EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS

A part of the Roman Empire.

GREECE

The city-states of Greece continued to govern themselves although theoretically they were under Roman rule. They were poor by virtue of Roman taxation and were almost destitute morally, spiritually and physically. This was the-time of Plutarch and of Epictetus, the slave philosopher who combined the concepts of the Stoics and Cynics into many ideas paralleling the attitudes of early Christianity, including the Golden Rule. Thus Stoicism, originally the proud and scornful philosophy of aristocrats, found its final and most eloquent voice in a slave. Its doctrine of a final conflagration of the world, its rejection of all pleasures of the flesh, its humble surrender to the hidden will of God, all were preparing for the theology and ethics of Christianity. The age of the Cyrics paved the way for the Christian monks.

Corinth became the wealthiest city of Greece while Athens remained an intellectual center. Eleusis, across the Aegean Sea, became a religious center of sacraments and "mysteries". (Ref. 48)

UPPER BALKANS

The Roman province of Pannonia, the most southern portion of which comprises present day Yugoslavia, was established in A.D. 9 after defeat of the native Illyrians.

Moesia, which had never been penetrated by Grecian influence, was organized as a province in A.D. 44. The upper Balkans now showed increased activities of all kinds. There was considerable agriculture, mining and herding, as well as commerce with Asia through the port of Salonika in Macedonia. Great cities were built and roads constructed, such as the Via Egnatia, that ran across the Albanian alps to Salonika and Constantinople. In Dacia (Romania) there was a strong tribe of the same name who were never subdued by the Romans in this century. In A.D. 85 they surged out across the Danube into Moesia (now Serbia and part of Bulgaria) but were pushed back by Domitian. The Romans could go no further, however, as the Marcomanni and Quadi, who had occupied Bohemia west of Dacia, joined the fray and defeated Domitian. A peace was signed with the Dacian king, Decebalus, and he subsequently turned on the Germanic tribes and defeated them. Iazygians were also squeezing in between Quadi and Dacians and Roxolani were approaching Dacia from the east. In the area that they did control, the Romans found Thracians useful as soldiers, slaves and especially as gladiators. (Ref. 206, 48, 136, 171)

ITALY

This was a century of some great and some lesser emperors of Rome in what has been called the "Silver Age" to indicate that it was not quite as good as the previous "Golden Age" under Octavian. The Julio-Claudian Dynasty continued under TIBERIUS Claudius Nero who reformed the government and law, advanced construction of public works, elevated the legal status of the provinces and re-subdued and Romanized Gaul and Britain. Tiberius' reign had been saved from any serious Parthian threat because of dynastic quarrels within Parthia. In A.D. 37 when Tiberius was dying he indicated as his successors his young grandson Tiberius Gemellus and the surviving son of Germanicus, Gauius Caesar Germanicus. The latter soon put the former to death and ruled alone as "CALIGULA", a probably insane, megalomaniac given to excesses and obscenities of all kinds. He was assassinated in 41 and Tiberius CLAUDIUS Drusus became emperor. His four wives were his undoing but he actually was a fairly able man and instituted some definite administrative improvements.

He was followed by Nero who began his reign well under the guidance of Seneca, but in spirit he was an actor and had to play the monarch in the grand manner. He was recklessly cruel to the aristocrats, but generous to the poor, with the possible exception of the new Christians who were first persecuted about A.D. 64, when Rome was burned.

Thereafter followed the Flavian Dynasty. Vespasian was a man of sense, ability and honor who directed the war against Judea and established the first system of state education. The last of this line was Domitian (A.D. 81 - 96) who managed the flourishing empire well during a great age of construction. At the end, however, like many others, he became very cruel, deified himself, indulged in sexual discrepancies and became paranoid about possible conspiracies against him. Throughout this age there was a decay of the native religion in Rome and the multiple gods of Jove, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and others began to give way to the Stoic philosophy. (See GREECE, above)

We should mention some of the non-political figures of this century. Seneca was born in Spain in 4 B.C. and became a copious writer, tutor to and later financial backer to Nero. Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23 - 79) was a great mind of the day, but his book Natural History with dissertations on humans, animals, metals, chemistry, medicine and astronomy, was actually a monument to Roman ignorance. He also compiled an encyclopedia citing 150 Roman and 400 Greek scholars, before he was killed in the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Of interest also is De Materia Medica by a-Greek botanist, Pedanios Dioscorides, who had served as a military surgeon in Nero's army. He detailed the properties of some 600 medicinal plants in this text, which remained an authoritative guide for 1,500 years. (Ref. 222) At about the same time a patrician layman, Celsus, tried to summarize all knowledge. Only eight of his many books have survived, the De Medicina, and even these were lost for centuries. (Ref. 125)

