Pax Romana

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Slaves had value as possessions, but no protection against punishment, execution or sexual abuse by owners. If for some life was tolerable, with eventual freedom and even prosperity possible, the frequency of laws dealing with runaway slaves shows that plenty of others would take any opportunity to escape. The free population were divided by legal status and wealth. Provincials might be compelled to assist with public works, whether serving the needs of the imperial post or acting as a labour force for a building project. These burdens were not fairly distributed and could be oppressive to communities and highly damaging to individuals, but such heavy demands were rare.

  Unless condemned for a serious crime, the free population was not compelled to perform some of the most unpleasant work, such as toiling in the mines, where life was likely to be both hard and short. Such gruelling labour was left mainly to slaves and criminals, although there is good evidence that a surprising number of volunteers served because the pay was high. Some of these men were essential as experts, but others worked on many of the basic excavating and labouring jobs. Something of the conditions is hinted at by the extensive preserved mine shafts and galleries at one site in Jordan – the largest chamber measuring some 390 feet by 180 feet (120m by 55m) and up to 8 feet high (2.5m). Occupied before and after the Roman period, but used especially intensively then, to this day the surrounding landscape remains heavily polluted with a mixture of poisons produced by washing the ore and smelting.40

  Most of the population of the empire did not live or work in such a harsh environment, and shared to some degree in the greater availability of goods and the comforts offered by the economy and society of imperial Rome. The picture is not straightforward. On balance residents of the cities were better placed to enjoy such things, but at the same time the urban environment also made it far easier for disease to spread. The open sewer Pliny found in the main street of Amastris was far from unique and was only covered after several generations of Roman rule. Even at their best, Roman systems of water supply, drainage and waste disposal were far from perfect, so that epidemics posed as big a danger as famine. Infant mortality rates were high, and life expectancy low – at least compared to prosperous and stable countries in more recent times, but again these are the exception to the broad sweep of human history. Yet some scholars have let caution make them too pessimistic, and it is hard to believe claims that life expectancy in the Roman era was as bad as in the early Neolithic.41

  Provincials could be faced by arbitrary use and abuse of power by those who possessed it. In Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, a Roman soldier tries to confiscate the donkey at the heart of the story, and when driven off returns with his comrades to take the animal by force. Some soldiers used the pretext of official requisitioning to pilfer what they wanted – note that John the Baptist asked soldiers to ‘Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.’ If no higher authority was present and willing to act, then such demands could not be resisted. In the Gospels, the soldiers leading Jesus to execution compelled a bystander, Simon the Cyrenian, to carry the cross. Refusal of such a demand risked a severe beating and there was no certainty of recompense.42

  Proof of status was not simple in an era without passports and where few carried formal documentation. At Philippi Paul and Silas were dragged before the magistrates of this Roman colony and accused of being trouble-makers. The author of Acts explains that they had cured a slave girl possessed by an evil spirit, whose owners had profited from her telling fortunes and were now angry at this loss of income and seized hold of the missionaries. A crowd gathered to support the accusations, whether from hatred of Jews or association with the girl’s owners is not clear, but this encouraged the magistrates to take the matter seriously. Without a hearing, Paul and Silas were stripped, beaten and imprisoned. The next day the colony’s magistrates sent orders to let them go, presumably because they had demonstrated their authority by inflicting punishment and also calmed the mob, so considered the matter closed. ‘But Paul said unto them, they have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison; now do they thrust us out privily?’ Roman citizens were not supposed to be subject to arbitrary corporal punishment and imprisonment, and the discovery that the captives were of higher status than they had thought prompted the magistrates to come and release them in person.43

  In Corinth another attempt was made to prosecute Paul and his party, this time before the tribunal of the proconsul of Achaea, who happened to be in the city conducting an assize. Paul’s accusers were fellow Jews, and a crowd gathered, seizing him and taking him to the governor. The account in Acts is brief and lacks details, and it is uncertain whether this was done as part of a demonstration, forcing their way into the governor’s presence or – which seems more likely – by formally requesting and being granted a hearing. Either way, the proconsul refused to listen to ‘a question of words and names, and of your law’ and declared that it was not a matter for his judgement. Paul was released and in the aftermath a crowd of Greeks beat up the leader of the synagogue in full sight of the proconsul’s tribunal, who ‘cared for none of those things’. This deliberate and humiliating attack on a Jewish leader suggests hostility between the Jewish and some of the Gentile community, the context of which is unclear.44

  Later, Paul was arrested by some of the auxiliary soldiers garrisoning the Fortress of Antonia after a disturbance in the Temple in Jerusalem. The cohort commander ordered that he be bound and then interrogated during a flogging, so that more confidence could be placed in his answers. Before this began, Paul spoke to the centurion in charge, stating that he was a citizen, so not subject to such treatment. The commander was brought to the captive and in person asked whether Paul was in fact a Roman citizen. He accepted the prisoner’s word, and from then on Paul was treated more gently and sent under escort to Felix, the equestrian governor of Judaea. Paul’s confinement then and later was fairly comfortable, since not only was he a citizen, but also a man of some education and therefore perhaps either wealthy or with wealthy connections. It was claimed that Felix hoped to secure a payment in order to release him, but it failed to appear and so he remained a captive until Festus arrived as the new governor. Faced with charges made by some of the priests from Jerusalem, the latter gave him a hearing in the presence of Herod Agrippa II and his sister Berenice. During the course of this, Paul appealed to the emperor’s judgement, so had to be sent to Rome, even though Festus was now willing to release him.45

