Tacitus, Suetonius, and the Myth of a Petrine Rome

The Roman Catholic Church grounds its claim to universal authority in a specific historical assertion: that the church in Rome was founded by the apostle Peter. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter’s successor, is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.” This statement assumes not merely that Peter was associated with Rome, but that he established the Roman Christian community as its origin point.

This claim is often repeated, but it is rarely tested against non-Christian historical evidence. When it is examined, the sources most frequently cited are Christian texts written from within the tradition itself. Far less attention is given to how Roman historians; outsiders to the movement and indifferent to its internal theology; understood Christianity’s arrival and presence in the capital.

This post approaches the question from that external vantage point. It restricts itself to Roman historical testimony, specifically the writings of Tacitus and Suetonius, two authors whose works remain among the most important sources for first-century Roman political and social history. Their accounts do not aim to preserve apostolic memory or ecclesiastical lineage; they describe Christianity only insofar as it intersected with Roman public order.

To avoid anachronism, key terms must be used with care. The word “establish” is taken in its historical sense, meaning to originate or found a community, not to later visit, influence, or lead one. Likewise, the term “church” is understood according to its first-century meaning, corresponding to the Greek ekklesia: an assembly of adherents rather than a formal institution with defined offices and territorial jurisdiction.

Later Christian tradition, patristic testimony, and theological claims of succession are not considered here. This is not a theological inquiry, but a historical one. The question is therefore narrow but precise: when Roman historians describe the presence of Christianity in Rome, do they present it as the result of apostolic foundation by Peter, or as the emergence of a movement that reached the city by other means?

The first Roman historian who allows us to see Christianity clearly inside the city of Rome is Tacitus. Writing in the early second century, Tacitus had no interest in Christian origins beyond explaining why Nero chose Christians as scapegoats after the Great Fire. Yet in the course of that explanation, he provides the most important non-Christian account of how Christianity reached Rome and what form it had taken there.

In Annals XV.44, Tacitus begins by identifying Christians as an already recognized group within the city. Nero, he says, punished “a class of persons, hated for their abominations, popularly called Christians.” That phrase alone tells us something crucial. By the time of Nero, Christians were not an obscure or newly arrived sect clustered around a recent founder. They were already “popularly called” by a distinct name, meaning their identity was established in public consciousness.

Tacitus then explains where this group came from. “Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate.” Christianity, in Tacitus’ account, begins not in Rome and not with an apostle, but in Judea, and its defining origin point is a Roman execution carried out under Pilate. This is a historical anchoring, not a theological one, and it places the movement firmly outside Rome at its inception.

What follows is Tacitus’ most revealing sentence for understanding how Christianity reached the capital. He writes that the superstition, “though checked for the moment, again broke out, not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome.” The structure of this explanation matters. Tacitus describes an origin, a temporary suppression, a resurgence, and then a spread outward until the movement reaches Rome. This is the language of diffusion. Rome is not presented as a founding center or as the recipient of a deliberate apostolic mission. It is the endpoint of a movement that has already begun elsewhere and has now expanded far enough to reach the imperial capital.

Tacitus reinforces this picture when he describes the scale of the Christian presence. After the first arrests, he says, “upon their information, a vast multitude was convicted.” A “vast multitude” does not appear overnight. It presupposes time, social networks, and sustained growth. By AD 64, Christianity in Rome is not a small or newly planted group awaiting its founder; it is numerous enough to be visible, hated, and administratively targeted.

Just as important as what Tacitus says is what he does not say. In this passage, Tacitus names everyone he considers causally relevant. He names Nero as the political actor. He names Christus as the figure from whom the movement takes its name. He names Pontius Pilate as the Roman official responsible for the execution. He names Judaea as the place of origin. Tacitus is meticulous with political causation and attribution. Yet he names no apostle. He does not mention Peter. He does not describe any apostolic arrival in Rome. He supplies no foundation narrative for a Roman church at all.

This absence is not accidental. Tacitus does not avoid naming figures when they matter to his explanation. If Roman memory associated the Christian presence in Rome with a specific founder who established the community there, Tacitus’ explanatory habits suggest he would have said so. Instead, Christianity appears in his narrative as an already-existing foreign movement that flowed into Rome the way other ideas, cults, and superstitions did.

Tacitus even frames Rome itself as a place where such things naturally arrive. In the same passage he remarks that Rome is the city “where all things horrible or shameful from every part of the world find their way and are celebrated.” Christianity, in his telling, belongs to that category. It comes from elsewhere, it spreads, it takes root, and it becomes visible enough to provoke reaction.

