Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley
Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley:
Soundings from Laodicea and Colossae Michael Trainor The Mediterranean world of the first century was Roman. Imperial Rome imposed its presence throughout this world, especially through its armies and local administrators—notwithstanding indigenous regional and local cultures that perdured and moderated Rome's influence. Rome's market economy, an essential characteristic of Roman influence, pervaded the world, shaping values and determining relationships. Its economic reach also spread into Asia Minor, though geographically distant and distinct from Italy. Its market economy affected those living in western Anatolia's
Lycus Valley in the mid-to-late first century CE. Its economy impacted Philemon, a paterfamilias of a Jesus household, and other Jesus followers in Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis, the three principal networked cities of the valley.
My aim in what follows is to offer some insights into these writings through the lens of Rome's pervasive market economy, appropriating perspectives from Peter Temin's recent monograph on the issue.1 Economics is a useful methodological approach, though not the only one, for providing insights into the ancient world.2 It was embedded within 1. Peter Temin's The Roman Market Economy (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2012) and Ulrich Huttner's Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, trans. David
Green, AJEC 85, Early Christianity in Asia Minor 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2013) are valuable sources for understanding the economic interactions that occurred among the Jesus followers in the Lycus Valley with significant theological consequences, as we shall see.
2. Temin, Roman Market Economy, 2. For New Testament scholarship on the issue, see Thomas R. Blanton IV and Raymond Pickett, eds., Paul and Economics:
A Handbook (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017). For scholarship on the ancient Roman economy, reflecting a variety of methodologies, see A. H. M. Jones, The Roman
Michael Trainor everything that constituted Roman society. I will suggest that a picture of the socioeconomic realities of Jesus followers living in the Lycus Valley in the early empire period can be gleaned from the writings addressed to them. This picture was one of relative wealth and social stability shaped by a market economy, that is, an economy "where many resources are allocated by prices that are free to move in response to changes in underlying conditions."3 An identification of these resources and the conditions in Economy: Studies in Ancient Economic and Administrative History, ed. P. A. Brunt
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1974); Richard Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire:
Quantitative Studies, 2nd rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982);
Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Willem Jongman, The Economy and Society of Pompeii
(Amsterdam: Gieben, 1988); Jongman, "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Economy:
Population, Rents and Entitlement," in Ancient Economies, Modern Methodologies:
Archaeology, Comparative History, Models and Institutions, ed. Peter F. Bang, Mamoru
Ikeguchi, and Harmut G. Ziche (Bari: Edipuglia, 2006), 237–54; Jongman, "Gibbon Was Right: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Economy," in Crises and the Roman
Empire: Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Nijmegen, June 20–24, 2006), ed. Olivier Hekster, Gerda de Kleijn, and Danielle Slootjes (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 183–99; Roger S. Bagnall and Bruce W. Frier, The Demography of Roman Egypt, Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Walter Scheidel,
Ian Morris, and Richard Saller, The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman
World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Dennis P. Kehoe, Law and the Rural Economy in the Roman Empire (Michigan: University of Michigan Press,
2007); P. F. Bang, The Roman Bazaar: A Comparative Study of Trade and Markets in a Tributary Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Walter Scheidel and Steven J. Friesen, "The Size of the Economy and the Distribution of Income in the Roman Empire," JRS 99 (2009): 61–91; Keith Hopkins, "The Political Economy in the Roman Empire," in The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium, ed. Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009),
178–204; Koenraad Verboven, "City and Reciprocity: The Rome of Cultural Beliefs in the Roman Economy," Annales 67.4 (2012): 597–627. See, too, The Oxford Roman
Economy Project, publishing the series Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy, currently listing fourteen publications, with further volumes projected. See http://oxrep. classics.ox.ac.uk/oxford_studies_on_the_roman_economy/.
3. Temin, Roman Market Economy, 6. Temin's analysis of the Roman market economy is in reaction to the analysis of Moses I. Finley (The Ancient Economy [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999], 22), who argues that "ancient society did not have an economic system which was an enormous conglomeration of interdependent markets." Temin's work, however, is not without limitations. See the insightful critique of the monograph offered by Paul Erdkamp, "How Modern Was the Market Economy
Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley
which they exist will assist us in interpreting the domestic relationships found in Philemon and Colossians. It will further help spotlight the real issue that lies behind the concern of the seer John in his prophetic letter to the Jesus domus of Laodiceans (Rev 3:14–21) in the book of Revelation.4
The Roman Market Economy Economics today affects what we do and how we do it. It is embedded in everything. The accumulation of wealth provides security, comfort, and the possibility of a defined future. What concerns and affects us today has its parallel with the peoples of ancient Rome and its provinces. While some have judged Rome's economic structure as a "conglomeration of interdependent markets," the Roman world was a huge market localized in provinces and towns.5 This economic strategy determined a trade system of supply and demand that provided an economy knit together, resilient, and secure. The local context in which the Roman market and its economics operated was also influential and adjusted the dominance of the imperial system. We shall see this below, when we look at the Phrygian context and its industries.
The early Roman Empire, the time in which the three New Testament Lycus Valley writings appear, was a period of economic security and growth, perhaps in a way that was unique before the industrial revolution.
It was, overall, a period of wealth with ordinary people living within interactive networks designed to assist the exchange and transfer of goods and services.6 At the same time, a social pattern of wealth and poverty existed of the Roman World?" Œconomia 4.2 (2014): http://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/399.
4. I take for granted that Paul wrote the Letter to Philemon sometime in the mid50s CE and that one evangelized by Paul (possibly Epaphras) wrote the Letter to the Colossians within at least one or two generations after Paul died—or certainly while
Paul's historical ministry was within living memory. I date Revelation after Colossians.
I am convinced that all three writings emerge from the Lycus Valley, contra Vicky Balabanski, "Where Is Philemon? The Case for a Logical Fallacy in the Correlation of the Data in Philemon and Colossians 1:1–2; 4:7–8," JSNT 38 (2015): 131–50, who argues for Italy, possibly Rome, as the provenance for Philemon. See also Michael Trainor,
Epaphras: Paul's Educator at Colossae (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), 2–5.
5. Finley, Ancient Economy, 22–23.
6. Temin, Roman Market economy, 4. Temin (6–7) further expands Polyani's original analysis of ancient economic exchange ("reciprocity," "redistribution," and
Michael Trainor in cities throughout the empire. This pattern decided people's socioeconomic status located within a hierarchy in which most people (about 90 percent) lived at or near subsistence,7 while 3 percent could be classified as the super elite, and 7 percent were artisans, skilled merchants, and small property owners. These owners maintained their status in the sociopolitical hierarchy through rents and slave ownership who could manage and skillfully run workshops that addressed different urban demands. Rome's artisans, merchants, and landlords were insulated from the factors that would have compromised their subsistence, unlike the majority caught up in and victimized by the Roman economic system.8
In other words, the economic situation of people in the empire was not a simple division between two groups, the haves and have nots, or the rich and the poor. It was multifaceted. Urban inhabitants and rural workers belonging to Jesus households in Rome or Asia Minor, including the Lycus
Valley, reflected this complex socioeconomic reality. However, as I shall suggest, the principal though not exclusive addressees of the Lycus Valley
Second Testament writings belonged to the middle strata of the economic hierarchy, though inscriptions pertinent to the valley suggest economic variations. The valley's inhabitants, like everyone else in this stratum, benefited from the financial stability and economic growth throughout the Roman world in this early period of the empire. Although, as we shall see, the socioeconomic status of Lycus-Valley Jesus followers was variegated, reflecting local Phrygian flavor and indigenous economic activity, and certainly not monochromatic.
