Author: oglesby@uoregon.edu

Christianity in Rome

oglesby@uoregon.edu

 It seems as though christianity hits all of the buttons that Rives lists in his chapter that would have the Romans react to it in a negative way. They didn’t practice animal sacrifice, they didn’t honor the gods of Rome, and the religious power of their tradition was out of the hands of the Roman elite. In short they were considered atheists, in the sense that they didn’t honor the gods in the proper way, and superstitious. A few of these issues seem to illustrated in a letter written by Pliny to the emperor Trajan regarding his treatment of Christians. His policy, laid out in the letter is that when a Christian is charged he gives them a chance to repent and honor the gods and the emperor. If they take this opportunity they are spared, and if not the accused is put to death. This section is Pliny talking about what success he has had with this strategy. “The contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and countryside, but it can probably be arrested and cured. It is quite clear that the temples which has been almost deserted for a long time have begun to be frequented and that the sacred rituals that has long lapsed are being revived, and that there is a general demand for sacrificial animals which, for some time, were finding very few buyers.”(Warrior, 15.5) Clearly high on his list of concerns is the lack of traditional Roman cultic practice and ritual sacrifice. 

Another letter, this time written by a christian called Minicius Felix lists some of the common views on Christians, calling them a wicked rabble of illiterates and women that “despise political offices” (Warrior 15.7) and meet in secret to eat human flesh and engage in lustful and incestuous acts (Warrior, 15.7-9). If these were common views of Christians at the time then it explains why the ßRomans treated them with the scorn that they did.

A good example of Christian response to these claims of atheos and lack religious respect for the emperor is given by Tertulian in his Apology. In it he basically says that they cant offer sacrifices to the gods, because there is only one god to be honored and the others don’t exist. He also says that they are constantly praying for the good health and success of the emperor, they just don’ do this by performing animal sacrifice, “The Christians are considered public enemies because they will not give the emperors vain, false and rash honors, and because they celebrate the emperors’ festivals as men of true religion, in their hearts rather than in licentious behavior.”(Warrior 15.15) He further goes on to say that the association isn’t clandestine or evil, it is just people trying to help each other where they can.

After the initial persecution of Christians it got much worse before it got better. First there was Diocletian’s great persecution(Warrior 15.21) followed by Galerius declaring Christianity illegal (Warrior 15.22) However, it slowly, then very rapidly got better for the Christians in the Roman Empire. As time went on and more and more Romans, and specifically elite Romans became christian the Imperial policy toward Christianity began to soften before coming to a head with the Emperor Constantine converting to Christianity in 312 (Rives, 200). This conversion would then lead to ban on pagan religion and Christianity becoming the law of the land, certainly a major jump from a time when professing your faith as a Christian merited a death sentence. To conclude and emphasize how much the prevailing attitudes in Rome had changed by the late 300s BCE, here is a quote from Symmachus, the pagan prefect of Rome from a letter he wrote to a Christian emperor, “And so we are asking for amnesty for the gods of our fathers, our native gods. It it reasonable to assume that whatever each of us worships is one and the same…What difference does it make which system each of us uses to seek the truth? It is not by just one route that man can arrive at so great a mystery.”(Warrior, 15.27)

The Hermetic Tradition

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 The Hermetic tradition focuses in on the god Hermes Trismegistus. This gods name means Thrice Great Hermes and is the name that the Greeks gave to the Egyptian god Thoth. The tradition teaches that “the material world is corrupt and inferior, and that humanity contains within itself an element from a higher level of existence to which people should strive to return.”(Rives, pp. 167)I had a hard time finding specific aspects that the god possess, but I think that he is associated with this higher aspect of humanity. The Hermetic tradition teaches that salvation is possible through learning this true nature. The text Poimandres says, “life and light are god and father, from whom the man came to be; so if you learn that you are from light and life, and you happen to come from them, you shall advance to life once again”.(Rives, pp. 179)

In the Corpus Hermeticum XIII dialogue, Tat learns that the material world and the material body are illusions, something lesser than the true form. By knowing this truth the lower form can be escaped and the higher level can be entered into. Hermes makes it clear that this knowledge is a gift from the creator god and is already present in man, “This kind of knowledge is not taught, O son, but through God it is remembered, whenever he wills.”(Corpus Hermeticum XIII.3) To achieve this Hermes tells Tat that he must retreat into himself and separate himself from the material world. “Make idle the senses of the body and the spirit will be born” (Corpus Hermeticum XIII.7). This enlightened state of mind is described as a sort unity or presence with all things. To have “Nous”, Hermes says is “to no longer picture oneself with regard to the three dimensional body” (Corpus Hermeticum XIII.13).

