Emperors of Rome
Taught by Professor Garrett G. Fagan
The Pennsylvania State University
You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations 4
“Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus tomorrow will be a mummy or ashes.”
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditation 5
(And this is what President Bill Clinton was reading?) revealing a man of deeply depressive outlook — Marcus, not Bill
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The Arch of Septimius Severus
To the emperor Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Pius Pertinax Augustus,
son of Marcus, father of his country, victor over Arabian Parthia and Adiebenic Parthia,
chief priest, holder of the tribunician power for the eleventh time,
hailed general 11 times, consul for the third time, proconsul AND to emperor Caesar Marcus.
Note: Queen Helena was from Adiabene.
Emperors of Rome
Taught by Professor Garrett G. Fagan
The Pennsylvania State University
Lecture 2: The Roman Republic
Dictator (Ruler-in-Crisis)
Cursus Honorum (Run of Offices)
Nowhere written down was the Republic’s manner of governing, no “Constitution” just a mos maiorum – the way of the ancestors.
SPQR: Senatus Populusque Romanus
Fasti: consular lists
Prosopography: the study of people and their family connections (hats off to those historians)
The Centuriate Assembly which elected the consuls and praetors- was plagued by widespread bribing operations
Libertas – freedom of political action; freedom from domination by a monarch or a group of rulers
People did not have the right to assemble. They needed a magistrate or tribune to convene assembly.
The Republic was democratic? No, just look at the fasti, the consular lists: the same families appear over and over again. Perhaps it was a democratic oligarchy.
Features of the Roman Republic to be stressed:
1)
In the absence of a written constitution, the republic relied on a deep respect for tradition and precedent.
2)
Libertas – freedom of political action; freedom from domination by a monarch or a group of rulers
people acted by tradition not by law
3)
Concordia – the maintenance of political civility by avoiding rancorous conflicts through compromise and a willingness to back down if faced with resolute challenges
An Exaltation of Tyrant killers was largely inherited from the Greeks because tyrants by nature were destroyers/enemies of Libertas and Concordia.
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The oligarchic, upper families were not factional: alliances came and went.
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Given this culture, Rome would not have been accepting of an empire run by a theocracy headed by 12 Jewish judges, under Jesus, with no legislative branch.
Lecture 5: The Powers of Augustus
There was no dyarchy – rule by two: Augustus and the Senate
Dictator and Emperors – Julius Caesar and the subsequent emperors
in perpetuum was avoided by Augustus Caesar because he knew how lethal that was for Julius Caesar
The First and Second Constitutional Settlements
2BC – Augustus becomes Father of the Fatherland (Pater Patriae)
like paterfamilias – head of the household
pietas – respect, affection, and deference
Senators had been called patres – fathers
“He gradually rose up and drew onto himself the duties of the Senate, magistrates, and laws.” – Tacitus, Annals 1.2.1
He had vast autoritas. princeps – leading man (The Principate) He had no equal.
Lecture 6: Successions Woes
“May I be allowed to establish the res publica on a firm and secure footing and from that deed reap the profit that I seek:
to be called the founder of the best form of government, and as I die to take with me the hope that the foundations I have laid for the state will endure.”
Suetonius, Augustus 28
Marcus Claudius Marcellus, potential successor but he died at age 19 leaving a 16 year old widow, Julia, Augustus’ only born child.
Marcus Vipsainus Agrippa (63-12 BC), by Augustus Caesar’s side since Julius Caesar’s assassination.
Gaius Maecenas (a close friend of both) advised the emperor Augustus Caesar:
“You have raised Agrippa so high, you either have to kill him or marry him to Julia.”
But Agrippa died.
Tiberius was forced to divorce his wife to marry Augustus’ daughter, Juliia. Tiberius was now step-son and son-in-law.
Tragic succession drama for Caesar Augustus.
When both of the third generation of successors perished, Augustus had to turn to the surviving second generation of successors, Tiberius who went AWOL in Rhodes but by the help of his mother snuck back into Rome; and, Augustus Caesar adopted him as a son, no longer a step-son or son-in-law:
“This I do for reasons of state.” – Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History 2.104.1
There were two more adoptions to stock the pool.
