Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene

1. Trajan and the Empire

It is the view of some historians that Trajan’s attack on Parthia in 114 was not inevitable; Roman control of Armenia was not necessary to ensure her military position and although Parthia was a nuisance at most times and hostile at others, quick to complain of the actions of a governor of Syria,[1359] or to support a false Nero,[1360] she was neither united within nor ready for real war.[1361] But this need not mean that there was no real clash of interests. Rostovtzeff has pointed out that an independent Armenia was acceptable to neither side; herself a potential aggressor, as a Roman protectorate she threatened Mesopotamia, while under Parthian influence she furnished access to the Black Sea states, to Asia Minor and to the hostile Sarmatians.[1362] Nor did complete calm prevail in the eastern provinces. The mood of Judaea during the Jewish revolt will be gauged presently. The very annexation of “Provincia Arabia” to the Empire lights up the real situation. Only Rostovtzeff manifested, albeit obliquely, some understanding of the significance of this operation, remarking,[1363] with reference to the hellenistic period, that “Palestine, a country organized from very ancient times, and now in a recalcitrant mood, they (the Ptolemies) surrounded with a screen of fortified cities of the Greek type.” The liquidation of the client kingdom of Nabataea and the establishment of the new province of Arabia, then, may have had three objects: the control of the trade routes over the Negev between Arabia and Gaza and between Arabia and Damascus along the line of the present railway to Mecca; the protection of the frontiers of Syria and Judaea against the raids of desert tribes, including the Arabs; and the containing of Judaea, still fermenting and recalcitrant, within a military zone designed to cut her off completely from influences outside the Empire — whether from Parthian intervention or from direct contact with Babylonian Jewry.[1364] Syme has observed[1365] that Q. Pompeius Falco, governor of Cilicia and Pamphylia under Trajan, passed on in an unusual manner to a second praetorian governorship of Judaea. He reached the consulate in 108, hence his second praetorian post fell in 106/7, a short time after the acquisition of the new province. Pompeius had served in Judaea previously and taken part in the Dacian War, hence it is to be suspected that he was transferred to Judaea for a second term owing to some unrest then prevailing there. A recently published inscription from Ephesus[1366] throws some additional light on events in Judaea during Pompeius’ second governorship. This is a dedication made in 123/4 by two delegates of the Samaritan city of Flavia Neapolis in honour of Pompeius, who is here called Saviour and Benefactor (σωτῆρα καὶ εὐεργέτην). It would seem reasonable to connect the events implied by this text with the year 107, and to believe that Neapolis stood in some danger during the disturbances which then took place. It is further known that ’Avdat in the Negev suffered destruction and abandonment shortly after the year 128, due, in all probability, to the penetration of new nomadic elements from the east;[1367] whether this trouble had begun some years before we do not yet know. At Mampsis occupation appears to have ceased about 130.[1368]

The closing off of Judaea by fortified zones was nevertheless such as to secure quiet in that province, and it shows that Trajan was not blind to the prospects of a Jewish outbreak in his rear when he attacked Parthia. The said fortifications were along the via Traiana, which extended from Hauran to the Red Sea. Trajan indeed had received a training thoroughly conducive to an understanding of the political and military problems of Syria and Judaea.

His father M. Ulpius Traianus had served under Vespasian as commander of the Tenth Legion in the Jewish War, and had subjugated the areas across the Jordan.[1369] In 73 or 74, after discharging the consulate, he had been appointed governor of Syria,[1370] and had silenced Parthian threats of war by a concentration of forces on the frontier.[1371] According to one view, he “may have been Vespasian’s principal agent in the ordering of the whole frontier and its defences from the Armenian mountains to the desert of Arabia”.[1372] Trajan, then, was in a position to learn about the Jewish problem, the nature of the Parthian question and the provinces connected with both.[1373] He himself had served as tribunus militum in the Syrian army, and was thus acquainted with the region of the Euphrates[1374] For this reason he would have regarded the Jews essentially with the eyes of a soldier;[1375] it is doubtful if he was an anti-Semite in the accepted sense, but it is likely that he gauged them as potential, if not actual, enemies, and participated in the attitude of contempt for Judaism which was hereditary among the majority of the Roman aristocracy. But as a military man he may have estimated (and even overestimated) the military strength of the Jews of Eretz Yisrael, and underestimated the military potentialities of the Jews of the Diaspora.

There are contradictory traditions concerning the attitude of Trajan’s family to the Jews. The so-called Acts of the Pagan Martyrs,[1376] which present a satirical account both anti-Roman and anti-Semitic, make Trajan’s wife Plotina a supporter of the Jews, and one of the participants in the episode, an Alexandrian, alleges that Trajan’s council of state is full of “sacrilegious Jews” (τὸ συν ἐδριόν σου ἐπλήσθη τῶν ἀνοσίοιν Ἰουδαίων). Scholars differ on the truth of this allegation, but Musurillo has remarked[1377] that several “court Jews” and prominent renegades, such as the descendants of Tiberius Alexander and Herod, perhaps Josephus himself, and some aristocratic Roman proselytes, may have served on Trajan’s council or have been invited to its sessions to advise on the Jewish problem. On the other hand, the relevant papyrus, P. Oxy. 1242, in its present version is regarded as of late 2nd century date, and the allegation of Jewish participation in the imperial council may really be directed, not to Trajan but to one of the Severan emperors, among whom Caracalla and Severus Alexander were well known for their favourable attitude to the Jews.[1378]

A contrary tradition is to be found in the Jerusalem Talmud, which says:[1379] “In the days of Troginus the wicked, a son was born to him on the ninth of Av, and (the Jews) fasted; his daughter died on Hannuqah and they lit candles. His wife sent to him and said: Before you conquer the barbarians, come and conquer the Jews who have rebelled against you.” This tradition follows the account of the famous synagogue of Alexandria, and is succeeded by the description of the extermination of Egyptian Jewry in Trajan’s reign. As Plotina never bore either sons or daughters, the story cannot be seen as historical in its details, but if it contains a grain of truth, it possibly reflects a popular view, that some change of attitude to the Jews had taken place in imperial circles immediately before the outbreak of the revolt. If Trajan was careful to check petticoat influence among his immediate entourage,[1380] Plotina nevertheless exercized considerable influence,[1381] nor must her role in the elevation of Hadrian to the imperial throne after her husband’s death be forgotten. It may therefore be said in conclusion, that Trajan saw the Jews chiefly from a military point of view, as the problem of a people situated on the border of the Empire, and in the light of the experiences of his father and his own experiences in Syria and Judaea. If any change occurred in his attitude to the Jews which hastened the outbreak of the rebellion, it must have come as the result of a decision to their disadvantage taken after the beginning of his Parthian war in 114.

2. Chronology

The chain of events in Egypt has been fully investigated by a number of scholars,[1382] nor is there need within the limits of the present work to do other than repeat their conclusions, sum up briefly the course of events against the background of the rising as a whole, and discuss several special questions. The information on the rising in Cyprus is slight, but a few archaeological scraps have accumulated in recent years to enlarge our knowledge. The archaeological evidence on the revolt is plentiful in Cyrene, in Egypt it is chiefly papyrological, while most of it in Eretz Yisrael and Mesopotamia is literary and involves difficult problems.

First let us survey briefly the order of events according to Eusebius and Dio Cassius. The Jews in Egypt and Cyrene attacked their Greek neighbours with sudden fury and slew many of them. These events were repeated in Cyprus, where the rebels were led by one Artemion. In the following year the Jews of Cyrenaica invaded Egypt under the leadership of their “king” Lucuas, and at first defeated the Greeks, who fleeing to Alexandria wreaked their vengeance on the Jews of the city. The Jews under Lucuas meanwhile ravaged and destroyed the country districts, until Trajan’s marshal Marcius Turbo arrived with strong forces, and exterminated the insurgents after numerous and prolonged combats. The Jews of Cyprus were also wiped out, and a decree was passed that no Jew should in future set foot on the island on pain of death. In Mesopotamia, anticipating a Jewish rising, Trajan ordered Lusius Quietus to slay many of the Jews resident there, then appointed him governor of Judaea. This is the sum of the account to be derived from Greek literature; it can be supplemented here and there by details from other and parallel sources.

Two questions arise at the outset: 1) the date of the outbreak of the revolt; 2) did the rising in any one province precede the outbreaks in the rest?

