Camp Gagnon - Ancient Rome Expert on Jesus Death, Early Christianity , & Rise of Gladiators

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Dr. Michael Taylor, Professor of Ancient Roman History at University at Albany, visits the tent to unpack the historical reality of early Christianity's spread through the Empire, and the spectacular rise of gladiatorial combat. From separating historical fact from religious tradition to understanding how the Romans viewed early Christians, Dr. Taylor brings his expertise to some of history's most debated topics. Want to know what really happened in ancient Rome and how Christianity transformed from a small Jewish movement to the Empire's official religion? Pack your bags—we're headed to ancient Rome. WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️ Shoutout to our sponsors MagicSpoon, Huel, Prizepicks, Morgan& Morgan and Bluechew! MagicSpoon: https://magicspoon.com/camp Huel: https://huel.com/camp Prizepicks : https://prizepicks.onelink.me/ivHR/CAMP 🏕️ FREE NEWSLETTER HERE: https://camp.beehiiv.com/ TIMESTAMP: 0:00 Intro 1:12 Welcome Dr. Taylor 2:48 The Timeline of Roman Empire 5:53 Ancient War Elephants 10:23 Movement of Roman Empire 14:10 Roman Annexation 16:41 Political Role In Annexation 22:54 Technology In Rome 30:17 Christianity In Rome 37:04 History of Crucifixion + Persecution 46:16 Mystery Cults In Rome 1:02:14 Constantines Apparition 1:03:54 Spread of Christianity + Nag Hammadi Library 1:09:50 The Trinity + The Gospels + Nicaea 1:17:51 Pax Romana 1:25:35 Gladiator Games + Construction of Colosseum 1:34:45 Colosseum Games 1:37:38 Who Were the Gladiators? 1:43:14 Most Famous Gladiator + Spartacus 1:46:11 Lead Up To The Fall of Rome 1:51:17 Check Out Dr. Turner’s Book

Gladiatorial games. They are first put on as part of aristocratic funerals. If you're a big aristocrat, you want the voters to come, you know, because, you know, probably his son's going to be running for office and his grandson, and not everyone is there for the speeches. So how do you get them into a whole Coliseum? What do you do?

Hey, we have some gladiator games, and it's great, because people will come for that. This is Dr. Michael Taylor. He's a Roman historian, and today he's going to explain how the Roman gladiator games were actually like the WWE of ancient times. Thumbs up, thumbs down. There is a W.W.E. element to gladiatorial combat. The gladiators don't always die.

He explains how Christianity spread through Rome, like wildfire. I'm sorry, that's too soon. Deocletian decides that Christianity is an existential threat. It's clear at this point that Christians are kind of coming out of the woodworks. And lastly, he explains who really built the Coliseum. Was it aliens? Jews built the Coliseum. Yes.

My Jewish friends are going to love this. So, if the Roman Empire, is your Roman Empire, then this is the episode for you. So get cozy in the tent. Come hang out and welcome to camp. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to camp. Today we have a very, very exciting conversation teed up. I have a brilliant man sitting in front of me, originally from California and somehow was duped into going to upstate New York to pursue, you know, telling the youth of America about the brilliance of the Roman Empire. Dr. Taylor, how are you? I'm good. It's a great pleasure to be be here. Thank you so much. There's a meme that has been percolating on the internet for

maybe, you know, three, four years that basically asserts that men specifically think about the Roman Empire once a week, maybe, you know, maybe once a day. Have you heard this meme? I've seen the meme. I've seen the meme. I'm privileged to live the meme. Absolutely. You are the embodiment, the manifestation, the meme become flesh. And as you said before me, you are just a encyclopedia of Roman empiric knowledge. But I'm also, I would say maybe an offshoot of the meme. I feel like I do consider the Roman Empire frequently. I think about the fall of the Roman Empire. I think about the Coliseum. I think about Pompeii. I think about how the Roman Empire created, you know, much of like the current, you know, global structure as we see today, whether geopolitically or culturally. I think that

the remnants of Rome still persist into, you know, modern times in 2025. And, and, you know, And it's just a fascinating thing. I mean, the crucifixion of Christ, certainly I don't think can be underestimated in terms of global importance. There's so many things about the Roman Empire that I find fascinating. And that's why I'm excited to chat with you today. Let's get into all of it, shall we? Absolutely. So just to begin, could you give me just like a general timeline when people say ancient Rome or Roman Empire? What are they talking about? All right. It's a long timeline. So Rome canonically believes that they were founded

The city was founded in 753 BC So And whether or not that date is The actual date It does seem that there is a Community living You know amongst the hills of Rome at that time In the 8th century

By large-pressed Wolf, right? As the story goes Supposedly And And, you know, I mean, I would say I'm pretty skeptical about the historicity of, you know, Romulus and Remus. It's quite likely that Rome becomes actually much more of a clear city a little later. It really sort of takes off in the, in the 6th century, BC. And Rome initially is ruled by kings.

And the, supposedly there's canonically seven of them, starting with Romulus. And then supposedly in 509 BC, the Romans overthrow their last king, Tarkwin, the proud, and set up a republic. And so 509 BC begins the Republican period in which Rome is, it's a sort of democracy in that it's governed by elected magistrates who are elected by popular voting assemblies. and once you are elected to a certain level of magistrateal office, because there's a whole kind of hierarchy of magistrates, you get lifetime membership in the Senate. So the Senate is part of this structure. But nonetheless, it's a republic with elected magistrates, a Senate, and then voting assemblies that kind of, you know, produce these magistrates. And that is the Republic is the period when Rome acquires its first control over Italy. So they're they're conquering the Etruscans and the Samnites and establishing a hegemony in Italy.

And then starting in the 3rd century BC, they begin to acquire their overseas empire. And the big war is the first Punic war with Carthage. It's the first time they engage in overseas operations. And this is in North Africa, correct? In North, now the first Punic War, they're primarily fighting in Sicily, although they have one brief foray into North Africa. And then in the second Punic War, the last battle of the second Punic War, that's the war with Hannibal, is in 202 BC in Zama, deep in North Africa. They beat Hannibal's last Carthaginian army and essentially humble Carthage permanently. They'll destroy the city sometime later in 146 in a war that really is a lopsided war.

The last one is pretty unfair. Now, people like to look at these Carthagin battles in the Punic Wars and they think elephants. I've heard that the elephant thing is a bit overblown, maybe a tad exaggerated. Can you speak to that? Yeah. So war elephants in the ancient world are used as a weapon. But yes, for the the Carthaginian elements, oh, excuse me, Carthaginian elephants under Hannibal are not particularly decisive. Hannibal sets out to cross the Alps, almost all of his elephants freeze to death or die miserably. And he has one last elephant who may be his favorite elephant. We actually know it's name. Its name is Seurus and drowns in a bog. So Hannibal loses almost all of his elephants and all of his great victories in circling and annihilating Roman armies. Elephants play almost no role in

those victories. It's, you know, the real key to Hannibal's military successes is his very, very effective use of his cavalry. He's really good at using his horse. to encircle Roman armies through these grand sweeping double envelopment. So he's at the end of the day a very effective commander using, using, you know, cavalry rather than his war elephants. Right, because the elephant seems like a nightmare. They're so big. You got to take care of them, you know.

They go slow. And they're afraid of mice, according to cartoons I've seen. So the Romans, the first time the Romans encounter elephants is in the 270s, when a different king invades, a guy named Puris of Epirus, is where we get the term Peeric victory. Right. And he invades Italy, and he brings war elephants, which are at this point a really new thing in the Mediterranean. They've only recently encountered them through Alexander's contacts with India. And so this is the first time war elephants have been deployed in Italy.

And war elephants are actually probably most effective if you've never encountered them before, because they really do kind of freak people out. And it actually seems the elephants can be most effective because horses freak out when they're around them. And horses spook easily. And if you can kind of cause your enemy's cavalry to stampede, that's obviously a good thing. Now, if you're an early Roman soldier,

have you ever seen an elephant before? You probably haven't in, you know, 280 BC. Have you heard of them? Like, do you think word gets around? Like, oh, they have these giant tusks in their big ears? It is, it probably takes some time. Wow. We actually know that the Romans around this time or a coin is mented, and it's not really a coin.

It's a bronze bar. The Romans have a very primitive currency at this point. So it's a bronze bar. And on one side is an elephant. And on another side is a pig. And this, I think, gets actually to your point that elephants are afraid of, you know, mice. There is a story that is related to the Pyrrhic Wars, that Pyrrhic Pyrrhus has some elephants, and the elephants encounter some Italian pigs, and the elephants are the ones who get scared by the pigs and run away.

And it may be that this bronze bar commemorates that incident of Italian pigs spooking, you know, these big, scary elephants. But it does seem that, you know, if you can get your... soldiers familiar with elephants. And if you can kind of tell them what they need to do, it is possible for disciplined, determined infantry to stand up to war elephants just fine. Interesting. And ultimately, that's probably one reason why the war elephant just goes out of usage. And it takes time. In fact, the Romans, after they've beaten the Carthaginians, when they go and fight other wars, they will tell the Carthaginians, you know, send us some elephants. And so the Romans themselves use war elephants in the second century.

Although, again, these don't seem to necessarily prove decisive. They're present. But, you know, the war elephant is, yeah, it kind of looks cool, but it never really proves to be a decisive weapon of ancient warfare. I see. So now there's an occupation of Carthage. Rome is officially an empire. Is that fair to say? They got some satellites gone?

