From the Hellenistic Age to the Rise of the Church

is provided by Annenberg CPB to advance excellent teaching.

It was a time rather like ours of large, impersonal states and individuals who felt lost in them, a time of consumption, brutality, sophistication, experimentation,

and trying to find justification and consolation in religious cults. The Hellenistic Age, this time on the Western Tradition.

UCLA Professor Eugene Webers continuing journey through the history of Western civilization.

Last time we ended with the waning of the independent Greek cities, the Polis, and the decay of their classical discipline in the three centuries before Christ.

But this was not, as you spirit of openness arose in the Hellenistic age, a spirit of experimentation and diversity.

The most striking example of this was in art.

The artists of the classical period imposed standards that were outside and beyond the change and decay that are part of human life.

But the artists of the Hellenistic age tried to embrace those very qualities of humanity

that go with change and with a variety of life.

Classical perfection was pure, austere, unchanging. The artists of classical and pre-classical Greece had aimed at forms that could be regarded as timeless and ideal, calm, fixed in their perfection. This is the art of a society that's sufficiently

pleased with itself not to want to imitate gods and heroes. Fortune is no longer enthroned in stiff majesty. She sits like a normal woman. Aphrodite flows and curves in a sinuous movement. Victory alights on the prow of a ship, and you can feel the wind pressing the folds of her dress against her body. And then all this technical virtuosity becomes exaggerated

in statues like this one of Laocoon and his sons, entangled in what appears to be a giant strand of pasta, but which is actually a snake that goddess Athena sent to kill them.

In this respect, the Hellenistic Greeks were rather like ourselves, admiring moderation but often going to extremes. But if much of this art with its Baroque convolutions and grotesque sugary pathos

is less admired than its classical predecessors, it's also more natural, more dramatic, more dynamic. And it is also more inclined to historical references.

This is the first age of museums, collections, libraries, private and public, and of archaeology. at the time as fragmentation and alienation in a vast impersonal state, others appreciate

as greater independence in a more open, less constricting society.

Polis-directed art goes out, individual-directed art comes in.

We get portraits, embusts and paintings that are not idealized but lifelike. We get landscapes and still lives,

which would have been completely irrelevant when only gods and the polis mattered. And now the center of literary life is not Athens, as it had been for so long, but the new Hellenistic city of Alexandria,

produces psychological speculation and biography and autobiography. In this theatrical scene, lovers struggle not against gods, but against parents and rivals, and the references are not to higher values, but to wills and dowries and stolen letters, as in modern entertainment.

And the public also wants happy endings, not just the inevitably grim misadventures of classical Greek tragedy.

There is a wider market for art now, and there is a greater variety in public taste. It's less grand, less noble than that of the 5th or 6th century BC. it mirrors a more vulgar society, insecure, uneasy, excited, but livelier, much like our own.

Another familiar aspect of the Hellenistic world is that one's social experience in the community

had shifted from an accessible human scale where you could affect your environment if you wanted to, to a fragmented, depersonalized society. If you wanted to lead

a good life, you could no longer say, as Plato said, let's make a good society, good society make good men, good men lead good lives. And if you wanted to play a part in the world,

you could no longer just stay in your polis because the polis mattered less and less. You had to enter

the service of one of the great kings who ruled Macedonia or Egypt or Syria. These kings now ruled so many different peoples that they were practically forced to take over the oriental

tradition of a godlike king because that alone could bind so many different territories

and tribes and cities to their rule. Even the lesser kings had pretensions based on Alexander's claims to divinity.

But such pretensions were completely contrary to Greek then. So something had to give.

And if it wasn't going to be the kings, it was going to have to be the Greeks.

In the 4th century BC, when Alexander wrote back to Greece asking to be worshipped as a god, the Spartans, for one, took it calmly with a mixture of practicality and skepticism.

If he wants to be a god, they said, let him be god.

You can see where this led by looking at Antiochus I of Comergin, a Hellenistic king of the first century BC. When he built his tomb at Nemrut Dag, which is now in Turkey, Antiochus cut off the top of a mountain 8,200 feet high and had it replaced with a tumulus, a grave mound 400 feet high, with colossal statues of Greek and Persian gods in whose midst he sits enthroned, a god among the gods.

Lubris on this scale was a radical break with the Greek tradition of moderation. It also offended Greek ideas of the dignity of free men, subject only to the laws of the police but the days of the autonomous police were long

gone now the power rested with the kings so the problem arose how was a free-thinking man supposed to adapt himself to the new situation what should he do if he wanted to live as a good and by his principles. Should he remain aloof?

Should he act? And if he was going to act, by what rules should he act?

This is the problem of the various Hellenistic schools

of philosophy, the problem they had to face.

And while they answered it differently, they all agree that man must find the source of freedom and justice within himself. Freedom in classical times consisted of obeying the law of your city and its gods.

But in the Hellenistic age, it would have to consist of an internal freedom that comes from being at one with the cosmic order and with oneself.

The wise man is free even if he is a slave as long as he can establish and retain his eternal freedom. If he is his own master, then he has no power.

No human can intimidate him.

His fears, greed, desires cannot shake his equanimity. He doesn't feel the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Indeed, he learns not to worry about chance or fate or fortune at all

because he is more autonomous than any polis could. The cynics whose best-known representative was the philosopher Diogenes, had one of the many recipes for achieving such autonomy and detachment.

Essentially, the cynics believed in being poor, rude, and unconventional, dropping out of society, avoiding family or any kind of property, and begging to stay alive.

Diogenes himself lived in a barrel or whatever other shelter he could find in the Athens streets. This is a 16th century depiction of a famous story about him in which Alexander comes to ask if there's anything he can do for the old man,

at which point Diogenes asks him to get out of his light. This is one way to avoid fate, give up everything and be rude to others. Another way is to avoid the others and the world except for a few kindred souls and the basic essentials you need to lead a vulgar pleasures of the body, but never had much political or historical influence.

Epicurus' more successful rival was Zeno, who lived from 335 to 263 BC. It's significant that where Epicurus taught his his in a public arcade, a stoa like this one. And stoicism, the name

of Zeno's philosophy, is much more about public concerns than Epicureanism is because it teaches that internal freedom comes from being in tune with the order of the universe. Perceive the cosmic order, says Zeno.

Grasp the ruling will of the universe,

then submit to it, and you are free. That, at least, was the Stoics' view of spiritual autonomy. But they also believed that you and improve order in the world around him, to bring the everyday world in line with the cosmos, to counsel the despots who have power to act and so turn kings into philosophers. So where the cynics

were anarchists and the Epicureans were passive contemplators, the Stoics were conservative political activists who, rather as the Puritans were going to do, cheerlessly took on the burdens of the world.

Yet, however reluctant the Stoic appears, his philosophy is positive because he teaches that a higher order governs the world and that it's the duty of good men to uphold the

nobler values which are their own reward. The third century biographer of Greek philosophers, Diogenes Laertius, listed

the principles of Stoic philosophy. He wrote, the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or in other words, in right reason which pervades all things. into Roman legal terms, and it became the sanction behind large-scale government, and

it was passed on to the Middle Ages and beyond.

And Stoic beliefs also made a major contribution to Christianity, as you can see from the works of Epictetus, a Greek philosopher who lived from 60 to 120 AD.

This is what he wrote. You, O man, are God's principal work. You are a distinct portion of the essence of God and contain a certain part of him in yourself. Why then

are you ignorant of your noble birth? It is within yourself that you carry him, and you do not observe that you profane him by impure thoughts and unclean actions?