As noted above it was in the year 79 that Mt. Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples erupted after 16 years of violent surrounding earthquakes. The cities of Heraculaneum and Pompeii were buried and thousands were killed. At 95 a severe form of malaria appeared in the farming areas surrounding Rome and became endemic there for the next 500 years. At that time ten aqueducts supplied Rome with 250 million gallons of water per day. (Ref. 125, 222)

Throughout this century Roman legions continued to probe the frontiers in Gaul and in the east, gradually extending the empire boundaries. Comments about some of the battles will be found in the paragraphs concerning the regions involved. The population of the Roman Empire at this time was about 54 million, while that of Han China was an estimated 57,600,000. Rome now began to break the Arab monopoly on spices from the east by building ships large enough to sail from the Egyptian Sea to India. The journey was still hazardous and at one time pepper cost $125,000 per 12 ounces. As the secret of the changing monsoon winds in the Indian Ocean was solved, however, pepper became cheaper. Gold was taken to Malabar to be exchanged for pepper. Pliny wrote that Roman ships of this period sailed from the mouth of the Ganges to Ceylon in seven days. The sailing ships were up to 420 feet long with 50 foot beams. One commercial ship had room for 200 sailors, 1,300 passengers and 93,000 bushels of wheat. Wines made from the very prolific Italian vines were now generally preferred to the Greek product. (Ref. 48, 28, 211, 95, 185)

Additional Notes

GERMANY

In this century there were three to four million people living in the area of modern Germany with three main divisions of the Germanic tribes; The eastern Germans on the Oder and Vistula who were the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians and Vandals; the northern Germans of the southern part of Scandinavia, the Baltic islands and Jutland; and the western ones between the Elbe, the North Sea, the Rhine and the Main. The last group preserved their ancient Germanic traits and are the present day Germans, Dutch, Flemings, Anglo-Saxons and, in part, the French.

The early Germanic peoples lived simply, eating horse meat and living in log houses. They were monogamous and held slaves. Super-individual motivations such as patriotism or religious idealism were strangely lacking as these people were highly personalistic. The boundary line between the Roman Empire and the Germanic lands became fairly well established at the Rhine, but battles raged back and forth from time to time. Domitian crossed the Rhine at Mainz to campaign against the Chatti and early victories allowed him to construct a series of forts which were later extended along the central Rhine and then across to the upper Danube. Where this joined an older line of forts on the Danube part of this fortification line became known as "the limes".

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY

The Emperor Tiberius started as early as A.D. 25 to strengthen the frontier forts of the Danube limes to keep out the northern barbarian hordes. Vindobona (Vienna) was one of three important military bases of the Danube Valley and watch towers were erected all along the river and boats were on constant patrol. At the end of the century there was a completely fortified military road from the Boden See (Lake Constantine) to the Danube limes. The southern portion of what is now Austria and Hungary, along with the western Balkans, was included in the Roman province of Pannonia.

CZECHOSLAVAKIA

As we noted earlier, the Marcomanni and Quadi Germanic tribes had occupied the area of Bohemia and then went south to help the Dacians defeat Domitian, slowing down the Roman advance in this area. The Dacians then turned on the Germans, however, and drove them from the territory.

SWITZERLAND

All under Roman control.

WESTERN EUROPE

SCANDINAVIA

There was a proliferation of various Germanic tribes throughout Norway and Denmark. The Swedish peninsula was dominated by the Suione tribe, while the island of Gotland and other Baltic islands were probably inhabited chiefly by Goths. Snorre Sturlasson, a learned Icelandic scribe, described the origin and ancestral home of the Scandinavian kings as on the border between Europe and Asia along the eastern shores of the Black Sea.

This work has been translated by Holtsmark and Seip4 Snorre gives a detailed, geographical account of the early migration through Europe, passing from Saxony into Denmark, Sweden and Norway, having been chased out of the Caucasus by the ravaging Roman armies and led by the Viking King Odin. Snorre named thirty kings before reaching the generation of Harold Fairhair, of which we shall hear more later in the 9th century.

Rich Stone Age finds show that from prehistoric times the Finnish peninsula has been the meeting place of peoples from Russia, Scandinavia and central Europe. Ancient Lapp and Nordic stocks went north, as Finno-Ugrian speaking peoples came in from the east.

In the century under consideration there were three groups of people: The Karelians, who were a dark, short, brachycephalic people entering from the southeast; the Tavastians, with high cheek-bones coming across the Gulf of Finland; and the Finns, proper, from the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. (Ref. 95, 61) All of these northern people were probably excellent seamen. A forty-two foot, slender, rowing canoe has been found in Denmark dating to this century.

EASTERN EUROPE