wouldnt human beeleaf-curiosity care for a meatink off the 2 species to see the pövväir öff the new Faith ? maybe well bears could allzöö id pläntce v. ?v
I have beef researching Roman taxation for over a year and have hit nothing but dead ends and practices that only apply to Egypt and the provinces of the east. My question is, do you know anything about exactly how the Romans in the western provinces would have physically paid their taxes in the high empire? Were there agents of the portitores and decuriones that went door to door or was it a ‘meet in the forum by census’ kind of system?
As I understand it taxes were bid on by tax collecting agencies who were conscripted by the governments of provinces and cities to collect X amount, with the agreed bid including a profit for the agency. They would then, with the authority of the state, go around using census data and collect taxes from people. As to the material mechanism I don't believe there was a proper way to do it, people paid in currency or in kind and usually to a collector arriving at their property or domicile.
@@theeccentrictripper3863 Your describing tax farming. This was popular to collect provincial taxes in the late republic, but progressively fell out of favour afterwards. It was replaced by more direct collection, but I'm unsure of the details.
Maybe the interview with Nico Roymans can help. It is in the video on Julius Caesar and the Rhine frontier. Taxation was in the conscription of fighting men for the tribes on the Rhine and Meuse/Maas, the Batavieren, Canifaten, the Frisians.
Hi - I've been wondering to what extent were the statues or buildings we imagine as pristine stone or marble actually painted? A New Yorker article, for example, claims a lot were, so just wondering how much truth there is in that.
I don't think we can be sure that they were all painted, but many were. Some were clothed too. I wonder if the exception are bronzes (and marble copy of bronze masterpieces), because painting such a metal would ruin the point of using it.
@@QuantumHistorian Thanks for the comment. Interesting to hear that some were clothed. Next time I'm in an H&M I'll try and imagine the mannequins as Roman statues.
@@QuantumHistorian exactly, i would even go as far as to say most monumental buildings were painted, judging by the traces found on most of them. though most common housing was destroyed, most of what we do have suggests that some, but certainly not all apartment-style houses, insulae, were painted - though mostly white paint, as is the case still in most southern european countries as a heat repellent
We have some questions for a future podcast. Why do you suppose there are no known entry tokens to the colosseum? Were they surrendered upon entry or did the fan keep them to verify there seat location? It would seem that they would have been saved as souvenirs and there must have been thousands if not millions of them.
It's much more likely that there never were tokens. The games were typically free, first-come, first-seated for all but the seats reserved for officials and dignitaries.
I also heard that they starved the poor animals in order to make them hungry enough to want humans, since they usually prefer other species like sheeps zebras etc
Hi Garrett! Long time watcher of all your stuff and hallway through your first book. Forgive me if this has been answered somewhere already but the chapter on money got me thinking of this. How did currency exchange work in the Roman world? How did merchants equate coins from different places? Were Roman coins used as a kind of global reserve currency like the forint and ducats of mediaeval times? Were coins from the same place but different eras roughly still usable as long as the composition of metals hadn't changed? Did black market currency exchangers exist like they did today? Roman temples would surely have contained coins from different places, were they used as places to exchange money? It also seems in your book it seems that drachmas were still used in Greece during Roman rule, or have you just equated the amount based on the value of the metals? Were coins 'refused' for being too old or too damaged? Were they regularly melted down and re minted? Say you were in the imperial era of Diocletian but stumbled upon a hoard of coins from the republican era of Scipio Africanus. How do you spend that or are you bound to melt it down for it's base materials? Thanks for taking the time to read it! Hopefully it gets answered in a future video or book!
Also - most Roman coins are written with abbreviated Latin, or acronyms. I find it extremely difficult to extract the meanings unless they are accompanied by text in a museum. Were literate Romans able to discern these things clearly? Or did the assumed cultural/historical knowledge of people, events and places also diminish with the passage of time and generations
Would love to know the names and artists behind the paintings you use in your videos, all of which are fantastic by the way. Really love your work, thank you!
I visited Ephesus a while ago and at the theater I noticed a grid of divots carved into some the marble slabs on the steps and walkways. Were these ancient or added later for the traction and safety of tourists?
