lime poetry, of moral and even metaphysical philosophy of a high order—the care and pains he bestowed on the idle rumours or political satires of Rome.
Still more extraordinary is the apathy of Tacitus in this portion of the 'History,' when it is certain that he had before him one at least of the works of Flavius Josephus. Whether or no he consulted the 'Antiquities of the Jews,' or the autobiography of Josephus, or his tract against Apion, cannot be told; but there can be no doubt that he studied and borrowed from his 'Wars of the Jews' many facts relating to Vespasian's campaigns in Galilee, and to the siege of Jerusalem. Perhaps if the 'History' were complete as he wrote if, we should find that Josephus had been to Tacitus, for that portion of his narrative, what Polybius was to Livy while composing his Decades on the Punic and Maecedonian wars.
We now afford our English readers a specimen or two of the unaccountable ignorance of Tacitus when treating of the origin and rites of the Jewish nation. "As I am about to relate," he writes, at the opening of the fifth book of the 'History,' "the last days of a famous city, it seems appropriate to throw some light on its origin. Some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of Crete, who settled on the nearest coast of Africa about the time when Saturn was driven from his throne by the power of Jupiter." "Evidence of this is sought in the name. There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the neighbouring tribe, the Idæi, came to be called Judæi by a barbarous lengthening of the national name. Others assert that in the reign of Isis the overflowing population of Egypt, led by Hierosolymus and Judas, dis-
