This chapter sets religion into the fabric of urban life in the first three centuries A.D. – both the official cults of the state and the unofficial cults that we have so far viewed (in chapter 5) largely through the hostile eyes of members of the Roman élite. We shall explore in particular the proliferation of religious choices that had started already in the Republic, but which came even more strongly to characterize the religious world of the city of Rome during the empire: from the great civic cults and festivals, through private or local associations worshipping state gods (such as Aesculapius and Hygieia), through those ‘foreign’ cults that remained strongly linked to particular ethnic groups in Rome (the Palmyrenes or Jews, for example), to cults (of Isis, Mithras, or Christianity) that were purely elective – entered, that is, not by virtue of race or social position, but through individual choice, with no qualification for their adherents (at least in theory) other than personal religious commitment.
The city of imperial Rome was vast, with a population that may at times have approached one million people. (In Europe, even by the end of the seventeenth century A.D., only London, Paris and Constantinople had populations over 400,000.) The population was also highly diverse, socially, culturally and ethnically. One way of picturing the sharp stratification of Roman society is on the model of a triangle: at the apex was the emperor, with his family and the 600 or so senators (plus their families) – the highest echelon of the élite, and also the principal holders of religious office in the official system; the next level of social status was the much broader equestrian order, numbering some thousands; below them came the far greater number of ordinary Roman citizens, men and women who had little active political role under the empire; below them (and no doubt just as numerous) free non-citizens and slaves. But such a model does not recognize all kinds of other differences that served to distinguish different groups of the population of the city, whether Roman citizens or non-citizens – notably differences of ethnic and cultural origin. A high proportion, perhaps even a majority of the population was originally not from Rome or Italy; one second-century observer described Rome as the microcosm of the world, with people from all the great cities of the Greek East (from Alexandria, for example, Antioch, Nicomedia, Athens) and whole ethnic groups settled there en masse (from Cappadocia, Scythia and Pontus, among others).1 Many of the foreigners were slaves or ex-slaves (though ex-slaves would have been Roman citizens, if their masters had themselves been Roman citizens and had formally freed them before the appropriate Roman magistrate); others came to Rome voluntarily, and in the early empire lacked any formal Roman status – although after the emperor Caracalla’s edict in A.D. 212, all the free population of Rome (and the empire) became Roman citizens.
So the question of ‘ Roman-ness’, of what is to count as ‘Roman’ and what ‘foreign’ in this multi-cultural atmosphere, will inevitably underlie this chapter too. Focussing principally on the city of Rome itself, we shall be highlighting the links between the official and unofficial cults (against the background of a single city and its inhabitants) as well as exploring further the differences that distinguish them. For this reason, we have chosen to divide the chapter into themes that cut across boundaries of individual cults. We have not, in other words, devoted particular sections of our analysis to particular cults (Isis or Christianity, for example), nor even to a general category of ‘Oriental’ cults – though for ease of reference discussion of the major cults in each section normally follows the same order: adherents of Isis, Mithras, Jahveh, Christ. The aim is to expose the web of connections that links ‘Roman’ religion to the seemingly ‘unRoman’. The role of religion as one way of defining Roman identity in communities outside Rome will be explored further in the next chapter.
Our treatment takes care to avoid the standard term ‘Oriental religions’ in discussing the new religious options in imperial Rome. This category was first widely used, if not invented, by the Belgian scholar Franz Cumont in the early years of the twentieth century in his pioneering studies of Roman religion: for Cumont, the key to understanding the religious history of the period lay in the influx into Rome of a group of Eastern religions that shared a number of common characteristics setting them apart from traditional civic cults – and paving the way, eventually, for the rise of Christianity. As we shall see, however, these religions cannot be so neatly pigeon-holed as ‘Oriental’.2 Several of the cults did certainly proclaim an eastern ‘origin’ for their wisdom, but it is often clear that a Roman version of the cult differed substantially from its (notional) eastern ancestor. Above all, the ‘Orient’ itself was hardly the homogeneous category that we (like the Romans, no doubt) often try to make it: different cults came from quite different religious backgrounds – the religious traditions of the home of Mithras in Persia, for example, had little in common with the Egyptian traditions in the worship of Isis and Sarapis.
Overall there is as much to separate these new ‘Eastern’ cults, as there is to group them together into a single category. Some were defined by their initiation of the worshipper into secret ‘mysteries’;3 others (such as Isis and Magna Mater – who, as we have seen, was ‘officially’ incorporated under the aegis of magistrates and priests) were public cults before they acquired private ceremonies of initiation. These mysteries, even if they proclaimed an eastern origin, were almost certainly descended from earlier Greek initiation cults. Nor is there any clear evidence that all these cults shared a common preoccupation with ‘salvation’; it is, in fact, the modern assumption (following Cumont) that the ‘Oriental cults’ were the precursors of and rivals to Christianity that has encouraged us to construct them in those terms – on directly Christianizing lines.
We must also resist the assumption that new, ‘foreign’ cults were necessarily particularly attractive to those who had little official role in the traditional Roman civic cults. Was there, after all, a strong opposition between ‘official’ religion (and its office-holders drawn almost exclusively from the senate) and the ‘popular’ religious life of the city? Was there a range of religious activities among the ordinary people of Rome that had almost nothing in common with the aristocratic practices of official religion? The answer to such questions may, in part, be yes. But the opposition between ‘official’ and ‘popular’ can be deceptive; and official and popular manifestations were most probably different aspects, on different levels, of a continuum of religious institutions and practices. There was nothing to stop a cult having significance for both the élite and the mass of the population.4
We shall investigate the nature of the choices offered by the new cults always against the background of the civic cults (section 1); indeed, in so far as the new religions were seen either as complements or as alternatives to traditional religion, they cannot be understood except in relation to it. We shall think about these choices in terms of the prominence and visibility of the new cults in the city (section 2), their appeal (section 3) and their membership (section 4). Of course, although we have chosen to concentrate on the city of Rome, these new cults did not exist only there. In Section 5 of this chapter we shall consider their distribution and character across the empire.
The evidence for this subject is extremely rich and diverse. In addition to a wide range of literary texts (from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, a novel partly centred on the cult of Isis, to outspoken tracts of Christian polemic and self-defence),5 archaeological material survives in the city of Rome both from the major civic temples and from the temples and shrines of the new cults. These remains include some of the very best preserved Roman buildings anywhere in the world (Hadrian’s temple of all the gods, the Pantheon, has been in active use as temple or church ever since the second century A.D., even if much restored); but they also include far more poorly preserved monuments, often just as hard to interpret as the remains from earliest Rome.6 Inscriptions too (as we noted in chapter 4) continue throughout the first three centuries A.D. to be an important source of information on all kinds of cult (except, for reasons we shall see, on Christianity). For example, inscribed dedications or vows, and sometimes the preservation of inscribed membership lists of particular cults, enable us to gauge the social standing or ethnic origin of worshippers; while in the empire at large, such inscriptions are often crucial in tracing the spread of a particular cult.7
To consider the empire as a whole, as well as the city of Rome itself, raises the question of how far individual cults were essentially the same in different parts of the world; how far, that is, the cult of the ‘same’ deity held the same religious, social or political significance in Gaul or Greece as it did in Rome. The problem is particularly clear with Judaism and with Christianity – where later histories of each of these two religions have sought to define and maintain ‘orthodoxy’, and to represent a single religious tradition, effectively unchanging throughout the empire and imperial history. In fact no Jewish literary texts of this period survive from the west, and we should not simply assume that Judaism was identical in those regions to its form(s) in the east. In the case of Christianity (whose preserved texts now overwhelm those of all the other cults combined) there is plentiful evidence for the many different varieties of faith and worship that could be called ‘Christian’ during this period – even if particular variants were regarded as ‘heresies’ by other Christians and later ‘orthodox’ historians.8 But the other cults too cannot possibly have been the homogeneous and exclusive entities that they are often taken to be. The cult, for example, of Magna Mater that is well attested in third-century Lyons may have had important things in common with the cult of the goddess in first century Rome, but it will not have been the same; nor – for that matter – could the views, understanding or religious commitment even of those who gathered together at the same festival, on the same day, in the same place ever have been identical. Our last section in this chapter does investigate the degrees of religious continuity in these cults traceable across the Roman world. By and large, however, in discussing the religions of the empire we have tried to avoid thinking in terms of uniformity, or in terms of a central core ‘orthodox’ tradition with its peripheral ‘Variants’; we have preferred to think rather in terms of different religions as clusters of ideas, people and rituals, sharing some common identity across time and place, but at the same time inevitably invested with different meanings in their different contexts.9
The system of official cults of Rome continued – and continued to develop – after the restructuring of the Augustan period. We have already noted, for example, the enduring importance of the pomerium, of the ward cults of the Genius Augusti and the Lares Augusti, the continued prominence of senatorial priesthoods and the celebrations of the Saecular Games by the emperors Claudius, Domitian and Septimius Severus;10 throughout the period too the senate continued to handle numerous items of religious business (albeit under the authority of the emperor), while senatorial magistrates continued to be responsible (as they had been also during the Republic) for putting on the games that formed part of the official festivals.11 There were also significant changes in the system after Augustus, which we shall trace in this section through the history of temple building in the city. Structural changes in religion are often hard to delineate; by focussing specifically on the religious landscape of Rome under the empire, we shall bring out in a vividly concrete register some of the structural changes in Roman religion through our period.
Official Roman religion could not fail to have changed over the three centuries of the principate; in fact, even a ritual in the late third century A.D. celebrated identically as it had been in the late first century B.C. would inevitably have become a different ritual in the course of its preservation.12 On the other hand, many details of these religious changes remain uncertain, for a whole variety of reasons. One is the pattern of survivals. Throughout this book we have emphasized, for example, the important evidence for religion in civic calendars of festivals, found (inscribed or painted) in Rome and the towns of Italy. We cannot, however, follow this evidence through the later centuries of the principate (and so follow the changes that might, or might not, be revealed) for the simple reason that all but one of the calendars surviving on stone date from the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius – until A.D. 354, when a calendar was recorded in manuscript.13 This may be a sheer accident of survival; or it may itself be an important indication of change, a move away (for whatever reason) from the permanent public display of the festal cycle.14 The immediate consequence for us is that we have almost no evidence of the formal calendrical cycle of Roman rituals between the mid first and fourth centuries A.D. By the fourth century it is clear that there had been great changes, but we cannot say precisely when most of them were made.15
A striking instance of this uncertainty concerns the festivals of Isis in Rome, partly because of swings and ambiguities in official attitudes – with characteristic tension between exclusion and acceptance, and a series of banning orders, obeyed or ignored by turns. In the late Republic, the cult was formally suppressed, only for the triumvirs to vow a shrine to the goddess in 43 B.C.; and we saw in chapter 5 that official action was taken once more against the cult under Augustus and Tiberius.16 At some point between then and the fourth century A.D. festivals of Isis entered the official Roman calendar; but when? One guess is that the cult was made official by the emperor Gaius Caligula; but it is only a guess. Certainly after his reign comments on the cult’s status are still ambiguous: some authors claim the goddess as ‘Roman’, others stress her foreign exoticism. A clearer indication perhaps is found in the planning of the main Roman sanctuary of Isis on the Campus Martius: from at least the second century A.D. onwards, this was architecturally related (by an arch) to the east side of the Saepta, or official voting area, and to other public monuments in this area – suggesting, at least, its integration into the official landscape of Rome.17 It was also the only new foreign sanctuary, so far as we can tell from the surviving fragments, to be represented on the third-century A.D. official map of the city of Rome.18 But if these hints do indicate its ‘official’ incorporation into state religion, we certainly cannot pinpoint any precise moment for its change of status
Such uncertainties obviously raise questions about the whole category of ‘official cults’; and whether there was any clear boundary between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ religions at Rome. The position was surely much more nuanced than those single terms suggest; and transition between the status of marginal (even banned) cult and that of ‘official’ religion must have been a gradual one. All the same the category of ‘official cults’ can still be a helpful one. They seem, for example, to have shared a number of characteristic rights and privileges: their buildings stood on ‘public land’ which had been made ‘sacred’ by an act of the Roman people or the emperor, and whose cult received money from the state.19 Also, in provincial towns which received Roman charters there was a clear category of official festivals: on festival days certain types of legal business were prohibited.20 There is also evidence for a striking degree of uniformity (and hence, it follows, central regulation) in the official system. In the early third century A.D., for example, the Arval Brothers in Rome and an auxiliary cohort of the Roman army stationed at Dura Europus on Rome’s eastern frontier (whose sacrificial calendar survives on papyrus) sacrificed to exactly the same set of deified emperors and empresses; this clearly suggests that they were both following some official list which prescribed which divi should receive sacrifice and (by implication) which should not.21 This dropping of those who were now out of political favour – as well as the abolition of other rituals (Nerva, among other emperors, scrapped various sacrifices as an economy measure) – was legitimated by the religious authority of the emperor himself.22
Throughout the empire the emperor was seen as the principal source of innovation and took the lead in promoting new cults.23 This is one important facet of the religious focus on the emperor, characteristic (as we have seen) of the Augustan restructuring and continued – if anything, intensified – through the principate. The emperor’s religious dominance had wide-ranging effects. The traditional systematic reporting of prodigies, for example, had disappeared already in the Augustan period: these seemingly random intrusions of divine displeasure must have appeared incongruous in a system where divine favour flowed through the emperor; such prodigies as were noted generally centred on the births and deaths of emperors.24 A complementary change was the annual offering of vows (vota) on 3 January for the well-being of the emperor, participation in which became nearly obligatory for the Roman “élite. The ancient senatorial priesthoods took a leading part in these ceremonies, as we have noted in the case of the Arval Brothers; Pliny writes to Trajan from his province to inform him that the annual vows have been carried out in Pontus-Bithynia; while a letter from Fronto to Marcus Aurelius suggests that they were performed privately too. These imperial vows sum up the official position of the emperor as the focus for human aspirations and the beneficiary of divine support.25
In the rest of this section we shall be tracing imperial change and innovation through temples and temple-building. The emperor’s role as pontifex maximus, as intermediary between Rome and the gods, involved responsibility for the fabric of the official cults of Rome. Emperors were regularly praised for restoring sacred shrines as well as for preserving public rituals.26 Many of the day-to-day duties would, however, have been delegated, and remained outside the knowledge and practical control of the emperor himself. A pair of senior senatorial officials, for example, was responsible for giving permissions for religious dedications in public places, and for the maintenance of official religious buildings; below them was a vast range of junior officials down to the imperial freedmen who often acted as caretakers (aeditui) of individual temples.27 But symbolically (and practically, no doubt, in the case of major decisions and major new foundations) it was the emperor who controlled the temples of official cult.
One of the most striking changes in the landscape of Roman religion under the empire was the impact of the new temples of deified emperors. Almost half the twenty or so new state temples built between the reigns of Augustus and Constantine were dedicated to divi, for, at least up to the mid second century A.D., almost all deified emperors had a temple built in their honour (deified empresses generally shared the temple of their husbands; minor deities of the imperial family usually had no specific shrine).28 These nine new temples followed the precedent set by Octavian, who had consecrated the temple to divus Julius in the Roman Forum where Caesar’s funeral pyre had stood; although they did not claim to occupy the very site of the imperial pyres, the vowing of a temple, its building and dedication were the culmination of an elaborate process of funeral and official consecration by the Roman senate. Most temples of the divi were large and conspicuous. That of divus Antoninus and diva Faustina (later converted into a church) still towers over the Forum.29 The colossal temple to the deified Trajan and his wife Plotina (of which very little now survives) seems to have been added on to Trajan’s Forum by Hadrian – so completing that vast complex which focussed directly on Trajan’s military achievements, burial and apotheosis, and was noted in antiquity as one of the most remarkable sights of Rome.30 The temples of the divi not only reflect the religious dominance of the emperor; they themselves added enormously to the monumental prominence of emperors at Rome.
Other imperial foundations raise much more acute questions about the limits of acceptable innovation at Rome. Just as Augustus had built temples to a particular group of deities closely associated with his régime, so Vespasian promoted the cult of Pax, Domitian that of Minerva – and both these traditional Roman deities were honoured with new temples as centre pieces of grand new fora.31 Particular foreign deities were also honoured in this way. Emperors did not systematically seek to transfer foreign cults from the provinces to the capital; there was no policy to make Rome an official showcase for the religious life of the empire. Individual emperors might import cults (or cult images) to Rome, sometimes as a result of conquest (as in the republican tradition): Aurelian, for example, in A.D. 274 brought the Sun and Belos from Palmyra after its recapture by him.32 In other cases, as we shall see, the emperor’s new foundations reflect his own ‘foreign’ background: it was a marker of the yet greater religious complexity, the even less certain boundary between the Roman and the foreign, that, from the second century on, emperors themselves were often of provincial origin. What was to count as ‘Roman’ religion, when the pontifex maximus himself, the apex of the official religious structure of Rome, came from Spain or Syria?
Caracalla’s temple of Sarapis on the Quirinal hill, attested by an inscription recording the dedication of a temple by Caracalla to the Egyptian god, was an imperial foundation to an Egyptian god within the sacred boundary of the city.33 But how Egyptian is ‘Egyptian’? The cult of Sarapis at Rome was often associated with Egyptian Isis, with all its paraded marks of alien cult (Egyptian music, shaved heads, bizarre costumes...). At the same time a cult of Sarapis could be seen as more Greek than Egyptian, and hence much more easily brought into the sphere of Roman public cult. There was a tradition that the cult had originally been introduced to the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria (one of the major Mediterranean centres of Greek culture) not from inland Egypt but from elsewhere in the Greek world; while the priesthood of the cult in Rome, in the nearby port of Ostia, as well as in Alexandria itself, was purely Greek in form. The case of Sarapis shows that not all cults that are Egyptian in name need also be Egyptian in atmosphere, feeling or ritual – so further problematizing the boundary between what is Roman and what is not.
Two other temples represent different ways of incorporating the foreign. The first is a massive temple whose remains are on the Quirinal, almost certainly the emperor Septimius Severus’ new foundation in honour of Liber and Hercules. It was the second largest temple ever built in Rome (we shall consider the largest shortly), with its central square covering 13,000 square metres, and its columns over 21 metres high; for the contemporary senatorial historian Cassius Dio a prime example of the emperor’s useless extravagance. Liber (or Bacchus) and Hercules were gods long familiar at Rome; and although the worship of Bacchus had been on occasion the focus of official Roman control, there was no obvious sense in which Hercules was regularly regarded as dangerously alien. On the other hand, in this particular pairing Liber and Hercules were the ancestral gods of the emperor’s birthplace at Lepcis Magna in North Africa. We do not know how Roman or foreign they seemed in this particular temple; besides, their image would have changed with different worshippers or observers, with different backgrounds and in different religious contexts. Nevertheless, if Egyptian Sarapis could claim a Greek pedigree, it is clear too that such apparently ‘Roman’ gods as Liber and Hercules could also evoke the African homeland of the new emperor.34
One emperor in the third century A.D. became particularly associated with the introduction of flagrantly alien cults, incompatible with the traditions of official Roman religion. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (known posthumously as Elagabalus, after the deity whom he promoted and whose priest he was) is said to have introduced from his native city in Syria the cult of the god Elagabalus. The surviving ancient accounts of the career of this emperor (who was only 18 years old when he came to the throne and ruled for just four years) are flamboyantly extravagant – full of lurid anecdotes about his strange sexual practices (an attempted sex-change, for example) and stories of black humour about his treatment of the élite (a banquet that ended with a shower of rose petals so numerous that they actually smothered the guests...). These accounts in general are much more important for what they can tell us about common Roman fantasies of transgressive behaviour than for any accurate information they may (or more often may not) offer about the history of Elagabalus’ reign.35 But surviving archaeological evidence from Rome does confirm some elements of the religious changes reported by the literary sources. Since this is such a spectacular display of innovation, imagined, debated and stigmatized, we shall consider it in some detail.
The story goes that in A.D. 219 the emperor brought from Emesa to Rome the cult image of the god – which (like the cult image of Magna Mater, introduced in 204 B.C.) took the form not of a statue, but of an unworked stone. In Rome he established two temples for the god: one (referred to by ancient writers) on the outskirts; and another huge one (of which some traces still remain) on the Palatine – probably rebuilding and enlarging the existing temple of Jupiter Ultor.36 The cult image was apparently carried in procession between the two temples twice a year. In lingering over the disgusting irregularities of the reign, Dio claims that what was most offensive about these religious innovations was not the foreign nature of the deity, nor the strange aspects of the worship (though they were bad enough – ranging from circumcision to human sacrifice; bizarrely too the emperor even ‘married off’ his deity to the Carthaginian goddess Tanit or Caelestis); worse was the fact that the new god was placed at the head of the Roman pantheon, above Jupiter (and was invoked first in all public sacrifices), and that the emperor paraded his role as priest of this foreign god. Indeed the priesthood was occasionally featured on the emperor’s coinage; and the Greek historian Herodian, writing just after Elagabalus’ reign, tells how the emperor (before he had arrived in Italy) had sent to the senate a portrait of himself dressed in his eastern priestly costume – with instructions that it should be hung in the senate-house.37 There could hardly be a more striking reversal of the Augustan association between the emperor and pontifex maximus; the fantasy (at least) of a radical overturning of the association between imperial power and official religion. As with other stories of the career of Elagabalus, this anecdote prompts its readers to reflect on the possibility that the marginal, ‘foreign’ religions of the empire might indeed usurp the position of ‘official’ cult. In the ‘official’ version of the story, of course, the upshot is the public restoration of traditional order: the god and the emperor were so closely associated that when the emperor fell the god was banished from Rome, and the temple rededicated, fittingly enough, to Jupiter Ultor, the Avenger.
