JEWS OR PAGANS? 139ors with Jewish types and then switched to pagan types at thebeginningof
Trajan’s reign.^34 Lydda-Diospolis was raised to city status only after 193 and
its coinage is entirely pagan, as is also the rare coinage of Joppa.^35 It may or
maynotbeacoincidencethatSepphorisstoppedissuing“Jewish”typeswhen
its name was changed to Diocaesarea (i.e., city of Zeus and Caesar) and that
Lydda’s elevation to city status involved a change of name, to Diospolis—city
of Zeus.^36 Lydda’s new name may have been intended as a compliment to
the emperor Severus, whose in-laws and heirs were ancestral priests of Zeus
Heliopolites(theBaalofBaalbek),agodwhoseimageisespeciallyprominent
ontheLyddancoins.^37 Butat TiberiasandNeapolistherewasnocomparable
coincidence of change of name and of coin types.
Prima facie, all this coinage of “Jewish” cities provides evidence for the
importance of the Greek gods and/or of their local Semitic equivalents in the
way the leaders chose to think about and celebrate their cities. The Tiberians
usedimagesofPoseidon,Asclepius,andHygieiatoemphasizetheimportance
to their city of the Sea of Galilee and the hot springs of Hamath, just as the
Sepphorites celebrated their ancient friendship with Rome, which had sur-
vived even the revolt of 66, with images of the Capitoline Triad. This is espe-
cially striking given that the Sepphorites presumably were obliged to pay the
specialJewishtaxtoCapitolineJupiter(orwerethey?Didtheyceaseofficially
to profess Judais mand thereby free the mselves fro mthe obligation to pay?),
deemed by all modern historians to have been humiliating to the payers. It
must again be emphasized that the coin types were items in a culture of dis-
play, little pieces of public political and religious discourse; but the display
and discourse were primarily internal, the coins seen and used only within
the cities. They therefore reflect the images of the cities the leaders wished
their fellow citizens, not Greek neighbors or imperial officials, to see.
Do the coins imply more about the public life of the cities? It is normally
assumed that gods depicted on city coins, especially in cultic situations, were
beneficiaries of public worship. If so, the gods on the Tiberian, Sepphorite,
and Lyddan coins cannot all be dismissed as metaphors, since all these cities
issuedcoins showinggods seatedin temples,which stronglysuggeststhe gods
wereactuallyworshiped.Tomyknowledgethisassumptionabouttherelation
betweengodsdepictedoncoinsandmunicipalcultshasneverbeenexamined
in a systematic way and it may be best not to draw hasty conclusions about
the civic religions of Tiberias, Sepphoris, and Lydda on the basis of the coins
(^34) Rosenberger, 3: 5–26; the Flavian coins are nos. 1–6.
(^35) Rosenberger, 2: 28–31, 76–78.
(^36) Sepphoris probably adopted its new name in honor of Hadrian’s visit to the province of
Judaea in 130: the name is first attested ona milestone of that year; see M. Hecker, “The Roman
Road Legio-Sepphoris,”BJPES(=Yediot) 25 (1961): 175–86, esp. 176. The pagan coins begin
under Antoninus.
(^37) See Herzog, “Iulia Domna,” inRE19.929.