But if we are permitted to trace the roots of the revolt in Cyrene to a combination of the Sicarian activist current and economic, chiefly agrarian, conditions implicit in the country itself, does this explanation hold good for all the centres of the movement in Trajan’s time? If this is not the case, we are faced with the alternative: either the agrarian situation in Cyrenaica possessed no real importance for the historical episode under discussion, or Cyrene stood at the head of the movement and played the leading role in igniting the conflagration. Historical data are in favour of collusion between the Jews of Cyrene and Egypt, more especially in the rural areas outside Alexandria, at least from the time of Lucuas’ incursion into the Nile valley. The Alexandrine Jews are referred to explicitly as “the allies” of the Jews of Cyrenaica, although both the historical and the papyrological evidence suggest that the Jews of the city in 116 were not the attackers but the attacked; nor did the Roman authorities treat their remnants as rebels.[1778] But this evidence should not mislead us in our assessment of events in Alexandria; the widespread damage shows beyond all doubt that the broad strata of Alexandrian Jewry were drawn into the defensive war against the Roman power by their own violent reaction, and at a certain point of time the initiative passed into their hands (the capture of the Serapeium); we may be sure that the activist element was also present. The Romans, for their part, could permit themselves some clemency at the end of the struggle, or at least a show of compassion towards the miserable remnant.
It is equally erroneous to see in the struggle waged by the Jews of Alexandria with the Greeks of the city for equality of rights between πολίτευμα and πόλις, a factor in the war of 116. It was certainly not a struggle for Greek citizenship. The striving for such citizenship belonged logically to the hellenizing group in Alexandrine Jewry, meaning the wealthy and the well-to-do among them, and was bound up with an attitude that harmonious co-existence with Greek neighbours must be sought by all possible means. The sharp antagonisms between the Jewish masses of Alexandria and their Greek neighbours originated elsewhere and their sources were more complex; the most prominent were the radiation of national influence from Eretz Yisrael, differences of religion and custom, relations with Rome as a ruling power, and above all, the ethnic-intellectual compactness of the Jews themselves.
The aggressive Jewish movement in Egypt seems to have originated chiefly in the rural districts, hence it may be possible to perceive among its causes an agrarian economic factor. The situation of the Egyptian fellah had always been difficult, and had been in a state of crisis throughout the later period of Ptolemaic rule. Roman administration had not modified his situation in any fundamental fashion. Milne has surveyed the economy of Egypt in the ist century A.D.[1779] in a way which can be summarized as a condemnation of the regime. He observed that the Romans transferred to themselves those lands previously granted to private proprietors, imposed the poll-tax on the majority of the population (especially the peasants), and subjected the merchant-class to an inexorable system of licensing. They confiscated the temple estates in return for an annual grant-in-aid, and thrust the greater number of administrative functions upon Egyptian citizens, who had to discharge them without remuneration. The system of currency introduced by Rome into Egypt was valid only within the province’s frontiers, thus affecting adversely its export and import trade. Although the economic position improved temporarily at the beginning of the Roman occupation, thanks to improved conditions of security and order and the restoration of the irrigation system, most of Egypt’s production — chiefly her grain — was exported to Rome for her own benefit without requital, while the export trade as a whole was mainly in Roman hands.[1780] Milne concludes that “before the end of the first century, the pauperization of the middle classes must have been fairly complete:... and, as there was no more to be squeezed out of them, the pressure was transferred to the actual cultivators of the soil.”
Bell[1781] does not contradict Milne’s assessment, and thinks that in the ist century A.D., after the initial period of prosperity, the members of the Egyptian middle class already faced a burden of taxation beyond their capacity to bear, and that economic difficulties were now perceptible. Villages which had been evacuated and abandoned by the flight of their inhabitants are known as early as 55-60.[1782] These data would therefore suggest that in Trajan’s day the economic conditions of Egypt were such as to foster a rebellious mood among certain elements of the population. Milne explains the clash between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria partly in terms of the economic situation described. But these factors applied more especially to the rural areas, and if we cannot yet point to a real agrarian crisis, growing poverty is perceptible in the steadily increasing difficulty in finding candidates to fill honorary official positions in the provincial centres. The elements of the Egyptian situation, therefore, do not contradict the explanation given for Cyrene, and were equally likely to act as one insurrectionary factor among several.
