Day of Empire

by Amy Chua

  In other cases, a whole community could be granted the prestigious—and usually materially beneficial—status of “Roman colony.” When this happened, the entire free male population became citizens. Over time, the ranks of Roman citizens throughout the empire steadily increased, culminating in Emperor Caracalla's mass enfranchisement of AD 212, granting citizenship to every freeborn male in the empire.

  Rome's color-blind and surprisingly class-blind approach to citizenship was instrumental in spreading Roman culture and values. Across the empire, Roman citizens eagerly donned the Roman toga and adopted the tria nomina, the Roman three-part name, in order to convey their elite status.22

  “TO SEE THE WHOLE POPULATION

  OF THE WORLD IN TOGAS”

  In incorporating different peoples, Rome's ideal was emphatically not multicultural diversity. It was assimilation. Rome was tolerant in the sense that any group willing to adopt Roman customs, manners, and ethos could be fully incorporated into the empire, regardless of ethnic origins. But the Romans had no interest in preserving, respecting, or honoring the practices they found barbaric.

  They were disgusted, for instance, by the unkempt appearance of the Irish Celts, who wore their hair long and sported trousers instead of togas. They criticized the Britons, who had access to milk, but—unfathomably—did not use it to make cheese. They spurned the Lusitanians, in today's Portugal, who slept on the ground, made bread out of acorn meal, preferred water to wine, and cooked with butter instead of olive oil.

  For the Romans, however, these coarse traits were remediable. Roman contempt for barbarian subjects evaporated as soon as they adopted the Roman way of life. Barbarians were not thought to lie forever outside the pale of civilization; they had only to live by Roman practice to be considered part of the empire. Thus, in AD 48, when his opponents argued that the barbarous Gauls were too uncivilized to be included in the Roman Senate, the emperor Claudius famously replied, “They are all right, they no longer wear trousers.”23

  Claudius's point was clear: Barbarism could be shed. And the sooner it was shed, the better. Like the British nearly two millennia later, the Romans believed firmly in their civilizing mission. As described by Pliny the Elder, the goal was “to soften people's ways, ritus molliret, to bring the clashing wild speech of infinite different peoples to a common conversation through a common tongue, and to supply civilization, humanitas, to men, that all races might, in a word, belong to a single patria.” Claudius thus hoped “to see the whole population of the world in togas—Greeks, Gauls, Spaniards, Britons, the lot.”

  Similarly, the historian Tacitus described how his father-in-law, Agricola, the governor of Britain, sought to create “Britons in togas” by encouraging his subjects to build Roman-style houses and temples and by educating the sons of the leading men in the liberal arts. According to Tacitus, the Britons, who initially lived in “primitive settlements” and were “inclined to war,” eventually grew “accustomed to peace and quiet by the provision of amenities.” “Even our style of dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen,” he said. As time went on, the Britons were seduced by “the allurement of evil ways, colonnades and warm baths and elegant banquets. The Britons, who had no experience of this, called it ‘civilization,’ humanitas, although it was part of their enslavement.”24

  In other words, the Romans were not cultural relativists. Roman officials encouraged subjugated elites to accept the Roman cultural formula, creating a political and economic system that rewarded assimilation. What was remarkable was that nationality and ethnicity did not affect one's ability to be Roman. It was Rome's willingness and ability to incorporate and assimilate an endless stream of new peoples into its empire that held the secret to its greatness.

  RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE IN THE HIGH EMPIRE

  One of the most striking features of Rome's golden age was its cosmopolitan approach to religion. As Gibbon shrewdly observed, “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus tolerance produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.”25 The only requirement Rome imposed on local religions was that they pay sufficient respect to Roman authority and official rituals.

  In some ways, Rome's religious tolerance is not surprising. Like the Persians, the Romans were polytheists and believed that different peoples would naturally worship different gods. Moreover, Rome's system of multiple gods was based almost entirely on Greek mythology—with Zeus, Athena, and Aphrodite reincarnated as Jupiter, Minerva, and Venus. According to the Greco-Roman worldview, there were gods for almost everything. If other people worshipped new gods, what was wrong with that?

  By the second century AD, it was virtually impossible to isolate a “pure” Roman religion. As the Roman legions marched across Europe and North Africa, they “captured” new gods nearly as often as they conquered foreign cities and cultures. After the conclusion of a battle, Roman generals often would adopt the defeated enemy's deity in order to steal the source of their enemy's power. Far from desecrating these local gods, enterprising legionnaires would carry them back to Rome, frequently incorporating them in their hometown temples.

  In addition to “capturing” foreign deities, Rome often “summoned” a prestigious foreign god to come to Rome to help the city cope with a natural emergency such as an epidemic or invasion. If a drought or famine was particularly bad, the Roman gods must be either angry or otherwise engaged. The answer was to find new gods to solve the problem.

