Romanization, Rebellion and the Theatre of Ancient Palestine

Author(s): Miriam Kammer

Source: Ecumenica , Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2010), pp. 7-23
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/ecumenica.3.1.0007

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Romanization, Rebellion and the Theatre
of Ancient Palestine

Miriam Kammer
University of Washington
Cities are plugged into the globe of history like capacitors: they
condense and conduct the currents of social time. Their layered
surfaces... register the force of these currents both as wear and as
narrative. That is, city surfaces tell time and stories.
Holson (37)

The founding of cities by Roman rulers in conquered lands is one of the plainest
signifiers of the practice of “Romanization,” a systemized process by which the provinces
were bestowed with marks of Roman civilization, or humanitas. Such is a deliberate
program of acculturation where the conqueror introduces his own cultural and social
patterns—and their requisite venues—in order to bring the conquered under his influence
and control (Webster 209-211). In urban areas under Roman rule, theatres made manifest
the inter-connectedness between religion, society, and politics. These venues were vital
to the spreading of Imperial thought and culture, were considered fundamental to any
proud city in the empire, and unlike other entertainment facilities, theatres were erected
in nearly every sizeable Roman settlement including Palestine. To what degree the local
population accepted this theatre building, however, is still a cause for much speculation.
The implementations of power in the Roman Empire were generally performative
and often marked by the interaction of authority figures and their subjects (Potter 131). In
this cultural and political system, the theatre space was able to serve as much more than
a spot for watching plays. Due to their spatial dimensions, Roman theatres were well-
suited for a number of public events including the reading of Imperial decrees and the
staging of trials, debates, and protests—some civilized, some not (131). A New Testament
passage, for example, recounts a riot at Ephesus, a prosperous trading port in Asia Minor
that was home to the famous Temple of Artemis, a pre-Christian goddess. Around the
summer of 52 CE, the Christian evangelist Paul of Taursus began his missionary work in
the city (Schnelle 54), and by October of 54 CE, the town’s silversmiths, who made their
living by manufacturing effigies of the old goddess, took Paul’s successful proselytizing
to be too much of a threat (G.H.R. Horsley 142). One silversmith mustered together a
7

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8 Miriam Kammer
number of workmen and townspeople, complaining that not only were locals about to
lose their livelihoods over the decrease in revenue, but that the city’s goddess herself was
under attack. The crowd seized two of Paul’s followers, carried them into the theatre, and
for hours made acclamations1 in favor of Artemis (Acts 19:34). Eventually, authorities
were able to appease the crowd and they advised the protestors to present their concerns
to a proper (Roman) court instead of acting rashly as a mob, rallying inside a theatre.
This sort of theatricality, enacted within a designated performance space, was standard
within the lands of the Roman empire.
Theatrical events were staged in locales outside of Rome only five to twenty-
five times per year, and performances may have been standardized across the empire
(Boatwright, “Theatres,” 185, 191). These productions were essential to Rome’s long-
distance strategy of influencing its provincial subjects. Images of the Imperial family
were displayed on most theatrical occasions, and performance days traditionally began
and ended with prayers and sacrifices offered in the name of Rome, the Emperor, and the
Imperial family. Governmental and religious processions, also key exercises of Roman
authority, often commenced or concluded at theatres. These parades included public
prayers led by imperial priests and priestesses who processed with images of their gods
as well as effigies of earthly emperors and empresses who were exalted to godhood
(Brief History 239).
In resistance to the rule of Rome and concomitant cultural practices, on a number
of occasions in ancient Palestine, natives rebelled against their conquerors. Alongside
this pattern of insurrection—the First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE), the Kitos War
(115–117 CE), the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-135 CE) and other, smaller skirmishes—
there was also a pattern of increasing Roman theatre construction. From the close of the
first century CE onward, colonial authorities broke ground for theatres at sites throughout
the Judean region, and by the third century, one or more theatres stood in nearly every
major city in Palestine (Netzer and Weiss 17). This building of theatres was an imperial
appropriation of native space, operating as a material and psychological weapon in the
Roman arsenal of acculturation aiming to crush local resistance—the more marks of
the colonizer on the native landscape, the less hope among the natives for a successful
revolution. Through a reading of the physical environment and an examination of the
theatre as both a venue for entertainment and for political acts, this study will explore
the implications of theatre-building in ancient Jewish communities via an analysis of the
theatre at Sepphoris in Galilee. The debate over when this theatre was built and how it
was used reveals the complications that arise when trying to determine how successful
the Roman campaign for humanitas was in the Galilee region of Palestine, a territory
famous in the West for its historical and Biblical weight.
The Way of Life in Roman Palestine
Rome “arrived” in Palestine around 63 BCE in the figure of the conqueror
Pompey who suspended native kingship and ushered in an era of colonial rule that would
last more than six hundred years. In 37 BCE, Rome appointed Herod their first “client
king” of the region in hopes that he would be able to sway the native people towards
acceptance of Roman supremacy (Grant 67). To the indigenous Jews, however, Herod’s
kingship was tenuous. He was not considered to be Jewish but of Idumaean and Arab
ancestry, as his family had converted to Judaism only two generations previous (Kasher

