world cultures

Rome: From Empire to Christian Empire

Introduction

With the assassination of Julius Caesar, civil war erupted in Rome. Caesar has left almost all his inheritance of power to his great-grandnephew Octavian (63 BCE-14CE). This caused a lot of confusion for many, since Octavian was not necessarily a leader. Marc Antony, the second in command while Caesar was in charge, would have been the expected choice for most people. But it seems that Caesar had other plans. Octavian was much of a surprise. He eventually came to be the leader the empire required. This is the Octavian that eventually passed to history as Augustus Caesar.

On the other hand, this empire that for years persecuted Christians, a new group of followers of a man from Nazareth who had been crucified by the Romans around the year 30 will turn into the faith that it had condemned for so long. The empire becomes Christian.

Battle of Actium

Leo2004. (2008).  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Actium-hu.svg#/media/File:Battle_of_Actium-en.svgLinks to an external site.

In the Battle of Actium on 31 BCE, the forces of the new Roman leader and successor to Julius Caesar, Octavian, proclaimed victory against Marc Anthony and Cleopatra’s armies. If we look back at the events, we need to remember that Julius Caesar and Cleopatra had been lovers and they had one child together. After Caesar was assassinated, the only son he had was with Cleopatra. But he was the son of a non-Roman woman. Romans would not accept him as a leader. Cleopatra tried to stay away from Roman business. However, Caesar’s second in command, Marc Anthony, had moved to Egypt and started a relationship with Cleopatra. They also had children together. Back in Rome, Marc Anthony’s wife, a “real Roman woman”, and the sister of Octavian, had been dishonored by this relationship between Marc Anthony and Cleopatra. Octavian put together a very effective campaign against the couple in Egypt and declared war on them. In battle, Marc Anthony and Cleopatra didn’t stand a chance. They both fled to Egypt where Octavian followed them. By the time he arrived, Marc Anthony had committed suicide and Cleopatra followed later while being a prisoner in her own country. Caesar’s children with Cleopatra and Marc Anthony were killed, and Octavian claimed Egypt as his own private possession. There starts the path toward total empire by Rome, the city that was once a small village in the center of the country we now know as Italy.

Sculpture

Zucker, S. (2020).   https://www.flickr.com/photos/82032880@N00/49763750177Links to an external site.

When Octavian took the power in his hands, he knew how things worked in the new Roman Empire. The people, not so much the senate, were the ones who kept you in power. He knew he had to develop and create an image through, among other things, art. When we look at the Augustus of Primaporta we see a noble, perfect face. This straight looking man is pointing toward the horizon. Many copies were made of this statue and spread through the empire to share the message of the greatness of the emperor. Even after Augustus was already old, this is the image everyone through the empire saw of him. It looked as if he did not age. The bigger the empire grew, the more important it became for all the empire to have a belief on the perfection and eternity of the emperor back in Rome.  

Architecture

At the center of Rome was the Forum. The people met at the Forum and legal issues, news about the empire and everything else was discussed there. This is the type of activity that made Rome what it was originally, a republic. Now Octavian Augustus was in power, but he was a conservative. He was interested in restoring the traditional customs that made Rome what it was, at least according to him. Octavian was careful to control the whole government system very closely. But on the outside, he seemed almost as if he did not want power. He asked the people not to call him emperor or to give him any honors. He wanted to be called princeps, which meant, the first among the people. He made sure that this image was kept alive all the time. Now the Romans met at the Forum, but their concerns were already settled by the one in charge, Octavian.

The Pantheon is the house of all the gods, pan – all, theon – gods. This is where Romans show their skill building with concrete. They were not the only ones or even maybe the first ones, but the Romans wanted to challenge space and gravity. Its rotunda is 19 foot-thick, and it domes consists of 5000 tons of concrete, in the center it has a 30-foot-wide oculus or eye that admits light and air (Fiero, 2021).

