As has been said, the authenticity of the _Historia Augusta_ is dubious, but the number of details offered to show the interest of both Alexander and his predecessor Elagabalus in Judaism and Christianity is too great to be ignored. The Sentences of Paul, it must be noted, have come down to us only in the abridged and perhaps interpolated form in which they are found in the Lex Romana Wisigothorum, a code issued by Alaric II in 506, and called therefore the Breviarium Alaricianum. At that time, however, proselytizing on the part of the Jews had been expressly prohibited by a rescript of Theodosius (Cod. Theod. 16, 8, 9, 19) of 415. Even then it was completely ineffective, but at any rate the rite of circumcision was definitely under a legal ban.[382] Whether or not a qualified restriction on the spread of Judaism has been changed in our texts of the Sentences into a general and all-embracing one, it is impossible to say, but that some such change has taken place may be called even likely, by reason of the point just raised; viz., that it is wholly contrary to the spirit and principles of the Roman law to impose any restrictions whatever on the master’s authority. We have examined the decrees that regulated the rite of circumcision, merely because general inferences have been drawn from it—inferences that are in no sense justified. The Roman law regarded bodily mutilation, when practised as part of a religious rite, and especially for sordid purposes, as against public policy. It was a _privilegium_ of the Jews, that to the members of their organizations the general rule of the law did not apply, and the various statements quoted from the jurists were simply judicial decisions limiting, by a well-known principle of interpretation, the exercise of the privilege to the narrowest possible bounds. The rebellion of Bar-Kosiba was probably the last time that the Jews confronted the Roman troops on issues that were even partly national. We hear that between 150 and 161, under Antoninus Pius, another rebellion broke out, but we have no other record of it than the notices in the _Historia Augusta_,[383] upon which little reliance can be placed. After the death of Commodus and Pertinax,[384] the eastern empire, including Palestine, sided with the local claimant Pescennius Niger, and Palestine became the scene of battles sufficiently important to justify the decreeing of a “Jewish triumph” to Caracalla. It is likely that these various “rebellions” were the more or less serious insurrections of bandits, who terrorized the countryside until suppressed by the authorities. This view derives some support from the fact that of one of these bandits who submitted to Severus we know the name, Claudius (Dio Cass. Ep. lxxv. 2). There is even no certainty as to whether those who took part in them were wholly or mainly Jews. At any rate, there were no national ends which they attempted to serve.