Taken on its own terms, Tacitus’ testimony leads to a narrow but unavoidable conclusion. Christianity did not arrive in Rome as the result of Petrine establishment. It arrived by diffusion. It spread from Judea, survived suppression, expanded through social networks, and was already present in large numbers by the time Roman power turned against it. Whatever role Peter may later have played, Tacitus provides no evidence that he founded the Roman Christian assembly. On the Roman evidence alone, Rome received Christianity not through apostolic institution, but through organic spread.

If Tacitus shows that Christianity was already established in Rome by the time of Nero, Suetonius allows us to push the evidence back even earlier, into the reign of Claudius. In doing so, he confirms something decisive: Christian proclamation was already active, disruptive, and publicly visible in Rome well before any later claim that Peter “established” the Roman church.

In his Life of Claudius, Suetonius records a brief but highly significant administrative action. He writes: “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome” (Claudius 25.4). The sentence is short, but every word carries historical weight.

First, Suetonius describes the unrest as ongoing. The disturbances are not isolated incidents; they are happening “constantly.” This indicates a sustained pattern of conflict within the Jewish population of Rome. Whatever “Chrestus” refers to, the agitation is not new, not speculative, and not momentary. It is persistent enough to exhaust imperial patience.

Second, the unrest is public and serious enough to provoke an imperial response. Roman expulsions were not symbolic gestures. To expel an entire population group from the capital was a blunt and disruptive administrative act, one that affected commerce, households, and urban stability. Claudius does not act preemptively; he reacts to disorder that has already become unmanageable. Suetonius’ wording presupposes that the problem is already present and already visible.

Third, the disturbances are intra-Jewish. Suetonius does not describe riots between Jews and Romans, nor between Christians and pagans. He describes Jews rioting among themselves. This fits precisely with what we would expect from early Christ-proclamation: disputes within synagogues over messianic claims, not the operation of a separate, fully detached religious institution. At this stage, Christians are still legally and socially categorized as Jews.

Fourth, the reference to “Chrestus” situates the cause of the unrest. Whether Suetonius is misunderstanding the name “Christus,” using a common phonetic variant, or assuming a present agitator rather than a deceased one, the historical shape of the problem remains the same. The disturbances are linked, in Suetonius’ understanding, to a figure or claim associated with “Chrestus.” That is, they are tied to Christ-related proclamation, not to unrelated Jewish factionalism.

Chronologically, this matters enormously. Claudius’ reign runs from AD 41 to 54, and the expulsion is usually dated to around AD 49. That places this unrest at least fifteen years before the Neronian persecution described by Tacitus. By the middle of the first century, then, Rome already contains Jewish communities divided sharply enough over Christ-claims to produce continuous rioting and imperial intervention.

This has direct implications for any Petrine foundation theory. A community that is “constantly” producing unrest, already divided over Christ-proclamation, and already provoking state action is not a community waiting to be founded by an arriving apostle. It is already functioning, already fractured, and already socially embedded. Claudius is not responding to the arrival of Peter; he is responding to a problem that has already taken root.

Suetonius, like Tacitus, names causes when he thinks they matter. He attributes the expulsion to disturbances “at the instigation of Chrestus,” not to the arrival of an apostle, not to the founding of a new institution, and not to the leadership of Peter. There is no Roman memory here of a Petrine establishment event. There is only unrest, division, and administrative suppression.

Once the Roman evidence is placed on a timeline, the argument no longer depends on interpretation or nuance. It becomes mechanical.

Suetonius shows that by the reign of Claudius, around AD 49, Rome already contained Jewish communities divided sharply enough over Christ-related claims to produce constant disturbances. These were not isolated incidents, but ongoing unrest serious enough to provoke the extraordinary measure of expulsion. That alone requires the presence of Christ-proclamation in Rome at a relatively early date.

Tacitus then shows that by AD 64, only fifteen years later, Christians in Rome are no longer an obscure subset within Jewish synagogues. They are “popularly called Christians,” present in “a vast multitude,” and visible enough to be singled out as a scapegoat for a citywide disaster. Between these two fixed points, Christianity is not only present in Rome; it is expanding.

There is no room in this sequence for a founding moment attributable to Peter. Movements that already exist, already spread, already divide communities, and already provoke state action are not waiting to be established. A founder establishes something before it exists. The Roman evidence shows Christianity existing in Rome before any possible Petrine arrival can be made to do that work.

