1 Timothy 2:9–10

1 Timothy 2:9–10

Worldly Authorities: Rome’s Laws – Part 1

AI: Paul instructed saints to behave differently from the world system.

SP: God’s household behaves different than the world’s household.

Worldly Authorities: Rome’s Laws – Part 1

1 Timothy 2:9–15: [L]ikewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.

This morning, I’d like to document how God used first-century Roman laws in existence at the time Paul wrote to prompt Paul to write these words. To do so, I’d like to explore two areas:

I. The History of Roman Law

II. Specific Dress Codes.

The History of Roman Law. Every nation’s laws evolve over time. Roman law was no different. Scholars trace the beginning of Roman law to the Laws of the Twelve Tables in 449 B.C. Over the next few centuries, laws were added and expanded to address changing times. For example, in 169 B.C., a law called Lex Voconia[1]prohibited women from large inheritances by testament.[2]Yet, by 44 B.C., we find laws granting women the right both to inherit property and to divorce their husband, which provided them some measure of financial independence.[3]With this newfound social freedom, women began to marry less and use their independence more (as the poets and playwrights last week reflected). This went largely unopposed (and in many ways endorsed by Roman laws) until the census of 28 B.C.

That census of 28 B.C. revealed a startling and sobering fact, which in many ways, changed the course of history because it led to two acts of sweeping legislation aimed at social engineering. Let me explain.

The 28 B.C. census revealed a sharp decrease in birth rates in the Roman Empire.[4]To Octavian Augustus, the emergence of “new wives” or the “new women’s movement” was a problem. As women gained financial independence, they were marrying less and committing adultery more. The decrease in child births threatened the existence of Rome for in two ways: (1) Rome was producing less future taxpayers to fund the national defense and (2) less future soldiers to defend and expand Rome’s interests in the world.

Octavian Augustus responded with urgency. By 17 B.C., he had worked with the senate to pass two sweeping acts of legislation aimed at rewarding marriage and childbearing and penalizing singleness and adultery: (1) the Julian Law Concerning Marriage Orders[5] and (2) the Julian Law Concerning the Suppression of Adultery.[6]A flavor of some of those laws were as follows:

· Adultery was made a public crime with a special court to adjudicate it.

· A husband was legally required to prosecute his adulterous wife or face exile.

· Adulteresses were required to wear a certain color toga as a symbol of shame.

· Adulteresses were no longer free to wear the marriage veil.

· Men, ages 25–60, were taxed if childless and single (by choice or by widowhood).

· Women, ages 20–50, were taxed if childless and single (by choice or by widowhood).

· Women with three children accrued more inheritance rights and tax breaks.

· Freedmen with three children got protection from claims on their estate.[7]

· Widows were required to remarry within two years or be taxed.[8]

Men and women both exploited loopholes by divorcing and remarrying frequently.[9]At the same time Paul wrote (60–62 A.D.), Seneca—an advisor to Emperor Nero—described the societal sentiment (written sometime between 56-62 A.D.):

Is any woman ashamed of being divorced . . . they leave their homes in order to marry others, and marry only in order to be divorced? . . . Women learn do to what they hear so much about. . . . A woman is frumpish and old-fashioned if she does not know that “adultery with one paramour is nicknamed as marriage.”[10]

Paul lived in the same times and places that Seneca described. For our purposes, 1 Timothy reflects Paul’s implicit knowledge of several specific Roman statutes.

Dress Code Laws. Thomas A. J. McGinn, a professor of history at Vanderbilt University, rightly states, “In classical antiquity, you were what you wore.”[11]Octavian Augustus’s legislation distinguished three types of women by dress code: (1) the modest wife; (2) the adulteress; and, (3) the prostitute. The modest wife wore a stola (long, pleated toga), a vittae hairstyle (with a woolen headband band), and a marriage veil.[12]She was prohibited from wearing gold ornaments or clothes bordered in purple.[13]

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The adulteress wore a tunica (short undergarment) with no institia (the pleated design) and a dark toga.[14]We have no surviving statues of adulteresses (Rome did not exalt such behavior), only the written code, but we do have a picture of Julia, the daughter of Octavian Augustus. She was a sexually immoral and flaunted it. You can see she has no head covering and a more flamboyant appearance.

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Prostitutes were divided into two groups: the lower class and the higher class (hetairai). The lower class wore clothing similar to the adulteress. The higher class (female escorts) wore extravagant hair designs, luxurious jewelry including gold, pearls, makeup, and flashy clothing bordered in purple.[15]

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This is a famous painting of a hetairai by Lawrence Alma-Tameda from 1868, depicting a symposium (discussed below).. Notice, she has braided hair, non-traditional dress, and makeup/jewelry.

