Dying to Be Men: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts 9780231518208

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Dying to Be Men

gender, theory, and religion

Gender, Theory, and Religion Amy Hollywood, Editor The Gender, Theory, and Religion series provides a forum for interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of the study of gender, sexuality, and religion. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making, Elizabeth A. Castelli When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David, Susan Ackerman Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity, Jennifer Wright Knust Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World, Kimberly B. Stratton

l. stephanie cobb

Dying to Be Men gender and language in early christian martyr texts

Columbia University Press / New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2008 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cobb, L. Stephanie. Dying to be men : gender and language in early Christian martyr texts / L. Stephanie Cobb. p. cm. — (Gender, theory, and religion) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-231-14498-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-51820-8 (e-book) 1. Martyrologies—History and criticism. 2. Martyrdom—Christianity— Early works to 1800. 3. Sex role—Religious aspects—Christianity—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–600. 4. Church history—Primitive and early church, ca. 30–600. I. Title. BR1609.C64 2008 272'.1082—dc22 Columbia University Pr ess books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book is printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

2008005088

For my parents, Sue and Jimmy Cobb

Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations

ix xi

Introduction: Constructing Identity Through Cultural Appropriation Scholarship and Early Christian Martyrologies Martyrdom and Identity Formation Christianity and the Roman World: Appropriation or Subversion?

1 What Is a Christian? Constructing a Christian Identity Constructing Social Identity Social Identity Theory Applied Sex and Gender in Antiquity

2 Noble Athletes: Gladiatorial, Athletic, and Martial Imagery in the Martyr Acts Martyrdom and the Amphitheater The Gladiator in Antiquity The Athlete and the Soldier in Antiquity

3 Be a Man: Narrative Tools of Masculinization in Early Christian Martyr Acts Masculinity and Virtue Constructing Masculinity by Comparison

1 3 8 11 18 19 22 24

33 34 47 55

60 61 80

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CONTENTS

4 Putting Women in Their Place: Masculinizing and Feminizing the Female Martyr Perpetua Felicitas Blandina Agathonike

Conclusion: Gender and Language in Early Christian Martyr Texts Notes Bibliography Index

129

185 203

92 94 111 113 116 124

Acknowledgments

A

friend of mine once suggested that scholars’ research topics provide intriguing glimpses into their psyches. While I do not know whether this book emerges from a deep-seated martyr complex, I am sure that in its final form it is a testimony to my stubbornness and limitations. Had I been savvier and more capable, I would have implemented more of the critiques and suggestions I have received, and the book would have been the better for it. To borrow words from Marcus Aurelius, “It is my fault that I still fail since I did not observe . . . the reminders or teachings.” Chief among those who have tried to teach me is my doctoral advisor and friend, Bart Ehrman, whose questions and criticisms helped refine my arguments and toughened my skin. To him I owe a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. I also wish to thank Dale Martin, Elizabeth Clark, Zlatko Plese, and Peter Kaufman for their close readings of my work and for their helpful critiques. Under the direction of these individuals, along with many of my professors from Baylor University, Yale Divinity School, and Brite Divinity School, I hope I have become both a better scholar and a better person. I have been extraordinarily lucky to have as friends and conversation partners a group of scholars whose work will, I have no doubt, change the face of early Christian studies. In particular I would like to thank Catherine Chin, Christopher A. Frilingos, Andrew Jacobs, Diane Wudel Lipsett, Pamela Mullins Reaves, Carrie Schroeder, and Christine Shepardson for their insights, criticisms, and, most important, their friendship. I appreciate also my friendships with Lynn Neal, Susan Bales Ridgely, David Shefferman, and Nereida Segura-Rico, all of whom worked extraordinarily hard to keep me relatively sane through this journey. I am thankful for my longtime friend Markie Hart Cooke, whose support has

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always been steady and unconditional. I am particularly thankful as well for a newer friend, Patrick Alexander, who never doubted me or my work and whose confidence has sustained me of late. I was fortunate to be offered a job at Hofstra University in 2002; there I found not only generous and supportive colleagues but also wonderful friends: Julie Byrne, Anthony Dardis, Markus Dressler, Warren Frisina, Amy Karofsky, Ilaria Marchesi, Anne O’Byrne, and John Teehan. Special thanks go to my colleague Kathleen Wallace, who has gracefully managed to be both my mentor and my friend. My gratitude extends also to Wendy Lochner, senior executive editor at Columbia University Press, for her interest in my book; to Amy Hollywood, series editor, for her generous support of this project and, especially, for her well-timed words of encouragement; to Christine Mortlock, assistant editor at Columbia University Press, for her helpfulness through the various stages of production; and to Kerri Sullivan, for her diligent work in copyediting the manuscript. My family has always supported me in my work and, perhaps equally important, taught me the value of laying it aside for a time. I am grateful to them for both. I am especially thankful that over the years my sister and brother-in-law, Melissa and Tom Lacy, and my brother, Chris Cobb, have given me four of the best playmates I could ever hope to have: Benjamin, Jackson, and Adelaide Lacy, and William Cobb. This book is dedicated to my first and best teachers, Jimmy and Sue Cobb, who modeled and fostered intellectual curiosity without limits.

Abbreviations

Aristotle, Gen. an. Calpurnius Flaccus, Decl. Cicero, Att. Cicero, Cael. Cicero, De Or. Cicero, Leg. Cicero, Mil. Cicero, Mur. Cicero, Off. Cicero, Phil. Cicero, Quint. fratr. Cicero, Sest. Cicero, Sull. Cicero, Tusc. CIL Cyprian, Don. Dio Chrysostom, 1Melanc. Dio Chrysostom, 2Melanc. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Galen, Usefulness Herm., Sim. Herm., Vis. Horace, Sat. Ign. Rom. ILS

De generatione anamalium Declamationes Epistulae ad Atticum Pro Caelio De oratore De legibus Pro Milone Pro Murena De officiis Orationes philippicae Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem Pro Sestio Pro Sulla Tusculanae disputationes Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum Ad Donatum Melancomas i (Or. 29) Melancomas ii (Or. 28) Historia ecclesiastica On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body Shepherd of Hermas, Similitudes Shepherd of Hermas, Visions Satirae Ignatius to the Romans Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae

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A B B R E V I AT I O N S

Josephus, Ant. Josephus, J.W. Justin Martyr, 2 Apol., Juvenal, Sat. Lactantius, Opif. Livy, Epit. Livy, Per. Lucan, Bell. civ. Lyons Marcus Aurelius, Med. Mart. Apoll. Mart. Carp. Mart. Fruc. Mart. Just. Mart. Mar. Mart. Pion. Mart. Pol. Martial, Epig. Martial, Spect. Minucius Felix, Oct. NPNF Pass. Perp. Petronius, Sat. Philo, Contempl. Life Philo, Opif. Philo, QE Philo, QG Philo, Leg. Philo, Spec. Laws Plato, Phaedr. Plautus, Cas. Pliny the Elder, Nat. Pliny the Younger, Pan. Plutarch, Cohib. ira Plutarch, Cor. Plutarch, Crass. Plutarch, Galb. Plutarch, Inim. util. Plutarch, Quaest. rom.

Jewish Antiquities Jewish War Apologia ii Satirae De opificio Dei Epitome Periochae Bellum civile Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne Meditations Martyrdom of Apollonius Martyrdom of Carpus Martyrdom of Fructuosus Martyrdom of Justin Martyrdom of Marian and James Martyrdom of Pionius Martyrdom of Polycarp Epigrams Spectacles Octavius Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas Satyricon De vita contemplativa De opificio mundi Quaestiones et solutions in Exodum Quaestiones et solutions in Genesin Legum allegoriae De specialibus legibus Phaedrus Casina Naturalis historia Panegyricus De cohibenda ira Marcius Coriolanus Crassus Galba De capienda ex inimicis utilitate Quaestiones romanae et graecae

A B B R E V I AT I O N S

Plutarch, Ti. C. Gracch. Scill. Seneca, Clem. Seneca, De prov. Seneca, Dial. Seneca, Ep. Seneca, Helv. Seneca, Nat. Seneca, Vit. beat. Servius, ad Aen. Statius, Silv. Suetonius, Aug. Suetonius, Cal. Suetonius, Claud. Suetonius, Dom. Suetonius, Galb. Suetonius, Jul. Suetonius, Nero Suetonius, Tib. Tacitus, Ann. Tacitus, Dial. Tacitus, Hist. Terence, Phorm. Tertullian, Apol. Tertullian, Fug. Tertullian, Praescr. Tertullian, Scap. Tertullian, Spect.

Tiberius et Caius Gracchus Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs De clementia De providentia Dialogi Epistulae morales De consolatione ad Helvium Naturales quaestiones De vita beata Ad Aeneid Silvae Divus Augustus Gaius Caligula Divus Claudius Domitianus Galba Divus Julius Nero Tiberius Annales Dialogus de oratoribus Historiae Phormio Apologeticus De fuga De praescriptione haereticorum Ad Scapulam De spectaculis

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Dying to Be Men

Introduction CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY THROUGH CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

“A

re you a Christian?” This was one of the most commonly asked questions at the university I attended in central Texas. One’s response to the question was simple—yes or no—but extraordinarily important: it provided a way to categorize fifteen hundred rather homogeneous entering students into discrete groups in the university at large. Those whose answer was “no” were clearly in one group, a group that remained undifferentiated. They were “other” and highly stereotyped: they wore black, had body piercings (this was before piercings were mainstreamed), and hung out at “the fountain” on campus, smoking cigarettes. The yesses, however, were more difficult to sort. “How often do you go to church?” “Which church do you attend?” “Have you been born again?” “Are you dating someone who goes to church?” “Has he been born again?” A person’s answers to these questions served as further markers of group identity, and one’s affiliation with a particular subgroup of Christian—rigorous, passable, titular—was often more telling than one’s answer to the original question. Competition between Christians and non-Christians was superficial. Because these groups did not desire the same things (or so they claimed), most group characteristics were uncontested. Intra-Christian competition, however, could be heated and often involved claims to piety and accusations of hypocrisy. Over time, the preliminary category “Christian” took on subsets (e.g., Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic), but it also became a subset of larger campus groups such as sororities and fraternities. The more we became involved in college life, the more identities we had to maintain. The us/them dichotomy with which we began led to any number of different us/ them dichotomies, each with competing demands for our time and on our behavior.

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INTRODUCTION

Strangely, none of us asked what the question “Are you a Christian?” actually meant. We did not deconstruct or even destabilize the category, and we saw no need to. What once struck me as a simple and straightforward question, however, now strikes me as immensely complex, in part because it involves very fluid categories. Being a Christian in my university setting was defined by comparison, and claims to that identity depended on which attributes a person or group emphasized. What I did not know then was that this process of grouping one another was not peculiar to my collegiate setting. Rather, we were participating in standard human behavior: all social beings create order by first categorizing the world, then identifying with certain groups, and finally accepting—and when necessary, enacting—their behavioral norms. The authors of the earliest martyr accounts categorized the actors in their stories in ways very similar to the ways my classmates and I grouped one another: “Are you or are you not a Christian?” “How Christian are you?” The processes of categorization were also similar: first, the world was divided into categories in order to make it manageable (e.g., Christian, pagan, Jewish); second, individuals were identified with one or more of the categories; and third, they favorably compared their group to others to enhance selfesteem. At my university, the heated identity issue was intra-Christian—what kind of Christian are you?—while in the martyrologies the locus of contestation was primarily inter-Christian. Identity was assigned, in large part, by differentiating Christians from Jews and pagans. What, then, is a Christian? This book begins to answer that question by examining the ways the authors of the martyrologies described the actions of exemplary group members. Christians were not insulated from the world around them, and they were not passive observers of Roman life. Christians were inhabitants of the Roman Empire, and as such they were familiar with their culture’s values. At issue is whether Christians accepted or rejected these values. The martyrologies show—contrary to traditional scholarly assumptions—that Christians did not wholly reject the culture and world around them. They embraced, rather than replaced, Roman definitions of honor, strength, and reason. Certainly the claims to Christian strength were contrary to observable events—Christians, after all, were being executed— but the authors of the martyrologies go to extraordinary lengths to show how Christians embody the good and honorable Roman life. An analysis of the martyrologies reveals that Roman cultural values were at the very core of Christian identity. The stories of the martyrs depict Christians as more masculine—a principal Roman attribute—than non-Christians. The Christian

INTRODUCTION

3

identities that emerge from these martyrologies suggest that the question “Are you a Christian?” was answered by one’s actions: to be a Christian was to embody masculinity.

S C H O L A R S H I P A N D E A R LY C H R I S T I A N M A RT Y R O L O G I E S

Sometime in the early second century, Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the Christians in Rome in anticipation of his martyrdom: May I benefit from the beasts that have been prepared for me; and I pray that they be found ready for me; I will entice them to devour me readily; not, as has happened to some whom they have not touched because of cowardliness; and if they do not wish to do it voluntarily, I will force them to it. Grant me this indulgence. I know what is profitable for me; now I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing visible or invisible concern me so that I attain to Jesus Christ. Let there come upon me fire and cross and encounters with beasts, mutilation, tearing apart, scattering of bones, mangling of limbs, grinding of the whole body, evil tortures of the devil, only that I may attain to Jesus Christ.1

Ignatius’s letter to the Romans is an example of one of the most interesting— albeit disquieting—aspects of formative Christianity: the quest for martyrdom.2 This pursuit of death strikes many modern readers as a sign of psychosis. E. R. Dodds, for example, deemed Ignatius’s “wild language” indicative of the “pathological nature of the craving of martyrdom.”3 W. H. C. Frend described Ignatius’s letters as displaying “a state of exaltation bordering on mania.”4 And G. E. M. de Ste. Croix suggested that Ignatius’s desire for death revealed an “abnormal mentality,” and that his letters displayed a “pathological yearning for martyrdom.”5 More recently, Leonard L. Thompson has compared Polycarp, another second-century martyr, to a “deviant” who performed his “deviancy.”6 Ignatius, however, appears to have seen his requests as demonstrating proper and reasonable devotion to God: he described martyrdom as the supreme form of discipleship and asserted that one attained perfect salvation through suffering.7 He told the Roman Christians that allowing him to die was to assist him in—among other things—obtaining grace,8 attaining to God or Christ,9 becoming a word of God,10 a Christian,11 a disciple,12 and even human.13 The value accorded martyrdom by Ignatius was in no way unique among early Christians. We have dozens of written records of early Christian

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INTRODUCTION

martyrdom that depict the desires and actions of the martyrs as products of rational consideration. Because modern readers are often baffled by some ancient Christians’ desires for martyrdom, it is not surprising that this aspect of early Christianity has been the focus of innumerable scholarly inquiries. Some studies employ the martyrological materials to piece together various elements of early Christian history. One of the most pressing issues for early interpreters of this stripe was to assess the historical reliability of the narratives.14 Herbert Musurillo’s selection of texts in what has become the more-or-less canonical collection of martyrologies, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, for instance, was based in large part on his perception of the historicity of the accounts.15 Some researchers focused instead on what the accounts of the martyrs might reveal about the development of the church, and in particular about the development of Christian theology and liturgy.16 Other scholars have examined the texts in hopes of uncovering the social or political reasons for the persecution of Christians.17 Were Christians, for example, persecuted for “the name,” the nomen Christianum, or for committing specific crimes? Historically, then, interest in the martyr accounts has centered on their ability to inform us about the phenomenon of martyrdom and the historical situation within which Christianity grew; in addition, they have been expected to provide glimpses into early Christian praxis. The martyr acts are also commonly read as records of individuals’ responses to persecution. Studies such as these tend to concentrate on the psychological state of the martyr. Many of these studies, furthermore, focus on women and employ psychological or feminist theories, typically in an attempt to recover the voices of early Christian women that have been silenced through centuries of male-dominated Christendom. So, for instance, the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas is often read as a straightforward autobiographical record (i.e., a prison diary) of Perpetua’s familial relationships, particularly to men, and her psychological battle to remain true to her faith.18 Understanding what motivated Christians to endure—and on occasion to seek—martyrdom requires reflection on the significance of martyrdom not only for the individual, but also for Christianity as a whole. Until recently, the social function of the martyr accounts in early Christianity had been largely neglected; scholarly interest in intercommunal relations (e.g., the reasons for persecution) prevailed over the study of the intracommunal work accomplished by these stories. Some newer studies of early Christian martyrdom, however, have bracketed the question of “what really happened” and turned instead to the narrative effect of the texts and their function within early Christian communities. Elizabeth Castelli, for example, explains that in her

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5

newest book, Martyrdom and Memory, the “ ‘what really happened?’ questions that motivate many scholars across the spectrum are displaced by questions of ‘what meanings are produced?’ and ‘what ideological impulses are satisfied?’ ”19 Our understanding of formative Christianity gains texture and complexity when we view the martyrs’ stories as part of the material culture of Christianity in the Roman Empire rather than simply as vehicles for the transmission of historical data. The martyrologies reflect Christian culture, to be sure, but they are also integral to its construction. As products of and participants in their culture, the martyr accounts inform us not only about the martyrs themselves but also—and perhaps more importantly—about those who told their stories. What, then, do these texts tell us about the communities that produced them? What “ideological impulses” did these stories satisfy? My thesis is that the martyr acts functioned in the Christian community as identity-forming texts and, more specifically, that the authors of these texts appropriated Greco-Roman constructions of gender and sex to formulate a set of acceptable Christian identities. These stories are both descriptive and prescriptive: they explain who Christians are and how an individual can be identified as one; they illustrate Christian behavior and establish boundaries between Christianity and other social groups. I am not suggesting that the martyrologies cannot provide the kinds of historical information many scholars have sought, but the texts were surely not written to record unbiased history. The martyr acts are better understood as educational propaganda than objective history. Thus, rather than providing historical data, these texts may more readily supply information about the ways Christians portrayed themselves and how they constructed appealing and persuasive group identities through the stories they told.20 In the martyr acts I examine, gender and sex are integral to social identity. The texts portray Christians as strong, courageous, just, and selfdetermined—in short, as men. As Polycarp faced death, for instance, he was exhorted to “be a man.”21 Although phrases like “be a man” and “take it like a man” are common in our everyday lives and are code for “be strong” or “be brave,” most of us do not employ such phrases literally. In antiquity, however, virtues were thought to be inherent to the sexes. For the martyrs to be depicted as male meant that they embodied the highest virtues. Their opponents, by contrast, were less virtuous and less masculine.22 The portrayal of the martyrs as manly would be appealing to many in the early Christian community because it claimed—contrary to all appearances—that as the martyrs stood in the arena facing death, they embodied virtue and strength; they personified Roman masculinity.

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INTRODUCTION

Dying to Be Men explores the means—as well as their resulting meanings— by which the authors of the martyrologies depicted the martyrs as men. In the first chapter, “What Is a Christian?,” I introduce my methodological approach to the martyrologies, namely, social identity theory. At the most basic level, social identity theories assert that we know ourselves only by reference to others. Humans construct identities by aligning themselves with others, and since being a member of one group often requires not being a member of another (e.g., being a Democrat means, in part, that one is not a Republican), the social world is categorized and differentiated. To identify emerging Christian identities we must understand by what means Christianity differentiated itself from others. As we will see, the actors in the martyrologies are representatives of various groups: faithful Christians, pagans, Jews, and apostate Christians. It is with one of these groups that members of the audience (the imagined audience of the martyrdom itself as well as those who read or listened to the narrative account) are expected to align themselves. Other scholars have proposed that the martyrologies are identityforming texts; I include the discussion of social identity, therefore, not to claim innovation but with the assumption that it is beneficial to be explicit about the theory one is employing. In addition, careful examination of social identity theories offers a corrective to many scholarly analyses of identity formation in the martyrologies, as I discuss below. In addition to presenting the theoretical underpinnings of the book, chapter 1 offers a brief introduction to ancient understandings of gender and sex. Christians exploited the cultural discourses of masculinity and the related discourses of virtue and power to distinguish themselves from other social groups. The primary means of establishing Christian group identities was the depiction of the superiority of Christian masculinity, a masculinity that pagans, Jews, and Christian apostates, to differing degrees, lacked.23 By utilizing the cultural discourse of masculinity, the stories of the martyrs defined Christianity and established boundaries between it and those “others”: pagans and Jews. This section of the chapter reviews widely held scholarly assumptions as an introduction to ancient sex and gender construction for readers who are unfamiliar with the literature. One way the authors of the martyr acts presented Christians as men was by situating their actions in a specific geographical location within the ancient city. The martyrologies are set in the amphitheater, and Christians are depicted not as victims of Roman power but as gladiators, athletes, and soldiers. The significance of the location of the martyrologies is the subject of chapter 2, “Noble Athletes: Gladiatorial, Athletic, and Martial Imagery in the Martyr Acts.” Gladiators, athletes, and soldiers were typically males,

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7

and the use of terms such as athlete (ж̧̤̣̯̭̚) and contest (ж̟̹̩) would have evoked masculine images and actions in the minds of readers and listeners. By equating the martyrs with some of the most virile characters in Roman society, the authors of the martyrologies challenged their audiences’ expectations. Those who seemed most vulnerable, most out of control, most victimized, and, thus, least masculine, were, in fact, the victors—gladiators, athletes, and soldiers—who, when facing death courageously, displayed a superior masculinity. By focusing attention on the amphitheater as the location of martyrdom, the authors of the martyr acts associated those events with the contestants: martyrs became gladiators.24 The depiction of the martyrs as gladiators, athletes, and soldiers sets the groundwork for more subtle ways of masculinizing Christian martyrs. Chapter 3, “Be a Man: Narrative Tools of Masculinization in Early Christian Martyr Acts,” explores the various ways the martyrologies employ the discourse of masculinity to form a set of Christian identities. The authors convey masculine group identity through the use of the language of justice as well as through descriptions of the martyrs’ self-control, volition, physical and emotional strength or stamina, and resistance to persuasion. Perhaps most subtly but most effectively, the texts illustrate Christian masculinity by the favorable juxtaposition of types of individuals who would have been expected to be unmanly (e.g., women, young or old men, slaves) with those at the height of masculinity (the governor or proconsul). Regardless of age, sex, or social position, the Christian martyr’s masculinity is always superior to that of the Roman ruler. In addition to offering examples of manly Christians, the martyrologies provide foils for these portrayals. In contrast to the manly martyr (ж̡̩̠̬Ӻ̫̭), apostates are unmanly (к̩̝̩̠̬̫̭). Whereas the praiseworthy Christians are persuaded by God and thus deliberately choose death, unmanly Christians deny their faith. The presence of this literary antitype emphasizes the performance of manliness as an essential element of one of the Christian group identities constructed in these texts. Chapter 4, “Putting Women in Their Place: Masculinizing and Feminizing the Female Martyr,” shifts the focus of inquiry from external power negotiations (the martyr against pagan, Jew, or apostate Christian) to internal social relations.25 Studies of sex and gender in the martyrologies have generally focused on the masculinization of the female martyr. Modern readers have given much attention to the depictions of virile women but gloss over the seemingly banal descriptions of women as daughters and mothers who are modest and beautiful. By broadening the scope, however, I show that the characterization of the female martyrs is much more complex than it may at first seem: the authors of the martyrologies also highlight the femininity

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INTRODUCTION

of the female martyrs. These portrayals of women exemplify female virtues in antiquity and are worthy of our attention. Although the depiction of the female martyr as both masculine and feminine appears to be self-defeating, these characterizations model appropriate group identities for women in distinct social encounters. Thus the narratives suggest that the attributes of Christian identity differ for women in inter- and intra-communal situations. In the former, the female martyr must be more masculine than her non-Christian opponents; in the latter, she must be appropriately feminine when compared to her Christian brothers.26

M A RT Y R D O M A N D I D E N T I T Y F O R M AT I O N

In Dying to Be Men I am seeking to contribute to a large and ever-growing conversation about the construction of Christian identities and the nature and function of martyrological literature. Along the way I hope that the book highlights ways that modern theory (e.g., gender theory, sociological and psychological theories of group formation) can add texture to historical analyses. Scholarly work on the martyrologies has multiplied in recent years, and one may wonder if there is a need for yet another investigation. In what follows, therefore, I offer a brief apologia for the book by highlighting some ways that Dying to Be Men builds on and differs from other scholarly readings of these materials. As we have seen, the martyrologies have been—and continue to be—used as sources for historical reconstructions of various sorts. There remains on the part of many readers a desire to see in these stories reliable accounts of historical events; they cherish the seemingly direct access to the feelings, thoughts, and circumstances of early Christians who died for their faith. But a scholarly consensus is building around the importance of the rhetorical aspects of the martyrological narratives. Even if there are historical elements to the stories of the martyrs, they have not been passed along untouched over the centuries; these stories are to some extent literary creations designed to meet particular communal needs.27 As Elizabeth Castelli reminds us, “the texts that remain for us to interpret from the early Christian world are overwhelmingly rhetorical in their character, and they require approaches that treat them in their textuality rather than approaches that presume their documentary status.”28 Castelli explores the meaning of the martyrologies for subsequent Christian communities in Martyrdom and Memory. Her contribution to the study of Christian martyrdom is not in terms of the phenomenon, its origins, or the

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historicity of particular texts, but in terms of the memory making that martyrologies accomplish within communities. She explores how the martyrologies create a “metanarrative of a meaningful, useable past.”29 One of the important elements of Castelli’s work is its attention to the ways in which the martyrologies “suture the present (and the future) to the past.”30 The communal work accomplished by the martyrologies is of great importance to any interpretation of these narratives, so we must always return to the significance of these stories not only for those who originally produced them but also for those who subsequently transmitted them.31 Castelli’s use of memory theory helps in this task by highlighting the rhetorical nature of the texts. While this approach does not deny that the martyrologies might contain historical data, its focus remains fixed on the communal function of the narratives. The main thrust of Castelli’s argument is that the martyrologies contributed to the formulation of a Christian identity focused on suffering: “My thesis is that the memory work done by early Christians on the historical experience of persecution and martyrdom was a form of culture making, whereby Christian identity was indelibly marked by the collective memory of the religious suffering of others.”32 Castelli highlights the surprising, even paradoxical, nature of this Christian memory making by explaining that “the view that vindication and salvation were achieved in and through the public humiliation involved in ignominious execution certainly played a significant role in the ideology of martyrdom. At the same time, this valorization of submission would certainly have been a shocking and unintelligible one to the average Roman.”33 Castelli argues that Christian authors recast “suffering as salvation,” and transformed “ ‘persecution’ into ‘martyrdom’ and powerlessness into power.”34 In The Suffering Self, Judith Perkins reaches a similar conclusion, albeit by a different route. Perkins suggests that Christianity constructed a group identity by participating in a larger cultural discourse about the body. She investigates a number of non-Christian writers (e.g., Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius, and Aelius Aristides) and concludes that the early Roman Empire saw the construction of a new cultural subject, namely, “a representation of the human self as a body in pain, a suffering body.”35 Perkins argues that the depiction of the body in pain was central to early Christian group identity: “The discourse of the martyr Acts, representing pain as empowering and death a victory, helped to construct a new understanding of human existence, a new ‘mental set’ toward the world that would have far-reaching consequences.”36 She contrasts the subjects of ancient romances—individuals who “passed through suffering but bore no mark that they had experienced it”37—and

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Stoic representations of the self—“a self that is exempt from the experience of pain and suffering”38—with Christians who, according to Perkins, sought to change the world around them by attributing meaning to suffering. One advantage of locating martyrdom within a larger conversation about a suffering self is that it guards against depicting martyrdom as deviant behavior since, as Perkins notes, “if there is a pathology it belongs to the culture rather than to the psychology of any individual.”39 But an examination of the Christian experience of pain as portrayed in many of the early martyrologies suggests that emphasizing suffering did not serve the Christian agenda. It is here that Dying to Be Men diverges from Castelli’s and Perkins’s works. Although we might expect martyrologies—as narratives presumably dedicated to the description of the torture and death of Christians—to focus on suffering, the opposite appears to be true: the authors of the martyrologies insist that Christians are not affected by torture and pain.40 Rather than presenting suffering as valuable, the authors depict the martyrs as not suffering; they are portrayed as being insensitive to pain. Thus Christian martyrs are like the heroes and heroines of the romances—who bear no marks of torture—or the Stoic sage—who feels no pain.41 As opposed to Aristides, who seems to relish in documenting his every prickle and itch, the authors of the martyrologies religiously avoid mentioning even the slightest physical sensation. The author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for example, describes the shredding of the martyrs’ skin—down to the very veins and arteries— but insists that “none of them complained or groaned, showing us all that at that hour, while being tortured, the noble martyrs of Christ were absent from the flesh.”42 Perpetua is described as being oblivious to the fact that she had been tossed by a bull.43 If Perkins is correct in identifying a new cultural subject, the suffering self, during the formative years of Christianity, this is a self that the martyrologies I explore appear to reject.44 Regardless of the mode of torture—ad bestias or ad flammas—the Christian body is decidedly not in pain. I do not, therefore, find suffering to be a key element in the emerging Christian identities of the martyrologies. Rather, these texts promise that membership in the social group “Christian” provides insensitivity to pain and suffering through the embodiment of a masculinity superior to one’s persecutors. Whereas some scholars suggest that the central element of Christian identity is suffering, others have argued that the core trait of Christian group identity is the public declaration of belief: “I am a Christian.” This confession appears often in martyrologies, typically as an exchange of an earthly designation (e.g., “Perpetua”) for a spiritual declaration (e.g., “Christian”). Judith Lieu argues precisely this when she writes,

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Within this drama the determinative moment is not the death, however extended or graphic, nor even the preceding torture; rather it is the declaration ̷̡̲̬̥̮̯̥̝̩̭Ѣ̨̥, Christiana sum, although this is no less the moment the choice is made for death; the individual identity of Christian belongs to the martyr.45

According to Lieu, Christian identity is enacted in confession. When answering the question “Are you a Christian?,” the martyrs must choose either to commit to or to reject Christian group identity. Lieu asserts, “It is when confronted with the choice of confession or denial that the true commitment for or against identity is made, and so, implicitly, until that moment there is only potential. Those who ‘fail’ have miscarried or failed to attain their birth (Eusebius, H.E. V.1.11; cf. 45), whereas others only here achieve their true identity.”46 Christian identity cannot be located solely in confession, however. There must be an enacted, or embodied, element.47 In other words, what is the content of the verbal claim “I am a Christian”? How is the claim borne out? In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Phrygian Quintus confessed his faith. The story goes on to show, however, that he was not truly a Christian because his confession was not enacted. Dying to Be Men shows that while confession may be an element of Christian identities, the claims to Christian group membership must be shown to be true. In the early martyrologies the content, the meaning, of the claim “I am a Christian” is masculine virtue enacted in the face of opposition. The importance of action can be seen in the martyrologies themselves: in addition to those who reject their faith, those who confess their Christian beliefs but fail to embody Christian virtue—such as Quintus—are denied membership in the social group “Christianity.”

C H R I S T I A N I T Y A N D T H E R O M A N WO R L D : A P P R O P R I AT I O N O R SUBVERSION?

That the martyrologies utilize masculine images to characterize their heroes and heroines is not a new thesis. Indeed, it has been the subject of many previous scholarly works. Explanations of how this language works, however, and its significance for the construction of Christian identities differ widely. Some have suggested that the masculinization of the female martyr signals a rejection of Greco-Roman constructions of sex.48 Judith Perkins, for example, writes concerning Perpetua’s fourth vision, “Her final dream brings Perpetua to a full recognition of her power and her rejection of the subordinate female

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INTRODUCTION

role decreed by the norms of a male-dominated hierarchy.”49 In The Suffering Self Perkins asserts that the martyrologies work “to challenge the surrounding ideology of the early Roman Empire.”50 Perkins describes Christianity in opposition to its culture, claiming that it had a “subversive agenda”51 that reversed “the normative hierarchy” and turned “the social and political body of the Roman empire upside down.”52 In Dying for God, Daniel Boyarin focuses on fourth-century texts, but he notes the tendency toward masculinization in earlier texts: “As is well known by now,” he writes, “earlier Christian texts frequently represented the possibility of a virilization of the female, whether as martyr, Perpetua, or as apostle, Thecla.”53 He interprets the tendency toward virilization in this way: In the earliest periods of Christianity, there was a radical critique of GrecoRoman gender discourses and sexual dimorphism tout court. This critique is represented in large part through “gender-bending” attacks on female subordination such as the famous early story in which Jesus promises to make Mary a male. Although, obviously, we should be chary of ascribing “feminist” motives to such representations, it seems that the stance of drastic alienation from the Roman world and all of its works, including marriage, led to at least this burst of imagination, this envisioning of female power and autonomy.54

In this instance, Boyarin, like many other scholars, depicts early Christianity as rebelling against Roman constructions of sex and power: early Christianity was “unambiguously countercultural and subversive with respect to Rome and its gendered hierarchies.”55 The discomfort Christians felt in this world, such scholars might argue, led them to abandon Roman culture and replace it with something particularly and peculiarly Christian. Most of the recent analyses of the martyr accounts carefully locate Christianity within the larger cultural and political world of the Roman Empire, and they typically characterize Christianity as opposing it entirely. Boyarin, however, has offered a compelling argument that Judaism and Christianity are not easily separated in the first centuries of the Common Era, and a complementary argument regarding the relationship of Christianity to paganism is found in Robert Markus’s The End of Ancient Christianity.56 According to Markus, the division of ancient society into “pagan” and “Christian” was the invention of fourth-century Christians and “has been taken too readily at face value by modern historians.”57 Similarly, Gregory J. Riley reminds us that total separation of Christians from Romans is nonsensical because had Christians not shared certain values with the culture at large, the movement

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would not have been successful: “The Christians were beating the Romans at their own game. Both sides shared the same ideals and culture; Christianity would never have taken hold in the Greco-Roman world had it not.”58 In fact, the Christianization of the empire, from the second century onward, seems to have entailed assimilation to and not rejection of Greco-Roman culture. Christians were not insulated from Roman ways of thinking and ways of life; rather, most parts of ancient life—such as festivals, games, and the theater— were part of what Markus labels “that vast shared territory” of Christians and pagans.59 Certainly Christian martyrologies challenged particular Roman assumptions of power, but we must exercise caution in our analysis of this narrative confrontation. “Subversive” is an appropriate description of Christian ideology in the martyrologies if the term is used to describe the Christian challenge to others’ perceptions of them. That is, although Christians appear to be powerless, they in fact wield great power.60 The term is not fitting, however, if it implies that Christians completely rejected Roman culture and values. The stories of the martyrs do not reject or even substantially revise common understandings of sex and the virtues and hierarchies accompanying them. On the contrary, the texts are culturally conservative in the sense that they utilize cultural expectations of manliness, justice, and volition in their descriptions of Christians. The authors of the early martyr acts appropriate Roman constructions of power—in particular, the power of masculinity. Thus, when female martyrs are described as manly, it is not a liberating description of women per se, but a comment on the transformation (or potential for transformation) of a female to male and is rooted firmly in the ancient world’s correlation of maleness with virtue, strength, and honor.61 The gendered language in the martyrologies, furthermore, is far more complex than many scholarly analyses have allowed, for it is not only females who are masculinized—males are as well. Analyses of the virilization of male Christians in the early martyrologies are often confined to discussions of athletic and gladiatorial images. I will show, however, that the depiction of the masculinity of the Christian martyrs—both male and female—goes far beyond the comparison of martyrs to athletes and gladiators. Everything the martyrs say and do—even the location of their deaths—witnesses to their masculinity. Dying to Be Men explores the deeply embedded nature of the gendered characterizations of the martyrs. As we will see, the virilization of the martyrs—both female and male—is a recurring theme in the martyr acts and entails subtle culturally coded language.

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INTRODUCTION

An analysis of the virilization of females without an accompanying analysis of the virilization of males leads to an incomplete understanding of the identities being formulated in the texts. In this book, therefore, I analyze texts that describe their actors through the use of gendered language, regardless of their biological sex; I juxtapose Perpetua and Blandina to Polycarp and Pionius, and Agathonike and Felicitas to Quintus and Carpus, in order to explore the function of gendered language in the descriptions of female and male martyrs. It is only in this way that we may begin to appreciate the complexity of the Christian identities being formulated in opposition to a number of “others.” Females, moreover, are not only masculinized but also feminized. Our curiosity about the masculinization of female Christians must not overshadow the importance of the feminization of these same characters. Perpetua, for example, is described as obeying her Christian brothers, being concerned for her son’s welfare, and displaying modesty—all of which are expectations of virtuous women in antiquity. Perhaps the texts’ emphasis on Christian women’s femininity has been overlooked because it conflicts with the description that is more startling to us: the woman who becomes a man. Or perhaps it has been overlooked because it appears trite: just as we gloss over Polycarp being exhorted to “be a man,” we pay little attention to women being described as women. Womanly virtue, however, is repeatedly underscored, and we cannot allow the seeming banality of the depiction (e.g., “bride of Christ”) to obscure our recognition of its importance and communal function.62 Another element of the martyrologies that has been undervalued is the gendered language applied to other characters in the texts (i.e., nonmartyrs). A careful reading of the narratives shows that Christian identities are established in the descriptions of pagans, Jews, and apostate Christians as much as in the descriptions of the martyrs themselves. Scholars note the characterization of pagans as “lawless” or refute the historicity of the narratives’ depictions of Judaism, but the gendered element of the texts’ accusations is often overlooked.63 As Mathew Kuefler reminds us, “For one man to describe another as unmanly or effeminate, then, not only condemns the other man as inferior but also distances him from the one doing the describing. In the denunciation of unmanliness, the speaker in the same breath insists on his own manliness (not only to himself, but also to all of his listeners).”64 When pagans are described as “lawless,” they are being accused of unmanly behavior since masculinity is related to justice. When authors describe the Jewish crowds as unruly mobs, they are portraying them as lacking masculine reason and self-control. Part of the task of group identity formation is differentiating one group from another, and the martyrologies use gendered language to accomplish this.

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Focusing exclusively on one aspect of gendered language will lead to incomplete reconstructions of the Christian identities being formulated in the martyrologies. This exegetical methodology, furthermore, typically results in scholarly pronouncements of a Christian identity. Social identity theorists, however, have shown that we maintain multiple identities, and a close reading of gendered language—in its totality—in the martyrologies bears this out. In different situations different social identities are salient. Sometimes Christian women are to identify with the group “Christian” in opposition to non-Christians. This requires that they be described as more manly than their persecutors. Thus the depiction of manly women like Perpetua may have less to do with Christian women per se and more to do with the development of a group identity for Christians of both sexes.65 At other times, however, the salient Christian identity is established within the group: man versus woman. The feminizing task (i.e., highlighting female martyrs’ womanly virtues) gives us insight into the ways in which the masculinizing discourses of power were subsequently renegotiated within Christian communities: while Christian women were expected to display masculinity in the face of external opposition, they were to maintain traditional women’s virtues within the Christian community. One aspect of the “useable past” that the martyrologies took advantage of was a history of strength and endurance in the face of persecution and torture. To the communities that valued them, the stories of the martyrs witnessed to Christian character: the martyrs embodied the highest human virtues—strength, wisdom, justice, courage—despite being placed in inhuman circumstances. These virtues, moreover, according to Greco-Roman thought, were defining characteristics of masculinity. Through martyrdom, then, Christians were literally dying to be men; however, any Christian could embody the virtues of the martyrs at any time. The value of the martyrologies, in other words, is that their moral exhortation transcends the period of persecution. By taking into account ancient understandings of sex and employing modern theories of group formation, this project shows how Christians in different times and places applied the discourse of masculinity to the stories of the martyrs, and thereby formed social identities that accounted for past experiences and made them meaningful to future generations. The stories of the martyrs instructed Christians who might themselves face opposition and promised their victory. The martyrologies give assurance that the adversary, the devil, the governor, proconsul, emperor, or mob—however the opponent is described—will not win; Christ will defeat the enemy, these authors insist, through the tortured, mangled, sometimes unrecognizable, but nonetheless masculine bodies of the martyrs. The textually created characters of Poly-

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INTRODUCTION

carp, Pionius, Apollonius, Blandina, and Perpetua, to name only a few, are depicted as triumphant athletes and gladiators, as individuals more courageous—that is, manlier—than their persecutors. Through the construction of these masculinized Christians, the narratives affirm the martyrs’ power. These texts were not written solely to narrate an individual’s power, though. They also reveal the strength, resolve, power, and solidarity of Christianity as a social group. The martyrologies create social identities not only for the community experiencing persecution; these identities are also passed on to, claimed, and made meaningful by subsequent generations of Christians. As Robert Markus notes, continuity of identity—from generation to generation—is essential to group survival: “A continuous biography is the core of our sense of personal identity. This is true no less of a group’s sense of identity. It needs to be able to recognise itself as one and the same group enduring through time, the heir of its own past.”66 For the written narrative to be profitable for a larger community, however, the claim to power must be consumed and appropriated by the reading audience, a task accomplished through the recitation and transmission of the narrative. These group characteristics, therefore, are not peculiar to a specific situation: although the martyr texts may originally have circulated among Christians who were enduring or feared persecution (even if it was not an imminent threat), the authors’ descriptions of Christian masculinity would also have been meaningful for subsequent Christian communities. The manly martyr functions as a claim to power that binds later Christian communities together in solid opposition to their world and persecutors. The martyrologies dealt with here differ both geographically (originating in both the Greek East and the Latin West) and chronologically (written between the mid-second and the early fourth centuries).67 The selection of texts from such diverse times and origins, however, is not problematic because I do not intend to argue that every martyrology in this time period and from these geographical areas uses masculinity to form group identities; such a thesis would result in the unnecessary homogenization of texts and, indeed, of Christianity in the Roman Empire. There are scholarly analyses of each of these texts that explore their individual emphases, and I will not repeat those observations here. Nevertheless, my selection of texts shows that there is a thread that one can trace that associates Christianity with masculinity. Thus I have chosen these particular martyr accounts to isolate and analyze one way early Christians constructed a set of group identities. Early Christian martyrs are often described as fanatical, irrational, or even mad. And although he would not have characterized the martyrs using the modern term “psychotic,” Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic philosopher and

INTRODUCTION

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emperor, did suggest that the Christian wish for death originated in a misguided desire. In his Meditations he praised those individuals who accepted death, but he disapproved of those who sought it out of stubbornness rather than out of rational judgment.68 He used the Christian martyrs to illustrate the difference: “What a soul that is which is ready, if now it must be released from the body, and ready either to die or be dispersed or continue. But this readiness, which comes from one’s own judgment not from mere obstinacy— as with the Christians—but with calculation and solemnity and, indeed also to persuade others, not tragically.”69 The Stoic philosopher-emperor believed that self-death could be an appropriate response to certain situations, but such action should not be a spectacle. It is unlikely that the depiction of the martyrs as masculine was a direct response to Jewish or pagan descriptions of Christians. Rather, the authors of the martyrologies—as inhabitants of the Roman Empire—shared their culture’s understandings of power and honor. They agreed, for example, that one’s willingness to die should be based on rational consideration, and they depicted their heroes in this manner. Sounding like a true Stoic, for example, when asked if he was glad to die, Apollonius answered that although he was not seeking death, he would accept it: “I live gladly, Perennis, though to be sure I have not been afraid of death on account of love for life.”70 Similarly, Pionius responded to a group of admirers by saying: “I also say life is good, but the one that we desire is better . . . But all these things are also good; and we do not flee as ones who are eager to die or who hate God’s works. Rather, we despise the things that lie in wait for us because of the extraordinariness of those other great things.”71 The stories of the martyrs are stories of rationality, autonomy, and power—in short, of Roman manliness. They are stories, furthermore, not only of the strength of individual Christians, but of the foundation upon which a set of Christian social identities were built. In a recent essay, Virginia Burrus asked, “Is religious discourse then mapped in antiquity as a competition among cultural claimants of masculine perfection?”72 I believe the martyrologies provide—from the perspective of one social group—an affirmative answer to Burrus’s question. In what follows I will show that religious identity and claims to masculinity do indeed intersect in the martyrologies.

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What Is a Christian? CONSTRUCTING A CHRISTIAN IDENTITY We are what we are because they are not what we are. —HENRI

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TA J F E L

n the 1960s and 1970s social psychologists began generating new hypotheses about the relationship between identity and group formation.1 In particular, these theorists focused on group categorization and its effect on cognitive biases (e.g., bias in favor of one’s in-group). In his work on racism and discrimination, for example, Henri Tajfel sought to determine the minimal requirements necessary for discrimination in favor of an in-group and against an out-group.2 His experiments showed that discrimination is related to categorization: individuals categorize objects and people in order to make the world meaningful, but the very act of categorizing involves discrimination. Tajfel’s work served as a corrective to an overemphasis on personal identity by insisting that social identity was equally important. He defined social identity as “the individual’s knowledge that he/ she belongs to certain groups together with some emotional and value significance to him/her of the group membership.”3 Thus, social identity theory highlights the process of group formation and its effect on an individual’s behavior. This social psychology approach to group formation was more fully formulated in the 1970s in the work of John Turner and others.4 An important development in social identity theory at this time was Turner’s hypothesis of self-categorization. Building on Tajfel’s studies, Turner argued that people are capable of categorizing themselves in the same ways they categorize others: as we organize the world into manageable groups, we assign ourselves to certain ones. Through a process of comparison, individuals who are similar to the self become the in-group, while individuals who are different are assigned to various out-groups.

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Social identity theory suggests that the formation of identity may be motivated by the desire to make the world meaningful, to reduce uncertainty, and, most important, to establish and affirm the self ’s role in society.5 Identity, therefore, is produced in the service of self-esteem: one’s in-group is always perceived as superior to other groups, thus group membership enhances the individual’s self-esteem. Humans categorize the world, identify with particular categories, and favorably judge their groups in order to feel better about themselves. Each of these processes—categorization, identification, and comparison—plays an equally important role in the formation of identity. Applying social identity theory to the martyr acts demonstrates the role that the written records of the martyrs played in the process of categorization and identity making. Rather than concentrating solely on the psychology of individual Christians mentioned in the texts, social identity theory requires that we examine how and why individuals define themselves (or in this case, how authors define their characters) as part of a group and how group membership influences and explains intergroup encounters.

CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL IDENTITY

Categorization In the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, the editor narrates Perpetua’s insistence that she can go by no name other than “Christian.”6 In this instance Perpetua is described as an interchangeable group member; she has no individuating characteristics but instead locates her identity within a larger social group. When she prays for her brother Dinocrates, however, the editor highlights Perpetua’s individuality.7 In this case, the text’s heroine is differentiated from a social group and is described as an individual responding to a specific personal relationship. These two examples of differing identity—social versus personal—can be explained by the foundational tenet in social identity theory: we know who we are by comparing ourselves to others. In Tajfel’s words, “we are what we are because they are not what we are.”8 Identity, in other words, is formulated not independently but comparatively. Categorization, however, does not result in fixed identities. Indeed, one of the most important aspects of social identity theory is its assertion that identities are fluid and form in response to specific occurrences or interactions.

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A person’s identity, moreover, is comprised of both personal and social aspects. Sometimes we understand ourselves in terms of group membership but other times in terms of our uniqueness. Thus in different circumstances we identify ourselves as more or less a group member: the saliency of one’s personal identity (“me” versus “not me”) or social identity (“us” versus “them”) is situationally determined.9

)DENTIÎCATION When Papylus was hung up and scraped and withstood six men torturing him, he made no sound but endured the ordeal as a noble athlete.10 His reaction to torture was so courageous that the proconsul wondered about his extraordinary capacity for endurance. The martyr acts suggest that torture and death provided opportunities to demonstrate one’s Christian identity. Indeed, in the martyrologies one’s reaction to torture often points to one’s social group. Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg describe the process of an individual’s identification with a particular group as follows: “First, people categorize and define themselves as members of a distinct social category or assign themselves a social identity; second, they form or learn the stereotypic norms of that category; and third, they assign these norms to themselves and thus their behavior becomes more normative as their category membership becomes salient.”11 The process of self-categorization outlined by Abrams and Hogg can be seen in the early Christian martyr accounts. While conversion and catechism (which I see as the equivalent of phases one and two in Abrams and Hogg’s description) are typically not narrated, they are certainly presupposed.12 The final phase of self-categorization—conforming to prescribed standards of group behavior—is the focal point of the martyrologies. As individuals face torture and persecution, their actions conform to the principal attributes of Christian identity, namely, courage, strength, reason, and justice. Since these traits were those most closely associated with masculinity in antiquity, in the texts under consideration here, it appears that to be a Christian was to be a man. The effect of self-categorization is seen most clearly in its explanation of social influence. When personal identity is salient, the individual interacts with others on an interpersonal level. When social identity is salient, however, a person ceases to identify as a unique individual. This process, referred to as “depersonalization,” results in the activation of one’s social identity.13 No longer is the self seen as unique; rather, the person identifies as an inter-

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changeable member of a group, as the embodiment of group norms. When a member regulates his behavior to conform to the group’s standards, he reaffirms his membership in the group.

Comparison The repeated claims to Christian masculinity in the martyrologies stem from the third aspect of the construction of social identity: comparison. As individuals categorize the world, they identify with certain groups, which they then judge more favorably than others. Favorable group comparison is accomplished by viewing one’s own group as superior to similar groups. In this case, social identity is salient and individuals achieve positive selfesteem simply by identifying with the group. Group comparisons, however, require a shared understanding of the kinds of power and resources that are desirable. Thus, a group is labeled “better” or “worse,” “acceptable” or “unacceptable,” “us” or “them” by attaining or forfeiting a specific commodity. Accordingly, the symbols and values employed by groups in competition are not idiosyncratic. Groups and their members compete for resources or powers that are valued by the culture at large. Hence Abrams and Hogg note that “many, if not most significant social identities reflect moral traditions and practices which extend beyond particular communities; they are properties and products of cultures.”14 Intergroup competition typically results in value judgments being placed on individuals or social groups based on the possession of specific resources. In the ancient world masculinity was a particularly valued commodity. Marcus Aurelius explains that the life of reason is comprised of justice (̸̠̥̦̝̥̫̮̩̣̭), truth (ж̧̡̛̣̤̝̭), self-control (̴̸̮̱̬̫̮̩̣̭), and manliness (ж̡̛̩̠̬̝̭).15 If, as I argue, masculinity is a primary attribute of Christian identities in the martyrologies, we should expect to find evidence of competition over this socially agreed-upon ideal. Indeed, as we will see, such evidence is abundant. The martyr accounts, moreover, do not merely assert Christian masculinity—they provide examples of it. In situation after situation, the martyrs show self-restraint, courage, and other masculine virtues while non-Christians display a less potent form of masculine behavior. The martyr accounts claim that Christians embody the attributes of the “life of reason”; the claim that Christians possessed justice, truth, self-control, and manliness did much to enhance Christians’ selfesteem.

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SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY APPLIED

Threats to Group and Self-Esteem The subordination of self-esteem occurs when “low status groups acquiesce to majority rule.”16 If Christians, for example, submitted to demands to offer sacrifices to the gods (thus acquiescing to the majority rule), the consequence might have been a lowered self-esteem. In this case, group cohesion might also suffer, which could lead to the dissolution of the group. Many ancient Christian authors attest that Christian resistance to pagan hegemony and the display of masculine endurance during torture and death bolstered the martyr’s self-esteem. When non-Christians witnessed Christian confidence, it could spark conversion, as Tertullian famously asserted: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”17 Threats to self-esteem usually occur as challenges to the group’s possession of a particular resource and can originate both outside and inside one’s group. When group identity is being threatened, the importance of an individual’s performance of social identity is raised because each person is perceived as a representative of the group. In these cases, an individual’s performance is evaluated, and the group either affirms or rejects the person’s claim to group membership—that is, his social identity—based on the enactment of group characteristics. When a member’s actions do not conform to group norms, she is perceived as a threat to group identity and is rejected.18 Social identity theory, furthermore, predicts that we should expect a nonconforming in-group member to be rejected more vehemently than an out-group member because the in-group member is supposed to be a prototype of the group. The rejection of the in-group member—referred to as the “black sheep effect”—protects group identity by confirming the group’s standards: rejection eliminates the threat. Since in-group rejection occurs only when group cohesion is threatened, instances of it can provide important information about group identity.19 If, as I argue, masculinity is a key element in group identity, then it is surely not coincidental that only apostate Christians—nonconforming in-group members—are described as unmanly. These individuals are placed entirely outside of the group by denying they possess even inferior forms of the group’s ideals (i.e., they are “unmanly,” not “less manly”). The group, then, reaffirms its unity by expelling the unmanly Christian; this action also restores members’ self-esteem by reestablishing group superiority. Self-esteem is based not only on successful competition, however, but also on the perception of an individual’s power. Jean-Paul Codol explains the importance of “the attribution to oneself of a certain power over the mate-

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rial and social environment. The conception of oneself as the origin of certain effects, the feeling that one can influence things and people, the ability to guide or master, at least to some extent, the events in the surrounding world—all this is directly associated with a positive self-image.”20 The authors of the martyrologies enhance Christian self-esteem by portraying the martyrs as influencing physical outcomes. In these accounts, the persecutor has surprisingly little authority over life and death: the martyrs decide their own fates. The martyr’s will, according to these texts, is the origin of her condemnation. Attending to the issue of choice enhances self-esteem because these texts emphatically insist that Christians did not acquiesce to pagan will. The authors, therefore, did not have to abandon “objective” history altogether by narrating the physical victory of the martyrs over their persecutors. The focus on masculine self-control was itself a persuasive statement of Christian power over other groups. Thus textual masculinity was a potent source of positive self-esteem.

