Europe: A History (41 page)
Yet Rome’s Indian summer still lay ahead. ‘If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous,’ wrote Gibbon, ‘he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.’
23
Under the emperors Nerva (r. 96–8), Trajan (r. 98–117), Hadrian (r. 117–38), Antoninus Pius (r. 138–61), and Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–80), the Empire not only reached its greatest geographical extent but enjoyed an unrivalled era of calm and stability. Nerva initiated the tradition of poor relief; Trajan was an honest, indefatigable soldier; Hadrian a builder and patron of the arts. Of Antoninus Pius, Gibbon wrote: ‘His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.’
24
The minutiae of imperial administration during its heyday have survived in the voluminous correspondence of the Emperor Trajan with Pliny the Younger, administrator of Bithynia-Pontus:
PLINY.
Nicaea has expended 10,000,000 sesterces on a theatre that was tottering and great sums on a gymnasium that was burned … At Claudiopolis, they are excavating a bathhouse at the foot of the mountain… What am I to do?
TRAJAN.
You are on the spot, decide for yourself. As for architects, we at Rome send to Greece for them. You should find some where you are.
PLINY.
The money due to the towns of the province has been called in, and no borrowers at 12 per cent are to be found. Ought I to reduce the rate of interest… or compel the decurions to borrow the money in equal shares?
Trajan.
Put the interest low enough to attract borrowers, but do not force anyone to borrow… Such a course would be inconsistent with the temper of our century.
PLINY.
Byzantium has a legionary centurion sent by the Legatus of Lower Moesia… to watch over its privileges. Juliopolis… requests the same favour.
TRAJAN.
Byzantium is a great city… But if I give such help to Juliopolis, all small towns will want the same thing.
PLINY.
A great fire has devastated Nicomedia. Would it be in order to establish a society of 150 firemen?
TRAJAN.
No. Corporations, whatever they’re called, are sure to become political associations …
PLINY.
I have never been present at the resolutions concerning the Christians, therefore I know not for what causes… they may be objects of punishment… Are those who retract to be pardoned? Must they be punished for their profession alone?
TRAJAN.
The Christians need not be sought out. If they are brought into your presence and convicted, they must be punished. But anonymous information against them should not carry any weight in the charges.
25
PANTA
W
HEN
the city of Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeiana was buried under five metres of volcanic ash on 24 August
AD
79, all forms of human life were extinguished—the elegant, the mundane, and the seamy. Yet when Pompeii was excavated, mainly from 1869 onwards, one aspect of its former life, its dedication to Venus, was officially concealed. A huge collection of objects which offended against the nineteenth century’s fear of obscenity were kept for decades in the
stanze proibiti
or ‘prohibited sections’ of the National Museum in Naples.
1
The sexual commerce of Pompeii, in contrast, was plied without shame or hypocrisy. Brothels or
lupinari
were located in all parts of the town, and openly advertised their menus and their tariffs. The cheapest girls, such as Successa or Optata, charged 2
assi;
Speranza charged 8, Attica 16. Outside brothels, there were notices to discourage eavesdroppers. One notice read: ‘No place for idlers … Clear off’. Inside, there were pictures to encourage the customers. Paintings and sculptures of sexual subjects were common, even in private houses. Murals portraying the ‘mysteries’ of the city’s cults had a semi-sacred character. Phalluses of gigantic proportions were on frequent display. They served as the flame-holders of oil-lamps, as the centrepiece of comic drawings, even as the spouts of drinking cups. Humorous trinkets showing male gods with divine equipment, or the god Pan plunging an upturned she-goat, were commonplace.
