Antiquity
The praetor Cornelius Hispalus expels the Jews from Rome and Italy for religious propaganda (Valerius Maximus)
139 av. J.-C.·Rome
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
The peregrine praetor Cornelius Hispalus expelled from Rome and Italy the Jews residing there, on the charge of having sought to spread their rites among the Romans. The notice by Valerius Maximus, the sole source for the episode, links this measure to the expulsion of Chaldean astrologers pronounced on the same day.
This is the first known expulsion of Jews from a city in the Western world. It had no lasting consequence — the community of Rome is attested again shortly afterward, and never ceased to dwell there — yet it inaugurated a legal precedent that Christian Europe would unwittingly repeat for fifteen centuries.
- Period :
- Antiquity
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Italie
Valère Maxime, Faits et dits mémorables ; épitomés de Julius Paris et de Nepotianus.