  For the most part, Roman religion coexisted with native local cults in the new regions of the empire. In some places this took the form of layered religious recognition. In Mauretania, for example, a local market was known to be protected by Jupiter (a god in the Roman pantheon), Juba (a deified local king), and Genius Vanis-nesi (the local guardian spirit). Elsewhere, locals fused gods together. For example, Saturn and Jupiter were treated almost as one in Northern Africa; the Celtic god Lug was subsumed into Mercury; and Minerva was associated with a number of local goddesses such as Sulis, the water goddess of Bath.26

  But Rome's inclusive treatment of religion also had its limits. To begin with, cults or customs that were deemed “un-Roman” or morally repugnant were forbidden. Thus the Roman Senate banned the Druid practice of human sacrifice, as well as the rite of self-castration followed by worshippers of the Phrygian goddess Cybele. Other deities fell victim to politics. The Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis—widely identified with Antony and Cleopatra— were banned by Emperor Augustus when he emerged victorious in Egypt. It was not until two centuries later that the emperor Caracalla received Isis and Serapis into the Roman pantheon.27

  On the whole, the Romans were remarkably successful at incorporating local gods into the empire's religious system. But the monotheistic religions of Judaism and Christianity—with their refusal to acquiesce in Roman pagan rituals—presented more serious challenges.

  The Jews of antiquity lived mainly in their ancestral homeland in Palestine and the coastal cities of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, including Alexandria, which was home to the largest community of Greek-speaking Jews. The Jews posed a unique problem for the Roman empire. In the “happy melting pot” of Rome's major cities, the Jews often built separate Jewish quarters centered around their own synagogues and courts and resisted attempts to replace Hebrew with Greek or Latin. Although there was also a large number of Greek-speaking “Hellenized” Jews, the Jewish tendency to live separately led many Romans to consider the Jews to be “internal barbarians.”

  At first the Jews thrived in the empire, enjoying the same strategically motivated tolerance that Rome extended to other groups. Around 161 BC, the Jews approached the Romans after being harshly attacked by the Syrian king Antiochus IV. Eager to weaken Syria, Rome made a declaration of friendship with the Jews. As the century progressed, the relationship strengthened. Julius Caesar granted the
Jews freedom of worship and legal autonomy throughout the empire. In return, the Jews provided Caesar with military support; after Caesar's assassination, Roman Jews returned night after night to the funeral pyre, mourning his death.

  Caesar's successor, Augustus, also treated the Jews favorably, even making exceptions to ensure that the Roman government's grain collection and distribution schedule did not interfere with the Jewish Sabbath. The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria wrote glowingly of Augustus’ tolerance:

  Augustus knew that much of the city of Rome on the Tiber's farther side was inhabited by Jews. Many were freedmen who now had become Roman citizens…[H]e did not banish them from Rome or strip them of their Roman citizenship just because they took pains to preserve their identities as Jews. He did not compel them to abandon their places of worship, or forbid them to gather or receive instruction in the laws…He respected our interests so piously that with the support of nearly his whole household he adorned our temple through the magnificence of his dedications, and he ordered that forever more whole burnt offerings should be sacrificed every day as a tribute at his own expense to the most high God.

  Other emperors were far less accommodating. Hadrian banned circumcision and the teaching of Jewish law. Caligula forced the Jews of Alexandria to eat pork. Such provocations, in addition to a long-simmering conflict over control of Jerusalem, exploded into three major revolts, beginning in AD 66-73, when the emperor Titus destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, then recurring in 115 and 131, when Jews revolted against oppressive laws and the perceived influx of Greek and other settlers into Jewish areas. These revolts led to enormous bloodshed, both on the Roman and Jewish sides.

  Some historians have argued that the conflict between the Romans and Jews was primarily political in nature. Others stress religious and cultural factors. In any event, the Jews’ fortunes varied widely over time, often turning on the opinions of the particular emperor in power.28

  Christianity presented a different set of challenges to Roman tolerance. Like the Jews, Christians denied the gods of Rome and refused to swear oaths to the emperor. The Jews, however, were essentially exempted from these requirements because of the “ancient cult” status extended to them when they were first conquered by the Roman legions. Christianity, a “new cult” with growing adherents from all over the empire, had no such status and thus no right to violate the implicit bargain that the Romans would tolerate other religions unless they publicly disrespected the Roman authorities.

  As a result, there were sporadic clashes between the early Christians and local Roman officials. Christians also faced hostility from Jews, who viewed them as heretics within their own faith. Nevertheless, as a practical matter, Christians during the High Empire were largely left alone. As Gibbon wrote, “The indifference of some princes and the indulgences of others, permitted the Christians to enjoy, though not perhaps a legal, yet an actual and public, toleration of their religion.”29

  INTOLERANCE, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE FALL OF ROME

  When did the Roman Empire begin to decline? Historians disagree widely, depending on the particular theory of decline they champion—and there have been dozens of these theories. Imperial overstretch, economic crisis, barbarian invasions, and military weakness are frequently cited and no doubt all played a role. More idiosyncratic explanations include lead poisoning; moral corruption; soil exhaustion; a proliferation of hermits, monks, nuns, and other “drop-outs;” and dilution of the “pure” Roman stock.30 Assessing the totality of the causes of Rome's collapse is beyond the scope of this chapter. But two points are clear, and both exemplify the thesis of this book.