Yeah, and, you know, it actually, it does take time before Rome transitions to, you know, an interest in annex, direct annexation and direct administration of places in the Mediterranean that it's conquered. So it's unclear that the first overseas province that they obtain is actually, it's not in Carthaginian, Africa, it's in Sicily. They beat Carthage in the first Punic War. They kicked them out of Sicily, and they take Western Sicily as a province. And, of course, it seems they're just really interested in the grain. And then, so that's kind of the first overseas province after the second Punic War. And here they've kicked Carthaginian out of Spain. So they've kicked the Carthaginians out of Spain.

they annex Spain and both start exploiting Spain for its, particularly its silver. Spain's got these huge silver mines and the Romans are interested in that. And of course, they also then engage in ongoing warfare against the peoples of the Iberian and interior. So in many ways, sort of you could argue that it is Spain that kind of makes Rome a a genuine territorial empire interested in permanent occupation and exploitation in the early second century BC. But the Romans are actually slow to a next place. They're they're kind of notorious for, you know, they'll defeat an opponent and they'll say, all right, you guys,

you guys behave. Interesting. And then, you know, it may take several, you know, let's take the case of Macedonia. They beat the Macedonians in the in the second Macedonian war, and they say, okay, you guys behave. Then they fight the Macedonians again in the third Macedonian war, seemingly alarmed by a resurgence of Macedonian power. The third Macedonian war ends in 168 BC. And they say, okay, no more kings in Macedonia. They abolish the Macedonian monarchy. The last king of Macedonia dies in Roman captivity. But they do not annex Macedonia. They leave it and they sort of divide it up into these four republics. And again, they say, okay, you guys behave.

Don't trouble us anymore. And then 20 years later, a man emerges who says, oh, I'm descended from the last king of Macedonia. And this guy, but the Romans referred to as pseudo-Philip, stirs up a rebellion. So there's a fourth Macedonian war. And after the fourth Macedonian war, the Romans say, okay, fool us four times. And it's only then that Rome is annexed as a province and actually receives a routine, you know, has a Roman governor dispatch to administer it and has some kind of Roman military garrison. But the Romans are real hesitant to actually annex a territorial empire. It takes them, it takes time for sort of a, you know, a hegemony.

the Romans simply having such military superiority that they expect people to do what they tell them, to turn into a kind of hardened empire of directly administered by Roman pro-consuls or pro-preters who are sent out with soldiers to permanently occupy and administer overseas territory. Do the Romans develop this notion of annexation occupation? What is the precedent of imperialism at this point? Um, so obviously the idea of ruling foreign peoples goes all the way back to the beginning. Um, uh, uh, the first great world empire, uh, you know, a huge empire that, that spans many regions, um, is I think arguably the Persian Akhemenate empire, um, uh, which, uh, had emerged in the sixth century BC, uh, eventually. spans all the way from

briefly from Macedonia all the way into India. This is the empire that Alexander improbably overthrows. But, you know, the the, the we see, you know,

sort of many of the same things. Direct, direct territorial administration and extraction and the use of this, you know, huge empire to sort of enrich an imperial elite. probably one of the things that makes the Roman Empire actually weird by just the standards of ancient and pre-modern empires is most ancient empires, most pre-modern empires, are monarchic from the get-go.

So this is the case with the Persians, where an Iranian warlord. Cyrus the Great manages to put together a, you know, a sort of expanding empire in the Near East. It's the case with, you know, Chinese dynasties where usually either a, you know, regional king or regional warlord manages to beat his rivals and establish a, you know, broader dynasty. But most ancient empires are monarchic from the get-go. Rome is very unusual in that it's a, it starts out as a Republican empire, as an empire that's produced by a Republican city-state. And it only transitions to being a true imperial monarchy under Augustus, who, you know, after a series of brutal civil wars that destroy the republic, becomes the first emperor of Rome. And then we have another, you know, six centuries of this sort of imperial monarchy.

No, is the republicanism of Rome, again, using, deriving from being a republic, some type of democratic process that goes into governing this state. Was that beneficial in annexation and sort of expanding the empire's reach? I think so. And I think a lot of that has to do with oftentimes monarchies can be very status quo. You know, if you are a big king, yes, you might, you know, want to engage in kind of conquest on the fringes or you might want to fight a few wars to sort of boost your political standing. But, you know, big monarchies can be, you know, they can be really just fat and happy and okay with what they've got. Right. Also rife with rebellion, I imagine.

And oftentimes, oftentimes, yeah, more concerned with, yeah, kind of standpoint. stamping down rebellions to just keep what you have. Because this power structure is top down. You have one guy that says, I'm destined by God, some type of divine right of kings or, you know, a prototypical version of that to say that I'm going to rule these people. And then it's up to the people to eventually just rebel in some capacity. And that seems like the cyclical nature. But now you have this Republican system, the power is now sort of dispersed at the bottom level now moving upwards. Yeah.

Yeah, and I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, the, I think the classic case in the, in the period of Roman expansion of a big kingdom that just spends all of its time tamping down rebellions is the Seleucid Empire, which actually basically is based in the, in the Near East. It actually has the footprint of the old Persian-Achemid empire, but is now ruled by a descendant of Alexander's generals. And that's basically all they do. They've got this huge domain, and the kings just kind of, you know, are constantly moving. around, tamping down the various rebellions that are always popping on. Oh, waste of time. And yeah, it's one, I think, feature of now, and of course, one key thing is the sort of democratic aspects of the Roman Republic only apply to a citizen body in central Italy. So, you know, if you're a Roman subject in Spain or Macedonia, you're not involved in that

process. And indeed, there are a lot of Italians who, at least in the third and second centuries, during the period of this big expansion, aren't Roman citizens. They are considered Soki-e. That's where we get our term social. And they are essentially subjects. They don't have a vote. They cannot vote for Roman consuls, even though they serve in Roman armies. So, you know, Rome has a very big citizen body. But there are limits. There are limits on who's involved in that kind of those sort of democratic processes that govern the Roman Republic. That being said, the one thing the Roman Republic is really good at doing is it spurs competition amongst Rome's political class basically towards aggressive warfare because, you know,

they elect the two highest magistrates of the Roman Republic are the consuls. So you're two elected every year. and you've basically got one year in your consular office to make a name for yourself. You're moving the football forward every chance he gets. Exactly. So, you know, you get, you get elected consul. You get, you know, a powerful army. You get a 20,000 man army.

And you've got one year and your clock starts to tick. And so these guys are just hyper aggressive. They're not interested in the status quo. They're looking for a war that they can pursue as sometimes they pursue it quite recklessly, but they pursue very aggressively. and the kind of goal if you're, you know, a Roman politician is to win your war. This allows you to have a special parade called a triumph, which is a procession through the streets of Rome. You drive the captives that you've taken in the war ahead of your chariot.

Your soldiers follow behind, oftentimes singing, you know, sort of dirty songs about you. But, you know, everyone's in a good mood. And to have a triumph is the, you know, it's the pinnacle of being a Roman aristocratic male. Not everyone gets to do it. And so if you do get to do it, it's the best possible thing that can happen to you. Oh, that's fascinating. But this, this is an incentive system that really motivates Roman generals towards extreme bellicosity. They're always looking for a war. They're always engaged in aggressive military operations. And this is, probably something that actually makes, you know, drives Roman expansionism. Because every year, it's two new guys looking for a fight. Yeah. And trying to pursue that, you know, whatever, whatever war they're lucky enough to get, they try to, you know, pursue it as aggressively as possible. Oh, that's interesting. And I think this explains why Rome is, yeah, a far more expand, you know, It's, it is, you know, that's going to draw, power Roman imperialism in a different way than an empire that is governed by a monarchic figure.

One of the interesting things is when Rome becomes a monarchy under Augustus and his successors, expansion grinds to a halt. The Roman emperor is only engaged in a little bit of expansion on the fringes. But now they're thinking long term. These are thinking long term. They've already got a huge empire. They're thinking about the balance of troops and how I'm going to pay these guys. And it's kind of easier just to say like, well, let's just chill. Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, I think it's not a coincidence that Rome's great period of expansion is the republic. And its great period of status quo maintenance is the, what we call the imperial period, but being governed by, you know, by emperors. Now, I'm going to dare be a pseudo, you know, historical scientists here. But I wonder if there's any extrapolation we can make to the modern time with this idea that, you know, when you have every country in the, in the modern world, or at least in the, you know, 20th century as some type of, you know, democratic republic, does that force progress to happen quicker? Because you have these

politicians that are maybe stoking war or, you know, pushing forward advancements in order to, you know, gain some type of political standing. And as a result, you know, from these wars, you have, you know, technological invention that then benefit the people. Mixed in with capitalism, I wonder if that leads to this rapid, almost exponential growth of technology in the 20th century is partially due to the political and governmental structures that our nations have. Um, I mean, I would. This is outside of your purview, but now we're speculating. Yeah, I would, I would agree. Um, you know, and certainly, uh, and actually there, there is a recent book by a, a, a stand.

Stanford historian Walter Shidell, who actually argues that, you know, the Roman Empire, particularly the imperial period governed by, you know, governed by emperors, is really a period of stagnation. There's very little technological development. And some of that is, you know, he argues, big empires aren't good for that. You know, on one hand, they're not going to encourage developments in warfare because they've They've obtained their kind of, you know, imperial footprint. And also, you know, the kinds of wars that empires do fight tend to be asymmetric, right?

