Claudius and Nero
Since Nero is such a controversial figure, reliable accounts of his reign are hard to come by. But it seems a fair guess that his reign must have faced the same problems that Claudius' reign faced and so I'll turn my attention thither.
We can readily establish, based on Suetonius' account, that Claudius was a careful and detached person, who valued his own safety more than his own glory. And if this portrait of him is indeed his likeness,
we can safely say that that was so, because he was completely averse to the concept of glory, as would befit, of course, a crippled man.
When Claudius became emperor at the age of 49, he had already lived a life of ridicule and it is not hard to imagine that he would have taken further ridicule nonchalantly, in particular if it meant that he would be left alone as before during Caligula's reign, id est that he was prepared to put on a show for the sake of his environment.
Claudius wrote a lot, and from that alone we could deduce that in his view it was the written word that really mattered and not the political dealings of the day.
And if this was indeed his belief then it would figure that amongst all political questions he would be most concerned with the right form of worship, and it certainly appears that he was concerned with that:
Although he refused the title, he was of course an emperor and as such he governed around the Senate, relying on freed men to administer his will. He ran into some trouble with that, but not a lot. He made some changes to the law, but generally he preferred to keep things as they were, trying only to reign in decadence, but never valuing principle higher than stability.
Now, with regard to the situation he was facing: It was fragile in terms of power struggles and fragile economically. And Claudius could be viewed as a restorer who worked on a ruin - at least that's not in disagreement with his efforts to restore some powers of the Senate, emphasise the nobility of his ancestors and to facilitate the food trade.
And then there's the matter of Christianity.
Chrestus might be Christos or not, but this is from Claudius' own hand:
Now, a staunch anti-semite might interprete the plague infecting the whole world to be the Jews themselves, but
So, it is quite impossible to interprete the plague infecting the whole world in any other way than as Christianity and Syria and the Nile valley in any other than as its early hotbeds.
And the fact that Claudius would refer to Christianity as a plague demonstrates, given his overall character and ambition, that he perceived it as a threat to the established order.
And then came Nero: young, inexperienced, acquainted with murder as a means of advancement, instilled with a sense of physical and dynastical superiority and facing the same problems, the same ruin. And if only the account of Claudia Octavia's death is accurate, that he divorced her, because she bored him, we can be absolutely certain that Nero would destroy that which he aspired to embody: the dominance of the Greco-Roman spirit.
And this is a defining characteristic of the beast: that it will not know that, which it means to represent, that it will be severed from the tradition, in which it sees itself: young, fiercely proud and acquainted with crime. Or at least that's the character that would serve best to play the role of the beast, id est shorten its days to the shortest possible term.
We can readily establish, based on Suetonius' account, that Claudius was a careful and detached person, who valued his own safety more than his own glory. And if this portrait of him is indeed his likeness,
When Claudius became emperor at the age of 49, he had already lived a life of ridicule and it is not hard to imagine that he would have taken further ridicule nonchalantly, in particular if it meant that he would be left alone as before during Caligula's reign, id est that he was prepared to put on a show for the sake of his environment.
Claudius wrote a lot, and from that alone we could deduce that in his view it was the written word that really mattered and not the political dealings of the day.
And if this was indeed his belief then it would figure that amongst all political questions he would be most concerned with the right form of worship, and it certainly appears that he was concerned with that:
He utterly abolished the cruel and inhuman religion of the Druids among the Gauls, which under Augustus had merely been prohibited to Roman citizens; on the other hand he even attempted to transfer the Eleusinian rites from Attica to Rome, and had the temple of Venus Erycina in Sicily, which had falled to ruin through age, restored at the expense of the treasury of the Roman people. He struck his treaties with foreign princes in the Forum, sacrificing a pig and reciting the ancient formula of the fetial priests.
- Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus
Although he refused the title, he was of course an emperor and as such he governed around the Senate, relying on freed men to administer his will. He ran into some trouble with that, but not a lot. He made some changes to the law, but generally he preferred to keep things as they were, trying only to reign in decadence, but never valuing principle higher than stability.
Now, with regard to the situation he was facing: It was fragile in terms of power struggles and fragile economically. And Claudius could be viewed as a restorer who worked on a ruin - at least that's not in disagreement with his efforts to restore some powers of the Senate, emphasise the nobility of his ancestors and to facilitate the food trade.
And then there's the matter of Christianity.
Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome.
- Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus
Chrestus might be Christos or not, but this is from Claudius' own hand:
[...] not to bring in or admit Jews who come down the river from Egypt or from Syria, a proceeding which will compel me to conceive serious suspicions. Otherwise I will by all means take vengeance on them as fomenters of which is a general plague infecting the whole world.
- Letter of the Emperor Claudius to the Alexandrians
Now, a staunch anti-semite might interprete the plague infecting the whole world to be the Jews themselves, but
- they are accused of fomenting the plague
- what bother, if the Jews themselves are the plague, whether they are in Syria or up the Nile or in Alexandria.
So, it is quite impossible to interprete the plague infecting the whole world in any other way than as Christianity and Syria and the Nile valley in any other than as its early hotbeds.
And the fact that Claudius would refer to Christianity as a plague demonstrates, given his overall character and ambition, that he perceived it as a threat to the established order.
And then came Nero: young, inexperienced, acquainted with murder as a means of advancement, instilled with a sense of physical and dynastical superiority and facing the same problems, the same ruin. And if only the account of Claudia Octavia's death is accurate, that he divorced her, because she bored him, we can be absolutely certain that Nero would destroy that which he aspired to embody: the dominance of the Greco-Roman spirit.
And this is a defining characteristic of the beast: that it will not know that, which it means to represent, that it will be severed from the tradition, in which it sees itself: young, fiercely proud and acquainted with crime. Or at least that's the character that would serve best to play the role of the beast, id est shorten its days to the shortest possible term.
Labels: 16, bibelkommentar, geschichte, gesetze, institutionen, kommentar, psychologie, sehhilfen, zeitgeschichte, ἰδέα, φιλοσοφία
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