Worshippers of the Gods: Debating Paganism in the Fourth-Century Roman West 0190082445, 9780190082444

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WORSHIPPERS OF THE GODS

OXFORD STUDIES IN LATE ANTIQUITY Series Editor Ralph Mathisen Late Antiquity has unified what in the past were disparate disciplinary, chronological, and geographical areas of study. Welcoming a wide array of methodological approaches, this book series provides a venue for the finest new scholarship on the period, ranging from the later Roman Empire to the Byzantine, Sasanid, early Islamic, and early Carolingian worlds. The Arabic Hermes From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science Kevin van Bladel Two Romes Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity Edited by Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly Disciplining Christians Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters Jennifer V. Ebbeler History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East Edited by Philip Wood Explaining the Cosmos Creation and Cultural Interaction in Late-​Antique Gaza Michael W. Champion Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity Porphyry of Tyre and the Pagan-​Christian Debate in Late Antiquity Michael Bland Simmons The Poetics of Late Antique Literature Edited by Jas Elsner and Jesus Hernandez-​Lobato Rome’s Holy Mountain The Capitoline Hill in Late Antiquity Jason Moralee The Koran and Late Antiquity A Shared Heritage Angelika Neuwirth, translated by Samual Wilder Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350–​450 Maijastina Kahlos Worshippers of the Gods Debating Paganism in the Fourth-​Century Roman West Mattias P. Gassman

Worshippers of the Gods Debating Paganism in the Fourth-​Century Roman West

Mattias P. Gassman

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gassman, Mattias Philip, author. Title: Worshippers of the gods : debating paganism in the fourth-century Roman West / Mattias Philip Gassman. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. | Series: Oxford studies in late antiquity | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019051775 (print) | LCCN 2019051776 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190082444 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190082468 (epub) | ISBN 9780190082475 Subjects: LCSH: Rome—Religion. | Christianity and other religions—Rome. | Paganism—Rome. | Christianity and other religions—Paganism— History—Early church, ca. 30-600. | Paganism—Relations—Christianity. | Apologetics—History—Early church, ca. 30-600. | Church history—Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. | Rome—History—Empire, 284-476. | Identification (Religion) Classification: LCC BL805 .G37 2020 (print) | LCC BL805 (ebook) | DDC 292.07/09015—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051775 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051776 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgements  vii List of Abbreviations  ix Introduction  1 1. ‘Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence’: Lactantius, Cicero, and the Critique of Roman Religion in the Divine Institutes  19 2. On the Error of Profane Religions: Emperors and Traditional Religion after Constantine  48 3. ‘The Manifold Divinity of the Gods’: ‘Paganism’ in Fourth-​Century Rome  76 4. Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors: Rethinking the Altar of Victory Affair  107 5. Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus: Senators and Traditional Religion in 380s Rome  140 Conclusion  168 Bibliography  179 Index  229

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Acknowledgements

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study of Roman religion in late antiquity, this book began as a University of Cambridge doctoral thesis, funded by the Cambridge Trust and supervised by Christopher Kelly, who has given his unfailing support, encouragement, and advice from the project’s inception. He has my heartfelt thanks. I  must likewise express my thanks to Neil McLynn and Oliver Nicholson, to whose mentorship and published work I owe a great deal. There are many other colleagues and friends whom I  would also like to thank. Mark Edwards supervised the essay on Firmicus Maternus in which the book’s core ideas first arose. Rosamond McKitterick’s advice shaped the thesis at a vital juncture, while Doug Lee and Gillian Clark were sympathetic and insightful examiners. Spencer Cole, Claire Hall, George Woudhuysen, and Muriel Moser offered comments on the introduction, individual chapters, or my earlier drafts on Firmicus Maternus. I owe thanks to the anonymous readers for Oxford University Press for their many incisive comments, as well as to Robin Osborne for his reflections on an earlier draft. Jason Gehrke and Alexander Evers allowed me to cite forthcoming articles. Brendan Wolfe, who read the entire dissertation, Judith Wolfe, Graham Andrews, Aaron and Anna Beek, Robin Whelan, James Prothro, Philip Booth, Patrick Cook, Duncan and Alison Hardy, and Andy Niggemann have been frequent and valued conversation partners. Audiences at Cambridge, Frankfurt, Oxford, London, Birmingham, Newcastle, and San Francisco have heard and offered comments on aspects of the ideas presented in this book; for arranging seminar and conference papers and for discussion of my ideas, I thank Neil McLynn, Bryan Ward-​Perkins, Hartmut Leppin, and Michele Salzman. The Cambridge Faculty of Classics and Queens’ College funded travel for presentation. Special thanks are due also to Ralph Mathisen for accepting the book for Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity and to Stefan Vranka and the editorial staff at OUP for seeing it through to publication.

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viii Acknowledgements The opening paragraph of the introduction and some other text in the introduction and conclusion are drawn from an article on Augustine and Christian–​ pagan dialogue that I published in Journal of Late Antiquity in 2018 (‘Debating Traditional Religion in Late Fourth-​Century Roman Africa’, JLA 11[1]‌: 83–​110). Andrew Cain and Noel Lenski have my thanks for their editorial work on this article. I  also thank the Berlin-​Brandenburger Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, and the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli for allowing me to reproduce visual material (the figures in ­chapters  3 and 5)  from their archives and Diana Stow for permission to cite her unpublished Oxford B.Litt. thesis, ‘Julius Firmicus Maternus Mathesis and De Errore Profanarum Religionum: An Introductory Survey’ (1978). Other particular debts are noted in the footnotes. Lastly, I thank my wife, who has read every part of this book (and heard a great deal more about it), my children, and my parents. To them I dedicate this book.

Abbreviations

C

itation of primary texts is regularly by author’s name and abbreviated title; this list emends and supplements the abbreviations in Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. (Oxford, 2005). Some chapters deviate from this system in order to make more efficient reference to works cited with particular frequency; in such cases, the changes are signalled in the first footnote of the chapter. AC Acta Cypriani. Acad. Cicero, Academici libri. Ad coetum Constantine, Oratio ad sanctorum coetum. Adv. nat. Arnobius, Aduersus nationes. Ant. Varro, Antiquitates rerum diuinarum. AP Lactantius, De aue phoenice. Beat. Augustine, De beata uita. Bell. Lucan, De bello ciuili. CAS Carmen ad quendam senatorem (= [Cyprian], Carm. 4). CCCA Corpus Cultus Cybelae Attidisque (CCCA). Edited by Maarten J. Vermaseren. 7 vols. Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’Empire romain 50. Leiden: Brill, 1977–​89. CCP Carmen contra paganos. CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina. CIMRM Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae. Edited by Maarten J. Vermaseren. 2 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956–​60. Civ. dei Augustine, De civitate dei. C.J. Codex Justinianus. Conf. Augustine, Confessiones. Cor. Tertullian, De corona.

ix

x Abbreviations CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. C.Th. Codex Theodosianus. Dem. Cyprian, Ad Demetrianum. DI Lactantius, Diuinae institutiones. Dial. Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone. Div. Cicero, De diuinatione. Div. daem. Augustine, De diuinatione daemonum. Div. haer. Filastrius, Diuersarum hereseon liber. Don. Cyprian, Ad Donatum. Epit. Lactantius, Epitome diuinarum institutionum. Err. Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum. Expositio Expositio totius mundi et gentium. Faust. Augustine, Contra Faustum. Fort. Cyprian, Ad Fortunatum. Frag. Vat. Iuris romani anteiustiniani fragmenta Vaticana. Gal. Jerome, Commentarium in Epistulam ad Galatas; Marius Victorinus, In Epistolam Pauli ad Galatas. Hist. Orosius, Historiae aduersum paganos. Homoous. Marius Victorinus, De homoousio recipiendo. Idol. Tertullian, De idololatria. ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Edited by Hermann Dessau. 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1892–​1916. Imag. Porphyry, Περὶ ἀγαλμάτων. In Arist. Int. Boethius, Commentarii in Librum Aristotelis ΠΕΡΙ ΕΡΜΗΝΕΙΑΣ. Vol. 2, Secundam Editionem et Indices Continens. Edited by Carl Meiser. Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana. Leipzig: Teubner, 1880. Ira Lactantius, De ira dei. IRT2009 Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania. Edited by J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward-​Perkins. Enhanced electronic reissue by Gabriel Bodard and Charlotte Roueché. Rome: British School at Rome, 2009. http://​inslib.kcl.ac.uk/​irt2009. Iud. Tertullian, Aduersus Iudaeos. Lampe A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Edited by G. W. H. Lampe. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. Laps. Cyprian, De lapsis. LLT Library of Latin Texts, Series A and B. Published by the Centre ‘Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium’ and Brepols. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. http://​clt.brepolis.net/​lltb/​pages/​ Search.aspx. Mart. Pal. Eusebius, De martyribus Palaestinae (short recension).

Abbreviations  xi Mort. Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum. Myst. Iamblichus, De mysteriis. Nat. Tertullian, Ad nationes. ND Cicero, De natura deorum. OED Oxford English Dictionary Online. 2019. Oxford: Oxford University Press. www.oed.com. Opif. Lactantius, De opificio dei. OV Ambrose, De obitu Valentiniani. Quaestiones Ambrosiaster, Quaestiones Veteris et Noui Testamenti. Quir. Cyprian, Ad Quirinum. Praesc. Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum. PV Poema ultimum (= [Paulinus of Nola], Carm. 32). Reg. Carth. Registri Ecclesiae Carthaginiensis excerpta. PLRE A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971–​92. Reb. ant. Maffeo Vegio, De Rebus Antiquis Memorabilibus Basilicae S. Petri Romae. Reprinted in Acta Sanctorum, Junii Tomus Septimus, edited by Godefridus Henschenius, Daniel Papebrochius, Franciscus Baertius, Conradus Ianningus, and Joannes Bapt. Sollerio; new edition edited by Joannes Carnandet, 56*–​76*. Paris: Victor Palme, 1867 [1455–​7]. Rel. Symmachus, Relationes. Spect. Novatian, De spectaculis; Tertullian, De spectaculis. VA Paulinus of Milan, Vita sancti Ambrosii. VC Eusebius, Vita Constantini. Verr. Cicero, In Verrem. Vir. ill. Jerome, De uiris illustribus. VS Eunapius, Vitae sophistarum.

Introduction

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round 390, an elderly pagan named Maximus, a grammar teacher from Madauros in Numidia, wrote to an acquaintance who had once studied in the city and had recently resumed contact after many years spent pursuing a career in Carthage and Italy.1 The younger man’s letter is not preserved, but it was clearly not a conventional salutation from one cultured man to another; conversion to a life of serious religion, not respectable retirement, had brought Aurelius Augustinus back to his native small-​town Africa.2 Augustine’s words provoked Maximus to defend the civic cults of his colonia, whose gods he identifies with those of Rome and its epic tradition. ‘Health-​bringing divinities’, he asserts, are present in the city’s forum, giving their worshippers a public, respectable access to the remote high God that contrasts starkly with the secrecy of Christian cult.3 The old grammaticus weaves Classical allusions together with aspersions on the ‘odious names’ of local, Punic martyrs, whom he contrasts with ‘Jupiter who hurls the thunderbolts’ and the other Roman gods.4 He concludes with a final, ironic wish that ‘the gods preserve’ his interlocutor but only after he announces his own departure ‘from the contest’ and his intention to make his letter public. Augustine’s copy will doubtless ‘perish, stolen by someone’s stealth, in the flames or by some other method’, but Maximus ‘will retain a copy forever for all the religious’, those who had not, like Augustine, ‘deviated from my sect’.5 Maximus’ open letter and Augustine’s sharp-​tongued reply, which invokes Cicero, Ennius, Vergil, and awkward details of Madaurian rites against civic religion, both grapple with a basic problem of life in a fourth-​century Roman city:  the displacement of traditional cults from their once-​unquestioned social, political, and cultural dominance by increasingly influential Christian

1. Augustine, Ep. 16–​17, with Conf. 2.3.5 on Augustine’s studies at Madauros (possibly, though not necessarily, with Maximus himself; Mastandrea 1985: 13); Vössing 1992: 900, explicates Augustine’s complicated educational career. The exchange must postdate Augustine’s return to Africa in 388 but cannot (pace Mastandrea 1985: 13–​14) be securely placed before the ban on sacrifices in C.Th. 16.10.10 (24 February 391), which was directed at Rome, not Africa (see McLynn 1994: 331–​2). 2.  Augustine’s early works figure his conversion as a commitment to Christian philosophia (cf. especially Beat. 1.1–​5); see further Brown 2000: 125–​50. 3.  Ep. 16.1, 3. 4.  Ep. 16.2. 5.  Ep. 16.4, ‘post haec non dubito, uir eximie qui a mea secta deuiasti, hanc epistulam aliquorum furto detractam flammis uel quolibet pacto perituram. quod si acciderit, erit damnum chartulae, non nostri sermonis, cuius exemplar penes omnes religiosos perpetuo retinebo.’