In the meantime, however, there is another darker aspect of the Hellenistic period, the persistence and popularity of primitive mystery religions.

These women are participants in Dionysiac cult rites. Only the initiated learn the secrets to the mysteries of life,

and so only they are afforded salvation. Whether these mystery cults worshipped Isis, or Serapis from Egypt, Mithras from Persia, or others, they all had this in common, they were the business of the individual, not the polis.

They took no account of political responsibilities, and they bound people together in communities of worshippers quite independent of the state religion. The simplest of these were the good old earth religions, like the Eleusinian cult you see depicted here, or the Dionysiac cults. This is Dionysius himself, the god

of fertility, wine, and drama. In all of the cults, a young king appears who is the bearer of spring and a new summer. He appears as the savior of the earth, which winter had

made cold and lifeless, and which all the pollutions of the past had doomed to barrenness. And by an extrapolation, the young king is also the savior and purifier of mankind from all kind of evils, bringing

a new age to the world. Then there is the lady, the old wife of the Savior, who is often both a virgin and a mother, and

who appears all around the Mediterranean in a variety of shapes and names. Lastly, there are the heavenly bodies, the sun seen here in his chariot, the moon, the

stars represented by these boys who dive out of sight when the dawn comes. Over the centuries, this worship came gradually into contact with a more definite sun worship of Persia,

and eventually it brought us the cult of Mithras, the unconquered sun, who is seen here slaughtering a bull to guarantee the return of the seasons. Mithras became particularly popular in Rome in the second century and proved to be the chief rival of Christianity.

After the sun, there were the planets in their seven spheres surrounding the earth. Their movement reflected the will of providence. Their power affected everything, even the days of the week.

Next to these heavenly bodies, life and human endeavor are a vain thing. So the religion of later antiquity becomes absorbed in plans of escape

from the prison of Earth, her sister planets, and the other lesser stars.

Men and women are the sport of fate and charm,

to say nothing of the native ills and demons of the earth. But if you could move away, past the sphere of the earth, past the sphere

of the moon and of the other rulers of the universe, then you could get to the sphere of the ultimate God, whatever his name may be, where there is true being and freedom.

And more than freedom, the ultimate union with God. The kind of knowledge which would enable you to get to this point must be taught. Men must be initiated as in this ceremony in a temple of Isis.

So here you have priests and prophets and teachers. But above you have the figure of a redeemer, a godly savior, Savior who is connected with figures like Attis or Adonis in Asia Minor, Osiris in Egypt,

Dionysius in Greece, and the special Jewish idea of the Messiah who would save the chosen people. This Redeemer has various names, particularly that of Christos, of anointed.

And above all, he is in a very profound sense man, or the son of man,

even though he is also a god.

The logic goes this way. Since the ultimate unseen god, spirit, though he is, made man in his own image, it follows that god is himself man. He is the real, the ultimate, perfect, eternal man of whom all bodily people are just feeble copies. So this God and ideal or first man is the Father,

while the Redeemer, the Savior, is his Son, the image of the Father or the son of man. Usually this savior comes down from heaven to save mankind.

And then when his work is done, he goes back to heaven to sit by the side of the father in glory. And thereafter, the chosen people he has saved will be able to join him.

Of course, you can see the similarities with later Christian doctrine. But you must notice, too, that these early mystery cults,

including the mysteries of the Gnostics who influenced some early Christians and against whom other Christians reacted, that all these mystery cults were exclusive,

just as the Hebrew religion was exclusive.

They were a set of cliques of chosen people, each with their particular contract or password to salvation. Whereas, as we shall see in due course, the Christians

were going to realize the universal implications of these cults in a much more effective way. For the moment, I would just point out this. It's impossible not to see these religious developments as emotional aids for men and internality, such as the Greek of the

classical age never possessed. Men and women were slowly making souls for themselves, and they were making churches

too, whose values and rights and institutions stood for the first time outside the belief for better or for worse.

Next time, I shall talk about the rise of the world.

This program is provided by Annenberg CDB. To advance excellent teaching. They would march across the Mediterranean world, making new conquests for the glory and profit of Rome.

A culture that so stressed discipline and seriousness of purpose

become a synonym for conspicuous consumption and public display.

The rise of Rome, this time on the Western Tradition. And now UCLA Professor Eugene Webber's continuing journey through the history of Western Civilization.

Beginning of the 5th century B.C. when the Greeks were busy throwing back the Persians, a small, barely civilized city-state to the west of Greece, was fighting for its life. It sat on a peninsula that was dominated by Gaulish tribes in the north, Etruscan warriors

in the center, Greek cities to the south of all Italy and was on the verge of conquering the

entire Mediterranean world. It would prove so successful that its myth would endure for 2,000 years, even into our own century. AD Charlemagne had himself crowned Roman Emperor centuries after Rome's empire had collapsed.

In 1804 Napoleon had himself crowned in the same tradition and he called his heir the King of Rome. Even the Russian Tsars like Peter here claimed to rule from the third Rome, better known as Moscow.

And in this century, in Rome itself, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini

would name his system of government Fascism, after the emblem of authority of ancient Roman magistrates.

This extraordinary myth began, as most myths do, in a rather modest way. Rome, like so many other ancient centers, was blessed by geography.

The city lay on a fertile plain that could support a relatively dense population with ford, then a bridge, and across it ran the main

north-south road and all the trade that came with it. The bridge was so important to the Romans that it was considered sacred, and the official charge with its upkeep was sacred as well.

He was called the Pontifex, and his title lives on in the title of the Roman Catholic Pope, the Pontiff. So Rome began as a market town and a farming community.

This is a sign from a greengrocer's shop whose owner lightly shared his neighbor's tough-minded, practical, conservative out in a rather modest way. Rome, like so many other ancient centers, was blessed by geography.

The city lay on a fertile plain that could support a relatively dense population

with its grain, vegetables, and fruit.

Rome also had the advantage of straddling the Tiber River just 15 miles from the sea where boats could still come upriver. At this point there was first a ford, then a bridge, and across it ran the main north-south road and all the trade that came with it.

It was so important to the Romans that it was considered sacred, and the official charge with its upkeep was sacred as well. He was called the Pontifex, and his title lives on in the title of the Roman Catholic Pope, the Pontiff.

So Rome began as a market town and a farming community.

This is a sign from a greengrocer's shop

whose owner lightly shared his neighbor's tough-minded, practical, conservative outlook.

The virtues the Romans admired

were all related to discipline and self-discipline. They believed in pietas, respect for established authority and tradition. They believed in fides, being true to your responsibilities.

In religio, the commons that bind men together.

And above all, in gravitas, the sober seriousness that marks a real man. Even the word virtue means manliness. Early Roman society was also strictly patriarchal.

A Middle Eastern Greek, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, explained, the lawgiver of the Romans gave virtually full power to the father over his son,

even during his whole life, whether he thought proper to imprison him, to scourge him, to put him in chains and keep him at work in the fields, or put him to death.

And this even though the son already engaged in public affairs, though he were numbered among the highest magistrates, though he was celebrated for his zeal for the commonwealth.

As for women, they didn't think much of them or about them. A Roman in the first century BC wrote to his wife, If good luck to you, you bear offspring, if it is male, let it live.

