The Humiliation of Christ in the Social World of Roman Philippi, Part 1

By Joseph H. Hellerman

[Joseph H. Hellerman is Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Biola University, La Mirada, California, and Copastor, Oceanside Christian Fellowship, Oceanside, California.]

The purpose of this two-part series is to demonstrate how knowledge about the social world of Roman Philippi contributes to understanding Paul’s rhetorical strategy in his portrayal of Christ’s humiliation in Philippians 2:6–11. A newly published collection of inscriptions from Philippi, along with two recent monographs that attempt more accurately to situate Paul’s letter in its historical and cultural setting, offer promising avenues of approach to a text that has been at the center of Christological controversy for generations.[1] This article examines the social world of the colony of Philippi, where the social stratification so central to Roman sensibilities—and the corresponding quest for public honors that characterized elite males in the empire—manifested itself to a degree apparently unparalleled in the Roman world. A second article will offer reflections on the importance of the social setting of the colony for interpreting Philippians 2:6–11.

Social Stratification in the Roman World

Much has been written on class structure and social stratification in antiquity, and the problems associated with cross-cultural analysis undertaken across great barriers of time are well known.[2] It is commonly acknowledged, however, that Roman elite society was highly stratified and that this stratification was replicated in various nonelite social settings throughout the empire.[3] Also elite males in Roman society engaged in a relentless quest for the acquisition and preservation of personal and familial honor. These concerns, in turn, generated a consuming passion to identify persons publicly according to social status, a characteristic of Roman society that found expression wherever two or more were gathered in the ancient world.[4]

Based on their social status individuals wore different clothing, occupied different seats at public events, and experienced different treatment at the hands of Roman magistrates. Urban patronage provided an opportunity for elites to enhance their honor by spending their wealth on public projects such as fountains, baths, and libraries. Civic offices and local priesthoods throughout the empire served further to highlight the status of their occupants. Various other displays of rank prevailed in the public arena. Rome hosted an annual parade, for example, which highlighted the prestige of the equestrian class.[5] Public banquets and food distribution in the provinces were administrated in such a way as to ensure that resources were given according to rank, not according to need. All such practices served to reinforce the values of the elite society. “Putting everyone in his proper place was a visual affirmation of the dominance of the imperial social structure, and one calculated to impress the bulk of the population of the empire…. The impoverished may have resented this principle, even as public event after public event imprinted it in the communal consciousness.”[6] As one esteemed senator of early second-century Rome unequivocally asserted, when faced with the challenge of preserving “the distinction of orders and dignity” in legal hearings, “if these distinctions are confused, nothing is more unequal than equality itself.”[7]

The degree to which the nonelites resented the values of the dominant culture must remain a mystery, since the voices of elite males predominate in the source material. What is clear, however, is that ubiquitous public reminders of the social order so “imprinted … in the communal consciousness” the notions of rank and status that even the nonelites embraced, rather than rejected, the marked verticality of Roman society. This is evident from the fact that the nonelites simply replicated the hierarchical nature of the culture as a whole in their own social groups and voluntary associations. Rome’s esteemed cursus honorum[8] was, of course, open to only the smallest minority of persons in Roman society. Local municipalities duplicated the Roman cursus in their own civic honors, however, and elite stratification was further replicated among the nonelites, as voluntary cult and trade groups afforded their members the opportunity to participate in a cursus honorum to which they could never aspire outside the association. Formal titles of a variety of magistracies and other positions are attested in inscriptions that describe members of household and cult associations.[9] In the case of the Mithras, for example, a highly defined set of stages delineates the initiate’s progress in the cult.

Nearly all these voluntary groups were “expressly organized in such a way as to reflect and reinforce the dominant social order.”[10]

Recent studies have confirmed the convictions of Meyer Reinhold nearly a generation ago. In an essay on the history of purple as an ancient status symbol Reinhold categorically identified Roman society as “the most status-symbol-conscious culture of the ancient world.”[11] And no region east of Rome was more quintessentially Roman in this regard than the colony of Philippi.