In Judaea, on the other hand, the agrarian factors are prominent, and the evidence for them reaches us through the sayings of the talmudic scholars and the documents of Ben Kosba in a clearer form than in any other province except Egypt.
Cyprus constitutes a weak link in the approach which sees the agrarian factor as one of the factors in the Jewish rebellion. Here the Jewish outbreak assumed no less violent and murderous a form than in Cyrenaica, yet the proofs of an agrarian element are slender and almost non-existent. All that can be said is, that the use of the island’s agricultural produce by the Jews of Judaea in Second Temple times encourages a belief that a Jewish rural population existed in Cyprus, and the little that is known of the extent of the revolt and the distribution of Jewish archaeological finds, suggests the presence of Jews throughout the island and that they were not confined to the cities.
We are therefore forced to conclude, that the agrarian factor was common to two centres of the rising — Cyrene and Egypt — (the movement in Judaea did not attain the dimensions of a war, being faced by an overwhelming Roman force) but the degree of decisiveness of the factor cannot be proved in Egypt, while the position in Cyprus is obscure. The decisive universal factor was psychological — the messianic aspiration derived from the destruction of the Temple, and the activist ideology of which the Sicarian is an example, intensified to no small degree by the economic situation. It is to the peculiarity of the conditions of Cyrenaica, however, that we may ascribe specific features of the revolt. In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, the Jewish struggle originated as an organic part of the entire population’s reaction to the Roman invasion, although doubtless the influence of events within the Roman Empire was also considerable.
Having examined the impulses at work in the rising, we must consider the nature of its manifestations. These can be divided into three heads: a) the massacre of the gentiles; b) the destruction of gentile temples and images; c) the destruction of the enemy’s habitation-centres. The visible traces of the second and third phenomenon are most prominent in Cyrenaica, but are also to be found in Alexandria and Salamis of Cyprus. Allusions to them are preserved with reference to the rural areas of Egypt. The slaughter of gentiles is described by the non-Jewish historians, but chiefly in the Roman History of Dio. Xiphilinus, in his abbreviation of Dio, tells how the Jews devoured the flesh of the slain, made girdles from their intestines, and forced their prisoners to fight one another in the amphitheatres.[1783] Critics have noted Xiphilinus’ general anti-Semitic outlook,[1784] and Joel justifiably observed[1785] that no account of such atrocities is to be found in any other source, even in Eusebius, who states explicitly that he had drawn on Greek authors writing at a time much closer to the events described, including, very probably, Dio Cassius himself.[1786] The mother of the strategos Apollonius nevertheless believed (according to her letter) that the Jews roasted (ὀπτήσουσι) their foes,[1787] and the belief may have been influenced by the tendencies of the Egyptians themselves. Polybius,[1788] describes the atrocities committed by them upon their antagonists in times of revolt, from the 3rd century B.C. onward, and the poet Juvenal testifies[1789] that they ate the flesh of their enemies. During the rebellion of the Bucoli in the reign of M. Aurelius, their leader Isidorus shared out among the insurgents the flesh of a captured Roman officer.[1790] Milne comments on this incident,[1791] “that it was an act of ceremonial cannibalism which was typically Egyptian”. It is not impossible that some Jews of the Egyptian χώρα had been influenced in the same direction after centuries of residence among Egyptians. But the authenticity even of the above incidents is difficult to assess: we have only to recall Josephus’ insinuation[1792] (the charge is not directly levelled) that Simon bar Giora nearly ate the flesh of his victims, a feature so entirely inappropriate to what we know of that leader, as to be utterly incredible. Only one fact can be stated with certainty on the entire question: the two sides fought savagely and slew without mercy.
1780
Also in Jewish hands, according to Milne, but I am doubtful whether the evidence is sufficient to confirm his opinion. It is that of Josephus,
1782
Thus also Rostovtzeff,
1784
K. Friedmann,
1786