It's fighting peoples or rebels on the periphery where the empire is much more powerful than the folks on the periphery. And so Shidel argues that, you know, one reason why we start to see both the sort of big technological takeoff in sort of, starting in the early modern period. And also one reason why we see it in Europe is Europe is totally fragmented. You've got all of these little states. They're all fighting their little wars. And so they start developing both, you know, technologies to do that, including gunpowder, eventually steam power, you know, exploitation of fossil fuels, you know, the industrial

revolution that takes off actually in England around the time of the massive wars of the late 18th and 19th centuries. But they also start to develop a political process that can help, you know, to, it encourages kind of experimentation with political processes that have sort of arrived at representative, you know, what representative democracy, which, which emerges actually in a, you know, whole series of experiments and competitions. But, you know, there's probably a reason why all of a sudden, yeah, the big, the countries that are in some ways, some of the most successful countries of this period, Britain, the United States, they've kind of hit on the formula of representative democracy

and that in turn helps to fuel, as you point out, the further technological developments that continue to kind of move on that exponential curve. Fascinating. Wow. Now, on one hand, the Romans just aren't there. And of course, you know, it remains a great question of, yeah, you know, why even during this period, Don't we see more, you know, kind of technological process or progress? Some of it's just, it's hard to get a technological lift off.

There is a little bit of just luck and serendipity involved in that. That makes sense. What's up, guys? Let's take a break really quick because you're nostalgic. You remember in your childhood sitting down watching cartoons, having a big old bowl of cereal. I tried doing that now in my 28-year-old father. Okay? I sat down with my little baby.

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unlock a healthier, easier way to eat with Huell, completely nutritious meals in just a few minutes so you can focus on what really matters, all right? Being productive and listening to podcasts. Let's get back to the show. Now, I want to shift gears to discussing early, Christianity and, you know, this occupation of Judea that leads to the crucifixion of Christ, at this time, which I know is a little bit outside of, you know, military history per se,

so feel free to punt on any of these. But at the time of Christ and early Christianity, would word of this person that, you know, is, you know, known as Christ, whatever his name might have been, you know, Issa bin Miriam or Yahshua, Ben, Joseph, or whatever he would have been described, would this have gone back to the, you know, head consulate in Rome? Would Tiberius have known about this person named Christ? Did it cause significant disruption around the time of his death, or was it only after his death that it caused disruption? Probably this is only something that is going to come to sort of, yeah, imperial awareness afterwards in that, you know, for Pontius Pilate, who's the equestrian governor, he can kind of execute non-citizens and probably

doesn't need to report that back up to hire. Now, he can't execute Roman citizens because one of the, this is actually one of the old sort of quirks of, you know, the transition from the Republic to the empire, but one of the foundations of sort of Roman libertos, Roman freedom, is the idea of, it's called Provocatio, which is basically the right to appeal. If you're a Roman citizen, you can't be put to death by a Roman magistrate. And under the Republic, you have the right to appeal to a Roman voting assembly and say, you know, either I'm innocent or they sort of have to approve that sentence. Now, the empire, you know, is established. and that right is actually transferred to the emperor.

So you're no longer appealing to a Roman voting assembly, but you still have the right if you're a citizen to appeal to the emperor. And of course, the classic case of this is Paul, who has Roman citizenship, and that's why when he's sentenced, you know, he has to go to Rome now. So in that instance, so anyway, for Jesus, probably that is not being sent up. This is just one of many, you know, people that are getting executed, you know, by, you know, provincial governors.

The first sort of time that reference to Jesus or awareness of Jesus turns up in kind of Roman sources is under the reign of, I believe, Claudius, where in his, one of his biographies written by a biographer named Swaytonia. It's mentioned that he expels and here it kind of I believe it gets so you know He expels Jews from the city of Rome because of the instigation of a certain Crestes I think the most obvious interpretation is these are early Christians And and it may be that that again Early Christians but moving through a Diaspora Jewish community and those who are sort of affiliated Around it we are Jews that follow Christ as the Messiah and And it's like, okay, well, then what are you?

And I guess in the early Roman Empire, they weren't exactly sure what to refer to them as. Is that fair? Yeah, I mean, I think it takes a little time for the Romans to figure out kind of what's going on. Who are we killing? What are we called? I mean, there's a famous letter by a governor, and he's being sent to Bithynia. So he's being sent to what's now modern day Turkey. And this is around, I believe, 102 AD.

And his name's Pliny. and Pliny is governing by Thinia, and he writes to the emperor Trajan and says, I've got a problem. There's some folks who call themselves Christians, and I kind of, I'm under the impression that they're kind of bad, and people are, people are, you know, informing on them. What should I do? What should I do with them? And Pliny's initial solution is, you know, he kind of, he's saying, you know, I'm doing some investigations and people are, people are saying they're doing a lot of bad things, but all I can tell is they're kind of gathering and singing some hymns. And so Pliny's initial response, he says, well, look, I asked them to sacrifice to the emperor, which would usually mean probably burning some incense to the imperial cult. And if they don't do it, you know, I killed.

I kill them. And again, almost all Christian persecutions, the crime is almost what we might consider contempt of court. That is, Roman magistrates ask you to do something. You don't do it. And, you know, in many instances when we have sort of, you know, when kind of Christian communities preserve the trial transcripts, it frequently is the Roman magistrates saying, you know, you really should, you know, just just renounce Christ and go home. And they say, oh, I don't want to. He said, come on. I'm renounce Christ. You know. And they say, oh, I don't want to. He said, come on. And renounce Christ. You know. And The girl of majesty is always sort of begging them to like, come on. They don't want to kill you. Yeah, exactly. But we can't have Christian. And then and then it, and so again, the punishment is, again, usually, like I say, it's a kind of contempt of court punishment. You're being so recalcitrant that, you know, we've got no choice. But plenty is plenty, you know, says he says, so he likes this, I'm asking them to sacrifice the emperor if they sacrifice, they're good.

If not, you know, they're punished. And he also says, I'm, you know, what should I do about these sort of anonymous accusations? Because it's also clear there's a kind of witch hunt going on in by Thinian that, you know, if you don't like your neighbor, you're, you're secretly reporting that they're Christians so that the governor will, you know, bring them in. It's like, you know, ancient McCarthyism or something. In some ways, yes. And so, um, uh, Trajan's responses, he says, plenty, you did it, you did everything exactly right. No anonymous accusations. He says that, that is,

runs counter to the spirit of our era. So this is the first time that we actually have evidence of, you know, a Roman governor writing to the emperor and actually saying, I've got this situation. What should we do about it? And this is, this is already, you know, in the in the very early second century AD. So it definitely takes, it definitely takes time for, you know, the, the sort of. Roman imperial system to start trying to process what's going on. Interesting. Now, is crucifixion common throughout the Roman Empire, or is this kind of isolated to Judea? So, crucifixion, so far as we can tell, is actually one of the things we get from Carthage. The first report of this being used as a punishment actually comes from Carthaginian practice. And the Carthaginians actually have this quirky little thing where if generals perform poorly, they can be crucified as a punishment, sometimes by their own troops.

So we actually have instances where, you know, Carthaginian general makes a decision. Troops don't like it, and they crucify them. But this is our first, this is the first reference we have to crucifixion as a punishment. It seems to be Carthaginian. And of course, there's always debate, are there near eastern antecedents in the sense of, we do know that it's, it is common in, you know, ancient near eastern practice to, you know, display bodies on poles or, you know, display the corpses of people accused of treason, put them on a pole. Put a head on a stick. I mean, this seems like it goes back to every culture. Exactly.

Except, you know, but the whole, you know, like the whole body. So at some point, someone's had some clever person or sadistic person. It's had the idea of what if instead of just putting the body on the pole, what if we put the person on the pole until they die? Oh, wow. And so anyway, this seems to start off with Carthage and the Romans pick it up from Carthage and seemingly as a punishment that is used for lower class persons. So it's a punishment for particularly it seems slaves. You know, the Roman kind of native mode of execution is the use of the Faskees, the bundle of sticks surrounded by an axe, which is, you know, is a symbol that has a very, very long, obvious afterlife. But the Faskees are actually a tool of punishment.

The idea is you break open the Faskees, you take the rods that surround the axe and you beat the victim with them, and then you take the axe and decapitate them. Oh, wow. So the Faskees are how a Roman magistrate inflicts punishment. So it seems that the, you know, but typically punishment on, in some ways, kind of free persons, seems the Romans pick up crucifixion as a way of punishing slaves or sufficiently lower class. pass persons that it's it's sort of a lower, you know, it's obviously more excruciating. It's more excruciating. It's more disrespectful to the person. And furthermore, it also probably quells rebellion. And of course, then they're there on display. So it seems that it's just this odd little Carthaginian practice that the Romans pick up and then that's why

it's being deployed. And we hear of Roman crucifixion outside of Judea. I mean, we hear of it being used in Sicily in the 70s BC. So it has kind of become a Roman kind of way of punitive practice in the provinces. Now why is early Christianity such a threat to the Roman power structure? Why is there so much persecution of early Christians? Well, on one hand, I think it's fair to say

that a lot of the early persecution is really sporadic in that there doesn't seem to be any really imperial, you know, grand imperial decree. Until the fourth century, that is. But I guess arguably in the third century 80, maybe our first kind of imperial persecution, the Dishan persecution. But it's so small and disparate that you're not going to get a grand decree from the Roman.

