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ZAKHORIUM
PTEN

From republic to empire, from Spain to the Euphrates

Date

31BCE

31 BCE – 14 CE

After defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian turned the Roman republic into an empire that came to rule almost all the world's Jews.

Political history41.8900°N 12.4913°E
50 BCE
50 CE
100 CE
Between Caesar and God: each bar is an event of the period; this one is in coral.

Sourced narrative

Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.

8 statements

01The rise of Rome

04

Romans and Jews had traits in common: agrarian, patriarchal societies attached to tradition, revering their gods or God and their inherited customs, both marked by contact with Greek culture. The decisive difference, already in the second century BCE, was power: Rome acted in the Hellenistic world as a far superior force.

05

Rome had dominated Italy since the fourth century BCE. In the west only Carthage stood against it; after three Punic Wars it was defeated for good in the second century BCE, and Spain and North Africa came under Roman control. In the east, the Seleucids and Ptolemies also ended up giving way.

01

Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic ruler, hoped to revive her kingdom alongside Mark Antony, her Roman lover. In 31 BCE Octavian, adopted posthumously by Julius Caesar, defeated them both and added the title of pharaoh to his powers. The book's timeline records the conquest of Egypt and the end of the Ptolemies in 30 BCE.

02From republic to empire

The Roman republic was an oligarchy centered on the Senate, a council of elders that advised and filled offices. Octavian posed as the restorer of that order, but removed awkward senators and installed allies; the docile Senate gave him titles (Imperator, Augustus) and command of every legion and governor. The republic survived only as a façade. In Octavian's day Roman territory already reached from the Iberian Peninsula to the Euphrates River. Map 4.1 in the book gives the empire's borders in the second and third centuries CE and marks the regions contested with Parthia.

03Jews inside and outside the empire

Roman expansion brought most of the world's Jews under one government, from Judea and Egypt to North Africa, Asia Minor, Greece and the capital itself. By the first century CE only one sizable Jewish community remained outside the empire: that of the Parthian kingdom, which had taken the lands east of the Euphrates from the Seleucids and rivaled Rome. Almost nothing is known of the Jews of Parthia: the main source, the Babylonian Talmud, only crystallized during the 500s and 600s CE. So from 63 BCE to the Talmudic age, the Jewish history that can be written is in practice that of the Jews of the Roman Empire.

Context

For Philo, Augustus was the model sovereign: he brought peace, united the world, civilized the barbarians and put an end to piracy; Caligula, by contrast, was dreadful, but in his view most successors acted with benevolence toward the Jews. Archaeology shows what prompted this judgment: aqueducts in Jerusalem and Caesarea, better roads, streets and ports.

§ 01Geography

Where it happened

Gazetteer coordinates (Pleiades for ancient places; Natural Earth and Wikidata for modern ones) over modern physical geography (Natural Earth). Coastlines and the Dead Sea have changed since antiquity.
▮ loading geography

§ 02Museum

Objects and images

Each item states whether it is an ancient object, a modern photograph or a later artistic interpretation.

§ 04Network

Connections

§ 05Bibliography

Further reading

  • Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, as updated by Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973).

    Jewish history and culture in the Roman period (reference work) · recommended in Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 119

§ 06Apparatus

Sources on this page

  1. 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 90; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 520inspect
  2. 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 90; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 91; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 520inspect
  3. 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 91inspect
  4. 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 90inspect
  5. 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 90inspect
  6. 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 90; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 90inspect
  7. 07Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 91inspect
  8. 08Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 95; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 96inspect
  • Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
  • Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
  • Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
  • Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
  • Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.