Worshippers of the Gods. Mattias P. Gassman, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190082444.001.0001

2  Worshippers of the Gods alternatives.6 In order to define and debate the place of traditional religion, and thus also of Christianity, within contemporary society, the letters draw on the same cultural resources: Classical literature (especially poetry), philosophy, and the actual practice of local religion. This choice of resources is profoundly rooted in Classical religious theory. Maximus’ arguments and Augustine’s response implicitly adopt the three modes of discourse on the gods, the mythical, physical (that is, philosophical), and civic, that were identified by the Republican polymath M. Terentius Varro.7 The shared inheritance of the Classical tradition and the shared experience of civic life provided Maximus and Augustine with intellectual tools for engaging in religious disputation. As Maximus’ allusion to his ‘religious’ readers implies, they also shaped the attitudes of a broader audience of educated men such as Maximus’ own students, the cultured upper class of the African cities and of the wider Latin-​speaking world.8 Maximus, a grammaticus in a town where a teacher could hold high office and be lauded on an epitaph for his patriotism, was speaking not just for himself but for a cultural tradition.9 The pointed exchange between Augustine and Maximus provides a brief glimpse of the ways in which Christians and adherents of Roman religion negotiated the religious changes that had been unfolding since Constantine’s rise to power, the messy processes of conversion, accommodation, and appropriation that collectively constitute the ‘Christianisation’ of the Roman Empire.10 These negotiations are reflected in a broad array of texts from the fourth and fifth centuries. Most, at least in the Latin West, were written by Christians, who reinterpreted traditional gods and cults in works that range from brief sermons and poetical invectives to the two comprehensive Latin expositions of Christianity written in antiquity:  Lactantius’ Divine Institutes and Augustine’s own City of God.11 No work by a Latin pagan author embodies so expansive a theological 6.  On the exchange, see further Gassman 2018. 7.  Cf. Clark 2010: 189–​90. Varro, Ant. fr. 7 Cardauns (Augustine, Civ. dei. 6.5), ‘tria genera theologiae . . . esse, id est rationis, quae de diis explicatur, eorumque unum mythicon appellari, alterum physicon, tertium ciuile . . . mythicon appellant, quo maxime utuntur poetae; physicon, quo philosophi, ciuile, quo populi’. Variants of the tripartite division of theology are widespread in antiquity (Lieberg 1982). For two perspectives on Varro’s intellectual project in Ant., see Van Nuffelen 2010 and North 2014. 8.  On African elite paganism and civic culture, see Lepelley 1979–​81, 1: 357–​62 and Shaw 2011: 195–​206. 9.  Cf. Shaw 2011: 237. The epitaph is ILAlg I 2209, dedicated by one Maxima for her father, Marius, whom Stéphane Gsell suggested identifying (plausibly but unprovably) with Augustine’s Maximus. The socio-​economic mobility of grammatici at Madauros was perhaps better than the average (for which, see Kaster 1988: 99–​134). 10.  I can single out only a few studies from a vast literature: Brown 1961, 1995, 1998 and Markus 1988, 1990 have been especially influential on modern views of ‘Christianisation’; see also Av. Cameron 1991, 2014 (two contrasting approaches to Christian rhetoric), Stroumsa 1999, 2009a (on mutations of religious thought in the late Roman world), Cameron 2011 (on Roman senators, paganism, and Classical literature), and Salzman 1990, 2002 (on religion in fourth-​century Rome). For a range of perspectives, see the collections edited by Inglebert, Destephen, and Dumézil 2010 and Salzman, Sághy, and Lizzi Testa 2016. Especially stimulating brief contributions focused on ‘paganism’ and Christian attitudes towards it include McLynn 2009, Lim 2009, and Leppin 2004. Trombley 1993–​4 has attempted a comprehensive survey of the fate of traditional religion in the East; the result is not always accurate in detail (Frankfurter 1995), and no equivalent study exists for the West. 11.  For overviews of Christian apologetic writing, see Kahlos 2007 and Opelt 1980, who distil key polemical themes from the corpus.

Introduction  3 vision, but an eclectic array of texts, including Tetrarchic legislation, inscriptions erected by Roman senators, and a few of the epistles and communiqués of the senator Q. Aurelius Symmachus, shows the outlines of approaches that aimed to secure traditional religion’s place in Roman society. As the Maximus–​Augustine exchange illustrates, these writings reveal not only the tensions that religious change could provoke between Christians and worshippers of the gods but also the power of shared literary and civic culture to provide a clearer view of what Robert Markus called the ‘indeterminate and polymorphic reality’ of traditional religion.12 These intertwined themes—​tension and shared culture—​have played a key role in modern historiography on late antique religious change. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the great Belgian scholar of religion, Franz Cumont, had presented the religious history of the later Roman Empire as a story of evolution, in which the traditional public cults were replaced by more sophisticated ‘oriental’ religions, whose organised clergy and spiritual piety made ready the way of their eventual conqueror, the Christian Church.13 In this process, Classical culture and traditional city life played a relatively small part. For Cumont, the many Christian polemics that focused on civic cult and its literary manifestations were anachronisms, the products of a school mentality that failed to realise that the religious times had changed.14 The real rapprochement between pagans and Christians was reached through deeper spiritual means. As Cumont said in the concluding sentence of Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, ‘The religious and mystical spirit of the Orient had prepared all peoples to unite in the bosom of a universal Church.’15 In the decades that followed the publication of Cumont’s seminal study, many historians came to prefer a model of conflict, which pitted a coherent party of pagans, including ardent devotees of Cumont’s oriental cults and defenders of public religion, against increasingly articulate and militant Christians. Inspired, so Herbert Bloch and others argued, by their pagan devotion and the example of Julian’s attempted religious revival, senators such as Vettius Agorius Praetextatus and Nicomachus Flavianus mounted a final political and cultural resistance against Christian encroachment, which was defeated only through the emperor Theodosius’ victory over the usurper Eugenius at the River Frigidus in 394.16 In this pagan ‘last stand’, Classical literature served as an intellectual and spiritual 12.  Markus 1995: 80; cf. Bowersock 1990: 82 on ‘the powerful lens of Hellenism’. 13.  Cumont 1929 (based on lectures delivered in 1905). 14.  Cumont 1929: 186–​7; cf. Turcan 1997: 35–​6 for a more recent echo. 15.  Cumont 1929: 194, ‘L’esprit religieux et mystique de l’Orient . . . avait préparé tous les peuples à réunir dans le sein d’une Église universelle’; for further discussion of Cumont’s views on the Christianisation of the empire, see Praet 2014. 16.  Comprehensive bibliography in Cameron 2011; see Robinson 1915, Geffcken 1978: 159–​90 (a translation of the German second edition of 1929), Alföldi 1937: 30–​58, Alföldi and Alföldi 1976–​90, 2: 25–​63 (a reprint of material first published in 1943), Bloch 1945, 1963.

4  Worshippers of the Gods rallying point for the pagan elite, who directed an almost religious devotion to Vergil, Livy, and other Classical authors, just as Christians such as Jerome and Augustine were becoming increasingly critical of the ancient culture in which they were equally steeped.17 This, in broad lines, is the arc of historiography on the religious history of the fourth-​century Roman Empire from around 1900 to the 1960s. Fifty years on, late Roman culture looks very different from the way it did to Cumont or Bloch. Contemporary scholarship on Roman religion has reasserted the social and political importance of civic cult and largely rejected the division between ‘orientalist’ and ‘traditionalist’ pagans that was grounded in the work of Cumont and others and played a key role in the resistance narrative.18 At the same time, scholars of late antique society, led by Peter Brown, Alan Cameron, and Robert Markus, have reinterpreted ‘Christianisation’ as a process of accommodation, in which religious differences could sometimes generate tension and violence but were more often overshadowed by shared values, education, and traditions.19 Cumont’s evolutionary account and the ‘resistance’ narrative both placed religion at the centre of late-​imperial society. Modern scholarship, by contrast, has cast fourth-​century Rome as a world dominated by essentially secular politics and culture, in which most people lived by old patterns of thought and daily routine that were little influenced by the rigorists’ doctrinal strictures.20 Although some scholars have emphasised the acuity of Christian critiques of traditional religion,21 an important strand of contemporary scholarship has reinterpreted the division of the Roman population into ‘pagans’ and ‘Christians’ as a construct of Christian clergymen and lay intellectuals, who wanted to refute an immense diversity of local cults that had in reality very little to do with one another. In the trenchantly polemical formulation of Garth Fowden, ‘ “Paganism” was just a collection of ethnic polytheisms, whatever was not Judaism or Christianity, but

17.  Markus 1974 is a lucid statement. 18.  Scheid 2016 vigorously asserts the centrality of civic cult in Roman religion (qualified, for example, by Bendlin 2000, 2001); good modern overviews include Lane Fox 1986: 27–​261, Beard, North, and Price 1998, Rives 2007. For a range of perspectives on ‘oriental’ religions, see Versluys 2013, Stroumsa 2009b, and Burkert 2009; Matthews 1973 refutes the traditionalist–​orientalist dichotomy. 19.  Historiographical overviews in Salzman 2008 and Brown 2011. Key studies include Brown 1961, Markus 1990, and Cameron 2011, whose views are summarised in his conclusion (783–​801). Shaw 2011: 195–​259 offers an important counterpoint in his study of pagan–​Christian violence in fifth-​century North Africa. Continental scholarship has been less willing to abandon the idea of senatorial resistance; see Ratti 2012 for a forceful restatement. 20.  ‘Secularity’: overviews in Lim 2009 and Rebillard and Sotinel 2010, building on a tradition of scholarship developed by Markus 1988, 1990: 1–​17, 1997, 2006, 2009, 2010, and Brown 1961, 1998, 2004, 2011, 2012: 101–​3, 201–​7; and elaborated by, e.g., Puk 2014:  55–​62, Lim 2012, Lepelley 2002, 2010, 2011, Belayche 2007, Salzman 2007: 109–​10, Sandwell 2007: 8–​9, Leppin 2004: 65. Sotinel 2010: 322, 348, Soler 2010, and Rebillard 2012: 95–​6 offer important conceptual and methodological qualifications. 21.  North 2007, on Arnobius’ criticism of sacrifices, is an outstanding example.

Introduction  5 given a name by the lazy cunning of Christian apologists, who could then use their most salacious material to discredit all their opponents at one go.’22 Modern views of ‘paganism’ have not coalesced into a single communis opinio. Thus, Alan Cameron, for example, has defended against Fowden and others the utility of ‘pagan’ as a designation for adherents of traditional cults,23 while Continental scholars continue to develop pictures of Roman religion that are indebted to Cumont.24 There have, likewise, been repeated attempts to produce subtler religious typologies that do not fully abandon the Christian–​pagan dichotomy yet still reflect the ambiguities of, and variations of intensity in, religious devotion that are visible in the ancient evidence.25 Nevertheless, Fowden expresses a widely held concern about the Christian polemical texts that provide much of our information on late antique polytheists and their religions. In the eyes of many historians of the later Empire, Christian writings on traditional religion aimed less to make a substantive response to others’ beliefs and practices than to cement a notional boundary between ‘pagans’ and ‘Christians’ who could look altogether too much alike.26 As Averil Cameron has put it, ‘Apologetic writings . . . served to sharpen and perpetuate, and indeed to create, a view of a religious world divided into “us” and “them”, into correct belief and false belief.’27 They were primarily about Christian identity, not about paganism, a concept that did not correspond to the pagans’ own conceptions of their manifold religiosities.28 To quote Alan Cameron:  ‘fourth-​century pagans naturally never referred to themselves as pagans, less because the term was insulting than because the category had no meaning for them.’29 Paganism was ‘an artificial category’; as Neil McLynn has stressed, it, like modern alternatives such as Fowden’s preferred ‘polytheism’, imposed ‘a boundary that bore little relation to the complex interactions between the “faithful” and their multifariously unchristian neighbors’.30

22.  Fowden 1988: 176. For a range of perspectives that emphasise the Christian ‘invention’ of paganism (not necessarily, however, as a mere fiction or a conscious polemical ploy), see Jürgasch 2016: 132–​3, Kahlos 2011: 166–​7, 2007: 26, McLynn 2009: 573, Leppin 2004: 62–​3, Hedrick 2000: 51–​4, Rothaus 1996, and Chadwick 1985: 9–​10. 23.  Cameron 2011: 14–​32. 24.  Especially Turcan 1996 and Alvar 2008. 25. Intermediate religious groups have been proposed by, e.g., Guignebert 1923, Bonner 1984 (‘semi-​ Christians’), Kahlos 2007: 11–​54 (incerti), and Cameron 2011: 176–​7 (a five-​fold division shading from ‘committed’ pagans to ‘committed’ Christians). 26.  See Trout 2016: 224–​8 for an especially sophisticated statement. 27.  Av. Cameron 2002: 223 (emphasis in original). 28.  Cf. Chapot 2009: 459, ‘L’apologétique définit l’identité chrétienne telle qu’elle doit être vue de l’extérieur’, Kahlos 2007: 1–​2, 2011: 166, and Price 1999: 105, with application to specific texts in Trout 2016, Sandwell 2007: 3–​ 33, and Johnson 2006: 1–​24. Cf. also Inglebert 2010: 15, ‘on peut penser qu’il n’existait pas nécessairement de contradiction ressentie entre des aspects “chrétiens” et “païens” chez certains chrétiens . . . mais des discours cléricaux opposes sur une réalité vécue comme chrétienne’. For acute criticism of this approach, see Liebeschuetz 2009. 29. Cameron 2011:  27; cf. Bowersock 1990:  6, who credits Julian’s unified paganism to ‘his Christian upbringing’. 30.  McLynn 2009: 573.

6  Worshippers of the Gods The Interconnectedness of ‘Christian’ and ‘Pagan’ Discourse on Traditional Religion The new awareness of what Peter Brown has termed ‘the deceptive trenchancy’ of fourth-​century narratives of Christianisation is an important step towards recapturing the full complexity of late antique conceptions of traditional religion, which the narratives of evolutionary ‘orientalisation’ and senatorial ‘resistance’ both oversimplified.31 However, recent scholarship that emphasises the ‘secularity’ of Roman culture and the artificiality of late antique Christian religious categories has not yet done full justice to the dynamic interaction between Christian thinkers and the whole ‘multifarious’ diversity of traditional religion. In stressing the distance between Christian conceptions of traditional religion and the contemporary social reality, scholars have risked separating Christian authors too sharply from the wider Roman culture within which (and for which) they wrote. Cast as a tendentious intervention in ancient religious discourse, Christian polemic remains a mirror for the authors’ own concerns:  a tool for identity making, not an engagement with the actual beliefs and practices of contemporary non-​Christians. Close examination of the surviving body of literature on fourth-​century polytheistic religion reveals a more complicated picture. Christian polemicists were not anthropologists avant la lettre. Their aim was to prove and assert the superiority of Christianity, not to observe and describe traditional cults. Nevertheless, they were still participants in Roman culture, aware of what pagans believed and did, and often shaped (as we have seen in the exchange between Augustine and Maximus) by the same cultural norms and traditions as were their pagan targets and interlocutors. Pagan and Christian approaches to traditional religiosity, though not identical, still developed in dialogue with one another. Even the division between ‘pagans’ and ‘Christians’, often taken to be a wilful Christian invention that was unintelligible to actual polytheists, has clear parallels in extant non-​Christian thought. Adherents of traditional religion may not have separated the human race into worshippers of a single God and of many, as Jews and Christians did,32 but polytheist philosophers had long recognised the affinity among traditional cults, positing (as Maximus would to Augustine) a single high divinity beyond, or uniting in one, all lesser gods (an idea that I, choosing only one of the available terminologies, will call henotheism).33 This affinity became a social reality in the decades before Constantine’s rise to power, as the legislation 31.  Brown 1998: 636. 32.  On the Jewish and New Testament background of the notion of ‘gentiles’, see Fredouille 1986: 1116–​19, Kittel 1964: 364–​72, 504–​16. 33.  For philosophical precedents to ‘paganism’, see Van Nuffelen 2011a. Van Nuffelen 2012a: 457–​8 sketches the conflicting significations that have been put on ‘monotheism’, ‘henotheism’, and ‘monolatry’ in recent scholarship; on ‘pagan monotheism’, as they term it, see the collection edited by Athanassiadi and Frede 1999, with the methodological reflections in Van Nuffelen 2012a, Cerutti 2010, and Edwards 2004.

