Understanding Biblical Roman Culture
1. Nature and character of Nero- ruler during the life of the apostles
Nero’s grandfather, Lucuis Domituis Ahenobarbus (48 BC) was a savage and heartless man. Even Emperor Augustus rebuked him because his animal shows and gladiatorial contests were so bloody. Nero’s father, Gnaeus, was even worse. One time he deliberately rode down a child on the Appian Way just for fun. He also murdered someone for refusing to drink as much as he ordered and another time he gauged out someone’s eyes for criticizing him. He was generally engaged in drunken, adulterous debauchery and had an incestuous relationship with his sister Domitia Lepida (54).[i]
The name Nero is notorious for every kind of crime imaginable.
He ordered Apostle Paul’s execution[ii]
He set fire to Rome and blamed it on Christians
He tied a Christian woman to a bull’s horns to enact the Greek myth of Dirce
He used Christians as human torches to light up the gardens of Nero[iii]
Defiled every single part of his body and thought of new ways to do it:
"He at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched by his freedman Doryphorus."[iv]
Nero fasten naked boys and girls to stakes, put on the hide of a wild beast, and attacked them and satisfied his brutal lust under the appearance of devouring parts of their bodies? Such were the indecencies of Nero.[v]
Set up stops full of prostitutes for long travels:
Whenever he drifted down the Tiber to Ostia, or sailed about the Gulf of Baiae, booths were set up at intervals along the banks and shores, fitted out for debauchery, while bartering matrons played the part of inn-keepers and from every hand solicited him to come ashore."[vi]
Abused free-born boys, debauched married women, raped Rubria, a Vestal Virgin.
He castrated the boy Sporus, and transformed him into a woman. He married him with all the usual formalities of a marriage settlement. When the ceremony was over, he had him conducted like a bride to his own house, and treated him as his wife. He took Sporus to Greece and back to Rome, making Calvia Crispinilla serve as "mistress of wardrobe" to Sporus, epitropeia ten peri esthete, kissing him from time to time as they rode together.[vii]
During the Calends festival, Sporus presented Nero with a ring with a gemstone depicting the Rape of Proserpina, in which the ruler of the underworld forces a young girl to become his bride.
It’s a miracle Christianity survived the Neronian persecution despite all the opposition of the pagan and Papal Roman Pontiffs.
Thoughts: he was overall what we would call evil. It was his nature and character. He terrorized people, murdered, committed adultery, was violent, among many other things. And yet these types of actions were common back then. We read about them all over in history about people killing people and plotting to deceive and kill people or hurt them or outcast them.
The Tacitus Annals say that everyone rejoiced over the death of Nero.
Welcome as the death of Nero had been in the first burst of joy, yet it had not only roused various emotions in Rome, among the Senators, the people, or the soldiery of the capital, it had also excited all the legions and their generals;
Proverbs 11:10 when the righteous prosper, the city rejoices; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy.
Proverbs 28:12 when the righteous triumph, there is great glory, but when the wicked rise, people hide themselves
Proverbs 29:2 when the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.
Thoughts: It’s engrained in us to know when something is good and when something isn’t because it’s written on our hearts. We don’t grieve over good things and we are conflicted when something seems good because it is good. This is why we are to discern with right judgment and judge the heart and the thoughts the way Jesus did over and over and not the appearance. This is why we are to be led by the Spirit so we aren’t led astray and blaspheme (slow to call what is really good, good and what is really evil, evil)
2. The kings and emperors were looked at as gods
It is not for us to criticize one whom you may raise above all others, or your motives for so doing. Heaven has entrusted you with the supreme decision of affairs, and for us is left the glory of obedience. And, again, we see what takes place before our eyes, who it is on whom you bestow riches and honors, who are the most powerful to help or to injure. That Sejanus was such, no one will deny. To explore the prince's secret thoughts, or any of his hidden plans, is a forbidden, a dangerous thing, nor does it follow that one could reach them. "[viii]
The lictors each bore a fasces, a bundle of rods which symbolized the power over life and death held by the King of Rome. The axe symbolized the power to execute quickly and mercifully, while the rods symbolized the power to punish with beatings. Though the king was commander in time of war, chief priest, and judge, he did not have absolute power when it came to governing Rome.
Thoughts: The kings wanted to be known as the ones who gave life or death and had the power just like the Pharaohs had said who is this god that you talk about to Moses, I am god he can’t hurt me. They wanted the people to believe that they held their ultimate fortunes and controlled the world. But God says I am the One True God and I sent my Son, repent and turn from these other gods to me, the living God. Worship me. Trust me.
