Romen Empire

Chapter 6: The Roman Empire
The age of Augustus (31 B.C. – A.D. 14)
In 27 B.C., Octavian proclaimed the restoration of the Republic to appease the senatorial aristocracy. The Senate awarded him the title of Augustus (revered one). He preferred the title princeps meaning chief citizen and established the principate – a constitutional monarch with the senate as co-ruler. This compromise made the senate very happy. In reality, he held the real power.

A. The New Order
Under the new constitutional order, the basic government structure consisted of the princeps and an aristocratic senate which remained the chief deliberative body of the Rome. The decrees initiated by the Senate were screened in advance by the princeps. Augustus held the office of consul until 23 B.C. when he assumed the power of a tribune which gave him power to propose laws and veto any item of public business. By observing proper legal procedure, Augustus became very popular.

1. The Military
Augustus maintained a standing army of 28 legions – about 150,000 men. The military guarded the frontiers and also participated in maintaining domestic order within the provinces. Roman legions were recruited from citizens from Italy. He also maintained an auxiliary force of 130,000 men recruited mainly from the subject peoples. He also established the praetorian guard (about 9,000 men) as body guards of the princeps. Augustus was proclaimed imperator (emperor) after each victorious campaign though he continued to refer himself as the princeps.

2. Roman Provinces and Frontiers
Under the Republic, the Senate appointed the provincial governors while certain provinces were allotted to the princeps who then assigned deputies (legates) to govern them. As his prestige grew, Augustus became powerful enough to overrule the senatorial governors and establish a uniform imperial policy.

After stabilizing the Roman frontiers, Augustus conquered the central and maritime Alps and further expanded to the Balkan peninsula up to the Danube River. His attempt to conquer Germany failed in 9 A.D. when three Roman legions under Varus were massacred in the Teutoburg Forest by a coalition of German tribes. The defeat taught him a lesson that he could have unlimited victories.

B. Augustan Society
Roman citizens were divided into three basic classes – senators, equestrian, and lower classes. The senators filled the chief magistracies and most important military posts, and governed the provinces. One needed property worth one million sesterces to belong to the senatorial order. The equestrian order was open to all Roman citizens of good standing who possessed property valued at 400,000 sesterces. They could hold military and government offices of less important than those of the senators.

The lower classes made up the overwhelming majority of the free citizens. Many of these people were given free grain and public spectacle to prevent them from creating disturbances. However, by gaining wealth and serving as lower officers in the Roman legions, they could advance to the equestrian order.

Augustus believed that Roman morals were corrupted by Greek culture during the late Republic. He thought that indulgence in luxuries had undermined traditional Roman frugality and simplicity and led to the loosening of morals as evidenced by easy divorces, falling birth rate among the upper classes, and lax behavior manifested in hedonistic parties and love affairs of prominent Romans with fashionable women and elegant boys.

Through his new social legislation, Augustus hoped to restore respectability to the upper classes and reverse the declining birth rate. Lavish feasts were curtailed and adultery became a criminal offence. Augustus’ own daughter, Julia, was exiled for adultery. He also revised the tax law to penalize bachelors, widowers, and married persons who had fewer than three children.

C. The Augustan Age
Augustus died in A.D. 14 after dominating the Roman world for 45 years. In exercise the art of compromise, he created a new order without provoking opposition from the senate. The old order existed only in name while he ruled supreme.

II. The Early Empire (14-180)
There was no serious opposition to Augustus’ choice of his stepson Tiberius as his successor. By designating a family member as princeps, he established the Julio-Claudian dynasty – the next four successors of Augustus were related either to his own family or to that of his wife, Livia.

A. The Julio-Claudians (14-68)
During the reigns of the Julio-Claudians, more and more responsibilities that Augustus gave to the senate were taken over by the emperors who ruled with the help of the imperial bureaucracy, staffed by talented freedmen. Julio-Claudian successors of Augustus acted more openly as real rulers.

