*^«OVO. UTAH
Hl/
MAR 1 2 1891
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2011 with funding from
Brigham Young University
http://www.archive.org/details/jewsamonggreeksrOOradi
04 h
90^
THE JEWS AMONG THE
GREEKS AND ROMANS
By
Max Radin
158198
Philadelphia
The Jewish Publication Society of America
1915
Copyright, 1916, by
The Jewish Publication Society of America
t t «
MATRI MEM
PIETATIS ERGO
HOC OPUSCULUM
D. D. D.
PREFACE
It is a counsel of perfection that any historical study
should be approached with complete detachment. To
such detachment I can make all the less claim as I freely
admit an abiding reverence for the history of my own
people, and, for the life of ancient Greece and Rome, a
passionate affection that is frankly unreasoning. At
no place in the course of the following pages have I
been consciously apologetic. It is true that where sev-
eral explanations of an incident are possible, I have not
always selected the one most discreditable to the Jews.
Doubtless that will not be forgiven me by those who
have accepted the anti-Semitic pamphlets of Willrich
as serious contributions to historical research.
The literature on the subject is enormous. Very few
references to what are known as " secondary " sources
will, however, be found in this book. A short bibli-
ography is appended, in which various books of refer-
ence are cited. From these all who are interested in
the innumerable controversies that the subject has
elicited may obtain full information.
There remains the grateful task of acknowledging
my personal indebtedness to my friend. Dr. Ernst
Riess, for many valuable suggestions. Above all I
desire to express my indebtedness to President Solo-
mon Schechter, of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
8 PREFACE
America, at whose instance the preparation of this
book was undertaken. Those who share with me the
privilege of his friendship will note in more than one
turn of expression and thought the impress of that rich
personality.
Max Radin
New York City,
October, 1915
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 13
I. Greek Religious Concepts 21
II. Roman Religious Concepts 40
III. Greek and Roman Concepts of Race 48
IV. Sketch of Jewish History between Nebuchadnez-
zar and Constantine 56
V. Internal Development of the Jews during the
Persian Period 66
VI. The First Contact between Greek and Jew 76
VII. Egypt 90
VIII. Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt 104
IX. The Struggle against Greek Culture in Palestine 118
X. Antiochus the Manifest God 135
XI. The Jewish Propaganda 148
XII. The Opposition 163
XIII. The Opposition in Its Social Aspect 176
XIV. The Philosophic Opposition 191
XV. The Romans 210
XVI. Jews in Rome during the Early Empire 236
XVII. The Jews of the Empire till the Revolt 257
XVIII. The Revolt of 68 c. e 287
XIX. The Development of the Roman Jewish Com-
munity 304
XX. The Final Revolts of the Jews s^S
XXI. The Legal Position of the Jews in the Later
Empire 350
Summary 368
Notes ;^y^
Bibliography 415
Index 417
ILLUSTRATIONS . '
Arch of Titus, Rome Frontispiece
Ruins of the Amphitheater at Gerasa
(Jerash), Gilead, Palestine facing page 62
Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes, after a Coin
(from a Drawing by Ralph Iligan) " " 136
Greek Inscription, Found on Site of Temple
Area, Forbidding Gentiles to Pass
beyond the Inner Temple Walls at
Jerusalem " " 186
Ruins of an Ancient Synagogue at Merom,
Galilee, Palestine (Roman Period) ** " 216
Tombs of the Kings, Valley of Kedron,
Jerusalem (from Wilson's "Jerusalem ") " " 268
Symbols and Inscriptions from Jewish Cata-
combs and Cemeteries in Rome (from
Garrucci) between pages 310 and 311
INTRODUCTION
The civilization of Europe and America is composed
of elements of many different kinds and of various
origin. Most of the beginnings cannot be recovered
within the limits of recorded history. We do not know
where and when a great many of our fundamental insti-
tutions arose, and about them we are reduced to con-
jectures that are sometimes frankly improbable. But
about a great many elements of our civilization, and
precisely those upon which we base our claim to be
called civilized — indeed, which give us the word and
the concept of civic life — we know relatively a great
deal, and we know that they originated on the east-
ern shores of the large landlocked sea known as the
Mediterranean.
We are beginning to be aware that the process of
developing these elements was much longer than we
had been accustomed to believe. Many races and sev-
eral millennia seem to have elaborated slowly the insti-
tutions that older historians were prepared to regard as
the conscious contrivance of a single epoch. But even
if increasing archeological research shall render us
more familiar than we are with Pelasgians, Myceneans,
Minoans, Aegeans, it is not likely that the claims of two
historic peoples to have founded European civilization
will be seriously impugned. These are the Romans and
14 INTRODUCTION
the Greeks. To these must be added another people,
the Jews, whose contribution to civihzation was no less
real and lasting.
The Greeks and Romans have left descendants only
in a qualified sense. There are no doubt thousands of
individuals now living who are the actual descendants
of the kinsmen and contemporaries of the great names
in Greek and Roman history; but these individuals are
widely scattered, and are united by national and racial
bonds with thousands of individuals not so descended,
from whom they have become wholly indistinguishable.
We have documentary evidence of great masses of
other races, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Semitic, entering
into the territory occupied by Greeks and Romans and
mingling with them, and to this evidence is added the
confirmation of anthropological researches. This fact
has made it possible to consider Greek and Roman his-
tory objectively. Only rarely can investigators be
found who feel more than a very diluted pride in the
achievements of peoples so dubiously connected with
themselves. It is therefore with increasing clarity of
vision that we are ordering the large body of facts we
already know about Greeks and Romans, and are
gathering them in constantly broadening categories.
That unfortunately is not the case with the Jews.
Here, too, racial admixture was present, but it never
took place on a large scale at any one time, and may
always have remained exceptional. However that may
be, common belief both among Jews and non-Jews
holds very strongly the view that the Jews of to-day are
INTRODUCTION 15
the lineal descendants of the community reorganized
by Ezra, nor is it likely that this belief would be ser-
iously modified by much stronger evidence to the con-
trary than has yet been adduced/ The result has been
that the place of the Jews in history has been deter-
mined upon the basis of institutions avowedly hostile
to them. It may be said that historians have introduced
the Jews as a point of departure for Christianity, and
have not otherwise concerned themselves with them.
There was a time when Greek and Roman and Jew
were in contact. What was the nature of that contact?
What were its results ? What were the mutual impres-
sions made by all three of them on one another? The
usual answer has been largely a transference of modern
attitudes to ancient times. Is another answer possible ?
Do the materials at our disposal permit us to arrive at
a firmer and better conclusion ?
It is necessary first to know the conditions of our
inquiry. The period that we must partially analyze
extends from the end of the Babylonian Captivity to
the establishment of Christianity — roughly from about
450 B. c. E. to 350 c. E., some seven or eight hundred
years.
The time limits are of course arbitrary. The contact
with Greeks may have begun before the earlier of the
two limits, and the relations of the Jews with both
Greeks and Romans certainly did not cease with either
Constantine or Theodosius. However, it was during
the years that followed the return from the Exile that
much of the equipment was prepared with which the
i6 INTRODUCTION
Jew actually met the Greek, and, on the other hand, the
relations of Christian Rome to the Jews were deter-
mined by quite different considerations from those that
governed Pagan Rome. It is at this point accordingly
that a study of the Jews among the Greeks and Romans
may properly end.
The Sources
Even for laymen it has become a matter of great
interest to know upon what material the statements are
based which scientists and scholars present to them. It
is part perhaps of the general skepticism that has dis-
placed the abundant faith of past generations in the
printed word. For that reason what the sources are
from which we must obtain the statements that we shall
make here, will be briefly indicated below.
First we have a number of Greek and Latin writers
who incidentally or specially referred to the Jews.
However, as is the case with many other matters of
prime importance, the writings of most of these authors
have not come down to us completely, but in fragments.
That is to say, we have only the brief citations made
of them by much later writers, or contained in very late
compilations, such as lexicons, commonplace books, or
manuals for instruction. Modern scholars have found
it imperatively necessary to collect these fragments, so
that they may be compared and studied more readily.
In this way the fragments of lost books on history,
grammar, music, of lost poems and plays, have been col-
lected at various times. Similarly the fragments con-
cerning the Jews have been collected, and gathered into
INTRODUCTION 17
a single book by M. Theodore Reinach, under the title
of Textes d' auteurs grecs et latins relatifs au judaisme.
Here the Greek and Latin texts and the French trans-
lation of them are arranged in parallel columns, and
furnished with explanatory footnotes. M. Reinach's
great distinction as a classical scholar enables him to
speak with authority upon many of the controverted
questions that these texts contain. Often his judg-
ment as to what certain passages mean may be unques-
tioningly accepted, and at all times one disagrees with
him with diffidence.
Secondly, we have the Jewish literature of the
period ; but that literature was produced under such
various conditions and with such diverse purposes that
a further classification is necessary.
Most important for our purposes is that part of
Jewish literature which was a direct outcome of the
contact we are setting forth — the apologetic writings of
the Jews, or those books written in Greek, only rarely
in Latin, in which Jewish customs and history are
explained or defended for non-Jewish readers. Most
of these books likewise have been lost, and have left
only inconsiderable fragments, but in the case of two
writers we have very extensive remains. One of these
men is the Alexandrian Jew Philo, a contemporary of
the first Roman emperors. The other was the Pales-
tinian Jew Joseph, who played an important, if ignoble,
part in the rebellion of 68 c. e.
An estimate of the character of Philo and Josephus
— to give the latter the name by which alone he is
i8 INTRODUCTION
remembered — or of the value of their works, is out of
place here. Philo's extant writings are chiefly con-
cerned with philosophic exposition, and are only in-
directly of documentary value. However, he also wrote
a '' Defense " of his people, of which large portions
have survived, notably the In Flaccum, a bitter invective
against the prefect of Egypt under Tiberius, and the
Legatio ad Gaium, a plea in behalf of the Alexandrian
Jews made to the emperor Caligula by an embassy of
which Philo was himself a member.'
An apologetic purpose, for himself more than for his
fellow-citizens, is discernible in practically all the extant
writings of Josephus. One of them, however, the mis-
named Contra Apionem, is avowedly a defense of the
Jews against certain misrepresentations contained in
Greek books. The importance of Josephus' works it is
impossible to overrate. For many matters he is our
sole authority. But the character exhibited in his own
account of his conduct has impaired the credibility of
much of what he says, and has provoked numerous con-
troversies. It is impossible to disregard him, and un-
safe to rely upon him. However, it is not unlikely that
fuller knowledge, which the sands of Egypt and Pales-
tine may at any time offer, will compel us to change our
attitude toward him completely.^
Besides the apologetic Jewish writings, directed to
gentile readers, there was a flourishing literature in
Greek (and perhaps in Latin too) intended for Greek-
speaking Jews. It may be said that no branch of
literary art was quite neglected. The great majority of
INTRODUCTION 19
these books are lost. Some, however, of a homiletic or
parenetic tendency, attained partial sanctity in some of
the Jewish congregations, and were, under such pro-
tection, transferred to the Christian communities that
succeeded them. They may now be found in collections
of Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, such as the Ger-
man collection of Kautzsch and that recently completed
in English by Charles. Examples are the Wisdom of
Solomon, the Jewish Sibyl, the Letter of Aristeas, etc.
All these books were intended for Jewish readers,
but for Jews whose sole mother tongue was Greek. In
Palestine and Syria the Jews spoke Aramaic, and the
educated among them used Hebrew for both literary
and colloquial' purposes. There w^as consequently an
active literature in these languages. Some books so
written were early translated into Greek, and from
Greek into Latin and Ethiopic, and have survived as
part of the Apocrypha. Judith, First Maccabees, Tobit,
are instances. It was a rare and fortunate accident that
gave us the Plebrew original of such a book, of Ben
Sira, or Ecclesiasticus.
Again, the highly organized religious and legal insti-
tutions of the Jews found literary expression in the
decisions and comments upon them that all such insti-
tutions involve. The exposition of the consecrated
ancient literature was also begun in this period. It was
not, however, till relatively late, 200 c. e. and after,
that actual books were put together, so that it is dan-
gerous to accept uncritically references to earlier dates.
20 INTRODUCTION
The books referred to are primarily the Mishnah and
the other extant collections of Baraitot. Besides these,
such works as the Megillat Taanit and the Seder Olam
must be grouped here. The earlier portions of both
Talmuds may be included, perhaps all of the Jerusalem
Talmud. ^
One source of somewhat problematic character re-
mains to be considered. Biblical critics have been at
some pains to assign as much as possible of the Bible
to the earlier centuries of the period we have delimited.
That more than a very slight portion can be so assigned
is scarcely probable, but some of it may, especially those
books or passages in which Greek influence is clearly
noticeable. However, little profit can be gained for
our purposes from material that demands such a deal
of caution in its use.
Finally, besides literary evidences, which, as we have
seen, have wretchedly failed to substantiate the poet's
vaunt of being more lasting than brass, we have the
brass itself ; that is, we have the stones, coins, utensils,
potsherds, and papyri inscribed with Hebrew, Aramaic,
Greek, Latin, Babylonian, and Egyptian words, which
are the actual contemporaries, just as we have them, of
the events they illustrate. It is the study of evidences
like these that has principally differentiated modern
historical research from the methods it displaced, and in
the unceasing increase of these fragmentary and in-
valuable remains our hopes of better knowledge of
ancient life are centered."
CHAPTER I
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS
The Jew is presented to the modern world in the
double aspect of a race and a religion. In a measure
this has always been the case, but we shall not in the
least understand what the statement of the fact means
without a very close analysis of the concepts of race and
religion formed by both Greeks and Romans.
The word religion has a very definite meaning to us.
It is the term appHed to the body of beliefs that any
group of men maintain about supernatural entities upon
whom they consider themselves wholly dependent. The
salient fact of modern religions is that for most men the
group is very large indeed, that it vastly transcends all
national limits. Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, all
profess the purpose of gaining the entire human race
for their adherents, and have actively attempted to do
so. The fact that the religions with which we are most
familiar are " world-religions," and the abstract char-
acter of the predicates of the Deity in them, would seem
to make religion as such practically free from local
limitation. However, that is not completely true even
for our time. In the first place, the bulk of Christians, as
of Muslims and Buddhists, are in all three cases bearers
of a common culture, and have long believed themselves
of common descent. They occupy further a continuous,
22 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
even if very large, area. Religious maps of the world
w^ould show solid blocks of color, not spots scattered
everywhere. Secondly, even within the limits of the
religion itself national boundaries are not wholly
expunged. The common Christianity of Spain and
England presents such obvious differences that insis-
tence upon them is unnecessary ; nor does the fact that
Southern Germany, Belgium, and Ireland are ail
Roman Catholic imply that all these sections have the
same religious attitude.
These are modern illustrations, and they represent
survivals of a state of things which in the Greek world
was fundamental. As it seems to us axiomatic that an
abstractly conceived God cannot be the resident of a lim-
ited area on the surface of the earth, just so axiomatic
it seemed, at one stage of Greek religious growth,
that a god was locally limited, that his activities did not
extend — or extended only in a weakened form —
beyond a certain sharply circumscribed geographical
area. That is probably the most fundamental and thor-
oughgoing of the differences between Greek religious
feeling and that of our day. Opinions may differ widely
about the degree of anthropomorphism present at the
contrasted periods ; and then, as now, the statements
made about the nature and power of the Deity were
contradictory, vague, and confusing. But one thing it
is hard to question : the devoutly religious man of to-
day feels himself everywhere, always, in the presence
of his God. The Greek did not feel that his god was
everywhere with him, certainly did not feel that he was
everywhere approachable/
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 23
At another point too we are in great danger of
importing modern notions into ancient conditions.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all book-religions.
The final source of their doctrines is a revelation that
has been written down, and is extant as an actual and
easily accessible book. Moreover, it is the narrative
portion of this book that is the best-known part of it,
and that is generally associated in the popular mind
with it. In the same way, we are prone to think of
Greek religion. as a series of extraordinarily beautiful
myths or narratives of gods and heroes, which have
likewise been written down, and are extant in the poems
and dramas of which they are the subject. This view
has been greatly strengthened by the unfortunate cur-
rency of the epigram that Homer was the Greek Bible.
No one would be inclined to force, except as a paradox,
the analogy upon which the statement rests ; yet the
phrase is so terse and simple, and the elements of the
comparison are so generally familiar, that consciously
and unconsciously current conceptions are moulded
by it.
Now if the epigram quoted is essentially true, we
have at once a measure of Greek religious feeling, since
the Homeric poems are as accessible to us as to the
Greeks themselves. We should be compelled to reckon
with variety in the interpretation of the text, but in the
literal signification there would always be a point of
departure. And we should at once realize that for
divine beings depicted as they are by Homer a devotion
of a very different sort is demanded from that which
24 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
modern faiths give their Deity. Nor does later Htera-
ture represent the gods on a loftier moral plane. When
we read Aristophanes,' it becomes still more difficult to
understand how the gods could retain their divinity not
only when deprived of their moral character, but even
when stripped of their dignity. So far from raising the
moral character of the divine beings who are the actors
in these legends, the later versions of many quite unex-
ceptionable myths deliberately debase them by subject-
ing most actions to a foully erotic interpretation.* The
less offensive narrative, to be sure, survives as well, but
it is to be noted that the divinity of the personages in
question seems to be as unquestioned in the corrupt as
in the purer form of the story.
How might an emotionally sensitive or mentally
trained man pour forth supplication before a guzzling
braggart like the Aristophanic Heracles or an effem-
inate voluptuary like the Apollo of Alexandrian poetry?
It seems hard to discover any other defense than the one
Charles Lamb offered for the dramatists of the Restora-
tion— that the world the gods moved in was a wholly
different one from the human world ; a world in which
moral categories had no existence, a Land of Cockayne
without vices, because it was without the sanctions
which vice disregards. No doubt some Greeks felt in
this way toward the myths. But it was not a satis-
factory theory. It introduced a dualism into standards
of conduct that soon became intolerable, when men
reflected seriously upon other sides of the divine nature,
and drew inferences from it.
A
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 25
As a matter of fact, the difficulty we find in address-
ing words of prayer and praise to such unworthy gods
as sat upon the Homeric Olympus is modern, and was
probably not felt at all by the vast majority of Greeks,
either in Homer's time or later. Not that the fraud,
cruelty, faithlessness there exhibited seemed to the
Greeks of any epoch commendable or imitable quaHties.
Even the Homeric Greek was far from being in a
barbarous or semi-barbarous state. Civic virtues as
between men were known and practised. But the per-
sonality of the individual gods in these stories could be
disregarded in practice, because they were in no sense a
part of the Greek religion. The chastest of men might
with a clear conscience worship the lecherous Zeus,
because worship did not at all concern itself with the
catalogue of his amours. In Homer's time and after,
the Greek firmly believed that the Olympians were
actually existing beings, but he scarcely stopped to ask
himself whether it was literally true that Zeus had
bidden Hera be silent under threats of personal violence.
What did concern him in his relation with his gods
was the disposition in which the god was likely to be
toward him or his people. And his religious activity
was directed to the end of making that disposition as
good as possible.
The matter just set forth is far from being new doc-
trine ; but for the general reader it must be constantly
re-emphasized, because it is constantly forgotten. We
continually find the Greek myths discussed in terms that
would be true only of the Gospel narratives, and we see
26 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
the Greek gods described as though they possessed the
sharpness of personal outHne which the Deity has in the
minds of beHeving Christians. It is no doubt the extant
Hterature — a florilegium at best — that is at fault in the
matter. This literature, it must be remembered, was not
preserved altogether by accident. To a large extent it
represents a conscious selection, made for pedagogic
purposes. The relative coherence which Greek myths
have for us is due to the fact that the surviving poems
and dramas which contain them were selected, partially
at least, by Hellenistic and Byzantine schoolmasters in
order to fit into a set cycle or scheme. Even in what
we have there is abundant evidence that the myths
about the gods could pretend to no sanctity for any-
body, devout or scoffer, for the simple reason that they
negated themselves, that widely differing and hope-
lessly contradictory stories were told of the same event
or person.
In reality the Greek myths were not coherent. It
is hard to discover in many of them a folkloristic kernel
that had to be kept intact. Almost everywhere we
are dealing with the free fantasies of highly imaginative
poets. So fully was this understood that the stories
most familiar to us are generally alluded to in serious
Greek literature with an apologetic w? ol iroL-qrai (/)ao-t,
*' as the poets say," or some similar phrase. And as
these stories were largely unrelated, so also were the
gods of whom they were told, even though they bore
the same name. If mythographers had taken the
trouble to collect all the stories known of any one
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 27
god — Hermes, for example — there would be nothing
except the common name to indicate that they referred
to the same chief actor, and much that, except for the
common name, would be referred to different gods. Not
even a single prominent trait, not a physical feature,
would be found to run through all the myths so
collected.
So far we have been dealing with extant literature.
But if the more recondite notices of popular super-
stition are taken into account, as well as the archeo-
logical discoveries, we meet such figures as Demeter,
Artemis, Apollo,' in various and curious forms and
associations, so that one might be tempted to suppose
that these highly individualized figures of poetry were,
in the shrines in which they were worshiped, hardly
more than divine appellatives of rather vague content.
And on the islands of the Aegean, in Crete and Cyprus,
where the continuity between Aegean, Mycenean, and
Hellenic civilization " was perhaps less disturbed by
convulsive upheavals, this seems especially to have been
the case.
For cult purposes, then — the primary purpose of
Greek religion — there was less difference between gods
than we might suppose. Not even the strongly marked
personages that poetry made of them were able to fix
themselves in the popular mind. Sculptors had been
busy in differentiating types, and yet even here the pro-
cess was not completed. While in general we know of
Poseidon-types, Zeus-types, etc., in art, the most thor-
oughly equipped critics find themselves embarrassed if
28 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
they are required to name a statue that is wholly lack-
ing in definite external symbols or attributes, such as
the thunderbolt, trident, caduceus, and others.^ Even
I "the unrivaled artistic abilities of Greek sculptors found
it impossible to create unmistakable types of the Greek
gods, for the reason that the character of the god as
portrayed in myth and fable was fluid, and not fixed.
As among most peoples of the time, the essential
religious act was that which brought the god and his
worshiper into contact — the sacrifice. What the real
nature of sacrifice was need not concern us here. The
undoubted fact is that sacrifice and prayer formed a
single act ; ^ that it was during the sacrifice that the wor-
shiper ventured to address his prayer to the godhead he
invoked. In doing so he must of necessity use the
god's name, and, as we have seen, the name was of
more general and less specific connotation than is
usually supposed. But the act of worship itself was
specifically occasioned. Even the fixed and annually
recurring festivals related to a specific, if recurring,
occasion in the life of the people. This was eminently
the case in the irregular acts of worship that arose
out of some unforeseen contingency. Whatever the
divine name was that was used, the specific occasion of
its use made it necessary also to specify the function of
the divinity of which the intervention was sought. That
was regularly done by attaching to the name a qualify-
ing epithet. When the rights of hospitality were
threatened with invasion, it was ZeiJ? EeVio?, Zeus the
Protector of Strangers, that was addressed. In grati-
158198
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 29
tude for a deliverance, Zeus or Apollo or Heracles or
the Dioscuri or many another might be invoked as '' the
Savior." * And it might well be argued that the Greek
who did so had scarcely anything more definite in mind
than a Roman who worshiped Salus, the abstract prin-
ciple of safety. In very many cases the particular func-
tion was especially potent in certain areas, so that a local
adjective applied as a divine epithet would sum up the
power desired to be set in motion.
In the actual moment of prayer or propitiation, it
was often a matter of courtesy to ignore the existence
of other gods. This makes perhaps a sufficiently
definite phenomenon to justify the application to it of
the special name '' henotheism " long ago devised by
Max Mliller ; ^ and in henotheism we have very likely the
germ of monotheism. But when not actually engaged
in worship, the Greek was well aware that there were
many gods, and that there were differences among
them, and this quite apart from the myths, to which, as
has been said, no very great importance can be attached
in this connection. The differences in power and prom-
inence of deities were perhaps not original, but they had
arisen quickly and generally.
One difference particularly, that between gods and
heroes, seems to have been real to the popular mind. A
difference in the terminology that described the ritual
act, and a difference in the act itself, point to a real dis-
tinction between the two divine conceptions."
Who and what the heroes actually were is an
extremely doubtful matter. That some of them were
30 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
originally men is a proposition with which legend has
made us familiar." We shall recur later to the com-
mon heroization of the dead. That some of them were
undoubted gods has been amply established.'" It may
well be that they were deities of a narrowly limited ter-
ritory, knowledge of whom, for one reason or another,
remained sharply circumscribed for a long time, so that
when they came later within the range of myth-making
they could not be readily fitted into any divine scheme.
Often the name that appears in some legends as a hero
appears in others as an epithet or cult-title of a better-
known god. This fact may be variously interpreted.
At least one interpretation derives this fusion of names
from the fact that the worshipers of the later deity
invaded the cult-home of the earlier, and ultimately
degraded the latter to accessory rank. Or it may be
taken as a compromise of existing claims. At any rate,
in some of the heroes we seem to reach an element some-
what closer to the religious consciousness of the Greek
masses. And if the gods, or most of them, are heroes
who owe their promotion to a fortunate accident rather
than to any inherent superiority, we may discover the
fundamental divine conceptions of the Greeks in the
traits that especially mark the heroes : sharp local limi-
tation, absence of personal lineaments, adoration based
upon power for evil as well as for good."
It was because of this last fact that Greek poets could
deal freely with gods and heroes in the narratives they
created. The divine name possessed none of the ineffa-
ble sanctity it has for us by thousands of years of tradi-
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 31
tion. Except during the performance of the ritual act,
the god's presence and power were not vividly felt, and
it would have been considered preposterous to suppose
that he resented as compromising an idle tale from
which he suffered no impairment of worship. That the
gods really existed, and that honor was to be paid them
after the ancestral manner, was more than the essence,
it was the totality, of popular Greek theology. Specu-
lation as to the real nature of gods and the world, the
mass of citizens would have regarded as the most futile
form of triviality."
But there were some who thought otherwise. Many
thoughtful men must have felt the absurdities and
immoralities of the myths as keenly as we do. Xeno-
phanes " protests, and no doubt not first of all men,
against them. Further, with the earliest stirrings of
cosmic speculation in Ionia, systems of theology are
proposed that dispense with demiurges and adminis-
trators. Intellectually developed men cannot have been
long in ridding themselves of popular conceptions that
violated the most elementary reflection. To be sure,
the philosopher did not always feel free to carry his
conviction to the point of openly disregarding the
established forms. To do so would bring him into con-
flict with other institutions that he valued, and with
which religious forms had become inextricably bound
up. But his own beliefs took broader and broader
ground, and well before Alexander became monotheism,
pantheism, or agnosticism."''
32 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
All these standpoints must be kept in mind when we
deal with the conflict between Greek and Jew : the
popular one, no doubt rooted in a primitive animism,
to which the gods were of indifferent and somewhat
shifting personality, but to which the ritual act was
vital; the attitude of poetry and folk-lore, in which
divine persons appeared freely as actors, but in which
each poem or legend was an end in itself unrelated to
any other; and finally the philosophic analysis, which
did not notably differ in result from similar processes
of our own day.
We find the Hellenic world in possession of very
many gods. Some of them are found practically wher-
ever there were Greeks, although the degree of venera-
tion they received in the different Greek communities
varied greatly. However, such common gods did exist,
and their existence involves the consideration of the
spread of worships.
It is of course quite possible that the common gods
grew out of the personification of natural phenomena,
the solar-myth theory, on which nineteenth-century
scholars sharpened their ingenuity." It may be, too,
that one or more of them are the national gods of the
conquering Hellenes, whensoever and howsoever such
a conquest may have taken place. Some may have been
of relatively late importation. The Greeks lived in ter-
ritory open to streams of influence from every point of
the compass. Of one such importation we know some
details — the worship of Dionysus.'" Of others, such as
Aphrodite, we suspect a Semitic origin by way of
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS Z3
Cyprus." It will be noticed that the names of most of
the common gods are difficult to trace to Greek roots, a
fact in itself of some significance.
We must remember that the wandering of the god is
often merely the wandering of a name. That is especially
true in those cases in which an old divine name becomes
the epithet or cult-title of the intruding deity. Here
obviously there was no change in the nature of the god
worshiped and no interruption of his worship. It is
very likely, too, that very few deities ever completely
disappeared, even when there was a real migration of a
god. The new god took his place by the side of the
old one, and relations of many kinds, superior or
inferior, were speedily devised. So at Athens, in the
contest between Poseidon and Athena, permanently
recorded on the west pediment of the Parthenon, the
triumph of Athena merely gave her a privilege. The
defeated Poseidon remained in uninterrupted posses-
sion of shrine and votaries.
How did the worship of certain gods spread? One
answer is obvious : by the migration of their votaries.
Locally limited as the operation of the divinity was,
in normal circumstances there never was a doubt
that it could transcend those limits when the circum-
stances ceased to be normal. And that certainly took
place when the community of which the god was a
member changed its residence. The methods of pro-
pitiation, as crystallized into the inherited ritual, and the
divine name, in which, for the rank and file, the indi-
viduality of the god existed, would be continued, though
34 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
they were subject to new influences, and not infre-
quently suffered a sea-change.
But migration of all or some of the worshipers of a
given deity was not the only way by which the god him-
self moved from place to place. Exotic rituals, as soon
as men became acquainted with them, had attractions of
their own, especially if they contained features that
made a direct sensational appeal. The medium of
transference may have been the constantly increasing
commerce, which brought strangers into every city at
various times. In all Greek communities there was a
large number of " disinherited " — metics, emancipated
slaves, suffrageless plebs — to whom the established gods
seemed cold and aloof, or who had only a limited share
in the performance of the established ritual. These
men perhaps were the first to welcome newer rituals,
which it was safer to introduce when they were directed
to newer gods.^° They were assisted in doing this by
the long-noted tolerance Greeks exhibited toward
other religious observances, a tolerance which Chris-
tian Europe has taught us to consider strange and
exceptional.
That tolerance was not altogether an inference from
polytheism itself. Polytheism, to be sure, takes for
granted the existence of other gods in other localities,
but it does not follow that it permits the entrance of
one god into the jurisdiction of another. And it was
not universal. Among communities inhospitable in
other respects it did not prevail. But it was the general
rule, because the conception of ao-e/Seia, of " impiety,'"^
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 35
was largely the same everywhere. Impiety was such
conduct as prevented or corrupted the established forms
of divine communication. The introduction of new
deities was an indictable offense at Athens only so far
as it displaced the old ones. Where no such danger was
apprehended, no charge would lie. The traditions that
describe the bitter opposition which the introduction of
Dionysus encountered in many places, are too uniform
to be discredited.''' But the opposition was directed to
the grave social derangements that doubtless attended
the adoption by many of an enthusiastic ritual. The
opposition cannot have been general nor of long dura-
tion, since the worship of Dionysus spread with extra-
ordinary rapidity, and covered the whole Greek world.
Religious movements curiously like the " revivals "
of medieval and modern times visited Greece as they
visit most organized communities. One of the most
important of these, which gradually spread over Greece
during the sixth and fifth centuries b. c. e., must be
reserved for later treatment. We may note here merely
that there had been present from very early times the
nuclei of a more intense religious life than any that
could be experienced through the rather perfunctory
solemnities of the state cults. These were the mysteries,
of which the most famous were the Eleusinian in Attica.
Some assign the latter to an Egyptian origin.^^ Wher-
ever they came from, they had assumed a large place in
the imagination of Greeks as early as the eighth cen-
tury ; ^* and they gained their adherents not so much
by wrapping themselves in impenetrable secrecy as by
36 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
promising their participants an otherwise unattainable
degree of divine favor. Other mysteries existed else-
where, possibly modeled upon the Eleusinian. All, how-
ever, made similar claims. It was in the form of
mysteries that the emotional side of religion was
deepened. Further, the organization of these mysteries
exercised a profound influence upon all propagandizing
movements, whether religious or not. It is not unlikely
that the earliest organization of the Christian ecclesiae
was, at least in part, influenced by the organization of
the mysteries, whether of Eleusis or of some other sort.
It has been said that one commonly worshiped group
of heroes were frankly and concededly dead men. It
needs no demonstration to make clear that such wor-
ship of the dead must of necessity be very old ; but at
many places in the Greek world this ancient worship of
the dead had become much weakened. The Homeric
poems, for example, know it only in a very attenuated
form.^ At many other places, on the other hand, it
flourished vigorously and continuously from the earliest
times. The application of the word 17/30)?, " hero," to the
dead may have had very ancient sanction. In later times,
the term appears very commonly,"^ and undoubtedly
claims for the persons so qualified the essential char-
acteristics of other heroes — i. e. immortality, the prim-
ary divine quality in Homer, and greatly increased
power. It involved no difficulty to the Greek mind to
make this claim, for it was a very common, perhaps uni-
versal, belief that gods and men were akin, that they
were the same in nature. Perhaps the very oldest of
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS Z7
transcendental beliefs is that the all-overwhelming
phenomenon of death is not an annihilation, and that
something survives, even if only as a shadow in the
House of Hades. When men began to speculate
actively upon the real results of bodily death, it must
have occurred to many that the vaguely enlarged scope
of such life as did survive was a return to a former and
essential divinity .""
But from a hero, limited and obscure, to a god, seated
in full effulgence at the table of Zeus, was a big step,
and bigger yet was the deification of living men. It
may even be that the latter conception was not Greek,
but was borrowed from Egypt or Mesopotamia. There
is no indication of its presence before Alexander. That
a man in the flesh might be translated from mortality
to immortality — entrilckt — was a very ancient convic-
tion. The son-in-law of Zeus, Menelaos, had been so
privileged.^** A poetic hyperbole claimed as much for
the tyrannicide Harmodius.^^ There were others, of no
special moment, who by popular legend had walked
among men and were not found, as in later times hap-
pened to Arthur and Barbarossa. But they became as
gods only by their translation. We do not meet in
Greece for centuries men who ventured to claim for
themselves in the visible body that measure of divinity.
In Egypt, however, and Mesopotamia the conception
was not new. Certainly Pharaoh did not wait to receive
his divine character from the hand of the embalmer.
He was at all times Very God. At both the Euphrates
and the Nile, Alexander found ample precedent for the
38 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
assumption of divine honors, to which he no doubt
sincerely beheved he had every claim. We know how
he derived his descent, without contradiction from his
mother Olympias. It was novel doctrine for Greeks,
but the avidity with which it was accepted and imitated
showed that it did not absolutely clash with Greek
manner of thought.
After Alexander, every king or princelet who
appeared with sufficient force to overawe a town could
scarcely avoid the formal decree of divinity. The
Ptolemies quietly stepped — though not at once — into the
throne and prerogatives of Ra. Seleucus adopted Apollo
as his ancestor, and his grandson took 0eo?, " the God,"
as his title. His line maintained a shadowy relation
with Marduk and Nebo of Babylon. Demetrius the
Besieger had only to show himself at Athens to be
advanced into Olympus.
The religion briefly and imperfectly sketched in this
chapter was not really a system at all. There is a deal of
incoherency in it, of cross-purposes and contradiction.
There was no priestly caste among the Greeks to gather
into a system the confused threads of religious thinking.
Its ethical bearings came largely through the idea of
the state, in which religion was a highly important con-
stituent. There was also a personal and emotional side
to Greek religion, and in particular cases the adoration
of the worshiper was doubtless the sacrifice of a broken
and contrite heart, and not the blood of bullocks. But
the crudities of animism cropped out in many places,
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 39
and in the loftiest of Greek prayers there is no note like
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and all thy soul, and all thy might." In its most
developed form a Greek's dependence on his god was
resignation, not self-immolation.
CHAPTER II
ROMAN RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS
Roman religious ideas were in many respects like
those of the Greeks, partly because they were borrowed
from the Greeks and partly because they were common
to all the nations of the Mediterranean world. It may
even be that some of these common forms are categories
which the human mind by its constitution imposes upon
some classes of phenomena, Grundideen, as ethnolo-
gists call them/ Among both Romans and Greeks we
shall find deities sharply limited in their spheres, we
shall find the religious act exhausted in the ritual com-
munion, we shall find evanescent personalities among
the gods. But all these things will be found in a far
different degree, and at various periods many other
matters will demand consideration which the Greeks did
not know at all or knew to a slighter extent.
The differences in national development would of
themselves require differences of treatment. Greek
religion grew up in countless independent communities,
which advanced in civilization at very different rates.
Roman religion was developed within a single civic
group, and was ultimately swamped by the institutions
with which it came into contact. Again, it is much more
necessary among the Romans than among the Greeks
to distinguish clearly between periods. Roman political
ROMAN RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 41
history passed through points of obvious crisis, and
many institutions were plainly deflected at these points
into quite new paths of development.
Real comprehension of Roman religion is a matter of
recent growth. During the vogue of comparative
mythology, the Roman myths were principally dis-
cussed, and the patent fact that these were mere trans-
lations from the Greek seemed a complete summing up
of Roman religion. It is only when the actual Roman
calendar, as recorded on stone during the reign of
Augustus, came to be studied that the real character of
Roman religion began to be apprehended.^
The results of this study have made it clear that dur-
ing the highest development of the Roman state the
official religious ritual was based upon pastoral and
agricultural conditions that could scarcely be reached
even in imagination. Propitiatory and dramatic rites
carried out with painful precision, unintelligible formu-
laries carefully repeated, ceremonial dances in which
every posture was subject to exact regulation, all these
things indicate an anxious solicitude for form that is
ordinarily more characteristic of magic than of religion.
Now, magic and religion have no very definite limits in
anthropological discussions, but most of those who use
the terms will probably agree that magic is coercive,
and religion is not. We shall see at various points in
Roman religion that a coercive idea was really present
in the Romans' relation with the gods, and that it fol-
lowed in a measure from the way the gods were
conceived.^
42 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The personality of the Greek gods was not so sharply
individualized as the myths we happen to know would
indicate, but the gods were persons. That is, during
the act of prayer and sacrifice there was conjured up in
the mind of the worshiper a definite anthropomorphic
figure, who dealt with him somewhat as a flesh and
blood man would do. But what was present in a
Roman's mind in very early times — those of the king-
dom and the early republic — was probably not at all like
this. The name of his deity was often an abstraction,
and even when this was not verbally the case, the idea
was an abstract one. And this abstraction had so little
plastic form that he was scarcely certain of the being's
sex to which he addressed words of very real supplica-
tion, and wholly uncertain what, if any, concrete mani-
festation the god might make of his presence."
But it will be well to understand that this abstraction,
which the Roman knew as Salus, or Fortuna, or Vic-
toria, was not a philosophic achievement. It was not a
Platonic '' idea." No one could doubt the fact that in
times of danger safety was often attained. The means
of attainment seemed frequently due to chance; that is,
to the working of unintelligible forces. It was to evoke
these forces and set them in operation that the Roman
ritual was addressed, and whether these forces acted
of their own mere motion, or whether the formularies
contained potent spells, which compelled their activity,
was not really of moment. That was the nature of the
" abstraction " which such words as Fides, Concordia,
and the rest signified to Roman minds.
ROMAN RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 43
In the early days a great deal of the religious practice
was borrowed from the Etruscan neighbors, conquerors
and subjects of Rome. The Etruscans, as far as any-
thing can be said definitely about them, were especial
adepts in all the arts by which the aid of deities, how-
ever conceived, could be secured. How much of actual
religious teaching they gave the Romans, that is, how far
they actually influenced and trained the emotions which
the sense of being surrounded by powerful and unac-
countable forces must excite, is not yet determinable.
But they gave the Romans, or increased among them,
the belief in the eflicacy of formulas, whether of the
spoken word or of action.
Although most of the Roman deities were abstrac-
tions in the sense just indicated, many others and very
important ones bore personal names. These names could
^ot help suggesting to intelligent men at all times that
the god who bore one of them was himself a person, that
his manifestations would be in human form, and that his
mental make-up was like their own. Genetic relations
between themselves and the gods so conceived were
rapidly enough established. It is very likely, too, that
some of these deities, perhaps Jupiter himself, were
brought into Italy by kinsmen of those who brought
Zeus into Greece, although the kinship must have been
extremely remote. And when the gods are persons,
stories about them are inevitable, arising partly as folk-
lore and partly from individual poetic imagining. There
are accordingly traces of an indigenous Roman or Italic
mythology, but that mythology was literally over-
44 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
whelmed, in relatively early times, by the artistically
more developed one of the Greeks, so that its very
existence has been questioned.''
The openness of the Romans to foreign religious
influences is an outcome of a conception, common
enough, but more pronounced among the Romans than
anywhere else. In most places the gods were believed
to be locally limited in their sphere of action, and in
most places this limitation was not due to unchangeable
necessity but to the choice of residence on the part of
the deity. Since it was a choice, it was subject to revo-
cation. The actual land, once endeared to god or man,
had a powerful hold upon his affections, vastly more
powerful than the corresponding feeling of to-day, but
for either god or man changes might and did occur.
Both Greeks and Romans held views somewhat of
this kind, but the difference in political development
compelled the Roman to face problems in the relations
of the gods that were not presented to the Greeks.
Greek wars were not wars of conquest. They resulted
rather in the acknowledgment on the part of the
vanquished of a general superiority. With barbarians,
again, the struggles were connected with colonizing
activity, and, when they were successful, they resulted
in the establishment of a new community, which gen-
erally continued the ancient shrines in all but their
names. Roman wars, however, soon became of a dif-
ferent sort. The newly conquered territory was often
annexed — attached to the city, and ruled from it. To
secure the lands so obtained it was frequently found
necessary to destroy the city of which they were once a
ROMAN RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 45
part, and that involved the cessation of rites, which the
gods would not be likely to view with composure. The
Romans drew the strictly logical inference that the
only solution lay in bringing the gods of the conquered
city to Rome. The Roman legend knew of the solemn
words with which the dictator Camillus began the sack
of Veii : '' Thou, Queen Juno, who now dwellest in Veii,
I beseech thee, follow our victorious troops into the city
that is now ours, and will soon be thine, where a temple
worthy of thy majesty will receive thee." ^ But besides
this legendary incident, we have an actual formula
quoted by Macrobius from the book of a certain Furius,'
probably the contemporary of the younger Africanus.
The formula, indubitably ancient and general, is given
as Africanus himself may have recited it before the
destruction of Carthage in 146 b. c. e., and it is so sig-
nificant that we shall give it in full :
Whoever thou art, whether god or goddess, in whose ward
the people and city of Carthage are, and thou above all, who
hast accepted the wardship of this city and this people, I
beseech, I implore, I beg, that ye will desert the people and
city of Carthage, that ye will abandon the site, the consecrated
places and the city, that ye will depart from them, overwhelm
that people and city with fear, dread, and consternation, and
graciously come to Rome, to me and my people : that our
site, our consecrated places, and our city be more acceptable
and more pleasing in your sight, and that ye may become the
lords of myself, the Roman people, and my soldiers. Deign
to make known your will to us. If ye do so, I solemnly
promise to erect temples in your honor and establish festal
games.*
What might happen as an incident of warfare could
be otherwise effected as well. We have very old evi-
dence of the entry of Greek deities into the city of
46 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Rome. The Dioscuri came betimes ; also Heracles and
Apollo, both perhaps by way of Etruria. And in his-
torical times we have the well-known official importa-
tion of the Great Mother and of Asclepius.'*
These importations of Greek gods were at the time
conscious receptions of foreign elements. The foreign
god and his ritual were taken over intact. Greek modes
of divine communion, notably the lectisternium, or
sacrificial banquet,^" and the games, were adopted and
eagerly performed by Romans. When Rome reached a
position of real primacy in the Mediterranean, the pro-
cess of saturation with foreign elements was acceler-
ated, but with it an opposition movement became appar-
ent, which saw in them (what they really were) a source
of danger for the ancient Roman institutions. The end
of the second Punic war, approximately 200 b. c. e.,
shortly after a most striking instance of official im-
portation of cults, that of the Phrygian Cybele,. par-
ticularly marks a period in this respect as in so many
others. From that time on, the entry of foreign
religions went on apace, but it was somewhat sur-
reptitious, and was carried on in the train of economic,
social, and political movements of far-reaching effect.
When the Jews came in contact with the Romans, this
point had been long reached. As far, therefore, as the
Jews were concerned, their religion shared whatever
feeling of repulsion and distrust foreign religions
excited among certain classes, and equally shared the
very catholic veneration and dread that other classes
brought to any system of worship.
ROMAN RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS 47
The former classes correspond roughly to those of
educated men generally. Their intellectual outlook was
wholly Greek, and all their thinking took on a Greek
dress. But they received Greek ideas, not only through
Homer and Sophocles, but also through Plato and
Aristotle. Not popular Greek religion, but sophisti-
cated religious philosophy, was brought to the intel-
lectual leaders of Rome. One of the very first works of
Greek thought to be brought to Roman attention was
the theory of Euhemerus, a destructive analysis of the
existing myths, not merely in the details usually cir-
culated, but in respect to the fundamental basis of myth-
making." In these circumstances educated men adopted
the various forms of theism, pantheism, or agnosticism
developed by the Greek philosophical schools, and their
interest in the ceremonial of their ancestral cult became
a form of patriotism, in which, however, it was not
always possible to conceal the consciousness of the
chasm between theory and practice.
The other part of the Roman population, which knew
Greek myths chiefly from the stage, could not draw
such distinctions. What was left of the old Italian
peasantry perhaps continued the sympathetic and propi-
tiatory rites that were the substance of the ancient
Roman cult. But there cannot have been a great number
of these. The mass of the later plebs, a mixed multitude
in origin, could get little religious excitement out of the
state ritual. What they desired was to be found in the
Oriental cults, which from this time on invaded the
city they were destined to conquer.
CHAPTER III
GREEK AND ROMAN CONCEPTS OF RACE
During the nineteenth century a pecuHar rigidity
was given to the conception of race through the appH-
cation of somewhat hastily formed biological theories.
One or another of the current hypotheses on heredity
was deemed an adequate or even necessary explanation,
and by any of them racial characteristics became deter-
mined, fixed : race was an unescapable limiting con-
dition. The Ethiopian could not change his skin.
These ideas, when popularized, corresponded crudely
to certain other ideas already present in men's minds —
ideas that often had a very different basis. Their lowest
manifestation is that form of vicarious braggadocio
which is known as jingoism, racial or national, and is
expressed in the depreciation of everything that con-
cerns other ".races."
Many historians have been influenced by this modern
and unyielding concept of race, and have permitted
themselves to make rather large promises about the
destinies of existing groups of men on the basis of it.^
But as late as a hundred years ago it was not yet in
existence. The term race then denoted a sum of
national and social traits which it might be difiicult to
acquire in one generation, but which could readily be
gained in two. Even such disparate ethnic groups as
GREEK AND ROMAN CONCEPTS OF RACE 49
Austrian and Magyar knew of no impassable chasm
that good-will on either side could not bridge.
It is the latter racial feeling and not the modern one
that classical antiquity knew. Consequently, in the
clash of races that took place during the period with
which this book deals, '' race " must be understood as
the centuries before the nineteenth understood it.
Racial prejudices, pride of blood, contempt for ''slave-
nations, "existed and found voice, but the terms are not
coextensive with those of to-day.
It is well-known that a primary Greek distinction was
that between Hellene and barbarian, and it is equally
familiar that the distinction had not been fully formed
in the time of Homer. There is no indication that the
Trojans were felt to be fundamentally different from
the Acheans, although it is likely enough that the allies
who attacked the great city of the Troad were of differ-
ent descent from those that defended it. The one
instance found in Homer of the word /3dp/3apo<i is in the
compound l3ap/3ap6(f>Mvos^ " of barbarous speech " (Iliad
ii. 867), which makes the original meaning of the word
apparent. A Greek was one whose speech was intel-
ligible. All others were barbarians, "jabberers." And
it is not only incidentally that Homer fails to make the
racial division clear. When he of set purpose con-
trasts the two armies, as in Iliad iv. 422-437, it is the
contrast between the silent discipline of the Greeks and
the loose, noisy marshaling of the Trojans: ''For all
were not of one speech or of a single language. Mixed
were their tongues, since the men came from far-off
lands."
so THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
It is probably in the course of just such expeditions
as the IHad tells of, a joint movement against a common
foe, that a sense of national unity arose, and it is likely
that it came to include many tribes of different race.
We do not know what real basis there is for the tradi-
tional divisions of lonians, Dorians, and Aeolians.
These divisions have not proved very valuable means
of classification to modern students of Greek dialects.
The generic name of Greek to the East was Yavan,
obviously the same as Ionian,^ and that name indicates
where the first contact took place. The struggles of
Greeks to establish themselves on the coast of Asia
Minor probably created the three traditional groups,
by forcing them to combine against threatened destruc-
tion. But there is nothing to show that any real feel-
ing of common origin and common responsibility
existed even here.
On the continent, again, there were large groups of
men whom the Greeks found difficulty in classifying.
There were some Epirotes and Macedonians whose
claim to be Greeks was admitted. On the whole, how-
ever, Epirotes and Macedonians were classed as bar-
barians, though a different sort of barbarians from
Scythian and Phrygian. The first realization of
national unity came with the first great national danger,
the catastrophe that impended from the Persians.
Even then actual invasion did not succeed in com-
bining the Greeks even temporarily. That was due to
the inherent difficulty in interesting Thessalians or
Boeotians in the quarrels of lonians.^ In spite of them,
GREEK AND ROMAN CONCEPTS OF RACE 51
the danger was at that time averted, but it did not there-
fore become less real. The consciousness of this ever-
present danger and the bitter experiences of subjection
created groups that coalesced more solidly than ever
before about certain leaders, Athenians or Spartans.
In the fifth and fourth centuries, the concept of a Greek
race received a real outline, and the feeling of a com-
mon race pride became highly developed.
This race pride showed itself principally in an over-
weening confidence in the superiority of Greek arms.
It is a false notion that represents the Greek as careless
or contemptuously indififerent of the races about him.
Never were men more eager for curious tales of out-of-
the-way peoples. Their earliest historians won their
chief success in this way. But Greeks had beaten back
the conquerors of the world, and had maintained them-
selves aggressively as well. It was very natural that
something of this attitude was apparent in dealing with
barbarians even on terms of comity. The Greeks had
at least colorable ground for believing that in military
matters they were masters wherever they chose.
One phrase of which some Greek writers were fond
need not be taken too seriously. Barbarians, we are
told, are by nature slaves.* It would be an error to
attach much importance to the statement. Greeks did
not really believe that Darius or Datames or Hamilcar
was servile in character or in disposition. The expres-
sion was merely the facile chauvinism that military
prestige readily stirs up in any nation. So at certain
times some Englishmen were ready to call the French
52 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
cowards, or Frenchmen to call Prussians so. Among
the Greeks the principal basis for the statement was the
fact that the activity of Greek merchants and pirates
filled every city with slaves of all foreign nations.
Indeed the phrase is no more than a generalized asser-
tion of that state of things.
We shall have to qualify similarly the statement now
and then encountered of a natural and permanent hos-
tility between Greeks and barbarians. It is a common-
place of Athenian orators, but it practically always
concerns the real hereditary enemy of Greeks, and
particularly of Athens — the Persians. It is in calling
the Greeks against their ancient foe that Isocrates uses
the phrase," and in Demosthenes ^ it is especially based
upon the hostilities so long maintained between Athens
and Persia and the ancient grudge Athenians bore for
the sack of their city in 480 b. c. e.
The first achievement of united Hellas was the
invasion of Persia, although it was under Macedonian
leadership that this was done, but soldiers of Alexander
appeared as Greeks to the East, and Alexander is^i> -T'p);^'
melek Yavan, '' king of Greece," in the Book of Daniel.^
Just at this culminating point in the development of
Greek nationality, the process of blurring began. Greek
and non-Greek were no sooner sharply contrasted than
by the conscious assimilation policy of Alexander's suc-
cessors the lines tended to obliterate themselves. At
first Greek culture was dominant, but beneath it Syrian,
Egyptian, and Cappadocian obstinately survived, and
ultimately, under Christian and Mohammedan influ-
GREEK AND ROMAN CONCEPTS OF RACE 53
ences, regained their place. It is with one phase of this
specific problem — the threatened submergence of an
Asiatic people by Greek culture — that we are particu-
larly concerned.
The attitude of Romans toward other nations was,
as might be expected, even more arrogantly that of
masters and conquerors. But where we find among
Greeks a certain theoretical importance attached to
purity of Hellenic descent* (which, by the by, was
largely ignored in practice), the Romans scarcely
understood what the term meant. A system in which
emancipated slaves were citizens, who in the second
generation were eligible to high civic honors,^ and not
infrequently attained them — such a system did not tend
to encourage claims to purity of blood. That does not
mean that foreign origin, real or suspected, could not
at any time become a handle for abuse. Cicero fastens
on the Celtic strain in Piso's lineage with savage delight,
just as Demosthenes' enemies rarely forgot to remind
him of his Scythian grandfather.^" But these are not
matters of real significance. The significant fact was
that they who were Liby-Phoenicians in one generation
were descendants of Romulus in the next."
Sumus Romani qui fuimus ante Rudini, " We are
Romans, we who formerly were Rudinians," says
Ennius,^^ and the metamorphosis was as complete and as
easy if, instead of Italians, they were wholly barbarous
elements that were absorbed. In religious matters the
Romans more than the Greeks felt the efficacy of form.
So in political matters the formula of emancipation and
54 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
the decree of citizenship were deemed operative of a
real change in the persons affected.
The Roman nobiHty, it is true, often made preten-
sions to a purity of descent that felt every foreign
admixture as a stain/' But such claims were absurdly
groundless, and cannot really have deceived even those
who maintained them. The great majority of Romans
had no quarrel with any who desired and tried to be
Roman. Even Juvenal's venom is vented only on the
avowed foreigners, who as Greeks, Egyptians, and
Syrians lolled at their ease, while the ragged Cethegi
and Cornucanii munched, standing, the bread of afflic-
tion and charity. The leveling tendencies of the autoc-
racy removed a great many of the reasons of this fric-
tion, and in part succeeded in giving even the Greek-
speaking East and the Latin-speaking West a common
culture to maintain. But by that time new movements
of population made such race-concepts as were based on
blood-kinship too plainly out of accord with the facts
to be seriously asserted. At the close of the period we
are discussing, every man was either a Roman citizen,
with a pressingly heavy share of the burden of main-
taining the Roman system, or he was not. Who his
ancestors were was wholly forgotten. It had even
ceased to be of moment whether he spoke Greek or
Latin or Syriac, Punic, or even Gallic," which had never
completely died out in their ancient homes.
At no time did a feeling of racial kinship make a
strong sentimental appeal. That the whole human race
was an extended family was taken as axiomatic. Strik-
GREEK AND ROMAN CONCEPTS OF RACE 55
ing physical differences did not prevent similarity of
names from proving kinship between Egyptian and
Greek and Persian and Ethiopian. All through Greek
history factions in Greek cities called upon outsiders
against their countrymen. The Phoenicians of Utica
preferred the foreign Romans to their Carthaginian
kinsmen. Similarly the Campanians of Capua chose to
fraternize with the Libyans and Phoenicians of Hanni-
bal's army rather than the closely related Latins.^^ In
these circumstances nothing will lend itself more easily
to distorting our view of the times than the importation
into them of the modern view of race — of that view, at
least, in which the historians of the nineteenth century
found so easy and adequate an explanation of every-
thing they desired to debase or extol.
CHAPTER IV
SKETCH OF JEWISH HISTORY BETWEEN
NEBUCHADNEZZAR AND CONSTANTINE
We have briefly sketched in the foregoing chapters
the concepts of race and rehgion that Greek and Roman
applied to the world about them. These concepts were
not starkly rigid. They changed considerably and often
rapidly in the six centuries our subject covers. They are
further to be qualified by the social environment within
which they operated. But it was not only the Greeks
or Romans who in blood and thought passed through
many and profound changes. The Jews, too, developed
in many directions, and this development can no more
be lost sight of than the corresponding one among their
neighbors.
In 586 B. c. E. the kingdom of Judah, which had for
some years been a Babylonian dependency, was ended
as a political institution, and the majority of its people,
at any rate of the nobles and wealthy men of them, were
forcibly deported to Babylon. The deportation though
extensive was not complete. Some, principally peasants
and artisans, were left, but in districts so long wasted
by war their condition can only have been extremely
wretched. Since the whole region was part of the same
huge empire, the old boundary lines were probably
obliterated, and those who lived there subjected to the
FROM NEBUCHADNEZZAR TO CONSTANTINE 57
control of imperial governors residing in one or another
of the walled cities of Syria or Philistia.
Within the next two generations momentous political
changes occurred. The Babylonian empire gave way
to a Persian, which, however, can at first have changed
nothing except the personnel of the actual administra-
tors. According to a very probable tradition, one of the
first acts of Cyrus was to permit, at any rate not to
oppose, the remigration of some of the Judean families
or clans to their former homes. Within the next hun-
dred years a larger and larger number of the families
deported by Nebuchadnezzar likewise returned, though
never all of them and perhaps not even a majority of
them. Much of the old territory must have been found
unoccupied, since otherwise conflicts must have arisen
with interests vested within the fifty years and more
that had elapsed, and of these we do not hear. But we
do hear of immediate conflicts between the returned
exiles and those who professed to be the descendants of
the Israelites (and Judaites) left by Assyrians (and
Babylonians) on the soil. These latter were beginning
to gather about Shechem, where they must already have
been a dominant element, and where they had created a
cult center on Mount Gerizim. The conflict tended to
become compromised in time, until the activities of the
reformer Ezra, backed by the civil governor Nehemiah,
again and permanently separated them.
The returned exiles had from the beginning made
the ancient capital their center, and had succeeded in
obtaining permission to rebuild their ancient shrine.
58 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
But they were at an obvious disadvantage compared
with their rivals at Shechem, until the city of David
could receive the characteristic of a city — the walls
which alone distinguished village or somewhat more
densely populated section of the open country from the
polis or city proper. These, too, were obtained through
Nehemiah, and the prohibition of connubium between
the so-called Samaritans of Shechem and the Jews of
Jerusalem was the first aggressive act of the now self-
reliant community.
The system of government of the Persian empire was
not oppressive. The distant king of kings was mainly
insistent upon recognition of his sovereignty and regu-
larity of tribute, less as a means of support than as an
acknowledgment of submission. Within the provinces
the satrap was practically king, and might make his
domination light or burdensome as he chose. We have
excellent contemporary evidence that he took his
responsibilities lightly for the most part. In the moun-
tains of Asia Minor many tribes seem scarcely to have
known that they were born vassals of the Persian king.*
The local satrap rarely attempted to control in detail the
administrative affairs of the communities in his charge,
particularly when such an attempt would precipitate a
rebellion.
In Judea the open plains and low hills rendered it
easier for the governor to emphasize the king's author-
ity than it was among the mountains of Cappadocia
or the fiords of Cilicia, whose native syennesis, or king,
retained both title and authority. We have, however,
1
FROM NEBUCHADNEZZAR TO CONSTANTINE 59
a confused and particularly fragmentary record of
what actually happened in the two hundred years that
elapsed between Zerubbabel and Alexander. Changes
of great moment in the political, social, and religious life
of the Jews were undoubtedly taking place, since we
find those changes completed a few years later, but we
can only conjecture the stages of the process. On the
whole our sources, till considerably later, are very
imperfect. The Persian period forms the largest gap
in the history of the Jews.
A great many Biblical scholars, particularly in Ger-
many, assign to this period an influence nothing short
of fundamental. A large part of the texts now gathered
in the Bible are placed in this time. The extreme view
practically refers the beginning of Jewish history to
this date, and assumes that only a very small part of the
older literature and institutions survived the Babylonian
exile. The new community began its life, it is asserted,
with elements almost wholly dependent upon the civil-
ization of Babylon and Persia.
It is extremely unlikely that this theory is correct.
Every individual assertion of course must be judged in
the light of the evidence presented for it. And on this
point it may be sufficient to mention that the evidence
for almost every position is of the feeblest. It consists
largely in apparent inconsistencies of statements or
allusions, for which the theory advanced suggests a
hypothetical reconciliation. If these hypotheses are to
be considered scientifically, they at best present a possi-
ble solution and always only one of many possible solu-
6o THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
tions. But the general theory suffers from an incon-
sistency much graver than those it attempts to remove.
The inconsistency lies in this : The soil of Palestine,
never of high fertility, had greatly deteriorated by the
frequent wars of the seventh century and the neglect
and desolation of the following centuries. Commerce,
because of the absence of ports, was practically non-
existent. Those who returned can scarcely have found
time for anything else than the bare problem of living.
In these circumstances it is obviously improbable that
a literary activity rich and powerful enough to have
created the masterpieces often assigned to this period
can have existed. The conditions of pioneers do not
readily lend themselves to such activities. City life, an
essential prerequisite of high achievements in art, was
being reconstructed very slowly and was confined almost
wholly to Jerusalem. The difficulty is a serious one,
and is quite disregarded by many scholars to whom the
bleakness of our records of this time affords a constant
temptation.
Jewish soldiers fought in the armies of their Persian
master wherever these armies went. Some must have
been among the Syrian contingent at Marathon and
Plataea.' The garrisons of the frontiers contained
many of them. Recently a fortunate accident has dis-
closed, at the upper cataract of the Nile, a garrison com-
munity of Jews, of which the records, known as the
Assuan and Elephantine papyri,^ have opened up quite
new vistas in Jewish history. Perhaps the most impor-
tant point established is the beginning of the Diaspora.
FROM NEBUCHADNEZZAR TO CONSTANTINE 6i
The existence of communities of Jews outside of Pal-
estine, developing their own traditions and assimilating
their appearance and social customs to those of their
neighbors, is a matter of capital importance for the his-
tory of later Jewry. When such communities multi-
plied, Jerusalem came more and more to have a merely
religious presidency over them, and the constitution of
Judea itself became determined by that fact, while the
foundations were being laid for the career of religious
propaganda later so successfully undertaken.
The virtual autonomy of the Persian period allowed
the development of a well-organized ruling caste of
priests, in which were perhaps included the Soferim, or
Scribes, men learned in the Law, who had no definite
priestly functions. The scope of the high priest's juris-
diction, the extent of his powers, may not have been
sharply defined as yet. In itself the presence of a high
priest as head of the state was not at all unusual in that
region. As has been said, the interference of the repre-
sentative of the Persian sovereign was a variable quan-
tity. In the second half of the fifth century a Jew,
Nehemiah, held the office of tirshatha, or viceroy, an
accident that was of inestimable value to the growing
community, and may have finally secured the threatened
political existence of Jerusalem.
One other political event, of which we have dim and
confused accounts, was a rebellion — whether in or of
Judea — under Artaxerxes Ochus (359-338 b. c. e.).
The account of Josephus speaks of feuds in the high-
priestly family, the murder of a claimant in the temple
(>2 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
precincts, and the intervention of the all-powerful
eunuch Bagoas." That some such thing happened there
can be no reasonable doubt, although we cannot recover
the details. It is, however, unwarranted to make the
incident in any way typical of the fortunes of Judea
during Persian rule. There was no tradition in later
times of Persian oppression, nor can even this rebellion,
if rebellion it was, have involved serious repressive
measures, since the Greek invasion a few years later
found the Jews loyal to their overlord.
When the Macedonian Alexander changed the face
of the East, the Jews were swept along with the rest of
the loose-jointed empire built by Cyrus and Darius.
Upon Alexander's death, after uncertainties which the
w^iole Levant shared, Palestine fell to Egypt, of which
it was a natural geographical appanage as it had been
for millennia before. Under the suzerainty of the
Ptolemies the Jewish communities in Egypt received
very considerable reinforcements, and the home-coun-
try became a real national expression, and rapidly
attained a relatively high degree of material well-being,
since the practical autonomy of Persian days was con-
tinued. Seized by Antiochus of Asia in the decrepitude
of Egypt, Judea entered with full national conscious-
ness into the heterogeneous kingdom ruled by a singu-
larly fantastic royal house. A blunder in policy of the
peculiarly fantastic Epiphanes provoked a revolt that
was immediately successful in causing the prompt aban-
donment of the policy, and was helped by dynastic
chaos to a still larger measure of success.
FROM NEBUCHADNEZZAR TO CONSTANTINE 63
The leaders of that revolt, the Hasmonai family, pro-
duced a succession of able soldiers. Besides the old
Mattathiah and his heroic son Judah, Jonathan, Simon,
and John, by selling their service dearly to this one or
that one of the Syrian pretenders, by understandings
with the ubiquitous Roman emissaries, above all by
military skill of the first order, changed the virtual
autonomy of Persian and Ptolemaic times into a real
one, in which Syrian suzerainty was a tradition, active
enough under the vigorous Sidetes, non-existent under
the imbecile Cyzicenus."
During all this time Jews, from personal choice and
royal policy, had extended their dispersion through-
out the new cities founded by their Seleucid masters.
Until the battle of Magnesia, 190 b. c. e., Asia Minor
was the real center of the Seleucid monarchy ; and in the
innumerable cities established there, Jews in large num-
bers settled. When Judea became independent there
were probably as many Jews outside of it as within it.
With the Hasmonean princes — " high priest " is the
title which the Hebrew legend on their coins gives
them ^ — the country entered upon a career of conquest.
Galilee, Idumaea, the coast cities of Philistia, portions
of Gilead were seized by John, or Aristobulus, or Alex-
ander, so that Judea rapidly became one of the impor-
tant kingdoms of the East, with which no one could fail
to reckon who became active in the affairs of that
region. Rome had backed the Hasmoneans against
Syria so long as Syria presented the possibility of
becoming dangerous. But that soon ceased. By a
64 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
strange paradox of history the Hellenized East found
its last champion against the Romans in the Persian
kings of Pontus, and when Mithradates was crushed, it
could only be a question of the order in which every
fragment of Alexander's empire would slip into the
maw of the eagles. The Roman liquidator, Pompey,
appeared in Asia, and Antioch became a suburb of
Rome.
The pretext for clearing their way to Egypt by tak-
ing Judea presented itself in a disputed succession.
The sons of Alexander Jannai were compelled to accept
the arbitrament of the Romans, with the usual result.
The loser in the award, Aristobulus, attempted to make
good by arms what he had lost in the decision. A
Roman army promptly invested Jerusalem, moved by
the patent injustice of allowing a capable and vigorous
prince to usurp the place of a submissive weakling. The
Roman general walked into the inner court of the tem-
ple, and peered into the Holy of Holies. He found
nothing for his pains, but his act symbolized the pres-
ence of the master, and left a fine harvest of hate and
distrust for the next generations to reap.
From that time on, the history of Judea is the not
uncommon one of a Roman dependency. The political
changes are interesting and dramatic but not of particu-
lar importance : vassal kings, docile tetrarchs, finally
superseded by the Roman procurator with all the
machinery of his office. Judea was different only in
that her rebellions were more formidable and obstinate.
But Rome had developed a habit of crushing rebellions.
FROM NEBUCHADNEZZAR TO CONSTANTINE 65
Simeon bar Kosiba, known chiefly as Bar-Kochba, was
the last Jew to offer armed resistance. With his death
the poHtical history of Judea comes to an end.
The rehgious and social history of the Jews had for
many centuries ceased to be identical with that of their
country. It was a minority of Jews then living that
participated in the rebellion of 68, and perhaps a still
smaller fraction that took part in the rising under
Trajan and Hadrian. The interest of all Jews in the
fortunes of Judea must at all times have been lively
and deep, but the feeling was different in the case of
non-Palestinian Jews from that of men toward their
fatherland.
Meeting for the study of their ancient lore in their
'' guild-house," the proseucha, or schola, the Jewish
citizens of the various cities of the Roman empire or the
Parthian kingdom did not present to their neighbors a
spectacle so unique as to arrest the latter's attention at
once. They were simply a group of allied cult-com-
munities, sometimes possessing annoying exemptions or
privileges, but not otherwise exceptional. An excep-
tional position begins for them when their privileges
are abolished, and their civil rights curtailed, by the
legislation of the early Christian emperors.
CHAPTER V
INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE JEWS
DURING THE PERSIAN PERIOD
The Jews took to Babylon a highly complicated body
of civil law and religious doctrine. The essence of the
latter was an exclusive monotheism, and that belief was
not the possession of a cultured few, but the accepted
credo of the entire nation. No doubt, among the com-
mon people, practices still existed that implied the recog-
nition of polytheism. No doubt, too, words and phrases
occurred in common speech, in poetry, and in ritual,
which had arisen in polytheistic times, and are fully
intelligible only with a polytheistic background. But
these phrases and practices do not imply the survival of
polytheism, either as a whole or in rudimentary form,
any more than using the names of the Teutonic gods for
the days of the week commits us to the worship of those
gods, or the various funeral superstitions still in vogue
allow the inference that our present-day religion is a
worship of the Di Manes.
Just as the Jewish religion was in a highly developed
form at the time of the Exile, so the Law was very
fully developed. That the entire Law, as embodied in
the Pentateuch, was promulgated by Moses is not alto-
gether likely, but that any considerable fraction of it is
later than 586 b. c. e. is equally unlikely. Interpolations
THE JEWS DURING THE PERSIAN PERIOD 67
doubtless occurred often. To insert into an authorita-
tive text an inference from the words which the inter-
polator honestly believed to be true, was not a generally
reprehended practice. Perhaps some of the emphasis
upon sacerdotal organization which parts of the Penta-
teuch show, may have so been imported into the con-
stituent codes of the Torah. But on how slight a scale
this was can be readily seen by comparing the Penta-
teuch with any of the apocryphal books consciously
designed to magnify the priesthood.^ The actual civil
law bears every mark of high antiquity. The religious
law is at least not inconsistent with such antiquity.
