From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (50 page)

The two chief legal writers under Augustus were M. Antistius Labeo and C. Ateius Capito. Both legally and politically they were opposed to each other. Labeo, a man of tremendous learning (he wrote 400 volumes), was an independent innovator, but refused a consulship which Augustus offered him. Capito, more conservative in his legal beliefs, was more willing to co-operate with the new régime and held a consulship in A.D. 5; he was particularly interested in sacral law,
ius pontificum
. Their differences led to the development of two schools, the Sabinians and Proculians. Masurius Sabinus was a pupil of Capito and wrote on the
ius civile
; the Sabinians were also known as Cassians, after the jurist C. Cassius Longinus, legate of Syria (45–49), who was exiled by Nero (65), but recalled by Vespasian. The other school followed Proculus, who both taught and wrote under the Julio-Claudians.

Thus beside the more purely literary writers of this age, there was an immense output of works by professional men, scientists, doctors and lawyers. If genius was lacking, there was no shortage of solid and useful achievement. It is noteworthy also that the western provinces were beginning to make their contribution to Roman culture. As earlier northern Italy had provided Catullus and Virgil, so now from Spain came the Senecas, Lucan and Columella, soon to be followed by Quintillian and Martial. Thus in the course of time it was not only the Greek East that helped to enrich the cultural life of the Roman world. But these men were so Romanized that their works do not sound a distinctively provincial note: that comes later with writers like Apuleius and Tertullian from Africa and Ausonius from Gaul, at a time when the provinces were providing even emperors for Rome.

The various schools of philosophy continued to make their appeal to an intellectual aristocracy and to win fresh followers in each generation. The Epicureans attempted to simplify life by removing fear of death. The Stoics were increasingly concerned with social ethics and with finding the way to virtue by living according to nature: as external circumstances which cannot be controlled become harder, so the controllable internal opinions, impulses and desires must be disciplined. The Cynics preached the attainment of independence by the renunciation of worldly goods and obligations: some became itinerant beggars who preached anarchy and denounced all rulers.
Meantime other men turned to the more mystical approach of Neopythagoreanism and hoped in a common cult to purify the soul by prayer and discipline and to free it, in part even in this life, from the burden of the body. Philosophy was thus now less concerned with creative thought and metaphysical enquiry than with providing a way of life and a shield against the oppressions of the world around.

Two exponents of Stoicism in Rome at this time were C. Musonius Rufus and L. Cornutus, the freedman whose pupils included Lucan and Persius (p. 299 f.); his contact with men of this group led to his exile in 66. Musonius Rufus, who came from a good family in Etruria, in A.D. 60 followed Rubellius Rufus, whom Nero had banished, to Asia Minor, but after Rubellius’ enforced death he returned to Rome, was involved in the Pisonian conspiracy and himself suffered exile, though he returned after Nero’s death. His teaching was humane and advanced: he condemned war and gladiatorial games, advocated equality and education for women, opposed infanticide, urged sympathy for slaves, and preached respect for manual labour. This stalwart philosopher, whose deeds matched his words, had considerable influence and numbered Epictetus among his pupils.
¹⁰
Seneca was not a creative thinker, but rather something of an eclectic willing to accept a good moral teaching where he could find it; yet he had great influence in spreading Stoic doctrines in a form which a weary world might accept.

Thus Stoicism was the creed of many of the men who joined Piso in his attempt to kill Nero, and it was linked with practical politics: a group of Stoics formed an ‘opposition’ to Nero’s increasing tyranny. Stoics did not in principle object to monarchy, provided that it aimed at the benefit of the ruled, but they did resent the autocracy of Nero and the moral decay of the court. Their heroes were men like Cato and Brutus, but although there may have been some talk of Republicanism, in practice they probably only sought a better emperor (cf. p. 261). Stoic opposition became more vocal under the Flavians, though with less reason, but it was confined to a small and obstinate group, whose excesses offended the majority of senators; Tacitus and the younger Pliny might admire their courage but not their conduct.