Temin suggests two factors among many others for Rome's economic development. The first was the availability of food, particularly wheat.
Rome was the largest urban center in an ancient world that was 10 percent urbanized with a population of seventy million.9 Rome's population of "exchange") in adopting Pryor's economic transactional analysis (market or reciprocal "exchanges"; centric and noncentric "transfers"; customary, command, and instrumental "behaviour").
7. Katherine Bain, Women's Socioeconomic Status and Religious Leadership in Asia
Minor in the Frist Two Centuries CE (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 17, borrowing from the research of Steven Friesen, "Poverty in Pauline Studies: Beyond the So-called
New Consensus," JSNT 26 (2004): 323–61. However, see the reworked percentages of Bruce W. Longenecker (Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman
World [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010], 44–53).
8. Bain, Women's Socioeconomic Status, 17.
9. Temin, Roman Market Economy, 252.
Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley
approximately a million people required feeding on a diet mainly of wine, oil, dry legumes, and especially wheat. This grain was most popular in the Roman diet and was universally sought after.10 One measure of wealth in Roman society was its availability. Italy itself could not supply all the wheat and other consumption needs for Roman citizens. Rome's merchant providers drew heavily on the food resources that came from the empire's provinces. A ship sailing to Rome's harbor, Ostia, could carry an average of 6,700 metric tons of wheat. Two thousand ships a year berthed at Ostia.11
The access to such a vast quantity of the grain in a balanced Mediterranean market economy, in which wheat prices in one far-off province reflected those in Rome with relative consistency, indicated economic prosperity. The need for grain and its value as an economic commodity is well illustrated in the Lycus Valley. Colossae and Laodicea could boast of a purchaser of wheat or corn (a sitones).12 This meant that the presence of the office of a sitones for Colossae and Laodicea implied the necessity of such an office to deal with the quantity of grain available for sale. It is not known for whom the sitones was purchasing the grain, but it would be conceivable that the transactions were conducted on behalf of a grain transporter with an eye to the Roman international market.
The demand for wheat and other grains made agriculture the most important economic activity in the Roman world. Improved agricultural technology and farming techniques enhanced wheat's quality and quantity available for purchase by the sitones and offered material well-being and prosperity.
A second factor that led to Rome's economic prosperity was due to the Pax Romana, the political stability across the empire that began with the reign of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE) and flagged earlier, in 67 BCE, by Pompey ensuring the safe passage of ships across the Mediterranean Sea unhindered by piracy. Shipping transportation became safer and economically more effective. It further allowed for a greater quantity and variety of foodstuffs (fruits and vegetables, hitherto unknown in Rome) to arrive at Ostia.13 Meat, the food of the elite, was more consumed. This, in turn,
10. Temin, Roman Market Economy, 30.
11. Temin, Roman Market Economy, 40.
12. The sitones in Colossae is mentioned in IGRR 4.870, and, in the case of Laodicea, in I.Laodikeia 47.6.
13. Temin, Roman Market Economy, 225. The centrality of Ostia as a receiver and distributor of food is illustrated by its epigraphic and archaeological evidence.
Michael Trainor reflected the rise in income per capita and real wages around the empire.14
Overall, living standards seemed to increase throughout the empire.15
Economic growth in the Roman world, formed by its intricately linked market economy, partly mirrored the economic status of some of those from the middle economic strata living in the Lycus Valley in Colossae,
Laodicea, and Hierapolis and was influenced by the Phrygian cultural, social, and economic context of this part of Asia Minor.16 We do have hints of the diverse local economic and market situations in which the valley's inhabitants lived.
An example of an indigenous commercial activity that generated some wealth is seen in the third-century CE funerary inscription dedicated to M. Aur. Ammianos, from Hierapolis. Ammianos invented a water-powered twin saw for cutting stones for civic building projects. The inscription reads, M. Aur. Ammianos, citizen of Hierapolis, skilful as Daedalus in wheelworking (?), made (the represented mechanism) with Daedalean craft
(or: "with the skill of Daedalus"), and now I'll stay here.17
Stone masonry was an important industry of the area and would have provided Ammianos and his household with some economic security.
However, the limestone nature of the inscription, rather than marble, would suggest that he was not a person of wealth or high social standing.18
Inscriptions mention a prefect/chief of the grain supply (L. Bourke van der Meer,
Ostia: Inscriptions, Buildings and Spaces in Rome's Main Port [Leuven: Peeters, 2012],
29, 54), an office of grain traders (36), six superintendants of the granary (70), and a guild of grain measurers (71). The archaeological remains of the granary of Hortenius also exist in the port city (107–8). Note, too, the archaeological remains of fishmonger shops (90–91), mosaics of fish in the House of Fish (94–97) and, in a shop, a mosaic of a fisherman standing in a ship, holding two fish in his right hand (103). There is also mention of the macellum ("meat market," 92) in another inscription.
14. Temin, Roman Market Economy, 225–31.
15. Temin, Roman Market Economy, 196.
16. Sheidel and Friesen ("Size of the Economy," 62) argue that "middling groups"
(craftsmen, merchants) only comprised 10 percent of the Roman Empire.
17. Tullia Ritti, Klaus Grewe, and Paul Kessner, "A Relief of a Water-Powered Stone Saw Mill on a Sarcophagus at Hierapolis and Its Implications," JRA 20 (2007):
139. More generally, see Ben Russell, The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013).
18. Ritti, "Relief of a Water-Powered Stone Saw Mill," 139. For an example of
Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley
The stone-cutting machines that Ammianos and, presumably, other colleagues constructed were important in an area where water mills operated.
A second funerary inscription from the same period gives further weight to the presence and popularity of water-millers:
[This sarcophagus and the (surrounding) area] belong to Mar. Aur. Apollodotos Kalliklia(nos); Apollodotos shall be buried in it, and also his wife
Aur. Tertia, their children and their son-in-law Aur. Tatianos; burying and being buried in it is not permitted to others, except if Apollodotos will give his consent; anybody transgressing shall pay to the most holy ficus 500 denarii, and the water-millers association 300 denarii. A copy of this inscription has been registered in the archives.
The penalty incurred by transgressing the restrictions engraved on the inscription was paid to the association of water-millers. That they were able to form an association indicated their number and influence. They would have formed one of the more numerous guilds in competition with other guilds, like the purple dyers, discussed below. The millers would have been necessary to ensure the good working of their machinery used by fullers and bakers.19 The relationship between all these, and epigraphical evidence of other guilds, gardeners, grocer, cattle breeders, metal, and textile workers,20 suggest a complex economic industrial environment that impinged on the valley's village-domestic network.
