1. To what extent the Jews of the present day or those of earlier times may be considered racially pure, depends upon what criteria of race are adopted. At present there is no general agreement among ethnologists on this subject. The historical data are very uncertain. At all events absolute racial unity of the Jews of the Dispersion cannot be maintained. The facts of their vigorous propaganda and their extensive slave-property are too well attested. But it is wholly impossible to determine how far the admixture went.
2. The best edition of Philo is the still unfinished one which is being prepared by two German scholars, Wendland and Cohen. In this the Apologia has not yet appeared. Earlier editions are those of Mangey (1742) and Holtze (1851).
Philo’s works were translated into English by C. D. Yonge (Bohn’s Library, London, 1854).
3. In Greek the two commonest editions of Josephus’ works are those of Niese (1887-1895) and of Naber (1896). Neither completely satisfies all the demands that may be made for the adequate presentation of the text.
The old English translation of W. Whiston, so widely circulated both in England and America, is very inaccurate. The revision of this translation by A. R. Shilleto (1889-1890) has only slightly improved it.
4. The references to the Jews in the inscriptions and papyri have not, as yet, been collected. Mr. Seymour de Ricci planned a collection of the Greek and Latin inscriptions to be called Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum. This Corpus was, at least partly, in manuscript form in 1912, but no part has been published. Mr. de Ricci’s article on “Inscriptions” in the Jewish Encyclopedia, and Johannes Oehler, Epigraphische Beiträge zur Geschichte des Judentums (Monatsschrift f. Gesch. u. Wiss. d. Jud. 1909, xvii. 292-302, 443-452, 524-538) give a practically complete collection.
5. It is nowhere directly stated that the power of a god did not extend beyond a definite locality. But the numerous local epithets applied to the various gods indicate it. We need mention only such typical references to the θεοὶ ἐγχώριοι as Aesch. Septem. 14, Soph. Trach. 183, and Thuc. ii. 74.
6. Cf. Dionysus in the “Frogs” of Aristophanes, Heracles and Poseidon in the “Birds.” The other comic poets, even Epicharmus, the oldest, dealt with even greater freedom with the gods. Even the scanty fragments of Cratinus and Amphis indicate that fact. In Sicily, an entire dramatic genre, that of the Φλύακες, contained practically nothing but situations in which the divine personages of the myths were the subjects of the coarsest fun.
7. Such heroic friendships as that of Achilles and Patroclus were perverted early in the imagination of Greeks. Cf. Aeschylus, in Athen. xiii. 601 A, and Aeschines, i. 142. So also the story of Apollo and Admetus became a love story for Alexandria; Callimachus H. ii. 49.
8. The subject has been discussed in full by de Visser, De Graecorum deis non referentibus speciem humanam (Leyden, 1900;) 2d ed. in German, 1903. So at Phigaleia, in Arcadia, Demeter had the form of a horse; the Brauronian Artemis was a bear; Apollo Lykeios was sometimes adored in the form of a wolf.
9. Aegean and Mycenean are both used to designate the civilization that preceded that of historical Greece. Aegean, however, has, to a large extent, superseded the older term. For the specifically Cretan form of it, Minoan is generally employed.
10. In spite of the apparently well-defined personalities of the Homeric gods and a poetic tradition of many centuries, the sculptors of later times found it necessary to indicate the subject of their labors, either by some well-known attribute, such as the caduceus, or a sacred animal, or a symplegma representing a scene of a known legend. Without these accessories, archeologists often find themselves at a loss when they are required to name the god intended. Cf. Koepp, Archäologie ii. 88 seq.
11. It is not suggested that prayer could not exist without sacrifice. But where sacrifice did take place, the act of worship did not lie in the sacrifice alone, or in the propitiatory allocution that accompanied it, but in the two together.
12. Cf. Apollo Soter, Soph. O. T. 149, Dionysus Soter, Lycophr. 206, Zeus Soter, Aristoph. Plut. 1186, etc.
13. Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, passim. The term is rarely used by recent investigators.
