The Faith and the Power
The inspiring story of the first Christians & how they survived the madness of Rome
A first century history by James D. Snyder
The remainder of the first century after the crucifixion of Jesus was more than the commonly named “Apostolic Age.” It may have been the most turbulent and terrifying period in all history. It was also an era that – more than any other since – shaped the destinies of Christianity, Judaism and world civilization for 2000 years to come.
Why, then, does it remain such a murky period to even the most avid of history readers? When this question first piqued my journalist’s curiosity more than 20 years ago, little did I know then that it would eventually absorb me in the works, sites and bedrock of first century Christianity.
One of the barriers facing anyone who wants to know more about this period is that chronology – any historian’s most basic tool – is obscured by ancient writers and their maddening lack of attention to it. The Book of Acts, for example, tells its story sequentially but never mentions dates as we would recognize them. Likewise, the 21 epistles of the New Testament are arranged with scant regard to chronology, and scholars still debate when many of them were written.
The Romans didn’t help much. Rather than assigning numerals to years, they commonly identified events as happening “in the consulship” of two or more senators who may or may not have left us something more than their names.
The second barrier to a fuller understanding of this period is the narrow perspective of the Biblical text. The writers of the New Testament were understandably focused on telling the story of Christian community. And since these books were often dictated, then transcribed into many copies by paid scribes, they tended to be efficient (but often frustratingly) brief.
It wasn’t the task of the first gospel writers to report in the broader context of events happening all around them in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and other centers of the Roman Empire. But when one consults the other histories of this period, the Christian tapestry gains even more color and texture. I refer to the contemporary Jewish historians Josephus and Philo, and to Roman writers such as Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio Cassius. Supplementing these essential sources is an array of ancient glitterati ranging from the philosopher-playwright Seneca to the early Christian Bishop Eusebius to the Roman poets Lucan, Livy and Martial.
The reward from all this added reading is that the first century Christian story – that Apostolic Age – becomes more powerful, understandable and believable than when told by Biblical sources alone.
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I’ve seen my job as sorting out and condensing the ancient sources so that you’ll be spurred along in your discovery rather than frustrated as though you were left alone to dig through a 2,000 year-old archeological site with a teaspoon. Thus, I would like to begin with a few general suggestions to frame your mindset before you begin Chapter 1.
The first concerns the material world of 2000 years ago. Many people today seem to view their ancient counterparts as some sort of neo-cavemen who carved on crude stone tablets and walked about in loincloths. By all means do remove from the scene gunpowder, computers, air conditioning, jet travel and the like, but don’t go too far with this exercise. People then had nails, winches and pulleys, intricate artwork, elaborate plumbing, huge apartment complexes, massive ships and stadiums with more seating than today’s largest superdome. Books were often elaborately illustrated, and Rome alone had 25 public libraries in which to enjoy them. Every way that we see hair coiffed, permed or spiked today had already been done by Romans and emulated throughout their client kingdoms.
The same mindset applies to the way people thought and interacted. The more I delved into the ancient sources, the less distance there seemed between 20 centuries of human behavior. Men winked at pretty girls, mothers scolded their children at the dinner table, teenagers scrawled the same graffiti on bathroom walls, old men sat around telling lies about their war exploits and young dandies borrowed beyond their means to buy the trendiest clothes and bet on the horses.
Having said all that, one should note that the social structure was much more rigid and far more apt to dictate one’s future. One of every three humans was a slave. For the others, social class and family background counted most, so that the son of a tanner would as surely follow him into the trade guild as would the son of a patrician into a life of leisure that actually proscribed him from taking part in the disdained world of commerce.
Overlaying these dictates were those of the religious world. The first Christians contended not only with the rigidities of Jewish ritual, but with a pantheon of state-sanctioned gods and the various priesthoods that profited from their many temples and sacrifices. But no less important to the average citizen in the Roman world was the need to be constantly attentive to one’s many household god-spirits. And woven throughout the fabric of society were uncountable soothsayers, witches, magicians and messiahs. To an early Christian apostle, these purveyors of suffocating superstition were every bit as daunting as a cohort of Roman soldiers.
To these conceptual suggestions, I have added some practical aids in this book to make your reading easier:
The subject of money is also worth some discussion here, simply because people in the Roman world – yes, even the Christians - thought and fought about it just as much then as they do today. Although many client states had their own coinage (for example, the Jewish shekel,) the prevailing monetary units were the Roman as, sesterce and denarius. In general, four as comprised a sesterce and four of these a denarius. It took roughly 6,000 denarii to make a silver talent.
For convenience sake, one might roughly equate a sesterce to today’s U.S. quarter ($.25) and the denarius to $1. But precise comparisons are frustrating for several reasons. Cash was less crucial to ancient economies because most households produced more of their own goods and bartered for trade than today. Although the as (6.25 cents by the above reckoning) would buy six loaves of bread, it doesn’t follow that an as should be valued at $6 just because today’s stores may sell bread for $1 a loaf. The reason is that the value of human labor was more akin to that in today’s least developed economies. A typical Roman soldier, for example, earned 900 sesterces a year. And to further complicate comparisons, the value of that pay would have been worth more in A.D. 31 and perhaps one-third less 50 years later. The reason: inflation took its toll then as it does now.
