*In lieu of a ☧ost about Onward, my new project helping people find meaning in faith and service, I wanted to share a bit of the Bible tumbling around my head. But before I do that, I should invite you to join me at 5pm tomorrow, either in-person (if you’re in SoCal) or by Zoom, for the first session of From Darkness to Light, my six-part Bible study on soldiers.
Lydia was a military dependent
Lydia the porphyropōlis, or purple-seller, features prominently in Acts 16 when Psaul is in Philippi during his 2nd missionary journey. Luke calls the city “a Roman colony” (v.12), which the Latin-speaking colonizers called Colonia Victrix, Victory Colony, because it was the birthplace of the Roman Empire. In 43 BCE, the plains surrounding Philippi served as the battlefield where Julius Caesar’s assassins were defeated by future emperors Octavian and Marc Antony. Philippi was to Romans what Appomattox is to Americans.
After their 20 years of service, legionaries would be allowed to marry and receive a plot of land in a colony where they were expected to help recruit and train the next military generation. Philippi’s special place in the imperial imagination meant only the most Roman of Romans could hope to raise a family and live out their days there. If Lydia owned property in the Victory Colony, it probably came to her through a light-skinned Italian veteran, the same through whom she would have received the only legal status women were afforded, as either a daughter or wife. In modern parlance, she was a military dependent.