Yeah. So, yeah. So until the third century AD, there's not that many Christians. And it seems that when there are persecutions, they are basically done. at the initiative of the local governor. So plenty, plenty would be our, is our kind of example.

Governor says I've got this situation. What should I do? The emperor isn't aware and says, yeah, that sounds good, you do you. And so it seems that we, we do have these sort of sporadic persecutions, some of which we hear about.

There's a big one in Leon, ancient lugdum in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. There's one in, you know, there's some in Carthage in the, around 200 AD. But again, they didn't be very localized and they seem to sort of flare up. Again, it does seem to be kind of like there's a sort of witch hunt thing and then they kind of,

they flare down. And in some ways, you know, some historians of early Christianity have kind of noted that it may almost be a kind of Goldilocks situation for early Christian communities in that the persecutions, you know, clearly are mobilized as a source of social solidarity. We know that they're keeping, you know, records of martyrs. This is used to inspire and, you know, it actually is a recruitment tool. And at the same time, the persecutions aren't sufficient to actually break these communities. So it's, and that's really the case up to the early, early 4th century.

And what happens then? So there's the really one serious, serious. Perse persecution is the so-called great persecution. This is... Good name. Yeah, fitting, fitting. Very creative. Yeah.

And this is under Diocletian. So this is a period where the Roman Empire is, it's under a lot of strain. It's recovering from decades of civil war. And Deocletian, who's become, he's a military emperor. And he eventually sets up this sort of innovative system where, he's the senior emperor amongst four emperors, it's the tetrarchy. But Deocletian also seems to, for whatever reason, you know, fear, think that Christianity is actually a more existential threat.

And it's actually, it's not entirely clear, although it's, you know, one possibility is he himself is spooked because he sort of just put the empire back together after all these civil wars and then there's a incident where Christians in his army refused to sacrifice and it's clear at this point

that Christians are kind of coming out of the woodworks that there's some holding important positions at this point we know of bishops and intellectuals who are publicly operating in cities but forever reason deacletian decides

that Christianity is an existential threat to a tenuously restored Roman Empire and orders a systematic persecution. And this is a top-down persecution, whereby the emperor is sending out missives, saying, you know, here's what we need to do. And this includes destroying church buildings, destroying scriptures, denying, you know, kicking, kicking Christians out of the bureaucracy. imperial bureaucracy or from holding imperial office. Because the Council of Nicaa had already occurred by this time. Is that true? We're not quite this. So this is happening in like, I think it starts in 303.

Okay. And so we're just before Constantine. And in some ways, this is sort of the, you know, the kind of, you know, surprise of all of this is the closest Christianity gets to being hit with, you know, a massive coordinated imperial persecution. And, you know, this really does impact Christian communities because, in fact, the biggest impact you see in, is it going to be in North Africa? Because there are some bishops who are seen as yielding to the, yielding to the persecution. and basically this leads to two churches in North Africa. One, and one church basically says, and these are the Donatists, they're eventually considered heretics.

But the Donatists say, you know, all those other bishops, they bent in each of the persecutors, and therefore we're the true church in North Africa. And this schism persists into the fifth century. It's something that St. Augustine is still dealing with, the fact that there's Donatists and Catholics. And all of this bad blood kind of goes back to who behaved well or didn't behave well under the pressure of this imperial persecution. Interesting. So really Christianity is not an affront to the religious structure of Rome at the time. It's an affront to the governmental structure that you have these people taking positions of power that are, I guess, you know, working at the behest of, you know, the religious power or to God or Christ himself and not to the Roman emperor. And so therefore it's like, all right, we got to quell this this cult that's coming up that's taking power. Is that true? Yeah. I mean, it's, I think it's always, you know, the funny thing about the, the persecute. is, you know, the Roman Empire is a really religiously diverse place. I mean, the Romans are not interested in maintaining really, for the most part, any kind of, of, you know, imperial religious orthodoxy. So you have Roman mythology that's probably going around, like Mithras, like the...

Well, and some of it is, you know, the Romans are themselves polytheists. And with, you know, if, polytheists are always actually on the lookout for a new god. So if they encounter someone, you know, if they go up and they're, you know, dealing with the Celts up in what's now France or trans alpine Gaul. And they say, oh, you know, Celts have this cool god and she's a horse goddess named Apona. And well, hey, we can, we can worship her too. And we can use that as an imperial tool. You guys can keep your little faith. And we can, you guys can join our thing and give us resources.

Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, on one hand, we see, you know, the cult of Mithras, you know, which seems to also spread along. I mean, in fact, the Roman army does seem to actually be a conduit for new cults. The cult of Mithras is a very popular military cult. And generals are the ones that seem to be the most, I guess, you know, into the idea of Mithras, from what I've read. It's like typically like soldiers that are kind of doing this sort of initiation ritual into the Mithric cult. true? Yes. No, yeah, it seems that it's really, it's popular amongst the army and it may be a kind of, yeah, way that you sort of integrate yourself into the broader military network of the army. You get initiated into the cult and you now have those connections as you move, you know, to different units or different bases, but, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're,

you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, who's an Egyptian goddess that's very popular. There's a cult of Jupiter, Delcenaeus, who's, you know, syncretized with Jupiter, but is a Syrian god that becomes very popular. So there's all kinds of, you know, of syncretism going on.

And it's the military that's bringing these things back to Rome because they're the ones that are going out and interacting with these people that have these different gods. And also just, you know, they're really mobile. Right. You know, they move around. Interesting.

Um, uh, merchants also seem to be a source. Um, I mean, ISIS seems to be popular amongst the merchant community. But for this, they're, they're like soldiers. They're going about their, they encounter a lot of different peoples. And it's actually kind of nice to have, you know, you can both encounter this new god or goddess, but also it's nice to have that kind of as a as a kind of business card. Um, you know, I too am part of the cult of ISIS. Oh, we can do business together and not be afraid of you rip me off. Exactly. Interesting. Um, so, you know, the Roman Empire is is very religious. religiously diverse and there's only a couple of other, the only other examples of the Roman state tampering down really on religious belief is probably attempts to end human sacrifice. That's the one thing that the Romans don't like is human sacrifice. Well, if other people do it. If they do it, it's kind of, the Romans have in the Republic on a handful of occasions. I think the last one is 115 BC. Barry people alive in the forum to deal with kind of military disaster.

But I think that's the last, 115 is the last attested example. But the Romans do go after the druids in the early imperial period, seemingly because the druids do human sacrifice. That seems to be the thing they don't like. And there is some reports, all these, these actual reports come from Christian authors that the Romans have also gone after priests in North Africa who are practicing child sacrifice. Another Carthaginian, another little Carthaginian quirk. So we do hear of, okay, the Romans don't like human sacrifice, and they are willing to use imperial power to tamp that down. But yeah, the reason Christianity's, you know, seems to unnerve at least at first some Roman

officials on the ground and then by the time of deocletian, you know, you mobilize the imperial apparatus against Christian communities. It's always a little unclear. Some of it is probably just because it's new. I mean, the Romans have a deeply conservative mindset, and they can deal with stuff that's old. The Jews are monotheistic. They don't engage in sacrifice to the emperor. And, of course, to be monotheistic is actually to be the original atheist, right?

Because, you know, if you live in a world with hundreds of gods, if you're down to one god, you might as well be at zero. Right. You're one away from zero. So the term atheist, atheoi, is actually first deployed against Jews and Christians. Like these guys don't have gods. They're not like us where we have lots of gods. But at the same time, the Jews have been around for a long time. They're established.

And so, you know, the Roman emperors, while there are these Jewish wars, Roman emperors are also okay with Jews not sacrificing to the emperor, but saying, well, in our synagogue, we'll give prayers to the emperor's health. And this is a sort of compromise that works for a lot of Jewish communities. the emperor is seen as a god. Yeah, so it's complicated, but basically yes. Okay. The imperial cult is something that emerges very early on in, with the establishment of this imperial monarchy. There is a tension because it usually comes from provincial communities.

So provincial communities will, you know, write to Augustus or Tiberius and say we'd like to establish a, you know, you know, build a temple in your honor and, and offer sacrifices in your honor. When the imperial monarchy is still quite new, emperors have to be a little cautious, because you're still surrounded by, you know, all of these senators and you're still operating under the fiction that, you know, Augustus says, I've just restored the republic. You know, I'm not an emperor. I'm just, you know, just one more, you know, honest official of a restored republic.

It's a lie and everyone knows it's a lie. But they're, you know, if early emperors act too haughty, they're at risk because senators like this kind of fiction that the emperor is just the first amongst equals. And so that's hard to pair with the emperor being a god. I see. I see. And so they kind of have their cake and eat it too. You know, they'll, they're sort of, they will accept the worship and the imperial cult when it's being offered both by provincial. and very quickly also by people in Italy.

But they also, at least in their immediate circle, they also, you know, they kind of wink and nod. They play both sides a little bit. I mean, so famously, supposedly, Vespasian, who's sort of remembered as another kind of solid down-to-earth emperor. Supposedly he's dying and he, you know, he says, oh, I think I'm becoming a god. And of course, he's then deified.

