In Episode 1 Season 2 of the HBO series Rome, a Jewish mercenary makes clear to Mark Antony that he expects payment for the job he is being asked to do. Mark Antony snidely replies that he would never expect a Jew to do something without compensation.
Is this accurate? Are stereotypes about Jewish greed as old as the Roman republic? I thought they stemmed from Jews being pigeonholed into money-handling jobs in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages. Did they hold similar positions in Ancient Rome?
I can't exactly answer your question entirely, but I can tell you why it is very unlikely Antony would have made such a comment.
Let me begin by stating that the first writers in the Greco-Roman tradition who delineated Jews as a distinct ethnic group were Greeks of the Hellenistic period. However, while these writings do stereotype Jews (after a fashion), the earliest stereotypes are not negative .
I believe the very first person to comment on Jewish traits in extant literature is Aristotle's student Theophrastes of Erosos (372-288 BCE)
Specifically, Eusebius of Caesarea, in Chapter: 2 of his "Praeparatio Evangelica" reports that Theophrastes offers the following.
"And while doing this they fast throughout the intermediate days; and all this time, as being a nation of philosophers, they converse with one another about the Deity, and at night they contemplate the heavenly bodies, looking up to them, and calling upon God in prayers. For these were the first to dedicate both the other animals, and themselves, which last they did from necessity and not from any desire.'"
As you can see, this assessment is quite respectful of Jewish temperament and customs. Several contemporaries of Theophrastes, such as Megasthenes, say much the same.
All that said, the sentiments on Jews in Greece underwent a dramatic shift just a few decades later, in the mid-200s BCE.
Most historians are of the opinion that this nascent antisemitism originated among the religious leaders of Egypt,, who at the time had begun to have much more extensive interaction with Greeks by virtue of being integrated into the social structure of the Ptolemaic kingdoms.
Indeed, rhe person most associated with the origins of the idea was a supposed Egyptian priest named Manatheo , who wrote of Jews in Chapter 15 of his History of Egypt::
"...whatever they learned from Moses and from those who have philosophized like him, first that they might be considered as having something of their own, and secondly, that covering up by a certain rhetorical artifice whatever things they did not understand, they might misrepresent them."
So, by the mid-200s BCE, we have confirmed anti-Jewish intellectual contributions. However, though he may have accused Jews, as above, of being deceitful and stupid,, neither Manatheo, nor any other figure from classical antiquity, ever accused Jews of greed in any extant source. There is simply no evidence to support the idea.
That surely came later.