Actions Contrary to Self-Interest Group politics and social identification help us understand an individual’s behavior when it appears to be contrary to his self-interest, such as, in this case, the quest for death. Theories of group politics suggest that inclusion in a group provides adequate motivation for an individual to suppress her will or desire (personal identity) for what is advantageous for the group (social identity).21 In the first centuries of the Common Era, Christians, as illustrated by those memorialized in martyrologies, had to identify strongly with group commitments to preserve the Christian movement. Strong commitments, notes Hardin, result in a “willingness to run grotesque risks of personal harm for a meager group benefit.”22 This willingness, indeed desire, is perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the Christian martyrologies, but it provides a compelling example of the strength of Christian identity. The martyr’s manly attitude toward death placed him solidly within the group. Thus social identity theory enables us to understand the seemingly psychotic behavior of Christians as the activation of social identity. From the perspective of social identity theory, the description of the martyrs as masculine is logical: it set them apart from the (less masculine) Jews and pagans, and, by claiming that Christians possessed a culturally valued commodity, it enhanced self-esteem. The centrality of masculinity to Christian identity also explains why Christians would submit to martyrdom (due to the saliency of social identity) and why Christians who did not conform to

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group norms were rejected (the black sheep effect). But as Christians were tortured and stood in the arena to die at the Roman ruler’s directive, they appeared to lack clear signs of masculinity, such as the exercise of power over oneself and the ability to control the actions of others. Self-determination was central to ancient understandings of masculinity. Marcus Aurelius, for example, describes his adoptive father, emperor Antoninus Pius, as “a mature man [ж̩Ҟ̬½̙½̡̥̬̫̭], complete, indisposed to flattery, having the power to manage his own affairs as well as those of others.”23 The description of condemned criminals—standing unarmed in the arena facing beasts or gladiators—as self-determining seems nonsensical. To understand how the claim for Christian masculinity could be made, therefore, it is necessary to detour briefly into a selective discussion about gender and sex in the Roman world.24

SEX AND GENDER IN ANTIQUITY

When Polycarp entered the arena for his trial, he heard a voice from heaven saying, “Be strong, Polycarp, and be a man [Ѯ̡̮̲̰  ̸̧̫̦̝̬̍½̡  ̦̝Ҡ ж̢̛̩̠̬̫̰].”25 This divine exhortation to Polycarp is striking: isn’t Polycarp already a man? In Perpetua’s fourth and final vision she participates in a contest with an Egyptian who is later designated “the devil.” As Perpetua’s attendants removed her clothes to prepare her for battle, she realized that she had become a man (facta sum masculus).26 These examples raise an important question: what does masculinity entail in antiquity? How can Polycarp— anatomically male—be exhorted to “be a man” and Perpetua—anatomically female—declare that she has become a man? Scholars have long agreed that gender is a socially constructed category. Thomas Laqueur, however, devotes his book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud to arguing that sex is also socially constituted. He writes, To be sure, difference and sameness, more or less recondite, are everywhere; but which ones count and for what ends is determined outside the bounds of empirical investigation. The fact that at one time the dominant discourse construed the male and female bodies as hierarchically, vertically, ordered versions of one sex and at another time as horizontally ordered opposites, as incommensurable, must depend on something other than even a great constellation of real or supposed discoveries.27

Laqueur concludes that empirical data do not hold the answers to constructions of sex: “Science does not simply investigate, but itself constitutes, the

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difference my book explores: that of woman from man.”28 Thus, explanations of sex differences and the gendered characteristics accompanying them are best understood as illustrations of cultural beliefs, not objective facts.29 That males and females are different is common sense in our world, but what constitutes common sense differs among cultures and ages. The discussion that follows, therefore, may seem counterintuitive to readers not familiar with ancient views of gender and sex. Scholars who work in modern gender theory, moreover, may find the ancient system frustratingly unsystematic. The belief that anatomy and character are intricately interwoven, always interdependent and inseparable, for example, makes little sense to a modern reader, who differentiates between the physiological and the psychological, the anatomical and the emotional. But the theoretical distinctions between sex and gender that lie at the core of modern scholarly discourse are foreign to the ancient system.30 As Dale Martin reminds us, we must not force our system of sex differentiation onto ancient authors. Rather we must strive to understand the ideologies that inform our sources: “Perhaps the most interesting way to proceed toward an understanding of the ancient body is to try to wipe clean our slate of corporeal vocabulary and attempt the (ultimately impossible) task of taking an imaginative leap into the past, recognizing that even ‘things’ like bodies, minds, and matter will not only look, but actually be, quite different in a world so unlike our own.”31

Sexual Categorization One of the first problems we encounter when we “leap into the past” is sexual categorization. Modern Western society does not often acknowledge this difficulty, having solved the dilemma by canonizing two anatomically identifiable bodies—male and female—and relegating other sexual bodies to that catchall category labeled “unnatural.”32 Interestingly, ancient constructions of sex allowed for more ambiguity, because the terms “masculine” and “feminine,” “male” and “female,” “manly” and “womanly” described types of individuals, not simply their anatomy. In fact, one of the most important aspects of ancient sex construction is its insistence on the fundamental similarities between male and female bodies. We must leave behind the binary formula of male-female if we hope to understand ancient authors who often wrote of sex in terms of a continuum, what Laqueur calls the “one-sex model.”33 According to the one-sex model, differences between males and females are not of kind but of degree, and a person’s position on the continuum is determined by the preponderance of maleness or femaleness.34 Sex, like identity, is established by comparison: an individual is more or less masculine than another. As the second-century medical writer Galen notes, “All the parts,

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then, that men have, women have too, the difference between them lying in only one thing, which must be kept in mind throughout the discussion, namely, that in women the parts are within [the body], whereas in men they are outside.”35 Galen asserts that when examining a female body, “you could not find a single male part left over that had not simply changed its position; for the parts that are inside in woman are outside in man.”36 It is as if Galen thought, to borrow Laqueur’s words, “a man could be squeezed out of a woman.”37 The location of the generative organs—external or internal—might seem an obvious sign of sex, but it was the possession of identical organs, not the position of them, that mattered because positions could change. Indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of the one-sex model is its allowance—in theory, at least—for one’s sex to change. The transformation of female to male, in fact, was the subject of popular stories dating back at least to the time of Pliny the Elder. These stories often focused on women who performed what were perceived to be masculine activities (e.g., running too fast or jumping over a fence) and subsequently became men (that is, their genitalia descended and they were identifiably sexed as male).38 Pliny insisted that accounts of females becoming males were not just idle stories. He testified to having seen an African woman turn into a male on her wedding day.39 If, therefore, men and women are biologically comparable—made up of the same “stuff ”— sex differentiation cannot rely solely on anatomical observation. That males and females were more alike than different, however, did not result in biological or social equality: for many reasons, the male form was superior to the female.

The Superiority of the Male According to many ancient authors—from the contributors to the Hippocratic tradition to Aristotle and beyond—the hierarchical ranking of male over female was the result of the placement of the genitalia, the quality of the sperm, or the temperature and dryness of the body.40 Sex was understood as a continuum, with perfect maleness at one end and imperfect, defective, or deficient maleness (what we might call “femaleness”) at the other.41 Humans were believed to be composed of both male and female elements, however, so individuals were placed somewhere between these two extremes. “This hot/cold, dry/moist, hard/soft system,” Martin notes, “does not relate simply to the division between men and women. Every body contains the same spectrum within it.”42 For example, Philo, a first-century Jewish philosopher, writes, “In the soul, just as in families, there is, on the one hand, a male element [к̬̬̣̩] derived from men [ж̩̠̬Ԗ̩], and on the other hand, a female

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element [̧̡̤̥̝̚] derived from women [̟̰̩̝̥̦Ԗ̩].”43 In Philo’s discussion, the female element is clearly inferior—indeed, it is offensive and even dangerous—and, for one’s safety and health, it should be amputated just as one would amputate a hand that had been used in an assault.44 In an exegesis of Exodus 12:5, Philo also notes the relative perfection of male to female. In his comments on the sacrificial requirement of a perfect male sheep, he writes, “And [it is to be] male, first, because the male is more perfect than the female. Wherefore it is said by the naturalists that the female is nothing else than an imperfect male.”45 Philo, it seems, was speaking about sex differences in general, since, as the exegesis continues, his description of female and male reaches beyond the sheep with which he began: “For progress is indeed nothing else than the giving up of the female nature by changing into the male, since the female nature is material, passive, corporeal and sense-perceptible, while the male is active, rational, incorporeal and more akin to mind and thought.”46 The status of male to female is further clarified by the virtues Philo assigns to each. Males possess those virtues toward which all people should strive (particularly rationality), while females possess qualities all people should avoid (particularly passivity and materiality).47 Interestingly, however, Philo holds out the possibility of women moving up the scale of perfection by overcoming their femininity (i.e., by becoming male).48 The superiority of male to female is also clear in Galen’s writings: “The female is less perfect than the male for one, principal reason—because she is colder; for if among animals the warm one is the more active, a colder animal would be less perfect than a warmer. . . . Now just as mankind is the most perfect of all animals, so within mankind the man is more perfect than the woman, and the reason for his perfection is his excess of heat.”49 Galen argues that the imperfection of women lies in the lack of heat required to draw the generative parts to the outside of the body. This defect, as Galen calls it, is not a total loss for humanity: although the female is “in all respects” less perfect than the male, this imperfection “provided no small advantage for the race; for there needs must be a female. Indeed, you ought not to think that our Creator would purposely make half the whole race imperfect and, as it were, mutilated, unless there was to be some great advantage in such a mutilation.”50 So, according to Galen, confidence in a perfect creator need not be shaken by the clear imperfection of women; the existence of both male and female derives from and serves the divine will. Ancient physicians, physiognomists, and philosophers had to account not only for differences between males and females but also for differences among males. Why were some men stronger, more powerful, and more virtuous—i.e., more masculine—than others? Aretaeus, a contemporary of Galen,

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attributed the variations among men to the quality of semen. He believed semen contributed to men’s “health, strength, [and] courage.”51 He writes, “For it is the semen, when possessed of vitality, which makes us men, hot, well braced in limbs, hairy, well voiced, spirited, strong to think and to act, as the characteristics of men prove. For when semen is not possessed of its vitality, persons become shrivelled, have a sharp tone of voice, lose their hair and their beard, and become effeminate.”52 Aretaeus refers to two distinguishable groups: those whose semen possesses vitality and those whose semen does not. It is clear that the former is by far the superior of the two groups. He establishes maleness by means of a number of different characteristics, not all of which are anatomically based. Since the second group is described in terms reminiscent of those used to describe women (e.g., sharp tone of voice, less hairy, effeminate), Aretaeus may be advancing a common belief that both men and women produce or possess sperm, but the sperm is of differing qualities.53 Maleness, furthermore, was not an arrived-at state but rather the goal of a lifelong quest that required self-control, wisdom, and virtue. Although anatomically sexed males were closer to the perfect state of masculinity, they, too, had continuously to strive to be men.54 Males began their quest for manliness from the moment of birth. They were expected to develop masculine characteristics, but development is the key; they could, at any moment, fail at the task and slip down the continuum toward femininity.55 Since women not only were inferior to men, but were, in fact, inferior men—a belief expressed repeatedly in the ancient literature—they could move up the continuum toward masculinity.56 Because sex categories were not fixed, individuals were aware of the possibility that their actions or demeanor could propel them up or down the scale of manliness.

Physiognomy: The Science of Sex Assignment The existence of the science of physiognomy in antiquity demonstrates that sex assignment was not based solely on anatomy. Polemo, a second-century physiognomist, explains how sex assignments were made: You may obtain physiognomic indications of masculinity and femininity from your subject’s glance, movement, and voice, and then, from among these signs, compare one with another until you determine to your satisfaction which of the two sexes prevails. For in the masculine there is something feminine to be found, and in the feminine something masculine, but the name “masculine” or “feminine” is assigned according to which of the two prevails.57

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Polemo’s observations provide another example of the assumption that all humans are comprised of both male and female elements. When Polemo continues, however, he addresses not only masculine comportment but also masculine virtue: sex and virtue, it turns out, are so integrally related that a person’s sex can be determined by his or her personality and character. He writes, The male is physically stronger and braver, less prone to defects and more likely to be sincere and loyal. He is more keen to win honor and he is worthier of respect. The female has the contrary properties: she has but little courage and abounds in deceptions. Her behavior is exceptionally bitter and she tends to hide what is on her mind. She is impulsive, lacks a sense of justice, and loves to quarrel: a blustering coward. . . . It is possible to find masculine qualities also in women.58

Polemo restates the conclusions of other authors we have examined. He assumes a one-sex model and suggests that the preponderance of masculinity results in an identifiably more virtuous character. Men are stronger and braver, more sincere and loyal than women. We should note, however, that Polemo also testifies to the instability of sex determinations: masculine qualities (strength, bravery, sincerity, honor) can be found in women. While sex and gender were linked in antiquity so that sexually identified males were expected to perform the socially defined roles of masculinity, things were much more complex in the mess of reality. It is not unusual, as we will see, for anatomically sexed females to be portrayed as masculine (i.e., embodying culturally assigned attributes of men) or for anatomically sexed males to be portrayed as feminine (i.e., embodying the attributes of women). Physiognomists like Polemo also give us clues as to how authors might describe their characters as a means of signaling sex. For example, people described as dark-skinned or very light-skinned were considered cowardly, a decidedly unmasculine trait.59 A person described as strong and brave was believed to embody the characteristics most associated with masculinity, while the person who was deceptive might be depicted as feminine. Masculinity and femininity, like identities, are always relative terms: an individual may be warmer and drier or stronger and braver than another person— regardless of his or her sex—and thus be manlier. Rather than the binary formula male/female, then, it is more helpful to think in terms of an economy of exchange: in the martyrologies, when Christian social identity is salient, individuals—male and female alike—must cultivate masculine characteristics and suppress feminine ones.

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Sex and Power The sociopolitical import of masculinity and femininity in antiquity was integrally related to the issue of power. A person’s location on the male-female continuum constituted his social power. To be a male was to exert control over oneself and others, to show oneself capable of governing by ruling a household properly. To be a male was to perform masculinity. As Laqueur notes, in the ancient world “to be a man or a woman was to hold a social rank, a place in society, to assume a cultural role, not to be organically one or the other of two incommensurable sexes.”60 He continues, “Serious talk about sexuality is thus inevitably about the social order that it both represents and legitimates. . . . Almost everything one wants to say about sex—however sex is understood—already has in it a claim about gender. Sex, in both the onesex and the two-sex worlds, is situational; it is explicable only within the context of battles over gender and power.”61 Sex and gender are indicators not only of social power, but also, as we have already seen, of character, demeanor, and virtue. Males—because they are stronger, warmer, and hairier, speak with deep voices, and have external genitalia—represent the more perfect end of the continuum. With warmth, hair, and other male attributes come rationality and the four classical masculine virtues of justice, self-control, wisdom, and manly courage. Cicero, in fact, identifies virtue itself with masculinity: “For it is from the word for ‘man’ that the word virtue is derived.” He restates his conclusion in unambiguous terms: “We must exercise [scorn of death and pain] if we wish to prove possessors of virtue, or rather, since the word for ‘virtue’ is borrowed from the word for ‘man,’ if we wish to be men.”62 Similarly, Plutarch equates virtue with masculinity.63 Females, on the other hand, because they are weaker, colder, have less hair, speak with high voices, and have internal genitalia, represent the more imperfect end of the spectrum. For females to display the virtues of self-control or courage, they must suppress their femininity and become male.

Women’s Virtues Ancient constructions of sex assigned women to the lower end (i.e., the less manly end) of the continuum, but women were also associated with positive characteristics. If we are to recognize the ways the authors of the martyrologies feminize their heroines—and, therefore, not dismiss feminizing rhetoric as banal and insignificant—we must familiarize ourselves with what ancient authors characterized as ideal womanly behavior. Seneca, in a let-

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ter to his mother, describes the ideal woman as chaste, having no desire for jewels or riches, unadorned by cosmetics, and modest.64 Valerius Maximus commends the loyalty of women to their husbands: “Tertia Aemilia, wife of the elder Africanus and mother of Cornelia of the Gracchi, was so accommodating and patient that although she knew that one of her slave girls had found favour with her husband, she pretended to be ignorant of it, lest she, a woman, charge a great man, world-conquering Africanus, with lack of selfcontrol.” Thuria, wife of Quintus Lucretius, hid her husband from authorities at the risk of her own life. Sulpicia disguised herself as a slave in order to follow her husband to Sicily.65 Juvenal describes the woman worth marrying in this way: “Let her be handsome, charming, rich, and fertile; let her have ancient ancestors ranged about her halls; let her be more chaste than all the disheveled Sabine maidens who stopped the war—a prodigy as rare upon the earth as a black swan! Yet who could endure a wife that possessed all perfections?”66 Roman inscriptions also record women’s merits. Asë is recognized in a first-century C.E. inscription as “a woman who was chaste and cultivated and who glorifies both her city and her family with praise won for her conduct.”67 A second-century C.E. inscription from Pergamum reads, Farewell, lady Panthia, from your husband. After your departure, I keep up my lasting grief for your cruel death. Hera, goddess of marriage, never saw such a wife: your beauty, your wisdom, your chastity. You bore me children completely like myself; you cared for your bridegroom and your children; you guided straight the rudder of life in our home and raised high our common fame in healing—though you were a woman you were not behind me in skill.68

This man’s statement of his wife’s accomplishments summarizes well the evidence considered to this point: commendable women were loyal to their families, modest, chaste, not greedy, beautiful, fertile, and virginal. If the ideal for women was to be, for example, beautiful, descriptions of female Christians as beautiful must carry as much hermeneutical weight as descriptions of their manliness.

Masculinity and Social Status I have discussed the relationship of male to female on the spectrum of masculinity, but up to this point we have considered only free men and women. Social status, however, also affected a person’s placement on the scale of masculinity. Since control over one’s life was an important part of mascu-

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linity, slaves would certainly be located near the bottom of the spectrum. Indeed, there is some evidence that slaves were not considered human—and thus sexed—at all. Richard Saller explains: According to Latin antiquarian writers, during the Campitalia held in January woolen balls and male and female woolen dolls were hung in the cross-roads— one ball for each slave in the household and one doll for each free member. . . . The ritual gave crude, stark expression to a model of the household in which all members, free and slave, gained protection through this rite, but in a fashion that distinguished visually between those symbolically humanized and gendered, and those dehumanized in form.69

The relationship of social status and masculinity can also be seen in Artemidorus’s dream interpretations: a dream is inauspicious if the person dreams of engaging in same-sex relations with an equal, but the dream has mostly auspicious meanings if the sex partner is of a lower social status. Rules for sexual morality hinged on accepting one’s proper place—either as the dominant, penetrating male or the submissive, penetrated female. Young boys and slaves (regardless of sex) were placed in the female, or submissive and penetrated, category, and thus were acceptable sex partners for free male citizens.70 The claims of the martyrologies—that Christian men, women, and slaves were manlier than their persecutors—are the all grander and more surprising when considered in the light of ancient constructions of sex and gender. To enable us to grasp the full significance of depicting the martyrs as masculine, the stories must be understood within the context of the construction of sex in antiquity and its association with virtue. Without this understanding, the exhortation to Polycarp to “be a man” and Perpetua’s vision of becoming a man are no more than clichés. Attending to the ways the authors of the martyrologies employed current discourses about sex and virtue, however, reveals the group-building work done by the narratives: equating Christianity with masculinity enabled Christians to establish order in their world. Claiming such a culturally valued trait, moreover, enhanced Christian group esteem.



Noble Athletes GLADIATORIAL , ATHLETIC , AND MARTIAL IMAGERY IN THE MARTYR ACTS Without an adversary, virtus shrivels. —SENECA,

D E P R O V . 2.4

Your one salvation was to join my camp and die with an unconquered neck. — L U C A N , B E L L . C I V . 9.379–380

S

ince claims to masculinity in the ancient world were claims not only to strength but also to power and authority over others, Christians could hardly claim for themselves a masculine status: secondand third-century Christians lived at the mercy of the Roman ruler and died by his caprice. As the locus of attack, moreover, the martyrs’ battered bodies should have been proof of their lack of masculinity. The textually masculinized martyr, however, challenged the perception of domination. The literary tool of masculinization inscribed resistance to pagan hegemony onto the body of the martyr. One way the martyrologies demonstrated Christian masculinity was by depicting their heroes as gladiators and athletes—some of the most potent cultural symbols of masculinity—thereby revising their audiences’ expectations of the events narrated. As gladiators and athletes, the martyrs were not passive victims of Roman power but active participants in a fight for honor.1 Even though Christian power was not evident in the public sphere—that is, the martyrs did not wield visible political authority—Christians’ perception that they possessed power was all that was needed to affirm a masculine social identity and to enhance their self-esteem. 4HE MARTYRS ARE OFTEN PORTRAYED AS ATHLETES ж̧̤̣̯̭̚  WHO CONTEND IN conflicts (ж̟̹̩ . The heroes and heroines of the martyrologies are referred to as trained (̨̟̰̩̘̭), while those unable to compete successfully are described as untrained or unprepared (ж̸̨̟̩̝̮̯̫̭). This athletic language is used in conjunction with amphitheatrical language to portray the martyrs as active—and thus manly—in approaching death. As virile fighters, gladia-

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tors embodied ideals of Roman masculinity such as strength, courage, and volition. Like their pagan counterparts, the authors of the martyrologies (and presumably their communities) regarded a noble death, similar to that of the gladiator, as honorable. The martyr, like the gladiator, received honor because of his or her display of manliness (ж̡̛̩̠̬̝), a virtue that placed the Christian—regardless of his or her sex—in a masculine body.

M A RT Y R D O M A N D T H E A M P H I T H E AT E R

Although the martyrologies recount the deaths of Christians in the arena, references to the amphitheater and the events that took place within it occur only sporadically and without sustained attention. The lack of narrative attention to the amphitheater as the location of martyrdom is perhaps the result of the “shared territory” between Christians and Romans: as inhabitants of the empire the audiences of the martyrologies would have been familiar with amphitheatrical events and their meanings.2 Tacitus even complains that what he regards as Roman vices—passions for actors, gladiators, and horses—are so ubiquitous that they must be conceived in the womb. He asks, “How few are to be found whose home-talk runs to any other subjects than these? What else do we overhear our younger men talking about whenever we enter their lecture hall?”3 The authors of the martyrologies did not need to describe beast hunts, gladiatorial fights, executions, or athletic contests because they could rely on their audiences’ experiences in—or, at the very least, awareness of—the amphitheater to provide a fuller contextual meaning for their narratives.

The Amphitheater: Architecture and Power Thanks to the colorful commentary on spectacles in ancient literature, we often imagine the amphitheater as a place of amusement for bloodthirsty Romans. Suetonius, for example, wrote approvingly of Domitian’s spectacles: He constantly gave grand and costly entertainments, both in the amphitheater and in the Circus where in addition to the usual races between two-horse and four-horse chariots, he also exhibited two battles, one between forces of infantry and the other by horsemen; and he even gave a naval battle in the amphitheater. Besides, he gave hunts of wild beasts, gladiatorial shows at night by the light of torches, and not only combats between men but between women as well.4

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The amphitheater, however, was not simply a place for entertainment. From its architectural presence in a city to its exhibitions of death, the amphitheater was a symbol of Rome and Roman power. On show days, from morning beast hunts to lunchtime executions to afternoon gladiatorial shows, Rome exhibited a far-reaching and domineering hand.5 The message displayed on the bodies of slaves, conquered peoples, criminals, and beasts was clear to every last observer: “Rome is invincible.”6 It was in the amphitheater that the emperor was recognized as emperor and where he displayed his imperial character.7 It was also in the amphitheater, however, that the emperor was expected to court his people: he was to negotiate political and social issues with them, and at times to appease them by complying with their demands.8 Thus the amphitheater did not serve as a static demonstration of power. As rife with meaning as the amphitheater was, scholars rarely consider its importance as the physical location of Christian martyrdom. The amphitheater is not incidental to the story of the martyrs; it is not, in other words, simply the place where Christians were executed. In the martyrologies, the heroes and heroines are deliberately positioned in the complex space of the amphitheater. The author of the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne explains that the torture of Maturus and Sanctus replaced the gladiatorial entertainment;9 they were taken into the amphitheater for an initial round of torture, during which they ran the gauntlet, were mauled by beasts, and roasted on iron seats (1.38). Similarly, Alexander and Attalus were led into the amphitheater to face the beasts and endure other tortures (1.51). The first explicit reference to the amphitheater in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas occurs in Perpetua’s fourth vision.10 Here, the deacon Pomponius leads Perpetua to the amphitheater, and then into the arena, where she believes she will fight with beasts (10.4). She is wrong, however, and is instead pitted against an Egyptian. The man who judges the contest is taller than the top of the amphitheater and resembles a lanista, a gladiator trainer (10.8). After Perpetua wins the contest, she exits the arena through the Gate of Life, one of only two ways a combatant left the arena (10.13).11 Although the details of her vision did not come to fruition, the author does locate the martyr’s death in the amphitheater. He describes how the Christians marched joyfully to the amphitheater (18.1), and how after their initial torture Perpetua and Felicitas were led through the Gate of Life, ironically, to face the executioner (20.7).12 The author of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas invokes gladiatorial imagery again when he states that after enduring a premature delivery, Felicitas was turned over to a gladiator: she went from bloodbath to bloodbath, from midwife to retiarius (18.3). Not all of the martyrologies explicitly state that the events in the narrative took place within the amphitheater. The authors of the Martyrdom of Polycarp

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and the Martyrdom of Pionius, for example, do not use the term “amphitheater” (ж̨̱̥̤̙̝̯̬̫̩) but rather “stadium” (̮̯̘̠̥̫̩).13 The Christians in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, however, faced beasts—or were threatened with such punishment—an event typically confined to the amphitheater, and Pionius is compared to a voluntary gladiator.14 The complex discourses associated with the amphitheater are fundamental to the work of the martyrologies: they set the stage at the most basic level for the depiction of the Christian martyrs as masculine, a central element in the identities constructed by the martyrologies.15 In order to understand the import of these passing and seemingly benign statements about the location of the martyrs’ deaths, we must understand the origins of the amphitheater and gladiatorial activities as well as their social and political significance in the Roman world.

The Origins of Gladiatorial Games Gladiatorial games did not originate as state-sponsored events. They were initially held as funerary memorials for individuals and were distinct from the public ludi (festivals) held in honor of the gods.16 The ludi traditionally consisted of ceremonial processions and chariot races in the Circus Maximus or Circus Flaminius. These were state celebrations overseen by a magistrate and financed by public funds. The munera had a different function and history: literally translated “obligations,” munera were funeral events financed by private citizens. Even when munera were given by public figures, they were perceived as memorials—not mandatory offerings—made in their private capacities and from private funds.17 For example, according to the Historia Augusta, when Hadrian died, Marcus Aurelius presented gladiatorial games “as a private citizen.”18 The traditional date given for the first gladiatorial contest in Rome is 264 B.C.E., immediately preceding the First Punic War.19 Consisting of three gladiatorial pairs, these games were given in honor of Junius Brutus Pera by his sons Marcus and Decimus.20 Competition among Romans to give impressive munera escalated, as Livy attests: in 216 B.C.E. twenty-two pairs of gladiators fought in honor of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus; in 200 B.C.E. twenty-five pairs fought in honor of Marcus Valerius Laevinus;21 and in 183 B.C.E. sixty pairs fought in honor of Publius Licinius.22 The numbers continued to rise through the period of the Late Republic. Although such funerary exhibitions were technically viewed as private affairs, the line between public and private was easily blurred: the munera provided occasion to acknowledge publicly the accomplishments, wealth, and prestige of a family, and the political advantage of providing munera was not lost on grieving sons, who would often postpone celebrations of

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their fathers’ lives until a politically advantageous time. The munera, then, became a way for men to win votes for future elections, and they were vital to political survival.23 Some emperors offered games to introduce their chosen successors. Trajan, for example, chose Hadrian to preside over his victory games.24 The imperial family also marked special occasions by offering munera. The editor of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas tells us that the gladiatorial games at which Perpetua and her fellow Christians were martyred were convened to celebrate Geta’s birthday.25 The popularity of the games, and consequently of the men who gave them, was significant. Thus the gladiatorial games provided opportunities for the editor, or sponsor, to gain public recognition, popularity, and power. Augustus recognized the advantages and possible threats of the potent political power of the spectacles, and, as early as the 20s B.C.E. he restricted the number of games praetors could offer and their total number of participants.26 By the time of Domitian’s reign, only the emperor, or a relative or a magistrate acting on his behalf, could hold gladiatorial games in Rome. Since the games were such powerful political events, the consequent imperial regulation is understandable: the emperor could ill-afford rivals upstaging his spectacle-gifts to the Roman populace. Many ancient historians not only recorded the number of spectacles an emperor gave but often indicated the reasons an emperor put on a show. As we should expect, some of the spectacles were munera offered in honor of a deceased family member. After Hadrian’s death, for instance, Marcus Aurelius sponsored gladiatorial games in his honor.27 Other times, however, emperors gave gladiatorial shows in hopes of receiving the people’s forgiveness, adoration, or acknowledgment of their imperial claims. After supposedly having four consuls murdered, for example, Hadrian rushed to Rome and, in order to win public approval, gave gladiatorial games and beast hunts that lasted six days and included one thousand beasts.28 In a rhetorical exercise, an anonymous person wrote an account from the point of view of a gladiator that highlighted the political importance of the games. In part, it reads, “The presenter of the show, who hoped to gain favor with our blood, took his seat.”29 The games, then, offered one way for the emperor or other sponsor to gain the support of the populace by securing their allegiance, loyalty, and respect.

Power: Demonstration or Negotiation? Although it seems certain that the emperors tried to assert their imperial power through the events held in the amphitheater, ancient sources make it clear that the amphitheater, and other places where crowds gathered, was

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rife with political tension. Romans assembled at the amphitheater not only for entertainment, but also to make their voices heard. As Cicero reports, “For the opinion and feeling of the Roman people in public affairs can be most clearly expressed on three occasions, at a meeting, at an Assembly, at a gathering for plays and gladiatorial shows.”30 “The amphitheater was,” in Keith Hopkins’s words, “their parliament.”31 Rather than allowing unfettered imperial power, Romans anticipated reciprocity in the amphitheater: at public events, the spectators expected to be granted a certain amount of power.32 As David Potter notes, “the exercise of authority in the ancient world was highly theatrical, and for the performance of power to succeed, it was necessary for the audience to be drawn into the act, to be made to feel a part of the action. The person providing the entertainment had to share his power with the crowd.”33 Similarly, Thomas Wiedemann notes that for the emperor not to appear at the games “would have been a challenge to the people by denying that the power exercised at these events was shared, even if only symbolically, between emperor and people.”34 If the amphitheater provided a place for public opinion to be heard, we should expect that on occasion the authority of Rome and its emperor would be challenged there. In the famous incident recounted by Suetonius, a group of condemned criminals—not gladiators, as is popularly depicted— proclaimed to Claudius, “Hail, emperor, we who are about to die salute you,” as they entered the arena to face death. Such a tribute to the emperor may seem to signal an obvious and indisputable acknowledgement of authority: condemned, powerless criminals pledge their final allegiance to an unassailable political entity. In the story Suetonius tells, however, the absolute authority of the emperor to command a battle to the death was challenged. Claudius’s response to the criminals’ salute (“Or not”) was (mis-)understood as a pardon: those condemned refused to fight one another. Claudius became so frustrated with their passivity that, “at last leaping from his throne and running along the edge of the lake with his ridiculous tottering gait, he induced them to fight, partly by threats and partly by promises.”35 For a moment, even if brief, the condemned assumed power over the judge. In the end, the preponderance of power was restored to the emperor and the criminals died. The negotiation that took place, however, left a residual mark: because of the criminals’ challenge, Claudius was belittled; he was mocked as a ridiculous leader who lacked authority over his own people, indeed, even over condemned criminals. More commonly, though, it was the spectators, not the participants, who engaged in conflicts over power in the amphitheater. The crowds often

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brought demands and petitions to the emperor at the amphitheater. Sometimes requests involved arena events themselves. The Book of Spectacles records the audience’s demand that a particular gladiator be allowed to leave the arena alive.36 Tiberius typically avoided the shows “for fear that some request would be made of him.”37 And when the crowds demanded that Tetrinius, a thief, fight in the arena, Caligula accused the crowds of being Tetriniuses, that is, the thief ’s collaborators and, therefore, the emperor’s enemies.38 Thus, the spectators at public events expected to wield some power that would, on occasion, influence the results of the games. At public gatherings, moreover, spectators often voiced admiration for or dissatisfaction with their rulers. On one occasion a crowd reportedly affirmed Nero’s greatness by declaring, “Good Caesar . . . No one conquers you.”39 Sometimes, however, individuals were compelled to voice support for a ruler. According to Dio, for example, he and other senators were forced to exclaim to Commodus: “You are Lord, and you are first, and you are most fortunate of all.”40 The actions of the spectators could also signal displeasure with the Roman rulers. Suetonius relates that on a certain occasion Caligula became extremely angry with the people because they who “rule the world give more honour to a gladiator for a trifling act” than to their emperor.41 Cicero records that “at the Games of Apollo Diphilus the actor attacked poor Pompey quite brutally: ‘To our misfortune are you Great’—there were a dozen encores.”42 At other times the populace took advantage of their numbers at public celebrations to make concrete, often economic, demands of the emperor. Josephus describes the people’s attempt to force Caligula to reduce taxes,43 and Dio writes of the people’s objection to a rise in the price of grain.44 Emperors who granted the crowd’s requests, according to Josephus, were popular: “The Romans . . . gather enthusiastically in the circus and there the assembled throngs make requests of the emperors according to their own pleasure. Emperors who rule that there can be no question about granting such petitions are by no means unpopular.”45 These stories illustrate the importance of power negotiations between the emperor and the crowd. Thus we should be wary of any unqualified assertions that the amphitheater stood for Roman power: the ancient sources make it clear that the amphitheater was a highly contested site; it was a place full of expectation and tension. According to Wiedemann, the politically loaded nature of the amphitheater should not be surprising: This constant struggle between emperor and people as to how power was to be distributed and where sovereignty lay, was particularly liable to surface in

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the amphitheater, since the three categories of activities that went on in there were particularly symbolic of the exercise of power: power over the natural world, the enforcement of law, and the power to decide whether a particular gladiator was or was not to be classified as a virtuous Roman.46

The amphitheater is best understood as a place for the negotiation for power rather than the exertion of it. The culturally productive value of the amphitheater as a site for the negotiation of power made it a prized location for Christian authors to appropriate and reimagine that power and its dynamics. Locating Christian martyrdom in the amphitheater, then, has great potential for the formation of Christian identities that are based on the possession of strength and power. In addition, the actions deemed significant within that site—combat, heroism, bravery, and death—could be put to good use in the production of Christian identities. As we have seen, the editor of the games, the ultimate arbiter of the contest, often granted, if reluctantly, the requests of the crowd. Gunderson notes that in the amphitheater “the editor . . . becomes the lightning rod for the public will in judgment over the utterly subject fighter.”47 The expectation that the crowd might influence the fate of an arena combatant may be the basis for some scenes in the martyrologies. According to the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for example, Polycarp offered to explain his Christian beliefs to the governor, presumably in the hopes of converting him. The governor, however, refused Polycarp’s offer, suggesting instead that Polycarp “try to persuade the people.”48 Polycarp, in turn, refused to offer an apology to the crowd, deeming them unworthy. It was the crowd that originally called for Polycarp’s arrest, and the governor’s suggestion may reflect the importance of appeasing them (3.2).49 It is the crowd, moreover, that the author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp holds responsible for Polycarp’s death.50 The Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne also attests to the role of the crowds in the persecution of Christians. Indeed, the crowd plays such a large role in this martyrology that they seem to propel the story to its conclusion: the people initiate restrictions on Christians51 and lead them to the forum to be interrogated (1.8); the mob dismisses Zachary’s apology on behalf of Christianity (1.10). In a list of the persecutors, the mob is named first, before the prefect or soldiers (1.17). Bystanders attack the elderly Pothinus (1.30– 31). The mob dictates the punishments of Maturus and Sanctus (1.38), and it demands that Attalus be brought out (1.43).The author of this martyrology, however, does not overlook the power of the governor and emperor. Even though the people are enraged and wish to witness Attalus’s death, when

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the governor realizes that Attalus is a Roman citizen, he immediately returns him to prison to await the emperor’s decision (1.44). In the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas the spectators are reportedly so disturbed by Perpetua’s beauty and by the milk dripping from Felicitas’s breasts that they demand that the women be removed from the arena and dressed in tunics; the crowd (or editor) thus protects itself (or his reading audience) from witnessing the destruction of beauty.52 These examples illustrate the narrative use of spectators’ potential power in the amphitheater. While the crowd’s influence over arena events may be surprising, it can be explained in the light of the contestations of power inherent in the amphitheater.

Provenance and Architecture Although public gatherings allowed people to be in contact with—and at times even to influence—the emperor or provincial ruler, the negotiations of power that took place within the amphitheater did not ultimately devalue it as a symbol of Roman might. Indeed, as the structure developed over time, it appears to have become an unmistakable sign of Romanization. As the popularity of the munera grew, the shift from more-or-less private to public affairs stimulated the design and construction of amphitheaters. In the Greek East, permanent theaters already existed and, with minor modifications, could be used for gladiatorial shows.53 In the West, though, the first amphitheaters were temporary wooden structures built for specific occasions.54 Literary evidence shows that the amphitheatrical structures erected in the Roman Forum were oval from at least the second century B.C.E. The firstcentury B.C.E. architect Vitruvius explains, “But in the cities of Italy . . . the custom of giving gladiatorial shows in the forum has been handed down from our ancestors. . . . Now let the breadth be so determined that when the length is divided into three parts, two are assigned to the breadth. For so the plan will be oblong, and the arrangement will be adapted to the purpose of the spectacles.”55 These temporary amphitheaters were elliptical primarily because of the configuration of the Forum: in order to maximize space, semicircular short sides joined two roughly parallel long sides. Besides taking full advantage of space so that the gladiator was allowed to advance and retreat to the fullest degree, the elliptical shape provided a natural focal point from which the emperor or editor could be seen.56 Wiedemann notes, “A circular building implies the equality of all spectators (at least, all those seated in each row); an ellipse makes most of the spectators face two specific points on the circumference, thus enabling attention to be drawn to the box of the

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presiding magistrate.”57 Since many of our sources for gladiatorial games and other public events focus on proper seating arrangements, the architecture of the amphitheater may also reflect this concern.58 The first stone amphitheater in the West was built at Pompeii around 70 B.C.E., soon after Sulla and his military troops settled in the area.59 Keith Hopkins argues that the popularity of gladiatorial games increased with the cessation of military conquest as a way for men to show their military prowess. Wiedemann, on the other hand, argues that the spread of gladiatorial games was due to a social crisis in the Late Republic. Since the only experience of social cohesion during this time was in the Roman army, during times of peace “only new, artificially constructed, cultural symbols could replace violence as a means to a new consensus.”60 The spread of gladiatorial games, according to Wiedemann’s theory, continued the process of integration and Romanization begun by military campaigns. Katherine Welch argues, alternatively, that the games were popular particularly within the military in earlier times, even during the Republic.61 She accounts for the sparse evidence for gladiatorial games during this period by pointing out that our primary historical source for this period, Livy, gives information about munera selectively, singling out those that were given by well-known men whose families were important. Indeed, Livy himself admits that “many gladiatorial games were given in that year, some of them unimportant; one was noteworthy beyond the rest.”62 Also in support of her thesis, Welch points out that in 105 B.C.E. Roman forces had difficulty fighting the Germans due to a shortage of men trained for war, and they needed an efficient means of preparing new soldiers. Gladiatorial methods met this need and for this reason were introduced into infantry training.63 She ties the significance of gladiatorial shows to the interests of veteran colonists in the first century B.C.E. Central to Welch’s thesis is that the architectural form of the amphitheater spread not from Campania to Rome (as traditionally thought) but from Rome to Campania and elsewhere with the establishment of military colonies such as Pompeii and Capua.64 Welch defends her thesis against more traditional views, such as those held by Hopkins and Wiedemann, when she writes, “The stone arena was born during a time of military activity and cannot, therefore, be explained as a substitute for warfare or as a symptom of collective ennui.”65 She points out, moreover, that in the imperial period most amphitheaters were built near legionary fortresses. “It is clear,” writes Welch, why ex-soldiers in the age of Sulla would have been particularly interested in gladiatorial games—not only were munera good military-style entertain-

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ment, but the technique of the combat may have been familiar to them from their army training. It is not surprising, then, that the earliest securelydatable monumental amphitheatre should appear at Pompeii, a city colonized by army veterans (80 B.C.) soon after gladiatorial training methods were introduced.66

Although the permanent amphitheaters built in the region of Campania predate any such structures in the capital, Welch argues that the blueprint for these amphitheaters must be located in Rome. Since there does not appear to have been a development in architectural style over time, she asserts that there must have been one archetype that influenced the building of all other permanent amphitheaters. She presents a compelling argument that the amphitheaters in the provinces were modeled on the temporary structures that Vitruvius described as being erected in the Roman Forum: How could a temporary wooden structure be so well known that it served as a model for the earliest monumental amphitheatres? Surely it was because of its prestigious location in the Forum in Rome. It was where the populus Romanus met to listen to speeches, to vote on legislation and to elect magistrates. It was also the location of the aristocracy’s funeral ceremonies, of which gladiatorial combat had traditionally been a part. Such a model would have been a natural choice for Roman colonists and soldiers, who wished to create a monumental building for gladiatorial shows in a civilian or military context.67

In newly established colonies, generals, veterans, and citizens looked to Rome for architectural guidance and in the process paid tribute and established their allegiance to Rome. The veterans wished to assert the Romanness of the newly formed colony, and the construction of an amphitheater—a distinctively Roman building—aided in the formation of an unambiguous identity for these cities: The new building-type and its games were an important component of the Roman public self-image which, during the republic, was largely military. It is surely no accident that most of the earliest amphitheatres appear in the towns of Italy which had especially close ties to Rome, notably coloniae settled by army veterans.68

The amphitheater at Pompeii, for example, may have been a particularly graphic symbol of Rome and Romanness brought by Sulla and his veterans to a largely Greek and Samnite city: “By building a structure as novel

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as an amphitheatre seemed to a viewer in 70 B.C., the colonists were making a statement of their power and of its distinctive character.”69 Cicero notes that there was hostility in Pompeii when Roman colonists arrived.70 This may have resulted in the veterans’ desire to establish a “particularly Roman architectural presence” as a way of asserting their Roman identity and Rome’s authority over the colony.71 Similarly, Alison Futrell suggests that “the increased interaction with non-Roman peoples would have heightened the need for self-identity. . . . Public spectacle would have provided that: it not only entertained, it served the purposes of Roman hegemony as a means of bringing together the Roman community to commemorate its shared past and to invoke an ideal of a group future.”72 The amphitheater and its games became a tool for the construction of a Roman social identity in the provinces; it was also an ideal setting for Christians to use in the construction of their social identities. The first permanent amphitheater for munera in Rome was built when Augustus was reining in control of the gladiatorial games.73 Wiedemann suggests that the move from temporary to permanent buildings in Rome was symbolic of the contemporary political climate: “The transitoriness of the structures erected for such spectacles so long as the republic continued to function parallels the circulation of magisterial power among short-term office holders. Permanent buildings would indicate permanent control.”74 This thesis is supported by Livy’s report that the Senate refused to allow two censors to build a theater in 154 B.C.E. because it would have made their censorship too permanent.75 If Wiedemann is correct in his assessment that, in Rome, permanent buildings reflected permanent control, it is not surprising that Augustus— who declared that only the emperor, or someone on his behalf, could give munera—was the first emperor to build a permanent amphitheater in the capital. The destruction of Augustus’s amphitheater in the conflagration attributed to Nero provided opportunity and space for Vespasian to build the monumental Colosseum, the architectural model for all later amphitheaters in the empire. In Welch’s words, “the Colosseum canonized the Roman amphitheatre as an architectural form. Amphitheatres securely dated after it (e.g., Capua) self-consciously refer to it in the same way that circuses throughout the empire looked back to the Circus Maximus.”76 The amphitheater, then, stood as a grand reminder of Rome’s centrality and power, and the funeral-ceremonies-turned-political-events became one way for Rome to impose its will on other cities. The spread of the amphitheater from the heart of Rome, the Forum, to the provinces also testifies to the

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increasing importance of provincial ties to Rome: the presence of an amphitheater claimed a Roman identity for the city. The building itself became a symbol of Rome’s far-reaching influence and authority.

The Liminality of the Roman Amphitheater Roman power was apparent not only in the architecture of amphitheaters, but also in their location. A significant number of the known amphitheaters are situated on the edges of cities.77 The amphitheater at Pompeii, for example, sits immediately inside the city wall, while the amphitheater at Trier makes up a part of the city wall. Rome is an obvious exception, but the centrality of the Flavian amphitheater may be incidental: after the destruction of Nero’s palace, there was a real estate opportunity for a more centrally located amphitheater, space that was unlikely to be available in other cities.78 The amphitheater symbolized liminality: it dramatically displayed the point at which civilization ended and barbarism began. The actors on the sand—both men and beasts—represented the barbarous, and as such they were temporary imports into civilized Roman space.79 The amphitheater graphically illustrated what was and what was not Roman. The walls of the arena represented, to use J. C. Edmondson’s words, a “social barrier”: “Those who watched from the cavea were ipso facto defined as part of the Roman social order, while those who performed down in the arena were socially dead or, at best, déclassé. Thus, munera immediately advertised those who belonged within Roman society and those who were excluded from it.”80 The amphitheater, and specifically the arena, differentiated Rome from the rest of the world: it established the divide between “us” and “them,” between Roman and barbarian, civilized and uncivilized. The distinctions between civility and barbarity were also depicted in amphitheatrical events. Here in this space Rome demonstrated its justice.81 Those who acted against the benefit of the state were displayed in the arena and justly punished. In addition to displaying Roman justice, these events were also intended to deter others from similar actions.82 All threats to Roman civilization were extinguished in the arena; in this space, Rome displayed to spectators the consequences of civil disorder. Alternatively, several scholars have proposed that the events of the arena were not, first and foremost, about punishment, but were a dramatic display of Roman protection. Wiedemann, for example, suggests that those condemned to the arena had been rejected from society.

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Such criminals no longer had any claim to the protection that society gives its members from the chaos of nature; and consequently they were abandoned to the appropriate natural forces—wild beasts or flames—ad bestias, ad flammas. . . . Frequently the criminal is in some sense ejected from the community and left to try to resist the forces of nature on his own, without any of the help with which human society provides its members. The community does not directly take away the criminal’s life: but it no longer protects him from the power of nature.83

According to this interpretation, the spectacles illustrated the protection Rome provided its inhabitants from criminals and from forces of nature such as beasts and fire. The activities in the amphitheater—barbarians fighting other barbarians or exotic beasts and criminals killed by beasts or fire—represented the dangers of the uncivilized world. By presenting these spectacles, Rome reminded the audience of its power to protect them from or abandon them to these lethal forces. Another proponent of this theory, Erik Gunderson, writes, “Those dying in the sand have been exiled into the non-Roman space; their sufferings are those of the uncivilized world. In this sense, the populus Romanus is not even the agent of destruction: beast, fellow criminals, or fellow gladiators are the overt agents, agents of that other world and not the Roman state.”84 Rather than portraying Rome as the hand that punishes, then, the events of the arena displayed to spectators the kinds of brutality, torture, and death to which all people would succumb without imperial protection. Such a seemingly small shift—from an emphasis on killing to a focus on dying—makes sense in larger discussions about the arena. Ancient philosophers and historians who mention the arena, for instance, emphasize the manner of dying in the arena. As I will show in the following chapters, the focus on Christians dying rather than Romans killing is also central to the message of the Christian martyrologies. In addition, the authors of the martyrologies use the amphitheater to highlight issues of Romanness, justice, civility, and masculinity. They indict Roman actions by appropriating Roman ideals. Far from simply being the historical location of the deaths of Christians, the amphitheater provided a preestablished locus for the contestation of power and for the construction of identities. The inversion of perception— civility for barbarity and justice for criminality—present in these texts draws on issues at stake in the arena and would have been difficult to accomplish outside the walls of the amphitheater.

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T H E G L A D I AT O R I N A N T I Q U I T Y

We turn now from architecture to actor, from amphitheater to gladiator. If, as I have suggested, the site of the amphitheater was not incidental to the narrative of martyrdom, neither was the figure most strongly associated with it: the gladiator. Christian martyrs were not gladiators, but noxii, condemned criminals. Unlike gladiators, they were not trained, and they fought sine missione, without possibility of reprieve. It is unlikely, furthermore, that the martyrs fought in the afternoon shows against armed combatants; they were probably killed during the lunchtime shows—reserved for the execution of criminals—by wild beasts or fire. Despite these important differences, however, many Christian authors depicted the martyrs as gladiators. In addition to being empirically false, however, the association of Christians with gladiators is surprising because gladiators were often perceived as a particularly seedy lot. Any discussion of identities constructed in the martyrologies must account for the presence of these complex images. During the Early Republic, gladiators were slaves, criminals, or prisoners of war—members of the lowest stratum of society—who were forced to fight to their deaths.85 The execution of these individuals by the state was considered proper: these men (and occasionally women) were barbarians who, in various ways, challenged Rome’s authority and thus deserved to die. During the period of the Late Republic, however, the figure of the gladiator changed somewhat. Many gladiators were now professionals specializing in various forms of combat, distinguished by their weapons, defensive armor, and opponents. They were no longer regarded as easily replaced prisoners but were instead trained and paid for their services. By this time spectacles had also become a lucrative business. Owners of gladiators invested quite a lot of money to train their fighters, and they had financial reasons to keep them alive and healthy. In some ways the gladiator’s life was better—in the short run, anyway—than is often imagined. In order to extend gladiators’ lives, owners of gladiatorial troupes provided ample nutrition for their fighters to provide a layer of fat that might protect them from deadly sword wounds.86 Wiedemann suggests that the meal provided to gladiators before the games, the cena libera, may have been intended to give them the energy necessary to fight successfully.87 In addition, gladiators often received excellent medical attention. Galen, one of the bestknown ancient physicians—Marcus Aurelius’s personal physician, in fact— worked for a gladiatorial school for several years. Some owners even provided masseurs for their fighters.88 It was not only the owners who were

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concerned about a gladiator’s health, however. The sponsor of a show rented gladiators, and should one die or be permanently disabled, the fee would rise considerably. Healthy fighters, moreover, made for more interesting shows. In Petronius’s Satyricon, the editor of a recent show was criticized because he hired fighters who were infirm and bromidic: He produced some decayed twopenny-halfpenny gladiators, who would have fallen flat if you breathed on them; . . . one a spavined mule, the other bandylegged, and the holder of the bye, just one corpse instead of another, and hamstrung. One man, a Thracian, had some stuffing, but he too fought according to the rule of the schools.89

When the editor of the show reminded his critic that he had at least given a show, the critic replied: “Yes, and I clap my hands at you. Reckon it up, and I give you more than I got” (46).90 The figure of the gladiator was not confined to the arena, though. He was not simply an entertaining sideshow. To the contrary, the gladiator held an important place in the collective imagination of Romans.

