Latest news with #PlinytheYounger
BBC News
12-07-2025
- BBC News
Italy's sunken city returning from the sea
A volcanic eruption sank Aenaria nearly 2,000 years ago. Now, underwater tours and ongoing excavations are bringing Ischia's fascinating history back to the surface. "You're fine. Just don't look down." I hold my breath, take the captain's outstretched hand and board the boat. The waves glimmer beneath my feet; the only thing separating me from the sea is a pane of glass. As our tour sets sail, the vast Bay of Cartaromana opens up before us. Jagged cliffs shoot up from the waves; sunbathers sprawl on the inlet bridge leading to the 2,500-year-old Aragonese Castle, attached to the island like the tail of a whale periscoping through the waves. After just 10 minutes at sea, we reach a network of buoys marking the ruins below. I press my hands against the vessel's transparent bottom. Through the turquoise-blue water, between waving fields of seagrass and small striped fish, I glimpse a pile of rocks. Then the seagrass parts and I see that the rocks are arranged into a long rectangular form, its sides encased in wooden planks. This is an ancient city's quay; buried in the cool dark for centuries and perfectly preserved. Ancient Rome, almost close enough to touch. I am on the Italian island of Ischia, where sometime around AD180, the Cretaio volcano erupted, and the ensuing shockwaves sank the Roman port city of Aenaria beneath the sea. At least, that's what archaeologists think happened. Unlike the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 – documented by Pliny the Younger in the hours before it devastated Pompeii – there are no records of the explosion, and very little written about the settlement itself. For nearly 2,000 years, there was no physical trace of it either. The ruins lay submerged in the Bay of Cartaromana hidden for centuries beneath layers of sediment and volcanic material. The first hints of its existence were in 1972, when two scuba divers found Roman-era pottery shards and two lead ingots off Ischia's eastern shore. The find intrigued archaeologists, but the ensuing investigation, helmed by local priest Don Pietro Monti and archaeologist Giorgio Buchner, yielded nothing. Officials cordoned off the bay. The case went cold for nearly 40 years. Then, in 2011, passionate local sailors reopened the excavation, this time digging into the sea floor. Soon, they were able to confirm that 2m beneath the bay's volcanic seabed lay the ruins of a massive Roman-era quay. Further digs found coins, amphorae, mosaics, seaside villas and the wooden wreckage of a ship. For centuries, Aenaria had existed somewhere between history and myth. Today, its rediscovery is reshaping Ischia's story – and offering travellers the rare chance each summer to dive into a piece of history once thought lost to the sea. A puzzling past As far as anyone had ever known, Ischia's DNA was Greek. The island was renowned as the site of the first Greek colony in the Italian peninsula, established around 750BC in the north of the island. The Greeks called the island Pithecusae and harnessed the healing powers of its volcanic thermal springs to found its first spas. Today, with its lush beauty, laid-back vibe and revered thermal spa culture, Ischia is Italy's quintessential wellness retreat – despite sitting atop the Campi Flegrei supervolcano. But it's precisely that volatile volcanic geology that has shaped the island's verdant landscapes and wild beaches. It's also what archaeologists long assumed had scared the Romans away from permanently settling here. When the Romans seized Pithecusae sometime around 322BC, they renamed the island Aenaria – a name that appears in ancient texts from Pliny the Elder to Strabo, often in relation to military events. But unlike the Greeks, who left behind a necropolis, kilns and troves of pottery, the Romans left only a few modest tombs, engravings and scattered opus reticulatum. Scholars settled on the theory that they'd come to the island but never properly settled it – perhaps avoiding it due to its constant volcanic rumblings. "The name was documented," echoes local resident Giulio Lauro. "But no one could find the place." Archaeologists had been looking for Roman Ischia on dry land, but it was buried below the sea. The modern rediscovery Lauro is the founder of the Marina di Sant'Anna; the cultural branch of the Ischia Barche sea-tourism cooperative. Along with various affiliated cultural groups – comprised of Ischian seafarers, history enthusiasts and archaeologists – they have self-funded the excavations for the past 15 years. Lauro is quick to tell me that he's no scientist. "But I love the sea," he said. "In 2010, I got the idea to look again … People said maybe there was something there, because in the '70s they found artefacts. I thought, why not try?" The plan was to launch underwater tours "to create a cultural attraction", says Dr Alessandra Benini, the project's lead archaeologist. "[Then] it was, 'let's see if there's truly a deeper history of our island'." There were challenges, recalls Lauro: "Getting authorisations, training people, sourcing funds. We started from zero. We were lucky to believe in it. And then to actually find it." Finally, the narrative could be rewritten. "It