ABSTRACT
In his Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Giorgio Agamben invokes the archaic Roman figure of the homo sacer as a central element in his argument. The homo sacer held an anomalous position in religious law: “It is not permitted to sacrifice him, yet he who kills him will not be condemned for homicide.” Agamben describes the homo sacer as the “originary figure of life taken into the sovereign ban.” Agamben’s discussion provides the basis for my exploration of some of the cultural dynamics enabling the formation of a Christian identity in the context of Roman imperial sovereignty. By comparing the representation of victims of the Roman games in Martial’s poetry and Christian martyr Acts, I offer that a new Roman sovereignty and its effects contributed to the appeal of the Christian movement in the early imperial period.