Now neither in civil law nor in religious thought did
the community that slowly formed itself about the
acropolis of Zion remain stationary. We must suppose
that the energies of the returning exiles were pretty
well concentrated upon the economic problems before
them. But an actual community they were from the
start, and although the communal life was far from
attaining at once to the richness of former days, it con-
tained all the elements necessary. Without a common
law, i. e. a regulation of conflicting claims to property,
and without a common cult, i. e. a regulation of the com-
munication between the divine and the human members
of a state, no state was conceivable to the ancient world.
Changed conditions will infallibly modify both, and
some of these modifications it will be necessary to
understand.
We possess in the book known as Ben Sira, or
Ecclesiasticus/ an invaluable and easily dated record
68 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
of life as it appeared to a cultured and wealthy inhabi-
tant of Jerusalem about the year 200 b. c. e. The inci-
dental references to past time and, above all, the infer-
ences which may legitimately be drawn about the
origins of a society so completely organized as that of
Judea at that time, render recourse to the book a neces-
sity at many points of our investigation. While accord-
ingly we find it a convenient terminus in both directions,
we must make large individual qualifications. Ben Sira
does not fully represent his time or his people. He
belonged to a definite social stratum. His own studies
and reflections had no doubt developed conclusions
that were far from being generally shared. But he is
an eloquent and unimpeachable witness that the Biblical
books had already reached a high measure of sanctity,
and the division later perpetuated in the tripartite canon
of Law, Prophets, and Writings, already existed ; and,
if nothing else, the single reference to Isaiah as the
prophet of consolation renders it probable that even so
heterogeneous a corpus as the canonical Isaiah was
already extant much as we have it now.^
Opinions may differ as to the length of time necessary
to permit this development. But that a very few gen-
erations could have sufficed for it is scarcely credible.
Since even the Secondary Canon, that of the prophets,
had already become a rigid one, in which historical dif-
ferences in parts of the same book were ignored, the
Law must have been fixed for an even longer time, and
the process of interpretation which every living code
requires must have gone on apace for very many years
indeed.
THE JEWS DURING THE PERSIAN PERIOD 69
We know very little of the actual agencies by which
this process was effected. The second great code of the
Jews was not finally fixed till 200 c. e. We are, how-
ever, measurably familiar with the organization of the
judiciary for some two centuries before, but even here
there are distressing gaps, and for the time before
Hillel the tradition is neither clear nor full. All, there-
fore, that concerns the organization of the judicial
bodies that framed and applied the Law must be con-
jectured, and the earliest conjectures embodied in Tal-
mudic tradition are perhaps as good as any. The devel-
opment of " houses of prayer " was a necessity where
so many Jewish communities were incapacitated from
sharing in the great cult ceremonies at Jerusalem, and
these houses became a convenience within Palestine and
Jerusalem itself. But the creation of houses of prayer
demanded local organization, and with that local organ-
ization gradations of members and the establishment
of local magistrates. There can be little doubt that the
organization of the Greek city-state, familiar to the
East for many years, became a model for these cor-
porately organized communities. Now the judicial
function inherent in the character of ancient magis-
trates of all descriptions might easily have been the
means of originating that long series of responsa from
which the later Mishnah was finally winnowed. With
every increase of population, power, and governmental
machinery, the judicial system increased in complexity,
and the intimate relation which the civil code bore to the
ancient sacred code, as well as the close penetration of
70 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
life by religion, tended to render the complexity still
more intricate.
But if the origin of the oral law, in its application at
least, can be made clear to ourselves only by means of
such imaginative reconstruction, we are helped on the
side of Jewish religious development by the possession
of at least one fact of prime importance. The religious
system of the Bible knows of a life after death, in Sheol,
but does not know of a survival of personality. War-
lock and witch, by such incantations as were used by
Odysseus at the mouth of the dread cave, or by the wise
woman at En-Dor, could give the shadowy ghost enough
outline to be recognizable under his former name, but
for the most part all these flitting spirits were equal
and undistinguishable. But about loo b. c. e. there was
current generally, although not universally, a very dif-
ferent belief, to wit, that in Sheol, or the grave, per-
sonality was not extinguished, but at most suspended ;
and that under certain conditions it might, or certainly
would, be permanently continued. In other words,
between the deportation to Babylon and the culmination
of the Hasmonean rule, the belief about life after death
had very considerably changed for most people. And
the change was of a nature that must inevitably have
affected conduct, since the acceptability of man's life
could no longer be proved by the naively simple method
of Eliphaz the Temanite," nor yet by the austere con-
sciousness of rectitude that was the ideal of the prophets.
Transferred to a world beyond perception, reward and
penalty gave the Torah a superhuman sanction, which
THE JEWS DURING THE PERSIAN PERIOD 71
must have been far more powerful than we can now
readily imagine.
It is idle to look for the origin of this belief in any one
series of influences. For many generations poets and
philosophers had swung themselves in bolder and bolder
imagery up to the Deity, which they, as Jews, conceived
in so intense and personal a fashion. Very many pas-
sages in the Bible have seemed to imply a belief in per-
sonal immortality and resurrection, and perhaps do
imply such a belief. Nor is it necessary to assume that
these passages are of late origin. Some of them may
be, but one would have to be very certain of the limita-
tions of poetic exaltation to say just what definite back-
ground of belief metaphor and hyperbole demand. We
shall not go far wrong if we assume that even before
the Exile, individual thinkers had conceived, perhaps
even preached, the dogma of personal immortality. Its
general acceptance among the people occurred in the
period previously mentioned. Its official authorization
took place much later in the final triumph of Pharisaism.
Personal immortality and resurrection of the body
are kindred, but not identical, conceptions. Of the two,
resurrection is probably the older, and resurrection, we
may note, implies a real suspension of personality, when
the body is dissolved in death. But the body may be
recombined, and, when that occurs, the personal life is
renewed. The exact time must have been very differ-
ently conceived by different men. A great many, how-
ever, had already very definite fancies — one can hardly
say beliefs — as to the great day that would deliver the
T2 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
souls from Sheol. That such a great day would come,
on which the whole cosmos would be permanently read-
justed, is the essence of all eschatology. It was only
natural that all other hopes of the people should tend
to be combined with it ; and of these hopes the principal
one was the Messianic hope.
It is obvious that no adequate discussion of the
development of this hope can be given here, even if our
fragmentary sources permitted such discussion. The
most that can be done is to state the situation briefly. It
is all the more important, as the Messianic idea was the
source of the most powerful political movements among
the people, and the direct occasion of at least one of the
desperate insurrections of the Jews.
Many nations look back to a golden age of power and
prosperity, and forward to a future restoration of it.
The Jews likewise never forgot the kingdom of David
and Solomon, and saw no reason to despair of its return.
As a matter of fact, the Hasmonean rule at its greatest
extent was practically such a restoration. But condi-
tions and people had radically changed between David
and Alexander Jannai. In looo b. c. e. it was a mighty
achievement for the small tribal confederation to have
dominated its corner of the Levant, to have held in
check the powerful coast cities of Philistia, to have been
sought in alliance by Tyre and Egypt. In lOO b. c. e.,
men's minds had long been accustomed to the rise and
fall of great empires. Assyria, Babylonia, Persia,
Macedon, Egypt, Syria, Athens, and Sparta, and in the
distant west Carthage and Rome, had at different times
THE JEWS DURING THE PERSIAN PERIOD 73
been lords of many lands. The Judean kingdom itself
had arisen from the wreckage of such an empire. It
was accordingly a different political ideal that filled the
imagination of every nation at this time. To secure
and maintain the independence of a few square miles
of semi-arid soil between the Jordan and the Sea was
no deed to puff men with inordinate pride, however
difficult of actual accomplishment it was. As a step
toward larger deeds, however, it was notable enough.
What was the larger deed, and how was it to be
accomplished ? However disproportionate it may seem
to us, it was nothing else than the dominion over the
whole world, to be accomplished by sudden and miracu-
lous conversion of men's souls for the most part, or by
force of arms, if it should prove necessary. And, as
was natural enough, it was in the ancient royal line, the
stock of David, that the leader, the Anointed of God,
was to be found.
The family of David, which was still important and
powerful when Zechariah xii.was written (perhaps the
fourth century b. c. e.) , had evidently since fallen on evil
days. It cannot, of course, have entirely disappeared,
but no member of undoubted Davidic lineage arises to
make political pretensions. It is even likely that, in the
absence of adequate records, and with the loss of
importance which the family suffered during the fourth
and third centuries b. c. e., it had become impossible for
anyone to prove descent from David.
None the less, perhaps because of the decline of the
family, popular imagination clung to the royal house.
74 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
In the bitter days of exile, the writer of Psalm Ixxxix.
loses no faith in the destiny of David's line:
I have made a covenant with My chosen,
I have sworn unto David, My servant,
Thy seed will I establish forever,
And build up thy throne to all generations.
So the author of First Maccabees, a loyal supporter
of a non-Davidic dynasty, puts in the mouth of the
dying Mattathiah the acknowledgment of the ultimate
sovereignty of the ancient house : '' David for being
merciful possessed the throne of an everlasting king-
dom " (I Mace. ii. 57).
The certainty of this high destiny grew inversely with
the political fortunes of the people. But when even
the Hasmoneans fell, and Judea, so far from increas-
ing the possessions of Solomon, found herself a hope-
lessly insignificant fraction of a huge empire, it was not
merely the political side of the Messianic idea that fed
upon its non-realization. Obscure economic and re-
ligious factors had long been operative, and all these
raised popular temper to a point of high and, as it
proved, destructive tension. It must always be remem-
bered that those who undertook to lead the people
against the Romans did not aim at the restoration of
the Hasmonean or even Solomonic kingdom. The
establishment of a throne in Jerusalem was the first step
of that triumphant march through the world which
would inaugurate the reign of the God-anointed son of
David. The Judean zealots fought for no mean prize.
The Jews who came into contact with Greeks and
Romans were a people whose development had been
THE JEWS DURING THE PERSIAN PERIOD 75
continuous from the earliest times. The cataclysms of
their history had produced disturbances, but no break
in their institutional growth. To the civil codes of the
ancient polity they were in the process of adding a new
body of law based upon judicial decisions. To the
ethical monotheism of their former development the
popular mind was adding a belief in personal immortal-
ity and bodily resurrection. Folk-lore and superstitions
on one side, and speculative philosophy on the other,
were busy here, as they were busy everywhere, in modi-
fying the attitude of the people toward the established
religion.
Finally the Messianic idea was gaining strength and
form. In essence a hope for future prosperity, it had
united in itself all the dreams and fancies of the people,
which had arisen in many ways. It became in the end
the dream of a world-monarchy, in which a scion of
David's line would be king of kings and give law to the
world from Jerusalem. The ushering in of that era
soon became a great day of judgment affecting the
whole universe and ardently desired to correct the
oppressive evils of actual life.
CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK
AND JEW
Jews came into the occidental horizon as part of
a larger whole. That whole was known as Syria.
Unfortunately Syria itself is a very vague term, and is
without real ethnographic or geographic unity. It
might include Mesopotamia and all the intervening
region between the Taurus and Egypt. One might sup-
pose that with such a people as the Phoenicians Greek
dealings had been so extensive and frequent that it was
impossible to call them out of their name, but Tyrians
too are considered and spoken of as branches of the
Syrians. The name soon became practically a descrip-
tive epithet, more or less derogatory in its implication.*
The lower part of the region between the Taurus
and Sinai was known to Greeks as Syria Palaestina, a
name almost certainly derived from the Philistine cities
whose position on the coast and whose origin made
them familiar to traders. The Greeks knew, of course,
that variously denominated tribes occupied the hinter-
land, but what little they knew about them did not until
somewhat later get into the literary fragments that
have come down to us. Perhaps they would not even
have been surprised to learn that here, as in Asia Minor,
a very large number of peoples had settled and fought
and jumbled one another into what seemed to superficial
outsiders a common group of Syrians,
CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW 77
The particular section later occupied by the Jews had
itself been the scene of a racial babel. The Israelites
were, by their tradition, expressly commanded to dis-
possess Hittite, Girgashite, Canaanite, Amorite, Periz-
zite, Hivite, and Jebusite.^ The recurrence of this
enumeration indicates an historical basis for the tradi-
tion. It is very likely that nations so named were
actually subdued by the invading. Hebrews. The fact
that the tribes dispossessed are seven in number makes
caution necessary in accepting the statement. Perhaps
some of these " nations " are different names for the
same group. Some of them, e. g. Hittite or Amorite,
may be vague descriptive terms, like Syrian or even
Hebrew.
Then there were the Phoenicians, representing per-
haps the first Semitic invasion of this territory. Below
them, the Philistines, '' from Caphthor," who are very
plausibly identified with Cretans or " Minoans," the
Keftiu of the Egyptians.^ During Mesopotamian and
Egyptian sovereignty, Mesopotamian and Egyptian
infiltration may be safely assumed. The desert never
ceased to contribute its share of tribes. Permanent
results of such nomad invasions were the settlement of
the various Hebrew tribes — Moab and Edom in the
southeast and Israel on both sides of the Jordan.
If the analogy of other times and places is to be fol-
lowed, no one of these groups was ever completely and
literally exterminated. Jewish tradition knows of an
attempted extermination — that of the Amalekites —
only as a very exceptional thing. The resultant nation-
alities, which in Greek times occupied Palestine, were
78 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
likely enough to have been of somewhat mixed origin.
When the Greeks came to know them well, however,
the Jews had long been a well-defined group, frowning
upon intermarriage, although it is not likely that the
prohibition of connubium had its source in any impor-
tance attached to racial purity, or that all Jews every-
where were equally strict in enforcing it/
As has been suggested, the first contact was probably
military. Since Jews served in the Persian armies as
far south as Elephantine, they probably were equally
present in the battalions of Datis and of Mardonius.'
Another early contact was in the slave-mart, no doubt
both as buyers and the bought. Enterprising Tyrian
traders had made themselves comfortable in Jeru-
salem before Nehemiah (Neh. xiii. 6), and human
commodities formed the chief merchandise of most
commerce. Before him, perhaps before the Exile, Joel
reproaches the Phoenicians with the words, '' The chil-
dren also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have
ye sold unto the Grecians."" " Syrus " had become a
common slave-name in Greece in the fifth century, and
Syrus might include anything.^
All these scattered and uncertain hints do not tend
to present a very clear picture. However, the time
was rapidly coming when Greek contact with " Syria "
was to be vastly more intimate.
In the spring of 334 b. c. e., Alexander crossed the
Hellespont to carry out the cherished vision of Isocrates,
a united Hellas drastically stamping out the Persian
peril. From the complete success of his efforts we are
CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW 79
wont to date the so-called Hellenistic epoch, the period
in which Greek influences in art, government, and society
were dominant. But Hellenization had in actual fact
begun long ago in the domain of art. It had penetrated
central Asia Minor far back in the seventh century b. c.
E.," and the magnificent '' satrap-sarcophagus " at Sidon
shows how thoroughly it was appreciated at the very
borders of Judea well in the middle of the fifth century
B. c. E.*" A generation before Alexander the king of
Sidon bore a Greek name.^**
So the ''king of Yavan," who received the submission
of Jerusalem, passed, on his way to Egypt, among a
people to whom the name of Greek was quite familiar —
who had long known of Greek skill in craftsmanship,
Greek prowess on the field of battle, and Greek shrewd-
ness in bargaining. The new empire, on the dizzy
throne of which Alexander placed himself, seemed to
all the East commensurate with the whole world, and
to the kinsmen of the new king of kings and lord of
lords all men were ready enough to grant the deference
formerly owed to Persians.
At Alexander's untimely death it could scarcely have
seemed to men that great changes were impending. On
the contrary, the prestige of his literally miraculous
successes, the impress of his powerful and fascinating
personality, continued for a long time. It might be
doubtful — in fact, it must have immediately become
uncertain — whether the persons to whom the actual
administration of afifairs would fall, would be of Alex-
ander's blood. The satraps of the old regime had to
8o THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
some extent been displaced by the great king's generals.
Every one of these was convinced that the coveted prize
would fall to the strongest or cleverest or quickest ; but
for a while a short and troubled truce was maintained
under the shadow of regal authority embodied in the
poor fool Arrhidaeus and the unborn child of Roxane.
When the young Alexander was born, the conditions
at Babylon challenged the intriguing of every court-
parasite. Ptolemy, son of Lagos, satrap of Egypt, was
the first to disregard the confused and divided authority
of the zany king and his baby colleague. A general
debacle followed. Palestine suffered more than others,
because it was unfortunately situated on the road to
Egypt. But by about 300 b. c. e. the country was
definitely settled as a province of Egypt, and it entered
upon a century of extraordinary and varied growth.
It is just about this time that unmistakable knowledge
of the Jews themselves, as a separate nationality of
Syrians, is evidenced in extant Greek writers. His-
tories of the nearer and of the remote East, impressions
of travel and concatenation of irresponsible gossip of
all sorts had long been written by Greeks. Some of
these may well have contained reference to the Jews.
In the fifth century, Herodotus speaks of the " Syrians
of Palestine " in connection with the rite of circum-
cision, which, he claims to know from the testimony
of the Syrians themselves, was derived from Egypt."
However, he obviously writes at second hand, so that
we have no means of knowing whether or not he refers
to Jews. That he knew the name 'lovhaloi is not likely,
CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW 8i
but the fact that his source was probably a hterary one
makes it possible to date the acquaintance of Greeks
with the practice of circumcision in this region, and
therefore perhaps with Jews, at least to the beginning
of the fifth century b. c. e.
The peculiar natural phenomena of the Dead Sea
attracted the attention of travelers from very early
times. Aristotle discusses it, and after him — no doubt
before him, as well — the collectors of wonder-tales, of
which we have so many later specimens. Interest in
the Dead Sea, however, by no means implied interest in
those who dwelt on its borders, and the story of the
bituminous formation on the water and the curious
manner in which it was collected could be and was told
without so much as a mention of the name of Jews.''
But they are mentioned, and for the first time in
extant Greek writers, by the famous pupil and successor
of Aristotle, Theophrastus of Lesbos. The passage
does not occur in any one of the works of Theophrastus
which we have in bulk, such ns the Characters or the
Natural History. It is a quotation made by the Neopla-
tonic philosopher Porphyrins, who wrote somewhere
about 275 c. E. The quotation may, in accordance with
ancient custom, be of substance rather than verbatim.
Faulty memory may have further diminished its value
for our purposes. When we add to these facts possible
uncertainties in the transmission of the text of Por-
phyrius, we are in a fair way of realizing from what
dubious material we must piece our knowledge together.
6
82 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The passage is in itself, except perhaps for one casual
phrase, strangely unimportant, but as the earliest plain
reference to Jews in a Greek writer it deserves citation
in full:
t^ As a matter of fact, if the Jews, those Syrians who still
maintain the ancient form of animal sacrifice, were to urge
us to adopt their method, we should probably find the practice
repellent. Their system is the following : they do not eat of
the sacrificial flesh, but burn all of it at night, after they have
poured a great deal of honey and wine upon it. The sacrifice
they seek to complete rather rapidly, so that the All-Seer may
not become a witness of pollution. Throughout the entire
time, inasmuch as they are philosophers by race, they discuss
the nature of the Deity among themselves, and spend the night
in observing the stars, looking up at them and invoking them
I as divine in their prayers.
As Reinach points out," there is scarcely a correct
word in this description considered as an account of
actual Jewish sacrificial rites. If we have a correct, or
even approximately correct, version of Theophrastus'
report, he or his informant was curiously misinformed.
This informant obviously could not have been a Jew.
No Jew could have been so ignorant of the customs of
his people. Nor did his statement come directly from
any one who had actually witnessed, from the Court of
the Gentiles, even a small part of a Jewish sacrifice. It
may well be that we have before us an inextricable con-
fusion between Jewish and other Syrian rites. We are
left to wholly uncontrolled speculation, if we are bent
on knowing whence Theophrastus derived the assertions
he makes here.
The important words of the passage are found in the
casual phrase are </)tAoo-o^ot to yeVos ovres, '' inasmuch as
CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW 83
they are philosophers by race." The phrasing indicates
that this aspect of the Jews is not wholly new. Word
had come to Theophrastus, and to others before him,
of a Syrian people not far from the coast, whose ritual
in some respects — though the transmission is confused
as to what respects — differed from that of their neigh-
bors, but whose customs were strikingly different, in^
one particular, that part of their divine observance
was some form of theologic discussion. That, as we
know, was a fact, since '' houses of prayer " — we may
call them synagogues — already existed. This reference
to them is the one kernel of observed fact in this whole
description, however indirectly obtained.
Now the Greeks of the fourth century knew of
esoteric religious communities, and they knew of
nations that professed to be especially attached to
religious practices. But groups of mystae engaged in
rapt spiritual converse were never coextensive with
entire nations. And '' religious " nations might be sim-
ply those among whom an elaborate state cult was
punctiliously performed. Even theocracies were no
unheard-of thing. Sidon was such a theocracy ; i. e.
theoretically ruled by the god and administered by his
priest." But that too was largely formal, not strikingly
different from the patronage of Athena over Athens.
The Jewish theocracy was a more intensely real matter
than this, but that fact could not have been apparent to
either merchant or traveler, from whom in the last
analysis the information about Jews before 300 b. c. e.
must have come. If, therefore, Greeks found some-
84 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
thing in the religious customs of the Jews that aroused
immediate attention, it was the very general interest
and participation of the masses in the theological dis-
cussion as it was carried on in the synagogues.
This fact alone would justify the use of the term
(f)LX6(TO(j>oL, ''philosophers." Theology, the knowledge of
the high gods, was an accredited branch of wisdom
which the Platonic Socrates strove with a little too
palpable irony to elicit from Euthyphro. Those who
busied themselves with it were properly termed philos-
ophers, whatever may have been the conclusions they
reached! If we venture to assume that the conclusions
« — .
which the Jews had long reached were actually known,
Theophrastus' phrase could only have been confirmed.
An exclusive monotheism was in every sense a philo-
_ .^ ,rier~ — ———————— ' "
sophic and not a popular concept.
A contemporary of Theophrastus was Clearchus of
Soli in Cyprus. Of his writings none whatever has
survived, except quotations in other books. Among
other works he wrote dialogues more or less after the
Platonic manner, in which his master Aristotle is inter-
locutor in place of Socrates. One of these dialogues
was marked, no doubt as a subtitle, Trepl vttvov, " On
Sleep," and in this dialogue an encounter of Aristotle
with a Hellenized Jew is described.
We need not seriously consider the question whether
such an encounter actually occurred. It is not in the
least likely that it did. The only inferences that may
be drawn from this passage are those that concern
Clearchus.
CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW 85
Aristotle is the narrator, and tells his story, as he
takes pains to say, according to the rules formulated in
Rhetoric." He had met a man in Asia, a Jew of Coele-
Syria by birth, but Grecized in speech and in soul. This
Greek or Jew voluntarily sought out Aristotle and
his associates, ttci/ow/acvo? avrwv T^? (7o<^ta9, ** to find out
whether they were really as wise as their reputation."
On the whole, however, he had given rather than
received edification."
What it was in this man's conversation that so
strongly aroused the approval of Clearchus we are not
told. Josephus, in whose Contra Apionem we find the
passage, ends here, to tell us briefiy that the rest of
Aristotle's story described the man's great strength of
character and the admirable self-control of his habits of
life. It may be suspected that Clearchus' Jew is little
more than a mouthpiece for his own ethical doctrines,
a sort of fourth century Ingenu, or Candide.^^ But
what he does actually say is of great interest.
We have here the first mention of the capital in the
form Jerusaleme, introduced, it may be noted, for its
outlandish sound. And we have the statement, curious
enough to our ears, that the Jews are descendants of
Hindu philosophers, who bear the name of Jews in
Syria and Calani in India. Elsewhere Clearchus asserts
an exactly similar connection between the Persian magi
and the Hindu gymnosophists." It is obvious that
Clearchus has the caste organization of the magi in
mind, and that his knowledge of Jews is as mediate and
remote as that of Theophrastus.
86 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The connection of the Jews with India was evidently
a hasty conclusion, arrived at when knowledge came to
the Greeks of the existence of castes whose function
was principally religious. The statement is repeated
by a man who should have known better — Megasthenes,
Seleucus' ambassador to India. '' All that has been
written on natural science by the old Greek philoso-
phers," he tells us, '' may also be found in philos-
ophers outside of Greece, such as the Hindu Brahmans
and the so-called Jews of Syria." ^ He is of course
quite wrong as to the facts. But his statement is
evidence of the wide currency of the opinion that the
Jews possessed a very special and very profound lore.
Megasthenes, it may be noted, does not state or imply
that the Greeks were borrowers. If he had done so,
the writer in whose book we find the citation, Clemens
of Alexandria (about 180 c. e.), would have pounced
upon it. Clemens was eagerly searching for demonstra-
tion of the thesis set up by many Jews and most early
Christians, that all Greek science and philosophy were
derived from an imagined early communication between
Moses and the first Asiatic philosophers."^
Theophrastus, Clearchus, and Megasthenes, all of
them belonging to the generation of or immediately
after Alexander, hold largely the same views. Influ-
ence of one of them upon the others is practically
excluded. We may find in them accordingly such
knowledge of the Jews as at about 300 b. c. e. had
reached educated Greeks.
CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW 87
If we try to imagine how this information reached
them, we are reduced to pure speculation. It does not
seem to have been a common Hterary source, although it
is likely enough that in the numerous histories of the
East, now lost, casual and inaccurate references were
made to the Jews. And again it is not likely that the
vastly increased communication that followed Alex-
ander's campaign, at once brought the Jews much more
prominently within the circle of Greek interest. In
those days, the land-passage hugged the sea as closely
as the sea-passage hugged the land. Judea was a little
inland country, somewhat out of the line of direct com-
munication between the Euphrates and the Nile. If
then the current views, expressed as they are by
Theophrastus and his contemporaries, had neither a
literary source nor one of direct report, it can only have
spread as an indirect, filtered rumor, perhaps by way of
Phoenicians, Syrians, and Egyptians.
As far as Phoenicians and Syrians are concerned,
immediate contact with the Jews must have existed.
Tyrians and Sidonians and Philistines are frequently
mentioned in the post-Exilic books of the Bible." This
contact was not wholly hostile, though it was often so ;
but if these nations were the sources of Greek informa-
tion about the Jews, the hostility is not apparent. Per-
haps in the generations between Zechariah and Alex-
ander it had disappeared. At all events, it would appear
that the Canaanite neighbors of the Jews really knew
very little about them, except that the Jews were the
residents of the hills about Jerusalem, and that they
88 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
had highly characteristic rehgious rites — characteristic
principally in the earnestness with which they were
performed.
In Egypt, a country that had never ceased to be
in communication with Greece from very early times,
and particularly since the founding of a Greek city
at Naucratis, in Egypt itself, about the middle of
the sixth century b. c. e., there had been communities of
Jews from times that antedated the Persian conquest.
Into the situation here, newly discovered papyri at
Assuan and Elephantine allow us a glimpse, but only a
glimpse. Even the little we know includes one case
of bitter conflict between Jews and Egyptians." No
doubt it was not the only case of its kind. Egyptians,
we may be sure, knew of the Jews in the communities
in which Jews lived, and one might suppose that Greek
visitors to Egypt would at some time stumble across
Jews there. However, our extant sources, which speak
of Egyptians often enough, do not seem to have recog-
nized the presence of foreign elements in the Egyptian
population. It was reserved for the papyri to show us
Persians, Syrians, Babylonians, and Jews established in
the land as individuals and in groups.
The view of the Jews that represented them as a
mystical sect did not cease when Judea became an
important political factor in the East. One Greek
thinker particularly had professed so strange and
esoteric a doctrine that his biographers and critics
inevitably looked for the source of it in non-Greek
tribes and especially in those who had otherwise
CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW 89
obtained a reputation for wisdom of various kinds.
This was Pythagoras. Some seventy-five years after
Theophrastus, Hermippus of Smyrna, in his Life of
Pythagoras, ascribed certain definite doctrines of the
latter to the Jews and Thracians/^ Pythagoras as a
matter of fact had traveled extensively, and had
brought to his Italian home little fragments of exotic
lore variously derived. That his philosophy was influ-
enced by them, there is no sufficient proof, much less
based upon them, and the general belief that he was so
influenced had probably no sounder foundation than the
indubitable strangeness of the rites he instituted and his
personal mannerisms. But in later times Pythagoras
was a name to conjure with for those who were bent on
establishing a connection between the Jews and the
Greeks. Hermippus had numerous imitators among
later Jewish and Christian writers.
We shall of course never be able to discover the
particular moment that marked the first meeting of
Jew and Greek. The contact that is indicated in the
words of Theophrastus or Megasthenes is already of
some duration. The term 'lovSato? has a definite mean-
ing for educated Greeks. It denoted a Syrian sect, liv-
ing together about their rock-citadel and akin in doc-
trine and probably in blood to the Persian Magi and
Hindu gymnosophists. More exact information was
scarcely available. The two non-Judean sections where
Jews were to be found, Babylon and Egypt, were them-
selves strange and only partially understood regions to
Greeks in spite of their long acquaintance with both of
them.
CHAPTER VII
EGYPT
In the relations that subsisted between Jews and
Greeks after Alexander, Egypt plays an important
part, so that particular attention must be directed to that
country.
The influence of Egypt upon Palestine is no new
thing in its history. For century after century the
mighty empire across Sinai had been the huge and
determining fact in the political destiny of all Pales-
tinian nations. Indeed Palestine is much more properly
within the Egyptian sphere of culture than the Baby-
lonian. The glamor lasted even when the Pharaoh had
become a broken reed. Men's minds instinctively
turned in that direction, and the vigor of the relatively
youthful Assyria could not hold imaginations with half
the force of the remembered glories of Thutmose and
Ramses.
Egypt had been in Persian times a turbulent province,
subdued with difficulty and demanding constantly
renewed subjugation. Shortly before Alexander's con-
quest, Artaxerxes Ochus had reconquered it with brutal
severity. It offered no resistance to the victorious
Macedonians. Upon Alexander himself it exercised an
undoubted attraction. The ancient gods of this most
ancient of countries were those best fitted to confirm his
EGYPT 91
rather raw divinity. From none else than Amon him-
self, in his isolated shrine in the desert, he claimed to
have received revelation of his divine lineage. And
at the mouth of the Nile he laid the foundation of the
greatest monument he was destined to have, the city of
Alexandria.
When Alexander's satraps proceeded to carve out
portions for themselves, Egypt was seized by Ptolemy,
whose quick brain had grasped at once the advantages
accruing from the possession of an inexhaustible
granary and from the relative remoteness of his posi-
tion. The first contests would have to be fought in Asia.
To attack Egypt meant a costly and carefully planned
expedition, with the hazards of a rear attack. It was
attempted, and it failed. Egypt might, as far as the
country itself was concerned, breathe freely for a while,
and give itself the opportunity of developing its extra-
ordinary resources.
One of Ptolemy's first aggressive campaigns was the
seizure of Palestine, the natural geographical extension.
Judea and Jerusalem fell into his hands. It is probable,
as will be later discussed, that the story of the capture
of the city on the Sabbath is apocryphal. But there
can be no doubt that one of the immediate conse-
quences of the annexation of Palestine was a greatly
increased emigration of Jews, and doubtless of Pales-
tinians generally, to Egypt. There is the tradition of a
deportation, but it is feebly supported. However, the
emigration was unquestionably vigorously encouraged
and stimulated by the king. The new city needed
92 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
inhabitants, and Egyptians were as yet looked at
askance by their Macedonian rulers.
From the beginning, a great number of Greeks, Jews,
Persians, Syrians, and Egyptians dwelt side by side in
Alexandria. Greeks who now spoke of Jews could do
so at first hand, and they could also obtain at first hand
accounts of Jews from other nations, especially from
the Egyptians. When, therefore, at about this time,
Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek living in Egypt, wrote a
history of that country, he had more to say of the Jews
than that they were a Syrian caste of strange ritual.
Indeed his account of them is so important that it will
be briefly summarized.
A pestilence broke out in Egypt, which was popularly
attributed to the neglect of the national cult owing to
the presence of foreign elements in the population. To
propitiate the gods, the strangers (dAAd</)i;AAot) were
expelled. The most distinguished and energetic, as
some say, arrived in Greece led by famous chieftains, of
whom Danaus and Cadmus are the best known. The
mass of the population settled in the neighboring Pales-
tine, which was then a desert.
This colony (aTroiKia) was led by a certain Moses,
famous for his wisdom and valor. He founded several
cities, of which lerosolyma is now the best-known.
Having organized cult and government, he divided the
people into twelve tribes, because he considered that
number the absolutely perfect one, and because it cor-
responded to the number of months in the year.
EGYPT 93
He made no statues of gods, because he regarded as
God and Ruler of all things the heavens that encircled
the earth, and accordingly did not believe that the Deity-
resembled man in form. The sacrifices he instituted,
the manner of life he prescribed, were different from
those of surrounding nations. This was due to the
expulsion they had suffered, which induced Moses
to ordain an inhospitable (/Ltio-o^evov) and inhuman
(aTrdv6p(t)7rov) form of living.
Since the nation was to be directed by priests, he
chose for that purpose men of the highest character and
ability. These he instructed, not merely for their sacer-
dotal functions, but also for their judicial and govern-
mental duties. They were to be the guardians of law
and morality.
It is for this reason that the Jews have never had a
king, but appoint as ruler the wisest and ablest of their
priests. They call him high priest (apxiepev^), and
regard him as bearer of the divine commands, which he
announces at the public assemblies and other meetings.
In this matter the Jews are so credulous that they fall to
the ground and adore {irpoaKovdv) the high priest when
he interprets the divine message. At the end of their
laws is written, " These words, which Moses heard from
God, he states to the Jews."
Moses showed much foresight in military matters,
since he compelled the young men to train themselves
by exercises that involved courage and daring and
endurance of privations. In his campaigns he con-
quered most of the surrounding territory, which was
94 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
divided equally among all citizens, except that the
priests received larger shares, so that they might enjoy
greater leisure for their public duties. These allot-
ments the possessors were forbidden to sell, in order
to prevent depopulation by the creation of great estates.
As an additional means to that end he compelled every
one to rear his children, an arrangement that involved
little expense and made the Jews at all times a very
populous nation. Marriage and funeral rites were
likewise quite dififerent from those of their neighbors.
However, many of these ancient customs were modi-
fied under Persian, and more recently under Mace-
donian, supremacy.''
So far Hecataeus of Abdera. The fragment is inter-
esting, not merely as the first connected account of
Jews by a Greek, but also from a number of facts that
are contained implicitly in his narrative.
We have seen, in the previous chapter, what general
knowledge of the Jews educated Greeks had in the
latter half of the fourth century. Hecataeus could
scarcely avoid being familiar with that version before
he came to Egypt. That he ever was in Judea there is
no evidence. If he followed his master Ptolemy, he
might easily have been there. But the information he
gives was almost certainly obtained in Egypt, and
the sources of that information will be more closely
examined.
It is evident at once that some of his facts must have
come from contemporary Jewish sources. His state-
ment of conditions among the Jews is markedly accurate
EGYPT 95
for the time in which he wrote, although to be sure these
conditions do not date to Moses. The absence of a king,
the presence of a priestly nobility, the judicial functions
of the priests, the compulsory military service, the
supremacy of the high priest, and the veneration
accorded to him, are all matters of which only a resident
of Judea can have been cognizant.
Was the source a literary one ? Did Hecataeus, writ-
ing at about 300 b. c. e., have before him a translation
of the Bible or of the Pentateuch or a part of it ? In the
first place there is very little reason to believe that such
a translation was current or was needed at this time.
Secondly, the matters mentioned are just those that do
not stand out at all in such a rapid reading of the Bible
as a curious Greek might have given it. To obtain even
approximate parallels, single verses of the Bible must
be cited. But the statements of Hecataeus do corre-
spond to actual conditions in the Judea of his time. We
may therefore plausibly suppose that Hecataeus' infor-
mant was a Greek-speaking Jew, perhaps a soldier.
Certain inaccuracies in the account would not militate
against such a supposition. Whoever it was from
whom the information came, cannot himself have
been especially conversant with his national history.
The glorious period of Jewish history was that of the
kings, of David and Solomon. For any Jew to have
asserted that no king ever reigned over them is scarcely
conceivable. But that may be an inference of the Greek
and not a statement of the Jew, and that in Egypt there
96 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
were Jews crassly ignorant of everything but the facts
of their own time, we can readily enough imagine.'
Was there any other source of information? Ob-
viously no Jew told Hecataeus that his people were
descendants of Egyptian outcasts, at least in the way in
which they are here described ; no Jew qualified the
institutions of his people as " inhospitable and in-
human " ; no Jew represented his kinsmen as credulous
dupes. Plainly these stories are told from the Egyptian
point of view. The first almost surely is. It constitutes
in outline what has often been called the " Egyptian
version of the Exodus."
As to that version this question at once arises : What
are its sources? Is it a malicious distortion of the
Biblical story, or has it an independent origin in Egyp-
tian traditions?
The former supposition is the one generally accepted.
We have seen that there is little likelihood that a Greek
translation of the Pentateuch existed as early as 300 b.
c. E. If then the Egyptian version is consciously based
upon the Jewish story, that story must have been known
to the Egyptians by oral transmission only. Until
recently, imagined difficulties in the way of assuming
such a transmission seemed weighty objections, but all
these difficulties have disappeared in the light ot the
Assuan and Elephantine papyri. The existence of
Jewish communities in Egypt from pre-Persian times
is established by them, and particular interest centers
upon one of them, which alludes to the Passover cele-
EGYPT 97
bration and represents the Egyptian Jewries as refer-
ring certain questions to the Palestinian community/
It must be clear that if Passover had been celebrated
in Egyptian surroundings for two centuries, the
Egyptian neighbors of the Jews knew of the feast's
existence and of the occasion it was intended to cele-
brate. In those two centuries the elements that make
this version an Egyptian one may easily have arisen.
Indeed, it would have been strange if stories repre-
senting the Exodus as anything but the Jewish triumph
it is depicted in the Pentateuch had not circulated
widely among Egyptians.
The mere celebration of Passover was apt to make
permanent a certain hostility between the two nations.
When we compare Deut. xxiii. 7, '' Thou shalt not
abhor an Egyptian," with Ezra ix. i, where the customs
of the Egyptians are classed as abominations, and where
Egyptian, Moabite, and Edomite are added to the list of
peoples (Deut. vii. i) to be shunned and avoided, it is
plain that the attitude toward Egyptians had undergone
considerable change in the intervening centuries. It
requires a long period of antagonism to explain the later
Alexandrian anti-Semitism.
At the same time the papyri show other phases of
life as well. They offer instances of amicable relations,
even of intermarriage, as well as instances of hostility,
such as that which resulted in the destruction of the
shrine of Yahu at Elephantine. The latter incident is
too obscure to permit us to draw inferences from it.
But it is clear that it can no more be considered typical
7
98 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
than the other examples, which show perfectly free and
friendly intercourse.
The story as it appears in Hecataeus, however, does
not imply, even in its unflattering aspects, hostility on
the part of the Egyptians. It may be remembered that
the founders of several Greek nations as well as the
Jews were expelled from Egypt on the occasion men-
tioned. It is easy to see how Egyptians, learning of
Greek and Jewish legends that ascribed the origin of
those nations to themselves, would accept the ascription,
and make it a part of their own stories in a way to
flatter the national vanity.
While therefore the supposition that Egyptians
based their version on the Jewish story of the Exodus
as it became known to them is much the more probable
view, the possibility of an independent Egyptian tradi-
tion on the subject is not to be dismissed cavalierly.
The Egyptian records that have come down to us
do not often mention Jews. Careful study has made it
plain that the Pharaoh of the oppression or the Exodus
cannot be identified so readily as was formerly done,
but they have shown that the popular traditions about
the Hyksos had at least so much foundation in fact, that
about 1580 B. c. E. Ahmose I did actually drive out the
Semitic or half-Semitic conquerors of the country, and
these conquerors are quite plausibly identified with the
Hyksos. Now during the Hyksos period we hear of
a ruler named Jacob-Her, or Jacob-El, and a few cen-
turies after the inscriptions of Mer-ne-ptah show Israel
already established in Palestine. If, in the casual selec-
EGYPT 99
tion of inscriptions that has been made by the lapse
of thirty-five centuries, these facts appear, it is surely
not impossible that in 300 b. c. e. a great many more
facts were known. It is not likely that every Egyptian
priest could read the hieroglyphics, but some could, and
the knowledge of a few could easily become common
possession.
When Greeks came to Egypt in the train of Alex-
ander and Ptolemy, they not only brought Jews there,
but they found them, as well as the story just discussed,
whether two hundred or twelve hundred years old.
When we meet the Egyptian version again, it is in a
form unmistakably malevolent. A very few years after
Hecataeus, an Egyptian priest named Manetho wrote
the history of his people in Greek. His sources were
popular traditions much more than the monuments, but
they were at least partly documentary. Manetho's book
has been lost, and its '' fragments," as usual, appear in
the form of quotations in much later books, where we
must estimate the probabilities of wilful and careless
error.
The fragments of especial interest to us are con-
tained in Josephus' apologetic work known as Contra
Apionem (§1, 26-27), where unfortunately one cannot
always distinguish between the statements of Josephus
and those of Manetho.
The essential part of Manetho's story, as far as we
can piece it together, is that the Exodus of the Jews
from Egypt was nothing more nor less than the defeat
and expulsion of certain rebellious Egyptians. These
100 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
latter had been isolated from their fellow-men as lepers
and criminals, and had treasonably summoned to their
aid the Bedouin Hyksos from Jerusalem. The Egyp-
tian outcasts were led by a Heliopolitan priest named
Osarsiph, who afterwards changed his name to Moses.
After a short domination over Egypt, they were
defeated and expelled, and pursued to the frontiers of
Syria.
If the very indefinite words of Josephus are to be
trusted {Contra Apioncm, i. 26), Manetho expressly
asserts that this account is based upon what is popularly
told of the Jews (ra fxvOevofxeva Kal Xeyo/xeva Trepl twv
'lovSaiwv). Whether Manetho really said so or not, it
is extremely unlikely that it was the case. The account
seems too finished and detailed to have such an origin.
It is much more likely that it is a deliberate invention of
Manetho himself, following the Jewish story with a
certain amount of care. As has been suggested, the
name Osarsiph is simply an Egyptian version of Joseph,
the name of Osiris (which often appears as Osar- or
Osor- in names)* being substituted for the assumed
theophoric element Jo-, a syllable that would be familiar
to all Egyptians in such very common Jewish names as
Johanan and Jonathan.
The " Egyptian version " as we found it in Hecataeus
is far from malevolent. In Manetho it is plainly
inspired by hatred. The Jews are represented as the
mongrel offspring of Egyptian outcasts and half -civil-
ized Bedouins. The vice of unsociability is reasserted,
coupled with a charge of " atheism," a term we shall
EGYPT loi
have to deal with later in detail. Moses, or Osarsiph,
forbade the Jews " to have any dealings with anyone
whatsoever except their confederates (o-vi/w/Aoa/xeVot).
That is, of course, more precise than the words '' inhos-
pitable and inhuman manner of life " of Hecataeus, and
formed in ancient times a more serious indictment than
in our own.
Now Josephus, of course, is roused to considerable
heat by the " silly lies " of Manetho, although as testi-
mony to the antiquity of his people the story is grist
to his mill. He points out very clearly and correctly
that many of the incidents are admissions that the cor-
responding incidents of the Jewish story are essentially
true. These admissions do not prove that Manetho
read these matters from the hieroglyphic records, but
merely that he knew the Jewish story, and, except for
the confusion of Moses and Joseph, that he knew it
well.
Nearly all Manetho's details are suggested in some
way by the Biblical story. The leprosy of Osarsiph is
probably derived from the story of Moses (Exodus iv.
7) ; the convicts in the quarries (ot h rah AaoTo^Liiats),
from the bondage which the Jews acknowledged of
themselves (Exodus i. 12-14). Manetho cannot accept
Joseph's rule nor Pharaoh's discomfiture at the Red
Sea, but, as many other ancient and modern writers did,
he will not absolutely deny what he wishes to avoid, but
prefers to present it in a form less galling to his pride.
Osarsiph did rule over Egypt, but his rule was a chas-
tisement of the Egyptians for the impiety of King
102 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Amenophis, and was effected only by the aid of foreign
mercenaries. Pharaoh did advance to " the river " with
a picked army and then withdraw before the enemy,
but it was a voluntary withdrawal, impelled by his fear
of the offended gods/
It is by no means impossible that all the facts implied
may have been learned by Manetho through oral
acquaintance with the Jewish story of the Exodus. But
if Manetho acquired his information so, we should
expect confusion in the sequence of events. We should
find anachronisms of various sorts. It is therefore more
likely that he had an actual book before him. Tradition
of strong intrinsic probability assigns the translation of
the Pentateuch into Greek to the reign of Philadelphus.
Writing at about 270 b. c. e., Manetho may well have
read the Pentateuch, at least cursorily. Indeed it would
be easy to suppose that it was the circulation in Greek
of stories so offensive to Egyptians that specially moved
him to publish his own interpretation of those stories.
He was hardly likely to have made so much of them, if
they were merely legends, scarcely known except to the
Jews themselves and their closest neighbors.
The ''Egyptian version " may be said to have been
the more successful. The leprosy of Moses, the founder
of the nation, was constantly girded at by later writers.
Tacitus repeats Manetho faithfully in the matter," and
one of the latest pagan writers of whom we have frag-
ments concerning the Jews, Helladius, makes allusion
to the same thing.^ The point does not seem to us of
capital importance, but among peoples that regarded
EGYPT 103
bodily defects as obvious signs of divine displeasure in
the person afflicted, it was likely to have weight.
It may, however, be well to remember that both ver-
sions were in equal circulation. To many the Jewish
story seemed the more probable. But it is significant
that at the very beginning of the period when the Jews
took a larger share in the life of the Mediterranean
world we find Jews and Egyptians distinctly in conflict.
That conflict was destined to become embittered, but it
must not be taken as an epitome of Jewish relations
generally with other nations.
CHAPTER VTTI
JEWS IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT
Greek civilization was essentially urban. The city-
state, or polis, was its highest governmental achieve-
ment. When, therefore, under Alexander and Ptolemy,
Egypt was to be transferred wholly within the sphere of
Greek culture, it was by means of a polis that this was
to be effected.
The same was still more largely true for the other
parts of Alexander's empire. In Asia and Syria the
** Successors " were busy founding, wherever con-
venient, cities diversely named. However, in these
regions they were merely continuing, in a somewhat
accelerated fashion, a practice begun long before. In
Egypt, on the contrary, it was plain that a modification
of that policy was necessary. There was, to be sure,
an ancient Greek city at one of the western mouths of
the Nile, the city of Naucratis. But that had been
founded as an emporium, and due care was taken that
it should be essentially nothing more, that it should
acquire no supporting territory in Egypt. And how-
ever important and wealthy Naucratis became, it re-
mained confined to its foreign trade for its subsistence.*
Besides, it had considerably dwindled in 330 b. c. e., so
that its claims could never have been seriously con-
sidered by Alexander, in comparison with his desire to
JEWS IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT 105
found a new city and in comparison with the much
superior location of Alexandria.
It is not likely that Alexander himself completed the
plans for the organization of the city. That was left to
Ptolemy, and it was accomplished with a modification
of the Greek system that illustrates both the wariness
and the foresight of this most astute of Alexander's
officers.
The essential part of the polis was its organization as
a commonwealth, i. e. as a group of citizens, each of
whom had a necessary function to perform in the state.
From time immemorial the administration of affairs
was assigned to a boule, or senate, the actual executives
being little more than committees of the boule; but at
all times an essential element of the constitution was the
confirmation, real or constructive, of all acts of the
boule by the demos, or mass of citizens. The manner in
which the boule was selected, as well as the extent to
which the check exercised by the demos was real, deter-
mined the measure of democracy each polis obtained.
However, even in cities which, like Sparta, were in
theory permanent camps, the same view was held of the
necessity of these parts and of their respective func-
tions, so that everywhere, in legal contemplation,
sovereignty resided in the demos.*
It must not be supposed that all men who lived within
the walls of the city were members of the demos. That
is a conception of democracy wholly alien to ancient
ideas. The participation of the individual in the state
was a privilege, acquired in the first instance by birth.
io6 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Side by side with the citizens was the slave, who was
wholly devoid of legal rights, and the metic, or resident
foreigner, who had, as a result of a direct compact with
the state, acquired the right of residence and personal
protection upon the payment of certain specified taxes.
The privilege of citizenship was a complex of rights,
to which were attached certain very definite and sharply
emphasized obligations. What those rights were
depended upon the constitution of the given polis.
Where they were fullest, as at Athens, they included
voting in the public assembly, the holding of public
office, service on the jury, and a claim for certain per-
sonal privileges, such as admission to the dramatic per-
formances at the Dionysiac festivals. In other states
they were not quite so extensive, but the obligations
were everywhere the same, i. e. payment of taxes and
military- service. The state was in the habit of remitting
from time to time certain or all of these taxes and other
compulsory services, so that we may say that various
grades of citizens and metics generally existed.
Now Naucratis was just such a polis as this. So
were the various Apameas, Antiochias, Seleucias,
Laodiceas, established in Asia and Syria. It is true
that the boule and demos of these cities were the merest
shadows; and actually the despotism of the monarch
was as undoubted as it had been in Persian times. But
the shadows were at least a concession to the Hellenic
spirit, and as such were immensely treasured ; nor can
it be denied that as long as they remained the remem-
brance of free institutions remained as well. At,
JEWS IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT 107
Pergamon, which the AttaHds created, no pubHc act
was done except as the dehberate choice of senate and
people.^
But when Ptolemy constituted Alexandria, he delib-
erately departed from this plan. As has been said,
Naucratis had boule and demos and all the other
appurtenances of a well-regulated polis. So had Ptole-
mais somewhat later ; and many years later, when the
emperor Hadrian founded an Antinois in memory of his
dead minion, he likewise made it a full and complete
Greek city. In x\lexandria, on the other hand, there is
no trace, till late in Roman times, of a boule ; and of a
demos as little. In the great mass of Greek papyri
that have come from Egypt there is nowhere any indica-
tion that a senate ever met, or a people ever assembled,
to parody the deliberations of the Athenian ecclesia.
In other words Alexandria was much less a polis than it
was a royal residence, i. e. the site of the king's palace
amidst a more densely gathered group of his subjects.*
In externals Alexandria was every inch a city. It
had the high walls, which, as Alcaeus tells us, do not
constitute a state. It had the tribe and deme, or district
division, and it had its various grades of citizens, deter-
mined by the duties and imposts to which they were
subjected.
Of its tribe and district division we know some
details. There were probably five tribes, each of which
consisted of twelve demes, or districts, which in turn
had twelve phratries, or wards. The tribes were known
by the first five letters of the Greek alphabet. In the
io8 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
absence of even formal political rights, this division
can have been made simply in the interests of the census
and the police. The obligations to pay taxes and per-
form military service were very real ones, and their
proper enforcement necessitated some such organiza-
tion of the city/
Different classes of citizenship were at once created
by the establishment of special taxes and special exemp-
tions. The peculiar Greek fiscal arrangement known
as the liturgy, which made the performance of certain
services to the state a means of compounding for taxes,
was also in vogue. We have records of certain of these
classes of citizens, or inhabitants, and it is at least prob-
able that there were other classes of which we know
nothing.
First of all, there were the Macedones, or Mace-
donians. These form a specially privileged group,
whose residence was probably by no means confined to
Alexandria. Just what their privileges were we do not
know, but that they lay chiefly in fiscal exemptions of
one sort or another, is almost certain.
Then there were the Alexandreis, or Alexandrians
We know that there were at least two groups — those
that were enrolled in a given tribe, or deme, and those
not so enrolled. We can only conjecture the purpose of
this division, and one conjecture will be mentioned later.
Besides these, there were other men whose legal right
to residence was unquestioned. They were variously
designated. We find Persians, Jews, and other nationali-
ties, qualified with the phrase r^s eTrtyov^s which means
lElVS TM PTOLEMAIC EGYPT 109
literally " of the descent," but the exact force of which
is unknown. This classification procured for those so
termed certain very much valued exemptions. Native
Egyptians also were present, paying a special poll-tax,
and no doubt a very large number of metics and
transient foreigners. Greek publicists regarded the
presence of a large number of metics and foreign
merchants as a sign of great prosperity.* We may be
sure that no burdensome restrictions made the settling
of these classes difficult at Alexandria.
Were the Jews in Alexandria citizens ? A great many
heated controversies have been fought on this subject,
some of which would surely not have been entered into
if a clearer analysis had been available of what con-
stituted Alexandrian " citizenship." As we have seen,
the question can only be framed thus : Did the Jews of
that city appear on the census books as " Alexandreis,"
with or without the deme and tribe adjective after them,
or were they classified as Jews, and did they form a dis-
tinct fiscal class by themselves ?
The denial of their citizenship is principally based
upon distrust of Josephus, who asserts it. But distrust
of Josephus may be carried to an extravagant degree.
Modern writers with pronounced bias may, of course,
be disregarded, but saner investigators have equally
allowed themselves to be guided by disinclination to
credit Josephus, and have come to the conclusion that
the Jews were not citizens of Alexandria.
There were of course very many Jews in Alexandria
who were not legally Alexandrians. Josephus' assertion
no THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
did not and could not mean that every Jew in the city
was, by the very fact of his residence, an Alexandrian.
Nowhere in the ancient world could citizenship be
acquired except by birth or by special decree. Jews
who emigrated from Palestine to Alexandria, and were
permitted to remain there, were metics, and became
Alexandrians only if they were specially awarded that
designation. But that was just as true for a foreign
Greek or a foreign Macedonian, since at Alexandria
" Macedonian " was a class of citizenship, not an ethnic
term. Those who assisted in the founding of the city
were undoubtedly classified either as '* Macedones " or
" Alexandreis," and the tradition that Jews were among
them is based upon other authority than Josephus. It
is not enough, therefore, if one desires to refute
Josephus, to show that there were Jews in Egypt who
were not " Alexandreis." Undoubtedly there were
thousands of them. But if, in the papyri, we do find
Jews among the *' Macedones " and others among the
" Alexandreis," the statements of Josephus on the sub-
ject are strikingly confirmed, for he says no more than
that there were Jews in both these categories.'
Of the two classes of Alexandrians, those enrolled in
demes and those not so enrolled, it is likely that the
Jewish '' Alexandreis " belonged to the latter class.
The former either paid a special district tax, or, more
likely, were charged with the performance of certain
district duties, either religious in their nature, such as
the burying of the pauper dead, or of police character.
When Alexandrians were constituted, not registered in
JEWS IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT iii
denies, the purpose can only have been to secure exemp-
tion from these local duties, and the example quoted
would of itself indicate why the Jews may have been so
exempted.
It was not, however, merely in Alexandria that the
Jews settled, precisely as it was not merely in Greek
cities that Greeks were to be found. That part of
Egypt which lay outside the definite civic communities
as they were founded from time to time, was organized
in nomes, in large agricultural districts containing many
villages or even cities. In every instance, however, the
administrative unit was the nome.
These nomes had themselves a history of immemorial
antiquity. Some of them were surely in boundary co-
incident with the petty nationalities that antedated the
first dynasties. The mass of the population in them had
practically always been peasant-serfs, and continued to
be so. Beside them, in the villages and towns, there
lived in Greek times motley groups of men, whose legal
status was determined in a number of ways. Some
were citizens of Alexandria, Ptolemais, etc., and merely
resident in the nome. Others enjoyed certain mili-
tary and fiscal privileges, which involved the right of
residence. But in all circumstances, in the elaborate
financial organization of Egypt every resident had cer-
tain precise dues to pay, and was marked by a certain
designation.
The military and other settlers whom the Greeks
found in Egypt, whether they were Persians, Jews,
Syrians, or Babylonians, retained their status, i. e. they
112 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
paid taxes and performed services differing from those
of the native Egyptians in part, although no doubt cer-
tain taxes were levied upon all." The foreigners whom
Ptolemy invited or brought into Egypt must have been
settled either in the cities or the nomes, and were given
a definite fiscal status. And besides all these various
grades, there were metics — a term which may have
included emancipated slaves, and of course slaves as
well — in huge numbers. There can be little doubt that
Jews were to be found in all classes, from the highly
privileged nobility of '' Macedones " to the slaves.*
In most large Greek cities metics of foreign birth or
ancestry existed. There were Phoenicians and Egyp-
tians in Athens in very early times. But they were all,
together with non-Athenian Greeks, gathered into the
general group of metics, and no one group ever became
numerically so preponderant that a special class had to
be legally constituted of them. In Egypt, however, the
general term metic was rarely used. For the nome
organization of the country it seemed scarcely appli-
cable. Instead, those foreigners who had acquired
legal residence and other rights were known by their
national name. So there was a group of Egyptian
residents known as 'lovhaloi, as '* Jews," which was
in their case a legal designation, whereas, when
the *' Macedones," '* Alexandreis," etc., of the same
nationality were referred to as 'lovhaloi the term was
merely descriptive.
We do not know whether the louSatot that had no
other classification were more numerous or less numer-
JEWS IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT 113
ous than those who had. But it was shortly found advis-
able to organize the Jewish metics to the extent of
superadding upon their own cult-organizations certain
royal officers responsible to the king. Of these the
chief was the ethnarch, and it is evident that the
ethnarch would assume an importance in proportion to
the number under his jurisdiction. The right to have an
ethnarch seems to have been a prized privilege and was
not confined to the Jews. What the relation of the later
alabarch ^ was to the ethnarch is not clear. The two
terms may perhaps designate the same office.
But a complete understanding of the condition of the
Jews in Egypt and Alexandria necessitates some
account of the synagogue organization.
There is no reason to question the Jewish tradition
that the synagogue was Exilic or pre-Exilic in origin.
In fact, it is not easily conceivable that it could have
been otherwise. Worship was a social act in the ancient
world, and properly to be performed in concert. It was
inevitable therefore that just as soon as the Jews were
removed from those places where the ancestral and
traditional ritual was performed without any conscious
organization for that purpose, they would combine
themselves in groups in order to satisfy the strongly
marked religious emotion that characterized them.
Corporate organization, based upon the performance
in common of some religious act, characterized the
whole ancient world. The state was itself a large
corporation of this kind, and the local divisions
rapidly assumed, or always possessed, the same form.
8
114 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Obviously members of the same nationality residing in
a foreign city would be specially prone to organize
themselves into such corporations, and as a rule make
the religious bond, which seems to have been a formal
requisite, the common worship of one of their own gods.
The merchants of Citium at Athens formed a guild for
the worship of the Cyprian Aphrodite. It was in this
way that Egyptian merchants and artisans made Isis
known to the Roman world."*
It has been said that the state itself was such a cor-
poration, of which the formal basis was the common
performance of a certain ritual act. When new states
were founded or new men admitted into old states, a
great deal was made of the act. It follows therefore
that when Jews were admitted into the newly founded
civic communities of Asia, as we know they were, some
relation would have to be entered upon between them-
selves and the religious basis of the state. In most
cases, special exemption from participation in these
religious acts seems to have been sought and obtained.
In Egypt the conflict between the exclusive worship
of Jehovah and the less intolerant worship of the Nile-
gods had been in existence for centuries before the
Greeks. The pre-Greek Jewish immigrants were per-
haps not of the sort that sought to accentuate the con-
flict, though friction was unavoidable. At the Greek
conquest, it must be remembered, no great disposition
was shown by the first Ptolemies to accept the native
institutions or the native gods. The new god of
Alexandria, the mighty Sarapis, was not, as has been
JEWS IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT iig
generally supposed, a composite of Osiris and Apis,
but an out and out Greek god, imported from his
obscure shrine in direct opposition to the indigenous
gods." Membership in the civic communities, or resi-
dence in the country districts, can have involved no
obligation to share the ritual localized there. Every
group of foreigners might freely disregard it, and
maintain unimpaired their own ancestral forms.
We accordingly find Jewish synagogues — in the
sense of cult-organizations, each having its own
meeting-house, schola, or proseucha, and organized
with magistrates and council, like miniature states —
not only in Alexandria but in insignificant little towns
of Upper and Lower Egypt.^'' Nor was the legal basis
of such organization wanting, i. e. the corporate per-
sonality, since we find these synagogues enjoying
the rights of property and subject to the imposts
levied upon it.^^ The extent of each synagogue was
limited by the physical capacity of the schola. There
must have been in Alexandria very many of them.
Who were members of them? The various classes
of Jews in the city and country were divided by social
and legal lines. In the synagogue social distinctions
cannot have disappeared, but there can be no doubt that
in many, if not in all, there would be found Jews repre-
senting every class of the community. In other parts
of the Greek world it was no strange thing to see citi-
zens, metics, foreigners, slaves, claiming membership in
the same cult-organization, and jointly worshiping a
native or foreign god. The synagogue likewise con-
.A^'^
/^'
ii6 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
tained among its members nobles and slaves. The
tendency for the wealthier classes to become completely
Hellenized, and so completely to abandon the syna-
gogue, did not show itself prominently for some time.
We may readily suppose that the native Egyptians
regarded all the foreign invaders with scarcely dis-
criminating hatred. In most cases, when Greeks and
Jews dwelt in the nomes, they were both exempt from
local dues, and both paid the same special tax. What
the attitude of the Egyptians was to their Greek and
Macedonian masters, we have no need to conjecture."
As under Persian rule, they rose in bloody riots ; and
after a century of Greek domination, they were so far
successful that a complete change in the policy of the
Ptolemies was effected. The house had very rapidly
degenerated — a process perhaps hastened by the Egyp-
tian custom of brother and sister marriage, which they
adopted. From the weaker kings of the close of the
third century b. c. e., the Egyptian priests received a
complete surrender. Continuity with the Pharaohs was
consciously sought. The ancient titles in a modified
form were adopted in Greek as well as Egyptian for the
rulers. The hieroglyphics represented Ptolemy as the
living god, sprung from Ra, just as they had done for
Amen-hem-et thousands of years before.^'
But a Hellenizing process had gone on as well as an
Egyptizing process. The irresistible attractions of Greek
culture had converted even the fiercest nationalists into
Greeks outwardly, and in the horde of Greek names
that the papyri exhibit we have sometimes far to seek,
JEIVS IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT 117
if we wish to discover unmistakably Greek stock. Inter-
marriage and concubinage must have given Egypt a
large mixed-blood population, which no doubt called
itself Greek. Evidences of Greek aloofness on the
subject of marriage have been sought in the denial of
connubium by the city of Ptolemais to foreigners." But
that applied to foreign Greeks as well, and was a com-
mon regulation in most Greek cities.
' The Hellenizing process affected the Jews even more.
In Alexandria the Jewish community had begun to show
signs of the most active intellectual growth, and the
results of that growth, naturally enough, wore a Greek
dress. But that process had been active in Palestine
as well, where the consequences were somewhat more
important. It is there that we shall turn for a study
' of the first conflicts between Judaism and Hellenism.
CHAPTER IX
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE
IN PALESTINE
While Palestine was a Greco-Egyptian province, the
influences at work over the whole Levant had been as
effectually operative there.
In the matter of government no change had been
made that was at all noticeable. The internal auton-
omy of Persian times had been maintained; the claims
of the tax-collector and recruiting sergeant were dealt
with by the whole community, not by the individual.
Socially and economically, relative peace had per-
mitted considerable progress. At the close of this
period the work of Ben Sira is the best of all possible
evidence, both of the literary productivity out of which
the book arose and of the society which it implies. We
are given glimpses of settled and comfortable life,
which could scarcely have been attained unless the pre-
ceding century had been one of constantly increasing
well-being. It is a well-equipped table at which Ben
Sira bids us sit. The graces and little luxuries of life
are present, and equally the vices that went with these
luxuries.*
Nor had the character of the whole spiritual culture
essentially changed. The language of daily intercourse
was Aramaic, the lingua franca of the whole region.
STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE 119
But the literary language was still Hebrew. It must
have been constantly spoken among educated men, for
the changes it continued to exhibit are not such as would
occur if it had been quite divorced from life. And the
literary activity, which took its forms from the estab-
lished and already canonical literature, took its sub-
stance from the life about it. That this life had been
impregnated with Greek elements, there can of course
be no manner of doubt.
Not only the old Philistian and Phoenician cities
of the coast had acquired a Greek varnish, but Judea
was being surrounded by a closer and closer network of
new Greek foundations. Ptolemais, Anthedon, Apol-
lonia, Arethusa, and the cities of the Decapolis across
the Jordan, brought the external forms of Greek culture
so near that even the peasant who went no great dis-
tance from his furrow must have encountered them.
What made up the fascination of Greece for the
nations she dominated? In the first place it must be
insisted upon that there was a national resistance,
whether or not it took the form of insurrection. Indeed,
insurrection was a thing quite apart from resistance to
Hellenism. As we have seen in the case of Egypt,
national resistance to the political domination of Greeks
did not by any means imply national resistance to the
spread of Greek culture. The latter resistance gener-
ally took the form of a dull and obstinate clinging to
ancestral ritual and language. At Antioch in the fourth
century c. e., some men and women still spoke Aramaic,
and knew no Greek." It is only within the rather narrow
120 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
limits set by wealth and education that the Hellenization
was really effective. Unfortunately most of our avail-
able evidence is concerned with this class.
Among these men, who were naturally open to cul-
tural impressions, the attraction of Hellenism was
undoubted, and had been growing slowly for years
before Alexander, and it had meant for them all the
charm of an intellectual discovery. The mere fact that
what the Greeks had was new and different could have
been of no real influence. There must have been an
actual and evident superiority in Greek life or culture
to have drawn to itself so quickly the desires and long-
ings of alien peoples.
In one field that superiority was evident, in the
field oi_^\.. Whatever may have been the origins of
Greek art, from the seventh century on no one seriously
questioned that Greek workmen could produce, in any
material, more beautiful objects than any other people.
Artistic apprecjation is no doubt a plant of slow growth,
but the pleasure in gorgeous coloring, in lifelike model-
ing, in fine balances of light and shade, in grouping of
masses, is derived immediately from the visual sensa-
tion. No peasant of Asia could fail to be impressed
by his first glimpse of such a city as the Ephesus and
Miletus of even the sixth or fifth century. After the
extraordinary artistic progress of the fifth century had
vastly increased the beauty of Greek cities, every
foreigner who visited them must have found greater
and greater delight, as his knowledge grew broader
and deeper.
STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE 121
In other branches of art, in music, poetry, dancing,
the wealthier Asiatic had a training of his own. But
it is likely that even a slight acquaintance with Greek
taught him to depreciate the achievements of his own
people. Doubtless, in poetic capacity and imagination,
Phrygian, Lydian, or Lycian was the equal of Greek.
Yet we have no choice but to believe that in sheer
sensuous beauty of sound, which made a direct appeal
to any partly cultivated ear, no one of the languages
could compare with Greek. Nor is it likely that any
written literature existed in Asia that could be ranked
with Greek.
With the appeal to eye and ear there went an appeal
to the intellect. Greek mental capacity was not demon-
strably greater than that of the Asiatic peoples to whom
the Greeks were perhaps akin, but both imagination and
reflection had framed their results in systematic form.
The rich narrative material found in every race was
available in Greek in dramatic and finished pieces.
The philosophic meditation in which others had long
anticipated the Greeks was among the latter set forth
in clearer and simpler phrasing.
The allurement of all these things was intensified
by a franker and fuller exploitation of all physical
instincts, and the absence of many tabus and forms
of asceticism that existed among non-Greek peoples. A
vastly increased freedom over one's body seemed a
characteristic of Greek life, and a vastly greater free-
dom of political action was characteristic of the Greek
polis.
^
122 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
It is small wonder therefore that the upper classes of
Asia and Syria had for two or three centuries before
the conquest succumbed to a culture that possessed so
visible a sorcery. Then, with the conquest, came a new
factor. To be a Greek was to be a Herrenmensch, a
member of the rulmg caste, a blood-kinsman of the
monarch. Syrians, Asiatics, and Egyptians found
themselves under the direct sway of a Greek dynasty,
supported by a Greek court and army. All the ten-
dencies that had made Greek cultural elements attrac-
tive for certain classes were intensified by the eager
desire of the Greeks to identify themselves with the
dominant race, and this identification seemed by no
means impossible of achievement.
What had to be given up? As far as language was
concerned, a smattering of Greek was the common
possession of many men. Every trading-post had for
generations swarmed with Greek merchants. Greek
mercenaries were to be found in most armies. It was
no especially difficult matter for those classes which
knew a little Greek to increase their familiarity with it,
to multiply the occasions for its use, to sink more and
more the soon despised vernacular. The latter, we must
repeat, was not and could not be suppressed, but it
became the language of peasants. In the cities men
spoke Greek.
But there were other things — the ancestral god and
the ancestral ritual. These were not so readily dis-
carded. However, the attitude of the Greeks in this
matter made it unnecessary to do so. The gods of
STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE 123
Greece were often transplanted, but rarely more than
the name. In Syria and Asia particularly it was only
in wholly new foundations that Greek gods and Greek
forms were really established. Generally the sense of
local divine jurisdiction was keenly felt. Greeks had a
wholesome awe of the deity long in possession of a
certain section, and in many cases erected shrines to
him, invoking him by the name of some roughly corre-
sponding Hellenic god. Frequently the old name was
retained as an epithet. Thus Greek and Syrian might
approach the ancient lord of the soil in the ancient man-
ner and so perpetuate a bond which it was aae/Seia,
" impiety," to break.
