2 On the Status of the Jews in the Cities
Ulpian on a Legislation of Septimius Severus and Caracalla 196/197/198-209/211
Ulpian cited, in his work on the office of the Proconsul, legislation of Septimius Severus and Caracalla on the rights and duties of Jews serving in municipal offices.
The paragraph which contains this citation is quoted in the Digest {Dig. 50:2:3:3). It is impossible to date this legislation precisely. Ulpian wrote this book under Caracalla, i.e., between 212 and 218.1 If our text refers to one law issued in the names of both Septimius Severus and Caracalla, it should be dated to the period between 196 (when Caracalla was declared Caesar and Emperor designate),2 or 197,3 or 198 (when he received the title Augustus) and 209 (when Geta joined them as a third Augustus), or 211 (the year Septimius Severus died). It is possible, on the other hand, that that legislation consisted of several laws, some passed under Septimius Severus, others after his death. Modestin seemed to point in this direction when he referred to “laws” in plural (constitutiones, διατάξεις) in his discussion of this subject (Dig. 27:1:15:6). An additional argument, though of relative weight, can be adduced from the Scriptores Historiae Augustaef which stated that Alexander Severus maintained the privileges (again in plural) of the Jews. Ulpian’s work dealt with the law in force in the two senatorial provinces, Asia and Africa, both of them known to have important Jewish communities, but there can be no doubt that his conclusions were valid for the other provinces as well.Ulpian stated that the Severan legislation allowed the Jews to enter government offices. The immediate context leads to the conclusion that these were municipal government offices, the decurio- nate in particular.
One must assume, therefore, that these offices were closed to Jews prior to the Severan legislation, perhaps one of the sequels of the Bar-Kokhba revolt. He added that this right was accompanied by a duty to undertake those liturgies which do not involve a transgression of their religion. This opening of municipal government offices to Jews is confirmed by Jewish sources, which document Jewish ‘buleutai’ and ‘strategoi’ in Palestine from the time of the Severi.5 Epigraphical sources,6 as well as Jewish and pagan7 traditions, testify to the reputation of the Severi as benefactors of the Jews, which they have earned, probably, by their attention to the religious susceptibilities of the Jews.Digesta, 50:2:3:3, ed. Mommsen & Krüger, p. 896
Idem libro tertio de officio proconsulis* ...
Eis, qui ludaicam superstitionem* sequuntur, divi* Severus et Antoninus* honores* adipisci permiserunt, sed et necessitates* eis imposuerunt, qui* superstitionem* eorum non laederent.
The same author, On the Proconsul’s office,8 Book Three.
The Divine9 Severus and Antoninus10 permitted those that follow the Jewish religion11 to enter offices,12 but also imposed upon them liturgies13 such14 as should not transgress their religion.
NOTES
1. According to A. Μ. Honorö, “The Severan Lawyers—A Preliminary Survey,” SDHI, XXVIII (1962), p. 210. A more precise date—213—was recently suggested in T. Honord, Ulpian, Oxford 1982, p. 156.
2. See P.
v. Rohden, PW, 1:4, 1896, s.v. Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus (Caracalla), Cols. 2439-2443.3. See J. Fitz, “When Did Caracalla Become Imperator Designatus?” Alba Regia, VIII-IX (1967-1968), pp. 285-286.
4. See Severus, 17:1, ed. E. Hohl, I, Leipzig 1955, p. 149.
5. See Alon, Jews, II, p. 686.
6. S. Klein, “Inscriptions from Ancient Synagogues in Palestine,” Bulletin of the Institute for Jewish Studies, II (1924/25), p. 25 (in Hebrew); idem., “The Synagogue of Spondilia,” Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society, III (1935), pp. 63-65 (in Hebrew); CIJ, I, No. 677, II, No. 972.
