Texts in Context
The Pax Romana
By Gabriel Blanchard
"Behold, I Tell You a Mystery"
The Divine Logos
Naturally it is impossible, in a format like this, to write well about the career of Jesus of Nazareth (even describing it as a “career” is a hideous solecism). The only thing to do really would be to copy out of all four of the Gospels by hand; but as this probably cannot be done, or read, in the space of a single Monday, and would probably involve our esteemed copyist getting yelled at by somebody, our editorial department has resolved to forego this appropriate solution. Marginally less inappropriate than most alternatives, perhaps, is the following passage—now about a century old—written by a friend of one Clive Lewis, an Oxford professor of Medieval literature, who also saw some success of his own in light fiction and one or two other fields; said friend was involved in the publishing industry in London, and went by the name Charles Williams.
There had appeared in Palestine, during the government of the Princeps1 Augustus and his successor Tiberius, a certain being. This being was in the form of a man, a peripatetic1 teacher, a thaumaturgical1 orator. There were plenty of the sort about, springing up in the newly established prace of the Empire, but this particular one had a higher potential of power, and a much more distracting method. It had a very effective verbal style, notably in imprecation,1 together with a recurring ambiguity of statement. … [I]t said nothing against the Roman occupation; it urged obedience to the Jewish hierarchy; it proclaimed holiness to the Lord. But it was present at doubtfully holy feasts; it associated with rich men and loose women; it commented acerbly1 on the habits of the hierarchy; and while encouraging everyone to pay their debts, it radiated a general diapproval, or at least doubt, of every kind of property. It talked of love in terms of hell, and of hell in terms of perfection. And finally it talked at the top of its piercing voice about itself and its own unequalled importance. It said that it was the best and worst thing that ever had happened or ever could happen to man. … It said its Father in Heaven would do anything it wished, but that for itself it would do nothing but what its Father in Heaven wished. And it promised that when it had disappeared, it would cause some other Power to illumine, confirm, and direct that small group of stupefied and helpless followers whom it deigned, with the sound of a rush of sublime tenderness, to call its friends.
It did disappear— either by death and burial, as its opponents held, or, as its followers afterwards asserted, by some later and less usual method.2
This hints somewhat at why it is so impossible to write about Jesus of Nazareth with that dry indifference which our own age associates with honest scholarship (foolishly? maybe, but we do). This is also connected with CLT’s aversion to placing writings regarded specifically as Scriptures on the exam, despite its friendliness to using religious texts, even those of an avowedly partisan nature: to dissent from or dislike a text by one’s fellow man is an everyday matter; but even to rephrase what a sacred author has said, let alone what he or she meant, may be a matter that draws swords—within a group that all believe that author’s work divine. Accordingly, we will for the moment say comparatively little here about the historical Jesus of Nazareth or the earliest infancy of the Nazarene movement, beyond noting that last week’s post on Second Temple Judaism provided some of the context for understanding both.
The Principate
The century after Actium (roughly, the last thirty years of the first century BC and first two-thirds of the first century AD) was, according to conventional Western historiography, the first half of the pax Romana. This was a two-hundred-year period of peace throughout the Mediterranean, stark in its contrast with the preceding era of civil wars in Rome and, before that, foreign wars between Rome and Carthage, and before that, the Successors’ Wars, themselves immediately following the conquests of Alexander … you get the idea. At last, by the triumph of Augustus Cæsar over all rivals, there was peace throughout the Roman world. Even banditry, although it still existed, was less common during this period. Allowing for the unpredictable fortunes the weather would always impose on people, a man could travel from Aquæ Sulis3 all the way to Rome’s eastern border near the Zagros Mountains with little fear. Small wonder, then, that the Cæsars were hailed by the public with titles like σωτήρ [sōtēr], i.e. “healer” or “savior” (no distinction is made in Greek between the verbs “to heal” and “to save,” and the same is true in Latin). Indeed, so complete was the serenity of Rome’s rule that Augustus closed the gates of Janus three times: in 29 BC, in 25 BC, and (probably) in 13 BC.
It bears saying that, although the opening half of the pax Romana is historically persuasive enough, the latter half of this ostensibly two-hundred-year period featured its share of armed conflict, notably surrounding the fall of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Rome’s first imperial house. But we shall come to that presently. For now, we may note a few more of the authors that time and tide have brought us in view of. We have discussed Cæsar and Cicero in some detail; however, we said little or nothing about Lucretius, and have also to discuss Virgil, Livy, Ovid, Seneca, and (at the turning point between the two halves of our period) Josephus.
In the year, from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created Heaven and earth, five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine;
From the flood, two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven;
From the birth of Abraham, two thousand and fifteen;
From Moses and the coming of the Israelites out of Egypt, one thousand five hundred and ten;
From the anointing of King David, one thousand and thirty-two; ...
In the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
In the year seven hundred and fifty-two from the founding of the city of Rome;
In the forty-second year of the empire of Octavian Augustus,
When the whole world was at peace, in the sixth age of the world, Jesus Christ ... is born in Bethlehem of Juda, having become Man of the Virgin Mary.
The Outer Fringe: Lucretius and Ovid
Titus Lucrētius Cārus was rather unusual among famous Roman authors, in that he was an Epicurean. Contrary to the popular idea, based on modern use of the term, the Epicureans were not hedonists; they did believe that pleasure was the highest good, but defined pleasure as being free from pain and the things that cause pain—which, in turn, meant things like ego, jealousy, addiction, and romantic love: temperance and simplicity, not indulgence, were their watchwords. All in all, and with admitted differences, they were a little like Buddhists (and indeed, both originated during the debatable “Axial Age”). Lucretius was one of the few well-known Romans really to go in for Epicureanism; Stoicism and Skepticism were more congenial to the Roman temper, especially since both sat more comfortably with traditional reverence for the gods.4 Nonetheless, Lucretius’ long philosophic poem Dē Rērum Nātūrā (which can be translated “On the Nature of Things” or “The Way Things Are”) was quite a hit in ancient Rome: few people became convinced Epicureans for its sake, but, for its beauty and clarity, it became a favorite text of Latin writers for the next few centuries.