was believed that the Romans never built a city on Ischia," says Benini. "It was the opposite." Aenaria returned from the sea Each day in the Bay of Cartaromana, swimmers dive off the rocks and sailboats bob in the waves. Do they know what's beneath the sea, I wonder? "Most locals do, thanks to [the archaeologists]," says local tour guide Marianna Polverino. "But not many visitors know about Aenaria's existence, or that you can visit it." Each summer, Benini and her team excavate the sea floor. Progress is painstaking due to a perennial shortage of funds. "They invest in Herculaneum, in Pompeii," remarks consulting archaeologist Maria Lauro, and because of the ocean's seasonal turbulence, they can only operate from May to October. During the site's active months, curious visitors can take glass-bottomed boat tours, as well as snorkelling and scuba excursions to get even closer to the ruins. "You can see the underwater archaeologists at work, the equipment they use and everything involved," says Benini. All tours start with viewing a 3D video in the cooperative's small auditorium, where artefacts from the site are displayed beneath glass flooring, arranged on a layer of sand evoking the seabed. My shoes tread over amphorae, oil lamps, herringbone-patterned clusters of opus spicatum tiles – a tile pattern "typically found in [Ancient] Roman shops", says Benini. The video – featuring a submarine that winds up in a digitally reconstructed Aenaria – is geared towards children, but I'm enthralled. The quay hugs the coastline and just beyond is a Roman city resplendent with cobblestoned lanes and columned buildings. To think during the eruption nearly 2,000 years ago, someone – maybe a Roman soldier – may have been standing on that massive quay, terrified as it crumpled beneath their feet. Benini has her own vision of that fateful day. "There might've been a tsunami-like wave, or maybe an earthquake, that swept across the structures and pulled everything out to sea," she says. "That's the movie in our minds." Rewriting ancient history Each summer, a clearer picture of Aenaria emerges – although there remains some confusion as to what the ancient settlement actually was. Were the ruins a city? Benini explains: "[The name] Aenaria referred to the island as a whole. So it's not that we haven't found the Aenaria mentioned by the ancients: Aenaria is Ischia – that's unquestionable. We've found a Roman-era settlement with a port that was well connected to the entire Mediterranean and, presumably, had an inhabited area behind it." Radiocarbon dating of the quay's wooden stakes puts it at roughly 75 to AD30. The discovery of the shipwreck in 2020 unearthed naval equipment, like a bronze mooring post in the shape of a swan's head – typical of Roman military vessels – as well as items like lead sling bullets, suggesting that Aenaria may have been a crucial military outpost controlling the Gulf of Naples. Recovered amphorae also suggest Aenaria's wide reach; the 142 clay variants come from 12 Mediterranean production zones, stretching from Campania to the Levant. The most recent analyses showed that the site's lead came from Spain, painting an even clearer picture of how deep Aenaria's intercultural network was. "It's likely there was also a small town nearby [the port]," says Benini. "We found thousands of mosaic tiles, roof tiles, wooden combs for hair, needles for mending nets, decorated plaster… These aren't just ship or trade related. They suggest a residential area." Since the initial digs, two seaside villas have been uncovered, with grand tunnel-like galleries, alcoves and traces of Roman baths. "The ruins of Aenaria give insight into the lives of the ancient people who lived on the island," says Polverino. "It was truly the centre of trade in the Mediterranean. You understand how important Ischia was – and still is – without ever forgetting the history that lies behind it." Looking ahead I ask Benini what she hopes to find this summer. "My dream is to find the foundations of the residential city," she says. "If we've found the port, then we know there was a city." The team hopes to introduce Lidar, Georadar and sub-bottom profiler instruments into the digs, but Benini points out, "That's expensive. We need more investors." Funding aside, the true challenge for those involved has always been reaching a wider audience: "[We are] sharing a part of Ischia's history that, until now, had been missing," says Benini. "What we've found is 99% underwater. It's like Pompeii: until it was excavated in the 1700s, no one knew it was there. But that doesn't mean it wasn't important or didn't exist." "We rewrote history," adds Lauro. "They gave up on finding something in the bay. But we found something." -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Newsweek
02-07-2025
- Health
- Newsweek
Gen Z Is Drinking More Alcohol
