Horace on the Jews
Quintus Horatius Flaccus - better known as Horace - is one of the intellectual doyens of Western civilisation and a man who has long been praised by the artists and thinkers of every generation. He was one of the poets and intellectuals of the new Augustine order in Rome and has long been seen - as a former follower of Cassius and Brutus (two of the murderers of Octavian's uncle Julius Caesar) - as walking an intellectual tight-rope between the official policy and polity of the Augustine new order and his own intellectual inclinations and flights of fancy.
One such area where Horace walked that tight-rope is on the subject of jews as Octavian - like his Uncle - was a great patron of the jews and awarded them numerous privileges within the Empire as well as in Rome itself. (1)
Horace was aware that if he seemed to go against the policy of the new order and yet be popular with the Roman people then he would be deemed a threat and punished much as Ovid was for his politically-tinged verses about love and lust. (2) Horace needed to please his powerful sponsor in the Augustine new order Maecenas, but also could not - as a well educated Roman with some obviously Republican inclinations - fully subdue his mind to that of an intellectual slave to the system.
As such scholars have past and present delighted in finding the subtly subversive peons in Horace's work that could easily be viewed as being supportive when in fact they are an intellectual double-edged sword. This is the kind of intellectual output that is common among intellectuals who are constrained by authority from writing what they feel they want to write.
I would point out that one such area of intellectual dissidence that Horace wrote on was the jews: where he seems to have dissented from the practical - if grossly miscalculated - Augustine policy of supporting the jews as a so-called 'productive minority'.
We can see this intellectual dissent in Horace's mentions of the jews in his 'Satires' where he states:
'Make good friends,
What he did wasn’t nice,
Could I ever unthinkingly do something similar one day?
So I advise myself with my lips tight closed,
And when I’m free I toy with my writings,
It’s one of the minor failings I mentioned,
And if it’s something you can’t accept,
A vast crowd of poets will flock to my aid,
For we are by far the majority,
And just as the Jews do in Rome,
We’ll force you to join our congregation!' (3)
What Horace is overtly talking about here is the idea of poetry and how many self-described 'poets' there are in Rome and that these 'poets' - fashionably playing down his own considerable poetic ability - will force everyone - through the medium of being fashionable - to 'join their congregation' just like the jews do. This is a fairly harmless and typical Roman theme: the vulgarity of the mob and the pretentiousness of the many towards the gifted few.
However if we stop a moment and think about those lines 'just as the jews do in Rome, we'll force you to join our congregation'; we begin to see a different meaning springing from them than just an innocent a-political comparison.
The double-edged meaning here is that while it plays into the theme of the awful poets he delights in satirizing: they pale in comparison to the real - as opposed to a literary - problem of the jews in Rome who are trying to force Romans - by means foul and fair - into either 'converting' to the jewish mystery cult of Yahweh or becoming a 'god-fearer' (i.e., a gentile who forswears all things non-jewish and swears to serve jews in all things).
This is the classic stereotype of the 'pushy jew' - often asserted to be a nineteenth century European literary creation - whereby jews seeks entry into their host society only to push their own personal (or perceived collective) agenda once they have received admittance. What Horace is describing is like a large number of Japanese coming to America, being given special rights that other minorities do not have, setting up Shinto shrines and then demanding Americans worship at them as Shinto believers or serve Japanese interests to the exclusion of their own.
In essence Horace is talking about the 'pushy jews' trying to form - by aggressive proselytizing - a fifth column in Rome rather like the Christian Zionists of today: who perform much the same function to the current Israel as the 'god-fearers' and 'converts' did for ancient Israel. They help the jews create a system - for lack of a better term - of relatively trustworthy partisans for their interests who can be used by any particularly unscrupulous jew for their personal benefit.
This is not however to suggest that there was a centralised set of 'god-fearers' and 'converts' in Rome run by the agents of the kings or high priests of the jews.
What was actually the case - which is what Horace is alluding to - was that some of the 'god-fearers' and 'converts' did willingly do the bidding of the kings and high priests of the jews conveyed through their local jewish priestly representatives - who did often act as adjuncts to these powers - (4) while others were beholden to renegade or iconoclastic sects of jews - like the famous group of jews who followed Chrestus - (5) while yet others were independent of both and were simply fellow travellers and/or 'god-fearers' without being specifically attached to one group or another. (6)
Horace is thus torn between the Augustine new order's favourable policy towards the jews and what he saw happening in Rome: with the increasing judification of high-ranking Romans to the extent that within a few years of his death: the Emperor Nero's famous second wife Poppaea was partial to Judaism (7) [and likely a ‘god-fearer’] (8) and the king of the jews Herod Agrippa I was an eminence grise behind the Imperial throne of both Caligula and Claudius. (9) His subtle conclusion can be see as an intellectual cry for help in the battle against this judification of the Roman political class as well as an internal battle between Horace's principles and his purse.
