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 indicates. The Mishnah of Rabbi Judah became the standard
text-book in the Jewish academies of Palestine 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 conceal 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 Abomination. Nor are the seemingly trivial
regulations despicable for their anxious minuteness. In all probability
they are decisions of actual cases, and derive their precision from that
fact.[354]
Certain passages in Aboda Zara (ii. 1) would unquestionably 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. 1 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 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,”
particularly to the general city life of the Greeks. Some Jew or
Christian scratched those names on a house wall of Pompeii.[355]
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 comparing 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,[356] a punishment of his crime in
first bringing pederasty into the world, the Jews had the much more
drastic punishment of Sodom; 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.[357]
In many other matters there are evidences that not all the regulations
of Aboda Zara were carried out by all Jews. In the Tosefta[358] 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 τόπος τῶν Εἰουδαίων φιλοσεβάστων, “Reserved for
His Imperial Majesty’s most loyal Jews.”[359] 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 monument, but
also for the astounding purpose of actually assisting a heathen
ceremonial.[360] 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 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 _fiscus Iudaicus_, the word _fiscus_ 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 destination, 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 substantial one of a lump sum, or
a share in the fine imposed, a practice still in vogue in our own
jurisdictions. Plainly, under such circumstances, there were temptations
to a form of blackmail which the Greeks knew as συκοφαντία,
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.”[361]
The opportunities presented to delators by the _fiscus Iudaicus_
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.[362] In a very
large number of cases, however, the charge was not established, but in
these cases it was often apparently 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 blackmailers,
συκοφαντία, _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 perfectly 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 Iudaici calumnia sublata_, “To
commemorate the suppression of blackmail arising from the Jewish tax.”
The _fiscus Iudaicus_ 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 ἀσέβεια: “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.”
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
consisted 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 Flavius Clemens
and Flavia Domitilla, both of them kinsmen of the emperor.[363]
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.
In Suetonius we have a wholly different version (Dom. 15). Flavius
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 reiterated, 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 ἀσέβεια was a relatively
common offense, and indictment for it of frequent occurrence. But it is
doubtful whether there was such an indictment at Roman law. There is no
Latin term for ἀσέβεια. 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 ἀσέβεια 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 provisions, but all of them relating to acts that tended
to the bodily injury of anyone, whatever the motive or pretext of that
injury.[364]
The “many,” then, who, as Xiphilinus says, were prosecuted for
“impiety,” because they lapsed into Jewish 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 probably far-fetched pretexts devised by the morose
and suspicious Domitian during his last year of veritable terror in
order to get rid of men whom he suspected (often justly) of plotting his
assassination. These are the men whom Nerva’s act of amnesty freed.
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 lies in the series of insurrections of the Eastern
Jews of which the rebellion of 68 C.E. was merely the beginning. Our
sources for the events of these rebellions are remote and uncertain, and
the transmission is more than usually troubled; but a chance fragment,
as well as the kernel of the lurid account presented by Xiphilinus’
epitome of Dio, leaves no doubt that the struggle was carried on with
memorable ferocity, 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. lxviii. 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 détails de Dion inspirent la
méfiance_.[365]
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.
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
στάσις, reviving the revolt of 68 C.E. At first the Jews
were generally successful, 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 (Fg. hist. gr. v. p. 65) gives us a first-hand view of the
situation.
Both the papyri and Appian are in complete accordance with Eusebius’
account, and emphasize the extent of the Jewish insurrection and the
impression it produced 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[366] 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 represented as abortive, and the “day of
Trajan” ceased, according to another story, to be observed when the
martyrs Papius and Lollianus were executed.[367]
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 Parthians’ 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 successor, 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 conditions that led to the revolt of 68 C.E.
were not still operative. The fall of the temple did not paralyze the
Jewish propaganda. We find it as vigorous afterward as before. The
Messianic hopes, which were one form of the prevailing spiritual unrest,
had not died out in the East among Jews or non-Jews.[368] 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, however, are in the highest degree suspect, and while the
period between Vespasian and Marcus Aurelius represents 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 merchants. 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 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-overwhelming 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 Palestinian schools, the eloquent and passionate Akiba.[369]
Dio[370] 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 official 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.[371]
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.[372]
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 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
_elillim_, one of the Abominations of the heathen, roused the frenzy of
the people that witnessed it to such a pitch that the chances of success
could no longer be considered. At the same time, assurances of ultimate
help from Parthia were perhaps not lacking. Among those who streamed to
aid the rebellious 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 historical value.[373] 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 permanent prohibition against the
entrance of a Jew into Aelia Capitolina there is excellent
evidence;[374] 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. In Hadrian’s letter of 134 C.E., to his brother-in-law
Servianus, the Jews of Egypt are referred to in a manner quite
irreconcilable with the theory that Judaism was then a proscribed
religion.[375]
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
biographer of Hadrian, Spartianus, makes this edict precede and not
follow the war; but the reliability of the _Historia 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.[376]
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 circumcision had been openly carried on both by Jews who were
Roman citizens and by their converts, in disregard of this provision,
probably under the tacit assumption that the privileges of the Jewish
corporations 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 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.[377]
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 practice of
circumcision among people outside of those to whom it was an ancient
custom may have been followed by indictment and punishment. If Hadrian
really had attempted to carry out this prohibition generally, he would
have provoked a rebellion in Egypt as well as in Judea, since in Egypt
the priests practised it likewise.[378] The rescript of Antoninus, a few
years later, which expressly exempted Jews from the broad condemnation
of the practice, simply restated established law.[379] 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
circumcision 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 making the performance of the rite in the case of non-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.[380] 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, _Iudaeis privilegia
reservavit_.[381] When one contrasts this with the immediately following
statement, _Christianos 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
Sentences, 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 predecessor Elagabalus in Judaism and Christianity is too 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.[382]
Whether or not a qualified restriction on the spread of Judaism has been
changed in our texts of the Sentences 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 restrictions 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 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 Jews, 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, 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_,[383] upon which little reliance can be placed. After
the death of Commodus and Pertinax,[384] the eastern empire, including
Palestine, sided with the local claimant Pescennius Niger, and Palestine
became the scene of battles sufficiently important to justify the
decreeing of a “Jewish triumph” to Caracalla. It is likely that these
various “rebellions” were the more or less serious insurrections of
bandits, who terrorized the countryside 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. lxxv. 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 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 convulsed 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 themselves.[385] 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.[386]
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