Economic Life

Food Production

90 % of Empire was engaged in farming and herding (caring for sheep, goats, pigs, cattle)

Shepherds were lower class and often accused of criminal behaviour.

Day labourers waited in a public place to be hired

Fishermen worked with small cooperatives

Working classes

Senators – lived in luxury and possessed many slaves

Equestrians – included many merchants and political officials. They were the financial speculators

Plebian – majority of Roman citizens who lived in cheap tenement houses.

Freed slaves – intermingled with citizens but rarely became citizens

Slaves who with the freed slaves, performed most of the labour

Banking/Debt

Money kept in temple, buried in fields, strong boxes Roman coins were considered idolatrous because of the images of the deified emperors. Professional bankers – money changers in the Court of the Gentiles in Jer. provided a service to visiting Jews by exchanging their Roman money into shekels.Wealthy Roman families all practiced some money lendingSomeone who could not pay back a loan could be put into slavery or sell themselves into slavery

Entertainment

“Baths, wine and love-making destroy our bodies, yet love-making, wine and baths make life worth living” (Common Roman Graffiti)Rome had over 200 public baths by the time of PaulGames in Olympia were held every 4 years in honour of the god ZeusAmphitheatres were designed for the combats of gladiators and wild beasts

Social Life

Family values

Hellenistic fathers were expected to teach their children a trade

Corporal punishment was the primary means of discipline. Parents were not encouraged to play or laugh with their children or risk spoiling them

Mothers transmitted traditional morality and domestic skills

A Roman mother would be responsible to educate her daughter in domestic skills

In a regular marriage children took their status from their father, in a extralegal marriage they took their status from their mother.

Marriage

Only when both partners were Roman citizens could a legal marriage be formed

In a legal marriage a wife did not come under her husband’s complete authority. Instead her father was her legal guardian. She belonged first to her father

Roman law the minimum marriage age 12 for girls, 14 for boys

Most marriages were arranged by their parents

Goal of a Roman marriage was to produce children, but also had room for partnership and love

Divorce

One needed only to send one’s spouse a letter of intent to divorce in the NT era.Romans generally divorced because of the failure to have children, to initiate a desired new marriage, continued adultery, or political reasonsAdultery for men applied only to affairs with married women in their social classAffairs with slaves or lower-class women were not considered adultery by the stateWomen could be punished for affairs with slaves or men of lower classesIt was a crime for married men to commit fornication with unmarried “respectable” womenRoman divorce usually resulted in the separating a mother from her children in the case of a legal marriage

Women

Greco- Roman culture viewed women as intellectually inferior to men

There was considerable inequality between women in the upper classes and those in a lower class.

Caesar Augustus decreed that every woman between 25 and 50 must be married or lose their rights of inheritance and other privileges

Slaves

Averaged about 10 % of the population and over 30% in RomePrisoners of War, sold by professional slaversPossibility of selling yourself into slavery to pay off debtSlaves had no legal right to marryA master could do anything he wanted to his slave, except his power to execute slaves had diminished by the NT era.

At the age of 30 slaves were often freed.  

Roman Rule

Law

Roman took precedence, especially for Roman citizens.Generally, local officials did not have the power to execute. Non-citizen suspects could be beaten and imprisoned as part of the preliminary examination (coercitio) Prisons were only used to hold prisoners awaiting trial. A convicted person of a lower status might be sold into slavery or condemned to work in the mines or the gladiatorial arena

Taxes

Taxes were not levied on Roman citizens but on non-citizen provincials

Tributum soli – fixed-rate property tax assessed on land, houses, slaves and ships within each province

Tributum capitis – pool or head tax, levied on men ages 14 to 65 and on women from 12- 65

Jews also had to pay religious taxes

Jews also paid tithes on produce to support the priests in Jerusalem.

Schools

Three kinds of education – military, physical education or hygiene and educational subjectsTraveling artist poets, and philosophers would often give lectures on the streetThe Greek word Schole, the word for school, meant “leisure,” as did the Latin word schola, which came from the Greek. The words were used for the place where leisurely discussions took place. Only people who had leisure could go to school and become scholars. Teaching often occurred on a one to one basis between the youth being educated and an elder. In Graeco-Roman society teachers were people of leisure and did not do physical labour, which was the task of slaves.In Jewish society the rabbis, or teachers, practiced trades in addition to their work as teachers

Roman Religion and Philosophy

Mythology

PolytheisticThe gods were responsible for what happened on earth. Evils in human existence were beyond human control. Remedies had to come from the gods. Romans would sacrifice to their gods when the need arose in order to win the favour of the god being worshippedPeople used magic and theurgy, the arts of persuading a god to reveal himself and give salvation for achieving contact with the divine.Romans believed religion should serve the state.

Stoicism

Lo logos (word, reason) permeated the universe and gave it unity, order and purpose

o a seed of logos exists within humans and by observing the seed stoics could learn their purpose in life

o providence is revealed in the order and unity of the universe, which is the work of god.

o Believed in destiny and had to be accepted as God’s will

o Happiness occurs when the human will is aligned with the will of God or will of nature

o Stressed duty over personal pleasure

Cynicism

Celebrated the ideals of indifference, self-control and patient endurance

No room for religion as the pursued life according to nature

A cynic was a citizen of the world

Were countercultural in nature

Skepticism

Critics of sense perception

Mistrusted absolute claims

rejected nature over convention as an absolute criterion