Christianity and the Empire
"And there went out in those days a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed..."
Some 30 years ago, at right about this time of year, My wife and I went with a friend to a German Reform church in Maryland. The pastor was a very nice man, but his sermon elicited at least one guffaw. After expatiating, quite properly, on the superiority of Christianity over ancient paganism, he drove the nail home. "Da crule, crule Caesar Augustus. Imagine, da crulety and arrogance of da man: He wanted to tax da whole world, but today, when everybody in da world knows da name of Jesus Christ, who has ever heard of Augustus?" Well, actually, there were at least three of us in church that day, all having done graduate work in classics, who remembered Augustus' name with respect and understood that the taxation referred to by St. Luke was nothing more sinister than a census.
The good pastor's sermon was only one of many such anti-Roman outbursts I have listened to over the years, not only from leftists but also from Christians and political conservatives. Some years back, I learned of a bone-head conservative group whose motto was "Carthage must be preserved." Since the Carthaginians excelled in torture and murder, I assume that some of the members of this group have joined the Defense Department. I wonder, though, how they feel about the massive sacrifices of children? Perhaps abortion is the modern equivalent--G.K. Chesterton would certainly have thought so.
My wife and I had more than one Latin student who objected to any material referring to a Roman deity, and I have had countless letters, emails, and personal conversations in which I was informed that the Roman Empire was evil to the core, an anticipation of Nazi Germany. Not content with asking Tertullian's question, "What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?" they wanted to draw a line in the sand between Christianity and the Empire whose only contribution to the Church was the blood of martyrs.
This is an odd time of year for mounting a defense of the Romans, but the discussion will certainly be more worthwhile than any attention paid to the upcoming primaries. This must seem to be so to Luigi Amicone, editor of I Tempi, a conservative Catholic weekly in Milan, which recently (29 November) interviewed the well-known Roman historian, Marta Sordi. The entire interview is worth reading, but I shall translate just the bits that have to do with her view of Rome and Christianity.
After explaining that her study of ancient historians taught her how to find insights (e.g. about the neurotic but successful Emperor Tiberius), which the historians themselves would have disclaimed, she then explained that "the discovery of the historical method" served to reinforce her Christian faith. Studying in Bucharest during WW II, she learned, in dialog with a professor of Crocean orientation, to respect those whom Christianity calls, the preambles of faith, namely, the rational certainty of God's existence and in the divinity of Christ. Asked to clarify what she meant, Sordi tells of a a conversation she had with a non-believing schoolmate who asked her, "How in the world can you who are an historian believe in these things?" She answered:
"Precisely because i am an historian, I have been brought to beleive in the reality of Christ's claim to be God. Certainly, faith cannot be reduced to an historiographic operation; it is a qualitative leap. But historical study, to be precise study of the Gospels, show that Jesus of Nazareth actually existed and was a man of definite characteristics. To acknowledge his claim to divinity, I repeat, is another matter, but the historical study of hte Gospels favors, I should say prepares the way for the leap of adherence to the Faith. Either that concrete man, who really existed, whom the Gospels show us, was a charlatan, a madman, or he was what he said he was, God. It is extremely illogical to affirm, as so many do, that Christ was a great prophet, a reformer, or whatever, and to deny that he is God....Christianity is a religion, which has an historical foundation, not simply believing in God, but that God has been incarnated in an historical person."
Asked about her other historical studies, not limited to Christian history, Sordi replies that it is "a mistake, something artificial to separate Christianity and the civilization of the classical world. There is an evident continuity between ancient civilization and Christianity. The ancient world opens up and receives Christianity. Rome is the place in which Christianity is diffused, not only because the Empire, as has often been observed, offered the roads and security that enabled the Christian message to travel, but above all because the Roman mentality was ready to receive that message."
She goes on to discuss two poems, Vergil's 4th Eclogue and Catullus 64 that reveal the Roman religious mentality, which both anticipates a new Golden Age of peace and justice, and which sings of the heroic age when gods associated with men. The first point has been made by many Christians, including Chesterton (in The Everlasting Man), who argued that for God to descend to this world, the world had to be cleansed of the evil paganism of the Carthaginians: Rome had to win the Punic Wars in order to prepare the Mediterranean for the Incarnation. The second point is not very common, namely, that the pagan idea, expressed by Pindar, "One is the race of gods and men," is in some way a better preparation for the Son of God than Judaism's relentless distinction between God and man, a distinction that discouraged some of them from accepting the Messiah. (This is not at all meant to slight the precious and indispensable testimony of ancient Jews from whom our Lord was born as a man.)
Like it or not, the Christian Church and the Roman Church were born in the same age, and while the Empire would persecute Christians for nearly 300 years, the two would begin to fuse in the time of Constantine, and by the time the Western Empire collapsed finally in 476, the Christian Church in the West was ready to take over its role in the European world.
This is, perhaps, more than enough for now, though I am happy to post parts of several historical lectures I have made on this theme.
A Postscript on the Punic Wars
In the early third century B.C., as Rome expanded to the south and came into conflict with tribes of Lucanians and Bruttians, and eventually Tarentum whom Pyrrhus failed ultimately to save. Though Pyrrhus fought brilliantly, he eventually abandoned southern Italy and returned to Greece, but not before observing with some surprise, “These Romans don’t fight like barbarians.”
After Pyrrhus’ departure, Rome resolved to put an end to the troubles in southern Italy. She subjugated the Bruttians and Lucanians, and she either won over the Greek cities into an alliance or subjugated them. She was equally effective in the north, stamping out the last sparks of resistance from the Samnites and pushing her system of alliances as far north as Pisa and Rimini. Before the end of the 260’s, Rome was mistress of Italy, ruling much of it directly and the rest through alliances and confederations. Her interventions in southern Italy and Sicily, however, were about to bring her into conflict with an ancient and powerful state that would threaten her very existence: Carthage.
Carthage was an old and wealthy city founded by the Phoenicians, and the Carthaginians had made settlements in Sicily and Spain and sailed even beyond the Pillars of Hercules to trade for tin with the peoples of Britain. Carthage was feared for her brutality against conquered peoples and for her charming religious rites, which included temple prostitution and human sacrifices, but she was also admired for the stability of her government.
Like later Rome (and, later still, Venice), Carthage was a commercial republic governed by an aristocratic senate, though wars and foreign policy were usually controlled by a few powerful clans like the Barca family. Her agriculture was a system of vast estates tended by slaves and serfs. It is hard to find anything very admirable about the Carthaginians. They produced no original art that we know of, no literature, and no philosophy. Even their handicrafts seem shoddy and mass-produced.
As the citizens of Carthage grew rich, they lost their interest in serving in the army, and while native Carthaginians served in a militia home guard, most of her foreign wars would be fought by mercenaries under the command of Carthaginian officers. These officers had a powerful incentive to succeed, since the usual penalty for failure was crucifixion.
First Punic War (264-41)
The Romans were drawn into war by Carthaginian ambitions in Sicily and southern Italy, where the Phoenicians had been expanding their power at the expense of the Greek cities. Carthage was a great naval power, while Rome had few warships and even less experience in naval warfare. But the Romans, in the First Punic War, took a wrecked Punic ship and, using it as the model, built 120 duplicates. Knowing they had no time to study the refinements of naval tactics—ramming, boarding, etc.—they devised a system of gangplanks that could be attached to an enemy ship with a bronze hook—hence the name corvus, crow. This way they could turn a naval battle into infantry combat, which is what the consul of 260, C. Duilius, accomplished off Mylae, winning a stunning first victory.
A Roman army under command of Atilius Regulus landed in Africa and earned a series of victories until the Carthaginians hired a Spartan mercenary to train their citizens in Greek warfare. The retrained militia defeated the Romans and took many of them prisoner, including Regulus himself. Later, when sent to negotiate prisoner exchanges, Regulus advised the Senate against the plan. He revealed the dearth of Carthaginian manpower before voluntarily returning to Carthage to be tortured to death. Rome was still producing Romans of the old school.
After a series of disasters in which Rome lost most of her ships, the Romans finally built another fleet and were able to inflict a total defeat on the Punic fleet. Proud Carthage was finally willing to repudiate the leaders of her war party and to sue for peace. Apart from imposing an indemnity, Rome demanded only Sicily and the adjacent islands, but Sicily was a major prize. Rome treated half of Sicily as a conquered province, which became the model for future provinces, and the rest of the island, Syracuse in particular, remained in the hands of independent Greek states.
Second Punic War ( 218-201)
The uneasy and suspicious peace would last 21 years, during which the Romans appropriated Sardinia, though it was not covered by the treaty, and pushed their advantage to the point of inciting the war party in Carthage. Smarting from the insult over Sardinia and from the indignity of paying indemnity to Rome, Carthage granted permission in 237 to Hamilcar Barca to rebuild her empire in Spain—far removed from Roman concern, she thought. The Barcid clan were strong men who hated Rome, none more than Hamilcar, who had made his young son Hannibal swear an oath of eternal hatred against Rome.
After the deaths of his father and uncle, young Hannibal took over operations in Spain and demanded the surrender of the important city of Saguntum, which lay south of the Ebro and therefore was not technically covered by the treaty with Rome. But Saguntum had recently become a Roman ally, and Rome ordered Carthage to surrender Hannibal. Hannibal had learned from his father the wisdom of fighting the war on Italian soil, and leaving a substantial number of troops behind for the defense of Spain, he set off to southern Gaul with about 35,000 regular soldiers with him, obviously intending to recruit additional troops from the Celtic tribes he would pass through in southern France and northern Italy.
I am not going to narrate Hannibal’s campaigns, how he fought his way into Italy, how in despair the Romans chose the Romans chose Q. Fabius Maximus as temporary dictator, who deliberately spent his time rebuilding the army and limited operations to skirmishing, disrupting supply lines, etc., wearying the Carthaginian army by delaying tactics that would later be emulated by Russians fighting Napoleon and Hitler. The Roman nobles later declared that he had saved Rome by delaying and gave him the title Cunctator, how going back on the offensive in 216, the Romans were wiped out at Cannae by Hannibal’s pincer-movement, how young P. Cornelius Scipio drove the enemy out of Spain and brought the war home to North Africa and defeated Hannibal.
The Roman’s glorious march to victory was marred by the sack of the ancient city of Syracuse, a former Roman ally. When Marcellus’ soldiers broke through, they proceeded to loot the richest city in the world, chopping art treasures out of temples and destroying much in the process.
Third Punic War (149-146)
Before moving on to administer the coup de grâce to Carthage, Rome found herself involved in wars with the Macedonian rulers of Greece and the Middle East. The Roman general Flaminius arrived in 198 as liberator of the threatened Greek states. After defeating the Macedonian king, Philip III, Flaminius was content to keep him as ruler in Macedon and to proclaim the liberation of Greece.
Scipio and Flaminius genuinely admired Greek culture and were willing to permit the Greek states to remain free. The anti-Greek party in the senate was led by M. Porcius Cato, one of the most remarkable Romans of that or any generation. The plebeian farmer Cato had little sympathy for the Scipios and their obvious plan to make themselves a princely power within the Roman state. Since Scipio Africanus had permitted Carthage to surrender, Cato never lost an opportunity to attack both Carthage and Scipio himself.
The real cause of the third and final Punic War was the treaty, which deprived Carthage of power over the Roman-supported Numidians. Attacked by the Numidians, Carthage was put in an impossible position. Cato, convinced that it was time to complete the conquest of Carthage, took to ending every speech with the sentence Carthago delenda est (Carthage must be destroyed). The Carthaginians were told that they must satisfy the Romans, though nothing specific was stated, and even their offer of formal surrender was not enough to stop the Roman invading force of some 80,000 troops under the command of the adopted son of Scipio Africanus, Scipio Aemilianus (the son by birth of Scipio Africanus’s cousin Aemilius Paulus). After a bitter siege, Carthage fell in 146. The city was sacked, and the citizens who escaped death were sold into slavery. One brick was not allowed to stand on another, and salt was ceremoniously sown into the spoil.
Watching the devastation, the young Scipio, educated in Greek literature, quoted Hector’s moving lines from the Iliad: “I know that some day Holy Troy will fall.” Troy was already identified as the ultimate founder of Rome, and Scipio’s quotation became a prophecy or even a curse. It is usually interpreted as simply a prediction that all great empires must end, but in following in the path of Alexander and in disdaining the conservatism of Fabius, the Romans had made a fatal decision.