This economic network would particularly affect the addressees of Philemon, Colossians, and the Letter to the Laodiceans in the book of Revelation (Rev 3:14–22). The addressees were Jesus followers living within domestic contexts. The recognition of the household context adds a further level of economic implication and status. Metaphors drawn from the market economy of Rome and Phrygia would also infiltrate Colossians and the Letter to the Laodiceans. They shape the theological insights the building costs and the labor force required for a marble stoa at Hierapolis, see
Dominik Maschek, "The Marble Stoa at Hierapolis: Materials, Labour Force and Building Costs," in Ancient Quarries and Building Sites in Asia Minor: Research on Hierapolis in Phrygia and Other Cities in South-Western Anatolia; Archaeology, Archaeometry, Conservation, ed. Tommaso Ismaelli and Giuseppe Scardozzi (Bari: Edipuglia,
2016), 393–402.
19. Ritti, "Relief of a Water-Powered Stone Saw Mill," 145.
20. Ritti, "Relief of a Water-Powered Stone Saw Mill," 144.
Michael Trainor which their respective writers offer their Phrygian audiences. To these contexts and the respective economic imagery, I now turn.
Paul's Letter to Philemon addresses a Jesus household in general and its paterfamilias in particular. A similar domestic context lies behind
Colossians. The explicit identification of the Roman domus in both writings implies an economic institution. The household was "the most important ancient economic institution in which economic behaviour was embedded."21 It was a residence for a large group of people (parents, children, and slaves) and also a manufacturing or production unit within the other business and agricultural institutions, collegia, and associations of the Lycus Valley.22 The domus linked to the market place of the nearby city, of the indigenous Phrygian economic context indicated above, and Rome's larger Mediterranean market composed of an intricate industrial and familial network. Whether the domestic contexts presumed in Philemon and Colossians was urban or rural is a moot point.
We know from the Roman situation that wealthy landowners had two villas, one in the country and the other in the city. The urban setting provided the opportunity for the paterfamilias to display his grandiose wealth to the passers-by who would venture into the outer courtyard and therefore heap upon him honor and prestige as they awaited benefits to fall upon them from their acts of adulation.23 The urban villa would be supplied by products that came from the country estate. While south eastern Asia Minor was a long way from Italy, there is no reason to suggest that this same situation did not apply in the Lycus Valley and the domus context, explicit in Philemon and Colossians, albeit with local indigenous
21. Ekkehard W. Stegemann and Wolfgang Stegemann, The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century (Minneapolis Fortress, 1999), 18.
22. The interlocking nature of ancient Roman houses as residential and workplace spaces is confirmed by archaeological research on houses and the locale in Pergamon and Pompeii. See the summary of this in Bain, Women's Socioeconomic Status,
83–84. The economic value and agricultural richness of Colossae throughout history, especially evidenced in its inscriptions and coins, is described in Alan H. Cadwallader,
Fragments of Colossae: Sifting through the Traces (Hindmarsh: ATF Press, 2015). On the nature of associations in the Lycus Valley, see Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 30.
23. On the visibility of elite households, see Kate Cooper, "Closely Watched Households: Visibility, Exposure and Private Power in the Roman 'Domus,'" Past and Present 197 (2007): 3–33.
Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley
Phrygian variations and competitive interests as the following inscription from the village of Kaygetteia illustrates.24
Kaygetteia is far from Hierapolis but within its ambit of influence and locale. The inscription concerns the actions which vineyard owners can take if their vineyards are damaged:
… from all the vineyards, [it being permitted] to the owners alone to cut them down or, on the pretext of lack of substance, to engage in any
[…]. If anyone acts contrary to this, [it is permitted] to the owners of the vineyards, and likewise to [anyone of their household] to whom they have entrusted their affairs, [to seize] all of the cattle or sheep in their vineyards, to carry them off and keep them in recompense for the harm,
[doing with them] whatever they wish. (The vineyard-owner) may have the shepherds whipped, if they are slaves, once they have been reported to those appointed paraphylakes for the year, in that they may refrain from persistent [theft?]. As for the masters of the flocks, and free shepherds, and [headmen?] of the villages who do not prevent shepherds from herding their sheep into vineyards and breaking off vine-branches,
(the vineyard-owner) is permitted to make exactions from their other property, and to take sureties from them … exacting from them …
Apollo archegetes … any inhabitant of the place … slave or shepherd.25
There are several things about this inscription that are noteworthy. Like many others identified in the area around Hierapolis, this inscription dates from the third century CE, well after Philemon, Colossians, and the Letter to the Laodiceans were written to the valley's Jesus followers. However, it might well reflect the tense relations that existed between agriculturalists, herdsmen, and viticulturalists over centuries. Whatever this possibility, the inscription illustrates the rights and authority that the vineyard owner and the members of the vineyard household had over their property and its produce. In the event of crop or vine damage, their authority was clearly defined. They could confiscate the animals, the sheep or cattle, that belonged to others. This confiscation would continue until the vineyard
24. In regard to the competitive interests between the poleis of the Lycus valley, note the inscription revealing a fishing dispute between Hierapolis and Tripolis with Laodicea: Tullia Ritti, Hierapolis di Frigia IX: Storia e istituzioni di Hierapolis (Istanbul:
Ege, 2017), 388–95.
25. MAMA 4.297; trans. Peter Thonemann, The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 194.
Michael Trainor owner was compensated for the damage done. The shepherds could also be punished for theft from the vineyard. Further, vineyard owners could also exact compensation from the property of the actual flock owners, the shepherds who grazed freely on the land, and village leaders.
The inscription illustrates the local issues that created tension within a smaller village economic network and vineyard household. Whether this issue concerned a larger elite household or a smaller village-domestic unit involved with wine production is not clear. However, the relationships and tensions described in the inscription from a situation geographically related to Hierapolis, and thus to the Jesus followers of the Lycus
Valley, though from a later era, might possibly reflect similar problems that occurred in much earlier times, involving households from another part of the Lycus Valley and perhaps the addressees of the three letters.
If this was the case, then the inscription might shed light on the affirmation the author of Colossians gives to the ministry of Epaphras, "who has worked hard for you [Colossians] and for those in Laodicea and Hierapolis" (Col 4:13). Epaphras's role might not just be about the proclamation of the gospel, but also involve acting as intermediary when tensions arose among the villagers, herdsmen, viticulturalists, stone workers, agriculturalists, or any of the other workers in industries known to operate in the Lycus Valley. The ministry of those "entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation" was one accentuated by Paul in 2 Cor 5:19. The focus of this ministry concerned reconciliation with God, but it would have practical implications for reconciliation among Jesus followers who might have been at blows with each other over what might seem simple things such as grazing activities, vineyard care, and grape production.
No matter how speculative this reconciling aspect of Epaphras's ministry from Colossians might be, the inscription does indicate the relational and economic complexity that existed in village-urban economic life. This complexity would moderate the impression that the Roman domus integral model offered a uniform template for urban-village domestic life and production all over the empire.26 The vineyard owners and wine producers of Kaygetteia would hold a different opinion.
