Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene

CHAPTER FIVE THE BACKGROUND OF THE JEWISH REVOLT

The period of transition of Cyrenaica from Ptolemaic rule to a thoroughgoing Roman administration was marked by two events, an understanding of which is important to our theme. These events were the social conflict revealed by the rising of Nicocrates and the revolution of Arataphila on the one hand, and the transfer of the Ptolemaic royal lands to the Roman state on the other.

Following the civil war which ended with the inauguration of an aristocratic regime at Cyrene by Arataphila in the years between 91 and 82 B.C., a Jewish stasis broke out. The word “stasis” may denote either a rising on the part of the entire Jewish group, or conflict between one section of the Jewish community and the rest of it. As we have no details of the affair, any explanation must be in the sphere of conjecture, yet an examination of the general contemporary background may cast some light on its significance. As mentioned above, the decade in which the rising of Nicocrates broke out at Cyrene was a stormy one; in the year 88 B.C. a civil war was raging in the Egyptian Thebais, one of a series of revolts by the lower classes of the Egyptian populace, more especially the peasants, caused by the general conditions imposed by the Ptolemaic regime. The same year beheld the beginning of the war of Mithradates king of Pontus against Rome, a war accompanied by violent social conflict, risings of debtors to throw off the yoke of debt, and of slaves to free themselves from their masters. In Italy the embers of the Social War still flickered, while the struggle between the party of the wealthy and the Populares continued, sharpened by monetary crisis and widespread indebtedness. On the sea, an unprecedented proliferation of piracy was nurtured by the same social privations. An investigation of Cyrene’s agrarian plight (Ch. III) has revealed that in the later 2nd century B.C. there were signs of agrarian crisis, and documents indicate a fall of agricultural production, while rural disturbances are deducible from the edicts of Euergetes II or Soter II.

It may be supposed that this crisis also furnished the conditions of the severe struggle between the Cyrenean aristocracy and the broad strata of the people, which reached a stage of violence several years after the end of Ptolemaic rule. The question is, did these antagonisms find an echo among the Jewish community, when Lucullus arrived in Cyrene? One aspect that may assist a solution of the question is the fact that we hear faint reports of anti-Jewish disorders in Alexandria in the same year.[1113] Even if we are not in a position to decide whether what occurred at Cyrene was a clash between Jews and Greeks or between two Jewish factions, either would fit the situation of civil strife and economic crisis in which social ferment was apt to seek an outlet in inter-community hatred as a substitute for class-hatred. But the synchronization of the phenomenon in both places — each important as a Jewish centre — possesses historical significance in so far as it proves the unity of public mood and of the social setting in both cities, and, despite the difficulties of communication over distances in those days, shows that the use of analogy is permissible in order to understand events in the various eastern Mediterranean centres of the period. If then we face two possibilities — the hatred of gentiles for Jews, or antagonisms within the Jewish group itself, — we may note that the events in Alexandria are decisively in favour of the first interpretation, while Josephus’ language derived from Strabo that “(Sulla) sent Lucullus... against the stasis of our people... at Cyrene”,[1114] supports it. If so, it is possible that the Jews had fallen out with the aristocratic regime of Arataphila, meaning that the movement was the work of the popular elements among the Jewish community.

The acute class antagonisms revealed in the last period of Ptolemaic rule and at the beginning of Cyrene’s entry into the sphere of Roman influence, find expression also in the juridical division of the city as reported by Strabo (p. 176), and principally in the separation of the peasantry (meaning probably the Libyans) from the rest of the population. In considering this subject, we encounter the phenomenon of the alliance between Anabus, the Libyan king, with Arataphila and the Cyrenean aristocracy. Under the Ptolemies the Libyan tribes were controlled by a royal official, the Libyarch, but on the “liberation” of the cities by Rome those settled on the fringes of their territories, in so far as their lands were not included in the ager publicus, gained their freedom, and again became a political factor and an influence on security. A tangible expression of Anabus’ alliance with the Pentapolis towns has in my view been found in a new inscription from Cyrene, published in 1962:[1115] this commemorates the erection by Cyrene of the statue of one “Aiglanor son of Demetrius of Cyrene, one of the kinsmen of the late King Ptolemy, benefactor in the greatest matters both of his country and of the other cities and peoples round about the city-territory”. This inscription was engraved after the death of Ptolemy Apion, and informs us that the political situation created by the end of royal rule was common to all the cities of the Pentapolis; it also reflects the rapprochement between their aristocracy and the Libyan tribes. Such a rapprochement had taken place once before in the 6th century B.C. when Arkesilaos II’s brothers founded Barka jointly with the Libyans and formed an alliance with the local king, whose descendant, Aladdeir, still lived in the town in the hellenistic period. That step was in its time an attempt to maintain together with the Libyans the extensive economy based chiefly once real cultivation and the rearing of horses and cattle, as opposed to a more varied and intensive agriculture combining sheep-raising, silphium, arable farming, plantations and green crops. The alliance of Anabus and Arataphila was a political one, and would have obliged certain concessions in exchange for the aid rendered by Anabus to the Cyrenean nobility in their struggle. Accordingly it may be supposed that the Libyan tribes were awarded greater freedom of movement over the plateau, and this tendency was probably not contrary to the will of the large estate-owners who devoted their lands chiefly to stock-rearing and cereals. This hypothesis would offer an explanation for the Jewish stasis suppressed by Lucullus, for the new political settlement would have exposed the tenants of the royal land to the unrestrained depredations of the nomads, and have alienated them from the rule of the aristocrats of Cyrene.

Our analysis has shown that in the 2nd century, under the Ptolemies, the agricultural economy of the country had declined as a result of the systematic intensification of their policy of etatism, the ground thus being prepared for the conservative agricultural regime at the expense of the small and medium peasantry. If Lucullus on his visit to Cyrene in the year 88/6 cited Plato[1116] (pp. 63-4) on the flourishing state of the city’s inhabitants, he did not do so in order to draw attention to their prosperity at the time of his visit, but on the contrary — the philosopher’s words were his preface to a statement in the opposite sense: “No man is harder to govern than the successful one, and none is easier to govern than he who has been brought low by fortune” — “And this it was (Plutarch concludes) that made the Cyreneans submit without resistance to the legislation of Lucullus.” Thus, Lucullus’ words confirm the depressed state of the city in this period.

A second economic factor influencing the life of the country was constituted by the royal lands, which had passed into the hands of the Roman Senate on the death of Ptolemy Apion in 96 B.C. It has already been stated (pp. 110-11) that these lands were extensive and evidence can be adduced for their existence near Cyrene, on the Jebel to east and west of the city, near Ptolemais, and on the southern slopes of the plateau. Further areas have been conjectured between Teucheira and Bengazi. The extent of these tracts is shown by the size of the standard unit mentioned by Hyginus in his account of their division.

What in effect were the agri Apionis which thus became ager pttblicus? Tenney Frank, in a lengthy enquiry,[1117] endeavours to prove that the term ager publicus did not refer in the 1st century B.C. to all the lands of the provinces conquered by Rome, but meant the personal estates of the hellenistic monarchs in Asia and Sicily, and other tracts confiscated from rebellious cities or enemies (Sicily; the lands of Corinth and Carthage). In Asia, for example, they did not on this view include the βασιλικὴ γῆ, i.e. the crown lands, but only the personal domains of the Attalids. If Frank was right, can his doctrine be extended to Cyrenaica? We have seen that Euergetes II regarded the χώρα as entirely his, but this was almost certainly a purely political conception, and did not carry the meaning of personal ownership. But Cyrene differed from Asia and Sicily in one important aspect, namely, that here a transitional period intervened between the Roman assumption of control of the agri Apionis and the inclusion of the whole country in a province. In Asia and Sicily, by contrast, the separation of royal domains from crown land was possible because the Roman authority was imposed on these countries in their entirety by a single act. Had the Cyrenean lands outside the city-territories and the personal property of the kings not been annexed to one of these two categories when autonomy was granted to the towns, they would have remained “in the air”, without administrative control. This reality therefore obliges an interpretation not consistent with Frank’s view on other provinces. The arrival of silphium in the Roman treasury in 93 B.C.[1118] agrees with our own interpretation.