Introduction  7 of Decius, Valerian, and the Tetrarchs produced a de facto distinction between Christians and worshippers of the gods.34 The political differentiation between polytheists and Christians first took shape in late 249, when the emperor Decius issued an edict that ordered the whole population of the empire to offer sacrifices.35 Decius did not mandate the worship of any specific divinities, even those of the people of Rome.36 Instead, he commanded sacrifice simply to ‘the gods’, the collective, undifferentiated objects of the offerings recorded on numerous extant certificates from Egypt.37 The edict had, of course, to be realised within the context of local religious affairs; at Carthage, for example, sacrifices were performed at the city capitolium, as they were at Rome itself, while the Greek city of Smyrna chose its temple of the Nemeseis as the main sacrificial site.38 Nevertheless, the evidence ‘implies very strongly’, as James Rives has observed, ‘that any deity would do, even the god of the Christians, just so long as a sacrifice was performed’.39 In mandating universal sacrifice, Decius’ edict produced a visible division between the empire’s loyal citizens, who paid homage to the gods of their communities and the wider Roman world, and devout Christians, who would not, and openly credited their refusal to their Christianity.40 Though Decius may not have intended to target Christians,41 his law nevertheless (as Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price have put it) ‘defined . . . all the accepted religious practices of the empire as a single category, in opposition to Christianity’.42 Sacrifice was now, in North’s words, ‘in effect an act of pagan profession’.43 Valerian’s anti-​Christian initiatives took a similarly broad approach to polytheistic piety. Thus, the proconsul of Africa ordered Cyprian of Carthage to ‘recognise Roman ceremonies’—​presumably by participating in the rites of his native city, which bore a strong Roman stamp.44 By contrast, Cyprian’s Alexandrian colleague Dionysius was told simply to worship ‘the natural gods  .  .  .  whom all know’, and ‘the gods who preserve the emperors’ rule’.45 Again, Christianity

34.  For the analogy between philosophical conceptions of the unity of traditional cults and Decius’ policies, cf. Van Nuffelen 2011a: 107. Others date the development of an ‘oecumenical paganism’ to the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 (Leppin 2014: 67–​8) or the political rise of Christianity (Hedrick 2000: 51–​4, Jürgasch 2016: 136). 35.  Rives 1999 remains the best study. 36.  Pace Frend 1984: 320. 37.  Millar 1973: 160 and Rives 1999: 152 n. 91. The text of most of the Decian libelli is collected in Knipfing 1923; for extensive discussion of the technicalities of their production and the local administrative realities they reflect, see Schubert 2016, who lists all certificates published to date. 38. Cyprian, Ep. 8.2.3, Laps. 8, 24, with Clarke 1984–​9, 1: 212 n. 20; Passio Pionii  7–​8. 39.  Rives 1999: 152 n. 91. 40.  Cf. Lactantius, DI 5.22.18–​24 on the publicity offered Christians by persecution. 41.  Rives 1999: 141–​2. 42.  Beard, North, and Price 1998: 312. 43.  North 2010: 44. 44. Cyprian: AC 1.1, a difficult passage, on which see Millar 1973: 160–​1, Heberlein 1988, and Freudenberger 1978. On Roman cults at Carthage, cf. Rives 1995: 39–​51. 45. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 7.11.6–​9.

8  Worshippers of the Gods was opposed, in the policies of pagan emperors as in the polemics of Christian intellectuals, to the worship of the manifold gods of the Roman world.46 When, almost fifty years later, the Tetrarchs promulgated their anti-​Christian edicts, they too seem to have conflated dutiful Roman behaviour with worship of ‘the gods’ in general.47 Only from a report of a trial at Thebeste, another African colonia, do we hear specifically of ‘rites of the Roman gods’, and only then after a demand to sacrifice ‘to all our gods for the well-​being of the emperors’.48 By 311, the fiercely pagan Galerius, echoing language first found in Tertullian, could describe the traditional cults of the Roman world as a collective ancestral ‘sect’.49 This way of denoting traditional religion seems to have established itself in pagan discourse; thus, the orator Symmachus, writing to a Christian emperor more than seventy years after Galerius’ death, referred to ancestral cults and Christianity as ‘either sect’, while Maximus of Madauros would use the word to denote the complex of rites, literary culture, and philosophy to which he adhered.50 Fourth-​century pagans did not live in a world sealed off from Christian ideas, and they too could pit the whole array of traditional cults against Christianity, just as Christians could foreground the ethnic and social diversity of ‘gentile’ religion.51 Even before the period that this book studies, therefore, the later Empire had begun to see a shift in the nature and social position of traditional religion, as the mass of traditional cults became differentiated as one religious option among others.52 In the fourth century, it also saw the opening up of a range of new conceptual possibilities for discussing religion, especially in the works of Christian polemicists. One need only compare Cicero’s view of traditional religion to that of his late antique interlocutor, Lactantius, to see these new possibilities emerging. The most influential surviving work of pre-​Christian Roman religious theory, Cicero’s dialogue De natura deorum, links ‘religious duty, piety, sanctity, ceremonies, good faith, oath-​taking; temples, shrines, and solemn sacrifices’, and the auspices to the ‘enquiry on the nature of the gods’.53 The values, practices, 46.  Cf. Rives 1999: 153. 47.  Rives 1999: 153–​4. Cf. the rescript of Maximinus Daia posted at Tyre (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.7.3–​14) or the generic references to ‘the so-​called gods’ and ‘idols’ in Eusebius, Mart. Pal. 1.1, 2.1, 3.1. 48.  Passio Crispinae 1.3–​4; similar phrases recur in the suspect sections 2.1–​4.1, on which see Rosen 1997. Millar 1973: 162 suggests, cautiously, that even dei Romanorum might ‘mean simply the pagan gods’. 49. Lactantius, Mort. 34.1, ‘ut Christiani, qui parentum suorum reliquerant sectam, ad bonas mentes redirent’; Tertullian, Idol. 14.7, ‘o melior fides nationum in suam sectam’. A similar usage may appear in the proconsul’s judgement against Cyprian in AC 3.4, most of whose manuscripts refer either to the ‘sect of the emperors’ most blessed reign’ (sectam [or secta] felicissimorum temporum suorum) or to ‘the sect of their ceremonies’ (sectam cerimoniarum suarum), but insurmountable textual difficulties preclude certainty (see Bastiaensen 1987: 202–​4 and the apparatus criticus on 216 and 224). 50. Symmachus, Rel. 3.3. On secta in Augustine, Ep. 16.4, cf. Mastandrea 1985: 41–​2. 51.  Particularly striking examples in Tertullian, Nat. 1.8, Apol. 24.8, and Augustine, Ep. 17.2. 52.  Cf. North 1992: 188, who describes ‘paganism . . . as a religion invented in the course of the second to third centuries AD, in competition and interaction with Christians, Jews and others’; similarly, in the same volume, Millar 1992: 105. 53.  ND 1.13–​14, ‘itaque mihi libet exclamare ut in Synephebis . . . “inploro fidem” non leuissuma de re . . . sed ut adsint cognoscant animaduertant, quid de religione pietate sanctitate caerimoniis fide iure iurando, quid de

Introduction  9 and buildings connected to the gods belong with one another, with philosophical theology, and with the poetical and cultic imagery briefly discussed in De natura deorum. An influential body of scholarship in religious studies—​exemplified by recent books by Brent Nongbri and by Carlin Barton and Daniel Boyarin—​has judged the terminology of ‘religion’ to be anachronistic for study of many or all ancient societies.54 However, Cicero’s comments reveal a pre-​existing ‘cultural pattern or structure’ (to borrow the words of Kevin Schilbrack) that we may profitably term Roman ‘religion’ and to which Cicero himself can apply religio in the singular.55 As Mary Beard has argued, Cicero and his late-​Republican peers, by writing works such as De natura deorum, made religion ‘an independent subject of Roman discourse’.56 That discourse was, however, precisely a Roman and public one: it neither set Roman ways of worshipping the gods in a thoroughgoing contrast with other forms of worship (though it did recognise that there were differences) nor paid much heed to private devotion.57 Christian authors would do both. For Cicero, religio did not always or consistently designate the complex of Roman practices and ideas pertaining to the gods.58 It was, however, the main term that denoted ‘proper’ worship. As the Stoic Balbus explains, religio is worship of the gods carried out with moderation according to ancestral forms. Its antonym is superstitio, the excessive performance of rites by those who want to ensure ‘that their children are their survivors [superstites]’.59 Balbus associates

templis delubris sacrificiisque sollemnibus, quid de ipsis auspiciis, quibus nos praesumus, existimandum sit (haec enim omnia ad hanc de dis inmortalibus quaestionem referenda sunt)’. Further discussion in c­ hapter 1. 54.  Smith 1963 is the seminal account. Barton and Boyarin 2016 and Nongbri 2013 must be read with the reviews by Bialecki 2014, Hedges 2015, Frankfurter 2015, Petersen 2017, and Schilbrack 2017, and especially the incisive review article by Broucek 2015. Boyarin has highlighted the development of distinct ‘religions’ in late antique discourse (Boyarin 2009:  12–​27; cf. Barton and Boyarin 2016:  200–​14), but Nongbri contends that the category of ‘religion’ only arises in modernity. He thus distinguishes (2013: 157–​9) between ‘descriptive’ and ‘redescriptive’ accounts; the latter may use ‘religion’ as a category of analysis, but the former should focus on (what he claims are) more genuinely ancient categories of thought:  ‘Athenian appeals to ancestral tradition, Roman ethnicity, Mesopotamian scribal praxis, Christian and Muslim heresiological discourses’. As Nongbri himself recognizes (2013: 157), ‘other words such as “culture,” “society,” and “ethnicity” ’ are vulnerable to the same critique as ‘religion’. One suspects, with Broucek 2015: 108–​14, that Nongbri’s distinction between redescriptive and descriptive accounts of antiquity must therefore collapse. 55.  Schilbrack 2010: 1124 (a judicious defence of a moderate, ‘critical realist’ use of the terminology of ‘religion’). ND 3.5, ‘cumque omnis populi Romani religio in sacra et in auspicia diuisa sit, tertium adiunctum sit si quid praedictionis causa ex portentis et monstris Sibyllae interpretes haruspicesue monuerunt’. 56.  Beard 1986: 36, 46. Barton and Boyarin 2016: 51 reach a similar conclusion; it seems to me unlikely, however, that Cicero was faced by a conscious need to ‘choose the word religio for the whole of his disciplinary system’. That he does not apologise for his usage of religio suggests, rather, that it was the obvious overarching term by which a Roman could denote the worship to which he, his people, and their ancestors adhered. 57. The objections of Nongbri 2013:  50–​3 to Beard’s conclusions only underscore this fact; for foreign divinities, cf., e.g., ND 3.39, discussing the gods of Syria, Egypt, and Greece. 58.  Even in ND 3.5, the speaker, Cotta, not only speaks of ‘omnis populi Romani religio’ as an overarching category embracing rites, auspices, and divination but also refers to those divisions of Roman religio as religiones (‘harum ego religionum nullam umquam contemnendam putaui’); cf. Nongbri 2013: 27–​8. 59.  ND 2.71–​2.

