I'm reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall. and in the section on persecution of the Christians he also discusses persecution of the Jews. He states that they were not totally unjustified, as Jews had been carrying out massacres in parts of the Empire. This sounds plausible, but he "sexes it up" (see quote below) in a way that makes me think he's just repeating anti-Semitic calumnies. Did this actually happen?
Here is the quote:
In Cyrene they massacred 220,000 Greeks; in Cyprus, 240,000; in Egypt, a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims were sawed asunder, according to a precendent to which David had given the sanction of his example. The victorious Jews devoured the flesh, licked up the blood and twisted the entrails like a girdle round their bodies. See Dion Cassius, lxviii, 1145.
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