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Gen Zers have long been known for their abstinence from alcohol and drugs as they focus on health, wellness and self-care. But the tide might be changing as a new survey from IWSR Bevtrac found that Gen Z's drinking has increased, putting its alcohol consumption in line with that of other generations. Why It Matters There has long been talk of a generational shift in attitudes toward drugs and alcohol. In December, researchers from the University of Michigan found that the percentage of students abstaining from drugs had hit record levels. A July 2024 study found that 64 percent of legal-drinking-age Gen Zers in the United States said they had not consumed alcohol in the six months leading up to May. An August Gallup study also found that 65 percent of adults under 35 viewed alcohol as unhealthy. A Russian River Brewing Company customer sipping the newly released Pliny the Younger triple IPA beer in Santa Rosa, California, on February 7, 2014. A Russian River Brewing Company customer sipping the newly released Pliny the Younger triple IPA beer in Santa Rosa, California, on February 7, To Know The Bevtrac survey, which covered 15 markets, found that the proportion of Gen Z adults of legal drinking age who said they had consumed alcohol in the past six months had risen from 66 percent in March 2023 to 73 percent in March 2025. In the U.S. specifically, the swing was more pronounced, rising from 46 percent to 70 percent. The survey also found that Gen Z drinkers were more likely to drink spirits and more likely to drink from a wider variety of alcoholic beverages. Additionally, Gen Z drinkers are more likely to drink in bars, restaurants or clubs than other adult drinkers. Almost half of Gen Z drinkers reported that a trade venue was their last drinking location, while just over a third of adult drinkers reported this. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement "I am actively choosing to drink more," Gen Z drinkers were the most likely demographic to answer in the affirmative. The consumer insights from Bevtrac are from a twice-yearly quantitative survey of more than 26,000 respondents across 15 global markets: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, South Africa, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S. What People Are Saying Richard Halstead, IWSR's chief operating officer of consumer insights, said in a news release: "Moderation has been a growing trend among all drinkers for several years, but the idea that Gen Z [legal drinking age] drinkers are somehow fundamentally different from other age groups isn't supported by the evidence. For instance, we know that beverage alcohol consumption correlates with disposable income, and Gen Z came of age during a cost-of-living crisis. Rising prices have been especially acute in bars and restaurants—places that appeal most to Gen Z drinkers." What Happens Next It remains to be seen whether the upward trend of alcohol consumption will continue for Gen Zers as they age.
CNN
20-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Before Easter became a holy day, it was the beginning of the Resistance
In the year 112, a Roman governor in modern-day Turkey had his first encounter with members of a strange religious cult called 'Christiani.' The governor had heard reports the cult followed an obscure criminal who had been tortured and executed by the Romans. His followers, though, believed that their leader was still somehow alive. They met in each others' homes for communal meals where, rumor had it, they practiced cannibalism by drinking the blood of their leader and held orgies. The governor became even more puzzled when he summoned two leaders from the cult for interrogation. He wrote about the encounter. 'I believe it all the more necessary to find out the truth from two slave women, whom they call deaconesses, even by torture,' he wrote to the Roman Emperor Trajan.' I found nothing but depraved and immoderate superstition.' He assured Trajan that he had deployed the firm hand of Rome to halt the 'contagion.' The governor, Pliny the Younger, would go on to some renown. He would write additional letters that gave historians crucial insight into the Roman Empire. And he would provide a harrowing first-person account of the volcanic eruption that buried the city of Pompeii. But he would miss the seismic religious shift that literally stared him in the face. The obscure cult would become the dominant faith in Rome and the most widely practiced religion in the world. The cross, an instrument of torture used by the Roman government to publicly lynch political revolutionaries, would 'come to serve as the most globally recognized symbol of a god that there has ever been,' according to the scholar Tom Holland, in his book, 'Dominion: How the Christian Revolution remade the World.' This improbable rise of Christianity is what many of the world's estimated 2 billion Christians will celebrate today. The holiest day of the Christian calendar commemorates what Christians believe is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, symbolized by the empty tomb. But the miracle of Easter didn't end there. What happened across Rome in the years that followed was in some ways just as astonishing. Before Christianity became a religion, it was the Resistance — a poor people's campaign that began in a Roman backwater, took on one of the most ruthless and militaristic empires in world history, and won. How did the first Christians do it? And what can today's resistance movements facing tyrannical regimes learn from their success? This is not a typical Easter sermon topic. The Easter miracle, though, cannot be explained