The Romanness of Colonia Julia Augusta Philippensis

Philippi’s origins can be traced to pre-Hellenistic times.[12] It was established as a Roman colony, first under Antony (42 B.C.) and then under Octavian (30 B.C.). The victories at Philippi of Antony and Octavian (later Augustus) over Cassius and Brutus, the murderers of Julius Caesar, guaranteed that the colony of Philippi would have a distinctly Roman flavor.[13] The reconstitution of Philippi as Colonia Julia Philippensis, after Augustus’s victory at Actium (Augustus’s name was added in 27 B.C.: Colonia Julia Augusta Philippensis), along with the settlement of still more veterans, insured that Philippi would be closely allied to the increasing consolidation of power under the new emperor.

Epigraphic data demonstrates unequivocally that the city and the colony were administered by Romans in a decidedly Roman fashion. Latin predominates in the inscriptions, and civic honors and offices such as duumviri, aediles, and quaestors are widely attested.[14] A drama troupe put on Latin productions in a theater rebuilt according to Roman tastes.[15] A forum built in Roman style marked the center of the city. Residents honored Roman gods such as Jupiter, Neptune, Mercury, and Silvanus.

Scholars consistently highlight the Romanness of Philippi, in distinction from other colonies in the East.[16] The colonies of Pisidian Antioch and Iconium, for example, were each superimposed on an already thriving Greek polis. Local citizens shared citizenship with more recent Roman colonists from Italy and elsewhere. At Philippi, in contrast, local landowners were dispossessed and relegated to noncitizen status, with the colony’s social elites consisting exclusively of high-ranking veterans from the Roman army. Only in Italy could one find a Roman settlement comparable to Philippi. Pilhofer appropriately concludes, “Anyone who, like Paul, came to Philippi from the East, entered into a different world. One could visit Roman colonies in Asia Minor, but none was remotely as ‘Roman’ as Philippi.”[17]

The Roman Emperor and Philippi

The changes brought about through the refounding of Philippi under Augustus can hardly be overemphasized. Numismatic evidence demonstrates that Antony originally undertook to establish the colony in expressly Republican fashion. Rituals associated with the foundation of Roman cities harking back to Romulus and Rome find expression in coins minted around 42 B.C. In contrast, evidence for the refounding of the colony a little more than a decade later explicitly identifies Philippi with the new world order established by Augustus.

The link between Philippi and Augustus is illustrated by the association of the emperor with the goddess Victoria on coins minted in connection with the refounding of Philippi in 30 B.C. Soon after Actium, Augustus began to portray himself, contrary to historical reality, as the sole victor at Philippi, some twelve years earlier. Antony’s role at Philippi was increasingly effaced in the public record. This is evident from Augustus’s own claims and from the association of Augustus—and Augustus alone—with Victoria on coins minted after Actium.[18] The military victory referenced on these coins is not that of Actium but of Philippi, more than a decade earlier, as the imagery and text clearly show.[19] The timing of the minting of these coins, however (post-Actium, ca. 30 B.C.), connects Victoria with Augustus not simply as the founder of a colony but now as the initiator and overseer of a new world order. The goddess came to symbolize more than victory on the battlefield of Philippi. Victoria now represented the new political reality summed up in the person of Augustus.[20] And Philippi was memorialized as the location at which Augustus began his career as imperator—a career that would have far-reaching implications.

After Actium, Philippi thus entered into a special relationship with the emperor; a distinctly Roman colony had now taken on “a markedly Augustan character.”[21] And Victoria Augusta began to play a central role in a further political-religious development, namely, the honoring of the emperor and the establishment of the imperial cult in the Roman colony of Philippi.

The Military Origins of the Colony

Roman colonization accompanied the expansion of Roman power throughout the Mediterranean and occupies an important place in Roman history. The nature of colonization changed somewhat, however, during the long transition from the Republic to the Principate. Once employed primarily as a strategy to invest landless citizens with property to farm, colonization ultimately served to reward soldiers for faithful service to military commanders like Marius and Caesar, and later Antony and Octavian.[22] Antony and Octavian, in particular, found themselves under pressing obligation to pay their troops for services rendered at Philippi and, for Octavian, at Actium. The establishment of a colony of veteran soldiers through land allotments, forcibly appropriated from persons in the surrounding area, satisfied much of this need.[23]

The social stratification characteristic of Roman society in general would have been particularly pronounced at Philippi because of the city’s recent origins as a military settlement. The army was markedly stratified, and wages were assigned according to rank.[24] Land allotments to veterans also differed according to an individual’s position (pro portione office) and the meritorious nature of his service (pro merito). In the case of Philippi such practices in turn became defining for the social orientation of the fledgling colony, since high-ranking veterans who had received the largest allotments of land would as a result have the prerequisite wealth to serve in public office as decuriones, pontifices, and augurs. From its founding, then, the social orientation of the colony replicated the strong verticality of the Roman army, or, as Bormann more directly asserts, “after the end of service, the military hierarchy is converted into a social hierarchy.”[25]

