ii. 13 (written about 250), shows that the circumcision of the non-Jew

involved _de iure_ the penalty of death, although it is not clear how far this found application to Samaritans or Sicarii.

[198] This exclusion of the joint rule of the senate as of the senators is indicated by Tacitus (_Hist._ i. 11) with the words that Augustus wished to have Egypt administered exclusively by his personal servants (_domi retinere_; comp. _Staatsrecht_, ii. p. 963). In principle this abnormal form of government was applicable for all the provinces not administered by senators, the presidents of which were also at the outset called chiefly _praefecti_ (_C. I. L._ v. p. 809, 902). But at the first division of the provinces between emperor and senate there was probably no other of these but just Egypt; and subsequently the distinction here came into sharper prominence, in so far as all the other provinces of this category obtained no legions. For in the emergence of the equestrian commandants of the legion instead of the senatorial, as was the rule in Egypt, the exclusion of the senatorial government finds its most palpable expression.

[199] This ordinance holds only for Egypt, not for the other territories administered by non-senators. How essential it appeared to the government, we see from the constitutional and religious apparatus called into requisition to secure it (_Trig. tyr._ c. 22).

[200] The current assertion that _provincia_ is only by an abuse of language put for the districts not administered by senators is not well founded. Egypt was private property of the emperor just as much or just as little as Gaul and Syria--yet Augustus himself says (_Mon. Ancyr._ 5, 24) _Aegyptum imperio populi Romani adieci_, and assigns to the governor, since he as _eques_ could not be _pro praetore_, by special law the same jurisdiction in processes as the Roman praetors had (Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 60).

[201] As a matter of course what is here meant is the land of Egypt, not the possessions subject to the Lagids. Cyrene was similarly organised (p. 165). But the properly Egyptian government was never applied to southern Syria and to the other territories which were for a longer or a shorter time under the power of Egypt.

[202] To these falls to be added Naucratis, the oldest Greek town already founded in Egypt before the Ptolemies, and further Paraetonium, which indeed in some measure lies beyond the bounds of Egypt.

[203] There was not wanting of course a certain joint action, similar to that which is exercised by the _regiones_ and the _vici_ of self-administering urban communities; to this category belongs what we meet with of agoranomy and gymnasiarchy in the nomes, as also the erection of honorary memorials and the like, all of which, we may add, make their appearance only to a small extent and for the most part but late. According to the edict of Alexander (_C. I. Gr._ 4957, l. 34) the _strategoi_ do not seem to have been, properly speaking, nominated by the governor, but only to have been confirmed after an examination; we do not know who had the proposing of them.

[204] The position of matters is clearly apparent in the inscription set up at the beginning of the reign of Pius to the well-known orator Aristides by the Egyptian Greeks (_C. I. Gr._ 4679); as dedicants are named ἡ πόλις τῶν Ἀλεξανδρέων καὶ Ἑρμούπολις ἡ μεγάλη καὶ ἡ βουλὴ ἡ Ἀντινοέων νέων Ἑλλήνων καὶ οἱ ἐν τῷ Δέλτᾳ τῆς Αἰγύπτου καὶ οἱ τὸν Θηβαϊκὸν νομὸν οἰκοῦντες Ἕλληνες. Thus only Antinoopolis, the city of the “new Hellenes,” has a Boule; Alexandria appears without this, but as a Greek city in the aggregate. Moreover there take part in this dedication the Greeks living in the Delta and those living in Thebes, but of the Egyptian towns Great-Hermopolis alone, on which probably the immediate vicinity of Antinoopolis has exercised an influence. To Ptolemais Strabo (xvii. 1, 42, p. 813) attributes a σύστημα πολιτικὸν ἐν τῷ Ἑλληνικῷ τρόπῳ; but in this we may hardly think of more than what belonged to the capital according to its constitution more exactly known to us--and so specially of the division of the burgesses into _phylae_. That the pre-Ptolemaic Greek city Naucratis retained in the Ptolemaic time the Boule, which it doubtless had, is possible, but cannot be decisive for the Ptolemaic arrangements.--Dio’s statement (ii. 17) that Augustus left the other Egyptian towns with their existing organisation, but took the common council from the Alexandrians on account of their untrustworthiness, rests doubtless on misunderstanding, the more especially as, according to it, Alexandria appears slighted in comparison with the other Egyptian communities, which is not at all in keeping with probability.