exclusively through a spiritual lens. It's also a story of power — about people who seemed to have none but rose up to defeat an empire. The first Christians faced challenges that would be familiar to anyone in authoritarian states or failing democracies today. They lived in a political system where a predatory elite amassed almost all the wealth. They faced a repressive regime that used fear to silence internal critics and enforce conformity. They faced the prospect of being arbitrarily arrested without due process and whisked off to prison or disappeared. The early Christians faced a government that had perfected a form of proactive brutality that made political change seem impossible, says Obery M. Hendricks, a social activist and author of 'The Politics of Jesus.' When the Romans heard that a group of demonstrators had assembled near Jesus' hometown of Nazareth to protest excessive taxation, they deployed their own version of shock and awe. 'Roman legions came in and killed folks, crucifying 3,000 of them,' Hendricks says. 'These people weren't doing anything violent. They were just protesting. But the Roman empire said, no, we don't play that. They killed folks if they thought they might be a threat.' And yet these first Christians still triumphed. The conventional Easter story says they beat the Romans because of their beliefs and courage. That is partially true. Christians preached a message of 'God is love,' which tapped into a spiritual need that Rome's pagan religions could not meet. But they also shrewdly employed two lesser-known tactics that offer lessons for resistance movements today — whether these movements identify with the left, the right or somewhere in between. The Romans' capacity for cruelty created an opening for dissident movements. They committed the mistake that tyrannical leaders often commit — they overreached. They were too callous to deliver tangible economic benefits to most of their citizens. The Christian movement stepped into this compassion gap and used it as a wedge to amass power. It's hard to imagine today how awful life was for most people in ancient Rome. If you watch Hollywood's sword-and-sandal movies of the 1950s and 1960s, Rome seemed filled with clean streets and well-scrubbed citizens. But life in places where Christianity took root was miserable, according to Rodney Stark, author of 'The Rise of Christianity,' one of the most influential books about the faith's early years. Most people in Roman cities lived in 'filth beyond our imagining,' Stark wrote. They shared smoky, dark spaces with limited water and means of sanitation. Human corpses — even infants — were abandoned in the streets. The smell of sweat, urine and feces permeated everything. 'The stench of these cities must have been overpowering for many miles — especially in warm weather — and even the richest Romans must have suffered,' writes Stark, who died in 2022. 'No wonder they were so fond of incense.' A tiny elite controlled virtually all the wealth and political power. Most people lived one financial emergency away from irreversible doom. In rural areas, it was not uncommon for people to die of starvation from famines or a bad harvest. There was no Medicaid in ancient Rome. The average life expectancy was about 35 years, due to high rates of infant mortality. Many of those that lived suffered chronic health conditions, including 'swollen eyes, skin rashes and lost limbs,' Stark recounts. The first Christians offered what was arguably Rome's first social safety net. When epidemics swept through the cities and many leaders and wealthy citizens fled to the countryside, they stayed behind to nurse the ill and the dying. In time, Christians would establish orphanages, hospitals and food-delivery systems. The Roman world was full of stories of pagan gods rising from the dead, but the compassion Christians displayed was new. 'There was nothing like a welfare state in Rome,' Andrew Crislip, a historian and an authority on early Christianity, tells CNN. 'Even doctors in time of plagues would get out of town. One of the principles of ancient medicine was if a patient appears to be hopeless, do not treat (them). Christians did not have such compunction. They were willing to treat the hopeless.' These early Christians also offered a different economic model. They collected money for the poor and eventually established poorhouses. And in the New Testament's Book of Acts, which recounts the rise of the church, they redistributed their wealth. 'All the believers were one in heart and mind,' says Acts 4:32. 'No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.' These Christians followed the adage, 'First bread, then religion.' Their willingness to meet the physical and economic needs of the people gave them credibility. Scot McKnight, a biblical scholar and host of the podcast 'Kingdom Roots,' says the first Christians formed 'a socio-economic community of justice,' inspired by Jesus. His first public sermon in the Gospel of Luke was about economic justice, or 'good news to the poor.' Jesus routinely criticized wealthy people who were indifferent to the poor. He stood in the tradition of Jewish prophets who condemned greed and evoked the concept of 'Jubilee,' a tradition from Leviticus 25 in which kings freed slaves and forgave debts to prevent perpetual cycles of poverty and promote social justice. McKnight sees echoes of the first church's message in a modern-day socialist: Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who has been drawing huge crowds across the US on his current 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour. Sanders has long condemned the gap between the haves and have-nots in America, and political analysts say his message resonates now because he's tapped into mounting anger over wealth disparities. 