Читать онлайн "Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene" - Эпплбаум Шимон - RuLit

Let us now revert to the terms used by Josephus. If we scrutinize them, we shall discover that only ἰσοπολιτεία and ἰσοτελεία are terms of status susceptible to precise legal definition. Ἰσοτιμία means “equality of privilege”,[1015] ἰσομοιρία an equal share in wealth and power;[1016] ισονομία denoted in classical times “equality among peers”; later the ideal of a community in which the citizens had their equal share.[1017] These are, then, general expressions describing not a legal status, but a situation. We are left with ίσοτελεία and ἰσοπολιτεία. Ἰσοτελεία was the privilege sometimes bestowed by a Greek city on metics releasing them from payment of the μετοίκιον — a tax to which they were otherwise subject.[1018] Ἰσοπολιτεία was the potential citizenship granted by a Greek city to citizens of another city. It was part of a reciprocal agreement called συμπολιτεία, whereby the citizenship granted to the partner’s citizens became effective in the event of their settling in the granting city, and vice versa.[1019] We shall presently see that ίσοτελεία, as applied to the Jews of Cyrene, was a genuine grant which can be historically demonstrated.

As to ἰσοπολιτεία, some scholars have seen in it an indication, where the Jews of Alexandria are concerned, that they held potential citizenship in the Greek polis, and this became actual if they chose to participate in the pagan rites involved in entry into the ranks of the citizens of Alexandria.[1020] But this interpretation is very doubtful, for two reasons. Firstly, all known agreements involving ἰσοπολιτεία were concluded between two Greek cities, and none is known between a Greek city and a non-Greek corporation. Secondly, it is inherently unlikely that an agreement existed between the Jewish politeuma and the Greek polis, providing that any Jew prepared to desert his faith should be admitted to Alexandrian citizenship. Whatever Josephus’ term ἰσοπολιτεία meant, it was not that.

Now an examination of the relevant documents, including both literary sources (Josephus, Philo) and Jewish inscriptions of the Roman period in various Jewish centres, shows that the term πολῖται was applied to the members of Jewish politeumata existing in gentile cities or elsewhere. We have seen that Philo called the Jewish communal organization a πολιτεία; its constitution was a πολιτεία, its laws were τὸ πολιτικὸν δίκαιον; its members πολῖται. The Jews of Sardes are termed by a Roman document (Ant., XIV, 235) οἱ Ἰουδαίοι πολῖται ὑμέτεροι; the city of Sardes refers to them officially as οἱ κατοικοῦντες ἐν τῇπόλει Ἴουδαίοι πολῖται (ib., 259). The president of the Leontopolis Jewish community in Egypt, was entitled a πολιτάρχης and had held the same office in another unidentified Egyptian Jewish community (CPJ., III, no. 1530). Josephus (Ant., XII, 123-4) speaks of the communal rights of the Antioch community as τὰ δίκαιὰ τα τῆς πολιτείας.

It therefore appears that nearly all Josephus’ statements regarding Jewish citizen status in Alexandria and other Greek cities can be understood to refer to their status as members of their own organized communities. It is, indeed, highly improbable that many Jews in the Roman period (in relation to the hellenistic epoch we have little information on this question) were interested in obtaining citizenship in the Greek polis of Alexandria, which stood in a relation of almost continual conflict with the Jewish population. The problem may have interested a small group of Jewish hellenizers who already held that status, or were impelled to seek it to escape the situation created by Roman policy in Egypt, which chose to class the Jews with the despised native Egyptian population. The real conflict in the Egyptian capital and in other Greek cities possessing Jewish populations, however, was created by the claim of the Jewish politeumata to equal status with the Greek citizen communities, and the endeavours of the latter to liquidate the power and existence of the Jewish organizations. If then Josephus’ use of the term ἰσοπολιτεία was in any sense meaningful, it meant to him the claim to equality of status between these two bodies. This indeed perhaps emerges from his use of the word in the context of the conflict between the Jews and Greeks in Caesarea Maritima in the years before the great revolt (Ant., XX, 173).[1021]

Bearing this solution in mind, we may now return to the situation in Cyrenaica. One important document here furnishes evidence that the Jews of a Greek city were not as a body citizens of the polis. This is the resolution of the Jewish politeuma of Berenice, in honour of M. Tittius (A.D. 24/25).[1022] which reads “not only did he manifest himself as accommodating in these matters, but behaved in like manner both towards the citizens whom he encountered privately, and also (ἐτὶ δὲ καὶ) towards the Jews of our politeuma in matters public and private.” The expression ἐτὶ δὲ καὶ in this text distinguishes clearly between the citizens of Berenice and the members of the Jewish community; there is no doubt that the two groups were regarded as two separate bodies.[1023]

It is another question whether a Jew who obtained Greek citizenship remained a member of his politeuma. But in Egypt, at least, a native Egyptian could only be a Roman citizen if he was also a citizen of Alexandria.[1024] The politeuma of Berenice certainly had some Roman citizens amongst it,[1025] and we may note that Augustus’ edict[1026] compelled Cyreneans possessing Roman citizenship to assume or maintain their civic responsibilities in the Greek polis. It seems very likely therefore, that on the same principle Jews who held civitas either became citizens of the Greek city, or were obliged to continue to bear the responsibilities involved in membership of their politeuma.

As we have seen, some Jewish pupils were already training in the gymnasium of Cyrene in the reign of Augustus; this means they were being accepted as citizens, and the first known Jewish graduates recorded for the year A.D. 2/3 must have begun their education in 7-8 B.C.

The fourfold division of the Cyrenean population reported by Strabo belongs to the first half of the 1st century B.C., and shows that at that time the Jews were not, as a body, Greek citizens. This is also indicated by the reason given by the city for withholding permission from its Jews to despatch the half-shequel payment to the Temple of Jerusalem.[1027] This was, that the Jews had defaulted in the payment of certain taxes (τέλη).[1028] which indicates that the community paid them as a body, and not as individuals. This is clearly not a reference to tributa, which were collected and forwarded by the city: in no case outside Judaea do we hear of Jews paying tributa as a separate body, but here collective responsibility is inferred, hence city-taxes must be meant. Josephus describing this or a similar previous incident[1029] says that the impounding of the half-sheqel was an act of “the cities”, but even so, M. Agrippa’s letter cited by the historian in connection with the affair is addressed to Cyrene in particular. According to Josephus, the Jews complained to Agrippa that the money had been stopped as the result of the act of informers (συκοφάνται); this may be taken to mean that certain citizens had risen in the council or assembly of Cyrene, and claiming that the Jews had defaulted in their tax-payments, had proposed taking measures against them by delaying the despatch of the Temple dues. The normal translation of the words τελὴ μὴ ὀφειλόμενα is “taxes not owed” because they had already been paid. But if the Jewish community really owed taxes, why were informers needed to tell the city so? Informers do not deal with complete communities, but with individuals, and it is improbable that even an anti-Semitic polis would have stopped the despatch of the sheqel merely on account of a few individual defaulters. For one thing, the Jews believed in the justice of their cause, otherwise they would not have appealed to higher authority; for another, the city had reason to think that their charge had substance. What then was the subject of dispute?