Just as importantly, the Roman sources show Christianity existing independently of apostolic hierarchy. In both Tacitus and Suetonius, Christianity appears as a diaspora-driven phenomenon. It moves along social and ethnic networks, especially within Jewish communities, and it spreads in the same way other eastern cults and ideas spread into the capital. Rome is not portrayed as a missionary destination deliberately chosen by apostolic leadership. It is portrayed as the place where movements eventually arrive once they have grown large enough.

This chronological argument does not depend on denying Peter’s presence in Rome. It depends only on timing. By the time Peter could plausibly have arrived, Christian assemblies already existed. They were already active. They were already multiplying. At most, Peter could have encountered an existing Roman Christian community. He could not have originated it.

At this point, one more line of evidence closes the door almost completely: chronology. Not Roman chronology this time, but the internal chronology of the earliest Christian sources themselves.

The book of Acts, whatever one makes of its theology, functions as our only continuous narrative account of Peter’s movements during the 30s and 40s. And what it shows is not a hidden Roman episcopate, but a Peter who is repeatedly and deliberately located elsewhere.

Peter is last shown residing in Jerusalem in Acts 12, around AD 44. He then reappears several years later as a leading authority at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, usually dated to around AD 49. These are not incidental mentions. Luke is clearly interested in Peter’s role and location in the early decades of the movement. He tracks Peter closely in the opening chapters of Acts, naming places, speeches, arrests, and decisions.

Between these two anchor points, there is simply no viable window for what later tradition requires: a multi-year Petrine ministry in Rome beginning in the early 40s. At most, the evidence would allow for a brief, undocumented visit. But a brief visit does not constitute a foundation. Founding implies continuity, leadership, and recognized authority over time; none of which Acts attributes to Peter in Rome during this period.

Acts itself makes this absence more striking by what it does include. In Acts 18, Luke notes that Aquila and Priscilla were expelled from Rome under the decree of Claudius, around AD 49. These two figures later emerge as influential teachers within the Christian movement, exercising formative roles in several communities. If Peter had already been acting as Rome’s apostolic overseer, this would raise immediate questions, since the apostles themselves were not counted as bishops in early succession lists. Why are Aquila and Priscilla displaced while Peter is not even mentioned? Why do they, rather than Petrine delegates or successors, appear as theologically formative figures after the expulsion?

The simplest explanation is the most coherent: Rome had no resident apostolic overseer at that time. The Roman Christian community appears to have developed organically, without centralized apostolic governance, exactly as the Roman historians describe it.

Paul’s own letters reinforce this picture. Writing earlier than Acts, Paul places Peter firmly in the eastern Mediterranean. In Galatians, Peter appears first in Jerusalem and later in Antioch, where Paul famously recounts a confrontation with him. Paul also distinguishes spheres of mission, identifying Peter primarily with the circumcised rather than the Gentile west. Nowhere does Paul suggest that Peter is governing the Roman church. Most telling of all, when Paul writes directly to Rome in the late 50s, he shows no awareness of a Petrine Roman episcopate already in place.

Later patristic writers do affirm that Peter eventually went to Rome and died there. But they do not help with the crucial early period. They provide no dated evidence for Peter’s presence in Rome during the 40s. Their episcopal lists compress decades into symbolic successions and rely on tradition rather than contemporaneous documentation. No early writer independently places Peter in Rome between AD 42 and 49.

Roman historians, for their part, know nothing of a Petrine leader during Claudius’ reign. Suetonius knows of Christ-related unrest among Jews. Tacitus knows of Christians in vast numbers under Nero. Neither knows of Peter as a Roman authority figure in the 40s. Given their habit of naming responsible individuals, this silence matters.

Sometimes this gap is explained away by appeal to “hidden years.” But this explanation collapses under scrutiny. Acts does not record Peter randomly; it records leadership moments. A seven-year Roman episcopate would qualify. Foundational claims require positive evidence. You cannot establish an early Roman bishopric on silence alone; especially when that silence directly contradicts known activity elsewhere.

What can be responsibly said is therefore limited, but firm. Peter was active in Jerusalem, Judea, and Antioch throughout the 40s. He was present at the Jerusalem Council around AD 49. There is no evidence placing him in Rome before this. His arrival in Rome is most plausibly dated to the early 60s. And whatever authority he exercised there derives from apostolic witness and martyrdom, not from having founded or governed the Roman church in its earliest phase.

One additional historical detail helps explain how Christianity could reach Rome so early, without any apostolic “founding mission” to the city.

