hindrance; and we hereby charge them to use our graciousness with
moderation and not to show contempt of the religious observances of
other people, but to keep their own laws quietly."[1] Nevertheless the
tolerant principle on which Caesar and Augustus had sought to found the
Empire was surely giving way to a more tyrannical policy, which viewed
with suspicion all bodies that fostered a corporate life separate from
that of the State, whether Jewish synagogue, Stoic school, or religious
college.

[Footnote 1: Ant. XIX, v. 2.]

The conflict between Rome and Jerusalem entered on a bitterer stage when
Agrippa died in 44 C.E. Influenced by his self-seeking band of
freedmen-counselors, who saw in office in Palestine a golden opportunity
for spoliation, Claudius placed the vacant kingdom again under the
direct administration of Roman procurators, and appointed to the office
a string of the basest creatures of the court, who revived the
injustices of the worst days of the Republic.

From 48-52 C.E. Palestine was under the governorship of Ventidius
Cumanus, who seemed deliberately to egg on the Jews to insurrection.
When a Roman soldier outraged the Jewish conscience by indecent conduct
in the Temple during the Passover, Cumanus refused all redress, called
on the soldiers to put down the clamoring people, and slew thousands of
them in the holy precincts.[1] A little later, when an Imperial officer
was attacked on the road and robbed, Cumanus set loose the legionaries
on the villages around, and ordered a general pillage. When a Galilean
Jew was murdered in a Samaritan village, and the Jewish Zealots, failing
to get redress, attacked Samaria, Cumanus fell on them and crucified
whomever he captured. Then, indeed, the Roman governor of Syria, not so