never paled or faltered, that the day would surely come when out of their own people a mighty Deliverer would arise, who would restore them to their loved sacred city and country; would invest His own, His chosen nation, with a glory and power grander, greater than the world had ever seen.
There is no doubt but that the Jew of Rome in Rome's golden days, in spite of his seeming poverty and degradation, possessed a peculiar moral power in the great empire, unknown among pagan nations.[1]
In the reign of Nero, when the disciples of Jesus in Rome first emerged from the clouds and mists which envelop the earliest days of Roman Christianity, the number of Jews in the capital is variously computed as amounting to from 30,000 to 50,000 persons.
The Jewish colony in Rome was a thoroughly representative body of Jews. They were gathered from many centres of population, Palestine and Jerusalem itself contributing a considerable contingent. They evidently were distinguished for the various qualities, good and bad, which generally characterized this strange, wonderful people. They were restless, at times turbulent, proud and disdainful, avaricious and grasping; but at the same time they were tender and compassionate in a very high degree to the sad-eyed unfortunate ones among their own people,—most reverent, as we have remarked, in the matter of disposing of their dead,—on the whole giving an example of a morality far higher than that which, as a rule, prevailed among the citizens of the mighty capital in the midst of whom they dwelt.
The nobler qualities which emphatically distinguished the race were no doubt fostered by the intense religious spirit
- ↑ A singular and interesting passage of Allard here deserves to be quoted verbatim: "Dans Rome où le celibat est devenu une plaie sociale, où la population diminue, où la stérilité regne au foyer domestique, où l'avortement l'infanticide sont fréquents et à peine reprimés, les Juifs seuls ont beaucoup d'enfants—Tacite a défini d'un mot ce trait de leur race; 'generandi amor,' dit-il en énumerant les principaux charactères du peuple Juif. Tous les témoignages anciens parlent de leur grand nombre; 'augmenter était une de leurs préoccupations, augendæ multitudini consulitur dit encore Tacite." See Tacitus, Hist. v. 5; Allard, i. p. 12.
