On the first day of my Sabbatical as I was preparing to explore the world of the New Testament on our doorstep in Roman Britain, I went to an open day at Chedworth Roman Villa. Roger Box, one of the regular guides was sitting with a tray of coins in front of him. I was treated to a lively run through of the history of the Roman empire through the images and inscriptions on fifty or so coins. I was hooked. I purchased a coffee-table introduction to Rome from the bookshop. At the very least it gave me a framework of dates and emperors and again caught my imagination.
Rodgers, N., and H. Dodge. Roman Empire. Lorenz Books, 2006.
It wasn’t long before I realised that narrative accounts of Rome are based in large measure on a small number of works by Roman historians. Having already studied Caesar’s Gallic wars and Virgil’s Aeneid in Latin classes at school, I had the translations I had used then. To them I added more recent translations of Tacitus, Suetonius and the Res Gestae of Augustus.
Warner, Rex, trans. War Commentaries of Caesar. New York: Mentor Books, 1960.
Virgil. The Aeneid. Revised. Translated by W. F. Jackson Knight. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 1958.
Tacitus. The Annals of Imperial Rome. Revised. Translated by Michael Grant. London: Penguin, 1996.
Tacitus. Tacitus: The Histories. Edited by D. S. Levene. Translated by W. H. Fyfe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Tacitus. Agricola and Germania. Revised. Translated by Harold Mattingley and J. B. Rives. London: Penguin Classics, 2009.
Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars. Translated by Catharine Edwards. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Cooley, Alison E. Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
While I found these translations remarkably readable, I felt I wanted to make sense of what I was reading. The three most significant works I have used are
Beard, Mary. SPQR – A History of Ancient Rome. London: Profile, 2017.
Woolf, Greg. Rome: An Empire’s Story. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
Woolf, Greg. Roman World. Cambridge Illustrated History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
I found other books on Augustus, the early empire and the tradition of the Triumph helpful:
Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: From Revolutionary to Emperor. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014.
Galinsky, Karl. Augustus: Introduction to the Life of an Emperor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Holland, Tom. Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of
Caesar. London: Little Brown, 2015.
Goldsworthy, Adrian. Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016.
Beard, Mary. The Roman Triumph. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Conscious of the inter-change between Jerusalem and Rome in the period of the New Testament I found it good to read Josephus on the Jewish war, and Martin Goodman’r reflections on the clash of civilizations represented in those two great cities.
Josephus. The Jewish War. Revised. Translated by G. Williamson and E. Mary Smallwood. London: Penguin, 1981.
Goodman, Martin. Rome and Jerusalem : The Clash of Ancient Civilizations. London: Allen Lane, 2007.
By the middle of the second century Aelius Aristides could claim that the Roman Frontiers were “enclosing the civilised world in a ring”. In 1987 Hadrian’s Wall was declared a World Heritage Site; in 2005 the German frontier between the rivers Rhine and Danube received the same designation. Since then, a project is underway to designate the entire 5000 miles of the Roman frontiers through twenty countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe a World Heritage Site.
Most of the Bloomberg tablets date to the period of the on-going conquest of Britain as the frontier was extending north and west, 43–83 CE. The Vindolanda tablets date to the period when the frontier to the west had been established in what is now Cymru, Wales, and the frontier to the north was still very fluid. They pre-date the building of Hadrian’s Wall. Some understanding of the Roman frontiers is important to our project.
During my sabbatical in 2015, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with David Mattingly, Professor of Roman Archaeology in Leicester University. He told me about the work he had been doing in North Africa, and directed me to the work of David Breeze.
Breeze, David J. The Frontiers of Imperial Rome. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2011.
He then pointed me towards the publications which are steadily coming out describing the whole length of the frontier. The colourful multi-lingual books may be purchased or are available online free of charge.
Archaeopress are publishing a special Collection of Books on the Roman Frontier that are Open Access. UNESCO also have information about the project.
Collection: Frontiers of the Roman Empire
UNESCO World Heritage Convention, Frontiers of the Roman Empire
David Breeze has written two volumes on Hadrian’s Wall which are of interest in the context of the Vindolanda tablets, though it must be said that they predate the building of the wall.
David J., Breeze. Frontiers of the Roman Empire: Hadrian’s Wall. Archaeopress Archaeology, 2023.
