Roman imperialism and its social and economic reconfigurations helped set the stage for the development of the prose fiction genre in the late Hellenistic and early Roman imperial period. This period saw the emergence not only of polytheistic Greek and Roman fictions, but also of Christian and Jewish ones, as different social groups adopted the narrative fiction form to assert themselves in the new times of empire. In this chapter, I argue that a central theme of the early Christian fictions, the apocryphal Acts of the apostles, in particular their repeated emphasis on converting elite persons and folding them into the Christian community as benefactors, was both a reaction to the erosion of the traditional civic ideal caused by the political and economic transformations of the period and an articulation of a desire for closer multi-status civic interrelations and a less bifurcated community. At the same time, by reconfiguring elite munificence into Christian almsgiving, the Acts construct a role that allowed a newly wealthier imperial understratum—traders, merchants, and artisans—to understand themselves as mimetically related to civic euergetists.
Arjan Zuiderhoek’s The Politics of Munificence in the Roman Empire (2009) provides a foundation for my reading of the early apocryphal Acts in the context of the larger economic and social transformations of the early imperial period. Zuiderhoek (2009, 3) offers a political explanation for the extravagant and unprecedented civic generosity practiced by elites in the early empire, a period he describes as being of “breathtaking inequality.” Indeed, the accelerating economic disparity between the elites and others in the period informs Zuiderhoek’s explication of the euergetic impulse. He notes (2009, 56) that the non-elite did not become poorer in the period; rather, the landowning elite became “truly vastly richer” than the others in their communities. This growth in elite wealth was largely a result of Roman imperialism. As Peter Bang writes, “The Roman Empire appears to have worked like a powerful revenue pump” (2008, 110; cf. 2007, 30: “Empire was a mechanism for mobilizing wealth. … [It] was about tribute first and foremost”). For those sharing its benefits, imperialism proved very lucrative. The provincial elite’s supervision of their cities enabled them to win imperial favor and promote their own political and economic interests, and such efforts resulted in significant financial gains for the elite across the empire.
Zuiderhoek (2009, 13) proposes that, in the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the elite’s increasingly exorbitant wealth and monopolization of political power threatened to expose as a “fiction” the traditional civic ideal that the cities were communities in the classical mode, bound together by shared citizenship and isonomic relations. And, he argues (2009, 71) that euergetism allowed the elite to perpetuate the illusion that the cities remained citizen communities even as it helped to reshape the civic model into one informed by hierarchy.
In Zuiderhoek’s view (2009, 56), elite munificence provided a mechanism to defuse the inherent potential for social violence that otherwise might have been provoked by the elite’s accelerating wealth and political power. It smoothed over social tensions both by begetting citizens the traditional pleasures of urban life and by showcasing the benevolence of the elite and their right to rule. The elite’s generous donations to their communities allowed them to impress upon the understratum the continuing benefits of citizenship and to demonstrate their own commitment to supply the non-elite with everything necessary for the enjoyment of a proper urban civic life. By providing the understratum with access to the amenities associated with the “citizen good life—gymnasia, baths, theatres, temples, games, festivals, distributions,” civic munificence fostered in poorer citizens a continuing commitment to the civic order, as it simultaneously legitimated and naturalized the privileged position of the elite in the city’s increasingly unequal civic structure (Zuiderhoek 2009, 74).
Zuiderhoek contends that elite munificence did its job in mollifying the social tensions arising from the inequality of the period and even garnered public affirmation (munificence was recognized by public validation of the elite’s position, and when the assemblies agreed to the inscriptions honoring donors, they were testifying to their consent to the elite’s preeminence; see Zuiderhoek 2009, 121–122). He writes, “No disaffected non-elite group ever tried to replace it [the oligarchic system] with a different, perhaps more egalitarian, political system” (2009, 151). Having said this, however, in his conclusion, Zuiderhoek turns his attention to the third-century decline in civic munificence and considers whether Peter Brown’s suggested date for Christianity’s “revolution in the social imagination,” which resulted in the shift from the “civic model of society” with its civic beneficence to a Judeo-Christian model premised on an unrestricted community informed by charitable relations between the rich and poor, may be dated too late. Brown had noted that this revolution “could only come to the fore … when the ancient ‘civic’ sense of community was weakened,” and he dated it to the period 300–600 CE (Brown 2002, 5–6; Zuiderhoek 2009, 156–159). Zuiderhoek considers whether this imaginative shift may have occurred earlier, in the mid-third century, the period seeing a decline in civic munificence. And he muses whether Christian ideology, as well as the changing economic situation, may have contributed to the falloff in both civic benefaction and epigraphic activity in the third century.
Zuiderhoek’s speculation seems plausible that the imaginative shift, making the poor an integral part of a community’s social template, began earlier than the fourth century. In his recent magisterial study of the role of wealth in the making of Christianity, Brown explicitly emphasizes the long tradition of Jewish and Christian concern for the poor as a group in need of support and its refashioning in late antiquity (2012, 528–530). In the early imperial era, some Christians may indeed have made up the “disaffected group” suggested but discounted by Zuiderhoek that helped to refigure the illusory civic ideal of community that elite munificence attempted to support.
