PALESTINE IN JESUS' TIME 15 trade expansion. This was what brought about the emergence of slavery, an outstanding characteristic of empires around the shores of the Mediterranean. Moreover, the idea of private property, which was later developed in Roman law, had its origin in this mode of production. Palestine, after the exile of the people of Israel to Babylon, was always subjugated by the empires of Persia and Rome, even as it was dominated internally by the wealthy landowning class. In the second century BC, at'the time of the hellenizing process, the region witnessed the revolt of the Machabees. In 63 BG, the Roman Empire under Pompey gained mastery over the whole region and integrated Palestine's economic production into the trade of the empire. ^Palestine in this epoch was divided into two distinct geographic regions. Judaea, a mountainous region around Jerusalem and its Temple, was economically characterized by a sub-Asiatic mode of production. The soil was arid and dry, olives and fruits were cultivated, and rearing of sheep and goats was widespread. Galilee, the other region, was traversed by two great trade routes, one leading from Damascus to the sea, and the other from Damascus to Jerusalem. This was a very fertile stretch of country, a characteristic of which was large properties given to the cultivation of corn or the rearing of big herds of cattle. There were fishermen along the seacoast and on the lakes. Foreign merchants exerted strong influence in the area which gave rise to one of the characteristics of Galilee, that of being a land of mixed blood and as such regarded as impure with regard to the Jewish people (St Matthew iv. 13: land of the Gentiles; people that lived in darkness). Galilee was also the place where numerous peasant revolts, particularly that of the Zealots, originated. Roman Presence From the point of view of social geography, there was a vast difference between the villages on the one hand, which subsisted as self-sufficient entities according to a social model of the clannic type and on the other hand, the highly developed towns in Judaea, particularly Jerusalem, with stratified societies. The dominion of the Roman Empire had been established in several ways. It began with economic domination exercised by exactions which aimed at absorbing the surplus produced in Palestine to the Roman centre. In the first place, this drainage was carried out officially through the different kinds of taxes: about 6,000,000 denarii (1 denarius s= 1 day's work rendered by a labourer) were transferred each year by the expedient of the tributum (a personal tax aggregating a Jourth of the haryest); the annona (a tax in kind or in service for the army) and the publicum (rates and taxes). Further, there was also an unofficial levy which the Roman officials or their Palestenian allies raised. The domination was also political, exercised through intermediaries recruited from among the dominating classes in Israel and the "Romanized" officials. The following pyramid can be discerned: from the political