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 Romanization, Rebellion and the Theatre of Ancient Palestine 9
18). He did not meet any of the conditions necessary to act as religious leader, and so the
spiritual duties that were usually part of Jewish kingship needed to be re-allotted (Grant
66). Herod did marry Mariamne, a princess of the Judaic Hasmonean dynasty, but he later
had her, her mother, and their sons executed.
Michael Grant characterizes Herod’s “path” as “a difficult one” (70). He needed
to present himself as “a good enough Jew to retain sympathy at home,” but “at the same
time, he had to be a good enough pro-Roman to retain the favor of Octavian who had
re-named himself ‘Augustus’” (70). As Emperor, Augustus himself made theatre a part
of his campaign for cultural development. To the grand theatre of Pompey, originally
constructed in 55 BCE, he added two more performance sites—the theatre of Balubus
in 13 BCE and the theatre of Marcellus in 11 BCE. Augustus also attended theatre
performances and wrote a drama of his own named Ajax (Batey 119). As agent of Rome
and political servant to Augustus, Herod became the first to erect performance facilities in
the Palestinian region, in cities such as Caesarea Maritima, Samaria, Jericho, and Sidon.
In Jerusalem he built a number of impressive entertainment venues to celebrate a series
of contests held in honor of Augustus’s victory over Mark Antony, termed the Actium
Games (Netzer and Weiss 16-17; Batey 119).
Scholars have debated intensely what degree of warmth native Jews may have
felt towards Herod during his rule. Jews may have been suspicious of his proclivities
for things Greek and Roman, and any of his subjects, regardless of ethnicity, would be
fearful of his secret police and brutish tax collectors. Grant maintains that whatever the
public’s opinion of him may have been, Herod nevertheless “gifted” his territories “the
astonishing, unprecedented phenomenon of peace for thirty years” which allowed for
a level of “prosperity” that previously seemed “inconceivable” (73). The final years of
Herod’s reign, though, were marked by domestic troubles that seemed to spin beyond
his control. In 4 BCE, Pharisee teachers incited their students into staging violent
demonstrations against his rule. The cause of their protest (at least that which was
reported), was Herod’s placing a large gilt-bronze eagle above the great gate of the
Temple. A strict interpretation of Jewish laws—the same laws that point towards Judaic
anti-theatricality—would condemn the raising of the statue, as the likeness of an animal
would qualify as a graven image. Though Jewish writings allude to eagles with a sense
of reverence, this eagle remained symbolic of Rome. During the riot, the sculpture was
torn down (Grant 81).
Indeed, the Roman colonizer’s overall rule of public life affected the colonized
people materially and psychologically, consciously and unconsciously. Life within these
Herodian territories as well as in lands throughout the Roman provinces demanded much
from the native peoples, including an oath of loyalty to the emperor (to which Herod met
much resistance), lengthy military occupations, and imperial taxes collected by largely
corrupt bureaucrats (Grant 88; Laurence 3). In addition to these more intangible, complex
stratagems activated by the colonizer to gain and maintain control over his subjects, an
overwhelming system of land control was enacted whereby Rome appropriated native
spaces and transformed pieces of Palestinian land into sites of Roman dominance. For
instance, by around 20 CE, Herod Antipas, son of Herod and ruler of the Galilee from ca.
6 BCE – 37 CE, began construction of Tiberias, a city east of Sepphoris on the western
shore of the Sea of Galilee. Though Antipas envisioned the settlement as his capital,

