As a matter of fact, all bodily mutilation had been under the ban of the Roman law, but that prohibition applied only to Roman citizens. In practice circumcision had been openly carried on both by Jews who were Roman citizens and by their converts, in disregard of this provision, probably under the tacit assumption that the privileges of the Jewish corporations covered this as well. Primarily the prohibition was directed against castration, but it was quite general. The only formulation which the edict against these practices had received was in the Sullan Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficis (above, p. [241]). This was a lex per saturam, or miscellaneous statute. Under one of its captions, any act, perhaps any act performed with a weapon or instrument of any kind, that resulted in bodily injury, was prohibited. A senatorial decree of the year 83 C.E. specified castration as one of the mutilations referred to; similarly abortion was punished as a violation of the Lex Cornelia.[[377]]
Hadrian’s rescripts seem to have dealt on several occasions with this law. His obvious intention to extend the statute may have caused him to use terms of general effect. Perhaps an isolated case of the practice of circumcision among people outside of those to whom it was an ancient custom may have been followed by indictment and punishment. If Hadrian really had attempted to carry out this prohibition generally, he would have provoked a rebellion in Egypt as well as in Judea, since in Egypt the priests practised it likewise.[[378]] The rescript of Antoninus, a few years later, which expressly exempted Jews from the broad condemnation of the practice, simply restated established law.[[379]] Indeed it may well be that the occasion of Pius’ rescript was rather one that restricted the Jews than one that enlarged their privileges. Even in the case of the severest form of mutilation, it is forbidden if it is done promercii aut libidinis causa. A similar insistence on criminal intent must have been present in the case of the lesser mutilation involved in the Jewish rite. There could of course never have been any question that circumcision was not performed promercii aut libidinis causa, and therefore there seems to be little reason for the rescript of Pius, unless we assume it to have been a direct attempt to check the spread of Judaism by making the performance of the rite in the case of non-Jews criminal per se, without proof of wrongful intent.
Paul, writing about seventy-five years later, states the limitation on the performance of the rite even more broadly, by including within it slaves of non-Jewish origin.[[380]] In all circumstances there does not seem to have been any real effort to enforce it. The Jewish propaganda went on in spite of it, not surreptitiously, as in the case of the still-proscribed Christians, but quite frankly. The statement of Paul is the stranger because of the open favor shown by Paul’s master, the Syrian Severus Alexander, toward all foreign cults, including that of the Jews. The Sentences of Paul may have been written before the decree of the emperor which his biographer mentions, by which, he says, Severus strengthened the privileged position of the Jews, Iudaeis privilegia reservavit.[[381]] When one contrasts this with the immediately following statement, Christianos esse passus est, “He allowed the Christians to profess their faith,” it is plain that in the case of the Jews there is no question of mere toleration, but of the recognition of an established position, and that is not quite in accord with the statement in Paul’s Sentences, according to which the spread of Judaism was rigorously checked, even to the extent of modifying one of the fundamental concepts of the law—the unlimited character of the master’s dominion over his slaves.
As has been said, the authenticity of the Historia Augusta is dubious, but the number of details offered to show the interest of both Alexander and his predecessor Elagabalus in Judaism and Christianity is too great to be ignored. The Sentences of Paul, it must be noted, have come down to us only in the abridged and perhaps interpolated form in which they are found in the Lex Romana Wisigothorum, a code issued by Alaric II in 506, and called therefore the Breviarium Alaricianum. At that time, however, proselytizing on the part of the Jews had been expressly prohibited by a rescript of Theodosius (Cod. Theod. 16, 8, 9, 19) of 415. Even then it was completely ineffective, but at any rate the rite of circumcision was definitely under a legal ban.[[382]]
Whether or not a qualified restriction on the spread of Judaism has been changed in our texts of the Sentences into a general and all-embracing one, it is impossible to say, but that some such change has taken place may be called even likely, by reason of the point just raised; viz., that it is wholly contrary to the spirit and principles of the Roman law to impose any restrictions whatever on the master’s authority.
We have examined the decrees that regulated the rite of circumcision, merely because general inferences have been drawn from it—inferences that are in no sense justified. The Roman law regarded bodily mutilation, when practised as part of a religious rite, and especially for sordid purposes, as against public policy. It was a privilegium of the Jews, that to the members of their organizations the general rule of the law did not apply, and the various statements quoted from the jurists were simply judicial decisions limiting, by a well-known principle of interpretation, the exercise of the privilege to the narrowest possible bounds.
The rebellion of Bar-Kosiba was probably the last time that the Jews confronted the Roman troops on issues that were even partly national. We hear that between 150 and 161, under Antoninus Pius, another rebellion broke out, but we have no other record of it than the notices in the Historia Augusta,[[383]] upon which little reliance can be placed. After the death of Commodus and Pertinax,[[384]] the eastern empire, including Palestine, sided with the local claimant Pescennius Niger, and Palestine became the scene of battles sufficiently important to justify the decreeing of a “Jewish triumph” to Caracalla. It is likely that these various “rebellions” were the more or less serious insurrections of bandits, who terrorized the countryside until suppressed by the authorities. This view derives some support from the fact that of one of these bandits who submitted to Severus we know the name, Claudius (Dio Cass. Ep. lxxv. 2). There is even no certainty as to whether those who took part in them were wholly or mainly Jews. At any rate, there were no national ends which they attempted to serve.
A fact, which may be accidental, and is certainly noteworthy, is that, of all the struggles of the Jews with their surroundings, after 68, none are localized in Asia Minor.
It was, however, in Asia Minor that the Jews were especially numerous and influential. To a certain extent their propaganda had become most firmly established there, and their position was so intrenched that even the hostile legislation of the later Byzantine emperors found them in successful resistance. We find evidences of certain laxity in the practice of Jewish rites, but neither in 68 nor under Trajan or Hadrian did the Asiatic Jews take part in the movements that convulsed that section of the Jews of the empire. And yet it was in the cities of Asia that the Jews in earlier days did meet hostility and direct attacks, and needed the assistance of the Roman central government, to be maintained in the position which they claimed for themselves.[[385]] However, in that most ancient and fertile nursery of beliefs and mysteries, the Jewish mystery evidently found a grateful soil and, as we have seen, sent its roots deep.[[386]]