14. For the sacrificial act when addressed to gods, the word was θύειν; addressed to heroes, ἐναγίζειν. Herod, ii. 44. The color of the sacrificial animal for heroes was usually black, and no part of the flesh was eaten. Cf. Sch. Hom. Il. i. 459.
15. For heroes whose position in the state was as high as that of gods, we have only to refer to the eponyms of the Cleisthenic tribes at Athens, Theseus, Cecrops, Erechtheus, etc.
16. Local deities, such as Pelops at Olympia (Sch. Pind. Ol. i. 149), Archemorus at Nemea (Arg. Pind. Nem. i), Tlepolemus at Rhodes (Sch. Pind. Ol. vii. 146).
17. Cf. Suidas. s. v. Ἀναγυράσιος, Alciphro, iii. 58.
18. The doctrine of Socrates cited by Xenophon, Memor. iv. 7, represents popular Greek feeling on the subject of theological speculation.
19. Xenophanes of Colophon (sixth cent. B.C.E.) cited in Sex. Emp. adv. Math. ix. 193. The lines are frequently quoted, and are to be found in any history of philosophy.
20. A monotheistic or pantheistic tendency showed itself in the attempt on the part of poets like Aeschylus and Pindar to absorb the divine world into the personality of Zeno. Cf. Aesch. Heliades, 71:
21. The solar myth theory was especially advocated by Max Müller in his various books and articles. Most of the older writers on mythology, e.g. in the earlier articles of Roscher’s Lexikon, accept it as an established dogma. There can be no reasonable doubt that the celestial phenomena of sun, moon, and stars exercised a powerful influence on popular imagination.
22. Dionysus came into Greece probably from Thrace and Macedon about the tenth century B.C.E. By the sixth century there was no Greek city in which he was not worshiped. As far as any center of his worship existed, it may be placed in Boeotia. Cf. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, chs. iv. and v.
23. We find Aphrodite firmly established among Greek gods from the earliest times. It may be that the Semitic or Oriental connections which have been found for her (cf. Roscher, s. v. Aphrodite, Roscher’s Lex. i. 390-406) are due to the readiness with which she was associated with Oriental female deities. That fact, however, is itself significant.
24. The merchants of Citium formally introduced into Athens the worship of their local Aphrodite; Dittenberger, Syll. no. 551. Sarapis, Isis, and Sabazios also early found their way into Athens.
25. The statement that ἀσέβεια was a negative offense, that its gravamen consisted not in introducing new divinities, but in neglecting the established ones, is made by Wilamowitz (Antigonus von Karyst, p. 277). It is, however, only qualifiedly true. The Greeks found purely negative conceptions difficult. Impiety, or ἀσέβεια, was not the mere neglect, but such a concrete act as would tend to cause the neglect of the established gods. The indictment against Socrates charged the introduction of καινὰ δαιμόνια, but only because that introduction threatened the established form. The merchants of Citium (cf. previous note) might introduce their foreign deity with safety. No such danger was deemed to lie.
26. The stories of Lycurgus (Il. vi. 130) and of Pentheus (Euripides, Bacchae) are a constant reminder of the difficulties encountered by Dionysus in his march through Greece. Then, as has always been the case in religious opposition, the opponents of the new forms advanced social reasons for their hostility (Eurip. Bacchae, 220-225).
27. The Egyptian origin of the Eleusinian mysteries is maintained especially by Foucart, Les grands mystères d’Eleusis.
28. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter dates from the close of the seventh century B.C.E., perhaps earlier. In it we find the Eleusinian mysteries fully developed, and their appeal is Panhellenic.
29. Homer certainly knows of no general worship of the dead. But the accessibility of the dead by means of certain rites is attested not only by the Νέκυια (Od. x. 517-520), but by the slaughter of the Trojan captives at the funeral of Patroclus (Il. xxiii. 174). The poet’s own attitude to the latter is not so important as his evidence of the custom’s existence.
