Though all Palestine was a Roman province the Romans interfered but little with this religious despotism. The Romans had enough wrongs of their own to inflict upon the people. The whole race of Jews in their home government had their own laws, their own Jewish customs, habits, and religion. The Romans simply made them subjects of Cæsar, and they rendered unto Cæsar only that which was Cæsar's, as this youth of Galilee, later, would suggest their doing.
The empire collected taxes, very heavy ones, from the people, and occasionally forced them into its armies. The Roman eagles and the Roman soldiers were familiar sights in every town and village of Palestine. The Romans usually had enough to do at home to disincline them from bothering themselves too much with the religion of the Jews. Wars they had had everywhere. But just now, at the time of the Master's coming, there was a sort of peace in the world--a truce for breath, as it were. That is to say, the Roman empire that has its foot on almost the whole earth is resting a little. Rome's untold horrors, wars, corruptions, its licentiousness, its inhumanity to man, its blood and outrages have stopped their course at the eternal city for a little while. It is almost out of victims. Violence has ceased, only because violence has done its work.
The social conditions at Rome just before Augustus came to the throne were too terrible to be believed. That some of this outrage and terror had spread into the provinces of Palestine through governors and petty kings, appointed by, and tools of Rome, is only too well known. Herod himself was bloody enough to have served as an example for the worst the Roman empire, even, could endure. In Palestine, however, the great Jewish church served somewhat as a little hindering-wall to the element that had been almost crushing decent humanity out of the world.
All the states, like Palestine, bordering on the Mediterranean, says a distinguished historian, simply looked at one another--partakers of a common misfortune. They were tranquil, but it was the silence of despair. Man was not being considered as an individual by the Romans any more; he was only a "thing." Human suffering in the provinces counted for nothing, if only Rome had some political gain. If Palestine, or any other province, had some advantage by the presence of Roman legions, it was purely incidental, and scarcely intended. At this very moment Palestine is groaning under awful taxes paid to Rome, one-third of all produced, the writers say. No wonder the Jews were longing for the new time, the great time, the king, the Old Scriptures had told about. They are so afflicted, so depressed. The government of man had been a failure with them. Would not the day soon be at hand when God himself, through some vicegerent, would come to the world and rule in pity? Then the wicked would no longer thrive, the just would live in delight, the very face of the world would be changed, all would be transformed into love and beauty, and Palestine would be the heart of the new world, and Jerusalem the capital of a perfected humanity. The Scriptures had said it. The prophets had said it.