Religious innovation in the principate was not, however, only a matter of the importation of new cults from the provinces of the empire. A number of temple foundations seem to represent new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between place and the traditions of Rome – whose importance in the Augustan period we discussed in chapter 4. In particular, three new state temples of the second and third centuries attempted in different and novel ways to relate Rome to the whole cosmic order. First, two Hadrianic temples. The Pantheon, perhaps the most impressive monument to have survived from imperial Rome, replaced an earlier Augustan temple on the same spot, which had already been much restored.38 Hadrian emphasized his adherence to Augustan ideology in various different ways: he restored the original inscription above the porch, so that the building still emblazoned the name of Agrippa (Augustus’ right-hand man) as builder; and he retained the principal deities honoured in the original building, including Mars and Venus, perhaps along with statues of Augustus and Agrippa. But the building itself had a revolutionary new plan: behind the porch, the temple consisted of an enormous rotunda, covered by a dome – with light entering the vast space inside through a circular opening in the centre of the dome. It is one of the most dramatic designs of any Roman building; even today the shafts of light that come through the central aperture, moving with the sun, are spectacular. But it is not just spectacle. Dio observes that the form of the whole temple, with its domed roof, resembles the heavens themselves.39 And although there have been endless theories about the precise interpretation of the architectural symbolism, it is clear that in evoking the vault of heaven with its sun, the building displayed the old deities of Rome in an explicitly cosmic setting.40
Hadrian’s temple of Venus and Rome, close to the Roman Forum, also expressed a new relationship between Rome and the divine order.41 This was the largest temple ever built in the city (with a platform 145 by 100 metres and surrounding columns almost 2 metres in diameter). Its plan was quite unlike any other in the city; for, in order to house the statues of the two deities, two chambers (cellae) were constructed, back to back– one entered from the colonnade at the front of the temple to the west, the other from the colonnade at the rear. Just as with the Pantheon, there are strong Augustan echoes in this building: the cult of Venus, in particular, alludes in an Augustan manner to the goddess who was the mother of Aeneas. But there are radical innovations too. In this Hadrianic temple, Venus’ associations were no longer with the current dynasty (which, in any case, did not claim divine descent), but with Rome as a whole. Even more strikingly the goddess ‘Rome’ shared the dedication of the temple with Venus. There had long been cults of Rome in the Greek world, so too more recently in the Latin west; even in Rome there was a minor cult of the ‘ Genius of the Roman people’. But this was the first time that ‘Rome’ received a cult in the city itself. Here, in what was later known as the ‘temple of the city’, eternal Roma was represented, enthroned and holding in her right hand the Palladium, symbol of Rome’s eternity. This was a revolutionary development in the religion of place, a new expression of the enduring place of Rome in the divine order. It goes closely together with Hadrian’s adaptation of the festival of the Parilia. As we have seen, since at least the first century B.C. the primeval festival of the Parilia had been taken to commemorate the foundation of the city. It seems that Hadrian dedicated this new temple during the Parilia, perhaps in A.D. 121, a festival which in turn was henceforth known as the ‘Romaea’.42
Fig. 6.1 The Pantheon, as depicted in a nineteenth-century engraving.
A temple built more than a century later illustrates even more clearly the potential ambiguities between tradition and innovation. In A.D. 274 the emperor Aurelian dedicated a great temple to the Sun (Sol), which was famed in antiquity for the richness of the offerings and dedications it contained. Though little survives today, its remains were recorded by antiquarians between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries; and we rely largely on their reports in attempting to reconstruct its general appearance – an unusual design (if our reconstructions are right) of one grand precinct, surrounded by a portico, with a temple building in the middle, another smaller precinct forming an entrance, and perhaps a third precinct off the other side.43 The cult of the Sun can have clear associations with eastern religions: the full title of the god Elagabalus was, in fact, Sol Invictus Elagabalus – Invincible Sun Elagabalus; and here it is often assumed that the particular form of the cult derived from the cult of Ba’al at Palmyra in Syria, after Aurelian’s successful campaigns there. Certainly, the building of this temple has been interpreted by modern and (in all likelihood) ancient observers as the final triumph of ‘Oriental cults’ in Rome. At the same time, however, its significance had Roman roots too. So, for example, a regular sacrifice to Sol is marked on 9 August of several Augustan calendars; and there had been a longstanding identification in both the Greek and Roman worlds of the god Apollo with Sol (or Greek Helios). The sanctuary was also located in a place with strong associations with the Augustan principate: it was opposite the famous Ara Pacis, and near another historic altar, the Ara Providentiae (the Altar of Providence, founded under the early empire). Besides, the imagery of the god – at least on the few contemporary coins on which it is shown – is strongly Graeco-Roman, rather than Oriental (contrast the explicit eastern imagery attached to Elagabalus’ cult); and the priesthood founded to serve the cult was given the very Roman title of ‘pontifices of the Sun’. A single divine name ‘Sun’ could evoke either alien ‘Oriental’ excess or ‘native’ traditionalism, or both; the same cult arrangements – here, for example, the new priesthood – could suggest both a continuing adherence to traditional religious forms, as well as an aggressive attempt to outdo those traditions (the invention of a new set of pontifices after nearly a thousand years representing a challenge to, as much as respect for, the old arrangements).
Such developments continue up to the very last phases of pagan Rome. Though the emperors of the late third and early fourth centuries (the tetrarchs) did not build major new temples, still there were significant new foundations in the very heart of the traditional city. Diocletian commemorated vows to the gods taken at the twentieth anniversary of his rule (in A.D. 303) with a major monument in the Roman Forum. Maxentius (A.D. 306–312), who restored Hadrian’s temple of Venus and Rome after a fire, also built near the Roman Forum in A.D. 307 a small round temple to his deified (and well-named) son Romulus (it was close to the massive basilica he built for judicial business, which still dominates the forum); this temple came to include other divi of the dynasty, but was rededicated by Constantine (who defeated Maxentius to take the throne in A.D. 312) to Jupiter Stator. This was no doubt another loaded dedication – the first temple to Jupiter Stator in the city had, it was said, been dedicated by the legendary Romulus, the founder of the city.44 Even in this last period of the pagan history of Rome, the official cults of the state and official temple foundations still found a powerful symbolism in the most ancient stories and places of Rome.
In this section we consider the impact of religions on the population of the capital. How conscious of the state festivals would an ‘ordinary’ inhabitant of the city have been? How noticeable were the new cults – whether in terms of their buildings, their religious activities, or their social prominence? What was the impact of their claims on writers and other intellectuals? We start by exploring popular involvement in the official religions of Rome. As we have seen, there is clear evidence throughout the principate for the religious and priestly activity of the élite in state cult. But how much of that impinged on the rest of the population? The senatorial officials may have performed these rituals anywhere between piously and perfunctorily. But was the rest of the city passionately involved or entirely unmoved by them?45
The senatorial élite did not monopolize state cults – whether as officeholders or as participants. The Luperci (as we have already noted) were drawn principally from the equites during this period. Minor priesthoods, too, such as the so-called ‘lesser’ pontifices and flamines (who are now, admittedly, little more than names to us) were also reserved for the equites; as were many of the ancient priesthoods of the Latin cities round Rome.46 The equestrian order was still of course unquestionably part of the élite. But more humble Romans also had a variety of parts to play within official religion. In addition to the local cults of the wards that we discussed in chapter 4 (under the charge of four annual magistrates, who were mainly ex-slaves, aided by four slave officials),47 many cults of the Roman people as a whole gave ‘ordinary’ citizens official roles. In the cult of Magna Mater during the empire, for example – a religion which always challenges any strict boundary we might try to draw between the Roman and the foreign, between official and ‘alternative’ religions48 – the priests and priestesses were mainly ex-slaves, newly enfranchised Roman citizens.49 (This was a notable change from republican practice when the cult’s priestly officials came from the goddess’ native Phrygia in Asia Minor, and Roman citizens were banned from serving in the cult.) Likewise ex-slaves (as well as freeborn men from the Italian towns) provided many of the specialist personnel required in all the most central Roman rituals: musicians to play at the rites, men to kill the sacrificial animals, haruspices, temple attendants and so forth. Many of these groups of cult ‘servants’ even proudly formed their own professional associations around their religious duties; these were not just, in other words, positions of menial service, but part of a paraded official religious status open to some of the most lowly inhabitants of Rome.50
Official festivals of the state calendar could also have a considerable impact on public life at all levels. Not all festivals, no doubt; it is a fair guess that during the principate some of the minor rituals would have been carried out by a handful of priests, quite properly and routinely but practically unnoticed by anyone else. Many festivals on the other hand did make a difference to the lives of a wide cross-section of the city’s population.51 This could be a matter of active participation: we know that crowds sometimes turned out to watch the Lupercalia (some women no doubt waiting to be struck with the thongs wielded by the Luperci – which were reputed to bring fertility to the childless); some festivals (like the Saturnalia) involved private celebrations at the same time as public sacrifices; and at supplicationes everyone, male or female, was supposed to sacrifice wine and incense in public. It is striking too that Athenaeus in the second century A.D., writing a (fictional) scholarly discussion set in Rome, has the calm of his intellectual speakers disturbed by the noise of boisterous enjoyment, of music and singing in the streets at the Parilia.52
Religious rules also prescribed activities that could not take place on festal days. According to the state calendar, the courts did not sit on most major festival days; and sometimes religious celebrations were accompanied by a ban on mourning one’s own kin – in the Saecular Games of A.D. 204 the closure of the courts (as well as the prohibition on mourning) lasted, exceptionally, for 30 days. At least in theory (for rules affecting private conduct are always especially hard to enforce), religious festivals made a difference to the lives of the city’s inhabitants.
One particular kind of religious ceremonial certainly involved mass participation. The various types of ludi (games) – from circus races to theatrical performances or gladiatorial shows – were regularly given as part of the festivals to the gods or deified emperors. Of course, many of those who went to enjoy the races or the plays may not have had ‘religion’ (in our sense of the word) uppermost in their minds; but there remained strong associations between the games and the gods throughout the principate. Images and symbols of the appropriate deities, for example, were paraded through the streets of Rome to the Circus or theatre, where sacrifices were performed; and the audience is reported, on one occasion at least (in the civil wars at the very end of the Republic), to have been keenly observant of this ritual. In 40 B.C., during the campaign of Octavian and Antony against Sextus Pompey, at the festival of Pompey’s patron god Neptune, the statue of Neptune was carried into the Circus and the people showed their support for Pompey by warmly applauding; when Octavian subsequently had it omitted from the procession, there was a riot.53 Of course, the audience was here putting a strongly ‘political’ gloss on the ceremonies; but they were certainly not oblivious of these divine preliminaries, merely waiting for the ‘entertainment’ to start – as Christian critics of the late second and third centuries A.D. confirm when they argue that Christians should avoid all games, not only because of their intrinsic immorality, but also because of their context in the worship of the traditional gods.54
The number of days of ludi increased under the empire. There were 77 days in Rome in the early first century A.D., 177 days in the mid fourth century A.D.55 The increase was due partly to the addition of ludi to ancient festivals, partly to the creation of new festivals or the building of new temples commemorated by games. So, for example, when Hadrian dedicated the precinct of the temple to Venus and Rome in A.D. 121, he added circus games to the ancient Parilia, which became a festival popular with all the residents of Rome and all visitors to the city. The foundation of Aurelian’s temple of the Sun was commemorated with games on a four-year cycle (recorded under a Greek title: ‘the agon (contest) of the Sun’), and by the fourth century this cult was also associated with annual four-day ludi.56
Ludi were events for the city as a whole, open not just to Roman citizens, but to foreigners and slaves. When much of the Colosseum was destroyed by lightning in A.D. 217 on the day of the Vulcanalia (the festival of the god Vulcan), this was taken to portend the evils that would afflict the whole Roman empire, whence came the spectators that usually packed the building. And during the major shows put on by Augustus, the streets were said to be so empty that he had to station guards round the city to prevent robbery.57 This story is told because it celebrated the popularity of the ludi presented under the auspices of the emperor and his care for city and citizens; but it gives a good idea of the scale of the games. 150,000 could sit in the Circus Maximus, and the Colosseum (opened in A.D. 80) held 50,000 seated, and another 5,000 standing at the top. This was one way the people as a whole, citizens and others, were collectively involved in the official cults of imperial Rome.
Against this background of the great state temples and public festivals, how visible were the new cults of Rome? We have emphasized throughout this book that ‘new’ cults were no novelty at Rome – and some of the republican imports were among the most conspicuous in the city. At the festivals of Magna Mater in the late Republic and early empire, for example, eunuchs preceded the goddess through the streets of Rome banging drums and clashing cymbals; these eunuchs, dressed in their bright costume, with heavy jewels and long greased hair, seem even to have had official permission to go round the city ‘begging’ for funds, at least on the appointed days of the year. But what of the more recent imports? How visible and how distinctive were their monuments and buildings? Jews and Christians may not have been instantly identifiable in the streets of Rome by a characteristic costume or style of hair – but was there anything else that made them conspicuous?58
One of the major new cults in Rome paraded a particularly clear distinctive identity through its public monuments and rituals. The sanctuary of Isis and Sarapis on the Campus Martius differed from normal Graeco-Roman temples in its design and decoration; and much of it (also unlike a traditional civic sanctuary) was not open to non initiates (Fig. 6.2).59 It seems to have been started in the reigns of Augustus and Gaius, but the sanctuary as we know it dates from the later first century A.D., with some later additions and alterations. Two arches formed the entrance to a large courtyard some 70 metres across, within which was an obelisk honouring the emperor Domitian, who had rebuilt the temple (perhaps on a new plan) after its destruction by fire in A.D. 80. This courtyard was open to passers-by, but two sanctuaries opened off it, accessible only through narrow doorways and probably not evident to the general public. To the south was a sanctuary of Isis: here, at the centre of a great semicircular apse, was a colossal statue of the deity, flanked in other niches by statues of Sarapis and Anubis. Projecting into the water in the middle of the apse were giant statues in Greek style, of Tiber, Nile and Ocean, symbolizing the position of the cult in the Roman world. To the north was a great courtyard, up to 70 metres across and 140 metres long. Its layout and purpose are not wholly clear (as the Severan marble plan largely breaks off at this point and as excavations have been only very partial), but it included at least one (and presumably two) lines of obelisks or trees, perhaps forming a processional route, and at the far end probably shrines for Isis and Sarapis, one (Isis) in Egyptian style, the other (Sarapis) in Greek style. The plan of this northern area was probably modelled on the sanctuary of Sarapis at Saqquara in Egypt. Overall, some of the decoration came directly from Egypt – including several sphinxes and portraits of earlier Egyptian rulers (pharaohs and Ptolemies) and also several of the obelisks that were re-used centuries later to decorate the Renaissance piazzas of Rome. Other items, including baboons and crocodiles, were imitations of genuine Egyptian products but further enhanced the ‘Egyptian’ atmosphere. In addition, the priests of the cult obeyed bizarre regulations of dress and diet: shaved heads, white robes, a prohibition on the eating of pork and fish and the drinking of wine. Elaborate daily rituals took place in these sanctuaries behind closed doors, but outside the sanctuary individual initiates could be seen performing actions that seemed quite weird to some observers – such as leaping into the river Tiber; and on festival days grand carnival processions passed through the streets of Rome.60
Fig. 6.2 The sanctuary of Isis and Sarapis on the Campus Martius, Rome.
In addition to this major sanctuary of Isis, there is evidence for some thirteen other sites of Egyptian cults in imperial Rome, varying widely in size, character and prominence. One of the fourteen regions into which the city was divided was named, in lists of the fourth century A. D. (detailing the different regions and their buildings), after a sanctuary of Isis and Sarapis. Although we can identify no surviving traces of this sanctuary, it must have been prominent enough by the mid fourth century A.D. for it (rather than, say, the Colosseum which was in the same region) to give its name to this division of the city.61 Other sanctuaries are, to us at least, obscure – and some were contained within private houses. For example, the series of second-century A.D. Isiac graffiti from a house on the Aventine hill seems to have been written by a small Isiac group which met there.62
No other ‘foreign’ religion in the city was so visible to the casual visitor. The cult of Mithras seems to have been established in Rome by the early second century A.D. and evidence for it remains abundant until the second half of the third century A.D. The classic sanctuaries of the cult (the so-called ‘caves’) appeared in the middle of the second century.63 Up to forty of these sanctuaries, dating to the second and third centuries A.D., can be located in Rome – or else fairly certainly conjectured (from inscriptional evidence, for example).64 They rank among the most elaborately designed and decorated of all religious places in Rome. But they were sited away from the casual eye, inside buildings which had rooms to let, in private houses, or in the various military camps scattered across the city. Similarly in Ostia Mithraic sanctuaries were found in secluded locations, away from the major roads; and only two were entered directly from the street. Mithraic sanctuaries were for the initiates alone and presented no public exterior to the world. This seclusion of its shrines may have been one of the ways in which Mithraism differentiated itself from traditional civic cult: consciously opposing its dark and private places to the public openness of civic temples.
There seems to have been a similar seclusion (though not necessarily for similar reasons) about many of the cult places of Judaism and, in its earliest phases, of Christianity. By the mid first century B.C. there was a substantial Jewish community in Rome, numbering several thousands by the
Augustan period. Their presence in the city was well known (even though their religious practices did not involve the public displays and processions associated with other cults); and in Ostia a synagogue has been excavated, dating in its earliest phases to the first century A.D., prominently located, even if on the outskirts of the town. However, though literary and epigraphic sources mention about eleven Jewish synagogues in Rome itself during the imperial period, none of them is known archaeologically. This may be a matter of chance survivals and losses; and one of the synagogues was certainly once prominent enough to be mentioned in an inscription as a local landmark.65 But it may also be that most of these synagogues were simple meeting places in houses, leaving no permanent marks of their religious function.
Evidence of the early Christian church shows how complex and shifting issues of visibility or invisibility might be. Christians certainly seem to have avoided distinctive and recognizable ‘churches’ in Rome until at least the third century A.D. Christian groups were established in Rome by the late 50s (Paul wrote a letter to the Romans, that is to the Christian community in the city, c. A.D 55, and Christians were executed by Nero in A.D. 64); and Christian adherents in Rome increased, by stages which we cannot trace, until by the mid third century A.D. the church in Rome had about 150 officials and was able to support 1500 widows and poor – suggesting that the whole community was to be numbered in thousands, making it almost certainly the largest ‘association’ in the city.66 But Christians met in small groups around Rome, mainly in rooms in private houses; and like Jewish synagogues, none of their pre-Constantinian buildings in Rome has been securely identified. Indeed, the ‘house church’ at Dura Europus in Syria is the only excavated example of a clearly identified early Christian meeting place from the whole of the empire earlier than the fourth century A.D.67
Prudence and fear of persecution no doubt in part lay behind this lack of public display. But some Christians seem also to have felt that specific sanctuaries were inappropriate, since no object or building could or should enclose the majesty of god. But whatever the reasons for the secrecy, it also fuelled hostility to Christians. One Christian writer around A.D. 200 represents his opponents attacking the members of his community as ‘a crowd that lurks in hiding places, shunning the light; they are speechless in public but gabble away in corners’.68 In the third century, however, there was an increasing number of purpose-built Christian churches, some, it seems, of considerable grandeur. No archaeological traces survive; but by the mid third century A.D. the Christian meeting places had become sufficiently evident for the emperor Valerian to order the confiscation of church property, and a little later Porphyry could claim in his treatise Against the Christians that Christians imitated the construction of temples in building great places for their prayer meetings. All this, of course, is before the reign of Constantine and the end of the main periods of persecution – suggesting that fear of reprisals was not the only reason for the lack of display in the earliest phases of the cult.69
As early as the second century there were some Christian landmarks in Rome whose religious significance was evident to members of the church at least – even if not recognized more widely. The Christian historian, Eusebius, quotes a Christian priest at Rome appealing (in an argument with a so-called ‘heretic’) to monuments to the Apostles Paul on the Ostian Way and Peter on the Vatican Hill. The monument on the Vatican is probably to be identified with a structure built around A.D. 170, and excavated below the apse of the church of Saint Peter’s (founded by Constantine) (Fig. 6.3).70 This unpretentious monument was built in a cemetery consisting of fairly lavish tombs, as well as a number of simple burials, some of which may be Christian. It was fitted carefully into an awkwardly restricted site in such a way as to suggest that the spot itself was felt to be of particular importance; and, although there is no firm evidence (such as an inscription) to link the monument conclusively with the saint, various features which would offer access to pilgrims suggest that those who built the monument believed that it marked the tomb of Peter. To the passing non-Christian, on the other hand, the structure would not stand out from the other tombs in the cemetery. Matters of visibility depend not least on who is looking: although some cults (such as the Isiac religion) may have forced their presence on any one who came in the way of their public rituals, others would have been visible only selectively. The committed Christian may have perceived the city of Rome as a place loaded with Christian associations, marked by the presence of Christian meeting places and monuments whose existence would often have been hidden from, or unnoticed by, the casual passer-by.
