Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ROME

(Lat. Roma; Gk. Rhṓmē)

Roman Forum from Capitoline Hill. The oldest of the city’s public squares, it comprised a
complex of open spaces and government buildings, temples, and shops (Allen C. Myers)

Augustus of Prima Porta (shortly after 20 b.c.e.). Marble with traces of polychrome; Chiaramonti Museum, Vatican (Photo Philip Gendreau, N.Y.)

A designation both for the ancient city on the Tiber River, located 16 km. (10 mi.) inland from the port of Ostia, as well as for the expansive empire which began to grow during the Republic and continued to increase in size until it reached its greatest extent in the early 2nd century c.e. At its widest extent toward the end of Trajan’s reign (98-117), the Roman Empire circled the Mediterranean basin, encompassing all southern Europe, Britain (to the Scottish border), North Africa (to the Sahara), Egypt (to well beyond the first cataract), Asia Minor, the north coast of the Black Sea, Armenia and regions south of the Caucasus, Mesopotamia (to the Euphrates), Syria, and Palestine: 9650 km. (6000 mi.) of frontier.

A knowledge of Roman history and culture sheds light on a number of passages in the OT, Apocrypha, and NT. Heb. kittîm is an ambiguous term found in the OT (Isa. 23:1; Jer. 2:10; Ezek. 27:6), where it very likely refers to the Greeks. In the Apocrypha Kittim also seems to refer to the Greeks (1 Macc. 1:1; 8:5), though in the nearly contemporaneous literature of Qumran, the term probably refers to the Romans (1QpHab 2.12-13; 3.9; 4.5-6; 6.1-4; 4QpNah frags. 3-4.I.3). Jews were very much aware of the presence of Roman power in the western Mediterranean, as suggested by the list of Roman conquests to the mid-160s b.c.e. found in 1 Macc. 8:1-16. The significant political links between the Maccabees and Rome are narrated in 1 Macc. 8:17-32; 12:1-4. In the NT the author of Luke-Acts was particularly aware of the ubiquitous political presence of Rome, and carefully weaves allusions to Roman history and culture throughout his work, beginning with explicit mention of the reign of Tiberius in Luke 3:1 and continued through numerous references to Roman political and social institutions in the Acts of the Apostles.

Environment

The soil of Italy is more fertile than that of Greece, though the climate is similar. The topographical system is also very different from that of Greece, for the Apennine Mountains form the backbone of the peninsula with arable land both east and west of the mountain range. Italy is divided into two parts. Continental Italy centers on the Po Valley with the Po River running through the center. Peninsular Italy is divided into three parts: the east coast, west coast, and southern boot. Italy had few good harbors, such as the Bay of Naples, which together with the fact that the Po and the Tiber are the only navigable rivers impeded the development of trade and commerce. Throughout their long history the Romans remained landlubbers. The east coast was sparsely inhabited in antiquity, with little sailing on the Adriatic and no shipping until the time of the Crusades. The west coast consisted of excellent farmland, while the northwest part of the peninsula had mineral resources. The southern tip also had an abundance of arable land, but was particularly vulnerable to invasion. Unlike Greece, Italy was a land suitable for raising cattle.

Origins to the End of the Monarchy
(753-509 b.c.e.)

According to Varro, Rome was ritually founded on 21 April 753, one of several legendary 8th-century dates proposed in antiquity (the birthday of Rome was celebrated during the Republic as the Parilia, and in the Empire as the natalis Urbis). There were in fact two competing legends of the founding of Rome which were ultimately linked in various ways, both going back to the 4th century b.c.e. One centered on the eponymous founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus, the other on Aeneas (whom Augustus claimed as an ancestor), a prince of Troy who fled to the west following the sack of Troy by the Greeks and eventually founded Rome (Dionysius of Halicarnassus Rom. arch. 1.72.2), narrated in epic length in Vergil’s Aeneid. The fact that the Romans regarded themselves as descended from the Trojans meant that they differentiated themselves from both Greeks and Etruscans. After the mid-1st century b.c.e., Rome became known as the Septimontium (septem montes, “seven hills”), a conception popularized by Varro (De ling. lat. 5.41-54; 7.41), though his list (which quickly became canonical) differs considerably from earlier lists of seven hills. The earliest settlement of Rome was on the Palatine and the Forum Romanum (used as a cemetery) by the 10th century, and then after 650 spread to the Quirinal, the Esquiline, and other hills not identical with Varro’s list. Throughout the history of Rome, the territory of the city itself (though occasionally enlarged) was called urbs and defined by a sacred boundary, the pomerium, which was surrounded by the ager Romanus, the “Roman territory” (which also increased in size). Roman kingship was nonhereditary and Roman political organization followed the Indo-european pattern of king-council-assembly. While new kings were nominated by the senate, they were approved when the popular assembly (comitia curiata) passed a lex de imperio conferring the rights of imperium on the king. The mythical Romulus (temporarily sharing kingship with the Sabine Titus Tatius) was the first of a canonical succession of seven kings including Numa Pompilius (a Sabine), Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcus, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus (the Etruscan founder of the Tarquin dynasty), Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius Superbus (expelled in 508 according to tradition), a patently artificial list since the names of other kings survive in various sources. The seven kings mentioned in Rev. 17:9 may allude to the tradition that the seven Roman kings represented a complete and predestined number of rulers.