The views of scholars on the year of the outbreak differed till comparatively recently.[1383] Schurer assumed it took place in 115 on the authority of Eusebius;[1384] Fuks accepts that year as the date of the outbreak in Egypt,[1385] also dating its beginning in the first months of 115 on the evidence of the papyrus containing the edict of Rutilius Lupus, then governor of Egypt,[1386] dated on the 13th October 115. This document mentions a hand-to-hand combat (μάχη) which had taken place previously between Romans and Jews in Alexandria, also acts of violence perpetrated by Greeks and their slaves subsequent to the episode but in continuation of it. A special judge has arrived from Rome to investigate the offences, and in the meantime the Prefect warns the Jews not to disturb the peace of the capital. The conclusion to be drawn from this information is, that the rebellion broke out in early 115, more especially (Fuks’ view)[1387] because the rising in Cyrene had preceded that in Alexandria. But the principal sources on which this opinion depends[1388] do not state with any clarity that the Jews of Cyrene initiated the revolt. Eusebius says: “The Jews were exterminated in Libya and Cyrene, in Egypt, Alexandria and the Thebais when they were fighting with the Hellenes dwelling with them.” The distinction made here between Libya and Cyrene is very interesting, and shows that the two were not identical. In the Latin version Libya is mentioned first, then come Egypt, Alexandria, Cyrene and Thebais in that order.[1389] Dio Cassius, having described the rising in Cyrene and the Jewish atrocities there, continues: “and in Egypt they did many similar things.” Hence the order of events is far from clear, and the other passages cited in this context, namely, the Armenian version of Eusebius,[1390] Jerome and Syncellus, depend on Eusebius’ Chronicon. It is indeed possible that the movement first broke out in Cyrenaica, but the authority for such a view is not to be found in the historians but in the interpretation of the papyrological document associated with Rutilius Lupus. The entire atmosphere reflected in this papyrus, and in those connected with the same events[1391] is not that of the rebellion itself. The battle between the Jews and Romans in the city seems to have been an isolated occurrence, and the acts of retaliation of the Greeks through slaves or in order to free them, did not affect many people. Their character is rather than of intercommunal street-rioting of the type long known in Alexandria; it was not in this sort of conflict that the Great Synagogue of Alexandria, the Temple of Nemesis and the Serapeium were destroyed. Even if the “battle” which formed the subject of Lupus’ proclamation was the result of an attack planned by the Jews, and hence, very probably, of organized activists, it was not part of the actual war, since the Prefect’s words are appropriate to a time before the rebellion had begun or had spread from Cyrene to the rural districts of Egypt and had broken out in Cyprus. The attitude to the Jews is still moderate and judicial, and the verdict of a judge sent by Trajan to investigate the incidents is awaited. It is clear that no “war psychosis” had yet developed and that control of events had not yet been lost by the authorities. A rising had broken out against the Roman government, and had been immediately suppressed.

In the light of this conclusion it may be deduced that the movement began in Cyrene, and an attempt at organized rebellion had already been made in Alexandria which failed because it did not include most of the Jews of the city, had been quickly isolated, and suppressed by the Roman government. Only in the course of a year, in 116, according to Eusebius, did the war spread to Egypt, evidently on the arrival of the Jews of Cyrene under their leader Lucuas.[1392]

We have no absolute evidence concerning the time of the outbreak of the rebellion in Cyrene.[1393] Eusebius’ words leave no room for doubt that the Cyrenean Jews reached Egypt only in 116, nor should it be forgotten that the ostraka used as receipts for the Jewish tax (τὸ Ἰουδαϊκὸν τέλεσμα) at Edfu (Tell Tevet = Apollinopolis Magna) cease in that year, and are not renewed until the years 161-5.[1394] On the other hand it is clear according to Eusebius’ account that fighting was going on in Egypt in the autumn of 115, as is shown, for instance by P. Giessen 19 (see p. 315). This being so, it seems probable that the rising broke out in Cyrene in 115, and in Egypt between October 115 (when Lupus’ proclamation was issued) and the beginning of 116.

A conclusion in favour of a date earlier in the year 115 for the outbreak in Cyrene, i.e. in agreement with Eusebius’ date (at the beginning of Trajan’s eighteenth year) is Longden’s,[1395] who dates the destructive earthquake at Antioch which devastated the city and cost numerous lives,[1396] to the opening of 115. The said earthquake also seriously damaged Rhodes and the cities of Asia Minor. Trajan, who had meanwhile returned to Antioch from the Parthian War, was slightly injured in the disaster, and one of the year’s consuls was killed, an event which enabled the precise dating of the event. The numerous passages of the Sibylline Oracles which repeat prophecies of similar natural cataclysms which are to herald the advent of the Messiah, and the fact that Antioch was among the cities designated for destruction,[1397] as well as the personal presence of the Emperor on the scene of the catastrophe — all these evoke the possibility that the event was a signal for revolt among the Jews of the east.[1398] Against this attractive conjecture it can however be claimed that the time elapsing between an outbreak at Cyrene at the beginning of 115 and Lucuas’ invasion of Egypt in early 116, is too long, as this period of twelve months would have given the Romans time to concentrate forces from a distance for a counterattack on the Cyrenean Jews before they left the country. This strategic consideration appears to be decisive, and it seems better to place the date of the Cyrene outbreak in the middle of 115 at earliest, at least till more definite evidence is forthcoming.

We have no more exact information on the date of the attack in Cyprus, but an inscription at Soli deserves attention. This records the setting up of a statue of Trajan not later than August of 117.[1399] This makes it difficult to believe that the tumultus on the island was suppressed later than 116 or at the beginning of 117. An extreme terminus ad quern for the suppression of the rising is furnished by an inscription dedicated at Beyruth to Gaius Valerius Rufus, commander of a vexillatio (detachment) of the VII legion Claudia, which had operated in Cyprus to suppress the revolt.[1400] This dedication was set up shortly after August, 117. As Valerius managed to hold another military post after the Cypriot operation, and the inscription was put up during the discharge of a third civilian duty when Hadrian had already ascended the imperial throne, his command in the island is likely to have belonged to 116. It is further worthy of note that Hadrian personally dedicated a statue in honour of the deceased Trajan at Curium in 117 or 118.[1401] As the Emperor, then, seems to have come to Cyprus during the rebellion (see p. 269) and was again in Antioch in August, 117, the statue must have been erected in August of the same year immediately after Trajan’s death.

The chronology of the events connected with the rising in Judaea and Mesopotamia will be discussed when we come to treat of those countries.

3. The Archaeological Evidence for the Extent of the Revolt

4. The Course of the Rebellion[1658]

Fuks has devoted a brief investigation to the Greek and Latin terms used by ancient documents in relation to the Jewish rebellion.[1659] The sources use the following terms: στάσις,[1660] θόρυβος,[1661] ἔφοδος,[1662] τάραχος,[1663] tumultus[1664] and πόλεμος.[1665] The first four terms appear in contemporary documents. The word στάσις denotes, of course, any collision between two classes or groups in a given state. The meaning of θόρυβος is any undefined civil disorder, while ἔφοδος simply means an attack. But τάραχος (or ταραχή) was used as a synonym of the Latin word tumultus,[1666] and the inscriptions at Cyrene show that this term was the official Roman description of the revolt of 115-117. The word πόλεμος, as Fuks has observed, appears once almost contemporarily with the revolt, in Appian; forty years after it, in Artemidorus Daldianus in the 2nd century, also in a Cyrenean inscription at the end of the same century — and it is used by the inhabitants of Oxyrhinchos in the year 199/200.[1667] Its absence from Latin sources may not be due to chance, since tumultus denotes a graver situation and event than simple war; Cicero writes:[1668] “There can be a war without a tumultus, but there cannot be a tumultus without a war. For this reason our ancestors spoke of a tumultus Italicus because it occurred at home, and of a tumultus Gallicus because it was very close to Italy. What is more it can be understood that a tumultus is graver than a bellum (war), because in wartime military furlough is still legal, but in a tumultus it is not.”[1669] Livy says:[1670] “...The Boii also had set their faces to rebellion. Therefore the Senate proclaimed the existence of a tumultus... This situation is defined by Forcel-lini:[1671] “The name tumultus was applied by the Romans to any sudden war which seriously alarmed the city due to the magnitude of the danger and the nearness of the enemy.” Cagnat wrote of such a situation: “A critical situation caused by an internal rising or a sudden attack by the enemy. When the country was thus endangered, the Senate proclaimed a tumultus, and all activities public and private ceased for the time being... and every man put on military uniform... all citizens were summoned... to take up arms.”[1672]

These definitions enable us to comprehend why both Apollonius, the civil district commissioner of Apollonipolitis,[1673] and simple Egyptian peasants[1674] were summoned to take up arms to fight the Jews in Trajan’s time. It also makes clear that the authorities saw the conflict with the Jews as more serious than a normal war. Tumultus was not a mere disorder or riot, but a rising or attack which imperilled the very existence of the state.

We have seen that the collision between the Jews and Romans in autumn, 115, was, to judge by the atmosphere of the account, an isolated occurrence. But it is very likely that the revolt had already broken out in Cyrene in the middle of the year, and by early 116 the insurgents were advancing from Libya and penetrating Egypt. Two sources survive that may throw some light on the fighting in Cyrenaica at the outbreak of the revolt. The first is the tomb stele of Gaius Julius Carus, a military tribune of the III legion Cyrenaica, who died at Cyrene while in command of a recruiting party composed of centurions and troops of the same legion and of the XXII Deiotariana.[1675] This party has been despatched to recruit for the Roman army, presumably for the abovementioned legions, then stationed in Egypt. Carus had served previously as commander of the Second Cohort of Asturians (Cohors II Astyrum equitata) and had been decorated in “the British war”. A terminus post quem for his death is provided by the fact that the Cohors II Astyrum was still in Germany in 89,[1676] and recruiting activities are known in Cyrene in the year 100,[1677] when a milestone was set up three miles from the city inscribed with Trajan’s name and titles and the words “Viam fecit / per tirones lectos / in provincia Cyrenensi.” Carus’ tombstone, however, need not inevitably be associated with such activities in 100, as there was a similar recruiting drive in the province in 59,[1678] and such drives recurred, it seems, at various times. But the liberal award of military decorations is more characteristic of Trajan than of Hadrian,[1679] hence the British campaign mentioned on Cams’ monument is more likely to have taken place between 89-115. Serious fighting in North Britain had begun by 100;[1680] there was something like a disaster in about 105 and the Roman frontier was subsequently being withdrawn to the Tyne-Solway line; fighting was still going on in 108.[1681] Military tribunes were young men at the beginning of their careers, and those of them who were of the equestrian order normally took command of a second auxiliary unit after their term of service in a legion and prior to promotion to the next rung of the equestrian cursus.[1682] As Carus was a young man when he died, he may not have died a natural death. Having distinguished himself in Britain, he passed to his legionary tribunate in Egypt and died before reaching his third military post. It is therefore possible that he was killed at the outbreak of the Jewish rising in Cyrene.

