CHAPTER XVI

JEWS IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE

We are all familiar with the assertion that both Greeks and Romans of the last pre-Christian century were in a state of complete moral and religious collapse, that polytheism had been virtually discarded, and that the worn souls of men were actively seeking a new religious principle to take its place. This general statement is partly true, but it is quite inadequate, if it is made to account for the situation at Rome at that time.

The extant literature of the time makes it quite clear that there was no belief in the truth of the mythology. But it is doubtful whether there ever had been, and mythology was no part of religion. This was particularly true at Rome. For some thousands of years the inhabitants of central Italy had performed ceremonies in their fields in connection with their daily life. A great many of these ceremonies had become official and regulated in the city of Rome and many other Italic civic communities. It was the practice of educated Italians to devise aetiological stories for these practices and to bring them into connection with Greek myths. In this way a Roman mythology was created, but more even than in the case of the Greeks it was devoid of a folkloristic foundation.[252] For the masses these stories can scarcely be said to have existed. But the ceremonies did, and their punctilious performance and the anxious care with which extraordinary rites of purgation were performed satisfied the ordinary needs of ordinary men.

Mention has been made of the religious movement which from the seventh century B.C.E. spread over the Eastern Mediterranean, and which was concerned with the demand for personal salvation and its corollary, a belief in personal immortality. In the Greek-speaking world the carriers of that movement were the Orphic and Dionysiac mysteries. In the non-Greek East there was abundant occasion for beliefs of this kind to gain ground. The great world monarchies introduced such cataclysms in the smaller nations that a violent readjustment of relations with the divinity was frequently necessitated, since the god’s claim to worship was purely national. No such profound political upheavals occurred in Greece. Here, however, a fertile field for the spread of mysteries and extra-national means of divine relations was found in the rapid economic degeneration caused by the slave system. Attachment to the state was confined to those who had a stake in it. The maxim that a man’s fatherland was where his fortune brought him seemed less a bold and cynical aphorism than the veriest commonplace for all but a few idealists.[253] To save the personality that individual misfortunes threatened to overwhelm, recourse was had to every means and especially to the vague and widespread doctrine of other and fuller existences beyond the confines of mortality.

In Rome the obvious hinge in the destinies of the people from almost every point of view was the Hannibalic war. For a short time disaster seemed imminent, and the desperate reaching out to the ends of the earth for divine support could not fail to make a deep impression upon thousands of men. In that moment of dreadful stress, it was not the Etruscan Triad on the Capitol nor Father Mars, but the mystic Ma, the Ancient Mother of Phrygia with her diadem of towers, her lion-chariot and her bloody orgies, that stayed the rush of the Carthaginian. It is true that the city’s ultimate triumph caused a reaction. An increased national self-consciousness made Romans somewhat ashamed of their weakness, but they could not blot out the memory of the fact.

The city’s increase in total well-being went on with tremendous strides, but the disintegrating forces of a vicious economic system were present here too. Besides, the special circumstances that tended to choke the city with people of diverse origin were intensified. In the next few generations we hear of the threatening character of foreign mysteries, of surreptitious association with the Cybele worshipers, of Isis devotees gaining ground. Shortly after the Second Punic War occurs the episode of the Bacchic suppression. One can scarcely help noticing how strikingly similar were the accusations directed against the Bacchanales and those later brought against the Christians, and wondering whether they were any truer in the one case than in the other. The whole incident can easily be construed as an act of governmental persecution, which, it may be noted, was as futile as such persecution generally is. The orgiastic Dionysus was not kept from Italy, though he always remained an uncomfortable god for Romans of the old type. One reason has already been referred to; viz., the constant recruiting of the _infima plebs_ from enfranchised foreign slaves. The lower classes were becoming orientalized. The great Sicilian slave revolt of 134 B.C.E. was almost a Syrian insurrection, and was under the direct instigation of the Syrian goddess Atargatis.[254]

During the civil wars and the periods of uncertainty that lay between them, all political and social life seemed as though conducted on the edge of a smouldering volcano. Innumerable men resorted to magic, either in its naïve form or in its astrological or mathematical refinements. Newer and more terrific rites, stranger and more outlandish ceremonials, found a demand constantly increasing. And the Augustan monarchy brought only a temporary subsidence of this excitement. Order and peace returned, but Augustus could not cure the fundamentally unsound conditions that vitiated Roman life, nor did he make any real attempt to prevent Roman society from being dissolved by the steady inpour of foreign blood, traditions, and non-Roman habits of mind. The need of recourse to foreign mysteries was as apparent as ever.