Nero (54-68) freely eliminated people he did not like, including arranging the murder of his mother. Without the control of the troops, the senators were helpless to stop these excesses. Eventually, his extravagances provoked a revolt of the Roman legions. Abandoned by his guards, Nero chose to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the throat.

Vespasian, commander of the legions in the east, seized power as sole ruler and established a new dynasty – the Flavians – which ruled from 69 to 96. This proved that it was possible for an emperor to be chosen outside Rome.

B. The Five “Good Emperors” (96-180)
The five good emperors – Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius – brought peace and prosperity to Rome for about 100 years. They exercised tolerance and diplomacy by treating the ruling elite with respect, cooperated with the senate, ended arbitrary executions, maintained peace throughout the empire, and supported domestic policies beneficial to the empire.

Emperor Trajan (98-117) extended the scope of imperial administration to areas not touched by the imperial government. He established state funds to help poor parents raising and educating their children.

C. The Roman Empire at its Height: Frontiers and Provinces
Emperor Trajan departed from Augustus’ defensive policy and embarked on an a territorial expansion into Dacia (modern Romania), Mesopotamia, and the Sinai Peninsula.

This policy was reversed by his successors who felt that empire was over-extended. Hadrian withdrew Roman forces from much of Mesopotamia though he retained Dacia and Arabia, and reinforced fortifications of the frontier along a line connecting the Rhine and Danube Rivers by building a 80-mile defensive wall to keep the Scots out of Roman Britain.

At its height, the Roman Empire had a population of about 50 million people spanning over 3.5 million square miles. Local customs were respected and privileges of Roman citizenship were extended to many people throughout the empire. Latin was the lingua franca of the West part of the empire and Latin was the language for the East. As many of local residents spoke neither Greek nor Latin, local languages persisted.

1. Cities and Romanization
The administration and culture of the Roman Empire varied from cities and towns, which were not large. Rome had the largest population with about 1 million peopple. Alexandria in Egypt had 300,000, people; Ephesus in Asia Minor had 200,000, and Antioch in Syria had 150,000.

Magistrates and town councilors were chosen from the ranks of the wealthy upper classes. Roman municipal policy was elitist to ensure that the wealthy elite remained in control of the government.

By the 1st century, there was a noticeable decline on the number of senators from the Italian families. Increasingly, the Roman senate recruited wealth equestrian families. The provinces also provided many legionaries for the Roman army, and beginning from Trajan, supplied many of the emperors.

The degree of Romanization varied widely. In the west, including Spain, Africa, and parts of Spain, where Greeks and Phoenicians had established cities centuries before, Romanization occurred quickly. Temples, aqueducts, amphitheaters, and Latin language quickly took root. Men from Spain and parts of Gaul began serving as officials in Rome as early as the 1st century A.D.

The process of Romanization was less extensive in other parts of the empire, especially in Asia, where towns and cities had their own traditions long before the arrival of the Romans. By 200 A.D., the upper classes everywhere in the empire had become Romanized, sharing a common culture and similar economic and social interests.

2. Roman law and Romanization
The spread of Roman citizenship in the cities created new citizens who were subject to Roman law and thus hastened the process of Romanization. The 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. saw the “classical age of Roman law.” Most jurists stressed that Emperor was the source of law.

According to Jurist Upian (d. 228), “natural rights implied that all men are born equal and should therefore be equal before the law. “ But in practice, that principle was not applied. A judge was expected to consider evidence carefully before arriving at a conclusion. These principles endured in western civilization. Roman law provided a uniform system of principles.

When Emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to every free person in the empire, Roman law became even more significant in binding the empire together.

D. Prosperity in the Early Empire
The internal peace in the early empire paved the way for unprecedented levels of trade and prosperity. Merchants from all over the world met at Italian ports of Puteoli and the Bay of Naples and Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber. Large quantities of grained to feed the people of Rome and crave for luxury items by the wealthy upper classes caused the drain of gold and silver coin from Italy and the west to the eastern part of the empire.

