Referring to the just prior thread post, Laupot discusses the relationship between the Jews and the Spartans. This in regards to explaining Nero's typological references in burning the Nazorean
Christiani as candles and eaten by dogs and such.
The meaning of 'Spartoi' as being 'sown men' is rather interesting here. And especially in the context of the prior collapse of the Late Bronze Age, where only Egypt was left standing in the Eastern Mediterranean and adjacent Mesopotamian region. As a result, the Greek mainland, so to speak, was left unpopulated for centuries, before being re-sown with men. The Mycenaeans that supposedly defeated Troy to mark the end of the Late Bronze Age, went missing, the Danoi ended up in northern Palestine, only to later be forced to immigrate by the Assyrians along with the other 'Hebrews' (the so-called Lost Ten Tribes).
Somewhere in all this, Laupot mentions that the Jews' term, as found in the Talmud several times, for the Romans was Edomites. As I pointed out in my article,
Isaac and the Fortunate Scions, the 'Jewish' OT states that the Edomite descendants of Esau would regain their rightful inheritance (that coming from Abraham). Well, what happened then? Laupot also mentions that the Jews used the term Gentile mainly for the elite Romans, only sometimes applying in a wider sense. Why? Because this is the correct usage of the term, as indicated by the terms
gentil and
gentility.
From pages 80-83:
Actaeon the hunter was a figure better known in the ancient world for his death than his life.
His grandfather, Cadmus, may have been of Semitic origin. Cadmus was thought perhaps to
have been an Egyptian or the king of Phoenicia, and to have founded the Greek city of Thebes.
He is also believed to have sown from the teeth of a serpent in Thebes a race of warriors known
as the Spartoi (literally, “sown men” in Greek). These were frequently, but incorrectly, connected
in people’s minds with the Spartans of Greece and were also mistaken by some for biological
descendants of Cadmus. Thus for some there was a close connection between Actaeon
(Cadmus’ grandson) and the Greek Spartans.
Likewise there was a well-known idea in the ancient world that associated the Jews with
both the Spartans and Cadmus. According to the author Hecataeos of Abdera (some of whose
work was preserved by the ancient historian Diodorus of Sicily [see section 40.3.1–8 of his
Library of History]), this association between the Jews, the Spartans, and Cadmus originated with
the tradition of a common Jewish Exodus [from Egypt] and . . . Greek migration [out of Egypt] of Danaos [a
relative of Cadmus and therefore of Actaeon] and [Cadmus] as episodes of one
and the same event—the expulsion of the [Semitic] Hyksos [dynasty of Pharaohs
from Egypt] which [Hecataeos of Abdera] described after the late Egyptian
[fables]. Thence the assertion—wherever it may have originated—that the
Spartans (whose kings, through Heracles and Perseus, claimed descent from
Danaos) are brothers of the Jews and descend from Abraham’s kindred. For us,
in this context, it is absolutely indifferent whether some tribes of the [Israelites]
directly participated in the Hyksos invasion [of ancient Egypt], or the Israelites
adopted these reminiscences from the real participants, the Canaanites or, the
Hyksos motifs were borrowed from the Egyptians themselves by Judean settlers
in Egypt since the VIIIth century [B.C.]—what interests us is the resemblance of
the essential thematic skeletons.
Hecataeos’ story begins with the conquest of ancient Egypt by a non-Egyptian dynasty of
Pharaohs, known as the Hyksos, ruling over the Egyptian people. According to Hecataeos’
tradition, the Hyksos successfully invaded Egypt and invited the Jews and the Spartans in to help
them rule (compare the story of Joseph in Genesis 45.8, in which he becomes ruler over Egypt at
Pharaoh’s request). This was done to help control the Egyptians, and the Jews and Spartans
shared in the spoils of the conquest. Eventually the Hyksos were overthrown by the Egyptian
people, and the Jews and Greeks had to flee the country. According to Hecataeos, the Spartans
made it home but the Jews did not. They were enslaved in Egypt by the new dynasty of
Pharaohs. They were not to be freed until Moses arrived several centuries later. But in Nero’s
time the Jews were seen as brothers to the Spartans because of their common experience
supporting the Hyksos against the Egyptians.
