- Bill
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<http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=948&letter=C&search=egypt%20roman>
Under the leadership of one Artemion, the Cyprian Jews participated in the great uprising against the Romans under Trajan (117), and they are reported to have massacred 240,000 Greeks (Dio Cassius, lxviii. 32). Thisinsurrection was finally quelled after considerable bloodshed (perhaps by Q. Marcius Turbo, who suppressed the uprising in Cyrene and Egypt), with the result that the Jews of Cyprus were almost entirely extirpated. The blood of the Jews slaughtered in Palestine is said to have streamed is far as Cyprus (Lam. R. i. 16, iv. 19); that is, the insurrection and the consequent slaughter of the Jews extended to Cyprus. In further punishment a severe law was enacted, according to which no Jew was thereafter to be permitted to land on Cyprian soil, not even in case of shipwreck; nevertheless Jewish residents were still to be found upon the island at a later period; and the products of the soil, to which Talmudists frequently refer (for instance, the "cumin" of Cyprus, Yer. Dem. ii. 1), were probably brought into the market by them. So rapidly did the Jews multiply that in 610 they were sufficiently numerous to participate in the insurrection against the Greeks under Heraclius.
Chris Doss 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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