First attested « pogrom »

Alexandria was home to the largest Jewish community in the diaspora, settled in two of the city's five districts and endowed with its own institutions. Its civic status — neither Greek citizens nor ordinary Egyptians — had long been contested by the Hellenic population.

The visit of King Agrippa I served as a pretext. The prefect Flaccus, who sought the support of the Greek notables, allowed the crowd to mock the Jewish sovereign, then had effigies of the emperor placed in the synagogues, rendering them unusable. The Jews were confined to a single district, that of the Delta — the first known residential assignment of this kind —, their houses looted, their shops closed; notables were publicly flogged, others lynched in the streets.

Philo of Alexandria, a witness to the events, led the embassy to Caligula that came to plead the community's cause; the audience was a failure. Flaccus, for his part, was recalled, exiled, and then put to death by imperial order.