A. C. 135.] NUMBERS SLAIN AT BITHER.

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destruction of Jerusalem, that Bither fell; it was razed to the ground.

Of the massacre the Rabbins tell frightful stories, but their horror is mitigated by their extravagance. More are said to have fallen at Bither than escaped with Moses from Egypt. The horses waded up to their bits in carnage. Blood flowed so copiously, that the stream carried stones weighing four pounds into the sea, according to their account, forty miles distant. The dead covered eighteen square miles, and the inhabitants of the adjacent region had no need to manure their ground for seven years. A more trustworthy authority, Dio Cassius, states, that during the whole war the enormous number of 580,000 fell by the sword, not including those who perished by famine, disease, and fire. The whole of Judea was a desert, wolves and hyænas went howling along the streets of the desolate cities. Those who escaped the sword were scarcely more fortunate; they were reduced to slavery by thousands. There was a great fair held under a celebrated Terebinth, which tradition had consecrated as the very tree under which Abraham had pitched his tent. Thither his miserable children were brought in droves, and sold as cheap as horses. Others were carried away and sold at Gaza; others transported to Egypt. The account of the fate of Rabbi Akiba is singularly characteristic. He was summoned for examination before the odious Turnus Rufus. In the middle of his interrogations, Akiba remembered that it was the hour of prayer. He fell on his knees, regardless of the presence of the Roman, and of the pending trial for life and death, and calmly went through his devotions. In the prison, while his lips were burning with thirst, he nevertheless applied his scanty pittance of water to his ablutions. The barbarous Roman ordered the old man to be flayed alive, and then put to death. The most furious persecution was commenced

against all the Rabbins, who were considered the authors and ringleaders of the insurrection. Chanania the son of Theradion was detected reading and expounding the Law; he was burned with the book which he was reading. It was forbidden to fill up the number of the great Synagogue, or Sanhedrin; but Akiba, just before his death, had named five new members; and Judah the son of Bava secretly nominated others in a mountain glen, where he had taken refuge. Soldiers were sent to surprise Judah; he calmly awaited their coming, and was transfixed by 300 spears.

Hadrian, to annihilate for ever all hopes of the restoration of the Jewish kingdom, accomplished his plan of founding a new city on the site of Jerusalem, peopled by a colony of foreigners. The city was called Ælia Capitolini; Ælia after the prænomen of the emperor, Capitolini as dedicated to the Jupiter of the Capitol. An edict was issued, prohibiting any Jew from entering the new city on pain of death, or even approaching its environs, so as to contemplate even at a distance its sacred height. More effectually to keep them away, the image of a swine was placed over the gate leading to Bethlehem. The more peaceful Christians were permitted to establish themselves within the walls, and Elia became the seat of a flourishing church and bishoprick

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BOOK XIX.

THE PATRIARCH OF THE WEST, AND THE PRINCE OF THE CAPTIVITY.

Re-establishment of the Community-Patriarch of Tiberias-his Power and Dominions-Jews in Egypt-Asia Minor-Greece-Italy--Spain -Gaul-Germany-Origin and Nature of the Rabbinical Authority -The Worship of the Synagogue-Early History of the Patriarchate-Civil Contests-Contests with the Babylonian Jews-Relation with Rome.

For the fourth time the Jewish people seemed on the brink of extermination. Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, Titus, Hadrian, had successively exerted their utmost power to extinguish, not merely the political existence of the state, but even the separate being of the people. It might have appeared impossible that any thing like a community should again revive within Palestine; still more so, that the multitudes of Jews scattered over the whole face of the world, should maintain any correspondence or intelligence, continue a distinct and unmingled race, or resist the process of absorption into the general population, which is the usual fate of small bodies of strangers, settled in remote and unconnected regions. In less than sixty years after the war under Hadrian, before the close of the second century after Christ, the Jews present the extraordinary spectacle of two regular and organized communities; one under a sort of spiritual head, the Patriarch of Tiberias, comprehending all of Israelitish descent who inhabited the Roman empire; the other under the Prince of the Captivity, to whom all the eastern Jews paid their allegiance Gibbon has briefly stated the growth of the former of these principalities with his usual general accuracy, as

regards facts, though the relation is coloured by his usual sarcastic tone, in which the bitter antipathy of his school to the Jewish race is strongly marked. "Notwithstanding these repeated provocations, the resentment of the Roman princes expired after the victory; nor were their apprehensions continued beyond the period of war and danger. By the general indulgence of polytheism, and by the mild temper of Antoninus Pius, the Jews were restored to their ancient privileges, and once more obtained the permission of circumcising their children, with the easy restraint that they should never confer on any foreign proselyte that distinguishing mark of the Hebrew race. The numerous remains of that people, though they were still excluded from the precincts of Jerusalem, were permitted to form and to maintain considerable establishments both in Italy and in the provinces, to acquire the freedom of Rome, to enjoy municipal honours, and to obtain, at the same time, an exemption from the burthensome and expensive offices of society. The mode ration or the contempt of the Romans gave a legal sanction to the form of ecclesiastical police which was instituted by the vanquished sect. The patriarch, who had fixed his residence at Tiberias, was empowered to appoint his subordinate ministers and apostles, to exercise a domestic jurisdiction, and to receive from his despised brethren an annual contribution. New synagogues were frequently erected in the principal cities of the empire; and the Sabbaths, the fasts, and the festivals, which were either commanded by the Mosaic Law, or enjoined by the traditions of the Rabbins, were celebrated in the most solemn and public manner. Such gentle treatment insensibly assuaged the stern temper of the Jews. Awakened from their dream of prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behaviour of peaceable and industrious subjects. Their irreconcilable hatred of mankind, instead of flaming

PATRIARCH OF TIBERIAS.

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out in acts of blood and violence, evaporated in less dangerous gratifications. They embraced every opportunity of over-reaching the idolaters in trade and they pronounced secret and ambiguous imprecations against the haughty kingdom of Edom."*

Unfortunately, it is among the most difficult parts of Jewish history to trace the growth of the patriarchal authority established in Tiberias, and its recognition by the whole scattered body of the nation, who, with disinterested zeal, and, we do not scruple to add, a noble attachment to the race of Israel, became voluntary subjects and tributaries to their spiritual sovereign, and united with one mind and one heart to establish their community on a settled basis. It is a singular spectacle to behold a nation dispersed in every region of the world, without murmur or repugnance, submitting to the regulations, and taxing themselves to support the greatness of a supremacy which rested solely on public opinion, and had no temporal power whatever to enforce its decrees. It was not long before the Rabbins, who had been hunted down with unrelenting cruelty, began to creep forth from their places of concealment; the death of Hadrian, in a few years after the termination of the war, and the accession of the mild Antoninus, gave them courage, not merely to make their public appearance, but openly to re-establish their schools and synagogues.

* According to the false Josephus, Tsepho, the grandson of Esau, conducted into Italy the army of Eneas, king of Carthage. Another colony of Idumeans, flying from the sword of David, took refuge in the dominions of Romulus. For these, or for other reasons of equal weight, the name of Edom was applied by the Jews to the Roman empire.Gibbon's note. The false Josephus is a romancer of very modern date, though some of these legends are probably more ancient. It may be worth considering whether many of the stories in the Talmud are not history, in a figurative disguise, adopted from prudence. The Jews might dare to say many things of Rome, under the significant appellation of Edom, which they feared to utter publicly. Later and more ignorant ages took literally, and, perhaps, embellished, what was in1elligible among the generation to which it was addressed.

VOL. III-K