Rome's location, rise to power, and identity transformation with Christianity

History Of Rome

The City on Seven Hills

Rome is one of the most storied cities in the entire world both because of its age and because of its importance in world history. The city is almost 3000 years old and has been inhabited continuously. While it has sometimes been more important in terms of its influence than at other times, it has played on important role on the world stage since the era in which it became the center of Christendom. This paper examines the history of the Eternal City, focusing on how it changed after the coming of Christianity.

The city was founded in the ninth century BCE as a village and grew in size and importance over much of its first 1500 years. In the decades before it became the center of Christianity, the city served as the capital of a powerful Mediterranean empire, whose power extended into northern Europe and Africa through an aggressive colonization process that was enforced by its large and highly disciplined army. While many people think of its site as the papal seat has been its most important role, it is arguable that the pre-Christian history of Rome had a greater influence and still continues to shape the modern world.

There is actually evidence of a human settlement on the same site at least 10,000 years ago, but the oldest chapters of the city's history are often forgotten because they are obscured by the myth of the "birth" of the city in the eighth century BCE when a pair of mythical twins named Romulus and Remus (who were supposedly raised by a wolf who nursed them in their infancy) (Ketzer 18). These twins established the beginning geographic footprint of the city, abducted women to provide mates for the first citizens so that the city would endure, and established the basic structure of Roman government.

Through about the end of the first century BCE, Rome was rarely at peace, fending off various invasions from neighboring countries and invading its neighbors as well. For the last decades of this era, Rome was a republic, a condition that would end as the empire grew bigger and more complex. The burdens of governing such a large empire could not be sustained by elected officials that came and went every year (Ward-Perkins 23-4).

By the end of the Roman Republic, the population of Rome was about two million people, and Rome was the largest city in the world. The form of government thus shifted to that of empire. Longer-ruling emperors brought a measure of stability to Rome -- at least when the emperors were skilled and humane. When they were bad emperors they were often very, very bad and the empire suffered during their reigns (Ward-Perkins 27).

By about 400 AD, the old social and physical structures of Rome were in decline, the city losing power both within its own empire and within the West as a whole (Miles 41). The decline of the old order in Rome allowed a space for the ascension of Christianity, which began in the first century AD. For the first two centuries of the Christian era, Roman authorities classified Christianity as simply a sect of Judaism and so did not react to it as if it were its own distinct religion.

To the extent that Christians were persecuted in the first few centuries after the beginning of the Christian era, it was only by local officials, with the imperial government warning those officials not to do so. However, in the first century of the Christian era, there was considerable anger at Christians in some quarters of Rome, especially after the Emperor Nero attempted to put the blame for the Great Fire of Rome (in AD 64) on Jews, and thus on Christians as well as one of the Jewish sects (Kertzer 49). Nero's attempts to blame Jews for both the fire and the many financial and moral excesses of his rule led both to his own suicide and to a civil war that badly damaged the city.

However, while it was true that initially Romans in general classified Christians and Jews as the same (at least for administrative purposes), it was also true that by Nero's reign, he was sufficiently aware that Christianity was emerging as a new type of religion, with its followers a group that was given to a high level of "superstition" and whose views warranted their being punished (Ward-Perkins 38).