, of which Judaea was but a petty division, became a Roman province,
and a generation had not passed away before we find Horace making
jocular allusion to the spread of the recognition of the Jewish sabbath.
In his ninth satire he describes himself as being buttonholed by a bore,
and, seeing a friend pass by, as begging the latter to pretend business
with him and so relieve him of his trouble. His friend mischievously
excuses himself from talking about business:--

"To-day's the thirtieth sabbath. Can you mean
Thus to insult the circumcised Jews?"

Persius, in his fifth satire, speaks of those who--

"Move their lips with silence, and with fear
The sabbath of the circumcised revere."

Juvenal, in his fourteenth satire, describes how many Romans reverence
the sabbath; and their sons, bettering the example, turn Jews
themselves:--

"Others there are, whose sire the sabbath heeds,
And so they worship naught but clouds and sky.
They deem swine's flesh, from which their father kept,
No different from a man's. And soon indeed
Are circumcised; affecting to despise
The laws of Rome, they study, keep and fear
The Jewish law, whate'er in mystic book
Moses has handed down,--to show the way
To none but he who the same rites observes,
And those athirst to lead unto the spring
Only if circumcised. Whereof the cause
Was he, their sire, to whom each seventh day
Was one of sloth, whereon he took in hand
No part in life."

Ovid, Tibullus, and others also speak of the Jewish sabbath, not merely
as universally known, but as largely observed amongst the Romans, so
that it obtained almost a public recognition, whilst the success of
Judaism in making proselytes, until Christianity came into rivalry with
it, is known to every one.

As to the general influence of Judaism in securing the recognition of
the week with its seventh day of rest, the testimony of Josephus is
emphatic.

"The multitude of mankind itself have had a great inclination
of a long time to follow our religious observances; for there
is not any city of the Grecians, nor any of the barbarians,
nor any nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on
the seventh day hath not come, and by which our fasts and
lighting up lamps, and many of our prohibitions as to our
food, are not observed; they also endeavour to imitate our