The Romans are descended from a group of related tribes called Latini who originated in central Europe, settling in the region of Latium by the 10th century. Latin, the language spoken by the people of Latium, belongs to the Italic group of Indo-european, which has two major divisions, Oscan-Ubrian and Latin-Faliscan. Oscan was the standardized common language of central Italy until the area was subjugated by the Romans during the Republic. Originally the language of Latium and the city of Rome, Latin eventually displaced the other Italic languages as a result of the increasing political and military power which Rome exerted in central Italy and then throughout the Italian peninsula.

Republic (509-27 b.c.e.)

The monarchy was replaced by a republic whose chief magistrates were two consuls elected annually (thus avoiding concentrating power in the hands of one person), lists of whom, together with significant events, were preserved in the annales maximi, a chronicle compiled by the pontifex maximus and which served as a major source for such Roman historians as Q. Fabius Pictor and L. Cincius Alimentus (3rd century), Gnaeus Gellius (late 2nd century), and Licinius Macer (1st century). These historians were in turn major sources for Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Rom. arch. 1.6.2), the two historians of the early period of Roman history, major portions of whose works have survived.

The political history of republican Rome falls naturally into two periods, 509-265 and 264-27. During the first period Rome expanded locally (509-336), came to dominate central Italy (336-290), and eventually gained control of the entire peninsula (290-265). This control was partially facilitated by the founding of colonies in areas newly under Roman control as well as by Roman support for local aristocracies. Roman expansionism, which continued through the early 2nd century c.e., was not motivated by the desire to build an empire but rather to protect Rome’s existing holdings. During this period, Rome experienced the Gallic invasion which climaxed in the catastrophic sack of Rome ca. 386 b.c.e., resulting in the rebuilding of the city, reorganization of the army, and elimination of the Etruscans as a dominant power. Greek colonists in Magna Graecia, harassed by the Samnites, appealed to Rome for aid, which was forthcoming. The consequent Samnite wars lasted from 325-306, leading to Roman control of the west coast of the peninsula. The conflict was facilitated by the construction of the Via Appia, the first Roman road, in 312 under the censor Appius Claudius. A second series of wars was fought from 298-290 against the Samnites who had allied themselves with Gauls and Etruscans. However, allied with Tarentum, the Romans defeated the Samnite coalition and found themselves in control of most of central Italy. Conflict with Tarentum in the Bay of Naples led to open warfare from 281-272, ending with the fall of Tarentum.

