By the time Jesus was born, Augustus had
already been monarch for a quarter of a century. King of kings, he ruled from
Gibraltar to Jerusalem and from Britain to the Black Sea. He had done what no
one had done for two hundred years before him: he had brought peace to the
wider, Roman world—peace at a price. A price paid in cash by subjects in
far-off lands.
Augustus "gave peace, as long as it
was consistent with the interests of the Empire and the myth of his own
glory," wrote Arnaldo Momigliano. There you have it in a nutshell: the
whole ambiguous structure of human empire, a kingdom of absolute power,
bringing glory to the man at the top, and peace to those on whom his favor
rested.
Yes, says Luke, and watch what happens
now. This man, this king, this absolute monarch, lifts his little finger in
Rome, and fifteen hundred miles away, in an obscure province, a young couple
undertakes a hazardous journey, resulting in the birth of a child in a little
town that just happens to be the one mentioned in the ancient Hebrew prophecy
about the coming of the Messiah. And it is at this birth that the angels sing
of glory and peace. Which is the reality, and which the parody?
