The Jews of Alexandria; as a class of peculiar and emphatic characteristics, a class toward which consideration was due in deference to its numbers, its wealth and its sensitiveness, were necessarily the object of particular provision. Therefore, that they might be intelligently handled as to their prejudices, they were provided with a special governor from among their own--an alabarch; permitted to erect their own sanctuaries and to practise the customs of race and the rites of religion in so far as they did not interfere with the government's interests. Thus much their privileges; their oppressions were another story. Peopled by three of the most aggressive nations on the globe, the Greek, the Roman and the Jew, Alexandria seemed likewise to attract representatives of every country that had a son to fare beyond its borders. Drift from the dry lands of all the world was brought down and beached at the great seaport. It ranged in type from the fair-haired Norseman to the sinewy Mede on the east, from the Gaul on the west to the huge Ethiopian with sooty shining face who came from the mysterious and ancient land south of the First Cataract. It followed that such a heterogeneous mass did not effect union and amity. That was a spiritual fusion which had to await a perfect conception of liberty and the brotherhood of man. The racial mixture in Alexandria was, therefore, a prematurity, subject to disorder. So long as a Jew may have his life, his faith and his chance at bread-winning, he does not call himself abused. These things the Roman state yielded the Jew in Alexandria. But he was haughty, refined, rich, religious, exclusive, intelligent and otherwise obnoxious to the Alexandrians, and, being also a non-combatant, the Jew was the common victim of each and all of the mongrel races which peopled the city. The common port of entry was an interesting spot. The prodigious stretches of wharf were fronted by packs of fleets, ranging in class from the visiting warrior trireme from Ravenna or Misenum, to the squat and blackened dhow from up the Nile or the lateen-sailed fishing-smack from Algeria to the papyrus punt of home waters. Its population was the waste of society, fishers, porters, vagabonds, criminals, ruffian sea-faring men, dockmen, laborers of all sorts, men, women and children--the pariahs even of the rabble and typically the Voice of Revilement. Agrippa, landing with his party, attracted no more attention than any other new-comer would have done, until Silas gravely inquired the way into the Regio Judaeorum. "Jupiter strike you!" roared the man whom the sober Silas had addressed. "Do I look like a barbarian Jew that I should know anything about the Regio Judaeorum!" His words, purposely loud, did not fail to excite the interest he meant they should.