One document may throw some light on the problem, namely, an inscription from the ancient village of Negharnes, east of Cyrene.[1119] This settlement is situated on the northern edge of lands divided up by the Roman method of limitatio, which shows that they belonged to the estates of Ptolemy Apion and subsequently to the Roman ager publicus. The present buildings of Negharnes are mostly Byzantine, but there are hellenistic mausolea to west of the village, which stands near the northern scarp of the plateau, overlooking the Lusaita, where its inhabitants doubtless grew wheat on the fertile terra rossa. Negharnes was further directly linked by road with Apollonia, through which port its grain could be exported. The inscription concerned is dated in the ist century before the present era; its surviving portion commemorates an act of the village council, composed of fifty-three πολιάνομοι, releasing one of its inhabitants from the village liturgies and labour service; the man so exempted is appointed honorary priest of Dionysus and receives permission to make his own estimate of his corn-contribution when registering with the relevant official (the σιτώνης). As the inscription was set up in the ist century B.C., and reflects characteristically hellenistic administrative arrangements, probably we may perceive in them Ptolemaic conditions, even if the inscription was dedicated after Rome had taken over these lands in 96 B.C. The purchaser of the grain is a government official, and the grain concerned is evidently the ἀγοραστός σῖτος of Ptolemaic Egypt,[1120] the frumentum emptum mentioned by Cicero in relation to Sicily.[1121] The document permits its subject to sell more when the prices are good, and less when they are low. Clearly then, the community was permitted to release its members from certain duties because it bore a collective responsibility to supply an annual quota of corn to be purchased by the government. It is known that in Egypt the ἀγοραστός σῖτος was imposed on cleruchs and cultivators of γῆ ἐν ἀφέσει.[1122] i.e. land awarded by the king, and theoretically reverting to him. Negharnes therefore was inhabited by this category of cultivator (cleruchs or katoikoi), or by peasants working γῆ ἐν ἀφέσει, and not by λαοὶ βασιλικὴ, or peasants cultivating royal lands (βασιλικὴ γῆ) under contract and royal supervision.[1123] The presence of katoikoi at Negharnes would indeed agree with the internal autonomy enjoyed by its inhabitants, expressed by their council, and by their freedom to impose liturgies and labour-service. If this supposition is correct, we must conclude that in the 1st century B.C., before Cyrene became part of a Roman province, Negharnes, inhabited by comfortable holders of land granted to them by the king, but not by inhabitants of his personal estates — nevertheless became part of the ager publicus. And if the Negharnes evidence is not regarded as convincing, because the land here was not βασιλικὴ γῆ but γῆ ἐν ἀφέσει, it will be recalled that in Egypt, whose influence on Cyrenaica was generally considerable at this period, crown domain was assimilated to the ager publicus (δημόσια γῆ) under Augustus.[1124]

The evidence we possess, nevertheless, shows that not all the ager publicus of Cyrene remained in the hands of its previous inhabitants. Pliny says explicitly that most of the silphium was destroyed by the publicani who had leased its tracts for grazing sheep.[1125] Cicero also speaks of the leasing of the same areas in 2 B.C.[1126] The silphium had till then, apparently, been paid as tax to the government, while a pasture-tax (ἐννόμιον) had been exacted from the Libyans; the southern areas were now opened to direct exploitation by the publicani, and the Libyans would have been driven from them. The destruction of the silphium, begun in the 3rd century by the Libyans themselves, was thus repeated in different circumstances. The end of the process is not known with any certainty; until recently it was accepted that the silphium was now destroyed completely, but this view has been challenged by Capelle.[1127] The expansion of the publicani over the southern Jebel at the expense of the Libyan tribes may nevertheless be seen as part of the background of the Roman campaigns between 20 B.C. and 2 B.C. But these phenomena also indicate an important general development, namely, the completion of the trend perceptible since the dissolution of the kingdom of Ptolemy Apion, and perhaps even since the 2nd century B.C., — namely, the abandonment of intensive agriculture for a pastoral economy combined with extensive arable, involving a renewed spread of the livestock branch.

Shortage of money may have induced the Roman Senate to use the country’s depressed and conflicted situation as a pretext for undertaking the government of Cyrenaica in its entirety in 75-74 B.C., and to include it within a province consisting of Crete and Cyrene.[1128] In 67 B.C., at any rate, on the epigraphical evidence already sketched above (p. 65), Cnaeus Lentulus Marcellinus was forced to take various steps to reform the situation, and even if his work was bound up with the campaign against the pirates, the phenomenon of piracy cannot be separated from the general social crisis of the time, nor is it chance that in a fragmentary inscription of the same year,[1129] apparently set up by a group of Roman businessmen to express their thanks to Marcellinus, robbers (κλοποί) are referred to. A fragment from Sallust speaks of a renewal of civil strife before 75 B.C.;[1130] a contemporary inscription[1131] shows that settlers were being settled near Ptolemais on surveyed plots which had been evacuated by their previous tenants.

It is not clear how soon the country recovered after 67. The country was certainly a Roman province by 63. Pompey, at all events, obtained large quantities of grain from Cyrenaica,[1132] but the city was taken by storm during the Civil War, and as late as the year 7 B.C. a small group of Roman citizens was in control of the country’s law courts, and retained its monopoly till Octavian took measures to end it. We do not know what the position was in other respects at Cyrene or in the other towns of the country. Things were not bad in all of them, since several important building-projects were in train at Cyrene in the ist century B.C., and we have seen evidence that the city then possessed wealthy citizens with ample resources. But internal tension also existed.

The basis of the dispute between the city and its Jewish community between the years 31-13 B.C. has been investigated (p. 183), and when the city’s nomophylakes set up a dedication to Ὁμονοία, or concord, under Augustus,[1133] this obviously hinted at a situation which was the opposite of unity. In A.D. 54, in Claudius’ reign, a special commissioner (legatus) was sent to Cyrenaica by the Emperor to enquire into the situation on the state lands, the agri publici,[1134] The commissioner, Acilius Strabo, found that part of these tracts had been abandoned by their tenants and had for some considerable time (diutina licentia) been occupied by the neighbouring tenants or landholders.[1135] Why had these tracts been vacated — the more so since they constituted a considerable part of the fertile lands of the country? Natural conditions dictated that the livestock rearing of the Roman publicani could not be restricted to the south of the country. Like all other members of the population engaged in this branch, they had to transfer their animals northward to the Plateau in the summer months, hence the lot of the agri publici on the Jebel resembled that of the agri publici in the south.[1136] The seasonal transhumance of the livestock placed the conductores pascuum in the role of the Libyans, and thus the alliance between the wealthy landowners of Cyrene and the Libyan tribes, renewed under Arataphila, was terminated or infringed; its final annulment was achieved by the Roman campaigns against the southern tribes between 20 B.C. and 2 B.C.

What was the effect of the publicani on the inhabitants of the ager publicus of the Plateau, we do not precisely know, and no direct echo of their situation has reached us. But it is hard to suppose that this meeting was to the advantage of the inhabitants, especially if the conductores charged with the division of the lands also collected the rents (vectigalia) from their tenants.[1137] It can be assumed with certainty that the stock-grazing publicani, keen for quick profits (cf. Pliny’s expression, maius lucrum sentientes), neither heeded the tenants’ plots nor respected their boundaries. It also suggests that they were not merely concerned in the collection of the scriptura or in the purchase of wool, but were directly involved in the grazing of the flocks. In this struggle, the publicani were the stronger,[1138] and we may believe that they were allied with the small group of Roman citizens who had seized control of the juries, and perverted the law to put Cyreneans to death. Augustus intervened in 7/6 B.C. to end this perversion of justice, also facilitating appeals on the part of the provincials against the administration’s acts of extortion. Whatever Augustus’ influence on the activity of most of the publican companies, however, the lessees of the state pastures continued to discharge their function.[1139] We have no information of developments in this sphere in Cyrenaica, but it is clear that the exploitation of the state lands by publicani came to an end in the first half of the 1st century A.D., when these tracts had been abandoned by their previous tenants. We can only conjecture the causes, but it is difficult to avoid the simple conclusion that the extensive pastoral economy based on seasonal transhumance had reached its peak in this period and had destroyed the economy of the original tenants of the ager publicus. When Acilius Strabo arrived to investigate the legal position of the state lands in 54, they were in the hands of entirely new holders, the Cyrenean proprietors whose property bordered on the agri publici.