Since the essentials were maintained, the only step
necessary to turn a Syrian into a Greek was to purchase
a himation, change his name of Matanbal to Apol-
lodorus, and the transformation was complete. He
might be known for several years as " 6 Kal Matanbal "
— " alias Matanbal " ; he might suffer a little from the
occasional snobbishness of real Greeks, but, especially
if he was wealthy, such matters would be of short dura-
tion. The next generation would probably escape them
altogether, and their children, the young Nicanors,
Alexanders, Demetriuses, would talk glibly of the
exploits of their ancestors at Marathon or under the
walls of Troy.
But there was also no inconsiderable group that com-
bined adoption of the new with loyalty or attempted
loyalty to the old. Many Syrians, Egyptians, Phoeni-
cians, and others, conscious of a history not without
124 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
glory, desired to acquire the undeniably attractive Hel-
lenic culture, while maintaining their racial ties, of which
they felt no real reason to be ashamed. That was par-
ticularly true of the Seleucid dominions where Alex-
ander's assimilative policy was consistently pursued.
Persian or Lydian or Phoenician descent was a thing
many men boasted of. It was with a sense of adding
something to the culture of the world that natives with
Greek training prepared to transmit in Greek forms the
history of their people to Greeks and to interpret their
institutions to them. And they found a ready enough
audience. On many points, especially in religion and
philosophy, the Greeks w^ere willing enough to concede
a more profound acquaintance to barbarians than they
themselves possessed ; and often the weariness of civili-
zation made Greeks search among fresher peoples for a
sound social life, since that life was tainted, in Greek
communities, by many grave diseases.
But people of this class found themselves in a delicate
situation, an unstable equilibrium constantly disturbed.
It was hard to remain a Grecized Syrian. Generally
the temptation to suppress the Syrian was well-nigh
irresistible. Now and then, the rise of national political
movements would claim some of the younger men, so
that the fall was on the native side. In general, the
older conservative attitude expressed itself naturally in
avoidance of Greeks as far as possible, and precisely in
proportion to the value set upon the national and
indigenous culture.
STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE 125
The situation of the Jews was only in so far unique
that there could be no question among them of gradual
steps in the acquisition of Greek culture, but only of
partial acceptance of it. The final step of interchang-
ing gods — of accepting the Greek name and maintain-
ing the old rite and of exercising that reciprocity of
religious observance which was a seeming necessity
for those who lived in the same region — that, as every
Jew was aware, could never be taken. The religious
development among the Jews had been fuller than else-
where, and had resulted in a highly specialized form,
which by that fact had none of the elasticity of other
cult-forms. It was easy to make any one of the
Baalim of local Syrian shrines into Zeus Heliopoli-
tanus, Zeus Damascenus, etc. It was not possible to
turn the Lord Zebaoth of Zion, the awful and holy God
of psalm and prophecy, into an epithet of Zeus or of
another.
Consequently Jews who felt the pull of Greek art
cind literature, who, like other subjects of Greek sov-
ereigns, were eager to gain the favor of their masters,
had to realize to themselves the qualifications of their
Hellenism, or determine to discard wholly their Juda-
ism. And this latter step, even to enthusiastic Philhel-
Wenes, was intensely difficult. For so many generations
" Thou shalt have no other gods " had been inculcated
into men's hearts that it was no simple thing to under-
take in cold blood to bow before the abominations of the
heathen.
126 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
He who could not do that — and there were many —
might feel free to adopt Greek language and dress and
name ; but, even more than Babylonian and Egyptian, he
was conscious of making a contribution of his own to
the civilization of the East. An inherited wisdom, which
was in effect closer communion with the Absolute, he
believed he had, and, as we have seen, he was generally
credited with having. He felt no need therefore of
yielding unreservedly to the claims of Greeks, but might
demand from them the respect due to an independent
and considerable culture.
Barriers to mutual comprehension were created by
the Jewish dietary regulations as well as b}^ ritual
intolerance. Courtesy and good breeding however
might soften and modify what they could not remove,
and social intercourse between Greek and Jew certainly
existed. Nor need we exaggerate the embarrassments
these relations would suffer from the fact that while a
Greek might, and doubtless would, assist at the little
ceremonies of his Jewish neighbor's household, the
Jew might not without sin reciprocate. By judicious
absence on occasion — perhaps by little compromises —
the average easy-going Jewish citizen of an Asiatic or
Egyptian community need not have found himself in
constant conflict.
As in the case of other nations, the first Greek-
speaking Jews that desired to emphasize their origin
while accepting the all-pervading Greek culture, wished
primarily to convey to Greeks the facts of their history
and institutions. The Septuagint, at least the Penta-
STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE 127
teuch, was probably written in the early part of the
third century b. c. e., and although primarily intended
for Jews, no doubt came within the knowledge of
Greeks as well. But its purpose was utilitarian. The
Greek-speaking synagogues absolutely needed it. If
others were to be acquainted with the history of the
Jews, some other means had to be devised.
About 225 B. c. E., an Egyptian Jew named Demetrius
wrote the history of his people in Greek. Unfor-
tunately we have only such fragments of his work as
Eusebius, the church historian, and Josephus have
chosen to quote ; but what we have, permits the con-
jecture that he wrote in a concise and simple style, with-
out oratorical embellishment, and obviously without
apologetic motives. It seems to have been a sober and
dignified narrative, the loss of which is a serious gap in
our records.^
The name of this man, Demetrius, is not without;
significance. It contains the name of a Greek deity,
Demeter, so that religious precisians might find in it an
honor — even if only a verbal one — to the Abomination.
But Alexandrian Jews were not likely to be religious
precisians, and we may readily suppose that these
names, attrited by constant use, did not immediately
convey the suggestion of being theophoric. In 238
B. c. E., an Arsinoite slave is named Apollonius or
Jonathas, and about the same time a Jewess is found
with the name of Heraclea.*
In the case of Demetrius it was rather the redoubt-
able Besieger than the goddess that was honored, just
128 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
as the very first Jew whom we know by a Greek name,
Antigonus of Socho, is probably named after Deme-
trius' father, the one of Alexander's officers who be-
came so nearly a real Successor. It is to be noted that
Antigonus of Socho is one of the earliest doctors of
the law, whose fine saying is recorded in Abot i.,"
and, although we know no Hebrew name for him, there
can be no question here of Hellenizing or partly Hel-
lenizing tendencies.
Otherwise Jews in adopting Greek names were prone
to translate them approximately. The common Jona-
than and Nathaniel became Theodotus, Dositheus,
Theodorus, and the like. Phoenicians had long done
the same, but there would be of course no difficulty in
the case of the latter if they chose to turn Meherbal
into Diodorus. That the Jews were scarcely more
scrupulous in this matter is a little surprising. It fits in
well however with the conclusion that friction in unes-
sential was rather avoided than invited by the average
Jew.'
The conflict that was preparing itself in Palestine
was not one between Greek and Jew, but between
Hellenizing and reactionary elements among the Jews
themselves. And the term reactionary is chosen ad-
visedly. In the many centuries that had witnessed the
slow spread of Hellenism, and the hundred years or
so in which that progress had been immensely acceler-
ated by the political domination of Greeks, a resistance
was also preparing itself. In the early years of the
movement, before and after Alexander, the numbers
STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE 129
affected had been too few to justify active opposition.
But the number became constantly greater, and the
imminence of a real peril became vividly present to
thinking men. The method of opposition was at once
indicated. It could be only a conscious restoration of
such national institutions as had lapsed into compara-
tive disuse, a recultivation of ancient national practices,
and a more intense and active occupation with the tradi-
tional sacred literature.
In just this way opposition to the orientalizing of the
imperial religion produced the reactionary reforms of
Augustus, and much later opposition to an excessive
clerical interference with life expressed itself in the
very real paganism of the Italiam Renaissance. In all
these instances the attempt was deliberately made to
rebuild with material still present, even if largely dis-
carded, a structure that had fallen into ruins. The suc-
cess of such movements depends wholly on the amount
of material still present. If it has to be painfully
gathered and swept together from forgotten corners,
success is more than problematic. The Jewish reac-
tionaries were fortunate in that the ancient institutions
still held their ground, and in having no huge gap of
disuse to fill.
They were also fortunate that the actively Hellen-
izing party was limited in numbers, and the line of
demarcation was the easily noticeable one of wealth and
position. Not all men of wealth were in this class.
Such a man as Ben Sira, in whose book some have
detected Greek elements, betrays no Hellenizing ten-
9
130 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
dencies/ He is Jew to the marrow, and he can be no
isolated phenomenon. But there had been a rapid
growth of a moneyed class, and this not so much com-
posed of great landowners as of the newer class of
capitalists, who grew rich through the various forms of
financial speculation then open, particularly the tax-
farmers, of whom that magnificent vulture, the Tobiad
Joseph, is a permanent type/ The life of these men
involved such an association with king and court that
marked discrepancies of social custom, such as dietary
regulations, or any form of abstinence, as well as dif-
ferences in dress, were not to be thought of.
It is unfortunate that any discussion of the nature
and character of the opposition involves a controversial
question of the first magnitude, that which concerns the
Hasidim, or 'Assidaei. It were idle to enumerate, much
less to examine critically, the theories that have been
advanced. Our evidence is so scanty that it can be made
to fit into many different schemes, all of which can be
shown to be conceivable. The simplest interpretation
of the extant sources however is by far the best, and it
has further the merit of being the longest-established
and most widely current.
Now concerning the Hasidim we have only three
passages that can be considered even approximately
contemporary, two in the First Book of Maccabees and
one in the Second.
The first passage, I Mace. ii. 41, states that after the
martyrdom of the loyal Jews who had taken refuge in
the desert, there united with Mattathias the cnwayiayr)
STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE 131
'Ao-crtSatW, " the congregation of Hasidim, a body of
great power and influence in Israel, containing all those
who were devoted to the Law." In the second passage,
I Mace. vii. 12, we read that when the renegade high
priest Alcimus and the Greek prefect Baeehides entered
Judah with peaceful overtures, they were met by the
congregation of scribes, who brought their lawsuits to
him, and then recognized his authority. '' And the
'Asidaei were the first among the children of Israel, and
they also sought peace from them. For they said, " A
priest has come of the seed of Aaron with a powerful
army, and he will not injure us."
Taken together, these passages are best understood to
mean that at the beginning of the Hasmonean revolt
an already existing and powerful group, known as the
'' 'Asidaei," or '' Hasidim," gave their official support to
the Modin rebels, but that upon the arrival of the duly
ordained high priest they, or at any rate their officials,
put themselves under his authority, to their own un-
doing. The author of I Maccabees speaks in terms of
the highest respect of them, and applies to the treacher-
ous murder of their leaders the words of Psalm Ixxix.
In II Mace. xiv. 6, Alcimus replies to the question of
King Demetrius as follows : '' The so-called "Asidaei
among the Jews, of whom Judas Maccabeus is the
leader, maintain the war and sedition, and will not per-
mit the realm to secure peace." It will be seen that this
passage is not necessarily in contradiction with those of
I Maccabees, since it is here put into the mouth of
Alcimus, and is meant to be a wilful misrepresentation
132 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
of the facts on his part. Like the other passage, it
impHes that such a definite body with a distinct name
existed before the Hasmonean revolt.
To find in Psalms xii., Ixxxix., cxlix., and others
references to the same group of men is quite gratuitous.
The ordinary sense of '' righteous " or " saintly " amply
satisfies every one of the occurrences of the word Hasid
in the Psalms. And the figurative Dn^Dn hT\p (Ps.
cxlix. i) no more implies an organized body than
D'r'^D ^np of Psalm xxvi. 5 implies a formal association
of evil-doers, a Camorra. We shall be compelled to rely
wholly on the passages in Maccabees for any informa-
tion about the *Assidaei, or Hasidim, in the sense of a
definite organization bearing that title.
Who were these 'Assidaei? That admirable writer
and sturdy patriot, the author of I Maccabees, says they
were a body of great power and influence in Israel,
hxvpa, Svvdfiei, the leaders of the Jews, and, as has been
seen, organized before the revolt. Nothing is clearer
than that they are not identical with the '* scribes," with
whom they are grouped in I Mace, vii., among those who
acknowledged Alcimus. It is equally clear that they
are not at all the same as the Hasmonean partisans, for
they join Mattathiah later, and abandon Judah, at least
temporarily, early in the struggle. They are char-
acterized by their zeal for the Law, a zeal which natur-
ally manifested itself in strong opposition to Hellenism.
In Palestine, accordingly, for at least a generation
before the revolt, the disintegrating tendencies of Hel-
lenism, as evidenced in the apostasy of many wealthy
STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE 133
Jews and in the neglect of many traditional customs on
the part of others, provoked an organized opposition.
Forming themselves into a fraternity or groups of
corporate bodies, to which they applied the name of
" saints," the opponents of the Greeks directed their
efforts to the exact fulfilment of the Torah, and no
doubt carried on a violent polemic against Greek inno-
vations, however harmless and valuable. At about the
same time an exactly similar movement among Egyp-
tians had brought the Ptolemies to terms. It was not
of course to be expected that a single province of the
Syrian-Babylonian monarchy would accomplish the
same-result. In the eyes of the Antiochene court their
programme was no doubt treasonable fanaticism. But
it was not, as in the case of Egypt, directly political in
its scope, and it might never have led to armed conflict.
According to Jewish tradition a pupil of Antigonus
of Socho, Jose ben Joezer, was a member of this sect of
" saints." ° And it is significant that, although he is
represented as especially rigorous in all religious
requirements that had a separatist tendency, he was
strikingly liberal in all matters of what might be called
internal religious practice. It is likely enough that the
tradition is accurate and the *' saints " were not at
all precisians or fanatics, but that their cohering bond
was simply opposition to Hellenism. As has been said,
it was against the Hellenizing Jews more than the
Greeks that their attack was directed. These latter
had on their side the advantages of wealth and social
position, but they lacked just that which made their
134 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
opponents strong, a compact organization. There was
no ovvayinyy) 'EAAt^vwi^, no congregation or fraternity of
Philhellenes. They included all shades of Greek sym-
pathizers, from out and out apostates to parvenus, to
whom speaking Greek was a mark of fashion. No
doubt the feeling between the two groups ran high, and
neither side spared bitter abuse and invective.
The conflict was finally precipitated by an act that
was one of the commonest occurrences of ancient poli-
tical struggles. The party defeated, or in danger of
defeat, does not scruple to invite foreign intervention.
In this case the irreconcilable Hellenists, evidently los-
ing ground in face of the rapid growth of Hasidic con-
venticles, appeal to the Greek king, whose policies their
own efforts were furthering, and of whose sympathy
they were assured. That king happened to be the
bizarre Antiochus Epiphanes.
CHAPTER X
ANTIOCHUS THE MANIFEST GOD
'' And there arose from them [the companions of
Alexander] a root of sin, to wit, Antiochus Epiphanes,
son of King Antiochus, he who had been hostage in
Rome." That to the writer of I Maccabees is a com-
plete characterization of the king whose reign was
to be of fateful consequences to the Jews, a pt^a
a/Aa/3TojAo?, an ill sapling of a noble tree. Perhaps the
writer had in mind the njr^i t^'t^i niD tJ'iSJ^ (Deut.
xxix. 17), ''a root bearing gall and wormwood." And
he had been a hostage in Rome ; a man, that is, of no
usual character and no usual career.
Except in this general way, he can scarcely be said
to have a personality at all to the writers of the Books
of Maccabees. He is merely the type of tyrant, proud
and presumptuous, unduly exalting himself above God
because of his vain and transitory successes, and dying
in agony, after an edifying deathbed repentance. No
more than the Nebuchadnezzar of the Book of Daniel,
is he anything other than an instrument of the wrath of
God. It is hard to believe that there was any real feel-
ing on the writer's part.
But Antiochus had a real personality and an espe-
cially interesting one. Both in modern and in ancient
times characterization of this strange figure has been
136 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
attempted, and the verdicts have been so widely dif-
ferent that the summary may be given in Livy's words :
Uti nee sibi nee aliis, quinam homo esset, satis eonstaret,
" So that neither he himself nor anyone else could
clearly state what manner of man he was."
The freakish outbursts, which amazed and scandal-
ized his contemporaries, amply justified the common
parody of his title Epiphanes by Epimanes, '' the mad-
man." * Some there were — perhaps his royal nephew
and biographer, Ptolemy of Egypt, among them — who
regarded him as unqualifiedly demented.'' It is likely
enough, if the stories about him are even partly true,
that he had periods of real derangement. But it seems
evident that he was a right royal personage, of unusual
charm of manner, of undoubted military capacity, quick
and decisive in action, fostering a dream of empire
whose rude shattering must have been an important
contributing cause to his death.
His was a strange blend. Various epochs met in him,
and it is not surprising that many incongruities resulted
from that fact. First of all he was in every sense a
Macedonian despot. Macedonians had always been
accustomed to the concentration of supreme power in
the hands of a single individual. For four or five gen-
erations Antiochus' immediate ancestors had wielded
such power over a rabble of nations stretching from
the Aegean to the frontiers of India." The emotional
reactions which the existence and the possession of this
power must have, were present in him. One constant
result of it, the absence of any real social life, is an
ANTIOCHUS (IV) EPIPHANES
AFTER A COIN
(From a drawing by Ralph lligan)
ANTIOCHUS THE MANIFEST GOD 137
especially fertile source of deterioration, but the worst
effects are noticed chiefly in those born to the purple.
Antiochus' exile saved him from them. Yet nothing
could save him from the consciousness that he might,
if he chose, gratify every whim, and yield to every
impulse, and his associates found quickly enough that
his bonhomie and engaging simplicity were moods,
which might be succeeded by bursts of quite incalcu-
lable and murderous rage.
There was the additional fact that the monarchy
founded by Alexander was in legal contemplation the
reign of a god made flesh. Seleucus, we may remem-
ber, entered almost at once into the titularies of Sumer
and Akkad." The second Antiochus was styled '* the
God," 0eos, tout simple. Our Antiochus called himself
Epiphanes — which, it need scarcely be said, is to be
translated '' the Manifest Deity," and not " the Illus-
trious." ^ And, at any rate at certain moments, the
designation was doubtless a real one to him and not a
conscious pose. Worship of the king, the foundation of
the later Augustus-cult, was an apparent unifying
element in the hopeless jumble of gods and rituals. For
that purpose it might be encouraged even by hard-
headed peasants like Vespasian, or philosophers like
Marcus, who had no illusions about the character of
their divinity. But that Alexander in all sincerity
believed himself to be god can scarcely be questioned,
and Epiphanes may often have similarly impressed
himself.
138 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Secondly, he was a Greek. Hellenism was to him a
real and profomid enthusiasm. His early life as a
Roman hostage must have immensely stimulated this
side of his character. At Rome his associates were the
Scipionic circle, to whom Greek culture had come as a
revelation. The distinguished Roman families with
whom the young prince lived read Greek, spoke Greek,
discussed Greek, and were eager to act as the interpre-
ters of Hellenism to their slower-witted countrymen. In
these surroundings anyone boasting not only Greek but
regal blood must have found his racial self-esteem flat-
tered to an extraordinary degree. Antiochus' first act
on his release was to betake himself to the intellectual
capital of Greece, to Athens, in whose citizenry he
eagerly enrolled himself. In fact, he was an Athenian
magistrate — o-r/oarTyyo? liri ra oirXa — when news came to
him of the assassination of his brother Seleucus and of
the opportunities waiting one who could act quickly.
When he was king, so much of his policy as did not
look to the aggrandizement of his empire was directed
to the rehabilitation of Greek cities and temples.
Megalopolis, Tegea in Arcadia, Delos, Rhodes, were
the beneficiaries of his Philhellenic enthusiasm. The
truckling Samaritans — at least the Hellenizing party
among them — knew that nothing would make a quicker
appeal to him than to rename the sanctuary on Gerizim
in honor of Zeus Hellenius.^ He would probably have
found it difficult to understand that anyone could
seriously maintain the claims of any other culture
against that of the Greeks, and no doubt received as a
ANTIOCHUS THE MANIFEST GOD 139
matter of course the representations of the Jewish Hel-
lenizers that a Httle impetus would greatly expedite the
Hellenizing- process in Palestine.
When we find Antiochus, king of kings, Manifest
God, soliciting the suffrages of the Antiochene burghers
for the office of " market-commissioner," or of '* district
mayor," * we are not to regard it as an eccentricity of
the same sort that set him wrangling in the public
squares with Hob and Dick, or pouring priceless oint-
ments on his fellow-bathers in the public baths.^ The
maintenance of the structure of the Greek polis was an
expression of Hellenic pride in a characteristically Hel-
lenic institution. No one, to be sure, was deceived by it
into thinking that Citizen Antiochus could not incon-
tinently change into an irresponsible master at will, but,
comedy as it was, it had a real significance, which did
not escape even the scoffers and, least of all, the king.
Finally there was an ultra-modern side in him.
Antiochus was also a cultivated gentleman, to whom
skepticism was an index of education and sacrilege a
concrete instance of skepticism. He lived in a very
unsettling age. As has been said before, the Greek
culture that found its way into Rome after the Hanni-
balic wars was a sophisticated, disintegrating culture,
to which the ancient institutions had at best a practical
utility, and which acknowledged theoretically no bind-
ing principles in the physical or moral world. It was
in this culture that the young Antiochus was reared.
He was not alone in it. Many of the incidents of this
period show a revolting cynicism on the part of the
140 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
actors. One Greek commander erected altars to
" Impiety and Illegality." A Spartan brigand called
himself " Hybristas," "the Outrager."'"
Indeed it was as a wanton desecrater of shrines that
Antiochus gained an unenviable notoriety. His pillag-
ing of the temple at Jerusalem was only one of a series
of similar acts. At Hierapolis, as well as at many other
Syrian shrines, and finally at Elymaea, he coolly appro-
priated the temple treasures, which in most cases
involved violence on his part. But it needed his out-
rageous " marriage " to Diana to set the seal upon his
derisive attitude toward his fellow-gods. The sober
Polybius attributes his death to his impiety, a conclusion
which naturally is warmly supported by Josephus."
It is idle to attempt to reconcile this sort of cynicism
with the pretensions to actual divinity which he prob-
ably made in all seriousness. The two are of course
quite irreconcilable, and represent merely the shifting
moods of a complex and slightly abnormal personality.
Under almost any king such an outbreak as the Has-
monean revolt might have taken place. Perhaps the
conflict was inevitable. But the form the conflict took,
the high degree of religious and national enthusiasm
which it evoked, and the powerful aid that enthusiasm
gave to the propaganda which was preparing itself,
were directly consequent upon the character of Anti-
ochus the God Manifest. The rigor and thoroughness
with which he strove to suppress the Jewish cult were
characteristic of him. His indifference to sarred tradi-
tions made his violation of the temple almost a casual act
ANTIOCHUS THE MANIFEST GOD 141
on his part, his Hellenism justified his plans, and his
despotic nature, raging under the humiliating rebuff he
had received from Rome, found an outlet in the punish-
ment of a disobedient province.
The writer of I Maccabees places the responsibility ,
for the persecution by Antiochus directly upon the Jews
themselves. Many, he tells, were persuaded to identify,
themselves wholly with the Greeks." The first offense'
to Jewish religious sentiment did not come from the
king at all. The men who waited upon Antiochus, and
obtained permission to set up a gymnasium at Jeru-
salem, acted quite of their own volition. Antiochus'
direct action in the matter begins with his return from
Egypt. " Embittered and groaning," Polybius says, he
left Egypt and returned to Syria. Now, just what hap-
pened in Judea is not quite clear. First Maccabees tells
of an unprovoked pillage of the temple and a massacre of
the people. Second Maccabees reports a furious struggle
between the two pretenders, Menelaus and Jason, upon
a rumor of the king's death. In all likelihood the fight
ended with the discomfiture of Antiochus' appointee,
Menelaus, and the king immediately proceeded to
rescue him. The sack of Jerusalem and a massacre fol-
lowed. No doubt the massacre was no worse than
befell any captured city, since of a special policy of
extermination there can as yet have been no question.
Menelaus was restored, the temple treasures were
surrendered to the king, and, either directly or after an
interval of two years, the pro^^ramme of forcible sup-
pression of the Jewish cult was announced.
142 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
It is for this programme that an adequate explana-
tion is wanting. There is nothing really quite like it
in Greek history. Not that religious persecution, or the
suppression of an obnoxious cult, was an unheard-of
undertaking. The establishment of the worship of
Dionysus had encountered vigorous opposition in con-
tinental Greece. A probable tradition recounts the
attempts at thorough repression with which several
Greek communities, notably Thebes, met the intruder."
But this movement had as its object the preservation
of an ancestral religion, not its destruction. To com-
pel anyone to abjure his national customs, to forsake
TO. irarpia, must have seemed monstrous to all people in
whom the sense of kinship with the deity, and the
belief in the god's local jurisdiction, were as strong as
they were among the Greeks.
Somewhat later, among the Romans, a successful
attempt was made to extirpate the Druidic ritual in
Cisalpine Gaul. As far as this was an effort to destroy
root and branch an ancient and established form of
worship, it presents many analogies to the project of
Antiochus. But the persecution of the Druids was
based on specific charges of immoral and anti-social
practices associated with their ritual, especially that of
human sacrifices. That may have been a pretext. The
Druids may not after all have been guilty of these
enormities. However, the pretext was at least ad-
vanced, and the exile of Druidic brotherhoods and the
destruction of their sanctuaries were publicly justified
only by that."
ANTIOCHUS THE MANIFEST GOD . 14*3
In the case of the Jews no such assertions are to be
discovered. Antiochus, instigated by renegade Jews, *
sets about a systematic obHteration of the distinctively
Jewish ritual. The synagogue services were to be 't
checked by the destruction of the Torah. Perhaps
periodic reunions in the synagogue were forbidden alto-
gether, since meetings of citizens were proverbially
looked at askance in monarchies.^^ The temple was
rededicated to the Olympian Zeus, and the ceremony of
circumcision was made a capital offense. Observance of
the Sabbath was construed as treason. No detail was
overlooked.
This complete scheme is not to be explained by the
existence of a strong animosity toward the Jews. There
is, in the first place, none of the evidence that was
met with in Egypt, that such animosity existed. And,
secondly, animosity between racial groups expressed
itself in bloody riots, not in a carefully prepared plan
for extirpating a religion while sparing its professors.
Nor can we find in the personal character of Antiochus
a sufficient cause for the persecution. He undoubtedly
exhibited the gusts of passion common enough among
those who wield irresponsible power, but the sustained
and bloody vindictiveness of such a programme is a
very different thing.
It has been frequently suggested that his cherished
policy was the thorough Hellenization of his empire,
that among the Jews only was there a determined
resistance, that upon learning that the basis of their
resistance was a devoted attachment to their ancestral
144 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
superstition, he determined to root out the latter. The
difficulties with this view are, first, that opposition was
not confined to the Jews, but was met with everywhere
— a dull and voiceless opposition, which, however,
unmistakably existed. Secondly, among the Jews a
., very large number, we are told, '' were persuaded " ; and
it is highly likely that Antiochus came in direct contact
wholly with the latter, or almost wholly, so that the
situation in Judea cannot have impressed him as radi-
cally different from that of Syria or Babylonia.
But, above all, it is the conclusion that the obstacles
to his policy would lead to persecution on his part, which
^ is more than doubtful. No one could have known better
than he did himself that ancestral religious customs are
^ not to be eradicated by violence. The Egypt which was
so nearly in his grasp might have taught him that, if
nothing else could. There the indigenous religion had
triumphed. He himself, upon his entry into the king-
dom, had crowned himself more Aegyptico, '' after the
Egyptian fashion," " that is, with full acknowledgment
of the sovereignty of Ptah and Isis over their ancient
demesnes.
We shall probably have to look to the Hellenizing
Jews not only for the initiation, but for the systematic
carrying out, of the policy of persecution. And, as has
been suggested, it is one of the commonest phenomena
of ancient life. There was scarcely a Greek city in
which a defeated faction had not at some time sum-
moned the public enemy into the city, and by their aid
taken a cruel vengeance on their opponents. If the
ANTIOCHUS THE MANIFEST GOD 145
Hellenizing faction in Judea found its influence wan-
ing, its action was from the point of view of ancient
times natural enough. It appealed to foreign aid and
strove systematically to stamp out the institutions it
opposed, just as at Athens the Athenian oligarchs,
placed in power by Spartan arms, tried to maintain
themselves by wholesale proscription and by system-
atically removing all the democratic institutions that
had developed since Clearchus "
It is likely too that the impelling motive was not
solely the rancor which apostates feel for the faith or
nation they have quitted. They saw themselves in the
presence of a real danger. Among them was to be
found most of the wealth of the community, and no
doubt a great deal of the intellectual culture. Many of
them were already in the third or fourth generation of
Hellenistic Jews. The ancient ritual had for these men
no personal associations whatever. In the various com-
munes they enjoyed the position which wealth neces-
sarily, and in those days especially, brought. That
there was any virtue in poverty or privation in them-
selves had not yet been preached to the world, and
would have seemed a wild paradox ; and although the
vanity of wealth without wisdom was a philosophic
truism, ordinary wits would not always trust themselves
to make the distinction.
When these men, who formed almost a hereditary
nobility, and already cherished a superb aloofness from
the mass, felt their influence and power challenged,
perhaps saw themselves outvoted in the governing
10
146 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
councils of the synagogues and communes, and the
foundations of their petty glory sapped, they were
roused to a counter-effort, of which the results have
been indicated. The danger in which they found them-
selves came from the Hasidim, the group of brother-
hoods that made a conscious opposition to Hellenism
their bond of union. In Egypt the opposition had found
its organs in the caste-like corporations of priests. In
Judea the organs had to be created. And that they were
successful, the words of I Maccabees testify. They
contained the leaders of the nation ; their position was
already one of dominating influence.
It is unnecessary to detail the course of the Has-
monean revolt. Even the brilliant successes of Judas in
the field, and the less splendid but equally solid triumphs
of his brothers, would have had fewer political conse-
quences than they had except for the chaos in the
Seleucid succession. But of the permanent triumph of
the movement there was never any doubt. If the revolt
had ended with the death of Judas, the discomfiture of
the Hellenists would have been complete. No Mace-
donian king would ever be tempted to provoke another
revolt by a similar project. It could never be a part of a
sane ruler's policy to sacrifice valuable military material
in order to gratify a local faction. And it must never
be forgotten that the Greek rule of the Syrian kingdom
was the domination of a military class. Every diminu-
tion of the army was a dead loss.
The suggestion may be hazarded that not merely the
Hellenistic Jews, but also the Greeks themselves, viewed
ANTIOCHUS THE MANIFEST GOD 147
the progress of the Hasidim with real alarm. We are
far as yet from the epoch of real propaganda, but to
some extent it may already have begun. Where and
when we can only speculate. Perhaps the fervor of
Hasidic preaching had touched non-Jewish Syrians;
perhaps some of the yotmger men of the Hellenists
*' relapsed " under Hasidic stimulation into Judaism.
However the case may be, Greeks of influence may have
noted that the Grecizing of Coele-Syria was not merely
hindered by obstacles in Judea, but that the Judaizing
of portions already won" was a possibility that w^as
attaining a constantly greater vividness. If this was
the case, the persecution by Antiochus was a precaution,
insensate and futile, but less at variance with Greek
methods than it seems in the usual interpretation of
the facts we know.
CHAPTER XI
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA
The preaching of a gospel seems to us as natural as
the existence of a religion. That is because the religions
we know best are universal ones, of which the God is a
transcendent being, in whose sight human distinctions
are negligible. But for the Mediterranean world that
was not the case. The religions were not universal;
many of the gods were concretely believed to be the
ancestors of certain groups of men, and not always
remote ones. Local associations played a determining
part. If we find an active propaganda here, it cannot
be because the spread of a ritual or faith is an inherent
characteristic. On the contrary, in normal circum-
stances there seems to be no reason why one com-
munity should change its gods or forms of worship for
those of another.
But, as a matter of fact, they did change them. And
the change was often effected consciously by the
planned efforts of a group of worshipers, and in all the
ways that have been used since — preaching, emotional
revivals, and forcible conquest. One such carefully
planned effort was that of the Jews, but only one of
them. The circumstances in which this propaganda
was carried out need close investigation.
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA 149
In discussing Greek religion (above, p. 34) it has
been suggested that there was in every community a
large number of men who found no real satisfaction in
the state cult, and that it was chiefly among them that
the proselytes of new and foreign religions were to be
found. But that does not make us understand why these
foreign religions should have sought proselytes, why
they should have felt themselves under obligations to
assume a mission. The stranger within the gates might
reasonably be expected to do honor to the divine lord of
the city : if he remained permanently, his inclusion in the
civic family in some way is natural. But what was it
that impelled Isis to seek worshipers so far from the
Nile, where alone she could be properly adored, or the
mysterious Cabiri to go so far from the caves where
their power was greatest and most direct?*
The movement of which these special missions are
phases was old and extensive. It covered the entire
Eastern Mediterranean, and went perhaps further west
and east than we can at present demonstrate. Its begin-
nings probably antedated the Hellenes. The religious
unrest of which Christian missionaries made such excel-
lent use was a phenomenon that goes back very far
in the history of Mediterranean civilization. At cer-
tain periods of that history and in different places it
reached culminating waves, but it is idle to attempt to
discover a sufficient cause for it in a limited series of
events within a circumscribed area of Greece or of Asia.
The briefest form in which the nature of this unrest
can be phrased is the following — the quest for personal
salvation.
150 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
We shall do well to remember that the ancient state
was a real corporation, based not upon individuals but
upon smaller family corporations. The rights of these
corporations were paramount. It was only gradually
that individuals were recognized at all in law.^ The
desire for personal salvation is a part of the growing
consciousness of personality, and must have begun
almost as soon as the state corporation itself became
fixed.
Within a state only those individuals can have rela-
tively free play who are to a certain extent the organs
of the state ; that is, those individuals who by conquest,
wealth, or chance have secured for themselves political
predominance in their respective communities. But
these could never be more than a small minority. For
the great majority everyday life was hemmed in by
conventions that had the force of laws, and was
restricted by legal limits drastically enforced. And this
narrow and pitifully poor life was bounded by Sheol,
or Hades, by a condition eloquently described as worse
at its best than the least desirable existence under the
face of the insufferable sun.^
The warrior caste, for whom and of whom the
Homeric poems were written, were firmly convinced that
the bloodless and sinewless life in the House of Hades
was the goal to which existence tended. But they found
their compensation in that existence itself. What of
those who lacked these compensations, or had learned
to despise them? In them the prospect of becoming
lost in the mass of flitting and indistinguishable
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA 151
shadows must have produced a profound horror, and
their minds must have dwelt upon it with increasing
intensity.
It is one of the most ancient behefs of men in this
region that all the dead become disembodied spirits,
sometimes with power for good or evil, so that their dis-
pleasure is to be deprecated, sometimes without such
power, as the Homeric nobles believed, and the mass
of the Jews in the times of the monarchy. These spirits
or ghosts had of themselves no recognizable personality,
and could receive it only exceptionally and in ways that
violated the ordinary laws of the universe. Such a
belief is not strictly a belief in immortality at all, since
the essence of the latter is that the actual person of flesh
and blood continues his identity when flesh and blood
are dissolved and disappear, and that the characteristics
which, except for form and feature, separated him from
his fellows in life still do so after death. The only
bodiless beings who could be said to have a person-
ality were the gods, and they were directly styled " the
Immortals."
However, the line that separated gods and men was
not sharp. The adoration offered to the dead m the
Spartan relief " is not really different from the wor-
ship of the Olympians. From the other side, in Homer,
the progeny of Zeus by mortal women are very emphat-
ically men.^ Whether the Homeric view is a special
development, it is demonstrably true that a general
belief was current in Greece not long after the Homeric
epoch, which saw no impossibility in favored men
152 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
securing the gift of immortality ; that is, continuing
without interruption the personal life which alone had
significance. This was done by the translations — the
removal of mortal men in the flesh to kinship with the
gods."
This privilege of personal immortality was not con-
nected, in the myths that told of it, with eminent ser-
vices. It was at all times a matter of grace. In the
form of bodily translation it always remained a rare and
miraculous exception. But the mere existence of such
a belief must have strongly influenced the beliefs and
practices that had long been connected with the dead.
We cannot tell where and when it was first suggested
to men that the shadow-life of Hades might by the
grace of the gods be turned into real life, and a real
immortality secured. It may be, as has been supposed,
that the incentive came from Egypt. More likely, how-
ever, it was an independent growth, and perhaps arose
in more than one place. The favor and grace of the
gods, which were indispensable, could obviously be
gained by intimate association, and in the eighth and
perhaps even the ninth pre-Christian century we begin
to hear in Greece of means of entering into that asso-
ciation. One of these means was the " mystery," of
which the Eleusinian is the best-known. In these cult-
societies, of the origin of which we know nothing, a
close and intimate association with the god or gods was
offered. The initiated saw with their own eyes the
godhead perform certain ceremonial acts ; perhaps they
sat cheek by jowl with him. It is obvious that such
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA 153
familiarity involved the especial favor of the gods, and
it is easy to understand that the final and crowning mark
of that favor would not be always withheld. The com-
munion with the god begun in this life would be con-
tinued after it. To the mystae of Eleusis, and no doubt
elsewhere, and to them only, was promised a personal
immortality.^
It may not have been first at Eleusis. It may have
been in the obscure corners of Thrace where what later
appeared as Orphic societies was developed. But there
were soon many mysteries, and there was no lack of
men and women to whom the promise was inexpressibly
sweet. The spread of Orphism in the sixth and fifth
centuries b. c. e. bears witness to the eagerness with
which the evangel was received.
Outside of Greece, in Persia, India, and Egypt, per-
haps also in Babylonia, there were hereditary groups of
men who claimed to possess an arcanum, whereby the
supreme favor of the gods, that of eternal communion
with them, was to be obtained. These hereditary castes
desired no extension, but jealously guarded their
privileges. But among them there constantly arose
earnest and warm-hearted men, whose humanity im-
pelled them to spread as widely as possible the boon
which they had themselves obtained by accident. Per-
haps many attempts in all these countries aborted. Not
all Gotamas succeeded in becoming Buddhas.
The Jews seemed to the Greeks to possess just such
an arcanum, and whatever interest they originally
excited was due to that fact. The initiatory rite of cir-
154 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
cumcision, the exclusiveness of a ritual that did not
brook even the proximate presence of an uninitiate, all
pointed in that direction, even if we disregard the
vigorously asserted claims of the Jews to be in a very
special sense the people of God.
The Jews too had as far as the masses were concerned
developed the belief in a personal immortality during
the centuries that followed the Babylonian exile (comp.
p. 70), and as far as we can see it developed among
them at the same time and somewhat in the same way
as elsewhere. That is to say, among them as among
others the future life, the Olam ha-ho, was a privilege
and was sought for with especial eagerness by those to
whom the Olam ha-zeh was largely desolate. Not
reward for some and punishment for others, but com-
plete exclusion from any life but that of Sheol for those
who failed to acquire the Olam ha-bo, was the doctrine
maintained, just as the Greek mystae knew that for
those who were not initiated there was waiting, not the
wheel of Ixion or the stone of Sisyphus, but the bleak
non-existence of Hades.*
But there was a difference, and this difference became
vital. Conduct was not disregarded in the Greek mys-
teries, but the essential thing was the fact of initiation.
Those who first preached the doctrine of a personal
salvation to the Jews were conscious in so doing that
they were preaching to a society of initiates. They were
all mystae ; all had entered into the covenant : all
belonged to the congregation of the Lord, nin^ "7r{\). To
whom was this boon of immortality, the Olam ha-bo, to
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA 155
be given? The first missionaries, whether they did or
did not constitute a sect, had a' ready answer. To those
to whom the covenant was real, who accepted fully the
yoke of the Law.
The sects of Pharisees and Sadducees, whose dis-
putes fill later Jewish history, joined issue on a number
of points. No doubt there was an economic and social
cleavage between them as well. But perhaps the most
nearly fundamental difference of doctrine related to the
Olam ha-bo. The Pharisees asserted, and the Sad-
ducees denied, the doctrine of resurrection. It is
stated by Josephus,^ that the Sadducees called in ques-
tion the Olam ha-bo itself. When and where these sects
took form is uncertain. The Pharisees at least are fully
developed, and form a powerful political party under
John Hyrcanus." It is very unlikely that they are re-
lated to the Hasidim or are a continuation of them. The
latter were a national, anti-Hellenic organization, and
contained men of all shades of beliefs and interests.
But the Pharisees, like the Hasidim, began as a brother-
hood or a group of brotherhoods, however political their
aims and actions were in later times. The fact is
indicated by the name Haber, '' comrade," which they
gave themselves, and the contemptuous Am ha-aretz,
** clod," ot TToAAot, with which they designated those
who were not members of their congregations.
Now the Habermi, who preached the World-to-Come,
were not in a primitive stage of culture, but in a very
advanced one. Their God was not master of a city, but
Lord of the whole earth. And they had long main-
IS6 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
tained the principle that merit in the eyes of God was
determined by conduct, both formal and moral, a dis-
tinction less profoundly separating than seems at first
to be the case. If that were so, anyone, Jew or Gentile,
might conceivably acquire that merit. How was the
Olam ha-bo to be refused to anyone who had taken upon
himself the yoke of the Law, who did all that the Lord
required at his hands ? Jewish tradition knew of several
eminently righteous gentiles, such as Job, in whom God
was well pleased. It was an untenable proposition to
men whose cardinal religious doctrine had for centuries
been ethical and universal that all but a few men were
permanently excluded from the beatitude of life after
death.^^
Since, however, the promises of the sacred literature
were addressed primarily to Israel, those who were not
of Abraham's seed could become '^ comrades " only by
first becoming Jews. That conception involved no
difficulty whatever. The people of the ancient world
had empirically learned some of the more elementary
facts of biological heredity; but membership in a com-
munity, though determined by heredity in the first
instance, was not essentially so determined. In earlier
times, when the communities were first instituted, not
even the pretense of kinship was maintained. The
essential fact was the assumption of common sacra.
That a man might by appropriate ceremonies — or
without ceremonies — enter into another community,
was held everywhere. If, as has been suggested (above,
p. 147), the Hasidim found some of their members
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA 157
among the non- Jewish population of Syria," it is not
likely that the process of becoming Jews was rendered
either difficult or long. Abraham, a late tradition stated,
brought many gentiles under the wings of the Shekinah,
the Effulgence. If this tradition is an old one, it indi-
cates that proselytizing was in early times held to be
distinctly meritorious."
The first conquests of the Hasmonean rulers brought
non-Jewish tribes under immediate political control of
the Jews. Most of them, notably the Idumeans, were
forcibly Judaized, and so successfully that we hear of
only one attempted revolt." There can of course have
been no question here of elaborate ceremonies or
lengthy novitiates. The Idumeans were dealt with as
shortly as Charlemagne's Saxons, and gave the most
convincing demonstration of their loyalty in the time of
the insurrections."
This drastic way of increasing the seed of Abraham
must have been viewed differently by different classes
of Jews. To the Haberim the difference between a
heathen and a Jewish aspirant to their communion lay
in the fact that the heathen had undergone the fearful
defilement of worshiping the Abomination, while the
Jew had not. For the former there was accordingly
necessary an elaborate series of purgations, of cere-
monial cleansing ; and until this was done there was no
hope that he could be admitted into the congregation of
the Lord. But it might be done, and it began to be done
in increasing numbers. It would have been strange if,
among the many gentile seekers for salvation, Greek,
is8 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Syrian, Cappadocian, and others, some would not be
found to take the path that led to the conventicles of
the Jewish Haberim. This was especially the case
when, instead of an obscure Syrian tribe, the Has-
moneans had made of Judea a powerful nation, one
of the most considerable of its part of the world.
All the mysteries welcomed neophytes, but none made
the entrance into their ranks an easy matter. In some
of them there were degrees, as in those of Cybele, and
the highest degree was attained at so frightful a cost
as practically to be reserved for the very few.'" In the
case of the Jews, one of the initiatory rites was
peculiarly repellent to Greeks and Romans, in that it
involved a bodily mutilation, which was performed not
in the frenzy of an orgiastic revel, but in the course of a
solemn ritual of prayer. That fact might make many
hesitate, but could not permanently deter those who
earnestly sought for the way of life.
The Jewish propaganda was not confined to receiving
and imposing conditions on those who came. Some at
least sought converts, although it is very doubtful that
the Pharisaic societies as a class planned a real mission
among the heathen. The methods that were used were
those already in vogue — methods which had achieved
success in many fields. Books and pamphlets were
published to further the purpose of the missionaries;
personal solicitation of those deemed receptive was
undertaken. Actual preaching, such as the diatribe
commenced by the Cynics, and before them by Socrates,
was probably confined to the synagogue, or meeting
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA 159
within the proseucha, and reached only those who were
there assembled/'
The literary form of the propaganda was especially
active in those communities in which Jews and Greeks
spoke a common language and partly shared a common
culture. Even books intended primarily for Jewish
circulation contain polemics against polytheism and
attacks upon heathen custom, which the avowed pur-
pose of the book would not justify.
It is not to be supposed that the literary propaganda
was the most effective. It was limited by the very field
for which it was intended. Such a book as the Wisdom
of Solomon was both too subtle and too finished a
product to appeal to other than highly cultivated tastes,
and men of this stamp are not readily reached by
propagandizing religions. The chief object of attack
was the Greek polytheism. '' Wisdom " ventures even
on an historical explanation of polytheism, which is
strangely like that of Herbert Spencer.'* Now, just for
the Greeks, who might read and understand such a
book, to refute polytheism was destroying a man of
straw. No one of them seriously believed in it. Those
who were not agnostics or atheists believed in the
unity of the Divine essence, and at most maintained the
existence of certain subordinate ministerial beings, who
might or might not be identical with the names of the
actors in the myths. But many Jews would be ready to
admit so much. Indeed that there were subordinate
daemonia, helpful and harmful, was a widespread belief
in Judea, even if without authoritative sanction. Very
i6o THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
often the heathen gods were conceived to be not
absokite nulHties, but demons really existing and evil —
a belief which the early Christian church firmly held
and preached."
Accordingly the polished society of a Greek city did
not need the literary polemics against polytheism to be
convinced that monotheism was an intellectually more
developed and morally preferable dogma. On the other
hand, it was a very difficult task to convince it that
the ceremonies of the official cult, granting even their
philosophic absurdity, were for that reason objection-
able. To make them seem so, there would have to be
present the consciousness of sin, and that was not a
matter which argumentation could produce.
One other point against which Jewish writers of that
time address themselves is the assumed viciousness of
Greek life. How much one people has with which to
reproach another in that respect in ancient or in modern
times need not be considered here. The fact remains that
in many extant books sexual excesses and perversions
are made a constant reproach to the heathen — which
generally implies the Greek — and the extant Greek and
Latin literature gives a great deal of color to the
charge."* This is due not so much to the actual life de-
picted as to the attitude with which even good men
regarded these particular incidents. It is true that we
have contemporary evidence that many Jews in Greek
communities were no paragons of right living or self-
restraint. But it is at least significant that this accusa-
tion, continually repeated by the Jews, is not met by
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA i6i
a retort in kind. The anti-Jewish writings are not
especially moderate in their condemnations. But with
viciousness in their lives they do not charge the Jews,
and they cannot have been unaware of what the Jews
wrote and said.
Polytheism and immorality, the two chief counts in
the indictment which Jewish writers bring against
heathendom, were not things Greeks were disposed to
defend. But it is doubtful whether the books that
inveighed against them were valuable weapons of
propaganda. We have practically no details of how
the movement grew. In the last century before the
Christian era it had reached the extraordinary pro-
portions that are evidenced by the satire of Horace as
well as by the opposition which it encountered. Jewish
apocalyptic literature confidently expects that all the
heathen on the rapidly approaching Judgment Day will
be brought within the fold.^^ The writers may be for-
given if the success of their proselytizing endeavors
made them feel that such a result was well within the
range of possibility.
Within the same period the worships of Cybele, of
Sabazios, and of Isis, had perhaps even greater success
in extending themselves over the Greek and Roman
world. The communities they invaded only rarely wel-
comed them. Even at Rome the official introduction of
Cybele was the last desperate recourse of avowed super-
stition, and it was promptly restricted when success and
prosperity returned to the Roman arms. But in all the
communities great masses of men were thoroughly pre-
1 62 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
pared in mind for the doctrines the Asiatic religions
preached. A pubHc preaching, such as the Cynics used,
was rarely permitted. But if we recall how many slaves
and ex-slaves as well as merchants and artisans were of
Asiatic stock, the spread of these cults, including that
of the Jews, by the effective means of personal and
individual conversion is nothing to be wondered at.
The state was perforce compelled to notice this spread.
Individuals had noticed it long before.
CHAPTER XII
THE OPPOSITION
The ancient state was based on community of sacra,
of cult-observances. Anything that tended to destroy
them or impair general belief in their necessity, went to
the very roots of the state, was therefore a form of
treason, and was punished as such. The state rarely
was interested in the honor of the gods themselves.
Roman law had a maxim, which was very seriously
stated, but which makes upon us the impression of a
cynical witticism : Deorimi ininriae dis ciirae, *' Let the
gods attend to their own wrongs." Since the kinship
of members of the state was generally known to be a
legal fiction, the bond that took its place was common
worship. The state could not look without concern
upon anything that threatened to weaken its formal
structure.
Most Greek states made aai/Seta, " impiety," a crim-
inal oflfense. But just what acts or omissions consti-
tuted impiety was in each case a question of fact, to be
determined specially in every instance. At Athens vari-
ous persons of greater and less distinction were pros-
ecuted under that indictment — Socrates, Theophras-
tus, Phryne. In every one of these cases, the gravamen
of the charge was that the defendant did not regard as
gods those whom the state so regarded (/at) vofxt^av
1 64 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Oeov^ ors r) ttoAi? vofiiUi, Plat. Apol. 24B and 26b), and
taught so. In general, individual prosecutions such as
these were deemed sufficient to repress the spread of
dangerous doctrines. It was not believed necessary
to consider membership in any sect or community as
prima facie evidence of such impiety, punishable with-
out further investigation. In later times, however, even
this step was taken. Certain philosophic sects — which,
we may remember, were corporately organized — were
believed to be essentially impious. The city of Lyctos
in Crete forbade any Epicurean to enter it under penalty
of the most frightful tortures.^
We shall have to distinguish these police measures,
which, when aimed at religious bodies, constitute an
undoubted religious persecution, from the mutual ani-
mosity with which hostile races in any community
regarded each other and the bloody riots that resulted
from it. In the new city of Seleucia in Babylonia, the
Syrians, Jews, and Greeks that lived there were very
far from realizing the purpose of the city's founder and
coalescing into a single community. Sanguinary con-
flicts, probably on very slight provocation, frequently
took place. Sometimes the Jews and Syrians combined
against the Greeks ; sometimes the Greeks and Syrians
against the Jews, as recounted by Josephus.' The sit-
uation in Alexandria, where Egyptians hated Greeks,
Jews, and doubtless all foreigners with a scarcely dis-
criminating intensity, is peculiar only because we are
well informed of conditions there by the papyri. When
any one of these nationalities gained the upper hand,
THE OPPOSITION 165
there was likely to be a bloody suppression of its foes,
often followed by equally bloody reprisals. Salamis, in
Cyprus, is a grim witness of the frenzy with which
neighbors could attack each other, when years of
hostility culminated in a violent outbreak.^
The attitude of Greek states toward the Jewish con-
gregations in their midst was certainly not uniformly
hostile. But in many cases there could not help being a
certain resentment, owing to the fact that these congre-
gations were by special grant generally immune from
prosecution for impiety, although as a matter of fact
they very emphatically " did not regard as gods those
whom the state so regarded." Of itself this circum-
stance might have been neglected, but the active and
successful propaganda they undertook made them a
source of real danger to the state. We therefore hear of
attempts made sporadically to abrogate the immunity,
to compel the Jewish corporations to conform to the
local law of ao-e/Saa. Nearly always, however, the im-
munity was a royal grant, and therefore unreachable
by local legislation, a fact that did not tend to alleviate
friction where it existed.*
At Rome police measures to suppress irreligion
were long in existence. However, the Roman attitude
toward any form of communion with gods or daemonia
was so uniformly an attitude of dread, that prohibition
of religious rites and punishment of participants in them
were not a task lightly assumed by a Roman magis-
trate. The suppression of the Bacchanalia in 186 b. c.
E. was nothing short of a religious persecution, but the
i66 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Utmost care was taken to make it appear to be directed
against certain licentious practices alleged against the
Bacchae, and the senate's decree expressly authorizes
the Bacchic rites, under certain restrictions deemed
necessary to insure their harmlessness/ Very early the
Isiac mysteries and other Eastern cults came within
the animadversion of the urban police.^ Here too the
theory was that the crimes and immorality of the
communicants were the sole objects of punishment,
especially that species of fraud which took the form of
magic and unofficial fortune-telling. In reality, how-
ever, all these pretexts covered the fact that the Romans
felt their state ritual endangered, not by the presence,
but by the spread, of such rituals among Romans; and
in this their alarm was very well grounded indeed. But
to proceed openly and boldly against any manifestation
of a divine numen, was more than the average Roman
board of aediles ventured to do.
If the official attitude of various communities toward
outside cults and toward the Jews in particular can be
brought under no general rule, we may be sure that the
personal attitude of individual Greeks toward them
varied from enthusiastic veneration to indifference and
determined antagonism. In certain cities the Jews as
foreigners could not hope to escape odium nor the
jealousy of competing individuals and organizations.
In Egypt particularly, the feud between Egyptians and
Jews existed before the coming of the Greeks there,
and grew in intensity as time went on. As far as definite
attacks upon the Jews and their institutions went, many
THE OPPOSITION 167
of them had an Egyptian origin, and many others were
wholly confined to that country.
These attacks are not essentially different from the
methods that generally obtained when one group of
men found itself in frequent opposition to another
group on the field of battle or otherwise. The populace
needs no rhetorical stimulation to represent its enemies
as wicked, cowardly, and foolish. That is a human
weakness which exists to-day quite as it has existed for
many centuries. However, even for the populace, such
phrases were accepted conventions. They were not
quite seriously meant, and could be conveniently for-
gotten whenever the former foe became an ally.
Among professional rhetoricians this particular
method of argumentation formed a set rhetorical
device, one of the forms of vituperatio ^ as classified in
the text-books. Certain roVot, " commonplaces,*' were
developed concerning all nations, and used as occasion
required. Historical facts, popular gossip, freely imag-
ined qualities, were all equally used to support the
statements made or to illustrate them. Now it is in
the works of professional rhetoricians that most of the
attacks on the Jews are to be found. Further, we have
their works wholly in the form of citations taken from
the context. We cannot even be sure to what extent
the authors themselves were convinced of what they
said. Wherever we meet what is plainly a rhetorical
TOTTos, we have little ground for assuming that it corre-
sponds to any feeling whatever on the writer's part.
Often it was mechanically inserted, and has all the effect
of an exercise in composition.
1 68 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
With a laughter-loving people one of the first
resources in controversy is to render the opponent
ridiculous. It was especially on the side of religion that
the Jews maintained their difference from their neigh-
bors, and claimed a great superiority to them. A Greek
enemy would be much inclined to heap ridicule, first on
the pretensions to superiority, and then on the religious
form itself. That may be the basis of a story, which
soon became widely current, to the effect that the Jews
worshiped their god in the form of an ass.
The story is of Egyptian origin. Just where and
when it began, cannot be discovered. Josephus in com-
bating Apion refers to a writer whose name the copyists
have hopelessly jumbled. It is not unlikely that he was
a certain Mnaseas, perhaps of Patara in Lycia, or
Patras in the Peloponnesus, a highly rhetorical his-
torian of the second century b. c. e. ^ He wrote therefore
before the establishment of the Maccabean state. Wher-
ever he was born, he was a pupil of Eratosthenes, and
therefore a resident of Alexandria.^
We have his words only at third hand, in Josephus'
account of Apion's reference. Each citation is of sub-
stance, not the ipsissirna verba; and, besides, of this part
of Josephus we have only a Latin translation, not the
original. The story, whether it is Mnaseas' or Apion's,
is to the effect that a certain Idumean, named Zabidus,
duped the Jews into believing that he intended to
deliver his god, Apollo," into their hands, and con-
trived to get into the temple and remove '' the golden
head of the pack-ass. '*
THE OPPOSITION 169
The uncertainty and indirectness of the citation
makes it dubious whether Mnaseas understood this ass
to be the actual divine symbol or, as others said, merely
one of the figures of a group. The absurdity of the
story seems so patent that its existence is almost
incredible. It indicates the extreme strictness with
which gentiles were excluded from even the approach
to the temple at Jerusalem that the baselessness of the
ass-legend was not immediately discovered."
Josephus' indignation and his frequent reference to
the '' pretended wit " of Apion or of Mnaseas make
the tone and intention of the story quite plain. It can
have had no other purpose than that of holding the
Jews up to ridicule. But just what the point of the jest
is, is by no means quite so easy to discover. We cannot
reconstruct even approximately the words of Mnaseas.
It is, however, at least likely that if he had attributed
the adoration of an ass to the Jews, a somewhat less
equivocal statement to that effect would appear. Other
writers do make that statement plainly enough. The
point of Mnaseas' raillery seems rather to be the easy
credulity of the people, a characteristic that was at
all times attributed to them in the ancient world, from
the earliest references, as they are found in Hecataeus,
to the latest. It is curious that this quality, which to
Greeks and Romans seemed the most striking trait of
the Jews, is the very last that modern observers would
ascribe to them.
If we follow the story as it appears in later writers,
we shall meet it next in the history of the Syrian Posi-
170 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
donius, who lived about lOO b. c. e. Again, we have his
statement only in quotation, this time in a fragment of
the work of Diodorus, a Sicilian contemporary of
Augustus. Posidonius does no more than make the
assertion that the innermost shrine of the temple con-
tained the statue of a long-bearded man, assumed to
be Moses, riding on an ass {XWivov ayaXfxa avSp6<i
/SaOvTTMyMvo'i Ka6r]ix€vov [sic | eV oi/ov) /" This is very far
from accusing the Jews of worshiping an ass. Indeed
it is likely enough that nothing was further from the
mind of the writer. Perhaps Mnaseas too told the same
or a very similar story, since his anecdote would fit in
just as well with the account of Posidonius as with the
later version.
The story appears again in the writings of Molo, the
tutor of Caesar and Cicero ; but Molo's statement is
wholly lost. In the next generation we find it in the
writings of the Egyptian Apion, and in Damocritus, of
whom we know nothing, but who, it is likely enough,
was a resident of Alexandria.^""
Here the statements are unmistakable. According to
Damocritus, if he is accurately cited by the late Byzan-
tine lexicographer Suidas, the Jews adored the gilded
head of an ass (^xP^^V^ ^^^^ Kc^aA^v TrpocreKvvovv) . Apion,
in the Latin translation of Josephus, asserts that the
Jews " adored this ass' head, and worshiped it with
much ceremony " (id [i. e. asini caput] colere ac
dignum facere tanta religione) .^*
Probably from Apion it got to Tacitus, 120 c. e., who
in his Histories (v. 4) uses the words, effigiern [asini]
THE OPPOSITION 171
penetrali sacravere, " they consecrated the figure of
an ass in their inner shrine." Tacitus expressly avoids
the allegation of worshiping this statue. He probably
intentionally modified the words of Apion to fit the
statement into the then abundantly proven fact that the
Jews worshiped an imageless and abstract deity (Hist.
V.5)-
The Greek essayist Plutarch, almost a generation
before Tacitus, makes a similar reference, though in
his case without the least hostile or satiric intention.
The ass is according to him the animal most honored
among the Jews (^to TifXMixevov W arrali^ juaAio-ra 6r)ptov^ ^
a statement which, it may be said incidentally, is by no
means without foundation.^''
It is generally assumed that the use of an ass as an
object of adoration necessarily aroused derision. That
would probably be true of our own times in Europe or
in America, but it would not obtain in the ancient world.
Veneration of an ass was no more extraordinary to a
Greek than veneration of any other animal symbol. Nor
was the ass associated in men's minds only with con-
temptuous and derisive images. He played a large part
in the economy of the people, and was in many places
correspondingly esteemed. The very first reference to
him in Greek literature is in the Iliad (xi. 558), where
A j ax's slow retreat is compared to the stubborn and
effectual resistance of an ass in the fields — surely no
dishonoring simile. The ass was a part of the sacred
train of Dionysus,^^ long before the latter was identified
with the Phryg^ian Sabazios. Again, the ass was trans-
172 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
ferred to heaven, where he still shmes as a constella-
tion. At Lampsacus and Tarentum he was a sacrificial
animal/' At Rome he was associated with Vesta, and
crowned at the Consualia.
Among the Jews, as among all the people of that
portion of Asia, his importance is such as to justify in
a large measure the words of Plutarch. Generally in
the Bible he is preferred to the horse (Prov. xxvi. 3;
Psalm xxxii. 9). In the ancient song of Deborah
(Judges V. 10) those who sit on white asses are the
princes of the people. The Anointed of God would
ride into the city upon an ass. It is not without mean-
ing that asses, but not horses, appear on Assyrian
sculpture.
In Egypt, however, the ass was a symbol of evil. He
was associated with the demoniac Typhon, and was an
object of superstitious fear and hatred.'^
For most of the Mediterranean nations the worship
of an ass was only in so far contemptible as the worship
of any animal was so considered. Romans and Greeks
take very lofty ground indeed when they speak of Egyp-
tian theriolatry, although innumerable religious prac-
tices of their own were associated in some way or other
with animals.'" It is not likely accordingly that the
allegation of this form of fetichism against the Jews
arose among Greeks or Romans or Syrians or Pales-
tinians. For Egyptians, on the contrary, this particular
story would charge the Jews with " devil-worship,"
or, at least, the veneration of a deity hostile to them.
In Egypt, and in Egypt alone, the story would have a
special point.
THE OPPOSITION 173
It may further be noted that in Manetho's account the
Jews are brought to Avaris, a site consecrated to
Typhon.
As it appears in Posidonius, perhaps in Mnaseas and
Molo, and certainly in Plutarch, the story is based upon
a real Jewish tradition and actual custom. In Damoc-
ritus and Apion, on the other hand, it is a malicious
slander, needing no basis in observed fact. It is one
of the many developments of the mutual hatred of Jew
and Egyptian, of which there is such a wealth of other
evidence.
This story has been dealt with in some detail because
it illustrates in very many ways the character, sources,
and methods of the literary anti-Semitism of ancient
times. Wholly without basis from the beginning, it
becomes almost an accepted dogma, as well grounded as
many another facile generalization in those days and
ours. Further, it will be observed that it does not every-
where necessitate the inference of hostility on the part
of the writer. The historians of those days were
ex professo rhetoricians. Every form of literary com-
position had as its prime object a finished artistic
product. Since the subject of literature, or artistic
verbal expression, was human life, history, which is
the record of human life, was eminently the province of
the word-fancier, the rhetorician. The trained his-
torian has no words of sufficient contempt for the mere
logographer whose object is the recording of facts.
That '' pretty lies " do not in. the least disfigure history,
is the opinion of the Stoic Panaetius and his pupil and
174 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
admirer Cicero. And that was particularly the case
when the history was, as it often became, an expanded
plea or invective, in which case the tricks of trade of the
advocate were not only commendable but demanded/"
Most of the accounts of the Jews or the fragments
of such accounts come to us from just these rhetorical
historians. If the whole book were extant in any case,
we should be in a position to determine the occasion for
the account and the source of its color. As it is, we
are on slippery ground when we endeavor to interpret
the fragments in such a way as to discover the facts of
which they present so distorted an image.
Not all historians, however, were of this type. Even
among the rhetors, many had, or at any rate professed
to have, a passion for truth. And among the others
there is manifested from time to time a distinct his-
torical conscience, a qualm as to the accuracy of the
assertion so trippingly written.
It is for this reason an especially painful gap in our
sources to find that portion of Polybius missmg in
which he promised to treat at length of the Jews.
Polybius of Megalopolis, a Greek who lived as an
Achean hostage in Rome, in the second third of the
second century b. c. e., was the nearest approach the
ancient world had to an historian in the modern sense,
one whose primary object was to ascertain the truth
and state it simply. Polybius could, for example, feel
and express high admiration for Roman institutions
and at the same time do justice to the bitter hater of the
Romans, Hannibal. And this too in the lifetime of men
THE OPPOSITION 175
who may themselves have heard the dreadful news of
Trasimene and Cannae.
In his sixteenth book, Polybius briefly relates the con-
quest of Judea among other parts of Coele-Syria, first
by Ptolemy Philometor's general, then by Antiochus
the Great. '' A little while after this, he [Antiochus]
received the submission of those of the Jews who lived
around the temple known as Jerusalem, About this I
have much more to tell, particularly because of the fame
of the temple, and I shall reserve that narrative for
later."
An evil chance has deprived us of that later narrative.
If we possessed it, we should probably have a very sane
and, as far as his sources permitted, an accurate account
of the condition of the Jews during the generation
between Antiochus the Great and the Maccabees.
Polybius, however, wrote before the establishment of
the Jewish state and the spread of its cult had focused
attention upon the people, and roused opposition. And
he wrote, too, at the very beginning of Roman inter-
ference in the East, which reduced Egypt to a pro-
tectorate before another generation. When he speaks
therefore of the '' great fame of the temple " (17 irepl to
Upbv eVtt^aveta), he is an especially important witness of
what the name meant to the Romans and Greeks, for
whom he wrote.'^
CHAPTER XIII
THE OPPOSITION IN ITS SOCIAL ASPECT
If the rivals and opponents of the Jews had nothing
more to say of them than that they worshiped the head
of an ass, it is not likely that their opposition would have
been recorded. But they would have put their training
to meager use, if they could not devise better and
stronger terms of abuse.
The very first Greek historian who has more than a
vague surmise of the character and history of the Jews
is Hecataeus of Abdera (comp. above, p. 92). As has
been seen, his tone is distinctly well-disposed. But he
knows also of circumstances which to the Greek mind
were real national vices. He mentions with strong dis-
approval their credulity, their inhospitality, and their
aloofness.
Credulity is not a vice with which the Jews were
charged in later times. That may be due to Christian
tradition, in which of course the sin of the Jews is that
they did not believe enough, as stated in Christian con-
troversial writings. But Greeks and Romans were
quite in accord, that the Jews were duped with extra-
ordinary facility ; especially that they were the victims
of the deception of their priests, so that they attached
importance to thousands of matters heartily without
importance. We may remember Horace's jibe, Credat
THE SOCIAL ASPECT 177
ludaeiis Apella, " Tell it to the Jew Apella " ; * and
nearly two hundred years later Apuleius mentions the
ludaei superstitiosi, '' the superstitious Jews." '
Among the Greeks particularly the quality of evrjOeta,
" simplicity/' had rapidly made the same progress as
the words " silly " and " simpleton " have in English.
Sharpness and duplicity were the qualities with which
non-Greek nations credited the Greeks, and whether the
accusation was true or not," " naivete," €vrj6eia^ excited
Greek risibilities more quickly than anything else. The
evrjOaa of the Jews lay of course not in their beliefs
about the Deity. On that point all educated men were
in accord. But it lay in believing in the sanctity of the
priests, and in the observance of the innumerable regu-
lations, particularly of abstention, which had already
assumed such proportions among the Jews. The line
of Meleager of Gadara, about his Jewish rival,
Even on the cold Sabbaths Love makes his warmth felt,
contains in its ^l^vxpa ad/SjSaTa '' cold Sabbaths," an epit-
ome of the Greek point of view. il/vxp6<s, " cold," was
almost a synonym for " dull.". That a holiday should
be celebrated by abstention from ordinary activities and
amusements seemed to a Greek the essence of unreason.
Their own religious customs were, like those of all other
nations, full of tabus, but they were the less conscious
of them because they were wholly apart from their
daily life. Jews avoided certain foods, not merely as
an occasional fast, but always. Their myths were not
12
178 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
irrelevant and beautiful stories, but were firmly believed
to be the records of what actually happened. The pre-
cepts of their code were sanctioned, not merely by ex-
pediency, but by the fear of an offended God.
An excellent example of how the rhetorical totto'^ of
" naivete " was handled is presented by Agatharchidas
of Cnidus, who wrote somewhere near 150 b. c. e.*
He tells us of Stratonice, daughter of Antiochus
Soter and wife of Demetrius of Macedon, who was
induced by a dream to remain in a dangerous position,
where she was taken and killed. The occasion is an
excellent one to enlarge upon the topic of superstition,
and Agatharchidas relates in this connection an incident
that is said to have happened one hundred years before
Stratonice, the capture of Jerusalem by Ptolemy Soter
through the fact that the Jews would not fight upon the
Sabbath. '' So," says Agatharchidas, " because, instead
of guarding their city, these men observed their sense-
less rule, the city received a harsh master, and their law
was shown to be a foolish custom." One cannot repro-
duce in English the fine antitheses of the related words
(fyvXaTTCLV T7]V TToAtv balauccd by hiaTrjpovvTOJv Trjv dvoiav, vo/jlo^
answering to lOidfxov ; but, besides the artificiality of the
phrases, the total absence of any attempt to make the
words fit the facts is shown by the conclusion to which
Agatharchidas, by rule of rhetoric, had to come. Now
a '' harsh master " is just what Ptolemy was not to the
Jews, and Agatharchidas of all men must have been
aware of that fact, for he wrote not only at Alexan-
dria, but at the court of Philometor, an especial patron
of the Jews individually and as a corporation.
