Excursus: Patrons, Clients, and Reciprocity
Excursus: Patrons, Clients, and Reciprocity
By offering Paul and his company hospitality and apparently by allowing her home to be the initial meeting place for a religious association (Acts 16:40) after the more informal gatherings by the river (16:13–16), Lydia fills the role of patroness (a role familiar also from one of Paul’s letters from near this region, Rom 16:1–2). She is not a patron in the technical Roman political sense of seeking clientele to follow her during her business day to augment her honor, but she functions as the new group’s benefactor (a patron, in the common English sense of the term). Because Philippi was a Roman colony, it is helpful to explore briefly the function of patrons in Roman society, especially in their more general role as benefactors. This excursus also informs other mentions of patronage in this commentary (esp. at Acts 19:31).
Public benefactors tended to sponsor glamorous public works yet provide low wages for workers.[1079] This is related to, but different in some respects from, patronage[1080] in its more technical sense.[1081] Romans generally preferred the close connections provided by patron-client relationships, although the Greek model of benefaction began to replace this model in the second century.[1082]
Patronage, which grew from Roman political alliances in the republic,[1083] is often said to have become one of the dominant forms of social exchange in the empire.[1084] During the empire, the emperor absorbed the broader political dimension of patronage, calling his freedmen, soldiers, and the plebs his clients and treating the ruling class likewise without the title;[1085] his patronage is reflected in his responsibility for the grain dole and occasional grants of money.[1086] Meanwhile other elite people still had clients[1087] who would be seen in public with the patron.[1088] They no longer needed political support from the masses, but they augmented their honor by the early-morning crowds at their door, the clients following them during their daily business and applauding for their speeches.[1089]
Clients in the narrowest sense would follow the patron around during his daily business as paid retainers whose numbers and company augmented the patron’s honor.[1090] The patron-client model was especially a Roman model; the Greek East emphasized reciprocity more.[1091] But patronage language does appear in Roman colonies such as Corinth and Philippi;[1092] though Lydia is probably not a citizen, she would be familiar with the local model.
Moreover, the Roman model of patronage influenced how Romans practiced benefactions even as benefactors of towns in the countryside.[1093] We focus here, however, on the more general nature of the relationship between benefactors and beneficiaries, which Roman patron-client literature well illustrates.[1094] Despite distinctions, the benefaction and patronage models overlapped.[1095] We also read of patrons or benefactors of temples or religious associations.[1096] Such sponsorship often helped groups and their members to eventually move into the social mainstream.[1097] Many Diaspora synagogues depended on such patrons.[1098]
2. Reciprocity in and beyond Patronage
A patron might well feel obligated[1099] by a client’s requests or affection.[1100] More obviously, a client or other beneficiary would be obligated by loyalty to the benefactor.[1101] Whoever takes the initiative puts the other in his debt, so that even a potential benefactor might need to show gratitude to one who sought out his “friendship.”[1102] Thus a patron who received too much praise from beneficiaries might show gratitude by bestowing yet more benefactions to avoid being outdone.[1103] An Eastern benefactor might insist that the city had already provided sufficient honors[1104] and that he was “indebted” until he could repay them with enough “thanks” (χάριτας).[1105]
The emphasis on reciprocity existed in the East before the East knew the Roman model of patronage,[1106] continued alongside it,[1107] and as a principle was applicable to all relationships in some form,[1108] including among peers.[1109] Repaying favors was necessary[1110] and constituted an investment in the future, since the beneficiary could receive more when needed (Sir 3:31). Too large a gift might create problems, however, since the receiver could not adequately reciprocate[1111] and this reduced the receiver’s honor.[1112] Failing to receive or to reciprocate gifts would turn friendship into enmity.[1113]
