Comparison and Contrast of Perpetua and Lucretia By comparing the following primary sources, “The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas” and “The Rape of Lucretia,” historians can learn about the archetypes of Roman society. The former text, written in 202 or 203 CE, is a prison diary of a young martyr in Carthage. The protagonist, Perpetua, is arrested and sentenced to death because she refused to renounce her Christian faith. Despite having a newborn and hearing consistent outcry from her father to renounce her faith, Perpetua refused to absolve from Christianity. Prior to her execution, she and her comrades experience visions of entering Heaven and specifics of how their deaths would be bestowed upon them. These visions provided comfort to the prisoners because they legitimized the belief in God, as well as sanctioned the power of God to perform miracles. As God willed it, Perpetua, the “most valiant and blessed martyrs”, was ultimately executed in the arena. The latter text, written in 17 AD by Roman historian, Livy, is a story of propaganda about the rape of a honorable woman named Lucretia. Lucretia, Tarquinius Conlatinus’s wife, was the quintessential example of a Roman martyr. She was applauded for her modest, hospitable, and dutiful nature. Tragically, she was forcibly raped by the emperor’s son, Sextus Tarquinius. Consequently, Brutus, Tarquinius, and Lucretia’s father, did not object while witnessing Lucretia commit suicide in order to preserve her and her family’s
In the source “The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas,” the narrative of a few early Christians who died for their beliefs is told. The two martyred women, named Perpetua and Felicitas, along with a few other followers of the religion were imprisoned because they identified themselves as Christians and refused to offer sacrifice to the Roman Emperor. The Christians were sentenced to death by beast for this. The source illustrate the problems Christians had in navigating the cultural realities of life in the Roman empire. This can be observed along with the struggles involved in class, family, and gender.
Historical research shows that many of the stories about Christian martyrs are not completely true. The stories of these events that happened with Christian martyrs changed over time. The stories became embellished and exaggerated; however, there is one story of Christian Martyrs that is true. This is the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. These events were written by two of the martyrs, Perpetua and Saturus.
The Shadow of the Galilean sheds light on the historical context of Jesus by showing how people of ancient Palestine received his message; then he shows how this illuminates the actions and sayings of Jesus by revealing that his most important teaching was that he was the son of God, and that while some aspects of his teachings were permissible or even attractive to members of both Roman and Jewish authority, the baggage of this claim was too much to carry.
Theodora was the Empress of the Byzantine Empire from 527, when she was crowned, until her death in 548. Procopius was the appointed historian to record what was happening in the Empire, but mostly to focus on Theodora and Justinian. The Secret History was written by Procopius, but not published in the West until about a millennium after it was written. As it was ‘a venomous pamphlet of dubious merit’, The Secret History is hardly a reliable historical source. It criticises Justinian and Theodora for all of their actions as Emperor and Empress, as well as create a story, possibly based on nothing, about the origins of Theodora. While Procopius is considered a significant historian for the sixth century, it is notable that his treatment of Theodora is biased in an unfavourable way. Procopius adopts a perceptibly hostile attitude toward Theodora. Much of this bias against Theodora can be explained by Procopius’ view of women in power and gender roles.
How are the versions of Remus’ death presented by the different authors similar or different?
