The Jewish tradition speaks of a systematic and cruel persecution instituted by Hadrian. The details mentioned are very much like the remembered incidents of the persecution by Epiphanes. We must keep in mind that every one of the statements connected with this persecution is late, and is in so far of dubious historical value.[373] As a matter of fact the character of Hadrian makes the reality of the persecution in the highest degree improbable. No doubt the revolt was punished with ruthless severity, and for the permanent prohibition against the entrance of a Jew into Aelia Capitolina there is excellent evidence;[374] but to attempt to root out Judaism as Antiochus had done is something that simply cannot be credited to Hadrian, if only for the fact that the overwhelming majority of Jews did not dwell in Palestine at all, and all the alleged persecutions of Hadrian are localized only in Palestine. In Hadrian’s letter of 134 C.E., to his brother-in-law Servianus, the Jews of Egypt are referred to in a manner quite irreconcilable with the theory that Judaism was then a proscribed religion.[375] In this connection we may mention a decree which, according to Jewish tradition, constituted one of the most deeply resented of Hadrian’s persecutions—the prohibition of circumcision. Here again the late biographer of Hadrian, Spartianus, makes this edict precede and not follow the war; but the reliability of the _Historia Augusta_, of which Spartianus’ biography is part, is not very high. We have the _Historia Augusta_, if it is not wholly a fabrication of the fourth century, only in a recension of that time, so that its testimony on such a detail is practically valueless.[376] As a matter of fact, all bodily mutilation had been under the ban of the Roman law, but that prohibition applied only to Roman citizens. In practice circumcision had been openly carried on both by Jews who were Roman citizens and by their converts, in disregard of this provision, probably under the tacit assumption that the privileges of the Jewish corporations covered this as well. Primarily the prohibition was directed against castration, but it was quite general. The only formulation which the edict against these practices had received was in the Sullan Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficis (above, p. 241). This was a _lex per saturam_, or miscellaneous statute. Under one of its captions, any act, perhaps any act performed with a weapon or instrument of any kind, that resulted in bodily injury, was prohibited. A senatorial decree of the year 83 C.E. specified castration as one of the mutilations referred to; similarly abortion was punished as a violation of the Lex Cornelia.[377]