Many of the city’s whores are known by name or, like actresses, by their
noms de scène:
hence Panta (Everything), Culibonia (Lovely Bum), Kallitremia (Super Crotch), Laxa (Spacious), Landicosa (Big Clit), or Extaliosa (Back Channel). Their clients are also known by name or nickname. One was Enoclione (Valorous Toper), another Skordopordonikos (Garlic Farter). The chief ponce of Pompeii’s largest brothel died shortly before the volcano erupted. His servant had scratched an obituary on the gate: ‘For All Who Grieve. Africanus Is Dead. Rusticus Wrote This.’ The trade was both bisexual and bilingual: rent boys were available for both sexes, and the language of the game was either Greek or Latin. The essential vocabulary included
futuere, Lngere, fellare; phallus, méntula, verpa; cunnus
or
connos
(m.) and
lupa
.
Most expressive are the graffiti, ancient moments of triumph and disaster recorded for all time:
FILIUS SALAX QUOT MULIERUM DIFUTUISTI
2
AMPLIATE, ICARUS TE PEDICAT
3
RESTITUTA PONE TUNICAM ROGO REDES PILOSA CO
4
DOLETE PUELLAE PEDI— … CUNNE SUPERBE VALE … AMPLIATUS TOTIES …
HOC QUOQUE FUTUTUI …
5
IMPELLE LENTE
6
MESSIUS HIC NIHIL FUTUIT
7
With Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–80) Rome received a true philosopher-king. A disciple of Epictetus, he trained himself to withstand the rigours of constant campaigning, the burdens of office, and the demands of a profligate family. His notes ‘To Myself’, known as his
Meditations
, exude all the higher sentiments:
What peculiar distinction remains for a wise and good man, but to be easy and contented under every event of human life…? Not to offend the divine Principle that resides in his soul, nor to disturb the tranquillity of his mind by a variety of fantastical pursuits … To observe a strict regard to truth in his words and justice in his actions; and though all mankind should conspire to question his integrity and modesty… he is not offended at their incredulity, nor yet deviates from the path which leads him to the true end of life, at which everyone should endeavour to arrive with a clear conscience, undaunted and prepared for his dissolution, resigned to his fate without murmuring or reluctance.
26
Marcus Aurelius had a marvellous sense of who, and where, he was:
As the Emperor Antoninus, Rome is my city and my country, but as a man, I am a citizen of the world … Asia and Europe are mere corners of the globe, the Great Ocean a mere drop of water, Mount Athos is a grain of sand in the universe. The present instant of time is only a point compared to eternity. All things here are diminutive, subject to change and decay, yet all things proceed from … the one Intelligent Cause.
27
By the mid-third century the Roman Empire was showing all the outward symptoms of an inner wasting disease. Political decadence was apparent in the lack of resolve at the centre, and in disorder on the periphery. In the ninety years from
AD
180 no fewer than eighty short-lived emperors claimed the purple, by right or by usurpation. ‘The reign of Gallienus’, wrote Gibbon, ‘produced only nineteen pretenders to the throne … The rapid and perpetual transitions from the cottage to the throne, and from the throne to the grave, might have amused an indifferent philosopher.’
28
The army dictated to its civilian masters with
impunity. The barbarians flooded over the
limes
, often unchecked. The raids of the Goths turned into permanent occupations. In 268 they sacked Athens. One breakaway ‘Empire’, under a certain Postumus, appeared in central Gaul, and another in Palmyra. The difficulty of enforcing the cult of worthless or transient emperors led to recurrent persecution of the growing Christian sect. From 250 to 265, plague raged in many regions: for a time, 5,000 people a day were dying in Rome alone. Famine followed the plague. Severe price inflation set in, accompanied by a seriously debased coinage. Marcus Aurelius had issued an imperial silver coin of 75 per cent purity. Under Gallienus (r. 260–8), a century later, it was 95 per cent impure. Tax revenues slumped; the imperial authorities concentrated resources in the frontier provinces; elsewhere, many provincial centres declined; amphitheatres were demolished to provide stone for defensive walls.
Even under Diocletian (r. 284–305), whose twenty-one years have been seen as the ‘founding of a new empire’, all was far from well. The tetrarchy, or ‘rule of four’, which divided the Empire into two halves, each with its own Augustus and its own deputy Caesar, facilitated administration and frontier defence. The army was greatly increased—but so was the bureaucracy. The rise in prices was controlled—but not the fall in population. The Christian persecutions continued. In 304 a great Triumph was organized in Rome; but it was the last. One year later, Diocletian abdicated, retiring to his native Dalmatia.
