Aims & Objectives
Summary
Texts
Seminar Teaching
Further Work

Associated Lecture: The Roman Army [link to Lecture 12]
Aims
To look at the depiction of revolts in Roman Egypt
To discuss the historicity of such accounts
To establish the geographical framework of these stories
To explore the mythologising of historical traditions
To discuss the linkage between banditry and social revolt in ancient and modern traditions

Objectives
After these seminars, students should have developed

• a greater awareness of the processes of the formation of the historical tradition
  
• a fuller understanding of the geography of Egypt
  
• skills in constructing and deconstructing literary sources
  
• a greater awareness of stereotyping within literary traditions
  
• some insight into the culture and politics of the Delta
  
• skills in presenting and discussing historical materials

Summary
The revolt of the Boukoloi provides us a major historical incident attested in a range of historical sources. As such, we are able to try and provide a context for that event within our existing knowledge of Egypt and also within the papyri which may (or may not) refer to the revolt itself. The story can also be linked further to the revolt of the Jews in Cyrene in 117, a story told again in Dio but also in Eusebius, and again reflect in the papyri and further to the tales of violence in Plutarch and Juvenal. The issue of evaluation returns again and with it the issue of myth, perhaps rather more complexly in a source which claims historicity. The class will first examine the four literary sources and then turn to consideration of the historical context from which these sources spring to try and make sense of the material.

Texts
Cassius Dio, LXXII 4
And those called the Boukoloi created a revolt in Egypt and joined with the other Egyptians led by the priest Isidoros. First, in the cloaks of women, they tricked the centurion since they appeared to be the women of the Boukoloi approaching to give him money for their men, and they struck him down. His companion they sacrificed swearing an oath on his entrails and then eating them. Of these men Isidoros was the bravest. Then, when they defeated the Romans in battle, they advanced towards Alexandria and would have reached there had not Cassius been sent against them from Syria and contrived to upset their unity and divide them from each other, for they were too many and too desperate for him to dare to come against them all together. And so he subdued them when they grew divided.

Achilles Tatius, III 15
On the next day he (the general) made preparations to fill up and so to cross over a wide trench that stood in our way; for on the other side of it we could see the robbers standing in great numbers and fully armed; they had an improvised altar made of mud and a coffin nearby it. Then two of them led up the girl with her hands tied behind her back. I could not see who they were as they were in full armour, but I recognised Leucippe. First they poured libations over head and then led her round the altar while, to the accompaniment of a pipe, a priest chanted what seemed to be an Egyptian hymn; this at least was indicated by the movement of his lips and the contortions of his features. Then, at a concerted sign, all retired some distance from the altar; one of the young attendants laid her down on her back and strapped her so by means of pegs fixed in the ground, just as the statues represent Marsyas fixed to the tree; then he took a sword and plunging it in about the heart drew it down to the lower part of her belly, opening up the body. Her bowels gushed forth and these they drew forth in their hands and placed them upon the altar; and when they were roasted, the whole body of them cut them up into small pieces, divided them into shares, and ate them.

Cassius Dio, LXVIII 32
Also at this time, the Jews of Cyrene appointed Andreas as their leader and killed both Greeks and Romans, eating the flesh of their victims and making belts with their entrails. They annointed themselves with blood and wore skins for clothing. Many were sawed in two, from the heads downwards; others they gave to the beasts.

Eusebius, HE IV 2
In the eighteenth year of Trajan the Jews of Alexandria, Cyrene and Egypt rose up and in the next year caused a large war when Lupus was prefect of all Egypt. In the first battle the Jews were victorious but the retreating Greeks fell upon the Jews of Alexandria and killed them all. The Cyrene Jews, deprived of their allies, fell upon the chora of Egypt and laid waste the nomes led by Loukouas. Against these the emperor sent Marcius Turbo with foot and fleet and also cavalry. These men, in many battles and over along period of time, slew many thousands of Jews, not only those from Cyrene but also those from Egypt who had taken up with them together with their King Loukouas.

Depopulation in the Mendesian Nome (After Rathbone 1990)

Seminar teaching

The first seminar will concentrate on the elucidation of the literary sources and the listing of problems with those sources. The first group will look at Cassius Dio on the Boukoloi, the second at Achilles Tatius, the third at Dio on the revolt of the Jews in the period 115-17 and the fourth on Eusebius on the same incident. The aims will be to establish the literary context of the passages (which in all cases will require prior research), to establish a political-social context where appropriate (that is what do we know from outside this text which we can bring to bear on its interpretation) and thirdly, what problems does the text itself produce and how do we interpret it. The second seminar will be open class discussion about how we can start to relate these texts to what we know of the area and how we might begin to solve some of the cumulative problems raised by this material. We will also look at the population figures in the table and attempt to make sense of general evidence of population change in the 170s.

Essay 6: How effectively did the army suppress social unrest?

To what extent should we treat the accounts of the revolt of the Boukoloi as novelistic?

Bibliography: Roman Attitudes towards Egypt: Cannibals and Culture , The Roman Army

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