Perpetua was a true woman of faith. Perpetua was a twenty-two-year-old, a Christian, a mother, a daughter, and a martyr. The story of The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas is the story of the execution of Perpetua and her Christian companions. This story reveals the difficulty Christian’s went through during this time, the chasm between the Roman and Christian communities, and the experience of Christian persecution for going against the Roman cultural norms. Perpetua’s personal prison diary expresses her extremely deep faith in Christianity. Perpetua and her Christian companions were prepared to be tortured, publicly humiliated, and in the end, lose their lives for their faith. Perpetua had a young baby still nursing her and Felicitas was
The Flames of Rome by Paul Maier is a documentary-fiction that has not only brought to life the evolution of Christianity in Rome but has also painted a clear picture of what it was like to live in Rome at the time. Understanding the Roman’s way of life and reasoning behind their actions plays a major role in the reasoning for Maier writing this book. The Flames of Rome is equivalent to reading a textbook but Maier makes it much more enjoyable and intriguing by adding plausible details of his own. Maier’s portrayal of the death of Claudius Caesar, in chapter nine of the novel, closely follows the primary sources of Tacitus and Suetonius but also loosely follows that of the secondary sources. It is important to compare Maier’s version to other
The Roman Empire, in which the early Church rises in the wake of Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, is complex cultural melting pot. Rife with hedonism, the honor/shame structure of the Roman Empire encourage the worship of the Emperor as God and the Empire as his Holy Empire. Against this narrative, the early Church was a counterculture to the ways of the empire and it is against this backdrop that Bruce Longenecker’s The Lost Letters of Pergamum takes place. The Lost Letters of Pergamum is a historical narrative following Antipas and encounters with Luke through an associate in a neighboring town. Antipas, named after his relative Herod Antipas, has come to great wealth and influence in the Roman empire. Antipas is introduced to
The first part of the book focuses on providing the reader with an overview of Palestine under Roman rule, a land filled with turmoil and false messianic figures. Aslan gives specific examples of failed self-proclaimed messiahs, such as Judas the Galilean and “the Samaritan”, who attempted to overthrow Roman rule but eventually were
By contrast, the pagan-humanist tradition, with its pantheon of capricious and often morally suspect gods, upheld a highly public ideal of honor, whereby behavior could be regulated. Whereas guilt can be either private or public, shame is necessarily a public affair. Guilt, as much a theological as ethical construct, requires appropriate punishment, but shame requires simply appropriate action to eliminate its source. Without dwelling on these distinctions, however, Williams argues that in the early modern period these contradictory sets of values operated simultaneously, and it is this tension that informs the often contradictory treatment of rape in such texts as Titus Andronicus and Lucrece.
The great Christian writer Tertullian was born in Roman controlled Carthage, now known better as Tunisia. Around 200 AD he famously wrote De spectaculis, a work outlining the failing of the Roman moral system based around the gladiatorial games and the circus. Tertullian received a good education growing up and partook in “pagan” rituals such as sexual intercourse and observing the gladiatorial games. However, when the Roman Empire began executing Christians he felt compelled to become a Christian himself. Tertullian outlined clearly in his essay that the failing of the games lay in idolatry, and in the belief that ‘Thou shall not kill’. He writes this essay to compel all Christians to give up the games in order to gain favour in the eyes
It is evident that the construction of the Christian church was done through oppression and rejection, but for some it sparked a passion to serve God. The document The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas, illustrates the courage and fearlessness of the Martyrs in Rome around 203. A.D. Much of Rome consisted of those who practiced polytheism. Which resulted in the persecution of numerous Christians for their faith in God, and their practices were not supported or approved by the Roman Empire. Surprisingly enough this was an opportunity for the Christian Martyrs to strengthen their faith, even if death would be the result. The group was establish and through Perpetua and Felicity who were part of a group of five catechumens.
Speeches: The highest denomination of the Latin prose, there remained fifty-seven sermons, and the time was forty-eight, one of the richest sources of contemporary events, dealt with civil and criminal issues and political issues. In spite of its hyperbole and exaggeration, it provides accurate factual information on Roman law, the judicial system, political and constitutional history, economic and social life, the tax and financial system, and state administration.
The jurisdictional primacy exercised by the Roman legal corpus, and the prudential exercise of the laws therein for the administration of the populace, might be efficaciously understood in the context of the maxims propounded in Ulpian’s writings: honest vivere (“to live honorably”), alterum non ladere (“not to injure another”), and suum cuique tribuere (“to grant each man his due”, Radin 394). The maxims aforementioned, though not legal principles, might be construed as pious hopes that the application of legal rules shall render [promptly] a just and prudent verdict that adheres to the directives of the penal code. A careful reading of the facts of the case presented in the matter of Apuleius suggests that the premise of the motion to invalidate
Tacitus wrote Agricola and Germania by Tacitus as a historical account for the Roman Empire and its affairs around 98 AD. The first part of the book is a personal tribute to his father-in-law Agricola whom he so dearly honored. Based on the first sentences of his book, he is compelled to tell the story of a man who is worthy to be written about and remembered. He mentions in the first part of his book that a personal that “men even felt that to tell their own life’s story showed self-confidence rather than conceit”. Tacitus acknowledges the continual risk of written history about a person or the Roman Empire’s history as a whole. However, Tacitus, “…robbed by informers even of the interchange of speech. We would not have lost our memories as well as our tongues had it been an easy to forget as to be silent”.