If it is female, expose it. Which, of course, meant leaving it to die. One gets the clear impression that there wasn't much kidding around with the ancient Romans, as you can see for yourself. They disliked disorder and luxury, which meant excess. The legend of how Rome was founded is a case in point. These are Romulus and Remus,

twin brothers who were raised by a she-wolf. Remus refused to follow Romulus' strict orders stripped others to behave while the sacred boundaries of Rome were being traced. He jumped

over them as if they didn't matter, and Romulus killed him. The moral of this story is that serious things should not be taken lightly. True virtue subordinates the person to the On this solid base of gravitas, or true gravity, the Roman Republic was founded in the 6th century BC.

The Romans were a conservative people, and so office of consul, but only for one year.

These consuls had vast powers. They were constrained by law and as senators for the rest of their lives,

it was a foolish consul who totally ignored or defied the will of the Senate. The Roman army also mirrored the values of this hard-bitten society.

Every soldier provided his own equipment,

which meant that he had to have a farm or some kind of property so he could have the necessary resources to buy a shield and helmet, a sword, a spear, and a pack on his back. If you didn't have

all this, you didn't get into the army. So the landless poor did not fight. They were

called the proletariat because their only contribution to the state was their proles or offspring. They didn't pay taxes and they had no say in how the city was run.

The more prosperous among them would struggle for political and social rights with mixed success.

But it was their army service that gave them their greatest bargaining power. The primary attraction of life in the army was a very important fringe benefit, the spoils of war. And the potential for these spoils was going to increase dramatically after a war in the 4th century BC with the Samnites,

a people who lived in the mountains to the southeast of Rome. Beginning of the war with the Samnites, the Roman army fought like this in the Phalanx,

a tight formation without much room to maneuver. But then they switched to smaller self-contained units

of 120 men called maniples. Three maniples made a cohort of 360 men and 10 cohorts made a legion. These smaller units could operate in a checkerboard pattern that allowed for

a lot of flexibility. They also made greater demands on the individual soldier and they could be perfected only by strict training and discipline. So these Roman infantry were invariably better trained than their opponents.

The legions proved so superior in discipline and determination

to the cruder troops of Rome's neighbors

that by the middle of the 3rd century BC,

the city on the Tiber controlled nearly all of the peninsula.

It was then that the Romans did something that turned their military advantage

into an even greater political advantage.

Instead of slaughtering or enslaving their defeated enemies, as was the fashion,

the Romans made them ally.

They took some of their land to settle Romans, and they didn't treat them all alike because the Senate's maxim was divide and rule, but on the whole, each conquered Italian state was allowed to

run its own affairs. All that Rome asked was control of the state's foreign policy and military aid in time of war. It was an extremely liberal arrangement for those days, and it was eventually followed by the extension of Roman citizenship throughout the rest of Italy. So Rome gained the attachment of neighboring states in a way that no Greek city ever managed.

were then cemented by building first-class roads which provided concrete bonds, quite literally,

where ideological bonds might not have sufficed.

Examples of Roman skill in civil engineering are everywhere you look in Italy today.

This is an ancient sewer,

and these are the ruins of a Roman aqueduct.

They serve to remind us that technology can have long-lasting political uses as well as practical ones. In 170 BC or so, their last enemies on the peninsula, the Greek cities

in the south, had been brought to heel. But once Rome controlled this territory, she was going to be drawn into the wider Mediterranean sphere and would collide with the Carthaginians, the Greeks' chief business rivals and enemies.

This is an artist's conception of Carthage as it might have been in the 3rd century BC

when it went to war with Rome. What had begun more than 500 years earlier as a Phoenician colony in North Africa

had become the greatest naval power in the western Mediterranean. In Rome, the Senate was under increasing pressure to protect the southern cities from Carthage after the

Carthaginians got mixed up in a local war in 264 BC, and the first of three Punic Wars began, Punic meaning Phoenician. The wars with Carthage would do two very important things to Rome.

These are Roman shipbuilders helping Rome rule the waves as every Mediterranean empire must, whether it's Athens two centuries before or Turkey 1700 years later. Like all sailors in the ancient Mediterranean, the Romans used galleys propelled by rowers.

Galleys were invented by the Egyptians who could sail down the Nile but needed to row back upriver. By the time the First Punic War was over 24 years later, Rome had made Sicily a province and

was soon to add Corsica and Sardinia and move into Spain, a Carthaginian stronghold. Which brings us to the second result of the Punic Wars. All this territory was won by Rome's fleet, which was built to win

a single war, but which ended by gaining an empire. The Romans had never meant to be drawn

so far away from home, but the fleet ensured that they would be. After Rome defeated Carthage, she went on to defeat the Macedonians, the Greeks, the Asian heirs of Alexander the Great, and finally Egypt as well.

There were some close calls.

The Second Punic War began in 218 BC when Hannibal, a Carthaginian general, set out from Spain to invade Italy. Since the Romans now controlled the sea, Hannibal had to go overland through a thousand miles of hostile territory. When he made it across

the first obstacle, the Pyrenees, he had about 40,000 soldiers and 37 African elephants which were meant to strike terror in the hearts of Rome. By the time he crossed the Alps,

however, he had less than half his troops and almost no elephants. Nevertheless, Hannibal was so brilliant a general that he beat the

Romans to a pulp. He outwitted them, outfought them, and by 216 BC, he was camping under the walls of Rome itself. If Hannibal had succeeded as well in his political strategy

as he had in his military strategy, the history of Western civilization might have been quite different. But when he called on the other Italian cities to join him against Rome, they turned a deaf ear.

Rome's liberal policy towards them had paid off. While Hannibal hung around looking for support, of his supplies and then landed troops first in Spain, then in North Africa near Carthage

itself. Hannibal was forced to return home to defend his territory and Rome was saved. When Carthage foolishly went to war one more time two generations later, the angry Romans obliterated the city, literally tearing it down.

The Punic Empire was no more. By this time, Rome itself had profoundly changed in all sorts of ways. For one thing, the old Roman infantry, which had been formed by annual levies,

was replaced by professional infantry, which signed up for long tours of duty and was paid by the state or by generals from the booty they captured. So you could

use the troops for long campaigns which were more attractive now because they could pay for themselves and even return a profit. What had begun as a quest to defend Roman borders

against Carthage and against other hostile states eventually became a brutal search for territory and riches. This is how Plutarch describes a Roman victory

celebration or triumph. The triumph lasted for three days. On the first, which was scarcely long enough for the sight, would be seen the statues, pictures, colossal images taken from drawn upon 250 chariots. On the second day was carried in a great many wagons the finest

and richest armor of the Macedonians, both of brass and steel. On the third day first

came the trumpeters who did not sound as they were wont in a processional solemn entry, but such a charge as the Romans used when they encouraged the soldiers to fight,

followed by young men wearing frocks with ornamented borders who led to the sacrifice 120 stalled oxen. The more enemies to defeat, of course, the more jobs for soldiers

and for the patricians and their hangers-on as well

who would be sent out to govern and tax and squeeze the provinces. This became the basis of Roman foreign policy, a very different spirit from the sensible federal approach

they had followed in Italy itself. The spreading empire had brought Rome into close contact with more sophisticated cultures.

It suggested new tastes, new fashion, new luxuries unknown to the sober, frugal, older generations. The loot of a dozen legions was now flowing into Rome, and young gentlemen second and the first century BC and quite naturally they wanted to show off their wealth.

a room where you could go and vomit what you had just eaten, so you could go back out and eat and drink another meal. It's hard to imagine a better example of conspicuous consumption. This is what the tribune cellist had to say about the morals of his time. As soon as wealth came to be a mark of distinction and an easy way to renounce military commands to political power, virtue began to decline.

