The lines in which he states his feeling are well-known (Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 96 seq.):
Some whose lot it is to have a father that reveres the Sabbath, worship nothing but the clouds and the sky and think that the flesh of swine from which their father abstained is closely related to that of man. Soon they become circumcised. Trained to despise the laws of Rome they learn, maintain, and revere the Law of the Jews, which Moyses has transmitted in a mystic volume;—laws that forbid them to show the way to any but members of their cult, and bid them guide to a spring none but their circumcised brethren.
We need be at no pains to correct Juvenal’s estimate of Jewish beliefs or Jewish theology. As in the case of Persius, the interest of the passage lies in the fact that it gives additional testimony to the success with which the Jewish synagogues, despite official frowns and even repressive measures, despite the severe conditions they imposed upon initiates, were constantly gaining in membership.
Juvenal’s other references to the Jews[[352]] show us certain unlovely aspects of their life. The hawkers and fortune-tellers whom he describes are certainly not the best representatives of the Roman community. It is no part of his purpose to give a complete picture of the community. But it is his purpose to denounce the degeneration which made the imperial city a disagreeable place for real Romans to sojourn in, and the Jewish peddler at the Grove of Egeria and the swindling hags who sell potent spells for cash give him the colors he requires.
One other writer must be mentioned, Martial. With him we are in the very heart of Grub Street. Marcus Valerius Martialis came from Spain to the capital. He had evidently no definite expectation of any career beyond that of a man of letters, and such a career involved at that time (as it continued to do until the nineteenth century) something of the life of a parasite. He had at least some of the characteristics of a parasite—a ready tongue, a strong stomach, and an easy conscience. But within his own field of poetry, the epigram, he was a real master. Subsequent centuries have rarely equaled the mordancy of his wit or the sting of his lampoon. At the foot of the banquet tables, jostled by hungry mountebanks and the very dregs of Roman society, he kept his mocking eyes open to the foibles of his host no less than to the disgustingly frank vices of his fellows.
And Martial meets Jews on his way through the teeming city. But if Horace, Persius, and Juvenal have their eyes upon Romans that were being Judaized, Martial presents to us the counterpart, Jews that actually were, or sought to be, as Greek or Roman as possible. In speech it is likely that most Roman Jews (and Roman Christians as well) were Greek.[[353]] But Greek was almost as well understood at Rome as Latin, and perhaps even better understood among the masses. Two of his Epigrams (vii. 30, and xi. 94) make it clear enough that the Jew at Rome did not live aloof from his fellow-citizens, and wealthy Jews did not scruple to purchase in the market the gratifications they were especially enjoined by their faith to forego. We can readily believe that Martial is recounting real experiences, but these cases must have been exceptional. As we shall see later, the Jewish community was certainly not a licentious one. That point appears specifically from the controversial literature. But it is equally well to remember that as individuals they were subject to human passions, and the excesses found in other classes of society might also be met with among them.
Grecized in speech and name, and no doubt in dress, the Jews accepted for their conduct the external forms and standards about them. One very interesting indication of the completeness with which they identified themselves with the city in which they lived is the expression “fatherland” that they used of it; e.g. in Akmonia (Ramsay, Cities and Bishops of Phrygia, no. 561). Again, in Ostia a large and well-carved slab was recently found in which a decree of the Jews at Ostia was set forth. The corporation grants to its gerusiarch, Gaius Julius Justus, a place for a sepulchre. The officers are Livius, Dionysius, Antonius, and another man whose name is lost (Not. Scav. 1907, p. 479). Surely but for the unambiguous statement of the inscription itself one would not have looked for Jews in this assemblage of Julii, Livii, and Antonii.
CHAPTER XX
THE FINAL REVOLTS OF THE JEWS
In the generations that followed the fall of the temple, changes of great moment took place, which we can only partially follow from the sources at our disposal.