'Bernie's quest for justice is an inherently Biblical view,' says McKnight, author of 'The Jesus Creed.' 'The prophets of Israel — Jesus, the early church in Jerusalem, even (the apostle) Paul — all believed in economic justice.' Hollywood movies propagated another myth about early Christians: that relentless persecution by Rome fanned their growth. In this telling, the blood of Christian martyrs facing lions rather than renouncing their faith eventually transformed the Roman empire. There's no doubt that Roman persecution was a factor in the growth of the church. But historians say Rome's violent persecution of Christians was sporadic, and the number of martyrs has been exaggerated. There was another factor that helped Christianity spread. Its leaders disarmed one of the major weapons tyrants use to crush resistance movements. Repressive regimes don't just instill fear in people — they also breed indifference. People check out of civic involvement. They stop following the news or politics. They don't talk about their beliefs with family or friends because they're afraid of informers or because they don't believe it will make a difference. This is the atmosphere that Vladimir Putin has instilled in Russia through the manipulation of information via state-controlled media. People don't know what to believe, so they don't believe in anything. But support from friends and family can offer an antidote to fear and apathy — for early Christians, and for others throughout history. This is what James Zwerg, a civil rights activist, discovered when he was attacked by a White mob in 1961 at an Alabama bus station. The photograph of a bloodied Zwerg, standing next to the late John Lewis, the congressman and legendary activist, became a rallying cry for the civil rights movement. Zwerg says he couldn't have endured the beating without the friendships he developed with people like Lewis. 'Each of us was stronger because of those we were with,' Zwerg recounted in 'Children of the Movement,' my book about the children of prominent figures of the civil rights era. 'If I was beaten, I knew I wasn't alone. I could endure more because I knew everybody there was giving me their strength. Even as someone else was being beaten, I would give them strength.' It may be hard to believe today, but Christianity was once considered a form of social deviancy. Many Romans thought Christians were ridiculous or dangerous. A major reason why the faith ultimately triumphed in Rome is that many people were motivated by the same sentiments that ultimately power resistance movements everywhere: personal loyalty to friends and family. Many people didn't join the movement because of its doctrinal appeal alone. They joined because their family or friends reached out to them. Stark writes that for many early Christians, joining the faith was 'not about seeking or embracing a theology; it was about bringing one's religious behavior into alignment with that one one's friends and family members.' The first Christians also offered believers an array of personal relationships that were previously unseen in their world. Rome was a society divided by entrenched ethnic, racial and class divisions. But early Christians largely erased these hierarchies. Greeks, Jews, Romans — rich and poor — all worshipped together in homes and built close relationships with one another. They accepted women as leaders and — shockingly at the time — treated slaves as human beings of inherent worth. Slaves were so despised in the ancient world that 'Roman men no more hesitated to use slaves and prostitutes to relieve themselves of their sexual needs than they did to use the side of a road as a toilet,' Holland, the historian, writes in 'Dominion.' 'In Latin, the same word, meio, meant both ejaculate and urinate,' Holland writes. Unlike today, when some activists reject allies who don't fit all their ideological requirements, early Christians practiced coalition building. They appealed to as many people as they could. 'Christians spread because believed their religion was universal,' says Crislip, the historian who teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University. 