THE SOCIAL ASPECT 179
The practice of the Sabbath was one of the first
things that struck foreigners. It is Hkely that the con-
gregations of Sabbatistae in Asia Minor were com-
posed of Jewish proselytes.^ The name of the Jewish
Sibyl Sambethe/ the association of Jewish worship
with that of the Phrygian Sabazios/ were based
upon this highly peculiar custom of the Jews. But its
utter irrationality seemed to be exhibited in such in-
stances as Agatharchidas here describes, the abstention
from both offensive and defensive fighting on the
Sabbath.
Whether the incident or others of the same kind ever
occurred may reasonably be doubted. The discussion
of the question in Talmudic sources is held at a time
when Jews had long ceased to engage in warfare.*
Their nation no longer existed, and their legal privi-
leges included exemption from conscription, if they
chose to avail themselves of it. In the Bible there is no
hint in the lurid chronicles of wars and battles that the
Sabbath observance involved cessation from hostil-
ities during time of war, and the supposition that no
resistance to attack was offered on that day is almost
wholly excluded. It is not easy to imagine one of the
grim swordsmen of David or Joab allowing his throat
to be cut by an enemy because he was attacked on the
Sabbath.
That any rule of Sabbath observance which de-
manded this had actually developed during the post-
Exilic period is likewise untenable. The Jews served
frequently in the army under both Persian and Greek
i8o THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
rule. This is amply demonstrated by the Aramaic
papyri of Elephantine and the existence of Jewish
mercenaries under the Ptolemies/ The professional
soldier whose service could not be relied upon one day
in seven would soon find his occupation gone.
Several passages in the Books of Maccabees have
often been taken to imply that the strict observance of
the Sabbath was maintained before the Hasmonean re-
volt, and deliberately abrogated by Mattathiah (I Mace,
ii. 30-44 ; II Mace. viii. 23-25) . But upon closer analysis
it will be seen that the incidents there recorded do not
quite show that. The massacre of the loyal Jews in
the desert was a special and exceptional thing. They
were not rebels in arms, but hunted fugitives. Their
passive submission to the sword was an act of voluntary
martyrdom (I Mace. ii. 37). aTTo6dvM/xev ol Trai/res iv rrj
wnXoT-qTi r)fjL(^v : fxaprvpcl e0' ry/xa? 6 ovpavb<5 /cat rj yyj on
aKpiTiii^ dTToAAure ly/xa?, " Let US all die in our innocence.
Heaven and earth bear witness for us that ye put us to
death wrongfully.'^
Again, it is not Mattathiah, but the sober reflection of
his men, that brings them to the resolution that such
acts of martyrdom, admirable as they are in intention,
are futile. The decision is rather a criticism of their
useless sacrifice than anything else.
Similar acts of self-devotion on the part of inhabi-
tants of doomed cities were not uncommon. As final
proofs of patriotism on the part of those who would
not survive their city, they received the commendation
of ancient writers.'"^ But to kill oneself or allow oneself
THE SOCIAL ASPECT
to be killed for a fantastic superstition, could have
seemed only the blindest fanaticism.
Now there is no reason for doubting the essential
accuracy of the report in I Maccabees, to the effect that
one group of Jewish zealots chose passive resistance
to the attempt of Antiochus, and by that nerved the Has-
moneans to a very active resistance. And it is very
likely that in this event we have the basis for the
stories that related the capture of Jerusalem — almost
in every case — on the Sabbath. The story is told of the
capture by Nebuchadnezzar, by Artaxerxes Ochus, by
Ptolemy, and by Pompey. It is a logical inference from
the non-resistance of the refugees mentioned in I Mac-
cabees. The conditions of ancient warfare make it
highly improbable that it was more.
The rationalist Greek or Roman felt it a point of
honor to hold in equal contempt the '' old-wives' tales "
of his own countrymen as to the supramundane facts
with which the myths were filled," and the vain and
foolish attempts by which barbarians, and Greeks and
Romans too, sought to dominate the cosmic forces or
tear the secret from fate. These attempts generally
took the form of magic, not, however, like the primitive
ceremonies, of which the real nature had long been for-
gotten, but in the elaborate thaumaturgic systems which
had been fashioned in Egypt, Persia, and Babylon. In
their lowest forms these were petty and mean swindling
devices. In their more developed forms they contained
a sincerely felt mysticism, but under all guises they
aroused the contempt of the skeptic, to whom the most
i82 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
ancient and revered rites of his own cult were merely
ancestral habits which it did no harm to follow. The
tone such men adopted toward the complicated Oriental
theologies and rituals was very much like that of mod-
ern cultivated men toward the various " Vedantic phil-
osophies," which at one time enjoyed a certain vogue.
Those who seriously maintained that by the rattling
of a sistrum, or the clash of cymbals, or by mortifica-
tions of the flesh, influences could be exerted upon the
laws that governed the universe, so as to modify their
course or divert them, were alike insensate fools, whose
chatter no educated man could take seriously. The
Jews, who observed, even when they were less rigorous,
a number of restrictive rules that gravely hampered their
freedom of action, who seriously maintained that they
possessed a direct revelation of God, were fanatics and
magicians, and exhibited a credulity that was the first
sign of mental inferiority.
*' Senseless," '' nonsense," dvoT^rds, avoia, are terms
that are principally in the mouths of the Philopator of
III Maccabees and the Antiochus of IV Maccabees, in
whose words we may fairly see epitomized all the cur-
rent abuse as well as criticism which opponents to
the Jews, from philosophers to malevolent chauvinists,
heaped upon them.
Hecataeus says of Moses that he instituted an " inhos-
pitable and strange form of living." " The two words
fxiuo^evov and airavOpoiirov form a doublette, or rhetorical
doubling of a single idea. That idea is '' inhospitality,"
lack of the feeling of common humanity, a term which
THE SOCIAL ASPECT 183
for Greeks and Romans embodied a number of concep-
tions not suggested by the word to modern ears.
The word ^eVo5, which is the root of the words for
'* hospitahty " and its opposite, has no equivalent in
EngHsh. A ^eVo? was a man of another nation, who
approached without hostile intent. The test of civiliza-
tion was the manner in which such a vo^ was dealt
with. The Greek traditions, even their extant litera-
ture, have a very lively recollection of the time when
hospitality was by no means universal, when the feVos
was treated as an enemy taken in arms or worse. The
one damning epithet of the Cyclops is a^evo?, " inhos-
pitable." " The high commendation bestowed upon the
princely hospitality of the Homeric barons itself indi-
cates that this virtue was not yet a matter of course,
and that boorish nations and individuals did not pos-
sess it.
Legally, of course, the ^eVo? had no rights. Such
claim as he could make for protection rested upon the
favor of the gods, especially of Zeus, who was fre-
quently addressed by the cult title of Eeno?. the Pro-
tector of Strangers. The uncertain aid of the gods was
soon displaced by personal relations between individuals
and groups of individuals in different states, who were
mutually Trpoievot to each other, a title that always
created a very definite moral obligation and soon a legal
one as well. So, when Alexander destroyed Thebes, he
spared the irpoievoi of his own family and of the Mace-
donians in general."
1 84 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The institution and the development had practically
gone on in similar ways all through the Mediterranean
world. The Bedouins still maintain the ancient cus-
toms of their fathers in that respect. The Romans had
the word hospes, of which the history is a close parallel
to that of ^€1/05.
Of the Jews the same thing may be said. The
Bible enjoins the protection of strangers as a primary
obligation. They were the living symbols of the Egyp-
tian bondage. So Exodus xxiii. 9, " Also thou shalt not
oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger,
seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." One of
Job's protests of righteousness is his hospitality (Job
xxxi. 32).
In these circumstances just what could the charge of
/Aio-o^cvta, of " inhospitality," have meant? We shall
look in vain in Greek literature for an injunction to hos-
pitality as finely phrased as the passage just quoted
from Exodus. To understand the term as applied to the
Jews we shall have to examine the words that are used
for the acts connected with hospitality.
In Homer the word ^etn'^w^' is frequently found.
Strictly of course it means simply " to deal with a
stranger," but it is used principally in the sense of '' en-
tertain at dinner." The wandering stranger might as
such claim the hospitality of the people among whom
chance had brought him, and claim it in the very con-
crete sense that food and lodging at the master's table
were his of right. Indeed it would almost seem that he
became pro hac vice a member of the family group in
THE SOCIAL ASPECT 185
which he partook of a meal, protected in Hfe and Umb
by the blood-vengeance of his temporary kinsmen.
That however seems to have been the general rule in
the older communities of the East, in Palestine just as
in Greece and Asia. There was no feeling against en-
tertaining a stranger at table among the Jews, although
the relation could not well be reversed. And there was
the rub. It was not in Palestine (where the Jew was
likely always to be the host), but in the communities in
which Jew and non-Jew acknowledged the same civic
bond that the refusal of the Jew to accept the hospitality
of his neighbor would be a flagrant instance of fjnaoievia,
of dislike of strangers. We need not suppose that it
needed careful investigation and the accumulation of
instances to produce the statement. A few incidents
within anyone's experience would suffice. We shall
have to remember further that we are dealing with a
literary tradition in which many statements are taken
over from the writer's source without independent con-
viction on his own part.
However, among the great masses the general feel-
ing that the Jews disliked strangers, and so were prop-
erly to be termed /Ato-d^evot, was in all likelihood based
on an observation of more obvious facts than dietary
regulations. It is principally in meat diet that the sep-
aration is really effective, and meat diet was the pre-
rogative of the rich. Then, as now, the great majority
of the people ate meat rarely, if at all, and surely could
take no offense at a man's squeamishness about the
quality or nature of the food he ate. But what every-
i86 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
body was compelled to notice was that the Jews delib-
erately held aloof from practically all public festivities,
since these were nearly always religious, and that they
created barriers which seemed as unnecessary as they
were foolishly defended. That in itself could be inter-
preted by the man in the street only as a sign of deep-
rooted antipathy, of /xto-o^ei/ta.
This accusation, as has been shown, was more than
the reproach of unsociability. The vice charged by it
was of serious character. Those individuals who in
Greek poetry are called inhospitable are nothing short
of monsters. It implied not merely aloofness from
strangers, but ill-usage of them, and that ill-usage was
sometimes assumed to be downright cannibalism. So
Strabo (vii. 6) tells us that the " inhospitable " sea was
called so, not only because of its storms, but because
of the ferocity of the Scythian tribes dwelling around
it, who devoured strangers and used their skulls for
goblets. That was of course to be inhospitable with
a vengeance, but the term covered the extreme idea
as well as the milder acts that produced at Sparta
and Crete frequent edicts of expulsion (ievrjXaataty^
and a general cold welcome to foreigners.
In very many cases, especially in the rhetorical
schools, '* inhospitality," ''hatred of strangers," was a
mere abusive tag, available without any excessive con-
sideration of the facts. And when intense enmity was
to be exhibited, the extreme form of *' inhospitality "
was naturally enough both implicitly and expressly
charged against the objects of the writer's dislike.
1 6 '^^M'^^
GREEK INSCRIPTION, FOUND ON SITE OF TEMPLE AREA, FORBIDDING
GENTILES TO PASS BEYOND THE INNER TEMPLE
WALLS AT JERUSALEM
(Now in the Imperial Ottoman Museum, Constantinople)
THE SOCIAL ASPECT 187
There are many instances in which the hereditary
enemy was credited with human sacrifice or cannibal-
ism. Indeed it was currently believed that cannibalism
had universally prevailed at one time, and with ad-
vancing civilization was gradually superseded." As far
as human sacrifice was concerned, many highly civilized
states, knew of vestiges or actual recurrences of it in
their own practice. Rome is a striking example. But
in Rome such things were rare exceptions, employed in
times of unusual straits to meet a quite unusual emer-
gency.^^ In Greece there were many traces frankly
admitted to be such — if not actual instances of such
sacrifices. But here, as at Rome, the act was admittedly
something out of the ordinary, a survival of primitive
savagery."
Accordingly when Greeks and Romans spoke of hu-
man sacrifices, it was not of an inconceivable form of
barbarity, which placed those who took part in it quite
out of the human pale, but as a relic of a condition from
which they had themselves happily grown, and to which
they reverted only in extremities. Its presence among
other tribes was a demonstration that they were still
in the barbarous stage, and especially was it deemed
to be so when all strangers who chanced to come upon
the foreign shore were the selected victims of the god.
That charge, as we know, was made against many
Scythian and Thracian tribes. The story of Iphigenia
in Tauris is an example of it. It was made against
the Carthaginians, at least in the early stages of their
history. The Gauls, according to both Greek and
i88 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Roman writers, had made of it a very common institu-
tion.'" We do not know very much of the evidence in
the case of the Thracians, Scythians, and Gauls. It is
not impossible that customs like certain symbolic rites
found in many places were misinterpreted. Or it is
highly likely that, if human sacrifices existed, they were,
as among Greeks and Romans, a rare form of expiation.
For the Carthaginians the story is almost certainly a by-
product of national hatred, and rests upon the same
foundations as the ''cruelty" and "perfidy" of
Hannibal.
Human sacrifices, similar to those of Greece and
Rome, existed in Palestine. Children were sacrificed to
the nameless god or gods that bore the cult title of
melech, i. e. " king." As in the rest of the Mediter-
ranean world such sacrifices were exceptional and grisly
forms of expiation, used when ordinary means had
failed. Among the Jews, on the other hand, they
seem to have been prohibited from the very beginning
of their history as a community. It is a purely, gra-
tuitous theory that makes melech, or molech, a cult-
title of Yahveh in Israel. There is simply no evidence
of any kind that it was so. On the contrary, the oldest
traditions of the Jews represent the abolition of human
sacrifices as one of the first reforms instituted by the
founders of their faith. The Mosaic code made these
sacrifices a capital offense (Lev. xviii. 21 ;xx. 2). The
very name molech indicates an intense abhorrence,
if, as has been plausibly suggested, it is simply i^D, or
"king," with the vowels of nt^n. "the Abomination." ""
THE SOCIAL ASPECT 189
With SO old a tradition on the subject, the Jews must
have felt, as peculiarly irritating, the transference of
this vituperative tag to them. That it might be so
applied was of course an inevitable expansion of
the belief that the Jews were fiiaoievot, '' haters of
strangers." However, it must not be supposed that the
statement was widely current. On the contrary, we
have only two references to it. Damocritus, who lived
perhaps in the first century b. c. e., as quoted by the late
Byzantine compiler Suidas," asserts that the Jews cap-
tured a stranger every seven years, and sacrificed him to
their god ; and Apion, in the first century c. e., relates the
circumstantial story of the captured Greek who was
found immured in the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes.
The latter story is an amusing instance of rhetorical:
method. Of its baselessness of course no proof need be
adduced. It is almost certainly the concoction of Apion
himself, perhaps based upon some such statement as
this just quoted from Damocritus. Its melodramatic
features, the fattening of the stranger, the oath sealed
by blood, are highly characteristic of Apion's style.
It cannot be said that this particular charge against
the Jews had any real success. The later writers do not
mention it. Tacitus and Juvenal, both of whom are
very likely to have read Apion, pass by the story in
silence. And Juvenal, who in his Fifteenth Satire
expresses such detestation of a similar act among the
Egyptians he abominated,'' would certainly not have let
off the Syrian fortune-tellers, whom he equally disliked,
with an allusion to their unsociability.
190 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Non monstrare vias nisi eadem sacra colenti^ ** They
are instructed not to point out a road except to those
who share their rites." It might almost seem as though
even rhetorical animosity demanded more for its terms
of abuse than the authority of Apion.
The tragic importance of the '' ritual murder " in the
modern history of the Jews since the Crusades has
given the account of Apion a significance to which it is
by no means entitled. The least analysis will show that
the " ritual murder " of modern times is not really like
the ancient story at all. The latter is simply an applica-
tion to the Jews of the frequent charge of ievodvata^
" sacrifice of strangers," such as was made against the
Scythians. And Apion's fable found practically no
acceptance. There is of course no literary transmission
between Apion and the chroniclers of Hugh of Lincoln,
but we cannot even suppose that there was a popular
one. In the fearful struggles of the rebellions under
Hadrian and Trajan, it is impossible to believe that the
mutual hatred, which found such expression as the
massacre at Salamis and the reprisals of the Greeks,
would have failed to register this charge against the
avoGLoL 'lovSaloL, " the wicked Jews," if it were known.
The early Middle Ages, at any rate from the Cru-
sades on, devised the " ritual murder " without the aid
of older authorities. It is one of the many cases in
which parallel developments at different times and in
dififerent places produce results that are somewhat sim-
ilar, although only superficially so."""
CHAPTER XIV
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION
A favorite adjective in describing the Jews was
" superstitious." Strangely enough, another, perhaps
even more general, was '' irreligious." The Jews were
frequently stigmatized as aOtoi, a word generally trans-
lated '' atheist," and undoubtedly often used in the
sense of the modern term. It remains to be seen
whether the term meant, in its application to the Jews,
all that the corresponding modern term implies. That
is particularly necessary here, since to the modern world
the devotion of the nation to its Deity is its most strik-
ing characteristic, and at least one of the key-notes of
its historical development. Upon us it has almost the
effect of a paradox to read that this people impressed
some Greeks as a nation of *' atheists " or " godless."
The modern term and the ancient partly cover
each other. Both often denote the speculative negation
of a supernatural direction of the world. Now it
simply cannot be, in view of the wide distribution of
the Jews and their successful propaganda, that even the
unthinking could associate the people whose claims to
direct divine guidance were so many and so emphatic,
with a term that implied the non-recognition of any god.
We may remember how even the very first contact had
192 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
seemed to emphasize the rehgious side of the Jewish
communal Hfe.
The usual explanations will not bear analysis. It is
frequently asserted that '* atheist " was applied to the
Jews because of their imageless cult. The natural
inference, we are told, from the fact that there were no
statues was that there were no gods. But that is to
assign to the statue a larger importance in ancient
religious theory than in fact belonged to it. We meet,
to be sure, cases where the identification of the statue
and the resident deity seems to be complete. Especially
in such scoffers as Lucian,^ or in the polemics of the
philosophic sects, or in those of Jews and Christian
writers, Romans and Greeks are often charged with the
adoration of the actual figure of stone or bronze. That,
however, was surely not the general attitude of any
class. The passages that seem to show it are generally
figurative and often imply merely that the god had
taken his abode within the statue, and might leave it at
will.
Indeed, just for the masses, the most intense and
direct religious emotions were always aroused, not by
the great gods whose statues were the artistic pride of
their cities, but by the formless and bodiless spirits of
tree and field and forest that survived from pre-Olym-
pian animism. And these latter, if adored in symbolic
form, were represented generally by pillars or trees,
and not by statues at all.
Nor were the Jews the only imageless barbarians
whom the Greeks and Romans encountered. Most of the
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION 193
surrounding nations can scarcely have possessed actual
statues at first. And the Greeks or Romans drew no
such inference as atheism from the fact that they found
no statues of gods among Spaniards, Thracians, Ger-
mans, or Celts. On the contrary, we hear of gods
among all these nations, many of them outlined with
sufficient clearness to be identified promptly with vari-
ous Greek deities. What a Greek would be likely to
assume is rather that these barbarians lacked the skill to
fashion statues or the artistic cultivation to appreciate
them. If it occurred to him to explain the imageless
shrine at Jerusalem at all, he would no doubt have
offered some such statement, especially as it was quite
common to assume lack of artistic skill in barbarians.
Atheism as a philosophic doctrine was relatively rare.
Diagoras of Melos, a contemporary of Socrates, and
Theodore of Gyrene,^ a contemporary of the first
Ptolemy, were said to have held that doctrine, and the
former was known from it as '' the Atheist." How-
ever, even in this case we cannot be quite sure of our
ground. Some of the poems of Diagoras seem to have
a distinct, even a strong, religious feeling. Josephus
asserts that Diagoras' offense in Athenian eyes was
scoffing at the mysteries.^ If that is true, he received
his sobriquet less from atheism, as we understand it,
than from the same facts that brought Protagoras,
Anaxagoras, and Socrates himself within the ban of the
Athenian police. That is, he was charged rather with
contempt of the actually constituted deities of the
Athenian state than with a general negation of a
13
194 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
divinity. The term itself, aO^o^, is not necessarily nega-
tive. In fact, Greek had very few purely negative
ideas. In Plato's Euthyphro* the only alternatives that
are admitted are ^€0(^tAes and dcofjuah, i. e. what the
gods hate and what the gods love. So the various Greek
adjectives compounded with " a privative," avoi(f>eXr]^,
'' useless," aySovAo?, "thoughtless," are really used in a
positive sense contrary to that of the positive adjective.
So av(j}cf)€\r)s is rather " harmful " than merely ** use-
less " ; aySouAo? is " ill-advised " ; etc. The word aOeo^s
would, by that analogy, rather denote one that opposed
certain gods than one who denied them. A man might
be adeo<s in one community and not in another. Indeed
his " atheism " might be an especial devotion to a divine
principle which was not that recognized by the state.
In ordinary literary usage a^eos is denuded even of
this significance. It means little more than " wicked."
It is used so by Pindar, by Sophocles, and in general by
the orators. Often it runs in pairs with other adjectives
of the same character. Xenophon calls Tissaphernes
(An. II. V. 29) d^eoraros Koi Trarov/oyoraTos, " most god-
less and wicked," in which the superlative is especially
noteworthy. As a matter of fact it is often used
of a man whom the gods would have none of, rather
than one who rejects the gods. A^cos, ac^iAo? oXoifiav,
cries the chorus in Oedipus Rex, *' May I die abandoned
by gods and men."°
When it is first used of the Jews by Molo, it is as part
of just such a group ; aOcot Kal /xto-av^yowTrot, he calls the
Jews. " hateful to gods and men," and other rhetoricians
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION 195
follow suit. As a term of abuse, a^eo? was as good as
any other.
But there may have been a more precise sense in
which the Jews might by an incensed Greek be properly
stigmatized as oOeoi. To the thoroughgoing mono-
theists, the gods of the heathen are non-existent. They
are not evil spirits, but have no being whatever. The
prophets and the intellectual leaders of the Jews held
that view with passionate intensity. But even they used
language which readily lends color to the view that these
gods did exist as malignant and inferior daemonia.
The " devils " of Leviticus xvii. 7 are undoubtedly the
gods of other nations.^ The name '' Abomination,"
which for the Jew was a cacophemism for '' god,"
equally implies by its very strength a common feeling of
the reality of the being so referred to. Likewise the
other terms of abuse which the Jews lowered upon
the gods of the heathen indicate a real and fiercely per-
sonal animosity.
Hatred and bitterness formed almost a religious
duty. An implacable war was to be waged with the
abominable thing, and it is not likely that dictates of
courtesy would stand in the way. The retort of a^eos
would mean no more than a summary of the fact that
the Jew was the declared enemy of the constituted
deity, whose anger he provoked and whose power he
despised.^
Something of this appears in the statement of the
Alexandrian Lysimachus, that the Jews were enjoined
to overturn the altars and temples which they met
196 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
(Josephus, Contra Ap. i. 34), and in the phrase of the
elder Pliny (Hist. Nat. XIII. iv. 46), gens contumelia
numinum insignis, " a race famous for its insults to the
gods."
Most of the phrases that have been quoted have been
taken from works where they were little more than
casual asides imbedded in matter of different purport.
Rhetoricians, in attempting to establish a point, use
some phrase, either current through popular usage or
a commonplace in their schools. In this respect the
Jews fare no better and no worse than practically all
nationalities of that time. Individual writers disliked
or despised various peoples, and said so in any manner
that suited them. Slurs against Romans, Athenians,
Boeotians, Egyptians, Cappadocians are met with
often enough. The Cretans were liars, the Boeotians
guzzlers, the Egyptians knaves, the Abderitans fools ;
antiquity has furnished us with more than one enter-
taining example of national hate and jealousy.* The epi-
thets which the Acheans showered on their Aetolian
rivals certainly leave nothing to be desired as far as
intensity is concerned.* The various panders of Roman
comedy often are represented as particularly choice
specimens of Agrigentine character." Cicero particu-
larly knew from his rhetorical masters how to use
national prejudices in the conduct of his business. If
Celts are the accusers of his client, as they were in
the case of Fonteius, they are perjurers, murderers,
enemies of the human race. " Tribes," he says, " so
far removed from other races in character and customs
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION 197
that they fight, not for their rehgion, but against the
rcHgion of all men."" If they are Sardinians, these
are a '' tribe whose worthlessness is such that the only
distinction they recognize between freedom and slavery
is that the former gives them unlimited license to lie." "
To take this seriously is to misconceive strangely
both the functions of an advocate and the license of
rhetoric. Now the abusive paragraphs directed against
the Jews are quite of this type. And it is in the highest
degree extraordinary that these phrases, which, in the
instances just cited, are given no weight in determining-
national attitude, should be considered of the highest
importance in the case of the Jews. Whether it was
Syrian, Greek, or Celt that was attacked, the stock epi-
thet means no more than the corresponding terms of
our own day mean.
But besides these occasional flings there were whole
books directed against the Jews, and to that fact a little
attention may be given.
It is a relatively rare thing that a writer should nurse
his bile against a particular people to the extent of
expanding it into a whole book. We must of course
remember that a '' book " was sometimes, and especially
in this polemical literature, a single roll, and we are not
to understand it in the sense of a voluminous treatise.
However, there were such books and these we must
now consider.
What such a book was like, recent anti-Semitism
has made it very easy to imagine. There is no reason
to suppose that this type of pamphlet was appreciably
198 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
different in those days. It consisted of a series of bitter
invectives interspersed with stories as pieces justiHca-
tives. Now and then an effort is made to throw it into
the form of a dispassionate examination. But even in
very skilful hands that attitude is not long maintained.
Of several men we know such treatises. All have
already been mentioned — Apollonius Molo, Damocri-
tus, and probably Apion.
Apollonius, either son of Molo, or himself so named,
was one of the most considerable figures of his day.
He taught principally, but not exclusively, at Rhodes,
and numbered among his pupils both Cicero and Caesar.
As a rhetorician he enjoyed an extensive and well-
merited influence. It was during his time that the reac-
tion against the florid literary style of Asia culminated
in the equally artificial simplicity of the Atticists — a
controversy of the utmost importance in the history of
Latin literature no less than Greek. The doctrine of
mediocritas, " the golden mean," set forth by Molo,
moulded the style of Cicero and through him of most
modern prose writers. The refined taste and good
sense which could avoid both extremes justify his
repute and power.
He was a voluminous writer on historical and rhetor-
ical subjects. Only the smallest fragments remain, not
enough to permit us to form an independent estimate of
his style or habits of thought. Just what was the incen-
tive for the pamphlet he wrote against the Jews it is
impossible to conjecture. But it is not likely that it con-
tained many of the specially malignant charges. To
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION 199
judge from Josephus' defense, it seems to have con-
cerned itself chiefly with their unsociability, and may
have been no more than a sermon on that text. Josephus'
charge against him is that of unfairness. There is none
of the abuse in Josephus' account of Molo which he
heaps upon Apion. We may accordingly infer that
Molo's pamphlet was considerably less offensive. It
may have been, in effect, a mere declamatio, a speech
in a fictitious cause, or the substance of an oration
delivered in an actual case. Or perhaps a single in-
stance of personal friction produced it as an act of
retaliation. The rhetoricians of those days were essen-
tially a genus irritabile, and their wrath or praise was
easily stirred.
Of Damocritus we know almost nothing. Suidas, a
late Byzantine grammarian, mentions a short work of
his on Tactics, and one as short, or shorter^ on the Jews.
The reference to human sacrifice (above, p. 189), might
be supposed to indicate a strong bias. While it is likely
enough that it was hostile in character, that single fact
would not quite prove it, since we do not know whether
Damocritus represented these human sacrifices as an
ancient or a still-existing custom.
The third name, Apion, has become especially famil-
iar from the apology of Josephus. The latter refers
to him throughout as an Egyptian, and in spite of cer-
tain very warm and modern defenders, he very likely
was of Egyptian stock. From the Oasis where he was
born, he came to Alexandria, where he established a
great reputation. Undoubtedly possessed of fluency
200 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
and charm as a speaker, he was a most thoroughgomg
charlatan, a noisy pedant wholly devoid of real critical
skill. He boasted of magical power, through which he
was enabled to converse with the shade of Homer. His
vanity prompted the most ludicrous displays of arro-
gance. Tiberius Caesar dubbed him the cymbalum
mvmdi, " the tom-tom of the world," a characterization
that seems to have been generally accepted."
In the appeal of the Jewish residents of Alexandria
against the maladministration of the prefect Flaccus,
argued before the emperor, he represented the Alexan-
drian community, whose acts were the basis of the
charge made by the Jews. As such he no doubt deliv-
ered an anti-Jewish invective, and it is at least likely
that this speech formed the substance of his book on
the subject, just as the defense of the Jews and the
attack upon Flaccus are contained in the two extensive
fragments of Philo, the Legatio ad Gaium, and the In
Flaccum.
It has been doubted whether he really wrote such
a book, although there are express statements that he
did. It is true enough that those who assert it may
easily have been misled by the fact that certain books
of his History of Egypt may have contained these
anti-Jewish passages or most of them. None the less,
the fact that he must have prepared a set speech in
the case mentioned, coupled with the statements of
Clemens of Alexandria and Julius Africanus, renders
the older view the more probable." There would of
course be nothing strange if the books of the History
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION 20 t
of Egypt and a special monograph contained essen-
tially the same material.
As to other similar pamphlets, we hear of a Trcpt
^lovhaiuiv by a certain Nicarchus, son of Ammonius,
which may have had an '' Egyptian " bias, in that
Moses is said to have been afflicted with white scales
upon his body — an assertion that seems to be a re-
vamping of Manetho's " leprous outcasts." But the
title of the book does not point to a wholly hostile
attitude, nor does the passage referred to necessarily
imply such an attitude."
Taking all these passages together, from Manetho
to Apion, one thing must be evident : Manetho him-
self, Mnaseas, Agatharchidas, Chaeremo, Lysimachus,
Apion, are either Egyptians or are trained in Alex-
andria, and represent the Egyptian side of a bitter
racial strife, as intense and lasting as was generally
the case when the same community contained sev-
eral compact groups of different political rights and
privileges.
The conditions of the population of Alexandria have
been previously discussed. It was the great market
center of the East, and as such of the Mediterranean
world, since the commercial and intellectual hegemony
was always east of the Aegean Sea. The population
had been a mixed one since its foundation. The warped
notions that have often been held of the position of the
Jews there are due to a failure to realize concretely how
such a city would be likely to grow. The Greeks
and Macedonians that were originally settled there
202 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
undoubtedly constituted a real aristocracy, and made
that attitude very thoroughly felt. One thing further
is clear, that the native Egyptians, who probably formed
the mass of the populace, looked upon these Greeks as
they did upon all foreigners, with intense dislike. We
have a document in which a Greek suitor in court
impugns the credibility of Egyptian testimony against
him because of the well-known hatred Egyptians bear
toward Greeks/''
Egyptian animosity toward Jews had been of longer
standing simply because intercourse in close proximity
was much older. Further, the Jewish colonies from
early Persian times had always represented the foreign
master. It was as natural, therefore, for this animosity
to express itself in street-conflicts in Alexandria as for
anti-Greek feeling to be manifested there. Those
modern investigators who have confidently asserted that
Alexandrian " anti-Semitism " was of Greek origin and
leadership have permitted the rattle of the cymbalum
mundi to confuse their minds. For it is Apion and
Apion alone that makes the claim that the Jews are
especially embittered against Greeks, and seeks to
create a general Greek feeling against them. His
motives are too apparent to need comment, and there is
no evidence whatever that he was successful.
Further, it is the Egyptians Manetho and Apion
whose tirades have a fiercely personal coloring. The
Greek Alexandrians make their anti-Jewish polemics on
the basis of general theories, and particularly lay stress
on what was to them the perfectly irrational separatism
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION 203
which the Jews had made a part of their religion. As
has been frequently shown, the relatively small frag-
ments of these writers do not enable us to say how far
this Jewish characteristic is used to point a moral, much
as the modern clergy takes chauvinistic commonplaces
to illustrate the evil results of doctrines they are
attacking.
In the case of two Greeks, Posidonius of Apamea in
Syria, and Molo, no Egyptian influence can be shown.
Both were among the most influential men of their
time. Molo's career and importance have been briefly
sketched. To Posidonius must be assigned a still more
powerful intellectual influence over his generation and
those that followed." The leader of the Stoic school or,
as it may well be called, sect, he so reorganized its
teaching that the Stoa became nothing else than the
dominant faith among cultivated men, a situation per-
haps paralleled by Confucianism in China, which is also
an ethical philosophy that finds it possible to dwell on
terms of comity with various forms of cruder popular
belief.
What Molo's philosophic affiliations were is not easy
to determine. The Stoics were nearer than most other
schools to rhetoricians and grammarians, but many men
of these professions acknowledged allegiance to the
Academy, to Epicureanism, or even to the revived
Pythagoreanism of the first century b. c. e. Of the
extensive writings of the Rhodian rhetorician there is
not enough left to give even a probable answer.
204 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
But most philosophic sects laid stress on the univer-
sality of their teachings, and were marked by an intense
intellectual rationalism. The crude psychology of those
days made the formation of categories a simple thing.
Thinkers could scarcely be expected to admit that
inherited instincts could qualify the truth of a philo-
sophic dogma. More particularly, the philosophic
movements were powerful solvents of nationalism.
Even the distinction between Greek and barbarian did
not exist in theory for them.^ The notion of the state
and the maintenance of its ancestral rites became for
them a meaningless but innocuous form, which men of
common sense would not despise, but to which one
could attach no great importance.
Face to face with congregations like those of the
Jews, which enforced their separation by stringent
religious prohibitions, the Stoics more than others found
their opposition roused. More than others, because many
Stoics adopted from the Cynical school the methods of
the diatribe, the popular sermon, and, indeed, made an
active attempt to carry the universality of their prin-
ciples into practice. And the Stoics, more than others,
would find the height of irrationality in the stubborn
insistence on forms for which only an historical justi-
fication could be found.
A highly interesting document, which gives a certain
phase of the controversy, or perhaps even fragments of
an actual controversy, between the general philosophic
and the Jewish doctrine, has come down to us in the
tract known as the Fourth Book of Maccabees. The
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION 205
author announces his purpose of setting forth a most
philosophic thesis, to wit, whether the pious reason is
sovereign over the passions. The philosophic argument,
which fills the first three chapters, is Stoic in form and
substance. Then, to illustrate his point, he cites certain
vaguely remembered stories of II Maccabees, which
he expands into highly detailed dramatic forms. In the
mouth of Antiochus Epiphanes are placed the stock
philosophic arguments against the Jews, which are
triumphantly refuted by the aged Eleazar and the
seven sons of Hannah.
So we hear Epiphanes reasoning with Eleazar and
urging him to partake of swine's flesh (IV Mace. v. 8
seq.) :
For It is obviously a senseless proceeding to refrain from
enjoying those pleasures of life which are free from shame:
it Is even wicked to deprive oneself of the bounties of nature.
And it seems to me that your conduct will be still more sense-
less, if you provoke my anger because of your zeal for some
fancied principle. Why do you not rid your mind of the silly
doctrine of your people? Discard that stupidity which you
call reason. Adopt a form of thought that suits your age, and
let your philosophic principle be one that actually serves you.
.... Further consider this : If in the Deity you adore there
Is really a power that oversees our deeds, It will grant you full
pardon for all transgressions which you have been forced to
commit.
To a Greek, and no doubt to many modern men, the
reasoning is conclusive. It presents the Greek point
of view very well indeed, and is doubtless the epitome
of many conversations and even formal disputes in
which these matters were discussed between Greek and
-nuU-
a
2o6 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Jew. And just as the argument of Epiphanes seems
strangely modern in its appeal to common sense and
expediency, so the answer of Eleazar rings with a lofty
idealism that is both modern and ancient :
I We, whose state has been established by God, cannot admit
that any force is more powerful than that of the Law. Even
if, as you assume, our Law were not divine, yet, since we sup-
pose that it is, we durst not set it aside without gross impiety.
^^ Eleazar then proceeds to elaborate upon the Stoic
paradox that the slightest and the greatest transgres-
sions are equally sinful;" and that in so far as absten-
tion is a form of self-control, it is an admirable and not
a contemptible act. After a detailed account of the
hideous sufferings heroically endured by the priest, the
author breaks out into a panegyric of him as a main-
tainer of the Law, in which the fundamental Stoic prop-
osition with which he begins is less prominent than his
intense Jewish piety.
For us, however, the prime importance lies in the
sharp contrast between the Greek and the Jewish atti-
tude. Upon the philosophically cultured man, the rea-
soning of Epiphanes could not fail to produce a certain
impression. In the case of the seven sons of Hannah,
while many elements are repeated (IV Mace. viii. 17
seq.), the writer has in mind the appeal to the flesh,
which Hellenism made. " Will you not change your
mode of life for that of the Greeks and enjoy your
youth to the full?" asks Antiochus (ibid. viii. 8) ; and
that no doubt was the whisper that came to the heart
of many a young man, surrounded by the bright and
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION 207
highly colored life of the Hellenic communities in
which he dwelt. There is no exchange of vituperation.
The denunciations hurled against Antiochus are im-
personal, indeed are generic. He is the type of tyrant,
another Busiris or Phalaris, a bowelless despot. And
the one word which alternates with '' senseless " in the
mouths of Antiochus and his executioners is " mad."
The actual events described are of course quite unhis-
torical. But we do not find here any of the various
forms in which racial animosity or personal spleen
exhibited itself against the Jews. In spite of the set-
ting, the controversy is, judged by disputation stand-
ards, quite decorous. The terrns that qualify the
Jewish doctrine as " irrational " are almost contro-
versial commonplaces. The martyrs do not resent the
epithet. They seem to accept it as the logical inference
of the carnal philosophy of their oppressors and claim
to be justified by a higher wisdom.
Jewish and Greek life began to touch each other
at many points in the six or seven generations that
intervened between Alexander and Caesar. Hellenism
dominated the political and social culture of the Eastern
Mediterranean, although the nationalities it covered
were submerged rather than crushed. In Egypt the
indigenous culture maintained itself successfully, and
forced concessions from the conqueror, which made the
Hellenism of that country a thing quite different from
that of the other lands within the sphere of Greek
influence. The resistance of the Jews also took the
form of successful insurrection, and in their case
2o8 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
/"enabled an independent political entity to be constituted.
I The dispersal of the Jews was already considerable
* at this time. It differed from the dispersal of the
Syrians in the fact that the bond of union of the Jewish
congregations existed in the common cult and the com-
mon interest in the fortunes of the mother-country. On
the other hand, the Syrians of Rome and of Naples
shared nothing except the quickly effaced memory of a
common racial origin.'"
1^ The propaganda of the Jews was also well under
way. Since it was believed that they possessed a
mystery, initiation into which gave promise of future
beatitude, they were strong rivals of the Greek and
Oriental mysteries that made similar claims. It was
chiefly among the half-educated or the wholly un-
i lettered that these claims would find quickest belief.
However, the Jewish propaganda had also its philo-
sophic side, and competed with the variously organized
forms of Greek philosophic thought for the adherence
of the intellectually advanced classes as well.
Through the Diaspora and this active propaganda
an opposition was invited. In Egypt the opposition was
older, because the presence of Jews in Egypt was
of considerably earlier date than the period we are con-
sidering. The occasions for its display were various,
but the underlying cause was in most cases the same.
That was the fact of religious separatism, which in any
given community was tantamount to lack of patriotism.
It does not appear, however, that this opposition found
voice generally except in Egypt. Elsewhere racial fric-
tion was relatively rare.
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION 209
The literature of the opposition falls into two classes IK/^ k/\/{/AjLf^j
first, that which scarcely knows the Jews except as a 5t^ ^
people of highly peculiar customs, and uses these cus-
toms as illustrations of rhetorical theses ; and second,
that which is inspired by direct animosity, either per-
sonal or, in the case of the Egyptians, racial in its
character.
U^^.
14
CHAPTER XV
THE ROMANS
We have been concerned so far almost wholly with
Greeks and the Greek attitude toward the Jews. It
will be necessary at this point to turn our attention to
a very different people, the Romans.
If we desire to trace the development of this all-
overwhelming factor in our reckoning, it will not be
possible to go back very far. During the fifth century
B. c. E., in which Greek genius is believed to have
reached its apogee, it is doubtful whether even the
faintest whisper had reached Greeks that told of the
race of Italic barbarians destined so soon to dominate
the world. Little as was known of the Jews by Greeks
of this period, the Romans were still less known. The
eyes of men were persistently turned east.
Rome, however, even then was not wholly insignifi-
cant. Many centuries before, there had grown up, on
the south bank of the Tiber, a town of composite racial
origin. It is possible to consider it an outpost of the
Etruscans against Sabine and Latin, or a Latin outpost
against the Etruscans. Whatever its origin, at an
indeterminate time, when the Etruscan hegemony over
central Italy was already weakened, this town of Rome
became a member of the Latin Confederation, a group
THE ROMANS 211
of cities of which the common bond was the shrine of
Jupiter Latiaris on the Alban Mount.
There may have been rude hamlets upon this site
from times very ancient indeed. But from the begin-
ning of its existence as a real city Rome must have
been a considerable community. Her strategic position
upon seven hills, the commercial advantages of her
location upon a navigable stream, conspired to this end.
The Latin Confederation had long been under the
real or titular presidency of the city of Alba. At some
time before our records become reliable, Rome had
obtained a decidedly real leadership in the league,
and unscrupulously used the latter's resources for the
furtherance of her own power and wealth. Without
a definite programme of conquest, and with military
skill and personal hardihood very little, if at all, superior
to that of their neighbors, the Romans had, by stead-
fastness and native shrewdness, developed a policy
which it is difficult to put in precise terms, because it was
never even approximately formulated, but which may
be said to consist of unremitting vigilance and long
memory, combined with special alertness to profit by
the mistakes or division of the foe. It may be that the
indubitably mixed character of Rome's population pro-
duced that result. Certainly in these respects no other
ancient community was its equal.
The legendary history of Rome is as generally
familiar as the commonest household stories of the race.
Modern investigators have abandoned the attempt to
find out even partially the line at which its history
212 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
ceases to be legendary. Fairly correct accounts of
Rome begin with the permanent contact of the city with
a literate community of which the records have sur-
vived, namely, the Greeks/
The Greeks had founded cities along the southern
coast of Italy and the eastern half of Sicily as early as
the ninth century b. c. e. With some of these cities it
was inevitable that Rome should be in frequent com-
munication, but the communication did not impress
itself for many years upon that class of Greeks which,
in the extant books, speaks for the whole people. Not
till the time of Alexander (330 b. c. e.) do our Greek
records begin to deal with Romans. At that time Rome
was already the dominant power in central and in the
interior of southern Italy, succeeding roughly to the
empire of that great Tuscan League of which she was
once the subject. And yet, Alexander's teacher, the
encyclopedically learned Aristotle, had only vaguely
heard of Rome as an Italian city overrun by marauding
Gauls.'
The position occupied then by Rome would of itself
have made active participation in Mediterranean affairs
a necessity. The embroilment of Romans in the con-
flicts in which international politics is expressed was
precipitated by the ambition of the restless Diadochi
and their successors. It was a kinsman of the lurid
Demetrius the Besieger, the Epirote prince Pyrrhus,
who undertook to save the Greek civilization of the
coast cities from the Italian barbarians. Pyrrhus ulti-
mately retired with his tail between his legs, after hav-
THE ROMANS 213
ing dragged the Romans into Sicily and brought them
face to face with the Carthaginians. The succeeding
three generations were occupied in the mortal grapple
between these two. It ended with the triumph of
Rome.
So far Rome had dealt only with the West, but with
the permanent eastward bent of men's minds the lord of
the Western Mediterranean was, as such, a power in the
East as well. Scarcely a single generation passed before
it became the sole power in the East, so that future
political history becomes the act of officially recording
successive realizations of that fact. And yet, this extra-
ordinary people, which had in an astoundingly short
time secured the primacy over a considerable fraction
of the earth, was apparently possessed of slighter intel-
lectual endowments than many of its subjects. It had
not succeeded in giving such culture as it had developed
any artistic form. And before it had taken any steps
in that direction, it came into immediate contact with
nations of much older culture, which had done so ; in
one case, a nation which had carried artistry of form
to a degree never subsequently attained by any single
people. First, the Etruscans had given in bulk a mass
of finished cultural elements, especially in religion and
constructive crafts, and had otherwise exercised an
influence now wholly undeterminable. Secondly, by
Etruscan mediation and afterwards directly, the
RomansJaecame the intellectual vassals of the Greeks, a
fact that lends some justification to the modern tend-
ency to treat classical antiquity as a single term.
214 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The Romans obtained their very earhest knowledge
of the Jews when the political and social development
just outlined was practically complete.
The treaty cited in I Mace. viii. 22 seq. is per-
haps apocryphal, but the substantial accuracy of the
chapter is scarcely doubtful. " And Judas had heard
the name of the Romans," we read, and this statement
is followed by a lengthy recital of the recent conquests
of Rome. After the first Hasmonean successes the little
knowledge that Roman and Jew had of each other may
be so summed up. On the Roman side, the responsible
senatorial oligarchy learned with undisguised satisfac-
tion that a previously unknown tribe of Syrian moun-
taineers, grouped about a famous temple-rock not far
from the Egyptian frontier, had successfully main-
tained themselves against a troublesome and unaccount-
able tributary king. On the Jewish side, the leaders of
the victorious rebels, conscious of the precarious nature
of their success, turned at once to that mighty people —
known as yet scarcely by report — which from far off
directed men's destinies. Even at that time the Roman
policy of divide et impera, '' divide and rule," was well
understood and consciously exploited by all who could
do so. The embassy sent by Judas — there is no real
reason for questioning its authenticity — presented to
curious Romans in 162 b. c. e. an aspect in no way
different from that of other Syrian embassies long
familiar to the capital. And if it is true that some of
that train or of a later embassy of Simon took up
THE ROMANS 215
permanent residence in Rome, that fact was probably
scarcely noticed from sheer lack of novelty.
Generally speaking, the Roman attitude to the Jews,
as to all other peoples, was that of a master : the attitude
of the Goth in Spain, the Manchu in China, the English
in India. No one of these analogues is exact, but all
have this common feature, that individuals of the
dominant race can scarcely fail to exhibit in their per-
sonal relations with the conquered an arrogance that
will vary inversely with the man's cultivation. It is so
very easy to assume for oneself the whole glory of
national achievements. No doubt every Italian peasant
and artisan believed that it was qualities existing in
himself that commanded the obedience of the magnifi-
cent potentates of the East. The earliest attitude of
Roman to Jew could not have been different from that
toward Syrians or foreigners in general. If in 150 b. c.
E. the term ludaei had reached the ears of the man in
the street, it denoted a Syrian principality existing like
all other principalities at sufferance and upon the con-
dition of good behavior.
For nearly a hundred years this state of things
remained unchanged. Then the inevitable happened.
Syria became Roman, and the motives that had won
Roman support for the Jews no longer existed. Roman
sufferance was withdrawn, and Judea's good behavior
ceased. That Gnaeus Pompey encountered serious
resistance on his march from Antioch to Jerusalem is
doubtful. The later highly-colored versions of his
storming of the temple are probably rhetorical inven-
2t6 the jews among THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
tions. The Psalms of Solomon, which are very plausi-
bly referred to this period, are outbursts of passionate
grief at the loss of the national independence ; for no
recognition of Hyrcanus' rank could disguise the fact of
the latter's impotent dependence upon the senate, and
the limitations openly placed upon the vassal-king's
authority show that the Romans were at no pains to
disguise the fact.^
When the Romans added Asia to their dominions,
as they had in the generation preceding the occupation
of Jerusalem, they annexed with Asia many hundreds
of Jewish synagogues in the numerous cities of Asia.
Jews lived also in Greece, in Italy and Rome itself, and
in Carthage. Egypt, which contained many hundreds
of thousands, was still nominally independent. Roman
officials had long known how to distinguish the ludaei
from others of those ubiquitous Syrians who, as slaves,
artisans, physicians, filled every market-place of the
empire. More than one provincial governor must have
collected a few honest commissions from a people
indiscreet enough to collect sums of considerable mag-
nitude, as the Jews did for the support of the temple.
That they were classed as Syrians did not raise the
Jews in general, and particularly in Roman, esteem.
The Syrians, to be sure, were one of the most energetic,
perhaps mentally the quickest, of the races then living,
but they were the slave race par excellence ; i. e. the
largest number of slaves were and had long been derived
from among them. The vices of slavery, low cunning,
physical cowardice, lack of self-respect, were apparent
(c. UnderwiiuU and Under uivod)
RUINS OF AN ANCIENT SYNAGOGUE AT MEROM, GALILEE,
PALESTINE
(Roman Period)
THE ROMANS 217
enough in those Syrians who were actually slaves, and
were transferred to all men of that nation. " Syri " is
nothing less than a term of contempt applied to any
people of unwarlike habits.*
Unwarlike the Jews of that day were not. All that\
had commended them to Roman notice was their mili- \
tary successes over the troops of Antiochus and Deme-
trius. Pompey may not have found Aristobulus and his
Nabatean allies really formidable, but he did have to
fight, and did not meet that docile crawling at his feet
which he had encountered elsewhere. That made con-
siderable difference in Roman eyes, and may have
caused the unusual tenderness they manifested as a rule/
for what they loftily termed the Jewish superstition.
As has been said, we have reason to believe that a
Jewish community already existed at Rome, and we \(jj\j\}\
shall see that it must have been fairly numerous. As a A . <
city, Rome was probably the least homogeneous in the
world. It may have contained at this time something
less than a million people, perhaps much less ; but this
population was of the most diverse origin. Not only
had the capital of the world attracted to it all manner
of adventurers ; not only was it teeming with slaves of
every imaginable blood and speech ; but the thronging
of the city with the refuse of the world had been a con-
scious policy of the democratic and senatorial rings, to
whom modern " colonization " was a familiar and
simple process. When we recall that the accepted
governmental theory was still that of the city-state, we
shall see that mere residence made to a certain extent
21 8 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
a Roman of everyone who lived v^ithin the walls.
Various measures of expulsion, such as the Lex Junia
Penni and the Lex Papia of 65 b. c. e., were wholly
ineffective.
As a matter of fact, the governmental apparatus of
the city-state was quite unable to cope with the situation
that presented itself. Until 200 b. c. e., the turning-
point in Roman history, the city was small and mean ;
the population, though composite, was still almost
wholly Italian in character. A rapid increase in wealth
and a consequent increase in glaring inequalities of
fortune began at this point. The governing council of
ex-magistrates, whose office had in practice become
almost hereditary, found itself confronted by a needy
and exigent proletariat, which it could neither overawe
nor purchase.
The urban tendency of the population of Italy was
due largely to the failure of the small farms to support
their man. Free labor was subjected to the constant
drain of military levies, and temporary suspension of
cultivation was ruinous. The obvious remedy was a
forced and unprofitable sale to the agrarian capitalists,
whose leasehold interest in the great public lands had
long been so nearly vested that it was almost sacrilege
to attack it. To migrate to the city was then the only
course open to the peasant, but in the city the demand
for free labor was never great. The new arrivals
joined the great mass of landless rabble, sinking soon
into an idle and pauperized mob.
THE ROMANS 219
But at the same time infusions of foreign blood came
into the city. The rapid rise in wealth and power had
poured into Rome a constant stream of the commonest
of wares, viz. human chattels. These slaves, Greek,
Thracian, but above all Syrian, were directly conse-
quent upon the imperative demand for skilled labor,
which they alone could satisfy. But the very number of
these slaves, and the changes in personal fortunes,
which were then even more frequent than now, made
them often a liability rather than an asset to their
master.
Enfranchisement was encouraged by another con-
sideration. The Roman law, determined by a very an-
cient patriarchal system, was apparently very rigid as
to the extent of the master's dominium. The slave was,
in law and logic, a sentient chattel indistinguishable
from ox and ass. But in other respects the Roman law
was extraordinarily liberal. For practical purposes the
slave could and did acquire property, the so-called
peculium, and could and did use it to purchase his
freedom.
Further, the newly-made freeman became a full
citizen, a civis Romanus. His name was enrolled in the
census books ; he possessed full suffrage, and lacked
only the ius honorum, the right of holding office. Even
this, however, his children acquired. Sons of slaves
who held magistracies are frequent enough to furnish
some notable examples ; e. g. Cn. Flavins, the secretary
to Appius Claudius; P. Gabinius, the proposer of the
Lex Tabellaria of 139 b. c. e.' It is for this reason that
indications of servile origin have been found in names
nothing less than illustrious in Roman history."
220 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
With this steady influx of dispossessed peasants and
enfranchised Greek and Asiatic slaves, the urban popu-
lation was a sufficiently unaccountable quantity ; and in
this motley horde, constantly stirred to riot by the
political upheavals, which quickly followed each other
from the Gracchan period onward, all manner of
strange and picturesque foreigners lived and worked.
To the Roman of cultivation they were sometimes
interesting, more often repellent, especially if he found
himself compelled to reckon with them seriously on
the basis of a common citizenship. Even for foreigners
Roman citizenship was not very difficult to acquire, and
was, as we have seen, obtained with especial facility
through slavery. The emancipated slave was as such
a civis Romanus. His son had even the ius honorum ;
he might be a candidate for the magistracy. This
process had been accelerated after the Social War,
which admitted an enormous and quite unmanageable
number into citizenship. The popular leaders were
especially lavish, and no doubt many ward politicians
took it upon themselves to dispense with the formalities
when a few votes were needed.
We are very fortunate in possessing for this period
records of quite unusual fulness and variety. The last
century of the Roman republic was rich in notable men,
with some of whom we are especially familiar. In
literary importance and in permanent charm of person-
ality, no one of them can compare with the country
squire's son, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who achieved the
impossible in his lifetime, and attained posthumous
THE ROMANS 221
fame far beyond his wildest dreams. He was consul of
Rome in the very year in which Jerusalem was cap-
tured, and was in the throes of the same political uncer-
tainty that marked his whole later career. The most
brilliant pleader in the city or the world, he was feared,
loved, and hated for his mordant wit, his torrential
fluency of speech, and his remarkable power and skill
in invective. Although his personal instincts had always
inclined him to the gentlemanly aristrocracy that made
up the majority of the senate, he had won his first suc-
cesses in politics on the other side, and reached the sum-
mit of his ambition, the consulship, as a popular candi-
date, receiving the support of the senate only because
he was deemed the least dangerous of three.
In the year 59 b. c. e. Cicero, concededly the leader of
the Roman bar and still more concededly the social lion
of the day, undertook the defense of Lucius Valerius
Flaccus, former governor of Asia, who was charged
with maladministration and oppression. The counts in
the indictment were numerous. Among them was the
following allegation : That Flaccus as praetor had
seized certain sacred funds ; to wit, the moneys which
Asiatic provincials, Jews in origin, had, in accordance
with ancient custom, collected and were about to trans-
fer to the temple at Jerusalem. By so doing Flaccus
had doubled embezzlement upon sacrilege, for the
sanctity of the temple was established by its antiquity,
and confirmed by the conduct of Pompey, who had
ostentatiously spared it and its appurtenances.
222 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
It will be necessary to examine in some detail the cir-
cumstances of the entire case. Flaccus was a member
of the reactionary wing of the senatorial party, which
until recently had held Cicero aloof as an upstart
provincial. His birth and training were those of an
aristocrat. A certain portion of Cicero's defense is
occupied in descanting on the glories of the Valerian
house, to which Flaccus belonged. The prosecution of
Flaccus, again, was a political move of the popular
opposition, now at last, after the futile essays of Lepidus
and Catiline, finding voice and hand in the consummate
skill of Gaius Julius Caesar.
Shortly before this date a powerful combination had
been made, which enlisted in the same scheme the
glamour of unprecedented military success in the per-
son of Gnaeus Pompey, the unlimited resources of the
tax-farmers and land-capitalists represented by Marcus
Crassus, and the personal popularity of the demagogue
Caesar. Each no doubt had his own axe to grind in this
coalition, and the bond that held them was of an uncer-
tain nature, opposition to the senatorial oligarchy.
Further, only in the case of Caesar was the opposition a
matter of policy. In the case of the other two, it was
the outcome of nothing loftier than pique. None the
less, when the strings were pulled by Caesar, this
variously assembled machine moved readily enough.
In 59 B. c. E. this cabal had been successful in winning
one place in the consulship, that of Caesar himself.
Lucius Flaccus had earned Caesar's enmity by his
vigorous action against the Catilinarians in 63 b. c.
THE ROMANS 223
E., SO that when an influential financier, C. Appuleius
Decianus, complained of Flaccus' treatment of him, the
democratic leader found an opportunity of gratify-
ing his allies, of posing as the protector of oppressed
provincials, and wreaking political spite at the same
time. A certain Decimus Laelius appeared to prosecute
the ex-governor of Asia.
Of Flaccus' guilt there seems to be no reasonable
question. He was plainly one of the customary type of
avaricious nobles to whom a provincial governorship
was purely a business proposition. No doubt he was
no worse than his neighbors. His guilt seems to have
been especially patent. '* Cicero," says Macrobius,
"secured the acquittal of Flaccus by an apposite jest,
although the defendant's guilt of the charges made was
perfectly apparent." "' And indeed on the • principal
counts Cicero has no evidence except exaltation of
Flaccus' personal character, and abuse of the witnesses
against him, whom he characterizes as lying and irre-
sponsible Greeks. His peroration is a flaming denuncia-
tion of the prosecution and an appeal to the jury not to
permit the supporters of the dead traitor Catiline to
win a signal triumph.
The speech was successful. Flaccus was acquitted,
and the acquittal may have hastened Cicero's own ban-
ishment. But for us the particularly interesting part
of this brilliant effort is contained in §§66-69. After
he has disposed of the various charges of peculation
and extortion, he turns to the charges made by the
Jews:
224 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Next comes the malicious accusation about the gold of the
Jews. No doubt that is the reason why this case is being
tried so near the Aurelian terrace. It is this count in the
indictment, Laelius, that has made you pick out this place, and
that is responsible for the crowd about us. You know very
well how numerous that class is, with what unanimity they act,
and what strength they exhibit in the political meetings. But
I shall frustrate their purpose. I shall speak in a low tone,
just loud enough for the jury to hear. There is no lack of
men, as you very well know, to stir these fellows up against me
and every patriotic citizen ; and I have no intention of making
the task of such mischief-makers lighter by any act of mine.
The facts are these : Every year it has been customary for
men representing the Jews to collect sums in gold from Italy
and all our provinces for exportation to Jerusalem. Flaccus
in his provincial edict forbade this to be done in Asia.
Now, gentlemen, is there a man who can honestly refuse
commendation to this act? That gold should not be exported
is a matter which the senate had frequently voted, and which
it did as recently as my own consulship. Why, it is a proof of
Flaccus' vigorous administration that he took active steps
against a foreign superstition, as it is an indication of a lofty
sense of duty that he dared defy, where the public weal was
concerned, the furious mass of Jews that frequently crowd our
meetings.
But, we are told, when Jerusalem was captured, the con-
queror Gn. Pompey touched nothing in that shrine. And that
was very wisely done on Pompey's part, as in so many other
acts of that commander. In so suspicious and slanderous a
city as ours, he would leave nothing for his detractors to take
hold of. But I do not believe, and I cannot suppose you do,
that it was the religion of such a nation as the Jews, recently in
arms against Rome, that deterred our illustrious general. It
was rather his own self-respect.
In view of these considerations, just wherein does the accusa-
tion lie? You do not anywhere charge theft; you do not
attack the edict ; you admit due process of law ; you do not
deny that the moneys were openly confiscated upon official
investigation. The testimony itself discloses that the whole
THE ROMANS 225
matter was carried on by men of rank and position. At
Apamea, Sextus Caesius, a Roman knight and a gentleman of
whose honor and integrity there can be no question, openly
seized and weighed out in the forum at the feet of the praetor
a little less than a hundred pounds of gold. At Laodicea an
amount somewhat more than twenty was seized by Lucius
Peducaeus, a member of this very jury; at Adramytus, . . . .
by the governor's representative, L. Domitius. A small
quantity was also seized at Pergamon. The accounts of the
gold so seized have been audited. The gold is in the treasury.
There is no charge of theft. The purpose of the charge is
to excite odium against my client. It is not the jury that
the prosecution is addressing, but the audience, the crowd
about us.
Religious scruples, my dear Laelius, are primarily national
concerns. We have our own, and other states have theirs.
And as a matter of fact, even while Jerusalem was standing,
and the Jews were at peace with us, there was very little in
common between the religious customs of which their rites are
examples and those which befit an empire as splendid as ours,
or a people of our character and dignity. Our ancestral institu-
tions are as different from theirs as they well can be. Now,
however, there surely can be all the less obligation upon us to
respect Jewish religious observances when the nation has
demonstrated in arms what its feelings are toward Rome, and
has made clear how far it enjoyed divine protection by the fact
that it has been conquered, scattered, enslaved.
There are a number of difificulties with the passage.
The text of the final sentence is doubtful — but the dis-
cussion of that point will be reserved for the Notes.^
We cannot suppose that Cicero was guilty of delib-
erate misstatement on matters about which he could be
immediately confuted. We must therefore accept his
assertion that this count in the indictment did not
charge theft or malversation, but merely public con-
fiscation of the funds in question. It is undoubtedly a
15
226 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
fact that the exportation of the precious metals had been
frequently forbidden, although the senatorial resolution
to this effect was far from being a law, but with this
precedent and even without it no one could very well
deny that it was within the imperium of a proconsul to
make such a regulation if he saw fit."
One may well ask with Cicero, Uhi ergo crimen est?
The point seems to be that previous officials had inter-
preted the rule to refer to exportation for commercial
purposes, and had exempted from its operation con-
tributions for religious purposes. Doubtless the self-
imposed temple tax of the Jews was not the only one of
its kind. If custom had sanctioned that exemption,
Flaccus' act would be felt as an act of oppression, since
the strict or lenient enforcing of the edict on this point
was purely a matter of discretion." Flaccus' successor,
Quintus Cicero, a brother of the orator, seems to have
reverted to the former practice.
In one other respect the seizure of these sums may
have seemed an act of arbitrary tyranny. The sum
seized at Apamea was said to be one hundred pounds
of gold — about 72 English pounds — and must have
equaled about 75,000 Roman denarii or Athenian
drachms. As the temple tax was a didrachm, that
would imply over 35,000 heads of famihes, or a total
Jewish population for Apamea of 170,000. That num-
ber is quite impossible. It is, however, very likely that
the Jews of the various synagogae paid their didrachm
with their other dues to the corporation area, or treas-
ury, and that it was the whole treasury that was seized.
THE ROMANS 227
That would give the Jews of these cities a very real
grievance, and make their animus against Flaccus easy
to explain.
The importance of the passage, however, is in no
way concerned with the justice or injustice of the
accusation against Flaccus. It lies first in its picture of
the Jewish community at Rome, and secondly in its
indication of Cicero's personal views.
The very insertion of the charge proves that a
considerable Jewish element existed, whose aid the
prosecution was anxious to enlist. Cicero's own state-
ments show this directly. Here and here only in his
speech he refers to the popular odium sought to be
incited against his client, and speaks of the number and
power of the Jews in contionibus,^^ " in the political
meetings," and in the crowd about him. Part of this,
the summissa voce, " low tone," for example, is the
veriest acting. Cicero was really not afraid to say
loudly what he wished to say, and if the jury could
hear him, part of the crowd could hear as well. But
although the Roman Jews were probably not so redoubt-
able as Cicero would have his jury believe, they must
have formed a large contingent. Where did they come
from?
We have the statement of Philo that it was not until
the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 b. c. e. that
Jews were brought to Rome in large numbers.^^ These,
it is supposed, were enfranchised shortly after, and are
the people here referred to. That may be said to be
the general view.
228 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
There are, however, serious difficulties in it that
escape those who hold it, simply because they fail to
follow in detail the implications of their view. Pompey
did not arrive in Rome till January, 6i b. c. e. His army
had been previously dismissed, but was to assemble for
the great triumph that took place in September, 6i. The
trial of Flaccus was held in August, 59 b. c. e. Some
months must have been spent in preparing the case
against him. Accordingly we are to suppose that thou-
sands of Jewish captives were brought to Rome, sold
there, enfranchised, learned Latin, became politically
organized, and developed formidable voting strength,
all within less than two years ! The mere question of
language makes the hypothesis impossible. Pompey's
captives were Palestinian Jews, of most of whom the
native language was Aramaic, not Greek." Without
command of Greek or Latin the ready acquisition of
either was nothing short of miraculous, and the
immediate political activity is only less so.
But the chief difficulty lies in another matter. The
phrase '* taken prisoners " immediately suggests the
conditions of modern warfare, in which whole armies
are surrendered and transferred in bulk great distances
for safe-keeping. It is to be feared that some such idea
was suggested to modern writers by the words of
Philo. But that is not at all what occurred in ancient
times. Prisoners taken on the field of battle were sold
immediately at the nearest market. Slave-dealers fol-
lowed the army. Caesar's account of his campaign in
Gaul affords numerous instances of this immediate dis-
THE ROMANS 229
posal of captured foes ; e. g. the case of the Atuatuci
and Veneti." If they were assigned as loot to individual
soldiers, they were disposed of in the same way. Here
and there a soldier would, for one reason or another,
retain his prisoner as a personal slave, but in general
he had almost no facilities for providing or caring for
a number of them. A few of the distinguished captives
were reserved by the commander for a triumph.
Now Pompey's army had just finished a five years'
campaign. It had marched through Asia and Syria,
winning battles that were not very bloody, but must
have been immensely lucrative. The Jews formed only
a small portion of the total prisoners taken. If all those
prisoners actually accompanied their captors to Rome,
the question of transportation and provision for such a
horde must have been tremendous. What could have
induced a general or private to assume this enormous
expense and care, when the greatest slave-market in the
world, viz. that at Alexandria, was relatively near by,
is inconceivable. If they got to Rome, the city's popu-
lation must have swelled visibly under the process.
There is no record that it did, and it could scarcely have
escaped notice, had such a thing taken place.
And finally, even if we assume that such a wholly
unprecedented and inexplicable incident occurred, how
are we to explain the immediate and wholesale en-
franchisement of so large a number? Ransom by
wealthy coreligionists at Rome is excluded by the
hypothesis. Similar action by Jews outside the city
would demand a much longer time. The reasons gener-
230 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
ally assigned are based upon the assumed uselessness of
Jewish slaves for ordinary purposes because of their
dietary laws and religious intransigeance. But that is
a purely dogmatic assertion. Papyri and inscriptions
have shown that in spite of a bitter racial opposition and
perhaps economic strife as well, Jew and non-Jew could
live quite peaceably together. The dietary laws would
not render his master's meals obnoxious to a Jewish
slave, because he did not eat at his master's table, and
might consume his scanty vegetable food where and
how he pleased. If a master actually chose to force
attendance at the sacrifice, the compulsion of necessity
would have been a valid excuse for all but those of
martyr stuff, and we cannot suppose that every Jewish
soldier had in him the zeal of a martyr. Besides, for
such compulsion the slave would in no sense be responsi-
ble,, and it is with disadvantages moving from him that
we are concerned.
It is simply impossible to imagine what could have
induced Pompey's soldiers or those who purchased from
them to enfranchise immediately slaves transported
from such a distance and at such expense.
Philo's statement is at best a conjecture, made with-
out any better acquaintance with the facts than we
ourselves possess, and contradicted by the necessary
inference from Cicero's words.
We must therefore assign the settlement of Jews in
Rome to a much earlier date. The tradition that some
of the train of Simon's embassy had remained in Rome
is, as we have seen, probable enough. To that nucleus
THE ROMANS 231
there was added, by a perfectly natural and even inevi-
table infiltration, a group of Jewish freedmen, artisans,
and merchants who were establishing themselves all
over the Mediterranean. Jews are met with at Delphi
a hundred years before the delivery of this speech."
We have therefore, in 59 b. c. e., an established Jew-
ish community, necessarily organized in synagogues and
chiefly of servile origin. The use of foreigners at the
polls by the political leaders had led to the Lex Junia
Penni of 80 b. c. e. and the Lex Papia of 65 b. c. e.,
which ordered foreigners to leave the city. But
these measures were wholly ineffective, and in any
case could have only partly served those who proposed
them, since the mass of the democratic strength lay in
the proletariat, and the proletariat was largely com-
posed of undoubted citizens, although freedmen. The
Jews formed, as we see, an active and troublesome
element in the turbulent city populace. Their attach-
ment to the democratic leader, Caesar, is well attested,
and Caesar's marked favor toward them has all the
appearance of the payment of a political debt, as in the
case of the Cisalpine Gauls."
As far as Cicero was concerned personally, we may
assume that his attitude was the contempt which he no
doubt honestly felt for the iniima plehs and for Syrian
barbarians in particular. He probably voices the senti-
ments of the optimates," with whom, though still hesi-
tant, he had already cast his fortunes. The abuse arises
from the necessities of the case. As previously pointed
out, it is in this very speech that we have fine examples
232 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
of the device of abusing your opponent's witnesses
when arguments give out. These phrases show no
special animus. Just as Greeks are Hars if they are on
the other side, and men of honor on his own, as
exhibited almost in successive paragraphs of this
speech," so we may be sure if Cicero were prosecuting
Flaccus, a few eloquent periods would extol the char-
acter of those ancient allies and firm friends of Rome,
the Jews.
How much Cicero really knew of the Jews is not cer-
tain. He is aware that in point of religious observance
the Jews are strikingly different from other tribes. The
contrast he emphasizes in his speech may be an
allusion to the imageless cult of the Jews and the
inference of meanness and poverty of ceremonial which
Romans would draw from it. And the taunt quam dis
cara, *' how dear to the gods," seems an unmistakable
fling at the claim of the Jews, loudly voiced in their
propaganda, to possess in a high degree the favor of the
Divinity, or even a special communion with the Deity in
their mysteries.
