The fall of Jerusalem was of deeper, subtler significance than the surrender of any one of the countless cities which were subject to Rome. Rome had passed through a few years of terrible turbulence after Nero’s suicide in 68. When Vespasian, the steady-headed general with the Army’s strength and loyalty behind him, surged to the crest of the turbulence as Emperor in 69, Rome realized in order to stabilize her entire Empire, she must crush rebellion or revolution wherever found. If one city like Jerusalem, or one little province like Judea not much larger than Vermont or New Hampshire, could defy Roman power, all the Eastern provinces would flame in revolt; and there were certain considerations that particularly embittered the Romans towards the Jews. From at least thirty or forty years before the birth of Christ, the Jews of Jerusalem had been granted special privileges by the Roman Senate. They were allowed freely to exercise their own peculiar religious rites. Their huge temple revenues from Jews in every part of the world were left untouched by Rome. Though a head tax had been imposed from the days of the census in Christ’s boyhood—supposed not to have exceeded from fifty to sixty cents of modern money—the Jews paid no other tributary taxes to Rome. Certain seaport towns, from the borders of Egypt in the south to Asia Minor on the north, seemed to have paid some sort of municipal tax in excise, which went to the members of the local rulers like the Herod family as a personal revenue or bride’s dowry; and yet all local rulers amassed colossal fortunes. How did they do it? By the perversion of justice. While the Jews had their own courts dominated by high priests, these court decisions were subject to appeal to Rome; and as evident in the case of Paul and Felix and Festus at Cæsarea, a bribe could buy freedom or friendship. Paul could have had his liberty if he had paid a bribe. He would not and was held for two years. Then, while the Roman generals cleaned out the robber bands and kidnappers of the desert and Galilee and Dead Sea caves, they too often, like Felix, sold both defeated brigands and brigand prisoners as slaves for immediate profit. Now the Roman in religion was all things to all men. He set up the goddess Roma in the temples with the features of whatever emperor happened to be ruling, not because he believed his own ruler a god, but because he saw that the great diversity of gods in the East split the Empire up into warring factions; and Rome aimed to unify her Empire by religion, and doubtless winked cynically at neglect to worship the goddess Roma, as long as no disrespect was offered the statue; but statue, image, picture, painting—all were abhorrent to the Jew, who regarded all outside the pale of the chosen people as cursed by God; so the Jews abominated the conqueror Romans; and the Romans despised the Jews as bigots, fanatics, stiff-necked factionists.