'Most other religions did not want to proselytize. They didn't attempt to covert other people to their way of life. Christians from the beginning said this is a religion that is radically inclusive — a way of life for everyone.' After years of employing these strategies, the Christians' movement grew so popular and entrenched in Rome that political leaders discovered they couldn't get rid of it. It became a force for social stability, not dissent. A pivotal moment came when the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity and used the might of the Roman empire to give it institutional support. He became the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. Something was lost, though, when the Christian resistance triumphed. Scholars say the church won, in part, because its leaders eventually softened their message of resistance. Salvation became solely about the afterlife instead of deliverance from oppressive conditions on earth. Crislip says the church eventually promoted 'more quietism and compliance' in Rome. In time, the church itself became oppressive, giving us the Inquisition and leaders who sanctioned slavery. And yet for millions, the miracle of Easter continues to inspire. For many, it means that 'The Caesars among us don't get the final word,' Andrew Thayer, an episcopal priest, wrote in a recent essay. History didn't record the names of the two young women who were interrogated by Pliny the Younger. Most historians assume they were executed because they would not recant. But their courage lives on. We still talk about them today. They embodied one of the most overlooked elements of the Easter story: The Easter miracle isn't confined to an empty tomb. In some ways, the greatest miracle is what started the day after. John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of the award-winning memoir, 'More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.'
CNN
20-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Before Easter became a holy day, it was the beginning of the Resistance
In the year 112, a Roman governor in modern-day Turkey had his first encounter with members of a strange religious cult called 'Christiani.' The governor had heard reports the cult followed an obscure criminal who had been tortured and executed by the Romans. His followers, though, believed that their leader was still somehow alive. They met in each others' homes for communal meals where, rumor had it, they practiced cannibalism by drinking the blood of their leader and held orgies. The governor became even more puzzled when he summoned two leaders from the cult for interrogation. He wrote about the encounter. 'I believe it all the more necessary to find out the truth from two slave women, whom they call deaconesses, even by torture,' he wrote to the Roman Emperor Trajan.' I found nothing but depraved and immoderate superstition.' He assured Trajan that he had deployed the firm hand of Rome to halt the 'contagion.' The governor, Pliny the Younger, would go on to some renown. He would write additional letters that gave historians crucial insight into the Roman Empire. And he would provide a harrowing first-person account of the volcanic eruption that buried the city of Pompeii. But he would miss the seismic religious shift that literally stared him in the face. The obscure cult would become the dominant faith in Rome and the most widely practiced religion in the world. The cross, an instrument of torture used by the Roman government to publicly lynch political revolutionaries, would 'come to serve as the most globally recognized symbol of a god that there has ever been,' according to the scholar Tom Holland, in his book, 'Dominion: How the Christian Revolution remade the World.' This improbable rise of Christianity is what many of the world's estimated 2 billion Christians will celebrate today. The holiest day of the Christian calendar commemorates what Christians believe is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, symbolized by the empty tomb. But the miracle of Easter didn't end there. What happened across Rome in the years that followed was in some ways just as astonishing. Before Christianity became a religion, it was the Resistance — a poor people's campaign that began in a Roman backwater, took on one of the most ruthless and militaristic empires in world history, and won. How did the first Christians do it? And what can today's resistance movements facing tyrannical regimes learn from their success? This is not a typical Easter sermon topic. The Easter miracle, though, cannot be explained exclusively through a spiritual lens. It's also a story of power — about people who seemed to have none but rose up to defeat an empire. The first Christians faced challenges that would be familiar to anyone in authoritarian states or failing democracies today. They lived in a political system where a predatory elite amassed almost all the wealth. They faced a repressive regime that used fear to silence internal critics and enforce conformity. They faced the prospect of being arbitrarily arrested without due process and whisked off to prison or disappeared. The early Christians faced a government that had perfected a form of proactive brutality that made political change seem impossible, says Obery M. Hendricks, a social activist and author of 'The Politics of Jesus.' When the Romans heard that a group of demonstrators had assembled near Jesus' hometown of Nazareth to protest excessive taxation, they deployed their own version of shock and awe. 'Roman legions came in and killed folks, crucifying 3,000 of them,' Hendricks says. 