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10 Miriam Kammer
a great sign of Rome on the eastern landscape, finding locals to settle in his new city
was not easy, for he constructed his Roman site on top of an ancient burial ground.
To the area’s native peoples, Jews for the most part, the presence of the dead made
the land ritually unclean and made the city even less appealing. As a solution, Antipas
used force to move people onto his site, importing slaves, coercing local Galileans, and
uprooting the impoverished from “all parts of the [country] belonging to him” to settle
his Roman-esque site (Josephus, Antiquities, 18.2.3; Chancey and Porter 179). A number
of indicators of Romanization have been excavated from Tiberias, such as a first-century
floor of imported marble (Ben-Ari 6), an oval stadium mentioned by Josephus (Wars
2.21.6),2 and a theatre discovered almost accidentally by archaeology teams in 1990
(Hirschfeld 170). By 66 CE, Roman authorities divided the Galilee region into two
separate territories, and in the western portion (which included Tiberias and Sepphoris)
taxes were notably high, and authorities charged Jewish residents additional levies (Safrai
106). Successive revolts in the area precipitated a sizeable Roman military presence
which stationed itself in Sepphoris3 as early as the late first century CE, years before the
“official” arrival of Roman troops in Galilee in 120 CE (Newcastle 179; Safrai 105-106).
Until 300 CE, Palestine held the largest amount of Roman soldiers of any zone its size
(approximately 20,000 sq. km), and fifty percent of these troops were headquartered in
the Galilee region. A Roman citadel built on a hill above Tiberias was large enough for
an entire Roman cohort of soldiers (Safrai 105).
Tiberias shared a number of structural and demographic characteristics with
Sepphoris, its smaller neighbor to the west. Sepphoris was widely Judaic, a “great city
of scholars and scribes,” until at least the fourth century (Miller 59) and was already an
established city when it came under Herodian rule. It lies on top of a hill in the Lower
Galilee region, approximately 30 km from Tiberias and 6 km northwest of Nazareth,
midway between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Galilee. In Antiquity, Sepphoris
stood near the intersection of two significant roadways—the Via Maris running north-
south, and the east-west road connecting the port city of Acre and Tiberias on the
Galilean Sea. The area’s fertile soil and ample rainfall made it a prosperous agricultural
zone (Netzer and Weiss 7), and humans may have continuously inhabited the area around
Sepphoris since some point in the Iron Age (ca. sixth century BCE) (Meyers, “Sepphoris
and Lower Galilee,” 16). Antipas fortified the settlement, and transformed Sepphoris into
what Josephus called “πρόσχημα του Γαλιλαίου,” which has been translated as both the
“security” and “ornament” of “all Galilee” (Antiquities 18.2.1).4
Provincial Construction
In founding new cities in Roman style or transforming native cities into Roman
sites, builders produced a number of pieces of architecture—such as villas, baths,
aqueducts, and theatres—that became powerful “colonizers” in their own right. These
structures’ unmovable presence served as constant reminders to conquered peoples
that their homeland was no longer their own. Provincial theatres were made with the
resources of the colonized, including the building materials extracted from the area and
the labor of its inhabitants. At Sepphoris, the theatre’s orchestra, its adjoining paths,
and stage floor were all paved with slabs of rectangular stone culled from the colonized
landscape, and the stage was covered with a hardwood floor that would have required the
felling of local trees. All of this makes the theatre building itself a strange, hybrid blend

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 Romanization, Rebellion and the Theatre of Ancient Palestine 11
of what is Roman and what is Palestinian: the building is in the design of the colonizer,
reflects his ideals, and serves his political and social purposes, but it is physically part of
the colonized’s land, and resonances of life before Rome’s arrival pervade every molecule
of the space, particularly as indigenous homes may have been destroyed to make way for
the theatre on this site (Netzer and Weiss 32).
Today, environmental theorists write that city planning “is inextricably implicated
in the material and ideological practices that conduct and control city affairs” (Borden
138), which is to say, space speaks, sometimes overtly and sometimes covertly. This
precept also holds true in the ancient world and is evidenced by a careful consideration of
the theatres in Roman Galilee in terms of simple space. For instance, the theatre at Tiberias
was no small venue, but covered a broad area at the foot of Mount Berenice on the western
edge of the city where it abutted the main road, making it even more unmissable. It was
partially built on the slope of the mountain, and the stage was thoughtfully angled so that
the sun would not be in the audience’s eyes. Early assumptions figure that the theatre
was probably built in the second to third century CE (Hirschfeld 170-171), and such a
structure could have held a large amount of spectators, approximately 5,000. The theatre
at Sepphoris was the largest man-made feature on its local landscape until an extravagant
Roman villa, a bit larger than the theatre in terms of land use, was built just to the south
of the theatre’s cavea in the third century CE.5 The theatre is perched on the northern part
of its city’s hill and offers spectacular views of the landscape below. Upon its completion,
the theatre at Sepphoris contained approximately 4,500 seats and was about 74 m in
diameter. When considering who might have attended these theatres, it is important to
remember that Jews were not the only people living in Galilee. Throughout the Roman and
Byzantine eras, the region was home and host to various indigenous Near Eastern groups,
Christians, and Greco-Roman pagans (Gafni 51). A number of Romans who functioned
in public and private life, performing roles such as traders and businessmen, delegates on
government missions, judges, tax collectors, and most noticeably, the governor and his
entourage, also resided in the provinces (Balsdon 75). Any and all of these people could
have easily attended these theatres, either along the main road at Tiberias, or perched in
plain sight on the northern edge of the Sepphorian hill.
The initial year of construction of the theatre at Sepphoris has been under much
debate. This conversation hinges on intricate matters of architecture, politics, and audience
composition, particularly, which ruler(s) would have desired the status symbol of a theatre,
an eminent mark of Rome on his territory. In 1983, the University of South Florida began
excavations at the theatre with James F. Strange and Richard Batey as directors. In 1985,
the Joint Sepphoris Project (JSP), directed by E.M. Meyers and E. Netzer began work
at the site as well. These camps have differing takes on the theatre’s chronology, each
making arguments based on archaeological finds and historical deduction. It seems that
the construction of the Sepphoris theatre began anywhere from the early first century
CE (under the Herodian rulers) to sometime in the second. Meyers and the JSP contend
that the theatre was built in the late first century CE, possibly under the rule of Felix
(52-60 CE), or even as late as the second century when there would have been a much
larger pagan population (Meyers, Sepphoris 11). In his co-authored book, Zippori, fellow
excavator Zeev Weiss writes that the theatre was constructed no earlier than the second
half of the first century CE (19). On the other hand, Strange contends that the “founding

