We turn from these recluses back to the busy world of the Roman age, when troops for Caesar at Alexandria were collected by his General Mithradates, but stuck at Askelon, hindered by the desert and the Delta.[40] Antipater, a Jewish general with 3,000 Jewish troops, joined him, organized the desert transport with the Arabs, and then forced the fortress of Pelusium. On entering Egypt Antipater brought over the Jews of the Delta to the Caesarian cause, and so opened the way across to Alexandria, and this induced the Memphite Jews also to join Caesar. This service was handsomely acknowledged by Caesar.
Augustus rewarded the fidelity of the Alexandrian Jews by giving them a renewal of all the rights and privileges of equality with the Greeks,[41] which they had in the original charter of Alexander. They had an ethnarch and a council, or a president and parliament, of their own; but the Alexandrian Greeks by their opposition to Augustus lost their right to a senate.
Trouble began with the insane Caligula,[42] who tried to force the worship of his own statues in every place. The Jewish refusal of this demand cost them the withdrawal of all rights of citizenship.[43] The Greeks then thought it an opportunity for a pogrom to revenge their subordination under Augustus.[43] On the accession of Claudius the Jews started a riot to avenge themselves on the Greeks.[44] The influence of Agrippa, which had checked the persecution of the Jews before, shielded them again at Rome. Claudius therefore sent a decree,[45] reciting the equality of the Jews and Greeks in Alexandria from its foundation, and the renewal of the rights by Augustus. Another more general decree was published in the Empire, honouring the fidelity of the Jews to the Romans, and declaring that they were in all countries to keep their ancient customs without hindrance: “And I do charge them also to use this my kindness to them with moderation, and not to show a contempt of the superstitious observances of other nations, but to keep their own laws only.” By the end of his reign, however, Claudius ejected all Jews from Rome.[46] Under Nero there was an attempt of Egyptian Jews to liberate Jerusalem.[47] That failing, there was a renewed riot in the theatre at Alexandria between Jews and Greeks, ending in calling in the legions to plunder the Jewish quarter; in hard fight and massacre after it 50,000 are said to have been killed.[48] This seems to have broken the Jewish hold on the capital, and we do not hear of any more turmoil with the Jews in Alexandria.
The great war in Palestine and destruction of Jerusalem immediately after Nero’s reign put an end to Jewish aspirations for a long time. At last a general conspiracy broke out when Trajan was engaged in Parthia, and the Jews in Cyrene, Egypt, Cyprus, Palestine and Mesopotamia broke out in revolt and massacre.[49] Nearly half a million Greeks were slaughtered in Cyrene and Cyprus.[50] In Egypt all Greeks about the country were massacred, or driven into Alexandria for refuge, where they massacred all Jews left in that city. All of this history shows that in numbers and power the Jews were almost the equals of the Greek population, their close organization perhaps making up for lesser numbers. The retaliation by the Roman legions was naturally a full reply to the destruction which had been dealt out to the Greeks. Henceforward there was no united action of the Jews.
The great settlement of Onion, occupying most of the eastern Delta, was depleted at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The Temple of the new Jerusalem was closed in 71 A.C. by Lupus the Prefect;[51] finally, Paulinus within the next few years stripped the place, drove out the priests, shut the gates, and left the place to decay. This repression was not sheer persecution on the part of the Romans, but was caused by the Zealots, who had made the worst of the Palestine war, escaping to Egypt, and going even as far as Thebes.[52] In the interest of peace it was needful to abolish a religious centre which might have been made a rallying point for later trouble.
Although history scarcely mentions the Jews in Egypt for some centuries, they were by no means expelled. As traders, perhaps as cultivators, they kept a place in the country. A surprise has come in the last few weeks by the discovery at Oxyrhynkhos, in Middle Egypt, of fragments of four papyri written in Hebrew, as early as the third century. These are thus the oldest Hebrew writings known, apart from stone inscriptions. The age of them is given by another papyrus found with them dated under Severus, 193-211 A.C. One Hebrew writing is on part of a Greek document, which by the hand is probably of the third century. The style of the Hebrew will quite agree to this, as it is closely like the synagogue inscriptions of the first century, as pointed out by Professor Hirschfeld, who has examined these papyri and made a preliminary transcript. With these letters are scraps of a liturgical work on parchment with minute writing. Two of the papyri appear to be dirges, one on the destruction of the Temple. Another papyrus has Jewish names, Joel, Nehemiah, and others.
Though the Jewish half of Alexandria had been severely, if not altogether, reduced in the great rebellion under Trajan, there had been a large return of those who were attracted by the powerful centre of commerce and activity. Once more a pogrom broke out, from the fanatical Cyril in 415, who expelled the Jews, while the mob sacked the Jewish quarter.[53] Yet they returned, as, a couple of centuries later, at the conquest by Islam the Jews were expressly allowed to remain, according to the articles of capitulation.[54] During the rule of Islam the position of the Jew has fluctuated like that of the Christian. Restrictive laws have sometimes been passed, as that of El Hakim, ordering Jews to wear bells or to carry a wooden calf,[55] or the later restriction to wearing yellow turbans.[56] Yet Jews have risen to high power, as the slave-dealer who became supreme in the childhood of Ma’add about 1040, and set Sadaka, a renegade Jew, as vizier in 1044.[57] Though in recent times the Oriental Jew has little hold in Egypt, the European Jew has been a moving force in finance and enterprise.
The general conclusion appears that Egypt from its position and its fertility has always attracted the Jew. It has had therefore a notable influence on the mental attitude, especially in the Alexandrian school of the Wisdom literature and Philo. The status of the Jewish population has been fully equal to that of the other important races, native and Greek, especially in the great Jewish occupation under the Ptolemies, which was perhaps the age of the greatest political power in Jewish history.