Chapter XVI
JEWS IN ROME DURING THE EARLY EMPIRE
[252]. Myths are understood by modern anthropologists exclusively as a “folk-way,” with the effects of single creative imaginations almost wholly eliminated. However, the better-known Greek myths are not at all folk-devised. As far as the Romans are concerned, it has so far been impossible to pick out a definite story which does not appear to have been derived from an existing Greek myth by quite sophisticated methods.
[253]. The phrase referred to is Ubi bene ibi patria, although just this form of it may not be ancient. However, the idea, that a fatherland might brutally ill-use its citizens and still claim their loyalty, was something that the average Greek scarcely recognized even in theory. When Socrates propounds some such doctrine in Plato’s Crito, 51 B, he is consciously advocating a paradox. It was regarded as a noble ideal somewhat beyond the reach of ordinary men. Its disregard involved no moral turpitude.
In Cicero, Tusc. v. 37, 108, the phrase runs, Patria est ubicunque est bene. That is an evident adaptation of a Greek phrase, such as the one in Aristoph. Plut. 1151, πατρὶς γάρ ἐστι πᾶσ’ ἵν’ ἂν πράττη τις εὖ.
[254]. Livy, Epit. lvi. Eunous, the leader, called his followers Syri, and himself King Antiochus. Cf. Florus, ii. 7 (iii. 9), Diodorus fr. xxxiv. 2, 5. Atargatis was the Dea Syria that played so important a rôle in the life of the empire.
[255]. The philosophic schools had the usual corporate names of θίασος, σύνοδος, and the like. Or like other corporations they have a cult name in the plural, οἱ Διογενισταί, οἱ Ἀντιπατρισταί, οἱ Παναιτιασταί (Athen. v. 186). For the International Athletic Union, ἡ περιπολιστικὴ ξυστικὴ σύνοδος, cf. Gk. Pap. in Brit. Mus. i. 214 seq.
[256]. Cf. ch. III., n. 9.
[257]. Cf. Menippus in Lucian’s Icaromenippus, 6 seq. Menippus does not spare his fellow Cynics (ibid. 16).
[258]. Macrobius, Sat. II. i. 13. The jest has unfortunately not come down to us.
[259]. The book we know as the “Wisdom of Solomon” is unquestionably the finest in style and the profoundest in treatment of the Apocrypha. Such passages as i.; ii. 1 seq.; ii. 6; iii. 1 seq. can hardly have appealed to any but highly cultured men.