All this Cicero might have learned from his sur-
roundings. It is doubtful that he learned it from
Posidonius and Molo, both of whom he knew well. In
these two appear stories which Cicero could hardly have
overlooked if he knew them. When we remember what
he says of Sardinians in the Scauriana, of Gauls in
the Fonteiana," he surely would not have omitted to
catalogue the tales treasured up by these two Greek
teachers of his; to wit, the ass-god, the scrofulous
THE ROMANS 233
prophet, the savage inhospitality and absurd fanaticism
Molo and Posidonius ascribe to the Jews.
One other phrase which Cicero appHes to Jews would
deserve little attention if it were not for the extra-
ordinary general inferences some have drawn from it.
In May, 56 b. c. e., Cicero has an opportunity to vent his
venom on his enemy Gabinius, consul in 59 b. c. e.,
whom he held personally responsible for the humiliation
of his exile. Gabinius, in 56, was governor of Syria,
and seems to have been rather short with the tax-
farmers, whom, to the delight of the provincials, he
treated with contumely and no doubt with gross in-
justice. The persistent favor he showed to all pro-
vincial claims against these men, many of them Cicero's
personal friends and at all times his supporters, caused
the orator to exclaim :
As far as the unfortunate tax-farmers are concerned — and
I count myself equally unfortunate to be compelled to relate
their misfortunes and sufferings — Gabinius made them the
chattel-slaves of Jews and Syrians, races themselves born to be
slaves.
The concluding phrase is simply the application of
the rhetorical commonplace of Greeks that barbarians
as such were slaves by nature. It was applied to
Syrians with a certain justice, as the slave name
Syrus testifies. From that standpoint, however, it was
obviously absurd to assert that it was true of Jews.
Cicero's inclusion of them is due to the fact that, as
governor of Syria, Gabinius would have had many
occasions to favor Jewish litigants against the publicans,
probably in pursuance of his party's policy. Gabinius,
234 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
we may recall, was a very obedient servant of his
masters, the triumvirs, and the interest of the leading
spirit of the coalition in the provinces has been pre-
viously pointed out.*"
Allusions of this type made in the course of vehement
advocacy or invective are really of little meaning even
as an indication of personal feeling. It is true, however,
that Cicero shows very little sympathy in general with
the Roman masses or with the provincials, despite the
Verrine prosecution. That he could have felt any
interest or liking for Syrian barbarians in or out of the
city is very improbable.
None the less, within Cicero's own circle, the same
elements in Jewish customs which had impressed
Greeks, such as Theophrastus and Clearchus, could not
fail to strike such Romans as made philosophic pre-
tensions. The fame of the shrine at Jerusalem had
reached Rome a century earlier, as we have seen from
Polybius. Pompey's capture of the city formed no
inconsiderable item in his exploits. Cicero refers to
him jestingly as noster Hierosolymarms, " Our Hero of
Jerusalem."" We can tell from Cicero's own words
the emphasis that Laelius had laid on the fame of the
temple and its sanctity when he denounced Flaccus. As
a matter of fact it was a constant practice of Romans to
find, in those institutions of barbarians which could be
called severe or simple, the image of their own golden
age of simplicity, before the advent of Greek luxury.
So Cicero's learned friend and correspondent Varro is
quoted by Augustine'' as referring to the Jews among
THE ROMANS 235
others as a people whose imageless cult still maintains
what the Romans had abandoned. There may be very
little sincerity in this regret of a simple-living past, but
it is an indication that the exceptional character of
Jewish religious customs might in Cicero's own
entourage be characterized in terms somewhat different
from those of the Flacciana.
We shall have reason to distinguish very sharply
between the attitude of Romans of rank and cultivation
and that of the great mass. However, that is true not
only in this relatively minor detail but in thousands of
other matters as well. The Roman gentleman was dis-
tinct from the mass, not merely in political principles,
but in his very speech. In the following generations
social readjustments of all sorts frequently modified the
position of the Jews in Rome, but until the increasing
absolutism of the monarchy practically effaced dis-
tinctions, the cleavage just indicated largely determined
the point of view and even the terms used.
CHAPTER XVI
JEWS IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE
We are all familiar with the assertion that both
Greeks and Romans of the last pre-Christian century
were in a state of complete moral and religious collapse,
that polytheism had been virtually discarded, and that
the worn souls of men were actively seeking a new
religious principle to take its place. This general state-
ment is partly true, but it is quite inadequate, if it is
made to account for the situation at Rome at that time.
The extant literature of the time makes it quite clear
that there was no belief in the truth of the mythology.
But it is doubtful whether there ever had been, and
mythology was no part of religion. This was particu-
larly true at Rome. For some thousands of years the
inhabitants of central Italy had performed ceremonies
r — ^in their fields in connection with their daily life. A
I great many of these ceremonies had become official and
I regulated in the city of Rome and many other Italic
civic communities. It was the practice of educated
Italians to devise aetiological stories for these practices
and to bring them into connection with Greek myths. In
this way a Roman mythology was created, but more
even than in the case of the Greeks it was devoid of a
folkloristic foundation.^ For the masses these stories
can scarcely be said to have existed. But the cere-
IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 237
monies did, and their punctilious performance and the
anxious care with which extraordinary rites of purga-
tion were performed satisfied the ordinary needs of
ordinary men.
Mention has been made of the rehgious movement
which from the seventh century b. c. e, spread over the
Eastern Mediterranean, and which was concerned with
the demand for personal salvation and its corollary, a
belief in personal immortality. In the Greek-speaking
world the carriers of that movement were the Orphic
and Dionysiac mysteries. In the non-Greek East there
was abundant occasion for beliefs of this kind to gain
ground. The great world monarchies introduced such
cataclysms in the smaller nations that a violent read-
justment of relations with the divinity was frequently
necessitated, since the god's claim to worship was
purely national. No such profound political upheavals
occurred in Greece. Here, however, a fertile field for
the spread of mysteries and extra-national means of
divine relations was found in the rapid economic degen-
eration caused by the slave system. Attachment to the
state was confined to those who had a stake in it. The
maxim that a man's fatherland was where his fortune
brought him seemed less a bold and cynical aphorism
than the veriest commonplace for all but a few idealists.^
To save the personality that individual misfortunes
threatened to overwhelm, recourse was had to every
means and especially to the vague and widespread doc-
trine of other and fuller existences beyond the confines
of mortality.
238 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
In Rome the obvious hinge in the destinies of the
people from almost every point of view was the Hanni-
balic war. For a short time disaster seemed imminent,
and the desperate reaching out to the ends of the earth
for divine support could not fail to make a deep im-
pression upon thousands of men. In that moment of
dreadful stress, it was not the Etruscan Triad on the
Capitol nor Father Mars, but the mystic Ma, the
Ancient Mother of Phrygia with her diadem of towers,
her lion-chariot and her bloody orgies, that stayed the
rush of the Carthaginian. It is true that the city's
ultimate triumph caused a reaction. An increased
national self-consciousness made Romans somewhat
ashamed of their weakness, but they could not blot out
the memory of the fact.
The city's increase in total well-being went on with
tremendous strides, but the disintegrating forces of
a vicious economic system were present here too.
Besides, the special circumstances that tended to
choke the city with people of diverse origin were inten-
sified. In the next few generations we hear of the
threatening character of foreign mysteries, of surrepti-
tious association with the Cybele worshipers, of Isis
devotees gaining ground. Shortly after the Second
Punic War occurs the episode of the Bacchic suppres-
sion. One can scarcely help noticing how strikingly
similar were the accusations directed against the Bac-
chanales and those later brought against the Christians,
and wondering whether they were any truer in the
one case than in the other. The whole incident can
IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 239
easily be construed as an act of governmental persecu-
tion, which, it may be noted, was as futile as such
persecution generally is. The orgiastic Dionysus was
not kept from Italy, though he always remained an
uncomfortable god for Romans of the old type. One
reason has already been referred to ; viz., the constant
recruiting of the iniima plebs from enfranchised for-
eign slaves. The lower classes were becoming orien-
talized. The great Sicilian slave revolt of 134 b. c. e.
was almost a Syrian insurrection, and was under the
direct instigation of the Syrian goddess Atargatis.^
During the civil wars and the periods of uncertainty
that lay between them, all political and social life seemed
as though conducted on the edge of a smouldering vol-
cano. Innumerable men resorted to magic, either in its
naive form or in its astrological or mathematical refine-
ments. Newer and more terrific rites, stranger and
more outlandish ceremonials, found a demand con-
stantly increasing. And the Augustan monarchy
brought only a temporary subsidence of this excite-
ment. Order and peace returned, but Augustus could
not cure the fundamentally unsound conditions that
vitiated Roman life, nor did he make any real attempt to
prevent Roman society from being dissolved by the
steady inpour of foreign blood, traditions, and non-
Roman habits of mind. The need of recourse to foreign
mysteries was as apparent as ever.
In this way the internal conditions of Roman society
impelled men to the alien forms of religion. And
external impulses were not lacking. There were present
240 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
professional and well-equipped missionaries. Our
information about them is fullest with reference to
the philosophic schools, which consciously bid for
the support of educated Romans. These groups of
philosophers were nearly all completely organized,
and formed an international fraternity as real as the
great International Actors Association and the sim-
ilar Athletic Union." It was scarcely feasible to stand
neutral. A man was either an Academic, or Stoic, or
Epicurean, or Neopythagorean, and so on. So skil-
ful a trimmer as Cicero's friend, the astoundingly
shrewd Atticus, was enrolled as an Epicurean.'' Even
skepticism classified a man as an Academic, as Cicero
himself was classed despite occasional exhibitions of
sympathy for the Stoa. And the combat was as intense
and as dogmatic as that between competing religious
sects. That is precisely what they were, and they
bandied their shibboleths with the utmost zeal and
unction.
Some of these philosophic sects, the Cynics and
Stoics, reached classes of lower intellectual level. And
there they came in conflict with astrologer and thau-
maturg, with Isis and with Atthis devotees, and with
Jews. The popular sermon, the diatribe, was an insti-
tution of the Cynics, and was directed to the crowd.
Indeed the chief object of Cynic jibes was the pretension
of philosophers to possess a wisdom that was in any
way superior to the mother-wit of the rudest boor."
The Stoics too used the diatribe with success. It must
not, however, be supposed that either Stoic or Cynic
IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 241
was a serious rival of the dramatic and sensationally
attractive rites of the Eastern cults. The latter counted
their adherents by the hundreds where the preaching
philosopher might pick up an occasional adherent. The
importance of the philosophers for the spread of non-
Roman beliefs lies chiefly in the fact that they reached
all classes of society, and, different as they seem from
the cult-associations of the various foreign deities, they
really represented the same emotional need as the latter.
These had literary support as well. We have recently
had restored to us some astrological pamphlets, such
as that of Vettius Valens,^ and we can only guess from
what arsenal Isiac or Mithraist drew those arguments
with which he boasted of confuting even Stoics and
Epicureans. But we may safely assume that tracts
existed of this sort.
As far as the Jews are concerned, their propaganda
may have begun with their first settlement in Rome.
Cicero does not mention it, but Cicero was not inter-
ested in what went on among the strata of society in
which the Jews then moved. In the next generation
their propaganda was so wide and successful that it
must have been established for a considerable time.
Further, from what has been said it is clear that this
propaganda must have been directed primarily to the
plebs, to the same classes, that is, as those who received
Isis and Cybele, Mithra and the Cabiri. At first it prac-
tically did not reach the intellectually cultivated at all.
But the Jews possessed an extensive literature, which
in Egypt and the East generally had assumed the form
16
242 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
of " most philosophic " treatises. Indeed, it is. quite
clear that the Wisdom of Solomon could be enjoyed by
none but cultured men.* Books of this sort, as well as
the Bible, were accessible, and were read by some. The
synagogue service was an exposition of Jewish doctrine
upon topics that ranked as philosophic. While there-
fore it was mainly from among the masses that Jewish
converts came, here and there men of education must
have found the Jewish preachers as convincing as the
philosophic revivalists, who boasted of no more respect-
able credentials.
The Roman state had found itself obliged to take
cognizance of the foreign religious movements at an
early date. The official acceptance of Cybele had
promptly been surrounded by restrictions. Cybele
was always to remain a foreign goddess. Romans were
stringently forbidden to take part in her ceremonies."
Toward the forms of worship themselves, the Roman
attitude was tolerant enough. As long as they were con-
fined to Egyptians, Syrians, Cappadocians, the partici-
pants would be secure from molestation. But that the
foreign rites might displace the ancestral forms was a
well-grounded fear, and drastic precautions were taken
against that. The Bacchanalian incident of i86 b. c. E.
is the first of these instances.
In the same way the Roman police found it necessary
at various times to proceed against astrologers, Isis-
worshipers, and philosophers. The statement fre-
quently occurring, that these groups were banished,
is constantly misunderstood. It can apply only to
IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 243
foreigners in these classes, not to Roman citizens
affected by these strange beHef s ; but it impUes that the
Roman citizens so affected were sufficiently numerous
to make the desertion of the national religion a probable
contingency. Of course Roman citizens could not
violate the laws that regulated religious observances
with impunity. These laws, however, were ostensibly
never directed against the religious observances, but
against abuses and acts that were connected with them.
That was true even in the case of the Bacchanalia, when
the decree of the senate expressly permitted the cele-
bration of the rites under proper restrictions.
Whether honestly or not, the Roman government
aimed its measures solely at certain indubitably criminal
acts, which, it was alleged, were associated with the
practice of the foreign cults. These acts were often I
offenses against public morality. Conditions of high '
religious excitement often sought a physical outlet in
dancing or shouting, and no doubt often enough, when
the stimulation of wine or drugs or flagellation was
added, in sexual excesses. Instances that were perhaps 1
isolated and exceptional were treated as characteristic,
and made the basis for repressive legislation.^"
Another and better founded objection to many of the
forms of foreign religion was the opportunities they
offered for swindlers. As early as 139 b. c. e. the
astrologers were banished from Rome, not because of
the feeling that the astrological system was baseless,
but because of the readiness with which professed
astrologers defrauded the simple by portentous horo-
244 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
scopes, which they alone could interpret or avert." The
" Chaldeans " or mathematici included many men who
were neither the one nor the other. It was obviously
easier for a Syrian or Oriental generally to make these
claims than for either Greek or Italian. Syrians in the
city accordingly found the profession of quack tempt-
ing and profitable, and doubtless many Jews as well
entered it.
We have evidence too that many of the mushroom
political associations were grouped about some of these
foreign deities. The possession of common sacra was,
in a sense, the distinguishing mark of any organized
body of men, and organization of the masses in all
forms was the commonest device of the agitators of the
revolutionary period. Clodius had his mobs grouped in
de curies and curiae ^^ It is likely enough that in some
of these groups, consisting largely of freedmen of
foreign birth, various foreign deities were worshiped
in the communal sacra, so that the various police
measures restricting or forbidding these rites may have
had strong political motives as well.
When Caesar reconstituted the state after Pharsalia,
he knew from direct experience the danger that lay in
unrestricted association ostensibly for religious pur-
poses. The OiaaoL, "cult-associations," which he dis-
solved were undoubtedly grouped about some Greek or
Oriental deity. The Jews were specially exempted, for
reasons easy to guess at, but which we cannot exactly
determine.^'' This striking favor cannot but have
immensely increased their influence. We need not sup-
IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 245
pose that Caesar's orders were any more effective than
previous decrees of this character had been. But even
a temporary clearing of the field gave the active prop-
agandists among the Jews an opportunity which they
fully utilized.
We have sketches of Jewish activities in Rome dur-
ing the following years drawn by master hands. In
every instance, of course, the picture is drawn with
distinct lack of sympathy, but it is none the less valuable
on that account. Easily of first importance is the infor-
mation furnished us by the cleverest of Roman poets,
Horace.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus was the son of a former
slave. His racial origin accordingly may have been
found in any corner of the Mediterranean in which we
choose to look for it. That fact, however, is of little
importance, except that the consciousness of servile
ancestry must have largely influenced his personal inter-
course, and his patriotism must have been somewhat
qualified, despite some vigorously Roman sentiments.
Suave, obese, witty, a thoroughly polished gentlemen
of wide reading and perfect manners, both sensual and
shrewdly practical, Horace had early reached the point
at which one descants on the merits of frugality and
simplicity at the end of a seven-course dinner. His star
was in the ascendant. His patron Maecenas was the
trusted minister of Augustus ; and to Augustus, and not
Antony, fell the task of rebuilding the shattered frame-
work of the state. Secure in the possession of every
creature comfort, the freedman's son could loaf and
invite his soul.
246 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
That he did so in exquisite verses is our good fortune,
and that he chose to put his shrewd philosophy and
criticism of Hfe into the form of sketches that are med-
leys of scenes, lively chat, satirical attacks, and por-
traits of types and individuals, makes the period in
which he lived and the society in which he moved almost
as vivid to us as that depicted in the letters of Cicero.
In one of his Satires — '' Chats," as he called them —
he tells the story of his encounter with a pushing gen-
tleman, of a type familiar to every age. Horace cannot
escape from the infliction of his presence, and miserably
succumbing to the inane chatter of the bore, he comes
upon his friend Titus Aristius Fuscus. But his hopes
in that quarter are doomed to disappointment.
" Surely," says Horace, nudging Fuscus, " you said
you had something you wanted to speak to me about in
private."
" Yes, yes, I remember," answers Fuscus, " but we'll
let that go for some more suitable time. To-day's the
thirtieth Sabbath. Why, man, would you want to
offend the circumcised Jews ?"
" I can't say that I feel any scruples on that score."
'' But I do. I haven't your strength of mind. Fm
only a humble citizen. You'll excuse me. I shall talk
over our business at some other time."
The little scene is so significant that we shall have to
dwell on it. One unescapable inference is that the Jews
in Rome were numerous, and that a great many non-
Jews participated wholly or partially in their observ-
ances. Fuscus need not be taken seriously about his
IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 247
own beliefs, but his excuse would be extravagant in the
highest degree if the situation of the Jews were not
such as has been suggested. Indeed, the terms of inten-
tional offensiveness which Fuscus uses indicate the
serious annoyance of either himself or Horace that that
should be the case.
The '' thirtieth Sabbath " will probably remain an
unsolved riddle." And whatever the day was, the
extreme veneration expressed by Fuscus in declining
even to discuss profane affairs is of course absurdly out
of keeping with the words he uses. Fuscus is simply
assuming the tone of a demi-proselyte, a metuens Sab-
hata, whose superstitious dread of the rites he has half
embraced would make him carry his devotion to an
excess. Horace thus obtains an opportunity of sketch-
ing a new type of absurdity, in the very act of girding
at the one which is the subject of the sermo.
And Horace makes still another reference to the
proselytizing activities of the Jews. '' You must allow
me my scribbling," he writes to Maecenas in another
Satire. ''If you don't, a great crowd of poets will come
to help me. We far outnumber you, and, like the Jews,
will compel you to join our rout.""
This is explicit enough in all conscience, and gives a
very vivid picture of the public preaching that must
have brought the Jews to the unwelcome notice of every
saunterer in the Roman streets. Horace, despite his
slave grandfather, is a gentleman, the associate of
Rome's aristocracy, a member of the most select circle
of the city's society. The Jewish proselytes, whether
248 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
fully converted or *' righteous strangers," must have
been very numerous indeed, if he was forced to take
such relatively frequent notice of them. Horace has
no pictures, like those of Juvenal, of presumptuous
Syrians, Egyptians, or Greeks swaggering about the
city. It is only these Syrian Iiidaei whom he finds
irritating, and wholly because of their successful hunt
for souls.
It is true that all this may be due to personal circum-
stances in his own surroundings. Some of his acquaint-
ances, or men whom he occasionally encountered, may
have been proselytes ; others may have been impressed
by certain Jewish forms or ideas. Horace is taking his
fling at them in his usual light manner. There is some-
thing ludicrous to a detached philosopher in the eager
striving to save one's soul, and still more absurd in the
earnest attempt to gain adherents for an association
that promises salvation.
Once he takes a more serious tone. In the famous
journey he made with Maecenas to Brundisium Horace
is told of an altar-miracle at Egnatia. The incense
melts of itself, it seems, in the local temple. " Tell it
to the Jew Apella," says Horace, '' not to me. I have
always been taught that the gods live free from every
care, and if anything wonderful occurs in nature, it
is not because it has been sent down from heaven by
meddlesome divinities." "
This Jew Apella — a dialect-form of ApoUas or
Apollonius" — is no doubt a real person, who may per-
haps have recounted to Horace some of the miracles
IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 249
of the Bible. Horace's raillery is directed plainly
enough at the credulity that will accept these stories,
and equally at the troublesome theology which makes
the god a factor in daily life. Life was much simpler
if no such incalculable quantity were injected into it.
And to keep life free from harassing and unnecessary
complications was the essence of his philosophy .^^
At about the same time another writer, the geogra-
pher Strabo, of Amasea in Cappadocia, makes a state-
ment of special interest. As quoted by Josephus (Ant.
XIV. vii. 2) he says: ''These people have already
reached every city, and it would be difficult to find a
place in the whole world that has not received this tribe
and succumbed to it."
Obviously the statement is a gross exaggeration, and
at most applicable to the cities of Egypt and Cyrene,
in connection ^/vrith which it is made. But that such a
statement could be made at all is excellent evidence that
it was at least partially true, and that there were Jewish
communities practically everywhere, although it can
hardly be the case that they were everywhere dominant.
However, the sketches by Horace are an eloquent com-
mentary upon the statement of Strabo. Not merely the
East or Africa, but the capital itself, was overrun with
Jews, and their number was constantly increasing.
Horace, it has been said, wrote of and for a cul-
tured aristocracy. So did the other poets of the age,
Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid. But all of them were more
than ordinarily familiar with the bas-lieux where dis-
reputable passions might be gratified. The voluptuary
250 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Ovid was especially prone to go down into the sewer
for new sensations, and just as Horace met Jews in
the boulevards, so Ovid knew them in the slums.
In his salad-days Ovid had written a manual of
debauchery, which he called the " Art of Love." He
was destined to regret bitterly the facility of verse and
of conscience that gave birth to this bold composition.
But written it was, and in his advice to the dissolute
young Romans he enumerates the time and place for
their amours.
Rome [he says in Ars Amatoria, \. 55 seq.] is the place for
beauties. Venus has her fixed abode in the city of her Aeneas.
Whatever you desire you may find. All you have to do is
to take a walk in the Porticus of Pompey or of Livia, ....
Do not pass by the place where Venus mourns Adonis, or
where the Syrian Jew performs his rites each seventh day.
Nor overlook the temples of the linen-clad heifer from
Memphis. She makes many what Jove made her. Even the
fora favor Love, .... those where the Appian aqueduct
gushes forth near the marble temple of Venus But
above all stalk your game in the theaters.
In these instances Ovid refers to place, not to time,
and it is only as part of the passages as a whole that
the individual references can be understood. It will be
seen that all the localities, beginning with the Porticus
of Pompey in the Campus Martins, are merely casual.
It is at the theater and circus where Ovid's pupils are
chiefly to pick out the ladies of their light loves. For
that reason the other places specified are also, to a cer-
tain extent, show places. The mention of the law-
courts is especially noteworthy in this connection.
IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 251
We must therefore assume that in the Jewish pro-
seucha and in the temple of the Egyptian Isis there were
to be found a certain number of curious onlookers,
particularly women, and while many of them became
ardent converts, a certain number were innocent of any
intentions except to while away an idle hour, and were
easy game for the professional " mashers " for whom
Ovid writes. Isis and Judaism were the two Oriental
cults which at this time had the greatest success in
Rome. And we can easily imagine how the unoccupied
of all classes thronged to every new fashion in religious
stimulation as in others.
Ovid is as explicit in the selection of time as of place.
Do not disregard time, .... Avoid the first of April. Then
the rainy season begins, and storms are frequent. But begin
the day of the defeat at the Allia, or the day on which the
Sabbath feast comes again, which the Syrian from Palestine
celebrates. That's a day on which other business ought not to
be done. (Ars. Am. i. 413 seq.)
Again, in his palinode, with which he vainly hoped to
regain his shattered reputation, " The Cure for Love "
(vv. 214 seq.), he brings the same things together:
Off with you ; take a long journey to some distant land
The less you want to go, the more you must; remember that!
Be firm and make your unwilling feet run. Do not pray for
rain. Let no imported Sabbaths hinder you, nor the day on
which we remember the disaster on the Allia."
As far as Ovid is concerned, and we must assume he
is speaking for Fuscus' multi, a certain Jewish feast,
whether it is the Sabbath or some special holiday, such
as the Day of Atonement, is ranked with the Dies
252 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Alliensis, the fifteenth of July, the day on which, in 390
B. c. E., the Romans suffered their great defeat at the
hands of the Gauls, and which was in consequence an
ill-omened day from that time forth. Again, the Sab-
bath is classed with the rainy season as a day that might
ordinarily incline a man to put off serious business.
As stated in the Notes, it is a common error to sup-
pose that the generally ill-omened character of these
days makes them eminently proper for flirtation. No
Roman, however cynical, could flout superstition to
that extent. The advice is given for purely practical
considerations. The rainy season at the time of the
equinoxes is an inauspicious time to begin a courtship,
which, as we have seen in the previous passage, must be
carried on almost wholly in the open air. Social gather-
ings in the houses of friends in the society of ladies
were not common. There was nothing among the
Romans to correspond to modern five-o'clock's or. re-
ceptions, at which court might be paid to anyone who
had caught the fancy of the Roman man about town.
It is in the porticoes, in the idle crowds at the theater or
circus, where the steps of ingratiating are to be carried
out, and for these the rising of the Pleiades (Ars. Am.
i. 409) is distinctly unpromising.
This is especially borne out by the passage immed-
iately following the one quoted from the ''Art of Love "
(Ars. Am. i. 417 seq.). The most inauspicious day to
attempt the beginning of an intrigue is the lady's birth-
day. Gifts are in order then, and they undoubtedly
deplete one's pocket-book. Ovid is jocose here, but the
IM ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 253
point is the same throughout. The hints and sugges-
tions are as practical and direct as the formula of Ovid's
face-powder, which he also sets forth in the unfinished
verses called Medicamina Faciei Femineae.
That which makes the Dies Alliensis and the Jewish
Sabbath desirable is the fact that the former is in mid-
July and the latter in the early fall, the most delight-
ful of Italian seasons. Then an unbroken series of cloud-
less skies is almost assured ; and the Roman fop could
count on meeting his fair one day after day in one of
the places of assignation so conveniently enumerated by
Ovid.
The phrase rebus minus apta gerendis, " unsuitable
for transacting business," is best taken as given in the
translation (above, p. 251). Ovid knows that under-
takings are rare on that day, and that causes its inser-
tion. If it were merely that cessation of ordinary
business made it easier for idlers to pursue their amours,
it must be remembered that the jeunesse doree had no
other ordinary business than falling in love.
The reference in the "' Cure for Love " (above, p.
251) is of quite a different character. It will be noted
that pluviae, " the rainy season," which in the first case
is particularly contrasted with the Sabbath and the
Allia day, is here associated with them. '' Let nothing
hinder you," says Ovid, '' neither a good excuse nor a
bad one; neither the weather nor superstition." The
point of the reference in the two cases is accordingly
not at all the same. In the first instance the accidental
fact that the Allia day and a certain Jewish festival
254 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
occur during pleasant weather singles them out for
mention. In the second it is the religious association
of the day that Ovid has in mind.
As far as Ovid is personally concerned, there is no
more than in Horace a trace of sympathy for the Jewish
cult. We have seen that in every instance this cult
is only one of several illustrations. The adjective
peregrina, '' foreign," applied to the Sabbath, gives the
tone of all the passages. Ovid is a collector of light
emotions. Of serious beliefs he has no vestige. But
the presence of these Syrians in the city interests him
as anything else picturesque would. He takes cog-
nizance of the part they play in the life of the city, and
is a valuable witness on that point.
The same inference may be drawn from the letter of
Augustus to Tiberius (Suet. Aug. 76) : " There is no
Jew, my dear Tiberius, who keeps his fast on the Sab-
bath as I kept it to-day." If the considerations advanced
in Note 19 are valid, the Sabbath here is the Day of
Atonement. But the significant fact is the use of the
illustration at all. It confirms Strabo's statement of
the extent and success of the propaganda of the
Jews that all these writers in some way mention their
presence.
That the preaching of the Jews was vigorous and
aggressive is almost a necessary inference. We know
no less than three of their synagogues by name,
Augustenses, Volumnienses, Agrippenses,""" and we
have no reason to assume that these three exhausted
the list. To many Romans the ardor of their proselytiz-
IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE 255
ing was oftensive. It seemed a systematic attempt to
transform the ancestral faith of the state. A casual
reference in Valerius Maximus, a contemporary of
Tiberius, charges the Jews with having attempted " to
contaminate Roman beliefs by foisting upon them the
worship of Jupiter Sabazios." ^' Valerius goes on to say
that the praetor Hispalus expelled the Jews for that
reason as early as 139 b. c. e. If such a thing took place,
it was undoubtedly an act similar to an expulsion under
Tiberius (below, p. 306), and was based on definite
infractions of law, perhaps the law against unlicensed
fortune-telling. The Jews in both cases were associated
with the Chaldeans, a fact that makes the supposition
more likely. But Valerius has in mind the conditions of
his own day, when the success of the Jewish propaganda
was bitterly resented, as we have seen, by Horace and
Fuscus, and, as we shall later see, by Seneca and his
associates generally.
If we try to imagine what the Jewish Roman com-
munities of that day were like, we shall have to think of
them as a proletariat. Freedmen in the second or third
generation must have constituted a large part of them,
and later references make it likely that many earned
their livelihood by the proscribed arts of divination and
fortune-telling. As in Alexandria, the bulk were prob-
ably artisans. Some were physicians, a profession then
ranking in social degree with the manual trades, and
usually exercised by slaves or freedmen.^ The Roman
encyclopedist Celsus mentions two Jewish medical
authorities (De Med. V. xix. 11; xxii. 4). But the
256 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
majority must have formed part of the pauperized city
mob, turbulent and ignorant, and no doubt only mod-
erately acquainted with their own laws and literature,
so that we cannot be surprised to find indications of
many things among them that were regarded as sacri-
lege in Jerusalem, such as carved animal figures on
tombstones.^^
However, there must at least have been some of a
different type, whose command of their controversial
literature enabled them to meet the competing philos-
ophies upon their own ground and impress themselves
upon some of the men of Augustus' own circle.
CHAPTER XVII
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE TILL THE
REVOLT
One of the great determining events in ancient and
modern history took place on January i, 27 b. c. e.,
when Gains Caesar Octavianus, returned from his suc-
cessful campaigns in the East, was solemnly invested
with the civil and military primacy of the Roman world.
The importance of that particular historic moment is
due of course not to anything in itself, but to the fact
that it was the external and overt stamp put upon the
development of centuries. The basic governmental
scheme of ancient society — the city-state — was bank-
rupt. Its afifairs were being wound up, and the receiver
was in possession.
The reconstitution by Augustus appeared to the men
of his day as the inauguration of an epoch. Poets
hailed the dawn of a new day, and unqualifiedly saluted
its great figure as a living god.^ But we shall receive a
false impression of the time and its condition, if we
assume it to resemble an empire of modern type.
The Roman empire as founded by Augustus was
simply the expression of the fact that between the
Euphrates and the Ocean, between the Danube and the
great African Desert, all the various forms of consti-
tuted authority were subject to revision by the will of
the Roman people, i. e. those who actually lived, or had
17
258 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
an indefeasible right to live, within the walls of the
Roman city. The populus Romanus had chosen to dele-
gate functions of great extent and importance to a
single man, to Augustus ; but the power wielded by
Augustus was not in any sense the power of an unre-
strained master, nor was the rule of the Roman people
the actual and direct government of the nations subject
to it.
It would be quite impossible to enumerate the vari-
ous communities which, under Augustus, as they had
before, maintained their customs as the unbroken
tradition of many centuries. In the mountains of
Asia Minor it is likely that such a people as the Car-
duchi, whom Xenophon encountered there, were still
under Augustus determining their mutual rights and
obligations by rules that were either the same as those
of Xenophon's time or directly derived from those
rules. ^ So the cartouches on the Egyptian monuments
might have been read by the clerks of Amen-hem-et,
and would have excited no queries from them. The
communities of the Mediterranean enforced their law —
that is, the rules which constrained the individual mem-
ber to respect the claims of his fellows — without notice-
able break. The difference was that there was a limit to
which it might be enforced, and that limit was set by
the caprice of another and a paramount people.
Although the sovereignty of the Roman people was
limitless, it was not, as a matter of fact, capriciously
exercised. During the republic the theory of pro-
vincial organization had been somewhat of the follow-
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 259
ing nature. Within any given territory contained in
the Hmits of the province, there existed a certain num-
ber of individual civic units, which might take the form
of city-states, territorial states of varying extent,
leagues of communities, kingdoms, tetrarchies, or
hieratic religious communes. Any or all of these might
be gathered within a single province, a word which is
essentially abstract, and denoted a magisterial function
rather than a territory. Into the midst of these civitates,
this jumble of conflicting civic interests, there was
sent a representative of the sovereign Roman people,
invested with imperium, or supreme power, a term in
which for Romans was the essence of the higher magis-
tracies. Since the provincial magistrate had no col-
leagues, and since the tribunician check upon him was
inoperative beyond the first milestone from the city, the
wielder of the imperium outside of Italy was at law and
often in fact an absolute despot for the period of his
office.
However, in theory his functions were divided as
follows : first, he was the only officer with jurisdiction
over the Roman citizens temporarily resident in the
province ; secondly, he kept the peace ; thirdly, he guar-
anteed the treaty rights of those communities that had
treaties with Rome ; and fourthly, he enforced and
maintained the local customary law of all these com-
munities. His judicial functions might include cases of
all these kinds, so that in rapid succession the praetor or
propraetor might be called upon to enforce the Twelve
Tables and an ancient tribal usage of the Galatian
Tectosages.
26o THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The checks upon the holder of imperium at Rome
consisted in the pecuhar Roman theory of magistracy,
one of the corollaries of which was the right of any
other equal or superior magistrate, or of any tribune, to
veto any administrative act. A second check lay in the
right of appeal in capital cases to the people. A third
was found in the accountability for every illegal or
oppressive action. This accountability however existed
only after the magistracy had expired.
Outside of Rome only the last check existed. For
everything done beyond the functions enumerated
above, it was possible, even usual, to attempt to make
the governor responsible after his term of office was
over. We know how frequently that attempt was futile,
and how constantly and flagrantly corrupt juries
acquitted equally corrupt governors. '' Catiline will be
acquitted of extortion," writes Cicero in 65 b. c. e., " if
the jury believes that the sun does not shine at noon." ^
The jury evidently thought so, since he was acquitted.
But upon occasion, and generally when there were
personal and political motives at work as well, these
governors were convicted, so that there was always a
certain risk attached to any attempt at playing the
tyrant for the brief period of a governor's authority."
The Augustan monarchy brought no real change into
the theory of provincial organization, except as to rela-
tively unimportant details. But one great reform was
instituted. The responsibility of the governor became
a real one, and was sharply presented to those officials.
For the provinces, accordingly, the advent of Augustus
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 261
was an unmixed blessing, since, except for a few senti-
mentalists, the presence of the Roman representative as
the final court of appeal was not at all resented. We
can accordingly understand the extravagance with
which the rich and populous East, always the center of
wealth and civilization, received the Reformer, and the
unanimity and perhaps sincerity with which he was
hailed as living god.^
We cannot be certain that this was encouraged by
Augustus himself. There is nothing in his character
that indicates any special sympathy with the point of
view demanded by it; nothing of that daemonic strain
noticeable in Alexander, which makes it easy to believe
that the latter was one of the first to be convinced by the
salutation of the priests of Amnion. But Augustus
recognized at once the value for unity that the tendency
to deify the monarch possessed. The reverence for the
living monarch, to be transformed into an undisguised
worship at his death, was, however, to be superimposed
upon existing forms. Nothing was more characteris-
tically Roman than Augustus' eagerness to make it clear
that the vast domain of the empire was to remain, as
before, a mass of disparate communities of which the
populus Romanus was only one, although a paramount
one, and that in each of these communities every effort
was to be made to maintain the ancestral ritual in
government and worship. What he added was simply
the principle that to keep the community together, to
prevent the chaos and anarchy of a dissolution of the
empire, it was necessary to bestow on the princeps, on
2(>2 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
the First Citizen of the paramount Roman people, such
powers and functions as would assure the coherence of
the whole. These powers he selected himself. Such a
step as that taken by the Constitution of Caracalla,
which attempted to enforce a legal merging of all the
communities into a single state, would have been noth-
ing else than abhorrent to Augustus.^ And, indeed,
it was a distinctly un-Roman idea.
In Rome Augustus was chiefly intent upon a restora-
tion of everything that could well be restored in the
social, religious, and political life of the people. Cer-
tain of the political elements, such as the actual sov-
ereignty of the populus, as far as it could be physically
assembled in the Campus Martins, had to be abandoned,
as demonstrably inconsistent with the larger purpose
which Augustus had set himself. But in every other
respect, he did not, as Julius Caesar had done, compel
the Romans to face the unpleasant fact that a revolution
had taken place, but professed to be simply a restorer
of the ancient polity. Perhaps he did not face the
facts himself. At any rate he seems sincerely to have
believed that morality and sobriety could be recon-
stituted by statute, and that one, by dint of willing,
might live under Caesar as men lived under Numa
— barring such un-Sabine additions as marble palaces
and purple togas.
With his mind full of these views, Augustus could
hardly be expected to regard favorably those tendencies
in his own time which inevitably made for real unity of
the empire in speech, blood, and religion. He was quite
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 263
aware that this unity would not be produced by a
coalescing of everything into new forms, but by the
conquest of all or most of the existing elements by the
one most powerful or most aggressive. Unchecked,
it was likely that Greek speech would drive out Latin,
Syrian blood dominate Roman, or any one of the vari-
ous Oriental worships dislodge the Capitoline Triad.
On the last point he had even a definite policy of
opposition. His sagacious adviser Maecenas had laid
great stress upon the ease with which foreign religions
introduce a modification of habits of life, in his last
words :^
Take active part in divine worship, in every way estab-
lished by our ancestral customs, and compel others to respect
religion, but avoid and punish those who attempt to introduce
foreign elements into it. Do so not merely as a mark of honor
to the gods — although you may be sure that anyone who
despises them, sets little value upon anything — but because
those who introduce new deities are by that very act persuad-
ing the masses to observe laws foreign to our own. Hence
we have secret gatherings and assemblies of different sort,
all of which are inconsistent with the monarchical principle.
His commendation of Gains' avoidance of sacrifice
at Jerusalem was of a piece with this policy.^
The Jews in Rome, who had been directly favored
by Caesar, had to be contented, as far as Augustus was
concerned, with freedom from molestation. However,
this freedom was real enough to enable their situation
in Rome to reach the development hinted at in the
Augustan poets, although their activities militated
strongly against the most cherished plans of Augustus.
In the rest of the empire the Jews of the various
264 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
communities found their situation unchanged. Even
the obnoxious privileges which they had in several
cities of Asia continued unimpaired/ and here the
orthodox Jewish propaganda and a few generations
later the heterodox Jewish propaganda made rapid
strides.'"
Judea belonged, in spite of the quasi-independence
of Herod, to the province of Syria, which meant that
such dues as Herod, the Jewish king, owed Rome
would be enforced, if he were recalcitrant, by the
Roman legate at Antioch. Herod's name throughout
the empire was as much a synonym for wealth as it
is now for cruelty. And his wealth and power adver-
tised the Jews notably, a fact which their propaganda
could scarcely help turning to account."
The attitude of the various Jewish synagogues and
communes toward Judea was one that appeared to the
men of the day as that which bound various colonies of
a city to the mother-city. Indeed the Jewish com-
munities outside of Palestine were styled explicitly
colonies, airoiKia. Such a tie, however, was conceived in
the Greek fashion and not in the Roman. The Greek
colony was bound to its mother-city by sentiment only,
not, as in the case of the Romans, by law. That senti-
ment might be powerful enough at times, but it was not
inconsistent with the bitterest warfare. Consequently
such movements as appear in Palestine need not at all
have been reflected in the synagogues of the East and
West, and there is nothing to indicate that the active
and successful proselytizing of the Asiatic and Roman
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 265
synagogues was either directed or systematically en-
couraged by the Pharisaic majority in the Sanhedrin
at Jerusalem. It will at all times create a wholly false
impression to speak of the Jews of that period as of a
single community bound by common interests and open
to identical influences. The independence of the Jewish
congregations of one another was quite real, and was
even insisted upon. Neither the high priest nor the
Nasi of the Sanhedrin pretended to any authority
except over those legally resident in Judea ; and often,
when the reverence for the temple and the holy city was
most strongly emphasized, intense contempt might be
manifested for those who were at the moment the
holders of the supreme authority in the mother-country.
Another matter that is apt to be lost sight of in this
connection is the fact that not all Jews of the time
lived within the Roman empire. The Persian king-
dom, which Alexander had conquered, and which the
Seleucidae had with varying success attempted to main-
tain, had fallen to pieces long before the Roman occu-
pation of Syria. Media, Babylonia, Bactria resumed a
quasi-independence, which however was soon lost when
the obscure province of Parthia — as Persis had done
five centuries before — assumed a dominance that ended
in direct supremacy. The Roman limits were set at the
river Euphrates, leaving Armenia a bloody, debatable
ground. The one great moment in the history of this
new Parthian empire was the decisive defeat of Crassus
at Carrhae in 58 b. c. e., a victory that gave the
Parthians sufficient prestige to maintain themselves
266 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
under conditions of domestic disorder that would
ordinarily have been fatal. The Augustan poets and
courtiers might magnify the return of the Roman
standards by King Phraates to their hearts' content.
They might, as they did, exultantly proclaim that the
Crassi were avenged, that the known world to the
shadowy confines of the Indus bowed to the will of the
living god Augustus. The fact remained that, after
Carrhae, the conquest of the country beyond the Eu-
phrates ceased to be a part of the Roman programme,
and, except for the transient successes of Trajan, was
never seriously attempted.
In this Parthian kingdom, of which the capital was
the ancient and indestructible city of Babylon, Jews had
dwelt since the time of Nebuchadnezzar. There is even
every reason to believe that those who remained at
Babylon were decidedly not the least notable of the
people in birth or culture. And between Babylon and
Judea there was constant communication. When
Babylon became the seat of the only power still existing
that seemed formidable to Rome, it is obvious that the
uninterrupted communication between the Jews of that
section and the mother-country would create political
situations of no slight delicacy, and may have played a
much more important part in determining the relations
of the governing Romans to the Jews than our sources
show.
That there was at all times a Parthian party among
the Palestinian Jews there can be no doubt. We know
too little of the history of Parthia to speak confidently
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 267
on the subject, but Parthian rulers seem to have brought
to the Jewish reHgious philosophy a larger measure of
sympathy and comprehension than most Roman repre-
sentatives. While the existence of Parthian sym-
pathizers may date almost from the beginning of
Parthian supremacy, their presence was very con-
cretely manifested when Jannai's son, Aristobulus,
appealed to Parthia as Hyrcanus had appealed to Rome.
Indeed a Parthian army invaded and captured Pales-
tine, and gave Aristobulus' son, Mattathiah-Antigonus,
a brief lease of royal dignity. Every instance of dis-
satisfaction with the Roman government was the occa-
sion for the rise of Parthian sympathies.
It may further be recalled that Parthia was the con-
tinuation of Persia. Of all foreign dominations the
Persian rule was the one most regretted by the Jews,
and the Persian king's claim to reverence never died
out in the regions once subject to him. We may remem-
ber with what humility, some years later, Izates of
Adiabene dismounted and walked on foot before the
exiled Parthian king, although the latter had gone to
him as a suppliant, and had been prostrate in the dust
before him. The prestige of the Great King, diminished
considerably to be sure, had still not completely faded.''
The one general term that covered all the Jews of
various types was '' race of the Jews," gens Iiidaeoriim,
yeVo? ^lov^aLoiv. It was meant to be a racial descriptive
appellation, and was constantly combined with other
adjectives denoting nationality or citizenship. The
temptation to make an actual unit of any group that
can be covered by a single term is well-nigh irresistible.
268 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
and it is strengthened for us by the century-old asso-
ciations that have made Palestine the embodiment of an
ideal. Varying as the Jews of that time were in tem-
perament, character, occupations, position, and mental
endowments, the fate and vicissitudes of the mother-
country, and particularly of the holy metropolis Jeru-
salem, went home vividly to all of them, scattered as
they were between the shores of the Caspian Sea and
Spain. In this respect the gens ludaeorum was a real
unit. Their hearts were turned to the Zion Hill.
Not all Palestine, however, formed this mother-
country. The mere fact that the Hasmoneans had
brought a great deal of the surrounding territory under
subjection, and made the boundaries of their power
almost as extensive as those of David and Solomon, did
not make a single country of their dominions. The
real metropolis was Jerusalem and its supporting terri-
tory of Judea. In this predominance of the city in post-
Exilic Judaism, we may see either Greek influence or
the continuance of the ancient city-state idea, as much a
general characteristic of Eastern civilization as it is
specifically of Greek. Not even undoubted Jewish
descent, or loyalty to the Jewish Law, made of the
adjacent lands an integral part of Judea. The Jews
of Gaulonitis, Galilee, Ituraea, Peraea, Trachonitis,
Idumaea, were, like the Jews of Rome, of Alexandria,
or of Babylon, Jews of foreign nationality to inhab-
itants of Jerusalem, although the association was nota-
bly closer and the occasion of common performance of
Jewish rites much more frequent than was the case with
the more distant Jews.
Ui
_l
<
CO
D
QC
LU
z
o
QC ^
Q =
LU E
^ ©
Ll 0)
< o
> i
of ^
O E
? 2
LU
I
I-
U.
O
CO
CD
O
I-
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 269
The Idumean Herod had been confirmed by Rome
in the sovereignty of a wide and miscellaneous territory,
which included Greek cities, as well as these territorial
units enumerated above. The favor he enjoyed granted
him practically all the privileges that an independent
sovereign could hold, except that of issuing gold coins/'
Further, the authority was only for his life. The right
of disposing of his dominions was no part of his power.
His will was merely suggestive, and carried no weight
beyond that.
His favor in the eyes of the Romans was based upon
his scarcely disguised Hellenic sympathies and his
proven loyalty to his masters. The Parthian invasion
of 40 B. c. E. and the existence of Parthian sympathizers
made the maintenance of order in Palestine a matter of
the highest importance. The significance of these
Eastern marches for the stability and safety of Rome
was even greater than those of the North along the
Rhine, where also constant turbulence was to be feared,
and eternal vigilance was demanded. In the East, how-
ever, there was not merely a horde of plundering
savages to be repelled, but the aggression of an ancient
and civilized power, bearing a title to prestige compared
with which that of Macedonian and Roman was of
recent growth. And Parthian successes here immedi-
ately jeopardized Egypt, already rapidly becoming the
granary of the Empire.
Quite in accordance with Roman policy, indeed with
ancient policy in general, Augustus vastly preferred to
have the peace of this region assured by means of a
reliable native government than directly by Roman ad-
270 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
ministration. The Romans did not covet responsibility.
If a native prince was trustworthy, it was a matter of
common sense to permit him to undertake the arduous
duty of poHcing the country rather than assume it them-
selves. The difficulty was to discover such a man or
government. Experience and the suspiciousness that
was almost a national trait convinced the Romans that
only very few were to be trusted; and these not for long.
In Herod, however, they seemed to have discovered a
trustworthy instrument, and while it is not strictly true
that the powers conferred upon him were of unex-
ampled extent, they were undoubtedly unusual and
amply justified the regal splendor Herod assumed. The
readiness with which Herod's loyalty to Antony was
pardoned demonstrated the clear perception on the part
of Augustus of how admirably Herod could serve
Roman purposes here.
One of the motives that generally impelled Romans
to permit native autonomy was no doubt to gain credit
for generosity with their subjects. They might be for-
given for supposing that Roman rule would be more
acceptable if it came indirectly through the medium of
a king that was himself of Jewish stock. The distinc-
tion between Idumean and Jew proper would hardly
be recognized by a Roman, although the distinction
between the geographical entities of Idumaea and
Judea was familiar enough.
But the Romans likewise knew and consciously
exploited Herod's unpopularity. Strabo states that
the humiliating execution of Antigonus was intended
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 271
to decrease the prestige of the latter and increase that
of Herod." Josephus and the Talmud would be ample
evidences themselves df the hatred and the bitter antag-
onism with which Herod was regarded.'^ None the
less it may well be that the unpopularity was largely
personal, and produced by the violence and cruelties of
which Herod was guilty. It appears so in Strabo's
account. Idumean descent cannot have been the prin-
cipal reproach directed against Herod by his subjects.
On more than one occasion the Idumeans had evinced
their attachment to the Jewish Law.^° Nor was Herod
wholly without ardent supporters. In the cities which
he had founded there were many men devoted to him.
Even — or perhaps especially — among the priests, there
was a distinctly Herodian faction.^' It is highly likely
that hatred of Herod was especially strong in those who
hated Rome as well, either through Parthian pro-
clivities or because Rome seemed to present a danger
to the maintenance of their institutions. And among
these men were, it appears, most of those whose teach-
ings have come down to us in the course of later
tradition.
To the Romans this devotion of the Palestinian Jews
to their Law seemed an excessive and even reprehensi-
ble thing. As we have seen, the Jews were qualified as
stiperstitiosi, " superstitious " (above, p. 177). In gen-
eral, to be sure, zeal for ancestral institutions was sup-
ported by the Romans, and they were not particularly
concerned that foreign institutions should resemble
theirs. However, if there were any from which a
2^2 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
breach of the peace was to be apprehended, they might
be regarded as practices to be suppressed.
, The Romans had shown for certain Jewish customs
a very marked respect. The mtense Jewish repugnance
to images was at first difficult for Romans to reahze,
/ since they had been training themselves for generations
to test the degree of civilization by the interest in the
f^ I plastic arts. That there might be among barbarians no
statues was natural enough : that the barbarians would
^w refuse to take them when offered, was incomprehensi-
^ ^ ble. But, hard thoug-h it was to realize, the Romans
' ' quickly enough did realize it. The capital concession
of issuing no Roman coins for Judea with anything
but the traditional symbols on them, of carefully
eliminating those which bore the emperor's effigy,
undoubtedly showed their good-will in the matter.'^
And the fact may be noted that after the coins cele-
brating the triumph of Vespasian and Titus, with the
Latin and Greek legends TovSaia? 'EaAwKvta?^ Indaea
capta, '' For the Conquest of Judea," no Roman coins
with imperial effigies appear till the radical reorganiza-
tion by Hadrian. That indicated clearly enough the
extent to which the Romans were willing to respect
what was to them a purely irrational prejudice.
One other matter was easier for Romans to compre-
hend, and that was the inviolable sanctity of certain
things and places. It was a common enough conception
that certain places were unapproachable to all but a few,
aSura; and that certain things, like the Palladium, suf-
fered profanation from the slightest touch. They sub-
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 273
mitted accordingly with a good grace to exclusion from
most of the temple precincts, and Nero^" readily gave
his consent to the building of the wall that prevented
Agrippa II from turning the temple ceremonies into a
show for his courtiers. The punishment of a Roman
soldier, who tore a scroll of the Pentateuch, is another
case in point. The soldier may have been a Syrian
enrolled from the section in which he served, and
not properly a Roman at all. None the less an arbitrary
and distinctly unsympathetic procurator felt his respon-
sibility for threatened disorders keenly enough to make
this drastic example.^*'
Herod had kept order. He had done so with a high
hand, and had met with frequent rebellions. Himself
wholly inclined to complete Hellenization, he had made
many efforts to conciliate his Jewish subjects. His
lust for building he gratified only in the pagan cities
subject to him. His coins bear no device except the
inanimate objects and vegetable forms allowed by law
and tradition. With cautious regard to certain openly
expressed fears on the part of the Jews, he rebuilt the
temple on a magnificent scale. He spoke of the Israel-
ites as " our ancestors." ^^ As has been said, he did not
wholly want adherents among priests and people. That
he died as an embittered and vindictive despot, con-
scious of being generally detested, and contriving
fiendish plots to make his death deplored, is probable
enough, and is amply explained by the domestic diffi-
culties with which he had to contend all his life.''
18
274 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
In some cases at least, it was his zeal for orderly
administration that caused friction with the people.
His law sentencing burglars to foreign slavery is an
instance (Jos. Ant. XVI. i. i ). In general, however, the
mere suppression of more or less organized brigandage
was a task that took all his attention, but this " brig-
andage " was often a real attempt at revolution, in which
popular teachers were suspected of being implicated,
and every such suppression carried with it in its train a
series of executions that did not increase the king's
popularity.
These ''robbers" or "brigands" were of different
types. The distinction which Roman lawyers made
between war proper, iustum helium, and brigandage,
latrocinium, was in Syria and the surrounding regions
rather quantitative than qualitative. So, after Herod's
first defeat by the Arabians, " he engaged in robberies,"
TovvrevOev 6 [xev 'H/owS?^? XrjaTetaLs Ixp'^To (Jos. Ant. XV.
V. I ) , which meant only that he made short incursions
into the enemy's country, until he had the strength to
attempt another pitched battle. So also of the Tracho-
nitians (ibid. XVI. ix. 3). Every one of the expeditions
in which the Hasmonean rulers had increased their
dominions had been in the eyes of the Syrian historians
'' robberies." Itureans and other Syrians had been
guilty of them under the last Seleucids.^^ In the pro-
logue to Pompeius Trogus' Thirty-ninth Book, as
contained in Justin's epitome,^ we hear the conquests of
John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannai described as
latrocinia. And again (xl. 2) we read that Pompey
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 275
refused the petition of Antiochus, son of Cyzicenus, to
be called king of Syria, on the ground that Antiochus
had miserably shirked his responsibilities for eleven
years, and he, Pompey, would not give him what he
could not maintain, " lest he should again expose Syria
to Jewish and Arabian brigands," ne rursus Syriam
ludaeorum et Arahum latrociniis infestam reddat.
Herod had kept these robbers in check, and had
effectually fulfilled his tacit engagement to the populus
Romanus. His death immediately removed the strong
hand. His son Archelaus found an insurrection on
his hands almost at once, which he suppressed with
great bloodshed. The moment he left for Rome to
maintain his claims to a part of this inheritance, the
governor of Syria suppressed another revolt ; and hardly
had he turned his back, when his procurator Sabinus
found himself surrounded by a determined band of
rebels recruited principally from Galilee, Idumaea,
Jericho, and the trans-Jordan territory. In spite of a
successful sortie by the Romans, Sabinus was nothing
less than besieged in the Tower of Phasael.
Innumerable (fjcvpcoi) disorders, Josephus tells us
(Ant. XVII. X. 4), occurred at about the same time.
Some two thousand of Herod's soldiers engaged, as
was so often the case, in plunder on their own account.
Sepphoris in Galilee was seized and plundered by Judah,
son of the highwayman ( dpxtATyo-TTys ) Hezekiah, who
made the neighboring country dangerous with his band
of "madmen" (anovevorjiJievoi) . At Jericho Simon, a
former slave of Herod, had himself proclaimed king
2^^ THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
and sacked the palace there. But more serious than
these was the band of outlaws commanded by four
brothers, of whom only Athronges is mentioned. These
attacked both the local troops and even Roman detach-
ments and were not suppressed till much later."^""
All these disorders required the presence of Varus '^
once more. He marched on Jerusalem at the head of
an army, turning over the various towns on his route
to be sacked by his Arabian allies, precisely as both
British and French used their Indian allies during the
colonial wars in America.
The effect of such conditions in so critical a place as
Judea, was to call Roman attention to the country to a
much greater extent than was advantageous to the
Jews. The region very naturally appeared to them as a
turbulent and seditious section, much as Gaul did to
Julius Caesar and largely for the same reason, the
instinctive love of liberty and the presence of '' innova-
tors," veo)Tepi(jTai, cupidi rerum novarum, restless and
ambitious instigators of rebellion." The Jerusalem
Jews are, to be sure, very eager to escape the reproach
of disloyalty. The rebellion was the work of outsiders
(eTrryAvSes), to wit, the Galileans and Gileadites above-
mentioned.^^
Varus crucified two thousand men, and then dis-
banded his auxiliary army. The latter, composed ob-
viously of natives of the country, proceeded to plunder
on their own account. Varus' prompt action brought
them to terms. The officers were seized and sent to
Rome, where, however, only the relatives of Herod,
who had added impiety to treason, were punished.
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 277
But the reproach of being a seditious people was
resented by other Jews than those of Jerusalem. The
Jews in Rome were largely descended from those who
had left the country before even Antipater, Herod's
father, had become powerful there. On them, of
course, the house of Herod could make no claim, and
for obvious reasons closer relations with Rome seemed
to them eminently desirable. The Jewish embassy
which Varus had permitted the Judeans to send — how
selected and led we have no information — was joined
by an immense deputation from the Roman synagogues.
The substance of their plea was the petition that they
be made an integral part of the province of Syria. '' For
it will thus become evident whether they really are a
seditious people, generally impatient of all forms of
authority for any length of time " (Jos. Ant. XVH. ii.
2; Wars, H. vi. 2).
This plea, to be joined to Syria, is particularly signifi-
cant if we remember that the motive of the Jews in
sending the embassy was, in the words of the Wars (H.
vi. i), to plead for the autonomy of their nation (cf.
Ant. XVH. xi. i). We see strikingly confirmed the
theory of the Roman provincial system, in which the
proconsul or propraetor was only an official added to,
but not superseding, the local authorities.
The representative of Archelaus, Nicolaus of
Damascus,^^ charged the former's accusers with ''rebel-
lion and lust for sedition," with lack of that culture
which consists in observance of right and law. Nicolaus
had in view primarily the Jewish accusers of his
27S THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
employer, but no doubt made his remarks general. In
the earlier version of the embassy, as it appears in the
Wars (II. vi. 2), it is the whole nation that Nicolaus
charges directly with " a natural lack of submission and
loyalty to royal power."
Augustus declined to continue the heterogeneous
kingdom of Herod. A brief trial of Archelaus as
ethnarch of Judea proper convinced him of the latter's
worthlessness. The request of the Jewish envoys was
now granted. Judea became a part of Syria — and the
agent or procurator of the Syrian proconsul took up
official residence at Caesarea. We find, however, that
this step, which the Jews themselves had suggested,
almost immediately provoked a serious rebellion in
Galilee, led by one Judah of Gamala in Galilee and by
a Pharisee named Zadok, who, if we may believe
Josephus, were appreciably different from the various
" robbers," Ar^orai, whom he had formerly enumerated,
and, in his eyes, even more detestable than they were.
They placed their opposition on the basis of a principle.
This principle was that of the sinfulness of all mortal
government and the consequent rejection of Roman
authority as well. Accordingly they refused to pay
tribute. These advocates of a pure theocracy had of
course obvious Scriptural warrant for their position,
but the relatively rapid spread of such a doctrine in
the form of an actual programme of resistance can be
accounted for only by the extremely unsettled state of
the country and the still more unsettled state of men's
minds.
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 279
That this Judah formed a fourth sect of the Jews
m addition to the three, Pharisees, Sadducees, and
Essenes, already in existence, as Josephus tells us, may
not be quite true."*" Men of his type are scarcely
founders of sects. But there can be no doubt that the
doctrines which these zealots espoused were those which
Josephus has described. The later history of Europe has
abundant examples of such groups of fanatic warriors
maintaining one of many current religious dogmas,
especially in times of economic and political disorder.
Of such incidents the Hussite bands of Ziska and the
Anabaptist insurrection are examples. In this case
the distress and uncertainty were largely spiritual. The
economic conditions, while bad, had not become particu-
larly worse. Indeed, if anything, more direct adminis-
tration had somewhat lightened the burdens, by mak-
ing them less arbitrary and by removing the heavy
expense of a court and the need of footing the bill for
Herod's building enterprises.
Josephus regards the great rebellion of 68 c. e. as
the direct consequence of this insurrection of Judah.
He is therefore very bitter against this " fourth philo-
sophic system," which spread among the younger men
and brought the country to ruin. It is at least curious
that in his earlier work, the Wars, in which the recollec-
tion of Jewish disaster would be, one would suppose,
vastly more vivid, he does not ascribe to this rebellion
any such far-reaching effects (Wars, II. viii. i) ; nor
is it in any degree likely that this insurrection was after
all more than what it appears to be there, a sporadic
28o THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
outburst in that hotbed of unrest, the GaHlean hills,
noteworthy only for the special zeal with which the
theocratic principles were announced.
No riots or disturbances are mentioned in Judea till
the famous image-riots of the time of Pontius Pilate.
However we may wish to discount the highly colored
narrative preserved in Josephus, there can be no doubt
that these riots did take place. It may even be that
the representation of influential Jews induced the much
desired concession on Pilate's part of removing the
** images." But what these images were does not
appear with any clearness from Josephus' account, and
of course we are under no obligation to take literally
the " five days and five nights " during which the
ambassadors lay prostrate, with bare necks, at Pilate's
feet.
Josephus speaks of the " images of Caesar which
are called standards " (Wars, II. ix. 2 ; Ant. XVIII. iii.
i). The Roman standards, signa, o-ry/xatat, often con-
tained representations of the emperor. But these were
in the form of medallions in flat relief, hung upon the
standard. They would have been noticed only upon
relatively close inspection. There were also statues in
the camp. But it is quite unlikely that if the Roman
provincial administrators were instructed to issue no
coins with the imperial effigy, they would be allowed to
carry into the city actual statues of the emperor. They
may well have forgotten that the military standards
would be themselves offensive, if they bore, as they
always did, the representation of animal forms. All
~>
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 281
legions at this time carried the eagle, and most of them
had other heraldic animals as well."
Now it may be remembered that the chief legion
permanently encamped in Syria, of which detachments
must have accompanied Pilate upon his transference
of the praetorium from Caesarea to Jerusalem, was the
Tenth Legion, called Fretensis (Leg. X Fretensis),
and that its standards were a bull and a pig.''' To the
mass of the Jews the carrying, as though in triumph, of
the gilded image of an unclean animal must have
seemed nothing less than derision, and can easily
explain the fury of the populace.
Another of the Syrian legions, of which certain
divisions may have been with Pilate, was the Third
Gallic Legion (Leg. Ill Gallica). This legion, like the
X Fretensis, bore a bull as a standard, which, while less
stimulating to the mass of the population, must have
seemed even more than the pig the emblem of idolatry
to those who had the history of their people in mind.''
If this was the occasion of the disturbance, Pilate
may well have been innocent of any provocative inten-
tion. That can scarcely have been altogether the case
in the riots provoked by the aqueducts. Pilate seized
certain sacred funds for that purpose, and in this case
no official, Roman or Greek, could have failed to under-
stand the nature of the funds or the ofifense involved in
using them for secular purposes.
A certain significance is attached to the Samaritan
episode mentioned by Josephus (Ant. XVIII. iv. i). It
is one of the incidents that become more and more fre-
282 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
quent. The promises of a plausible thaumaturg cause
an enormous throng to gather. It does not appear that
he had any other purpose than that of obtaining credit
as a prophet or magician. But Pilate, as most Roman
governors would no doubt have done, held the un-
licensed assemblage of armed men to be sedition, and
suppressed it as such.
Shortly afterwards Palestine and the closely con-
nected Egyptian communities were thrown into a
frenzy of excitement by the widely advertised attempt
of Gains to set up his statue in the temple at Jerusalem.
The imperial legate at Antioch had no desire whatever
to arouse a rebellion in which all the forces of religious
hatred would be let loose upon him. He therefore tem-
porized and postponed at his own imminent peril. In
view of the constantly threatening attitude of Parthia,
Petronius ^* may well have felt his responsibility with
especial force. Only a few years before, an invasion
on the part of the Parthian king Artabanus had been
generally feared. Agrippa had even been accused of
complicity with the Parthians."*^ The governor of Syria
had every reason to hesitate to gratify the caprice of
an obviously insane emperor at so great a risk to the
state. Luckily for him, the assassination of Gains
saved him from the consequences of his hesitation.
His subsequent procedure against the people of Doris ^
indicated a lively comprehension on his part of the
inflammable character of the people he had to govern
and the particular importance to be attached to this
question of images.
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 283
To the Roman historian, the incident of Gains*
attempted erection of his statue in the temple is only
an illustration of the readiness with which this nation
rebelled. Tacitus" treats the period between insur-
rections as one of smouldering revolt. The incident
of Gains precipitated an outbreak (Hist. v. 9), which
his death calmed, and enabled the Jews to suppress
their inclinations a few years longer. Duravit tamen
patientia ludaeis, he tells us, usque ad Gessium Florum
procuratorem, '' The submission of the Jews lasted
till the procuratorship of Gessius Florus."
The short reign of Herod's popular grandson.
Agrippa, " the great king Agrippa, friend of Caesar
and the Romans," as he calls himself on his coins and
inscriptions,'^ rather confirmed Roman anxiety about
the loyalty of their Jewish subjects than lightened it.
It was by a complete adoption of Jewish customs —
an adoption that can hardly have been sincere — that
Agrippa secured and maintained his hold on their
affections.^" His deference to the religious leaders of
the people was unqualified. His dealing with the
Pharisee Simon, who publicly challenged his right to
enter the temple precincts at all, is an illustration.'^ The
Pharisaic tradition of his reign as preserved in the
Talmud is that he was a pious and scrupulously obser-
vant Jew, painfully conscious that his Idumean origin
made him half a stranger in Israel.
But to Rome Agrippa's methods, in spite of their
success, indicated only that no real progress had been
made in the subjugation of Palestine. Rome was not
284 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
without experience of lands difficult to subdue. Gaul,
Belgium, Germany, Britain, were all lands where insur-
rections might at any time be feared through the devo-
tion of an influential minority to their ancestral customs.
But in Palestine there was even less appreciable in-
crease in Romanization or Hellenization of customs
than in the countries mentioned. To an antiquary and
scholar like the emperor Claudius there might be some-
thing interesting and admirable in the maintenance of
an historic culture, but to the Roman administrative
official, accountable for the security of the East, there
was little that was admirable about it.
A quarrel between the Jews of Peraea and the
neighboring city of Philadelphia may have had only
local significance. And the Ptolemy executed by Fadus
may have been only a common highwayman." But
a very little later the success of a certain Theudas, an
*' impostor,'' yo-q^ n? avy]p, Josephus calls him, in gaining
adherents as a prophet is highly significant."^ This
Theudas undertook to divide the Jordan, and pass
across it with his followers. It is noteworthy that every
such claim to miraculous power immediately elicited
drastic action on the part of the Romans. Theudas'
followers were cut down in a cavalry raid, and he him-
self was captured and beheaded. Roman officials appre-
hended danger chiefly from this source, and were par-
ticularly on their guard against it.
Such incidents as the riots provoked by individual
soldiers cannot have been frequent. As has been said
in one case, the Roman commander executed a soldier
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE 285
whose outrage had stirred up a revolt. But a garrison
of foreign soldiers in a warlike country furnishes con-
stant incentives to friction, which may at any time burst
out into a general war. In Samaria and Galilee there
were abundant pretexts for mutual attacks, the net
result of which was that the land was full of brigand-
age, which indicates that the Roman police here were
strikingly ineffective. And in all cases the suspicion
that attached to every armed leader was that his motives
were treasonable as well as criminal. So Dortus of
Lydda was accused by the Samaritans of directly
preaching rebellion.
Under Nero, says Josephus, the country went from
bad to worse, and was filled with brigands and impos-
tors.'^ How little it was possible to distinguish between
these two classes appears from the fact that Josephus
continually mentions them in couples. Those whom
he calls Assassins, or Sicarii, can be placed in neither
category. One thing is evident. Their apparently
wanton murders must have had other incentives than
pillage, for even Josephus does not charge them with
that; they were obviously animated by a purpose that
may be called either patriotism or fanatic zeal, depend-
ing upon one's bias. That is shown plainly enough in
a casual statement of Josephus that these brigands were
attempting to foment by force a war on Rome, rov Syjfiov
ci? Tov TT/oos PwjUatots TToXefjiov rjpiOit^ov,
The usual ''prophet," in this case an unnamed Egyp-
tian, appears with his promise to make the walls of
Jerusalem fall at his command, and the usual attack
286 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
of armed soldiers on a helpless group of unarmed
fanatics. In the Wars, Josephus speaks of a great num-
ber of these self-styled prophets (II. xiii. 4) : "Cheats
and vagabonds caused rebellion and total subversion of
society, under the pretense of being divinely inspired.
They infected the common people with madness, and
led them into the desert with the promise that God
would there show them how to gain freedom." The
procurator Felix took the customary measures of treat-
ing these expeditions as open sedition and crushing
them with all the power at his command — acts which
can only have inflamed the prevailing disorders.
The picture drawn by Josephus of the Judea of those
days represents a condition nothing short of anarchy.
Such a situation could have existed only under an
incompetent Roman governor. Whether the procu-
rator Gessius Florus was or was not quite the mon-
ster he is depicted as being in the W^ars, he can
scarcely have been an efficient administrator. It is
very likely that the various acts of cruelty imputed to
him by Josephus were examples of the intemperate
violence of a weak man exasperated by his own failure
to control the situation. However this may be, it cer-
tainly was not the excesses of an individual governor
that provoked the rebellion of 68 c. e., even if we accept
Josephus' account of him in full, and assume him to
have been a second and worse Verres. The outbreak
of that year was the result of causes lying far deeper
in the condition of the time and the character of the
people.