This text fits into Rives discussion of religious esoterica in Chapter 6 fairly neatly. The text offers a divine wisdom and interaction with the divine that Rives lays out on page 162. The Hermetic tradition offers a path to salvation that seems similar to me to the Gnostic tradition, a point that Rives also makes. To go a bit further, when removed from contextI don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that some of the passages sound a bit Christian in general. The advantage of the dialogue genre has when discussing salvation is that the knowledge of salvation and how to attain it can be shown to come directly from the source. If this knowledge is shown in a text as coming right from a god or divinity then I think that would go a long way to making it more credible.

Asclepius and Medicine

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The healing god Asclepius’ sanctuary is surrounded on all sides by boundary markers and within these markers no birth and no death is to take place. Inside the sanctuary are people devoting themselves to the god in hopes of being cured of their health problems. They eat sleep and live at the sanctuary giving dedications to the god and hoping for a vision telling them what to do to be cured. (Warrior 6.26-27) All around the sanctuary are inscriptions detailing past cures given by the God such as mutes given speech, the blind given sight, and women getting pregnant when they could not before. Athens and rome would be interested in having Asclepius in their cities for two reasons. First their citizens would want Asclepius in their city for their own individual sake. Getting sick in the ancient world was a scary thing and a big deal, so the closer they could be to a healing god, the better. The second reason that they would want Asclepius in their cities is for the health of the sate. Livy records in Periocha, “When the state was troubled by a plague, envoys were sent to bring the image of Asclepius from Epidaurus to Rome.”(Warrior, 14.27)

The relationship that Asclepius has with Aristides is one of dreams and visions. Aristides at the beginning of the sacred tales says about the God, “he revealed somethings openly in his own presence, and others by the sending of dreams, as far as it was possible to obtain sleep…Therefore in view of this I decided to submit truly to the God, as as to a doctor and to do in silence whatever he wishes.” (Sacred Tales, 1.3-4) Asclepius appeared to Aristides as he did to many who sought his help and guidance, in his dreams. When Aristides was ill it was Asclepius’ council that was the most valuable and he would do what ever the god would tell him to. Another characteristic of the relationship is that it is personal. When Aristides has a problem he seeks out Asclepius on his own and expects to get a direct and individual answer. This relationship is different from those of the Classical age in this aspect. He does not go to a festival, or worship at an altar in a great crowd. Aristides’ ailments are his own and so is his relationship with Asclepius.

The impression of the state of medical knowledge at the time of Aelius Aristides was certainly not advanced. Medical knowledge was not very deep at the time and seeing a doctor seems like it would have been almost as much of a gamble as praying to Asclepius and going to his sanctuary for healing. In this quote from the The Sacred Tales, Aelius Aristides has a tumor on his groin and he is trying to heal himself. The doctors, give many and varied consultations as to what he should do, “At this point, the doctors cried out all sorts of things, some said surgery, some said cauterization by drug, or that an infection would arise and I must surely die. But the God gave a contrary opinion and told me to endure and foster the growth. And clearly there was no choice between listening to the doctors or to the God.”(The Sacred Tales, 62-63) This quote also does a good job of establishing the relationship between medicine and religion at the time. While Aelius seeks the opinions of doctors about his malady the thought of not doing what his vision guided him to do is unthinkable to him. The guidance his vision of Asclepius gave him has the final say. 

Religious Identity in Rome

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A key feature defining Roman society is their devout practice of religion and it’s pervasive presence in all aspects of Roman life. The Romans in part defined the essence of “Roman-ness” by their religious practice, as Cicero said “We Romans are far superior in religio, by which I mean, the worship of the gods.”(Warrior, 1.1) In addition to helping give definition to what it meant to be roman in general, religion also contributed to the structure societal hierarchies. At the top levels of society generals and leaders of state were devout and would ask for favor before taking actions. This is exemplified in Cicero’s On Behalf of Murena (Warrior, 4.6) where he opens a legal defense with a prayer of petition to the gods on behalf of the man he is defending. There are many examples of generals asking for the blessings of the gods before going into battle or during war such as the prayer Livy attributes to Scipio before he invaded Africa (Warrior, 4.7). This happened often enough to be parodied in literature such as the slave in Plautus’ Persian mocking the prayer of thanksgiving given by the victorious general (Warrior,4.8).

In times of trouble religious ritual was used to promote unity. When the Romans went to war with Aantiochus, Livy records that the senate declared a time of public prayer (supplicatio) for victory. (Warrior, 4.17) This shows that not only the prayers of individuals were needed to gain the favor of the gods but also Rome as a collective, this type of thinking would certainly help unite Rome. Another example of this given by Livy is when a lectisternium (religious festival where statues of gods were place on draped couches outside and worshiped) to beg for pax deorum (peace of the gods) while Rome was stricken with plague. The health and success of the state was directly tied to the religious practice of individuals, households, and groups. Sometimes religious leaders shaped public action, such as the example given by Cicero in On the Nature of the Gods. When a vitium (error) was made in the election of the consuls, some of the most powerful men in Rome, and they were told to step down by the haruspices (diviners or soothsayers) and they did (Warrior, 1.26). The thought of retaining their rank and power despite the religious implications was unthinkable to them.