Reciprocity revealed gratitude, and gratitude was an essential part of the beneficiary’s obligation.[1114] Recommendations often promise the recommended person’s gratitude;[1115] that the recommendee is a grateful person could be an incentive to invest one’s resources in the recommendee.[1116] Ingratitude was a terrible offense meriting punishment.[1117] Worse than murderers, adulterers, and traitors are the ungrateful, Seneca declares, for ingratitude is the evil from which others spring![1118] Laws even allowed the reversal of major benefactions because of ingratitude.[1119]
Patrons counted on reciprocity toward their benefaction in terms of public honor, especially when it could be reciprocated in no other way.[1120] The recipient ought to honor the patron or benefactor as widely as possible,[1121] and the normal response to benefaction was honor or praise.[1122] Greek aristocrats competed for honor by public benefactions; Roman patrons sought honor by benefiting clients, to whom they were obligated.[1123]
Ideally, the beneficiary should always remember the benefactor’s kindness, but the benefactor should forget it and fail to mention it.[1124] Benefactors should give without thought of remuneration, even to the ungrateful; beneficiaries should consider themselves indebted and not expect further favors if they prove ungrateful.[1125] Still, those who showed gratitude showed themselves worthy of more benefactions.[1126]
Although beneficiaries might wish to conserve more of their own honor by not admitting their need for benefactions, the appropriate behavior was to advertise the benefactions, thereby bringing honor to their benefactors.[1127] Entering the relationship with its obligations was voluntary, but violating the conventional protocol of the relationship left one open to public censure.[1128]
The ethic of reciprocity entailed mutual obligations in patronage and other expressions of generosity. Although obligations were mutual, they ultimately included a larger network of “friendships.”[1129] Thus, when a governor is “obligated” to a physician for helping him, he appeals to the emperor to give him a reward that the governor cannot offer;[1130] a letter of recommendation obligated both the writer and the recommended beneficiary to the proposed benefactor.[1131] It also obligated the recommended to the recommender, whose letter was itself a benefaction.[1132] By helping the recommended person, a recommender notes, “[You will show] that I love him and you love me.”[1133] Or the recommender suggests that the benefactor help the proposed beneficiary because “I love him” and “he loves me”[1134] or because “he loves me” just as “I love you.”[1135]
The point in such instances was not that such debts be avoided, like monetary debts today; rather, all parties in the letters seem eager to enter into such debts (or at least to portray themselves as eager).[1136] Such eagerly expanding networks of generosity created political bonds but were also helpful in rendering the larger society more cohesive,[1137] except insofar as these friendship networks also entailed corresponding group enmities.[1138] By receiving a favor from another honorable person, one displayed one’s friendship and hence participated in that honor; thus Pliny’s many and tedious requests to the emperor are for Pliny’s honor and posterity as well as for the benefits themselves.[1139]
The ideal patron-client or benefactor-beneficiary relationship required both “grace” and “faith” or “loyalty.” “Grace” (χάρις) included the giver’s generosity or benefactions.[1140] The same term applied to thanks or gratitude, what the beneficiary reciprocates toward the benefactor.[1141] “Faithfulness” or “loyalty” (πίστις) was an essential virtue in this as in other relationships.[1142] A king (the most powerful and hence most productive sort of benefactor)[1143] depended on the “loyalty” (πίστις and its verb cognate)[1144] and “loving” (ἀγαπάω)[1145] of the friends who surrounded him, which he would best secure by choosing them wisely and by strengthening them.[1146] One could likewise praise a patron for his πίστις—that is, his trustworthiness, dependability.[1147]
The desire for honor could get out of control; an institution that once had more benevolent intent had often degenerated into fawning by the mid-first century.[1148] In contrast to the Greek emphasis on equality, Roman patronage was openly asymmetrical, a greater helping a lesser.[1149] Given the benevolent patriarchy model,[1150] that some clients complained about having to grovel[1151] is hardly surprising.