26. See also Peter Thonemann, "Households and Families," in Roman Phrygia:
Culture and Society, ed. Peter Thonemann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2013), 124–42, who argues for distinctions between family life in the domus at Rome and at Phrygia.
Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley
This reflection from the Phrygian Kaygetteia inscription would further temper the way the Roman urban-rural relationship was perceived.
One contemporary commentator describes that relationship this way:
Our image of a city of antiquity, however, would be very different according to our status. If we were a member of the Roman elite, for instance, we would leave our country house—spacious, centrally heated, with a swimming bath, library, works of art, etc.—and estate, and drive, ride or be carried in a litter to the city. We would pass the tombs of the great along the highway nearer to the city. Our entourage would make a way for us through the teeming city streets. We would thus make our way through the city centre, past splendid theatres, amphitheatres, public halls and baths and parks. Eventually we would be welcomed by yet more attendants in our town house, which would be almost as elegant as our country house—and largely supplied with foodstuffs by our country estate. There our clients would be waiting to dance attendance upon us.27
This analysis describes the world of the Roman elite, not the middle strata of the household owners envisaged in the Lycus Valley context or the relationship that would have existed been sheep and vineyard owners.
However, the description is helpful from another point of view. It reflects the patterned and interlocking network between the rural and urban contexts, with the urban domestic center acting as a collecting node for grain and other products harvested and manufactured in the surrounding countryside.
A rural or urban location of the domus of Philemon or the Colossians would, in a sense, not matter, given the symbiotic relationship between rural producers and urban residences. The domus would still be the setting for produce collection and cottage industries with its symbiotic and intertwining relationship within the wider Roman market economy and reflective of the local economy and industries. The relative proximity of Hierapolis, Colossae, and Laodicea to one another would further underscore the economic symbiosis that existed in the valley, though not without its tensions and competition, as we have seen. Every domus in the valley would also be economically attached and aligned to these cities.
This would apply to the households envisaged in Philemon, Colossians, 27. T. F. Carney, The Shape of the Past: Models and Antiquity (Lawrence: Coronado Press, 1975), 85.
Michael Trainor and the Letter to the Laodiceans and the cities and villages associated with them. These would be the locations for local business transactions and the gathering of food stuffs, especially grain, for distribution and transportation to Rome's market abroad.28
This trading relationship between the Lycus Valley cities and Rome is evident in an inscription concerning the merchant, Titus Flavius Zeuxis, a citizen of Hierapolis:
Titus Flavius Zeuxis, merchant, who navigated around Cape Maleas towards Italy during seventy-two sailings, built the monument for 28. See the instructive study of Jésus Bermejo Triado, "Domus and Household
Production. Towards a New Model for the Study of Roman Economy; The Case of the House of Bachus Ariadne (Thuburbo Maius)," in L'Africa Romana XVIII: I luoghi e le forme dei mestieri e della produzione nelle province africane atti del XVIII convegno di studio, Olbia, 11–14 dicembre 2008, ed. Marco Milanese, Paolo Ruggeri, and Cinzia
Vismara (Roma: Carocci, 2010), 851–62. In an investigation of the domus of Bachus and Ariadne in the Romano-African city of Thuburbo Maius (the former province of Africa Proconsularis), Triado demonstrates how the household moved beyond a "selfsufficiency economy" to a much higher level of household production than that which was required, based entirely around the products of its olive mill press. In sum, the rates of production showed a complexity of economic activity that was clearly "aimed at the market, at intraregional levels" (858). On household estates in Asia Minor, see
Thomas Corsten, "Estates in Roman Asia Minor: The Case of Kibyratis," in Patterns in the Economy of Roman Asia Minor, ed. Stephen Mitchell and Constantina Katsari
(Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2005), 1–51. In the case of the Lycus valley, any assessment of the urban domi of Colossae (Col 1:1: ἐν Κολοσσαῖς) is totally stymied by the fact that the site remains unexcavated. The inner-city evidence of nearby Laodicea is ambiguous, with insulae predominating in House A Alley and elsewhere there are two-story peristyle houses (Celal Şimşek, "Urban Planning of Laodikeia on the Lykos in the Light of New Evidence," in Landscape and History in the Lykos Valley: Laodikeia and Hierapolis in Phrygia, ed. Celal Şimşek and Francesco D'Andria [Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2017], 13–14, 18–19). But the most impressive candidate for a Lycus valley domus of the kind discussed in this chapter is the Southern Roman
Villa outside of Laodicea, though, significantly, it postdates the New Testament period. Şimşek ("Urban Planning of Laodikeia," 18) summarizes the archaeological finds there with these words: "The owners of the villa are believed to have not only cultivated the land but also to have manufactured and marketed things such as glass, wine and olive-oil, during the Late Roman Imperial period (third century to the first quarter of the fifth century AD). Coins of Attouda and Hierapolis, as well as lead seals, demonstrate commercial relations with these cities. Thus, this villa is a complex that was intended for agricultural and industrial production" (18).
Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley
himself and his sons Flavius Theodoros and Flavius Theudas, and for whoever shall obtain the concession for them.29
Titus's mausoleum inscription indicates that he made a significant number of trips, seventy-two around Cape Maleas towards Italy and, presumably,
Rome. We do not know what he was trading, perhaps valley cloth or dyes that would have been commercially and internationally popular.30 Nevertheless, the inscription affirms the profitable commerce with Rome and the importance of the Roman connection for the citizens of Hierapolis and those in other parts of the valley (see Rev 18:15–17).
The Domus in Philemon In Paul's letter addressed to Philemon, the addressee is clearly the owner of a house that gathers an association of Jesus followers. This is the ekklesia that Paul identifies and salutes. It is a gathering place which has economic implications.
After greeting Philemon, Paul next addresses Apphia, whom he calls "sister" (a significant title to which I shall return shortly); then, before finally greeting the whole ekklesia in Philemon's house, he hails Archippus, whom he describes as a "fellow-soldier." This military designation that Paul gives to Archippus reflects, in Paul's imminent eschatology, the nature of those committed in a gospel ministry that involves an eschatological battle preparing for the final coming of the Christ. Nevertheless, these three, Philemon, Apphia, and Archippus, represent part of the membership of a wider community that form the ekklesia of a larger (and wealthy) household.
The fact of Apphia's mention immediately after the letter's addressee and before the male, Archippus, in a social context of male hierarchy is not without its significance. It would suggest something of Apphia's status in the ekklesia gathering. Paul calls her "sister" (Phlm 2). The only other female that Paul explicitly addresses with this title is Phoebe, the female deacon of the ekklesia at Cenchreae, the harbor town of Corinth (Rom
29. IGRR 4.841. Translated by Tullia Ritti, Epigraphic Guide to Hierapolis (Pamukkale), tran. P. Arthur (Istanbul: Italian Archaeological Mission at Hierapolis, 2006), 68.
Ritti speculates: "We may suppose that Zeuxis exported loads of cloths or clothes, in particular those coloured with the local vegetal dye" (70).
