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stition of the Sabbath was widespread among less enlightened people.
A somewhat different form of evidence is supplied by an incident related by Suetonius in his Life of Tiberius[1]. Tiberius when living at Rhodes wished to hear a certain Diogenes, a 'grammarian,' i.e. a literary lecturer. But Diogenes only gave his public lectures on the Sabbath, and when Tiberius asked for a special reception, he merely received a message brought by a slave that he must come on the seventh day. Tiberius took the affront meekly, but later, when he became Emperor, 'scored off' Diogenes, when he wished to be admitted to his levée at Rome, by telling him to come after seven years. This curious form of Sabbath-keeping on Diogenes' part can hardly have been due to religious feeling and I can only explain it on the supposition that there were so many people at leisure on the Sabbath that he found it a suitable day to collect an audience.
A further point of great significance must be noted. We sometimes find the Sabbath spoken of as 'Saturn's day.' Leaving out of consideration writers of the second or third century, we have in the first century Frontinus[2], a writer on military tactics, using this term, when he speaks of the refusal of the Jews to fight on the Sabbath. Tibullus[3], writing some time earlier than 18 B.C.
