Section: 3B - The Emperors to Constantine.
Number of quotes: 333
A History of Ecclesiastical Dress
Janet Mayo
Book ID: 6 Page: 11
Section: 1B,3B
Although the birth of the Christian religion occurred in a province within the Roman Empire, it was unheralded by any contemporary historian. Tacitus, writing at the beginning of the second century AD, made the famous remark that in Judaea ‘Under Tiberius all was quiet.{1}
Quote ID: 102
Time Periods: 2
A History of Ecclesiastical Dress
Janet Mayo
Book ID: 6 Page: 179
Section: 3B
Chapter l, pp. 11-12 {1} ‘Sub Tiberio quies’, Tacitus, histories v:9, Philo does not mention the Crucifixion in his critical analysis of the career of Pontius Pilate which he wrote not much later than AD 41.PRE-100
Quote ID: 106
Time Periods: 1
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 40
Section: 3B
But the tribunate survived until the last days of the republic, and even when the republic was finally overthrown, the emperors took the proud title of tribunus plebis. Then, at last, the title lost all meaning.
Quote ID: 264
Time Periods: 01
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 216
Section: 3B,4B
In his famous edict of A.D. 212 Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to all free persons living within the empire. But the measure, although seemingly magnanimous, was actually demagogic and, in its way, oppressive. Once everyone was a citizen, the hitherto cherished concept of Roman citizenship, with its rights and rewards for people of Roman or Italian birth, lost its meaning and became a mere word. As the historian Michael Rostovtzeff has remarked, Caracalla’s chief purpose “was not so much to raise the lower classes, as to degrade the upper.” Moreover, admission to citizenship involved the assumption of heavy taxes by all concerned. In the preamble to the law Caracalla himself remarked that the gods would look with favor on the grateful offerings by the new citizens. Certainly he himself looked with favor on this new scheme of extortion . . .
Quote ID: 295
Time Periods: 3
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 227
Section: 3B
Yet everywhere there were signs of change - and no single one was more significant, perhaps, than that the emperor who presided over the celebration was an Arab chieftain’s son who had taken a Christian wife. Philip the Arab at 245 Read with p. 196
Quote ID: 302
Time Periods: 3
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 231
Section: 3B
(The fact of his [Philip the Arab] marriage to a Christian, coupled with stories of his lack of interest in the pagan rites that marked the millennial exercises of A.D. 248, was to cause Christian commentators to argue that he was, in fact, the first Christian emperor of Rome - a claim not otherwise supported).
Quote ID: 306
Time Periods: 3
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 232
Section: 3B
Moreover, Decius was determined to compel the loyalty of all inhabitants to the state and its religion, and he took the occasion of a general sacrifice and libation to the gods in every village and city of the empire as the means of achieving this. All persons were required by decree to participate in the sacrifices and to procure from special boards of inspection certificates testifying that they had obeyed the order and that they had also made such sacrifices in the past.Pastor John notes: to unite the divided empire
Quote ID: 307
Time Periods: 3
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 233
Section: 3B
While making his division, though, Valerian continued to follow a policy of general attack on the Christians throughout the empire. Many had bowed to Decius’ decree and paid their respects to the old Roman gods. This was not enough: they were now to be made to abjure their faith under penalty of having their goods confiscated, their places of worship shut, and their priests deported if they did not recant.
Quote ID: 308
Time Periods: 3
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 238
Section: 3B
Even so, there was no escaping the necessity of the empire’s division. Constitutionally, when he Diocletian gave his co-ruler Maximian the title of Augustus in A.D. 286, he endowed him with powers equal to his own - though in practice he retained a right of veto as senior augustus. Soon he decided that not even two rulers were sufficient to deal with the complex problems of the empire, and arranged the appointment of two further men who were to serve in effect as deputy co-emperors with the title of caesar - Constantius Chlorus in the West and Galerius in the East.
Quote ID: 311
Time Periods: 3
Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 239
Section: 3B
It is more likely that Diocletian’s action, far from being a fit of imperial temper, represented cold-blooded policy. Conversions had been increasing; Christian basilicas were flourishing in many cities; the imperial court itself was peopled with votaries of the new faith. A rapid series of edicts, beginning in February, A.D. 303, therefore undertook to root out the infection totally. The first ordered all copies of the Scriptures surrendered and burned and the churches destroyed; all meetings of Christians were forbidden. Next the Christians were deprived of all civil rights, including that of holding any public office. Regardless of their social rank, they could be submitted to torture after trial; Christian slaves were not to be liberated. In further edicts, setting up a progressive scale of punishments, Christian priests and then Christian laymen were to be executed unless they recanted and worshiped state gods.
Quote ID: 312
Time Periods: 34
Ancient Rome: In The Light Of Recent Discoveries (1888)
Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani
Book ID: 18 Page: 106
Section: 3B
The Palatine hill became the residence of the Roman emperors, and the centre of the Roman Empire, not on account of its historical and traditional associations with the foundation and first growth of the city, nor because of its central and commanding position, but by a mere accident. At daybreak on September 21st of the year 63 B.C., Augustus was born in this region, in a modest house, opening on the lane called ad Capita bubula, which led from the valley, where now the Colosseum stands, up the slopes of the hill towards the modern church and convent of S. Bonaventura. This man, sent by God to change the condition of mankind and the state of the world, this founder of an empire which is still practically in existence, never deserted the Palatine hill all through his eventful career. From the lane ad Capita bubula he moved to the house of Calvus, the orator, at the northeast corner of the hill overlooking the forum; and in process of time, having become absolute master of the Roman Commonwealth, he settled finally on the top of the hill, having purchased for his residence the house of Hortensius, a simple and modest house, indeed, with columns of the commonest kind of stone, pavements of rubble-work, and simply whitewashed walls.PJ: Bold part is in 1A/0
Quote ID: 352
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 72/73
Section: 3B
But they did not wait till their arrival in the city to begin the vengeance. They had agreed to follow the precedent of Sulla by publishing lists of men declared to be out of the pale of the law. The larger list was reserved for farther consideration; but a preliminary list of seventeen names was drawn up at once, and soldiers were sent with orders to put the men to death wherever found. (The Proscription.). . . .
On the day after the installation of the triumvirs (November 28th) the citizens were horrified to see an edict fixed up in the Forum, detailing the causes of the executions which were to follow, and offering a reward for the head of any one of those named below—25,000 sesterces to a freeman, 10,000 and freedom to a slave. All who aided or concealed a proscribed man were to suffer death themselves. Below were two tablets, one for Senators and one for equites. They contained 130 names, besides the original seventeen, to which were shortly added 150 more. Additions were continually being made during the following days, either from private malice or covetousness. In some cases men were first killed and then their names inserted in the lists.
. . . .
Quote ID: 546
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 76
Section: 3B
For a just view of the character of Augustus, it is important to decide how far he acquiesced in the cruelties of the proscription. With the general policy he seems to have been in full accord; and as far as a complete vengeance on those implicated in the murder of Iulius was concerned, he was no doubt inexorable.
Quote ID: 548
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 77
Section: 3B
He affirms that Antony and Lepidus were chiefly responsible for the proscriptions, pointing out that Octavian by his own nature, as well as his association with Iulius, was inclined to clemency; and moreover, that he had not been long enough engaged in politics to have conceived many enmities, while his chief wish was to be esteemed and popular; and lastly, that when he got rid of these associates, and was in sole power, he was never guilty of such crimes. The strongest of these arguments is that which claims for Caesar’s youth immunity from widespread animosities; and it does seem probable that outside the actual assassins and their immediate supporters, Augustus would not personally have cared to extend the use of the executioner’s sword.
Quote ID: 549
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 129
Section: 3B
It would be pleasanter if the death of Cleopatra and the confiscation of her treasury were the end of the story. But the executions of the two poor boys, Caesarion and Antyllus, were acts of cold-blooded cruelty.
Quote ID: 551
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 131
Section: 3B
It has been called a dyarchy, the two parties to it being the Emperor and the Senate. (The new constitution.)
Quote ID: 552
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 149
Section: 3B
To mark his exceptional position without offending the prejudice against royalty, it was desired to give him a special title of honour. His own wish was for “Romulus,” as second founder of the state. But objection was raised to it as recalling the odious position of rex, and he eventually accepted the title of AUGUSTUS, a word connected with religion and the science of augury, and thereby suggesting the kind of sentiment which he desired to be attached to his person and genius. This was voted by the Senate on the Ides (13th) of January, B.C. 27, and confirmed by a plebiscitum on the 16th.
Quote ID: 553
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 157/158
Section: 3B
But soon after entering on his eleventh consulship in B.C. 23, he became so much worse that he believed himself to be dying. It became necessary, therefore, to make provision for the continuance of the government. Augustus had no hereditary office, and no power of transmitting authority. Still, it was supposed that he was training his nephew and son-in-law Marcellus, or his stepson Tiberius, to be his successor.. . . .
But when he thought death approaching, Augustus did not designate either of these young men. He handed his seal to Agrippa, and the official records of the army and revenue to Cn. Calpurnius Piso, his colleague in the consulship.
. . . .
When he met the Senate once more, he offered to read his will to prove that he had been true to his constitutional obligations, and had named no successor, but had left the decision in the hands of the Senate and people. (The new constitutional settlement, B.C. 23.)
Quote ID: 554
Time Periods: 0
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 159/160
Section: 3B
The second—potestas tribunicia— was superior to the ordinary powers of the tribunes, because by it, he could veto their proceedings, while they could not veto his. “It gave him”—to use Dio’s words—“the means of absolutely putting a stop to any proceeding of which he disapproved; it rendered his person inviolable, so that the least violence offered him by word or deed made a man liable to death without trial as being under a curse.”. . . .
It was now unnecessary any longer to hold the consulship, for the imperium given him in other ways covered all, and more than all, which the consulship could give.
Quote ID: 555
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 161
Section: 3B
But Marcellus, who had been adopted by Augustus on his marriage to Iulia, betrayed his hopes by protesting against the preference shewn by the apparently dying Emperor to Agrippa; and Augustus yielded so far as to send Agrippa from Rome as governor of Syria. A sudden disaster, however, put an end to any intention that may have been formed in regard to Marcellus. In the summer of B.C. 23, he was attacked by fever, and Antonius Musa, who had successfully treated Augustus by a regime of cold baths, tried a similar treatment on the young man with fatal effect.
Quote ID: 556
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 165/166
Section: 3B
Accordingly, Augustus seems to have meditated putting Tiberius in much the same position as Agrippa had held. In B.C. 11 he compelled him to divorce his wife Vipsania (a daughter of Agrippa) and marry Agrippa’s widow Iulia, the Emperor’s only daughter.. . . .
But he made the mistake of neglecting sentiment. Tiberius was devotedly attached to Vipsania, by whom he had a son, and could feel neither affection nor respect for Iulia, who fancied that she lowered herself in marrying him.
. . . .
His only son by Iulia died, and before long her frivolity and debaucheries disgusted him, and therefore, though associated in the tribunician power for five years in B.C. 7, he sought and obtained permission in the next year to retire to Rhodes, where he stayed seven years in seclusion.
Quote ID: 557
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 168
Section: 3B
In the same year (A.D. 4) Tiberius was once more associated with Augustus in the tribunician power for ten years.{2} There could be no longer any doubt who would succeed.
Quote ID: 558
Time Periods: 1
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 169
Section: 3B
Hardly any emperor left behind him such an evil reputation as Tiberius. His funeral procession was greeted with shouts of “Tiberius to the Tiber,” the Senate did not vote him the usual divine honours, and Tacitus has exerted all his skill to make his name infamous.
Quote ID: 559
Time Periods: 1
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 188
Section: 3B
The loss of three legions and a large body of auxiliaries greatly affected the Emperor, now a man of over seventy. For many months he wore signs of mourning, and we are told that at times in his restless anxiety he beat his head upon the door, crying, “Varus, give me back my legions!”
Quote ID: 560
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 191
Section: 3B
In the time of the republic there was in theory no one standing army. There were many armies, all of which took the military oath to their respective commanders. Now the military oath was taken by all to one man—the Emperor. The commanders of legions were his legati.
Quote ID: 561
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 201
Section: 3B
He specially objected to be called dominus, a word properly applying to a master of slaves, and forbade the word to be used even in jest in his own family.
Quote ID: 562
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 203
Section: 3B
There are other anecdotes which still farther illustrate this human side of Augustus. A veteran begged him to appear for him in court, and Augustus named one of his friends to undertake the case. The veteran cried out, “But when you were in danger at Actium, Caesar, I did not get a substitute; I fought for you myself!” With a blush Augustus consented to appear. The troubles and tragedies of life interested him.
Quote ID: 563
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 203/204
Section: 3B
Another is of a similar kind. A poor Greek poet was in the habit of waylaying him as he left his house for the forum with complimentary epigrams to thrust into his hand. Augustus took no notice for sometime, but one day seeing the inevitable tablet held out he took it and hastily scribbled a Greek epigram of his own upon it. The poet by voice and look affected to be overpowered with admiration, and running up to the Emperor’s sedan handed him a few pence, crying, “By heaven above you, Augustus, if I had had more I would have given it you!” Everybody laughed and Augustus ordered his steward to give him a substantial sum of money.
Quote ID: 564
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 211
Section: 3B
These anecdotes of Augustus do not suggest a very heroic figure, very quick wit, or great warmth of heart. They rather indicate what I conceive to be the truer picture, a cool and cautious character, not unkindly and not without a sense of humour; but at the same time as inevitable and unmoved by pity or remorse as nature herself.
Quote ID: 565
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 221
Section: 2C,3B
Augustus in B.C. 18 ordered them to be re-copied and edited, and the authorised edition was then deposited in his new temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and continued to be consulted till late in the third century.. . . .
As one of the quindecemviris, Augustus had charge of these books, but he formally took the official headship of Roman religion by becoming Pontifex Maximus.
Quote ID: 566
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 223
Section: 3B,4B
The sixth ode of the first book (written about B.C. 25) joins to the necessity of a restoration of the temples and a return to religion a warning as to the relaxation of morals, tracing the progress in vice of the young girl and wife, with the shameful connivance of the interested husband, and exclaims: “Not from such parents as these sprang the youth that dyed the sea with Punic blood, and brake the might of Pyrrhus and great Antiochus and Hannibal, scourge of God.” Again in the twenty-fourth ode of the same book, also written about B.C. 25, he warmly urges a return to the old morality, and promises immortality to the statesman who shall secure it: “If there be one who would stay unnatural bloodshed and civic fury, if there be one who seeks to have inscribed on his statue the title of ‘Father of the Cities,’ let him pluck up heart to curb licentiousness. (The reformation of morals.)
Quote ID: 567
Time Periods: 0
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 231
Section: 3B
Livia is said elsewhere by Dio to have explained her lasting influence over Augustus by the fact that she was always careful not to interfere in his affairs, and, while remaining strictly chaste herself, always pretended not to know anything of his armours.
Quote ID: 568
Time Periods: 1
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 232
Section: 3B
If, however, all that Suetonius and Dio allege against his middle life is true, we must still remember that in the eyes of his contemporaries, and indeed in Roman society generally, from Cato downwards, such indulgence in itself was not reprehensible. It entirely depended on circumstances, and whether other obligations—such as friendship, public duty, family honour—were or were not violated.
Quote ID: 569
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 237
Section: 3B
At the beginning of B.C. 2, he was again consul, in order to introduce the second grandson to the forum; and to show their appreciation of his achievements, and their affection for his person, the Senate at length voted to give him the title of “pater patriae.”. . . .
He made some difficulty about accepting it; but the next time he appeared at the theatre or circus, he was met by loud shouts, the whole people addressing him by that title, and at the following meeting of the Senate on the 5th of February Valerius Messala was put up to address him formally: “With prayers for your person and your house, Caesar Augustus—for in offering them we deem ourselves to be praying for the perpetual felicity of the Republic and the prosperity of this city—we, the Senate, in full accord with the Roman people, unanimously salute you as Father of your country.” Augustus, rising with tears in his eyes and voice, could just answer briefly, “My dearest wishes have been fulfilled, Fathers of the Senate, and what is there left for me to ask of the immortal gods except that I may retain this unanimous feeling of yours to the last day of my life?”
Quote ID: 570
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 239
Section: 3B
But however guilty Iulia may have been, she did not forfeit the popular affections. Again and again Augustus was assailed by petitions to recall her. He passionately refused, exclaiming at last to a more than usually persistent meeting, that he “would wish them all daughters and wives like her.”. . . .
Her mother, Scribonia, accompanied her into exile, and though Tiberius, acting under the authority of Augustus, sent from Rhodes a message of divorce, he made a formal request that she might be allowed to retain whatever he had given her. The sincerity of such an intercession was illustrated by the fact that on the death of Augustus he immediately deprived her of all allowances.
Quote ID: 571
Time Periods: 01
Augustus Caesar
E.S. Shuckburgh
Book ID: 33 Page: 252
Section: 3B
On the present occasion, however, in regard to the point on which you consult me, I do no object to his having charge of the triclinium of the priests at the games of Mars if he will submit to receive instructions from his relative, the son of Silanus, to prevent his doing anything to make people stare or laugh.Pastor John’s Note: Claudius
Quote ID: 575
Time Periods: 1
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 19
Section: 3B
Such was not the case with the Druids of Gaul and Britain, notorious for the practice of human sacrifice.{3} Augustus forbade Roman citizens to participate in the Druid religion; Tiberius “checked” the Druids; and Claudius “completely abolished the religion of the Druids.” He executed a Roman knight from Gaul who was carrying a Druid magic egg.{4}[Footnote 3] H. Last in JRS 39 (1949), I-5
[Footnote 4] Suetonius, Claudius 25, 5; Pliny, Nat. hist. 30, 13; 29, 54.
PJ Note: Romans hated human mutilation and human sacrifice.
Quote ID: 590
Time Periods: 01
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 166
Section: 3B
The reign of Alexander Severus (222-235), was marked by closer relations between Christians and the court. The emperor may have kept statues of Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, and Apollonius of Tyana - along with some of the deified emperors - in his private chapel.{26}[Footnote 26] SHA Severus Alexander 29, 2.
Quote ID: 641
Time Periods: 3
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 167
Section: 3B
Indeed, Philip was so friendly toward Christian leaders that Eusebius was able to transmit legends pointing toward his active acceptance of Christianity.{27}[Footnote 27] H. E. 6, 34.
An enormous restructuring took place, in order to stabilize the shaky empire. And it succeeded in large measure.
Quote ID: 642
Time Periods: 3
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 170
Section: 3B
After Valerian came to power in 253 the persecution ended. Dionysius of Alexandria could write that “all his house was filled with godly persons and was a church of God”. . .
Quote ID: 643
Time Periods: 3
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 171
Section: 3B
After Valerian died in captivity, the Persians stuffed his skin and placed it in a temple.
Quote ID: 644
Time Periods: 3
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 226
Section: 2C,3B
The provinces were too large for efficient control, and as Lactantius says, the emperor “chopped them into slices”{31} At the same time the provinces were combined in larger groupings known as “dioceses,” each under the control of a deputy of the praetorian prefects. This deputy was called a vicarius, a title which like “diocese” later occurs among Christians.{32}[Footnore 31]De mort. Persec. 7, 4.