But visibility, and the significance of that visibility, also depended on the precise location of a cult or cult building within the city. The pomerium remained a significant boundary through the imperial period. Foreign cults which had been ‘officially’ established might have sanctuaries within the pomerium, but even Aurelian’s temple of the Sun was sited just outside it, and the only prominent sanctuary of the unofficial cults, that of Isis, was also beyond the pomerium.71 The principal area of Jewish settlement in the Augustan period was also outside the pomerium, west of the Tiber, in what is now Trastevere; seven of the known synagogues were probably located here. One synagogue (the local landmark that we have already mentioned) was near the agger, that is the line of the pomerium – though we do not know on which side; others were in the Campus Martius and in the populous area of the Subura just north of the Fora (the latter of these at least was clearly inside the pomerium).72 The location of Christian meeting places is not known with even that degree of precision, though they were probably scattered throughout the residential areas of the city, perhaps mainly in Trastevere and on the south-east side of the city in the first and second centuries A.D.73 It seems fairly certain, in any case, that only those foreign sanctuaries that were effectively out of public view, positioned in houses or rooms within public buildings, lay inside the pomerium.74 There were, in other words, no blatant, unofficial ‘foreign’ sanctuaries in the monumental centre of Rome. If you chose not to look outside that centre, the traditional cults of the Roman state might seem unaffected by the religious developments in the rest of the city.
Fig. 6.3 Monument to peter, Rome.
We are much better informed about the location of Jews and Christians when they were dead – in their communal burial areas known as catacombs. Communal burial arrangements had precedents in Rome and Italy. In the early empire members of professional associations, and the slaves and ex-slaves of the imperial house and of other families, were sometimes buried together in columbaria (literally ‘dovecotes’), built above ground with niches to hold the individual cremation urns. And elsewhere in Italy members of some religious associations shared burial arrangements; we occasionally find, for example, burial sites of the worshippers of Bona Dea Caelestis, of Hercules, of Jupiter Caelestis, of Isis and for the dendrophori (‘tree-bearers’) of Magna Mater.75 By the second century A.D. ordinary Romans had started to use not these traditional columbaria but (sometimes extensive) underground chambers, or catacombs. Some of these were soon taken over by Christians, and other, specifically Christian, burial sites were established – all located, following the civic rules, well outside the pomerium.
Some of these Christian burial areas began as private foundations (like the catacombs of Priscilla, founded by A.D. 190; or those of Praetextatus, in early third century A.D.); but from around A.D. 200 Christians also had their first communal cemetery (Callistus).76 In total, the Christian catacombs, which were in use through the fourth century A.D., have more than 1000 kilometres of corridors, off which burial chambers themselves were arranged, with space for some 6 million people. As their extent suggests, they were designed for all members of the church, rich and poor alike; charges for cemeteries were kept low and salaries paid to the officials of the cemeteries.77
The Jewish community in Rome also had catacombs exclusive to members of their faith. Seven Jewish catacombs have been found, a mile or two outside the city. These date from the early third (or possibly the later second) century A.D. onwards, the earliest in Trastevere. Some of these burial grounds are quite extensive; the catacombs on the Via Nomentana, for example, on the north east of Rome have 3000 feet of galleries.78
Catacombs now have a romantic image: film and fiction portray them as Christian places of refuge during times of persecution. There is, in fact, no evidence that the cemeteries were ever used in this way; though they were regularly visited by the living to commemorate the dead, formed the focus of the cult of some Christian martyrs and were a noticeable part of the landscape of Rome in the principate. Some catacombs may have had tombs and other associated buildings visible above ground, and they were sufficiently closely identified with Christian activity for the emperor Valerian to have thought it necessary to ban Christians from using them.79
A cult may, of course, have had a prominent sanctuary with striking public rituals – but still have made little (religious) impact on the population at large; it may never have seemed a religious option for most of those who passed its doors. Conversely, a cult may largely have remained hidden from public view, but at the same time have been a major focus of popular interest – through, perhaps, the activities of its members in seeking out new adherents. The visibility of foreign cults in Rome, in other words, has a social dimension. The presence of a cult in Rome does not in itself mean that it opened new religious options to the population as a whole.
In this respect, cults centred on individual families were perhaps the least visible. We get a rare glimpse into one such cult (of Dionysus) from an inscription on a statue base honouring one Agrippinilla, a member of a leading senatorial family in the mid-second century A.D; it was found about 10 miles south-east of Rome.80 On the stone below the name of Agrippinilla herself are listed the names of 420 people in 25 or 26 grades of initiation. At first sight the text gives the impression of a massive influx of Orientals to Rome (many of the names listed have an Eastern ring) – bringing, so it might seem, the cult of Dionysus with them and attracting others to join. In fact, this stone is much more likely to be the commemoration of a particular family cult. Agrippinilla’s family traced its ancestry back 200 years to Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos, where there was an important local cult of Dionysus. The 420 initiates listed had probably not joined this cult by religious choice; nor were they necessarily of eastern origins (despite the sound of their names). They were the slaves and ex-slaves of this and a related senatorial family; and were initiated into this ancestral familial cult not primarily through religious choice, but by virtue of their membership of the two families.
Of course, many foreigners who moved to Rome did continue to worship their ancestral gods, according to the customs of their original countries; but did not necessarily seek new cult members from the population at large. People flocked to Rome from both the eastern and western parts of the empire. No doubt almost all of them kept to some of the religious traditions of their homeland. But of civilians it was only groups from the east who actually established sanctuaries of their ancestral cults in Rome. In Trastevere there was a sanctuary to a number of gods from Palmyra in Syria; the dedications were made by immigrants from there to ‘their ancestral deities’ in a combination of Latin, Greek and Aramaic (the common language of the near east).81 The Jewish community in Rome too may be seen primarily as an ethnic group. They probably originated mainly in the eastern Mediterranean, some being brought to Rome as slaves after successive captures of Jerusalem in 63 and 37 B.C. and subsequently emancipated.
Other cults, however, were ‘elective’ – in the sense that they were open either to any individual who chose to join, or at least to those who satisfied some basic qualification for membership (such as a particular profession –or, in the case of the Mithraic cult, were male). The degree of commitment implied by these choices varied greatly from cult to cult. As in the republican period, there were associations which people joined by virtue of their occupation, or to ensure themselves a decent burial. These associations were regularly under the auspices of a god, but it may not have been the cult of that deity as such which attracted members, nor any particular ‘religious’ conviction.82 For example, at Lanuvium south-east of Rome a group of men, both slave and free, formed an association of worshippers of Diana and Antinous.83 Diana was often the patroness of such associations, and Antinous, Hadrian’s favourite, had died (and achieved divine status) shortly before the creation of the association; it was on his new temple in the town that the rules of the association were inscribed. This association dined together six times a year, on the birthdays of Diana and of Antinous, and on the birthdays of four high-ranking local figures, when sacrifices of incense and wine were made. Members also paid monthly contributions which ensured that the association would give them a proper burial, even if they died far from home.
How far this and other such societies are seen as ‘religious’ groups depends on what activities we decide to classify as ‘religious’. Even then, it remains clear enough that different participants might have had different priorities, or that a solemn religious feast for one might simply have been a good party for another. The association’s rules emphasise what seem to us the non-religious aspects of the association; and no greater weight is apparently given to the birthdays of the two deities than to those of the four local dignitaries. Feasting and funerals have often been taken to be the principal (and worldly) objectives of the association. On the other hand, it was actually named after two deities – so parading its specifically religious identity to members and non-members alike; while for many members the proper rituals of a funeral and the care of the burial place after death might have been uppermost in their religious priorities.
There is, however, a clear contrast between a group such as the worshippers of Diana and Antinous and the associations (say) attached to the cult of Magna Mater. From the second century A.D. onwards, special groups of ‘tree-bearers’ (dendrophori) and ‘reed-bearers’ (cannophori) played their parts in the cult’s ritual (notably at the spring festival, where a pine tree was carried in procession to the goddess’s temple, and reeds carried in procession through the streets). And in the cult of Bellona, a deity often closely linked with Magna Mater, there was also in some places another association, of ‘bodyguards’ (hastiferi).84 Though members of these groups no doubt shared various kinds of ‘social’ activities, their central defining function was their role in the ritual of the cult. The official sanctioning of the cult was extended to these associations, which offered a model for other elective groups.
Other cult organizations in Rome, outside the official cults of the state, seem to have attracted members through a specifically religious appeal. Two examples from Rome – both attested, though in very different ways, through surviving archaeological material – will illustrate the nature of the religious choices involved. Next to one of the city gates (the modern Porta Maggiore) are the remains of an underground building, some 12 metres long by 9 metres wide, divided into three aisles, with a vaulted ceiling elaborately decorated with stucco panels – which show a variety of figures from Graeco-Roman myth, interspersed with religious scenes and symbols. It is now generally known as ‘The Underground Basilica at the Porta Maggiore’ and it dates originally to around A.D. 40 (Fig. 6.4).85 The purpose of the building is much disputed. Some argue that it was designed to house funerary urns, and that the stucco scenes are essentially decorative, not a coherent symbolic programme. Others hold that it was for the meetings of a religious group, and that the stucco scenes amount to an elaborate symbolic code, which made sense in the context of the shared religious or philosophical beliefs of the group’s members. The building remains puzzling: but certainly the plan of the building would be very unusual for a burial place and no trace of any funerary urns has ever been found; while some of the mythological scenes are so unusual for decoration of this type that it is hard not to imagine that some intricate symbolism underlies it all. It has often been suggested, for example, that the rare depiction of the poetess Sappho throwing herself to her death from a cliff might have been a symbol of the liberation of the soul from the body. If the building did belong to a particular religious association, it offers one image of the essentially private (and, to outsiders, mysterious) world of a cult meeting place, unobtrusive behind closed doors.
Fig. 6.4 The central ‘nave’ of the Underground Basilica at Porta Maggiore, Rome, looking east to the apse; on each side is an aisle. The vaulted ceiling of the nave and aisles is covered with stucco scenes (for an example from the nave see fig. 5.1).
The second example, by contrast, concerns a named and relatively well-known cult: the cult of Jupiter Dolichenus, believed to have originated in Doliche in northern Syria. (The name indicates both its place of origin and the Romanization – under the title Jupiter – of the Syrian ‘ Ba’al’.) This cult was widespread among non-Syrians in the western empire, in both civilian and military contexts. There were three sanctuaries in Rome: one was in or near the camp of the imperial cavalry guard, one was used mainly by soldiers of the watch, and the third, on the Aventine, seems to have been used solely by civilians.86 The Aventine sanctuary, which is probably the best documented sanctuary of Jupiter Dolichenus in the empire, dates from the mid second century A.D., though it overlies an earlier, probably Augustan building.87 Inscriptions connected with this sanctuary suggest that its adherents formed a tightly knit group, with a complex hierarchy: a priest who might also be called ‘father of candidates’, a scribe and ‘patrons’ who presided over a series of initiates (‘brothers’). It seems very unlikely that this organization was visible (let alone comprehensible) to those outside the cult; and we can only guess what difference their cultic role would have made to the initiates when they left the sanctuary and proceeded with their ‘ordinary’ lives; we can also only guess how new adherents found out about (or decided to join) the cult. There is, to be sure, no evidence that the cult of Jupiter Dolichenus (nor any other of the elective religions) stimulated any adverse attention; but then there is hardly any evidence for its making any public impact at all outside the walls of its sanctuaries and its initiated members. This is a striking contrast to the cult of Isis – which was an exception among these elective cults both in its public prominence and in the violent reactions it provoked.
The attraction of new adherents was more problematic in Judaism and Christianity than in any other of these cults. The Jewish community remained a group largely defined by descent which did not seek actively to gain new members. On the other hand, Jews did recognize a category of converts (‘proselytes’) to Judaism. Outsiders did become attracted to the Jewish faith: some admired Jewish monotheism and the absence of religious images, others followed part of the Jewish law (for example on the observance of the sabbath or on diet), while a number became fully committed to Judaism and acquired the status of proselytes. Outside Rome, an early third-century Jewish inscription from Aphrodisias in Asia Minor mentions both proselytes (that is, full converts) and ‘god-fearers’, a term which seems to have referred to gentiles who followed some aspects of Jewish law or practices. And in Rome itself, there is a handful of tombstones (two male and five female) in which the deceased is specifically designated a proselyte; a small number, maybe – but it is a status that we would not necessarily have expected to be proclaimed on tombstones. However such fringe members were attracted, the process certainly caused adverse comment from some Roman writers: Tacitus, for example, in his lengthy description of Jewish practices that formed part of his account of the emperor Titus’ capture of Jerusalem, lays particular stress on the wickedness of Jewish proselytes ‘who scorned their ancestral religion’; and the historian Cassius Dio records that in A.D. 95 the emperor Domitian put his own cousin to death and exiled his wife on charges of ‘atheism’, because ‘they had drifted into Judaism’. There was almost certainly a tension here between on the one hand the status of Judaism as the ethnic religion of the Jews (and as such not expected to be seeking to widen its group of adherents) and on the other the increase in its numbers outside the ethnic group through a process (however casually, however unsystematically) of ‘proselytizing’.88
Christianity lacked the ethnic links of Judaism. Initially it depended for its members entirely on conversion, both from Jews and non-Jews; and the exhortations ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels, and the travels of Paul actively seeking out new converts, define it at its origins as a missionary religion. After Paul there seems to have been no organized or systematic programme of attracting non-believers; but itinerant preachers remained active in different areas of the Roman world – and even if they did not draw attention to themselves in public, conversion was clearly a central aim. One pagan criticism of Christianity focussed on the personal approaches made by Christians to non-Christians; and on the ways they insinuated themselves into private houses and ‘corrupted’ the women and children with their bizarre ideas. These complaints seem to refer to the kind of low-key evangelizing that must have been prudent given that those offended could seek to have the missionary executed by the Roman authorities. But it also suggests a thoroughly unRoman model of social spread, through vigorous personal diffusion of the cult, transcending the absence of prominent and grand cult centres.89
Finally in this section we turn to consider the intellectual impact of these cults. How far did their claims influence Roman writers? How far was there a literary or intellectual response to these new religions? There are, as we saw briefly in the last chapter, a variety of jibes and critiques directed at some of the most prominent of the new cults: from Juvenal’s satire on some of the rituals of Isis to the Greek writer Lucian’s ironic account of the alleged charlatan Peregrinos, who had succeeded in duping simple-minded Christians (along with other gullible Greeks).90 Christianity, in particular, prompted extended critiques, generating a sequence of pagan theological responses to its claims and practices. The first one known to us is Celsus’ True Doctrine, written in Greek c. A.D. 180, perhaps in Alexandria – though it is not preserved independently, but known only through lengthy quotation in Origen’s attempted refutation of it (Against Celsus, written in the late 240s A.D.). From these quotations, it seems that Celsus argued that Christianity was an untraditional deviation from Judaism, which was itself a falling away from the original Egyptian cults, and which thus lacked any grounds for credence; it was also totally objectionable for its subversion of the household by conversions of slaves, women and children.91 A century later the neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry mounted a much better informed attack on Christianity, which argued (rightly), for example, that the Book of Daniel was in fact written centuries after its purported date of composition; and these objections later formed the basis for a tract by a high-ranking Roman official Hierocles in the early fourth century A.D.92
Such criticism, now a commonplace of Christian biblical scholarship, may have been seriously unsettling to Christians at the time; certainly the church historian Eusebius took the trouble to compose detailed refutations of both Porphyry and Hierocles. On the other hand, these high profile intellectual disputes would inevitably have had the effect of drawing more attention to the cult itself; in the process of refuting Christianity pagan writers inevitably gave it the prominence that they feared.
Not all writing was hostile. Various authors commented on Judaism with positive approval or at least sympathetically, and sought to locate it within their own terms of reference. The medical writer and philosopher Galen, for example, stated that Jewish views of the creation were superior to that of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, though Galen himself argued for a different position.93 The nature of the goddess Isis was the subject of an essay by Plutarch, who used the cult to expound his own Platonic-style philosophy (On Isis and Osiris). The most complex case, however, is that of Mithras. In the mid second century A.D. two philosophers Numenius and Cronius, drawing upon earlier treatises on the cult, discussed Mithraism in the context of their own (Platonic and Pythagorean) philosophical views. These discussions have not survived; but they were used by the later philosopher Porphyry and are known to us through him. Porphyry advanced arguments in favour both of vegetarianism and of a particular allegorical reading of a passage of Homer’s Odyssey on the basis of these Mithraic texts. The imagery of the cult of Mithras was evidently extremely suggestive to these philosophers, who deployed it for their own arguments and purposes.
These philosophical readings are almost our only early literary accounts of the Mithraic cult; and it is very hard to know how far they reflect the theology and intellectual style current within the cult itself – or how far they have transformed it for their own philosophical purposes.94 But this is only a pressing problem if you imagine that there ever was a single ‘ real’ Mithraic message which could, in principle and if you had enough evidence, be disentangled. We suggested earlier in this chapter that it is more helpful to think of these cults in terms of shifting clusters of ideas, people and beliefs; and that under the rubric of a single cult title (‘Mithraism’, for example), we might find quite substantial religious differences (or, at least, different emphases) depending on the context, the place, or for that matter the literary form, in which the cult was represented. On this model the philosophical treatises take their place as one more distinctive way in which the cult (and its representations) spread through the Roman world. Religions were not necessarily hidden by the seclusion of their secret cult places; literary, philosophic, even satiric representations could always give public prominence to a cult whose rituals took place behind closed doors.
We have seen the impact that the different new cults in Rome could make on an observer – whether wandering the streets of Rome, or reading in a library. But what was the appeal of these cults, especially in comparison with the traditional cults of Rome? What would make you wish to participate? The new cults had a different focus from the official system: they referred primarily to places other than Rome; some of them also constructed a much more complex symbolic system than traditional cults; they also offered the initiates change – both in this life and (sometimes) after death. Can we understand how far these religions would have seemed distinctively different from the civic cults of the city? How far would they have seemed really new? Many of the new cults did offer a striking alternative to the ‘religion of place’ we explored in chapter 4. If the state cult focussed specifically on Rome, other religions evoked different lands, far away. The very name of Jupiter Dolichenus, for example, points to Doliche in northern Syria, the original home of the god. And the cult of Isis derived from Egypt and paraded many ‘Egyptian’ features. It is clear that in practice the cult in the Graeco-Roman world was very different from its Egyptian ‘origins’; but nonetheless Isiac sanctuaries in Italy were loaded (as we have seen) with distinctively Egyptian (or pseudo-Egyptian) objects, from obelisks to sphinxes; and when Lucius is initiated in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses the books used are written in ‘unintelligible’ – presumably Egyptian – script.95
These complex evocations of foreign places are well illustrated in the cult of Mithras, which claimed Persia as its source of wisdom. The Persian sage Zoroaster was said to have founded the cult in the distant past, and numerous aspects of the cult alluded to its Persian ‘origins’. Two religious terms used in the rituals (nama – ‘hail’ and nabarzes – ‘victorious’) are of Persian origin – one certainly so, the other probably; and ‘Persian’ was the title of one of the grades of initiation. The design of Mithraic sanctuaries also evoked a cave in Persia, where – as an act of primordial sacrifice – the god Mithras himself was said to have slain a bull.96 This sacrifice was regularly depicted in sculpture and painting at one end of Mithraic sanctuaries: Mithras on a bull’s back forces it to the ground; pulling its head up by the nostrils, he plunges in a knife behind or beside the head. The violence of the scene marks this out as quite alien to the practice of ‘normal’ Graeco-Roman sacrifice, in which the victim was expected to die willingly; the role of the god in the Mithraic sacrificial ritual is also strikingly different (breaking the traditional civic norms which firmly separated the roles of humans and gods in sacrifice).97
The Persian ‘origins’ of Mithras cannot, however, be taken at face value: the picture is much more complicated than a simple diffusion of the cult from a Persian homeland to Rome.98 Mithras was an ancient Persian deity, known to the Greeks from at least the fifth century B.C.; and his cult may indeed have become better known in Asia Minor from the first centuries B.C. and A.D. through the Persian settlements there. However, the form of the cult most familiar to us, the initiatory cult, does not seem to derive from Persia at all. It is found first in the west, has no significant resemblance to its supposed Persian ‘origins’, and seems largely to be a western construct. The fact that this new western form of the cult represents itself as the wisdom of the Persian sage Zoroaster does not mean that it literally was a version of Persian Zoroastrianism. The claims of foreign origins must here in part be playing the role of a religious metaphor or symbol, appealing to symbolic authority outside the city of Rome and emphasizing the cult’s difference from traditional civic religion.99
Judaism too was focussed on another place, Jerusalem. Until the destruction of the temple there by the Romans in A.D. 70 (following the Jewish Revolt) Jews throughout the empire regularly sent money to Jerusalem. These practical ties to Jerusalem were broken at that point (sacrifices were not resumed in Jerusalem after A.D. 70), but Jewish scriptures continued to evoke Judaea. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in Rome after the destruction of the temple, refers to the temple and its cult in the present tense; and in the second century A.D. Jewish sages in Judaea wrote extensive and elaborate sets of rules about the performance of sacrifices and the maintenance of the sanctuary – just as if it still existed. The real Jerusalem, in other words, was reconstructed as a purely symbolic focus.100
The focus of these cults on places other than Rome did not, however, preclude the worship, even in the same sanctuary, of deities from the Graeco-Roman civic pantheon; nor did it necessarily imply rejection of the political order ordained and upheld by civic religion. Consider, for example, the sanctuary of Magna Mater at Ostia: it included not only temples of Magna Mater and her ‘consort’, Attis, but also a shrine of Bellona, and a series of statues of other gods – Pan, Bacchus, Venus and maybe Ceres.101 Context inevitably makes a difference to how a deity is perceived and understood; and here the association with Magna Mater and her cult may have prompted viewers to rethink their ideas of Pan or Venus, to reinterpret them in the light of the goddess, her strange rituals and her castrated priests. But at the same time, these other gods and goddesses brought into this sanctuary the associations of their own roles in civic cult, so linking Magna Mater to the concerns of the state. This is a link, in fact, powerfully reinforced in some inscriptions from the sanctuary which record the performance of the cult’s characteristic form of sacrifice, the taurobolium (‘bull killing’): the texts state that the sacrifice was carried out ‘for the wellbeing of the emperor’.102 Of course, Magna Mater (though ‘foreign’ in all kinds of ways) had been officially introduced to Rome; and it is not therefore surprising, perhaps, to find her so closely associated with the concerns of the Roman state and other deities of the civic pantheon. But we find the same pattern in other cults too, those which had not in any sense been ‘officially’ incorporated: there were, in fact, many different ways of expressing their relationship with traditional Roman cults and deities, quite apart from the impression of exclusivity given by the physical layout and position of some of their sanctuaries.
