5.5: The Early Empire
From the reign of Augustus in 27 BCE to the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE, the Roman Empire was one of relative peace and prosperity. The Romans referred to this time as the Pax Romana , or Roman peace. During this period, the Empire experienced a smoothly ran bureaucracy, commerce prospered, and territory grew to its largest extent. Of course, some of the Roman subjects did not feel quite as happy with this peace and what it brought to them.
5.5.1: The Julio-Claudian Dynasty
After the death of Augustus, some Senators were hoping for the return of the Republic, while others assumed that Augustus’ stepson would inherit his powerful position. The question that all were pondering in 14 CE was: how do you pass on something that does not exist? After all, Augustus did not have any official position.
Because of the untimely deaths of all other possible candidates, Augustus eventually settled on adopting his stepson Tiberius Claudius Nero (not to be confused with the later emperor Nero), son of his wife Livia from her first marriage. Tiberius was a decorated military general in his youth. According to historical sources, he was sullen and a possibly cruel individual. In addition, he was a reluctant emperor, who preferred life out of the public eye.
Similar to Augustus, Tiberius had a difficult time selecting a successor, since each relative who was identified as a candidate died an untimely death. Ultimately, Tiberius adopted as his successor his grandnephew Gaius Caligula , or “little boot,” son of the popular military hero Germanicus, who died young.
While Caligula began his power with full support of both the people and the Senate, and with an unprecedented degree of popularity, he swiftly proved to be mentally unstable and bankrupted the state in just under four years. In 41 CE, he was assassinated by three disgruntled officers in the Praetorian Guard, which ironically was the body formed by Augustus in order to protect the emperor.
Caligula’s assassination left Rome in disarray. According to Suetonius, the confused Senate was meeting and planning to declare the restoration of the Roman Republic. However, the Praetorian Guard proclaimed as the next emperor Claudius , uncle of Caligula and the brother of Germanicus.
While Claudius was a member of the imperial family, he was never considered a candidate for succession because he had a speech impediment. Claudius proved to be a productive emperor. His downfall appeared to be pretty women, as one wife after the other plotted his downfall. Finally, in 54 CE, Claudius died, widely believed to have been poisoned by his wife, Agrippina the Younger.
Although Claudius had a biological son from an earlier marriage, that son was poisoned soon after his death. His successor instead became Nero , his stepson, who was only sixteen years old when he gained power.
Over the course of his 14-year rule, Nero gradually alienated the Senate, the people, and the army. He destroyed his own reputation by performing on stage—behavior that was considered disgraceful in Roman society. Furthermore, in 64 CE, Nero is believed to have caused the great fire of Rome in order to free up space in the middle of the city for his ambitious new palace, the Domus Aurea, or Golden House.
The last years of Nero’s reign seem to have been characterized by provincial rebellions. The revolt of Vindex ultimately proved to be the end of Nero. Vindex convinced the governor of Spain, Servius Sulpicius Galba, to join the rebellion and proclaim himself emperor. While the rebellion of Vindex was quickly squashed, and Vindex himself committed suicide, popular support for Galba grew just as quickly. Terrified by rumors of Galba marching to Rome, Nero committed suicide in June of 68 CE. His death marked the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
5.5.2: The Year of the Four Emperors, the Flavian Dynasty, and the Five Good Emperors
After Nero’s death, the empire saw more civil war and instability. In particular, the year 69 CE became known as the year of the four emperors: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian. Each challenged his predecessor to a civil war, and each was as swiftly defeated by the next challenger.
Vespasian , a mere son of a tax-collector, was the only successful emperor of 69 CE and the founder of the Flavian dynasty . As a talented military commander, Vespasian proved to be already in command of a major military force. Second, Vespasian was the only one of the four emperors of 69 CE who had grown sons, and thus obvious successors. Furthermore, his older son, Titus, was already a popular military commander in his own right and cemented his reputation even further by his conquest of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The Flavian dynasty ended in 96 CE with the assassination of Emperor Domitian, Vespasian’s younger son.