And, you know, one, one aspect of this is that, while emperors are given cult while they're living, usually in, officially in Rome, they don't become gods until they die, at which point the Senate will actually officially, you know, deify them. Oh, that's so interesting. And the early republic nature of Rome is great for expansion, but it causes difficulty with civil war. Yes. And so in order to stop these civil wars, you have Augustine that says, all right, I'm both. I'm, you know, the first amongst equals, but also kind of a god in playing this both sides thing like you're discussing. And I can see how that causes an issue when you have these monotheists that say, we're not going to play your little game of, oh, you're an emperor, but you're not. Or you're a god, but you're not.

And clearly, that is the constant tension of the Christians don't sacrifice to the imperial cult. And, and, you know, again, the, this is a bit of a generalization, but a lot of ancient religion involves, I guess, what religious scholars call orthopraxy. We don't really care what you believe inside. If you think the emperor is just a mortal man and he's, you know, probably got indigestion and venereal disease, and he's probably a jerk to and his kids probably hate him, you can think that in your head and all you have to do is go burn a little incense on the altar and you're fine. Now, obviously the kind of, you know, religions of the book, and this also, you know, obviously both Judaism and Christian have substantial amounts of orthopraxy involved. But we started to get the idea of kind of orthodoxy. It doesn't matter as much what you do, but it really matters what you believe. So, you know, that's where all of a sudden, you know, you get this tension of, you know, the Roman officials saying, like, well, we don't really care.

what, you know, care what you think, but you've, you just got to do the thing. And then, and you have Christian saying, well, I won't sacrifice to the emperor. And of course, that's where you get basically these contempt of court cases, um, where it's like, we didn't even care what you think. We didn't care what you read. We, we, we just care that you didn't do the one thing, you know, I, a Roman magistrate told you to do. Um, and so that's where you, that's where you get that tension on these, um, you know, get in these, these oftentimes quite sporadic persecutions, because after a while, just, you know, why bother? Um, and so these, you know, these, you know, They tend to flare up and then flare down again pretty quickly.

And of course, you know, by the middle of the third century AD, in some ways, it's almost surprising. A lot of Christians are out in the open. Everyone knows who the bishop of a city is. There are Christian intellectuals openly writing and circulating materials, some of which we now start to have, you know, like, you know, eventually Turtallian and others. So, you know, I think it's actually a sign of how sporadic and infrequent that this is now kind of possible. I mean, that by the, you know, sort of late third century, you know, Christian, you know, yes, it's technically legal, but Christians are operating quite openly. And which is, I think, one reason why actually the great persecution is so dangerous because everyone, everyone knows who these guys are now. They know where the church is.

They know who the bishop is. And that's why it's such a threat. It is one of the great just sort of, you know, shifts in that the great persecution fails pretty quickly. De Ecclesion seems to lose interest. But a new civil war breaks out after Deocletian's retirement, and the winner of that civil war happens to be Constantine. and Constantine believes that he has been given a sign from the Christian God that's helped him to win his great battle at the Milvian Bridge and is all of a sudden ready to make Christianity an imperial religion, really in some ways the imperial religion. Totally unexpected if you're, you know, that this is going to happen in 312 if you're if you're living in say 303. What's up guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I want to help you make sports more fun.

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Do you remember? I forget exactly what. He saw like a cross at the end of his victory or something like that. I can't remember. Yeah, there are several versions. And off the top of my head, I don't remember all of the specific versions. But he sees either a cross or a Cairo, the Greek first two letters of Christos. And in some instances, I think here's a voice.

And again, we get, we get slightly different versions. I mean, Constantine himself may have told this story in slightly different, slightly different ways. He's, he's been somebody who seems to in his career have been interested in both epiphanies. He'd previously claim that he was in a temple of Apollo and that Apollo came down and talked to him. So, this is before 312 when he's still a pagan. But, you know, it's also possible at interest in, I mean, Apollo's the sun god. He may be someone who's either looking into the sky, you know, looks to the sky kind of for religious motivation or inspiration.

But yes, he claims some kind of vision where a Christian symbol appears to him and that this is what grants him, you know, the victory, perhaps by putting the symbol on his soldier's shields in his subsequent battle, the Milvian Bridge, which establishes him. He's not quite yet the only emperor in the Roman world, but establishes him as the dominant emperor in the West. Oh, wow. So now Constantine takes over, becomes Christian, and then spreads Christianity across the Roman Empire. It seems to take actually a little bit of time. One thing that Constantine doesn't seem as interested in is while he's made it the effect. He's made it the effect. religion. And obviously, anytime the emperor does anything, people will start to emulate that. I mean, we know that when the emperor changes his hairstyle, all of a sudden, you know, his statue goes out with the new hairstyle. And then all of a sudden, provincial elites, when they put up their statues, they put it up in the, that the emperor's new haircut. So we do know that there's just going to be, you know, people will follow the emperor's lead. And that probably, of course, is a is going to be a huge boost for.

for, you know, elites, both at the provincial level and imperial level, you know, looking, looking to Christianity as a religious option. He does not, though, go after, like, go after paganism. There's still a lot of pagan temples. Pagan temples are still receiving at imperial, you know, funding or subvention. You know, there is still a lot of pagan activities. even in the reign of Constantine. It's not really until the 380s that the imperial apparatus actually moves against, you know, a lot of pagan institutions. And there'll, I mean, there'll still be pagans in Rome,

I mean, into the 5th century. In fact, you know, one reason Augustine writes, the city of God is Rome gets sacked in 410 by the Visigoths. And there's still a lot of pagans who are saying, see? Look what happened. We gave up the worship of the traditional gods. And like, just as we were predicting, you know, this calamity happened to the city, which is why, I mean, that is city of God is a massive and complicated text.

But that's the basic gist of Augustine saying, well, you know, maybe the actual physical city of Rome wasn't necessarily the city of God. and you're, you know, you're sort of misinterpreting that. But, you know, so, yeah, so paganism doesn't go away overnight. And it really, it really probably doesn't start to take a real hit until the late 4th century. Now, what Constantine does do is, you know, Constantine seen this sign and he knows he's won this victory. And he knows, so he's really, he's like, okay, he doesn't know anything about Christianity, right? And so he's, you know, he's, he's sort of, and of course, one thing that he does when he looks around, he's like, okay, so what, what do I believe? What do we believe? Yeah. And it's immediately obvious that, you know, no one is sure. And, you know, that there are a lot, there is a, there is a much greater variety of Christian belief simply because, you know, when this is.

And when you're an underground movement, even though there are intellectuals, and again, these intellectuals are starting to publish and write more openly, you know, you really can kind of speak of Christianity's, right? Every single Christian community has its own bishop and, you know, may believe different things. It's not until the late 4th century that they agree on the canon. So, you know, the idea that even Christian, you know, they've agreed already in the third century on the four gospels. So they do know that.

So that's something. But people are still using all kinds. People are still reading and copying and transmitting many, many gospels beyond the four. And they have not agreed on the full 27 books of the New Testament. So in fact, this doesn't happen until, again, the late 4th century when the Bishop of Alexandria actually says, these are the only 27 books. He was writing all his monks out in Egypt. These are only 27 books you should have.

Please burn everything else. And we know that they don't burn everything else because they, at least one monastery, takes a bunch of their non-canonical books, buries them in a pot, and this pot gets dug up in 1945, and it's the Nag Hammadi Library. It's the huge library of some quite weird and wild Christian text, but that are clearly also being read. Are these the Essians? The ascines are Jewish.

Like mystics, right? Is that fair to say? Mystic aesthetics maybe. They are, there's some debate about this, but they may be associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls and that Kumran, that kind of community of Jewish ascetics in the Hellenistic period. The Nankhamadi library is, or again, it's referred to by religious scholars as the non. Al-Kamati Library, but it's, again, it's just a giant pot full of books, full of, full of papyrus. It is associated with the, or it's found pretty close to the monastery of Pocomius, I believe. So one of the first big, big monasteries of monks, not just men living as monks, but monks living

together as part of a disciplined community. So I think there's some speculation that these monks, They get the letter, they say, oh, shoot, we're not supposed to have that. But they're also kind of like, oh, we're also a little fond of these. And so they bury them rather than burning them. But again, that's late. One thing that Constantine, you know, one of the big controversies that Constantine's facing is basically a debate over Christology and the Trinity. That is, is Christ, you know, co-equal and co-eternal to God the Father? Or is he a divine being who nonetheless was created by God at a later point and therefore is in some way inferior in power?

In the hierarchy of gods, or is it a polytheistic thing that's also monotheistic? Yes. The Trinity, I guess, is not explicitly detailed in any of the Gospels of how it should function. No, this is a later dispute. You know, the Gospels don't deal with it. Paul has a very high Christology, but also doesn't specifically say what he thinks Jesus is other than, you know, an extraordinarily, you know, powerful being. But, again, doesn't quite go to like Jesus is God. basically doesn't give us like a, you know, an explicit one-stop shopping Trinitarian

description. So the closest that we get, and this is probably one reason, you know, of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are, you know, they're synoptic, right? They tell basically the same story. They, maybe some things get mixed up. I mean, it's clear that, you know, Mark is actually the core for both Matthew and Luke, and they've incorporated. some other traditions, including a kind of sayings tradition. But they're basically the same. That's so you can read them side by side. John gets a little wild.

