Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights (21 page)

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Authors: Susan Ford Wiltshire

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ported as needed, sometimes from certain conquered peoples, such as the Juno of Veii or Juturna of Lavinium, sometimes to accommodate cultural or economic developments, such as the induction of Argentinus when silver money was issued or the association of Neptune with Poseidon as a protection for marine trade. More common was public disaster, which accounts for the importation of Cybele, the Great Mother, from Asia Minor during the Second Punic War.

7

The Second Triumvirate, yielding to the popularity of Egyptian cults at Rome, built a temple to Isis and Osiris.
8
After the Battle of Actium in 31
B.C.
, Octavian sought to repress the Egyptian cults reminiscent of Cleopatra by banishing them from the precincts of the city.
9
Later they were restored and sometimes even given special honors.
The establishment of the empire at Rome brought about a new fusion between state and religion, centered in the divine personage of the emperor himself.
10
In the Hellenistic East, this was especially easy to accomplish. At Ephesus, for example, Caesar was considered a manifest god, savior of mankind, descendant of Ares and Aphrodite.
11
Augustus associated himself with Apollo, while Mark Antony was called the New Dionysus in the East, thus forging new fusions between monarchy and traditional religious nationalism. As Arnaldo Momigliano puts it, "If the god was king, would not a king become a god?"
12
Augustus set about repairing all the temples in the city of Romeeighty-two of them by his own, perhaps exaggerated, count.
13
He also demonstrated special pride in two deities by dedicating in 29
B.C.
a new temple to the Divine Julius, which had been vowed by the triumvirs, and by building a large temple to Apollo on the Palatine as a new imperial cult center. His motives seem patently political in this building program, although Syme allows the possibility that there was more "authentic religious sentiment" in all of this than is sometimes believed.
14
Jews probably settled in Rome as early as the second century
B.C.
We know from 2 Maccabees that Jewish slaves came through Roman markets. As these slaves were manumitted, in accordance with established prac-

 

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tice they automatically became Roman citizens. Pompey brought others from Palestine in 63
B.C.
Cicero's reference to their numbers in the
Pro Flacco
indicates that by 53
B.C.
they were well-established in the city. You see, he reminds his audience, how numerous they are, how closely they stay together, and how influential they are in assembly:
scis quanta sit manus, quanta concordia, quantum valeat in contionibus
.

15

It is a curious question why the Christians were persecuted
16
while Jews were not. Jews, too, were exclusive "atheists." In the first century they also pursued converts, and unlike the Christians, they involved the Romans in three wars of rebellion between the years of
A.D.
67 and 132. Robin Lane Fox points out that what saved the Jews was precisely their strength at what the Romans honored most: venerability. As Gibbon noted, "the Jews were a people which followed, the Christians a sect which deserted, the religion of their fathers."
17
Circumcision appeared ridiculous to many Romans, but at least the Jews were not accused of cannibalism or incest as were the Christians. They met in public synagogues, unlike the Christians, who met mysteriously in private houses. Their religious organization was more adapted to the classical notion of religion because of its ethnic character.
The Jews were, in short, familiar to the Romans. Even when the Christians were persecuted in the third century, the Jews were officially tolerated.
18
For example, when Decius demanded in 250 that all subjects of the empire must offer sacrifice to the official gods under pain of death, there is no evidence that this conformity with Roman absolutism was demanded of Jews, who had identical views with Christians concerning the imperial cult.
19
Only for a short period during the reign of Hadrian in the second century was the Jewish religion subject to any disabilities, and this may have been only with regard to circumcision.
One of the earliest Roman accommodations to Judaism was exemption from the ban on the export from the empire of precious metals, notably gold. This exemption was granted to permit the Jewish temple tax to be sent to

 

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Jerusalem from Rome, as it was from throughout the Diaspora. Cicero was critical of this practice, and it had been forbidden when he was consul in 63
B.C.