Carthage was not the only great city destroyed in 146. War had broken out in Greece, and Rome intervened on the side of Sparta against the stronger Achaean League. The Roman commander, L. Mummius, entered Corinth, enslaved the population, and looted the city, which he then ordered destroyed. Marcellus in looting Syracuse was overcome by greed on seeing the city’s great wealth; Mummius had planned his plunder in advance, so it is said, taking orders for the loot.
The plunder of Syracuse, Asia Minor, Carthage, and Corinth fundamentally and drastically altered the Roman economy and way of life. Despite all their wars, the Romans, especially in the years before the Punic Wars, were really farmers. Roman farmers were torn away from the land to be soldiers and ended up losing property, appetite for work, and even skills. Booty of gold and silver caused inflation. Aggravating the farmers’ plight was the growing competition of slave labor farms in North Africa and Sicily. The Latin word for these vast estates where commercial farming was practiced is Latifundia; today we call it agribusiness. The Carthaginians had pioneered Latifundia, and their system was adopted by their conquerors.
Rome, in the roughly 100 years between the destruction of Carthage and Corinth and the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44, was torn by a civil strife as intense as the struggle between patricians and plebeians had been. Despite the civil conflict, Rome’s empire spread inexorably to encompass the entire Mediterranean World.
Postscript II: Two Kingdoms
Two Kingdoms
The Procurator was in a difficult spot. As an honest Roman official, he knew better than to get mixed up in the turbulent local politics. The local religious establishment wanted a rebel to be executed. They said the rebel claimed to be ruler of the Roman Empire, a pathetic but direct challenge to the Emperor. Tiberius was a fair man, of course, and did not wish to receive divine honors, but this imposter’s claim was too much for the overworked procurator to endure:
“Are you the king of the Jews?” he asks, repeating the charge made by the Sanhedrin. The answer is surprisingly shrewd:
“Did you come up with that on your own or did other people give you the idea?”
“What do you think I am? A Jew? How would I know,” asks the exasperated Pilate.
This exchange is from the account set down in old age by John, the “beloved disciple” of the rebel leader. John is the one member of the inner circle to have written down his recollections of the master, and he also records Jesus final answer to Pontius Pilate. “My kingdom is not of this world.” If it did, he said, his followers would be up in arms to defend him.
From the Roman point of view, this Jesus whom they called the Christ or the anointed one had done nothing wrong, but since the Jews did not have the authority to put a criminal to death, it was up to the Roman administration. Pilate resisted the mob’s demands, until the Jewish leaders played their trump card: “If you let him go, this man who has challenged the emperor’s universal authority, you are no friend to Caesar.” Why not just say my career is over?
Tiberius, who for all his personal faults, was an excellent ruler and he despised the fawning adulation he received. According to Christian tradition, when he heard of this strange Jewish renegade who alone did not want to kick the Romans out of Judaea, he proposed to the senate that Christ be included in the pantheon of Roman gods. The Senate, so the story goes, objected, declaring the new religion to be illicit, though Judaism was protected by law. Assuming, as many scholars do not, that the story is true, why should the senate make such a declaration? Was it to embarrass Tiberius? Were they bribed? Or were they simply offended by one more mystery cult invading Rome from the East? I don’t know, but the Senate’s decision, never enforced by Tiberius or the next two emperors, was to give Nero the authority he needed to ignite—literally—the first important persecution.
If John’s was the last legitimate gospel to be written, the first—according to tradition—was set down by Mathew, the so-called Hebrew Gospel, which might have been written in Aramaic, the everyday language of the Jews rather than in Hebrew. The gospel we have today is probably a translation of that “Hebrew Gospel” but with some materials used also by Luke. What is distinctive about the first gospel is the beginning: Biblos geneseos Iesou Christou. Abraam egenesen ton Isaak…. 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to Jesus. Thus Jesus is an historical fulfillment of the David kingdom, with the difference that Jesus will rule not just the Israelites but the entire world—though in a spiritual sense.
Neither Mathew nor John were much interested in the details of the birth story, for which we have to turn to Luke. “There went out in those days a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed…. Actually enrolled in census. This famous sentence from Luke’s Gospel reminds us of Eusebius’ observation that the story of the Christian Church begins in the reign of the man who created the Roman Empire, and as we shall see, the two institutions—Church and Empire--develop together, often as enemies, but eventually (at least in principle) as friends and allies.
The Roman imperial order was the political order of the West, the civilized world. Judged by its failures—the execution of Christ, the stoning of Stephen, the oppression of the provincials, the very imperfect justice it administered, one cannot blame some Christians— for example, the author of the Apocalypse, writing after the persecution had begun--for condemning it as Babylon. But Paul, writing before the Great Fire at Rome, advised his followers that the sword of justice was given to the ruler by God almighty. Paul was proud enough of his Roman citizenship to invoke it when his Jewish enemies demanded his execution. Indeed, it was only the Roman imperial authority that prevented the Sanhedrin from going house to house killing the heretical followers of the “false” messiah.
By the end of the 1st Century, Christianity had grown beyond a Jewish sect that claimed that the prophecies had been fulfilled. Looking back on their experiences, Christian leaders as different as Paul and John could see that the Incarnation had a universal significance. The preface to John’s Gospel locates Him before time: “In the beginning was the word.” Mathew’s sequence of “Begats,” however, locates Christ in time and space, which is entirely appropriate since He was the God who became Man and entered history at a particular time and place. Christians would begin to see history less as the cycle of ages eternally recurring and more as a projection from the past into the present and beyond toward the future when His return would change the earth. Though Christ himself had told his disciples that they would not know the time or manner of his coming, they were mere human beings who wanted an apocalypse now. “All creation groaneth,” said Paul [Ro 8:22], “and travaileth in pain until now.“ The entire universe was being transformed and the Kingdom of God was emerging. What this might mean would only become clear as millennialist expectations gave way to a longer perspective.
Vergil
Christians were not alone in expecting a dramatic transformation. Many people, Jews and Pagans, accepted the notion that someone from Syria would conquer the world, though as Tacitus reveals, Romans would later apply these prophecies to Vespasian’s successful conquest of the Empire from his base in Judea. Like Christians, too, Roman citizens were interested in divine genealogies, and they were also anticipating a transformation. By a strange quirk of fate or providence, Augustus, on his mother’s side, was connected to the family of the Julii—the dictator Julius Caesar, his adopted father, was his mother’s uncle. Although this patrician family had not amounted to much for centuries, the dictator’s aunt had married the plebeian soldier Marius, who had led a popular rebellion that cost the lives of thousands of Roman aristocrats.
And yet, poor aristocratic families, even those that have been inconspicuous for centuries, have their stories of a better time to tell. The Julii were said to have been descended from Iulus, an early Latin King who was the son of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who distinguished himself in the Trojan War. Like many Homeric heroes, Aeneas had a divine parent: his mother was Aphrodite/Venus, goddess of sexual desire, but fortunately her Roman counterpart, Venus, was a far more respectable dame who presided over the lovely green and growing things of planted fields and orchards.
Vergil, the greatest of Roman poets, paid tribute to the emperor’s ancestry in his unfinished masterpiece, the Aeneid, which tells the story of the fall of Troy, the troubles of the wandering Trojans, and their arrival in Latium, where Aeneas had to fight a second war before he could establish his people—and their gods—in Italy and marry the local princess. But Vergil had a long apprenticeship before setting out to rival Homer. His first important work was a collection of bucolic poems the Eclogues. Although the Eclogues have a serious theme—the revival of Italy after a century of civil wars, the poems are, on the surface, the usual trifles of bucolic poetry—lovesick shepherds engage in singing contests. He would tackle the agricultural crisis in a more serious work, the Georgics, but there is one odd poem in the volume, the Fourth Eclogue.
The 4th Eclogue has engendered more speculation and wild theories than any other stretch of 60 odd lines in ancient literature, and I have my own. Let us first look at what we know. Written in 40 BC partly to honor the consul of that year Asinius Pollio. Pollio was important to Vergil, as governor of Cisalpine Gaul P. had befriended the young poet whose farm had been taken away and awarded to a veteran. P. arranged for the farm to be restored the farm. Pollio important to Octavian. A distinguished officer who became one of Caesar’s most trusted officers, had drifted onto the side of Antony, who had him appointed governor. When Octavian and Antony quarreled, Pollio was replaced as governor. When war was breaking out between the two masters of the universe, Pollio mediated successfully and was rewarded with the consulship.
Appealing to the Muses of Sicily—presumably because Sicily was home to Theocritus, the master of bucolic verse, Vergil announces that he has a loftier theme in mind: a new order of the ages, peace and plenty will reign, war and commerce will come to an end, all because a wonderful child is being born in Pollio’s consulship. Although another round of violence will take place—another Trojan War is in the offing—the time is at hand when a new Golden Age will arrive and the poet hopes he will live long enough to celebrate the child, grown into manhood, who will accomplish the work.
Who is the child? The most obvious candidate is the son born to Pollio, and in future years Asinius Gallus, an outspoken senator whose republican arrogance offended Tiberius, claimed it was about him. Seems excessive praise for the son of a second-tier magnate. Other candidates: Octavian had recently married Scribonia, who may have been pregnant at the time V. was writing the poem. Unfortunately the child turned out to be a girl—Julia, the daughter whose sexual antics would give Octavian so much grief. I incline to this since this would 1) make the praise of the child’s heroic parent applicable to Octavian and 2) make sense of the reference, at the end, to heroes who mate with goddesses—as Anchises, father of Aeneas had. This would also make the reference to another Trojan War a graceful compliment to Italy’s ruler, whom the poet praised in the 1st Eclogue.
Whoever the child may be—perhaps no on in particular— poem reveals agony of world worn out with war and the hope that peace and prosperity (at least security) would be restored. The farm crisis was very real. Perhaps the reference to Trojan War reveals that Vergil is not fooled by the temporary reconciliation between the two dynasts and expects another major conflagration, but this time the Trojans will win (one assumes) under the divine leadership of Aeneas’ descendant.
Aeneid VI
In the Aeneid Vergil, even more than Livy, has created an enduring image of the good Roman. Pius Aeneas, faithful Aeneas, a somewhat secondary figure in the Iliad whose legend grew first by association with a ruling family in Troad, the Aeneadae, and secondly because story of his wandering was used in constructing local genealogies—as stories of Greek heroes were also used.
Aeneas is pius not only in leading his son by the hand and carrying his father on his back out of burning Troy, but he is also faithful in bringing his household gods to Italy. In book III (147-71), the “Phrygian penates” appear in a dream to reveal that the homeland he seeks is not in Crete, but in a western land known as Hesperia. This is not only his destination but the original homeland of the Trojans and their Penates. Thus the Cult of Magna Mater, adopted by the Julian gens in the Empire to celebrate their divine and heroic ancestry, could be regarded as native to Italy.
Just as Augustus was loyal to the memory of his adopted father Julius and acted as foster father to his grandsons Gaius and Lucius, and Marcellus the son of his sister Octavia. Like Aeneas, Augustus was pious in restoring the gods, but also like Aeneas, who had to defeat a woman’s dangerous passion (Dido) and a brave man’s homicidal fury (Turnus), Augustus had to defend the Roman order from Cleopatra—a passionate African queen like Dido—and the equally passionate and dissolute Antony.
Augustus
Augustus came to power at the end of a 13-year struggle with Antony, but open civil war had plagued Italy since the beginning of the First Century, and civil strife had torn apart the Romans and Italians since the Punic Wars. It was a weary world, as Vergil tells us in the 4th Eclogue, a world that expected a miraculous leader to transform it.
The young Octavian was an unlikely candidate. Sickly and immature, he was as dissolute as his rival Antony. Even before Actium, however, he had learned to rely on more mature friends: the Etruscan knight Maecenas, who was patron to both Horace and Vergil, Marcus Agrippa to whom he married his daughter, and his wife Livia.
From the Roman perspective, Augustus was a god-send if not a god. For almost a hundred years, the republic had been in a turmoil: wars between Marius and Sulla, the German invasion, the so-called social war that resulted from Rome’s refusal to treat her Italian allies on an equal footing, and--worst of all--the wars between Julius and Pompey, Antony and Octavian against Brutus and Cassius, and the final duel between Antony and Octavian. Small wonder if they breathed a sigh of relief and allowed Augustus to reconstruct the forms of the old republic, but with Octavian and his family playing the role formerly reserved to several dozen families of competing dynasts. It was as if the ruler had been reading Cicero whose De Officiis, remember, was written in 44, after Caesar’s murder and during the initial power struggle between Antony and the senate.
