Timeless. Steve Weidenkopf

of Rome was a republic governed by elected magistrates, advised by the Senate. This form of government was designed to prevent one person or group from gaining supreme power. The Roman Republic began to change during the life of the outstanding general Julius Caesar, whose conquests (especially of Gaul) increased the power, prestige, and wealth of Rome. After Caesar’s murder in 41 B.C., three men, Marc Antony (one of Caesar’s generals), Octavian (Caesar’s nephew and adopted son), and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (a close ally of Caesar), stepped into the political void caused by Caesar’s death and established a dictatorship known as the Second Triumvirate. Eventually, infighting and civil war ensued among the three, which ended when Octavian exiled Lepidus and defeated Marc Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. Octavian was acknowledged as imperator (emperor) by the army and given the title “Augustus” by the Senate years later. Although Octavian kept the outward governmental framework of the Republic, he was a military dictator; thus the Roman Empire was born. The Empire reached its height of power, influence, and expanse in the mid-second century, when it encompassed all of Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Danube Rivers, including most of Britain, as well as North Africa, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine. The Empire was organized into forty provinces with a total population of sixty million people, most of whom lived an agrarian lifestyle (only 15 percent of the Empire lived in cities).³ Above all, the Empire united a vast, diverse civilization in a “common mode of life,” consisting of shared language, culture, and commerce, which all citizens embraced and preserved.⁴ The Roman army was the foundation of the Empire. It was deployed in garrisons in cities that were connected by a well-maintained and extensive road network, allowing the free flow of resources and ideas.⁵ It was into this political organization that the Church grew, and that growth raised the ire of the Empire, with violent results.

       The Burning of Rome

      The night of July 18, A.D. 64, began 250 years of government-sanctioned persecution against the Catholic Church. On that night, a great fire flared up in the city of Rome. The fire raged for days, ultimately destroying several districts of the city and causing serious property damage as well as loss of life. When it subsided, the angry populace demanded answers about the fire’s origin. Rumors circulated that the emperor was to blame for the fire, as it was known he wanted to remake the city according to his own design and even rename it after himself (“Neropolis”).⁶ In an effort to deflect criticism, the emperor fabricated a scapegoat. He blamed the fire on a small sect in the city that refused to honor the pagan gods: the Christians.

      Nero became emperor of Rome in A.D. 54 at the young age of seventeen. The history of the Roman emperors illustrates that many men who came to the throne before the age of thirty-five went insane.⁷ Nero certainly fits that description — the man was a psychopath. He was known to practice all forms of vice and was a cruel, “neurotic hedonist” who poisoned his brother, ordered the murder of his mother, and kicked his pregnant wife, Poppaea, to death because she scolded him for coming home late from the races one night.⁸ Nero was a man “of about average height, his body was pockmarked and smelly, while he had light yellow hair, good but not handsome features, blue, rather weak eyes, too thick a neck, a big belly, and spindly legs” and was “ridiculously fussy about his person and his clothes, having his hair done in rows of curls.”⁹

      Nero blamed the Christians for the great fire and initiated the first of many persecutions against the early Church. He outlawed the Christian faith, ordering the arrest and imprisonment of Christians in Rome.¹⁰ Those arrested who refused to abandon the Faith were horribly tortured and killed. Tacitus, a Roman senator and historian, described the horrors suffered by Christians under Nero: “[they] were covered with wild beasts’ skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed, were burned to serve as lamps by night.”¹¹ Although Nero tried to use the Christians as a scapegoat for the fire, his punishments served to bring about “a sentiment of pity [among the Roman people], due to the impression that they [Christians] were being sacrificed not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a single man.”¹²

      Tradition holds that during Nero’s persecution the twin pillars of the early Church, Saints Peter and Paul, were martyred in Rome. Peter demanded to be crucified upside down, and Paul, as a Roman citizen, was executed by beheading. Before their martyrdom, Peter and Paul had worked to strengthen the Christian community in the imperial capital and mentored elders to lead the flock after their deaths. As a result, the bishop of Rome, Linus (67–76), became the successor to Saint Peter and the universal pastor of the Christian community.

       The Jewish Revolt

      A few years after Nero’s persecution of Christians in Rome, a devastating event occurred in the Holy Land that would forever shape the history and worship of the Jewish people, and also influence the early Church.

      Gessius Florus, the Roman Procurator of Judea, was a wicked man. He disliked the Jewish people and wanted to goad them into rebellion against Rome. Florus provoked the people by commandeering money from the Temple treasury in the name of the emperor. The people, incensed, rioted in the streets of Jerusalem. Florus demanded that the Jews hand over the leaders of the demonstrations. When the people refused, he ordered Roman troops to restore order. The army killed thousands of Jews in Jerusalem, even crucifying Roman citizens, which was against imperial law. This was the tipping point for the Jews, and more men joined the rebellion. The rebels quickly overwhelmed the small Roman garrison in Jerusalem. Word reached the Roman legate in Syria that the situation in Judea was out of control, so he ordered the Twelfth Legion, augmented by mercenaries and auxiliary troops, to quell the Jewish rebellion. On the march to Judea, Jewish rebels at the pass of Beth-Horon ambushed and slaughtered the legion.¹³ News of the massacre of the Roman legion spread throughout Judea, encouraging more people to join the rebellion, which now became a full-scale war.

      Rome never allowed those who defeated a legion to remain unpunished. When word of the Twelfth’s defeat reached the capitol, Nero ordered General Titus Flavius Vespasian to Judea. Vespasian was “a no-nonsense sort of man, tough, shrewd, and efficient, with a caustic wit, a soldier’s soldier who always led from the front and had been wounded several times.”¹⁴ Vespasian was a confident and experienced combat commander, a veteran of thirty battles fought in Germania and Britain against some of Rome’s fiercest foes. He took command of several legions and ordered his son, Titus, to lead the Fifteenth Legion from Egypt to Judea. Nearly sixty thousand Roman troops were dispatched to Judea to put down the Jewish revolt. Vespasian embarked on a systematic campaign, initially refusing to attack the main rebel stronghold of Jerusalem and focusing instead on controlling the surrounding areas and strategic towns on the approach to the great city.

      The main source of information for the Great Jewish Revolt is from the writings of Josephus (A.D. 37–100), a Levite and a Jewish nobleman (a descendant of the famous Maccabee kings on his mother’s side), whose many books include The Wars of the Jews.¹⁵ Josephus had lived in Rome in the years before the Jewish rebellion, so he was intimately aware of the power of the Empire. He returned to his homeland and tried in vain to convince his countrymen that war against Rome was futile. But Josephus believed it was his duty to defend his nation, so he joined the rebellion and took command of the city of Jotapata (also known as Yodfat), which the Romans besieged for forty-seven days. Eventually, Roman soldiers broke into the city and killed most of the city’s population. Josephus survived and was taken prisoner. He soon gained favor with Vespasian for his knowledge, respect for Rome, and clever mind. The Romans used Josephus to convince other Jewish towns to surrender, so most Jews saw him as a traitor. At the end of the war, Josephus settled in Rome, became an imperial citizen, and took as his own the imperial family name, Flavius, in honor of their patronage.

       The Holy City Destroyed

      After three years of fighting, Vespasian’s systematic campaign in Judea came to its culmination with the siege of Jerusalem. The situation in the city at the arrival of the Roman legions was desperate. Zealots inside the city had unleashed ferocious class warfare, breaking into rival factions so that the Jews in the city were fighting not only the Romans, but also each other. As Vespasian’s army prepared for siege, word reached the general that Nero