The life and work of St. Paul

586 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
selves, thrust themselves into every house and every profession, flung them-
selves with perfect shamelessness into the heathen vices, and became the
useful tools of wealthy rascality, and the unscrupulous confidants of the
" gilded youth." l Some became the favourites of the palace, and made
nominal proselytes of noble ladies who, like Poppaea, had every gift except
that of virtue. 2 But whatever their condition, they were equally detested by
the mass of the population. If they were false to their religion they wore
flouted as renegades ; if they were true to it, their Sabbaths, and their circumcision,
and their hatred of pork, their form of oath, their lamp -lightings, and
their solemn festivals were held up to angry ridicule, 3 as signs of the most
abject superstition.
If a Roman saw a knot of Jew beggars, he turned from
them with a shudder of disgust ; if he noticed the statue of a Jewish king or
Alabarch, he frowned at it as a proof of the degradation of the age. Whether
successful or unsuccessful whether he was an Herodian prince or a matchselling
pedlar the Jew was to the Latin races an object of abhorrence and
disdain. They were regarded with the same feelings as those with which a
citizen of San Francisco looks on the Chinese immigrant as intruders, whose
competition was dangerous as aliens, whose customs were offensive. And
yet they made their presence tremendously felt. Borne, so tolerant and so indifferent
in her own religious beliefs, was sometimes startled into amazement
by the raging violence of their internal disputes. Cicero, one hundred and
twenty years before this period, prided himself on his courage in defending
Flaccus against their charges, and was obliged to deliver his speech in a low
tone of voice, for fear of exciting a riot among the thousands of them who
besieged the court to denounce their enemy. Sober Quirites had listened with
astonishment to their wild wailing round the funeral pile of their patron
Julius Caesar. 4 Even poets and satirists imply that those who were attracted
by feelings of superstition to adopt some of their customs were neither few in
number nor insignificant in position. 6
Under Augustus their condition was not materially altered. Tiberius, recog-
nising them as a dangerous element in the population, made a ruthless attempt
to keep down their numbers by conscriptions and deportations. Grains, on the
other hand, grossly as he behaved to their most venerable ambassadors, was so
much attached to the elder Agrippa that he respected their religious and
political immunities. The position of the Herodian princes in the imperial
court was sufficient to protect them during the greater part of the reign of
Claudius. During the reign of Nero, and therefore at the very time of St.
Paul's Bornan imprisonment, they enjoyed a secret influence of the most formidable
kind, since Poppsea never hesitated to intercede for them, and had
even given orders that after her death her body was in accordance with the
Jewish practice to be buried and not burnt,
l Mart. xi. 94; vii. 30.
5 Tac. Ann. xiii. 44, "Huic mulieri cuncta alia fuere praeter honesturn animum."
8 See Pers. v. 180 ; Hor. Sat. ii. 3, 288.
Suetou. Cat*. 84, * Hor. Sat, I, is.. 20,
-* "*