respect the king was all they could wish.  This very prosperity seems, however, to have caused them fresh danger.  For it made them feel the government by procurators, which was resumed after the death of Agrippa I., to be particularly hard to bear, whatever the individual characters of these might be.  They were Cuspius Fadus (from 44, under whom Theudas), Tiberius Alexander (the Romanised nephew of Philo, till 48), Cumanus (48-52, under whom the volcano already began to give dangerous signs of activity), and Felix (52-60).  Felix, who has the honour to be pilloried in the pages of Tacitus, contrived to make the dispeace permanent.  The influence of the two older parties, both of which were equally interested in the maintenance of the existing order, and in that interest were being drawn nearer to each other, diminished day by day.  The masses broke loose completely from the authority of the scribes; the ruling nobility adapted itself better to the times; under the circumstances which then prevailed, it is not surprising that they became thoroughly secular and did not shrink from the employment of directly immoral means for the attainment of their ends.  The Zealots became the dominant party.  It was a combination of noble and base elements; superstitious enthusiasts (Acts xxi. 38) and political assassins, the so-called sicarii, were conjoined with honest but fanatical patriots.  Felix favoured the sicarii in order that he might utilise them; against the others his hostility raged with indiscriminating cruelty, yet without being able to check them.  The anarchy which he left behind him as a legacy was beyond the control of his able successor Porcius Festus (60-62), and the last two procurators, Albinus (62-64) and Gessius Florus, acted as if it had been their special business to encourage and promote it.  All the bonds of social order were dissolved; no property was secure; the assassins alone prospered, and the procurators went shares with them in the profits.

It was inevitable that deep resentment against the Romans should be felt in every honest heart.  At last it found expression.  During his visit to Jerusalem in May 66 Florus laid hands upon the temple treasure; the Jews allowed themselves to go so far as to make a joke about it, which he avenged by giving over a portion of the city to be plundered, and crucifying a number of the inhabitants.  He next insisted upon their kissing the rod, ordering that a body of troops which was approaching should be met and welcomed.  At the persuasion of their leaders the Jews forced themselves even to this; but a constant succession of fresh insults and cruelties followed, till patience was quite exhausted at last, and in a violent street fight the Romans were so handled that the procurator withdrew from the town, leaving only the cohort in Antonia.  Once again was an attempt at pacification made by Agrippa II., who hastened from Alexandria with this purpose, but the Jews could