THE JEWS OF THE EMPIRE TILL THE REVOLT
One of the great determining events in ancient and modern history took
place on January 1, 27 B.C.E., when Gaius Caesar Octavianus, returned
from his successful 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 bankrupt. Its affairs 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.[275] 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 constituted authority
were subject to revision by the will of the Roman people, _i.e._ those
who actually lived, or had an indefeasible right to live, within the
walls of the Roman city. The _populus Romanus_ had chosen to delegate
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
unrestrained 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 various 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 Carduchi, 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.[276] 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 member to respect the claims of his fellows—without
noticeable 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 provincial organization had been somewhat of the following
nature. Within any given territory contained in the limits of the
province, there existed a certain number 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 magistracies. Since the provincial magistrate had no
colleagues, 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
guaranteed the treaty rights of those communities that had treaties with
Rome; and fourthly, he enforced and maintained the local customary law
of all these communities. 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.
The checks upon the holder of _imperium_ at Rome consisted in the
peculiar 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.”[277] 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.[278]
The Augustan monarchy brought no real change into the theory of
provincial organization, except as to relatively 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 was an unmixed blessing,
since, except for a few sentimentalists, 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.[279]
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 Ammon. 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 characteristically
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 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
nothing else than abhorrent to Augustus.[280] And, indeed, it was a
distinctly un-Roman idea.
In Rome Augustus was chiefly intent upon a restoration of everything
that could well be restored in the social, religious, and political life
of the people. Certain of the political elements, such as the actual
sovereignty of the _populus_, as far as it could be physically assembled
in the Campus Martius, 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 reconstituted 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 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 various 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:[281]
Take active part in divine worship, in every way established 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 persuading 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 Gaius’ avoidance of sacrifice at Jerusalem was of a
piece with this policy.[282]
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 communities found
their situation unchanged. Even the obnoxious privileges which they had
in several cities of Asia continued unimpaired,[283] and here the
orthodox Jewish propaganda and a few generations later the heterodox
Jewish propaganda made rapid strides.[284]
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
advertised the Jews notably, a fact which their propaganda could
scarcely help turning to account.[285]
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
communities outside of Palestine were styled explicitly colonies,
ἀποικία. 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 sentiment 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
synagogues was either directed or systematically encouraged 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 kingdom, which Alexander had conquered, and which the Seleucidae
had with varying success attempted to maintain, had fallen to pieces
long before the Roman occupation 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 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 Euphrates
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 on the subject, but Parthian rulers seem to have
brought to the Jewish religious philosophy a larger measure of sympathy
and comprehension than most Roman representatives. While the existence
of Parthian sympathizers may date almost from the beginning of Parthian
supremacy, their presence was very concretely manifested when Jannai’s
son, Aristobulus, appealed to Parthia as Hyrcanus had appealed to Rome.
Indeed a Parthian army invaded and captured Palestine, and gave
Aristobulus’ son, Mattathiah-Antigonus, a brief lease of royal dignity.
Every instance of dissatisfaction with the Roman government was the
occasion for the rise of Parthian sympathies.
It may further be recalled that Parthia was the continuation 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 remember 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.[286]
The one general term that covered all the Jews of various types was
“race of the Jews,” _gens Iudaeorum_, γένος Ἰουδαίων. 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, and it is strengthened for us by
the century-old associations that have made Palestine the embodiment of
an ideal. Varying as the Jews of that time were in temperament,
character, occupations, position, and mental endowments, the fate and
vicissitudes of the mother-country, and particularly of the holy
metropolis Jerusalem, 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 Iudaeorum_ 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 territory 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
inhabitants of Jerusalem, although the association was notably closer
and the occasion of common performance of Jewish rites much more
frequent than was the case with the more distant Jews.
[Illustration: TOMBS OF THE KINGS, VALLEY OF KEDRON, JERUSALEM
(From Wilson’s “Jerusalem”)]
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.[287] 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, however, 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 immediately 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
administration. 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 policing the country rather than assume it
themselves. 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 unexampled 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 forgiven 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 distinction 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 to decrease the prestige of the latter and increase that of
Herod.[288] Josephus and the Talmud would be ample evidences themselves
of the hatred and the bitter antagonism with which Herod was
regarded.[289] 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 principal reproach directed against Herod by his
subjects. On more than one occasion the Idumeans had evinced their
attachment to the Jewish Law.[290] 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.[291] It is highly likely that hatred of
Herod was especially strong in those who hated Rome as well, either
through Parthian proclivities 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 teachings 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 reprehensible thing. As we have seen, the Jews
were qualified as _superstitiosi_, “superstitious” (above, p. 177). In
general, to be sure, zeal for ancestral institutions was supported by
the Romans, and they were not particularly concerned that foreign
institutions should resemble theirs. However, if there were any from
which a 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 intense Jewish repugnance to images was at first difficult for
Romans to realize, since they had been training themselves for
generations to test the degree of civilization by the interest in the
plastic arts. That there might be among barbarians no statues was
natural enough: that the barbarians would refuse to take them when
offered, was incomprehensible. But, hard though 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.[292] And the fact may
be noted that after the coins celebrating the triumph of Vespasian and