Philosophy, although it was becoming more ‘religious’, could appeal to only a limited circle. The imperial-cult, which became a kind of communal thanksgiving ceremony to a benefactor, would at times attract widespread interest. In this matter Tiberius followed the example of Augustus (see pp. 191 ff.). The cult of
divus Augustus
was established both in Rome and in the provinces, where it superseded that of
Roma et Augustus
, but Tiberius deprecated worship of himself (see p. 236) and did not encourage foreign cults, as demonstrated by his destruction of the temple of Isis in A.D. 19, his expulsion of the Jews (p. 231), his attitude to the Druids (p. 249), and his driving out Chaldaean astrologers early in his reign. Gaius’ wild demand for worship
was fortunately ended by his early death but it revealed dangerous possibilities; it was followed by the saner policy of Claudius (p. 174), who perhaps deserved his deification after death, but not Seneca’s parody of it. Nero, who allowed a temple to Divus Claudius on the Caelian hill, later had it destroyed. As his megalomania increased, the tendency to worship him as ruler of the world became stronger, and in Rome his features appeared on the colossus of the Sun near the Golden House, while his head was represented on the coinage with a radiate crown. Members of the imperial house also began to receive unheard of honours: under Claudius, Messalina’s birthday was celebrated and Agrippina appeared in sumptuous robes, while Nero deified his child by Poppaea and Poppaea herself after their deaths. All this was far removed from the modest attitude of Augustus.

The ordinary man may have enjoyed watching the official cults of the State but he is unlikely to have derived much spiritual comfort from them beyond the feeling that they helped to secure the well-being of the Roman world. But the individual lived also in a much smaller private world which was often terrifying or disheartening, and he needed help and strength. While the educated might turn to Stoicism, the more humble could seek refuge in the older gods of the household or countryside, but if these did not suffice then he could turn either to magic or one of the eastern religions. Common forms of superstitious belief, as charms, amulets and fortune-telling, were naturally widespread. Curses and imprecations against private enemies, inscribed on lead, had long been used. Necromancy, sorcery and the darker forms of magic attracted some, and astrology retained its hold (see pp. 174 f.).

Although on occasion astrologers were expelled from Rome or Italy (in A.D. 16, 52, and perhaps 66 and 68) generally on the ground that they caused unrest, most of the emperors were interested and Tiberius was himself a practitioner. Further, two astrologers, probably father and son, gained great influence at court. The first was the Alexandrine scholar Thrasyllus, a man of wide interests, whom Tiberius met when in semi-exile in Rhodes; after his return to Rome in A.D. 2 Tiberius secured Roman citizenship for his friend, on whose judgement and companionship he leaned until Thrasyllus’ death in 36. The latter’s son, Ti. Claudius Balbillus, shared his father’s astrological lore and had won the friendship of Claudius when he was young. On Tiberius’ death he had retired to Alexandria, but at the accession of Claudius he returned to Rome and to honour: he accompanied Claudius on the British expedition and later probably became Prefect of Egypt (55–9) in the Principate of Nero whose confidence he enjoyed at least until 64/5. Another astrologer was Chaeremon, a Stoic from Alexandria, whom Agrippina chose as one of young Nero’s tutors; he was perhaps suggested to her by Balbillus who at one time was in charge of the library in Alexandria. The influence of these men on the various emperors was very considerable, but
how far they strengthened the ties of natural friendship still further by using their astrological skill must be uncertain. Clearly, however, both in high and low society this pseudo-science had a great vogue, and men sought to know their Fate even if there was no escape from it, since it had been determined by what star was in the ascendant at the moment of a man’s birth. Fear and uncertainty thus drove even practical people like the Romans to a superstition which the columns of some newspapers show to be still far from dead today.
¹¹

Despite any attempt to warm up the innate fatalism of astrology by approaching it in a spirit of faith and religion rather than of science, many must have found but cold comfort in the stars and have turned to other cults that also came from the East, particularly those that by initiation and worship provided a lively hope of personal immortality. Beside the officially authorized cults (
religiones licitae
), many small groups of semi-secret and unregistered (
illicitae
) worships must have flourished in Italy. The Porta Maggiore chapel (p. 293), with stuccos depicting symbolically the carrying-off of the soul to a higher life, was the centre of one such sect, whether Neopythagorean or not, which appears to have been quickly suppressed. Since the chapel lay in the gardens of the Statilii, the sect may have had some connection with Statilius Taurus, one of Agrippina’s victims who when charged with magical practices in A.D. 53 committed suicide.
¹²
Another cult was celebrated at the so-called Villa of the Mysteries (Villa Item) at Pompeii: its walls are decorated with a series of frescoes, connected with Dionysus and some initiation-rites.
¹³
These examples illustrate obviously wealthy sects, but many of the small authorized clubs of the humbler folk may well have had religious as well as purely social interests.

