EDICT OF AUGUSTUS ON JEWISH RIGHTS
   
( About AD 1 )
 
 
( Johnson, Coleman-Norton & Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes, Austin, 1961, pp. 127-128, n. 150 ).
 
 
      Jews living in Asia Minor and in Libya, having suffered maltreatment from Greeks in those regions, sent complaints by envoys to Augustus, who confirmed their privileges in the following edict directed to Asia.
      Although Josephus inaugurates with this edict his series of documents on the Jewish right to send money to Jerusalem, it seems, because of the chronological considerations involved, that it cannot have been this edict which inspired the other documents. But this and the other five documents doubtless belong to the Augustan principate.
 
 
ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
 
 
      Caesar Augustus, pontifex maximus, holding the tribunician power, . . . proclaims :
      Since the nation of the Jews and Hyrcanus, their high priest, have been found grateful to the people of the Romans, not only in the present but also in the past, and particularly in the time of my father, Caesar, imperator, it seems good to me and to my advisory council, according to the oaths, by the will of the people of the Romans, that the Jews shall use their own customs in accordance with their ancestral law, just as they used to use them in the time of' Hyrcanus, the high priest of their highest god ; and that their sacred offerings shall be inviolable and shall be sent to Jerusalem and shall be paid to the financial officials of Jerusalem ; and that they shall not give sureties for appearance in court on the Sabbath or on the day of preparation before it after the ninth hour.
      But if anyone is detected stealing their sacred books or their sacred monies, either from a synagogue or from a men's apartment, he shall be considered sacrilegious and his property shall be brought into the public treasury of the Romans.
      I order that both the decree given to me by them concerning my piety, which I have toward all persons, and concerning Gaius Marcius Censorinus and this edict shall be placed in the most conspicuous place of the temple constructed for me by the Assembly of Asia in Ancyra.
      And if anyone transgresses any of the aforesaid matters, he shall pay a not moderate penalty.
      Inscribed on a stone slab in Caesar's Temple.