The Gladiator Reviled Gladiators held a peculiar position in ancient Roman society: they were both admired for their bravery and detested because of their unabashed public displays.91 “There is no meaner condition among the people than that of the gladiator”—so thought more than one Roman citizen.92 Many of Rome’s elite thought so little of gladiators that the word itself could be a slur. Cicero, for instance, referred to politicians he disliked as gladiators.93 As Alison Futrell notes, however, there were also edifying aspects of gladiatorial combat: “The slaves and criminals were not real men . . . yet in the arena they fought bravely and with glory and died with honor like men, like heroes; if such men could die admirably, surely real Romans could do no less.”94 Pliny, in fact, approves of gladiatorial fights because they “inspire [men] to face honourable wounds and look scorn on death.”95 The paradoxical position of the gladiator should most likely be attributed to the disjunction between the class of people who fought as gladiators, the virtues exhibited by them in the arena, and the popularity accorded them. This was true during the Republic, but by the time of the Empire, when freed and free men (and occasionally women) joined the ranks of the gladiators,

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there was even greater ambivalence about the profession. The issue was no longer simply that of class, but of class appropriateness: just as citizens were not to perform on the stage, neither were they to discard their prestige and honor by entering the arena. According to Seneca, in fact, fighting in the arena was even more despicable than acting on stage.96 Appreciating both the positive and negative social conceptions of the gladiator is critical to understanding his role in society and literature. Besides class issues and the appropriateness of certain individuals’ participation in the games, Romans loathed gladiators for several more specific reasons. Virility, perhaps the most important attribute of the male Roman citizen, was threatening in the person of the gladiator. It seemed impossible to control the gladiator’s erotic appeal, and his strength posed a genuine political threat. The gladiator as “sex-symbol” was an imperial development, employed by Ovid, Juvenal, and Martial, and it is also evident in some graffiti in Pompeii. Some gladiatorial terms had sexual connotations as well. The word gladius, for example, usually translated “sword,” was sometimes used as a term for the penis. In his comedy “Casina,” Plautus writes, “While I’m searching for her sword [gladium] to see if she has one, I got hold of a hilt. On second thoughts, though, she didn’t have a sword [gladium], for that would have been cold.”97 Wiedemann, furthermore, points out that some “texts associate the Latin word for the gladiator’s trainer (lanista) with that for a pimp (leno).”98 Art also depicted the sexuality of the fighters. A stone relief from Italy, for example, shows a gladiator fighting an engorged penis.99 A terracotta gladiatorial helmet shaped like a penis was found at Pompeii; also found at Pompeii was a small bronze figurine of a gladiator fighting off a doglike beast growing out of his penis.100 Michael Grant interprets the dog’s vicious attack as “a visual simile for the uncontrollable sexual impulse.”101 Both literary and visual media, therefore, associate the gladiator with rampant sexuality. Carlin Barton suggests that this relationship is due, at least in part, to the inevitability of the gladiator’s death. This was a man “free from restraint, a wanton, a sensualist without compunction.”102 Augustine would likely agree with Barton. The sinner, he explains, acts, “with the spirit of a gladiator, since he despairs of his life, he does whatever he can do to satisfy his desires and lusts.”103 Ancient authors also gave attention to the gladiator’s seductive powers. Juvenal’s sixth satire, for example, focuses on women’s attraction to gladiators. Concerning Eppia, a senator’s wife who eloped with her favorite gladiator, he writes,

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And what were the youthful charms which captivated Eppia? What did she see in him to allow herself to be called “a she-Gladiator”? Her dear Sergius had already begun to shave; a wounded arm gave promise of a discharge, and there were sundry deformities in his face: a scar caused by the helmet, a huge wen upon his nose, a nasty humour always trickling from his eye. But then he was a gladiator! . . . It was this that she preferred to children and to country, to sister and to husband. What these women love is the sword.104

Faustina, Marcus Aurelius’s wife, was suspected of having had affairs with gladiators because her son Commodus, unlike her husband, was engrossed by the sport.105 And at Pompeii the retiarius Crescens was known as “the netter of girls by night” and the “girls’ darling.”106 Roman apprehension about the sexual magnetism of gladiators eventually made its way into legislative issues. Augustus, apparently concerned about gladiators’ allure, restricted women—with the exception of the Vestal Virgins—to the rearmost seats at the games, presumably to create distance between Roman women and these exotic, erotic warriors.107 The Romans’ concern regarding the sexuality of the gladiators is also evident in legislation that classified them with prostitutes and pimps.108 The infamia suffered by gladiators, actors, and prostitutes (people whose living depended on public consumption) had legal ramifications: they were restricted from witnessing wills or other legal transactions and from appearing before a court on their own or another’s behalf.109 Marcus Aurelius judged these people to be unworthy of paying taxes because their money was covered in blood.110 These individuals were no longer part of the political or social body, and because of their opprobrious behavior, they may have been refused burial in public cemeteries.111 Romans’ unease extended beyond worries about controlling the gladiator’s sexuality; they were also concerned with controlling the gladiators themselves. The Romans never forgot the political and social danger that could stem from the strength and bravery of the gladiators, particularly as it related to their ability to gain massive popular support. There was always the possibility of rebellion, always the image of Spartacus in the collective memory.112 During Catiline’s conspiracy, for example, the Senate moved gladiators from Rome to Campania, where policing was more effective; in the same year, 63 B.C.E., Gaius Marcellus was expelled from Capua for trying to solicit the support of gladiators for an uprising.113 When Caesar invaded Italy in 49 B.C.E., his opponents were particularly concerned about the five thousand gladiators owned by him and kept at or near Capua. To prevent them

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from causing any trouble, these gladiators were distributed among the city’s population, with only two in each household.114 In sum, myriad social and political dangers were associated with the gladiator. The perceived inability to control his image, his popularity, and his strength led society to push the gladiator to the margins, to the “un-Roman” ground where his threat was more clearly defined and managed.

The Gladiator Revered Although any discussion of the gladiator in antiquity must adequately convey the disgust many Romans felt about the occupation, it should not dismiss the great respect offered to gladiators for their bravery. If, on the one hand, gladiators were despised as socially inferior and suffered infamia, they were also heralded as the embodiment of Roman strength and virtue, characteristics traditionally accorded the greatest of men and military heroes. Ancient sources reveal a respect for the moral value of gladiatorial combat, and gladiators were regularly associated with glory, discipline, and, ironically, even an enviable eroticism. They risked death, but they had the opportunity to do what many free men in Roman society did not: to fight well, to die well, and, thereby, to exhibit the highest Roman virtues of bravery, endurance, and self-control.115 Wiedemann, commenting on the complexity of the gladiator’s place in society, writes, “The gladiator was not simply a social outcast. What made him peculiar was that the particular virtus he exercised gave him a claim to be a Roman.”116 Philosophers appealed to the spectacles as lessons in masculinity, as demonstrations of military valor or Stoic fortitude.117 For instance, Pliny the Younger writes that Trajan’s games were “nothing lax or dissolute to weaken and destroy the manly spirit of his subjects, but one to inspire them to face honourable wounds and look scorn on death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory even in the persons of criminals and slaves.”118 Pliny’s comments were intended to show the usefulness of the spectacles for the spectator and were not a praise of gladiators per se, but his statements do suggest that some ancient writers thought gladiatorial combats could play a positive role in the moral development of Romans. Seneca and Martial also viewed gladiatorial exhibitions as offering examples of virtus.119 Wistrand explains the didactic nature of the spectacles: It was more important to live well than to live long, and to live well it was necessary to learn to despise death. . . . The performers in the arena, be they

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gladiators, professional hunters, or simply criminals who had been sentenced to death, could set a good example. Outcasts as they were, they could give proof of bravery and contempt for death.120

The low social standing of many of the gladiators only enhanced the examples of masculinity they offered: even condemned criminals could embody virtus or ж̡̛̩̠̬̝ (manliness). These virtues could almost be transferred, it seems, from the combatant to the thoughtful spectator. Particularly important for our purposes, the Late Republic witnessed the addition of auctorati, paid volunteers, to the ranks of the gladiators. Auctorati were free or freed individuals who hired themselves out as gladiators in hopes of winning fame, profit, or honor. Arguing that auctorati were not uncommon, Keith Hopkins writes, The existence of the word, auctorati, for freeborn gladiators suggests that they were commonplace. This is corroborated by the presence of free names (e.g. Q. Petillius) in surviving advertisements or programmes of gladiatorial contests (e.g. CIL 4.2508). In one list, 9 out of 28 gladiators are apparently free men (CIL 9.465–6). . . . The motives for free men to become gladiators probably ranged from poverty to prodigality (Tatian, Against the Greeks 23 = Patrologia Graeca 6.857).121

There is ample literary evidence for the popularity of gladiatorial games among freed or free persons.122 Ville and Barton suggest that by the end of Republic, over half of the gladiators were volunteers.123 According to Dio, several Roman equestrians, two senators, and the son of a praetor fought in Caesar’s games alongside those condemned to death. In addition, Dio mentions that one senator asked (but was not allowed) to fight as a gladiator in full armor and that another participated in the gladiatorial games at the dedication of the temple of Caesar. The popularity of participating in spectacles is evidenced by the enactment of laws intended to curb the participation of free men in gladiatorial combat. Dio, for example, mentions a law that forbade senators from fighting as gladiators.124 Tiberius punished aristocrats who tried to evade laws concerning gladiatorial combat, and Gaius killed some equestrians for practicing as gladiators.125 Laws prohibiting people of the senatorial and equestrian rank from participating in spectacles, however, seem to have been difficult to enforce. In 11 C.E. Augustus allowed equestrians to fight because the prohibition was useless.126 During Nero’s reign the prohibitions were not enforced, but Vitellius reestablished them.127

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At least eight emperors trained as gladiators or fought in gladiatorial contests and on occasion even forced aristocrats to fight in the arena.128 Caligula, for instance, had Proculus dragged from his seat and forced him to fight in the arena, because, Suetonius intimates, he was handsome. Proculus defeated the two gladiators he fought but was nevertheless beheaded.129 Suetonius also reports that Nero forced four hundred senators and six hundred equestrians to fight in the arena.130 Several scholars have offered theories to explain the increasing interest among men of high social status in competing as gladiators. Carlin Barton suggests that in imperial Rome honor came to individuals, ironically, through dishonor and humiliation. She writes, The importance of the social and psychological role of the gladiator among the free and privileged classes in Rome developed apace with the notion that with the failure of the aristocratic republic, dignitas, “social worth,” had become a word whose only content was humiliation. One finds in Roman literature, from Cicero on, a sense that the price exacted for political, social, and economic status (indeed, for life) had become self-abasement, and that honor and dishonor had become synonymous. The traditional testimonials of power, freedom, and pride began to signal as well powerlessness, enslavement, and humiliation.131

In some ways aristocrats might not have considered themselves different from gladiators. They were not free—even though they were freeborn— because in order to earn a social standing, they served as the emperor’s slaves.132 These men demonstrated their virtus in the arena in order to earn honor. Barton argues that the honor gained through the good fight in the arena outweighed the loss of honor one suffered by entering the arena.133 Hopkins, alternatively, is skeptical about interpreting dishonor (e.g., of fighting as a gladiator) as honor. Commenting on the variety of Roman conceptions of gladiators, he writes, “In such a steeply stratified society, it seemed outrageous for men of high status to throw away privilege, to declass themselves, even if ‘in this way they achieved death instead of dishonor’ (Dio 56.25).”134 Instead, Hopkins emphasizes the martial elements of gladiatorial training and contests to explain aristocratic participation. He suggests that “what attracted them was the opportunity to display their military prowess, their courage and their skill, plus the desire for victory, and the shouts of the crowd. At the risk of death, it was their last chance to play soldiers in front of a large audience.”135 Men volunteered to be gladiators because the opportunity to demonstrate their valor in war was not readily available. Whether

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or not men joined the ranks of the gladiators in order to demonstrate their military prowess, as Hopkins suggests, spectators of the gladiatorial games expected a close-fought battle, one that displayed warlike enthusiasm and courage. “Without an adversary,” Seneca asserts, “virtus shrivels. We see how great and how efficient it really is, only when it shows by endurance what it is capable of.”136 Gladiatorial games allowed the opportunity for virtus to be displayed, even in the bodies of the most unlikely candidates: criminals, prisoners of war, or slaves. One of the ways auctorati revealed their bravery was by taking an oath, the sacramentum gladiatorium, to die the good death. Through this oath (“to be burned by fire, bound in chains, to be beaten, to die by the sword”137), they became responsible for their own deaths; technically, they were no longer compelled to die but chose to. Barton writes, “Because of the sacramentum, the assumption of a solemn obligation, the gladiator’s fate became a point of honor. Henceforward not to show himself willing to be burned, bound, beaten, and die would be dishonorable.”138 These gladiators replaced dishonorable compulsion with honorable complicity. In this way, what would have been seen as an ignoble death was now imbued with honor. The Christian martyrs are depicted as auctorati in the sense that they enter the arena by their own wills. By employing the language of volition, the authors of the martyrologies illustrate Christian honor. Barton also suggests that in spite of the degradation of the gladiator, he became an image of empowerment to the disenfranchised: “To witness the voluntary gladiator play his role to the moment of truth was to witness the victim die invictus. It was a parable of hope to every victim. . . . It was one which offered a pattern of glory to the powerless.”139 If the symbol of the gladiator offered an example of transforming potential humiliation into noble self-sacrifice, then Christian appropriation of such a figure is understandable. As a model of empowerment, furthermore, the portrayal of the martyrs as auctorati was particularly useful in the construction of Christian identities. It was a way to show Christians freely choosing their fates— essential to Roman masculinity—rather than Christians as victims of others’ power. In addition to associating the gladiator’s battle and approach to death with masculinity and honor, the figure of the gladiator also took on metaphorical meanings: a person exhibiting certain virtues might be described as a gladiator. In the Phormio, for example, Terence uses the expression “with the spirit of the gladiator” (gladiatorio animo) as the equivalent of “without hope or fear.”140 Seneca uses the image of the gladiator and his oath as the model for his “good man”:

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You have enlisted under oath. . . . I will not have you deceived. The words of this most honourable compact are the same as the words of that most disgraceful one, to wit: “Through burning, imprisonment, or death by the sword.”. . . You must die erect and unyielding. . . . There is no discharge for us from the moment we are born.141

Cicero, likewise, uses the gladiator as an illustration of his “good man”: Look at the gladiators . . . what blows they endure! See, how men, who have been well trained, prefer to receive a blow rather than basely avoid it! . . . What gladiator of ordinary merit has ever uttered a groan or changed countenance? Who of them has disgraced himself, I will not say upon his feet, but who has disgraced himself in his fall? Who after falling has drawn in his neck when ordered to suffer the fatal stroke?142

The martyrologies may also employ gladiatorial imagery metaphorically: since the martyrs were not trained gladiators and did not have the opportunity to defeat their opponents and thereby live, Christians transferred the virtues of the gladiator to their heroes. The martyrs’ nobility and willingness to die exhibited the best characteristics of the gladiator. By depicting the martyrs as gladiators, the authors of the martyrologies acknowledged the social position of Christians, but they also used this characterization to challenge the perception of Christianity.

T H E AT H L E T E A N D T H E S O L D I E R I N A N T I Q U I T Y

Although amphitheatrical imagery dominates much of the martyrological literature, many Christian authors also utilized athletic and martial images.143 The author of the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne tells us that, like runners, the martyrs “sped on to Christ”;144 Maturus and Blandina are both described as “noble contestants” (1.17, 19). Blandina was filled with such power and strength that her torturers admitted that they “were vanquished” by this “noble athlete” (1.18–19). Attalus entered the arena as a “wellprepared athlete” (1.43). These “athletes,” Christians willing to compete in the games and to die in order to live, were trained in Christian discipline (1.43). Christ himself is described as a “mighty and invincible athlete” (1.42).145 We have already seen some of the connections between gladiators and warriors. Seneca, for example, conflates the soldier and gladiator.146 The soldier’s principal weapon was a medium-length sword, the gladius hispanensis,

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from which the name “gladiator” derives. Since military valor was one of the most effective means of portraying one’s virtus, it is not surprising that authors of the martyrologies chose to portray their heroes as soldiers. The depiction of martyrs as athletes, however, is potentially more problematic.147 According to many ancient historians and philosophers, athletics was a decidedly un-Roman activity. Roman authors rarely discuss athletics in any detail, and those who do often focus on the repugnancy of the required nudity.148 Romans believed it was degrading to display oneself for the consumption of an audience. As opposed to actors, who typically wore costumes, and gladiators, who were largely covered with protective gear and helmets that concealed their bodies and faces, athletes were completely exposed to the spectators. Athletes thus degraded themselves even more than these other performers. Philosophers’ judgments against athletics, however, may point to apprehension about other social issues. For example, many of these authors voiced concerns that the self-indulgences of the Greeks would lead to the decline of Roman values: Galen compared athletes to pigs, Plutarch blamed the gymnasium for the political decadence of the Greeks, and Tacitus feared that young men would engage in sport instead of military battles.149 Seneca believed that physical exertion even dulled the mind.150 We should note, however, that Seneca’s appraisal of athletics is not wholly negative. He compares the athlete to a wise man wrestling with Fortune: both have to submit to the difficulties of training to increase their endurance and to be victorious. The wise man has to suffer hardship to enhance and prove his virtus.151 Scholarship on ancient sport has tended to reinforce Roman elite views: Greek athletics found no useful place in the Roman world because Romans were inherently utilitarian and bodily exercise must be directly related to the development of martial skill.152 More recent scholarship, however, has focused on evidence from nonelite sources and concluded that athletic skill and competition were quite important in imperial Rome. Tacitus reports that the people demanded Greek-style contests.153 The Imperial baths, furthermore, were constructed with palaestrae, which functioned as a place for Greek-style exercise. The popularity of Domitian’s Capitoline games offers yet more evidence of the role of sport in the Roman world. The sheer size of the stadium built by Domitian in Rome, which would hold about fifteen thousand spectators, suggests that athletic events were of interest to Romans. Romans, of course, did enthusiastically compete in some Greek competitions. In particular, they were attracted to the Greek style of boxing, wrestling, and the pankration, which combined boxing and wrestling.154 Athletes were also popular subjects in Roman art.155

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There is some evidence that the figure of the athlete was associated with the amphitheater. In the Greek East, the classic Greek stadium—where athletic contests were held—was also used for Roman spectacles, including gladiatorial games.156 The inscriptional evidence at Aphrodisias regarding the city’s devotion to the imperial cult is particularly helpful in showing the association of traditional Greek athletics with gladiatorial combat.157 Although the association of the athlete with the amphitheater and the gladiator is interesting, it is neither possible nor necessary to insist that the authors of the martyrologies exploited this relationship. The amphitheater was valuable to the story of the martyrs because it was a place where the possession of power was contested and where masculinity and masculine virtus was displayed. The figure of the athlete—regardless of its association with the amphitheater or elite Romans’ disdain of the sport—was commonly used to portray masculine virtues. Dio Chrysostom, for example, praises athletics because it “produces at the same time manliness, strength, and self-control.”158 And in praise of a recently deceased boxer, Melankomas, he writes, Indeed, the most amazing thing about the man was his being undefeated not only by combatants but also by labor, burning heat, gluttony, and lust. For the one who intends to be superior to his opponents must be defeated by none of these things. For if he had not been self-controlled and rational, I do not suppose he would have been so superior in strength, not even if he was by nature the strongest.159

By portraying the martyrs as gladiators, athletes, and soldiers, the authors focus their reader’s attention on agonistic figures and thus highlight Christian masculinity. The reward Christians received for competing successfully was a heavenly or spiritual crown—reminiscent of the reward given to the victors of athletic or musical competitions. The crown was also a symbol of military victory.160 Gregory M. Stevenson notes, “The wreath finds its clearest expression as a symbol of honor within the contexts of military awards and benefactor relationships, even to the extent that ̷̴̡̮̯̱̝̩ could be used as a synonym for ̴̨̯̥̘.”161 For Christians this crown was not a symbol of temporal victory but of spiritual and eternal victory: the martyrs competed against the Roman ruler and won, thus earning immortality through an honorable death. The martyrs of Lyons and Vienne earned crowns of immortality by enduring various tortures: “For plaiting one crown from different colors and all kinds of flowers, they offered it to the father. It befits the noble athletes,

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then, having endured diverse contests and a great victory, to take the great crown of immortality.”162 In the Martyrdom of Pionius, Pionius and his companions were mocked by the crowd, and, like Jesus, were crowned; the martyrs, however, rejected these crowns, tore them apart, and threw them to the ground because they were meaningless.163 The crowns Pionius and his fellow Christians desired, and ultimately earned, were those that were given by God alone; those given by pagans symbolized apostasy, as the story of Euctemon makes clear. Euctemon, a Christian leader in one of the churches in Smyrna, is described as ridiculous because he wore a crown as he recanted his faith, offered sacrifice in the temple of Nemesis, and swore by the emperor’s genius and the goddesses of Fate (18.13–14). The author of the Martyrdom of Pionius contrasts temporal crowns received in this world to those crowns that symbolize immortality. Indeed, the author of this martyrology states that Pionius’s crown was revealed in his dead—but undefeated—body.164 Interestingly, some martyrologies claim that after torture or death, God rejuvenates the martyr’s body. Pionius’s “crown was made manifest through his body”: after the fire was extinguished, the Christians saw Pionius’s “body adorned like that of an athlete in his full prime. His ears were not distorted; his hair lay in order on the surface of his head; and his beard was in flower like with the first growth of hair.”165 Similarly, the author of the Martyrdom of Marian and James writes, “You hung up his body, beat his sides, racked his bowels, and yet our Marian, with his faith in God, grew great in body as well as in soul.”166 Through their strength—a vigor often explicitly attributed to the presence of Christ—the martyrs defeated the enemy, envisioned as both the devil and the earthly persecutor.167 Like auctorati, having made the choice to die, Christians had only to persevere in the good death to embody masculine virtus.168 The authors’ emphasis on the arena, on the strength of the martyr, as well as explicit references to gladiators and games, provide a social and spatial context for interpreting the martyrologies. When the martyrs “received the fury of the adversary” and “beheld the passion of the enemy,” they responded like noble athletes and gladiators, models of masculinity: they focused on dying with honor.169 Though Perpetua knows she will die, she is also certain of her victory.170 Justin announces to the prefect, “We are confident that if we suffer the penalty we shall be saved.”171 The martyrs, like the gladiators, needed only to persevere in a manly struggle to receive the victory, the crown, and the promise that they would walk through the Gate of Life. In a number of ways the martyrologies appropriate both actional and spatial elements of the amphitheater. By contesting the power of the empire,

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these authors claimed power for those who seemed least likely to obtain it, those who at that moment were factually powerless. Since the martyrs were condemned to die, it seemed impossible for them to display masculine virtue. Through the production of their texts, however, these authors inscribed resistance and power onto the body of the gladiator-martyr. They insisted that the martyrs chose to die, and that they did so with masculine honor and bravery. Through the reading and consumption of the text, the Christian community appropriated that power and constructed new identities.

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Be a Man NARRATIVE TOOLS OF MASCULINIZATION IN EARLY CHRISTIAN MARTYR ACTS Leap upon me, make your assault; I shall conquer you by enduring. —SENECA, VIT.

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n their provocative article on 4 Maccabees, Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson show that virtue and masculinity—as constructed and associated in antiquity—are central concerns for the author of this Jewish martyrology: the stories about the Jewish martyrs and their persecutors are told primarily to illuminate the Jews’ possession of masculinity. In fact, they argue that 4 Maccabees is ultimately about “what it means to be a true man.”1 “The physical torture of the youths and the psychological torture of their mother,” Moore and Anderson write, “will prove their remarkable self-control, and hence their ‘manliness.’ But the torture itself, characterized by excess, is occasioned by the inability of Antiochus to control his own passions, especially his rage.”2 The author of 4 Maccabees—heavily influenced by Stoic philosophy—has already explained to his audience that reason (̷̧̨̫̟̥̮̭) should rule over emotion.3 Specifically, he warns against the passions that impede manliness: rage, fear, and pain. The masculinity of the Jewish martyrs, therefore, is revealed in their actions. It is also, however, underscored by the ruler’s actions. Moore and Anderson explain: “If the torture of the seven youths is an expression of rage on the part of the tyrant, and as such a failure of ж̡̛̩̠̬̝ (‘manliness’), it is also the occasion for a stunning exhibition of ж̡̛̩̠̬̝ on the part of the youths themselves and their elderly mother. By yielding to rage Antiochus has compromised his MASCULINITYBYOVERCOMINGFEAṞ̷̞̫̭ ANDPAIN½̷̩̫̭ THEMARTYRSHAVE confirmed theirs.”4 Thus the author of 4 Maccabees shows that the emotions of the victims and persecutor—both controlled and uncontrolled—are indicators of the presence or absence of masculine traits. Moore and Anderson’s essay is particularly instructive because it attends to the political and cultural force of textual sexuality in ancient writings.

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4 Maccabees constructs the Jew as manly by focusing on his rationality, which is demonstrated by self-mastery and adherence to Torah. The author challenges the Greek ruler’s power not by subverting traditional virtues but by appropriating them. He reveals the ruler’s lack of self-mastery and thus his lack of masculinity. By featuring an old man, seven young men,5 and a woman—all categories of people whose masculinity was normally perceived to be inferior to that of a man in his prime—the author reverses his audiences’ expectations of the possession of masculinity. Similarly, many of the characters in the Christian martyrologies would have been placed on the lower end of the continuum of masculinity—old men, young men, women, and slaves—yet the level of masculinity they demonstrate confounds the expectations of the reader. Polycarp, for example, was eighty-six years old, and Blandina was a slave. Such details may appear to be nothing more than trivial pieces of a Christian’s biography, but as I argued in the previous chapter in regard to references to the amphitheater, attention to seemingly immaterial facts can reveal profoundly important elements in the construction of Christian identities. The textually constructed martyrs—disadvantaged as a result of age, sex, or class—embody a masculinity superior to that of their persecutors. Claims to masculinity or even confessions of belief in Christ were not adequate indicators of one’s inclusion in the Christian community. Membership characteristics must be performed: they must be made visible to an audience and witnessed by spectators.6 Masculine virtues, then, were critical markers of group identity; they allowed one to be recognized as a member of the social group of Christians. In what follows, I will explore the many ways Christian authors depicted the martyrs as more masculine than those who persecuted them. I will be concerned here with subtle but nonetheless unmistakable markers of Christian manliness.

M A S C U L I N I T Y A N D V I RT U E

In his essay “How to Profit by One’s Enemies,” Plutarch connects masculinity to self-control and several other character attributes. He writes, “If you wish to distress the man who hates, do not reproach him as lewd [̛̦̩̝̥̠̫̩], effeminate [̷̨̧̝̝̦̩], undisciplined [ж̷̧̦̝̮̯̫̩], vulgar [̴̷̨̧̞̫̲̫̩], or servile [ж̸̡̧̡̡̩̤̬̫̩], but be a man [ж̩̬̚] yourself, show self-control [̴̷̡̮̱̬̩̥], be truthful [ж̧̡̡̤̰̚], and treat with kindness [̧̱̥̝̩̤̬̹½̴̭] and justice [̴̛̠̥̦̝̭] those whom you meet.”7 Similarly, Plato links masculinity to virtue when he lists prudence (̷̱̬̩̣̮̥̭), justice (̸̠̥̦̝̥̫̮̩̣), manli-

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ness (ж̡̛̩̠̬̝), and self-control (̴̸̮̱̬̫̮̩̣) as the four principal virtues.8 In antiquity a number of virtues were associated with masculinity, and many of these were employed by the authors of the martyrologies to describe the martyrs, their actions, and the events that led to their deaths. The martyrologies illustrate the superiority of Christian masculinity through the virtues discussed by the philosophers. The martyr’s volition, imperviousness to persuasion, challenge to justice, or mastery of the passions are certainly behaviors that were valued in antiquity and would have served as models of Christian conduct. If we see these behaviors as individual, unrelated characteristics, however, they will likely not add up to a compelling argument for the centrality of masculinity in the formation of Christian identities. When we take into account, though, that the authors of the martyrologies assigned to Christians so many complementary characteristics— all of which were associated with masculinity—we are offered a stunning glimpse into the textual formulation of emerging Christian group identities. This Christian identity based on socially agreed upon virtues was bolstered by the comparison of Christians who would not be expected to embody masculine ideals—specifically, the elderly, the young, women, and slaves—with non-Christians at the peak of manliness. In each case it is the Christian who displays superior masculinity. I am not suggesting that the articulation of any one of these characteristics alone is enough to sustain a masculine social identity, but the portrait of the Christian martyr that emerges from the composite picture—including the comparison to non-Christians—is strikingly masculine.

Mastery of the Passions Mastery of the passions was a central component of masculinity in the Roman world. Marcus Aurelius attributed his manly character (ж̷̡̬̬̩̥̦̩) to his ability to control his temper.9 Seneca asserted that the inability to control one’s emotions was typical of women. He explained that laws restricting the amount of time individuals can mourn were necessary because women were unable to control themselves; without legislation, they were likely to mourn for inappropriate lengths of time: “Our forefathers have enacted that, in the case of women, a year should be the limit for mourning; not that they needed to mourn for so long, but that they should mourn no longer. In the case of men, no rules are laid down, because to mourn at all is not regarded as honorable.”10 He expresses similar views in another essay that addresses grief. In this letter, he chastises Marullus for displaying womanish emotion as he mourned the death of his son: “Is it solace that you look for? Let me

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give you a scolding instead! You are like a woman in the way you take your son’s death” (99.3). He goes on to warn Marullus that when people “see a man who collapses and clings to his dead: they call him womanish and weak” (99.18). According to Seneca, the inability to control one’s emotions—in this case, grief—was womanish and antithetical to masculinity. Alternatively, Plutarch did not insist that grief was wholly incompatible with masculinity. In a letter of condolence to his friend Apollonius, Plutarch asserted the importance of expressing one’s grief in an acceptable (i.e., moderate) manner: “Reason, therefore, requires that men of understanding should be neither apathetic in such circumstances nor suffer severely. For the one course is hard-hearted and savage, the other relaxed and befitting of women [̟̰̩̝̥̦̫½̡̬½̙̭].”11 According to Plutarch, complete lack of emotion was unacceptable, but equally problematic were excessive (i.e., womanish) feelings. Later in the same letter, Plutarch states even more clearly that an excess of emotion is womanish: They say that the lawgiver of the Lycians commanded his citizens, whenever they mourned, to clothe themselves in women’s clothes to mourn, wishing to MAKEITCLEARTHATPASSION;̯Ң½̘̤̫̭=ISWOMANISHANDISNOTSUITEDTOMODERATE MEN;ж̩̠̬̘̮̥=WHOLAYCLAIMTOTHEEDUCATIONOFTHEFREE BORN&ORTOMOURN IS WOMANISH ;̤Ӭ̧̰=  AND WEAK ;ж̡̮̤̩̙̭=  AND IGNOBLE ;ж̡̟̩̩̙̭=  FOR WOMEN indulge in mourning more than men, and barbarians more than Greeks, and inferior men more than better men; and of the barbarians themselves, not the most noble, Celts and Galatians, and all who are born filled with a more manly SPIRIT;ж̡̩̠̬̥̫̯̙̬̫̰= BUTRATHERTHE%GYPTIANSAND3YRIANSAND,YDIANSANDALL those who resemble them. (113A)12

Plutarch reminds Apollonius that if he desires to be manly, he must not be emotional or irrational. If he displays these behaviors, he might be counted among weak and ignoble women and barbarians, all of whom, of course, were positioned on the lower end of the continuum of masculinity. Although in these essays, Plutarch and Seneca speak of self-control specifically in situations of mourning, their disapproval of their friends’ actions reflects more universal concerns. Their counsel is based upon the perceived relationship between masculinity and the control of emotion; masculinity requires that emotions be kept in balance. To take another example of the threat to masculinity posed by emotions, we can turn to Plutarch’s essay “On the Control of Anger.” Here Plutarch describes anger (̷̨̤̰̭) as unmanly (̫Ѿ̠Áж̩̠̬̹̠̣̭);13 not surprisingly, he maintains that women are more prone to anger than men (457B), and he

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warns against transporting anger from women’s quarters—where it presumably originates—to men’s (457D). In this essay, control or lack of control over emotions is clearly related to one’s sex: all of Plutarch’s examples of individuals who successfully control the passions are men. In addition to explicitly associating anger with women, he describes the lack of control over one’s passions as “weak” (ж̡̮̤̩̭̚), an adjective often applied to women. Seneca also writes an essay on anger, and he, like Plutarch, contrasts the behavior of men to that of women: “Anger is a most womanish and childish weakness. ‘But,’ you will say, ‘it is found in men also.’ True, for even men may have childish and womanish natures.”14 Seneca further explains his position by directly addressing possible counterarguments: “What then?” you ask; “will the good man not be angry if his father is murdered, his mother outraged before his eyes?” No, he will not be angry, but he will avenge them, will protect them. . . . “What then? If a good man should see his father or his son under the knife, will he not weep, will he not faint?” But this is the way we see women act whenever they are upset by the slightest suggestion of danger. The good man will perform his duties undisturbed and unafraid; and he will in such a way do all that is worthy of a good man as to do nothing that is unworthy of a man. (1.12)

According to Seneca, anger also diminishes one’s strength. Again he answers possible counterarguments: “ ‘But against the enemy,’ it is said, ‘anger is necessary.’ Nowhere is it less so; for there the attack ought not to be disorderly but regulated and under control. What else is it, in fact, but their anger—its own worst foe—that reduces to impotency the barbarians, who are so much stronger of body than we, and so much better able to endure hardship? So, too, in the case of gladiators skill is their protection, anger their undoing” (1.11). Anger, then, far from fueling strength and resolve, reduces men to barbarians; it marks one as non-Roman. To be angry is to be inferior and “other.” Seneca goes so far as to assert that anger and virtue cannot coexist: “A man must banish virtue from his heart before he can admit wrath, since vices do not consort with virtues, and a man can no more be both angry and good at the same time than he can be sick and well” (2.12).15 Anger, moreover, is particularly dangerous because it invites a variety of other passions: “How great a blessing to escape anger, the greatest of all ills, and along with it madness, ferocity, cruelty, rage, and the other passions that attend anger!” (2.12). Control over one’s emotions is fundamental to being a man. The authors of the martyrologies employed the discourse of the mastery of the passions to illustrate that the martyrs were neither indifferent

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to nor overly anxious about their fates. They were instead models of Roman masculinity. Mastery of the passions is depicted through the emotional and physical responses given—or rather, not given—by the martyrs. We are told, for instance, that Alexander did not groan or cry out during his torture.16 Sanctus is described as having “extraordinary” or “surpassing” strength, a strength that gave him the ability to remain unbending during his torture (1.20). He was “refreshed and strengthened by the heavenly fountain of the water of life flowing out from the stomach of Christ” so that he did not feel the pain of the torture (1.22). Carpus revealed his self-control by responding to the proconsul’s threats with a “gentle smile.”17 The Martyrdom of Polycarp illustrates Christian masculinity by describing the martyrs’ control over their bodies as they were being persecuted. The unnamed martyrs silently endured torture that exposed their inner arteries and veins,18 and they withstood being stretched over sharp shells and any number of other tortures devised by the tyrant (3.1). When the authorities came in search of Polycarp, he “was not troubled” (5.1). And later, after he urged the governor to proceed with the execution, Polycarp was “filled with joyful courage, his countenance was filled with grace, so that . . . he did not collapse in terror at what was said to him” (12.1). Here the author contrasts what clearly would be a typical response to this situation—namely, terror— with the Christian response—namely, courage and grace. The mastery of the passions displayed by Christian martyrs is further underscored by the actions of those around them. At each point the bystanders were amazed by the Christians’ masculine self-control. To take just one example for now: note how the author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp highlights the pagans’ lack of masculinity by revealing their susceptibility to emotion—while the Christian martyrs endured torture stoically, the “bystanders were brought to pity and mourning” (2.2). By juxtaposing the Christians’ control of the passions with the spectators’ emotions, the author reveals which group is more masculine. In Christian martyrologies control over emotions is often coupled with— or enabled by—an insensitivity to pain, the display of physical stamina or strength (often in the form of gladiatorial or athletic imagery), or the presence of God or Christ with the martyr. In the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, Blandina’s confession of faith brought her such insensitivity to pain that we are told she no longer perceived what was happening.19 The Christians described in the Martyrdom of Polycarp did not feel the heat of the fire to which they were exposed, because they thought not of the immediate and short-lived fire but of the future and eternal fire that brings punishment and justice.20

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The motif of Christ’s presence with or in the martyrs during torture and death is also common in the early martyrologies and is often used to explain Christian fortitude. The soon-to-be martyr Conon—described as an old man and called grandfather by the man who arrested him—asserted that God gave him strength. This God-given strength came in handy when he was tied to a horse and dragged behind it, and again when the prefect had spikes driven into his ankles and forced him to run ahead of a chariot, all the while being goaded on by charioteers wielding whips.21 Conon remained in full control during these tortures, as evidenced by his silence. Similar accounts can be found in other martyrologies. Christ suffered in Sanctus, thus allowing him to overcome the adversary.22 Carpus insisted that there was one whom the persecutors could not see who would suffer within him.23 Pomponius, assuming the voice of Christ, told Perpetua that he would suffer with her.24 These authorial techniques of mitigating the pain experienced by God’s witnesses could serve to strengthen resolve in later communities that might experience persecution or other forms of hardship by suggesting that if they keep their faith, Christ will bear the pain of torture for them. Interestingly, the author of the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne uses pain as a warning against apostasy by asserting that it was not the Christian who confessed who suffered physical and emotional pain, but the one who denied his faith.25 One way the authors of the martyrologies illustrated Christian masculinity was by narrating the martyrs’ ability to control the passions during their trials, tortures, and deaths.

Volition The ability to control one’s life—including having the option of taking it— was also vital to the ideology of masculinity in antiquity. According to Seneca, men should avoid being coerced at any cost. In an essay on preparing for death, he explains that cooperation frees people from forced action: See to it that you never do anything unwillingly: That which is bound to be a necessity if you rebel, is not a necessity if you desire it. This is what I mean: he who takes his orders gladly, escapes the bitterest part of slavery—doing what one does not want to do. The man who does something under orders is not unhappy; he is unhappy who does something against his will. Let us therefore so set our minds in order that we may desire whatever is demanded of us by circumstances, and above all that we may reflect upon our end without sadness.26

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In another essay Seneca quotes Epicurus offering a different way of escaping coercion: “It is wrong to live under constraint; but no man is constrained to live under constraint. Of course not! On all sides lie many short and simple paths to freedom” (12.10). The path to freedom to which Seneca refers is death.27 For Seneca, Cato’s suicide illustrated his freedom and thus his masculinity. He insists that even after Caesar gained power and controlled both land and sea, Cato had a way to escape: suicide.28 Although the sword was unable to secure the Republic’s freedom, it could guarantee Cato’s. But it could only provide freedom, Seneca explains, if Cato turned it on himself, since it is “as ignoble to beg death from any man as to beg life” (2.10). Seneca’s praise of Cato’s actions grows even stronger when he explains that he had the resolve to kill himself not just once but twice. When Cato’s first selfinflicted wound did not kill him, Seneca attributes it to the gods: “It was not enough for the immortal gods to look but once on Cato. His virtue was held in check and called back that it might display itself in a harder role; for to seek death needs not so great a soul as to reseek it” (2.12). Lucan also suggests that suicide can ensure one’s freedom: But let the foe learn that our men are unconquerable; let him dread the mad courage that welcomes death. . . . They will try to tempt us with terms of peace, and will seek to bribe us by the offer of dishonourable life. I wish that they would promise pardon and encourage us to hope for life; for so our matchless death would gain greater renown, and they would not think, when they see us pierce our vitals with the warm steel, that we have abandoned hope.29

These examples show the importance of one’s approach to death: real men choose to die rather than acquiesce to another’s will. Similarly, the authors of the martyrologies insist that the martyrs chose to die; they were not coerced. Such assertions of volition diverted power—and thus masculinity—from the persecutor to the martyr by denying that the persecutor had any real claim over the life and death of the Christian. Germanicus’s masculinity, for example, accentuated pagan impotence because he wrested control from the persecutor; his command of the situation discredited the governor’s claim to power. Rather than waiting for the beast to attack him, he attacked the beast, thus revealing his freedom to decide when and how to die.30 The narrative action simultaneously reveals Germanicus’s decision to die, his responsibility for his own death, and his dismissal of the power of external forces.

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Germanicus’s act of pulling the beast upon himself is but one example of the Christians’ control over life and death.31 Agathonike, whose death will be discussed in more depth in the next chapter, threw herself upon the stake after watching other Christians die.32 Perpetua drew the sword to her own throat after the executioner failed to strike her correctly and make the kill.33 Polycarp’s and Pionius’s insistence that they be allowed to mount the pyre of their own accord also witnesses to the participation of the martyrs in their deaths. Through the martyrs’ involvement in their own deaths, the authors instruct their readers that they, like the characters about whom they read, are responsible for their own fates.34 Like the oath that binds gladiators to the “good death,” Christians embody their social identity by wholly participating in their own deaths; they perform masculinity—indeed, they perform Christianity itself—through strength, endurance, volition, and self-control. In addition to illustrating the ways Christians physically took control over their deaths (i.e., suicide), the authors of the martyrologies show that the martyrs were active in orchestrating their own deaths. The author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for example, insists that the martyrs were not victims because they made the decision to die. The martyrs’ complicity in their deaths shows that they are not victims of circumstance but fully in charge of their destinies; it also instills in the readers the confidence that they control their own futures. Early martyrologies emphasized the martyr’s volition and complicity in death to illustrate that neither the martyr nor the later Christian community was subject to the whims of an individual. Rather, Christians must choose how to live and when to die. Although the authors of the martyrologies depict Christians as choosing to die, many of them carefully avoid suggesting that the martyrs were eager to die. Polycarp did not seek his death by presenting himself to the governor.35 In fact, the author of this martyrology begins his letter by insisting that Christian imitation of Jesus lies in waiting to be handed over, not specifically in dying (1.2).36 The author explains that Polycarp moved from place to place hoping to avoid arrest. Soon, however, he received a vision that he would be burned alive.37 Just as the passion predictions in the Gospels prepare the reader for the inevitability of Jesus’ death, so Polycarp’s dream prepares the reader for the inevitability of his death. Even after his vision, however, Polycarp did not pursue death; rather, he waited for the police to find him. The author assures his readers that when the cavalry arrived at the estate, Polycarp still could have fled. He chose to remain, however, because it was God’s will. After narrating Polycarp’s arrest, the author turns the reader’s attention to how the Christian faces death. The governor gives Polycarp the chance

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to save himself no fewer than seven times, but his threats and promises are inconsequential since the fact and means (i.e., burning) of Polycarp’s death are already assured. In a moving speech that highlights Polycarp’s volition and strength, the soon-to-be-martyr asks the governor not to nail him to the post on which he was to be burned, because “the one who grants me to endure the fire will grant me to remain in the flames untortured without the safeguard of your nails.”38 Polycarp is described as strong and courageous enough to withstand his fiery death. Ultimately, Polycarp dies because he has made a choice to do so. We see, then, that from the moment the crowd calls for his arrest, Polycarp is in complete control: he successfully evades capture several times (5.1; 6.1); he decides to hide no longer (7.1); he allows the authorities to find him (7.1); of his own will, he comes down to meet those who have come to arrest him (7.2); he decides when he will leave the estate to appear in the stadium (7.3). The author does not allow his reader to imagine Polycarp as a victim or at the mercy of another man. Instead, he shows that Polycarp allowed his death to take place. The author of the Martyrdom of Pionius employs the motif of choice even more clearly.39 Knowing of their imminent arrest, Pionius placed chains around his neck and the necks of two of his fellow-Christians, Sabina and Asclepiades. The author explains that he did this “in order that all should know that they had decided [̡̛̦̦̬̦̝̮̥̩] to be taken off to prison immediately.”40 Later, when questioned about the chains, Pionius explained that he and his fellow Christians wore the chains to show that they did “not consent to be questioned.” Pionius insisted, “We have decided [̡̛̦̬̩̝̩̯̭] not to go to the temple of Nemesis but to the prison. And lastly, that you may not, seizing us, take us off by force, but rather leave us alone because we are already bearing chains. . . . Thus we have decided [̡̨̡̛̦̦̬̦̝̩]” (6.3–4). Pionius responded to the proconsul’s offer of life in exchange for sacrifice by saying, “I . . . have chosen [̝ѣ̬̫ԉ̨̝̥] to die” (4.7). The language of decision (̴̛̦̬̩) and choice (̝ѣ̴̬̙) that recurs throughout these texts attests to the importance attached to volition. One way Christians show their masculinity is by choosing how to live and when to die. The author of the Martyrdom of Pionius not only insists on the martyr’s volition, he also traces Christian volition back to Jesus. The Jews of Smyrna, according to this author, claimed that Jesus was nothing more than a criminal. Pionius, as we might expect, rejects the premise: “What manner of criminal has filled the whole world with disciples? What manner of criminal had disciples and others with them die for the name of their master? By the name of what manner of criminal were devils cast out for so many years, are being cast out, and will be cast out?” (13.4–6). What was most

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important for Pionius, however, was not rebutting the claim that Jesus was a criminal but insisting that he did not die by force: “What these people do not recognize is that this criminal departed from life at his own choice” (4.7). The fact that Jesus was executed as a criminal is irrelevant to Pionius’s case, since he believes Jesus was innocent of the charges leveled against him. So too, then, Christians who are arrested because of their faith are innocent of wrongdoing and are able to choose death rather than being victims of their persecutors. Like Polycarp before them, Pionius and his fellow Christians insisted that they need not be coerced to approach the pyre: “Light a fire and we will climb upon it ourselves” (18.2). As he describes this event, the author assures his audience that throughout the martyrs’ torture, “they were not conquered by the enemy or by the hypocritical Euctemon” (18.12). Through the repetition of the language of choice and decision, the martyrologies vehemently deny that these Christians were subject to an earthly power. The dynamics of power and masculinity shift and the martyr is depicted as more masculine because he is in full control; the martyrs’ masculinity allows them to determine the outcome of events. Like Seneca’s Cato, the early Christian martyrs chose freedom (i.e., death) over enslavement (i.e., living under constraint).

Justice In his essay “On the Control of Anger” Plutarch states that manliness (ж̡̛̩̠̬̝) goes well with justice (̸̠̥̦̝̥̫̮̩̣).41 As we have already seen, other ancient authors, such as Plato, Philo, Polemo, and Marcus Aurelius, connected manliness with justice as well. Claims to justice and accusations of injustice in ancient texts thus carried with them appraisals of gender. Since justice was a masculine ideal, we should not be surprised to find that in the group identity rhetoric of the martyrologies, Christians and Christian actions are described as just, while persecutors and their actions are unjust. By insisting that actions against the martyrs were unjust—and were recognized as such—the authors of these texts underscored the persecutors’ lack of masculinity. When the discourse of justice is coupled with other signals of masculinity, it bolsters the authors’ claims about the character of Christians and of non-Christian “others.” The author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp describes Germanicus’s quest for death as stemming from a desire to depart quickly from the “unjust [ж̛̠̦̫̰] and lawless [ж̷̨̩̫̰] life” of the pagans.42 Pagan life is characterized by injustice, but the author does not leave the reader to wonder about the relationship between Christianity and justice. When the governor offers

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to set Polycarp free if he denies his faith, the martyr responds by insisting that he cannot abandon his king and savior, who has never been unjust (ђ̡̛̠̦̣̮̩) to him (9.3). Polycarp’s affirmation of God’s justice is a powerful foil to Germanicus’s condemnation of pagan life. The author continues to polarize pagan and Christian existence with respect to justice when he narrates Polycarp’s statement to the governor that Christians are not permitted to change from a better to a worse state, but must change “from wickedness to justice [̛̠̦̝̥̝]” (11.1). The devil, who incited Nicetes to ask the governor not to relinquish Polycarp’s body to the Christians, is “the adversary of the race of the just” (17.1). Through endurance, Polycarp defeated the unjust (к̠̥̦̫̩) governor (19.2). This author establishes Christian masculinity both by depicting Christians and Christian beliefs as just and by describing paganism as unjust (i.e., womanish). The injustice of pagan action is also a central motif in many of the other Christian martyrologies. In the Martyrdom of Saints Ptolemaeus and Lucius, a Christian woman requested a divorce because she could not live with a man who acted against natural law and justice.43 She left her husband because she did not want to be an accomplice to his injustices (6). In the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne the prefect dismisses the “just request” of Vettius Epagathus, who could not endure the “unreasonable judgment” (ж̷̴̧̟̭ ̛̦̬̮̥̩) of the ruler.44 When Perpetua argued with the tribune that she and Felicitas had not agreed to dress as the priestesses of Ceres, the editor tells us “even injustice [iniustitia] recognized justice [iustitiam].”45 The author of the Martyrdom of Apollonius states the issue succinctly: “The one who turns from the just [̴̛̠̥̦̝̩], good, and wonderful commands of God is truly the lawless, unholy atheist. But the one who turns from all injustice [ж̛̠̥̦̝̭], lawlessness, idolatry, and evil thoughts, and flees the power of sin and never turns to them, this one is just [̛̠̦̝̥̫̭].”46 This author not only describes the person who follows God’s laws as just but also insists that the divine laws that keep Christians from sacrificing are themselves just, thus implying, of course, that the pagan law that required such sacrifice was unjust (9).47 The author of the Martyrdom of Pionius indicts the Jews for treating their enemies, in this case the Christians, unjustly.48 The injustice of their treatment is compounded by the litany of rhetorical questions Pionius poses: “To whom have we been unjust [ђ̨̡̠̥̦̮̝̩̚]? Whom have we murdered? Whom did we persecute? Whom did we compel to become an idolater?” (4.9). The reader recognizes that the Christians had not done any of these things. Whereas the Jews treated the Christians unjustly, Pionius insists that the Christians never reacted in kind. Later the author explicitly confronts the injustice of the pagans. After an official curses Christ, Pionius cries out:

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“Respect piety, honor justice [̸̠̥̦̝̥̫̮̩̣̩ ̨̡̯̥̮̝̯̚], know sympathy, and obey your laws.” He condemns the pagan audience: “You punish us for not being obedient [̨Ҟ ½̡̨̥̤̫̙̩̫̰̭], but you are disobedient [ж½̡̡̥̤Ӻ̡̯]. You have been commanded to punish, not to compel” (16.6).49 Here the author does not explicitly call into question the justice of the laws, but he does condemn those who do not follow them. By continuing to attempt to persuade the Christians to sacrifice, the pagans, Pionius insisted, were breaking their own laws. The theme of injustice is sometimes implicit rather than explicit in these stories. For example, right after Germanicus forces the beast upon himself, the author notes the contradiction in the crowd’s response: they both are “amazed at the nobility of the God-loving and God-fearing race of the Christians” and immediately cry out for the arrest of Polycarp, whom they claim is an atheist.50 Even without expressly utilizing the language of justice, the author highlights the injustice of the charge of atheism—inherent in its falseness—made against Polycarp. It is surely not a desire for justice that motivates the crowd—which has just acknowledged the godliness of Christians— to label Polycarp an atheist. It is not justice that this crowd seeks when they simultaneously admire Christians as “God-loving and God-fearing” and call for Polycarp’s death. A similar implication of injustice may be seen in the pagans’ determined search for Polycarp as if he were a criminal (7.1). The injustice of this manhunt becomes apparent when the cavalry wonder why there had been a concern to arrest him (7.1). The admiration expressed by the soldiers for Polycarp’s devotion to his faith reminds the reader that the accusations made against Polycarp were false and his arrest unjust. In the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, the proconsul admitted his grief at the tortures inflicted on the martyr.51 This regret may suggest that the proconsul was not convinced of the justice of the punishment. We see repeated in these stories a perception of the pagan life as lawless, licentious, uncontrolled, and unjust. These are not merely indictments against paganism and pagans’ treatment of Christians—they are also signals of pagans’ lack of masculinity. Christians, these authors tell us, better illustrate masculine ideals because they side with and exhibit justice. We again see a competition over masculinity at work in the textual construction of Christianity.

