Download 0-Background

History 2
Chapter 3
Empires and Exchanges in the Ancient Mediterranean
The civilization of ancient Greece was the second major contributing source in the
formation of western civilization, after the civilizations of ancient West Asia. While
the Greeks were themselves profoundly influenced by the older civilizations of
Egypt and Mesopotamia, they eventually diverged sharply from their west Asian
neighbors in political thought, religious outlook and artistic vision. Above all,
ancient Greek civilization was distinguished by its vision of a rational universe fully
comprehensible by the free exercise of human reason.
Like other ancient cultures, early Greek civilization developed myths about the
gods and goddesses that formed the universe and shaped the actions of mortal
humans. But in the Greek tradition, expressed most brilliantly in the poetry of
Homer, self-confident individuals shared the spotlight with the deities and worked
out their fate through their own actions.
In the later classical age of Greek history, human reason became an even more
central focus. Greek historians, playwrights and philosophers attempted to define
and comprehend a world shaped by the rational intellect of the free, autonomous
individual. Gone were the theocratic monarchies ruled by the semi-divine kings of
ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Gone too was a view of religion based on the
inscrutable actions of distant, unapproachable gods whose ways were
incomprehensible to the rational human mind. In place of these conventions, the
ancient Greeks developed a humanistic outlook that would shape western
civilization over the next several centuries. Humanism is the belief in the value of
the individual human person and a confidence in the ability of human beings,
through the free exercise of their human talents, to create a good society.
Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean World, 2000–334 B.C.E.
A branch of the Indo-European speakers reached the Greek peninsula around 2000
B.C.E. The Greek speakers, as well as the Phoenicians (FOE-knee-shuns) were
active traders in the Mediterranean. Both lived in scattered city-states, whose
residents sailed across the seas to establish new outposts that retained their ties to
the mother city-state.
Although we tend to think of Greece as a single Greek-speaking entity, whether in
earlier times or today, there was no unified nation called “Greece” in the ancient
world. Greek speakers thought of themselves as citizens of the city-state where they
lived, such as Athens or Sparta. By the year 500 B.C.E. Athens had emerged as the
1
largest of over one hundred different Greek city-states, and only Athens had a
democracy in which all male citizens, some 10 percent of the city’s population,
could participate equally. In addition to being a military power, Athens was a
cultural center famous for its drama, art, and philosophy.
The Rise of the Greek City-State, 800–500 B.C.E.
Since there are no surviving materials in ancient Greek from between 1200 and
900 B.C.E., there is a gap in our knowledge. A new era in Greek history starts
around 800 B.C.E., when various regions—including mainland Greece, the islands
of the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, and the Aegean coast of Turkey—
coalesced into city-states (polis; plural, poleis). The residents of these different
places began to farm more intensively, and the resulting increase in agricultural
production permitted a diversification of labor among the growing population:
while the vast majority of people farmed around the cities, a tiny minority were
able to settle inside walled cities. These cities had both markets for agricultural
goods and temples to different gods. Each of these city-states, including the
surrounding agricultural area, was small, with a population of between five and ten
thousand people, but each was self-sufficient, having its own courts, law code, and
army.
These city-states each had a guardian deity whose temple was located within the
city walls. The Greeks believed in a pantheon of many gods headed by Zeus and
his wife Hera. Each god possessed specific traits: Athena, the guardian god of
Athens, was a goddess of war and of weaving. The Greeks told many myths about
the gods and goddesses, often focusing on their attempts to intervene in the human
world.
The citizens of the city-state gathered during festivals to offer animal sacrifices to
the gods, with whom they communicated through prayers and oracles. The most
famous oracle was at Delphi, on the Gulf of Corinth, where individuals and citystates consulted Apollo’s priests to learn what would happen in the future before
making any important decisions. People traveled all over the Aegean to pray for
medical cures and to participate in temple festivals such as the Olympic games,
which were held every four years from 776 B.C.E. at the temple to Zeus at Olympia
in the Peloponnese.
The citizens of the city-states of Greece established more than 250 different citystates along the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Like Mesopotamian
city-states, the Greek city-states remained linked to the mother city through trade.