Thus Lucian, who himself paid morning respects to his own patron,[1152] lampooned patrons who kept their clients waiting outside until finally emerging in glorious raiment; such a patron “thought that he was conferring happiness and bliss upon those who greeted him if he proffered his right hand or his breast, to be covered with kisses.”[1153] Lucian mocked parasites who flattered patrons for favor,[1154] but he was merely continuing a stock character in comedy.[1155] A generation or two earlier, in the late first century, Martial complained that he had problems with his patron doing nothing for him[1156] and jibed that one Gaius had given him advice instead of a loan.[1157] Juvenal also indicates problematic patron-client relations;[1158] a client neglected for months becomes ecstatic when offered the lowest-ranking place on the lowest-ranking couch.[1159]
One form of reciprocity concerns hospitality.[1160] In terms of the larger Philippian society, Lydia was Paul’s benefactor, and she was something of a patron (though she needed no honor or political support, in contrast to the Asiarchs in Acts 19:31). Yet her activity differs from typical expectations for aristocratic patrons (probably in part because she was not an aristocrat).[1161] Association with Paul brings her (like the Asiarchs) the risk of public dishonor, the antithesis of the normal Greek and Roman purpose for benefaction. That she perseveres in her commitment to discipleship (16:40) demonstrates the sincerity of her conversion.[1162]
Hospitality is critical in many traditional societies,[1163] though it is perceived as more difficult, and often unsafe, in most modern urban contexts. It appears as a central virtue in traditional Mediterranean culture,[1164] no less than the pervasive emphasis on honor and shame;[1165] this is also true of the Middle Eastern culture in which most biblical stories before Acts take place.[1166]
Hospitality was both a sacred duty and a privilege for the host, especially if the guest was a particularly honorable person.[1167] It is no surprise, then, that Luke uses such a strong term (παρεκάλεσεν, “exhorted,” “pleaded,” 16:15) for Lydia’s desire for the missionaries to board with her, given her esteem for them as God’s messengers.[1168] When she entreats them to stay (cf. 18:3) if they have judged her “faithful to the Lord” (i.e., genuine in her faith in Jesus), she cannot mean that all true believers should share the privilege of having the evangelists stay with them. She is offering an argument with an implied plea for a special privilege; her home will be the base from which the true God’s agents will evangelize Philippi (Luke 9:4; 10:5–7). Perhaps her insistence that they stay with her is partly for their protection, in view of the situation for Jews in Philippi (cf. Acts 16:20) that she already well knows (cf. Judg 19:20).[1169] Another God-fearer’s insistence regarding hospitality was earlier accepted at the risk of scandal (Acts 10:48);[1170] this time, however, God’s agents are far from any Pharisees (Luke 15:2) or any dominant-culture church (Acts 11:3) that would criticize them on religious grounds. Insisting on a guest staying at least one night to rest was good form (Hom. Od. 3.345–58; Luke 24:29); in extreme cases, the guest might have to protest several times to be able to leave (Judg 19:4–9; Tob 10:6–10).
One undesirable alternative to accepting hospitality in Mediterranean antiquity was the need to stay in an inn.[1171] Although some inns were nicer than others,[1172] high-status people avoided them when possible (though on long journeys this might not prove possible); hospitality in the town houses or villas of wealthy peers was always preferable.[1173]
Full-scale facilities called mansiones were stationed at about a day’s journey apart, with smaller bed-and-food mutationes (where government couriers changed horses) roughly every ten miles; government agents had first priority, but others could stay there.[1174] If a traveler could not afford or reach these, he or she might have to stay “at a boarding house or wayside inn (hospitium, deuersorium, caupona, stabulum)”; archaeology confirms the frequent literary portrait of “dilapidated and unclean facilities, virtually non-existent furnishings, bed-bugs, poor quality food and drink, untrustworthy proprietors and staff.”[1175] Inns and boardinghouses often provided no more than a bed and candle.[1176] Towns provided a wider range of lodging, “from luxurious villas converted for use as comfortable hotels to very cheap dives, the walls covered with graffiti and the beds infested with bugs.”[1177] In a later novel we read of some philosophers staying at an inn near Rome’s city gate (Philost. Vit. Apoll. 4.39).
Inns were necessary way stations for travelers,[1178] but they had a poor reputation[1179] and were a choice of last resort.[1180] Partly because the culture as a whole stressed free hospitality, people resented the exorbitant prices innkeepers charged guests when they could get away with such prices.[1181] Innkeeping was considered a disgraceful trade, and the provision of prostitutes at inns led to innkeepers being “classed with lenones (pimps).”[1182] Many people considered them dangerous;[1183] sometimes they were even suspected of murdering guests.[1184] But it appears that some valued honesty, as in one inscription from near Philippi.[1185]
Inns could function as taverns on the ground floor,[1186] and one could procure better wine there than in the countryside.[1187] Because lower classes often lacked culinary facilities in their upper-story apartments, such taverns, or popinae, became noisy hubs of lower-class social life. Most residents of cities lacked means to cook their own food; taverns were where they could acquire hot food as well as loud entertainment. Remains from the Italian city of Pompeii illustrate their popularity: the town of twenty thousand had nearly “140 inns and bars, or about one per 145 of the population.”[1188] A traveler who wished entertainment and a full meal rather than a snack bar would go to a popina, which functioned as a nightclub, gambling den, and brothel; the institutions had a poor moral reputation.[1189]
More notoriously, inns usually doubled as brothels, with sexual partners available especially in the rooms.[1190] A sample of a low-class brothel-inn includes “tiny cubicles, erotic paintings, and boastful graffiti.”[1191] Maidens to kiss were available at inns (e.g., Virg. Copa 33), and inns often advertised their sexual services on signs.[1192] Probably many of the prostitutes who stocked these institutions were throwaway babies raised as slaves;[1193] inns used both slaves and freedwomen for this task.[1194] Classical Athenians referred to the running of inns and brothels as a disreputable trade (Theoph. Char. 6.5) and despised (μισεῖτε, “hate,” Aeschines Tim. 188) brothel keepers. The same disdain for brothel keepers appears in the first century (Dio Chrys. Or. 7.133) and later (Hermog. Inv. 1.2.103).
