The Jewish communities of the diaspora, who from the time of Hyrcanus II maintained the customary practice of remitting the half-shekel temple tax to Jerusalem. Flaccus, as governor of Asia in 62 BC, banned the export of this gold from his province; Cicero defends the measure in Pro Flacco 66-69 with strikingly hostile language about "barbarous superstition," the longest classical Latin reference to Roman Jews.