In classical antiquity one of the most perplexing things that has come down to us is the comment by the Roman historian Suetonius regarding the jews in his ‘Life of Julius Caesar’ where he writes in an off-hand comment that following the death and funeral of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.:
‘Thereupon the musicians and professional mourners, who had walked in the funeral train wearing the robes that he had himself worn at his four triumphs, tore these in pieces and flung them on the flames – to which veterans who had assisted at his triumphs added the arms that they had then borne. Many women in the audience sacrificed their jewellery together with their children’s breast-plaques and robes. Public grief was enhanced by crowds of foreigners lamenting in their own fashion, especially Jews, who came flocking to the forum several nights in succession.’ (1)
This comment has often been used to claim that Caesar was himself pro-jewish and/or that the other Greco-Roman writers of antiquity who discuss/mention the jews were ‘bigoted’/’prejudiced’ and thus their comments about the jews are not to be taken as seriously as they might otherwise be because Julius Caesar – easily the most famous Roman in history – was pro-jewish or a ‘friend to the jews’. (2)
I have previously discussed this reference as part of Suetonius’ series of ‘Lives’ which contain some incredibly important mentions of the jews where I observed concerning this passage that:
‘There are several things to note on the basis of this history in that it indicates that there was a significant colony of jews in Rome by the time of Caesar’s death, which is important in that it tells us that jews could well have been playing a notable role in the affairs of state - albeit behind the scenes - at this fairly early stage.
The second is something Henry Ford most famously pointed out in ‘The International Jew’ in so far as jews have a tendency to try to be something too hard. So, in Ford’s case: they tried to be American but ended up being hyper-American and in the case of Rome they ended up being hyper-Roman. This is demonstrated in the fact that jews ‘especially’ ‘flocked to the forum’ to pay tribute to Caesar who they naturally saw as an object to venerate for their own best egoistic advantage as those who did not venerate Caesar would surely have been looked upon as siding with his murderers lead by Brutus.
The third is more conjectural in that Suetonius mentions how many Romans sacrificed jewellery to throw it in the flames as an offering to a great warrior and statesman in the true Roman model. Now obviously jewellery would have included large amounts of precious metals, stones and gems which would not have been melted or otherwise rendered useless by the funeral pyre (as it isn’t likely to have been hot enough). Thus, it is plausible to suggest that part of the reason for the jews flocking to the forum for several night was to pick clean the offerings to the divine Julius to clean up, re-use and sell on to the highest bidder.
It might be conjectural, but if Suetonius’ account is accurate, it firstly explains why the jews should flock to the forum at night in such numbers and secondly why Suetonius deigns to mention that the jews were particularly drawn to the forum under cover of darkness. Perhaps Suetonius suspected some mischief was afoot from the jews but being the neutral (by Roman standards) scholar of history he was he could not uncover any proof that this was the case, but he could make mention of the fact that this was rather odd and hence worthy of being recorded. As otherwise why bother and single out the jews for special mention?’’ (2)
To build on this I will point to classicist Barry Strauss’ commentary on Suetonius’ comment which largely echoes and reinforces my own:
‘A Roman general, victorious in various provinces, would have many foreign clients. Caesar had the greatest number of them all. Besides, he had made a name for himself as one who championed various foreign elites, especially in Italian Gaul but also in the so-called Province (the Provence region of France) and Hispania (Spain) as well as in various other communities around the empire. One of Caesar’s most successful and long-lasting alliances was with various Jewish communities.
His relationship with the Jews was very different from that of Pompey – who conquered Judea, looted the Temple, deported Jewish slaves to Rome, and paved the way for the country to be diminished and divided. Caesar, by contrast, declared Judea an ally and friend of the Roman people, restored its territorial integrity, reduced taxes, and allowed the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. He granted privileges to Roman and other diaspora Jewish communities.
Caesar’s friendliness towards the Jews marks a refreshing change from the verbal hostility of many elite Romans such as Cicero, Horace, Tacitus, and Juvenal, not to mention Pompey’s brutality. Yet the relationship between Caesar and the Jews was surely a marriage of convenience. In Egypt in 48 B.C. Jewish troops came to Caesar’s rescue against his Egyptian enemies. Caesar remember this and perhaps saw Judea as a base against Parthia. In the Land of Israel, chances are that many saw Caesar as an occupied – better than Pompey but still unwelcome. And Caesar favoured Antipater, father of King Herod, who was hated by both the rabbis and by many in the Jewish masses.
The Jews who mourned Caesar night after night might have genuinely admired him. Even if they disliked Caesar, perhaps they wanted to be on good terms with Caesar’s friends if they saw them as the likely winners in the power struggle.’ (3)
Now Strauss – who is himself jewish – is correct in drawing that conclusion that it simply isn’t likely that the jews ‘genuinely admired him’ but rather regarded him as a better occupier than his forebears and – as it happens – those republicans who took control of Judea in the wake of Caesar’s assassination.