Poverty was now looked on as a disgrace,

and a blameless life as a sign of ill nature. Riches made the younger generation a prey to luxury, avarice, pride.

Squandering with one hand what they grabbed with the other, they set small value on their own property while they coveted that of others.

Honor and modesty, all laws, human and divine, were alike disregarded in a spirit of recklessness and intemperance.

Conspicuous consumption and large-scale display also became a part of politics. In 65 BC, Julius Caesar paid for 400 lions and 320 pairs of gladiators to fight and murder each other in one see 6,000 crosses, each with its own crucified rebel slave.

This new interest in public display also affected art. historical paintings, political advertising of all kinds were everywhere.

Beauty now fulfilled a public function and was heavily involved in propaganda and publicity.

This concern for impressing people explains why architecture becomes the Roman art par excellence. The old empire would be manifested in great, solemn, spectacular buildings like these. Temples, palaces, stadium, attests, the greater the proportions,

the greater the power of Rome. The richer the decorations, the richer the Roman people seem destined to become. So even if you were a poor Roman, you could still participate of conspicuous consumption and self-congratulation.

But was it enough?

For a while, yes, but eventually the strain of gaining and then holding on to such a huge amount of territory

was going to take its toll on the Republic, especially on its poorer citizens.

We shall see how in our next program, which is about the Roman Empire.

We're traitors. It's in our DNA to make bold decisions when everything is on the line. This program is provided by Annenberg C.P.B. to advance excellent teaching.

In the first century B.C., the republic was plunged into civil war. Powerful generals and their private armies fought for control of the state until one

man stood victorious, the absolute master of the Mediterranean world, the Roman Empire, this time on the Western Tradition.

History of Western Civilization. When we left Rome at the end of the 2nd century BC, it was triumphant in its growing wealth

and power. But if you were an ordinary Roman, there was also a great deal to be worried about. The wars of expansion into Greece and Asia had dealt a terrible blow to small, freehold farmers who were the mainstay of the Roman state.

Those who went off to war returned to find their farms gone for pot, and they were the lucky ones. A lot of men never returned at all. Once back home, the survivors had trouble re-establishing their holdings.

Cheap grain was now pouring in from the provinces, the same provinces, ironically, that the farmer soldiers had helped to conquer. With so much grain now available on the market, prices plummeted. suited to other uses anyway, raising cattle or growing grapes or olives. And all of these

could be worked cheaper on much larger spreads by slaves provided in great numbers and who furnished hard labor in return for bare subsistence. The family farmer could not compete. The rich who found the capital to buy up the small farms got richer while the farmers got poorer and a lot of them sold out to large landowners.

They moved into the city to swell the number was advised by his brother to flatter endlessly.

This is wrong and shameful in ordinary life, but necessary in running for office.

Let the voters say and think that you know them well, that you greet them by name, that you are generous and open-handed. If possible, accuse your competitors of having a bad reputation for crime, vice,

or bribery. And so, by the late 2nd century BC, social unrest had become a serious problem. The displaced and needy masses were pressured by the rich, trying to squeeze as much as

possible out of them, and this included the conservative senate, which was indifferent to their plight.

The poor of Rome had two political options.

Constitutionally, authority lay in the senate and the people, but practically the state was run by the senate alone.

This august body, with its massive authority and responsibility, But really, a municipal council that had been propelled into governing half the world was simply not equipped for the job.

Most senators just wanted the world to stand still, but it wouldn't stand still. It never does.

While the senators could handle foreign problems by simply throwing soldiers at them, social and economic problems were beyond them.

In 133 B.C., Tiberius Dracus, the noble grandson of the man who defeated Hannibal, took up the cause of the court. He tried to limit the size of large estates

and to provide land for the landless, but he was murdered by a group of conservative senators and their followers, beaten to death with chairs. His brother, Pius Gracchus, tried to carry on his work, but he too was murdered.

It appeared that the Senate, with its determination to keep the status quo, had triumphed. But in fact, the political landscape had been grown up to challenge the authority of the Senate.

This was not a blow for democracy as some might expect. On the contrary, the situation was made to order for men like Julius Caesar,

who knew how to use and manipulate class hatred and social unrest for their own careers. Caesar was one of several outstanding

generals who were also politicians, men who married politics to the army in the first century before Christ. Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar, they would all become dictators in turn, either in the name of the people.

But it appeared that the Senate, with its determination to keep the status quo, had triumphed. But in fact, the political landscape had been changed by the Gracchi brothers and their followers.

For the first time in Roman history, a popular party had grown up to challenge the authority of the Senate. But this was not a blow for

democracy as some might expect. On the contrary, the situation was made to order for men like Julius Caesar who knew how to use and manipulate class hatred and social unrest for their own Caesar was one of several outstanding generals who were also politicians

On the contrary, the situation was made to order for men like Julius Caesar who knew how to use and manipulate class hatred and social unrest for their own careers

Caesar was one of several outstanding generals who were also politicians, men who married politics to the army in the first century before Christ.

Arius, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar, they would all become dictators in turn, either in the name of the people or of the Senate and so-called tradition.

It didn't seem to matter which. The first century BC was a bloody time of plots and rivalries among men who were too powerful to be stopped themselves, yet not quite powerful enough to stop others from following in their footsteps. With their armies behind them, they would march into Rome in times of crisis and force the Senate to vote on extraordinary powers ostensibly to bring order and stability to the state.

Then they would eliminate their enemies as best they could, opening an era of political murder that was going to last for several centuries the history books with the most fascinating gore. The generals also became very rich men.

Here is Plutarch's description of Lucius Licinius Lucullus, a very successful commander who retired to private life in 63 before Christ. Lucullus' life presents us at the beginning with political acts and military commands, and at the end with drinking bouts and banquets and what were practically orgies, torturances, all manner of frivolity. For I countined alone, he became angry because only one modest course had been prepared and called the slave in

charge. When the slave said that he didn't think there would be need of anything expensive since there were no guests, Lucullus said, what, do you not know that today Lucullus dines with Lucullus?

Well, Lucullus and his kind were men of great appetite, not only for luxury, not only for food, but also for power. And that power rested in their legions. who in 107 BC introduced an innovation that completely reshaped the army and ultimately upset the balance of power in the republic.

He did this by throwing out the financial requirements for enlistment and accepting volunteers from the whole citizen body. The poor proletarians rushed in to be equipped and paid by the state,

while the other classes, who were growing less enthusiastic about military service because they had better things to do at home, stayed out altogether. Army pay was not very good even for a proletarian.

Don't do this at home, kids.

But a successful commander could be expected to provide his men with a share of the spoils or a parcel of land on discharge and these rewards which could substantially improve a man's life were under

the control of the general it followed from this that the Roman legionsy who lived from 106 to 148 BC. At the age of loyalty not to Rome but to him personally.

A general with such an army behind him could then dominate or intimidate the Senate into giving him other commands and honor. And from there, it was only a short step to using his power to brush aside the senators and legalize his hold his whole state as well. This is what happened with Pompey

and a number of others until it became clear to everything in Roman that the days of the Republic were numbered. It had become a government not of law but of men, ambitious, powerful, Ruthless men. The generals and their legions had proved so successful

that Rome controlled an extraordinary amount of territory by the middle of the first century BC. But this expansion also brought with it new threats.