Ships carried olive oil, wine, and pottery produced by the Greeks to other regions,
where they obtained lumber to make more ships.
2
The Greco-Persian Wars, 490–479 B.C.E.
The Athenian army was particularly effective because it consisted of citizensoldiers with a powerful commitment to defend their home city-state. Greek
soldiers, called hoplites (HAHP-lites), were divided into units, called phalanxes,
eight men deep. If the first row of soldiers was broken, the row behind them
pressed forward to meet the attack.
The first important Athenian victory came at the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C.E.
The Persian ruler Darius sent a force to punish the Athenians for supporting an
uprising against the Persians by the Greeks living on the east coast of the Ae-gean.
The Athenian forces of 11,000 men attacked the Persian army of 25,000 when they
were foraging for food and, in a stunning reversal of what every informed person
expected, won a decisive victory on the plain of Marathon. (The English word
marathon comes from a later legend about a messenger running over 20 miles [32
km] from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory.) Herodotus’s tally of the
casualties underlines the immensity of the Athenian victory: the Athenians lost 192
men; the Persians, 6,400.
After Darius died in 486 B.C.E., his son Xerxes (r. 486–465 B.C.E.) decided to
avenge his father’s defeat and gathered a huge army that he hoped would frighten
the Greeks into surrendering. But Sparta and Athens for the first time organized a
coalition of the Greek city-states that fought the Persians for control of a mountain
pass north of Athens at Thermopylae (thuhr-MOP-uh-lie). The Greeks were
eventually routed, but three hundred Spartans stood firm and fought to their deaths.
The victorious Persians then sacked the deserted city of Athens.
The Greeks regrouped, and the Athenian naval commanders took advantage of
their superior knowledge of the local terrain to secure a surprising Greek victory at
Salamis. In recounting this battle, an important turning point in the war, Herodotus
highlighted the role of Artemisia (fl. 480 B.C.E.), the woman ruler of Halicarnassus,
Herodotus’s hometown, who had become queen on the death of her husband and
who, like all conquered peoples in the Persian Empire, fought alongside the
Persians. Artemisia (ar-TEM-ee-zee-uh) commanded 5 of the Persians’ 1,207
triremes (TRY-reems), three-story boats powered by rowers on each level. “She
sailed with the fleet,” Herodotus explains, “in spite of the fact that she had a
grown-up son and that there was consequently no necessity for her to do so.” His
meaning is clear: if her son had still been a child, he would have understood her
sailing with the fleet. Artemisia fascinated Herodotus because she differed so much
from well-off Athenian women, who stayed indoors and devoted themselves to
managing their households.
Herodotus employed contrasts to heighten his comparisons between Greeks and
non-Greeks. The Athenians enjoyed the benefits of democracy while the Persians
suffered under the tyranny of Xerxes. Greek men were strong while Persian men
3
were weak, which is why Xerxes had to depend on Artemisia. In the inverted world
of the war, the only Persian commander worthy of mention in Herodotus’s eyes is
the Greek woman Artemisia.
Contrary to all expectations, the Greeks defeated the Persians. Defeat, however,
had little impact on the Persian Empire except to define its western edge.
Culture and Politics in Athens, 480–404 B.C.E.
During the century after the defeat of the Persians, Athens experienced
unprecedented cultural growth. The new literary genre of Greek tragedy took
shape, and the Athenians constructed the great temple to Athena on the Acropolis
(uh-KRAW-poe-lis), the great bluff overlooking the city, as a lasting monument to
Greek victory against the Persians.
