EVEN IF IT IS THE affluent who usually initiate new religions, it is obvious that rich and poor alike often turn to Christianity in response to the widespread need to be comforted for the miseries of life—not merely poverty, but disease, the deaths of loved ones, and all the other misfortunes and disappointments humans face. The central idea is, of course, that Christian faith offers a sedative for suffering in this life by promising that we will be fully compensated in the next, when “many that are first will be last, and the last first” (Matt. 19:30). Atheists like to ridicule this aspect of faith as “pie in the sky.”1
What is almost always missed is that Christianity often puts the pie on the table! It makes life better here and now. Not merely in psychological ways, as faith in an attractive afterlife can do, but in terms of concrete, worldly benefits. Consider that a study2 based on ancient tombstones has established that early Christians outlived their pagan neighbors! What that demonstrates is that Christians enjoyed a superior quality of life. They did so because of their commitment to what was an unusual virtue in ancient times: “the quality of mercy,” as Portia put it in The Merchant of Venice, played a major role in the growth of early Christianity.
Urban Misery
JESUS’S MINISTRY WAS MAINLY in the rural areas of Galilee, but his disciples soon transformed the Jesus Movement into an urban phenomenon.3 Not only was the church headquartered in Jerusalem, but the earliest congregations were in the larger cities.4 Of course, what were “larger” cities in those days were very small by today’s standards. Even so, they were far more crowded, crime-infested, filthy, disease-ridden, and miserable than are the worst cities in the world today.
Size and Density
Ancient history has long suffered from very exaggerated numerical claims offered in the original sources.5 Many armies of perhaps ten thousand were said to number in the hundreds of thousands or even as many as a million.6 Similar exaggerations distort city sizes. For example, Josephus reported that in the first century CE there were more than 204 villages in Galilee, and that the smallest of these had a population of fifteen thousand.7 In fact, Sepphoris, the largest city in Galilee probably did not have as many as five thousand residents, and most villages probably had fewer than one hundred. Consider that in this era Jerusalem’s population probably exceeded twenty-five thousand only when it was crowded with refugees fleeing Roman armies—and even then it is unlikely to have contained more than forty or fifty thousand people, despite ancient claims that more than a million Jews were slaughtered when Jerusalem fell to Titus in 70 CE.8
Ancient cities had small populations! When Paul visited, Corinth probably had fifty thousand residents, Thessalonica thirty-five thousand, and Athens seventy-five thousand. Even Rome, then the largest city in the world (Loyang, China, was second), probably only had a population of about 450,000,9 although many historians still cling to outdated figures in excess of a million.10 But despite having small populations, ancient cities were remarkably crowded because they covered such small areas. Rome probably suffered from the greatest density. John Stambaugh11 estimates it to have had 302 people per acre (compared with 122 in modern Calcutta and 100 in Manhattan). I have estimated the density of Antioch as 195 per acre.12 Most other “major” cities of the day had densities comparable to Antioch. To get some feel for what such density was like, imagine yourself living on a popular beach in mid-summer.
To squeeze everyone in, it was necessary to jam all the buildings together and build them higher than was safe. Even so, most streets were so narrow that we would consider them to be mere footpaths. Although Roman law required that all streets be at least 9.5 feet wide, many were narrower.13 In fact, the famous roads leading out of Rome such as the Via Appia or the Via Latina, were only fifteen to twenty feet wide! The main thoroughfare of Antioch was celebrated throughout the classical world for its spaciousness—it was only thirty feet wide14 (streets in modern residential areas usually are forty feet wide). In most parts of ancient cities, streets were so narrow that if people leaned out of their windows they could chat with someone living across the street without having to raise their voices. Such crowding, combined with the fact that everything except a few temples and palaces was constructed of wood (covered with stucco), and that all heating and cooking was done over open braziers, explains why “dread of fire was an obsession among rich and poor alike.”15
There was a nearly equal obsession with the collapse of buildings. In Rome it was illegal to construct a building higher than sixty-five feet. Nevertheless, buildings fell down all the time. Rome “was constantly filled with the noise of buildings collapsing or being torn down to prevent it; and the tenants of an insula [tenement] lived in constant expectation of its coming down on their heads.”16 The tenements collapsed because they were too lightly built17 and because the less desirable upper floors (there being no elevators) housed the poor, who so subdivided them that the upper floors became heavier than the lower floors and beyond what the beams and foundations could carry.
