If this was so, whether or not Simon’s conjecture on Jewish expansion in this period is right, his idea of the concentration of rebellious elements in the desert borders is extremely likely, and helps us to understand the episode of Jonathan the Weaver, the more so in the light of the knowledge provided by the War Scroll. Josephus states explicitly that “the Zealot madness’ was not restricted to one city of Cyrenaica, hence it is clear that Jonathan was not isolated in his activity and that the ferment did not die down with the massacre of two thousand Jews and the execution of Jonathan. I he pressure of the renewed intensification of agriculture which spread over the plateau hand-in-hand with the revision of property boundaries (the limitatio), displaced a growing number of Libyans, driving them to the desert fringes, which became the seed beds of the rebellion which was to break out in the reign of Trajan; here was created and forged the religious covenant between the Jewish zealots and the Berber tribes of the south.[1218]
Both Jewish tradition and Roman geographical sources add certain information which tends to support the view that the Jews in the period were being pushed westward and southward. The Jews of the Syrtis retain a tradition that one of Titus’ commanders, named Pangor, settled 30,000 Jews in that country.[1219] This tradition should apparently be connected with the story in a fragmentary mediaeval manuscript, perhaps derived from the Chronicle of Yerahmeel, who wrote in the 12th century and used various classical and Jewish sources, concerning the settlement of 30,000 exiles from Jerusalem by Titus’ commander, Pangor, in Carthage.[1220] It is interesting that the name of “Pangor” contains four letters of the names Paconius Agrippinus in their correct order. Moreover, the historical nucleus of this tradition may be reflected in the Roman settlement of Iscina Locus Iudaeorum Augusti, situated on the Syrtic coast in eastern Tripolitania, some 80 kilometres west of the frontier between Cyrenaica and Numidia. The place appears under its full name only in the Tabula Peutingeriana,[1221] in the 4th century; as Iscina in the Itinerarium Antonini (3rd century A.D.),[1222] and in Ptolemy’s Geography (mid-2nd century A.D.).[1223] In sources of the 4th and ist centuries B.C. the same locality is marked as Charax.[1224] It is therefore probable that Iscina was founded between the ist century B.C. and the middle of the 2nd century A.D.[1225] There is indeed additional evidence suggesting that Iscina was founded in the Flavian period. The name “Locus Augusti” is a clear indication that the settlement originated on imperial land and was never a municipium or a colony. A number of sources preserve cases of the founding of settlements, generally without municipal status, by the personal initiative of the first Flavian Emperor: to this class belonged the colony of Flaviopolis, preceded by a Claudian settlement in Thrace, whence it was removed to Asia by Vespasian;[1226] a similar settlement founded by Vespasian in Samos;[1227] tracts near Panormus in Sicily allocated for the settlement of discharged troops and of members of Vespasian’s own household (i.e. slaves);[1228] and land assigned by the same Emperor to tenants and members of his household at Abella in Campania.[1229] On the basis of these examples, we may follow Monceaux’s suggestion[1230] that Iscina was established by Vespasian (or Titus) for Jewish slaves transferred as prisoners of war from Judaea, or for Jews from Cyrenaica who no longer found a place there or were suspected of seditious activity.[1231] It is inherently likely that both elements were represented at Iscina.
The name locus is defined by Ulpian[1232] as part of an agricultural estate (fundus), and in the texts of agrarian laws frequently appears as a term designating rural property (ager, locus, aedificium);[1233] in the south of France more especially the term indicates an agricultural settlement, and in one case at least, the centre of a large estate.[1234] In Britain, however, and in some regions of the Danube basin, the loci were points near the frontier regions where fairs were held by the natives at fixed times under the supervision of the authorities and with its permission,[1235] These points were generally also cult-centres, hence it is very possible that Locus Iscina was a place of meeting for the Jewish inhabitants of a number of local settlements at festivals and on appointed days. It is at any rate clear from the Roman name, that the settlement stood on imperial land, and was essentially agricultural, although it is not impossible that it was meant also as the site of a fair at fixed times. The modern name of the place, Medinet es-Sultan, still preserves the memory of imperial ownership.
As we have seen, Jewish settlement in the Syrtis region had begun in the hellenistic period, and perhaps even earlier. But Iscina is not the only evidence of Jewish migration to this shore in the Roman imperial period. A cemetery of the 4th century A.D. discovered at Syrtis itself, included inter alia a number of tombstones with pronouncedly Jewish names, some bearing the imperial family names.[1236] Bertoccini remarked of this discovery: “We have here slaves or tenants, most of them Jews, employed in the maintenance and working of the imperial estates which were numerous in Tripolitania.”[1237] It may well be that this settlement began in the Flavian period, and that the nearby Roman station of Praesidium, whose site is known by the Arabs as “ Yehudiyeh”, was founded about the same time.[1238]
The year 73 saw the annihilation of the Jewish aristocracy of Cyrenaica, and the disappearance of the mediating factor between the Greek population and the Jewish community. This had doubtless included the most hellenized element of local Jewry, meaning the more “moderate” among them in all that concerned national and economic problems. The Jews of Cyrenaica thus remained leaderless, and the way was open for the revolutionary activists. They were aided by the social situations for our analysis indicates the presence among the Jews of a considerable number of landless peasantry, and it may be supposed that these elements were an object of propaganda the aim of which is represented by the acts of Jonathan the Weaver and described in the War Scroll of the Dead Sea sect.
1218
The analogy that suggests itself is the settlement of Hirbet Qumran. As to Cyrenaica itself, a historical parallel might be seen in the function of the “Zawiet” or settlements of the Order of the Sanusi during the war conducted by the Libyans against the Italian government in 1912-1931. The more important of these settlements were on the margin of the desert and also in the oases linked by the caravan routes. They were supported by contributions from the tribes and by trade; some of their supplies came from the occupied regions. It is important to emphasize that their existence was rendered possible by tribal support and by supplies from without. It should also be remembered that the Sanusis were first and foremost a m ove ment of the countryside. The rebel forces that fought the Italians and found their leadership in the Order, were supported by an underground of the inhabitants of the Plateau, who were outwardly reconciled to Italian rule. From these they derived arms and manpower; among them they rested and recovered from their wounds. (For an account of these circumstances, see E. Evans Pritchard,
1220
A. Neubauer,
1225
The catacomb epitaph at Rome (
1226
T. Mommsen,
1230
1231
Cf. in the same period the settlement by Vespasian of opponents of the great revolt at Yavneh, which was an imperial estate (B.
1234
A. Grenier,
1235
I. A. Richmond in