[205] The Egyptian coining of gold naturally ceased with the annexation of the land, for there was in the Roman empire only imperial gold. With the silver also Augustus dealt in like manner, and as ruler of Egypt caused simply copper to be struck, and even this only in moderate quantities. At first Tiberius coined, after A.D. 27-28, silver money for Egyptian circulation, apparently as token-money, as the pieces correspond nearly in point of weight to four, in point of silver value to one, of the Roman denarius (Feuardent, _Numismatique, Égypte ancienne_, ii. p. xi.). But as in legal currency the Alexandrian drachma was estimated as obolus (consequently as a sixth, not as a fourth; comp. _Röm. Münzwesen_, p. 43, 723) of the Roman denarius (_Hermes_, v. p. 136), and the provincial silver always lost as compared with the imperial silver, the Alexandrian tetradrachmon of the silver value of a denarius has rather been estimated at the current value of two-thirds of a denarius. Accordingly down to Commodus, from whose time the Alexandrian tetradrachmon is essentially a copper coin, the same has been quite as much a coin of value as the Syrian tetradrachmon and the Cappadocian drachma; they only left to the former the old name and the old weight.

[206] That the emperor Hadrian, among other Egyptising caprices, gave to the nomes as well as to his Antinoopolis for once the right of coining, which was thereupon done subsequently on a couple of occasions, makes no alteration in the rule.

[207] This figure is given by the so-called Epitome of Victor, c. 1, for the time of Augustus. After this payment was transferred to Constantinople there went thither under Justinian (_Ed._ xiii. c. 8) annually 8,000,000 artabae (for these are to be understood, according to c. 6, as meant), or 26-2/3 millions of Roman bushels (Hultsch, _Metrol._ p. 628), to which falls further to be added the similar payment to the town of Alexandria, introduced by Diocletian. To the shipmasters for the freight to Constantinople 8000 solidi = £5000 were annually paid from the state-chest.

[208] At least Cleopatra on a distribution of grain in Alexandria excluded the Jews (Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 5), and all the more, consequently, the Egyptians.

[209] The edict of Alexander (_C. I. Gr._ 4957), l. 33 ff., exempts the ἐνγενεῖς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς dwelling ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ (not ἐν τῇ πόλει) on account of their business from the λειτουργίαι χωρικαί.

[210] “There subsist,” says the Alexandrian Jew Philo (_in Flacc._ 10), “as respects corporal chastisement (τῶν μαστίγων), distinctions in our city according to the rank of those to be chastised; the Egyptians are chastised with different scourges and by others, but the Alexandrians with canes (σπάθαις; σπάθη is the stem of the palm-leaf), and by the Alexandrian cane-bearers” (σπαθηφόροι, perhaps _bacillarius_). He afterwards complains bitterly that the elders of his community, if they were to be scourged at all, should not have been provided at least with decorous burgess-lashes (ταῖς ἐλευθεριωτέραις καὶ πολιτικωτέραις μάστιξιν).

[211] Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 4, μόνοις Αἰγυπτίοις οἱ κύριοι νῦν Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς οἰκουμένης μεταλαμβάνειν ἡστινοσοῦν πολιτείας ἀπειρήκασιν. 6, _Aegyptiis neque regum quisquam videtur ius civitatis fuisse largitus neque nunc quilibet imperatorum_ (comp. _Eph. epigr._ v. p. 13). The same upbraids his adversary (ii. 3, 4) that he, a native Egyptian, had denied his home and given himself out as an Alexandrian.--Individual exceptions are not thereby excluded.