The defining nature of religion could also be seen in voluntary associations, or collegium. In a letter to Pliny responding to a request to form a group of firefighters the emperor Trajan says “Whatever we name them and for whatever purpose we grant people to come together, in short order they become political and religious brotherhoods.”(Reasoner, pp. 145) Not only did non religious groups take on a religious slant, but there were many groups devoted to Gods or for religious association explicitly. These groups show that people chose to define themselves and their groups religiously.

Gods and Heroes

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The greeks categorized the divine world by god, epithet and location. By this I mean each individual god had many sides to them which are described by their epithet. The example that Mikalson gives in his book on page 33 is that of Poseidon Soter of Sunium and Poseidon Hippios. The former would deal with matters of the sea while to latter is responsible for horses, “One would pray in vain to Poseidon Soter to save his horse or to Poseidon Hippios to save his life at sea.” (Mikalson 33). The epithet describes something about that particular god’s function and characteristics. The locale of a god is where that god holds influence over. It would be foolish for people in one city or area to pray to the god of a different place as that is not their patron deity.

Homer and Hesiod are given the credit for formalizing the basic features of gods and heroes. Herodotus in his Histories says, “For I believe that Hesiod and Homer, who were 400 years before my time, and no more than that, made for the Greeks the genealogies of the gods, giving them their appropriate titles, assigning them their honors and skills, and describing their appearance.” (Warrior 2.1)

The picture of the Gods that I get from Warrior’s book is that they have a distinctly human element to them. That is not to say that they aren’t supernatural or otherworldly, but rather in Hesiod and Homer they seem to have human concerns. In Hesiod, for example, Rhea has to plot with her parents so she can have her child (Warrior 2.6, 470). In Homer’s The Iliad the gods plot against each other and seemingly admit mistakes, “How naive and senseless we are to set our hearts against Zeus!” (Warrior 2.18, 105) The gods are definitely not man, but they have an element of humanity in their interactions with each other and with humans.

The relationship that these myths have with practiced greek religion is that they myths explain things about the world and explain why certain gods have power over certain places or things. Mikalson says on page 54 that the truth of the myth is not the important part, but rather the message that is contained in the myth. He quotes G.S. Kirk as saying that they are “on the one hand good stories, on the other hand bearers of important messages about life in general and life-within-society in particular.” (Mikalson 54)

The myth that I am explaining is that of Athena, Poseidon, and Athens. In the myth all the gods decide to go down to Earth and claim the cities that they would become the patron god of. Athena and Poseidon get into a race to see who can claim Athens the fastest. Ultimately the story ends with Cecrops, the Athenian king at the time, deciding that Athena was the victor. After the race Athena planted and olive tree and Poseidon hit the Acropolis with his trident. This myth seems to serve several purposes in Greek and Athenian religious practice and thought. First it provides the Athenian citizen with a physical connection to the divine. As Mikalson states on page 56, “The Athenian would have before him a most impressive and beautiful representation of the story he had learned from childhood of how Athena became the eponymous patron of his city.” Secondly I think that it grounds Athens as being a city of great importance. Athens was a powerful and wealthy city but this story seems to show that it also was desirable to the gods themselves. The powerful Athena and Poseidon were involved enough with wanting the city as their own that they would race to claim it. In addition to this the judge of a race between immortals was just a man, the king of the city. The ancient Athenian king in that moment held some sort of power over two of the gods. 

The Nature of the Divine and Approaches to Roman Religion

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Ben Oglesby 

Rives’ explanation of the category divine in the roman context shows just how broad a concept the idea of the divine was in that time and place. From inside the idea of divinity he unpacked a huge amount of spiritual diversity in both belief and practice. What is most different from the monotheistic faiths seemed to be the large number of things that have a divine element, from the gods all the way down to the numen/genius/etc of everyday people and things. What Rives says about Roman religious practices intersects with our initial discussion of Roman belief in a significant, but semi superficial way as we lacked the depth of knowledge that he has. It seems that we did manage to cover all three parts of the tripartite Roman faith in our initial discussion as we covered the cultic practices, the myths surrounding the pantheon, and briefly we mentioned philosophy and its relation to Roman faith. We definitely need to fine tune our initial ideas, but it seems like we were not too off base as a group. We should talk more about the diversity of divine beings as I don’t think the idea of daimons or spirits came up in our discussion.