Social Stratification and the Display of Public Honors in Roman Philippi

Epigraphic testimonials to the social status of individuals abound in and around Philippi to a degree unparalleled elsewhere in the empire. Those who enjoyed positions of honor had an incessant desire to proclaim publicly their status in the form of inscriptions erected throughout the colony. As Dio Chrysostom so pointedly related, “For the pillar, the inscription, and being set up in bronze are regarded as a high honour by noble men…. For all men set great store by the outward tokens of high achievement, and not one man in a thousand is willing to agree that what he regards as a noble deed shall have been done for himself alone and that no other man shall have knowledge of it.”[26]

It is wrong to conceive of ancient society as consisting of two distinct spheres, religious and secular. A twofold classification serves well, however, as a heuristic device to outline the evidence for social verticality in Roman Philippi.

Evidence for Social Stratification in the Municipal Sphere

Honorary inscriptions detailing the careers and benefactions of various citizens of Philippi have been unearthed throughout the city.[27] A certain Burrenus, for example, of the Voltinian tribe, publicly enumerated a career that took him from tribunus militum of the fourth legion (Macedonica) to praefectus cohortis and praefectus nationum.[28] The western fountain in the city boasts many such inscriptions, including one honoring duumvir Lucius Decimus Bassus, an aedile and a citizen who left behind thirty-thousand sesterces for the construction of the fountain.[29] A nearby inscription extols the virtues of another member of the Decimii family, Caius Decimius Maxumus [sic].[30] Other individuals honored in the vicinity of the fountain include Caius Mucius Scaeva and his brother Publius Mucius. The former, a Roman citizen who did not originally stem from Philippi (Fabia tribu), identified himself as primopilus of the sixth legion (Ferrata) and praefectus cohortis.[31] Not to be outdone, Gaius’s brother proudly displayed a cursus honorum of sorts that details his rise from the rank of centurion in the same legion to the position of duumvir iure dicundo at the top of the social hierarchy in Philippi.[32] The social verticality of the military was seamlessly joined to a hierarchy of municipal honors.

Claims of citizenship were quite important to the subjects of the honorific inscriptions in Philippi, understandably so in view of Philippi’s origin as a Roman colony. Colonies at their founding were typically identified with one of Rome’s citizen tribes. In the case of Philippi that tribe was the tribus Voltinia. For the citizen of Philippi, citizenship in the colony was inseparable from membership in the tribus Voltinia. One who belonged to the tribus Voltinia possessed πολίτευμα (citizenship) in Philippi and was, at the same time, a full Roman citizen: civis Philippensis and civis Romanus. Under the ius Italicum, citizenry privileges included exemption from taxes, tributes, and duties, along with the right to prosecute civil lawsuits (vindicatio) and acquire (manicipatio), own (usucapio), and transfer (in jure cessio) property.[33] Not surprisingly, then, the abbreviation VOL (Voltinia) is seen on half of all first-and second-century inscriptions found in the city.[34] It is important to recognize that this pervasive concern to proclaim one’s citizen status publicly attests to a sharply pronounced social distinction between citizens and noncitizens in a Roman colony like Philippi where, unlike Greek cities in the East, for example, the rights of city citizenship were directly related to Roman citizenship.

Evidence for Social Stratification in the Religious Sphere

As already noted, nonelite voluntary associations and cult groups tended to replicate in their own contexts the verticality of elite society. Evidence from Philippi underscores the pervasive nature of this tendency. Numerous religious associations at Philippi boasted official honors for the most privileged of their members, a few of which are attested only here in the ancient world.