Lucius Acilius Strabo came as judge and arbitrator (disceptator),[1140] which means that a dispute over land ed rights had broken out between two sides. Strabo’s judgment that the land belonged to the Roman state aroused the anger of the Cyreneans, and they appealed to the Senate, who referred them to the Emperor Nero, who had meantime acceeded. The Emperor confirmed Strabo’s finding, but as a concession left the Cyreneans with the land. Thus, at least, Tacitus.[1141] It may be asked, however, who were the parties to this dispute: were they simply the Roman people versus the Cyrenean occupiers, or was there a third party? Tacitus’ use of the term disceptator, meaning arbitrator, to describe Acilius’ role, implies that he came to adjust a dispute between two claimants; had he merely represented the Roman people, he himself would have been an interested party, and the term disceptator would have been inappropriate. Tacitus, however, was a man of legal experience,[1142] and hence the term must be taken seriously. Ruggiero indeed,[1143] thought that the other party was constituted by the publicani, but this is unlikely, since they had apparently abandoned their concessions on the ager publicus a long time before. It is much more probable that the heirs of the previous tenants were the claimants who challenged the rights of the Cyrenean occupiers. Indeed, the most acceptable interpretation of an unclear account would be, that in the course of adjudicating their claim Acilius found that the state was the rightful owner, and left the State to assign the tenancies.[1144]

These settlers had been placed in a serious position by the separation of the agri Apionis from the rest of the country’s tracts in 96 B.C. Torn away from the administrative framework of the Ptolemaic state, which had till then ensured their rights, and furnished both legal and military protection, they remained defenseless before the oppression and profit-hunting of the con-ductores, and before the raids and trespassing of the Libyan tribes. If we read between the lines of Tacitus’ account, we see that most of them had been driven from their farms some years before the arrival of Strabo to investigate their claims. It would seem very probable that these years beheld the creation of a landless and embittered agrarian proletariat. We have already sought to show that from the beginning of Ptolemaic rule in the territory, most of the new agricultural settlers, whether Jews or gentiles, had settled on the Ptolemaic royal lands, impelled both by the juridical and by the economic situation. The consequences of their plight will be examined below. Nero’s decision, according to Tacitus, confirmed the state’s ownership of the areas in dispute, but left the Cyrenean squatters where they were, that is, as state tenants.[1145] If this was the case, then the former tenants remained landless.

Tacitus’ account, however, can be compared with three other sources drawn respectively from epigraphy, from archaeology and from the professional literature of the Roman state-surveyors. The surveyor Hyginus, who lived under Trajan (98-117), describing the surveying and dividing up of the agri Apionis of Cyrenaica as an eye-witness, writes: “And there are here boundary stones on which is inscribed the name of the Divine Vespasian, and these end with the words: these boundaries, seized by private individuals (Vespasian) restored to the Roman people.”[1146] Several of the said stones have actually been discovered, bearing inscriptions which witness the survey-work of Acilius Strabo and of an official who succeeded him, Quintus Paconius Agrippinus. Of the three known stones set up by Strabo,[1147] one is from Gasr Targhuna, one from Marazig in the eastern Jebel, and the third from an unknown provenance. The first of them was erected in A.D. 54 “56. Another belongs to Nero’s reign, and the third is undatable, as only part of it remains. Their bilingual texts end with the words: “... (Nero) restored to the Roman people the boundaries seized by private individuals”.[1148] It is harder to interpret the four known boundary stones bearing the name of Paconius Agrippinus,[1149] who came, like Acilius Strabo, as special imperial commissioner — this time for Vespasian (ἰδίος πρεσβευτής: legatus). All these stones were found at Cyrene, two on the north-east edge of the city, a third in the south-west of the Agora, and the fourth near the city’s northern wall. The first three are dated to 71 and their text resembles that of Strabo’s stones, showing that Hyginus’ version is inaccurate, although its contents corresponds to reality: but no private boundary trespassers are mentioned, and the property restored to the Roman people by the Emperor through the agency of his commissioner Agrippinus is called Πτυλυμαῖον. Opinions differ on the meaning of this word: Ferri[1150] identified the “Ptulu-maion” with the Temple of Zeus on the eastern hill of Cyrene; Rostovtzeff[1151] understood it as a temenos, probably a garden or grove; others have seen in these four stones evidence that the restoration of Apion’s lands to the state continued, interpreting the word “Ptulumaion” as “Ptolemy’s land”.[1152] Difficult as it is to decide, it may be said in favour of the last suggestion that the first two stones were incised by different masons,[1153] while the letter-style of all of them is more characteristic of field boundary-stones than of urban buildings or parks, and even more so the spelling of the word “Ptulumaion’, which is decidedly Libyan.[1154] It should further be remembered that the boundaries of ancient agricultural plots reach the very walls of Cyrene on all sides. A similar boundary-stone, dated in 72, was also set up opposite the west gate of Ptolemais, recording (in Latin and Greek) the restoration of a garden (κῆπος, hortus) to the Roman people by Vespasian through the agency of Paconius.[1155] The significance of these Flavian inscriptions, therefore, lies not so much in the extensiveness of the areas restored, as in the evidence they afford of the aim of Vespasian and his sons to restore as much as possible crown property to state ownership and thereby to recover its revenues. Important in this respect is the evidence of Hyginus.[1156] who states specifically that the boundary-stones he had seen were Vespasian’s, meaning that in Agrippinus’ time the systematic resurvey of the agri publici had begun. If indeed the grid was first laid out after the transfer of these areas to Rome in 96 B.C. — as Fabricius, for example, seems to have believed —[1157] then the boundaries were now set out afresh under the supervision of Paconius Agrippinus.

The two sources just cited, Hyginus and the inscriptions, do not contradict Tacitus’ account; but the redivision of the ager publicus should not be interpreted to mean that the Cyrenean “squatters” remained on their plots undisturbed in accordance with Nero’s permissive decision. The resurvey meant a redivision of the areas, and this operation was apparently an extensive one; it was therefore the expression of a stubborn determination to settle the affairs of the statelands of Cyrenaica for good and all, since the surveying was still going on in the reign of Trajan, on the evidence of the surveyor Hyginus, who worked in Cyrenaica personally in the examination of the said boundaries.[1158] In the late republican and early imperial period limitatio was used chiefly to divide out lands assigned to military colonies or public land acquired by conquest. In the latter period it also seems to have been found useful for adjusting the rights of new Roman settlers in conquered provinces with indigenous native tribes (Numidia, Pannonia).[1159] These considerations may assist us to understand the resurvey of the Cyrenaican ager publicus under the Flavians and Trajan; but it is not clear whether the Greek units of measurement used in the Cyrenaican survey should be taken to prove a Roman method applied by a hellenistic state, or whether the project originated when the royal lands were taken over by Rome. Beside the purpose of adjustment between inhabitants and new settlers evident in the arrangements of the early Empire, the renewed survey in Cyrenaica served two further purposes: it reregularized the payment of rents and taxes by the settlers, and thus renewed the revenues of the treasury; it also restored the tracts to proper cultivation.

There is no doubt that agriculturally limitatio acted more particularly in the Mediterranean area, as a framework for the cereal branch, and secondarily for the plantation economy. This is proved beyond all doubt by the air-photographs in Africa and Italian Apulia, where traces of the plantations are seen among the fields.[1160] The Flavian revision of the field-boundaries of Cyrenaica must therefore be seen as the first renewal of mixed farming and intensive cultivation in the territory.

The fact that the revision of the survey of the Cyrenaican ager publicus continued, even with intermissions, over half a century, shows that this was not simply a re-marking of boundaries. The field-divisions still traceable in the Safsaf district, for instance, contain farmsteads, and there is evidence of the active clearance of new areas.

