The two sources just cited, Hyginus and the inscriptions, do not contradict Tacitus’ account; but the redivision of the ager publicus should not be interpreted to mean that the Cyrenean “squatters” remained on their plots undisturbed in accordance with Nero’s permissive decision. The resurvey meant a redivision of the areas, and this operation was apparently an extensive one; it was therefore the expression of a stubborn determination to settle the affairs of the statelands of Cyrenaica for good and all, since the surveying was still going on in the reign of Trajan, on the evidence of the surveyor Hyginus, who worked in Cyrenaica personally in the examination of the said boundaries.[1158] In the late republican and early imperial period limitatio was used chiefly to divide out lands assigned to military colonies or public land acquired by conquest. In the latter period it also seems to have been found useful for adjusting the rights of new Roman settlers in conquered provinces with indigenous native tribes (Numidia, Pannonia).[1159] These considerations may assist us to understand the resurvey of the Cyrenaican ager publicus under the Flavians and Trajan; but it is not clear whether the Greek units of measurement used in the Cyrenaican survey should be taken to prove a Roman method applied by a hellenistic state, or whether the project originated when the royal lands were taken over by Rome. Beside the purpose of adjustment between inhabitants and new settlers evident in the arrangements of the early Empire, the renewed survey in Cyrenaica served two further purposes: it reregularized the payment of rents and taxes by the settlers, and thus renewed the revenues of the treasury; it also restored the tracts to proper cultivation.
There is no doubt that agriculturally limitatio acted more particularly in the Mediterranean area, as a framework for the cereal branch, and secondarily for the plantation economy. This is proved beyond all doubt by the air-photographs in Africa and Italian Apulia, where traces of the plantations are seen among the fields.[1160] The Flavian revision of the field-boundaries of Cyrenaica must therefore be seen as the first renewal of mixed farming and intensive cultivation in the territory.
The fact that the revision of the survey of the Cyrenaican ager publicus continued, even with intermissions, over half a century, shows that this was not simply a re-marking of boundaries. The field-divisions still traceable in the Safsaf district, for instance, contain farmsteads, and there is evidence of the active clearance of new areas.
The Roman method of division also possessed advantages from an agrotechnical point of view, since the definition of the plots contributed to the checking of soil-erosion, to the clearing of stones, to drainage and to protection against wind-erosion.[1161] Administratively, the correction of the boundaries of the ager publicus in Cyrenaica was only one of a number of similar activities conducted on the initiative of Vespasian and his Flavian successors, which included the institution of offices to administer the large imperial estates of Africa,[1162] the merging in Egypt of the crown-domains with the ager publicus and the Egyptian temple-lands,[1163] the surveying and organization of the agri publici of Apulia and Calabria[1164], and the restoration of the irregular fringe-areas of the centuriated tracts (subseciva) to state-ownership.[1165]
The time has come to examine the influence of the present process upon the Jewish community of Cyrenaica. A growth of the number of Jews in the country between the 1st century B.C. and the 1st century of the common era is indicated by the tombs of Teucheira and by the three Jewish inscriptions at Berenice, also by what Josephus reports of Cyrenean Jewry as a whole.[1166] It is clear that their number was large in the city of Cyrene at the time of Lucullus’ visit, when they were already a political factor, and the same inference may be drawn from their clash with the city over the despatch of the half-sheqel tax to Jerusalem between 31 and 13 B.C. At both Berenice and Cyrene the community was able to elaborate and beautify its public buildings during the 1st century B.C. The influence of the comfortable and wealthy city-elements seems to have grown in the second half of the century, since by 7-6 B.C. some Jews had attained citizen-status in the Greek polis of Cyrene, and by 13-12 B.C. the same had occurred at Ptolemais. Their community’s ties with the Jewish homeland, more especially with Jerusalem, had also been drawn closer in the last century before and in the first century of the common era; this is shown by the tombs of Cyrenean Jews discovered in Jerusalem in 1941. Here eleven ossuaries of Jews with Cyrenean names were found by Sukenik in a rockcut tomb in the Qidron Valley,[1167] while another ossuary from the tombs of Dominus Flevit, dug by Bagatti and Milik, bore the name of a Cyrenean.[1168] The first group was accompanied by pottery and lamps of the 1st century of the current era, the second by coins from the Hasmonean period (from c. 135 B.C.) down to A.D. 16. This evidence may be connected with the New Testament report[1169] of a synagogue in Jerusalem owned by Cyrenean Jews, which existed a short time after the death of Jesus, and of the presence in Jerusalem of Simon of Cyrene, who carried the cross.[1170]
Two documents of Cyrenean Jewry belong to the first third of the 1st century A.D., namely, the resolution of the Jews of Berenice in honour of the Roman official M. Tittius in A.D. 24/5, and the inscription recording the mission of Ittalammon son of Apellas and Simon son of Simon to Lanuvium in an unknown year, apparently in the first decades of the century. These two documents have been discussed, (pp. 146 sqq.; 167 sqq.) and on neither can a firm conclusion be reached. If we accept the view that the Lanuvium inscription was set up by a delegation in the name of Ptolemais, we must see this as evidence that the Ptolemais community had then reached such a measure of influence that the polis found it profitable to send two of its Jewish citizens to prosecute its affairs, apparently a claim for the recovery of money from the Roman authorities. But if we interpret the inscription as belonging to the tenants of the ager publicus, the former agri Apionis (and I think the language of the document supports this interpretation), we shall discover in the text a common element with the Berenice stele of A.D. 24-25, which expresses gratitude to M. Tittius who came to Cyrenaica “on public affairs” (ἐπὶ τῶν δημοσίων πραγμάτων), an expression which could be interpreted to mean “on affairs of the ager publicus”.
If then our analysis of the situation of the tenants on the country’s public lands in these years is correct, involving their expulsion by the spread of the pastoral economy managed by the publicani, and if we are justified in our belief that many of the tenants were Jews, — then the Berenice and Lanuvium documents may be seen as expressions of the Jewish community’s economic struggle against the Roman contractors on the one hand, and against the private landowners who had replaced the Roman contractors on the other. An analysis of the agrarian development of the Cyrenean ager publicus in the first half of the 1st century A.D. obliges us to suppose that the activity of the Roman publicani on those tracts and their seizure by the Cyreneans themselves, brought into existence a landless agrarian proletariat which included a considerable Jewish element. We do not know whether the Jewish wealthy of the Pentapolis came to the assistance of their brethren. The honorary inscription dedicated to M. Tittius by the Jewish politeuma of Berenice looks like an act of the well-to-do leaders of the community, and its text can be interpreted to mean that the dedicators had a tangible interest in the state-lands. It would be less natural for the propertied group to be on the side of the Roman publicani and the conductores; that they would have supported the oppressed tenants and peasantry is nevertheless uncertain. But the Lanuvium inscription would appear to mean this, if we agree to see in it evidence for a delegation on behalf of the tenants of the agri Apionis. It is likely enough that differing attitudes were held concurrently among the wealthier members of the community. One thing at any rate is made very clear by this study — namely, the sharp cleavage prevailing in this period between the inhabitants of the cities and the country population, particularly that living outside the city territories (ἡ χώρα). The situation is reflected by Strabo (p. 176) and is prominent in most phases of the country’s history from the Ptolemaic conquest onward.
1159
For Limitatio (centuriation) see Blume, Lachmann, Rudorff,
1160
For areas of Limitatio in Africa in which the tree pits of the olive-plantations are clearly visible, Bradford,
1162
The clearest sketch of this development is still that of F. Pelham,
1167
N. Avigad,
1168
P. B. Bagatti, J. T. Milik,