The art is really beautiful to look at -- given the time period (and assume running parallel to capriccio art), I'm wondering if the Romans had any similar form of artistic expression regarding earlier antiquity?
They had trained fighters who specialty was fighting animals. They often defeated the animals, though I am sure there were some casualties. Even if a condemned person got a weapon somehow and defeated the animal, they'd just kill him anyway.
@@huwhitecavebeast1972 Indeed, those were two separate events. On one hand there were unarmed prisoners executed via the beasts - who were expected to lose (I guess it's possible that some occasionally won). On the other, there were trained and armed hunters who killed beasts for entertainment, perhaps modern bull fighting is the closest surviving analogue (and those hunters sometimes died during the show).
A major reason the Guillotine was set in public in a large square or field, was to allow the population to view the condemned meet their punishment, and be sure it wasn't more corruption. This was actually the whole point of the Revolution, the poor and lower classes had had ENOUGH of the Nobles and Clerics being above the law, and torturing the poor, having the right to murder commoners without penalty . . . They were accused by the People at Public events. Tried by People's Tribunals which were mostly open to all the Citizens. Then executed in front of the People in a way it would be hard to fake. And put in a place large numbers of the Citizens could come and see it happen. And these methods were not mere CUSTOM or chance. The Delegates debated for months about all these aspects, their records are freely available still. They deliberately made Justice open and over-looked by the Citizens in reaction to the clandestine and secret ways the courts operated in the time before.
question: growing up in the streets of Brooklyn, NY, we played jax, tag and stickball (baseball with a tennis ball and broomhandle bat) - what did the kids growing up in the streets of Rome play??.. 🤔
So are you suggesting that Ignatius letters are spurious? Indeed he did not write a firsthand account of actually being chomped, but the events leading up to it make it obvious he was going to be eaten.
During the hyperinflation of the late roman empire how did trade work, was there a certain price if you paid in "good" denarii and a higher amount if you paid in later struck ones?
Thanks for the clarity and objectivity. I think that the video coukd have been better with a calculation on the number of people that were tortured on the arenas of the empire (of coursr, if there is a way to know it).
There is no way to know that even if there were any records later it surely would be destroyed either by the emperor or the court to hide the crimes...
In the mosaic of the leopard attacking the prisoner does anyone know what the mostly lost image of the man behind the prisoner is supposed to be doing?
I would think after eating most of one human, the lion would be full. Big cats might act like little cats and toy with the prey, killing a bunch, and only eating part of one, I suppose.
If they were all later accounts past the Era the events were happening, could it also be a metaphor? Like "being thrown to the maw of the beast" implying the change of opinion towards tyrannical order or systematic brutality?
We all have seen represented in art, legion signifer wearing lion or other predators head over his helmet. Do we have sufficient knowledge to answer why they did that and if they did it in battle or only when on triumphs ? Also was it provided/determined by legion in any way or was it on personal preference/availability of signifer/legate ? I get it - rule of cool was most likely same in ancient Rome as it is today but it seems a little bit problematic to provide such piece of equipment.
An even more interesting question would be if the early christians would be seen as christians in present time. Very little is known about early Christianity. The canon of the bible as we know it is determined long after Jesus died. What did the early christians really believe?
Not even close. The cult of Bacchus (or rather, a wave of riotous worship of it) was ruthlessly persecuted by the Senate in the early years of the 2nd century BC: the rites with orgies, excessive drinking, loud music, and a strong role for women was deemed too un-Roman and a danger to the stability of the state. After the conquest of Gaul by Caesar in ~50 BC (and Britain a century later) the druids were systemically repressed, or at least their practice of human sacrifices. Then there were also the Jews, although the persecution there was more as a nationality than a religion. In the late Empire, pagans were harassed for not being Christian. Indeed, the wrong type of Christians (various heresies such as the Aryan or Iconoclasts, even before the Orthodox/Catholic split) were also strongly persecuted during the Byzantine era. I'm sure there were others I haven't covered, especially with the deluge of secretive and potentially subversive religions that sprang up in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.