The Roman method of division also possessed advantages from an agrotechnical point of view, since the definition of the plots contributed to the checking of soil-erosion, to the clearing of stones, to drainage and to protection against wind-erosion.[1161] Administratively, the correction of the boundaries of the ager publicus in Cyrenaica was only one of a number of similar activities conducted on the initiative of Vespasian and his Flavian successors, which included the institution of offices to administer the large imperial estates of Africa,[1162] the merging in Egypt of the crown-domains with the ager publicus and the Egyptian temple-lands,[1163] the surveying and organization of the agri publici of Apulia and Calabria[1164], and the restoration of the irregular fringe-areas of the centuriated tracts (subseciva) to state-ownership.[1165]

The time has come to examine the influence of the present process upon the Jewish community of Cyrenaica. A growth of the number of Jews in the country between the 1st century B.C. and the 1st century of the common era is indicated by the tombs of Teucheira and by the three Jewish inscriptions at Berenice, also by what Josephus reports of Cyrenean Jewry as a whole.[1166] It is clear that their number was large in the city of Cyrene at the time of Lucullus’ visit, when they were already a political factor, and the same inference may be drawn from their clash with the city over the despatch of the half-sheqel tax to Jerusalem between 31 and 13 B.C. At both Berenice and Cyrene the community was able to elaborate and beautify its public buildings during the 1st century B.C. The influence of the comfortable and wealthy city-elements seems to have grown in the second half of the century, since by 7-6 B.C. some Jews had attained citizen-status in the Greek polis of Cyrene, and by 13-12 B.C. the same had occurred at Ptolemais. Their community’s ties with the Jewish homeland, more especially with Jerusalem, had also been drawn closer in the last century before and in the first century of the common era; this is shown by the tombs of Cyrenean Jews discovered in Jerusalem in 1941. Here eleven ossuaries of Jews with Cyrenean names were found by Sukenik in a rockcut tomb in the Qidron Valley,[1167] while another ossuary from the tombs of Dominus Flevit, dug by Bagatti and Milik, bore the name of a Cyrenean.[1168] The first group was accompanied by pottery and lamps of the 1st century of the current era, the second by coins from the Hasmonean period (from c. 135 B.C.) down to A.D. 16. This evidence may be connected with the New Testament report[1169] of a synagogue in Jerusalem owned by Cyrenean Jews, which existed a short time after the death of Jesus, and of the presence in Jerusalem of Simon of Cyrene, who carried the cross.[1170]

Two documents of Cyrenean Jewry belong to the first third of the 1st century A.D., namely, the resolution of the Jews of Berenice in honour of the Roman official M. Tittius in A.D. 24/5, and the inscription recording the mission of Ittalammon son of Apellas and Simon son of Simon to Lanuvium in an unknown year, apparently in the first decades of the century. These two documents have been discussed, (pp. 146 sqq.; 167 sqq.) and on neither can a firm conclusion be reached. If we accept the view that the Lanuvium inscription was set up by a delegation in the name of Ptolemais, we must see this as evidence that the Ptolemais community had then reached such a measure of influence that the polis found it profitable to send two of its Jewish citizens to prosecute its affairs, apparently a claim for the recovery of money from the Roman authorities. But if we interpret the inscription as belonging to the tenants of the ager publicus, the former agri Apionis (and I think the language of the document supports this interpretation), we shall discover in the text a common element with the Berenice stele of A.D. 24-25, which expresses gratitude to M. Tittius who came to Cyrenaica “on public affairs” (ἐπὶ τῶν δημοσίων πραγμάτων), an expression which could be interpreted to mean “on affairs of the ager publicus”.

If then our analysis of the situation of the tenants on the country’s public lands in these years is correct, involving their expulsion by the spread of the pastoral economy managed by the publicani, and if we are justified in our belief that many of the tenants were Jews, — then the Berenice and Lanuvium documents may be seen as expressions of the Jewish community’s economic struggle against the Roman contractors on the one hand, and against the private landowners who had replaced the Roman contractors on the other. An analysis of the agrarian development of the Cyrenean ager publicus in the first half of the 1st century A.D. obliges us to suppose that the activity of the Roman publicani on those tracts and their seizure by the Cyreneans themselves, brought into existence a landless agrarian proletariat which included a considerable Jewish element. We do not know whether the Jewish wealthy of the Pentapolis came to the assistance of their brethren. The honorary inscription dedicated to M. Tittius by the Jewish politeuma of Berenice looks like an act of the well-to-do leaders of the community, and its text can be interpreted to mean that the dedicators had a tangible interest in the state-lands. It would be less natural for the propertied group to be on the side of the Roman publicani and the conductores; that they would have supported the oppressed tenants and peasantry is nevertheless uncertain. But the Lanuvium inscription would appear to mean this, if we agree to see in it evidence for a delegation on behalf of the tenants of the agri Apionis. It is likely enough that differing attitudes were held concurrently among the wealthier members of the community. One thing at any rate is made very clear by this study — namely, the sharp cleavage prevailing in this period between the inhabitants of the cities and the country population, particularly that living outside the city territories (ἡ χώρα). The situation is reflected by Strabo (p. 176) and is prominent in most phases of the country’s history from the Ptolemaic conquest onward.

One event that belongs to this period, between the years 60 and 70, might have thrown some light on the Jewish position in Cyrenaica had we possessed details: this is the fate of the High Priest Ishmael ben Phiabi, who was put to death at Cyrene between the above dates.[1171] Ishmael was apparently appointed High Priest by the Roman procurator Porcius Festus between the years 61-64;[1172] he appears to have been of Egyptian origin. Something is known of his personality from Josephus[1173] and from rabbinical literature.[1174] He conducted an aggressive policy against Agrippa II and the Roman procurator, expressed by the erection of a wall between the Temple and the royal palace, and headed a delegation to Rome to state his case in the dispute before the Emperor himself. In respect of internal Jewish problems he was both masterful and unscrupulous, gathering about himself a gang of roughs to manhandle his opponents in Jerusalem, and depriving the lesser priests of their dues by sending his slaves to the threshing floors to seize their tithes. After his collision with Agrippa and the procurator Festus over the high wall he had built to screen the Temple service, (61-64), Ishmael arrived in Rome at the head of eleven Jerusalem notables, and with the aid of the Empress Poppaea Sabina successfully gained Nero’s support for his case, but was detained by Poppaea in Rome when his colleagues left to return to Judaea.[1175]

This is the end of Josephus’ account, and we do not know how or why Ishmael found his way to Cyrene. One thing however is clear: he died by the sword of the Roman administration, for decapitation was a pronouncedly Roman form of execution.[1176] His general outlook, indeed, bore no resemblance to that of the Zealots, yet obviously the appearance of so stormy a personality among the Jews of Cyrene not long before the outbreak of the great rebellion in Judaea, could not but evoke strong reactions and a sharpening of antagonisms within the Jewish community. A rapprochement between the leaders of the community and the Cyrenean aristocracy precisely in the ’sixties, was expressed by the appointment of Eleazar son of Jason to the post of nomophylax in 61 (pp. 178 sqq). Eleazar does not, indeed, appear to have hidden his Jewish identity, but the members of his hellenizing group had been educated in the Greek gymnasia and did not hesitate to permit their names to be engraved on ephebe steles dedicated to the gods Hermes and Heracles, and the same applied to a parallel Jewish group at Ptolemais. Eleazar’s name, moreover, was listed on an inscription which opened with the names of the high priests of Apollo. Probably the years of the ’sixties saw the creation of a deep rift between this group and the broader sections of the Jewish population, both in the town and the country. It is hard to imagine the High Priest Ishmael as an ally of the Sicarian Jonathan the Weaver on the one hand, or of the communal leaders who informed the Roman government of Jonathan on the other; or yet that he would have given aid to the Jewish peasants. He must then have been isolated in the politics of the Jewish society at Cyrene, yet his presence could have created strong reactions, deepening conflicts and widening cleavages. Probably he met his end in the events of the year 73 yet to be described, falling victim to Roman suspicion.

Meanwhile the Roman activity designed to settle the problem of the ager publicus went forward. Paconius Agrippinus is known to have been still active in this sphere in 75,[1177] and Hyginus was in Cyrenaica under Trajan (i.e. after 98) measuring the same lands. Probably not a few Jews were interested in profiting from the reform to return to the plots from which their fathers had been evicted years before, and if the settlement was carried out at the expense of Cyrenean squatters by Vespasian’s decision, this would have exacerbated relations between Greeks and Jews. But here a new factor intervened — the prolonged and growing tension in Judaea, which ended in A.D. 66 with the great explosion in Jerusalem and a bloody clash between Jews and Greeks first at Caesarea, then in the Greek cities of Judaea and Syria, and in Alexandria, which finally brought about the outbreak of trouble in Cyrene.

