In my readings of The Twelve Caesars and Plutarch's Lives for my Topics in Literature: Autobiography, Biography, and Memoir class (English classes always have long titles...) I have come to the conclusion that Rome was dastardly immoral and decadent.  In The Twelve Caesars Suetonius writes he is only mentioning "the tip of the iceberg," so to speak, about sexual immorality and pornographic violence, yet the things he alludes to are fearful---that a human could do that sort of thing.

I have always heard of the ridiculous film Caligula as the example par exellence of cinematic excess and the devolution of "reality" into a historical pornography.  But now I kind of get it.  Roman's were just pornographic, period. 

And seeing the dates of Nero and Tiberius they reigned during Christ's lifetime, and it finally struck me the kind of world Christ was born into: a colony on the fringe of pornography.  Crosses lined the roads heading back to Rome as a reverberation or hint of what happened under the Caesars behind closed doors.  A lot of the history may be racy and overblown, but if just a fraction of that kind of evil was actually present during Christ's generation on earth, it is scary to think about the spirit of the age.

Christ's message to the Jews was one of fulfillment and consolation, but to the Greeks (and Romans) it was foolish mainly because it was so counter-cultural and just plain odd---the morality that was practiced at the time was precisely amorality: morality was non-existent.  Just as John was beheaded for preaching against a combination of incest and adultery, Jesus' followers preached a gospel that was moral in an amoral world.

It is useless to compare Rome to America or Europe or Venezuela for that matter.  What is important is that we realize that Jesus was against the Empire, and so were his followers.  The Empire stood for everything evil in this world, it was a pit that the darkness of hell rose up from.  When Paul talks about powers and principalities he is talking about Rome, and about every other power in this world.  What we see on the news should not surprise us.  The powers and principalities are out to get us, to widdle Christians down, or, in this new fangled thing we call democracy, to stuff us into an apathetic plurality or some reactionary body politik.  We must always remember that only the kingdom of God will stand against these forces holed up in the darkness of powers, principalities, and empire.