The Greek Inscriptions of the Jews of Rome Leon, Harry J Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Jan 1, 1959; 2, 1; ProQuest pg. 45 THE GREEK INSCRIPTIONS OF THE JEWS OF ROME HARRY J. LEON T HE TEXTS OF THE INSCRIPTIONS from the Jewish catacombs of Rome are available in J. B. Frey's Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum. I. Europe (Citta del Vaticano, 1936), 6-390. Of the 529 inscriptions which Frey regards as belonging to the Jews of ancient Rome, some must be rejected either as of un­ certain provenience or as not demonstrably Jewish or even as spurious. Besides, as I have demonstrated elsewhere,l several inscriptions allegedly found in Porto were actually taken to that place from Rome and should be included among the Judeo-Roman inscriptions. In addition, some of the items which Frey places in an appendix as probably pagan should be regarded as genuinely Jewish. In the texts themselves as presented by Frey, there are, as I discovered through personal examination of the inscriptions, many errors of transcription.2 Yet, despite these shortcomings, Frey's Corpus is now, and will likely be for some time, the standard collection. Conse­ quently, my references to the inscriptions by number are in accordance with the arrangement in the Corpus Inscriptionum I udaicarum. Of the 534 items which I think may legitimately be counted as Jewish inscriptions of Rome, 405 (76%) are Greek; of the rest, 123 (23%) are Latin, three are Hebrew, one Aramaic, one bilingual Greek and Latin, one bilingual Aramaic and Greek. From these figures it is quite apparent that the Roman-Jewish community, which existed from about 100 B.C., was Greek-speaking. The Latin inscriptions appear to belong to a more Romanized element in the group. In a paper read before the American Philological Asso­ ciation some thirty years ago,3 I pointed out that the Roman 1 "The Jewish Community of Ancient Porto," Harv. Theol. Rev., 45 (1952), 165-175. 2 My corrections of Frey's Corpus will appear in a forthcoming book on the Jews of ancient Rome. For some of these corrections, see L. Robert, Rev. El. Juives, 101 (1937), 73-86; also Hellenica, 3 (1946), 90-108; and my review in Jewish Quart. Rev., 28 (1938),357-361. 3 "The Language of the Greek Inscriptions from the Jewish Catacombs of Rome," Trans. Amer. Philol. Assn., 58 (1927), 210-233. My more recent study of the inscriptions has produced some corrections and additions, but the basic per­ centages and conclusions of the original paper have not been changed. 48 HARRY J. LEON [GRBS 2 Jews spoke no special Greek dialect in any way comparable to the Yiddish or Ladino of more recent times. Since all the inscriptions are sepulchral, examples of vocabulary, idiom, and syntactical peculiarities are necessarily limited, but the indications are that the Greek of the Jewish community at Rome was not materially different from the koine Greek of the Mediterranean lands during the Graeco-Roman period. Errors in spelling and instances of transliteration between Greek and Latin words and names proved to be especially useful as evidence for pronunciation. The very frequent con­ fusion of ac. and E and of €l. and c. reveals that the original diphthongs ac. and €l. were already pronounced as in modern Greek, a pronunciation which we know prevailed generally by the beginning of the Christian era. On the other hand, oc. and v, though pronounced alike, were not yet pronounced like c., as they are at present, but they seem to have been close to the sound of German it or French u. The vowel 'Y} still had its ancient e sound, as is clear from its being frequently inter­ changed with E. In only a few instances is 'Y} confused with c., and these occur in inscriptIons which show a low level of literacy in other respects. The consonant8 seem essentially to have retained their classical pronunciations, except that cp was already equivalent in sound to Latin f. The other aspirate consonants, (} and X' were still pronounced as aspirates; {3, y, and 8 had not become spirants, as they are in modern Greek. Variations from the norm in inflections and syntax are few and not especially significant. Worth citing is the nomi­ native ending -ov~ instead of -o~, on the analogy of Latin -us. Examples are >E7TC.YEVWV~ (323), V'Y}7nov~ (162), ~EAEVKOV~ (52). In many instances -c.~ is found instead of -w~ in the nominative of masculine names. Such are, to cite a few, EVO"E{31S (114, 119, 332, 333), Kac.Ac.~ (365), >AO"TEpC.~ (95, 305), MaKE80vc.~ (370). The genitives and datives of both these groups have the regu­ lar endings -ov and -wv, -eo and -c.eo, respectively. It should be noted that no iota subscript (or adscript) is used in the dative, nor, in fact, is there any example of such an iota in this group of inscriptions. 1959] GREEK INSCRIPTIONS OF THE JEWS IN ROME 49 Instead of -EV~ in the nominative, such nouns as ypap,p,arEv~ and LEPEV~ occasionally show -'EO~ (142, 146) and -EOV~ (99, 148, 346). The verb forms, apart from a few garbled instances, are correct, but except for such words as KE'irat, e/3Lwo-Ev, E1ro£TJo-EV, these sepulchral inscriptions show comparatively few verbs. Other grammatical peculiarities are sporadic and fail to reveal characteristics which can be attributed to the group as a whole. An interesting feature of the Greek inscriptions, aside from the linguistic peculiarities, is the use of sepulchral formu­ las. More than two-thirds start with the phrase "Here lies" (Ev{}acE Ke'irat), and at least half end with the formula "In peace be his (her, their) sleep" (ev Elp-rJvTJ TJ KOLp,TJCTtr; avrov or avrfjr; or avrwv). Not infrequently the wish is expressed that the de­ ceased may sleep "among the righteous" (p,Era rwv CLKaLwv or p,ErG. rwv OCTtWV). The aphorism in Proverbs 10.7, "The mem­ ory of the righteous shall be for a blessing," appears as p,v-rJP,TJ (or p,vELa) CtKatOV El~ EvAoytaV (86, 370) or p,V'rJp'TJ CLKa£ov crov EVKWp,LW (201). The exhortation "Be of good courage; no one is immortal" ({}apCTEt OV8EL~ a{}avaro~), which occurs also in pagan and Christian inscriptions, is found five times in the Jewish inscriptions of Rome (314, 335, 380, 401, 450). It is especially touching as found on the grave of the child Euphra­ sius, who died at the age of three years and ten months (335), and on that of the infant Samuel, who lived only one year and five months (401). Besides linguistic data, these inscriptions, both Greek and Latin, reveal the names of 551 individual members of the Jewish community, the names of eleven of their synagogues, the organization of the community, the titles of their com­ munal officia1s/ and other significant facts about the life of the Roman Jews, who may have numbered as many as forty thousand during the early Empire, forming one of the two or three largest Jewish groups in the Diaspora of that time. This phase of the subject, however, is beyond the scope of the present paper. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 4 See H. J. Leon, "The Names of the Jews of Ancient Rome," Trans. Amer. Philol. Assn., 59 (1928), 205--224; "New Material about the Jews of Ancient Rome," Jewish Quart. Rev., 20 (1929/30), 301-312. These matters will be treated exten­ sively in the book mentioned above.