Of the spread in Italy of some of the better-known eastern cults something has already been said (p. 174).
¹⁴
The most attractive of these was perhaps that of Isis which had made good headway in Italy in the late Republic until it was naturally checked by Octavian’s war on Cleopatra and the gods of Egypt. Gaius, however, welcomed the cult and erected a temple to her in the Campus Martius (
c.
A.D. 38). Though an Egyptian goddess Isis was becoming a universal deity, partly through a process of syncretism which identified various deities. She was the true mother-goddess, the principle of all life, whom other nations might worship under other names. She claimed to be stronger than Fate, to be the giver of law and order, of justice and mercy, and through the sufferings, which according to Egyptian legend she had endured, to sympathize with suffering humanity. The immemorial antiquity of her cult, with its professional white-robed clergy, made a wide appeal: its demands were not heavy, involving initiation and occasional abstinence. Further, its worshippers, men and women alike, actually took part in the cult instead of watching a ceremonial performance by others. Very different was
the cult of the Phrygian Mother-goddess Cybele with its eunuch priests, the Galli, and her young consort Attis, in origin a vegetation spirit who was born and died with the plants each year. Although Claudius in admitting this cult into the Roman calendar (see p. 249) checked some of its grosser features, it remained a very un-Roman worship which appealed to the cosmopolitan population of the capital. It involved a belief in immortality, but the ceremony of the
taurobolium
(blood-bath) did not develop until the second century, when Attis also became a solar deity. Ma, the Mother-goddess of Cappadocia, was no serious rival to Cybele, but she had her devotees, who in frenzied dances slashed themselves with swords. Introduced into Italy by the soldiers of Sulla, who favoured it because an adherent had prophesied his victory over Marius, this cult continued under the Empire, Ma being identified with the Roman war-goddess Bellona. Its priests, as those of Cybele, were often referred to as
fanatici
, the ‘people of the shrine’. The cult of the Persian god Mithras, which was to become so important later, though spreading in the eastern provinces, had scarcely affected Italy or the Roman armies in this period.

Very different were two other beliefs that came from the East and still live while their rivals perished: ‘ex Oriente lux’. As the Jews of the Dispersion had scattered through the Mediterranean world, they had naturally taken their religious beliefs with them, together with their Scriptures of which the non-Jewish world had needed a Greek translation (the Septuagint). The traditional Roman attitude to foreign cults was essentially tolerant, as any polytheistic belief should be, but it required a degree of reciprocity, and this it could naturally not gain from any people holding a monotheistic faith. Hence in order to avoid head-on collisions with the Jews Rome had made exceptional concessions to them in the matter of their worship, as has been seen. Local disturbances had on occasion resulted in Roman repressive measures, as expulsions of Jews from Rome or Italy, or the re-establishment of order in Alexandria. Further, the Jews of Palestine had not succeeded in reconciling their nationalistic longings and their internal dissensions with Roman rule and this finally led to the tragedy of the revolt and consequent destruction of Jerusalem. But in the religious sphere the Jews, who actively attempted to proselytize, met with some success. In a world of lowered standards, the lofty moral code and monotheism of Judaism would interest many better minds, even if some ceremonial features were less attractive. Conversion might be less than complete: full proselytes became naturalized Jews, but a group called the Sebomenoi only attended the synagogue and observed the commandments, while the Hypsistarioi were still less strict.
An interest in Jewish beliefs may even have become ‘fashionable’ in Rome for a short time: at any rate Poppaea Sabina showed an interest in them, though Josephus does not call her a convert.
¹⁵