10  Worshippers of the Gods this excess with a misunderstanding of the gods’ true, benevolent nature.60 His religio is not, however, one complex of belief and practices among others, nor is superstitio defined by false doctrine; rather, mistaken opinions lead to superstitious behaviors.61 Declension from proper religio is linked to or rooted in intellectual error, but there is no such thing as ‘true’ or ‘false’ religio or even one ‘religion’ among many. This Classical, polytheistic religio thus stands close to the older sense of ‘religion’ as ‘action or conduct indicating belief in, obedience to, and reverence for a god, gods, or similar superhuman power; the performance of religious rites or observances’; it is equally far from the word’s common modern senses: the combination of belief in a god with ‘a code of living’, or, least of all, ‘a particular system of faith and worship’.62 In dialogue with Classical theory and with later writers who denigrate foreign customs (and Christians’ own) as superstitiones,63 Christian apologists used religio in something like the second sense.64 Roman historians have often objected to conceptions of Roman ‘religion’ that import a Christian emphasis on faith, that is, on doctrine and inward devotion towards God.65 Although there are senses in which we can speak of Roman polytheistic ‘belief ’—​for example, that the gods existed, had power, and would look with favour on their worshippers’ prayers and sacrifices—​Christian concepts are indeed of limited utility for describing polytheistic, especially pre-​Christian Roman religion.66 However, the emphasis on piety of intellect and heart is not simply a modern, anachronistic imposition on the study of late Roman religion.67 A key element in the apologists’ critique of traditional civic cults, it is rooted in a polemical Christian reinterpretation of

60.  ND 2.70, ‘uidetisne igitur ut a physicis rebus bene atque utiliter inuentis tracta ratio sit ad commenticios et fictos deos. quae res genuit falsas opiniones erroresque turbulentos et superstitiones paene aniles. et formae enim nobis deorum et aetates et uestitus ornatusque noti sunt, genera praeterea coniugia cognationes, omniaque traducta ad similitudinem inbecillitatis humanae. nam et perturbatis animis inducuntur: accepimus enim deorum cupiditates aegritudines iracundias.’ See also the detailed description of the fears and behavior of the superstitious person in Div. 2.148–​50. 61.  Cf. Grodzynski 1974: 43, ‘L’erreur scientifique, la déviation religieuse naissent de l’ignorance des lois qui régissent ce monde. La connaissance est une libération, même contre la peur de la mort.’ 62.  OED, s.v. ‘religion’, 3a, 5a, 4a, respectively. Many other definitions of ‘religion’ have been advanced by scholars of religion (a useful, if polemical, discussion in Nongbri 2013: 15–​24); these three shed particular light on the shifts in ancient usage of religio and related concepts. 63.  On the development of the concept of superstitio, Grodzynski 1974 remains essential; see also Sachot 1985. 64.  Cf. Smith 1963: 26–​32 and Nongbri 2013: 28–​30. 65.  For two quite different perspectives on the problem of ‘belief ’ in past scholarship on Roman religion, see Scheid 1987 and Bendlin 2000: 120–​2. 66.  On belief and ancient polytheism, see King 2003 (with particular focus on divine response to prayer and the concept of pietas) and Versnel 2011: 539–​59 (on Greek religion). See also Morgan 2015: 123–​75 on the terms fides and pistis in pagan religious contexts. 67.  As Scheid 2016: 3 recognises, when he associates modern ideas of ‘a single true religiosity’ with ‘the “true religion” of the Christian Minucius Felix’. Contrast Cameron 2011: 794, who calls a fourth-​century Christian poet’s portrayal of a repentant Isiac who seeks the goddess’s forgiveness ‘anachronistic, wholly Christian’; the lines (CAS 35–​6) may well represent a Christian rather than genuinely Isiac view of proper piety, but, as the work of a contemporary of the poem’s target, they cannot be called an anachronism.

Introduction  11 civic piety through the work of its own great exponent, Cicero.68 In a discussion I  set in context in ­chapter  1, Lactantius rejects Cicero’s focus on moderation, defining religio as ‘worship of the true’ and superstitio as ‘worship of the false’.69 Religio must, therefore, be united with sapientia, which includes correct belief about the one God and his son, Jesus Christ; true worship (cultus) is both proper conduct of life and God-​pleasing ritual.70 Christian religio is therefore nothing other than, as Tertullian put it, ‘the true worship of the true God’.71 By contrast, the traditional ways of worshipping the many gods—​including, above all, the Graeco-​Roman public cults, which, Lactantius alleges, exclude wisdom and devotion of the heart entirely—​are falsae religiones, or superstitio. The apologists’ redefinition of religio does not establish a concept of multiple ‘religions’; what is at stake are not different systems of worship and belief but right and wrong ‘ways of worshipping’.72 Their usage of religio does, however, contrast Christian worship to the whole complex of ways in which the many gods were worshipped and so paves the way for the later usages (mentioned above) that distinguish among religious groups. Secta in particular approximates, as religio does not, to the modern sense of ‘religion’ as one system of belief or practice among others; thus, Symmachus can speak of ‘all sectae’ and ‘both sectae’ (pagan and Christian), and Augustine of the ‘four sectae: Jews, pagans, Christians, and heretics’.73 Chapter 3 discusses an especially striking permutation of this idea: the anonymous Roman polemicist Ambrosiaster’s use of the word lex—​a common term for the Christian faith, which he extends to describe polytheism as well—​ and of the rare new word paganitas to oppose a singular ‘paganism’ to a singular ‘Christianity’. No consistent technical terminology for ‘religion’ or even (as c­ hapter 3 argues) for ‘paganism’ develops in fourth-​century Latin writing. Nevertheless, late antique writers developed ways of thinking about worship and duty towards God or the gods that (a) opposed Christianity to all traditional cults and vice versa, (b) linked proper worship and piety to correct belief and morality (and condemned traditional cults for not linking them), (c) described the theological underpinnings of traditional cults and ascribed (corrupt) theological and moral teachings to them, 68.  Although the apologists have been criticized for inaugurating the stereotype of Roman religion as empty pseudo-​religiosity (King 1999: 36–​41; cf. North 1992: 188 and Kahlos 2009c: 301–​2), their criticisms do hit upon real differences between traditional, civic and Christian, inwardly focused approaches to piety (cf. Stroumsa 1999: 44–​56 on Origen and Celsus). 69.  DI 4.28.11, ‘nimirum religio ueri cultus est, superstitio falsi’. On Lactantius’ place in the history of the concept of religion, see Smith 1963: 29–​30, Feil 1986: 60–​4, and Aloe Spada 1994. 70.  DI 4.3–​4, 28–​9 (religio and sapientia; worship of the Father and of Christ together); 6.25.7, 12–​14 (praise and prayers; the dominant theme of book 6, De uero cultu, is, however, righteous living). 71.  Apol. 24.2, ‘ueram religionem ueri dei’. 72.  Smith 1963: 29, ‘vestra religio . . . should perhaps best be translated as “your ritual practices”, “your way of worshipping” ’. 73. Symmachus, Rel. 3.3, 19, Ep. 7.51; Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 45.13, ‘inter sectas, inter iudaeos, paganos, christianos, haereticos’.

12  Worshippers of the Gods or even (d) applied singular language to traditional religion and Christianity in parallel. How such new conceptions of religion (as I think we may rightly call it) played out, the individual chapters of this book show, always in the context of each polemicist’s wider arguments, since the terminology for ‘religion’ is constantly changing and, even in Lactantius, only one, subordinate feature of a wider apologetic case.74 The key point, for now, is this:  Christian polemics not only engaged with pagans’ own views of their religion, whether expressed in ritual, contemporary legislation, or venerable literature. Using a mixture of Christian and established, Classical ideas and terminology, the polemicists also developed new ways of describing and defining different kinds of worship. To quote Neil McLynn: ‘for the Christians who first invented them, the pagans [were] good to think with’.75 If modern scholarship has sometimes overlooked the depth of Christian intellectual engagement with pagan religion, studies that underscore the importance of ‘secular’ culture in late antique cities have not always considered the attitudes of the pagans themselves towards their traditional customs. Robert Markus, for example, characterised episcopal complaints about civic celebrations such as the Kalends of January—​‘the feast of the great daemon’ to the polytheist Libanius, who lamented the fire, blood, and aroma no longer offered to the gods—​as attempts to ‘paganise’ what he elsewhere called an ‘essentially secular tradition’ devoid of ‘any religious ideology’.76 Éric Rebillard has challenged Markus’s dichotomy between the religious and the secular, but his preferred model, which makes religious adherence one of many interchangeable identities, also denies the religious freight with which Graeco-​Roman civic life had traditionally been laden.77 Thus, he argues that the participation of Christian laymen and local notables in a feast of a city genius was really just an expression of civic spirit, in which ‘religious affiliation [was] not necessarily relevant’ to any party but an overanxious bishop.78 These readings have rescued an important strand of late antique Christian opinion from burial beneath episcopal opprobrium:  as our 74.  By this point, it should be clear that I do not mean by ‘religion’ anything so narrow as an ‘apolitical [path] to individual salvation’ (Nongbri 2013: 8). When I speak of ‘traditional’, ‘polytheist’, or ‘pagan’ ‘religion’, I am ordinarily referring, quite generically, to traditional ways of worshipping the gods; ‘traditional religion’ is thus basically equivalent to ‘polytheism’ or ‘paganism’ and overlaps with ‘traditional cult’ (which also refers, more concretely, to the particular rites, priesthoods, etc., devoted to a particular divinity or complex of divinities). I use ‘traditional religiosity’ as a near synonym for ‘traditional religion’; it suggests, however, a greater emphasis on the attitudes and behaviors of the pious. A good gloss would often be ‘traditional ways of being properly religious, dutiful towards the gods’. Finally, when I speak of a ceremony, belief, or act as ‘religious’, I mean that it had to do with the worship of the gods (or God) or with the devotion of worshippers individually or collectively, whether or not that devotion reflected some particular inner emotion or conviction, as Lactantius (for example) might have wished. 75.  McLynn 2009: 587. 76. Libanius, Or. 9.1, 18 (speculations on whose context are provided by Graf 2012). Markus 1997: 39 (‘De cette façon on paganisa une grande partie de ce qu’on n’avait pas contesté au paravant.’), 1990: 118; cf. Grig 2017, Cameron 2011: 786–​9, Klingshirn 1994: 217–​18. 77.  Rebillard 2012. 78.  Rebillard 2012: 76–​7, on Augustine, Sermo 62.

Introduction  13 informant (again Augustine) acknowledged, his listeners agreed that the genius was no god, and they wished to attend the festival simply to gratify their patrons, not to express religious devotion.79 However, by preferring the laymen’s perspective, Markus and Rebillard replace one Christian approach to traditional religion with another. The problem with the feast, Augustine insisted, was that other participants still worshipped the genius as a divinity; this was hardly an implausible claim, granted that a well-​known apologia by a contemporary pagan senator had put civic genii at the centre of public cult.80 To Augustine, the ‘paganism’ of the rite was not a leftover of bygone practice but an unavoidable feature of the social landscape in which it was even now embedded.81 To say that civic rites like the Kalends or the feast of the genius were only ‘secular’ (and thus devoid of religious meaning) is no less problematic, therefore, than to insist that they were truly and incorrigibly ‘pagan’.82 In the fourth century, as in the late Republic and early Empire, the meaning of traditional rites was open to interpretation and debate, conducted with the help of Classical literature, observation of cultic practice, and the burgeoning Christian theological tradition.83 At the most fundamental level, the aim of Christian writings on paganism was to convince their readers to choose one approach to traditional religion above all others: to show the gods and cults of the Roman world through a Christian lens. Much the same is true, mutatis mutandis, for the few analogous texts produced by the Christian apologists’ pagan peers. Neither a straightforward model of ‘pagans’ versus ‘Christians’, therefore, nor the existing studies of Christian texts on Roman religion capture the full complexity and dynamism of the relationships that linked Christian polemics with Classical and contemporary pagan discourse on religion. As Dennis Trout has observed concerning 380s Rome, ‘The period, therefore, begs for explanatory models that can situate even well-​known actions, texts, and images within a nuanced thick description of late fourth-​century Roman culture.’84 Tracing Out Fourth-​C entury Conceptions of Traditional Religion The aim of this study is to move beyond the theories of ‘secularity’ and Christian boundary formation to an account of fourth-​century ideas on Roman religion 79.  Sermo 62.7–​8, 10. 80.  Sermo 62.7–​10, 15; Symmachus, Rel. 3.8, which was likely known to Augustine (Cameron 2011: 542). On the worship of genii in Africa (including at this feast), see Lepelley 2001. 81.  Cf. Salzman 2015: 345–​6, 352, for a similar assessment of the kalendae ianuariae and den Boeft 2003 on Classical culture more broadly. 82. Cf. Curran 2000:  218–​59 and Lim 2012 on the religious ‘ambivalence’ of the Circus Maximus and Liebeschuetz 2009: 441–​7 on differing views of Antiochene festivals in Julian and Libanius. 83.  On earlier writings on Roman religion, see Feeney 1998, 2004, Beard 2004, Cole 2013, and MacRae 2016. 84.  Trout 2015: 13.

14  Worshippers of the Gods that is grounded more firmly in contemporaries’ own portrayals of traditional cults. These theories and, still more, the earlier narratives of ‘orientalisation’ and pagan resistance that they critique have been developed in large (though not exclusive) measure through engagement with the ideas and vocabulary of Western, Latin authors. My own account retains this Western focus. This choice allows for a more effective engagement with prior scholarship on key concepts such as ‘paganism’, which this study challenges at many points. It also produces a more finely textured picture of one of the main traditions of ancient discourse on polytheistic religion, the body of reflections produced by Latin-​speaking critics and exponents of traditional Roman religion. The reasons for focusing on this one strand of the ancient evidence are at once practical and intellectual. A  truly comprehensive account of late antique ideas on polytheism is impossible, since we do not have access to the totality of late antique writing on or practice of religion. It would, theoretically, be possible to attempt an account that was comprehensive within the bounds of the evidence—​one that brought together Latin writers with (at the least) representatives of the Greek-​, Syriac-​, and Coptic-​speaking cultures of the Roman East. As it grew more complete, however, such an account would run an ever-​greater risk of becoming a kind of encyclopaedia of late antique opinions on traditional religion, rather than a coherent study of a culture in change. Even Greek, the literature adjacent and most obviously relevant to the Latin, does not reflect the same intellectual concerns or practical realities (whether the shape of local cults or the tenor of imperial laws). As Jörg Rüpke has stressed in his study of earlier Christian apologies, texts on ‘Hellenic’ religion are the product of a linguistic and cultural setting sharply distinct from the Romano-​ centric world of the Latin literature on paganism.85 Despite influence from earlier Greek philosophers and apologists, the intellectual links between contemporary Greek and Latin writers on traditional religion are, for most of the fourth century, not robust. Direct intellectual contact with (roughly) contemporary Greek writers on traditional religion can rarely be demonstrated in fourth-​century Latin polemicists before Augustine, and in the few cases where it is certain, such as in Firmicus Maternus’ appeals to Porphyry (­chapter 2), the influence does not run deep. Even the works of the emperor Julian, rightly a fixture of narratives of late antique religious politics and legislation,86 reveal (as c­ hapter 3 argues) only a few demonstrable parallels to the eclectic polytheism embraced by some Roman senators. The separation descends all the way to the linguistic bedrock: the Latin vocabulary used to describe traditional cults—​religio, superstitio, sacrum, paganus,

85.  Rüpke 2014: 212, referring to the ‘enormous linguistic’ and ‘intercultural filter’ between Greek and Latin apologetic. 86. For a range of perspectives on Julian’s religious reforms, see Koch 1927–​8, Bowersock 1978:  79–​93, Athanassiadi 1981, Smith 1995, Elm 2012: 269–​335.

