plead before Augustus on his death declared that "Herod had put such
abuses on them as a wild beast would not have done, and no calamity they
had suffered was comparable with that which he had brought on the
nation."[2] Beneath the fine show of peace, splendor, and expansion, the
passions of the nation were being aroused to the breaking-point.

[Footnote 1: Jerusalem, ii. 504.]

[Footnote 2: Ant. XVII. xi. 2.]

Augustus himself, following the example of his uncle Julius Caesar, yet
lacking the same large tolerance, held towards Judaism an ambiguous
attitude of impartiality rather than of favor. He caused sacrifices to
be offered for himself at the Temple at Jerusalem,[1] but he praised his
nephew Gaius for having refrained from doing likewise during his Eastern
travels.[2] He was anxious that the national laws and customs of each
nation should be preserved, and he issued a decree in favor of the Jews
of Cyrene; but he initiated the worship of the Emperors, which
necessitated a conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of
Caesar, and in the end destroyed the religious liberty that Julius
Caesar had given to the Empire. His aim was at once to foster the
veneration of the Imperial power and establish an Imperial worship that
should replace the effete paganism of his subjects. He made no attempt
to force this worship on the Jews, but its existence fanned the
prejudice against the one nation that refused to participate. And the
Jews could not but look with distrust on a government that "derived its
authority from the deification of might, whereof the Emperor was the
incarnate principle."[3]

[Footnote 1: Philo, De Leg. ii. 507.]