had decorated with several buildings, they refused to sacrifice to the
statues of Zeus and Hera. That is to say they scorn to do homage to me
and my husband!"

"They are forbidden to worship any other divinity than their own God.
Aelia rose up on the very soil where their ruined Jerusalem had stood,
and the statues of which you speak stand in their holy places."

"What has that to do with us?"

"You know that even Caius--[Caligula]--could not reduce them by placing
his statue in the Holy of Holies of their temple; and Petronius, the
governor, had to confess that to subdue them meant to exterminate them."

"Then let them meet with the fate they deserve, let them be
exterminated!" cried Sabina.

"Exterminated?" asked the prefect. "In Alexandria they constitute
nearly half of the citizens, that is to say several hundred thousand of
obedient subjects, exterminated!"

"So many?" asked the Empress in alarm." But that is frightful.
Omnipotent Jove! supposing that mass were to revolt against us! No one
ever told me of this danger. In Cyrenaica, and at Salamis in Cyprus,
they killed their fellow-citizens by thousands."

"They had been provoked to extremities and they were superior to their
oppressors in force."

"And in their own land one revolt after another is organized."