The Histories

At the start of 70 AD, Titus was leading a large military force in Judea and beginning to besiege the city of Jerusalem. Tacitus decides to place the rebellion that led to this siege in its context.

Tacitus starts with the origin of the Jewish people, for which he provides multiple possible stories. He claims that the most common explanation is that the Jewish people were exiled from Egypt when they were cursed by a disease because of divine disfavor. They were led out of Egypt by Moses, who took them to Judea, where they settled. Moses, Tacitus says, also prescribed new religious rights to strengthen the bonds between the people.

Tacitus describes Jewish customs by saying that “everything that [the Romans] hold sacred is regarded as sacrilegious” (146). He says that Jewish people display the image of a donkey in their temple, sacrifice rams to mock the god Hammon, abstain from eating pork because pigs were infected with the same disease that led to them being removed from Egypt, fast to remember the hunger they went through, and eat unleavened bread to remember the hurried meal they had before leaving Egypt. He also notes that they set aside the seventh day of the week to mark the end of their movement to Egypt.