It wasn't always serious criminals like murderers that got damnatio ad bestias, it was disobedient slaves or foreign prisoners of war. One story that stands out was of a German, who rather than get thrown to the beasts in the arena, swallowed a sponge and choked on it to avoid this fate. Another man thrust his head into the the spokes of a big wagon wheel and broke his neck thereby, rather than face the arena. I for one would rather fight to the death rather than experience that fate.
Seneca's account of the sponge-German was him being a gladiator specifically, and he deems it a thing of virtue and bravery to have seized his own life rather than be a slave to a fate others had assigned for him. Shows you how things have changed in the minds of men over the last 2000 years.
I don’t think “purported” is honest enough, but certainly it was a practice. And I agree that persecution was definitely regional, and depended on the Emperor at the time, and his governors. Some were tolerant, some not. However you look at it, Christians outlasted their persecutors. But living through it was not something any of us would want. And your description was accurate. As to comments here of defeating the beasts: difficult without weapons.
There is a lot to admire the Romans for. However, one must not discount that they were an especially cruel civilization. Any persecution of christians is just the tip of the iceberg.
It was a fact you can read the Christian Bible itself and you can see these Wicked occult rumors revealing is true and you can even see the early Christian writings within the second century and the third where the Christian Bible comes to be or at least the author start pinning it and they start getting prominence taking place. Blessed Celsus reveals all to us.
Yes, we have both material evidence found in the modern era and the ancient accounts of not only the Carthaginians but Phoenician practices in general, a civilization Carthage belonged to. The Romans might've exaggerated a little bit, but it was going on, for a variety of reasons that are hard to properly quantify because of how thoroughly Carthage's history and religion were eradicated and assimilated.
@@theeccentrictripper3863ea It happened but it was probably done rarely; only in times of great hardship and food shortages like in many pagan societies. And we have to keep in mind many of the Early Christian and Roman reports had an incentive to embellished how often the practice was done.
@@Jones25ful Do you have an example of Christian commentary on Carthaginian child sacrifice? I can't think of one off the top of my head, maybe Augustine since he lived there but I've never actually seen it mentioned, because of all the syncretism Christians in Late Antiquity didn't seem to differentiate too much between pre-Christian religious traditions, at least the ones I've read
@@theeccentrictripper3863 if I’m not mistaken Moloch from the bible is based of Roman propaganda floating around at the time about Carthaginian deities and child sacrifice.
As a historian, I'm going to add a little bit of context for this question. There are Roman records indicating that a number of Christians in the 1st Century were executed not because of their Christian beliefs, but because of their actions as Christians, specifically accosting people (while calling upon them to repent and convert), graffiti (calling on people to repent and convert), disturbing the peace (by wandering down the streets at night banging things like sticks and pots together loudly all the while calling upon others to repent and convert), just generally inciting unrest (by calling on others to repent and convert), and other similar crimes. In other words, they were executed not because they were Christians, but because they were jerks. Most of these executions were crucifixions. Some were known to have been fed to animals as entertainment, but not in the Colosseum. (There were other arenas.) There's a notable set of letters involving Pliny the Younger about how to identify a Christian from a Jew. (Ask them. The Jew will deny being Christian, but the Christian will affirm it.) At this point, the behavior of these Christian jerks appears to have reached a point where all Christians began being targeted by association. As for allegiance to the Roman gods, Rome didn't care which gods you worshiped. You could worship any god you wanted but Rome came first. (We see this in places like Gaul and Romano Britain where they still worshiped the local gods but foremost allegiance was to the Empire.) It became very clear to people like Nero that Christians put their god before Rome.
Those illustrative paintings are awesome, this is what painting should be. Especially the last one, including the congoise slave carrying the sedan chair. This was a well ruled society.
Pagans were amazing. I should write a novel about my pagan ancestors in Eastern Arabia, before the onslaught of Muhammad’s Islamic armies from the western end of the peninsula.
