sacrifice

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)

Relationships with the gods and cult practices

lgc@uoregon.edu

In his hypothetical construction of a temple at Sunium, Mikalson attempts to address the various dimensions of Greek religious life and how they combine and converge at temple sites. In his step-by-step approach, Mikalson successfully explains which components of religious sites were most important, and those that followed once a cult had become popular enough to sustain a large temple. In his introductory chapter James Rives talks at length about the four dimensions of religious worship: cult, art, myth, and philosophy. In many ways cult, art, and myth converge during the production of a religious worship site like the one Mikalson constructed in his chapter. In the Greek religious landscape, the most important step to becoming a pious individual was to worship in the correct fashion, hence the importance of cult. This same reverence for cult drove the Greeks to place their worship sites in locations that were suitable for each individual god. Mikalson points out, for example, that mountaintops were often sacred for Zeus and the Site of Sunium was fitting for the god of the sea.  After choosing a proper location, nearly every aspect of the temples construction had a cult purpose, most notably the altar on which offerings would be made. The altar was the crucial aspect of cult, as the practice of sacrificial offerings was a fundamental part of their religious lives and a crucial aspect of remaining in good favor with the god. While myths of the deeds of gods and heroes likely served to reinforce the cult practices, they were not what modern Westerners would classify as a sacred religious text or tradition. Myths were often oral traditions that were used as symbolic representations of philosophical truths, according to Rives.  As it pertains to the temple at Sunium, there would have likely been tales of men lost at sea or killed in naval battles as a result of not providing the proper offering to Poseidon. So while myths might not have served a central role in religious life, it probably reinforced the central ideas and practices of cult. Besides just performing an offering before embarking on the sea, many worshippers would have brought dedications to the temple at Sunium in thanks to the god for fulfilling their requests. These dedications were often works of art such as small statuette or sculpted or painted plaques that would decorate the temple. In many ways, these works of art would be physical and tangible evidence that Poseidon had in fact helped dozens of sea merchants or sailors.

As I previously stated, the presence of myths was far more important to literature and art than it was cult. As Rives states, “…myth remained a fluid tradition, reworked and adapted to new contexts by successive generations…”
Cult worship was clearly the more important aspect of Greek religious life and was merely reinforced by myth and literature.

What I found most interesting about the overall “religiosity” of the Greeks was that they seemed to rely on the gods to help them with things that were out of their control. For example, a sailor would make an offering to Poseidon before setting sail because once they were on the water they were at the mercy of the elements. Greeks made offerings to Zeus because they could not control the climate and weather. So while they were ritualistic when they needed to be, more often than not they were able to complete tasks without invoking the gods.