Latest / Nero: Mad Tyrant or Misunderstood Emperor? — Fexingo History / Nero's Alexandria: The Great Jewish-Greek Riot of 66 AD
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about Nero's problems in Judaea with the Jewish revolt, but there was another flashpoint that's often forgotten — one that nearly starved Rome itself. I'm talking about Alexandria, the summer of 66 AD. Luna: Right, the grain fleet came from there. Lucas: Exactly. Alexandria was the breadbasket of the empire. And in that summer, while Nero was in Greece performing at the Isthmian Games, the city exploded into a Greek-Jewish riot that left hundreds — maybe thousands — dead in the streets. Josephus gives us a brutal account, and even Tacitus mentions it briefly. Lucas: The roots go back decades. Alexandria had a huge Jewish community — maybe a third of the population — but they were second-class residents. They lived in their own quarter, the Delta district, and they had their own institutions, but they were constantly clashing with the Greek citizenry over civic rights. Luna: What set it off in 66? Lucas: A specific incident at a Greek amphitheater. The Greeks — the Alexandrian citizens — had gathered to debate sending an embassy to Nero about Jewish privileges. But someone — Josephus says it was a Greek named Sostratus — brought in a crowd of hecklers. They started chanting and jeering, and then someone threw stones. The Jews fought back, and the Greeks locked the gates. People were trapped inside. Lucas: From there it spread into the Jewish quarter. Greek mobs looted synagogues, beat people in the streets, set fire to houses. The Roman prefect of Egypt, a man named Tiberius Julius Alexander, tried to restore order by sending in troops. But he was caught in a terrible position — because he himself was Jewish by birth. Luna: He was Jewish? Lucas: Yes, Tiberius Julius Alexander was the nephew of Philo, the famous Jewish philosopher. But he had abandoned his faith — he was a Roman career administrator, a hard-liner. He had actually served as procurator of Judaea earlier, under Claudius. So when the riot broke out, he sent in the Legio III Cyrenaica and the Legio XXII Deiotariana. But his troops overreacted. Lucas: Josephus says the soldiers slaughtered indiscriminately — they didn't distinguish between rioters and bystanders. The Jewish quarter was awash in blood. Estimates range from several hundred to a few thousand dead. And then, to make matters worse, the Greeks captured some Jewish leaders and forced them to eat pork in public — a deliberate humiliation. Luna: That's horrifying. And Nero had to respond. Lucas: He did. From Greece, Nero dictated a letter to the Alexandrian Greeks — a formal rebuke. He told them to stop persecuting the Jews and to maintain the peace. But he also confirmed the second-class status of the Jews — a compromise that satisfied no one. The Greeks felt he was coddling the Jews; the Jews felt he had abandoned them. Lucas: You know, this episode is a grim reminder that these deep dives into history — episodes like this one — take real work. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. If you've gotten something out of them, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It makes a difference. Luna: Yeah, every bit helps keep the research rolling. Lucas: So Nero's response was basically a whitewash. The riot had exposed the fragility of Roman control in Egypt, and Nero's solution was to send a personal envoy — a man named Anicetus, the same freedman who had helped him murder his mother. But Anicetus didn't even make it to Alexandria he was caught in a storm and died at sea. Luna: Wait — the same guy who did the dirty work in the matricide? Lucas: The very same. It's almost poetic. So the crisis festered. And two years later, when the Jewish revolt in Judaea really took off, the Alexandrian Jews rose again. This time Tiberius Julius Alexander unleashed the full force of the legions. He had his soldiers destroy the Jewish quarter — leveled entire blocks. Josephus says 50,000 Jews died in that later uprising, though that number is probably exaggerated. Lucas: But here's the irony: Tiberius Julius Alexander later became the prefect of the Praetorian Guard under Titus. He was standing right next to Titus when they sacked Jerusalem in 70 AD. A Jewish-born commander watching the Temple burn. Luna: That is a brutal arc. Lucas: And Nero never solved the Alexandrian problem. He just kicked it down the road. When Galba revolted in 68, one of the first things he did was send a new prefect to Alexandria to secure the grain supply. Because everyone knew: whoever controlled Egypt, controlled Rome. Luna: And Nero had already lost control of Egypt by then, hadn't he? Lucas: Effectively, yes. The Alexandrian Jews and Greeks both hated him. The legions in Egypt were wavering. When Nero was declared a public enemy in June 68, the Egyptian legions transferred their loyalty to Galba within days. The grain stopped flowing to Nero — and that was the final blow. Without Egyptian grain, Rome starves. And a starving Rome cannot support a emperor. Lucas: So the Alexandria riot of 66 wasn't just a bloody footnote. It was the beginning of the end. It showed that Nero couldn't manage the provinces, couldn't keep the peace, and couldn't even secure the grain supply. The riot was a symptom of a deeper rot — and Nero's half-hearted response made it worse. Luna: It's fascinating how this one event ties together so many threads: the Jewish revolt, the grain supply, even Nero's downfall. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's a story that doesn't get told enough. The fire, the conspiracy, the Greek tour — those are the headlines. But the Alexandria riot is where the empire really started to crack.