SOURCE: Lane, Eugene N. “Sabazius and the Jews in Valerius Maximus: A Re-Examination.” Journal of Roman Studies 69 (1979): 35-38.

In the following essay, Lane remarks on a conflation of Sabazius-worshippers and antique adherents of Judaism that he attributes to errors in the manuscript tradition of Valerius's Memorable Doings and Sayings.

There has long been accepted as a fact in the study of the cult of Sabazius an ostensible reference to Jews who, as early as 139 b.c., worshipped Sabazius, and were expelled from Rome by the praetor peregrinus Cornelius Hispalus.¹ The source of this information is often given without qualification as Valerius Maximus, 1, 3, 2. Even Eisele's thorough and generally sceptical article, s.v. ‘Sabazius’, in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (1909), accepts the statement and gives the usual indication of its source. The passage is generally cited as follows:

Cn. Cornelius Hispalus praetor peregrinus, M. Popilio...