Note 40 — Chapter XXXVII · A Pirate Band

—page 291. Such a robber group was not uncommon in that age, made up as it was of such diverse races and dispositions. The corruption of the Roman rule under Nero brought an approach to anarchy in many of the provinces. Owing to the favorable character of its topography and the strange mixture of its population, Palestine, and indeed the whole Syrian shore of the Mediterranean, was at the worst in this regard. Robbery, by sea and by land, was so widely practised as to gather to itself a degree of respectability not usually associated with it. German, Chiote, Syrian, Arab, Egyptian, and Ethiopian, all develop here in the most marked way, under the influence of over-much wine, their national idiosyncrasies and their natural quarrelsomeness.