Roman Empire

D

3

Britain

Only a century after Julius Caesar briefly invaded Britain, the emperor Claudius launched a major expedition in ad 43 and imposed Roman rule in southern England. The Britons were rebellious, and at first the Romans preferred to rule through subject kings. But the Britons resented Roman domination and especially Roman taxes. In ad 60 Boudicca, queen of the British tribe called the Iceni, led a major insurrection and destroyed Roman settlements at London, Saint Albans, and Colchester. The Romans later retook England, but only partially conquered Wales and parts of lowland Scotland. For a long time, Hadrian’s Wall, stretching across northern England, remained the frontier of the empire. New evidence also suggests a Roman presence on the coast of Ireland.

The native peoples in Britain were less urban than those in Gaul and were correspondingly less influenced by Roman culture. Stone inscriptions indicate that the Britons were also less literate than the Gauls. Latin did replace Celtic in most lowland areas of Britain, although the German invasions of Britain of the 5th century ad eliminated Latin there as a living language.

D

4

Africa

An indigenous or native people known as the Berbers originally populated the northern coast of Africa. However, colonists from the eastern Mediterranean kingdom of Phoenicia (most of modern Lebanon) established the city of Carthage on the Gulf of Tunis (present-day Tunisia). To the west of Carthage, native Berber kings ruled in Numidia and Mauritania (present-day Algeria and Morocco). After Rome defeated Carthage in 146 bc, it established its first province in Africa. Later, Rome also added Numidia and Mauritania as provinces. When the North African general Lucius Septimius Severus became emperor in ad 193, he spoke Latin with a Punic accent.

The agricultural lands of North Africa provided grain to Rome, and many wealthy senators invested in them. Under the emperor Nero (ad 54-68), half of the Roman province of Africa belonged to six individuals, and the largest landholder was the emperor himself. Until the barbarian invasions of the 5th century ad, remarkable irrigation systems made lands that today seem barren enormously fertile. The African provinces had a vigorous cultural life, which included Latin writers like Lucius Apuleius and Fronto, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius. The urban population of North Africa was Romanized, although people in the villages continued to speak the Punic language of the Carthaginians until the 4th century ad. During the Christian era, North Africa produced some of the great intellectual figures of the early church, including Tertullian, Saint Cyprian, and Saint Augustine.

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D

5

Greece and Asia Minor

Although the Greeks had long treated Rome with condescension, they recognized that Roman power was unlikely to disappear. Greece yielded to Rome’s political authority in the 2nd century bc but maintained its cultural superiority. Greek cities acclaimed the Roman emperors as gods more eagerly than the Roman people did. Greek was the everyday language of the eastern Mediterranean, used in business, intellectual life, and even biblical writings like the New Testament. Roman aristocrats studied rhetoric (public speaking) and philosophy in Greece, while Latin poets used Greek models and myths as inspiration for their verse. Roman artists and architects also adapted Greek styles. The emperor Augustus spoke to his friends in Greek, Nero sang in Greek, Hadrian wrote poetry and Marcus Aurelius penned his Meditations in Greek. Emperors surrounded themselves with Greeks as astrologers, actors, doctors, or political advisers, while Greek artists converged on Rome. The poet Juvenal was typically sarcastic in his assessment of the role the Greeks played in Roman society when he wrote: “Grammarian, orator, geometrist, painter, doctor, prophet, wrestling-master, acrobat, wizard—a penniless Greek can do anything!” But Horace, an earlier poet and satirist, possibly made a more accurate comment: “Captive Greece overcame its fierce conqueror, and brought culture to rustic Latium.”

D

6

Judea

In 63 bc Roman legions first entered Palestine, and Pompey the Great, the Roman general who led the conquering forces, placed the Jewish state under the control of the governor of Syria. Another Roman general and statesman, Mark Antony, later gave the throne to Herod the Great, who began his rule in 37 bc. Herod was born into a prominent military family of Idumaeans, converts to Judaism who were distrusted by native Jews. Herod, whose father was granted Roman citizenship by Julius Caesar, was determined to assimilate the Jews into Greco-Roman culture. He dedicated the new cities of Caesarea and Sebaste (the Roman name for Samaria) to Augustus and built temples for the worship of the emperor. The king also initiated public games and placed Greek words on his coinage. Deeply religious Jews despised the nudity required at the games and considered the use of Greek language blasphemous. Their views contributed to Herod’s unpopularity. Although Herod’s use of Greek culture made him hated in the region of Judea, he was popular with the Jewish population outside Judea, known as the Diaspora, on whom he lavished money as a benefactor. Herod, fearing mutiny and conspiracy, did not trust his own people and enrolled in his army only Greeks and Diaspora Jews.

Although Greeks and Romans usually distrusted religions that worshiped only one god, Roman leaders such as Julius Caesar and Augustus were sympathetic towards the Jews. Jews were exempt from Roman military service. The Romans permitted freedom of worship, and Diaspora Jews could send a tax to support the temple in Jerusalem. Augustus was sensitive to Jewish religious beliefs and allowed their coinage to omit the traditional image of the emperor because it was seen as sacrilegious.

After the death of Herod, his kingdom was divided among his sons, who ruled as tetrarchs (leadership by four rulers), although Judea soon became a small Roman province under the administration of Pontius Pilate, a military governor, or procurator, chosen by the Romans. Dissent, so long repressed by Herod’s cruelty, burst forth, and the people in Palestine began to agitate for religious and political freedom. Messianic prophecy, the religious belief in the coming of a savior, was accompanied by bitter fighting between the political factions and religious sects among the Jewish people. The Zealots, a Jewish sect whose name later became a byword for political extremism, agitated for Judean independence, while inept Roman administrators were unable to control the situation. Under Nero a general rebellion erupted, and he dispatched four legions led by Vespasian to crush the uprising. The Romans destroyed the Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem and defeated the last Zealot holdouts at the fortress of Masada in ad 73. The Romans then abolished the priesthood, thus leaving no remnant of Jewish political organization.

From 132 to135 the charismatic figure of Simon Bar Kokhba led Jews who resisted an imperial ban on certain religious rites. They also opposed a Roman colony that was established on the site of Jerusalem, a holy city to the Jews. The Roman victory against Bar Kokhba’s army brought the final dispersion of the Jewish people. Although some Jews remained, Jewish culture and the Jewish people essentially survived through the communities of the Diaspora.

V

Life in Imperial Rome

The conquests of the empire gradually transformed the nature of Roman society. A principal reason for this transformation was that the very idea of “Roman” had changed as Rome’s leaders extended citizenship to all Italians and to millions of provincials. It is hard to generalize about Roman society during the Roman Empire because the Roman population had become so diverse. People who valued Rome’s traditions were not at all happy to discover that they shared their city with Easterners who spoke different languages and observed different customs. Others recognized that provincials brought different blood and a new vitality to Roman society that allowed it to survive for centuries.

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