Francamente mi risulta difficile capire il perché del martirio dei cristiani, visto che i cristiani erano una delle tante sette religiose presenti a Roma e nell'impero, nettamente minoritaria, e non si capisce perché se la prendessero proprio con loro. I fatti ci dicono che poi l'impero abbracciò il cristianesimo, da Costantino in poi, che permane tutt'ora (il cristianesimo, dico). Secondo me la storia del martirio dei cristiani è abbondantemente costruita; e serve solo a rafforzare la tesi, a scopo propagandistico, quanto i cristiani abbiano dovuto subire, in termini di sacrificio della vita, prima di affermarsi come religione predominante nel mondo.
There is a story of one Christian, her mother and a local Christian official (bishop or priest, not sure) having animals set on them in a theater. The mother in question was a matron and to mock her further they apparently tried to set a cow or bull up against her. They also stripped her chest bare. The animal wasn't interested, however. What a pleasant thing to force an older woman. She is supposed to have borne her treatment bravely. The church official, on the other hand, was said to be terrified in the moments leading up because he was to be set against a predatory animal.
My ancestors fought this myth. Fought for their lives against the tides. But here we are. Understanding, and respecting, the people/cause/ideology/aesthetics, underlying Universality of the message: Love your neighbor. Cloth the naked. Shelter the weak. Feed the hungry. Protect the orphan. AMEN
Then your ancestors were organized criminals, "Goodfellas"/ crestoi, not actual followers of Christ. So many pretenders, who took His name in vain, committed atrocious crimes against humanity. These deceivers received their just recompense.
Admit it: going by your hair cut, which clearly follows the style of Roman males of late Republic/early Principate times, you are ramping up to a time travel expedition to Rome, aren't you? 😆
Fun fact: when the empire stopped persecuting christians, they got really angry bc now the (easiest) opportunity to become a martyr was no longer available
The Romans accepted Judaism and exempted its adherents from relevant Roman practices. I think the issue with early Christianity was that it was a Doomsday cult that expected the end of the world very soon and welcomed it because it would mean the Second Coming. It is very easy to imagine some Christians in 64AD Rome celebrating as the city burned, seeing it as fulfilment of prophecy. It is also easy to imagine some extremists, or even mentally ill worshippers, setting fires to help things along. I think therefore that Nero's blaming of the Christians might well be based on actual albeit maybe minor incidents that witnesses observed. The Romans referred to Christians as "enemies of the Human Race" because of this obsession with the ending of the world and the unimportance of this life.
"a rare note of honestly". That is exactly why I am subscribed to this channel.
wouldnt human beeleaf-curiosity care for a meatink off the 2 species to see the pövväir öff the new Faith ?
maybe well bears could allzöö id pläntce v. ?v
Were there a lot of homeless people in Rome? How did the Romans deal with extreme poverty?
I have beef researching Roman taxation for over a year and have hit nothing but dead ends and practices that only apply to Egypt and the provinces of the east. My question is, do you know anything about exactly how the Romans in the western provinces would have physically paid their taxes in the high empire? Were there agents of the portitores and decuriones that went door to door or was it a ‘meet in the forum by census’ kind of system?
As I understand it taxes were bid on by tax collecting agencies who were conscripted by the governments of provinces and cities to collect X amount, with the agreed bid including a profit for the agency. They would then, with the authority of the state, go around using census data and collect taxes from people. As to the material mechanism I don't believe there was a proper way to do it, people paid in currency or in kind and usually to a collector arriving at their property or domicile.
@@theeccentrictripper3863 Your describing tax farming. This was popular to collect provincial taxes in the late republic, but progressively fell out of favour afterwards. It was replaced by more direct collection, but I'm unsure of the details.
Maybe the interview with Nico Roymans can help. It is in the video on Julius Caesar and the Rhine frontier. Taxation was in the conscription of fighting men for the tribes on the Rhine and Meuse/Maas, the Batavieren, Canifaten, the Frisians.
Hi - I've been wondering to what extent were the statues or buildings we imagine as pristine stone or marble actually painted? A New Yorker article, for example, claims a lot were, so just wondering how much truth there is in that.
I don't think we can be sure that they were all painted, but many were. Some were clothed too. I wonder if the exception are bronzes (and marble copy of bronze masterpieces), because painting such a metal would ruin the point of using it.
