Accordingly the polished society of a Greek city did not need the literary polemics against polytheism to be convinced that monotheism was an intellectually more developed and morally preferable dogma. On the other hand, it was a very difficult task to convince it that the ceremonies of the official cult, granting even their philosophic absurdity, were for that reason objectionable. To make them seem so, there would have to be present the consciousness of sin, and that was not a matter which argumentation could produce.
One other point against which Jewish writers of that time address themselves is the assumed viciousness of Greek life. How much one people has with which to reproach another in that respect in ancient or in modern times need not be considered here. The fact remains that in many extant books sexual excesses and perversions are made a constant reproach to the heathen—which generally implies the Greek—and the extant Greek and Latin literature gives a great deal of color to the charge.[[162]] This is due not so much to the actual life depicted as to the attitude with which even good men regarded these particular incidents. It is true that we have contemporary evidence that many Jews in Greek communities were no paragons of right living or self-restraint. But it is at least significant that this accusation, continually repeated by the Jews, is not met by a retort in kind. The anti-Jewish writings are not especially moderate in their condemnations. But with viciousness in their lives they do not charge the Jews, and they cannot have been unaware of what the Jews wrote and said.
Polytheism and immorality, the two chief counts in the indictment which Jewish writers bring against heathendom, were not things Greeks were disposed to defend. But it is doubtful whether the books that inveighed against them were valuable weapons of propaganda. We have practically no details of how the movement grew. In the last century before the Christian era it had reached the extraordinary proportions that are evidenced by the satire of Horace as well as by the opposition which it encountered. Jewish apocalyptic literature confidently expects that all the heathen on the rapidly approaching Judgment Day will be brought within the fold.[[163]] The writers may be forgiven if the success of their proselytizing endeavors made them feel that such a result was well within the range of possibility.
Within the same period the worships of Cybele, of Sabazios, and of Isis, had perhaps even greater success in extending themselves over the Greek and Roman world. The communities they invaded only rarely welcomed them. Even at Rome the official introduction of Cybele was the last desperate recourse of avowed superstition, and it was promptly restricted when success and prosperity returned to the Roman arms. But in all the communities great masses of men were thoroughly prepared in mind for the doctrines the Asiatic religions preached. A public preaching, such as the Cynics used, was rarely permitted. But if we recall how many slaves and ex-slaves as well as merchants and artisans were of Asiatic stock, the spread of these cults, including that of the Jews, by the effective means of personal and individual conversion is nothing to be wondered at. The state was perforce compelled to notice this spread. Individuals had noticed it long before.
CHAPTER XII
THE OPPOSITION
The ancient state was based on community of sacra, of cult-observances. Anything that tended to destroy them or impair general belief in their necessity, went to the very roots of the state, was therefore a form of treason, and was punished as such. The state rarely was interested in the honor of the gods themselves. Roman law had a maxim, which was very seriously stated, but which makes upon us the impression of a cynical witticism: Deorum iniuriae dis curae, “Let the gods attend to their own wrongs.” Since the kinship of members of the state was generally known to be a legal fiction, the bond that took its place was common worship. The state could not look without concern upon anything that threatened to weaken its formal structure.
Most Greek states made ἀσέβεια, “impiety,” a criminal offense. But just what acts or omissions constituted impiety was in each case a question of fact, to be determined specially in every instance. At Athens various persons of greater and less distinction were prosecuted under that indictment—Socrates, Theophrastus, Phryne. In every one of these cases, the gravamen of the charge was that the defendant did not regard as gods those whom the state so regarded (μὴ νομίζειν θεοὺς οὓς ἡ πόλις νομίζει, Plat. Apol. 24B and 26B), and taught so. In general, individual prosecutions such as these were deemed sufficient to repress the spread of dangerous doctrines. It was not believed necessary to consider membership in any sect or community as prima facie evidence of such impiety, punishable without further investigation. In later times, however, even this step was taken. Certain philosophic sects—which, we may remember, were corporately organized—were believed to be essentially impious. The city of Lyctos in Crete forbade any Epicurean to enter it under penalty of the most frightful tortures.[[164]]
We shall have to distinguish these police measures, which, when aimed at religious bodies, constitute an undoubted religious persecution, from the mutual animosity with which hostile races in any community regarded each other and the bloody riots that resulted from it. In the new city of Seleucia in Babylonia, the Syrians, Jews, and Greeks that lived there were very far from realizing the purpose of the city’s founder and coalescing into a single community. Sanguinary conflicts, probably on very slight provocation, frequently took place. Sometimes the Jews and Syrians combined against the Greeks; sometimes the Greeks and Syrians against the Jews, as recounted by Josephus.[[165]] The situation in Alexandria, where Egyptians hated Greeks, Jews, and doubtless all foreigners with a scarcely discriminating intensity, is peculiar only because we are well informed of conditions there by the papyri. When any one of these nationalities gained the upper hand, there was likely to be a bloody suppression of its foes, often followed by equally bloody reprisals. Salamis, in Cyprus, is a grim witness of the frenzy with which neighbors could attack each other, when years of hostility culminated in a violent outbreak.[[166]]
The attitude of Greek states toward the Jewish congregations in their midst was certainly not uniformly hostile. But in many cases there could not help being a certain resentment, owing to the fact that these congregations were by special grant generally immune from prosecution for impiety, although as a matter of fact they very emphatically “did not regard as gods those whom the state so regarded.” Of itself this circumstance might have been neglected, but the active and successful propaganda they undertook made them a source of real danger to the state. We therefore hear of attempts made sporadically to abrogate the immunity, to compel the Jewish corporations to conform to the local law of ἀσέβεια. Nearly always, however, the immunity was a royal grant, and therefore unreachable by local legislation, a fact that did not tend to alleviate friction where it existed.[[167]]