But if the connection of Carus’ tombstone with the Cyrenean revolt is uncertain, this is not the case concerning a well known passage of the Ὀνειροκριτικά (Dream Book) of Artemidorus Daldianus, who writes:[1683] “A camp prefect (στρατοπεδάρχης) (dreamt) he saw the letters I, K, Θ written on his sword. The Jewish war in Cyrene began and the man who dreamt this distinguished himself, and it was as we have related: The I meant “Jews” (Ἰουδαῖοι); the K — “Cyreneans” (Κυρηναῖοι); and the Θ — death (θάνατος). Before the event it was indeterminate, but after the outcome (ἀποβάντων τῶν τελεσμάτων) the interpretation presented no difficulties”. The identity of the camp prefect concerned may be conjectured.[1684] In Trajan’s time the two Egyptian legions (the XXII Deiotariana and the III Cyrenaica) were commanded by a prefectus castrorum;[1685] thus there is little doubt that in the event of serious trouble in Cyrene which the garrison stationed there could not control, it would have been the duty of the prefect of Egypt to intervene by despatching a detachment (vexillatio) of troops, which might well have been commanded by the camp prefect, or by proceeding personally at their head to the scene of action.[1686] It may therefore be supposed that when the rising broke out, troops of the Egyptian legionary garrison proceeded by sea to Cyrene under the command of their camp prefect. Nor can it be doubted that Artemidorus’ story belongs to the beginning of the rebellion rather than to its end, for few Jews requiring suppression by strong forces can have remained at the end of the tumultus; the devastation of Cyrenaica which is so clearly revealed by the evidence points to the intention of the insurgents to evacuate the country utterly. The fate of the camp prefect in the fighting, on the other hand, is problematic. I think that Artemidorus’ narrative is to be interpreted to mean that he was killed in action, otherwise there seems no way of understanding the third letter — Θ.

It is possible to adduce grounds for this view. Writing of Origen’s work on the Old Testament, Rufinus[1687] says: “(Origen) noted Jewish additions or omissions... by marks at the beginning of the line... in a manner used by one who, having received a nominal roll of troops, attempts to ascertain from it how many ranks are still alive, and how many have fallen in battle; and having been sent to ascertain, searches and, instead of a word, sets the customary appropriate mark, “Θ”, against the name of each man deceased, and marks each survivor with the appropriate sign.”

This information is repeated more briefly by Isidore of Seville[1688] who states that the letter ‘tau’ (T) was placed at the beginning of a line indicating a survivor, and “theta” (Θ) against the name of a dead man. “For this reason it has a cross-line (telum) through it, a sign of death.”[1689] The correctness of Rufinus’information is confirmed by at least one papyrus, to be described below (p. 314), dated latest to a few years (A.D. 96-127) after the revolt; this is a roster of men of the III legion Cyrenaica, in which the names of men deceased are marked with the letter “theta”.[1690]

The derivation of the use of the letter theta in Artemidorus’ account is such as to suggest that the events described really took place, or at least that the original source of the narrative was familiar with army life. It might also suggest that nominal lists of casualties who had met their deaths in the tumullus, including also Cyreneans and Jews, were drawn up by the Roman authorities at the time.

If the tombstone of Carus related to the revolt, the legions XXII Deiotariana and III Cyrenaica were in Egypt when it broke out in 115, but the inscription from Dura Europus already mentioned shows that the III Cyrenaica was in that city, on the Euphrates frontier, in the first or second year of Trajan’s Parthian expedition, i.e. in 114 or 115[1691] The excavators of Dura believed that the whole legion was operating there, but a vexillation derived from it appears at Jerusalem in 116,[1692] and it is very possible that it was identical with the unit recorded at Dura. There is however evidence that units of both legions remained in Egypt during the revolt; probably one legion at least, was at full strength. A papyrus usually dated to the period between 116 and 117 speaks of “Rutilius’ (Lupus) other legion which has come to Memphis.”[1693] It is therefore clear that one complete legion was present in Egypt at that time, i.e. XXII Deiotariana, with part of III Cyrenaica. The presence of at least some troops of the latter seems to be confirmed by an unexpected quarter, namely by the Sibylline Oracles (XII),[1694] where we read: “and the third great ram of Cyrene, which fled, as I have said before, from the battle by the dykes of the Nile.”[1695] The ram is the symbol of the God Ammon,[1696] and accordingly of Cyrene; there can be no doubt that by “the third great ram of Cyrene” we must understand the legion III Cyrenaica, or part of it, which appears to have suffered a reverse near the Nile, and it is difficult to find any occasion for such an event except the revolt of 115-117. Most of Book XII of the Sibylline Oracles belongs to the 3rd century, but the phrase ὁ πρὶν ἔλεξα indicates an interpolation, and we seem to have here an ancient tradition, the more so as the book contains much material older than its final redaction.

The defeat of III Cyrenaica, moreover, may be confirmed by papyrology. Pap. Vindobonensis L2 is a list of soldiers of that legion drawn up not later than A.D. 127. It is certainly not earlier than the reign of Nerva (96-98). It contains a record of nine men deceased out of the 28 recorded, while two or even three of the nine centuries named are without centurions.[1697] There can be little hesitation, therefore, in ascribing this high casualty list to the Jewish revolt, thus confirming the tradition preserved in the Jewish source. In this list the letter “theta” is used, moreover, to distinguish the names of deceased soldiers.

It may therefore be concluded: a) that at the outbreak of the rising in 115, two legions were in Egypt, but part of one had left the province to take part in Trajan’s Parthian War; b) that a detachment from one of the two, or both, set out for Cyrene by sea at the outbreak of the fighting, and was either defeated or retreated, having lost its commanding officer; c) that in the course of the rebellion in Egypt itself, the III Cyrenaica, or that part that had remained there, was severely handled. Evidence further exists that at least one auxiliary unit in Egypt, the Cohors I Lusitanorum, also suffered heavy casualties in the fighting of 115-117. This is in the form of a papyrus, PSI, 1063[1698] dated to September, 117. This record indicates that the cohort then received an exceptionally high percentage of recruits, amounting to a third or more of its strength. The first and third centuries now received 20 men each, the fourth, 22, the sixth, 23, and the fifth, 24. As there is only restricted evidence of the participation of Egyptian auxilia in Trajan’s Parthian campaign,[1699] this heavy scale of replacements can safely be ascribed to casualties inflicted in the Jewish revolt. The cohort did not know of Trajan’s death (Aug. 117), and was therefore probably deep in Upper Egypt in that year,[1700] showing that the fighting in that region must have been exceptionally severe. Additionally one auxiliary unit is known which was moved from Europe to reinforce the Egyptian garrison; this was the Cohors I Hispana, diverted to Egypt, on papyrological evidence,[1701] from its march through Macedonia.

Eusebius[1702] in his account of the rising mentions Libya first among the centres of the movement, then Cyrenaica. He may have been influenced by the administrative division prevalent in his own time, in the 4th century, when Cyrenaica was divided into Libya Superior (the Pentapolis) and Libya Inferior (Libya Sicca, Marmarica).[1703] Even if this was the case, he seems to have preserved a distinct tradition of disorders in the eastern region. This impression is strengthened by his mention of the Thebais at the end of the same list, whereby he designates that Egyptian nome as a particular centre of disorder at the time. We already know that Marmarica had a Jewish population and that signs of destruction dating to the time of the revolt have been found there. The province of Inferior extended to the frontier of the Nile Delta, and took its origin in the “Libyan Nome” of the Ptolemaic period.[1704] Accordingly it is possible to see in Eusebius’ report confirmation of the location of Cyrenean Jews on the fringes of the province, and groups of activists may have occupied the desert borders in the frontier regions between Egypt and Marmarica.

The appearance of the Thebais as a special centre of fighting in Upper Egypt may further be interpreted to mean that groups of Jewish insurgents reached the area by crossing the desert from Libya, using the chain of oases known as Hargijeh, Dahliyeh, Farafa, Siwa and Jarabub, which together constitute a well known caravan route.[1705]

According to Pap. Giessen 19,[1706] there was trouble and even fighting in the Egyptian countryside as early as August-September, 115; at the beginning of 116, on Eusebius’ testimony,[1707] the Cyrenean Jews broke into Egypt, and the trouble assumed the scale of a full war. The correspondence of Apollonius, strategos of the Apollinopolite nome, indeed witnesses to sharp fighting at a time placed by Tcherikover and Fuks at the end of June of the year 116.[1708] Between June and January of the following year, belongs, in their view, the letter in Apollonius’ archives which speaks of a severe defeat suffered by the Egyptian villagers at the hands of the Jews, apparently in the vicinity of Memphis, and of the approach of “Rutilius (Lupus’) other legion which has come to Memphis” (above) — Rutilius Lupus being the Roman prefect then governing Egypt. The defeat referred to was possibly identical, or contemporary with, the defeat of the legion III Cyrenaica referred to by the Sibylline Oracles.

