Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. PaulTucker, T. G. (Thomas George)
History
Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul
Tucker, T. G. (Thomas George)
Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Rome -- Civilization; Rome -- Social conditions
So much for the Roman citizen proper. Other elements of the population
were the foreigners. At Rome these were exceedingly numerous, and the
city may in this respect be called--as indeed it was called--a
microcosm, a small copy or epitome of the Roman world. Gauls,
Africans, Greeks, Jews, Syrians, and Egyptians were perhaps the most
commonly to be seen, but particularly prominent were the Greeks and
the Jews. The Greeks were recognised above all as the clever men, the
artists, the social entertainers, and the literary guides. The Jews,
who formed a sort of colony in what is now known as Trastevere--the
low-lying quarter across the Tiber--were not yet the princes of high
finance. As yet they were chiefly the hucksters and petty traders,
notorious for their strange habits and for the fanaticism of their
religion, which nevertheless exercised a strange potency and made many
proselytes even in high places, especially among the women. Poppaea,
the wife of Nero himself, is commonly considered to have been such a
proselyte, although the strange notion that she herself was a Jewess
is without any sort of foundation. It is a common error to suppose
that the Jews came to Rome only after the destruction of Jerusalem.
The dispersion had occurred long before Rome had anything to do with
Judaea, and naturally the enterprising Jew was to be found in all
profitable places, whether in Alexandria, Antioch, Smyrna, Corinth,
Rome, or farther afield.
In the political sense all these foreigners belonged to their own
provinces and communities. They might be citizens there, but they were
not citizens at Rome. At Rome they had no public claims and no
official career, unless--as not seldom happened--they received, for
some service or some distinction, the gift of the Roman citizenship.
Sometimes the citizenship was given wholesale to a town, or even to a
province. How the Hebrew father or grandfather of St. Paul became a
Roman citizen, we do not know. Their own abilities or the emperor's
favour might carry such citizens, or their children, up all the steps
which were open to the ordinary Roman.
After the foreigners come the slaves. At Rome itself they formed about
one-third of the population. This is not the moment for any detailed
account of their employment, their treatment, or their liberation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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