  First, while tolerance was essential to both Rome's rise to world power and its maintenance of the Pax Romana, it also sowed the seeds of Rome's eventual disintegration. As we have seen, Rome was far more successful than Achaemenid Persia in assimilating diverse conquered peoples through the inducements of citizenship, participation in the empire, and the appeal of Roman culture. Whereas most of the peoples under Achaemenid rule never “Persianized,” stunning numbers of Roman subjects “Romanized.”

  But not all. Particularly in the Hellenic east and the “barbarian” north, the empire sought to absorb peoples whose varying traditions and cultures were, for one reason or another, more at odds with Rome's and more resistant. The great early emperors tolerated this heterogeneity, and their tolerance undoubtedly worked to Rome's advantage throughout the High Empire. But precisely because of Roman toleration, the peoples of the east and north were permitted to remain socially intact, relatively autonomous, and relatively un-Roman; over time, they chafed at imperial rule and began agitating for independence.

  The historian Anthony Pagden explains, “As the empire grew and the diversity of the peoples it included increased, so its sheer heterogeneity became more difficult to handle.” In the fourth century, the divide between the Latin-speaking west and the Greek-speaking east deepened, and in 395 the empire was permanently split in two. At the same time, the empire “began slowly but inexorably to be hollowed out from within as long-quiescent subject peoples revolted and once-loyal subjects seized the opportunity to carve out independent states for themselves.”31

  But “too much diversity” was only part of the problem. Far more devastating, after the golden age Rome descended into an era of intensifying religious persecution and ethnic bigotry. This is my second point: Although not the only cause of Roman decline, intolerance helped tear the empire apart.

  Christianity was deeply implicated in the new intolerance, first as a target and later as its primary source. Over the course of the third century AD, Christianity spread to every corner of the empire, representing by the year 300 approximately one-tenth of the total population. The early Christians were not popular among their fellow subjects. Not only did they deny the gods of Rome, they were also accused of incest and cannibalism, the Eucharist taken literally to be the consumption of human bodies and blood. Because of their refusal to participate in the official rites of sacrifice to the deities, Christians were often held responsible for military defeats as well as natural disasters like plagues, earthquakes, and famines.32

  In AD 303 the emperor Diocletian launched the so-called Great Persecution against Christianity. At the time, the Pax Romana was breaking down, with Germanic tribes invading from the north and Persians attacking in the east. Seeking to restore the glory of the High Empire—ironically through measures antithetical to the values of the golden age—Diocletian decided to extirpate the “un-Roman” Christians. For nearly ten years, Christians were systematically persecuted. Imperial officials stripped Christians of public office and purged the army. In 304, an imperial edict ordered the arrest of every Christian who would not make sacrifice to Rome's gods. Churches were destroyed, scriptures burned, and thousands killed.

  Amazingly, in the battle between mighty Rome and the fledgling Christian church, the church won. After a brief but intense war of succession, Constantine the Great emerged as emperor and, for reasons opaque to this day, converted to Christianity in AD 312. With his conversion, the persecution of Rome's millions of Christians abruptly ended, but for the rest of the empire's inhabitants, the era of persecution was just beginning.

  The role of Christianity in Rome's fall has been debated for centuries. Gibbon believed that Christianity was a major factor— perhaps the major factor.33 Although tempered by various qualifications, Gibbon's view was that Christianity's emphasis on “a future life,” “passive obedience,” and “pusillanimity” fatally corrupted Rome's traditional manly, martial, and worldly virtues. My emphasis is different. Rome's official embrace of Christianity introduced into imperial policy a virulent strain of intolerance that undermined those strategies of assimilation and incorporation that had so successfully held together the empire's diverse populations.

  At first, paganism was far too widespread to be simply banned. Instead, Constantine stripped Roman temples of their riches while erecting lavish Christian basilicas. But as the
empire became more and more Christian, intolerance intensified. Particularly conspicuous “sects” such as Stoicism, Manichaeism (an ancient religion of Persian origin), and Judaism were aggressively repressed. By the late fourth century, Rome had embarked on a systemic campaign to weed out paganism—and indeed all dissenters, including “heretic” Christians who deviated from the official orthodoxy. For the first time, Europe had an established church: “[T]he closed Christian society of the Middle Ages was now in existence.”

  Undoubtedly, Constantine and his successors believed that religious uniformity would reinvigorate the empire and strengthen it against increasing barbarian attacks. In fact, the opposite occurred. The attacks on pagans and heretics proved deeply self-destructive, actually facilitating barbarian encroachments. In North Africa, for example, the shutdown of pagan temples provoked bitter rioting, and the persecution of heresy threw popular support behind the Vandal king Genserie—himself a heretic Christian—helping him to sweep into power as a liberator. Elsewhere, pogroms led to an exodus of Jews, who resettled in Persian territory, damaging imperial trade and allying themselves with Rome's enemies. As Montesquieu later wrote, “Whereas the ancient Romans fortified their empire by tolerating every cult, their successors reduced it to nothing by cutting out, one after another, every sect but the dominant one.”34