This was the high point of Jewish success. Now, if not previously, the Greeks who had fled from the rural areas attacked the Jews of Alexandria, according to Eusebius, and there flared up in the city the long and fierce conflict in which a considerable part of its buildings was laid in ruins and the Great Synagogue, the Temple of Nemesis and the Sanctuary of Serapis were damaged or destroyed. Appian writes of the Temple of Nemesis that “it was destroyed by necessity of war”,[1709] which seems to mean that it was destroyed by the Greeks, to prevent the Jews using it as a position, as it lies close to the Jewish quarter in the east of the city. A similar picture is revealed by the discoveries in the Serapeium: the excavations of 1943 showed that the building had been utterly destroyed in the rebellion and rebuilt under Hadrian.[1710] The building’s later history perhaps throws some light on the events under Trajan. The Serapeium continued to be the stronghold of the pagans in Alexandria, and although it was closed in 325, evidently by order of the Emperor Constantine, continued to discharge this function till it was taken by storm by the Christians in 391, in the time of the Patriarch Theophilos.[1711] It is therefore more than possible that the building was used as a citadel in Trajan’s reign, and one archaeological detail would suggest that it may have been seized by the Jews. The excavations of 1943 found here amphora-handles stamped with Hebrew letters,[1712] and Tertullian writes that the manuscripts of the Septuagintal rendering of the Bible were kept in the Serapeium.[1713] This fact, though not positive proof, may be taken as an indication and measure of the place’s importance in the eyes of the Jews of Alexandria, hence its defenders at this time may have been the Jews and not the Greeks. The Serapeium is situated at the opposite end of the city to the Temple of Nemesis, in its south-west corner, and if it was not seized by the Jews, it was attacked by them. Whether we accept the first version or the second, it emerges that the fighting raged at both ends of the city, and that the Jews must have attacked with considerable violence.

Pap. Giessen 27,[1714] written by a member of the strategos Apollonius’ entourage in the first months of 117, in Fuks’ view, announces an important victory over the Jews in the vicinity of Memphis, although its exact location has not been determined. Fuks notes that there is no certainty that this was a decisive victory, in view of Eusebius’ statement that the revolt was suppressed by Marcius Turbo “in many battles and over a long period.”[1715] But it may be supposed that Memphis was situated near the strategic focus of the war,[1716] since in its vicinity the Nile divides into several arms which fan out northward to form the Delta. Marcius Turbo, who had been despatched by Trajan to suppress the Jewish movement in Egypt,[1717] may have been appointed commander in the province in 116 or in early summer of the succeeding year, not long before the accession of Hadrian to the imperial throne.[1718] According to Eusebius he commanded both land and sea forces,[1719] and if so probably his advance southward was made with the accompaniment of the fleet sailing up the Nile.[1720] The importance of controlling the crossroads at Memphis was emphasized by the location in its proximity of the strong fortress of Babylon.[1721] The bastions of this formidable stronghold are paralleled in forts of the 2nd century on the Syrian and Transjordanian frontiers;[1722] it was reconditioned by Turbo according to a Byzantine source,[1723] and constituted the departure point of the Traiani Amnis[1724] a transport canal that linked the Nile with the Mediterranean, and whose use was renewed by Trajan. It entered the sea by the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, and command of it would have given the Jews rapid access to Sinai and to Judaea. Appian’s story[1725] that the Jews had seized a ship at Pelusium during the revolt, and that he himself was rescued by a Roman trireme (i.e. a warship) in the same district — may possess a similar significance. Pelusium had been the seat, in Ptolemaic times, of a Jewish military settlement which was in a position to hold any army advancing from Judaea and Sinai.[1726] The contemporary incidents at Pelusium are therefore to be understood in the light of the Jewish aim of seizing control of the route from Babylon to the Red Sea and the approaches to Sinai and Judaea.

The dates of Apollonius’ two applications for leave from his military service have been placed by Fuks between September and November 117,[1727] and according to the Historia Augusta’s life of Hadrian, Turbo was appointed to the Mauretanian command in the first period of Hadrian’s rule.[1728] He therefore left Egypt shortly after August, 117, when Hadrian acceded; the following Egyptian prefect, Rammius Martialis, took up his duties between the nth and the 28th of August in the same year.[1729] It is therefore clear that the revolt in Egypt had been put down, for the most part, by August of 117.

The revolt in Cyprus had terminated, as we have seen from epigraphical evidence, at the end of 116 or the beginning of 117.[1730] Hadrian must have visited the island personally at the time, for he was governor of Syria in 117,[1731] and had been so earlier,[1732] and a vexillatio of the VII legion Claudia had been sent to Cyprus from his province, while an inscription proves his personal presence in August, 117 (p. 268); during the same month, however, he was again in Antioch.[1733] The VII Cohort of Breuci is known to have taken part in the suppression of the rising[1734] together with the detachment from the VII legion Claudia.

In 115, having overrun Armenia, Trajan invaded the country of Adiabene, then Mesopotamia (Aram-Naharayyim). In the winter of that year and in the succeeding year, 116, he turned south, took the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon and reached the Persian Gulf. But at this point a violent and widespread rebellion broke out in the conquered areas in his rear, and Trajan was compelled to retire northward. The three centres of the rising were Seleucia on the Tigris, Nisibis and Edessa in Aram-Naharayyim. His marshal Lusius Quietus reconquered Nisibis; S. Arucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander subdued Seleucia. The rebellion was put down, but had so weakened the Roman effort that the conquest of Parthia could not be completed, and the Emperor died on his way back to Rome, in August, 117.

Scholars are divided on the question whether the Jewish movement of the years 115-117 also found expression in Mesopotamia, and if it did, whether this was a separate Jewish operation, or one carried out as part and parcel of the rising of the entire population against Rome.[1735] Groag[1736] thought that there was no connection between the rebellion of the Mesopotamian population and the order given by Trajan to Lusius Quietus, according to several sources one of whom is Dio Cassius,[1737] to exterminate the Jews; in his view this action followed the suppression of the rising. Jerome, however,[1738] explains Quietus’ attack by the assumption that the Jews were already in revolt, an allegation repeated by Pseudo-Dionysius Tel-Marensis.[1739] Alon appears to share Groag’s view.[1740] As to the Roman apprehension that the Jews might attack the rest of the population — this is Eusebius’ justification of the Roman action — it would have been unfounded because the Greek population appears to have been ranged with the Jews in their resistance to Rome (as Alon saw), as is shown by the rebellion of Seleucia and the desecration of the temple at Dura, which was treated by the Roman forces as a hostile town. Alon does however argue, that the powerful participation of the Jewish population in the fighting against Rome in Mesopotamia, would have imparted to the insurrection of 116 an outstandingly Jewish appearance, and we might add that the circumstances of the time would have converted that community into the spearhead of the resistance movement.[1741]

It were well here to emphasize that history has preserved reports which indicate a very ancient military tradition among the Jews of Mesopotamia and Babylonia. At the end of the 3rd century B.C. Seleucus III transferred 2,000 Jewish families from Babylonia to settlements in Lydia and Phrygia as military settlers, to hold down the rebellious elements of those countries.[1742] It was probably in the same years that a force of Jews played an honourable and successful part in an action between Seleucid troops and a force of Gallic mercenaries in Babylonia.[1743] Later, in 9-6 B.C.. the Babylonian Jew Zamaris passed at the head of a force of Jewish mounted archers from Babylonia to Syria, and settled near Antioch with the permission of the Roman governor Saturninus. These troops were later transferred by Herod to Golan and Bashan as military colonists in order to reduce to peaceful settlement the predatory inhabitants of Trachonitis (a-Lejja).[1744] In the ist century of the current era (A.D. 10-30), two Jewish brothers of the city of Nehar-dea on the Euphrates, Hanilai and Hasinai, established a shortlived independent principality in the area, which held out as long as it did by force of arms.[1745] It seems possible, moreover, to deduce from Josephus, that the fortified towns of Babylonian Nehardea and Nisibis[1746] were held by Jews on their own military responsibility.[1747]

It would therefore be natural to suppose that Quietus’ exterminatory action, whether carried out before or after the suppression of the rising, was impelled by the success of the insurrection in Egypt in 116, by the intensification of ferment in contemporary Judaea and, not least, by the considerable military potential of Babylonian Jewry.