30. In later times any dead man was ἥρος, and his tomb a ἡρῷον; C. I. G. 1723, 1781-1783.
31. The kinship of gods and men was an Orphic dogma, quickly and widely accepted. Pindar formulated it in the words ἕν ἀνδρῶν, ἕν θεῶν γένος; Nem. vi. i. Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 41 C.
32. Od. iv. 561.
33. Hesychius, s. v. Ἁρμοδίου μέλος.
34. Adolph Bastian presents his theory of Grundideen in his numerous writings. It has, however, been found difficult, if not impossible, even for anthropologists to present the details of that theory with either definiteness or clearness.
35. Cf. W. Warde Fowler, Roman Religion, in Hasting’s Dictionary of Religions (consulted in proof).
36. The relation, or the contrast, between magic and religion has been a constant subject of discussion since the publication of Tylor’s Primitive Culture. For the present the contrast stated in the text may suffice.
37. Sei deo sei deivae sac (C. I. L. vi. 110); sive deo sive deae (ibid. iii, 1212); sei deus sei dea (ibid. xiv. 3572). Cf. also Not. d. Sc. 1890, p. 218.
38. Such a story as that of Mars and Nerione may belong to genuine Roman mythology. The enormous spread of Latin translations of Greek poems, and the wide popularity of Greek plays, rapidly drove out all the native myths which had attained no literary form.
39. Livy V. xxi. 3, 5.
40. Macrob. Sat. III. ix. 7-8.
41. The authenticity of this particular application of the formula has been questioned; Wissowa, s. v. Evocatio (deorum); Pauly-Wiss. vi. 1153. The proofs that the formula has been extensively modified are not conclusive. The evocati di received a special form of ritual at Rome. Festus, p. 237, a, 7. Cf. Verg. Aen. ii. 351-352.
42. For the Dioscuri, Livy, II. xx. 13. Apollo, Livy, III. lxiii. 7; IV. xxv. Both introductions are placed in the fifth century B.C.E. The historical account of the reception of Cybele and of Asclepius, Livy, Per. ix. and xxix. 10 seq.
43. The lectisternium is generally conceded to be of Greek origin. The ceremony consisted in formally dressing a banquet table and placing thereat the images of some gods, who reclined on cushions and were assumed to be sharing in the repast.
44. Cic. De Nat. Deor. i. 119.
45. The extreme of racial fanaticism will be found in H. S. Chamberlain, Grundzüge des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.
46. Aristophanes, Acharn. 104, Ιαοναῦ and the Schol. ad loc.: ὂτὶ πάντας τοὺς Ἕλληνας Ἰάονας ἐκάλουν οι βάρβαροι.
47. After the defeat of the Persians, the victors set up a tripod at Delphi, about the stem of which a bronze serpent was coiled. About this serpent ran an inscription, τοίδε τὸν πόλεμον ἐπολέμεον, “The following took part in the war.” Then follows the list of the Greeks beginning with the Lacedemonians. Here, if anywhere, a collective term denoting the common origin of all these nations might have been expected.
48. Euripides, Iph. Aul. 1400; Aristotle, Pol. I. ii. 4; ὡς ταὐτὸ φύσει βάρβαρον καὶ δοῦλον ὄν.
49. Isocrates, Pan. 181.
50. Demosthenes, In Mid. 48 (xx. 530).
51. Daniel xi. 3.
52. Besides the flings at barbarian descent scattered throughout the orators (cf. Dem. In Steph. A. 30), Hellenic origin was required for all the competitors in the Olympian games. Herodotus, v. 22.
