1 Earliest Rome

11.8 The Jews
control. Indeed you will suffer the same punishment as those who are detected. For each
of those people, if he actually dares to do what has been banned, is only one individual;
but an official who fails to repress this activity is himself responsible for danger to many. 2
During the seventh year of Emperors Caesars Lucius Septimius
Severus Pius Pertinax Arabicus Adiabenicus Parthicus Maximus and Marcus Atirelius
Antoninus August[ . . . ]
1. In Egypt questions and petitions were put to the gods when rheir images were carried in
procession; the response of the god was indicated either by the image becoming heavy or
by it moving toward or away from the petitioner.
2. By this period governors were expected to search out malefactors (Ulpian, On the Duty
of the £«wr«0; H
Book VII, in Justinian, Digest i. 18.13 pr; cf. 11.7a). This is a change from
the early Empire when governors were expected only to respond to cases brought to
11.8 The Jews
them: see the ruling that Christians should notbt sought out (11.1 lb).
Roman attitudes to Judaism varied widely. Some Roman writers expressed an
interested and sympathetic attitude to the Jewish faith (see 12.6a-b). Others
made passing jibes against Jewish 'credulity (e.g. Horace, Satires 1.5.96-105)
or (particularlv after the Jewish revolt of A.D. 66—70) produced systematic diatribes
against Judaism.
Sec further: Vol. 1, 222-3. 275-6, 284, 304; 12.6; M. Stern (1974-84), (a
full collection of evidence, with translations and commentaries): M. Whittaker
(1984) 3-130 (selection of translated sources); Gager (1985) 35-112*.
11.8a An ethnography of the Jews
Tacitus, Histories vA-^
The most extensive (extant) Roman account of the Jews was given by Tacitus
in his description of Titus' capture of Jerusalem and the suppression of the
revolt of A.D. 66-70. A paragraph on the Jews' origins (from Mount Ida on
Crete, or from Egypt, the majority view) is followed by an exposition of Moses'
creation of new and peculiar rules. The whole is to our eyes a mixture of good
information and garbled assertions.
See further: M. Stern (1974-84) n.37-43.
To establish his position over the race for the future, Moses introduced novel rites, quite
different from those of the rest of the human race. In them everything we hold sacred is
profane, and conversely they permit what for us is taboo. In the heatt of the temple they
dedicated a statue of the animal which helped them to find their way and end
their thirst , sacrificing a ram apparently in mockery of Amnion; a
bull too is sacrificed, since the Egyptians worship the Apis bull. They abstain from pork
273