Hist1121GR-Christianity

Greco-Roman Culture and the Rise of Christianity

Outline of Lecture

1. Limitations of Greco-Roman Culture 14 A.D. - 200 A.D.
A. Why was There a Search for New Meaning at the Height of Imperial Power and Prosperity? The Factors Making the Empire Strong, Prosperous, and Civilized Also Revealed the Weaknesses of Classical Culture
B. What were the Three Ideals Offered by Rome?
C. Ideal One: Security and Justice under Eternal Rome. Attraction and Weakness of this Ideal.
D. Ideal Two: Material Prosperity. Attraction and Weakness of this Ideal.
E. Ideal Three: the Civilized Life and Culture of the Empire. Attraction and Weakness of this Ideal.

Limitations of Greco-Roman Culture 14 A.D. - 200 A.D.

Even during the Pax Romana a growing number of people searched for spiritual and emotional meaning which they could not find in the prosperity, security and civilized life of the empire. It is difficult to analyze these feelings because they represented an underlying mood instead of the dominant spirit of this era. Still, some characteristics of the search for new meaning are clear. Many wanted some emotional justification for believing in their own individual worth within a vast world-state ruled by a distant emperor. They sought a non-intellectual or non-volitional explanation of life. And they wanted to be assured that they would survive in an afterlife as the unique personalities they were in this life.

Why did these feelings begin to stir during the height of imperial power and prosperity? There is no simple reason--human behavior is too complex for that. But one answer which explains much is that the same conditions making the empire strong, prosperous and civilized also revealed the weaknesses of classical culture and thus produced deeper spiritual and emotional needs than that culture could satisfy. Paradoxically, as the three attractive ideals were realized under the aegis of Eternal Rome--safety, prosperity and the expansion of civilized life--there also appeared a general weariness with classical culture and its beliefs and values. Each of these three ideals and its cultural effect bears looking at briefly.

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1. Do you buy the theory that the ideals and actual conditions of safety, security, prosperity, and civilized life contributed to the rise of feelings antagonistic to those ideals? That is like saying that people want more than security and material wealth and that there are positive human needs of an emotional, spiritual nature which security and material wealth cannot satisfy. Do you agree?
2. It has been said that the ancient world as represented by the Roman empire was at a dead end and had nowhere else to go. Do you agree? Was the fall of Rome a good thing?

An important part of the appeal of Eternal Rome was the promise of security and justice under Roman rule. As a result of the tighter unification of the Mediterranean world under the emperors, imperial citizens did gain greater security. The empire became stronger, as the emperors gathered power to themselves. Citizens enjoyed greater protection, not only against foreign enemies, but also against domestic violence, special privilege and injustice as Roman law spread to greater numbers. But they paid a high price for this security: the loss of political freedom to an all-powerful emperor, the destruction of all ties to groups which formerly had helped the individual define his life, and the emotional isolation of the individual who found himself without psychological support within a vast state. The imperial bureaucracy intruded into local government more and more in the interests of efficiency, justice and the prevention of disorder. The emperors also gathered powers to themselves as they moved to weaken the aristocratic and family ties which competed with their own power and which had been a source of special privilege and injustice in the Republic. The aristocracy had done much to destroy themselves as a group in the civil wars of the first century B. C., and family ties had also been weakened during that period. But the emperors caused a further decline in the power of these traditional groupings. They checked aristocratic initiative and aggrandizement and increasingly curtailed the authority of the family over individual members, all in the interest of the larger needs of imperial authority. As men were left with less and less to do in the actual running of the empire, they had less reason to give interest and energy to the political ideal that Eternal Rome was for the purpose of making the ancient world safe. As the emperors governed more, it was gradually assumed that the responsibility for governing was theirs alone. So inhabitants of the empire increasingly regarded themselves as individuals, who sank in political and social significance as the position of the emperor became ever more exalted. To the political and social problems of the empire classical culture offered little in the way of solutions.