CHAPTER XVIII ■
THE REVOLT OF 68 c. e.
The Jews were not the only nation that fought with
desperate fury against complete submergence in the
floods of Roman dominance. The spread of the Roman
arms had encountered, from the beginning, seemingly
small obstacles that proved more serious checks than
the greater ones. Thus, after the Second Punic War,
when Rome was already in the ascendant in the world,
the relatively fresh strength of a conquering people
was all but exhausted in the attempt to subdue and
render thoroughly Roman the mountain tribes of the
Ligurians in the northern part of the peninsula.^ In
later times, after Caesar's conquest, the subjugation
of Belgium was a weary succession of revolts and
massacres and punitive expeditions that stretched over
several generations. Similarly in Numidia it was
found that formal submission of the tribes that filled
this region insured no permanence of control."
In the last cases, however, the danger that was
warded off seemed in Roman eyes to be remote. In the
case of Judea the very existence of the eastern empire
was threatened. On the other side of the Syrian desert
there was a watchful and ready enemy, who might
appear in force at any time and with whose arrival
there might break out into open conflagration the
288 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
smouldering disloyalty that still was present in the
Asiatic provinces.
The Jewish rebellion of 68 c. e. was not an isolated
phenomenon. For the Jews it formed the beginning of
a series of insurrections that did not end till the found-
ing of Aelia Capitolina put a visible seal on the futility
of all such attempts. To us the outcome seems so inevi-
table that the heroism of the Zealots has stood for
centuries as a striking example of unrestrained fanat-
icism. To take a modern instance, if the single island
of Cyprus were to attempt, by its unaided strength,
to cast off the British rule, it would not seem to be
engaged in a more completely forlorn enterprise than
were the Jews who undertook to defy the power of the
legions. And yet those who began and conducted the
revolt were neither fools nor madmen, and the hopes
that buoyed them must have been very real when they
attempted the impossible.
We must first of all remember that a foreign suze-
rainty was not necessarily incompatible with Jewish
theocratic ideals. Tradition had accustomed the Jews
to Assyrian and Persian dominance, and their most
sacred recollections contained ample warrant for those
who would bear the rule of Caesar with complete
equanimity. But it had been axiomatic that the rule of
a foreign master was a divinely imposed penalty, a
trial, a test of submission. At some time the period of
trials would cease, and the normal condition of com-
plete freedom from outside control under the sway of
God would be restored. The Messianic hope made
THE REVOLT OF 68 C. E. 289
that situation more and more vividly present to the
hearts of men.
Nor did actual experience of recorded history make
this possibility a vain dream. The vicissitudes of for-
tune, the sudden rise of obscure nations to supremacy,
and their quick destruction, were rhetorical common-
places. The East knew abundant cases of the kind.
Empires had risen and crumbled almost within the
recollection of living men. That was particularly so
after Alexander, when sudden glories and eclipses were
too common to be noteworthy.
And we must further reckon with the fact that a
potent incentive was the living faith in an actual God,
who could and did hurl the mighty from their seat. To
these men the destruction of Sennacherib or the triumph
of Gideon was no legend, but a real event, which might
occur in their days as in the days of their fathers. The
attempt, accordingly, to secure the independence of a
small portion of the empire need not have seemed to
the men that undertook it quite as insensate a proceed-
ing as it does to us.
Our most complete source for the period is dis-
credited by the parti pris of the author, the disloyal
Josephus. The Roman sources indicate that in the
Jewish revolt there was nothing diiTerent from the
revolts in other parts of the w^orld, revolts to which
Romans were accustomed. There was no direct exter-
nal provocation. There was no one event that seemed
to account adequately for an outburst just then. But
we find no indication that Romans felt it to be a strange
19
290 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
or inexplicable fact for men to rise in order to recover
their freedom. The imperial interests demanded that
the hopelessness of such rising should be made ap-
parent. It was therefore to the leaders of the com-
munity, the aristocracy, that Romans looked to keep in
check the ignorant multitude to whom the superiority
of Romans in war or civilization might not at all be
apparent.
The contemptible young rake who, as Agrippa II,
continued for some years the empty title of *' king of
the Jews," was no doubt at one with the smug Josephus
in his sincere conviction of the overwhelming might of
the Romans and the folly of attacking it. We cannot
sufficiently admire the successful way in which the king
concealed his heartfelt pity for the sufferings of the
Jews, *' since he wished to humble the exalted thoughts
they were indulging," as Josephus naively tells us
(Wars, II. xvi. 2). However, not mere truckling to the
Romans, but sober conviction, would sufficiently account
for the pro-Roman leanings of men like Agrippa and
Josephus. The long speech put in the king's mouth
{ihid. 11. xvi. 4) was perhaps never delivered, but it
states the feeling of the pro-Roman party and of the
Romans themselves eminently well.
Both Josephus and Agrippa could hold no other view
than that it was some single act or series of acts of the
procurator Florus that animated the leaders of the
revolt. It seemed to them a " small reason " for engag-
ing in what was conceded even by the most hopeful to
be a desperate and frightful war. The burden of the
THE REVOLT OF 68 C. E. 291
king's supposed speech, however, in which we are jus-
tified in seeing the sentiment of the historian, is this :
"Who and what are these Jews that they can refuse to
submit to that nation to which all others have sub-
mitted?"^ We find enumerated for us the extent and
wealth of the Roman possessions with a fervor of
patriotism that might have shamed many a Roman.
" Are you richer than the Gauls, more powerful in
body than the Germans, wiser than the Greeks, more
numerous than all the inhabitants of the earth put
together?" he asks, and enforces his question with a
detailed account of the enormous numbers of people
who in the several provinces are kept in check by a
handful of legionaries.
As an appeal to common sense, the speech, in spite of
its obvious exaggerations, ought to have been success-
ful. But what the Romans and the Romanized Jews
chose to overlook was that common sense was scarcely
a factor in producing the " exalted opinions " which
Agrippa sought to abase. The glowing assurance of
direct divine interposition was of course lacking to the
speaker, and the wilder and more exuberant fancies
that made the present time big with great upheavals and
opened vistas of strange and sweeping changes, could
not be answered by a statistical enumeration of the
forces at the disposal of Romans and Jews respectively.
In the previous chapter one fact has been frequently
mentioned which Josephus states quite casually as an
ordinary incident of the events he is describing. That
fact is the readiness with which the Romans took
292 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
alarm, not only at the armed '' brigands," who were
really at all times in open revolt, but at anyone who,
posing as preacher or prophet, gathered a crowd about
him for thoroughly unwarlike purposes. We do not
find elsewhere in the empire this quickness of animad-
version on the part of the authorities to such acts.
The Armenian Peregrinus was quite unmolested by the
Roman officials when he undertook to perform before
the eyes of the assembled crowd the miracle of Hercules
on Mount Oeta." Nor is there any evidence, however
large the multitude was that surrounded the itinerant
magician elsewhere, that riot and subversion were
apprehended from that fact. Yet when the Egyptian
promised to divide the walls of Jerusalem (above, p.
285), or Theudas to pass dryshod over the Jordan, or
another man to discover the hidden treasures on the
Gerizim (above, p. 284), a troop was sent at once to
crush with bloody effectiveness an incipient rebellion.
Obviously, in Judea, and not elsewhere, the assertion
of divine inspiration carried with it a claim to certain
political rights, or was deemed to do so, which was
incompatible with Roman sovereignty.
It is easy enough to understand what that claim was,
and easy enough to understand why it does not stand
forth more clearly in Josephus' narrative. The coming
of the Messianic kingdom had been looked for by
previous generations as well, but in the generation that
preceded 68 c. e. it became more and more strongly
believed to be immediately at hand and to demand
from those who would share in it a more than passive
reception.
THE REVOLT OF 68 C. E. 293
We are not to suppose that every one of these impos-
tors or thaumaturgs claimed Messianic rank. That it
is not expressly stated by Josephus proves little, since
he actively strove to suppress any indication that there
were rebellious incentives among his people other than
the brutal oppressions of Florus. But to claim to be
Messiah was a serious matter both to the people and to
the Roman officials, and we assume that these rather
vulgar swindlers hardly dared to go so far. However,
whether individuals did or did not make these pre-
tensions, it is clear that during the reign of Nero the
sense of an impending cataclysm was growing, and the
most fondly held dreams of the Jews, which clustered
about the Messianic idea, seemed to come near to
realization.
Besides the cumulative force which the Jewish escha-
tology and Messianic hope acquired by the mere tradi-
tion from generation to generation, there was another
and more general factor. The constitution established
by Augustus might strive as it would to resemble with
only slight modifications the republican forms it dis-
placed. The East, for its part, had never been deceived
into regarding it otherwise than a monarchy. And as
such it was an unmistakable notch in the course of
events. At a specific moment, whether it was Caesar's
entry into Rome or Augustus' investiture with the prin-
cipate, living men had seen and noted a page turned in
the history of the world.
In this new monarchical constitution, the weak point
was the succession. The glamour of acknowledged
294 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
divinity rested upon Julius Caesar and Augustus, and
in their blood there seemed to be an assurance of title to
the lordship of the world. What would happen if this
blood should fail ? No machinery existed that would
automatically indicate who the successor would be.
Changes of dynasty, whether regular or violent, were
of course no new thing to the East, but this was
not the same. The Roman empire was unique. The
imperator, or avroKparayp, was as new in conception
as in title. Divinely established, the imperial dignity
would be divinely maintained in those who by their
origin could claim an unbroken chain of divine descent.
He whom we know as Nero was on the monuments
" Nero Claudius Caesar, son of the god Claudius and
great-great-grandson of the god Augustus " ; and the
last was at all times officially styled Divi Ulius, " son
of the God."'
But Nero's childlessness made it plain that the divine
maintenance would be wanting. With Nero, the line of
Augustus would become extinct. For Rome that pre-
saged confusion and civil war. For the little stretch of
country between the Lebanon and the River of Egypt,
it loosed all the hopes and fears and expectations to
which each generation had added a little, and which
were to be realized in the dissolution that was hurrying
on.
Nor must we forget that the reign of Nero had been
marked by frequent rebellions. Armenia had revolted
and been subdued. At the other end of the Roman
world, the Britons had risen in a bloody insurrection.
THE REVOLT OF 68 C. E. 295
And in the very midst of the Jewish war, the inevitable
GalHc rebelHon broke out, ostensibly against Nero per-
sonally, but doubtless impelled by motives of national
feeling as well. Perhaps, if we had as detailed a narra-
tive of the British, Armenian, and Gallic insurrections
as we have of the Jewish, we should find many prelimi-
nary conditions the same. Perhaps in those countries
too " brigands " and " impostors " stirred the people to
revolt by playing upon their sacred traditions and
appealing to their hopes of a national restoration."
One very curious circumstance is the association of
this last emperor of the Julian house with the Jews
generally and the Messiahship particularly. How far
it is possible to discover the real Nero under the mass
of slanderous gossip and poisonous rhetoric which
Suetonius and Tacitus have heaped upon him, is not
easy to determine, nor is it necessary to do so at this
point. One thing may, however, be insisted upon. He
courted and achieved a high degree of popularity. This
is hinted at, not only in the fact noted in Suetonius
(Nero, 37), that in a public prayer he ostentatiously
referred only to himself and the people, and omitted
any mention of the senate, but is expressly referred to
in the same writer (ibid. 53) : Maxime autem popu-
laritate eiferehatur, omnium aemtilus qui quoquo modo
animum vulgi moverent, *' Above all, his chief desire
was for popularity, and, to gain this, he imitated all who
in any way had caught the fancy of the mob.'' To this
may be added the confirmatory evidence of the lasting
veneration felt for his memory by the populace {ibid.
296 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
57) and the assumption of his name by Otho when
the latter desired to court popular favor (Suetonius,
Otho, 7);
This favor among the masses in the city would of
itself indicate a hold on the Oriental part of his sub-
jects, which Nero's personal traits make especially
likely. And of these Oriental or half-Oriental Romans
a very considerable fraction were Jews. The all-power-
ful Poppaea Sabina, Nero's mistress and afterwards his
wife, is on good grounds believed to have been a semi-
proselyte, a metuens.^ Josephus ascribes Nero's inter-
ference to her influence when Agrippa II attempted to
make a display of the temple ceremonies. It is also not
unlikely that the change of attitude on the part of
Josephus toward Nero was due to the general feeling of
the Roman Jewry toward his memory — a feeling of
which Josephus had no cognizance in writing the
Wars, but which had come to his attention when the
Antiquities was composed. In the Wars (IV. ix.
2) we hear " how he abused his power and intrusted the
control of affairs to unworthy freedmen, those wicked
men, Nymphidius and Tigellinus.'^ In the Antiqui-
ties (XX. viii. 3) we find a temperate paragraph warn-
ing readers that the extant accounts of Nero are thor-
oughly unreliable, especially the accounts of those '' who
have impudently and senselessly lied about him." "
That among the Roman populace there were some
who believed that Nero was not dead, but still alive, and
would return to be avenged upon his foes, is not strange.
But it is particularly strange that in the extreme East
THE REVOLT OF 68 C. E. 297
the hereditary rivals of Rome, the Parthians, cherished
his memory, so that their king Vologaesus expressly
asked for recognition of that fact when he strove to
renew his alliance with Rome. It was among the
Parthians that the man who claimed to be Nero found
enthusiastic support about ^'8i c. e. (Suet. Nero, 57).
The Parthians seem to have been ready to invade the
Roman empire to re-establish this " Nero " (Tac. Hist.
I. ii. 6). That, it is true, happened long afterward ; but
directly after Nero's death, in the very throes of the
Jewish war, a similar belief spread like wildfire over
Greece and Asia Minor, and a slave, by calling him-
self Nero, secured temporary control of the island of
Cythnus (Tac. Hist. I. ii. 8).
One phrase of Suetonius is especially noteworthy.
Long before Nero's death it had been prophesied that
he would be deposed, and would return as lord of the
East : Nonnulli, Suetonius goes on to say, nominatim
regmim Hierosolymorum [spoponderant], ''Some as-
sured him specifically that he would be king of Jeru-
salem."
There is no direct confirmation in the Jewish sources
of this association of Nero with a restored kingdom at
Jerusalem. The very late Talmudic legend which states
that Nero became a convert and was the ancestor of
Rabbi Meir" must, of course, be disregarded. No
notable heathen sovereign escaped conversion in the
Jewish legends. To the Christians, Nero was Belial or
Antichrist for reasons obvious enough, and the Sibylline
verses which so represent him are probably of Chris-
298 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
tian origin. But since the Messianic idea of the Jews
was well-known throughout the Roman world (Suet.
Vespasian, 4), the prediction made to Nero meant noth-
ing less than that he was the promised Messiah, a con-
ception startling enough, but perhaps less so to Nero's
generation than to ours.
It may further be possible to find an association
between Nero and the Jews in the words that Philos-
tratus " (Life of Apollonius, v. 33) puts in the mouth of
the Alexandrian Euphrates. The Jews, Euphrates
says, are the enemies of the human race almost as much
as Nero, but it is the latter against whom Vespasian
should direct his arms, not the former.
Whether, however, it was Nero or someone else,
the intense force of the Messianic idea of the time of
the revolt is attested explicitly by Suetonius in the
passage alluded to above. Percrebuerat Oriente toto
vetus et constans opinio esse in fatis ut eo tempore
ludaea profecti rerum potirentur, '' Throughout the
length and breadth of the East there was current an
old and unvarying belief to the effect that it was decreed
by fate that supreme power would fall into the hands of
men coming from Judea." If to Tacitus the insurrec-
tion was merely the expected outbreak of a turbulent
province, repressed with difficulty in previous genera-
tions, and inevitable under all circumstances; if, to
Josephus, the revolt was the foolish attempt of deluded
but unfortunate men, driven mad by the oppressions of
officials and led by selfish rascals, Suetonius, who
retailed the gossip of the seven seas, had clearer insight
THE REVOLT OF 68 C. E. 299
when he referred the actual outbreak of hostilities to
the general conviction that the result of the war would
determine the fate of the empire. The Law would go
out from Zion : ludaea profecti rerum potirentur.
The war, which resulted in the fall of Jerusalem,
was in the eyes of Josephus (Wars, Preface, §1) the
greatest war in recorded history. The words he uses
are very much like those of Livy when he is about to
describe the Second Punic War (Livy, XXL i.), where,
it must be admitted, the statement seems somewhat
more fitting. The Roman historians naturally enough
do not attach quite the same importance to a rebellion
in a border province, however dangerous or desperate.
But no one regarded it as an insignificant episode in
the maintenance of the imperial frontier. There were
many accounts of it, most of them written '' sophistic-
ally '' (ibid. L i. i), i. e. with a definite purpose that
was quite apart from that of presenting a true version
of the facts. These men, we are told by the author,
wrote from hate or for favor. They desired to flatter
the Romans or to vent their spleen on the Jews. The
accurate truth was, of course, to be found only in the
austerely veridical account written by Josephus in
Aramaic, and translated by him into Greek.
It is, accordingly, strange that in the one narrative
which we have from a source independent of Josephus,
there should appear details which suggest that flattery
of the Roman conqueror was not wholly absent from
Josephus' own narrative. In the Roman History of
Cassius Die (known principally by the Greek form of
300 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
his name, Dion Cassius), who wrote about 225 c. e., we
find a version of the siege of Jerusalem in which Titus
is something less than a demi-god, and the Jews some-
thing different from the wretched and besotted fanatics
Josephus makes of them. Dio has little sympathy
for the Jews in general, and finds their institutions
repellent on the whole, but his account is simpler and
actually more favorable to the Jews than the one pre-
sented in the pages of the Wars.
Such details as the wound received by Titus (Dio,
Ixvi. 5), which Josephus omits or modifies (Wars, V.
vi. 2), are of minor significance, although even they
indicate the strain Josephus was put to in his attempt
to make Titus move in the midst of dangers like a
present divinity. But there are other matters that
Josephus does not mention, e. g. the desertion of Roman
soldiers to the Jews in the very midst of the siege, the
awe of the Romans toward the temple, so that they had
to be actually forced to enter upon the forbidden pre-
cinct even when the building was in flames. But espe-
cially it is the Asiatic Roman, and not the Jew, who lays
stress upon the heroic pride which the Jews displayed
in the moment of their utmost extremity. '' All believed
it was not destruction, but victory, safety, happiness, to
die with their temple " (Dio, Ixvi. 6).
That the conquest of the capital seemed no usual
triumph is evidenced by the closing words of Dio {ibid.
7) and by the inscription which was carved on one
of the arches erected to Titus. Several such arches
were erected. One on the lower ridges of the Palatine,
THE REVOLT OF 68 C. E. 301
at the edge of the forum, contains the famous rehef of
the triumph of Titus. The other was in the Circus
Maximus, and of this we have only the copy of the
inscription (C. I. L. vi. 944). It runs as follows:"
The Senate and People of Rome have erected this arch to
the first of their citizens, His Sacred Majesty, Titus Caesar
Vespasian, son of the God Vespasian, High Priest, invested
for the tenth time with tribunician power, hailed commander
seventeen times, chosen consul eight times, Father of his
Country, because, led by the guidance, wisdom, and divine
favor of his father, he subdued the race of the Jews, and
destroyed their city of Jerusalem, a city which all kings, com-
manders, and nations before him have either attacked in vain,
or left wholly unassailed.
Dio notes that the title '' Judaicus " was not assumed
by either Vespasian or Titus. The inscription just
quoted makes it clear that their motive in doing so was
not any desire to minimize the importance of their
victory. Relatively less important triumphs over such
people as the Adiabeni or Carpi resulted in the assump-
tion of the titles of Adiabenicus or Carpicus. It has
been urged with considerable plausibility" that the
term '' Judaicus " would suggest to the general public a
" convert to Judaism," and at a moment when the spread
of Judaism was, if anything, greater and more success-
ful than ever, despite the fall of the temple, that was
an impression dangerous to convey, particularly since
Titus was himself under a strong suspicion of Eastern
procHvities (Suet. Titus, 5). As a matter of fact,
■however, Dio's surprise is due to the conditions of his
own time, when the emperors freely assumed these
302 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
gentile cognomina. So Septimius Severus is Parthicus,
Arabicus, Adiabenicus, Britannicus. In Vespasian's
time that was distinctly not customary. None of his
predecessors assumed these titles. The name Ger-
nanicus, used by Gaius, Claudius, and Nero, is a hered-
itary cognomen, and its assumption by Vitellius is due
to a desire on the latter's part to associate himself with
the memory of a name at all times endeared to the
people.
But that the conquest of Judea seemed at the time
quite equal to those which justified the assumption of
such honoring titles, may be seen in the epigram of
Martial (ii. 2) :
Creta dedit magnum, maius dedit Africa nomen
Scipio quod victor quodque Metellus habet,
Nobilius domito tribuit Germania Rheno,
Et puer hoc dignus nomine, Caesar, eras.
Prater Idumaeos meruit cum patre triumphos.
Quae datur ex Chattis laurea, tota tua est.
Crete granted a great name ; Africa, a greater ; the former
to Metellus, the latter to Scipio. Even more renowned a title
was derived from Germany and the conquered Rhine. That
title, Caesar, your boyhood valor also earned. The Idumean
triumph " you must share with your brother and father. The
laurel wreath inscribed with the name of the Chatti — that is
all your own.
The destruction of the city and temple affected the
imaginations of all men, Jew and non-Jew, very power-
fully. A large number of the various apocryphal books
are referred to this period, especially those which are
filled with lamentations over the desolate condition of
the former princess among provinces. But dramatic
THE REVOLT OF 68 C. E. 303
and affecting as it was, the destruction of the temple
was not at the time the epochal event it seems to us now.
It made only a slight change in the political condition
even of Palestinian Jews, and even in the spiritual con-
dition of the Jews at large it played seemingly a sub-
ordinate part.
CHAPTER XIX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMAN
JEWISH COMMUNITY
The Jews in Rome at the time of Cicero formed, we
have seen, an important and numerous class amidst the
largely orientalized plebs of the city. With the other
foreigners resident in the city they had a powerful
patron in Caesar, as their grief at his death attested.
Under his successor they found at least an indulgent,
if somewhat contemptuous, toleration, which however
was directed not toward them specially, but toward the
other foreigners in the capital as well. And as we have
seen, the religious reformation of Augustus, and his
active disapproval of foreign cults, did not prevent the
Jews from spreading rapidly in all classes of society.
Under Tiberius we hear of a general expulsion of the
Jews, as afterward under Claudius. " Expulsion of
Jews " is a term with which later European history has
made us familiar. In the case of such expulsions as the
Jews suffered in England, France, Spain, and Portugal,
we know that the term is literally exact. Practically all
Jews were in the instances cited compelled to leave the
country and settle elsewhere. The expulsion ordered
by Tiberius was unquestionably wholly ineffective in
practice, since there were many Jews in Rome shortly
after, although we have no record that the decree was
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 305
repealed. But it may be questioned whether even in
theory it resembled the expulsions of later times.
The facts are given fully by Suetonius (Tiberius,
36):
Externas caerimonias Aegyptios ludaicosque ritus com-
pescuit, coactis qui superstitione ea tenebantur religiosas
vestes cum instrumento omni comburere. ludacorum iuven-
tutem per speciem sacramenti in provincias gravioris caeli
distribuit: reliquos gentis eiusdem vel similia sectantes urbe
summovit sub poena perpetuae servitutis nisi obtemperassent.
He checked the spread of foreign rites, particularly the
Egyptian and Jewish. He compelled those who followed the
former superstition to burn their ritual vestments and all their
religious utensils. The younger Jews he transferred to prov-
inces of rigorous climate under the pretense of assigning them
to military service. All the rest of that nation, and all who
observed its rites, he ordered out of the city under the penalty
of being permanently enslaved if they disobeyed.
Undoubtedly the same incident is mentioned by Taci-
tus in the Annals (ii. 85), where we hear that ''action
was taken about the eradication of Egyptian and Jew-
ish rites. A senatusconsultum was passed, which trans-
ferred four thousand freedmen of military age who
were affected by this superstition to Sardinia in order
to crush brigandage there The rest were to
leave Italy unless they abandoned their impious rites
before a certain day.''
Between these two accounts there are discrepancies
that cannot be cured by the simple process of amalga-
mating the two, as has generally been done. These
divergences will be treated in detail later. For the
present it will be well to compare an independent
account, that of Josephus, with the two.
20
3o6 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Josephus (Ant. XVIII. iii. 5) tells us of a Jew, *' a
thoroughly wicked man," who was forced to flee from
Judea for some crime, and with three worthy associates
supported himself by swindling in Rome. This man
persuaded Fulvia, a proselyte of high rank, the wife
of a certain Saturninus, to send rich gifts to the temple.
The presents so received were used by the four men
for themselves. Upon the complaint of Saturninus,
"Tiberius ordered all the Jews [-rrav To''lovhdiK6v] to be
driven from Rome. The consuls enrolled four thou-
sand of them, and sent them to the island of Sardinia.
He punished very many who claimed that their ances-
tral customs prevented them from serving." Apart
from the incident which, Josephus says, occasioned the
expulsion, we have a version here which is not quite in
accord with the one either of Tacitus or of Suetonius.
Of these men Josephus is probably the nearest in
time to the events he is describing, but also the most
remote in comprehension. Besides the story just told,
Josephus tells another, in which it is a votary of Isis
who is deceived, with the connivance of the priests of
the Egyptian goddess. The two incidents which he
relates are placed in juxtaposition rather than connec-
tion by him, but the mere fact that they are told in this
way indicates that a connection did exist in the source,
written or oral, from which he derived them. Josephus
does not mention that the Egyptian worship was
attacked as well as the Jewish, and indeed he takes pains
to suggest that the two incidents were not really con-
nected at all
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 307
From all these statements, and from the reference
that Philo makes in the Legatio ad Gaium/ there is
very little that we can gather with certainty. This
much, however, seems established: an attempt was
made to check the spread both of Judaism and of
Isis-worship. In this attempt a certain number of
Jews were expelled from the city or from Italy. Four
thousand soldiers — actual or reputed Jews — were
transferred to Sardinia for the same reason. There are
certain difficulties, however, in the way of supposing
that it really was a general expulsion of all Jews, as
Josephus and Suetonius, but not Tacitus, say.
Tacitus' omission to state it, if such a general expul-
sion took place, is itself a difficulty ; but like every argu-
menhim ex silentio, it scarcely permits a valid infer-
ence. It seems strange, to be sure, that a severe and
deserved punishment of the taeterrima gens, " that dis-
gusting race," should be represented to be something
much milder than really was the case. But Tacitus is
neither here nor in other places taking pains to cite the
decree accurately, and the omission of even a significant
detail may be laid to inadvertence.
But what Tacitus does say cannot be lightly passed
over. Four thousand men, libertini generis, '*of the
freedmen class," were transferred to Sardinia for mili-
tary service. All these four thousand were ea super-
stitione infecti, " tainted with this superstition." Now,
the Jews who formed the community at Rome in the
time of Cicero may have been largely freedmen, but
their descendants were not classed as libertini generis.
3o8 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The phrase is not used in Latin of those who were of
servile origin, but solely of those who were themselves
emancipated slaves. There is, however, scarcely a pos-
sibility that there could have been at Rome in 19 c. e. so
large a body of Jewish freed slaves of military age.
There had been no war in recent times from which these
slaves could have been derived. We may assume there-
fore that most, if not all, of these men were freedmen
of other nationalities who were converts to Judaism.
This is confirmed by the words ea superstitione
infecti, " tainted with this superstition." These words
are meaningless unless they refer to non-Jewish prose-
lytes.^ Men who were born Jews could not be so char-
acterized. If Tacitus had meant those who were Jews
by birth, it is scarcely conceivable that he would have
used a phrase that would suggest just the opposite. The
words, further, imply that many of these four thou-
sand were rather suspected of Jewish leanings than
definitely proselytes. Perhaps they were residents of
the districts largely inhabited by Jews, notably the
Transtiberine region.
Again, to suppose that all the Jews were banished by
Tiberius involves an assumption as to that emperor's
methods wholly at variance with what we know of him.
A very large number of Jewish residents in Rome were
Roman citizens (Philo, 569 M), and so far from being
a meaningless distinction in the early empire, that term
through the influence of the rising science of juris-
prudence was, in fact, just beginning to have its mean-
ing and implications defined. A wholesale expulsion of
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 309
Roman citizens by either an administrative act or a
senatusconsultum is unthinkable under Tiberius. Exile,
in the form of relegation or expulsion, was a well-
known penalty for crime after due trial and conviction,
which in every instance would have to be individual.
Even in the Tacitean caricature^ we find evidence of
the strict legality with which Tiberius acted on all
occasions. No senatusconsultum could have decreed a
general banishment for all Jews, whether Roman citi-
zens or not, without contravening the fundamental
principles of the Roman law.
How thoroughly confused the transmission of this
incident had become in the accounts we possess, is
indicated in the final sentence from Suetonius : '' He
ordered them out of the city, under the penalty of being
permanently enslaved if they disobeyed." The very
term perpetua servitus, as though there were a limited
slavery in Rome at the time, is an absurdity. It becomes
still more so when we recall that slavery, except in the
later form of compulsor}^ service in the mines and
galleys, was not known as a penalty at Roman law.
The state had no machinery for turning a freeman into
a slave, except by his own will, and then it did so
reluctantly. We shall be able to see what lies behind
this confusion when we have considered one or two
other matters.
The alleged expulsion is not mentioned by Philo in
the extant fragments. The allusion to some oppressive
acts of Sejanus (In Flaccum, § i. ii. p. 517 M ; and Leg.
ad Gaium, § 24. ii. p. 569 M) is not clear. But it is diffi-
310 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
cult to understand the highly eulogistic references to
Tiberius, then long dead, if a general Jewish expulsion
had been ordered by that emperor.
That the senatusconsultum in question was general,
and was directed indiscriminately at all foreign re-
ligions, appears not merely from the direct statement of
Suetonius and Tacitus, and the association of the two
stories by Josephus, but also from a reference of Seneca.
In his philosophic essays, written in the form of letters
to his friend Lucilius (io8, 22), he says: "I began
[under the teaching of Sotion] to abstain from animal
food You ask me when I ceased to abstain.
My youth was passed during the first years of Tiberius
Caesar's rule. At that time foreign rites were expelled ;
but one of the proofs of adherence to such a supersti-
tion was held to be the abstinence from the flesh of
certain animals. At the request of my father, who did
not fear malicious prosecution, but hated philosophy, I
returned to my former habits."
The words of Seneca, sacra movebantur, suggest the
Twv Iv 'IraAta TrapaKLVrjdevTMV of Philo (loc. cit.), *' when
there was a general agitation [against the Jews?] in
Italy." It is further noticeable that the mathematici, i. e.
the soothsayers, against whom the Roman laws were at
all times severe, were also included in this decree.*
It has been pointed out before (above, p. 242) that
the observance of foreign religious rites was never for-
bidden as such by Roman laws. From the first of the
instances, the Bacchanalian persecution of 186 b. c. e.,
it was always some definite crime, immorality or impos-
SYMBOLS AND INSCRIPTIONS FROM JEWIS^ CATACOMBS AND CEMETERIES IN ROME
(From G
rucci)
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 311
ture, that was attacked and of which the rites mentioned
were alleged to be the instruments. The ** expulsion "
of the Isis-worshipers during the republic meant only
that certain foreigners were summarily ordered to
leave the city, something that the Lex Junia Penni in
83 B. c. E. and the Lex Papia of 65 b. c. e. attempted to
enforce, and which the Roman police might do at any
time when they thought the public interest demanded
it. Roman citizens practising these rites could never be
proceeded against, unless they were guilty of one of the
crimes these foreign practices were assumed to involve.
The two stories cited by Josephus, one concerning an
Isis-worshiper, the other a Jew, may not be true.
Whether true or not, the incidents they record surely did
not of themselves cause the expulsion of either group.
But these are fair samples of the stories that were prob-
ably told and believed in Rome, and similar incidents no
doubt did occur. The association of the mathematici
with the other two makes it probable that the senatus-
consultum was directed against fraud, the getting of
money under false pretenses, and that the Jewish, Isiac,
and other rites, as well as astrology, were mentioned
solely as types of devices to that end.
What actually happened was no doubt that in Rome
and in Italy overzealous officials undertook to treat the
observance of foreign rites as conclusive or at least pre-
sumptive evidence of guilt under this act. Perhaps, as
Philo says, it was one of the instances of Sejanus'
tyranny to do so. But there is no reason to doubt
Philo's express testimony that Tiberius promptly
312 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
checked this excess of zeal and enforced the decree as
it was intended {loc. cit.) : w? ovk eTriTraVTas Trpo/Sdarfs t'^<s
eVc^eAcvo'cw?, aAA.' cttI jxovovs Toy's airtous — oAiyot Se ijaav
— KLvrjaai 8k fiijSkv e^ eOovs ; i. e. '' since the prosecution
was not directed against all, but only against the guilty,
who were very few. Otherwise there was to be no
departure from the customary attitude."
The transference of the four thousand recruits,
libertini generis, to Sardinia undoubtedly took place,
and was very likely the expression of alarm on the part
of Sejanus or Tiberius at the spread of Judaism in
Rome. It may well be that the removal of these men
was caused rather by the desire to withdraw them from
the range of proselytism than by the purpose of allow-
ing them to die in the severe climate of Sardinia. There
is as a matter of fact no evidence that Sardinia had a
noticeably different climate from that of Italy. It was
one of the granaries of the empire.^
Perhaps we may reconstitute the decree as follows:
The penalty imposed was, for foreigners, expulsion ;
for Roman citizens, perhaps exile ; for f reedmen, for-
feiture of their newly acquired liberty in favor of their
former masters or the latter's heirs. This last fact will
explain the statement of Suetonius. Many of the
people affected were no doubt freedmen, and several
instances where such a penalty was actually inflicted
would account quite adequately for the words perpetua
servitus of Suetonius. The '' malicious prosecution,"
calumnia, which Seneca asserts his father did not fear,
would be based, as against Roman citizens, on the viola-
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 313
tion of this law against fraudulent practices, of which,
as we have seen, the adoption of foreign rites would be
taken as evidence.
The personal relations between Gaius and the Jewish
king Agrippa seemed to guarantee an era of especial
prosperity for the Roman Jews. However, the entire
principate of that indubitable paranoiac was filled with
the agitation that attended his attempt to set up his
statue at Jerusalem. His death, which Josephus
describes in gratifyingly minute detail, brought per-
manent relief on that point.
It is during the reign of his successor Claudius
that we hear of another expulsion : ludaeos impulsore
Chresto adsidue tumultuantis Roma expulit (Suet.
Claud. 25), "The Jews who engaged in constant
riots by the machinations of a certain Chrestus, he
expelled from Rome." It has constantly been stated
that this refers to the agitation in the Roman Jewry
which the preaching of Christianity aroused. For that,
however, there is no sufficient evidence. Jesus, to be
sure, is called Chrestus, Xprjaros, the Upright, in many
Christian documents.^ This play upon words is practi-
cally unavoidable. But Chrestus is a common name
among all classes of society.^ Jews would be especially
likely to bear it, since it was a fairly good rendering of
such a frequently occurring name as Zadok. The riot in
question was no doubt a real enough event, and the
expulsion equally real, even if it did not quite imply all
that seems to be contained in it.
314 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
If it were a decree of general expulsion of all Jews,
it would be strikingly at variance with the edicts in
favor of the Jews which Claudius issued, and which
are contained in Josephus (Ant. XIX. v.). As in the
case of other documents cited here, there is no reason
to question the substantial accuracy of their contents,
although they are surely not verbatim transcriptions
from the records. It is as clearly impossible in the case
of Claudius as in that of Tiberius to suppose an
arbitrary disregard of law on his part, so that a general
ejection of all Jews from the city, including those who
were Roman citizens, is not to be thought of.
Neither Tacitus nor Josephus mentions the expulsion.
The silence of neither is conclusive, but it lends strong
probability to the assumption that the decree cannot
have been so radical a measure as a. general expulsion
of all Jews from the city would be. The passage from
Suetonius is concerned wholly with acts of Claudius
affecting foreigners — non-Romans, i. e. Lycians,
Rhodians, Gauls, Germans — and if we keep in mind
Suetonius' habits of composition, it is highly likely that
he has put together here all that he found together in
his source. We are to understand therefore by the
ludaei of this passage only foreign Jews, which implies
that the majority of the Jews were not affected by it
at all.
But were even all foreign Jews included? Is there
anything in the passage that is not perfectly consistent
with the assumption that some relatively small group of
Jews led by a certain Chrestus was ejected from the
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 315
city for disorderly conduct? The silence of the other
writers, the total absence of effect on the growth of the
Jewish population, would seem to make this after all the
simplest meaning of Suetonius' words.
The fact of the expulsion is confirmed by that pas-
sage in the Acts of the Apostles in which the meeting
of Paul and Aquila at Corinth is mentioned (Acts
xviii. I, 2) : " [Paul] found a certain Jew born in
Pontus, lately come from Italy with his wife Priscilla,
(because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to
depart from Rome)." The testimony is late,* but it
will be noticed that Aquila is an Asiatic by birth, and
so very likely had no legal right of residence at Rome
in any circumstances.
Finally, expulsion " from Rome " may have meant
only exclusion from the pomoerium, the sacral limit
of the city that followed an imaginary line not at all
coincident with its real walls. To escape from the oper-
ation of the decree, it would merely have been necessary
to cross the Tiber, where as a matter of fact the Jews
generally lived, since the Transtiberine region was not
included in the pomoerium. In general, expulsion from
the city specified that the expelled person might not
come within the first milestone, but in view of the diffi-
culties presented by the assumption of a real expulsion,
this supposition may also be considered.
Mention has already been made of the special asso-
ciation of Claudius' successor, Nero, with the Jews.
The success that attended their efforts at propaganda
during that emperor's reign is evidenced by the fact
3i6 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
that Poppaea Sabina became a semi-proselyte. And
during Nero's reign occurs an event of special im-
portance to the Jews of Rome, the first Christian
persecution.
In the reign of Nero, possibly in that of Claudius,
there was brought to the various Jewish congregations
of the Roman world, seemingly not beyond that,
the " good news," evayyiXtov, that a certain Jesus, of
Nazareth in Galilee, was the long-promised Messiah.
To most, perhaps, the facts cited of his life indicated
only that he was one of the '' many swindlers," yorfTe<s
avOpoiiToi, like those whom Felix captured and put to
death (Jos. Ant. XX. viii. 5). But some beHeved. If
we are to credit the Acts of the Apostles, this belief at
once produced a bitter conflict between those who did
so believe, afterwards called Christians, and those who
did not.' But the Acts in the form in which it has come
down to' us represents a recension of much later date,
made when the enmity between Jew and Christian was
real and indubitable.
It may be that in certain places those Jews who
accepted the evangel almost at once formed congrega-
tions of their own, synagogues or ecclesiae (the terms
are practically synonymous)," different from the syna-
gogues of those who rejected it. But there were from
the beginning differences of degree in its acceptance,
and even in the existing recension of the Acts there is
good evidence that its acceptance or rejection did not
immediately and everywhere produce a schism.
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 317
In the city of Rome a persecution of Christians, as
distinct from Jews, took place under Nero. That fact
is attested by both Suetonius and Tacitus and by the
earliest of the Christian writers. Tertullian quotes the
commentarii, the official records, for it.
The record as it appears in Suetonius is character-
istically different from that in Tacitus. In Suetonius
we have a brief statement (Nero, 16): Afdicti sup-
pliciis Christiani, genus hominiim superstitionis novae
ac maleficae, " Punishment was inflicted upon the
Christians, a class of men that maintained a new and
harmful form of superstition." This statement is made
as one item, apparently of minor importance, in the
list of Nero's creditable actions, as Suetonius tells us
later {ihid. 19) : Haec partim nulla reprehensione,
partim etiam non mediocri laude digna, in unum con-
tuli, "These acts, some of which are wholly blameless,
while others deserve even considerable approbation, I
have gathered together." Whether the punishment of
the Christians is in the former or the latter class does
not appear.
In Tacitus, on the other hand, we have the famous
account that Nero sought to divert from himself the
suspicion of having set Rome on fire, by fastening it
upon those '' whom the people hated for their wicked-
ness, the so-called Christians" (Ann. xv. 44). These
were torn by dogs, or crucified, or tied to stakes and
burned in a coat of pitch to serve as lanterns to the
bestially cruel emperor. The truth of these stories
depends upon the reliability of Tacitus in general. They
3i8 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
have been received with justifiable doubt, ever since the
quite conscienceless methods of Tacitus' rhetorical style
have been made evident. The last form of punishment,
the tunica molesta, has made a particular impression on
the ancient and modern world. It is referred to by
Seneca, Juvenal, and Martial, but by none of them
associated with the Christians. From the passage in
Seneca (Epist. ad Lucil. xiv. 4) it is simply a standard
form of cruelty, such as the rack, thumbscrew, and
maiden of later times. The very fact that the courtier
Seneca dares to mention it as a form of saevitia would
indicate that it was not used by Seneca's master, Nero.
But what is particularly striking is that Tertullian " in
his Apology does not mention any cruelties, in the sense
of savage tortures, inflicted upon the Christians. The
context (Apologeticus, § 5) indicates that the punish-
ment was banishment to some penal colony, relegatio,
a punishment considered capital at law, but still dif-
ferent from the tunica molesta.
But a new element was introduced in the case of the
Christians, which, except in the treatment of the Druidic
brotherhoods among the Gauls, is unusual in Roman
methods. It is scarcely possible to read the Apology of
Tertullian without being convinced that the profession
of Christianity was in and for itself an indictable offense
at Roman law since the time of Nero, quite apart from
the fantastic crimes of which the Christians were held
to be guilty.'' Tertullian undoubtedly had legal train-
ing, and his exposition of the logical absurdities into
which the fact led Roman officials is convincing enough,
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 319
but the fact remains. The nonien Christianum, " the
profession of Christianity," was considered a form of
maiestas, '' treason," and punished capitally. In effect
this was an attempt to stamp out a religion, just as
Claudius had sought to stamp out the Druids (Sue-
tonius, Claud. 25). (Comp. above, p. 142.)
When TertuUian wrote, perhaps even in the time of
Tacitus and Suetonius, the gulf between Jew and
Christian was wide and impassable. It can hardly
have been so in Nero's time. The statement that Nero's
measures were instigated by Jews is a later invention
for which there is simply no evidence whatever.^^ The
fact that the nomen Christianum was either actually
considered treason or partook of the nature of treason,
makes it probable that the Messianic idea, which was the
very essence of the evangel, was the basis of the Roman
statute. In Judea the special and drastic crushing of
every '' impostor " has been spoken of, and its signifi-
cance indicated (above, p. 292). The preaching of
Christianity in Rome itself could only have seemed to
Nero, or his advisers, an attempt at propagating, under
the guise of religion, what had long been considered in
the East simple sedition. While therefore the spread of
Judaism, Isis-worship, Mithraism, was offensive, and
attempts were made to check it, the spread of Chris-
tianity was an increase in crime and was treated as such.
Perhaps a partial analogy may be offered in the attitude
of conservative Americans to doctrines they regard as
mischievous, like Socialism, and to those which are
directly criminal, like some forms of organized
Anarchism.
320 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The elaborate scheme of salvation prepared by the
Cilician Jew Paul " gradually gained almost general
acceptance among Christians, although in the mother
ecclesia at Jerusalem it found determined and obstinate
resistance long after Paul's death/' The fundamental
doctrine, that the Law was not necessarily the way of
salvation for any but born Jews, and even for them was
of doubtful efficacy, was the direct negation of the
Pharisaic doctrine that through the Law there was
effected immediate communion of man with God in
this world and the next.
As long as the Christians were merely a heretical
Jewish sect, their fortunes affected the whole Jewish
community. When their propaganda became, not a
supplement to that of the Jews, but its rival, and soon
its successful and triumphant rival, its history is wholly
separated, and the measures that dealt with the Chris-
tians and those that concerned the Jews were no longer
in danger of being confused. To the Jews the success
of the propaganda of Paul seemed to depend on the fact
that he had abolished the long and severe ritual of initi-
ation ; he had increased his numbers by decreasing the
cost of admission. So we find, shortly after the destruc-
tion of the temple, R. Nehemiah ben ha-Kannah assert-
ing (Ab. iii. 6) that to discard the yoke of the Law was
to assume the yoke of the kingdom and of the world ;
i.e. so far from making the path to unworldliness easier,
it laid insuperable obstacles in the way. The statement
is applicable to Jews of lax observance, but it seems
particularly applicable to the Pauline Christians, who
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 321
had not merely lightened the load, but deliberately and
ex professo wholly discarded it.
Outside of the references that give us certain data
about the external history of the Roman Jewish com-
munity of the first century, we have other data of a
wholly different sort, data that allow of a more intimate
glimpse into its actual life. They are furnished us by
the Roman satirists, whose literary labors have scarcely
an analogue in our days. Satire itself was assumed to
be a Roman genre." Whether or not it was of Roman
invention, the miscellanies that have given us so many
and such vivid pictures of ancient life are known to us
wholly in Latin. It is safe to say that if satirists such
as Horace, Persius, Juvenal, and Martial had not come
down to us, ancient history would be a vastly bleaker
province than it is.
Of Horace and his representation of Jewish life we
have already spoken. It will be remembered that the
one aspect which earned for the Jews his none too
respectful raillery was their eager proselytism. And it
is excellent evidence of how important this proselytism
was in the Jewish life of the time, that in the two
generations that stretched from Nero to Nerva the
same aspect is present to men of such diverse types as
Persius and Juvenal.
With Persius we enter a wholly different stratum of
society from that of Horace and, as we shall later see,
of Juvenal. Persius was by birth and breeding an
aristocrat. He was descended from an ancient Etruscan
house, and could boast, accordingly, of a nobility of
21
Z22 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
lineage compared with which the Roman Valerii and
Caecilii were the veriest mushrooms." But he was
almost wholly devoid of the vices that often mark his
class. An austere Stoic, his short life was dedicated to
the severe discipline that his contemporary and fellow-
Stoic Seneca found it easier to preach than to practise.
Persius wrote little, and that little has all come down
to us. His Latin, however, is so crabbed and difficult
that he is easily the least read of Roman poets/* His
productions are called Satires. They are less that than
homilies, in which, of course, the virtues he inculcates
are best illustrated by the vices he attacks.
One of these vices is superstition. The mental con-
dition that is terrified by vain and monstrous imagin-
ings of ignorant men is set forth in the Fifth Satire:'^
But when the day of Herod comes and the lamps on the
grimy sills, garlanded with violets, disgorge their unctuous
smoke-clouds; when the tail of a tunny-fish fills its red dish
and the white jar bursts with wine, you move your lips in silent
dread and turn pale at the Sabbath of the circumcised.
As a picture of Jewish life on the eve of the Sabbath,
this passage is invaluable. We can readily imagine how
the activities of a squalid suburb inhabited by a brawl-
ing class of men, mostly of Oriental descent, must have
impressed both the grandee and the Stoic.
But the passage is cited here, not merely as a genre-
picture, but more especially because it is again the
phase of Jewish life, so often neglected in histories,
that has brought the Jews to Persius' attention. The
ordinary Roman, not saved from carnal weakness by
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 323
Stoicism, is found to stand in particular dread of the
strange and nameless God of the Jews, to whom he
brings a reverence and awe that ought legitimately to
be directed only to the gods of his ancestors.
Persius wrote while the temple was still standing. In
70 the temple was destroyed. A gaping mob saw the
utensils of the inner shrine carried in triumph through
the city, and could feast its eyes, if it chose, on the
admirable portrayal of that procession, on the Arch of
Titus near the Forum. It might be supposed that the
God who in Roman eyes could not save His habitation
from the flames, could hope for no adherents among
His conquerors. But after the destruction of the temple,
in the lifetime of the very men who cheered Titus when
he returned from Palestine, we see the propaganda
more vigorous, if anything, than before.
It is in the pages of Juvenal that we find evidence of
that fact, and here again we are confronted with a
sharply outlined personality. Decimus Junius Juvenalis
was born near Aquinum in Southern Italy, where the
Italic stock had probably suffered less admixture with
foreign elements than was the case at Rome. What his
intellectual training was we can only conjecture from
its results, the turgid but sonorous and often brilliant
eloquence of his Satires. Whether they are true pic-
tures of Roman life and society or not may be doubted.
But they indubitably reflect his own soul. We see there
a soured rate, a man embittered by his failure to receive
the rewards due to his merits. In the capital of the
324 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
world, the city where he, the man of undoubted Roman
stock, should have found a career open before him, he
discovered himself to be a stranger. He was no match
for the nimble-witted Greeks that thronged every pro-
fession and crawled into entrances too low to admit the
scion of Cincinnatus and Fabricius. How much of this
was the venom of defeated ambition, and how much
was honest indignation at the indescribable meanness of
the lives he depicted, we cannot now determine.
Throughout all his work one note may be heard, the
note of rage at a Rome where everything characteris-
tically Roman was pushed into the background, a Rome
in the hands of Greeks, Egyptians, and Jews. And in
the case of the last it is particularly the danger noted by
Strabo and Seneca,^" of an actual conquest of Rome by
the Jewish faith, that rouses his savage indignation.
The lines in which he states his feeling are well-
known (Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 96 seq.) :
Some whose lot it is to have a father that reveres the
Sabbath, worship nothing but the clouds and the sky and think
that the flesh of swine from which their father abstained is
closely related to that of man. Soon they become circumcised.
Trained to despise the laws of Rome they learn, maintain, and
revere the Law of the Jews, which Moyses has transmitted in
a mystic volume; — laws that forbid them to show the way to
any but members of their cult, and bid them guide to a spring
none but their circumcised brethren.
We need be at no pains to correct Juvenal's estimate
of Jewish beliefs or Jewish theology. As in the case of
Persius, the interest of the passage lies in the fact that
it gives additional testimony to the success with which
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 325
the Jewish synagogues, despite official frowns and even
repressive measures, despite the severe conditions they
imposed upon initiates, were constantly gaining in
membership.
Juvenal's other references to the Jews "' show us cer-
tain unlovely aspects of their life. The hawkers and
fortune-tellers whom he describes are certainly not the
best representatives of the Roman community. It is no
part of his purpose to give a complete picture of the
community. But it is his purpose to denounce the
degeneration which made the imperial city a disagree-
able place for real Romans to sojourn in, and the Jewish
peddler at the Grove of Egeria and the swindling hags
who sell potent spells for cash give him the colors he
requires.
One other writer must be mentioned. Martial. With
him we are in the very heart of Grub Street. Marcus
Valerius Martialis came from Spain to the capital. He
had evidently no definite expectation of any career
beyond that of a man of letters, and such a career
involved at that time (as it continued to do until the
nineteenth century) something of the life of a parasite.
He had at least some of the characteristics of a parasite
— a ready tongue, a strong stomach, and an easy
conscience. But within his own field of poetry, the
epigram, he was a real master. Subsequent centuries
have rarely equaled the mordancy of his wit or the
sting of his lampoon. At the foot of the banquet
tables, jostled by hungry mountebanks and the very
dregs of Roman society, he kept his mocking eyes open
326 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
to the foibles of his host no less than to the disgustingly
frank vices of his fellows.
And Martial meets Jews on his way through the
teeming city. But if Horace, Persius, and Juvenal have
their eyes upon Romans that were being Judaized,
Martial presents to us the counterpart, Jews that
actually were, or sought to be, as Greek or Roman as
possible. In speech it is likely that most Roman Jews
(and Roman Christians as well) were Greek."" But
Greek was almost as well understood at Rome as Latin,
and perhaps even better understood among the masses.
Two of his Epigrams (vii. 30, and xi. 94) make it clear
enough that the Jew at Rome did not live aloof from
his fellow-citizens, and wealthy Jews did not scruple
to purchase in the market the gratifications they were
especially enjoined by their faith to forego. We can
readily believe that Martial is recounting real experi-
ences, but these cases must have been exceptional. As
we shall see later, the Jewish community was certainly
not a licentious one. That point appears specifically
from the controversial literature. But it is equally well
to remember that as individuals they were subject to
human passions, and the excesses found in other classes
of society might also be met with among them.
Grecized in speech and name, and no doubt in dress,
the Jews accepted for their conduct the external forms
and standards about them. One very interesting indica-
tion of the completeness with which they identified
themselves with the city in which they lived is the
expression '' fatherland" that they used of it; e. g. m
THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY 327
Akmonia (Ramsay, Cities and Bishops of Phrygia, no.
561). Again, in Ostia a large and well-carved slab was
recently found in which a decree of the Jews at Ostia
was set forth. The corporation grants to its gerusiarch,
Gains Julius Justus, a place for a sepulchre. The offi-
cers are Livius, Dionysius, Antonius, and another man
whose name is lost (Not. Scav. 1907, p. 479). Surely
but for the unambiguous statement of the inscription
itself one would not have looked for Jews in this assem-
blage of Julii, Livi'i, and Antonii.
CHAPTER XX
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS
In the generations that followed the fall of the temple,
changes of great moment took place, which we can only
partially follow from the sources at our disposal.
The Mishnah gives in considerable detail the laws
that governed the life of the Jew at this period, and
also those that regulated the intercourse of Jew and
non-Jew. But the Mishnah may after all have been
the expression of an ideal as often as it was the record
of real occurrences, and the range of its influence
during the time of its compilation may have been more
limited than its necessarily general phraseology indi-
cates. The Mishnah of Rabbi Judah became the
standard text-book in the Jewish academies of Pales-
tine and Babylonia, although not to the total exclusion
of other sources of Halakah. That did not occur at
once; and even when it was complete, the authority of
the presidents of the schools over the Jews resident
throughout the world is more or less problematic.
For that reason it is especially necessary to note the
invaluable records of actual life that appear in the
papyri and inscriptions, especially where they show that
the intercourse between Jews and pagans was far from
being as precisely limited as the Mishnah would compel
us to suppose, and men who are at no pains to con-
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 329
ceal their Jewish origin permitted themselves certain
indulgences that would certainly not have met with the
approval of the doctors at Jamnia and Tiberias.
The tractate of the Mishnah which is called Aboda
Zara, *' Idolatry " or " Foreign Worship," lays down
the rules under which Jew and heathen may transact
such business as common citizenship or residence made
inevitable. The essential point throughout is that the
Jew must not either directly or indirectly take part, or
seem to take part, in the worship accorded the Abomina-
tion. Nor are the seemingly trivial regulations despic-
able for their anxious minuteness. In all probability
they are decisions of actual cases, and derive their
precision from that fact.^
Certain passages in Aboda Zara (ii. i) would un-
questionably have made intercourse between Jew and
pagan practically impossible except in public or semi-
public places. But in the very same treatise it is implied
that a pagan might be a guest at the Jew's table (v. 5) ;
and indeed much of the detail of the entire tractate
would be unnecessary if the provision contained in ii. i
were literally followed out.
The Epigrams of Martial (above, p. 326), if we
believe them, indicate that so far from fleeing the
society of pagans for its sexual vices, some Jews at
least sought it for the sake of these vices, as was the
case with the rival of the Syrian Greek Meleager, more
than two centuries before Martial. But it will be
noticed that the subject of the last Epigram (xi. 94) is a
renegade, who swears strange oaths, and is taunted by
330 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Martial with what he is obviously trying to conceal.
Besides, as to the particular vice there mentioned, it
rests on the malice of the satirist alone. The victim
of his wit denies his guilt.
Indeed it is just this particular vice, so widely
prevalent in the Greek and Roman world, that the
Jewish antagonists of the pagans seized upon at all
times. It unquestionably characterized continental
Greece and Italy much more than the eastern portions
of the empire. For the Jews it seemed to justify the
application of the words " Sodom and Gomorrah," par-
ticularly to the general city life of the Greeks. Some
Jew or Christian scratched those names on a house wall
of Pompeii.^
It is quite untrue to say that unnatural sexual excesses
were so prevalent as to pass without comment among
Greeks and Romans generally. However large they
loom in the writings of extant poets, we may remember
that poets are emotionally privileged people. The sober
Roman and Greek did not find any legal or moral
offense in illicit love, but unnatural lust was generally
offensive from both points of view, and, however
widely practised, it was at no time countenanced. Still,
Jews and Christians would be justified in corhparing
their own unmistakable and specific condemnations in
this matter with the mere disapproval with which decent
heathens regarded it. For the Greek legend that made
the fate of Laius, father of Oedipus," a punishment of
his crime in first bringing pederasty into the world, the
Jews had the much more drastic punishment of Sodom ;
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 331
and, in many passages of the Apocrypha, the fact of
this vice's prevalence is dwelt upon as a characteristic
difference between Jewish and gentile life."
In many other matters there are evidences that not
all the regulations of Aboda Zara were carried out
by all Jews. In the Tosefta^ we meet the express
prohibition of theatrical representations to the Jews, a
prohibition which, in view of the fact that dramatic
performances were at all times theoretically and actually
festivals in honor of Dionysus, seems perfectly natural.
But in spite of that, in the great theater at Miletus,
some extremely desirable seats in the very front rows
are inscribed tottos twv 'Etlovhaloiv </)tAocre/?ao-Twv^ " Re-
served for His Imperial Majesty's most loyal Jews."**
It will therefore not be safe to assume that the Halakic
provision which forbade Jews to attend the theater
actually meant that Jews as a class did not do so.
But we find even stronger evidences of the fact that
the amenities of social life in Greek cities seemed to
some Jews to override the decisions of the law schools
in Palestine.. In Asia Minor a Jew leaves money not
merely for the usual purposes of maintaining his monu-
ment, but also for the astounding purpose of actually
assisting a heathen ceremonial.^ The instance is a late
one, but perhaps more valuable for that reason, because
the spread of the schools' influence increased constantly
during the third century.
At the fall of the temple the voluntary tax of the
shekel or didrachm, which had formerly been paid to
the temple at Jerusalem, and which was a vital factor
332 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
in the very first instances of conflict between the Jews
and the Roman authorities (comp. above, p. 226), was
converted into an official tax for the support of the
central sanctuary of the Roman state on the Capitoline
Hill. Whether Roman citizens who were Jews paid it,
does not appear. All others however did. The bureau
that enforced it was known as the Hscus ludaicus, the
word Rscus indicating here, as always, that the sums so
collected were considered as belonging to the treasury
of the reigning prince during the time of his reign,
rather than to the public treasury.
It does not seem that this tax, except for its destina-
tion, was believed by the Jews to be an act of notable
oppression, nor was its enforcement more inquisitorial
than that of other taxes; but it became an especial
weapon of blackmail in Rome and in all Italy, and this
blackmail grew into dimensions so formidable that
action had to be taken to suppress it.
In Rome, we may remember, there was no officer at
all resembling our public prosecutor or district-attorney.
The prosecution of criminals was an individual task,
whether of the person aggrieved or of a citizen acting
from patriotic motives. Indeed it had at one time
been considered a duty of the highest insistence, and
innumerable Romans had won their first distinction in
this way. The delators of the early empire were in
theory no different, though the reward of their activity
was not the glory or popularity achieved, but the sub-
stantial one of a lump sum, or a share in the fine
imposed, a practice still in vogue in our own juris-
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 333
dictions. Plainly, under such circumstances, there were
temptations to a form of blackmail which the Greeks
knew as (TVKo<f)dvTeLa^ and the Romans as calumnia; i. e.
the bringing of suits known to be unjustified, or with
reckless disregard of their justification, for the purpose
of sharing in some reward for doing this quasi-public
service. Private prosecutors at Roman law were
required to swear that they were not proceeding
calumniae causa, " with blackmailing intent." *
The opportunities presented to delators by the Hscus
ludaicus consisted in the fact that anyone of Jewish
origin, with the possible exception noted above, was
liable to the tax, and that there must have been many
who attempted to conceal their Jewish origin in order
to evade it. In view of the wide extent of the spread
of the Jewish propaganda, the delation was plausible
from the beginning. Suetonius tells us at first-hand
recollection of a case in which the charge of evading
the tax was made and successfully established.^ In a
very large number of cases, however, the charge was
not established, but in these cases it was often appar-
ently the policy of prudence to buy off the accuser rather
than risk the uncertainties of a judicial decision. It is
upon people who act in just such a way that black-
mailers, crvKocj>dvTai, calumniatores, grew fat. And the
charge of evading the Jewish tax was easily made,
and disproved with difficulty, since all who followed
Jewish customs were amenable to it, and many Jewish
customs so closely resembled the practices of certain
philosophic sects that confusion on the subject was per-
334 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
fectly natural. We have seen this in the case of Seneca
some years before this (comp. above, p. 310).
The emperor Nerva, in 96-98 c. e., removed the
occasion of this abuse. Coins are extant with the
legend Fisci ludaici calumnia suhlata, '' To commem-
orate the suppression of blackmail arising from the
Jewish tax." The iiscus hidaicus itself continued into
much later times, but blackmail by means of it was
ended. How this was done we are not told. But an
obvious and natural method would be to abolish the
money reward which the delator or prosecuting witness
received for every conviction. Plainly there would be
no blackmail if there was no incentive thereto.
But this reform of Nerva affected rather those who
were not Jews than those who were, since in the case of
actual Jews, whether by birth or conversion, the tax
was enforceable and the accusation of evading it was
not calumnia, but patriotic zeal. It is likely enough that
the measure of Nerva discouraged prosecution, even
where it was justified, but the losses which the imperial
fiscus sustained by reason of the successful evasion of
the tax on the part of some individuals cannot have
been great, since the Jews not only publicly professed
their faith, but openly and actively spread it.
In the epitome of the sixty-eighth book of Cassius Dio
(i. 2), we read that this measure of Nerva was one of
general amnesty for the specific crime of " impiety," or
acri/SeLa: '' Nerva ordered the acquittal of those on trial
for impiety, and recalled those exiled for that crime.
.... He permitted no one to bring charges of impiety
or of Jewish method of living."
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 33S
Unfortunately this passage is extant only in the
epitome made of this book by Xiphilinus, a Byzantine
monk of the eleventh century. We have no means of
knowing to what extent the epitomator is stating the
impression he received from his reading, largely colored
by his time and personality, and to what extent he
is stating the actual substance of the book. If there
really was in Rome an indictable offense which con-
sisted in adopting Jewish customs as distinguished
from the general charge of impiety, such an offense
does not appear elsewhere in our records. We must
remember that there is no indication that the men
freed by Nerva had been suffering under the despotic
caprice of Domitian, but on the contrary there is the
specific statement that they were being duly prosecuted
under recognized forms.
It is highly likely that the two accusations which
Xiphilinus gives are really one : that Nerva discouraged
prosecutions for impiety, and that among the instances
of men acquitted, which Dio gave, were some who were
converts to Judaism, or believed to be so. In one
instance, a constantly cited one, that is precisely what
is the case, and that is the condemnation, in the last
year of Domitian's reign, of Flavins Clemens and
Flavia Domitilla, both of them kinsmen of the emperor."
In the case of these, we hear that Clemens was
executed for " atheism," and that under this charge
many others who had lapsed into the customs of the
Jews were condemned, some of them to death, others
to loss of their property, Domitilla to exile.
336 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
In Suetonius we have a wholly different version
(Dom. 15). Flavins Clemens, we read, was a man
contemptissimae inertiae, ''of thoroughly contemptible
weakness of character," but enjoying till the very last
year of Domitian's life the latter's especial favor.
Clemens' two children were even designated for the
succession. The emperor was, during this year, a prey
to insane suspicions, which amounted to a real mania
persecutoria, and on a sudden fit had Clemens executed.
The context and general tone of the passage suggest
that the charge, real or trumped up, against Clemens
was one of treason, not impiety.
Clemens' relationship, his undoubted connection with
the palace conspiracy that ultimately resulted in the
assassination of Domitian, make this account the more
likely one, but the " many " mentioned in the epitome of
Xiphilinus require us to assume that at least some of
the men actually prosecuted for " impiety," or atheism,
were so charged upon the evidence of Jewish practices.
It has been stated, and it must be constantly re-
iterated, that impiety was a negative offense, that it
implied deliberate refusal to perform a religious act
of legal obligation, rather than the actual doing of some
other religious act. If ''impiety" were really the
offense here, the "many" that were charged with it
under Domitian and Nerva must have been so charged
because they neglected certain ceremonies which the
laws made obligatory. In Greek communities do-e/^eta
was a relatively common offense, and indictment for it
of frequent occurrence. But it is doubtful whether
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 337
there was such an indictment at Roman law. There
is no Latin term for aaejSeia, The word impietas is
generally used in a different sense. The Greek Dio or
his late Byzantine epitomator has evidently used that
term here to describe in his own words what seemed to
him to be the substance of the accusation rather than
to give a technically exact account of the charge against
these men.
In later law writers certain offenses are discussed
under which forms of impiety or dae/Seta might be
included. But these offenses are treated either as
sedition or as violations of the Sullan Lex Cornelia
de Sicariis et Veneficis, " Statute of Assassins and
Poisoners." The latter law seems to have been a
general statute containing a varied assortment of pro-
visions, but all of them relating to acts that tended to
the bodily injury of anyone, whatever the motive or
pretext of that injury."
The '' many," then, who, as Xiphilinus says, were
prosecuted for '' impiety," because they lapsed into Jew-
ish rites, may have been indicted under the Lex Cornelia
— no doubt as a pretext — or charged with treason upon
proof of Jewish proclivities. The Palestinian Jews,
we may remember, were until recently in arms against
Rome. In all these cases, the indictments were prob-
ably far-fetched pretexts devised by the morose and
suspicious Domitian during his last year of veri-
table terror in order to get rid of men whom he sus-
pected (often justly) of plotting his assassination.
These are the men whom Nerva's act of amnesty freed.
22
338 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
The famous jurist Paul, who wrote in the first part
of the third century, discusses the restrictions imposed
upon the spread of Jewish rites, under the heading of
''sedition" or "treason." The justification for that
treatment Hes in the series of insurrections of the East-
ern Jews of which the rebelHon of 68 c. e. was merely
the beginning. Our sources for the events of these
rebellions are remote and uncertain, and the transmis-
sion is more than usually troubled ; but a chance frag-
ment, as well as the kernel of the lurid account pre-
sented by Xiphilinus' epitome of Dio, leaves no doubt
that the struggle was carried on with memorable feroc-
ity, and left a lasting impression on the people whom
it concerned.
If Dio is to be believed, the outbreak that took place
in the reign of Trajan (115 c. e.) in Cyprus, Cyrene,
and Egypt (Ep. Ixviii, 32) was marked by scenes of
indescribable horror. In Cyrene, Dio states, the Jews
devoured the flesh of their victims, clothed themselves
in their skins, threw them to wild beasts, or compelled
them to engage in gladiatorial combats. In Cyrene, two
hundred and twenty thousand men perished ; in Cyprus,
two hundred and forty thousand. One may say with
Reinach, Les chiffres et les details de Dion inspirent la
mefiance.^^
It will not be possible to assign the responsibility for
these statements to the epitomator Xiphilinus. Unless
they were found in Dio, he could not have ventured to
place them here, since the epitome and the text were
extant together for a long time.
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 339
In the Church History of Eusebius (IV. ii.) the
revolt is described somewhat differently. Eusebius
mentions the Cyprian revolt in his Chronicon (ii. 164).
Here however he speaks only of the insurrection in
Cyrene and Egypt. The name of the leader is given as
Lucua, not Andreas, as Dio has it, and the whole event
is described as an ordinary revolt, a o-rao-t?, reviving the
revolt of 68 c. e. At first the Jews were generally suc-
cessful, driving their opponents to take refuge in the
city of Alexandria, while they harried the land. At
last the Roman prefect, Q. Marcius Turbo, crushed
them completely.
As far as Egypt is concerned, many papyri mention
the revolt. Appian Arab. Liber (Eg. hist. gr. v. p. 65)
gives us a first-hand view of the situation.
Both the papyri and Appian are in complete accord-
ance with Eusebius' account, and emphasize the extent
of the Jewish insurrection and the impression it pro-
duced upon others.
In Jewish writings the references to what must have
been a matter of prime importance to all Jews are vague
and confused. The punishment of the Mesopotamian
Jews by Lusius Quietus ^^ is mentioned, but beyond that
we have only much later statements, in which a deal
of legend-making has been imbedded. The *' day of
Trajan," which appears as a festival day, is connected
by a persistent tradition with the permission to rebuild
the temple, alleged to have been given by that emperor.
The Roman and Greek writers know nothing of this,
and in Jewish tradition likewise the permission is repre-
340 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
sented as abortive, and the "day of Trajan" ceased,
according to another story, to be observed when the
martyrs Papius and LolHanus were executed."
However, it must be noted that for Palestine in
particular details are lacking. Indeed we might well
believe that Palestine itself took no part in it whatever.
The expedition of Quietus to Mesopotamia may have
been an ordinary military expedition against the Par-
thians' territory, with whom the Romans had been then
at war. There is evidence that the Jews of Parthia
were almost autonomous, and a foray into the section
which they happened to control would not be considered
as anything more than an attack on other Parthian
dominions. The Mesopotamian provinces of Parthia
were then under the theoretical rule of Rome, but the
precarious character of the conquest was apparent to
everyone, so that the first act of the conqueror's suc-
cessor, Hadrian, was to abandon both Mesopotamia and
Armenia. The revolt of the Mesopotamian Jews was,
in consequence, a somewhat different thing from that
of the Jews in Cyprus or Cyrene.