Omitted is a long discussion of Augustus' principate.
After a wild youth, Octavian was wise enough to realize that a revived political order would only work within a virtuous social order. Deploring the childless hedonism of the roman upper classes, he passed laws to punish the single state and to reward the procreation of children. He purged the senatorial order of its less respectable members and made it clear that his personal favor would only go to those who adhered to the old Roman virtues. Hard to estimate results. Much profligacy as shown by careers of daughter, Ovid, and upper classes under later Julio-Claudians. On other hand, the population in Italy did increase and very clear evidence of moral revival within 100 years. Probably most classes were not so degenerate as the imperial household or the senatorial aristocracy.
More important, perhaps, even than his political reorganization were the steps Augustus took to revive and restore Roman religion, building new temples such as the temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus and restoring those fallen into ruin (82!). In the magnificent Ara Pacis (c.13) he paid tribute to the Pax romana he had brought the world. He also revived and refurbished ancient cults that had fallen into decay and made great show out of the Ludi Saeculares in 17.
The Emperor Augustus once said that he had found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. On the literal level, certainly true. New forum with temple of Mars Ultor he had vowed, Ara Pacis, Theatre of Marcellus, the first version of the Pantheon of M. Agrippa (burned and rebuilt under Hadrian), baths libraries, splendid public buildings, to say nothing of the roads and aqueducts.
This statement might be applied also to Roman culture in general and even to its politics. The literature of the Augustan era has also suffered from the ravages of time. We have only a small portion (one fourth) of the enormous History written by Livy, while the works of other major historians (Asinius Pollio, Vergil’s patron, for example) have completely disappeared, but we do have most of the mature writings of Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius. Either Vergil or Horace would have made Augustan Rome one of the greatest ages of literature. Taken in total, what remains can only be compared with Fifth Century Athens and with nothing since.
Much of this literary activity was sponsored by important patrons close to the Princeps: Pollio and Maecenas, but Augustus himself took an active part in supporting both Horace and Vergil, and he seems to have prodded Vergil rather sharply into working on the Aeneid
Aeneid
There is a curious reluctance of Roman poets to write on epic themes. Horace and Propertius both have poems in which they claim they are not up to the task, and Vergil shows a similar reluctance. Why? Part of this is a literary tradition going back to Alexandria: Vergil was 43 when, after serving an apprenticeship writing about shepherds and farmers, he began work on the epic that guaranteed his fame as the greatest Latin poet. When he died 8 years later, the work was still unfinished, and he asked his literary executors to burn the manuscript. Wisely, they did not comply with his wish. In 23 Augustus prevailed upon him to read parts of the work to him, and it was Augustus who insisted on Vergil, not a well man, returning from Greece to Italy. He died in the port of Brindisi.
The story of the Aeneid is well-known to all educated people. The first half is framed by Aeneas’ arrival in Carthage and his arrival in Italy. Books two and three tell the story of the Fall of Troy and of the Trojan’s wanderings, while Book 4, often regarded as Vergil’s masterpiece, narrates the unhappy love affair between Dido and Aeneas. Aeneas is so smitten that he neglects his mission—to resettle his people in Italy—until the gods tell him to leave. Like most passionate women, Dido thinks he simply doesn’t love her and kills herself. Book V describes the funeral games given to honor Aeneas’ father Anchises who has died on the trip.
The second half of the work is devoted to the Trojan’s arrival in Latium and their fight to establish themselves there. Book 6, which concludes the first half, is thus the key point of transition from the wandering Trojans to the Trojans who are the founders of Rome. It is also a transition from the “Odyssean” (the travel adventures) part of the work to the Iliad part (another Trojan War). Not surprisingly for a work filled with Homeric echoes and allusions, Vergil turns to Odysseus’ descent to the underworld as his model.
Like Odysseus, Aeneas descends into Hell to gain information about the future and like Odysseus, he runs into old acquaintances—Greek heroes who fear him, Dido who hates him, and like Odysseus he does find out something of his mission, but not from a prophet or seer but from his own father. There are other differences. Vergil’s account shimmers with mystical and philosophical implications and, as we shall see, is really not at all about Aeneas’ future at all, but about the Roman people.
Everything in Book 6 is significant, even the setting: Cumae, a Greek colony on the Bay of Naples. Vergil knew the area well and studied philosophy there. It played an important in Octavian’s rise to power—site of his naval base in war against Sextus Pompey, son of PM, who was a serious threat. Cumae was home to the Sibyl, whose prophetic books had been acquired by the Roman Republic. The Sibyl not only foretold the future, as did the priestess of the Delphic Orace, but she used necromancy—summoned souls of dead for information. Even before reaching the Sibyl’s cave, there are strange events—his helmsman and trumpeter have both died, one from negligence, the other from arrogance. Is the point that Aeneas has conquered these vices? His concern for their burial is another reflection of his pietas.
It is the Sibyl who tells Aeneas he must descend to Hell, though Anchises had already given the same instructions. First he has to find the mysterious Golden Bough. Dead in life, like mistletoe—a plant worshipped by Celts and Germans. Vergil came from Celtic region of Italy and may have had some Celtic blood, as used to be thought before all talk of ethnic background was made taboo. Name, however, seems to connects him with the Etruscans, who also had obsession with afterlife.
Important to remember that Vergil was always a serious student of philosophy and intended to give up poetry to devote himself to loftier studies. Vergil had begun his studies with an Epicurean teacher, but as he developed hi seems interested in metaphysics and theology, and we know that Platonism and Pythagoreanism were both in vogue (as was Epicurus) in Naples. Only overt philosophy is in VI where Aeneas shown souls waiting to be reborn. The passage is inspired by the Myth of Er in Plato’s Republic and had already been imitated in Cicero’s Republic, where Scipio has a dream of the other world. Of course, the source for Plato’s belief in transmigration of souls was the earlier philosopher Pythagoras, whose school in southern Italy was still influential.
It is impossible to tell if Vergil is serious as a Platonist, but his use of material is clever, even brilliant. Both Plato and Cicero introduced the story of reincarnation as part of a discussion of a just commonwealth, and Cicero’s reflections were pointed directly at how to reestablish the Roman Republic—a job that late in life he hoped to entrust to Octavian, who agreed to his murder. In the Aeneid, the souls waiting to be reborn are, of course, not just any souls but the souls of future Romans.
Roman Race
At this point a reader should remember the beginning. Vergil announces his theme as arma virumque—arms, defensive arms, and the man, who driven by fate came to Italy to found a city and bring his gods. About to land in Carthage, his fleet is wrecked by Juno, who hates the Trojans. And here is finally the point in line 33:
Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem. (So great an effort was required to found the Roman race.)
So the story of Aeneas is really the story of Roman race, and unlike Odysseus, who sees the past in the Underworld and is only told of his own future, Aeneas is treated to the spectacle of the Roman history that is to come. Vergil is clearly influenced by some very Roman traditions. At funerals and celebrations, Romans carried images of their ancestors, and this historical pageantry, so characteristic of the Roman as opposed to the Greek mind, is reflected in relief sculpture of the imperial period and in the endless sequence of historical busts on display in forums and other public places—now suitably displayed at the Capitoline Museum.
Before he can see the future heroes of Rome, Aeneas is allowed to glimpse the torments of Hell reserved for great sinners, not just mythological villains like Ixion but even the hero Theseus who presumed to steal Persephone, queen of Hell. The cult of Persephone still very strong in Sicily and Southern Italy, and even today processions for the Virgin bring Proserpina, the maiden seized by a God, to mind. On a more moral note, Aeneas sees those who hated their brothers, struck a father, tricked a dependent into wrong, spent all their property without leaving it to heirs, committed adultery, or engaged in war against their own country. This is, I would suggest, a complete portrait of the moral life of Rome in the 1st century BC, the sinful Rome that has departed from the ways of the Roman past that Augustus is reviving.
Aeneas finally finds his father who shows him “the coming glory of the Dardanian line.” (756 ff.): Silvius, Aeneas’ future son who will found Alba Longa, and his descendants, Romulus, descendant of Aeneas and son of Mars, founder of Rome. Under him glorious Rome will make her power equal to the whole earth and her proud courage to the heavens. Then, very significantly, Rome is compared with the Great Mother, the Phrygian-Syrian Goddess in her happy progress through the Phrygian cities. Then, significantly, is Caesar:
Hic Caesar et omnis Iuli
Progenies magnum caeli ventura sub axem.
Hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis
Augustus Caesar, Divi genus, aurea condet
Saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva
Saturno quondam..
Whatever Vergil may have intended in the 4th Eclogue—though I think he clearly had Augustus in mind—here he makes it clear that the Golden Age will be restored by Julius’ adopted son.
Now that the connection between Aeneas and Augustus has been made, we return to early history—to the Roman kings and the Tarquins, the heroic families of the Decii, Drusi, Manlii Torquati, the Scipios and Gracchi, the Fabii.
“Oh, Roman, to rule the nations with they sway, these shall be thine arts—to crown peace with law, to spare the humbled and to tame in war the proud” (851 ff). Vergil’s world, however, is not untouched by tragedy. After this lofty proclamation, a noble youth with downcast face is seen: Marcellus, of a noble race but doomed to die. When Vergil read this passage to Augustus, his sister Octavia was present and she broke down in tears, hearing of her son who had died earlier that very year.
The system that Augustus put in place survived even the wickedness of his successors—Caligula and Nero—and was preserved or revived by competent emperors such as his stepson Tiberius, Vespasian, and the so-called five good emperors but even tough guys like Septimius Severus and Aurelian had a selfless sense of public good that goes back to the Augustan principate.
The Augustan principate was not the Kingdom of God nor the Christan Church, but it was about the best empire that anyone had yet managed to establish and in some form it endured down to 476 in the West and down to 1453 in Constantinople. Romanitas remained an enduring ideal: a civilization of disciplined soldiers and statesmen, who did their duty, exercised power through the rule of law and built things to last.
Here, then, are two visions of history, from the point of view of two kingdoms: The Kingdom of Man in this world, set aright by a wise emperor, and the Kingdom of God proclaimed by the Son of God who had rejected this world as one of the temptations offered by Satan. The Church and the Empire were to influence each other profoundly; sometimes through conflict, but more often by imitation. Much of the Church’s structure is a reflection of the Roman order restructured by Diocletian, the worst of the persecutors, but the vision of political order that inspired the heirs of Constantine and Theodosius was an empire in which the Church played the spiritual and moral role once assigned to pagan religion and the emperors themselves retained much of their old religious authority. The contest that resulted would play out in different ways in the Byzantine Empire and in the struggle between Popes and Holy Roman Emperors. It cannot be said that it has ever been resolved. Victory for either side usually has disastrous consequences. It is the tension between the two kingdoms, the two thrones, that may be the nearest to an ideal social order that man is capable of.
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We would love to see those historical lectures.
I beleive one of the Fathers of the Church commented that classical civilization was a preparation for the Gospel. Amen, Brother!
Although the Fathers are often fairly dismissive of the pagan culture that gave them the tools with which they combatted heresy and defended the faith against the attacks of philosophers, both Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria have positive things to say about what they had learned. Origen was esteemed as a philosopher even by pagans (though not Porphyry), and Athansius used philosophical arguments he had learned from his study of the Greeks--and even suggests that pagan myths contain an anticipation of Christian truths. Eusebius' Praeparatio Evangelica, though designed as a refutation of pagan attacks on Christianity, is also strong evidence of what he had learned of ancient literature and philosophy.
Your comments about Carthage struck me, and I'd like to read more on the topic. The same is probably true of others. Would you please suggest further readings, both from the Roman era itself and current scholars. I sense that even today's readers familiar with Rome and Greece know little about Carthage and its society.
Thank you
"...Judaism’s relentless distinction between God and man, a distinction that discouraged some of them from accepting the Messiah."
The irony in that statement is that the Pharisees set themselves up in the place of God. They expected Messiah (when he came) to affirm and congratulate them. Jesus called them a brood of vipers. Yet, fulfilling the prophets, He confirmed the New Covenant with a remnant of Israel (whether there will be a future remnant of Israel is, of course, the source of much hubbub in Christendom).
I echo the previous sentiments: it would be fascinating to read more material culled from your lectures.
Carthago delenda est?