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Just as one can’t fully understand World War II by starting with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the story of the first Christians after Jesus doesn’t begin at the crucifixion. Two men who were long since dead at the onset of our story probably had more to do with shaping events of the first century than any of the characters who lived through it.
The first is Octavian Caesar Augustus, who died peacefully and gracefully in A.D. 14, or more than a decade before Jesus began his ministry. His deeds and persona are important to keep in mind, because of the way they contrast with what Rome did to itself in the rest of the first century. For 55 years Augustus employed his considerable charisma and cunning to preside over relative peace and prosperity. With his steel blue eyes and Apollo-like looks, he could charm a room with a smile or wilt a rival with an icy stare. Although a few members of his own family were banished (mostly on good grounds for outrageous behavior), Augustus tolerated public criticism well and no citizen lost a night’s sleep worrying that Praetorian guards would come to snatch him up for making a careless remark.
During these 55 years, government was reorganized, new temples built and old buildings recovered with marble. The people got an annual accounting of public finances and the treasury accumulated a surplus. When leading citizens left the emperor portions of their estates as a gesture of respect, he usually repaid the sum with interest to their children when they became of age. And when Augustus passed away at age 77, he left an orderly will, an inventory of his achievements, an uncontested successor and a farewell gift of some $20 million for the citizens of Rome.
Yet, Caesar Augustus left something else as well. The builder of the Golden Age of Rome left an empire so large and intricately organized that it exceeded the leadership and management skills of the lesser mortals who followed him. And these people nearly destroyed the entire Roman Empire as a result.
Just as the persona of Augustus lingered in Rome, the legacy of Herod the Great could be seen in the spectacular building projects that graced Judea long after his death in 4 B.C. – from the colonnaded streets of Beirut to the gleaming man-made harbor of Caesarea to the massive, marbled temple at Jerusalem. Outwardly, no two more different men could be found on earth than Octavian Caesar Augustus and Herod the Great. One was clean-shaven and slight of build, with a regal calm. The other was a burly, bearded Semite whose moods could swing from outlandish generosity to fits of vile temper. He could be the most charming and obsequious of client kings or a ruthless ruler in his own right who would even kill his wife and sons.
Herod’s rise may have been the more remarkable because he came from Idumea, an Arabic district south of Jerusalem that was a part of Judea in name only. For an Arab from Idumea to become king of the Jews was an audacious feat in itself. The reason is that most first century Jews knew Idumea as the successor to ancient Edom—the same kingdom that had rudely refused Moses and his wandering exiles permission to traverse on their way to Canaan. They were also the same treacherous jackals, who had, 500 years before, encouraged the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem so they could join in the plunder. Yet, Idumeans could be useful to the Jews because the Jewish kingdom needed compliant clients to provide border protection against Egypt to the south. Herod’s grandfather was a strong chieftain and willing ally for the right price.
But Rome, which ruled the Jews, had an even broader strategic need for such services. To the east lay Parthia, successor to the legendary Persian Empire. Although still a loose confederation spread over vast treeless stretches, Parthia could, when aroused, muster the only fighting force that could rival Rome’s. And because the Roman client states along the eastern Mediterranean were both scattered and quarrelsome, Parthia regularly preyed on their people, herds and croplands.
In 62 B.C. the Roman governor-general Pompey tried to fix the problem by welding all of the smaller client states from Antioch to the Egyptian border into the new province of Syria. When he picked the compliant Hycrannus II to rule the Jewish lands within the new province, it was too much for an envious brother named Aristobulus. Rallying a mass of fiery nationalists, he seized the temple, uprooted Hycrannus, and, I would suppose, made ready to cast his lot with Parthia. But now an angry Pompey stormed back to Jerusalem with a full legion, captured Aristobulus and sent him back to Rome to be paraded as a showpiece in the public celebration, or triumph, that followed.
This time Pompey set out to “balance”—or minimize—the power of the quarrelsome and unruly Jews throughout the new province. To this end he carved out, or isolated from Jewish rule, most of the cities that consisted chiefly of Hellenistic (ethnic Greek) populations. It meant denying Jewish rule over the already Hellenized cities along the Phoenician Mediterranean and Gaza strip. Because there were many ethnic Greek cities in the central hinterland, Pompey created the state of Samaria, which had the effect of splitting the Jewish stronghold of Galilee in the north from its counterpart Judea in the south. Then in the arid lands that stretched up and down Syria east of the river Jordan, Pompey created the Decapolis, a loose league of 10 Hellenistic city-states. Left in charge of the gutted but still-wealthy Jewish population centers was the newly-restored Hycrannus II. He returned, however, not as king, but as ethnarch—a term meaning “prince,” but one that Roman provincial administrators came to use as they saw fit.
