Ghetto and the Jews of Rome

This vivid description of the two-thousand-year-old Jewish community of Rome- a rare combination of informative history and literature- has held the attention of readers for more than a hundred years. One question in particular fascinated the famous German historian: How did the Roman Jews, never numbering more than a few thousand manage to survive long after ancient republics and empires fell, and long after the power of the medieval Church had declined? The book begins with a vivid account of Titus' triumphant march through rome after his destruction of the Temple, and ends with a picturesque description of the mid-nineteenth-century ghetto. As Gregorovius traces the fluctuating conditions of the Roman Jews under pagan and Christian emperors, and later under the Papal States, he is always on alert for the colorful detail that illumines the patterns of history. The admiration aroused in him by a patient people stubbornly clinging to its ways shines through these pages.