ENEMIES OF ROME 59Commodus or Caracalla are accused of tyranny and immorality in their
refusal to give Greeks their due rights and privileges in the city; some
emperors are even claimed as crypto-Jews to explain their injustice and
avarice. But although Alexandria was the site of communal battles against
the Jews in the fi rst century and frequent demonstrations against the Roman
prefect whose headquarters lay in the heart of the city, and although the city
rashly supported the pretender Avidius Cassius in AD 175 and incurred the
wrath of Caracalla in AD 215 by mocking him (Dio 78.22–3), Alexandrian
Greeks never rebelled on their own account. The anti-Roman literature is
hostile but not subversive; there are no calls to action nor any forecast of a
horrible doom for the tyrant empire.^9
The great mass of Greek literature from the fi rst two centuries AD reveals,
in its harking back to the classical era, a certain ideological opposition to
Rome, but the areas from which such authors came – Greece, the coastal
cities of Asia Minor, the big cities of Syria – were not among those which
tried to rebel.^10 Most evidence is found in the writings of Jews and Christians,
whose sufferings at the hands of Rome and theological expectations for the
future are unlikely to have been paralleled in other provincial cultures. It is
impossible to tell how infl uential in instigating action against Rome the fi ery
words of the New Testament book of Revelation were, nor whether similar
prophecies encouraged revolt in other societies (see below pp. 61–2).
The evidence of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus thus acquires
special signifi cance since he was uniquely placed to explain in his voluminous
works one of the most serious provincial revolts suffered by Rome, that of
Judaea in AD 66–70. Josephus was a priest from Jerusalem whose family had
acquired some infl uence in the city in the years preceding the revolt. He had
been involved in some way in the politics of the city before AD 66, and when
the war was underway he was appointed as general of the rebels in Galilee,
a position he held until captured by the Romans in AD 67. In captivity he
proved useful to the Roman forces and at the end of the war he was freed
and given Roman citizenship by his patron, the new emperor Vespasian. His
account of the revolt and its antecedents, the Jewish War , was written in
Rome before AD 81. His later works – the Antiquities of the Jews , which
covered all Jewish history up to AD 66 and provides an interestingly different
account of some of the events of the fi rst century AD also narrated in the
Jewish War , and the Life , most of which was an apologetic version of his
own career as general in Galilee – took a somewhat longer view, being
published in the nineties. Josephus portrayed himself as a Greek historian in
the mould of Thucydides. As a participant in the rebellion and later a
concerned observer from the other side, he was exceptionally placed to
provide an informed analysis, but a number of factors prevent him from
appearing fully trustworthy. Defensive about his own behaviour both to
those Jews who thought him a traitor to their cause and those who berated
him for his original participation in rebellion, he attempted to demonstrate
to his gentile readers that respectable Jews like him were capable of living at