Before turning to the Christian fictions and their refigured vision of a civic community attentive to the claims of the poor, I will briefly review how much this perspective differs from that of the contemporary polytheistic novels. Like elite munificence, the early Greek and Latin narrative fictions also functioned to legitimize the elite’s superior position. All the extant novels except the incomplete Satyrica share a similar plot, described by William Fitzgerald as “a story of deracination and restoration” (2000, 95). They feature elite protagonists uprooted from their privileged lives and forced to experience hardships and social privations. By each narrative’s conclusion, however, all the protagonists have regained their status as wealthy and honored individuals. This reiterated plot serves to validate the contemporary social hierarchy. Those at the top must obviously deserve their place, for unlike common people, no matter what disasters or adversities befall them, they always regain their prosperous and happy lives in the end (cf. Perkins 1995, 57–58; and 2009, 72–84, on the upper-stratum perspective in the Greek romances).
As part of their elite perspective, the novels also tend to offer a rather hazy picture of the non-elite, displaying little interest in or sympathy for their actual circumstances or attitudes (see Scarcella 1977, 2003, on the novels’ representation of social and economic groups; and Whitmarsh 2008, 72–87, on class in the novel; Whitmarsh notes that novels tend to reflect upper-class values, although the Satyrica complicates the reading of class in its narrative). Apuleius’ Metamorphoses has been offered as an exception.1 Fergus Millar (1981, 65), for example, comments on Apuleius’ depiction of the emaciated, ragged men toiling at a wheat mill (Met. 9.13): “It is undeniable that the novel expresses a rare and distinctive level of sympathy with the working lives of the poor” (cf. Greene 2008, 184: “Lucius’ moralistic reaction to the pitiable condition of man stands out prominently from an otherwise fictional story in the mill scene especially.”). This sort of reaction to Apuleius’ novel seems to me anachronistic, colored by the shift in the social imagination identified by Brown, rather than based on textual support. Contemporary readers more likely reacted to the depictions of the harsh life experienced by Lucius and the others working at the mill not with sympathy, but with gratitude that they did not share their position. This is the sort of joyous relief that infuses the endings of the Greek adventure romances. In Xenophon’s romance, for example, the beautiful hero and heroine have endured real hardships, including slavery, torture, near crucifixion, and sexual consignment to a goatherd, among other tribulations. When the couple finally returns to Ephesus, they immediately dedicate themselves to a festive life free from cares (5.15.3):
καὶ [τὴν] γραφὴν τῃ̑ θεῳ̑ ἀνέθεσαν πάντα ὅσα τε ἔπαθον καὶ ὅσα ἔδρασαν…καὶ αὐτοὶ του̑ λοιπου̑ διη̑γον ἑορτὴν ἄγοντες τὸν μετ’ ἀλλήλων βίον (They set up an inscription to Artemis recounting all that they suffered and experienced…and they lived the rest of their life together as one long holiday.2)
The tenor of this conclusion with its anticipation of the couple’s long and happy lives puts their past sufferings decisively behind them and seems to open little space for identification with those who regularly suffer adversities. The whole point of the novel’s plot is to impress that hardships are for other people, not for the elite protagonists. And, although the Isiac conversion has complicated readings of the conclusion of Apuleius’ novel, there is no doubt that its protagonist, like the heroes and heroines of the Greek novels, in the end reclaims a prosperous and even enviable style of life as a devotee of Isis and Osiris and a wealthy Roman advocate who indicates no concern for those “others” still enduring social sufferings.3
Niall Slater provides the proper frame for interpreting Apuleius’ depiction of the social suffering at the mill. He suggests (2008, 235) that insufficient attention has been paid to Apuleius’ decision to write a narrative that takes both its plot and its narrator from an earlier text and refigures these to his own ends. Apuleius apparently derived the basic form of his narrative from the lost Metamorphoseis of Lukios of Petrai described by Photios (see Mason 1994; 1999a; 1999b for a discussion of the relation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses to the extant Onos and the lost Metamorphoseis described by Photios). And since the extant Onos, an epitome of the Metamorphoseis, includes a brief scene of Lukios the ass working with other animals at a mill, and the Onos does not appear to supplement the Metamorphoseis, it is safe to assume that Apuleius appropriated his mill scene from his model (Hall 1995, 48).
By so fashioning his narrative, Apuleius firmly situates himself in the mimetic and competitive culture of the contemporary Second Sophistic rhetorical culture (see Harrison 2000 for Apuleius as sophist). Second Sophistic orators regularly appropriated the persona and themes of earlier orators for their declamations in order to showcase their proficiency and match themselves against renowned orators from the past. These imitations were not intended to be mechanical, but creative and competitive, expanding and redirecting their models (Webb 2006). Working off his model, Apuleius has created a pathetic and moving description of the animals and humans onerously toiling at the flourmill. He describes the human workers (Met. 9.12.3–4)4:
Dii boni, quales illic homunculi vibicibus lividis totam cutem depicti dorsumque plagosum scissili centunculo magis inumbrati quam obtecti, nonnulli exiguo tegili tantum modo pubem iniecti, cuncti tamen sic tunicati ut essent per pannulos manifesti, frontes litterati et capillum semirasi et pedes anulati. (Good gods. What poor creatures were there! Their skin was completely painted with livid welts and their beaten backs shaded, rather than covered by a torn patchwork. Some had thrown on a tiny cloth that just covered their groin, but all were dressed so that their bodies were visible through their rags. Their foreheads were tattooed, their heads half-shaved, their feet shackled.)
