Disquisitio philol. de Iudaeorum odio et abstinentia a porcina, eiusque c ausis

...FROM PORK? At this inquiry, a great laugh erupted from his adversaries, partly those rejoicing, and partly those doing so for the sake of flattery, and thus also seeking the Emperor's favor. This occurred when Philo was defending the cause of the Alexandrians before Caligula against Apion. Thus also Apion reproaches the Jews in the writing against him by JOSEPHUS, Book II, p. 1068: Εγκαλει γαρ ότι ζωα θυομεν, και χοιρον ουκ εσθιομεν, και την των αιδοιων χλευαζει περιτομην. He complains because we sacrifice animals, and do not EAT PORK, and he mocks the circumcision of the genitals.

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Thus also, in the provoked Alexandrian sedition against the Jews, Flaccus reports that pork was proposed to each one to test whether they were Jews or not, and those who would not touch the pork were treated cruelly, as PHILO JUDAEUS reports at length in the History of Flaccus, p. 979. And Antiochus Epiphanes, in JOSEPHUS On the Maccabees, ch. 5, speaks to the old man Eleazar with persuasive words to invite him to eat pork, and as it seems, falsely: Δια τι της φυσεως κεχαρισμενης καλλιστην την δε του ζωου σαρκοφαγιαν βδελυττη Why, when nature has permitted the eating of the flesh of this animal (the most excellent), do you abhor it? The same also seems to be an insult against the pig when RUTILIUS, in his Itinerary, mocks the Jews for their abstinence from foods, where certain things are said bitterly against the Jews as well as the Christians, Book I, 383:

For the complaining Jew of the place (Alexandria) was taking care,
To keep the animal from human foods.

There was something peculiar in the fact that the Jews abstained so religiously, for other animals cannot even be compared with this one; they loathed this beast to such an extent that they judged nothing to be more foul. The hare, the rabbit, and the camel were not as execrable to them (Leviticus XI. 4. sq., Deuteronomy XIV, 7. sq.); nor those twenty kinds of birds which are listed as unclean and impure in Leviticus XI, 13. & Deuteronomy XIV, 12.; nor those animals that walked on their palms (Leviticus XI, 27.); nor the eight reptiles from which they are ordered to abstain (v. 29. 30).