Hadrian and the Jews

Hadrian showed little sympathy or understanding towards the Jews of the Empire. From the outset his new settlement Aelia Capitolina, built on the ruins of Jerusalem, was intended as a wholly pagan city, to be populated by Roman soldiers.

Hadrian must have known that to erect what was for all practical purposes a military garrison on the sacred city of the Jews was an immense provocation. There was no magnanimity or generosity in the action, no attempt to pacify the local people, or to remind them that their Emperor had their well-being at heart. Jews were specifically forbidden to enter the new settlement, except for one day a year. But the most serious affront of all was the erection of the Temple of Jupiter on the foundations of the Second Temple, an unmistakable symbol of Jewish subjugation and humiliation. It would seem that Hadrian could not have done more to provoke the Bar Kokhba revolt, whether that was his intention or not.

Nero: the First Anti-Christ

Nero probably has, in both Tacitus and Suetonius, a better 'press' than he deserves. Suetonius, although he clearly despises Nero, balances the good with the bad, and Tacitus points out just how commendable at least some of his actions were during the Great Fire of Rome. His reign did not begin badly, especially during the period when he was being advised and guided by Seneca.

Nero was not stupid but the defects in his character were eventually to expose the true weakness of the whole apparatus put in place by Augustus, both tyrannical and contradictory; imperial and republican. The final crisis begins when he starts to lose all restraint in his exercise of pure and egomaniacal forms of power. The Pisonian conspiracy contributed to this, but the real rot came with the building projects he conceived after the Great Fire, so grand that he was on the verge of taxing Rome-and some Romans-quite literally to death. He died an enemy of the state who was in time to become, for the Christians he scapegoated and persecuted, a version of the Anti-Christ. And such is the verdict of history.

Diocletian and Government

Diocletian's system of government, an answer to the murderous political chaos of the third century, was essentially an exercise in good-faith, the assumption that those in power will give way peacefully, and by their own volition, to successors, already in the wings. Better, yes, than succession by murder, the preferred practice after the death of Septimius Severus, but it still failed to recognise that power has its own attractions, whatever the risks. The late imperial system of government, absolutist and uncompromising as it was, certainly contributed to the continuing decline of the empire. Quite simply it depended too much on the capacity and talents of a limited number of individuals; for when the Emperor was good he was very, very good; and when he was bad...well, he was much more than horrid!

The First Christian Emperor?

Most people, if they consider the matter at all, will think of Constantine the Great as the first Christian Roman Emperor, but there is a tradition that this distinction belongs to a third century emperor known as Philip the Arab. This is based on no greater evidence than a report in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History, which the author himself doubts, that Philip attended a Christian service at Easter, after being required by an unnamed bishop to confess his sins, though the date and the location are not mentioned. Beyond Eusebius there is nothing, and in his five year reign, about which not an awful lot is known, Philip continued to follow the state religion.

I was interested to note, though, in a glance over Marta Sordi’s The Christians in the Roman Empire that she makes the case for Philip, drawing on Eusebius and traditions after him. “I personally believe the story to be true”, Sordi concludes. What she, what any historian does or does not believe is monumentally irrelevant. All that matters is what can be proved.

Constantine the Great: Christianity as Political Expediency

So why did the Emperor Constantine favour Christianity? It was politics, dear boy, politics! Yes, I simplify, but in simplicity there is always a hard nugget of truth.

Victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge was not sufficient in itself; the empire had to be pacified, and one way of achieving this was to end the persecution of the increasingly important Christian community. But the Edict of Milan only extended recognition to Christianity as one of the empire's many cults, with Christ no more significant than Apollo, to whom the Emperor had already pledged his special allegiance. From a purely Christian perspective the Milan decree was just as intolerable, if not more so, than the persecutions of Diocletian.

While Constantine hoped to harness the power of the Christian God, it seems certain, his background notwithstanding, that he had an imperfect understanding of the true nature of the religion. It was his continuing need for political support that served to focus his thinking, to appreciate the power that could be conferred by a church, infinitely better organised than its pagan competitors. It was this unified and organised church that he saw as an essential base to his power, and made him all the more determined to maintain that unity after his victory over Licinius in 324. At the First Council of Nicaea, summoned to address the dangerously disruptive Arian heresy, Constantine appeared as the dominant influence, more powerful than any bishop, beginning a long tradition of Caesaropapism.

Now in the latter part of his reign, Constantine gave further signs of the special significance that Christianity had achieved in his political scheme of things by lavish patronage, in sharp contrast to his neglect of the pagan cults. But it is always well to remember that to the very end, even in the great city of Constantinople, the supreme figure, even the supreme deity, was not Christ but Constantine, which makes him not that much different to his imperial predecessors, all the way back to Augustus. Baptism only came at the very end for an Emperor who was always more mindful of earthly than heavenly power.

Lepcis Magna-what it meant to be Roman

Have you been to Lepcis Magna? Possibly not, as the remains are in Libya, which, until fairly recently, was not the most welcoming place in the world. It’s a magnificent place, arguably the best Roman site in the whole of the Mediterranean basin, better even than Pompeii and Ephesus. It’s all in a remarkable state of preservation; the theatre, the amphitheatre, the markets, forums, circus, baths, arches and basilica, aided by its location on the edge of the desert. It was abandoned in 800AD and largely lost under the encroaching sand, saving it from the free-lance quarrying that has destroyed or decimated so many other ancient sites. Indeed large parts of it are still under the dunes despite continuous excavation since the 1920s.

The city was originally founded by Phoenician traders some seven hundred years before the birth of Christ. It later fell under Roman domination after the Punic Wars. But while Carthage, the other Phoenician foundation, an object of particular Roman animus, was totally destroyed, Lepcis Magna grew and flourished, becoming, amongst other things, an important centre for the production of olive oil. The wealth of the local elite is reflected in the beauty and range of the city’s architecture.

These elites kept close to the centres of power, dedicating monuments to emperors like Trajan and Hadrian. Their greatest moment in the politics of the Roman world came towards the end of the second century, when Lucius Septimius Severus, son of a local family and a leading soldier, became Rome’s first North African Emperor. In 203AD he returned to his home town in triumph, showing his gratitude by relieving it of taxes and institution a new building programme. The subsequent construction is among the some of the city’s most impressive remains. To go there is to understand what it truly meant to be Roman

In Praise of Julian

Julian, the so-called Apostate, was the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire. There is a tragic quality to his brief reign, which seems to give the impression that his attempt to return to the old religion was foredoomed. This is far from being the case. All Julian really needed was time; time to turn matters around, time to establish a new dynasty supported by a new pattern of though. Time, sad to say, was the one thing he was denied.

But he understood the character of his enemy, indeed he did. His Edict of Toleration not only re-established the Pagan Cults but it allowed for the return of all of the dissident bishops who had been sent into exile by Constantius II, his predecessor. And if there was any religion more fissiparous and open to schism it was Christianity. Julian, moreover, did not make the mistake of returning to the wholesale persecutions of the past, which had given the Christians martyrs and momentum. Rather he removed all of the Church’s financial and political privileges.

Just imagine the possible fate of the Church, deprived of money and influence, without the backing of state power to settle the usual intense, and often murderous, theological disputes, divided and dividing, then it is possible to imagine a different future. And if you think such a scenario improbable you might care to investigate the decline of Christianity in Muslim Andalusia.