Explain the traditional religious culture of the classical world.

The traditional religious culture:

(i) The traditional religious culture of the classical world, both Greek and Roman, had been polytheist. That is, it involved a multiplicity of cults that included both Roman/Italian gods like Jupiter, Juno, Minerva and Mars, as well as numerous Greek and eastern deities worshipped in thousands of temples, shrines and sanctuaries throughout the empire.

(ii) Polytheists had no common name or label to describe themselves. The other great religious tradition in the empire was Judaism. But Judaism was not a monolith either, and there was a great deal of diversity within the Jewish communities of late antiquity.

(iii) Thus, the ‘Christianisation, of the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries was a gradual and complex process. Polytheism did not disappear overnight, especially in the western provinces, where the Christian bishops waged a running battle against beliefs and practices they condemned more than the Christian laity did.

(iv) The boundaries between religious communities were much more fluid in the fourth century than they would become thanks to the repeated efforts of religious leaders, the powerful bishops who now led the Church, to rein in their followers and enforce a more rigid set of beliefs and practices.

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Mention the aim of reinforcing cycle of development in which leaders encouraged the settlements of villagers close to themselves.

1. Besides people would be safe living in close proximity to one another. At Uruk, one of the earliest temple towns, we find depictions of armed heroes and their victims, and careful archaeological surveys have shown that around 3000 BCE, when Uruk grew to the enormous extent of 250 hectares — twice as large as Mohenjo-daro would be in later centuries -dozens of small villages were deserted.
There had been a major population shift. Significantly, Uruk also came to have a defensive wall at a very early date. The site was continuously occupied from about 4200 BCE to about 400 CE, and by about 2800 BCE it had expanded to 400 hectares.

2. War captives and local people were put to work for the temple, or directly for the ruler. This, rather than agricultural tax, was compulsory. Those who were put to work were paid rations. Hundreds of ration lists have been found, which give, against people's names, the quantities of grain, cloth or oil allotted to them.
It has been estimated that one of the temples took 1,500 men working 10 hours a day, five years to build.

3. With rulers commanding people to fetch stones or metal ores, to come and make bricks or lay the bricks for a temple, or else to go to a distant country to fetch suitable materials, there were also technical advances at Uruk around 3000 BCE. Bronze tools came into use for various crafts.
Architects learnt to construct brick columns, there being no suitable wood to bear the weight of the roof of large halls.

4. Hundreds of people were put to work at making and baking clay cones that could be pushed into temple walls, painted in different colours, creating a colourful mosaic. In sculpture, there were superb achievements, not in easily available clay but in imported stone.
And then there was a technological landmark that we can say is appropriate to an urban economy: the potter's wheel. In the long run, the wheel enables a potter's workshop to ‘mass produce’ dozens of similar pots at a time.

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Describe yours understanding about the Roman Social Structure.

The Roman social structure:

1. Tacitus described the leading social groups of the early empire as follows: senators (patres, lit. ‘fathers’); leading members of the equestrian class; the respectable section of the people, those attached to the great houses; the unkempt lower class (plebs sordid) who, he tells us, were addicted to the circus and theatrical displays; and finally the slaves.

In the early third century when the Senate numbered roughly 1,000 approximately half of all senators still came from Italian families.

2. By the late empire, which starts with the reign of Constantine I in the early part of the fourth century, the first two groups mentioned by Tacitus (the senators and the equites) had merged into a unified and expanded aristocracy, and at least half of all families were of African or eastern origin.

This ‘late Roman’ aristocracy was enormously wealthy but in many ways less powerful than the purely military elites who came almost entirely from non-aristocratic backgrounds.

3. The ‘middle’ class now consisted of the considerable mass of persons connected with imperial service in the bureaucracy and army but also the more prosperous merchants and farmers of whom there were many in the eastern provinces.

Tacitus described this ‘respectable’ middle class as clients of the great senatorial houses. Now it was chiefly Government service and dependence on the State that sustained many of these families. Below them were the vast mass of the lower classes known collectively as humiliores (lit. ‘lower’).