In this way the internal conditions of Roman society impelled men to the alien forms of religion. And external impulses were not lacking. There were present professional and well-equipped missionaries. Our information about them is fullest with reference to the philosophic schools, which consciously bid for the support of educated Romans. These groups of philosophers were nearly all completely organized, and formed an international fraternity as real as the great International Actors Association and the similar Athletic Union.[255] It was scarcely feasible to stand neutral. A man was either an Academic, or Stoic, or Epicurean, or Neopythagorean, and so on. So skilful a trimmer as Cicero’s friend, the astoundingly shrewd Atticus, was enrolled as an Epicurean.[256] Even skepticism classified a man as an Academic, as Cicero himself was classed despite occasional exhibitions of sympathy for the Stoa. And the combat was as intense and as dogmatic as that between competing religious sects. That is precisely what they were, and they bandied their shibboleths with the utmost zeal and unction.

Some of these philosophic sects, the Cynics and Stoics, reached classes of lower intellectual level. And there they came in conflict with astrologer and thaumaturg, with Isis and with Atthis devotees, and with Jews. The popular sermon, the diatribe, was an institution of the Cynics, and was directed to the crowd. Indeed the chief object of Cynic jibes was the pretension of philosophers to possess a wisdom that was in any way superior to the mother-wit of the rudest boor.[257] The Stoics too used the diatribe with success. It must not, however, be supposed that either Stoic or Cynic was a serious rival of the dramatic and sensationally attractive rites of the Eastern cults. The latter counted their adherents by the hundreds where the preaching philosopher might pick up an occasional adherent. The importance of the philosophers for the spread of non-Roman beliefs lies chiefly in the fact that they reached all classes of society, and, different as they seem from the cult-associations of the various foreign deities, they really represented the same emotional need as the latter.

These had literary support as well. We have recently had restored to us some astrological pamphlets, such as that of Vettius Valens,[258] and we can only guess from what arsenal Isiac or Mithraist drew those arguments with which he boasted of confuting even Stoics and Epicureans. But we may safely assume that tracts existed of this sort.

As far as the Jews are concerned, their propaganda may have begun with their first settlement in Rome. Cicero does not mention it, but Cicero was not interested in what went on among the strata of society in which the Jews then moved. In the next generation their propaganda was so wide and successful that it must have been established for a considerable time.

Further, from what has been said it is clear that this propaganda must have been directed primarily to the plebs, to the same classes, that is, as those who received Isis and Cybele, Mithra and the Cabiri. At first it practically did not reach the intellectually cultivated at all. But the Jews possessed an extensive literature, which in Egypt and the East generally had assumed the form of “most philosophic” treatises. Indeed, it is quite clear that the Wisdom of Solomon could be enjoyed by none but cultured men.[259] Books of this sort, as well as the Bible, were accessible, and were read by some. The synagogue service was an exposition of Jewish doctrine upon topics that ranked as philosophic. While therefore it was mainly from among the masses that Jewish converts came, here and there men of education must have found the Jewish preachers as convincing as the philosophic revivalists, who boasted of no more respectable credentials.

The Roman state had found itself obliged to take cognizance of the foreign religious movements at an early date. The official acceptance of Cybele had promptly been surrounded by restrictions. Cybele was always to remain a foreign goddess. Romans were stringently forbidden to take part in her ceremonies.[260] Toward the forms of worship themselves, the Roman attitude was tolerant enough. As long as they were confined to Egyptians, Syrians, Cappadocians, the participants would be secure from molestation. But that the foreign rites might displace the ancestral forms was a well-grounded fear, and drastic precautions were taken against that. The Bacchanalian incident of 186 B.C.E. is the first of these instances.

