Generally speaking, the Roman attitude to the Jews, as to all other peoples, was that of a master: the attitude of the Goth in Spain, the Manchu in China, the English in India. No one of these analogues is exact, but all have this common feature, that individuals of the dominant race can scarcely fail to exhibit in their personal relations with the conquered an arrogance that will vary inversely with the man’s cultivation. It is so very easy to assume for oneself the whole glory of national achievements. No doubt every Italian peasant and artisan believed that it was qualities existing in himself that commanded the obedience of the magnificent potentates of the East. The earliest attitude of Roman to Jew could not have been different from that toward Syrians or foreigners in general. If in 150 B.C.E. the term Iudaei had reached the ears of the man in the street, it denoted a Syrian principality existing like all other principalities at sufferance and upon the condition of good behavior.
For nearly a hundred years this state of things remained unchanged. Then the inevitable happened. Syria became Roman, and the motives that had won Roman support for the Jews no longer existed. Roman sufferance was withdrawn, and Judea’s good behavior ceased. That Gnaeus Pompey encountered serious resistance on his march from Antioch to Jerusalem is doubtful. The later highly-colored versions of his storming of the temple are probably rhetorical inventions. The Psalms of Solomon, which are very plausibly referred to this period, are outbursts of passionate grief at the loss of the national independence; for no recognition of Hyrcanus’ rank could disguise the fact of the latter’s impotent dependence upon the senate, and the limitations openly placed upon the vassal-king’s authority show that the Romans were at no pains to disguise the fact.[[232]]
When the Romans added Asia to their dominions, as they had in the generation preceding the occupation of Jerusalem, they annexed with Asia many hundreds of Jewish synagogues in the numerous cities of Asia. Jews lived also in Greece, in Italy and Rome itself, and in Carthage. Egypt, which contained many hundreds of thousands, was still nominally independent. Roman officials had long known how to distinguish the Iudaei from others of those ubiquitous Syrians who, as slaves, artisans, physicians, filled every market-place of the empire. More than one provincial governor must have collected a few honest commissions from a people indiscreet enough to collect sums of considerable magnitude, as the Jews did for the support of the temple.
RUINS OF AN ANCIENT SYNAGOGUE AT MEROM, GALILEE, PALESTINE
(Roman Period)
(© Underwood and Underwood)
That they were classed as Syrians did not raise the Jews in general, and particularly in Roman, esteem. The Syrians, to be sure, were one of the most energetic, perhaps mentally the quickest, of the races then living, but they were the slave race par excellence; i.e. the largest number of slaves were and had long been derived from among them. The vices of slavery, low cunning, physical cowardice, lack of self-respect, were apparent enough in those Syrians who were actually slaves, and were transferred to all men of that nation. “Syri” is nothing less than a term of contempt applied to any people of unwarlike habits.[[233]]
Unwarlike the Jews of that day were not. All that had commended them to Roman notice was their military successes over the troops of Antiochus and Demetrius. Pompey may not have found Aristobulus and his Nabatean allies really formidable, but he did have to fight, and did not meet that docile crawling at his feet which he had encountered elsewhere. That made considerable difference in Roman eyes, and may have caused the unusual tenderness they manifested as a rule for what they loftily termed the Jewish superstition.
As has been said, we have reason to believe that a Jewish community already existed at Rome, and we shall see that it must have been fairly numerous. As a city, Rome was probably the least homogeneous in the world. It may have contained at this time something less than a million people, perhaps much less; but this population was of the most diverse origin. Not only had the capital of the world attracted to it all manner of adventurers; not only was it teeming with slaves of every imaginable blood and speech; but the thronging of the city with the refuse of the world had been a conscious policy of the democratic and senatorial rings, to whom modern “colonization” was a familiar and simple process. When we recall that the accepted governmental theory was still that of the city-state, we shall see that mere residence made to a certain extent a Roman of everyone who lived within the walls. Various measures of expulsion, such as the Lex Junia Penni and the Lex Papia of 65 B.C.E., were wholly ineffective.
As a matter of fact, the governmental apparatus of the city-state was quite unable to cope with the situation that presented itself. Until 200 B.C.E., the turning-point in Roman history, the city was small and mean; the population, though composite, was still almost wholly Italian in character. A rapid increase in wealth and a consequent increase in glaring inequalities of fortune began at this point. The governing council of ex-magistrates, whose office had in practice become almost hereditary, found itself confronted by a needy and exigent proletariat, which it could neither overawe nor purchase.
The urban tendency of the population of Italy was due largely to the failure of the small farms to support their man. Free labor was subjected to the constant drain of military levies, and temporary suspension of cultivation was ruinous. The obvious remedy was a forced and unprofitable sale to the agrarian capitalists, whose leasehold interest in the great public lands had long been so nearly vested that it was almost sacrilege to attack it. To migrate to the city was then the only course open to the peasant, but in the city the demand for free labor was never great. The new arrivals joined the great mass of landless rabble, sinking soon into an idle and pauperized mob.