Perhaps the difficulties in Cyprus, Cyrene, and Egypt
are to be considered nothing more than magnified race
riots, which, however, assumed the dimensions of a
real war, and demanded systematic military operations
to suppress them. But the friction between the Jews
and Greeks of Salamis or Alexandria could scarcely
have resulted in such serious outbreaks, if the con-
ditions that led to the revolt of 68 c. e. were not still
operative. The fall of the temple did not paralyze the
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 341
Jewish propaganda. We find it as vigorous afterward
as before. The Messianic hopes, which were one form
of the prevaiHng spiritual unrest, had not died out in
the East among Jews or non-Jews." The calamity of
the empire, which the death of Nero seemed to bring
with it, did not after all take place.
Our sources represent the era begun by Vespasian,
except for a few years of Domitian's reign, as one of
general and increasing felicity. These sources, how-
ever, are in the highest degree suspect, and while the
period between Vespasian and Marcus Aurelius repre-
sents an undoubted rise in administrative and legal
development, they represent a deterioration in the
economic condition due to the gathering pressure of
the huge state machinery itself. The increase of the
more degraded forms of superstition marks the spiritual
destitution of the time.
The Jewish communities in Cyprus, Egypt, and
Cyrene consisted largely of craftsmen and small mer-
chants. Perhaps among them were a number of former
Palestinian rebels, sold as slaves in the neighboring
markets, and since ransomed. The conditions, the active
Messianic hope, the presence of former soldiers, were
themselves provocative of riot, and the outbreaks in the
places indicated are scarcely surprising. We hear only
of those that became formidable insurrections. It is
possible that slighter ones have failed wholly to be
recorded.
But during the reign of Hadrian there broke out an
unmistakable insurrection in Palestine, which more
342 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
clearly than its predecessors showed the motive force of
these movements. In 131 c. e. a certain Simeon bar
Kosiba led his people again to war on the all-over-
whelming power of the empire. The occasion for the
revolt is variously given, but that it was in the eyes of
those that fought in it vastly more than an attempt to
shake off a foreign yoke is shown by the Messiahship
to which Simeon openly laid claim, and for which he
had the invaluable support of the head of the Pales-
tinian schools, the eloquent and passionate Akiba."
Dio^^ states that the immediate instigation of the
revolt was the building on the ruins of Jerusalem the
new city and temple that were to be the ofificial home of
the colony of Aelia Capitolina, a community founded
by Hadrian and composed perhaps of native Syrians,
since it did not possess the ius Italicum, the full rights of
citizenship/^ This statement is much more probable
than that of Eusebius, which reverses the order of
events, and makes the founding of the Colonia Aelia
Capitolina a consequence and not the cause of the
revolt."
The rebellion of 68 had enormously depopulated
Judea. Those that were left had neither the power nor
the inclination to try conclusions with the legionaries
again, and, as we have seen, remained passive when
closely related communities rose in arms. But the
hopes they nourished, no doubt systematically fostered
by the powerful communities in Mesopotamia and the
Parthian lords of the latter, were none the less real for
their suppression. The erection of Aelia was the
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 343
signal. Just as the desecration of the temple by
Epiphanes was the last measure of oppression, which
brought upon the king the vengeance of Heaven,
so this second desecration, the dedication of the holy
hill to one of the elillini, one of the Abominations of
the heathen, roused the frenzy of the people that wit-
nessed it to such a pitch that the chances of success
could no longer be considered. At the same time, assur-
ances of ultimate help from Parthia were perhaps not
lacking. Among those who streamed to aid the rebel-
lious Jews were doubtless many of Rome's hereditary
enemies, since of other rebellions within the empire at
that time we have no evidence.
The Jewish tradition speaks of a systematic and
cruel persecution instituted by Hadrian. The details
mentioned are very much like the remembered incidents
of the persecution by Epiphanes. We must keep in
mind that every one of the statements connected with
this persecution is late, and is in so far of dubious his-
torical value.^" As a matter of fact the character of
Hadrian makes the reality of the persecution in the
highest degree improbable. No doubt the revolt was
punished with ruthless severity, and for the per-
manent prohibition against the entrance of a Jew into^
Aelia Capitolina there is excellent evidence ; ^ but to
attempt to root out Judaism as Antiochus had done is
something that simply cannot be credited to Hadrian,
if only for the fact that the overwhelming majority of
Jews did not dwell in Palestine at all, and all the alleged
persecutions of Hadrian are localized only in Palestine.
344 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
In Hadrian's letter of 134 c. e., to his brother-in-law
Servianus, the Jews of Egypt are referred to in a man-
ner quite irreconcilable with the theory that Judaism
was then a proscribed religion.''^
In this connection we may mention a decree which,
according to Jewish tradition, constituted one of the
most deeply resented of Hadrian's persecutions — the
prohibition of circumcision. Here again the late biog-
rapher of Hadrian, Spartianus, makes this edict precede
and not follow the war ; but the reliability of the His-
toria Augusta, of which Spartianus' biography is part,
is not very high. We have the Historia Augusta, if it
is not wholly a fabrication of the fourth century, only
in a recension of that time, so that its testimony on
such a detail is practically valueless.^'
As a matter of fact, all bodily mutilation had been
under the ban of the Roman law, but that prohibition
applied only to Roman citizens. In practice circum-
cision had been openly carried on both by Jews who
were Roman citizens and by their converts, in dis-
regard of this provision, probably under the tacit
assumption that the privileges of the Jewish corpora-
tions covered this as well. Primarily the prohibition
was directed against castration, but it was quite general.
The only formulation which the edict against these
practices had received was in the Sullan Lex Cornelia
de Sicariis et Veneficis (above, p. 241). This was a lex
per saturam, or miscellaneous statute. Under one of
its captions, any act, perhaps any act performed with
a weapon or instrument of any kind, that resulted in
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 345
bodily injury, was prohibited. A senatorial decree of
the year 83 c. e. specified castration as one of the
mutilations referred to ; similarly abortion was punished
as a violation of the Lex Cornelia/*
Hadrian's rescripts seem to have dealt on several
occasions with this law. His obvious intention to
extend the statute may have caused him to use terms
of general effect. Perhaps an isolated case of the prac-
tice of circumcision among people outside of those to
whom it was an ancient custom may have been fol-
lowed by indictment and punishment. If Hadrian
really had attempted to carry out this prohibition gener-
ally, he would have provoked a rebellion in Egypt as
well as in Judea, since in Egypt the priests practised it
likewise."* The rescript of Antoninus, a few years later,
which expressly exempted Jews from the broad con-
demnation of the practice, simply restated established
law.^ Indeed it may well be that the occasion of Pius'
rescript was rather one that restricted the Jews than
one that enlarged their privileges. Even in the case
of the severest form of mutilation, it is forbidden if it is
done promercii aut libidinis causa. A similar insistence
on criminal intent must have been present in the case of
the lesser mutilation involved in the Jewish rite. There
could of course never have been any question that cir-
cumcision was not performed promercii aut libidinis
causa, and therefore there seems to be little reason for
the rescript of Pius, unless we assume it to have been a
direct attempt to check the spread of Judaism by mak-
ing the performance of the rite in the case of non-
346 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Jews criminal per se, without proof of wrongful intent.
Paul, writing about seventy-five years later, states
the limitation on the performance of the rite even more
broadly, by including within it slaves of non-Jewish
origin.^ In all circumstances there does not seem to
have been any real effort to enforce it. The Jewish
propaganda went on in spite of it, not surreptitiously, as
in the case of the still-proscribed Christians, but quite
frankly. The statement of Paul is the stranger because
of the open favor shown by Paul's master, the Syrian
Severus Alexander, toward all foreign cults, including
that of the Jews. The Sentences of Paul may have been
written before the decree of the emperor which his
biographer mentions, by which, he says, Severus
strengthened the privileged position of the Jews,
ludaeis privilegia reservavit. ^* When one contrasts
this with the immediately following statement, Chris-
tianas esse passus est, '' He allowed the Christians to
profess their faith," it is plain that in the case of the
Jews there is no question of mere toleration, but of
the recognition of an established position, and that is
not quite in accord with the statement in Paul's Sen-
tences, according to which the spread of Judaism was
rigorously checked, even to the extent of modifying one
of the fundamental concepts of the law — the unlimited
character of the master's dominion over his slaves.
As has been said, the authenticity of the Historia
Augusta is dubious, but the number of details offered
to show the interest of both Alexander and his pre-
decessor Elagabalus in Judaism and Christianity is too
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 347
great to be ignored. The Sentences of Paul, it must be
noted, have come down to us only in the abridged and
perhaps interpolated form in which they are found in
the Lex Romana Wisigothorum, a code issued by
Alaric II in 506, and called therefore the Breviarium
Alaricianum. At that time, however, proselytizing on
the part of the Jews had been expressly prohibited by
a rescript of Theodosius (Cod. Theod. 16, 8, 9, 19) of
415. Even then it was completely ineffective, but at any
rate the rite of circumcision was definitely under a
legal ban."^
Whether or not a qualified restriction on the spread
of Judaism has been changed in our texts of the Sen-
tences into a general and all-embracing one, it is
impossible to say, but that some such change has taken
place may be called even likely, by reason of the point
just raised; viz., that it is wholly contrary to the spirit
and principles of the Roman law to impose any restric-
tions whatever on the master's authority.
We have examined the decrees that regulated the '
rite of circumcision, merely because general inferences
have been drawn from it — inferences that are in no 1
sense justified. The Roman law regarded bodily
mutilation, when practised as part of a religious rite,
and especially for sordid purposes, as against public
policy. It was a privilegium of the Jew^s, that to the
members of their organizations the general rule of the
law did not apply, and the various statements quoted
from the jurists were simply judicial decisions limiting,
348 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
by a well-known principle of interpretation, the exercise
of the privilege to the narrowest possible bounds.
The rebellion of Bar-Kosiba was probably the last
time that the Jews confronted the Roman troops on
issues that were even partly national. We hear that
between 150 and 161, under Antoninus Pius, another
rebellion broke out, but we have no other record of it
than the notices in the Historia Augusta,^'' upon which
little reliance can be placed. After the death of
Commodus and Pertinax,'^ the eastern empire, includ-
ing Palestine, sided with the local claimant Pescennius
Niger, and Palestine became the scene of battles suf-
ficiently important to jiistify the decreeing of a "Jew-
ish triumph " to Caracalla. It is likely that these
various " rebellions " were the more or less serious
insurrections of bandits, who terrorized the country-
side until suppressed by the authorities. This view
derives some support from the fact that of one of these
bandits who submitted to Severus we know the name,
Claudius (Dio Cass. Ep. Ixxv. 2). There is even no
certainty as to whether those who took part in them
were wholly or mainly Jews. At any rate, there were
no national ends which they attempted to serve.
A fact, which may be accidental, and is certainly
noteworthy, is that, of all the struggles of the Jews with
their surroundings, after 68, none are localized in Asia
Minor.
It was, however, in Asia Minor that the Jews were
especially numerous and influential. To a certain extent
their propaganda had become most firmly established
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS 349
there, and their position was so intrenched that even
the hostile legislation of the later Byzantine emperors
found them in successful resistance. We find evidences
of certain laxity in the practice of Jewish rites, but
neither in 68 nor under Trajan or Hadrian did the
Asiatic Jews take part in the movements that con-
vulsed that section of the Jews of the empire. And yet
it was in the cities of Asia that the Jews in earlier days
did meet hostility and direct attacks, and needed the
assistance of the Roman central government, to be
maintained in the position which they claimed for them-
selves.^' However, in that most ancient and fertile
nursery of beliefs and mysteries, the Jewish mystery
evidently found a grateful soil and,- as we have seen,
sent its roots deep.^^
CHAPTER XXI
THE LEGAL POSITION OF THE JEWS IN
THE LATER EMPIRE
The empire established by Augustus was, as has
been set forth (above, p. 259), a more or less abstract
thing. It was the imperium, or supreme authority,
which a single community, the city-state of Rome,
exercised over all the other communities existing
within certain not over sharply defined geographic
limits. This imperium was, by Roman statute or series
of statutes, almost completely delegated to a single
individual. The delegation however was not quite
complete, and the legal theory that "made it incomplete
remained to work no little mischief in a crisis like the
death of Nero or Domitian or Commodus.
When Diocletian reorganized the empire in 286 c. e.,
the theory was completely changed. The imperium was
now a dominium ; it was the authority that a single man
possessed over all the inhabitants of a region greater
even than it was under Augustus, and that authority
was in point of law as limitless as that of a master over
his slaves.
Between Augustus and Diocletian the reign of the
Severan emperors, particularly the promulgation of
the Edict of Caracalla, the Constitutio Antonina, which
extended Roman citizenship to almost all the free
LEGAL POSITION IN THE LATER EMPIRE 351
inhabitants of the empire, may be considered the turn-
ing-point of the tendency toward absolutism/ It broke
finally and completely with the legal theory that the
populus Romanus was a paramount community within
a complex of other similar and inferior communities.
From that time on nearly all those who could possess
rights and obligations at all, whether in regard to one
another or to the state, were members of the paramount
community, and the delegation of the imperium to the
prince ps, which had until then been subject to the
remote but still conceivable possibility of revocation,
became irrevocable by the sheer impossibility of con-
ceiving the populus as acting in the only way the
populus could legally act, by direct vote when assembled
in mass in the Campus Martins.
In the period between Caracalla and Diocletian the
vast political machine snapped at many points. Dio-
cletian's skill enabled it to go on for a considerable time,
and yet the changes he instituted were administrative
rather than social. Internally the new populus Romanus
took its form in the third century.
A calculation of doubtful value makes the population
of the empire at that time about 85,000,000.'' Of these
about half were slaves, i. e. at law not participants in
the empire at all. The other half were nearly all cives
Romani, Roman citizens, and it is the position of these
cives that now concerns us.
Upon the civis Romanus devolved the task of main-
taining a frightfully expensive governmental machin-
ery. The expense consisted in the fact that a huge
352 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
army had to be maintained on what was practically a
war footing all the time, because, as a matter of fact,
war with the barbarians on the northern frontier and
with the Parthians in the East was always going on.
Compared with that, the expenses of the court itself,
although considerable, were scarcely important ; but an
important item was the vast horde of civil employees
which the execution of so tremendous a budget neces-
sitated. Then the local civic centers, generally the
remains of old independent communities, had an organ-
ization of their own that was partly ornamental, but
in all circumstances costly. That is to say, a very large
share of the available wealth of the empire was diverted
into unproductive channels, since it was devoted to the
purpose of maintaining a machinery not altogether
necessary to guard that wealth.
Many of the nations of modern Europe have a mili-
tary budget relatively and absolutely greater than that
of the Roman empire of the third century ; but in these
nations the economic system has a high degree of
efficiency, compared with that of the older state, and
the waste is incalculably less. The great difference lies
in the slave system, which was the foundation of ancient
society. The total absence of individual incentive
wherever the slaves were worked in gangs — and that
was, perhaps, true of the majority of slaves — made the
efficiency and consequent productivity of each laborer
much less.
We must further remember that human waste was
also much greater, owing to the absence of all measures
LEGAL POSITION IN THE LATER EMPIRE 353
to restrict it. Only the most elementary of sanitary
precautions existed, and they were directed against
definite diseases of plainly infectious character. With
a great percentage of the population undernourished,
the ravages of any disease with epidemic tendencies
must have been enormous. Even in the absence of any
plague, such a scourge as consumption alone must have
been much more generally destructive than it is now.
As has been recently suggested, malaria in Italy had a
heavy account to answer for in producing the physical
debilitation of the populus Romanus, and was therefore
a real factor in the gradual decay of the Roman state.^
The incidence of the state burdens was not regulated
as it is at the present time. Taxes were imposed within
certain districts, and upon each district devolved the
duty of satisfying the impost. For a long time Italy
had been free from such a burden, but even this excep-
tional position was abrogated by Constantine in 300
c. E.
How each district accomplished its task was a local
matter, and was determined by its individual develop-
ment. Until the reorganization effected by Diocletian,
the old national units had in the main been kept intact.
That is to say, Egypt remained what it had been under
the Ptolemies and for thousands of years before — a
strongly centralized kingdom, rigidly bureaucratic, but
measurably well organized. Asia, again, was a group
of independent cities and certain larger districts, prin-
cipally rural, the kingdoms of Bithynia, Cappadocia,
Galatia, etc. The tax which the particular province had
23
354 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
to deliver was apportioned among the various units
according to their apparent capacity. Here and there a
poll-tax existed, levied upon every inhabitant alike, and
on the existence of this poll-tax far-reaching theories
have been constructed.
The obligation of the individual toward the state
was determined by one fundamental fact, viz., domicile,
or right of residence. Before the Constitutio Antonina
there was only one class of inhabitants that possessed an
almost unlimited right of residence, the cives Romani.
But even these could not live indiscriminately in Egypt,
for example, which was at all times an exceptional prov-
ince, and was considered a sort of imperial appanage.
As a matter of fact, it is in Egypt that we see the first
development of the colonatiis, destined to be of so
fundamental importance in the creation of the feudal
system. It may be that the colonatits was found prac-
tically everywhere in the Hellenistic states, but its
growth in Egypt goes back to Pharaonic times, and its
fullest expansion was found there.
The principle of the colonatus was the permanent
obligation of the agricultural free laborer to remain
on the soil he tilled. Originally it applied only to the
state lands, but in the third century these state lands
became largely private property, and the serf-like
coloni went with them. All over the empire there
were still, in spite of the latifundia, or agriculture on
a big scale, a large number of peasant proprietors;
but with the impossibility of competing with the pro-
duction of the latifundia, these peasant proprietorships
LEGAL POSITION IN THE LATER EMPIRE 355
were soon converted into holdings resembling the
colonatus, or actually that.
Now, as long as the civis Romanus, as a prerogative
of his position, paid no tax, his right of residence was
unqualified. When he too had to submit to a direct
tax, the place where he resided became a matter of
prime importance. The tax that was imposed upon any
given locality could be met only if all those subject to
tax, living there, paid their dues. Consequently those
who by birth were domiciled there could not remove
themselves without lessening to that extent the power
of that district to meet its state obligations. At first, to
be sure, this cannot have been a matter of first-rate
importance. Changes of domicile after all were rare,
and took place principally among the wealthier classes,
a fact that made it easy to insure that no loss would
accrue to the community abandoned. But as conditions
of ordinary living deteriorated, the practice of deserting
one's legal residence became more frequent, and needed
the intervention of the central authorities, since the
local magistrate had no jurisdiction whatever beyond
the strictly circumscribed limits of his commune. As
soon as it was possible for a commune to claim from
its members, wherever they happened to be, their con-
tribution to the communal tax, there arose the corollary
that for all practical purposes the tax-paying member
might not leave the place where his tax was due. The
colonatus had been applied to the urban laborer.
But the chaining of the individual to his commune
was not sufficient unless his paying power was main-
356 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
tained. The same motives that impelled men to evade
their fiscal duties by change of domicile, would make
them idle and sullen paupers in the places where they
were forced to remain. It was a part of the state
system which the Severan emperors introduced to make
the paying power of the citizen certain by means of the
compulsory guilds.* These latter were natural out-
growths of former voluntary associations. The forma-
tion of guilds of laborers, either free or consisting
partly of freemen and slave laborers, was as old as
the state itself. The evident superiority of training
which such groups insured alone justified them. From
time to time certain privileges and exemptions were
conferred upon them — always in return for definite
state functions ' which they took upon themselves as
well as the industrial functions which were their reason
for existence. Indeed, in the municipal towns the
collegiati, or members of these publicly sanctioned
industrial guilds, formed an order of citizenship second
only to that of the decurions, or municipal senate.
While the various collegia were at first voluntary
associations, it is evident that the sons of members
would tend to follow the callings of their fathers with-
out statutory command to that effect. When, however,
the dues of the corporation to the state became onerous,
the voluntary choice of a calling might leave certain
collegia quite deserted. At what time this danger ,
became so serious that special legislation was required,
we do not know, but there is a vague and textually
uncertain passage in the Life of Alexander Severus, in
LEGAL POSITION IN THE LATER EMPIRE 357
the Historia Augusta, which indicates that a reorgan-
ization of the trade-guilds was undertaken by that
emperor. If it was so, the appearance soon afterwards
of the compulsory guild in full development makes it
likely that the compulsory principle was officially recog-
nized or perhaps extended then.
But it was not merely the artisans of the empire that
were included in any organization or reorganization of
the collegia. Like all other corporate bodies the trade-
guilds, if not wholly religious in form, possessed a com-
mon cult or ceremony, and this common possession
made it easy to consider them as not essentially different
from collegia directly and solely religious — the Greek
OtaaoL, for example. In these, the voluntary principle
remained even after the compulsory guilds were fully
developed, although in point of fact they were generally
rigidly hereditary at all times. Here too, after Alex-
ander Severus, there must have been a certain legal
restriction placed upon arbitrary withdrawal from such
cult-organizations, even if their ritual was openly and
unmistakably foreign, such as that of the Jews, the
orgies of Atthis, or the mysteries of Mithra. Some
restriction would be necessary, because membership in
these organizations, as far as they were tolerated by
law, involved the payment of certain dues to the state,
and the state could not see with equanimity the obliga-
tion to pay these dues discarded and no new ones
assumed in its place.
The dues to the state did not consist altogether, and
soon not even principally, in the actual taxes levied
358 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
upon a community, and portioned among its constituent
members, whether individuals or corporations. Indeed
these latter were paid to what seems to us a wholly dis-
proportionate extent by a small and wealthy class in the
community. The taxes, whether they consisted of
ground-rent for state lands, harbor-dues, or taxes on
certain sales, were principally paid by the large traders
and investors, who were in every case the governing
body of the local communes. In provinces where a poll-
tax was levied, and where a tribute was imposed as on
conquered territory, which the province really was,
these direct taxes, when brutally executed on the
peasant's grain, were oppressive enough, but in many
parts of the Roman world they were in effect Aa-
rovpytai, " liturgies," i. e. the burdens assumed by or
imposed upon private persons of making large contri-
butions in service to the state in proportion to their
means. The principle of the liturgy was common to
most Greek states, and was capable of indefinite
extension.
And there was one state burden rapidly increasing in
gravity, which was generally met on the principle of the
liturgy, although the state too, as early as the time of
Trajan,* was compelled to attempt it in part. That was
the care of incompetents, by which term we may under-
stand all free individuals who could not support them-
selves wholly by their personal efforts, i. e. widows and
orphans, as well as destitute freemen. The proletariat
of the empire not only had no share in its burdens, but
itself formed the empire's chief economic burden.
LEGAL POSITION IN THE LATER EMPIRE 359
The organization of the system was of very old
standing. From time immemorial the minor children
and the women of a family and of a clan had been under
the legal control and care of the family's head. In
the developed system of law, the technical terms were
tufela and cura, the former being the guardianship of
a child until fourteen, the latter the guardianship of a
youth until tw^enty-five, as well as the care of an adult
incompetent. This system of guardianship was further
extended, but always remained the same in principle.
It was the duty of the family to provide for its destitute
members, and the legal extension the system underwent
was simply that of widening the family circle. Not
merely close relatives but remoter kinsmen were drawn
into it as far as the obligations of guardianship were
concerned ; and in default of kinsmen, the guild, society,
or commune assumed the wardship of minors, and was
answerable for their maintenance.
It is easy to understand how important this item of
state service became, when we recall how large a part
of the municipal budgets in England during many cen-
turies was concerned with the care of the poor. But
after the disintegration of the slave system on its
economic side, the number of persons for whose care
this provision had to be made must have been much
greater than it was in England at any time. If nothing
else, the minute care with which the burdens of ward-
ship were apportioned, the precautions against their
evasion, the great part its discussion played in legal
literature,' will make it evident that wardship of minors
36o THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
was a vitally important matter, and its administration
one of the chief functions of citizenship in the empire.
Many groups of men were practically exempted from
all other state dues, provided the guardianship of
minors within that group was assumed.
The maintenance of the poor is almost a corollary of
the compulsory wardship of women and minors. The
artisan whose efforts no longer sufficed to maintain his
family often absconded, or in very many cases suc-
cumbed physically to his tasks, leaving in either case a
family for whose wardship his kinsmen or colleagues
had to provide. The state foundations instituted and
maintained by Trajan and his successors were probably
abandoned during the third century, when the tutela
was systematized and minutely regulated.
All in all, every member of the state as such had cer-
tain fiscal duties to the state, munera, and his perform-
ance of these munera determined his place in the state.
The social cleavage between the honestiores, the " better
classes," and the humiliores, " the lower classes," was
of very great importance in criminal law, since the
severity of the penalty varied according to the class
to which the convicted criminal belonged; but we are
not told on what basis the judge determined whether
any given man was honestior or humilior, and the whole
distinction seems somewhat un-Roman.^ For other
purposes the various honors and ranks which multiplied
in spite of the sinking significance of the many con-
stituent communities were much less important than
the drastically enforced classification of citizens by the
taxes they paid.
LEGAL POSITION IN THE LATER EMPIRE 361
The Jews of the Roman empire were to be found in
all the classes that existed. As long as innumerable
forms of local citizenship existed, distinct from citizen-
ship in the Roman state, Jews might be met in all those
groups. But when the Constitution of Caracalla merged
all the local forms of citizenship in the civitas Romana,
practically all the Jews then living in the empire
became Roman citizens, although it is highly likely that
the old names did not at once disappear.
Only one exception is known to have been made by
Caracalla. A certain class of inhabitants known as the
dediticii were excluded from his general grant. To
analyze the exact position of these dediticii would
demand more detailed argument than can here be
offered, especially since it is a highly controversial
matter. Recently it has been urged that all those who
paid a poll-tax, particularly in Egypt and Syria, were
classed as dediticii and consequently excluded from
Roman citizenship. For this, however, there is not the
remotest evidence. In the Institutes of Gains ^ there
is an unfortunate lacuna where the matter is discussed,
but from what is said there, it is likely that as early as
the Antonines the dediticii in Rome were a class of
f reedmen suffering legal disabilities for proven offenses,
and that there were few others. The exemption of the
dediticii from the benefits of the Edict of Caracalla was
therefore perfectly natural, and did not in the least
imply the exemption of those who paid the poll-tax in
Egypt and Syria, among whom were many Jews.
362 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
As Roman citizens domiciled in the various quarters
of the empire, the Jews were subjected to the obliga-
tions that went with that domicile. So in Egypt a great
number of Jews paid a poll-tax, although many of them,
especially in Alexandria, were exempt. In Syria and
Asia, where many communities still had tribute to pay,
the Jewish members of those communities were equally
assessed.
But besides being legally domiciled in some definite
place, the Jews in every place formed cult-organizations.
Apostasy in the case of the Jew meant no more than the
abandoning of this organization, " separating himself
from the congregation." ^" Those who did so found
themselves at once obliged to perform the rites of the
state worship in the many cities where such rites were
legally enforced, or to enter other cult-associations,
since it was only as a member of the Jewish corporation
that he secured the privilege of abstention.
These Jewish corporations were known as " syna-
gogues," a term more properly denoting the meetings of
the societies. The word was used of other associations
as well as of the Jewish. A word of kindred origin and
meaning, synodos, was almost a general term for cor-
poration everywhere." However " synagogue " became
gradually appropriated by the Jewish collegia, and in
inscriptions in which the word occurs it is generally
safe to assume a Jewish origin.
Like all other similar corporations or guilds, the
Jewish synagogues had special munera. One which
was almost unique was the Jewish tax, the fiscus
LEGAL POSITION IN THE LATER EMPIRE 363
ludaicus, or didrachm, which, since 70, had been levied
on all the Jews, originally for the support of the Capi-
toline temple, but probably long merged into the gen-
eral fiscus, or imperial treasury. It is unique, because
there does not seem to have been any other tax which,
like this one, was wholly devoid of local basis, and did
not depend on domicile at all. Otherwise membership
in the Jewish synagogue conferred a highly valued and
general exemption. The Jews could not be required to
perform any task that violated their religious convic-
tion. This privilege is formulated in a constitution of
Caracalla, but it seems rather a confirmation of one
already existing than a new grant."
According to this privilege, Jews were immediately
relieved from all dues connected with local or state
worship or with the temples. As many Jews were in a
financial position that would ordinarily invite the
imposition of just these liturgies, that meant a very
great relief. All other liturgies, including the tutela
both of Jews and of non-Jews, we are expressly told
the Jews were subject to.
We know further that the demands upon them did
not end there. In Palestine the organization of the
Sanhedrin had maintained itself, although only in the
form of several schools under the general presidency
of the Nasi, whom Romans and Greeks called the
Patriarch. The maintenance of these schools and those
who labored in them was a religious duty which most
Jews voluntarily assumed. The money was collected
by apostoli, '' envoys," despatched to the various Jewish
364 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
synagogues for that purpose/^ The early Christian
emperors beHeved, or professed to beHeve, that the pay-
ment of this tax was a grave burden to the poorer Jews,
and that irregularities were committed in its enforce-
ment. The Jewish sources, all of which are Palestinian,
naturally show no trace of this complaint ; nor is it likely
that there was much foundation for it except in certain
localities already grievously burdened by constantly
increasing dues.
Besides these various classes into which the tax-
paying Jewish citizens fell, there were also Jews who
did not share in the support of the state at all. Jewish
slaves existed in the third and fourth centuries too, but
they can scarcely have been numerous. A Jewish slave
belonging to a Jewish master was practically only a
servant bound for a term of years." Within a relatively
short space of time he could demand his freedom by
Biblical law. If his master was a pagan, a religious
duty devolved upon all other Jews, and particularly the
local synagogue, to redeem him.*' Often, to be sure,
that duty could not be carried out. Not every master
would sell, and not every synagogue was financially able
to supply the necessary funds. In general, however, it
added another motive to those already existing that
made emancipations frequent.
The social position and occupations of the Jews
throughout the empire are only slightly known. For
Egypt and Rome we have fuller documents than else-
where, except for Babylon, which was outside the
empire. We have no means of determining whether
LEGAL POSITION IN THE LATER EMPIRE 365
the facts found in Egypt and Rome are in any way
typical. One negative statement may however be safely
made. They were only to a very slight extent mer-
chants or money-lenders. In most cases they seem to
have been artisans. The inscriptions in the Jewish cat-
acombs show us weavers, tent-makers, dyers, butchers, _
painters, jewelers, physicians.^^ In Egypt we meet
sailors and handicraftsmen of all description." Ven-
dors, of course, on a small and large scale were not
wholly lacking. Indeed it would be impossible to under-
stand the individual prosperity of some Jews or of some
communities except on the assumption of commercial
occupations and success. However, in general, com-
merce was principally in the hands of Syrians and
Greeks, especially the former, whose customs and cults
spread with them over the Mediterranean.
We may say, in conclusion, that the economic and
political position of the Jews in the empire was unique
in one sense. There were no other groups that had
exactly the same rights, or were subject to exactly the
same demands as the Jews. But in another sense that
position was not at all unique. Many other groups of
men had rights somewhat like those of the Jewish syna-
gogues, and played a part in the social economy similar
to theirs ; and, as individuals, there was probably noth-
ing to mark out the Jew from his fellows in the
community.
We cannot tell how far and how long the Jews would
have been able to maintain their position. There seems
however to have been nothing in the conditions of the
366 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
Diocletianic empire that threatened the stabiHty of the
synagogues in the form in which they were then found.
The reHgious basis of the state — the maintenance of a
common cult for the whole empire — had practically
been abandoned. At one time, under Aurelian/* the
emperor's devotion to the solar cult had almost made of
that the state religion. But in general it may be said
that the absolutism of Diocletian rendered such bonds
unnecessary. Where all men were born subjects or
slaves (''slaves of their duties," servi functionum, the
guild-men are called explicitly ^^) of the same master, it
could be considered indifferent whether they all main-
tained the same theology.
But whether the Jews might have maintained their
position or not, if the conditions had remained the same,
is a purely hypothetical question. When Christianity
became the state religion, under Theodosius,^" a step
was taken that Jews must perforce regard as retrogres-
sive. In ancient times participation in the common
sacra was of the essence of membership in a state."^^
That principle was, however, tolerantly enforced. In
the first place the mere existence of private sacra was
not deemed to imperil the public sacra. Secondly,
exceptions and exemptions that did not take offensive
forms were freely allowed. But when Theodosius
established Christianity, he consciously strove to make
the ecclesia coterminous with the empire. " As well
could those be saved who were not in the ark with
Noah," Cyprian ''^ had cried, " as they be saved who are
not in the church." What was originally a group of
LEGAL POSITION IN THE LATER EMPIRE 367
elect, a company of saints (aytot), ''the salt of the
earth," "" had been expanded into a world-filling
community.
Not only was the ancient theory revived, but it was
revived without the qualifications that had made the
ancient theory a livable one. No other sacra could be
permitted to exist. Not to be in the ecclesia, was not
to be in the empire. Only the practical impossibility of
really enforcing that theory restrained the zealous and
triumphant leaders. Of course, the development of
law was continuous. The new basis of citizenship was
never actually and formally received as a legal principle.
Yet gradually the limitation of civic rights, which non-
membership in the church involved, operated to work
an exclusion from citizenship itself. In a very short
time those who were not within the church were in a
very real sense outside the state, merely tolerated
sojourners, and subject to all the risks of that pre-
carious condition.
SUMMARY
What has been attempted in the foregoing pages is
an interpretation of certain facts of Jewish, Roman,
and Greek history within a given period. For that
purpose it has been necessary to analyze fully the terms
used, and in many cases rather to clear away miscon-
ceptions than to set forth new points of view. A brief
retrospect is here added.
The Jews, as one of the Mediterranean nations, began
to come into close contact with Greek civilization about
the time of Alexander. Greece was then entering on a
new stage in her development. The Macedonian hege-
mony produced a greater degree of political unity than
had been previously achieved, but above all a real cul-
tural unity had been created, and was carried by arms
and commerce over the East. To this the Jews, as other
nations did, opposed a vigorous resistance; and this
resistance was successful in so far as it allowed the
creation of a practically independent nation, and par-
ticularly it stimulated the independent development of
Jewish institutions, especially religious ones.
In religion the Jews came into further and more
extensive conflict with their Greek environment. For
many centuries all the East had known a great spiritual
unrest, from which had grown various religious move-
ments. Of all these the common goal was the attain-
SUMMARY 369
ment of a personal immortality, the " salvation of the
soul." Among the Jews too this movement had been
active, and had produced concrete results in sects and
doctrines. The Jewish aspect of this general movement
would have remained a local development, had it not
been given a wider field by the unusual position of the
Jews, due to their dispersion.
For this dispersion various causes can be assigned.
Perhaps the most potent single cause was the fact that
the Jews, who rigorously opposed exposure of infants,
and encouraged in other ways the growth of their
population, increased too rapidly for the very limited
resources of their small and niggardly territory. At
any rate the kingdoms of the successors of Alexander
found Jews as colonists in many of the new foundations
in Asia, Syria, and Egypt, especially the last, where, as
a matter of fact, Jews had lived from pre-Persian times.
Within these new and, in many cases, old communities
the doctrines preached in Palestine became a means of
propaganda, and enabled the Jews to do more than
maintain themselves in the exceptional position which
their highly specialized religion necessitated.
The Jews were by no means the only religious group
in the Greek communities with proselytizing tendencies.
But they were unique in so far as they were per-
manently connected with an existing national group,
with which they maintained relations. This made fric-
tion of some sort inevitable at first, since some com-
munity of religious observances for all citizens of a
single state was axiomatic for ancient times. How-
24
370 THE JEWS AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS
ever, the anomaly of the Jewish position became less
glaring in course of time.
The first stage of Jewish influence is marked by two
things, a constantly increasing dispersion and an equally
increasing propaganda that reached all stages of society.
The advance of the power of Rome at first did not
change these conditions. In fact that advance mate-
rially assisted both the dispersion and its propaganda,
since the support of Rome was an invaluable asset
for the Hasmonean kingdom. Even the conquest by
Pompey had no other effect than to accelerate the indi-
cated development, especially within Italy and Rome
itself.
But the relations of the Jews with the Greco-Roman
world entered upon a second stage, the stage of armed
conflict, when the national and religious aspirations
of certain classes of Jews, which culminated in the
Messianic hope, came into contact with the denational-
izing tendencies of the imperial system. This conflict
was in no sense inevitable, and might easily have been
avoided. In addition to the internal movements that pro-
voked the series of rebellions between 68 and 135, there
was a constant excitation from without. The hered-
itary enemies of the Greek East and its successor, the
Roman Empire — the Persians and their kinsmen and
successors, the Parthians — maintained not only their
independence but also their hostility, and the fact that
the Jews lived in both empires, and that Parthian Jews
communicated freely with the others, presented a chan-
nel for foreign stimulation to revolt.
SUMMARY 371
The third stage of Jewish relations consists of an
adjustment of the Jews to the rapidly centralizing
empire, of which the administrative center was moving
eastward. The center of wealth and culture had always
been in the East. The reforms of Hadrian and his suc-
cessors prepared the way for the formal recognition of
the new state of things in the Constitutio Antonina,
the Edict of Caracalla, which gave Roman citizenship
to almost all the freedmen of the empire. This is the
great period of Roman law, when, in consequence of
the enormously extended application of the civil law, a
great impetus was given to the scientific analysis and
application of juristic principles. Out of this grew the
bureaucratic system perfected by Diocletian, and begun
perhaps by Alexander Severus, in which, as told in the
last chapter, the attempt was made to classify every
form of human activity in its relation to the state.
A new stage of Jewish relations begins with the
dominance of Christianity ; and that, as was stated at
the beginning of this study, lies outside of its scope.
~^
pp. I5-20J
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
*To what extent the Jews of the present day or those of
earlier times may be considered racially pure, depends upon
what criteria of race are adopted. At present there is no
general agreement among ethnologists on this subject. The
historical data are very uncertain. At all events absolute
racial unity of the Jews of the Dispersion cannot be main-
tained. The facts of their vigorous propaganda and their
extensive slave-property are too well attested. But it is wholly
impossible to determine how far the admixture went.
'The best edition of Philo is the still unfinished one which
is being prepared by two German scholars, Wendland and
Cohen. In this the Apologia has not yet appeared. Earlier
editions are those of Mangey (1742) and Holtze (1851).
Philo's works were translated into English by C. D. Yonge
(Bohn's Library, London, 1854).
' In Greek the two commonest editions of Josephus' works
are those of Niese (1887-1895) and of Naber (1896). Neither
completely satisfies all the demands that may be made for the
adequate presentation of the text.
The old English translation of W. Whiston, so widely cir-
culated both in England and America, is very inaccurate. The
revision of this translation by A. R. Shilleto (1889-1890) has
only slightly improved it.
*The references to the Jews in the inscriptions and papyri
have not, as yet, been collected. Mr. Seymour de Ricci planned
a collection of the Greek and Latin inscriptions to be called
Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum. This Corpus was, at least
partly, in manuscript form in 1912, but no part has been pub-
lished. Mr. de Ricci's article on " Inscriptions " in the Jewish
Encyclopedia, and Johannes Oehler, Epigraphische Beitrage
zur Geschichte des Judentums (Monatsschrift f. Gesch. u.
Wiss. d. Jud. 1909, xvii. 292-302, 443-452, 524-538) give a
practically complete collection.
I
374 NOTES [pp. 22-28
Chapter I
GREEK RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS
* It is nowhere directly stated that the power of a god did
not extend beyond a definite locality. But the numerous local
epithets applied to the various gods indicate it. We need
mention only such typical references to the deoi e^x^P'-^'^ as
Aesch. Septem. 14, Soph. Trach. 183, and Thuc. ii. 74.
■ Cf . Dionysus in the " Frogs " of Aristophanes, Herakles
and Poseidon in the " Birds." The other comic poets, even
Epicharmus, the oldest, dealt with even greater freedom with
the gods. Even the scanty fragments of Cratinus and Amphis
indicate that fact. In Sicily, an entire dramatic genre, that of
the <l>Xua/ces, contained practically nothing but situations in
which the divine personages of the myths were the subjects
of the coarsest fun.
' Such heroic friendships as that of Achilles and Patroclus
were perverted early in the imagination of Greeks. Cf.
Aeschylus, in Athen. xiii. 601 A, and Aeschines, i. 142. So also
the story of Apollo and Admetus became a love story for
Alexandria ; Callimachus H. ii. 49.
* The subject has been discussed in full by de Visser, De
Graecorum deis non referentibus speciem humanam (Leyden,
1900;) 2d ed. in German, 1903. So at Phigaleia, in Arcadia,
Demeter had the form of a horse ; the Brauronian Artemis
was a bear ; Apollo Lykeios was sometimes adored in the form
of a wolf.
^ Aegean and Mycenean are both used to designate the
civilization that preceded that of historical Greece. Aegean,
however, has, to a large extent, superseded the older term.
For the specifically Cretan form of it, Minoan is generally
employed.
* In spite of the apparently well-defined personalities of the
Homeric gods and a poetic tradition of many centuries, the
sculptors of later times found it necessary to indicate the
subject of their labors, either by some well-known attribute,
such as the caduceus, or a sacred animal, or a symplegma
representing a scene of a known legend. Without these acces-
pp. 28-32] NOTES 373
series, archeologists often find themselves at a loss when they
are required to name the god intended. Cf. Koepp, Archaologie
ii. 88 seq.
' It is not suggested that prayer could not exist without
sacrifice. But where sacrifice did take place, the act of wor-
ship did not lie in the sacrifice alone, or in the propitiatory
allocution that accompanied it, but in the two together.
* Cf . Apollo Soter, Soph. O. T. 149, Dionysus Soter, Lycophr.
206, Zeus Soter, Aristoph. Plut. 1186, etc.
® Max Miiller, Lectures on the Science of Language, passim.
The term is rarely used by recent investigators.
'" For the sacrificial act when addressed to gods, the word
was 6v€iu; addressed to heroes, ivayi^eiv. Herod, ii. 44. The
color of the sacrificial animal for heroes was usually black,
and no part of the flesh was eaten. Cf. Sch. Hom. II. i. 459.
^^ For heroes whose position in the state was as high as that
of gods, we have only to refer to the eponyms of the Cleis-
thenic tribes at Athens, Theseus, Cecrops, Erechtheus, etc.
"Local deities, such as Pelops at Olympia (Sch. Find. 01. i.
149), Archemorus at Nemea (Arg. Find. Nem. i), Tlepolemus
at Rhodes (Sch. Find. Ol. vii. 146).
" Cf . Suidas. s. v. 'Auayvpdcnos, Alciphro, iii. 58.
"The doctrine of Socrates cited by Xenophon, Memor. iv.
7, represents popular Greek feeling on the subject of theo-
logical speculation.
^'Xenophanes of Colophon (sixth cent. b. c. e.) cited in
Sex. Emp. adv. Math. ix. 193. The lines are frequently quoted,
and are to be found in any history of philosophy.
"A monotheistic or pantheistic tendency showed itself in
the attempt on the part of poets like Aeschylus and Findar
to absorb the divine world into the personality of Zeno. Cf.
Aesch. Heliades, 71 :
Zeus €<TTiv aidrip, Zevs 5e yij Zeus 5' oi/pauos,
Zeus TOi TO. TTOLvra x^'^'- twi'5' vireprepov.
" The solar myth theory was especially advocated by Max
Miiller in his various books and articles. Most of the older
writers on mythology, e. g. in the earlier articles of Roscher's
I
376 NOTES [pp. 32-35
Lexikon, accept it as an established dogma. There can be no
reasonable doubt that the celestial phenomena of sun, moon,
and stars exercised a powerful influence on popular imagi-
nation.
^® Dionysus came into Greece probably from Thrace and
Macedon about the tenth century b. c. e. By the sixth century
there was no Greek city in which he was not worshiped. As
far as any center of his worship existed, it may be placed in
Boeotia. Cf. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, chs. iv. and v.
"We find Aphrodite firmly established among Greek gods
from the earliest times. It may be that the Semitic or Oriental
connections which have been found for her (cf. Roscher, s. v.
Aphrodite, Roscher's Lex. i. 390-406) are due to the readiness
with which she was associated with Oriental female deities.
That fact, however, is itself significant.
^The merchants of Citium formally introduced into Athens
the worship of their local Aphrodite; Dittenberger, Syll. no.
551. Sarapis, Isis, and Sabazios also early found their way
into Athens.
^ The statement that dae^eia was a negative offense, that
its gravamen consisted not in introducing new divinities, but
in neglecting the established ones, is made by Wilamowitz
(Antigonus von Karyst, p. 277). It is, however, only quali-
fiedly true. The Greeks found purely negative conceptions
difficult. Impiety, or do-e'^eia, was not the mere neglect, but
such a concrete act as would tend to cause the neglect of the
established gods. The indictment against Socrates charged
the introduction of Kaipa dai/novia, but only because that intro-
duction threatened the established form. The merchants of
Citium (cf. previous note) might introduce their foreign
deity with safety. No such danger was deemed to lie.
^The stories of Lycurgus (II. vi. 130) and of Pentheus
(Euripides, Bacchae) are a constant reminder of the diffi-
culties encountered by Dionysus in his march through Greece.
Then, as has always been the case in religious opposition, the
opponents of the new forms advanced social reasons for their
hostility (Eurip. Bacchae, 220-225).
I
pp. 35-42] NOTES 377
^ The Egyptian origin of the Eleusinian mysteries is main-
tained especially by Foucart, Les grands mysteres d'Eleusis.
'^^ The Homeric Hymn to Demeter dates from the close of
the seventh century b. c. e., perhaps earlier. In it we find
the Eleusinian mysteries fully developed, and their appeal is
Panhellenic.
" Homer certainly knows of no general worship of the
dead. But the accessibility of the dead by means of certain
rites is attested not only by the Ne'/cuia (Od, x. 517-520), but
by the slaughter of the Trojan captives at the funeral of
Patroclus (II. xxiii. 174). The poet's own attitude to the
latter is not so important as his evidence of the custom's
existence.
^® In later times any dead man was Tipcos, and his tomb a
vpvop; C. I. G. 1723, 1781-1783.
" The kinship of gods and men was an Orphic dogma,
quickly and widely accepted. Pindar formulated it in the
words ev avbpuv, tv Oewv yevos ; Nem. vi. i. Cf . Plato, Timaeus,
41 C.
'' Od. iv. 561.
^ Hesychius, s. v. 'Ap/jLodlov fieXos.
Chapter II
ROMAN RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS
^ Adolph Bastian presents his theory of Grundideen in his
numerous writings. It has, however, been found difficult, if
not impossible, even for anthropologists to present the details
of that theory with either definiteness or clearness.
^ Cf. W. Warde Fowler, Roman Religion, in Hasting's Dic-
tionary of Religions (consulted in proof).
'The relation, or the contrast, between magic and religion
has been a constant subject of discussion since the publication
of Tylor's Primitive Culture. For the present the contrast
stated in the text may suffice.
* Sei deo set deivae sac (C. I. L. vi. no) ; sive deo sive deae
{ibid, iii, 1212) ; sei deus sei dea (ibid. xiv. 3572). Cf. also Not.
d. Sc. 1890, p. 218.
378 NOTES [pp. 44-50
' Such a story as that of Mars and Nerione may belong to
genuine Roman mythology. The enormous spread of Latin
translations of Greek poems, and the wide popularity of Greek
plays, rapidly drove out all the native myths v^hich had at-
tained no literary form.
"Livy V. xxi. 3, 5.
' Macrob. Sat. III. ix. 7-^.
* The authenticity of this particular application of the form-
ula has been questioned; Wissowa, s. v. Evocatio (deorum) ;
Pauly-Wiss. vi. 1153. The proofs that the formula has been
extensively modified are not conclusive. The evocati di
received a special form of ritual at Rome. Festus, p. 237, a, 7.
Cf. Verg. Aen. ii. 351-352.
' For the Dioscuri, Livy, II. xx. 13. Apollo, Livy, III. Ixiii. 7 ;
IV. XXV. Both introductions are placed in the fifth century b.
c. E. The historical account of the reception of Cybele and
of Asclepius, Livy, Per. ix. and xxix. 10 seq.
^^ The lectisternium is generally conceded to be of Greek
origin. The ceremony consisted in formally dressing a
banquet table and placing thereat the images of some gods,
w^ho reclined on cushions and were assumed to be sharing in
the repast.
"Cic. De Nat. Deor. i. 119.
Chapter III
GREEK AND ROMAN CONCEPTS OF RACE
*The extreme of racial fanaticism will be found in H. S.
Chamberlain, Grundziige des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.
^Aristophanes, Acharn. 104, laovav and the Schol. ad loc:
on iravras tovs EWrjuas 'Idovas iKoXovv ol pdp^apoi.
' After the defeat of the Persians, the victors set up a tripod
at Delphi, about the stem of which a bronze serpent was
coiled. About this serpent ran an inscription, rotSc roi/TroXe^oi'
iiroXefieov, " The following took part in the war." Then
follows the list of the Greeks beginning with the Lacedemon-
ians. Here, if anywhere, a collective term denoting the com-
mon origin of all these nations might have been expected.
pp. Sl-SSl NOTES 379
*Eunpide?, Iph. ul. 1400; Aristotle, Pol. I. ii. 4; w$ ravrd
<f)vaei pdp^apov Kal dovXov '6v.
' Isocrates, Pan. 181.
® Demosthenes, In Mid. 48 (xx. 530).
' Daniel xi. 3.
* Besides the flings at barbarian descent scattered throughout
the orators (cf. Dem. In Steph. A. 30), Hellenic origin was
required for all the competitors in the Olympian games. He-
rodotus, V. 22.
^ The secretary of Appius Caecus was a certain Gnaeus
Flavins, grandson of a slave, who became not merely curule
aedile, but one of the founders of Roman jurisprudence.
(Livy, IX. xlvi.). Likewise the Gabinius that proposed the Lex
Tabellaria of 139 b. c. e. was the son or grandson of a slave,
vernac natus or nepos. (Cf. the newly discovered fragment
of Livy's Epitome, Oxyr. Pap. iv. loi f.) The general state-
ment is made by the emperor Claudius (Tac. Ann. xi. 24), in
a passage unfortunately absent in the fragments of the actual
speech discovered at Lyons.
^* Cicero, In Pisonem (Fragments 10-13). Aeschines, In
Ctes, 172.
" Muttines, a Liby-Phoenician (cf. Livy, XXI. xxii. 3,
Libyphoenices mixtuni Punicum Afris genus), becomes a
Roman citizen {ibid. XXVI. v. 11).
'^ Ennius ap. Cic. de. Or. iii. 168.
" Mucins defines gentiles, i. e. true members of Roman
gentes, as follows (ap. Cic. Topica, vi. 29) : Gentiles sunt inter
se qui eodem nomine sunt, qui ab ingenuis oriundi sunt, quorum
maiorum nemo servitutem servivit, qui capite non sunt de-
minuti. Literally taken, that would exclude descendants of
former slaves to the thousandth generation. But Pliny de-
mands somewhat less even for Roman knights. The man is
to be ingenuus ipse, patre, avo paterno (H. N. XXXIII. ii. 32).
'* Gallic was still spoken in southern Gaul in the fourth
century c. e., Syriac at Antioch in the time of Jerome, and
Punic at Carthage for centuries after the destruction of the
city.
^° The racial bond upon which modern scientific sectaries
lay such stress was constantly disregarded in ancient and
38o
NOTES
[pp. 58-63
modern times. The Teutonic Burgundians found an alliance
with the Mongol Avars against the Teutonic Franks a per-
fectly natural thing.
Chapter IV
SKETCH OF JEWISH HISTORY BETWEEN NEBU-
CHADNEZZAR AND CONSTANTINE
* The Carduchi. Taochi, Chalybes, Phasiani (Xenophon, An.
IV. iii. 6), make friends with the Greek adventurers, or oppose
them on their own account without any apparent reference
to the fact that the army of the Ten Thousand was part of a
hostile force recently defeated by their sovereign,
* Herodotus, vii. 89: Trapeixovro 5e avras (sc. tcls rpirjpeas) otde,
^oiviKcs fxkv avv l^vpotai roiai ev tt] HaXaicrTivij^ and he later
defines the name specifically (ibid.): rijs de Hvpias tovto tI
X(^pf-ov /cat TO fiixP'- AlyvTTTOv irav HaXaiffTiur] KoKeerai.
^ Aramaic Papyri Discovered at Assuan, edited by Sayce
and Cowley, London, 1906. Aramaische Papyri . . . . zu Ele-
phantine, ed. Sachau, Leipzig, 191 1.
* Josephus, Antiquities, XI. vii. Reference to the same
incident in Eusebius, Chron. (01. 103), Syncellus (486, 10),
and Orosius (iii. 7) depends upon Eusebius. The general
statement of pseudo-Hecataeus (ap. Joseph, in Ap. i. 22) is,
of course, worthless as evidence.
Ochus was especially noted for his sacrilege. (Cf. Aelian,
N. A. X. 23).
^ After the death of Antiochus Sidetes, in 129 b. c. e., the
various occupants or claimants of the Syrian throne are
scarcely to be distinguished by nickname or number. They
are uniformly imbeciles or puppets, and the last of them,
Antiochus XIII, dies miserably at the hands of a Beduin
sheik.
' In the Talmud John Hyrcanus is always ^i:in jriD pnin\
but Alexander is "]^Dn ^J**- On the coins John styles himself
High Priest ; but Jannai, on both his Hebrew and Greek coins,
bears the title of King, l^on jriJin"* ^^^ AXe^dpdpov ^acriXeus,
Cf. Madden, Coins of the Jews. We have no record that the
pp. 67-78] NOTES 381
royal title was specifically bestowed upon Jannai, either by
the Seleucids or by the people. It is therefore likely that it
was assumed without such authorization. The high-priesthood,
on the other hand, was duly conferred upon Simon and his
descendants.
Chapter V
INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE JEWS DURING
THE PERSIAN PERIOD
* Cf. especially the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, in
the editions of Kautzsch or Charles.
'That the name is Sira and not Sirach, as it appears in the
LXX, is generally accepted. It was the practice of Greeks to
put a final X to foreign names to indicate that they were
indeclinable. Cf. 'Iwo-tjx (Luke iii. 26) for Jose.
^ Ecclesiasticus xlviii. 24.
* Job iv. 7 seq.
Chapter VI
THE FIRST CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW
* Hvpios means scarcely more than " Oriental " in Aeschylus
(Persae, Si, 1.vpiov apua; and Ag. 1312, Hvpiov dyXd'Ca/na) .
^Except Hittite and Amorite, these names have no non-
Biblical occurrence.
^ Caphthor is rendered Cappadocia in the LXX (Amos ix.
7), for no better reason, it may be, than the similarity between
the first syllables. The Keftiu ships of the Egyptian monu-
ments are scarcely other than Mycenean, and if they came
from Crete, Minoan (Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt,
ii. 492). That the Philistines are of Cretan origin is, in the
absence of monumental sources, a pure theory. It fits in well,
however, with what we do know of them.
^ The Jews were commanded by Ezra to put away their
"strange wives" (Ezra x. 10) for the specific reason that the
latter incited them to idolatry. Instances of intermarriage
occur in the papyri from Elephantine (see ch. IV., n. 3).
382 NOTES [pp. 78-83
^ Datis and Artaphernes commanded the Persian troops
defeated at Marathon, 490 b. c, e. Mardonius was defeated
at Plataea in 479.
* Joel iii. 6. There is nothing in the extant Book of Joel
inconsistent with a pre-Exilic date. Such slave raids as the
Phoenicians are here accused of making, the Greeks made
freely in Homeric times, and Greek merchants were already
in every mart. In the famous picture of a golden age in Isaiah,
Jewish captives are to be assembled " from Assyria, Egypt —
and from the islands of the sea" (Isaiah xi. 11), a passage
indubitably pre-Exilic. The " islands of the sea," however,
are obviously Greek.
^ In the lexicon of Stephen of Byzantium (s. v.) we read
Si'pot Koivov ovojxa iroWHov edvwv^ Strabo, writing in the time of
Augustus, includes most of the nations of Asia Minor, such as
the Cappadocians, etc., under that term (xvi. 2).
^ The famous Harpy-tomb from Xanthus in Lycia, now in
the British Museum, dates from the sixth century. It is, how-
ever, so highly developed a work that it presupposes a long
history of mutual artistic influence between Greece, Ionia, and
Lycia.
' One of the magnificent sarcophagi found in 1887 at Sidon
by Hamdi Bey. They are all published in sumptuous form by
Hamdi Bey and Reinach, Une necropole royale a Sidon, Paris,
1892. An excellent and convenient description may be found
in Hans Wachtler, Die Bliitezeit der griechischen Kunst im
Spiegel der Reliefsarcophage, Teubner, 1910 (Aus Natur u.
Gcisteswelt, no. 272).
^^ Strato, king of Sidon in 360 b. c. e. Athen. xii. 531. Cf.
Gerostratos of Arados at about the same time.
"Herodotus, ii. 104 (cf. ii. 2>7)-
" Aristotle states the fact in the Meteorologica, II. iii. 39, but
does not mention the Jews.
" Textes, p. 8. n. 3.
" In the royal tombs at Sidon excavated by Hamdi Bey (see
above, n. 9.), one of the monuments bears a long Phoenician
inscription of a king of Sidon. It begins : " I, Tabnit, priest
of Astarte and king of Sidonians, son of Eshmunazar, priest
of Astarte, and king of the Sidonians."
pp. 84-94] NOTES 383
" Plato, Euthyphro, 3 C, and passim.
'^Aristotle, Rhetoric, III. vii. 6.
" Reinach, Textes, pp. 10-12. Miiller, Frag. hist, graec. ii.
22s, quoted in Josephus, In Ap. i. 22.
^^ The untutored philosophers of Voltaire's stories were quite
in the mode of the eighteenth century, which had discovered
the " noble savage," and were quite convinced that civilization
was a retrogression from a state of rude and primitive virtue.
It was, further, a convenient cloak behind which one might
criticise an autocratic regime. Hence the flood of " Turkish,"
" Chinese," "Japanese," etc. " Letters," of which Montesquieu's
Lettres Persanes are the most famous. Modern instances are
" The Traveller from Altruria " of Mr. Howells, and Mr. Dick-
inson's " Letters of a Chinese Official."
" Cited by Diogenes Laertius, i. 9 (Miiller, Frag. hist, graec.
ii. 328).
^"Reinach, Textes, p. 13; Miiller, Frag. ii. 437; Clemens Alex,
i. 15. Megasthenes had previously resided at the court of
Sibyrtius, satrap of Arachosia (southern Afghanistan). Ar-
rian, Anab. V. vi. i.
^^ Clemens Alex. Str. v. (Sylberg), pp. 607 seq. Justin Coh.
ad Graecos, 25.
^ Cf . Ecclesiasticus 1. 26 ; Zech. ix. 2,
^^ At Elephantine we learn from the papyri recently from
there (Pap. i, Sachau) that the Jews had a shrine conse-
crated to in", and that in 410 b. c. e. it was destroyed by the
priests of a rival Egyptian temple.
'''* Reinach, Textes, p. 39. Miiller, Frag. iii. 35.
Chapter VII
EGYPT
^This fragment, of the authenticity of which little doubt
can be entertained, must be distinguished from the books attrib-
uted to Hecataeus about the Jews and Abraham. Josephus
uses both in his "Defense" against Apion (i. 22 seq.), but
their authenticity was questioned even in ancient times (cf.
Herennius Philo, cited by Origenes, C. Cels. i. 15 ; Reinach,
384 NOTES [pp. 96-105
Textes, p. 157). They are almost certainly Jewish works of
the first century b. c. e.
The text of the real Hecataeus (Reinach, Textes, p. 14 seq.)
is anything but certain. We have it only in a long citation by
Diodorus, xl. 3. This book of Diodorus, however, has dis-
appeared, and is found only in the Bibliotheca made by the
Byzantine patriarch Photius in the ninth century c. e. (cod.
244).
^ There were in Egypt a number of colonies of military
settlers. They are distinguished by certain privileges, and,
in legal terminology, by the term rijs iTriyovijs, placed after the
words of nationality. Just as there are Uepaai ttjs iiriyovijs, so
there are 'lovdaloi ttjs imyovr]?. In the Hibeh Papyri, i. 96, of
259 B. c. E., we read an agreement between the Jew Alexander,
son of Andronicus, decurion in the troop of Zoilus, and
Andronicus, a Jew rijs iiriyourjs^ The groom Daniel (?) in a
papyrus of the second century b. c. e. (Grenfell, An Alex-
andrian Erotic Fragment and Other Papyri, no. 43.) and the
farm laborer Teuphilus (Grenf ell-Hunt, Fayum Towns and
their Papyri, no. 123) are also humble men, and probably in the
same stage of cultivation as other men of their calling.
^Elephantine Pap. (ed. Sachau), no. 6.
* Osiris appears as a theophoric element, not only in Egyptian
names and in those of Grecized Egyptians, but also in purely
Phoenician names, and joined to Semitic elements. So Osir-
shamar, from Malta, and Osiribdil, from Larnaca (Notice des
Mon. Phen du Louvre, nos. 133, 162).
'Reinach, Textes, pp. 20 seq. Miiller, Frag. ii. 511-616.
' Tac. Hist. V. ii.
' Reinach, Textes, p. 362. Photius Bibl. no. 279.
Chapter VIH
JEWS IN PTOLEMAIC EGYPT
* Naucratis was founded, on the Canopic mouth of the Nile,
about 550 B. c. e.
^ However completely oligarchical in practice the govern-
ment became, the sovereignty of the demos was recognized in
theory. In the ancient doom ascribed to Lycurgus (Plutarch,
pp. I07-II51 NOTES 385
Lye. 6). which may be said to form the constitution of Sparta,
occur the words dd/uno 5e rav KvpLav r\ixev Kai Kparos.
^ Frankel, Inschriften, v. Perg. no. 5, 18 ct passim.
* Mitteis und Wilcken, Grundziige und Chrestomathie der
Papyruskunde, I. v. i, pp. 14 seq.
^ Mitteis-Wilcken, op. cit. p. 15.
" Xenophon, De Reditibus, ii. 4-7.
'Josephus often refers to the Jews of Alexandria as oi kv
AXe^avdpeia 'lovdaioi (Ant. XIII. iii. 4) or oi iv ' AXe^avdpeia
KaTOLKovuTos '\ov5aioi (Ant. XIV. vii. 2), but he refers similarly
to the Greeks there (Ant. XVIII. viii. i), and plainly under-
stands KaroLKeiv simply as " inhabit." The question is fully
discussed in Contra Ap. ii. 5, where the general statement is
made that Jews might and did become Alexandrian citizens,
but that Egyptians were at first excluded.
* Jewish MaK^boves, Berliner Griechische Urkunden (B. G.
U.), iv. 1068 (62). In other classes of citizenship, B. G. U.
iv. 1140; iv. 1151, 7. For humbler classes of Jews cf. ch. VII.,
n. 2. A Jewish house-slave is manumitted in Oxyrhyncus Pap.
ix. 1205.
^ The discussion is fully set forth by Brandis, s. v. Arabar-
ches in the Pauly-Wissowa Realenzyklopadie, ii. 342. The word
" alabarch " or " arabarch " impressed the Romans somewhat
as " mogul " impresses the English, and was used with the
same jocular intent. Cic. ad Att. II. xvii. 3. Juvenal, Satires,
i. 130.
" Apuleius, Met. xi. 30. Drexler in Roscher's Lexikon Myth.,
s. V. Isis, ii. 409 seq. gives a list of the cities through which the
worship of Isis spread.
" Sarapis was not Osiris-Apis, but a deity of Sinope in Asia
Minor, duly " evoked " into Alexandria by Ptolemy. The
matter is left an open question by Cumont, Les religions orien-
tales dans le paganisme romain, p. 112, but the general con-
sensus of opinion is in favor of the theory just mentioned.
The opposition referred to in the text was less an aggressive
one than it was an assertion of the distinction between Greeks
and Egyptians. It broke down with the fourth Ptolemy, and
Sarapis was more or less officially identified with Osiris.
25
386 NOTES [pp. 1 15-136
" Alexandronesus. Cf . Reinach, in Melanges Nicolle, p.
451 ; Pap. of Magdola, n. 35.
"Greek Pap. of the Brit. Mus. iii. 183, the apxovres ' lovdalcou
vpoaei'xvs pay their water tax.
'* B. G. U. iv. n. 562.
" The cartouches representing the Ptolemies contain all the
royal titles of the Pharaohs.
" Mitteis-Wilcken, Grundziige und Chrestomathie, 1. p. 42.
Chapter IX
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST GREEK CULTURE IN
PALESTINE
^ Ecclesiasticiis xxxi. 12-30; vi. 2-4.
'Cf. ch. III., n. 14.
' A full bibliography is given in Schiirer, Geschichte der
Juden\ iii. 472 seq.
* Flinders Petrie Pap. iii. 31, g, 13.
^ By Mishnic tradition Antigonus was a pupil of Simon the
Just (Abot i. 3). A later legend makes him the founder of
the Sadducees (Abot R. N. v.). The saying of Antigonus is:
" Be not like servants who minister to their master for the
sake of a reward, but be like servants who minister to their
master without the expectation of reward, and let the fear
of Heaven be upon you."
^ Andronicus (Hibeh Pap. i. 96), Helenus and Trypho (B.
G. U. iv. 1 140), Dionysius (Dittenberger, Syll. no. 73).
^ Cf. Oesterley's edition of Ecclesiasticus, pp. xxiv-xxv.
^Josephus, Ant. XII. iv.
"Abot i. 4; Shab. 46 a; Eduy. viii. 4; Pes. 15 a.
Chapter X
ANTIOCHUS THE MANIFEST GOD
* Polybius, XXVI. i. I : 'Aptloxos 6 'E7rLcf>avi]S fih KXrjdeis
EircfjLavijS 8' e/c tiop irpd^eccu ovofiacdeis. Cf. also Athenaeus, V.
5 (193), and x. 10 (439)-
'Ptolemy Euergetes II (Athenaeus, x. 10, 438 D).
pp. 136-145I NOTES 387
^ It is usual to speak of the Seleucid kingdom as Syria. That,
however, conveys a wholly wrong impression of either the pre-
tensions of the house or the actual extent of its dominion. Se-
leucus himself actually maintained his authority within what is
now Hindustan and was styled " king of Asia," where he was
not called simply "the king" as Alexander and the Persians
had been before him. Even when Antiochus the Great gave up
all his Asiatic possessions north of the Taurus, he did not re-
nounce his claim to the Persian and Oriental patrimony of
Alexander.
^ Zeitschr. d. deut. morg. Gesell. xxiii. 371 ; Noldeke, Die
sem. Spr. 41 f . ; Zeitschr. f. Assyr. vi. 26. Cf. also Gardner,
Greek and Scythic Kings of Bactria and India.
^ The full title is Geos E7ri.(paur}s, as it appears upon coins.
® The (XTparrjyos iwl to. oirXa^ i. e. " general of infantry," was
at that time practically equivalent to the chief magistracy.
Athenian coins of the year 175 b. c. e. bear his name and
the elephant which was the heraldic emblem of his house.
Reinach, Rev. d. et. gr. 1888, 163 f.
'Josephus, Ant. XII. v.
* The titles d'yopdvoixos and dr]fjLapxos are translations of
" aedilis " and " tribunus," which Antiochus sought to transfer
to his capital. Polyb. XXVI. i. 5-6. Livy XLI. xx.
''Livy (loc. cit.), Polyb. (loc. cit.), Athenaeus, x. 438 D and
E.
" Hybristas is mentioned in Livy XXXVII. xiii. 12.
"Polyb. XXXI. xi. 3; Josephus, Ant. XI. ix.
''I Mace. i.
'^ Cf . ch. I., n. 22.
" Cf. the article Druidae, Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzykl.
'' Isocrates Nicocles (III), 54. King Nicocles of Salamis
in Cyprus, the type and exemplar of a benevolent despot, states
to his subjects: eraipeias ixt] iroieiade /nrjTe (twoSovs avev T-qs ifiijs
yvwfjLTjs. at yap TOLavrac cvaTdaeis iv jxev rals dWais TroXireiais
irXeoj/eKTOvaip, ev be tolls /AOJ'ap^t'ats Ktubvvevovcnv.
^"Jerome in Dan. xi. 21 f.
" So the Spartans actively assisted the oligarchical party in
Megara, Argos, Sicyon, and Achaea (Thuc. iv. 74; v. 81; v.
82).
I
388 NOTES [pp. 149-155
Chapter XI
THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA
' Cumont, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme remain,
gives the best and clearest account of the spread of these
foreign cults. The Cabiri came from Samothrace. They were
generally referred to as Oeot /xeydXoi, and are found in many
parts of the empire.
^ Athenian criminal statutes often contain in the penalty
clause Kal to yeuos avrov. Cf. Glotz, La solidarite de la famille
dans le droit Ath. Cf. for Teos C. I. G. 3044.
^ Homer, Odys. xi. 489-491.
* Frequently pictured relief (Gardner, Greek Sculpt, p. 136)
formerly in the Sabouroff Coll. PI. i., Ath. Mitth. 1877. Taf.
xx-xxiv.
"II. iii. 243-244; V. 638-651 ; xviii. 117-119.
' Cf. the translation of Menelaus, ch. I, notes 28, 29.
' Hymn in Dem. 480-482.
^ Ben Sira knows of no life after death except Sheol. Per-
haps it is better to say that he refuses to acknowledge any.
His repeated affirmations have the air of consciously repudiat-
ing a doctrine advanced by others. The author of Wisdom
(iii. 4) is sure of an immortality of the elect. It is in the
apocryphal Hterature generally, in Enoch, the Testaments of
the Patriarchs — most of them written in the first century
B. c. E. — that the scattered and contradictory references to a
future life are to be found.