In the same way the Roman police found it necessary at various times to proceed against astrologers, Isis-worshipers, and philosophers. The statement frequently occurring, that these groups were banished, is constantly misunderstood. It can apply only to foreigners in these classes, not to Roman citizens affected by these strange beliefs; but it implies that the Roman citizens so affected were sufficiently numerous to make the desertion of the national religion a probable contingency. Of course Roman citizens could not violate the laws that regulated religious observances with impunity. These laws, however, were ostensibly never directed against the religious observances, but against abuses and acts that were connected with them. That was true even in the case of the Bacchanalia, when the decree of the senate expressly permitted the celebration of the rites under proper restrictions.

Whether honestly or not, the Roman government aimed its measures solely at certain indubitably criminal acts, which, it was alleged, were associated with the practice of the foreign cults. These acts were often offenses against public morality. Conditions of high religious excitement often sought a physical outlet in dancing or shouting, and no doubt often enough, when the stimulation of wine or drugs or flagellation was added, in sexual excesses. Instances that were perhaps isolated and exceptional were treated as characteristic, and made the basis for repressive legislation.[261]

Another and better founded objection to many of the forms of foreign religion was the opportunities they offered for swindlers. As early as 139 B.C.E. the astrologers were banished from Rome, not because of the feeling that the astrological system was baseless, but because of the readiness with which professed astrologers defrauded the simple by portentous horoscopes, which they alone could interpret or avert.[262] The “Chaldeans” or _mathematici_ included many men who were neither the one nor the other. It was obviously easier for a Syrian or Oriental generally to make these claims than for either Greek or Italian. Syrians in the city accordingly found the profession of quack tempting and profitable, and doubtless many Jews as well entered it.

We have evidence too that many of the mushroom political associations were grouped about some of these foreign deities. The possession of common _sacra_ was, in a sense, the distinguishing mark of any organized body of men, and organization of the masses in all forms was the commonest device of the agitators of the revolutionary period. Clodius had his mobs grouped in _decuries_ and _curiae_.[263] It is likely enough that in some of these groups, consisting largely of freedmen of foreign birth, various foreign deities were worshiped in the communal _sacra_, so that the various police measures restricting or forbidding these rites may have had strong political motives as well.

When Caesar reconstituted the state after Pharsalia, he knew from direct experience the danger that lay in unrestricted association ostensibly for religious purposes. The θίασοι, “cult-associations,” which he dissolved were undoubtedly grouped about some Greek or Oriental deity. The Jews were specially exempted, for reasons easy to guess at, but which we cannot exactly determine.[264] This striking favor cannot but have immensely increased their influence. We need not suppose that Caesar’s orders were any more effective than previous decrees of this character had been. But even a temporary clearing of the field gave the active propagandists among the Jews an opportunity which they fully utilized.

We have sketches of Jewish activities in Rome during the following years drawn by master hands. In every instance, of course, the picture is drawn with distinct lack of sympathy, but it is none the less valuable on that account. Easily of first importance is the information furnished us by the cleverest of Roman poets, Horace.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus was the son of a former slave. His racial origin accordingly may have been found in any corner of the Mediterranean in which we choose to look for it. That fact, however, is of little importance, except that the consciousness of servile ancestry must have largely influenced his personal intercourse, and his patriotism must have been somewhat qualified, despite some vigorously Roman sentiments. Suave, obese, witty, a thoroughly polished gentleman of wide reading and perfect manners, both sensual and shrewdly practical, Horace had early reached the point at which one descants on the merits of frugality and simplicity at the end of a seven-course dinner. His star was in the ascendant. His patron Maecenas was the trusted minister of Augustus; and to Augustus, and not Antony, fell the task of rebuilding the shattered framework of the state. Secure in the possession of every creature comfort, the freedman’s son could loaf and invite his soul.

That he did so in exquisite verses is our good fortune, and that he chose to put his shrewd philosophy and criticism of life into the form of sketches that are medleys of scenes, lively chat, satirical attacks, and portraits of types and individuals, makes the period in which he lived and the society in which he moved almost as vivid to us as that depicted in the letters of Cicero.

In one of his Satires—“Chats,” as he called them—he tells the story of his encounter with a pushing gentleman, of a type familiar to every age. Horace cannot escape from the infliction of his presence, and miserably succumbing to the inane chatter of the bore, he comes upon his friend Titus Aristius Fuscus. But his hopes in that quarter are doomed to disappointment.

“Surely,” says Horace, nudging Fuscus, “you said you had something you wanted to speak to me about in private.”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” answers Fuscus, “but we’ll let that go for some more suitable time. To-day’s the thirtieth Sabbath. Why, man, would you want to offend the circumcised Jews?”