E.J. Kenney (2003, 161) identifies this passage as an example of a favorite Sophistic rhetorical figure, a vivid description conjuring up a scene in the mind’s eye, the ecphrasis (see also Webb 2009, 2).
Although the nature of the mill scene in the Metamorphoseis is not recoverable, the scene in the Onos (42) is brief and lacks a description of the humans working at the mill. Apuleius may well have added this dimension for its potential to allow him to craft a scene more vivid and poignant than his model. Rather than being motivated by a special sympathy for the wretched workers, the pathetic depiction allows him to strut his artistic skill and take his model in new emotional directions. The text itself supports this kind of motivation for the episode. As Kenney has delineated, the narrative specifically calls attention to an artistic impetus for this episode. Lucius describes how, although he was exhausted and nearly starving, he was overcome by his habitual curiosity (familiari curiositate attonitus) and ignored his food in order to observe with “a certain pleasure the regimen of the terrible workplace” (inoptabilis officinae disciplinam cum delectatione quadam arbitrabar; 9.12.2). The pleasure felt by Lucius appears to be that of the artist suddenly inspired (attonitus) by a scene worthy of “every colour in his rhetorical palette” (Kenney 2003, 161). That the focus in this scene is on artistic achievement emerges even more clearly when Lucius, fearing that he may die at the mill, consoles himself by recalling what he had gained from his wretched experiences as an ass: he had been able to satisfy his curiosity because everyone acted and spoke freely in his presence (cf. Met. 9.15).
Next, Lucius turns to Homer and his assessment of Odysseus, and then, for the only time in the novel, Lucius/narrator as a human reflects on his difficult period as an ass and what he learned from the experience (Kenney 2003, 160, 161–163; I paraphrase Kenney’s persuasive argument here based on his analysis of Met. 9.13.3–5):
Nec inmerito priscae poeticae divinus auctor apud Graios summae prudentiae virum monstrare cupiens multarum civitatium obitu et variorum populorum cognitu summas adeptum virtutes cecinit. Nam et ipse gratas gratias asino meo memini, quod me suo celatum tegmine variisque fortunis exercitatum, etsi minus prudentem, multiscium reddidit. (Met. 9.13.4–5) (Very rightly did the divine originator of the ancient Greek poetry, when he wished to define a consummately wise man, sing of one who attained supreme virtue by visiting many cities and acquainting himself with many peoples. Speaking for myself, I am devoutly grateful to the ass that I once was, for it was he, when I was concealed under his hide and was buffeted by so many tribulations, who rendered me, no wiser, I must admit, but very widely informed. [translation from Kenney 2003])
The author Lucius breaks into his narrative here and expresses his gratitude for the many turns of fortune that he experienced while concealed in his ass body that enabled him to be, “no wiser … but very widely informed.” Multiscium is a word unique to Apuleius, who uses it five times, and in every case, as Kenney notes, the emphasis is on a “polymathy” related to cultural or artistic activities.5 The narrator/author Lucius is explicit here about his life as an ass and what he learned from it—it was all material, “grist to his literary mill” (Kenney 2003, 161).6 His sufferings as an ass provided him with a multifarious experience of the world and its doings that he can draw upon to delight his readers. He admits he did not become wiser or more moral, but he did see and hear numerous things to enliven his art. Lucius consoles himself for his time at the mill because it has allowed him to craft such an affecting picture and exhibit his verbal virtuosity. Kenney (2003, 163), I believe, correctly identifies this Lucius auctor with Apuleius auctor and Sophist. And neither author appears as concerned with the tragic figures doing their rounds at the mill as they are with the literary hay they can make of them.
Elizabeth Greene contests Kenney’s position that the major focus of the mill scene is artistic achievement and stylistic panache. She holds that Lucius offers a “moralistic reaction” to the human degradation he sees at the mill, and she argues for a dual reading of the passage, one that combines “pure entertainment” and a sense of “social criticism” (2008, 184, 181; Greene wishes to locate the Metamorphoses within the satirical traditions; for the problems of using satire for social realia, see Braund 1989 and Woolf 2006). It would be easier to accept this mill scene as having serious social overtones if Apuleius did not specifically appear to play with it in ways that undercut its poignancy. In an acute reading, William Fitzgerald (2000, 107–109) shows how Apuleius crafts an intertextual relationship between the description of the miserable toilers at the mill and Lucius’ seduction of Fotis, the slave girl, to the point that the mill slaves offer a “hideous parody” of the seduction scene. Fitzgerald points to the emphasis on clothes and circular motions in both scenes. When Lucius comes upon Fotis making dinner, he describes her neat attire with a red band pulling up and accentuating her nipples (pupillas) as she turns her cooking dish in circles (vasculum … rotabat in circulum), shaking it in a circular motion (in orbis flexibus) while also sinuously moving her body (2.7.3–5). Lucius addresses the girl: “How charmingly, I said, my Photis, you turn your little pot with your ass” (Quam pulchre, quamque festive, inquam Photis mea, ollulam istam cum natibus intorques; Met. 2.7, 5).7 The vocabulary and imagery in this scene link Fotis’ cooking undulations with the toil at the mill, where Lucius first notices the animals turning (intorquebant) massive millstones in repetitive circles (multivii circuitus, Met. 9.11.1). Lucius himself experiences these endless circles of the onerous work (ut in orbe termini circumfluentis 9.11.3). That Apuleius plays with and parodies the mill workers’ experiences by verbally juxtaposing their hard labor, beaten backs, and exposed bodies with Fotis’ sexy red ribbon, accentuated breasts, and provocative movements complicates reading this passage as a social critique. While Apuleius takes his theme from his Greek model, he recasts it to showcase his ludic talent and artistry. Real sympathy for or identification with the mill workers would seem to be undercut by such literary play.