20
In the
Pro Flacco
, he expanded his tirade against the Greeks to include the Jews, known to congregate by the Aurelian Steps and presumably being pandered to by the witnesses. Cicero says he will speak in a low voice so as not to incite the Jews against him, given their superstitious practice of sending gold to Jerusalem for the temple, since one of the charges against Flaccus was exporting gold. Then he moves into a more general criticism:

Each state, Laelius, has its own religious scruples, we have ours. Even while Jerusalem was standing and the Jews were at peace with us, the practice of their sacred rites was at variance with the glory of our empire, the dignity of our name, the customs of our ancestors. But now it is even more so, when that nation by its armed resistance has shown what it thinks of our rule; how dear it was to the immortal gods is shown by the fact that it has been conquered, let out for taxes, made a slave.
21
The destruction of the temple at Jerusalem in
A.D.
70 ended the payment of the temple tax. At that point Vespasian established the Fiscus Judaicus, a special imperial treasury into which was paid the tax levied on all Jews in the empire over the age of three and their slaves. Funds from this source were used to rebuild the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome. This tax, which continued into the second century
A.D.
, effectively required Jews to pay a special tribute to the emperor in return for the privilege of practicing their religion.
Augustus and his first successors respected the status of approved religion,
religio licita
, to which Caesar's privileges had raised the Jews in Rome.
22
In the early empire Jews were exempted from service in Rome's legions. In order to become a
religio licita
, however, Judaism at Rome had to lose some of its ethnic character. One way this occurred was through the hegemony of Roman legal institutions. When Rome recognized the legality of a
collegium
, it was as a legal and political grouping no matter

 

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what the nature of the association. Thus its members were directly subject to Roman law just as was everyone else. A Roman citizen like Paul could appeal any sentence from a Jewish court to the regular civil tribunal, and the judgment of the latter would always prevail.

23

Guterman ties much of the Roman treatment of Judaism to the exclusive character of Roman citizenship. Because Roman citizenship was exclusivethat is, Roman citizens normally could not hold citizenship in any other peoplethe practice of unauthorized foreign cults was forbidden. From the time of the republic the Roman principle was that no one was able to be a citizen of two states under civil law (
duarum civitatium civis noster esse iure civili nemo potest
),
24
although the establishment of the Pax Augusta by Augustus saw the wide extension of citizenship to non-Latin peoples, culminating in
A.D.
212 with the grant of the franchise by Caracallus to all or almost all of the free inhabitants of the empire.
25
While these new citizens typically could keep some civic status in their own municipalities, they were now expected to come fully under the Roman
civitas
in both a legal and a religious sense. To be a Roman meant to relate to the gods of Rome as ''the highest class of Roman citizens,"
26
but as a freely contracting party, not in the attitude of humility and exclusiveness that was characteristic of both Judaism and Christianity.
There was a major distinction between Judaism as practiced in Rome and in the East. The Jews of Rome, to conform to this pressure, were organized into separate synagogues on the model of
collegia
,
27
which required licensing and authorization. Thus, Judaism was an ethnic cult in Judea, a quasi-ethnic cult in the Hellenistic cities, but an authorized religion in the western parts of the Roman Empire. The Jews at Rome were what de Ste Croix calls "licensed atheists,"
28
that is, officially permitted not to believe in the polytheistic Roman gods.
Pagan Rome, faced with a choice of persecution or toleration of the Jews, chose the latter. From the first century
B.C.
on, Jewish practices were protected throughout the empire. Traditional Judaism was less dangerous to Rome

 

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than Christianity, and therefore treated more tolerantly. Christianity lacked a national basis, and therefore displayed more zeal as a missionary religion. Proselytization was easier because Christianity lacked the liabilities of the unpopular circumcision and other legalistic trammels. It actively repudiated Roman state cults and preached what E. Mary Smallwood calls the "socially disruptive doctrine" of equality.

29

Then Christianity began to rise over the Roman world, although it held the allegiance of perhaps only 10 percent of the population at the time of the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century. Tertullian provides a descriptive portrait of a Christian community in Africa. Its features include the election of officers, a treasury filled by monthly assessments, common meals, provisions for funerals for members, and other related activities.
30
The success of Christianity may be attributed to the crisis in the third century and the loss of confidence in historical Roman values in general. In such circumstances, Christianity could win large numbers of converts. Success was always the measure of Roman religion, and Christianity had brought political success for Constantine. With the help of his imperial patronage, it could now work for everybody else. Liebeschuetz notes the paradox: what began as an association of individuals for private religious purposes ended as a means of political domination as the state religion of an empire.
31
It is a poignant chapter in religious history that there is some evidence that early Christianity was protected under the wings of its Jewish parent. Christianity was, as Tertullian puts it, "under the umbrella of a well-known religion":
quasi sub umbraculo insignissimae religionis
.
32
Even after he embraced Christianity, Constantine preserved Jewish privileges, and as late as the beginning of the fifth century emperors were still issuing edicts protecting the synagogues.
33
Then the adult child turned on the parent, as successive Christian emperors increasingly restricted Jewish civil and religious liberties. By the middle of the fourth century, legislation forbade

 

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