The life and work of St. Paul

446 THE LITE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
conviction, they were useless and troublesome as ordinary slaves, but they
displayed in every direction the adaptability to external conditions which,
together with their amazing patience, has secured them an ever-strengthening
position throughout the world. They soon, therefore, won their emanci-
pation, and began to multiply and flourish. The close relations of friendship
which existed between Augustus and Herod the Great improved their con-
dition ; and at the dawn of the Christian era, they were so completely
recognised as an integral section of the population, with rights and a religion
of their own, that the politic Emperor assigned to them that quarter beyond
the Tiber which they have occupied for ages since. 1 From these dun purlieus,
where they sold sulphur matches, and old clothes, and broken glass, and went
to beg and tell fortunes on the Cestian or Fabrician bridge, 2 8,000 of them
swarmed forth to escort fifty deputies who came from Jerusalem with a
petition to Augustus. 3
It was doubtless the danger caused by their growing
numbers which led to that fierce attempt of Sejanus to get rid of them which
Tacitus records, not only without one touch of pity, but even with con-
centrated scorn.* The subsequent, but less atrocious decree of Claudius, 6
brought about St. Paul's friendship with Aquila and Priscilla, and is probably
identical with the measure alluded to by Suetonius in the famous passage
about the "Impulsor Ckrestus." 8
If so, it is almost certain that Christians
must have been confounded with Jews in the common misfortune caused by
their Messianic differences. 7
But, as Tacitus confesses in speaking of the
attempt to expel astrologers from Italy, these measures were usually as futile
as they were severe. 8 We find that those Jews who had left Rome under im-
mediate pressure began soon to return. 9 Their subterranean prosolytism, 10 as
far back as the days of Nero, acquired proportions so formidable that Seneca, 11
while he characterised the Jews as a nation steeped in wickedness (gens
sceleratissima), testifies to their immense diffusion. It is therefore certain
that when St. Paul first arrived in Home (A.D. 61), and even at the time
when he wrote this letter (A.D. 58), the Jews, in spite of the uurepealed
1 I have described this quarter of Rome In Seekers after Gfod, p. 168.
2 Mart. Ep. i. 42, 109 ; vi. 93 ; x. 3, 5 ; xii. 57 ; Juv. xiv. 134, 186, 201 ; Stat. Silv. L,
vi. 72. They continued here for many centuries, but were also to be found in other parta
of Rome. On their mendicancy see Juv. iii. 14, 29G ; vi. 542. On their faithful-ness to the
Law, see Hor. Sat. i., ix. 69; Suet. Aug. 76; Juv. xiv. 96 ; Pers. v. 134; &c.
8 Jos. Antt. xvii. 1.
4 Tac. Ann. ii. 85 ; Sueton. Tib. 36 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, 5.
s Acts xviii. 2.
6 V. supra, p. 279 ; infra, p. 720. Since Christus would be meaningless to classic ears,
the word was surfrappe (see my Families of Speech, p. 119). Chrestianus is common in
St. Paul, 101.
inscriptions ; Renan,
7 And perhaps by the commencing troubles In Judaea, early In A.D. 52.
8 Tac. Ann. xii. 52, "atrox et irritum." It is not impossible that these may be one
and the same decree, for the Mathematici, and impostors closely akin to them, were frequently
Jews.
9 Dion Cass. (Ix. 6), who is probably alluding to this decree, says that the Jews were
not expelled, but only forbidden to meet in public assemblies. Aquila, however, as a
leading Christian, would be naturally one of those who was compelled to leave.
i Hor. Sat. L ix. 70; Pers. Sat. v. 180 ; Ovid, A. A. i. 76 ; Juv. vi. 542 ; Suet. Aug. 76 }
RIerivale, vi. 257, teq., &c.
11
Ap. Aug. De Civ. Dei, vi. 11 ; v. infra, Excursus XIV,