all installed by Claudius and obviously had common interests. They were also connected to each other by marriage arrangements. Agrippa’s daughter Drusilla and his brother Aristobulus (Aristobulus V), for example, were both married to children of King Sampsigeramus II (AJ 18.135; 20.139; Schwartz 1990: 138; Kokkinos 1998: 315, 321). However, Marsus, the Roman governor of Syria, happened to be around and he was not amused by the meeting in Tiberias and required the kings to return to their territories without delay. Perhaps he was afraid of a pact against Rome or he was worried about the Parthian frontier, for which he was responsible but also needed the loyal support of these kings. Another explanation would be personal: the Syrian governor may have considered Agrippa to be a threat to his own position as most important Roman in the East (Schwartz 1990: 137–140; cf. Kokkinos 1998: 300).
Josephus’s Herod narratives provide valuable information about friendly kings along the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire and their interactions with their patrons. Herod the Great’s official status in the empire was rex sociusque et amicus (“king, ally, and friend”). Originally, Herod was a commoner who took over the power from a well-established local royal dynasty, as King Polemon of Pontus, King Amyntas of Galatia, and King Archelaus of Cappadocia did. Mark Antony must have supported them because of their outstanding qualities as leaders and organizers, as Herod’s early career suggests (BJ 1.203–285; AJ 14.158–184, 268–305, 324–390; Buchheim 1960: 51–53, 56, 58–59). Herod was successful as king because he had a good and mutually beneficial relationship with his Roman patrons: first with Mark Antony, who settled the Roman affairs in the East, and then, after the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, with Octavian, later named Augustus. Josephus indicates in both The War and The Antiquities that Herod was a “friend” of his first patron Mark Antony (e.g. BJ 1.386, 390; AJ 15.131, 162, 183, 189, 195, 409), and afterwards of Augustus (e.g. BJ 1.394; AJ 15.193, 195, 199). During Augustus’s reign a third Roman high official, Marcus Agrippa, acted as go-between for Herod and the emperor. In War 1.400 Josephus suggests that Herod had a close relationship with Agrippa as well as with Augustus himself: “but what was greater than all this in Herod’s eyes was that next after Agrippa, he enjoyed Caesar’s [i.e. Augustus’] special favor, and next after Caesar, he enjoyed Agrippa’s [special favor].” That Herod actually was a close friend of Augustus and Agrippa is less plausible for Augustus – who met Herod only a few times – than for Agrippa, who is described as Herod’s “friend and companion” in Antiquities 15.350 (see also AJ 15.318, 361, and 16.12–15; Richardson 1996: 226–234).
The Herod narratives show that returning favors was expected by the relationship between a friendly king and his Roman patrons. Herod frequently applied this practice (e.g. BJ 1.242, 393, AJ 15.5). In War 1.393 Josephus states, for example, that Herod placated Octavian with gifts. Mark Antony rewarded Herod’s loyalty also by favors. He made him a prominent guest during banquets and involved him in his judicial decisions (AJ 15.77; Braund 1984: 83; Vössing 2004). The relationship between a friendly king and his patrons was not only based on mutual beneficiality, but also on mutual trust (pistis) and loyalty (eunoia). The section on Herod’s perilous meeting with Octavian after the Battle of Actium and its follow-up imply that (AJ 15.187–201; esp. 15.193–194, 201). Escorting Antony or Octavian for part of their military campaigns was an obvious service from Herod as friendly king (e.g. AJ 15.80, 96, 168, 199–201). Herod honored his patrons by founding or renaming cities after them. For the emperor he topped this off by erecting temples or altars and by organizing games in his honor (e.g. BJ 1.407, 414–41; cf. Suetonius, Aug. 59–60). Herod expanded and fortified the city of Samaria, which he renamed as Sebaste (= Augustus) in honor of Augustus (AJ 15.294, 296; cf. also the foundation of Caesarea Maritima in Augustus’s honor, AJ 15.331–341). Archelaus I of Cappadocia and Pythodoris of Pontus also renamed cities as Sebaste (Braund 1984: 108; Kienast 1999: 469–470). The sons of friendly kings were often educated in Rome from the times of Augustus onward, as a passage in Suetonius indicates (Aug. 48; Braund 1984: 9–17). Josephus confirms this practice by reporting that: “… when Sebaste was already built as a city, he [Herod] decided to send his sons Alexander and Aristobulus to Rome in order to meet with Caesar” (AJ 15.342–343). The obvious aim of this meeting is the Roman education of the boys, but Herod may have had additional motives for this move, such as carrying over the close relationship with the Roman patrons to the next generation and preparing them for their own career as friendly ruler (Braund 1984: 11). The particular relationship between Herod and Augustus remained intact as long as the king did not exceed his authority, as another section in Josephus indicates. Herod jeopardized his position when he launched a punitive expedition against the Nabataeans without having Augustus’s permission (AJ 16.271–293).