AD 14 Augustus Caesar dead at age 75.
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What about the succession plans of Jesus, Son of Man over the Kingdom of God?
God of the Gaps: God will take care of that.
Wait, Jesus was Son of Man but he got himself in trouble and there is no successor for the new kingdom.
We only go from Kingdom of Heaven to a church with Peter as a founder. That is the consolation.
Jesus spoke of Son of Man in the first person. Then he spoke of Son of Man in the third person. This Son of Man was not mortal. The earthly kingdom did not have mortal citizens?
Lecture 10: The Mad Emperor? Caligula [I’m looking forward to Nero’s first 5 years with the Stoic Seneca]
We don’t have good sources for Caligula because we don’t have Tacitus weighing in.
OMG, Caligula lived with Tiberius in the last 7 years of Tiberius life which were more than brooding and crazy.
Caligula (who wanted his statue in the Temple of Jerusalem):
Are you the god-haters who do not believe me to be a god?
Source: Philo / Embassy to Gaius 353
Lecture 13: Power and Poison – Agrippina and Claudius
37 CE on 15 Dec, Agrippina gave birth to Nero
Astrologer declared: your baby will be Emperor but he will kill his mother.
Agrippina: Let him kill me, so long he rules.
Her husband (before Claudius), Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (who died about the time Nero was 3 years of age) made a comment at the naming ceremony of their new born son:
“I and Agrippina could only give birth to something loathsome and disastrous for the public.”
(See Suetonius, Nero 6.1)
Lecture 15: The Trouble with Christians
July 18 & 19, AD 64 – Fire
Narrow Streets
Capturing the sleeping populace by surprise.
Nero was not at Rome. He threw open his properties to refugees.
Overwhelmed the nighwatch crew.
It destroyed Nero’s palace. He built the Domus Aurea – Golden House to replace his palace.
Tacitus defined Christianity as a malignancy, a baleful superstition, and a hatred of the human race.
Tacitus Annals 15.44.2-4
Pagan gods didn’t wait until after you died to get you.
I don’t think you really have Christianity until you have the books for them to rally around (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, and Acts). They weren’t organized enough until then. They were in the East of the Roman Empire with a small presence in Rome.
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Also cited is the so-called persecution of Christians by Nero on the basis of a citation from Tacitus:
After the burning of Rome…
‘…despite public aid, despite generous donations by the emperor and expiatory sacrifices to the Gods, the dreadful rumour could not be scotched that the fire was set on orders. And so, Nero, in order to end this rumor, revealed the culprits and imposed the most exquisite punishments on those who were hated for their outrageous acts and who were called by the people chrestiani.’[283]
Many have wanted to understand this to mean the Christians. At a later date the hand of a copyist has even inserted an explanation of the word chrestiani:
‘This name derives from Christ, who was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilatus under the government of Tiberius.’[284]
That this is an interpolation is formally indicated on the one hand by the scholiastic nature of the sentence, on the other hand by the fact that chrestiani is written with an ‘e’, but Christ with an ‘i’. But the logical break in the report is more weighty. That is, the story continues with a very logical consequent conclusion by Nero. Construction speculators were suspected of being behind those who set the fire alight:
‘For no one had the courage to check the spread of the fire, because again and again numerous people hindered its extinction with threats, others had openly thrown firebrands and cried aloud that they had a principal standing behind them, whether doing this so they could plunder unrestrainedly, or because they were really ordered to do so.’[285]
In order to not be taken for one of the instigators or one of their accomplices, Nero imposed draconian punishments on the incendiaries and their principals—construction speculators who expected to make a huge profit from the reconstruction. The former were burned alive, the latter torn to pieces by dogs:
‘And at first those who confessed were arrested, then on the basis of their testimony a further large circle of people were arrested, and they were found guilty not only of the crime of arson but also of hatred of humanity. And those at death’s door suffered mockery: they were wrapped in animal skins and torn to pieces by dogs, or they were (nailed to a cross and destined for the death by fire) burned after day’s end as night lights.’[286]
One recognizes by the symmetry of the punishments that Nero has here applied the Talion law: the incendiaries were burned and those torn to pieces by dogs can only have been the speculators, the ‘bloodsuckers’. Therefore the word chrestiani here can only mean the chrêstai, the speculators, as we have seen above in Suetonius’ report on Claudius.[287] Then their characterization too does make sense, namely, that they were ‘hated by the people because of their outrageous acts’.