7. See S. Krauss, Antoninus und Rabbi (XVII. Jahresbericht der israelitischtheologischen Lehranstalt in Wien), Vienna 1910; A. Momigliano, “Severo Alessandro Archisynagogus,” Athenaeum, XII (1934), pp. 151-153; J. Schwartz, “Avidius Cassius et les sources de l’Histoire Auguste—A propos d’une legende rabbinique,” Historia-Augusta Colloquium, Bonn 1963, Bonn 1964, pp. 135-164.
8. Ulpian, one of the more important jurists in the early third century, held several important government offices in 222-23. At the time he was assassinated by mutinous praetorians in the summer of 223, he held the office of supreme praefectus, assisted by two praefecti praetorio. Most of his legal works were written after the years 212-218. He was recognized as one of the five authoritative jurists in the Citation Law of 426.
His work On the Proconsul’s Office, which dealt with the governership of the senatorial provinces, was highly esteemed as an authoritative source in legal cases involving litigants from these provinces. In the course of a legal contention in the fourth century on the rights of the city of Ephesos, for example, the Proconsul of Asia asked that all the relevant documents be produced, beginning with the laws quoted in Ulpian’s On the Proconsul’s Office, the Imperial rescripts and the senate’s decisions (Senatus consultd) appearing in second and third places only. See AE, 1966, No. 436. The term ‘officium’ signified both the office and the administrative staff under the governor. Jewish sources usually refer to it in its Greek translation, as “Taxis.” See F. Grosso, “11 papiro Oxy. 2565 e gli aweni- menti del 222-224,” Rendiconti, XXIII (1968), pp. 205-220; Honoré (above, n. 1); J. Modrzejewski & T. Zawadzki, “La date de la mort d’Ulpien et la prefecture de prötoire au döbut du rdgne d’Alexandre Severe,” RHDFE, Series 4, XLV (1967), pp. 565-611.9. Mommsen was of the opinion that this title of “divine” should be omitted as an interpolation, for on Ulpian’s testimony in this work Caracalla was still alive when it was written, and he could not have attributed to him the title ‘divus’ which was reserved to deceased emperors only. It was given to Caracalla only after November 224, under the reign of Macrinus. See T. Mommsen, “Die Kaiserbezeichnung bei den römischen Juristen,” ZRG, IX (1870), p. 114; J. F. Gilliam, “On Divi under the Severi,” Hommages ä Μ. Renard, II, Bruxelles 1969, pp. 284-289. Lenel, too, considered this title to be an interpolated gloss, and he was followed in this, though with some hesitation, by Honors (Ulpian, p. 155, above n. 1). Volterra, on the other hand, maintains that emperors were given this title in their lifetime as well, and one of the examples he cites is precisely that of Caracalla.
See E. Volterra, “Sülle ‘inscriptiones’ di alcune costituzioni di Diocleziano,” BIDR, Series 3, LXXVI (1973), pp. 266-267.10. Severus and Antoninus: Septimius Severus and his son Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Bassianus Caracalla.
11. Religion: Ulpian employed here the term ‘superstitio’, whose meaning, originally devoid of negative significance, was that of religion, or religious cult. Quite early, however, it acquired an additional sense, that of an exaggerated religious piety, and that of foreign and unconventional cults not recognized by the State. The negative content became progressively predominant with the Christianization of the Empire, and the legal texts since the fourth century employed it exclusively in this sense, usually in regard to Jews, heretics, and pagans following eastern cults, such as Mithraism. See, for example, the permission granted by Constantine ca. 333 to the Umbrians to build a temple and dedicate it to his ‘gens’, the ‘gens Flavia’: ‘ea observatione prescripta ne aedis nostro nomini dedi- caca cuiusque contagiosae superstitionis fraudibus polluatur’; “under this condition, that the temple dedicated to our name shall not be polluted by the frauds of any contagious superstition” (CIL, XI, No. 5265, 11. 45-48). There can be no doubt concerning the negative content of the term ‘superstitio’ in this text, but this negative content does not derive from the pagan character of the temple, which was officially dedicated as a pagan temple, but from cults not recognized in Roman law. See, on this question, Μ. de Dominicis, “Un intervento legislative di Costantino in materia religiosa,” RIDA, Series 3, X (1963), pp. 199-211. An appreciation of the evolution of this term, from an original connotation devoid of clear negative judgment, if one excludes the negative undertones inherent in the definition of a foreign cult as ‘superstitio’, to the decidedly pejorative meaning of the fourth century, is liable to lead to a satisfactory solution of the problem of the authenticity of this term in Ulpian’s passage.
