Supermen of Roman Power

In the first video, the information that most surprised me was Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon. Fearing that the Republic leaders will strip him of his army and therefore his power, Caesar, not King, but Caesar, decides to engage the Senatorial forces led by Pompey the Great. It is not necessarily the fact that Caesar decided to attack the Republic in an effort to overthrow it and replace it with a regime under his command, but that he did so facing such great odds. Caesar’s legion, while experienced and intensely loyal, is nonetheless only one army of many the Republic commanded, and the drive and ambition necessary to dare to attack Rome from within are incredible. 

The mythical origin of Rome, which saw the brothers Romulus and Remus fighting and the subsequent death of the latter, is interesting and significant in how it ties into how Caesar and Pompey could justify war and fratricide on the basis of historical anecdotes and mythical origin stories. This bit of information strikes me as particularly illogical and strange and therefore is one of the more surprising things learned in the video. The other amazing information learned was the method Cleopatra choose to deliver herself as a gift to Caesar. By wrapping herself in an expensive carpet, Cleopatra dares death and danger to deliver herself to Caesar as a gift. In addition to the gift and her own personal company, Cleopatra essentially offers Caesar the land of Egypt, the single most prosperous and wealthiest land in the entire Mediterranean. The death of Ptolemy XIII led Cleopatra to become the Pharaoh of Egypt, and she would become an excellent client ruler of Egypt for the growing dominion of the Roman Empire. 

The last more intriguing thing I learned from the lesson was the way in which particular Roman figures dramatically impacted the course of history in the West. It seems that Roman history, more so than perhaps other states, is particularly driven by some very specific great men and women of the time, such as Pompey, Crassus, and Cleopatra, as well as Caesar and Mark Antony. These great figures are charismatic and appealing individuals and are endowed with great personal ability and fortune and are able, as a result of these traits, to do the great things that they do. When Caesar was attacked in Egypt by the forces of Ptolemy, he defied all odds and managed to win the battle and turn the tide of the situation in Egypt and secure the land for Cleopatra. This is but one example where the great leaders of Roman history emerge to act as the driving force of historical change—without these incredibly powerful “supermen” of history, the great feats they achieved would likely have never occurred. 

Thus, the most significant thing I learned from this lesson was not a particular fact or idea regarding a specific person in history, but rather that the direction of Roman history is often driven by powerful individual figures. The favorite thing I learned was the rationale Cleopatra used in justifying her suicide, as prior to this I had always been taught that Cleopatra had chosen suicide over capture and defeat. The fact that she chose suicide in order to continue her fight against Octavian in the afterlife is fascinating and shows that the different attitudes present with regards to the matter of suicide in the ancient world. Overall, this lesson did well to showcase the significance of particular historical actors and the ways in which individuals can act in order to affect the flow of history. 

The Early Roman Empire

The most significant thing I learned in this lesson was the background surrounding how Octavian, one of the major players in the Roman Empire, systematically formulated and created the state of the Roman Empire. Specifically, how the new Augustus achieved the creation of an imperial organization where he alone held actual power is both significant and fascinating. 

For Octavian to secure power, he had to first address the root issues surrounding the importance of public opinion with regards to authoritarian rule. From the outset, Rome had been hostile to the idea of a tyrannical king, only appointing dictators and single rulers when needed in the case of great danger to the existence of the fledgling Republic. Octavian inherited a system in which this strain of thought was palpable—the Romans did not want another king. Octavian, then, chose to address this issue by merely ruling behind the scenes, appointing men loyal to him in high office and controlling the strings of the Senate from afar. Through this system, Octavian expanded the bureaucracy and enabled future emperors to control and dominate the state of the Roman Empire while simultaneously justifying their rule against the backdrop of the Senate and other traditional democratic illusions. 