The second period (264-27) saw Roman expansion outside of peninsular Italy, beginning with a series of wars with Carthage (264-201), its primary economic and political rival in the western Mediterranean region, followed by Roman interventions in the Greek east (201-146), and concluded by the gradual dissolution of the Republican constitution and the institution of the principate (146-27). In 264, because of a dispute with Sicily, Rome went to war with Carthage, a Punic city in North Africa colonized in the 8th century by Phoenicians from the Palestinian coast. The war concluded in 241 when the Carthaginians ceded Sicily to Rome. The Second Punic War (220-201) erupted when Carthaginian expansion in Spain came into conflict with Roman interests there. In the subsequent conflict, Hannibal led an army with elephants through Spain and over the mountains to Italy. Though he won many battles in peninsular Italy, he never quite managed to conquer Rome itself. Hannibal’s defeat at Zama in 201 led to the surrender of Carthage, destruction of her fleet, and payment of an enormous indemnity. The period of the first two Carthaginian wars coincided with a complex series of power struggles between the Hellenistic monarchies in the Greek east established by the diadochoi or “successors” of Alexander the Great (who died in 323). The three major players (all founders of dynasties in their respective spheres of rule) were Ptolemy in Egypt, Seleucus in Mesopotamia, and Antigonus in Greece and Macedonia. Rome opposed Philip of Macedonia, an Antigonid, because of his aid to Carthage. The Second Macedonian War (200-196), prosecuted by the Roman general Flamininus, led to Philip’s defeat and Flamininus’ proclamation of the freedom of Greece at the Isthmian games in Corinth in 196. Following two more Macedonian wars, Rome destroyed Corinth in 146 and incorporated Greece and Macedonia as Roman provinces. The Fourth Macedonian War (148-146) largely coincided with the Third Punic War (149-146), an uneven conflict which resulted in the destruction of Carthage in 146 (both Corinth and Carthage were rebuilt by Julius Caesar in 46 on the hundredth anniversary of their destruction). Finally, the year 133 became a landmark in Roman history when Attalus III of Pergamon died and bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, which became the Roman province of Asia in 129. Rome had by this time acquired much of the desirable real estate around the Mediterranean (Spain, Carthage, Pergamon, Macedonia), with the exception of Egypt.

The social history of Rome during the Republic is dominated by the so-called Conflict of the Orders, a major emphasis of late republican historians whose work was preserved by the Roman historian Livy (59 b.c.e.–17 c.e.) and the contemporary Greek historian of Rome, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (ca. 60 b.c.e.–ca. 30 c.e.). This Conflict of the Orders centered on the twin problems of debt and availability of farmland. Political and social power was concentrated in the hands of the aristocratic patricians (patres, “fathers”) who belonged to privileged clans (gentes). The plebs constituted the commons and may have originated as the clients of patricians. The plebs was itself divided into two groups: those who belonged to prominent families and those who were poor. The former considered themselves equal in status to the gentes, but were constitutionally prevented from enjoying an egalitarian status with the patricians. By the end of the monarchy, there were four basic rights (ius), all four possessed by the patricians, though only two by the plebeians. Of the two public rights, ius suffragii (right to participate in the assembly) and ius honoris (right to hold office), only the first was held by plebeians. Likewise, of the two private rights, the ius commercium (right to buy and sell) and the ius conubii (right of intermarriage), only the first was held by plebeians. The prohibition of intermarriage, found in the Twelve Tables (cf. Livy Urb. cond. 4.4.5; Dionysius Rom. arch. 10.60.5; Cicero Republic 2.37.63), the earliest surviving codification of Roman law, was critical in keeping the two orders separate. Patricians monopolized the priesthoods, principal magistracies, the interregnum procedure, senate membership, and effectively controlled the popular assembly through patron-client relationships. The two distinctively plebeian magistracies were the tribunate and aedileship. The senate originated during the monarchy as a council of kings, appointed first by kings and then during the Republic by the chief magistrates. By the end of the monarchy there were 300 senators (perhaps based on three Roman tribes, each consisting of 10 curiae). The comitia, or assemblies, were three in number: the comitia curiata, in which each of 30 original curiae (a clan-type form of social organization) had a single vote; the comitia centuriata, a military assembly based on landed wealth; and the comitia tributa, the plebeian assembly. Following the secessio plebis, the temporary emigration of the plebs from Rome to the Aventine in 494, they formed their own state within a state with an assembly (concilium plebis) and annually elected their own magistrates (10 tribunes, two aediles) for nearly two centuries. The codification of the Twelve Tables of Roman law by two successive committees of 10 men (Decemvirs) in 451 and 450, replacing the consulship and the tribunate, represents a major plebeian success (Livy 3.33-57; Diodorus 12.24-26). The Sexto-Licinian laws of 367 allowed plebeians to hold the consulship. Equality of the plebs became more or less complete by 287 with the enactment of the lex Hortensia, which turned the decrees of the plebs (plebiscita) into laws binding on all the people including patricians. From the time of the Gracchi (last third of the 2nd century), Roman political life was polarized by the optimates (who sided with the senate) and the populares (who worked with the popular assembly and the tribunate).

