It boasted of a Synagogue, said to have been built by King Jechoniah with stones that had been brought from the Temple. [1 Comp. Furst, Kult. u. Literaturgesch d. Jud. in Asien, vol. i. p. 8.] In this fortified city the vast contributions intended for the Temple were deposited by the Eastern Jews, and thence conveyed to their destination under escort of thousands of armed men. Another of these Jewish treasure-cities was Nisibis, in northern Mesopotamia. Even the fact that wealth, which must have sorely tempted the cupidity of the heathen, could be safely stored in these cities and transported to Palestine, shows how large the Jewish population must have been, and how great their general influence.

In general, it is of the greatest importance to remember in regard to this Eastern dispersion, that only a minority of the Jews, consisting in all of about 50,000, originally returned from Babylon, first under Zerubbabel and afterwards under Ezra, [a 537 B.C., and 459-'8 B.C.] Nor was their inferiority confined to numbers. The wealthiest and most influential of the Jews remained behind. According to Josephus, [b Ant. xi. 5. 2; xv. 2. 2; xviii. 9.] with whom Philo substantially

agrees, vast numbers, estimated at millions, inhabited the Trans-Euphratic provinces. To judge even by the number of those slain in popular risings (50,000 in Seleucia alone [2 Jos. Ant. xviii. 9. 9.] ),these figures do not seem greatly exaggerated. A later tradition had it, that so dense was the Jewish population in the Persian Empire, that Cyrus forbade the further return of the exiles, lest the country should be depopulated. [3 Midrash on Cant. v. 5, ed. Warsh. p. 26 a.] So large and compact a body soon became a political power. Kindly treated under the Persian monarchy, they were, after the fall of that empire, [c 330 B.