Dr. Fleming,
Good post. Rome had its problems but, despite these, many seem to read modern totalitarianism back into the Roman empire, which was not the case, for logistical and technological reasons, as well as others. Our government today in the U.S. has far more power and is able to control peoples' lives in ways of which the most power-hungry Roman emperor never would have dreamed. An example of this is seat-belt laws: the Roman government never would have presumed to have such power. And while Rome added provinces for revenue, food or security (money coming in), we attempt to build nations abroad (money going out) for ideological reasons.
Early Christianity, as I understand it, was closer to the concreteness of paganism: a particular people erected a church to worship God to further their own survival. (Orthodox Christianity today is probably the closest to this sentiment.) Today, Christianity is grounded in, or at least buttressed by, abstractions, like universal human rights.
What do you think of the claim by CS Lewis that only by returning to paganism can we resuscitate Christianity?
tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
desinet ac toto surget gens aurea mundo.
casta fave Lucina: tuus iam regnat Apollo
Dr. Fleming,
What you have highlighted in your article, I attempted to explain in a discipleship training session in my local church this past Sunday. I specifically mentioned the Carthaginians and their penchant for torture and murder. My simplification was that the Romans had effectively driven the god Moloch, whatever guise he was using with a particular people, out of the Mediterranean basin. This is, in my understanding, precisely that which the ancient Hebrews were supposed to have done in Canaan but failed to do, living as they had to with the result of their failure in that they adopted the abominations they were to have destroyed. What the Hebrews failed to do, the Romans did with a necessarily brutal efficiency. Albeit not a perfect parallel, the role of the Conquistadors in Mexico was similar. The indigenous society which the Spaniards encountered was gratuitously and ritualistically murderous. With a brutal stroke, the Conquistadors ended it.
Those historical lecture would indeed be interesting.
I recall listening to a TV interview with Maia Morgenstern who played Mary in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The talking head was very interested in her Jewish sensibilities, given the accusations which the movie endured even before it was released, as she had read through the script, had done the shooting and had seen the final cut. I am now paraphrasing, but she responded that one should also also inquire as to her Roman sensibilities since she was a Romanian and was as much a descendant of the Romans as she was of the Jews. As I recall, the talking head was not intellectually equipped to deal with the unanticipated response of Ms. Morgenstern.
I would also love to see those lectures.
I once read a history of Carthage, and the author (I cant remember his name) said in the book that ritual sacrifice was dying out by the time of the first war with Rome. He said that it's frequency and the numbers sacrificed by this time was greatly exaggerated by the Romans, and that the desperation caused by the Carthaginians' defeat in the wars likely caused a revival that otherwise never would have happened. I have wondered whether or not this was true for years. There is also the respect that the Greeks seem to have had for the Carthaginians. Your comments would be welcome, Dr Fleming.
Of course, despite the story of the destruction of Troy, it has been said that it was the Carthaginians who first introduced the wholesale destruction of entire cities to the classical Greek world, during one of their early wars with the Greeks. Could this be one reason the Romans eventually destroyed Carthage completely, in vengeance?
My opinion of the Empire is that it started out as the result of necessity, became in it's early stage somewhat oppressive but with benefits to conquered peoples, and then became one of the best things that ever happened to civilisation, especially after it involved into a Christian imperium. Sometimes I wish it hadn't fallen, especially in the East.
The history of the Punic Wars (especially the second) has many lessons we could draw from. One can see that the strength of Carthage lay in her navy and her commercial attachments, yet they continually underestimated the Roman resolve and ability to adapt. As great as Hannibal's victories were, up and down the Roman peninsula, especially at Cannae, he was eventually worn down by Roman resolve and the inability of Carthage to reinforce him (and his inability to effectively lay siege to any important city). Though the strategy of cunctatio kept Roman armies from defeat at Hannibal's hands, it also kept him effectively bottled up in the Italian boot, from whence he eventaully passed, with his army after thirteen years of occupation (I believe 13 is right).
By the time of Scipio's victory over Hannibal at Zama, Carthage had lost Spain and Sicily and wanted only to maintain her control in Africa, which was denied her by that defeat. The lesson of Carthage, inordinately motivated by profit and loss and too reliant on mercenaries recruited from subject provinces should be a lesson to any nation contemplating invasive war with a determined foe. Ultimately, the oligarchs (and Hannibal Barca for his part) of Carthage failed to count the cost of breaking the Erbo treaty. In the prosecution of war it can be said that Carthage was almost always shortsighted and had no leaders on land or sea that equalled their Roman opponents for energy and discipline (other than Hannibal). For her part, Rome evolved during the struggle into a nation whose politico-military caste of wealthy families dominated the Senate, and the Senate came to run the Republic. The Romans learned the importance of generalship and better organization. Eventually, Rome raised a general equal to the ability of Hannibal in Scipio Africanus.
Reading these thoughtful responses is a fine way to begin the day, but to do justice to the questions, I shall have to take them in pieces. First, the question of Carthage v. Rome. For the big metaphysical picture, you might read Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. Yes, he makes tons of mistakes and never seems to get a fact entirely right, but on the picture he is. On the Punic Wars, you can read the relevant books of Livy and Polybius, beefed up with a standard Roman history, such as H.W. Scullard. On Carthage and the Phoenicians, the best thing I know recently, though a bit pedantic, is Maria Aubet on the Carthaginians and the West. The multi-authored CARTHAGE published by Touchstone/ S&S is a popular work and a little soft. Sabatini Moscato's older works are quite readable but he was something of an apologist. When I took a group to Marsala/Lillybaeum in Sicily, the excellent tour guide I had hired was a great admirer of Moscato and she filled out students' heads with denials of Carthaginian atrocities. When we got to the great altar area, just adjacent to a graveyard filled with little skeletons, I asked how she explained the scene. She said she had not thought of it before.
Carthaginians are merely Western Phoenician colonists, who preserved the customs of their ancestors, the very people who taught the Jews human sacrifice. The odd thing about the Phoenician custom is that the victims were not typically drawn from foreign enemies or subject peoples (as was the case with the Aztecs) or from criminals and slaves (as with the Etruscans and Romans in gladiatorial games) but from the children of citizens, particularly noble citizens. The ritual was not a regular part of the calendar but an extraordinary event during times of crisis. It may have been dying out on the eve of the First Punic War, but it was certainly revived during the Wars. I recall a correspondence between Hannibal and his wife on this subject, and he instructed her to buy a substitute.
Quite apart from human sacrifice, the Carthaginians were capable of appalling brutality. If a general was unsuccessful, he might be crucified; the inhabitants of captured cities were routinely butchered and torture was a speciality of theirs, as it was for many ancient Semitic peoples such as the Assyrians. Finally, they were untrustworthy. Polybius explains that the Romans were successful because they fulfilled oaths and kept promises. This he attributed to their very scrupulous religious sense. When Hannibal took a vast number of prisoners after the disaster at Lake Trasimene, some surrendered on his promise that they would be releasee with a single weapon and allowed to return home. Livy comments dryly that he kept this promise, as he kept all his promises, with "Punica religio." Punic faith was a term like French leave. Yes, one can point to parallels among Greeks and Romans, but the parallels were exceptional; with the Phoenicians such brutality was normal.
This is not to say that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians were void of merit. They were great seamen, bold adventurers, great merchants, and their upper class maintained a stable society that won the admiration of the Mediterranean World. Cato the Elder, who repeatedly called for the destruction of Carthage, was once asked why he was not more enthusiastic about the arrival of the King of Pergamum. He replied that kings never did anyone any good and he preferred noble citizens who were their countries' benefactors, men like Cincinnatus and Hamilcar Barca--Hannibals's father! What an extraordinary thing for any Roman, much less Cato, to have said, but while the Romans hated the Carthaginians, they did not despise them as they despised the Gauls--not as soldiers but as moral weaklings.
The tale of the Ist and IInd Punic War is extraordinary and it produced extraordinary men, not only Scipio Africanus but his father and uncle, to say nothing of Fabius Maximus who knew that the Romans were no match for Hannibal's generalship and adopted the delaying tactics that repeatedly bought time. But even more extraordinary than these great men was the resolve of the Roman people, beaten time after time on sea and on land, yet always recovering their nerve and relentlessly determined to drive the enemy out of Italy. By the way, after the Punic War II, it was Scipio Africanus and his supporters who most dragged their heels on finishing off Carthage, though it had been their opponents--Cato's hero Fabius--who did not want Scipio to carry the war to Africa. But enough. Later I shall try to address some of the broader questions and figure out the best mechanism for posting bits of lectures. All I do, it seems, is write and deliver history lectures.
PS Of the moderns, you should begin with a general history of Rome, like Scullard's Rome, from 753 to 156. If that is too technical, there is a popular book on Ancient Rome, aimed at prep school students, by Paul A. Zoch. It is not based on real scholarship but is a good vulgarization, as the French would say and far better than most such introductory books on any subject. I am posting as a postscript to the above post a very brief account of the Punic Wars drawn from the rough and uncorrected draft of a pamphlet I give to our Winter School students. I would post the corrected version, but it is in .Pdf form and I don't know how to do it and am too lazy to ask our webmaster. It is pretty simple, boneheaded stuff, but it might be a start for those who have never looked at the period.
Using historical sources to establish, as the choice is usually posed, that Jesus was either Divine, a madman, or a charlatan suffers from many of the same problems as other questions in ancient history.
Original documents are few or non-existent; what we have are hand-written copies of copies of copies, often of oral traditions for which the original sources are unclear.
I consider it almost certain that Jesus existed and was a great Jewish prophet; only a few scholars such as G.A. Wells persist in denying that he existed at all. Whether or not Jesus claimed to be God is another question entirely, as is the question of whether or not he was (or still is) God. Early Christian documents were based on oral traditions and on documents that are no longer extant. They were also written by Christian apologists, many of whom had never seen Jesus but who had definite beliefs about him that they wanted to advance. Many New Testament scholars regard Jesus' claims to divinity as later additions by copyists who wanted to bolster the doctrinal claims of Christianity. If Jesus never in fact made such claims (as I suspect), then the "madman, charlatan, or God" dichotomy no longer works as an argument.
It's worth noting that the Jewish concept of the Messiah is different from the Christian concept of the Christ, which is largely Greek in origin. The early church melded the two ideas together to establish continuity between the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The idea of a god assuming mortal form and dying for the sins of mankind was Greek, not Jewish, and was not unique to Christianity. That doesn't invalidate Christian doctrine, but it does explain why Jews did (and do) regard it with skepticism.
Classics is where Dr. Fleming is resplendent. And the above essay and writebacks are true to form. I'd like to see much more for the same. Real Conservatism is about patrimony, and taking the longer view.
The Romans for too long have been depreciated in favor of the Greeks, a process that starts only in the 18th C with Winkelmann, and continues with Schiller, Goethe, Nietzsche, Arnold, Camus, Leo Strauss, and Allan Bloom. The Medieval age and the Renaissance-Baroque world saw Rome and Athens as of equal worth (though they tended to see the Greeks through the eyes of the Romans). The claim of assorted Greeklings is that the Romans were a nation of only soldiers, lawyers, and engineers (no mean achievements, by the way). This ignores that humanitas -- that excellence contrasted to virtus, founded in the Sciponic Circle and celebrated by Cicero -- was a Roman, not a Greek, contribution to High Culture. (See the Smaller Pauly q.v. "humanitas".) Frankly, in lyrics I prefer Horace, Ovid, and Catullus to Pindar (though granted we don't have much of Sappho). With Eliot I agree that Homer is greater than Virgil, but I'd rather live in the world of Virgil than of Homer. I have read the Aeneid as if it were a Christian poem.
Not to depreciate virtus. Hannah Arendt claimed that the Romans were the supreme master of that most difficult social art, politics, though she has a unique definition of politics, one with roots in Aristotle. (cf her the Human Condition)
The Catholic Faith and the Roman Empire is a complicated issue. One extreme is that of a very Roman man himself, St. Augustine, who in The City of God sharply faults Livy and Virgil. The other is Dante, for whom everything laudatory can be said about the Empire. I myself, with all respect to the great saint, lean more to Dante, at least in this issue.
The Catholic religion and the Empire are quite close, and the former much in debt to the other. I would ask, Is the Protestant religion, for this very reason, very anti-Roman Empire? And thus explaining the Greek preference of those backsliding Protestant Germans and Englishmen, mentioned above?
