Can Antisemitism Be Traced Back to Ancient Rome?

Abstract

Abstract: The political context and the comments about Jews found in Latin literature indicate that no discrimination against them is attested to in Rome in the period between the second century BCE and the second century CE. The expulsions from the city applied also to other foreign groups, and the occasional negative comments made by Roman politicians, historians, and poets are not intrinsically different from those regarding other foreign population groups. Although Jewish separatism and cases of alleged attraction to Judaism aroused some hostility, this hostility never led to open conflict of the kind that transpired in other centers of the Mediterranean. However, some disparaging comments about the Jews did not disappear with time, as with other peoples slandered by the Romans, and were later redeployed forming the basis upon which anti-Judaism and antisemitism developed.