Flavius Valerius Constantinus (r. 306–37), later called ‘Constantine the Great’, was born at Naissus in Moesia Superior (i.e. Nis, in modern Serbia, not, as Gibbon says, in Dacia). His father, Constantius Chlorus, Diocletian’s Western Caesar, died at Eboracum (York) soon after succeeding to the purple. His mother, Helena, was a British Christian, revered in legend as the discoverer of the True Cross. Constantine reunited the two parts of the divided Empire and, in the Edict of Milan, proclaimed general religious toleration. At two crucial moments of his career he claimed to have had a vision. Initially, the vision was said to have been of Apollo, later of a Cross, together with the words ‘By this you will conquer’. He quarrelled with the citizens of Rome, and determined to move his capital to the shores of the Bosphorus. On his deathbed he was formally baptized into Christianity. In this way, at the moment of its Emperor’s Christian conversion, Rome ceased to be the centre of the Empire which it had created.
Christianity
In its origins, Christianity was not a European religion. Like Judaism and Islam, to which it is related, it came from Western Asia; and Europe did not become its main area of concentration for several centuries.
Jesus of Nazareth (C.5BC-33AD), Jewish nonconformist and itinerant preacher, was born in the Roman province of Judaea in the middle of the reign of Augustus. He was executed in Jerusalem, by crucifixion, during the reign of Tiberius (14–37AD) and the procuratorship of Pontius Pilatus, praenomen unknown, a Roman knight who may later have served at Vienna (Vienne) in Gaul. Reportedly,.
though no fault was found in him, the procurator acquiesced in the demands of the Jewish Sanhedrin to put him to death,
[
CRUX
]
Apart from four short gospels, whose evidence is partly repetitive and partly contradictory, few facts are known about the life of Jesus. There is no historical document which mentions him, and there is no trace of him in Roman literary sources. He did not even attract major notice from the Jewish writers of the period such as Josephus or Philo. His personal teaching is known only from a score of parables, from his sayings during the various incidents and miracles of his ministry, from his talks with the apostles, and from a handful of key pronouncements: his Sermon on the Mount, his answers in the Temple and at his trial, his discourse at the Last Supper, his words on the Cross. He claimed to be the ‘Messiah’, the long-foretold saviour of the Jewish scriptures; but he reduced the vast corpus of those scriptures to two simple commandments:
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. (Matt. 22:37–9)
Jesus did not challenge the secular authorities, stressing on several occasions, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’. When he died, he left no organization, no church or priesthood, no political testament, no Gospel, indeed; just the enigmatic instruction to his disciples:
If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. (Matt. 16: 24–5)
That Christianity should have become the official religion of the Roman Empire could hardly have been foreseen. For generations of Christian believers in later times, the triumph of Christianity was simply the will of God. It was not seriously questioned or analysed. But for many Romans in the early centuries it must have presented a real puzzle. Jesus was long regarded as an obscure, local phenomenon. His followers, whose beliefs were confused by outsiders with Judaism, were unlikely candidates to found a religion of universal appeal. The faith of slaves and simple fishermen offered no advantage for class or sectional interest. Their gospel, which made such a clear distinction between the spiritual ‘Kingdom of God’ and the rule of Caesar, seemed to have resigned in advance from all secular ambitions. Even when they became more numerous, and were repressed for refusing to participate in the imperial cult, Christians could hardly be seen as a general menace,
[
APOCALYPSE
]
Of course, one may see with hindsight that Christianity’s emphasis on the inner life was filling a spiritual void to which the Roman lifestyle gave no relief; also that the Christian doctrine of redemption, and the triumph over death, must have exerted great attractions. But one can also understand the bafflement of imperial officials, like Pliny the Younger in Bithynia (see p. 191 above). It is one thing to decide that the ancient world was ripe for a new ‘Salvationist’ religion; it is quite.
