But there was also no inconsiderable group that combined adoption of the new with loyalty or attempted loyalty to the old. Many Syrians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and others, conscious of a history not without glory, desired to acquire the undeniably attractive Hellenic culture, while maintaining their racial ties, of which they felt no real reason to be ashamed. That was particularly true of the Seleucid dominions where Alexander’s assimilative policy was consistently pursued. Persian or Lydian or Phoenician descent was a thing many men boasted of. It was with a sense of adding something to the culture of the world that natives with Greek training prepared to transmit in Greek forms the history of their people to Greeks and to interpret their institutions to them. And they found a ready enough audience. On many points, especially in religion and philosophy, the Greeks were willing enough to concede a more profound acquaintance to barbarians than they themselves possessed; and often the weariness of civilization made Greeks search among fresher peoples for a sound social life, since that life was tainted, in Greek communities, by many grave diseases. But people of this class found themselves in a delicate situation, an unstable equilibrium constantly disturbed. It was hard to remain a Grecized Syrian. Generally the temptation to suppress the Syrian was well-nigh irresistible. Now and then, the rise of national political movements would claim some of the younger men, so that the fall was on the native side. In general, the older conservative attitude expressed itself naturally in avoidance of Greeks as far as possible, and precisely in proportion to the value set upon the national and indigenous culture. The situation of the Jews was only in so far unique that there could be no question among them of gradual steps in the acquisition of Greek culture, but only of partial acceptance of it. The final step of interchanging gods—of accepting the Greek name and maintaining the old rite and of exercising that reciprocity of religious observance which was a seeming necessity for those who lived in the same region—that, as every Jew was aware, could never be taken. The religious development among the Jews had been fuller than elsewhere, and had resulted in a highly specialized form, which by that fact had none of the elasticity of other cult-forms. It was easy to make any one of the Baalim of local Syrian shrines into Zeus Heliopolitanus, Zeus Damascenus, etc. It was not possible to turn the Lord Zebaoth of Zion, the awful and holy God of psalm and prophecy, into an epithet of Zeus or of another.