The second significant thing I learned was the historical backdrop on which Jesus is born, and the impact Christianity would have on the Empire. Tied into this is the “wow” factor of the surprising fact that the Nativity scene is an inaccurate portrayal of the birth of Jesus. Far from being born in a warm barn, surrounded by fresh straw and clean linen, Jesus was born in the first level of a building, which meant that Mary gave birth in a cold, damp, wet, and smelly “cave” of a room where animals would have lived. Also, the surprising fact that the wise men mentioned in the birth narrative would not have ridden camels, but rather horses, is representative of the ways in which popular culture and media influence the perception of historical events. These are admittedly small events in the overall history of the period, meaning that whether the wise men rode camels or not or whether they were actually kings or just educated scholars do not significantly impact the course of history, nor the interpretation of events after, but it remains amazing nonetheless to see the corruption of the original truthful narrative into a bizarre, Hollywood-esque surreal version. 

However, the “wow” moment is definitely the action of Mary to cut the umbilical cord with a knife made of bread. Such an act is both almost ludicrous to think of from a contemporary standpoint, and is also fascinating in the way that it shows how the medical techniques of ancient people so parallel our own. As a bread knife has no bacteria on it, it would be safe to use in a pseudo-surgical operation. Granted, ancient people had no conception of the idea of bacteria nor the casual reasons for disease and infection, but the fact remains that ancient people must have known something that would have tipped them off to the fact that such a tool would be safe to use in that situation. 

The favorite thing I learned was the actual detail of the virgin conception. The “virgin birth” described by Christian theology was not that the birth itself was particularly divine or different in any way from other births, but rather that the miracle comes in when Mary was impregnated by the divine spirit. It is a small point of clarification, but it is one that is important in certain ways, namely the clarification of where the miracle and divine nature of Jesus begins. I also enjoyed the discussion of why Jesus was wrapped in a burial garment—Mary was fully aware of the divine nature of Jesus and how he would die for man’s sins, so she wrapped him in a burial garment as he is a newborn man that is destined to die. 

Early Roman Empire Part II

In this lesson, the discussion on Caligula is both fascinating and insightful. Caligula, after inheriting the well-oiled machine of Octavian and Tiberius, effectively ruined the finances of the Roman state. Incredibly narcissistic and driven by his own personal desires, Caligula is the epitome of a terrible Roman emperor. Not only was he incestuous with his unwilling sister, but he actively attempted to defame and insult the Roman Senate by naming his horse as a senator. The incestuous nature of Caligula surprised me, as did the mention of Emperor Nero and his tendency to perform for audiences. I certainly did not expect to hear that Nero was a stage performer, and his capacity for incredible violence and terrible retribution against any of those people who would potentially offend him with even the most irrelevant of slights. 

The “wow” moment of the lesson was the ridiculous mention of how Nero had won nearly two thousand “gold medals”, or wreaths more specifically. He managed this because he simply could not lose, given his status as an imperial ruler. He would be incapable of losing a race, even going so far as to win events in which he never entered. The second “wow” moment was the burning of Rome, as I had previously thought that Nero got the reputation of burning Rome because he merely did not respond to a massive fire and just sat in his palace. Instead, Nero burned Rome to make room for his new palace and blamed Christians as an effective minority scapegoat to ensure the success of his regime. By blaming Christians for the burning of Rome, Nero could implement the persecution of Christians. However, limited by the technological organization of the time, widespread persecution of Christians would remain difficult. While Nero could effectively implement persecution strategies in areas where Roman control was particularly strong, he would be limited by an inability to pursue his enemies in a systematic fashion. The other “wow” moment I experienced was the mention of the man who survived nine days on the cross, and that the crucified individual had to thrust himself up and down on the cross in order to breathe. 