The year 73 beheld a further event whose direct influence is hard to assess, but which certainly did not improve the attitude of most of the Jews to the Roman power: This was the imposition of the penal Ἰουδαικὸν τέλεσμα (Jewish tax), first exacted in Judaea the same year;[1178] in Egypt it was paid in the year 72-73.[1179]

We may distinguish, hypothetically, between three groups among Cyrenean Jewry at this moment: those involved in the affairs of the cities and who stood close to their authorities; a broader group, for the most part now nationally aroused by the events in Judaea, and the broad populace, not a few of whom were a landless proletariat concentrated in the towns or scattered in the lesser settlements and on the fringes of the agricultural areas; the plight of this group may well be reflected in the tombs of Teucheira. This third group, the ἄποροι, or indigent, made its contribution to the events of 73, when the Sicarian Jonathan the Weaver fled to Cyrene.[1180]

If Josephus’ account can be trusted, two outstanding points are to be discussed in the episode connected with him. First, that the movement which he led was not restricted to the city of Cyrene, as according to Josephus’ words “the Sicarian madness infected the cities like a plague;”[1181] second, that his initial acts did not assume the form of an armed rising, but were an attempt to lead two thousand of the poorer Jews towards the desert, where he promised to show them signs and wonders. The Jewish wealthy did not hesitate to inform the Roman administration, which appears not to have noticed what was happening, of the movement, and the proconsul Catullus[1182] despatched cavalry and infantry to disperse the participants. Most of the unarmed mob was cut down; the remnant was captured. Jonathan was caught after a prolonged chase. Whereupon, whether in despair or inspired by the class-hatred which was so prominent a feature of the several contemporary Jewish activist currents, he accused various Jews among the wealthier of the country of supporting the movement. The first objects of his charges were one Alexander, with whom he (or the governor) appears to have clashed previously, and his wife Berenice, and they were put to death by Catullus. Their execution was followed by the infliction of the death penalty on several thousand of the richer Jews of Cyrenaica — or three thousand according to one of Josephus’ versions. “And this,” concludes the historian, “he (Catullus) thought could be done without danger, because he had confiscated their property to the credit of the imperial exchequer.”[1183] He then proceeded to impel Jonathan to extend his charges to the leaders of the Jewish communities in Alexandria and Rome, among those accused being Flavius Josephus himself, whom Jonathan charged with furnishing weapons and money to the alleged conspirators.[1184] These people, however, were cleared by Vespasian after a personal investigation, and Jonathan was sentenced to death by burning.

Critical examination of the above story, as related by Josephus, raises several problems, not all of which are soluble. Klausner long ago remarked[1185] that the term “Sicarian” applied to Jonathan hardly accords with his behaviour, namely, the leading of an unarmed mob towards the desert on the promise of showing them signs and wonders. The Sicarians generally believed in armed insurrection against Rome and their other enemies, whereas “signs and wonders” belong to the sort of action ascribed in Judaea, in the years before the great rebellion, to “the Egyptian prophet,” who led 30,000 people from the desert to the Mount of Olives with the purpose of capturing Jerusalem by performing miracles,[1186] and to one Theudas, who led a large mob to the Jordan in order to take them to the desert,[1187] and was killed by the procurator Fadus. The contradiction between the acts of Jonathan and his title of “Sicarian” can indeed be resolved, and to this we shall return. But first another question arises: Why did the Roman authorities fail to notice Jonathan’s departure at the head of two thousand Jews in the direction of the desert? The answer might be that they had left the towns secretly, in small groups, making for a common meeting place, yet the whole action rather suggests an excited assembly and a mass-march under the influence of Jonathan’s personality. The explanation is rather to be sought elsewhere; that the assembly took place not in the city, but in the rural area.[1188]

Another question forces itself upon the enquirer; why did Catullus believe that there was no danger in putting to death wealthy Jews since he had confiscated their property to the treasury? It is easy to connect this remark with the avarice and covetousness of Vespasian; it is known that the new emperor faced an empty treasury at the end of the civil war, hence his severity in the collection of taxes and in the augmentation of revenue,[1189] nor are anecdotes lacking of his greed.[1190] Suetonius accuses him of promoting corrupt officials so that he could condemn the wealthier ones, and it was said of him that he then wrung them out like sponges.[1191] On the other hand Suetonius writes that “no innocent person was ever punished except in his absence, because he did not know of it, against his will, or because he had been deceived.”[1192] Suetonius’ two statements are contradictory, and the first accords better with the conduct of Catullus. Yet even if we assume that it is correct, Josephus would not have admitted the reality of this vicious characteristic on the part of the patron to whom he owed his life. The facts remain to carry their own condemnation.

Catullus’ execution of the Jewish aristocracy of Cyrene can indeed be interpreted in the light of the situation prevailing at the time with regard to the Jewry of the Empire as a whole and of Cyrene in particular. In Judaea the last embers of rebellion had only just been stamped out, while violent reactions had occurred also among Alexandrian Jewry.[1193] No one knew where new reactions might appear, and the nervousness of the authorities in those provincial centres where Jews were numerous is understandable. The destruction of the Temple made it natural to anticipate insurrectionary conspiracies in every Jewish community, and Jonathan may not have been isolated in his revolutionary plans. At Cyrene, in addition, socially explosive material had accumulated in the form of a landless proletariat on the one hand, and in the discontent of the landowners who held themselves to be injured by the new regulation of the ager publicus on the other. The confiscation of the land of Jewish proprietors would have been an “ideal” solution in such a complex situation, the more so if they were accused of fostering sedition against the Emperor.[1194] As a number of the condemned Jews were citizens of the city (or cities), no small part of their possessions would have been landed property, which now passed to the imperial fiscus. Catullus, according to Josephus, was not tried or punished by Vespasian, a fact which appears to prove the latter’s concurrence with the judicial murder and with the spoliation of the possessions of the accused. In defence of Vespasian it can only be said that the punishment of a governor at this juncture, when the Jewish insurrection had just ended and the Flavian dynasty was barely consolidated in power, would not have been popular among the groups about the Imperator. Whatever the case, the facts served to emphasize the cynical attitude to a perversion of justice affected by political considerations. The most moderate of the Cyrenean Jews was bound to realize clearly that from now on the Jews were outside the law. A boundary-stone found below the Jebel escarpment 500 metres south of the modern townlet of Susa, which impinges on Apollonia, records the acquisition and leasing of two farms covering 23% medimnia (about 251 iugera) of land by the city of Apollonia.[1195] The transaction was carried out with the sanction of the Emperor Vespasian by the provincial governor C. Arinius Modestus, who was discharging a second term of governorship, two local men acting as guarantors. Arinius’ prolonged term was probably necessitated by the disturbances of 73; the acquisition and leasing of the land — presumably state property, may well have been a consequence of the confiscations of Jewish property by Flavius Catullus.

It has already been observed that an apparent contradiction exists between Jonathan’s description as a “Sicarian” and his conduct as a prophet and revealer of signs and wonders. There can be no doubt, however, that the Zealot aspirants to the Messianic kingdom in the last years before the destruction of the Second Temple, included two principal currents, one of which saw the road to the achievement of its aim in military action and political organization, while the other sought realization in the anticipation of miracles and wonders to be performed by the Almighty through the instrumentality of men of particular charisma. To the second current doubtless belonged the Egyptian prophet and Theudas, whose acts are described by Josephus. But there was a close connection between the two currents, and there was also a group or trend that combined both aspirations. This group is described by Josephus[1196] after he has described the Sicarii: “Additional to these men of blood was another group, evil men, whose hands were clean of blood, but were themselves even more wanton in heart, since they, no less than the assassins, destroyed the peace of the city. For themselves misled, they misled others, and pretending to Divine inspiration, engaged in revolution and revolt, influencing the multitude to madness, leading them to the desert and claiming that there God would reveal to them omens of liberation”. The Qumran scrolls have now proved to us the activist revolutionary content of the sect’s aims — more particularly the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness.[1197] This document appears to belong to a period between the ist century B.C. and A.D. 70, and very probably, in Yadin’s opinion, to the Roman period, i.e., between 64 B.C. and the latter date. Its contents are the definition of the aims and phases of the war to be waged by Israel against the nations on the final day in order to attain complete redemption. It drafts the regulations and the regime to prevail among the combatants, describes the organizational structure and armament of their army, its array and tactics. As Devir has observed,[1198] the desert performed an important function in Jewish history, as a symbol and source of religious and political inspiration, in which divers trends and individuals in Judaism saw a place of devotion and solitary retreat, where the spiritual powers could be renewed and purified, where profounder contact with God could be attained, lhe desert symbolized the furnace in which the nation had been annealed, the heroic cradle of its unsullied youth, and the place of creation of its law of righteousness. For this reason the men of the Qumran sect saw their sojourn in the desert as a stage of spiritual and physical preparation for the final struggle which was to bring about the liberation of Israel and the redemption of mankind.