In 472 B.C.E., the playwright Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.E.) wrote The Persians, the
earliest Greek tragedy surviving today. Set in the Persian capital at Susa, the play
opens with a chorus of elderly men speculating about Xerxes’ attempted invasion
of Greece because they have had no news for so long. One-quarter of the way
through the play, a lone messenger arrives and mournfully announces:
A single stroke has brought about the ruin of great Prosperity, the flower of Persia
fallen and gone. Oh oh! To be the first to bring bad news is bad; But necessity
demands the roll of suffering Be opened, Persians. 6
Writing only eight years after the war, Aeschylus (ESS-kih-luhs), himself a veteran,
exaggerates the losses to make the audience sympathize with the Persians and to
emphasize the shared humanity of the Persians and the Greeks. Xerxes’ mother, the
Queen, struggles to understand why the Persians have lost: they have violated
natural law, she eventually realizes, by trying to conquer what did not belong to
them. The Persians is the first of over one hundred tragedies written during the fifth
century B.C.E. by three great playwrights—Aeschylus, Sophocles (sof-uh-KLEEZ)
(496–406 B.C.E.), and Euripides (you-RIP-uh-deez) (ca. 485–406 B.C.E.)—that
show individuals, both male and female, struggling to understand their fates.
In 478 B.C.E., the Athenians formed the Delian (DEE-lih-yuhn) League, a group of
city-states whose stated purpose was to drive the Persians from the Greek world.
After several victories in the 470s against the Persians, the Persian threat was
eliminated, prompting some of the league’s members to withdraw. Athens invaded
these cities and forced them to become its subjects. In the 460s a general named
Pericles (PER-eh-kleez) (ca. 495–429 B.C.E.) emerged as the most popular leader in
the city, and in 454 B.C.E. the Athenians moved the league’s treasury to Athens,
ending all pretence of an alliance among equals. This was the closest that Athens
came to having an empire, but its possessions were all Greek-speaking, and its
control was short-lived.
4
In 449 B.C.E., Pericles used the league’s funds to finance a building campaign to
make Athens as physically impressive as it was politically powerful. The
centerpiece of the city’s reconstruction, the Parthenon, was both a temple to
Athena, the city’s guardian deity, and a memorial to those who had died in the
wars with Persia. Once completed, the Parthenon expressed the Athenians’ desire
to be the most advanced people of the ancient world.
The Spartans, however, felt that they, not Athens, should be the leader of the
Greeks. Since the 460s, tensions had been growing between the two city-states,
and from 431 to 404 B.C.E. Athens and Sparta, and their allied city-states, engaged
in the protracted Peloponnesian War. Sparta, with the help of the Persians, finally
defeated Athens in 404 B.C.E. The long and drawnout Peloponnesian War wore
both Sparta and Athens down, creating an opportunity for the rulers of the northern
region of Macedon to conquer Greece.
Alexander of Macedon and His Successors, 334–30 B.C.E.
In the course of his lifetime, Aristotle witnessed the decline of Athens, which never
recovered from the costs of the Peloponnesian War, and the rise of his native
region of Macedon. Philip and his son Alexander of Macedon (also called
Alexander the Great) were autocrats untouched by the Athenian tradition of
democracy: as generals they ordered their professional armies to obey them and
governed conquered territory as if the inhabitants were part of their army. Many
scholars use the term Hellenization to describe the process by which societies,
peoples, and places during Alexander’s rule became more Greek (the Greek word
for Greece is Hellas). As Alexander’s army conquered territory, his Greek-speaking
soldiers encountered many different peoples living in West, Central, and South
Asia. Some settled in these regions and built communities that resembled those
they had left behind in Greece.
Recent historians have questioned this depiction of Alexander as a champion of
Greek culture, noting how much he emulated the Persians. Alexander portrayed
him-self as a defender of the Achaemenid tradition and adopted many Achaemenid
practices, sometimes to the dismay of his Greek followers. Newly discovered
leather scrolls show that four years after defeating the Achaemenids, Alexander’s
government issued orders under his name in the same format and language as the
Achaemenids.8 The borders of his empire overlapped almost entirely with those of
the Achaemenid Empire, and his army, administration, and tax system were all
modeled on those of the Achaemenids. After his death, Alexander’s empire broke
into three major sections, each ruled by a successor dynasty that followed
Achaemenid practice.
5
Philip and Alexander: From Macedon to Empire, 359–323 B.C.E.