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12 Miriam Kammer
of the main internal wall of the theatre took place in the first half of the Early Roman
period,” and furthermore, there was “nothing in [Strange’s] evidence that would require
a date later than Herod Antipas” (342). Richard Batey, Strange’s co-director, also argues
in favor of Antipas as the builder of the theatre on the basis of Herod’s and Augustus’s
influence upon the younger man.6 He points out that Antipas studied in Rome during
the reign of Augustus and proposes that it would have been natural for a son to want to
follow his father’s example, if not surpass it. Batey maintains that “a beautiful theatre as
a central feature of this new city would have been a virtual necessity for this young ruler”
(119). Leroy Waterman, the University of Michigan professor who discovered the theatre
in 1931, firmly believed it was constructed no earlier than in the reign of Herod the Great,
for he figured “no Hasmonean Jew could be conceived of as builder of a theatre” (29).
Although we cannot be sure of its beginnings, the material presence of the
theatre remains an overt gesture of Roman colonization. The space also speaks more
subtly, however, with a semiotic voice that lies quietly inside the landscape. Roman
authorities erected the main, outer wall of the theatre at Sepphoris over already existing
water cisterns, thus compounding and transcending the theatre’s symbolic dominance by
granting it possession of the inherent, sustaining force for the land and its people—the
native water supply. For the Romans this move was quite necessary, as the securing
of the local water source had proven critical to their colonial successes, so much so
that water theft was a punishable crime, and Roman officials assigned specific guards
called Aquarii to patrol and maintain the community’s water (Hughes 161). Furthermore,
although representational artworks were disallowed by the natives’ holy commandments,
red frescoes adorned the entranceways to the theatre, and square and semicircular recesses
that ran the length of the proscenium front probably held pictorial ornamentations, such as
statues of Roman authorities. Discoveries of remains of other ancient theatres may point
to these same types of ornamentation as common of the region. In the excavations of the
theatre at Ceasaria Maritima, archaeologists uncovered building blocks of the scaenae
frons depicting rows of laurel leaves, palm leaves, budding flowers, and birds. Cornices
with carvings of plants, pomegranates, and masks, and frieze blocks ornamented with
busts of Dionysus were also found. Stones of similar design were also unearthed at the
Roman theatre at Beth Shean, about 40 km from Sepphoris. Both sets of blocks date
from approximately the late second century CE (Turnheim 290-301), not much later
than the theatre at Sepphoris may have been built. This marking of space with Roman
ornamentation—along with Rome’s dominance over the local water supply and use of
local building resources—are three tools of colonization that worked synchronically to
establish Roman political and cultural control, and each of these tools can be read in the
“text” of this theatre-space.
Cultural Romanization
Traditionally, it has been held that in imperial Palestine, antagonisms between
Romans and Jews, conqueror and conquered, ran deep. Writes historian J. Balsdon, “No
pagan writer, Greek or Roman, had any great sympathy with the Jews” (67). Seneca
refers to Jews as “sceleratissima gens,” a most-accursed, or exceedingly criminal race
(Augustine 264); Cicero, in De Provinciis Consularibus, identifies both Jews and
Syrians as peoples born to be slaves (551). When 4,000 subjects, a number of them
Jews, were conscripted for military service in Sardinia, Tacitus held it would be a “cheap