Apuleius’ lack of concern for the lives of the destitute is not an anomaly, however, but reflects the cultural norm. As Anneliese Parkin states (2006, 61), “Elite writers are simply not interested in the dregs of their society and their survival mechanisms.” Parkin makes this statement in her project to contest Paul Veyne’s assertion that “[Ancient] paganism had abandoned without much remorse the ‘starving, the old and the sick’” (2006, 70, citing Veyne 1990, 3). She finds evidence for pagan almsgiving, but primarily by the non-elite. In making her case for some pagan almsgiving, Parkin also confirms the elite’s essential separation and detachment from the destitute. The “really” poor existed outside the lens of polytheistic ancient literature, off to the side, ignored. When the elite speak of poverty, they usually appear to be referring to some sort of lack of wealth, not penury (Woolf 2006, 92–94). In the period’s culture of munificence and steep stratification of wealth, it was easy for even the well-off to feel poor (Hopkins 1998, 211). In his Apology, Apuleius, for example, insists that his poverty (pauperitas) is real (Apol. 19). And he praises the poverty of some of the early Roman generals as shown by their few slaves (Apol. 17; see McCreight 2008 with references for Apuleius’ Laus Pauperatis). His philosophical framing of riches and poverty further evidences how far elite conceptions of poverty are from the realities of the destitute poor:
namque is plurimum habebit, qui minimum desiderabit; habebit enim quantum volet qui uolet minimum. (Apol. 20) (For whoever desires least will possess most, since you have what you want, if what you want is only little. [translation from Hunink 1997])
That Apuleius can frame poverty in terms of a modulation of desires and that he describes himself as poor, although he has shared in a sizable inheritance with his brother and acquired an expensive education (Apol. 23), indicates how profoundly the realities of abject poverty fail to register in the elite thought world.
The five major apocryphal Acts of the apostles, the Acts of Paul, Acts of Peter, Acts of John, Acts of Andrew, and Acts of Thomas—Christian prose fictions written likely between the mid-second and the first quarter of the third century—share motifs and themes with the ancient novels (see Söder 1932 for shared motifs, and Bremmer 2001b for chronology; see Bowie 2002 for the chronology of the early Greek novels; he places all of these in the first centuries CE). In these narratives, however, the poor and their needs are a central focus.8 The Acts all present a model for a more integrated multi-status community with an imperative for the wealthy to support and care for the poor. They also feature episodes showing the high civic elite, persons who would typically have been euergetists, making large gifts to support the community’s poor (Finn 2006, 130). The emphasis in these narratives on the elite’s learning to attend to the poor functions as a simile, I suggest, for a desire that the imperial elite attend to and have more interaction with all those below them in general, not just the down-and-out. In the apocryphal Acts, the “poor” are more an occasion for generosity and shared social commitment than subjects. Except for the apostle, the poor in the Acts remain as objectified as they were in the romances.9 Rather, the construction of the poor in these narratives offers a means for unifying a more status-integrated community that downplays prestige as the prime criteria of worth. This may have had particular appeal for the artisans, tradesmen, and merchants who are suggested as early converts to Christianity and whose economic status was improving in the early centuries CE.10 Andrew Jacobs has pointed the way to my reading of the Acts as imagining and championing a refashioned social community. He delineates how frequently in the Acts an elite conjugal couple, functioning as a “microcosm of the (aristocratic) society,” is subsumed within a common Christian kinship group led by the apostle (1999, 132; he also emphasizes how often this group is presented as a kinship [sungeneia] group; I interpret this emphasis on kinship to metaphorically indicate the social community). The Acts of John, written likely in the mid-second century, already deploys the ideal of a community comprising mixed statuses joined together to succor the needy.11 This incomplete text opens in medias res when the apostle John, prompted by a vision, goes to Ephesus to heal the wife of Lycomedes, who the text stipulates is the powerful praetor of the Ephesians (19.1). When Lycomedes takes John to Cleopatra’s sickbed, he becomes so distraught at her condition that he falls to the ground lifeless (ἄπνους) (21.18). At this turn of events, John first fears for his own life but quickly realizes that many Ephesians will convert if the couple can be raised up. He prays to the Lord, “O physician who heals for nothing” (22.5), and emphasizes that he desires not riches but just to raise the couple for the conversion of many (22.13–14). The apostle minimizes the power of wealth. After Lycomedes and Cleopatra are resurrected, they beg the apostle to remain with them until he finally agrees (25). Crowds gather into Lycomedes’ home to hear John preach (26.1). In this vignette, powerful and prestigious persons are depicted as begging to live in community with those of lower status. These sorts of mixed-status communities are highlighted throughout the Acts. John also preaches and raises up a dead priest of Artemis in Andronicus’ house (46.1). Earlier in the narrative, Andronicus had been described as “a praetor (στρατηγός) and a leading citizen of Ephesus” (31.7).