Five inscriptions survive from the Silvanus cult, a nonelite religious association. Members (all male) included freeborn, freedmen, and slaves. No elites are listed, decurions and duumviri being conspicuously absent from a list of some sixty-nine members. The cult is distinctly Roman. All five inscriptions are in Latin, and no Thracian names appear on the list. A hierarchy of honors included priests (sacerdotes) and an aedile. One aedile distinguished himself by paying for two inscriptions and some construction work associated with the sanctuary. Members of the Silvanus cult were organized in decuriae, of which there were at least seven.[35]

Other associations offered similar honors. The worshipers of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus had a curator, an office once occupied by a certain Lucius Firmius Geminus, and a priest.[36] A high priest (antistes) served the goddess Diana, along with a priest (sacerdos) named Manta Zercedis, and numerous curatores.[37] Followers of Dionysius had subcuratores, which of course implies the presence of curatores.[38] Local Thracian cult associations also reflect a preoccupation with honorific offices or ranks. Interestingly a number of the honors attested for voluntary associations in the above inscriptions are unique to Philippi. For example among members of the Silvanus associations attested throughout the ancient world— Rome included—only at Philippi is the office of aedile mentioned.

Among those who honored the Thracian Rider, a local cult that persisted throughout the Roman era, only in Philippi was there a group identified as procuratores.[39]

The Special Case of the Imperial Cult

Others have devoted considerable attention to the development of the ruler cult in Philippi, so the focus here is on only those aspects of the cult that served to reinforce the highly stratified social environment of the colony.[40] Until recently a tendency to view ancient religion as private in practice and individualistic in orientation, skewed understanding of the imperial cult and of Roman religion in general. While modern religion in the West can be characterized as private and personal, Roman civic religion (religio), in which emperor veneration was to play an increasingly important part, was decidedly public and collective in nature. The imperial cult found its primary public expression in festivals that involved the entire populace. And these public rituals associated with the cult constituted much more than simply an aggregate of individuals honoring the emperor (or his family). Price talks about the imperial cult as a way of “conceptualizing the world.”[41] Hopkins relates the ruler cult to the unity of the empire, suggesting that the Roman emperors reinforced the political system by allowing themselves to be associated with the gods.[42] Evidence in Philippi for the veneration of the emperor strongly suggests that the rites and honors associated with the cult served publicly to reinforce the social stratification of the colony, especially demarcating distinctions between elites and nonelites and citizens and noncitizens.

Opportunities to participate in honoring the emperor and his family were available to individuals of various social classes, but the distinction between these classes was decidedly reinforced in the process. Two central honorific offices were associated with the ruler cult in Philippi: flamines and severi Augustales. The local decurion senate awarded both honors but did so to two distinct classes of persons. The flaminate was reserved exclusively for Roman citizens who had possessed their citizenship from birth (ingenui). The title sacerdos divae Augustae was synonymous, and a number of inscriptions with both titles have survived.[43] The portrayals of honors reflected in the following inscriptions are not limited to the flaminate. In each case a cursus honorum of sorts was publicly portrayed for every passerby to see.

(for) flamen of the divine Julius, Gaius Antonius Rufus, son of Marcus, of the tribe of Voltinia, flamen of the divine Augustus, (of/for) the colonies of Apri and Philippi, the chief leader of both colonies, as, likewise, of the colony of Parium, military tribune of Cohort XXXIII of the volunteers, military tribune of the thirteenth legion, Gemina, prefect of the cavalry division I Scubulorum[44]

Publius Marius Valens, son of Publius, of the tribe of Voltinia, honored with the insignia of rank of a member of the town council, aedile, also a decurion of Philippi, flamen of the divine Antonius Pius, duovir, organizer of the gladiatorial games[45]

The honor of serving as a flamen must have been greatly prized, for the office was held by the highest magistrates of the colony (duumviri), probably for one year at a time.

The severi Augustales, in contrast, came from a different social class, that of the freed persons (libertini). Whereas the flamines busied themselves with offerings and cult services for both living and consecrated emperors (Augustus, Claudius, and Vespasian are attested in Philippi), the severi Augustales focused solely on Augustus, and their primary responsibility consisted of underwriting the expenses of festival day games. This understandably endeared them to the local populace, and recent excavations confirm the assumption of Collart that special seats were reserved in the theater at Philippi to honor the severi Augustales publicly.[46]

Public inscriptions detailing the honors of those who held the flaminate and special seating at public events for freedmen priests served to reinforce the social hierarchy in the colony. Perhaps even more effective in this regard, however, were the regular festivals celebrating the ruler cult. Festal calendars, organized and kept by the local decurion council, reveal some ten annual ceremonies in honor of Augustus or his followers. Included were the birthday of Augustus, the birthdays of his sons and of the currently reigning emperor, Augustus’s victory at Actium, the day on which a triumph was held, and the day of the divinization of an emperor. Public offerings and communal meals typically accompanied these great festivals, preceded by a public procession to the place of celebration in which the participants proceeded in order of social rank. Decurions and duumviri, along with current flamines of the cult, led the way, with other lesser functionaries close behind.