Lying to the north of Greece, Macedon was a peripheral region with no cities and
little farming where Greek was spoken. Originally a barren region, it became a
powerful kingdom under Philip II (r. 359–336 B.C.E.), who reorganized the army
into a professional fighting force of paid soldiers. Philip and Alexander built
empires by amassing wealth from the peoples they conquered.
Philip created, and Alexander inherited, an army more powerful than any of its
rivals. Philip reorganized his army by training them to use close-packed infantry
formations and by arming some of the infantry with pikes 17 feet (5 m) long.
Alexander’s infantry carried the same long pikes, and the infantry phalanx had
15,000 men who fought in rows and were almost invincible; 1,800 cavalry aided
them by attacking the enemy on either side.
Following his father’s assassination, Alexander defeated the Persian forces in 331
B.C.E., and in 330 B.C.E. one of the Persian satraps killed the reigning Achaemenid
emperor Darius III (r. 336–330 B.C.E.). This turn of events allowed Alexander to
take over the Persian Empire intact; he did not alter the administrative structure of
satrapies. A brilliant military strategist, Alexander led his troops over eleven
thousand miles in eight years, going as far as Egypt and north India, but did not
significantly expand the territory of the Persian Empire.
The farther they traveled from Greece, the more unhappy Alexander’s men grew. In
326 B.C.E., when they reached the banks of the Hyphasis River in India, they
refused to go on, forcing Alexander to turn back. After a long and difficult march,
Alexander and the remnants of his army returned to Babylon, where Alexander
died in 323 B.C.E.
The City of Alexandria
After his conquest of Egypt, Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria,
which would become one of the great cosmopolitan urban centers of the ancient
world. Sited in the Egyptian delta where the Nile River flows into the
Mediterranean Sea, Alexandria evolved into a vast trading emporium, as merchants
and products flowed in from West Asian caravan routes, Mediterranean ports and
the Indian Ocean.
Alexandria became a major center of learning in the ancient Mediterranean. There
the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (eh-ruh-TOSS-thih-nees) devised an ingenious
experiment by which he concluded that the earth’s circumference must be 24,427
miles (39,311 km), an error of less than 2 percent from the actual circumference of
24,857 miles (40,000 km) (see Figure 6.1). Eratosthenes’ brilliant experiment taught
the Greeks that the known world occupied only a small section of the earth’s
northern hemisphere.
6
The Legacy of Alexander the Great
The aftereffects of Alexander’s conquests lasted far longer than his brief thirteenyear reign. Initially the greatest impact came from his soldiers. Thousands traveled
with him, but thousands more chose to stay behind in different parts of Asia, often
taking local wives. These men were responsible for the spread of Greek culture
over a large geographic region.
In the Afghan town of Ai Khanum (aye-EE KAH-nuhm), archaeologists have
unearthed an entire Greek city with all the usual buildings of a Greek town: a
theater, a citadel where the army was stationed, a gymnasium, and temples
housing statues of gods made by local artists following Greek prototypes. The
population of Ai Khanum and other similar settlements included both the local
Iranian peoples and descendants of Alexander’s soldiers.
After Alexander’s death, his empire broke into three sections, each ruled by one of
his generals: Egypt went to Ptolemy (TOHL-uh-mee), Greece and Macedon to
Antigonas (an-TIG-uh-nass), and all other territories (see Map 6.2) to Seleucus (sehLOO-kuhs), who sent Megasthenes as his ambassador to the Mauryans in 302
B.C.E. (see Chapter 3). Each general founded a regional dynasty named for himself:
the Ptolemies (TOHL-uh-meze), the Antigonids (an-TIG-uh-nidz), and the Seleucids
(seh-LOO-sidz). These successor regimes continued to administer their territories
using the Achaemenid system of administration.
Cultural Exchanges in the Roman Empire
The expansion of Rome from a city-state to a world empire represented the
culmination of the universalistic sweep of the Hellenistic era. Like Alexander’s
empire before it, the Roman Empire incorporated many different nationalities and
regions into a transnational, multicultural world-state.
The Conquest of the Mediterranean World, 272–146 B.C.E.