Developments in both the Roman and Chinese Empires helped foster the growth of this trade despite the absence of formal contact between the rulers. Merchants developed a network of trade routes that brought two great empires into commercial contact. For a example, the Silk Road was used by the Chinese to export their silk cloth, which was highly sought by Roman upper classes, causing an outpouring of silver from Rome to China.

Despite the thriving trade and commerce, agriculture remained the main occupation of most people and the basis of Roman prosperity. Large landed estates
(latifundia) still dominated agriculture in southern and central Italy, where small peasants lived, especially in Etruria and the Po Valley.

While large estates used the slave to rear sheep and cattle, some latifundia were leased to free tenant farmers. The gap between the rich and poor continued to widen as the tenant farmers had to struggle to make a living.

III. Roman Culture and Society in the Early Empire
Intellectual found ways to accommodate the autocratic rule of Emperors. Roman architects built massive building befitting an Empire. Gladiatorial games were popular and upper class women acquired greater independence.

A. The Golden Age of Latin Literature
Virgil (70-19 B.C), son of small landholder in northern Italy, was the most outstanding poet. He wrote in praise of Augustus. His master-piece was Aeneid, an epic poem meant to rival the work of Homer. Another great Augustan poet was Horace (65-8 B.C) who work focused on the “follies and vices of his age.” Ovid (43 B.C-18 A.D) wrote to ridicule the old Roman values. The most famous Latin prose work was written by historian Livy (59 B.C.-17 A.D). Livy viewed history as moral lessons.

B. The Silver Age of Latin Literature
The century and a half after Augustus was labeled as the “silver age” because the literary works of the period were not equal to the high standards of the Augustan golden age. The popularity of rhetorical training encouraged the use of clever literary expressions at the expense of original content as found in the works of Seneca (4 B.C.-65 A.D), who was attracted to Stoicism.

The greatest historian of the silver age was Tacitus (56-120) whose works included the Annals and Histories, narrating the Roman history from the reign of Tiberius through the assassination of Domitian (14-96). Tacitus was disgusted with the abuses of the emperors and determined to expose them.

C. The Upper-Class Roman Family
In the later Republic, the paterfamilias lost absolute of their children and could no longer sell his children into slavery or have them put to death. The husband’s absolute authority over his wife also disappeared. Upper-class Roman women in the Early Empire had considerable freedom and independence with the right to wn, inherit, and dispose of property.

D. Imperial Rome
Rome was the largest city in the Empire with close to one million people during Augustus’ rule. Nationalities from all over the empire resided there, with specific neighborhoods inhabited by Greeks and Syrians. Rome was an over-crowded and noisy and unsafe city for lone travelers. There was an enormous gap between rich and poor in Rome. The rich lived in comfortable villas while the poor lived in apartment blocks (insulae) which could be six-storey high.

Rome boasted its public buildings were equal to none in the empire. Its temples, forums, markets, baths, theaters, triumphal arches, governmental buildings, and amphitheaters gave Rome an appearance of grandeur and magnificence.

Though Rome was capital of a great empire, Rome was also a great parasite. It had some 200,000 people receiving free grain. They also received food, gladiatorial games and other entertainments on a grand scale. With no vote to sell, they adopted a “couldn’t care less” attitude in life. Rome also had over 100 days of holidays where the people could enjoy three major types of entertainment – Circus Maximus (horse and chariot races), Dramas in theaters, and the gladiatorial shows.
E. The Gladiatorial Shows
The gladiatorial shows, which took place in amphitheaters, were an integral part of the Roman society. The most famous was the Flavian Ampitheater - the Colosseum – with 50,000 seating capacity, which was inaugurated by Emperor Titus. Gladiatorial games – contests to the death between trained fighters - were held from dawn to dusk. Criminals of all ages and both sexes were sent into the arena without weapons to face certain death from wild animals that would tear them to pieces. These blood-thirsty spectacles were very popular with the Roman people.

IV. Transformation of the Roman World: Crises in the 3rd Century
At the end of the 2nd century, a number of natural disasters – floods, famine, and plague - struck Rome causing the empire losing population and a shortage of military manpower. Many Romans viewed them as signs of bad omen.