And then John is wild. And yet at the same time, John without question has the absolute highest Christology of all the gospels. And that's, I assume, is one reason why, you know, we know that we know from Nag Hammadi that a lot of wild crazy stuff did not. get included. And I think, but I think John gets, it's included because of the, the high Christology that it embodies.

But they still, but they still haven't worked it out. So, so when Constantine says, okay, guys, I'm in, tell me what I believe. And he starts to realize there's a massive dispute that's going on within the Christian community. And the, the basic, it's eventually considered a heresy, but it's associated with the priest named Arias who says, you know, Christ is, again, not co-equal. He's not co-earnal. He's, you know, a divine being, but, you know, he's sort of inferior to God the Father. This is why they come together at Nicaea, which is just across the straits from where

Constantinople will be. And they have this huge, huge counsel. And this is where they hash out, at least the first kind of version of the Nicene Creed. There's a couple of additions that in the, you know, cross the fourth century that, that, that, that, uh, tinker with it a bit.

But this is actually the first time that there's the idea that, um, all Christians should believe the same thing. Um, and this is done because of imperial power, right? This is an emperor has gotten all these bishops there, an emperor.

And the, and the funny thing is, it seems that Constantine is a, bit more sympathetic to the Aryan side. And a number of Constantine's sons seem to be straight up Aryans. But Constantine is also just, he's a pragmatic guy. He says, well, okay, this is what we've decided. I guess this is the belief. And that is one reason why, you know, even with, say, the fragmentation of the Protestant Reformation, which, which of course leads to, you know, some, some theological disagreements. But in terms of the basics,

Christianity is much more homogenous, even in, you know, 1700, simply because, you know, of the, basically the effects of the fourth century of the, you know, all using the same books, all believing the same basic, you know, Christology and Trinitarian beliefs. This is actually a product of the fusion of Christianity and the raw power of the 4th century AD imperial state. Wow. So now what does, Chrisos, could we actually pull up a, again, I'm not talking to Jesus here. I'm talking to my friend Christos, who just happens to be Greek. I wish I was talking to Jesus.

I wish it was that easy. Hey, Christos, could we get a map of Constantine's empire at that time? I'm curious, I guess, what the expanse is. Because going all the way into Constantinople, I mean, he's in Turkey at this point, like modern day Turkey. He's going all the way. Like, it is a large spanning empire. Oh, yeah.

And for them, I mean, the, a lot of this is already basically, if not directly administered, subject to Roman hegemony, you know, by the late second century BC. So, you know, again, a lot of the activities, the military activities of Roman emperors, including the big military emperors is eternal sort of restoration. That if there is a revolt, you crush it. If there's a civil war, well, probably you're the emperor because you won that civil war. But, you know, for the most part, I mean, there's a bit of conquest. Trajan is actually notable for, you know, his conquest in both Dacia, which is provincialized.

And then also Mesopotamia, which is ultimately the Romans pull out. But yeah, the empire of Constantine is basically the, what we would sort of think of the standard footprint, running from Britain all the way down the Rhine and Danube and then across the Hellespont through, and then kind of a strip along the Near East and then across to North Africa. I mean, it's, it is, it's a tri-continental empire. You're not joking, this is a whole thing here. Wow. I mean, yeah, it's massive.

the entire Mediterranean. There's no coast or beach you could go on in the Mediterranean that wouldn't be under the rule of Constantine. Yes, yes. And how was he as an emperor? When does the Pax Ramana start? Am I jumping ahead? What's up, guys?

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Check it out. Bluechu. Let's get back to the show. Oh, no, no. So, I mean, the Pax Romana, which is obviously a, it's, it's, it's, well, the Romans do speak of, you know, use this term. It's oftentimes a kind of modern historical term, simply to describe, um, usually the, the end of the major civil wars under Augustus. Um, and of course, Augustus, Pox, um, and it pox means peace, but it's, it's a peace that's been achieved through military domination. It's not a kumbaya piece. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a piece that, that is based on, you know, the superiority eventually of, of not just Rome, but the Roman emperors.

So Augustus, you know, Pox is critical to his new imperial ideology. It's a major selling point. He's like, look, I, I, not just restore the Republic, but I brought peace to the world after what we recall was just a brutal series of seemingly never ending civil wars. And I'm sorry, Augustus is before Constantine? Yeah, so Augustus, he wins the Great Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Oh, wow. So he's like a good, he's like a good, you know, over 300 years before Constantine. Oh, wow, okay. So Diocletian still comes in and causes a ton of problems. Exactly.

I would say that most as a kind of historical term probably would be used to describe the period from Augustus after 31 BC, up until around 180 BC. sorry, 180 AD, which is the death of Marcus Aurelius. I think you could actually arguably bump that up towards the Severin period. There's actually a big civil war that takes place after the murderer of Marcus's son, Comedus, who is a good, Joaquin Phoenix and Gladiator. But the third century AD is a really, really bad time for the for the Roman Empire. In fact, historians will speak of a third century crisis.

And basically, you know, the Pax-Roman is characterized by both very stable frontiers. And yes, there's there's fighting with the Germans and there's some fighting with the empire that Rome borders in the Near East, the Parthians. But it's actually pretty mild. Rome's able to sustain the kind of Pax Romana with surprisingly light military footprint. I see. And that's why it's known as the Pax Romana. It's not because there wasn't any war. It's that the front was generally stable.

The front stable. And I think probably most importantly, there is very limited civil war. I mean, the worst war that Rome can have after it's established its Mediterranean Empire. is a civil war, because the Germans can't harm a Roman legion as badly as another Roman legion can. And of course, you know, once you've got a civil war, every casualty is diminishing Roman power. Right. The deadliest war in American history is the American Civil War. Precisely.

And so, you know, after Augustus wins at Actium and ends again what had just been a brutal series of late Republican civil wars, there's not going to be another civil war for a century. And then there's a very brief civil war after Nero is compelled to commit suicide. It's the year of the four emperors, basically as each emperor peels off with his army. And the winner of that war is our friend Vespasian. And Vespasian had just been lucky enough that right before the civil war breaks out, he's given the most important military command because there's a big war going on in Judea. and he says, we're going to put pause on this war while we go and he establishes himself as emperor. But that's one year.

And then subsequently, our next big civil war is going to be 193, also only lasts one year. And then starting in 238 AD with the fall of the Severin dynasty. The Severans, I haven't seen the film, but the Severans are the dynasty featured in the new gladiator film. But starting in 238 AD, there is almost nonstop civil war. And so this is again referred to as the third century crisis. And this is coupled with increased threat coming from the frontiers. The Germanic tribes are starting to organize into confederacies and are capable of much greater military threat rating. invasions.

It's, you know, kind of during the Paxramana, maybe a bunch of, you know, German guys from the Hattie or Hauruski would, you know, organize a raiding party and come over and carry away some people. And that caused some problems, but it was manageable. Now you've got, you know, vast, you know, large Gothic armies raiding down, getting as far as Anatolia,

or actually crossing, you know, from crossing the Hellespont and raiding into Anatolia, they sack Athens. And they're doing this in part because Roman armies are so busy and depleted, like, clashing with each other. So this is the third century crisis. This is the crisis that Deocletian ends. And so this may be one reason why Deacletian is so sensitive. He's well aware of how fragile the Roman Empire is at this point.

And this may be why he's so spooked supposedly at an incident where some Christians in his army won't sacrifice. because he realizes how quickly this has not just come apart, but has been, you know, he's barely got it back together. So on one hand, generally the crisis of the third century in our kind of grand narratives, historical narrative of the Roman Empire is seen as ending the Pax Roman Empire. And of course, it should be noted that, you know, the crisis of the third century isn't a crisis everywhere.

You could be a farmer in Africa during the entire, you know, the entirety of the crisis and are living just fat and happy and everything's great. And you may be here. There's been another terrible civil war. There's a new emperor. And you're like, okay, well, that's nice. And you go back to, you know, raising your chickens. Raising your chickens or, you know, eating your porridge or, you know, milking.

So milking your goat and making some cheese. So it's not a crisis everywhere. But in terms of the stability of the empire, it is much, much weaker in the, you know, It's very fragile in the third century AD. Now, Constantine, in some ways, heralds a period of stability in the fourth century AD. So we talk about the late Roman Empire, and obviously we know that it's eventually the Western Empire is going to collapse in 476. But the fourth century, you know, is a time of relative stability. The armies are, you know, able to mostly hold the frontiers.

There are some civil wars amongst Constantine's sons. But, you know, it manages to carry on. And then there is a new period of political instability in crisis really starts breaking out in the late 4th century. But, you know, the 5th century is a pretty bad, a pretty bad time. Right. I want to get back to Constantine, but I'm curious, and we'd be remiss to not discuss this. When is the Coliseum built and when are the gladatorial games happening in Rome? So gladiatorial games seem to have their deep origins in probably Italic practice. The Romans claim that the Etruscans invented them and the Etruscans are the people just to the north of Rome, kind of on the north bank of the Tiber. although all of our gladiatorial schools are based in compania. So for whatever, or that seems to be a hotbed of gladiatorial training, which may mean

that it's kind of the companions are oscans initially. They would speak a language called oscun that's related to Latin but is its own language. So maybe this is a kind of, you know, ritual combat or maybe has emerged from sort of aristocratic duels. the first time we hear of them in Rome actually aligns with the Punic Wars and they are first put on as part of aristocratic funerals. So, you know, if you're a big aristocrat,

and again, it's still the republic. And so, you know, when a family member dies, you want to kind of make sure that the funeral is a real moment to both commemorate that family member, but also re-advertise the family. You want to get as many people there. You give a big speech. You actually have people dress up like the dead guy and also like his ancestors.

