Domitian
c. 51 CE–c. 96 CE · Rome
Last Flavian emperor (r. 81–96 CE), whose autocratic rule ended in assassination and a senatorial damnatio memoriae. Suetonius records that he enforced the fiscus Judaicus — the tax on Jews instituted after the Temple's destruction — with notable harshness, using informers to pursue both practicing Jews and those concealing Jewish ancestry or observance. Cassius Dio reports that in 95 CE Domitian executed his kinsman, the consul Flavius Clemens, and exiled Clemens's wife Flavia Domitilla on charges of "atheism" and drifting into Jewish customs. Later Christian tradition (Eusebius) reinterpreted these events as a persecution of Christians and placed the apostle John's exile to Patmos and the writing of Revelation in his reign, though the evidence for any systematic persecution is debated.
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RomeרומאItaly
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About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Silius Italicus, Tiberius Catius, Musonius Rufus, Quintilian, Titus, Martial, Valerius Flaccus, Gaius
Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Domitian’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Domitian’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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