'These people weren't doing anything violent. They were just protesting. But the Roman empire said, no, we don't play that. They killed folks if they thought they might be a threat.' And yet these first Christians still triumphed. The conventional Easter story says they beat the Romans because of their beliefs and courage. That is partially true. Christians preached a message of 'God is love,' which tapped into a spiritual need that Rome's pagan religions could not meet. But they also shrewdly employed two lesser-known tactics that offer lessons for resistance movements today — whether these movements identify with the left, the right or somewhere in between. The Romans' capacity for cruelty created an opening for dissident movements. They committed the mistake that tyrannical leaders often commit — they overreached. They were too callous to deliver tangible economic benefits to most of their citizens. The Christian movement stepped into this compassion gap and used it as a wedge to amass power. It's hard to imagine today how awful life was for most people in ancient Rome. If you watch Hollywood's sword-and-sandal movies of the 1950s and 1960s, Rome seemed filled with clean streets and well-scrubbed citizens. But life in places where Christianity took root was miserable, according to Rodney Stark, author of 'The Rise of Christianity,' one of the most influential books about the faith's early years. Most people in Roman cities lived in 'filth beyond our imagining,' Stark wrote. They shared smoky, dark spaces with limited water and means of sanitation. Human corpses — even infants — were abandoned in the streets. The smell of sweat, urine and feces permeated everything. 'The stench of these cities must have been overpowering for many miles — especially in warm weather — and even the richest Romans must have suffered,' writes Stark, who died in 2022. 'No wonder they were so fond of incense.' A tiny elite controlled virtually all the wealth and political power. Most people lived one financial emergency away from irreversible doom. In rural areas, it was not uncommon for people to die of starvation from famines or a bad harvest. There was no Medicaid in ancient Rome. The average life expectancy was about 35 years, due to high rates of infant mortality. Many of those that lived suffered chronic health conditions, including 'swollen eyes, skin rashes and lost limbs,' Stark recounts. The first Christians offered what was arguably Rome's first social safety net. When epidemics swept through the cities and many leaders and wealthy citizens fled to the countryside, they stayed behind to nurse the ill and the dying. In time, Christians would establish orphanages, hospitals and food-delivery systems. The Roman world was full of stories of pagan gods rising from the dead, but the compassion Christians displayed was new. 'There was nothing like a welfare state in Rome,' Andrew Crislip, a historian and an authority on early Christianity, tells CNN. 'Even doctors in time of plagues would get out of town. One of the principles of ancient medicine was if a patient appears to be hopeless, do not treat (them). Christians did not have such compunction. They were willing to treat the hopeless.' These early Christians also offered a different economic model. They collected money for the poor and eventually established poorhouses. And in the New Testament's Book of Acts, which recounts the rise of the church, they redistributed their wealth. 'All the believers were one in heart and mind,' says Acts 4:32. 'No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.' These Christians followed the adage, 'First bread, then religion.' Their willingness to meet the physical and economic needs of the people gave them credibility. Scot McKnight, a biblical scholar and host of the podcast 'Kingdom Roots,' says the first Christians formed 'a socio-economic community of justice,' inspired by Jesus. His first public sermon in the Gospel of Luke was about economic justice, or 'good news to the poor.' Jesus routinely criticized wealthy people who were indifferent to the poor. He stood in the tradition of Jewish prophets who condemned greed and evoked the concept of 'Jubilee,' a tradition from Leviticus 25 in which kings freed slaves and forgave debts to prevent perpetual cycles of poverty and promote social justice. McKnight sees echoes of the first church's message in a modern-day socialist: Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who has been drawing huge crowds across the US on his current 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour. Sanders has long condemned the gap between the haves and have-nots in America, and political analysts say his message resonates now because he's tapped into mounting anger over wealth disparities. 'Bernie's quest for justice is an inherently Biblical view,' says McKnight, author of 'The Jesus Creed.' 