The Achemenidean kingdom gave Israel little repose. This grand feudality, tolerant towards all provincial differences, almost analogous to the Califat of Bagdad and to the Ottoman Empire, was the rule under which the Jews found themselves most at ease. The Ptolemaic rule in the third century before Jesus Christ seemed equally sympathetic to them: there were even no Seleucidæ. Antioch had become an active centre of Hellenic propagandism. Antiochus Epiphanus felt it necessary to set up everywhere the image of Jupiter Olympus as the sign of his power. Then broke out the first great Jewish revolt against profane civilization. Israel had patiently supported the disappearance of its political existence since Nebuchadnezzar. It retained no measure in which it saw a danger to its religious institutions. A race, in general not military, was seized with an access of heroism; without a regular army, without generals, without tactics, it conquered the Seleucidæ, maintained its revealed rights, and created a second period of autonomy. The Asmonean royalty, nevertheless, was always distracted by profound interior vices. It endured but one century. The destiny of the Jewish people was not to constitute a separate nationality. That people dreamed always of something international. Its ideal was not the city, it was the synagogue, the free congregation. The same is true of the Islam, which has created an immense empire, but has destroyed all nationality, in the sense in which we understand it, among the peoples which it has subjugated, and leaves them no other country than the mosque and the _Zaouia_.