when bar kokhba's rebellion was over, judaea was once again a conquered territory under military occupation. In Roman eyes the inhabitants were defeated enemies with no rights at all, and the victors could have treated the defeated Judaeans in any fashion that they wished: mass exile, total enslavement, even (had the Romans seen any point in this) outright extermination. None of these terrible things occurred, but the situation was dire just the same. Many lives had been lost, and many Judaeans had been captured for the slave market. For the last few years of Hadrian's reign a terrible suppression of Judaism raged in the old homeland. Those who engaged in public teaching of Torah were put to death, often barbarously – the most famous martyr was the venerable sage Akiba ben Joseph – and other traditional Jewish practices were banned as well. The emperor died after a short while, in 138 CE, and his successor quickly ended the persecution, but the memory of this oppressive time lasted for generations.

As stability returned, however, the Romans prepared yet again to restore some form of Jewish self-government in the subdued territory. The Romans were probably guided by the awareness that the Jews remained numerous and were famous everywhere for their determination to follow the Laws of Moses. Such a people could not easily live under direct foreign control: no outsider could understand the Torah and its ways in the necessary depth; any outsider would eventually do something that offended them and begin a new cycle of resentment and violence.