Housing
Not only were the buildings squeezed together; inside them people were crowded into tiny cubicles.18 Private houses were rare; in Rome there was “only one private house for every 26 blocks of apartments.”19 Tenements lacked both furnaces and fireplaces. As noted, cooking was done over wood or charcoal braziers, which also were the only source of heat; since everyone lacked chimneys (it was still many centuries before they were invented), the rooms were always smoky in winter. Because windows could only be “closed” by “hanging cloths or skins,”20 the tenements were sufficiently drafty to prevent frequent asphyxiation. But, of course, the drafts increased the danger of rapidly spreading fires. Given these living conditions, people tended to live their lives in public places, and the “home” of the average person “must have served only as a place to sleep and to store possessions.”21
Filth
Soap had not yet been invented. Because water had to be carried home in jugs from public fountains, there could have been little water for scrubbing floors or washing clothes. Nor could there have been much for bathing—although many people could go to the public baths. But even at the baths the water was quite contaminated because, whether it came to a city by way of an aqueduct or from local wells, all the larger Greco-Roman cities had to store water in cisterns, awaiting use. And “untreated water[,]... when left stagnant, encourages the growth of algae and other organisms, rendering the water malodorous, unpalatable, and after a time, undrinkable.”22 No wonder Pliny (23–79 CE ) advised that “all water is the better for being boiled.”23
One thing is certain: when human density is high, urgent problems of sanitation arise. Granted that an underground sewer carried water from the major baths of Rome through public latrines next door and on out of the city (to be dumped untreated into the Tiber River which could, therefore, be smelled for many miles). But few people jogged off to public latrines each time nature called. Like all cities until very modern times, people used chamber pots and pit latrines—and for lack of open spaces most Greco-Roman cities were entirely dependent on pots.24 Of course pots needed to be emptied, and often the only option was to dump them in the open ditches running down streets that served as sewers. Too often the pots were emptied out of upper-story windows at night. As the great French historian Jerome Carcopino (1881–1970) described it:
There were other poor devils who found their stairs too steep and the road to the dung pits too long, and to save themselves further trouble would empty the contents of their chamber pots from the heights above the streets. So much the worse for the passer-by who happened to intercept the unwelcome gift! Fouled and sometimes even injured, as in Juvenal’s satire, he had no redress save to lodge a complaint against the unknown assailant; many passages in the Digest indicate that Roman jurists did not disdain to take cognisance of this offense.25
Given limited water and means of sanitation and the incredible density of humans and animals (narrow as they were, the streets were constantly traversed by horses, donkeys, and oxen, as well as by flocks on their way to be butchered, all making their own contributions to the mess), it must have been a remarkably filthy existence. The tenement cubicles were smoky, dark, often damp, and always dirty. The smell of sweat, urine, feces, and decay permeated everything. Outside: mud, open sewers, manure, and crowds. In fact, human corpses—adult as well as newborns—were sometimes just pushed into an open sewer.26 And even if the wealthiest households could provide ample space and personal cleanliness, the rich could not prevent the stench of general filth from penetrating their homes—no wonder everyone was so fond of incense. Worse yet, flies, mosquitoes, and other insects flourish where there is stagnant water and filth—and like stinks, insects are very democratic.
