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Once removed from the synagogue, the followers of the Way had to hold meetings elsewhere. A model for the required organisation was at hand in the free associations that honeycombed the Roman world. While the social purposes of these clubs were extensively varied, all had the same organisation. One point in reply: the communists were prior to the fascists in rejecting the core of pre-1914 morality. When the other Apostles agreed that Paul should preach to the Gentiles, they certainly were not going to do that themselves. Peter couldn’t have preached what he didn’t understand. Not having Paul’s talents, they would have had even less success in preaching in the synagogues if they had preached Paul’s theology. If James – Jesus’s brother no less – is an example, they didn’t. Galatians ii.12 implies that James was ‘of the circumcision’ party who consistently opposed Paul (Acts. xv.1). As a consequence of that party’s preaching, the followers of the Way within the synagogue would not have become anything very distinct. They believed Jesus was the Messiah, but such claims were evidently not that unusual. Before the destruction of the Temple and the consequences of that, there had been another event that carried the same effect. The followers of the Way, later called Christians, had been taken out of the synagogue (Acts.xix.9). There were also forcible expulsions (John. ix. 22). Of course, it is true that the empires of Britain and to some extent France were more merciful than those of their rivals, but that is not the result of some Hegelian metamorphosis, but the consequence of a growing devotion to human happiness, typical of the Enlightened West.
Hachette Book Group is a leading book publisher based in New York and a division of Hachette Livre, the third-largest publisher in the world. Social Media Thankfully, with Pax we are treated to good views of the Colosseum, the Palatine, and the Pantheon as well. Nor does the tour end there: we spend a dramatic few days in the Bay of Naples, watching in horror along with Pliny the Younger as Vesuvius wipes out countless lives and flattens cities; we visit the northern extremes along the Danube and the Rhine; cross the cold grey sea to meet the strange and barbarous Caledonians; traverse the mountains and plains of Parthia; and sail along the Nile mourning with Hadrian for the loss of his lover. And then there is the written style, both flamboyant and eloquent, that is the hallmark of Holland’s writing. Although there is nothing to rival my favourite quotation – of any history book – ‘that the Athenians were content to ascribe the origins of their city to a discarded toss-rag’, there is still a delightful turn of phrase that brings to life his subjects ‘in all their ambivalence, their complexity and their contradictions’. Tom Holland, Persian Fire (London: Abacus, 2006), p. 101; Pax, p. xxiv. Just as the ‘golden age’ of Rome is a story of assimilation, of peoples coming together under an all-encompassing flag, in Pax Holland has achieved a remarkable synthesis of ideas and themes, of astounding scholarship and beautiful accessibility, to make something that truly stands out from the crowd. Dio goes on to say its purpose was to insult the memory of Domitian’s (deceased) elder brother Titus. Cutiliae was situated in the rural territory east of Rome known as the Sabina. Vespasian himself, with his rustic accent and manners, was considered a bit of a country bumpkin, and might seem an improbable emperor from an improbable source. But in the Roman imaginary the Sabina evoked tough and thrifty peasants and solid, old-fashioned values. Tom Holland’s Pax, the third instalment of his Roman trilogy, describes the collapse of the Julio-Claudian dynasty with the assassination of Nero, the civil conflict that followed, the Flavians who emerged from it, and the ‘Spanish Emperors’, Trajan and Hadrian, to whom has been attributed the settled heyday of the Roman Empire, the Pax, ‘peace’, of Holland’s title. A persistent theme is how the various contenders for power presented their credentials to the Romans. In Vespasian’s case, his origins in a part of Italy that might appear a few hundred years behind Rome, appealing in itself, also complemented the blunt, no-nonsense military manner he cultivated. ‘Woe is me, I think I’m becoming a god!’, he joked on his deathbed, while a response to his son Titus when he questioned the propriety of a new tax on toilets has resulted in the French word for a public urinal, vespasienne. TH: Well, it wasn’t just young men, but we’ll come to that. There is always a temptation to emphasise the way in which the Romans are like us, a mirror held up to our own civilisation. But what is far more interesting is the way in which they are nothing like us, because it gives you a sense of how various human cultures can be. You assume that ideas of sex and gender are pretty stable, and yet the Roman understanding of these concepts was very, very different to ours. For us, I think, it does revolve around gender — the idea that there are men and there are women — and, obviously, that can be contested, as is happening at the moment. But the fundamental idea is that you are defined by your gender. Are you heterosexual or homosexual? That’s probably the great binary today.About the Author Tom Holland is an award-winning historian of the ancient world, a translator of Greek and Roman classical texts, and a documentary writer. He is the author of six other books, including Rubicon, Persian Fire, and Dominion. He contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He co-presents the podcast The Rest Is History. He lives in London. Quite an extraordinary blunder, don’t they proof read these things anymore ? Or is Mr Holland* telling us that he is NOT a classicist?