  The emperor as the ultimate court of appeal for citizens was an innovation of the Principate – note that Pliny sent the Christians who were Roman citizens to Trajan for his judgement. Paul and other prisoners were sent under the escort of a small detachment of troops commanded by a centurion of a cohors Augusta, an auxiliary unit which appears to have served as Herod Agrippa’s bodyguard. They were not provided with official transport, and instead had to arrange for passage on any ship going in the right direction. The masters of these vessels were obliged to take them, but not compelled to deviate from their planned route for the convenience of the official passengers. The journey to Rome proved long and dangerous when the ship they were sailing in was wrecked, and after arrival it was several years before the emperor – by now Nero – chose to deal with the case. In Acts the narrative finishes before this, so that it is only later Church tradition which says that Paul was executed as part of the persecution begun when the emperor made Christians scapegoats for the great fire in Rome in AD 64.46

  The episode highlights the slow, almost lethargic, pace of the empire’s administration. This was not an urgent matter so far as the governors were concerned. Felix kept Paul under open arrest in the hope of profit and to keep happy the priests who had made the accusations against him. They were men of influence, with whom a governor needed to work, and so it was best not to antagonise them too much. His inertia cannot have pleased them, hence the fresh appeal on the matter to Festus when he arrived, but the priests will surely have
had other favours or petitions for the procurator, so that his inaction in this case could be used to press for action on another matter. It was during the years of Paul’s captivity in Caesarea that the attempt was made to have Nero declare the city to be Jewish, and it was also at this time that Josephus went as part of a delegation to Nero on behalf of some priests arrested by Felix. Paul’s antagonists would also have needed to send representatives to Rome if they wished to argue their case in front of the emperor and, like Paul, these would have no choice save to wait until the princeps found the time and inclination to deal with the matter. In the event it took three to four years, and might well have taken even longer had Nero not embarked upon the mass execution of Christians in Rome.47

  Action was a good deal swifter in the trial and execution of Jesus, who was not a Roman citizen, nor from a wealthy or well-connected family. His driving of the moneylenders from the Temple was a very public challenge to the authority of the priests in charge of the place – something which the Temple guards had failed to prevent. A group of these aristocratic priests felt threatened by this, as well as by his other actions and popularity, so decided to act. Only John’s Gospel mentions the presence of Roman soldiers alongside the guards and followers of the priests when Jesus was arrested, but this suggests that the governor’s approval was secured before action was taken. The prisoner was interrogated and by implication condemned by these senior priests, and then was taken to the Roman governor. In some circumstances the Sanhedrin, or high council, could execute for blasphemy and could arrange lynchings, but in this case they did not wish to take the responsibility, perhaps because they had not met in a proper way or wanted to pass the blame for a controversial act on to the Romans.48

  Pontius Pilate had to work with the high-priestly Jerusalem aristocracy and relied on them to control the wider population. He was therefore obliged to listen to their concerns, just as after the crucifixion he was willing to grant the request of Joseph of Arimathaea – a rich man and a member of the Sanhedrin – to be given the body for burial. The accusations were backed by a crowd gathered and orchestrated by the priests involved, and the principal charge was Jesus’ claim to be King of the Jews, and thus a challenge to the authority of Rome. As John’s account puts it, ‘If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend; whosever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.’ Pilate could not be seen to ignore charges of this sort, especially when made by men of the wealth and education able to make a petition either to the legate of Syria or directly to Rome. The climate under Tiberius was a dangerous one, with the machinations of the praetorian prefect Sejanus, who disposed of many senators and wealthy equestrians as he tried to become the princeps’ successor, and then his bloody fall which prompted a purge of his friends. It is no coincidence that the only inscription bearing Pilate’s name records the construction in Caesarea of the Tiberieum – a building of some sort honouring the emperor.49

  As with Paul’s detention under Felix and Festus, the trial of Jesus was just one episode in a long and often difficult relationship between Pilate and the Jerusalem elite, who were in turn jockeying among themselves for influence and were not a united group. As governor he could not afford to alienate them entirely, but also needed to assert his power and try to play them off against each other so that they were less likely to unite against him. The Gospel accounts suggest little love was lost between them, and can be read as showing each group eager to make the other openly responsible for what was done. No more details are known than the vague Gospel references to the insurrection in the city and the leistes Barabbas, but this suggests some recent violence. Jerusalem had a large and volatile population, swollen at the time of Passover with visitors from all over the province and abroad for a festival commemorating release from servitude in Egypt. If there was a crowd calling for Jesus’ execution, then in recent days there had also been a crowd acclaiming him, and he was known to have followers – who were not treated as open rebels and so suppressed with the usual prompt brutality shown by the Roman authorities. Pilate seems to have wanted it to be placed on record that both the senior priests and the people gathered outside his residence in the old Herodian palace demanded the execution of this man. He had no qualms about having the accused flogged and humiliated, while stating that he did not find evidence for a capital charge. In Luke’s account he says, ‘I will chastise him, and release him’, a very Roman way of asserting his authority, by inflicting summary, though not fatal, punishment on a ‘trouble-maker’.