That they were not alone in their outlook on the function of the desert, is shown by the appearance of the idea in various forms over centuries of Jewish life[1199] and by the “exodus to the Desert’ of which we hear both in Judaea and in Cyrenaica. Knowledge of the aims of the Qumran Sect enables us to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the character and acts of Jonathan the Weaver. The currents and sects of the period also included men in whom the two ideas were associated: sojourn in the desert as a place of preparation, physical and spiritual, for the messianic war, the warlike aim being the way to complete redemption. The same conclusion has been reached by Professor Y. M. Grinz,[1200] who identifies the “prophets of the desert” with the aims embodied in the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness. The two principal ideas of this current are such as to explain Jonathan’s programme and enable us to divide it into two phases: the assembly of the rebellious for preparation in the desert, and, subsequently, the war itself. Jonathan did not survive the first phase.

Does the study of the Libyan tribes enable us to add to a reconstruction of the events under discussion? The opinion of Gautier has already been cited, that the federation of the judaizing tribes of Algeria, the Zenata, took its origin in Cyrenaica at the time of the Jewish rising under Trajan. On the other hand the period of the most rapid spread of Judaism among the tribes of the Maghreb is placed by Gautier in the Severan epoch, when the camel-riding tribes came into being after the nomads had been thrust into the desert by the Roman administration. This view has been criticized by Julien and Margais,[1201] who doubt the exclusively nomadic character of the Botr tribal group constituting the Zenata. Alber-tini[1202] dates the judaization of certain Berber tribes and their expansion from Tripolitania to the Saharan oases, to the end of the ist century A.D. Simon,[1203] for his part, sees the first point of contact between the western Berbers and Judaism in the great Jewish Rebellion of 66-70. If the opinion is correct that the origin of the Botr tribes was in Cyrenaica, it is clear that they moved westward to Tripolitania and the Maghreb after the First Revolt on account of their attachment to Judaism, and this would support the view that their association with Judaism began before the time of Trajan. Simon writes of this conclusion,[1204] that the circumstances of the rebellion under Trajan imply “the presence, on the fringes of the hellenized Jewish communities, on the desert borders of the province (i.e. Cyrenaica), of important Palestinian Jewish elements, doubtless of Zealot spirit and origin, part of whom flowed, as time went on, to the Saharah, while others sought refuge in the direction of the Maghreb plateau.”

But unfortunately it now seems that the information concerning the judaizing Berber tribes alleged to have existed before the Arab invasion is less proven than it appeared to be some years ago. In 1963 Professor H. Z. Hirschberg published a detailed enquiry containing a systematic criticism of the sources of this information,[1205] showing that the first report of the phenomenon is not older than the Middle Ages. The main source is Ibn Khaldoun, but his statement concerning the Judaism of the tribes concerned in Tripolitania and the Maghreb is less confident than would appear to the reader from the French translation of de Slane.[1206] Most of the stories of Jewish influence on the Berber tribes, moreover, originated, as Hirschberg shows, not earlier than the 12th century, as a result of the contemporary spread of Jewish communities over north Africa; they also stem from tales of the Lost Ten Tribes, and above all from the ethnic and religious assimilation, forced or voluntary, of Jews to the Moslem population. Despite all this, Hirschberg sums up the discussion by saying:[1207] “the possibility of Jewish influence on the Berbers, and even Judaizing by certain Berber groups, should not be ruled out. That influence may have obtained not only in the pre-Islamic period, but also in the days of Arab rule.” There survive, indeed, several fragments of evidence of such influence in the pre-Arab period. The epigraphical material at Teucheira speaks in clear language of reciprocal influence between the two elements in the ist century B.C., and similar hints appear in eastern Cyrenaica and at Ptolemais;[1208] we have also noticed signs of contact between Jews and Libyans at Barka.[1209] Even if the tribes of the Nafusa and the other tribes of Cyrenaican origin did not really Judaize, Jewish settlement on the Syrtic Gulf is very ancient, and we shall shortly see evidence that the Jews continued to enter that area in the ist century A.D. This study has also made it clear that the physiographic conditions of Cyrenaica, as well as its agrarian development, associated the Jews and the Libyan tribes in a common plight.

Jewish literature early reveals an interest in Libyan origins, and claims that they are kindred to the Jews because they are descended from the Canaanites who had been expelled from their country by Joshua. This idea is expressed in the Book of Jubilees, composed a short time before the beginning of the Christian era;[1210] the same information, cited by Flavius Josephus,[1211] derives from Cleudamos, also known as Malchus, a Jewish or Samaritan historian who appears to have written in the 2nd century B.C. The tradition, then, originated not later than in the same century; it is further quoted by King Juba in his work.[1212] Yohanan Lewy on the other hand,[1213] argues that belief in the Canaanite origin of the African natives arose from the dispute between the Jews and Phoenicians over the ownership of Eretz Yisrael, which flared up following the Maccabean conquests, and was influenced by Greek legal conceptions. If Lewy was right, then the. tradition on the Canaanite origins relates not to the Libyans but to the Phoenicians. This view, however, evokes two questions: Why was the tradition of Canaanite origin also accepted by the Jews, precisely in connection with Africa; and how did it become popular among the simple people of the African countryside?[1214] If these ideas were known to the Phoenicians, who used them as propaganda against the Jews, such propaganda was apt to be useful to both sides, and in Africa it could be turned to the advantage of the latter. The very use of such propaganda by non-Jews beyond the frontiers of Eretz Yisrael means that Jewish counter-influence existed. Professor Y. Guttman, indeed,[1215] has noticed an interesting element in later Jewish hellenistic literature which constitutes valid evidence of a rapprochement between Jews and Libyans in the ist century A.D. This is to be found in the surviving portions of the Greek tragedy of Ezekiel, written in Egypt in the ist century A.D., on the subject of the Exodus.[1216] It is superfluous to remark that the theme was not one likely to appeal to Egyptians; more important, it transfers the encounter of Moses with the Midianites and his subsequent friendship with them to the Libyans of the Western Desert. As Josephus recorded that Eophren, who conquered Libya, was descended from Madian son of Abraham, Ezekiel must have read an allied source, perhaps Cleodamus,[1217] and it becomes clear that this genealogy was being used by the Jews as propaganda among the Libyans at least as early as the ist century of the present era.

If this was so, whether or not Simon’s conjecture on Jewish expansion in this period is right, his idea of the concentration of rebellious elements in the desert borders is extremely likely, and helps us to understand the episode of Jonathan the Weaver, the more so in the light of the knowledge provided by the War Scroll. Josephus states explicitly that “the Zealot madness’ was not restricted to one city of Cyrenaica, hence it is clear that Jonathan was not isolated in his activity and that the ferment did not die down with the massacre of two thousand Jews and the execution of Jonathan. I he pressure of the renewed intensification of agriculture which spread over the plateau hand-in-hand with the revision of property boundaries (the limitatio), displaced a growing number of Libyans, driving them to the desert fringes, which became the seed beds of the rebellion which was to break out in the reign of Trajan; here was created and forged the religious covenant between the Jewish zealots and the Berber tribes of the south.[1218]

Both Jewish tradition and Roman geographical sources add certain information which tends to support the view that the Jews in the period were being pushed westward and southward. The Jews of the Syrtis retain a tradition that one of Titus’ commanders, named Pangor, settled 30,000 Jews in that country.[1219] This tradition should apparently be connected with the story in a fragmentary mediaeval manuscript, perhaps derived from the Chronicle of Yerahmeel, who wrote in the 12th century and used various classical and Jewish sources, concerning the settlement of 30,000 exiles from Jerusalem by Titus’ commander, Pangor, in Carthage.[1220] It is interesting that the name of “Pangor” contains four letters of the names Paconius Agrippinus in their correct order. Moreover, the historical nucleus of this tradition may be reflected in the Roman settlement of Iscina Locus Iudaeorum Augusti, situated on the Syrtic coast in eastern Tripolitania, some 80 kilometres west of the frontier between Cyrenaica and Numidia. The place appears under its full name only in the Tabula Peutingeriana,[1221] in the 4th century; as Iscina in the Itinerarium Antonini (3rd century A.D.),[1222] and in Ptolemy’s Geography (mid-2nd century A.D.).[1223] In sources of the 4th and ist centuries B.C. the same locality is marked as Charax.[1224] It is therefore probable that Iscina was founded between the ist century B.C. and the middle of the 2nd century A.D.[1225] There is indeed additional evidence suggesting that Iscina was founded in the Flavian period. The name “Locus Augusti” is a clear indication that the settlement originated on imperial land and was never a municipium or a colony. A number of sources preserve cases of the founding of settlements, generally without municipal status, by the personal initiative of the first Flavian Emperor: to this class belonged the colony of Flaviopolis, preceded by a Claudian settlement in Thrace, whence it was removed to Asia by Vespasian;[1226] a similar settlement founded by Vespasian in Samos;[1227] tracts near Panormus in Sicily allocated for the settlement of discharged troops and of members of Vespasian’s own household (i.e. slaves);[1228] and land assigned by the same Emperor to tenants and members of his household at Abella in Campania.[1229] On the basis of these examples, we may follow Monceaux’s suggestion[1230] that Iscina was established by Vespasian (or Titus) for Jewish slaves transferred as prisoners of war from Judaea, or for Jews from Cyrenaica who no longer found a place there or were suspected of seditious activity.[1231] It is inherently likely that both elements were represented at Iscina.