Persuasion Persuasion has a complex history in the ancient Greek and Roman traditions.52 Greek political theory initially championed persuasion as an effective way to establish democracy and civil human relationships. The ability to speak per-

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suasively was the mark of a good orator and statesman;53 in this case, persuasion was the alternative to violence (̛̞̝) and compulsion (ж̩̘̟̦̣). By the early fifth century, however, persuasion had come to be considered every bit as destructive as ̛̞̝, though perhaps, to borrow Sarah Johnston’s words, “draped more attractively.”54 Persuasion was potentially dangerous because it could lead individuals away from reason and their better judgment. It came to be associated with deception, seduction, and, on occasion, women. In her work on literary depictions of women in antiquity, Kate Cooper discusses the different connections between persuasion and gender: “The rhetorical figure of womanly influence existed in both a negative and positive version. The negative version styled woman as a seductress, bent on tempting a man by private allurements to a betrayal of public duty.” Cooper also explains that “the positive version dwelt on a man’s licit relationships with female family members, whose soothing charm would ideally restore him to order when he had strayed, and persuade him to hear the voice of reason.”55 These dual roles are apparent in the martyrologies. Being persuaded often carries negative connotations in the martyr acts: it is something to be avoided as the work of Satan. To be persuaded can be a mark of weakness, an indication of irrationality, an exhibition of femininity, although the authors of the martyrologies can also employ the language of persuasion to illustrate Christian masculinity. While the martyrs are impervious to the requests and demands of their persecutors, they are always able to be persuaded to follow God. If masculinity entails utilizing reason to distinguish good from bad—rational from devious—persuasion, the martyrs’ resistance to persuasion that leads to apostasy illustrates Christian masculinity. The martyrs are repeatedly ordered not simply to sacrifice to the gods, but to be persuaded—that is, to come to believe through rational consideration—that they should sacrifice.56 Frequently the impetus for persuasion is torture: the persecutors threaten torture unless Christians offer pagan sacrifice, at which time they promise reprieve. But since persuasion can be used for either good or ill, the martyrs must employ reason to determine the just course of action. In most cases, of course, Christians are not persuaded to sacrifice, in part because they do not find the pagans’ arguments compelling. The authors of the martyrologies often employ eschatological expectations to support the martyrs’ actions. It is irrational to choose momentary comfort when it results in eternal torture. Christian certainty of future reward and punishment warns believers against acquiescing to pagan demands. In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for example, the tyrant failed to persuade the unnamed martyrs to deny their faith, even though they had been constantly tortured.57 He also tried—again unsuccessfully—to persuade Ger-

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manicus to abandon his faith (3.1). In both cases the author explains why the martyrs were correct to resist persuasion: the group of martyrs described earlier in his chapter 2 escaped the eternal fire by resisting persuasion; and had Germanicus acquiesced to the proconsul, he would have become a part of an “unjust” and “lawless” world. Polycarp, furthermore, faced the temptation of persuasion seven times, each time responding to the growing frenzy with a calm demeanor.58 By refusing to be persuaded to act against what he viewed as a rational decision to die for his faith, Polycarp enacted his masculinity. Quintus, a Christian newly arrived from Phrygia, on the other hand, revealed a lack of masculinity by succumbing to the proconsul’s persuasion (4).59 Apollonius, like Germanicus, Polycarp, and others, displayed his masculinity by standing firm against the governor’s attempts to persuade him to reject his faith. In the Martyrdom of Apollonius we are told that after questioning the would-be martyr, the governor demanded that he repent, be persuaded, and swear by the genius of the emperor.60 Apollonius countered the governor’s orders by explaining that “the one who turns away from the just [̴̛̠̥̦̝̩], good [ж̟̝̤Ԗ̩], and marvelous [̴̨̛̤̝̰̝̮̩] commandments of God” is an atheist (к̡̤̫̭), but the one who follows reason—i.e., “turns away from injustice [ж̛̠̥̦̝̭], lawlessness [ж̨̛̩̫̝̭], idolatry [̡Ѣ̴̧̧̡̛̠̫̝̯̬̝̭], and impure thoughts [̧̨̠̥̝̫̟̥̮Ԗ̩½̫̩̣̬Ԗ̩]”—is just (4).61 In this case, to be persuaded by the governor would lead to unmasculine behaviors. An impious and enraged tyrant assured Conon that torture would succeed in persuading him to sacrifice.62 To this threat, Conon responded, “Do you expect to terrify me by proclaiming mere words, thus thinking to persuade me? You will not persuade me” (5.5–6). Each of these martyrs embodied Christian masculinity by resisting persuasion and choosing death over apostasy. The author of the Martyrdom of Pionius employs the notion of persuasion more than any of the other authors I consider in this study. He uses the verb ½̡̡̛̤̥̩ to introduce the crowd’s pleas for Pionius to save himself: “Be persuaded [½̡̛̮̤̣̯̥] by us, Pionius,” the crowd asks, “because we love you. There are many reasons you are worthy of life, for your habits and gentleness. It is good to live and to see the light.”63 Pionius responded as a Stoic philosopher might: he agreed with the crowd that life was indeed good, but the greater good, he insisted, was to live by one’s convictions and not to be enslaved to inferior things (5.4–5). Pionius even encouraged Polemon, the temple attendant, to proceed with executing the Christians because they could not be persuaded to deny their faith: “You have been ordered either to persuade or to punish. You are not persuading, so punish” (8.1). Later, when Pionius and his fellow Christians were in prison, the pagan crowds returned to try yet again—and with the same luck—to persuade the

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Christians to change their minds (12.1). Polemon attempted to persuade them to sacrifice by deceiving them: he told the Christians that Euctemon, one of their leaders, had offered sacrifice and was asking for them to come to the temple of Nemesis (15.2).64 In the description of Pionius’s death, the verb ½̡̡̛̤̥̩ is not used, but the spirit of persuasion is present: even after the nails were hammered into his hands, the executioner asked Pionius to repent, promising that if he did, the nails would be removed. In a show of conviction, Pionius answered, “I believe they are in to stay” (21.4). The Christian martyrs were resolute and were not persuaded to follow a course of action that would lead to apostasy. They were ideal examples of masculine reason because they were able to identify the deceptive nature of the pagans’ attempts at persuasion. Plutarch explicitly associated persuasion with reason: “You will do well, therefore, also to be persuaded [½̡̡̛̥̮̤̭] by reason.”65 In this case Plutarch refers to grief that is moderate: it is neither indifferent nor overly emotional. His advice, however, reflects a larger concern for distinguishing rational from irrational acts. Reason will guide Apollonius away from womanish emotions. Persuasion, therefore, is in itself a neutral concept, but when applied to a particular situation, it can become a marker of (ir)rationality and (lack of) masculinity. The martyrologies exploit the double-sided nature of persuasion. The authors do not assert that persuasion in itself is bad. In fact, in each of these cases they state clearly the reasons for the martyrs’ resistance, thus underscoring that one’s reasons for being (or not being) persuaded are meaningful. As we have seen, when persuasion threatens to lead Christians to apostatize, the martyrologies denounce it and associate it with weakness and lack of discipline or self-control. When, however, the martyrs discuss their own conversions, or their attempts at converting others, their statements are often couched in the language of persuasion. Note, for instance, the interplay between the martyrs and Polemon regarding persuasion: Polemon says, “Come to the marketplace and there you will be persuaded [½̡̡̡̥̮̤̮̮̤̚].”66 Sabina and Asclepiades answer, “We have been persuaded [½̷̡̨̡̥̤̤̝] by the living God” (3.4). Later the author records a discussion between Pionius and Polemon: “Be persuaded by us, Pionius,” said Polemon. Pionius said, “If only I were able to persuade [½̡Ӻ̮̝̥] you to become Christians.” The men laughed and said, “You do not have enough [power] to make us be burned alive” (7.3–4).67 In the Martyrdom of Apollonius, Apollonius asserts that Christ persuaded (½̡̛̮̝̭) him to faith by many proofs or miracles (ж½̴̡̡̛̫̠̪̭), and that Christ persuades (½̡̡̛̮̥) people for the sake of virtue.68 Pionius explains his choice for death in this way: “Having been persuaded [½̷̡̨̡̥̤̩̫̭] by the teachings, I choose to die rather than to turn away from his words.”69 In this

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example the author of the Martyrdom of Pionius couples choice with persuasion: Pionius chose a course of action based on the positive assessment of persuasion. This selection of texts reveals that in the martyrologies persuasion was neither wholly good nor wholly bad. When a person is being persuaded, the first step she should take is to determine which actions stem from reason and which stem from irrational pleasure. The masculine virtues of self-control, volition, mastery of the passions, and knowledge of justice are all critical to ascertaining appropriate action, and a person should not be persuaded to act in a way that compromises these virtues. Christians display a masculine social identity when they are persuaded by God or Christ—more particularly, by divine arguments and proofs—and do not succumb to pagan persuasion, even though it might extend one’s temporal life. True, masculine Christians, therefore, are trained to determine whether or not they should be persuaded to a particular action; their masculinity enables them to withstand appeals from crowds and would-be persecutors to deny their faith in order to save their lives.

Virtue and Age The martyrologies reveal the superior masculinity of Christians in relation to their opponents not just by the martyrs’ display of masculine virtues, but also by capitalizing on societal concerns regarding the likelihood of virtuous behavior in specific individuals. In antiquity, age and social position—in addition to sex—affected the potential for, and were indicators of, masculinity, and the authors of these stories exploit these expectations to make powerful statements about Christian masculinity. In On the Creation, Philo discusses the seven stages of life according to the Hippocratic tradition. In this tradition life is described as advancing toward maturity—from infancy to childhood to boyhood to youth—reaching its peak at “manhood.”70 Because the fifth stage is referred to as “manhood,” we can infer that the last two stages of life, though perhaps not a full regression to the earlier stages, represent a decline (or at least a differentiation) from full manhood. Philo makes this clear in his description of the last stage of life (in his reckoning, the tenth stage): “During the tenth comes the desirable end of life, while the bodily organs are still compact and firm; for prolonged old age is wont to abate and break down the force of each of them.”71 Here Philo argues that one should desire death before signs appear that reveal a lack of vigor, a deficiency largely associated with women. Philo’s concern is the deterioration of masculinity as revealed through softness.

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Many other ancient philosophers also taught that the elderly became less manly, at least in part because their physical or mental strength deteriorated. Plutarch, for example, associates old age with the weakening of the body and, thus, a diminished masculinity. In his Letter to Apollonius, he writes, “He, bearing with him the fair and fitting fame of your piety and his own conjoined, has departed early to eternity from out of this mortal life, as from an evening party, before falling into any such grossness of conduct as is wont to be concomitant of a long old age.”72 Here Plutarch advocates death over the diminution of masculine attributes. In his Life of Pythagoras, Diogenes Laertius writes, “And [Pythagoras] divides the life of humans in this way: a boy [½̝Ӻ̭] for twenty years; a youth [̡̛̩̣̩̮̦̫̭] for twenty; a young man [̡̛̩̣̩̣̭] for twenty; an old man [̴̟̙̬̩] for twenty. . . . To him, a youth [̡̛̩̣̩̮̦̫̭] is one who is boyish [̨̡̥̬̘̦̥̫̩] and a young man [̡̛̩̣̩̣̭] is one who is a man [ж̩̬̚].”73 Thus, according to Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras designated a (roughly speaking) forty- to sixty-year-old man as ж̩̬̚. Later he asserts that “old age is like everything that is decreasing, and also increase and youth are synonymous” (35). We cannot assume that Diogenes Laertius, or any of our other authors, would have argued that younger and older men could not be “real men,” but we must take seriously the use of the noun ж̩̬̚ to refer to a specific age group. Discussing this issue, M. B. Skinner notes that physical infirmity due to old age tended to be viewed as a feminizing disability in a male: Male status, the prerogative of the citizen and head of household, is a function of age as well as of sex, hinging upon control—control over wife and children, over slaves, over extrinsic political and economic affairs and, above all, over self. To maintain that status, constant physiological and psychological vigilance is required. Any loss of physical vigor due to old age, infirmity, or overindulgence in carnal pleasures, any analogous lapse of moral resolve, or any diminution of social standing, can weaken the bulwarks of masculinity and cause reversion to a passive “womanish” condition.74

Age, then, is yet another factor that affects a person’s location on the continuum of masculinity. Young boys were understood to be less manly than older men because although they were progressing toward manhood, they had not yet reached that end. Young men were sometimes associated with women because they lacked secondary masculine attributes such as beards, body hair, and deep voices.75 Aristotle, for example, writes, “A boy is like a woman in form and a woman is like an infertile male.”76 Thus, according to Aristotle,

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young men are like women, presumably because they are not fully formed males. Discussing the significance of age in the rhetoric of masculinity, Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson note that the unexpected masculinity shown by Eleazar and the seven sons in 4 Maccabees is central to the irony of the book. These unmanly individuals display more potent masculinity than a tyrant in his prime, thus upsetting the cultural expectations of the confrontation. The author of 4 Maccabees also alludes to the deterioration of the body and the diminution of rationality that was thought to accompany age. The elderly Eleazar made his masculinity known to the tyrant: “I am not so old and cowardly as not to be young in reason on behalf of piety.”77 In response to Eleazar’s courage in the face of torture, the author writes, “Most amazing, indeed, though he was an old man, his body no longer tense and firm, his muscles flabby, his sinews feeble, he became young again in spirit through reason” (7:13–14). Eleazar’s old body masked his true manliness. And although the two youngest boys were considered physically immature, after their martyrdoms the author calls them “men” (14:11).78 Christians also appropriated cultural assumptions about masculinity and age and played them to their advantage: in the narratives of the martyrs, individuals who were not in their masculine prime (due to age, sex, or social status) defeated their opponents, thus claiming an extraordinary masculinity for themselves (and for Christianity as a social group) and calling into question the masculinity of their persecutors. The motif of unexpected strength is seen, for instance, in the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne. Pothinus, bishop of the see of Lyons, is described as ninety years old and having such a weak body (ж̡̮̤̩Ҟ̭̯ԗ̮ҧ̨̝̯̥) that his breathing was disturbed.79 Such an ill, elderly man certainly would not be expected to be manly, to exhibit courage and strength, to show mastery over himself and others. But this is exactly what Pothinus was enabled to do: “Because of the eagerness of the spirit, he regained strength through his insistent desire for martyrdom. He, too, was dragged before the tribunal, his body having been weakened by age and illness; but he held on to life in order that Christ might triumph in him” (1.30). Pothinus withstood the beating meted out by the crowd—a crowd, the author tells us, that thought “it a great error and impiety if anyone left an outrageous act undone against him” (1.31). The description of Pothinus’s manly endurance immediately follows the description of younger individuals who were unable to endure even prison. Thus Pothinus’s triumph in spite of his age is highlighted all the more: “The young people who had just been arrested and had not been physically mistreated before, could not bear the weight of being locked up and died in

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there” (1.28). The author does not pronounce judgment on these young people, perhaps because his condemnation is largely reserved for those who denied their faith. The narrative juxtaposition of the young and the old, however, allows the author to underscore the unexpected masculinity of the Christian martyr. Pothinus withstood torture like a man when others, who were supposedly at the peak of masculinity, could not bear even to be imprisoned. The only young Christian to appear in the martyrologies under discussion here is Ponticus, a fifteen-year-old boy who was arrested during the persecution at Lyons and Vienne. We are told little about Ponticus in the narrative except that the means employed to persuade him to recant his faith included forcing him to watch the daily executions of his fellow Christians (1.53). His steadfastness angered the crowd, which subsequently took no pity on his youth. Combining the stories of Blandina and Ponticus, the author tells us that the crowd “exposed them to every terror and led them through every punishment in turn, one after another forcing them to confess, but they were not able to accomplish it” (1.53). In contrast to the crowd’s savage anger (ђ̟̬̥ҧ̤̣)—a testimony to its lack of masculinity—Ponticus calmly endured the persecution and chose to die. The young boy took the torture like a man: he nobly endured it and gave up his spirit (1.54).80 The expectation of weakness that accompanied age is central to the Martyrdom of Polycarp, whose main character declares that he has been a Christian for eighty-six years.81 Perhaps the author makes a point of Polycarp’s age precisely because it adds to the unexpected masculinity of the martyr. The disjunction of his age and his display of masculinity is first illustrated by the reaction of the cavalry and police when they find Polycarp: “The ones present were amazed at his age and courage and whether there was so great a hurry to arrest an old man such as this” (7.2). The same men, after watching Polycarp pray for two hours, were amazed and remorseful about coming against such a godly old man (7.3). These examples reveal that this “old man” was surprisingly in control of himself. Over and over again, Polycarp is asked to have respect for his old age. This exhortation to Polycarp may stem from a concern that his old age, particularly under the strain of torture, might lead to an embarrassing public display of weakness (9.2). The author of this martyrology displays Polycarp’s mastery over his persecutors through the language of volition, choice, and justice. His age, however, highlights an obstacle to this masculinity. Thus Polycarp’s arrest becomes even more poignant. As he entered the arena for his trial, a voice came from heaven, saying, “Be strong, Polycarp, and be a man” (9.1).82 If being a man was embodying masculinity (e.g., self-control, courage, rationality), perhaps

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at one time he was a man. But because of the cultural assumptions of the deterioration of masculinity that accompanied old age, an audience might have expected his masculinity to be diminished. The text, as we have seen, does not leave his manliness to our imagination. The Martyrdom of Polycarp envisions masculinity as the paradigmatic trait of a Christian. While the text addresses a range of virtues that are markers of Christian identity, when this narrator wants to sum up Christian identity in one emphatic imperative, it is not “Love your enemies,” or “Be full of faith,” or even “Be like Christ” (in spite of the somewhat laborious imitatio Christi theme83)—it is “Be a man.” If masculinity, then, is the defining characteristic of Christianity, envisioned at least in part as self-control, how do perceived or created rival groups, such as pagans and Jews, measure up?

C O N S T R U C T I N G M A S C U L I N I T Y B Y C O M PA R I S O N

As we have seen, the early martyrologies highlight Christian volition, mastery of the passions, devotion to justice, and imperviousness to persuasion, thereby creating a masculine group identity. Importantly, the narratives depict virtuous behavior in categories of individuals who were not believed to be especially prone to possessing such virtues. Christian masculinity is further underscored in these stories by a variety of comparisons to other social groups. While Christians display virtuous behavior, non-Christians act unjustly and from emotion, both of which are signs of deficient masculinity. Some authors also provide narrative foils in an effort to emphasize Christian masculinity. The assignment of varying levels of masculinity to different out-groups is not unexpected. Jonathan Z. Smith explains such differences in a discussion of identity formation: “The radically ‘other’ is merely ‘other’; the proximate ‘other’ is problematic and hence, of supreme interest.”84 Smith’s distinction between the radically other and the proximate other underscores the important point that differentiations between in- and out-groups do not result in a simple us-them dichotomy. Rather, out-group status is complex and based on perceived threats to identity. The authors of the martyrologies assign different levels of out-group status to pagans and Jews based on the threat they pose to Christian distinctiveness. The difference between pagans and Jews is most clearly seen in the portrayal of group masculinity: the greater the threat, the less masculine the group. The “proximate other”—in this case, the Jews—possesses less, or an inferior form, of the valued cultural commodity of masculinity than pagans (the “radical other”).85

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Comparisons of Character in the Martyrdom of Polycarp The Martyrdom of Polycarp invites a close analysis of the gendered description of its characters’ behaviors because this author depicts masculinity as running from the zenith of the martyr, to the pagan, then to the Jew, and finally to the nadir, the Christian apostate who fails to perform the in-group attribute of masculinity. Many of Polycarp’s pagan persecutors lack self-control, though they do not succumb to womanish emotion to the extent of either the tyrant in 4 Maccabees or the persecutors in other martyrologies. This is perhaps because the Martyrdom of Polycarp focuses more on Jews, distinguishing them from the pagan crowd in ways that other martyrologies do not.86 The pagan population is, therefore, to borrow Smith’s category, the “radical other”: it does not pose an immediate threat to Christian identity (even if it does immediately threaten Christian existence). Generally speaking, pagans are of less narrative interest than Jews, who are the proximate others and, as we shall see, are both “problematic” and “of supreme interest.” Pagans, however, cannot simply be dismissed out of hand, since they are necessarily involved in the outcome of the narrative. Both pagans and Jews serve as points of comparison for the masculinity of Christians. In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, there are three groups of pagans: the high-ranking officials who are responsible for Polycarp’s death; the cavalry who search for Polycarp; and the faceless, anonymous mob. I shall consider these groups in order. Although Polycarp remains calm throughout the narrative, those around him do not. Herod was eager to bring Polycarp to the arena.87 He and his father repeatedly tried to persuade Polycarp to deny his faith (8.2), but the author tells us that “having failed to persuade him they said terrible words to him and with haste kicked him out. As he was getting down from the carriage he skinned his shin. And not turning, as if nothing happened, he went on with haste, going into the arena” (8.3). When Herod and his father advanced from persuasion to threats, and from threats to emotional acts, they became progressively less masculine than Polycarp, who, remaining unmoved and in control of his emotions—not even acknowledging a wounded leg—displayed perfect masculinity. Unlike the tyrant of 4 Maccabees, the proconsul in the Martyrdom of Polycarp is not depicted as growing more violent or angry as the narrative progresses. We can interpret the lack of authorial interest in pagan officials as a signal to the reading audience that these characters do not pose the most immediate threat to Christian identity. So, although it may seem that the persecutors, that is, those who hold the power to kill—who, indeed, do kill—

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should be understood as the primary threat to Christian identity, the author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp shows them little interest. His attention, instead, is focused on the power of the crowds, a power to which he calls attention by strategic demasculinization. In addition to the high-ranking officials (Herod, Niketas, and the governor), we must also consider the narrative role of the police and cavalry who search out and arrest Polycarp. Although this group pursues Polycarp (6.1); seizes slaves in an attempt to gain information about his location (6.1); and, armed, searches for him as they would a common criminal (7.1), the description of these men is not wholly negative. If their eagerness and anger are signs of a diminished masculinity, the author tempers this deficiency by noting that the men’s demeanor changes when they meet Polycarp. They wonder why it was necessary to arrest this godlike man (7.2). Unlike the crowd and the pagan officials, this group recognizes Polycarp’s piety and repents of coming to arrest him (7.3). The author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp depicts the police and cavalry as even less of a threat to Christian identity and existence than the pagan officials. These individuals may represent the possibility of conversion prompted by the death of a pious individual. In the rhetoric of this martyrology, the crowd (often undifferentiated Jews and pagans) is depicted as highly unmasculine because it is wildly emotional. When Polycarp entered the arena for the first time, “the turmoil was so great in the stadium that no one was able to hear anything” (8.3). The author describes the scene using the term ̷̤̬̰̞̫̭, translated by Lake as “uproar.” Since the term normally indicates something more frenzied, it might better be translated as “turmoil,” or “unrest,” or “disturbance.” By using this term, the author highlights the emotionality of the crowd. This is evidenced further in the crowd’s reaction to Polycarp’s confession: “The multitude of gentiles and Jews who were living in Smyrna cried out with uncontrollable wrath and shouted with a loud voice” (12.2). This group of “lawless” (9.3) people acted with one mind (12.3). The crowd as a whole is described in negative and womanish ways: its participants are incapable of controlling their emotions.88 Any vestige of masculinity that might remain for this crowd vanishes with the author’s description of the preparations for Polycarp’s death. While Polycarp calmly accepted his fate, assigning it to the fulfillment of God’s will, the crowd came together immediately to prepare the fire. The emotion and haste displayed by the crowd in every scene demand that the reader compare its actions to those of the Christians. While Christians accept their fates without an excess of emotion, and while they calmly endure torture and

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death, those around them teem with passion and run about with an overzealous desire to witness death. The lack of self-control displayed by the pagans in the Martyrdom of Polycarp—Herod, his father, the crowds—reflects a judgment concerning the masculinity of these groups that in turn signals a judgment of group relations. Although their masculinity is inferior to that embodied by Christians, they are not the nadir of masculinity. Compared to pagans, Jews represent a greater threat to Christian identity and thus are depicted as even less masculine than their pagan counterparts. Jews appear as a discrete group only three times in the Martyrdom of Polycarp. These specific moments, therefore, deserve special attention. The first mention of the Jews as a group does not occur until after Polycarp’s arrest, when the proconsul sends his messenger into the arena to announce Polycarp’s confession.89 “The drama of the moment is inescapable,” notes Judith Lieu. “On the one side, the solitary witness who has made his confession, ‘I am a Christian’; on the other, the opposing forces against whom Christians must ever stand and argue, the gentiles and the Jews.”90 The Jews are momentarily differentiated—perhaps as an allusion to the passion narrative where the Jews shout for Jesus’ crucifixion—but they are quickly reintegrated with the gentiles as they shout together what is, ironically, at least for the author of the martyrdom, a true confession: “This is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our Gods, who teaches many neither to offer sacrifice nor to worship.”91 The emotion of the Jews— seen in their rage and their repeated shouts for Polycarp’s death—illustrates their lack of masculinity (12.2–3). The tempo of the narrative quickens in chapter 13 as the crowd prepares for Polycarp’s death. “It all happened,” the author says, “more quickly than it takes to tell” (13.1). The pace of the narrative starts and stops as the author takes us from observing the crowd’s hurried preparation to the martyr’s deliberate actions in preparing for his own death. In their second appearance the Jews are disparaged for their eager collusion with the gentiles. The Jews were “extremely zealous” in assisting the crowd, “as is their custom [ҋ̭ъ̤̫̭̝Ѿ̯̫Ӻ̭]” (13.1). This phrase—which occurs at two other places in the narrative—is not simply a passing statement, but rather an indication of a fundamental element of social identity as constructed by this author. The Jews are eager to assist in the death of a pious man, as is their custom. The proconsul tries to persuade Polycarp to save himself, as is their (that is, the rulers’) custom. And Polycarp prays for all people, “as is his custom” (5.1). Lieu suggests that “these appeals are not

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primarily to what is already known but they are creating models of behavior and expectation. . . . They highlight the contrast between the behavior of the martyr and that of those who oppose him.”92 By identifying the Jews as eager to assist in Polycarp’s death, the author warns his readers that in their own lives their most severe opposition will come not from officials or from gentiles in general, but from Jews. The third and final time the Jews are explicitly mentioned caps the rise of hostility. The Jews are no longer part of a crowd but are initiators in the drama, diligently watching over the body of the martyr, using every influence they have to keep Christians from obtaining Polycarp’s body. By using the same verb, “to incite,” to describe the activity of both the Jews and the devil, the author relates their actions. Just as the “jealous and envious evil one” incited (ѿ½̧̡̙̞̝̩) Herod’s father to ask the governor not to allow the Christians to have the body, the Jews also were inciting (ѿ½̷̴̧̧̫̞̝̩̯̩) him.93 The overall depiction of the Jews in the Martyrdom of Polycarp is either— viewed in the best light—as a group in collusion with the gentiles or—viewed in the worst light—as the instigators of Polycarp’s death and the group that kept Christians from receiving his remains. As a group prone to frenzy and irrational emotion, they are effectively demasculinized in relation to the martyr and to Christianity in general.

Comparisons of Character in Other Early Martyrologies Not every martyrology uses identical techniques to illustrate the masculinity of Christianity, but they do overlap in many places. The crowd, for example, plays a crucial role in the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, bearing even more narrative weight than in the Martyrdom of Polycarp. The actions of the crowd show that its participants are less masculine than the Christians. Unable to control their emotions, these undifferentiated individuals are depicted as an enraged mob whose thirst for torture cannot be quenched. The author of this letter describes the mob and the Christians as participants in a cosmic battle between Satan and God: “The Adversary hurled down with all strength, inaugurating his return which is surely coming. He went through many things to accustom and prepare [½̴̨̢̬̫̟̰̩̘̩] his own against God’s slaves.”94 The pagan slaves who falsely accused Christians of incest and cannibalism are described as having been “ensnared by Satan” (1.14), and the author describes the crowd as wild and barbarous people who were stirred up by the wild beast (1.57).95 This choice of words labels the crowd’s behavior as typical of barbarians. They are acting like foreigners, not Roman citizens.

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The crowd here is also depicted as being irrational and incapable of selfcontrol. The author initially describes the treatment Christians received in this way: “They nobly endured all that the whole crowd laid upon them in heaps: shouts, blows, dragging, plundering, throwing stones, imprisonment, and all that a savage mob would wish to do to hostile enemies” (1.7). The crowd’s lack of masculine control is further illuminated when it “shouts down” Vettius Epagathus as he embarked on an apology for Christianity (1.10). Shortly thereafter, the crowd grew even more agitated: “They turned into savage beasts against us, so that even those who previously were moderate because of friendship now became greatly violent and gnashed their teeth against us” (1.15). Their wrath fell immoderately on Sanctus, Maturus, Attalus, and Blandina (1.17). The mob shouted all sorts of things at the elderly bishop Pothinus, as if he were Christ himself (1.30); and those nearby attacked him with their feet and fists (1.31). The Christians were forced to run the gauntlet of whips, to endure mauling by animals, and anything else that the mad mob shouted for and demanded (1.38). Even the smell of the Christians’ roasted skin on the iron seat did not satisfy the mob; they continued to rage in their wish to conquer the martyrs’ endurance (1.39). In addition, the mob loudly called for Attalus (1.43), against whom it was violently worked up (1.44). Growing annoyed, the crowd shouted out against Alexander (1.50). It grew savage at Blandina and Ponticus, having little pity for his age and no respect for her (1.53). The punishments meted out to Blandina and Ponticus could not satisfy the crowd’s mad passion and savageness toward the Christians (1.57). Of course, without self-control, the mob could never hope to defeat the manly Christians. The uncivilized and barbarous crowd, however, was not even humiliated when the Christians defeated it, because it lacked human comprehension; the Christian victory, though, enflamed its bestial anger, and both the governor and the populace exhibited unjust hatred (1.58). The author of the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne repeatedly underscores the savagery of the pagan crowds, who are wholly incapable of controlling their emotions. By narrating the crowd’s wild fury, the author links the mob to the barbarous and to that which is inherently unmasculine.96 The unruly pagans are unfavorably compared to the Christian martyrs, who are models of masculine self-control. Alternatively, the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas focuses largely on the experiences and visions of Perpetua as she awaits death, and thus the editor spends little time describing the crowds. The populace appears only when the martyrs are taken out to face death. At this time, the editor tells us that the crowds became enraged and demanded that the Christians be scourged

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before a line of gladiators.97 It also demanded that the Christians be executed in public—an order that, according to the editor, made the crowd guilty of murder (21.7). These examples of mob behavior underscore out-group status. By describing the pagans as unruly mobs that shout for Christian torture and blood, the authors leave no room to question comparative group masculinity. As in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, pagan officials in other martyrologies are singled out as examples of the unmasculine behavior of the pagans. Sanctus, for instance, aroused the great contentiousness of the governor when he refused to reveal any information about himself other than his identity as a Christian.98 The governor became angry when Alexander confessed he was a Christian (1.50). In the Greek recension of the Martyrdom of Carpus, the proconsul is described as becoming furious.99 When the impious tyrant became angry with Conon, the soon-to-be martyr pointed out the tyrant’s unmasculine behavior: “You are shaming yourself, governor.”100 In the Martyrdom of Pionius, the jailers became angry and threw the Christians into the inner part of the prison because they received no gifts from them.101 The cavalry commander (ironically named Theophilus), moreover, tried to deceive the Christians (15.4), and when Pionius did not show him proper respect he almost choked Pionius with a scarf (15.6). These examples show how authors of the martyrologies employed the rhetoric of self-control to reveal the lack of masculinity of the pagan persecutors; conversely, the possession of selfcontrol underscores the masculinity of the Christians. Once the modern reader is familiar with the cultural indicators of masculinity in antiquity, it becomes clear that the authors of the martyrologies employ these categories to label various out-groups negatively. The vocabulary used to describe Jews and pagans guides the reader to the conclusion that, to varying degrees, these groups suffered from a lack of rationality, selfcontrol, justice, and therefore masculinity. My argument thus far has focused on the “othering” of out-groups. We should note, however, that there have not been, to this point, explicit accusations of unmanliness leveled against any of these groups. For such an indictment we must turn to intra-Christian disputes.

The Apostate Christian The early martyrologies construct Christians as ideal men by employing the rhetoric of volition, self-control, justice, and persuasion, but the authors of many of the texts are not content with presenting examples only of successful Christians. Many of these narratives also provide suitable foils for their

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portrayals: as opposed to the manly martyrs (ж̡̛̩̠̬̝), these Christians are described as unmanly (к̩̝̩̠̬̫̭) or cowardly (̷̡̧̠̥̭).102 The masculinity of Christians who deny their faith is far inferior even to that of the Jews and pagans who are responsible for the torture and deaths of innocent Christians. Whereas the pagans and Jews are described as less manly than the Christian martyrs, apostates are worse: they are unmanly. The anti-type of the true Christian is described in much harsher terms than those used against pagans and Jews because he poses the greatest threat to group distinctiveness. It is typical of group behavior for undesirable in-group members—i.e., members who fail to perform specified group characteristics—to be disliked to a greater degree than out-group members; they may even be denied association with the group altogether (see chapter 1 above). The more direct a threat an individual or group presents to Christian distinctiveness, the more vehemently that individual or group is rejected. The “black sheep,” as social identity theorists label them, are those who appear to be a part of the social group but fail to perform in-group identity. One way to protect social identity is to propagate negative attitudes toward in-group members who deviate from normative standards. By labeling those who succumb to deceptive persuasion (i.e., those who are persuaded to deny their faith) as unmanly, the authors of the martyrologies underscore the performance of masculinity as the identifying characteristic of Christianity. We may pause to ask why these authors construct such a negative portrayal. Might the martyrologies be stronger witnesses to proper Christian behavior if there were not such clear examples of failed Christians? Why, in other words, introduce the cowardly Christian into the text at all? In an essay on Juvenal’s satires, Jonathan Walters provides a possible answer to this question. Walters argues that satire is based on the notion of a preemptive strike against antisocial behavior. It defends the norms of society by drawing attention to those who would thwart them: “The wrongdoer is put on show, acting out his misbehavior before the community, assembled as readers of, or more accurately (since it was intended, at least at first, for recitation) the audience of, the text. If successful in its appeal to its public, it creates a ‘community of the righteous’ and punishes those detected in deviant behavior by ejecting them from this community.”103 He continues, “This community and these standards are defined, that is, given shape and form, by the successful placing of at least one person outside the community, by making the allegation that he or she has transgressed them.”104 Walters’s conclusions about the literary and communal function of satire provide a plausible explanation for the function of the cowardly Christian in the martyrologies. By polarizing the two responses to persecution, manliness on one side and unmanliness on

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the other, the texts build group cohesion by constructing a “community of the righteous.” The texts isolate masculinity as a Christian characteristic and ostracize those who fail to embody it. It is not only the Christian martyr but also her foil who reveals what it is to be a true Christian. One way to explore what it is to be a Christian is to “focus on representations of those who broke its rules.”105 The Martyrdom of Pionius testifies to apostasy’s potential threat to Christian social identity. The author explains that Christians in Smyrna were being mocked because some had abandoned their faith in the face of persecution.106 Through Pionius’s long apology, the author acknowledges that some people did not perform Christianity as ideally constructed, but their failure did not redefine Christian social identity. He rejects the idea that the action of apostates should impact outsiders’ perceptions of Christianity: “Would you pass judgment on all Christians because of these?” (4.13). He rebukes the pagans for not being persuaded by their teacher Homer, who counseled people not to boast over those who will die (4.4). He saves his strongest condemnation, however, for the Jews (4.5).107 In an ingenious maneuver, Pionius forces the Jews to affirm a positive Christian identity—despite the occasional apostate—by challenging Jewish social identity. He catalogues the sins of the Jewish people—they sacrificed to Beelphegor, offered sacrifices to the dead, fornicated with foreigners, sacrificed children to idols, murmured against God, slandered Moses, and made the golden calf—and then asks if the actions of these errant Jews accurately define Judaism. Neither then, Pionius asserts, should Christianity be defined by its apostates. The anti-Jewish agenda of the author of the Martyrdom of Pionius, however, should cause us to be wary of any formula that equates Jews and Christians. According to this author, the similar history of apostasy between Jews and Christians is in no way a reflection of the equality of the religions. The sins of the Jews were far worse than the sins of the apostate Christians, because, unlike the Jews, the Christians acted out of fear (4.10). The Jews’ sins, moreover, were voluntary while the Christians’ sins were unintentional (4.11).108 Group identity, it seems, should be determined by analyzing the group as a whole rather than by isolating a few errant members: “Which heap is larger, the chaff or the wheat? For when the farmer comes with the winnowingshovel to clean the threshing-floor, the chaff, being light, is easily carried off by the blowing wind, but the wheat remains where it was” (4.13–14). The author, through the metaphor of wheat and chaff, urges his audience to be weighty (i.e., manly) Christians who do not succumb to pressures to sacrifice.

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Turning to the more explicit cases of apostasy in the martyrologies: Quintus, one of only three named Christians in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, is the consummate example of the unfaithful, unmasculine Christian. The author’s brief mention of Quintus is inserted between the examples of Germanicus and Polycarp. The author begins by illustrating quintessential Christian behavior (Germanicus pulling the beast upon himself), juxtaposes this behavior with Quintus’s cowardliness, and then returns to illustrating the true nature of Christianity by detailing Polycarp’s martyrdom. Quintus is castigated for his lack of conviction after he turned himself over to the authorities.109 He is explicitly described as “being a coward” (ц̡̧̡̛̠̥̝̮̩).110 The text further demasculinizes him by emphasizing the proconsul’s victory over him (4.1). Quintus, who was persuaded to deny the group’s fundamental identity characteristic, lacks self-control and was defeated by the authorities. In this way he was effectively emasculated and excluded from the Christian in-group. He is the antithesis of Germanicus and Polycarp—the coward versus the courageous, the uncontrolled versus the self-controlled, the unmasculine versus the masculine. The public nature of the performance of masculinity was vital to the integrity of Christian group identity. Weak Christians were seen to compromise the possibility of outsiders’ acknowledgment of a Christian masculine identity and provided an unacceptable example of behavior for their own communities. The author of the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne illustrates the importance of enacted social identity by telling his audience the stories of two groups of Christians: one that admitted their faith and one that denied it. The author’s description of the groups’ demeanors reveals their affiliation with Christianity: some “advanced joyously, with much splendor and grace mixed together on their countenances, so that even the bonds were around them like some fair decoration. . . . But the others were weighed down, dejected, ugly, full of shame. Over and above this, they were reproached by the pagans as ignoble and unmanly [ж̡̡̟̩̩Ӻ̭̦̝Ҡк̩̝̩̠̬̫̥]; they were accused of murder and lost the honorable, glorious, and life-giving name.”111 Even the pagans recognized the cowardice and utter unmanliness of the failed Christians. The author makes clear that those who were willing to die were happy—not only in the life to come, but even as they were imprisoned awaiting martyrdom. Similarly, cowardly Christians were already experiencing their punishment. The Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne presents a unique vignette in which we are shown the transformation of a cowardly Christian to a manly one—ironically, in the body of a woman. As we have seen, an ancient

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audience would not be surprised that a woman would be weak in the face of torture. Biblis fulfilled all such expectations. She was among a group of Christians that denied their faith, a group that the devil had devoured (1.25). Her persecutors were not content simply to punish her as a Christian; they tortured her in hopes of charging her with slander as well, believing she was already broken and unmanly (к̩̝̩̠̬̫̩) (1.25). But the narrator tells us that when she was on the rack, she came to her senses, as if awaking from a deep sleep. Rather than indicting the other Christians on charges of cannibalism and incest, she testified to their innocence.112 From that moment on, writes the author, she confessed she was a Christian and was counted among the number of the martyrs. Her moment of clarification—the threat of temporal versus eternal punishment—transformed her from an unprepared (ж̸̨̟̩̝̮̯̫̭), weak (ж̡̮̤̩ҟ̭), and unmanly (к̩̝̩̠̬̫̭) woman to a Christian, an appellation given to her only after she accepted the necessity of her martyrdom.113 To be a man was to exhibit control over oneself and others, to affect the outcome of events. The authors of these martyrologies construct Christians who display all the characteristics of the Roman man. They highlight this portrayal by juxtaposing the manly Christian to less manly pagans and Jews. But—keeping in mind Jonathan Z. Smith’s statement that the proximate other is the most dangerous—we should not be surprised to find that it is only apostate Christians who are explicitly labeled unmanly. Derogation of ingroup members occurs when they are seen as an immediate threat to social identity. By not performing masculinity, Quintus, Biblis, and others were identified as “other,” and—unless they repented—were no longer associated with Christianity. The anti-type or the black-sheep type is an important element in the formation of identity. By parading deviants in front of his audience, Juvenal (and, I would argue, mutatis mutandis, the authors of these martyrologies) “marks the boundaries of what was acceptable for a respectable Roman man.” Such a show “creates a pleasure in which author and audience collude” by “affirming their own righteousness.”114 As the Christian audience heard the stories of the martyrs read aloud, they were to identify with the normative behavior of the martyrs. The texts created a world within which groups and behaviors were differentiated and judged, individuals praised or cast out. The martyrologies do not simply record the deaths of the martyrs. Even Herbert Musurillo, who, along with Adolf von Harnack, championed the historicity of the martyr acts, admitted that “one might say that in all Christian doc-

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uments which purport to be historical, the border line between history and edification is too often obscure.”115 As an author told the story of a martyr, he constructed and promoted a specific identity—one, I have argued, that centered on the performance of masculinity. Masculinity, furthermore, was not simply one among many equal aspects of Christian identity; rather, in many of the martyr texts it is the very definition of Christianity. The performance of masculinity—in its wide range of manifestations—became the standard for all who claimed to be Christian. It was also the standard by which other groups were evaluated. The Martyrdom of Polycarp constructs a spectrum of masculinity for a narrative world populated exclusively by males. Interestingly, the author of this text, unlike those of other martyrologies, does not ask us to imagine what Christianity looks like for females, for the Martyrdom of Polycarp has no female characters; but when we consider the depiction of women in other martyrologies, we see that even for them masculinity remains an important, indeed, a central, Christian virtue. The next chapter examines narratives about Christian women and their quest for martyrdom. We will see that in these texts the rhetoric concerning martyrdom is not substantially different from that which concerns male Christians. The standard remains: the performance of masculinity is central to the group identity of Christianity. The stories of Christian women, though, present unique problems that the authors of the martyrologies must tackle.

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Putting Women in Their Place MASCULINIZING AND FEMINIZING THE FEMALE MARTYR Out of free will I die. . . . Stout-heartedly I will offer my throat. —EURIPIDES,

T

H E C U B A 548–549

he previous chapters have shown how textual masculinization of martyrs helped Christian communities gain ground in power struggles against their pagan persecutors and Jewish rivals. Narratives concerning female martyrs participate in these same efforts, and Christian women are masculinized by the same means as their male counterparts: through a narrative emphasis on athletic and gladiatorial imagery and on masculine virtues. The masculinization of female Christians, in fact, presents an even stronger case for the superiority of Christianity, because the narratives often depict Christian women defeating pagan men. The authors of the martyrologies do not portray the female martyrs as unambiguously masculine, however. On the contrary, readers are presented with an unresolved sexual dilemma: the narratives both highlight the women’s masculine fortitude and underscore their femininity. Thus the stories of female Christians who endured torture and death complicate the group identity issues presented in the previous chapters because being manly is integral to only one of the social identities constructed for Christian women in the early martyrologies.1 The stories of brave and autonomous—that is, manly—Christian women are tempered by references to (what were believed to be) quintessentially feminine activities, relationships, and emotions.2 This chapter focuses on the texts’ tendencies to masculinize and feminize the female martyrs and argues that we as readers are better equipped to interpret this seemingly contradictory portrayal when we identify the cultural unease caused by the image of masculinized women.3 On the one hand, the stories of female martyrs allow authors to develop Christian social identity through external power negotiations (i.e., the martyr or Christian community against the “other”). On the other hand, depicting Christian

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women as wholly masculinized presented a problem within these very Christian communities. It appears to have been unacceptable for the authors of these martyrologies to describe Christian women as being masculine—i.e., autonomous, other-worldly, and unyielding—at all times. The shift between masculinization and feminization in these narratives illustrates a communal concern over appropriate roles for women in two distinct situations, interand intracommunal. Feminine characteristics such as modesty and submissiveness continued to be idealized within the Christian communities that produced these texts, and so the authors eased the gender tension by illustrating the women’s femininity alongside their masculinity.4 Reminding the audience of Christian women’s femininity would be able to ease communal apprehension only if the martyr’s conduct, both in life and in death, were offered as an appropriate model for group behavior. There is ample evidence that the martyrologies were written as guides for living, rather than simple accounts of a unique individual’s death. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, for instance, was written to show a “martyrdom according to the Gospel” so that readers might become imitators of both Polycarp and Jesus.5 Similarly, the Martyrdom of Pionius was written “for our instruction.”6 The Martyrdom of Saints Marian and James was written so “that the ordinary people who constituted God’s people might be given strength in the test of their faith by the sufferings of those who had gone before them.”7 Many of the authors of these texts appear to define their authorial task, at least in part, as instructing Christian communities. While the texts purport to be accurate accounts of the deaths of heroic Christians, they are not narrated simply for history’s sake, and we would severely limit the scope and import of these narratives if we were to insist that action-in-crisis was their only didactic function.8 Since Christianity at this time was not, technically speaking, illegal, we should not assume that persecution in one area spilled over into neighboring areas. Many of the original recipients of these letters likely were not in imminent danger of persecution. Since the texts were preserved and used in worship long after the period of persecution had ended, we can assume further that they served a broader communal objective.9 What, then, is the enduring message of these texts? What, in other words, did they articulate to Christians outside the context of persecution that led to their continued distribution and perceived relevance? In what follows, I will show that the stories of Perpetua, Felicitas, Blandina, and Agathonike were meaningful for Christian communities precisely because of the paradox of the manly woman. These texts hold unresolved the dilemma of appropriate behavior and gender identification for Chris-

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tian women, and thus as readers of the text, as audience members who observe the spectacle, we are asked to accept the paradox of the fully feminine and fully masculine female martyr. Because the main character in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas is a woman, this text offers ample opportunities to explore the tension between masculinizing and feminizing tendencies in narratives about female martyrs, and so will be discussed first.

P E R P E T UA

Some interpreters have accounted for the masculine imagery in the martyrologies by arguing that it originates within the psyche of the female martyr. Scholars who favor this position propose that masculinization signals the woman’s rejection of traditional gender roles or, alternatively, that it is related to life-changing decisions such as conversion or martyrdom.10 These theories, however, do not account for the feminization of the female martyr; the indicators of femininity are, in fact, largely ignored. By focusing primarily on psychological interpretations of this gender bending, these theories lose sight of what seems to be the larger problem in the texts. Although masculinization requires interpretation and contextualization by the modern reader, in the case of female martyrs it is the author’s insistence on feminization that presents the more perplexing (and perhaps the more interesting) problem. The claim that masculinization originates with the martyr herself (and thus is not strictly a literary trope) is often based on an assumption of the authorship of the text. The editor of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas claims that he is transmitting—without alteration—Perpetua’s prison diary. Scholars accepting this claim typically interpret the text as an unmediated account of Perpetua’s life, thoughts, and emotions.11 If we wish to analyze the function of its gendered language we must begin by exploring some of the implications of this authorial claim.

Authorship of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas has proven extremely popular among readers in ancient and modern times alike.12 This alleged first-hand prison diary purports to be written by Perpetua herself and may be the only Christian literary text that has a serious claim for female authorship in

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the first three centuries of the common era.13 The editor of the martyrology maintains that he has not amended any of the first-person text, assuring his readers that “from this point on the entire account of her ordeal is her own, according to her own ideas and in the way that she herself wrote it down.”14 Most modern interpreters categorically accept that assertion.15 Mary Lefkowitz, for instance, writes, “The narrator then quotes directly from Perpetua’s own memoirs, which consist of her account of her imprisonment and of the dreams she had in prison; she tells how her father, who has remained a pagan, pleads with her to abandon her religion and tries to get the authorities to let her out; detailed, explicit visions tell her meanwhile that she must die.”16 Similarly, Brent Shaw laments the way that male interpreters, beginning with the male editor of the account, have distorted Perpetua’s “unmediated self-perception.”17 He suggests that this editor modified Perpetua’s “simple, factual, real-time replay of what was happening to her” by reframing it in a “densely theoretical structure which is intended to deflect the reader’s attention away from the plane of immediate experience to transcendent levels of meaning.”18 E. R. Dodds, furthermore, writes, “In the fourth dream, Perpetua suddenly finds herself transformed into a man; this again is scarcely the sort of detail which would occur to a hagiographer.”19 These interpretations of Perpetua’s story are wholly dependent on the authenticity of the authorial claim, a claim that in the end cannot be substantiated. Alternatively, James W. Halporn questions the importance of attributing the text to Perpetua.20 Halporn discusses three assumptions about the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas that serve as axioms for modern scholars; although they are not necessarily false, they “are, as axioms, assumptions made without proof, and . . . they are not necessarily or ipso facto true.”21 First, scholars assume that the text is a historical document. Second, they accept as true that Perpetua and Saturus wrote the first-person narratives contained in the text; and, third, they accept that these first-person accounts are the very words, the ipsissima verba, of the martyrs.22 Halporn concludes by reminding his readers that the reliability of the authorial claim is distinct from the function of the text. It is this distinction that has failed to receive sustained treatment in recent scholarship on the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. We should note, moreover, that even though the editor claims that the text is taken directly from Perpetua’s diary, it is framed by his preface and conclusion; these additions inevitably shape the reader’s interpretation. Although the editor avers that he is “unworthy . . . to complete the writ-

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ing of so great a story,”23 he in fact does add to the story by describing the deaths of the martyrs and explaining their significance. We must also take seriously the editor’s self-proclaimed task of explaining how this text can give honor “to God and comfort to humans” (1.1) and his elucidation of the text’s authority for the life of the community.24 Even if one wishes to attribute the central part of the martyrology to Perpetua, we must acknowledge that the editor had choices about how he compiled the text. In my reading of this martyrology, authorship per se is not a critical issue; my interpretation of this text is not dependent upon a specific authorship claim.25 Rather, I am interested in exploring how the narrative works, and how the text functions as a literary whole. As we will see, this text contains two competing narrative trends: some portions of the text focus on Perpetua’s masculinity, while others focus on her femininity. On the one hand, there are occasions when Perpetua performs masculinity by showing herself capable of self-control and, in fact, of substantial control over others. In particular, the text highlights Perpetua’s authority over men to whom she should, by all rights, be submissive. At other times, however, the text exhibits a concern to reclaim Perpetua’s social role as a woman and to offer her as an appropriate model for women in subsequent Christian communities. Even if we could substantiate the authorship claims of this text, we cannot divide it into two parts based on these gendered behavioral ideals. “Perpetua” (i.e., the first-person account) does not always describe herself as masculine, and the editor (i.e., the third-person account) does not always depict Perpetua as feminine. Rather, these characterizations—both masculine and feminine—coexist in the martyrology. For example, when Perpetua describes her reaction to being imprisoned, she says she was “terrified.”26 Here she displays not masculine courage, but feminine fear. Perpetua is worried—an expected emotion for a woman to experience in relation to her child—before her son is brought to her (3.9). Moreover, when Perpetua recounts her fourth vision—the vision in which she becomes a man—her maleness is temporary. After she defeats the Egyptian, the judge addresses her as “daughter” (filia), underscoring her femininity and legal status as a dependent (4.1; 5.2). The masculinizing and feminizing tendencies in this text, then, are complex and cannot be dismissed by assigning them to different authors. In the next three sections I will explore the methods by which the editor emphasizes Perpetua’s masculinity, and then we will examine the techniques by which her feminity is carefully depicted as conforming to in-group norms.

