194 CHAPTER SIXliturgy was incumbent on the college of ship owners. The emperor prohibits
the innovation on the grounds that it is illegal to oblige small traders and
other poor people to transport grain and, conversely, to reduce the obligation
of the wealthy. In other words, when it comes to theircivicobligations, the
Jews do not constitute a separate body but remain citizens. The same conclu-
sion emerges clearly from the emperors’ repeated insistence that Jews, other
than their clergy, are obliged to serve on city councils—the insistence presum-
ably implying that in many places the Jews managed to avoid such service,
which was both an honor and a burden.
The tension between Jews as a separate body and Jews as Roman citizens,
and the related recognition of the Jews as members of areligion, is expressed
most clearly in a law given by Arcadius to Eutychianus, praetorian prefect of
the East, in 398 (CTh 2.1.10). Here the Jews are obliged to subject themselves
to Roman laws, as well as Roman courts, in matters that pertain not to their
superstition but toforum, leges et iura, that is, civil law. The law continues by
recognizing the right of Jewish religious judges to serve as arbitrators in civil
cases, a right, as already indicated, the emperor was in no position to deny.
This may reflect the difficulties that some Jews may have had in distinguishing
between religious and civil cases, but it does not subvert the principle that as
far as the state is concerned, the Jews are separate from other citizens primarily
with respect to their religion.
Marginalization
Neither the pagan nor the Christian Roman Empire was founded on an ideol-
ogy of pluralism.^38 What changed under Christian rule was the emperors’
promotion ofreligiousuniformity—as opposed to cultural uniformity con-
taining a diffuse and rather vague religious component. Notwithstanding what
has just been said, many laws already in the fourth century move far in the
direction of identifying Roman citizenship with orthodox Christianity. This
theme emerges in an edict Theodosius I issued at Thessalonica in 380, shortly
after his accession (CTh 16.1.2), in which he declared his desire that all his
subjects “shall practice the religion which the divine Peter the Apostle trans-
mitted to the Romans....thereligion that is followed by the Pontiff Damasus
and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria,” that is, post-Nicene orthodoxy. Others
were inevitably marginalized in the state ideology, however insistently the
emperors declared their legality and their Romanness.
In the case of the Jews, marginalization took the form of actual legislation,
not just general declarations, which are unlikely to have had any practical
results except to inform them, along with the remaining nonorthodox, of the
(^38) See Garnsey, “Religious Toleration,” and in general Rives,Religion and Authority.