Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:06 pm
We are experiencing not just a lack of representation (though we have that too) but an unrelenting war on women, on children, on working Americans, on ethnic and religious minorities, on science, on the environment, on the very air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat.
Each day we see headlines that are more terrible than any we have seen previously, like recent Wisconsin legislation that would allow in-laws to make reproductive health choices for you. Imagine your mother-in-law deciding you can’t have an abortion. If that’s the case, maybe you should get to trump her bypass surgery.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
And you wonder: where’s the tolerance? Where is the so-called freedom Republicans are always talking about? Where is the small government that stays out of your business? It’s nowhere to be seen. It’s tyranny. Endless, unrelenting, often horrifying – as when a woman goes to prison for having a miscarriage, or is forced to carry a dead fetus to term – tyranny.
Meanwhile, the Romans, so reviled in Christian memory, managed to make all sorts of concessions to strange foreign customs. After all, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out in his Notes on the State of Virginia, “Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry Christianity could never have been introduced.” Be damned if we can get free inquiry from this bunch. Their minds are closed.
I am not going to advance the claim here that the Romans were the most tolerant people who ever lived. They engaged in their fair share of genocide (as have we). But let us take a look here at some of the concessions and privileges granted by the Romans to the Jews by the Roman state (and feel free to compare and contrast, if you will, American treatment of the Native Americans in the 19th century – a supposedly enlightened “Christian” century). Take special note of the third point:
All right. Now show me even a fraction of this level of tolerance from any Republican legislative body in the past 15 years. It can’t be done.
I should note here that these sorts of edicts of toleration were not general and empire wide, but seem to have been issued on a city by city basis. Though these senatus consulta were ad hoc in nature, they also served as legal precedents to which future governors and emperors could appeal.
Leonard Rutgers makes an important point when he notes that “Rome did not have a standard policy toward the Jews: Roman magistrates responded to situations.”[12] Which, if nothing else, shows the ability of the Roman administration to think on its feet, rather than along strict ideological lines. There is a nuance and a responsiveness lacking in modern-day Republican thinking – about anything.
Arnaldo Momigliano, not alone among scholars, takes note of the fact that “the members of the ruling class of Rome were ready to transact business with people who worshipped different gods and were used to different political traditions. Roman polytheism could adapt itself to, and indeed merge with, what we may call the provincial traditions.”[13]
That is not possible under today’s Republicanism. The only religious freedom Americans have under Republican ideology is to be Christians, or at least, what they imagine to be Christians, and it is already more than apparent that Republicans, unlike the ancient Romans, are not ready to transact business with people who worship different gods.
The Romans even had an emperor, Philip the Arab, who got far less grief from his people than Obama does from Republicans. Philip was born in Shahba, just south of Damascus. Philip had an easier time pursuing his dream in ancient Rome than he’d have trying to pursue it in modern America.
I would suggest that the Republicans could learn from history, but let’s face it, at this point, I’d look silly making that suggestion to these charlatans. So I’ll just make the point to those of you who have open minds, and you can make the point to them next time you vote.
Image from Wikipedia
Notes:
[1] Maurice Sartre, The Middle East Under Rome, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005), 103.
[2] Leonard Victor Rutgers, “Roman Policy towards the Jews: Expulsions from the City of Rome during the First Century C.E.,” Classical Antiquity 13 (1994), 58.
[3] F.W. Madden, History of Jewish Coinage (London: Bernard Quartich, 1864), 135.
[4] See David M. Jacobson, “Herod the Great Shows His True Colors,” Near Eastern Archaeology 64 (2001), 100-104. As Jacobson states in relation to the cap of the Dioscuri, “such an image might have been offensive to the Jews.”
[5] Tessa Rajak, “Was there a Roman Charter for the Jews?” JRS 74 (1984), 107; cf. Martin Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 399.
[6] For the example of Cyrenaica see Martha W. Baldwin Bowsky, “M. Tittius Sex.f. Aem. And the Jews of Berenice (Cyrenaica),” The American Journal of Philology 108 (1987), 495-510.
[7] It has been demonstrated that sacrifices in the Imperial Cult were generally made on behalf of rather than to the emperor. See S.R.F. Price, “Between Man and God: Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult,” The Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980), 28-43. For this reason, the Jews had no difficulty accommodating the needs of the Empire just as they had in the past accommodated other foreign rulers. They simply prayed to their God to watch out for the emperor rather than to the gods of the State; the Romans, quite sensibly, were also satisfied with the arrangement since there was no rejection of YHWH implicit in polytheism. Claims that the Jews (or Christians, for that matter) were required to worship the emperor miss the mark.
[8] The warning inscriptions would have been difficult to miss: They were inscribed in Greek and Latin in red-painted letters on white limestone. Discovered by Clermont-Ganneau in 1871, the inscribed stone reads: “No foreigner may enter the forecourt beyond the barrier rail around the sanctuary; Anyone who is caught will have himself to blame for his own death.” See Elias J. Bickerman, “The Warning Inscription of Herod’s Temple,” JQR 37 (1947), 387-405. Bickerman compares similar inscriptions found at Pagan temples and notes that “The pagan visitor of the Temple however was shut out not because his hands or his heart were unclean but because he was an alien.”
[9] Rajak, 107.
[10] Jerry F. Daniel, “Anti-Semitism in the Hellenistic-Roman Period,” JBL 98 (1979), 45-65.
[11] Rajak, 115.
[12] Rutgers, “Roman Policy,” 58-59.
[13] Arnaldo Momigliano, On Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 123.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
The RNC's Chief Election Integrity Counsel, Christina Bobb, has been indicted for her role in…
Seven Trump allies and lawyers were indicted along with all of the fake electors for…
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) reviewed the numbers and showed that Donald Trump has a steep…
President Biden took down Trump and said that when the ex-president injected bleach, it missed…
A new poll from Quinnipiac University reveals that the vast majority of Americans following Trump's…
Michigan prosecutors consider Donald Trump a co-conspirator in the GOP plot to use false electors…
This website uses cookies.