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ROME

SPQR

Senatus Populus Que Romanus - The Senate and People of Rome.

Julius ( Iulius ) Caesar



Born 100 BCE into a patrician family claiming descent from the gods and kings. Through family influence and his many campaigns he rose through the ranks.

At age 20 Julius was sent to Bithynia where he became the young lover of the King Nicomedes.


"He served his first campaign in Asia on the personal staff of Marcus Thermus, governor of the province. On being sent by Thermus to Bithynia, to fetch a fleet, he dawdled so long at the court of Nicomedes that he was suspected of improper relations with the king . . ." Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, Divus Iulius

 

 These Emperors had taken male lovers.

Edward Gibbon who wrote 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' observed that all but one of the first 14 Roman emperors were either bisexual or exclusively homosexual.

Although I have never completely read this book, the title contains the entire epithet of the Roman Empire.  Why do you suppose this Empire fell?  Is this significant for our time?  Or is this just another civilization of a bygone era?  Observe:

 The beast that you saw was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall come. Here is the mind that has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits: and they are seven kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come; and when he comes, he must continue a little while. And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goes into perdition. Revelation 17:8-11

Do you believe in a resurrected Roman Empire?  Does the beast (government) bear similarities to the previous Roman Empire?  The beast system has been forming for quite some time, and the earth's inhabitants are oblivious to it!  Let's see if the Roman Pattern can be applied to anything we now know!

Homosexuality in Ancient Rome

Compiled by Nathaniel Wandering

A) Rome political system over the centuries went from a Monarchy to a Republic, and finally to an Empire

B) It was an agrarian society (before the empire) on the Tiber river

C) History of Roman Politics is really a history of Oligarchy (Property qualifications).

D) Rough consensus held the state together - even in imperial times, but especially during the Republic.

E) Roman citizenship

1) Right to appeal local rulings to the magistrates

2) Death penalty was rare

3) Participation in political life

4) Comparatively open citizenship (manumission was far easier in Rome than in Greek city states), social war, Italian citizenship, even non-Romans in the colonies were allowed to become citizens

F) It was the first federal state

G) The Census

1) Every five years

2) Counted all citizens

3) Ranked their status (wealth) and this affected military/political placement

4) Paterfamilias registered his name, wife, sons and slaves (not daughters)

5) The moral census (Cicero tells us): censor would submit a citizen to a moral and physical examination because "a bad man cannot be a good citizen." The higher the man's standing, the higher expectations of his moral stature

6) Censors could impose fines as punishment

H) Almost all citizens were soldiers for Rome

I) Loot brought back from war helped inspire allegiance and maintain consensus for state rule

J) Devastation in times like Punic wars reveals that the commitment to the state ran deeper than financial allegiance - deep nationalism

K) Tribunes: approve or reject laws, war and peace

L) Consuls: Field authority during wars

M) Senate: Controls the budget, contracts, taxes

The Emperor Augustus: lifestyle changes during the Empire:

1) Urban life replaces agrarian lifestyle · overpopulation · garbage, sewage and corpses in streets · slaves in factories, flour mills, mines, houses and farms

2) Public works · public spectacles, city projects, baths, chariot races · public brothels

3) Romanization: · bridges, roads, cultural interpenetration · Roman soldiers work with local elites

4) Roman Household:

a) Private space was invaded by censors (unlike the Greek home that was strictly the sphere of the individual head of the household and not subject to outside law).

· The censors tried to prevent cruelty to slaves

· They also tried to prevent seduction of boys and other behavior not approved of by the censors or the law.

b) Many groups lived under one roof, one household:

· Husband, wife, children, servants

· Nutrix - wet nurse

· Nutritor - male educator

· Pedagogue - older child's educator who was there to provide moral growth, protection. Sex possibly went on between the two, like in the tradition of Greek educators, although unlike the Greeks it would be kept a secret

c) War displacement

· Children often moved from home to home because of war. This was a fact of life in Rome.

d) Divorce:

· It was a legal and a practical reality in Rome (unlike Greece where it may be legal in some rare circumstances but it was virtually impossible to attain in reality)

e) Client/Patron relationships - common types of social relationships in Rome:

· Patron: Wealthy individual who would extend kindness to clients such as basket of food left on doorstep

· Patron's primary kindness - legal assistance

· Client: lends political support (votes for patron) and helps to finance the patron's dowry for his daughters (the patron collects donations)

· Patron/client relationships were often long term

· A patron could be the client to someone even more powerful The household and realm of relationship involved far broader social networks and a more ambiguous family than the ones that existed in Greece. The family was a hybrid of different arrangements, not the stable, autonomous cell of Greece. These extended family relationships continue in Italy today (Mafia, family business, etc.)

Marriage:

1) Purpose was to produce legitimate children

2) Roman marriage originally resembled Greek marriage but over time developed into more of a partnership (again, quite unlike the absolute hierarchy of Greek relationships)

3) Household law: Patria Potestas - Father/husband (Paterfamilias) has legal power over the household - including the wife. No one in the household technically owns property except for him. (except for possible exception of dowry)

5) Old fashioned Roman marriage law - Marriage cum mano: all of the husband's and wife's possessions are in fact the husband's possession legally

6) Filaefamilias: This is sometimes referred to as marriage sin mano - This later form of legal marriage was fairer to women and gave them more power within the marriage. Wives would legally still be under the care of their fathers after they married and could reclaim their dowry if they divorced their husband. It was a kind of legal protection for wives to be able to have some rights to their property (although they still depended upon their fathers for the legal right to claim their dowry, revealing that the system was still dominated by men, but with more power for women than in ancient Greece).

7) Consent: One of the positive Roman innovations for marriage. For a marriage to be considered legally legitimate, both partners had to consent to it (unlike in Greece).

8) Consent of the Paterfamilias was also required, so a father could prevent marriage from occurring, but could not force one upon a daughter (in theory - certainly daughters could be pressured into marriage but the law said that if they refused to marry then no father could force them to).

9) Concubines: allowed for men

10) Prostitution: allowed for men (even married men)

11) Adultery: considered adultery for men only if it involved another man's wife

12) Adultery for women: any sex with another man once the woman is married. (But with other women? The books do not say)
 

Sources for these notes:

1) David Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality

2) Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex - Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud

3) Michael Feher (ed.), The Zone 1 & 2 - Fragments for a History of the Human Body

4) William Stewart, Cassell's Queer Companion

5) Claude Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome

6) Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage

7) Keith Bradley, Discovering the Roman Family

8) Amy Richlin, The Gardens of Priapus

9) Petronius, The Satyricon

10) Peter Brown, The Body and Society

11) John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality

12) John Boswell, Same Sex Unions in Modern Europe

Now tell me!  Does any of this ring familiar?  Could this be applied to the United States of America today?  Could this also be applied to many of the European Countries?  Yes!  Shockingly, it can mirror the societies in Europe and America. 

What caused the fall of the Roman Empire?  Rome fell from within!  It decayed from the degeneracy practiced, with knowledge and approval of its' leadership.

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12

Yours in Messiah Yahshua,  Hawke