The historical context to the jews conduct is that Judea had long been a hot bed of political intrigue, murder and civil strife with the Maccabees – with the factions led respectively by High Priest John Hyrcanus II and his brother Aristobulus II – in conflict with each other over the succession with the Roman governor playing the role of arbiter to their murderous political disputes. (4)
For example, in 57 B.C. the new Roman governor Gabinus – in a bid to split up the warring jews and render Judea into a quiescent territory – split it up into five different fiefdoms/kingdoms in the wake of a revolt by Alexander a son of Aristobulus II over the ‘audacity’ of Gabinus’ moving to rebuild the pagan Hellenistic/non-jewish cities on the coast facing and to the south of Judea. (5)
This naturally spiralled over time with Gaius Cassius Longinus – then a lieutenant of Pompey – invading Judea after the jews under Pitholaus and Aristobulus II had betrayed Rome, formally allied themselves with the Parthian Empire and risen against the Romans and all the gentiles with the intent of massacring them only for the Parthians to abandon them and make a separate peace with Rome in 54-56 B.C. (6)
Incidentally It was this history of jewish alliances with Rome’s major opponent in the East – the Parthian Empire – during which the jews would revolt and act as a fifth column right across Roman territory that led to the savage and seemingly disproportionate military response from the Roman empire to the First Jewish Revolt from 66 to 70 A.D.
This is also why the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian pursued what might reasonably be termed a ‘final solution to the jewish question’ – which failed in large part because later emperors lessened the restrictions and violently anti-jewish laws that Trajan and Hadrian put in place – in the wake of the Kitos War (aka the Second Jewish Revolt) of 116 to 118 A.D. and Hadrian made even more draconian in the wake of the Bar Kochba Revolt of 132 to 135 A.D. because fighting major jewish anti-gentile mass uprisings/conspiracies to commit genocide across what is now Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Libya, Algeria and Tunisia every 1-2 decades was simply ridiculous and impractical.
This link to the Parthians is why Hadrian deployed 6-7 full Legions plus tens of thousands of Auxilia and smashed the jews once – and so he thought – for all, destroyed every synagogue, made Judaism illegal, killed over half a million jews, sold hundreds thousands more into slavery, annexed Judea completely to Roman rule and ran what were effectively Roman death squads who were seeking out and executing every rabbis and jewish scholars they could find.
Moving back to the beginning of this cycle in 53 B.C. the Romans – not known for being overly merciful towards those who engaged in wholesale betrayal of the Roman state – under Gaius Cassius Longinus responded to this jewish treason and attempted mass murder of every non-jew (and ‘jewish heretic’) in Judea and the coastal regions of Gaza and all of Syria by cutting a bloody swathe through Judea and enslaving circa 30,000 jews before placing Aristobulus II’s rival and brother John Hyrcanus II on the throne of Judea. (7)
Then the jews – taking advantage of intra-Roman conflict – began allying with specific sides in the burgeoning Civil War between Caesar and Pompey/the Senate.
Schaefer summarizes the events as follows:
‘With the outbreak of the civil wars in Italy (in 49 BCE), Judaea was treated more than ever as a plaything of the competing political interests in Rome. The first victims were Aristobulus and his son Alexander. Aristobulus, who Caesar had set free in Rome in order to use him for his own purposes in Judaea, was poisoned while still in Rome by followers of Pompey, while Alexander was beheaded in Antioch on the orders of Pompey’s father-in-law.
This left only the High Priest Hyrcanus and his nephew Antigonus, Aristobulus’ surviving son, as contestants in the internal power struggle amongst the Jews. Hyrcanus had shown himself to be a weak personality from the start. He was doubtless also more conservative and orthodox in his beliefs (hence closer to the Temple aristocracy) than Aristobulus, who inclined more to the Hellenistic ideal of kingship. It is one of history’s ironies that it was precisely Hyrcanus who was to facilitate the rise to power of the family that, in the person of Herod, was to embody the acme of Hellenistic powers structures in Palestine.
Hyrcanus’ most important ally in the powers struggle between himself and Aristobulus following the death of Salome Alexandra had been the Idumaean Antipater, who was married to a Nabataean and enjoyed good relations with the Nabataean king Aretas III. Antipater was strategos (military commander) of Idumaea, a district south of Jerusalem which had first conquered and forcibly judaised under John Hyrcanus. Antipater continued to stand by Hyrcanus as events unfolded, although this is not so much because he was a faithful adherent of the latter’s political line, but rather in order to use him to achieve power in Palestine itself.
After the death of Pompey (in 48 BCE), Hyrcanus had his “henchman” Antipater had no alternative but to attempt to win the approval of Caesar. When Caesar came to Syria in 47 BCE, the two rival parties – Hyrcanus/Antipater and Antigonus – competed for his favour (just as in former times: in 64 BCE with Pompey’s governor Scaurus, in 63 BCE with Pompey himself). Caesar decided in favour of the Hyrcanus/Antipater team (probably by way of reward for the military support Antipater had given him in Alexandria) and revised the measures implemented by Pompey and Gabinus. The political system of Judaea was now reformed for a third time in less than twenty years.’ (8)
Caesar’s reforms in Judea simply amounted to the following: (9)
A) Hyrcanus was appointed High Priest as well as Ethnarch (i.e., ruler) of the jews and this was now a hereditary title.
