By Cynthia White
The historic Romans believed that purely right polytheistic worship may keep the pax Romana, or Roman Peace. within the first century A.D., a splinter sect of Judaism started to crack this wall, bringing upheaval, persecution, and conversion into the lives of Romans, Jews, Christians, and pagans. This intriguing quantity explores the emergence of Christianity in Rome through the first 4 centuries of the Greco-Roman empire, from the 1st fans of Jesus Christ, to conflicts among Christians and Jewish kings below Roman career, to the torture of Christian fans, Diocletian's reforms, and Constantine's eventual conversion to monotheism, which cemented Christianity's prestige because the legit faith of Rome.
Supplemented via pictures, basic rfile excerpts, biographies of key figures, a word list, an annotated bibliography and an index, this quantity is a perfect reference resource for college kids and normal readers alike.
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Roman citizenship alone was enough to guarantee safe travel, and the general economic prosperity and peace promoted trade all over the empire. In this century, emperor worship was unchecked. Like a god on earth, the emperor governed all provinces, led the army, dispensed justice, and acted as the mediator between the gods and his citizens. At the same time, the reverence the emperor demanded as due his status caused the Christian communities to erupt into open conflict with the state. To ensure the pax deorum, “peace of the gods,” which, in turn, sustained the pax Romana, the emperor’s virtus, “noble excellence,” and pietas, “piety,” had to be properly acknowledged through ritual rites performed by professional priests.
For Trajan, as for his successor Hadrian, Christianity was no crime as long as Christians participated in the worship of the state gods. 6). Among the Flavians, Domitian accused Christians of atheism for refusing to worship him as a god. He also prosecuted members of his family in the imperial court for Judaizing, that is, worshipping and living like Jews but refusing to pay the fiscus Iudaicus, the tax for the Temple in Jerusalem. Many scholars interpret this to mean that those who refused to pay the tax were not really Jews, but seemed to be to those who could not distinguish between Christians and Jews.
Herod put aside his royal diadem as an act of submission and asked Octavian not to consider the fact that he had been loyal to Mark Antony, but rather how loyal he had been; and he promised to be just as loyal to Octavian. Octavian acted quickly to reaffirm Herod’s title as King of the Jews and soon thereafter vastly expanded his territory. 3). Herod’s political star was on the rise. This period in his long reign was marked by lavish entertainments, luxurious building projects, and the construction of vast and splendid cities: Greco-Roman theatres, amphitheatres, fortresses, palaces, colonnades, and temples decorated his territories.