In the sanctuary of Jupiter Dolichenus on the Aventine in Rome103 an extremely wide range of gods is represented alongside Jupiter (as we saw, a Romanization of the Syrian Ba’al) and other gods of Doliche. These included Graeco-Roman gods of the civic pantheon (a statue of Diana, for example, of Hercules and of Apollo), as well as Mithras and Egyptian deities. One surviving sculptured panel, in fact, shows the Dolichene gods together with representations of Isis and Sarapis. And, as in the Ostian sanctuary of Magna Mater, there are dedications to the apparently foreign deities ‘for the well-being’ of the emperor. In this case, however, there seems to be an attempt to assert the superiority of ‘Jupiter Optimus Maximus Dolichenus’ over the whole pantheon, above both the old gods like Minerva and Apollo, and the Egyptian and Persian gods. The main god is described as ‘protector of the whole world’ – and his title ‘Optimus Maximus’ brazenly mimics the cult title of Jupiter in his temple on the Capitoline: on the Aventine and elsewhere in the empire, in other words, the cult of Dolichenus borrows the epithets of the Capitoline triad (the title ‘Juno Regina’ is sometimes given to his female partner) to express the overarching position of the Dolichene deities – so effectively claiming to usurp that of the state cult itself.104 In this sort of cosmology, the display and incorporation of other deities could reinforce a strength – even parade the superiority – of an ‘alternative’ cult.
The cosmology of the cult of Isis, too, often incorporates other cults and deities. Though the goddess was of explicitly Egyptian origin, Isiac hymns (preserved on inscriptions) praised her as responsible for the whole apparatus of the Graeco-Roman pantheon; and her adherents claimed that she was worshipped under many different divine names throughout the world – that she was (in other words) the goddess otherwise worshipped under the name of Venus, Minerva or Magna Mater. These ideas may underlie the presence of statuettes of Dionysus and Venus in the Isiac temple at Pompeii. They may also give a very particular gloss to the various links between Isis (as the all powerful deity) and the political order: the temple of Isis at Beneventum included a statue of Domitian as Pharaoh; an Isiac festival at Corinth, fictionalized by Apuleius, was explicitly designed to favour Rome (one of the priests prayed before the assembled people for the emperor, the senate, knights and people of the Roman world). But in general the archaeological evidence for the cult of Isis presents a peculiar (and revealing) set of problems. The major temples of Isis in Italy have not yet been systematically excavated, but have been reconstructed instead on the basis of casual finds – a process which may give them a much too exclusively ‘Egyptian’ image.105 So, for example, the sanctuary at Beneventum (which is known from inscriptions) has had numerous ‘Egyptian’ finds in the town assigned to it – images of Isis, Apis bulls, Sphinxes, as well as the ‘Egyptianizing’ Domitian we have just mentioned. For all we know, other ‘non-Egyptian’ images may once have belonged there too. But in the archaeological record a casual find of a statue of (say) Hermes or Venus is never likely to be assigned to a shrine of Isis. There is, of course, a circular process at work here: if only objects with a strongly Egyptian style are associated with Isiac shrines, then Isiac shrines will inevitably appear exclusively Egyptian. This is another clear example of how archaeological interpretation and archaeological assumptions can affect our understanding of cult practice and ideas.
In the case of the ‘Persian’ cosmology of the cult of Mithras archaeology has offered particularly important material. Excavations have shown that, in some Mithraic sanctuaries at least, the cult (which literary evidence might have encouraged us to see as rigidly separate from the civic pantheon) did allow a place to a wide range of other deities. For example, in the excavations of the sanctuary of Mithras under the church of S. Prisca in Rome heads of Sarapis, Venus and perhaps Mars were discovered, as well as representations of Hecate, Fortuna, Dionysus and Asclepius.106 And in that same sanctuary is preserved, painted on the wall, a line of verse: ‘fertile earth, through whom Pales procreates everything’.107 The line, which may be the opening of a Mithraic prayer, celebrates the role of the Roman deity Pales (whose festival, the Parilia, we discussed in chapter 4) in the promotion of fertility – though it is unclear from this single surviving line how that was related to the role of Mithras himself. In addition, as in the other cults we have looked at, dedications were often made to Mithras for the well-being of the emperor. The arcane and astronomical aspects of the cult of Mithras, which have been over-emphasized in some current interpretations, co-existed with the traditional god and the temporal order. There appears nevertheless to be an important difference in the incorporation of the various deities of the traditional pantheon between the cult of Mithras and the cult of Jupiter Dolichenus. In the cult of Dolichenus there seems to have been some attempt to set the civic pantheon into a new structure, now under the Syrian god; in the cult of Mithras the evidence that we have suggests no more than that individual members of the cult did sometimes feel that particular Graeco-Roman gods had their place in a Mithraic sanctuary, choosing, in other words, to re-locate the traditions of Rome within a new cosmic setting. The overlap and inter-relationship between traditional and alternative cults could take many different forms.
A sanctuary of Syrian gods on the Janiculan hill in Rome shows how complicated such inter-relationships might be.108 The excavations of the sanctuary offer little secure archaeological evidence for its character before the fourth century A.D., but epigraphic evidence illuminates the cult in the second century A.D. The main deity was Jupiter Optimus Maximus Heliopolitanus, who (like Jupiter Dolichenus) combines the principal deity of Rome with an ‘origin’ at Heliopolis (Baalbek in Lebanon); and the second-century phase of the sanctuary seems to have been sponsored by a wealthy Syrian living in Rome, one Gaionas. The links with the traditional Roman religious order are much more intricate than the dedications on behalf of the emperor made to the god by Marcus Antonius Gaionas would, on their own, suggest. The eastern ‘origin’ of the cult itself is complicated by the fact (as we shall see in chapter 7) that Heliopolis in Lebanon was in the territory of the Roman colonia of veteran soldiers at Berytus (modern Beirut), and that from the first century A.D. the cult in Heliopolis was itself in part a Roman adaptation, designed for the Roman settlers there. Besides, dedications on the Janiculan linked Syrian deities to the Furrina nymphs, whose ancient grove (and spring of Furrina) was near the Syrian sanctuary and whose festival figured in the official calendars of the Republic and early empire. The new deities were thus tied to the traditions of a specific place in Rome.
The relationship of Christianity to Rome – both as a place and a political power – is articulated rather differently in surviving Christian writing. One strand of thought, going back to the Book of Revelation, identified Rome, ‘the whore of Babylon’, as a satanic power, and envisaged apocalyptic doom falling on the Roman empire. Many outsiders certainly thought that the Christians were hostile to Rome, either because they had heard of their apocalyptic hopes or simply because of the Christian refusal to participate in religious rituals. In striking contrast with the other cults we have reviewed, early Christianity did not incorporate rituals celebrated for the emperor’s well-being. A second strand of Christian thinking, however, and one which is more prominent in the surviving texts, sought to counter the fears of non-Christians. Defenders of Christianity cited biblical passages to argue that they recognized the power of the state and did in fact pray in their own terms for the emperor. Some even hoped for the conversion of the emperor to Christianity. But such arguments, which still explicitly rejected the accepted religious underpinning of imperial power, could not persuade traditionalists. Emperors and Roman officials demanded that what they regarded as divine blessing be invoked on behalf of the state.109
The novelty of many of these alternative cults partly depended on a relationship to texts and to the written word as a generator (or guarantor) of religious meaning that was strikingly different from Roman civic cults. The traditional cults certainly had books of religious formulae, which preserved the proper texts of prayers; there were also numerous priestly collections of religious rules and decisions. But they had no written works which established their tenets and doctrine, or provided explanation (religious exegesis) of their rituals or moral prescription for their adherents. Exegesis and prescription were offered within traditional civic paganism – but outside any formal religious context, and by men of learning or philosophers, who might, or might not, also be priests. By contrast in the cult of Isis great emphasis was laid on the sacred books, allegedly deriving from Egypt –which, as we have seen, were featured in the initiation of Lucius in Apuleius’ novel. Judaism too had a large number of writings long regarded as authoritative and which formed the basis of much of their religious observance; so, for example, over the year in a synagogue the first five books of what Christians came to call the Old Testament were read out, and the members of the community received instruction in their ‘ancestral philosophy’, that is, the scriptural texts.110 In the period after the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem, Jewish sages in Palestine, and later Babylon, began to create elaborate exegeses of the scriptures and rules for ordinary living, which were compiled from the late second century A.D. onwards. Christianity also had a wide range of doctrinal texts, on the life of Christ and the lives of the apostles, as well as treatises on theology and pastoral matters. The sheer diversity of these texts became a major factor in debates in the second and third centuries A.D. between those who saw themselves as ‘Orthodox’ Christians, and those they viewed as ‘heretics’: ‘Orthodox’ churches based their beliefs and practice on selections from the whole range of Christian texts that were quite different from those chosen by ‘heretics’. Only gradually did an agreed canon of authoritative Christian texts emerge.111
In the cult of Mithras we know very little about the role, status or content of its various religious books and treatises. On the other hand, from writers such as Porphyry and from the iconography of its cult images and places, we can reconstruct a good deal of what seems to have been a complex and peculiar system of symbols and ‘received wisdom’. This was partly structured around the names of the sequence of Mithraic grades of initiation themselves: ‘raven’, ‘male bride’, ‘soldier’, ‘lion’, ‘Persian’, ‘sun-runner’, ‘father’. It seems clear that some of these names drew their significance from (and, at the same time, manipulated) the common-knowledge and day-to-day beliefs of the time. Ravens, for example, were commonly believed in the Roman world to be able to talk and to understand signs from the gods; Mithraic ‘ravens’ were on the boundary between outsiders and full initiates, just as the real bird was on that between animals, humans and the divine. Not all the grades played on ‘ordinary’ beliefs in this way: the ‘male bride’, for example, is a deliberate paradox, presumably the subject of complicated exegesis within the cult.112
Mithraic temples seem to have had a particular role in the cult’s symbolic system. They were not simply replicas of Mithras’ cave in Persia; some also had a complex astronomical symbolism which turned the temple into a ‘map’ of the universe.113 Roman templa also had a cosmic orientation: the Latin word templum denoted an area of the heavens; and we have already seen in this chapter how the design of the Hadrianic Pantheon evoked the vault of heaven with the sun. But Mithraic temples were far more explicit and complex in their symbolism: one end, for example, seems regularly to have stood for the dark, the night and the west, the other for the light (of Mithras), the sun and the east – so giving a religious ‘orientation’ to the temple, which might be exactly the opposite of its real-life, geographical, orientation; the axis of (religious) north and south might also be marked, as well as the planetary spheres and the signs of the zodiac.
Astronomical learning is also on display in the Mithraic sanctuary – as a way, it seems, of showing the celestial journey of the human soul through the fixed stars. The characteristic scene of the killing of the bull by Mithras, regularly shown at the ‘east’ end of the temple, provides a clear example of this. These representations often include a striking, and at first sight baffling, set of symbols: a dog, snake and scorpion. But these, together with the bull itself, almost certainly correspond to a set of constellations: Canis Major/Minor, Hydra, Scorpio, Taurus. Mithras himself may be associated with the Sun, and the Sun’s main constellation Leo. Above the scene of bull-killing itself, the signs of the zodiac are sometimes shown; while beside it stand two figures known as Cautes (shown with raised torch) and Cautopates (shown with lowered torch), who represented the opposites of day and night, growth and decay, and oversaw the soul’s entry to and departure from this life.114
Many of the new cults, as we have already seen, proclaimed the superiority of one single supreme deity: Jupiter Dolichenus was described in the Aventine sanctuary as ‘protector of the whole world’; Isis was believed to be the supreme power in the universe and the origin of civilization; the cult of Mithras focussed on the mediating exploits of Mithras; Judaism and Christianity both stressed the might of one god. How far then should any or all of these cults be seen as monotheistic? Were they, as a group, a reflection of a general trend in the imperial period towards monotheism?
Without a doubt there were some adherents of these alternative cults who recognized no other deity but their god (whether Isis, Mithras or the Christian god); adherents who were, in the very strictest sense, monotheists. It seems also fairly clear that such people increased in number over our period. It is much harder, however, to trace any general, unified trend towards monotheism. Not only were the cosmologies of the various cults so different that the single label ‘monotheistic’ unhelpfully blurs out the profound differences between them: even within Judaism and Christianity (the central cases of monotheistic cults) there were considerable variants – in Judaism god was generally seen as the head of a number of divine beings, who were not always under his control,115 and in Christianity the supreme god was related, in different ways by different Christian groups, to the Son and the Holy Spirit.116 But monotheism itself is no single phenomenon. Rather, it occupies part of a spectrum between an extreme form of polytheism (where all of a large number of deities are treated as effectively equal) and an equally extreme position that insists on the existence of only one god; and, in practice, it rarely draws a clear distinction between those who believe that their particular deity is by far the most important and powerful (perhaps, like Isis, incorporating all others) and those who believe that their deity is literally the only one.117 Of course, within official Roman civic paganism there were well established traditions which claimed the supremacy for one god – whether Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or Elagabalus; and private worship throughout pagan antiquity must always have left open the possibility for any individual to devote him or herself exclusively to one deity. The claim to a new supremacy for a particular god may well have been an important part of the appeal of the elective cults; but even this did not necessarily, on its own, mark a complete rupture with the traditional religious practice.118
As we have seen over the last few pages, the issue of similarity and difference between traditional and alternative cults depends in many respects (just as it must have done in antiquity) on your standpoint, or on which particular features you decide to stress. For some worshippers or some observers, for example, the cult of Isis could represent a complete rejection of traditional, civic paganism – for others it was part of, or an extension of, traditional religious life. There are nevertheless a few particular features of new cults which serve to mark them out much more strongly from traditional religions than this model would suggest. These features might be grouped under the term ‘transformation’: for all these new cults claimed to make much more of an impact than traditional religions on the everyday world and on the after-life of their adherents.119
In this life, most elective cults offered a new sense of community. As we have seen, the worship of traditional deities could have a social dimension. The association of Diana and Antinous, for example, met six times a year for sacrifice and dinner, and ensured that members had a decent burial. But most new, elective cults offered a much stronger type of membership, which they marked by special initiatory rituals. So, for example, in the cult of Isis, alongside the relatively public rituals, individual initiations became increasingly important from the first century A.D. onwards; members took part in the rituals at the main sanctuaries, or met in private groups, such as the one which (as we have already seen) used a house on the Aventine hill.120 The most vivid account we have of Isiac initiation concerns Lucius in Apuleius’ novel The Metamorphoses.121 Lucius, miraculously transformed by the goddess Isis from a donkey back into a man, sought formal initiation into her cult at Corinth in Greece, through purity, abstinence from unclean foods, and daily service in her temple. After the secrets of the holy books were explained to him by the priest, he underwent an initiation that took him down to the entrance of the underworld and brought him back to life again. Lucius then, at the instruction of the goddess, went to Rome, where he prayed daily in the temple of Isis on the Campus Martius. But, because he was a stranger in that sanctuary, though not to the religio, he was told by Isis to undergo two further initiations, one into the mysteries of Osiris her consort and one again into the mysteries of Isis.122 Apuleius at several points teases the reader about what he can or will tell (even in a fictional account) about the experience of religious initiation. Much of his point is to explore the tensions of such a religion: how far secrecy is compatible with the retelling of a (fictional) initiation; what is secret, or where the secrets reside, in an initiatory religion; how far such secrecy challenges the structures of Graeco-Roman civic life.
Initiation inevitably meant entry into another (secret) world; and it was particularly associated with those foreign cults which met only privately. In the cult of Mithras individuals probably belonged primarily to one Mithraic sanctuary and its group of worshippers. Inscriptions record lists of initiates, varying from 10 to 36. One inscription, for example, records the 34 members involved in the restoration of a sanctuary in A.D. 183 (of whom 5 died of the plague of A.D. 184), and the subsequent annual initiations between then and A.D. 201 of between one and eight new members.123 The sequence of seven initiatory grades also defined an individual member’s rank within the cult: the first three grades were preparatory, not implying full cult membership; the ‘lion’ was the crucial pivotal rank, while the ‘father’ represented the highest degree of perfection. Men progressed up through the grades, passing through fresh rituals of initiation, each with its own complex symbolism.124 Individuals presumably belonged primarily to one Mithraic sanctuary and its group of worshippers – and moved up the Mithraic ranks within their own particular ‘congregation’.
Christians too had a set of procedures for new members, which varied from group to group and over time. One common pattern, at least by the late second century A.D., had a transitional phase leading to baptism; people in this position, which could last for up to three years, were known as ‘catechumens’.125 A community of Christian initiates had a particularly strong sense of group identity. It was only Christians (and Jews) who practised charity towards their own members (the poor, widows, prisoners); and Jews and Christians alone had cemeteries specific to their faiths (no cemeteries in Rome were reserved for initiates of the other cults).
Membership of the new cults affected, in different ways, the everyday life of their members. As we have seen in earlier chapters, the traditional cults of Rome were based on (and, in turn, acted to legitimate) the public status of individuals within the community of the state – whether citizen, matron, or pontifex. What was distinctive about the new cults was their drive toward a strong religious identity through strictly controlled rules of behaviour; and they created new statuses and new ways of life that may have started within the walls of the sanctuary, but extended outside those walls too. In theory, just as Apuleius’ Lucius was instructed by Isis herself, Isiac initiates were supposed to devote their whole life to the goddess, to obey the rules of her cult, and to practise perfect purity. Mithraic initiates were also expected to obey strong rules of purity and to oppose evil in the world.126 Jews, to the anger of some non-Jews, kept themselves apart from their neighbours by special dietary rules and by the celebration of their own calendar (resting on the Sabbath). Christians were expected to mark their difference by living a different life, often defined through particular control of sexuality or a particular régime of the body: some Christians, for example, made a public parade of their choice to retain their virginity.127 In all these religions, though, practice must have varied widely. Individuals and individual communities must have defined their own norms; there were, no doubt, as many who lapsed from the rules (at least in their strictest form) as adhered to them.
In some of the new cults this ‘transformation’ affected the fate of the initiate after death, as well as in the day-to-day world of this life. Traditional pagan culture offered all kinds of views of death and the afterlife: ranging from a terrifying series of punishments for those who had sinned in this life, through a more or less pleasant state of being that followed but was secondary to this life, to uncertainty or denial that any form of after-life was possible (or knowable).128 The traditional cults of Rome included rituals that honoured, commemorated and made offerings to the dead: the annual festival of the Parentalia, for example, involved feasting at the tombs of relatives and ancestors. But the official state cult did not particularly emphasize the fate of the individual after death, or urge a particular view of the after-life. Some of the new cults, on the other hand, constructed death much more sharply as a ‘problem’ – and, at the same time, offered a ‘solution’.129 Certainly, not all the new cults promised life after death; in the case of Jupiter Dolichenus, for example, there is no evidence to suggest that immortality was an issue.130 And those religions that did make claims about a future life after death presented radically different pictures. When in a dream Isis promised Lucius escape from his ass’s body, she said that he would be subject to her for the rest of his life, which she could prolong beyond what the fates appointed, and after death he would find her shining in the darkness of the underworld. His subsequent initiation, as we saw, took him down to the entrance of the underworld and back to life again.131 The cult of Isis had implications for life and death, but even so more emphasis is placed on extending the span of life than on the after-life – which is pictured in fairly undifferentiated terms. The transformational aspects of the cult of Mithras are more striking, as the initiate ascended through the seven grades. In addition to its cultic title (raven, male bride, etc.), each grade was correlated with a different planet; and the soul of the initiate was probably conceived as rising during his lifetime further and further away from the earth, finally achieving apogenesis or birth away from the material world. That is, the progressive transformation of the soul of the initiate in this life, on which much of the cult focussed, was probably conceived as continuing after death.132 This is a quite different conception from the ideas of immortality or resurrection that developed among some Jews by the first century A.D.,133 and became particularly associated with Christianity – which offered not only a radically new life here and now, but also the hope of a bodily resurrection and a glorious after-life.
Over the centuries, the Christian model has created a demand for immortality; but, of course, the other cults were not ‘failures’ because they did not promise this particular kind of life after death. In fact, through the first centuries A.D., Christian writers had to defend the idea of bodily resurrection against general mockery; and it was this very strange notion that prompted the writing of some of the first technical works of Christian theology.134 Only a Christian perspective finds bodily resurrection self-evidently superior to the different versions of after-life (or not) within traditional Roman thought, or to the Isiac model of immortality, or to the gradual ascension of the soul of the Mithraic initiate.
