The Jews among the Greeks and Romans

by Max Radin

In one field that superiority was evident, in the field of art. Whatever may have been the origins of Greek art, from the seventh century on no one seriously questioned that Greek workmen could produce, in any material, more beautiful objects than any other people. Artistic appreciation is no doubt a plant of slow growth, but the pleasure in gorgeous coloring, in lifelike modeling, in fine balances of light and shade, in grouping of masses, is derived immediately from the visual sensation. No peasant of Asia could fail to be impressed by his first glimpse of such a city as the Ephesus and Miletus of even the sixth or fifth century. After the extraordinary artistic progress of the fifth century had vastly increased the beauty of Greek cities, every foreigner who visited them must have found greater and greater delight, as his knowledge grew broader and deeper.

In other branches of art, in music, poetry, dancing, the wealthier Asiatic had a training of his own. But it is likely that even a slight acquaintance with Greek taught him to depreciate the achievements of his own people. Doubtless, in poetic capacity and imagination, Phrygian, Lydian, or Lycian was the equal of Greek. Yet we have no choice but to believe that in sheer sensuous beauty of sound, which made a direct appeal to any partly cultivated ear, no one of the languages could compare with Greek. Nor is it likely that any written literature existed in Asia that could be ranked with Greek.

With the appeal to eye and ear there went an appeal to the intellect. Greek mental capacity was not demonstrably greater than that of the Asiatic peoples to whom the Greeks were perhaps akin, but both imagination and reflection had framed their results in systematic form. The rich narrative material found in every race was available in Greek in dramatic and finished pieces. The philosophic meditation in which others had long anticipated the Greeks was among the latter set forth in clearer and simpler phrasing.

The allurement of all these things was intensified by a franker and fuller exploitation of all physical instincts, and the absence of many tabus and forms of asceticism that existed among non-Greek peoples. A vastly increased freedom over one’s body seemed a characteristic of Greek life, and a vastly greater freedom of political action was characteristic of the Greek polis.

It is small wonder therefore that the upper classes of Asia and Syria had for two or three centuries before the conquest succumbed to a culture that possessed so visible a sorcery. Then, with the conquest, came a new factor. To be a Greek was to be a Herrenmensch, a member of the ruling caste, a blood-kinsman of the monarch. Syrians, Asiatics, and Egyptians found themselves under the direct sway of a Greek dynasty, supported by a Greek court and army. All the tendencies that had made Greek cultural elements attractive for certain classes were intensified by the eager desire of the Greeks to identify themselves with the dominant race, and this identification seemed by no means impossible of achievement.

What had to be given up? As far as language was concerned, a smattering of Greek was the common possession of many men. Every trading-post had for generations swarmed with Greek merchants. Greek mercenaries were to be found in most armies. It was no especially difficult matter for those classes which knew a little Greek to increase their familiarity with it, to multiply the occasions for its use, to sink more and more the soon despised vernacular. The latter, we must repeat, was not and could not be suppressed, but it became the language of peasants. In the cities men spoke Greek.

But there were other things—the ancestral god and the ancestral ritual. These were not so readily discarded. However, the attitude of the Greeks in this matter made it unnecessary to do so. The gods of Greece were often transplanted, but rarely more than the name. In Syria and Asia particularly it was only in wholly new foundations that Greek gods and Greek forms were really established. Generally the sense of local divine jurisdiction was keenly felt. Greeks had a wholesome awe of the deity long in possession of a certain section, and in many cases erected shrines to him, invoking him by the name of some roughly corresponding Hellenic god. Frequently the old name was retained as an epithet. Thus Greek and Syrian might approach the ancient lord of the soil in the ancient manner and so perpetuate a bond which it was ἀσέβεια, “impiety,” to break.

Since the essentials were maintained, the only step necessary to turn a Syrian into a Greek was to purchase a himation, change his name of Matanbal to Apollodorus, and the transformation was complete. He might be known for several years as “ὁ καὶ Matanbal”—“alias Matanbal”; he might suffer a little from the occasional snobbishness of real Greeks, but, especially if he was wealthy, such matters would be of short duration. The next generation would probably escape them altogether, and their children, the young Nicanors, Alexanders, Demetriuses, would talk glibly of the exploits of their ancestors at Marathon or under the walls of Troy.

But there was also no inconsiderable group that combined adoption of the new with loyalty or attempted loyalty to the old. Many Syrians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and others, conscious of a history not without glory, desired to acquire the undeniably attractive Hellenic culture, while maintaining their racial ties, of which they felt no real reason to be ashamed. That was particularly true of the Seleucid dominions where Alexander’s assimilative policy was consistently pursued. Persian or Lydian or Phoenician descent was a thing many men boasted of. It was with a sense of adding something to the culture of the world that natives with Greek training prepared to transmit in Greek forms the history of their people to Greeks and to interpret their institutions to them. And they found a ready enough audience. On many points, especially in religion and philosophy, the Greeks were willing enough to concede a more profound acquaintance to barbarians than they themselves possessed; and often the weariness of civilization made Greeks search among fresher peoples for a sound social life, since that life was tainted, in Greek communities, by many grave diseases.

But people of this class found themselves in a delicate situation, an unstable equilibrium constantly disturbed. It was hard to remain a Grecized Syrian. Generally the temptation to suppress the Syrian was well-nigh irresistible. Now and then, the rise of national political movements would claim some of the younger men, so that the fall was on the native side. In general, the older conservative attitude expressed itself naturally in avoidance of Greeks as far as possible, and precisely in proportion to the value set upon the national and indigenous culture.