There are not a lot of academic works on the history of the Jewish
community of ancient Rome, which is known from several classical,
Latin and Greek sources, as well as from Talmudic ones. Far from the
academic world, interesting insights into it are given by Eustace
Mullins in his well-known heretical 'History of the Jews'. They are
to be taken cautiously for most of them : yet, it is suitable to work
on them.
Since "the Romans were well aware of the nature of the Jews as a
criminal and immoral group", he wonders : "Why then were the Romans,
a proud and ambitious people, unable to withstand the insidious
effect of the Jews? The answer, oddly enough, lies in the Roman
nature. A strong race, the Roman had conquered the world, including
the desert of Palestine. But Rome had no defense against the Jews,
who had formed their usual parasitic community in the heart of Rome.
The Romans tried again and again to get rid of them. Each time, the
Jews came back. Rome was the center of wealth of the world. It was
impossible to keep the Jews away from such wealth."
(...)
"The Roman historian, Valerius Maximus, wrote in 139 B.B. that the
Praetor of Rome forced the Jews to go back to their homeland because
they had tried to corrupt Roman morals. The Roman historian Marcus
says that the Emperor Trajan greeted a Jewish delegation in Rome most
cordially, "having already been worn over to their side by the
Empress Poltina". Is not this the story of Esther again?"
(...)
"In a papyrus found in Oxhynchus, Egypt, a Roman named Hermaiscus is
tried for treason, apparently because, like Haman in the Persian
Empire, he protested against the growing power of the Jews. The
papyrus states that in his defense, Hermaiscus said to the Emperor
Trajan, "It distresses me to see your cabinet and your privy council
filled with Jews" Of course, he was executed, haing pronounced his
own death sentence with this daring statement." Here, it seems to us
that Mullins jumps the gun in assuming that the reason Hermaiscus was
sentenced to death lies in his criticising the Jews."
"And here too, Mullins continues, as in the case of the previous
civilizations, we find that the parasitic community of Jews had
developed a terrible pathological hatred of their gentile host. In
his "History of the Jews", Kastein says, page 192,
"To the Jews, Rome constituted the quintessence of all that was
odious and should be swept away from off the face of the earth. They
hated Rome and her device, arma et leges, with an inhuman hatred.
True, Rome had leges, laws, like the Jews. But in their very
resemblance lay their difference: for the Roman laws were merely the
practical application of the arma, the arms... but without the arms,
the leges were empty formulae."
(...)
"Few historians make any reference to the part played by the Jews in
the fall of Rome, and even fewer give any indication of the power
which the Jews achieved in the empire. it is only in books published
by the Jews themselves that one discovers these little known-facts.
And here too, one finds the fact about the assassination of Julius
Caesar. How did this come about?"
Before hearing Mullins' explanation of the death of Caesar, it should
be pointed out that, as a rule, Jews tend to exaggerate their
influence when they are not in power and to minimise it when they are
in office.
"First of all, the Romans had made attempt after attempt to get the
Jews out of Rome, but they always came back."
"The politically ambitious Julius Caesar recognised the power of the
Jews, which stemmed from one incontrovertible fact - Rome was made up
of many opposing political groups and sects. In order to win, the
politician needed the support of one group which would stick by him
steadfastly, and thus the influence other groups to support him. Just
as in our present-day democracies, this group was the Jews."
(...)
With the Jews behind him, Caesar soon became the dictator of Rome and
the unchallenged ruler of the world. Alarmed by his increasing
subservience to the Jews, a group of loyal Senators, led by Brutus, a
former friend of Caesar's in his pre-Jewish period, resolved to
assassinate him."
This explanation is obviously to be taken with much caution. Just as
the Emperor Julian tried to play the Jews against the Christians, it
is tempting to assume that Caesar tried to use the Roman Jewish
community for its own profit ; if that community was influential, it
must have been quite wealthy. However, according to Juvenal (Satire
3.10-16) the Jews of Rome, those of the Porta Capena in particular,
were poor, while Lazare claims, without substantiating his claim,
that "At Rome the Jews had a powerful and wealthy colony as early as
the first year of the Christian era" ('Antisemitism, its History and
Causes' -
http://64.233.183.104/search?
q=cache:khxBeWlQtLQJ:www.swstk.com/Lazare,%2520Bernard%2520-%
2520Antisemitism.%2520Its%2520History%2520and%2520Causes.pdf++%
22in+Ionia,+where,+under+Augustus%22&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8 )
"(In his book, "Jews of Ancient Rome", Harry J. Leon states) that
Emperor Augustus, who inherited the empire after caesar's generals
fell out among themselves, restored the special privileges of the
Jews."
This is the Edict of Augustus on Jewish Rights :
"Caesar Augustus, pontifex maximus, holding the tribunician power,
proclaims: Since the nation of the Jews and Hyrcanus, their high
priest, have been found grateful to the people of the Romans, not
only in the present but also in the past, and particularly in the
time of my father, Caesar, imperator, it seems good to me and to my
advisory council, according to the oaths, by the will of the people
of the Romans, that the Jews shall use their own customs in
accordance with their ancestral law, just as they used to use them in
the time of Hyrcanus, the high priest of their highest god; and that
their sacred offerings shall be inviolable and shall be sent to
Jerusalem and shall be paid to the financial officials of Jerusalem;
and that they shall not give sureties for appearance in court on the
Sabbath or on the day of preparation before it after the ninth hour.