[Footnote 32] On vicarius cf. W. Ensslin in RE XXII 2418 and VIII A 2023-44.
Quote ID: 651
Time Periods: 234
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 622/623
Section: 3B
Anxious to raise more revenue, he doubled the inheritance tax to ten per cent; and noting that the tax applied only to Roman citizens, he extended the Roman franchise to all free male adults in the Empire (212); they achieved citizenship precisely when it brought a maximum of obligations and a minimum of power.Pastor John’s Note: Caracalla
Quote ID: 912
Time Periods: 3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 626
Section: 3B
He recognized the absurdity of his cousin’s effort to replace Jove with Elagabal, and he co-operated with his mother in restoring the Roman temples and ritual. But to his philosophic mind it seemed that all religions were diverse prayers to one supreme power; he wished to honor all honest faiths; and in his private chapel, where he worshiped every morning, he had icons of Jupiter, Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, Abraham, and Christ. He quoted frequently the Judaeo-Christian counsel: “What you do not wish a man to do to you, do not do to him”; he had it engraved on the walls of his palace and on many a public building.Pastor John’s Note: Alexander Severus
Quote ID: 914
Time Periods: 3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 628
Section: 3B
Philip the Arab was defeated and killed at Verona by Decius (249), an Illyrian of wealth and culture whose devotion to Rome well deserved a name so honorable in ancient story. Between campaigns against the Goths he laid out an ambitious program for the restoration of Roman religion, morals, and character, and gave orders for the destruction of Christianity;Pastor John’s Note: not simply anti-Xn. Apparently, he was just trying to restore dignity & stability to the Empire.
Quote ID: 915
Time Periods: 3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 638
Section: 3B
Meditating distant campaigns, and fearing an assault upon Rome during his absence, he persuaded the Senate to finance, and the guilds to erect, new walls around the capital. Everywhere in the Empire city walls were being built, signifying the weakening of the imperial power and the end of the Roman peace.Pastor John’s Note: Aurelian
Quote ID: 916
Time Periods: 3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 639
Section: 2B,3B
Turning to the tasks of peace, he re-established some economic order by reforming the Roman coinage; and reorganized the government by applying to it the same severe discipline that had regenerated the army. Ascribing Rome’s moral and political chaos in some degree to religious disunity, and impressed by the political services of religion in the East, he sought to unite old faiths and new in a monotheistic worship of the sun-god, and of the Emperor as the vicar of that deity on earth. He informed a skeptical army and Senate that it was the god, and not their choice or confirmation, that had made him Emperor. He built at Rome a resplendent Temple of the Sun, in which, he hoped, the Baal of Emesa and the god of Mithraism would merge. Monarchy and monotheism were advancing side by side, each seeking to make the other its aide. Aurelian’s religious policy suggested that the power of the state was falling, that of religion rising; kings were now kings by the grace of God. This was the Oriental conception of government, old in Egypt, Persia, and Syria; in accepting it Aurelian advanced that Orientalization of the monarchy which had begun with Elagabalus and would complete itself in Diocletian and Constantine.
Quote ID: 917
Time Periods: 3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 639/640
Section: 3B
It now hailed as imperator one Diocles, the son of a Dalmatian freedman. Diocletian, as he henceforth called himself, had risen by brilliant talents and flexible scruples to the consulate, a proconsulate, and command of the palace guards. He was a man of genius, less skilled in war than in statesmanship. He came to the throne after a period of anarchy worse than that which had prevailed from the Gracchi to Antony; like Augustus, he pacified all parties, protected all frontiers, extended the role of government, and based his rule on the aid and sanction of religion. Augustus had created the Empire, Aurelian had saved it; Diocletian reorganized it.His first vital decision revealed the state of the realm and the waning of Rome. He abandoned the city as a capital, and made his emperial headquarters at Nicomedia in Asia Minor, a few miles south of Byzantium. The Senate still met in Rome, the consuls went through their ritual, the games roared on, the streets still bore the noisome pullulation of humanity; but power and leadership had gone from this center of economic and moral decay. Diocletian based his move on military necessity: Europe and Asia must be defended, and could not be defended from a city so far south of the Alps. Hence he appointed a capable general, Maximian, as his co-ruler (286), charging him with defense of the West; and Maximian made not Rome but Milan his capital. Six years later, to further facilitate administration and defense, each of the two Augusti chose a “Caesar” as his aide and successor: Diocletian selected Galerius, who made his capital at Sirmium (Mitrovica on the Save), and was responsible for the Danube provinces; and Maximian appointed Constantius Chlorus (the Pale), who made his capital at Augusta Trevirorum (Trèves). Each Augustus pledged himself to retire after twenty years in favor of his Caesar, who would then appoint a “Caesar” to aid and succeed him in turn. Each Augustus gave his daughter in marriage to his “Caesar,” adding the ties of blood to those of law.
Quote ID: 918
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 640/641
Section: 3B
The monarchy was divided, but it was absolute. Each law of each ruler was issued in the name of all four, and was valid for the realm. The edict of the rulers became law at once, without the sanction of the Senate at Rome. All governmental officials were appointed by the rulers, and a gigantic bureaucracy spread its coils around the state. To further fortify the system, Diocletian developed the cult of the Emperor’s genius into a personal worship of himself as the earthly embodiment of Jupiter, while Maximian modestly consented to be Hercules; wisdom and force had come down from heaven to restore order and peace on earth. Diocletian assumed a diadem - a broad white fillet set with pearls - and robes of silk and gold; his shoes were studded with precious gems; he kept himself aloof in his palace, and required visitors to pass the gantlet of ceremonious eunuchs and titled chamberlains, and to kneel and kiss the hem of his robe. He was a man of the world, and doubtless smiled in private at these myths and forms; but his throne lacked the legitimacy of time, and he hoped to buttress it to check the turbulence of the populace and the revolts of the army, by enduing himself with divinity and awe.
Quote ID: 919
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 641
Section: 3B
This adoption of Oriental despotism by the son of a slave, this identification of god and king, meant the final failure of republican institutions in antiquity, the surrender of the fruits of Marathon; it was a reversion, like Alexander’s, to the forms and theories of Achaemenid and Egyptian courts, of Ptolemaic, Parthian, and Sassanid kings. From this Orientalized monarchy came the structure of Byzantine and European kingdoms till the French Revolution. All that was needed now was to ally the Oriental monarch in an Oriental capital with an Oriental faith. Byzantinism began with Diocletian.
Quote ID: 920
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 641
Section: 2C,3B
He and his colleagues redivided the Empire into ninety-six provinces grouped into seventy-two dioceses and four prefectures, and appointed civil and military rulers for each division.
Quote ID: 921
Time Periods: 3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 643/644
Section: 3B
Since every taxpayer sought to evade taxes, the state organized a special force of revenue police to examine every man’s property and income; torture was used upon wives, children and slaves to make them reveal the hidden wealth or earnings of the household; and severe penalties were enacted for evasion.{57} Towards the end of the third century, and still more in the fourth, flight from taxes became almost epidemic in the Empire. The well to do concealed their riches, local aristocrats had themselves reclassified as humiliores to escape election to municipal office, artisans deserted their trades, peasant proprietors left their overtaxed holdings to become hired men, many villages and some towns (e.g., Tiberias in Palestine) were abandoned because of high assessments; {58} at last, in the fourth century, thousands of citizens fled over the border to seek refuge among the barbarians.{59}
Quote ID: 922
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 644
Section: 3B,4B
It was probably to check this costly mobility, to ensure a proper flow of food to armies and cities, and of taxes to the state, that Diocletian resorted to measures that in effect established serfdom in fields, factories, and guilds. Having made the landowner responsible, through tax quotas in kind, for the productivity of his tenants, the government ruled that a tenant must remain on his land till his arrears of debt or tithes should be paid. We do not know the date of this historic decree; but in 332 a law of Constantine assumed and confirmed it, and made the tenant adscriptitius, “bound in writing” to the soil he tilled; he could not leave it without the consent of the owner; and when it was sold, he and his household were sold with it.{60} He made no protest that has come down to us; perhaps the law was presented to him as a guarantee of security, as in Germany today. In this and other ways agriculture passed in the third century from slavery through freedom to serfdom, and entered the Middle Ages.Similar means of compelling stability were used in industry. Labor was “frozen” to its job, forbidden to pass from one shop to another without governmental consent. Each collegium or guild was bound to its trade and its assigned task, and no man might leave the guild in which he had been enrolled.{61} Membership in one guild or another was made compulsory on all persons engaged in commerce and industry; and the son was required to follow the trade of his father.{62} When any man wished to leave his place or occupation for another, the state reminded him that Italy was in a state of siege by the barbarians, and that every man must stay at his post.
Quote ID: 923
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 645
Section: 3B,4B
Confronted by enemies on every side, the Roman state did what all nations must do in crucial wars; it accepted the dictatorship of a strong leader, taxed itself beyond tolerance, and put individual liberty aside until collective liberty was secured. Diocletian had, with more cost but under harder circumstances, repeated the achievement of Augustus. His contemporaries and his posterity, mindful of what they had escaped, called him the “Father of the Golden Age.” Constantine entered the house that Diocletian built.
Quote ID: 924
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 646
Section: 3B,4B
Before Nero, the two forces had found it possible to live together without blows. The law had exempted the Jews from emperor-worship, and the Christians, at first confused with the Jews, were granted the same privilege. But the execution of Peter and Paul,* and the burning of Christians to light up Nero’s games, turned this mutual and contemptuous tolerance into unceasing hostility and intermittent war.Pastor John’s Note: (The asterisk above was not part of the original quote-it was John’s mark for this note.) Their “executions” are undocumented; this may be Xn myth. This author assumes the veracity of Xn historians.
Quote ID: 926
Time Periods: 1
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 650
Section: 3A4C,3B
The renewal of the barbarian attacks ended this truce. To understand the persecution under Decius (or Aurelius) we must imagine a nation in the full excitement of war, frightened by serious defeats, and expecting hostile invasion. In 249 a wave of religious emotion swept the Empire; men and women flocked to the temples and besieged the gods with prayers. Amid this fever of patriotism and fear, the Christians stood apart, still resenting and discouraging military service, {20} …….
Quote ID: 931
Time Periods: 3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 650
Section: 3B
Apparently Christians were not asked to abjure their own faith, but were commanded to join in the universal supplicatio to the deities who, the populace believed, had so often saved imperiled Rome. Most Christians complied; in Alexandria, according to its Bishop Dionysius, “the apostasy was universal”; {21} it was likewise in Carthage and Smryrna; probably these Christians considered the supplicatio a patriotic formality.
Quote ID: 932
Time Periods: 3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 650
Section: 3B
Six years later, Valerian, in another crisis of invasion and terror, ordered that “all persons must conform to the Roman ceremonials,” and forbade any Christian assemblage. Pope Sixtus II resisted, and was put to death with four of his deacons. Bishop Cyprian of Carthage was beheaded, the bishop of Tarragona was burned alive.In 261, after the Persians had removed Valerian from the scene, Gallienus published the first edict of tolerations, recognizing Christianity as a permitted religion, and ordering that property taken from Christians should be restored to them. Minor persecutions occurred in the next forty years, but for the most part these were, for Christianity, decades of unprecedented calm and rapid growth. In the chaos and terror of the third century, men fled from the weakened state to the consolations of religion, and found them more abundantly in Christianity than in its rivals. The Church made rich converts now, built costly cathedrals, and allowed its adherents to share in the joys of this world.
Quote ID: 933
Time Periods: 3
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 651
Section: 2E6,3B
Galerius, however, saw in Christianity the last obstacle to absolute rule, and urged his chief to complete the Roman restoration by restoring the Roman gods. Diocletian hesitated; he was averse to needless risks, and estimated more truly than Galerius the magnitude of the task. But one day, at an imperial sacrifice, the Christians made the sign of the cross to ward off evil demons. When the augurs failed to find on the livers of the sacrificed animals the marks that they had hoped to interpret, they blamed the presences of profane and unbelieving persons. Diocletian ordered that all in attendance should offer sacrifice to the gods or be flogged, and that all soldiers in the army should similarly conform or be dismissed (302).
Quote ID: 934
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 651
Section: 3B
Galerius at every opportunity argued the need of religious unity as a support to the new monarchy; and at last Diocletian yielded. In February, 303, the four rulers decreed the destruction of all Christian churches, the burning of Christian books, the dissolution of Christian congregations, the confiscation of their property, the exclusion of Christians from public office, and the punishment of death for Christians detected in religious assembly. A band of soldiers inaugurated the persecution by burning to the ground the cathedral at Nicomedia.The Christians were now numerous enough to retaliate. A revolutionary movement broke out in Syria, and in Nicomedia incendiaries twice set fire to Diocletians’ palace. Galerius accused the Christians of the arson; they accused him; hundreds of Christians were arrested and tortured, but the guild [guilt]? was never fixed.
Quote ID: 935
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 651/652
Section: 3B,3C2
Maximian carried out the edict with military thoroughness in Italy. Galerius, become Augustus, gave every encouragement to the persecution in the East. The roll of martyrs was increased in every part of the Empire except Gaul and Britain, where Constantius contented himself with burning a few churches. Eusebius assures us, presumably with the hyperbole of indignation, that men were flogged till the flesh hung from their bones, or their flesh was scraped to the bone with shells; salt or vinegar was poured upon the wounds; the flesh was cut off bit by bit and fed to waiting animals; or bound to crosses, men were eaten piecemeal by starved beasts. Some victims had their fingers pierced with sharp reeds under the nails; some had their eyes gouged out; some were suspended by a hand or a foot; some had molten lead poured down their throats; some were torn apart by being tied to the momentarily bent branches of trees. {23} We have no pagan narrative of these events.
Quote ID: 936
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 652
Section: 3B,4B
As the brutalities multiplied, the sympathy of the pagan population was stirred; the opinion of good citizens found courage to express itself against the most ferocious oppression in Roman history. Once the people had urged the state to destroy Christianity; now the people stood aloof from the government, and many pagans risked death to hide or protect Christians until the storm should pass. {24} In 311 Galerius, suffering from a mortal illness, convinced of failure, and implored by his wife to make his peace with the undefeated God of the Christians, promulgated an edict of toleration, recognizing Christianity as a lawful religion and asking the prayers of the Christians in return for “our most gentle clemency.” {25}
Quote ID: 937
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 653
Section: 3B
Diocletian, peaceful in his Dalmatian palace, saw the failure of both the persecution and the tetrarchy. Seldom had the Empire witnessed such confusion as followed his abdication..... A year later Maximinus Daza adopted the same title, so that in place of the two Augusti of Diocletian’s plan there were now six; no one cared to be merely “Caesar.”
Quote ID: 939
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 657
Section: 3A,3B,4B
[Used this part]. In the interval between the Decian and the Diocletian persecution the Church had become the richest religious organization in the Empire, and had moderated its attacks upon wealthy. Cyprian complained that his parishioners were mad about money, that Christian women painted their faces, that bishops held lucrative offices of state, made fortunes, lent money at usurious interest, and denied their faith at the first sign of danger. {41} Eusebius mourned that priests quarreled violently in their competition for ecclesiastical preferment. {42}
Quote ID: 945
Time Periods: 34
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 14
Section: 3B
After the chaos of 235-285, in which there were twenty emperors and many other unsuccessful claimants to the throne, some speak of the “restoration” of the Empire, but the original state was not restored.“There have been many ‘restorations’ in history, but the last state has never been the same as the first.”
Quote ID: 962
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 17
Section: 3B
Gibbon: the happiest period in human history: AD 96-180
Quote ID: 964
Time Periods: 2
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 42
Section: 1B,3B
“With the death of Marcus Aurelius, the revered philosopher-king, the Old Rome came to an end.” In Dio Cassius’s [PJ: c. 155–c. 235] classic, and contemporary, history of this time, he concluded his last book covering the reign of the pitiable Marcus Aurelius (p. 33), with these stunning words, “Our history now descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust, as affairs did for the Romans of that day.”
Quote ID: 970
Time Periods: 2
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 45
Section: 3B
Commodus’s murder set the stage for the rest of Roman history, so far as emperors are concerned. From then on, 193, all emperors were chosen by the army.
Quote ID: 971
Time Periods: 2
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 46
Section: 3B
Pertinax murdered by the soldiers who made him ruler. Didius outbid the others for the throne. Septimius Severus wins the race of the generals for Rome.
Quote ID: 972
Time Periods: ?
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 83
Section: 1A,3B
“By the time of Septimius, not only were catholic belief and practice defined and established, but the church was formed and braced for the inevitable struggle with the pagan state. The most crucial period in the whole life of the church was to be the third century . . . because only in this century were efforts made not merely to punish Christians, but to root out Christianity altogether.”
Quote ID: 990
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 117/122/123
Section: 3B
Elagabalus adopted his cousin to be his successor. When murdered, Alexander became emperor, a quiet and chaste young man.. . . .
He [Alexander] had the Golden Rule engraved on the palace and on public buildings. He was very genial to Christians and Jews. He had a desire to build a temple to Christ, and to have the Senate recognize him as one of the gods of the Roman empire. Origen was brought to Rome. When conflict arose in the city between the Church of Rome and the guild of tavern-keepers over ownership of a building, Alexander resolved the matter thus: “Better that God be worshipped in any manner whatsoever in this place, than that it should be handed over to the tavern-keepers as a gift.”
. . . .
The reign of Alexander was “a threshold of a door of acceptance of Christianity by Roman society.
Quote ID: 1005
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 124
Section: 3B
“The fifty years which separated Alexander’s and Constantine’s reigns “was to be the darkest and most disastrous that Rome had yet known.”
Quote ID: 1006
Time Periods: 34
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 127
Section: 3B
according to Eusebius, most of Alexander’s household were Christians.
Quote ID: 1007
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 131/132
Section: 3B
murders follow murders for the empire. Philip the Arab murdered the aged but competent Gordian, though he pleaded for his life. Later, Philip showed great respect to the man he had murdered, even bidding the senate to proclaim Gordian to be numbered among the gods.
Quote ID: 1009
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 132
Section: 3B,3C2
Philip, son of a sheikh, was a pure-bred Arab. He reigned over the millennial celebration of Rome. Considered to have been a just ruler, he is considered by some, on the fanciful testimony of Eusebius (134) and the comment of Jerome (134) and that of bishop Dionysius of Alexander (135), to be the first Christian emperor. His son was declared to be Pontifex Maximus.
Quote ID: 1011
Time Periods: 34
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 135
Section: 3B
It was apparently just a sensibility toward Christianity, as with Alexander before him. (Letters from Origen in his house, too.) Philip publicly was a pagan, presiding over secular games as became a good pagan emperor, and preserving the ancient religion of Rome. He was emperor when, on April 21, 248, the Rome celebrated its Millennial Anniversary. His toleration of Christianity was probably just a matter of good politics. (pp. 134-5 have good old quotes--Christian myths–concerning Philip.)
