Sermon Tone Analysis

In Hostile Territory

How can your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ?

By standing fast in One spirit

Striving together for the faith fo the gospel

and not being terrified by your adversaries

A character – The Philippian Church Member / The Manchester Church Member

Et Tu, Brute?

March 15, 44BC

On the Ides of March of 44 BC, a day used by the Romans as a deadline for settling debts,[9] the conspirators staged a game of gladiatorial sport at the Theatre of Pompey.

The gladiators were provided by Decimus Brutus in case their services were needed.

They waited in the great hall of the theatre's quadriportico.[10]

Caesar, however, was late, having received several warnings in the previous days.

Therefore, Decimus Brutus was sent to fetch him, and managed to persuade Caesar to attend so as not to disappoint the Senate.

Mark Antony, having vaguely learned of the plot the night before from a terrified Liberator named Servilius Casca,[11] and fearing the worst, went to head Caesar off.

The plotters, however, had anticipated this and, fearing that Antony would come to Caesar's aid, had arranged for Trebonius to intercept him just as he approached the portico of the Theatre of Pompey, where the session was to be held, and detain him outside (Plutarch, however, assigns this action to delay Antony to Decimus Brutus).

When he heard the commotion from the Senate chamber, Antony fled.

According to Plutarch, as Caesar arrived at the Senate, Lucius Tillius Cimber presented him with a petition to recall his exiled brother.[12]

The other conspirators crowded round to offer their support.

Both Plutarch and Suetonius say that Caesar waved him away, but Cimber grabbed Caesar's shoulders and pulled down Caesar's toga.

Caesar then cried to Cimber, "Why, this is violence!"

("Ista quidem vis est!").[13]

At the same time, Casca produced his dagger and made a glancing thrust at the dictator's neck.

Caesar turned around quickly and caught Casca by the arm.

According to Plutarch, he said in Latin, "Casca, you villain, what are you doing?"[14] Casca, frightened, shouted "Help, brother!" in Greek ("ἄδελφε, βοηθεῖ", "adelphe, boethei").

Within moments, the entire group, including Brutus, were stabbing the dictator.

Caesar attempted to get away, but, blinded by blood in his eyes, he tripped and fell; the men continued stabbing him as he lay defenseless on the lower steps of the portico.

According to Eutropius, sixty or more men participated in the assassination.

Caesar was stabbed 23 times.[15][16]

Suetonius relates that a physician who performed an autopsy on Caesar established that only one wound (the second one to his chest that pierced his aorta) had been fatal.

This autopsy report (the earliest known post-mortem report in history) describes that Caesar's death was mostly attributable to blood loss from his stab wounds.[17]

March 15, 44BC

Caesar was killed at the base of the Curia in the Theatre of Pompey.[18]

The dictator's last words are a contested subject among scholars and historians.

Suetonius himself says he said nothing,[13] nevertheless, he mentions that others have written that Caesar's last words were the Greek phrase "καὶ σύ, τέκνον;"[19] (transliterated as "Kai su, teknon?": "You too, child?" in English).[20]

Plutarch also reports that Caesar said nothing, pulling his toga over his head when he saw Brutus among the conspirators.[21]

The version best known in the English-speaking world is the Latin phrase "Et tu, Brute?" ("You too, Brutus?");[22][23] this derives from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599), where it actually forms the first half of a macaronic line: "Et tu, Brute?

Then fall, Caesar."

This has no basis in historical fact.

Shakespeare was making use of a phrase already in common use at the time.[original

research?][24]

According to Plutarch, after the assassination, Brutus stepped forward as if to say something to his fellow senators not involved in the plot; they, however, fled the building.[25]

Brutus and his companions then marched to the Capitol while crying out to their beloved city: "People of Rome, we are once again free!".

They were met with silence, as the citizens of Rome had locked themselves inside their houses as soon as the rumour of what had taken place had begun to spread.

According to Suetonius, all the conspirators made off, and he (Caesar) lay there lifeless for some time, and finally three common slaves put him on a litter and carried him home, with one arm hanging down.[26]

A wax statue of Caesar was erected in the Forum displaying the 23 stab wounds.[27]

A crowd who had amassed there started a fire, which badly damaged neighboring buildings.[citation

needed] In the ensuing years, the Liberators' civil war resulted in the end of the Republic and the rise of Imperial Rome.

Julius Caesar, The Roman Dictator , fell in Hostile Territory because his house was divided.

The Aftermath

October 42BC

The result unforeseen by the assassins was that Caesar's death precipitated the end of the Roman Republic.[114]

The Roman middle and lower classes, with whom Caesar was immensely popular and had been since before Gaul, became enraged that a small group of aristocrats had killed their champion.

Antony, who had been drifting apart from Caesar, capitalized on the grief of the Roman mob and threatened to unleash them on the Optimates, perhaps with the intent of taking control of Rome himself.

To his surprise and chagrin, Caesar had named his grandnephew Gaius Octavius his sole heir (hence the name Octavian), bequeathing him the immensely potent Caesar name and making him one of the wealthiest citizens in the Republic.[115]

📷Mark Antony

The crowd at the funeral boiled over, throwing dry branches, furniture, and even clothing on to Caesar's funeral pyre, causing the flames to spin out of control, seriously damaging the Forum.