Herod’s father Antipas had risen to become chief minister to Hycrannus. Now, although the ethnarch’s powers receded, his Idumean advisor became increasingly active. Pompey, for instance, had wanted to invade and subdue Idumea. Antipas was the go-between who skillfully helped avoid it, then became the mediator of Roman and Arab interests. Several years later, Antipas—with the 25-year-old Herod at his side—rushed troops to reinforce Julius Caesar during his march to Egypt. Four years afterward, when Julius Caesar was murdered in Rome, it was the 29-year-old Herod who raised money in Galilee for the armies of his assassins, Brutus and Cassius. But when these were defeated in battle by Mark Anthony and Caesar’s 19 year-old nephew, Octavian, Herod again switched his allegiance to the victors.
Now came the decision that defined the rest of his life. The Parthians at last decided to invade Judea, hoping again to exploit the chaos caused by the Roman civil war. Much of the Jewish elite welcomed the prospect of a new form of servitude that might mean less tribute and taxes. But Herod was one of the a few leaders in the region to declare for Rome—and in so doing he bound himself forever to its fortunes.
To bolster his cause, Herod’s immediate hope lay in Egypt where Cleopatra had cast her lot with Mark Anthony and the Romans. In a daring dash to Egypt, he borrowed a ship from the queen and sailed off for Rome in dangerous late autumn seas in order to appeal personally for support. He needn’t have worried about it, because Anthony and the young Octavian, with their pressing need for an energetic ally in Judea, greeted the young Herod like a lost cousin. With great ceremonial gusto, the joint consuls then escorted him arm in arm to the Senate, which was ready to award him troops and money.
Herod now needed a title to match his lofty new status. Because he was either all or part Idumean, he could not become Jewish high priest. The Roman joint consuls quickly settled on a title that would soon lead to the reassembly of Judea’s parceled domains into one political unit again.
The title was king.
Like Octavian Caesar, Herod was to reorganize the government gristmill and preside over more than 40 years of internal peace—or, to be more precise, the absence of open civil war. And again like Caesar Augustus, he became the greatest builder his nation had ever known. In addition to the public works already mentioned, the new King wasted no time erecting what one might call “fortified palace-resorts” at Ascalon, Jericho, Masada, Sepphoris and Herodium.
Yet, blocks of stone do not define or unite a people. The kingdom held together by Herod’s guile until 4 B.C. was as fragile as the one crafted by the genius of Augustus. Herod’s death left feuding family factions, fractious religious sects, disputed borders and covetous neighbors. The more the strife, the more Rome would yank on the reins of its unruly eastern buffer state. And the more pressure from Rome, the more tightly the Jewish leadership would attempt to police and pacify its noisiest factions.
In the Passover of A.D. 30, Jesus and his followers fell victim to that chain of events. But they also brought about a resurrection that ignited something that even the Roman Empire could not contain.
—J.D.S.—
In May of A.D. 30 the most devout followers of Jesus gathered in Jerusalem in the upper room of a large public house or private villa to contemplate their future lives without him.
At the time they had no collective name other than God Fearers or Jesus Followers. Their message was most often called The Way.
How many of these Jesus Followers existed by the time of the Passover in A.D. 30? Overall, the number of those who were baptized by John the Baptist or declared themselves followers of Jesus during his ministry must surely have numbered many thousands. Galilee, for example, was full of towns with populations of 10,000 or more and the crowds that followed Jesus were often in the thousands. Jerusalem serves as another yardstick. The city at this time had a permanent population of around 1 million, which more than doubled each spring with the infusion of Passover pilgrims. For the city’s governing authorities to perceive a serious threat to their control, the numbers of presumed believers that lined the streets and shouted hosannas for the new Messiah surely must have exceeded 10,000. However, the big question is how many still called themselves followers after the crucifixion and how many melted away in fright like rainwater down a desert gully.
The immediate world surrounding Jerusalem – the Roman province of Syria – probably contained 5 million more Jews, Hellenes, retired Roman soldiers and other transplants from nearly every Roman province on the Mediterranean rim. Many lived in the walled port cities that served the lively shipping trade up and down the Syrian coast. But most lived in clustered villages and went out by day to till their crops and orchards.
In all, the Roman Empire in A.D. 30 embraced some 40 provinces and perhaps 54 million residents. Of these, about 7 million were Jews, now scattered from their original homeland to cities from Spain to Babylon.
No matter who they were, the person who could most influence their lives – be it with a decree, a tax, a new political appointment, or sudden arrest – was one man who had already ruled from afar for 17 years.
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In A.D. 30, in his 71st year, Tiberius Caesar Augustus was entrenched in a refuge that reflected his weariness and wariness of Rome. Far from the imperial palace on Palatine Hill, three miles off the Cape of Surrentum (Sorrento), was the rocky isle of Capri, the private preserve of just a few noble families. Today, as then, one can disembark at the island’s only natural harbor and trek southward through ascending orchards and stony outcrops. At the highest and southernmost point is a breathtaking thousand-foot cliff overlooking Surrentum to the east and the sweeping, blue Bay of Naples to the north.
