The social standing of the Jews must have varied greatly in different places. They appear to have been most favourably situated in Egypt, especially at Alexandria. Owing to their pro- sperity and culture they here played an important réle in public life, and under some of the Ptolemies they even rose to high offices in the State. Ptolemy vi. (Philometor) and his consort Cleopatra ‘en- trusted their whole empire to Jews, and the com- manders of the whole army were the Jews Onias and Dositheus’ (Jos. ¢. Apion. ii. 5). Another Cleopatra, the daughter of the royal pair above named, likewise appointed two Jews, Chelkias and Ananias, to the chief command of her army in the war against her son Ptolemy Lathyrus (Ant. XIII. x. 4, xii. 1-2).* In an inscription at Athribis there is mention of a Ptolemy, émirdrns tev gvdaKkirev (chief of police), who, in conjunction with the Jewish community, built the synagogue of the place (see above, p. 96%). Although it does not necessarily follow from this that he was a Jew, the probability, in view of analogous cases, is in favour of such having been the case. The ’Avtwyios Madyavos who in the time of Trajan held the dpuoduraxia at Syene (see above, p. 96>), may also have been a non-Jewish Semite, but ought in all probability to be regarded as a Jew. We may also remind the reader of the above (p. 96°) men- tioned Jewish tax-collectors in the Thebaid during the earlier Ptolemaic period.
During the Roman period several Jews of noble birth and wealth held the office of alabarch. So, for instance, Alexander, the brother of the philo- sopher Philo (Jos. Ant. XVIII. vi. 3, vill. 1, XIX. v. 1, XX. y. 2), and a certain Demetrius (XX. vii. 3). The view that the alabarch was the head of the
* Chelkias and Ananias were the sons of the high priest Onias 1y., the founder of the temple of Leontopolis.—A Greek inscrip- tion, now in the Berlin Museum, contains a fragment of a decree in honour of a certain Chelkias or, as is more probable, his son. All that has survived of the name is the genitive Xeazfov. The subject honoured was otpernyés, and received as a mark of distinction a golden wreath (see Willrich, Archiv fiir Papyrus- forschung, i. [1900] 48-56). It is possible, but not certain, that this Chelkias is identical with the one mentioned by Josephus.
Jewish community is certainly wrong. He is in all probability identical with the dpaBdpxns, whose office was that of chief superintendent of customs on the Arabian frontier, z.e. on the east side of the Nile. (A ‘vectigal Arabarchize per Aigyptum atque Augustamnicam constitutum ’ is mentioned in the Codex Justin. Iv. lxi. 9; an inscription found at Koptos contains a tariff fixing “how much is to be raised by those who farm the dmoarbov [7] at Koptos under the arabarchy’; see the text of this inscription in Bulletin de corresp. hellénique, xx. [1896] 174-176 ; on the office of the alabarch in general, see the Literature in Schiirer, GJV3 iii. 88 £., and add Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, i. [1899] 347-351). Perhaps it is the office of the alabarch that is in view when Josephus says that the Romans ‘continued (to the Jews of Alex- andria) the position of trust given them by the kings, namely, the watching of the river’ (c. Apion. ii. 5 fin.: ‘maximam vero eis fidem olim a regibus datam conservaverunt, id est fluminis custodiam totiusque custodie’ [the last word is certainly corrupt]). The ‘watching of the river’ refers to watching it in the interests of levying customs. In any case the alabarch was not an official of the Jewish community, but a man who held a prominent place in civil life. —Tiberius Alexander, a son of the alabarch Alexander, even reached the highest grades of a Roman military career, although at the expense of renouncing his ancestral religion.
Outside Egypt the Jews do not appear to have anywhere gained so influential a footing. Yet in- stances are not wanting elsewhere of their rising to positions of prominence. In Jerusalem at the outbreak of the war of A.D. 66 there were Jews holding the rank of Roman knights (Jos. BJ I. xiv. 9). At Ephesus and Venosa we meet in tomb- inscriptions with Jewish ‘head physicians’ (dpxi- arpo.; see Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, iii. 2, No. 677; Ascoli, [seriziont inedite o mal note, 1880, No. 10). These were appointed by the city, and are thus to be regarded as muni- cipal officials. In Italy the Jews from the time of Septimius Severus were admitted to the city offices (Digest. L. ii. 3: ‘ Eis qui Judaicam superstitionem sequuntur, divi Severus et Antoninus honores adipisci permiserunt ’).
v. RELIGIOUS AND INTELLECTUAL Lirz. — In spite of all its contact with Greek surroundings, the Jewish people preserved its religious unique- ness in a surprising fashion. The effects of the Maecabzean rising manifestly extended also to the Diaspora. As in the mother country at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes there was in aristocratic circles an inclination towards Hellenism even in religious matters, so in the city of Jasus in Caria we hear about the same time of a Nixjras Idoovos ‘Iepocodupirys who contributed money to support the festival of the Dionysia (see above, p. 94"). But the Maccabzean rising removed the danger of a wholesale syncretistic amalgamation of Judaism with Hellenistic heathenism. Instances of this last phenomenon do, indeed, occur. The Jewish Hellenist Artapanus considered that he was glori- fying Judaism by representing the patriarchs and Moses as not only the creators of all secular culture, but the founders of the Egyptian religious cults in the sense in which Artapanus himself understood these (see the fragments of his writings in Euseh. Prep. Evang. ix. 18, 23, 27). In the temple of Pan at Apollonopolis Magna in Upper Egypt two Jews recorded their thanks to ‘the god’ for an act of deliverance (CJG 4838°). In a professed letter of Hadrian it is even said in general that in Egypt all the Jewish dpxyicwdywyo are ‘ astrologers, haru- spices, and quacks’ (Vopise. Vita Satwrnint, ¢. 8, in the ‘Seriptores Historie Auguste’: ‘Nemo illic archisynagogus Judzeorum, nemo Samarites,