Crime and Disorder
Amid all the concern that modern cities lack community, being filled with newcomers and strangers, it is forgotten that ancient cities were even more so. Had that not been true, ancient cities would quickly have become empty ruins. A constant and substantial influx of newcomers was required to offset the extremely high mortality rates of ancient cities.27 Consequently, ancient cities had a quite high proportion of residents who were very recent newcomers, and Greco-Roman cities were therefore communities of strangers. Wherever such conditions prevail, crime abounds since people are attached to the moral order primarily by their ties to others. Consequently, Greco-Roman cities were far more crime-ridden than are the worst of modern cities. As Carcopino described Rome:
Night fell over the city like the shadow of great danger, diffused, sinister, menacing. Everyone fled to his home, shut himself in, and barricaded the entrance. The shops fell silent, safety chains were drawn behind the leaves of the doors.... If the rich had to sally forth, they were accompanied by slaves who carried torches to light and protect them on their way.... Juvenal sighs that to go out to supper without having made your will was to expose yourself to reproach for carelessness.... [W]e need only to turn to the leaves of the Digest [to discover the extent to which criminals] abounded in the city.28
More specifically, “most criminals in Rome followed traditional pursuits, and the city was plagued with housebreakers, pickpockets, petty thieves, and muggers.”29 There also were very high levels of interpersonal violence30 —there even were professional murderers for hire.31
In addition to crime, the constant influx of strangers into Greco-Roman cities caused a great deal of disorder, including riots—some involving ethnic conflicts, some involving political disputes.32 Riots not only cost many lives and ruined immense amounts of property (major fires often resulted), but the political riots aroused such extreme anxiety among the ruling elite that secret police proliferated, generating a huge network of informants. Subsequently, “no class, high or low, could escape their prying.... [T]hey [also] were commissioned to carry out political assassinations.”33 All this added to the miseries of everyday life.
Disease
The constant companion of filth, insects, and crowding is disease. Consequently, people were far more likely to die during the summer than when the chill of winter mitigated the effects of filth and insects.34 Even so, illness and physical afflictions probably were dominant features of daily life. A recent analysis of decayed human fecal remains in an ancient Jerusalem cesspool found an abundance of tapeworm and whipworm eggs, indicating that almost everyone had them.35 Although being infected with one or both of these parasites is not fatal, both can cause anemia and make victims more vulnerable to other illnesses. Given their living conditions and lack of medications, the majority of persons living in Greco-Roman cities must have suffered from chronic health problems that caused them pain and some degree of disability, and of which many would soon die. Compared with modern cities, sickness was highly visible: “Swollen eyes, skin rashes and lost limbs are mentioned over and over again in the sources as part of the urban scene.”36 Roger Bagnall reported that in this age before photography and finger-printing, written documents offered descriptive information to help identify the parties, and these very often relied on “their distinctive disfigurements, mostly scars.”37 Bagnall cited a fourth-century papyrus that lists a number of persons owing debts, all of whom were scarred.38 Finally, as will be discussed in chapter 7, women were especially susceptible to health problems due to childbirth and to widespread abortion by means of unsanitary and crude methods.
Christian Mercy
IN THE MIDST OF the squalor, misery, illness, and anonymity of ancient cities, Christianity provided an island of mercy and security.
Foremost was the Christian duty to alleviate want and suffering. It started with Jesus: “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.... Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:35–36, 40).
