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record that the decree was repealed.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 Iudaicosque ritus compescuit,
coactis qui superstitione ea tenebantur religiosas vestes cum
instrumento omni comburere. Iudaeorum iuventutem 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 provinces 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 Tacitus in the Annals (ii.
85), where we hear that “action was taken about the eradication of
Egyptian and Jewish rites. A senatusconsultum was passed, which
transferred 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 amalgamating 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.
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 [πᾶν τὸ
Ἰουδαϊκόν] to be driven from Rome. The consuls enrolled four
thousand of them, and sent them to the island of Sardinia. He punished
very many who claimed that their ancestral 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 connection 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 connected at
all.
From all these statements, and from the reference that Philo makes in
the _Legatio ad Gaium_,[332] 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 expulsion took place,
is itself a difficulty; but like every _argumentum ex silentio_, it
scarcely permits a valid inference. It seems strange, to be sure, that a
severe and deserved punishment of the _taeterrima gens_, “that
disgusting 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 military service. All these four thousand were _ea
superstitione 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_. 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 possibility 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 therefore 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 proselytes.[333] Men who were born Jews could not be so
characterized. 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
thousand 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 jurisprudence was, in fact, just beginning to have its
meaning and implications defined. A wholesale expulsion of 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[334] 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 citizens
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 compulsory 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, § 1. ii. p.
517 M; and Leg. ad Gaium, § 24. ii. p. 569 M) is not clear. But it is
difficult 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 religions, 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 (108, 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 superstition 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 τῶν ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ
παρακινηθέντων 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.[335]
[Illustration: SYMBOLS AND INSCRIPTIONS FROM JEWISH CATACOMBS AND
CEMETERIES IN ROME
(From Garrucci)]
It has been pointed out before (above, p. 242) that the observance of
foreign religious rites was never forbidden 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 imposture, 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 probably 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 senatusconsultum 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 presumptive 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 checked this excess of zeal and enforced the decree as
it was intended (_loc. cit._): ὡς οὐκ ἐπὶ πάντας προβάσης τῆς
ἐπεξελεύσεως, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ μόνους τοὺς αἰτίους—ὀλίγοι δὲ ῆσαν—κινῆσαι δὲ
μηδὲν ἐξ ἔθους; _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 allowing 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.[336]
Perhaps we may reconstitute the decree as follows: The penalty imposed
was, for foreigners, expulsion; for Roman citizens, perhaps exile; for
freedmen, forfeiture 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 violation 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 permanent relief on that point.
It is during the reign of his successor Claudius that we hear of another
expulsion: _Iudaeos 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,
Χρηστός, the Upright, in many Christian documents.[337]
This play upon words is practically unavoidable. But Chrestus is a
common name among all classes of society.[338] 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.
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 _Iudaei_ 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 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 passage in the Acts of
the Apostles in which the meeting of Paul and Aquila at Corinth is
mentioned (Acts xviii. 1, 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,[339] 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
operation 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 difficulties
presented by the assumption of a real expulsion, this supposition may
also be considered.
Mention has already been made of the special association 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 that
Poppaea Sabina became a semi-proselyte. And during Nero’s reign occurs
an event of special importance 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,” εὐαγγέλιον, 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,” γόητες ἄνθρωποι, like those whom
Felix captured and put to death (Jos. Ant. XX. viii. 5). But some
believed. 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.[340] 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 congregations of their own, synagogues or
ecclesiae (the terms are practically synonymous),[341] different from
the synagogues 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.
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 characteristically different
from that in Tacitus. In Suetonius we have a brief statement (Nero, 16):
_Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum 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 (_ibid._
19): _Haec partim nulla reprehensione, partim etiam non mediocri laude
digna, in unum contuli_, “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 wickedness,
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 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[342] 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 punishment was banishment to some
penal colony, _relegatio_, a punishment considered capital at law, but
still different 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.[343] Tertullian undoubtedly had legal training,
and his exposition of the logical absurdities into which the fact led
Roman officials is convincing enough, but the fact remains. The _nomen
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 (Suetonius, Claud. 25). (Comp. above, p. 142.)
When Tertullian 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.[344] 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 significance 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 Christianity 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.
The elaborate scheme of salvation prepared by the Cilician Jew Paul[345]
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.[346] 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 Christians 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 initiation; he had increased
his numbers by decreasing the cost of admission. So we find, shortly
after the destruction of the temple, R. Nehemiah ben ha-Kannah asserting
(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 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 community 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.[347] 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 lineage compared with
which the Roman Valerii and Caecilii were the veriest mushrooms.[348]
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.[349] 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 condition that is
terrified by vain and monstrous imaginings of ignorant men is set forth
in the Fifth Satire:[350]
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 brawling 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 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 pictures
of Roman life and society or not may be doubted. But they indubitably
reflect his own soul. We see there a soured _raté_, a man embittered by
his failure to receive the rewards due to his merits. In the capital of
the 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 profession 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 characteristically 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,[351] 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 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[352] show us certain 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 disagreeable 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 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.[353] 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 experiences, 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 indication 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._ in 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, Gaius Julius Justus, a
place for a sepulchre. The officers 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 assemblage of Julii, Livii, and Antonii.
------------------------------------------------------------------------