There are no proofs that any link existed between the Jews of Cyrene and Egypt and those of Mesopotamia during the rebellion or before it. But it may be remarked that the timing of the revolt in the latter country (A. D. 116) coincides, at least where the year is concerned, with the widest spread of the war in Egypt. Yet we may have more tangible evidence that the ideas and aims of the Jewish war in Cyrene, Cyprus and Egypt left their mark and memory on the Jews of the Euphrates valley. I refer to certain elements visible in the wall-paintings of the synagogue at Dura-Europus. We have seen (p. 299) that the Roman forces treated Dura as a conquered city, and the Roman triumphal arch nearby bears witness that a battle took place here during Trajan’s advance. The synagogue’s third-century wall-paintings embody four general themes, namely, the achieving of independence, the exodus to freedom, the destruction of idolatry, and national rebirth. The upper frieze of the west wall shows the Exodus, and more especially the departure of the Israelites as warriors in array in full hellenistic panoply.[1748] The central frieze of the same wall exhibits, among other themes, the episode of the capture of the Ark of the Covenant by the Philistines and its restoration to Beth Shemesh. In one of the pictures[1749] is seen the temple of the Philistine god and his shattered image, while fragments of the idols lie scattered over the entire area before the building. These two elements, the departure from exile “with a high hand” as an armed force, and the smashing of the idols, figure so prominently in the rebellion of Trajan’s time, that their prominence on the Dura murals is not likely to be a coincidence. In the Diaspora rising of 115-117 the consciousness of these aims as part of the aspiration to national independence, had struck so deep, that their influence was still alive over a century later, and found expression in the mural paintings of the synagogue of Dura Europus.[1750]

The epigraphical and literary evidence for the situation in Judaea at the time of the revolt has been surveyed, and they point, in sum, to tension and even to bloodshed, although not to a genuine military outbreak. Some words, however, must be added on certain social factors which may have intensified a readiness for revolt among the Jews of Judaea.

The two relevant factors demanding consideration are the absorption of the kingdom of Agrippa II into direct imperial administration, and the general agrarian position. Smallwood[1751] has rejected the possibility that the first event influenced the attitude of the Jews of the country, observing that the greater part of Agrippa’s kingdom lay outside the areas of dense Jewish population. Recent archaeological surveys may not bear out her assessment,[1752] which in any case does not take into account the royal estates in Judaea which Agrippa II would have inherited indirectly from the last Hasmonean rulers.[1753] These estates, which corresponded technically to the χώρα βασιλική of the hellenistic kings, were identical in my opinion with the “King’s Mountain” (Har ha-Melekh)[1754] of talmudic sources, which extended over the entire western area of the mountains of Samaria and Judaea as far as the Darom.[1755] These contained several centres which had been foci of the Great Rebellion,[1756] and it may be supposed that at the end of it, when Vespasian confiscated considerable areas in Judaea,[1757] some tracts in Har Ha-Melekh passed into imperial hands. The change doubtless induced Vespasian to inaugurate various innovations in tenurial procedures, although Agrippa II had remained loyal to Rome. It is very probable that the “King’s Mountain” means simply χώρα βασιλική, and when Josephus wrote[1758] that Vespasian “kept the χώρα for himself” (to lease out), that the same region was meant. The Mishnah and the Midrashim leave very little doubt that much of the confiscated land was taken by the so-called matziqim, whose precise status may be controversial but whose social and economic impact is clear, for they harassed and oppressed the Jewish peasants who, in so far as they were allowed to remain, became their tenants. The con temporal Jewish sources make it clear that they held land from Galilee to the borders of Nabataea.[1759] The tradition that R. Eliezer ben Harsurn, who lived after 70, “had ten-thousand villages in the King’s Mountain and a thousand ships on the sea”,[1760] though doubtless hyperbole, nevertheless suggests that the region so named survived the destruction as an administrative unit. It may also be supposed that on the transfer of Agrippa II’s kingdom to the Empire on his death (c. A.D. 100), his administration of such land as remained in royal possession was dissolved, and its work transferred to non-Jewish officials, a change which may well have caused a further deterioration in the position of the Jewish subtenants.[1761]

If this was the case, the annexation of the kingdom to the Empire at the beginning of Trajan’s reign may have been a factor in the sharpening of the agrarian situation, nor were the confiscation of lands, the expansion of imperial estate and the increase of oppressive new landowners (the matziqim) restricted to the King’s Mountain. The catalogue of the distribution of the matziqim occurs in a document datable on internal evidence at latest to Trajan’s time but probably of the 1st century, since the reference to Tzoar, outside the Empire until 106, is likely to be an interpolation.[1762] A comparison of these sources with the distribution of imperial estates in the country as known from other evidence,[1763] confirms their presence in all the regions mentioned in the Midrashim — in Galilee, the Plain of Jezreel, Ephraim, western Judaea, Yavneh, Jericho, ‛Ein Geddi, in the Beer Sheba district and in Transjordan. In addition areas round Jerusalem were confiscated for the use of the Tenth Legion, and thus became, legally, imperial land.[1764]

The agrarian situation created by the confiscations at the end of the war of 66-73 continued into the reign of Trajan, and is indirectly reflected in the documents of Ben Kosba’s administration found in the caves of Murabba’at[1765] and Nahal Hever.[1766] These include a number of lease-contracts signed between the officials of the Nasi’s administration and various Jews in the time of the restored Jewish commonwealth (132-135), their subject being the leasing of plots of land by the Nasi to assignants who thus became lessees of the government. This evidence makes it clear that Ben Kosba as secular ruler had taken over considerable tracts when the Roman yoke was thrown off; these would have consisted of Roman state-land not till then inhabited by Jews, lands of gentiles who had fled or been killed, and also Jewish lands whose previous owners had died without heirs. And although it is clear from other contemporary documents that land existed held by Jews in private possession, state-domain must have been an important economic and social factor when the revolt broke out in 132. This, indeed, can be demonstrated by the centres associated with the outbreak.[1767]

Notable events already observed with reference to Judaea between 115 and 118, therefore, were the reinforcement of the Roman forces in Jerusalem, the appointment of Lusius Quietus as governor of the province, and the erection of pagan shrines in the holy city. On the Jewish side, we hear remote echoes of the presence of the Cyrenean leader, Lucuas, in the country, and of the operations of Lulianus and Pappus, directed, apparently, to the infiltration of Jews from outside Judaea. Archaeology has further revealed signs of disorder at Jaffa and Gerasa.

The tradition of Seder ‛Olam Rabba[1768] places the beginning of “Pulmus Qitos” in 116, but according to the chronology of the Parthian War as restored by Longden and others,[1769] Lusius Quietus, after his military successes in Mesopotamia, was appointed to govern Judaea at the end of 116 or at the beginning of 117. His consular rank,[1770] unusual in a praetorian province, if not the result of a previous administrative change, hints at the gravity of the situation in Judaea, and perhaps at the presence of more than one legion stationed in the country to hold down the Jewish population.[1771] A detachment of III Cyrenaica, at any rate, set up an inscription at Jerusalem not earlier than 116. On the other hand, on the assumption that the revolt had come to a final end in Egypt in August 117, it is to be supposed that Lucuas penetrated Judaea at the head of the remnants of his warriors latest by summer of that year. But as the Jewish movement in Cyprus had been liquidated not later than early 117, we have to place the beginning of the activities of Lulianus and Pappus in organizing entry into the country and to Jerusalem from Cyprus, in 116. Their capture by Quietus belongs to the beginning of Hadrian’s reign (which began in July, 117) before the execution of the Judaean governor,[1772] and the prolongation of seditious activity in the country after Trajan’s death is confirmed by the Historia Augusta[1773] and by the tradition of Seder ’Olam Rabba which sets the end of the “Pulmus Qitos” in 118.[1774]

Among the centres of ferment and revolt may be noted, beside Bethar and Jaffa, also Darom, the southern region between Eleuthe-ropolis (Beth Govrin) and the Nabataean frontier. Schlatter[1775] and Alon[1776] have demonstrated, against the view of Bacher and others, that the killing of R. Ishmael preceded the Ben Kosba war, and both scholars associate the event with the “Pulmus Qitos”. If R. Ishmael, who lived at Kefar ’Aziz in the Darom on the Idumaean frontier, was the R. Ishmael put to death with R. Sime’on, as Schlatter and apparently Alon think, then it is evident that the south of the country was also in revolt or near to it. This is hardly surprising if we recall what Appian relates[1777] concerning his flight to the desert near Pelusium, namely, that numerous Jewish rebels were at large in the neighbourhood — i.e. in the Sinai desert.

In summing up, we may propose the following chronological order for events in Judaea in the years 115-118. Ferment began in the country as early as 116, evidently due to the agrarian situation and under the influence of events abroad. Not earlier than the same year, Roman reinforcements were sent to Jerusalem, and active erection of pagan shrines is perceptible. In early 117, if not before, had begun the activity of Lulianus and Pappus, directed to the infiltration of Jews into Judaea and Jerusalem, and at the end of 116 or in early 117 Quietus was appointed governor of Judaea to suppress the rising which had broken out or was likely to break out. We have to place the incursion and death of Lucuas not later than mid-summer, 117, but Lulianus and Pappus do not appear to have been executed before July, 118. We are not in a position to date the supposed outbreak at Jaffa, but it would be natural to see it as the result of the capture of Pelusium by the Egyptian Jews, probably before the Roman victory near Memphis in the first months of 117, which closed the sea-route as a way of access to the coast of Judaea. If our chronological reconstruction is anywhere near the truth, the conclusion becomes reasonable that Quietus was not despatched to Judaea to prevent a rising, but because it had already begun, so that the operations of the Roman commander were directed to restricting its scope and putting it down. The critical moment seems to have been in the earlier half of 117, with the outbreak of disorders at Jaffa and the arrival of Lucuas, if such a break-in ever did take place.

