The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

by Charles Freeman

  Some areas proved more difficult to govern than others. Among Pompey’s conquests in the east in 63 B.C. was Judaea, which had enjoyed a hundred years of independence under the Hasmonaeans, a family of priests and kings. The Romans proved deeply ambivalent towards Judaism. While they always respected antiquity in any spiritual belief (“[Jewish] rites, whatever their origins, are sanctioned by their antiquity,” as the historian Tacitus put it),15 the Romans felt threatened by the exclusivity of monotheism. Roman high-handedness rapidly upset Jewish sensitivities: Pompey could not refrain from displaying Roman dominance by entering the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Jerusalem, and a later emperor, Caligula, caused outrage when he suggested that a statue of himself be placed inside the Temple. However, a way had to be found to rule Judaea. The Romans began by appointing a Hasmonaean, Hyrcanus, as high priest with responsibility to Rome for Judaean good order. Dissensions between Hyrcanus and his relatives rapidly led to the collapse of this arrangement, and the Romans then appointed a king, Herod, a member of a powerful family of Idumaea (southern Judaea) in 37 B.C. Herod wisely married into the Hasmonaean family and sustained himself in power for over thirty years. Although the Jews always distrusted him, he rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple in great splendour, and until the final years of his reign, when he became increasingly brutal, he remained on good terms with the Romans, who were impressed with the skillful way he maintained peace in a difficult territory. When he died in 4 B.C., his territories, which spread far beyond Judaea (into Galilee, for instance), were divided among his three sons. In Galilee Herod Antipas held on to power until A.D. 39 (that is, for the entire period of Jesus’ youth and ministry there). His brother Archelaus, who assumed control over Judaea, was less successful and survived only until A.D. 6, when he was deposed by the Romans after petitions of complaint from the Jews. Judaea then became a Roman province, though the governor was at first a prefect subject to Quirinius, the governor of the neighbouring province of Syria. The tax census conducted by Quirinius (subsequently used by Luke the Evangelist as a means of bringing Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem) 16 led to outbreaks of serious unrest. Some respect for Jewish feeling was shown by the decision to base the prefect in the prosperous port of Caesarea while giving day-to-day responsibility for order to the high priest in Jerusalem. It always remained possible for the Romans to depose the high priest if he was unsatisfactory, and this system worked effectively for a number of years. Annas, high priest from A.D. 6, was succeeded by his son-in-law Caiaphas, who lasted from c. 18 to 37, the longest term of office recorded under the empire. Only at times of the major Jewish festivals did the prefect move with accompanying Roman soldiers into Jerusalem. Images of Judaea—and in some cases Galilee— groaning under the weight of Roman rule, presented by some historians, have little or no historical backing. Most Jews would never have seen a Roman soldier, although Judaeans, if not the Galileans who paid their tax to Herod Antipas, would have been fully aware that in addition to the dues they paid as Jews to the Temple, their taxes went to Rome.17

  In A.D. 26, Augustus’ successor, Tiberius, appointed a new prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate. His was not a successful appointment. In an attempt to impress the emperor and demonstrate Roman power, he marched into Jerusalem with standards bearing the emperor’s image. The Jews reacted with outrage. Pilate did not learn from his experience. His attempt to make use of Temple funds for the building of an aqueduct led to riots that he suppressed violently. In another incident he confronted a group of Samaritans who had assembled for religious reasons, which he interpreted as seditious. The Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria wrote of “the briberies, the insults, the robberies, the outrages and wanton injuries, the executions without trial constantly repeated, the ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty”18 that marked Pilate’s term in office. It seems unlikely that the decision to order the crucifixion of Jesus would have weighed heavily on him. Eventually, in A.D. 36, Tiberius, who, like all the more effective emperors, knew how counterproductive volatile and vindictive governors were, dismissed him.19

  Augustus was concerned not only with his own position but also with securing imperial rule for his successors. Technically he was no more than “a first citizen”; in practice, however, his authority and influence were such that he was able to control the succession. The problem was in finding a successor. His daughter, Julia, was exploited in the cause with such insensitivity that after her third marriage, to the elderly Tiberius (himself Augustus’ stepson), she took refuge in a string of adulteries so scandalous that her father felt it necessary to exile her. Tiberius himself now became the heir designate, and he succeeded to Augustus’ powers on the latter’s death in A.D. 14. Once a senator reported that Augustus’ body had been seen rising from his funeral pyre towards heaven, the Senate confirmed that he had become a god. His divinity, according to the senatorial decree, rested on “the magnificence of his benefactions to the whole world.”

  Tiberius was a highly capable ruler, and he preserved the stability of the regime, until old age and his promotion of favourites led to increasing disillusionment with his regime. On his death in 37 the youthful Caligula, Tiberius’ great-nephew, succeeded, receiving the grant of all the imperial powers from the Senate within a single day. Caligula was to prove profligate, unstable and cruel. There remained, however, no constitutional means through which he could be deposed, and eventually he was assassinated (A.D. 41). By this time the tradition of single ruler was deeply entrenched, and Caligula’s uncle, the scholarly Claudius, whose disabilities (probably the result of cerebral palsy) had previously led to him being passed over, was acclaimed by the imperial guard. Claudius proved an unexpectedly successful ruler, even gaining, through his competent generals, an entirely new province, that of Britain, for the empire. The concept of imperial rule was never again challenged during the history of the empire; and when the Ottoman Turks eventually sacked its final capital, Constantinople, in 1453, the last emperor, Constantine, the eleventh of that name, died in its defence.