The Greeks, who had colonized Magna Graecia in southern Italy by the mid-8th century, came to dominate Roman cultural life by the mid-1st century. Greek literature, mythology, and history were central in Roman education, and Greek was the first language of Roman education. By the end of the 1st century b.c.e. many young Roman aristocrats were routinely educated in Greece and were thus bilingual. By the 1st century, only a small percentage of the population of the residents of Rome were of Roman or Italian ancestry, perhaps 10 percent. Within Rome itself various national groups often maintained linguistic and cultural traditions; the extensive Jewish community, e.g., which numbered from 30 to 50 thousand, was a Greek-speaking community, doubtless because of the hellenization of Palestine.

Empire (27 b.c.e.–476 c.e.)

The Roman Empire, from its foundation by Augustus in 27 b.c.e. through the fall of the western empire in 476 c.e., falls roughly into two periods, the Principate (27 b.c.e.–283 c.e.), when the emperors took the title princeps (“first man”); and the Dominate (284-476), when emperors assumed the title dominus (“lord”) and the principate was transformed into a bureaucratic and totalitarian monarchy.

In the eight years following the civil unrest sparked by Julius Caesar’s assassination on 15 March 44 b.c.e., Octavian gained control of Italy and the west (43-35) and after that the east at the decisive sea battle at Actium where he defeated Antony and Cleopatra VII (31), ending the chaotic civil wars. Octavian, given the name Augustus by the senate in 27 (he was almost given the name Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome), ruled as the princeps from 27 b.c.e. to 14 c.e. At the beginning, the age of Augustus was regarded by some as the restoration of the Republic (Velleius Hist. rom. 2.89; Ovid Fasti 1.589), but by others as the beginning of autocracy (Dio Hist. 52.11.1; 53.11.4). The latter view proved to be the more correct one. While Augustus began by laying down extraordinary dictatorial powers, he gradually assumed a series of political and civil powers and offices including the title imperator (“emperor”), the tribunicia potestas (“tribunician powers”) in 23 (Dio 53.32.5), and pontifex maximus (“high priest”) in 12 b.c.e. According to Tacitus, Augustus “gradually increased his power, and drew into his own hands the functions of the senate, the magistracies, and the laws” (Ann. 1.2). Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar under the title divi filius (“son of the god [Julius]”), continued the Julio-Claudian dynasty which included Tiberius (14-37 c.e.), Gaius (37-41, nicknamed Caligula “baby boots”), Claudius (41-54), and concluded with Nero (54-68). Following the unstable period of 68-69, when three emperors reigned, Vespasian (69-79) and his sons Titus (79-81) and Domitian (81-96) established the short-lived Flavian dynasty. Nerva, who reigned only briefly (96-98), established a new imperial dynasty consisting of a series of adoptions, by adopting Trajan (98-117), of Spanish descent the first emperor to originate in the provinces. When Trajan died the empire was at its greatest extent before or after. Trajan’s adopted successor Hadrian (117-138) was a relative on his father’s side. Hadrian in turn adopted Antoninus Pius (138-161) who, following Hadrian’s recommendation, adopted Marcus Aurelius (161-180), a relative of Hadrian and a devotee of Stoicism who has been widely admired as a model philosopher-ruler. Finally, the son of Marcus Aurelius, Commodus (181-190) was the last of the five imperial successors of Trajan.

During the early empire, there were two new social developments: (1) the social pyramid (consisting of an upper class numbering not more than 5 percent of the population, no middle class, and a vast lower class) received a new summit which consisted of the imperial household, and (2) the provincials and provinces were integrated into the Roman system. The traditional Roman orders which constituted the upper-class minority, the senate (whose members numbered ca. 600 during the 1st and early 2nd centuries), and the equites or knights (numbering ca. 20 thousand during the same period), came to include the urban decurions, aristocratic members of the councils of provincial cities. Under Augustus and his successors, the senate retained a formal role (such as the investiture of emperors) but lost all real political power. While the equites only held public office as judges and officers during the late Republic, under Augustus they were employed as procuratores Augusti, placed in charge of the administration of imperial property as well as the economic and financial administration of the whole empire. There were two very different kinds of relationships in the Roman social structure between members of the upper and lower classes. The emperor treated senators and equites as amici (“friends”) or equals, while his relationship to the masses was that of a powerful patron to dependent clients. Augustus took the title pater patriae (“father of the fatherland”) in 2 b.c.e. as a formal expression of this dependency relationship.

