The history of the Jews in Italy spans more than two thousand years to the present. The Jewish presence in Italy dates to the pre-Christian Roman period and has continued, despite periods of extreme persecution and expulsions, until the present. As of 2019, the estimated core Jewish population in Italy numbers around 45,000. Pre-Christian Rome The Jewish community in Rome is likely one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world, existing from classical times until today. Most certainly, it is known that in 139 BCE, Simon Maccabeus sent a Hasmonean embassy to Rome in order to strengthen his alliance with the Roman Republic against the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom. The ambassadors received a cordial welcome from their coreligionists already established in Rome. Large numbers of Jews even lived in Rome during the late Roman Republican period (from around 150 BC). They were largely Greek-speaking and poor. As Rome had increasing contact with and military/trade dealings with the Greek-speaking Levant, during the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, many Greeks, as well as Jews, came to Rome as merchants or were brought there as slaves. The Romans appear to have viewed the Jews as followers of peculiar, backward religious customs, but antisemitism as it would come to be in the Christian and Islamic worlds did not exist (see Anti-Judaism in the pre-Christian Roman Empire). Despite their disdain, the Romans did recognize and respect the antiquity of the Jews' religion and the fame of their Temple in Jerusalem (Herod's Temple). Many Romans did not know much about Judaism, including the emperor Augustus who, according to his biographer Suetonius, thought that Jews fasted on the sabbath. Julius Caesar was known as a great friend to the Jews, and they were among the first to mourn his assassination. In Rome, the community was highly organized, and presided over by heads called άρχοντες (archontes) or γερουσιάρχοι (gerousiarchoi). The Jews maintained in Rome several synagogues, whose spiritual leader was called αρχισυνάγωγος (archisunagogos). Their tombstones, mostly in Greek with a few in Hebrew/Aramaic or Latin, were decorated with the ritual menorah (seven-branched candelabrum). Some scholars have previously argued that Jews in the pre-Christian Roman Empire were active in proselytising Romans in Judaism, leading to an increasing number of outright converts. The new consensus is, that this is not the case. According to Erich S. Gruen, though conversions did happen, there is no evidence of Jews trying to