  6

  “ALL NATIONS LOOK TO THE MAJESTY OF ROME” The Roman Empire at Its Height

  We are at a dinner party, perhaps held in Rome sometime after A.D. 75, although the guests are Greek and they speak in Greek. Between them they represent the major schools of philosophy, Platonism, Stoicism and Aristotelianism, but their subject on this occasion is not philosophy as such but the problem of whether the moon has a face. This might seem a recondite—or perhaps a trivial—theme, but it allows the guests to explore the central questions of astronomy in some depth. The diners debate whether the patterns on the moon are a reflection of the earth’s oceans, why the moon does not fall into the earth, the relative sizes of the two, the distances between them and the distance between each and the stars. These are not just speculations. Among the speakers are a geometrician, Apollonides, and a mathematician, Menelaus. They discuss how the size of the moon can be measured by timing eclipses and speculate that the moon is maintained in the sky by its own velocity “just as missiles placed in slings are kept from falling by being whirled around in a circle,” and that it may act as its own centre of gravity. They are aware of, even if they do not accept, Aristarchus’ hypothesis that the sun, not the earth, is the centre of the universe, and in discussing the distance between the earth and the stars they show themselves at home with Archimedes’ work The Sand Reckoner, which deals with the issues raised by very large numbers. Furthermore, they relate their astronomical views to the philosophies each champions, and when in need of illustrative material they quote from the great poets of previous generations, Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Pindar. These are highly educated men engaged in sophisticated conversation.1

  The author of this reconstruction is Plutarch, a Greek from Chaeronaea in central Greece, writing sometime in the late first or early second century A.D. This period has often been derided for its lack of intellectual energy. In the magnificently sardonic words of Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The name of P
oet was almost forgotten; that of Orator usurped by the sophists [for whom see below]. A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.”2 Yet, as the conversation at Plutarch’s dinner party illustrates, the quality of intellectual life remained high, and in recent years scholars have shown increasing respect for the continuing achievements of the Greeks under the Roman empire.

  The experience of conquest by the Romans had been crushing, and one finds little evidence of a revival of Greek confidence before the middle of the first century A.D. Then begins the period known as the second sophistic, the first being the period of the sophists—“those who make a profession from being clever and inventive”—of fifth-century Athens. The second sophistic was led by members of the Greek city elites and characterized by a renewed interest in the glories of classical Greece and in the art of rhetoric.3 It was essentially conservative, even reactionary, in contrast to the radicalism of the thinkers of the first sophistic, but this does not mean that it lacked sophistication. A speech by Dio Chrysostom (Dio the Golden-tongued), made at the Olympic Games of A.D. 97, in which he praises Zeus, the glory of his image in the monumental statue by Pheidias that stood in his temple at Olympia and the greatness of Hellenism, is fully equal to the best formal speeches of the fifth and fourth century B.C. 4 The leaders of the second sophistic openly recognized the contribution of Rome. As Plutarch put it, while Rome ruled the empire, Greece was culturally superior. Greeks should recognize Roman political hegemony but need not abase themselves before Romans. In his influential, and atmospheric, series of Lives Plutarch presented selected Greeks and Romans alongside each other as equals.

  The movement owed its origins to a visit to Greece in A.D. 66–67 by Nero, the successor to Claudius as emperor. Nero viewed himself in the role of a Hellenistic monarch, familiar with the arts, and as the benevolent patron of his subjects.5 His visit, judging by the gossipy report of Suetonius, writing some fifty years later, appears to have been a farce. Nero was determined to take part in a wide range of traditional contests. Suetonius, a typically upper-class Roman, is clearly appalled by Nero’s exhibitionism and regales his readers with tales of chariot races in which Nero falls out of his chariot (but is still awarded first prize) and musical contests in which members of the audience pretend to be dead so that they can be carried out while the emperor is playing. Yet, despite Suetonius’ mockery, the Greeks themselves seem to have been flattered by the imperial attention to the traditions of their culture.

