ancient rome

Ordinary Life for Romans Under Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius
History

Ordinary Life for Romans Under Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius

09/13/2023 Bruce Strom 3

Professor Aldrete in his Wondrium lecture on the History of the Ancient World points out that the ancient historians and sources are silent on what life was like for the many farmers who labored in obscurity, that these ancient histories are really histories of political leaders and city dwellers. For every person who lived in the city in much of the ancient world, eight or nine lived on a family farm. The ratio differed around Rome, about a quarter of the people nearby lived in the city. Most people never traveled more than twenty miles from home, never saw a king, never read a book, or heard a philosopher speak. Most people living on farms did not even know the name of the Roman Emperor, and life went on as before no matter who was emperor. […]

Ancient Warrior Culture - Ancient Greece, Rome, Israel
History

Ancient Warrior Societies, Blog 3, Warfare in the Old Testament

08/25/2023 Bruce Strom 9

Warfare is mentioned over three hundred times in the Old Testament, swords four hundred times. Ancient Israel was caught in many of the ancient wars since it was in the cross-roads of trade routes between Mesopotamia and Egypt. Since Judah was mountainous, its armies relied heavily on infantry, but the Bible mentions that King Ahab of the Northern Kingdom had chariots, and that he was felled by arrow probably shot by a composite bow. Assyria and Babylon had cavalry archers on horseback, but not Egypt or Israel. An Israeli chariot had three horses pulling three men, a driver with a spear, an archer, and a shield bearer. We know from our Sunday School stores King David slew Goliath with a sling, but the ancient slings were not the puny toys we imagine, the sling in the ancient world was a deadly combat weapon. A skilled slinger could sling a rock over 120 miles per hour, faster than the fastest fast ball. […]

Ancient Warrior Culture - Ancient Greece, Rome, Israel
History

Ancient Warrior Societies, Blog 2, Ancient Greek and Roman Armies and Navies

08/25/2023 Bruce Strom 11

The Greek innovation to ancient warfare was their hoplite warrior phalanx, a formation eight to ten rows of a hundred or more warriors, sometimes extending a quarter of a mile. The shields of the front row would interlock, and the entire formation would press upon the enemy, the soldiers would first throw their spears then jab with their swords from behind their shields, strictly maintaining their position. This required training and practice, the Athenians expected their nobles to drill during the year, the Spartans had a year-round military the practiced year-round. […]

Ancient Warrior Culture, Slavery, Concubines, Ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel
History

Ancient Warrior Culture, Blog 1, War, Slaves, and Concubines in Ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel

08/23/2023 Bruce Strom 13

The Greeks were the most formidable fighting force in the Near East. The mighty Persian empire loaded their army on ships to fight what they thought would be an easy victory, but were decisively defeated by Athens and Sparta and their allies both on land and on sea in two separate wars. This established the reputation of the Greeks, later a Persian prince, Cyrus the Younger, hired a Greek hoplite infantry army to fight for the crown of Persia. The Greeks dominated the battle, but Cyrus was killed in the fighting. Losing their patron, the Greeks were forced to fight their way through the Persian Empire back to the Black Sea and then to Greece. This showed that the mighty Persians were vulnerable, later Alexander the Great of Macedon would conquer all of Persia and some of India also.

The Greeks may have been the founders of Western Civilization, but they were first and foremost a warrior society. If the Greeks weren’t formidable warriors they would have been conquered by the mighty Persian Empire, which means that there would be no Socrates, no Plato, no Xenophon, the Greeks would not have been able to leave us a cultural legacy. […]

Early Church Writing

St Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho the Jew on Circumcision and Jesus

08/06/2021 Bruce Strom 2

When the debate begins, the first question Trypho asks is about circumcision, which was a major stumbling block for Christian converts in the early days of the Church, when many converts were confused on whether they first needed to convert to Judaism before becoming Christian.  Converting to Judaism meant you had to be circumcised.  St Paul in his Epistles famously reassures his Gentile converts that they only needed to be circumcised in their heart.  Not only did Christian converts not need to be circumcised; it was wrong to require that converts be circumcised, and he is quite strident in his exhortations in Galatians in particular. […]

History

Slaves in Ancient Greece and Rome, Blog 2

08/24/2019 Bruce Strom 9

Slavery in the ancient world was not based solely on race like in the Confederate South. Slavery in the ancient world happened to you when your city was conquered or when you were kidnapped by pirates. When a city was defeated the women and children were often enslaved, the men were often slaughtered, though sometimes they were enslaved to work in the mines. Or if you could not pay your bills you could be sold into slavery. […]

History

Slaves in the Ancient World, Blog 1, Were Slaves the Employees of the Ancient World?

08/20/2019 Bruce Strom 6

We are tempted to view slavery as something that went away with the Civil War, that with regards to slavery the modern world is so morally superior to the ancient world. The truth is that there were no employees in the ancient world, that slaves in the ancient worlds did the work that employees are hired to do in today’s world.

To understand the role of slaves in the ancient world we have a totally distorted picture when we only focus on the moral wrong of owning another person, treating servants like talking draft animals. The other aspect of slavery is paying someone such low wages that they cannot feed their family with dignity, that they feel like they live forever on the edge of the abyss, where the slightest crisis could force them to live in the streets. Someone who earns starvation wages is very much a modern-day slave. […]

History

Ordinary Life and Justice in Ancient Athens, Rome, and Israel

08/18/2018 Bruce Strom 6

The ancient world is very different from the modern world. We in the modern world view life is sacred, today we expect our children to survive until old age, because modern medicine ensures a long healthy life to most of us. If I had lived in the ancient world, I would have died as a teenager from appendicitis. In the ancient world, parents often did not name their children until they were a few weeks old due to the high infant mortality rate. Only half of children survived to adulthood, some scholars estimate that only one in ten survived to a ripe old age.
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Philosophy

Seneca, Moral Epistles, Blog 7, Precious Stoic Nuggets of Wisdom

05/11/2018 Bruce Strom 2

Seneca tells us that “we Stoics believe that pleasure is a vice.” Like the Church Fathers, Seneca reminds us that we need to overcome many years past of bad habits with many future years of living a godly life. “We are fettered and weakened by many vices; we have wallowed in them for a long time and it is hard for us to be cleansed.”
Seneca asks, “Why does folly hold us with such an insistent grasp? Primarily because we do not combat our vices strongly enough, we do not struggle towards salvation with all our might, we do not trust and drink in the words of the wise with open hearts,” we are not serious in our struggle against our vices, our efforts at living a godly life are but trifles. […]

Philosophy

Seneca, Moral Epistles, Blog 6, Stoicism and the Golden Rule

05/02/2018 Bruce Strom 3

Seneca warns us not “to trust the countenances of those whom we meet.” Men may appear to be kind smiling kind in their appearances but often men possess souls of brutal beasts in their hearts. The difference is beasts may attack you when they first encounter you from fear or hunger, but once your paths depart beasts will usually not pursue you further. Men, however, scheme and often delight in destroying one another, making each other’s lives miserable. […]