@@QuantumHistorian Thanks for the comment. Interesting to hear that some were clothed. Next time I'm in an H&M I'll try and imagine the mannequins as Roman statues.
@@QuantumHistorian exactly, i would even go as far as to say most monumental buildings were painted, judging by the traces found on most of them. though most common housing was destroyed, most of what we do have suggests that some, but certainly not all apartment-style houses, insulae, were painted - though mostly white paint, as is the case still in most southern european countries as a heat repellent
@@QuantumHistorian Many "bronzes" that were made historically have been enameled in whole or part.
We have some questions for a future podcast. Why do you suppose there are no known entry tokens to the colosseum? Were they surrendered upon entry or did the fan keep them to verify there seat location? It would seem that they would have been saved as souvenirs and there must have been thousands if not millions of them.
It's much more likely that there never were tokens. The games were typically free, first-come, first-seated for all but the seats reserved for officials and dignitaries.
I also heard that they starved the poor animals in order to make them hungry enough to want humans, since they usually prefer other species like sheeps zebras etc
Of course. And abused them terribly to make them fighting angry.
@DiversityForIsrael There are no lions in the Sahara, lol. It's a desert and lions live in the savanna.
Hi Garrett! Long time watcher of all your stuff and hallway through your first book. Forgive me if this has been answered somewhere already but the chapter on money got me thinking of this.
How did currency exchange work in the Roman world? How did merchants equate coins from different places? Were Roman coins used as a kind of global reserve currency like the forint and ducats of mediaeval times? Were coins from the same place but different eras roughly still usable as long as the composition of metals hadn't changed? Did black market currency exchangers exist like they did today? Roman temples would surely have contained coins from different places, were they used as places to exchange money?
It also seems in your book it seems that drachmas were still used in Greece during Roman rule, or have you just equated the amount based on the value of the metals?
Were coins 'refused' for being too old or too damaged? Were they regularly melted down and re minted? Say you were in the imperial era of Diocletian but stumbled upon a hoard of coins from the republican era of Scipio Africanus. How do you spend that or are you bound to melt it down for it's base materials?
Thanks for taking the time to read it! Hopefully it gets answered in a future video or book!
Also - most Roman coins are written with abbreviated Latin, or acronyms. I find it extremely difficult to extract the meanings unless they are accompanied by text in a museum. Were literate Romans able to discern these things clearly? Or did the assumed cultural/historical knowledge of people, events and places also diminish with the passage of time and generations
im in dire need of your ancient knowledge. how did ancient romans defend themselves from fleas? or just bugs in general
Would love to know the names and artists behind the paintings you use in your videos, all of which are fantastic by the way.
Really love your work, thank you!
I visited Ephesus a while ago and at the theater I noticed a grid of divots carved into some the marble slabs on the steps and walkways. Were these ancient or added later for the traction and safety of tourists?
Are there any accounts of the condemned prevailing over the animals tasked with carrying out the executions?
The art is really beautiful to look at -- given the time period (and assume running parallel to capriccio art), I'm wondering if the Romans had any similar form of artistic expression regarding earlier antiquity?
Speaking of people being thrown up against wild animals:
Did it ever occur that someone defeated the beasts?
They had trained fighters who specialty was fighting animals. They often defeated the animals, though I am sure there were some casualties. Even if a condemned person got a weapon somehow and defeated the animal, they'd just kill him anyway.
@@huwhitecavebeast1972 Indeed, those were two separate events. On one hand there were unarmed prisoners executed via the beasts - who were expected to lose (I guess it's possible that some occasionally won). On the other, there were trained and armed hunters who killed beasts for entertainment, perhaps modern bull fighting is the closest surviving analogue (and those hunters sometimes died during the show).
Domitian once condamned a senator to the arena, and even though the senator defeated the lion he was executed anyway
A major reason the Guillotine was set in public in a large square or field, was to allow the population to view the condemned meet their punishment, and be sure it wasn't more corruption. This was actually the whole point of the Revolution, the poor and lower classes had had ENOUGH of the Nobles and Clerics being above the law, and torturing the poor, having the right to murder commoners without penalty . . .
