JEWS OR PAGANS? 133probably be added legionary troops, for although their fixed presence in or
near the city is not mentioned in rabbinic literature or any other source, the
Latinepitaphsoftwoservingtroops(asopposedtoveterans)foundinTiberias
suggest that a detachment of the Sixth Legion Ferrata, based at Legio-Ca-
percotna, was encamped at Tiberias.^12
Given the likely demographic composition of the city, how are we to ex-
plain the explicitly pagan character of its material remains? First I will survey
the material and then offer some brief reflections on its character.
Scholarly convention has tended to introduce a distinction between two
categories of material evidence—coins and everything else—and different
techniques have been used for dismissing the implications of each. Statues,
bothpublicandprivate,decoratedfurnitureandtableware,mosaicpavements
decorated with mythological scenes, after all, create a rather different set of
problemsfromimagesoncoins.Thelatterarecommonlyassumedtoinclude
moreorless straightforward,andauthorized,representationsof thecities’“of-
ficial”religiousbehavior—portraitsofgodsseatedintemples,imagesofcultic
acts, and so on.^13 Therefore, thecoins can only be reconciled with the knowl-
edgethatthecitieswereinhabitedmainlybyJewsbydrasticmeans,forexam-
ple, by the invention of a historical narrative (Hadrian disenfranchised the
Jews, entrusting control of their cities to pagans) not attested in any ancient
source. Once the coins are dismissed, most of the other types of paganizing
material can be combined with pagan-seeming imagery used in synagogues
and other definitely Jewish contexts, such as the necropoleis of Beth Shearim
and Rome, and discussed as aspects of the hellenization of Judaism, though,
of course, the actual tools of sacrifice, several examples of which were discov-
ered at Sepphoris, have to be attributed to pagan interlopers. The main ques-
tion in that case is, How did Jewsas adherents of an ideological system that
tended to frown on representations of humans, let alone of godsdefend their
use of figurative art? This issue—the use of figurative, including paganizing,
representation by the ancient Jews—is the topic of an old but durable debate
between E. R. Goodenough and his followers and their students on the one
side, and a loosely arrayed opposition on the other, of who mMichael Avi-
(^12) See M. Schwabe, “Letoldot Teveryah: Mehqar Epigrafi,” M. Schwabe and Y. Gutmann,
eds.,Sefer Yohanan Lewy(Jerusalem, 1949), pp. 200–251, nos. 18–9 = L. di Segni, “Ketovot
Teveryah,” inTeveryah, pp. 70–95, nos. 11–12. Also B. Isaac,TheLimitsofEmpire, p. 434, who,
however,inlocatinga detachmentoftheTenthLegion Fretensisinthecity,failedtonotice that
Aurelius Marcellinus,centurion ofthe Legion,was seventy-four years old whenhe diedand had
obviously(re?)settledin Tiberiasafter hisdischarge manyyears earlier; hisepitaphthusprovides
no evidence for the presence of the Tenth Legion in the city. For rabbinic comments about
minim, possibly Christians, in Tiberias and Sepphoris, see Bu ̈chler,StudiesinJewishHistory;R.
Kalmin, “Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,”HTR87 (1994):
155–70.
(^13) This is, for example, the assumption of R. MacMullen,Paganism in the Roman Empire
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 25.