Augustus extended the Roman Empire to include Egypt, parts of Asia Minor, the areas S of the Danube from the Alps to the Black Sea, and northern Spain. Increasing urbanization was a characteristic of the early empire, which included some 1000 cities of varying populations. While most cities had a population of 10-15 thousand, Pergamum was a mid-range city with a population of ca. 50 thousand, Antioch and Alexandria had populations in the hundreds of thousands, and Rome, the largest city of the empire, an estimated 1 million inhabitants. The entire population of the Mediterranean world during the reign of Augustus is estimated at 50 to 80 million; at least 20 percent were slaves, 10 percent Jews, and 90 percent lived on the land (giving an agricultural base to the imperial economy). During the reign of Augustus, a dual provincial system was developed consisting of imperial provinces (originally Gaul, Spain, and Syria) and senatorial provinces governed by proconsuls (such as Asia and Africa) who nevertheless had first to be approved by the emperor. Roman provinces were integrated into the structure of the empire by several means: (1) construction of a network of roads begun during the late Republic; (2) introduction of coherent provincial administration; (3) admission of provincials into Roman military service; (4) extension of Roman citizenship to provincials; and (5) the process of urbanization. The extension of Roman citizenship was particularly significant. Under Augustus, according to his “testament” called the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (“The Achievements of the Divine Augustus”), there were 4,937,000 Roman citizens in 14 c.e., a number which increased to 5,984,071 by 48 (Tacitus Ann. 11.25). Under Caracalla (211-217), citizenship was given to all free inhabitants of the empire. Paul of Tarsus is an example of a provincial who possessed Roman citizenship. The distinction between provincials and Roman citizens which existed early in the 1st century c.e. was gradually transformed during the 2nd century into the distinction between the honestiores (the high born) and humiliores (the low born). These received unequal treatment under Roman law. Capital offenses for Roman citizens during the 1st century and honestiores during the 2nd century and beyond frequently consisted of exile, while capital offenses committed by noncitizens or humiliores was punished by crucifixion.

The pax Romana (“Roman peace”), which began initially as the achievement of Augustus, was a period extending from his reign to that of Antoninus Pius (138-161) which enjoyed relative tranquility both domestically and on the frontiers. Exceptions to this peaceful era included the First and Second Jewish Revolts (66-73 and 132-135) and the intervening Jewish revolts under Trajan in Cyrenaica, Egypt, and Mesopotamia (115-117). The attempt of the emperor Gaius to introduce a golden statue of himself into the Jewish temple in Jerusalem (an act virtually guaranteed to trigger a Jewish revolt) came to nothing when Gaius was assassinated in 41 c.e. by members of the Praetorian Guard (Philo Leg. 197-337; Josephus BJ 2.184-203; Ant. 18.256-309).

The various aspects of Roman religion, such as Roman civic religion, Roman army religion, and Mithraism, had little significant impact on non-Romans with the exception of the Roman imperial cult, i.e., the worship of deceased and even living Roman emperors, primarily by provincials in the east and west. From Augustus to Constantine, no less than 36 of 60 emperors were apotheosized and given the title divus, “divine.” In Rome, certain deceased emperors were posthumously designated divine by the Roman senate and worshipped alongside Dea Roma (the goddess Roma, a personification of the city of Rome), and the more traditional romanized divinities of Greek cult and myth. In the Greek east, living emperors were sometimes accorded divine worship, which was as political as it was religious. In the earliest Christian martyrdom, the Martyrdom of Polycarp (written during the third quarter of the 2nd century), Polycarp is required to sacrifice to the imperial cult or suffer martyrdom. Rev. 13 suggests that Christians found themselves in the same predicament late in the 1st century.

Bibliography. G. Alföldy, The Social History of Rome (Baltimore, 1988); The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, 2: Greco-Roman Setting, ed. D. W. J. Gill and C. Gempf (Grand Rapids, 1994); CAH, 2nd ed., 3: Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 b.c., ed. A. E. Astin et al. (Cambridge, 1989); 7/2: The Rise of Rome to 220 b.c., ed. F. W. Walbank et al. (Cambridge, 1989); F. Millar, The Roman Near East: 31 b.c.–a.d. 337 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 b.c. to a.d. 68, 5th ed. (London, 1982); A History of the Roman World, 753 to 146 b.c., 4th ed. (London, 1980); J. E. Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City (Baltimore, 1988).

David E. Aune

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ROME

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)