Introduction  15 for example, as well as the names of specifically Roman gods and priesthoods—​ are not interchangeable with the terms used by Greek contemporaries. In a history framed by the political or social aspects of religious change, this might not be a problem;87 to a study that attempts to tease out the continuities and changes in conceptions of religion through close study of individual texts, it is much more of an obstacle. One would, in effect, have either to write two distinct narratives (in a much longer book), one Greek, the other Latin, that were conjoined, perhaps, by the broad framework of imperial legislation, or else one would have to flatten the unique contours of the Latin tradition against a more copious Greek corpus profoundly shaped by Neoplatonism. It is more straightforward and (as I hope to show by way of example through this book) also rewarding to explain how authors who shared a common education and common intellectual concerns rethought their culture over the course of the century. Following the main arc of the legal ‘de-​paganisation’ of the western regions of the empire, this study traces out ideas on paganism from the final imperially sponsored persecution of Christians under the Tetrarchy to the early 380s, when Gratian and Valentinian II confiscated state funds from the priesthoods of the city of Rome. Its subjects are Latin writers, men and at least one woman for whom Vergil and Cicero were key literary and philosophical authorities, Rome still stood at the centre of their imaginative universe, and Roman religio (however they defined it) was a central point of contention. The book’s protagonists are aristocrats, churchmen, and religious theoreticians, all educated and (except for the first, who served for a time in Diocletian’s court) active primarily in the West: the rhetoric professor Lactantius, the last Christian apologist to write before Nicaea and Constantine’s rise to sole power (­chapter 1); the senator and ex-​astrologer Firmicus Maternus, the first extant writer who incited the emperors to destroy polytheistic cults and pitted a coherent pagan theology against Christian revelation (­chapter 2); the many senatorial adepts of ‘paganism’ (as their critic, the anonymous cleric Ambrosiaster, called it) who inhabited the city of Rome (­chapter 3); the urban prefect Symmachus and the bishop Ambrose, adroit spokesmen for new and old ways of defining religio and upholding its proper exercise (­chapter  4); and Praetextatus and his wife, Paulina, the most outstanding representatives of an eclectic paganism that sought the ‘manifold power of the gods’ through the whole range of traditional cults (­chapter 5). Inevitably, this cultural and chronological framework leaves some important figures at the periphery. The greatest late antique Latin writer on paganism, Augustine, was converted to catholic Christianity in 386, the year after this study draws to a close, and wrote City of God decades later, in the changed world of early-​fifth-​century Africa, after the emperors had cracked down vigorously on 87.  Chuvin 1990 and Watts 2015b are important examples of each.

16  Worshippers of the Gods pagan practice and Rome itself had been sacked by Alaric. He appears, therefore, only for his occasional reflections on religion in his youth and in a brief look forward to that vigorous African religious world in this book’s conclusion. The emperor Julian plays an even smaller role, since his Platonist philosophy and pro-​ pagan legislation exercised little influence on contemporary Western writers. The great exception is the Roman rhetorician Marius Victorinus, whom Julian’s law on schoolteachers forced to retire from teaching.88 Victorinus took up Christian theology and biblical commentary, providing some of our earliest references to ‘pagans’ and ‘paganism’, on which ­chapter 3 comments, as it does on the parallels between Julian’s spirituality and that of Roman senators such as Praetextatus. The fourth-​century Latin corpus on paganism is rich but uneven, with a strong weight towards the city of Rome. Because of gaps in the polemical tradition, for which nothing survives that can be certainly dated between ca. 350 and the 370s or 380s, no year-​by-​year (or even decade-​by-​decade) account of the evolution of religious ideas is possible. What can be illuminated with clarity—​ this book’s main purpose—​are several crucial episodes in fourth-​century religious history: the Tetrarchic persecution, Constantine’s rise and the immediate sequel to his reign, the proliferation of the vocabulary of ‘paganism’ in the middle of the century, the altar of Victory controversy, and the aftermath of the ‘disestablishment’ of the Roman cults. Heeding Trout’s call for ‘thick description’, I illustrate each of these episodes by situating and interpreting a text or body of texts within its own intellectual, social, and religious world, and so revealing, as far as the evidence allows, the nuances of both Christian and non-​Christian conceptions of polytheistic religiosity. By providing a series of close-​up pictures of different configurations of traditional religion, I hope to illustrate not just the particular approach to paganism in vogue in each author’s milieu but also the changing position of pagan cults within wider Roman society. In order to maintain a clear view of their political and social context, these ‘snapshots’ are laid out against a diachronic thread provided in great measure by imperial legal enactments, from Diocletian and Constantine to Gratian and Valentinian II. The extant record of imperial legislation is not a sure guide through the tangled religious politics of the fourth century. Our most important source, the Theodosian Code, is the product of a complex process of later compilation and editing,89 while the laws themselves were often limited in application, provisional in character, and unevenly enforced.90 Even so, the actions and pronouncements of emperors helped to set the terms on which their subjects approached traditional religion. A Roman of the 380s could call upon many of 88. Augustine, Conf. 8.5.10, with McLynn 2014: 130–​1. 89.  Matthews 2000; cf. the collection edited by Harries and Wood 2010 for discussion of many aspects of the C.Th. 90.  Errington 1997, Barnes 2002, Bradbury 1994, Jones 1964:  169; for surveys of imperial legislation, see Gaudemet 1990, Delmaire 2004, and the larger historical accounts by Chuvin 1990 and Veyne 2010.

Introduction  17 the same intellectual resources as he might have under the Tetrarchy, yet the social and rhetorical circumstances had changed profoundly in the intervening decades, in ways that were both illustrated and driven by imperial legislation.91 Nevertheless, the narrative of imperial policies can never serve as more than a kind of shorthand for the full complexity of the contemporary political and social circumstances in which each text was embedded, and those circumstances are neither solely nor completely determinative of the ideas expressed by fourth-​ century writers on Roman religion. An apology, pagan or Christian, is a product of its particular time and place but also an expression of enduring convictions. The shifting attitudes of emperors towards traditional religion is thus a leitmotif of the book, reflected not only in changing Christian expectations regarding the final demise of polytheistic cult but also in diverse pagan and Christian visions of individual devotion, public religion, and imperial power. Emperors play an especially prominent role in c­ hapters 1, 2, and 4, which trace out the development of new intellectual frameworks for thinking about traditional religion under the pagan-​dominated Tetrarchy, during the middle years of the Constantinian dynasty, and in the sharply pro-​Christian reign of Valentinian II. The other two chapters, by contrast, zero in on the details of cultic practice and personal politics at Rome, the best-​attested locus of pagan religiosity in the West. Chapter 3 (the only one not explicitly framed by imperial legislation) focuses on pagan practice and theology—​and their representations in Christian polemic—​in a city now distant from the emperors, while ­chapter 5 discusses senatorial responses to Gratian and Valentinian II’s intervention in local religious traditions during the altar of Victory controversy. Shifting vocabulary and concepts of ‘religion’ (as we would call it) also play a recurrent role. Since these concepts did not develop in any straightforward, unidirectional way across the fourth century, I do not attempt to write a narrative of their evolution. Instead, I seek, as with the other recurrent themes of the book, to illustrate the ways in which individual authors advanced particular conceptions of ‘religion’ (using such terms as religio, lex, secta, and paganitas) to meet the challenge of their social and political situations. The resulting narrative shows how representatives of the Latin cultural tradition responded to the shifting fortunes of polytheistic cults in general and of Roman cults in particular. It also yields several more specific intellectual results. First, it gives a clear sense of the multiplicity—​still bounded, however, within a fundamental unity—​of Christian views of polytheism, alongside murkier glimpses of the diversity (again, within a general similarity) of pagans’ own approaches to their ancestral cults. Second, it offers, in place of appeals to identity formation, a nuanced assessment of the aims of several neglected polemical texts in their own historical settings. Third and finally, it offers a reassessment (suggested by 91. Contrast Brown 2004:  115, ‘In the fourth century, the emperors  .  .  .  controlled the rhetoric of Christianization’, to Hunt 2010: 157–​8, who stresses imperial inability to direct the social progress of Christianity.

18  Worshippers of the Gods earlier scholarship yet not hitherto developed in detail) of the origins and development of the concept of ‘paganism’, as a polemical Christian interpretation of urban Roman senatorial religiosity. In the fourth-​century Roman West, neither imperial politics nor theological commonplaces overmastered the diversity of attitudes towards traditional cults, which was sustained by vigorous engagement with Classical texts, cultic practice, and new, Christian ideas.

1

‘Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence’ LACTANTIUS, CICERO, AND THE CRITIQUE OF ROMAN RELIGION IN THE DIVINE INSTITUTES

But when those people come to sacrifice, they offer nothing inward, nothing of their own to their gods, not integrity of mind, not reverence, not fear. Therefore, when they have completed their empty sacrifices, they leave all worship in the temple. . . . Hence it is that cults of this sort can neither make men good nor be firm and immutable. . . . In this superstition I see nothing other than ritual that pertains to the fingers alone.1

Lactantius’ description of traditional religiosity is a bold challenge

to the religious-​ political order of the early-​ fourth-​ century Roman Empire. Formerly professor of Latin rhetoric in the court of Diocletian, Lactantius had turned, after the Tetrarchs’ crackdown on Christianity, to what he called ‘the much better, more useful, and more glorious profession’ of instructing his peers in ‘the worship of the true majesty’.2 He was provoked, he says, to write his seven-​ book Diuinae institutiones—​the most comprehensive defence and exposition of Christianity produced in Latin prior to Augustine’s De ciuitate dei—​by the polemics of pagan intellectuals at Diocletian’s court, one a governor, Sossianus Hierocles, the other a philosophical hack who has defied certain identification.3 He nevertheless envisioned Divine Institutes, which he produced sometime between 305 and 310, as a universal apologetic work of a kind that his predecessors,

1. Lactantius, DI 5.19.27–​9, ‘isti autem cum ad sacrificandum ueniunt, nihil intimum, nihil proprium diis suis offerunt, non integritatem mentis, non reuerentiam, non timorem. peractis itaque sacrificiis inanibus omnem religionem in templo . . . relinquunt . . . inde est quod eiusmodi religiones neque bonos facere possunt neque firmae atque immutabiles esse. . . . in qua [sc. superstitione] nihil aliud uideo quam ritum ad solos digitos pertinentem.’ In this chapter, DI is regularly cited by number alone; Lactantius’ other works are cited by abbreviated title. 2.  DI 1.1.8; Jerome, Vir. ill. 80, Chron. 317–​20 post Christum. 3.  5.2.1–​4.1 On Augustine and Lactantius, see Garnsey 2002 and Bochet 1998. Sossianus Hierocles: Barnes 1976:  242–​3; cf. Mort. 16.4. The philosopher is sometimes identified as Porphyry of Tyre (e.g., Digeser 1998, 2000:  93–​107, Schott 2008:  179–​85, Simmons 2015:  42–​3, 64), without sound foundation (Goulet 2004:  37–​40, Wlosok 2005: 20–​8, Nicholson 2006: 308, Freund 2006).

Worshippers of the Gods. Mattias P. Gassman, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190082444.001.0001

