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LEISTAI IN JUDAEA
Fadus is supposed to have stamped out rampant banditry throughout Judaea. 38
During the governorship of Ventidius Cumanus, i.e., in the period 48–52,
unrest flared up again between Galilaeans and Samaritans after several Jews
(according to Josephus in his ‘Jewish Antiquities’; in his ‘Jewish War’ he has
one) were set upon as they crossed Samaria on their way to Jerusalem for
Passover. 39 The Galilaeans blamed the Samaritans for this. Acts of reprisal
followed. Galilaeans swarmed spontaneously and headed for Samaria. At the
head of the ‘bands’ were Alexander and Eleazar, son of Dinaeus. The targets
of their aggression were Samaritan border settlements. The Galilaeans slew
all the inhabitants and set the villages on fire. The governor Ventidius
Cumanus advanced against them from Caesarea with an armed force and
killed or captured many of their number. The latter were later crucified on
the orders of Ummidius Quadratus, governor of Syria. 40 Eleazar got away,
and the fires of unrest were not extinguished as ‘many of them ...emboldened
by impunity, had recourse to robbery and raids and insurrections, fostered
by the more reckless, broke out all over the country’. 41 Since Josephus likens
these events to both unsystematic robbery (which may indicate social banditry,
although the context is against it) and attempted subversion (contrary
to the model of social banditry because of the political dimension), the
theory of social banditry, according to which mindless robbery and political
motivation do not occur together, is hardly applicable here.
In contrast with Alexander, of whom we have only a name, Eleazar is
more of a known quantity. When he, along with many members of his
band, was captured by the provincial governor, Antonius Felix, around 61,
he had, Josephus tells us, already terrorised the land for over 20 years. 42
Again, many of his comrades were crucified and general sympathisers and
helpers executed. The fact that Alexander and his closest cronies were transported
to Rome shows how dangerous the Roman authorities considered
him to be. Josephus himself shows appreciation of the calibre of the man by
classifying him as a ‘bandit chief’ (archileistes) rather than as a simple bandit
(leistes), i.e., – to judge from the hierarchy implicit in these terms – as a
member of the bandit elite. 43
Among the leaders of revolt who made a name for themselves upon the
outbreak of the War in 66 was the Sicarius Menahem. 44 He was a descendant
of the rabbi Judas who intrigued against Roman domination around ad 6,
as Judaea was becoming an imperial province. 45 Judas’ protests, sparked by
the census ordered by the governor of Syria, P. Sulpicius Quirinus, had both
social and religious roots. Judas was utterly opposed both to paying tax to
Rome and to acknowledging a secular authority. 46 Josephus counted Judas’
teaching as the fourth (after those of the Essenes, the Sadducees and the
Pharisees) of the Jewish philosophies in its own right, the followers of which
resembled the Pharisees in everything, except their greater commitment to
fighting for freedom and their recognition of no one but God as their
lord and master. 47 The product of this spiritual background, Menahem, the
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