According to the earliest Christian sources, Romans were already present at Pentecost, the event traditionally dated to around A.D. 30, only weeks after the crucifixion. The Pentecost account explicitly lists “visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes” among those gathered in Jerusalem at the outset of the movement. This means that people with direct ties to Rome encountered the Christian proclamation at its very beginning, not decades later.

The implication is straightforward. Christianity did not need Peter; or any other apostle; to travel to Rome in order for it to arrive there. Roman Jews and God-fearers were already participating in the pilgrimage cycle, already embedded in diaspora networks, and already capable of carrying new beliefs back with them. This is exactly how ideas moved in the Roman world, and it fits perfectly with how Tacitus later describes Christianity spreading outward from Judea.

The silence of the Roman historians becomes significant; but only when used correctly. This is not an argument from ignorance, as though Tacitus and Suetonius were expected to record everything. It is an argument from authorial expectation, based on how these writers normally handle causation and origins.

Both Tacitus and Suetonius regularly name minor provincial figures when they matter to an explanation. Tacitus names obscure procurators, informers, and local agitators. Suetonius attributes disturbances to individuals whose names would otherwise be lost to history. Both authors identify founders of cults, sources of superstition, and agents responsible for public disorder.

Yet neither associates Christianity’s presence in Rome with Peter. Neither presents Rome as an apostolic center. Neither hints at Petrine authority or founding activity. When Tacitus explains Christianity’s origin, he names Christus and Pilate. When Suetonius explains unrest, he names Chrestus as the perceived instigator. In neither case does Peter enter the causal story.

It is worth pausing on a striking fact about the Tacitean record. The very years in which Claudius’ policy toward the Jews would have been described; the period when Christ-related unrest in Rome is said to have occurred; fall precisely within a major lacuna of the Annals. Tacitus’ narrative breaks off in Book VI and does not resume until the middle of Book XI, leaving the years from AD 37 to mid–47 missing. This gap encompasses the reign of Gaius and the early part of Claudius’ reign, exactly where one would expect discussion of Jewish disturbances and imperial responses in Rome.

Nothing about this gap should be exaggerated. Ancient texts survive unevenly, and Tacitus is not unique in this respect. But the consequence is clear: Tacitus cannot tell us directly what Claudius did with regard to the Jews, not because the event was insignificant, but because the relevant portion of his work is no longer extant. The silence here is not Tacitus’ choice; it is the result of textual loss.

Fortunately, the historical record does not end with Tacitus. Suetonius, writing independently and with a different method, preserves precisely the information that Tacitus’ missing books would likely have contained. In his Life of Claudius, Suetonius records that Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome because they were “constantly making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus.” This brief notice supplies the missing administrative action and confirms that Christ-related unrest in Rome belongs firmly to Claudius’ reign.

What matters is not speculation about what Tacitus might have said, but the convergence of Roman evidence where it survives. Tacitus shows that by the time his narrative resumes, Christianity is already present in Rome as a large and recognizable movement. Suetonius shows that well before this, Christ-related disputes were already destabilizing Jewish communities in the city to the point of imperial intervention. Together, they bridge the gap created by the missing pages.

This Roman chronology becomes even more difficult to reconcile with a Petrine foundation of the Roman church when it is placed alongside what other early sources say about Peter’s location during the same period.

By the middle of the first century; the very years in which Suetonius places Christ-related unrest in Rome; Peter is consistently associated not with Rome, but with Antioch. Antioch was one of the earliest and most important centers of the Jesus movement outside Judea, a major hub of the eastern Mediterranean, and a natural focal point for Jewish and Gentile interaction. It is also the city most closely linked with Peter’s early leadership in non-Roman sources.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians, generally dated to the late 40s or early 50s, presupposes Peter’s presence and influence in Antioch during this exact window. Paul refers casually to an encounter with Peter there, treating Antioch as a known and established center of Christian activity rather than as a temporary stop. Whatever one makes of the theological dispute Paul describes, the geographical assumption is clear: Peter is operating in Antioch at a time when, according to Suetonius, Rome is already experiencing sustained Christ-related unrest.

Early Christian tradition reinforces this eastern focus. Long before Rome is described as Peter’s final destination, Antioch is remembered as a place where Christian assemblies formed early, grew rapidly, and required apostolic attention. Even later ecclesiastical writers who strongly affirm Peter’s eventual association with Rome still acknowledge Antioch as an earlier and significant sphere of his activity. There is no competing early tradition that places Peter founding the Roman church during Claudius’ reign.

