So, my entire lecture is about answering that question:

To count as polyamory, it has to be “more than one partner, they all know about it, and everyone is cool with it.” In ancient Rome, as I explain, it was almost impossible to even find consensual relationships at all, and it’s not poly if it’s not consensual. I walk up the ladder of increasingly closer to poly cases, and end up at only one confirmed case of it.

Overall, I’d say Rome was in a better place for possible progress in that direction than any Christian culture since, but it was hardly a polyamorous society by any conceivable definition. For example, their harsh sex crime laws mandating (mainly elite female) monogamy were explicitly realpolitik and unpopular (unlike American society until very recently); but there was no popular resistance to the idea of monogamy or promotion of the idea of polyamory, and as my study shows, it was nearly impossible to find even a single real polyamorous relationship.

To illustrate what I mean: consider the middle-case I examine of high-end courtesans openly arranging partner-sharing contracts.

That was evidently more common than (so far as we know) actual poly relationships (like I do find one epitaph of), yet still very uncommon, and still not actually polyamory (the men would not have agreed but for having no choice, were not “cool with it” but just put up with it, and the woman was only there because she was paid to be, so it’s missing the “amory” even while having the “poly”). There were fewer cases of “cool with it” love relationships. So while Roman society was closer than ours to accepting polyamory, they were not there yet.

By analogy if we said “early 20th century America” (an infamous time of sexual repression in which polyamory was not commonly acceptable) was “pro-poly” because if we look really hard we can find a scant few examples of it (even if including an actual sitting President), we’d be abusing the English language. But the only difference between that and ancient Rome is how much the public and elite peers would tolerate it if it was more open: ancient Rome was significantly less scolding, but still not approving, and definitely not promoting.

In Rome, non-monogamous relationships were public rather than secret, which still seems to fit the definition of non-monogamy. So their culture were pretty non monogamous in acceptance aswell not in secret

Is that some sort of koan?

Would it really have been that much different if Antony had won at Actium?

In the same way that Obama beating Romney was “different,” but also in many ways still a victory for the establishment. But of course that disparity was even starker than between Antony and Octavian. Like you say, they were both kind of the last two top billionaires; they also agreed on a lot more than Obama and Romney did. Antony was just the guy the “democrats” of that era backed; but yes, these were pretty elitist democrats by our standards. So it wasn’t exactly “the people’s man” in any Ridley Scott sense. But the people backing Antony expected him to preserve the Republic, not destroy it (Cicero certainly expected Antony to be sort of the best bet against the path of Caesar, although I think Cicero was aware the bet was dodgy—it was just all they had). Whether Antony would have actually done the same things Octavian did is a different question. Although I think your contrafactual as to his relative stupidity and fate is plausible.

You are also correct in your estimate of the political situation. Several civil wars had already been fought over the century before that resulted in conceding more power to the public, by extending the vote to all free male citizens of Italy. The structure of the democracy was intended to maintain the class system, but it was also done to ensure the public didn’t feel disenfranchised, because that caused bad things. Even the Athenian democracy did this (even there access to significant offices was limited explicitly to the rich). And, to be honest, so did the Founding Fathers, in a sense (the electoral college was a sneak circuit to disenfranchise “the mob” without their noticing; they were also aware that getting elected to anything required wealth in practice, so they didn’t have to signal that fact by making it required in law).

P.S. We know head scarves (hijab) were a common (but not universal) cultural expectation of women in the Middle East in Roman times (Paul argues for Christian women in Eastern churches to continue wearing hijab at least when at services).

did Christians ever claim Vesuvius as an instance of Godly Wrath

Sort of. It’s widely believed Revelation 18 is just such a commentary. But we have almost no writing from Christians until half a century later, and even then only a trickle for half a century more. By then it was a distant memory, of an event that had too trivial an effect on an Empire spanning three continents.

The one moment of shock I had when reading (in English translation) Ovid’s Ars Amatoria came where the poet advises romantically-inclined young men to attend public games, as occasionally one might be so lucky as to glimpse a shapely ankle in the stadium. That kind of year-round wrapping up, considering local summers, signals possessive patriarchy at its most prudish.*

It might not have taken much – one widely-emulated empress, say – for Rome to have adopted, then mandated, veils for women and thus made them a traditional Christian value.

* Down the coast at Pompeii, of course, they celebrated the exact opposite of prudery – while still, I gather, seeing women as property. I tangentially have to wonder: did Christians ever claim Vesuvius as an instance of Godly Wrath™? If so, why didn’t it stick?

Just as strange, he says he’s in general agreement with Metzger, convinced that the entirety of errors in the N.T. doesn’t alter its major themes.

“It would be a mistake… to assume that the only changes being made were by copyist with a personal stake in the wording of the text. In fact, most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology.”

Why then does he deny the virgin birth, the sacrificial death, the resurrection and the appearance of the holy spirit at Pentecost?