None of the available political and social models in the Greek or Roman past had any relevance to the problems just described. Neither the Greek polis nor the Roman city-state was a realistic possibility, although both had in their own different ways been workable and even remarkably effective, as we have seen. A later model, the cosmopolis, was of no use because its inadequacies had created the problems in the first place. It held up a remote ideal, despite Virgil's use of it to articulate Eternal Rome, and offered little emotional support to the individual. The Hellenistic world had created it, but had never been able to realize it after Alexander. When the Romans adopted it with their characteristic energy and enthusiasm, they came closer to achieving the goal of uniting the inhabited world, as they defined it, into one cultural and political union. But they could not overcome the problem that the individual felt isolated and insignificant in such a vast empire. So Caesar-worship and military force became more and more important as bonds than the cosmopolitan ideal. The Caesar cult and the elaboration of court ceremony which set the emperor apart were a sign of desperation to make the ideal of Eternal Rome believable. The emperor himself, despite efforts to pose as the vigilant shepherd guarding his flock, was remote from the everyday lives of his subjects. If he was the shepherd, they were sheep: the reverse image itself posed problems. He offered them physical safety and material rewards, but he could not give personal salvation and spiritual comfort. The truth was that in this final version of the cosmopolitan ideal classical culture had come to a dead-end politically and socially. With its claim to eternity, it offered only the bleak prospect of more of the same forever. Later, within the culture Europe the cosmopolitan ideal influenced thinking about the Christian church and medieval politics, not to mention later schemes for European unity. But within classical culture there could be no further development.

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1. If ancient Rome had had mass media such as we have today, would people have felt any closer to their Caesar-god? And thus not have felt alienated?
2. Do you know anyone who "worships" some hero and tries to find some meaning in being a fan of that person? ("Fan" comes from Fanatic) Is this like Caesar worship?
3. Modern heroes tend to be anti-heroes. (They are like us, except famous for being famous.) Explain.

Another attractive feature of imperial life was material prosperity, although it too produced problems of the spirit while providing for satisfaction of physical needs. As we have seen, there is evidence that the unification of the Mediterranean world under Rome led to an unprecedented level of prosperity. In material ways life had never been better for many in the empire, despite the poverty and misery of the lower urban classes. Material plenty gave many people reasons to forget the price they were paying for it--the loss of personal liberties and personal significance in a vast world state. They could content themselves by enjoying, and being reasonably certain that their offspring would continue to enjoy, a good life of material things.

Was life enriched in other respects? Often, those who could afford to do so concentrated on material gain and pleasure. Many were like Trimalchio, the gross character in Petronius' Satyricon (late first century); not all were like that, but enough whose whole life was lavish living and sensual gratification to make Trimalchio representative of a way of life which dominated imperial society. Wealth failed to stimulate any outburst of creativity. Although more goods of a wide range were produced, the spirit behind the output was not the diversity and excitement that nurtures creativity. There was more of almost everything, but it did not matter because most of it was stamped by monotony and dullness. These characteristics, as well as the sensual preoccupation of many wealthy people, suggest that while the materialism of the empire may have satisfied many of the physical needs of life it did not give enough people a reason to live.

For those who were not satisfied with security or prosperity there was a third attractive element of imperial society: solace in the amenities provided by the cities of the empire and the mastery of the artistic and intellectual riches of the classical tradition. Civilization (city-based life) flourished in most regions of the empire. About all these cities provided, however, were amenities. The city as a humanizing way of life, deliberately shaping human beings towards the goal of excellence, had lost much of its earlier meaning. Cities no longer defined the good life in the fullest sense for their citizens. Cities were principally administrative centers for the imperial government. While they offered a sophisticated way of life, they did not provide meaning as a whole way of life. Serving primarily physical needs, they offered little guidance and support for the individual adrift in a vast empire.

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The cities just described sound like modern cities, places to live but not ways of life. Agree?