I warmly thank Dr. Fleming for sticking up for the Romans. I wish his upcoming commendable Winter School in Rome, myself an alumnus, every success.
The problem with a statement like:
"Using historical sources to establish, as the choice is usually posed, that Jesus was either Divine, a madman, or a charlatan suffers from many of the same problems as other questions in ancient history. Original documents are few or non-existent; what we have are hand-written copies of copies of copies, often of oral traditions for which the original sources are unclear."
is that it leads precisely nowhere. Skepticism is always a healthy tool of scholarship but one has to be equally skeptical of skepticism as a point of view that can turn into obsession. As a general statement about the sources of ancient history, it is certainly true that we possess few autograph mss. of ancient sources, but until quite recently, the same can be said of most of the world's literature and history. That is what textual criticism exists for. For some Greek and Roman authors, we do have ancient texts, and the texts of Bacchylides and Vergil, for example, seem quite good. For the New Testament, one has to be sure of what one actually knows. Many modern text critics have formulated theories by which they think they can date the composition of this or that book or show how sources, mostly no longer extant, went into the compilation of, say, Luke. Unfortunately, these are only speculative theories and like most theories of literary detection, particularly studies of authorship, they do not hold up very well when subjected to controlled testing. For example, it used to be argued that several hands could be detected in the Pauline epistles--this on the usual criteria of word studies, sentence length, etc. A clever Anglican Parson proved, using the same criteria, that there are different hands in the works of James Joyce. Although I have not looked at this stuff in decades, as a scholar I finally concluded that mufh of the study of the NT, including such techniques as Form Criticism, while they might contribute to our enlightnment, were rarely securely enough established to settle anything of importance.
Marta Sordi is a better Roman historian than I am, though I do disagree with her on many points. One is perfectly justified in holding her opinions up to scrutiny, but only if the one in question is well-trained in Latin and Greek. Otherwise, the critic has no basis for forming an opinion.
As a Hellenist, I find the statement that the "Christian concept of Christ... is largely Greek in origin" utterly preposterous. I do believe I already said that certain notions in Greek religion and philosophy prepared the Greek and Roman mind for accepting Christianity, but the notion of a god dying for the sins of the people is hardly mainstream among the Greeks and where it does occur it has been borrowed from the Semitic mythologies of the Middle East, with which the Jews were far more familiar than the Greeks. Ezekiel, writing perhaps/probably in the 6th century, refers to women in Jerusalem, sitting at the gate of the temple, wailing for Tammuz. It is not at all clear, by the way, that all or most Semitic or Greek dying gods sacrificed themselves to save man from sin. It would be tedious to sift through the sources of the Orphic myth or the story of Dionysus, but certainly in the Greek versions, human sinfulness is hardly the issue.
The fact of the matter is that our best and earliest sources on Jesus' teachings--the Gospels, Acts, the epistles of Paul--all refer to him as Messiah or Christ, and our earliest reliable Pagan references say that Christians worshipped Christ as a god. If we were to discuss this question only as nonbelieving scholars looking at what was taught about a god or legendary figure, we should not be justified in rejecting a tradition that is attested so early--unless we had an anti-Christian agenda. Among Christians, however, it is necessary to discuss such matters with reverence, humility, and tact. For traditional Christians, it would be a great loss if all the Scriptures had disappeared in a fire, but, then again, Christ told us not that we was leaving behind infallible Scriptures, but the Holy Ghost, and Christians were taught from the beginning that the Holy Ghost entered the Church at Pentacost and has guided our understanding ever since. This is obviously not an historiographic question but requires a leap of faith, but non-Christians should not make the village-atheist assumption that, in casting doubt on this or that text or this or that date, they have laid a glove on the Christian faith.
I also find striking Chesterton's depiction of the war between Rome & Carthage -- a sort of grand finale for the pagan gods of the hearth & city, as they war desperately against alien and perverse demons from the East.
Perhaps Chesterton does indeed get a few details wrong in his tale-tellings, but like Dr. Fleming I am more inclined to trust Chesterton's openly subjective and occasionally wild imagination over most modern "objective" scholars' analyses.
The comparison (not intentional by Chesterton I should think, since I expect legalized abortion would've been inconceivable at the time he was writing) between modern America and Carthage at its worst -- baby-killing oligarchies imbued with a sort of superstitious utilitarianism -- is uncanny.
"Sabatini Moscato’s older works are quite readable but he was something of an apologist."
Given the postmodern penchant for making up into down, black into white, and right into left, I guess it shouldn't surprise anybody that there have been efforts to portray the Carthaginians as slandered and misunderstood.
After all, we certainly wouldn't want to give our Western forefathers the benefit of the doubt on anything or about any cause, now would we?
But, I'd also agree that like any other peoples, the Carthaginian people must've had their good points -- after all, if I'm not mistaken, they were cousins to the Maltese, no?
Certainly, I defer to Dr. Fleming's expertise in the area of Greek history.
However, I think the main source of our disagreement is whether or not we view the text of the Gospels (as we have them in hand) with faith in all the particulars of Christian doctrine. Dr. Fleming alludes to this.
As no less an authority than St. Augustine says, "In this world, we walk by faith, not by sight."
I would not want to denigrate Moscato, who, so far as this amateur can tell, did excellent work on Semitic languages and cultures and is stilll cited. I think it was not so much a case of Western self-hatred as of a man falling in love with his subject. More recent white-washing attempts seem less innocent. In any event, I think it is a good thing, when studying the Phoenicians qua Phoenicians, to try to see things from their point of view. When they are at war with Our People, however, we are morally required, so I have argued, to support our own side--though not to lie. GKC, by the way, has a charming essay about sitting in a Spanish inn, striking up a conversation with an Englishman who does not know that they are in the hometown of Scipio Africanus (actually, they are not: as usual GKC got it wrong) and he explains that the difference Scipio made to our world is that now European children can play with inanimate dolls, because the Romans won, but if the Carthaginians had won, we would be sacrificing our live children to an inanimate doll.
I don't think so much that Mr. Palmer and I are having a disagreement on the facts (apart from trivial questions of dying gods) as on the way things should be discussed. I am not a Fundamentalist and though I do not know of any seriously erroneous passage in the NT (although there are problems with dates and the handling of Roman officialdom, etc.), it would trouble me very little to find out that, say, some pious person or group of persons embellished the birth story to make it conform to prophecy. John, for example, who had the most intimate acquaintance with our Lord, says nothing of his life before the baptism, though there may be many different and good reasons for his silence.
Again, the Holy Ghost has taught the Church how to think, write, and speak of these matters and, as Christ told us, reminds the disciples of what they might have forgotten and makes all things clear. The Creeds emphasize the facts--conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of a virgin--without spelling out the historical details.
Now, I believe in most of the historical details, partly because there is no reason not to and more importantly because they are part of the Church's traditions, but I would not be disturbed to learn, for example, that John's version of the Baptism is the truest, namely, that it is John the Baptist and not the others who saw the Holy Ghost descending as a dove. I have said too much as it is, and would not like to leave the impression that I reserve the right to treat matters of faith as a skeptical scholar. What I do say is that Christians--including Arians, Montanists, and Donatists--have agreed on the fundamentals as expressed in the Apostle's Creed from as early a time as they were able to formulate their thoughts clearly. As time went on, and issues and questions arose, the Church clarified most of them, and that should be enough for us. Scholarship, even skeptical scholarship must serve a purpose higher than its self and generally does. Thus one has to take sides and decide whether to support the Church of Christ or the Antichurch of Antichrist. There is no neutral position, whatever we may pretend to ourselves.
I am now starting to see the point more clearly. Human sacrifice had to go. The trials of the war had revived the cult of sacrifice. If the Carthaginians had won, it's likely that many of them would have interpreted their victory as being brought about by the return to their ancient customs, and their trials as having been caused by their having gotten lax in observing them in the first place. What a different world we would have had.
The Roman victory also brought about the eventual Romanising and Hellenising of the Berbers, and their eventual Christianisation, which sadly was reversed by the Arab conquest. If this Westernising process was incomplete when the Arabs invaded, perhaps it would have come to fruition over time had the Arabs not become such nasty trouble makers.
Alternatively, had the Punic wars not occured, perhaps human sacrifice would have died out eventually on it's own, and Carthage might eventually have been drawn into the Western world through it's trade and other connexions (I like to think Persia would have too, barring the Arab conquest).
"A clever Anglican Parson proved, using the same criteria, that there are different hands in the works of James Joyce."
Can you provide a citation for this? It's something I'd very much like to look into.
If Greek and Roman accounts are true, then the Phoenicians had other habits they had to give up, not just human sacrifice. Now, any conqueror is generally disliked, but the North Africans really seem to have hated Carthage, and they turned against her at the end of PW I--Carthage was rescued by Hamilcar--and after PW II. Hannibal assumed that the various Italians would rise up against Rome, when he invaded, even the Latins--whom he gave preferential treatment to as POWs--but by an large it didn't happen. This could only be explained on the basis of Polybius' treatment of the Roman character. Not that they did not do terrible things--the sacking of Corinth, for example--but many Greeks could distinguish between the two sides.
PS I shall post a bit of a lecture both as a writeback on at the end of the initial post. It may be easier in the future to put them on the site and post a reference.
Two Kingdoms
The Procurator was in a difficult spot. As an honest Roman official, he knew better than to get mixed up in the turbulent local politics. The local religious establishment wanted a rebel to be executed. They said the rebel claimed to be ruler of the Roman Empire, a pathetic but direct challenge to the Emperor. Tiberius was a fair man, of course, and did not wish to receive divine honors, but this imposter’s claim was too much for the overworked procurator to endure:
“Are you the king of the Jews?” he asks, repeating the charge made by the Sanhedrin. The answer is surprisingly shrewd:
“Did you come up with that on your own or did other people give you the idea?”
“What do you think I am? A Jew? How would I know,” asks the exasperated Pilate.
This exchange is from the account set down in old age by John, the “beloved disciple” of the rebel leader. John is the one member of the inner circle to have written down his recollections of the master, and he also records Jesus final answer to Pontius Pilate. “My kingdom is not of this world.” If it did, he said, his followers would be up in arms to defend him.
From the Roman point of view, this Jesus whom they called the Christ or the anointed one had done nothing wrong, but since the Jews did not have the authority to put a criminal to death, it was up to the Roman administration. Pilate resisted the mob’s demands, until the Jewish leaders played their trump card: “If you let him go, this man who has challenged the emperor’s universal authority, you are no friend to Caesar.” Why not just say my career is over?
Tiberius, who for all his personal faults, was an excellent ruler and he despised the fawning adulation he received. According to Christian tradition, when he heard of this strange Jewish renegade who alone did not want to kick the Romans out of Judaea, he proposed to the senate that Christ be included in the pantheon of Roman gods. The Senate, so the story goes, objected, declaring the new religion to be illicit, though Judaism was protected by law. Assuming, as many scholars do not, that the story is true, why should the senate make such a declaration? Was it to embarrass Tiberius? Were they bribed? Or were they simply offended by one more mystery cult invading Rome from the East? Don’t know but the Senate’s decision, never enforced by Tiberius or the next two emperors, was to give Nero the authority he needed to ignite—literally—the first important persecution.
If John’s was the last legitimate gospel to be written, the first—according to tradition—was set down by Mathew, the so-called Hebrew Gospel, which might have been written in Aramaic, the everyday language of the Jews rather than in Hebrew. The gospel we have today is probably a translation of that “Hebrew Gospel” but with some materials used also by Luke. What is distinctive about the first gospel is the beginning: Biblos geneseos Iesou Christou. Abraam egenesen ton Isaak…. 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to Jesus. Thus Jesus is an historical fulfillment of the David kingdom, with the difference that Jesus will rule not just the Israelites but the entire world—though in a spiritual sense.
Neither Mathew nor John were much interested in the details of the birth story, for which we have to turn to Luke. “There went out in those days a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed…. Actually enrolled in census. This famous sentence from Luke’s Gospel reminds us of Eusebius’ observation that the story of the Christian Church begins in the reign of the man who created the Roman Empire, and as we shall see, the two institutions—Church and Empire--develop together, often as enemies, but eventually (at least in principle) as friends and allies.
