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155
captivity
impure diaspora. But after a
few weeks or months they
would get fed up with the
climate in Rome and go back
to Jerusalem; then either
somebody else would be
sent to replace them or not.
In time, a few Levite families
settled down and got rich,
mostly through the ritually
pure oil and wine that they
imported from Judaea and
Galilee.
Rome’s non-Jews were not
very interested, to tell the
truth, in how the population
on the right side of the Tiber
lived.
There were many small
ethnic enclaves in Rome, and
outsiders had no awareness
into them, and the Jewish
enclave was not among the
larger and most important
ones either: in a city of around
one million, it accounted for
no more than thirty or forty
thousand, the majority of
them the gradually liberated
progeny of the slaves who
were sporadically carried
off to Rome. They did have
synagogues, however, twelve
of them, one of which was on
the Appian Way, where they
also had an underground
cemetery, a catacomb.
Count ing on eventual
resurrection as they did, they
did not incinerate their dead
like the foolish Latini. Seven of
the prayer houses were along
the road to Ostia alone, the
thoroughfare by which goods
delivered by sea reached
Rome by land.
The first of the temples,
named for Marcus Agrippa,
the Roman potentate who had
given patronage to the Jews,
was built almost a century
before and was still standing.
Although Uri’s family did not