This internal struggle is also characterised by Horace's mention of how the jews are spreading superstitious nonsense throughout Roman society with their mystery cult of Yahweh when he fires a satirical barb at jewish miracle-mongers trying to gull good, honest Romans into parting with their coin and their gods.
To wit:
'Next day the weather was better,
The road was worse,
Right up to fishy Bari.
Then Gnatia,
On whose building the water-nymphs frowned,
Brought us laughter and mirth,
As it tried to persuade us that incense melts without fire,
On its temple steps,
Let Apella the Jew credit that: I don't.
I’ve heard the gods live a carefree life,
And if nature works miracles then it isn’t the gods,
Gloomily sending them down from their home in the sky.
Brindisi's the end of a long road and this story.' (10)
In the quoted text above Horace again gives us a rather pedestrian theme in Roman satirical literature about the credulity of the masses to 'miracles' and the doubting of the existence of the Gods. This was all very normal for a well-educated Roman writing poetical satire, but once again we can detect the slightly subversive example given by Horace in so far as he is saying that those who believe in the mystery cult of Yahweh are inherently credulous to begin with.
Apella you see is not a jewish name. (11)
Although Feldman does suggest an etymology of 'without a foreskin'; (12) he never-the-less means that the figure of Apella is a non-jewish literary creation conceived by Horace to subtly poke fun at the 'chosen' status of the jews without drawing too much attention from the Augustine new order for being slightly politically subversive
What Horace is doing is pointing out by implication that the jews used a vast array of improbable and implausible 'miracles' - such as 'incense burning without fire' - to gain 'god-fearers' and 'converts' to their mystery cult and as such gain an even greater power-base in Roman society. That Horace regards this as a problem goes without saying given his negative mention of it.
Indeed this pro-jewish power structure in Roman society is the focus of the last mention of the jews that Horace makes when he states:
'We stop.
‘Where have you been,
Where are you going?’
He asks, he answers.
I start to tug at his cloak,
And press on his unresponsive arms,
Nodding and winking at him to save me,
The joker cruelly laughing in non-comprehension,
I grew heated with anger,
‘Wasn’t there something you needed to say in private.’
Yes I remember,
I’ll tell you at some more convenient time:
It is the thirtieth,
Sabbath,
Do you want to offend the circumcised Jews?’
‘Nothing is sacred to me.’
‘It is to me: I’m one of the many and somewhat weaker.
Pardon: another day.’
That so black a sun had risen for me!' (13)
Once again we find Horace playing to the standard theme of using the covenant of the jews with Yahweh - symbolised by their being circumcised - as a way to poke fun at the cult of Apollo (the new moon being on the 30th of every month in the Roman understanding) by comparing it was the odd rites of the jews. However we also once again see Horace using this as a broad theme to cover his specific message, which is the scale of jewish influence and power in Rome when he implies that people are scared of the jews and the power they exert when he rhetorically asks: 'do you want to offended the circumcised jews?' Then proceeding to answer that he did not, while the other character (sometimes held to Horace himself) responds that he holds nothing sacred and thus is so unwise to offend everybody in addition to the jews.
As such Horace is telling us that he is watching what he says and keeping it within the perceived acceptable bounds of simple satire and mockery for fear of the jews and their friends in authority. And as such we should regard Horace as a voice ringing throughout the ages with one simple message for us currently living: be wary of jews bearing gifts.
References
(1) Harry Leon, 1960, 'The Jews of Ancient Rome', 1st Edition, Jewish Publication Society of America: Philadelphia, p. 142
(2) Ovid, Tris. 2:131-132
(3) Horace, Sat. 1:4
(4) Cassius Dio, Rom. Hist. 69:12-14
(5) Martin Goodman, 2008, 'Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations', 1st Edition, Penguin: New York, p. 387
(6) Leon, Op. Cit., pp. 21-28
(7) Ibid., p. 28
(8) This potentially offers a reason for the political conspiracy against Nero on the part of Roman authors: they don't wish to admit that the Roman empire was almost successfully subverted and destroyed by jews.
(9) Goodman, Op. Cit., pp. 387-388
(10) Horace Sat. 1:5
(11) Louis Feldman, 1996, 'Studies in Hellenistic Judaism', 1st Edition, E. J. Brill: Leiden, pp. 371-372
(12) Ibid., pp. 372-374
(13) Horace, Sat. 1:9