For some time the Romans failed to distinguish Christianity from Judaism: this is not surprising, since it began as a Jewish sect and, although the ordinary Roman will not have realized this, it was characteristic of Judaism in the last century B.C. to split up into sects. These voluntary communities within the larger body of the Jews in Palestine included the Pharisees and Scribes (not quite identical), the aristocratic and worldly Sadducees who despised the more pious and democratic Pharisees, the Apocalyptists (less a party than representatives of a way of thought), the ascetic Essenes, and, unless they are to be identified with the Essenes, the Qumran community by the Dead Sea, whose monastic life is revealed by their Scrolls, which it may be remarked throw much light on religious thought and conditions in Palestine at this time, but have provided no evidence to connect Jesus or primitive Christianity with this sect.
¹⁶
With this national tendency for the community to break up into smaller groups, the establishment of new groups by the disciples first of John the Baptist and then of Jesus was a natural development. In various forms and in varied degree the Jews continued to look forward to the appearance of a Messiah, a Saviour, a king in David’s line who would ‘restore again the kingdom to Israel’ and cause the world to acknowledge the kingdom of God. Religious stirrings were felt when about A.D. 27 John the Baptist emerged in the desert by the Jordan, a successor to the Old Testament prophets, calling his people to repentance and foretelling that he would be succeeded by a ‘mightier one’. He was imprisoned by Herod Antipas and later executed through the intrigues of Herodias and her daughter Salome.

These long-cherished Messianic hopes were at last realized, in the belief of his followers, in the person and life of Jesus, son of a carpenter of Nazareth in Galilee.
¹⁷
There is a margin of uncertainty about the precise dates of his birth (probably before the death of Herod the Great, which occurred in 4 B.C.), his ministry of not less than two years, and the Crucifixion (probably A.D. 29, 30 or 33).
¹⁸
This is because his disciples were at first less concerned with recording historical detail or writing a full life of their Master than with proclaiming that his life was the supreme intervention of God in human history, recalling stories of his life and teaching, and emphazing the central fact of his life and resurrection. This proclamation of the crucified and risen Messiah was the keynote of the apostolic preaching (
kerugma
); by the middle of the first century it had probably been put into some recorded form (in Aramaic) and was then expanded by the authors of the first three Gospels from their own knowledge and that of the disciples. Thus Luke in the preface to his version of the Gospel mentions other attempts to record the earliest traditions and set his hand to the same task of collecting, sifting and arranging the written and oral tradition.

This is not the place to discuss the content of the teaching of Jesus nor the theological implication of his assertion that he was the Son of God, a belief shared by his disciples and members of the Christian Church ever since. It is sufficient here to record the indisputable fact that what he said and did in the two or three years of his ministry changed the whole course of human history. At first he received baptism from John the Baptist, but his conception of the kingdom of God and the Messiah soon outran that of John: the former was to be no earthly kingdom nor the Messiah a secular ruler. Rather, he gathered round him a small group of followers to whom he explained the true nature of the kingdom and God’s purpose of salvation for man. His personality and teaching, however, combined with a ministry of healing, drew large numbers of ordinary people to him (5000 in one part of Galilee on one occasion), and their enthusiasm led Herod to fear political trouble. Jesus became equally suspect to the Jewish religious authorities who resented the interpretation of the Mosaic law by the new prophet. A turning-point came when Jesus made clear to his disciples who had recognized him as the Messiah that he would not fulfil Jewish hopes of an earthly kingdom, still less by force attempt to throw off the Roman yoke (‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s); rather, he would continue his ministry come what might. After his entry into Jerusalem, tension with the Jewish authorities increased until finally after a preliminary investigation by the Jewish supreme court of the Sanhedrin on a charge of blasphemy he was then handed over by them to the Roman procurator on a charge that he was a rival to Caesar and was seeking the throne of David as ‘king of the Jews’. Pilate, who ‘found no cause of death in him’, was willing to release him but, fearing a mob-rising and its political repercussions, weakly gave in to the hatred of the Jews who cried out for the crucifixion of Jesus.
¹⁹