4. They comprised a rural labour force of which many were permanently employed on the large estates; workers in industrial and mining establishments; migrant workers who supplied much of the labour for the grain and olive harvests and for the building industry; self -employed artisans who, it was said, were better fed than wage labourers; a large mas of casual labourers, especially in the big cities; and of course the many thousands of slaves that were still found all over the western empire in particular.

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What do you know about the trading town in a pastoral zone ?
Mari (the capital) was known for its highly productivity agriculture.

1. Agriculture and animal rearing were carried out close to each other in this region. Some communities in the kingdom of Mari had both farmers and pastoralists, but most of its territory was used for pasturing sheep and goats.

2. Herders need to exchange young animals, cheese, leather and meat in return for grain, metal tools, etc., and the manure of a penned flock is also of great use to a farmer. Yet, at the same time, there may be conflict. A shepherd may take his flock to water across a sown field, to the ruin of the crop.
Herdsmen being mobile can raid agricultural villages and seize their stored goods. For their part, settled groups may deny pastoralists access to river and canal water along a certain set of paths.

3. Through Mesopotamian history, nomadic communities of the western desert filtered into the prosperous agricultural heartland. Shepherds would bring their flocks into the sown area in the summer. Such groups would come in as herders, harvest labourers or hired soldiers, occasionally become prosperous, and settle down.
A few gained the power to establish their own rule. These included the Akkadians, Amorites, Assyrians and Aramaeans. (You will read more about rulers from pastoral societies in Theme 5.)
The kings of Mari were Amorites whose dress differed from that of the original inhabitants and who respected not only the gods of Mesopotamia but also raised a temple at Mari for Dagan, god of the steppe. Mesopotamian society and culture were thus open to different people and cultures, and the vitality of the civilisation was perhaps due to this intermixture.

4. The kings of Mari, however, had to be vigilant; herders of various tribes were allowed to move in the kingdom, but they were watched. The camps of herders are mentioned frequently in letters between kings and officials. In one letter, an officer writes to the king that he has been seeing frequent fire signals at night - sent by one camp to another - and he suspects that a raid or an attack is being planned.

5. Located on the Euphrates in a prime position for trade - in wood, copper, tin, oil, wine, and various other goods that were carried in boats along the Euphrates - between the south and the mineral rich uplands of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, Mari is a good example of an urban centre prospering on trade.
Boats carrying grinding stones, wood, and wine and oil-jars, would stop at Mari on their way to the southern cities. Officers of this town would go aboard, inspect the cargo (a single river boat could hold 300 wine-jars), and levy a charge of about one-tenth the value of the goods before allowing the boat to continue downstream.
Barley came in special grain boats. Most important, tablets refer to copper from ‘Alashiya’, the island of Cyprus, known for its copper, and tin was also an item of trade. As bronze was the main industrial material for tools and weapons, this trade was of great importance. Thus, although the kingdom of Mari was not militarily strong, it was exceptionally prosperous.

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How the third century crisis was different than the first and second centuries a period of peace ?

The crisis:

(i) If the first and second centuries were by and large, a period of peace, prosperity and economic expansion, the third century brought the first major signs of internal strain. From the 230s, the empire found itself fighting on several fronts simultaneously.

(ii) In Iran a new and more aggressive dynasty emerged in 225 (they called themselves the ‘Sasanians’) and within just 15 years were expanding rapidly in the direction of the Euphrates. In a famous rock inscription cut in three languages, Shapur I, the Iranian ruler, claimed he had annihilated a Roman army of 60,000 and even captured the eastern capital of Antioch.

(iii) Meanwhile, a whole series of Germanic tribes or rather tribal confederacies (most notably, the Alamanni, the Franks and the Goths) began to move against the Rhine and Danube frontiers, and the whole period from 233 to 280 saw repeated invasions of a whole line of provinces that stretched from the Black Sea to the Alps and southern Germany.

(iv) The Romans were forced to abandon much of the territory beyond the Danube, while the emperors of this period were constantly in the field against what the Romans called ‘barbarians’. The rapid succession of emperors in the third century (25 emperors in 47 years!) Is an obvious symptom of the strains faced by the empire in this period.

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Describe yours understanding about the Roman Social Structure.