Silanus, in truth, was intensely apprehensive, and had been frightened into caution by his uncle's destruction. Nero then procured persons, under the name of informers, to invent against Lepida, the wife of Cassius and aunt of Silanus, a charge of incest with her brother's son, and of some ghastly religious ceremonial.
Thoughts: in truth was a common thing said in other writings as well as the Bible. It seems like it more translates to when we say this is honestly how I feel or honestly or if I’m honest. It was to say they weren’t deceiving or lying, but telling what the truth about what they heard and experienced.
3. The way the word nature was used in Roman times
The Greeks worshipped in sanctuaries located, according to the nature of the particular deity, either in the city or countryside. The sanctuaries (temenos) contained a temple with a monumental cult image of the deity, outdoor altar, statues and votive offerings to gods, and often features of landscape such as sacred trees or springs. Many temples benefited from natural surroundings, helping to express the character of the divinities.
They worshipped many gods, each with a distinct personality and domain. Greek myths explained the origins of the gods and their individual relations with mankind.
The art of Archaic and Classical Greece illustrates many mythological episodes, including an established iconography of attributes identifying each god. There were twelve principal deities in the Greek patheon. Zeus was the sky god and father of the gods, to whom the ox and the oak tree were sacred. Hades and Poseidon, Zeus’s brothers, reined over the Underworld and sea. Hera, Zeus’s sister and wife, was queen of the gods.
Demons are benevolent or benign nature spirits, beings of the same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts, chthonic heroes, spirit guides, forces of nature or the deities themselves (see Plato's Symposium).
4. Common gods and their descriptions in Roman times
Romans stole their pagan pantheon from Greece. Jupiter is Zeus and Minerva is Athena.
But abhorred Eris (Strife) bare painful Ponos (Toil), and Lethe (Forgetfulness), and Limos (starvation), and the Algea (Pains), full of weeping, the Hysminai (Fightings) and the Makhai (Battles), the Phonoi (Murders) and the Androktasiai (Man-slaughters), the Neikea (Quarrels), the Pseudo-Logoi (Lies), the Amphilogiai (Disputes), and Dysnomia (Lawlessness) and Ate (Ruin), who share one another’s natures, and Horkos (Oath).[ix]
ERIS: goddess or spirit (daimona) of strife, discord, contention and rivalry. She was often represented specifically as the daimon of the strife of war, who haunted the battlefield and delighted in human bloodshed. Because of Eris' disagreeable nature she was the only goddess not to be invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. When she turned up anyway, she was refused admittance and, in a rage, threw a golden apple.
HYPNOS: god or spirit (daimon) of sleep. He resided in Erebos, the land of eternal darkness, beyond the gates of the rising sun. From there he rose into the sky each night in the train of his mother Nyx (Night). Hypnos was often paired with twin brother Thanatos (Peaceful Death), and Oneiroi (Dreams) were his brothers or sons.Hypnos was depicted as a young man with wings on his shoulders or brow. His attributes included either a horn of sleep-inducing opium, a poppy-stem, a branch dripping water from the river Lethe (Forgetfulness), or an inverted torch.
KRONOS: worshipped as "King of the Golden Age," and depicting freedom. The feet of his image in the pagan temple, which were normally swathed and tightly restricted with wool, were unbound. Everyone wore a pilleus, or wool "freedom hat," a sign of liberty.
The Charites character and nature are sufficiently expressed by names they bear: they were conceived as the goddesses who gave festive joy and enhanced the enjoyments of life by refinement and gentleness. Gracefulness and beauty in social intercourse are therefore attributed to them. (Horat. Carm. Iii. 21,22; Pind. Ol. Xiv. 7, &c.)
Thoughts: the way we are made in God’s image and likeness, they had gods they strived to be like and God said no be in my personality, not theirs. God spoke to them about their relation in a way they would understand, father son, or intimate love because we understand those emotions and because that’s how they looked at the gods. He says repent from all of this and worship solely me. Repent from dead works and adultery from me and serve me, not these gods or the people that make themselves like gods.
Do not put your trust in idols or make metal images of gods for yourselves. I am the Lord your God- Leviticus 19:4
Do not make idols or set up carved images, or sacred pillars, or sculptured stones in your land so you may worship them. I am the Lord your God. - Leviticus 26:1
​
The Israelites did evil in the Lord's sight and served the images of Baal and Ashtoreth- Judges 2:11-13
God created human beings in his own image. And he wants to us to live in His image, like Jesus.- Gen 1:27, Gen 9:6
​
So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord- who is the Spirit- makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image. - 2 Co. 3:18
5. Tacitus Annals writings (from that time period) about common gods worshipped
On the 15th of January, as Galba was sacrificing in front of the temple of Apollo, the Haruspex Umbricius announced to him that the entrails had a sinister aspect, that treachery threatened him, that he had an enemy at home.