The late confusion of those chrestiani or chrêstai, of the speculators with the Christians, could have arisen because there were possibly Jews amongst the speculators who were punished. This fit the image of the Jews anyhow, all the more so, because at that time the Jewish rebellion was in the air. Hence the lines that immediately follow the above interpolation could refer to Jews, especially to a Jewish mafia of speculators, taken as a pars pro toto:
‘The fatal superstition, which was at first suppressed, gained ground once more, not only in Judea from where this evil arose, but also in Rome, where all sorts of atrocities and infamies from all the world pour in and find a happy approval.’[288]
Hence these lines could be authentic, as the corresponding short version in Suetonius shows:
‘The punishment of death was declared on the christiani, a race of humans with a new and objectionable superstition.’[289]
But it is also possible that they belong to the interpolation, because Suetonius is not independent of Tacitus and a prosecution of Jews is not recorded at this time.
Conclusion: If one follows this critique of the passages by Tacitus and Suetonius, then in the historical writings from the time before the Jewish war there is no Jesus, no Christ, and no Christians. And if one does not want to follow it, then it can at least be said objectively that Greek citations are missing, whilst indubitable Latin proofs do not appear until the second century and they concern only chrestiani or christiani, respectively: Chrestos or, barely, Christus—with no trace of the name Jesus.
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We can’t blame Nero’s new palace on him starting the fire.
(Nero could calm his sadness by playing the lute/fiddle or reciting poetry about Troy.)
But Edward Chaplin of Princeton says Nero was an arsonist.
In AD 65, Subrius Flavus plotted against Nero. Nero asked him why. Answer:
“I hated you, and yet no soldier was more loyal to you, while you deserved to be loved.
I began to hate you after you became the murderer of your mother and wife,
a charioteer, an actor, and an arsonist.”
Tacitus, Annals Book 15, 66.03
Gerhard Baudy says Nero was correct: the Christians DID burn down Rome. 1) This is when renewal needed to take place when Sirius, the Dog Star, rose in the sky; 2) the Early Christianity was Apocalyptic
…but the chaff he will burn with unquencahable fire.
Matthew 13: 12
So, with the full scale Jewish Revolt around the corner, we have the fire committed by Christians, then Apocalyptic Zealots attacking the Roman Legion at the beginning of the Jewish Revolt, then the Revolt itself.
(Paul and Peter died in the fire?)
I have come to ignite a fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
Jesus – Luke 12:49
Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which is from God. The authorities that exist have been appointed by God.
Consequently, the one who resists authority is opposing what God has set in place, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
ROMANS 13: 1-2; so, Paul knew about the attack and tried to talk the Zealots down.
The first Christians captured actually confessed their guilt.
Lecture 16: Dynasty’s End: The Fall of Nero
Burrus died and Seneca lost his influence on Nero.
Well Octavia was killed horribly and he married Poppaea Sabina.
Poppaea Sabina was killed by Nero.
Sporus, a man who looked like Poppaea was castrated and made Nero’s wife.
Opposition to Nero but plot is discovered.
The Golden Day – Armenia king is inducted at Rome
Neron Kaisar = 666
Nero lost power and was cornered resulting in self-injury and death.
The Year of Four Emperors
1) Galba
Galba from Spain was rich and frugal
“I levy troops, I don’t buy them,” that was Galba’s problem.
Galba’s omen’s weren’t good and Otho took over.
2) Otho
Vitellius had more military power than Otho.
So, we have civil war.
3) Vitellius
A glutton and drunk
Re: civil war, and visiting the battlefield, he said, “a dead enemy smells sweet, a dead citizen smells sweeter.” So disgusting.