In the east, there was the growing power of the Parthian Empire, which had taken the place of the Persians. In the north there was the thunder cloud of hostile Germanic peoples. In the south there were Arab raids in Asia and Numidians in Africa

and even inside the Roman state a lot of provinces were muttering volcanoes. The provincial governors appointed by Rome were changed each year and their performance depended completely on their individual character.

There was no permanent civil service to provide stability. Here we see provincial peasants paying their taxes. The revenues from the provinces were the chief source of income for Rome

and tax collection was invariably farmed out to joint-stock companies of Roman capitalists who paid the state only a fraction of what they extorted from the native people. Something had to change, but

what? The necessary reforms could not come from the Senate because it was too conservative and it was losing its grip anyway. And reforms were not likely to come from the radicals either, since they were faced each other, each with his own heart,

each claiming to stand for Rome, each trying to keep it in his grasp. In the end, this struggle left Julius Caesar victorious. He took power in 46 BC, and at once the Senate rushed to load him with honors. The honor he liked best was the right to wear the triumphal laurel wreath at all times because this made his baldness less conspicuous, but there were

more serious advantages. He was voted consul and the first dictator for life. The month was called by his name, July. And he was given the title of Imperator, which used to mean

simply victorious general, but which came to mean what it now signifies, emperor, sovereign ruler. Caesar did not live long to enjoy his power. After only two years of dictatorship, he was murdered in the Senate in 44 BC by men who were not willing to see the Republic die so easily.

But the Republic was doomed in spite of the Senator's efforts. There was another period of anarchy and bloody struggle before Julius Caesar's grandnephew, Octavian,

vanquished his uncle's enemies and his own. In 31 before Christ, at the Battle of Actium, he defeated his last serious rival, Mark Antony, who had allied himself with the last Ptolemy queen of Egypt, Cleopatra.

And so Octavian was now the absolute master of the empire. He inherited all of Caesar's powers and he increased them further. Within four years of Actium, the Senate conferred upon him a combination of military and religious titles, Emperor Augustus.

And so he too got a month of his own. to the long reign of Augustus was going to be the Pax Romana, the longest period of peace

and stability the Mediterranean world has ever known. Augustus' two main props were the imperial bureaucracy and the imperial army of defense,

which were both under his authority. Although ostensibly he ruled with the Senate, he saw to it that the Senate was colonized by his men and that the Imperial Civil Service, which was nominally under Senate scrutiny, was filled with his choices too. In fact, he dominated everything.

South Africa, are you ready for a weekend of cheers? This is how you support the chaps these civil servants would prove indispensable to the sprawling empire

and the growing number of administrators reflected a new degree of social mobility and opportunity because these people were being recruited from the general body of citizens not just the patricians

Sometimes they might even be ex-slaves or freedmen. At the same time, Augustus tried to reawaken Rome's citizens to their civic duties in order to keep them loyal to the state. He tried very hard to revive the old Roman virtues, using Roman history and legends very much as American history was once used to discourage small children from telling lies or to encourage

adults to patriotism and enterprise. All this, however, depended on the army or rather on the fundamental stability and security that only the army could provide.

Under Augustus and for some time thereafter, every army commander depended directly on the emperor, not on the senate or the people.

He was no longer an entrepreneur recruiting soldiers and gambling on his own abilities. He was an employee of the state who could be transferred from one army to another just

as generals are today. Except for the household troops of the Emperor, the Praetorian Guard, shown here, the great bulk of the army was based along the frontiers, strung out in small garrisons and fortified camps along thousands of miles of imperial boundaries.

because everyone was heartily sick of fighting and partly because in the long run war has to pay and there were few enemies with wealth worth conquering around the border and those who did border Rome were very tough indeed. From

now on the biggest threat would be the poor and hungry barbarians trying to get inside rich Roman territory. And so the army became a defensive force,

increasingly expert in building border fortifications like this one on the Danube. It was not very interested in expansion anymore, because expansion would only cost money and strain the administration

without bringing any tangible benefits. There was little treasure in the lands of the barbarians, only trouble. But the Imperial Army was more than just a thin wall strung out around the Empire.

Its permanent camps became centres of urban development, centres of Roman civilisation. Many of the great cities of Europe were born as army camps from Vienna

and Budapest to York, from Lisbon and Bordeaux to Cologne. The centuries of security that the Roman army ensured, and the roads it built, and the settlements it created, allowed Greek and Roman culture to take root so deeply that even when the barbarian invaders eventually broke through, they were not able to dispel it. A lot of our culture today is owed in no small part to those legions. Each army outpost bore the signs of Roman life from

its temples and public buildings to its theaters and bars. We talked earlier about the impact of Greek philosophy and learning. In the West, with a mark of Rome everywhere, education in Latin became an important vehicle

for social mobility, especially for civil servants, and it was also a vehicle for socialization to teach the conservative values of the Roman ruling class. In architecture, the Romans developed a dome and large-scale

vaulting and the whole concept of vast, impressive interior space that had not much interest in the Greeks. These were spectacular architectural advances. Still, to a layman like myself, the main contribution of the Romans was to take Greek designs and

make them larger and grander. Roman architecture also made vast advances in engineering. Roman sculpture reflects Roman practicality. It can see it especially in the portrait busts of the emperors which were to be found in every corner of the empire. one by one and seen them relapse into barbarism or degenerate into petty tyranny. The barbarians

of the East and the North would have invaded Roman territories centuries before they did. A parochial Rome would certainly have been destroyedoked by debris instead of being carried forward

by conscientious Roman students. And when Christianity came in during the first century AD, this imperial Roman tradition which the reforms and the will of Augustus had made possible would profoundly influence

the organization and the thinking of the church. The imperial tradition would Romanize Christianity, help make it the great organized, centralized, bureaucratized institution.

It eventually became, quite literally, the Church of Rome, as we shall you next time. Oh, my goodness. rulers until the stamp of Greco-Roman culture was left on Europe and on the Mediterranean

world.

And those affected were the Jews, and through Jews, a new heresy spread that would transform

the West.

Early Christianity, this time on the Western tradition. And now UCLA Professor Eugene Webber's continuing journey through the history of Western civilization.

The story of the Roman Empire can be simply told. The two centuries that opened with the Emperor Augustus were a time of peace and prosperity. There were crazy emperors and murderous emperors and murdered emperors, but the empire marched on. The Mediterranean was full of ships, the roads were safe, the borders were well-guarded.

Greco-Roman civilization be so stable and perfect.

And politics were not about how things should go but how things should be kept the way they were.

The third century however was a time of troubles, of war, of civil war until the reign of Diocletian from 284 to 305, which was a period of reorganization and reconstruction.

For nearly another century, there was relative peace, but after that, everything went to pieces. The economy cracked, the provinces were invaded by barbarians, Rome itself was sacked, And in 476, Romulus Augustus retired to the country,

the last emperor to rule from Rome over the western part of Yemen. And so the end came just about five centuries after the Battle of Actium and the beginning of the Peace of Augustus.

It was a remarkable run. As Edward Gibbon, the 18th century historian, wrote, instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed,

we should rather be surprised that it subsisted so long. The real turning point came not in the 5th century, but way back in the 2nd and 3rd centuries,

when Rome realized that she was mortal and when the calm confidence of an earlier age lapsed into something more anxious, more uneasy, increasingly decadent.

You can chart the change in the portraits the best emperors Rome ever had.

He seems to have grown old with a sense of humor and a certain skepticism. Fifty years later, however, emperors, just like their subjects, looked sad or worse.