Known as the period of the “ Five Good Emperors ,” (96 CE to 180 CE), the trend was for each emperor to adopt a talented leader with potential as his successor. The result was what Edward Gibbon, the nineteenth-century British historian of Rome, called “the happiest age” of mankind. But was life everywhere in the Roman Empire in the second century equally happy for all? The evidence suggests that while Rome and other major urban centers flourished, life in the periphery could be a very different experience.
5.5.3: Center Versus Periphery in the Roman Empire: the Evidence of Pliny and Apuleius
Life in Rome was not representative of everyday life in the empire. Writing about two different provinces within a half-century of each other, Pliny the Younger and Apuleius show the complicated blessings of living in a province far away from Rome that was yet under Roman rule.
Most Roman governors received just one type of personnel to assist them with their duties: a flute-player, whose job was to play during sacrifice ceremonies. Since military forces were expensive to maintain and needed for emergencies in those areas of the Empire considered to be the most at risk for rebellion or outside attack, most governors did not have a legion stationed in their province. So how did governors resolve problems, and what resources did they find when they arrived?
The single best source of information about the Roman provincial government is the prolific letter-writer Pliny the Younger, who reveals a myriad of problems that the governor was expected to solve:
- staffing personnel for prisons (is it acceptable to use slaves as prison guards?)
- building repairs and water supply, abandoned infants and their legal status (should they be considered slave-born or free?)
- fire brigades (are they a potential security risk to the Empire?)
- what to do with Christians in the province?
The emperor Trajan patiently responded to each letter that he received from Pliny and appears to have placed stability and peace in the province foremost in his concerns.
Another perspective comes from the novel Metamorphoses or Golden Ass , written by the North African intellectual Apuleius. Lucius is a curious intellectual who is traveling through Greece. A magic experiment goes wrong, and he is accidentally is turned into a donkey. For the remainder of the novel, as a donkey, Lucius is repeatedly stolen, traded, beaten, and abused, until finally being rescued by the Egyptian goddess Isis, whose service he then enters as a priest. Overall, the picture that Apuleius paints reveals the dark side of the Pax Romana . Yes, the Empire was at peace, and few attacks were happening on the frontiers. Yet life in the provinces was anything but truly peaceful.
5.5.4: Early Christianity in the Context of the Roman Empire
Pliny’s perspective is one of the earliest non-Christian sources about the new religion and shows how quickly it had spread over the Empire. But how and why did the new religion spread so rapidly over the Empire, and why was it so attractive to different populations? After all, quite a number of different cults and self-proclaimed prophets periodically appeared in the Roman world, yet none had the long-term impact of Christianity, which just two centuries after Pliny’s day became the religion of the Roman emperor himself.
Early Christianity has many primary sources from both the perspective of insiders and outsiders. The New Testament is a collection of primary sources by early Christians about their movement. It is a remarkably open document, collecting theological beliefs and stories about Jesus on which the faith was built. At the same time, the New Testament does not “white-wash” the early churches; rather, it documents their failings and short-comings with remarkable frankness.
In a variety of respects, the early Christian movement went completely against every foundational aspect of Roman (and, really, Greek) society.
- In traditional Roman paganism, the gods had petty concerns and could treat humans unfairly. In Christianity, God himself became man and dwelt with men as an equal.
- Gender roles in Roman society were extremely rigid, as all women were subject to male authority. Indeed, the paterfamilias , or head of the household, had the power of life or death over all living under his roof. Christianity allowed women to serve in the church and choose to remain unmarried, and even to become heroes of the faith by virtue of their lives or deaths as martyrs.
- Traditional Roman society was stratified with sharp divisions between the rich and poor. While social mobility was possible, extreme mobility was the exception rather than the rule. In Christianity, one's social position in the Roman world had no significance in God’s eyes.
- Early Christianity was an apocalyptic religion. Many early Christians believed that Jesus was coming back soon, and they eagerly awaited his arrival, which would erase all inequality and social distinctions.
It is important to note that early Christianity appears to have been predominantly an urban religion and spread most quickly throughout urban centers. Paul’s letters address the churches in different cities throughout the Greek-speaking world and show the existence of a network of relationships between the early churches, despite the physical distance between them. By the early second century CE, urban churches were led by bishops, who functioned as overseers for spiritual and practical matters of the church in their region.