Language:
English
Year of publication:
1998
Titel der Quelle:
Historia; Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte
Angaben zur Quelle:
47,1 (1998) 77-107
Keywords:
Antisemitism
Abstract:
Compares the treatment by Latin authors of two disliked Eastern "barbarians", the Dacians and the Jews, both of whom carried out failed rebellions against Rome. Some of the authors expressed an animus toward Jews that they did not have toward the Dacians, thus demonstrating that Romans did not consider the Jews to be merely another group of unruly barbarians. States that the views of Cicero and other writers were influenced by Greek Jew-haters, who concocted a Greco-Egyptian version of Jewish history in order to slander the Jews and convince the Romans to put an end to the Jewish state. Seneca's anti-Jewish writings may have stemmed from a visit to Egypt, after which he began to hate Oriental religions and was horrified by the growing number of Jewish proselytes in Rome. Tacitus, writing after the defeat of Judea, moderated the Greco-Egyptian version of history, but he hated the Jews, probably due to resentment of their influence in Rome, and especially their proselytizing. His contemporary, the satirist Juvenal, slandered Jewish customs and religion for the same reason. Concludes that the treatment of the Dacians by these authors was more favorable because "they were not proselytizers, had no Diaspora, and never endangered Roman mores".
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