tained on repentance and submission, and, lastly, by the fatal shammata, the final curse, after which there was no pardon possible : " Let nothing good come out of him ; let his end be sudden ; let all creatures become his enemies ; let the whirlwind crush him ; let fever and every other malady, and the edge of the sword, smite him ; let his death be unforeseen, and drive him into outer darkness." * With this machinery of internal government, the Jews were not only united together and separated from the rest of the world, in each particular town, not only did they maintain their nationality and their religion, but, which was of much more importance to their conquerors, they Avere able to act in concert with each other, to demand redress together, to give help to each other, to rise in revolt together. As for their treatment by the Eomans, it is not certain that they were at first persecuted at all. A tax of two drachms was levied by Yespasian on every Jew for the rebuilding of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and was exacted with the greatest rigour. He also searched everywhere for descendants of the House of David, in order to extinguish the royal line altogether; otherwise there is no evidence to show that the Jews .were ill-treated by the conquerors, but rather the contrary, because the policy of the Eomans was always to treat the conquered nations with consideration and humanity, and to extend to them the privilege of citizenship. But whether they were persecuted or not, and whatever the cause, the whole of the Jews in Egypt, Cyrene, Babylonia, and Judaea, rose in universal revolt in the time of Trajan. Perhaps they had experienced some affront to their religion; perhaps they had been persecuted with the Christians ; perhaps they expected the Messiah ; perhaps their fanatical and turbulent spirit was the cause of the rising ; perhaps the stories * Milman, ' Hist, of the Jews,' iii. 146.