This is a portrait of Marcus Aurelius, a stoic who ruled from 161 to 180. He was an excellent emperor, but one who seemed

to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. From that time on, the emperors range from sad to worried, as in this portrait of Decius, to brutish, like the emperor Caracalla, or to simply insane like the young Commodus, son and successor

of Marcus Aurelius, who rejected the rationalism of the Stoics and invoked the protection of every Oriental deity in the book. Sibylle, the great mother from Asia Minor, Mithras Asia, Isis from Egypt, and any other god who promised salvation or immortality.

So in the course of one century, the Romans shifted from confidence and stability to anxious uncertainty. And their view of the world shifted as well, especially in religion and philosophy. in the second century BC, when Rome first became open to Greek ideas, the philosophy

that became popular was Stoicism. You remember that for the Stoics, the basis of morality was conformity with nature, not only one's truly human nature, but also that of the divine world order. The wise man perceived true nature and true order and conformed to them. The

Romans adapted this to their needs by emphasizing self-mastery, temperance, courage, dedication. But they also learned the universal humanitarian ideas of Stoicism and their limited original notion of virtu as manliness in the service

of the state. This was enlarged and enriched. The old parochial morality was broadened into a new humanism to the practical problems of political and social life. Born in 106

BC, Cicero, shown here, was a Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher until his outspokenness against Mark Anthony and Octavian got him killed. It was in the name of a more humane philosophy that the stoic Seneca became the tutor and then the counselor of the young emperor Nero,

until Nero accused him of conspiracy and ordered him to take his own life. And it was stoic philosophy that helped justify a princeps like Augustus, a first citizen, that is, who would be the wise and virtuous protector of the state.

The Stoics had transformed the platonic notion of a philosopher-king into the idea that all men were equal in essence, but not in ability or virtue.

There were a few superior souls, like Augustus, who had pressed through to lighter knowledge, and these alone could conceive and carry out what was good.

And many of the reforms of Augustus reflected this conception of the exceptional man, a man with a mission who set out to re-establish and secure the balance and harmony of the world that were threatened by excess and corruption. Hence Augustus' efforts to restore the old moral virtues, to reaffirm traditional marriage, to reestablish old religious on Greco-Roman humanism, whose values would still be taught in school in the 19th and 20th centuries. But this Augustan restoration, which lasted a long time, ultimately proved precarious because it depended on exceptional individuals individuals to handle an immense and overwhelming task, the governing of an empire. And these

outstanding individuals were not always available. The restoration was also shaky because the

culture that was offered, or rather imposed upon the lower classes by Augustus, this clashed with a brutishness and irrationality that was common among the lower classes.

And rationality sat uneasily on the upper classes as well, so when hard times came, it proved a veneer easy to discard. Augustus tried to introduce an ascetic, elitist philosophy good for the brightest and best.

These men were told that public service was their duty and that power had to be exercised only to good ends and then with moderation. The religious rituals were too businesslike, too cool for hot periods, and the philosophy was too demanding for normal people.

So when security collapsed and the economy broke down, danger and death were more on their minds and in their heart. Stoicism was replaced by new ideas and new aspirations.

this by saying that they wanted salus, a word which originally meant simply physical health,

but which came to mean the health of the soul, that is, salvation. Stoic humanism might be good for a philosopher like Seneca, but the psychotic emperor Nero did not want to be told what to do, and Seneca's stoicism came in handy when Nero asked him to commit suicide. A century later, stoicism

led Marcus Aurelius to write his Meditations, but his son and successor Commodus was a crazy lout, less interested in inner fortitude than in magic salvation. By that time, Roman culture was running hard just to stand still.

Respectable citizens were trying to plumb the great unknown by way of seances like this one. Emperors prayed for miracles to get them out of tight spots. And ordinary people relied on religious charms, astrologers and soothsayers, and lots of amulets. If you're caught in an air raid and the bombs are falling,

you'll know that virtue or wisdom or strength make no difference and you pray for divine intervention. That's what happened as the second century slipped into the third and the fourth.

In politics, in thought, in the arts, the realism and naturalism and the sense of perspective that were part of a rational attitude to nature

and the world, these gave way. The more disorder grew, the less relevant rationalities. The more the empire cracked, the less self-discipline and of escape, which brings me to Christianity.

There are three things we have to bear in mind when we look at early Christianity. First, the cultural context of a Hellenistic world all around it.

Second, the Jewish sources of the new creed and the Jewish influences on it. And third, the changes in the contemporary world between the first century when Christianity was born and the fourth century when it was

recognized by the Roman state. In other words, the ways in which the world affected Christianity and the ways in which Christianity affected the world.

If we begin by looking at the dominant Hellenistic culture of the ancient world, we find that it had been deeply infiltrated by Orientalism, especially as regards religion. This for example is a Roman figure one of the mystery religions, or from a gnostic cult, claiming to offer

access to gnosis, or knowledge of spiritual mysteries. These cults were most popular among women and among the lower classes for whom they

had been greatly simplified and vulgarized. new, but their importance in the Hellenistic, Greco-Roman world was new. Speaking in general

terms, we might describe that world as skeptical, tolerant, and materialistic. This, for example, is a pillow merchant doing business in the marketplace. But it was above all, perhaps, a cosmopolitan world in which under Roman rule, tribes and races intermingled

within the same empire. In the midst of this, only the Jews really kept their identity and their uncompromising Semitic outlook. The The Hebrews were Semites, and so were the people we now call Arabs.

power but with whom they had a particular unique and exclusive relationship. It was this idea that kept them alive as a people through years of trial and tribulations, alive and also jealously aloof from other religious influences in the world around. Although Hellenistic influences affected the Jews as they affected everybody else, they affected

them first in a contrary fashion, by making them resist assimilation, by stirring their nationalism, and by forcing them to unify his realm by wiping out competing religions and traditions. And so he prohibited circumcision and dietary laws, which were central to Judaism. The Jews of course refused to give up their traditions. They refused to worship Antiochus IV as a god to subordinate their religion to the state. The friction

got worse until it finally erupted in the bloody Maccabean revolt of 164 BC. That was so bloody and murderous that even today the French slang for corpse is macabre.

These are coins struck by the new Maccabean rulers. As often happens, the results of the revolt went well beyond the practical issues that set it off. The chief result was mainly that in resistance the Jewish religion survived as a distinct and very self-conscious belief.

If Antiochus had succeeded, if Judaism as such had died out, neither Christianity nor Mohammedanism in the form they actually took would have existed. But as it happened, the persecutions and the fighting

produced a sort of revival of Judaism, partly as a nationalistic manifestation, partly as a search for consolation. War was hell, life was hell, and so just to make up for it, the the Jews started to think of heaven. The chief result was mainly that in resistance the Jewish

religion survived as a distinct and very self-conscious belief. If Antiochus had succeeded, if Judaism

as such had died out, neither Christianity nor Mohammedanism in the form they actually took would have existed. But as it happened, the persecutions and the fighting produced a sort of revival of Judaism, partly as a nationalistic manifestation, partly as a search for consolation.

And so, just to make up for it, the Jews started to think of heaven.

They took over ideas of immortality from the Gnostics, and they did this partly to encourage themselves and their friends not to bow to Antiochus and to the Syrian gods. Look at it this way. If you had to choose between sticking to Jehovah and being burned, or worshipping a barbarian god like Baal and staying alive,

you could take comfort and fortitude from the fact that if you were burned, you would be rewarded afterwards in eternity, which is a long time.