  This was prevented because key figures in the local elite and a chanting crowd, which could be taken as the will of the community, demanded that he go further. There is no evidence outside the Gospel accounts for a tradition of releasing a prisoner at the Passover, so we cannot say any more about how this worked or how long it was in force. Governors were expected to listen, and to listen most of all to men of wealth and high birth, the leaders of the provincial communities. The intervention of his wife offers an example of the frequently alleged influence of family and friends on a governor. Pilate ordered the execution of a man claimed to be a threat to Caesar, but ensured that he was shown to have been persuaded by the community and its leaders and not to have acted in an arbitrary fashion. The placard declaring the man he killed as ‘The King of the Jews’ in Latin, Greek and Aramaic was provocative to the Jewish leaders and the population as a whole, and was another assertion of the governor’s power, reminding them that they could not control him and were subject to his power and judgement. It also made clear that this was a Roman official dealing with a threat to the emperor.50

  The trial and crucifixion of Jesus is the most famous act by any Roman governor, even though it involved an equestrian prefect in charge of a minor province and can only be dated roughly to the early 30s AD. Nothing is known of Pilate apart from his term as prefect of Judaea, while his unnamed wife – without doubt the most famous governor’s wife – only appears in Matthew’s Gospel. Yet for all that, the way the events occurred, the pressures brought to bear on the governor and his assertion of his authority, fit with everything we know of Roman provincial government. It is also a useful illustration of the brutality that maintained the control of the provinces. Savage flogging followed by death by crucifixion – in most cases a longer, even more painful experience when the victims were not killed quickly by having their legs broken, but left to die slowly – was a common form of punishment, and many thousands perished in this way. No doubt the Sebasteni and Caesarean soldiers were particularly enthusiastic in the humiliation and scourging of Jesus, given their deep-seated hatred of the Jews – it can only have confirmed their view of the Jews as a perverse race, since now they had rejected their own king. Yet the willingness of the detachment who carried out the execution to sit and gamble while three men died slow deaths shows how casual and commonplace such violence was.51

  Regardless of the genuine desire or pretensions of Roman administration to benevolence and care for the provincials, the rule of the emperor and empire was maintained by force, and it was the soldiers of the Roman army who were the agents of this.

  XII

  THE ARMY AND THE FRONTIERS

  ‘For their nation does not wait for the outbreak of war to give men their first lesson in arms . . . On the contrary, as though they had been born with weapons in their hand, they never have a truce from training, never wait for emergencies to arise. Moreover, their peace manoeuvres are no less strenuous than veritable warfare; each soldier daily throws his energy into his drill, as though he were in action. Hence that perfect ease with which they sustain the shock of battle; no confusion breaks their customary formation, no panic paralyses, no fatigue exhausts them; and as their opponents cannot match these qualities, victory is the invariable and certain consequence.’ – Josephus, describing the Roman army, c.AD 80.1

  ‘A GREAT CIRCLE OF CAMPS’

  The professional army created by Augustus was unlike anything yet seen in Europe, Africa and the Near East, for no ot
her kingdom or state had ever maintained so many soldiers permanently under arms. At Augustus’ death there were twenty-five legions – the three lost in AD 9 not having been replaced – with a theoretical strength of around 125,000 soldiers. Supported by a roughly similar number of auxiliaries, as well as naval flotillas, the praetorian guard and the other units stationed in Rome, there were perhaps a quarter of a million men under arms. Over time the total grew substantially, and in spite of the loss or disbanding of other legions, there were thirty in service at the start of the second century AD, and thirty-three under Septimius Severus at its end. Although the smaller units of the auxilia are harder to trace than the legions, it looks as if the increase in their numbers was even more substantial. By AD 200, the nominal size of the army was at least 350,000 men, all sworn to serve the emperor, and paid and promoted by him. It was not until the French Revolution brought mass conscription that the army of any European state surpassed this total, and even then few maintained so many troops outside the grand mobilisations of wartime.2

  The numbers are impressive, but then the Roman Empire was far larger than any other ancient state – and indeed larger than the main European powers until well into the modern era – and the size of its army was small compared to the vast extent of territory conquered and controlled by Rome. Estimates of the population of the ancient world rely on guesswork, since the evidence is fragmentary and often difficult to interpret. For instance, it is probably correct to assume that the figures of more than four million Roman citizens registered in censuses under Augustus include all adults, but it is not impossible that this dealt only with men, which of course would at least double the total, even before infants were included.