In 272 B.C.E., the year that Rome gained control of the Italian peninsula, six
different powers held territory around the coastline of the Mediterranean, and the
residents of these different regions had no shared cultural identity. To the east, the
three successors to Alexander still occupied territory: the Antigonids in Macedon,
the Seleucids in Syria, and the Ptolemies in Egypt. In addition, two separate leagues
of city-states controlled the Greek peninsula. Finally, there was Carthage, which
controlled the north coast of Africa between today’s Tunis and Morocco, the
southern half of modern-day Spain, Corsica, Sardinia, and half of Sicily. Carthage
had an oligarchic government and prospered by taxing trade. The only two actively
expansionist states among these different powers, Rome and Carthage, collided in
264 B.C.E.
7
In that year Rome sent troops to support one city-state in Sicily against a different
city-state allied with Carthage, triggering the first of the Punic Wars. (The Latin
word for Phoenicians was Poeni, the origin of the English word Punic [PYOO-nik].)
Whereas Rome had an army of citizens who fought when they were not farming,
Carthage’s army consisted almost entirely of mercenary troops paid to fight.
Previously a land power, Rome built its first navy of sailing ships powered by
multiple levels of oarsmen. After more than twenty years of fighting—some on
land, some on sea—Rome won control of Sicily in 241 B.C.E., but Carthage
continued to dominate the Mediterranean west of Sicily.
Rome and Carthage faced each other again in the Second Punic War (sometimes
called the Hannibalic War) from 218 to 202 B.C.E. This war matched two brilliant
generals: Carthage’s Hannibal (ca. 247–182 B.C.E.) with Rome’s Scipio Africanus
(SIP-ee-o ah-frih-KAHN-us) (236–183 B.C.E.). Writing about events that occurred
before he was born, Polybius believed that while an army might use a pretext to
attack an enemy and a battle could begin a war, the historian should distinguish
the underlying causes of war from both their pretexts and their beginnings. The
underlying cause of the Second Punic War, Polybius argued, dated back to
Hannibal’s childhood and his father’s anger at losing the First Punic War. From
New Carthage (modern-day Cartagena) in Spain, Hannibal led a force of 50,000
infantry, 9,000 cavalry, and 37 elephants on a five-month march across southern
France and then through the Alps.
Polybius believed that the historian had to do on-site research; as he said, “I …
have personally explored the country, and have crossed the Alps myself to obtain
first-hand information and evidence.” Hannibal’s decision to cross the Alps was
audacious: “These conditions were so unusual as to be almost freakish,” Polybius
learned from interviews with the locals. “The new snow lying on top of the old …
gave way easily.” Many of Hannibal’s men froze or starved to death, and Polybius
estimated that less than half the original army, and a single elephant, survived the
fifteen-day march through the Alps.
Carthage’s army included Africans, Spaniards, Celts, Phoenicians, Italians, and
Greeks. The varied composition of Hannibal’s force intimidated the Romans.
Polybius reported: “The troops were drawn up in alternate companies, the Celts
naked, the Spaniards with their short linen tunics bordered with purple—their
national dress—so that the line presented a strange and terrifying appearance.”
Polybius attributed much of the Romans’ success to the rules governing their army.
Like the Qin army in China (see Chapter 4), the Roman commanders enforced a
complex policy of rewards and punishments. Men who fought bravely in battle
could win a spear, cup, or lance. The punishments for failure to fight were severe.
If a group of men deserted, their commander randomly selected one-tenth of the
deserters to be beaten to death, explains Polybius, “whereupon all the soldiers fall
8
upon him with clubs and stones, and usually kill him in the camp itself.” Fear of
this punishment kept Roman soldiers at their posts even when defeat was certain.
Diminished as their numbers were by the trip across the Alps, Hannibal’s army
entered Italy and won several major battles in succession, yet Hannibal never
attacked Rome directly. When the two armies finally met in 202 B.C.E. at Zama, on
the North African coast, Rome defeated Carthage. In 201 B.C.E., Rome and
Carthage signed a peace treaty that imposed heavy fines on Carthage, granted
Carthage’s holdings in Spain to Rome, and limited the size of its navy to only ten
vessels. With the elimination of Carthage as a rival power, the Roman Empire
gained control of the entire western Mediterranean.
