We have been concerned so far almost wholly with Greeks and the Greek attitude toward the Jews. It will be necessary at this point to turn our attention to a very different people, the Romans.

If we desire to trace the development of this all-overwhelming factor in our reckoning, it will not be possible to go back very far. During the fifth century B.C.E., in which Greek genius is believed to have reached its apogee, it is doubtful whether even the faintest whisper had reached Greeks that told of the race of Italic barbarians destined so soon to dominate the world. Little as was known of the Jews by Greeks of this period, the Romans were still less known. The eyes of men were persistently turned east.

Rome, however, even then was not wholly insignificant. Many centuries before, there had grown up, on the south bank of the Tiber, a town of composite racial origin. It is possible to consider it an outpost of the Etruscans against Sabine and Latin, or a Latin outpost against the Etruscans. Whatever its origin, at an indeterminate time, when the Etruscan hegemony over central Italy was already weakened, this town of Rome became a member of the Latin Confederation, a group of cities of which the common bond was the shrine of Jupiter Latiaris on the Alban Mount.

There may have been rude hamlets upon this site from times very ancient indeed. But from the beginning of its existence as a real city Rome must have been a considerable community. Her strategic position upon seven hills, the commercial advantages of her location upon a navigable stream, conspired to this end.

The Latin Confederation had long been under the real or titular presidency of the city of Alba. At some time before our records become reliable, Rome had obtained a decidedly real leadership in the league, and unscrupulously used the latter’s resources for the furtherance of her own power and wealth. Without a definite programme of conquest, and with military skill and personal hardihood very little, if at all, superior to that of their neighbors, the Romans had, by steadfastness and native shrewdness, developed a policy which it is difficult to put in precise terms, because it was never even approximately formulated, but which may be said to consist of unremitting vigilance and long memory, combined with special alertness to profit by the mistakes or division of the foe. It may be that the indubitably mixed character of Rome’s population produced that result. Certainly in these respects no other ancient community was its equal.

The legendary history of Rome is as generally familiar as the commonest household stories of the race. Modern investigators have abandoned the attempt to find out even partially the line at which its history ceases to be legendary. Fairly correct accounts of Rome begin with the permanent contact of the city with a literate community of which the records have survived, namely, the Greeks.^[230]

The Greeks had founded cities along the southern coast of Italy and the eastern half of Sicily as early as the ninth century B.C.E. With some of these cities it was inevitable that Rome should be in frequent communication, but the communication did not impress itself for many years upon that class of Greeks which, in the extant books, speaks for the whole people. Not till the time of Alexander (330 B.C.E.) do our Greek records begin to deal with Romans. At that time Rome was already the dominant power in central and in the interior of southern Italy, succeeding roughly to the empire of that great Tuscan League of which she was once the subject. And yet, Alexander’s teacher, the encyclopedically learned Aristotle, had only vaguely heard of Rome as an Italian city overrun by marauding Gauls.^[231]

The position occupied then by Rome would of itself have made active participation in Mediterranean affairs a necessity. The embroilment of Romans in the conflicts in which international politics is expressed was precipitated by the ambition of the restless Diadochi and their successors. It was a kinsman of the lurid Demetrius the Besieger, the Epirote prince Pyrrhus, who undertook to save the Greek civilization of the coast cities from the Italian barbarians. Pyrrhus ultimately retired with his tail between his legs, after having dragged the Romans into Sicily and brought them face to face with the Carthaginians. The succeeding three generations were occupied in the mortal grapple between these two. It ended with the triumph of Rome.

So far Rome had dealt only with the West, but with the permanent eastward bent of men’s minds the lord of the Western Mediterranean was, as such, a power in the East as well. Scarcely a single generation passed before it became the sole power in the East, so that future political history becomes the act of officially recording successive realizations of that fact. And yet, this extraordinary people, which had in an astoundingly short time secured the primacy over a considerable fraction of the earth, was apparently possessed of slighter intellectual endowments than many of its subjects. It had not succeeded in giving such culture as it had developed any artistic form. And before it had taken any steps in that direction, it came into immediate contact with nations of much older culture, which had done so; in one case, a nation which had carried artistry of form to a degree never subsequently attained by any single people. First, the Etruscans had given in bulk a mass of finished cultural elements, especially in religion and constructive crafts, and had otherwise exercised an influence now wholly undeterminable. Secondly, by Etruscan mediation and afterwards directly, the Romans became the intellectual vassals of the Greeks, a fact that lends some justification to the modern tendency to treat classical antiquity as a single term.