There, Tiberius built his terraced Villa Jovis and from there he ruled until his death at 78 with only occasional forays onto the mainland. The villa offered a natural protection from assassins, but it also symbolized the emperor’s distain of and detachment from a people he despised as much as they did him. Tiberius was sick of Rome’s dirty streets, the Senate’s inane sycophancy and the thankless burden of governance itself. His naturally serious demeanor had by now turned sour and sullen.
Yet, some might have understood Tiberius and sympathized with his plight. His servitude to Rome began even before birth when the emperor Augustus became captivated with his mother Livia and compelled her to divorce her husband – all when she was still pregnant with Tiberius.
From the time he became of age, the imperial stepson dutifully served Augustus, be it as personal emissary to investigate grain trade irregularities in Rome or commanding legions on the most contentious frontiers of Parthia and Germany. His only refuge had been his devotion to his wife, Vipsania, but even here imperial needs intervened. Tiberius was forced to divorce Vipsania “for the good of Rome” and marry the emperor’s daughter Julia. Yes, part of it was Livia’s insistence on positioning her son more securely in contention to succeed Augustus. But in the bargain, the emperor hoped to police his daughter’s fondness for wine and sexual adventures.
The other light in Tiberius’ life had been Drusus, his younger brother and military comrade in arms. But within a few years Drusus had died mysteriously in a German encampment and Julia had proven so unruly that her father banished her for life to a forlorn island.
Now Tiberius had no one save his busy stepfather and ambitious mother. But lest he be perceived as contending for the successorship with Augustus’ two younger grandsons by a former marriage, Tiberius, now a tall, erect, proven military commander in the presumed fullness of his powers, stunned his parents by departing for the balmy isle of Rhodes with no more than a few household servants. There he lived alone for eight years as quietly as possible for a celebrity émigré.
That, however, would never do for his mother. At Livia’s repeated instance, Tiberius was coaxed back again to Rome on the understanding that he could avoid public office. But within a few years both of Augustus’ grandsons had died and Tiberius was again the hard working heir-apparent. And when Augustus died in A.D. 14, his stepson became the man who, in his own words, felt “as though I have just picked up a wolf by the ears.”
The new emperor was then 56, and with an aging, but no less ambitious mother eager to be proclaimed Rome’s first “Augusta” and rule at his side. After seeing that the Senate deified his stepfather and ensconced him in the round family mausoleum that still stands among Rome’s crumbling antiquities, Tiberius embarked on several years of frugal administration and proper relations with a wary Senate. Quiet and courtly, the new emperor went out of his way to eschew honors and proposals that temples be erected in his name. He insisted that he was to be treated as a “mere man” and showed irritation when a senator would flatter him in a speech or approach his carriage in a subservient posture.
But in time Tiberius also came to be viewed by the populace as Rome’s version of Ebenezer Scrooge. The image was reinforced by the very presence of his opposite – his handsome, outgoing stepson and most likely successor. Germanicus, the eldest son of the emperor’s deceased brother, Drusus, was adopted by Tiberius and became his chief military commander whenever rebellion broke out in Gaul, Germany and other conquered provinces. The more glory the popular, young father of nine gained in his troubleshooting assignments, the more Tiberius would see Give us Germanicus! scrawled on the walls of buildings as he passed by in his litter.
At age 62, Tiberius might have welcomed displays of public confidence in this loyal heir-apparent. But it’s also true that Germanicus had once botched a troop mutiny in Germany – pacifying his ragged, underpaid legionaries only by so many concessions that the treasury had trouble paying for them. Germanicus constantly had to be reigned in from launching overly expensive conquests and once entered Egypt with his troops in disregard of the long-standing rule that no senator enter Rome’s prized breadbasket without the emperor’s express permission..
In A.D. 19 Germanicus was suddenly dead at age 34 – struck down by some unknown malady while visiting Syria. Well, the emperor’s emissary, Calpurnius Piso, had also been a guest in Germanicus’ camp just beforehand and rumor soon flashed around the Mediterranean rim that Piso had poisoned the young general at a banquet. If so, on whose orders?
For days on end, the entire Roman Empire mourned with incense and loud wailing at losing this charming, charismatic Roman equivalent of Alexander the Great. Tears flowed as crowds gathered to watch Agrippina, his weary, grief stricken widow, shuffle down the gangplank of a Syrian ship with three of her children – the youngest, six year-old Gaius Caligula, reminding everyone of their fallen hero. And as they began the slow funeral march to Rome, hundreds from all walks of life joined in the cortege.
And they began to talk as they marched. Where were Tiberius and his mother Livia? Yes, they’d written that they had stayed in Rome so as not to deflect from Germanicus’ last glory, but was it really because joining the mourners would expose their guilt?
Tiberius never escaped the constant comparisons to his predecessor, and now this tragedy triggered more of them. Was Tiberius merely frugal like Augustus? No, he was a skinflint. Was he merely taciturn? No, he was morose – a misanthrope. Was it his disdain of maudlin flattery that made him wave off people who approached his litter? No, it was really his fear of assassination?
