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Pap. Giessen 27,[1714] written by a member of the strategos Apollonius’ entourage in the first months of 117, in Fuks’ view, announces an important victory over the Jews in the vicinity of Memphis, although its exact location has not been determined. Fuks notes that there is no certainty that this was a decisive victory, in view of Eusebius’ statement that the revolt was suppressed by Marcius Turbo “in many battles and over a long period.”[1715] But it may be supposed that Memphis was situated near the strategic focus of the war,[1716] since in its vicinity the Nile divides into several arms which fan out northward to form the Delta. Marcius Turbo, who had been despatched by Trajan to suppress the Jewish movement in Egypt,[1717] may have been appointed commander in the province in 116 or in early summer of the succeeding year, not long before the accession of Hadrian to the imperial throne.[1718] According to Eusebius he commanded both land and sea forces,[1719] and if so probably his advance southward was made with the accompaniment of the fleet sailing up the Nile.[1720] The importance of controlling the crossroads at Memphis was emphasized by the location in its proximity of the strong fortress of Babylon.[1721] The bastions of this formidable stronghold are paralleled in forts of the 2nd century on the Syrian and Transjordanian frontiers;[1722] it was reconditioned by Turbo according to a Byzantine source,[1723] and constituted the departure point of the Traiani Amnis[1724] a transport canal that linked the Nile with the Mediterranean, and whose use was renewed by Trajan. It entered the sea by the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, and command of it would have given the Jews rapid access to Sinai and to Judaea. Appian’s story[1725] that the Jews had seized a ship at Pelusium during the revolt, and that he himself was rescued by a Roman trireme (i.e. a warship) in the same district — may possess a similar significance. Pelusium had been the seat, in Ptolemaic times, of a Jewish military settlement which was in a position to hold any army advancing from Judaea and Sinai.[1726] The contemporary incidents at Pelusium are therefore to be understood in the light of the Jewish aim of seizing control of the route from Babylon to the Red Sea and the approaches to Sinai and Judaea.

The dates of Apollonius’ two applications for leave from his military service have been placed by Fuks between September and November 117,[1727] and according to the Historia Augusta’s life of Hadrian, Turbo was appointed to the Mauretanian command in the first period of Hadrian’s rule.[1728] He therefore left Egypt shortly after August, 117, when Hadrian acceded; the following Egyptian prefect, Rammius Martialis, took up his duties between the nth and the 28th of August in the same year.[1729] It is therefore clear that the revolt in Egypt had been put down, for the most part, by August of 117.

The revolt in Cyprus had terminated, as we have seen from epigraphical evidence, at the end of 116 or the beginning of 117.[1730] Hadrian must have visited the island personally at the time, for he was governor of Syria in 117,[1731] and had been so earlier,[1732] and a vexillatio of the VII legion Claudia had been sent to Cyprus from his province, while an inscription proves his personal presence in August, 117 (p. 268); during the same month, however, he was again in Antioch.[1733] The VII Cohort of Breuci is known to have taken part in the suppression of the rising[1734] together with the detachment from the VII legion Claudia.

In 115, having overrun Armenia, Trajan invaded the country of Adiabene, then Mesopotamia (Aram-Naharayyim). In the winter of that year and in the succeeding year, 116, he turned south, took the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon and reached the Persian Gulf. But at this point a violent and widespread rebellion broke out in the conquered areas in his rear, and Trajan was compelled to retire northward. The three centres of the rising were Seleucia on the Tigris, Nisibis and Edessa in Aram-Naharayyim. His marshal Lusius Quietus reconquered Nisibis; S. Arucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander subdued Seleucia. The rebellion was put down, but had so weakened the Roman effort that the conquest of Parthia could not be completed, and the Emperor died on his way back to Rome, in August, 117.