The aqueducts provided water to the cities. It was an extreme luxury to have running water in the cities that might have been too far from rivers. The Romans did not stop at anything to show off their power and ingenuity. Sometimes it is hard to believe that these structures were built to just bring water from the rivers to the cities. But it was not so much the water that was obviously an important element to have a great city, but the people had to be impressed by what their empire was able to provide. The aqueducts were built using the very simple but effective and solid technique of the arch that was a Roman signature in all their architecture.

An empire needs to keep its people entertained. Again, the Romans built big and took the challenge to heart. The Colosseum provided intense and bloody entertainment for all Romans. There were crucifixions, feeding prisoners to animals like lions and tigers, there were gladiator fights, some of them being very popular with the crowds that came to specially see them slay other men. All social classes could attend the Colosseum. Their seating arrangements showed to what social class they belong. The emperor had a special place, and the events of the Colosseum provided an opportunity for the people of Rome to feel that they shared a moment with their leader. Low or high class, they all enjoyed the violence featured at the Colosseum.

Christianity

Between the years 7 and 4 BCE, Jesus of Nazareth was born. It is not certain where exactly he was born. Although the accounts in the New Testament say he was born in Bethlehem because his family travelled there for a census being done by the Roman government, scholars have not found evidence of that census, and the question still stands in the sense that there was not any need for Jesus' family to travel for a census since people, like today, were counted where they lived and not where they were from.

This man was a Hebrew and the son of a carpenter who at an early age started to preach to his people about new ways of interpreting the almost two-thousand-year-old scriptures of the Hebrew Bible. During this time, his native Israel was a province of Rome. Jesus’ suggestions on new interpretations of tradition caused the priests and the status quo to be shaken, and eventually the leadership of the Hebrews with the cooperation of the Romans got him arrested and condemned to death. Jesus' followers, the apostles, continued to preach his message and grew proportionately. The followers of Jesus could take advantage of the political structure set up by the Roman Empire to be able to travel anywhere within it to spread their message. By this time, anyone was born in any province of the empire was considered a citizen. That meant that citizens could travel from Egypt all the way to Spain.

On the year 313 C.E., emperor Constantine, who had moved the seat of the empire from Rome to Byzantium in the east, issued the Edict of Milan which allowed the empire to tolerate new religions. The empire was pagan, but now it was willing to try religious tolerance without persecuting any religious beliefs. Constantine himself declared that he was inspired by the sign of the Christian god in battle. Although he was not baptized until he was in his deathbed, he is famous for opening the door for Christianity to become an official religion that eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire around the year 325 C.E.

Medieval Times / The “Dark Ages”?

What we today call the Middle Ages are the years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Renaissance. The name “Middle” means just that, they are in the middle, or in between two historical epochs considered more productive and valuable than the Middle Ages. One of the reasons for this is our perspective when we study the events that marked the cultures of what we call the “West”. Usually, our view is centered in Rome. Before the Middle Ages, we had Greece and Rome, two cultures that excelled in their development of culture, government, philosophy, art, and architecture. After the Middle Ages, we get the Renaissance, which is a moment of advance and discovery to higher levels.

The Middle Ages are known as the almost thousand years, roughly between the year 450 and around 1300. During these years, the followers of Jesus had developed a network of churches around the empire, and they have taken over. The followers of Jesus had created what today we call the Christian religion. The word Christ derives from Greek. The New Testament was almost entirely written in Greek. The first book used by the followers of Jesus of Nazareth was the Septuagint which was a translation of the Hebrew Bible that was put together in Alexandria around 200 before Christ. During the Middle Ages, most of the art and culture in general that was produced carried the message of the Christian religion. Knowledge was limited to priests and other members of the church. This is the time when universities were born out of the need for the elite who wanted to educate their children and the only ones could do it were the monks and religious officials, who knew how to read and write. The development of the Cathedral happened also during the Middle Ages, since all the efforts when building big had to be related to the Christian religion.