The Romans obtained their very earliest knowledge of the Jews when the political and social development just outlined was practically complete.

The treaty cited in I Macc. viii. 22 seq. is perhaps apocryphal, but the substantial accuracy of the chapter is scarcely doubtful. “And Judas had heard the name of the Romans,” we read, and this statement is followed by a lengthy recital of the recent conquests of Rome. After the first Hasmonean successes the little knowledge that Roman and Jew had of each other may be so summed up. On the Roman side, the responsible senatorial oligarchy learned with undisguised satisfaction that a previously unknown tribe of Syrian mountaineers, grouped about a famous temple-rock not far from the Egyptian frontier, had successfully maintained themselves against a troublesome and unaccountable tributary king. On the Jewish side, the leaders of the victorious rebels, conscious of the precarious nature of their success, turned at once to that mighty people—known as yet scarcely by report—which from far off directed men’s destinies. Even at that time the Roman policy of divide et impera, “divide and rule,” was well understood and consciously exploited by all who could do so. The embassy sent by Judas—there is no real reason for questioning its authenticity—presented to curious Romans in 162 B.C.E. an aspect in no way different from that of other Syrian embassies long familiar to the capital. And if it is true that some of that train or of a later embassy of Simon took up permanent residence in Rome, that fact was probably scarcely noticed from sheer lack of novelty.

Generally speaking, the Roman attitude to the Jews, as to all other peoples, was that of a master: the attitude of the Goth in Spain, the Manchu in China, the English in India. No one of these analogues is exact, but all have this common feature, that individuals of the dominant race can scarcely fail to exhibit in their personal relations with the conquered an arrogance that will vary inversely with the man’s cultivation. It is so very easy to assume for oneself the whole glory of national achievements. No doubt every Italian peasant and artisan believed that it was qualities existing in himself that commanded the obedience of the magnificent potentates of the East. The earliest attitude of Roman to Jew could not have been different from that toward Syrians or foreigners in general. If in 150 B.C.E. the term Iudaei had reached the ears of the man in the street, it denoted a Syrian principality existing like all other principalities at sufferance and upon the condition of good behavior.

For nearly a hundred years this state of things remained unchanged. Then the inevitable happened. Syria became Roman, and the motives that had won Roman support for the Jews no longer existed. Roman sufferance was withdrawn, and Judea’s good behavior ceased. That Gnaeus Pompey encountered serious resistance on his march from Antioch to Jerusalem is doubtful. The later highly-colored versions of his storming of the temple are probably rhetorical inventions. The Psalms of Solomon, which are very plausibly referred to this period, are outbursts of passionate grief at the loss of the national independence; for no recognition of Hyrcanus’ rank could disguise the fact of the latter’s impotent dependence upon the senate, and the limitations openly placed upon the vassal-king’s authority show that the Romans were at no pains to disguise the fact.^[232]

When the Romans added Asia to their dominions, as they had in the generation preceding the occupation of Jerusalem, they annexed with Asia many hundreds of Jewish synagogues in the numerous cities of Asia. Jews lived also in Greece, in Italy and Rome itself, and in Carthage. Egypt, which contained many hundreds of thousands, was still nominally independent. Roman officials had long known how to distinguish the Iudaei from others of those ubiquitous Syrians who, as slaves, artisans, physicians, filled every market-place of the empire. More than one provincial governor must have collected a few honest commissions from a people indiscreet enough to collect sums of considerable magnitude, as the Jews did for the support of the temple.