On the other hand, if you broke your contact with Jehovah, life was short and you would be very sorry afterwards. The Hellenistic influence which was rejected by the Jews when he tried a frontal attack

was however going to affect Jewish thought in more subtle ways through the ethical developments of Pharisaic philosophy. The Pharisees were a religious sect given to piety, earnest prayer, strict observance of Jewish law, but also to interpreting the law of Moses in the context of changing situations.

Jewish observance in general centered increasingly on reading the law and the scriptures in the synagogue, discussing them, interpreting them. This was a habit which led people to think for themselves

and to listen to others around them who were developing notions to be found less in the scriptures than in current thought. Belief in an immortal soul, in angelic spirits, in personal resurrection in free will reconciled with predestination. So with one ear to Hellenistic

culture and another to their inner voice, the Pharisees were going to evolve most of the socially significant ideas which have since come down to us in the New Testament.

The Sermon on the Mount is a perfect reflection of early Pharisaic doctrine. For those of you who know it, here is a passage that may sound familiar. Love ye one another from the heart, and if a man sin against thee,

speak peaceably to him, and in thy soul hold no doubt. And if he repent and confess, forgive him. But if he deny it, do not get into a passion with him, lest catching the poison with thee he take to swearing, and so sin double.

And if you be shameless and persist in wrongdoing, even so forgive him from the heart, and leave to God the avenging. This passage was written by Jews over a century before the birth of Christ. It comes from the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs,

which was written between 109 and 107 BC, and which later proved extremely popular with St. Paul, and was probably known to Christ as well. Now, obviously, we cannot understand understand Christianity unless we realize that it was the product of this

long development and interaction of thought and religion within and upon the Jewish people. Jesus after all was a Jew and probably a rabbi who followed Jewish

law. And Christianity was first preached by Jews to Jews as a sort of reformed Judaism. Jesus won a considerable following among Jews,

especially among the poor, until his success provoked the hostility of the Jewish establishment which did not find it difficult to convince the Roman governor that Jesus was a dangerous radical. So the Romans put him to death in Jerusalem probably in 30 AD. But it's important

to realize that from the first, Christianity claimed to be not a break from but the continuation and the fulfillment of triumph over their enemies.

The Christians inherited a lot of things from the Jews, including the Semitic sense of world worthlessness and the conflict between body and spirit.

And they took over, too, the typically Jewish vision of a blinding, all-powerful God above and the abject condition of man below

with his overwhelming sense of sin and a passion for salvation. But this salvation could not come from anything man could do, as the rationalist Greeks might have argued, but only from God, or as St. Paul later put it, from faith in God, which in Christian

terms is simply faith in the reality and value of Christ's sacrifice. However, there is one thing to remember about all this. At the beginning, in order to be a Christian, you had to be a Jew.

There was no thought of separateness in Christian communities which were merely reformed religious groups within a Jewish community. We shall see how this changed and why in our next program.

The time is provided by Annenberg C.P.V. to advance excellent teaching. An obscure Jewish sect follows the teachings of a heretical prophet

who claims he is the son of God.

How did the cult of Christ

withstand the might of the Roman Empire and then become its ally? The rise of the church, this time on the Western tradition.

UCLA Professor Eugene Webber's continuing journey through the history of Western civilization.

Last time we ended at the dawn of Christianity when Christ and his disciples were preaching to their fellow Jews a sort of reformed Judaism. Where the long tradition of the Hebrew prophets promised the coming of a Messiah who would establish the kingdom of God on earth, Jesus seems to have preached that there would be no kingdom.

judgment coming very soon when the wicked would be punished and the righteous rewarded.

And so the message was, abandon all sin while you still have time. This was definitely a departure from orthodoxy, but even so, there was no thought of separateness in Christian

communities until that is, St. Paul came along.

Paul was a Roman citizen born in the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor. He was a rabbi and a Pharisee, in other words, a very pious Jew. And as a p on the road to Damascus, and he became convinced

that Jesus was the Son of God. Here is a 15th century version of Paul's conversion. Paul turned out to be the great organizer, the great public relations manager of the young

faith, and in effect he made Christianity competitive with other religions. He enlarged its scope by recruiting outside the restricted group of people who obeyed Jewish law.

He admitted non-Jews without asking them to be circumcised first, and without insisting they respect the ritual laws, especially the laws concerning food. He probably did it because he was in a hurry.

The end of the world was coming and you couldn't quibble over trifles. But it's worth remembering that Paul and his like were able to spread Christianity because of Roman roads and Roman peace, as well as his skill and the religion's

appeal. It was Rome that linked the Mediterranean world together. Equally important was the coin, the Greeks' common dialect, which spread from east to west, making all the Mediterranean a bilingual world

where traveling men could make themselves understood everywhere. St. Paul wrote to the Romans in Greek, and until early in the 3rd century AD, the language of Christian liturgy in the Church of Rome was Greek.

It was also into Greek that the Hebrew scriptures had been translated two centuries before Christ. That extremely important translation was finished in Hellenistic Alexandria with its great Jewish community. It was called the Septuagint from

the Latin for 70 because there were supposed to have been 70 translators. And so it was ready for early Christian missionaries when they began to carry their message through through the world. In the synagogues which you could find in Hellenistic cities like

this one, Dura-er-Ropos, the translations of the Hebrew scriptures were read and studied. And I don't think the early Christian church would have gone very far, or Paul either,

without the Septuagint and the synagogue, and without writing the New Testament in the Greek Koine from the very beginning. So here you have a crucial

interconnection of factors. First, the conquest of the Roman Empire which unified the Mediterranean world. Second, the Hellenistic creation of a common

speech for this world. Both were preconditions for the advance of Christianity. However, as time went on, the Jews became increasingly hostile to Christians,

and the Christians also became more and more hostile to the Jews. To the Jews, the Christians were heretics. To the Christians, the Jews were willfully blind to what was so evident and so evidently holy. And so Christianity separated from Judaism.

It left the fairly straightforward path of Jewish religious thought and moving westward along both shores of the first century

by a great Jewish rising against Rome and a wave of anti-Semitism that swept over the East about the same time. But then the Roman procession with the spoils of Jerusalem. At this point,

the Christians were still pretty much a Jewish sect, and they were emotionally affected by the humiliating defeat. But then two things happened. On the one hand, a lot of Christians were left with an abiding hatred of secular power. On the other hand, as you can tell from this coin with the inscription, Judea taken captive, established Jewish communities and the power of Orthodox Jewish religion temporarily collapsed so the Christians found it easier to break free.

The earthly Jerusalem had been destroyed so that now the ideal version could be better projected into heaven without having to worry about real nations and real governments.

The result of all this can be found in the suggestion made by Origen, a Christian teacher who lived in Alexandria in the 3rd century. Origen wrote that Christians should not take part in the government of the state, but that

their only concern should be the divine nation, that is, the church.ome churchmen went even further denying the world and their own bodies which in the dichotomy between spirit and flesh came out a poor second. They gave away their

property, they fasted, they flagellated themselves and Origen, its story would have ended there. But fortunately, St. Paul suggested it was better to marry than to burn.

