160 CHAPTER FOUR“runningoutofsteam”andtheimageryinanycasesometimeshadanallegori-
calcharacter(Dionysus=Prosperity).^105 Attheveryleast,theimageryacquires
its meaning as decoration only by its embeddedness in a pagan religious sys-
tem. Even so, we should be careful not to assume that most Tiberian or Sep-
phorite town councillors were Lucian-like sophisticates. Their counterparts
elsewhereintheempireoftenattributedrealreligious(or“magical”)meaning
to their domestic decoration, and Tertullian could take it for granted that his
Christian readers were aware that garlands hanging on doorways were offer-
ings to gods like Janus.^106 Thus, the decorative use of Dionysiac imagery may
have been thought an aspect of real (pagan) piety. A constructive judaizing
interpretation, of the type associated with E. R. Goodenough, is excluded by
thefactthatbefore300theimagesneverappearinacontextmarkedasJewish,
and when they begin to do so, as at Beth Shearim, it seems more compelling
to view the two sets of cultural markers as being in tension.
Some might be tempted to posit a class distinction in religious practice, to
suppose that paganizing was limited to the well-to-do, who needed it as a way
to show off their wealth (post-Destruction Judais mhaving not yet developed
effective ways of doing so) and associate themselves with the rulers. Further-
more,inareligioussystembuiltarounda“theodicyofgoodfortune,”itstands
to reason that the less fortunate would have been ambivalent—an ambiva-
lence that may in this case have tended to favor (partial) adherence to Juda-
ism.^107 While there may be some truth to this, it is also reductive and mis-
leading, and it fails to explain the evidence. First of all, show off their wealth
to whom? If they were to do so effectively, their (almost entirely Jewish) audi-
encehadtobereceptive;infact,by200orso,thecitiesandsomeofthelarger
villages already contained specifically Jewish institutions, synagogues, that
couldhaveservedasobjectsoftheelites’euergetisticimpulses,buttheyseem
notto havedone soina waythat leftmaterialtraces. Second,theelites them-
selves were divided, if very unequally, since it is overwhelmingly likely that
most rabbis were from well-to-do backgrounds (perhaps usually subcurial?).
Finally, we need to understand the implications of the Sepphorite mosaics,
figurines of the gods (which someone had thrown down a well), and small
(^105) On allegorizing interpretation of mythological imagery, see A. D. Nock, “Sarcophagi and
Symbolism,” inEssays, 606–41; and in more detail, M. Koortbojian,Myth,Meaning,andMem-
ory,onRomanSarcophagi(Berkeley: University of California, 1995), pp. 3–8, passim.
(^106) See Tertullian,De Idololatria15.4–5 (= J. H. Waszink and J. C. M. van Winden, eds.,
Tertullian’s De Idololatria: Critical Text, Translationand Commentary[Leiden: Brill, 1987], pp.
52–53, with comments ad loc.); K. Dunbabin,The Mosaics of Roman North Africa(Oxford:
Clarendon, 1978), pp. 137–87. For an interpretation of the decoration on a high imperial Syro-
Palestinian lead coffin as “apotropaic,” see D. White, “The Eschatological Connection between
Lead and Ropes in a Roman Imperial Period Coffin in Philadelphia,”IEJ49 (1999): 66–91.
(^107) Cf. Gordon, “Religion in the Roman Empire: The Civic Compromise and Its Limits,” p.
238.