And of course, you've got him propped up right there. So the aristocratic funeral is this huge event. But, you know, you want the voters to come, you know, because, you know, probably his son's going to be running for office and his grandson. So you want to get as many voters as you can. And not everyone is there for the speeches and just to see the dead guy propped up and, you know, see actors running around pretending to be. So how do you get them into a whole Coliseum? What do you do? Yeah. So you have some gladiatorial games and it's great because people will come for that. And right, you don't have the Coliseum yet. So most gladiatorial games are taking place in the forum and are usually taking place in just like you throw up some wooden stands to accommodate your crowd.

the Coliseum, which I guess Tademly the name would be the Flavian Amphitheater, is built again by our friend, it started by our friend Vespasian. And probably it is an attempt to obviously both aggrandize his new dynasty. Because remember, he's just a military usurper. He is a general. His family is not one of the splendid, established, senatorial families in Rome. He just lucked out and got this huge Judean command with a big army right before a civil war kind of unexpectedly breaks out. And so he's won that civil war. But, you know, he's now needs to sort of actually establish both himself and his dynasty.

He has two adult sons, Titus and Domitian. And so it seems that one of the ways that he is, you know, showing to benefit the Roman people is to build this new Coliseum. But importantly, he builds it where Nero had had his house. So Nero, late in his reign, is appropriating a huge amount of the city of Rome to turn into a kind of grand, you know, sort of a Neronian Versailles. You know, it's going to be this huge, beautiful house. It's going to have a big park and the lake. And it's basically turning what had been like places that, you know, people lived or walked around or how to, you know, and turning it into Nero's sort of pleasure palace. And it seems that this is a bit unpopular.

And what years is this roughly? So Nero is deposed in 68, A.D., 68, AD. So Nero, you know, he's hounded out and he kills himself before he can be killed, basically. There's the Civil War of Espasian wins, but he comes back and he says, okay, I'm going to take where Nero had his house. And I'm going to give it back to the Roman people. They deserve it. I'm going to create a public space for their entertainment and amusement. And because I've just won the Jewish war, because after the civil war, he sends his son and this is when Jerusalem is besieged and captured and the second temple is destroyed.

So, I mean, just monumental event in the history of Judaism and a major, major war of the imperial period. So he takes the proceeds of that war and also explicitly says the Jewish captives as punishment for rebelling, they're going to have to build this Colosseum to benefit the Roman people. So he even says that I use Jewish slaves to begin. If there's one kind of Republican, like there's sort of Republican DNA in the imperial period. And the big one is that emperors are supposed to benefit the populace of Rome. They give them free grain. They provide them with public spaces and amusements. And so Vespasian is really playing into that.

So this huge colosseum is constructed. It's probably... It's either near completion or completed right as Vespasian dies. And then his son, Titus, who becomes the emperor, incidentally, the first time that an emperor has been succeeded by his biological son. That was the first one. That was the first time. We've had an empire for over a century and emperors for whatever reason, mostly just bad luck, have never actually passed power onto a biological son.

It was a nephew or a student or something? It's always been a nephew or, well, it's always been a relative of some sort, a stepson. And now they've always adopted a successor or when they can. Sometimes they're, when he colligula dies, he doesn't have time to adopt anybody. So they just, they find his uncle hiding behind the curtain. This is the emperor Claudius and he just becomes the emperor. But this is the first time actually that we've, we've had a true sort of biological succession.

And we won't have another one until the death of Marcus Aurelius when he succeeded by his biological son, comidus. This is, I think, of a strange quirk of Roman imperial history, of how rarely we actually get genuine biological succession. So, at any rate, Titus dedicates the Colosseum, and it's the Colossus is

a statue Nero headbelt, seemingly him, of him or of of, you know, the sun god Helios, maybe with Nero's face. They just changed the face a little, and that's the colossus of the Colosseum. So probably the formal name

would be the Flavian amphitheater, because it's Flavius is Vespasian's family name. But the Colosseum is in operation by 7980 AD. And, you know, yes, we'll be the great landmark of the city of Rome going forward. And it's known as the Coliseum, not because the arena was so colossal, because there was a statue. Yes, from the colossal statue that's in front of it. Oh, wow. And that statue is obviously no longer there.

No, no, that's gone. Wow, that's interesting. And it was perhaps Nero or perhaps this sun god. It's disputed. If I remember correctly, it's, it's, it's Helios, although, again, it may be they say, you know, it was Nero. They said, well, it's, you know, Nero is, is, you know, he's, he's on the out. So it's, well, it's, it's actually Helios. We like the statute. We'll, we'll keep it. Oh, that's fascinating. Jews built the Coliseum. Yes. So it's, so it's, so my Jewish friends are going to love this. Yeah. They say they built everything. We built the pyramids. built the Coliseum. You know, and the interesting thing is by and large, most labor on urban construction actually seems to be free labor is relatively important. And in fact, there's a later story that I believe is associated with Spasian where someone

brings him some kind of useful machine, whether it's a ramp or a crane, says, you know, this can speed work on an X or Y project because Vespasian is a big building. or the Coliseum isn't the only thing he and his dynasty builds. And supposedly Vespasian says, oh, we can't use this. Like, the people need the employment. So public works are definitely seen as a, in some ways, actually is another economic benefit to the Roman people. But in this instance, there is, it is, even if it's not economically efficient, it is

ideologically important that Vespasian is linking his success in this distant war to a benefit the Roman people are receiving, which is why he says, you know, I brought I brought these Judeans who rebelled and as punishment they're coming over here as slaves and they're they're building the Coliseum. Wow. So now this early Coliseum is built and then immediately there are games and, you know, mock battles and all sorts of different things happening in the Coliseum for the public's spectacle. Yes. So, I mean, it's it's it would be home to the sort of, yeah, variety of gladiatorial spectacle that that the Romans have sort of come to enjoy. both probably gladiatorial combats and probably also public executions and also like beast hunts, which is another popular spectacle where, you know, you don't, you bring in people who actually aren't going to fight, but you bring in animals from across your empire. And this is actually a way of showing both the extent of the empire, like, look, we've got bears from Germany and we've got, you know, lions from Africa. and elephants and hippopotamuses, crocodiles.

And also you sort of show your mastery over the world to say, you know, the emperor has, and it's not just the emperor who sponsors some of these games. They can be sponsored by, you know, well-placed imperial officials. So, you know, whoever's the urban prefect, you know, might sponsor games. But the point of bringing in all these animals to show, look, we control the world. And by control the world, like, we can bring these animals and then kill them in front of you for your entertainment. Wow. And so, yes, in fact, it's been noted for a while that even into the like 20th century, you could find weeds growing in the Coliseum.

And while they may have just been seen as weeds, oftentimes they were weed species that weren't native to Italy. They were, they'd probably come over either in an animal, you know, the animals had, you know, adjusted them and droppings or they'd just been carried over. But, you know, there really is a sense the Coliseum is where you see the world that, you know, the empire dominates. Oh, wow. So the height of the Coliseum was far before Constantine or, I guess, the Christian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire. Yes. And one of the cultural consequences of Christianity is it does bring it into the gladiatorial spectacles. Um, uh, bishops do not like them.

They obviously are associated with, with the martyrdom of, of, of, of Christian martyrs. Right, because they're bringing Christians in there to get eaten by. Yeah. And so once, once the empire becomes officially Christian, uh, I mean, eventually they'll just be explicitly banned by imperial rescript that you, you cannot have humans, human on human. Um, now, this doesn't mean that other spectacles, which had been popular, those continue. So chariot racing is still enormously popular. Um, you know,

going to Constantinople in the sixth century, the Emperor Justinian is almost overthrown by a series of riots that kind of seem to be sparked by the chariot faction. So this isn't the end of big spectacle, but gladiatorial combat, its end comes with Christianity and with the belief that that's incompatible with Christian emperors and Christian officials sponsoring that kind of violence. Wow, that's fascinating. And so these gladiatorial games, the gladiatorial games, the gladiators were, it was originally not necessarily, you know, ardent warriors that trained their whole lives. Like early on, they were slaves, is what I was told. Yes.

So it seems that they are typically enslaved. I think there is some evidence eventually of gladiators who are free, but basically agree to accept discipline and training as if they are slaves. For what purpose? Fame, money? Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it seems that, yeah, they're, uh, they're kind of celebrities. Um, uh, they, they, they certainly, um, are spectator. You know, they, they have careers. And we, and we do know, um, there is a, um, W.W.E element to gladiatorial combat in the sense that the gladiators don't always die. Um, uh, really, uh, and it, and it, it, it actually, one element of the spectacle is like a really good gladiatorial game, particularly if it's being sponsored by the emperor, may actually have them fighting all the way to the death. But in many instances, you know, if you're some guy in a provincial city and you're putting on gladiatorial

games, you were renting the gladiators from a ludus, a gladiatorial training school, which is a business that you you set up your ludus and hire a lanista or multiple lunistas as the gladiatorial trainers. And, you know, you rent gladiators for these spectacles. And, you know, if one gets killed or, you know, they have to pay you extra. So it's more expensive if they're truly fighting to the death. And so in many instances, it seems that there are gladiatorial combats where once one guy wins and one guy loses but they both live

and I think the way we know that is we do have gladiatorial inscriptions that describe gladiatorial careers of gladiators who've retired and so survived and retired and they mentioned losses which means at one point they lost and we're not killed. Fascinate.