Tiberius had won neither the hearts of the Senate nor people of Rome, and it would seem that somewhere around this time he stopped caring about it. The emperor ceased his regular appearances in the Senate and soon treason trials were flourishing. So was a growing network freelance informants eager to catch some patrician or knight in an imperial sleight so as to be awarded a slice of the victim’s estate.
As Tiberius approached age 65 he was ready to welcome the ambitions of a man who would quickly become “the partner of my labors” and in the process structurally change the way Rome chose and deposed its emperors. In A.D. 22 Tiberius appointed a new commander to head the Praetorian Guards, the elite corps that protected the imperial palace, put down any major disruptions in the city and provided military splendor at parades and festivals. Lucius Aelius Sejanus, a handsome, skillfully diplomatic young officer form one of Rome’s best equestrian families, was able to cover his fierce ambitions with a hard-working dedication to fulfill the emperor’s every need.
At the time Sejanus was appointed, Praetorian units were barracked throughout Rome like so many fire brigades – each accountable to their local commanding officer. Within a year, Sejanus had moved about these officers, bribing and otherwise winning their personal loyalty in exchange for even more luster to come under his patronage. During his second year Sejanus called upon Tiberius with an “administrative” plan. Feeding and equipping all those Praetorian garrisons was costly and inefficient, he noted. Wouldn’t it make more sense – and improve morale – if all 14,000 or so soldiers were quartered in a single complex just outside the city walls? Just imagine the efficiencies stemming from a single parade ground and a common rostrum from which imperial orders could be read to one and all.
Tiberius bought the idea, and soon Sejanus commanded a single fighting force that could combat trouble anywhere in Rome – or start it, as history would show. The Praetorian prefect was now ready for his next move. In A.D. 26 he waited until Tiberius was in one of his melancholy moods, deploring the pile of dispatches piled up for his perusal and ruminating about his simpler, sunny days on Rhodes. Besides, his astrologers were indicating that he might not have much longer to live.
Well, why not find a sunny place like Rhodes? Sejanus intoned. Why not somewhere around every rich Roman’s favorite playground, the Bay of Naples? Or, just to keep the crowds away, why not the sparkling Isle of Capri? Sejanus and his men could set up a post on the mainland and courier dispatches back and forth to the island. They could also interview the crushing number of ambassadors, senators and other supplicants who came seeking the emperor and row his chosen few back and forth.
One spring day in A.D. 26 Tiberius and small entourage of senators, old cronies, astrologers and entertainers left the imperial Palace overlooking the noisy Roman Forum and headed southwest in the guise of going to dedicate some temples in Campania. They did. But afterwards, the party departed from Surrentum to a newly expanded, renovated villa on Capri, never to return to Rome.
Sejanus was now the gatekeeper, and of course everyone from senators to governors to ship builders to those seeking tax collection contracts in the provinces would vie to see him - and pay for the privilege. He, a mere knight, was now entertained by patrician senators, and soon his statues were appearing in theaters and temples alongside the emperor’s.
It’s doubtful that Tiberius realized the full extent of his protector’s new persona in Rome, but I don’t doubt that the younger Drusus warned him. Drusus was the emperor’s only son and his logical heir if it weren’t for the fact that he personified the idle, rich Roman dandy and took little interest in government. He hated Sejanus, however, and had once slapped him across the face in a public argument and had never apologized.
Sejanus, always the outwardly dutiful, modest imperial servant, had borne Drusus’ ire in silence, but the episode made his next plan all the more delicious. Drusus had married Livilla, a younger sister of the illustrious Germanicus. Livilla lived an unhappy life, both from grief over her brother and disgust at how her husband neglected her for horses and harlots. So when Sejanus came calling with his arsenal of charms, Livilla willingly received them. Soon the two were in a love pact: Sejanus would divorce his own wife and disown his two children if Livilla would find a way to poison Drusus. Then he would ask Tiberius for her hand, the old man would make him regent (if he didn’t die first) and the two would become the de-facto rulers of Rome.
Soon Drusus succumbed so a mysterious wasting disease. Not long after his elaborate state funeral, and at approximately the time Jesus was crucified in far-off Jerusalem, the emperor received the letter that would hopefully culminate all the dreams and ambitions of Aelius Lucius Sejanus. Although he would gladly live the rest of his life “working, like any soldier for the emperor’s safety,” the letter read, Sejanus had hoped that he had “gained the greatest privilege – to be thought worthy of a marriage link with your house.” Thus, “please bear in mind,” he implored, “that if you should seek a husband for Livilla, consider your friend, who would gain nothing but prestige from the relationship.”
In time Tiberius replied in an equivocating letter. Although larded with praise for his efficient commander, the emperor noted that Livilla and her mother Agrippina (the publicly adored widow of Germanicus) were already at loggerheads, and that such a marriage would “virtually split the imperial house in two.” But be of good cheer, it concluded obliquely, for “I have other plans for you that are better not to mention at this time.”
