The Julio-Claudian Dynasty 14-68 AD
After the death of Augustus, four emperors from his family, known as the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, took power during the period from 14-68 AD. The reason for naming this dynasty is due to the Julius clan of Augustus on the one hand, and the Claudius clan on the other hand, which is the clan of the Empress Livia, whom she bore from her first husband Claudius Nero. Augustus encouraged marriage between these two families, and from them came the four successors of Augustus: Tiberius, Gaius Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.
Emperor Tiberius 37-14 AD: He belonged to the Julio-Claudian family by adoption and married Augustus' daughter Julia. He had two sons, the first of his own, Drusus the Younger, and the other son he adopted by order of Augustus, Germanicus, son of Drusus. While Drusus was dull and Tiberius had adopted him by order of Augustus, even though Tiberius had a son of his own, Drusus the Younger. At the time Drusus was dull, Germanicus, the commander of the armies in Germany, was winning victories. There were many circumstances surrounding the death of Emperor Tiberius in the fall of 19 AD. Emperor Gaius Caligula 37-41 AD: Tiberius left the throne to his adopted grandson Gaius, known as Caligula, meaning "little military boot", because since his childhood he accompanied his father Germanicus in wars, and assumed power in difficult circumstances as he witnessed the death of his father by poisoning and the death of his mother after her exile and the suicide of his two brothers, which was reflected in the conduct of his rule as it was a good beginning and he was loved, as he was influenced by the eastern princes and requested the deification of himself and his sisters, and he abolished the republican positions and offices, and thus he completely abandoned the imperial system of government and turned to the system of absolute rule, and Gaius Caligula's policy with regard to the East, especially Egypt, was governed by his personal tendencies more than being the result of general political considerations. Flaccus ruled Egypt for six years, and during the first five years he was a model of justice and peace and had a great deal of energy and activity. However, in the last year his situation became unstable due to his relationship with the former emperor Tiberius, as well as his prominent role in the deportation and exile of Agrippina, the mother of Emperor Gaius. According to Philo, he was raised in Rome and had close ties to the descendants of Augustus and the sons of the imperial palace. He enjoyed a high degree of efficiency and skill, as he was able to understand the administrative and demographic structure of Egypt, to the point that he advised his advisors and did not listen to them, as was the custom. The effect of this was positive, as he made a number of important changes in financial administration, including the cancellation of some privileges granted to some lands, and thus imposed taxes on them. This procedure was recorded in the decree of Tiberius Julius Alexander, and in 34-35 AD his famous decree prohibiting the carrying of weapons by anyone and threatened the death penalty for anyone caught with a weapon, with the exception of household tools and certain classes of Population.
Regarding the events in Alexandria, Agrippa was a friend of Gaius before he took the throne, and appointed him king of a state neighboring the state of Judah. He held a military parade in the streets of Alexandria, and the Alexandrians mocked him and remembered his arrival yesterday while he was bankrupt and in debt, so they devised tricks for him. After they realized that they might anger the emperor, they came up with other tricks to cause discord between the emperor and the Jews. They knew that the Jews refused to deify and worship the emperor, and did not accept placing statues of humans in their temples, no matter how great their status was. Therefore, they stormed the Jewish temples and forcibly installed statues of the emperor in them. Philo says that the Alexandrians thought of a cunning trick when they succeeded in introducing the emperor’s name, which prompted the city’s mob to attack the Jews and torture them. It was said that the reason behind this was the Jews’ desire and persistent effort to be equal to them, and their lack of satisfaction with the gains they had in a city that was not their city, as Emperor Claudius addressed them in clear and unambiguous language. The Jewish philosopher Philo claimed: In his book Against Flaccus, “the governor claimed that the Jews had piles of weapons in their homes to justify the use of violence against them by some of the soldiers units operating under his command in Alexandria. The governor, in implementation of the decree, searched the homes of Jews and Alexandrians for weapons used in the violence in the city, but found nothing. On the contrary, when the homes of the Alexandrians were searched, he found piles of Jewish weapons.” However, the reality is that the governor found weapons in the homes of the Jews, so he arrested 38 Jewish leaders and flogged them on the day of the emperor’s birthday. Philo went on to mention that the Alexandrians had arrested Jewish women and forced them to eat pork in public. The Jews sent a delegation headed by Philo to Emperor Gaius to file a complaint against the Alexandrians and clarify their position. The Alexandrians also sent another delegation headed by Appion. The appearance of the two delegations coincided with another incident that occurred from the Jews of Palestine, which had a negative impact on the emperor’s position towards the Jews. The Jews of Palestine destroyed a temple that the Greeks had built for the emperor in the town of Yamnia. (Iamina), the emperor became furious and quickly sent to his governor in Syria the necessity of storming the great temple of Jerusalem and installing statues of the emperor in it, but the governor was calm and did not do so because this matter was enough to increase the flames of revolution