ushing of flesh and bone, as of
huge cats worrying little white mice; sharp cries, then blood, then
silence, then a great laughter, and the sodden face of mankind's drunken
master grows almost human for a moment with a very slow smile. The wild
beasts are driven out with brands and red-hot irons, step by step,
dragging backward nameless mangled things in their jaws, and the
bull-nosed dwarf offers the Emperor a cup of rare red wine. It drips
from his mouth while he drinks, as the blood from the tiger's fangs.

"What were they?" he asks.

"Christians," explains the dwarf.

[Illustration]

REGION XI SANT' ANGELO

The Region of Sant' Angelo, as has been already said, takes its name
from the small church famous in Rienzi's story. It encloses all of what
was once the Ghetto, and includes the often-mentioned Theatre of
Marcellus, now the palace of the Orsini, but successively a fortress of
the Pierleoni, appropriately situated close to the Jews' quarter, and
the home of the Savelli. The history of the Region is the history of the
Jews in Rome, from Augustus to the destruction of their dwelling-place,
about 1890. In other words, the Hebrew colony actually lived during
nineteen hundred years at that point of the Tiber, first on one side of
the river, and afterwards on the other.

It is said that the first Jews were brought to Rome by Pompey, as
prisoners of war, and soon afterwards set free, possibly on their paying
a ransom accumulated by half starving themselves, and selling the
greater part of their allowance of corn during a long period. Seventeen
years later, they were a power in Rome; they had lent Julius Caesar
enormous sums, which he repaid with exorbitant interest, and after his
death they mourned him, and kept his funeral pyre burning seven days and
nights in the Forum. A few years after that time, Augustus established
them on the opposite side of the Tiber, over against the bridge of
Cestius and the island. Under Tiberius their numbers had increased to
fifty thousand; they had synagogues in Rome, Genoa and Naples, and it is
noticeable that their places of worship were always built upon the shore
of the sea, or the bank of a river, whence their religious services came
to be termed 'orationes littorales'--which one might roughly translate
as 'alongshore prayers.'

They were alternately despised, hated, feared and flattered. Tacitus
calls them a race of men hated by the gods, yet their kings, Herod and