So Sejanus took a detour and set to work splitting the imperial house on his own. He soon convinced Tiberius that Agrippina was enlisting conspirators in a plot to crown her eldest son, Nero Caesar. In a few months Praetorians carried Agrippina off to exile on one rocky, bird-stained island and her Nero Caesar on to another. A second son was thrown into a Roman jail and kept near starvation. Military comrades of Germanicus were given orders, signed by Tiberius, to commit suicide as were friends of the family and, mixed up in the process, various rivals of the Praetorian prefect himself.
Sejanus’ only mistake was in underestimating the fearsome power that an emperor wielded in Rome, even if he happened to be an elderly recluse. Nor did he reckon how easy it is for an emperor to find another willing Sejanus. I say this because sometime in late A.D. 30 Tiberius learned who had killed his son Drusus. How? A common version is that one day a maid in the imperial household on Palatine Hill was collecting trash from various rooms with instructions to retrieve and remove the ink from expensive papyrus so that it could be reused. Soon she found herself holding discarded drafts of letters Livilla had intended for Sejanus protesting his sudden aloofness and demanding to know when he would marry her. When she began to read references to the poisoning of Drusus, the alarmed maid stopped and marched straightaway to Antonia, the widow of Tiberius’ brother and de-facto head of the immediate household. Antonia was always loyal to Tiberius, and so it wasn’t long before she smuggled a letter to the emperor past Sejanus’ gatekeepers that told him all he needed to know.
Tiberius was the sort who enjoyed extracting revenge with slow torture. It probably began with a letter to Sejanus saying that he was planning to adopt him as his grandson. Therefore, he had arranged his marriage to – not Livilla – but her teenaged daughter Helen! And he confided that this would lead to a new role for his “partner” in the future.
Sejanus never flinched. He thanked the emperor for his decision, which, after all, gave him the same objective even though it meant discarding Livilla and divorcing his own wife.
Now, having played one cruel joke, Tiberius took his time arranging another. In the spring of A.D. 31, as the followers of Jesus prepared for their first Passover without him, the Roman Senate was told to convene, not at its usual meetinghouse in the Forum, but at the temple of Apollo, which nearly abutted the palaces of Augustus and Tiberius on Palatine Hill. Sejanus was approaching the temple that morning when he was surprised to be greeted by his second in command, Naevius Sertorius Macro, and a small detachment of Guards from the Praetorian barracks. Macro replied cheerfully that Tiberius had sent him a letter to deliver to the Senate.
“Hmm, why didn’t he ask me? ” an unsettled Sejanus wondered aloud.
“Ah, because the letter is about you, the smiling Macro confided with a wink. “I think you’re about to be named Protector of the People and our next emperor.”
With that, an elated Sejanus strode into the temple beaming. Macro entered almost unnoticed behind him and handed the letter to the presiding consul. Already, word of the “Protectorship” was spreading, as senators buzzed together and looked up at Sejanus with fawning salutes and nods of congratulations.
The emperor’s letter began with the phony apology about poor health preventing his return to Rome, then swerved directly into a crescendo of charges against his Praetorian prefect. Erecting statues on his own behalf. Putting enemies to death. Then, even plotting against the writer himself. Indeed, the real reason for the emperor’s not coming to Rome was that he didn’t feel safe enough to travel in the company of his own Guards. He had no choice but to ask for the immediate arrest of Sejanus.
Now one could hear boos and hisses build among the men who until then would have been elated had Sejanus but smiled in their direction. The presiding officer, who alone had been included in the little game with Macro, called out the name of Sejanus sternly from the rostra. Sejanus merely sat slack-jawed.
The consul called out again.
“Me? You mean me? ” Sejanus stammered at last.
Now the seats around him were quickly being vacated. Other senators suddenly became indignant accusers. Macro’s guards were summoned and the dazed Sejanus was marched off towards one of the dingy prisons that lay just outside the Forum. The crowd that always loiters about the Senate quickly picked up the scent and followed the victim with a pelting of mud and rotten vegetables.
Sometime that afternoon Sejanus was beheaded and the rest of his body left to be hacked apart and abused by the rabble. Three days later, when tradition required the remains to be dragged into the Tiber with a hook through the throat, only half the body remained and the skull was being used as a ball in a public gymnasium. And the streets were still littered with the broken limbs of the many statues of the man who had aspired to join the pantheon of Roman emperors.
But did this now bring tranquility? It only demonstrated who was the more treacherous between Tiberius and Sejanus. What followed was a new wave of treason trials and executions – this time against anyone thought to be a friend of Sejanus or beneficiary of his favors. It also extended to his political appointees in the provinces. And when news filtered into far-away Parthia about chaos in Rome, King Artabanus II saw it as further evidence that an aged, weakened Tiberius was losing his grip on his empire.
