If the city was so certain of its case as to impose sanctions for non-payment, the meaning of Josephus’ τελὴ μὴ ὀφειλόμενα should be, not “taxes not owed because they had already been paid”, but “taxes not owed because they were being demanded (in the Jewish view) illegally.” As this was a tax for the discharge of which the Jews were responsible as a group, yet saw themselves as exempt from it, there are two possible alternatives: either this was an exceptional imposition to which the Jews had not agreed, or it was a regular tax whose payment was now refused by the community. Generally both citizens and non-citizens of Greek cities were liable to pay the same taxes, but alien residents (μέτοικοι, κάτοικοι) paid a special impost (the μετοίκιον), and this only can have been the tax concerned in the present dispute. In other words, the subject of the conflict was the status of the Jews as citizens or noncitizens. Their position, indeed, was sufficiently ambiguous to expose them to attack; as we have seen, Strabo’s information tells us that they were neither citizens nor metics. This being the case, the function of the σικοφάνται was to cast doubt on the validity of their status and of their privileges. This analysis, indeed, can be confirmed by Josephus’ own account, which relates that Augustus, reasserting the Jewish right to transmit the half-sheqel, granted them τὴν αὐτήν ἰσοτελείαν (Ant. XVI, 161), indicating that he confirmed an existent status that had been challenged by the city of Cyrene. Ἰσοτελεία, as stated, was exemption of metics from the μετοίκιον. The Jews, though not citizens, were exempt from this tax; they were in fact especially privileged aliens, and the Greeks of Cyrene saw no reason why, if they annually sent large sums of money out of the state, they should enjoy such exemption, which gave them a status superior to that of the Greek metics. We do not know whether as a result of Augustus’ confirmation the opportunity was also given to certain Cyrenean Jews to obtain full citizen status. But there are some hints that such was the case.
In the first half of the century, on Strabo’s evidence, the Jews did not possess citizenship in Cyrene. The year when Agrippa confirmed this right to send the half-sheqel, is not known; in Juster’s opinion[1030] it was between 23 and 13 B.C., when Agrippa was in charge of the Near East, and issued a similar order on the halfsheqel to the city of Ephesus. He died in 13 B.C. Agrippa himself refers in his letter to a previous instruction on the matter sent by Augustus to Flavius, governor of Crete and Cyrene;[1031] probably, then, his second instruction was given nearer to the year 13. At Ptolemais we find Jews as ephebes as early as 3/2 B.C., hence they had begun their education in the gymnasium in 13 B.C. approximately. In Cyrene Jews had begun to obtain the same education by 7/6 B.C.
On this evidence, Agrippa’s letter was sent to the Cyrene authorities not long before his death, and it would seem that in this or another order issued in connection with the same problem Augustus (probably with Agrippa’s advice) decided that a number of Jews of Cyrene, Ptolemais, and perhaps of the other Pentapolis towns, could acquire Greek citizenship. Such an order would indeed have been appropriate to Augustus’ general eastern policy in those years, for between 2 B.C. and A.D. 2 he reconfirmed by a general declaration the internal rights of the Jewish organizations throughout the Empire.[1032] Josephus reports this confirmation immediately after mentioning for the first time the attempts of the cities of Cyrene and Asia to prevent the transfer of the Temple dues.
Further light is thrown on the status of the Jews of Cyrene in the 1st century A.D. by an inscription of the nomophylakes of Cyrene, published in 1961.[1033] This is a dedication by the nomophylakes of the city to some deity (the stone is broken below and its lower part has been severely damaged). It belongs to the years 60 and 61 of the current era, opening with a date and the names of the priest of Apollo who is completing his term of office, and of his successor. There follow the names of ten or eleven and perhaps additional nomophylakes. As the inscription records these posts for two years, and other known dedications of this class do not mention more than nine and generally fewer persons, it may be deduced that the names here represent two successive colleges of magistrates, each of which functioned for a year. In this case Eleazar son of Jason, who is listed second on the list of nomophylakes, served in the year 60.
To the best of my knowledge this is, with one possible exception,[1034] the first Jew serving as a senior magistrate in a Greek polis who can be identified as a Jew. It may be supposed that he had not renounced his faith, since he did not follow a common fashion of changing his name to a Greek one, as did many Cyrenean Jews — including some active in their communities — who, as we have seen, bore purely Greek names. It is probably right to suppose that Eleazar belonged to the local Jewish aristocracy, and that his ancestors had reached Cyrene in the hellenistic period.[1035]
The complete dedications of the Cyrenean nomophylakes[1036] known hitherto were dedicated respectively to Apollo Nomios, Homonoia and Aphrodite (two), and all belonged to the period of Augustus. Four of them were found in a hall situated to south of the Agora, separated from it by a small building through which the hall was entered. On the floor of the latter were discovered 4,000 stamped pyramidal clay seals (cretulae), of the sort made to be attached to documents and certificates.[1037] This was, therefore, the city’s registry, which was administered, as the inscriptions showed, by the nomophylakes. The hall communicated southeastward with a building of no great size possessing a two-storeyed colonnade on its north front, repaired in the reign of Domitian.[1038] North of it an alley-way led into the nomophylakeion by a side door, but the nomophylakeion itself was much older, and was apparently built before the hellenistic period. The interior of its hall elicited clear signs of burning, the result of a conflagration at an unknown date.[1039]
1034
In Asia Minor Jews appear as city-magistrates in the 3rd century A.D. after the Constitutio Antoniniana — cf. especially
1035
The name Ele’azar (Elasaros) was common among Cyrenean Jews in the Hellenistic period. It appears four times in Egypt on inscriptions (Tcherikover,
1038
1039
The signs of burning on the interior of the walls pass behind the pilasters, which were inserted at a secondary stage in the building’s history to support the walls. The placques recording the nomophylakes of the time of Augustus were incorporated into the pilasters. It is therefore logical to suppose that the conflagration that damaged the building occurred in the hellenistic period. This possibility is ignored by G. Madolle, Les cretales del Nomophylakion di Cirene,