CHAPTER III

CALLED upon to examine the origin and causes of the spreading resentment, of the fermenting revolution against Rome's rule, one curious circumstance is bound to attract our attention. This circumstance is that the Jews themselves petitioned Rome for Judea's annexation to the Roman province of Syria. Rome, on the other hand, did not grant the petition immediately. Only after years of Archelaus's misrule in Jerusalem was he finally deposed and Judea annexed in 6 A. D. Of course there were good reasons for the Jewish petition; the immediate concrete situation must have suggested precisely such action both on the part of Judea and on the part of Rome. But behind the immediate situation a vista is opened on the character and quality of Jewish political independence.

The events themselves are simple enough; judged by themselves they are insignificant; but valued psychologically, viewed as indications, what a light they throw upon Jewish nationalism and anationalism, upon Jewish political life with its dreams, its aspirations, its struggles and its fate. One has only to glance at the position of the heirs of Herod before Cæsar's throne; one has only to listen to the petitions and supplications of Herod's heirs and of the Judean ambassadors to realize that the political doom has long ceased to be a specter and a threat, but has been accepted by the

Jewish statesmen as an actual status quo, as a matter of fact, whether the plain people realize it in their every-day life or not.

Thus it seems that in their petitions they were haggling over minor terms and comforts; only details of submission appear to have worried them. In reality they were trying to save their culture and their religion. But why did the Jewish ambassadors demand provincial annexation? Why did eight thousand Jewish residents in Rome second Jerusalem's petition? Did they not prefer to be at least nominally independent? Fifty Jewish ambassadors were prostrated before the throne of Cæsar begging for annexation; the entire Jewish population of Rome was supporting these ambassadors and opposing the claims of Herod's heirs. Where then was Jewish patriotism, where the exclusive nationalism, clothed in all-consuming religious fervor? Fifty ambassadors were not likely to represent one particular clique; the entire Jewish populace in Rome could not be moved by considerations of sheer expediency. On questions of reason, feasibility, and expediency we divide; only on the most elemental emotions are we united. Hence their petition could not possibly have gone against those essentials which then constituted Jews as Jews; it could not go contrary to their religion and their nationalism.

Indeed it did not. Their supplications were dictated by austere and conservative religious nationalism. It was not for minor comforts they were bargaining. Rather did they feel that where the question at issue

was between so-called political independence and religion, then indeed it was their religion, as they understood it, their Jewish culture that they could not possibly sacrifice. It was in reality a phase of the nationalistic struggle, although it took the curious form of a petition for annexation. If they should be managed by a Roman procurator, they hoped for complete cultural autonomy, and they expected to manage their own local affairs. Ruled by a Herodian prince, they were quite helpless to do so; for the Herodians, while nominally Jews, were striving hard to be culturally Romans. Naturally enough the cultural aspiration of their entire entourage was also Roman and anational; and this anationalism was insidious and widespread, especially in upper-class circles.

The Jews' petition for annexation was therefore to be an exchange of their sham political independence for very real cultural autonomy. In other words, complete independence looked to the more enlightened part of the population like a forlorn hope; and the struggle was waged for a home rule that would not infringe upon religious traditions. Statesmen they

may perhaps have been, to follow these tactics; but they were certainly not philosophers. They did not realize that the growing religious and cultural conservatism and nationalism were an ideological expression of their political unrest; were but the spiritual flavor of their national and political struggle for independence. They did not realize that their religious culture and their political nationalism were so intimately tied up together that they could be served only

by the sword. Hence it was most unlikely that cultural autonomy could really accept and adjust itself to the political downfall and the annexation as a province for which they were petitioning. Besides, so far as Rome was concerned, there was but one practical alternative. A Herodian government under Rome, offering no resistance to Rome, was precarious and undermining. It was tantamount to a complete cultural surrender.

Among the abuses of Herod, which the ambassadors quoted as reason for annexation, is the frank statement, that

Herod did not abstain from making many innovations, according to his own inclinations. . . . That he never stopped adorning the cities that lay in their neighborhood, but that the cities belonging to his own government were ruined and utterly destroyed.1 Just how was Herod adorning the cities of the Gentiles? It is not uninteresting or unimportant. In Samaria Herod built

a very large temple to Cæsar, and had laid round about it ... the city Sebaste, from Sebastus or Augustus.

With similar temples to Cæsar he filled Judea, and when in honor of Cæsar

he had filled his own country with temples, he poured out the like plentiful marks of his esteem into his province, and built many Icities which he called Cesareas.2

In one of these Cesareas Herod also erected an

amphitheater, and theater, and market-place, in a manner agreeable to that denomination; and appointed games every fifth year 1 Josephus: Antiquities, XVIII, 2, 2. Josephus: Jewish Wars, I, 21, 2-4.

and called them. . . Cæsar's games, and he himself proposed the largest prizes upon the hundred and ninety-second Olympiad.1

Herod went farther still in emphasizing his adherence to so-called Greco-Roman culture. He built amphitheaters in Tripoli, Damascus and Ptolomeis, agoras at Berytus and Tyre, theaters in Sidon and Damascus.

...

And when Apollo's temple had been burned down, he rebuilt it at his own expense. . . . What need I speak of the presents he made to the Lycians and Samnians? or of his great liberality through all Ionia? . . . And are not the Athenians and Lacedemonians, the Nicopolitans and that Pergamus which is in Mysia, full of donations that Herod presented them with? 2

As Herod's most splendid gift Josephus regards the endowment of the Olympic games, which were suffering much from lack of funds.

What favors he bestowed on the Eleans was a donation not only in common to all Greece, but to all the habitable earth as far as the glory of the Olympic games reached.3

As a matter of fact Herod even took part in these games himself.

These activities of Herod are obviously too strenuous, too consistent to be casual. Inwardly anything but a Roman gentleman, he took the world-culture, Hellenism, for his ideal, and made outward assimilation to that culture his ardent endeavor. He was far from being a unique specimen in Judea. Many felt as he did, but they belonged to the upper classes and were certainly a small minority. The bulk of the popu