[212] Alexandrian science, too, protested in the sense of the king against this proposition (Plutarch, _de fort. Alex._ i. 6); Eratosthenes designated civilisation as not peculiar to the Hellenes alone, and not to be denied to all barbarians, _e.g._ not to the Indians, the Arians, the Romans, the Carthaginians; men were rather to be divided into “good” and “bad” (Strabo, i. _fin._ p. 66). But of this theory no practical application was made to the Egyptian race even under the Lagids.

[213] Admission to the equestrian positions was at least rendered difficult: _non est ex albo iudex patre Aegyptio_ (_C. I. L._ iv. 1943; comp. _Staatsrecht_, ii. 919, note 2; _Eph. epigr._ v. p. 13, note 2). Yet we meet early with individual Alexandrians in equestrian offices, like Tiberius Julius Alexander (p. 246, note).

[214] If the words of Pliny (_H. N._ v. 31, 128) are accurate, that the island of Pharos before the harbour of Alexandria was a _colonia Caesaris dictatoris_ (comp. iv. 574), the dictator has here too, like Alexander, gone beyond the thought of Aristotle. But there can be no doubt as to the point, that after the annexation of Egypt there never was a Roman colony there.

[215] The titles of Augustus run with the Egyptian priests to the following effect: “The beautiful boy, lovely through worthiness to be loved, the prince of princes, elect of Ptah and Nun the father of the gods, king of upper Egypt and king of lower Egypt, lord of the two lands, Autokrator, son of the sun, lord of diadems, Kaisar, ever living, beloved by Ptah and Isis;” in this case the proper names “Autokrator, Kaisar,” are retained from the Greek. The title of Augustus occurs first in the case of Tiberius in an Egyptian translation (_nti χu_), and with the retention of the Greek Σεβαστός under Domitian. The title of the fair, lovely boy, which in better times was wont to be given only to the children proclaimed as joint-rulers, afterwards became stereotyped, and is found employed, as for Caesarion and Augustus, so also for Tiberius, Claudius, Titus, Domitian. It is more important that in deviation from the older title, as it is found, _e.g._ in Greek on the inscription of Rosetta (_C. I. Gr._ 4697), in the case of the Caesars from Augustus onward the title “prince of princes” is appended, by which beyond doubt it was intended to express their position of great-king, which the earlier kings had not.

[216] If people knew, king Seleucus was wont to say (Plutarch, _An seni_, 11), what a burden it was to write and to read so many letters, they would not take up the diadem if it lay at their feet.

[217] That he wore other insignia than the officers generally (Hirschfeld, _Verw. Gesch._ p. 271), it is hardly allowable to infer from _vita Hadr._ 4.

[218] Thus Tiberius Julius Alexander, an Alexandrian Jew, held this governorship in the last years of Nero (p. 204); certainly he belonged to a very rich family of rank, allied by marriage even with the imperial house, and he had distinguished himself in the Parthian war as chief of the staff of Corbulo--a position which he soon afterwards took up once more in the Jewish war of Titus. He must have been one of the ablest officers of this epoch. To him is dedicated the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise περὶ κοσμοῦ (p. 168), evidently composed by another Alexandrian Jew (Bernays, _Gesammelte Abhandl._ ii. 278).

[219] Unmistakably the _iuridicus Aegypti_ (_C. I. L._ x. 6976; also _missus in Aegyptum ad iurisdictionem_, _Bull. dell’ Inst._ 1856, p. 142; _iuridicus Alexandreae_, _C._ vi. 1564, viii. 8925, 8934; _Dig._ i. 20, 2), and the _idiologus ad Aegyptum_ (_C._ x. 4862; _procurator ducenarius Alexandriae idiulogu_, _Eph. cp._ v. p. 30, and _C. I. Gr._ 3751; ὁ γνώμων τοῦ ἰδίου λόγου, _C. I. Gr._ 4957, v. 44, comp.