The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 2Mommsen, Theodor
History
The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 2
Mommsen, Theodor
Roman provinces -- Administration; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
The internal dualism of the empire expresses itself in nothing more
sharply than in the different treatment of the Jews in the respective
domains of the Latin and Greek languages. In the West autonomous bodies
of Jews were never allowed. There was toleration doubtless there for
the Jewish religious usages as for the Syrian and the Egyptian, or
rather somewhat less than for these; Augustus showed himself favourable
to the Jewish colony in the suburb of Rome beyond the Tiber, and made
supplementary allowance in his largesses for those who missed them on
account of the Sabbath. But he personally avoided all contact with the
Jewish worship as with the Egyptian; and, as he himself when in Egypt
had gone out of the way of the sacred ox, so he thoroughly approved
the conduct of his son Gaius, when he went to the East, in passing
by Jerusalem. Under Tiberius in the year 19 the Jewish worship was
even prohibited along with the Egyptian in Rome and in all Italy, and
those who did not consent openly to renounce it and to throw the holy
vessels into the fire were expelled from Italy--so far as they could
not be employed as useful for military service in convict-companies,
whereupon not a few became liable to court-martial on account of their
religious scruples. If, as we shall see afterwards, this same emperor
in the East almost anxiously evaded every conflict with the Rabbi, it
is here plainly apparent that he, the ablest ruler whom the empire had,
just as clearly perceived the dangers of the Jewish immigration as the
unfairness and the impossibility of setting aside Judaism, where it
existed.[162] Under the later rulers, as we shall see in the sequel,
the attitude of disinclination towards the Jews of the West did not in
the main undergo change, although they in other respects follow more
the example of Augustus than that of Tiberius. They did not prevent
the Jews from collecting the temple-tribute in the form of voluntary
contributions and sending it to Jerusalem. They were not checked, if
they preferred to bring a legal dispute before a Jewish arbiter rather
than before a Roman tribunal. Of compulsory levy for service, such as
Tiberius enjoined, there is no further mention afterwards in the West.
But the Jews never obtained in heathen Rome or generally in the Latin
West a publicly recognised distinctive position and publicly recognised
separate courts. Above all in the West--apart from the capital, which
in the nature of the case represented the East also, and already in
Cicero’s time included in it a numerous body of Jews--the Jewish
communities nowhere had special extent or importance in the earlier
imperial period.[163]
[Sidenote: and in the East.]
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