Elite Space and Elite Power: The Social Impact of Territoriality and the Ruler Cult

The dominance of the imperial cult in first-century Philippi has not been universally acknowledged. Two recent discussions of religion in Roman Philippi offer markedly divergent opinions on the issue. Bormann sees emperor veneration as the dominant form of religion in the colony during the first century, strongly maintaining that evidence for foreign cults, such as Isis, did not surface until the following century.[47] Pilhofer draws on more recent archaeological data and maintains that Bormann has grossly underestimated the persistence of Thracian and Greek religion in the colony.48 Both authors argue strongly for the Romanness of the colony. Pilhofer, however, generally ignores the ruler cult in his treatment of Philippi’s religious life.

Considerations of geography and public space, however, suggest that a degree of common ground can be established between the divergent opinions of Bormann and Pilhofer. Pilhofer is correct to insist on the presence of Thracian influence and Thracian religion throughout the early Roman period. Inscriptions attest to the presence of Thracians in the territory of Philippi throughout the first century. Some of the surrounding hamlets seem, in fact, to have been predominantly Thracian. As Pilhofer aptly notes, however, few Thracians resided in the city of Philippi proper. In contrast to the surrounding territory, for example, no lists with Thracian names have been unearthed from the city, and hardly any gravestones have been found on the acropolis with Thracian names.[49] This is an important observation, for power and social status had a spatial component in antiquity and it is clear that as one moves from places of little influence (outside the city) to places of power (the city itself) Thracians recede and Romans dominate.[50]

Cultural anthropologists have recently given much attention to the issue of “territoriality,” “the attempt by an individual or group to affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and relationships, by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area.”[51] Such attempts typically manifest themselves in classification of places, communication of this classification, and control of the places so classified. A number of patterns for classification are offered, all of which are binary in nature: public or private, sacred or profane, honorable or shameful, clean or unclean, civilization or nature, and center or periphery.[52] Much overlap will be reflected in any specific real-life setting. Communication of these socially constructed classifications and control of the places so classified will also manifest themselves in culturally specific ways.

The geographical center of power of a Roman colony like Philippi was the city’s forum, which served as the location for temples dedicated to the veneration of the emperor and his family.[53] The geography of emperor veneration in Roman Philippi suggests that the cult was situated squarely in the “sacred,” “honorable,” and “center” categories. Temples erected in honor of the emperor and his family constituted the most sacred and honorable space in Philippi, and they also represented the colony’s center of power. Although the imperial cult involved the whole colony in its festive celebrations, control of the cult remained in the hands of the local elites, who also shared in the cult’s highest honors (e.g., the flaminate). Elite religion and elite power are thus closely associated with what might be called elite space.

By contrast the cult of Silvanus was a distinctly nonelite association. Silvanus “remained unconnected with political and civic life, and continued to be of little concern to elite society.”[54] Given the spatial component of power and prestige in the colony, no evidence of Silvanus worship exists anywhere near the center of the city. Rather, venerators of Silvanus seem to have been relegated to an old stone quarry north of the forum, a location suitable for an exclusively Roman yet conspicuously nonelite religious association.

Local deities were also spatially marginalized in the layout of the recently founded colony. The worship of Dionysius, traced well back into the Thracian period, persisted during Roman colonization. The central sanctuary of the cult, which welcomed Thracians, Greeks, and Romans, remained on top of a local mountain (Mount Pangaion), well outside the city of Philippi. The main sanctuary of the Thracian Horseman, the most important Thracian god, was located in Kipia, also several miles from the walls of Philippi. No evidence exists that the worship of either Dionysius or the Thracian Horseman had penetrated the walls of the city in the form of a permanent cult sanctuary during the first century. What is indisputable is that the worship of these two local deities found no foothold in the Philippian forum itself.[55]

As Whittaker has recently maintained, “The relationship of religion to society and politics … is not so much that the former reflects the social order as that it shapes it.”[56] The imperial cult clearly shaped the social world of Roman Philippi (a colony with “a markedly Augustan character”) by reinforcing the social verticality of the dominant culture on at least two levels. Most obviously, public rites and honors associated with the veneration of the emperor—as well as the location of the cult’s temple in Philippi’s Roman forum—regularly reminded the colony’s residents of Augustus’ place as the founder of the colony and of the position of the imperial family at the top of the empire’s hierarchy of power and prestige. As illustrated above, however, the cult’s practices also served to impress on the public consciousness the rank of the colony’s elites at the apex of the local hierarchy.