But if anyone is detected stealing their sacred books or their sacred
monies, either from a synagogue or from a mens' apartment, he shall
be considered sacrilegious and his property shall be brought into the
public treasury of the Romans."
Once again, it should be asked : what privileges? what rights? One of
the best specialist of Roman law, the French philosopher of law
Michel Villey, has showed, for instance, that Jewish law had no
influence whatsoever upon Roman law in the empire. In any case, it
can be wondered whether an emperor like Augustus was aware of the
content of that "ancestral law" which use he intended to respect,
since, according to Suetonius ('Life of Augustus', 76), he didn't
know that the Jews were permitted to eat on the Sabbath. the Jewish
philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who visited Rome as a member of an
embassy to the emperor Caligula (40 CE). In the overview he gave of
the life of the Jews in Rome after he visited Rome as a member of an
embassy to the emperor Caligula, the Jewish philosopher Philo of
Alexandria stressed that their position had been guaranteed by the
emperor Augustus. However, it appears that this picture was rather
idealised. For instance, Frontinus, an official responsible for
Rome's water supply, writes that the water of the Aqua Alsietina was
not potable and could only be used for irrigation purposes, but the
Jews were forced to use this aqueduct because it led to their
quarter.
The emperor Claudius (41-54) moved to check the spread of Judaism in
Rome. There, Jews were forbidden to meet outside of their synagogues.
In 49, following a revolt involving Jews, Claudius (as told in Acts
18:2) expelled Jews from the city. But outside Rome, he guaranteed
the rights and privileges which had been conferred upon Jews, as well
as those which had been conferred to other peoples.
We can agree with Lazare that "it may even be maintained, strange as
it may seem, that the motive of Roman anti-Judaism was religious",
insofar as the Roman religion was originally far from being a
religion in the Semitic sense, as shown by all the authors who have
understood its essence ; actually, Lazare, while judging it not up
to "the admirable and profoundly symbolic polytheism of the Greeks"
according to his Jewish mentality, was not far from having understand
it : "It was ritual rather than mythical; it consisted of customs
closely connected with the doings of everyday life, as well as with
all sorts of public acts. Rome was one body with its gods; its
greatness was bound, as it were, with the rigorous observance of the
practices of their national religion; its glory depended upon the
piety of its citizens (...). Somehow or other, the Roman was always
in the presence of his gods; he left his hearth, where they abode,
only to find them again in the Forum, on the public highways, in the
Senate, even in the fields, where they kept watch over the power of
Rome. At all times and on all occasions sacrifices were offered; the
warriors and the diplomats were guided by auguries, and all
authority, civil as well as military, partook of the priesthood, for
the officer could not perform his duties unless he knew the rites and
observances of the cult. It was this cult that for centuries
sustained the Republic, and its commandments were faithfully obeyed;
when they were changed, when the traditions became adulterated, when
the rules were violated, Rome saw its glory fade, and its agony
commenced. Thus the Roman religion preserved itself for a long time
without change. True, Rome was familiar with foreign cults; she saw
the worshipers of Isis and Osiris, those of the great Mother and
those of Sabazius; still, though admitting them into her Pantheon,
she gave them no place in her national religion. All these Orientals
were tolerated; the citizens were allowed to practice their
superstitions, provided they were harmless; but when Rome perceived
that a new faith was subversive of the Roman spirit, she was
pitiless, as in the case of the conspiracy of the Bacchantes, or the
expulsion of Egyptian priests. Rome guarded herself against the
foreign spirit; she feared affiliation with religious societies; she
was afraid even of Greek philosophers, and the Senate, in 161, upon
the report of the praetor Marcus Pomponius, barred them from entering
the city."
Unlike the Church, it was certainly not on mere 'religious' grounds
that imperial Rome opposed the Jews. "Seneca's view was in accord
with the attitude of both the Republic and the Empire, by which
measures were adopted from time to time to check Jewish proselytism.
Under Tiberius, in the year 22, a senatus-consult was directed
against the Egyptian and Judaic superstitions and four thousand Jews,
says Tacitus, were deported to Sardinia. Caligula subjected them to
vexatious persecution; he encouraged the doings of Flaccus in Egypt,
and Flaccus, sustained by the Emperor, robbed (sic) the Jews of the
privileges granted to them by Caesar; he took away from them their
synagogue and directed that they might be treated as in habitants of
a captured city. Domitian imposed a special tax upon Jews and those
who led a Judaic life, hoping by the levy of the tax to stop
conversions, and Antoninus Pius prohibited the Jews from circumcising
other than their sons. Anti-Judaism manifested itself not only at
Rome and Alexandria, but wherever there were Jews: at Antioch, where
great massacres occurred; in Lybia, where, under Vespasian, the
governor Catullus stirred up the populace against them; in Ionia,
where, under Augustus, the Greek cities, by an understanding among
themselves, forced the Jews either to renounce their faith or to bear
the entire burden of public expenditures."