Quote ID: 1012
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 137/138/139
Section: 3B
The Millennial celebration reactivated passions concerning the ancient religion. Decius’s persecution of Christians may have been a part of this pagan reaction against the infiltration of Rome by non-pagan Christianity.. . . .
The persecution was political. The Act of Supplication was imposed upon everyone, as an act of solidarity with the state. It was not their faith, but their unwillingness to conform to this Roman “Pledge of Allegiance”, which provoked the State’s wrath.
. . . .
Decius’s Edict: Every person, young and old, was to make a sacrifice “for the safety of the emperor”, with a “Certificate of Sacrifice issued to those who did. It was no more to Decius than a safeguard for society. The emperor’s object was not to rid the earth of Christians but to bring them in line with the rest of the citizenry (139).
. . . .
Two examples of Certificates of Sacrifice”.
PJ: Used middle quote only (p. 138, I assumed).
Quote ID: 1013
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 140
Section: 3B
Thousands of Christians were tortured and executed by cruel means, until Decius died in battle against the Goths. Gallus succeeded him and later (p.141) started his own persecution.
Quote ID: 1014
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 145
Section: 3B
Valerian persecuted Christians strongly – again for political and economic reasons, not theologic.
Quote ID: 1017
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 157
Section: 2D1,3B
Paul of Samosota had been deposed for heresy by a council of the church and Domnus made bishop instead. Paul refused to accept the verdict. The church called upon the emperor, who had arrived in the east in a war against eastern provinces, for a judgment. It is significant that this took place, but Aurelian’s REASON for siding with Domnus is startling. Domnus, decreed the emperor, was the one recognized by the bishops “in Italy and Rome.” A step toward Roman primacy.
Quote ID: 1018
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 162
Section: 3B
Aurelian murdered. April, 276.
Quote ID: 1024
Time Periods: 3
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 165
Section: 1A,3B
Diocletian. 283 Last emperor of the old Roman, pagan, empire.PJ: Read earlier that Die Cassius said M. Aurelius was rthe end of old Rome. Everybody guessing.
Quote ID: 1028
Time Periods: 134
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 166
Section: 2C,3B
[USED this part] “The cardinal and most permanent achievement of Diocletian was his complete reorganization of the administration of the Empire – so cardinal and so permanent that to this day the Christian Church uses the very terms which Diocletian devised for his new structure.” examples: the provinces were grouped into twelve dioceses over each which set a vicar.
Quote ID: 1029
Time Periods: 34
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 166
Section: 3B
Only a privileged few were admitted to the presence, and they must greet their emperor by kneeling and kissing the hem of his garment. Diocletian said this
Quote ID: 1031
Time Periods: 34
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 169
Section: 3B
after two fires in his palace, and perhaps some slander, Diocletian lost his head. “a moderate who had been proved wrong”.
Quote ID: 1036
Time Periods: 34
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 169/170
Section: 3B
While Diocletian was sick, Gallerius issued a fourth Edict concerning Christians: on pain of death every person in the empire was to sacrifice to the gods of Rome. Diocletian chose not to oppose this man any longer and abdicated in 305. The first emperor ever to do so.
Quote ID: 1037
Time Periods: 34
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 170/171
Section: 3B
Incredibly horrible tortures were inflicted on Christians in the east. In the west, where Constantius ruled, it was not so. In 311, Gallerius was stricken with a disease and issued an Edict of toleration.
Quote ID: 1038
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 49
Section: 3B
On the basis of Tacitus’s account of the burning of Christians, later Christian tradition created a fantastic picture of persecution after the burning of Rome; but his account was written sixty years later, and the sparsity of detail in the text should caution one from making too much of the event.
Quote ID: 4539
Time Periods: 1
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 163
Section: 3B,2B
During this whole period, most official pagan worships were fading into the background. Pliny the younger, on his arrival in northern Asia Minor early in the second century, had already found the temples becoming deserted and neglected, {1} and the withdrawal of paganism continued. During the third century its shrines in north Africa were abandoned, and at Rome, too, the cults lost ground.. . . .
This failure of enthusiasm was one of the prices paid for war and disaster. As Julian the Apostate later remarked, ‘It was the sight of their undeserved misery that led people to despise the gods.’ {4} Another reason for waning interest in the old religion was the growth of monotheistic feeling. Throughout this period the Olympians were coming to be regarded as branches or aspects or symbolic representatives of a single unknowable divinity (pp. 134, 174). {5}
Quote ID: 4716
Time Periods: 234
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 164
Section: 3B,1A
Clearly the most Roman and patriotic of all cults was the worship of Rome itself. As the city began to lose its political and economic importance (p. 97), the emotional inspiration of its name remained as great as ever; the heavily charged slogan Roma Aeterna preserved and intensified its power.PJ: eternal city (used for searching tbis subject)
Quote ID: 4717
Time Periods: 1456
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 164/165
Section: 1A,1B,3B
….Diocletian gave even more massive and widespread publicity to the idea of Rome than any other ruler. For he and his fellow-emperors expressed this idea, without variation, on millions of the silvered bronze coins of their universally circulating reformed currency. These enormous and uniform issues, issued at many mints from c. 294 onwards for more than two decades, represent one of the largest outbursts of numismatic propaganda in the whole of Roman history. By such means, every household in the empire was repeatedly reminded of eternal Rome for many years.But the slogan of Diocletian and his colleagues was not simply concerned with Rome itself; instead it celebrated the Genius of the Roman People – GENIVS POPVLI ROMANI. The Genius was represented by a youthful male figure, carrying a cornucopia and wearing the turreted (mural) crown which was characteristic of the Fortune (Tyche) of cities.
Quote ID: 4718
Time Periods: 34
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 167/168
Section: 3B,2B,2D2
The days of the Olympians are nearly over, and there is nostalgia for the glorious past. But since the world is still unthinkable without Rome, Venus must survive, because Venus, as another part of the poem recalls, was the mother of all Rome’s glory; ….. . . .
Another patriotic goddess who defied the decline of the Olympians by her continued impact on the later Roman world was Vesta. Her shrine in the forum is repeatedly shown on coins and medallions of Septimius and subsequent emperors, and the neighbouring courtyard devoted to her service contained many dedications persisting right up to the fourth century AD. The fire-cult of Vesta (Hestia) corresponded to contemporary Sun-worship and to the fire-altars of Sassanian Persia; and her Vestal Virgins suited contemporary tastes for asceticism and monastic seclusion. As the ancient, everlasting guardian of Rome and its rulers, Vesta in these dangerous times received more devoted veneration than ever.
Quote ID: 4720
Time Periods: 23
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 169
Section: 3B,3C
And yet the appeal to the divi was a failure, for except in some countries such as Africa, where their worship was especially strong, this cult did not outlast the third century; in the revivals of paganism under Diocletian, it played only a very minor part. Nevertheless Maxentius deified his own son, who had died in boyhood (c. 310), and Constantine honoured Divus Claudius Gothicus, a fellow-Illyrian emperor and Sun-worshipper from whom he claimed descent (p. 180). Moreover, the Christian Constantine himself became Divus after his death.
Quote ID: 4722
Time Periods: 34
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 170/171
Section: 3B
Commodus used to appear dressed as other gods also. His coins present a dedication to ‘Jupiter the youthful’ (IOVI IVVENI), and in order to point this comparison the god is endowed with the imperial features. Similarly, on the Arch of Septimius at Lepcis Magna, the emperor’s Triumph no longer leads him to Jupiter on the Capitol; in his own person, he is not only the victorious general but Jupiter as well. Although emperors were not officially deified in their lifetimes, there was now little more that could be done to emphasise their elevation to the rank of the gods.
Quote ID: 4725
Time Periods: 23
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 171
Section: 2B,3B
Nevertheless, in an increasingly spiritual age, these pretensions began to ring false. In spite of the ruler’s growing autocracy and magnificence, he was not the same as the quasi-monotheistic transcendent divine power in which people of this epoch believed (p. 163). And so while the adulation of reigning Augusti continued and intensified, a different and indeed contradictory interpretation of their relationship with the deity gained ground. This was the idea that the emperor was not one of the gods, but was instead their favoured and chosen delegate and regent upon earth.
Quote ID: 4726
Time Periods: 23
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 172
Section: 3B
This, then, was the spirit in which Aurelian, while describing the divine power as his consort (consors), explicitly rejects the deification attributed to him on one of his coins (p. 170); it was more in keeping with the spirit of the times to claim divine grace. The god, he said, had given him the purple and fixed the length of his rule, {33} and his coins stress various aspects of the concord between the emperor and this divine power. It was again as elect of the gods, rather than as gods themselves, that Diocletian and his colleague Maximian attempted to renew and restore the pagan worship to which they had been devoutly brought up in the Balkan peasant homes.
Quote ID: 4728
Time Periods: 3
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 172
Section: 2B,3B
The link was made still more explicit when Diocletian and Maximian founded their whole theology on the specific comradeship and protection which they received from Jupiter and Hercules respectively, and which led them to assume personal titles of Jovius and Herculius. Although there were later continuations and revivals of paganism, this was the last great official manifestation of the Olympian cults. But the culmination of this, while tendency to treat the emperor as the elect of pagan deities was reached under Constantine, when he devoted his coinage throughout the empire to proclaiming that his comrade was the Sun-god.
Quote ID: 4729
Time Periods: 34
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 176
Section: 3B,2B
Under Septimius Severus and his family solar worship almost took charge of the entire pantheon.
Quote ID: 4733
Time Periods: 23
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 176/177
Section: 3B,2B,2E6
In this atmosphere, designs on imperial coinage show advances upon their customary conservatism. {67} In particular the boy Geta, son of the Unconquerable and Pious Septimius, not only appears as Sol himself, portrayed in a novel half-length representation with radiate crown, but his right hand is raised in the Sun’s magic gesture of benediction (c. AD 200). This gesture, which warded off evil influences as well as conferring blessing, was very ancient, and had reappeared in statues of Roman orators. {68}. Court-poets wrote of the holy or divine hand of their emperor, and Sol’s arm is similarly lifted on Alexandrian coins of Trajan. This symbol, still the sign of Episcopal blessing today, was to become frequent on sarcophagus reliefs and in the catacombs of Christians, where Jesus outstretches his hand in the most popular of all Christian themes, the Raising of Lazarus from the dead (p.214).
Quote ID: 4734
Time Periods: 3
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 177
Section: 3B,2B
And then Elagabalus, though he adopted the names of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus which Caracalla had used before him, swept aside any caution or tradition in his haste to incorporate Sun-worship into the Roman imperial theology (218-22).
Quote ID: 4735
Time Periods: 23
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 177
Section: 3B,2B
A huge temple was now built for this Sun-god at Rome, and the deity’s Semitic name ELAGAB (alus) or Baal, identified with Sol, strikes an outlandish note amid the conservative traditions of the official coinage.. . . .
He placed the Sun-god in a chariot adorned with gold and jewels and brought him out from the city to the suburbs. A six-horse chariot bore the Sun-god, the horses huge and flawlessly white, with expensive gold fittings and rich ornaments. No one held the reins, and no one rode in the chariot; the vehicle was escorted as if the Sun-god himself were the charioteer. Elagabalus ran backwards in front of the chariot, facing the god and holding the horses’ reins. He made the whole journey in this reverse fashion, looking up into the face of his god. Since he was unable to see where he was going, his route was paved with gold dust to keep him from stumbling and falling, and bodyguards supported him on each side to protect him from injury. The people ran parallel to him, carrying torches and tossing wreaths and flowers. The statues of all the gods, the costly or sacred offerings in the temples, the imperial ornaments, and valuable heirlooms were carried by the cavalry and the entire Praetorian Guard in honour of the Sun-god. {72}
Elagabalus was too rash, and was murdered. And yet in spite of this setback, the worship of the Sun did not cease to flourish and increase.
Quote ID: 4736
Time Periods: 23
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 178
Section: 3B,2B,2E4
Nevertheless, forty years later, matters had advanced so far that Gallienus proposed to dominate the city, from the highest point of the Esquiline Hill, with a chariot-group including a colossal statue of himself as the Sun. {73} His successor Claudius II Gothicus (268-70) was devoted to the same deity, and then the logical, conclusive move was taken soon afterwards by the next emperor Aurelian. For he established, as the central and focal point of Roman religion, a massive and strongly subsidized cult of Sol Invictus (274), endowing him with a resplendent Roman temple, and instituting on the model of the ancient priestly colleges, and as their equal in rank, a new college of Priests of the Sun. {74} The birthday of the god was to be on 25 December, and this transformed into Christmas Day, was one of the heritages which Christianity owed to the solar cult.
Quote ID: 4737
Time Periods: 23
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 179
Section: 3B,2B
Moreover, when Constantius I Chlorus took London from the usurper Allectus (296) and brought England back into the empire, a medallion hailed in as Restorer of Eternal Light (REDDITOR LVCIS AETERNAE).. . . .
It is also solar language, for Constantius was a monotheist who revered the Sun, {80} like his forebears before him in their Sun-worshipping Balkan homeland.
Quote ID: 4739
Time Periods: 234
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 236
Section: 3A,3B
To encourage this repressive action, Maximinus Daia obtained and circulated confessions from prostitutes that they had taken part in Christian orgies. He also directed that spurious anti-Christian Acts of Pilate should be included in schools curricula. Executions took place, but they were few, for Maximinus preferred tortures to death-penalties, in order to improve his statistics of apostasy: the obstinate were blinded in one eye and had one leg ham-strung, and were then sent to mines and quarries. But what interested Daia more than such penal measures was the positive establishment of a pagan organisation which would rival and outdo its efficient Christian counterpart. And so he created an elaborate, homogeneous, pagan ecclesiastical system with its own priestly hierarchy.While this was happening in the eastern provinces, Constantine defeated Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge outside Rome, and became the sole master of the west (312). Constantine was in the midst of his determined but rather confused transition from Sun-worship to the Christian faith (p. 180).
PJ: Used only first sentence so far.
Quote ID: 4770
Time Periods: 34
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 84
Section: 3B,4B
If there was a theme to Diocletian’s programme it was to centralize the state so that it could function more coherently and effectively. He built on earlier developments. In 212, for instance, all subjects of the empire except slaves had been made Roman citizens so all could be taxed equally. Diocletian took this further by stressing that a common citizenship meant accepting common responsibility for the state, and so those whose allegiances were questionable suddenly found themselves more vulnerable. Prominent among these were the Christians.
Quote ID: 4814
Time Periods: 34
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 19
Section: 3B,4B
Indeed, between 226 and 379 only nine kings ruled Persia; during the same period there were some 35 Emperors at Rome.
Quote ID: 5015
Time Periods: 34
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 23
Section: 3B
However, the emperor Gallienus has been very variously estimated (see Figure 11). He has been considered to have ‘ruled’, if that is the right word, at the lowest time of the Roman empire.
Quote ID: 5016
Time Periods: 3
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 41
Section: 3B
This must not be forgotten: for those who lived in it, the revived empire, under a ruler who seemed more a godlike Pharaoh than a Roman magistrate, was intolerably worse than it had been, partly because of the much increased and stabilised taxation, which the relatively few curiales enforced rather than controlled.
Quote ID: 5017
Time Periods: 34
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 41
Section: 3B
The reign of Diocletian is one of the last great milestones in the history of Rome. For there was hardly one speck of imperial civilisation that the reforming hand of Diocletian left untouched.
Quote ID: 5018
Time Periods: 34
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 60
Section: 3B
In c.240 . . . the young Mani started to preach at the Persian (Sassanian) capital Ctesiphon (Kut), and Seleucia which lay opposite it across the Tigris.
Quote ID: 5036
Time Periods: 3
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 60
Section: 3B
Nevertheless during the century after Mani’s death his doctrines became a world religion; nearly the world religion. {3}[Footnote 3] Ibid., pp. 200ff. cf. P. 203. Mani was believed to have been born in c.177 and to have died in 216. He was a friend of Sapor I, but Mazdaean (Sun) influence under a later king, Bahram I, led to his death. Mani encouraged asceticism, and found room for Jesus.
Quote ID: 5037
Time Periods: 23
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 60
Section: 3B
Diocletian . . . introduced savage sanctions against the Manichaeans . . . apparently regarding them as potential instruments of Rome’s Persian foes. {4}[Footnote 4] M. Grant Constantine the Great (1993), p. 166. For Gnosticism, see M. Seymour-Smith, Gnosticism: The Role of Inner Knowledge (1996).
PJ: Diocletian was not just anti-Christian.
Quote ID: 5039
Time Periods: 34
Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 68
Section: 3B,4B
Nevertheless, the Roman imperial phenomenon does ring a bell, because it does contain points of relevance to what is happening today, or rather to what will be happening before long. For what is likely to be happening, although not all of us will be alive to see it, is a confrontation between the western world and those outside it. It is not for me, now, to go into further details about this confrontation, but I do maintain that it is likely to occur. It also attacked the Roman empire, which was nearly destroyed 200 A.D.: but not quite. It was saved because of its superior organisation.Pastor John’s note: written in 1999
Quote ID: 5044
Time Periods: 237
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 82
Section: 3B
While Jerusalem lost its role as the center of Jewish political and religious life, and Jews were forbidden upon pain of death to set foot in Jerusalem or its surrounding territory.{5}[Footnote: 5] Aristo of Pella, quoted by Eusebius, HE 4.6.3; Justin, Apol. 1.47.5; Dial. 40.2, 92.2; Tertullian, Apol. 21.5; Jerome, Chronicle 201e ; cf. E. Schurer, History, rev. G. Vermes and F. Millar, 1.521 ff., 553.
Quote ID: 1570
Time Periods: 2
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 84
Section: 3B
Shortly after 230, …….
After his ordination, Origen proceeded to Athens, where he may have spent a year or more. {30} He returned to the East by way of Asia Minor, visiting Ephesus and Antioch. {31} It was probably at this juncture that Julia Mamaea, the mother of the emperor Severus Alexander, who was conducting war against Persia, summoned Origen to her presence with a military escort and listened to him explain Christian teaching. {32} The amicable interview symbolizes the respectability which a Christian teacher now enjoyed in the eyes of the Roman ruling classes.
Quote ID: 1571
Time Periods: 3
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 85
Section: 3B
Gregory, who appears to have been called Theodorus until his baptism, was born into a pagan family in Cappadocia.….
Origen greeted the young man warmly and employed every effort to convert him from his chosen career and worldly ambitions to philosophy and true religion. Gregory was won over. He stayed in Caesarea willingly and studied with Origen for several years. {43} Origen gave him a course of instruction which represented a gradual ascent to biblical truth.
Quote ID: 1572
Time Periods: 3
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 86
Section: 3B
About 248, when he saw persecution approaching again, he composed a long refutation of Celsus’ True Reason, a polemical work against Christianity written some seventy years earlier. The imperial order to sacrifice to the gods came, and Origen stood firm. He was arrested and imprisoned, tortured on the rack, and urged repeatedly by the governor to sacrifice. Despite his persistent contumacy, Origen was not in fact executed but set free when imperial policy changed. Prison and torture, however, had broken his health: in the reign of Gallus, sometime before his seventieth birthday, Origen died and was buried at Tyre.{53}[Footnote 53] Eusebius, HE 6.46.2, 7.1; Jerome, De Viris Illustribus 54; Epp 84.7. Epiphanius, Pan 64.3.3 (GCS 31.406); De Mensuris et Ponderius 18 (PG 43.268), makes Origen reside in Tyre for twenty-eight years after leaving Alexandria.
