ch-Glutha, or Prince of the Captivity, lived in all the state and
splendour of an oriental potentate, far outshining in his pomp his rival
sovereign in Tiberias. The most celebrated of the rabbinical sovereigns
was Jehuda, sometimes called the nasi or patriarch. His life was of such
spotless purity that he was named the Holy. He was the author of a new
constitution for the Jewish people, for he embodied in the celebrated
Mischna all the authorised traditions of the schools and courts, and all
the authorised interpretations of the Mosaic law. Both in the East and
the West the Jews maintained their seclusion from the rest of the world.
The great work called the Talmud, formed of the Mischna and the Gemara
(or compilation of comments), was composed during a period of thirty
years of profound peace for the masters of the Babylonian schools, under
Persian rule. This remains a monumental token of learning and industry
of the eastern Jewish rabbins of the third and fourth centuries.

The formal establishment of Christianity by Constantine the Great, in
the early part of the fourth century, might have led to Jewish
apprehension lest the Synagogue should be eclipsed by the splendour of
its triumphant rival, the Christian Church; but the Rabbinical authority
had raised an insurmountable barrier around the Synagogue. And,
unhappily, the Church had lost its most effective means of
conversion--its miraculous powers, its simple doctrine, and the
blameless lives of its believers. Constantine enacted severe laws
against the Jews, which seem in great part to have been occasioned by
their own fiery zeal. But, still earlier than these enactments, Spain
had given the signal for hostility towards the Jews. A decree was passed
at the Council of Elvira prohibiting Jewish and Christian farmers and
peasants from mingling together at harvest home and other festivals.

In Egypt, during the reign of Constantius, who succeeded his father
Constantine, the hot-headed Jews of Alexandria provoked the enactment by
that emperor of yet severer laws, by mingling themselves in the factions
of Arians and Athanasians, which distracted that restless city. They
joined with the pagans on the side of the Arian bishop, and committed
frightful excesses. An insurrection in Judea, which terminated in the
destruction of Dio Caesarea, gave further pretext for exaction and
oppression. But the apostasy of the emperor for a time revived the hopes
of the race, especially w