Whom did the new cults attract? Did the different ‘messages’ we have just explored appeal to some sections of the inhabitants of Rome more than to others? Were the poor more commonly to be found among the adherents than the rich? Women more commonly than men? Did these alternative religions attract those who had only a small role to play in the traditional civic cults and the political order that those cults sustained? Were they, in other words, ‘religions of disadvantage’?
There is no simple answer to those questions. We have already discussed the variety within the population of Rome, which had no single axis between privilege and disadvantage: in a society where some of the richest and most educated members were to be found outside (were indeed ineligible for) the ranks of the élite, it makes no sense to imagine a single category of ‘the disadvantaged’. Besides, it is now (and no doubt always was for most outside observers) very hard to reconstruct accurately the membership of any particular cult; for apparently casual references to a cult’s adherents in the writing of the period are often part and parcel of an attack on that cult – deriding a religion as being, for example, the business of women and slaves. Occasionally membership lists survive, inscribed in stone or on bronze. We shall exploit these in what follows; but even such inscriptions (which were inevitably put up for some particular reason on some particular occasion) may not reveal a typical cross-section of a cult’s followers. Christianity is here a special case. The spotlight cast by the New Testament texts on the earliest history of the religion provided much fuller information than anything we have for the spread and social composition of the church over the next two hundred years.
We shall begin with the question of how far the élite (defined in a variety of ways) were involved in these cults; for the fact that the rich in the Roman world inscribed their activities on stone or bronze can help us trace their involvement in and around these alternative cults.
Male members of the senatorial order appear conspicuously absent from the elective cults. No senators are attested as initiates of Jupiter Dolichenus, Jupiter Optimus Maximus Heliopolitanus, Isis, Mithras or (probably) Christianity before the mid third century A.D. Their interest in these cults, as we shall see in chapter 8, became strong only in the fourth century A.D. Before then, from Rome and Ostia just two senators are definitely attested as members of the cult of Isis.135 There were some Christian senators and knights by the mid third century, against whom the emperor Valerian directed particular attention in his ruling against the Christians of A.D. 258, but presumably they were a tiny minority of the Roman élite.136 The rules of dress and behaviour associated with initiation in the various alternative cults are no doubt a significant factor here: the public parade of ‘alternative’ religious status was hardly compatible with the civic and religious rituals, and the codes of dress, associated with a public senatorial (or even equestrian) career.
But there is a question of what counts as ‘adherence’ to a particular cult; for it was obviously possible to favour or support (or be intrigued by) a religion without being an initiate in the strictest sense. Senators and equestrians certainly patronized cults in this way. So, for example, senior army officers, whether senators or equestrians, made dedications to Mithras during their period of command in the provinces. They may have found it politic to encourage a cult that was popular with their men, without becoming initiated themselves or (so far as we can tell) continuing their association with the cult on their return to Rome.137 But they too may have found a more specifically religious appeal in the cult; while such élite involvement – even if marginal – no doubt made a considerable difference to the standing and public image of the cult.
This pattern of cult patronage is found also among those of equestrian status at Rome (a status defined essentially by free birth and wealth); unlike senators, the majority of Roman knights held no specific Roman office. In the sanctuary of Jupiter Dolichenus on the Aventine one man in making a gift to the sanctuary proudly describes himself as a Roman knight; though in this case, from the later third century, the man also claims membership of the cult (as a ‘candidate’, candidatus).138 On another occasion we can see a wealthy patron displaying his aspirations for Roman civic status at the same time as his support of an alternative cult. Gaionas, who paid for the second century phase of the Syrian sanctuary on the Janiculan, stressed in the commemorative inscription his holding of what is probably a (minor) Roman office with responsibility for night-time security and fire patrol.139 As we have already seen, Gaionas was in fact a wealthy Syrian, who belonged to the middle ranks of the free population of Rome; but here in the context of an apparently ‘foreign’ cult, he classifies himself as a Roman office-holder.
Outside Rome, members of local élites (those we may define as holding the rank of ‘town councillor’) were involved in these cults much more widely and fully. The cult of Isis, for example, had a strikingly different profile even in the other towns of Italy. It had been established in Greece since the fourth century B.C., initially as the preserve of immigrants from Egypt; but, from the second century B.C. onwards, local citizens too had held priesthoods of Isis, which seem to have counted much as ordinary civic priesthoods. It was probably as a result of commercial contact with the Greek world that the cult of Isis appeared in Italy in the mid second century B.C. – where it again received the support of the local élites. At Pompeii near Naples town councillors became priests of the cult, and Isiac initiates even signalled their support for people seeking election to civic magistracies.140 Judaism too was a long established cult in some Greek cities of Asia Minor. At Aphrodisias in the third century A. D. nine non-Jewish members of the town council are attested as ‘god-fearers’ on a list of donors from the local synagogue.141
Not all such cults outside Rome, however, followed this pattern of more widespread élite involvement. The cult of Mithras hardly penetrated local élites at all, remaining a strongly military cult.142 A very few town councillors are attested in the cult; but the majority of these come from the ‘military’ provinces, in the Danube area – a region which had a weak local civic tradition, and where many councillors were serving or retired soldiers. Christianity also fitted uneasily with local office holding. Indeed one accusation levelled against Christians was that they scorned magistracies; and it is only rarely before the fourth century A.D. that declared Christians are found holding local offices. Christians are attested, for example, as councillors in one part of Asia Minor in the third century A.D. and a church council held in Spain after A.D. 312 banned from communion Christians who had been magistrates or imperial priests (the length of the ban depending on whether they had sacrificed, given games or only worn the priestly crown).143 These differences are partly a reflection of different definitions of ‘ancestral’ religion. Local élites, like the Roman élite, were concerned to maintain their ‘ancestral’ local cults; but what counted as that varied from place to place. The goddess Isis, for example, might claim longstanding, if not ‘ancestral’, acceptability in various parts of the Roman world; the god Mithras hardly anywhere.
The mass of support for the new cults in Rome itself must have come from those who made up the vast bulk of the ‘ordinary’ inhabitants of the capital – freeborn citizens, slaves and ex-slaves. But within that vast population, did particular groups dominate membership? We have already seen that some of the new cults in Rome were supported by foreigners in the city, continuing to worship the gods of their native land. But did men and women of eastern origin or descent predominate more generally in these alternative religions? Certainly many of the names recorded in these religions seem on their own to imply eastern origin. In Rome and Italy the priesthood of Isis remained in the hands of immigrants from Egypt, and about half the worshippers of Isis and Sarapis epigraphically attested in Rome have Greek names. Likewise the inscribed list of initiates in the Aven-tine sanctuary of Jupiter Dolichenus includes a good number with Greek and Semitic names. A variety of languages, in addition to Latin, is also attested in these cults. Greek is the commonest of these: Mithraic dedications were often inscribed in Greek (sometimes as well as Latin); two thirds of the Jewish texts from Rome are written in Greek (the rest in Latin, with a tiny number in Hebrew or Aramaic), and the synagogue services in Rome (as in other Mediterranean diaspora communities) were probably mainly in Greek.144 Other languages included Egyptian (and pseudo-Egyptian) in the cult of Isis, and Aramaic in the cult of the Palmyrene gods.145
It would be misleading, however, to argue simply from these foreign elements within the cults that the majority of the worshippers themselves were eastern in a literal sense. Of course, Greek language can (and certainly sometimes does) indicate a Greek speaking origin. But, as we have noted already, many of the foreign aspects of these cults were part of their symbolic repertoire, their construction of a source of authority outside the city – rather than a clear indication of foreign origin. Besides, names alone can be a very tricky guide to ethnic or cultural origin. It is absolutely clear that many Romans with apparently eastern names had no actual connection (or only the remotest) with the east itself. Such names, for example, were commonly given to slaves born and bred in Rome – not even necessarily of eastern descent – and they were inherited sometimes by their free descendants. They are certainly not enough to prove in general a predominance of easterners within the new cults as a whole.
There is clearer evidence for membership of the cult of Mithras, which had a more specific and restricted appeal than most of the new religions. Here ethnic origin does not seem to be particularly at issue. Mithraic inscriptions suggest that the main adherents of the cult were soldiers, up to the level of centurion, imperial slaves and ex-slaves, and also slaves and ex-slaves of private citizens. Throughout the empire, the classic location for a Mithraic shrine is an army camp; and in Ostia, half of the Mithraists known from inscriptions were slaves or ex-slaves.146 The experience common to these groups was that of discipline, hierarchy and the possibility of self-advancement. The structure of the cult mirrored this experience. Those of higher rank (centurions or civilians) tended to fill the higher grades of initiation, and the sequence of grades, with their planetary analogues, offered a parallel ‘career’ that conformed to and confirmed the everyday world of the participants.
The history and spread of Christianity at Rome in the first and second centuries A.D. offer a more diverse picture than this. The earliest Roman Christians seem to have been predominantly Greek-speaking; Paul’s Letters to the church at Rome, for example, as to other Christian communities were written in Greek. This use of Greek as a common tongue between different Christian groups is a stronger argument than the language of names alone; and it may well indicate that members of the church were drawn initially from immigrants from the Greek-speaking east. In the course of the second century A.D., however, it is clear that Christians made increasing use of Latin: both the Old and the New Testaments seem to have been translated into Latin in the second century (though these versions do not survive), and so were some other Christian texts originally written in Greek; the liturgy, on the other hand, the most conservative element of ecclesiastical practice, remained in Greek until the third quarter of the fourth century A.D.147 The growing importance of Latin might then mirror the growing domestication of the Christian church at Rome through the third into the fourth century A.D., and its increasing spread among groups whose native tongue was Latin.
By A.D. 200 Christians were found in Rome at every level of society: some upper class women (and a few men) were, at least by that date, prominent in the Christian community; from the earliest times Christian slaves and ex-slaves had been employed in leading Roman households, including the emperor’s;148 Christians also served in the ranks of the army in the second and third centuries A.D. (though not, it seems, as officers) – most, presumably, managing to fudge the issue of attendance at pagan sacrifices obligatory in military service.149 More generally, to the distress of a contemporary Christian writer, many second-century Roman Christians were ‘absorbed in business affairs, wealth, friendship with pagans, and many other occupations of this world’. This comment reveals as much about the variety of ‘Christian’ behaviour (however strict the rules were in theory) as it does about the varied social composition of the Christian community.150
A contrasting image stresses the poverty of many professed Christians. In addition to the 1500 widows and poor supported by the church in the mid third century A.D., Christian writers could claim that Christians in Rome had to work hard to stay alive, and that even so the majority suffered from cold and hunger.151 And those who attacked the Christians readily deployed this point in their polemic: Celsus, for example, assumes that most Christians were ill-educated – humble artisans, or children and women (both slave and free) in more substantial houses; while Minucius Felix has his pagan opponent characterize Christians as the dregs of society.152 These two different images of Christianity do more than reflect the wide social range from which adherents of this new religion were drawn. Within the discourse of (and about) Christianity, poverty was clearly vested with symbolic, religious significance just as foreignness was in several of the other cults we already have examined: there was, for example, a heavily loaded clash between a Christian ideal of poverty (as reflected in some of the teaching ascribed to Jesus) and the abomination of the poor and destitute in élite pagan culture; in Christianity the poor were both a metaphor and a reality. Precisely this kind of symbolic re-evaluation of poverty made it a particularly attractive religion to the poor as a group; but it also makes it peculiarly difficult for us to trace accurately the presence of the poor (in strictly economic terms) in early Christian communities.153
Gender had always been a factor in the organization of cult. It is important to consider how the appeal of the various cults to different genders determined the membership of new religions. The official civic cults of Rome were principally in the control of men – though there were some exceptions. The tending of the flame of the goddess Vesta was, famously, in the charge of six Vestal Virgins; a few male priests (notably the flamen Dialis) were obliged to have a wife to share in some of the rituals; while women in the imperial family might themselves hold priesthoods of deified members of their house. Some cults and festivals too demanded the participation of women: one of the main Roman festivals, of the Bona Dea, in fact excluded men (as we saw in chapter 3); and the ceremonies of the Saecular Games involved 110 matrons, the number apparently corresponding to the number of years in the saeculum. The temple of Fortuna Muliebris, the Fortune of Women, according to tradition had been dedicated by senatorial wives in 493 B.C., four miles from the city of Rome, and served as the focus for their religious activities. In the imperial period it was restored by Augustus’ wife Livia (and again by the emperor Septimius Severus, along with his two sons and his wife Julia Domna). Her lavish piety emphasized the importance of the religious role of upper class women.154 All these roles seem largely restricted to women of senatorial families. But one official festival, marked in the calendar, also explicitly involved women below the senatorial class: the festival of Fortuna Virilis, ‘the Fortune of Men’, was celebrated by women of both upper and lower rank – with women ‘of lower status’ (according to one calendar entry) worshipping the deity ‘in the baths’.155
In general, however, although the attendance of women at most religious occasions (including ludi) was not prohibited, they had little opportunity to take any active religious role in state cults. So, for example, the occupational or burial associations in the penumbra of the civic cults did not generally include women; only in the purely domestic associations of the great households were women normally members.156 Much more fundamentally (though the evidence is not entirely clear), they may have been banned – in theory, at any rate – from carrying out animal sacrifice; and so prohibited from any officiating role in the central defining ritual of civic religious activity.157
These limited roles may have been satisfying to some women; but almost certainly not to all. How far then did women find in the new cults a part to play that was not available to them in civic religions? Upper class male writers regularly portrayed women as particularly liable to succumb to the charms of superstitio and feared religious activity by women outside very narrowly defined limits – as is illustrated by the trial of the wife of a senator for her attachment to a foreign superstitio, and the strong, negative stereotypes that portrayed the adherents of the cult of Isis, and Christianity, as mainly female.158 But was there any truth in these male fears? Did women form a particularly significant element in the membership of the new cults as such?
In some cults, definitely not. Women, for example, were not initiated into the cults of Jupiter Dolichenus or Mithras. Indeed the symbolism of the cult of Mithras classified women as noxious hyenas, animals which stood as the antithesis of civilized values – even more aggressively misogynist, it would seem, than the ideology of the official religion. In both cults, however, women are found on the margins, making dedications in the sanctuaries; and in one case having a Mithraic prayer inscribed on stone.159
In other cults there were roles for women. They served, for example, as priestesses of Magna Mater and participated in the cult of Dionysus – as they had in the second century B.C., when, so Livy’s account runs, the senate had been shocked into imposing controls on the cult in part by the promiscuous mingling of the sexes that was said to characterize it. The Dionysiac cult whose members were recorded on the statue base honouring Agrippinilla included slaves and ex-slaves of both sexes.160 In the cult of Isis too women were given particular titles and status: ‘Bubastiaca’, for example – a devotee of the cat goddess Bubastis seen as an aspect of Isis; or ‘Memphiana’ – an allusion to the major cult of Isis at Memphis in Egypt; and as members of the group of pastophoroi, whose job was to open the temple during ceremonies. The ideal of joint participation is represented in a painting of an Isiac sanctuary from Herculaneum: two choruses of male and female initiates, decorously separated, hymned the goddess – who in extant hymns is praised as the founder of marriage and of love between man and woman.161
At least outside Palestine, Jewish women held various offices: ‘elder’, ‘leader of the synagogue’, and ‘mother of the synagogue’.162 Christianity also attracted many women, who – both rich and poor – had specific roles within the church. Women deacons, for example, had the tasks of instructing female initiates in the faith and of caring for sick women; an ‘order’ of widows had the tasks of regular prayer and of charity; and women died as martyrs at the hands of the Roman authorities – and were canonized as Christian saints and heroines. Besides, some Christian groups developed a theology in which a female principle was incorporated along with the Son or the Father; and in these groups women became the mouthpiece for prophecies, were teachers and even (it was said) priests and bishops.163
Some women no doubt found an opportunity within these cults for all kinds of religious expression not available within the civic cults of Rome. For some women, it may even have been precisely that opportunity which first attracted them to an alternative cult. On the other hand, there is no evidence to suggest that women were particularly powerful within these cults in general or that they dominated the membership in the way suggested by the conventional stereotype of the literature of the period. In the cult of Isis the principal offices were held by men, and the names of cult members recorded in inscriptions do not suggest that women predominated numerically.164 In Christianity likewise, women were not incorporated into the male hierarchy of priestly office-holding that emerged in the second century A. D. And the ‘orthodox’ male authorities were uneasy about specifically female groups within the church; many, in fact, came to regard the prominence of women as a marker of ‘heretical’ or ‘heterodox’ sects, and roundly condemned it, whether in the theology or in the social organization of Christian communities.165
The literary stereotype, in other words, almost certainly exaggerates the number and importance of women in the cults, by representing them effectively as ‘women’s cults’. Why is this? In part the explanation may lie in the exclusively élite vision of most of the literary sources. Even if women did not dominate the new religions, it seems certain that upper class women were involved in these cults before their male counterparts: wives of senators, that is, were participating in the worship of Isis at a period when no senator was involved in the cult; and wives of senators are attested as Christians from the late second century A.D., before any Christian senator. In fact in the early third century A.D., Callistus the bishop of Rome allowed high status Christian women to cohabit with (rather than marry) Christian men of lower status, even slaves and ex-slaves – for, according to Roman law, they would have lost all senatorial privileges by formal marriage to a man of such lower rank.166 The literary stereotype, in other words, may reflect a (temporary) difference between the involvement of élite men and women, that did not necessarily apply at other levels of society.
Much more fundamentally, however, the claims of female fascination with foreign religion are embedded in the vast literary and cultural traditions of Graeco-Roman misogyny. Women were regularly associated with the ‘Other’ in all its forms – the alien world of distant lands, the antitypes of civilization, the wild, transgressive madness of those who broke the rules of civic life. And, at the same time, foreign and ‘different’ peoples and places were conceptualized or denigrated in specifically female terms. So, for example, one of the commonest themes in the Roman construction of the ‘Orient’ is the effeminacy of the Oriental man, with his soft skin, perfumes and long hair. In traditional Roman ideology, ‘Oriental’ cults would inevitably raise questions of gender: the idea that they were ‘women’s religions’ is one important part of this.167
Throughout this section we have seen how ancient (and modern) claims about the membership of the various new cults are deeply implicated in the symbolic claims made by (or about) those cults – with their themes of foreignness, poverty and gender. So are any generalizations possible at all about the social composition of these cults and the social range of their members?168 It is easy enough to imagine how a rootless immigrant, lost in a great city, might have found attraction in the community of worshippers of Isis. But there is no reason to suppose that such people made up the majority of the cult’s adherents or explain its success. Likewise it is easy enough to see what ‘problems’ might in theory be solved by the teaching of the new cults (whether issues of mortality and immortality, or feelings of exclusion from the political order that was sustained by civic cults). But to ascribe the success of these religions to the ‘failings’ of the civic cults, or the problems to which traditional religion had provided no answer, is only speculation. There is no reason to suppose that significant sections of the population of Rome had long been searching for some kind of spiritual satisfaction which was eventually offered by the new cults; a counter-suggestion holds that the new cults were themselves instrumental in creating the very needs which they satisfied.
We may get further with general questions of membership and appeal by going back to the one cult whose adherents are relatively well known to us. We have already seen that the cult of Mithras recruited heavily from soldiers in the ranks, as well as slaves and ex-slaves. The fixed progression through the Mithraic grades provided such initiates with a structured hierarchy that paralleled the rigid military ranks of their day-to-day life, as well as offering different goals and different rates of progress through this hierarchy-outstripping or transcending their daily experience. The example of Mithraism might, in other words, prompt us to see that the transformation offered by these cults was not a simple rejection of (or escape from) the everyday world, but was rooted and legitimated in the social and political lives of its adherents – that it was tied to the structures of civic life, as much as it rejected them. One important factor here was almost certainly social mobility. Although sharply socially stratified, the Roman empire worked on the assumption that self-advancement was both desirable and possible: slaves could gain freedom; sons of ex-slaves could enter local councils; members of local élites could enter equestrian service or even the Roman senate.169 If the adherents of the new cults can be defined as those particularly open to the varied possibilities of transformation, part of that openness may stem from their own position (as freedmen, for example) within the structure of advancement in the social and political world around them. Their everyday experience, that is, found an echo in the promise of the cults to transform lives.170
All kinds of other factors were, of course, at work too – different, no doubt, in the different cults; and all of them, as briefly expressed, are inevitably crude oversimplifications of the complex motives any individual, or group, would have in joining a new religion. Our point is to emphasize the relationship between the appeal of these cults to certain groups and the Roman social political order, a relationship much closer than a first glance at their sometimes very ‘foreign’ symbolism might suggest.
The new cults, which we have examined so far through the context of Rome, also flourished in other parts of the empire; we now return finally to consider how far their structures and practice were similar in different parts of the empire; how far the same cult title denoted what was effectively the same cult, empire-wide.