B) Hyrcanus was awarded the title ‘Ally and Friend of the Roman people’ which was also now hereditary.
C) Hyrcanus was given permission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem which had been demolished by Pompey and was also awarded the city of Joppa and the fertile plain of Jezreel. Plus, the jews of the Diaspora – specifically in Alexandria and the Asia Minor – were given important privileges and protections.
D) Antipater was made a Roman citizen and Procurator (basically Roman governor) of Judea.
E) Judea was exempted from having to provide Auxilia to the Roman army.
F) In return for the city of Joppa, Judea was to pay a significant tribute to Rome for the privilege of governing it and also pay Rome part of all customs duties levied there.
G) Judea was to pay Rome a significant tribute annually which was to be delivered each year to the Phoenician port of Sidon.
There is a strong tendency among philo-Semites and jews to focus on point C and the ‘important privileges and protections’ which they use to claim Caesar was a philo-Semite and ‘friend to the jews’, but as Strauss notes this was all simply political stratagem for Caesar (10) – with which Schaefer also agrees – (11) and he only rather cynically cared about Judea not causing problems and distracting his attention, while also providing large amounts of funding to the Roman exchequer in form of the annual tributes and customs duties from Judea and the city of Joppa.
But what about the ‘important privileges and protections’ mentioned by Schaefer?
Well despite there being a strong tendency to make much of these among jews and philo-Semites; the key is the reference to Alexandria and the Asia Minor mentioned by Schaefer (12) because – as Gruen explains at length – (13) this actually concerned the free practice of Second Temple Judaism as there had been a series of problems with jews being prevented from practicing their religious rites across the near east – notably in the Greek cities of Halicarnassus and Miletus in Asia Minor as well as Alexandria in Egypt as well as barriers to their attained ‘special food’ (aka kosher food) as required.
It isn’t so much that Caesar gave the jews power and influence but rather he simply granted them the freedom to practice Second Temple Judaism and stopped the Greeks of Halicarnassus, Miletus and Alexandria discriminating against them within the bounds of the Roman Empire.
In essence then Caesar is then exposed not as a philo-Semite nor a ‘friend to the jews’ but rather someone who didn’t see jews as a particular threat – and despite some initial rumblings with the largely unknown expulsion of the jews from Rome in 139 B.C. as recorded by Valerius Maximus being a bad omen – (14) and sought to cynically use the jews as a cash cow to fund his regime and his wars.
Further evidence of just this can seen in the wake of Caesar’s death with the jews becoming once again sources for ready cash to be directly exploited by Gaius Cassius Longinus – the same man who had put down the jewish revolt in support of the Parthians in 53 B.C. and a key figure in the murder of Caesar on the Ides of March 44 B.C. – who Caesar had appointed to be Praetor for Syria in the same year.
He was then sent by the senate to Syria as Pro-Consul in 43 B.C. after the murder of Caesar. Where he extracted large amounts of tribute - 700 talents of silver - and because the jews refused to pay up immediately; he took all the jewish inhabitants of four cities - Gophna, Emmaus, Lydda and Thamma - as slaves. (15) They were only liberated and the tribute repaid later by the explicit order of Mark Anthony after he had re-conquered Judea and Syria from Cassius and the senate. (16)
Ironically Herod the Great – Antipater I had died in 43 B.C. and his son had thus succeeded him as Procurator of Judea – was an ardent supporter of Cassius then switched to Mark Anthony and then switched again after Mark Anthony and Cleopatra’s defeat at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. to supporting Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus).
Now from the foregoing discussion we can see that Caesar might have been misguided in his cynical attempts to use the jews for his own political benefits but he was no friend of the jews that is to be sure, while the jews are revealed to be a scheming murderous people with a habit of trying to sadistically murder everyone and anyone in order to get ahead or achieve power as well as believing that they have a right to… well… rule the world.
References
(1) Suetonius, Iul., 84.:1
(2) Quoted from my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/suetonius-on-the-jews
(3) Barry Strauss, 2015, ‘The Death of Caesar’, 1st Edition, Simon & Schuster: New York, p. 178
(4) Peter Schaefer, 1995, ‘The History of the Jews in Antiquity’, 1st Edition, Routledge: New York, pp. 81-85
(5) Ibid., p. 81
(6) Ibid.; pp. 81-82; Strauss, Op. Cit., p. 74
(7) Strauss, Op. Cit., p. 72; Schaefer, Op. Cit., p. 82; also, Josephus, Jud. Ant., 14:7 and Josephus, Bel. Jud., 1:8
(8) Schaefer, Op. Cit., pp. 82-83
(9) Ibid., p. 83
(10) Strauss, Op. Cit., p. 178
(11) Schaefer, Op. Cit., pp. 81-84
(12) Ibid., p. 83
(13) Erich Gruen, 2002, ‘Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans’, 1st Edition, Harvard University Press: Harvard, pp. 91-95
(14) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/valerius-maximus-on-the-expulsion
(15) Josephus, Jud. Ant., 14:11; Josephus, Bel. Jud., 1:11
(16) Josephus, Jud. Ant., 14:12