The cultural construction of the poor as a crucial social category is well under way in the Acts of John. John sets out with Cleopatra and Lycomedes to care for the old women of the city. He is appalled when he learns that so many of these are in poor health (see Krause 1995 for widows in Christianity). He chastises the Ephesians: “Oh, what slackness of those living in Ephesus. What a collapse, what a weakness toward God” (Ὢ ἀτονία τω̑ν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ οἰκούντων · ὢ πράγματα ἐκλελυμένα καὶ ἀσθένεια ἡ πρὸς τὸν θεόν,·30.9–11). He directs that all the sick women be brought to the theater to be healed. At the theater, John offers a speech indicting the Ephesians for their love of riches, their pride in their beauty, their arrogance, their delight in gold, ivory, jewels, and soft clothing—in essence, for their wealth (35–36). John’s message includes a warning (35.5–8):
ὁ δὲ τοι̑ς δεομένοις μὴ κοινωνω̑ν, ἔχων δὲ χρήματα ἀπόθεται,
ἀπαλλαγεὶς του̑ σώματος τούτου καὶ δεόμενός τινος ἐλέους ἐν πυρὶ
φλεγόμενος οὐχ ἕξει τὸν ἐλεου̑ντα.
(You who give nothing to the needy, although you have money put away, when you depart from this body and are burning in the fire, begging for mercy, will have no one to pity you.)
John then heals all the old women. This episode demonstrates that Christian discourse by the mid-second century was already refiguring the social imagination to include the needy. The narrative represents John’s gathering the city’s poor, sick women into the Ephesian theater and making a veritable civic spectacle of them (32). He literally thrusts the needy onto center stage. This scene articulates the basic elements of Christian redemptive almsgiving (cf. Garrison 1993). By providing alms to the needy, donors will obtain favor and mercy for themselves in the next world. The popular Shepherd of Hermas, written likely around the same period as the Acts of John, articulates this same role for the poor: “For the poor person is rich in his petition and confession and his petition has great effect before God” (Sim. 2.5–6).12 The prayers of the needy will count with God in the donor’s favor at the Judgment. (The Christian Scriptures also emphasize care for the poor; in the early second century, the form of these documents was still evolving. The Acts of Paul, the Acts of Peter, and the Shepherd of Hermas also were included in some lists of the books accepted as scriptural into the fourth century [Metzger 1987, 165–189].)
This exchange described in the Acts of John and the Shepherd appears to conform to the “semiotics of patronage.” Patrons give to forge a relationship of gratitude; they expected something in return (Parkin 2006, 62). This is also the semiotics of civic munificence. Traditionally, the truly impoverished were excluded from the patronage system and from the city’s self-representation and self-understanding of itself, because they had nothing with which to reciprocate (Brown 1992, 84; Woolf 2006, 85). In John’s public exhibition of the poor, as in the Shepherd, however, a place is made for the abject poor within a refigured reciprocity system underwritten not by the city, but by the Christian community. This realigned patronage system would lay the financial foundation for the institutionalization of Christianity and its continued flourishing.
In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, a wealthy and well-connected woman, Tryphaena of Antioch, a relative of the emperor (36:263.3), also is depicted as a Christian benefactor. After Thecla survives her trials in the arena, Tryphaena assigns to her all her possessions and listens to the word of God (39:265.5–6). Even after Thecla leaves Antioch, Tryphaena continues to act as a Christian donor. She sends clothing and gold to Thecla so that she can “leave many things to Paul for the service of the poor” (41:267.6–8).13
Members of the imperial elite are also a focus in the Acts of Peter, where Marcellus, a Roman senator, plays a central role.14 Paul converts Marcellus, and the senator becomes such a generous supporter of the poor that the emperor warns he will never appoint Marcellus to an office, “lest you exploit the provinces to benefit the Christians” (8.55.5–6). After Paul’s departure, however, induced by Simon Magus, Marcellus abandons Christianity. The narrative emphasizes the close nexus linking faith to charitable giving (Misset-van de Weg 1998). When Marcellus renounces his faith, he also renounces his charity; he beats off with a stick anyone coming to his door for alms (Marcellum omnes pauperi patronum vocabant; cuius domus peregrinorum et pauperorum vocabulum habebat; 8.55.17). When Peter arrives in Rome, the Christian community begs him to show mercy to Marcellus. They extol the senator’s former charity, “All the poor called Marcellus their patron and his house was called (the house) of pilgrims and the poor” (8.55.3–4). When the senator reconverts, he immediately resumes his former generosity. He informs Peter, “And now, most blessed man, I have told the widows and the aged to meet you in my house … that they may pray with us and each of them will be given a piece of gold (singulos aureos) on account of their service” (19:66.13–15).