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Encounters with Her Father One way the editor highlights Perpetua’s masculinity is by contrasting her actions to those of her father. Perpetua and her father meet three times in this narrative, and each encounter reveals Perpetua’s escalating—and her father’s diminishing—masculinity. Shortly after her arrest, Perpetua’s father appears in the narrative for the first time (3.1). As he will do in their other confrontations, he comes to her in an attempt to persuade her to give up her faith. The editor depicts Perpetua standing firm before her father’s pleas, refusing to recant her faith to save herself. She explains to him that as a vase can go by no other name, neither can she be called anything other than Christian (3.1–2). When Perpetua refuses to be persuaded to deny her religious commitment, her father becomes extremely angry—so angry, in fact, that he advances toward her violently, as if to pluck out her eyes (3.3). His violent actions rob him of his masculinity because they expose his lack of self-control. Not surprisingly, then, the editor tells us that Perpetua’s father leaves “vanquished” (victus; 3.3).27 Perpetua remains calm and undisturbed by her father’s aggression. Through her self-control and imperviousness to persuasion, Perpetua defeats her father. There are several points of interest in this first encounter. Perpetua’s father does not approach her with paternal authority: he does not insist on a certain behavior, as is his legal right. In the imperial period, most Roman women were married sine manu; that is, even after marriage, a father retained legal control over his daughter.28 A woman therefore did not, strictly speaking, belong to her husband’s family. We can assume that in the narrative world Perpetua’s father—not her absent husband—had the right to demand compliance with his wishes. Her father, however, does not approach Perpetua as pater familias; he does not assert his power over her. Rather than demanding obedience to his will, Perpetua’s father tries to persuade her—by appealing to familial attachments—to change her mind. As we saw in the previous chapter, being persuaded to act contrary to one’s reason was unmasculine; it was something that Christians—as they embody group identity—must avoid. We see from the beginning then an inversion of expected gender roles: Perpetua utilizes masculine reason to resist her father’s pleas, but her father’s attempt at persuasion may reveal his waning masculinity. His masculinity is even further diminished when he loses his self-control. He is ultimately defeated by Perpetua and leaves less manly than he arrived. The second time Perpetua’s father visits, he again tries to persuade her to change her mind. This time, he reminds her of his old age and asks her

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to remember her family, in particular her mother, aunt, brothers, and finally her child (5.2–3). He reminds her of the preferential treatment she has received from him, begging her not to abandon him. He admits, furthermore, to the control Perpetua has over him when he laments that he will become a reproach to all men because of her, disclosing that she holds the power to diminish or increase his reputation in the community (5.2). The censure he fears can most likely be attributed to the expectation that a pater familias should exercise complete control over his familia. Perpetua’s father’s inability to control her, a daughter who is legally under his authority, is a powerful illustration of his diminished masculinity. The editor further problematizes the father’s authority by underscoring his legal power over Perpetua (he calls her filia, a term that denoted a legal relationship), only to have him call his own authority into question by begging, “Have pity, daughter, on my grayness—have pity on your father, if I am worthy to be called your father” (5.2).29 Again, Perpetua’s father does not enforce his paternal rights; he does not demand her obedience. Eventually he relinquishes his paternal claim altogether by calling her “woman,” not “daughter” (5.5). The editor had a number of options by which he could designate Perpetua’s womanhood. He could have used mulier or femina, but he chose domina instead, a word that often connoted power, authority, and dominance.30 Thus the editor shows us yet again that it is Perpetua, not her father, who exercises control. An ancient audience, moreover, would likely be taken aback at the physical movements in this scene. In this part of the narrative we see an inversion of masculine posture: Perpetua stands before her father as he falls to the ground in front of her, kissing her hands and crying; by narrating his excessive emotion, the editor depicts Perpetua’s father as unmanly (5.5).31 Here and elsewhere the narrative is strengthened by the audience’s ability to visualize the characters’ performances. Did ancient authors, however, expect their audiences to participate in the storytelling in this way (i.e., by visualizing action)? In response to feminist theories of the gaze, historians have begun considering the visual aspects of rhetoric.32 Some scholars have questioned the legitimacy of utilizing a theory that is formulated on the strictly visual medium of film. Jennifer Glancy, for instance, asks, “Do we ‘see’ when we read?”33 I suggest we ask a slightly different question: Did ancient authors, as far as we can know, write with the belief that their audiences would “see” when they “read” (or, in most cases, “listened”)?34 There are indications that ancient authors did expect their audiences to visualize what they heard.35 John Chrysostom, for instance, in a fourthcentury homily in which he denounces the theater, warns his congregation:

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For as soon as the tongue has uttered the name of the dancer, immediately the soul has figured to itself his looks, his hair, his delicate clothing, and himself more effeminate than all. Another again fans the flame in another way by introducing some harlot into the conversation, with her words, and attitudes, and glances, her languishing looks and twisted locks, the smoothness of her cheeks, and her painted eyelids. Were you not somewhat affected when I gave this description?36

If, Chrysostom argues, even the word “dancer” or “harlot” elicits such lurid visual imagery, how much more dangerous is watching the spectacle in the theater? Chrysostom’s argument relies on a correlation between hearing and visualizing, between knowing and seeing. Augustine also drew firm connections between hearing or reading and seeing. In one of his sermons, he explains that if a person is attentive to what is said, he will create a visual image: “When these things are read of in the church, you behold them with pleasure with these eyes of the heart, for if you were to behold nothing, you would hear nothing.”37 Similarly, in a homily on the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, Augustine writes, “We heard of the encouragement they received in divine revelations, and of their triumph in their sufferings, as it was all being read; and all those things, recounted in such glowing words, we perceived in our ears, and actually saw in our minds; we honored them with our devotion and praised them with love.”38 Greek drama was also built around the assumption of visual imagination. Concerning Greek tragedy, Nicole Loraux writes, “Everything starts by being spoken, by being heard, by being imagined.”39 In her description of death in Greek tragedy, Loraux speaks to this correlation of text and vision: “One should not underestimate the real benefit, in terms of the imagination, that these deaths, and the fact that they were only described, must have brought to an audience of citizens. . . . Death by report lends itself to conjecture vastly more than does violence exposed to the public view.”40 Greek tragedy, then, engages the audience’s imagination as events are narrated. Similarly, Richard Hawley argues that drama created a “gaze of the imagination” by having events described to an audience rather than enacted for them.41 According to these authors, ancient texts “work” by relying on the imaginative gaze. Returning, then, to the second encounter between Perpetua and her father, we note that the editor holds the audience’s imaginative gaze on a critical moment: the physical positions of father and daughter graphically illustrate the inversion of authority and masculinity. As readers and thus spectators of this encounter, we watch Perpetua’s father fall to the ground at

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her feet. The editor concludes the scene simply, noting that after Perpetua’s father begged her to pity him, he left. We are not told that Perpetua’s father regained control of his emotions. The editor does not interrupt his audience’s gaze by narrating Perpetua’s father standing up. Rather, the reader’s imagination lingers on the image of Perpetua standing over her father, who, lying on the ground in anguish, begs her to help him. The first two encounters between Perpetua and her father highlight issues of gender and authority. The editor uses loaded legal and familial language to take advantage of his audience’s expectations of social relationships, thus highlighting Perpetua’s masculinity even more. Since masculinity is measured relatively, we should not imagine binary opposites of masculinity and femininity—that Perpetua has become male and her father female—but these encounters do illustrate the balance of masculinity shifting from father to daughter. Perpetua’s actions and demeanor show her to be more masculine, while her father’s actions and demeanor show him to be less so. The next time we meet Perpetua’s father, his demeanor has changed. He approaches Perpetua at her trial and, dragging her from the steps, he orders: “Sacrifice. Have pity on the baby!” (6.2). Hilarianus, the governor, repeats her father’s command. In this scene, two men who have legal authority over Perpetua—familial and political—confront her. Whereas in the previous scenes the editor asserted Perpetua’s masculinity, here her masculinity is challenged by the presence of two men who (should) have power over her. The readers are left to decide which of the three characters embodies the most compelling and effective masculinity. As this scene opens, Perpetua’s father is not portrayed as weak: he does not grovel, and neither does he relinquish authority. Faced with a formidable challenge to her autonomy, though, Perpetua retains her manly self-control and exhibits her resolve by refusing to obey her father’s and the governor’s demands to sacrifice. She does not grow angry; she does not shout. She states simply, “I will not” (6.4). During the course of this interaction, the governor displays his power by ordering Perpetua’s father to be beaten. Her father’s masculinity is diminished as we see the effectiveness of the governor’s control over him. The physical staging of the characters in this scene also offers the reading audience a visual image that serves as a commentary on gender assignment: Perpetua’s father is thrown to the ground in front of Hilarianus and Perpetua, who observe the scene without remark. Again the editor allows the reader’s gaze to linger on Perpetua’s father suffering ignobly on the ground. As in the previous encounter between Perpetua and her father, his rising and departure are not narrated. The editor abandons him when the narrative gaze abruptly changes, focusing now on Hilarianus’s condemna-

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tion of the Christians and their joy at the conviction. Perpetua’s father is left on the ground, defeated. In spite of the legal claims these two men have over Perpetua, the editor shows us that they do not present a significant challenge to her masculinity. We are, in fact, reminded of the defeat suffered by her father in the first encounter: again Perpetua’s father attempts to prevent her from confessing her faith, and again he is unsuccessful. Her determination renders his act of force impotent. Although Perpetua feels sorry for her father, specifically for his “pitiable old age,” the governor’s display of strength (i.e., his command that Perpetua have regard for her father) does not have its desired effect: she is not persuaded to live by the womanly emotion that would lead her to recant her declaration of faith even if it would save her father. Rather, she retains manly reason, by virtue of which she remains firm in her commitment to her faith and her death. Perpetua’s masculinity is contrasted most clearly to her father’s unmasculine behavior in the scene immediately before her death: “My father came to me being devoured by sorrow. He began to pluck out his beard and threw it on the ground; he then threw himself down and reproached his years and began to say such words as would move all creation” (9.2).42 This scene takes place between two individuals, though Perpetua does not speak at all. She observes, as if from a distance, her father’s display of emotion. Interestingly, the editor tells us that her father speaks words that would move all creation, but these words do not persuade Perpetua to change her mind. Perpetua resists what almost seems like a gravitational pull of emotion. She stands firm against nature itself; her disinterestedness highlights her masculinity. What might Philo or Polemo, those teachers of masculine comportment, think of such emotion displayed in the body of a man? Might they respond that Perpetua’s father is failing to perform masculinity? By being “devoured by sorrow” (consumptus taedio), he exhibits the demeanor of a woman more than that of a man.43 As we will see, Perpetua’s father is emotionally tied to her in a way that Perpetua seeks to avoid with her son. Her father’s passion in the face of estrangement and death is precisely what Perpetua rejects. In addition to her father’s excessive emotion, on several occasions the editor calls attention to his age, perhaps also reflecting a judgment against his masculinity (5.2; 6.3, 5). In chapter 3 I argued that the authors of the martyrologies often highlight a martyr’s age as a way to demonstrate the superior quality of Christian masculinity. In the case of Perpetua’s father, however, the audience’s expectations of age and masculinity are confirmed: the old man not only loses self-control, he also fails to control those who are under his authority. His behavior exhibits nonmasculine sentiment and emotional-

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ity. Unlike the Christian martyr whose age is highlighted to show the triumph of Christian masculinity in an unlikely individual, Perpetua’s father’s age (described as pathetic and unhappy) reveals his diminished masculinity (6.5; 9.3). Furthermore, what do we make of Perpetua’s father tearing out his beard? This is an expression of sorrow, but the imagery may run deeper.44 Richard Hawley notes that in antiquity the “greatest symbol of masculinity (apart from the phallos itself) is the beard.”45 Females are incompletely formed or defective males because, as we have already seen, their coldness has resulted in internal reproductive organs, and, in addition to this (or, more accurately, because of this) they have higher voices and lack body hair. It is heat, a trait of males, that produces sperm and body hair.46 Hair, then, is an external sign of internal heat; it is a signal of masculinity at work. Musonius Rufus states that the beard is a covering provided by nature as “a symbol of the male, like the cock’s crest and the lion’s mane.”47 Clement, in a creative exegesis of Genesis, notes that Eve was formed from a hairless part of Adam’s body; thus Adam, giving up his hairless element, remains a man and shows masculinity (alternatively, Eve, who is hairless, embodies femininity).48 By tearing out his beard, then, Perpetua’s father is, quite literally, making himself womanish. He is removing the most identifiable mark of masculinity. The demasculinization of Perpetua’s father—reflected in his emotionality, his abandonment of paternal authority, his use of deceptive persuasion, and his old age—is important because it is by juxtaposing Perpetua with her father that the editor reveals Perpetua’s masculinity, and, through that, the superiority of Christianity. Moreover, it shows that Christian masculinity can be revealed in a most unexpected place: a woman. Although Perpetua feels pity and sorrow for her father, her decision to seek martyrdom prevents reconciliation. So definitive is the split between father and daughter that Perpetua says, “Then for a few days after I gave thanks to the Lord that I was free from my father, and I was refreshed by his absence” (3.4). Perpetua rejects all association with the male figures in her life. She has detached herself from feminine, familial, this-worldly concerns and has instead focused on the otherworldly rewards she will receive through martyrdom. Through this rejection, the editor underscores Perpetua’s autonomy, a characteristic of masculinity.

Masculinity and Motherhood The editor depicts Perpetua’s separation from her father as relatively unproblematic for her. Her separation from her child, however—a task of equal or

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greater import for displaying her masculinity—is more difficult. The rejection of motherhood was necessary if Perpetua was to advance to martyrdom; it was a bond that had to be severed if she was to give herself over fully to God and attain martyrdom. The relationship between women and family, particularly children, was well established in the ancient world, and this relationship is fully exploited in the early martyrologies. Women were thought to be mired in this world through motherhood. Maternal attachments were believed to thwart rationality, one of the principal characteristics of masculinity. The author of 4 Maccabees asserts the “natural” attachment mothers feel toward their children when he writes, “In what manner might I express the emotions of parents who love their children? . . . Especially is this true of mothers, who because of their birth pangs have a deeper sympathy toward their offspring than do the fathers. Considering that mothers are the weaker sex and give birth to many, they are more devoted to their children.”49 As Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson note, the story of the mother and her sons in 4 Maccabees “works” because it reverses gender expectations.50 In spite of her maternal instincts, this mother urges her children to die. After she rejects motherhood, she is praised for being more noble and courageous than men and being of the same mind as Abraham. By leaving behind the quintessential marker of femininity—motherhood—she becomes masculine—that is, led by reason. Perpetua’s transformation from femininity to masculinity is highlighted by the incremental separation from her child. In one of the first phases of this separation, Perpetua’s father pleads with her to have pity on her child, “who will not be able to live” after she is gone.51 Perpetua responds, “It will happen on the scaffold as God wishes; you may be sure that we are not stationed by our own power but by God’s” (5.6). Although she may appear indifferent or even callous concerning her son, the narrative itself guards against such an interpretation by illustrating her love and concern for her child. Perpetua’s relationship with her child is one of the most poignant examples of the Christian community’s discomfort with a fully masculinized female martyr. The editor of the martyrology depicts Perpetua both as determined to separate from her child and as a good mother who cares deeply for her child’s welfare. Eventually, Perpetua gives her child to her family, but subsequently asks for his return (3.8). The shift in the gender roles of father and daughter comes full circle when Perpetua’s father refuses to return her son (3.7). He, not Perpetua, will raise the boy. He, not his daughter, will nurture the child to adulthood. Father becomes mother, and Perpetua’s ascension into man-

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hood is almost complete. Rather than viewing Perpetua’s father’s assumption of parental duties as a sign of demasculinzation, we might be tempted to interpret this as bolstering his masculinity by underscoring his right to the child as pater familias.52 There are at least two problems with such an interpretation, however: first, the right to the child would go to the paternal, not the maternal line. Second, perhaps more significant, Perpetua’s father does not take the child from Perpetua. Rather, the editor states explicitly that Perpetua gives the child to her parents. Perpetua, therefore, retains a masculine posture both by separating herself from her emotional attachments to her child (a separation her father is unable to exact) and by determining who will raise her child. Perpetua’s control over her child’s life, furthermore, underscores her father’s inferior masculinity since he is unable to control his own child’s life. The editor tells us that when Perpetua’s father refused to return her son to her, the baby suddenly no longer desired the breast, and Perpetua did not suffer any inflammation or discomfort (6.8).53 The natural, feminine, process of lactation suddenly ends—Perpetua no longer shows physical or emotional signs of motherhood or femininity. She is, in fact, relieved that the baby no longer needs her, and she no longer worries about him. Ancient medical tradition might explain the cessation of lactation as a sign of masculinity: since males have a higher body temperature, their bodily fluids burn off rather than being emitted through milk or menses, as is the case with colder females.54 For example, one author included in the Hippocratic tradition writes, And when the body of a woman—whose flesh is soft—happens to be full of blood and if that blood does not go off from her body, pain occurs. . . . Because a man has more solid flesh than a woman, he is never so totally overfilled with blood that pain results if some of his blood does not exit each month. . . . The fact that a man works harder than a woman contributes greatly to this; for hard work draws off some of the fluid.55

The same author states that women who menstruate more than three days are “delicate,” but those who menstruate for fewer than three days, or have minimal discharge, “are robust, with a healthy complexion and a masculine appearance.”56 Similarly, Galen notes that a fetus could not take its nutriment from the woman if she were “perfectly warm; for if she were, she would easily disperse and evaporate it. Accordingly, it was better for the female to be made enough colder so that she cannot disperse all the nutriment which she concocts and elaborates.”57 Thus, bodily discharges are signs of femininity.

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The editor, therefore, reveals Perpetua’s masculinity not only by illustrating her internal strength but also by commenting on her physical constitution.

The Fourth Vision: “I Was a Man” The editor prepares his reader for Perpetua’s unequivocal move toward masculinity by depicting her as manly in comparison to her father and by narrating her separation from her child. In her fourth vision Perpetua is led to the amphitheater, and when she enters she discovers that she is to compete against an Egyptian who is identified as the devil.58 Perpetua’s masculinity is fully confirmed when her assistants remove her robe and she declares, “I became a man” (sum masculus; 10.7).59 Most modern commentators focus almost exclusively on this vision and in particular on this statement, as the moment Perpetua is masculinized. Readers attentive to the gendered rhetoric throughout this text, however, will not be startled by Perpetua’s declaration since the editor has carefully laid the groundwork for this vision. Perpetua’s statement that she became a man is merely the physical manifestation of a much deeper and more important transformation that has already taken place. Many scholars rely on psychological approaches to interpret this vision, suggesting that it reflects a crisis over conversion or a quest for liberation from patriarchy. Mary Ann Rossi, for example, argues that Perpetua’s visions show the “inner struggle precipitated by her conversion to Christianity.”60 Similarly, the Jungian psychologist Marie von Franz suggests that Perpetua’s fight is fundamentally a fight between paganism and Christianity. Von Franz interprets Perpetua’s “becoming male” as symbolic of her total conversion to Christianity. The fact that an “inversion” of sex, rather than unification of sexes, takes place, von Franz argues, indicates the “extinction of the previous ego-consciousness.”61 By becoming male, by wholly altering her previous existence, then, Perpetua resolves the inner crisis between Christianity and paganism. Some of the problems associated with these kinds of readings were raised above. Rather than focusing on Perpetua’s experiences, I wish to focus instead on how the language of the text works, how the narrative flows. In other words, based on what we can determine to be more-or-less common understandings of gender and sex construction in antiquity, how might a person in the early third century hear and understand the declaration that Perpetua “became a man”? We might first inquire whether the geographical setting of the vision points to an assessment of masculinity or femininity. This vision takes place

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in the amphitheater—the home of that paradigmatic male, the gladiator. In her vision Perpetua is not forced to go to the amphitheater; rather, Pomponius leads and she follows willingly (10.3). Perpetua is so eager to participate in the games that she arrives out of breath (10.4). By focusing on Perpetua’s decision to participate in the amphitheatrical games, the editor places her in a masculine category, perhaps that of the auctoratus, the voluntary gladiator.62 The editor’s focus on Perpetua’s decision to go to the amphitheater prepares his reader for Perpetua’s dramatic masculinization. Perhaps even more telling, though, is the appearance of the lanista, the gladiator trainer who supervises the contest and announces Perpetua’s victory (10.8, 12). In addition, Perpetua exits the amphitheater through the Gate of Life (Porta Sanavivaria), the gate used by victorious gladiators.63 In addition to depicting Perpetua as a gladiator, the editor describes her as an athlete participating in one of the fiercest athletic contests, the pankration. Perpetua’s superior physical strength is revealed as she fights the devil, first with her fists and then, when he tries to grab her feet, by striking him in the face with her heels. The vision reads like a commentary on a modern wrestling match: We drew close to one another and began to let our fists fly. My opponent tried to get hold of my feet, but I kept striking him in the face with the heels of my feet. Then I was raised up into the air and I began to pummel him without touching the ground. Then when I noticed there was a lull, I put my two hands together linking the fingers of one hand with those of the other and thus I got hold of his head. He fell flat on his face and I stepped on his head. (10.10–11)64

There isn’t much about this vision that is womanly. Perpetua is not passive but active; she is courageous and physically stronger than her opponent. A second way the editor depicts Perpetua’s masculinity is by highlighting her reactions to the spectators. Perpetua assumes a masculine stance when she reverses the power of the gaze: in her vision, Perpetua enters the amphitheater, and it is not the crowd that watches her, but she who looks at them (10.5). She is not the passive object of the audience’s voyeurism; rather, she controls it. Her actions do not move the audience to pity or sorrow; her femininity is nowhere to be found. Similarly, when the editor narrates the events that lead to Perpetua’s death, he tells us that as Perpetua enters the arena, her intense gaze puts down the crowd’s stares. Maud Gleason explains that Polemo believed the eyes were valued as indices by orators and physiognomists alike because they were thought to give unmediated expression to the thoughts and emotions of an individual.65 According to Polemo, if a person’s

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eyebrows or eyelids are not straight, and if his pupils are not steady, “then you may be sure that this is the profile of someone who is really feminine, even though you may find him among real men.”66 We can assume that Polemo would categorize the opposite characteristics as masculine. Pliny the Elder also discusses the importance of the eye for determining one’s character: “No other part of the body supplies greater indications of the mind—this is so with all animals alike, but specially with man—that is, indications of self-restraint [moderationis], mercy [clementiae], pity [misericordiae], hatred [odii], love [amoris], sorrow [tristitiae], joy [laetitiae]. The eyes act as a sort of vessel receiving and transmitting the visible portion of the consciousness.”67 Pliny illustrates his argument about the power of the eye by referring to the strength of two gladiators: “In the training-school of the Emperor Gaius there were 20,000 gladiators, among whom there were only two that did not blink when faced by some threat of danger and were consequently unconquerable: so difficult it is for a human being to stare steadily, whereas for most people it is natural to keep on blinking, and these are traditionally supposed to be more cowardly.”68 This seemingly simple aside about the way she looked at the crowds, therefore, reveals yet another masculinized representation of Perpetua.69 In the end, even Perpetua’s death was manly. She died by a courageous act of self-will: she drew the gladiator’s sword to her throat, effectively ending her own life.70 The editor explains that it was as if so great a woman could not be killed unless she were willing (21.10). This act reveals Perpetua’s participation in her death: it is a final act of masculine volition. Perpetua’s final vision is the culmination of her ascent to masculine Christianity. With her exclamation—“Suddenly I was a man”—the textual transformation of Perpetua the mother, daughter, and woman to the higher end of the scale, that is, to gladiator and man, is complete. She fights the devil and wins, confident that although she will die in the games she will walk through the gate of life wearing the immortal crown.

Illustrating Perpetua’s Femininity The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas exhibits Perpetua’s masculinity by showing her successfully putting aside feminine ties to family and living by reason rather than emotion. Such toying with social arrangement and gender construction could prove extremely dangerous, however, and it is precisely this danger that the editor attempts to diffuse. Although claiming to be unworthy to add to the story—a claim perhaps intended to divert the reader’s attention from his editorial manipulation of the text—he greatly

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influences the reader’s interpretation by making certain to depict Perpetua’s femininity alongside her masculinity. In this way he defines group behavior in distinct situations. One way the editor illustrates Perpetua’s femininity is by providing the reader with a carefully constructed framework within which to read the “diary.” In the introduction to the text he tells us nothing about the personal background of any of the other martyrs, except that Revocatus and Felicitas are slaves (2.1). He gives a few more facts about Perpetua: she is newly married, comes from a good family, was given a good upbringing, and has recently given birth to a son, whom she is still nursing (2.2–3). We can glean a great deal from this information. Before he tells us anything about Perpetua’s actions and experiences, the editor introduces her as a “good” woman; as a wife and mother Perpetua epitomizes societal expectations of women. Although the textual depiction of Perpetua in the martyrology challenges and in some cases contradicts this characterization, through his description of Perpetua’s background, the editor has laid the foundation for the work he will do to rescue Perpetua’s story from possible misunderstandings. He depicts Perpetua as manly in her contests with pagans, but he also portrays her as a model of Christian women’s comportment; he accomplishes this by depicting Perpetua’s femininity even in the midst of determinedly masculinizing her. Although the editor uses Perpetua’s separation from her child to masculinize the martyr, he does not allow his reader to assume that this separation was uncomplicated. Rather, he labors to show Perpetua as a good and loving mother. The connection between female martyrs and children is found in all of the martyrologies under consideration here. It appears to be a standard topos in the early accounts of female martyrs. We see Perpetua’s maternal attachment when she expresses concern for her child: “A few days later we were lodged in the prison, and I was terrified, as I had never before been in such a dark hole. What a difficult time it was! With the crowd the heat was stifling; then there was the extortion of the soldiers; and to crown all, I was tortured with worry for my baby there” (3.5–6).71 More specifically, while she was in prison, she worried about his health: “I nursed my baby, who was weakened from hunger” (3.8). In the midst of all of her physical and emotional trials, Perpetua’s anxiety was for her child. Soon she and her fellowChristians were allowed to move to a more comfortable part of the prison, and Perpetua sent for her child: “I got permission for my baby to stay with me in prison. At once I recovered my health, relieved as I was of my worry and anxiety over the child. My prison had suddenly become a palace, so that I wanted

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to be there rather than anywhere else” (3.9).72 In addition to highlighting her role as a mother, the editor’s feminizing task is also apparent in other narrative descriptions of her. She is called “wife of Christ” and “God’s beloved,” thus underscoring marriage as a fundamental role for women (18.2). We should remember as well that the editor makes a point of introducing Perpetua as a newly married woman (2.1).73 The narrative attention to Perpetua’s femininity offers the editor an opportunity to present an example of the proper behavior of Christian women. Margaret Miles suggests that the editor of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas used Perpetua’s body as “a textual device, a useful figure on which to advocate modesty for future female readers of the Martyrdom.”74 Augustine’s sermons on this martyrology support Miles’s theory. He focuses his congregation’s attention on Perpetua as an example of the proper Christian woman: she was not only a woman, Augustine exclaims, she was also a wife—and a mother!75 Although the martyrology depicts Perpetua rejecting and defying her father at every encounter, Augustine, radically rewriting the narrative, praises her: Saint Perpetua, however, answered her father with such moderation that she neither violated the commandment by which honor is owed to parents nor yielded to the tricks that the real enemy was practicing. . . . What she hated in him was his folly, not his nature; his unbelief, not her roots. Thus she earned all the greater glory by resolutely rejecting the bad advice of such a beloved father, considering that she could not see him thrashed without feeling the pain herself.76

Through his creative exegesis, Augustine distinguishes between appropriate disregard (of her father’s folly) and inappropriate dishonor (of her father himself). He adjudicates between the roles that the editor of the martyrology presents: the defiant, self-willed, and arguably disrespectful Perpetua of the martyrology is transformed into a Christian mother, daughter, and wife of whom any man should be proud. Augustine focuses his audience’s gaze on Perpetua’s feminine behavior. Like other commentators before him, Augustine has no choice but to interpret the tradition, since it precedes him as a fact of worship with which he cannot dispense.77 When it is appropriately interpreted, it is an instructional story. But if it is to be educational for Augustine’s audience, Perpetua cannot remain the masculinized woman who challenges social relationships. Rather, according to Augustine, she is empowered by God to overcome wom-

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anly weakness, all the while remaining particularly feminine. Augustine, however, did not have to look beyond the martyrology for help in domesticating Perpetua; the editor had already begun that task. Another way the editor feminizes Perpetua is by focusing the audience’s attention on the visual aspects of the narrative. Just as he used his audience’s imaginative gaze to bolster his argument for Perpetua’s masculinity in the episodes with her father, he also makes use of it to feminize her. Perpetua and Felicitas, for example, are presented as highly feminized objects of the narrative gaze: “They were stripped naked, placed in nets and thus brought out into the arena. Even the crowd was horrified when they saw that one was a delicate young girl and the other was a woman fresh from childbirth with the milk still dripping from her breasts” (20.2).78 By describing Perpetua’s and Felicitas’s bodies graphically—so graphically in fact that we, like the observers described in the text, are horrified—the editor keeps the nude bodies of the martyrs before us. We are not only looking at bodies, however; we are observing the beauty of Perpetua’s body and the milk dripping from Felicitas’s breasts, details that highlight their femininity even more. Many scholars who work with the Christian martyrologies discuss the narrative emphasis on women’s bodies. Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, for instance, note “the gratuitously detailed manner in which these incidents are described.”79 The narrative insistence on the fundamental relationship between women and the body, or “enfleshment,” is a tool of feminization because it reminds the audience of the essential materiality of femininity. Discussing the narrative attention given to women’s bodies in martyrological literature, Elizabeth Castelli writes, “When, in what seems to be the most extreme form of objectification, women are displayed as spectacle, they are richly enfleshed—and the obsessive attention to the details of their suffering reinscribes their ties to the body, both rejecting its integrity while requiring its presence for the martyrdom to take place at all.”80 The “obsessive attention” paid to the bodies of the female martyrs cannot be dismissed as an unavoidable part of a martyr’s story. Suffering, torture, and death can be—and are—described without directing the audience’s gaze at the vulnerability of the body. The male body, as we will see, for example, is not the focus of brazen voyeurism. Another significant aspect of the narrative attention given to women’s bodies is that it often interrupts the flow of the text, requiring the audience to pause and visualize the spectacle of the female body. Laura Mulvey notes a similar phenomenon in film: “The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action

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in moments of erotic contemplation.”81 On the one hand, the editor of the Martyrdom of Perpetua develops the image of a strong, autonomous, masculine woman by focusing on her volition, bravery, self-control, and independence. On the other hand, however, when he narratively spans the arena, he asks his readers to stop and, employing the “off-stage imagination,”82 linger on the beauty or vulnerability of the female body. The editor explains that after being tossed by the bull, Perpetua pulled down her skirt—enacting the feminine virtue of modesty—and straightened her hair. It is, however, the editor’s comment that Perpetua pulled down her skirt that actually triggers our imaginations to picture her exposed thigh. The editor ends the story, moreover, by leaving us with an unforgettable sight: as Perpetua and Felicitas stand in the masculine space of the arena, he casts the narrative gaze on their nude bodies (20.2). By describing their bodies in detail, he focuses and holds the women in our sights. At every turn in the narrative, the editor adds brief asides—either verbal or visual—that feminize Perpetua. The use of visual imagination is one of the most effective ways authors feminize the female martyrs: they narrate the strength of the female martyrs, but they also produce graphic visual images of their bodies. The narrative emphasis on both masculine and feminine aspects of the female martyr reflects the dilemma that confronted these Christian communities: how can an author assert the masculinity of Christianity without also implying that Christian women are fully and finally masculine? In the martyrologies, the vivid descriptions of the trials, tortures, and deaths of the martyrs establish a mental image, an “off-stage imagination” of the events. This imaginative work brings “the reader into the event.”83 Thus the audience of the text is conflated with the audience of the spectacle: as they watch the martyrdoms taking place, they experience the events that evoke emotions such as pity and astonishment. The hearers/readers sit in the amphitheater observing the saints’ actions in order to be able to learn from, remember, and imitate their behavior. And although the martyrs are portrayed in only one setting (i.e., persecution), their example of Christian living is made relevant to other situations (i.e., communal life).

F E L I C I TA S

Felicitas, the only other woman mentioned in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, does not receive sustained narrative attention. After she is listed among the Christians arrested,84 she does not reappear until chapter 15, immediately before the gladiatorial games take place. Felicitas is not men-

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tioned in the first-person account attributed to Perpetua; only the editor tells her story, and the only story he tells (other than briefly mentioning her presence in the arena) is of Felicitas in childbirth.85 In this short but meaningladen scene the editor focuses our attention on the quintessentially female experience—childbirth—while simultaneously portraying Felicitas’s masculine strength, bravery, volition, and determination. The editor begins by noting that Felicitas, like the others, received divine favor: Perpetua and Saturus had been granted visions, Secundulus died in prison without facing the beasts, and now God has intervened on Felicitas’s behalf (15.1). Felicitas is pregnant when she is arrested, and, as the games draw near, she is only in her eighth month. She is “greatly distressed” because her death will be postponed until after she has given birth (15.2).86 The editor attributes her emotion to the fact that she will have to pour out her “holy and innocent blood” among criminals rather than die alongside her Christian comrades (15.2). Felicitas’s concern seems to be focused on the value of her death: if she is banned from participating in the games until after she has given birth, the glory of her death will be diminished because she will die not in the company of Christians but in the midst of common criminals. Since those watching the spectacle might not differentiate her from these criminals, her pregnancy jeopardizes her public witness to God. The concern of her fellow Christians, on the other hand, is the lack of support Felicitas will have if she has to face death alone. Their worries about her ability to withstand torture without their support may reflect the fact that Felicitas’s strength is doubly questionable because she is both a woman and a slave. For these reasons, and in spite of the risks of early delivery, the Christians pray fervently for Felicitas to go into labor. As she suffers labor pains, one of the guards asks her how she will bear the torture of death, since she is consumed with pain in labor (15.5). Felicitas replies, “I alone endure this; but then another will be in me who will endure for me, because I also will be enduring for him” (15.6). As Felicitas is delivering her child, caught up as she is in a fundamentally feminine event, she differentiates types of pain. In labor, she experiences this-worldly pain because she is physically bound to this world. But she is certain that her faith will make the pain of death easy to endure. Whereas Perpetua’s separation from her son is detailed in scene after scene, the fate of Felicitas’s daughter is mentioned only in passing: another Christian woman raised her as her own child (15.7). The editor dismisses the baby economically—using only eight words—showing that his real interests are not with the baby but with Felicitas. Felicitas is important to the story not because she is a mother, but because she chooses martyrdom over

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motherhood. The baby is little more than a prop through which the editor effectively illustrates both Felicitas’s femininity and her masculinity. By her determination to die with her fellow Christians and by her separation from her child, Felicitas displays masculine Christian social identity. The brevity of the story, however, keeps the image of Felicitas’s painful and bloody delivery before our eyes. The editor of the martyrology does not allow his readers to dwell exclusively on Felicitas’s masculinity or on her femininity. Rather, he presents both elements simultaneously: Felicitas was glad to have given birth so that she could then fight beasts—she joyfully moved from bloodbath to bloodbath, from midwife to retiarius (18.3). The editor alternates his reader’s gaze between the woman suffering in labor—giving birth, bloodbath, midwife— and the man fighting in the arena—fighting beasts, bloodbath, retiarius. The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas tells the story of brave Christians, and first among these are two women, Perpetua and Felicitas. These women embody masculinity as they not only accept, but also seek on their own terms, their deaths. The editor also, however, casts our gaze on their feminine bodies, reminding us that although they withstood torture as bravely as the male Christians, these women were not permanently transformed into men. The masculinization and feminization of female martyrs is not a phenomenon peculiar to the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas. The authors of the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne and the Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike deal in similar ways with the powerful image of the masculinized woman. Like Felicitas, Blandina and Agathonike are given little narrative space, but their presence and function in the narratives are nonetheless significant.

BLANDINA

Blandina, a slave and victim of a localized persecution in Gaul, is one of four central characters in the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, and the only woman who receives sustained narrative attention.87 The tension between the masculinized and feminized Blandina is quickly and clearly brought to the audience’s attention. When the author introduces her, he acknowledges their expectations of women, but he also prepares the reader for a challenge to these expectations: “All the anger of the mob, the prefect, and the soldiers fell unrestrainedly on the deacon Sanctus, on Maturus . . . on Attalus . . . and on Blandina, through whom Christ demonstrated that the things humans

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deem worthless, unformed, and despicable are considered worthy of great glory before God because her love for him was not merely a boastful appearance but was proven in ability.”88 Blandina’s earthly mistress, arrested at the same time, also reflects the concerns of the ancient audience: she fears that Blandina might not have the fortitude to withstand torture because of bodily weakness (1.18). There is plenty of irony in this situation: because Blandina’s owner is a woman, an audience might question her bodily strength. But Blandina, like Felicitas, begins with two strikes against her masculinity: she is both a woman and a slave.89 The author has already told us that Blandina’s faith is apparent in her actions, so we should not be surprised when he says that Blandina was filled with such power that after a full day’s torture it was not she but her persecutors who were “weary and exhausted” (1.18). When there is nothing more they can do to her, they admit that they have been defeated (̡̛̩̩̦̣̩̯̝̥; 1.18). Although her body is broken and any one of the tortures should have killed her, Blandina, like a “noble athlete” (1.19), regains strength through her confession, “I am a Christian” (1.18, 19). The balance of masculinity shifts from the strong male persecutors to the “worthless, unformed, and despicable” woman. Through unexpected strength, endurance, and will, Blandina bests her male opponents in the performance of masculinity. The author tells his readers that Blandina was victorious in many other contests against humans and beasts, showing that even though “small, weak, and contemptible” she could serve as an inspiration to men because she had clothed herself in Christ, overcome the Adversary, and won the crown of immortality (1.42). The author of this letter describes Blandina in highly masculinized terms. She is a victorious athlete whose powers are greater than those of her persecutors. Her victory has cosmic import, because through it she seals the “condemnation of the crooked serpent” (1.42).90 Blandina is the instrument through which God exacts punishment. In addition, when those standing by look at Blandina hanging in the form of a cross, they see not just her body but also the body of Jesus.91 Although this author, like the editor of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, employs many of the masculinizing tools we have seen at work in other martyrologies, he does not allow Blandina to stay fully masculinized. Throughout the narrative we are reminded of her womanly weakness, reminded that we should be surprised at the masculinity performed by this “unformed,” “despicable,” and “weak” woman (1.17, 42). Toward the end of the letter, though, the author makes Blandina’s femininity even clearer. Immediately before her death, Blandina is paired with the fifteen-year-old

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boy Ponticus. She is referred to as his sister and, strangely, as his mother. The author’s description of Blandina here is reminiscent of the mother in 4 Maccabees: like the Maccabean mother, Blandina is a “noble mother” who encourages “her children” to seek martyrdom (1.55).92 Blandina, furthermore, “sent them before her victorious to the king, and then, after duplicating in her own body all her children’s feats, she strove to rejoin them, rejoicing and glorifying in her departure” (1.55). The connection between the Maccabean mother and Blandina is made stronger by the use of the plural noun, “children,” in the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne (1.53). Although Blandina is not, strictly speaking, a mother (i.e., Ponticus is not her biological child), and she is paired with only one child, the text employs the plural form ̯Қ ̯̙̦̩̝ (“children”), modeling Blandina’s actions even more explicitly on those of the Maccabean mother. The author highlights Blandina’s femininity by placing her—indeed, forcing her—into a maternal role, a role of which we should be suspect since, according to the text, she has no natural children. Motherhood, however, is the quintessential female role in the martyrologies. While all of these narratives affirm it as good, it is also something that must be abandoned when one is called to witness to Christ. Blandina illustrates the sacrifice a mother must make for her faith. She functions as a formulaic example to women narrated not out of historical fact but rather out of social and theological truth. In telling Blandina’s story, then, the author narrates a double sacrifice— that of the child whom Blandina urges to martyrdom and that of her selfsacrifice. She counsels the young boy to give himself over to martyrdom, thereby breaking the maternal (and thus the earthly) tie she feels toward him and achieving the masculine ideal of detachment from this world. As in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne does not narrate relationships between the male martyrs and biological children. Blandina, the only female character who receives sustained attention in the martyrology, is the only one associated with a child. She is the only one, therefore, who must dissolve this relationship before she can die as a martyr and be considered a member of the masculine group of Christians. Blandina’s witness to God is not described as qualitatively different from that of the other martyrs; she seems to have suffered no more than her male counterparts.93 The author, for example, elaborately describes Sanctus’s torture: the pagans pressed red-hot metal plates against his body until it was one wound and he no longer had a human form (1.21). Pothinus was beaten and trampled by the crowds (1.31). Maturus and Sanctus ran the gauntlet of whips, were mauled by animals, and were put in iron seats that were placed

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over flames (1.38). Attalus, likewise, was fastened to a metal seat over fire (1.52). Even though Blandina’s torture may not have been greater, her endurance and death were extraordinary, a fact made clear both by the author of the text and in subsequent tradition. Today the events of that day are recorded on a plaque at the amphitheater in Lyons, and the only martyr mentioned by name is Blandina. As Augustine pointed out in his sermons on Perpetua and Felicitas, female martyrs are remembered because of the extraordinary strength required to overcome womanly weakness.

AG AT H O N I K E

In my discussions of other female martyrs, I have focused on the authors’ characterizations of their actions, words, and deaths. In addition to focusing on these aspects in the story of Agathonike, the only female martyr in the second-century Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, I will offer a comparative analysis between the stories of Agathonike and her male counterparts. This text invites—perhaps even demands—such analysis, since the author separates the narrative into three discrete sections (first the story of Carpus, second the story of Papylus, and third the story of Agathonike), and much of the action follows a formulaic structure. Differences among the stories should alert us to important aspects of the martyrology. This martyrology is preserved in two recensions, a Greek version and a Latin one.94 Although the two recensions narrate the same basic story, they are not identical—that is, one is not simply a translation of the other.95 For our purposes, however, this story is important not because of differences in the recensions. Rather, I am interested in how masculinity and femininity function in this martyrology and how the descriptions of the martyrs contribute to the construction of Christian group identities. Both recensions highlight Carpus’s and Papylus’s masculinity in similar ways. In order to avoid redundancy, therefore, I will discuss the techniques of masculinization thematically rather than isolating them within each recension. Some of the differences between the recensions, however, will need to be highlighted in the discussion of Agathonike.

Carpus and Papylus Carpus and Papylus embody masculine self-control and volition. In spite of repeated orders to sacrifice to the gods in accordance with the emperor’s decrees, both men refuse.96 They are unable to be persuaded to act against

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their beliefs. When the proconsul grows angry, Carpus simply smiles (A9). The proconsul’s excessive emotion, and thus his lack of masculinity, is contrasted to Carpus’s calm demeanor. When Papylus persists in refusing to sacrifice, the proconsul admits that he is sorry that Papylus has had to undergo such torture (B3.5). The proconsul’s lament may indicate that he feels his actions are unjust. As the men are hung up on stakes and scraped with claws, they repeat their confession, “I am a Christian,” but otherwise remain silent (A22, 35; B2.4, 3.5). Carpus and Papylus accept their deaths and do not attempt to save themselves at the expense of compromising their faith. And finally, when the men are taken off the stakes, they run to the amphitheater, wishing to meet their deaths more quickly (A36; B4.2). Their actions reveal their volition and participation in their own deaths: these martyrs are not forced to go to the amphitheater; rather, they go joyfully to claim their fate. Carpus and Papylus challenge the authority of the proconsul, the emperor, and the pagan gods by asserting God’s supremacy. The pagan gods are inferior (A5–10; B2.1–2, 3.4) or dead (A12, 14–20; B2.2), while the Christian God is preeminent, living, and eternal (A7, 16; B3.4, 4.5). Papylus insists that his God has power over all flesh (A16; B3.4). In the Greek recension, Carpus goes so far as to tell the proconsul that by attempting to persuade the Christians to abandon their faith he is assisting the devil and must realize that this “is no small folly” (A20). The martyrs assume a position of authority in the face of the pagan ruler; they do not consider his power ultimate or his gods real. We have seen that the setting of the amphitheater was important in part because it placed the martyrologies within a space where power was negotiated. In their encounters with the proconsul, Carpus and Papylus present a Christian apology that challenges the truth, justice, and authority of Roman rule as enacted in the amphitheater. The men are described in athletic and agonistic terms. The devil contends with Christians (ж̴̢̡̛̩̯̝̟̩̯̝̥), preparing his battles (½̧̨̫̙̫̰̭) ahead of time (A17); Papylus endures his torture like a “noble athlete” (A35; B3.5); their deaths take place in the amphitheater, the location, as we have seen, where masculinity reigns supreme (A36; B4.2). All of this language situates the martyrs in a particular space, a space where masculinity could be displayed, where justice was to be enacted, and where power was recognized or rejected. By affirming Christian victory, the authors of the martyrologies assert Christian masculinity. My thesis regarding the critical connection between women and children may appear to be challenged by Papylus, who confesses to the proconsul that he has children. His connection to these children, however, does not diminish my claim; rather, it strengthens it. In the initial encounter between the

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proconsul and Papylus, included in both the Greek and Latin versions, the proconsul asks Papylus if he has children. The soon-to-be-martyr answers affirmatively, “Yes, many [by God]” (A29; B3.2).97 The crowd explains to the proconsul that Papylus refers to children in the faith (A30).98 It is not without significance that Papylus’s “children” are expressly not his. The authors make it clear that Papylus claims—and the crowd recognizes—that he has children “in the faith”; these are not his biological children. The proconsul sharpens this distinction even further by calling Papylus a liar for claiming to have children.99 The distinction here is between spiritual and biological children: spiritual children do not, by definition, bind Papylus to this world. They are otherworldly, and therefore Papylus is not required to relinquish his attachments to them in his quest for martyrdom.100 The two recensions include few details about the deaths of the male martyrs. When Carpus refuses to offer sacrifice to the gods, he is hung up and scraped with claws (A23; B2.4). Papylus is also hung up and scraped (A35; B3.1). The only description of their response to torture—besides Carpus’s smile as he is nailed to the stake (A38)—is their silence (A23, 35; B2.4, 3.5). The martyrs’ refusal to react to their punishment reveals their masculine conviction and self-control. Never do the martyrs fear for their lives, and never do they waver in their decision to die for their beliefs. When we turn to the story of the only female martyr in this story, however, things become far more complex.

The Story of Agathonike Unlike those of Carpus and Papylus, the story of Agathonike is quite different in the Greek and Latin versions, so I will address the two recensions separately, beginning with the Greek text. After the author narrates the arrests, interrogations, tortures, and deaths of Carpus and Papylus, he turns his attention to Agathonike. One noteworthy difference between the stories of the male martyrs and Agathonike is the role of the proconsul and crowd. When the author narrates the stories of Carpus and Papylus, his focus is on the interaction between them and the proconsul. In fact, the author does not mention any witnesses to Carpus’s interrogation or torture. The crowd does not appear until the second third of the story, when Papylus appears before the proconsul (A30). Even then, however, the crowd addresses not the Christian martyr but the proconsul, informing him that Papylus does not have children. After this brief encounter, the crowd is again absent from the narrative until it questions Carpus about his curious reaction—he smiles—to being hung on a stake (A38). Importantly, the crowd does not ask Carpus and

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Papylus to take pity on themselves, nor are they asked to have pity on anyone else. The male martyrs are, with only one exception, addressed exclusively by the proconsul. Alternatively, the author does not narrate any encounter between the proconsul and Agathonike. In this story it is the crowd that speaks, and their request is characteristic of that submitted to women: have pity on your child (A43).101 Agathonike responds by insisting that her son is no longer her concern. She relinquishes her child, asserting her belief that God can pity him (A44). This act of separating herself from her child precedes Agathonike’s self-willed death, showing the importance of freeing herself from earthly concerns—always in the form of children—just as Perpetua, Felicitas, and Blandina did. Another point of interest in this martyrology is the Greek author’s offhand remark that Agathonike removes her clothing before she jumps on the stake (A44).102 The statement is so peripheral that, on a cursory read, we are likely to overlook it. It is a critical detail, however, because it is the only mention of clothing in this narrative; here the author draws the reader’s attention to Agathonike’s nude body. Although it is likely that Carpus and Papylus were stripped before being scraped with claws, and although they would have been stripped before being burned, the Greek author does not narrate this. He does, however, supply his audience with an image of Agathonike’s nude body as she throws herself upon the stake. By mentioning that Agathonike removed her clothing, the author facilitates the audience’s “off-stage imagination.” If Musurillo is correct that the Greek version is earlier than the Latin one, we see that the Greek author was successful in creating a visual image of Agathonike’s body: the Latin recension commits the image to words, dwelling even longer on Agathonike’s body and describing it in greater detail. Turning now to the Latin recension, we should note the different responses the proconsul or crowd has toward the Christians’ confessions. When Carpus refuses to deny his faith, the proconsul asks him to have pity on himself (B2.3); when Pamfilus—as he is called in the Latin recension—refuses to deny his faith, the proconsul, likewise, asks him to have regard for himself (B3.5). But when Agathonike—who in this recension is arrested at the same time as Carpus and Pamfilus—professes her faith, it is the crowd that initially cries out, “Have pity on yourself and on your children” (B2.3); the proconsul repeats the crowd’s request (B6.2). By invoking Agathonike’s maternal emotion, the author reminds his audience of her femininity. Agathonike, however, modeling masculine self-control and resolve, replies, “My children have God who protects them” (B6.3).

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Differences between the exhortations made to male and female martyrs also appear in the other martyrologies. For example, the governor tries to persuade Germanicus to show compassion for his manhood;103 Polycarp is also asked to have respect for his manhood;104 the crowd asks Pionius, whom they love, to save himself because of his character and righteousness.105 All of these pleas are directed at the preservation of the man’s body. Perpetua, on the other hand, is asked to take pity not only on herself but also on her father, brothers, mother, aunt, and child.106 These pleas occur four times, and only once from the governor. It is her father, a family member to whom Perpetua should be emotionally attached, who tries to persuade her. Here, as with Agathonike, the crowd’s pleas show what they think will be most persuasive: calling on a woman’s earthly attachments to her family and especially to her children. In addition to requesting that Agathonike have pity on herself and on her child, the proconsul poses another revealing question. Again, the narrative presses the reader to compare the martyrs’ experiences. The proconsul asks Carpus to sacrifice to the gods according to the emperor’s command (B2.1), and he asks Pamfilus if he is a magistrate (B3.1), if he is wealthy (B3.2), and if he has children (B3.2)—all questions that ultimately would link him to masculine activities and status. When Agathonike is brought before the proconsul, however, he asks her to sacrifice but then asks if she is going to follow the decision of her teachers, Carpus and Pamfilus. By questioning Agathonike’s motivation for martyrdom, the author suggests she has an inferior (even submissive?) position relative to Christian men (B6.1).107 Unlike the portrayal of Agathonike in the Greek recension—where she acts independently of men—in the Latin version she is clearly placed in a subordinate position within the Christian community. Agathonike’s masculinity and femininity are also apparent when we compare the Latin author’s description of the torture and deaths of the three martyrs. Carpus is hung up to be scraped with claws, and then hung on a stake (B2.4, 5.1). Pamfilus is also hung up and scraped (B3.5). The author says that the “devil’s henchmen” strip Pamfilus and nail him to the stake (B4.2). By calling attention to the work of the devil’s henchmen, we easily miss the one-word note about Pamfilus’s disrobing. The author’s description of these events is remarkably succinct: he uses nine words to narrate Carpus’s torture and death and ten to narrate Pamfilus’s. When he describes Agathonike’s experience, however—one that is supposed to be similar (simile mortem; B3.4)—the author uses almost three times as many words. The story is not only longer, however—it is also more detailed. The audience’s imaginative gaze is taken rapidly from the scene of the men’s deaths and made to dwell on Agathonike’s body: “And when she was led to the spot, she removed her

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clothing and gave it to the servants. But when the crowd saw how beautiful she was, they grieved in mourning for her. The servants then carried her and hung her upon a stake” (B6.4).108 Although we are not given as many details about Agathonike’s body as we are of Perpetua’s and Felicitas’s bodies, we must note the difference in this author’s treatment of male and female martyrs. Through the detailed description of Agathonike’s experience, the author guides his audience into the world of the spectator. He paints a vivid picture for his audience, a picture that does not allow Agathonike’s masculine activities (volition—she removes her own clothes—courage, masculine detachment from worldly concerns) to overwhelm the image of her femininity. He paints a picture full of friction between Agathonike’s masculinity and femininity. Like the Carthaginians who were horrified by the destruction of Perpetua’s and Felicitas’s beauty, the audience that sees Agathonike through the narrative gaze is led to focus on the beauty of the body, an issue never raised in relation to men. The stories of these female martyrs show that in addition to masculinizing their Christian women subjects, authors also feminized them. The women fight in the arena like athletes, warriors, and gladiators; they display selfwill, leadership, bravery, and volition. These women, however, are also mothers and wives who are beautiful and modest. They embody the actions and virtues of Roman women: marriage, fertility, fidelity, modesty, and beauty. The conflict between masculinity and femininity in these female martyrs is not neatly resolved. Rather, the tension serves an immediate and critical role in their Christian identities. The masculinization of the martyrs bolstered the community’s power in relation to its opponents and offered hope to those who were, in reality, powerless; it showed that Christians were, in a real sense, more powerful than those wielding swords. This masculinity, however, when embodied in female Christians, was as dangerous as it was necessary, and thus it demanded mitigation. The reemergence of the paradigmatic woman from her masculinized body eased the potential societal unrest caused by the initial masculinization because it reaffirmed the appropriateness of women’s roles as obedient wives, mothers, and daughters. Masculinizing both men and women, in other words, was essential and, indeed, is forcefully presented in relation to the “other,” but in select cases (i.e., the narratives of female martyrs) it was subsequently reexamined, renegotiated, and reinterpreted within Christian communities. When an author writes of a heroine who challenges secular and familial authorities by asserting her autonomy in response to them, he presents a model of Christian behavior. Since the martyrologies, though, were written

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as instructive tales, we should not be surprised when the author tempers his depiction of the female martyrs. Although those women who fought and died as men could be inspiring models for Christian men and women confronted with persecution, they would be dismal examples of how Christian women ought to live in community. There appear, then, to be two distinct didactic tasks at work in the stories of the female martyrs. The first task was to educate both men and women about proper group behavior in relation to external threats, whether political, religious, or familial. When facing opposition to one’s faith, the Christian is to perform masculinity, to be single-minded and unwavering in testimony to his or her faith. Importantly, the stories of the female martyrs do not serve as models exclusively for Christian women. In fact, their stories may also serve as effective tools in the education of men since the implication of the narrative is, as Augustine argues, that if women can be successful in moving toward masculinity, so much more should men exhibit this manliness: “What, after all, could be more glorious than these women, whom men can more easily admire than imitate?”109 The authors’ emphasis on the female martyrs’ relationships to family points to an interesting element in the construction of Christian group identities. We saw in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, as well as in some of the other martyrologies, that men are usually asked to have pity on themselves and to save their lives. Christians must not be persuaded by the offers of life given by their persecutors. Rather, they must embody a superior masculinity, one that entails self-control, bravery, and volition. They must resist the persuasion of the crowds. When we turn to the female martyrs, group identity continues to be at the forefront of the story, but the threat is presented differently. In these texts, worldly relationships are the greatest threats to Christian women who are trying to embody the group identity characteristic of masculinity. In the stories of the female martyrs, it is not persuasion by Jews or pagans that is central. Rather, persuasion by and in reference to family poses the most significant risk for Christian women. Given Greco-Roman characterizations of women as mired in this world—especially seen in their attachments to children—it is not surprising that the authors of the martyrologies depict their heroines separating themselves from family members. The second didactic task of these narratives is the renegotiation of power within the Christian community. While traditions about masculinized female martyrs are critical in certain circumstances, they pose a serious threat to a Christianity community that is not facing an external threat, because they upset communal order. The varied gendered language in the martyrologies reflects the tension between external threat and internal cohesion. The texts, therefore, in various ways, attempt to balance appropriate behavior by, on the one hand, illustrating the necessity and possibility of women moving

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toward the ideals of masculinity, and, on the other hand, ensuring that the female martyr is placed safely back within the confines of proper, domestic femininity. In the end, the editor leaves his audience with an unresolved tension: he does not—indeed, he cannot—adjudicate between the gladiator and the mother. Both characterizations are needed to construct effective group identities.