Summary: Social Stratification in Roman Philippi

Excavations at Philippi have produced the most detailed inscriptions found anywhere in the Roman Empire outlining the civic and military honors of veteran colonists. Pilhofer comments, “I take this as an indication that persons in Philippi were especially proud to make a public display of their ranks and offices.”[57] Such pride, however, was hardly limited to the military. Even Titus Uttiedius Venerianus, a lowly actor who was hardly a member of the local elite, was compelled to list in great detail on his sarcophagus the various stations of his course in life.[58] As Pilhofer notes, one might expect such parading of honors on the part of the elite. At Philippi, however, everyone who could scrape together the resources necessary to erect an inscription of some kind apparently felt the need to proclaim his achievements publicly. Pihofer rhetorically queries, “Was it necessary for ᾿Ενκόλπιος, who had a sarcophagus with an inscription made for his patron, to designate himself an ἀπελεύθερος [freedman] in this inscription, and thereby hand down to posterity his own social status?”[59] Residents of first-century Philippi felt strongly compelled to proclaim their social location publicly in the pecking order of this highly stratified Roman colony. Christians in the colony would hardly have been immune to these pressures.

The second installment in this series will discuss Paul’s attempt in Philippians 2:6–11 to construct for the Philippian Christian community an alternative social vision where honor and shame are concerned, based on the humiliation of Jesus and His corresponding exaltation by God.