Scholars are divided on the question whether the Jewish movement of the years 115-117 also found expression in Mesopotamia, and if it did, whether this was a separate Jewish operation, or one carried out as part and parcel of the rising of the entire population against Rome.[1735] Groag[1736] thought that there was no connection between the rebellion of the Mesopotamian population and the order given by Trajan to Lusius Quietus, according to several sources one of whom is Dio Cassius,[1737] to exterminate the Jews; in his view this action followed the suppression of the rising. Jerome, however,[1738] explains Quietus’ attack by the assumption that the Jews were already in revolt, an allegation repeated by Pseudo-Dionysius Tel-Marensis.[1739] Alon appears to share Groag’s view.[1740] As to the Roman apprehension that the Jews might attack the rest of the population — this is Eusebius’ justification of the Roman action — it would have been unfounded because the Greek population appears to have been ranged with the Jews in their resistance to Rome (as Alon saw), as is shown by the rebellion of Seleucia and the desecration of the temple at Dura, which was treated by the Roman forces as a hostile town. Alon does however argue, that the powerful participation of the Jewish population in the fighting against Rome in Mesopotamia, would have imparted to the insurrection of 116 an outstandingly Jewish appearance, and we might add that the circumstances of the time would have converted that community into the spearhead of the resistance movement.[1741]

It were well here to emphasize that history has preserved reports which indicate a very ancient military tradition among the Jews of Mesopotamia and Babylonia. At the end of the 3rd century B.C. Seleucus III transferred 2,000 Jewish families from Babylonia to settlements in Lydia and Phrygia as military settlers, to hold down the rebellious elements of those countries.[1742] It was probably in the same years that a force of Jews played an honourable and successful part in an action between Seleucid troops and a force of Gallic mercenaries in Babylonia.[1743] Later, in 9-6 B.C.. the Babylonian Jew Zamaris passed at the head of a force of Jewish mounted archers from Babylonia to Syria, and settled near Antioch with the permission of the Roman governor Saturninus. These troops were later transferred by Herod to Golan and Bashan as military colonists in order to reduce to peaceful settlement the predatory inhabitants of Trachonitis (a-Lejja).[1744] In the ist century of the current era (A.D. 10-30), two Jewish brothers of the city of Nehar-dea on the Euphrates, Hanilai and Hasinai, established a shortlived independent principality in the area, which held out as long as it did by force of arms.[1745] It seems possible, moreover, to deduce from Josephus, that the fortified towns of Babylonian Nehardea and Nisibis[1746] were held by Jews on their own military responsibility.[1747]

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1714

CPJ 11 no 439.

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1715

HE IV, 2, 4.

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1716

Cf. Orac. Sib. V, 60-74, which threatens the city because it “had encouraged evil in the hearts of the good”.

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1717

Eus., ibid. IV, 2, 4.

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1718

A. Stein, Die Prafekten von Ägypten in der römischen Kaiserzeit, 1950, pp. 59 sqq., considered Turbo was appointed Prefect of Egypt; cf. Fuks, Aegyptus, 33, 1953, pp. 151-2. But Syme (JRS 52, 1962, pp. 87 sqq.) has shown that the well-known inscription from Caesarea in Mauretania, AE 1946, no. 113 = CRAI 1945, pp. 144 sqq., does not concern the Marcius Turbo who suppressed the Jewish rising in Egypt and Cyrene, nor does he consider the latter’s appointment as prefect of Egypt probable, but thinks he was appointed to the Egyptian command in 116.

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1719

IV, 2, 4. In 114 Turbo commanded the classis praetoria which took Trajan to the east — CIL XVI, 60; AJA 1926, pp. 418 sq.

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1720

As suggested by C. G. Starr, The Roman Imperial Navy, 1960, p. 112.

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1721

On the fortress, JEA 4, 1917, pp. 174 sqq.; Antiq. 4, 1930, pp. 483 sqq.

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1722

The fortress generally resembles the fortresses of Odruh, el-Lejjun (Beth Horon) and e-Dumeh in Transjordan and Syria, which differ from the Diocletianic forts and those of the subsequent period in the number of their gateways and their internal arrangements. Ed-Dumeh has yielded an inscription of the time of L. Verus (AD 162) (R. E. Brunnow, A. von Domaszewski, Die Provincia Arabia, 1904-1909, III, p. 197); the Roman fort at ’Avdat appears to belong to the same type (plan, Rev. bib, 1904, pp. 404, 414), but Professor Negev b+elieved that it was not later than the early 2nd century AD, and recent excavation seems to have confirmed his opinion.

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1723

Johannes Nikiu (Zotenberg), LXXVII.

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1724

J. Ball, Egypt in the Classical Geographers, 1942, pp. 117, 130; Ptol. IV, 5, 23.

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1725

App., frag. 19 (Reinach, TRJ, no. 77).

