Not only was the ancient theory revived, but it was revived without the qualifications that had made the ancient theory a livable one. No other _sacra_ could be permitted to exist. Not to be in the ecclesia, was not to be in the empire. Only the practical impossibility of really enforcing that theory restrained the zealous and triumphant leaders. Of course, the development of law was continuous. The new basis of citizenship was never actually and formally received as a legal principle. Yet gradually the limitation of civic rights, which non-membership in the church involved, operated to work an exclusion from citizenship itself. In a very short time those who were not within the church were in a very real sense outside the state, merely tolerated sojourners, and subject to all the risks of that precarious condition. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SUMMARY What has been attempted in the foregoing pages is an interpretation of certain facts of Jewish, Roman, and Greek history within a given period. For that purpose it has been necessary to analyze fully the terms used, and in many cases rather to clear away misconceptions than to set forth new points of view. A brief retrospect is here added. The Jews, as one of the Mediterranean nations, began to come into close contact with Greek civilization about the time of Alexander. Greece was then entering on a new stage in her development. The Macedonian hegemony produced a greater degree of political unity than had been previously achieved, but above all a real cultural unity had been created, and was carried by arms and commerce over the East. To this the Jews, as other nations did, opposed a vigorous resistance; and this resistance was successful in so far as it allowed the creation of a practically independent nation, and particularly it stimulated the independent development of Jewish institutions, especially religious ones. In religion the Jews came into further and more extensive conflict with their Greek environment. For many centuries all the East had known a great spiritual unrest, from which had grown various religious movements. Of all these the common goal was the attainment of a personal immortality, the “salvation of the soul.” Among the Jews too this movement had been active, and had produced concrete results in sects and doctrines. The Jewish aspect of this general movement would have remained a local development, had it not been given a wider field by the unusual position of the Jews, due to their dispersion.