4) Vespasian
Battles at Bedriacum for Vespasian. Vitellius should have given the emperorship to Vespasian but he held on to the bitter end.
Lecture 18: The First Flavian-Vespasian
Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian are not covered fully by Tacitus.
Caligula had him covered in mud for not keeping the streets of Rome clean.
He gave a length speech in the senate thanking him for a dinner invitation.
Vespasian married Flavia Domitilla and had three children: Flavia Domitilla (daughter), Titus, and Domitian. Mother and daughter died before 69.
Agrippina the Younger indirectly shaded Vespasian’s career during the reign of Claudius.
Suetonius’s account is faulty.
He restored peace after civil war, as Augustus did.
His coins declared The Emergence of Peace, Worldwide Peace, Imperial Peace.
He built in AD 71-75 the Temple of Peace.
Lecture 19: The Last Flavians – Titus and Domitian
Titus was brought up with Britannicus.
Titus was a son of a senator.
Titus married twice but they both ended in divorce.
June 68, Nero committed suicide while Vespasian was helping his son take Jerusalem.
The son, Titus ,held the power of the praetorian guard for his father.
It seems Titus held out on his younger brother, with respect to career advancement, hoping Titus would have a son who would be the next emperor.
Tacitus did not like Domitian
Wars in Britain, Germany, and Dacia (Romania)
The Chatti and the Dacians were adversaries of Rome.
Domus Augustana on the Pallatine Hill, Home of Domitian
He held 17 consulships.
Censor for life
He would be called Lord and God and people had to kiss his foot.
Paranoia sets in: 13 senators perished under Domitian.
“The lot of emperors is wretched since nobody believes them about conspiracies they uncover until they are killed.”
Suetonius, Domitian 21
Killed at age 44.
Lecture 20: Pax Augusta – Nerva and Trajan
The senate selected Nerva, not the military.
Nerva was consul with Vespasian.
Domitian’s successor was chosen before the assassination.
Nerva adopted Trajan.
16-1/2 month reign for Nerva.
On the Danube frontier. Abandoned years later.
Lecture 21: Trajan in Rome and in the East
Trajan did not execute any senators.
The elite no longer had to worry about freemen holding offices above them.
Trajan built a large public bath.
Pliny – Trajan Correspondence
Example of correspondence (#96), this one concerning Christians:
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pick up at 17: 58
Trajan looked for a fight with Rome’s rival empire, Parthia.
Parthia did not provoke Rome but Trajan went for them.
He rejected diplomatic overtures from Parthia.
signs of vainglory
He was negligent in succession planning.
(Hadrian is next.)
Lecture 22: The Eccentric Hadrian
Hadrian’s accession was a sham.
Hadrian renounced Trajan expansions.
Hadrian really renounced territories Trajan had already lost control of.
The provinces (the bulk of the Roman Empire) were important to Hadrian.
He did a lot of restorations, without credit.
Hadrian’s wall in Britain
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Antinoos was Hadrian’s male lover but Antinoos drowned in the Nile and Hadrian wept like a woman.
Hadrian didn’t really recover.
Hadrian had to deal with the Third Jewish-Roman War, a revolt led by Simon bar Kokhba.
Bethar – Bar Kokhba killed there.
138, he died.
He wore a beard.
Lecture 23: Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus
Antoninus Pius – uneventful, he never left Italy
Pius – the dutiful one
He was Citizen Prince.
He refused excessive honors (unlike Julius Caesar), treated the Senate with tact, made no decision arbitrarily, consulted his advisory council, and took a vow never to execute a Senator.
He was a noted speaker before he came to power.
The Roman stock exchange is a gigantic spectacle from the outside. The building was constructed in a monumental ancient temple. At the front there are still eleven colossal Corinthian columns. Originally, the sanctuary was the temple of the Emperor Hadrian. … Today the temple houses the stock exchange.
He died at 74 and interred in Hadrian’s temple.
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Fronto was a friend of Marcus Aurelius.
