Perhaps no coins of antiquity have been more frequently reproduced in illustrations than the numerous coins struck by Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and the Roman senate to commemorate the subjugation of Judea (see Madden, pp. 207-229 ; de Sauley, Nwmism. de la Terre Sainte, p. 79 Ε΄; Pick, Zeit. f. Numism. xiv. 1887, 328 ff.). One of these, an aureus of Titus, is shown in No. 16.
Obv. T. CAES. IMP. VESP. PON. TR. POT.
Head of Titus, right, laureated.
Rev. No legend (other coins have JUDAEA CAPTA and the like). Palm tree; to left: Titus, with left foot on helmet, holding spear in right hand, with left resting on para- zonium ;§ to right: Judea as a Jewess seated on the ground.
* This date was first advocated by Ewald in the Géttinger Nachrichten, 1855.
+ Of. our illustrations with plates xxi. and xxii. of Wroth, Greek Coins of Galatia, etc.
t For weights of extant shekels and half-shekels, see Madden, Coins, P. 286 n. δ. § A short sword attached to a belt round the waist; see Rich, Dict. of Antig. 4.0.
§ 10. Coins of the Second Revolt, A.D. 182-135.— The history of the Jewish community in Judea during the sixty years that followed the destrue- tion of their temple is very imperfectly known ; in particular, the antecedents of the shortlived but sanguinary rebellion which broke out in the 16th year of Hadrian’s principate.* The conflicting and fragmentary evidence seems to warrant either of two alternatives. Either the Jews were goaded to revolt by coercive measures on Hadrian’s part, and by the founding of A®lia Capitolina with its heathen temple, on the occasion of his visit to Jerusalem A.D. 130;+ or on a former visit in A.D. 117 (see for this Diirr, op. cit. p. 63, follow- ing Epiphanius) the Jews had received permission to rebuild the temple, and were now incited to revolt by Bar Cochba, whose Messianic claims had been approved by R. Akiba, the most respected religious leader of the time. The founding of 4Glia Capitolina would thus fall naturally after the suppression of the revolt. The numismatic evidence seems rather favourable to the second alternative.
The distinguishing feature of the silver coins of the ‘second revolt’ is the fact that they are all, prob- ably without a single exception, imperial denarii, drachms, and tetradrachms from the mints of Rome, Cesarea, and Antioch respectively, which have been re-struck with Jewish types and legends. On most of them some trace, more or less, of the original legend, and even in some cases of the head of the emperor—from Galba to Hadrian inclusive —has survived. Where such is not the case, we may assign as the cause the success of the process of re-striking rather than the use of native flans. Our knowledge of these coins has recently been enlarged by a valuable find a few miles from Hebron, which has enabled a German numismatist to undertake an exhaustive study of all the known specimens (see L. Hamburger, ‘Die Silbermiinz- priguugen wiihrend des letzten Aufstandes der
sraeliten gegen Rom’ in Von Sallet’s Zeitsch. fiir Numismatik, xviii. (1892) pp. 240-347).
The activity of the Jewish moneyers during the short period of the revolt is vey remarkable, since, according to Hamburger’s data, no fewer than twenty-four different classes of silver coins have to be registered (op. cit. p. 246). From these we learn that the leaders of the revolt were the secular chief, ‘Simeon, Nasi (or Prince) of Israel,’ and the religious head of the nation, ‘ Eleazar the (high) priest.” The latter has been variously identified as Eleazar of Modein, whose priestly descent, however, is uncertain; Eleazar ben Aza- riah (Hamburger), and most recently Eleazar ben Harsom (Schlatter, cit. 84 ff.; ‘assez
lausible’ is Bacher’s verdict, REJ, 1898). The
imeon of the coin-legends can hardly be other than the pseudo-Messiah known as Simon bar Cochba (x2>\2 12 bar Kékébd, ‘son of the star,’ t in allusion to Nu 9417), whose real name was prob- ably Simeon bar Kozéba, 7.e. native of Kozéba, a place on the road to Jericho (cf. Buhl, Geogr. 176).
The following, apart from graphical details, is substantially Ham urger’s arrangement of the
* Besides the well-known histories of Gratz (vol. iv.), Mommsen (Provinces, etc. ii. 223 ff.), Gregorovius (7'he Emperor Hadrian, 1898, unfortunately not brought down to date), and Schtirer (HJP τ. ii. 287ff., with ample reff.), see Diirr, Die Reisen Hadrians, 1881, and Schlatter, Die Tage Trajans u. Hadrians, 1897 (an attempt to construct a connected history from the scattered notices in later Jewish literature). For the Roman forces engaged in ater the revolt (which were more numerous than has hitherto been supposed), see, besides Pfitzner, Gesch. ἃ. rém. Kaiserlegionen, J. Offord in PSBA, 1898, pp. 59-69.
+ This visit is commemorated by the coins of Hadrian with the legend ADVENTVI AUG. IVDAEAE (see Cohen, Déscr7; tion de monnaies impériales, ed. 1, p.176f. ; Madden, p. 251f.
1 The star on some of the tetradrachms has generally beer supposed to refer to this.
MONEY
MONEY 431
silver coins of Eleazar and Simeon, the three larger groups being determined by the legend of the Teverse.
I. Coins (dearii, drachms, and tetradrachms) of ‘the year one* of the redemption of Israel’ —drww? ndxad nox nw.
i. Denarius-drachms with the name of ‘Eliezer the priest’ 7π2π Wyde.
ii. Tetradrachms with legend ‘Jerusalem’ round the conventional representation of the ‘golden gate’ (ἢ) of the temple (see below).