They were accused by the People at Public events. Tried by People's Tribunals which were mostly open to all the Citizens. Then executed in front of the People in a way it would be hard to fake. And put in a place large numbers of the Citizens could come and see it happen.
And these methods were not mere CUSTOM or chance. The Delegates debated for months about all these aspects, their records are freely available still. They deliberately made Justice open and over-looked by the Citizens in reaction to the clandestine and secret ways the courts operated in the time before.
question: growing up in the streets of Brooklyn, NY, we played jax, tag and stickball (baseball with a tennis ball and broomhandle bat) - what did the kids growing up in the streets of Rome play??.. 🤔
Did Roman’s consider Caesar as their first princep or Augustus?
So are you suggesting that Ignatius letters are spurious? Indeed he did not write a firsthand account of actually being chomped, but the events leading up to it make it obvious he was going to be eaten.
During the hyperinflation of the late roman empire how did trade work, was there a certain price if you paid in "good" denarii and a higher amount if you paid in later struck ones?
Thanks for the clarity and objectivity. I think that the video coukd have been better with a calculation on the number of people that were tortured on the arenas of the empire (of coursr, if there is a way to know it).
There is no way to know that even if there were any records later it surely would be destroyed either by the emperor or the court to hide the crimes...
In the mosaic of the leopard attacking the prisoner does anyone know what the mostly lost image of the man behind the prisoner is supposed to be doing?
Can you speak about the Lar/ Larem and what was their rites?
Joaquin Phoenix had some pretty crazy games at the Coliseum...he was a nut.
Great content!
That would have been a sight to see. If only time travel existed.
I would think after eating most of one human, the lion would be full.
Big cats might act like little cats and toy with the prey, killing a bunch, and only eating part of one, I suppose.
What powers did Western and Eastern Roman consuls have during imperial era?
If they were all later accounts past the Era the events were happening, could it also be a metaphor? Like "being thrown to the maw of the beast" implying the change of opinion towards tyrannical order or systematic brutality?
Did they really fill the Colosseum up with water and have naval battles in them?
We all have seen represented in art, legion signifer wearing lion or other predators head over his helmet. Do we have sufficient knowledge to answer why they did that and if they did it in battle or only when on triumphs ? Also was it provided/determined by legion in any way or was it on personal preference/availability of signifer/legate ? I get it - rule of cool was most likely same in ancient Rome as it is today but it seems a little bit problematic to provide such piece of equipment.
An even more interesting question would be if the early christians would be seen as christians in present time. Very little is known about early Christianity. The canon of the bible as we know it is determined long after Jesus died. What did the early christians really believe?
I'd listen to more about what weird things the Romans thought Christians were into.
Were Christians the only religious group treated as criminals?
Not even close.
The cult of Bacchus (or rather, a wave of riotous worship of it) was ruthlessly persecuted by the Senate in the early years of the 2nd century BC: the rites with orgies, excessive drinking, loud music, and a strong role for women was deemed too un-Roman and a danger to the stability of the state. After the conquest of Gaul by Caesar in ~50 BC (and Britain a century later) the druids were systemically repressed, or at least their practice of human sacrifices. Then there were also the Jews, although the persecution there was more as a nationality than a religion. In the late Empire, pagans were harassed for not being Christian. Indeed, the wrong type of Christians (various heresies such as the Aryan or Iconoclasts, even before the Orthodox/Catholic split) were also strongly persecuted during the Byzantine era.
I'm sure there were others I haven't covered, especially with the deluge of secretive and potentially subversive religions that sprang up in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.
@@QuantumHistorian You're forgetting the Manicheans, who were so thoroughly put down that they only survived in meaningful numbers in faraway China
How did Christians from Persia end up in Rome? That sounds like an interesting story.
Lions in particular smell strongly of biblical allegory - Daniel in the lions den.
Ok, but they still threw people to the lions and other animals in the arena.
@@huwhitecavebeast1972 for sure - but that doesn’t mean the number and nature of all the martyr stories should be taken at face value.
@@edhaworth8151 Of course not. One has to question every historical account, regardless.