The Qumran scrolls associate the evil woman (perhaps personifying folly) with inns (4Q184 1 6). Josephus ranked innkeepers with prostitutes and female slaves (Ant. 3.276); he views Rahab, whom Scripture called πόρνη (Josh 2:1; 6:17, 23, 25), as an innkeeper (Jos. Ant. 5.8). Later Jewish tradition claimed that Balaam had Balaak prepare inns and stock them with prostitutes and discounted food (Tg. Ps.-J. on Num 24:14). The later church allowed priests to eat at such roadside institutions only when travel left them no alternative.[1195] In contrast to the hospitality of individuals, the purchased lodging of inns invited no reciprocal obligations.[1196]
2. Greeks and Hospitality[1197]
Greeks regarded Zeus as special protector of strangers or guests[1198] and as patron deity of hospitality.[1199] Hospitality invited the favor of the gods (Pindar Ol. 4.12–15, probably referring especially to Zeus), and injustice to strangers invited Zeus’s anger (Mus. Ruf. 15, p. 96.28–31).[1200] Showing hospitality was one expression of fearing the gods (Hom. Od. 9.176); one who does not fear the gods might doubt an obligation to show hospitality (9.273–78), but face Zeus’s vengeance (9.478–79). Rome’s annual festival called the lectisternium emphasized hospitality, inviting people to open their homes and provide food to the many passersby.[1201]
Showing hospitality to visitors was a moral obligation,[1202] and the virtuous displayed it immediately, not keeping a stranger waiting long at the door.[1203] One must provide good food and drink for even unexpected guests (Hom. Il. 9.199–220; Luke 11:6); poor hospitality could be satirized (Apul. Metam. 1.26; Lucian Lucius 1–2). Ideal hospitality might treat the guest as oneself (Pliny Ep. 1.4.2–3; 6.28.3). Even Roman and Greek architecture reinforced the point; patrons’ homes were designed to be open to the clients, and all large homes had space to welcome guests.[1204] Well-to-do travelers could depend on the estates of members of their own class whom they knew or who were known to their friends; their hosts could count on the favor being returned when they were traveling.[1205] Hospitality included lodging, food, and often being helped on one’s way,[1206] and three days was a normal stay, with up to a week being acceptable.[1207]
3. Hospitality Connections and Obligations
People were obligated to cherish hospitality ties.[1208] Some believed that such ties should persist even beyond death (Eurip. Temenidae frg. 736). So securely did hospitality establish covenant ties that two legendary warriors refused to fight each other because one’s ancestors had entertained the other’s as guests (Hom. Il. 6.212–31, esp. 224).[1209] Cicero wrote letters of recommendation for his guests, one who had stayed with him for a year (Fam. 13.19.1)[1210] and another who had proved a man of gratitude (13.25.1). Likewise, Pliny the Younger had to respond to the Baeticans’ pleas because of hospitality ties (Ep. 3.4.5). One owes friendship and kindness to a host (Cic. Verr. 2.2.47.117); for a guest to act unkindly was deceptive treachery (Catull. Carm. 64.176). Hospitality with possessions creates an obligation of friendship to look out for one another’s interests (Lysias Or. 18.10, §150). One who had once been in another’s house could plead for the other’s help on the basis of the relationship that this signified (12.14, §121). Betrayal of hospitality ties violated a sacred trust; all but the most wicked would shrink from injuring those who had been guests at their table,[1211] and betraying a host was deemed equally reprehensible.[1212] Those who eat together at a table should not betray friendship even by so much as slandering one another.[1213]
Outsiders evaluated, praised, or criticized lands and cities by how hospitable they were to strangers.[1214] Philippi proved inhospitable to Paul as Gibeah or Sodom did to others (Gen 19:4–9; Judg 19:22–30), with a foreigner like Lydia filling the role of Lot or of the Ephraimite worker (Gen 19:2–3; Judg 19:16–20). Both Lydia and her guests would understand the permanent mutual commitment they incurred by accepting her hospitality.