The mob then attacked the houses of Brutus and Cassius, where they were repelled only with considerable difficulty, ultimately providing the spark for the civil war, fulfilling at least in part Antony's threat against the aristocrats.[116]

Antony did not foresee the ultimate outcome of the next series of civil wars, particularly with regard to Caesar's adopted heir.

Octavian, aged only 18 when Caesar died, proved to have considerable political skills, and while Antony dealt with Decimus Brutus in the first round of the new civil wars, Octavian consolidated his tenuous position.

In the mid-first century, Philippi, although not large, was a strategically located city with a rich heritage and distinctive culture.

It spilled down a mountainside and onto a fertile, well-watered plain about ten miles inland from the important port of Neapolis.

The Egnatian Way, a critical artery of commerce linking the city of Rome with its eastern provinces, passed through the city center.2

To combat Brutus and Cassius, who were massing an enormous army in Greece, Antony needed soldiers, the cash from Caesar's war chests, and the legitimacy that Caesar's name would provide for any action he took against them.

With the passage of the lex Titia on 27 November 43 BC,[117] the Second Triumvirate was officially formed, composed of Antony, Octavian, and Caesar's loyal cavalry commander Lepidus.[118]

It formally deified Caesar as Divus Iulius in 42 BC, and Caesar Octavian henceforth became Divi filius ("Son of the divine").[119]

Because Caesar's clemency had resulted in his murder, the Second Triumvirate reinstated the practice of proscription, abandoned since Sulla.[120]

It engaged in the legally sanctioned killing of a large number of its opponents to secure funding for its 45 legions in the second civil war against Brutus and Cassius.[121]

Antony and Octavian defeated them at Philippi.[122]

📷Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, Caesar's adopted heir

Afterward, Mark Antony formed an alliance with Caesar's lover, Cleopatra, intending to use the fabulously wealthy Egypt as a base to dominate Rome.

A third civil war broke out between Octavian on one hand and Antony and Cleopatra on the other.

This final civil war, culminating in the latter's defeat at Actium in 31 BC and suicide in Egypt in 30 BC, resulted in the permanent ascendancy of Octavian, who became the first Roman emperor, under the name Caesar Augustus, a name conveying religious, rather than political, authority

Mark Antony, Co-regent of Roman, fell in Hostile Territory because his house was divided

The Battle of Philippi

Winter 31/30BC

Octavian/Caesar August Wins a victory over Mark Anthony/Cleopatra

Although located many miles east of Rome in a province whose common tongue was Greek, Philippi had been a Roman colony since Mark Anthony and Octavian had defeated the forces of Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Julius Caesar, at the site in 42 b.c.3 Large numbers of Philippians were descended from the soldiers who settled in the city after the battle or from those who came to the city slightly less than a decade later in the wake of Octavian’s victory over Mark Anthony.4

As a result Latin was the common language in Philippi, and the city proudly maintained a Roman character.5

Its architecture and administration, for example, appear to have been modeled on Rome’s, and worship of the emperor was an important element in the religious life of the city.6

No mystery, then, shrouds Paul’s reasoning for choosing Philippi as the base for his first evangelistic effort in Macedonia.

He chose one of the most important cities in the region for his efforts.

Mark Antony, Co-regent of Roman, fell in Hostile Territory because his house was divided

Christ Birth

6-4 BC

Jesus was born under the rule of Caesar August

Paul’s Second Missionary Journey

51AD

That he went to Macedonia at all, however, was not a matter of his own choice.

As so often in his labors, his own plans were overruled by God’s clear direction.8

In this case, despite his intention to take the gospel to Bithynia, a region in north central Asia Minor, the Spirit of Jesus led him and his companions away from there to Troas on Asia Minor’s northwestern coast ().

There, Paul experienced a nighttime vision in which a Macedonian appeared to him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” ().

So Paul and his companions, Silas, Timothy, and Luke, set sail for Macedonia.9

Their ship landed at Neapolis, and from there they followed the Via Egnatia to Philippi.

Their stay, although only several days, was eventful.

On Paul’s first missionary journey he had made a habit of going first to the synagogue in the towns to which he traveled (), but in Philippi he found only a place outside the city gate and by a river where some women who worshiped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob gathered each Sabbath for prayer ().

Presumably, not enough Jewish men lived in Philippi to form a synagogue, and the women may have sought out the site because Jewish worship was not welcome in this deeply Roman city.

When Paul, Timothy, and Silas left Philippi at the request of the city magistrates, they left behind a diverse group of believers.

The wealthy merchant Lydia and her household believed (), as did a jailer and his family (), and perhaps a slave girl ().

Apparently by the time Paul and Silas left, the group was meeting in Lydia’s house (), no doubt the largest residence among them.

This was certainly not a homogeneous social unit, but God had called each believer from her or his sphere to be part of his people and, although they lived in a highly stratified society, they had no choice but to work at unity.