The distribution pattern of the different cults differs widely. The cult of Isis in the Hellenistic period is found in Greece, but its expansion under the empire was largely western (Africa, Spain and Gaul); Jupiter Dolichenus appears mainly in Rome and along the Rhine-Danube frontier zone. Mithras was common in Italy, and again in the Rhine-Danube area, but appears hardly at all in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, North Africa or Spain. Jewish communities in the early empire existed in most parts of the eastern Mediterranean: Judaea, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, mainland Greece and various islands; in the Latin-speaking west in this period they are attested mainly in Italy. After the Jewish War of A.D. 66–73 they are also found in North Africa, Spain and Gaul. There were, in addition, important Jewish communities outside the empire to the east, in the Parthian (later Sassanian) kingdom. The spread of Christianity, by contrast, seems to have followed no such definable geographical pattern, at least not by region; from the early second century A.D., there were professed Christians in many different parts of the empire, numerous in some areas, almost entirely absent in others.171 The main feature of their distribution is their concentration in the cities of the Graeco-Roman world, rather than the countryside; up until at least the early fourth century A.D. (when the number of Christian communities was far greater, even if forming a small minority of the total population of the empire) professed Christians were still overwhelmingly concentrated in the towns – although some Christian ‘heresies’ were thought to be particularly located in rural areas.172 In fact, the term ‘pagan’ (Latin paganus), which can be used from the fourth century onwards by Christians to designate non-Christians, carried with it (rightly or wrongly) pejorative associations with country-dwellers as opposed to townsfolk.173
It is only possible to plot the distribution of these cults across the empire because there is a degree of uniformity in their material remains. Dedications to Jupiter Dolichenus from Syria, Rome and Austria have a very similar iconography. The inscribed hymns to Isis from the Greek world, which range in date from the second century B.C. to the second or third centuries A.D., are similar both to one another and to the version in Apuleius’ novel. And when Lucius went from Corinth to Rome, at the instruction of Isis, it was recognisably the same cult into which he was initiated. The surviving evidence for the cult of Mithras is also broadly similar across the empire.174 Shrines excavated in Britain or Germany have the same basic features as those in Rome or Dura Europus on the Euphrates frontier. At the sanctuary at Dura Europus, in fact, simply because of its location, we might have expected clear elements of some ‘eastern’ traditions of the cult; but at least in the second phase of the shrine (when it was patronized by soldiers), the iconography, if not the style, of the frescoes closely follows a standard pattern found in the west.
The explanation of such similarities lies in various factors. The existence of specialized priests, who could carry the traditions of the cult from place to place, was a feature of the cult of Isis and Christianity. But this could not have been so in other religions. There seems, for example, to have been no organized priesthood of Mithras, nor in Judaism outside Judaea. The existence of sacred books in some cults (Isis, Jews, Christians), prescribing rituals or orthodox doctrine, and transportable from place to place, might also have been a factor in promoting uniformity. Surviving fragments of a papyrus book, for example, seem to preserve the formulae of a ‘catechism’ of the cult of Mithras initiates, in which an officiant questions an initiate, who must give the required answers:
He will say: ‘Who is the father?’ Say: ‘The one who [begets?] everything ...’ [he will say: ‘How (?)] ... did you become a Lion?’ Say: ‘By the ... of the father.’
But neither personnel nor books are sufficient on their own to explain the apparent uniformity in these cults across such wide areas of the empire. The crucial point must be that these cults defined themselves as international; that their adherents perceived and wanted these cults not to be limited to one town, but to transcend any single place. As was said in the cult of Mithras, ‘ Hail to the Fathers from East and West.’175 This was surely enhanced by the movement of people around the empire. The interaction of traders, officials and soldiers, as well as of priests, helped to promote a degree of homogeneity in the various cults; while, at the same time, the cults responded to similar social conditions in different parts of the empire. It is a striking fact that (with the exception of Judaism, Christianity and Manichaeism) they are not found outside the boundaries of the Roman empire – a further indication that, for all their foreignness, they were essentially ‘Roman’.176
But we should not exaggerate the extent of this uniformity. We have already stressed that, even with their strikingly similar material remains, it is highly unlikely that these cults ‘meant’ the same to their practitioners in different parts of the empire. Given the vast differences in local religious and cultural traditions, Isis in Gaul must have been a significantly different phenomenon from Isis in Egypt. We can sometimes detect differences even within the broad similarities we have noted. None of the Isiac hymns is identical with any of the others, although they all share a series of family resemblances. And in the cult of Mithras the side scenes regularly shown around the main figure of Mithras and the bull, depicting parts of the Mithraic myth, do not appear in any fixed sequence: there seem to be two major geographical areas, along the Rhine and the Danube, where some of the scenes at least commonly appear in a local ‘standard’ order; but Italy was different and even within the two areas there was much diversity. It is clear that no orthodox ‘pattern-book’ can have been used by Mithraic groups across the empire in commissioning their major cult icon.177
This pluralism can be more fully documented within Judaism. As we noticed earlier, before A.D. 70 Jews in the empire sent contributions to the temple in Jerusalem, and instructions and information no doubt came back in return. But even within Judaea itself there was a great variety of Jewish religious practices and philosophies, and there was no attempt to create ‘orthodoxy’ among communities outside Judaea (in the ‘diaspora’). After the suppression of the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the temple, and even more after the failure of further revolts in the early second century A.D., Jerusalem was no longer a practical centre for Judaism. Within Palestine (and then Babylon) wise men (rabbis) emerged as a new and important feature of Judaism, but there is little evidence for them in other parts of the empire – still less that they imposed authoritative rules and norms on the widely spread communities.178 Common descent, a collective historical memory, shared rituals, and the synagogues sufficed to define the Jewish communities in the early empire; though definition of Jewish identity is an issue that must have become more pressing, both in theory and in practice, in the second century with the imposition by the Romans of a special tax on all Jews.179
Christianity laid far greater stress than any of the other cults on its internal organization and central control. Within Rome by the third century A.D. there was a strong central authority in the bishop of Rome; from A.D. 235 the bishops’ status was marked by their separate burial in a special crypt in the cemetery of Callistus. The emperor Decius is alleged (by a Christian, of course) to have said that he was less worried by the news of a pretender to the throne than of the appointment of a new bishop of Rome. Under the bishop, Rome was divided into seven pastoral districts, a division which roughly took over and eventually superseded the civil division of the city into fourteen regions established under Augustus. By the early fourth century the city included about twenty places in all for Christian worship, though none of them need have been purpose-built churches.180 It is hard to trace the history of the office of bishop in Rome in the first two centuries A.D., partly because later Christian writers, from the mid third century on, attempted to draw a direct line of succession from the apostle Peter as ‘first bishop of Rome’ (the so-called ‘doctrine of apostolic succession). But, in general, as far as we can tell episcopal authority developed only in the course of the second century A.D.181
Outside Rome, Christian communities throughout the empire had their own bishops. Later, as the doctrine of the primacy of the Roman church developed, these bishops (at least in the west) were clearly under the formal authority of the bishop of Rome. In the earliest Christian centuries, that authority was only informal – resulting partly from the size and importance of the city, and partly from the association of its church with the apostles and famous martyrs (such as Peter and Paul). Thus in the second and third centuries A.D. Rome sought to advise other churches, and was appealed to as an arbiter in matters of church discipline.182 But other churches (Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus) could claim that they too had been founded by apostles, and churches in other large cities of the empire also operated as major focuses in the hierarchy of Christian organization. The Roman church was of particular importance, but it did not yet have the status of ‘Christian capital’. The Christian community was still a complex network of different focuses of authority.
The development of internal structures of organization within the Christian church was, in fact, closely connected to the variety of beliefs and practices within Christianity; for these structures of authority were established partly to deal with the problems of such variety – while, at the same time, of course, exposing and even emphasizing (as we shall see) the sometimes irreconcilable differences of view within the church.183 The first regional meetings of bishops of which we hear were held from c. 180 A.D. onwards in Asia and elsewhere to deal with the ‘heresy’ of Montanus (a Christian movement originating in Phrygia).184 By the end of the second century A.D. the long-standing differences over whether the Easter fast should end on the fourteenth day of the lunar month, like the Jewish Passover, or on the nearest Sunday, came to a head. Each party claimed authority for their practice stretching back to the apostles and the very foundation of the church. Various regional councils (Palestine, Pontus, Osrhoene, Asia, Corinth, Rome and Gaul), covering the church from east to west, debated the issue. They separately agreed on a common position, with the exception of the Asian bishops, who upheld the fourteenth-day dating. The bishop of Rome sought to impose his own (the majority) view on Asia, but his action was rejected for its autocracy. The various councils had only the authority derived from mutual consent. Subsequently, other meetings of bishops from particular areas were held to thrash out organizational problems; the first one recorded in North Africa was on the issue of re-baptism for those who moved from a ‘heretical’ to an ‘orthodox’ church.185 Inevitably to some extent, under their parade of unity (unparalleled in any other cult of the day), Councils must have effectively advertised the ‘heresy’ they set out to control; they must also have served to imperil the authority of particular bishops, and groups of bishops, while consolidating their ascendancy in general, as they successfully claimed through the Councils the right to make decisions on ‘orthodox’ Christian doctrine and practice.
Internal strength and coherence was of course promoted (just as we saw in the pagan context in chapter 5) by the maintenance of boundaries, and by the construction of internal enemies. From the mid second century A.D., the ideal of a coherent central tradition of Christian practice and belief was delineated in the denunciation of variant traditions as ‘heresies’. Irenaeus, in Gaul, wrote the first extant treatise against ‘heretics’, followed by Hippolytus in Rome.186 Protesting against doctrines they saw as dangerous or untraditional, they effectively created the idea of Christian ‘orthodoxy’ – even though, as we shall see in chapter 8, the institutions for enforcing orthodoxy were created only in the fourth century, and the goal of a single agreed set of doctrines across the whole of the Christian world was never (and has never been) achieved.
Our final question concerns the degree of exclusivity of these new cults; or how far it was possible, or likely, for people be adherents of more than one such cult. We have already characterized these cults as shifting ‘clusters’ of people and ideas; and we have questioned the simple notion of cult ‘membership’, suggesting instead all kinds of different degrees of adherence. These factors, combined with the expectations of traditional Graeco-Roman polytheism (that the various gods had particular, but overlapping, functions to serve at particular times and in particular circumstances) would imply that multiple adherence was possible – in much the same way as we have seen that traditional deities could be honoured within the sanctuaries of the new cults. On the other hand, some of the complex (and seemingly mutually exclusive) theologies we have detected within these different cults must raise the question of how far any individual could live with the flagrant incompatibilities between them. Would it be possible at any level to accept the tenets of both the cult of Isis and of Mithras?187
There is some evidence that this was indeed possible. In addition to the imagery in the Aventine sanctuary of Jupiter Dolichenus (which included both Mithras and Isis and Sarapis), a fine Mithraic relief from Italy illustrates the possibility that an individual could support more than one cult. At the bottom of the relief, an inscription runs: ‘Apronianus the civic treasurer made it at his own expense’. It so happens that on another inscription from the same town the same man proclaims that he had paid for the erection of statues of Sarapis and Isis.188 This point is reinforced by the terminology of the cults themselves. It is not only our caution which queries the notion of ‘membership’ of these cults; it seems also that the initiates of most of the cults did not generally use any particular term of self-description, to define them as potentially exclusive adherents of the cult concerned. Modern scholars may talk of ‘Mithraists’, but there is no corresponding word in the ancient sources; while the titles of the grades of initiation were precisely that – not terms regularly used outside a specifically cultic context. The most we can detect are some much vaguer terms of self-description (syndexios – ‘he who has performed the ritual handshake’, or sacratus – ‘devotee’). Only ‘Isiacs’, ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ have equivalent ancient words, but even these are not quite as straightforward as they seem at first sight. ‘Isiacus’, though it is apparently the self-designation of a devotee of Isis, is only very rarely attested. The range of meanings of ‘Judaeus’ reflects the fact that Judaism was both an ethnic and an elective religion: it can refer simply to inhabitants of Judaea or people from there, as well as to Jews in a religious sense, including converts to Judaism. The word ‘Christianus’ is probably most like modern usage. Certainly by the early second century A.D., Pliny can use it quite unselfconsciously when writing to Trajan. But the history of even this word is complex: it is rare in Christian texts until the mid second century, when it was still possible to talk to ‘us so-called Christians’, and other terms remained commonly in use as self-designations of Christians.189
In some cults there is a difference between those whose religious, and maybe social, identity had come to depend on the worship of their particular deity (and who were rarely involved in more than one of the new cults) and those nearer the margins (who were much less likely to be so exclusive). In the cult of Magna Mater, for example, we can detect a difference between the dendrophori, ‘tree-bearers’ (who formed a sub-group within the cult, with particular ritual duties), and the castrated cult servants the galli: the dendrophori are found playing other roles; not so the galli. This exclusivity is predictable, insofar as their castration marked them out in perpetuity as belonging to this one deity; for the galli, that is, this religious role was their principal role, their claim to status and their self-definition – as is suggested by the fact that some chose to have themselves represented on their tombstones in the costume of, and with the symbols of, their religious office.190 It is probably significant in this context that the only two Italian tombstones to record allegiance to Mithras commemorate members of the highest Mithraic grade: as if it was only at the very top of the sequence of initiation that Mithraic grade defined social identity.191
In the cult of Isis, however, religious identity, as defined by a particular cultic role, was more commonly paraded; and there were some priests and worshippers whose physical appearance (shaven heads) signified to the world that they belonged to Isis.192 At the end of Apuleius’ novel Lucius’ newly shaven head, though in part a good joke, also emphasizes that Lucius had no time for any other deity but Isis. Funerary inscriptions also suggest that some people were deeply attached to the cult of Isis. Some funerary monuments represent those they commemorate (mainly women) as servants of Isis, others define the deceased through numerous Isiac positions: a temple warden of Isis Pelagia who had held office for ten years; a man who had paid for a major festival of Isis; women described as Bubastiaca or Memphiana; or a wife commemorated by her husband as ‘chaste worshipper of the Pharian goddess <i.e. Isis>, diligent and beautiful in appearance’.193 Maybe the display of Isiac attachments on public funerary monuments stemmed from the connection between Isis and the afterlife. On the other hand, they do not read like an attempt to maximize the chances of the deceased in the (Isiac) after-life; rather, they pick out Isiac attachments as crucial attributes of the living. Little of this need imply that allegiance to the cult was regularly exclusive, even among those who were commemorated in an Isiac role; and we have already seen clear evidence for overlaps between the cult of Isis and other cults. Nevertheless, it may suggest that, in contrast to the cult of Magna Mater, the cult of Isis much more regularly offered a religious status that could be paraded also as a marker of social and public status.
The exclusivity of Judaism and Christianity is difficult to assess because of the dominance in each case of later orthodoxies, which sought to exclude any possibility of overlap with traditional or other alternative cults. Among the Jews, ‘godfearers’ were probably not expected to reject all their own religious heritage; and some Jews certainly would have been more separatist than others – though, at most, this meant keeping apart; they did not (so far as we know) produce treatises on the nature and inferiority of the cults they shunned.194 By contrast, some strands in early Christianity did seek to explain how Christianity was superior both to Judaism and to the traditional cults. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity, a crucial issue from the earliest days of the Christian Church, was articulated in various ways. Marcion, teaching in Rome in the mid second century A.D., distinguished between two gods, a good but very distant god, and a creator god who is inferior to him; the latter god, who is concerned with justice but subject to passions and perhaps partly evil, Marcion identified with the god of the Jews. He also went so far as to reject the whole Old Testament, on the grounds that it could not be reconciled with the New Testament.195 He was a controversial figure, condemned by Justin and other ‘orthodox’ writers as a ‘heretic’, but the founder of a long-lived church. Justin, despite his criticisms of Marcion, agreed with him on the profound differences between Judaism and Christianity. In his Dialogue with Trypho, he argued that Christianity replaced the Mosaic law, which had only temporary validity; that Christ was God; and that those nations who followed Christ were the new Israel.
At around the same time in the mid second century, Christians also began to write ‘Apologies’, defences of Christianity normally addressed to the reigning emperor, attacking the traditional cults. They were written in the form of documents seeking to persuade the Roman authorities and other non-Christians of the merits of Christianity; but in practice the Apologies seem not to have been much read by non-Christians, their importance lying in their internal consumption within the church. One of the most famous of these treatises in the second century, again by Justin, criticized the official Roman treatment of the Christians, expounded Christian doctrine and explained the misleading nature of the traditional gods; although Greek mythology had many superficial similarities to Christianity, suggesting that the history of Christ was a mere myth on a par with the Greek poets’ myths about the various sons of Zeus, it was the product of demons who wished to lead people astray. Nor was this merely a matter of evil stories: the practices of the Mithraic cult, for example, were a demonic imitation of the Christian eucharist.196 The Apologies and other Christian texts attempted to define a clear and unambiguous boundary round the new movement; and it is clearly a marker of Christianity’s claims to exclusivity that it, alone of all the new religions, so far as we know, explicitly defined the other cults as rivals.197
The hard-line rejection of both Judaism and ‘paganism’ was, however, only one strand in second- and third-century Christianity. If one way of understanding the origin of Christianity is as a break-away Jewish cult, then connections between Judaism and Christianity are likely to have been close. Marcion’s rejection of the Old Testament was not the norm; Christians adopted a variety of different positions towards Judaism. Some practised circumcision and followed an obviously Jewish way of life. Others who rejected Judaism as a system nonetheless were much indebted to Jewish thought; for example, the homily On Easter by Melito of Sardis (in Asia Minor) draws on Jewish Passover traditions and recitations. And the second-century debates about the date of Easter hinged on the question whether (as people like Melito held) Easter should keep in step with the Jewish Passover.198
There were also debates about how much Christians should borrow from pagan learning: for example, should philosophical logic be applied to the interpretation of the Bible? Some Christians held that they could take part in traditional cults, for example by eating sacrificial meat, without themselves being corrupted. Others held that traditional cults contained part of the divine message. The Naassenes (one of the Christian ‘heresies’ condemned by Hippolytus) were said to believe that the performance of the mysteries of Attis were under the guidance of providence; without themselves being castrated, they attended the mysteries of Magna Mater ‘considering that they can actually observe their own mystery in these rites’.199 In Hippolytus’ horrified report of their actions, we should see not just ‘heresy’ on the part of the Naassenes; but also the drive of Hippolytus and others like him to define the limits of acceptability for Christian thought and behaviour. They were ultimately successful; which is to say their vision of Christianity was accepted by subsequent generations as the authoritative and ‘orthodox’ tradition. We may well reflect how different Christianity might have been if a different tradition had become dominant. For Hippolytus represented just one side of a set of debates in the first centuries A.D., concerning not only the relationship between different versions of Christianity, but also that between Christianity and other religions (whether Judaism or the cult of Magna Mater). And it was all no doubt taking place against a background of Christian behaviour, in which many more ‘Christians’ probably took a quiet interest in other cults, or even participated without much trouble in ‘pagan’ sacrifices, than vowed themselves exclusively to the Christian faith – even unto a painful death.200
In the next two chapters we shall develop some of these arguments further, and farther afield. Imperial Rome was by no means a typical city – and it is hard to know in any detail how far the kinds of religious choices we have characterized in the imperial capital were matched in different areas of the empire. For the western part of the empire, at least, we rely to a very great extent on the material remains of cult. And although these allow us to say for certain that there is not a single elective cult found in Rome that is not found somewhere else in the empire, they only rarely come together to offer any relatively complete picture of the religious options in any particular place.201 In the east, we gain a picture of the ancestral Olympian deities remaining the dominant religious focus. Even in the great city of Ephesus the only non-Greek gods attested on inscriptions are Isis and Sarapis, and we hear of few elective religious associations; though here (and this point may be connected to the last one) Christian evangelizing was all the more intrusive. On the other hand, the framework of ancestral cults in both east and west was itself, as we can clearly demonstrate, affected by Rome; and it is to this impact of Rome we turn next in chapter 7.
In the final chapter we shall return to Christianity. As we saw in chapter 5, persecution of the Christians, whether haphazard or systematic, reinforced a sense of religious identity for the Roman élite; while overt official backing for the ancestral cults defined, for the first time, all the accepted religious practices of the empire as a single category, in opposition to Christianity – so that it is only from this point, and directly under the influence of Christianity, that it is possible to speak of ‘paganism’ as a system rather than as an amalgam of different cults.202 But another effect of the growing popularity of Christianity was that by the fourth century A. D. the official cults of Rome, once a traditional set of practices embedded unproblematically in a stable social order, had become one option among many. It is to this new world of choice that we return in chapter 8, to consider in particular the religious allegiances of the Roman élite in the fourth century.
1 Athenaeus, Table-talk I.20b-c, extant only in a paraphrase; so Polemo in Galen XVIII.1.347 (Kühn); below, p. 271. Cf. La Piana (1927); MacMullen (1993). Greek names, which form a majority of those attested at Rome (c. 57% for the free; c. 67% for slaves), are a cultural phenomenon and do not prove Eastern origins, while ‘barbarian’ (mainly Semitic) names form only c. 2% of those attested (for example, 12.3a, a list of initiates of Jupiter Dolichenus): Solin (1971) 146–58; Solin (1996).
2 Cumont (1911). Burkert (1987) also rejects the category ‘Oriental cults’; on Mithras, R. L. Gordon (1975); below, pp. 279–80. For a general critique of ‘Orientalism’, Said (1978).
3 A convenient definition of a ‘mystery cult’ is found in Burkert (1987) 11: ‘Mysteries were initiation rituals of a voluntary, personal and secret character that aimed at a change of mind through experience of the sacred.’
4 Price (1984) 108. This is not to say that the significance was necessarily the same for both élite and mass: alternative interpretations can occur within the same symbolic system.
5 Not all of these texts relate specifically to Rome. We have drawn on texts (such as much of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses) which are focussed on other parts of the empire –where they are relevant and with the justification that they were part of Roman literary culture, read at Rome. We are constantly aware however of the differences that must have been apparent between the religious life of Rome and (say) Corinth.
6 For example, below, p. 258 on the temple of the Sun.
7 They belong mainly to the period between A.D. 100 and 250, as is true of the general epigraphic record of the Latin West; MacMullen (1981) 115–16 notes the time span of the inscriptions. (Cf. below nn. 68–9 for the problem of identifying Christian meeting places.)