^ Josephus, Wars, II. viii. 14. His words are {ol HaddovKaioi)
xj/vxv^ re ttjv biaixov7]v Kal ras Ka6' Adov rijucwplas Kai Tifxas
avaipovci. The passages in Josephus are our only contemporary
authority for the sects and their differences ; and Josephus was a
Pharisee. The word avaipovcL would in this context naturally
have the meaning " deny," but it might also simply indicate that
the Sadducean belief on the subject was, in his opinion, so
vague or so qualified as to render their whole transcendental
scheme ineffectual. It is, however, more natural to give the
word its dialectic sense (Cf. Plato, Rep. 533 c).
"Joseph. Ant. XIII. x. 10. Kid. 43 a.
pp. 156-160] NOTES 389
'^ The vision of a Messianic age in Isaiah ii. 4, and Micah
iv. I, expressly includes the gentiles. This is the more im-
portant as it is highly likely that both Micah and Isaiah are here
quoting an ancient and widely-accepted prophecy.
^"■"' There is no direct evidence about the extent of proselytiz-
ing in pre-Maccabean times. But there are two forms of
proselytizing which always seemed natural and even inevitable
to a man of ancient times. The slave, and the stranger actu-
ally resident under the roof of a head of a household, were,
however foreign in blood, practically members of that house-
hold, and it was a small step when they were brought formally
into it by appropriate ceremonies. So the first Biblical
reference to circumcision especially notes that not merely
Abraham but all his household, the slaves born there and those
bought of strangers, were circumcised (Gen. xvii. 23, 27).
The 1^, fxeroiKos, the sojourning stranger, is expressly held
to the observance of the religious prohibitions. Ex. xii. 43 ;
Lev. xvii. 12. And the relative frequency with which such a
stranger became a full proselyte is indicated by Ex. xii. 48.
and Num. ix. 14. It is true that the i^j or " stranger in blood "
is treated with extreme rigor by Nehemiah, xiii, 30, but it is
this same ijj who is referred to as a proselyte in Deutero-
Isaiah (Is. Ivi. 3, 6).
^=*Ab. R. Nat. ii. I.
" Josephus, Ant. XV. viii.
'' Josephus, Wars IV. iv. ; VII. viii.
^"^ Cf. Catullus, LXIII. The archigallus was not permitted
to be chosen from Roman citizens till the time of Claudius.
^^ This genre seems to have first taken literary form at the
hands of Bion of Borysthenes, a pupil of Crates, who was
himself a pupil of Diogenes.
^^ Wisdom of Solomon xiv. 12-14. Cf . also the entire
thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Wisdom.
^^ In Dan. x. 13-20 angels, or " princes," are the patrons of
the various nations, as also in the Testaments of the Patr.
(Test. Naph. 9). That fact of itself indicates a belief in the
reality of the divine protectors of the heathen nations. And
the "devils," Qt-j (Deut. xxxii. 17), and on^r^^ (Lev. xvii.
7), are very likely the local gods.
390 NOTES [pp. 160-168
^° Philo, De Specialibus Legibus, ch. 7.
^ We have already noted the ancient prophecy cited in Is.
ii. 4 and Micah iv. i. The fullest statement of this universalist
aspiration is in Malachi i. 11, and i. 14.
Chapter XII
THE OPPOSITION
* The Messenians also expelled the Epicureans (Athen. xii.
547), and Antiochus (VI) Dionysius, or rather Tryphon in
his name, expelled all philosophers from Antioch and all Syria
(Athen. ibid.). The latter document has been questioned by
Radermacher, Rh. Mus. N. F. Ivi. (1901), 202, but on insuffi-
cient grounds. It is probably genuine, but the king referred
to is uncertain. It will be remembered that the Epicurean
Philonides claimed to have converted Epiphanes and to have
been a favorite of Demetrius (Cronert, Stzb. Berl. (1900), 943,
and Usener Rh. Mus. N. F. Ivi. (1901), 145 seq.) Alexander
Balas professed Stoicism.
^Josephus, Ant. XVIII. ix.
^ Dio Cassius, Iviii. 32; Ens. Chron. ii. 164. The account in
its details is not free from doubt.
*Josephus, Ant. XIV. x.
° Senatusconsultum de Bacch. C. I. L. i. 43, n. 196. Bruns
Pontes, n. 35, 11. 14-16.
* Cf. the instances cited in Cumont, Les rel. or. dans le pag.
rom., p. 122, and the articles on Isis in the Pauly-Wissowa
Realenzykl, the Dar.-Saglio Diet., and Roscher's Lexikon.
Mn Greek Sta^oX-'. Cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric, II. iii. 30; Syri-
anus, In Hermogenem, ii. (134, 3). Of this dia^oXri, a favorite
form was eTTTypeatr/ios. " mockery " (Arist. op. cit. II. ii. 3), and
" Commonplaces," kolvoI tottoL. on the subject are cited in
Aristotle {op. cit. III. xv. i).
^ Reinach, Textes, p. 49.
** Eratosthenes was head of the Alexandrian Academy.
" Apollo is the god named and ascribed to Dora, which, as
Josephus remarks, is not in Idumaea at all. Nor does Apollo
appear as the god of Dora on the coins of that city. Accord-
pp. 169-174] NOTES 391
ing to Josephus (Ant. XV. vii. 9) the Idumean god was named
Koze, who might of course have been identified with the Seleu-
cid patron Apollo. It may be a title connected with p^p
(Josh. X. 24, Micah iii. i, 9).
^^ An inscription forbidding the approach of gentiles has
been found at Jerusalem, and is now in Constantinople:
ix7]6iva dWoyevi] elaTropevecrdaL evrbs tov irepl to lepbv Tpv<pdKTOv /cat
irepi^oXov' os d' du Xrjcpd'l eaur(f atrios ecTTai did to i^aKoXovdelu
ddvaTov.
^'' Reinach, Textes, p. 56. For an estimate of the importance
of Posidonius for his time, cf. Wendland, Hellenist. Kult. p.
60 seq. and 134 seq.
^^ Molo in Reinach, Textes, p. 60 seq. Damocritus, ihid.
p. 121.
" Reinach, Textes, p. 131.
^^ Plutarch, Moralia, ii. 813 ; Reinach, Textes, p. 139.
^^ Pseud-Opp. Cyn. iv. 256. Lact. Inst. i. 21-27.
" Cf. also Aelian Var. Hist. xii. 34. Strabo, xv. 1057.
'' Pseudo-Plut. Sept. Sap. Con. 5. Apul. Met. xi. 6. Ael. Hist.
An. X. 28.
^^ Juvenal, Sat. xv. 1-3. Q^us nescit Volusi Bithynice qualia
demens Aegyptos portenta colat? crocodilon adorat pars haec,
ilia pavet saturam scrpentibus ib'in; cf. also latrator Anubis
(Verg. Aen. viii. 698, Prop. iv. 11, 41).
^° It is not to be inferred that ancient historians as such were
unreliable. In those times, as in ours, the value of an his-
torical narrative must be judged by estimating the character
and capacity of the writer and the means at his disposal. Many
modern historians have been special pleaders, some consciously,
like Froude and von Treitschke, and most have been impelled
by personal sympathies and antipathies of many kinds.
It is, however, a fact that the writers of antiquity con-
sciously used falsehoods in what they believed to be details,
if they supposed that they could thereby more forcibly present
the essential character of a transaction, or better enforce a
moral lesson. The extreme danger of such a practice need
not be insisted on. nor did all writers engage in it. Bui
Panaetius and Cicero (Cic. De Orat. ii. 59; De Off. ii. 14),
392 NOTES [pp. 175-183
Quintillian (ii. 26-39) and the Church Fathers, unhesitatingly
defend it (Eusebius, Praep. Evan,, John Chrysost. De Sac.
i. 6-8, Clemens Alex. Strom, vii. 9).
^^ Polybius shares the general estimate of Syrians (XVI. Ix.
3), but that does not prevent him from acknowledging the
loyalty and devotion of the people of Gaza, whom he classes
as Syrians.
Chapter XIII
THE OPPOSITION IN ITS SOCIAL ASPECT
^ Horace, Sat. I. v. 100.
^Apuleius, Florida, i. 6.
^ Anthol. Pal. v. 160. Reinach, Textes, p. 55.
* Fg. hist. gr. iii. 196 ; Reinach, Textes, p. 42.
''Journ. Hell. Stud. xii. 233 seq.
* Pausanius, X. xii. 9; Suidas, s. v. ^afi^rjeri; Sibyllina, iii. 818.
^ Valerius Maximus, I. iii. 3.
* Shab. vi. 2, 4, but cf. Demai iii. 11, and Erub. i. 10.
" Cf. above, ch. VII., n. 2.
The letter of Dolabella to the Ephesians, cited in Josephus,
Ant. XIV. x. 12, makes it perfectly clear that if the Sabbath
restriction had actually been enforced in the sense indicated.
Jews would have been wholly useless for the army. But we
have seen that they not merely fought their own battles, but
engaged freely as mercenaries. We can therefore understand
the passage in Josephus only in the sense of an attempt to
escape conscription with the other Ephesians, by alleging an
extreme application of the Sabbath principle.
The other passage in Josephus (XVIII. iii.) is in direct con-
tradiction with other sources, and will be discussed later.
" Saguntum, Livy, XXI. xiv. Abydus, Livy, XXXI. xvii.
Cf. also Livy XXVIII. xxiii.
" Cic. De Nat. Deor. ii. 28, 71, his fabulis spretis ac repudi-
atis
*^ Reinach, Textes, p. 17. Cf. above, p. 93.
" The word itself does not occur in Homer. However, Od.
ix. 478, the taunt is flung by Odysseus, the blind monster,
cxerXi', iirei ^eiuovs ovx o,^€0 aip ivl o'iku)
icrOifxevai rCt) ere Zeus riaaro kuI deoi dWoi.
pp. 183-190] NOTES 393
" Arrian, Anab. I. ix. 9-10.
^^11. iii. 207; Od. iii. 355; vii. 190.
^"Plutarch, Lycurgus, xxvii. ; Ael. V. Hist. xiii. 16; Thuc.
i. 144-
"Juvenal, Sat. xv. 93-131.
^^ Cf. the undoubted instances of the Gallus-Galla, Graecus-
Graeca sacrifices at Rome. See article, Gallus et Galla, in
Pauly-Wissowa Realenzykl, especially the unwilling testimony
of Livy, XXII. Ivii. 6.
^^ The Tauric Artemis was considered a barbarian goddess,
but received the veneration of Greeks, and of her we read,
Eur. Iph. Taur. 384, avrr] 8k dvaiais riderai (3potokt6vois. The sac-
rifices of the Trojan captives at the funeral of Patroclus, the
sacrifice of Polyxena, Astyanax, and Iphigenia are sufficient
evidences of the familiarity of the practice to Greeks. An
historical instance is the atonement-sacrifice of Epimenides
at Athens. Diog. Laert. i. iii, 112; Athen. xiii. 602 C.
^" For the Gauls, cf. Strabo, iv. 198; the Thracians, vii. 300;
the Carthaginians, Verg. Aen. i. 525.
^ The question of the Molech sacrifices in Palestine is too
uncertain and complicated to be treated here in full. Doubt-
less some Jews at various times sacrificed to Molech ; but
some Jews in Greek times sacrificed to heathen gods, or, at
any rate, adored them while still professing Judaism, and
throughout the Middle Ages individual Jews indulged in super-
stitious practices severely reprobated by the rabbis. The pas-
sage in Jeremiah (xxxii. 35) does not necessarily imply that
those who took part in these rites deemed themselves to be
worshiping Jehovah.
^ Reinach, Textes, p. 121.
^ Sat. XV. 78-81 and 93 seq.
^ Sat. xiv. 103.
^'' It is a curious and instructive fact that Chinese have
charged Christian missionaries with precisely this same crime,
i. e. of kidnaping and killing children as part of their religious
ceremonies.
394 NOTES [pp. 192-208
Chapter XIV
THE PHILOSOPHIC OPPOSITION
^ Cf. the whole Lucianic dialogue on Images, 459-484, and
Zeus Tragoedus, 654 seq.
* Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, i. 23, 63. Athenag. Supp. xii.
^ Josephus, Contra Ap. ii. ^^y.
^ Euthyphro, viii. 3 (7A).
^ Sophocles, Oed. Rex, 661.
° Cf. ch. XL, n. 19. Also II. Chron. xi. 15. The dHK^ ^^^
mentioned in Psalms cvi. 37 as deities to whom human sacri-
fices are made.
Msocr. Pan. 155-156; Lycurgus, In Leocr. 80-81.
* For the Boeotians cf. the common i5s Boiwria; Pind. 01. vi.
153 ; id. Fr. iv. 9, and Hor. Epp. II. i. 244 ; for Egyptian perHdia,
Val. Max. v. i, 10; for Abdera, Juv. Sat. x. 50; Mart. x. 25,
4 ; for the Cretans, the famous Kp^res ael \pevcTai, Call. Hymn
in Jov. V. 8., a proverb also quoted from Epimenides by Paul,
Ep. ad Tit. i. 13. One may also note in this connection the
Greek proverb, rpia Kdinra KccKiara • KaTnradoKia Kai KprjTT) /cai
KiXt/ci'a.
'•Livy, XXXIV. xxiv. 4.
" Plautus, Rud. V. 50, scelestus, Agrigentinus, urbis proditor.
" Cicero, Pro Fonteio, 14, 30.
^^ Cicero, Pro Scauro, 17, 38.
" Pliny, Hist. Nat. Praef. 25.
" Africanus, ap. Eus. Praep. Ev. x. 10, 490 B, Clemens Alex
Strom, i. 22.
^^ Reinach, Textes, p. 122.
'' Cf. ch. VIIL, n. 14.
" CL ch. XII., n. 12.
^^ Strabo, i. 66; Cic. De Rep. i. 58.
" Cicero, Paradoxon, iii. : otl IVa rd aiJ-aprrifiaTa Parva, inquit,
est res. At magna culpa; nee enim pcccata reriini eventis, sed
vitiis hominum meticnda sunt.
^"^ Cumont, Lcs rej. orient, pp. 157 seq.
pp. 212-226] NOTES 395
Chapter XV
THE ROMANS
^ The first Greek historians to deal with Roman history are
Hieronymus of Cardia and Timaeus, both of the fourth century
B. c. E.
' Pliny, Nat. Hist. HI. Ivii.
^ Psalms of Solomon, ii.
* Livy, XLIX. v. : Syros omnis esse, haud paulo mancipiorum
melius propter servilia ingenia quant militum genus.
'Ci. ch. HI., n. 9.
® Servile origin has been ascribed to such a family as the
Sempronian, and is assumed for the praenomen Servius, as for
the nomen Servilius.
^ Macrob. Saturn. H. i. 13.
^ The reading of the last phrase in the mss. is quod servata,
which is scarcely consistent with the rest of the passage. Ber-
nays, Rh. Mus. 1857, P- 464 seq., conjectured that it was a
Jewish or Christian marginal gloss which found its way into
the text, a supposition by no means to be dismissed as cavalierly
as Reinach does (Textes, p. 241, n. i). A Christian scribe
might easily have been moved by the taunt quani dis cara, to
retort with the triumphant quod servata! It will be remem-
bered that the Christians accepted as part of their own all the
history and literature of the Jews till the birth of Christ, and
resented as attacks upon themselves any slur against the Jews
of pre-Christian times. Cf. the very interesting passage in
Lactantius, Div. inst. iv. 2.
"Cic. In Vat. 5, 12.
^'^ It may be worth while to indicate briefly the relation
between the senatorial authority and the executive power at
Rome. Unless the senate acted at the instance of the magis-
trate himself, a senatusconsultum was an advisory resolution,
passed upon motion and suggesting to the holder of executive
power, or imperium, a certain course of action. The words
were generally: Placet senatui ut A. A., N. N. consules, alter
ambove, si cis videretiir, ilia faciant. In practice, it is true,
such a resolution was almost mandatory. A strong magistrate,
however, or a rash one, might and did disregard it.
396 NOTES [pp. 227-232
While, accordingly, a magistrate might neglect a course of
action prescribed by the senate, there was nothing to hinder
any action on his part (whether or not there was senatorial
authority for it), except the veto power residing in the tribune
or in an equal or superior magistrate. The only restrictions
were made by the laws concerning the inviolability of the
person of a civis Romanus, and of the aerarium.
^^ The contio was a formal assembly of citizens, called by
a magistrate holding imperium. The purpose was generally
to hear projected legislation either favorably or unfavorably
discussed. No one spoke except the magistrate or those whom
he designated. The contio took no action except to indicate
its assent by acclamation, or its dissent equally emphatically.
At the actual legislative assembly, for which the contiones were
preparations, no discussion whatever took place. The law was
presented to be accepted or refused. It will be seen that a
mass of Orientals who less than two years before had been
Aramaic-speaking slaves can scarcely have been a power in
such gatherings as these.
^ Philo, Leg. ad. Gaium, 23.
" The language of the inscriptions in the various Jewish
cemeteries at Rome is almost always Greek, as is that of most
of the monuments in the Christian catacombs. Latin is rare
and generally later. But these monuments belong to Jews who
lived several generations after 63 b. c. e. As far as Palestine
is concerned, both inscriptions and literature leave no doubt
that the masses spoke only Aramaic or Hebrew.
" Caesar, Bell. Gall. IL xxxiii. 7 ; IH. xvi. 4.
^^ Foucart, Mem. sur 1' affranchissement des esclaves.
" Suet. Div. lul. 84, 76, 80.
" The pretensions of the senatorial party to be the only
true Romans were not altogether unfounded. The terms
boni and opiimates which they gave themselves were perhaps
consciously adapted from the /caXoi Kdyadoi of Athens. The
importance of nobilitas as a criterion of true Roman blood
lay in the fact that it attested lineage in a wholly unmistakable
way. We may compare the insistence of Nehemiah upon docu-
mentary evidence of Israelitish blood (Neh. vii. 61, 64).
" Pro Flacco, 15, 36, compared with 26, 62 seq.
pp. 232-239] NOTES 397
^'Cf. ch. XIV., notes 11, 12.
^^ The chief political asset of the triumvirs was the orien-
talized plebs of the city, whose origin and poverty would com-
bine to make them bitterly detest the organized tax-farmers.
Now Crassus, one of the triumvirs, was himself the head of
a powerful financial group. It may be that the tax-farmers
persecuted by Gabinius belonged to a rival organization, or that
Crassus had withdrawn from that form of speculation before
60 B. c. E. In the case of Flaccus, the complaint of the tax-
financier Decianus was a pretext, or else Decianus may have
been forethoughtful enough to have joined the right syndicate.
" Cicero ad Att. ii. 9.
^^ Augustinus, De Civ. Dei, iv. 31, 2.
Chapter XVI
JEWS IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE
^ Myths are understood by modern anthropologists ex-
clusively as a " folk-way," with the effects of single creative
imaginations almost wholly eliminated. However, the better-
known Greek myths are not at all folk-devised. As far as the
Romans are concerned, it has so far been impossible to pick
out a definite story which does not appear to have been derived
from an existing Greek myth by quite sophisticated methods.
^ The phrase referred to is Uhi bene ibi patria, although just
this form of it may not be ancient. However, the idea, thai
a fatherland might brutally ill-use its citizens and still claim
their loyalty, was something that the average Greek scarcely
recognized even in theory. When Socrates propounds some
such doctrine in Plato's Crito, 51 B, he is consciously advocat-
ing a paradox. It was regarded as a noble ideal somewhat
beyond the reach of ordinary men. Its disregard involved no
moral turpitude.
In Cicero, Tusc. v. 37, 108, the phrase runs, Patria est ubicun-
que est bene. That is an evident adaptation of a Greek phrase,
such as the one in Aristoph. Plut. 1151, Trarpls yap ean irda' tV
CLP TrpaTTT] TIS €V.
* Livy, Epit. Ivi. Eunous, the leader, called his followers
^3;^, and himself King Antiochus. Cf. Florus, ii. 7 (iii. 9),
398 NOTES [pp. 240-244
Diodorus fr. xxxiv. 2, 5. Atargatis was the Dea Syria that
played so important a role in the life of the empire.
* The philosophic schools had the usual corporate names of
eiaaos, avuodos, and the like. Or like other corporations they
have a cult name in the plural, oi Aioyeuiarai, oi 'AvmraTpcaTai,
oi UapaiTLaarai (Athen. v. 186). For the International Ath-
letic Union, 17 TrepnroXKrriKT} ^vgtlkt) avvobos, cf. Gk. Pap. in
Brit. Mus. i. 214 seq.
' Cf. ch. III., n. 9.
" Cf. Menippus in Lucian's Icaromenippus, 6 seq. Menippus
does not spare his fellow Cynics {ihid. 16).
' Macrobius, Sat. II. i. 13. The jest has unfortunately not
come down to us.
^The book we know as the "Wisdom of Solomon" is un-
questionably the finest in style and the profoundest in treat-
ment of the Apocrypha. Such passages as i. ; ii. i seq.; ii. 6; iii.
I seq. can hardly have appealed to any but highly cultured men.
® Until the time of Claudius, we are told by John Lydus, no
Roman citizen might actively participate in the rites of Cybele.
Cf. Dendrophori, Pauly-Wissowa, p. 216. Claudius removed
the restriction, perhaps to make Cybele a counterfoil to Isis.
^° The story in Livy, XXXIX., viii. seq. is a case in point.
The abominable excesses which, as Hispala testifies, took place
among the Bacchae {ibid. 13) are almost certainly gross
exaggerations.
This hostility to new-comers was not a sudden departure
from previous usage. Sporadic instances are mentioned in
Livy's narrative. As early as 429 b. c. e., he tells us, Datum
negotium aedilibus ne qui nisi Romani dii neu quo alio more
quam patrio colerentur (Livy, IV. xxx. 11). The notice is of
value as an indication that the general Roman feeling was not
always so cordially receptive as is often assumed.
" Valerius Max. I. iii. 3.
^^ Cf. Cic. ad Att. iii. 15, 4; Asconius ad Pison. 8.
^^ Suetonius, Div. lul. 42. Josephus, Ant. XIV. x. 8. Sue-
tonius {ibid. 84) states that many exterae gentes enjoyed his
favor. The Jews may have been only one group among many.
However, the statement is indirectly made by Suetonius and
p. 247] NOTES 399
directly by Josephus, that they received his special protection
to a striking extent. We have only the political support given
the triumvirs and Caesar personally to fall back upon for a
motive.
" I undertake with some diffidence to revive a conjecture
made before without much success, that the 30th Sabbath
was the Day of Atonement. One remarkable misunderstanding
of the Sabbath institution was that it was a fast-day. When
we consider the number and activity of the Roman Jews, it
seems scarcely credible that so many otherwise well-informed
persons supposed that the Jews fasted once a week. Augustus
in his letter to Tiberius seems to do so (Suet. Aug. 76). Pomp.
Trogus (Justinus), xxxvi. 2, explicitly states it. Cf- also Pet-
ronius (Biicheler, Anth. Lat. Frg. S7) and Martial, iv. 4. But
at least one man, Plutarch, not only knew that it was not so,
but was aware that, if anything, the Sabbath was a joyous
feast-day (Moralia ii., Quaest. Con. v. 2). To this testimony
must be added that of Persius, Sat. v. 182 seq. It is in the
highest degree surprising that Reinach (p. 265, n. 3) could
have accepted the theory that the pallor alluded to is the faint-
ness brought on by fasting. The tunny fish on the plate should
have convinced him of his error. It may be remembered that
fish in all its forms was one of the chief delicacies of the
Romans. Tunny, however, was a very common fish, and one
of the principal food staples of the proletariat.
Persius writes from personal experience. Of the other
writers it is only Pompeius Trogus who makes the unqualified
statement that the Sabbath as such was a fast-day. When
Strabo writes that Pompey is said to have taken Jerusalem
TTjv TTJs ur}(TTeias rj/xepap TTjprjaas (xvi. 40), he is assumed to
have been guilty of the same confusion. But it is not easy
to see why he should have hesitated to say the Sabbath if he
meant the Sabbath. Nor is it so certain that Josephus is
mechanically copying Strabo (Reinach, p. 104. n. i) when
he says (Ant. XIV. iv. 3) that Jerusalem was taken -rrepl rpLrov
(irfva Txi TTjs PTjareias rifiipa. The details of Josephus are vastly
fuller than those of Strabo, and he is not guilty of the latter's
error regarding Jewish observance of the Sabbath in times of
war (Ant. XIV. iv. 2). Besides, the siege lasted several weeks
400 NOTES [p, 247
— more than two months — so that Pompey's manoeuver, if it
depended wholly upon the Sabbath, might have been performed
at once.
Hilgenfeld's supposition (Monatsschrift, 1885, pp. 109-115)
that the day was the Atonement, is better founded than Reinach
would have us think. In the mouth of Josephus, 17 rrjs
prjareias ij/xepa can scarcely have any other sense. And if
Josephus believed that Jerusalem fell on the Kippur, he
believed so from more intimate tradition than the writings of
Strabo.
Now, i] rrjs vTjareias rjfxepa, the great fast of the Jews, must
have been as marked a feature in their life two thousand years
ago as to-day. While all the other feasts have individual nam.es,
it does not appear that this one did. D''"^'li3Dn D"l* (Lev. xxiii.
27 ; LXX, ij/xepa e^iXaa/nov ) seems rather a descriptive term
than a proper name. Josephus (Ant. IV. x.) has no name for
it, although he has for the others. In the Talmud, it is 5<o\
"the Day," fc^ai 5<0r, "the Great Day," i<n"lt^D1V» "the
Great Fast." In Acts xxvii. 9 we meet the phrase 17 prjareia,
''the fast Kar' iioxvf." Similarly in Philo, De Septenario, all the
festivals have names except this, which is referred to simply
as " the Fast." It must be, however, evident that with the insti-
tution of other fasts, v vrjareia would hardly be adequate.
As a distinctive appellation, some other name had to be chosen.
In the Pentateuch the term ( pjiit^ r\2^ ) is used of ordi-
nary Sabbaths (Ex. xxxi. 15, xxxv, 2, Lev. xxiii. 3) as well
as of the Atonement (Lev. xvi. 31, xxiii. 32). But the LXX
expressly distinguishes the application of it to ordinary Sab-
baths from its application to the Atonement. The former, it
renders ad^^ara di^diravais, the latter ad^^ara aa^jSdrwu. This
latter term may therefore be considered the specific designation
of the Atonement Day, and it is so used by Philo, De Septen. 23,
ad^^arov cra/S/Sdrwi', tuv dyicvu dy luirepai (e^dofiades) .
We may, therefore, assume that in the Greek-speaking
Jewish community of Rome, ad^^ara aajSpdrcov, " the Great
Sabbath," was the common designation — or at least a familiar
designation — of the Day of Atonement. In that case it could
scarcely be otherwise than familiar to those who had any
dealings whatever with the Jews.
p. 247] NOTES 401
Fuscus pretends to share a very general observance, and on
the strength of it to be disinclined to discuss any personal
matters with his friend. Can that day have been a simple
Sabbath ? The tone indicates a rarer and more solemn occasion.
Besides, we are definitely told that it is a special Sabbath,
the "thirtieth."
The Jews at that time seem to have reckoned their festivals
by strict lunar months (Josephus, Ant. IV. x.) and their civil
year by the Macedonian calendar. The thirtieth Sabbath, if we
reckon by the Roman calendar, might conceivably have fallen on
the Atonement. By the Macedonian or Athenian it could not
have done so. However, as the Roman calendar was a solar one,
the correspondence of the thirtieth Sabbath with the Atone-
ment can only have been a fortuitous one in a single year.
Tricesima sabbata can hardly apply to that.
It is just possible that the reason for the word "thirtieth"
is to be found in the widely and devoutly pursued astrology
of that time. The number thirty had a certain significance in
astrology, Firmicus Maternus, IV. xvii. 5; xxii. 3. If for one
reason or another the mansio of the moon, which coincided
with the second week of the seventh lunar month (cf. Firm.
Mat. IV. i. seq. for the importance of the moon in astrology),
bore the number thirty, then tricesima sabbata, to initiated
and unmitiated, might bear the portentous meaning required
for the Horatian passage.
Whether that is so or not, the only Sabbath which we know
to have been specially singled out from the rest of the year,
was this crd/S/Sara aa^^aTtov, the Day of Atonement. What-
ever reason there was for calling it the thirtieth, the mere fact
of its being particularly designated makes it likely that Horace
referred to that day.
Nearly every one of the festivals in Tishri has already been
suggested for the phrase, but these results have been reached
by elaborate and intricate calculations, which bring the thirtieth
Sabbath on the festival required. The main difficulty with all
such calculations has been noted. The coincidence can only
have been exceptional, and an exceptional coincidence will not
help us here. Some especially rigorous Jews undoubtedly
fasted every week like the Pharisee in Luke xviii. 11-20, but
that was intended as a form of asceticism. The custom
26
402 NOTES [pp. 247-256
survived in some Christian communities, notably in Rome,
which elevated it almost to a dogma, so that Augustine had to
combat the point with especial vigor. (Ep. xxxvi., and Casu-
lanum, Corp. Scr. Eccl. xxxiv. pp. 33 seq.) It may be interesting
to remember that from a passage of this epistle referring to
this Sabbath fast (xiv. 32) is derived the famous proverb,
" When you are in Rome, do as the Romans do."
'' Sat. I. iv. 18.
"Sat. I. V. 97.
" Apellas is a common name for a slave or freedman. Cic.
ad Fam. vii. 25; C. 1. L. x, 61 14. That a Jew should bear a
name derived from that of Apollo, is not at all strange. Cf.
ch. IX., n. 6.
^^ Cf. Ep. I. vi. I seq. The nil admirari of the first line is
Horace's equivalent for the drapaiia of Epicurus.
" As is stated in the text, the peregrina Sabbata and the
septima festa, which is merely a metrical paraphrase for Sab-
bata, are treated here as of annual occurrence. The word
redcunt itself points to that. It has been suggested in Note
14, that the great annual Sabbath was the Day of Atonement.
If that is referred to here, the application is very natural. The
season of the Tishri festivals coincided in the Mediterranean
with rather severe storms. These generally began after the
Day of Atonement, so that among Jews sailing was rarely
undertaken after that day. This is strikingly shown by Acts
xxvii. 9. But the equinoctial storms, while sufficient to make
a sea-voyage dangerous, do not seem to have caused serious
discomfort on land. The reference, accordingly, must in each
case be understood from its context. In the first the courtship
is to be begun, tu licet incipias, at the great Sabbath, to take
advantage of the exquisite autumn of Italy. In the second, the
voyage is not to be deferred even for this same Sabbath,
which ordinarily marked the danger line of navigation.
^" Vogelstein u. Rieger, Gesch. der Jud. in der Stadt Rom,
p. 39 seq.
^^ Reinach, Textes, p. 259.
'' Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXIX. i. 6. Plaut. Amphitruo, 1013.
^^ Cf. Garrucci, Cimitero .... in Signa Randanini ; F. X.
Kraus, Roma Sott. p. 286 ff. ; Garucci, Storia del arte Cristiana,
VI. tav. 489-491.
pp. 257-269] NOTES 403
Chapter XVII
THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE TILL THE REVOLT
^ Verg. Eel. i. 6-7 ; Georg. i. 503 ; Horace, Odes, I. ii. 43 ; Ovid,
Ex Ponto, ii. 8.
' Xen. An. IV. i. 2-3.
' Cic. ad Att. i. i.
* While notoriously corrupt governors like Cotta (130 b. c.
E.), Cic. Pro Mur. 58, and Aquilius (126 b. c. e.), Cic. Div.
in Caec. 69, were acquitted, a rigidly honest man like Rufus
was convicted under such a charge. Dio Cassius, fr. 97.
' Ditt. Or. inscr. no. 456, 1. 35 ; from Mytilene, 457, 659.
^ The Edict of Caracalla, called the Constitutio Antonina or
Antoniniana, has been known in substance for a long time.
Recently fragments of its exact words in Greek were dis-
covered in a papyrus (Giessen, Pap. II, (P. Meyer), p. 30 seq) :
didoofxi Tols avvd-nacnv ^euois rocs Kara ttju oiKovfieurju TToXiTeiav
Toj/jLaicov jxevovTOS navrbs yevovs TroXLTev/idTcov X'^P'-^ '''^'' ^^SeiTiKicov
The exact effect of the decree is not yet quite clear. It seems
evident that the dcditicii were excluded.
^ Dio Cassius, xxxvi. 6.
* Suet. Aug. 93.
"Josephus, Ant. XIV. x. ; XII. iii. 2.
" The " heterodox Jewish propaganda " is of course Chris-
tianity. The success of Paul and other missionaries in Asia
Minor is best indicated by the churches of Asia to which
Revelations is addressed.
" Horace, Ep. II. ii. 184. The sumptuous present of Aris-
tobulus, which formed part of Pompey's triumphal procession.
Josephus, Ant. XIV. iii. i. Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXXVIL ii. 12.
must have made the Jewish kings symbols of enormous wealth.
None the less, Herod's unsparing severity toward his own sons
was also well known, and it is said to have elicited from Augus-
tus the phrase malleni Herodis porcus esse qiiam iilius — Mac-
rob. Sat. II. iv. II — a jest which, as Reinach points out (Textes,
p. 358), is of doubtful authenticity, and certainly not original.
'^ Josephus, Ant. XX. iii.
" Judea herself was free from tribute, but Herod was respon-
sible for certain Arab revenues. Besides, he received from
404 NOTES [pp. 271-277
Augustus a number of Greek towns (Josephus, Wars, I. xx.
seq.), and his kingdom included further Batanaea south of
Damascus, Galilee, and Peraea, the Greek cities across the
Jordan and south through Idumaea. All this was held by him
as the acknowledged beneficiary of Rome (Josephus, Ant. XV.
vi. 7).
'"Josephus, Ant. XV. i. 2.
"Josephus, Ant. XVII. vi. 6.
"Cf. ch. XI., n. 15. Cf. also Josephus, Ant. XVII. x.
" Not merely composed of Herod's old soldiers (Josephus,
Ant. XVII. X. 4). Matt. xxii. 16; Mark iii. 6; xii. 13.
'* Madden, Coins of the Jews. Cf. also Josephus, Ant.
XVIII. iii. I.
"Josephus, Ant. XX. viii. 11.
■'" Josephus, Ant. XX. v. 4.
^Josephus, Ant. XV. xi. 15.
"Josephus, Ant. XVI. vii.-viii. seq. The many children of
Herod's ten wives were in almost constant intrigues against
him and one another.
^ Strabo, xvi. 755.
^* It is necessary at every point to note the uncertain character
of our evidence. The Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius
Trogus written under Augustus would have been of inestim-
able value for us, if we had them in full. But we possess them
merely in the summary of Justin (third century?), which gives
us all the substance, but little or none of the personality of the
writer. And in this case the loss is the more serious because
Trogus seems to have had a keener feeling for the dramatic
character of events and a broader sympathy than many other
ancient historians.
"'Josephus, Ant. XVII. x. 9.
"^ This is the Varus made famous in the Teutoburg battle.
The insurrection mentioned in the text is the polemos shel
Varos of the Seder Olam.
"^ Caesar, Bell. Gall. iii. 10.
^Josephus, Ant. XVII. x. 9.
^ Nicolaus of Damascus, philosopher and historian, was
Herod's principal Greek adviser and the advocate of the Jews
in many public controversies. As far as we can judge from
pp. 279-285] NOTES 405
fragments, his History of the World, in no less than 114 Books,
was a loosely connected compilation rather than a work of
literary merit.
'"Josephus, Ant. XVIII. i. i and 6.
^^ A complete investigation of this subject is contained in
Domaszewski, Die Religion des romischen Heeres.
^^ Cagnat. in Dar.-Sagl. Diet, des ant. s. v. legio, p. 1084.
^ The signa were actually worshiped by the soldiers. They
are the propria legionum numina. Tac. Ann. ii. 17. Cf. Cagnat.,
op. cit. p. 1065. Domaszewski, op. cit. p. 115.
^* To the sense and tact of this typical Roman official the
averting of a crisis in the history of Palestinian Jewry is due.
The rebellion which Gains would undoubtedly have provoked
might have dragged other parts of the world with it, and at
that time the conditions were less favorable for re-establish-
ment of the empire than in 68 c. e.
^'Josephus, Ant. XVIII. vii. 2.
^'Josephus, Ant. XIX. vi.
" That Tacitus shows a strong antipathy to the Jews can
scarcely be questioned. It is in these chapters (Hist. v. 2.
seq.) more than most others, that we are able to see the
rhetorical historian of ancient times almost in the act of pre-
paring his narrative. The sources of Tacitus are open to us.
That he used Manetho and Apion instead of Josephus and
Nicolaus is itself ample indication of the complete lack of
conscience with which such a writer could select his evidence
according to the thesis he meant to establish.
^* Cagnat. Inscr. Or. ad res Rom. pertin. ii. n. 176.
^® Cf. for the Jewish feeling toward him, Jos. Ant. VI. i. 2 ;
Ketub. 17a; Pes. 88b. He is represented as a rigidly obser-
vant and pious Jew. However, the boon companion of the
young Gains and the voluptuaries of the imperial court must
have undergone an overwhelming change of heart if he was
really worthy of the praise lavished upon him.
*° Josephus, Ant. XIX. vii.
*^ Josephus, Ant. XX. i. One of the slain rioters is named
Hannibal.
*■ Josephus, Ant. XX. v.
*^ Josephus, Ant. XX. viii.
4o6 NOTES [pp. 287-301
Chapter XVIII
THE REVOLT OF 68 C E.
' Cf. Livy, Books XXXIX and XL.
*Tac. Ann. iii. 40 seq. ; ibid. ii. 52; iv. 23. In 52 c. e., Cilicia
rose in revolt ; ibid. xii. 55. The Jewish disturbances of the
same year are alluded to in Tac. Ann. xii. 54 — a passage
omitted in Reinach.
^Josephus, Wars, II. xvi.
* The entire life of this curious impostor, as portrayed by
Lucian, is of the highest interest. The maddest and most in-
solent pranks received no severer punishment than exclusion
from Rome.
^ C. I. L. vii. 5471.
" For the Armenian, British, etc., rebellions, see Suet. Nero.
39, 40. In at least one other part of the empire, prophecy and
poetry maintained the hope of an ultimate supremacy, some-
thing like the Messianic hope of the Jews. This was in Spain,
and upon this fact Galba laid great stress. Suet. Galba, 9:
Quorum carniinum senteniia erat, oritm'um quandoque ex His-
pania principem doniinumque rerum.
^ Suetonius speaks first of the joy shown at his death, then
of the grief. It is, however, easy to see that the latter mani-
festation was probably the more genuine and lasting.
* Josephus, Ant. XX. viii. 11 ; Vita, 3.
" We learn from the same passage that a great many accounts
of Nero existed, and many of them were favorable. The
implication further is that these accounts were written after
his death. We have only the picture drawn by Tacitus and
Suetonius. If we had one written from the other side, like
Velleius Paterculus' panegyric of Tiberius (Veil. Pat. ii. 129
seq.), we should be better able to judge him.
" Gittin 56a.
" Reinach, Textes, pp. 176-178.
^^ Neither the arch nor the inscription exists any longer. A
copy of the inscription was made, before the ninth century, by a
monk of the monastery of Einsiedeln, to whose observation
and antiquarian interest we owe more than one valuable record.
" The phrase ludaica superstitione imbuti, already quoted,
pp. 302-315] NOTES 407
shows what the term would be likely to suggest to Roman
minds. In Diocletian's time, when the Persians were the arch-
enemies of Rome, and Persian doctrine in the form of Mani-
cheism was widely spread over the empire, the emperors did
not hesitate to call themselves Pcrsicus. But Persicus never
meant an adherent of a religious sect.
^* Idumaea is used for ludaea in Statius Silvae, iii. 138; v.
2, 138; Valerius Flaccus, Argon. 12.
Chapter XIX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMAN JEWISH
COMMUNITY
* Philo, Leg. ad Gaium, 24.
" We may compare such expressions as magica arte infecfi,
Tac. Ann. ii. 2; Cic. Fin. III. ii. 9,
^ Long before the attempts made in the nineteenth century
to rehabilitate all the generally acknowledged historical mon-
sters, historians had looked askance at the portrait of Tiberius
drawn by Tacitus. For a recent discussion, cf. Jerome, The
Tacitean Tiberius, Class. Phil. vii. pp. 265 seq.
* Suet. Tib. 36. The matheniatici are strictly the astrologers
whose science was called /xadrjais. Cf. the title of Firmicus
Maternus, Mathcscos libri. The governmental attempt to sup-
press the mathematici was a total failure, but the law's attitude
toward them may be seen from the rescript of Diocletian (294
c. E.) : ars mathematica damnabilis interdicta est (Cod. Just.
IX. xviii. 2).
^ Nero assigned Sardinia to the senate as ample satisfaction
for Achaea, which he took under his own jurisdiction.
" Acts xi. 26 ; xxvi. 28. lri<jov xpv<^'^°^ in the inscription quoted
in n. 10. In this case the identification of names may be due
to iotacism.
^ Cf. the well-known rhetorician Philostr. Vita. Soph. ii. 11,
and in Rome itself Inscr. gr. Sic. et Ital. 1272; and ibid. 2417, 2.
* The question of the authenticity and date of the Acts does
not belong to this study. A thorough discussion will be found
in Wendland, Die urchristlichen Literaturformen,^ p. 314 seq.
4o8 NOTES [pp. 316-322
° Acts xi. 19; xili. 5, 50.
^'^ avpayuyri=:iKK\7](Tia. Le Bas, 2528 (318 c. E.), a Mar-
cionite association.
" There was a jurist Tertullian of whom some fragments
have been preserved in the Digest (29, 2, 30 ; 49, 17, 4). He has
on plausible grounds been assumed to be the same as the
Church Father, There can be no question that the latter had
legal training. As for the cruelties described by Tacitus, it
may be said that Eusebius has no word of them, even in his
denunciation of Nero, (Hist. Eccl. H, xxv.)
^^ All the Church Fathers mention these outrageous charges,
Pliny (Ep. x. 96) refers vaguely to wickednesses charged
against them, but the Hagitia cohaerentia nomini are more likely
to be the treasonable machinations which the Christian asso-
ciations were assumed to be engaged in than these foul and
stupid accusations. It will be remembered that Tertullian
{loc. cit.) is more eager to free the Christians from the charge
of treason than of any other. Treason in this case, however,
meant not sedition or rebellion, but anarchy, i. e. attempts at
the destruction of the state. The attitude of medieval law
toward heresy gives a good analogy.
" It would scarcely be necessary to refute this slander, if
it had not recently renewed currency; Harnack, Mission and
Ausbreitung. Tertullian knows nothing of it, nor Eusebius,
although the latter refers in the case of Polycarp to Jewish
persecution of Christians (Hist, Eccl, IV. xv, 29). Tertullian,
on the contrary, implies that an enemy of the Jews would be
likely to be a persecutor of Christians (Apol. 5),
" Like most men of his time he bore two names, his native
name of Saul and the name by which he was known among
Christians, Paul. This is indicated by the phrase 1.av\os 6 Kai
UavXos (Acts xiii, 9), which is the usual form in which such
a double name was expressed.
^" The mother church at Jerusalem consisted exclusively of
Jews until the time of Hadrian (Euseb. Hist. Eccl, IV. v. 2).
''^ Quint. Inst, X. i. 93.
" Maecenas, too, was of the highest Etruscan nobility. Hor-
ace, Sat. I. vi. I seq. The antiquity of Etruscan families was
proverbial among the Romans.
pp. 322-333'i NOTES 409
^^ Mommsen seeks to make his crabbed style a racial char-
acteristic. The statement is quite gratuitous. His peculiarity
of expression is amply explained by his youth, his lack of
literary practice, and his absorption in his philosophical pur-
suits.
^^ Pers. V. 176. Reinach, Textes, p. 264.
^ Strabo apud Jos. Ant. XIV. vii. 2 : /cat tottoi^ ovk ean padiivs
cvpeiv TTJs olKovfievrjs 8s ov TrapadedeKrai tovto to (pv\ov /xt]8' eiriKpa-
relrai vir' avrov. Seneca apud Aug. De Civ. Dei, vi. 10 : Cum
interim usque eo sceleratissimae gentis consuetudo valet ut per
omnes iam terras recepta sit ; victi victoribus leges dcderunt.
^Besides the capital passage (Sat. xiv. 96) Juvenal speaks
of Jews in Sat. iii. 10 seq., 296; vi. 156, 542.
" Cf. Garrucci, Cimitero .... in Signa Randanini ; Rossi,
Roma Sotteranea. especially the Indices. As late as 296 c. e.
the epitaph of the Bishop of the Roman church is given in
Greek.
Chapter XX
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS
^ Perhaps the " egg laid on the Sabbath " would have excited
less comment, if the fact were kept in mind that a decision in
a specific case can hardly fail to be particular.
^ C. I. L. ix. I. 26.
' Laius outraged Chrysippus, son of Pelops, who had been
left in his care. The Euripidean lost play on Oedipus seems
to have adopted that version. Pisander, Schol. Eur. Phoen.
1760: TrpaJTOS 5e Adtos top adifitTOV e'pwra tovtov ikax^^.
^ Cf. Philo, De Spec. Leg. 7.
'Tosefta Ab. Zar. ii. 6.
"^ Ziebarth, Kulturbilder aus griechischen Stadten, p. 'J2)-
~' In very much earlier times Jews left dedications in the
temple of Pan Euhodus. Ditt. Inscr. Or. 74: GeOSoros Awpiojvos
*\ov5alos ao}6eis e/c ireXdyov. Cf. y^, UroXefiaios ^lovvaiov louSaios.
^ This became a standing formula and in inscriptions is regu-
larly abbreviated N. K. C. (Valerius Probus, 4), i. e. non
kalumniae causa. The use of k for c testifies to the antiquity
of the formula.
410 NOTES [pp. 333-344
® Suet. Domit. 12.
" Dio Cassius (Xiph.), Ixvii. 14.
" Passed in 81 b. c. e. This law punished offenses as
diverse as murder, arson, poisoning, perjury, abortion, and
abuse of magisterial power. In every case it was the efifect
of the act that was considered.
"Reinach, Textes, p. 197, n. i.
" The polemos shcl kitos of Mishnah Sota ix. 14 and the
Seder Olam,
Quietus was a Moorish chieftain of great military ability.
He seems to have hoped for the succession to the throne. After
the end of the revolt he was transferred to his native province,
Mauretania, by Hadrian, and was ultimately executed for
treason.
" Meg. Taan., Adar 12 ; Gratz, Gesch, der Juden,' iv. 445 seq.
/^ In the case of non-Jews, the Messianic hope was simply
the dread of an impending cataclysm. As far as this dread
was connected with the failure of the Julian line, it proved
groundless. But the Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of
this time are full of prophecies of the end of the world. It
was the general belief that the world was very old, and that
a fixed cycle, then rapidly coming to its end, determined the
limits it would reach.
" Jerus. Taan. iv. 7, p. 68 d. Ekah Rab. ii. i.
" Dio Cassius (Xiph.), Ixix. 12; Reinach, Textes, p. 198.
*" Dig. 50, 15, I, 6.
"Euseb. Hist. Eccl. IV. vi. 4.
^ Gen. Rab. Ixiii. (xxv. 23) makes Hadrian the typical
heathen king, as Solomon is the typical Jewish king. His name
is followed, as is that of Trajan, by a drastic curse. But
there are traditions of a kindlier feeling toward him. Sibyl, v.
248. In the Meg. Taan. the 29th of Adar.
'^ Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. IV. vi., quoting Aristo of Pella.
Jerome in Ezek. i. 15. It is here that the famous passage of
Jerome occurs, which describes the Jews as " buying their
tears." Cf. also Itiner. Burdigal. (Hierosolymitanum), I. v. 22.
" Vopiscus, Vita Saturn, viii. ; Reinach, Textes, p. 326. The
authenticity of this letter has been questioned, but the trans-
mission, although indirect, is better documented than in most
pp. 344-349I NOTES 411
such cases. Hadrian is known to have written an autobi-
ography, and Phlegon, his freedman, who also wrote his life,
no doubt used it. Spartianus, Hadr. i, i ; xiv. 8.
*' The writers Spartianus, Capitolinus, etc., dedicate their
work to Diocletian or Constantine. It was suggested by Des-
sau, Hermes, 24, S37, that these writers never existed, and were
invented by a forger of a century later. Mommsen, Hermes,
25, 2g8, assumed their existence, but regarded the extant works
as revised at the time mentioned by Dessau. Other investi-
gators, except H. Peter, accept Mommsen's conclusions.
Whether they are authentic or not, these biographies are alike
wretched in style and thought.
^* Paul, Sent. V. xxiii. 14; Dig. 48, 8, 3, 2 ; 8, 8. The date is
not certain ; Dig. 48, 8, 3, 4.
'' B. G. U. 347. 82.
^-Dig. 48, 8, II. pr.
" Paul, Sent. V. xxii. 3.
'^^ Lampridius, Vita Alex. 22.
"^ Jews made converts even after the prohibition of Theo-
dosius (Jerome, Migne Patrol, 25, p. 199; 26, p. 311). One
further ground for doubting the statement of Paul as it appears
in the extant texts is the following : In the Digest (48, 8, 4, 2)
it is only the physician and the slave that are capitally punished
for castration. The owner of the slave {ibid. 48, 8, 6) is pun-
ished by the loss of half his property. Further, the penalty for
circumcision is stated to be the same as that for castration.
That was the case not only in Modestinus' time, who lived after
Paul, but as late as Justinian, since it is received into the Digest.
Yet Paul, according to the extant text, makes the circumcision of
alien slaves a capital crime (V, xxii. 4). The discrepancy can
scarcely be reconciled.
^" Capitol. Antoninus Pius, 5.
" 193 c. E. It was on this occasion that the Pretorians
offered the imperial purple to the highest bidder.
^-Josephus, Ant. XIV. x.
^ The legend of Polycarp assumes a large and powerful
Jewish community. In late Byzantine times, the Jews of Asia
Minor were still a powerful factor. The emperor Michael
II, a Phrygian, was suspected of Jewish leanings ; Theophanes
(Contin.), ii. 3 ff.
412 NOTES [pp. 351-361
Chapter XXI
THE LEGAL POSITION OF THE JEWS IN THE LATER
EMPIRE
^ The theory advanced by Wilcken-Mitteis (Grundziige und
Chrestomathie der Pap. vol. I.) that all who paid a poll-tax were
dediiicii, and therefore excluded from the Const. Ant. is wholly
gratuitous. There is no evidence whatever connecting the
dediticii with the poll-tax.
'" There are few reliable statements in the extant texts for
estimating the population. Beloch's work on the subject puts
all the data together, but nothing except uncertain conjectures
can be offered.
^ Lanciani, Ancient Rome, pp. 50-51; Pelham, Essays on
Roman History, pp. 268 seq.
■* Lampridius, Alex, ss ' corpora omnium constituit vinari-
orum . . . . et omnino omnium^ artium.
"* These are the collegia, idcirco instituta ut necessariam
opera m publicis utilitatibus exhiberent (Dig. 50, 6, 6, i). They
are the transportation companies and others engaged in caring
for and distributing the annona, the fire companies and the
burial associations of the poor. Cf. C. 1. L. vi. 85, 29691 ; x.
1642, xiv. 21 12.
"The institutio alimentaria commemorated on the marble
slabs (anaglypha) in the Forum and by the bronze tablets
of Veleia and the Baebiani (C. I. L. ix. 1147; xi. 1455). It
had begun with Nerva : puellas puerosque. natos parentibus
e gestosis sumptu publico per Jtaliae oppida ali iussit (Aur.
Vict, Nerva, xii.).
'An entire article of the Digest (26, i) is devoted to the
tutela. Another one (27, i) deals with excusationes, which
are mainly exemptions from the burden of the tutela.
^The distinction is thoroughgoing in the penal clauses cited
in the Digest. It was already established in Trajan's time
(Plin. Ep. X, Ixxix. 3). It is implied in Suetonius, Gains, 2y :
multos honesti ordinis. It is doubtful, however, whether the
distinction was already recognized in the time of Caligula.
® Gains wrote about 150 c. e., probably in the eastern prov-
inces.
pp. 362-367 J NOTES 413
" Abot ii. 5. The saying of Hillel has no direct reference
to apostasy, and concerns rather arrogance or eccentricity of
conduct. But it literally describes the act by which such a
man as Tiberius Julius Alexander ceased to be classed as a
Jew.
" Cf. Plutarch, Numa, 17 ; Dionys. Hal. iv. 43.
"^ Dig. 50, 2, 3, 3.
" Cod. Theod. viii. 14.
" Exodus xxi. 2 ; Josephus, Ant. IV. viii. 28.
" Bab. Bat. 3b ; Gittin 46b. The duty was regarded as of
the highest urgency.
'^ Vogelstein and Rieger, Gesch. der Juden, p. 61 seq. Fried-
lander, Darstellungen der Sitt.^ i. p. 514.
" Ox. Pap. ii. no. 276.
" Aurelian reigned from 270-27^ c. e. The sol invictus
whom he adored was probably the Baal of Palmyra. Cumont,
Les rel. orient, pp. 170, 367, n. 59.
" Cod. Theod. xvi. 4.
^"In 311 c. E. Galerius, and in 318 c. e. Constantine and
Licinius, legalized the practice of Christianity. In 380 c. e.,
by the edict of Thessalonica, most of the heathen practices
became penal offenses.
^^ Every state as such had its characteristic and legally estab-
lished state ritual. Many centuries later Gladstone, then " the
rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories," stated, as a
self-evident proposition, that a government in its collective
capacity must profess a religion (The Church in its Relation to
the State, 1839).
^^ Cyprian. De catholicae ecclesiae unitate, ch. x.
^ Matth. V. 13. Cf. generally the Pauline Epistles, e. g. II.
Corinth, xiii. 13.
1
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PERIODICALS
The Jewish Quarterly Review : First Series, London, i88g-
1900. Second Series, Philadelphia, 1910-date.
Revue de etudes juives, Paris, 1880-date.
Monatsschrift fiir Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Juden-
thums, Breslau, 1851-date.
ENCYCLOPEDIAS
Jewish Encyclopedia: New York, 1901-1906.
Encyclopedia Biblica : London, 1899.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. 1901-1904.
Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 1908. Not
yet completed.
Daremberg-Saglio : Dictionnaire des antiquites grecques et
romaines, 1877. Not yet completed.
Pauly-Wissowa : Realenzyklopadie, 1894. Not yet completed.
Schaff-Herzog-Hauck : Realencyklopadie fiir protestantische
Kirche und Theologie. 3d ed. Eng. tr. 1908.
GENERAL REFERENCE BOOKS
Gratz : Geschichte der Juden (1873-1895). Eng. tr., History
of the Jews (1891).
Schiirer : Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu
Christi (4th ed.), 1901.
Juster : Les juifs dans I'empire romain, 1914.
Wendland : Die hellenistisch-romische. Kultur in ihren Be-
ziehungen zum Judentum und Christentum, 1912.
Wendland-Poland-Baumgarten : Die hellenistische Kultur.
Friedlander : Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms.
Leipzig (7th ed.). Eng. tr. London, 1909.
Cumont : Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain,
1912.
INDEX
Aboda Zara, 329.
Abstraction, 42.
Aelia Capitolina, 288, 342.
Aeolian, 50.
Africanus, the Younger, 45.
Agatharchidas, 178.
Agrippa I, king of the Jews, 283,
313.
Agrippa II, king of the Jews, 290.
Akiba, rabbi, 342.
Akmonia, z^T.
Alexander (Jannai), king of the
Jews, 274.
Alexander Severus, Roman em-
peror, 346, 356.
Alexander the Great, 37, 38, 52,
78, 212, 368.
Alexandria, 91, 107 seq., 200, 229,
255, 339, 362.
Allia, 252.
Amalekites, tj.
Antigonus, 128.
Antigonus, king of the Jews, 267,
270.
Antigonus of Socho, 128, 133, 386.
Antinois, 107.
Antioch, 119, 138, 282.
Antiochus Cyzicenus, 63, 275.
Antiochus Epiphanes, 135 seq., 205.
Antiochus Sidetes, 63.
Anti-Semitism, ^"j.
Apamea, 22().
Apella, 177, 248, 402.
Aphrodite, Z2, 114, ZT^'
Apion, 168, 170, 189.
Apocrypha, 18, 67, 331.
Apollo, 2T, 46, 168.
ApoUonius Molo, 170, 194.
Appuleius Decianus, 227,.
27
Aramaic, 118.
Archelaus, 278.
Archigallus, 389.
Aristobulus I, son of John Hyr-
canus, 63.
Aristobulus II, son of Alexander
Jannai, 64, 267.
Aristophanes, 24.
Aristotle, 81, 84, 212.
Armenia, 265.
Army, Roman, 352.
Artaxerxes Ochus, 61, 181.
Artemis, 2"], 140.
Asclepius, 46.
Asebeia, 34, 35, 123, 163 seq., 334.
Asia Minor, 58, 63, 331, 348.
Asianism, 198.
Ass, 168 seq.
Assideans. See Hasidim.
Assuan, 60, 96.
Astrology, 241, 243, 317, 407.
Atheism, 100, 191 seq., 335.
Athena, ZZ, 83.
Athens, 52.
Atonement, Day of, 399 seq.
Atticism, 198.
Augustus, Roman emperor, 245,
254, 257, 294.
Aurelian, Roman emperor, 366.
Avaris, 173.
Babylon, 56, 366.
Bacchanalia, 166, 238, 310.
Bagoas, 62.
Barbarian, 49, 51.
Bar Kochba See Bar Kosiba.
Bar Kosiba, 65, 342, 348.
Bastian, 377.
Ben Sira. See Jesus, son of Sira.
4i8
INDEX
Bible, 20, 59, 60.
Byzantine, 411.
Cabiri, 149.
Caesar (Gaius Julius Caesar), 222,
244, 294.
Caligula. See Gaius.
Calumnia, 332 seg.
Camillus, 45.
Candide, 85.
Caphthor, 77, 381.
Caracalla, 348, 351.
Carthage, 45, 188.
Cassius, Dio. See Dio Cassius.
Catiline, 222, 260.
Celsus, 255.
Chaeremo, 201.
Chaldeans, 244, 255.
Charles, 19.
Chrestus, 313.
Christians, 313, 316, 346, 366.
Cicero, 53, 196, 220 seq.
Circumcision, 80, 143, 345, 411.
Citium, 1 14, 376.
City-state, 69, 105 seq.
Claudius, Roman emperor, 284,
313.
Clearchus, 84.
Clemens. See Flavius Clemens.
Clemens, of Alexandria, 86, 200.
Clodius, 244.
Constantine, 353.
Constitutio Antoniniana, 262, 350,
361, 371, 403.
Crassus, 265, 397.
Credulity, 176, 271.
Crete, 164, 186.
Cybele, 46, 158, 161, 238, 242.
Cynics, 158, 240.
Cyprian, 366.
Cyprus, 33, 338.
Cyrene, 249, 338.
Damocritus, 170, 189.
Daniel, Book of, 52, 135.
David, 73, 179.
Dead Sea, 81.
Dediticii, 361.
Deification, 37 seq., 261.
Delphi, 231, 378.
Deme, 107.
Demeter, 27.
Demetrius, Jewish writer, 127.
Demetrius (the Besieger), 38, 127,
212.
Demosthenes, 53.
Diagoras of Melos, 193.
Diana. See Artemis.
Diaspora, 60, 208, 369.
Diatribe, 158.
Dio Cassius, 300, 334, 338, 342.
Diocletian, 350, 353, 365.
Dionysus, 32, 35, 142, 171, 376.
Dioscuri, 46.
Domitian, 335.
Dorian, 50.
Druids, 142, 319.
Ecclesia, 366, 408.
Ecclesiasticus. See Jesus, son of
Sira.
Egypt, 80, 88, 97, 144, 152, 153,
166, 172, 249, 269, 305, 338,
345, 353, 362.
Eleazar, 206.
Elephantine, 60, 96, 97, 180.
Eleusis, 35, 152, 377-
Eliphaz, 70.
Ennius, 53.
Epicurus, 164.
Eschatology, 72, 161.
Essenes, 279.
Ethiopic, 19.
Etruscans, 43, 210, 213, 321.
Euhemerus, 47.
Euphrates, river, 87.
Eusebia, 339, 342.
Euthyphro, 84.
Exodus, 96. 99.
Ezra, 57-
Fast, 399-
Fiscus ludaicus, 332, 363-
Flaccus, prefect of Egypt, 200.
Flaccus, proconsul of Asia, 221.
Flavius Clemens, 335, 336.
INDEX
419
Florus, Gessius, 283, 286.
Formula, 43.
Freedmen, 220, 245, 255, 307, 379.
Gabinius, 223.
Gaius, Roman emperor (Caligula),
282, 313.
Gaius, Roman jurist, 361, 412.
Galilee, 280.
Gauls, 187, 2:^2.
Gerizim, 57, 138.
Gods, 24, 40.
Greek names, 123, 128.
Grundideen, 40, 277.
Haberim. See Pharisees.
Hades, 152, 154.
Hadrian, 107, 340, 343.
Hannibal, 174, 188.
Harmodius, 37.
Hasidim, 130 seq., 147.
Hasmoneans, 63, 74, 158.
Hecataeus of Abdera, 92 seq., 176,
182.
Helladius, 102.
Hellene, 49.
Hellenization, 79, 116, 133, 145,
207.
Henotheism, 29.
Heracles, 46.
Hermippus, 89.
Herod (the Great), king of the
Jews, 264, 269, 222, 403.
Herodotus, 80.
Heroes, 29, 30, 36.
Hillel, 69.
Hindu, 85.
Historia Augusta, 344, 357, 411.
Homer, 23, 25, 49, 150, 184, 200.
Horace (Quintus Hora:tius Flac-
cus), 245 seq., 321.
Human sacrifices, 187.
Hyksos, 98.
Hyrcanus II, son of Alexander
Jannai, 267.
Idumaea, 157, 168, 270.
Images, 273, 280.
Immortality, 71, 153 seq., 237.
Impiety. See Asebeia.
Inhospitality, 93, 183 seq.
Ionian, 50.
Isis, 161, 166, 251, 307, 311.
Isocrates, 78.
Jerusalem, 178, 224, 222.
Jesus, founder of Christianity.
See Christians.
Jesus, son of Sira (Ecclesiasticus),
19, 67, 118.
Joel, Book of, 78, 382.
John, high priest, son of Simon
(Hyrcanus), 63, 155, 274.
Jonathan, Hasmonean prince, son
of Mattathiah, 63.
Jordan, 73.
Jose ben Joezer, 133.
Joseph, son of Tobiah, Egyptian
tax-farmer, 130.
Josephus, Titus(?) Flavius, 18, 85,
99, 109, 155, 164, 193, 285,
289, 296, 306, 272.
Judah Makkabi, 63, 132, 214.
Jupiter, 43.
Juvenal, 54» 189, 222 seq.
Kautzsch, 19.
Lectisternium, 46.
Levant, 72.
I.ex Cornelia de Sicariis, 337, 344.
Liby-Phoenicians, 53.
Lucian, 192.
Lysimachus, 195.
Ma. See Cybele.
Maccabeans. See Hasmoneans.
Maccabees, First Book of, 74, 130,
132, 141, 180, 214.
Maccabees, Second Book of, 131,
141, 180.
Maccabees, Fourth Book of, 204,
205.
Macedonians, 50, 108, no.
Macrobius, 45, 222.
Maecenas, 245, 247, 263.
420
INDEX
Magi, 85.
Magic, 41, 239.
Manetho, 99.
Marathon, 60.
Martial, 302, 325 seq., 329.
Mathematici. See Astrology.
Mattathiah, 63, 74, 180.
Megasthenes, 86.
Megillat Taanit, 20, 410.
Meir, rabbi, 297.
Meleager of Gadara, 177, 329.
Menelaus, 37.
Messiah, 72 seq., 293, 298, 319,
341, 370, 406, 410.
Metics, 34, 109, 1 12.
Miletus, 331.
Minoan, 13, 77, 374.
Misanthropy. See Inhospitality.
Mishnah, 69, 328.
Mithra, 241, 357.
Mithradates, 63.
Mnaseas, 168.
Molech, 188, 393.
Molo. See Apollonius Molo.
Moloch. See Molech.
Miiller, Max, 375.
Mysteries, 35, 152.
Mythology, 25, 26, 44, 236.
Names, 123, 128.
Nasi, 265, 363.
Naucratis, 104.
Nehemiah, 57, 61.
Nero, Roman emperor, 285, 294,
315 seq.
Nerva, 334.
Nicarchus, 201.
Nicocles, 387.
Nicolaus, of Damascus, 277, 405.
Nile, 91.
Olam ha-bo. See Immortality.
Orphism, 153.
Osarsiph, 100.
Osiris, 100, 115, 385.
Ostia, Z27-
Ovid, 250 seq.
Pantheism, 31.
Papyri, 339. See also Elephantine;
Assuan.
Parthians, 265, 297, 340, 370,
Passover, 97.
Paul, of Tarsus, 315, 320.
Paul, Roman jurist, 338, 346.
Pederasty, 160, 330.
Pentateuch, 67.
Pergamon, 107.
Persians, 52, 108.
Persius, 321 seq.
Petronius, legate of Syria, 282.
Pharisees, 71, 155, 265, 283.
Philistia, 72.
Philo (of Alexandria)), 17, 200,
227, 307, Z73-
Phoenicia, 77,. 78.
Pilate (Titus Pontius Pilatus), 280.
Pirke Abot, 128.
Plato, 42, 194.
Pliny, 196.
Plutarch, 171.
Polis. See City-state.
Polybius, 140, 141, 174.
Polytheism, 160.
Pompeius Trogus, 274, 404.
Pompey, 64, 181, 215, 227.
Poppaea Sabina, 316.
Porphyrius, 81.
Poseidon, 23-
Posidonius, 169, 170, 203.
Prayer, houses of, 69.
Propaganda, 148 seq., 208, 240,
263, 370.
Proselyte, 247. 296, 316, 389.
Proseucha, 65.
Psalms of Solomon, 216.
Pseudepigrapha, 19.
Ptolemies, 116, 133, 180.
Ptolemy Philadelphus, 102.
Ptolemy Philometor, 175, 178.
Ptolemy Philopator, 182.
Ptolemy Soter, 80, 91, 178.
Pyrrhus, 212.
Pythagoras, 89.
Quietus, Lusius, 339,
INDEX
421
Ra, 38, 116.
Race, 48 seq., 379.
Reinach, Theodore, 17.
Religion, 21, 22.
Resurrection, 71, 155.
Rhetoric, 85, 167, 173, 178, 391.
Rhodes, 198.
Ritual murder, 190.
Rome, 63, 210 seq.
Sabazios, 161, 171, 179, 2:55.
Sabbath, 143, 177, 181, 246 seq.,
254, 321. See also Thirtieth
Sabbath.
Sabbatistae, 179.
Sacrifice, 28.
Sadducees, 155.
Salamis (Cyprus), 340.
Salvation, 150.
Samaritans, 58, 138, 281, 285.
Sambethe, 179.
Sanhedrin, 265, 363.
Sarapis, 114, 385.
Sardinia, 307, 312.
Satire, 246, 321.
Scipionic Circle, 138.
Scribes, 61.
Scythians, 186, 190.
Seder 01am, 20, 404.
Sejanus, 312.
Seleucia, 164.
Seleucid, ^z^ 146.
Seleucus, 38.
Seneca, 310, 318, 324.
Septuagint, 102.
Shechem, 57.
Sheol, 70, ISO, 388.
Sibyl, 179, 298.
Sidon, 79, 83, 382.
Simon, high priest, son of Matta-
thiah, 230.
Slavas, 219, 2Z1, 309, 352, 364.
Socrates, 84, 193.
Sodom, 330.
Sparta, 51, 151, 186.
Standards, 280.
Stoics, 204, 240, Z22.
Strabo, 186, 249.
Suetonius, 295, 305, 317
Suidas, 170.
Synagogue, 254, zjy, 362.
Syria, 76 seq., 215, 264, ztj.
Syrians, 216, 2ZZ, 239, 244, 363,
380.
Tacitus, 102, 170, 189, 283, 307,
317.
Talmud, 20. "■
Tertullian, 318, 408.
Theodore of Cyrene, 193.
Theodosius, 347, 366.
Theophrastus, 81.
Theudas, 284.
Thiasi, 244, 357,
Thirtieth Sabbath, 399 seq.
Thracians, 187, 188.
Tiberius, 200, 254, 304.
Titus, Roman emperor, 300 seq.
Tosefta, 331.
Trajan, 338.
Trogus. See Pompeius Trogus.
Trojan, 49.
Typhon, 172.
Tyre, 78.
Valerius Maximus, 255.
Varro, Marcus Terentius, 234.
Varus, Publius Quintilius, 276.
Veil, 45.
Vespasian, 341.
Wisdom of Solomon, 159, 242.
Xenophanes, 31.
Xenophon, 194, 258.
Xiphilinus, 335, 338.
Yavan, 50, 79.
Zabidus, 168.
Zealot, 288.
Zechariah, -jz^ 87.
Zerubbabel, 59.
Zeus, 28, 138.
Zion, 268.
BALTIMORE, MD., U.S.A.
?k;
N0VZ7M Date Due
All library items are subject to recall 3 weeks from
the original date stamped.
NOV-
FEB 1 (1 2003
mnrnm
APR 1 0 7.004
MAR ? 0 fm
MAY 0 5 2005
ditivm
mTT
OCT 1 6 ?nnfi
Nnv 0 6 7
OCT 3 0 2006
NtIV J 2
OCT 24 2007
NUV 1 1 ?0]9
WfB,
w
w
Brigham Young University
i->
u
3 1197 00156 8010
■in'*