Diaspora Jews and Other Nations in the Near East
A passage in Agrippa II’s speech aimed at preventing a Jewish revolt against Rome (BJ 2.346–401) points to the serious consequences of a rebellion for the Jews who were living in the Diaspora: there was no population across the world without a Jewish minority and these Jews would surely be massacred in case of a revolt (2.398–399; cf. BJ 7.43). Elsewhere Josephus quotes the geographer Strabo, stating that the inhabited world was filled with Jews (AJ 14.115; FGrH 91F 7). Josephus himself provides useful information about Diaspora communities. He fills, for example, some gaps in the largely unknown history of the Jews in Babylonia and confirms that part of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi did not return from the Babylonian captivity (see AJ 12.149; 15.39; 17.24–26; 18.310–379; 20.34–35; Neusner 1969; Oppenheimer 1983; Goodblatt 2012). He mentions as Jewish settlements in Babylonia the cities of Seleucia on the Tigris, Ctesiphon, close to Seleucia (AJ 18.372–378), Nehardea (18.310–313, 379), Nisibis (18.379) as well as Charax Spasini between the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris (20.34). Nehardea on the Euphrates became a major Jewish center in the rabbinic period. Josephus also informs us that Hyrcanus II, former high priest and ethnarch (c. 76–40 BCE), was living in exile in Babylon after his capture by the Parthians in 40 BCE (AJ 15.12; see also below). Although Hyrcanus had become unfit for the High Priesthood after his mutilation by Antigonus (AJ 15.17), Josephus’s information implies that the Jews east of the Jordan treated him as if he were a king and high priest. He must have acted as the leader of the Jewish community in Babylonia and was well received at the Parthian court as a person of royal descent who could act as a trait d’union between the community and the Parthian administration. Later on Herod the Great strengthened the connection with the Babylonian Jews by founding a military colony with a group of them in Batanea (AJ 17.23–29). Josephus further tells us that Jews, one of them a merchant named Ananias who operated in the area of Charax Spasini, brought about the conversion of the royal family of Adiabene to Judaism (AJ 20.34–35). Josephus’s most elaborate section about Jews in Babylonia concerns the brothers Asinaeus and Anilaeus, who benefited from the weakness of the Parthian king and succeeded in establishing a semi-independent Jewish robber-state for some years (AJ 18.310–373), with “the parting of the rivers” as its center (AJ 18.315, probably referring to Pumbedita, c. 40 kilometers upstream on the Euphrates; Goodblatt 2012: 271). Josephus points out that one of the brothers fell for a Parthian beauty and that the marriage with this woman not only led to violations of the Jewish customs but also was the beginning of the brothers’ downfall (18.340–343).
Josephus mentions Syria as the region with the highest number of Jewish inhabitants and within Syria the Jews in the capital Antioch as the largest Jewish community (BJ 7.43). He offers us glimpses of the history of the latter. King Seleucus I is said to have founded this community and bestowed citizenship upon the Jews as a reward for their military services (AJ 12.119; cf. BJ 7.43–44; Apion 2.39). Josephus adds that Jews in other cities in Asia and Lower Syria founded by Seleucus were also granted local citizenship, which he specifies as having equal rights as the Macedonians and the Greeks in these cities were having (AJ 12.119; BJ 7.44). Several scholars have argued that Josephus overstates the privileges of the Syrian Jews and conclude that they plausibly only concern certain rights that applied to their own minority community (Tcherikover 1959: 328–329; Smallwood 1976: 226; Barclay 1996: 244–245; Pucci Ben Zeev