That they were classed as Syrians did not raise the Jews in general, and particularly in Roman, esteem. The Syrians, to be sure, were one of the most energetic, perhaps mentally the quickest, of the races then living, but they were the slave race par excellence; i.e. the largest number of slaves were and had long been derived from among them. The vices of slavery, low cunning, physical cowardice, lack of self-respect, were apparent enough in those Syrians who were actually slaves, and were transferred to all men of that nation. “Syri” is nothing less than a term of contempt applied to any people of unwarlike habits.^[233]

Unwarlike the Jews of that day were not. All that had commended them to Roman notice was their military successes over the troops of Antiochus and Demetrius. Pompey may not have found Aristobulus and his Nabatean allies really formidable, but he did have to fight, and did not meet that docile crawling at his feet which he had encountered elsewhere. That made considerable difference in Roman eyes, and may have caused the unusual tenderness they manifested as a rule for what they loftily termed the Jewish superstition.

As has been said, we have reason to believe that a Jewish community already existed at Rome, and we shall see that it must have been fairly numerous. As a city, Rome was probably the least homogeneous in the world. It may have contained at this time something less than a million people, perhaps much less; but this population was of the most diverse origin. Not only had the capital of the world attracted to it all manner of adventurers; not only was it teeming with slaves of every imaginable blood and speech; but the thronging of the city with the refuse of the world had been a conscious policy of the democratic and senatorial rings, to whom modern “colonization” was a familiar and simple process. When we recall that the accepted governmental theory was still that of the city-state, we shall see that mere residence made to a certain extent a Roman of everyone who lived within the walls. Various measures of expulsion, such as the Lex Junia Penni and the Lex Papia of 65 B.C.E., were wholly ineffective.

As a matter of fact, the governmental apparatus of the city-state was quite unable to cope with the situation that presented itself. Until 200 B.C.E., the turning-point in Roman history, the city was small and mean; the population, though composite, was still almost wholly Italian in character. A rapid increase in wealth and a consequent increase in glaring inequalities of fortune began at this point. The governing council of ex-magistrates, whose office had in practice become almost hereditary, found itself confronted by a needy and exigent proletariat, which it could neither overawe nor purchase.

The urban tendency of the population of Italy was due largely to the failure of the small farms to support their man. Free labor was subjected to the constant drain of military levies, and temporary suspension of cultivation was ruinous. The obvious remedy was a forced and unprofitable sale to the agrarian capitalists, whose leasehold interest in the great public lands had long been so nearly vested that it was almost sacrilege to attack it. To migrate to the city was then the only course open to the peasant, but in the city the demand for free labor was never great. The new arrivals joined the great mass of landless rabble, sinking soon into an idle and pauperized mob.

But at the same time infusions of foreign blood came into the city. The rapid rise in wealth and power had poured into Rome a constant stream of the commonest of wares, viz. human chattels. These slaves, Greek, Thracian, but above all Syrian, were directly consequent upon the imperative demand for skilled labor, which they alone could satisfy. But the very number of these slaves, and the changes in personal fortunes, which were then even more frequent than now, made them often a liability rather than an asset to their master.

Enfranchisement was encouraged by another consideration. The Roman law, determined by a very ancient patriarchal system, was apparently very rigid as to the extent of the master’s dominium. The slave was, in law and logic, a sentient chattel indistinguishable from ox and ass. But in other respects the Roman law was extraordinarily liberal. For practical purposes the slave could and did acquire property, the so-called peculium, and could and did use it to purchase his freedom.

Further, the newly-made freeman became a full citizen, a civis Romanus. His name was enrolled in the census books; he possessed full suffrage, and lacked only the ius honorum, the right of holding office. Even this, however, his children acquired. Sons of slaves who held magistracies are frequent enough to furnish some notable examples; e.g. Cn. Flavius, the secretary to Appius Claudius; P. Gabinius, the proposer of the Lex Tabellaria of 139 B.C.E.^[234] It is for this reason that indications of servile origin have been found in names nothing less than illustrious in Roman history.^[235]