53. The secretary of Appius Caecus was a certain Gnaeus Flavius, grandson of a slave, who became not merely curule aedile, but one of the founders of Roman jurisprudence. (Livy, IX. xlvi.). Likewise the Gabinius that proposed the Lex Tabellaria of 139 B.C.E. was the son or grandson of a slave, vernae natus or nepos. (Cf. the newly discovered fragment of Livy’s Epitome, Oxyr. Pap. iv. 101 f.) The general statement is made by the emperor Claudius (Tac. Ann. xi. 24), in a passage unfortunately absent in the fragments of the actual speech discovered at Lyons.
54. Cicero, In Pisonem (Fragments 10-13). Aeschines, In Ctes. 172.
55. Muttines, a Liby-Phoenician (cf. Livy, XXI. xxii. 3, Libyphoenices mixtum Punicum Afris genus), becomes a Roman citizen (ibid. XXVI. v. 11).
56. Ennius ap. Cic. de. Or. iii. 168.
57. Mucius defines gentiles, i.e. true members of Roman gentes, as follows (ap. Cic. Topica, vi. 29): Gentiles sunt inter se qui eodem nomine sunt, qui ab ingenuis oriundi sunt, quorum maiorum nemo servitutem servivit, qui capite non sunt deminuti. Literally taken, that would exclude descendants of former slaves to the thousandth generation. But Pliny demands somewhat less even for Roman knights. The man is to be ingenuus ipse, patre, avo paterno (H. N. XXXIII. ii. 32).
58. Gallic was still spoken in southern Gaul in the fourth century C.E., Syriac at Antioch in the time of Jerome, and Punic at Carthage for centuries after the destruction of the city.
59. The racial bond upon which modern scientific sectaries lay such stress was constantly disregarded in ancient and modern times. The Teutonic Burgundians found an alliance with the Mongol Avars against the Teutonic Franks a perfectly natural thing.
60. The Carduchi, Taochi, Chalybes, Phasiani (Xenophon, An. IV. iii. 6), make friends with the Greek adventurers, or oppose them on their own account without any apparent reference to the fact that the army of the Ten Thousand was part of a hostile force recently defeated by their sovereign.
61. Herodotus, vii. 89: παρείχοντο δὲ αὐτὰς (sc. τὰς τριήρεας) εοἵδε, Φοίνικες μὲν σὺν Σὺροισι τοῖσι ὲν τῆ Παλαιστίν ῃ, and he later defines the name specifically (ibid.): τῆς δὲ Συρίας τοῦτο τὸ χωρίον καὶ τὸ μέχρι Αιγύπτου πᾶν Παλαιστίνη καλέεται.
62. Aramaic Papyri Discovered at Assuan, edited by Sayce and Cowley, London, 1906. Aramäische Papyri ... zu Elephantine, ed. Sachau, Leipzig, 1911.
63. Josephus, Antiquities, XI. vii. Reference to the same incident in Eusebius, Chron. (Ol. 103), Syncellus (486, 10), and Orosius (iii. 7) depends upon Eusebius. The general statement of pseudo-Hecataeus (ap. Joseph, in Ap. i. 22) is, of course, worthless as evidence.
Ochus was especially noted for his sacrilege. (Cf. Aelian, N. A. x. 23).
64. After the death of Antiochus Sidetes, in 129 B.C.E., the various occupants or claimants of the Syrian throne are scarcely to be distinguished by nickname or number. They are uniformly imbeciles or puppets, and the last of them, Antiochus XIII, dies miserably at the hands of a Bedouin sheik.
65. In the Talmud John Hyrcanus is always יהוחנן כהן הגדל, but Alexander is יני המלך. On the coins John styles himself High Priest; but Jannai, on both his Hebrew and Greek coins, bears the title of King, יהונתן המלך and Αλεξάνδρου βασίλεως. Cf. Madden, Coins of the Jews. We have no record that the royal title was specifically bestowed upon Jannai, either by the Seleucids or by the people. It is therefore likely that it was assumed without such authorization. The high-priesthood, on the other hand, was duly conferred upon Simon and his descendants.