20  Worshippers of the Gods Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Cyprian, had failed to produce, which would refute all critics of Christianity, past, present, and future.4 Thus, he constructed his apology as a response not to the assertions of particular pagan polemicists but to the whole complex of religious attitudes and practices that underlay and justified contemporary enmity towards Christian worship. As a former resident of the now-​retired senior emperor’s court, Lactantius was well aware of the motivations that had driven the emperors and their officials to oppose Christianity. His account of the manoeuvres in Diocletian’s court prior to the initial anti-​Christian edict of 303 credits the persecution to a desire to uphold the public religious order of the empire. Diocletian and Galerius’ civilian and military advisors, he says in the later De mortibus persecutorum, ‘declared that the Christians should be eliminated as opponents of the gods and enemies of the public cults’.5 In the West, where Lactantius was likely writing, this project had never been evenly enforced and had lapsed completely by 305,6 but later laws issued by the Eastern emperors Galerius and Maximinus Daza confirm Lactantius’ report.7 As the dying Galerius declared in 311 in an edict that granted clemency to the Christians, it was ‘for the benefit and utility of the res publica’ that the emperors had sought ‘to correct all things according to the ancient laws and the public discipline of the Romans’; their anti-​Christian initiatives were intended to restore the traditional religious consensus of the Roman world by forcing Christians ‘to return to good sense’ and embrace ‘the sect of their fathers’.8 A rescript of Maximinus Daza posted in the city of Tyre the next year spells out the dire consequences of Christian neglect of ancestral cult, which the Tetrarchs had hailed in earlier legislation as the product of divine providence endorsed ‘by the counsel and consideration of many good, outstanding, and exceedingly wise 4.  5.1.21–​8, 5.4. On the date and location, see Barnes 1981: 291 n. 96; 5.11.15, which refers to the lapse of a confessor after two years, provides the terminus post quem (Heck 2009: 121), 5.23, which has not yet seen the death of any of the persecuting Tetrarchs, the terminus ante. Heck 2009: 122–​8 argues, unconvincingly, for composition in Bithynia. 5.  Mort. 11.5–​6, ‘placuit ergo amicorum sententiam experiri. . . . admissi ergo iudices pauci et pauci militares, ut dignitate antecedebant, interrogabantur. quidam proprio aduersus Christianos odio inimicos deorum et hostes religionum publicarum tollendos esse censuerunt, et qui aliter sentiebant, intellecta hominis uoluntate uel timentes uel gratificari uolentes in eandem sententiam congruerunt.’ 6. Eusebius, Mart. Pal. 13.12. The ‘fourth edict’ of Diocletian (of 304), the first Tetrarchic law to command universal sacrifice (Mart. Pal. 3.1; cf. Mart. Pal. 4.8, 9.2–​3, with Barnes 1981: 152–​4, for similar laws of Maximinus Daius in 306 and 309), was probably not promulgated in the West (de Ste. Croix 1954: 84–​96, Barnes 2002: 192–​4); references to forced sacrifice in Passio Crispinae 1.3–​4, 7, and Optatus, 3.8 (cf. CIL VIII 6700, ‘in diebus turifi/​ cationis’) probably reflect unilateral impositions by local officials (Optatus, Appendix 2, CSEL 26:  198–​99, ‘ut ex iussione proconsulari omnes sacrificarent’, with Barnes 1981:  23; cf. de Ste. Croix 1954:  88–​92, and contrast Simmons 2015: 303 n. 77). 7.  Humphries 2009 discusses the emperors’ intentions. The emperor officially known as C. Valerius Maximinus was most likely named Daza, not Daia, before his elevation (see the succinct summary of the direct and circumstantial evidence in MacKay 1999: 207–​9). 8.  Mort. 34.1–​2, ‘inter cetera quae pro rei publicae semper commodis atque utilitate disponimus, nos quidem uolueramus antehac iuxta leges ueteres et publicam disciplinam Romanorum cuncta corrigere atque id prouidere, ut etiam Christiani, qui parentum suorum reliquerant sectam, ad bonas mentes redirent’; a Greek version is supplied by Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.17.6.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  21 men’.9 ‘What person so witless . . . can be found,’ Maximinus asks, ‘that he does not perceive that it is by the goodness-​loving regard of the gods’ that famine, war, drought, storms, and earthquakes are prevented, which have ‘all occurred because of the destructive deception of the hollow vanity of these lawless men?’10 Maximinus’ florid rhetoric voices an old complaint. As Tertullian had declared more than a century before, ‘If the Tiber rises to the walls, if the Nile does not rise into the fields, if the rain stops, if the earth moves, if there is famine, if there is plague, at once: “The Christians to the lion!” ’11 The same mentality had undergirded hostility to Christianity in the 250s,12 when the earlier empire-​wide persecutions had taken place, and was still widespread as far afield as Africa, as is clear from the extensive response to pagan accusations produced by Lactantius’ former teacher Arnobius, a recent convert to Christianity.13 Upholding the cults by which the empire and its cities guaranteed the gods’ favour was a vital concern for the emperors and their pagan subjects, since all would suffer the disasters brought by Christian irreverence. Lactantius fine-​tuned his presentation of traditional religion to meet this challenge. Divine Institutes is a wide-​ranging work. Its seven books describe the gods’ deeds and the historical origin of their cults (Book 1), the creation of the world and the spiritual errors that underlie polytheism (Book 2), and the failure of philosophy to find man’s supreme good, immortality (Book 3); proclaim the coming of Christ to establish true religion and true wisdom on earth (Book 4); defend the righteousness of Christian resistance to polytheistic worship (Book 5); expound the Christian’s moral life, his true worship of the true God (Book 6); and lay out the events to come before Christ’s return, the establishment of the millennial kingdom, and the final victory over the devil and the worshippers of the gods (Book 7). Despite the wide scope of his polemic, Lactantius’ attack on traditional cults is carefully focused. Unlike Arnobius, whose sprawling Aduersus nationes addressed both public cult and the esoteric pursuits of those who sought immortality through Platonist philosophy, magic, and arcane wisdom,14 Lactantius separates philosophy fundamentally from traditional religion and excludes private devotion, attacking the diverse public cults embraced by those whom he

9.  Thus, the edict against the Manichaeans, Mosaicarum et Romanarum Legum Collatio 15.3.2 (on which see Humphries 2009: 23–​4). 10. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.7.8–​9, on whose context cf. Barnes 1981: 149. 11.  Apol. 40.2, ‘si Tiberis ascendit in moenia, si Nilus non ascendit in rura, si caelum stetit, si terra mouit, si fames, si lues, statim: “Christianos ad leonem!” ’ 12. Cyprian, Dem.  1–​2. 13. Arnobius, Adv. nat. 1, on which see Lucarini 2005: 143–​6. On the relationship between Lactantius and Arnobius, who are connected by Jerome, Vir. ill. 80 but (despite the cautious arguments of Perrin 1984) likely did not knew each other’s Christian works, see Nicholson 2004, Edwards 1999, and Liebeschuetz 1979: 252–​77. 14.  Adv. nat. 2.11, 13, 15, 62. North 2007 discusses Arnobius’ treatment of sacrifices; on his philosophically minded adversaries, see Edwards 2009: 122–​3.

22  Worshippers of the Gods calls cultores deorum.15 His polemic encompasses a vast array of divinities, including the old Latin gods Picus and Faunus; deified qualities such as Mens and Virtus; more exotic divinities such as Isis, Magna Mater, and Bellona; and such popular and potent gods as Hercules, Liber Pater, Saturn, and Jupiter himself, whom Maximinus Daza acknowledged as ‘highest and greatest’.16 Lactantius’ argument seeks to undercut pagan objections to Christianity by placing the true locus of religion in the heart rather than in the forum. Since they aim at earthly success, power, and wealth, the cultus deorum lack, he argues, the spiritual and moral content that is, from his Christian perspective, essential to true piety.17 For Lactantius, the soul is immeasurably superior to the body, and heaven to earth;18 thus, real worship must turn the human heart, the true temple of God, from material things towards God in heaven, a process that Lactantius describes, in a complex nexus of metaphors, as enlightenment, contemplation of heaven, and elevation to an upright stance.19 The falsae religiones, which are directed towards long-​dead human potentates and have no concern for sapientia, thus stand in an inescapable opposition to the true worship of the summus deus, the heavenly paterfamilias whose sons display true piety, wisdom, and justice.20 Where the worshippers of the gods offer only ‘the blood of cattle and smoke and silly libation’, the sacrifice of a Christian is ‘a good mind, a pure heart, and an innocent life’.21 Despite the breadth and theological vision of Lactantius’ polemic, modern scholars have often located its contemporary relevance in a single feature:  the prominent role played by Jupiter and Hercules in Lactantius’ account of the gods’ lives and doings in Book 1, which they explain as a response to the Tetrarchs’ promotion of their special relationship, as Iouii and Herculii, to those gods.22 This is a drastic oversimplification of a sophisticated and wide-​ranging response to early-​fourth-​century polytheistic religion. Neither Lactantius nor the Tetrarchs themselves, who diligently honoured other divinities and used the titles Iouius 15.  Philosophy and cult: 4.1–​4. References to ‘public’ cults or gods include 1.21.16, 3.20.15, 4.28.15, 5.19.20. The plurality of the ‘false religions’ is emphasised at, e.g., 4.3.7–​23; the singular falsa religio does occur, at, e.g., 2.3.15, 3.1.9, but always in a generic sense (‘false worship’, not ‘the false religion’; thus, Epit. 36.1, ‘falsam religionem, quae est in deorum cultibus’). Cultores deorum: 1.7.6, 2.1.6, 3.30.9, 4.4.5–​6, 28.11, 5.10.15, 12.3, 12.13, 13.1, 21.8, 6.13.13; contra Kahlos 2009c: 284, Lactantius never refers to ‘pagans’, a word first attested in the 320s (see 78 n. 23). 16.  1.9–​11, 20.12–​13, 21.16–​22, 22.9; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.7.7 (regarding Zeus as worshipped in Tyre). 17.  Cf. the discussion of religio in Lactantius and Cicero in this book’s introduction. 18.  E.g., 2.12.3, 10–​11. 19.  See the seminal study by Wlosok 1960, who overestimates the influence of the Hermetica on Lactantius (Nock 1963 and Löw 2002: 245–​57). The templum Dei is always either the heart (Koch 1920) or the Church (Speigl 1970: 22–​4) in Lactantius. 20.  3.10–​11, 4.1–​4. Lactantius’ euhemerism is discussed later in this chapter; on God as paterfamilias, see Wlosok 1960: 232–​46, 1978: 48–​54, with Buchheit 2002: 309–​11, who stresses the biblical roots of Lactantius’ ideas. Thomas 1959 discusses Lactantius’ conception of sapientia. 21. 5.19.30. 22.  E.g., Pichon 1901: 76–​7, Baynes 1944: 136, Fredouille 1978: 237 n. 1, Buchheit 1982: 338, Perrin 1994: 41, Digeser 2000: 36, Bowen and Garnsey 2003: 43–​4; Edwards 2015: 22 is more cautious. On Tetrarchic religious ideology, see Kolb 2004.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  23 and Herculius sparingly in official media,23 took so narrow a view of the traditional cults of the Roman world. While Lactantius’ account may contain ‘pointed topical allusions’ (as Peter Garnsey has termed them), his critique of the gods cannot be read as an attack on the emperors specifically.24 Lactantius passes over obvious opportunities for anti-​Tetrarchic polemic, foregrounding neither the Tetrarchs’ divine connections, which he mentions only once, at the end of De mortibus, without allusion to their patron gods,25 nor the promulgation of the first anti-​Christian edict on the Terminalia, which he recounts in De mortibus but omits from his attack on the worship of Terminus in Divine Institutes.26 Lactantius’ chief concern, at least in Divine Institutes, is not with the persons or even the laws of the emperors but with the deeper religious attitudes that their policies embodied. In his eyes, the Tetrarchs are the crowning contemporary examples of the cruelty to which polytheistic worship, invented at the instigation of demons by an ancient king, Jupiter, can drive all of its adherents; they never come, however, to dominate the polemic of Divine Institutes, which aims to refute any and all supporters of the publicae religiones.27 Jupiter was Optimus Maximus long before Diocletian was Jovius, and the worship of the gods itself, not imperial machinations in its support, is Lactantius’ ultimate target. Lactantius’ attack on Hercules and Jupiter, on which the next section will say more, reveals an important paradox. Divine Institutes is not a work of political (even religious-​political) theory. Though it condemns the persecuting emperors and their subordinates in the fiercest terms, the core question is not what Roman society should or will look like—​it will, of course, be predominantly polytheist and hostile to the righteous worshippers of one God—​but how the reader can find, and ought to live upon, the true path to that supreme God. As Edward Watts has emphasized, the ueterum instituta, as Galerius called traditional religious customs in the edict of 311, were more than just the subject of current imperial legislation to Romans of the Tetrarchic period. They were solid, apparently immutable realities in their civic and imperial landscapes.28 Lactantius is no exception to this rule. His ethical and religious vision is vast yet ultimately bounded by the horizons of a Mediterranean society in which traditional polytheism 23.  Other divinities: e.g., Mithras (CIL III 4413, a rare example of an inscription referring to ‘Iouii et Herculii’) and Sol (CIL V 803); cf. Barnes 1981:  12 and Nicholson 1984b. Eppinger 2015:  180, ‘in Papyri und juristischen Quellen kommen [die signa der Tetrarchen] nicht vor, ebensowenig in der regulären Münzprägung. Abgesehen von wenigen inschriftlichen Quellen sind die signa auch in der offiziellen Nomenklatur der Kaiser nicht belegt.’ Cf. Rees 2005. Images of Jupiter and Hercules are common on coinage, however (Hekster 2015: 297–​300, Eppinger 2015: 199–​216). 24.  Bowen and Garnsey 2003:  43; cf. Nicholson 1984a (Hercules and Maximian), 1984b (Liber Pater and Galerius). Contrast Digeser 2000: 38, who takes Jupiter as a cipher for Diocletian in 5.6.6. 25.  Mort. 52.3; cf. Mort. 8.1, 27.1, where Maximian is called Herculius to distinguish him from Maximianus Galerius. 26.  1.20.37–​41; Mort. 12.1. 27.  5.4.1–​2 (Lactantius’ aims), 5.5–​6 (Jupiter the first polytheist; cf. 1.22.18–​28); 2.16 (demons behind the religiones); 4.27.3–​9, Mort. 10 (demons, failed haruspicy, and the outbreak of persecution). 28.  Watts 2015b: 17–​36.

