not included in the _pomoerium_. In general, expulsion from the city specified that the expelled person might not come within the first milestone, but in view of the difficulties presented by the assumption of a real expulsion, this supposition may also be considered. Mention has already been made of the special association of Claudius’ successor, Nero, with the Jews. The success that attended their efforts at propaganda during that emperor’s reign is evidenced by the fact that Poppaea Sabina became a semi-proselyte. And during Nero’s reign occurs an event of special importance to the Jews of Rome, the first Christian persecution. In the reign of Nero, possibly in that of Claudius, there was brought to the various Jewish congregations of the Roman world, seemingly not beyond that, the “good news,” εὐαγγέλιον, that a certain Jesus, of Nazareth in Galilee, was the long-promised Messiah. To most, perhaps, the facts cited of his life indicated only that he was one of the “many swindlers,” γόητες ἄνθρωποι, like those whom Felix captured and put to death (Jos. Ant. XX. viii. 5). But some believed. If we are to credit the Acts of the Apostles, this belief at once produced a bitter conflict between those who did so believe, afterwards called Christians, and those who did not.[340] But the Acts in the form in which it has come down to us represents a recension of much later date, made when the enmity between Jew and Christian was real and indubitable. It may be that in certain places those Jews who accepted the evangel almost at once formed congregations of their own, synagogues or ecclesiae (the terms are practically synonymous),[341] different from the synagogues of those who rejected it. But there were from the beginning differences of degree in its acceptance, and even in the existing recension of the Acts there is good evidence that its acceptance or rejection did not immediately and everywhere produce a schism.