Still, the unworldly anti-secular ideas of Origen remained influential, and as the Roman Empire disintegrated, churchmen looked on with some detachment. They exercised their talents in bitter theological controversies

and in the spread of monastic communities like this one in Greece, cut off from the wicked world where Christians could concentrate on personal salvation and spend their lives

in contemplation and penitence. It can be argued, and it was argued even at the time, that this attitude was a sort of sour grapes, a retreat from the world when the world became too hard to bear,

denying earthly values in order to secure oneself against their loss. It can also be argued, however, that when you deny certain values, you are, at least by implication,

you are affirming alternative values. that. To many people of that time, even this positive aspect looked uncommonly like a negative one. And to understand this, we have to imagine what these early Christians looked like to

the respectable property owners of the first three centuries after Christ. To begin with, many people thought the Christians were crazy or drunk. The resurrection of Christ and the ascension were incompatible with natural science,

and for a late pagan intellectual to accept the incarnation of God in the human form as Jesus would be like a modern man denying the evolution of species. He would have to abandon

not just the most advanced rational knowledge available, but by implication the whole Greco-Roman culture that had been marked by that knowledge. But the ultimate accusation was the one that the high priest brings to the Roman governor against St. Paul

when he complains, we have found this man to be a pestilent fellow and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. And this is the point. These

Christians are dangerous. They insist that all men are brothers, that the beggar is as good as the solid citizen, that the slave is equal to his master in essence, if not

in fact, since this doesn't prevent Christians from keeping slaves. All in all, they deny the value of everything society holds dear. The good shepherd offers salvation, not money, or family, or property, or success, or service to the state.

Leave thy father and thy mother and thy brother and follow me. What good will all this do you if you have lost your own soul? Or what was even worse, the Christians even denied the final power of the emperor be the ultimate good or aim of the state.

And if that aim, God's aim, clashes with that of Caesar, there is no doubt about whom the Christian must follow. Think for a minute of the revolutionary character of such ideas being spread around a society where material values reign supreme, ideas which found particular favor with a

proletariat, especially around the ports and the Levantine cities. It's a society where gods, like Diana here, were anthropomorphic with human form and personality, where the emperor was God, where imperial unity called increasingly for religious unity

and for the subordination of private opinions to the state. So Christians were dangerous and they were subversive because their success threatened not just the state but the whole established accepted basis of social life and social values. When Christ says, my kingdom is not of this world, he means that the world is irrelevant, which challenges every stoic notion of civic duty.

God means the end of politics on earth, insofar as you define politics as a reasonable attempt to organize human society. On the other hand, a lot of what the Christians said could have fitted the Stoic tradition. The focus on individual salvation, the rejection of social or national differences, above all the high moral values.

They all sounded familiar or they could be made to sound familiar. And so on another level did the mystic aspect of Christianity and its promise of a special revelation, a special road to salvation,

just like the other so-called mystery religions, the cults of Mithras, of Isis, and so on. But the real secret weapon of the Christians

was that they soon developed a tight-knit, disciplined organization that stretched all over the empire. It all began with the fact that Christians had a book, the Bible, full of potent promises and stories of miracles that bore out the tales attested to by people who were practically contemporaries. and reading and having discussions about the Gospels,

took advantage of Roman respect for tombs to organize themselves legally as burial societies. And this is one of their catacombs, their underground burial tunnels. This meant that even when the authorities persecuted the Christians,

they generally respected their catacombs, at least until the third century, when the Christians were already pretty well organized. There was also the fact that while Christianity was just as mysterious

as any other mystery cult, it was much cheaper to join. Initiation as a worshipper of Mithras called for a bull. Initiation into the cult of Isis called for a whole series of gifts and sacrifices.

But if you wanted to worship Christ, there were no initial expenses. And most church meetings were rather like highly emotional Sunday school picnics. It was pleasant and it was economical.

But if you wanted to, and you probably did want to, you could give alms to the church. By the third century the church had become rich. Alms giving was a judicious transfer of capital from this world to the next, a sort of fire

insurance. These contributions and legacies accumulated in the hand of the bishops and were devoted almost exclusively to charity and not just for Christians either. You can imagine what a tremendous lever of power this Christian charity must have been

as the imperial Roman organization disintegrated, as misery increased, as the great cities crowded with starving poor, as men were thrown out of work or off their lands by barbarians or nobles or tax collectors. And the Christian bishops who controlled the arms were often the only

honest men around or the only honest powerful men around. The provincial governors and other magistrates were mostly blue-blooded ninis appointed for a year or two to act as the

figurehead of an ill-paid and hence corruptible staff. And so in the third century, the bishop stands out as a permanent figure in his town, dedicated to his job, to his flock, and responsible only to God.

And then by the next century, he also offers something everybody wants, a free, quick, uncorrupt settlement of lawsuits by arbitration. And this is sought by pagans and heretics as much as it is by Christians. So the church became a force to be reckoned with until by the 4th century it was officially recognized by the Roman state.

who enlisted the support of the Christians against his chief opponent,

his opponent who worshipped Sol Invictus, the invincible son, as most soldiers did then. Constantine, who was emperor from 306 to 337,

was given to visions and conversions he had shifted from one god to another before. This time, however, a vision told him that the sign of the cross would bring him victory.

And so he put the cross on his banner and on the shields of his soldiers, and it worked. In 312, Constantine defeated his chief rival, Maxation to the church and freedom of worship to all Christians.

It also established an alliance between the Christian church and the Roman state that was going to last a very long time. Within a few decades, tolerance for Christians turned into the right for Christians to be intolerant of any other faith or church, and to tear

down temples like this temple of Artemis in Jordan. Around 400, public paganism was suppressed, the temples were closed everywhere, the statues brokenable alliance of cities and their gods were carted away to pave the public highways.

For the Jews during this period, there were pogroms, organized massacres, which enlisted the antisemitism of the urban Greeks in the closing of temples, persecution, sometimes lynchings, as happened with Hypatia,

a distinguished lady of Alexandria who went in for philosophy and mathematics. As described by Edward Gibbon, the historian who didn't like early Christians very much,

Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanely butchered by a troop of savage, merciless fanatics.

Her flesh was scraped from the bones with sharp oyster shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flame. The just progress of inquiry and punishment was stopped by seasonable gifts.

Thus, Gibbon. By the time this happened in 415, the Christians were reserving most of their passion for fighting each other, and they invested far more fury and energy in persecuting fellow Christians than they did in hurting non-Christians,

especially as non-Christians were becoming ever more scarce. What you get now is the clash of groups holding strong views on things like diet, marriage, property, clothing,

which could and often did lead to violence. Above all, you get doctrinal discord about the Trinity, the union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,

which is a difficult concept anyway, and especially about the nature of Christ himself. Is Christ a man who becomes God? Is he a God who temporarily becomes a man? Is he a God who is God and man at the same time?

And is he equal to God the Father, or subordinate, as a son should be? This may sound like hair splitting but a lot of blood was shed and a lot of people suffered for each of these views. Rival doctrines also became associated

with this region or that they became part of what we might call a national or tribal identity. For example the city of Constantinople stood for a Christian God who combines two natures in one, Alexandria

stood for one nature only. From then on, when one province or people or political party fought another, it would very often be as orthodox against heretic on behalf of one or another. As long as Christians had been part of an alternative society, their shrines

had been harbors in a world ruled by demonic powers. But now, the alternative to society had become the society. The shrines proclaimed the greatness of God and of his church, and they also provided arenas where battles between Christians could

be fought out.

The Christian himself had been an athlete in Christ, committed to a wrestling match, an agon, as the Greeks called it, a match against evil and darkness and his own lower

nature. and his own lower nature. Now that the churches were full, he could wrestle against those whose idea of truth, especially Christian truth, was different from his own. And this

was to bring centuries of conflict, as we shall see in the programs of later. Thank you.