30. Ritti, Epigraphic Guide to Hierapolis, 70.
Michael Trainor 16:1). Paul conceivably entrusts her with his Letter to the Romans. She will carry it to Rome, read it the Jesus followers there, and prepare them for his intended visit. Her task in Rome is quite delicate, given the competing jealousies and tensions that seem to exist among the leaders of the Jewish and gentile Jesus households there.
Paul's use of "our sister" in relationship to Phoebe, therefore, implies status within the network of Jesus households. It affirms her colleagueship with Paul in his mission and her authority to represent him in a very complex and difficult situation. Paul's designation of her as "sister" precedes the other qualifiers that confirm her status. She is a diakonos at Cenchreae
(Rom 16:1b), a formal title that designates her as an entrusted communicator of an important (and in this case with Paul's letter, divine) message.31
She is also named prostasis (Rom 16:2c), suggesting that she is a woman of wealth, Paul's benefactor.32 This woman's high socioeconomic status and leadership at Cenchreae, flagged by the preeminent address that Paul gives her—"sister"—would not be unknown among women in the Roman world, as numismatic evidence testifies.33
A similar understanding might conceivably apply in Paul's address to Apphia in Philemon. She is a woman of at least equal rank and leadership with Philemon in the ekklesia that meets in his domus, irrespective of her marital status and relationship to Philemon. From the perspective of the Rome's market world, if she were his spouse, then Apphia, whose Anatolian name is frequently associated with wealth, would also share his socioeconomic status like a Roman matron.34 Though Paul greets Philemon first
31. Bain, Women's Socioeconomic Status, 108.
32. See Rosalinde A. Kearsley, "Women in Public Life in the Roman East: Iunia Theodora, Claudia Metrodora and Phoebe, Benefactress of Paul," TynBul 50 (1999):
189–211.
33. There is numismatic evidence of a Colossian female benefactor, Claudia Eugenetoriane. She minted two bronze Colossian coins, one featuring Hadrian on the obverse, the other with Helios on the obverse. Claudia's name is clearly present as the minter on both. On the smaller of the two coins she identifies herself very unusually as ΧΗΡΗ ("widow"). See, Alan Cadwallader, "Wealthy, Widowed, Astute and Beneficent: Claudia Eugenetoriane and the Second Century Revival of the Colossian Mint,"
NewDocs 12 (forthcoming).
34. On the Anatolian association of Apphia's name with wealth, see Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 85. For the name Aphia/Apphia at Hierapolis, see MAMA 4.276; SEG 33.1128, 54.1330; IDenizli 126; IJO 2.193 (of a Jew). There are two inscriptions where the name Aphia/Apphia is related to Colossae, one a priest-
Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley
and Apphia second, this order reflects the conventional patriarchal precedence given to the paterfamilias of a household. Philemon would also be greeted first because he is also the one to whom Paul directs his appeal on behalf of Onesimus who has fled the household and Philemon's authority.
If Apphia were his wife, she held a position of authority within the domestic context parallel to the authority exercised by Philemon in the public arena. Within the specific domestic setting, she would exercise religious leadership in the Jesus household, especially as it gathered for the Lord's Supper, as we have seen with Phoebe, not unusual in the Pauline households. From a socioeconomic viewpoint, her influence would also extend over those responsible for the manufacturing aspects and marketing production of the domus, albeit under the supervision of Philemon as paterfamilias who exercised authority over the slaves and the freed workers, of which Onesimus was one. A final point about Apphia is worth noting. The Phrygian origin of her name suggests that she is local. This indigenous recognition adds further weight to the regional provenance of Philemon's domus situated in the Lycus Valley, and given the duplication of names between Philemon and Colossians (with Timothy, Epaphras,
Aristarchus, Onesimus, Luke, and Archippus) in or close to Colossae, though—with the network and urban symbiosis between Colossae, Hierapolis, and Laodicea—not necessarily.
The size and style of this agricultural and manufacturing unit are further hinted at by two further facts: its architecture and the explicit identification of Onesimus.
◆ Philemon's house includes a guest room (Phlm 22), not unusual in a Roman styled villa. It existed within an intimate social and familial network upon which rested the security and stability of the province and the Roman Empire. Set against Rome's economic backdrop, what distinguishes Philemon's house from many others in the valley is the affiliation of its members to Jesus. One resident was Onesimus.
◆ We know from Paul's letter that Onesimus has absconded from Philemon's authority, for reasons that are not at first apparent, ess (IGRR 4.868). There is also one example from Laodicea: Jean-Louis Ferrary, Les mémoriaux de délégations du sanctuaire oraculaire de Claros, d'après la documentation conserve dans le Fonds Louis Robert, Des inscriptions et belles-lettres Tome 40 (Paris:
Mémoires de l'Académie, 2014), 1.31.20.
Michael Trainor though become clearer when we apply Rome's economic grid over the situation envisaged in Philemon. Onesimus comes to Paul to request that he broker a renewed relationship with Philemon. The letter is Paul's response to this request. But the status and name of Onesimus are most interesting.
Some scholars have suggested that Onesimus is Philemon's sibling who has come to grief in the close-knit domestic relationship of Philemon's household. Many more commentators are convinced the Onesimus is a runaway slave seeking to be restored to his master.35 I am convinced by Ulrich Huttner's argument that Onesimus is a freedman or manumitted slave. He would not be the only other person in a household that would accommodate other slaves and free men and women. Their presence would reinforce the fiscal value and status of the house and bring greater honor to Philemon.
Further, a person's name in the ancient world communicated identity, status, and relationships. It symbolized the slave's occupational and economic value and the tribal and social network to which the person belonged. This is reflected in Onesimus's name. Its meaning, "useful" or "beneficial," reflects an industrial, pecuniary, and social status in Philemon's household.36
35. Though most commentators consider Onesimus a runaway slave, there are some who hold for the sibling relationship between Onesimus and Philemon. See
Allen Dwight Callaghan, "Paul's Epistle to Philemon: Toward and Alternative Argumentum," HTR 86 (1993): 357–76; Margaret M. Mitchell, "John Chrysostom on Philemon: A Second Look," HTR 88 (1995): 135–48. For challenges to the runaway-slave theory, see John Knox, Philemon among the Letters of Paul (New York: Abingdon,
1935); Sarah Winter, "Paul's Letter to Philemon," NTS 33 (1987): 1–15; Peter Lampe,
"Keine 'Sklavenflucht' des Onesimus," ZNW 76 (1985): 135–37; Peter Arzt-Grabner,
"Onesimus erro: Zur Vorgeschichte des Philemonbriefes," ZNW 95 (2004): 131–43; Arzt-Grabner, "How to Deal with Onesimus? Paul's Solution within the Frame of Ancient Legal and Documentary Sources," in Philemon in Perspective: Interpreting a Pauline Letter, ed. D. Francois Tolmie, BZNW 169 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 113–42.
For a summary of scholarship on the letter's occasion, see Bonnie Beattie Thurston and Judith M. Ryan, Philippians and Philemon (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press,
2005), 181–82; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Letter to Philemon (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 17–19.
36. The name Onesimus was typical of a slave. Of the 150 Onesimus-names identified from north and west Asia Minor, several were free-born, and some had higher social status (Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 86–87).