After the Second Punic War, Roman forces fought a series of battles with the three
successor states to Alexander. They defeated the Seleucids in 188 B.C.E. yet
allowed them to continue to rule in Syria. Rome defeated the Antigonids in 168
B.C.E., the year Polybius came to Rome as a hostage, and brought the Antigonid
dynasty to an end. In the same year, Ptolemaic Egypt became a client state of
Rome, nominally ruled by a Ptolemy king. Rome secured control of the eastern
Mediterranean only in 133 B.C.E.
In 146 B.C.E. Rome defeated Carthage a third time. The victorious general, Scipio
Aemilianus (SIP-ee-o ay-mill-YAN-us), the grandson of Scipio Africanus who had
won the First Punic War, ordered the city leveled and the survivors sent to Rome to
be sold as slaves. The Roman senate passed a bill forbidding anyone to rebuild
Carthage and in place of Carthage’s empire established the province of Africa (the
origin of the continent’s name), an area of about 5,000 square miles (13,000 sq km)
along the North African coast. As we have seen in previous chapters, conquering
rulers frequently exacted a high price from the people of a newly subjugated
territory, but the order to destroy a city and enslave all its inhabitants marked a new
level of brutality.
Each conquest brought new territory to be administered by the Roman Empire.
Before the First Punic War, the newly conquered lands usually acquired the same
governing structure as the city-state of Rome; in later periods the conquered
territories, including Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, were ruled as military districts by a
governor appointed by the senate. The residents of these provinces did not receive
citizenship.
The Late Republic, 146–27 B.C.E.
Polybius and his contemporaries were well aware of the strains on Roman society
that came with the rapid acquisition of so much new territory. During the years of
Rome’s conquests, the political system of the republic had functioned well. But
soon after the victories of 146 B.C.E., the republic proved unable to resolve the
tensions that came with the expanded empire.
9
Large privatized armies staffed by the clients and slaves of generals conquered
much new territory for Rome in the first century B.C.E. They defeated the muchweakened Seleucids in 64 B.C.E. in Syria, bringing the dynasty to an end, but they
never defeated the powerful Parthian cavalry. The most successful Roman
commander was Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.E.), who conquered Gaul, a region that
included northern Italy and present-day France. After his term as governor ended in
Gaul, Caesar led his armies to Rome, and in 49 B.C.E. the senate appointed Caesar
dictator. Between 48 and 44 B.C.E. Caesar continued as dictator and served as
consul every other year.
Caesar named himself dictator for life in 44 B.C.E. This move antagonized even his
allies, and a group of senators killed him in March that year. Caesar’s death,
however, did not end Rome’s long civil war. In his will, Caesar had adopted as his
heir his great-nephew Octavian (63 B.C.E.–14 C.E.), the future Augustus. In 30
B.C.E. Octavian conquered Egypt, ending the rule of the Ptolemies. Egypt joined
the Roman Empire as a province.
The Roman Principate, 27 B.C.E.–284 C.E.
In 27 B.C.E., Octavian became the sole ruler of Rome. He never named himself
emperor. Instead he called himself “princeps” (PRIN-keps), or first citizen. The new
political structure he devised, in which he held almost all power over the empire, is
called the Roman principate (PRIN-sih-pate) (government of the princeps), and it
remained in place until 284 C.E. Historians call the period between 27 B.C.E.,
when Octavian took power, and 180 C.E. the pax Romana (PAHKS ro-MAHN-uh),
or Roman peace, because the entire Mediterranean region benefited from these
centuries of stability. The empire became even more integrated as people moved
easily across it.
The Political Structure of the Principate
Octavian wanted to establish a regime that would last beyond his own life. He
hoped, too, to prevent a future general from seizing the government, yet he did not
want to name himself perpetual dictator or king for fear that he would antagonize
the Roman political elite. In 27 B.C.E. the senate awarded him a new title,
Augustus, meaning “revered,” the name by which he is usually known.