24  Worshippers of the Gods remained the self-​evident order of communal life. Accordingly, what Divine Institutes presents is more than just a refutation of pagan cults; it is an attempt to explain and account for the origins, rise, and apparently permanent domination of the falsae religiones in human society. This was no easy task. For the Christian Lactantius, the scriptures were the ultimate norm of truth, yet they enjoyed little respect (as he complains) from pagans.29 In order to give his defence of uera religio the cultural weight it needed, Lactantius advanced his argument through constant engagement with the religious ideas and themes of Classical literature, the medium that held the greatest authority for educated men, including his own former students, imperial civil servants such as Demetrianus, the addressee of the earlier De opificio dei.30 He adduces testimonia from a vast range of works, some of purely human authority (the poets, philosophers, and Hermes Trismegistus), some divine (the Sibyls and other oracular literature).31 Through strategic citation of this wide-​ranging literary canon, Lactantius provides his readers with glimpses of a truth long obscured by polytheistic custom and only fully revealed to mankind by the teaching of Christ.32 As Lactantius says of the philosophers, ‘men of the greatest talent touched upon the truth’, but the evil ‘habit’ of thinking that material things ‘were to be considered gods and worshipped’ prevented them from actually ‘grasping’ it securely.33 Divine Institutes aims to demonstrate that Christian teaching, whose wisdom is revealed in scriptures and imparted to the human mind by baptism,34 encompasses and surpasses the best insights of all prior human intellects.35 In so doing, Lactantius will bring his readers to embrace the true religio and sapientia of Christ in place of the irreligious folly of philosophy and the wisdomless error of polytheistic superstition.36 Cicero, whom Lactantius describes as the ‘perfect orator’, the ‘supreme philosopher’, and an augur knowledgeable about Roman religion, plays an especially important role in this apologetic project, as was already recognised by Jerome.37 At 29.  DI 1.4; 5.1.14–​21. The centrality of scripture for Lactantius is shown by Buchheit 1990, 2002, and Walter 2006. 30.  Opif. 1.1–​10, 20.1–​9; DI 5.1.10–​11 underscores the attractive power of the refined language used by ‘philosophers, orators, and poets’. I thank Oliver Nicholson for his reflections on Lactantius’ students. 31.  1.5–​7; the boundaries of these categories, which shift slightly in Lactantius’ later works, are always fuzzy (Walter 2006: 81–​7): Hermes is ‘simile diuino’ (1.6.1), the oracles of Apollo are divine only in the opinion of pagans (1.7.1; cf. Buchheit 2008), and the biblical prophets, inspired by God, form a special, uniquely authoritative category above even the (for Lactantius) ancient Sibylline Oracles (1.4, 6.6–​17). 32.  On the role of Lactantius’ quotations in his arguments, cf. Heck 2005: 235–​6, 1988. 33.  1.5.28, ‘nunc satis est demonstrare summo ingenio uiros attigisse ueritatem ac paene tenuisse, nisi eos retrorsus infucata prauis opinionibus consuetudo rapuisset, qua et deos esse alios opinabantur et ea quae in usum hominis deus fecit . . . pro diis habenda et colenda credebant’. 34.  1.4; 3.26, 7.5.22. 35.  As Bryce 1990: 350 puts it, ‘This [Christian] truth is so mighty that it pervades every aspect of reality, so that witness to it may be found in words which had a different end, in the mind of their original author, than the interpretation placed upon them by Lactantius.’ 36.  3.10–​11,  4.1–​4. 37.  1.15.16–​17 (‘Marcus Tullius . . . non tantum perfectus orator, sed etiam philosophus fuit . . . et augurale habuit sacerdotium’); cf. 1.17.3 (‘Romanae philosophiae princeps et amplissimo sacerdotio praeditus’); 3.14.7 (‘ille

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  25 the outset of the Divine Institutes, Lactantius presents himself as a new and better Cicero, inaugurating a theme that will run throughout the work.38 Immediately after declaring his intent to write a ‘disputation . . . on religion . . . and on divine matters’,39 he compares his endeavour to his great predecessor’s: For if certain very great orators, after finishing the labours of their court cases, devoted themselves at last to philosophy as retired soldiers, so to speak, of their profession and thought it the most deserved rest from their labours, if they tormented their minds by enquiring into things that could not be learned, so that they seemed to have sought not so much leisure as trouble for themselves . . . how much more justly should I betake myself to that pious, true, divine wisdom as if to some very safe port, in which all things are ready to be spoken, pleasant to hear, easy to understand, and honourable to take up?40 Since Lactantius has just declared his own subject to be diuinae res, the chief area of Ciceronian difficulty that he has in mind is probably the quaestio de natura deorum, which Cicero described, in the prologue to his dialogue on that topic, as ‘exceedingly difficult’ and ‘exceedingly obscure’.41 Cicero’s difficulty highlights the ease with which Lactantius, aided by divine sapientia, will approach his own enquiry into divine matters. Lactantius reinforces this claim in the next sentence, where he names ‘collected institutions of civil law’ as a model for his own ‘divine institutions’.42 His work will not concern itself, however, ‘with runoff from eaves [stillicidiis] or fending off water or joining battle, but with hope, life, salvation, immortality, and God’. Cicero, too, had refused to treat stillicidia in De legibus, but the greatest subjects his dialogic interlocutors had been able to name were the

idem perfectus orator, idem summus philosophus’). Jerome, Ep. 58.10, 70.5. Bryce 1990: 19–​222 provides sensitive commentary on Lactantius’ Ciceronian allusions and quotations. Colot 2016 is the only wide-​ranging modern synthesis; older monographs (Wojtczak 1969, Fessler 1913, Barthel 1903, Limberg 1896) are limited to philological detail. For brief overviews, see Kendeffy 2015, Greer 1998, and Pichon 1901: 245–​66, as well as Van der Meeren 2009 on Lactantius’ treatment of Cicero, Acad. 38.  1.1.11–​12; cf. the programmatic allusions at Opif. 1.12–​14; DI 3.1.1, 4.1.1 (a reminiscence of Minucius Felix, Oct. 1.1 and thus of De or. 1.1), 7.1.1 (a quotation from Mur. 14). Cicero fills more than six pages in the Index Locorum of Heck and Wlosok 2005–​11 (4: 765–​71), two more than the scriptures and about three times as many as Vergil and the Sibylline Oracles. The now-​widespread description of Lactantius as a Cicero Christianus is generally credited to Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, De studio diuinae et humanae philosophiae 1.7. 39. 1.1.10. 40.  1.1.11, ‘nam si quidam maximi oratores professionis suae quasi ueterani decursis operibus actionum suarum postremo se philosophiae tradiderunt eamque sibi requiem laborum iustissimam putauerunt, si animos suos in earum rerum quae inueniri non poterant inquisitione torquerent, ut non tam otium sibi quam negotium quaesisse uideantur . . . quanto iustius ego me ad illam piam ueram diuinam sapientiam quasi ad portum aliquem tutissimum conferam, in qua omnia dictu prona sunt, auditu suauia, facilia intellectu, honesta susceptu?’ Cf., e.g., Bowen and Garnsey 2003: 58 n. 2 for the identification of quidam maximi oratores with Cicero. 41.  ND 1.1, which is echoed at the end of the dialogue by the Sceptic Cotta (3.93). Cicero’s allusion to his politically necessitated otium at ND 1.7 reinforces this identification of Lactantius’ main target. Kendeffy 2015: 59 notes parallels with Tusc. 1.1 and Off.  2.1–​2. 42. 1.1.12.

26  Worshippers of the Gods laws suited for the state described in De re publica and the reflection on human nature and society in which such laws were to be rooted.43 Lactantius will rise above Cicero’s earthly focus and speak about matters of eternal significance.44 As this programmatic section suggests, Lactantius’ refutation of the publicae religiones engages extensively with Cicero’s ideas on religion. Lactantius is arguing not simply against contemporary religious policy but with and through the arguments and evidence presented by one of the most distinguished theorists of religion in the Latin literary tradition. The next two sections aim to show how Lactantius developed Cicero’s insights into a defence of the Christian uera religio against polytheist hostility. Lactantius not only invokes Cicero for information on the gods and their cults but also attempts, sometimes simultaneously, to demonstrate that his own Christian approach to religion is morally and logically superior to the Ciceronian model that it so often adapts. For Lactantius, Cicero is not just an expert source of data and concepts that help to explain the rise of the Graeco-​Roman religious tradition; he is proof of the inability of the unaided human intellect to ascend to the true knowledge and worship of God,45 to which Lactantius intends to direct his readers. This reading is rooted in Lactantius’ anthropological and cosmological convictions46 but, like so much else in Divine Institutes, bears the stamp of his Tetrarchic context. Lactantius credits Cicero’s inability to establish the true religion in place of the ‘false’ public cults not only to Cicero’s human intellectual limitations but, more immediately, to his fear of persecution by the adherents of public religion. For Lactantius, the ascendancy of falsae religiones over uera religio is the central problem not just of contemporary religious politics under the Tetrarchy, whose violent oppression of Christians he answers again with Cicero’s help, but also of world religious history as a whole. His ultimate answer to contemporary polytheism is found not in the euhemeristic narrative of the origins of the gods that he lays out in Book 1 but in the grand cosmological and eschatological arc drawn, over the course of the whole work, from the fall of the Devil, the second spirit created by God after the Logos—​Lactantius’ theology leaves little place for the Holy Spirit47—​to the final victory of Christ over the enemies of the just. This chapter, therefore, does not simply explain how the overt anti-​pagan polemic of Divine Institutes 1 and 2 repurposed Classical ideas on religion to assert the folly of idolatry and show Christianity superior to traditional cults. It also explains how, in Books 5 and 7, Lactantius welded together Classical learning

43.  Leg. 1.14–​17; cf. Orat. 72. 44.  Digeser 2000: 57, who argues ‘that, like Cicero, [Lactantius] is teaching . . . legal principles appropriate to an ideal state . . . that Rome should strive to become’, overlooks this vital distinction. 45.  On the essential limitations of the human intellect, cf., e.g., 7.2.8. 46.  Perrin 1981 discusses all aspects of Lactantius’ anthropology; in lieu of a similarly comprehensive treatment of his cosmology, see Russell 1981: 149–​59 and Kendeffy 2006. 47.  2.8.3–​5; Holy Spirit: 46 n. 190.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  27 and Christian eschatology to show why Christians had to suffer under pagan domination and describe how, in the fullness of time, that domination would be undone by Christ himself. Despite his careful eschewal of narrowly political jabs, Lactantius’ interlocking treatments of the pagan falsae religiones and the Christian uera religio reflect the pre-​Constantinian context in which he wrote his masterwork. Constantine’s rise to power only widened the readership of the Divine Institutes, for which Lactantius wrote an updated Epitome and began a second edition dedicated to Constantine himself,48 yet Lactantius’ joy at the new regime’s support for Christianity did not (as we shall see at the end of the chapter) fundamentally alter his view of human religious history and its direction. Despite imperial endorsement of Christian interests, he still expected the adherents of public cult to oppress the worshippers of God until the consummation of human history in the eschaton. Classical theory and Christian theology, not imperial legislation, defined Lactantius’ approach to traditional public religiosity both before and after the ‘Constantinian revolution’. ‘A Sort of Africanus among the Gods’:  Lactantius’ Ciceronian Euhemerism Lactantius begins his defence of Christianity with a sustained engagement with traditional Graeco-​Roman polytheism. The first book of Divine Institutes lays out a detailed account of the gods’ res gestae.49 For Lactantius, the divinities of the Graeco-​Roman world are men and women, great potentates and their associates, who were born, lived, married (or failed to marry), warred, and died upon earth, near the beginning of Classical historical memory but long after the first prophets appeared:  Saturn, the ‘sower of all the gods’, lived ca. 1500 bc, postdating Moses by some six centuries.50 Lactantius’ narrative of divine misdeeds draws directly on the Sacra historia, the Republican poet Ennius’ translation of the Ἱερὰ Ἀναγραφή, an account of the gods’ lives and doings by the Hellenistic writer Euhemerus of Messene, for the account of the family of Caelus, Saturn, and Jupiter that forms its core.51 Its theoretical framework is, however, constructed primarily from Cicero.52 Like Orosius and Augustine after him, Lactantius uses historical narrative to reshape his readers’ perceptions of 48.  For detailed analysis of the text of Lactantius’ works, see Heck 1972. 49.  Perrin 1994 provides a broad overview of DI 1; cf. Pichon 1901: 73–​87, Rambaux 1994, and, for detailed discussion of individual deities, Monat 1983 (Juno), 1984 (Hercules). 50.  1.23.5, with 4.5.6. Lactantius’ dates wed millennialism with the chronology of Theophilus of Antioch (Nicholson 1985). 51. 1.11–​14. On Ennius’ Euhemerus, see Winiarczyk 2013:  109–​22. Contra Winiarczyk 2013:  118 n.  48, 1994: 286, Lactantius could well have accessed Ennius’ text directly, if Nonius Marcellus, a fellow North African, still read Ennius’ tragedies (Jocelyn 1967: 56, Lindsay 1901). 52.  Ingremeau 1996: 313 calls Cicero ‘au livre 1 des Institutions, le témoin par excellence’.

