The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Kelly Christopher

Author:Kelly, Christopher [Kelly, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2006-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

The empire writes back

Of course, it would be too simple to think of Plutarch or Pausanias as active opponents of Roman power. They would not have supported Boudica and her British revolt nor have committed suicide with the last of the Jewish freedom-fighters at Masada. Their works incited no riots; they did not inspire armed rebellion; no emperors were moved to suppress them. Indeed, Plutarch (like many of the Mediterranean’s landowning elite) was a beneficiary of empire. He inherited estates in Boeotia in central Greece; he held high municipal office in his local town of Chaeronea; he enjoyed the privileges of Roman citizenship and the friendship of a number of wealthy and powerful Romans. Rather than as open encouragements to resist Roman rule, what makes both Plutarch’s and Pausanias’ works interesting is a clear recognition that the imposition of empire not only involves substantial political, economic, and social rupture in the present, but also has an inseparable and significant impact on the past. Indeed, in addition to effective administration, tax collection, and the maintenance of law and order, part of what marks out a ruling power (long after the bloodshed of conquest and the parade of peace and prosperity restored) is its ability selectively to refashion for its own ends the history of its subject peoples.

In the early 2nd century AD, Hadrian provoked a historical revolution. Those pasts incompatible with the comfortable image of a munificent emperor and a complicit civic elite were effaced. Hadrian’s building programme in Jerusalem defiantly ignored the city’s Jewish heritage. In 130, while on tour in Judaea, he founded a veteran colony on the site, henceforth to be known as Colonia Aelia Capitolina (Aelius was the emperor’s family name). This decision to obliterate Jerusalem is sometimes suggested as one of the factors that may have led to the Jewish revolt of 132–135. Little is known of this insurrection; for a while the rebels, led by the charismatic Shim’on ben Kosiba (or Bar Kochba), waged a successful guerrilla war and minted their own coins proclaiming their intention to rebuild the Temple. But it was not to last. A large Roman force commanded by Hadrian himself crushed the revolt. Reprisals were ruthless: in one account, 50 towns and 985 villages were destroyed and over half a million insurgents slain.

After the Roman victory, building in Jerusalem continued. The forum (in the area of the much later Church of the Holy Sepulchre) was dominated by a temple to Jupiter. For the previous 60 years, since the sack of the city by Roman legions in AD 70 (the victory celebrated on the Arch of Titus in Rome), the Temple Mount had been abandoned. Now it was topped by two statues: one of Jupiter and one of Hadrian on horseback. Strikingly, Jews were strictly forbidden to settle in the city or its territory. Jerusalem, refounded and renamed, was closed to those for whom it was most holy. They were to be treated as permanent outsiders. Aelia Capitolina, extensively re-modelled with a

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