Rome's Market Economy in the Lycus Valley
It is not inconceivable that Onesimus may have been a freed slave, manumitted by Philemon himself.37 Perhaps he could have even been an imperial freed slave valued highly, in economic terms, by his previous owners. There is inscriptional evidence, for example, of imperial freed slaves in the Lycus Valley.38 In one inscription from Laodicea we note,
Tiberius Claudius Tryphon, freedman of the emperor, donated the towers and the triple gateway, the proconsul Sextus Iulius Frontinus dedicated the whole construction.39
It is clear from this that the freed imperial slave, Tryphon, had wealth enough to donate money for the construction of towers and a processional entrance to the city. This may not have been Onesimus's situation, but the high economic regard he is held in could well explain the reason that he first fled from Philemon's influence and later wanted to return to the household but under different conditions brokered by Paul. Paul redefines Onesimus's economic worth, "benefit" or "use." He is now "useful" in a different, noneconomic sense within the Jesus household defined by his baptismal status rather than his market value (Phlm 11). Paul affirms Onesimus's new status.
He challenges the hierarchically prescribed and economically determined social conventions that would have shaped the network of relations that operated in Philemon's house. Paul judges Onesimus's departure from Philemon as an opportunity of reminding him about the essential truth upon which every Jesus household is grounded: its relationship to the risen Jesus:
Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. (Phlm 15–16) Paul reminds Philemon that Onesimus is no longer to be regarded as an economically viewed domestic possession. Rather as a "beloved brother" he will have similar status, authority, and leadership as Paul's "sister,"
37. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 104–7.
38. Rosalinde Kearsley, "Epigraphic Evidence for the Social Impact of Roman Government in Laodicea and Hierapolis," in Colossae in Space and Time: Linking to an Ancient City, ed. Alan H. Cadwallader and Michael Trainor, NTOA-SUNT 94 (Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2011), 130–50.
39. I.Laodikeia 24b; Kearsley, "Epigraphic Evidence for Social Impact," 134.
Michael Trainor Apphia, greeted in the beginning of the letter. Finally, as the letter comes to its concluding verses, Paul reminds Philemon that he plans to visit
(Phlm 22). Paul's reminder to Philemon implies that he will check out what kind of treatment Onesimus will receive from Philemon when he returns.
In summary, there is nothing unusual about Philemon's household.
Like other houses in the early period of the Roman Empire occupied and owned by those of the middle economic social strata, it forms part of an integrated industrial and production complex within a network of marketable goods well-known in the Lycus Valley. The nature of these goods we shall discuss below. However, Philemon's household would be similar to other Jesus households in the valley, including those addressed, one to two generations later, by the pseudepigraphic Letter to the Colossians.
An economic lens placed over these dwellings highlights the issues with which their inhabitants have to contend—relationships, material wealth, and social approval. All these surface in the writings from Jesus followers that emerge out of first-century CE Lycus Valley.
The Domus in the Letter to the Colossians While the household context of Philemon is clear enough, unearthing the domestic setting for Colossians requires a little more excavation. The letter addresses "the saints and faithful brothers and sisters [adelphoi] in Christ at Colossae" (Col 1:2). The physical context in which they gather as Christ followers is not explicit, at least not at the beginning of the letter as the writer moves to applaud the ministry of Epaphras. He is the faithful conduit of Paul's teaching for a new time. He carries the memory of Paul's gospel teaching as his authorized representative and link to the wider Pauline "school" (Col 1:3–8). But there are two indicators towards the letter's end in which the domestic setting becomes more explicit.
The first is the household code of Col 3:18–4:1. Commentators have written much about the nature and purpose of this code—the writer's adoption of a classical topos that designates prescribed lines of domestic authority to reinforce social stability, cultural harmony, and provincial security.40 Jesus followers are part of, and not sectarian disputants in, the social landscape in which they live. The theological twist that the writer
40. See, for example, Angela Standhartinger, "The Origin and Intention of the Household Code in the Letter to the Colossians," JSNT 79 (2000): 117–30.
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gives the code softens its hierarchal reinforcement and makes Christ the ultimate authority to whom all within the household are subject. Before him all will be judged. The subject matter of the code with its designated lines of authority reinforce the status of those addressed and their interrelationship. This is not a small domestic dwelling occupied by people of lower social status. The code gives greatest attention to slaves. They are the most singled-out group among all the members of a household.41
Three reasons, all economically related, suggest themselves for this extra attention: the commercial value of slaves, the free status of Epaphras, and the discouragement given to slave resistance or revolt that would compromise the potential for the Colossian Jesus households to become a marketing cooperative or association.
First, slaves were a prominent social group in the Lycus Valley Jesus households. Within the early Roman Empire, they represented at least 10 to 20 or 30 percent of the population and formed a distinctive institution upon which the Roman economy depended.42 They were the most economically exploited group in Roman society.43
The institution of chattel slavery is one of the most striking features of Roman society. Slaves were an almost totally malleable product: they could be used to display the wealth of their owner or for the most specialized purposes, such as being virtual talking books. The Roman upper classes were aware of this reliance and not uncommonly expressed concern at this dependence on those beneath them. The demand for slave labor was supplied by domestically bred slaves and also by the purchase of considerable numbers of imported slaves, some from outside the empire but most from within the area of Roman rule.44
41. In the Greek text, forty-two words describe the conventional familial relationships (wives—husbands, children—parents, fathers—children). Masters receive twenty-three. The code's address to the slaves occupies fifty-six Greek words.
42. See Temin, Roman Market Economy, 31, who estimates that slaves were 10 percent of the Roman population. Other sources make them 20 to 30 percent (at least in Roman Italy, 1–1.5 million in an overall population of 5–6 million). See also
Tim G. Parkin and Arthur Pomeroy, Roman Social History: A Sourcebook (London:
Routledge, 2007), 157, 357; Leonhard Schumacher, "Slaves in Roman Society," in The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World, ed. Michael Peachin
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 509–608.
43. Schumacher, "Slaves in Roman Society," 509.
44. Parkin and Pomeroy, Roman Social History, 154.
Michael Trainor In other words, slaves represented wealth and symbolized economic prestige for the household to which they belonged.
A second consideration comes from an appreciation of the background of Epaphras and his status among the Jesus followers of the Lycus Valley.
Epaphras is a shorted form of Epaphroditus, derived from the Greek name for the goddess Aphrodite. This connection suggests that he was a Hellenized Jewish Jesus follower who moved away from the earlier religious practices of his parents, who had chosen to name him after the goddess of love. Inscriptional evidence gleaned from around the Mediterranean locates his name in Macedonia, Achaia, Magna Graecia (southern Italy), and Sicily.
