Bettenson's Documents

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (75-160), or Suetonius, was a Roman historian who was famous for his biographies of twelve caesars, beginning with Julius Caesar and dealing consecultively with the first eleven emperors of the Roman Empire. Bettenson includes a famous passage from his biography of the emperor Claudius (41-54), Vita Claudii 25:4. In chapter 25, Suetonius is listing a number of the accomplishments of Claudius. Included in this list is a record of his expulsion from Rome of a group of trouble-making Jews:

“He [Claudius} allowed the people of Ilium [Troy] perpetual exemption from tribute, on the ground that they were the founders of the Roman race, reading an ancient letter of the Senate and People of Rome written in Hellenic to King Seleukos, in which they promised him their friendship and alliance only on condition that he should keep their kinsfolk of Ilium free from every burden. Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome. He allowed the envoys of the Germani to sit in the orchestra, led by their naive self-confidence…. He utterly abolished the cruel and inhuman religion of the Druids among the Gauls, which under Augustus had merely been prohibited to Roman citizens…He struck his treaties with foreign princes in the Forum, sacrificing a pig and reciting the ancient formula of the fetial priests [a group of twenty noble advisers on international relations who also maintained a religious function]. But these and other acts, and in fact almost the whole conduct of his reign, were dictated not so much by his own judgment as that of his wives and freedmen, since he nearly always acted in accordance with their interests and desires.”

Several comments are in order in this passage. First, Bettenson sees the name “Chrestus” as a variant of the name “Christus,” which we saw in the previous passage by Tacitus. Thus, something was happening within Judaism at Rome that was divisive and presumably involved Christ and his followers there. Bettenson adds the note that this probably represents disagreements between Jewish and Christian teachers that characterized the differentiation phase of first-century Christianity. The editor also offers a biblical cross-reference to Acts 18:2. In this passage, Luke records the first meeting of Paul, and Priscilla and her husband, Aquila at Corinth. Priscilla and Aquila were living in Rome during the time of Claudius’ decree that expelled all Jews. In a letter to the Alexandrians written at the outset of his reign, Claudius addressed rioting that involved Jewish residents of that city and exhorted Gentile Alexandrians to tolerate the Jews in their midst. At the same time he warned the Alexandrian Jews that if they pressed issues too far he would “take all measures against them as awakening a disease affecting all the world.” here is the gist of the letter:

“As for the question , which party was responsible for the riots and feud (or rather, if the truth be told, the war) with the Jews, although in confrontation with their opponents your ambassadors, and particularly Dionysios the son of Theon, contended with great zeal, nevertheless I was unwilling to make a strict inquiry, though guarding within me a store of immutable indignation against whichever party renews the conflict. And I tell you once and for all that unless you put a stop to this ruinous and obstinate enmity against each other, I shall be driven to show what a benevolent Prince can be when turned to righteous indignation. Wherefore, once again I conjure you that, on the one hand, the Alexandrians show themselves forebearing and kindly towards the Jews who for many years have dwelt in the same city, and dishonor none of the rites observed by them in the worship of their god, but allow them to observe their customs as in the time of the Deified Augustus, which customs I also, after hearing both sides, have sanctioned; and on the other hand, I explicitly order the Jews not to agitate for more privileges than they formerly possessed, and not in the future to send out a separate embassy as though they lived in a separate city (a thing unprecedented), and not to force their way into gymnasiarchic or cosmetic games, while enjoying their own privileges and sharing a great abundance of advantages in a city not their own, and not to bring in or admit Jews who come down the river from Egypt or from Syria, a proceeding which will compel me to conceive serious suspicions. Otherwise I will by all means take vengeance on them as fomenters of which is a general plague infecting the whole world. If, desisting from these courses, you consent to live with mutual forebearance and kindliness, I on my side will exercise a solicitude of very long standing for the city, as one which is bound to us by traditional friendship. I bear witness to my friend Barbillus of the solicitude which he has always shown for you in my presence and of the extreme zeal with which he has now advocated your cause; and likewise to my friend Tiberius Claudius Archibius.”

The conclusion, then, is that we cannot be sure what the central issues were in the expulsion of the Jews from Rome, but that if it was similar to what happened in Alexandria it may have had to do with property rights and citizen privileges. Writing in Romans 13 at a later time, Paul exhorted the Roman Christians to obey the civil authorities, perhaps wanting them to not press too stringently for their rights– remember the earlier expulsion that could happen again! At least we can be sure that the Roman authorities still did not clearly differentiate between Jews and Christians during Claudius’ reign.

Another interesting point is that Claudius, according to Suetonius, was not his own man but acted in a people-pleasing manner. This raises an interesting question about the early Christians. Is there any evidence of any of Claudius’ wives or advisers having a grudge for, or fear of, the Christians? Notice that Claudius made a policy to wipe out druidism in Gaul, so he was willing to take extreme measures when religion threatened the civil peace in some way.

By the way, Claudius’ sentimental honoring of Troy is related to the belief that the founders of Rome were descended from the Trojan warrior Aeneas, who escaped the destruction of the Trojan War and emigrated west to found a colony on the Italian peninsula. This myth related to Roman origins fit in well with the typical Roman xenophobia regarding Greeks that strangely led to a sort of cultural inferiority complex on the part of the Romans. One may observe this in Roman art, which usually supplies a poor imitation of their Greek predecessors.