James 2:15–17 expresses a similar idea: “If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
In contrast, in the pagan world, and especially among the philosophers, mercy was regarded as a character defect and pity as a pathological emotion: because mercy involves providing unearned help or relief, it is contrary to justice. As E. A. Judge explained, classical philosophers taught that “mercy indeed is not governed by reason at all,” and humans must learn “to curb the impulse”; “the cry of the undeserving for mercy” must go “unanswered.” Judge continued: “Pity was a defect of character unworthy of the wise and excusable only in those who have not yet grown up.”39
This was the moral climate in which Christianity taught that mercy is one of the primary virtues—that a merciful God requires humans to be merciful. Moreover, the corollary that because God loves humanity, Christians may not please God unless they love one another was even more incompatible with pagan convictions. But the truly revolutionary principle was that Christian love and charity must extend beyond the boundaries of family and even those of faith, to all in need. As Cyprian, the martyred third-century bishop of Carthage explained, “there is nothing remarkable in cherishing merely our own people with the due attentions of love.... Thus the good was done to all men, not merely to the household of faith.”40
It wasn’t just talk. In 251 the bishop of Rome wrote a letter to the bishop of Antioch in which he mentioned that the Roman congregation was supporting fifteen hundred widows and distressed persons.41 This was not unusual. In about the year 98 CE, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, advised Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, to be sure to provide special support for widows.42 As the distinguished Paul Johnson put it: “The Christians... ran a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services.”43 Tertullian (155–222) explained how this welfare system functioned:
There is no buying or selling of any sort of things of God. Though we have our treasure chest, it is not made up of purchase money, as of a religion that has its price. On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he is able; for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts are, as it were, piety’s deposit fund. For they are not taken thence and spent on feasts, and drinking bouts, and eating houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls of destitute means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in prisons, for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession.44
These charitable activities were possible only because Christianity generated congregations, a true community of believers who built their lives around their religious affiliation. And it was this, above all else, that insulated Christians from the many deprivations of ancient life. Even if they were newcomers, they were not strangers, but brothers and sisters in Christ. When calamities struck, there were people who cared—in fact, there were people having the distinct responsibility to care! All congregations had deacons whose primary job was the support of the sick, infirm, poor, and disabled. As outlined in Apostolic Constitutions, deacons “are to be doers of good works, exercising a general supervision day or night, neither scorning the poor nor respecting the person of the rich; they must ascertain who are in distress and not exclude them from a share in church funds; compelling also the well-to-do to put money aside for good works.”45
Nothing illustrates the immense benefits of Christian life better than responses to the two great plagues that struck the empire.
Plagues and Faith
IN THE YEAR 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a devastating epidemic swept through the Roman Empire. Some medical historians suspect this was the first appearance of smallpox in the West.46 Whatever the actual disease, it was lethal—as many contagious diseases are when they strike a previously unexposed population. During the fifteen-year duration of the epidemic, a quarter to a third of the population probably died of it.47 At the height of the epidemic, mortality was so great in many cities that the emperor Marcus Aurelius (who subsequently died of the disease) wrote of caravans of carts and wagons hauling out the dead.48 Then, a century later came another great plague. Once again the Greco-Roman world trembled as, on all sides, family, friends, and neighbors died horribly.
No one knew how to treat the stricken. Nor did most people try. During the first plague, the famous classical physician Galen fled Rome for his country estate where he stayed until the danger subsided. But for those who could not flee, the typical response was to try to avoid any contact with the afflicted, since it was understood that the disease was contagious. Hence, when their first symptom appeared, victims often were thrown into the streets, where the dead and dying lay in piles. In a pastoral letter written during the second epidemic (ca. 251), Bishop Dionysius described events in Alexandria: “At the first onset of the disease, they [pagans] pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.”49
It must have caused most people considerable pain and grief to abandon loved ones in this manner. But what else could they do? What about prayers? Well, if one went to a temple to pray, one discovered that the priests were not there praying for divine aid, but that all of them had fled the city. They had done so because there was no belief that the gods cared about human affairs. It was thought that they sometimes could be “bribed” to grant wishes, but the idea of a merciful or caring God was utterly alien. As Thucydides explained about an earlier plague that had struck Athens:
Useless were prayers made in the temples, consultation of oracles, and so forth; indeed, in the end people were so overcome by their sufferings that they paid no further attention to such things.... [T]hey died with no one to look after them; indeed there were many houses in which all the inhabitants perished through lack of attention.... The bodies of the dying were heaped one on top of the other, and half-dead creatures could be seen staggering about in the streets or flocking around the fountains in their desire for water. The temples in which they took up their quarters were full of the dead bodies of people who had died inside them. For the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion and law.... No fear of god or law of man had a restraining influence. As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing whether one worshipped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately.50
By the same token the classical philosophers had nothing useful to say except to blame it all on fate. As Canadian historian Charles Norris Cochrane (1889–1945) put it: “while a deadly plague was ravaging the empire... the sophists prattled vaguely about the exhaustion of virtue in a world growing old.”51
But Christians claimed to have answers and, most of all, they took appropriate actions. As for answers, Christians believed that death was not the end and that life was a time of testing. This is how Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, explained to his people that the virtuous had nothing to fear during the second great plague.
