The end of Alexandria's great community
Date
115CE
115–117 CE
Under Trajan, Jewish uprisings spread from Libya to Egypt, Cyprus and perhaps Mesopotamia; the repression devastated the community of Alexandria.
Sourced narrative
Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.
6 statements
01A series of revolts
Josephus relates that, once the war in Judea was lost, surviving rebels tried to carry the revolt to Egypt and Cyrene, in today's Libya. They were turned in to the Romans by Jews who wanted no trouble. Their instinct was not absurd, however: those communities would eventually revolt, only decades later. The First Revolt opened a series of uprisings, in the diaspora and in Judea itself. The later ones are less well known because no historian like Josephus narrated them in order, but they may have threatened Rome even more and brought even harsher reprisals.
02From Libya to Cyprus
Under Trajan, between 115 and 117 CE, came the so-called Diaspora Revolt: several Jewish uprisings that ended up linked together. It apparently began in Libya, as one more clash between Jews and Greeks like those in Alexandria; this time, however, Rome failed to contain the violence, which reached Egypt, Cyprus and perhaps Mesopotamia. Cassius Dio, a Roman historian, ascribes atrocities in this war to the Jews, cannibalism included. The charge is likely invented: decades earlier, Greco-Egyptian authors such as Apion were already claiming that Jews kidnapped Greeks to sacrifice and devour them. Even so, it reveals the panic the revolt aroused among non-Jews.
03The repression
The harshness of the repression shows how great the danger was. In Mesopotamia thousands were killed; Cyprus forbade Jews to remain; in Egypt, the Alexandrian community was crushed. Jews still lived in the city, but the community that had given the world the Septuagint and Philo practically vanished.
Context
In the mixed cities of North Africa, Jews shared cities with large Greek-speaking and indigenous communities, and coexistence often turned to violence. Alexandria is the best-known case. Greeks and Egyptians resented the Jews, Rome stoked the rivalry by sometimes taking sides and sometimes setting one group against the other, and the Jews, insecure in their position, feared their neighbors and at times attacked them. In 38 CE an anti-Jewish riot left many dead and synagogues destroyed; in 41, with Caligula's death, came the Jewish reprisal; in 66 a new fight ended with a Roman massacre of Jews.
§ 01Geography
Where it happened
§ 04Network
Connections
§ 05Bibliography
Further reading
No specific reading recorded for this event.
§ 06Apparatus
Sources on this page
- 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 99; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 520inspect
- 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 99; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 99inspect
- 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 99inspect
- 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 99inspect
- 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 99inspect
- 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 99; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 520inspect
- Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
- Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
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- Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.