With this steady influx of dispossessed peasants and enfranchised Greek and Asiatic slaves, the urban population was a sufficiently unaccountable quantity; and in this motley horde, constantly stirred to riot by the political upheavals, which quickly followed each other from the Gracchan period onward, all manner of strange and picturesque foreigners lived and worked. To the Roman of cultivation they were sometimes interesting, more often repellent, especially if he found himself compelled to reckon with them seriously on the basis of a common citizenship. Even for foreigners Roman citizenship was not very difficult to acquire, and was, as we have seen, obtained with especial facility through slavery. The emancipated slave was as such a civis Romanus. His son had even the ius honorum; he might be a candidate for the magistracy. This process had been accelerated after the Social War, which admitted an enormous and quite unmanageable number into citizenship. The popular leaders were especially lavish, and no doubt many ward politicians took it upon themselves to dispense with the formalities when a few votes were needed.

We are very fortunate in possessing for this period records of quite unusual fulness and variety. The last century of the Roman republic was rich in notable men, with some of whom we are especially familiar. In literary importance and in permanent charm of personality, no one of them can compare with the country squire’s son, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who achieved the impossible in his lifetime, and attained posthumous fame far beyond his wildest dreams. He was consul of Rome in the very year in which Jerusalem was captured, and was in the throes of the same political uncertainty that marked his whole later career. The most brilliant pleader in the city or the world, he was feared, loved, and hated for his mordant wit, his torrential fluency of speech, and his remarkable power and skill in invective. Although his personal instincts had always inclined him to the gentlemanly aristocracy that made up the majority of the senate, he had won his first successes in politics on the other side, and reached the summit of his ambition, the consulship, as a popular candidate, receiving the support of the senate only because he was deemed the least dangerous of three.

In the year 59 B.C.E. Cicero, concededly the leader of the Roman bar and still more concededly the social lion of the day, undertook the defense of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, former governor of Asia, who was charged with maladministration and oppression. The counts in the indictment were numerous. Among them was the following allegation: That Flaccus as praetor had seized certain sacred funds; to wit, the moneys which Asiatic provincials, Jews in origin, had, in accordance with ancient custom, collected and were about to transfer to the temple at Jerusalem. By so doing Flaccus had doubled embezzlement upon sacrilege, for the sanctity of the temple was established by its antiquity, and confirmed by the conduct of Pompey, who had ostentatiously spared it and its appurtenances.

It will be necessary to examine in some detail the circumstances of the entire case. Flaccus was a member of the reactionary wing of the senatorial party, which until recently had held Cicero aloof as an upstart provincial. His birth and training were those of an aristocrat. A certain portion of Cicero’s defense is occupied in descanting on the glories of the Valerian house, to which Flaccus belonged. The prosecution of Flaccus, again, was a political move of the popular opposition, now at last, after the futile essays of Lepidus and Catiline, finding voice and hand in the consummate skill of Gaius Julius Caesar.

Shortly before this date a powerful combination had been made, which enlisted in the same scheme the glamour of unprecedented military success in the person of Gnaeus Pompey, the unlimited resources of the tax-farmers and land-capitalists represented by Marcus Crassus, and the personal popularity of the demagogue Caesar. Each no doubt had his own axe to grind in this coalition, and the bond that held them was of an uncertain nature, opposition to the senatorial oligarchy. Further, only in the case of Caesar was the opposition a matter of policy. In the case of the other two, it was the outcome of nothing loftier than pique. None the less, when the strings were pulled by Caesar, this variously assembled machine moved readily enough.

In 59 B.C.E. this cabal had been successful in winning one place in the consulship, that of Caesar himself. Lucius Flaccus had earned Caesar’s enmity by his vigorous action against the Catilinarians in 63 B.C.E. E., so that when an influential financier, C. Appuleius Decianus, complained of Flaccus’ treatment of him, the democratic leader found an opportunity of gratifying his allies, of posing as the protector of oppressed provincials, and wreaking political spite at the same time. A certain Decimus Laelius appeared to prosecute the ex-governor of Asia.