Perhaps the individual could lose himself in the rich storehouse of the classical tradition in learning and the arts. There certainly was much that was attractive there, as men of later centuries affirmed. And this now became available to more people than ever before. There was a marked expansion of learning and the arts as imperial writers and artists, finding ready patronage, busily added to what was available. More people than ever before could read what was being written, as well as the classic Greek and Roman works. And cities usually secured copies of the great examples of art and architecture. Yet the expansion of civilized life was only quantitative. Almost all creative inspiration had gone out of classical learning which settled into a body which was copied and memorized but broke no new ground. Only in architecture was there creativity in the recognition and use of interior space as an important structural dimension. Otherwise, artists and writers seemed to feel that they had little of importance to say. Even the best of them looked backward from the first century onward, imitating earlier figures and displaying a pessimism about life. Seneca (c. 5 B.C.-65 A.D.), perhaps the leading intellectual figure of the first two centuries, could identify the evils and defects of his age. Despite his own humanitarian views, however, he could not offer any improvements. His best solution was a retreat from responsibility and a withdrawal into personal virtue, a course which he could not promise had any lasting significance. Behind these deficiencies in learning lay more fundamental weaknesses in classical culture. Perhaps the most serious of these was the lack of conviction that the individual human being was worthwhile. classical views on man had originated when the stress was on the group--the tightly-knit family and the city-state--rather than the individual. Man as a reasoning being able to discern the divine order underlying the universe was worthwhile in that respect. But classical views on man emphasized the ideal type, and never did affirm the ultimate worth and dignity of the unique personality. Thus, Seneca, for example, was a humanitarian in general terms, believing that a divine spark of universal Reason dwelt in all men; he did not see the unique individual as important and worthwhile. It was mankind he and the Stoics cared about; it was mankind which possessed a divine spark. But from this principle the individual did not acquire any importance. The religions of the empire offered no more satisfying justification of the individual. Worship in the principal cults of the cities and the empire was more of a patriotic ceremony than a private experience for the individual. There was something for the individual in the mystery cults which originated in the Near East and spread throughout the empire. In their exclusiveness, secret rites and promise of salvation for the initiates they helped the individual bear his isolation and insignificance. But even the most popular of these--the cults of the Egyptian gods, Isis and Serapis and the Persian deity, Mithra--catered to special favored groups in the empire. Mithraism, for example, appealed mainly to soldiers; it excluded all women. (For a provocative theory about Mithra as a cosmic god worthy of worship because he caused the cosmos to shift by killing the bull, see the following site.) These cults promised that the individual would enjoy immortality in union and absorption by the divine force of the cult. But none of them promised that the individual would survive this life as a unique personality.

The failure to justify the worth and dignity of the individual was linked to other weaknesses of classical culture: an emphasis on rationalism and a denial of the validity of emotional feelings, an insistence that the basic order governing all things was rooted in the natural world, and a naturalistic or this-worldly orientation. These weaknesses had once been strengths. In the conditions of the empire they became weaknesses. Although confidence in the power of reason had produced several major periods of creativity in Greek and Roman history, the emphasis on rationalism denied the importance or validity of any other way of knowing. One of the great fears of classical thought was that the emotional or volitional part of man endangered him and prevented his living the good life. Thus civilized life could not exist unless the emotions were curbed, nor could one understand life unless he suppressed and ignored the feelings. One had to be habituated to virtuous living through reason and to resist uncontrolled impulses; otherwise barbarism would sweep away civilization. However, as we have seen, imperial life gave rise to new stirrings and yearnings which could not be satisfied by the traditional rational answers. Another basic weakness was the stubborn insistence that a basic eternal order underlay the world and alone explained the meaning of life. This concept too had once been a powerful impetus to creativity, both in the classical era of Greek culture and the Augustan period of the empire. Once this order came to be identified with the perpetuation of classical attitudes and imperial society, however, it ceased to be a source of creative inspiration. When people came to believe that the imperial culture no longer answered the fundamental questions of the mind and spirit, it was no help to be told that imperial culture would endure forever. Men became more inclined to believe that Fortune or Fate governed all and that nothing the individual did mattered anymore. The third deficiency in classical culture was its assertion that the world could only be understood in terms of itself and that this life was all that there was and worth living. This faith had once had a stimulating effect and liberating effect. It endured for centuries as a motivating faith after the Augustan Age adopted Virgil's theme that Roman rule answered all the problems of the ancient world and zestfully plunged into expanding and protecting classical culture. However, as men became increasingly powerless and insignificant, the naturalistic outlook became a pessimistic world view which offered no hope of escape. Common on tombstones was the epigraph “Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo” (I was not, I was, I am not, I don’t care), used so often that even abbreviated as “n.f.f.n.s.n.c.” it was still understood.

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1. What are the dangers of the emotional or volitional as an element in the human personality? Do feelings tend to carry one away?
2. What are the limits of rationalism? Do you know the character Dr. Spock on "Star Trek"? All reason and no feeling? What is the proper role of feeling and thinking?

By almost any quantitative measure the inhabitants of the Mediterranean world generally enjoyed a better life during the Pax Romana than ever before. For many this was enough. For many others it was not. Their needs went beyond the physical and this-worldly and were actually intensified by the conditions of imperial life which satisfied the body and to some extent the mind, but which left a spiritual and emotional void. To satisfy these needs they turned to older Near Eastern and to newer views of life. Of these newer views the most important was Christianity, a new and growing counterculture within the empire, to which we now turn.

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