“I can’t say that I feel any scruples on that score.”

“But I do. I haven’t your strength of mind. I’m only a humble citizen. You’ll excuse me. I shall talk over our business at some other time.”

The little scene is so significant that we shall have to dwell on it. One unescapable inference is that the Jews in Rome were numerous, and that a great many non-Jews participated wholly or partially in their observances. Fuscus need not be taken seriously about his own beliefs, but his excuse would be extravagant in the highest degree if the situation of the Jews were not such as has been suggested. Indeed, the terms of intentional offensiveness which Fuscus uses indicate the serious annoyance of either himself or Horace that that should be the case.

The “thirtieth Sabbath” will probably remain an unsolved riddle.[265] And whatever the day was, the extreme veneration expressed by Fuscus in declining even to discuss profane affairs is of course absurdly out of keeping with the words he uses. Fuscus is simply assuming the tone of a demi-proselyte, a _metuens Sabbata_, whose superstitious dread of the rites he has half embraced would make him carry his devotion to an excess. Horace thus obtains an opportunity of sketching a new type of absurdity, in the very act of girding at the one which is the subject of the _sermo_.

And Horace makes still another reference to the proselytizing activities of the Jews. “You must allow me my scribbling,” he writes to Maecenas in another Satire. “If you don’t, a great crowd of poets will come to help me. We far outnumber you, and, like the Jews, will compel you to join our rout.”[266]

This is explicit enough in all conscience, and gives a very vivid picture of the public preaching that must have brought the Jews to the unwelcome notice of every saunterer in the Roman streets. Horace, despite his slave grandfather, is a gentleman, the associate of Rome’s aristocracy, a member of the most select circle of the city’s society. The Jewish proselytes, whether fully converted or “righteous strangers,” must have been very numerous indeed, if he was forced to take such relatively frequent notice of them. Horace has no pictures, like those of Juvenal, of presumptuous Syrians, Egyptians, or Greeks swaggering about the city. It is only these Syrian _Iudaei_ whom he finds irritating, and wholly because of their successful hunt for souls.

It is true that all this may be due to personal circumstances in his own surroundings. Some of his acquaintances, or men whom he occasionally encountered, may have been proselytes; others may have been impressed by certain Jewish forms or ideas. Horace is taking his fling at them in his usual light manner. There is something ludicrous to a detached philosopher in the eager striving to save one’s soul, and still more absurd in the earnest attempt to gain adherents for an association that promises salvation.

Once he takes a more serious tone. In the famous journey he made with Maecenas to Brundisium Horace is told of an altar-miracle at Egnatia. The incense melts of itself, it seems, in the local temple. “Tell it to the Jew Apella,” says Horace, “not to me. I have always been taught that the gods live free from every care, and if anything wonderful occurs in nature, it is not because it has been sent down from heaven by meddlesome divinities.”[267]

This Jew Apella—a dialect-form of Apollas or Apollonius[268]—is no doubt a real person, who may perhaps have recounted to Horace some of the miracles of the Bible. Horace’s raillery is directed plainly enough at the credulity that will accept these stories, and equally at the troublesome theology which makes the god a factor in daily life. Life was much simpler if no such incalculable quantity were injected into it. And to keep life free from harassing and unnecessary complications was the essence of his philosophy.[269]

At about the same time another writer, the geographer Strabo, of Amasea in Cappadocia, makes a statement of special interest. As quoted by Josephus (Ant. XIV. vii. 2) he says: “These people have already reached every city, and it would be difficult to find a place in the whole world that has not received this tribe and succumbed to it.”

Obviously the statement is a gross exaggeration, and at most applicable to the cities of Egypt and Cyrene, in connection with which it is made. But that such a statement could be made at all is excellent evidence that it was at least partially true, and that there were Jewish communities practically everywhere, although it can hardly be the case that they were everywhere dominant. However, the sketches by Horace are an eloquent commentary upon the statement of Strabo. Not merely the East or Africa, but the capital itself, was overrun with Jews, and their number was constantly increasing.

