Culture

Peace is more than the absence of war. St. Augustine famously defined it as 'the tranquility of order', the deep calm that comes when everything is rightly arranged: a soul at peace with God, a person at peace within himself, a society ordered by justice. The Romans were proud of their Pax Romana, but it was a peace enforced by the sword, real and valuable, yet fragile, resting on legions and fear. Into that world came one the prophet Isaiah had called the 'Prince of Peace' (Isaiah 9:6), and the angels sang at his birth, 'on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased' (Luke 2:14). Christ's peace is different in kind: 'Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you' (John 14:27). It is the gift of being reconciled to God, a peace that can hold even in suffering, as we saw in St. Lawrence and the martyrs. The opposite vices are not only violence and war, but also the inner restlessness and division that come from sin. True peace, the saints teach, is the fruit of love and justice, never merely of force.

By the 1700s the colonies held a growing, mostly rural people. Most families farmed; children worked from a young age, and the home was the center of work, schooling, and prayer. Towns held meetings to decide local affairs, and each colony had an elected assembly that controlled taxes and laws. This habit of governing themselves, alongside the long English tradition of rights, slowly built an American expectation of self-government that would matter greatly in 1776.

In the 1730s and 1740s a wave of religious revival swept the colonies, the First Great Awakening. Fiery preachers like Jonathan Edwards (whose sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' is famous) and the traveling Englishman George Whitefield drew huge crowds, urging a personal, heartfelt faith. The Awakening crossed colony lines, weakened established churches, and taught colonists that they could judge authority for themselves, another seed of revolution.

But colonial prosperity rested in part on a great injustice. From the 1600s on, the transatlantic slave trade carried millions of captive Africans across the ocean in the brutal 'Middle Passage.' Enslaved people were treated as property, bought and sold, and forced to labor without pay or freedom, especially on Southern plantations growing tobacco, rice, and indigo. Colonial laws made slavery lifelong and hereditary, passing it to children. This was a grave evil, contrary to the dignity every human being holds as a child of God, and it would stain the new nation from its birth.

Key facts: - Colonial life: mostly farming families; town meetings; elected assemblies - Self-government: colonial assemblies controlled taxes; a seed of 1776 - First Great Awakening (1730s-40s): a religious revival - Jonathan Edwards; George Whitefield, the traveling preacher - Transatlantic slave trade; the brutal 'Middle Passage' - Slavery made lifelong and hereditary by colonial law; centered on Southern plantations

When Augustus became emperor, he understood that art could do what armies could not: shape how millions saw their ruler. The Augustus of Prima Porta, a marble statue, is a masterpiece of this 'image program.' Notice the change from last week's honest, wrinkled Republican busts: here Augustus is shown young, calm, idealized, more like a Greek god than a real aging man, his hand raised as a confident leader, his breastplate carved with scenes of Roman triumph, a small Cupid at his feet hinting he descends from the goddess Venus. Everything sends a message: this man is destined, divine, the bringer of peace. That message of peace is carved in marble on the Ara Pacis ('Altar of Peace'), built to celebrate the Pax Romana, its reliefs showing a serene procession and a fruitful, flourishing land. Roman architecture reached new heights too. The Colosseum (completed AD 80) could seat 50,000 for the games. The Pantheon (rebuilt c. AD 125) is the marvel: a vast domed temple 'to all the gods,' its perfect concrete dome (still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome) open at the top to a single circle of sky, the oculus. And at Pompeii, buried by Vesuvius in AD 79 and frozen in time, vivid wall frescoes show us ordinary Roman homes in astonishing color. Roman art served the state, the emperor, and the gods, the same skills that would soon be turned to serving the one true God in Christian basilicas.

Add today's vocabulary to your glossary. Write one sentence: 'How did Augustus use art to send a message about peace and his own rule?'