If that had been the end, there would have been no Christian Church.
²⁰
But his sad and disillusioned disciples, who must have felt that all their hopes had been thwarted, suddenly gained a new assurance: Christ’s death was followed by his resurrection. However the accounts of the empty tomb and the various appearances of their Risen Lord to different groups of his followers are to be explained, it is quite clear that these disheartened men suddenly became completely convinced that Jesus had ‘risen from the dead’ and was actively guiding and commissioning them to continue to spread his teaching ‘both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth’. To this task they pledged themselves when they gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem. ‘The number of names together were about an hundred and twenty’; these quickly increased, first to 3000, and then to 5000. Under the leadership of Peter they continued to observe the Jewish law and to attend the Temple services, but a less rigidly orthodox element was injected into their number when they converted some of the Jews of the
Dispersion who had come to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. Now the Jewish authorities, who had been responsible for the death of Jesus, were not likely to be tender-hearted towards his followers who instead of melting away began to consolidate into a new sect, especially when some of its members began to argue that it should release itself from the bonds of strict Judaism in order to appeal to the Gentile world. Thus persecution started and the persecutors were Jews not Romans.

Their first victim was Stephen, the leader of the Hellenist Christians who advocated a more liberal Judaism for propagation among the Gentiles. He was condemned by the Sanhedrin and was stoned to death. Then followed systematic persecution of the Christian leaders who were driven out of Jerusalem, some as far afield as Syrian Antioch, where they and their followers first received the name of Christians.
²¹
One of the fiercest persecutors was a strict Pharisee, Saul from Tarsus, who acted with the blessing of the High Priest – until his astounding conversion to Christianity when he was journeying on the road to Damascus in order to persecute the Christians there. Using his Latin name Paul (he was a Roman citizen), the persecutor now became the defender of the faith and of the faithful, and a leader of the stature of Peter.
²²
At first the scattered Christians preached only to Jews, but they then began to baptize Gentiles, Samaritans, an Ethiopian and the Roman centurion Cornelius. This created a new and difficult question: must Gentile converts accept Jewish customs in full? The problem was solved when Peter was finally convinced that the more liberal policy of Paul was right. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, could now carry the Christian message throughout the Roman world, freed from the narrower shackles of Judaism.

The account in
Acts
of the missionary journeys that Paul made through Asia Minor and Greece throws much light on conditions there; he won many converts, mostly in the humbler walks of life, but met with much opposition and persecution from the local Jewish communities. His journeys were facilitated by the
pax Romana
, and his preaching by the
koine
, the common Greek dialect that was widespread in the East: his life was saved by his possession of Roman citizenship. His presence often led to disturbances, provoked by Jews who trumped up charges against him or by people with vested interests in pagan cults who feared for their livelihood (as at Philippi and Ephesus). Thus he came for investigation or trial before various authorities: Gallio, the proconsul of Achaea, Claudius Lysias, the military tribune in command of the cohort at Jerusalem, Felix and Festus, the procurators of Judaea, and king Herod Agrippa II (pp. 266 f.). These men in general did not find him guilty of any offence against Roman law, and regarded the issues at stake as internal religious matters that concerned only the Jews themselves (p. 266). Finally, when accused of treason, Paul appealed to Caesar, and Festus sent him to Rome, which he reached after shipwreck and other adventures.
There he was kept for two years in some kind of free custody; whether he was tried and acquitted is not known since the book of
Acts
breaks off at this point. There is a strong tradition, which may well be true, that he perished with other Christian martyrs in the Neronian persecution.

At the time of his arrival in Rome, a Christian community was established there, consisting probably of some Gentiles as well as Jews. The Jews, expelled under Claudius’ order (p. 249), will have soon returned. Membership of this community was probably largely confined to the poorer classes; some adherents were found in the service of the emperor, but it is not certain whether the
externa superstitio
, with which a noblewoman Pomponia Graecina was charged in A.D. 57, was Christianity. At first to the man in the street the Christians were probably not distinguished from the rest of the Jewish community, but then came the fire and Nero’s savage onslaught. Thereafter they will have been known as a sect apart, suspect and liable to persecution. But the blood of the martyrs proved the seed of the Church. Few who witnessed their sufferings under Nero would have believed that in two hundred and fifty years Christianity would have triumphed, that the Roman Empire would have accepted it as an official religion and that a Christian emperor, Constantine, would be sitting on the throne of the Caesars.