66. Cf. especially the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, in the editions of Kautzsch or Charles.
67. That the name is Sira and not Sirach, as it appears in the LXX, is generally accepted. It was the practice of Greeks to put a final Χ to foreign names to indicate that they were indeclinable. Cf. Ἰωσήχ (Luke iii. 26) for José.
68. Ecclesiasticus xlviii. 24.
69. Job iv. 7 seq.
70. Σύριος means scarcely more than “Oriental” in Aeschylus (Persae, 81, Σύριον ἅρμα; and Ag. 1312, Σύριον ἀγλάϊσμα).
71. Except Hittite and Amorite, these names have no non-Biblical occurrence.
72. Caphthor is rendered Cappadocia in the LXX (Amos ix. 7), for no better reason, it may be, than the similarity between the first syllables. The Keftiu ships of the Egyptian monuments are scarcely other than Mycenean, and if they came from Crete, Minoan (Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, ii. 492). That the Philistines are of Cretan origin is, in the absence of monumental sources, a pure theory. It fits in well, however, with what we do know of them.
73. The Jews were commanded by Ezra to put away their “strange wives” (Ezra x. 10) for the specific reason that the latter incited them to idolatry. Instances of intermarriage occur in the papyri from Elephantine (see ch. IV., n. 3).
74. Datis and Artaphernes commanded the Persian troops defeated at Marathon, 490 B.C.E. Mardonius was defeated at Plataea in 479.
75. Joel iii. 6. There is nothing in the extant Book of Joel inconsistent with a pre-Exilic date. Such slave raids as the Phoenicians are here accused of making, the Greeks made freely in Homeric times, and Greek merchants were already in every mart. In the famous picture of a golden age in Isaiah, Jewish captives are to be assembled “from Assyria, Egypt—and from the islands of the sea” (Isaiah xi. 11), a passage indubitably pre-Exilic. The “islands of the sea,” however, are obviously Greek.
76. In the lexicon of Stephen of Byzantium (s. v.) we read Σύροι κοινὸν ὄ νομα πολλῶν ἐθνῶν. Strabo, writing in the time of Augustus, includes most of the nations of Asia Minor, such as the Cappadocians, etc., under that term (xvi. 2).
77. The famous Harpy-tomb from Xanthus in Lycia, now in the British Museum, dates from the sixth century. It is, however, so highly developed a work that it presupposes a long history of mutual artistic influence between Greece, Ionia, and Lycia.
78. One of the magnificent sarcophagi found in 1887 at Sidon by Hamdi Bey. They are all published in sumptuous form by Hamdi Bey and Reinach, Une nécropole royale á Sidon, Paris, 1892. An excellent and convenient description may be found in Hans Wachtler, Die Blütezeit der griechischen Kunst im Spiegel der Reliefsarcophage, Teubner, 1910 (Aus Natur u. Geisteswelt, no. 272).
79. Strato, king of Sidon in 360 B.C.E. Athen. xii. 531. Cf. Gerostratos of Arados at about the same time.
80. Herodotus, ii. 104 (cf. ii. 37).
81. Aristotle states the fact in the Meteorologica, II. iii. 39, but does not mention the Jews.
82. Textes, p. 8. n. 3.
83. In the royal tombs at Sidon excavated by Hamdi Bey (see above, n. 9.), one of the monuments bears a long Phoenician inscription of a king of Sidon. It begins: “I, Tabnit, priest of Astarte and king of Sidonians, son of Eshmunazar, priest of Astarte, and king of the Sidonians.”