Of Flaccus’ guilt there seems to be no reasonable question. He was plainly one of the customary type of avaricious nobles to whom a provincial governorship was purely a business proposition. No doubt he was no worse than his neighbors. His guilt seems to have been especially patent. “Cicero,” says Macrobius, “secured the acquittal of Flaccus by an apposite jest, although the defendant’s guilt of the charges made was perfectly apparent.”^[236] And indeed on the principal counts Cicero has no evidence except exaltation of Flaccus’ personal character, and abuse of the witnesses against him, whom he characterizes as lying and irresponsible Greeks. His peroration is a flaming denunciation of the prosecution and an appeal to the jury not to permit the supporters of the dead traitor Catiline to win a signal triumph.

The speech was successful. Flaccus was acquitted, and the acquittal may have hastened Cicero’s own banishment. But for us the particularly interesting part of this brilliant effort is contained in §§ 66-69. After he has disposed of the various charges of peculation and extortion, he turns to the charges made by the Jews:

Next comes the malicious accusation about the gold of the Jews. No doubt that is the reason why this case is being tried so near the Aurelian terrace. It is this count in the indictment, Laelius, that has made you pick out this place, and that is responsible for the crowd about us. You know very well how numerous that class is, with what unanimity they act, and what strength they exhibit in the political meetings. But I shall frustrate their purpose. I shall speak in a low tone, just loud enough for the jury to hear. There is no lack of men, as you very well know, to stir these fellows up against me and every patriotic citizen; and I have no intention of making the task of such mischief-makers lighter by any act of mine.

The facts are these: Every year it has been customary for men representing the Jews to collect sums in gold from Italy and all our provinces for exportation to Jerusalem. Flaccus in his provincial edict forbade this to be done in Asia.

Now, gentlemen, is there a man who can honestly refuse commendation to this act? That gold should not be exported is a matter which the senate had frequently voted, and which it did as recently as my own consulship. Why, it is a proof of Flaccus’ vigorous administration that he took active steps against a foreign superstition, as it is an indication of a lofty sense of duty that he dared defy, where the public weal was concerned, the furious mass of Jews that frequently crowd our meetings.

But, we are told, when Jerusalem was captured, the conqueror Gn. Pompey touched nothing in that shrine. And that was very wisely done on Pompey’s part, as in so many other acts of that commander. In so suspicious and slanderous a city as ours, he would leave nothing for his detractors to take hold of. But I do not believe, and I cannot suppose you do, that it was the religion of such a nation as the Jews, recently in arms against Rome, that deterred our illustrious general. It was rather his own self-respect.

In view of these considerations, just wherein does the accusation lie? You do not anywhere charge theft; you do not attack the edict; you admit due process of law; you do not deny that the moneys were openly confiscated upon official investigation. The testimony itself discloses that the whole matter was carried on by men of rank and position. At Apamea, Sextus Caesius, a Roman knight and a gentleman of whose honor and integrity there can be no question, openly seized and weighed out in the forum at the feet of the praetor a little less than a hundred pounds of gold. At Laodicea an amount somewhat more than twenty was seized by Lucius Peducaeus, a member of this very jury; at Adramytus, ... by the governor’s representative, L. Domitius. A small quantity was also seized at Pergamon. The accounts of the gold so seized have been audited. The gold is in the treasury. There is no charge of theft. The purpose of the charge is to excite odium against my client. It is not the jury that the prosecution is addressing, but the audience, the crowd about us.

Religious scruples, my dear Laelius, are primarily national concerns. We have our own, and other states have theirs. And as a matter of fact, even while Jerusalem was standing, and the Jews were at peace with us, there was very little in common between the religious customs of which their rites are examples and those which befit an empire as splendid as ours, or a people of our character and dignity. Our ancestral institutions are as different from theirs as they well can be. Now, however, there surely can be all the less obligation upon us to respect Jewish religious observances when the nation has demonstrated in arms what its feelings are toward Rome, and has made clear how far it enjoyed divine protection by the fact that it has been conquered, scattered, enslaved.