Because Lydia was a God-fearer, Jewish hospitality conventions are particularly relevant, though they do little to change the general picture above. Hospitality was no less central among Jews than in other Mediterranean practice.[1215] Jewish travelers would find it especially helpful in towns with Jewish inhabitants; it was extended particularly to members of one’s own group—for example, distant relatives (Tob 5:10–15) or those who spoke the local language (Xen. Eph. Anthia 3.1). It is even said that Essenes did not need to take provisions when they traveled because they could count on hospitality from fellow Essenes wherever they went.[1216] A visitor to a town “knew, or could easily learn, where to find immigrants and temporary residents from his own country or ethnos” or those who shared one’s trade; “these were the two most important factors in the formation and identification of neighborhoods.”[1217] Some synagogues apparently had guest rooms to lodge travelers.[1218]
Hospitality to strangers was among the basic acts of charity that Judaism expected (the others included visiting the sick and comforting the bereaved).[1219] The more lavish the hospitality, the better (Gen 18:4–8; Tob 7:8–9),[1220] but one should offer whatever one had, no matter how humble.[1221] The greatest example of hospitality in ancient Judaism was Abraham, and many traditions developed the portrait in Gen 18:2–8.[1222] Travelers carried letters of recommendation from known individuals so that they could be deemed trustworthy by hosts who did not know them personally (see comment on Acts 9:2).
One important form of Jewish hospitality was that toward traveling sages,[1223] a practice relevant for understanding both the Gospels and some of Paul’s lodging in Acts. The rabbis believed that people were morally obligated to serve the sages, including providing food (ʾAbot R. Nat. 27, §56 B). Because much of the responsibility for hospitality, especially food preparation, fell on the mistress of a home, later rabbis accepted hospitality only if the wife was trustworthy regarding tithing (t. Demai 3:9).[1224] Jesus often depended on hospitality (e.g., Luke 4:38; 5:29; 10:38; 19:5; 22:10–11), and he instructed his agents to do so (9:4; 10:7–8); denied a lodging (κατάλυμα) in 2:7, he receives one in 22:11.
Asking a person from whom one was learning to come and stay or receive hospitality appears elsewhere in Luke-Acts (e.g., Luke 7:36; 11:37; 14:1; 24:28–29), and so it is not surprising for the reader here.[1225] Early Christians also expected hospitality on their travels and emphasized this virtue repeatedly in their writings (Rom 12:13; 1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:8; Heb 13:2; 1 Pet 4:9; 3 John 5–8; Did. 11.1–3; 12.1–2).[1226] Both in his letters (Rom 15:23–24; 16:23; 1 Cor 16:6; Phlm 22) and elsewhere in Acts (Acts 9:11; 21:4, 7–8, 16; 28:14) Paul depended on hospitality.[1227]
Most people wanted an honored person to visit their homes[1228] and felt honored to lodge or entertain such a guest;[1229] they considered it an honor to entertain a noble friend as a guest, and a sorrow if the friend had to be housed elsewhere instead.[1230] Refusing to stay in someone’s house when in the city could be construed as rude;[1231] whenever visiting Ephesus, Cicero stayed with Curtius Mithres, “as much at home in his house as in my own” (Fam. 13.69.1). Thus, for Paul to refuse Lydia’s insistence (Acts 16:15) would be “a serious breach of etiquette.”[1232] On the size of homes and their use for religious meetings, see comment on Acts 12:12–13.
Another reason also compelled Paul to accept hospitality here. Jesus instructed his agents to stay wherever they were offered hospitality (Luke 9:4; 10:5–8); like Jesus himself, they had no other place to lay their heads (9:57–58).[1233] This home would be their home base for spreading their message elsewhere in the community (10:5–7). Those who received them, knowing their mission, embraced their message (10:5–7), since one limit on hospitality was to reject those considered deceivers or untrustworthy (Sir 11:29, 34). One Tanna warned that it was praiseworthy to extend hospitality to sages and their disciples but not to Gentiles or the sinful (Sipre Deut. 1.10.1); Greeks also did not require hospitality for the impious (Aeschylus Suppl. 927). One should not show hospitality to false teachers (2 John 10–11).