Romans and Jews 433society. It does not follow that the wordtheosebeisor the equivalent possessed a techni-
cal significance that held uniformly throughout. However, it does give decisive support
to the proposition that gentiles, as individuals or groups, could participate in Jewish
communities with regularity and without difficulty. The openness of Jewish society to
gentiles is amply demonstrated. This remarkable embrace of non-Jews, at every social
level and in so rich a variety of forms, decisively refutes any notion that Jews harbored
ethnic reservations about Romans.
A very different institution on the Roman side provides equally revealing testimony
about ethnic attitudes: the award of citizenship to manumitted slaves. The vast majority
of Roman slaves stemmed from abroad—as victims of war, products of the slave trade,
or descendants of such persons. Jews were certainly among them. A noticeable num-
ber of them already dwelled in Rome by the mid-second centuryBCE, probably the
result of Rome’s eastern wars, particularly the war with the Syrian monarchy in the early
second century. More certainly followed after Pompey’s invasions of Syria and Judea
in the 60s and the wars conducted by Roman governors of Syria in the next decade.
Philo declares that the majority of Jews who dwelled across the Tiber had originally
been enslaved war captives, subsequently manumitted by their owners (Leg. ad Gaium,
155). This must refer largely to descendants of such captives, since few occasions came
for importing Jewish prisoners in the century before Philo. The text, however, clearly
attests to continuing Roman emancipation of Jewish slaves. The numbers are unknown,
but the principle is crucial. Ex-slaves of all imaginable ethnic backgrounds, Jews among
them, entered Roman civic life as citizens. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing in the age
of Augustus, put that practice in the brightest light: Rome owed its rise from the most
insignificant to the greatest nation on earth partly to its generous bestowal of citizen-
ship upon conquered peoples and emancipated slaves (Dion. Hal. 1.9.4). That may be
too charitable an interpretation. Romans dangled the reward of freedom as an incentive
for loyalty and submission. A host of obligations still remained for the freedman to his
patron after manumission. He gained the suffrage and other civic privileges, but remained
in the lower rungs of society. And the frequency of manumissions may be less impressive
than we like to imagine. The institution suggests pragmatism rather than philanthropy
(Bradley 1984: 81–112; Wiedemann 1985: 162–75; Gardner 1993: 7–51; Mouritsen
2011: 66–80). More significantly, however, it also served, whether or not with delib-
erate intent, as a means of integrating foreigners into Roman society (Mouritsen 2011:
69–71). Attempts by Augustus to reduce the frequency of manumission were consis-
tent with his social conservatism but say little if anything about Roman (or Augustan)
ethnic policy.
Manumitted Jews in Rome retained a sense of collective identity. They could make their
presence felt as a defined group in demonstrations in the Republic and in the Augustan
era (Cic.Flacc. 67; Jos.BJ, 2.81;Ant. 17.301). They even received from the emperor
assurance of special access to the grain supply if the Sabbath should fall on the day of its
distribution (Philo,Leg. ad Gaium, 158). Eligibility for grain required citizenship. These
Jews obviously had it in substantial numbers, most of them probably as descendants of
former slaves from Judea. It is perfectly clear that Romans had no qualms in augment-
ing their citizen body with immigrants and their progeny from a wide span of ethnic
backgrounds, languages, and traditions. So much for racial prejudice against Jews.