It is associated with a variety of backgrounds and occupations, with benefactors, slaves, freedmen, and, in one inscription from the imperial cult at Ephesus, a priest. The majority of Magna Graecia references associate the name with conquered males from other countries forced into slavery.45
On balance then, it seems possible that Epaphras came from a servile background, not necessarily from the poorer fringes of society, given that some slaves were the trophies of elite households. At the time of the writing of Colossians, his availability to move freely about the Lycus Valley to Laodicea and Hierapolis (Col 4:13) suggests that he is now a freedman. If this is true, then Epaphras would take not a little interest in the slaves of the Lycus Valley Jesus households with whom he would identify. He would also be able to exercise considerable influence among them, especially if he was the one who brought Paul's gospel to the valley, if not the actual writer of Colossians at which some commentators have hinted.46
Third, this recognition of the prominence and market value of slaves at Colossae makes sense to the opening injunction in the household code
(that slaves "obey in everything those who are earthly masters," Col 3.22).
This reinforces their status quo. In Roman society slave resistance, rebellion, and desertion was more common than previously thought.47 The code's injunction counterbalances a perception easily derived from Col
45. For more on Epaphras, see Trainor, Epaphras, 6–10.
46. Ephaphras as the author to the Letter to the Colossians is not a new suggestion. It first appeared in the nineteenth century with Albert Klöpper, Der Brief an die
Colosser: Kritisch untersucht und in seinem Verhältnisse zum paulinischem Lehrbegriff exegetisch und biblisch-theologisch erortet (Berlin: Reimer, 1882). See also Mark Christopher Kiley, Colossians as Pseudepigraphy (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986).
47. Allen Dwight Callahan and Richard A. Horsley, "Slave Resistance in Classical
Antiquity," Semeia 83 (1998): 133–51.
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3:11 that there is "no Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all, and in all." If this text were interpreted literally and acted out socially, the removal of any distinction between slave and free would lead to revolt or the growing demand for manumission. Social anarchy and economic upheaval would follow.
However, the content of the code's address to slaves beyond its opening injunction offers a counter balance more aligned to Paul's gospel. The code subtly but carefully redefines the true social status of slaves in terms of their relationship to the Lord, rather than their earthly masters, in a way that honors the spirit of Col 3:11.
The author addresses the members of the household in the plural (wives, husbands, children, slaves, and masters). This number would be part of the conventional inheritance carried over from the expected address already present in the code. The plurality of children and slaves addressed would not be surprising.
On the other hand, those addressed are members of the one household of Jesus in Colossae. The plurality of spouses ("wives" and "husbands") indicates that those addressed by the letter do not form only one household (as envisaged in Philemon). There exist a number of households in which the husbands were also slave masters. All the members of these various domi would form a domestic collective and an interrelated marketing cooperative that would gather in one structure, a larger domus, in order to celebrate the Lord's Supper, remember the story of Jesus, and receive
Pauline instruction (as, say, by the Letter to the Colossians). It would not take much to imagine how Colossians and its code would be heard and comprehended with everyone, from different social classes, attentive at the same time and in the same place. This liturgical setting would be a concrete expression and demonstration of Col 3:11.
Nympha's House The Colossians author envisages several households. However, the writer identifies explicitly one house and greets it in words that echo Philemon:
"Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the ekklesia in her house" (Col 4:15). The fact that no other male is mentioned in regard to this household clearly indicates that Nympha is a woman of elevated social and economic status. "As owner of the central assembly place," asserts Huttner,
Michael Trainor Nympha did serve as one of the prominent pillars of her community.
Clearly she came from a relatively wealthy family and was among the women—by no means rare in Asia Minor—who had more or less extensive assets at their disposal more or less independently.48
She hosts and leads her household when the ekklesia gathers and conceivably presides at the Lord's Supper. Nympha is also a widow in the classical understanding of the word: one who did not live with a male or an elite woman who survived her older husband.49 In later history, as Jesus households become more male dominated and female household leadership discouraged and suppressed, her name was changed to the masculine in the New Testament text!50 In fact, Nympha's position, description, and status meant that she, like Apphia and Philemon and the other households envisaged in the Colossian household code, was responsible for a domus in Laodicea with all the economic connections this implied. It was a production and economic unit within the interrelated commercial symbiosis of the Lycus Valley with its marketing and economic wealth from the products that we know were produced there.
The Wealth of the Lycus Valley From inscriptions and steles discovered in the valley, this wealth could have come from the raising of pigs; the production of wine; the harvesting of wheat, other grains, fruits, and vegetables; and the production of additional marketable goods, especially dyed wool.51 Inscriptions found on tombstones, reliefs, and agricultural equipment from the first and second centuries testify to the variety and quality of the goods produced and manufactured in the Lycus Valley. Huttner offers a helpful summary of the agricultural wealth of the region in which the houses of Philemon
48. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 96.
49. Bain, Women's Socioeconomic Status, 69.
50. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 95. However, see the recent proposal of Thomas Corsten ("Man oder Frau: Nympha oder Nymphas in Laodikeia?," in Epigraphical Evidence Illustrating Paul's Letter to the Colossians, ed. Joseph Verheyden, Markus Öhler, and Thomas Corsten, WUNT 411 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2018], 215–19) who proposes that the name is indeed Νυμφᾶς and that the person is therefore a male.
51. For more on these goods, especially in ancient Colossae, see Cadwallader, Fragments of Colossae.
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and those addressed by Colossians, including Nympha's (Col 4:15), were located. Huttner's summary reflects the archaeological and numismatic evidence gleaned from the Lycus Valley in recent years:
The Lycus and its tributaries flow through a hilly alluvial landscape, including some ravines, that allows the cultivation of several crops.
Where cotton is the primary crop today, followed increasingly by wine, in antiquity it is clear that grain flourished along with fruits and vegetables, which were naturally irreplaceable as fundamental foodstuffs, but also olive trees (probably mostly on the hillsides) and wine grapes, albeit without suggesting agricultural continuity. Vitruvius speaks in one place of the "gardens and vineyards" around Hierapolis. At higher elevations, especially on the hillsides to the north and south, we may assume that cattle and especially sheep were raised.52
Dried food, harvested grain, and locally produced wine, wool, and other material products that exceeded local demands could be easily transported along the main trade route, which was connected to Ephesus in the west and then shipped across the Mediterranean Sea to Rome. A tombstone relief from the Hierapolis necropolis witnesses to one involved in the transportation trade.
The Letter to the Laodiceans (Rev 3:14–22) Before concluding, one final writing, the Letter to the Laodiceans in the book of Revelation (Rev 3:14–22), deserves brief attention. I have argued up until now for the Roman domus as the setting for Paul's Letter to Philemon and in the later pseudonymous letter to the Colossians.
The domus provides an entrée into considering the economic context and status for the Jesus followers of the Lycus Valley, the addressees of the letters. I have suggested that they would represent a middle stratum of social status and wealth. In turning to the third of the writings addressed to Lycus Valley Jesus followers, John's Letter to the Laodiceans
(Rev 3:14–22), a similar and more explicit economic picture emerges.
This surfaces from a study of the writer's language and metaphors used of the addressees and a consideration of these in the light of the economic resources and material wealth that we know of the Laodiceans.
The domus setting is also clearly present.
52. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 20–21.