Hecataeos’ tradition would fully explain the biblical Exodus from Egypt of those Jews who
had been enslaved: They were in fact rescued by their Spartan allies (or by Jews living in Israel
and elsewhere outside Egypt)—and it was done in secret. The Greeks (or Jews), through their
agent Moses, may have bought the slaves’ release from the Pharaoh, or they may have once
again put in place one of their own as Pharaoh in order to free the Jews. All hands maintained
silence during and after the Exodus in order to avoid war with Egypt. A cover story was devised
involving “divine intervention.” Over many centuries the Jews—still sticking to secrecy because of
the fear of war—came to believe the cover story.
There is also a well-known diplomatic letter, dated between 309 and 290 B.C., sent from the
government of the city-state of Sparta to the Jewish state of Judah in the land of Israel. This
official correspondence reaffirms the historical brotherhood between the Jews and the Spartans.
See 1 Maccabees 12.1–23 and its parallels in Josephus’ Antiquities 12.226–227, 13.163–170.
However, the letter, as far as we know today, lacks any details as to the nature of the
brotherhood. Only the bare assertion seems to have been made by the Spartans to the Jews that
they were brothers. This could be because the details themselves had been covered up from the
beginning to avoid war with powerful Egypt. All this would tend to support the present
explanation, but only the discovery of better documentation or archaeological evidence can tell us
for sure.
This ancient perception of a brotherhood between Jews and Greeks is further supported by
the famous reports in Tacitus (Annals 15.39), Suetonius (Nero 38.2), and Cassius Dio (Roman
History 62.18.1) that during the Great Fire Nero sang of the burning of the ancient city of Troy (in
what is now northwestern Turkey) by the Greeks. While Nero did not actually “fiddle while Rome
burned,” he did sing about Troy’s burning. According to tradition (Virgil’s Aeneid 1.7, 33, 257–296;
Livy’s From the Founding of Rome [Ab urbe condita], 1.1.1–1.7.3), the Trojan survivors of the war
eventually came to found Rome, fathering the Julian line of kings from whom Nero himself was
believed to be descended. The Greeks at Troy fought the Trojans who later founded Rome and
who were, in a sense, the first true Romans. They were also enemies of the Greeks. By singing of
this during the Great Fire, Nero was therefore “comparing contemporary evils with ancient
calamities” (Tacitus’ Annals 15.39). That is, he was comparing Rome’s war against the Jews with
the Trojan War against the Greeks—and the burning of Rome (allegedly by the Jewish
Nazoreans) to the burning of Troy by the Greeks. These were powerful analogies because of the
tradition of a brotherhood between the Jews and Greeks. Nero seems to have viewed the
proselytizing Nazoreans and their form of Judaism as a sort of “Trojan horse” whose Nazorean
promoters had, like Actaeon and like the Greeks in Homer’s Trojan War poem the Iliad, already
incurred the wrath of the gods.
Not only would both tragedies, the Great Fire of Rome and the burning of Troy, have
concerned, in Nero’s view, Rome’s present and former foreign enemies, the Nazoreans and the
Greeks, but both catastrophes would sooner or later lead (in Nero’s view) to the birth of a new,
more secure Rome, free of hostile foreign influence (whether Nazorean or Greek). This further
suggests that during the fire Nero had already made up his mind to execute the Nazoreans in
Rome. While Nero’s singing probably had the effect of making him appear insensitive to the
suffering of his subjects during the fire, he may actually have intended it to remind them that in
the long run Rome would prevail over the Jews, just as it had over the Greeks (Rome conquered
Greece in 146 B.C.).