Some historians consider this term as more typical of the later Christian editors than of Ulpian, and define it, consequently, as a later interpolation. Berger maintains, for example, that the term was not that common in early third century Imperial documents, but became so in the antisemitic literature of the sixth century; it should be seen therefore as an interpolation introduced into Ulpian’s text by the editors of the Digest. Colorni, too, believes that it replaced a more neutral term, like ‘cultus’; see Colorni, Gli Ebrei, p. 4 n. 11. Juster, on the other hand, was of the opinion that this term appeared in the original text. His opinion is probably correct, for the term appeared in texts dating from the first and the second centuries in its original meaning, and one can reasonably suppose that this was its meaning in Ulpian’s text as well. Ulpian cited, for example, a rescript of Antoninus Pius which established the legal validity of an oath sworn by a man on his particular superstition (Dig. 12:2:5:1); ‘superstitio’ here should be translated, obviously, as that man’s particular religion, hence the term was devoid of pronounced negative meaning. It consequently acquired its exclusively pejorative meaning with the general evolution of the Empire and of its attitude towards the Jews, but by that time it accorded well with the new position of the Jewish religion, and Justinian’s editors did not have to replace it with another term. See also F. Martroye, “La repression de la magie et le culte des gentils au IVe sidcle,” RHDFE, Series 4, IX (1930), pp. 672-676; Pfaff, PW, 11:7, 1931, s.v. Superstitio, Cols. 937-939; R. C. Ross, “Superstitio,” Classical Journal, XLIV (1968-1969), pp. 354-358; D. Grodzynski, “ ‘Superstitio’,” REA, LXXVI (1974), pp. 36-60; L. F. Janssen, “Die Bedeutungsentwicklung von superstitio/superstes,” Mnemosyne, Series 4, XXVIII (1975), pp. 135-188; Langenfeld, p. 63 n. 153; D. Harmening, Superstitio—Überlieferungsund theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters, Berlin 1979, pp. 14-32.12. The term ‘honos’ signifies office in both the Imperial and the municipal government, but the specific context of the term in Ulpian’s passage suggests the more limited meaning of the municipal decurionate.
13. Liturgies: Modestin’s parallel text proves that this is the meaning of the term ‘necessitates’ here (see below, No. 4). This is the meaning of ‘necessitates’ in other laws as well, for example, CJ 11:4:1 (publica necessitas), CJ 10:32:19 (necessitates civiles), CJ 9:22:21 (necessitates municipales). See also Μ. Nuyens, “La theorie des munera et l’obligation professionelle au Bas Empire,” RIDA, Series 3, V (1958), p. 525 n. 11.
14. size=1>Such: this is the version of MS. Florentinus, referring to both offices (honores) and liturgies (necessitates). Some editors emend ‘qui’ to ‘quae’, restricting its meaning to liturgies only.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lene), II: Ulpian, No. 2161, Col. 970; Juster, I, p. 161 n.5; II, p. 24 n.l; Browe, p. 113 n.18; Ferrari dalle Spade, “Privilegi,” p. 273; A. Berger, “Studi sui Basilici,” tura, VI (1955), pp. 113-116; A. Dell’Oro, I libri de officio nella giurisprudenza romana, Milan 1960, p. 136 n.121; Linder, pp. 110-113; Avi-Yonah, pp. 46-47; Alon, Jews, II, pp. 685-687.