Quote ID: 1574
Time Periods: 3
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 145
Section: 3B
Paul, a native of Samosata, became bishop of Antioch, succeeding Demetrianus about 260 (from pg. 144) though deposed and denounced by a council of bishops, retained the loyalty of his supporters in Antioch. He refused to surrender the church to Domnus, whom the council named as his successor, and his enemies were unable to dispossess him. The issue was resolved by appeal to the Roman emperor. Aurelian, who assumed the purple in September 270, ordered that the church building be restored to “those with whom the bishops of the doctrine in Italy and Rome should communicate in writing”; the form of the emperor’s rescript perhaps reflects a petition presented to him in Italy by a deputation of Italian bishops. Paul was then expelled with indignity. {162}[Footnote 162] HE 7.30.6 ff.; F. Millar, JRS 61 (1971), 14 ff.
Quote ID: 1588
Time Periods: 3
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 145
Section: 3A,3B,4B
Once the Church enjoyed toleration, it was natural that it should copy allother organizations in the Roman Empire in regarding the emperor, simply because he was emperor, as patron, protector, and arbiter. {164} For the Christians of the third century there was no incongruity in inviting a pagan emperor to intervene in ecclesiastical affairs.
[Footnote 164] F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977), 551 ff.
Quote ID: 1589
Time Periods: 3
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 159
Section: 3B
Various steps designed to strengthen pagan cults and discredit Christianity accompanied the repression. Maximinus tried to organize paganism as a cohesive religion. He had already, in late 309, decreed that disused temples and shrines be repaired;{82} now he established a pagan ecclesiastical hierarchy. The high-priests of the provincial councils received a general supervision of religious affairs, their new powers being marked by the constant attendance of a military escort as if they were government officials. Maximinus also appointed municipal priests from the leading citizens of each city to perform daily sacrifice to the gods and to aid in restoring ancient cults and priesthoods.[Footnote 82] Mart. Pal. 9.2 (both recensions).
Quote ID: 1590
Time Periods: 34
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 80
Section: 3B,4B
...the caesars tolerated, and even admitted to the pantheon, local gods. But the Roman war machine, once set running, was ruthless beyond what the world had seen. And though local gods were left alone, Rome was perhaps the first empire to require of its subjects an at least outward show of assent to the proposition that the emperor, too, was God.{36}
Quote ID: 1811
Time Periods: 123
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 80/81
Section: 3B
We have looked back at Rome from above -- from the point of view, that is, of those who benefited from its systems, traveled its roads, beheld its architectural wonders, learned to think in its language -- but what of that vast majority who drew no such benefit? There is no understanding either the Jesus movement itself or the foundational memory of its violent conflict with the Jews if we cannot look back from below, from the vantage of those for whom the Roman systems were an endless, ever-present horror. It was to them, above all, that the message of Jesus came to seem addressed.Most of the subjugated peoples in the Mediterranean world yielded to the Romans in what Romans regarded as essential, and those who refused to do this found themselves required to yield in everything, surrendering whatever was distinctive in their cultural identities to the dominant occupier. That is why we know so little of the Phoenicians, say, or the Nabataeans.
Quote ID: 1812
Time Periods: 0123
Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 224
Section: 3B
But the murder of Alexander Severus in A.D. 235 ended the dynasty and deprived the empire of the great stabilizing factor of dynastic loyalty, with the result that, as in A.D. 69 and in A.D. 192, various armies felt free to proclaim their own commander emperor. The empire now entered a dark age which lasted about fifty years.
Quote ID: 7613
Time Periods: 3
Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 305
Section: 3B
What gave Christianity the chance to become more than a very important sect was the crisis of the third century.{6}
Quote ID: 7641
Time Periods: 3
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 123
Section: 3B,4B
Literature then, as at most times till the eighteenth century, depended on patronage....In the Empire fashion spread swiftly downward and the views of the aristocracy have dominated the literature which survives, and without doubt dominated most of the far larger literature which has perished. There were no righteous poor, no critics of society except the philosophers, and they, too, had and needed backers.
Quote ID: 1951
Time Periods: 1237
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 125
Section: 3B
When Claudius planned his expedition to Britain in 43, the troops were loath to leave Gual and the world which they knew. The Imperial freedman Narcissus was sent to the camp and tried to address the troops, but they mocked him, saying. ‘Io Saturnalia,’ to indicate that they regarded him as a slave, and straightway, followed their commander Aulus Plautis. After 70 we see a great change. The old senatorial nobility was now greatly reduced in numbers or financially weakened and continued to decline.PJ Note: Julian would have considered the Empire to have fallen into apostasy. But what about the loss of senatorial power? Would he have mourned the passing of that old institution?
Quote ID: 1952
Time Periods: 1
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 125
Section: 2B2,3B,4B
It is therefore not surprising that the Flavian period saw a rise in the importance of the Egyptian gods. They remain outside the official city boundary, but appear on Roman coins in 71 and 73, and for the first time on the coins of Alexandria (which had an official character) Sarapis is called Zeus Sarapis.
Quote ID: 1953
Time Periods: 1
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 127
Section: 3B,4B
By the Antonine age, the trend of social change has had time to bear full fruit. The governing class is now recruited from the whole Empire, East and West alike: we find men born in the province of Asia holding time-honoured priesthoods in Rome itself.
Quote ID: 1954
Time Periods: 2
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 197
Section: 3B,4B
Marcus Aurelius says (xi.3):‘What a fine thing is the soul which is ready if it must here and now be freed from the body and either extinguished or scattered or survive. But let this readiness come from a personal judgement and not out of a mere spirit of opposition, like that of the Christians; let it be in a reasoned and grave temper, capable of convincing another, and without theatricality.’
Quote ID: 1979
Time Periods: 2
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 207
Section: 3A3,3B
Suetonius says of the Neronian persecution, which he reckons among the acts of Nero which were not blameworthy (Nero, 16. 2), ‘There were punished the Christians, a race (or, kind; genus) of men characterized by a novel and maleficent superstition.’ Both the Christians and their opponents came to think of themselves as a new people: and it is clear in the work of Celsus that his real aim was to persuade the Christians not to forget loyalty to the State in their devotion to this new state within the State.
Quote ID: 1981
Time Periods: 1
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 227/228
Section: 3B
The intending convert had to renounce the official worships of the State and of the municipality...in all these things his attitude was the same as a Jew’s. The Jew conscientious objection was recognized and allowed – in spite of the passing megalomania of Caligula and occasional outbreaks of Jew-baiting in Alexandria and elsewhere....Christians did not enjoy such privileges. Had the movement remained a sect within Judaism it obviously would have.When Pliny bade the Christians sacrifice to the Emperor, he was imposing a test and not making an ordinary requirement.
Quote ID: 1988
Time Periods: 12
Councils: First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their History and Theology, The
Leo Donald Davis
Book ID: 224 Page: 14
Section: 3B
Diocletian surrounded his person, now clad in gold and jewels, with the elaborate Persian court ceremonies. Everything associated with him became sacred as he ruled under the protection of Jupiter. He was addressed as “Lord and God.” All prostrated themselves when entering his presence. All stood while he remained seated during imperial consistories (a term which later passed into papal practice to describe the formal meetings of the pope and his cardinals).Pastor John’s note: Cathous IOX more killed than in the Colosseum and they were Christians.
Quote ID: 5622
Time Periods: 34
Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 49/50/52
Section: 2A1,3B
PJ Note: re: MithraismThe huge wound spouts a flood of hot blood.....which seethes in all directions...Through the countless channels provided by the perforations a stinking torrent falls. The priest enclosed in the pit gets the full force of it, exposing his befouled head to every drop; his robe and his whole body reek. Worse is to come! He tilts his head backwards, exposing his cheeks, his ears, his lips and his nostrils, even his eyes. Without sparing his palate, he soaks his tongue in it, until his whole body is impregnated with this horrible, dark blood. (Prudentius, Hymns, X, 1028-40)
. . . .
The victim is removed, the cover taken off, and then ‘the pontiff, dreadful to see’ is extracted from the pit. He is hailed ‘with the idea that vile blood ... has purified him while he was hidden in these shameful depths’ (see fig 1).
. . . .
The participant in the taurobolium is ‘reborn’, like Attis, born to a new life (hence the word natalicium found inscribed on some taurobolic altars).
Quote ID: 5141
Time Periods: 2
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jerome Carcopino
Book ID: 72 Page: 136
Section: 3B,4B
. . .– it is nevertheless beyond all doubt that “Christianity” in Rome goes back to the reign of Claudius (41-54), and that under Nero it had become so widespread that the emperor was able to throw the blame for the great fire of 64 onto the Christians.From the beginning of the empire members of the Jewish colony had proved so troublesome that in 19 A.D. Tiberius thought it necessary to take severe measures against them, and so numerous that he was able to ship off 4,000 Jews at one swoop to Sardinia. {134}
Quote ID: 2014
Time Periods: 1
Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jerome Carcopino
Book ID: 72 Page: 137
Section: 3B
Dio Cassius and Suetonius both record that Domitian successively accused of the crime of atheism M’ Acilius Glabrio, consul in 91, who was put to death; {139} then a pair of his own cousins-german, Flavius Clemens, consul in 95, who was condemned to death, and Flavia Domitilla who was banished to the island of Pandataria. {140} Finally, Tacitus notes in his Histories that Vespasian’s own brother, Flavius Sabinus, who was prefect of the Urbs when Nero turned the Christians into living torches to light his gardens, appeared toward the end of his life to be obsessed by the horror of the blood shed then. {141}It is true that none of these texts formally names as Christians the illustrious personages of whom their authors speak, but it is permissible to wonder, with M. Emile Male, whether Flavius Sabinus in his humanity and his obsession may not have been won over to the new religion by the courage of the early Roman martyrs; {142} and it is still more probable that we may detect an allusion to Christianity both in the forbidden “alien superstition” with which Pomponia Graecina was reproached and in the accusation of atheism brought against believers whose faith was bound to deter them from performing their duties toward the false gods of the official polytheism. In the case of Flavius Clemens and of Flavia Domitilla in particular, this probability is increased by the fact that their niece, called Flavia Domitilla after her aunt, was, according to testimony of Eusebius, interned in the island of Pontia for the crime of being a Christian. {143}
Quote ID: 2015
Time Periods: 1
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 1, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 320 Page: 88
Section: 3B
The two Antonines (for it is of them that we are now speaking) governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue.
Quote ID: 8186
Time Periods: 2
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 1, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 320 Page: 90
Section: 3B
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom.
Quote ID: 8187
Time Periods: 2
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 1, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 320 Page: 416
Section: 1A,3B
In the eyes of posterity, this triumph is remarkable by a distinction of a less honourable kind. It was the last that Rome ever beheld. Soon after this period the emperors ceased to vanquish, and Rome ceased to be the capital of the empire.John’s note: A.D. 302.
Ppl still guessing about the end.
Quote ID: 7724
Time Periods: 14
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 1, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 320 Page: 418/403
Section: 3B
The dislike expressed by Diocletian towards Rome and Roman freedom was not the effect of momentary caprice, but the result of the most artful policy. That crafty prince had framed a new system of Imperial government, which was afterwards competed by the family of Constantine; and as the image of the old constitution was religiously preserved in the senate, he resolved to deprive that order of its small remains of power and consideration.John’s note: Add note marked on page 403.
….
The reduction of Egypt was immediately followed by the Persian war. It was reserved for the reign of Diocletian to vanquish that powerful nation, and to extort a confession from the successors of Artaxerxes of the superior majesty of the Roman empire.
Quote ID: 7726
Time Periods: 34
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 1, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 320 Page: 420
Section: 3B
The senate of Rome, losing all connection with the Imperial court and the actual constitution, was left a venerable but useless monument of antiquity on the Capitoline hill.
Quote ID: 7728
Time Periods: 1
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 1, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 320 Page: 422
Section: 3B
The pride, or rather the policy, of Diocletian, engaged that artful prince to introduce the stately magnificence of the court of Persia.¹ He ventured to assume the diadem, an ornament detested by the Romans as the odious ensign of royalty, and the use of which had been considered as the most desperate act of the madness of Caligula.
Quote ID: 7730
Time Periods: 34
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 1, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 320 Page: 422
Section: 3B
When a subject was at length admitted to the Imperial presence, he was obliged, whatever might be his rank, to fall prostrate on the ground, and to adore, according to the eastern fashion, the divinity of his lord and master.²
Quote ID: 7731
Time Periods: 34
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 3
Section: 3B
…we are at a loss to discover what new offence the Christians had committed, what new provocation could exasperate the mild indifference of antiquity, and what new motives could urge the Roman princes, who beheld without concern a thousand forms of religion subsisting in peace under their gentle sway, to inflict a severe punishment on any part of their subjects who had chosen for themselves a singular but an inoffensive mode of faith and worship.. . . .
About fourscore years after the death of Christ, his innocent disciples were punished with death by the sentence of a proconsul of the most amiable and philosophic character, and according to the laws of an emperor distinguished by the wisdom and justice of his general administration.
Quote ID: 5186
Time Periods: 12
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 26/27
Section: 3B
Pliny had never assisted at any judicial proceedings against the Christians, with whose name alone he seems to be acquainted; and he was totally uninformed with regard to the nature of their guilt, the method of their conviction, and the degree of their punishment.
Quote ID: 5191
Time Periods: 12
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 27
Section: 3B
The life of Pliny had been employed in the acquisition of learning, and in the business of the world. Since the age of nineteen he had pleaded with distinction in the tribunals of Rome,{1} filled a place in the senate, had been invested with the honours of the consulship, and had formed very numerous connections with every order of men, both in Italy and in the provinces. From his ignorance therefore we may derive some useful information. We may assure ourselves that when he accepted the government of Bithynia there were no general laws or decrees of the senate in force against the Christians; that neither Trajan nor any of his virtuous predecessors, whose edicts were received into the civil and criminal jurisprudence, had publicly declared their intentions concerning the new sect; and that, whatever proceedings had been carried on against the Christians, there were none of sufficient weight and authority to establish a precedent for the conduct of a Roman magistrate.
Quote ID: 5192
Time Periods: 12
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 48
Section: 2E3,3B
But the laws which Severus had enacted soon expired with the authority of that emperor; and the Christians, after this accidental tempest, enjoyed a calm of thirty-eight years.{2} Till this period, they had usually held their assemblies in private houses and sequestered places. They were now permitted to erect and consecrate convenient edifices for the purpose of religious worship;{3} to purchase lands, even at Rome itself, for the use of the community; and to conduct the elections of their ecclesiastical ministers in so public, but at the same time in so exemplary a manner, as to deserve the respectful attention of the Gentiles.{4}
Quote ID: 5194
Time Periods: 3
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 49
Section: 3A4,3B
The sentiments of Mamaea were adopted by her son Alexander, and the philosophic devotion of that emperor was marked by a singular but injudicious regard for the Christian religion. In his domestic chapel he placed the statues of Abraham, of Orpheus, of Apollonius, and of Christ, as an honour justly due to those respectable sages who had instructed mankind in the various modes of addressing their homage to the supreme and universal Deity.{2} A purer faith, as well as worship, was openly professed and practised among his household. Bishops, perhaps for the first time, were seen at court; ….
Quote ID: 5195
Time Periods: ?
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 55
Section: 3B
But the leisure of the two empresses, of his wife Prisca, and of Valeria his daughter, permitted them to listen with more attention and respect to the truths of Christianity, which in every age has acknowledged its important obligations to female devotion.{1} The principal eunuchs, Lucian{2} and Dorotheus, Gorgonius and Andrew, who attended the person, possessed the favour, and governed the household of Diocletian, protected by their powerful influence the faith which they had embraced.
Quote ID: 5196
Time Periods: 34
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 55/56
Section: 3A4,3B
Diocletian and his colleagues frequently conferred the most important offices on those persons who avowed their abhorrence for the worship of the gods, but who had displayed abilities proper for the service of the state. The bishops held an honourable rank in their respective provinces, and were treated with distinction and respect, not only by the people, but by the magistrates themselves. Almost in every city the ancient churches were found insufficient to contain the increasing multitude of proselytes; and in their place more stately and capacious edifices were erected for the public worship of the faithful. The corruption of manners and principles, so forcibly lamented by Eusebius,{4} may be considered, not only as a consequence, but as a proof, of the liberty which the Christians enjoyed and abused under the reign of Diocletian. Prosperity had relaxed the nerves of discipline. Fraud, envy, and malice prevailed in every congregation. The presbyters aspired to the Episcopal office, which every day became an object more worthy of their ambition. The bishops, who contended with each other for ecclesiastical pre-eminence, appeared by their conduct to claim a secular and tyrannical power in the church; and the lively faith which still distinguished the Christians from the Gentiles was shown much less in their lives than in their controversial writings.
Quote ID: 5197
Time Periods: 34
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 6, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 383 Page: 416
Section: 3B
In the eyes of posterity, this triumph is remarkable by a distinction of a less honourable kind. It was the last that Rome ever beheld. Soon after this period the emperors ceased to vanquish, and Rome ceased to be the capital of the empire.John’s note: A.D. 302
Quote ID: 8287
Time Periods: 34
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 6, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 383 Page: 418/403
Section: 3B
The dislike expressed by Diocletian towards Rome and Roman freedom was not the effect of momentary caprice, but the result of the most artful policy. That crafty prince had framed a new system of Imperial government, which was afterwards competed by the family of Constantine; and as the image of the old constitution was religiously preserved in the senate, he resolved to deprive that order of its small remains of power and consideration.John’s note: Add note marked on page 403.
….
The reduction of Egypt was immediately followed by the Persian war. It was reserved for the reign of Diocletian to vanquish that powerful nation, and to extort a confession from the successors of Artaxerxes of the superior majesty of the Roman empire.
Quote ID: 8289
Time Periods: 34
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 6, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 383 Page: 420
Section: 3B
The senate of Rome, losing all connection with the Imperial court and the actual constitution, was left a venerable but useless monument of antiquity on the Capitoline hill.
Quote ID: 8291
Time Periods: 34
Dio Cassius: Roman History
Translated by Earnest Cary
Book ID: 371 Page: 295/297
Section: 3B
…he made it his business to strip, despoil, and grind down all the rest of mankind, and the senators by no means least. In the first place, there were the gold crowns that he was repeatedly demanding, on the constant pretext that he had conquered some enemy or other; and I am not referring, either, to the actual manufacture of the crowns—for what does that amount to?—but to the vast amount of money constantly being given under that name by the cities for the customary “crowning,” as it is called, of the emperors.….
…and there were the gifts which he demanded from the wealthy citizens and from the various communities; and the taxes, both the new ones which he promulgated and the ten per cent. tax that he instituted in place of the five per cent. tax applying to the emancipation of slaves, to bequests, and to all legacies….
….
