Holidays

Ancient Romans celebrated a festival honoring Pax on January 3.

Ancient Romans celebrated a festival honoring Pax on January 3. Pax was the goddess of peace, but Roman peace was not what the word implies today. Pax Romana meant the absence of organized military resistance to Roman authority. It was peace as the Romans defined it: the peace of the conquered. The Temple of Peace, the Templum Pacis, stood in the Roman Forum near the Colosseum. Emperor Vespasian built it in 75 AD to celebrate the end of the Jewish-Roman War, which had destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple. The irony of building a peace temple to commemorate a brutal military campaign was lost on nobody, then or now. The temple displayed spoils looted from Jerusalem, including sacred objects from the destroyed Jewish Temple. The festival on January 3 included offerings at Pax's altar and public prayers for the continuation of peace. By the imperial period, the celebration had become intertwined with the broader cult of the emperor, whose person was considered the guarantor of peace. Coins depicting Pax holding an olive branch were common propaganda. The message was clear: peace existed because Rome was strong enough to enforce it. The concept of Pax Romana influenced every imperial peace that followed. Pax Britannica, Pax Americana: each describes a period of relative stability enforced by a dominant military power. The original Roman version lasted roughly 200 years, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius. It ended with the crisis of the third century, when civil wars and barbarian invasions demonstrated that Roman peace had been contingent on Roman power all along.