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1726

Jos., BJ, I, 8, 7, (175): “(Antipater) persuaded the Jewish garrison guarding the estuaries at Pelusium to let Gabinius pass.“ (55 BC). It is to be noted that in the year 48 BC, when invading Egypt. Mithridates of Pergamum and Antipater capture Pelusium and seize Leontopolis (the military territory of the Jew Onias) and Memphis (BJ I, 9, 3-4 (189-91). The decisive battle for the Delta takes place at the Ἰουδαίων Στρατόπεδον.

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1727

CPJ II. no. 443 = P. Giss. 41; Aegyptus 33, 1953, p. 150.

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1728

SHA Had,. V, 8; VI, 7.

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1729

P. Oxy. 1023; Syme. JRS, 52, 1962, p. 87.

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1730

See p. 269.

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1731

SHA Had., IV, 6; Dio. LXVIII, 33 (2, 1).

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1732

Dio, LXIX, 1, 2; cf. JJS 2. 1950, p. 28.

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1733

Dio, LXIX, 2.

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1734

CIL III (i), 215.

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1735

For the political position of the Jews of Parthia see J. Neusner, Iranica Antiqua, III, 1963, pp. 51-6. Neusner sees in the internal political structure of Parthia factors inducing her rulers to accord a large measure of autonomy to the Jewish community. If this is correct, it might be reasonable to suppose that the Jews acted as a distinct and separate body in the rebellion of 116.

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1736

PW xxvi 1927, col. 1881, sv. Lusius Quietus (9).

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1737

Dio LXVIII, 32, 3; Eus. HE, IV, 2, 5; cf. Suda (Suidas), Adler, I, p. 400, sv. Ἀτασθαλία; IV, p. 53, sv. παρείκοι; Niceph. Call., PG 145, p. 941.

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1738

ad Eus., Chron. (Helm), XXIX, p. 196. (PG, 19, p. 554 ad ann. 2130).

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1739

Chabot, I, p. 123.

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1740

Hist. of the Jews, I, p. 254.

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1741

Various views have been expressed on the problems of the relation of the Diaspora rising with the Mesopotamian rebellion and the relation between the latter and Lusius Quietus’ suppression of the Jews. A few may be cited. Mommsen (The Provinces of the Rom. Emp., II, (Eng. trans.) 1909, p. 221), thought that the Jewish movement in Mesopotamia was an integral part of the general Jewish insurrection. Schürer (GVJ I, p. 666) wrote: “The Jews of Mesopotamia in his (Trajan’s) rear also became restive. Trajan commanded... Lusius Quietus... to sweep the insurrectionists out of the province.“ Juster (Les Juifs dans l’Empire romain, II, 1914, p. 89 nn.) saw the Mesopotamian movement as part of the entire Diaspora revolt. Graetz (Hist. of the Jews, JPS edn., 1949, p. 397), shared his view, but apparently believed that Quietus’ repressive massacre was a consequence of the rising. Longden (CAH XI, 1936, pp. 249-50) distinguishes between the general rebellion of the population of Mesopotamia, and the fear of a renewed rising on the part of the Jews, which led to Quietus’ repressive action. Abel (Hist. de la Palestine, II, 1952, p. 62) connects the action of the Mesopotamian Jews with the revolt of Edessa and Nisibis. Fuks (JRS 51, 1961, p. 99) accepts the view that the Mesopotamian Jewish rebellion was part and parcel of the general rising of the whole country. Important as a factor influencing the Jewish attitude to Rome may have been Trajan’s plans for reorganizing the caravan trade (in the year 116) — Fronto, Princ. Hist., 1 — referred to by Smallwood, The Jews under Rom. Rule, p. 411, n. 91.

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1742

Jos. Ant. XII, 3, 4 (148-53), and see Schalit, JQR 50, 1960, pp. 289 sqq.

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1743

II Macc. 8, 20; for the battle concerned, see B. Bar Kokhba, Pr. Cambridge Philological Soc.², 19, 1960, pp. 289 sqq.

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1744

Jos., Ant., XVII, 2, 1-3 (23-31).

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1745

Ant. XVIII, 9 (310-79).

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1746

Ibid.

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1747

The reference is to Nisibis in Babylonia, not to the Mesopotamian town of the same name.