This was the reason why he made all the people in his empire Roman citizens; nominally he was honouring them, but his real purpose was to increase his revenues by this means, inasmuch as aliens did not have to pay most of these taxes.
Quote ID: 8669
Time Periods: 12
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 35
Section: 2C,3B
(According to the Roman historian Tacitus . . .)Consequently, to be rid of the rumor, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.....
Quote ID: 5259
Time Periods: 1
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 45
Section: 3B
On August 10, AD 70, the soldiers of Titus burnt the Temple and pillaged its treasures, including the seven-branched candlestick, which was to feature both in the eventual triumph at Rome and on the arch of Titus. By September 8, all resistance throughout the city had ceased and Jerusalem passed into the hands of the Romans.
Quote ID: 5260
Time Periods: 1
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 46
Section: 3B
Shortly before the city was finally invested, the Christian community, warned of the impending disaster by a prophecy, according to Eusebius, withdrew to Pella in Perea, on the east side of Jordan.Traces of Jewish Christianity are to be found in the following centuries, but the fall of Jerusalem reduced them to a position of complete insignificance for the future history of the Church.
Quote ID: 5261
Time Periods: 1
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 76
Section: 3B
One of the new governor’s first acts was to issue an edict forbidding all clubs, for Trajan regarded them as disturbers of the peace and it was his view that ‘whatever title we give them, and whatever our object in giving it, men who are banded together for a common end will all the same become a political association, and so he would have ‘all societies of this nature prohibited’. When, on these grounds, the Emperor refused to sanction even a fire brigade, it was not to be expected that he would look with favour on the Church.
Quote ID: 5267
Time Periods: 12
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 115
Section: 3B
Alexander Severus (222-35), who had included a statue of Jesus in his pantheon.
Quote ID: 5281
Time Periods: 3
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 162
Section: 1A,3B
Indeed the main threat to the pax Romana came from the Church itself, which was rent by schisms and doctrinal strife.
Quote ID: 5313
Time Periods: 1234
Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 9
Section: 3B
The new Tetrarchic (that is ‘four ruler’) system did not eliminate the possibility of military revolt, but it certainly limited the extent to which a rebel general in a particular province could threaten the stability of the imperial regime.
Quote ID: 2132
Time Periods: 3
Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 10
Section: 3B
At the same time civil and military authority within the provinces was generally divided and parallel hierarchies created within both divisions. The smaller provinces were themselves then grouped into larger units, called dioceses, and these were placed under the direction of a new class of official called Vicarii, or Deputy Praetorian Prefects.
Quote ID: 2134
Time Periods: 34
Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 12
Section: 3B,3C
In general it could be said that the whole thrust of the changes introduced around the turn of the century by Diocletian and by Constantine was aimed at the production of a more regimented and rigid society. Laws that required sons to follow in the professions of their fathers, laws that fixed prices, laws that established exact hierarchies in the civil and military administration, and laws that forbade an increasing range of opinions and practices all cohere in terms of the kind of social ideals that underlie them. {31}….
In this sense the culmination of occasional persecution of the Christians in the course of the third century in the so-called Great Persecution initiated by Diocletian in 303 is hardly surprising.
Quote ID: 2135
Time Periods: 34
Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 12
Section: 3B
It began with the brief reign of Trajan Decius (249-51), who in 250 issued an edict requiring his provincial governors, urban magistrates and local Commissioners for Sacrifices to obtain certificates from the citizens to establish that they had taken part in the obligatory public sacrifices to the gods and to the Genius (or guiding spirit) of the Emperor on certain specified days. At least one witness was required to sign the statement.
Quote ID: 2136
Time Periods: 3
Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 12
Section: 3B
More sustained and systematic were the measures taken in the middle of his reign by the emperor Valerian, who issued two laws against the Christians.
Quote ID: 2137
Time Periods: 3
Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 13
Section: 3B
These laws were repealed in 261 by Valerian’s son Gallienus, who also restored their property to Christian individuals and communities. No further state action was taken against them until the time of Diocletian.The sources of evidence for all of the persecutions are generally later in date than the events themselves, and are written from a Christian point of view. Only the chance survival of an odd document, such as the witnessed certificate of attendance at sacrifices sent to the Commissioners for Sacrifices ‘in the Village of Alexander’s Island’ in Egypt by one Aurelius Diogenes ‘son of Satabus…aged 72; scar on right eyebrow’, gives any contemporary and non-Christian perspective on events. {35}
Quote ID: 2138
Time Periods: 3
Early Medieval Europe 300-1000
Roger Collins
Book ID: 78 Page: 13/14
Section: 3B
Thus for a Christian to participate in a pagan sacrifice, even in a passive way, was a positive act of apostasy, a renunciation of belief. This was unfortunate when the making of such sacrifices was the principal way in which acts of public loyalty to the emperor were expressed. In many ways such a sacrifice was a political act in a religious form.
Quote ID: 2139
Time Periods: 3
End of Ancient Christianity, The
Robert Markus
Book ID: 219 Page: 102
Section: 1A,3B
Christians had already gone a long way in appropriating the culture and life-styles of their pagan contemporaries before the time of Constantine.
Quote ID: 5425
Time Periods: 23
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 251
Section: 3B
It is beyond our powers to describe in a worthy manner the measure and nature of that honour as well as freedom which was accorded by all men, both Greeks and barbarians, before the persecution in our day, to that word of piety toward the God of the universe which had been proclaimed through Christ to the world.….
Why need one speak of those in the imperial palaces and of the supreme rulers, who allowed the members of their households—wives, children and servants—to practice openly to their face the divine word and conduct….
Quote ID: 8541
Time Periods: 234
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 253
Section: 3B,2E3
With what favour one might note that the rulers in every church were honoured by all procurators and governors! And how could one fully describe those assemblies thronged with countless men, and the multitudes that gathered together in every city, and the famed concourse in the places of prayer; by reason of which they were no longer satisfied with the buildings of olden time, and would erect from the foundations churches of spacious dimensions throughout all the cities?
Quote ID: 8542
Time Periods: 34
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 253
Section: 3B
But when, as the result of greater freedom, a change to pride and sloth came over our affairs, we fell to envy and fierce railing against one another, warring upon ourselves, so to speak, as occasion offered, with weapons and spears formed of words; and rulers attacked rulers and laity formed factions against laity, while unspeakable hypocrisy and pretence pursued their evil course to the furthest end….
Quote ID: 8543
Time Periods: 34
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 257
Section: 3B
All things in truth were fulfilled in our day, when we saw with our very eyes the houses of prayer cast down to their foundations from top to bottom, and the inspired and sacred Scriptures committed to the flames in the midst of the market-places, and the pastors of the churches, some shamefully hiding themselves here and there, while others were ignominiously captured and made a mockery by their enemies….
Quote ID: 8544
Time Periods: 34
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 257/259
Section: 3B
It was the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian,{1} and the month of Dystrus,{2} or March, as the Romans would call it, in which, as the festival of the Saviour’s Passion{1} was coming on, an imperial letter was everywhere promulgated, ordering the razing of the Churches to the ground and the destruction by fire of the Scriptures, and proclaiming that those who held high positions would lose all civil rights, while those in households, if they persisted in their profession of Christianity, would be deprived of their liberty.
Quote ID: 8545
Time Periods: 34
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 365
Section: 3B
Book IX chapter IX Copy of a Translation of the Epistle of the Tyrant“Jovius Maximinus Augustus to Sabinus. I am persuaded that it is manifest both to thy Firmness and to all men that our masters Diocletian and Maximian, our fathers, when they perceived that almost all men had abandoned the worship of the gods and associated themselves with the nation of the Christians, rightly gave orders that all men who deserted the worship of their gods, the immortal gods, should be recalled to the worship of the gods by open correction and punishment.
Quote ID: 3113
Time Periods: 34
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 379
Section: 3B,2E3
Book IX chapter XAnd permission has also been granted them to build the Lord’s houses.
Quote ID: 3115
Time Periods: 34
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 379
Section: 3B,2E3
Book IX chapter X. . . were godless and wicked, these he now allows both to observe their form of worship and to build churches;
Pastor John’s note: Greek for Lord’s houses. This is an Ordinance of Maximinus. Notice the mis-translation of that word!!!
Quote ID: 3116
Time Periods: 34
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 107
Section: 3B
Tiberius died after having reigned about twenty-two years, and Caius succeeded him in the empire. He immediately gave the government of the Jews to Agrippa, making him king over the tetrarchies of Philip and of Lysanias; in addition to which he bestowed upon him, not long afterward, the tetrarchy of Herod, having punished Herod (the one under whom the Saviour suffered) and his wife Herodias with perpetual exile{6} on account of numerous crimes.
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, II.iv.
Quote ID: 9522
Time Periods: 1
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 39
Section: 2D3B,3B
…selected Christians faced persecution and death because of their failure to participate in traditional Roman sacrifices. More would be caught in 250 when the emperor Decius issued an edict requiring every person in the empire to offer a public sacrifice to the gods. Even this produced relatively few victims.{4} As Éric Rebillard has recently shown, most Christians would likely have obeyed the emperor’s order without seeing a particular conflict between compliance and their Christian identity.{5}
Quote ID: 8302
Time Periods: 23
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 59
Section: 3B
Nearly six emperors and imperial pretenders had paraded through in the five decades between the death of Alexander Severus in 235 and the accession of Diocletian in 284.
Quote ID: 8306
Time Periods: 3
Gladiators
Michael Grant
Book ID: 97 Page: 32
Section: 3B
Cicero repeatedly sneered at Antony’s brother Lucius for fighting as a gladiator in Asia Minor, and cutting his opponent’s throat. Similar contests involving members of respected families are recorded under the first two emperors; and it pleased Caligula to compel many knights and senators to fight.
Quote ID: 2475
Time Periods: 1
Gladiators
Michael Grant
Book ID: 97 Page: 33
Section: 3B
That is to say the offense of being a gladiator, for a member of the upper classes, is comparable to acting - though even worse. Indeed, it is a logical step downwards from the one to the other, and emperors had sometimes forced such men to fight in the arena just because they had already disgraced themselves by appearing on the stage.
Quote ID: 2476
Time Periods: 1
Gladiators
Michael Grant
Book ID: 97 Page: 36
Section: 3B
Later emperors did their best not to disappoint. Thousands of fighters were matched against one another at Philip the Arabian’s celebration of the millenary of Rome (AD 248), and
Quote ID: 2479
Time Periods: 3
Hadrian
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 103 Page: 142
Section: 3B
The Christian apologist Tertullian, writing about 197, says, in a passage of his apology to which too little attention has been paid (but see Sordi, cited in Sources and Acknowledgements), that Tiberius, when he received Pontius Pilate’s report on the trial and execution of Jesus, wanted to enroll him among the gods of Rome, but that the senate objected on the ground that they knew too little about him. In an apology, a man does not write what is demonstrably false, for one proved error invalidates the whole.
Quote ID: 2578
Time Periods: 2
Hadrian
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 103 Page: 148
Section: 3B,3C
Hadrian forbade circumcision.For the rest, it was a nuisance: only for the Jews a sacrilege. The command can never have been carried out with anything like general obedience. Why did Hadrian try to impose it? There were two reasons. First, with all his liberality of mind, all his longing to see the empire as a company of equal provinces, he envisaged them as a Roman society, a coherent society. There was no room, in his theory, for any “opting-out”, any separatism, and what could be more separatist than this bodily mark? In an age when physical exercise and washing were habitually carried out naked and in company, nothing could be more blatant. Secondly, Hadrian was a Hellenist. To the Greek, man was the measure of all things, mind and body. To dare to modify that body, in any detail at all, even though its results, in the case of the Jews, only served to make a bad state of affairs worse.
Quote ID: 2579
Time Periods: 2
Hadrian
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 103 Page: 155
Section: 3B
Then, on the 30th October, Antinous was drowned. The inquest on his death, the longest and least conclusive inquest in history, is still going on. There are three possible causes of death, misadventure, murder or suicide. The first, for anyone occupying Antinous’ favoured position is very unlikely. Wherever he went he would be accompanied by servants and guards. Murder is just possible. “A favourite has no friend”, and yet what little we know about Antinous, apart from his overpowering beauty, leads us to suppose that he was a modest and intelligent lad. This leaves suicide as the most probable cause. Suicide was, in fact, the answer which men gave in antiquity: what divided opinions was the reason for the suicide. Antinous’ beauty, taken in conjunction with Hadrian’s known liking for males, was made the basis for the foul suggestion that Antinous had committed suicide out of shame for a sullied life.
Quote ID: 2581
Time Periods: 3
Hadrian
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 103 Page: 163
Section: 3B,4B
Bar Kokhba. He also did something else, which was to prove a disaster to his nation. He persecuted the Christians. In his role of Messiah, he found particularly obnoxious those who not only refused to acknowledge his Messianic quality, but went further and worshipped One whom they knew to have been the only true Messiah. It is from this act that the final separation of Jews and Christians is to be dated (though some Jewish apologists would place the responsibility on the later Christian Councils). Between the year 70 and the year 132 there had been a period of polemic between Jews and Christians, without a complete break. But Bar Kokhba’s execution of Christians caused the Christian attitude to harden into the tragic hostility which has ended only in our own day, when the Judaeo-Christian ethic has been assailed by a paganism more terrible than any of old,
Quote ID: 2582
Time Periods: 12
History of Rome
Michael Grant
Book ID: 109 Page: 240
Section: 3B
Then, three days before he was due to depart for the east, the Senate gathered for a meeting in Pompey’s theater; and there the conspirators surrounded him and stabbed him to death. Not long before, all senators had sworn an oath of allegiance to the father of their country, as Caesar had now come to be called; they were clients bound to protect their patron, just as a son is obliged to protect his own father. But at the moment of supreme reckoning they rushed out of the building, and Caesar lay where he had fallen.For all his immeasurable abilities as a general and administrator, he had failed, and would probably have continued to fail, to rescue Rome from its major dilemma. It was this: the republic, obviously, had become impotent, and because this was so, there was no practical alternative to one-man rule. Yet one-man rule was just what the nobles, although themselves incapable of ruling any more, categorically refused to accept; and so they put Caesar to death. It seemed an insoluble problem. Yet there now came another sort of man altogether, who performed the seemingly impossible task of finding a solution after all; he was the nineteen-year-old Octavian, grand-nephew of Julius Caesar who had adopted him in his will as his son.
Quote ID: 2632
Time Periods: 01
History of Rome
Michael Grant
Book ID: 109 Page: 245
Section: 3B
But although Cleopatra, and then Antony himself, succeeded in breaking out, only a quarter of their fleet was able to follow them.Both fled to Egypt. When the country fell to Octavian (30 B.C.), they committed suicide at Alexandria. Their conqueror declared the country a Roman possession, thus eliminating the last survivor of the three Greek monarchies that had succeeded to the heritage of Alexander; and he made it a unique sort of province, under his own direct control. His seizure of Cleopatra’s treasure made him wealthier than the Roman state itself.
Quote ID: 2633
Time Periods: 01
History of Rome
Michael Grant
Book ID: 109 Page: 249
Section: 2C,3B
Four days after the new political arrangements were announced in 27 B.C., the ruler’s name “Caesar” was supplemented by the novel designation “Augustus.” It was a word that carried venerable religious overtones, being linked with the verb “increase” (augere) which was also the root of auctoritus and probably of augurium, the practice of divination, which lay deep in Roman tradition. The adoption of this term “Augustus” to define his new status as the leader of the nation indicated his superiority over the rest of humankind and yet avoided dictatorial or divine appellations that would cause conservatives offense.
Quote ID: 2634
Time Periods: 01
History of Rome
Michael Grant
Book ID: 109 Page: 256
Section: 3B
After many earlier successes, Augustus’s policy of military expansion had ground to a halt in his last years, and he himself left Tiberius the advice not to continue it. By his reorganization, on the other hand, of the entire machinery of civilian government, he had proved himself one of the most gifted administrators the world has ever seen and the most influential single figure in the entire history of Rome. The gigantic work of reform that he carried out in every branch of Italian and provincial life not only transformed the decaying republic into a new regime with many centuries of existence ahead of it, but also created a durable efficient Roman peace. It was this Pax Romana or Pax Augusta that insured the survival and eventual transmission of the classical heritage, Greek and Roman alike, and made possible the diffusion of Christianity, of which the founder, Jesus, was born during this reign.
Quote ID: 2635
Time Periods: 01
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, The
Suetonius
Book ID: 246 Page: 142
Section: 3B
He abolished foreign cults, especially the Egyptian and the Jewish rites, compelling all who were addicted to such superstitions to burn their religious vestments and all their paraphernalia. Those of the Jews who were of military age he assigned to provinces of less healthy climate, ostensibly to serve in the army. Others of the same race or of similar beliefs he banished from the city, on pain of slavery for life if they did not obey. He banished the astrologers as well, but pardoned such as begged for indulgence and promised to give up their art.Pastor John’s Note: Tiberius
Quote ID: 6205
Time Periods: 1
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, The
Suetonius
Book ID: 246 Page: 146
Section: 3B
Still more flagrant and brazen was another sort of infamy which he practiced, one that may scarce be told, much less believed. He taught children of the most tender years, whom he called his little fishes, to play between his legs while he was in his bath. Those which had not yet been weaned, but were strong and hearty, he set at fellatio, the sort of sport bet adapted to his inclination and age.Pastor John’s Notes: Good grief.
Quote ID: 6206
Time Periods: 1
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, The
Suetonius
Book ID: 246 Page: 146
Section: 3B
It is also said that one day during a sacrifice he was so smitten by the beauty of a boy who swung a censer that he was hardly able to wait till the rites were over before taking him aside and abusing him as well as his brother who was playing the flute; and that soon afterwards he had the legs of both of them broken because they were reproaching each other with the disgrace.Pastor John’s Notes: Poor boy.
Quote ID: 6207
Time Periods: 1
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, The
Suetonius
Book ID: 246 Page: 226
Section: 3B
Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus {1}, Claudius expelled them from Rome.
Quote ID: 6209
Time Periods: 1
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, The
Suetonius
Book ID: 246 Page: 296
Section: 3B
Galba... was much inclined to unnatural desire, and in gratifying it preferred full-grown, strong men. They say that when Icelus, one of his old-times favorites, brought him the news in Spain of Nero’s death, he not only received him openly with the fondest kisses, but begged him to prepare himself without delay and took him privately aside.
Quote ID: 6210
Time Periods: 1
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, The
Suetonius
Book ID: 246 Page: 335
Section: 3B
the King of the Parthians...as death drew near, he said: “Woe’s me. Methinks I’m turning into a God.”
Quote ID: 6211
Time Periods: 1
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, The
Suetonius
Book ID: 246 Page: 342
Section: 3B
Having declared that he would accept the office of Pontifex Maximus for the purpose of keeping his hands unstained, he was true to his promise. For, after that he neither caused nor connived at the death of any man, although he sometimes had no lack of reasons for taking vengeance.
Quote ID: 6212
Time Periods: 1
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 420 Page: 249
Section: 3B
Christians of all sorts had been subject to local persecution from the beginning of the religion (2 Cor. 11:23-25); but it was not until the mid-third century that there was any official, empire-wide attempt to eliminate the religion. From about 249 CE onwards, starting with the brief reign of the emperor Decius (249-51), there were periods of persecution, sporadically and inconsistently enforced, along with times of peace.