A. Political and Military Woes
After a series of civil wars, Septimius Severus (193-211) used his legions to seize power and ushered in a military monarchy under the Severan Rulers (193-235). The army was expanded, soldiers’ pay increased, and military officers were appointed to important government positions. But the military monarchy lasted only 42 years because it degenerated into a military anarchy.

From 235 to 284, the empire was embroiled in civil wars. Contenders for the throne found that bribing soldiers was an effective way to become emperor. At the same, the empire was facing a series of invasions. In the east, Sassanid Persians
Poured into the Roman territory and they captured Emperor Valerian (253-260 ) who died in captivity.

Germanic tribes also invaded the empire. The Goths overran the Balkans and then moved into Greece and Asia Minor. The Franks advanced into Gaul and Spain.
Aurelian (270-275) re-conquered Gaul and re-established order in the east and along the Danube River.

Civil wars and invasion weakened the central government and provinces took the opportunity to break away from the empire. Military commander, Postumus, seized control of Gaul and then gained support from Britain and Spain. He defended the Gaulic empire until he was killed by his soldiers in 269. Zenobia, the wife of the ruler of Syria, seized power after his death and then extended her control over Egypt and much of Asia Minor. In 272, Emperor Aurelian defeated Zenobia and her forces in Syria.

B. Economic and Social Crises
Invasions, civil wars, and plague nearly caused an economic collapse of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century. The population declined by as much as one-third. The labor shortage created by plague affected both the military and economy. Farm production deteriorated significantly. Germanic tribes ravaged the fields and many farmers complained that Roman commanders and their soldiers confiscated their produce and livestock. Provincial governors were unable to stop this lawlessness.

Despite the dire need for armies, the financial constraints compelled Rome to recruits of frontier provinces. By the mid-3rd century, Rome relied on hiring barbarians to fight under Roman commanders. These soldiers had no understanding of Roman traditions and had no attachment to either the empire or the emperors.

V. Transformation of the Roman World: The Ride of Christianity
The coming of Christianity undermined the Greco-Roman values. Christian views of God, human beings, and the world were quite different from that of the Greeks and Romans.

A. The Religious World of the Roman Empire
Augustus took some steps to revive the Roman state religion – worship of a pantheon of gods and goddesses - which had declined during the late Republic. Proper rites cemented the Romans and the gods, which guaranteed peace and security.

The desire for more emotional spiritual experience led many people to explore the mystery religions of the Hellenistic east. The most important was Mithraism – identified as the sun god - supreme god of light in Persian Zoroastrianism. Mithraists paid homage to the sun on the first day of the week (Sunday). The sun’s birthday, around December 25, was celebrated with ceremonial meals.

B. The Jewish Background
The Jews were granted considerable independence in Hellenistic period by the Seleucid rulers. Roman contact with the Jews began in 63 B.C. and by 6 A.D, Judea became a Roman province. The Jewish community was divided into four sects.
The Sadduces favored a rigid adherence to Hebrew law and wanted cooperation with the Romans. The Pharisees followed a adherence to Jewish ritual and did not advocate means to achieve this goal. The Essenes, a religious community lived near the Dead Sea, awaited a Messiah who save Israel from oppression and ushered in the kingdom of God, and established a true paradise on earth. The 4th group – Zealots - was militant extremists who advocated the violent overthrow of the Roman rule. A Jewish revolt in 66 A.D. was crushed by the Romans four years later and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

C. The Origins of Christianity
Jesus of Nazareth (6 B.C-30 A.D ) grew up in Galilee and began his public preaching amidst confusion and conflict in Judea. He assured his fellow Jews that he would not undermine the traditional religion. But he stressed that the transformation of the inner person was more important than strict adherence to the letter of the law, rules and prohibitions.

Jesus presented the ethical concepts – humility, charity, and brotherly love – that would form the basis for the value system of medieval Western civilization. Some Jews welcomed him as a Messiah while the conservative religious leaders viewed him as another false Messiah out to undermine the traditional Jewish religion.

