LETTER OF ANTONY ON JEWISH RIGHTS
   
( 41 BC )
 
 
( Johnson, Coleman-Norton & Bourne, Ancient Roman Statutes, Austin, 1961, p. 108, n. 124 ).
 
 
      This letter implements that sent to the Jews, who had asked Mark Antony to compel the Tyrians to restore the territory which they had taken from the Jews.
 
 
ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
 
 
      Marcus Antonius, saluted imperator, to the magistrates, the Senate, the people of the Tyrians, greetings.
      Since the envoys of Hyrcanus, high priest and ethnarch, have appeared before me in Ephesus and say that you occupy their territory, into which you entered during the domination of those persons opposed to us, and since we have undertaken the war for supremacy and, taking thought for that which is pious and just, have requited those persons who neither remembered kindness nor kept oaths, it is my will both that our allies shall have peace at your hands and that you shall not agree to accept whatsoever you received from our antagonists, but that you shall restore such property to those persons from whom it was taken. For none of those men obtained either provinces or armies through the Senate's gift, but, having seized them by force, they forcibly gave them to the persons who were serviceable to them for what they did unjustly.
      Therefore, since they have paid the penalty, we require that our allies shall possess undisturbed whatever they once owned and that, if you now hold any districts that belonged to Hyrcanus, the ethnarch of the Jews, even for one day before Gaius Cassius, who induced an unjustified war and invaded our province, you shall return them to him and shall use no force at all against them to make them weak in controlling their own properties. But if you have any justificatory plea against him, whenever we come to the places you shall be permitted to employ it, since in our decisions we guard each and every right for the allies alike.