139 Marcus was a Leader of Youth
161 Marcus Aurelius became Caesar but insisted he do so with his brother Verus.
So, we have two emperors: Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.
Marcus Aurelius wanted a helping hand to manage a vast empire.
Marcus had a bunch of children but to reach adulthood, only one son.
Parthians marched into Armenia and Rome couldn’t defend Armenia.
Lucius was dispatched to the east.
Marcus had a keen legal mind and treated slaves well.
Lucius was not at the front of Rome’s military victories.
Fronto’s correspondences with the two emperors is important.
Father of the Fatherland (aHa, two men were fathers of the Roman Empire)
Tragedy: the army brought back an epidemic/plague
Lucius had a pub built in the palace, but Marcus stayed sober.
Lucius suffered a stroke at 39. Lucius died and the co-emperorship came to an end.
(Lucius shared a birthday with Nero.)
Marcus didn’t seek a replacement.
Lecture 24: Marcus in the North and Commodus
Cassius went against Marcus.
Commodus. 13 years old was Prince of the Youth. This proved to Cassius that although Marcus seemed to have been ill to dying, he was very much very much alive.
Commodus at 16 was the youngest Consul in Ancient Roman history.
Commodus became co-emperor.
Commodus had character problems–ordering a bath water drawer thrown into the furnace –but without Commodus knowing, he wasn’t thrown into the furnace.
In the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, his death was imminent.
Stopped at 17:00 because Marcus died and the professor is going on to the next emperor.
My purpose is tnese lines is to frame the larger question that the great and successful efforts of Christology, over the course of three centuries, Christology have raised. I’m framing it in order to ask how it’s been addressed by modern scholars — I have no idea.
(I’ll add here that my background is in paleoanthropology and cultural anthropology, not in history, though I do also have a limited social-history background.)
Christology teaches, it seems to me, that between the “short Axial Age,” — the 6th and 5th centuries BC — and the time of Christ’s birth and death, roughly 500 years later, religion — including belief in divine and semi-divine beings, in miracles, in personal immortality — took on new, very deep, importance for human beings.
From the above briefly-outlined historical perspective, the emergence of willed-belief in the divinity of a horribly martyred — crucified –Savior, which, as Dr. Ehrman has pointed out, goes against all preceding tradition, seems very logical. The 150 to 200 years preceding Jesus’ birth saw — from the perspective of human well-being — the low point of the Roman Republic (the inheritor of the earlier State societies of Antiquity, and of Classical Greek steps towards the recovery of pre-State democracy), culminating in the seizure of power by Octavian — who proclaimed himself “Caesar Augustus” — and the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire _only 27 years before Jesus’ birth_! It’s hardly an accident that Mussolini took the word “fascism” (whose significance he passed along to Hitler) from the geo-political/military practice of the Roman Empire, the most-successful, longest-enduring historically-documented Fascist state we know of. It provides the model to which modern fascists — from Hitler to the latest iterations — aspire. The Empire. under Constantine, happily accepted the idea that inhabitants of the Empire would worship the most efficient and cost-effective form of torture humans have managed to devise: the regular mass crucifixions of which Jesus of Nazareth was one, well-known, victim. (And that the primary symbol of the newly-adopted religion of the Empire would become — not a fish — but an instrument of torture.)
Isn’t this the ultimate lesson to be learned from Christology? I.e., the conditions that produced Christianity.
Calpurnia (Redacted)
Christology teaches, it seems to me, that between the “short Axial Age,” — the 6th and 5th centuries BC — and the time of Christ’s birth and death, roughly 500 years later, religion — including belief in divine and semi-divine beings, in miracles, in personal immortality — took on new, very deep, importance for human beings.
From the above briefly-outlined historical perspective, the emergence of willed-belief in the divinity of a horribly martyred — crucified –Savior, which, as Dr. Ehrman has pointed out, goes against all preceding tradition, seems very logical.
The 150 to 200 years preceding Jesus’ birth saw the low point of the Roman Republic culminating in the seizure of power by Octavian and the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire, only 27 years before Jesus’ birth!
