The Jews of ancient Rome played an interesting and important role during those critical junctures in Jewish and world affairs - when the Jewish State was destroyed, when Judaism and Christianity parted company, and when new diaspora communities were established in the Roman world. The literary sources for the history of the Roman Jews have yielded but little information - certainly not enough for a convincing picture.
Professor Harry J. Leon achieved an authentic portrait of that community by means of thorough investigation of the Jewish catacombs. The brief inscriptions reveal a wealth of significant information: the language of the people, their labors, their religion, and their manner of life. Many of the inscriptions are reproduced in photographs. The reader, whether layperson or scholar, will find Dr. Leon's synthesis of this information absorbing, as both ancient Rome and the ancient Jewish community come to life.

Harry J. Leon was Professor of Classical Languages at the University of Texas at Austin.