Conclusion GENDER AND LANGUAGE IN EARLY CHRISTIAN MARTYR TEXTS People only become martyrs because others make them so. — J A N W I L L E M VA N H E N T E N A N D F R I E D R I C H

AV E M A R I E ,

M A R T Y R D O M A N D N O B L E D E AT H

A

t the university I attended, being a Christian meant that a person said she was one. Although church attendance was expected and subtle signals of faith—a cross pendant or a “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet—were acceptable accessories, social identity remained more assertion than action. So we were all made uncomfortable by the student who conveniently modified Jesus’ charge in Mark 8:34 and wheeled around a cross so large that it would not fit through the classroom doors and thus had to be left in the halls. He did not simply state his faith: he towed it around campus as a testimony to his obedience to Christ. His public display was disconcerting to us because, like many Christians today, my fellow students and I differentiated social groups according to theological premises rather than physical actions. Faith, unlike children, should be heard but not seen. But like the student with the near-to-scale cross, the authors of the martyrologies insisted that Christian identity be confessed and performed. In the martyrologies one does not become a member of the Christian community through intellectual assent to prescribed beliefs. Anyone could confess his faith, as the story of Quintus shows, but the test of group membership lay in action. Being a Christian required a person to act like one: being a Christian meant being a man. The masculinity of the martyrs—evidenced through their volition, self-control, justice, and rationality—was asserted in spite of the obvious: Christians were victims of Roman power. In the last chapter of his book Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome, Donald Kyle discusses this inherent problem in the Christian martyrologies: they present their heroes as active participants—rather than passive victims—in the amphitheater. Kyle reminds us that Christians “died in the arena, but not as gladi-

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ators; they were thrown to the beasts, but not as bestiarii. As cheap, nonbellicose noxii, they suffered the worst atrocities of summa supplicia.”1 Kyle attributes this difference—historical fact versus narrative representation— to the fact that it was “Christian sources and the ironies of the history of western civilization that turned Roman prosecutions for religious treason into Christian persecutions for faith.”2 Kyle rightly points out the revisionist history of the martyrologies, which allows the authors to present prosecution as persecution. This cannot be a case of history being “written by the victors,”3 however, since many of the accounts of the martyrs were written long before Christians saw any hope of attaining earthly power. The martyrologies were not post-Constantinian flights of Christian fancy (as Kyle implies); rather, the stories of Christians triumphing over unjust persecution flourished in the century and a half before the Edict of Milan was issued. That Christians “eagerly documented traditions” about the “ ‘martyrs’ ” triumphing over Roman power before they obtained political power remains one of the most intriguing aspects of the narrative accounts of the martyrs.4 In the early martyrologies Christians entered the arena as hopeful and triumphant gladiators and athletes, as willing participants in a battle that for them led not to death but to life. The texts—disregarding observable events—portray the martyrs as agonistic gladiators involved in a life-anddeath struggle. By taking the martyrs out of the category noxii and placing them in the arena as gladiators, the authors of the martyrologies reject the portrayal of Christians as victims whose only fate is death. The authors of the martyrologies involved themselves in an activity that reversed the “ought” of history to the “is.”5 The project is far-reaching in the early martyrologies and affects almost every detail of the accounts. While martyrologies may offer innovative interpretations of events, they do not present Christianity in wholly new terms. Rather, the authors appropriated cultural indicators of masculinity to challenge the perception of Christian weakness and victimization. To accomplish this task, the martyrologies separate those around them into three groups—Christians, Jews, and pagans—and then they attribute varying levels of masculinity to each social group in proportion to the threat they pose to Christian social identity. Pagans are portrayed as manlier than Jews because they are not as significant a threat to Christian identity (even if they are a threat to Christians’ lives). The Jews are depicted as possessing an inferior masculinity because they represent a far greater threat to Christian distinctiveness. The martyrologies, furthermore, portray Jews and pagans as homogeneous groups.6 What is significant about Jews and pagans is that they are other; they are

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non-Christian. They function in the world of the martyrologies only as a way to define what Christianity is not. Subtle differences in behavior among out-group members are unimportant; Jewish and pagan characters are nothing more than representatives of their respective social groups. In-groups, however, are differentiated, so we should expect to find distinctions made among members based on the attributes of the group’s social identity. This plays out in the martyrologies when Christian apostates are described as unmanly. These individuals—for example, Quintus and Biblis—represent the greatest threat to Christian identity because when they publicly deny their faith, they call into question the validity of Christian identity and compromise group unity. Although these Christians represent a threat to group distinctiveness, the authors of the martyrologies manage the threat by labeling apostate Christians as unmanly, thereby reaffirming the value of masculinity for Christian identity. In descriptions of intercommunal conflicts, Christians are portrayed homogeneously: they are all manly. Intracommunally, however, Christian social identities were more complex. The Christian world was recategorized, and possession of masculinity was redistributed. On the one hand, the masculine female martyr was an effective tool in identity construction because the victory of Christian women over pagan and Jewish men underscored the superiority of Christian masculinity: even Christian women were manlier than their male persecutors. The depiction of a manly female Christian was beneficial in intergroup comparisons, but in intragroup relations the masculinized woman quickly became problematic. Christian women were endowed with masculine fortitude but also assigned the traditional women’s virtues of modesty, beauty, and fertility. The authors of the martyrologies do not attempt to resolve the gender ambiguity for their readers. Since both characterizations of Christian women were critical to Christian group identities, one could not outweigh the other. Masculinity and femininity were left in an irresolvable tension. As Christians sought to endow the actions of the martyrs with meaning by claiming masculinity for their own social group, they appropriated aspects of the world and culture around them, which is not surprising, because they were in fact part of that milieu. Since the amphitheater was already a place where authority was negotiated, it is not unexpected that the authors of the martyrologies would utilize this space to challenge Roman power. The authors of the martyrologies assert that God, and not the Roman ruler, is in charge of life and death, even if current events seem to contradict this belief. Many of the martyrs in Lyons were strangled in prison, for example, but the author assures his reader that the number was “as many as the Lord wished

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to go in this way . . . demonstrating his glory.”7 The authors of the martyr acts also challenged the ultimacy of imperial authority by recounting the power of God to repay suffering. The editor of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas interprets the actions of the martyrs as saying to their persecutors, “You [condemn] us, but God [will condemn] you.”8 Most of the martyrologies acknowledge the earthly power of the emperor—indeed, it would be difficult for Christians to deny his power as they stood in the arena facing torture and death9—but the authors of these texts insist that the emperor retained power only because it was God’s desire. Apollonius, for instance, told the proconsul Perennis that Commodus ruled the empire by the will of God, and Polycarp asserted that Christians obeyed temporal authorities because God assigned them.10 But when asked whether he knew of the emperor’s edict mandating sacrifice, Pionius subordinated the emperor’s command to God’s commands.11 Similarly, in the Martyrdom of Apollonius, Apollonius insists, “A decree from God cannot be conquered by human decrees.”12 Such declarations denigrate the power of Rome, suggesting the final, authoritative power lies with God alone. The martyrologies also assert God’s superior and eternal power—versus the inferior and temporary power of worldly leaders—when they date the martyrs’ deaths. The author of the Martyrdom of Apollonius, for example, records the martyr’s death as taking place on “the eleventh day before the Kalends, according to the Romans, and in the eighth month according to the Asiatic system, but when our Lord Jesus Christ was reigning.”13 The author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp notes that Polycarp was arrested “under Herod while Philip of Tralles was high priest and Statius Quadratus was governor, while our Lord Jesus Christ was reigning eternally.”14 In each of these cases the authors present God as superior to any earthly power.15 Yet another way the martyrologies challenge the power of earthly rulers is by claiming that Christians are citizens of a superior empire. The martyrs’ defiant gestures are not merely about religion and confession of faith; they are embodied political statements by which Christians position themselves as full citizens—that is, virtuous, masculine citizens—in God’s empire and not as victimized, feminized barbarians. The language of citizenship (½̧̡̛̫̥̯̝) challenges Roman power by constructing a new and superior polis. In the Martyrdom of Justin, Rome—the city of earthly rulers—is compared to Jerusalem— the city of God. Although Marcus Aurelius “governed the Roman Empire,” Jerusalem is God’s city, which is free, heavenly, and created by him.16 This author, furthermore, describes the martyrs as standing beside the throne of the absolute ruler (̯ԗ̡̠̮½̫̯̥̦ԗ) who is the Christians’ king (̧̡̞̝̮̥Ӻ).17 Even more pointedly, the author of the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs narrates an

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exchange between Saturninus, the proconsul, and Speratus, a Christian. Saturninus tells Speratus: “You can acquire the pardon of our lord the emperor if you return to a sound mind.”18 Speratus refuses to acknowledge the power of the Roman emperor, because, he insists, Christians have their own emperor.19 As citizens of God’s empire, the martyrs assume an active role as political players in the polis. By declaring Christians’ citizenship in God’s empire, the authors of the martyrologies rejected the characterization of Christians as barbarians on show in the arena.20 Christians are portrayed instead as the civilizing force in the midst of barbaric crowds and amphitheatrical events. Typically it was the combatants in the arena who symbolized the barbarous, that which was foreign, but the martyrologies invert the relationship between arena and stands, victim and spectator, citizen of heaven and Roman citizen. Now it is the ones in the sand—not the ones in the stands—who are civilized. The language of citizenship and civility, moreover, is gendered. By depicting the martyrs as full, active citizens of God’s polis, the authors of the martyrologies appropriate the Roman ideals of citizenship and masculine virtue. When we recognize the importance of the martyrologies for the construction of various identities, we can make sense of the phenomenon—turning prosecution into persecution—Kyle points out. The martyrologies are not simply stories about individuals and their decisions to die. Through these stories the authors of the martyrologies inscribed power and resistance not only on the bodies of the martyrs, but also within their communities of readers, rendering the acta fundamental for Christian communal hope within the Roman empire. The stories of the martyrs allowed Christians to reinterpret their world so that they were spiritually empowered long before they were politically in power.

Notes

INTRODUCTION: CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY THROUGH C U LT U R A L A P P R O P R I AT I O N 1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

Ign., Rom. 5.2. Translations are my own unless otherwise stated. For a thorough discussion of suicide in antiquity, or what Arthur J. Droge and James Tabor call “self-death,” see A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992). E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 135. Strangely, Dodds contrasts Ignatius’s attitude toward death with Tertullian’s “healthier motive”: Tertullian insisted that it was far better for Christians to die as martyrs than from natural causes (e.g., sickness or childbirth [Fug. 9], 52; see also 136). W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 197. G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?” Past and Present 26 (1963): 23–24. Leonard L. Thompson, “The Martyrdom of Polycarp: Death in the Roman Games,” JR 82 (2002): 39. So also in Herm., Sim. 9.28.3 and Tertullian, Apol. 50. Ign., Rom. 1.2. ̯̫ԉ̡̤̫ԉц½̡̥̯̰̲Ӻ̩, ibid., 2.1. Ignatius uses this phrase often in his letter to the Romans to describe his ultimate goal to be reached through death (see ibid., 4.1; 5.3); see also Richard A. Bower, “The Meaning of ц½̡̥̯̰̲Ӻ̩ in the Epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch,” VC 28 (1974): 1–14. Ign., Rom. 2.1. Ibid., 3.2. Ibid., 4.2; 5.1, 3. Ibid., 6.2. Although Ignatius uses the generic term к̴̩̤̬½̫̭ (“human”)

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14.

15.

16.

17.

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instead of ж̩̬̚ (“man”), the context of this letter is that of spiritual perfection (a state that depends both on the attainment of masculinity and the virtues that accompany it. See chapter 1 for a discussion of the relationship between masculinity and virtue). Edmond Le Blant (Les Actes des martyrs: Supplément aux Acta sincera de Dom Ruinart [Paris, 1882]), Adolf von Harnack (Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius [Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1958]), and Hippolyte Delehaye (Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires [Brussels: Bureaux de la Société des Bollandistes, 1921]) were among the major contributors to this era of scholarship. In Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Musurillo comments on Harnack’s method: it “tended to retain those documents which revealed nothing of the patently absurd, the miraculous, or the unhistorical” (Herbert Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972], li). “For the present edition, I have chosen twenty-eight of the texts which I consider the most reliable” (Musurillo, Acts, xii). Some recent scholars— particularly in the case of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas—have questioned the usefulness of this approach. See, for example, Erin Ronsse, “Rhetoric of Martyrs: Listening to Saints Perpetua and Felicitas,” JECS 14 (2006): 283–327; Ross S. Kraemer and Shira L. Lander, “Perpetua and Felicitas,” in Early Christian World, vol. 2, ed. Philip Francis Esler (London: Routledge, 2000), 1048–1068; and Jan N. Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary: Authenticity, Family, and Visions,” in Märtyrer und Märtyrerakten, ed. W. Ameling (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002), 77–120. In research concerning the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for example, much of the early scholarship focused on establishing the date of Polycarp’s death. Other scholars focused on the development of the doxology as evidenced in Polycarp’s prayer (Mart. Pol. 14). F. E. Brightman suggested that the doxology in the Martyrdom of Polycarp was typical of the church of Abyssinia (“The Prayer of St. Polycarp and Its Concluding Doxology,” JTS 23 [1922]: 391–392). J. Armitage Robinson argued that the doxological formula did not arise until the third century; thus he dated the whole of the Martyrdom of Polycarp to that period (as opposed to 155/56 C.E., as most scholars suggest; J. Armitage Robinson, “The Apostolic Anaphora and the Prayer of St. Polycarp,” JTS 21 [1920]: 97–105). J. W. Tyrer, however, argued against Robinson’s thesis by providing a parallel from Justin (Apol. 1.65.3) for Polycarp’s doxology (“The Prayer of St. Polycarp and Its Concluding Doxology,” JTS 23 [1922]: 390–391). Perhaps the most famous debate on this subject took place between G. E. M. de Ste. Croix and A. N. Sherwin-White in the pages of the journal Past and Present (Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?”; Ste. Croix, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?: A Rejoinder,” Past and Present 27 [1964]: 28–33; A. N. Sherwin-White, “Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted? An Amendment,” Past and Present 27 [1964]: 23–27). De Ste. Croix argued that Christians were charged “for the name,” the nomen Christianum.

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The underlying concern that drove pagans to persecute Christians was the perception of Christianity as atheistic, and thus as a threat to the pax deorum. Alternatively, A. N. Sherwin-White located the persecution of Christians primarily in the juridical, not religious, sphere. He argued that the persecution of Christians should be understood in the light of the treatment of other superstitions, which, he asserted, were all grounded in the criminal behavior of their followers. Sherwin-White suggested that in this early period the grounds indicated for the proscription of Christianity was its association with certain crimes. It was only later, when the cult was better known, that specific charges were dropped and the association with Christianity itself became liable for punishment. Sherwin-White is perhaps most closely associated with the thesis that Christian contumacia, stubbornness or contempt, was responsible for the shift from prosecution of specific criminal activities to persecution for “the name”: as Christians appeared more often before governors, their stubbornness became well known, and this stubbornness was eventually tied to a larger notion of Christian godlessness. Some scholars still hold this view (see, for example, Thompson, “Martyrdom,” 34–35). Thompson argues de Ste. Croix’s position regarding the “considerable latitude” a provincial ruler had in deciding relevant charges and punishments (“Martyrdom,” 36). 18. Perpetua has received a great amount of attention in this regard. Brent Shaw, for example, laments the fate of Perpetua’s story in the hands of her subsequent (male) interpreters (“The Passion of Perpetua,” Past and Present 139 [1993]: 5–45). The primary weakness with this approach (which could be applied, mutatis mutandis, to other martyrdom texts) lies in its demand that the text accurately reflect the inner thoughts and fears of a twentyone-year-old woman who died in North Africa in 203 C.E. Such exegesis is always difficult, but in this case it is perhaps even more so because we cannot compare it with any other text to determine the probability of the authorial claim. This becomes particularly problematic when interpretation is based so completely on such a claim. Elizabeth Castelli notes that such approaches ignore “the complexity of the textuality of the story, reading the account provided in Perpetua’s diary as though it were a simple rendering of the ‘truth’ of Perpetua’s actual, real-life experience rather than as, at some level, a fiction” (Elizabeth Castelli, “ ‘I Will Make Mary Male’: Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation of Christian Women in Late Antiquity,” in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub [New York: Routledge, 1991], 38). Similarly, Nicole Loraux writes about Herakles as “a figure rather than a character. Not an interior whose hidden deviations might simply be exposed to the light, but an actor constituted by his acts, the exterior of an exceptional body. By insisting on this definition [of figure], I mean to exclude from the start the facile tendency to endow the mythic hero with a character in order better to analyze

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19. 20.

21. 22.

23.

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him” (“Herakles,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin et al. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990], 23). Loraux cites Jean Starobinski in warning against “interpretive supplementation”: “the temptation to treat dramatic characters as ‘actual beings . . . endowed with actual childhoods . . . whereas they have no existence beyond the words attributed to them’ and . . . no existence beyond the acts they perform” (23). In a recent article, however, Shelly Matthews reminds us that women were a real part of early Christianity and, while it is true that male authors often use women—as Peter Brown noted—“to think with,” we must not assume that women are merely signs of masculine desires or concerns. “Rather than formulating the question of textual representation and historical reality as an either/or question,” Matthews suggests that the better route is to “argue both for the study of gender in textual representation and for reconstructive projects” (“Thinking of Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography,” JFSR 17 [2001], 51). Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 29. Because the names of the martyrs often carry such symbolic weight, J. Albert Harrill argues that many of the heroes and heroines in the martyrologies are fictions rather than historical persons: “Blandina is not bland; Biblis is not a fragile strip of ̧̛̞̥̞̭ (Cyperus Papyrus); Pothinus has a pressing desire (½̷̡̫̤̥̩̭) for martyrdom, as does Martyrus; Sanctus is blessed (sanctus), for he says to his tormenters nothing but the declaration of his faith; or (in another martyrdom) Perpetua does not enjoy a long-lasting life; the slave Felicitas does not have good fortune, and so on. From this insight, the system of name giving in Christian martyrdoms suggests a fiction familiar from Greco-Roman novels” (“The Domestic Enemy: A Moral Polarity of Household Slaves in Early Christian Apologies and Martyrdoms,” in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. David Balch and Carolyn Osiek [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003], 251). Mart. Pol. 9.1. It is difficult to separate gender and sex in ancient discourses. The literature reflects an understanding of differences in anatomy (sex) as well as differences in expected behaviors (gender). These are often, but not always, associated. The fluidity of the ancient system makes it difficult for the historian to adhere to contemporary distinctions between gender (as socially constructed) and sex (as biological). Indeed, Mathew Kuefler resists distinguishing the terms in his book The Manly Eunuch because they are not differentiated in antiquity (The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001], 5). This problem is discussed more fully in chapter 1. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to Christian masculinity rather than the “superiority of Christian masculinity.” Keeping in mind ancient under-

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24.

25.

26.

27.

28. 29.

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standings of gender and sex, however—described in chapter 1—it is more precise to say that Christians embodied a superior form of masculinity. My use of the shorthand “Christian masculinity,” then, should not be read to imply that Christians were described as the sole possessors of masculinity. As we will see, the portrayal of the martyrs’ masculinity—as with any group identity—is accomplished in large part by comparison. In Competing Identities Robert Seesengood employs postcolonial theory to argue that athletic and gladiatorial imagery in early Christian literature is an example of a “hybrid” identity (Competing Identities: The Athlete and the Gladiator in Early Christian Literature [New York: Clark, 2007]). Seesengood assumes that Christians thought of themselves as cultural outsiders who must have rejected cultural norms. As I explain below, my reading of these texts reveals that the authors of the martyrologies appropriated cultural categories of masculinity and power to claim the superiority of Christianity. I refer to “feminization” and not “eroticization” since I find no traces of the latter in the martyrologies with which I am here concerned. Certainly later texts incorporate erotic elements (e.g., the Martyrdom of Agnes), but as Daniel Boyarin points out, “the powerful eroticization of Christian martyrology is a product of the fourth century. It is absent in the second-century martyrdoms, even of women. The fourth-century virgin martyrs are ecstatically ravished brides, not victorious combatants, at the moment of ‘completion’ ” (Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999], 122). For a discussion of the eroticization of the female martyr in later Christian texts, see Virginia Burrus, “Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius,” JECS 3 (1995): 25–46; idem, Begotten, Not Made: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000); Elizabeth A. Castelli, “Imperial Reimaginings of Christian Origins: Epic in Prudentius’s Poem for the Martyr Eulalia,” in Reimagining Christian Origins: A Colloquium Honoring Burton L. Mack, ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli and Hal Taussig (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1996), 173–184. My argument here, though based on social identity theory, corresponds also to the anthropological model of group (the degree to which individuals feel like group members) and grid (the degree of regulation experienced by individuals) developed by Mary Douglas in Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Routledge, 1996). Castelli writes, “One might even go so far as to argue that they did not simply preserve the story of persecution and martyrdom but, in fact, created it” (Martyrdom, 25). Ibid., 26. Ibid., 29. Castelli writes, “This book is not a history of early Christian martyrdom but an exploration of the culture-making aspects of its representations” (ibid., 4).

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30. Ibid., 30. 31. Work on the martyr acts should address their function within Christian communities, but Margaret Miles reminds us that in our zeal to take into account these groups, we must not neglect the (presumably) initiating factor: the persecutions themselves. In a review of Judith Perkins’s Suffering Self and G. W. Bowersock’s Martyrdom and Rome, Miles writes, “Both Bowersock and Perkins minimize the fact of persecution and martyrdom as an explanation for why early Christians wrote about it so feverishly. Persecutions were, to be sure, intermittent even though persistent. Yet the powerful experience of anticipating and/or witnessing martyrdom, shared by Christians and non-Christians alike, should not be ignored as a fundamental impetus for literary fascination with martyrdom” (AThR 78 [1996]: 665). By employing memory theory, Castelli avoids this problem. She roots communal memories of persecution and suffering in the reality of Roman persecutions of Christianity. 32. Castelli, Martyrdom, 4. 33. Ibid., 41. Castelli’s argument here builds on Brent Shaw’s thesis regarding the Christian valorization of suffering, as formulated in his article “Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs” (JECS 4 [1996]: 269–312). Shaw writes, “Praises of active and aggressive values entailed in manliness (andreia) by almost all other writers in the world of the Maccabees could easily fill books. The elevation to prominence of the passive value of merely being able to endure would have struck most persons, certainly all those spectators, as contradictory and, indeed, rather immoral. . . . Silence, passivity, submissiveness, openness, suffering—the shame of allowing oneself to be wounded, to be penetrated, and of simply enduring all of that—were castigated as weak, womanish, slavish, and therefore morally bad. The equation of these two virtues—nobility (gennaia) and passive endurance (hypomonê)—would have struck the classic male ideologue of the city state as contradictory, a moral oxymoron” (279). Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson take issue with Shaw’s characterization of the centrality of endurance in 4 Maccabees (“Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” JBL 117 [1998]: 257). Shaw has, furthermore, overstated the case regarding ancient views of endurance. As F. Hauck points out in his Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) entry on ѿ½̨̫̫̩̚ (“endurance”), there is evidence that ѿ½̨̫̫̩̚ characterized an active stance against hostility (“ѿ½̴̨̫̙̩,” TDNT 4:581). Endurance was prominent in the construction of masculine self-control in Stoic philosophy, where acceptance of things beyond one’s control was mandated. Philo (e.g., Leg. 65), Seneca (e.g., Ep. 67), and Epictetus (e.g., Diss. 2.2.13) all link endurance with bravery (for other examples, see Hauck, TDNT 4:583). Hauck also notes that a positive evaluation of endurance can be traced at least as far back as Aristotle. He writes, “In the system of Greek virtues ѿ½̨̫̫̩̚ is, along with ̡̛̦̝̬̯̬̝, a sub-division of ж̡̛̩̠̬̝” (TDNT

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34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43.

44.

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4:582). The Psalmist explicitly connects ѿ½̨̫̫̩̚ with ж̢̡̛̩̠̬̮̤̝̥ (TDNT 4:584). Victor Pfitzner has also shown that ѿ½̨̫̫̩̚ was “the stock vocabulary of the picture of the Agon in the diatribe where the moral athlete is required to remain unmovable in enduring the toils of pain or the blows of fortune” (Paul and the Agon Motif: Traditional Athletic Imagery in the Pauline Literature [Leiden: Brill, 1967], 63). Thus even if we were to grant Shaw the centrality of endurance as a virtue in the martyrologies, we are not then bound to read ѿ½̨̫̫̩̚ as a feminizing—and thus shocking—description of Christianity. Moreover, how should we explain the athletic and gladiatorial imagery so abundant in these texts if the authorial emphasis is on passive endurance rather than active participation? Castelli, Martyrdom, 48. Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995), 2. Ibid., 122–123. The Christian martyr texts “need to be seen as more than reports of events; they need to be considered as key documents in early Christian self-fashioning” (104). Ibid., 76. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 193. Also interesting is the amount of space—or lack thereof—dedicated to suffering itself. Often the actual torture and death of the Christian is dismissed quickly. The bulk of the martyrologies tend to focus on the Christian’s attitude toward his or her impending death rather than detailing the death itself. In an article on the mastery of the passions, David Aune writes, “We find in many of these Christian writings an emphasis on moral perfection which is quite similar to 4 Macc: unwavering obedience to God results in complete freedom from troublesome bodily sensations” (“Mastery of the Passions: Philo, 4 Maccabees, and Earliest Christianity,” in Hellenization Revisited: Shaping a Christian Response Within the Greco-Roman World, ed. W. E. Helleman (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994], 139–140). Mart. Pol. 2.2. Pass. Perp. 20.8–10. The author of the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne insisted that it was not Christian confessors who suffered the most, but those who denied their faith (Lyons 32–35). This passage is particularly problematic for the thesis that suffering is key to Christian identity. Interestingly, Perkins acknowledges that the accounts of the martyrs do not present a body in pain (Suffering Self, 117). Yet her overarching thesis emphasizes the suffering body: “Bodily suffering . . . provided Christians with their community identity” (142); in its beginnings Christianity was “a radical social institution focused on, and articulated through, the suffering body” (143); “the popular and widely distributed Acts of the Martyrs presented the

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48.

49.

50.

51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

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message that to be a Christian was to suffer” (204). Judith Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek? Constructing Early Christianity (London: Clark, 2002), 213. See also Boyarin, Dying for God, 109–122. Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek, 213. Elizabeth Castelli notes that in the Martyrdom of Pionius, Pionius “is not only a speaker but also an actor. . . . From the opening of Pionius’s text, he knows that his spoken testimony must be supplemented by bodily testimony—not only the ultimate visible testimony of martyrdom but also gestures and performances that will unambiguously communicate the consistency of his commitment” (Martyrdom, 99). I would add that these consistent “gestures and performances” are indications of Pionius’s masculinity. The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas is the text scholars most often point to when arguing for Christianity’s subversive use of sex. Mary Lefkowitz, for example, writes, “Perpetua believed that her religion offered her an opportunity to break away from the traditional patriarchal values of pagan society. . . . Thus Perpetua does not go to her death so much because she is a woman, as in order not to be a woman” (Mary R. Lefkowitz, Women in Greek Myth [Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986], 104–105). Judith Perkins, “The Passion of Perpetua: A Narrative of Empowerment,” Latomus 53 (1994): 843. In another article, however, Perkins argues that the Pass. Perp. champions femininity, especially maternity (see n. 62). Perkins, Suffering Self, 104. The Martyrdom of Perpetua, according to Perkins, “is a self-representation of a woman subverting and transcending her society’s strictures, buttressed by a growing sense of her empowerment through suffering” (105). Ibid., 104. Ibid., 113. Boyarin, Dying for God, 75. It is not uncommon for scholars to compare the “simple” masculinization of early female martyrs to the “complex” feminization of male Christians in later texts. Boyarin, for example, contrasts what he describes as the complex and ambiguous gendered portrayals of Christians in the fourth century to earlier models that were “simply the victorious, valorous, virilized gladiator, à la Perpetua” (ibid.). Ibid. Ibid. Tertullian’s famous question, quid Athenae Hierosolymis? (“What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?” Praescr. 7), often read as proof of the rift between Christianity and paganism, may better be understood as a reflection of Tertullian’s desire to distinguish these communities, which were rapidly assimilating. Robert Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 28. Boyarin also locates Christianity in the throes of separating itself from paganism: “The fourth century seems particularly rich in

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the proliferation of technologies for the production of the self and other: Christian orthodoxy versus its other, so-called heresy (including prominently the ‘Judaizing’ heresies); rabbinic Jewish orthodoxy versus its major (br)other, Christianity and Christian Judaism (its ‘twin’); and even the ongoing issue of the fuzzy separation between Christianity and so-called paganism” (Dying for God, 18). I agree with Boyarin here, but I would add that in the martyrologies this separation is accomplished by fixing opponents at inferior points on the scale of masculinity. Elizabeth Castelli makes a similar point when she writes, “The categories of identity traditionally invoked in histories of Roman persecution and early Christian martyrdom tend to reinforce an oversimplifying and potentially misleading binarism: Roman vs. Christian. Obviously, these two categories are not structurally parallel, nor are they in lived experience necessarily mutually exclusive” (Martyrdom, 35). Her comments highlight the importance of identity theory for understanding the binary “Roman” versus “Christian”: “Both are ideals that required constant reinscription, categories whose borders demanded heavy guarding and strategic shoring up through repeated and sustained rhetorical and ritual performances. Indeed, from the Christian point of view, the commemorative practices associated with the production of ‘martyrdom’ were a major defense of the borders of ‘Christianness,’ and that defense necessarily involved the production of a Roman imperial other whose political and cultural dominance bore the caricaturing stamp of oppositionality” (Martyrdom, 35). Many of the essays in the recent volume edited by Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele focus on the intersection of gender and identity. Penner and Vander Stichele write, “What becomes clear in all of this is that gender and sex(uality) are understood as constituent elements of the ways in which humans thought about and constructed their identities in the ancient world—religious and otherwise” (Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses [Leiden: Brill, 2007], ix). In addition, scholars agree that by this point more Christians were converting from paganism than from Judaism. We should expect, then, some overlap in worldviews between the two groups. 58. Gregory J. Riley, “Words and Deeds: Jesus as Teacher and Jesus as Pattern of Life,” HTR 90 (1997): 433. 59. For an insightful analysis of Christian appropriation of spectacle, see Christopher A. Frilingos, Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 60. Minucius Felix makes explicit the distinction between appearance and reality (Oct. 37). In Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 [esp. pp. 75–171]), John Dugan explains that although De Oratore offers a transgressive theory of oratory (especially in its support of the theatrical), Cicero accomplishes his goals by utilizing traditional Roman values. Dugan describes Cicero’s aesthetic

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as “controlled transgression” that tests “established boundaries” (163). Similarly, Christian interpretations of the martyrs’ situations—particularly the case with women and slaves—are perhaps surprising but nonetheless remain true to Roman social values. 61. Judging from comments made by Pliny the Elder and Philo, the potential for females to transform into males (and vice versa) was accepted in the larger world. See discussion in chapter 1. Elizabeth Castelli also sees early Christianity as appropriating—rather than rejecting—gender norms. She writes, “The available evidence cautions us against making any sweeping assumptions about the transgressive character of Christianity with respect to gender ideology” (Martyrdom, 67). 62. Judith Perkins has recently written an article on the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas that focuses on the female body and maternity. Perkins argues that the characters Perpetua and Felicitas were created in the course of the author’s response to christological concerns in North Africa. The women “are so rhetorically pertinent to the discourse of the period in Carthage as evidenced by Tertullian as to make suspect the women’s authenticity as real persons. Their representations seem to coincide too closely with the theological polemics of the period not to have been created to fit a specific historical argument” (“The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body in the Passion of Perpetua,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, ed. Penner and Vander Stichele, 316). Perkins’s article is an important example of the possibilities for interpreting the martyrologies as products of specific communities and shows that martyrologies may not have been written as commemorations of suffering and death. Because the article focuses exclusively on the issue of maternity, however, we are left wondering how other gendered elements are to be interpreted. Perpetua, after all, is not only mother here, she is also consistently depicted as rejecting the role of mother and accepting a more masculine role in relation to outsiders. 63. Tat-siong Benny Liew writes, “Derrida’s and Lacan’s relational understanding of language meaning and self-identity respectively are thus important for the meaning and identity of gender. Male/masculine and female/feminine make sense only in terms of or, more accurately, in contrast to each other. Coleen M. Conway is correct in this regard to suggest that gender analysis within Gospel studies should involve a cross-examination or comparative inspection of both male and female characters. Yet a ‘real’ man in the ancient Mediterranean has various opposites or contrasting ‘Others.’ In addition to women, these ‘opposite Others’ include at least ‘foreigners’ and social inferiors” (“Re-Mark-able Masculinities: Jesus, the Son of Man, and the (Sad) Sum of Manhood?” in New Testament Masculinities, ed. Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson (Atlanta: SBL, 2003], 112–113). Maren Niehoff has discussed the construction of Jewish identity vis-à-vis “proximate others” in Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001).

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64. Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch, 3. 65. Harrill has observed that recent scholarly work on martyrdom “has not sufficiently emphasized martyrology as the official, and so not the whole, story—the ‘public transcript’ as opposed to the disguised ‘hidden transcript’ of household subordinates that the practice of domination also created” (“The Domestic Enemy,” 253). Harrill rightly suggests that we read these texts as products of the dominant group rather than as products of dissenting Christian groups. It is not surprising, then, that these texts prescribe traditional gender roles for male and female Christians. 66. Markus, End of Ancient Christianity, 85. 67. In particular, the discussion will focus on the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, the Martyrdom of Apollonius, the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, the Acts of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, and the Martyrdom of Pionius. Several other martyrologies will corroborate my thesis about emerging Christian group identities. These include the Acts of Justin and Companions, the Martyrdom of Bishop Fructuosus and His Deacons, the Martyrdom of Saint Conon, the Martyrdom of Saints Marian and James, and the Martyrdom of Saints Montanus and Lucius. 68. Droge and Tabor write, “The Stoics recognized the right of an individual to take his own life, but what concerned them more than the act itself was the context and manner in which it might be performed. Above all, the decision to take one’s life must be done rationally (eulogos)” (Noble Death, 29). The portrayal of Christian martyrdom appears to conform to much ancient philosophical discussion about suicide. Cicero (Tusc. 1.29.71–1.31.75; 1.49.118) suggests that when a sign has been received from a deity regarding an individual’s death, he or she should enter into death joyfully (see also Diogenes Laertius’s account of Zeno’s death [7.26]). Droge and Tabor note that according to Seneca, voluntary death was “the path to liberty . . . proof that an individual cannot be held against his will” (Noble Death, 34). According to Seneca, furthermore, killing oneself provided proof of one’s freedom (De prov. 2.9–12). For a discussion of Stoic views on death, see John M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 238–255. 69. Marcus Aurelius, Med. 11.3. The judgment of irrationality in seeking death not only was used by pagans against Christians, but became a fairly standard slur against competing forms of Christianity in the first three centuries. Take, for instance, the repeated claim made by “proto-orthodox” Christians against Montanists regarding their eagerness for martyrdom. 70. Mart. Apoll. 30. 71. Mart. Pion. 5.4–5. 72. Virginia Burrus, “Mapping as Metamorphosis: Initial Reflections on Gender and Ancient Religious Discourses,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, ed. Penner and Vander Stichele, 10.

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1 . W H AT I S A C H R I S T I A N ? C O N S T R U C T I N G A C H R I S T I A N IDENTITY 1. The following discussion of social identity theory is far from exhaustive. Rather, I have highlighted the backbone to the theory in order to set the stage for understanding better the function of the martyr acts in early Christian communities. 2. Henri Tajfel, “Quantitative Judgment in Social Perception,” British Journal of Psychology 50 (1959): 16–29; Henri Tajfel, “Stereotypes,” Race 5 (1963): 3–14; Henri Tajfel, “Social and Cultural Factors in Perception,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. G. Lindzey and E. Aronson (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), vol. 3, 315–394; Henri Tajfel, “Cognitive Aspects of Prejudice,” Journal of Social Issues 25 (1969): 79–97. 3. Joachim Israel and Henri Tajfel, eds., The Context of Social Psychology: A Critical Assessment (London: Academic Press, 1972), 31. See also Henri Tajfel, “Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination,” Scientific American 223 (1970): 96–102; Henri Tajfel, “Some Developments in European Social Psychology,” European Journal of Social Psychology 2 (1972): 307–322; Henri Tajfel, “Social Identity and Intergroup Behavior,” Social Science Information 13 (1974): 65–93; Henri Tajfel, Differentiation Between Social Groups (London: Academic Press, 1978); Henri Tajfel, Social Identity and Intergroup Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Henri Tajfel, The Social Dimension: European Developments in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 4. Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict,” in The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. W. G. Austin and S. Worchel (Monterey: Brooks-Cole, 1979), 33–47; John Turner, “Towards a Cognitive Redefinition of the Social Group,” in Social Identity and Intergroup Relations, ed. H. Tajfel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 15–40. 5. Categorization, according to social identity theorists Dominic Abrams and Michael Hogg, “lies at the cognitive core of social identity processes” (“Metatheory: Lessons from Social Identity Research,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 8 [2004]: 102). 6. Pass. Perp. 3.2. 7. Ibid., 7.1–2. 8. Henri Tajfel and Joseph Forgas, “Social Categorization: Cognitions, Values, and Groups,” in Social Cognition: Perspectives on Everyday Understanding, ed. Joseph P. Forgas (London: Academic Press, 1981), 124. 9. Rina S. Onorato and John C. Turner, “Fluidity in the Self-Concept: The Shift from Personal to Social Identity,” European Journal of Social Psychology 34 (2004): 259. 10. Mart. Carp. A35. The verb used here, ̡̨̨̦̬̘̩̩̰̥ (“to hang up”), can refer generically to being suspended, but can also be used to specify crucifixion. This is not, however, the term commonly used for crucifixion in the New Testament (which is ̷̴̮̯̝̰̬ and connotes being nailed or impaled).

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11. Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg, Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf and Springer-Verlag, 1990), 15. 12. This is not, however, always the case. In the Greek recension of the Mart. Carp., Agathonike converts after seeing the two men martyred (42). 13. “Depersonalization refers to the process of ‘self-stereotyping’ whereby people come to perceive themselves more as the interchangeable exemplars of a social category than as unique personalities defined by their individual differences from others” (Abrams and Hogg, Social Identity Theory, 72). 14. Abrams and Hogg, Social Identity Theory, 130. 15. Marcus Aurelius, Med. 3.6. Lack of reason is associated with women. Thus, he compares women’s reason to that of a child, a youth, a tyrant, a domestic animal, and a wild beast (Med. 5.1). 16. Abrams and Hogg, Social Identity Theory, 30. 17. Tertullian, Apol. 50. The author of Mart. Apoll. also holds this view: “Indeed, the more they kill those who believe in him, so much more will their numbers grow by God’s aid” (24). Similarly, Justin Martyr attributes his conversion to the martyrs’ influence (2 Apol. 12). 18. “Derogating a badly performing ingroup member is assumed to be a response to the threat that these black sheep are posing to the value of one’s social identity” (Jolanda Jetten, Natasha Summerville, Matthew J. Hornsey, and Avril J. Mewse, “When Differences Matter: Intergroup Distinctiveness and the Evaluation of Imposters,” European Journal of Psychology 35 [2005]: 611). 19. “One can predict what will prove central to the definition of an identity and what is more peripheral since critical behaviors must serve as effective communications of identity. Social identities are not just subjective categorizations, they are fundamentally public claims and commitments. They result in performances before an audience, self-presentations aimed at persuading others to award or concede the social identity claimed” (Abrams and Hogg, Social Identity Theory, 123). 20. Jean-Paul Codol, “Social Differentiation and Non-Differentiation,” in The Social Dimension: European Developments in Social Psychology, ed. Henri Tajfel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), vol. 1, 330. 21. Abrams and Hogg discuss the different demands private and public action make on an individual: “Private and public self-focused attention leads to different behavioral outcomes because they involve behavioral self-regulation in terms of different standards. Private self-focus involves attention to one’s self-definition, or self-schema whereas public self-focus involves attention to one’s self-portrayal. When attention is directed towards self as a group member, behavior will be regulated in such a way that will make it consistent with and supportive of that self-definition” (Social Identity Theory, 98). “The only form in which groups regulate individual action is through self-presentational demands. In contrast, when situational factors

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25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

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lead attention towards the private aspects of self, group members become more independent and self-consistent. In this model, focus on the private self encourages resistance to group pressure, whereas focus on the public self leads to conformity” (ibid., 92). Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 23. Marcus Aurelius, Med. 1.16.4. Readers should note that the following sketch does not provide new arguments; rather, it presents conclusions from scholarly discussions that can be readily found elsewhere. See especially Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978); David M. Halperin et al., eds. Before Sexuality; Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity, trans. Felicia Pheasant (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988); John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 1990). For discussions of gender construction particularly in early Christianity, see Kerstin Aspegren, The Male Woman: A Feminine Ideal in the Early Church (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1990); Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Virginia Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of Apocryphal Acts (Lewiston: Mellen, 1987); Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, eds., New Testament Masculinities (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2003). Mart. Pol. 9.1. Hermas is also exhorted to be a man (о̢̛̩̠̬̫̰ э̨̬ӝ [Herm., Vis. 1.4.3]), and at the end of the book he is again exhorted to behave manfully (Herm., Sim. 10.4.1). For a discussion of gender in Shepherd, see Steve Young, “Being a Man: The Pursuit of Manliness in The Shepherd of Hermas,” JECS 2 (1994): 237–255. Pass. Perp. 10.7. Laqueur, Making Sex, 10. Ibid., 17. Laqueur writes, “Anatomy serves more as illustration of a well-known point than as evidence for its truth” (Making Sex, 27). Laqueur’s work has not gone unchallenged. See, for example, Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). Paster’s emphasis on the humors serves as a corrective not, I believe, to Laqueur’s larger thesis, but to his manner of presentation. That is, Laqueur, as I show above, argues that we should understand male and female as poles on a continuum. Paster takes issue with what appears to be an oversimplified argument by highlighting the complexity of the ancient system, in this case, that of the humors (though Laqueur does discuss the humors [Making Sex, 109–113]). That both Laqueur and Paster use Galen as

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30.

31. 32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

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their primary source for ancient constructions of sex testifies to the complexity of ancient ideologies of sex. Diana M. Swancutt writes, “Hence, modern distinctions between biological sex and gender are anachronistic when applied to the ancient world” (“Still Before Sexuality: ‘Greek’ Androgyny, the Roman Imperial Politics of Masculinity, and the Roman Invention of the Tribas,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, ed. Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele [Leiden: Brill, 2007], 28). Martin, Corinthian Body, 3. For a discussion of this modern solution to sexual difference, see Anne FaustoSterling, “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough,” The Sciences (1993): 1–5. In Corinthian Body Martin writes of a “one world model” (15). This model, he argues, is one in which the Cartesian oppositions are unintelligible. So, too, in the one-sex model, the opposition of male and female is unintelligible. Paster explains that in the humoral system, female blood was thought to be weaker than male blood just as the female body was more porous, more susceptible to intrusion, and, in general, inferior to the male body (see Body Embarrassed, ch. 2). Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body 14.6 (trans. May). Ibid. Laqueur, Making Sex, 26. See discussion in Laqueur, Making Sex, 114–148. See also Swancutt, “Still Before Sexuality,” 35. Pliny the Elder, Nat. 7.4.36–39. See discussion in Bernadette Brooten, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 157–158. The superiority of the male body is considered to be the result of its innate heat. Blood—sometimes understood to be composed of the four humors—is more efficiently used in the warm male body than in the cold female body. Women, therefore, must express excess blood through menses or lactation (assumed to be a form of blood). From the point of view of humoral theory, then, the female body is further from the ideal balance of humors than the male body is. If one accepts the one-sex model, the category “female” cannot exist as a category differentiated from its opposite, “male.” Rather, what we call female is simply an inferior form of maleness. Nonetheless, I will employ this term, more-or-less interchangeably, with the idea of an inferior maleness both because ancient authors employ a similar term, and because it carries helpful connotations for the modern reader. See also Virginia Burrus, “Mapping as Metamorphosis,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, ed. Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1–10; Swancutt, “Still Before Sexuality,” 11–61.

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42. Martin, Corinthian Body, 32–33. 43. Philo, Spec. Laws 3.178. 44. Ibid., 3.179–180. See Stephen Greenblatt’s discussion of the ancient notion of competing male and female principles within the human body in “Fiction and Friction,” in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, ed. Thomas C. Heller et al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 30–52. 45. ̤Ӭ̧̰іж̡̧̯Ҝ̭к̡̬̮̩; Philo, QE 1.7 (trans. Marcus). For discussion of animals also lying on the male-female spectrum, see Martin, Corinthian Body, 33. 46. Philo, QE 1.8 (trans. Marcus). I have amended Marcus’s translation to read “female nature” rather than “female gender” for ̯̫ԉ̧̡̤̫̭̟̙̩̫̰̭̚. For a discussion of Philo and ancient gender, see Sharon Lea Mattila, “Wisdom, Sense Perception, Nature, and Philo’s Gender Gradient,” HTR 89 (1996): 103– 129. 47. Ancient authors also praised women for attributes such as fertility, beauty, and chastity (see below). 48. We see an example of such women in Philo’s discussion of the Theraputae (Contempl. Life 68–69). Although both men and women live in the community, Philo seems to consider that the women have made themselves men by giving up that which is particularly feminine: they do not want children; rather, they turn to God for completion. For Philo this abandonment of motherhood signals a movement toward masculinity. (For a discussion of the relationship between femininity and motherhood, see chapter 4.) Throughout Philo’s works there is a pervasive polarization of gender characterization: women are “earthly” and men are “spiritual.” This theme is clear in his commentary on the creation and fall. According to Philo, man was created perfect and in perfection, while the creation of woman was tied inextricably with the fall. Speaking of woman’s responsibility for the fall, he writes, “It was the more imperfect and ignoble element, the female, that made a beginning of transgression and lawlessness, while the male made the beginning of reverence and modesty and all good, since he was better and more perfect” (Philo, QG 1.43; trans. Marcus). 49. Galen, Usefulness 14.6 (trans. May). 50. Ibid. 51. Aretaeus, “Causes and Symptoms of Chronic Diseases” 2.5 (The Extant Works of Aretaeus, the Cappadocian, ed. Francis Adams [Boston: Milford House], 1972). 52. Ibid. On the importance of the beard, see chapter 4. 53. The Hippocratic author of the essay “On Generation” expresses this view around the fourth century B.C.E.: “In fact both partners alike contain both male and female sperm (the male creature being stronger than the female must of course originate from a stronger sperm)” (6.1; trans. Iain Lonie, The Hippocratic Treatises [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981], 3). Similarly, Aristotle believed

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54.

55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60.

61.

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that both men and women produced sperm, but it was of differing qualities: “The female is like a mutilated male; and menses is sperm, but not pure. For it lacks only one thing, the principle of the soul. . . . For this is conferred by the sperm of the male. But when the female’s residue secures this principle, it becomes a fetus” (Gen. an. 737a). Although both male and female produce sperm, the vitality of male sperm instills the soul into the fetus; the inferior sperm of the female provides only the material of generation. In this process, the male is the active agent, while the female is passive, receiving the male’s soul-infused semen. Laqueur suggests that the ability to inseminate, and, thereby, to be the causal agent in procreation has long been a defining aspect of maleness. He likens insemination, for the early medical doctors, to having an idea within a woman (Laqueur, Making Sex, 59). See Martin, Corinthian Body, esp. 31–37. Craig Williams writes, “Masculinity is an achieved status, and a tenuous accomplishment at that. Boys must be made men, while girls just become women. There are constant struggles involved not only in attaining masculinity . . . but also in maintaining one’s masculine status. Threats lurk everywhere, and a man can all too easily slip and fall. And if he does, according to the relentlessly binary logic of this system he is ipso facto behaving like a woman” (Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999], 141). See also Coleen Conway, “ ‘Behold the Man!’ Masculine Christology and the Fourth Gospel,” in Moore and Anderson, New Testament Masculinities, 164, 167. Note for instance the ancient perception of eunuchs as failed men. See Gary Brower, “Ambivalent Bodies: Making Christian Eunuchs” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1996). In other words, “a woman is like an infertile male” (Aristotle, Gen. an. 728a; see also Philostratus, Ep. 15; Galen, Usefulness 14.6). Polemo, Physiognomy 2.1.192F, quoted in Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 58. See also Maud W. Gleason, “The Semiotics of Gender,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Polemo, Physiognomy 2.1.192–194F, quoted in Gleason, Making Men, 60. Aristotle, Physiognomy 812a–813. See Martin, Corinthian Body, 32–34. Laqueur, Making Sex, 8. See also Janice Capel Anderson and Stephen Moore, “Matthew and Masculinity,” in Moore and Anderson, New Testament Masculinities, esp. 68–69. Laqueur, Making Sex, 11. Similarly, see Kathleen Brown, “Brave New Worlds: Women’s and Gender History,” William and Mary Quarterly 50 (1993): 311–328. Foucault also notes the political dimensions of the body: “The body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold

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62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69.

70.

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upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs” (Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison [New York: Random House, 1995], 25). Clement (Stromateis 4.8.67.4–68.2) illustrates cultural convention regarding the relationship of age, sex, and social status to the masculine ideal. Cicero, Tusc. 2.18.43 (trans. King). Plutarch, Cor. 1.6. Lactantius also links vir etymologically to virtus (Opif. 12.16). Statius tells a friend that virtus is more suited to sons than daughters (Silv. 4.8.27). Seneca describes virtus as opposed to “women’s vices” (muliebria vitia); women who embody virtus are considered “great men” (Helv. 16.2). Williams writes, “Women, indeed, may perpetrate acts of virtus, but in doing so they act like men” (Roman Homosexuality, 133; see Williams’s description of virtus on pp. 132–135). Seneca, Helv. 16. Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 6.7.1–3 (trans. Shackelton Bailey). Juvenal, Sat. 6.161–165 (trans. Ramsay). Mary R. Lefkowitz, Women in Greek Myth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 158. Ibid., 162. Pliny the Elder writes about child resemblances. In one case, a woman bore “twins of whom one resembled her husband the other an adulterer; and also in that of the maidservant of Marmara who, as a result of intercourse on the same day, bore one twin resembling her master and another resembling his steward” (Nat. 7.49; trans. Rackham). The comment in this description that the man’s children resemble him is most likely a comment on the wife’s sexual loyalty to her husband. Richard Saller, “Symbols of Gender and Status Hierarchies in the Roman Household,” in Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations, ed. Sandra R. Joshel and Sheila Murnaghan [London: Routledge, 1998], 87). See also J. Albert Harrill, “The Domestic Enemy: A Moral Polarity of Household Slaves in Early Christian Apologies and Martyrdoms,” in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. David Balch and Carolyn Osiek (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), 231–254. Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 1.78. For a discussion of this issue, see Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 20–22.

2 . N O B L E AT H L E T E S : G L A D I AT O R I A L , AT H L E T I C , A N D M A RT I A L I M AG E R Y I N T H E M A RT Y R AC T S

1.