To the Romans, he was a potential revolutionary who might transform Jewish expectations of a messianic kingdom into a revolt against Rome. Jesus was denounced by sides and was handed over to the Roman authorities. Procurator Pontius Pilate then ordered his crucifixion.

A few loyal followers spread the story that Jesus had overcome death – he had resurrected and ascended into heaven. The belief in the resurrection of Jesus became an important tenet of Christian doctrine. His followers hailed him as the “anointed one” and Messiah who would return a nd usher in the kingdom of God on earth.

1. The importance of Paul
Christianity began as a religious movement within Judaism and was viewed that way by Roman authorities for many decades. Though Peter was viewed as the founder of the Christian church in Rome, the most important figure in early Christianity was Paul of Tarsus (5-67), known as the second founder of Christianity, who reached out to the non-Jews and transformed Christianity from a Jewish sect into a broader religious movement.

He founded the Christian communities throughout Asia Minor and along the Aegean shores. Paul also provided a universal foundation to spread Jesus’ message. He taught that Jesus was a savior-God, the son of God, who had come to earth to save all humans (basically sinners because of Adam’s original sin of disobedience against God as recorded in the Old Testament). By his death, Jesus had redeemed the sins of all humans and made it possible for them to experience a new beginning. By accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior, they too could be saved.

2. The Spread of Christianity
Initially, Christianity spread slowly – dissemination mainly through the believers. Paul had written a series of epistles (letters) outlining Christian beliefs for different Christian communities. Some of Jesus’ disciples might have preserved some of their master’s teachings. Subsequently, they formed the basis of the written gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Although Jerusalem was the first center of Christianity, its destruction by the Romans in 70 A.D. left individual Christian churches with considerable independence. By 100 A.D., Christian churches had been established in most major cities of the east as well as in some parts of the West.

Early Christians included Hellenized Jews and Greek speaking populations of the east. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, more believers were from Latin speaking cultures. After 200, a Latin translation from the Greek New Testament further aided its penetration into the Latin heartland in the West.

As the popularity of Christianity grew, Roman attitude toward it began to change. Many Romans viewed the Christians as harmful t o public order or public morals. The Christians did not recognize other gods and thus abstained from public festivals honoring the Roman state deities. To the Romans, this constituted an act of treason, punishable by death.

In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the Roman persecutions of the Christians were sporadic and local. It began during the reign of Nero who blamed the Christians for the fire that gutted Rome and subjected Christians to cruel deaths in Rome. In the 2nd century, Christians were largely ignored as harmless. Christians still remained a small minority at the end of the reigns of the five “good emperors” but their strength was considerable then.

D. The Growth of Christianity
Sporadic persecutions of the Christians in the 1st and 2nd centuries did not deter its growth. The Church moved towards a more centralized and structured organization with salaried bishops and clergy, and the officers were separate from the laity or regular church members.

1. The Appeal of Christianity
Christianity grew slow in the 1st century, took root in the 2nd century, and then spread widely in the 3rd century. Christianity was able to attract many followers for the following reasons: a) Christian message of salvation, made possible by Jesus’ death and resurrection, was very appealing in the world full of suffering. It imbued life with a meaning purpose beyond the simple material things of everyday reality. b) Christianity could be viewed as simply another eastern mystery religion offering immortality as a result of the sacrificial death of Jesus. c) It offered advantages that the other mystery religions lacked – Jesus had been a human figure and a mythological one. d) Christianity had universal appeal. Mithraism was restricted to men but Christianity was open to all people without regard to race, color, or sex. e) Christianity gave new meaning to life by offering a personal link with God and to the higher worlds – something the Roman state religion could not provide. f) Christianity also fulfilled the human need to belong as Christian community bound to one another in which they could express their love by helping each other and offering assistance to the poor, the sick, widows, and orphans. Christianity also emphasized a sense of spiritual equality for all people.

2. Women and Early Christianity
First century Christian communities allowed both men and women to play significant roles. By the 2nd century, men gained control of church organization and relegated women to secondary roles. Paul advocated that women should be subordinated to men.