5. Summing Up

An examination of the physiography of Cyrenaica and the factors which moulded her settlement and economy, has shown that the seasonal cycle and the two forms of economy inherent in the conditions of the country have exercized a decisive influence on her history, causing a constant tension and a repeated oscillation between mixed farming and the raising of livestock, between settled agriculture and nomadic pastoralism. The concentration of the Jewish peasantry on the state lands, which were more sensitive than any other category to the results of the above alternation, as most of them were on the desert fringes, open to political vicissitudes and the arbitrary character of the rulers — caused the Jews to suffer to a greater degree than other elements from a reaction in favour of pastoralism and extensive agriculture at the end of Ptolemaic rule and at the beginning of Roman domination.

The process of the restoration of the intensive economy took place in a period of growing conflict between Rome and the Jewish people. Nero’s decision concerning tenant rights on the state domain was directed to the advantage of the population which had not suffered in this way, namely, the private landowners, which meant the Greek citizens of Cyrene. The penetration of extremist influence during the Great Rebellion of 66-73 therefore found a fertile field of activity among the multitude of landless and impoverished Jews in the country.

An analysis of the events of 73 at Cyrene has proved important in that it has revealed the close connection between them and activist revolutionary trends that fostered the messianic movement in Judaea; the same events led to the annihilation of the hellenizing class of Cyrenaican Jewry, and thereby prepared the way for the rising of 115, since it left no buffer element between the Jewish masses and activist influence. The points of contact between the acts of Jonathan the Weaver and the ideology of Hirbet Qum-ran, chiefly as it is expressed in the scroll of “The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness”, prove, with other features of the rebellion under Trajan, the Sicarian content of the movement; Eusebius’ reports on the movement’s activity in the Western Desert and in the Thebais point to concentrations of insurgents on the desert fringes and to their penetration into Egypt along the desert routes.

But if we are permitted to trace the roots of the revolt in Cyrene to a combination of the Sicarian activist current and economic, chiefly agrarian, conditions implicit in the country itself, does this explanation hold good for all the centres of the movement in Trajan’s time? If this is not the case, we are faced with the alternative: either the agrarian situation in Cyrenaica possessed no real importance for the historical episode under discussion, or Cyrene stood at the head of the movement and played the leading role in igniting the conflagration. Historical data are in favour of collusion between the Jews of Cyrene and Egypt, more especially in the rural areas outside Alexandria, at least from the time of Lucuas’ incursion into the Nile valley. The Alexandrine Jews are referred to explicitly as “the allies” of the Jews of Cyrenaica, although both the historical and the papyrological evidence suggest that the Jews of the city in 116 were not the attackers but the attacked; nor did the Roman authorities treat their remnants as rebels.[1778] But this evidence should not mislead us in our assessment of events in Alexandria; the widespread damage shows beyond all doubt that the broad strata of Alexandrian Jewry were drawn into the defensive war against the Roman power by their own violent reaction, and at a certain point of time the initiative passed into their hands (the capture of the Serapeium); we may be sure that the activist element was also present. The Romans, for their part, could permit themselves some clemency at the end of the struggle, or at least a show of compassion towards the miserable remnant.

It is equally erroneous to see in the struggle waged by the Jews of Alexandria with the Greeks of the city for equality of rights between πολίτευμα and πόλις, a factor in the war of 116. It was certainly not a struggle for Greek citizenship. The striving for such citizenship belonged logically to the hellenizing group in Alexandrine Jewry, meaning the wealthy and the well-to-do among them, and was bound up with an attitude that harmonious co-existence with Greek neighbours must be sought by all possible means. The sharp antagonisms between the Jewish masses of Alexandria and their Greek neighbours originated elsewhere and their sources were more complex; the most prominent were the radiation of national influence from Eretz Yisrael, differences of religion and custom, relations with Rome as a ruling power, and above all, the ethnic-intellectual compactness of the Jews themselves.

The aggressive Jewish movement in Egypt seems to have originated chiefly in the rural districts, hence it may be possible to perceive among its causes an agrarian economic factor. The situation of the Egyptian fellah had always been difficult, and had been in a state of crisis throughout the later period of Ptolemaic rule. Roman administration had not modified his situation in any fundamental fashion. Milne has surveyed the economy of Egypt in the ist century A.D.[1779] in a way which can be summarized as a condemnation of the regime. He observed that the Romans transferred to themselves those lands previously granted to private proprietors, imposed the poll-tax on the majority of the population (especially the peasants), and subjected the merchant-class to an inexorable system of licensing. They confiscated the temple estates in return for an annual grant-in-aid, and thrust the greater number of administrative functions upon Egyptian citizens, who had to discharge them without remuneration. The system of currency introduced by Rome into Egypt was valid only within the province’s frontiers, thus affecting adversely its export and import trade. Although the economic position improved temporarily at the beginning of the Roman occupation, thanks to improved conditions of security and order and the restoration of the irrigation system, most of Egypt’s production — chiefly her grain — was exported to Rome for her own benefit without requital, while the export trade as a whole was mainly in Roman hands.[1780] Milne concludes that “before the end of the first century, the pauperization of the middle classes must have been fairly complete:... and, as there was no more to be squeezed out of them, the pressure was transferred to the actual cultivators of the soil.”

Bell[1781] does not contradict Milne’s assessment, and thinks that in the ist century A.D., after the initial period of prosperity, the members of the Egyptian middle class already faced a burden of taxation beyond their capacity to bear, and that economic difficulties were now perceptible. Villages which had been evacuated and abandoned by the flight of their inhabitants are known as early as 55-60.[1782] These data would therefore suggest that in Trajan’s day the economic conditions of Egypt were such as to foster a rebellious mood among certain elements of the population. Milne explains the clash between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria partly in terms of the economic situation described. But these factors applied more especially to the rural areas, and if we cannot yet point to a real agrarian crisis, growing poverty is perceptible in the steadily increasing difficulty in finding candidates to fill honorary official positions in the provincial centres. The elements of the Egyptian situation, therefore, do not contradict the explanation given for Cyrene, and were equally likely to act as one insurrectionary factor among several.

In Judaea, on the other hand, the agrarian factors are prominent, and the evidence for them reaches us through the sayings of the talmudic scholars and the documents of Ben Kosba in a clearer form than in any other province except Egypt.

Cyprus constitutes a weak link in the approach which sees the agrarian factor as one of the factors in the Jewish rebellion. Here the Jewish outbreak assumed no less violent and murderous a form than in Cyrenaica, yet the proofs of an agrarian element are slender and almost non-existent. All that can be said is, that the use of the island’s agricultural produce by the Jews of Judaea in Second Temple times encourages a belief that a Jewish rural population existed in Cyprus, and the little that is known of the extent of the revolt and the distribution of Jewish archaeological finds, suggests the presence of Jews throughout the island and that they were not confined to the cities.

We are therefore forced to conclude, that the agrarian factor was common to two centres of the rising — Cyrene and Egypt — (the movement in Judaea did not attain the dimensions of a war, being faced by an overwhelming Roman force) but the degree of decisiveness of the factor cannot be proved in Egypt, while the position in Cyprus is obscure. The decisive universal factor was psychological — the messianic aspiration derived from the destruction of the Temple, and the activist ideology of which the Sicarian is an example, intensified to no small degree by the economic situation. It is to the peculiarity of the conditions of Cyrenaica, however, that we may ascribe specific features of the revolt. In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, the Jewish struggle originated as an organic part of the entire population’s reaction to the Roman invasion, although doubtless the influence of events within the Roman Empire was also considerable.

Having examined the impulses at work in the rising, we must consider the nature of its manifestations. These can be divided into three heads: a) the massacre of the gentiles; b) the destruction of gentile temples and images; c) the destruction of the enemy’s habitation-centres. The visible traces of the second and third phenomenon are most prominent in Cyrenaica, but are also to be found in Alexandria and Salamis of Cyprus. Allusions to them are preserved with reference to the rural areas of Egypt. The slaughter of gentiles is described by the non-Jewish historians, but chiefly in the Roman History of Dio. Xiphilinus, in his abbreviation of Dio, tells how the Jews devoured the flesh of the slain, made girdles from their intestines, and forced their prisoners to fight one another in the amphitheatres.[1783] Critics have noted Xiphilinus’ general anti-Semitic outlook,[1784] and Joel justifiably observed[1785] that no account of such atrocities is to be found in any other source, even in Eusebius, who states explicitly that he had drawn on Greek authors writing at a time much closer to the events described, including, very probably, Dio Cassius himself.[1786] The mother of the strategos Apollonius nevertheless believed (according to her letter) that the Jews roasted (ὀπτήσουσι) their foes,[1787] and the belief may have been influenced by the tendencies of the Egyptians themselves. Polybius,[1788] describes the atrocities committed by them upon their antagonists in times of revolt, from the 3rd century B.C. onward, and the poet Juvenal testifies[1789] that they ate the flesh of their enemies. During the rebellion of the Bucoli in the reign of M. Aurelius, their leader Isidorus shared out among the insurgents the flesh of a captured Roman officer.[1790] Milne comments on this incident,[1791] “that it was an act of ceremonial cannibalism which was typically Egyptian”. It is not impossible that some Jews of the Egyptian χώρα had been influenced in the same direction after centuries of residence among Egyptians. But the authenticity even of the above incidents is difficult to assess: we have only to recall Josephus’ insinuation[1792] (the charge is not directly levelled) that Simon bar Giora nearly ate the flesh of his victims, a feature so entirely inappropriate to what we know of that leader, as to be utterly incredible. Only one fact can be stated with certainty on the entire question: the two sides fought savagely and slew without mercy.

