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LEISTAI IN JUDAEA
plundered their locality. Instead, he gives a detailed account of the background
to and the circumstances of the genesis of the band.
The setting of his story (which may be dated roughly to the period
ad 20–35), 52 the city of Nearda, in Mespotamia, lay in an area subject to
Parthia. Asinaeus and Anilaeus belonged to a Jewish family resident there.
On the death of their father, their mother had her sons apprenticed as
weavers. Lack of diligence led to both quarrelling with their master, who
beat them. They regarded their punishment as an intolerable personal humiliation
and, arming themselves, fled to a remote area where they set up a
gang which recruited youths from the very poorest levels of society. 53 Structurally,
the banditry of these propertyless youngsters is comparable to that
which occurred in Spain, as we saw in general terms in the report of Diodorus
and, specifically, in the case of Viriatus. 54 Poverty possibly played a decisive
role in motivating Asinaeus and Anilaeus themselves to ‘exit’ into banditry,
a way of life that, thanks to the political vacuum in the region, could be
chosen with a fairly good chance of success. In this respect, too, conditions
on the western edge of the Parthian Empire are very comparable with those
in the Iberian peninsula before the arrival of Rome. Anyway, in an area
noted for its herdsmen and their flocks Asinaeus and Anilaeus were soon
reckoned to be invincible lords. From the local herdsmen they demanded
payment of a duty on their animals. In return, they offered protection against
enemies. Anyone who refused to pay was threatened with the destruction of
his stock.
The story goes on, though for our purposes this is not significant. In brief,
Asinaeus and Anilaeus managed to have their usurpation recognised by the
Parthian royal court. Some years later, intrigues, which Josephus dressed up
in the ‘recurrent bandit motif of the femme fatale’, 55 led to the sudden fall of
these local dynasts. Important for us is only that, at least as far as Josephus
reports them, the beginnings of the ‘bandit career’ of Asinaeus and Anilaeus
were completely unpolitical. Whether this is completely convincing is an
open question. However, Josephus was absolutely certain that it was purely
personal considerations, i.e., their improper treatment as apprentices at the
hands of their master, that made the brothers become bandits. In addition,
neither had any part within the Jewish-Hellenistic-Roman framework of the
battle for power in Judaea. They just set themselves up as local dynasts on a
border of the Parthian Empire characterised by its loose power structures.
Given their unpolitical start and their sphere of operations outside Judaea,
it is striking terminologically that in the case of Asinaeus and Anilaeus
Josephus carefully avoids the designation leistai, even though the criteria for
employing the vocabulary of the bandit and the robber band are fully met. 56
This, and the apolitical nature of their bandit origins, distinguishes them
from the leistai who, as politically motivated rebels, combated the pro-
Roman Jewish aristocracy and the Romans as imperial rulers in Judaea. 57 It
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