There are a number of difficulties with the passage. The text of the final sentence is doubtful—but the discussion of that point will be reserved for the Notes.^[237]

We cannot suppose that Cicero was guilty of deliberate misstatement on matters about which he could be immediately confuted. We must therefore accept his assertion that this count in the indictment did not charge theft or malversation, but merely public confiscation of the funds in question. It is undoubtedly a fact that the exportation of the precious metals had been frequently forbidden, although the senatorial resolution to this effect was far from being a law, but with this precedent and even without it no one could very well deny that it was within the imperium of a proconsul to make such a regulation if he saw fit.^[238]

One may well ask with Cicero, Ubi ergo crimen est? The point seems to be that previous officials had interpreted the rule to refer to exportation for commercial purposes, and had exempted from its operation contributions for religious purposes. Doubtless the self-imposed temple tax of the Jews was not the only one of its kind. If custom had sanctioned that exemption, Flaccus’ act would be felt as an act of oppression, since the strict or lenient enforcing of the edict on this point was purely a matter of discretion.^[239] Flaccus’ successor, Quintus Cicero, a brother of the orator, seems to have reverted to the former practice.

In one other respect the seizure of these sums may have seemed an act of arbitrary tyranny. The sum seized at Apamea was said to be one hundred pounds of gold—about 72 English pounds—and must have equaled about 75,000 Roman denarii or Athenian drachms. As the temple tax was a didrachm, that would imply over 35,000 heads of families, or a total Jewish population for Apamea of 170,000. That number is quite impossible. It is, however, very likely that the Jews of the various synagogae paid their didrachm with their other dues to the corporation arca, or treasury, and that it was the whole treasury that was seized. That would give the Jews of these cities a very real grievance, and make their animus against Flaccus easy to explain.

The importance of the passage, however, is in no way concerned with the justice or injustice of the accusation against Flaccus. It lies first in its picture of the Jewish community at Rome, and secondly in its indication of Cicero’s personal views.

The very insertion of the charge proves that a considerable Jewish element existed, whose aid the prosecution was anxious to enlist. Cicero’s own statements show this directly. Here and here only in his speech he refers to the popular odium sought to be incited against his client, and speaks of the number and power of the Jews in contionibus,^[240] “in the political meetings,” and in the crowd about him. Part of this, the summissa voce, “low tone,” for example, is the veriest acting. Cicero was really not afraid to say loudly what he wished to say, and if the jury could hear him, part of the crowd could hear as well. But although the Roman Jews were probably not so redoubtable as Cicero would have his jury believe, they must have formed a large contingent. Where did they come from?

We have the statement of Philo that it was not until the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 B.C.E. that Jews were brought to Rome in large numbers.^[241] These, it is supposed, were enfranchised shortly after, and are the people here referred to. That may be said to be the general view.

There are, however, serious difficulties in it that escape those who hold it, simply because they fail to follow in detail the implications of their view. Pompey did not arrive in Rome till January, 61 B.C.E. His army had been previously dismissed, but was to assemble for the great triumph that took place in September, 61. The trial of Flaccus was held in August, 59 B.C.E. Some months must have been spent in preparing the case against him. Accordingly we are to suppose that thousands of Jewish captives were brought to Rome, sold there, enfranchised, learned Latin, became politically organized, and developed formidable voting strength, all within less than two years! The mere question of language makes the hypothesis impossible. Pompey’s captives were Palestinian Jews, of most of whom the native language was Aramaic, not Greek.^[242] Without command of Greek or Latin the ready acquisition of either was nothing short of miraculous, and the immediate political activity is only less so.

But the chief difficulty lies in another matter. The phrase “taken prisoners” immediately suggests the conditions of modern warfare, in which whole armies are surrendered and transferred in bulk great distances for safe-keeping. It is to be feared that some such idea was suggested to modern writers by the words of Philo. But that is not at all what occurred in ancient times. Prisoners taken on the field of battle were sold immediately at the nearest market. Slave-dealers followed the army. Caesar’s account of his campaign in Gaul affords numerous instances of this immediate disposal of captured foes; e.g. the case of the Atuatuci and Veneti.^[243] If they were assigned as loot to individual soldiers, they were disposed of in the same way. Here and there a soldier would, for one reason or another, retain his prisoner as a personal slave, but in general he had almost no facilities for providing or caring for a number of them. A few of the distinguished captives were reserved by the commander for a triumph.