The aim of the destruction of pagan cults and images does not constitute a problem if the general objects of the movement are considered. The Maccabees[1793] and the activists of 66-70[1794] behaved in much the same fashion. The educated pagan was doubtless equal to doubting whether his cult-images were more than symbols of the deities he worshipped, but the written testimony must be interpreted to mean that the simple Greek and Roman saw in the image the god himself. Plato writes:[1795] “We behold the laws of the gods clearly and honour them, setting up images and statues in their honour, and although they are not alive when we worship them, we consider them to be the living gods themselves, who extend to us abundant good will and grace on that account.” In case we should think that Plato’s words applied only to the 4th century B.C., but not to the 2nd century of the current era, we have the words of Plutarch, priest of Delphi (A.D. 120-146): “As philosophers claim, those who do not learn to understand names correctly misuse things also; like those Greeks who, not having studied, are in the habit of calling bronze objects, paintings and things of stone, not statues or offerings to the gods, but ‘gods’, and even dare to say that Lachares clothed Athena, and that Dionysius trimmed the golden curls of Apollo.”[1796]

Even after the middle of the 2nd century A.D., when the Jewish scholars had begun to take a more lenient view’ of statues, distinguishing between those used for idolatrous worship and those designed for mere ornament — since they no longer feared that Jews would be led astray by images — they nevertheless persisted in their austere attitude to all images of the emperors and all actions associated with their cult.[1797] But in the earlier 2nd century they had not yet reached leniency even in spheres outside the imperial cult, and, clearly, the revolutionary activists even less so. Even subsequently, we hear of R. Nahum ben Samai at the end of the 2nd century, who refused to look upon a coin because it bore the image of Caesar.[1798] The degree of courage and hostility vis-a-vis the alien power involved in the smashing of the idols is made clear by the testimony of John of Ephesus,[1799] who relates that as late as the year 572 the statues of Trajan were still standing in Persia, and the Persians feared to pass by them. But we should not think that iconoclastic actions were confined to the Jews. Occasionally imperial statues became the targets of other rebels in times of revolt. Thus we find at Bath in Britain an inscription of the 2nd or 3rd century, which reads: Locum religiosum per insolentiam dirutum virtuti et n(umini) Aug(usti) repurgatum reddidit C. Severius Emeritus centurio reg(ionarius).[1800] Plutarch too, after the extract already quoted, proceeds to refer to “the statue of Zeus Capitolinus which was burnt and destroyed in the civil war.”[1801] The Res gestae Divi Augusti tell us that M. Antony plundered numerous dedications, including statues, from the temples of Asia, although this desecration did not reach the point of destroying the images themselves.[1802]

The destruction of gentile settlements becomes increasingly clear as the excavation of the city of Cyrene progresses, and details amounting to a comprehensive picture of what occurred in the province have been assembled above. The work of destruction embraces most of the country, despite the defectiveness of our information on various settlements. The picture at Alexandria and Salamis is similar. It is hard not to see in this destruction, more especially in Cyrene and Cyprus, judging by the number of casualties which occurred there, the result of a premeditated plan, and the systematic character of the demolition at Cyrene (e.g. the felling of the internal columns of the Temple of Zeus and of the peristasis of the Temple of Apollo) does not dispel the impression. Both this writer and Professor Fuks[1803] have put forward a reason for this work of destruction: it was a corollary of the determination to abandon the lands of the Diaspora and to concentrate in Eretz Yisrael. But it was also directed against certain factors, and the question is, against which? — The Greeks, the Romans, or all idolators indiscriminately? Many scholars tend, relying on ancient sources, to see the Jewish effort as directed first and foremost against the Greeks.[1804] Their view finds support in the texts of Eusebius,[1805] Orosius,[1806] and Syncellus.[1807] There is no doubt, of course, that a great proportion of the victims of the events in Cyrenaica, Cyprus and Alexandria, were Greek-speakers, because they were the inhabitants of the urban centres where the revolt raged most violently. But the revolt blazed up also in the Egyptian countryside, and in two places at least we hear of collisions between the Egyptian villagers and the Jewish insurgents.[1808] In Alexandria the rising appears as a continuation of the constant clashes between Greeks and Jews which were a recurrent phenomenon during the ist century A.D., but this does not prove that only the Greeks were the objects of Jewish hostility. We do not hear, for instance, of the spread of the movement to Greek Asia Minor, where anti-Semitism had manifested itself in the early days of the Empire,[1809] and an anti-Jewish literature existed much like that in Egypt.[1810] In Babylonia, as emerges from the revolt of Seleucia against Trajan, Jews and Greeks shared a common front against Rome. We must therefore conclude that only in the Hellenic-Roman cities was the Jewish onslaught directed against the Greeks, as they were the majority, and because the Jewish urban communities were concentrated in the hellenized cities of the eastern Empire. But the leaders of the insurgents must have known perfectly well that they had no prospect of defeating the Greeks, or any other community, without colliding with the Roman power. The very scope of the rebellion shows that the movement made no distinction between Greek and Roman, hence its purpose was to destroy not only the pagan cults, but also the Roman government. It is hard to think, however, that the insurgents hoped to overthrow the entire Roman Empire at one blow; their immediate objective seems to have been Eretz Yisrael. This is the meaning of the Cyrenean Jewish advance upon Egypt, their struggle for the Delta junction at Memphis, Lukuas’ break-in to Eretz Yisrael, and Lulianus’ and Pappus’ organization of Jewish infiltration from Cyprus to Syria and Judaea. It may indeed be supposed, on the evidence of the Apocalyptic literature, that the ingathering of the exiles to Eretz Yisrael was regarded as a precondition of the messianic kingdom. This aim, inspired by expectation of the Messiah, is expressed in its clearest form in an Egyptian-Jewish source — in the writings of Philo Judaeus,[1811] who says: “And even if (the Jews) are slaves at the ends of the world under the enemies who have led them captive — at one signal and in one day all of them shall be freed, and their unanimous conversion to virtue will strike their masters with amazement... and when this unexpected liberation comes, they, who were originally scattered over Greece and the barbarian lands, over islands and continents, shall arise with one impulse, hastening from all quarters to the destination shown to them, with a divine insight beyond the power of human nature, invisible to others and visible only to them, as they pass from exile to their motherland... and as they go, the ruins shall become cities again and the ravaged land shall become fruitful.”

The reasons for the failure of the rebellion remain to be examined. The rebel forces were doubtless far inferior to the Roman in military qualities, training and discipline. But their ability should not be underestimated: the evidence already summarized indicates that the Cyrenean insurgents probably underwent a period of physical and military training in the desert regions for a number of years, and the possibility should not be discounted that a number of Egyptian Jews received similar training. Nor should it be forgotten that no small part of the Jews of Egypt and Libya were cultivators whose forefathers had served for generations in the Ptolemaic armies and had earned their livelihood as military settlers under the same dynsties. The Libyan Jews’ march across the desert from Cyrenaica to Egypt itself testifies to physical endurance and organized morale. The route had been traversed in ancient times by the armies of Egypt (Apries) and Persia — twice in the reign of Arkesilaos II (see pp. 26-7), — also by the forces of Magas and Euergetes II. In that period the coastal plain was better settled than it is today; the winter rain collects in rock-basins, and ancient cisterns are to be found in considerable numbers along the coastal belt.[1812] The season would also have facilitated the march, for Lucuas’ men moved on Egypt in the rainy season of the early months of 116. In 1805 an American force 600 strong under the command of Captain William Eaton made the march from Alexandria to Bomba in eastern Cyrenaica, albeit with much privation, in thirty days.[1813] The overthrowing of the inner columns of the Temple of Zeus and of the outer peristasis of the Temple of Apollo in the Sanctuary of Cyrene, required technical skill,[1814] and implies a degree of organized effort exerted on a considerable scale. The general impression is, indeed, that the Jews of Libya acted as the spearhead of the entire movement. Unlike them or the Jews of the Egyptian countryside, on the other hand, the Jews of Alexandria lacked a military tradition and probably had received no moral preparation for the struggle; they were the attacked, not the attackers, and their combat methods were probably those of men experienced in rioting and street-fighting.