Notes

1. Lukas Bormann, Philippi: Stadt und Christengemeinde zur Zeit des Paulus (Leiden: Brill, 1995); Peter Pilhofer, Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, vol. 1 of Philippi, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 87 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1995); and idem, Katalog der Inschriften von Philippi, vol. 2 of Philippi, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 119 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 2000).
2. Two of the more sophisticated recent attempts to analyze the social structure of Roman antiquity are James M. Arlandson, Women, Class and Society in Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrikson, 1997), 1–119; and Ekkehard W. Stegemann and Wolfgang Stegemann, The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 53–95. Both volumes build on Gerhard Lenski’s seminal work, Power and Prestige: A Theory of Social Stratification (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), alternately confirming and modifying Lenski’s proposals based on evidence from ancient source material. For further study see the substantial bibliographies in Arlandson’s and Stegemann’s works, which reflect, respectively, American and continental European scholarship.
3. Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 107–25.
4. On the importance of public honor among the Roman elite see J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). For honor and shame as a foundational cultural script for understanding Roman antiquity see Bruce J. Malina and Jerome H. Neyrey, “Honor and Shame in Luke-Acts: Pivotal Values of the Mediterranean World,” in The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation, ed. Jerome H. Neyrey (Peabody, MA: Hendrikson, 1991), 25–66; David A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 23–93; and idem, The Hope of Glory: Honor Discourse and New Testament Interpretation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1999).
5. Suetonius, Augustus 38.3; and Dio Cassius, History of Rome 55.31.2.
6. Garnsey and Saller, The Roman Empire, 117.
7. Pliny, Epistolae 9.5.
8. The cursus honorum was the course of public offices that marked an elite individual’s political career. The cursus, in place since at least the fourth century B.C., included the offices of quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul, and censor, in ascending order. The existence of the cursus, replicated in miniature in municipal settings and voluntary associations throughout the empire, will be seen as significant in the interpretation of the humiliation of Christ in part two of this study, where it will be suggested that Paul presented Jesus as descending a cursus pudorum, “a course of ignomies,” in conscious opposition to Roman social values.
9. See Eckhard Plümacher, Identitätsverlust und Identitätsgewinn, Studien zum Verhältnis von kaiserzeitlicher Stadt und frühem Christentum, Biblisch-Theologische Studien 11 (Neukirchen: Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1987), 16.
10. Andrew Clarke, Serve the Community of the Church: Christians as Leaders and Ministers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 76. On the voluntary associations see John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson, eds., Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 1996).
11. Meyer Reinhold, History of Purple as a Status Symbol in Antiquity (Brussels: Latomus, 1970), 38.
12. Originally a Thracian settlement, the area was occupied by the exiled Athenian politician Callistratus, who founded a city and named it Krenides (ca. 360 B.C.), and, shortly thereafter, by Philip of Macedon (ca. 356 B.C.) (Pilhofer, Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 1:86–87).
13. A Roman colony was not viewed as an independent polis but rather as a daughter congregation of Rome itself. Citizens of Philippi identified themselves according to their membership in the tribes of Rome. Thus Sextus Volcasius, one of the first veterans who settled in Philippi, claimed membership in Vol(tnia tribu) (Bulletin du correspondance hellénique 57 [1933], S. 358, Anm. 4, cited by Bormann, Philippi, 21), and a formal ceremony proclaiming the establishment of Philippi as a colony recalled the founding of Rome under Romulus (ibid., 30–32). The size of the colony can only be conjectured. Pilhofer, utilizing as a point of departure the refurbished theater (second century A.D.), which seated approximately eight thousand persons, suggests the population of the city of Philippi during the second century may have been between five thousand and ten thousand (Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 1:75–76).
14. Holland L. Hendrix, “Philippi,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 5:315. Though the primary language of the elite was certainly Latin, inscriptions demonstrate the use of Greek on the part of masons and other trade workers (Pilhofer, Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 85). The proliferation of Latin during the first two centuries is, however, quite striking. Pilhofer remarks that in view of the history of Philippi, from its founding in the fourth century B.C. until the Byzantine era, Latin and its Roman speakers appear “almost ephemeral.” Latin dominates in inscriptions from the first and second centuries but retreats into the background as early as the third century A.D. Yet, as Pilhofer acknowledges, there can be no doubt that during the first century of the common era the Romans were the most influential group of people in Philippi. Every person listed as a duovir or decurion during the first century was a Roman. As Pilhofer concludes, “power in the colony lay in the hands of the Roman residents and only in their hands” (Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 91, author’s translation and italics). The uniqueness of Philippi in this regard is most apparent when the colony is compared with other settlements in Macedonia and Achaia. Cassandra, Dion, Pella, and Corinth also contained many Greek inscriptions alongside those in Latin. In Philippi, particularly the city itself, one must look long and hard for a single Greek inscription (ibid., 119).
15. The theater was thoroughly Roman. The archimimus (“chief mime”) Titus Uttiedius Venerianus occupied his position for thirty-seven years, and a choragiarius was named Marcus Numisius Valens (ibid., 1:121 n. 7). On the theater see Paul Collart, “Le théâtre de Philippes,” Bulletin du correspondance hellénique 52 (1928): 74-124.
16. For a comparison with Roman colonies in the East see Barbara Levick, Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 161.
17. Pilhofer, Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 1:92 (author’s translation).
18. For the numismatic data see Paul Collart, Philippes, ville de Macédoine, depuis ses origines jusqu’à la fin de l’époque romaine (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1937), 232 and table 30, no. 8–11.