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 Romanization, Rebellion and the Theatre of Ancient Palestine 13
sacrifice should they die from the pestilential climate” (Annals 2.85), and in his Histories,
he remarks that Jewish customs “which are at once perverse and disgusting, owe their
strength to [the Jews’] very badness” (195).
Jews were seen as superstitious and peculiar, and their traditions were
objectionable—the weekly Sabbath was an excuse for idleness, circumcision was
repugnant, dietary taboos were baffling, and their proselytizing activity and preoccupation
with their scriptures were all unmatched by other cults. Their system of exclusivity
which re-enforced a strict delineation between Jew and Gentile was fervently despised
by Romans and echoed too closely the Greeks’ division between Greek and Barbarian.
Greeks and Jews did not get on very well, either, nor did Jews and Arabs easily mix
(Balsdon 67). Romans, all in all, tended to look down upon most eastern nations as “soft,”
“effeminate” and “unwarlike” peoples (61). Conversely, Jews were well aware of Rome’s
earned reputation for lavishness and loose living. It is traditionally believed that the picture
of Rome formed by the Jews and later, the Christians, was one of “pious abhorrence,”
casting Rome as “Babylon, the Great Whore” (17). While Romans embraced the theatre
(Boatwright, Brief History 239), traditional theory maintains that Jews were by and
large anti-theatrical. Concluded Balsdon, “[Jewish] exclusiveness, easily construed as
misanthropy, was nowhere more evident than in their refusal to participate in the gaiety
and rejoicing of festival days” (67).
Broadly speaking, there appear to be two principle motives behind an ancient
Jewish, anti-theatrical worldview: 1) an aversion to the political (i.e. colonial) events that
took place within theatre buildings (which may or may not have spilled into a disdain
for performativity in general), and 2) an aversion to theatricality, due to either Biblical
restrictions against mimesis and representation and /or the close ties between theatre and
pagan ritual in the Greek and Roman worlds. Contemporary writers recorded a number
of instances in which Jews were drawn into political conflicts enacted inside theatres. In
Against Apion, Josephus wrote that “it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in
number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon
the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws and the records
that contain them” (1.8). During the reign of Caligula, thirty-eight members of the Jewish
Council in Alexandria were forced to appear in an intermission between theatrical bills of
music and dance. Philo records that they were marched onto the stage, and flogged before
the crowds while captured Jewish women were made to eat pork (x-xi). Josephus tells of
a different instance in which Jews were hastily executed inside a theatre:
A certain person whose name was Antiochus… came upon the theatre
at a time when the people of Antioch were assembled together and
became an informer against his father, and accused both him and
others, that they had resolved to burn the whole city in one night; he
also delivered up to them some Jews that were foreigners, as partners
in their resolutions. When the people heard this, they could not refrain
from their passion, but commanded that those who were delivered up
to them should have fire brought to burn them, who were, accordingly,
all burnt upon the theatre immediately. They did also fall violently
upon the multitude of the Jews as supposing that, by punishing them
suddenly, they should save their own city. (Wars 7.3.3)

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14 Miriam Kammer
When Titus visited this same city after his successful siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), the
“whole multitude of the senate and the people” gathered within the theatre to entreat him
“with much earnestness” to expel the Jews from the city. He did not agree to this, for he
reasoned “how can this be done, since that country of theirs, whither the Jews must be
obliged then to retire, is destroyed, and no place will receive them besides?” (Josephus,
Wars 7.5.2).
As these instances illustrate, theatres of ancient Rome were designed and
used as multi-purpose spaces that hosted both political and cultural events. Fictional
entertainments of this time, which according to Netzer and Weiss “appear” to have also
taken place in Sepphoris, were not of classical comedy, tragedy, or satire, but replacement
fare of a “merrier and lighter bent,” including mime, pantomime, and farce. Netzer and
Weiss further postulate that some of the entertainments, particularly the mimes, may
have shown traces of anti-Semitism (19). Katharine B. Free, in her discussion of Jewish
anti-theatrical prejudices, proposes that such popular fare was objectionable to Jews,
as its vulgarity ridiculed the Judaic way of life (149). Moreover, the illusory nature of
theatre—including its use of masks and general air of make-believe—was contrary to
native religious codes: Traditional interpretation of Jewish law simply forbade Jews
from attending the theatre or taking part in theatrical events, as the first commandment
prohibited the creation of graven images, and the eighth forbade falsity. Herod’s
constructing performance venues for the Actium Games, for instance, elicited a marked
response from indigenous Jews:
[Herod] built a theatre in Jerusalem, and after that a very large
amphitheatre in the plain, both being spectacularly lavish but foreign
to Jewish custom, for the use of such buildings and the exhibition
of such spectacles have not been traditional with the Jews… For it
seemed glaring impiety to throw men to wild beasts for the pleasure of
other men as spectators, and it seemed a further impiety to change their
established ways for foreign practices. But more than all else it was
the trophies that irked them, for in the belief that these were images
surrounded by weapons, which it was against their national custom to
worship, they were exceedingly angry. (Josephus, Antiquities 15.8.1)
Demonstrations against the trophies followed. Herod quelled the outcry by having the
statues taken apart for the protesters, who saw that they were not human effigies at all but
weaponry arranged on top of poles. Embarrassed, most of the angered Jews immediately
dropped the matter, but not long after, a small portion conspired to assassinate Herod
inside his own theatre. The plot was foiled, and Herod lived despite his subjects’ anger
(Richardson 224). In his study, Achim Lichtenberger emphasizes the semiotic value
of Herod’s projects, these Games included, that through his manner of “conspicuous
consumption” he was positioning his kingship within the Hellenistic—not Judaic—style
of rule. To his theatres he invited spectators and contestants from a number of nations,
and such cosmopolitanist efforts were aimed at winning prestige in the eyes of Rome.
Of the games, Lichtenberger concludes that while Herod garnered some cachet with his
international visitors, the event was “resisted” by the Jews of Jerusalem (288).
Three contemporary writers, Josephus, Philo, and Tacitus, relate a later incident
in the reign of Caligula (or Caius) where Jewish aversion to representation grew to a

