Luke and Juvenal at the Crossroads: Space, Movement, and Morality in the Roman Empire

Abstract

One of the more important turns in recent studies on the ancient world has in fact been the engagement of the dominant iconic image and spectacle that Rome—as reality, illusion, fiction—played in the Greek East. As Jonathan Z. Smith once noted, “It is the relationship to the human body, and our experience of it, that orients us in space, that confers meaning to place. Human beings are not placed, they bring place into being.” This particular formulation fits the theme in this chapter quite well. As much as East and West, Luke and Juvenal, intersect with respect to a common conceptual core related to space, movement, and morality in the Roman empire, it is at the crossroads of anxiety and aspiration that we perceive most clearly the critical divide between the two. Keywords:Greek East; Juvenal; Luke; morality; movement; Roman Empire; space