In the light of the events we have portrayed, therefore, we may conclude that it was the Jews of Cyrene and the Egyptian countryside who acted in a coordinated fashion according to a prepared plan; the same is perhaps to be assumed with regard to the Jews of Cyprus, but we know nothing of their military conditions. It is still more difficult to determine whether some sort of coordination developed between the Jews of Cyrene and Egypt on the one hand, and those of Cyprus on the other.[1815]

If we endeavour to formulate the strategic object of the Jews of Cyrene and Egypt, then, it was directed to achieving two aims: first, the liquidation of lesser resistance at the enemy’s weakest point, Cyrene, and the establishment of contact with the strongest Jewish centre outside Judaea, that is, Egypt, which was also a vital crossroads and the base of Rome’s corn supply. The aim of the second stage was to annihilate with united forces the Roman garrison of Egypt, which had been weakened in 115-116 by the despatch of a detachment of the III legion Cyrenaica to Mesopotamia and Judaea.[1816]

The second stage of the Jewish plan was the most crucial, as on its success depended the insurgents’ ability to capture Alexandria and to seize control of the sea, in order to pass on swiftly to Eretz Yisrael. The Jewish victory in Cyrenaica may have given the Jews control of the adjacent sea, if Apollonia was taken, while, as we have noted, the revolt perhaps affected Jaffa, and Jews seem to have crossed from Cyprus to Syria and Judaea. But such control of the sea would have been far from complete, as witness the fact that most of the insurgents reached Egypt from Cyrenaica by land across the desert.

It may be supposed that the inhibiting factor was the Roman fleet — the classis Alexandrina, stationed at Alexandria.[1817] The capture of the city would have enabled the Jews to close the seaways and cut off the corn supply, so starving the capital of the Empire. The fighting may indeed have affected this supply adversely for a period, since an inscription[1818] commemorates T. Flavius Macer, curator frumenti comparandi urbis factus a divi Traiano Augusto, which may reflect a corn shortage in Egypt known to have existed in 99, but might equally have been the result of measures taken due to the war situation between the years 115-118. But the Jewish plan to capture the city of Alexandria, if it existed, was frustrated, and this was the vital failure of the rising.

The Jews of Alexandria did not seize the initiative when the moment was ripe, perhaps due to the opposition of their comfortable classes; doubtless they were also influenced by the proximity of the Roman garrison and by memory of past failures.

The failure in Alexandria produced two grave consequences: the Jewish advance upon Judaea was stopped, and the Roman forces in Syria were able to mount a counter-attack by sea at a time chosen by themselves. The rebels’ plan required the swift liquidation of the imperial forces in Egypt — in order to concentrate as large as possible a force in Eretz Yisrael for the decisive struggle with the principal Roman armies. This aim explains the consistent Jewish policy of annihilation carried out towards the Greeks and Romans equally, and the method of “scorched earth” followed in Cyrenaica and Egypt, the object of which was to leave no effective opposition in the rear. A sea-crossing would have ensured the success of this operation, but Alexandria remained untaken and the battle for the Delta crossroads near Memphis ended with defeat. Further, the resistance in the remaining districts of Egypt exceeded what was anticipated. Fighting continued along the entire Nile valley in the form of local engagements, and it would seem that the insurgents failed, due to the great distances over which the struggle was waged, to concentrate enough force at one point to bring the contest to a decision before the legions advanced to join the battle. Characteristic of this situation was the far-flung fighting between the two remote poles of Memphis and the Thebais, — if the latter theatre may be regarded as the outcome of an attack by activists who had crossed from Cyrenaica by the oases of the western desert. This division and dispersion of the rebel forces must be counted among the factors of the Jewish failure.

The movement in Trajan’s reign reveals, where inner class-relationships are concerned, certain common features with processes in Judaea in the years 66-70. To judge by the premature outbreak in Alexandria in October, 115, and by the passive attitude of the Jewish population of the city till it was attacked by the Greeks in 116, most of the wealthier class stood aside from the revolt, whereas in Cyrene, the elimination of the hellenizing upper group in 73 had opened the way for the radicalization of the Jewish masses and their adherence to the revolutionary movement. While the Jewish upper class in Jerusalem and Judaea did revolt in 66, it did so because it was swept away by the more powerful current of the social revolution — which was intimately connected with the extremist and Zealot trends — and was destroyed as a result. At that time the wealthy of the Diaspora in Alexandria and Cyrene recoiled from rebellion; in Egypt they collaborated with Rome to bring the extremists to book. In the Diaspora revolt in Trajan’s time, they stood aside, but were nevertheless overwhelmed and destroyed.

It may be doubted whether there ever arose in the early Roman Empire any movement which so imperilled Roman authority as did the Jewish Diaspora revolt in the reign of Trajan. No one of Rome’s subject peoples had risen in active rebellion on this scale, and none was both located within and without the imperial frontiers and distributed over several important provinces of the Empire itself. Nor do we know of any instance of so extensive a degree of cooperation between various communities which were both within the Empire and hostile to it. The aid given by the tribes of southern Britain to the peoples of northern Gaul in Julius Caesar’s time preceded the principate,[1819] and if the Dacian king Decebalus was in correspondence with the king of Parthia in order to strengthen his position against Rome,[1820] he did not succeed in forming an effective military alliance.[1821] Tacitus, writing not long before the Jewish rebellion, could express his satisfaction at the disunion and fratricidal strife of the Germans, and pray “that this mutual hatred persist and continue among the peoples if they cannot love us, since... fate can grant no greater boon than the quarrels of our enemies.”[1822] It remains but to add that the Parthian kingdom, for all its internal weaknesses, was the only power within reach of the Roman Empire capable of measuring up to her, and therefore constituted a constant threat to Rome; scanty as is our knowledge of the relations between the Jews of the Empire and Parthia during the period of 115-117 or immediately before, it is hard to refrain from supposing that the Jews saw in Parthia a potential ally, and that the Parthian rulers were ready to exploit Jewish hostility to Rome in the event of a military confrontation.

Jewish tradition saw the rebellion of Ben Kosba as a continuation of the Diaspora rising,[1823] and even if this is incorrect, it is clear that the events of 115-117 influenced the outlook of Hadrian, who ascended the imperial throne a short time after the tumultus had passed its height, and had previously taken part in its suppression in Cyprus. From Trajan he doubtless derived his estimate of the Jewish people as an important factor and a grave problem bearing on the safety of the eastern frontier. This attitude was also affected by his sympathy for hellenism, which inclined him to see the Jews of Eretz Yisrael as an element which marred the integrity of hellenism in the east. The tumultus, the last great collision between Jews and Greeks in the hellenistic and Roman periods, must have made a deep impression upon him, and may have decisively influenced his decision, fifteen years later, to transform Jerusalem into a citadel of Graeco-Roman civilization.

The revolt’s failure led directly to the destruction of the three important Jewish centres of Cyrene, Egypt and Cyprus. The archaeological evidence in Cyrenaica can be interpreted to indicate the renewal there of Jewish settlement as early as the 3rd century, but the supposition needs further confirmation.[1824] Jewish communities existed in Cyprus, according to inscriptions, by the 4th century, when the decree prohibiting Jewish entry appears to have been forgotten. Papyrological material in Egypt conveys that “Jewish life in the country was completely paralysed”;[1825] only in the 3rd century do we hear again of evidence for the existence of a Jewish population consisting of more than scattered individuals.[1826] The annihilation of these three large communities may well have intensified national feeling in Eretz Yisrael — one case at least is known of a Cyrenean Jew who fought among Ben Kosba’s warriors[1827] — but had not these Diaspora centres met their end under Trajan, they might have furnished vital assistance to Judaea’s war against Hadrian; their ruin doomed the second revolt to failure before it had begun.

As a result of the rising (Pulmus Qitos) the scholars of Eretz Yisrael prohibited the teaching of Greek to the younger generation.[1828] The prohibition, indeed, did not last, if it was ever rigorously applied — and some recent scholars have ascribed to it no more than qualified application — for the family of Rabban Gamliel “permitted the teaching of Greek to (its) sons because they were associated with the Roman government”;[1829] by the early 3rd century many epitaphs were being written in Greek in the great cemetery of Beth Shea’rim. But this did not mean that the Kultur-kampf of Judaism and hellenism was at an end; it merely died down, and revived in different form in the struggle between Judaism and Christianity in the 4th century.

The failure of the rising also terminated the period of the active onslaught of Judaism as a missionary religion proselytizing among gentiles outside Eretz Yisrael. The collision symbolized by the confrontation of the God of Israel and the god Serapis,[1830] no longer takes political form, except perhaps when imperial statues are smashed at Tiberias in the following century.[1831] On the other hand, it is not impossible that the defeat under Trajan caused the expansion of Jewish influence over the African continent. The report of the judaization of Libyan tribes in the Aurez Mountains of Algeria lacks, apparently, reliable evidence, and it is not easy to prove that Jewish influence in western Africa originated in the flight of Jews from Cyrenaica westward before and after the revolt. Yet archaeology permits no doubt that reciprocal influences were at work between Libyan Jewry and Libyan-speakers in the ist century of the current era, and the conclusion to be drawn from Jonathan the Weaver’s departure to the desert, which hints at the dispersal of extremist elements on the fringes of the Sahara, and derives confirmation from the instructive analogies of Hirbet Qumran and the work of the Sanusi order in Cyrenaica in the present century — assists the credibility of an influence exerted by the insurgents upon the nomadic Libyan tribes and even of active cooperation between them. The result of such influence is likely to have been the spread of Judaism over north and central Africa after the rebellion’s failure.[1832]

The Jewish activist movement found its last expression in the rebellion of Ben Kosba. But where the Diaspora was concerned, R. Simeon bar Yohai’s words on the massacre of the Jews of Egypt by Marcius Turbo sum up the situation: “In that hour the horn of Israel was torn out, and will not return to its place till the son of David comes.”[1833]