Now Pompey’s army had just finished a five years’ campaign. It had marched through Asia and Syria, winning battles that were not very bloody, but must have been immensely lucrative. The Jews formed only a small portion of the total prisoners taken. If all those prisoners actually accompanied their captors to Rome, the question of transportation and provision for such a horde must have been tremendous. What could have induced a general or private to assume this enormous expense and care, when the greatest slave-market in the world, viz. that at Alexandria, was relatively near by, is inconceivable. If they got to Rome, the city’s population must have swelled visibly under the process. There is no record that it did, and it could scarcely have escaped notice, had such a thing taken place.

And finally, even if we assume that such a wholly unprecedented and inexplicable incident occurred, how are we to explain the immediate and wholesale enfranchisement of so large a number? Ransom by wealthy coreligionists at Rome is excluded by the hypothesis. Similar action by Jews outside the city would demand a much longer time. The reasons generally assigned are based upon the assumed uselessness of Jewish slaves for ordinary purposes because of their dietary laws and religious intransigeance. But that is a purely dogmatic assertion. Papyri and inscriptions have shown that in spite of a bitter racial opposition and perhaps economic strife as well, Jew and non-Jew could live quite peaceably together. The dietary laws would not render his master’s meals obnoxious to a Jewish slave, because he did not eat at his master’s table, and might consume his scanty vegetable food where and how he pleased. If a master actually chose to force attendance at the sacrifice, the compulsion of necessity would have been a valid excuse for all but those of martyr stuff, and we cannot suppose that every Jewish soldier had in him the zeal of a martyr. Besides, for such compulsion the slave would in no sense be responsible, and it is with disadvantages moving from him that we are concerned.

It is simply impossible to imagine what could have induced Pompey’s soldiers or those who purchased from them to enfranchise immediately slaves transported from such a distance and at such expense.

Philo’s statement is at best a conjecture, made without any better acquaintance with the facts than we ourselves possess, and contradicted by the necessary inference from Cicero’s words.

We must therefore assign the settlement of Jews in Rome to a much earlier date. The tradition that some of the train of Simon’s embassy had remained in Rome is, as we have seen, probable enough. To that nucleus there was added, by a perfectly natural and even inevitable infiltration, a group of Jewish freedmen, artisans, and merchants who were establishing themselves all over the Mediterranean. Jews are met with at Delphi a hundred years before the delivery of this speech.^[244]

We have therefore, in 59 B.C.E., an established Jewish community, necessarily organized in synagogues and chiefly of servile origin. The use of foreigners at the polls by the political leaders had led to the Lex Junia Penni of 80 B.C.E. and the Lex Papia of 65 B.C.E., which ordered foreigners to leave the city. But these measures were wholly ineffective, and in any case could have only partly served those who proposed them, since the mass of the democratic strength lay in the proletariat, and the proletariat was largely composed of undoubted citizens, although freedmen. The Jews formed, as we see, an active and troublesome element in the turbulent city populace. Their attachment to the democratic leader, Caesar, is well attested, and Caesar’s marked favor toward them has all the appearance of the payment of a political debt, as in the case of the Cisalpine Gauls.^[245]

As far as Cicero was concerned personally, we may assume that his attitude was the contempt which he no doubt honestly felt for the infima plebs and for Syrian barbarians in particular. He probably voices the sentiments of the optimates,^[246] with whom, though still hesitant, he had already cast his fortunes. The abuse arises from the necessities of the case. As previously pointed out, it is in this very speech that we have fine examples of the device of abusing your opponent’s witnesses when arguments give out. These phrases show no special animus. Just as Greeks are liars if they are on the other side, and men of honor on his own, as exhibited almost in successive paragraphs of this speech,^[247] so we may be sure if Cicero were prosecuting Flaccus, a few eloquent periods would extol the character of those ancient allies and firm friends of Rome, the Jews.