The Roman imperial order was the political order of the West, the civilized world. Judged by its failures—the execution of Christ, the stoning of Stephen, the oppression of the provincials, the very imperfect justice it administered, one cannot blame some Christians— for example, the author of the Apocalypse, writing after the persecution had begun--for condemning it as Babylon. But Paul, writing before the Great Fire at Rome, advised his followers that the sword of justice was given to the ruler by God almighty. Paul was proud enough of his Roman citizenship to invoke it when his Jewish enemies demanded his execution. Indeed, it was only the Roman imperial authority that prevented the Sanhedrin from going house to house killing the heretical followers of the “false” messiah.
By the end of the 1st Century, Christianity had grown beyond a Jewish sect that claimed that the prophecies had been fulfilled. Looking back on their experiences, Christian leaders as different as Paul and John could see that the Incarnation had a universal significance. The preface to John’s Gospel locates Him before time:
“In the beginning was the word.” Mathew’s sequence of “Begats,” however, locates Christ in time and space, which is entirely appropriate since He was the God who became Man and entered history at a particular time and place. Christians would begin to see history less as the cycle of ages eternally recurring and more as a projection from the past into the present and beyond toward the future when His return would change the earth. Though Christ himself had told his disciples that they would not know the time or manner of his coming, they were mere human beings who wanted an apocalypse now. “All creation groaneth,” said Paul [Ro 8:22], “and travaileth in pain until now.“ The entire universe was being transformed and the Kingdom of God was emerging. What this might mean would only become clear as millennialist expectations gave way to a longer perspective.
Vergil
Christians were not alone in expecting a dramatic transformation. Many people, Jews and Pagans, accepted the notion that someone from Syria would conquer the world, though as Tacitus reveals, Romans would later apply these prophecies to Vespasian’s successful conquest of the Empire from his base in Judea. Like Christians, too, Roman citizens were interested in divine genealogies, and they were also anticipating a transformation. By a strange quirk of fate or providence, Augustus, on his mother’s side, was connected to the family of the Julii—the dictator Julius Caesar, his adopted father, was his mother’s uncle. Although this patrician family had not amounted to much for centuries, the dictator’s aunt had married the plebeian soldier Marius, who had led a popular rebellion that cost the lives of thousands of Roman aristocrats.
And yet, poor aristocratic families, even those that have been inconspicuous for centuries, have their stories of a better time to tell. The Julii were said to have been descended from Iulus, an early Latin King who was the son of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who distinguished himself in the Trojan War. Like many Homeric heroes, Aeneas had a divine parent: his mother was Aphrodite/Venus, goddess of sexual desire, but fortunately her Roman counterpart, Venus, was a far more respectable dame who presided over the lovely green and growing things of planted fields and orchards.
Vergil, the greatest of Roman poets, paid tribute to the emperor’s ancestry in his unfinished masterpiece, the Aeneid, which tells the story of the fall of Troy, the troubles of the wandering Trojans, and their arrival in Latium, where Aeneas had to fight a second war before he could establish his people—and their gods—in Italy and marry the local princess. But Vergil had a long apprenticeship before setting out to rival Homer. His first important work was a collection of bucolic poems the Eclogues. Although the Eclogues have a serious theme—the revival of Italy after a century of civil wars, the poems are, on the surface, the usual trifles of bucolic poetry—lovesick shepherds engage in singing contests. He would tackle the agricultural crisis in a more serious work, the Georgics, but there is one odd poem in the volume, the Fourth Eclogue.
The 4th Eclogue has engendered more speculation and wild theories than any other stretch of 60 odd lines in ancient literature, and I have my own. Let us first look at what we know. Written in 40 BC partly to honor the consul of that year Asinius Pollio. Pollio was important to Vergil, as governor of Cisalpine Gaul P. had befriended the young poet whose farm had been taken away and awarded to a veteran. P. arranged for the farm to be restored the farm. Pollio important to Octavian. A distinguished officer who became one of Caesar’s most trusted officers, had drifted onto the side of Antony, who had him appointed governor. When Octavian and Antony quarreled, Pollio was replaced as governor. When war was breaking out between the two masters of the universe, Pollio mediated successfully and was rewarded with the consulship.
Appealing to the Muses of Sicily—presumably because Sicily was home to Theocritus, the master of bucolic verse, Vergil announces that he has a loftier theme in mind: a new order of the ages, peace and plenty will reign, war and commerce will come to an end, all because a wonderful child is being born in Pollio’s consulship. Although another round of violence will take place—another Trojan War is in the offing—the time is at hand when a new Golden Age will arrive and the poet hopes he will live long enough to celebrate the child, grown into manhood, who will accomplish the work.
Who is the child? The most obvious candidate is the son born to Pollio, and in future years Asinius Gallus, an outspoken senator whose republican arrogance offended Tiberius, claimed it was about him. Seems excessive praise for the son of a second-tier magnate. Other candidates: Octavian had recently married Scribonia, who may have been pregnant at the time V. was writing the poem. Unfortunately the child turned out to be a girl—Julia, the daughter whose sexual antics would give Octavian so much grief. I incline to this since this would 1) make the praise of the child’s heroic parent applicable to Octavian and 2) make sense of the reference, at the end, to heroes who mate with goddesses—as Anchises, father of Aeneas had. This would also make the reference to another Trojan War a graceful compliment to Italy’s ruler, whom the poet praised in the 1st Eclogue.
Whoever the child may be—perhaps no on in particular— poem reveals agony of world worn out with war and the hope that peace and prosperity (at least security) would be restored. The farm crisis was very real. Perhaps the reference to Trojan War reveals that Vergil is not fooled by the temporary reconciliation between the two dynasts and expects another major conflagration, but this time the Trojans will win (one assumes) under the divine leadership of Aeneas’ descendant.
Aeneid VI
In the Aeneid Vergil, even more than Livy, has created an enduring image of the good Roman. Pius Aeneas, faithful Aeneas, a somewhat secondary figure in the Iliad whose legend grew first by association with a ruling family in Troad, the Aeneadae, and secondly because story of his wandering was used in constructing local genealogies—as stories of Greek heroes were also used.
Aeneas is pius not only in leading his son by the hand and carrying his father on his back out of burning Troy, but he is also faithful in bringing his household gods to Italy. In book III (147-71), the “Phrygian penates” appear in a dream to reveal that the homeland he seeks is not in Crete, but in a western land known as Hesperia. This is not only his destination but the original homeland of the Trojans and their Penates. Thus the Cult of Magna Mater, adopted by the Julian gens in the Empire to celebrate their divine and heroic ancestry, could be regarded as native to Italy.
Just as Augustus was loyal to the memory of his adopted father Julius and acted as foster father to his grandsons Gaius and Lucius, and Marcellus the son of his sister Octavia. Like Aeneas, Augustus was pious in restoring the gods, but also like Aeneas, who had to defeat a woman’s dangerous passion (Dido) and a brave man’s homicidal fury (Turnus), Augustus had to defend the Roman order from Cleopatra—a passionate African queen like Dido—and the equally passionate and dissolute Antony.
Augustus
Augustus came to power at the end of a 13-year struggle with Antony, but open civil war had plagued Italy since the beginning of the First Century, and civil strife had torn apart the Romans and Italians since the Punic Wars. It was a weary world, as Vergil tells us in the 4th Eclogue, a world that expected a miraculous leader to transform it.
The young Octavian was an unlikely candidate. Sickly and immature, he was as dissolute as his rival Antony. Even before Actium, however, he had learned to rely on more mature friends: the Etruscan knight Maecenas, who was patron to both Horace and Vergil, Marcus Agrippa to whom he married his daughter, and his wife Livia.
From the Roman perspective, Augustus was a god-send if not a god. For almost a hundred years, the republic had been in a turmoil: wars between Marius and Sulla, the German invasion, the so-called social war that resulted from Rome’s refusal to treat her Italian allies on an equal footing, and--worst of all--the wars between Julius and Pompey, Antony and Octavian against Brutus and Cassius, and the final duel between Antony and Octavian. Small wonder if they breathed a sigh of relief and allowed Augustus to reconstruct the forms of the old republic, but with Octavian and his family playing the role formerly reserved to several dozen families of competing dynasts. It was as if the ruler had been reading Cicero whose De Officiis, remember, was written in 44, after Caesar’s murder and during the initial power struggle between Antony and the senate.
More bits, better read at end of original post:
Omitted is a long discussion of Augustus' principate.
After a wild youth, Octavian was wise enough to realize that a revived political order would only work within a virtuous social order. Deploring the childless hedonism of the roman upper classes, he passed laws to punish the single state and to reward the procreation of children. He purged the senatorial order of its less respectable members and made it clear that his personal favor would only go to those who adhered to the old Roman virtues. Hard to estimate results. Much profligacy as shown by careers of daughter, Ovid, and upper classes under later Julio-Claudians. On other hand, the population in Italy did increase and very clear evidence of moral revival within 100 years. Probably most classes were not so degenerate as the imperial household or the senatorial aristocracy.
More important, perhaps, even than his political reorganization were the steps Augustus took to revive and restore Roman religion, building new temples such as the temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus and restoring those fallen into ruin (82!). In the magnificent Ara Pacis (c.13) he paid tribute to the Pax romana he had brought the world. He also revived and refurbished ancient cults that had fallen into decay and made great show out of the Ludi Saeculares in 17.
The Emperor Augustus once said that he had found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. On the literal level, certainly true. New forum with temple of Mars Ultor he had vowed, Ara Pacis, Theatre of Marcellus, the first version of the Pantheon of M. Agrippa (burned and rebuilt under Hadrian), baths libraries, splendid public buildings, to say nothing of the roads and aqueducts.
This statement might be applied also to Roman culture in general and even to its politics. The literature of the Augustan era has also suffered from the ravages of time. We have only a small portion (one fourth) of the enormous History written by Livy, while the works of other major historians (Asinius Pollio, Vergil’s patron, for example) have completely disappeared, but we do have most of the mature writings of Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius. Either Vergil or Horace would have made Augustan Rome one of the greatest ages of literature. Taken in total, what remains can only be compared with Fifth Century Athens and with nothing since.
Much of this literary activity was sponsored by important patrons close to the Princeps: Pollio and Maecenas, but Augustus himself took an active part in supporting both Horace and Vergil, and he seems to have prodded Vergil rather sharply into working on the Aeneid
Aeneid
There is a curious reluctance of Roman poets to write on epic themes. Horace and Propertius both have poems in which they claim they are not up to the task, and Vergil shows a similar reluctance. Why? Part of this is a literary tradition going back to Alexandria: Vergil was 43 when, after serving an apprenticeship writing about shepherds and farmers, he began work on the epic that guaranteed his fame as the greatest Latin poet. When he died 8 years later, the work was still unfinished, and he asked his literary executors to burn the manuscript. Wisely, they did not comply with his wish. In 23 Augustus prevailed upon him to read parts of the work to him, and it was Augustus who insisted on Vergil, not a well man, returning from Greece to Italy. He died in the port of Brindisi.
The story of the Aeneid is well-known to all educated people. The first half is framed by Aeneas’ arrival in Carthage and his arrival in Italy. Books two and three tell the story of the Fall of Troy and of the Trojan’s wanderings, while Book 4, often regarded as Vergil’s masterpiece, narrates the unhappy love affair between Dido and Aeneas. Aeneas is so smitten that he neglects his mission—to resettle his people in Italy—until the gods tell him to leave. Like most passionate women, Dido thinks he simply doesn’t love her and kills herself. Book V describes the funeral games given to honor Aeneas’ father Anchises who has died on the trip.
The second half of the work is devoted to the Trojan’s arrival in Latium and their fight to establish themselves there. Book 6, which concludes the first half, is thus the key point of transition from the wandering Trojans to the Trojans who are the founders of Rome. It is also a transition from the “Odyssean” (the travel adventures) part of the work to the Iliad part (another Trojan War). Not surprisingly for a work filled with Homeric echoes and allusions, Vergil turns to Odysseus’ descent to the underworld as his model.
Like Odysseus, Aeneas descends into Hell to gain information about the future and like Odysseus, he runs into old acquaintances—Greek heroes who fear him, Dido who hates him, and like Odysseus he does find out something of his mission, but not from a prophet or seer but from his own father. There are other differences. Vergil’s account shimmers with mystical and philosophical implications and, as we shall see, is really not at all about Aeneas’ future at all, but about the Roman people.