Just a few years before, Artabanus had been bullied by no less than the late Germanicus into confirming Roman sovereignty over the traditionally Parthian kingdom of Armenia. Now his eyes turned again toward Armenia. His boldness served as a cue for the rulers of smaller Arab client states that bordered on Roman Syria – and specifically Judea. This in turn forced the governor of Syria and his regional procurator of Judea to tighten their control of the Jewish power center, Jerusalem. And at the end of this domino chain were the rebel prophet Jesus, and his tenacious followers. As the surviving adherents of The Way met in Jerusalem in the midst of the post-Sejanus persecutions, the Jewish temple authorities were tense and watchful. Other messianic pretenders had appeared in town and been executed for heresy, only to see their followers quickly melt away. Yet these people were back again, proclaiming a resurrection and a new beginning for Jews everywhere.
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Standing at the massive wooden gates of the largest, most thickly-walled temple fortress on earth, one would wonder why the protectors of Judaism would be overly concerned about a small, apparently peaceful sect of just a few hundred followers.
Was there a structure anywhere in the world more marbled and gleaming than the new temple at Jerusalem? There on the highest hill in the city which the smaller temple of Solomon once graced, atop a platform of massive but perfectly-cut stone blocks, stood a huge complex of outer buildings, courts and cloisters. At the entrance were giant doors bedecked with golden vine and grape clusters. The inner walls were hung with the largest Babylonian tapestry ever made. Outside, the gold-plated, white-marbled walls were so striking that pilgrims and tourists could see them from miles away as they wound their way up to the historic city.
In the large colonnaded outer court one would see men buying lambs, rams, birds and bullocks for various purification or thanksgiving rites. Seated inside the long colonnades were moneychangers, ready to convert any of the world’s currencies into Tyrian shekels, the only coins acceptable for temple offerings.
In the middle of this massive Court of the Gentiles, as most called it, stood a walled rectangular building, running east to west and containing the Inner Precincts. Inside these high walls, roughly one-half the space was occupied by the Court of Women, which included 13 chests, each shaped like a ram’s horn trumpet, to receive the various offerings. Several times a day the money in the rams’ horns was transferred to one of the numerous treasury chambers built into the temple’s inner forecourt. The Shekel Chamber, for instance, contained the half-shekel annual fee imposed on all Jewish men. The Chamber of Utensils housed the great store of gold and silver vessels for use in worship services. But there was also a Chamber of Secrets—so called because its function was to dispense money quietly to those who were poor, but “of good family.”
The remainder of the Inner Precinct contained the shielded Court of the Priests, so named because only clergy could enter it. This enclosed the Sanctuary, and at the top of the T-shaped building, the Holy of Holies.
The temple was not only the center of Jewish religious life, but a symbol of the highly volatile mixture of people who lived in southern Syria. Yes, the majority were Jews, but in this region of barely 150 miles in length and half as wide dwelled Romans, Jews, Greeks, a Jewish royal family, a priesthood and three religious sects with political differences as well. Added to these were a constant influx of pilgrims and merchants. Hovering on the outskirts of Jerusalem were gangs of outlaws that ranged from political rebels to highway bandits.
Of these converging forces, Rome was the most important, but this did not mean that the Jewish-Roman bond was strong or friendly. Yes, there were reasons why this should have been so. Rome and its Syrian province certainly needed the support of Judea as a borderland. The Armenians to the north were no less menacing than the Parthians to the east, and the Arabs to the south seldom offered more than a symbolic nod of vassalship.
Judea also needed to be embraced for its shrewd merchants and protected for its economic contributions to the empire. Judean linen produced the whitest and softest of garments. Its balsam was used for everything from medicines to fodder on funeral pyres. And a rich Roman’s dinner table would surely include Judean dates, wine and olive oil.
Thirdly, Jews were different than, say, Celts or Sythians because the latter tended to live in one region. Jews, although not originally at their own choosing, had formed strong communities in all corners of the empire and beyond. In the last census of Augustus there were some 4.6 million Roman citizens and an estimated 54 million persons of all kinds throughout the empire. Of the latter, roughly one in eight were Jews. The Jewish population of Alexandria alone was estimated at 500,000. Thus, for all of these reasons, Roman rulers had made concessions to Jews they wouldn’t have considered for others. For example, the military police force was garrisoned in Caesarea, some 60 miles from Jerusalem, so that the eagles atop its banners wouldn’t be seen by people whose religion tolerated no images. Moreover, Jews were exempted from service among the Roman auxiliary troops, due in part to their proscription against fighting on the Sabbath.
Yet, these very concessions – along with the uniqueness of Jewish customs – that fostered widespread enmity. Romans snickered at the male circumcision ritual. Many were affronted that Jews refused to attend games in the theater, that they cited their dietary laws as an excuse for declining a dinner invitation, and that they worshipped a god with no name or form yet would pay not even a passing nod to the shrines of other peoples. This, in turn, contributed in Tiberius’ time to the uneasy suspicion that the Jews would again welcome the Parthians if an enticing opportunity arose.
The temple symbolized this division just as it reflected Jewish glory. To Romans nothing was more insolent than to observe a religious temple in the process of being rebuilt into an impregnable fortress. And nothing was more irritating than to watch enormous Jewish wealth being amassed daily from the taxes and ritual fees imposed by temple priests on millions of Jews around the world.