The Empire. under Constantine, happily accepted the idea that inhabitants of the Empire would worship the most efficient and cost-effective form of torture humans have managed to devise: the regular mass crucifixions of which Jesus of Nazareth was one, well-known, victim. (And that the primary symbol of the newly-adopted religion of the Empire would become — not a fish — but an instrument of torture.)
Isn’t this the ultimate lesson to be learned from Christology, i.e., the conditions that produced Christianity?
Steefen
So what? It goes against all preceding tradition. It should go against all preceding tradition because Christianity is NOT an organic evolution of preceding tradition.
Let me see, even after my redaction, if I got this right, you are saying: politically, a low point was reached as city-state democracy changed into the fascism of imperial rule. You then bring up Mussolini and Hitler as examples of the low points of one-man rule. How do you separate the rule of pharaohs, Moses, kings in the Bible and outside the Bible, the power of Popes from fascist leaders.
Politics did not reach a low point with Octavian (Caesar Augustus). The political system of SPQR (the Roman Republic) was too small a political framework for Rome’s growth to Empire. The question, I suppose, is why wasn’t there an organic growth from 2-consuls, senators, and assemblies of SPCR to parliamentary democracy or a present-day republican form of government?
Let’s return to your point that religion took on the importance of divinity, miracles, and personal immortality but against that tradition, a religion comes along focusing on an instrument of torture and a man crucified by that instrument.
You are mistaken.
#1 You mistake the cross of crucifixion with a) the tropaeum of victory and b) the frame used to raise a wax figure of Julius Caesar during Marc Antony’s eulogy.
That is the religion. The remembrance of Julius Caesar, the religion focusing on Julius Caesar which morphed into the imperial cult/religion for the great Caesar Augustus joined to the religion of Julius Caesar.
There are even coins of the tropaeum with a figure on the left and a figure on the right.
You need to read Jesus was Caesar by Francesco Carotta.
#2 You mistake the cross of an alleged–even fictitious–crucifixion of Jesus in the 30s with the crucifixions decades later, 52-59 C.E., under Felix, and a decade later, 69-70 C.E. under the First Jewish-Roman War.
Second, Jesus of Galilee who led mariners/fishermen, was likely not crucified by killed with his men in the Battle of Galilee and on the “Sea” of Galilee by General Vespasian.
So the crucified Jesus is just a symbol representing the defeat of the Jewish Revolt and the defeat of Temple Judaism which fueled militant messianism. The Biblical Jesus left a sacrament for the defeat of Temple Judaism theology: Holy Communion. Holy Communion is a sacrament of that defeat and atheism towards a defeated God of Temple Judaism.
This is a fascinating thread and I appreciate the summary of the Roman Emperors. I’ve always found the idea of resurrection odd and what seems to have been a ready acceptance in the ancient world. Especially fascinating when applied not just to one exceptional person but to everyone who believes in that exceptional person. Although it never seems to have been clear what exactly constituted the “correct” belief. Is that issue even settled among Christians today? You would really expect precedents. Resurrection, and a suffering savior, surely could not have been novel ideas.
RICHWEN90 said
This is a fascinating thread and I appreciate the summary of the Roman Emperors. I’ve always found the idea of resurrection odd and what seems to have been a ready acceptance in the ancient world. Especially fascinating when applied not just to one exceptional person but to everyone who believes in that exceptional person. Although it never seems to have been clear what exactly constituted the “correct” belief. Is that issue even settled among Christians today? You would really expect precedents. Resurrection, and a suffering savior, surely could not have been novel ideas.
In Ancient Rome, there is resurrection but not of the actual body. There is a re-appearance claim with Romulus. There is a comet or something to that effect with Julius Caesar. There is reference to the Hebrew Bible about “suffering savior;” so, no, resurrection and suffering savior are not novel ideas.
Furthermore, there were resurrection myths connected to farming and there was the coming back to life of Osiris/Serapis.
Gee whiz, all the deep precedents you site for the belief in resurrection are pagan! This really looks like an idea with pagan roots, to me. And it carried right over into Judaism and Christianity. You would think that someone, at some point would have had some qualms about this belief.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert