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 329their 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 330Martial 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; 331and, 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 τ?πο? τ?ν Ε?ουδα?ων φιλοσεβ?στων, “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 332in 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. 333Plainly, under such circumstances, there were temptations to a form of blackmail which the Greeks knew as συκοφαντ?α, 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, συκοφαντ?α, 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 334natural. 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 ?σ?βεια: “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.”
335Unfortunately 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.
336In 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 ?σ?βεια was a relatively common offense, and indictment for it of frequent occurrence. But it is doubtful whether 337there was such an indictment at Roman law. There is no Latin term for ?σ?βεια. 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 ?σ?βεια 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.
338The 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,............