It is only recently, that what is now known as Cymru, Wales, was also a frontier of the Roman Empire. Whereas to the north of Britannia, a wall defined the frontier, to the west, a different mechanism was used. By the end of the first century, a network of roads had been built throughout the territories of the Silures, the Ordovices and the other peoples of the west. They linked more than 60 forts garrisoned by auxiliary soldiers. That network of forts and roads was supervised by two legionary fortresses at Caerleon and at Deva, Caer, Chester. In a bi-lingual publication in Cymraeg, Welsh, and English, Peter Guest has described the nature of that frontier. In many ways, this is closer to the kind of frontier the Batavian and Tungrian cohorts were facing in Vindolanda.
It's interesting to compare the Eastern Frontier.
Breeze, David et al. The Eastern Frontiers. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2022.
Thanks to Roger Box, guide at Chedworth Roman and coin collector, my introduction to the history of Rome as I began my research project was through its coinage. I quickly came across Larry Kreitzer’s ground-breaking work on Roman Imperial Coinage as a window on to the world of the New Testament:
Kreitzer, L. Joseph. Striking New Images: Roman Imperial Coinage and the New Testament World. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 134. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996.
Coins, I discovered could tell a story. I learned that Harold Mattingly’s classic work was still of value; indeed, another of the great Numismatists of the twentieth century, distilled a life-time of study into a small book, bringing together classical texts and a selection of Roman coins.
Mattingly, Harold. Roman Coins: From the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire. 2nd edn. London: Methuen, 1960.
Sutherland, C. H. V. Roman History and Coinage, 44 BC-AD 69: Fifty Points of Relation from Julius Caesar to Vespasian. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
We were in good company. For Jesus’ response when challenged about paying taxes to make any sense, Matthew, Mark and Luke all assume that the image and the inscription on a denarius tell a story (Matthew 22:19–20; Mark 12:15–16; Luke 20:24). Larry Kreitzer and all these authors were dependent on the published catalogues of Roman Coins accessible only in major libraries. In the new millennium, these catalogues have all gone online. Superb images of all Roman coins are available to everyone.
Coinage of the Roman Republic Online.
Online Coins of the Roman Empire.
What’s more, since 1997 in Britain metal detectorists have been encouraged to register their finds with the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities’ Scheme. Remarkably that has resulted in a searchable online catalogue of 140,000 coins. For anyone wishing to explore the story Roman coinage has to tell, Ian Leins, Sam Moorhead, and Natalia Bauer have collaborated on an online introduction to Roman coinage, brought together by Daniel Pett. Those findings have been brought together in a book by Sam Moorhead.
An Introduction to Roman Coins.
Moorhead, Sam. A History of Roman Coinage in Britain. Witham, Essex: Greenlight, 2013.
One of the most remarkable hoards of denarii to be found in Britain was discovered by Keith Bennett, a metal detectorist in 2008. I worked painstakingly through all 1100 coins, dating 194 BCE, shortly after the denarius first went into circulation, up until the last coin in 63/64 CE. I went on to examine another 500 and more denarii found at around the same time in Llanvaches, part way between Caerleon and Caerwent. Those coins began around the mid-60s and went up until the middle of the second century. In two hoards I glimpsed as it were Rome’s ‘official history’ in contemporary pictures and inscriptions. I presented a paper to the British New Testament Society in 2019 and hope to write more when time allows.
Ireland, Stanley. The South-Warwickshire Hoard of Roman Denarii: A Catalogue. BAR British Series 585. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013.
Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru, National Museum Wales. ‘The Llanvaches Roman Coin Hoard’.
Comparison with Celtic Coinage from the late Iron Age immediately preceding the Roman conquest of Britain, and also with the coinage of Iudaea highlighted the impact of the cult of the Roman emperor, as the head of one or other of the Roman gods was displaced by the head of the Emperor from the time of Augustus onwards. Unfortunately, the major catalogues of coins from Iudaea are not available online; a small online handbook, however, is helpful. No fewer than 145 of the South Warwickshire Hoard were coins of Tiberius. And with slight variation only, they all bear the same image and the same inscription, Tiberius himself, identified as ‘son of the divine’.
Van Arsdell, Celtic Coinage of Britain, 3rd edition
Hendin, David. Guide to Biblical Coins. 6th edn. New York: American Numismatic Society, 2021.
Wacks, Mel, The Handbook of Biblical Numismatics, 45th Edition.