Christopher A. Frilingos writes, “I wish to focus on a different framework of volition, which in turn throws into relief a one-on-one struggle. Whatever the status of the gladiator in view, and regardless of whether the combatant

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had entered the arena voluntarily or under compulsion, the contest always introduced a kind of freedom: either a willingness to die or the desperation of the alternative would be expressed in the faces and gestures of the gladiators. A battle for self-control, for one’s very self, this was a contest between equals, the positive result of which would be self-vindication and the acquisition of virtus the ‘old-fashioned’ way” (Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004], 34). Carlin Barton’s discussion of confession, silence, and profession as distinct reactions to loss of freedom in the Roman Empire is salient here. Profession, according to Barton, provided a kind of complicity, an aggressiveness, a willfulness to confession that ultimately safeguarded the confessor’s honor (Carlin Barton, Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)], 159–195). In a discussion of the centrality of the arena games for Roman life, Wiedemann points out that “they were held in the most visible single building in a Roman city” (Emperors and Gladiators [London: Routledge, 1989], 1). It is difficult to imagine an inhabitant of a city in the Roman Empire—whether in the capital itself or in one of the provinces—not knowing of amphitheatrical events and their meanings. Tacitus, Dial. 29 (trans. Winterbottom). Suetonius, Dom. 4.1 (trans. Rolfe). See also Suetonius, Claud. 21.5. The reference to women here is interesting and occurs in other literary references (and paintings) of the early Empire (see, for example, Martial, Spect. 5–7; Tacitus, Ann. 15.32; Suetonius, Ner. 12.2; Juvenal, Sat. 1.22–23, 6.246–247, 6.265–267; Dio Cassius 62.3, 62.17, 67.8; Statius, Silv. 1.6.51–56; Athenaeus, Banquet of the Philosophers 4.154a; CIL IX.2237). There is little evidence, however, that women regularly performed as gladiators. On the contrary, most authors’ remarks highlight the unusual nature of the combats or place women gladiators in a circuslike atmosphere (e.g., they are paired with dwarfs). Erik Gunderson argues that the occasional inclusion of women in gladiatorial combat served to underscore the essential male role of the gladiator. He writes, “Some events . . . serve as simple denigrations of women. For example, during one of Domitian’s spectacles, women were paired against dwarfs. On the principle that pairings match opponents of equivalent worth, women are best matched against men who are mockeries of real men” (“The Ideology of the Arena,” Classical Antiquity 15 [1996]: 143; see also Dio Cassius 67.8). Gunderson continues, “One import of such spectacles, then, is first to constitute and then to display the gulf between male and female roles via the dismal parodies of the latter’s prowess forced upon the women gladiators. Such a configuration does a double work, though: it underscores and essentializes the male role as it excludes women from it” (143). Women sometimes also participated in athletic games, but much of the extant literature points to the belief that women’s involvement in

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such a masculine activity was absurd. Martial, for example, satirizes women who dedicate themselves to athletics (which he considers a masculine activity; Epig. 7.67), and Juvenal ridicules female athletes as sexual transgressors (Sat. 6.246). 5. Wiedemann argues that beast hunts, executions, and gladiatorial fights were included in spectacles around the time of Augustus and that this threefold pattern was followed each day of multiday festivals (Emperors and Gladiators, 55). Edmondson, however, disagrees with Wiedemann’s attribution of the tripartite arrangement to Augustus. Pointing to Appian (Civil Wars 2.118), Edmondson asserts that gladiatorial combat was already taking place in the afternoon in 44 B.C.E. (“Dynamic Arenas,” in Roman Theater and Society [E. Togo Salmon Papers 1], ed. William J. Slater [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996], 74). 6. Condemned criminals were subject to a number of fates. If they were perceived to be strong, they might be sent to Rome to serve as entertainment in imperial munera. Alternatively, criminals might be sent to the mines or sold to lanistae to perform in rural munera. Josephus says that after the fall of Jerusalem, Titus sent many Jews to the provinces to be killed in the theaters (J.W. 6.418). See discussion in Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 2001), 92–95. 7. Suetonius and other historians record the odd, and often cruel, actions of emperors like Nero and Gaius at the games. Gunderson suggests that it was these emperors in particular who truly understood the power of the arena and the challenges to power inherent in it. Although Gaius is sometimes referred to as “crazy,” Gunderson argues that he “has in fact realized the social significance of the arena. Its capacity to recognize him as the most privileged social subject has consumed—at least for Suetonius—his attentions” (“Ideology,” 130). 8. On this point, Keith Hopkins writes: “The Games at Rome provided a stage for the emperor to display his majesty. . . . When the emperor entered the amphitheatre, or decided the fate of a fallen gladiator by the movement of his thumb, at that moment he had 50,000 courtiers. He knew that he was Caesar Imperator, the Foremost of Men. Reciprocally, the crowd, protected by its mass, could outvote the emperor” (Death and Renewal: Sociological Studies in Roman History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983], 16). 9. Lyons 1.40. 10. Although amphitheatrical imagery is also a part of her first vision: Perpetua climbs a ladder on which hangs the gladius, the gladiator’s (or soldier’s) sword (Pass. Perp. 4.3). 11. On the Gate of Life (Porta Sanivivaria) and the Gate of Death (Porta Libitinesis or Libitinaria) see J.-C. Golvin, L’Amphithéâtre romain: Essai sur la theorization de sa forme et de ses fonctions (Paris: De Boccard, 1988), 323. See also Historia Augusta, “Commodus” 16.7.

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12. The repeated mention of the Porta Sanivivaria is most likely a statement of the reward of martyrdom. Thus, it is important that Perpetua and Felicitas leave the arena through the Gate of Life: it signals their triumph and assures the audience of their fate. 13. Musurillo consistently translates ̮̯̘̠̥̫̩ as “amphitheater,” except once (12.1) where he translates it “arena.” His choice of translation may reflect the improbability of these events taking place in a stadium, where beasts could not be properly contained. Katherine Welch, however, has shown that some stadiums in the Greek East were retrofitted for gladiatorial games and beast hunts (Katherine Welch, “The Stadium at Aphrodisias,” American Journal of Archaeology 102 [1998]: 547–569). 14. Mart. Pol. 2.4, 3.1, 4.1, 11.1, 12.2; Mart. Pion. 20.6. 15. Military settings—as provided by the location of the martyrdom in the arena—furthermore, were a standard part of what David Seeley labels the “Noble Death” (The Noble Death: Graeco-Roman Martyrology and Paul’s Concept of Salvation [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990], 117–118). 16. According to Tertullian, munera were given because of the belief that the souls of the dead are appeased by human blood (Spect. 12). 17. Wiedemann notes, “It is not without significance that, in the context of wild beast hunts and gladiatorial games, emperors were generally acclaimed and referred to as ‘Caesar,’ rather than by any of their constitutional titles such as ‘Augustus,’ ‘Imperator,’ or ‘Princeps’ ” (Emperors and Gladiators, 2). Alternatively, Welch argues that during the Republic, munera were not completely private or financed solely by individuals. The charter of the colony of Urso in Spain (44 B.C.E.) stipulated that munera and ludi had to be put on and paid for by the state. This stipulation was not, according to Welch, unique and may be detected as early as the time of Sulla (“The Roman Arena in LateRepublican Italy: A New Interpretation,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 7 [1994]: 61–62; see also Kyle, Spectacles, 52). 18. Historia Augusta, “Marcus Aurelius” 6.1. The Historia Augusta is of mixed historical value since it is both late and forged. The classic essay on the problems inherent in it is Hermann Dessau, “Über Zeit und Persönlichkeït der Scriptores historiae Augustae,” Hermes 24 (1889): 337–392. 19. Traditionally, scholars have suggested an Etruscan origin for munera, based largely on early (6th-century B.C.E.) tomb paintings. These paintings depict athletic games and horseback riding, but not gladiators. There is one painting of a man being attacked by a beast, but it does not indicate a combat between two men. It is most likely a scene of execution by beasts (see R. Auguet, Cruelty and Civilization: The Roman Games [London: Allen and Unwin, 1972], 248–249). Other scholars have argued for Etruscan origins based on etymology, suggesting an Etruscan root for lanista. The Romans claimed Etruscan origins for munera (Tertullian, Spect. 5; Athenaeus, Banquet of the Philosophers 4.153f), but Wiedemann suggests that the Etruscan thesis origi-

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20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33.

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nated and was sustained by a prejudice against “oriental” traditions. The Etruscans, according to this theory, were responsible for the corruption of the “Western” (or “moral”) Romans (Emperors and Gladiators, 31–33). Scholars now generally agree, based on early tomb and vase paintings that show participants competing in single-combats, that the origin of the gladiator lies in the region of Campania (as first persuasively argued by Georges Ville in La gladiature en Occident des origines à la mort de Domitien [Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1981]). Donald Kyle, however, wonders if the origin of gladiatorial combats is historically answerable (in terms of a single provenance) since their popularity was so far-reaching (Spectacles, 45). Valerius Maximus 2.4.7; Livy, Per. 16; cf., Servius, ad Aen. 3.67. Livy, History of Rome 23.30.15, 31.50.4. Ibid. 39.46.2. See Cicero, Off. 2.57–59; Quint. Fratr. 3, 6.6; Mil. 95; Mur. 38; Sest. 54.116. See also Kyle, Spectacles, 50. Historia Augusta, “Hadrian” 3.8. Pass. Perp. 7.9. Dio Cassius 54.2.4. Historia Augusta, “Marcus Aurelius Antoninus” 6.1. Historia Augusta, “Hadrian” 7. Pseudo-Quintilian, Rhetorical Exercises 9.6; quoted in Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 26. Cicero, Sest. 106 (trans. Gardner). Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 16. Veyne notes that at the circus and amphitheatrical shows, “the Roman crowd honoured their Emperor, demanded that he should grant them pleasures, made known to him their political demands, and either hailed or attacked the Emperor under colour of applauding or booing the shows. Thus the Circus and the amphitheatre acquired disproportionate importance in Rome’s political life. Even when the Emperor was not present in person at some show (even Commodus was sometimes absent), the Imperial insignia were apparently always placed on his seat, where they could be seen by everyone” (Paul Veyne, Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism [trans. Brian Pearce; London: Penguin, 1990], 400–401). Gunderson notes that “the games were a sort of negotium disguised as otium” (“Ideology,” 127). Fergus Millar writes, “It is important to stress that the shows and contests of various types in Rome were not only an attraction in themselves, but provided the most clearly established occasion actually to see the emperor, even if from some distance, and if necessary to make demands of him” (The Emperor in the Roman World, 31 BC–AD 337 [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977], 365; see also 368–375). D. Potter, “Performance, Power, and Justice in the High Empire,” in Roman Theater and Society, ed. W. J. Slater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

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34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

50.

51. 52. 53.

54.

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1996), 131. Suetonius records that Claudius referred to the spectators as “my masters” (domini; Claud. 21), and Augustus asked the crowd’s pardon when he did not attend one of his shows (Aug. 45). Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 169. Dio Cassius reports that Tiberius attended public shows at the beginning of his reign “for the honor of those who brought them to pass and for the orderly behavior of the crowds, by seeming to share in their festivities with them” (57.11). Suetonius, Claud. 21 (trans. Rolfe). Martial, Book of Spectacles 29.3. This is related to the popular representation of the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” sign supposedly given by the sponsor of the games to signal the fate of a fighter. Suetonius, Tib. 47 (trans. Rolfe). Suetonius, Cal. 30.3 (trans. Rolfe). Dio Cassius 62.20. See also Tacitus, Ann. 16.4. Dio Cassius 73.20. Suetonius, Cal. 35.9 (trans. Rolfe). Cicero, Att. 2.19 (trans. Bailey). See also Cicero, Phil. 1.36–37. Josephus, Ant. 19.1.4. Dio Cassius 48.31.5. See also Tacitus, Ann. 6.13, where the people who were gathered in the theater protested the cost of corn. Josephus, Ant. 19.1.4 (trans. Feldman). Although Josephus does not record such demands being made specifically at the amphitheater, we can expect that when there was a large, public gathering of people, such requests might be made of the emperor (see Cicero, Sest. 106, above). Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 168–169. Gunderson, “Ideology,” 134. Mart. Pol. 10.2. This element is, of course, a part of the fictive nature of the account. As a condemned criminal, Polycarp could not have received pardon from the crowd; only a true gladiator could hope for such respite. The mob not only calls for Polycarp’s arrest and apparently influences the governor to give Polycarp to them, but also builds the pyre upon which he is killed. It is noteworthy that the governor himself is not mentioned in the description of Polycarp’s death. The importance of distinguishing the crowd from the Roman officials is discussed in chapter 3. Lyons 1.7. Pass. Perp. 20.3. Welch notes, “While it is well known that Roman spectacles were held in theaters in the Greek East, it is not well known that stadia were also used for such spectacles” (“Stadium at Aphrodisias,” 558). A similar trend is also seen in the building of theaters in Rome (see Richard C. Beacham, Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999]); for a discussion of temporary theaters, see 25–35.

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55. 56.

57.

58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

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Use of these wooden structures resulted in many fatal catastrophes (Tacitus, Ann. 4.62; Historia Augusta, “Antoninus” 9.1). Vitruvius 5.1.1–2 (trans. Granger). See also Calpurnius Siculus 7.23–72; Pliny the Elder, Nat. 36.24.116–120. Golvin argues that the amphitheater’s elliptical shape reflects a concern for both maximum visibility for the multiple gladiatorial matches taking place simultaneously and the provision of space for venatio (beast hunts), and, perhaps less important, derived from the fact that the forum was rectangular and the amphitheater was built to stand within it (Amphithéâtre romain, 300–304). Welch points out, however that there is no evidence of venationes taking place in the Roman Forum before the time of Caesar; the location of these hunts was the Circus Maximus. In addition, there is no evidence that multiple pairs of gladiators fought simultaneously. More than one pair certainly would have fought over the course of a munus, but not concurrently (Welch, “Roman Arena,” 72; see also Dio Cassius 43.23.3). Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 20. Welch agrees: “A circular space, such as the Spanish corrida, would have been ideal in terms of all spectators having a good view of a given pair of gladiators, but egalitarian seatingarrangements were never a Roman concern” (Welch, “Roman Arena,” 72). See also J. Kolendo, “La répartition des places aux spectacles et la stratification sociale dans l’empire romain,” Ktema 6 (1981): 301–315. E.g., Suetonius, Aug. 44. Welch notes that in the first Sullan colonies there was mutual hostility between the colonists and the native inhabitants. That the first permanent amphitheater was constructed under these conditions was not, according to Welch, accidental (“Roman Arena,” 60–62; see also Kyle, Spectacles, 50, 83). See further discussion below. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 40. Katherine Welch, “Roman Amphitheatres Revived,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 4 (1991): 279–280. Livy, History of Rome 41.28.11 (trans. Sage). Valerius Maximus 2.3.2. Gladiatorial training apparently continued to be used in the military. If this is correct, we should not be surprised to find martial imagery tied to the amphitheater in Christian martyrologies (as indeed we do). Scholars such as B. Schweitzer (“Dea Nemesis Regina,” Jahrbüch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 46 [1931]): 175–246) and S. J. Keay (Roman Spain [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988]) point to the relationship between amphitheatrical activity and the cult of Nemesis, thought by some scholars to be the patron deity of gladiators and venatores. Michael Hornum, however, argues against this view. He suggests that because the amphitheater was a place where state order was confirmed, it was a fitting place for the worship of Nemesis, the goddess of justice and of the Roman state. There is little evidence, moreover, that Nemesis was worshiped by participants in the games.

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65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77.

78.

79.

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Rather, it seems that the majority of worshipers were drawn from public officials and military leaders (Nemesis, the Roman State, and the Games [Leiden: Brill, 1993]). Nonetheless, Nemesis was seen as appropriate to munera and venationes, and temples to the goddess are predominantly located near amphitheaters. Tertullian states that Mars and Diana were worshiped as patrons of gladiators and beast fighters (Spect. 12.7). Welch, “Roman Arena,” 80. Ibid., 64–65. Ibid., 78. Welch, “Roman Amphitheatres,” 277. Welch, “Roman Arena,” 68. Cicero, Sull. 60–61. The dedicatory inscription on the amphitheater at Pompeii states that the building was donated to the colonists. Welch, “Roman Arena,” 79. Alison Futrell, Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 4–5. Welch remarks on the relatively late building date of a permanent amphitheater in Rome: “Indeed, it did not occur to the Romans to sacrifice this authoritative location [the Forum] for their native munera until it became absolutely necessary, due to the demand for a greater number of seats than the wooden structure in the Forum could hold. . . . The impermanence of the earliest amphitheaters is probably less the product of moral policing and more the result of force of conservative habit” (“Roman Amphitheatres,” 276). Wiedemann notes that by the time of Augustus, the word amphitheatrum was the standard designation for such elliptical structures (Emperors and Gladiators, 21). Similarly, Welch notes, “The term spectacula emphasizes the functional aspect of the building as a place for spectators to congregate and watch. This was the general term for arena buildings in the Republican period (the word amphitheatrum did not come into use until Augustan times)” (“Roman Arena,” 61). Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 19. Livy, Epit. 48. Welch, “Roman Amphitheatres,” 273. Golvin records 186 certain and 86 probable amphitheaters specially built for munera (L’Amphithéâtre, 275). Edmondson, “Dynamic Arenas,” 83. Hönle and Henze argue that amphitheaters were located on the outskirts of towns because of noise pollution (Römische Amphitheater und Stadien: Gladiatorenkämpfe und Circusspiele [Zurich: Atlantis, 1981]). Wiedemann points out, however, that the games were intended to draw crowds, and noise served this purpose. Alternatively, it could be argued that since Rome was considered the center of the world, the liminality of the arena functioned differently there than in the provinces. Gunderson suggests that “the shows presented fictions of barbarity versus civilization” (“Ideology,” 119). Concerning the importance of beasts in the

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80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85. 86.

87. 88. 89. 90.

91.

92. 93. 94. 95.

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arena, Richard Beacham notes that from the third century B.C.E. to the Late Republican period, animals captured for beast hunts were, for the most part, indigenous, with exotic animals a rarity; but with the rise of the Roman Empire, more exotic animals were imported into the arena (Spectacle, 12). Many scholars have interpreted the importation of exotic animals, and the killing of them, as an illustration to the masses of the dangers present in non-Roman territory. The killing of beasts symbolized, in yet another way, Roman domination. Edmondson, “Dynamic Arenas,” 83. The issue of Roman justice is strongly challenged in the martyrologies, as I will show in chapter 3. Seneca writes, “Let us pass now to the injuries done to others, in the punishment of which these three aims, which the law has had in view, should be kept in view also by the prince: either to reform the man that is punished, or by punishing him to make the rest better, or by removing bad men to let the rest live in greater security” (Clem. 1.22.1; trans. Basore). Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 77, 91. Gunderson, “Ideology,” 134. Historia Augusta, “Probus” 19.8; “Aurelian” 33.4–34.1. Tacitus, Hist. 2.88; Cyprian, Don. 7. See also John Scarborough, “Galen and the Gladiators,” Episteme 5 (1971): 98–111; Marc Z. Brettler and Michael Poliakoff, “Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish at the Gladiator’s Banquet: Rabbinic Observations on the Roman Arena,” HTR 83 (1990): 93–98; and discussion in Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 116–117. Ibid., 117. Ibid., 117. Petronius, Sat. 46 (trans. Warmington). The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas offers another example of the preference for healthy fighters. Perpetua, challenging a jailer, asks, “Why can you not even allow us to refresh ourselves properly? For we are the most distinguished of the condemned prisoners, seeing that we belong to the emperor; we are to fight on his very birthday. Would it not be to your credit if we were brought forth on the day in a healthier condition?” The officer, conceding Perpetua’s point, arranged for the Christians to be treated more humanely (Pass. Perp. 16.3–4; trans. Musurillo). The emperor Septimius Severus, for example, charged the senate with hypocrisy when they criticized Commodus for fighting as a gladiator: “Do none of you fight as gladiators? How, then, have some of you purchased his shields and those golden helmets?” (Dio Cassius 76.8.3). Carlin Barton, “The Scandal of the Arena,” Representations 27 [1989]: 25 (quoting Calpurnius Flaccus, Decl. 52). Cicero, Phil. 6.5.13. Futrell, Blood, 50. Pliny the Younger, Pan. 33.1 (trans. Radice).

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96. “Finally, when the brow is worn smooth long under the mask a transition is made to the helmet of the gladiator” (Seneca, Nat. 7.32.3; trans. Corcoran). See also Juvenal, Sat. 8.183–199. For a discussion of theater during the Empire, see Beacham, Spectacle. 97. Plautus, Cas. 909 (trans. Nixon). See also Petronius, Sat. 9.5. For a discussion of gladius as a sexual term, see J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). 98. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 26. Scholars who suggest an Etruscan origin for the gladiator, however, argue for an Etruscan etymology for lanista, translated “butcher” (for example, Michael Grant, Gladiators [New York: Delacorte Press], 53). 99. CIL IX.1671. 100. Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 22. A photograph of this figure can be found in Michael Grant’s book Erotic Art in Pompeii: The Secret Collection of the National Museum of Naples (London: Octopus Books, 1975), 139. 101. Ibid., 138. 102. Carlin Barton, Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 47. 103. Ibid., 48 (quoting Augustine, Serm. 20.3). 104. Juvenal, Sat. 6.103–113 (trans. Ramsay). 105. Historia Augusta, “Marcus” 19.7. Note also the second-century C.E. burial inscription from Pergamum discussed in chapter 1. 106. ILS 5142 = CIL IV.4356. The presence of a presumably wealthy woman (she wore gold jewelry and an emerald necklace) in the gladiator’s barracks in Pompeii has received much attention. See, for example, Barton, Sorrows, 81. 107. Suetonius, Aug. 44.2. For discussion of the Vestal Virgins, their liminal gender status, and their social rank, see Mary Beard and John North, Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990); Mary Beard, “The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins,” JRS 70 (1980): 12–27; Eva Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and Elaine Fantham et al., eds., Women in the Classical World: Image and Text (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 108. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 26. 109. Infamia, the loss of a respectable identity, was a recognition by judicial officials of the fact that a person was not trustworthy. The Lex Iulia Municipalis, for instance, excludes gladiatorial trainers and actors from serving on local councils (ILS 6085). Mathew Kuefler argues that infamia “was most often associated with unmanliness” (The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001], 30). 110. ILS 5163 = CIL II.6278. 111. This appears to be especially true for auctorati, voluntary gladiators, and lanistae. The senatus consultum from Larinum of 19 C.E. seems to deny burial

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(the inscription is fragmentary and uses an otherwise unknown phrase) to gladiators of senatorial or equestrian rank. A municipal charter in Umbria records that Horatius Balbus donated land for a cemetery, but stipulated that gladiators were not to be buried within it. See discussion in Kyle, Spectacles, 161. 112. Tacitus, Ann. 3.43, 15.46. See also Keith Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, 140 B.C.–70 B.C. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 83–101. 113. Cicero, Sest. 4.9. 114. Cicero, Att. 7.14. 115. Cicero, Phil. 3.35, Mil. 92; Seneca, De prov. 3.4. 116. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 38. 117. For example, Seneca, Ep. 80.1. For discussion, see Kyle, Spectacles, 4; Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 138. 118. Pliny the Younger, Pan. 33.1 (trans. Radice). 119. See, for example, Seneca, Ep. 70.20; Martial, Epig. 8.80. In Ep. 7.2.5, however, Seneca issues a warning about attending spectacles because of the vices on show there. 120. Magnus Wistrand, Entertainment and Violence in Ancient Rome: The Attitudes of Roman Writers of the First Century A.D. (Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1992), 18. See also Barton’s discussion of the gladiator as model for soldierly askesis (Sorrows, 21–25). 121. Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 24. 122. Petronius, Sat. 117; Seneca, Ep. 37, 87; Seneca, Nat. 7.31; Suetonius, Jul. 39.1, Aug. 43, Tib. 35; Tacitus, Ann. 15.32; Historia Augusta, “Marcus Aurelius” 12. Grieving parents might be consoled by the suggestion that had their son matured, he might have lost his money and sunk to the level of fighting as a gladiator (Seneca, Ep. 99.12). Tacitus complains that children’s interest in gladiators is attributable to servants who speak of little else (Dial. 29.3). Manilius wrote, in the early first century C.E., of those “who now sell themselves for the risk of death and for murder in the arena, and make enemies out of each other in times of peace (4.220–6, Goold, LCL; cf. Dio 74.2)” (Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators, 24). 123. Ville, Gladiature, 255; Barton, “Scandal of the Arena,” 2. 124. Dio Cassius 48.43.3. 125. Suetonius, Tib. 35.2; Dio Cassius 59.10.2 (ironically, Gaius condemned the equestrians to fight as gladiators). 126. Dio Cassius 56.25.7. 127. Tacitus, Hist. 2.62.4. 128. Caligula (Suetonius, Cal. 32.2, 54.1; Dio Cassius 59.5.5); Titus (Dio Cassius 65.15.2); Hadrian (Historia Augusta, “Hadrian” 14.10); Commodus (Dio Cassius 73.20, 76.8.2); Lucius Verus (Historia Augusta, “Marcus Aurelius” 8.12); Didius Julianus (Historia Augusta, “Didius Julianus” 9.1); Caracalla (Dio Cassius 77.7.1, 78.17.4); Geta (Dio Cassius 77.7.1).

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129. Suetonius, Cal. 35.2; Dio Cassius also reports that Caligula forced men to fight as gladiators. On one occasion he made twenty-six equestrians fight; on another he demanded that a group of spectators be thrown to the beasts. To avoid hearing their cries or curses, he had their tongues cut out first (59.10.4). 130. Suetonius, Ner. 12.1. 131. Barton, “Scandal of the Arena,” 9–10. In this essay Barton suggests that the gladiator experienced an “inverse elevation” through complicity with his master: the gladiator’s enthusiasm for death mitigated his humiliation. Employing postcolonial theory, Robert Seesengood suggests that the gladiator was “already a hybrid figure. Via mimicry (Bhabha’s ‘almost the same, but not quite’) the gladiator becomes a hybrid male and soldier. By embracing (and exploiting) the very cultural forces and norms that have produced imprisonment and forced public combat, the gladiator is able to establish a hybrid honor, a mimicked masculinity” (Competing Identities: The Athlete and the Gladiator in Early Christian Literature [New York: Clark, 2007], 91). Seesengood fails to distinguish the story’s character from its author, however. It is not the gladiator who establishes his honor by mimicking Roman virtues; rather, Roman authors (e.g., Seneca, Martial, and Pliny) construct the gladiator’s identity. 132. Barton refers to Arrian, Epicteti Dissertationes 4.1.6–14, 4.1.148–149 and Tacitus, Ann. 3.65.8 to argue the servile status of citizens to the emperor. 133. Romans thought of public performance of any kind, theatrical or gladiatorial, to be demeaning, an element of the games that added to public disdain. 134. Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 20. Similarly, Cyprian (Don. 7) questions the appropriateness of noncondemned men entering the arena. Cyprian refers to Christians and not Roman nobles, but the inappropriateness of the action of voluntary death to reveal strength is present nonethless in his comment. 135. Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 21. 136. Seneca, De prov. 2.4 (adapted from Basore translation). 137. Petronius, Sat. 117.5–6. See also Horace, Sat. 2.7.58–59; Seneca, Ep. 37.1. 138. Barton, “Scandal of the Arena,” 3. 139. Barton, Sorrows, 35. 140. Terence, Phorm. 964. This sentiment also may be apparent in a clay baby’s bottle, found at Pompeii, that was stamped with the image of a gladiator. Mau interpreted this as a symbol that the baby should imbibe the gladiator’s strength (August Mau, Pompeii: Its Life and Art [New York: Macmillan, 1899], 366). 141. Seneca, Ep. 37.1–2 (trans. Gummere). 142. Cicero, Tusc. 2.17.41 (trans. King). 143. Zeph Stewart argues that the inclusion of athletic imagery in the early martyrologies “was part of the second-century Christian accommodation to the attitudes and traditions of the Roman Empire” (“Greek Crowns and Chris-

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tian Martyrs,” in Mémorial André-Jean Festugière: Antiquité païenne et chrétienne, ed. Enzo Lucchesi and H. D. Saffrey [Geneva: P. Cramer, 1984], 124). 144. Lyons 1.6. 145. This author also claims that the adversary trained his servants to fight the Christians (1.5). 146. Seneca, De prov. 4.4. See Kuefler (Manly Eunuch, 45–46) for a discussion of the relationship between martial and gladiatorial imagery in the ancient imagination. 147. For a discussion of Philo’s conflation of military and athletic imagery, see Pfitzner, Paul and the Agon Motif: Traditional Athletic Imagery in the Pauline Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 42–43. 148. Cicero (Tusc. 4.33.70), Plutarch (Quaest. rom. 274D–E), and Tacitus (Ann. 14.20.4) condemn the nudity of athletes. Suetonius mentions that both Julius Caesar and Augustus gave athletic games (Aug. 45.2, 44.3). Nero planned to compete with the athletes at Olympia (Suetonius, Ner. 53). See also Suetonius, Jul. 39.3; Aug. 43.1ff., 44.3, 45.2–4; Ner. 12.3–4, 45.1; Dom. 4.4. 149. Galen, Exhortation for Medicine 9–14 (see Stephen Miller, Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004], 173–174); Plutarch, Quaest. rom. 274D; Tacitus, Ann. 14.20. 150. Seneca, Ep. 15.3. 151. Seneca, Ep. 13.2–3. 152. O. Grodde, Sport bei Quintilian (Nikephoros-Beihefte 3) (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1997); Don Kyle, “Directions in Ancient Sport History,” Journal of Sport History 10 (1983): 7–34. 153. Tacitus, Ann. 14.21.4. See also Seneca, Ep. 80.2. 154. Allen Guttmann, “Sports Spectators from Antiquity to the Renaissance,” Journal of Sport History 8 (1981): 5–27. 155. For a discussion and nice collection of artistic representations of athletes, see Eckart Köhne and Cornelia Ewigleben, eds. Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 156. Welch, “Stadium at Aphrodisias,” 547–569. 157. “The unusually complete architectural and epigraphical record at Aphrodisias provides important insight into the archaeology of the imperial cult festival. An imperial cult festival typically featured Roman forms of entertainment (gladiatorial games, wild beast shows, and executions), as well as traditional Greek athletic events (races, boxing, wrestling, etc.). The evidence indicates that at Aphrodisias both of these types of performances were held in the Stadium” (Welch, “Stadium at Aphrodisias,” 558). See also Michael Poliakoff, “Jacob, Job, and Other Wrestlers: Reception of Greek Athletics by Jews and Christians in Antiquity,” Journal of Sport History 11 (1984): 48–65. 158. Dio Chrysostom, 1Melanc. 9. See discussion in Poliakoff, “Jacob, Job, and Other Wrestlers,” 48–65. 159. Dio Chrysostom, 2Melanc. 12.

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160. Gladiators received cash for winning, crowns for bravery, and on rare occasions, the wooden sword that indicated the gladiator no longer had to compete. See Martial, Spect. 31. For a discussion of the crown in Pauline literature, see Pfitzner, Paul and the Agon Motif, 153–156. 161. Gregory M. Stevenson, “Conceptual Background to Golden Crown Imagery in the Apocalypse of John (4:4, 10; 14:14),” JBL 114 (1995): 265. 162. Lyons 1.36. When the adversary realized that Polycarp had been crowned with the crown of immortality, he prevented the Christians from claiming his body (Mart. Pol. 17.1). After Blandina urged her fellow Christians to die, she was crowned with the crown of immortality (Lyons 1.42). 163. Mart. Pion. 18.4. 164. Wiedemann notes that a relief from Munich depicts a gladiator winning salvation, even though he was defeated, because he showed virtus (Emperors and Gladiators, 95). Pausanius (8.40.1) records that Arrachion won a contest posthumously because he fought honorably. Other martyrologies imply, though do not explicitly state, that the crowns the martyrs received are not those of the temporal arena. For example, Fructuosus was certain that he would receive the Lord’s crown (Mart. Fruc. 1.4) and was crowned with the crown that does not fade (Mart. Fruc. 7.2). Marian and James realized that Christ had led them to the spot where they would receive their crowns (Mart. Mar. 2.3). The author of the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius, moreover, states that the martyrs received the crowns because the battle had already taken place (i.e., the cosmic battle in which God defeated Satan), but the palm of victory would not be given until the battle was over (i.e., their martyrdoms). 165. Mart. Pion. 22.2–3. The presence of a beard is an indication of masculinity. See discussion in chapter 4. 166. Mart. Mar. 5.9 (trans. Musurillo). 167. Mart. Pol. 2.2; Lyons 23, 41; Pass. Perp. 15.6. 168. Wiedemann suggests that through the gladiators, the arena held hope for resurrection and immortality—a belief that threatened the Christian idea of resurrection, and eventually led to Christian abolishment of arena games (Emperors and Gladiators, 150–160). 169. Mart. Carp. A35, B3.5. 170. Pass. Perp. 10.14. 171. Mart. Just. A 5.5 (trans. Musurillo).

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Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” JBL 117 (1998): 253. Ibid., 254. 4 Macc. 1:4.

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Moore and Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man,” 255. 4 Macc. 11:13 says that the second to youngest brother was still a boy (̨̡̛̥̬̝̦̮̦̫̭) but mentally mature (̯ӭ ̠Ҝ ̛̠̥̝̩̫ӛ ѓ̧̥̦̥ҧ̯̣̭); the author of Lamentations Rabbah maintains that the youngest was only two and a half years old (1.50). That this brother is described as so young may be a further indictment of the ruler’s lack of reason: even a two-and-a-half-year-old boy is more masculine than the ruler. 6. Tessa Rajak argues that martyrologies are fundamentally public texts that demand an audience and a response. She writes, “Martyrdom is idealized representation and the characterization of martyrs is portraiture, to a lesser or greater extent stereotyped. . . . Martyrdom is description, since in its very nature it demands a public, a response, and a record” (“Dying for the Law: The Martyr’s Portrait in Jewish-Greek Literature,” in Portrait: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire, ed. M. J. Edwards and Simon Swain [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997], 40). 7. Plutarch, Inim. util. 88C. For a discussion of the translation of malakos, see Dale B. Martin, “Arsenokoitês and Malakos: Meanings and Consequences,” in Biblical Ethics and Homosexuality: Listening to Scripture, ed. Robert L. Brawley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 117–136. 8. Plato, Phaed. 69C. Philo and the Stoics subsequently adopted this formulation (see, for example, Leg. 1.63–72). Concerning the relationship between masculinity and virtue, Craig Williams writes, “I suggest that the various manifestations of effeminacy are symptoms of an underlying failure to live up to the central imperative of masculinity: control and dominion, both of others and of oneself. As we will see, the language of masculinity often invokes such notions as imperium (‘dominion’) and fortitudo (‘strength’), whereas the essence of a weak femininity, embodied in women and effeminate men, is mollitia (‘softness’). Another crucial concept is that of virtus: etymologically nothing more than ‘manliness,’ but this word came to refer to broad notions of valor and ultimately ‘virtue,’ but always in a strongly gendered sense. Virtus is the ideal of masculine behavior that all men ought to embody, that some women have the good fortune of attaining, and that men derided as effeminate conspicuously fail to achieve” (Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999], 127). See also Sheila Murnaghan, “How a Woman Can Be More Like a Man: The Dialogue Between Ischomachus and His Wife in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus,” Helios 15 (1988): 9–22. For an in-depth history of the term “sophrosyne,” see Helen North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966). 9. Marcus Aurelius, Med. 1.1–2. 10. Seneca, Ep. 63.13 (trans. Gummere). 11. Plutarch, Consolatio ad Apolloniam 102E. Plutarch’s letter to Apollonius reads like a treatise on manly control of emotion. Throughout the letter Plutarch continually reminds Apollonius of the appropriate limits of emotion for

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12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

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men and warns him against too grand a show of grief, which would indicate a womanly nature. William Harris discusses the ubiquity of the association of femininity with the “other,” including barbarians, women, old men, and slaves (see, for example, Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001], 28, 64, 222). Plutarch, Cohib. ira 456F. Seneca, De ira 1.20 (trans. Basore). Harris discusses the rise among philosophers—most notably Stoics like Musonius Rufus—of the ideal of complete elimination of anger: some philosophies “came to advocate nothing less than an absolute moral prohibition of anger” (Restraining Rage, 4). He warns, however, against homogenizing ancient discourses on anger, and “supposing that the same set of ideas about anger and the control of anger was always current in antiquity” (9). Lyons 1.51. Mart. Carp. A10. Carpus is not censured for this response (cf. Mart. Pion. 7.5). Apollonius did the same (Mart. Apoll. 8). Mart. Pol. 2.2. Lyons 1.19, 1.56. Mart. Pol. 2.3. Similarly, Perpetua is described as being so oblivious to pain that she did not realize she had been tossed by a heifer (Pass. Perp. 20.8). Mart. Conon 5.8. Lyons 1.23. Blandina “put on Christ,” that invincible athlete, who helped her defeat the adversary (1.42). Mart. Carp. B3.6. Pass. Perp. 10.4. Lyons 1.32–35. Seneca, Ep. 61.3 (trans. Gummere). See Arthur J. Droge and James Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 34–37, for a discussion of Seneca’s view of suicide and how it differs from the traditional Stoic view. Freedom—even by means of suicide—should be the goal of the wise man, who “will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can” (Seneca, Ep. 70.4–5). Suicide can be ennobling, as John Rist notes: “Apparently the fool can be transformed into a sage by a well-judged and opportune death” (Stoic Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969], 249). Seneca writes, “With one single hand he will open a wide path to freedom” (De prov. 2.10; trans. Basore). Lucan, Bell. civ. 4.505–512 (trans. Duff). Mart. Pol. 3.1. Germanicus’s strength, shown in his ability to drag the beast onto himself, caused the crowd to wonder at the nobility of the “God-loving and Godfearing Christians” (3.2). Mart. Carp. A44.

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33. Pass. Perp. 21.9. 34. Carlin Barton suggests that gladiators (and I would add Christian martyrs) escape “the humiliation of being under compulsion through enthusiastic complicity” (The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996], 16). 35. Given the function of persuasion and voluntariness in this martyrology, we can assume that Germanicus did not give himself over, though the text does not discuss his arrest (Mart. Pol. 3.1). 36. ½̡̨̡̡̬̥̙̩̩̟̘̬ѧ̩̝½̝̬̝̠̫̤ӭ. 37. Mart. Pol. 7.1 reads “The will of God be done” (̐Ң̧̨̤̙̣̝̯̫ԉ̡̤̫ԉ̴̡̟̩̙̮̤). Although reminiscent of Jesus’ acquiescing to God’s will in the Garden of Gethsemane, it may be more important to recognize that these are the same words (though Luke uses “lord” [̯̫ԉ̛̦̰̬̫̰] rather than “God” [̯̫ԉ ̡̤̫ԉ] used by Christians in Acts 21:14 after they try—unsuccessfully—to persuade Paul not to go to Jerusalem. The link between persuasion and affirming the will of God is also an important part of the Martyrdom of Polycarp. 38. Mart. Pol. 13.3. 39. Pionius and his companions were arrested on the anniversary of Polycarp’s death, and the similarities between the two martyrdoms have long been acknowledged. (For a discussion of the similarities between these texts and the role of Jews in Smyrna, see Judith Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century [Edinburgh: Clark, 1996].) 40. Mart. Pion. 2.4. 41. Plutarch, Cohib. ira 457D. 42. Mart. Pol. 3.1. 43. Mart. Ptol. 1–4. 44. Lyons 1.9, 10. The author also asserts that pagans are unlawful and perform unlawful deeds, while Christians are just and perform just deeds (1.58). 45. Pass. Perp. 18.6. 46. Mart. Apoll. 4. 47. God’s laws are described as ̛̠̥̦̝̝̭ц̧̩̯̫Ӭ̭. 48. Mart. Pion. 4.7. 49. Peitho, translated here as “obedient,” also means “to be persuaded.” Both meanings are at work in this instance (see discussion below). 50. Mart. Pol. 3.2. 51. Mart. Carp. B3.5. 52. Scholarly discussion of peitho in antiquity is abundant. See, for instance, Richard Buxton’s important book Persuasion in Greek Tragedy: A Study of Peitho (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Sarah Iles Johnston, “The Song of the Iynx: Magic and Rhetoric in Pythian 4,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 125 (1995): 177–206; and Christopher Bobonich, “Persuasion, Compulsion, and Freedom in Plato’s Laws,” Classical Quarterly n.s. 4

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53.

54. 55.

56.

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(1991): 365–388. The Orestia illustrates the complexity of peitho. The positive form is represented by Athena’s persuasion of the Erinyes at the end of the Eumenides. But the undesirable, deceptive form of peitho is also strongly represented. Interestingly, the chorus links peitho and ̛̞̝—traditionally thought of as opposites—when it says that Peitho forced Paris to kidnap Helen. In another example, Johnston shows that Clytemnestra cries out to Agamemnon, “Be persuaded!” (½̥̤̫ԉ, Ag. 943). He is persuaded to follow her and this leads to his doom (Johnston, “Song of the Iynx,” 188–189). Many of Plato’s works also deal with peitho. In Gorgias Plato distinguishes between good and bad persuasion, and in the Laws, he argues that people should be persuaded—meaning “taught by rational arguments”—to follow laws rather than being compelled by force or persuaded by fear. Ancient apologies— including those by Christians—seek to persuade by rational arguments rather than by emotion. Johnston points out that while persuasiveness was the mark of the statesman, violence was the mark of the barbarian (“Song of the Iynx,” 188). These characterizations change dramatically over time; in fact, persuasion comes to be associated with women and barbarians: those who act antithetically to reason. Johnston, “Song of the Iynx,” 189. Kate Cooper, “Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy,” JRS 82 (1992): 153. That the personified Peitho was a goddess adds weight to Cooper’s assessment of the attribution of persuasion to women. In a frieze dated between the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., Peitho is depicted with Aphrodite persuading Helen to go to Troy with Paris. In this particular case, of course, Helen did not distinguish the “rational” from the “irrational” choice and, according to the myth, her actions led to catastrophe. On women and deceptive rhetoric, see also Joy Connolly, “Mastering Corruption: Constructions of Identity in Roman Oratory,” in Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations, ed. Sandra R. Joshel and Sheila Murnaghan (London: Routledge, 1998), 130–151. Bobonich discusses the relationship of teaching to persuasion. He writes that according to Plato, “what the person who is to be persuaded is asking for is to be ‘taught,’ that is, to be given a good argument for adopting the course of action or set of beliefs required by the laws (e.g. 885d2–3). . . . What the laws and preludes actually do is characterized as ‘teaching,’ that is, giving an argument to the citizens and bringing it about that they ‘learn’ (e.g., 718c8– d7, 720d3–6, 723a4–5, 857d–e, and 888a2)” (“Persuasion,” 373). We should note, however, that Plato’s characterization of the relationship of persuasion to teaching is varied. Whereas in the Phaedrus Plato contrasts teaching to persuasion (277c5–6), in Laws he clearly states that persuasion can be a form of teaching (or vice versa?). Apollonius specifies that God taught him

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57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67.

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by argumentation and thereby persuaded him to become a Christian (Mart. Apoll. 38). God’s teachings also persuade Pionius (Mart. Pion. 4.7). For a discussion of peitho in Pauline epistles and other Biblical literature, see David J. A. Clines, “Paul, the Invisible Man,” in New Testament Masculinities, ed. Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2003), 181–192. Mart. Pol. 2.4. The term ½̴̡̛̤ is explicitly used in Mart. Pol. 5.1, 8.2, and 9.2, but the act of persuasion is implied also in Mart. Pol. 9.3, 10.1, 11.1, and 11.2. The author’s mention of Quintus’s homeland may not be incidental. Provenance could indicate one’s masculinity or femininity, as Craig Williams notes: “Even more than Greece, though, the cities of Asia Minor seem to have represented to Romans the ultimate in decadence and luxury and consequently softness and effeminacy” (Roman Homosexuality, 136). On the effeminacy of the East, see also John Percy Vyvian Dacre Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 61; Hans Herter, “Effeminatus,” RAC 4 (1959): 622; Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 92–97. See also Valerius Maximus 2.6.1, 9.15; Nepos, Pausanias 3.2 and Alcibiades 11.5; Virgil, Aeneid 4.215–217, 9.598–620, 12.97–100; Cicero, Mur. 31–32; Juvenal, Sat. 8.113–124, 15.47–51, 14.187–188. Virgil (Aen 9.600.614–620, 12.97–100) mentions the effeminacy of the Phrygians. Quintus, as I will show below, is the most important example of unmanliness in this martyrology. He is described as ̷̡̧̠̥̭, cowardly, and represents the gravest threat to Christian group identity. Mart. Apoll. 3. Apollonius states explicitly that his actions are reasonable—to be persuaded to act otherwise would be to lower himself to commit the sin of idolatry (16). Mart. Conon 5.5. Mart. Pion. 5.3. The author describes the cavalry commander’s persuasion as deceptive (15.4). Plutarch, Cons. Apoll. 121E. Mart. Pion. 3.4. Although the translation of ½̡̛̮̤̣̯̥ as “obey” in the Martyrdom of Pionius (so Musurillo) makes sense in English, it misses the verbal repartee that the author narrates between the Christians and Polemon. The issue is by whom or what they will be persuaded and to what end. This could be read as a self-indictment on the part of the pagans because they assert here that they would not be persuaded by reason to follow God’s law. In the Martyrdom of Saints Ptolemaeus and Lucius, the reader is introduced to a woman who, after converting to Christianity, tried to convert her husband as well: “Once she knew the teachings of Christ she became selfcontrolled [ц̴̛̮̱̬̫̩̮̤̣] and attempted to persuade [½̡̡̛̤̥̩] her husband

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68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74.

75.

76.

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to be self-controlled [̴̡̮̱̬̫̩Ӻ̩]” (2). We are surely to understand this as a positive form of persuasion whose aim is to guide the husband to a just life. Kate Cooper argues that conversion via the persuasive wife (what she refers to as “home evangelization”) is a Christian literary trope (“Insinuations,” 150–164) and that stories about women converting their husbands do not give us historical information about the agency of actual, historical Christian women. Mart. Apoll. 38, 41. Mart. Pion. 4.7. Philo outlines the seven stages of life as the little boy, the boy, the lad, the youth, the man, the elderly man, and the old man. These are measured in multiples of seven years (Philo, Creation 105). Tim G. Parkin points out that we must not reduce the sources on old age by using them to quantify what the term “old” means: “Despite the philosophical and literary tradition of the aetates hominum (ages of humankind), no specific age limit applied. Literary evidence from antiquity may be adduced to ‘show’ that old age could be stated as beginning as early as the age of 42 years or as late as 77 years. A word like senex (old man) was not strictly defined in terms of number of years, but was related more to appearance and circumstances. . . . Physical appearance, mental attitude, circumstances and intention also affect the way a person thinks of him- or herself and is regarded by others” (“Aging in Antiquity: Status and Participation,” in Old Age from Antiquity to PostModernity, ed. Paul Johnson and Pat Thane [London: Routledge, 1998], 21). See also Tim G. Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World: A Cultural and Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 57–89. Philo, Opif. 103 (trans. Colson and Whitaker). Plutarch, Cons. Apoll. 120B (trans. Babbitt). Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pythagoras 10. M. B. Skinner, “Ego Mulier: The Construction of Male Sexuality in Catullus,” Helios 20 (1993): 111. We see this also in 4 Maccabees with Eleazar and even more clearly, with the elderly mother. Similarly, C. S. Wansink writes, “There is reason to believe that an appeal to age would have created pathos. Ancient writers often refer to the tension and anxiety created when the elderly are forced to undergo public humiliation, torture, or martyrdom” (Chained in Christ: The Experience and Rhetoric of Paul’s Imprisonments, JSNT Supp. 130 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996], 163). See Dale Martin, “Contradictions of Masculinity: Ascetic Inseminators and Menstruating Men in Greco-Roman Culture,” in Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity Through Early Modern Europe, ed. Valeria Finucci and Kevin Brownlee (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 81–108. The importance of the beard will be discussed in chapter 4. Aristotle, Gen. an. 728a.

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77. 4 Macc. 5:31 (New Revised Standard Version). 78. See Moore and Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man,” 256. See also 4 Macc. 16:1– 17. 79. Lyons 1.29. 80. The aorist active indicative ж½̴̡̙̠̦ connotes volition: Ponticus released, or returned, his spirit. In other words, he chose to die. 81. Mart. Pol. 9.3. It is not clear whether the author is referring to Polycarp’s age or to how long he has been a Christian. 82. Elizabeth Castelli points out the echoes of Scripture in this phrase (Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making [New York: Columbia University Press, 2004], 62). 83. For a discussion of the complexities of the imitation theme in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, see Michael W. Holmes, “The Martyrdom of Polycarp and the New Testament Passion Narratives,” in Trajectories Through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 407–432. 84. Jonathan Z. Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” in “To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity, ed. Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), 25. 85. Daniel Boyarin describes Judaism and Christianity as endpoints on a continuum. “In the middle, however,” he notes, “were many gradations that provided social and cultural mobility from one end of this spectrum to the other” (Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999], 8). Building on Boyarin’s work (and that of others)—which has urged us to see formative Christianity as a conversation partner with other social groups, and which shows us that Christians and Jews were simultaneously comparing and contrasting themselves to the “other”—I seek to focus the conversation on the ways these comparisons and distinctions were made by utilizing gendered language. Group identity in the martyrologies was accomplished in large part through gendered comparisons. My conclusions regarding the authors’ rejection of Jewish masculinity dovetail with Boyarin’s thesis since the rejection of Jewish masculinity would be unnecessary if the authors felt wholly unrelated to that social group. Indeed, Boyarin shows that Jewish authors used derogatory gendered language to describe Christians (68). 86. For a discussion of the Jews in Smyrna, see Lieu, Image, 86–94. In this chapter, I am not concerned with Polycarp’s community and its relationship to the local synagogue. Here I follow Judith Lieu’s differentiation between image and reality. She writes, “Literary presentation cannot automatically be taken as directly mirroring external reality but frequently meets particular needs, internal or external, to the literature itself ” (Image, 2). Lieu continues, arguing that all literature “has a clear rhetorical function and its details serve that rhetoric” (13). So, although the Martyrdom of Polycarp is

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87. 88.

89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

96.

97. 98.

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widely known for its anti-Judaism, what Musurillo calls “the author’s undisguised anti-semitism” (Musurillo, Acts, xiv), this chapter does not focus on reconstructing or deconstructing community tensions. Rather, I suggest that the derogatory rhetoric, aimed with varying degrees at pagans, Jews, and some Christians serves as a tool in the creation of Christian identities. E. Leigh Gibson argues that the anti-Jewish rhetoric in the Martyrdom of Polycarp reflects intra-Christian debate over Christianity’s relationship to Jewish ritual: “Thus MPoly, Revelation, and the Martyrdom of Pionius embed prescriptions about the boundaries of Christian identity in their narratives. In other words, a contributor to MPoly, wanting to claim Polycarp’s legacy for his brand of Christianity, uses a hostile depiction of Jews as a surrogate for criticizing Judaizing Christians” (“The Jews and Christians in the Martyrdom of Polycarp: Entangled or Parted Ways?” in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003], 158). Mart. Pol. 6.2. Mob behavior may seem more or less a fact of life for us—crowds are, seemingly by definition, unruly. This reality, however, is inconsequential to the point I make here: the authors of these texts had the ability to describe the crowds any way they chose. It is significant that they assigned unmasculine characteristics to the crowds. Mart. Pol. 12.1. Lieu, Image, 59. Mart. Pol. 12.2. Lieu, Image, 63. See discussion in Lieu, Image, 63. Lyons 1.5. The author uses the theme of terror and torture to subtly compare pagans and Christians. The slaves who were ensnared by the devil indicted the Christians because of the terror of torture (1.14), while the Christians’ fear is expressly not of torture but of the apostasy of believers: “Then all of us were very distressed by uncertainty about our confession; we were not afraid of the punishments that might be laid upon us, but looking to the end and fearing some might fall away” (1.12). The individuals who make up the crowd of torturers are not to be thought of as citizens of a civilized nation. See, for example, Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989). Hall notes that Greek discourse represents barbarians as incapable of selfcontrol. Similarly, Michael L. Satlow (“Try to Be a Man: The Rabbinic Construction of Masculinity,” HTR 89 [1996]: 19–40) discusses Jewish discourses that claim Gentiles and women lack masculine self-control. Pass. Perp. 18.9. Lyons 1.20, 21.

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99. Mart. Carp. A9. 100. Mart. Conon 5.6. 101. Mart. Pion. 11.4. 102. ̷̡̧̥̭́ is the opposite of ж̡̩̠̬Ӻ̫̭ (see, for example, Plato, Phaedr. 239a). 103. Jonathan Walters, “Juvenal, Satire 2: Putting Male Sexual Deviants on Show,” in Thinking Men: Masculinity and Its Self-Representation in the Classical Tradition, ed. Lin Foxhall and John Salmon (London: Routledge, 1998), 149–150. 104. Ibid., 150. 105. Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 126. 106. Mart. Pion. 4.3. 107. He argues that the Jews have broken God’s commandment not to rejoice when someone stumbles. The catalogue of Jewish misdeeds should be read in the light of the anti-Jewish tone of Mart. Pion. 108. Pionius points out that no one forced the Jews to sin, but Christians were forced to sacrifice. 109. At first glance, Quintus’s action—i.e., turning himself in—may appear to be a courageous thing. But the author of the martyrology has already set the standard for Christian response to persecution: wait to be handed over. It is God, according to the theology of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, who hands one over; Quintus is guilty of usurping God’s power. 110. Mart. Pol. 4.1. 111. Lyons 1.35. 112. On the charge of cannibalism made against Christians, see Andrew McGowan, “Eating People: Accusations of Cannibalism Against Christians in the Second Century,” JECS 2 (1994): 413–442. 113. Lyons 1.26. 114. Walters, “Juvenal,” 153. 115. Musurillo, Acts, lvii.

