Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/754

Rh 730 R O M R O M from the outset the community had not been in the habit of observing the Mosaic law. At most it was observed in isolated details, and as new members continued to be added from the outer heathen world these relics of Jewish custom received less and less prominence, fading away in presence of the faith in Jesus as the lledeemer. It is possible that influences from Pauline circles may also have come into play, but of this we cannot be sure. If such were the circumstances in which the majority of the community in Rome had been brought to their attitude of freedom towards the law, that attitude was one of fact rather than of principle. The law was not observed ; but there was no clear consciousness that it had no obligatory force. A community thus placed had no firm basis from which to withstand a Judaizing agitation when it should arise. In such an event there was the greatest danger to its very existence. It is here, then, that we must look for the real occasion of the present epistle. Paul was afraid that the Judaizers who had wrought with such effect within the churches founded by himself in Galatia and Corinth might also lay hold on that at Rome. Perhaps they had already arrived there and the apostle knew it. At all events he perceived a threatening danger. He was unwill- ing to delay till he could visit the church personally, and accordingly sent forthwith an elaborate document in estab- lishment and vindication of the gospel as free from the law, so that the Roman Christians might be confirmed in their free practice and might be strengthened to withstand the agitations of Judaizers. This is the explanation of the fact that a letter addressed to a Gentile Christian church, not in bondage to the law, is yet almost entirely devoted to the refutation of the Judaistic positions. The genuineness of the epistle is practically undisputed ; not so, however, its integrity. Baur (as had already been done by Marcion in ancient times) disputed the genuine- ness of the last two chapters (xv., xvi.), chiefly on the ground that in them a spirit of concession towards the weak is urged in a wholly un-Pauline manner. Lucht l has sought to separate out the genuine from the spurious in these chapters in a very complicated manner, but substantially on the lines of Baur's criticism. The most thorough discussion of Baur's and Lucht's views is that of Mangold, 2 who has very convincingly shown that there is no real ground for refusing to attribute to the apostle the chapters in question. All the exhortations to concession do not, after all, go beyond the principle acted on by Paul himself (1 Cor. ix. 20), "to the Jews I became as a Jew that I might win the Jews." In two points, however, the defence does not hold : (1) the doxology at the close (Rom. xvi. 25-27) appears certainly to be from a later hand ; 3 (2) ch. xvi. 3-20 seems to be genuinely Pauline indeed, but not to belong to the present epistle. Not only is the large number of salutations in a letter addressed to a community personally unknown to the apostle in itself strange ; but salutations also occur addressed to per- sons whom one would expect to find rather at Ephesus than at Rome (ver. 3, Aquila and Priscilla ; ver. 5, Epsenetus) and in districts where the apostle had resided and laboured (xvi. 7, 9, 13). Not without reason, therefore, is it con- jectured that here we have a fragment of an epistle to the Ephesians which by mistake has come to be incorporated with that to the Romans. 4 1 Ueber die beiden letzten Kapiteldes Romerbriefes, Berlin, 1871. 2 Der- livmerbrief u. s. gesch. Vorausselz. , pp. 1-164. 3 See Mangold, op. tit., pp. 44-81. 4 See especially Mangold, op. tit., pp. 147-164. Lightfoot (St Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, 2d ed., pp. 169-176) has shown that many of the names met with in Rom. xvi. 3-20 are found precisely in Roman inscriptions of the period of the emperors, but the fact is more striking than convincing. The names in themselves are common. It is not to the names but to the persons characterized that we have The more recent literature relating to the Epistle to the Romans lias been fully catalogued and discussed in the work of Grafe (Ueber Veranlassung u. Zweck dcs llomerbriefes, Tiibingen, 1881). Tho most important works in the list have already been named in tho present article. (E. S*.) ROMANUS I. (Lecapenus), who shared the imperial throne with CONSTANTINE VII. (q.v.) and exercised all the real power from 919 to 944, was admiral of tho By- zantine fleet on the Danube when, hearing of the defeat of the army at Achelous (17th August 917), he resolved to sail for Constantinople. Popular caprice as well as his influence over his sailors aided his ambition, and, after the marriage of his daughter Helena to Constantine, he was first proclaimed " basileopater " in April 919 and afterwards crowned colleague of his son-in-law on 17th December of the same year. His reign, which was un- distinguished and uneventful, was terminated by his own sons Stephen and Constantine, who in 944 carried him off to the island of Prote and compelled him to become a monk. He died in 948. ROMANUS II., emperor of the East, succeeded his father Constantine VII. in 959 at the age of twenty-one, and died poisoned, it was believed, by his wife, Theophano in 963. He was a pleasure-loving sovereign, but showed judgment in the selection of his ministers. The great event of his reign was the conquest of Crete by Nicephorus Phocas. ROMANUS III. (Argyrus), emperor of the East, was an accomplished but otherwise undistinguished member of the Byzantine aristocracy when, summoned to the palace of the dying Constantine VIII., he was informed that he had been selected to marry one of the imperial princesses and succeed the emperor. His hesitation as already a married man was removed by his wife, who generously took the veil; and his union with Zoe and their joint coronation were celebrated on 19th November 1028. Two days later Constantine died. A serious defeat which Romanus sustained in person at Azaz in Syria, when marching to take possession of Aleppo, considerably im- paired the popularity among his subjects which he had sought to purchase by lavish concession to various classes, and soon afterwards he began to show symptoms of disease, attributed by many to slow poison administered by con- nivance of the empress. His death took place on llth April 1034, and he was forthwith succeeded by MICHAEL IV. (q.v.). ROMANUS IV. (Diogenes), emperor of the East from 1068 to 1071, was a member of a distinguished Cappa- docian family and had risen to distinction in the army when he was convicted of treason against the sons of Con- stantine X. While waiting execution he was summoned into the presence of their mother, Eudocia Macrembolitissa, the empress regent, whom he so fascinated that she granted him a free pardon and shortly afterwards married him. Taking the field soon after his coronation, he carried on three campaigns against the Saracens and Seljuk Turks without achieving any decisive success, and in a fourth he was disastrously defeated by Alp Arslan on the banks of the Araxes and taken prisoner. Released from captivity after promising to pay a large ransom and concluding a treaty of peace, he returned homewards only to find revolu- tion in full flood, and after a second defeat of his arms ly the troops of Michael VII. he was compelled to resign the empire and retire to the island of Prote, where he soon died in great misery. It was during this reign that by the surrender of Bari (15th April 1071) the Byzantine empire lost its last hold upon Italy. ROMAN WALL. See ANTONINUS, WALL OF, vol. ii. p. 139, and HADRIAN, WALL OF, vol. xi. p. 364. to look. But of these it is difficult to believe that they should all have been living in Rome.