An early episode in the Acts of Thomas also represents the apostle creating a community that joins together elite and understratum as believers. In the narrative’s second episode, an Indian king Gundaphorus and his brother Gad become Christians in another scene that displays a Christian enterprise to reframe the traditional patronage system to include the destitute. When the apostle Judas Thomas, the twin brother of Jesus, arrives in India enslaved and working as a carpenter, King Gundaphorus hires the apostle to build a palace (πραιτωρίον) for him (see Hilhorst 2001 and Ries 1987 on this episode).
To pay for the project, the king gives the apostle considerable money, which Thomas gives to the poor (πένησιν) and needy (τεθλιμμένοις; 19:128.6–7). In time, reports reach the king that Thomas has not built anything but only “gives to the poor, teaches a new God, heals the sick, drives out demons, and performs many miracles” (καὶ εἴ τι ἔχει πάντα δίδωσι τοι̑ς πένησι, καὶ διδάσκει θεὸν νέον ἕνα, καὶ νοσου̑ντας θεραπεύει καὶ δαίμονας ἀπελαύνει καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ ποιει̑ παράδοξα, Act. Thom. 20:131.1–2). The outraged king sends Thomas off to prison to be killed. That night, however, the king’s brother Gad dies and is taken to heaven, where angels show him a magnificent building. He learns that it belongs to his brother. He is told that Thomas built the mansion for Gundaphorus. Gad is allowed to return to earth to try to persuade the king to sell him the palace. When the king hears Gad’s request, he realizes that he has received the eternal benefits (αἰωνίων ἀγαθω̑ν) that Thomas promised him. He releases the apostle and asks him to intercede with Jesus for him, so he may learn to become worthy of his heavenly home (24:138.11–12).
This episode displays Gundaphorus learning that, by distributing to the needy on earth, he earns a payoff in heaven. In return for their gifts, the poor provide donors with the opportunity for redemption and divine reward. Gad and Gundaphorus continue to follow Thomas and are described as “never leaving him and supplying the needy, giving to all and relieving all” (26:141.12–13.). The episode ends with the brothers asking to receive from Thomas the seal (σφραγίς), that is, to partake in the rites of incorporation and join the Christian community. Divine approval sanctions the brothers’ membership in the community. During their sealing ceremonies, a voice from heaven is heard, and a young man (the Lord) appears, holding a bright torch (27:142–143). The narrative also notes that not only the royal brothers but also many other believers were added to the community on this occasion (27:143.14). The Acts configure a status-eclectic Christian community of all those who believe in Thomas’ message.
By the second century, Christian fictive narratives already were offering a realigned “civic ideal” to replace the one attenuated by the growing stratification of the imperial state. In the Acts, “fellow believers” replicate the commonality of “fellow citizens” to forge a unified community across status lines (intrinsic inequalities likely inform every polity, even the classical Greek city, but the “veil of power” was increasingly tattered in the Roman east in the early centuries CE). At one level, the depictions of Roman senators, wealthy civic magistrates, and Indian royalty joining Christian communities suggest a desire by the Acts’ authors and readers for a more status-inclusive notion of community—a multi-status model more in line with the traditional civic ideal. At the same time, the Christian fictions also appear to aim their appeal to a specific social conglomerate taking shape in the early imperial period, an emerging group of newly wealthier non-elite that included traders, manufacturers, and artisans.
Recent economic studies propose that the early imperial period, likely as the result of imperialism, experienced an overall increase in per capita income and standard of living.15 Dennis Kehoe (2007) submits that this economic growth would have allowed significant numbers of non-elite persons to experience an increase in wealth during the period. Kehoe notes, however, that it is unlikely that these non-elite entrepreneurs ever achieved sufficient position to rival the “political and social ascendancy of the landowning elite” (2007, 569). The strict social divisions in early imperial society between the elite and the others, between the honestiores and the humiliores, was premised on style of life, education, and high status—criteria that acted as a check on the social and political ambitions of even wealthy non-elite.
Christian fictions, in contrast, provide a vehicle for some members of a newly wealthier under-elite to envision themselves as the equivalent of the elite euergetists in their communities. The apocryphal Acts represent the high elite—senators, magistrates, royalty—learning to perform roles that coincide exactly with those that wealthy Christians were called upon to enact in their communities: opening their houses and purses to the poor and needy. I argue that the Acts, by conflating in their narratives elite donors and Christian behaviors, permitted early Christian benefactors to understand (and romanticize) themselves and their actions as similar to elite benefactors and their gifts.
