For this dispersion various causes can be assigned. Perhaps the most potent single cause was the fact that the Jews, who rigorously opposed exposure of infants, and encouraged in other ways the growth of their population, increased too rapidly for the very limited resources of their small and niggardly territory. At any rate the kingdoms of the successors of Alexander found Jews as colonists in many of the new foundations in Asia, Syria, and Egypt, especially the last, where, as a matter of fact, Jews had lived from pre-Persian times. Within these new and, in many cases, old communities the doctrines preached in Palestine became a means of propaganda, and enabled the Jews to do more than maintain themselves in the exceptional position which their highly specialized religion necessitated. The Jews were by no means the only religious group in the Greek communities with proselytizing tendencies. But they were unique in so far as they were permanently connected with an existing national group, with which they maintained relations. This made friction of some sort inevitable at first, since some community of religious observances for all citizens of a single state was axiomatic for ancient times. However, the anomaly of the Jewish position became less glaring in course of time. The first stage of Jewish influence is marked by two things, a constantly increasing dispersion and an equally increasing propaganda that reached all stages of society. The advance of the power of Rome at first did not change these conditions. In fact that advance materially assisted both the dispersion and its propaganda, since the support of Rome was an invaluable asset for the Hasmonean kingdom. Even the conquest by Pompey had no other effect than to accelerate the indicated development, especially within Italy and Rome itself. But the relations of the Jews with the Greco-Roman world entered upon a second stage, the stage of armed conflict, when the national and religious aspirations of certain classes of Jews, which culminated in the Messianic hope, came into contact with the denationalizing tendencies of the imperial system. This conflict was in no sense inevitable, and might easily have been avoided. In addition to the internal movements that provoked the series of rebellions between 68 and 135, there was a constant excitation from without. The hereditary enemies of the Greek East and its successor, the Roman Empire—the Persians and their kinsmen and successors, the Parthians—maintained not only their independence but also their hostility, and the fact that the Jews lived in both empires, and that Parthian Jews communicated freely with the others, presented a channel for foreign stimulation to revolt.