crucifixion and the siege of Jerusalem, arose probably that secret
defensive society of Christians which suggested to Josephus his knavish
forgery. We must remember that Josephus did not write until _after_
the great ruins effected by the siege; that he wrote at Rome, far
removed from the criticism of those survivors who could have exposed,
or had a motive for exposing, his malicious frauds; and, finally, that
he wrote under the patronage of the Flavian family: by his sycophancy
he had won their protection, which would have overawed any Christian
whatever from coming forward to unmask him, in the very improbable
case of a work so large, costly, and, by its title, merely
archaeological, finding its way, at such a period, into the hands of
any poor hunted Christian. [4]

2. THE CAESARS.--This, though written hastily, and in a situation where
I had no aid from books, is yet far from being what some people have
supposed it--a simple recapitulation, or _resume_, of the Roman
imperatorial history. It moves rapidly over the ground, but still with
an exploring eye, carried right and left into the deep shades that have
gathered so thickly over the one solitary road [5] traversing that part
of history. Glimpses of moral truth, or suggestions of what may lead to
it; indications of neglected difficulties, and occasionally conjectural
solutions of such difficulties,--these are what this essay offers. It was
meant as a specimen of fruits, gathered hastily and without effort, by a
vagrant but thoughtful mind: through the coercion of its theme, sometimes
it became ambitious; but I did not give to it an ambitious title. Still I
felt that the meanest of these suggestions merited a valuation: derelicts
they were, not in the sense of things willfully abandoned by my
predecessors on that road, but in the sense of things blindly overlooked.
And, summing up in one word the pretensions of this particular essay, I
will venture to claim for it so much, at least, of originality as ought