The City Set On Seven Hills

The City Set On Seven Hills

It is a city with a past.

THE ROMAN annalist Titus Livius set the traditional date for the founding of Rome as April 21, 753 B.C. The oldest settlement was seventeen miles up from the mouth of the Tiber River on a cluster of seven hills.

Initially Rome was ruled by Latin kings, but in about 600 B.C. Etruscans from modern-day Tuscany along the northwestern coast of Italy took control.

About 509 B.C. the Romans revolted against the Etruscans and established the Roman republic. The republic’s chief officers were two consuls, elected annually and assisted by other elected administrative officials. The defining moment for the republic came in 387 B.C. when the Gauls ransacked Rome. Determined to be vulnerable no longer to outside attack, the Romans took up the sword and, by so doing, united all of Italy south of the Po River into a confederation. Rome became so strong that the city stood inviolate for eight centuries.

The republic ended in 27 B.C. when Caesar Augustus became emperor and the Roman Empire began. At this time the population of Rome was well over one million.

The first two hundred years of the Roman Empire are called the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, reflecting the empire’s internal and external peace. During this time of peace, Christians first appeared in Rome. Initially they were not differentiated from the Jews, as we know Christians Aquila and Priscilla had to leave Rome when Emperor Claudius forced the Jews out of the city.

In A.D. 57 when the apostle Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans, there was a church there. Paul was imprisoned in Rome from 59 until 62 and then a second time in 67 or 68. He was finally martyred there as was the apostle Peter.

Six different caesars of the first two centuries persecuted Christians. Then from the third century until Constantine in 313, there were five periods of persecution. During this period the Pax Romana disappeared. There were twenty-eight claimants to the imperial throne in the Roman Empire between Commodus (180–192) and Diocletian (284–305). Only one died a natural death, and only one reigned for more than ten years.

It was during these turbulent times that the Christians of Rome retreated to the catacombs, the subterranean cemeteries outside Rome’s city walls. In these underground labyrinths Christians not only buried their dead but also worshiped during times of persecution.

In 313 Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, giving Christians freedom of worship. At this time there were approximately forty churches in Rome. But Constantine also moved the capital of the empire to Constantinople (Istanbul), leaving Rome as the capital of only the Western empire. Rome weakened, and in 410 the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe, sacked the city. In 476 the Western Roman Empire fell to another Germanic tribe, the Ostrogoths. As the city of Rome weakened politically, the church grew in power and came to dominate Rome.

In 847 Pope Leo IV built a wall of defense around St. Peter’s Basilica, and it became the center of a Christian Rome. At this same time the title “Pope” from the Latin papa, meaning “father,” came to be reserved for the bishop of Rome. Previously it had applied to all bishops. Except for a period between 1305 and 1377 when the popes were captives of the French kings and ruled from Avignon, France, the Vatican in Rome has been the pope’s residence and the Roman Catholic Church headquarters.

Reflection

The New Testament book of Revelation contains references to the city of Rome. A woman called “Babylon the Great, Mother of all Prostitutes and Obscenities in the World,” symbolizing false religion, is pictured as sitting on “the seven hills of the city where this woman rules” (Revelation 17:5, 9). The woman herself “represents the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:18). In A.D. 95 when the book of Revelation was written, this description obviously applied to Rome. What do you think is the significance of these references to Rome?

I will show you the judgment that is going to come on the great prostitute.

Revelation 17:1