Short answer: Probably not.
But we should.
Read the Martyrologium Romanum, if you can find one. You'll see.
The martyrs of Leone were gored and trampled by bulls… that’s very clever.
Dang you look way younger than I expected.
It wasn't always serious criminals like murderers that got damnatio ad bestias, it was disobedient slaves or foreign prisoners of war. One story that stands out was of a German, who rather than get thrown to the beasts in the arena, swallowed a sponge and choked on it to avoid this fate. Another man thrust his head into the the spokes of a big wagon wheel and broke his neck thereby, rather than face the arena. I for one would rather fight to the death rather than experience that fate.
Seneca's account of the sponge-German was him being a gladiator specifically, and he deems it a thing of virtue and bravery to have seized his own life rather than be a slave to a fate others had assigned for him. Shows you how things have changed in the minds of men over the last 2000 years.
@@theeccentrictripper3863 I didn't even remember that was Seneca lol. Just remembered the story but thanks for the reminder.
@@huwhitecavebeast1972 Seneca is love, Seneca is life, even if he rages at those new-fangled glass panes in windows lol
Epic
I don’t think “purported” is honest enough, but certainly it was a practice. And I agree that persecution was definitely regional, and depended on the Emperor at the time, and his governors. Some were tolerant, some not. However you look at it, Christians outlasted their persecutors. But living through it was not something any of us would want. And your description was accurate. As to comments here of defeating the beasts: difficult without weapons.
Did they ever use European lions in the arenas
There is a lot to admire the Romans for. However, one must not discount that they were an especially cruel civilization. Any persecution of christians is just the tip of the iceberg.
An animal would never do that to a human being 😊
It was a fact you can read the Christian Bible itself and you can see these Wicked occult rumors revealing is true and you can even see the early Christian writings within the second century and the third where the Christian Bible comes to be or at least the author start pinning it and they start getting prominence taking place.
Blessed Celsus reveals all to us.
Tangentially related...did the Carthaginians really sacrifice children?
Yes, we have both material evidence found in the modern era and the ancient accounts of not only the Carthaginians but Phoenician practices in general, a civilization Carthage belonged to. The Romans might've exaggerated a little bit, but it was going on, for a variety of reasons that are hard to properly quantify because of how thoroughly Carthage's history and religion were eradicated and assimilated.
@@theeccentrictripper3863ea It happened but it was probably done rarely; only in times of great hardship and food shortages like in many pagan societies. And we have to keep in mind many of the Early Christian and Roman reports had an incentive to embellished how often the practice was done.
@@Jones25ful Do you have an example of Christian commentary on Carthaginian child sacrifice? I can't think of one off the top of my head, maybe Augustine since he lived there but I've never actually seen it mentioned, because of all the syncretism Christians in Late Antiquity didn't seem to differentiate too much between pre-Christian religious traditions, at least the ones I've read
@@theeccentrictripper3863 if I’m not mistaken Moloch from the bible is based of Roman propaganda floating around at the time about Carthaginian deities and child sacrifice.
@@Jones25ful Moloch was an actual Phoenician god the Israelites encountered, not a fabrication of later times
Great video!
They did.
As a historian, I'm going to add a little bit of context for this question.
There are Roman records indicating that a number of Christians in the 1st Century were executed not because of their Christian beliefs, but because of their actions as Christians, specifically accosting people (while calling upon them to repent and convert), graffiti (calling on people to repent and convert), disturbing the peace (by wandering down the streets at night banging things like sticks and pots together loudly all the while calling upon others to repent and convert), just generally inciting unrest (by calling on others to repent and convert), and other similar crimes. In other words, they were executed not because they were Christians, but because they were jerks. Most of these executions were crucifixions. Some were known to have been fed to animals as entertainment, but not in the Colosseum. (There were other arenas.) There's a notable set of letters involving Pliny the Younger about how to identify a Christian from a Jew. (Ask them. The Jew will deny being Christian, but the Christian will affirm it.) At this point, the behavior of these Christian jerks appears to have reached a point where all Christians began being targeted by association.
