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The provinces of Epirus and Macedonia, although divided into distinct regions by their mountains, were important for the Roman Empire, particularly because they were crossed by the via Egnatia which snaked its way eastwards, serving as the vital link between Rome and Constantinople at a time when insecurity was increasing along the Danubian frontier. From the middle of the third century, cities in this part of the Empire were under threat and their fortifications were reinforced in the fifth (Thessalonika) and sixth centuries (Byllis under Justininian). There was prosperity in the fourth century and beginning of the fifth. During the fifth century, the houses of Philippi were partly transformed into workshops. The sixth century was difficult and the second half was especially bleak. However, contacts between east and west were still maintained, along with local production. From 540–550, however, barbarian invasions and plague worsened the general situation. Graves appeared inside the city walls. Archaeology (Slav pottery and fibulae) and texts (Miracula Sancti Demetrii) all demonstrate how hard times were from the 580s to the 630s.

This chapter argues that Luke narrates the Christian mission to the Gentiles in Acts as an apocalypse (e.g., Luke 2:32). At its core, the Christian mission claims to be a revelation of God. Inasmuch as this revelation is carried in the formation of a people (“church”)—rather than merely being a list of academic theses—it entails a necessary challenge to constitutive patterns of pagan life. Embracing the theological vision of the Christian gospel simultaneously creates a new cultural reality. That this process of revelation and formation inherently destabilizes essential assumptions and practices of Mediterranean culture emerges paradigmatically in the scenes in Lystra, Philippi, Athens, and Ephesus (Acts 14, 16, 17, and 19, respectively). These passages, read narratively and in connection to their Graeco-Roman contexts, thus constitute the exegetical lens through which the problem of cultural destabilization is examined.

Evangelization of the Celts at Pessinus. Instead of ministering at Troas, Paul crossed to Europe, and in the process experienced his first sea voyage. Paul’s attitude towards women ministers in Philippi, where one of them acted as his patron. Lack of patronage in Thessalonica obliged him to adopt a lifestyle based on the workshop, but his preaching filled the void left by the co-option of Cabirus into the official cult of the city.

This chapter argues that Philippi and Thessalonica were probably the two communities in Macedonia (a Roman province) that gave Paul the greatest happiness. However, the chapter examines why Paul would have left Thessalonica other than for the reason given by Luke. The chapter also suggests Paul's teaching on the escathon, and the misinterpretation by the Thessalonians of his teachings, may have been the reason why he was attacked in Thessalonica. It is believed that Paul's teaching of Jesus filled a spiritual vacuum for the proletariats of Thessalonica. The characteristic features of all Pauline letters are cited in this section. It is also revealed that Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians is actually a compilation of two letters.

Philippi was the first European city to be evangelized by Paul. The chapter argues that Paul's preference for Philippi was surprising as it is inland, contradicting his earlier partiality to coastal cities like that of Corinth and Ephesus. Paul realized the significance of keeping in touch with his early foundations. It was only two years later that he became aware that facility of communications had to be a critical factor in the choice of a missionary base. Although the New Testament contains only one canonical letter to Philippi, some biblical scholars view that it is actually a series of two to three epistles. These letters were believed to have been written while Paul was incarcerated. Paul faced the possibility of execution during his incarceration, however, this appealed to him as this was a way of reuniting with Christ. Fortunately, it was not yet the right time, and Paul was freed.

The causal connection between the triumvirate and the civil war is stated in the opening lines of an ode to Asinius Pollio, in which the sometime republican Horace salutes the birth and development of Asinius' work on the civil war. To Horace, many years after the event, the battle of Philippi remained the moment at which ‘Valour's self was beaten down’ (cum fracta virtus). This view, not unlike that of Cremutius, but clearly set in a poem that views everything with disenchantment, appears in a book that opens with a somewhat nervous announcement of Pollio's forthcoming historical work. It is the ode of ‘a shield ingloriously abandoned’, a nostalgic ode looking back on a politically critical moment.

This chapter concerns an inscription dated to 41 BCE, which contains two orders issued by Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XV (Caesarion). These protect the interests of Alexandrian landholders in nomes in the Delta against what they claim are excessive tax exactions that go beyond what the queen had ordered. Cleopatra, faced with an external crisis produced by the defeat of the forces of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi and the ascendancy of Mark Antony, needed firm support from the Alexandrian propertied classes. In this case, the price of that support was exemption from a variety of special taxes. The language of the inscription preserves some of the rhetoric of the court hearing, probably from the speeches of the landowners' lawyers.

This chapter presents the orations that Himerius made when he was making his way to Constantinople after having been summoned by the emperor Julian. As he traveled northwards, he made stops at Thessalonica and Philippi before reaching Constantinople. In each of these cities, he delivered at least one public oration. These three surviving orations (Orations 39–41) are presented here, along with a much earlier oration (62), delivered in Constantinople. Himerius arrived in Constantinople some time during Julian's stay there, from December 11, 361, until the middle of June 362. Himerius's primary audience for Oration 41 was not the emperor (or a large number of Constantinopolitans), but his fellow Mithraic initiates. All four orations, being speeches of arrival of a sort, praise the cities in which they were delivered.

This chapter offers a brief summary of what can be known of Horace’s life, based on information provided by Horace himself in his poetry and by an ancient biography that preserves material from the Lives of the Poets by Suetonius (early second century CE). It traces Horace’s remarkable progress from humble origins as the son of a freedman, through his brief service in the army of Brutus following the assassination of Julius Caesar, to a close association with many of the leading figures in Roman society, most conspicuously his patron and friend Maecenas and the emperor Augustus.

After Caesar’s murder, Servilia had to act to help Brutus and Cassius. From now on, our sources improve. She was, on and off, with the assassins at a villa, involved in deliberations and negotiations. On 5 June 44 a meeting of the Senate was to authorize Brutus and Cassius to leave their duties as praetors and go abroad on a grain-commission. They took this as an insult. A family council at Antium in early June decided that they would leave. Servilia promised to get the grain-commission dropped from the decree. Planning for the games (ludi Apollinares) to be held in Brutus’s absence involved Atticus and Servilia. The games were a qualified success. Servilia led the family in protecting both Brutus and Cassius in their absence and Lepidus’s children. She continued to lead after Philippi. We do not know when she died, but it may have been many years later.

Even in the mid first century ce, Roman Philippi was still marked by its colonization by Roman veterans from the civil wars at the time of Augustus. One example of this is the cult of the god Silvanus there, a cult rarely attested in the East. The Silvanus cult celebrated its members’ donations, including the small donation of fifteen denarii offered for a painting. The small donations of this cult allow us to investigate poverty and economics in the Roman world. The Letter to the Philippians is full of financial language, indicating complex business ties between Paul and those to whom he wrote. The inscription and the Letter to the Philippians reveal economic engagement at low levels, evidence of the ways in which the less than elite sought to contribute to each other and their God(s). This theological and economic imaginary resonates with critiques of neoliberalism today.