The Alexandrian pogrom, or Alexandrian riots were attacks directed against Jews in 38 CE in Roman Alexandria, Egypt. The Roman emperor Caligula had few reasons to trust the prefect of Egypt,

Aulus Avilius Flaccus Aulus Avilius Flaccus was a Roman eques who was appointed ''praefectus'' or governor of Roman Egypt from 33 CE to 38. His rule coincided with the riots against Alexandria's Jewish population in 38. According to some accounts, including Philo's, ...

. Flaccus had been loyal to Tiberius and had conspired against Caligula's mother. In 38 CE, Caligula sent

Herod Agrippa Herod Agrippa (Roman name Marcus Julius Agrippa; born around 11–10 BC – in Caesarea), also known as Herod II or Agrippa I (), was a grandson of Herod the Great and King of Judea from AD 41 to 44. He was the father of Herod Agrippa II, th ...

to Alexandria unannounced. According to

Philo Philo of Alexandria (; grc, Φίλων, Phílōn; he, יְדִידְיָה, Yəḏīḏyāh (Jedediah); ), also called Philo Judaeus, was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt. Philo's de ...

, the visit was met with jeers from the Greek population who saw Agrippa as the king of the Jews. Flaccus tried to placate both the Greek population and Caligula by having statues of the emperor placed in Jewish synagogues, an unprecedented provocation. This invasion of the synagogues was perhaps resisted by force, since Philo writes that Flaccus "was destroying the synagogues, and not leaving even their name." In response, Flaccus then "issued a notice in which he called us all foreigners and aliens ... allowing any one who was inclined to proceed to exterminate the Jews as prisoners of war." Philo says that in response, the mobs "drove the Jews entirely out of four quarters f the city and crammed them all into a very small portion of one ... while the populace, overrunning their desolate houses, turned to plunder, and divided the booty among themselves as if they had obtained it in war." In addition, Philo says their enemies, "slew them and thousands of others with all kinds of agony and tortures, and newly invented cruelties, for wherever they met with or caught sight of a Jew, they stoned him, or beat him with sticks". Philo even says, "the most merciless of all their persecutors in some instances burnt whole families, husbands with their wives, and infant children with their parents, in the middle of the city, sparing neither age nor youth, nor the innocent helplessness of infants." Some men, he says, were dragged to death, while "those who did these things, mimicked the sufferers, like people employed in the representation of theatrical farces". Other Jews were

crucified Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross or beam and left to hang until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. It was used as a punishment by the Persians, Carthagin ...

. Flaccus was eventually removed from office, exiled, and ultimately executed. Riots again erupted in Alexandria in 40 CE between Jews and Greeks.Josephus, ''Antiquities of the Jews'' XVIII.8.1. Jews were accused of not honouring the emperor. Disputes occurred in the city of Jamnia.Philo of Alexandria, ''On the Embassy to Gaius'' XXX.201. Jews were angered by the erection of a clay altar and destroyed it. In response, Caligula ordered the erection of a statue of himself in the Jewish

Temple of Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two now-destroyed religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusa ...

,Philo of Alexandria, ''On the Embassy to Gaius'' XXX.203. a demand in conflict with Jewish monotheism.Philo of Alexandria, ''On the Embassy to Gaius'' XVI.115. In this context, Philo wrote that Caligula "regarded the Jews with most especial suspicion, as if they were the only persons who cherished wishes opposed to his". The sole source is Philo of Alexandria, himself a Jew, who witnessed the riots and afterwards led the Jewish delegation to Caligula, and requested the re-establishment of legal Jewish residence in Alexandria. Gambetti, Sandra, "Alexandrian Pogrom", in Levy, Richard S. (2005). ''Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution'', Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 9. Philo's writings on the topic are found in two sources: ''In Flaccum'' (meaning "Against Flaccus"), which is wholly devoted to the riots, and ''Legatio ad Gaium'' (meaning "Embassy to Caligula"), which makes some references to the event in its introduction.Gambetti, p13 Scholarly research around the subject has been divided on certain points, including whether the Alexandrian Jews fought to keep their citizenship or to acquire it, whether they evaded the payment of the poll-tax or prevented any attempts to impose it on them, and whether they were safeguarding their identity against the Greeks or against the Egyptians.Gambetti, Sandra, ''The Alexandrian Riots of 38 C.E. and the Persecution of the Jews: A Historical Reconstruction'', pages 11-12

Terminology

Sandra Gambetti states that " holars have frequently labeled the Alexandrian events of 38 CE as the first ''pogrom'' in history, and have often explained them in terms of an ''ante litteram'' explosion of anti-Semitism." In her book ''The Alexandrian Riots of 38 CE and the Persecution of the Jews'' (2009), however, Gambetti "deliberately avoids any words or expressions that in any way connect, explicitly or implicitly, the Alexandrian events of 38 CE to later events in modern... Jewish experience" as – in her view – this would "require[] a comparative re-discussion of two historical frames". Adalbert Polacek referred to the event as a holocaust in his work ''Holocaust, Two Millennia Ago'', a characterization that Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev believes is "misleading and methodologically unsound."

References

{{Massacres of Jews Roman Alexandria Jews and Judaism in the Roman Empire 1st century in Egypt Jewish rebellions 38 30s in the Roman Empire 30s conflicts 1st-century Judaism Anti-Jewish pogroms

Terminology

See also

References