As for allegiance to the Roman gods, Rome didn't care which gods you worshiped. You could worship any god you wanted but Rome came first. (We see this in places like Gaul and Romano Britain where they still worshiped the local gods but foremost allegiance was to the Empire.) It became very clear to people like Nero that Christians put their god before Rome.
Nero the same guy who killed so many innocent people and was a fruit cake and was a human garbage yeah let’s trust that guy
Nero the same guy who killed so many innocent people and was a fruit cake and was a human garbage yeah let’s trust that guy
Those illustrative paintings are awesome, this is what painting should be. Especially the last one, including the congoise slave carrying the sedan chair. This was a well ruled society.
i think not many Christians were eaten. cruxification was more like it saving beasts for gladiators. Those would be the forgotten .
The lions had a Good meal.
Pagans were amazing. I should write a novel about my pagan ancestors in Eastern Arabia, before the onslaught of Muhammad’s Islamic armies from the western end of the peninsula.
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Francamente mi risulta difficile capire il perché del martirio dei cristiani, visto che i cristiani erano una delle tante sette religiose presenti a Roma e nell'impero, nettamente minoritaria, e non si capisce perché se la prendessero proprio con loro. I fatti ci dicono che poi l'impero abbracciò il cristianesimo, da Costantino in poi, che permane tutt'ora (il cristianesimo, dico). Secondo me la storia del martirio dei cristiani è abbondantemente costruita; e serve solo a rafforzare la tesi, a scopo propagandistico, quanto i cristiani abbiano dovuto subire, in termini di sacrificio della vita, prima di affermarsi come religione predominante nel mondo.
There weren't martyrs in the Colosseum. They were executed in Nero's Circus which was situated on the Vatican hill.
Source?
This I sincerely doubt. Especially when you speak with the surety of someone who was actually there at the time.
Lions are predators, they need to hunt, and even then they have the fear of man in them, all wild animals have it,
There is a story of one Christian, her mother and a local Christian official (bishop or priest, not sure) having animals set on them in a theater.
The mother in question was a matron and to mock her further they apparently tried to set a cow or bull up against her.
They also stripped her chest bare. The animal wasn't interested, however.
What a pleasant thing to force an older woman.
She is supposed to have borne her treatment bravely.
The church official, on the other hand, was said to be terrified in the moments leading up because he was to be set against a predatory animal.
When your views intersect with Roman autocrats 😳
My ancestors fought this myth. Fought for their lives against the tides. But here we are. Understanding, and respecting, the people/cause/ideology/aesthetics, underlying Universality of the message: Love your neighbor. Cloth the naked. Shelter the weak. Feed the hungry. Protect the orphan. AMEN
Then your ancestors were organized criminals, "Goodfellas"/ crestoi, not actual followers of Christ. So many pretenders, who took His name in vain, committed atrocious crimes against humanity. These deceivers received their just recompense.
How great was the influence of Ancient Rome to Napoleon Bonaparte and his French Empire?
🗿👍🏿
Admit it: going by your hair cut, which clearly follows the style of Roman males of late Republic/early Principate times, you are ramping up to a time travel expedition to Rome, aren't you? 😆
It might be cool if you could get the great courses prof dude Dr. Philip Daileader on for a chat.
Fun fact: when the empire stopped persecuting christians, they got really angry bc now the (easiest) opportunity to become a martyr was no longer available
The Romans accepted Judaism and exempted its adherents from relevant Roman practices. I think the issue with early Christianity was that it was a Doomsday cult that expected the end of the world very soon and welcomed it because it would mean the Second Coming. It is very easy to imagine some Christians in 64AD Rome celebrating as the city burned, seeing it as fulfilment of prophecy. It is also easy to imagine some extremists, or even mentally ill worshippers, setting fires to help things along. I think therefore that Nero's blaming of the Christians might well be based on actual albeit maybe minor incidents that witnesses observed. The Romans referred to Christians as "enemies of the Human Race" because of this obsession with the ending of the world and the unimportance of this life.
But look what happened to Rome it fell apart because they were killing many Christians and God destroy them
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*primus
Why do people bother with these comments?
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