From the first lines of Norma's entrance — in which the druids, chafing under the degradation they suffer from the Romans, are poised to rebel — Ms. Meade sounded in complete command of the role, delivering the character's charged, defiant dramatic recitative with gleaming sound and incisive attack.
"His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come," Mr. Knohl said.
Throughout the Parthian wars, tribal groups along the Rhine and Danube took advantage of Rome's preoccupation with the eastern frontier (and the plague that the Romans suffered from after bringing it back from the east) and launched a series of incursions into Roman territories, including the Marcomannic Wars.
Other promising young Romans suffered a similar retardation at about the same time.
The Romans suffered losses, and, after a reverse on the walls of Hatra, Trajan abandoned the campaign and died on his way home.
In Spain in the second century B.C., the Romans suffered humiliating defeats and required several decades to surmount the tactics of the Lusitanians and Celtiberians.
Although it suffered during the Roman civil wars in the last decades of the republic, it prospered under the empire (after 27 bc).
Then, after the olive, came the final pope, "Peter the Roman," whose flock would suffer "many tribulations" not the least of which was the end of the world.
The first involves our ancient past: simply, Christians did not suffer persistent (or even frequent) persecution from the Roman authorities.
The Gospel writers therefore favored blaming the Jews rather than the Romans for Jesus' death -- especially since Roman legions suffered severe casualties in the brutal Jewish rebellion against Rome that resulted in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE.