Quote ID: 8607
Time Periods: 3
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 34
Section: 3B,4B
. . .to move from the age of the Antonines to the age of Constantine is not to pass through some moment of catastrophic breakdown, of bankruptcy, depletion, pauperization, and the consequent “cutting back” of expenditure on religious and cultural activity but rather to pass from one dominant lifestyle, and its forms of expression, to another; to pass, in fact, from an age of equipoise to an age of ambition.
Quote ID: 6292
Time Periods: 234
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 50/51
Section: 3B
There was, therefore, nothing new, much less artificial, about Diocletian’s solemn consultation of the oracles before the persecution of the Christians {101} or in his linking of himself with the traditional cults in monuments as far apart as Rome, Thessalonica, and Ephesus. {102} What was lacking, however, was the seemingly unflagging zeal with which members of the local community collaborated with such displays.
Quote ID: 6307
Time Periods: 34
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 58
Section: 3B
Even in a village near Oxyrhynchus, a Christian church had doors of bronze substantial enough to be confiscated and transported all the way to Alexandria in 303. {21}
Quote ID: 6312
Time Periods: 34
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 63
Section: 3B,4B
On one feature, all Late Antique men were agreed. Friendship with the invisible great had the same consequences as friendship with the great of this world: it meant far more than intimacy; it meant power.
Quote ID: 6318
Time Periods: 345
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 1/2
Section: 3B,3C2
In the summer of 177 there took place at Lyons one of the most terrible dramas in the history of the early Church. The story of the persecution is preserved in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book v, Chs. 1 – 3, from an account sent to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia by an anonymous survivor of the Gallic community.{1} For simplicity, sincerity and for the sheer horror of the events it describes it is unmatched in the annals of Christian antiquity.. . . .
Yet, however one looks at the evidence, there is no doubt that the Gallic Churches were in a rudimentary stage of development. In particular, and there seems to be no point in denying this,{11} Greek influences still predominated. Not only was the letter sent to the Churches in Asia Minor written in Greek, but any statements spoken in Latin were specially noted.{12}
Quote ID: 7648
Time Periods: 234
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 3
Section: 3B
Pothinus, the aged bishop is likely to have been himself an immigrant,{14} his senior presbyter and famous successor, Irenaeus had been brought up in Smyrna.{15} Attalus, described as a ‘pillar of the Church’ at Vienne was a Roman citizen from Pergamum.{16} Alexander, another prominent Christian at Lyons was a physician who had emigrated from Phrygia.{17}. . . .
The spiritual home of the two Churches was Asia Minor, for it was to the Churches of the provinces of Asia and Phrygia more than a thousand miles away that they addressed themselves in their hour of need. Here were ‘the brethren who had the same faith and hope of redemption’.{18} Their links with these provinces must have been strong indeed.
PJ: Irenaues connection with Phrygia made him defend them?
Quote ID: 7649
Time Periods: 23
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 6
Section: 3B
Then there began a general search for Christians which included a number from Vienne.{46} How this happened is not at all certain, as Vienne was outside the legatus’ jurisdiction. On the other hand, at Lyons the legatus had jurisdiction over every criminal found in his province regardless of origin. The only obvious explanation is that Sanctus and his companions from Vienne were visiting Lyons at the time.{47} Day by day, new victims, the most zealous members of the two Churches, were arrested.{48} From this, it seems that Trajan’s directive to Pliny in 112, that Christians should not be sought out, was no longer being observed fully everywhere.{49}
Quote ID: 7650
Time Periods: 2
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 7
Section: 4B,3B
Pagan slaves belonging to the prisoners were arrested and tortured in order to secure admissions from them that their masters had also indulged in incest and cannibalism – Thyestian feasts and Oedipean intercourse.{53} With a certain amount of prompting from the soldiers some made the desired statements.
Quote ID: 7651
Time Periods: 2
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 7
Section: 3B
Some of the martyrs refused, however, to give as much as their names to their torturers. Of Sanctus it was said ‘that he did not even tell his own name, or the race, or the city whence he was, but to all questions answered in Latin, “I am a Christian”. This he said for name and city and race and for everything else, and the heathen heard no other sound from him’.{57} To such exasperating behaviour the authorities could do little but apply repeated tortures.
Quote ID: 7653
Time Periods: 2
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 8
Section: 3B
Sanctus and Maturus perished. Blandina, terribly tortured though she was, nevertheless survived, the animals refusing to touch her.{61}
Quote ID: 7654
Time Periods: 23
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 8
Section: 3B
It was in this period of respite probably that the echoes of Montanism reached the prisoners from Phrygia: and Irenaeus, who somehow had escaped arrest, was charged with conveying their views to Bishop Eleutherus at Rome.{64}In due course, Marcus Aurelius’ answer arrived. In essentials it represented a continuation of the policy of Trajan sixty years earlier.{65} Those who persisted in confessing to Christianity were to be executed. The Roman citizens among them were to be beheaded, the remainder delivered to the beasts. Those who recanted were to be freed.{66}
Quote ID: 7655
Time Periods: 23
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 10
Section: 3B
At this period Romano-Gallic paganism was still intellectually and materially in the ascendant. It was the outward symbol of the deep imprint of classical culture in the Celtic lands. The Roman pantheon found itself grafted easily on to the Celtic religion. After its final outbreak in the year of the Four Emperors (68-69) Druidic nationalism had suffered eclipse.{82} The Druids became socially respectable and were no longer a menace to Rome.{83}
Quote ID: 3178
Time Periods: 1
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 15
Section: 3B,4B
There is no evidence that the Christians regarded their quarrel specifically with the authorities, let alone with the Roman Empire. Their witness was against the ‘world’ (which, of course, was represented for the time being by the pagan Roman Empire), but they saw their acts in eschatological and not political terms. The Devil was their enemy; {122} the Paraclete was their Advocate
Quote ID: 3179
Time Periods: 2
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 16/17
Section: 2D3A,2D3B,3B
The question has often been debated as to the extent of Montanist influence among the Lyons Christians at this time.{131} The problem would, however, appear to be more one of parallel religious developments rather than allegiances.As we have seen, there were many links between the Churches in Gaul and those of Asia Minor in those years. Movements among the one might be expected to find an echo in the other. If the letter had been written from Asia Minor at this time, the emphatic references to prophecy as among the Apostolic charismata,{132} and the description of Vettius Epagathus, ‘the Paraclete of the Christians’, ‘boiling over with the Spirit’, and ‘having the Spirit in fuller measure than Zacharias’, would certainly suggest Montanist influence.{133} So too would the claim made on behalf of the confessors to be able to forgive sins,{134} and to ‘bind and loose’,{135} as these were claims explicitly made by the Montanist prophets.{136}
Quote ID: 7656
Time Periods: 2
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 18
Section: 2D3B,3B,4B
This is revealed in a curious incident. Time and again the Christians under torture have denied the charges of cannibalism and incest made against them. They claimed indignantly that their religion did not involve these or any other evil actions. The authorities tortured a slave girl named Biblis who had previously shown a willingness to recant. In a sudden burst of strength she cried out, ‘How could such men eat children, when they are not allowed to consume the blood even of irrational animals (Greek Word)?’{147} The statement sounds as though it had been made under the stress of the moment, and is interesting. It suggests that the Christians at Lyons were still observing the strict Apostolic rules concerning food (Acts 15:20 and 29), and as is well known, these were derived from orthodox Jewish practice.{148}Pastor John notes: Footnote on page 28
Quote ID: 3180
Time Periods: 23
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 105
Section: 3B
Thus Livy records how in 397 B.C., during the war against Veii, the Delphic oracle informed the embassy from Rome that a condition of success was the restoration of traditional cults in the old style.{5} During the same war, Livy put into the mouth of Camillus the warning to the Roman people ‘that all went well so long as we obeyed the gods, and ill when we spurned them’.{6} When disaster did befall, as in the time of the great pestilence of 463 B.C., the remedy was a general sacrifice to the Roman gods by the whole people.{7} There were long-standing precedents for the action of the Emperor Decius in 250.
Quote ID: 7659
Time Periods: 03
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 114
Section: 3B
The events following his murder showed how threadbare the Republican tradition had become. The dead Caesar was accorded the title of Divus, the month of July was dedicated to him, and the Senate voted his Consecratio. His worship was associated with that of Dea Roma, and his genius was admitted to the Pantheon. It is difficult not to see in these measures a decisive break with the past,…
Quote ID: 7662
Time Periods: 0
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 115
Section: 3B,4B
The myth of Actium, as Syme has shown,{72} was religious as well as national. On the one side stood Rome and all the protecting gods of Italy, on the other, the bestial divinities of the Nile. If the Roman people were to be strong and confident in their future, honour must be done to the gods of Rome. Their dignified and reverent worship was the moral buttress of Rome’s continuing power. The qualities of virtus and pietas could not be dissociated. Thus there begins a period of self-assertiveness in Roman paganism, patriotic as well as religious. It was not that there was active proselytization on behalf of the Roman gods, but these became the symbols of Empire, of the culture and language of Rome.
Quote ID: 7663
Time Periods: 0
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 116
Section: 3B
What of the role of Augustus himself?{81} One looks for the clue in the profoundly conservative character of the man and in the fact that the principate was not intended as a complete break from what had gone before. Thus, to quote his own opinion of his office, ‘I refused to accept the award of any form of office which was not in accordance with the institutions of our ancestors’.{82}
Quote ID: 7664
Time Periods: 01
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 137
Section: 3B,4B
Nearly fifty years later, Pliny’s advisers in Bithynia urged the same course and for the same reasons, against the Christians. Supplication with incense to the Emperor’s statue and the recitation of prayer to the gods were ‘things (which so it was said) those who are really Christians cannot be made to do’.
Quote ID: 3193
Time Periods: 2
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 440
Section: 3B
Chapter Fourteen The Triumph of Christianity, 260-303
Quote ID: 7676
Time Periods: 34
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 477
Section: 3B
Exactly why, on 23 February 303, Diocletian signed an edict aimed at outlawing the Christian Church may perhaps never be known.
Quote ID: 7677
Time Periods: 34
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 485/486
Section: 3A4,3B
When it came, however, the persecution was more the outcome of the needs of military discipline than the result of intellectual conflict. Despite the adoratio, Diocletian’s court at Nicomedia was no centre for anti-Christian agitation. The Emperor’s wife and daughter and his personal attendants seem to have been pro-Christian.{75} There were plenty of Christian civil servants both at court and in the provinces, and plenty of Christians serving in the armies.{76}
Quote ID: 7678
Time Periods: 34
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 487/488
Section: 3B
Manichaeism had been spreading across the Persian frontier into Arabia and Egypt, and by 296/297 had found support in Carthage. The edict which Diocletian sent from Alexandria to Julianus, proconsul of Africa, at the height of the Persian war{85} on 31 March 297, demonstrated the religious beliefs by which the Tetrarchy was guided, and the Emperor’s determination to crush a proselytizing creed which he regarded as enemy propaganda hostile to the interests of the State.. . . .
The Manichaeans were therefore to be punished as innovators and indeed as enemy agents working for Persia. Their leaders and their books were to be seized and burnt;{86} other adherents of the sect to be put to death by more normal means.
Quote ID: 7679
Time Periods: 34
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 491
Section: 3B
To the very end, however, Diocletian with his concern for public order and the welfare of the Empire as a whole, insisted that there must be no bloodshed. The object was to recall Christians to their duty of honoring the gods. The edict was prepared according to his wishes. At first light on 23 February, soldiers and Guardians of the Peace (irenarchs) accompanied by the pretorian prefect and other high officers went to the church at Nicomedia, situated in full view of the Imperial palace, and demolished it. The sacred books were burnt, and anything else found in the church given over to the mob.{101} The next day, the edict was published. It commanded that throughout the whole Empire churches were to be destroyed, and sacred books handed over to be burnt. Christians in the public service were to be removed from their offices: in civil life the honestiores were to lose their important privileges of birth and status, and no Christian might act as accuser in cases of personal injury, adultery and theft. Christian slaves might no longer be freed.
Quote ID: 7680
Time Periods: 34
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 507
Section: 3B
…throughout the period 306-311 Christians never knew when their turn might come. Even so, the spirit of the pagans was flagging. Persecution was no longer a popular policy and, as Athanasius was to say, many pagans now sympathized with the Christians.{210}After nearly a year of suspense and confusion,{211} Maximian issued an edict around Easter 306{212} calling on everyone regardless of age and sex to sacrifice at the temples under the supervision of the magistrates.{213}
Quote ID: 7681
Time Periods: 4
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 508
Section: 3B
Next year, 307, Maximin changed his tactics. For the death penalty he substituted savage mutilation and consignment to hard labour in the mines and quarries.{216}
Quote ID: 7682
Time Periods: 4
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 509
Section: 3B
In the first months of 310 persecution continued, but after February, which witnessed the execution of Pamphilus and his pupils, it tended to become more desultory. Eusebius records Eubulus, as the last of the Palestinian martyrdoms, 7 March 310.{229}
Quote ID: 7683
Time Periods: 4
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 514
Section: 3B
Then, perhaps in the early autumn 311, pagan public opinion in Asia, Syria and Palestine was galvanized into action for the last time. There was to be a ‘plebiscite’ against the Christians.
Quote ID: 7684
Time Periods: 4
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 515
Section: 3B
Without promulgating a formal edict, executions of prominent Christians began again. Silvanus of Emesa was thrown to the beasts in the late autumn, Peter of Alexandria executed on 25 November 311 and ‘many other Egyptian bishops with him’, also the bishop and author Methodius of Olympus in Lycia,{262} and the theologian, Lucian, presbyter of Antioch at Nicomedia on 7 January 312.{263} The final savage outburst lasting from November 311 to January 312{264} deprived the Christians of some of their ablest leaders who had hitherto escaped molestation.
Quote ID: 7685
Time Periods: 4
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 518
Section: 3B,3C
What Maximian was performing for the benefits of the adherents of the gods, Constantine now did for those of the Christian God. The Senate had rapidly declared him senior Augustus. In the winter of 312, he used his legislative authority to dismantle the remains of the persecution.{281}
Quote ID: 7686
Time Periods: 4
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 1
Section: 3B
During his reign, Rome was visited by a severe pestilence, and this, with reverses suffered by his armies, threw the populace into a panic, and led them to demand the sacrifice of the Christians, whom they regarded as having brought down the anger of the gods. Aurelius seems to have shared the panic; and his record is stained by his sanction of a cruel persecution. This incident in the career of the last, and one of the loftiest, of the pagan moralists may be regarded as symbolic of the dying effort of heathenism to check the advancing tide of Christianity.
Quote ID: 6346
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 5
Section: 3B
1.1. From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.1.2. From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character.
1.3. From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.
1.4 From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.
1.5 From my governor, to be neither of the green nor of the blue party at the games in the Circus, nor a partisan either of the Parmularius or the Scutarius at the gladiators’ fights; from him too I learned endurance of labour, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other people’s affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander.
. . . .
1.6 From Diognetus, …. To endure freedom of speech; …. And to have desired a plank bed and skin, and whatever else of the kind belongs to the Grecian discipline.
. . . .
1.7 From Rusticus I received the impression that my character required improvement and discipline; …. Nor to showing myself off as a man who practices much discipline, or does benevolent acts in order to make a display; ….
Quote ID: 6347
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 6
Section: 3B
. . .and with respect to those who have offended me by words, or done me wrong, to be easily disposed to be pacified and reconciled as soon as they have shown a readiness to be reconciled; and to read carefully and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book; nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk overmuch; . . .
Quote ID: 6348
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 7
Section: 3B
1.13 From Catulus, not to be indifferent when a friend finds fault, even if he should find fault without reason, but to try to restore him to his usual disposition; and to be ready to speak well of teacher, as it is reported of Domitius and Athenodotus; and to love my children truly.1.14 From my brother Severus, to love my kin, and to love truth, and to love justice; and through him I learned to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, Brutus; and from him I received the idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed; I learned from him also consistency and undeviating steadiness in my regard for philosophy, and a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hopes and to believe that I am loved by my friends; ….
. . . .
1.15 From Maximus I learned self-government, and not to be led aside by anything; and cheerfulness in all circumstances, as well as in illness; and a just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity, and to do what was set before me without complaining. I observed that everybody believed that he thought as he spoke, and that in all that he did he never had any bad intention;. . .
Quote ID: 6349
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 7/8
Section: 3B
1.16 In my father, I observed mildness of temper, and unchangeable resolution in the things which he had determined after due deliberation; and no vainglory in those things which men call honours; ….
Quote ID: 6350
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 9
Section: 3B
. . . he showed prudence and economy in the exhibition of the public spectacles and the construction of public buildings, his donations to the people, and in such things, for he was a man who looked to what ought to be done, not to the reputations which is got by a man’s acts.
Quote ID: 6351
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 9
Section: 3B
1.17 To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good.
Quote ID: 6352
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 10
Section: 3B
I thank the gods for giving me such a brother, who was able by his moral character to rouse me to vigilance over myself, and who, at the same time, pleased me by his respect and affection; that my children have not been stupid nor deformed in body; ….
Quote ID: 6353
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 10
Section: 3B
. . . and what kind of life that is, so that, so far as depended on the gods, and their gifts and help, and inspirations, nothing hindered me from forthwith living according to nature, though I still fall short of it through my own fault, and though not observing the admonitions of the gods, and, I may almost say, their direct instructions; that my body has held out so long in such a kind of life; that I never touched either Benedicta or Theodotus, and that, after having fallen into amatory passions, I was cured; and, though I was often out of humour with Rusticus, I never did anything of which I had occasion to repent; that, though it was my mother’s fate to die young, she spent the last years of her life with me; that, whenever I wished to help any man in his need, or on any other occasion, I was never told that I had not the means of doing it; and that to myself the same necessity never happened, to receive anything from another; that I have such a wife, so obedient, and so affectionate, and so simple; that I had abundance of good masters for my children; . . .
Quote ID: 6354
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 11
Section: 3B
2.1 . . . and the nature of him who does wrong, that it (the other’s nature*) is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly not can I be angry with my kinsmen, nor hate him. For we are made for co-operation…Pastor John notes: John’s note: parenthesis above (the other’s nature) is not part of the original text—it is “John’s note”; all [brackets] are part of the original text
Quote ID: 6355
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 12
Section: 3B
2.5 Thou seest how few the things are, the which if a man lays hold of, he is able to live a life which flows in quite, and is like the existence of the gods, for the gods on their part will require nothing more from him who observes these things.
Quote ID: 6356
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 13
Section: 3B
2.11 But to go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve thee in evil; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of providence? But in truth they do exist, and they do not care for human things, . . .
Quote ID: 6357
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 14
Section: 3B
2.13 Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbours, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the daemon within him, and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the daemon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and men.
Quote ID: 6358
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 15
Section: 3B
2.17 What, then, is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing, and only one—philosophy. But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man’s doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens, . . .