Horace, it has been said, wrote of and for a cultured aristocracy. So did the other poets of the age, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid. But all of them were more than ordinarily familiar with the _bas-lieux_ where disreputable passions might be gratified. The voluptuary Ovid was especially prone to go down into the sewer for new sensations, and just as Horace met Jews in the boulevards, so Ovid knew them in the slums.

In his salad-days Ovid had written a manual of debauchery, which he called the “Art of Love.” He was destined to regret bitterly the facility of verse and of conscience that gave birth to this bold composition. But written it was, and in his advice to the dissolute young Romans he enumerates the time and place for their amours.

Rome [he says in _Ars Amatoria_, i. 55 seq.] is the place for beauties. Venus has her fixed abode in the city of her Aeneas. Whatever you desire you may find. All you have to do is to take a walk in the Porticus of Pompey or of Livia,... Do not pass by the place where Venus mourns Adonis, or where the Syrian Jew performs his rites each seventh day. Nor overlook the temples of the linen-clad heifer from Memphis. She makes many what Jove made her. Even the fora favor Love, ... those where the Appian aqueduct gushes forth near the marble temple of Venus.... But above all stalk your game in the theaters.

In these instances Ovid refers to place, not to time, and it is only as part of the passages as a whole that the individual references can be understood. It will be seen that all the localities, beginning with the Porticus of Pompey in the Campus Martius, are merely casual. It is at the theater and circus where Ovid’s pupils are chiefly to pick out the ladies of their light loves. For that reason the other places specified are also, to a certain extent, show places. The mention of the law-courts is especially noteworthy in this connection.

We must therefore assume that in the Jewish proseucha and in the temple of the Egyptian Isis there were to be found a certain number of curious onlookers, particularly women, and while many of them became ardent converts, a certain number were innocent of any intentions except to while away an idle hour, and were easy game for the professional “mashers” for whom Ovid writes. Isis and Judaism were the two Oriental cults which at this time had the greatest success in Rome. And we can easily imagine how the unoccupied of all classes thronged to every new fashion in religious stimulation as in others.

Ovid is as explicit in the selection of time as of place.

Do not disregard time,... Avoid the first of April. Then the rainy season begins, and storms are frequent. But begin the day of the defeat at the Allia, or the day on which the Sabbath feast comes again, which the Syrian from Palestine celebrates. That’s a day on which other business ought not to be done. (Ars. Am. i. 413 seq.)

Again, in his palinode, with which he vainly hoped to regain his shattered reputation, “The Cure for Love” (vv. 214 seq.), he brings the same things together:

Off with you; take a long journey to some distant land.... The less you want to go, the more you must; remember that! Be firm and make your unwilling feet run. Do not pray for rain. Let no imported Sabbaths hinder you, nor the day on which we remember the disaster on the Allia.[270]

As far as Ovid is concerned, and we must assume he is speaking for Fuscus’ _multi_, a certain Jewish feast, whether it is the Sabbath or some special holiday, such as the Day of Atonement, is ranked with the Dies Alliensis, the fifteenth of July, the day on which, in 390 B.C.E., the Romans suffered their great defeat at the hands of the Gauls, and which was in consequence an ill-omened day from that time forth. Again, the Sabbath is classed with the rainy season as a day that might ordinarily incline a man to put off serious business.

As stated in the Notes, it is a common error to suppose that the generally ill-omened character of these days makes them eminently proper for flirtation. No Roman, however cynical, could flout superstition to that extent. The advice is given for purely practical considerations. The rainy season at the time of the equinoxes is an inauspicious time to begin a courtship, which, as we have seen in the previous passage, must be carried on almost wholly in the open air. Social gatherings in the houses of friends in the society of ladies were not common. There was nothing among the Romans to correspond to modern five-o’clock’s or receptions, at which court might be paid to anyone who had caught the fancy of the Roman man about town. It is in the porticoes, in the idle crowds at the theater or circus, where the steps of ingratiating are to be carried out, and for these the rising of the Pleiades (Ars. Am. i. 409) is distinctly unpromising.

This is especially borne out by the passage immediately following the one quoted from the “Art of Love” (Ars. Am. i. 417 seq.). The most inauspicious day to attempt the beginning of an intrigue is the lady’s birthday. Gifts are in order then, and they undoubtedly deplete one’s pocket-book. Ovid is jocose here, but the point is the same throughout. The hints and suggestions are as practical and direct as the formula of Ovid’s face-powder, which he also sets forth in the unfinished verses called _Medicamina Faciei Femineae_.

