In the case of the Jews no such assertions are to be discovered. Antiochus, instigated by renegade Jews, sets about a systematic obliteration of the distinctively Jewish ritual. The synagogue services were to be checked by the destruction of the Torah. Perhaps periodic reunions in the synagogue were forbidden altogether, since meetings of citizens were proverbially looked at askance in monarchies.[140] The temple was rededicated to the Olympian Zeus, and the ceremony of circumcision was made a capital offense. Observance of the Sabbath was construed as treason. No detail was overlooked. This complete scheme is not to be explained by the existence of a strong animosity toward the Jews. There is, in the first place, none of the evidence that was met with in Egypt, that such animosity existed. And, secondly, animosity between racial groups expressed itself in bloody riots, not in a carefully prepared plan for extirpating a religion while sparing its professors. Nor can we find in the personal character of Antiochus a sufficient cause for the persecution. He undoubtedly exhibited the gusts of passion common enough among those who wield irresponsible power, but the sustained and bloody vindictiveness of such a programme is a very different thing. It has been frequently suggested that his cherished policy was the thorough Hellenization of his empire, that among the Jews only was there a determined resistance, that upon learning that the basis of their resistance was a devoted attachment to their ancestral superstition, he determined to root out the latter. The difficulties with this view are, first, that opposition was not confined to the Jews, but was met with everywhere—a dull and voiceless opposition, which, however, unmistakably existed. Secondly, among the Jews a very large number, we are told, “were persuaded”; and it is highly likely that Antiochus came in direct contact wholly with the latter, or almost wholly, so that the situation in Judea cannot have impressed him as radically different from that of Syria or Babylonia. But, above all, it is the conclusion that the obstacles to his policy would lead to persecution on his part, which is more than doubtful. No one could have known better than he did himself that ancestral religious customs are not to be eradicated by violence. The Egypt which was so nearly in his grasp might have taught him that, if nothing else could. There the indigenous religion had triumphed. He himself, upon his entry into the kingdom, had crowned himself _more Aegyptico_, “after the Egyptian fashion,”[141] that is, with full acknowledgment of the sovereignty of Ptah and Isis over their ancient demesnes.