CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Romanness of Roman
Christianity
Stefan Heid
Growth and External Perception
When Paul was planning his journey to Spain, a country new to Christianity
(Romans 15. 20 – 4), he knew that he would encounter an established Christian com-
munity during his stay in Rome along the way. This community was, however, marked
by tensions between Jewish and pagan Christians. He recommended that it remain
loyal to the state (Romans 13. 1–7). The Christians became the talk of the town in
ad 64 when Nero held them responsible for the fatal conflagration which spread
from the Circus Maximus through large parts of the city. He then had a “consider-
able number” executed during circus games at his villa on the Vatican hill (Tac.
Ann.15.44; 1 Clemens 6.1). This shows that the Christians were already perceived
by Roman society as an autonomous group, which had ceased to benefit from the
legal protection of the Jewish religion. In practice these are likely to have been staged
executions in which the condemned represented a mythical character or a mime with
a deadly ending. It may be that executions in the form of living torches referred to
the myth of Hercules; those being torn apart by hounds may have recalled the myth
of Actaeon.
Christians residing in the capital of the empire had to face the state’s demand for
loyalty more so than those in the provinces. Their belief in the only god of Jesus
Christ caused them to withdraw from participating in those public occasions which
incorporated pagan religious ceremonies. They did not live in a ghetto, nor did their
external appearance set them apart from others in the city (Epistula ad Diognetum
5). Like the Jews, however, they were regarded as outsiders because they kept them-
selves aloof from the cults of other deities and thus in practice from most activities
around which public life was organized. This was true of the cursus honorum
but also of membership of numerous professional and funeral associations, and of