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 Romanization, Rebellion and the Theatre of Ancient Palestine 15
military flashpoint:
[An ambassador] from the people of Alexandria was Apion… he
charged [the Jews] with neglecting the honors that belonged to Caesar;
for that while all who were subject to the Roman empire built altars and
temples to Caius, and in other regards universally received him as they
received the gods; these Jews alone thought it a dishonorable thing for
them to erect statues in honor of him, as well as to swear by his name…

Hereupon Caius [sent] Petronius [and] gave him order to make an

invasion into Judea [and] if they would admit of his statue willingly, to
erect it in the temple of God; but if they were obstinate, to conquer them
by war… But there came many ten thousands of the Jews to Petronius
[and he] said to them, “Will you then make war with Caesar, without
considering his great preparations for war, and your own weakness?”
They replied, “We will not by any means make war with him, but still
we will die before we see our laws transgressed [and] see the dedication
of the statue” (Josephus, Antiquities 18.8.1-3).
According to this account, the Jews left the local fields unsown for forty days as part of
their protest. In the end, the statue was never erected nor did war break out, either because
Caligula was persuaded to drop the plan or he died before any further action could be
taken (McLaren 125).
The strong connection that existed between theatre events, iconography, and the
worship of Greco-Roman gods likely contributed to a Jewish anti-theatrical prejudice.
As religious and social leaders, rabbis perceived the theatre as a “frivolous,” “histrionic,”
and “gentile” medium that was a real temptation for their communities (Levy 2). Such
diversions took time away from the study of the Torah, and worse invoked the pagan gods
(Free 149). In the Roman world, theatrical games were held in honor of specific deities.
Before the dramas began, effigies of the gods were ritualistically ferried in specially built
chairs from their temples to prominent positions within the theatres. This could have been
the case in Sepphoris as well, as a pagan temple dating to the Roman era was discovered
there in 2008 (“Hebrew U. Archaeological Excavations Uncover Roman Temple in
Zippori (Sepphoris)” 1). As the dramas presented at the games served religious purposes,
they were considered to be so important that they would be repeated from the beginning
if any disturbance occurred (Edwards 108).
Many contend that Jewish disdain to such theatricality was standard. However,
despite the ubiquity of the idea that ancient Judaism was a wholly non-mimetic culture,
viable arguments that many Jews were not so averse to performativity after all do exist.
Writes Shimon Levy, “as long as the dramatic and theatrical elements in the Jewish ritual
(there is hardly a ritual without them) were contained in their socio-religious contexts,
[theatricality] w[as] perfectly ‘Kosher’” (2). He invokes Grotowski’s distinction between
the “Holy” and “Prostitutional” characteristics of acting to argue that Jewish leaders
were most concerned with theatre’s ability “to create a new reality” much more than
its “profane” qualities. The engendering of theatrical imagination, not the presenting
of immoral subjects, was the more insidious religious threat—only God himself could
govern the power to “transform matter into spirit, and vice versa” (3). This reasoning

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16 Miriam Kammer
explains how Jews could use dramatic elements in their own rituals while shunning the
theatricality of their oppressors.
Free reminds us that the overall position of individual Jews in regards to mimetic
play logically could not have been consistent in all areas at all times over the course of
the centuries (150). In fact, at some point between the late third century BCE and the
early first century CE, the first Jewish playwright, “Ezekial,” emerged. Not much is
known about him, but he left behind a tragedy about Moses named Exagoge. Only about
twenty-five percent of the original script remains and his intended audience for the piece
is unknown, but it holds a weighty place in theatre history, for as Free maintains it is “the
forerunner and remote ancestor of all biblical drama, both Jewish and Christian” (149).
Free also states that some Jews acted and still more wrote plays during the Hellenistic and
early Roman eras, and that evidence “increasingly supports the view” that “significant
proportions of the Jewish communities” attended theatre performances in the last few
centuries BCE (156). Inscriptional evidence suggests the city of Berencia in today’s
Libya may have had a “Jewish amphitheatre” in the last decade BCE, and an inscription
from the early Imperial period in the theatre of Miletos in Turkey, “reserves one of the
best seating areas for the pious Jews” (Free 149). The idea that Jews of this era had the
best seats in the house let alone their own theatre space is staggering, and suggests that
instead of a nation of “outsiders,” Jews may have been much more integrated members
of their communities. Shimon Applebaum suggests that Jews may have even attended
gladiator matches (159). Also, archaeologists reason that the theatre at Sepphoris was in
use for some time, and not dismantled until the Byzantine Era when it was converted into
a quarry (Netzer and Weiss 19).
Ruth Padel’s theory of theatrical space in the ancient world can help explain
how Jews might have come to take part in Roman theatrical life. She writes of a “tension”
between “the inside and outside of theatrical space, internal and external sources of
dramatic change.” This difference offers the “the watching imagination” a space to
wonder about the “inside and outside of other structures important to tragedy: city, house,
self” (363-364). This dialectic is born of audience’s real-life situations, particularly those
grounded in their positioning in space. For instance, Padel conceptualizes the theatre
as “‘a sort of duplicate agora,’ [as] both were meeting-places, where male citizens felt,
and saw themselves as, part of the civic body” (337). Though Jews may not have held
Roman citizenship, their status as Roman subjects still marks them as “Roman” in at
least some degree. Accordingly, as Padel maintains, being a “self-conscious member of
that community was part of its experience of tragedy… and being the city meant judging,
or inferring, the interiors of others on the basis of what they had done and said” (338).
By the third century, Jewish scholars loosened restrictions on the viewing of
human and animal images. Convinced of the people’s commitment to the Jewish way of
life, they no longer worried that such pieces might become objects of worship, and so
Jews were allowed to possess portraiture as works of art. Likenesses of Roman emperors,
however, were still not allowed, as these leaders were often worshipped as heads of their
own cults (Applebaum 161). Perhaps ironically, Sepphoris may be best known today for
its wealth of mosaics dating from the second and third centuries CE, including the Mona
Lisa of the Galilee, a likeness of a beautiful woman embedded in the floor of the main
room of the villa just south of the theatre. Other mosaics unearthed depict the bathing of