Holland has an eye for an evocative anecdote. The chapter opening with the pen*s of a 90-year-old man being inspected in a court of law is a masterpiece. And his prose is superb. In one poetic passage he describes ‘smoke drifting from the roofs of tenant farms; vineyards and orchards laden down with succulent fruit; herds of cattle lowing softly in the deepening twilight’. Rarely has the distant past seemed so vividly alive” The definitive history of Rome’s golden age – antiquity’s ultimate superpower at the pinnacle of its greatness FS: What’s going on in your head when you are researching these characters? Does it make you think differently about our own morality today? FS: And yet, there are love stories in this period. In your book, you describe Trajan as having “such a passion for boys that an Assyrian king looking to win the emperor’s favour had secured it by getting his son to perform some barbaric dance”. So that’s the kind of decadent type that you’ve been talking about. But then the book ends with the love affair between the Emperor Hadrian and Antinous, which feels very emotional and very different. This was a time of change - four emperors in one year as civil war raged, followed by relative peacefulness until under Antonius Pius, adopted father of Marcus Aurelius, peace reigned across the Empire.Pax is a captivating narrative history of Rome at the height of its power…historian Tom Holland shows ancient Rome in all its glory.” FS: It seemed to me, when I was reading Pax, that there was a recurring theme: a movement between what’s considered decadence, and then a reassertion of either a more manly, martial atmosphere, or a return to how things used to be — to the good old days. With each new emperor in this amazing narrative, it often feels like there’s that same kind of mood, which is: things have gotten a bit soft. We’re going to return to proper Rome. Question One: How much credit can you give the emperors for Pax Romana? And how much was it just good timing and circumstance? If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.
Nor is this an un-Christian view, for Christianity, although it reposes upon the supernatural in its central doctrines (the Incarnation and the Resurrection, for example), does not insist that supernatural intervention changed the whole of human nature in the first three centuries AD – which is perilously near to what Mr Holland is saying. Holland’s superb storytelling takes us right into this era as viewed from every standpoint (including our own), offering fresh and vivid insights into well-worn history.” But authenticity could take many forms in Rome. When Vespasian’s second son Domitian succeeded to the throne after Titus’ premature death, having hitherto acted, arguably, like the archetypal spare, his approach was to style himself as censor. This was a time-honoured role in Rome that encompassed not only morals (though he did bury alive a Vestal Virgin convicted of adultery) but also enhancement of the physical city (‘a lunatic desire to build’, as one author described it), and increasing the silver content of the coinage. As well as being an impeccably traditional office, the censorship was an ideal vehicle for an emperor whose talent was micromanagement. Domitian was also an emperor, it is fair to say, who had little time for the polite fiction, maintained since the first emperor Augustus, that any institution other than the army (the Praetorian Guard in Rome and the legions scattered around the Empire) was necessary for establishing and maintaining imperial authority. Question Four: You talked a lot about the radical break that Christianity represented — the contrast with the extremely ruthless, pre-Christian, Roman world. Do you think there’s a case to be made, as I seem to recall Gibbon did, that Christianity was the ultimate example of the Romans getting soft? We welcome applications to contribute to UnHerd – please fill out the form below including examples of your previously published work.Sex has always been binary, though the concept of ‘gender’ has been more fluid for the reason it is socially constructed according to time and to culture. I think he is also confusing today’s concept of ‘sexual orientation’ with the actaul nature of biological sex.
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