Michael Trainor The letter itself is part of a larger apocalyptic work designed to offer comfort and security to late first-century Jesus followers experiencing economic, civic, and social suppression from the civic authorities and those who enforce the pax Romana. After an initial heavenly vision in which the Lordship and universal reign of Christ is affirmed (Rev 1:1–8), the writer addresses seven churches: Ephesus (Rev 2:1–7), Smyrna (Rev
2:8–11), Pergamum (Rev 2:12–17), Thyatira (Rev 2:18–29), Sardis (Rev 3:1–6), Philadelphia (Rev 3:7–11), and Laodicea (Rev 1:9–3:22). Whether these churches accurately reflect the local historical, social, and theological situations of the various locales or whether they are symbolic of more universal ecclesial phenomena is debatable.53 However, the background of the places addressed helps to understand the issues about which the writer is concerned for each Jesus household. John encourages the Jesus disciples in Smyrna in anticipation of the "tribulation" about to come upon them
(Rev 2:10). The other six churches are also encouraged, but they are also critiqued for their failures in discipleship. This same pattern emerges in the address to Laodicea.
From the monetary perspective of Rome's market economy that influenced commercial production, manufacturing, economic transactions, and industry in the Lycus Valley, Laodicea was clearly a city of wealth.
Its status emerged and bypassed ancient Colossae in the early imperial period. Its natural resources, gold, wool, water, production of dyes and eye salves, and its medical reputation helped its growth in economic prosperity, status recognition, and its capacity to rebuild itself without any outside support in the wake of the earthquake of 67 CE.54 Of significance was
Laodicea's access to gold.
Laodicea's natural resources and production prowess, while the source of wealth and economic power, also have spiritual consequences, which the writer of the book of Revelation names. Disciples do not live in a vacuum but are influenced by the economic realities that surround them.
53. See, for example, the summary comments offered by Leonard L. Thompson, The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire (New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 11–36. A celestial interpretation of the seven churches is offered in Bruce J. Malina, Social-Science Commentary on the Book of Revelation (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2000), 34.
54. On the importance of the natural resources of the Lycus Valley and its dyeworks as a means to economic wealth, see Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus
Valley, 119.
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Their economic wealth and comfort lead them into a state of spiritual poverty, which the writer names, using metaphors drawn from the economic world so familiar to the Laodicean Jesus followers:
For you say, "I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing." You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore
I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. (Rev
3:17–18) John, in his visionary ecstasy, echoes the voice of the risen, apocalyptic
Christ in identifying the real issues that are affecting these Jesus followers.
He encourages them to a spirit of repentance (Rev 3:19), converting their wealthy resources (refined gold, clothing, and eye salve) into theological symbols of this conversion that brings a refinement in their discipleship
("gold refined by fire") and a renewed baptismal commitment ("white robes," "salve to anoint your eyes"). The fruit of this repentance will be seen in their celebration of the communal meal of Lord's Supper. The explicit context for this is the Roman domus:
Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.
(Rev 3:20) The Laodicean Jesus domus reflects the same qualities that we have seen in Philemon and Colossians. It is the domestic setting for the gathering of Jesus householders, who represent a cross-section of Western AnatolianPhrygian-Roman society, weighted towards the more wealthy industrialists and merchants representative of the middle stratum, who have benefited from the prosperity gleaned from the Roman economic market. The seer
John invites them to consider their wealthy situation and to return to the fundamentals of their discipleship: their relationship to the risen Christ and their relationship to each other.55 These same truths echo what we have already seen in the households addressed by Philemon and Colossians.
55. Note especially John's critique of the merchants who were dependent upon the wealth of the (now fallen) Rome in Rev 18:15–17. See Richard Bauckham, "The Economic Critique of Rome in Revelation 18," in The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 373.
Michael Trainor Conclusion The Lycus Valley was an agriculturally rich and industrially successful region in south western Anatolia, situated within the wider matrix of Rome's market economy. Its regional wealth occurred because of the rich natural resources of the valley and the technical expertise of its inhabitants.56 Access to its natural wealth and economic largesse influenced relationships within the Jesus households, which collectively would have formed a marketing cooperative, though, as we noted, competition was not unknown. As Huttner notes, The readiness of individuals to form associations was deeply rooted in the Lycus Valley, as is apparent from the epigraphic evidence, which documents a dense concentration of trade associations, cultic communities, family associations, and hetairiai.57
In this context, the Roman market economy was embedded in everything that affected its members, though Phrygian manufacturing and industrial practices indigenous to the valley moderated Rome's economic influence.
My economic focus has been on the three New Testament Lycus Valley writings, Philemon, Colossians, and the Letter to the Loadiceans in the book of Revelation. In all three writings, the domus is clearly the context.
These were commercial and industrial units, besides places of habitation.
An economic dynamic operated within the Jesus households. A key consideration interprets the domus, not as a spiritual "cell" isolated from the social, commercial, and pecuniary interests of the valley in which it dwells but as a production and manufacturing unit within an integral economic network of the Lycus Valley, perhaps in an association of cottage industries formed through an alliance in their discipleship to Jesus.
My focus here has been to conjecture about the effects of the Roman market economy and its relative wealth upon the Jesus followers in the Lycus Valley, who represent the middle social stratum. However, I have also suggested that this was not a monochromatic picture. Local Phrygian industrial and agricultural industries shaped relationships and balanced out Rome's influence. More thought is needed about those Jesus followers who represent the lower, poorer stratum of Roman society, not explicitly
56. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 119.
57. Huttner, Early Christianity in the Lycus Valley, 30.
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addressed by, but not excluded from the New Testament writings associated with the Lycus Valley.
I have suggested that using a Roman economic lens throws light on key issues in each of the writings. An appreciation of the nature of the Roman market economy, in a period of relative wealth and social stability for those representing the middle strata of the Roman economic ladder, illuminates the main concern in Philemon with Paul's advocacy of Onesimus in his changed status. Other inscriptional evidence from Phrygia relevant to our discussion has thrown further light on this. This provides us with a variegated economic lens with which to view the transactions and relationships.
With regard to Colossians, the main focus has been upon the explicit households addressed in Colossians through the Haustafel and Nympha's singled-out domus. However, the use of the Roman-Phrygian economic dynamic also assists us in appreciating the main theological issues with which Colossians is concerned: the author's reassertion of the cosmic authority of Christ among Jesus followers, who were beguiled by their attraction to indigenous Jewish ascetical practices and angelic worship in an effort to assuage the dominant "principalities and powers" (Col 2:13–
23). These "principalities and powers" are pervasive political and economic forces that Christ has disarmed (Col 2:15a). The communion with the Christ that the Jesus followers have through baptism is the real power that will thwart and overcome any form of suppression (Col 3:1–3).
Finally, a brief study of the Letter to the Laodiceans affirms the embedded nature of economics within the Lycus Valley industrial, production, and manufacturing network. Rome's economic system did not entirely dominate. Laodicea's gold and clothing resources, its dyeing industry, and its medical practice account for its wealth. Economics are also embedded within the attitudes of the householders of the domus envisaged in Laodicea. They have been distracted by their access to gold, their prosperous clothing and dyeing industry, and their manufacture of medical goods. The seer John invites them to a renewal in their baptismal discipleship of the apocalyptic and risen Christ with eucharistic hospitality as central.
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