Many women found Christianity offering them new roles and new forms of companionship with other women. They fostered the new religion in their own homes and preached their convictions to other people in their towns and villages. Many also died for their faith as a result of persecutions by the Roman authorities.

3. The Failure of Persecution
As the Christian church became more organized, some emperors in the 3rd century responded with more systematic persecutions but that did not deter their faith. The last persecution was by Diocletian at the beginning of the 4th century. By then, Christianity had become too strong to be eradicated by force.

VI. Conclusion
The Roman Republic had created as huge empire but its institutions were inadequate to rule it. After a series of civil war, Augustus created a new order – the Roman Empire from the old Republic. Between 14 and 180, trade flourished and the provinces were governed efficiently. Roman culture and political ideals gradually spread to the conquered territories.
By the 3rd century A.D., Roman Empire began its decline in the face of civil wars, economic woes, and invasions. At the same time, Christianity began to spread throughout the empire.

Chapter summary
Octavian, an astute politician, did not declare the Republic dead or himself emperor. In 27 B.C. he accepted the title of Augustus, and rather than emperor he called himself princeps, or chief citizen. He followed the prescribed legal forms, and the Senate had a role in governing, but most of the authority was in the hands of the princeps.

Significantly, the army swore loyalty to him. Concerned about moral decline, he restored temples and shrines. Marriage and children were encouraged, extravagance was discouraged. It was a Golden Age in literature with works by Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Livy.

Augustus established the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which lasted until 68. In 69 Vespasian, a successful general but not a member of an old Senatorial family, founded the Flavian dynasty. His son, Domitian assumed the title of imperator, or emperor. In the second century five “good emperors” maintained the Pax Romana (Roman peace).

The empire, with its 50 million inhabitants, was prosperous, but more so in the cities than the countryside. The Romanization of the Empire varied widely, but became more entrenched in the West, where Latin took root, than in the East and Asia, with its older traditions and preexisting Greek as the major language. The age of expansion was over: the Rhine and Danube rivers served as the borders in Europe, and the Near East was governed by client rulers.

The army contained about 400,000 soldiers, ultimately too few to defend such a vast territory, as the events of the third century proved. The Early Empire was a prosperous era for many, including long distance trade over the Silk Road from China and East Asia.

In the Early Empire Greek models were followed in the visual arts, as in medicine, but in architecture and engineering the Romans excelled, as exemplified in its 50,000 miles of roads and the Flavian amphitheater, or the Colosseum. Rome itself had a population of one million, and the gulf between the rich and poor was enormous. However, the third century was an era of decline. Generals fought each other in civil wars and German barbarian tribes and Persian armies invaded. There were plagues, population decline, and economic collapse.

One of the most important events in history was the birth and spread of Christianity, which grew out of Judaism and probably influenced by the numerous mystery religions of the period. Jesus (d. c.30 A.D) preached the love of God and one’s neighbor instead of merely following religious laws.

Some saw Jesus as a false messiah, others were disappointed that he did not lead a revolt against Rome, and the Romans, fearing he was a rebel, executed him. His followers believed that he rose from his death and ascended into heaven, and that he would return and establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Christianity, with its promise of salvation as a consolation to this life’s trials, its similarity to many mystery religions, and its universality as a religion for all–rich and poor, men and women, Greek and Roman–slowly gained acceptance.

The 5th century saw the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire (the empire was divided in 395). With fewer resources, the West was less able to repel the Huns and German. In 476, the last Western emperor was deposed, and numerous Germanic kingdoms replaced the Western Roman Empire, although the Eastern Empire survived for another thousand years.