Titus, with the Latin and Greek legends Ἰουδαίας Ἑαλωκυίας,
_Iudaea capta_, “For the Conquest of Judea,” no Roman coins with
imperial effigies appear till the radical reorganization 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 comprehend, 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,
ἄδυτα; and that certain things, like the Palladium,
suffered profanation from the slightest touch. They submitted
accordingly with a good grace to exclusion from most of the temple
precincts, and Nero[293] 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 responsibility for threatened
disorders keenly enough to make this drastic example.[294]
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 Israelites as “our ancestors.”[295] As has been
said, he did not wholly want adherents among priests and people. That he
died as an embittered and vindictive despot, conscious of being
generally detested, and contriving fiendish plots to make his death
deplored, is probable enough, and is amply explained by the domestic
difficulties with which he had to contend all his life.[296]
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. 1). In general, however, the
mere suppression of more or less organized brigandage was a task that
took all his attention, but this “brigandage” 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 bellum_, 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,” τοὐντεῦθεν ὁ μὲν Ἡρώδης
ληστείαις ἐχρῆτο (Jos. Ant. XV. v. 1), 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 Trachonitians
(_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.[297] In the prologue to
Pompeius Trogus’ Thirty-ninth Book, as contained in Justin’s
epitome,[298] we hear the conquests of John Hyrcanus and Alexander
Jannai described as _latrocinia_. And again (xl. 2) we read that Pompey
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 Iudaeorum et Arabum 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 (μύριοι) 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 (αρχιληστής) Hezekiah, who made the
neighboring country dangerous with his band of “madmen”
(ἀπονενοημένοι). At Jericho Simon, a former slave of Herod,
had himself proclaimed king 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 detachments and were not suppressed till much
later.[299]
All these disorders required the presence of Varus[300] 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 “innovators,” νεωτερισταί,
_cupidi rerum novarum_, restless and ambitious instigators of
rebellion.[301] The Jerusalem Jews are, to be sure, very eager to
escape the reproach of disloyalty. The rebellion was the work of
outsiders (ἐπήλυδες), to wit, the Galileans and
Gileadites above-mentioned.[302]
Varus crucified two thousand men, and then disbanded his auxiliary army.
The latter, composed obviously 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.
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. XVII. ii.
2; Wars, II. vi. 2).
This plea, to be joined to Syria, is particularly significant if we
remember that the motive of the Jews in sending the embassy was, in the
words of the Wars (II. vi. 1), to plead for the autonomy of their nation
(cf. Ant. XVII. xi. 1). 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,[303] charged the
former’s accusers with “rebellion 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 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,”
ληστής, 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.
That this Judah formed a fourth sect of the Jews in addition to the
three, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, already in existence, as
Josephus tells us, may not be quite true.[304] 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
particularly worse. Indeed, if anything, more direct administration had
somewhat lightened the burdens, by making 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 philosophic 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 recollection 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. 1); nor is
it in any degree likely that this insurrection was after all more than
what it appears to be there, a sporadic outburst in that hotbed of
unrest, the Galilean 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. 1). The Roman standards, _signa_,
σημαίαι, often contained 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
legions at this time carried the eagle, and most of them had other
heraldic animals as well.[305]
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.[306] 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. III 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.[307]
If this was the occasion of the disturbance, Pilate may well have been
innocent of any provocative intention. 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 understand the nature of
the funds or the offense involved in using them for secular purposes.
A certain significance is attached to the Samaritan episode mentioned by
Josephus (Ant. XVIII. iv. 1). It is one of the incidents that become
more and more frequent. 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
unlicensed assemblage of armed men to be sedition, and suppressed it as
such.
Shortly afterwards Palestine and the closely connected Egyptian
communities were thrown into a frenzy of excitement by the widely
advertised attempt of Gaius 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 temporized and postponed at his own
imminent peril. In view of the constantly threatening attitude of
Parthia, Petronius[308] 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.[309] 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 Gaius saved him from the consequences of his
hesitation. His subsequent procedure against the people of Doris[310]
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.
To the Roman historian, the incident of Gaius’ attempted erection of his
statue in the temple is only an illustration of the readiness with which
this nation rebelled. Tacitus[311] treats the period between
insurrections as one of smouldering revolt. The incident of Gaius
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 Iudaeis_, 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,[312] 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.[313] 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.[314] The Pharisaic tradition of his reign as preserved in
the Talmud is that he was a pious and scrupulously observant 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 without experience of lands difficult to subdue. Gaul,
Belgium, Germany, Britain, were all lands where insurrections might at
any time be feared through the devotion of an influential minority to
their ancestral customs. But in Palestine there was even less
appreciable increase in Romanization or Hellenization of customs than in
the countries mentioned. To an antiquary and scholar like the emperor
Claudius there might be something 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.[315] But a
very little later the success of a certain Theudas, an “impostor,”
γόης τις ἀνήρ, Josephus calls him, in gaining adherents as
a prophet is highly significant.[316] 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 himself was captured and beheaded. Roman officials
apprehended danger chiefly from this source, and were particularly 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 whose outrage had stirred up a revolt. But a garrison
of foreign soldiers in a warlike country furnishes constant 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 brigandage, 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 impostors.[317] 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, depending 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, τὸν δῆμον εἰς
τὸν πρὸς Ῥωμαίοις πόλεμον ἠρέθιζον.
The usual “prophet,” in this case an unnamed Egyptian, appears with his
promise to make the walls of Jerusalem fall at his command, and the
usual attack of armed soldiers on a helpless group of unarmed fanatics.
In the Wars, Josephus speaks of a great number 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 treating
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 procurator Gessius
Florus was or was not quite the monster he is depicted as being in the
Wars, 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 certainly
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.
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