8 Reflections on the notion of ‘heresy’: R. Williams (1989). Christianity and the mysteries: J. Z. Smith (1990). We also hope that our emphasis on the sheer variety of ‘Christian’ beliefs and practices will free this chapter from the common, crypto-Protestant, scholarly agenda of determining whether the ‘core’ of Christianity was affected by its Jewish and Graeco-Roman religious environment.
9 Classification in terms of family or sporadic resemblances, ‘polythetic classification’: Needham(1975).
10 Above, pp. 177–81; 186; 192–6; 206.
11 Senate: Talbert (1984) 386–91. The praetors, from 22 B.C. onwards, gained increased distinction as the presidents of the games: Salomonson (1956) 34–41, 77–88; for the fourth century A.D., below, p. 383.
12 In the same way, the significance of the Christian Eucharist varies depending on the social, intellectual and theological context; above, pp. xx–xii; 6–8; 47–8, on the fluidity of ritual meaning.
13 Salzman (1990); extract in 3.3d; below, pp. 378–80; 382–3.
14 This may be because towns came to realize that festivals were liable to change with dynastic events (for control of imperial festivals, below, p. 251), and so replaced stone calendars with painted ones – more practical at the time, but far less likely to endure to the present day. But see Wallace-Hadrill (1987) for calendars as a significantly Augustan phenomenon.
15 Below, pp. 382–3. Cf. 3.3b and d. Hence our uncertainty about when the festivals of Magna Mater and Attis were reformed: Lambrechts (1952); Van Doren (1953); Vermaseren (1977) 113–24.
17 Map 2 no. 26; below, Fig. 6.2. Wissowa (1912) 352–5; Malaise (1972b) 221–8; Castagnoli (1981); Mora (1990) II.72–112; below, n. 59. A festival of Isis appears on one Roman calendar dating A.D. 175–225: Salzman (1990) 170.
18 Carettoni et al. (1960) 31 (reproduced as L. Richardson (1992) fig. 46).
19 Festus p. 284.18–21, 298.22–5, 348.33–350.6, 424.13–30 (ed. Lindsay). Wissowa (1912) 361 and 362 used fourth-century evidence to argue that the temples to Jupiter Dolichenus and Dea Syria were ‘official’, but it is very dangerous to retroject evidence from the fourth century, when all possible cults were incorporated in the face of Christianity; below, pp. 383–4.
20 AE (1986) 333 para. 92 (lex Irnitana; trans. JRS 76 (1986) 198); below, pp. 315, 356 on these charters.
21 Dura calendar: Fink, Hoey and Snyder (1940) = 3.5 and below, pp. 324–8 on the army. The lex Irnitana (above, n. 20) also assumes an official list of festivals in honour of the imperial house.
22 Abolition of festivals: Cassius Dio LX.17.1 (Claudius); Tacitus, Histories IV.40 (A.D. 70) (a senatorial commission); Cassius Dio LXVIII.2.3 (Nerva); Cassius Dio LXIX.2.3 (Trajan’s Parthian Games abolished); Marcus Aurelius (Augustan History, Marcus Aurelius 10.10) limited to 135 the number of festival days on which legal business was banned. Changes by the fourth century A.D.: below, p. 383.
23 Down to the third century B.C. the decemviri (later, the quindecimviri) had been responsible for the introduction of new cults, through the medium of the Sibylline Books, but their last major innovation was the cult of Magna Mater in 204 B.C. In the late Republic the senate and then individual political leaders, such as Sulla and Caesar, took the lead in promoting new cults. Above, p. 191 on imperial religious authority.
24 A contemporary writer noted with regret that portents were no longer reported publicly or officially recorded: Livy XLIII.13.1. Liebeschuetz (1979) 57–8, 159–61. Above, pp. 37–9 (on republican system).
25 Pliny, Letters X.35; Fronto, Letters (Loeb edn.) I.228–30. When Pliny petitioned Trajan for a priesthood (augur or septemvir), he noted that it would enable him to add his official prayers on behalf of the emperor to those he already offered privately: Letters X.13. Cf. Scheid (1990b) 298–309. The army and empire: pp. 320; 325–6.
26 Pontifex maximus: Pliny, Panegyric 83.5, 94.4; Suetonius, Titus 9.1; above, pp. 188–92. ILS 252 (A.D. 77–8); ILS 295 (A.D. 113–14); ILS 129 (A.D. 202); ILS 255 and 3781 (Severan). ‘Restoration’ was strongly motivated ideologically: above, pp. 196–7; E. Thomas and Witschel (1992).
27 Curator aedium sacrarum et operum publicorum: A. E. Gordon (1952) 279–304; Kolb (1993); fourth century: below, p. 382. Imperial delegation of restoration, of Capitolium: Tacitus, Histories IV.53. Outside Rome, local councils gave permission for sites (e.g. 12.5c(v)) and aediles looked after them (lex Irnitana: AE (1986) 333 paras 19, 79 (trans. JRS 76 (1986) 182, 194); Rives (1995a) 28–39).
28 Wissowa (1912) 596–7 has a list, from which we have excluded temples not certainly official (above, n. 19; Caelestis was also a private cult: Rives (1995a) 68–9) or not certainly imperial in date (Jupiter Propugnator, Bellona Pulvinensis). Augustan temple building: above, pp. 196–201. Up to Marcus Aurelius only Nerva and Lucius Verus did not have their own temples; after that only the temple to Divus Romulus of c. A.D. 307 is attested (below, p. 260).
29 Above pp. 197; 208; Price (1987) 77–8; 4.7 for the temples in the Roman Forum.
30 Map 1 no. 8; Zanker (1970); Boatwright (1987) 74–98; Steinby (1993–) II.348–56. For the huge precinct of divus Claudius, Map 1 no. 3; E. Nash (1968) I.243–8; Steinby (1993–) I.277–8.
31 Pax: Platner and Ashby (1929) 386–8; J. C. Anderson (1984) 101–18. Minerva: Steinby (1993–) II.309; J. C. Anderson (1984) 129–33. For the continuing importance of Roman cults in the third century A.D., Alföldy (1989).
32 The formal procedures of evocatio are not attested under the empire (for their last attested use see above, pp. 132–4). Aurelian: Zosimus I.61.2; Augustan History, Aurelian 25.5–6 claims the Roman cult was derived from that at Emesa; below, p. 256.
33 Map 2 no. 24. ILS 4387, on a plaque not the architrave of the temple. Valenzani (1991–2). Malaise (1972b) 131–6 on Greekness. This also shows how different archaeological reconstructions can lead to very different interpretations of the religious history of Rome. The inscription has often been linked to the nearby remains of a massive temple (below, n. 34). If that connection were correct, it would provide powerful evidence for the public prominence of an Egyptian cult within the pomerium, under lavish official imperial patronage, by the early third century A.D. In fact, there is no very strong reason to link the modest inscription with the huge temple; and it is much more plausible (especially given how much was being spent on Caracalla’s other massive building projects) to think in terms of a much smaller, much less prominent, structure somewhere in the area.
34 Marked by Map 2 no. 24. Cassius Dio LXXVII.16.3; E. Nash (1968) II.376–83; Valenzani (1991–2). The similarity to the temple of Sarapis at Alexandria, on a hill with an approach from the rear, is not a decisive argument in favour of this temple also being a Sarapeum.
35 These criticisms are attested only after the overthrow of the emperor. Cassius Dio LXXX.11–12,21.2; Herodian V.5.6–6. 10; Augustan History, Elagabalus 8 = 6.6c for an extreme example. Turcan (1989) 174–80; Baldus (1991); Millar (1993) 306–8. The form of the name ‘Heliogabalus’ sometimes used today is not found before the fourth century. Elagabalus also brought Caelestis from Carthage (Cassius Dio LXXIX.12; Herodian V.6.4–5).
36 Map 2 no. 11; the suburban temple may have been in the sanctuary of Palmyran gods: Map 2 no. 14. E. Nash (1968) 1.537–41; Coarelli (1986a) 230–53, (1987) 433–9; excavations in Vigna Barberini (1990) and following years, Chausson (1995), Steinby (1993–) I.14–16, III.10–11.
37 Herodian V.5.5–7 = 8.5c.
38 Map 1 no. 31; Fig. 6.1. E. Nash (1968) II.170–5; De Fine Licht (1968); W. L. MacDonald (1976); Boatwright (1987) 42–51; above, p. 209.
39 LIII.27.2.
40 The building thus develops the traditional notion of the templum, a designated space in a special relationship to the heavens: see 4.4 for more details. It was also a place where the emperor administered justice: Cassius Dio LXIX.7.1.
41 Map 1 no. 6. E.Nash (1968) II.496–9; Beaujeu (1955) 128–61; Boatwright (1987) 101, 119–33; Cassatella and Panella (1990). Cf. above, pp. 160, 176 and below, p. 259.
42 Athenaeus, Table-talk VIII. 361e–f = 5.1c.
43 Map 2 no. 9. Wissowa (1912) 315 n. 3, 367–8; Kähler (1937); Coarelli (1983a) 240–1; Torelli (1992). Below, n. 56. Coins: RIC V.1, p. 301 (asses of mint at Serdica).
44 Liebeschuetz (1979) 236–7; Coarelli (1986b) 1–35. There were also religious monuments in private houses probably of this date: a three-aisled room, whose apse was decorated with a wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, with a Lupercus on each side; and a shrine on the Esquiline hill containing statues of Egyptian and other gods. Lupercal: Spätantike (1983) 279–80; Weiland (1992); Esquiline: Map 2 no. 21; Malaise (1972a) 176–7; Stambaugh (1978) 598. On Constantine, below, pp. 369–75.
45 The use of official religious imagery in the private sphere: Zanker (1988) 265–95.
46 Luperci: Wrede (1983); above, pp. 184–6. ‘Lesser’ pontifices and flamines and tubicines: Wissowa (1912) 489, 492, 519, 557. Latin priesthoods, below, p. 323.
47 They were responsible for the local festivals, including the local games (ludi compitalicii), and the names of the magistrates were inscribed, just like the names of the consuls, on official lists (starting mainly in 7 B.C.). Above, pp. 184–6; 8.6a. For the parallel associations of Augustales outside Rome, below, pp. 323–4.
48 Above, pp. 96–98; 164–6; with the passages collected at 2.7.
49 Even the archigalli found in the second and third centuries A.D. were mainly ex-slaves. Wissowa (1912) 320; Lambrechts (1952) 155–9; Schillinger (1979) 289–97, 360–2. Cf. below, pp. 337—8 for control by the quindecimviri.
50 Waltzing (1895–1900) IV.131–5; Purcell (1983); Di Stefano Manzella (1994).
51 Any regulations on participation normally apply specifically to Roman citizens, but participation was not monitored and free non-citizens were presumably not excluded.
52 Lupercalia: Plutarch, Romulus 21 = 5.2a. Saturnalia: Macrobius I.24.22–3 = 5.3a; Pliny, Letters II.17.23–4 = 5.3b. At the Saecular Games the whole free population of the city was supposed to purify itself. Above, p. 203. Cf. Ovid, Fasti III.523–696 for the popular festival of Anna Perenna. Participation: above, pp. 48–52.
53 Cassius Dio XLVIII.31, preferable to Suetonius, Augustus 16. The circus (Map 1 no. 15) with its statues of the gods was a widespread motif on mosaics, reliefs and sarcophagi: Humphrey (1986) 175–294. See also below, p. 383 fig. 8.3.
54 Tertullian, On Shows; also On Shows ascribed to Cyprian, but probably by Novatian and hence written in Rome. Ludi: Wissowa (1912) 449–67; Taylor (1935); Balsdon (1969) 244–339; Weismann (1972) on Christians; Hopkins (1983) 1–30; above, pp. 122–3. There is a similar argument as to whether classical Athenian tragedies were ‘religious’ or merely ‘entertaining’: Goldhill (1987).
55 Calendar entries for April (3.3) include the Megalesian Games, games of Ceres, of Flora, and ‘Public Fortune’ – extending over several days.
56 Parilia: Beaujeu (1955) 131–2; Salzman (1990) 155; cf. above, pp. 174–6. Ludi Solis: Salzman (1990) 127, 150–1.
57 Vulcanalia: Cassius Dio LXXIX.25–26.1. Augustus: Suetonius, Augustus 43.1.
58 Jews: Cohen (1993). Priests of Magna Mater: above, pp. 164–6. There may also have been travelling priests of the Syrian goddess who openly demanded money for their cult: Apuleius, Metamorphoses VIII.24–30, XI.4, 8–10 (= 5.6c).
59 Map 2 no. 26. Above, n. 17; Malaise (1972a) 187–214; Lembke (1994); Steinby (1993–) III.107–9. For a painting from Herculaneum of an Isis temple, 12.4e.
60 Priests: Malaise (1972b) 113–43; Illustration: 5.8e. Rituals: Malaise (1972b) 217–43; Juvenal, Satires 6.522–41 = 12.4d; Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI.9–10 = 5.6c gives a fictional account set in Corinth. See above, pp. 250–1 for the problem of the status of these festivals. Recondite ‘Egyptian’ books used in initiations: Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI.22.
61 Map 2 no. 18; Coarelli (1982) 59–63. Region III: Malaise (1972a) 171–6; Häuber (1990) 43–54; de Vos (1993); Steinby (1993–) III.110–12.
62 Map 2 no. 28. Darsy (1968) 30–55; Malaise (1972a) 142,225–7; 12.4f; below, p. 269. Cf. White (1990) 26–59 for other adaptations of houses.
63 R. L. Gordon (1977–8); Boyce and Grenet (1991) 468–90. General introductions: Vermaseren (1963); Merkelbach (1984), with excellent pictures; Clauss (1990); Beck (1992); Turcan (1993). The evidence peters out when western inscriptions largely disappear: above, n. 7. ‘Caves’: below, n. 96; photograph in 4.6a.
64 Map 3. Coarelli (1979). Coarelli’s arguments for a total of 700 Mithraic sanctuaries in Rome are very fragile; Clauss (1992) 17–18 is rightly sceptical, particularly on the epigraphic evidence, but fails to account for the evidence of the monuments. Steinby (1993–) III.257–70 catalogues 27 sanctuaries.
65 Leon (1960); Schürer (1973–87) III. l, 73–82, 95–102; Solin (1983) 654–725; White (1990) 60–101; 4.14a (Ostia Synagogue). Local landmark: CIL VL.9821 = Noy (1995) no. 602.
66 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History VI.43.11. Modern guesses of the total number range from 10,000 to 30,000 or even 50,000.
67 Dura church (A.D. 240s): 4.15a.
68 Martyrdom of Justin 3 = 12.7f(ii). Minucius Felix, Octavius 32 = 2.10c, 8.4 = 11.11d. Cf. Pietri (1978); Snyder (1985) 67–82; Lampe (1989) 301–45; White (1990) 102–23.
69 Third/early fourth-century churches: Porphyry, Against the Christians fr. 76 (Harnack); CSEL XXVI.186–8 = 4.15b; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History VIII.1.5. Cf. Laurin (1954); Lane Fox (1986) 587; White (1990) 123–48. Below, pp. 368–9; 376–7, for fourth-century churches in Rome.
70 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History II. 25.6–7 = 12.7f(iii), A.D. 199–217. Map 4 no. 61; Toynbee and Ward-Perkins (1956); Chadwick (1957); Eck (1987) on social standing of the deceased; Arbeiter (1988) 21–49; Lampe (1989) 82–94. For the third-century memorial of Peter and Paul, Map 4 no. 39: 12.7f(iv).
71 Pomerium: above, pp. 177–81. Magna Mater: Map 2 no. 3. Sarapeum of Caracalla: Map 2 no. 24. Elagabalus, temporarily: Map 2 no. 11. Sol: Map 2 no. 9.
72 Map 1 nos. 7, 26, 29. Trastevere: Philo, Embassy 155 = 12.6c(ii). Agger: above, n. 65.
73 Lampe (1989) 10–52. The interesting discussion of the distribution of pre-Constantinian churches in Vielliard (1941) sadly falls on evidential grounds; above, n. 62.
74 As for example the Isiac meeting place on the Aventine (Map 2 no. 28; above, n. 62). For Mithraic sanctuaries, Map 3.
75 Waltzing (1895–1900) 1.277–93, IV.484–95; below, p. 273.
76 Priscilla: Map 4 no. 10. Praetextatus: Map 4 no. 38. Callistus: Map 4 no. 43.
77 Map 4 nos. 1–60. Testini (1966) 83–122; Brandenburg (1984); Pergola (1986); Guyon (1987); Finney (1994) 146–230; introductory, Stevenson (1978) and Snyder (1985) 82–115. Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 40. Commemoration: Février (1978). Burial of bishops: Map 4 no. 44; Stevenson (1978) 28.
78 Map 4 nos. 62–8. Schürer (1973–87) III.l, 79–81; Vismara (1986); Rutgers (1990), (1992), (1995), 50–99, who argues that the catacombs were not exclusive; Finney (1994) 247–63 on paintings. This dating assumes that the first and second century A.D. brickstamps in the catacombs were reused.
79 Above, p. 241. Sixtus, the bishop of Rome, and four deacons, were indeed executed in the cemetery of Callistus under Valerian: Cyprian, Letters 80.1.
80 Dionysus: IGUR I 160, with Scheid (1986); above, n. 1 on names.
81 Map 2 no. 14; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities II.19.3; IGURI 117–25, with Schneider (1987) and Chausson (1995) 661–718. The exceptional deity of western origin is Epona, who became known in Rome as patron of horses: Wissowa (1912) 86, 377.
82 Waltzing (1895–1900) I.195–255, II.138–9; Ausbüttel (1982) 49–59. For the Republic, above, pp. 42–3; 160–1.
83 Map 5. ILS 7212 = 12.2 (A.D. 136). Cf. ILS 7213, Aesculapius and Hygieia.
84 Magna Mater: Waltzing (1895–1900) I.240–53; Schillinger (1979) 312–32, 398–406. Bellona: Fishwick (1967). Both rituals alluded to the mythology of the cult: Attis had castrated himself at the foot of a pine tree; the reeds allude to the riverbank on which the baby Attis had been exposed, and/or the place where Attis had been unfaithful towards Magna Mater.
85 Map 2 no. 31; E. Nash (1968) I.169–73; Luciani (1984) 214–21. Funerary: Mielsch (1975) 29–33, 118–21. Religious (Pythagorean): Carcopino (1926); Sauron (1994) 604–30. In English, Vermaseren (1977) 55–7, with North (1980) 189. For one scene see fig. 5.1.
86 Map 2 nos. 7, 8, 12.
87 Colini (1935); E. Nash (1968) 1.521–4; Hörig (1984); Hörig and Schwertheim (1987) 221–35; Turcan (1989) 156–65; Steinby (1993–) III.133–4; Millar (1993) 248–9 on Doliche; 12.3 (a selection of documents of the cult). For the incorporation of local gods into the Roman system, below, pp. 313–19; 339–48.
88 The range of attitudes: Varro in Augustine, City of God IV.31 = 1.1a; Varro in Augustine, The Harmony of the Evangelists I.22.30 = 12.6a; Juvenal 14.96–106 = 11.8b; Tacitus, Histories V.4–5 = 11.8a. Proselytes: CIL VI.29756 = Noy (1995) no. 577 = 12.6d(ii); Aphrodisias: Reynolds and Tannenbaum (1987) = 12.6e. Cf. Goodman (1994a). Punishment: Cassius Dio LXVII.14 (A.D. 95). On the tensions between sects and society in modern Britain, see B. R. Wilson (1990) 46–68.
89 Origen, Against Celsus III.55 = 11.1 1c; Justin, Second Apology 2 = 12.7f(i). Cf. Lane Fox (1986) 312–17. Manichaean proselytizing: below, p. 303.
90 Above, pp. 214–25. E.g. Juvenal 6.522–41 = 12.4d; 14.96–106 = 11.8b; Lucian, Perigrinos with C. P. Jones (1986) 117–32.
91 E.g. Origen, Against Celsus I.9.III.55 = 11.11c. Generally: Labriolle (1934).
92 Porphyry’s treatise may date to the early 270s (rather than the early fourth century): Croke (1984–5). Sossianus Hierocles drew analogies between Christ and the pagan holy man Apollonius of Tyana.
93 Galen, The Usefulness of the Parts of the Body XI.14 = 12.6b; cf. Varro cited in n. 88 above; Plutarch, Table-talk 4.6.
94 Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Food IV.16 = 12.5d; On the Cave of the Nymphs in the Odyssey 5–6, 15–16, 17–18, 24–25 = 4.6c, 12.5g. Turcan (1975) argues for complete philosophical transformation; contra, Beck (1984) 2055–6, 2078–9; (1988) 73–85.
95 Above, n. 59. Differences: Malaise (1972b) 217–21 (Sailing of Isis), 230–8 (initiation), 475; below, n. 110.
96 R. L. Gordon (1989) 64–71; for an actual cave as a Mithraic sanctuary, CIMRM 2303–9, near Tirguşor in Moesia Inferior.
97 Turcan (1981), (1991), (1993) 138–45. Animal sacrifice does not seem to have been part of Mithraic practice. For ‘normal’ sacrifices, Scullard (1981) 22–5; Detienne and Vernant (1989), on Greece; Scheid (1990b) 441–676; above, pp. 36–7; illustrations in 6.1.