Everything in Book 6 is significant, even the setting: Cumae, a Greek colony on the Bay of Naples. Vergil knew the area well and studied philosophy there. It played an important in Octavian’s rise to power—site of his naval base in war against Sextus Pompey, son of PM, who was a serious threat. Cumae was home to the Sibyl, whose prophetic books had been acquired by the Roman Republic. The Sibyl not only foretold the future, as did the priestess of the Delphic Orace, but she used necromancy—summoned souls of dead for information. Even before reaching the Sibyl’s cave, there are strange events—his helmsman and trumpeter have both died, one from negligence, the other from arrogance. Is the point that Aeneas has conquered these vices? His concern for their burial is another reflection of his pietas.
It is the Sibyl who tells Aeneas he must descend to Hell, though Anchises had already given the same instructions. First he has to find the mysterious Golden Bough. Dead in life, like mistletoe—a plant worshipped by Celts and Germans. Vergil came from Celtic region of Italy and may have had some Celtic blood, as used to be thought before all talk of ethnic background was made taboo. Name, however, seems to connects him with the Etruscans, who also had obsession with afterlife.
Important to remember that Vergil was always a serious student of philosophy and intended to give up poetry to devote himself to loftier studies. Vergil had begun his studies with an Epicurean teacher, but as he developed hi seems interested in metaphysics and theology, and we know that Platonism and Pythagoreanism were both in vogue (as was Epicurus) in Naples. Only overt philosophy is in VI where Aeneas shown souls waiting to be reborn. The passage is inspired by the Myth of Er in Plato’s Republic and had already been imitated in Cicero’s Republic, where Scipio has a dream of the other world. Of course, the source for Plato’s belief in transmigration of souls was the earlier philosopher Pythagoras, whose school in southern Italy was still influential.
It is impossible to tell if Vergil is serious as a Platonist, but his use of material is clever, even brilliant. Both Plato and Cicero introduced the story of reincarnation as part of a discussion of a just commonwealth, and Cicero’s reflections were pointed directly at how to reestablish the Roman Republic—a job that late in life he hoped to entrust to Octavian, who agreed to his murder. In the Aeneid, the souls waiting to be reborn are, of course, not just any souls but the souls of future Romans.
Roman Race
At this point a reader should remember the beginning. Vergil announces his theme as arma virumque—arms, defensive arms, and the man, who driven by fate came to Italy to found a city and bring his gods. About to land in Carthage, his fleet is wrecked by Juno, who hates the Trojans. And here is finally the point in line 33:
Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem. (So great an effort was required to found the Roman race.)
So the story of Aeneas is really the story of Roman race, and unlike Odysseus, who sees the past in the Underworld and is only told of his own future, Aeneas is treated to the spectacle of the Roman history that is to come. Vergil is clearly influenced by some very Roman traditions. At funerals and celebrations, Romans carried images of their ancestors, and this historical pageantry, so characteristic of the Roman as opposed to the Greek mind, is reflected in relief sculpture of the imperial period and in the endless sequence of historical busts on display in forums and other public places—now suitably displayed at the Capitoline Museum.
Before he can see the future heroes of Rome, Aeneas is allowed to glimpse the torments of Hell reserved for great sinners, not just mythological villains like Ixion but even the hero Theseus who presumed to steal Persephone, queen of Hell. The cult of Persephone still very strong in Sicily and Southern Italy, and even today processions for the Virgin bring Proserpina, the maiden seized by a God, to mind. On a more moral note, Aeneas sees those who hated their brothers, struck a father, tricked a dependent into wrong, spent all their property without leaving it to heirs, committed adultery, or engaged in war against their own country. This is, I would suggest, a complete portrait of the moral life of Rome in the 1st century BC, the sinful Rome that has departed from the ways of the Roman past that Augustus is reviving.
Aeneas finally finds his father who shows him “the coming glory of the Dardanian line.” (756 ff.): Silvius, Aeneas’ future son who will found Alba Longa, and his descendants, Romulus, descendant of Aeneas and son of Mars, founder of Rome. Under him glorious Rome will make her power equal to the whole earth and her proud courage to the heavens. Then, very significantly, Rome is compared with the Great Mother, the Phrygian-Syrian Goddess in her happy progress through the Phrygian cities. Then, significantly, is Caesar:
Hic Caesar et omnis Iuli
Progenies magnum caeli ventura sub axem.
Hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis
Augustus Caesar, Divi genus, aurea condet
Saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva
Saturno quondam..
Whatever Vergil may have intended in the 4th Eclogue—though I think he clearly had Augustus in mind—here he makes it clear that the Golden Age will be restored by Julius’ adopted son.
Now that the connection between Aeneas and Augustus has been made, we return to early history—to the Roman kings and the Tarquins, the heroic families of the Decii, Drusi, Manlii Torquati, the Scipios and Gracchi, the Fabii.
“Oh, Roman, to rule the nations with they sway, these shall be thine arts—to crown peace with law, to spare the humbled and to tame in war the proud” (851 ff). Vergil’s world, however, is not untouched by tragedy. After this lofty proclamation, a noble youth with downcast face is seen: Marcellus, of a noble race but doomed to die. When Vergil read this passage to Augustus, his sister Octavia was present and she broke down in tears, hearing of her son who had died earlier that very year.
The system that Augustus put in place survived even the wickedness of his successors—Caligula and Nero—and was preserved or revived by competent emperors such as his stepson Tiberius, Vespasian, and the so-called five good emperors but even tough guys like Septimius Severus and Aurelian had a selfless sense of public good that goes back to the Augustan principate.
The Augustan principate was not the Kingdom of God nor the Christan Church, but it was about the best empire that anyone had yet managed to establish and in some form it endured down to 476 in the West and down to 1453 in Constantinople. Romanitas remained an enduring ideal: a civilization of disciplined soldiers and statesmen, who did their duty, exercised power through the rule of law and built things to last.
Here, then, are two visions of history, from the point of view of two kingdoms: The Kingdom of Man in this world, set aright by a wise emperor, and the Kingdom of God proclaimed by the Son of God who had rejected this world as one of the temptations offered by Satan. The Church and the Empire were to influence each other profoundly; sometimes through conflict, but more often by imitation. Much of the Church’s structure is a reflection of the Roman order restructured by Diocletian, the worst of the persecutors, but the vision of political order that inspired the heirs of Constantine and Theodosius was an empire in which the Church played the spiritual and moral role once assigned to pagan religion and the emperors themselves retained much of their old religious authority. The contest that resulted would play out in different ways in the Byzantine Empire and in the struggle between Popes and Holy Roman Emperors. It cannot be said that it has ever been resolved. Victory for either side usually has disastrous consequences. It is the tension between the two kingdoms, the two thrones, that may be the nearest to an ideal social order that man is capable of.
@14: Christopher Dawson described over a few essays how the Divine plan is manifested through history and via all peoples. In his view, writing as a Christian, the purpose of the covenant of the Hebrews was to actually bring Christ into the world; however, it would be a mistake to argue that their relationship with God excluded the rest of mankind from the preparation for the Kingdom. They were told as much as they needed to know about the Messiah to make the Incarnation possible.
"PS Of the moderns, you should begin with a general history of Rome, like Scullard’s Rome, from 753 to 156. If that is too technical, there is a popular book on Ancient Rome, aimed at prep school students, by Paul A. Zoch." ~ TJF
What do you think of the general works by M. Cary? He collaborated with Scullard in _A History of Rome_.
If anyone is interested, I have PDFs of key chapters (e.g. Punic Wars) from M. Cary's (out of print) History of Rome, with accompanying short-answer questions, which would be a valuable resource for homeschoolers.
Dr. Fleming,
Thanks for providing these reflections. They were a pleasure to read.
You write: "Christians would begin to see history less as the cycle of ages eternally recurring and more as a projection from the past into the present and beyond toward the future when His return would change the earth."
What do you think this means regarding the concept of 'progress'? Bagehot wrote: "The ancients had no conception of progress; they did not so much as reject the idea; they did not even entertain the idea." (I know that some have tried to refute this, saying that Hellenistic scientists did have a concept of progress, but by and large no such concept existed, if at all.)
'Progress', I think, is a modern idea. I know that some have tied it to Christianity, arguing Christianity is the harbinger of progress via its forward-looking nature. But I don't think this necessarily is the case, as it seems unlikely that this tendency, if natural, would lie dormant throughout the entire Medieval period only to surface in the last few centuries. The real source, I believe, is the Enlightenment.
"Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem. (So great an effort was required to found the Roman race.)"
Do you think there is much incongruity between say Vergil and Cicero, who were pro-Italian blood-and-soil patriots, and the later "universalism" of the empire?
Dr. Fleming,
One model which I have used for my own reference when looking at the Middle Ages in the West is a bifurcation of Caesar (ceremonial power - which is, by the way, very real) and Imperator (administrative power). In the West, the Pope was Caesar and ironically as to the title, the Kaiser was Imperator. This dualism or dichotomy was less obvious in the East.
This dualism plays itself out, albeit in a secular realm and in minor key, even in national states in England, with the Queen as head of state (Caesar) and the Prime Minister as head of government (Imperator) or in Germany, with the Bundespräsident as head of state (Caesar) and Bundeskanzler (Imperator) as head of government. In the Euro-American context of this model, it is the United States, ironically, which does not bifurcate Caesar (head of state) and Imperator (head of government) but fuses them into the Office of the President, who is both Caesar and Imperator.
I also see WWI, sans the French and English and their colonies and former colonies which they had to drag into the conflict in order to win, as a titanic struggle between the last vestiges of the Western Empire embodied in the two Kaisers and the Eastern Empire embodied in the Czar.
Picking up on your theme of empire and church, being "born" as it were about the same time, did not Augustus first use the term "evangelium" in reference to his own vision and plans?
Many thanks, Dr. Fleming.
This is your best work I have read here.
Your formal entry was hilarious and I read every one word of your lengthy post scripts thereto appended.
To them seeking a reasoned account of the New Testament's text, I heartily recommend: http://www.walkinhiscommandments.com/pickering3b.htm .
Dr. Fleming,
Sadly you tossed in a line that promotes a fable as fact: "This exchange is from the account set down in old age by John, the “beloved disciple”" - One should not be presenting an idea AS IF it were Biblical if they cannot cite a single verse that would justify teaching that idea - and yet here you have done just that in parroting the man-made tradition that says the unnamed "other disciple whom Jesus loved" was John. .
The truth is there is not a single verse in scripture that would justify teaching the idea that John was the unnamed one whom "Jesus loved" and yet most will simply assume that this man-made tradition cannot be wrong and then interpret scripture to fit this idea. But if one will heed Ps. 118:8 then the NON-BIBLE sources on which this man-made tradition is based will give way to the FACTS stated in the plain text of scripture which prove that NO MATTER WHO this anonymous author was he could not have been John.
Unfortunately most people never take the time to put the traditions they are taught to the test of scripture but if decide to follow the Acts 17:11 example and search the scriptures on this question, then you might enjoy the following site:
http://www.TheDiscipleWhomJesusLoved.com is free study that compares what the Bible says about John with what it says about "the disciple whom Jesus loved". Using nothing but Biblical evidence it proves that whoever this person was he was not John because the Bible cannot contradict itself.
But this study is not required reading since all it takes is reading the fourth gospel from beginning to end with an eye toward this question, "Who would I conclude the author was based on just the facts stated in this author's own gospel?" Those who do so can never come to the conclusion that this "other disciple" was John because NONE of the evidence points toward John.
Jim
Thanks for the responses. The lecture materials are not scholarship but my conclusions based on reading and research. I have been reading and rereading and rereading John's Gospel--which first I taught to first year Greek students back about 1970. I have concluded that, despite whatever vicissitudes the text might have undergone, it is a first-hand record of Jesus' ministry and that on the earlier period of his work in Galillee, it is an indispensable personal record. Literarily, it seems most probable that John is the "beloved disciple" as so many theologians and scholars have concluded. The website recommended is not a a serious piece of scholarship or even an informed investigation. The author may be right about some things (but surely ot about Mary Magdalene) and I may be wrong about many things, but I don't think he is possessed of the necessary tools to analyze this or any question arising from ancient texts. I may be doing him an injustice, but if people want to set down their thought in writing on so serious a subject as the Gospels, they have an obligation to equip themselves beforehand. The right-wing Calvinist John Lofton used to hector me on the telephone for quoting Aristotle more than the Bible, and I always gave the same answer. If the New Testament means so much to you, start studying Greek and ten years from now, if you put in a few hours a day, you may have a right to an opinion. Otherwise, either obey an authority--in his case the Armenian Guru Rousas J. Rushdoony--and do not presume to debate the subject.
