One other mode of tracking the footsteps of Israel's wanderings seems strangely significant. It is by tracing their records among the dead, reading them on broken tombstones, and in ruined monuments. They are rude, and the inscriptions - most of them in bad Greek, or still worse Latin, none in Hebrew - are like the stammering of strangers. Yet what a contrast between the simple faith and earnest hope which they express, and the grim proclamation of utter disbelief in any future to the soul, not unmixed with language of coarsest materialism, on the graves of so many of the polished Romans ! Truly the pen of God in history has, as so often, ratified the sentence which a nation had pronounced upon itself. That civilisation was doomed which could inscribe over its dead such words as: To eternal sleep;' To perpetual rest;' or more coarsely express it thus, I was not, and I became; I was, and am no more. Thus much is true; who says other, lies; for I shall not be,' adding, as it were by way of moral, And thou who livest, drink, play, come.' Not so did God teach His people; and, as we pick our way among these broken stones, we can understand how a religion, which proclaimed a hope so different, must have spoken to the hearts of many even at Rome, and much more, how that blessed assurance of life and immortality, which Christianity afterwards brought, could win its thousands, though it were at the cost of poverty, shame, torture, and the arena.
Wandering from graveyard to graveyard, and deciphering the records of the dead, we can almost read the history of Israel in the days of the Cæsars, or when Paul the prisoner set foot on the soil of Italy. When St. Paul, on the journey of the Castor and Pollux,' touched at Syracuse, he would, during his stay of three days, find himself in the midst of a Jewish community, as we learn from an inscription. When he disembarked at Puteoli, he was in the oldest Jewish settlement next to that of Rome, [311] where the loving hospitality of Christian Israelites constrained him to tarry over a Sabbath. As he went towards Rome,' and reached Capua, he would meet Jews there, as we infer from the tombstone of one Alfius Juda,' who had been Archon' of the Jews, and Archisynagogus' in Capua. As he neared the city, he found in Anxur (Terracina) a Synagogue. [312] In Rome itself the Jewish community was organized as in other places. [313] It sounds strange, as after these many centuries we again read the names of the Archons of their various Synagogues, all Roman, such as Claudius, Asteris, Julian (who was Archon alike of the Campesian and the Agrippesian Synagogue priest, the son of Julian the Archisynagogus, or chief of the eldership of the Augustesian Synagogue). And so in other places. On these tombstones we find names of Jewish Synagogue-dignitaries, in every centre of population, in Pompeii, in Venusia, the birthplace of Horace; in Jewish catacombs; and similarly Jewish inscriptions in Africa, in Asia, in the islands of the Mediterranean, in Ægina, in Patræ, in Athens. Even where as yet records of their early settlements have not been discovered, we still infer their presence, as we remember the almost incredible extent of Roman commerce, which led to such large settlements in Britain, or as we discover among the tombstones those of Syrian' merchants, as in Spain (where St. Paul hoped to preach, no doubt, also to his own countrymen), throughout Gaul, and even in the remotest parts of Germany. [314] Thus the statements of Josephus and of Philo, as to the dispersion of Israel throughout all lands of the known world, are fully borne out.
But the special importance of the Jewish community in Rome lay in its contiguity to the seat of the government of the world, where every movement could be watched and influenced, and where it could lend support to the wants and wishes of that compact body which, however widely scattered, was one in heart and feeling, in thought and purpose, in faith and practice, in suffering and in prosperity. [315] Thus, when upon the death of Herod a deputation from Palestine appeared in the capital to seek the restoration of their Theocracy under a Roman protectorate, [316] no less than 8,000 of the Roman Jews joined it. And in case of need they could find powerful friends, not only among the Herodian princes, but among court favourites who were Jews, like the actor of whom Josephus speaks; [317] among those who were inclined towards Judaism, like Poppæa, the dissolute wife of Nero, whose coffin as that of a Jewess was laid among the urns of the emperors; [318] or among real proselytes, like those of all ranks who, from superstition or conviction, had identified themselves with the Synagogue. [319]