The name locus is defined by Ulpian[1232] as part of an agricultural estate (fundus), and in the texts of agrarian laws frequently appears as a term designating rural property (ager, locus, aedificium);[1233] in the south of France more especially the term indicates an agricultural settlement, and in one case at least, the centre of a large estate.[1234] In Britain, however, and in some regions of the Danube basin, the loci were points near the frontier regions where fairs were held by the natives at fixed times under the supervision of the authorities and with its permission,[1235] These points were generally also cult-centres, hence it is very possible that Locus Iscina was a place of meeting for the Jewish inhabitants of a number of local settlements at festivals and on appointed days. It is at any rate clear from the Roman name, that the settlement stood on imperial land, and was essentially agricultural, although it is not impossible that it was meant also as the site of a fair at fixed times. The modern name of the place, Medinet es-Sultan, still preserves the memory of imperial ownership.

As we have seen, Jewish settlement in the Syrtis region had begun in the hellenistic period, and perhaps even earlier. But Iscina is not the only evidence of Jewish migration to this shore in the Roman imperial period. A cemetery of the 4th century A.D. discovered at Syrtis itself, included inter alia a number of tombstones with pronouncedly Jewish names, some bearing the imperial family names.[1236] Bertoccini remarked of this discovery: “We have here slaves or tenants, most of them Jews, employed in the maintenance and working of the imperial estates which were numerous in Tripolitania.”[1237] It may well be that this settlement began in the Flavian period, and that the nearby Roman station of Praesidium, whose site is known by the Arabs as “ Yehudiyeh”, was founded about the same time.[1238]

The year 73 saw the annihilation of the Jewish aristocracy of Cyrenaica, and the disappearance of the mediating factor between the Greek population and the Jewish community. This had doubtless included the most hellenized element of local Jewry, meaning the more “moderate” among them in all that concerned national and economic problems. The Jews of Cyrenaica thus remained leaderless, and the way was open for the revolutionary activists. They were aided by the social situations for our analysis indicates the presence among the Jews of a considerable number of landless peasantry, and it may be supposed that these elements were an object of propaganda the aim of which is represented by the acts of Jonathan the Weaver and described in the War Scroll of the Dead Sea sect.

It is impossible to say whether a Jewish rural population remained in Cyrenaica at this time. But in so far as Jewish tenants or subtenants remained on the ager publicus, something might be learnt of their plight from evidence on the attitude of Trajan’s government to the Jewish tenants on the land of Eretz Yisrael. This can be derived from several Midrashim which relate to the predicament of Jewish tenants on confiscated land in Judaea in the same period.[1239] Vespasian had confiscated much of the country’s land at the end of the War of the Destruction.[1240] Much of this appears in the records as subject to holders who are called Matziqim (crp’S?3).[1241] who oppress and harass the Jewish cultivators. These are not conductores, or state lessees, since they can sell their holdings; it is clear from a Midrash[1242] that they included various elements from the Roman aristocracy to ex-soldiers, or their agents, who had received their lands in grant from the Emperor. Midrash Siphri de-bei-Rav[1243] surveys all the regions of the country in which these holders are active, writing inter alia: “and the Negev, meaning that He showed him the South enjoying its calm, then showed it to him again with Matziqim holding it... the City of Palms (Jericho)... unto Zoar, these are the Matziqim of Israel.” Midrash Tannaim speaks in similar language:[1244] “... the Negev... unto Zoar, where He showed him the place, Matzirei Yisrael (= Matziquei Yisrael)”.

The two extracts cited inform us that there were Matziqim in the northern Negev, or the Darom, also in Zoar at the south end of the Dead Sea. These midrashim are not later than the 2nd century of the common era, but the reference to lands at Zoar which are in the hands of Roman owners cannot precede Trajan’s annexation of the Province of Arabia in A.D. 106/7.[1245] It may therefore be deduced that Vespasian’s original policy towards Jewish cultivators in Judaea had not changed under Trajan twenty or thirty years later.

We have no actual evidence that Trajan discriminated against the Jews of the Diaspora before the revolt of 115, just as there is no information that his predecessors had done so as a result of events in Judaea, if we except the imposition of the Jewish tax. But in Cyrenaica in 73 an abnormal situation had developed. The wealthier Jews had been put to death and their property sequestrated, while the rest of the community had manifested signs of ferment and rebellion. And if in the process of the reorganization of tenures, which lasted down to Trajan’s reign, problems occurred involving Jewish tenants or their settlement, it is not hard to imagine what attitude they encountered on the part of the representatives of the imperial government.[1246]

In proportion as the outbreak of the Jewish rebellion draws nearer, the evidence diminishes which might throw light on the immediate circumstances of its outbreak.[1247] But since the Second World War archaeology has made one important contribution to an understanding of the general background. In 1949 the late Colonel J. Baradez published his important book on the Roman frontier-system of Numidia.[1248] containing details of his explorations by air-photography of a hitherto relatively unknown Roman fortified system. These fortifications surround the Aurez Mountains on the west and south; inscriptions evidence that they were first organized under Trajan or Hadrian,[1249] and the line is closely bound up with planned areas of cultivation and with installations for storage of runoff and its direction to the fields, in other words, with an extensive and systematic scheme of agricultural settlement. This undertaking may be interpreted to mean that its purpose was to pin down the nomadic tribes of Numidia, to settle them in fixed agriculture and thus to put an end permanently to their seasonal movement backward and forward between the desert fringes and the cultivated areas. The significance of this impressive undertaking is, that in the reign of Trajan the problem of the relation between the Libyan tribes inhabiting the desert borders and the permanently settled population of the Roman provinces of Africa had reached a crisis.

Another archaeological discovery illumines the darkness shrouding the outbreak of the rebellion. This is part of a clay lamp already alluded to (p. 194),[1250] found at Cyrene in the area east of the Acropolis and south of the Agora. Another similar example, also fragmentary, was subsequently found in the Agora itself, alongside the foundation of Temple E6.[1251] Less than half the first lamp remains, but this is sufficient to show that its diameter was as much as 9.3 cm. The lamp is covered with a burnished maroon slip, its upper face being surrounded by a moulding and an ovolo frieze; within this is figured a seven-branched candlestick (menorah), and to its right appears an unidentifiable object, possibly a palm-branch. The menorah evidently occupied only part of the face, and what filled the remainder of the surface can only be conjectured. The filhng hole must have been small. The type belongs to the second half of the ist century and to the 2nd century, A.D., and is one of the commonest in this period, being known in Asia Minor, Italy, Egypt, Africa, Gaul, Greece and Eretz Yisrael.[1252] The excavations carried out at Teucheira in 1954 proved that this type of lamp was also manufactured in Cyrenaica; the rubbish dump of a pottery kiln was found in the Jewish cemetery to the west of the town, and in this similar lamps had been fired, as shown by the presence of the same type.[1253] The figures on those found were chiefly pagan deities (Astarte, Ganymede, Erotes), also gladiators and an erotic scene; only one decorative motif, a rosette, could have been acceptable to Jews. A number of examples of this type are known from Cyrene,[1254] including one which had been spoilt in the firing,[1255] providing additional evidence of local manufacture. Similar lamps have been found at Gerasa in Transjordan, among remains of a potter’s workshop turning out lamps and figurines, the finds belonging in the main to the reign of Trajan.[1256] Of the examples of this type from Gerasa, numbers 134-6 included figures of pagan deities, and one bore the figure of the ram of Jupiter Ammon and palmleaves: the appearance of the ram proves that this lamp did not precede the transfer of the legion III Cyrenaica to the province of Arabia about the year 128.[1257]

All the above finds carried pagan decoration, and no other examples of the type are recorded to the best of my knowledge, with the figure of the menorah. All other known clay lamps bearing the menorah-symbol belong, on the view till recently accepted, to the late Roman or to the Byzantine period; they have been classified by Reifenberg,[1258] who dated them not earlier than the 3rd century A.D., the overwhelming majority of them being of the 4th century or later. (On new evidence from Judaea, see p. 240). It is further generally agreed that the menorah as a decorative motif in Jewish art does not precede the destruction of the Second Temple, and even if some exceptional cases are known,[1259] there is little doubt that it became common chiefly after the year 70. This is confirmed at Teucheira, where the latest datable Jewish tomb belongs to the year 94 (see pp. 154 sqq), and symbols are virtually lacking, only two examples of the menorah being known.[1260] This is precisely what we should expect in a cemetery most of whose burials belong to the period before 70, on the assumption that the menorah became common on graves after that year. The Cyrene lamps with menorah motif, therefore, were probably made after the Destruction, and obviously cannot be later than the years 115-117, when the country’s Jewish community was annihilated. If these deductions are correct, the present lamp-type is the oldest known which bears the figure of the menorah-symbol.