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 Romanization, Rebellion and the Theatre of Ancient Palestine 17
Dionysus after his birth; three satyrs treading grapes in a winepress; a drinking contest
between Hercules and Dionysus; a “Nilotic” scene in which young, naked men hunt a
crocodile and a bird; and a triumphant procession of Dionysus edged with masks, fish,
and birds along its frame. These artworks attest to the probability of a “Hellenistic spirit”
that prevailed in Sepphoris at this time (Netzer and Weiss 38).
Romanization and the Theatre at Sepphoris
Unfortunately, it is impossible to be at all certain of the specifics of the
relationships between conqueror and conquered in Imperial Palestine, as such feelings
would have naturally fluctuated over time and differed from community to community.
Shimon Applebaum sums up the problem:
The primary question to be answered in any consideration of the
relationship between Jews and the Roman empire is—how far did
Rome succeed in Romanizing Judea, and if not, why not? The problem
is complicated largely by the fact that the country contained two
very different communities—the Greeks and the Jews… The fact is,
of course, that hellenization reached Judea first, and it was a fairly
hellenized population that Rome found there. It was the hellenized
element, Jewish or gentile, which Rome used in her attempt to
assimilate the population to the Empire (155).
How then was the theatre at Sepphoris regarded? Was it a welcome piece of urban
development, gifted by the Romans upon the native peoples? Was it an unwanted piece
of spatial and cultural colonization, a mark of the conqueror’s will and domination?
Or, could the reactions of the Sepphorians towards the theatre be much more varied?
The answers to this question depend on at least two factors that cannot as of now be
definitively understood—the dating of the theatre building (as discussed above), and the
political, social, and religious climate of the Galilee region of Palestine.
Lee I. Levine reasons that the dispute over the character of the Galilee, whether
it was “unique” in its “nationalistic fervor and religious proclivities,” has been fueled in
part by the “tantalizing” nature of the little evidence available (xviii). Many historians
believe that the Galilee was a hotbed of Zealot activity in which most of the population
was rebellious and warranted a firm Roman hand. Uriel Rappaport, for one, opposes
this idea, maintaining that Jerusalem, not Sepphoris or Tiberias, was the center of anti-
Roman sentiment. It was there that the Sicarii terrorists focused their activity, not in
the Galilee where he reasons “local leadership” was usually able to circumscribe native
rhetoric (101). Douglas Edwards questions the also common belief that the Galilee of the
first century was a “rustic, isolated, ‘primitive’” zone. Edwards accordingly reasons that
the peoples of the Galilee, like those in much of the East, may not have accepted Greek
or Roman culture “wholesale,” but may have adapted some colonial ways to suit their
own, unique heritages. These adaptations therefore afforded them a “modicum of control”
over their cultural and political lives (71). Edwards also makes the observation that the
“local, elite classes in Palestine (and one assumes the Galilee as well) had much to gain
by maintaining close cultural, economic, and political ties with Rome” (72). Levine
complements this argument, offering that data concerning the Galilee suggests a “densely
populated region where gentiles and not an insignificant degree of Romanization were in
evidence.” He continues, “one can no longer speak of the Galilee as a Semitic enclave

