We shall probably have to look to the Hellenizing Jews not only for the initiation, but for the systematic carrying out, of the policy of persecution. And, as has been suggested, it is one of the commonest phenomena of ancient life. There was scarcely a Greek city in which a defeated faction had not at some time summoned the public enemy into the city, and by their aid taken a cruel vengeance on their opponents. If the Hellenizing faction in Judea found its influence waning, its action was from the point of view of ancient times natural enough. It appealed to foreign aid and strove systematically to stamp out the institutions it opposed, just as at Athens the Athenian oligarchs, placed in power by Spartan arms, tried to maintain themselves by wholesale proscription and by systematically removing all the democratic institutions that had developed since Clearchus.[142] It is likely too that the impelling motive was not solely the rancor which apostates feel for the faith or nation they have quitted. They saw themselves in the presence of a real danger. Among them was to be found most of the wealth of the community, and no doubt a great deal of the intellectual culture. Many of them were already in the third or fourth generation of Hellenistic Jews. The ancient ritual had for these men no personal associations whatever. In the various communes they enjoyed the position which wealth necessarily, and in those days especially, brought. That there was any virtue in poverty or privation in themselves had not yet been preached to the world, and would have seemed a wild paradox; and although the vanity of wealth without wisdom was a philosophic truism, ordinary wits would not always trust themselves to make the distinction. When these men, who formed almost a hereditary nobility, and already cherished a superb aloofness from the mass, felt their influence and power challenged, perhaps saw themselves outvoted in the governing councils of the synagogues and communes, and the foundations of their petty glory sapped, they were roused to a counter-effort, of which the results have been indicated. The danger in which they found themselves came from the Hasidim, the group of brotherhoods that made a conscious opposition to Hellenism their bond of union. In Egypt the opposition had found its organs in the caste-like corporations of priests. In Judea the organs had to be created. And that they were successful, the words of I Maccabees testify. They contained the leaders of the nation; their position was already one of dominating influence.