The Maccabean Revolution taining the xenophobic laws, should be sprinkled with the broth of the
meat; that the lamp, which they call undying and which burns con-
tinually in the temple, should be extinguished; and that the high priest
and the rest of the Jews should be compelled to partake of the meat.^37Sidetes, however, was not moved but made peace with the Jews. What con-
cerns us, however, is that the story, for all its mythical elements, embodies the
conception, followed later by Tacitus,Hist. , , on the part of a pagan author,
that Antiochus had been seized by the conviction that Jewish observances
were undesirable and should be abolished. It should be noted, however, that
there is no hint from this pagan source of ‘‘syncretism.’’ What was involved
in the view of Diodorus was abolition.
Now it is a notorious (and true) commonplace that ancient states, though
they controlled (and might therefore reject, or attempt to reject) the impor-
tation of foreign cults, fundamentally respected the existing gods and cults of
different localities. The Ptolemies for instance, regulated and controlled the
revenues of Egyptian temples. But there was no question of their attempting
to abolish them and institute Greek gods and temples. In Syria, as we saw
earlier, non-Greek temples and cults survived the Seleucid period and were
famous and frequented under the Roman Empire. In Babylonia cuneiform
documents associated with the major temples persist through the Seleucid
period; a particularly relevant one shows Antiochus I Soter (–/..)
proclaiming his restoration of the temples of Esagila and Ezida.^38 The only
hint of a different attitude comes in an illustration given by Pausanias of the
justice and piety of Seleucus I (–..); ‘‘when he founded Seleucia on
the river Tigris, and brought Babylonian colonists to it, he left standing both
the walls of Babylon and the sanctuary of Bel, and allowed the Chaldaeans
to dwell round the sanctuary as before.’’^39 The passage contains just a sug-
gestion of presumptions which might have been relevant when a city called
‘‘Antiochia’’ was established in place of Jerusalem. But in fact Seleucus had
permitted the continuation of the local cult; and in Jerusalem not only had
Antiochus III given privileges which specifically reflected the Temple cult,
and the structure of the society related to it, but (according to Macc. :)
Seleucus IV Philopator (–..) had paid for the sacrifices out of his
own funds.
What happened under Antiochus Epiphanes was therefore both an ex-
ception to an undeniable general pattern and a break with the established
. Diodorus /, I (Loeb trans.) Stern,Greek and Latin AuthorsI, no. .
. J. B. Pritchard,Ancient Near Eastern Texts(), .
. Pausanias,Description of Greece, , , trans. Frazer.