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18 Miriam Kammer
surrounded by a sea of Hellenism” (Levine xx).
As for the city of Sepphoris specifically, Stuart S. Miller writes that the
“predominance of Jews, and especially of members of the rabbinic class… accounts for
the fact that, despite its Hellenistic veneer and the periodic presence of Roman troops,
Sepphoris was largely regarded as a Jewish city” (24). But, was it a Jewish city that
markedly disdained its colonizers, or was it one loyal to Rome? Josephus tells of a
moment of rebellion in Sepphoris that took place not long after the death of Herod (4
BCE) where Judas, son of Ezekias, gathered together a number of frustrated men and
attacked the royal palace, taking back property that had been seized from fellow Jews
(Antiquities 17.10.5). Josephus does not mention Sepphoris again until the time of the
First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 66 CE, but as Miller points out, he is not completely
consistent in his descriptions of the city during the rebellion. In the Wars of the Jews,
Josephus wrote that Sepphorians were “ready to go for war, without standing in need
of any injunctions for that purpose” (Wars 2.20.6). In his autobiographic work, Life, he
characterizes the city as fairly pro-Roman, a position that, reasons Miller, “engendered
the animosity of more revolutionary, rural Galileans” (Miller 22-23). On the relationship
between Sepphoris and Tiberias vis-à-vis their standing with Rome, Miller concludes:
As in Tiberias, Sepphorean society was characterized by factionalism
that included anti-Roman elements. The more pacifistic elements,
however, did gain the upper hand over time.... The Sepphoreans
greeted the Roman general Vespasian when he arrived at Acre in the
spring of 67 CE… Coins [were] minted at Sepphoris in 67/68 in honor
of Nero. The legends of these coins refer to the city as “Neronias,” in
honor of Nero, and as “Eirenopolis,” that is, “City of Peace.”…

It seems that Sepphoris, upon submitting to Rome, replaced Tiberias as

the first city of Galilee. No longer was Tiberias permitted to maintain
a royal bank and archives; these were “dissolved,” and the royal bank
and archives of Sepphoris assumed expanded jurisdiction. Sepphoris
would continue as a leading city almost until the end of Roman rule.
(Miller 22-23)
As to the political climate of the region during the Second Jewish Revolt
(or Bar Kokhba Revolt) of 132-135 CE, not much is known (Miller 23). Literary and
archaeological evidence, however, points to the Jews of Sepphoris as agitators in a more
minor, mid-fourth century rebellion. Jerome, Father of the Church, chronicled the event:
Gallus crushed the Jews who murdered the soldiers in the night, seizing
arms for the purpose of rebellion. Even murdering thousands of men,
even innocent children. And their cities of Diocaesarea [Sepphoris],
Tiberias and Diosopolis and many villages he consigned to flames
(quoted in Nathanson 32).
Both Miller and Barbara Geller Nathanson call the severity of the Gallus Revolt into
question. Though archaeological evidence of some physical destruction in the city
does exist from that time, Jews, it seems, continued to make Sepphoris their home.
The earthquake of 363 CE, according to Miller, may have caused more damage to the
architecture of the city than the revolt itself (25).

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 Romanization, Rebellion and the Theatre of Ancient Palestine 19
To what extent the physical theatre at Sepphoris was utilized in this or other
revolts, no one knows. Perhaps it was a place from which the rebels rallied their fellows,
their actions transforming the stage from a space of colonization into a point of native
insurgency. Perhaps it was an object of colonial hatred, one to be defaced and attacked.
Perhaps it played no part in the rebellions at all. Yizhar Hirschfeld, former director of
excavations at Tiberias, wrote that “the discovery of the theatre revealed that the residents
(who were mostly Jewish) were apparently open-minded with respect to general Roman
culture” (170). As for neighboring Sepphoris, Netzer and Weiss maintain that since
the theatre was built by Roman imperialists, not natives to the land, the theatre most
likely remained “foreign” in nature to the peoples of Galilee (19). Whatever the case,
it seems that as native rebellions increased, so did the construction of Roman theatre
structures, whether they were patronized by native peoples or not. By their very existence
in the colonized space, they manifested the inevitable differences between conqueror
and conquered, Roman and Palestinian. By reading these stones semiotically as well
as architecturally, the power of provincial theatres as both means of entertainment and
cultural-political forces in Biblical times can be better understood.

Notes
1. Defined as “unified chanting” in Potter (132).

2. See also Marco (665).

3. It is unclear whether these troops were stationed in Sepphoris because the townspeople
were especially rebellious and needed immediate supervision, or because Sepphorians
were hospitable to the Romans and Roman troops could fan out to other locations from
there. See the section “Romanization and the Theatre at Sepphoris” later in this essay.

4. Today, main roads still run close by the former city of Sepphoris, now an archaeological
park.

5. For details on the mapping of Sepphoris and the theatre’s physical measurements, see
Netzer and Weiss (13-19).

6. For Batey’s report, see Strange (342). For more on the JSP, see Eric M. Meyers, Ehud
Netzer, and Carol Meyers.

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20 Miriam Kammer
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