The hetairai exercised considerable influence over prominent men and generated wealth for themselves through sexual favors for payment during night life. For example, the normal prostitute might charge an obol (the smallest coin in Athens) while the hetaira would charge 3000 obols.[16]

Supporting evidence for this is replete. At the time Paul wrote, Seneca (advisor to Emperor Nero) wrote to his mother in 42/43 A.D. His letter illustrates the point:

Jewels have not moved you, nor pearls . . . You have never defiled your face with paints and cosmetics. Never have you fancied the kind of dress that exposed greater nakedness by being removed. Your only ornament, the kind of beauty that time does not tarnish, is the great honor of modesty.[17]

Obviously, his mother’s graceful modesty stood in stark contrast to the flamboyant and morally depraved hetairai.

Paul almost certainly was referencing the high-end prostitutes in 1 Timothy 2:9–10. They were called, hetaira (plural, hetairai). Octavian Augustus’s new legislation carved out exceptions for the heitairai in the state-mandated dress code due to their role in an important cultural custom, the symposium.

The symposium was an important social event in Roman culture. It consisted of an evening party in someone’s house where they ate and drank together. Political or philosophical subjects were debated, entertainment provided, and business connections made. The hetairai prostitutes were educated, high end prostitutes similar to “female escorts” or “socialites” today.[18]They would be hired to accompany men to the symposium. Some hetairai were Roman citizens. Others might be refined women captured in war and assimilated into Roman cities. They provided companionship and entertainment to men at the symposium. Often, the hetaira would provide entertainment by speaking on a subject in which she had been educated in her country. Later in the evening, the “after-dinners” occurred in which drunkenness and sexual immorality with the hetairaiwas common. Keep in mind, the symposiums were dinner parties in private homes, which may have caused some cultural syncretism in the Christian congregations. They met in homes, too.

Understanding the symposiums and the role of the hetairai is important to what is happening in 1 Timothy 2. Like the secular symposiums, the early congregations met in homes and enjoyed meals together, too. New converts naturally might conflate Christian assemblies with secular symposiums. When Paul states, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet” he likely had the hetairai’s role in the symposiums in his mind. This is why he issued the command to congregations in “every place” (1 Tim. 2:8) and in the context of the hetairai dress code.

Timeless Principle

You are what you wear.

Present Age Use

Paul isn’t talking so much about putting on certain style clothes as he is putting on spiritual clothes—although the two can relate sometimes. He uses words like “modesty,” “self-control,” and “good works.” Whatever was happening in Ephesus, it wasn’t those godly virtues. It was arrogance, haughtiness, aggressiveness, and gaudiness.

In an earlier letter, Paul speaks about taking off the things of the world and putting on the things of God. Colossians 3:12–13:

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

To the Romans he spoke similarly. Romans 13:13–14:

Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarrelling or jealousy. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh.

When a certain dress style and appearance promotes the world’s sinful ways, cast off the works of darkness and walk as children of light. Those in the Christian faith should not dress like the world’s prostitutes. Paul’s point is: if you cloak your heart in the right clothes, you’ll cloak your body in the right clothes, too.

[1]The Voconian Law. [2]The law valued large inheritances at 100,000 asses or more. [3] By 9 A.D., the lex Papia Poppaea (The Law of Papias Poppaea) granted full inheritance rights to married mothers of three or four children. [4]See Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows, 49. [5] Latin, lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus. [6] Latin, lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis. [7]Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows, 40–42, 55, 137–38. [8]Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows, 138. The lex Papia Poppaea of 9 A.D. specified this law more clearly. [9]See Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows, 48. [10] Seneca on Benefits in Bohn’s Classical Library, trans. by Aubrey Stewart (London: George Bell & Sons, 1887), 65. Accessible online: https://archive.org/details/seneca-on-benefits_202406/page/n3/mode/2up. The specific reference is On Beneficiis 3.16.2. [11]T. A. J. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality and Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 162. [12]See Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows, 43, 82, and 84. [13]See Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows, 43–44. [14]See Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows, 42–43. [15]See Roman Wives, Roman Widows, 43–44, 72, 80–81, 100, 104–06, and 108. [16]See Cartwright, “Hetairai.” [17]Seneca, Ad Helviam, 16.3–5. [18]See Mark Cartwright, “Hetaira,” in World History Encyclopedia, January 22, 2021. Accessible online: https://www.worldhistory.org/Hetaira/.