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Josephus mentions Syria as the region with the highest number of Jewish inhabitants and within Syria the Jews in the capital Antioch as the largest Jewish community (BJ 7.43). He offers us glimpses of the history of the latter. King Seleucus I is said to have founded this community and bestowed citizenship upon the Jews as a reward for their military services (AJ 12.119; cf. BJ 7.43–44; Apion 2.39). Josephus adds that Jews in other cities in Asia and Lower Syria founded by Seleucus were also granted local citizenship, which he specifies as having equal rights as the Macedonians and the Greeks in these cities were having (AJ 12.119; BJ 7.44). Several scholars have argued that Josephus overstates the privileges of the Syrian Jews and conclude that they plausibly only concern certain rights that applied to their own minority community (Tcherikover 1959: 328–329; Smallwood 1976: 226; Barclay 1996: 244–245; Pucci Ben Zeev 1998). Josephus indicates that the Jewish community in Antioch had its own leader, who bore the title archōn (BJ 7.46). A story about a Jewish apostate, who caused great suffering for the Jewish community during the revolt against Rome, shows that the life of the Jews in Antioch was sometimes not a bed of roses. This man, named Antiochus, was the son of one of the Jewish magistrates called archōn. He stirred up the non-Jewish Antiochenes and accused his fellow Jews, including his own father, of a plan to set the city on fire. He caused some of them to be burned in the theater and forced others to renounce Judaism and sacrifice according to the customs of the Greeks. With the help of Roman soldiers he also forced the Jews to work on the Sabbath (BJ 7.46–53). After a fire did happen in the city, ignited by non-Jews who had hoped to get rid of their debts through the destruction of the archive, Antiochus’s earlier accusation caused the Antiochenes to be infuriated and to throw themselves upon the Jews. Only with great difficulty was the Roman legate Gnaeus Collega able to restore peace and quiet (BJ 7.54–58). Josephus also notes that notwithstanding the triumph over the Jews in 70 CE Titus did not comply with the request by the non-Jewish inhabitants of Antioch to cancel the engraved-in-bronze privileges of the local Jews and expel them (BJ 7.100–111).