l and the
Law as a master, by the story that at Bethar, the appointed rendezvous
and last stronghold of the national defence, were four hundred
academies, each ruled by four hundred teachers, each teacher boasting a
class of four hundred pupils.

Akiba, now at the extreme point of his protracted existence, like Samuel
of old, nominated the new David to the chiefship of the people. He
girded Barcochebas with the sword of Jehovah, placed the staff of
command in his hand, and held himself the stirrup by which he vaulted
into the saddle.

The last revolt of the Jewish people was precipitated apparently by the
increased severity of the measures which the rebellion under Trajan had
drawn down. They complained that Hadrian had enrolled himself as a
proselyte of the Law, and were doubly incensed against him as a
persecutor and a renegade.

This assertion, indeed, may have no foundation. On the other hand, it is
not unlikely that this prince, a curious explorer of religions of
opinions, had sought initiation into some of the mysteries of the Jewish
faith and ritual.

But however this may be, he gave them mortal offence by perceiving the
clear distinction between Judaism and Christianity, and by forbidding
the Jews to sojourn in the town which he was again raising on the ruins
of Jerusalem, while he allowed free access to their rivals. He is said
to have even prohibited the rite of circumcision by which they jealously
maintained their separation from the nations of the West.

At last, when they rose in arms, he sent his best generals against them.
Tinnius Rufus was long baffled and often defeated; but Julius Severus,
following the tactics of Vespasian, constantly refused the battle they
offered him, and reduced their strongholds in succession by superior
discipline and resources. Barcochebas struggled with the obstinacy of
despair. Every excess of cruelty was committed on both sides, and it is
well, perhaps, that the details of this mortal spasm are almost wholly
lost to us.

The later Christian writers, while they allude with unseemly exultation
to the overthrow of one inveterate enemy by another who proved himself
in the end not less inveterate, affirmed that the barbarities of the
Jewish leader were mainly directed against themselves.

On such interested assertions we shall place little reliance. In the
counter-narration of the Jews even the name of Christian is
contemptuously disregarded. It relates, however, how at