The popular Shepherd of Hermas points to both the presence of wealthy Christian businesspersons and the vigorous promotion expended to entice them to perform charitable acts (both Irenaeus Ad. Haer. 4.20.2 and Origen Comm. in Rom. 10.31 speak respectfully of this text, with Origen even saying it was “divinely inspired”). The Shepherd’s depiction of Christians as often harassed and distracted by business affairs suggests their involvement in the risky economic undertakings of the entrepreneurial class. The narrative, for example, frequently refers to Hermas’ failings on account of being focused on business matters (Vis. 2.3.1; 7) (see Osiek 1983, 39–45, for a list of all references to wealth and poverty and business distractions). It also describes other Christians as so devoted to their business that they are not properly committed to the community (Sim. 8.8.1; 74). Even more culpable are the Christians who lose any opportunity for repentance because they were so worried about their businesses that they blasphemed and denied the Lord (Sim. 8.8.2; 74). However, some of the Christians described as doing “lawless works” because of their over-involvement in business are more fortunate. The narrative notes that they never actually fell away from God because they “bore his name gladly and gladly welcomed the slaves of God into their homes” (Sim. 8.10.2–3; 76; Maier 2002, 61, argues for this comment being interpreted in the context of Sim. 8.9.3; 75.3 and its reference to business harassments). Again, good works are shown to redeem flawed behaviors. Peter Lampe suggests that a motivation for the Shepherd’s theme of allowing for a single post-baptismal repentance may have been financial: “the reintegration of the secularized wealthy into the active church life, so that financial resources for the care of the Christian poor will again flow” (2003, 94).
The Shepherd of Hermas warns its Christian audience that if they wish to prepare houses and goods for the future life, they must use their wealth not for earthly possessions, but to purchase afflicted souls and take care of widows and orphans (Sim. 1.8; 50). This is the same lesson that Gundaphorus was made to learn in the Acts of Thomas. The shepherd explains that this is why God makes Christians wealthy—to care for the afflicted and poor. Then, in a passage that seems to invoke (as it redirects) the context of civic munificence, the shepherd praises Christian charity as a good kind of extravagance (Wudel 2004, 44; Lipsett 2011). Sim. 1.10–11; 50):
αὕτη ἡ πολυτέλεια καλὴ καὶ ἱλαρά, λύπην μὴ ἔχουσα μηδὲ φόβον, ἔχουσα δὲ χαράν. τὴν ο
ν πολυτέλειαν τω̑ν ἐθνω̑ν μὴ πράσσετε · ἀσύμφορον γάρ ἐστιν ὑμι̑ν τοι̑ς δούλοις του̑ θεου̑ · τὴν δὲ ἰδίαν πολυτέλειαν πράσσετε, ἐν 
δύνασθε χαρη̑ναι. (This kind of extravagance is good and makes one glad; it has no grief or fear, but joy instead. And so, do not participate in the extravagance sought by outsiders; for it is of no profit to you who are slaves of God. But participate in your own extravagance in which you can rejoice. [translation from Ehrman 2003])
Here the narrative appears explicitly to position Christian almsgiving as an alternative to elite munificence, just as the apocryphal Acts do when they depict the civic elite exchanging civic munificence for Christian charity. In the hierarchical society of the early imperial period, this representation of wealthy Christian almsgivers as the equivalent of elite benefactors might have had valence with the rich traders and merchants excluded from the social and political mechanics of civic munificence. The apocryphal Acts of the apostles should be recognized as texts not only helping to enlarge the social imagination to include the poor, but also specifically aimed at recruiting and affirming Christian donors. As the prose fiction form evolved in the early imperial period, one of its roles seems to have been to allow different social constituencies to project their social vision. The apocryphal Acts offer a template for a reordered civic ideal: a multi-status community of fellow believers unified around a common agenda, the care of the poor and afflicted. This agenda would provide the basis for the institutionalization of Christianity and for its growth.
1 Hall 1995, 49, suggests that the Greek Onos presents a realistic depiction of the understratum’s situation, but she recognizes that the narrative projects a social “double vision.” The narrator as ass, in his “unfreedom and subjection,” shares the perspective of the “dregs of society,” but this perspective is “counter-posed to his unrelenting social snobbery and unquestioning allegiance to the ruling class.”
2 When not otherwise attributed, translations are mine.
3 Met. 11.30. Liberali deum providentia iam stipendiis forensibus bellule fotum…, incunctanter gloriosa in foro redderem patrocinia, nec extimescerem malevolorum disseminationes, quas studiorum meorum laboriosa doctrina ibidem exciverat. (“had I not through the generous providence of the gods prospered by my forensic practice … [and Osiris bid] that I continue as now to win fame as an advocate in the courts and not fear the slanders of malevolent persons aroused there by my industrious learning and studies”). See Shelton 2005, 328, for Lucius’ undeviating commitment to a hierarchical system that privileges elite men, and for the Isiac cult as replicating a similar hierarchy. Alvares 2007, 7, also sees Lucius as retaining the viewpoint of his class and status throughout the narrative and showing support for the Roman imperium. Finkelpearl 2006, 2007, argues for a more critical stance toward Rome being displayed in the narrative.
4 I borrow from Helm’s text (1959) and citations that use Robertson and Villette’s (1940) text divisions.
5 Kenney 2003, 162. Multiscium occurs here in the Metamorphoses (9.13), once in the Apology referring to Homer (31), and three times in the Florida (for Apollo, 3.9; for Hippias, 9.15; for Protagoras, 18.19).
