LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

envy of his sister Herodias. Stung by ambition, she implored of her husband also to repair to Rome and to obtain from the generous young emperor at least another kingdom. Once more the painful want of family affection, common to all the Herodians, was brought to light in all its baseness. Alarmed that Antipas might succeed in winning Caligula's favor, or indignant at the envious feelings betrayed by his sister, Agrippa accused Antipas before the emperor of treachery to the Roman Empire. The unfortunate Antipas was instantly deprived of his principality and banished to Lyons, whither he was followed by his faithful and true-hearted wife. Herod's last son, Herod Antipas, and his granddaughter, Herodias, died in exile. Agrippa, by imperial favor, became the heir of his brother-in-law, and the provinces of Galilee and Peræa were added to his other possessions.

      The favor evinced by Caligula towards Agrippa, which might naturally be extended to the Judæan people, awakened the envy of the heathens, and brought the hatred of the Alexandrian Greeks to a crisis. Indeed, the whole of the Roman Empire harbored secret and public enemies of the Judæans. Hatred of their race and of their creed was intensified by a lurking fear that this despised yet proud nation might one day attain to supreme power. But the hostile feeling against the Judæans reached its climax amongst the restless, sarcastic and pleasure-loving Greek inhabitants of Alexandria. They looked unfavorably upon the industry and prosperity of their Judæan neighbors, by whom they were surpassed in both these respects, and whom they did not excel even in artistic and philosophical attainments. These feelings of hatred dated from the time when the Egyptian queen entrusted Judæan generals with the management of the foreign affairs of her country, and they increased in intensity when the Roman emperors placed more confidence in the reliable Judæans than in the frivolous Greeks. Slanderous writers nourished this hatred, and in their endeavors to throw contempt upon the Judæans they falsified the history of which the Judæans were justly proud.

      The Stoic philosopher Posidonius circulated false legends about the origin and the nature of the divine worship of the Judæans, which legends had been originally invented by the courtiers of Antiochus Epiphanes. The disgraceful story of the worship of an ass in the Temple of Jerusalem, besides other tales as untrue and absurd, added to the assertion that the Judæans hated all Gentiles, found ready belief in a younger, contemporary writer, Apollonius Malo, with whom Posidonius had become acquainted in the island of Rhodes, and by whom they were widely circulated. Malo gave a new account of the history of the Judæan exodus, which he declared was occasioned by some enormity on the part of the Judæans; he described Moses as a criminal, and the Mosaic Law as containing the most abominable precepts. He declared that the Judæans were atheists, that they hated mankind in general; he accused them of alternate acts of cowardice and temerity, and maintained that they were the most uncultured people amongst the barbarians, and could not lay claim to the invention of any one thing which had benefited humanity. It was from these two Rhodian authors that the spiteful and venom-tongued Cicero culled his unworthy attack upon the Judæan race and the Judæan Law. In this respect he differed from Julius Cæsar, who, in spite of his associations with Posidonius and Malo, was entirely free from all prejudice against the Judæans.

      The Alexandrian Greeks devoured these calumnies with avidity, exaggerated them, and gave them still wider circulation. Only three Greek authors mentioned the Judæans favorably—Alexander Polyhistor, Nicolaus of Damascus, the confidant of Herod, and, lastly, Strabo, the most remarkable geographer of ancient times, who devoted a fine passage in his geographical and historical work to Judaism. Although he mentions the Judæans as having originated from Egypt, he does not repeat the legend that their expulsion was occasioned by some fault of their own. Far otherwise he explains the Exodus, affirming that the Egyptian mode of life, with its unworthy idolatry, had driven Moses and his followers from the shores of the Nile. He writes in praise of the Mosaic teaching relative to the unity of God, as opposed to the Egyptian plurality of deities, and of the spiritual, imageless worship of the Judæans in contrast to the animal worship of the Egyptians, and to the investing of the divinity with a human form among the Greeks. "How can any sensible man," he exclaims, "dare make an image of the Heavenly King?" Widely opposed to the calumniators of Judaism, Strabo teaches that the Mosaic Law was the great mainstay of righteousness, for it holds out the divine blessing to all those whose lives are pure. For some time after the death of their great lawgiver, Strabo maintains that the Judæans acted in conformity with the Law, doing right and fearing God. Of the sanctuary in Jerusalem he speaks with veneration, for, although the Judæan kings were often faithless to the Law of Moses and to their subjects, yet the capital of the Judæans was invested with its own dignity, and the people, far from looking upon it as the seat of despotism, revered and honored it as the Temple of God.

