“A.M. 4915.――Cæsar Augustus was a pious and God-fearing man, and did execute judgment and justice, and was a lover of Israel. And as to that which is recorded in the beginning of the book, ‘Sceptre of Judah,’ that Cæsar Augustus caused a great slaughter amongst the Jews, his informant deceived him, for I have not met even with a hint respecting it in all the chronicles I have ever seen. On the contrary, in all their [_i.e._ Gentile] annals, and also in the fifteenth chapter of Josephon, it is recorded that he was a faithful friend of Israel. He also records in the forty-seventh chapter, that this Cæsar sent an epistle of freedom to the Jews in all the countries of his dominion; to the east as far as beyond the Indian Sea, and to the west as far as beyond the British territory (which is the country Angleterre, and which is designated England in the _lingua franca_.”)¹ ¹ See Appendix I. The Jews in this country chronicle the same event, annually, in their calendar; in the following words:――“Augustus’s edict in favour of the Jews in England, C. Æ. 15.” An ingenious antiquary of the seventeenth century, Mr. Richard Waller by name, came to the same conclusion in consequence of a curious Roman brick which was found in his time in London, when digging up the foundation of a house in Mark-lane. The brick had on one side a bass-relief, representing Sampson driving the foxes into a field of corn. The whole circumstance is thus related in Leland’s Collections, in the preface to the first volume, pp. 70, 71:――