How suitable, how necessary it is that this plague and pestilence, which seems horrible and deadly, searches out the justice of each and every one and examines the mind of the human race; whether the well care for the sick, whether relatives dutifully love their kinsman as they should, whether masters show compassion for their ailing slaves, whether physicians do not desert the afflicted.... Although this mortality had contributed nothing else, it has especially accomplished this for Christians and servants of God, that we have begun gladly to seek martyrdom while we are learning not to fear death. These are trying exercises for us, not deaths; they give to the mind the glory of fortitude; by contempt of death they prepare for the crown.... [O]ur brethren who have been freed from this earth by the summons of the Lord should not be mourned, since we know that they are not lost but sent before; that in departing they lead the way; that as travelers, as voyagers are wont to be, they should be longer for not lamented... and that no occasion should be given to pagans to censure us deservedly and justly, on the ground that we grieve for those who we say are living.52
As for action, Christians met the obligation to care for the sick rather than desert them, and thereby saved enormous numbers of lives!
Toward the end of the second plague, Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria wrote a pastoral letter to his members, extolling those who had nursed the sick and especially those who had given their lives in doing so:
Most of our brothers showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead.... The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons, and laymen winning high commendation so that in death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal to martyrdom.53
Should we believe the bishop? Certainly, given that he was writing to his local members who had independent knowledge of the events. But what difference could it really have made? A huge reduction in the death rate!
As William H. McNeill pointed out in his celebrated Plagues and Peoples, under the circumstances prevailing in this era, even “quite elementary nursing will greatly reduce mortality. Simple provision of food and water, for instance, will allow persons who are temporarily too weak to cope for themselves to recover instead of perishing miserably.”54 It is entirely plausible that Christian nursing would have reduced mortality by as much as two-thirds! The fact that most stricken Christians survived did not go unnoticed, lending immense credibility to Christian “miracle working.” Indeed, the miracles often included pagan neighbors and relatives. This surely must have produced some conversions, especially by those who were nursed back to health. In addition, while Christians did nurse some pagans, being so outnumbered, obviously they could not have cared for most of them, while all, or nearly all, Christians would have been nursed. Hence Christians as a group would have enjoyed a far superior survival rate, and, on these grounds alone, the percentage of Christians in the population would have increased substantially as a result of both plagues.
What went on during the epidemics was only an intensification of what went on every day among Christians. Because theirs were communities of mercy and self-help, Christians did have longer, better lives. This was apparent and must have been extremely appealing. Indeed, the impact of Christian mercy was so evident that in the fourth century when the emperor Julian attempted to restore paganism, he exhorted the pagan priesthood to compete with the Christian charities. In a letter to the high priest of Galatia, Julian urged the distribution of grain and wine to the poor, noting that “the impious Galileans [Christians], in addition their own, support ours, [and] it is shameful that our poor should be wanting our aid.”55 But there was little or no response to Julian’s proposals because there were no doctrines and no traditional practices for the pagan priests to build upon. It was not that the Romans knew nothing of charity, but for them it was not based on service to the gods. Since pagan gods required only propitiation and beyond that had no interest in what humans did, a pagan priest could not preach that those persons lacking in the spirit of charity risked their salvation. There was no salvation! The gods did not offer any escape from mortality. We must keep that in mind when we compare the reactions of Christians and pagans in the shadow of death. Christians believed in life everlasting. At most, pagans believed in an unattractive existence in the underworld. Thus, for Galen to have remained in Rome to treat the afflicted during the first great plague would have required far greater bravery than was needed by Christian deacons and presbyters to do so. Faith mattered.
Conclusion
SOME WILL OBJECT THAT to stress the importance of tangible, worldly benefits for Christian conversion is to wrongly downplay the religious motivations for the rise of Christianity. This objection overlooks that these worldly benefits were religious in the fullest sense. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40). It was by imitation of Christ that Christians were able to live longer and enjoy more comfortable lives.