during the Second Temple, the
author relied entirely on "Josippon." This was a medieval concoction
which long passed as the original Josephus. "Josippon" was a romance
rather than a history. Culled from all sources, from Strabo, Lucian, and
Eusebius, as well as from Josephus, this marvellous book exercised
strong influence on the Jewish imagination, and supplied an antidote to
the tribulations of the present by the consolations of the past and the
vivid hopes for the future.

For a long period Abraham Ibn Daud found no imitators. Jewish history
was written as part of the Jewish religion. Yet, incidentally, many
historical passages were introduced in the works of Jewish scholars and
travellers, and the liturgy was enriched by many beautiful historical
Elegies, which were a constant call to heroism and fidelity. These
Elegies, or _Selichoth_, were composed throughout the Middle Ages, and
their passionate outpourings of lamentation and trust give them a high
place in Jewish poetry. They are also important historically, and fully
justify the fine utterance with which Zunz introduces them, an utterance
which was translated by George Eliot as follows:

If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of
all the nations--if the duration of sorrows and the patience
with which they are borne ennoble, the Jews are among the
aristocracy of every land--if a literature is called rich in
the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say
to a National Tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in
which the poets and the actors were also the heroes?

The story of the medieval section of this pathetic martyrdom is written
in the _Selichoth_ and in the more prosaic records known as "Memorial
Books" (in German, _Memorbuecher_), which are lists of martyrs and brief
eulogies of their careers.

For the next formal history we must pass to Abraham Zacuto. In his old
age he employed some years of comparative quiet, after a stormy and
unhappy life, in writing a "Book of Genealogies" (_Yuchasin_). He had
been exiled from Spain in 1492, and twelve years later composed his
historical work in Tunis. Like Abraham Ibn Baud's book, it opens with
the Creation, and ends with the author's own day. Though Zacuto's work
is more celebrated than historical, it nevertheless had an important
share in reawaking the dormant interest of Jews in historical research.
Thus we find Elijah Kapsali of Candia wri