When these strands are brought together, the chronology tightens further. By around AD 49, Rome already contains Christ-centered assemblies active enough to cause repeated disturbances and provoke imperial expulsion. At the same time, Peter’s activity is oriented eastward, in Antioch, not westward in Rome. The Roman Christian presence does not wait for him to arrive; it develops independently.

This does not deny that Peter may later have gone to Rome, nor does it rule out influence, teaching, or even martyrdom there. But it does rule out something more specific and more foundational. A community already present, already expanding, and already disruptive by the late 40s cannot have been established by someone who was demonstrably active elsewhere at the time.

Seen this way, the Roman and non-Roman evidence converge. Rome did not become Christian because Peter founded it. It became Christian because the movement had already spread there; long before Peter could have made Rome its point of origin.

By this point, the cumulative weight of the evidence has shifted the discussion away from slogans and toward structure. What has been examined is not whether Peter was important, nor whether Rome later became a central city for Christianity, but whether the specific claims required for papal supremacy and apostolic succession actually arise from the earliest historical record. They do not.

Roman history has shown that Christianity was already present in Rome as a living, expanding movement well before any plausible Petrine “founding” could have taken place. Tacitus describes Christians in Rome by AD 64 as numerous, identifiable, and already hated. Suetonius pushes the timeline back even further, placing Christ-related unrest within Rome’s Jewish communities around AD 49; so serious that Emperor Claudius expelled Jews from the city altogether. A community that is already causing repeated disturbances, dividing synagogues, and provoking imperial intervention is not a community waiting to be established by an arriving apostle.

At the same time, the earliest Christian sources place Peter elsewhere during this crucial window. When Peter is mentioned in connection with leadership and controversy, it is in the eastern Mediterranean, particularly Antioch. Even later writers who strongly affirm Peter’s eventual presence in Rome acknowledge Antioch as an earlier and significant sphere of his activity. There is no early, contemporary evidence that places Peter founding a Roman church during Claudius’ reign, and the Roman historians; who name figures when they matter; preserve no memory of such an event.

This brings us to the theological claims that were later built on top of these historical assumptions. Papal supremacy rests on the idea that Peter established the Roman church and passed on his unique authority through an unbroken line of successors. But that framework presupposes something the evidence does not support: that Peter functioned as a bishop of Rome in the later sense, and that apostolic authority was designed to be transmitted as an office tied to a specific city.

Even within the Church’s own doctrinal history, this assumption is not as simple as it is often presented. In the Tome of Pope Leo the Great (Epistola 28, written in 449), the “rock” upon which the Church is built is identified not as a geographic see or an inherited position, but as Peter’s confession of faith. Authority, in Leo’s formulation, is grounded in fidelity to that confession, not in mere succession to a chair. The emphasis is theological and confessional, not administrative or dynastic.

This distinction matters, because apostles and bishops are not the same thing. The apostles function as foundational witnesses; those who proclaim, testify, and lay the groundwork of the faith. Foundations are laid once. They are not continuously rebuilt. Bishops, by contrast, emerge later as local overseers of already-existing communities. To conflate the two is to retroject later ecclesial structures back into the first century.

Once this is recognized, the logic of apostolic succession as commonly presented begins to fracture. If apostles were foundation layers rather than office-holders, then their authority is not something that can be passed down mechanically from one individual to another. It is something preserved through continuity of teaching and confession, not through an unbroken chain of institutional appointments. And if Christianity in Rome already existed and was already active before Peter could have established it, then there is no originating Petrine office in Rome from which such succession could even begin.

The chronological problem remains unavoidable. Christianity is causing unrest in Rome by around AD 49. Christians are numerous by AD 64. Peter is active elsewhere during this period. Tacitus knows nothing of a Petrine foundation. Suetonius knows nothing of a Petrine founder. The earliest Christian communities in Rome arise through diaspora networks and proclamation, not through apostolic installation.

So the question that closes the investigation is a simple one: if the Roman Christian community already existed, already expanded, and already provoked imperial action before Peter could have founded it, when exactly did Peter establish the church in Rome?

The evidence offers no answer; because the premise itself does not hold. What emerges instead is a far more historically coherent picture: Christianity reached Rome early, organically, and independently of any apostolic foundation by Peter. Later claims of papal supremacy and apostolic succession were theological developments built upon that existing reality, not historical facts that gave rise to it.

Once the sources are allowed to speak on their own terms, the conclusion is not polemical. It is simply unavoidable.

Please feel free to analyse the texts yourselves

Suetonius_Loeb.pdf

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Tacitus.pdf

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