Piso made his way to the temple of Vesta, where he was admitted by the compassion of one of the public slaves, who concealed him in his chamber. There, not indeed through the sanctity of the place or its worship, but through the obscurity of his hiding-place, he obtained a respite from instant destruction, till there came, by Otho's direction and specially eager to slay him…Piso was dragged out by these men and slaughtered in the entrance of the temple.
To those who inquired the reason of his departure, Otho pretended he was purchasing certain farm-buildings, which from their age he suspected to be unsound…he proceeded through the palace of Tiberius to the Velabrum, and thence to the golden milestone near the temple of Saturn. There three and twenty soldiers of the body-guard saluted him as Emperor, and, while he trembled at their scanty number, put him hastily into a chair, drew their swords, and hurried him onwards.
When he heard the Senate's decision, he led Helvidius and Demetrius into a chamber, and having laid bare the arteries of each arm, he let the blood flow freely, and, as he sprinkled it on the ground, he called the quaestor to his side and said, "We pour out a libation to Jupiter the Deliverer. Behold, young man, and may the gods avert the omen, but you have been born into times in which it is well to fortify the spirit with examples of courage." Then as the slowness of his end brought with it grievous anguish, turning his eyes on Demetrius . . .
6. Worship practices of other gods
Ashtoreth was a goddess of Canaan and Phoenicia... prostitution was practiced in her name and she was served with immoral rites by bands of men and women. (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 1, 1979, pages 319-320.)
The religious Canaanites of Palestine worshiped a fertility goddess named Ashtoreth. In Ashtoreth’s worship services, male worshipers had anal sex with priests and priestesses of the goddess. This was viewed as an offering to the fertility goddess. The priests and male prostitutes, who were consecrated to her cult were called qadesh, qedishim or sodomites, (Deuteronomy 23:18; 1 Kings 14:24; 15:12; 22:46)
Allow male worshipers to use them for anal sex, as did the sacred harlots, (2 Kings 23:7)
Pagan religions of the ancient near east shared a common feature. They were fertility cults who worshiped a Mother goddess (The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible)
Fertility rites were practiced at the numerous shrines, which dotted the land, as well as at the major sanctuaries... A characteristic feature of the fertility cult was sacral sexual intercourse by priests and priestesses and other specially consecrated persons, sacred prostitutes of both sexes... Child-sacrifice was also a feature of the rites...(The Interpreter's Dictionary of The Bible, Volume 3, Abingdon, 1990, pages 933-934)
Tacitus Annals
Its oldest temples consumed, and the Capitol itself fired by the hands of citizens. Sacred rites were profaned; there was profligacy in the highest ranks; the sea was crowded with exiles, and its rocks polluted with bloody deeds. In the capital there were yet worse horrors. Nobility, wealth, the refusal or the acceptance of office, were grounds for accusation, and virtue ensured destruction. The rewards of the informers were no less odious than their crimes; for while some seized on consulships and priestly offices, as their share of the spoil, others on procuratorships, and posts of more confidential authority, they robbed and ruined in every direction amid universal hatred and terror. Slaves were bribed to turn against their masters, and freedmen to betray their patrons; and those who had not an enemy were destroyed by friends
[i] Blond, A: Blond’s Roman Emperors (A Scandalous History of the Roman Emperors), Quartet Books, 1994; Grant, M: The Roman Emperors (A biolographical guide to the rulers of Imperial Rome: 31BC-AD476), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996; Green, V: The madness of Kings (Personal trauma and the fate of nations), Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1994; Scarre, Ch: Chronicle of the Rompan Empires, Thames and Hudson, 1995
[ii] Jackson, Wayne. Nero Caesar and the Christian Faith. Christian Courier. https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/623-nero-caesar-and-the-christian-faith
[iii] Tacitus AD 60-120), Annals (XV.44)
[iv] Suetonius: Nero XXVII-XXIX, Loeb Translation, 1914)
[v] Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXII, 13).
[vi] Suetonius: Nero XXVII-XXIX, Loeb Translation, 1914
[vii] Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Nero, XXVII)
[viii] Tacitus, Annals
[ix] Hesiod, Theogony 230 ff (trans. Evelyn-White)(Freep epic C8th or C7th B.C.)