4 . P U T T I N G WO M E N I N T H E I R P L AC E : M A S C U L I N I Z I N G A N D F E M I N I Z I N G T H E F E M A L E M A RT Y R

1.

As discussed above in chapter 1, social identity theorists posit that individuals have multiple identities corresponding to membership in different social groups. Which identity is salient depends upon the particular social situation. We should not be surprised, then, to find one set of behavioral expectations for Christians when they are compared to competing groups such as paganism and Judaism, but a different set of behavioral expectations for members within the Christian community. Social identity theories furthermore predict that in-group classifications will be much richer and more diverse than out-group classifications. Dominic Abrams and Michael Hogg write, “Different levels of categorization are simultaneously used by group members to encode information pertaining to their own group and to the

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other group. Superordinate and undifferentiated levels of categorization are used to encode out group behaviors, whereas in-group classifications take into account more subordinate and differentiated categories” (Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances [London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990], 74). The martyrologies depict Christian women in different contexts and thus with different social identities in play. Sometimes, for example, Perpetua is described as a Christian—as opposed to a pagan or a Jew—and the social identity that is activated requires her to be masculine. Other times, however, her identity is defined not in terms of Christian versus nonChristian but female Christian versus male Christian. This intragroup social identity, as we will see, appropriates Roman social norms for women: in this context, Perpetua is portrayed as a good wife and mother, thereby embodying feminine virtues. The phenomenon of masculinizing and feminizing the female martyr is not peculiar to Christian social identity. Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson show this dialectic clearly in 4 Maccabees (“Taking It Like a Man,” JBL 117 [1998] 249–273), wherein the mother of seven martyred boys is described as having the heart of Abraham, being nobler than men in perseverance, and manlier than men in endurance. She, like Perpetua, is ultimately responsible for her own death. Yet the account ends with the mother assuring her sons of her lifelong fidelity to her husband. “The ‘manly’ woman is effectively, if clumsily, ‘feminized’; a share of the credit for the manliness of the sons is transferred from her to their father, and she is depicted as always having been properly subservient to him. Though she has shown that she can take it like a man, she remains a woman in the end” (Moore and Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man,” 272). For a discussion of the perceived threat of the masculinized woman becoming (physically) male and then usurping male power, see Swancutt, “Still Before Sexuality: ‘Greek’ Androgeny, the Roman Imperial Politics of Masculinity, and the Roman Invention of the Tribas,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses, ed. Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 11–61. Although scholars used to assume that Christianity was much more egalitarian than Judaism and paganism, there is now widespread agreement that most early Christian groups did not offer significantly more freedom to women (see, for example, the discussions in Judith Romney Wegner, “Philo’s Portrayal of Women—Hebraic or Hellenic?” in “Women Like This”: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Amy-Jill Levine [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991], 67–82; and Amy-Jill Levine, “Second Temple Judaism, Jesus, and Women: Yeast of Eden,” Biblical Interpretation 2 [1994]: 8–33). While there may have been groups of Christians that allowed women to participate more freely in religious practices—e.g., Montanists and perhaps Gnostics—there is evidence that, by and large, by the second century

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Christianity was becoming more socially conservative in this regard. Within the New Testament itself, for example, we see the establishment of a strict male-female hierarchy in the Pastoral Epistles (most clearly in 1 Timothy, in which women are forbidden to teach and are to learn silently at home from their husbands. A similar sentiment is also apparent in what is likely a later interpolation in 1 Corinthians 14:33b–36). The Pastoral Epistles also show a preference for more traditional female roles—e.g., mother and wife. My arguments regarding the authors’ concerns about the role of women in intracommunal relations, however, stem less from an assumption of women’s roles in early Christianity as a whole and more from my observation of the depiction of women in these martyrologies. If the masculinizing descriptions are important in assessing the community’s construction of women— the assertion of most scholars who write on the martyrologies—we must also, and equally, attend to the feminizing imagery. We cannot understand the role of the female martyr in these narratives if we overlook many of the ways these women are described. 5. Mart. Pol. 1.1–2; see also 19.1, 22.1. 6. Mart. Pion. 1.2. 7. Mart. Marian 1.3 (trans. Musurillo). 8. Herbert Musurillo’s assumptions about the historicity of many of the martyrologies, matched perhaps only by Harnack’s, are muted by the acknowledgment of the didactic function of the texts. In the introduction to his collection of martyrologies, he writes, “The question of ultimate historicity, or how far our documents reflect the actual events of the period of persecution, leaves the scholar in an embarrassing dilemma. For without external confirmation of the facts (apart from the evidence of Eusebius) we are reduced to retaining merely those texts which seem least objectionable from the historical point of view” (Acts of the Christian Martyrs [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972], liv). He continues, asserting that the martyrologies “are indeed documents of Christian witness, and for this very reason it becomes similarly difficult to separate the factual record (hypomnêma) from apologia and didachê” (lvii). 9. Augustine and Quodvultdeus (De tempore barbarico I), for example, wrote sermons in response to the liturgical reading of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas on the saints’ day. 10. Such theories also assert self-masculinization, implying that these texts report women’s perceptions of themselves: that is, not only do the female martyrs believe that they have been masculinized, but these beliefs have been accurately preserved in martyrological texts. Such theories do not take into account textual redaction; neither do they contend with a variety of other authorial or textual transmission possibilities. 11. In his book Perpetua und der Ägypter oder Bilder des Bösen im frühen afrikanischen Christentum: Ein Versuch zur Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992), Peter Habermehl argues for the authenticity of the authorial claim by suggesting that since difficulty with nursing was

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not a theme in Hellenistic writings, the narrative contained in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas must be an authentic record of a woman’s experience. The force of this argument, according to Edward Peter Nolan, lies in its relationship to pseudepigraphy in antiquity. In praise of Habermehl’s thesis, Nolan writes, “If one cannot find either previous uses of the images and themes in the tradition, what was the counterfeiter drawing on?” (Cry Out and Write: A Feminine Poetics of Revelation [New York: Continuum, 1994], 34). Nolan continues, “It is therefore difficult to imagine where the putative counterfeiter found his models; and therefore it is more likely that the Passio contains the authentic, auto-biographic experience of a real Perpetua” (35). 12. The story’s popularity in antiquity is clear from Augustine’s community, which apparently reenacted parts of the Passio each year on the anniversary of Perpetua’s and Felicitas’s martyrdom. Vicki León, author of a series of popular books on women in history, demonstrates modern interest in Perpetua’s story by including an entry on Perpetua in her book Uppity Women of Ancient Times (New York: MJF Books, 1995), 96. 13. Maureen Tilley asserts, “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity is the oldest surviving Christian material one may attribute to a definite historical woman” (“The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity,” in Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice, ed. Richard Valantasis [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000], 387). Robert Seesengood writes, “There is sufficient reason to accept her narrative as the actual account of Perpetua; in it we have a document unique in its unmediated feminine voice” (Competing Identities: The Athlete and the Gladiator in Early Christian Literature [New York: Clark], 97). A recent article by Ross S. Kraemer and Shira L. Lander offers strong arguments against the authenticity of the authorship attribution (“Perpetua and Felicitas,” in The Early Christian World, ed. Philip Francis Esler [London: Routledge, 2000], 1048–1068). 14. Pass. Perp. 2.3 (trans. Musurillo). For the sake of clarity I will refer to the author of the introduction and conclusion as “the editor,” and differentiate that from the first-person accounts. Largely because of the assumed Montanist perspective, Tertullian has, at times, been regarded as the editor of the text. The connection between the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Tertullian is problematic, though, because, as many scholars have noted, Tertullian attributes Saturus’s vision to Perpetua (De anima 55). In addition, several scholars have argued that Tertullian’s vocabulary and style of writing differ from those of the editor of the martyrology. For a discussion of Tertullian as editor of the Passion, see W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952), 118; P. de Labriolle, “Tertullian, auteur du prologue et de la conclusion de la Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité,” BALAC 3 (1913): 126–132; A. Pettersen, “Perpetua—Prisoner of Conscience,” VC 41 (1987): 139; J. Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1: The Beginnings of Patristic Literature (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1950), 181; J. Armitage Robinson, Texts and Studies, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891);

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16. 17.

18.

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C. I. M. I. Van Beek, ed., Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, vol. 1 (Nijmegen: Dekker and Van de Vegt, 1936); H. von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible, trans. J. A. Baker (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), 229; W. H. Shewring, “Prose Rhythms in the Passio Perpetuae,” JTS 30 (1929): 56–57; Åke Fridh, Le problème de la Passion des saintes Perpétue et Félicité, Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia 26 (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1968), 45; René Braun, “Nouvelles observations linguistiques sur le rédacteur de la ‘Passio Perpetuae,’ ” VC 33 (1979): 105–117; Erich Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1965); E. C. E. Owen, Some Authentic Acts of the Early Martyrs (London: Clarendon, 1927); Kraemer and Lander, “Perpetua and Felicitas,” 1061. Interestingly, while the authenticity of the authorial claim is crucial for many modern interpreters, ancient exegetes worked to excise Perpetua as author, striving to save the text at the expense of the author, rather than to interpret the text by means of the author. Three early commentators—the two authors of the fourth-century Acta and Augustine—divorce Perpetua from the text, though by different means. The Acta do not mention Perpetua as author (rewriting the narrative in third-person prose), and Augustine glosses over the tradition, mentioning authorship only cursorily and at times using the plural pronoun “they,” rather than the singular pronoun, when referring to authorship. Mary Lefkowitz, “Motivations for St. Perpetua’s Martyrdom,” JAAR 44 (1976): 417 (emphasis added). Brent Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua,” Past and Present 139 (1993): 20–21. Of course, the notion that a text can be “unmediated” is problematic. Most interpreters, however, have assumed just that: that the text accurately reflects Perpetua’s inner struggles and turmoil and that it reveals their root causes. Shaw, “Passion,” 31. Although Shaw does not assert that this “simple and factual” style of writing is a peculiarly feminine way to write, this assessment may be implied by the polarity he draws between the female writer and the male interpreters. Edward Peter Nolan, on the other hand, explicitly states that writing styles are gendered: “The ‘Feminine’ style of meaning folds in, isolates the image in the pressure of the revelation of its Itness, its Isness, its Thereness, its quiddity-in-gnostic-reflexivity. It is metonymic, centripetal, paratactic, condensive: it revels in severance, and remains unabashed at the apparent nullities of the space between. It is hence resistant to the obliterating forces of symmetry forwarded by the male imperative of filling in the vacuums of space and silence with reasons for things. The feminine style uses those spaces and their corresponding silences as an echo-chamber in which to celebrate the Isness of the things that ARE there. And without the countering presence and pressures of the male style, the feminine style threatens to become excessively obscurantist, arcane, and disordered: it can self-destruct” (Cry Out, 43).

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19. E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 51. 20. James W. Halporn, “Literary History and Generic Expectations in the Passio and Acta Perpetuae,” VC 45 (1991): 223–241. 21. Ibid., 224. 22. Halporn challenges this assumption by noting that the “I-style” narrative does not necessarily reflect a diary or autobiographical text, but “is best known in antiquity in prose from the novel and romance” (ibid., 233). 23. Pass. Perp. 16.1. 24. The editor insists that the examples of Christian piety contained in the martyrology are as authoritative for Christian life as ancient examples (1.1). Many scholars interpret this statement as reflecting a Montanist belief in continued revelation. Musurillo, for example, writes, “The visions of Perpetua and Saturus while in prison provide a vivid insight into the beliefs of the African community; and the author’s stress on the ‘power of the Spirit’ (1.3), on ‘new prophecies’ and ‘new visions’ (1.5), would suggest that the passio is ultimately a proto-Montanist document, originating perhaps in the first decade of the third century from the Montanist circle of Tertullian himself. . . . The phantasmagoric, and sometimes erotic, imagery, may well represent the kind of mediumistic phenomena current in the Montanist church of Africa” (Acts, xxvi). Musurillo does, however, concede that the early church fathers—Augustine, in particular—did not recognize any heretical elements in the text. That this text was so popular outside of any presumed Montanist context may in fact argue against its “proto-Montanist” nature, since the early Church Fathers were constantly on guard against texts that could be interpreted as heretical. In Augustine’s sermons on the Passio, he never warns against, or even mentions, the belief in new prophecies. 25. Thus my references to Perpetua should not be read as claims for the authorship of the visions, but instead as a desire to differentiate the first-person from the third-person portions of the narrative. 26. Pass. Perp. 3.5. 27. John Winkler has noted that “at all levels of practical morality and advicegiving we find the undisciplined person described as someone mastered or conquered by something over which he should exert control. . . . Whether choosing a general to save the city (Xenophon, Mem. 1.5.1) or a bailiff to manage the farm (Xenophon, Oec. 12.13), one wants a man who is the honorable master of his pleasures, not—by the logic of zero-sum competition—the shameful slave of them (Xenophon, Mem. 1.5.1)” (The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece [New York: Routledge], 50). 28. For a discussion of marriage in the imperial period, see Judith Hallett, Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Eva Marie Lassen, “The Roman Family: Ideal and Metaphor,” in Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor, ed. Halvor Moxnes (London: Routledge, 1997), 103–120; Carolyn

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30. 31.

32.

33. 34.

35.

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Osiek, “Perpetua’s Husband,” JECS 20 (2002): 287–290; Carlin Barton, Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 164–171; B. Rawson, ed., The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (London: Croom Helm, 1986); B. Rawson, ed., Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome (Canberra: Humanities Research Centre; Oxford: Clarendon; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); R. Saller, “Familia, Domus, and the Roman Conception of the Family,” Phoenix 38 (1984): 336–355; S. Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991); Alan Watson, Roman Private Law Around 200 B.C. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971); T. Wiedemann, Adults and Children in the Roman Empire (London: Routledge, 1989). Lassen writes, “In legal terms, persons in potestas were called alieni juris, ‘in another’s right,’ and, depending on their sex, named filius (familias) and filia (familias) in legal documents” (“Roman Family,” 104). One of Perpetua’s fellow Christians also addresses her as domina soror (4.1). Erving Goffman notes, “A classic stereotype of deference is that of lowering oneself physically in some form or other of prostration. Correspondingly, holding the body erect and the head high is stereotypically a mark of unashamedness, superiority, and disdain” (Gender Advertisements [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979], 40). Theories of the gaze began to take shape after the publication of Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (Screen 16 [1975]: 6–18). See also Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Baskingstoke: MacMillan, 1989); Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshmint, eds., The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture (London: Women’s Press, 1988); John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972). Jennifer Glancy, “Text Appeal: Visual Pleasure and Biblical Studies,” Semeia 82 (1998): 67. “Reading” in antiquity was both public and private, and the term encompassed aural as well as oral presentation. Harry Gamble notes, “In antiquity virtually all reading, public or private, was reading aloud: texts were routinely converted into the oral mode. Knowing this, ancient authors wrote their texts as much for the ear as for the eye”; “in the Greco-Roman world virtually all reading was reading aloud; even when reading privately the reader gave audible voice to the text” (Books and Readers: A History of Early Christian Texts [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], 30, 203). This is the driving force behind the rhetorical technique ekphrasis. James A. W. Heffernan defines ekphrasis as “the verbal representation of visual representation” (Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993], 3. Studies of ekphrasis have multiplied in recent decades. See, for example, the discussions in Murray Krieger, “Ekphrasis and the Still Movement of Poetry; or, Laokoon Revisited,” in The Poet as Critic, ed. Frederick P. W. McDowell (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1967), 3–25; idem, Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore:

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36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44.

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Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); and Peter Wagner, ed., Icons–Texts– Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996). John Chrysostom, Homilies 18.4 (NPNF vol 14). Augustine, Sermon 51.2 (NPNF vol. 6). Augustine, Sermon 280.1 (trans. Hill; emphasis added). Nicole Loraux, Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman, trans. Anthony Forster (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1987), vii. Ibid., x. Richard Hawley, “The Body as Spectacle in Attic Drama,” in Thinking Men: Masculinity and Its Self-Representation in the Classical Tradition, ed. Lin Foxhall and John Salmon (London: Routledge, 1998), 87. Translation modified from Musurillo. Refer to chapter 3 for a discussion of excessive emotion as unmanly. Plucking out the hair from one’s beard is a common biblical expression of mourning (e.g., Jer. 48:37), but the Hebrew Bible also narrates the humiliation experienced by the man whose beard is removed (e.g., 2 Sam. 10; Isa. 50), perhaps reflecting a diminished masculinity. Hawley, “Male Body as Spectacle,” 91. Clement suggests that depilation is an unnatural act because it compromises the sign of masculinity (̯̫ԉж̩̠̬Ң̭ ̯Ң̸̨̮̩̤̣̝). Hairiness, as Maud Gleason notes, “is agreed to be the distinctive mark of a man” (Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome [Princeton: Princeton University Press], 68). Aristotle, Gen. an. 765b; 783b. Having already made the connection between heat and seminal fluid, Aristotle explains the lack of hair on women: “Women do not go bald; for their nature resembles that of children: for neither produces seminal fluid” (Gen. an. 784a). Clement also correlates hairiness and heat (Paedagogus 3.3). It should be noted that some ancient authors believed women produced sperm. Gleason, Making Men, 69. Gleason, paraphrasing Epictetus, writes, “Nature made women smooth and men hirsute. If a man born hairless is an ominous sign (̯̙̬̝̭), what are we to make of a man who depilates himself? Under what label should we exhibit him? (3.1.27–29). Such a creature of hybrid sex should ‘eradicate—what I shall call it—the cause of his hair’ so that he makes himself entirely female and no longer forces other people to make mistakes when they attempt to categorize him (3.1.31)” (Making Men, 69). If men are associated with hair, then how do we explain baldness, a condition that occurs most often in men? Aristotle explains it as the result of excess seminal fluid: “If you reckon up (a) that the brain itself has very little heat, (b) that the skin surrounding it must of necessity have even less, and (c) that the hair, being the furthest off of the three, must have even less still, you will expect persons who are plentiful in semen to go bald at about this time of life. And it is owing to the same cause that it is on the front part of the head only that human beings go bald, and that they are the only animals that do so at all; i.e. they go bald in front because the brain is there, and

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53.

54.

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they alone do so, because they have by far the largest brain of all and the most fluid. Women do not go bald because their nature is similar to that of children: both are incapable of producing seminal secretion. Eunuchs, too, do not go bald, because of their transition into the female state, and the hair that comes at a later stage they fail to grow at all, or if they already have it, they lose it, except for the pubic hair: similarly women do not have the later hair, though they do grow the pubic hair. This deformity constitutes a change from the male state to the female” (Gen. an. 783B–784A; trans. Peck; cf. Hippocratic Treatises, “On the Nature of the Child” 20). Clement, Paedagogus 3.3. 4 Macc. 15:4–5 (NRSV). Moore and Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man,” 257. Pass. Perp. 5.3. On the term pater familias, see Richard Saller, “Pater Familias, Mater Familias, and the Gendered Semantics of the Roman Household,” CP 94 (1999): 182–197. In a recent article, Carolyn Osiek (“Perpetua’s Husband”) sets out to explain why Perpetua’s father, rather than her husband’s father (who has legal right to the child), takes the child. She posits that Saturus is Perpetua’s husband, and Saturus’s family has rejected not only Saturus himself but also his child. Custody then passed to Perpetua’s father. In reference to the cessation of lactation in this section of the martyrology, Judith Perkins writes, “Commentators have read Perpetua’s self-representation in this section as a renunciation of her motherhood and a move away from her female role toward an embrace of male identity and the spiritual strength it tokens. The metaphor of holy women ‘becoming male’ does become an important topos in Christian discourse, signifying women’s spiritual growth and achievement. And Perpetua does envision herself transformed into a man in her final dream, where she sees herself in the arena fighting against a ‘hideous’ Egyptian. Yet this single dream apparition ought not overwhelm the primary focus of this narrative, where a mother’s, not a man’s, body is central” (“The Rhetoric of the Maternal Body in the Passion of Perpetua,” in Mapping Gender in Ancient Discourses, ed. Todd Penner and Carolyn Vander Stichele [Leiden: Brill, 2007], 326). Perkins provides a muchneeded corrective to analyses of Perpetua’s fourth vision by reminding us that it is simply one of several portrayals of the martyr that we are shown in the course of the narrative. But in the midst of the corrective, Perkins goes to the other extreme by dismissing the masculine language associated with Perpetua throughout the martyrology. My work has shown that the fourth vision is not unique in the Passio. Rather Perpetua is framed as both masculine and feminine through the entire course of the narrative. Rather than focusing exclusively on one or another of the portrayals, we must understand how the trends function together in the formation of Christian identities. See, for example, Aristotle’s discussion of men’s heat (and women’s lack

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55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

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of heat) in Gen. an. 726B; 728A; 783B. Maureen Tilley offers a modern scientific explanation of this episode: “Many factors might have combined to affect her milk supply: the stress of being in prison, the repeated absence of her child, a diminished water supply, the lack of sunlight in the dungeon cell (confusing the diurnal cycle of the body), and the stress of imprisonment” (“The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity,” in Searching the Scriptures, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza [New York: Crossroad, 1994], vol. 2, 837). These physiological explanations probably do not explain the function of the cessation of lactation within the narrative. Diseases of Women 1.1 (trans. Hanson in Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook in Translation, ed. Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992]). The author of this treatise does not attribute the lower fluid amounts in men to heat. Rather, he suggests that it results from work and the hardness of men’s bodies. Ibid., 1.6 (trans. Hanson). Galen, Usefulness 14.6 (trans. May). Jan den Boeft and Jan Bremmer suggest that Perpetua fights an Egyptian because Egyptians were considered the most accomplished athletes in the Roman world—thus Perpetua’s defeat of the Egyptian signals an unquestioned masculine superiority (“Notiunculae Martyrologiae II,” VC 36 [1982]: 390). See also Frank M. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983); Frank M. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1970). The Greek reads: ̦̝Ҡц̡̟̩̤̣̩̚к̬̬̣̩. Mary Ann Rossi, “The Passion of Perpetua, Everywoman of Late Antiquity,” in Pagan and Christian Anxiety: A Response to E. R. Dodds, ed. R. Smith and J. Lounibos (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984), 53. Marie-Louise Von Franz, “The Passio Perpetuae,” Spring (1949): 118. Perpetua’s words underscore their freewill: “We came to this of our own free will, that our freedom should not be violated. We agreed to pledge our lives provided that we would do no such thing. You agreed with us to do this” (18.5; trans. Musurillo). Dead combatants were carried through the Porta Libitinesis. The description of the contest is most likely drawn from the pankration, an athletic contest that combined elements of wrestling and boxing. Gleason, Making Men, 55–58. Polemo, Physiognomy 1.1.158F (quoted in Gleason, Making Men, 62). Pliny the Elder, Nat. 11.54.145–146 (trans. Rackham). Ibid., 11.54.144 (trans. Rackham). Brent Shaw comments that Perpetua’s “ability to stare directly back into the faces of her persecutors, not with the elusive demeanor of a proper matrona, broke with the normative body language in a way that signaled an aggressiveness that was not one of conventional femininity” (“Passion,” 4).

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70. In Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman, Nicole Loraux notes that the throat is a particularly feminine part of the body and tends to be the locus of death for women in tragedy (e.g., hanging or beheading), whereas the physical location of fatal blows to men tends to be abdominal. Charles Segal observes that only Ovid depicts Althaea plunging a sword into herself “rather than her usual end by the approved female gesture of hanging herself ” (“Ovid’s Meleager and the Greeks: Trials of Gender and Genre,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 99 [1999]: 328). Whereas in Greek tragedy, women die offstage, the editor of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas explicitly states that the martyrs were killed in a public place (10.7). Christopher A. Frilingos has described Perpetua’s death as a feminized event: “Perpetua is finally executed, and though she dies a noble death, it is the corporeality, not the courage, of the martyr that surfaces in the description: ‘she screamed as she was struck on the bone’ (Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 21)” (“Sexing the Lamb,” in New Testament Masculinities, ed. Stephen Moore and Janice Capel Anderson [Atlanta: SBL Press, 2003], 313). Although there are certainly feminized elements to Perpetua’s death—especially the fact that she dies by having her throat cut—Frilingos’s analysis does not account for the fact that Perpetua finally dies by a masculine act of volition and courage: she draws the sword to her own throat. The duality of Christian women’s social identities is perfectly summed up in “Perpetua’s she-male death,” to borrow a phrase from one of the anonymous readers of this book. 71. Trans. Musurillo. 72. Trans. Musurillo. 73. Perpetua’s husband is not mentioned in the text, but her relationship to Christ, described in marital language, may reveal her true attachment to a heavenly, and not earthly, husband/family. 74. Margaret Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: Beacon, 1989), 61. 75. Augustine, Sermon 282.2. Augustine seems not to have considered Felicitas a mother since she had not yet given birth. Even with his emphasis on the women’s domesticity, modern interpreters could learn much from Augustine’s interpretation of the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, which accounts for both the masculinizing and feminizing depictions of the women. 76. Augustine, Sermon 281.2 (trans. Hill). 77. Although Augustine often acknowledges a saint’s day, he rarely incorporates the saint into his homily. Interestingly, then, the only extant sermons Augustine delivered on Perpetua’s feast day deal almost exclusively with her. Augustine, moreover, tells us that the martyrdom was read aloud prior to his sermons: “We heard of the encouragement they received in divine revelations, and of their triumph in their sufferings, as it was all being read; and all those things, recounted in such glowing words, we perceived in our ears, and actually saw in our minds; we honored them with our devotion

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and praised them with love” (280.1; trans. Hill). Augustine, then, could not ignore the tradition; he was forced by its appearance in the liturgy to interpret it for his audience. 78. Trans. Musurillo. 79. Such emphasis on the female body, suggest Brock and Harvey, “reminds us further that men are also doing the writing” (Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998], 25). The attribution of authorship to men is probably accurate, and voyeurism is peculiar to the stories of female martyrs. I am not convinced, however, that such portrayals are necessarily connected to the sex of the narrator. Rather, the focus on the frailty and vulnerability of the female body is a way for the editor to remind us of Christian women’s femininity. 80. Elizabeth A. Castelli, Visions and Voyeurism: Holy Women and the Politics of Sight in Early Christianity, ed. Christopher Ocker (Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies, 1994), 8. Susanna Elm disagrees with Castelli: “Many of the earlier Greek or Latin martyria (Perpetua, Quartillosa, Agathonice, even Blandina), rather than emphasizing the women’s bodies, almost remove the female body from sight, as it were, at the most crucial moments of torture. While the tortures of many male martyrs are described in great detail (and male martyrs also are usually killed naked), descriptions of those of women are either brief to the point of being nondescript (Agathonice), or portray the women’s body as having been removed from the scene in some form: e.g., through transformation of her body into that of Christ (Blandina), or in allowing the heroine to fall into some kind of trance (Perpetua)” (Castelli, Visions, 37.). While it is true that the authors often attend to the female martyrs’ experiences in cursory fashion, when the texts are closely analyzed it is clear that the descriptions of women’s bodies are not only graphic and detailed, but typically more so than those of men. As we will see, for instance, whereas men’s bodies may be casually noted (i.e., the author may indicate that the male martyr was stripped or that his body regained strength or youthful vigor), women’s bodies are described (e.g., the milk dripping from Felicitas’s breasts horrified the crowds). Even when women are cursorily mentioned (in the case of Agathonike, for instance), their clothing or bodies receive far greater attention than those of their male counterparts. Moreover, women’s transformation (Blandina) or trance (Perpetua) may function in some way other than to aid in the removal of the body from the visual field of the reader. Blandina’s transformation into the image of Christ, for example, offers a concrete representation: the audience is given an iconographically familiar image through which to “see” Blandina. (We should note, moreover, that Blandina does not completely lose her bodily form. The text reads: “She seemed to hang in the form of a cross . . . in their torment they saw with their eyes, in their sister, the one who was crucified for them” [41].) It is not clear, furthermore, how the narration of trance affects an audience’s sight.

180

81.

82.

83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

88. 89.

90.

91.

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The trancelike state into which Perpetua falls after she is tossed by the bull reveals her confusion about—or insensitivity to—events, but it does not remove her from the audience’s visual field. Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure,” 837. For a discussion of Revelation and the gaze, see Christopher A. Frilingos, Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). A phrase used by Richard Hawley to refer to an author’s description of events as opposed to events that are acted out on stage for the audience (“Body as Spectacle,” 87). Castelli, Visions, 9. Pass. Perp. 2.1. Not even Felicitas’s death is recorded. For a discussion of the laws concerning capital punishment of pregnant women, see Chris Jones, “Women, Death and the Law During the Christian Persecutions,” in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed. D. Wood (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993), 23–34. In a compelling article on the role of the slave in early Christian apologies and martyrdoms, J. Albert Harrill eloquently points out the irony of the narrative presentation of Blandina: “In a physiognomic reversal, the eidos of Blandina’s slave body—cheap, ugly, and contemptuous—turns out, in the end, to be the most beautiful and prized spectacle of divine power (dynamis), the real ‘autopsy’ and direct sighting of God. This irony extends to her very name (from the Latin: blandus, ‘cozening,’ ‘insidious,’ ‘insincere’). Torture proves Blandina to be the moral polarity of her name, which better labels the cozening betrayer slaves not being tortured. Her name is an etymological pun heightening the dramatic surprise” (“The Domestic Enemy: A Moral Polarity of Household Slaves in Early Christian Apologies and Martyrdoms,” in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. David Balch and Carolyn Osiek [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003], 250). Lyons 1.17. Slavery, like motherhood, seems to be a trope of femininity employed by the authors of the martyrologies and may serve to bolster the surprise and unexpectedness of their enacted masculinity (see also the stories of Felicitas and Sabina). The author may be alluding to the account in Genesis where Eve is deceived by the serpent, and thus indicating to his audience that Blandina is in some way a new Eve who is not deceived by but instead vanquishes the serpent. The allusion may also be to the prophecy in Isaiah where God promises to punish the serpent (Isa. 27:1). Similarly, in Perpetua’s first vision she steps on the head of a serpent, and in her fourth vision she tramples on the head of the devil (see Augustine’s comments in Sermons 280.1 and 281.1, 2). The author indicates that the people see a male form by using the masculine form of the participle (̯Ң̩ц̴̨̮̯̝̰̬̙̩̫̩), though we should note that the author continues, paradoxically, to talk about Blandina’s body—not

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92.

93.

94.

95.

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Jesus’—and insists that the spectators see “in their sister” the one who was crucified for them (Lyons 1.41). It is likely that the author of the Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne not only knew 4 Maccabees, but consciously recalled aspects of that martyrology in detailing the torture and deaths of the Christians in second-century Gaul. The Maccabean mother seems to have served as an exemplary model for Christian women. The Martyrdom of Marian and James reads, “When this was all over, Marian’s mother, now sure of her son once his passion was finished, rejoiced like the mother of the Maccabees, congratulating not only Marian but also herself that she had borne such a son” (13.1; trans. Musurillo). Similarly, in the Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius, Flavian’s mother is described as a “daughter of Abraham” and “a mother of the Maccabees” (16.4). Augustine makes a similar claim for Perpetua and Felicitas, reminding his audience that they did not suffer any more than the male martyrs, but that they are remembered more because their witness was more extraordinary because of their sex: “In this remarkable and glorious company there were men too who were martyrs, very brave men who conquered by their sufferings on the same day; and yet they haven’t stamped their names on this day. The reason this has happened is not that the women were ranked higher than the men in the quality of their conduct, but that it was a greater miracle for women in their weakness to overcome the ancient enemy, and that the men in their strength engaged in the contest for the sake of perpetual felicity” (Sermon 282.3; trans. Hill). The Greek is labeled “A” and the Latin “B.” The relationship of the recensions is disputed. Musurillo favors the Greek as the original text: “It may well be that the shorter Latin text is merely an abridgement of a primitive Greek form with some editorial additions” (Acts, xv). The Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike is set in Pergamum, during the proconsulship of Optimus (A1; B1). The date of these martyrdoms, however, is disputed. Eusebius refers to Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike immediately after his discussion of Polycarp and Pionius (Hist. Eccl. iv.15.48). This placement suggests that the deaths of these Christians should be dated approximately to the same period, that is, during the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. The proconsul Optimus is otherwise unknown and therefore does not help us establish a date for the martyrdom. The proconsul’s name, moreover, is specified only in the Latin recension, a version that gives more information generally about the characters in the martyrology (e.g., the offices of Carpus and Papylus are found in the Latin recension). For a discussion of Optimus, see W. Hoffman, “Optimus,” RE 18 (1942): 804–805; David Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), ii, 1586. Both versions begin, for instance, with an arrest, but in the Greek version it is not clear whether Agathonike is a Christian at the beginning or if she converts at the sight of Carpus’s and Papylus’s deaths; in the Latin version she is clearly already a Christian because she is arrested at the same time as

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Carpus and Papylus. In the Greek version, furthermore, Agathonike speaks of her son (̯Ң̩̰ѣ̷̩), whereas in the Latin recension she speaks of her children (filii mei). 96. Mart. Carp. A4–5, B2.1. 97. ̝̇Ҡ½̧̧̫Қ̠̥Қ̯Ң̷̡̩̤̩, A29; Et multos, B3.2. 98. The Latin recension makes this clearer, calling Papylus’s children spiritual children (filios habere spirituales, B3.3). 99. ̥́Қ̸̡̛̯̳̠Ӫ, A31. 100. As a man, furthermore, Papylus would not be expected to have formed the kind of emotional attachments characteristic of women. 101. See also Pass. Perp. 5.3; 6.2, 3. 102. The Greek term is ѣ̨̘̯̥̝ and can be used to refer to a cloak or robe, but is more often used to describe clothing in general. We should probably interpret the term in the more general sense here since the martyrologies indicate that it was common practice for individuals to be stripped before execution (see Mart. Pol. 13.2; Mart. Carp. B4.2; Pass. Perp. 10.7, 20.2; Mart. Pion. 21.1). 103. Mart. Pol. 3.1. 104. Ibid., 9.2. 105. Mart. Pion. 5.3. 106. Pass. Perp. 5.2, 3; 6.2. 107. The author of the Martyrdom of Saints Justin, Chariton, Charito, Evelpistus, Hierax, Paeon, and Valerion (recension C), also places the female martyr in a subordinate position relative to the male Christians. The emperor asks Justin how he received his education in Christian thought (2.2) and where the Christians meet (2.4). He asks Chariton if he is a Christian (3.1). When he turns to the female martyr, Charito, however, his questions change. He does not ask about Christianity, rather he implies that Charito is unable to resist the persuasive rhetoric of the male Christians: “What is this, woman? Have you been deceived by their words?” (3.2). 108. Trans. Musurillo. 109. Augustine, Sermon 280.1 (trans. Hill).

C O N C L U S I O N : G E N D E R A N D L A N G UAG E I N E A R LY C H R I S T I A N TEXTS 1. 2. 3.

4.

Donald Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 2001), 244. Ibid. “Most history, indeed, is ‘written by the victors,’ and when on top the Roman authors paid little attention to Christian suffering; but the Christians, when they triumphed, eagerly documented traditions about the heroism of saints and ‘martyrs’ ” (ibid., 243). Kyle places the term “martyr” in quotes—perhaps indicating his uneasiness

CONCLUSION

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6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

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with the attribution of martyrdom to victims of Roman prosecution? Here I am borrowing terms from Jonathan Z. Smith’s definition of ritual (To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987], 109). Social identity theorists predict this kind of characterization of out-groups: “undifferentiated levels of categorization are used to encode out group behaviors” (Dominic Abrams and Michael Hogg, Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances [London: Harvester Wheatsheaf and Springer Verlag, 1990], 74). Lyons 1.27. Pass. Perp. 18.8. This is not always the case, however. In the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, Speratus tells the proconsul, “I do not acknowledge the empire of this world. Rather I serve God. . . . For I acknowledge my Lord who is emperor of kings and all nations” (6). Mart. Apoll. 9; Mart. Pol. 10.2. Mart. Pion. 3.2. Mart. Apoll. 24. Mart. Apoll. 47. Mart. Pol. 21. See also Mart. Carp. B7; Mart. Pion. 23. The supremacy of God over the emperor is also clear in the writings of several other early Christian authors. Both Minucius Felix (Oct. 37.1–2; 36.8–9) and Cyprian (Epistle 8), for example, assigned God a role in amphitheatrical action. Minucius Felix depicts spiritual soldiers, that is, Christians, as manlier than their earthly counterparts: the emperor’s soldiers could not endure the same torture that Christians do. Cyprian describes God as observing Christians participating in the spectacles. Just as spectators in the amphitheater enjoy the gladiator who fights well, so God enjoys the display of Christian superiority through the demonstration of exceptional skill. The image of God observing—and even staging—arena combat underscores the assertion of the supremacy of God’s power. These depictions deny that the emperor or his designated ruler has power over Christian existence. Mart. Just. C1.1, 3. Ibid., 6.2. Scill. 1. Ibid., 3. Judith Lieu discusses this element of the martyrologies: “The opposition played out [in the arena] is a foundational one, ‘the wrath of the gentiles against the saints’ (HE V.1.4); the mob are also archetypically ‘the lawless’ (ж̷̨̩̫̥), again perhaps as an inversion of the charges brought against the martyrs. . . . They, as we have seen, are the real barbarians” (Neither Jew Nor Greek? Constructing Early Christianity [London: Clark, 2002], 220).

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Index

Abrams, Dominic, 20, 21, 141n21 actor, 34, 39, 50, 56, 155n109 Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, 127, 183n9 Agathonike, 68, 116, 118–121, 141n12, 181n95 Alexander (martyr), 35, 65, 85, 86 amphitheater: architecture of, 41–45, 152n56; and Christian identity, 36, 40, 46; liminality of, 45–47; as location of martyrdom, 6–7, 34–36, 105, 106, 117; and negotiation of power, 35, 37–41, 46; and Roman identity, 44, 45, 46; as symbol of Roman power, 35, 41–45 Anderson, Janice Capel, 60, 78, 103, 134n33, 169n2 Apollonius (martyr), 17, 74, 75, 127, 163n56, 164n61 apostate Christians, 6, 7, 22, 81, 86–90, 126 arena: criminals in, 45–46, 124–125; as location of martyrdom, 46, 54, 58, 82, 83, 106, 110–111, 124–125, 149n15; and Roman power, 38, 39, 40, 41, 148n7, 153n79; and social differentiation, 45, 48, 53, 128. See also amphitheater Aretaeus, 27–28

Aristotle, 26, 77, 134n33, 144n53, 175n46, 175n47, 176n54 Artemidorus, 32 Asclepiades, 69, 75 atheism, 71, 72, 74, 130n17 athletes, 55–57; Christians depicted as, 7, 33, 55–58, 106, 114, 117, 125; masculinity of, 7, 57, 134n33, 147n4 Attalus, 35, 40–41, 55, 85, 116 auctorati, 48, 52–54, 156n122, 157n134; Christians depicted as, 36, 54, 58, 106, 155n111 Augustine, 49, 99, 109–110, 122, 171n12, 172n15, 178n77, 181n93 Augustus, and gladiatorial games, 37, 44, 50, 52, 148n5, 151n33 Barton, Carlin, 49, 53, 54, 162n34 beard, 28, 58, 77, 101–102, 175n44 beauty: female martyrs depicted as, 7, 41, 110–111, 121, 126; as woman’s virtue, 31, 121, 126 Biblis, 90, 126, 132n20 black sheep effect, 22, 24, 87, 90, 141n18 Blandina, 65, 79, 85, 113–116, 132n20, 179n80, 180n87, 180n90, 180n91;

204

INDEX

Blandina (continued) as athlete, 55, 114; as mother, 114– 115, 119; as slave, 61, 113, 114 Boyarin, Daniel, 12, 133n25, 136n53, 136n57, 166n85 Brock, Sebastian, 110, 179n79 Burrus, Virginia, 17 Caligula, 39, 52, 53, 107, 148n7, 157n129 Campania, 42, 43, 50, 149n19 Carpus, 65, 66, 116–120 Castelli, Elizabeth A., 5, 8–9, 110, 131n18 Cato, 67 childbirth. See motherhood Christianity: and appropriation of Roman culture, 2, 5, 13, 17, 32, 46, 58, 62, 78, 125; as subversive, 11–13 Chrysostom, John, 98, 99 Cicero, 30, 38, 39, 48, 55 circus, 34, 36, 39, 44, 150n32 Claudius, 38, 150n33 Clement, 102, 175n45, 175n46 Codol, Jean-Paul, 22–23 Colosseum, 44, 45 Commodus, 39, 50, 127, 154n91 confession, 65, 82, 83, 114, 117, 119, 127, 146n1; and Christian identity, 10, 11, 61 Conon, 66, 74, 86 Cooper, Kate, 73 courage: and Christian martyrs, 65, 69, 79; indicator of masculinity, 7, 15, 20, 28, 29, 30 cowardice: Christians depicted with 87, 89; as indicator of unmanliness, 29, 107. See also apostate Christians; Quintus criminals: Christians as, 24, 47, 72, 82, 125, 151n49 crowds: and amphitheater events, 37–41; in martyrologies, 40–41,

58, 72, 74, 78, 79, 81–86, 106–107, 118–120; unmanliness of, 14, 72, 79, 82–85, 167n88 crown, 57–58, 114, 159n164 Dio Cassius, 39, 52, 157n129 Dio Chrysostom, 57 Diogenes Laertius, 77 Dodds, E. R., 3, 95, 129n3 Domitian, 34, 37, 56, 147n4 effeminacy, 14, 28, 61, 99, 160n8, 164n59. See also unmanliness Eleazar, 78, 165n74 Euctemon, 58, 70, 75 Eusebius, 11, 181n94 Eve, 102, 180n90 Felicitas: masculinization of, 113; and motherhood, 35, 41, 110, 112, 113, 119, 178n75; as slave, 112, 114 femininity: and Christian social identity, 14, 15, 93, 121–123, 168n1 fertility. See motherhood Fourth Maccabees, 60, 78, 81, 103, 115, 165n74, 181n92 Frend, W. H. C., 3 Futrell, Alison, 44, 48 Galen, 25–26, 27, 47, 104 Gate of Life, 35, 58, 106, 149n12 gaze, 98–100, 106, 109, 110, 113, 120, 121, 174n32 gender, Greco-Roman construction of, 24–32 Germanicus, 67–68, 70, 71, 72, 73–74, 89, 120, 162n35 Geta, 37 gladiator: Christians depicted as, 7, 33–34, 35, 36, 47, 58, 106, 113, 124–125; emperors training as, 53, 154n91; infamia of, 50, 51, 155n109; and masculinity, 7, 33–34,

INDEX

52, 54–55; as moral exemplar, 48, 51, 52, 54–55; as political threat, 49, 50–51; and sacramentum gladiatorium, 54, 55, 68; as sex-symbol, 49–50; and social status, 47, 48, 52; women as, 34, 147n4. See also auctorati; retiarius gladiatorial contests: and construction of Roman identity, 41–45; legal function of, 45–46, 47; moral value of, 51, 54; origins of, 36; political value of, 36–37; power of spectators at, 37–41 gladius, 49, 55, 148n10 Glancy, Jennifer, 98 Gleason, Maud, 106, 175n45, 175n47 Gunderson, Erik, 40, 46, 147n4, 148n7, 150n32 Hadrian, 36, 37 Halporn, James W., 95, 173n22 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook, 110, 179n79 Hawley, Richard, 99, 102 heat: as sign of maleness, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 102, 104, 143n40, 175n46, 176n54 Hogg, Michael A., 20, 21 Hopkins, Keith, 38, 42, 52, 53–54 identity construction: and categorization, 2, 18–21, 168n1; and comparison, 14, 18–19, 21; and competition, 21, 22; and identification, 19–21; and self-esteem, 19, 21–23 Ignatius of Antioch, 3, 129n13 Jesus, 83, 114, 162n37; as criminal, 69–70; imitation of, 68, 93; as king, 127; and persuasion, 75–76; presence with martyrs, 58, 65, 66; as victor, 15, 78 Jews: inferior masculinity of, 14, 60–61, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, 125;

205

and lack of self-control, 14, 82–83, 84; as out-group, 6, 14, 80, 81, 88, 125–126; as unjust, 71 Johnston, Sarah, 73, 162n52 Josephus, 39, 148n6, 151n45 justice: and Christian identity, 20, 70–72, 74; as indicator of masculinity, 21, 29, 30, 61, 70, 76; as Roman virtue, 21, 30, 61–62, 76 Juvenal, 31, 49, 87, 90 Kuefler, Mathew, 14, 132n22 Kyle, Donald, 124–125 lanista, 35, 47, 49, 106, 149n19 Laqueur, Thomas, 24, 25, 26, 30, 142n29, 144n53 Lefkowitz, Mary, 95, 136n48 Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, 35, 55, 65, 71, 78–79; and apostasy, 66, 89–90; and 4 Maccabees, 115, 181n92; role of crowd in, 40, 84–85. See also Blandina; Maturus; Ponticus; Pothinus; Sanctus Lieu, Judith, 10–11, 83–84, 166n86 Livy, 36, 42, 44 Loraux, Nicole, 99, 178n70 Lucan, 67 ludi, 36, 149n17 Marcus Aurelius, 16–17, 21, 24, 36, 50, 62 Markus, Robert, 12–13, 16 marriage, 31, 97, 108, 109, 121 Martial, 49, 51, 147n4 Martin, Dale, 25, 26, 143n33 Martyrdom of Apollonius, 71, 74, 75, 127. See also Apollonius Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike, 72, 86, 116–121; role of crowd in, 118–119. See also Agathonike; Carpus; Papylus Martyrdom of Justin, 58, 127, 182n107

206

INDEX

Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, 35, 37, 94–113, 127; as autobiography, 4, 94–96, 108, 170n11, 171n13, 173n22; role of crowd in, 41, 85–86; and Tertullian, 171n14, 173n24. See also Felicitas; Perpetua Martyrdom of Pionius, 58, 86, 93, 120, 127; and apostasy, 88; and Jews, 71–72, 88 Martyrdom of Polycarp, 10, 35–36, 70, 80, 91, 122, 127; apostasy in, 89; Jews in, 81, 83–84, 166n86; pagan officials in, 65, 81–82, 83; and persuasion, 73, 74; role of crowd in, 40, 82–83; and self-control, 65; and volition, 68–69. See also Polycarp; Quintus Martyrdom of Saints Marian and James, 58, 93, 159n164, 181n92 Martyrdom of Saints Ptolemaeus and Lucius, 71, 164n67 martyrdom, Christian desire for, 3–4, 17, 23 martyrologies: historicity of, 4–5, 8, 90–91, 93, 170n8; as identityforming texts, 5–6, 15, 16, 19–24; as moral guides, 15, 93, 121–122; psychological interpretation of, 4, 94, 105; social function of, 4–5, 15–16, 93, 122–123 masculinity: and Christian social identity, 6–7, 15, 23–24, 62, 80, 87, 88–91, 121–123, 126; as constructed by comparison, 25, 29, 65, 78–79, 80–90, 100, 101; of elderly, 7, 61, 76–80, 101–102; and power, 24, 30, 33; of slaves, 7, 32, 61; and virtue, 5, 15, 21, 29, 30, 61–62, 146n63, 160n8; of women, 7, 61; of youth, 7, 32, 61, 77–79 mastery of the passions: and Christianity, 64–66; as indicator of mas-

culinity, 62–64; lack of as indicator of femininity, 62–63 Maturus, 35, 40, 55, 113, 115 Miles, Margaret, 109, 134n31 modesty: and female martyrs, 7, 14, 93, 111, 121, 126; as women’s virtue, 14, 31, 93 Moore, Stephen D., 60, 78, 103, 134n33, 169n2 motherhood: Christian rejection of, 102–105, 108–109, 112–113, 115, 119, 122; as marker of femininity, 31, 103, 144n48; as worldly attachment, 103, 115, 119, 120, 122 Mulvey, Laura, 110–111 munera. See gladiatorial contests Musonius Rufus, 102, 161n15 Musurillo, Herbert, 4, 90–91, 119, 130n14, 130n15, 170n8, 173n24 Nemesis, 58, 69, 75, 152n64 Nero, 39, 44, 45, 52, 53 noxii. See criminals, Christians as one-sex model, 25–26, 29, 143n41 pagans: depicted as unjust, 14, 70–72; inferior masculinity of, 6, 14, 65, 67, 72, 81, 82–83, 85–86, 87; as outgroup, 6, 80, 81, 86, 125–126 pain: and Christian identity, 9–10; Christian insensitivity to, 65, 66, 161n20 Pamfilus. See Papylus pankration, 56, 106, 177n64 Papylus, 20, 116–120; and children, 117–118 pater familias, 97, 98, 104, 176n52 Perkins, Judith, 9–10, 11–12, 135n44, 138n62, 176n53 Perpetua, 10, 19, 35, 120; as author, 94–96, 131n18, 172n15; feminization of, 14, 41, 96, 107–111, 176n53,

INDEX

178n70; masculinization of, 12, 24, 68, 94, 96–107, 176n53, 178n70; as mother, 102–105, 108–109 persecution, 15, 20, 93, 125, 128; martyrologies as records of, 4; martyrologies as responses to, 4, 16, 66, 93, 111, 122 personal identity, 16, 18, 19, 20, 23 persuasion, 17, 40, 72–76, 162n52; and Christian conversion, 7, 73, 75–76; Christian resistance to, 7, 62, 72, 73–76, 81, 97, 120; and masculinity, 73, 74; and women, 73, 163n53, 163n55 Petronius, 48 Philo, 26–27, 76, 144n48 Phrygia, 11, 74, 164n59 physiognomy, 27, 28–29, 106 Pionius: and persuasion, 74–75, 76; and volition, 69–70, 76. See also Martyrdom of Pionius Plato, 61, 162n52, 163n56 Plautus, 49 Pliny the Elder, 26, 107, 146n68 Pliny the Younger, 48, 51 Plutarch, 30, 56, 61, 63–64, 70, 75, 77, 160n11 Polemo, 28–29, 106–107 Polycarp: and age, 61, 79–80; and justice, 70–71; and volition, 68–69. See also Martyrdom of Polycarp Pompeii, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 50, 153n70, 155n106, 157n140 Pompey, 39 Pomponius, 35, 66, 106 Ponticus, 79, 85, 115 Pothinus, 40, 78, 79, 85, 115 Potter, David, 38

207

124; and masculinity, 21, 27, 30, 63, 73, 75, 79; as Roman virtue, 21, 30 retiarius, 35, 50, 113 Riley, Gregory, 12–13 Rossi, Mary Ann, 105

Quintus, 11, 74, 89, 90, 124, 164n59, 168n109

Sabina, 69, 75 Saller, Richard, 32 Sanctus, 35, 40, 65, 66, 85, 113, 115 self-control: and Christianity, 65–66, 96, 116–117, 122; as indicator of masculinity, 21, 28, 30, 57, 61, 62; as Roman virtue, 21, 61, 62. See also mastery of the passions self-esteem. See identity construction Seneca, 54, 56; and anger, 64; and athletics, 56; and gladiators, 49, 51, 54, 55; and grief, 62, 63; and volition, 67; and women, 30–31, 62, 63 sex, Greco-Roman construction of, 24–32 Shaw, Brent, 95, 131n18, 134n33 Skinner, M. B., 77 Smith, Jonathan Z., 80, 81, 90 social identity theory, 6, 18–24, 87, 168n1 soldiers: Christians depicted as, 6–7, 56, 57, 121; and gladiatorial games, 42–43, 53 Speratus, 128 stadium, 36, 56, 57, 149n13, 151n53 Ste. Croix, G. E. M. de, 3, 130n17 Stoicism, 10, 60, 74, 134n33, 139n68, 161n15 strength: and Christianity, 55, 58, 65, 66, 69, 78, 106, 114; as indicator of masculinity, 13, 28, 29, 57 Suetonius, 34, 38, 39, 53, 158n148 suffering: Christian valorization of, 9–10, 134n33 suicide, 17, 67, 139n68, 161n27

rationality: and Christianity, 74, 78,

Tacitus, 34, 56, 156n122, 158n148

208

INDEX

Tajfel, Henri, 18, 19 Terence, 54 Tertullian, 22, 129n3, 136n56, 149n16, 171n14, 173n24 theater, 13, 41, 44, 98–99 Thecla, 12 Tiberius: and spectacles, 39, 52, 151n34 Trajan, 37, 51 Turner, John, 18 unmanliness, 7, 14, 22, 87, 89, 90, 126. See also apostate Christians; Biblis; Quintus

Vitruvius, 41, 43 volition: and Christian martyrs, 23, 54, 62, 67–70, 107, 116–117, 121; as indicator of masculinity, 66–67 Von Franz, Marie-Louise, 105 Walters, Jonathan, 87, 88 Welch, Katherine, 42–44, 149n33, 149n17, 152n56, 152n57, 152n59, 153n73 Wiedemann, Thomas, 38, 39–40, 41–42, 44, 45, 47, 49, 51, 148n5, 149n19