But the Jews had their own good reasons why the bonds to Rome were in such constant tatters. Nothing was more hatefully symbolic of the yoke they lived under than the Fortress of Antonia that loomed ominously over the temple. Built by Herod to please his Roman patron, the 375-foot-long colossus housed a fortress, barracks and prison.
Its three towers rose up from the massive building with porticos that looked out directly over the large Court of the Gentiles. It meant that a Roman detachment, up from Caesarea to police a festival, could maintain constant surveillance on almost everything going on inside the temple complex.
The Jewish-Roman relationship alone might have made a cauldron boil, but there were many more ingredients to be added to the stewpot that was Jerusalem. The second was a truncated royal family and fragmented rule. Herod created the problem by having ten wives and so many sons as to befuddle even a census taker. Added to this confusion was the fact that while Herod was mainly Idumean, his chief wife, Mariamme, represented the Jewish royal Hasmonean line. Another wife was Samaritan. The leading Jewish families viewed Idumeans and Samaritans with equal disdain. The predictable result of having this poisonous concoction of people all living within one household was an endless profusion of bickering, plots and conspiracies in which countless offspring and relatives were taken off by a king who could be heard raging “No one will escape who thirsts for my blood!”
It was perhaps Augustus himself who best summed up the situation when hearing of yet another son’s execution. “It is safer to be Herod’s pig than his son,” the emperor lamented.
In the end it was not a plot that killed the aging despot after 36 years of rule, but a growing, agonizing “rage” in his lower quarters that his physicians’ baths and balms could not overcome. The constant palace turmoil in Jerusalem had so undermined Augustus’ confidence that he divided the old king’s lands into three jurisdictions in 4 B.C. Archelaus, whose mother was a Samaritan, was named ethnarch over Judea and Samaria. Next, Galilee to the north and Perea, an elongated strip of land on the east bank of the Jordan, went to another son, Antipas, along with the still-lower title of tetrarch. Thirdly, Gaulanitus and Trachonitus, two even smaller districts just south of the Syrian capital of Damascus, were given to another son, Philip.
At the time of Tiberius, both Philip and Antipas were still ruling—and competently, by all accounts. Antipas, known as a fair and peaceful man, had managed to keep the rambunctious Galileans in check by killing two birds with one stone. To show his devotion to the emperor, he built an entirely new city on the southern shores of Lake Galilee and named it Tiberius. To coax leading Galilean families to live there he gave them land and even built some of them fine houses at his own expense.
But Archelaus had not fared well in Judea and Samaria. The two largest pieces of Herod’s former kingdom had gobbled up more than their fair share of taxes, and now with a reduced domain, the new ethnarch was compelled to curtail many of this father’s public works programs, which in turn caused unemployment and unrest.
And the fact that Archelaus was half Samaritan and half Idumean didn’t help his standing with the Jewish populace. In 5 B.C., his first Passover as ethnarch, crowds in Jerusalem rioted. Archelaus panicked, called to the Roman garrison for help, and some 3,000 people lost their lives either fleeing or fighting back. Soon the uprisings had spread to the entire region and the governor of Syria was forced to move in with a large Army. Order wasn’t restored until part of the temple had been set afire and its treasury looted.
Looted? Or justifiably “appropriated” by the Romans to pay for the high cost of an unplanned police action? In either case, it’s clear that all this turmoil was too much for Augustus. The emperor ordered the hapless Archelaus to take up a new life of exile in southern Gaul and declared Judea and Samaria an official province of Rome. After a census to determine the proper tax base, the province would then be administered by a series of military prefects, or procurators.
Let us now add some more spices to the stewpot called Jerusalem. We have next the high priest of the temple, the symbol of the Jewish religion, protector of all temple rites and embodiment of the Jewish character. Among the traits that a good Jew should be known for were love of family, personal dignity, adherence to Mosaic Law, tithing to the temple and—almost as important—avoidance of degenerate outside influences.
In its ancient and purest form, the priestly caste centered on a few families, such as the descendants of Zadok, who had been high priest a thousand years earlier under David and Solomon. Closely interwoven with these were the Levites, who were charged with maintaining the temple, including the provision of music and money changing services as well as disposition of hides from all sacrificial animals. Together, members of these powerful, elite families traditionally made up the ruling council, or Sanhedrin.
But the rule of Herod had altered that pattern and created new tensions. By the time of Tiberius, the Hasmonean hold on the priesthood had been broken several times by Herod, his successors, and now the Roman procurators, so that the number of priestly families were more numerous and no longer united by the same ancient ties.
The Sanhedrin had also changed—or had been shattered. King Herod had begun his reign by murdering most of its members and reserving important decisions to his own circle of advisors. He then enticed the return of many of the wealthy families who had been carried off to Babylonia in the Diaspora more than 500 years before. Now accustomed to life in an eastern court, they were more amenable to Herod’s Hellenized way of life than the rigid traditionalists they replaced.