On progress, I think the older notion, that the ancients had little or no concept of it, is correct. Although my friend Robert Nisbet tried to prove the opposite, his specialty was political sociology and he misread, I believe, the ancient evidence and, I also believe, misconceived the question. The theory of progress does not simply state that things often or almost always get better but that there is some mystical force driving man to improve his condition. Greeks and Romans played with two ideas: one, the Hesiodic idea that we once lived happily in a Golden Age from which we have declined, and two (Aristotle), that with hard work and moral restraint we sometimes make the world or a specific institution better--though decline often sets in after the improvement. The two ideas converge in Vergil's Georgics.
On the distinction between the blood-and-soil patriotism of early Roman literature and the universalism of the Empire, I would say that there is an element of this, surely, though the subject is complicated. I think it was the Greeks, Polybius and Posidonius who taught Romans to think of their republican Empire (I am speaking now of the period after PW III) as first, a model of justice for the world (Polybius) and a universal commonwealth destined to spread Greek civilization under the banner of the Pax Romana (the basic phrase often used to describe the early Empire, the Roman Peace.) Down to fairly late, Italy enjoyed a privileged position (tax exemption) within the Empire, but the notion of Italy, so rich in Vergil's writing, begins to be less prominent.
On the distinction between sacral/symbolic authority and administrative power, I think we should find better terms, not only because Caesar/Kaiser/Czar is used in both senses but also because Caesar has the specific meaning, in the later empire and in the Byzantine period, of vice-emperor and heir to the throne, sort of like the title "King of the Romans" in the Holy Roman Empire. I also think both functions are often, perhaps usually found in the same position, though in the early republic the Romans divided the politial and sacred functions of the king between the consuls and the rex sacrificorum. One can point to a similar development in Athens. Indeed, in early Greek history one can say broadly that the old royal palaces of the Mycenaean kings become the site for temples of the later Greeks. This is a subject worthy of serious study, and I am happy to have my attention drawn to it.
Yes, Cary is a decent historian. Once again, I want to emphasize that though I have been reading Latin from an early age and took a degree that demanded equal competence, I am by training a Hellenist who came rather late to a serious study of Roman history. My lack of interest in the subject was a joke in graduate school, though I have spent much of the past dozen years making up for the deficiency. I know enough to handle the texts and to be somewhat discriminating in my choice of modern scholars, though I am much better on the late republic and the empire than on the earlier periods. Roman topography, which used to be a blank to me, is now become a hobby, though I am not fit to wipe the shoes of the people who really know their stuff.
Evangelium, as you all know I am sure, is a Greek (going back to Homer) word for good news or message of good tidings, and Augustus used it as part of this semi-messianic propaganda that advertised the peace and plenty of the new regime.
Finally, if you would like to continue this, I can post sections from follow-up lectures, sketching out the history of the early Church in the imperial context. The first has the rather shocking title, "The Creation of the Gentile Church," because the theme is Christianity's growing estrangement from its Judaic origins.
Dr. Fleming,
The sections of the lectures would be very interesting; the one with the shocking title would be quite interesting.
It is my pleasure to again thank Dr. Fleming for supporting another of my conclusions, that the Johannine gospel is indeed something of a memoir of the “beloved apostle”, albeit highly structured and thematic. I except 7:53-8:11, which my Stuttgart The Greek New Testament says is absent from many of the earliest manuscripts (the editors still give it an {A}, but this doesn’t mean that its from John’s hand). Chapter 21 also seems to be an add-on, perhaps from John’s community, and Chapter 1 seems heavily redacted. 1: 1-18 seems to be a very early Christian hymn which the writer is, so to speak, fisking, as Paul seems to be doing with another hymn in Philippians 2: 6-11. Could this "fisking" say something about early Christian preaching?
Further lecture sections would be most welcome. The growth of Christianity in it's initial stages and it's gradual separation from Judaism will be of great interest. Furthermore, we all know that sooner or later Constantine will come into the picture, and I eagerly await that juncture in the discussion.
"PS Of the moderns, you should begin with a general history of Rome, like Scullard’s Rome, from 753 to 156. If that is too technical, there is a popular book on Ancient Rome, aimed at prep school students, by Paul A. Zoch."
"I know enough to handle the texts and to be somewhat discriminating in my choice of modern scholars"
Dr. Fleming,
For a beginner, are Mommsen and J.B. Bury worth reading?
Bury was a clear writer, a good narrator, and an honest scholar with something less than a brilliant mind. His notes on Gibbon helped to keep the Decline and Fall alive, and his history of the later empire is still, probably, the most readable account. If you really have a stomach for that period, you cannot do without AHM Jones's study, but not until you have a firm grasp of the narrative. Mommsen was a very great historian and an effective writer. I believe his best stuff has never been translated but he is certainly worth reading. Even when he is wrong, he is generally wrong for a good reason. I do believe, however, that one should start with the ancient texts, which tell us what some/many/most Romans and Greeks thought about Roman history. Even for people who know nothing of ancient history, Livy, Tacitus, and Plutarch are wonderfully entertaining and provide insights and intuitions not only into their own times but into human nature.
I think it is unquestionable that creedal statements existed in the letters of Paul and that the earliest churches engaged in a creedal practice that was eventually elaborated in the classic creeds. What strikes me is a bifurcation I find in the canonical gospels themselves. There is indeed the presence of creedal, churchly understandings which make of Jesus a Messiah and argues for the development of the churches as creedal structures. But there is also an element of iconoclastic rejection by Jesus himself of hypocrisy, conspicuous prayer and most certainly of religious commercialism. I think the question is not whether Christianity can be inferred from the texts but whether there is in the narrative a Jesus who would reject and criticize much of our church history as it has unfolded and would tend in the direction of the sectarian protests that have always been a counterpoint to that history, in particular peace movemtnts and nonviolent movements.
This is, again, an argument pitting texts against tradition. Logically speaking, it seems, to me, we are in a bit of a dilemma if we do this. If the Jesus of the Gospels can really be distinguished from the Christ of Paul, then one or the other is wrong. Since there is no reason, earthly or divine, for preferring one set of texts to the other, we should have to conclude that either or both are so flawed as to be no basis for faith. Jesus knew there would be misunderstandings and confusions and memory lapses, which is why he promised us the Holy Ghost, Who has guided the Church. If we don't believe that, then we repudiate Christ's teachings as presented in the Gospels.
Jesus' own followers did not always understand Him. After all, He spoke in parallels and was often addressing himself to specific people on specific occasions that cannot necessarily be universalized. Along side of pronouncements of peace and nonviolence, we have such statements that He came not to bring peace but a sword; his admonition to the disciples that once he was gone they would have to take care of themselves and buy weapons; his reponse to the disciple who showed him a sword, not that he should give it awa but only the (possibly ironic) statement that it was enough. Any one statement taken out of context and made universal can be twisted by heretics into a creed of communism or nonviolence. Read in context of the epistles and also of the tradition, we are prevented from falling into error and into the solipsism that tells us we individully have the right to pass judgment on these difficult questions.
Whew. The supplementary lecture-excerpt/posts are fantastic, and very good for those of us who have vast and embarassing gaps in our education.
Not a substitute for systematic study, I realize, but still much appreciated.
I have a special spot in my heart for the Aeneid -- partly because I first read it while stationed in Naples, Italy, and because somehow the hero-fleeing-a-dead-civilization-to-found-another resonates a bit more for me than the plot of Odysseus, even if Homer is the more elaborate and greater imagist.
T.S. Eliot wrote an interesting bit on the Aeneid, in which he argues that family lineage, for the better sort of pagans, was a sort of mirror-image of eternity, the nearest they could come to salvation or something like that.
"Important to remember that Vergil was always a serious student of philosophy and intended to give up poetry to devote himself to loftier studies."
This is particularly interesting; naturally as you point out his trip to the land of the Dead recalls not only the Odyssey but also the myth of Er. I would be curious to nose into other aspects of the poem to find out other philosophical references embodied in narrative.
Obviously a big debate among some of the readers of these pages is whether empire is a priori evil. Quite a few would say yes, I expect.
I've been inclined to reserve judgment-- certainly I have no big beef with the Byzantines or the Habsburgs-- except to maybe wonder whether some peoples are better suited to empire than others.
That is, being too attached to one system of government (whether monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, empire, small republic, etc. etc.) as a one-size-fits-all ideal seems to me to be a manifestation of the universalist mania. It seems to me should reserve the bulk of our love for the place and the people, not the system they operate in.
A nation without strong and old roots, maybe, should stick to being a republic.
Those who tout Pax Americana -- attempting to compare America to Rome-- are obviously doing a disservice to the Romans, when in fact as we continue down the road of hegemony it strikes me that we come to resemble the worst stereotype of Carthage.
"texts against tradition" -- i.e., deconstructionism.
Oh, and this post from a while back--
"the difference Scipio made to our world is that now European children can play with inanimate dolls, because the Romans won, but if the Carthaginians had won, we would be sacrificing our live children to an inanimate doll."
-- for some reason struck me with another, tangential thought which may or may not be worth sharing -- hopefully it is.
Maybe one metaphorical way of understanding the New Age / Wiccan / Neopagan phenomenon is as a sort of arrested development and/or a perverse second childhood?
That is, as a cultural parallel to a grown man playing with cap-guns and action-figures and toy-soldiers?
That is, like toys, pagan idols were good preparation for real life -- but if clung to (or reverted to) once maturity arrives, they become both pathetic and dangerous to sanity/soul.
If the Jesus of the Gospels can really be distinguished from the Christ of Paul, then one or the other is wrong. Since there is no reason, earthly or divine, for preferring one set of texts to the other, we should have to conclude that either or both are so flawed as to be no basis for faith.
I would rather state it this way -- and I may not be in disagreement with Dr. Fleming -- that the Christ of Matthew, the Christ of Mark, the Christ of Luke-Acts, the Christ of Galatians, the Christ of Romans -- are all the same Christ, seen from different perspectives by writers addressing different historical situations. All these perspectives are true. So also was the view of faith and works: The view of Mt 10:42, of Paul, and of James are all different perspectives, and perspectives that can be harmonized, as so did the Council of Trent, 6th session.
I certainly agree that we must avoid a "canon within the canon".
Vergil's fourth eclogue was universally read in medlæval and early modern times as foreshadowing Christ's birth. Thus the mediæval hymnodist had St. Paul weeping at Vergil's tomb:
Ad Maronis mausolæum
Ductus fudit super eam
Piæ rorem lacrimæ;
Quem te, inquit, redidissem
Si te vivum invenissem,
Poetarum maxime!
Like the three wise men from the east, who saw Christ's star in the east and came to worship him (Matt. ii), Vergil was regarded as a virtuous pagan having supernatural insight. Vulgar superstition attributed magical powers to him, and Dante famously placed him in the first circle, the limbo of the just, conveniently enabling the great poet to be his guide through the Inferno and the Purgatorio.
It is almost beside the point whether this interpretation of the fourth eclogue is true; what is important is that it was devoutly believed to be for many centuries. It both illustrates the respect of early Christians for 'romanitas,' and also their belief that the Church was intended to include the gentiles - that Christ's purpose was, as the old song has it, "to save us ALL from Satan's pow'r/when we had gone astray" - rather than to be merely an improved or reformed form of Judaism.
Dr. Fleming:
In your article, you claimed that at Carthage "salt was ceremoniously sown into the soil." No ancient author claims this, and the sowing of salt was not a Roman custom. It is a modern invention, though there may be Biblical and medieval sources behind it. Please see the discussion in:
Ridley, R.T., "To Be Taken with a Pinch of Salt: The Destruction of Carthage," Classical Philology vol. 81, no. 2 (1986), 140-46.
A Legend of the Destruction of Carthage
Susan T. Stevens
Classical Philology, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 39-41.
Passing the Salt: On the Destruction of Carthage Again
Paolo Visona
Classical Philology, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 41-42.
The Destruction of Carthage: A Retractatio
B. H. Warmington
Classical Philology, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Oct., 1988), pp. 308-310.
"It is a modern invention" "It" being the story of the salting of Carthage. Some ancient Middle Eastern peoples did salt the ruins of captured cities, and so did Pope Boniface VIII after he captured Palestrina. See the cited works.
Sad, Tom, but not surprising, that you consider conversation about Scripture and its meaning to be a "diversion." And what, exactly, is a "non-sectarian intention?"