Tutorial topics

1. From Augustus to Nero: The Growth of a New Imperial Order

2. Decline of an Empire: The Political, Military, and Social Evidence

3. The Emergence and Growth of Christianity as a Radical, Underground Sect

4. Monotheism in the Roman World

5. The Cultural Achievements During the Pax Romana

6. The Radical Nature of Jesus' Challenge to Jewish and Roman Authorities

7. The Second Century as an ‘Age of Gold’ and the Third Century as an ‘Age of Rust

MAP EXERCISES

1. The Roman Empire from Augustus to Trajan (14 to 117). MAP 6.1. Examine expansion of Roman territorial control and the geopolitical implications of expanding Roman territories by comparing MAP 5.3 with MAP 6.1. Where did growth appear? Had Rome essentially reached its maximum geographical extent by the time of Augustus? Why or why not? (page 113)

2. Trade Routes and Products in the Roman Empire, c. 200. MAP 6.2. What does the map suggest about the importance of water transportation in the Roman Empire? From the map of the Silk Road, which regions and which cities in the Roman Empire would benefit the most from the luxury trade from Asia?
(p. 115)

3. Imperial Rome. MAP 6.3. Compare the walls of the city of Rome in the fourth century B.C. with the later walls of the imperial period. Note the number of roads and gates entering Rome. What additional geographical information would be helpful in understanding the social, political, and economic elements in Roman urban life? (p. 120)

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR THE PRIMARY SOURCES (BOXED DOCUMENTS)

1. “The Achievements of Augustus”: What were the achievements of Augustus? What did he believe to be his most significant accomplishments? To what extent did these accomplishments create the “job” of being emperor? In what sense could this document, the Res Gestae, be called a piece of propaganda? Was Augustus a typical or traditional Roman? Why and/or why not? (page 110)

2. “The Daily Life of an Upper-Class Roman”: What does Pliny’s letter reveal about the life style of Rome's upper class? Does the letter seem convincing, or is Pliny possibly exaggerating his intellectual interests and endeavors? How did Romans define a good life in material terms and what do their standards of bodily behavior tell us their mentality and culture? (p. 117)

3. “Ovid and the Art of Love”: What were Ovid's principles of love? Are they convincing? Would the same techniques be successful today? Why or why not? Why do you think Augustus found The Art of Love so offensive? How does the Roman poetical expression of human passions compare to earlier Greek works on similar themes (see Sappho for example)? (p. 119)

4. “Opposing Viewpoints: Roman Authorities and a Christian on Christianity”: What political and social issues did Christians and their religion present to Roman officials? Does the interchange between Pliny and Trajan indicates much about the essence of Christianity? Why or why not? Is Trajan’s response and indication of religious bigotry or political wisdom? What were Origen’s defenses of Christianity again Celsus? Theological? Social? Moral? (pp. 126)

STUDENT RESEARCH AND PROJECT TOPICS

1. Study the governmental (personalities, perceptions, and policies) conflicts and changes in Rome between the accession of Augustus to power to the end of the second century A.D.

2. Examine the status of religious affairs in the Roman world from the time of Augustus until the end of the third century A.D. Ask them to explain the reason for the decline of traditional Roman religion and the ultimate success of Christianity.

3. Explore the reasons for the successes of the second century and the failures of the third century A.D.

RELEVANT WORLD-WIDE WEB SITES/RESOURCES

1.Biblical Archaeology, BibArch:

http://www.bibarch.com

(Site maintained by High Top Media with extensive information on archaeological digs and analyses pertinent to the people and cultures of the Bible.)

2. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, ArtsEdNet, The Forum of Trajan in Rome: http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/ArtsEdNet/Browsing/Trajan/index.html (One of the finest online virtual reality tours of an ancient monument. Structures of the forum displayed magnificently as they appeared in 200 A.D.)

3. Roman Emperors–DIR–De Imperatoribus Romanis
An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors http://www.salve.edu/~dimaiom/deimprom.html (Fine web site complete with images of statuary and coins displaying the imperial visage.)

4. Search the Great Buildings Online: http://www.greatbuildings.com/gbc/search.html (Fine site enabling users to view and gather information on structures central to the history of Western Civilization. Many Roman imperial sites available here.)

5. Religion in the Roman Empire: www.roman-empire.net/religion/religion.html (Excellent discussion of religion in the Roman Empire.)