Jews : all this, no doubt, was done with a full knowledge of the dangerous and the turbulent nature of the people, and with a view to preserving the peace. Claudius Felix was sent in place of Cumanus, a freedman, brother of Pallas the favourite of the Emperor, magnificent, prodigal, luxurious, and unscrupulous. He found the country in the worst state possible, full of robbers, and impostors. These sprung up everyday, and were everyday caught and destroyed; no doubt most of them men whose wits were utterly gone in looking for the Messiah, until they ended in believing themselves to be the Messiah. These poor creatures, followed by a rabble more ignorant and more mad than themselves, went up and down the distracted country, raising hopes which were doomed to disappointment, and leading out the wild countrymen to meet death and torture when they looked for glory and victory. One of the impostors, an Egyptian, probably an Egyptian Jew, brought a multitude up to the Mount of Olives, promising that at his word the walls of the city should fall down, and they themselves march in triumphant. He came, but instead of seeing the walls fall down, he met the troops of Felix, who dispersed his people, slaying four hundred of them. To Felix belongs the crime of introducing the Sicarii into the city of Jerusalem. Wearied with the importunities of the high priest, Jonathan, who exhorted him continually to govern better, or at all events to govern differently, and reproached him with the fact that it was through his own influence that Felix obtained his office, he resolved to rid himself of a friend so troublesome, by the speediest and surest method, that of assassination. The Sicarii were not, like the hired bravoes of the middle ages, men who would commit any murder for which they were paid. It appears, on the contrary, that they held it a cardinal point of faith to murder those, and only those, who seemed to stand in the way of their cause. Now their cause was that of the sect