Augustus transferred the power to tax and control the armies from the senate to the
princeps. Fully aware that the armies were dangerously big, he ordered many
soldiers demobilized and used his own private funds to buy land for them—some
in Italy, some in the provinces. He also asserted the right to appoint all military
leaders and the governors of the important provinces, thus ensuring that no one
could form an army in the provinces and challenge him in Rome.
The one issue that Augustus did not resolve was who would succeed him: with no
son of his own, he named his wife’s son from a previous marriage as his heir,
10
establishing a precedent that a princeps without a son of his own could name his
successor. By chance, the three princeps who ruled from 98 to 161 C.E. did not
have sons and so were able to choose their successors while still in office. The last
century of the principate was not as smooth; between 211 and 284 C.E., the empire
had thirty-six emperors, of whom nineteen were murdered, were executed, or died
in battle with their successors.
The Rise of Christianity, ca. 30–284 C.E.
During these years, the people who moved easily and widely throughout the
Mediterranean world spread religious teachings. The Romans had their own gods,
to whom officials offered regular sacrifices, and they worshiped many deities
originating in other parts of the empire. Christianity began as a faith professed by a
small group of Jews in the province of Judaea (joo-DAY-uh) and began to spread
throughout the Mediterranean. The emperor Constantine’s decision to support
Christianity in 313 proved to be the crucial step in its extension throughout the
Mediterranean world.
Roman Religion and Judaism
Throughout the republic and the principate, the state encouraged the worship of
many different gods in the Roman polytheistic religion. Most Romans worshiped
major deities, like Jupiter, the most powerful of all the gods, or Mars, the god of
war, both of which have given their names to the planets. Many of these gods were
originally Greek; for example, Jupiter was the same as the Greek Zeus. Officials
frequently spent tax monies to support public cults, sometimes honoring a deity
and sometimes deifying current or former princeps.
In addition to their public obligations to state-supported gods, many people
throughout the Mediterranean privately worshiped in mystery cults that promised
adherents immortality and a closer personal relationship with the divine. Cult
deities not originally from Rome included Isis (EYE-sis), the Egyptian goddess of the
dead, thought to have power to cure the sick, and Mithra (MIH-thruh), the Iranian
sun-god sent by Ahura Mazda to struggle against evil. Gathering in small groups to
sacrifice bulls, the worshipers of Mithra believed that the souls of the dead
descended into earth before ascending into heaven.
Unlike almost everyone else in the Roman Empire, Jews were monotheistic.
Worshiping a single god, whom they never depicted in images or paintings, Jews
refused to worship any of the Roman gods or former princeps, a stance the Roman
government tolerated. Their center of worship was the Jerusalem Temple, which
housed their scriptures and survived the Roman conquest of Judaea in 63 B.C.E.,
when Judaea came under indirect Roman rule. The Romans initially delegated the
task of governing the region to the leadership of the Temple, yet many Jews
challenged the authority of the Temple’s leaders.
11
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a group of texts on leather, papyrus, and
copper, has revealed the diversity of beliefs among Jewish groups. The scrolls
mention a Teacher of Righteousness, a figure who the authors believed would bring
salvation, called a Messiah (muh-SIGH-uh) in Hebrew. Many Jewish groups at the
time believed that a Messiah would come, yet they disagreed about how to identify
him.
The Life and Teachings of Jesus, ca. 4 B.C.E.–30 C.E.
Almost every surviving record about early Christianity written before 100 C.E.,
whether about the life of Jesus or the early ministry, is written by a Christian
believer. The earliest sources, and so the most reliable, are the four gospels of
Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, written between 70 and 110 C.E. Accordingly,
historians use the gospels to piece together the chronology of Jesus’ life, all the
while remembering that, like sources about Zarathustra or the Buddha, they were
written by devotees, not outsiders.
The gospels relate that Jesus was born around 4 B.C.E. to a well-off Jewish family
near the Sea of Galilee, where residents made a good living fishing. They say little
about his life before about 26 C.E., when his cousin John the Baptist baptized him.