98 Cumont (1896–9), (1903) argued for diffusion.
99 R. L. Gordon (1975), (1977–8); Beck (1984) 2063–71, (1991), (1994).
100 Money: Schürer (1973-87) II.271–2; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities XIV.213–6 = 12.6c(i). Josephus, Against Apion II.193-8; Neusner (1979–80); below, p. 304.
101 Vermaseren (1977–89) III.107–19.
102 Vermaseren (1977–89) III nos. 405–7, 417. See below, p. 338.
104 Hörig and Schwertheim (1987) 221–35. Well-being of emperor: ILS 1707 = Hörig and Schwertheim (1987) no. 372; AE (1940) 71 = Hörig and Schwertheim (1987) no. 356; AE (1940) 80 = Hörig and Schwertheim (1987) no. 385.
105 Isis: Inschriften von Kyme 41 = 12.4a; Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI.5 = 12.4b. Sanctuaries: Wild (1984); Pompeii: Alla ricerca di Iside (1992) 70. Beneventum: Müller (1969); Malaise (1972a) 294–305; Corinth: Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI.17. In the western empire only the sanctuary at Sabratha has been dealt with fully; that may have had a statue of Heracles: Pesce (1953) 51.
106 Map 3 no. 37; Vermaseren and van Essen (1965) 134–7, 342 nos. 20–21, 343 no. 24, 383 no. 966, 435 no. 11,447 nos. 82, 84. Similarly the Walbrook sanctuary in London contained images of Minerva, Sarapis, Mercury, Water-god, Genius, Dioscorus, Bacchus and Mother-god with Rider gods: J. Toynbee (1986). Mithraic reliefs from Gaul and Germany feature at the top an assembly of gods: CIMRM 966, Saarburg; 1292, Osterburken. Cf. Clauss (1990) 153–74.
107 Vermaseren and van Essen (1965) 187 = 12.5h(iv). On the Parilia see above, pp. 174–6; Alföldy (1989) 93 for (rare) dedications to Pales.
108 Map 2 no. 16. Savage (1940) 29, 35–9, 44–52; Goodhue (1975); Hajjar (1977) 357–80, 523–58; Mele (1982); Calzini Gysens and Duthoy (1992); Steinby (1993–) III.138–43. See below, p. 292 on Gaionas and pp. 384–6 for the fourth-century sanctuary; Varro, On the Latin Language V.84 = 8.1a on Furrina (who became plural under the empire).
109 Apocalyptics: Revelation 13. 17–18; Hippolytus, Commentary on Daniel IV.5–8 (Griechischer christ. Schrift. I.196–207); Sibylline Oracles VIII.1–216. Defences: Justin, Apology 17; Tertullian, Apology 30–2; Origen, Against Celsus VIII.73–5. Cf. Pagels (1988) 32–56; Alexander (1991). For requests for divine favour by emperors in the early fourth century A.D.: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History VII.17.5; Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors 48.2–12 (= 11.13a).
110 Isis: above, n. 95. Jews: Philo, Embassy 156 = 12.6c(ii); Schürer (1973–87) II.447–54. Sages: 12.6g. For the role of writing in traditional religion, above, pp. 9–10; 24–6; 195.
111 Below, pp. 304–7. Canon: Campenhausen (1972); J. Barton (1986); Metzger (1987).
112 Below, n. 124; R. L. Gordon (1980a) 48–54; Beck (1984) 2056–63. A collection of Mithraic documents: 4.6; 12.5a.
113 Porphyry, On the Cave 6 = 4.6c; Beck (1976), (1977–8); R. L. Gordon (1989) 50–60.
114 12.5b; Porphyry, On the Cave 24–5 = 12.5g. Beck (1984) 2079–89; (1988); (1994). Cf. generally R. L. Gordon (1989). Roman templa: Varro, On the Latin Language VII.8–10 = 4.4; above, pp. 22–3.
115 Hayman (1991).
116 Kelly (1978) 83–162.
117 The term ‘ henotheism’ is sometimes used to describe personal devotion to one god, without rejection of other gods: Versnel (1990) 35–8.
118 On some debates see 2.10.
119 The difference is often expressed in terms of the offer of ‘salvation’, which has heavy Christian connotations and tends to set up misleading comparisons between the new cults and Christianity. ‘Transformation’ seems a much more helpful term.
120 U. Bianchi (1980); Malaise (1981); Burkert (1987) 40–1. Aventine house above, n. 62.
121 Extracts: XI.5–6, 23–5 = 12.4b.
122 The extra two initiations are odd. Winkler (1985) 215–23 treats them as subversive of the first one, but they show at most Lucius’ over-enthusiasm.
123 Piccottini (1994), from Virunum. Cf. CIMRM 2296 = 12.5c(viii) (Istros).
124 Vermaseren (1963) 129–53; above, n. 112; Brashear (1992) for initiatory catechism from Egypt (below, p. 303). Porphyry, On Abstinence IV.16 = 12.5d; Tertullian, On the Soldier’s Crown 15 = 12.5e; sanctuary of Felicissimus, Ostia = 12.5a; Porphyry, On the Cave 15 = 12.5g. ‘Lion’ and ‘Father’ are the only grades commonly found in inscriptions.
125 On the catechumenate see Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 15–19. Modern accounts tend to ignore this institution, and present Christian conversion as instantaneous, like Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus.
126 Isis: Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI.6 (= 12.4b), 19. Mithras: Porphyry, On the Cave 15 = 12.5g; R. L. Gordon (1975) 241. One question is how far Mithraic initiates felt an exclusive allegiance to their cult; however, despite what some scholars have claimed, Tertullian, On the Crown 15 = 12.5e does not show that Mithraic soldiers were exempted from wearing garlands at military sacrifices.
127 Jews: Tacitus, Histories V.4–5 – 11.8a; Juvenal 14.96–106 = 11.8b. Christians: Lane Fox (1986) 336–74; Brown (1988).
128 A range of documents on death and the after-life are collected at 9.6, with Cicero, On the State VI.13–16 = 9.1d.
129 But one should not therefore assume that the pre-Christian world in general was yearning for a new answer to the ‘problem’ of death.
130 Nor was the cult of Attis concerned with the after-life (Burkert (1987) 25). Cf. generally Burkert (1987) 21–8, 48, 105.
131 Above, p. 287. For control of fate, Inschriften von Kyme 41 = 12.4a. For relief by Osiris in the underworld, Vidman (1969) 459–63 (no. 459 = 9.6c).
132 Origen, Against Celsus VI.22 = 12.5f; Porphyry, On the Cave 6 = 4.6c. Cf. Turcan (1982); Beck (1988) 77–82 denies Mithraic interest in the after-life; the case depends on the weight given to Celsus and Porphyry. A dipinto in the Santa Prisca sanctuary refers to the pouring of blood, possibly for the benefit of initiates, but the reading is uncertain: 12.5h(xii).
133 Schürer (1973–87) II.539–44; Sanders (1992) 298–303; cf. CIL VI 39086 = Noy (1995) no. 103 = 12.6d(iii).
134 The Christian defence begins with Acts of the Apostles XVII.32 and continues in the various Apologies. Pre-Constantinian treatises were written by Justin (?), Athenagoras, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Origen, Peter of Alexandria and Methodius; cf. Origen, Against Celsus VIII.49 = 9.6d.
135 ILS 6149 = 12.4c; Malaise (1972b) 79.
136 Eck (1971), (1979); above, p. 241.
137 Note, however, an eques Romanus as a Pater in a military sanctuary of Mithras in Rome (Map 3 no. 2; Lissi Caronna (1986) 31) and the initiation of senatorial tribunes at a sanctuary in the legionary base at Aquincum (Eck (1989b) 48). There was apparently no favour accorded to the cult of Mithras by the emperor until the fourth century A.D.: M.Simon (1979).
138 Map 2 no. 12; ILS 4316 = 12.3b.
139 Map 2 no. 16. Nocturnal office (cistiber): CIL VI 36793, with Goodhue (1975) 31 n. 90; ILS 398 = IGUR 166, with AE (1980) 38; ILS 4294. Above, n. 108.
140 Dunand (1980); Malaise (1972b) 75–85; (1984); elections: ILS 6419f; 6420b (trans. in Lewis and Reinhold (1990) II.237).
141 Reynolds and Tannenbaum (1987) = 12.6e. Cf. generally Trebilco (1991).
142 Mithras: R. L. Gordon (1972); Clauss (1992) 266.
143 Origen, Against Celsus VIII.75; Minucius Felix, Octavius 8.4 (= 11.11d); Lane Fox (1986) 294–5; Council of Elvira canons 2–4, 55-6 in Patrologia Latina LXXXIV 302, 307–8 = Martínez Díez and Rodriguez (1984) 242, 259–60, with dating of Lane Fox (1986) 664–8 (trans. in Stevenson (1987) no. 265).
144 Isis: Malaise (1972b) 67–75, 163–70; Jupiter Dolichenus: AE (1940) 75 = 12.3a; ILS 4316 = 12.3b; Jews: Schürer (1973–87) III.1.142–4; Noy (1995) 513–14.
145 Cf. nn. 60, 81.
146 R. L. Gordon (1972); Clauss (1992) tabulates the information. The appeal of Jupiter Dolichenus to soldiers: P. M. Brennan in Horseley (1981–) IV.118–26. The Ostian argument is based largely on the Greek-style nomenclature of the Mithraists, which is normally taken to show servile origins (cf. above, n. 1 for the ‘cultural phenomenon’ visible here).
147 Bardy (1948) 161–4; Lampe (1989) 117–19; below, p. 376.
148 Paul, Letter to Romans 16.10–11; to Philippians 4.22; ILS 1738 = 12.7c(i); graffito in 2.10b. Cf. Countryman (1980) for the importance of the wealth of the minority, and problems it caused; and generally Lampe (1989).
149 Helgeland (1979) lists military martyrs. For the religion of the army, below, pp. 324–8.
150 Hermas, Shepherd, Mandata 10.1.3, ed. R. Joly, Sources Chrétiennes 53, p. 186; cf. Simil. 1.50.1, Joly p. 210; Simil. 8.7.4, Joly p. 278; Simil. 9.22.2, Joly p. 338. Lampe (1989) 71–8.
151 Above, n. 66; Minucius Felix, Octavius 12.2.
152 Celsus caricatures, but Origen in his reply to Celsus does not dispute his assumptions: Origen, Against Celsus III.55 = 11.11c. Minucius Felix: Octavius 8.4 (= 11.11d), a charge denied at 31.6. Cf. Lane Fox (1986) 293–312.
153 Countryman (1980). Christians, as also Jews, aided the poor (e.g. Justin, First Apology 67 = 12.7d(i)a).
154 Cf. Scheid (1992b). Vestals, above, pp. 193–4; Bona Dea, above, pp. 129–30; Saecular Games, above, pp. 201–6; Fortuna Muliebris, Map 4 no. 69, Champeaux (1982–7) I.335–73; Scheid (1992b) 388–90; Livia, above, p. 197.
155 3.3b, 1 April. For the various puzzles associated with this festival, Champeaux (1982–7) I.375–95.
156 Waltzing (1895–1900) I.348–9, IV.254–7; Ausbüttel (1982) 42.
157 De Cazanove (1987); Scheid (1992b) 379–80.
158 Above, pp. 213; 226; 229. Bacchanalia: above, pp. 92–6; Livy XXXIX.8–14 = 12.1a. Isis: Juvenal 6.522–41 = 12.4d. Christianity: Origen, Against Celsus III.55 = 11.11c; Minucius Felix, Octavius 8.4, 9.6 = 11.11d.
159 J. Toynbee (1955–6); R. L. Gordon (1980a); p. 266 above. Hyenas: Porphyry, On Abstinence IV.16 = 12.5d; prayer: Mussies (1982). Note also the portrait bust of an old lady from the Santa Prisca sanctuary: Vermaseren and van Essen (1965) 454 no. 11.
160 Above, n. 80.
161 Heyob (1975) 81–110. Below, pp. 308–9 for the statuses; painting: 12.4e; hymns: 12.4a; Veligianni-Terzi (1986).
162 Brooten (1982); Schürer (1973–87) III.1.107; Trebilco (1991) 104–26. Cf. CIL VI 29756 = Noy (1995) no. 577 = 12.6d(ii); CIL VI 29758 = Noy (1995) no. 616 (‘not Jewish’).
163 Deacons: Pliny, Letters X.96.9 = 11.11b. ‘Order’ of widows: Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 10, 23, 30. Martyrs: Martyrdom of St. Perpetua and Felicitas (partly in 6.8b, 7.9b). Heresies: Justin, First Apology 26 = 12.7a(i), ‘Thought of Norea’ = 12.7e(i); Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.6.2–4 = 12.7e(ii), I.11.1; Prophets (in Montanism): Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V.16 (cf. below, n. 184); Bishops: Epiphanius, Against Heresies 49.2.5 (Griech. christ. Schrift. XXXI.243). Fourth century, below, pp. 375–6.
164 Heyob (1975) 81–110, though she tries to argue that the negative stereotype conceals a ‘women’s religion’; Mora (1990) II.1–29.
165 Gryson (1972); Pagels (1979); Lane Fox (1986) 308–11, 336–74, 404–11; McNamara (1985); Brown (1988) 145–53; Witherington (1990); Kraemer (1992).
166 Hippolytus, Refutation IX.12.24–5 = 12.7c(iii), with Gülzow (1967); Eck (1971).
167 Effeminacy: Juvenal 6.511–21 = 8.7b; cf. C. Edwards (1993) 63–97. Women: Juvenal 6.314–41 = 13.4. See above, pp. 165–6.
168 Social composition of Christianity: Malherbe (1977); Judge (1980–1); Meeks (1983) 51–73; Lane Fox (1986) 317–35; Kyrtatas (1987).
169 In other words, we are not dealing here, as has been suggested in other societies, with the problem of ‘status dissonance’ (disparity between status achieved by an individual and the way others saw him or her) underlying the growth of new cults; in a world where there was a structural expectation of advancement ‘status dissonance’ is hardly a meaningful category.
170 This is a different point from the stress by I. M. Lewis (1989) on the incidence of spirit possession among the sexually or socially disadvantaged. For criticism of this ‘relative deprivation thesis’, B. R. Wilson (1982) 115–18.
171 Isis: Malaise (1984). Jupiter Dolichenus: Hörig and Schwertheim (1987). Mithras: Clauss (1990) 33–7. Jews: Schürer (1973–87) III.1.3–86; Barnes (1985) 282–5, 330. Christians: Pliny, Letters X.96 = 11.11b; Lane Fox (1986) 265–93. The only statistic concerns the Roman church in A.D. 251 which supported 154 ministers and more than 1500 widows and poor: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History VI.43.11; above, n. 66.
172 S. Mitchell (1993) II documents the importance of ‘heretical’ Christian groups in some rural areas of Asia Minor.
173 The earliest associations of the word are perhaps with ‘civilians’, rather than the ‘military’; but this was not relevant to fourth-century usage: O’Donnell (1977).
174 Cf. Burkert (1987) 30–53. Jupiter Dolichenus: e.g. Hörig and Schwertheim (1987) nos. 5, 386, 512. Isis: Inschriften von Kyme 41 = 12.4a; Apuleius, Metamorphoses XI.5–6, 23–5 = 12.4b. Mithras: Vermaseren (1963) ch. 7; Beck (1984) 2016–17 on Dura.
175 Catechism: Brashear (1992), though whether it is Mithraic is questioned by Turcan (1992), (1993) 152–6. ‘Hail’: Vermaseren and van Essen (1965) 179–84 (= 12.5h(xv)).
176 Manichaeism, a ‘successor’ to Christianity, moved into the empire from across its eastern frontier in the mid third century A.D., and was propagated by active missionary activity. Cf. 11.12.
177 Isis: 12.4a. Mithras: 12.5b; R. L. Gordon (1980b); Beck (1984) 2075–8. On Mithraic use of planetary gods and planetary orders Beck (1988) argued for homogeneity, but see Price (1990). On ‘local jargons’ within Mithraism, R. L. Gordon (1994).
178 Neusner, Green and Frerichs (1987). See now Sanders (1992), who argues for a core of common Jewish practices and theology in the first century A.D. Contributions: Philo, Embassy to Gaius 156 = 12.6c(ii); below, p. 341. Information: Acts of the Apostles 28.21 = 12.7b(i). Christian sources allege coherent Jewish ‘missions’ against Christianity, but these are probably fictitious (see Goodman (1983) 111–18 against Harnack (1908) I.57–9, 327–30). Rabbis: Cohen (1981–2). Late Jewish sources claim a yeshibah (academy) in second-century Rome (Reynolds and Tannenbaum (1987) 33, 83) but it is quite uncertain whether there were any academies outside Palestine and Babylon.
179 Goodman (1989); Cohen (1993). Goodman (1994b) on the possibility of continuing pluralism after A.D. 70.
180 Burial: above, n. 77. Decius: above, pp. 243–4. Division of city: by Fabianus (A.D. 236–50) according to the Liberian catalogue, Liber Pontificalis (ed. Duchesne) 1.4–5, 148, 123 n. 6. Churches: Saxer (1989) 920; above, p. 184. Cf. Pietri (1989).
181 Hobbs and Wuellner (1980); Lane Fox (1986) 493–517; Lampe (1989) 334–45; Brent (1995) 398–457. It is crucial not to use the anachronistic term ‘pope’ for the bishop of Rome, which implies acceptance of the primacy of Rome. Papa emerges in the fourth century as a term particularly associated with the bishop of Rome, with the implication of fatherly and traditional authority: Pietri (1976) II.1609–11. For the fourth century, below, p. 377.
182 E.g. Cyprian, Letters 59, 67.5, 68.
183 Cf. R. Williams (1989). S. G. Hall (1991) is an introduction to the theological debates.
184 The movement, based on charismatic men and women, claiming the authority of the Holy Spirit, prophesies the end of the world, and was marked by strongly ascetic practices. It continued into the sixth century. See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V.16.7–8 = 7.6b; Fischer (1974) on councils; Frend (1984); S. Mitchell (1993) II.39–40, 104–5 (and above, n. 162).
185 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V.23–5, with Huber (1969) 1–88; C. C. Richardson (1973). On the relationship to the Jewish Passover, see below, p. 310. North Africa: Cyprian, Letters 70.1.2, 71.4.1, 73.3.1. The council of Nicaea (below, pp. 370–1) was the largest assembly of bishops to that date, and was, at least later, described as ‘worldwide’.
186 Justin, First Apology 26 = 12.7a(i); extracts of Irenaeus in 12.7e(ii–iii) and of Hippolytus in 12.7c(iii) and 12.7e(iv). Cf. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History II.25.5–7 = 12.7f(iii). The term ‘heresy’ was influenced by the usage of the medical schools: Staden (1982).
187 Polytheism: Versnel (1981a). Scholars who specialize in one or another of the various cults tend to imply that exclusivity was normal.
188 12.5b; ILS 4381 = Vidman (1969) no. 477. See further Malaise (1972b) 461–8. Such multiple allegiances make very problematic the application of the term ‘sect’, which was devised for exclusive (Christian) groups: B. R. Wilson (1982) 101–2.
189 Mithraic terms: R. L. Gordon (1994) 109–10. ‘Isiacus’: Vidman (1969) nos. 487–8, 536 (= 12.4c), 538–9, 560. ‘Judaeus’: Schürer (1973–87) III.1.87–91; Kraemer (1989). ‘Christianus’: first in Acts of the Apostles 11.26; Pliny, Letters X.96 = 11.11b; Athenagoras, Embassy 1; RAC II.1131–8.
190 Dendrophori might, like other associations, share a burial ground (e.g. CIL V 81, Pula; X 8107–8, Volceii; above, p. 270), but they did not parade the peculiar imagery of the galli (e.g.8.7c).
191 ILS 4270 = CIMRM 511 (Rome); CIMRM 708 (Milan). We do not know how far, in practice, these were the distinctive features of only a small group of religious ‘over-achievers’, or more widespread within the cult; for the idea of religious ‘overachievement’, Lane Fox (1986) 336–40.
192 Shaven heads: 5.6d (relief sculpture of four Isiac officials).
193 Eingartner (1991); Vidman (1969) nos. 373, 396, 422–4, 428, 433, 451 (= 9.6b). Above, p. 298 on women.
194 ‘Godfearers’: above, p. 275.
195 Blackman (1948).
196 Millar (1977) 561–6 stresses the form of the Apologies. Justin, First Apology 54–8, 66, partly in 12.7a(i); cf. his Dialogue with Trypho 70, with Clauss (1990) 151–2, 175–9. Cf. Alföldy (1989) 66–70. The rejection of the Mithraic cult was just one element, and not a particularly important one, in the Christian critique of contemporary Greek and Roman cults.
197 Walsh (1970) 186–7 argues that Apuleius’ Metamorphoses was written in part to counter the spread of Christianity, but the polemic is at most implicit.
198 ‘Jewish Christianity’: e.g. Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.26.2 = 12.7e(iii); Segal (1992). Melito: S. G. Hall (1979); Easter, above, n. 185.
199 Logic: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V.28.13–14 = 12.7e(v). Sacrifices: e.g. I. Corinthians 8.10; Revelation 2.14–15, 20; Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.6.2–4 = 12.7e(ii). Naassenes: Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies V.6–9 = 12.7e(iv) in part.
200 The complexities of interacting religious positions in Asia Minor: S. Mitchell (1993) especially II.43–51. Fourth- and fifth-century attempts to retain parts of the traditional religious heritage: below, pp. 381–8.
201 The religion of Carthage: Rives (1995a).
202 Only now is it proper to speak of ‘paganism’. It is a paradox that Christianity invents paganism, not just as a term, but also as a system.
