their fate in the Christian Empire? The Eastern Empire was largely Greek in language and in spirit alike; and

any one who has become familiar with the intensity and bitterness of the hatred that separates the Greek

from the Jew, will recognise that in general the alternative of extermination or expulsion was presented to

them. There was no place and no mercy for the Jew in the Greek Christian Empire. The barbarous lands of

Europe and the steppes and villages of Russia were a gentler home to them than the most civilis ed of lands.

When one thinks of the character of the Hellenic cities, one must ask how and on what conditions the Jews

were able to live in them.

When the Jews were present in such a city merely as resident aliens, their position is easier to understand. It

was quite usual for strangers to reside in a Greek city for purposes of trade, and even to become permanent

inhabitants with their families. But, as has been already pointed out, there was no ordinary way by which

such inhabitants could attain the citizenship. They and their descendants continued to rank only as resident

aliens. It was easy for them to retain and practise their own religious rites. Strangers naturally brought their

religion with them; and their regular custom was to form an association among themselves for the common

practice of their own rites. Such religious associations were numerous and recognised by law and custom;

and Jewish residents could carry their religion with them under this legal form.

It was in this way as a rule that foreign religions spread in the Greek cities. The foreign Asiatic rites, by their

more impressive and enthusiastic character, attracted devotees, especially among the humbler and less

educated Greeks. Thus Oriental cults spread in such cities as Corinth, Athens, and other trading centres, in

spite of the fact that those pagan cults were essentially non-proselytising, and preferred to keep their

bounds narrow and to restrict the advantages of their religion to a small number.

Similarly the Jewish association, with its synagogue or place of prayer by sea-shore or river bank, attracted

attention and proselytes, though it repelled and roused the hatred of the majority, because it was "so

strange and mysterious and incomprehensible to the ordinary pagan, with its proud isolation, its lofty

morality, its superiority to pagan ideas of life, its unhesitating confidence in its superiority." Thus the Jews

became a power even where they ranked only as aliens.

It is much more difficult to understand the position of the Jews in those Hellenic cities where they

possessed the rights of citizenship. Now, as a rule, in the cities founded by the Seleucid kings, the Jews

were actually citizens. But it was to the ancient mind an outrage and an almost inconceivable thing, that

people could be fellow-citizens without engaging in the worship of the same city gods. The bond of

patriotism was really a religious bond. The citizen was encompassed by religious duties from his cradle to

his grave. It was practically impossible for the Jew t o be a citizen of a Greek city in the ordinary way. Some

special provision was needed.

That special provision was made by the Seleucid kings in founding their cities. It was a noteworthy

achievement, and a real step in the history of human civilisation and institutions, when they succeeded in so

widening the essential theory of the Greek city as to enable the Jew to live in it as an integral part of it. The

way in which this result was attained must be clearly understood, as it throws much light on the position of

the Jews in the Graeco-Asiatic cities.

The Greek city was never simply an aggregation of citizens. The individual citizens were always grouped in

bodies, usually called "Tribes," and the "Tribes" made up the city. This was a fundamental principle of

Greek city organisation, and must form the starting-point of all reasoning on the subject. The city was an

association of groups, not of individuals. It is generally admitted that the groups were older than the

institution of cities, being a survival o f a more primitive social system. As Mr. Greenidge says, Roman Public

Life, p. 66: "Simple membership of a State, which was not based on membership of some lower unit, was

inconceivable to the Graeco-Roman world." In the Seleucid City-States that "lower unit" was generally

called the "Tribe."