'The prophets of Israel — Jesus, the early church in Jerusalem, even (the apostle) Paul — all believed in economic justice.' Hollywood movies propagated another myth about early Christians: that relentless persecution by Rome fanned their growth. In this telling, the blood of Christian martyrs facing lions rather than renouncing their faith eventually transformed the Roman empire. There's no doubt that Roman persecution was a factor in the growth of the church. But historians say Rome's violent persecution of Christians was sporadic, and the number of martyrs has been exaggerated. There was another factor that helped Christianity spread. Its leaders disarmed one of the major weapons tyrants use to crush resistance movements. Repressive regimes don't just instill fear in people — they also breed indifference. People check out of civic involvement. They stop following the news or politics. They don't talk about their beliefs with family or friends because they're afraid of informers or because they don't believe it will make a difference. This is the atmosphere that Vladimir Putin has instilled in Russia through the manipulation of information via state-controlled media. People don't know what to believe, so they don't believe in anything. But support from friends and family can offer an antidote to fear and apathy — for early Christians, and for others throughout history. This is what James Zwerg, a civil rights activist, discovered when he was attacked by a White mob in 1961 at an Alabama bus station. The photograph of a bloodied Zwerg, standing next to the late John Lewis, the congressman and legendary activist, became a rallying cry for the civil rights movement. Zwerg says he couldn't have endured the beating without the friendships he developed with people like Lewis. 'Each of us was stronger because of those we were with,' Zwerg recounted in 'Children of the Movement,' my book about the children of prominent figures of the civil rights era. 'If I was beaten, I knew I wasn't alone. I could endure more because I knew everybody there was giving me their strength. Even as someone else was being beaten, I would give them strength.' It may be hard to believe today, but Christianity was once considered a form of social deviancy. Many Romans thought Christians were ridiculous or dangerous. A major reason why the faith ultimately triumphed in Rome is that many people were motivated by the same sentiments that ultimately power resistance movements everywhere: personal loyalty to friends and family. Many people didn't join the movement because of its doctrinal appeal alone. They joined because their family or friends reached out to them. Stark writes that for many early Christians, joining the faith was 'not about seeking or embracing a theology; it was about bringing one's religious behavior into alignment with that one one's friends and family members.' The first Christians also offered believers an array of personal relationships that were previously unseen in their world. Rome was a society divided by entrenched ethnic, racial and class divisions. But early Christians largely erased these hierarchies. Greeks, Jews, Romans — rich and poor — all worshipped together in homes and built close relationships with one another. They accepted women as leaders and — shockingly at the time — treated slaves as human beings of inherent worth. Slaves were so despised in the ancient world that 'Roman men no more hesitated to use slaves and prostitutes to relieve themselves of their sexual needs than they did to use the side of a road as a toilet,' Holland, the historian, writes in 'Dominion.' 'In Latin, the same word, meio, meant both ejaculate and urinate,' Holland writes. Unlike today, when some activists reject allies who don't fit all their ideological requirements, early Christians practiced coalition building. They appealed to as many people as they could. 'Christians spread because believed their religion was universal,' says Crislip, the historian who teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University. 'Most other religions did not want to proselytize. They didn't attempt to covert other people to their way of life. Christians from the beginning said this is a religion that is radically inclusive — a way of life for everyone.' After years of employing these strategies, the Christians' movement grew so popular and entrenched in Rome that political leaders discovered they couldn't get rid of it. It became a force for social stability, not dissent. A pivotal moment came when the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity and used the might of the Roman empire to give it institutional support. He became the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. Something was lost, though, when the Christian resistance triumphed. Scholars say the church won, in part, because its leaders eventually softened their message of resistance. Salvation became solely about the afterlife instead of deliverance from oppressive conditions on earth. Crislip says the church eventually promoted 'more quietism and compliance' in Rome. In time, the church itself became oppressive, giving us the Inquisition and leaders who sanctioned slavery. And yet for millions, the miracle of Easter continues to inspire. For many, it means that 'The Caesars among us don't get the final word,' Andrew Thayer, an episcopal priest, wrote in a recent essay. History didn't record the names of the two young women who were interrogated by Pliny the Younger. Most historians assume they were executed because they would not recant. But their courage lives on. We still talk about them today. They embodied one of the most overlooked elements of the Easter story: The Easter miracle isn't confined to an empty tomb. In some ways, the greatest miracle is what started the day after. John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of the award-winning memoir, 'More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.'
