Alexandrian Riots (38)
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Alexandrian Riots (38)
OR:
Alexandrian Riots (38) on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

The Alexandrian pogrom, or Alexandrian riots, were attacks directed against Jews in 38CE in
Roman Alexandria The history of Alexandria dates back to the city's founding, by Alexander the Great, in 331 BC. Yet, before that, there were large port cities just east of Alexandria, at the western edge of what is now Abu Qir Bay. The Canopic (westernmost) br ...
, Egypt.


Statues of Caligula

The Roman emperor
Caligula Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (31 August 12 – 24 January 41), also called Gaius and Caligula (), was Roman emperor from AD 37 until his assassination in 41. He was the son of the Roman general Germanicus and Augustus' granddaughter Ag ...
had few reasons to trust the prefect of Egypt, Aulus Avilius Flaccus. Flaccus had been loyal to
Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus ( ; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was Roman emperor from AD 14 until 37. He succeeded his stepfather Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC to Roman politician Tiberius Cl ...
and had conspired against
Agrippina the Elder (Vipsania) Agrippina the Elder (also, in Latin, , "Germanicus's Agrippina"; – AD 33) was a prominent member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. She was the daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (a close supporter of the first Roman emperor, Aug ...
, Caligula's mother. In 38 CE, Caligula sent
Herod Agrippa Herod Agrippa I ( Roman name: Marcus Julius Agrippa; ), also simply known as Herod Agrippa, Agrippa I, () or Agrippa the Great, was the last king of Judea. He was a grandson of Herod the Great and the father of Herod Agrippa II, the last known k ...
to Alexandria unannounced. According to
Philo Philo of Alexandria (; ; ; ), also called , was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt. The only event in Philo's life that can be decisively dated is his representation of the Alexandrian J ...
, 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
synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...
s, an unprecedented provocation.


Riots at the synagogues

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. Flaccus was eventually removed from office, exiled, and ultimately executed.


Riots in 40 CE

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,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".


Eyewitness account

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."


See also

* Alexandria riot (66) *
Jewish–Roman wars The Jewish–Roman wars were a series of large-scale revolts by the Jews of Judaea against the Roman Empire between 66 and 135 CE. The conflict was driven by Jewish aspirations to restore the political independence lost when Rome conquer ...
*
History of the Jews in Egypt The history of the Jews in Egypt goes back to ancient times. Egyptian Jews or Jewish Egyptians refer to the Jewish community in Egypt who mainly consisted of Egyptian Arabic-speaking Rabbanites and Karaites. Though Egypt had its own community ...
*
History of the Jews in the Roman Empire The history of the Jews in the Roman Empire () traces the interaction of Jews and Romans during the period of the Roman Empire (27 BC – 476 AD). A Jewish diaspora had migrated to Rome and to the territories of Roman Europe from the land of I ...
* List of conflicts in the Near East


References


Further reading

* Levy, Richard S., ed. ''Antisemitism: A historical encyclopedia of prejudice and persecution'' (Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO, 2005) p.9.. {{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 in North Africa Ethnic cleansing in Africa Herod Agrippa Caligula