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō, best known as Ovid, surpassed even Lucretius, becoming one of the most admired and widely-read authors ever to write in Latin. Much of his work is racy and satirical (notably his Ars Amātōria), and drew the thorough disapproval of Augustus, who might be as modern as anybody, politically speaking, but strove to encourage respect for traditional Roman values; he ultimately condemned Ovid to internal exile, banishing him to Tomis (located on the coast of what is now Romania), for what the poet called carmen et error, “a poem and a mistake,” though it remains a topic of speculation what precisely the “mistake” was.5 However, Augustus would in all likelihood have approved warmly of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a compendious retelling of a vast portion of the ancient body of mythology, Roman and Greek alike; Ovid’s versions of these stories were authoritative through the Metamorphoses for many centuries, well past the official fall of Rome.
However, even work that was, in both senses, as classic as that could hardly compare with another literary circle in Rome and its successors.
The Inner Circle: Virgil, Livy, and Seneca
The circle in question was that of Gaius Mæcenas, an advisor to Augustus. Being independently wealthy, he was a great patron of the arts, especially poetry; several composers of Latin verse at the time were among his clients, including Sextus Propertius, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (generally known in English as “Horace”), and perhaps the finest in all Rome’s history, Pūblius Vergilius Marō.6 Besides many other, much shorter works of poetry, Virgil took the great epics of Græco-Roman civilization, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and set out to tell the story of Rome’s found in a form worthy of both. The Æneid relates the escape of Æneas from the sack of Troy, his wanderings through the Mediterranean, and the divine mission Jupiter ordained for him and his people, to become the founders of what would, one day, be Rome—with occasional “flash forward” allusions to what was, more or less, Rome’s re-founding by Augustus, represented as the descendant of Venus and under the tutelage of Apollo. (The legends that the Romans were descendants of Æneas and that the Julian family were descended from the goddess Venus were both of much greater antiquity than Virgil’s work, but the grandeur of Virgil’s verse lent the Emperor an imaginative kind of authority he might never otherwise have possessed.)
The historian Titus Līvius is not known to have been part of Mæcenas’ circle, but he was a personal friend of Augustus. This is the more remarkable, given the unstinting praise Livy allots in his work to Romans who were opposed either to Augustus himself or his adoptive father, Julius Cæsar; for instance, Livy’s hometown of Patavium (modern Padua, as in “St. Anthony of”) had received Roman citizenship at the instigation of Pompey, and the historian accordingly wrote so highly of him that Augustus addressed him jokingly as “Pompeianus.” Livy also encouraged the young Tiberius Claudius—the great-nephew of Augustus through his sister Octavia, and grandson of Augustus’ wife Livia—to pursue his interest in scholarship, despite the fact that most of the family dismissed the boy as a dullard. Livy’s only surviving work is his history of Rome up to his own time, the Ab Urbe Conditā (“From the Founding of the City,”); at least, if we are content to call thirty-five whole scrolls out of an original hundred and forty-two “surviving.”
One or two generations later we come to Lūcius Annæus Seneca the Younger (typically known simply as Seneca). Like Lucretius, he was also a philosopher with a literary bent, though his was to the more typically Roman Stoicism; like Virgil, much of his work was devoted to adapting classical Greek material for Roman audiences, often in the form of plays; and, like Livy, he was an intimate of the royal family, serving for some time as a tutor to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who of course was later renamed (since the Romans loved nothing so much as bewildering chroniclers who might come after them). Admittedly, it might reflect better on Seneca if Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus had been renamed something other than “Nero.”
Then again, you can’t have everything. That is a lesson that Nero, and our sixth author mentioned above, Josephus, and a lot of other people besides, were fated to learn in what was either the midpoint of the pax Romana, or, arguably, its end—the First Jewish War, which erupted in the year 66.
1Princeps (“first”) was one of the titles assigned to the Emperor early in the Empire.
Peripatetic, while sometimes used to describe the thought of Aristotle, is often used (in a sense more literal to the word’s origin) as a synonym for “wandering, peregrine.”
Thaumaturgy means performing miracles or wonders.
Acerbly is a rare synonym for “sourly, bitterly, astringently.”
Lastly, imprecation means the delivery of rebukes, curses, chastisements, or woes.
2The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church, pp. 1-3; 1939, Regent College Publishing: Vancouver, Canada.
3Well, he could once it was built, anyway, in 60 AD.
4This may strike the modern reader as an odd thing to say about Skepticism. However, one of the logical consequences of Skepticism (which the ancients were quick to cotton on to) is a reluctance to experiment with new things; old things that have proven they have the power of endurance, if nothing else, have in that sense more to show for themselves. It was not at all uncommon back then, and is not unknown now, for a person to be both skeptical and religiously conservative.
5One theory is that Ovid knew of a conspiracy against Augustus’ life, but failed to inform the Emperor; he, Ovid, was banished in the same year as two of Augustus’ grandchildren, Agrippa Postumus and Julia the Younger, and Julia’s husband (one L. Æmilius Paullus) was involved in the conspiracy.
6The name Vergilius is occasionally Anglicized in the more strictly accurate form “Vergil”; however, due to the poet’s high esteem in both antiquity and the Middle Ages, he was widely regarded as something like a white magician, and so his name was conflated with the word virga, “wand.”
Gabriel Blanchard has a degree in Classics from the University of Maryland, and has worked for CLT since 2019. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
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Published on 23rd September, 2024.