Less wild and improbable is the last legend, that the Jews came hither when Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, and created the town they called Toledoth, "city of generations." From this period is supposed to date the synagogue Santa Maria la Blanca. The explanation of the fact that under Christian rule the Jews of Toledo were permitted to have their synagogues and worship unmolested according to their rites, is based on the tradition that the Jews of Jerusalem consulted them before condemning Christ to death. They withheld their consent, and pronounced the sentence both heedless and imprudent, but their letter arrived too late for consideration. The mere belief that this letter had been sent, however, secured them for some centuries from insult or persecution.[2] The famous archbishop, Don Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, rejects all these theories, and goes to Rome in search of founders, which he discovers in two consuls, Tolemon and Brutus, 108 years before Cæsar's time, when Ptolemy Evergetes was reigning. But this seems no nearer truth, since there exists no vestige of any domination anterior to the Roman Conquest, and there are no data on which to found a definite statement. The most convenient way of disposing of the question, up to the day of Livy's emphatic description of Toledo as "parva urbs, sed loco munita," is to say with the old-fashioned writers that its beginning is "lost in the night of ages." For lost it most certainly is, and the ancient Spanish historians are not to be trusted. It is probable that the first start of the race was a Celtic group of shepherds, wild and rude, whose wanderings led them to the leafy and verdant banks of the Tagus, and here, finding abundance of water, and rich and fertile land between Aranjuez and Toledo, they agreed to settle. Gradually the little town, pitched high above the river upon its unattackable rocky seat, spread itself; the number of huts grew into streets and lanes, the vague and wandering groups became more dense, and attracted others within their dominating influence, until the capital of Carpetania was formed. The shepherds left their flocks to build themselves walls and strong places, and thus bring upon their little city the imperious and conquering eye of Rome. Here again we have nothing but untrustworthy generalities to guide us, and no prehistoric remains on which to base conclusions about this vanished race. Alcocer, the old historian of Toledo, asserts that the very mystery and obscurity of the city's earliest days is proof of its antiquity and nobility, "since a race is all the more ancient by the less that is known of its origin and beginning." In a pleasing concession to this naïve statement, we need feel no shame in allowing to Toledo all the nobility and antiquity our unenlightened ignorance permits it to claim.