  Nero’s imperial initiative reached its climax in Hadrian, emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Spain (and spoke Latin with a rustic accent for which he was much mocked), but family connections to the previous emperor, Trajan, and his overall competence as a commander and administrator placed him in an excellent position to take over as emperor himself when Trajan died suddenly in 117.6 No emperor was to be better travelled or, perhaps, seen by more of his subjects than Hadrian, and his buildings, the Pantheon and his Mausoleum in Rome, his great villa outside Rome at Tivoli and Hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain remain outstanding monuments to his name. Yet, despite his achievements, he was clearly a complex and troubled man whom his contemporaries found impossible to fathom. “In one and the same person stern and cheerful, affable and harsh, impetuous and hesitant, mean and generous, hypocritical and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable,” as one observer put it. 7

  Hadrian’s love of all things Greek was to become the dominant cultural influence of his life. In 124 he was initiated into the ancient Eleusinian mysteries (Eleusis was a shrine close to Athens) and set about finally completing the massive temple to Zeus in Athens, which had by then stood unfinished for 600 years. A new quarter of the city was created through his patronage. In the 130s he founded a council of ancient Greek cities, the Panhellenion. The representatives of the cities, mostly provincial grandees, met in the precincts of the now completed temple to Zeus and offered cult worship to Hadrian. He was proud of his learning. In the museum at Alexandria he summoned the academics to his presence, asking the most difficult philosophical questions and then providing the answers himself. His patronage of a beautiful Bithynian adolescent, Antinous, was another manifestation of his Greekness, although this seems to have been a far more intense and passionate relationship than would have been approved of in classical Athens. Antinous appears to have cracked under the pressure, and his death in the Nile in 130 may have been suicide. Hadrian mourned his lover hysterically, even declaring that he was a god. A city, Antinoopolis, was founded in Egypt in his memory, and cult statues of the boy are found throughout the Greek world.

  There were eastern themes too in the monumental country villa Hadrian built outside Rome at Tivoli; echoes of Hadrian’s journeys are to be found throughout the surviving ruins. The temple complex to the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis at Canopus on the Nile (visited by Hadrian in 130) is commemorated by a pool surrounded by statues; the celebrated temple to Aphrodite at Cnidus, which contained the first nude statue of Aphrodite by Praxiteles (an exemplar for female nudity for centuries), was re-created; and a gorge beside the villa was called the Tempe, after the beautiful valley in Thessaly. Other parts of the building were named after the philosophical schools of Athens, the Academy and the Lyceum.

  Yet despite the complexities of his personality, Hadrian was a generous and effective ruler. In the twenty-one years of his reign he lavished over 200 benefactions on 130 cities across the empire. Many were effected directly through their leading citizens, enabling Hadrian to cement his ties with members of the elite while in turn reinforcing their own status with their fellow citizens. Hadrian often fostered local pride by restoring or finishing an ancient building, to which would be added a statue of himself or a dedicatory inscription. About a third of his known building projects involved temples, and, while a few were dedicated to the cult of the emperor, the majority honoured Olympian or local gods. So religious toleration, local pride and the beneficence of the emperor were celebrated in unison.8

  The reign of the emperor Trajan, Hadrian’s immediate predecessor (emperor A.D. 98–117), had seen a transformation in the public perception of the emperor, from his role as its “first citizen,” so effectively played by Augustus, to that of “parent” of the empire. Trajan had developed schemes by which poor children in Italy were given assistance, and children maltreated by their fathers were aided. He even set up a rescue service for babies who had been exposed to die (so long as they were free-born). He thus established the convention of the “good” emperor, who actively cared for his people. Hadrian himself was once accosted by an old woman who attempted to foist a petition on him. He turned her away, but she courageously persisted, saying that if he would not respond to her, he should cease being emperor. He took the point and paused to read the petition. Hadrian is credited with laws forbidding the castration of slaves and the shackling of agricultural slaves together in prison. His successor, Antoninus Pius, restricted the circumstances under which the torture of slaves could be ordered. A famous relief panel of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome, from the late 170s, represents imperial clemency. Two barbarians kneel in front of the emperor while he raises his right hand in a gesture of forgiveness. These are the images of benevolence that the emperors fostered of themselves and, even though the reforms were arguably minor and presumably difficult to enforce, they contributed to preventing the post of emperor from degenerating into unrestrained dictatorship.

  Within the empire the connections between the emperor and the cities rested on his recognition of their elites, the giving of patronage (Hadrian threw games in any city he visited) and, in the last resort, protection from invaders. In the east the greatest threat (until its overthrow by the Sassanids in the early third century) was the Parthian empire; when an emperor secured the frontier, cities showed their appreciation with great monuments of imperial propaganda. One o
f the finest was the Antonine Altar at Ephesus, whose sculptures survive only in fragments. The subject of the altar is the emperor Lucius Verus (ruled 161–69), who was adopted by Hadrian’s chosen successor, Antoninus Pius, as his son alongside the better-known Marcus Aurelius. On Antoninus’ death, both became emperor. Lucius led a successful campaign against the Parthians. In 164 he came to Ephesus, one of the most opulent cities of the Greek east, where imperial unity was cemented through his marriage to Marcus Aurelius’ daughter. After his death, the city chose to glorify his achievements. The Antonine Altar celebrates the imperial family. Lucius is shown as a baby being held by Antoninus Pius in the presence of Hadrian. He then appears in battle against the Parthians. Next he is shown being received into heaven and finally he is deified among the gods. In other fragments he is placed alongside personifications of cities rejoicing in their deliverance from the Parthian threat.9 The emperor is portrayed as a soldier protecting the eastern cities of his empire from invasion and earns the favour of the gods as a reward.10