Jewish tradition held that baptism, or ritual washing with water, could cleanse
someone of impurities. Invoking this tradition, John claimed to be a prophet and
urged Jews to undergo baptism in preparation for the kingdom of God.
In 28 and 29 C.E., Jesus began preaching publicly in Galilee and, like John, urged
Jews to repent and undergo baptism. Illness was a sign of Satan’s presence, Jesus
taught, and many of the miracles recorded in the gospels are anecdotes about his
curing the sick. Historians, particularly those who do not subscribe to the teachings
of a given belief system, are often skeptical about whether the events described in
miracle tales actually occurred. But they realize that many religious figures were
able to win converts because of them.
As he explained in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus welcomed the poor and
downtrodden: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”
(Matthew 5:3). Jesus summed up his teachings succinctly in response to someone
who asked him what the most important commandment was:
“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your mind.’ This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like
it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:36–39)
Jesus also taught his followers that God would send a Messiah to usher in a new
age. Christos was the Greek word for Messiah, and Jesus came to be known as
Jesus Christ because his followers believed that he was the Messiah. Jesus’
teachings attracted converts because his egalitarian message promised salvation to
12
all, including the poor, and welcomed all to join the new church, regardless of
their background.
Jesus also wanted to reform and challenge the abuses he saw. His criticisms
provoked the Jewish community leaders, who may also have feared that he would
lead the residents of Palestine, where there was already a great deal of unrest, in an
uprising against Roman rule. They asked the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to
convict Jesus on the grounds that he claimed to be king of the Jews and thus posed
a political threat to Rome. In 30 C.E., fearful of possible disorder, Pilate agreed to
crucify Jesus. At the time of his death Jesus had been actively preaching for only
three years.
On the third day after he died, Christians believe and the gospels concur that Jesus
was resurrected, or raised from the dead. As the gospel of John explains: “God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). This teaching, that Jesus died
so that all believers will be able to overcome death, is called atonement, and it
became one of the most important teachings of the Christian church.
Paul and the Early Church, 30–284 C.E.
Jesus’ disciples devised a structure for the early church that followed the model of
Jewish synagogues and established churches in each community where a sufficient
number of Christians lived. Bishops headed these districts; below them were
deacons and deaconesses, a position of genuine authority for the many women
who joined the church.
The teachings of an early Christian leader, Paul, were highly influential. Paul (ca.
5–64 C.E.) was born to a wealthy family of Roman citizens living in Tarsus in
modern-day Turkey. As described in the book of Acts, the turning point in Paul’s
life came when Jesus appeared to him in a vision, probably in the year 38 C.E., as
he traveled to Damascus. After deciding to become a Christian, Paul was baptized
in Damascus. The Christian leadership in Jerusalem, however, never granted that
Paul’s vision was equal to their own experience of knowing Jesus personally and
hearing him teach. Understandably suspicious of him, they sent Paul to preach in
his native Tarsus in 48 B.C.E.
Paul initially focused on converting the Jewish communities scattered throughout
the eastern half of the Mediterranean. His letters, written in Greek with the
sophistication of an educated Roman, carried the teachings of Christianity to many
fledgling Christian communities. When he arrived in a new place, he went first to
the local synagogue and preached. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas: Early
Christianity in the Eastern Provinces.”) Whereas Jesus had preached to the poor and
to slaves, Paul’s potential audience consisted of more prosperous people. He did
not call for the abolition of slavery or propose any genuine social reform.
13
Accepting the right of the Roman Empire to exist, he, like Jesus before him, urged
his audiences to pay their taxes.
By the time Paul died, circa 64, a Christian community had arisen in many of the
cities he visited. In Rome, according to Christian tradition, Jesus’ apostle Peter, who
died about the same time as Paul, headed the Christian community (see Map 7.2).
A Jewish uprising in Judaea in 66 prompted the Roman authorities to intervene with
great brutality: they destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70, and many Jews fled the
city. After 70, Rome replaced Jerusalem as the center of the Christian church,
which grew steadily during the first, second, and third centuries.
14