Now again for really good games you might have a body count so that isn't to say that gladiator don't die, but it's actually the sign of like, wow, that was, that was great entertainment. That was a great show. Did the audience know that they lived, or was that they were kind of carried out and then they went to a different... Well, so there's two.

I mean, one is the whole idea that there is some kind of, you know, the person sponsoring the games, presiding over the games, can simply allow a gladiator who's been defeated but has fought well to be spared. And, you know, there's the whole, the whole. whole question of, you know, the thumbs up, thumbs down, which is Hollywood. Hollywood. We know from, I believe, juvenile, that gladiators, there is some kind of turning of the thumb for living or dying.

I will just put this out there. This is my hypothesis. I have no research to back this up. My guess is the turning of the thumb is stick them in the neck like this. Oh, interesting. There is very little authority behind that statement. That's back out of. But it's as speculative as thumbs up, thumbs down, which has, of course, now just become a symbol.

But that's from Hollywood in the, like, 20s, inventing what they thought was the turning of the thumb. And, of course, it seems, you know, I think Juvenile does describe, like, the crowds want to see them stuck in the neck, you know, they're, you know, which may means they're going, you know, you'll go, you'll go, stick him in the neck. the at any rate clearly in some instances if you're this poor guy and you're like oh gosh the more gladiators die the the more i'm going to have to pay the the guy i rented them from you know he may say that was a that was a good fight you know uh whatever whatever the turn of the thumb for living he gives that and so gladiators often survive and it does seem that you know i believe it's been speculated that you know when we have images of gladiators they're quite fat. Really? They are, they are, they're shown as not just kind of muscle bound, but kind of chubby. And my guess is that's to actually enable flesh wounds that make a good show. Again, I'm being a little speculative here, so I want to, I want to admit that, you know, we don't know.

But, but we do have gladiators that are shown as flesh. And my guess is that, yeah, they just get a lot of flesh wounds and that's the show. Like they've been wounded. He's been defeated while he fought well. And then, you know, they both go back to their, their, their, their lus. And, you know, the guy putting on the show doesn't have to pay as much for the show. So, again, there's, like I said, there's a bit of W-W-E in the sense that there probably is, for some fights. Is it K-FAB as the-FAB?

Cave-Fab. Okay. That's probably an aspect. Wow. There are certainly gladiatorial combats that are genuine life or death scenarios where the losing side is killed. So that also is a reality. Oh, that's fascinating. I've never heard this before.

That is so interesting. And who is the most famous gladiator? Like, who is the Dwayne the Rock Johnson of the gladiatorial games? Is there one person that rises above the ranks that was known through the Roman Empire? Was it more disparate and kind of localized? You know, here I'll have to minute. I can't think of a name off the top of my head. We certainly do have graffitos that I believe, like people scratching a name on a wall

and that that seem to show that these guys are like popularly known. Later on from, I think they tend to be a little later, but we do have mosaics that feature gladiators, but the gladiators are named, which would actually suggest that it's sort of like, you know, this is the rock or, you know, the undertaker. And, you know, we also eventually will get inscriptions of gladiators who clearly have had either, in many instances, probably regional careers, but have had. had substantial careers that they feel that they should commemorate that with an inscription describing, again, their wins and their losses. I'll have to admit off the top of my head. I can't, I can't say who was, who was the, the Rock Johnson of gladiators, but they certainly, they certainly are, are known, yeah.

Do any of these ring a bill? Spartacus? Oh, well. Carpheus. Spartacus, of course, is famous because he leads a, revolt against Rome. He's the, he's the, and what is actually interesting about, actually, this Spartacus is actually known. So from, you know, Pompeii, there is preserved by the eruption a wall painting that shows probably late Republican gladiatorial combat, based on both kind of the

equipment and the styles. And it's written in Oskine. So it's at a time when, when, And the city in Italy is still a Oskan-speaking community. But there is also shown a figure on horseback. And it's clear that this is part of a gladiatorial combat because there's a guy like blowing a horn. So there's there's non-gladiators. But it shows two combatants on horseback. And the one that seems to be losing, he's being chased by the other. But there's a little there's a little Oskid in the Oskine alphabet that says, Spartacos.

again, is it the Spartacus? I kind of am tempted to say yes. But whether it's the Spartacus who leads through great revolt against Rome in the late 70s, BC, or a different gladiator with the same stage name, you know, that's actually another instance where if it is our Spartacus, it seems this could potentially show him losing a match, but he survives to rebel against Rome. Fascinating. Oh, wow. This is so interesting. My timeline on this is all is all so mixed up. I guess, I don't know, I saw that as a progressive, you know, decline. But when people say like, oh, Nero fiddled while Rome burned, what are they referring to? And I always thought that that was the end of the Roman Empire, but this seems like not the case. No, I mean, the empire is a long way from, the Western Empire is a long way from falling. And of course, you know, the Eastern Empire will. continue on with significant power and footprint to the early 7th century AD. And then we'll continue on with a much smaller footprint after the rise of Islam and the Islamic invasions until 1453. So, yeah, the fall is a long way off and is, you know, is, is, yeah, I think, I think that is something we should be cautious about is just saying like, okay, well, they've,

peaked and it's just kind of a decliming Roman power and the state efficiency and capacity of the Roman state is going to fluctuate. There's some highs, there's some lows. Rome almost falls in the third century, the crisis of the third century AD, but bounces back in the fourth century. But with Nero, there's a great fire in Rome in 64 AD. And it is, it seems an extremely destructive fire. It wipes out. a lot of neighborhoods and as a result causes, you know, a lot of kind of frustration and anger and the kinds of things that we oftentimes see after a national, any kind of great natural disaster. And people are like, I'm really hurting. We need help. What is interesting is our sources for Nero suggests that his initial response is pretty good. That is, there's the fire.

He, it seems he sends out firefighting teams and there are. you know, tearing down walls and creating firebreaks. He sets up refugee camps and goes out and visits them. You know, Roman emperors are deep down still urban politicians. So he's out there, you know, going through the refugee camps. That said, it does seem that people take out a lot of frustration for this event on Nero. They get mad and they associate it with the other things that are already mad at Nero about. firstly,

Nero's performances are always seen as kind of tawdry. They don't, you know, Nero is this sort of, for whatever reason, thinks it's a good idea to go out and kind of as Emperor perform his little song and dance show

and people kind of really say, oh, you know, that's just not, it's not quite right. As a result, I think this is where we get the idea that, that,

or the story, Who knows if it's true? That when the fire is raging, Nero, you know, takes out his liar and performs some kind of song about the sack of Troy. Whether or not it's true, it accords to one thing people don't like about Nero. Namely, we think it's tawdry for the emperor to be out here singing and performing in public because that's just seen as beneath the dignity of a Roman emperor. The other thing they get mad about comes back to Nero's golden house, that Nero, because Nero, there's a lot of space that is opened up and Nero actually kind of after the fire

accelerates the construction of this golden house and so some people say, we're mad about this but what if Nero lit the fire himself to clear the city out so that he could just take it over for his big kind of pleasure palace and it's also possible that some of that again is based on

you know, people seeing Nero's firefighters going out and, you know, doing what firefighters do, which is sometimes, you know, if you're fighting a wildfire, you've got to cut down some trees to stop the fire. So they may see some of his firefighters tearing down houses, like, as part of that emergency procedure to check the fire and say, but wait, I did see, I did see people tearing down houses. Nero really just wanted to, you know, wreck our house so that he could, you know, eminent domain the remaining land. So the fire is, you know, Nero's, he actually is in power for a surprisingly long time for one of our canonically bad emperors. I mean, he's, he's there for about 14 years. But it does seem to be a kind of turning point where his unpopularity really starts to take a dive after 64.

And then he's, he's ultimately overthrown in 68. Oh, this is fascinating. I'm always blown away when I have proper authors and academics that said before me. me and just know the answer to all my questions. You know, most people have a specific specialty where they go, I know just about this thing. Don't ask me anything else. You know everything. And it's fascinating to hear both, you know, what is on the record from primary sources, but also your own personal sort of theories as far as things go. I would like to discuss the fall of Rome, but this is all the time that we have at the moment. So I would love to discuss the fall of Rome

in another time and go through the entire sort of litany of how things progressed through Constantine and, you know, how the different battles eventually sort of decrease Rome, but how the lasting legacy of the Roman Empire still persist today. Thank you again for the conversation. You have a book that I have behind me that's been sitting here throughout the episode. Can you just tell us briefly where people can find the book and what they can expect to find inside it? Oh, right. Oh, no, thank you. The book is Soldiers and Silver mobilizing resources in the Age of Roman Conquest. It's published by University of Texas Press. So it can be bought through the UT Press website, also Amazon, and you may be able to find it in bookstores as well.

But it deals with the Rome's conquest of the Mediterranean in the third and second centuries BC. And, you know, some of the issues behind that conquest. Amazing. I'm excited to have you on again. We'll discuss the fall of Rome and everything else that we didn't get to today. Thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone. who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more fascinating than any fiction,

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