19. Two altars with the words VIC(toria) AUG(usta) appear on one side; COL(onia) PHIL(ippensis), along with a plow (an image closely associated with the foundation of a Roman colony), appears on the other side.
20. On the importance of the goddess Victoria for Roman imperial propaganda and specifically the use of the goddess in Res Gestae to justifiy Augustus’s civil and religious reforms, see Rufus J. Fears, “The Theology of Victory at Rome: Approaches and Problems,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981), 2:804–6.
21. Bormann, Philippi, 34 (author’s translation, Bormann’s italics).
22. Vellius Paterculus claims to have been unable to provide the name of a single nonmilitary colony founded after 95 B.C. (Vellius 1.15.5). For Roman colonization, and the situation in Philippi in particular, see ibid., 11–29.
23. The sufferings of local populations at the hands of veteran soldiers was common in cities colonized by Rome. Tacitus wrote, for example, that veterans settling the colony of Camulodunum “were acting as though they had received a free gift of the entire country, driving the natives from their homes, ejecting them from their lands,—they styled them ‘captives’ and ‘slaves.’ ” These retired soldiers were, more-over, “abetted in their fury by the [still active] troops, with their similar mode of life and their hopes of equal indulgence” (Annales ab excessu divi Augusti 14.31). Philippi presents a somewhat different situation, since it was relatively unimportant geographically and scarcely populated because of the flight of the local population during the Roman civil war. The special situation provides “no reason to assume that the indigenous population of Philippi and its key territory was spared the consequences of the founding of a colony—especially the expropriation of landed property. The founding of colonies, and the allotment of the great bulk of their territory to the colonists, led to the dispossession of all landowners” (Bormann, Philippi, 20, author’s translation). From the foundation of the colony, then, Roman power was utilized solely in the service of Roman needs.
24. Bormann speaks of “enormous differences in pay,” citing as evidence the tenfold difference in salary between the lowest centurion and a common legionnaire (ibid., 23, author’s translation).
25. Ibid. (author’s translation).
26. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes 31.20.22.
27. Dio Chrysostom wrote of the motivation that drove the elite in local municipalities to pursue public office. Those who sought such honors did so “not for the sake of what is truly best and in the interest of their country itself, but for the sake of reputation and honours and the possession of greater power than their neighbours, in the pursuit of crowns and precedence and purple robes, fixing their gaze upon these things and staking all upon their attainment” (ibid., 34.29).
28. Pilhofer, Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 120.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Mikael Tellbe, Paul between Synagogue and State (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 2001), 214.
34. Pilhofer, Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 121–22.
35. Ibid., 145.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 145-46.
40. On the growth of the cult in Philippi and its importance for Paul and early Christianity see Bormann, Philippi, and Tellbe, Paul between Synagogue and State, respectively.
41. S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (London: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 7.
42. Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves: Sociological Studies in Roman History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 197–242.
43. Bormann lists fourteen inscriptions describing priests and priestesses of the imperial cult (Philippi, 42–44).
44. Corpus inscriptionum latinarum III 386, quoted in Bormann, Philippi, 43 (author’s translation).
45. L’année épigraphique, 1948, 21, quoted in Bormann, Philippi, 44 (author’s translation).
46. Collart, Philippes, ville de Macédoine, 269. Bormann discusses two stone blocks that served as seats for the theater and show the marks AUG PO, indicating that the seats were reserved for the Augustan priesthood (Philippi, 98). Lex Coloniae Genetivae 66 offers a striking parallel: “eisque pontificib(us) augurib(us)q(ue) ludos gladiatoresq(ue) inter decuriones spectare ius potestasque esto [These priests and augurs shall have the right and the authority to view the games and gladiatorial spectacles (seated) among the decurions]” (ibid., 46 n. 89).
47. Ibid., 67.
48. Pilhofer, Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 47–48.
49. Ibid., 89.
50. The same might be said of Greek influence. The milestones that were erected between Neapolis and Philippi on the Via Egnatia are initially bilingual (first Latin, then Greek). Latin, however, clearly dominates along the last kilometer before the city (ibid., 119).
51. Robert D. Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 19. See also Ralph B. Taylor, Human Territorial Functioning: An Empirical Evolutionary Perspective on Individual and Small Group Territorial Cognitions, Behaviors and Consequences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
52. Jerome H. Neyrey, “Spaces and Places, Whence and Whither,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 32 (summer 2002): 61.
53. For a discussion of the archaeological evidence see Bormann, Philippi, 41–42.
54. Peter F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study in Roman Folk Religion, Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 20 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 3.
55. The Isis sanctuary, as well, established itself a century later across the Via Ignatia, some three hundred meters from the forum of the city (Pilhofer, Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 75). Later evidence confirms the above analysis of the imperial cult at the center of political power in Roman Philippi. Second- and third-century inscriptions, for example, portray the cults of Mercury, Jupiter, Cybele, and Isis devoted at the same time to the cult of the emperors. As Tellbe notes, “Many of the local gods were subordinate to Roman politics of religion and gradually became integrated into the civic cults” (Paul between Synagogue and State, 216).
56. Charles R. Whittaker, “Imperialism and Culture: The Roman Initiative,” in Dialogues in Roman Imperialism: Power, Discourse, and Discrepant Experience in the Roman Empire, ed. D. J. Mattingly, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 23 (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1997), 148.
57. Pilhofer, Die erste christliche Gemeinde Europas, 42 (author’s translation; Pilhofer’s italics: besonders stolz).
58. Ibid., 142.
59. Also Secundus dedicated an inscription to Iuppiter Optimus Maximus and identified himself as servus aquarius. Similarly Vitalis was identified as servus and verna domo natus (ibid.).