In some ways, the most alien presence in Rome during the Republic was that of the Jews. Their customs, practices, and beliefs had little in common with the traditional values espoused by Romans. And Jews, notoriously, kept to themselves, maintaining a separate identity that set them apart from conventional political and social relationships in Rome. As Tacitus later remarked, Jews show intense loyalty to one another but hostility to everyone else. They hold all things profane that Romans regard as sacred, and allow everything that Romans forbid (Tac. Hist. 5.4.1, 5.5.1).45
Were Jews then excluded from polite society, marginalized or oppressed?46 Cicero rails against them in a speech, defending his client against charges of infractions committed in the province of Asia. He refers to the ‘‘barbaric superstition’’ of the Jews and speaks with contempt of that nation whose institutions differ so sharply from those of Rome’s ancestors and whose inferiority was established by the gods themselves in authorizing the recent Roman conquest of their land (Cic. Flacc. 67, 69). But rhetoric plays a larger role here than prejudice. Cicero, in building a case for the defendant, spews equal vitriol (and at greater length) against Asian Greeks, against Lydians, Phrygians, and Mysians (Cic. Flac. 3, 6-26, 60-6). More importantly, his remarks on the Jews inadvertently disclose a place in society quite at variance with the objectives of his speech. The orator complains of Jewish demonstrations at Roman political gatherings, demonstrations that were not uncommon, indeed often influential, and in no way illegitimate (Cic. Flac. 66-7). When their interests called for it, Jews could freely press their views on the public scene. The Jewish crowds that gathered consisted primarily of Roman citizens, not slaves, freedmen or outsiders. An established community of Jews existed in Rome by the early first century, and probably had for some time before.47 They had access to civic privileges and carried weight in public deliberations. They kept a clear sense of their own identity and solidarity, but gained no small measure of integration within Roman society.
The great scholar Varro, who could eschew Ciceronian rhetoric, paid the Jews a signal compliment. He held that the ancient Romans for more than a century and a half had followed the admirable practice of worshiping the gods without the use of images. Things had gone downhill since then, and respect for the gods had diminished. For the practice of true piety, he observed, Romans should look to the Jews (August. De civ. D. 4.31).
World History