6 Kenney 2003, 168–78, examines the meaning of prudentem and understands multiscium and prudentem as “antithetical, opposing the sophist to the philosopher.” Also, he reads minus prudentem to mean Lucius was saying he was “no wiser.” Kenney agrees with Winkler that Lucius’ lack of wisdom continues even after his conversion and up to the time of his writing: “His experiences have not profited him morally” (176).
7 Freudenburg 2007, 247, points to the explicit sexiness of the viewing in this scene. In the Greek romances, “the lover’s eyes are usually set much higher on the beloved’s frame, especially on the eyes and face.” Lucius, however, details “everything he sees from ‘nipples’ (papillae) to ‘ass’ (nates).” See Morales 2004 for the politics of viewing in Achilles Tatius and the importance of vision and its constitution in the wider culture of the Second Sophistic.
8 I omit the Acts of Andrew from my survey, although Stratocles’ disavowal of his wealth would support my argument until I sort out the questions raised by Roig Lanzillotta 2007 on the various chronological strata of the text.
9 Hence, Holman 2001, 54, describes the recipients of alms in the redemptive almsgiving model as “essentially symbols, their bodies representing holy containers by which the donor may be lifted up to God” (emphasis in source).
10 See Meeks 1983, 51–73, for converts. See Kehoe 2007 and Jongman 2009 on economic growth in the early imperial period. See Scheidel 2006 for a sizable number of persons with financial resources falling outside the honestiores. Longenecker 2009 provides a helpful model for mapping economic gradations in the early empire, moving away from the binary-model rich and poor and suggesting a sizable middle between the extremes. I am grateful to David Downs for sharing with me his paper on almsgiving given at the Rome International SBL 2009 (Downs 2011), which focused on almsgiving and economic stratification in 2 Clement, and which pointed me to studies of poverty and wealth in the New Testament.
11 There is some dispute about the dating of Acts of John. Junod and Kaestli 1983, 695, place it in the later second century, but Bremmer 2001b and Lalleman 1998, 270, suggest the second quarter of the second century. Junod and Kaestli’s text is used, and my translations of all the apocryphal Acts in this paper are from Schneemelcher and Wilson 1992, with some modifications.
12 ὁ πένης πλούσιός ἐστιν ἐν τῃ̑ ἐντεύξει αὐτου̑ καὶ ἐν τῃ̑ ἐξομολογήσει, καὶ δύναμιν μεγάλην ἔχει παρὰ τῳ̑ θεῳ̑ ἡ ἔντευξις αὐτου̑ (51 Sim. 2.5). For the Shepherd, I cite Ehrman’s 2003 Loeb text and his translation, and follow his decision to use both the traditional citation method indicating visions, commandments, and parables and Whittaker’s 1967 consecutive numbering. The Shepherd is usually located in first half of the second century (Osiek 1999, 18–20), but see Maier 2002, 58, for a date near the end of the first century. For a discussion of rich and poor in Hermas, see Osiek 1983 and Lampe 2003, 90–9.
13 ἡ μὲν ον Tρύφαινα πολὺν ἱματισμὸν καὶ χρυσὸν ἔπεμψεν αὐτῃ̑, ὥστε καταλιπει̑ν τῳ̑ Παύλῳ εἰς διακονίαν τω̑ν πτωχω̑ν (41). The Acts of Paul is usually dated to the late second century. The Lipsius-Bonnet text is used. The Acts includes evidence for some non-elite benefaction. Paul is described as selling his clothes to buy bread for Onesiphorus’ children (23).
14 Much of the Acts of Peter survives only in a single Latin manuscript (Actus Vercellenses). This translation appears to have been made in the fourth century from a Greek text of the late second century. Baldwin 2005 argues against the notion of a written Acts of Peter on the scope of the Actus Vercellenses before the mid-third century. See Spittler 2008, 126–30, for a synopsis of the textual questions and dating of the Acts of Peter. I use the text from Lipsius and Bonnet 1891.
15 Willem Jongman 2009, 124, enumerates the underpinnings for this perspective that sees evidence for a “dramatic” growth in economic activity, exceeding what might be expected from population increases alone. More shipwrecks and metal pollution in the Greenland ice core point to more shipping and smelting of metals. Increased building, meat-eating, fish sauce consumption, and human body size round out the evidence for real economic growth during the period. See also Jongman 2007 with citations to his earlier work. See Bang 2007 and 2008 for other articulations of the benefits of empire in the early period.
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For an excellent comprehensive introduction to the early Apocryphal Acts, see H-J. Klauck (2008) The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: An Introduction. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. For essential studies of the historical and theological interrelations relation between the fictive Apocryphal Acts and Christian Canonical texts, see F. Bovon (1995) New Testament Traditions and Apocryphal Narratives. Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, and Bovon (2009) New Testament and Christian Apocrypha. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. For feminist and social readings of the AAA, see the collection of A.-J., Levine and M.M. Robbins (2006) A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha. New York: T & T Clark. For a perceptive overview of early Christian literature, see H. Rhee (2005) Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries. London: Routledge. For a different perspective on the economics of the period, see P. Temin, P. (2006) “The Economy of the Early Roman Empire,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20.1:133–151, and Temin (2013) The Roman Market Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.