throughout the empire, and after the emperor directed a set of questions to the Jewish delegation, he addressed them saying: "It seems to me that those who are so stupid as not to believe in my divinity are more deserving of pity than punishment," and the Jews were not saved from the wrath of Emperor Caligula except by his assassination on January 24, 41 AD, and despite that, things between the two parties did not settle down, and this is what prompted Emperor Claudius to send his famous letter to the city of Alexandria, and the basic principle on which this letter was based was (live and let live), and this content was directed to both parties, and after Flaccus threatened the death penalty for anyone caught with a weapon, and this penalty is considered severe for violators and was not mentioned in In any previous decree, but it was mentioned in one of the decrees of one of the governors of Egypt during the reign of Emperor Claudius (41-54), although we believe that it is related to the events of Alexandria, as the Jews at the beginning of the reign of Claudius attacked the Alexandrians fiercely, so the governor had to issue a new decree in which he recalled the death penalty mentioned in the decree of Flaccus. It is worth noting that the reason for the outbreak of the Jewish revolution was their attempt and aspiration for complete equality from a legal standpoint and to enjoy tax exemptions, especially the poll tax, although they enjoyed a kind of self-rule represented by the Senate and the community, as well as the right to build places of worship, educate their children, and establish courts. In addition to this, their desire to change the demographic composition of Alexandria by inviting their Jewish brothers from Syria and the various provinces of Egypt to settle there at the expense of the Alexandrians, and they came with weapons, which indicates their desire to riot and attack the Alexandrians. It is worth noting that Philo excelled in describing the events of the revolution as if it were a dramatic film that makes you sympathize with the Jews and always play the role of the victim. The Jews followed suit, such as the idea of the Holocaust Museum in Tel Aviv. It is clear that the situation in Alexandria did not calm down with the death of Caligula, as the Jews, as soon as they learned of his death, rushed towards the homes of the Alexandrians and began to destroy, rob and loot them, aided by their own people whom they had brought from the Egyptian countryside or from Syria, using their weapons that they had hidden. During this wave of violence, the Jews were the ones who initiated the aggression. The new governor informed Emperor Claudius of these developments, so he issued two decrees - according to Josephus, who is the only source for these two decrees - one of which confirmed the privileges of the Jews in Alexandria that they had enjoyed before Gaius, and the other granted the same rights of the Jews of Alexandria to all the Jews of the empire. From here, Emperor Claudius appeared to be blatantly biased towards the Jews when he issued these two decrees in favor of the Jews, which encouraged them to attack the Alexandrians. Perhaps the papyrus published by the scholar Parasoglu is related to this matter, and it is a decree of one of the governors of Egypt, perhaps the governor Vetrasius Pollio 39-41 AD, in which he mentions the death penalty. The decree of Flaccus stipulated the reason for which it is not clear, as the papyrus is in poor condition, and it is worth noting that Claudius’s speech is very clear in terms of the distinction between Jews and Alexandrians, as the Greeks were the only ones to whom the term Alexandrians applied, and others were not. There is no doubt that this matter aroused the resentment of the Jews who claimed their right to Alexandrian citizenship. Apion adopted the same position when he considered the Jews as strangers and atheist barbarians seeking rights they did not deserve. The speech revolved around three topics, the first topic regarding the domes that the Alexandrians established for the emperor, as some of them accepted and others rejected, including the idea of appointing a high priest for him and building temples for him because he reserved them for the gods only, and this clarified the good feelings that the Alexandrians had towards him. As for the second topic, it revolved around the demands of the Alexandrians, which he agreed to, except for the last demand, as it confirms the right of Alexandrian citizenship for those who meet the conditions for integration into youth organizations until the time of his ascension to the throne, while they enjoy all the privileges and exemptions enjoyed by the city, except for They sneaked into these organizations, and he also agreed to the Alexandrians’ proposal to limit the term of municipal positions to three years, fearing that his people would abuse their power. There was a final demand for the Shura Council, which was one of the most important features of the Greek city. The third topic was about the unrest that Alexandria had witnessed since the reign of Gaius Caligula and continued during the reign of Claudius. It is worth noting that the letter of Emperor Claudius, whose title we referred to earlier (Live and the Other Lives), addressed the issue of the conflict between the Jews and the Alexandrians in Alexandria and his stern warning to both parties. He also appealed to the Alexandrians to show tolerance towards the Jews and not violate their religious rituals. We do not know for sure to what extent this letter succeeded in stopping the violence in the city of Alexandria, because we know from one of the papyri that two delegations arrived to the emperor in 53 AD to present their complaints. However, the emperor sided with the Jews this time in a blatant manner and ordered the execution of two leaders of the Alexandrian delegation, which is evident from the trial that took place for them in the governor’s council, which was recorded in one of the papyri. The works of the Alexandrian martyrs.
