fortunetellers. Not a few found their way to the court. Alityrus, a Jewish actor, enjoyed the highest
favor of Nero. Thallus, a Samaritan and freedman of Tiberius, was able to lend a million denarii
to the Jewish king, Herod Agrippa.^488 The relations between the Herods and the Julian and Claudian
emperors were very intimate.
The strange manners and institutions of the Jews, as circumcision, Sabbath observance,
abstinence from pork and meat sacrificed to the gods whom they abhorred as evil spirits, excited
the mingled amazement, contempt, and ridicule of the Roman historians and satirists. Whatever
was sacred to the heathen was profane to the Jews.^489 They were regarded as enemies of the human
race. But this, after all, was a superficial judgment. The Jews had also their friends. Their indomitable
industry and persistency, their sobriety, earnestness, fidelity and benevolence, their strict obedience
to law, their disregard of death in war, their unshaken trust in God, their hope of a glorious future
of humanity, the simplicity and purity of their worship, the sublimity and majesty of the idea of
one omnipotent, holy, and merciful God, made a deep impression upon thoughtful and serious
persons, and especially upon females (who escaped the odium of circumcision). Hence the large
number of proselytes in Rome and elsewhere. Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, as well as Josephus,
testify that many Romans abstained from all business on the Sabbath, fasted and prayed, burned
lamps, studied the Mosaic law, and sent tribute to the temple of Jerusalem. Even the Empress
Poppaea was inclined to Judaism after her own fashion, and showed great favor to Josephus, who
calls her "devout" or "God-fearing" (though she was a cruel and shameless woman).^490 Seneca, who
detested the Jews (calling them sceleratissima gens), was constrained to say that this conquered
race gave laws to their conquerors.^491
The Jews were twice expelled from Rome under Tiberius and Claudius, but soon returned
to their transtiberine quarter, and continued to enjoy the privileges of a religio licita, which were
granted to them by heathen emperors, but were afterwards denied them by Christian popes.^492(^488) Josephus, Ant. XVIII. 6,4. Comp. Harnack, l.c., p. 254.
(^489) Tacitus, Hist. V. 4: "Profana illic omnia quae apud nos sacra; rursum concessa apud illos quae nobis incesta."Comp. his
whole description of the Jews, which is a strange compound of truth and falsehood.
(^490) "Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Otho, was the fairest woman of her time, and with the charms of beauty she combined the
address of an accomplished intriguer. Among the dissolute women of imperial Rome she stands preëminent. Originally united
to Rufius Crispinus, she allowed herself to be seduced by Otho, and obtained a divorce in order to marry him. Introduced by
this new connection to the intimacy of Nero, she soon aimed at a higher elevation. But her husband was jealous and vigilant,
and she herself knew how to allure the young emperor by alternate advances and retreats, till, in the violence of his passion, he
put his friend out of the way by dismissing him to the government of Lusitania. Poppaea suffered Otho to depart without a sigh.
She profited by his absence to make herself more than ever indispensable to her paramour, and aimed, with little disguise, at
releasing herself from her union and supplanting Octavia, by divorce or even death." Merivale, Hist. of the Romans, VI. 97. Nero
accidentally kicked Poppaea to death when in a state of pregnancy (65), and pronounced her eulogy from the rostrum. The senate
decreed divine honors to her. Comp. Tac. Ann. XIII. 45, 46; XVI. 6; Suet., Nero, 35.
(^491) "Victi victoribus leges dederunt."Quoted by Augustin (De Civit. Dei, VI. 11) from a lost work, De Superstitionibus. This
word received a singular illustration a few years after Seneca’s death, when Berenice, the daughter of King Agrippa, who had
heard the story of Paul’s conversion at Caesarea (Acts 25:13, 23), became the acknowledged mistress first of Vespasianus and
then of his son Titus, and presided in the palace of the Caesars. Titus promised to marry her, but was obliged, by the pressure
of public opinion, to dismiss the incestuous adulteress. "Dimisit invitus invitam." Sueton. Tit., c. 7; Tacit. Hist., II. 81.
(^492) The history of the Roman Ghetto (the word is derived from גָ, caedo, to cut down, comp. Isa. 10:33; 14:12; 15:2; Jer.
48:25, 27, etc., presents a curious and sad chapter in the annals of the papacy. The fanatical Pope Paul IV. (1555-’59) caused it
to be walled in and shut out from all intercourse with the Christian world, declaring in the bull Cum nimis: "It is most absurd
and unsuitable that the Jews, whose own crime has plunged them into everlasting slavery, under the plea that Christian magnanimity
allows them, should presume to dwell and mix with Christians, not bearing any mark of distinction, and should have Christian
servants, yea even buy houses." Sixtus V. treated the Jews kindly on the plea that they were "the family from which Christ came;"
A.D. 1-100.