That which makes the Dies Alliensis and the Jewish Sabbath desirable is the fact that the former is in mid-July and the latter in the early fall, the most delightful of Italian seasons. Then an unbroken series of cloudless skies is almost assured; and the Roman fop could count on meeting his fair one day after day in one of the places of assignation so conveniently enumerated by Ovid.

The phrase _rebus minus apta gerendis_, “unsuitable for transacting business,” is best taken as given in the translation (above, p. 251). Ovid knows that undertakings are rare on that day, and that causes its insertion. If it were merely that cessation of ordinary business made it easier for idlers to pursue their amours, it must be remembered that the _jeunesse dorée_ had no other ordinary business than falling in love.

The reference in the “Cure for Love” (above, p. 251) is of quite a different character. It will be noted that _pluviae_, “the rainy season,” which in the first case is particularly contrasted with the Sabbath and the Allia day, is here associated with them. “Let nothing hinder you,” says Ovid, “neither a good excuse nor a bad one; neither the weather nor superstition.” The point of the reference in the two cases is accordingly not at all the same. In the first instance the accidental fact that the Allia day and a certain Jewish festival occur during pleasant weather singles them out for mention. In the second it is the religious association of the day that Ovid has in mind.

As far as Ovid is personally concerned, there is no more than in Horace a trace of sympathy for the Jewish cult. We have seen that in every instance this cult is only one of several illustrations. The adjective _peregrina_, “foreign,” applied to the Sabbath, gives the tone of all the passages. Ovid is a collector of light emotions. Of serious beliefs he has no vestige. But the presence of these Syrians in the city interests him as anything else picturesque would. He takes cognizance of the part they play in the life of the city, and is a valuable witness on that point.

The same inference may be drawn from the letter of Augustus to Tiberius (Suet. Aug. 76): “There is no Jew, my dear Tiberius, who keeps his fast on the Sabbath as I kept it to-day.” If the considerations advanced in Note 269 are valid, the Sabbath here is the Day of Atonement. But the significant fact is the use of the illustration at all. It confirms Strabo’s statement of the extent and success of the propaganda of the Jews that all these writers in some way mention their presence.

That the preaching of the Jews was vigorous and aggressive is almost a necessary inference. We know no less than three of their synagogues by name, Augustenses, Volumnienses, Agrippenses,[271] and we have no reason to assume that these three exhausted the list. To many Romans the ardor of their proselytizing was offensive. It seemed a systematic attempt to transform the ancestral faith of the state. A casual reference in Valerius Maximus, a contemporary of Tiberius, charges the Jews with having attempted “to contaminate Roman beliefs by foisting upon them the worship of Jupiter Sabazios.”[272] Valerius goes on to say that the praetor Hispalus expelled the Jews for that reason as early as 139 B.C.E. If such a thing took place, it was undoubtedly an act similar to an expulsion under Tiberius (below, p. 306), and was based on definite infractions of law, perhaps the law against unlicensed fortune-telling. The Jews in both cases were associated with the Chaldeans, a fact that makes the supposition more likely. But Valerius has in mind the conditions of his own day, when the success of the Jewish propaganda was bitterly resented, as we have seen, by Horace and Fuscus, and, as we shall later see, by Seneca and his associates generally.

If we try to imagine what the Jewish Roman communities of that day were like, we shall have to think of them as a proletariat. Freedmen in the second or third generation must have constituted a large part of them, and later references make it likely that many earned their livelihood by the proscribed arts of divination and fortune-telling. As in Alexandria, the bulk were probably artisans. Some were physicians, a profession then ranking in social degree with the manual trades, and usually exercised by slaves or freedmen.[273] The Roman encyclopedist Celsus mentions two Jewish medical authorities (De Med. V. xix. 11; xxii. 4). But the majority must have formed part of the pauperized city mob, turbulent and ignorant, and no doubt only moderately acquainted with their own laws and literature, so that we cannot be surprised to find indications of many things among them that were regarded as sacrilege in Jerusalem, such as carved animal figures on tombstones.[274]

However, there must at least have been some of a different type, whose command of their controversial literature enabled them to meet the competing philosophies upon their own ground and impress themselves upon some of the men of Augustus’ own circle.