276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age - THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

£15£30.00Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?

Whence the Enlightenment? Christian doctrine? The heart and soul of it, naturally, but only after centuries of debate and wrangling, often with representatives of the official church! And, as Mr Horsman says, that doctrine could not have taken root were there not abundant nutrients in the human heart ready to receive it. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. If you are lower down the scale, I think your life is pretty terrible. If you’re a slave girl, you are there to be raped. The Roman legal and sexual dynamics licenses pretty much perpetual rape if you are subordinate in a powerful household. I mean, the same is true for boys, but women are likely to be sexually abused throughout their life. And that is why Christianity is so radical, because Paul, when he’s writing to, say, the Romans of Corinth (Corinth is a Roman colony, so they’re culturally Roman to the Romans in Rome), he is saying to the male householder: “You are playing the role of Christ, your wife is playing the role of the church, therefore. That’s why you must have a monogamous, enduring relationship. Christ doesn’t go around raping the scullery maid. You mustn’t.” And that is the transformation that Christianity brings to sexual ethics. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. TH: The question that haunts me, whenever I write about the Romans, is why am I so fascinated by them? When I went to Sunday school, and saw pictures of Jesus in front of Pontius Pilate, I was always on the side of Pontius Pilate. He was kind of glamorous: he had eagles, he had purple robes. By contrast, Jesus was a massive scruff. I much preferred the Romans, and I think that this speaks to something that is kind of inherent. There is a certain admiration, and a dread, and an appeal in power.To prevent the fracturing of the community in the churches as had happened in the synagogues, the converts could not be defined as previously. There could not be Greek and Jew. The Apostle Paul insisted that circumcision was ‘nothing’. It didn’t define a person. Therefore, why insist on it for a new convert. Thankfully, with Pax we are treated to good views of the Colosseum, the Palatine, and the Pantheon as well. Nor does the tour end there: we spend a dramatic few days in the Bay of Naples, watching in horror along with Pliny the Younger as Vesuvius wipes out countless lives and flattens cities; we visit the northern extremes along the Danube and the Rhine; cross the cold grey sea to meet the strange and barbarous Caledonians; traverse the mountains and plains of Parthia; and sail along the Nile mourning with Hadrian for the loss of his lover. And then there is the written style, both flamboyant and eloquent, that is the hallmark of Holland’s writing. Although there is nothing to rival my favourite quotation – of any history book – ‘that the Athenians were content to ascribe the origins of their city to a discarded toss-rag’, there is still a delightful turn of phrase that brings to life his subjects ‘in all their ambivalence, their complexity and their contradictions’. Tom Holland, Persian Fire (London: Abacus, 2006), p. 101; Pax, p. xxiv. Just as the ‘golden age’ of Rome is a story of assimilation, of peoples coming together under an all-encompassing flag, in Pax Holland has achieved a remarkable synthesis of ideas and themes, of astounding scholarship and beautiful accessibility, to make something that truly stands out from the crowd. Thus, from the beginning the churches were an integral part of Roman civic society, not alien to it. They would have been indistinguishable from other clubs. In Paul’s epistles he finds it necessary to correct the mistaken impressions that some have that they have come to dining or debating clubs. Philo writes that the Alexandrian clubs, under the pretext of religion, were merely convivial meetings. Being private, all these clubs were held in suspicion, and subject to persecution, by the emperors until Alexander Severus, who considered them a conservative element.Some of these primitive churches may have been scholae. Commitment is an apt title for this family epic; Mona Simpson’s chronicle of deeply depressed single mother Diane and the effects of her illness on her three children across the sweep of the 1970s US demands close attention and, sometimes, patience. But it’s worth it; Simpson’s quietly devastating writing eventually carves out distinctive and memorable multigenerational characters, each with their own compelling stories, motivations and locations. Ultimately, Commitment is a familiar tale of survival, love and friendship, but the precise detail of the relationships makes it stand apart.

Holland, who co-hosts the podcast The Rest Is History, is at his best when having fun with Rome’s bloody history’ The Times

The definitive history of Rome’s golden age – antiquity’s ultimate superpower at the pinnacle of its greatness Why didn’t ancient Judaism become the universal religion of the Roman world after it had been freed of its cultic centre? At the same time, it can be appreciated that the declaration that circumcision was nothing could be felt as an existential threat just as much as the German national socialists felt that the very self-same preaching of Paul was an existential peril to their concept of Germanness.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment