[lbo-talk] Question for you classicists (Jews in the Roman Empire)

Robert Wrubel bobwrubel at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 8 10:56:11 PST 2007


Those numbers, not to mention the lurid details, sure sound suspect. And Gibbon is normally quite circumspect about the concrete details of depravity.

BobW --- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> Dear Jerry etc.,
>
> 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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