The figure of the seven-branched candlestick appears in Cyrenaica at two places in very unusual circumstances. The first is at ‛Ein Targhuna, where it is cut deeply into a Roman road leading to Hirbet al-Yahud (on this site, see p. 170 sqq.). What is the meaning of a menorah incised in so extraordinary a position? The second instance may assist an answer. It is located at Ptolemais, where the figure is seen cut on the north wall of the south tower guarding the western city gate. The latter was built by Comanus, minister of Euergetes II, in about 158 B.C., and the same wall exhibits other incised inscriptions made by Greeks, apparently soldiers of the garrison.[1261] The menorah is so inappropriate to what surrounds it that it may be interpreted as a challenge, and after A.D. 70 it would only be attributed to the revolt of Trajan’s time. An aggressive act like the cutting of a menorah[1262] in a public place can only possess the significance of defiance or victory. We are thus reminded of the formula inscribed on two milestones of Hadrian from Cyrene and its vicinity: “The Emperor Hadrian (with all his routine titles) restored the road which had been overturned and broken up (eversa et co*ruftta) in the Jewish revolt.”[1263] A paved road can be overturned and broken up; this cannot be done to a rockcut road, but Jewish victory can be expressed in relation to it by cutting the menorah symbol in its surface.[1264] The conclusion is, that the menorah became for the Jews of Cyrene in the years 115-117 a political symbol and a sign of defiance and revolt. This conclusion harmonizes with the origin of lamps bearing the menorah figure in Cyrenaica, and if this suggestion is correct, Cyrenaica may be regarded as one of the points of diffusion of that symbol as a decorative motif on Jewish objects and buildings after the destruction of the Second Temple.

Several facts can be adduced concerning the function of this and similar types of lamp in the early Roman Empire. The decorative motifs on them are many and various, but we may notice among them the appearance of the figure of the Goddess of Victory,[1265] of victors of a horse-race with their horse,[1266] and the oakleaf wreath (corona civica), symbolizing valour.[1267] Very popular and well known is the lamp bearing the new year greeting annum novum, faustum, felicem, accompanied by the figure of the Goddess of Victory.[1268] Fragmentary examples of such found at Petra were incised with the addition word “Shalom” (peace) in Nabataean characters.[1269] Cases are also known in which lamps served as propaganda in the Roman world; such were the lamps inscribed Genio Populi Romani Feliciter (in the form of the abbreviation GPRF),[1270] or Ob cives servatos.[1271] In several instances these inscriptions occurred on a round shield (clipeus) supported by the figure of the Victory Goddess appearing in much the same form as on the new year lamps. Others of this type carry the letters S(enatus) C(on-sulto),[1272] evidencing that they were manufactured officially under state auspices. The date of the general type of the “Victory lamps” is in the reigns of Augustus and his successors,[1273] while the inscription Ob cives servatos connects them with the coins inscribed with the same words. These were first struck by Augustus to commemorate his successful campaign in Spain in 27 B.C.; they appear again on coins of 19 B.C. to celebrate the recovery of the Roman military standards from Parthia.[1274] The inscription is again encountered on coins of Vespasian, on which it surrounds an oak leaf wreath, symbol of victorious courage.[1275] There can be little doubt, therefore, that certain types of “Victory Lamps” resembling typologically the Cyrenean specimen under discussion, were used for purposes of state propaganda, and on two occasions one of these inscriptions marked successes on the eastern front of the Empire.

Very interesting is the function assigned to a lamp found in Campania,[1276] which belongs to the same type as the example from Cyrene. Its shape is similar, but the decorative motifs around the inner circle of the face are divided into pointed leaves.The face of the lamp shows the figure of a seated goddess, winged and hel-meted, who symbolizes, it would seem, both Rome and Victory. She is pouring a libation onto an altar before her, and is surrounded by symbols of the Empire’s more important cults; the eagle of Jupiter, the dolphin of Neptune, the hawk of Horus, the club of Heracles, the sistrum of Isis, the lyre of Apollo, the pincers of Vulcan, the caduceus of Mercury and the torch of Demeter. A central place is occupied by the corn-ear, pomegranate, cymbals and raven of the Great Mother (Magna Mater) of Asia, also by a sacred standard combining the sun and the moon, the symbols of the deities of Asia and Syria alike. It is probable enough that this lamp originated in the east, and that its purpose was to emphasize the unity of the Empire’s cults under the leadership of Rome. A group of figures which resembles the above in every respect is represented on a circular lamp found at Rome;[1277] the lamp-face here being defined, not by leaf motifs, but by simple mouldings. This specimen has sixteen nozzles. Parallel in function and content are two earthenware medallions from Italy, today in the Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology at Nir David, Israel; they bear a number of religious symbols, including the caduceus, the trident, the pincers, the sun-wheel, the moon, the double cornucopeia, the sceptre, the thunderbolt and the cymbals. Another example of lamp propaganda is represented by the specimen found at Gerasa already referred to, bearing the figure of Zeus Ammon. The third legion “Cyrenaica” was transferred to Arabia somewhere about 128, and as the worship of Ammon in Eretz Yisrael was in the main confined to the military and originated there with the same legion,[1278] this find must be later than most of the other objects from the same workshop, and it may be supposed that it reflects propaganda conducted to spread the cult of Ammon for political purposes.

It has also been remarked that the Cyrenean lamp is of unusual size, and the menorah on it constituted only a small part of the decoration occupying the upper surface. What constituted the rest of it? As we have been able to determine which types of gentile lamp were the prototypes of the Jewish example, a conjecture may be hazarded. The gentile examples, some of which were circulated at the instance of the government itself, laid stress on the idea of victory, figuring the Roman goddess of Victory or a similar deity (such as Zeus) as victor, or the Roman Victory as leader and unifier of the Empire’s cults; this motif takes the form of Victorious Rome surrounded by the symbols of those same cults.

The Cyrene lamp is the Jewish response to this iconic propaganda, hence it may be supposed that it too represented a group of symbols emphasizing — as against the unity of the pagan worship concentrated about the Roman victory — the unity of Judaism about the One God.[1279] It is clear from the angle of the menorah-figure and from its relation to the object by it, that it was not one of a pair of candlesticks flanking a central figure, as often seen in a later period on Jewish lamps, frescos, sculptures, glassware and mosaics. It apparently occupied a central position over other symbols. It may be conjectured that these symbols were ranged round one central object, and if this was a symbol of God, it could only have taken the form of the Temple or the Ark of the Covenant. It is probable enough that the other symbols were of the type appearing on later Jewish lamps and more especially on the “Gold Glass” bowls[1280] which have been found chiefly at Rome and Cologne. These are the lulab, etrog, and incense shovel, the cruse of oil and the other vessels of the Temple service. On the other hand the menorah figure seems to have been emphasized, despite its relative smallness.

The Cyrene lamp, then, may be interpreted as interesting evidence of the “cold war” between pagan worship and Judaism in the period preceding the revolt against Trajan in the years 115-117. This hypothesis finds some support in the distribution of a decorated Jewish lamp-type bearing the menorah symbol in the Hebron — Beth-Govrin — Gaza area of Judaea.[1281] Typologically these lamps are Herodian, but are known to have lasted down to the time of the Second Revolt (132-135), while the widespread use of the menorah as a decorative symbol does not generally precede the year 70 (above). It is probably significant, therefore, that the distribution of these lamps coincides with one of the focal areas of the Second Revolt. The Cyrene lamp shows, moreover, that the struggle was being conducted in the urban centres of Cyrenaica, and that the preparation for the violent outbreak which took place in Trajan’s reign, if it was based on the countryside and on the fringes of the desert, was not restricted to it.