84. Plato, Euthyphro, 3 C., and passim.
85. Aristotle, Rhetoric, III. vii. 6.
86. Reinach, Textes, pp. 10-12. Müller, Frag. hist. graec. ii. 323, quoted in Josephus, In Ap. i. 22.
87. The untutored philosophers of Voltaire’s stories were quite in the mode of the eighteenth century, which had discovered the “noble savage,” and were quite convinced that civilization was a retrogression from a state of rude and primitive virtue. It was, further, a convenient cloak behind which one might criticise an autocratic régime. Hence the flood of “Turkish,” “Chinese,” “Japanese,” etc. “Letters,” of which Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes are the most famous. Modern instances are “The Traveller from Altruria” of Mr. Howells, and Mr. Dickinson’s “Letters of a Chinese Official.”
88. Cited by Diogenes Laertius, i. 9 (Müller, Frag. hist. graec. ii. 328).
89. Reinach, Textes, p. 13; Müller, Frag. ii. 437; Clemens Alex, i. 15. Megasthenes had previously resided at the court of Sibyrtius, satrap of Arachosia (southern Afghanistan). Arrian, Anab. V. vi. 1.
90. Clemens Alex. Str. v. (Sylberg), pp. 607 seq. Justin Coh. ad Graecos, 25.
91. Cf. Ecclesiasticus l. 26; Zech. ix. 2.
92. At Elephantine we learn from the papyri recently from there (Pap. 1, Sachau) that the Jews had a shrine consecrated to יהו and that in 410 B.C.E. it was destroyed by the priests of a rival Egyptian temple.
93. Reinach, Textes, p. 39. Müller, Frag. iii. 35.
94. This fragment, of the authenticity of which little doubt can be entertained, must be distinguished from the books attributed to Hecataeus about the Jews and Abraham. Josephus uses both in his “Defense” against Apion (i. 22 seq.), but their authenticity was questioned even in ancient times (cf. Herennius Philo, cited by Origenes, C. Cels. i. 15; Reinach, Textes, p. 157). They are almost certainly Jewish works of the first century B.C.E.
The text of the real Hecataeus (Reinach, Textes, p. 14 seq.) is anything but certain. We have it only in a long citation by Diodorus, xl. 3. This book of Diodorus, however, has disappeared, and is found only in the Bibliotheca made by the Byzantine patriarch Photius in the ninth century C.E. (cod. 244).
95. There were in Egypt a number of colonies of military settlers. They are distinguished by certain privileges, and, in legal terminology, by the term τῆς ἐπιγονῆς, placed after the words of nationality. Just as there are Πέρσαι τῆς ἐπιγονῆς, so there are Ἰουδαῖοι τῆς ἐπιγονῆς. In the Hibeh Papyri, i. 96, of 259 B.C.E., we read an agreement between the Jew Alexander, son of Andronicus, decurion in the troop of Zoilus, and Andronicus, a Jew τῆς ἐπιγονῆς The groom Daniel (?) in a papyrus of the second century B.C.E. (Grenfell, An Alexandrian Erotic Fragment and Other Papyri, no. 43.) and the farm laborer Teuphilus (Grenfell-Hunt, Fayûm Towns and their Papyri, no. 123) are also humble men, and probably in the same stage of cultivation as other men of their calling.
96. Elephantine Pap. (ed. Sachau), no. 6.
97. Osiris appears as a theophoric element, not only in Egyptian names and in those of Grecized Egyptians, but also in purely Phoenician names, and joined to Semitic elements. So Osirshamar, from Malta, and Osiribdil, from Larnaca (Notice des Mon. Phén du Louvre, nos. 133, 162).
98. Reinach, Textes, pp. 20 seq. Müller, Frag. ii. 511-616.
99. Tac. Hist. V. ii.
100. Reinach, Textes, p. 362. Photius Bibl. no. 279.
101. Naucratis was founded, on the Canopic mouth of the Nile, about 550 B.C.E.
102. However completely oligarchical in practice the government became, the sovereignty of the dēmos was recognized in theory. In the ancient doom ascribed to Lycurgus (Plutarch, Lyc. 6), which may be said to form the constitution of Sparta, occur the words δάμῳ δὲ κὰν κυρίαν ἦμεν καὶ κράτος.