Quote ID: 6359
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 19
Section: 3B
3.7 Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything which needs walls and curtains; . . .
Quote ID: 6360
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 19
Section: 3B
3.10 Short then is the time which every man lives, and small the nook of the earth where he lives; and short too the longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less him who died long ago.
Quote ID: 6361
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 23
Section: 3B
4.7 Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the compliant, “I have been harmed.” Take away the compliant, “I have been harmed,” and the harm is taken away.
Quote ID: 6362
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 24
Section: 3B
4.17 Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.
Quote ID: 6363
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 24/25
Section: 3B
4.19 He who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon; then again also they who have succeeded them, until the whole remembrance shall have been extinguished as it is transmitted through men who foolishly admire and perish. But suppose that those who will remember are even immortal, and that the remembrance will be immortal, what then is this to thee? And I say not, what is it to the dead? but, what is it to the living?
Quote ID: 6364
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 27
Section: 3B
4.31 Love the art, poor as it may be, which thou hast learned, and be content with it; and pass through the rest of life like one who has intrusted to the gods with his whole soul all that he has, making thyself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man.
Quote ID: 6365
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 34
Section: 3B
5.10 But on the contrary it is even an object of serious pursuit, I cannot imagine. But on the contrary it is a man’s duty to comfort himself, and to wait for the natural dissolution and not to be vexed at the delay, but to rest in these principles only: the one, that nothing will happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the universe; and the other, that it is in my power never to act contrary to my god and daemon: for there is no man who will compel me to this.
Quote ID: 6366
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 36
Section: 3B
5.18 Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear. The same things happen to another, …
Quote ID: 6367
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 37/38
Section: 3B
5.27 Live with the gods. And he does live with the gods who constantly shows to them that his own soul is satisfied with that which is assigned to him, and that it does all that the daemon wishes, which Zeus hath given to every man for his guardian and guide, a portion of himself. And this is every man’s understanding and reason.
Quote ID: 6368
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 40
Section: 3B
6.4 All existing things soon change, and they will either be reduced to vapour, if indeed all substance is one, or they will be dispersed.. . . .
6.6 The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like [the wrong-doer].
6.7 Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it, in passing from one social act to another social act, thinking of God.
Quote ID: 6369
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 42
Section: 3B
6.16 What then is worth being valued? To be received with clapping of hands? No. Neither must we value the clapping of tongues, for the praise which comes from the many is a clapping of tongues. Suppose then that thou hast given up this worthless thing called fame, what remains that is worth valuing? This, in my opinion, to move thyself and to restrain thyself in conformity to thy proper constitution, to which end both all employments and arts lead.
Quote ID: 6370
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 43
Section: 3B
6.21 If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.
Quote ID: 6371
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 44
Section: 3B
6.30 Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar, that thou art not dyed with this dye; for such things happen. Keep thyself then simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshiper of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. Strive to continue to be such as philosophy wished to make thee. Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life.
Quote ID: 6372
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 49
Section: 3B
6.51 He who loves fame considers another man’s activity to be his own good; and he who loves pleasure, his own sensations; but he who has understanding, considers his own acts to be his own good.6.52 It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul, for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments.
6.53 Accustom thyself to attend carefully to what is said by another, and as much as it is possible, be in the speaker’s mind.
6.54 That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.
Quote ID: 6373
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 50
Section: 3B
7.6 How many after being celebrated by fame have been given up to oblivion; and how many who have celebrated the fame of others have long been dead.
Quote ID: 6374
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 51
Section: 3B
7.17 Eudaemonia happiness is a good daemon, or a good thing.
Quote ID: 6375
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 54
Section: 3B
7.34 About fame: look at the minds of those who seek fame, observe what they are, and what kind of things they avoid, and what kind of things they pursue. And consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after.
Quote ID: 6376
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 68
Section: 3B
8.59 Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.
Quote ID: 6377
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 73
Section: 3B
9.28 In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou also be governed by it (vi. 44; vii. 75).
Quote ID: 6378
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 75
Section: 3B
9.39 Either all things proceed from one intelligent source and come together as in one body, and the part ought not to find fault with what is done for the benefit of the whole; or there are only atoms, and nothing else than mixture and dispersion. Why, then, art thou disturbed?Pastor John notes: John’s note: atoms = chance
Quote ID: 6379
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 75
Section: 3B
9.40 Either the gods have no power or they have power. If, then, they have no power, why does thou pray to them? But if they have power, why dost thou not pray for them to give thee the faculty of not fearing any of the things which thou fearest, or of not desiring any of the things which thou desirest, or not being pained at anything, rather than pray that any of these things should not happen or happen?
Quote ID: 6380
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 87
Section: 3B
11. 3 What a soul that is which is ready, if at any moment it must be separated from the body, and ready either to be extinguished or dispersed or continue to exist; but so that this readiness comes from a man’s own judgment, not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians, but considerately and with dignity and in a way to persuade another, without tragic show.
Quote ID: 6381
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 90
Section: 3B
11.15 The man who is honest and good ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander as soon as he comes near him must smell whether he choose or not.
Quote ID: 6383
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 91/93
Section: 3B
11.18 But examine the matter from first principles, from this: If all things are not mere atoms, it is nature which orders all things: if this is so, the inferior things exist for the sake of the superior, and these for the sake of one another (ii. 1: ix. 39; v. 16; iii. 4) ….Remember these nine rules, as if thou hadst received them as a gift from the Muses, and begin at last to be a man while thou livest. . . . But if thou wilt, receive also a tenth present from the leader of the Muses, Apollo, and it is this—that to expect bad men not to do wrong is madness, for he who expects this desires an impossibility. But to allow men to behave so to others, and to expect them not to do thee any wrong, is irrational and tyrannical.
Quote ID: 6384
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 98
Section: 3B
12.14 Either there is a fatal necessity and invincible order, or a kind providence, or a confusion without a purpose and without a director (iv. 27). If then there is an invincible necessity, why does thou resist? But if there is a providence which allows itself to be propitiated, make thyself worthy of the help of the divinity. But if there is a confusion without a governor, be content that in such a tempest thou hast in thyself a certain ruling intelligence.
Quote ID: 6385
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 99
Section: 3B
12.23 For thus too he is moved by the deity who is moved in the same manner with the deity and moved towards the same things in his mind.
Quote ID: 6386
Time Periods: 2
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The
George Long
Book ID: 252 Page: 100
Section: 3B
12.26 And thou hast forgotten this too, that every man’s intelligence is a god, and is an efflux of the deity; and forgotten this, that nothing is a man’s own, but that his child and his body and his very soul came from the deity; ….12.28 To those who ask, Where hast thou seen the gods or how dost thou comprehend that they exist and so worshipest them? I answer, in the first place, they may be seen even with the eyes; in the second place, neither have I seen even my own soul and yet I honour it. Thus then with respect to the gods, from what I constantly experience of their power, from this I comprehend that they exist and I venerate them.
Quote ID: 6387
Time Periods: 2
Melito, ANF Vol. 8, The Twelve Patriarchs
Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson
Book ID: 474 Page: 10
Section: 3B
It appears, for example, that thy grandfather Adrian wrote, among others, to Fundanus, the proconsul then in charge of the government of Asia. The father, too, when thou thyself wast associated with him in the administration of the empire, wrote to the cities, forbidding them to take any measures adverse to us: among the rest to the people of Larissa, and of Thessalonica, and of Athens, and, in short, to all the Greeks. And as regards thyself, seeing that thy sentiments respecting the Christians are not only the same as theirs, but even much more generous and wise, we are the more persuaded that thou will do all that we ask of thee.
Quote ID: 8532
Time Periods: 2
Minucius Felix, Octavius, LCL 250: Tertullian, Minucius Felix
Minucius Felix
Book ID: 332 Page: 353
Section: 3B
For he wavered, from belief in the gods, at one moment, to keeping the question open at another, so that the ambiguity of statement might make my own line of reply more ambiguous.
Quote ID: 8093
Time Periods: 12
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 50/51
Section: 2B1,3B
Whatever modern critics and historians may say of Tertullian’s statement that the Emperor Tiberous desired to have Jesus Christ admitted among the gods of the Roman empire, but was refused by the Senate,{2} certain it is that Tertullian charges the Romans to consult their archives, where no doubt the record might be found of Pilate’s official dispatch concerning Christ and His crucifixion, to which even Tacitus seems so pointedly to refer in that passage so often cited, but which will here bear repetition; “Auctor nominis cjus Christus, Tiberio imperante, per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum, supplicio affectus erat.” “Christ, the author of the Christian name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius.” (Ann. Book XV . c. 44.) Then, too, there is the story of Alexander Severus, that he had a statue or portrait of Christ among his household gods, told by AElius Lampridius, with the additional statement that he wished to erect a temple in honour of Christ, and that the Emperor Hadrian had the same intention, directing buildings to be raised in every city, without images in them: but was prevented from executing his design by the oracles and the priests, who said that if this should be done, all would become Christians, and the heathen temples would be deserted.
Quote ID: 3299
Time Periods: 123
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 51
Section: 3B
This toleration of Christians at Rome continued until the time of Nero, who first persecuted them, and that, too, a year after St. Paul had been set at liberty.
Quote ID: 3300
Time Periods: 1
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 51
Section: 3B
This first persecution of Christianity by Nero is not easily accounted for. Various conjectures have been advanced, such as the proselyting disposition of the new sect-their exclusiveness in not attending the Pagan festivals and games-confounding Christians with seditious Jews-the conduct of the Christians during the great fire which reduced Rome to ashes, so offensive to the Romans because of its joyous demonstrations in prospect of Christ’s second coming, at what they supposed to be the end of the world--the suspicions of the Roman mob that the Jews had set fire to the city, and who when officially examined implicated the Christians, whom they detested as renegades from the faith of their fathers-and finally, that Poppea, Nero’s beautiful and accomplished Jewish mistress, and a Jewish actor named Alitiurus, a favorite with Nero, used their influence to save their own people from suspicion, and fasten the guilt upon the hated Galileans.{3}
Quote ID: 3301
Time Periods: 1
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 52
Section: 3B,4B
Two distinguished writers on Civil Law, in modern times, have advanced the more plausible theory that the general cause of the Roman persecutions of Christianity was the infraction of the law against secret assemblies.PJ: Clubs.
Quote ID: 3302
Time Periods: 23
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 53
Section: 3B
The other writer is Dr. David Irving, who does not state the matter quite so broadly, when he says: “It is commonly regarded as a very curious and remarkable fact, that although the Romans were disposed to tolerate every other religious sect, yet they frequently persecuted Christians with unrelenting cruelty. This exception, so fatal to a peaceable and harmless sect, must have originated in circumstances which materially distinguished them from the votaries of every other religion. The causes and the pretexts of persecution may have varied at various periods; but there seems to have been one general cause which will readily be apprehended by those who are intimately acquainted with the Roman jurisprudence. From the most remote period of their history, the Romans had conceived extreme horror against all nocturnal meetings of a secret and mysterious nature. A law prohibiting nightly vigils in a temple has ever been ascribed, though with little probability, to the founder of their state. The laws of the twelve tables declared it a capital offense to attend nocturnal assemblies in the city.
Quote ID: 3303
Time Periods: ?
Monumental Christianity, Or the Art and Symbolism of the Primitive Church
John P. Lundy
Book ID: 155 Page: 55
Section: 3B
About the beginning of the reign of Trajan, A.D. 98, a special law was published against Hetaria, or fraternities, what we now call secret clubs, or brotherhoods, which were established up and down the Roman empire. Their pretext was social feasting, and the better dispatch of business, friendship, and good fellowship. But they were suspected by the government to be hotbeds of sedition, plots, and conspiracies.PJ: Clubs.
Quote ID: 3305
Time Periods: 12
Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, The
Candida Moss
Book ID: 386 Page: 143/145
Section: 3B,3C2
In his Church History, Eusebius writes that, with the exception of a handful of “good emperors,” every one of the Roman emperors had participated in a demonically inspired program of persecution.{21} But apart from the Pliny-Trajan correspondence there is no record of imperial involvement in the handling of Christians.….
The important thing for us to note for now is that prior to 250 there was no legislation in place that required Christians to do anything that might lead them to die. Even the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan provided guidelines only for Pliny, not for the entire empire.
Quote ID: 8336
Time Periods: 123
Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans
A. T. Fear
Book ID: 165 Page: 353
Section: 3B
997 years after the foundation of the City, Philip was made the 23rd emperor after Augustus. He made his son, Philip, his co-ruler and reigned for seven years. {204} He was the first of all the emperors to be a Christian, and after two years of his rule the 1,000th year after the foundation of Rome was completed. So it came to pass that this most pre-eminent of all her previous birthdays was celebrated with magnificent games by a Christian emperor. {205} There can be no doubt that Philip dedicated the gratitude and honour expressed in this great thanksgiving to Christ and the church, as no author speaks of him going up to the Capitol and sacrificing victims there as was the custom. {206}.....
{205} Perhaps an odd comment, given Orosius’s hostility to the games, Jerome, Chronicle, A Abr 2262, gives more detail, speaking of ‘innumerable’ animals killed in the Circus Maximus, games celebrated in the Campus Martius, and three days and nights of theatrical performances. {206} This is a striking claim and not made by other Latin authors. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 6.34, claims Philip was a Christian, but says nothing about Rome’s millennium. For Orosius, the link he has made shows that Rome and its empire are an integral part of God’s plan. Orosius suppresses Eutropius’s, 9.3, comment that the two Philips were deified after their deaths, which would have destroyed his case. See Pohlsander (1980) for a sceptical, and Shahid (1984), for a more accepting, approach to Philip’s possible Christian beliefs.
{207} Decius claimed that he was ‘forced’ to declare himself emperor by his troops and promised to lay aside his claim on entering Italy. In fact, he met the elder Philip in battle at Verona, where he defeated and killed him. When news of the battle spread, the Praetorian Guard lynched the younger Philip in their barracks at Rome.
Quote ID: 3485
Time Periods: 3
Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 52
Section: 3B
….different penalties were being defined for people of different status: essentially, “one law for the propertied, one for the poor” established itself in the Antonine age. Before these new categories, Roman citizenship lost its former legal value. In 212, when it had been emptied of this privilege, it was extended throughout the Empire, exposing its holders to further taxes.{17}
Quote ID: 3835
Time Periods: 23
Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 80
Section: 4B,3B
In a famous text, Aristotle had once advised oligarchies to urge the holders of civic office to meet expensive undertakings as part and parcel of their job. {38} They should offer splendid sacrifices, he suggested, and prepare public monuments so that the people should enjoy the feasting and admire their city’s adornment. Then they would gladly “see the constitution persist.” In Aristotle’s own day, few cities, he complained, observed this advice: the notables of the Antonine age were wiser.
Quote ID: 3846
Time Periods: 02
Patronage in Early Christianity
Alan B. Wheatley
Book ID: 396 Page: 184
Section: 3A1,3B,4B
The Revised Paradigm in a World of Confusion 220-290 CEAs the Severan dynasty struggled and fell, the empire entered a period with much political turmoil, economic decline and environmental difficulties such as plague and crop failure. Christian communities flourished in this period, however, in part because their benevolence made many friends. As it grew and garnered approval, the church became more visible and a more attractive place for a career. Origen complained about a growing ambition for offices within the community. That is indeed the major story of this period.
Quote ID: 8452
Time Periods: 3
Plagues and Peoples
William McNeill
Book ID: 178 Page: 116
Section: 3B
A new round of a magnitude fully comparable to the Antonine plague of 165-80 hit the Roman world in 251-66. This time, reported mortality in the city of Rome was even greater: five thousand a day are said to have died at the height of the epidemic, . . .
Quote ID: 3928
Time Periods: 3
Plagues and Peoples
William McNeill
Book ID: 178 Page: 122
Section: 3B
Christianity was, therefore, a system of thought and feeling thoroughly adapted to a time of troubles in which hardship, disease, and violent death commonly prevailed.
Quote ID: 3933
Time Periods: 3
Religious Toleration And Persecution In Ancient Rome
Simeon L. Guterman
Book ID: 187 Page: 79
Section: 3B
It is true that Herod, playing his stakes well, managed to conciliate Caesar and Augustus in his favour so that he elicited from the former and had confirmed by the latter a set of privileges for the Jews that were to constitute a sort of Magna Carta for the members of this religion for a long time to come. {19} But in return for these and other favours, the Herod dynasty undertook to deliver as a quid pro quo the submission of the Jew to the Roman yoke. There was little national about the Herodians. They were Idumeans, of an alien race, and thoroughly detested by the people they ruled. {20}
Quote ID: 4132
Time Periods: 01
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 7/8
Section: 3B
A Roman citizen aged fifty in 30 B.C. would have lived through a generation of unexampled atrocities and civil wars.….
There was no security of life or property. While ruthless and ambitious generals competed for power, lesser men were crushed in the process. Read the pathetic account, preserved by Livy, of how the elderly Cicero, the greatest ornament of his age, was dragged out of hiding and butchered, or read in Plutarch’s Life of Antony how the Triumvirs cheerfully proscribed their relations.…
….
And then, when all hope was almost gone, Octavian, later to be called Augustus, succeeded in restoring peace and prosperity to Italy. The relief was enormous and took the form of gratitude to the gods, because to men of that generation, peace was a miracle….
Quote ID: 8363
Time Periods: 0
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 8
Section: 3B
The civil wars, then, and their end, more than anything else, made men’s minds receptive once more to the call of the old religion.
Quote ID: 8364
Time Periods: 01
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 121
Section: 3B,3A4
In one of his most religious works, Dream of Scipio, Cicero puts this idea quite clearly: ‘To all who have saved, helped, or advanced their country, a fixed place is assigned in heaven in which they shall enjoy everlasting bliss.’
Quote ID: 8385
Time Periods: 01
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 121/122
Section: 3B
It is clear that Caesar, before his assassination, had determined to claim divine status for himself.….
In May 45 his statue was set up in the temple of Quirinus with the inscription ‘To the Unconquered God’.
Quote ID: 8386
Time Periods: 0
Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Book ID: 390 Page: 124
Section: 3B,4B
The ultimate test of a religion is that it works; and the Romans truly believed that their religion worked. Otherwise Roman civilisation would have collapsed with Augustus.….
Romans could, therefore, and did, claim that their religion was verified by history. True religion for them, as opposed to superstition, was ‘to honour the gods fitly in accordance with ancestral custom’ (Cornutus).
Quote ID: 8387
Time Periods: 01
Rome and the Barbarians (100 B.C. – A.D. 400)
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 190 Page: 365
Section: 3B,4B
In speaking derisively of Caracalla, Herodian writing in the third century had commented that the emperor sometimes wore “a blonde wig elaborately fashioned in the German style” and that the barbarians loved him, apparently taking his false hair as a sign of his respect for their traditions. {82} The standard Roman view of barbarians was that they all wore their hair long, especially the nobility, but that was not always the case. The Alamanni did, but the Goths had cut their hair and adopted the short style traditionally favored among the Romans. Nevertheless, official monuments still depicted all barbarians, including Goths, with long flowing hair.
