MR. TAYLOR' S SECOND REPLY. 117 



Martial. Plutåech. Scetonius. Tacitus. 



in idleness/' (From a lost work quoted by Augustine, " De 

 Cl vit at. Dei," lib. vi. cap. 11.) 



The witty Martial (a. d. 90), in an epigram, can find no 

 more distinctive epithet for Jews, than " Sabbath-keepers.'' 

 (^Ep. lib. iv. epigr. iv. 7.) 



Plutarch, the biographer and essayist (a. d. 100), to 

 "point a moral,^' instances the historical fact that '4he Jews— 

 sitting idly down on their Sabbath, while the enemy scaled 

 and oecupied their walls — offered no resistance.'^ ( Opera : Tom. 

 ii. Tract. De Superstitione.) In another treatise, he endeavors 

 to show that the Jews dcrived the name ^' /SahhatJi' from the 

 Greek, GaSSaaixo^ (sahhasmos or sabasmos), a festival of Bac- 

 chus : ^' Sahazhs" being one of the names of that deity. {Sj/m- 

 posiac. lib. iv. prob. 5.) 



Suetonius (a. d. 105), illustrating the abstemiousness of 

 the Emperor Augustus, quotes him as writing to Tiberius — 

 ^' No Jew indeed so rigidly keeps fast on his Sabbath, as I 

 have fasted to-day." {De Cæsarihus, Lib. ii. cap. 76.) The Ro- 

 mans very naturally in forring that a day so strictly observed 

 as the seventh day rest, must be a "fast-day."* 



The polished Tacitus (a. d. 110), in his short description 

 of the Jews, records, as one of their peculiarities, that ''on the 

 seventh day, it is said they were idle." {Kist. lib. v. sect. 4.) 

 And he offers various vain conjectures to account for so singu- 

 lar a custom !f 



* It is strongl}^ illustrative of the ignorance prevailing among the 

 Roman writers concerning the origin and object of the Sabbath, that 

 they generally clescribe it as a "fast." Strabo, Suetonius, and Jus- 

 tinus all speak of it as such. Plutarch appears to have come nearer 

 the truth ; for the Jews, so far from making it a fast day, have always 

 accounted it a high festival. It was to be a " feast of the Lord" 

 [Levit. xxiii. 2, 3). Indeed it was a serious offence to fast upon it. It 

 is said of Judith, that "she fasted all the days of her life excq)t the 

 Sabbaths and new-moons, and the feasts of the house of Israel." {^Ju- 

 dith viii. 6.) 



f One of his suggestions is that the observance was designed to 



