It has been stated, and it must be constantly reiterated, that impiety was a negative offense, that it implied deliberate refusal to perform a religious act of legal obligation, rather than the actual doing of some other religious act. If “impiety” were really the offense here, the “many” that were charged with it under Domitian and Nerva must have been so charged because they neglected certain ceremonies which the laws made obligatory. In Greek communities ἀσέβεια was a relatively common offense, and indictment for it of frequent occurrence. But it is doubtful whether there was such an indictment at Roman law. There is no Latin term for ἀσέβεια. The word _impietas_ is generally used in a different sense. The Greek Dio or his late Byzantine epitomator has evidently used that term here to describe in his own words what seemed to him to be the substance of the accusation rather than to give a technically exact account of the charge against these men. In later law writers certain offenses are discussed under which forms of impiety or ἀσέβεια might be included. But these offenses are treated either as sedition or as violations of the Sullan Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficis, “Statute of Assassins and Poisoners.” The latter law seems to have been a general statute containing a varied assortment of provisions, but all of them relating to acts that tended to the bodily injury of anyone, whatever the motive or pretext of that injury.[364] The “many,” then, who, as Xiphilinus says, were prosecuted for “impiety,” because they lapsed into Jewish rites, may have been indicted under the Lex Cornelia—no doubt as a pretext—or charged with treason upon proof of Jewish proclivities. The Palestinian Jews, we may remember, were until recently in arms against Rome. In all these cases, the indictments were probably far-fetched pretexts devised by the morose and suspicious Domitian during his last year of veritable terror in order to get rid of men whom he suspected (often justly) of plotting his assassination. These are the men whom Nerva’s act of amnesty freed. The famous jurist Paul, who wrote in the first part of the third century, discusses the restrictions imposed upon the spread of Jewish rites, under the heading of “sedition” or “treason.” The justification for that treatment lies in the series of insurrections of the Eastern Jews of which the rebellion of 68 C.E. was merely the beginning. Our sources for the events of these rebellions are remote and uncertain, and the transmission is more than usually troubled; but a chance fragment, as well as the kernel of the lurid account presented by Xiphilinus’ epitome of Dio, leaves no doubt that the struggle was carried on with memorable ferocity, and left a lasting impression on the people whom it concerned.