The record
Rome's Normal
The people who first followed Jesus lived under Roman rule.
Crucifixion, slavery and public bloodshed were part of ordinary life.
Roman slavery - British Museum · Child exposure - W. V. Harris, Journal of Roman Studies · Infant exposure - Oxford Handbook of Childhood · Crucifixion - Oxford Classical Dictionary · Roman benefaction - Oxford Handbook of Greek Cities in the Roman Empire, Euergetism
They say
Rome was brutal by modern standards, but so were many ancient societies. It also produced law, philosophy and some extraordinary achievements. Rome wasn't just a catalogue of horrors.
The scene
It's true, Roman people were not monsters.
They loved their children and argued about right and wrong. People gave money to their communities, and some of the philosophers they produced are still read today.
Across the empire, Rome built cities, roads and aqueducts. It had law and government, trade on an enormous scale, mathematics, advanced architecture and medicine. This was one of the most sophisticated civilisations in the ancient world.
Human beings could also be bought and sold, and unwanted infants could be abandoned. Rome could turn a person's death by crucifixion into a public warning.
And that's uncomfortable to me, because when I imagine myself there, I would like to think I would have seen through it. We tend to do the same thing with more recent history. Once we know what happened, it's easy to imagine that we would have been among the few who refused to go along.
But they were living inside their world, just as we are living inside ours.
The point
A sophisticated society can still be blind to what it has made normal.
Sit with this
If you had been born into their world instead of ours, which of your moral convictions would still have felt obvious?