How much Cicero really knew of the Jews is not certain. He is aware that in point of religious observance the Jews are strikingly different from other tribes. The contrast he emphasizes in his speech may be an allusion to the imageless cult of the Jews and the inference of meanness and poverty of ceremonial which Romans would draw from it. And the taunt quam dis cara, “how dear to the gods,” seems an unmistakable fling at the claim of the Jews, loudly voiced in their propaganda, to possess in a high degree the favor of the Divinity, or even a special communion with the Deity in their mysteries.

All this Cicero might have learned from his surroundings. It is doubtful that he learned it from Posidonius and Molo, both of whom he knew well. In these two appear stories which Cicero could hardly have overlooked if he knew them. When we remember what he says of Sardinians in the Scauriana, of Gauls in the Fonteiana,^[248] he surely would not have omitted to catalogue the tales treasured up by these two Greek teachers of his; to wit, the ass-god, the scrofulous prophet, the savage inhospitality and absurd fanaticism Molo and Posidonius ascribe to the Jews.

One other phrase which Cicero applies to Jews would deserve little attention if it were not for the extraordinary general inferences some have drawn from it. In May, 56 B.C.E., Cicero has an opportunity to vent his venom on his enemy Gabinius, consul in 59 B.C.E., whom he held personally responsible for the humiliation of his exile. Gabinius, in 56, was governor of Syria, and seems to have been rather short with the tax-farmers, whom, to the delight of the provincials, he treated with contumely and no doubt with gross injustice. The persistent favor he showed to all provincial claims against these men, many of them Cicero’s personal friends and at all times his supporters, caused the orator to exclaim:

As far as the unfortunate tax-farmers are concerned—and I count myself equally unfortunate to be compelled to relate their misfortunes and sufferings—Gabinius made them the chattel-slaves of Jews and Syrians, races themselves born to be slaves.

The concluding phrase is simply the application of the rhetorical commonplace of Greeks that barbarians as such were slaves by nature. It was applied to Syrians with a certain justice, as the slave name Syrus testifies. From that standpoint, however, it was obviously absurd to assert that it was true of Jews. Cicero’s inclusion of them is due to the fact that, as governor of Syria, Gabinius would have had many occasions to favor Jewish litigants against the publicans, probably in pursuance of his party’s policy. Gabinius, we may recall, was a very obedient servant of his masters, the triumvirs, and the interest of the leading spirit of the coalition in the provinces has been previously pointed out.^[249]

Allusions of this type made in the course of vehement advocacy or invective are really of little meaning even as an indication of personal feeling. It is true, however, that Cicero shows very little sympathy in general with the Roman masses or with the provincials, despite the Verrine prosecution. That he could have felt any interest or liking for Syrian barbarians in or out of the city is very improbable.

None the less, within Cicero’s own circle, the same elements in Jewish customs which had impressed Greeks, such as Theophrastus and Clearchus, could not fail to strike such Romans as made philosophic pretensions. The fame of the shrine at Jerusalem had reached Rome a century earlier, as we have seen from Polybius. Pompey’s capture of the city formed no inconsiderable item in his exploits. Cicero refers to him jestingly as noster Hierosolymarius, “Our Hero of Jerusalem.”^[250] We can tell from Cicero’s own words the emphasis that Laelius had laid on the fame of the temple and its sanctity when he denounced Flaccus. As a matter of fact it was a constant practice of Romans to find, in those institutions of barbarians which could be called severe or simple, the image of their own golden age of simplicity, before the advent of Greek luxury. So Cicero’s learned friend and correspondent Varro is quoted by Augustine^[251] as referring to the Jews among others as a people whose imageless cult still maintains what the Romans had abandoned. There may be very little sincerity in this regret of a simple-living past, but it is an indication that the exceptional character of Jewish religious customs might in Cicero’s own entourage be characterized in terms somewhat different from those of the Flacciana.

We shall have reason to distinguish very sharply between the attitude of Romans of rank and cultivation and that of the great mass. However, that is true not only in this relatively minor detail but in thousands of other matters as well. The Roman gentleman was distinct from the mass, not merely in political principles, but in his very speech. In the following generations social readjustments of all sorts frequently modified the position of the Jews in Rome, but until the increasing absolutism of the monarchy practically effaced distinctions, the cleavage just indicated largely determined the point of view and even the terms used.