      One author exceeded all the other hostile writers in the outrageous nature of his calumnies; this was the Egyptian Apion, who was filled with burning envy at the prosperous condition of the Judæans. He gave a new and exaggerated account of all the old stories of his predecessors, and gained the ear of the credulous multitude by the readiness and fluency of his pen. Apion was one of those charlatans whose conduct is based on the assumption that the world wishes to be deceived, and therefore it shall be deceived. As expounder of the Homeric songs, he traveled through Greece and Asia Minor, and invented legends so flattering to the early Greeks that he became the hero of their descendants. He declared that he had witnessed most things of which he wrote, or that he had been instructed in them by the most reliable people; and even affirmed that Homer's shade had appeared to him, and had divulged which Grecian town had given birth to the oldest of Greek bards, but that he dared not publish that secret. On account of his intense vanity he was called the trumpet of his own fame, for he assured the Alexandrians that they were fortunate in being able to claim him as a citizen. It is not astonishing that so unscrupulous a man should have made use of the hatred they bore to the Judæans to do the latter all the injury in his power.

      But the hostility of the Alexandrians, based on envy and religious and racial antipathy, was suppressed under the reign of Augustus and Tiberius, when the imperial governors of Egypt sternly reprimanded all those who might have become disturbers of the peace. Affairs changed, however, when Caligula came to the throne, for the Alexandrians were then aware that the governor Flaccus, who had been a friend of Tiberius, was unfavorably looked upon by his successor, who was ready to lend a willing ear to any accusation against him. Flaccus, afraid of drawing the attention of the revengeful emperor upon himself, was cowed into submission by the Alexandrians, and became a mere tool in their hands. At the news of Agrippa's accession to the throne, they were filled with burning envy, and the delight of the Alexandrian Judæans, with whom Agrippa came into contact through the Alabarch Alexander, only incensed them still more and roused them to action.

      Two most abject beings were the originators and leaders of this anti-Judæan demonstration; a venal clerk of the court of justice, Isidorus, who was called by the popular wits, the Pen of Blood, because his pettifoggery had robbed many of their life, and Lampo, one of those unprincipled profligates that are brought forth by a burning climate and an immoral city. These two agitators ruled, on the one hand, the weak and helpless governor, and, on the other, they led the dregs of the people, who were prepared to give vent to their feelings of hatred towards the Judæans upon a sign from their leaders.

      Unfortunately, Agrippa, whose change of fortune had been an offense in the eyes of the Alexandrians, touched at their capital upon his return from Rome to Judæa (July, 38), and his presence roused the enemies of the Judæans to fresh conspiracies. These began with a farce, but ended for the Judæans in terrible earnest. At first Agrippa and his race were insultingly jeered at. A harmless fool, Carabas, was tricked out in a crown of papyrus and a cloak of plaited rushes; a whip was given him for a scepter, and he was placed on an eminence for a throne, where he was saluted by all passers-by as Marin (which, in the Chaldaic tongue, denotes "our master"). This was followed by the excitable mob's rushing at the dawn of the next day into the synagogues, carrying with them busts of the emperor, with the pretext of dedicating these places of worship to Caligula. In addition to this, at the importunate instance of the conspirators, the governor, Flaccus, was induced to withdraw from the Judæan inhabitants of Alexandria what they had held so gratefully from the first emperors—the right of citizenship. This was a terrible blow to the Judæans of Alexandria, proud as they were of their privileges, and justly entitled to the credit of having enriched this metropolis by their learning, their wealth, their love of art and their spirit of commerce equally

Скачать книгу