The most significant thing I learned in this lesson was how the Book of Revelation effectively avoided “death” at the hands of the Roman persecution and guaranteed the survival of the final chapter of the New Testament, something that has incredibly important historical ramifications for the rest of mankind. If John had not, with the grace of the Roman Emperor Nerva, been allowed to leave the island of his captivity, the New Testament would lack an entire quarter of its total text. Moreover, the Book of Revelations holds very significant theological and cultural implications for Christianity. Without the Book of Revelations, Christianity, in effect, has no “end game”. The Messiah came, died, and left, and only vague references to mentions of resurrection and the Second Coming. Thus, I feel that the discussion on how the Book of Revelations came to be an integral part in Christian theology is the most important thing learned in this lesson, as without it, Christianity would likely have a radically different theology. 

The favorite thing I learned was how the individual characteristics of Roman emperors continued to dominate the political scene of life in Rome, while at the same time even the worst of emperors could not really ruin the entire structure as a whole sufficiently to prevent future rulers the ability to recover and resurrect the empire’s core strengths. Emperors like Nero and Caligula were offset by good rulers like Hadrian and Trajan. In fact, under Trajan, the Empire reached its highest territorial extent to date. Moreover, individual emperors accomplished great things like Hadrian’s Wall and the Pantheon, which stand today as monuments to the strength and power of imperial authority. 

Middle Roman Empire

In this lesson, I was surprised when it was mentioned that 28 emperors ruled in only a handful of years. This is significant in that it shows the increasing spread of instability and political turbulence in the middle years of the Empire. Highly contingent on the effectiveness of particular rulers, any period of relative instability would continue to compound on itself and result in greater and greater levels of poor governance. Without strong, central leadership, the government would be wracked by army rebellions and the actions of individual generals who had won the popularity of their soldiers and felt they had the support necessary to become Emperor. 

Another significant thing we learned in this lesson was that Emperor Aurelian copied the birthday of Jesus to create further support for his own religious and imperial system. This was a process that helped to create a sense of competition between the imperial god Sol Invictus, and the Christian god represented by Jesus. This competition contributes to the accumulation and resurrection of support by the imperial faction and does this by creating communal ties that unite the individuals. December 25th was definitely a Christian holiday before the cult of Sol Invictus appropriated the date for their own use. The Roman records, for example, support the fact that the pagan cult only begins mentioning the 25th of December as the date of any particular importance well after the Christian community in the middle Roman Empire had begun to use the holiday for their own use. This evidence, then, runs contrary to the commonly held belief that Christians appropriated the use of a pagan holiday and that the God of Christianity is somehow based on the imperial cult of Sol Invictus. Instead, it seems the evidence indicates the opposite is true, and that the pagans of the time, in fact, used a Christian date for their own purposes.

The other information I found particularly significant was the discussion on the fall of the Western Roman Empire. By the 4th century AD, the Roman Empire had long since abandoned Rome as an administrative center. Here, we see that being “Roman” no longer meant being from Rome, or even from Italy. Citizenship belonged to the Romans as a whole, not just people from Italy proper. This, then, means that Rome, given its lack of strategic importance in comparison to other imperial capitals and administrative centers like Trier, Ravenna, and Constantinople, had long since failed to represent anything beyond historical sentiment. The city itself was still massive and popular, but it was overshadowed by the imperial capital at Constantinople and its administrative functions were divided and distributed across regional centers to increase efficiency and response time.

The favorite thing I learned was that the Roman Empire did not actually fall in 410. While the western half of the Empire had largely fallen to the wayside, the Eastern Roman Empire continued in true Roman fashion and, more importantly, did not lose its Roman identity. Until 1453, the “Byzantines” called themselves Romans, and their emperor was the Roman Emperor who retained theoretical authority over the empire in the West. Thus, while the western half of the Empire fell and Rome itself was sacked and put under barbarian control, the sense of what it meant to be Roman and the cultural identity with that Greco-Roman culture continued in the East and did not decline until 1453 and the true death of the Empire. This struck me as amazing information, as it can be said that the Roman state existed from 509 BC following the establishment of the Republic all the way to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In that sense, the Roman state existed in some form for nearly two thousand years, a truly amazing and astounding fact that boggles the mind to consider.