Quote ID: 4219
Time Periods: 3
Secret Archives of the Vatican, The
Maria Luisa Ambrosini & With Mary Willis
Book ID: 269 Page: 27
Section: 3B
The great thinker and writer Hippolytus, the antipope, apparently had free access to the court of Alexander Severus. He dedicated his The Resurrection to the Empress Mamaea, and the Emperor decided to erect a statue of Christ in the imperial palace, near those of the ancient gods and of giants of human thought such as Homer, Socrates, and Plato.
Quote ID: 6790
Time Periods: 3
Sentences of Sextus, The by Henry Chadwick
Translated by Henry Chadwick & C.H. Dodd
Book ID: 270 Page: 131
Section: 3B
Part II: Studies 3. Rufinus and JeromeXystus II was a bishop who left a deep impression upon his Roman community despite the brevity of his episcopate. His martyrdom was the more intensely felt in that he had been surprised by the soldiery in the very act of ministering the divine word to his flock in the cemetery of Callistus, and had been thereupon summarily executed with four of his deacons, {2} the archdeacon Lawrence following him shortly afterwards.
Quote ID: 6812
Time Periods: 3
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 1
Section: 3B
The end of the Antonine period in AD 192{1} marked what could be called the termination of the high-water mark of the Roman empire. It has always seemed strange to many that Marcus Aurelius (161-80), a clever man, should have been so besotted by the dynastic, paternal principle that he left the empire to his inadequate son Commodus (180-92). But the murder of Commodus not only marked the conclusion of the Antonine house, properly so-called, but ushered in a period of civil war and imperial chaos, marked by a number of short-lived reigns and attempted reigns.
Quote ID: 8046
Time Periods: 2
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 3
Section: 3B
It is a Roman empire in which the emperor dominates events not through the senate or any other organ of the state, but by means of the soldiers.They, whether members of the praetorian guard of legionaries, were nowadays very often not Italians but provincials (Chapter 5, 6). Here is another keynote of the period. Septimius Severus himself originated from Africa, and his wife and subsequent emperors came from Syria. We are witnessing the rise of the provinces and of provincials (Chapter 5). This must not be overstressed because Rome was still the ruler of the world. But the provinces, especially Africa and Syria, were taking giant steps towards equalling Italy as dominant regions of the Roman empire.
Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Septimius
Quote ID: 8047
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 4
Section: 3B
Two other features of the period deserves special notice. One is the prominence of women (Chapter 8). Septimius’s wife Julia Domna was clearly a remarkable person. She did not, however, rule the empire, because her very powerful husband did that. But her sister Julia Maesa and her niece Julia Mamaea did, after that, control the Roman world. It was an age, that is to say, in which the greater part of the civilized world was ruled by women. This had never happened before, to the same extent.
Quote ID: 8048
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 5
Section: 2B,3B
Three more points need to be made about what we may call the ‘Severan’ period, AD 193-235.....
Monotheistic religion, too, had gained ground to an extraordinary extent. When one says this, one thinks of course first of Christianity, whose writer Tertullian possessed immense authority and power (Chapter 12). But it is also necessary to recognize that the pagan, monotheistic worship of the Sun, despite the excesses of Elagabalus in importing a Syrian version of the cult, had become very widely practised; and that the Olympian deities tended increasingly to be regarded as appendages or manifestations of this all-powerful deity.
....
There was a great deal of pagan monotheism.
Quote ID: 8049
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 15
Section: 3B
There emerged in his place the first legionary to become emperor (Maximinus I).
Quote ID: 8050
Time Periods: 3
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 23
Section: 3B
Conservatives held it against him that he was not only the first Mauretanian but also the first non-senator to occupy the imperial throne, although Macrinus tactfully apologized for his non-senatorial origins and met with some approval from the senators because they had so greatly disliked Caracalla.
Quote ID: 8051
Time Periods: 3
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 24
Section: 3B
Elagabalus had been born in 204, and was emperor from 218 to 222. It was Julia Domna’s sister Julia Maesa who had decided to get rid of Macrinus. He had requested her, as he saw, to withdraw to her home at Emesa in Syria. But this town, and the soldiery stationed in Syria, gave her a suitable base for revolt. The 14-year old son of her daughter Julia Soaemias, whom we know as Elagabalus, occupied the hereditary priesthood of the Sun-god El-gabal (an offshoot of the principal Semitic god El) at Emesa. He possessed a striking personal beauty which meant that he contributed spectacular picturesqueness to the elaborate, jewel-encrusted ritual of his cult.
Quote ID: 8052
Time Periods: 3
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 28
Section: 3B
Furthermore, Septimius was a great expander of the empire-PROPAGATOR IMPERII, as his coins and medallions tell:{6} the greatest expander, it has been said, since Trajan (98-117), and the last.
Quote ID: 8053
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 29
Section: 3B
But it was not only the frontier provinces that benefited from the new spirit. Additional colonies were established. In the province of Asia alone we know of four appeals by Lydians to the emperors against what they considered, no doubt rightly, to be grievances. Moreover, the Celtic language, as well as Punic, came to be used in official documents.{11}Septimius talked in world terms: of the genus humanum and the orbis. Whether or not he fully appreciated Roman institutions, and whether or not his spirit was, in fact, alien to that of Rome, certainly his understanding of the empire and its needs was wide.
Quote ID: 8054
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 30/31
Section: 3B
His Constitutio Antoniniana (212) appears to us one of the outstanding features of the period, although whether it seemed the same to contemporaries is uncertain. Perhaps they just regarded it as a further stage in the tendencies already noted under Caracalla’s father Septimius, to level citizens and other subjects.{17} At any rate, that is what the Constitutio did, because its principal purpose was to make the vast majority of the free population of the empire into Roman citizens. The only exceptions were people called the dediticii, and there has been a great deal of discussion about who these were. It may be concluded, with some confidence, that they were tribesmen from beyond the Danube or Euphrates who had been recently conquered, had surrendered to the Romans, and had come into their empire lured by its higher living standards and better security.Very probably one of Caracalla’s motives in promulgating the Constitutio Antoniniana was to obtain increased revenue from the inheritance and manumission taxes that citizens paid.{18} But the enactment was also symbolic of a vast change that had gradually overtaken the Roman empire.
Quote ID: 8055
Time Periods: 3
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 34
Section: 3B
For Septimius, who tied the soldiers closely to his own imperial person, was well aware that everything depended on the army. And in consequence he drew the deduction that, if the soldiers were to be effective and loyal, they had to be better remunerated. As a result, not only were centurions now paid 8,333-33,333 denarii - instead of the 5,000-20,000 of the late first century AD - but legionaries received perhaps 500 denarii (or a little less?) instead of the 300 which had been their pay for the past century and more.
Quote ID: 8056
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 41
Section: 3B
So the army had become a huge burden on the state and public. And the equestrian procurators, too, whose numbers rose from 136 to 174, had to be paid. But under Septimius the public, too, were not neglected, especially at Rome itself. The congiaria to civilians there consisted of gigantic distributions, to over 100,000 people, of free grain and oil {6} and medicine, at festivals and on other festive occasions.....
Nevertheless, such lavish imperial giving was required as part of the Golden Age which was allegedly coming into existence.{7}
Quote ID: 8057
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 47/48
Section: 3B
It was now that female rule really came into its own, since when Severus Alexander came to the throne he was (like Elagabalus before him) only 14, so that his mother Julia Mamaea, who was the second daughter of Julia Maesa (and wife of a Syrian from the cult centre Arca Caesarea ad Libanum, Arqa), and had possibly connived in the death of Elagabalus, inevitably and necessarily had to look after the boy - and thus ruled the vast empire.{6}Moreover, when Alexander grew up, although he was quite popular, at first, with the troops, he remained vacillating and ineffective, so that Mamaea continued to rule. He was often known, merely, as the ‘son of Mamaea’, whereas she was described as ‘Mother of the Augustus’, as well as ‘Mother of the Camp’.{7} This was the climactic point of feminine power.
Quote ID: 8058
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 48
Section: 3B
Julia Mamaea also made the mistake, as we have seen (Chapter 2), of amassing too much personal wealth. Her excuse that it was intended for the praetorians fell on deaf ears. She gained a reputation for meanness, which together with the military weakness of herself and her son - whom she accompanied to the north, where they were said to have made a disgraceful peace with the Germans (Chapter 5) - eventually alienated the army and led to the murder of both of them in 235. Julia Mamaea was in her early forties.The extraordinary period in which women ran the Roman empire was at an end.
Quote ID: 8059
Time Periods: 3
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 64
Section: 3B
Picture. Plate 21 Julia Maesa, during the reign of her grandson Elagabalus (218-22)(British Museum; M. Grant, Roman Imperial Money (1954), plate 40, no. 1)
Julia Maesa, although we do not hear of her from any first-class historian, was the most powerful woman Rome had ever known, or would ever know. A Syrian from Emesa (Homs), she was the grandmother of the eccentric young emperor Elagabalus - and after she abandoned him was grandmother of the next juvenile emperor as well, Severus Alexander, until she herself died not long after his accession.
Quote ID: 8061
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 66
Section: 3B
Picture. Plate 25 Julia Mamaia. Museo Nazionale (Terme), Rome (Alinari)Portraits of Julia Mamaea, not always readily identifiable - although she had, to judge from her coins, a rather distinctive hair style - recall a remarkable period in the history of the Roman empire, during which the supreme power was in the hands of a woman.
It was when ‘the Syrian princesses’ arrived on the scene, under the Severans, that this feminine rulership became truly established. And this was never more the case than during the reign of Severus Alexander. The emperor himself was at first only a boy, who needed his mother’s control and decisiveness - his mother being Julia Mamaea. And he grew up to be a different and ineffective young man who was never able (and we do not know whether, except perhaps at the last moment, he even tried) to liberate himself from maternal direction and decision-making.
Quote ID: 8062
Time Periods: 3
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 72/73
Section: 2B,3B
In Rome, Elagabalus (built a) magnificent temple on the Palatine to house the cult-image of the Baal of Emesa, together with an adjoining garden and shrine of Adonis....The Temple of Sol Invictus Elagabalus occupied the site of what had been the Aedes Caesarum on the east spur of the Plaltine, opposite Hadrian’s Temple of Venus and Rome.....
After Elagabalus’s death it was rededicated to Jupiter the Avenger (Jup[p]iter Ultor.{25}
The successor of Elagabalus, Severus Alexander, was responsible for this rededication.
Quote ID: 8065
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 74
Section: 2B,3B
The age of the Severi witnessed two very important developments in paganism: the persistence of monotheistic views and the growth of syncretism, which imported Egyptian and Syrian religious motifs to Rome, with the encouragement, no doubt, of the Syrian Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius (Chapter 8)As to monotheism, it came to be increasingly felt that there was one god, who might as well be called Jupiter, and that the other Olympians were, as one could say, manifestations of the single deity. He should be worshipped with high-minded austerity. The most significant pagan writing of the time was the long, partly fictitious Life of Apollonius of Tyana (215-38) by Flavius Philostratus. {2}
Quote ID: 8066
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 77/78
Section: 2B,3B
Monotheism was often identified with the worship of Sol or Helios (the Sun).There was a belief, during this same epoch, which much more nearly (than Neo-Platonism) competed with Christ for the control of the western world. This was the cult of the Sun, which was revered by millions of the inhabitants of the Roman empire. And its religion for a time even became the state worship...There was an ever-increasing tendency to explain the other traditional deities in terms of the Sun, in all but monotheistic fashion.
The cult of this deity offered flattering analogies to the imperial regime and its resplendent, sun-like leaders. Under Septimius Severus, whose wife Julia Domna came from Syria where reverence for the Sun was expecially strong, its worship almost took command of the whole state religion.
The Sun-cult could well have become the religion of the Mediterranean area for an indefinite period ahead. But it did not do so, in the end, because such a divinity was too impersonal, too lacking in urgent human appeal. Devotees of the Sun themselves felt that this excessive remoteness failed to satisfy their needs. And a branch of the cult came into vogue in order to respond to such yearnings. It was the worship of an ancient Iranian deity, Mithras, who was god of the Morning Light, and...was identified with the Sun himself.
But unlike the solar cult the ritual of Mithras always retained its private character...in marked contrast to the Sun’s innumerable appearances on the official coinage....[So] it was Christianity, instead, that won the day. For the ‘biography’ that was Mithras’s holy book...failed to persuade its readers that he had ever really appeared on earth to provide help for human beings.
Besides, Mithraism had no place for women; and it is they, as the cults of Isis and Cybele and Jesus made clear, who provided the largest numerical support for successful faiths. {12}
Quote ID: 8068
Time Periods: 23
Severans: The Changed Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 350 Page: 78
Section: 2B,3B
A figure of Sol had the features of Commodus, whose father Marcus Aurelius, on his death-bed, declared him to be the Rising Sun. A relief from Ephesus shows the deified Marcus ascending to the sky in the god’s chariot which returns dead souls to their heavenly element.
Quote ID: 8069
Time Periods: 23
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 71
Section: 3B
But the chief encourager of strict manners was Vespasian, {68} himself old-fashioned both in his dress and diet.
Quote ID: 7502
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 86
Section: 3B
23-28 A.D.The funeral with its procession of statues was singularly grand. Ǣneas, the father of the Julian house, {18}….
Quote ID: 7507
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 86
Section: 3B
But as Sejanus had the credit of contriving every sort of wickedness, the fact that he was the Emperor’s special favorite, and that both were hated by the rest of the world, procured belief for any monstrous fiction, ….
Quote ID: 7508
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 98
Section: 3B,5C
Inasmuch as the divine Augustus did not forbid the founding of a temple at Pergamum {60} to himself and to the city of Rome, …
Quote ID: 7512
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 108
Section: 3B
But though the zeal of the nobles and the bounty of the prince brought relief to suffering yet every day a stronger and fiercer host of informers pursued its victims, . . . .Pastor John’s note: informers = a frequent topic during Tiberius
Quote ID: 7513
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 111
Section: 3B
Never was Rome more distracted and terror-stricken. Meetings, conversations, the ear of friend and stranger were alike shunned; even things mute and lifeless, the very roofs and walls, were eyed with suspicion.
Quote ID: 7514
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 125
Section: 3A2A,3B
Vitia, an aged woman, mother of Fufius Geminus, was executed for bewailing the death of her son.
Quote ID: 7518
Time Periods: 1
Tacitus, Histories, LCL 249: Tacitus III, Histories, Books 4-5
Tacitus (Translated by A.J. Church)
Book ID: 197 Page: 130
Section: 3A2A,3B
It was imputed to them as a crime that their great-grandfather Theophanes of Mitylene {29} had been one of the intimate friends of Pompeius the Great, and that after his death Greek flattery had paid him divine honors.
Quote ID: 7521
Time Periods: 1
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 20
Section: 3B
Ever since Diocletian and Maximian, political wisdom had dictated that the empire’s distances were too great, its frontiers too extensive, its enemies too many and strong for it to be ruled by one man for very long
Quote ID: 7052
Time Periods: 124
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 26
Section: 3B
In the half-century between 235 and 285 there were 15 ’legitimate’ emperors and many more brief usurpers. Nearly all had died violently, in civil war or simple assassination by their own soldiers and lieutenants.
Quote ID: 7059
Time Periods: 3
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 27
Section: 3B
The crippling civil wars for the throne had been largely surmounted by the new devices of dual emperors of East and West, the deliberate separation of civil and military chains of command in the elaborately graded bureaucracy, the subdivision of the provinces into smaller administrative units and the almost magical ceremonials of the elevated imperial cult.
Quote ID: 7063
Time Periods: 3
Twelve Tables, The, LCL 329: Remains of Old Latin III
Edited and translated by E. H. Warmington Vol. 3
Book ID: 305 Page: 493
Section: 1B,3B
Nocturnal meetings not permitted:Porcius Latro: We learn in the Twelve Tables that provision was made that no person shall hold meetings by night in the city.
PJ: Clubs
Quote ID: 7537
Time Periods: 12
Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 35
Section: 3B
Emperor Claudius, in AD 49, expelled Jews because of disturbances among them over a certain “Chrestus”, which was probably a mis-spelling of Christ. A tentmaker named Acquila, originally from Pontus in what now is Turkey, and his wife Prisca, the first Christians of Rome whose names are known, were among this group.
Quote ID: 6979
Time Periods: 1
Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 115
Section: 3B
The first bishop of Rome from North Africa, Victor (189-198) was not only imperious but had imperial connections. His link with Commodus was through the emperor’s concubine Marcia, a Christian who “could do just about anything she liked with him” (that is, with Commodus). She arranged the first deal between an emperor and a pope.
Quote ID: 6987
Time Periods: 2
Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 137
Section: 3B
The son of a sheik from what is now Hawran, Iraq, Philip (Marcus Julius Philippus), who came to power in 244, was considered by St Jerome as the first Christian emperor. Both Philip and his wife Otacilla Severa corresponded with Origen. The church historian Eusebuis claimed bishop Fabian converted Philip to Christianity, but if so, his Christian sympathies did not affect his public behaviour. His reign can be seen as a high point for the church because, while he left it in peace, Origen reinforced its intellectual credentials and Fabian was still bishop of Rome. But in 249 Philip made a mistake which was to cost him, and also the Church, dearly.
Quote ID: 6988
Time Periods: 3
Victory Of The Cross, The
Desmond O’Grady
Book ID: 278 Page: 138
Section: 3B
In Rome at the beginning of 250, Bishop Fabian was arrested. He died on 20th January, probably in prison as a result of beatings, and was buried in the Callistus catacombs. Commenting on Fabian’s death, Decius [PJ: 201–251] is supposed to have said, “I’d rather receive news of a rival to the throne than of another bishop of Rome.” Indeed the Roman church seemed to have resolved the problem of succession, which had become a nightmare for the empire.. . . .
The emperor could dispose of the bishop of Rome, but on average, in the third century, popes lasted more than twice as long as emperors.
Quote ID: 6989
Time Periods: 3
Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries?
Larry W. Hurtado
Book ID: 393 Page: 21
Section: 3B,4B
From our earliest sources, it is clear that at a very early point the movement that became “Christianity” practically exploded trans-locally, and continued this geographical spread all through the early centuries.
Quote ID: 8391
Time Periods: 123
Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries?
Larry W. Hurtado
Book ID: 393 Page: 31
Section: 3B,4B
…Hopkins held that throughout most of the first two centuries CE “Christians were statistically insignificant,” and that it was only in the third century that Christianity gained “the prominence that made it worthwhile persecuting on an empire-wide scale.”{34}
Quote ID: 8392
Time Periods: 123
Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries?
Larry W. Hurtado
Book ID: 393 Page: 56
Section: 3B
Still, Trajan’s letter also shows that there was no policy then or, it appears, in the ensuing decades, to seek out Christians or to conduct some active and systematic persecution of them.
Quote ID: 8394
Time Periods: 12
World of the Celts, The
Simon James
Book ID: 280 Page: 12
Section: 3B
Ireland was the only part of the Celtic world entirely to escape the colonial ambitions of Rome, and she sat out the centuries of the Roman empire . . .
Quote ID: 7003
Time Periods: 012345
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