After the death of Emperor Claudius on October 13, 54 AD, Emperor Nero took over the throne. Claudius had adopted Nero when he married his mother Agrippina, the daughter of his brother Germanicus and sister of Emperor Gaius Caligula. Nero was Agrippina's son from her first husband, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. When Agrippina felt that there was a tendency to claim the right of the emperor's son to the throne, she poisoned Emperor Claudius, so he died. Her son Nero was declared emperor under the name Nero (Claudius Caesar) at the expense of Brittanycus, the son of Emperor Claudius. Nero was raised and educated by two of the greatest Roman writers, Pliny the Elder and Seneca, the well-known philosopher and writer. In fact, the image of Nero in the Hellenistic East is good, attractive and benevolent, in stark contrast to his image in Rome. Nero showed great interest in the eastern states during the beginning of his rule, focusing on Alexandria in particular. He organized the city's citizen body and coordinated relations between the tribes and neighborhoods, and called it New names, which led to a cultural and artistic flourishing, and when the armies abandoned him, he expressed his desire to flee to Egypt or to be appointed a governor over it and tried to ask the Roman people for forgiveness for his previous crimes. If his attempts failed, he begged them to allow him to assume the governorship of Egypt. Despite the talk about his crimes, literary sources document a bright image of him in Egypt, which indicates the appreciation of the people for him, as they described him with positive titles such as the spirit of the good world and the savior of the world. He also declared the freedom of the land of the Greeks.
Reflecting his positive impact on the region, in the fall of 61 AD, Emperor Nero sent a military mission to explore the Kingdom of Ethiopia. The mission reached the Sudd region, where it met with the Nubian authorities, collected geographical and zoological information, and drew a map of the region. Pliny and Seneca differed on the mission's objective. Seneca believed that the main objective was to explore the sources of the Nile, while Pliny believed that the main objective was military to collect intelligence in preparation for the invasion of Ethiopia. Some have questioned the veracity of the story that claims that the mission was a prelude to a military campaign. Some believe that Pliny was trying to distort Nero's image and portray him as looking for cheap military victories because he was hostile to him. The campaign can be viewed from two perspectives: the first is a strategic military perspective, and the second is a commercial one, as it aimed to explore Ethiopia's military power and secure the Roman borders in Africa. The campaign also included interest in the Chad-Dar Fur region, which was central to trade routes and exploration of the sources of the Nile. The Romans were seeking direct control over trade resources such as ivory, timber and salt, which made them target gathering information about these areas and goods in order to get rid of intermediaries and increase security on trade routes. During his reign, Emperor Nero faced many challenges, including the Jewish revolt in Palestine in 66 AD. This revolt came in the context of escalating protests among the Jews as a result of the political, economic and religious tyranny they were suffering from. Their religious fervor and hope for the emergence of a new Messiah escalated, which prompted them to rise up and incite strikes, and finally to carry out their great revolt in Jerusalem. This revolt led to the destruction of their temple by Titus in 70 AD. In this context, tensions renewed in Alexandria, where some Alexandrians discovered the presence of Jews infiltrating them, which angered the masses and led to clashes and attempts to kill them. In an attempt to escape, some of them were arrested and others tried to hide, and an attempt was made to burn them alive. The Jewish reaction to these attacks was violent, as they attacked the Greeks and almost Setting fire to the stadium, the governor of Egypt at the time, Tiberius Julius Alexander, intervened to calm the situation and urged the Jews to remain calm, but some of them refused to respond and continued to escalate. In the end, Roman forces were used to suppress the revolt and restore order.