CHAPTER XIX

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY

Footnote 332:

Philo, Leg. ad Gaium, 24.

Footnote 333:

We may compare such expressions as _magica arte infecti_, Tac. Ann. ii. 2; Cic. Fin. III. ii. 9.

Footnote 334:

Long before the attempts made in the nineteenth century to rehabilitate all the generally acknowledged historical monsters, historians had looked askance at the portrait of Tiberius drawn by Tacitus. For a recent discussion, cf. Jerome, The Tacitean Tiberius, Class. Phil. vii. pp. 265 seq.

Footnote 335:

Suet. Tib. 36. The _mathematici_ are strictly the astrologers whose science was called μάθησις. Cf. the title of Firmicus Maternus, _Matheseos libri_. The governmental attempt to suppress the _mathematici_ was a total failure, but the law’s attitude toward them may be seen from the rescript of Diocletian (294 C.E.): _ars mathematica damnabilis interdicta est_ (Cod. Just. IX. xviii. 2).

Footnote 336:

Nero assigned Sardinia to the senate as ample satisfaction for Achaea, which he took under his own jurisdiction.

Footnote 337:

Acts xi. 26; xxvi. 28. Ιησοῦ χρήστου in the inscription quoted in n. 10. In this case the identification of names may be due to iotacism.

Footnote 338:

Cf. the well-known rhetorician Philostr. Vita. Soph. ii. 11, and in Rome itself Inscr. gr. Sic. et Ital. 1272; and _ibid._ 2417, 2.

Footnote 339:

The question of the authenticity and date of the Acts does not belong to this study. A thorough discussion will be found in Wendland, Die urchristlichen Literaturformen, 3rd p. 314 seq.

Footnote 340:

Acts xi. 19; xiii. 5, 50.

Footnote 341:

συναγωγή = ἐκκλησία. Le Bas, 2528 (318 C.E.), a Marcionite association.

Footnote 342:

There was a jurist Tertullian of whom some fragments have been preserved in the Digest (29, 2, 30; 49, 17, 4). He has on plausible grounds been assumed to be the same as the Church Father. There can be no question that the latter had legal training. As for the cruelties described by Tacitus, it may be said that Eusebius has no word of them, even in his denunciation of Nero. (Hist. Eccl. II. xxv.)

Footnote 343:

All the Church Fathers mention these outrageous charges. Pliny (Ep. x. 96) refers vaguely to wickednesses charged against them, but the _flagitia cohaerentia nomini_ are more likely to be the treasonable machinations which the Christian associations were assumed to be engaged in than these foul and stupid accusations. It will be remembered that Tertullian (_loc. cit._) is more eager to free the Christians from the charge of treason than of any other. Treason in this case, however, meant not sedition or rebellion, but anarchy, _i.e._ attempts at the destruction of the state. The attitude of medieval law toward heresy gives a good analogy.

Footnote 344:

It would scarcely be necessary to refute this slander, if it had not recently renewed currency; Harnack, Mission and Ausbreitung. Tertullian knows nothing of it, nor Eusebius, although the latter refers in the case of Polycarp to Jewish persecution of Christians (Hist. Eccl. IV. xv. 29). Tertullian, on the contrary, implies that an enemy of the Jews would be likely to be a persecutor of Christians (Apol. 5).

Footnote 345:

Like most men of his time he bore two names, his native name of Saul and the name by which he was known among Christians, Paul. This is indicated by the phrase Σαῦλος ὁ καὶ Παῦλος (Acts xiii. 9), which is the usual form in which such a double name was expressed.

Footnote 346:

The mother church at Jerusalem consisted exclusively of Jews until the time of Hadrian (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. IV. v. 2).

Footnote 347:

Quint. Inst. X. i. 93.

Footnote 348:

Maecenas, too, was of the highest Etruscan nobility. Horace, Sat. I. vi. 1 seq. The antiquity of Etruscan families was proverbial among the Romans.

Footnote 349:

Mommsen seeks to make his crabbed style a racial characteristic. The statement is quite gratuitous. His peculiarity of expression is amply explained by his youth, his lack of literary practice, and his absorption in his philosophical pursuits.

Footnote 350:

Pers. v. 176. Reinach, Textes, p. 264.

Footnote 351:

Strabo apud Jos. Ant. XIV. vii. 2: καὶ τόπον οὐκ ἔστι ῥᾳδίως εὑρεῖν τῆς οίκουμένης ὅς οὐ παραδέδεκται τοῦτο τὸ φῦλον μηδ’ ἐπικρατεῖται ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. Seneca apud Aug. De Civ. Dei, vi. 10: _Cum interim usque eo sceleratissimae gentis consuetudo valet ut per omnes iam terras recepta sit; victi victoribus leges dederunt_.

Footnote 352:

Besides the capital passage (Sat. xiv. 96) Juvenal speaks of Jews in Sat. iii. 10 seq., 296; vi. 156, 542.

Footnote 353:

Cf. Garrucci, Cimitero ... in Signa Randanini; Rossi, Roma Sotteranea, especially the Indices. As late as 296 C.E. the epitaph of the Bishop of the Roman church is given in Greek.