28  Worshippers of the Gods the nature of traditional religion, its gods, and the texts that informed both his and their interpretation of the Classical religious tradition.53 The result is the first comprehensive Latin Christian account of the historical origins of contemporary paganism.54 Cicero’s importance is already apparent in the account’s opening line, where Lactantius promises to speak of ‘Hercules, who because of his virtue is considered most illustrious (clarissimus) and a kind of Africanus among the gods’.55 This choice is usually linked to Maximian’s promotion of Hercules or to Hercules’ popularity as a philosophical model and saviour-​god,56 but the final phrase (‘quasi Africanus inter deos’) points instead to Hercules’ place within Cicero’s experiments in divinising statesmen.57 According to a tradition already found in Ennius but given its definitive statement in the sixth book of Cicero’s De re publica, Scipio Africanus became a god upon his death.58 Hercules, who figures elsewhere in Cicero as an exemplum for the divinisation of statesmen, was also invoked in De re publica to justify Scipio’s apotheosis.59 Lactantius’ allusion to Hercules as an Africanus thus reminds his readers not only that Hercules, like Scipio, was born a mortal but also that the notion of ruler divinisation enjoys unimpeachably Ciceronian authority. Whatever Hercules’ specific contemporary associations, he earns his prominent place in Lactantius’ account primarily because he is an irrefutable example of what Lactantius imagines every one of the gods to have been: a man deified for his virtues. But what were the uirtutes through which Hercules attained the divine clarissimate? His ‘acts of fornication, adultery, and lust’ with both men and women negated the value of his famous Labours, which were ‘the works of a brave man, but of a human nevertheless; for those things which he defeated were fragile and mortal.’60 To tarnish Cicero’s image of the virtuous Hercules,61 Lactantius boldly repurposes Cicero’s flattery of another divinised statesman, Julius Caesar, whose apotheosis he will also condemn. ‘ “To conquer the mind, to restrain anger,” he 53.  Cf. Augustine, Civ. dei 3.1; Orosius, Hist. 1 prol. 9–​16. Van Nuffelen 2012b: 115–​44 situates this rhetorical use of historical narrative within the context of Classical historiography; see also Gassman 2017b on Orosius’ reinterpretation of early Roman history. 54.  Inglebert 1996:  128, ‘[Lactance] fut le premier à développer une histoire complète de l’humanité, mais selon une perspective uniquement religieuse.’ See further Fredouille 1978, and cf. Schott 2008:  79–​109, Colot 2016: 213–​61. 55.  1.9.1, ‘Hercules, qui ob uirtutem clarissimus et quasi Africanus inter deos habetur’. Lactantius may be playing on the usage of clarissimus as an honorific title; cf. 5.14.18, where he repurposes common honorifics to stress the centrality of virtue in the Christian value system. I thank Oliver Nicholson for this point. 56.  See 22 n. 22; Monat 1984 and Vermander 1982: 124. 57.  The phrase likely alludes to a lost section of Cicero, Rep. (speculations in Monat 1984: 579). 58.  Ennius, fr. varia 23–​4 Vahlen; cf. Classen 1963: 315–​21. Weinstock 1971: 294–​5 suggests that Scipio temporarily received public cult. 59.  Rep. fr. 3 incertae sedis Powell (quoted at 1.18.13); cf. Sest. 143, Leg. 2.19, Tusc. 1.28. On Cicero and ruler divinisation, see Cole 2013, with Cole 2006: 545–​6 on Ennius’ importance as a traditional authority for this novel idea. 60.  1.9.1–​3. 61. E.g., Sest. 143, which refers to the uirtus of ‘sanctissimo Hercule’.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  29 says, quoting Pro Marcello, ‘is the work of the bravest man;  .  .  .  “he who does these things, I deem . . . most similar to a god.” ’62 Hercules, who could defeat a ‘lion’ but not ‘overcome the violent beast enclosed within himself ’, is, on these terms, not even a truly ‘brave man’—​that is, someone ‘temperate, moderate, and just’—​let  alone a god.63 The contrast between bodily courage and inner animi fortitudo is characteristically Lactantian,64 and looks ahead not only to Lactantius’ redefinition of justice as Christian worship in Books 5 and 6 but also to his account, in Book 4, of the deeds of a true God-​man, whose teaching, example, and religio produce in his followers the bravery that Hercules did not display.65 Lactantius’ history of the gods is more than scurrilous polemic against another religious tradition. It is a demonstration of the gods’ failure to uphold the moral standards that Cicero outlined and Lactantius will incorporate into his Christian revision of Classical ideas on virtue.66 Lactantius finds the other gods similarly human and similarly wanting, not just the uncontroversially human-​born (Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux, Liber Pater) but also divinities such as Mars, Apollo, and, above all, Jupiter, ‘who is named in solemn prayer Optimus Maximus’.67 Jupiter, he argues in a lengthy account drawn chiefly from Ennius, was actually a mortal king, the son of one Saturnus son of Caelus, whom Jupiter expelled from Crete to Italy after a botched palace intrigue.68 As with Hercules, Lactantius’ exploitation of Euhemerus’ rationalisation of the Hesiodic progression of divine generations (Ouranos to Kronos to Zeus) is especially damning in a Tetrarchic context,69 but he is aiming beyond ephemeral politics at the enduring religious order of the Roman world. ‘Let the Romans know, therefore,’ he says, ‘that their Capitolium, that is, the supreme head of the public cults, is no more than an empty monument.’70 By casting down Jupiter from heaven, Lactantius will, so he says, topple the whole cultural edifice of Roman religion with him.71 This strategy of theological dethronement progresses by several tactics. Not only does Lactantius deploy the mythological misdeeds of the gods against their worship; he also relativises the claim to antiquity that was their cults’ chief 62.  1.9.4, quoting Marcell. 8; on Caesar, 1.15.29–​30. 63.  1.9.5–​6. 64.  Cf. 3.12. 65.  4.15–​26. 66.  Lactantius distinguishes between uniquely Christian precepts and those Classical (especially Ciceronian) ideals ‘quae possunt . . . esse communia’ (6.2.16–​18). On Lactantius’ transformation of Cicero’s ethics, see Heck 1978 and Greer 1998. 67. 1.10. 68.  1.11–​14; on Lactantius’ sources on Saturn, see Wifstrand Schiebe 1997: 28–​33, 148–​51 (but note that she omits DI 5.5–​6 and accepts the dubious arguments of Winiarczyk 1994: 286; cf. 27 n. 51). Nothing suggests that this is a comment on the Augustan Principate (contra Digeser 2000: 40–​5). 69.  Diodorus Siculus, 5.42.6–​43.1, 44.5–​6, 46.3–​7; 6.1 (= Eusebius, Praep. evang. 2.2.52–​62) confirms the importance of this scheme for Euhemerus. 70. 1.11.49. 71.  1.16.2, ‘nam quamuis ipso religionum capite destructo uniuersa sustulerim’.

30  Worshippers of the Gods defence.72 This historicisation is reinforced, as Oliver Nicholson has observed, by ‘such contemporary imperial trappings as . . . panegyrics’, which deflate the gods’ mythic grandeur even further into human politicking.73 Lactantius’ image of the prototypical god as an ancient ruler frames his answer to the key theoretical question underlying his ‘history of religions’: why were men divinised to begin with?74 Caelus was, Lactantius asserts, the first princeps and Saturn the first king;75 their deification was due either to their apparent virtue or to the beneficia that their rulership brought to the human race, who wished to find ‘some solace’ for their grief ‘in contemplation of the images’ of their dead rulers and to encourage future rulers to imitate good kings.76 Lactantius reinforces his proof-​texts from Cicero’s De natura deorum with a pan-​Mediterranean array of precedents and Vergil’s depiction of the cult of the dead Anchises.77 He blames the leuitas Graecorum (a very Ciceronian insult) for this ‘evil’ but does not spare the Romans, whose Caesars he places, in a master stroke of cultural relativisation, alongside the divinised kings of the Moors.78 Nor does he limit himself to mere diui: ‘Marcus Tullius . . . did not hesitate’, he asserts, ‘to say that the gods who are worshipped publicly had been men.’79 A  barrage of Ciceronian quotations follows, which Lactantius uses to confirm not only the idea of divinisation but also the motive. ‘If the ancients consecrated the memory [of Jupiter, et al.] for the same reason that Cicero said he was going to consecrate the image and name of his daughter, one can pardon those who are grieving, but not those who believe it’.80 Cicero’s grief over the death of Tullia thus becomes the pattern for the deification of the gods. Lactantius confirms the argument with even loftier precedents: the deification of Romulus and of Julius Caesar, ‘the one a parricide of his twin brother . . . the other of the fatherland’.81 Lactantius thus hints that the gods’ beneficia were not so positive as he and his Ciceronian evidence have implied. In 1.18, he asserts this explicitly, revisiting the pair with which he began, Hercules and Scipio. ‘Virtus, they say, is what lifts a man into heaven,’ and Hercules certainly was very strong, yet his bodily fortitudo was still destroyed by the sufferings that drove him untimely to the pyre.82 The 72.  1.23.5, ‘non ergo isti glorientur sacrorum uetustate, quorum et origo et ratio et tempora deprehensa sunt.’ 73.  Nicholson 1984a: 142; panegyrical poetry: 1.15.2, 13; cf., e.g., 1.11.18 (the ‘golden rain’ of Danae as payment for her favours), 1.11.19 (Jupiter’s eagle as a legionary standard or naval figurehead). 74.  1.15; I borrow the term of Fredouille 1978 (‘Lactance historien des religions’), who focuses on the even wider narrative sketched in 2.13. 75. 1.13.15. 76.  1.15.1–​4. 77.  1.15.5–​13, quoting Cicero, ND 2.62, 3.50; and Vergil, Aen. 7.133–​4, 5.59–​60. 78.  1.15.6, 13–​14; Isaac 2004: 393 credits the invention of Greek leuitas to Cicero. 79. 1.15.16. 80. 1.15.27. 81.  1.15.29–​33; Lactantius uses Ennius here too, quoting Annales 106–​9 Skutsch on Romulus, probably by way of Cicero (cf. Rep. 1.64; Heck 1981 speculates that Lactantius is using the lost De gloria). On Cicero’s experiments in divinising Tullia, see Cole 2013: 1–​7. 82.  1.18.3,  5–​6.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  31 Greeks were foolish to deify a man ‘who had burned himself alive’, but Lactantius’ readers cannot blame Greek leuitas for distorting their own religious value system. The Greeks, he says, honour harmless ‘athletic uirtus’, the Romans ‘royal uirtus, because it is accustomed to doing harm far and wide’.83 Lactantius backs up the assertion with a description of the horrific deeds of generals, concluding, ‘He who has slaughtered countless thousands of men, flooded fields with gore, polluted rivers, is admitted not just into a temple, but even into heaven.’84 Scipio Africanus is again Lactantius’ exemplum and Ennius and Cicero his authorities. He quotes the famous epigram of Ennius on Scipio’s deification (‘If it is lawful for anyone to ascend into the regions of the heavenly ones, to me alone the greatest gate of heaven lies open’), then chides Cicero for ‘agreeing to this vanity’ when he asserted, in a now-​lost portion of De re publica, ‘ “It is true, Africanus, for to Hercules also this same gate lay open” ’.85 Lactantius’ treatment of the deification of Hercules has come full circle. Hercules began as ‘an Africanus among the gods . . . because of his virtue’; now Scipio is revealed to have outdone his Greek precedent in bodily courage so abhorrent that it led him to ‘extinguish and destroy a great part of the human race’.86 Thus, the pagan gods, of which Hercules and Scipio are Lactantius’ prototypes, are neither real divinities, universal, provident powers of the kind that the philosophers theorised, nor did they attain their specious apotheosis through any real merits. Injustice, not virtue, brought Jupiter and his kin their distinction. The conclusion that Lactantius wishes his readers to draw is evident: just as the gods ought not have been deified, so also they ought not be worshipped today. ‘The Prison of Socrates’: Reading De natura deorum during the Great Persecution Lactantius supplies a theological foundation for his polemic against the public cults in Divine Institutes 2. Here, he proposes to ‘uncover . . . the source of errors itself and explain all the causes for which men, deceived, both believed there to be gods to begin with and afterward . . . persevered in cults that they had taken up in the most perverse fashion’.87 The earthly origin, images, and rites of the gods, he alleges, turn their worshippers’ gaze to earthly, material things, away

83.  1.18.6–​8. 84. 1.18.10. 85.  1.18.11–​13; Cicero, Rep. fr. 2–​3 incertae sedis Powell; Ennius, fr. uaria 23–​4 Vahlen, ‘si fas endo plagas caelestum ascendere cuiquam est /​mi soli caeli maxima porta patet.’ Cicero’s quotation of the epigram is also attested by Seneca, Ep. 108.34. Ennius’ praise of Scipio, to which Lactantius also alludes at AP 2, was known to politically connected contemporaries: another line on Scipio (fr. uaria 21 Vahlen, ‘a sole exoriente supra Maeotis paludes’), which is preserved by Cicero, Tusc. 5.49, was referenced by a Gallic panegyrist of Maximian in 291; Pan. Lat. 11(3).16.3, with Nixon and Rodgers 1994: 76–​9 on the date. 86. 1.18.11. 87. 2.1.1.

32  Worshippers of the Gods from God and heaven, whose primacy is stamped in the upright stance of the human body.88 This religious anthropology and the spiritual dualities that accompany it enable Lactantius to explain the vast cosmic plan that has led to the existence of evil and the rise and endurance of the falsae religiones.89 It also gives him a framework through which to make Cicero’s De natura deorum support a Christian interpretation of traditional religion and its present domination over Roman society.90 ‘Cicero understood’, he says, ‘that the things which men adore are false. For though he had said many things which effected the overthrow of the cults, he nevertheless says that “those things are not to be disputed in public, lest such disputation extinguish the publicly adopted cults” ’.91 Thus, Cicero, like other ‘learned and prudent men’, persevered in the earthly worship to which the masses are addicted, even after he recognised the same moral and theological ‘emptiness’ that Lactantius has been trying to bring his readers to see in traditional cult.92 This reading of De natura deorum uses the dialogue’s multivocality to make an open-​ended exploration of the quaestio de natura deorum into an outright attack on Roman religion.93 Cicero had warned his readers not to focus on his own views and had cautiously endorsed the Stoic Balbus, not the Sceptic Cotta, at the end of the dialogue;94 he also made Cotta say that he had expressed his Sceptical views ‘concerning the nature of the gods not to eliminate it’ but ‘rather’, as Cicero says in his own person in the later De diuinatione, ‘to confute the arguments of the Stoics’.95 Lactantius’ interpretation is thus tendentious, as he himself tacitly admits by mirroring Cicero’s (or, rather, Cotta’s) own words back to him.96 This does not mean, however, that it is a simple misreading. In fact, Lactantius is recognising something that Cicero himself acknowledged and that troubled Lactantius’ pagan contemporaries, some of whom, according to Arnobius, called for the dialogue to be destroyed by official decree, much as the Christian

88.  2.1–​2. On the rectus status motif in Lactantius, see Wlosok 1960 and, briefly, Perrin 1981: 68–​77. 89.  Lactantius expresses his ‘dualism’ in both spiritual (2.8.1–​7) and physical (2.9, 12.1–​14) terms, but the latter have a largely metaphorical significance (Kendeffy 2006). The later additions to 2.8, 7.5, and Opif. 19 sharpen his dualism (Heck 1972: 70–​2), yet the evil spirit always remains a being created by God, never an independent ‘principle’ (Bowen and Garnsey 2003: 27–​8 n. 106; see further Russell 1981: 149–​59). 90. Lactantius’ reading of ND has attracted little sustained attention; cf. the brief comments of Ogilvie 1978: 66–​8, Opelt 1966: 149–​52, and Gawlick 1966: 60–​1. 91.  2.3.2, quoting from a now-​lost section of Cicero, ND 3.65. 92. 2.3.1. 93.  On the multivocal character of ND, see especially Beard 1986 and Schofield 1986, against a tradition of scholarship, represented by, e.g., Momigliano 1984 and Linderski 1982, that sees Cicero as a tacit opponent of Roman religion; see also Taran 1987 and, for a more recent survey of the secondary literature, Fott 2012: 155–​8. 94. Cicero, ND 1.10, 3.95; cf. Beard 1986: 35. 95.  ND 3.93, ‘haec fere dicere habui de natura deorum, non ut eam tollerem sed ut intellegeretis quam esset obscura et quam difficiles explicatus haberet’; Div. 1.8, ‘optime uero, inquam; etenim ipse Cotta sic disputat, ut Stoicorum magis argumenta confutet quam hominum deleat religionem.’ 96.  2.8.53, ‘disputationem, qua deorum naturam tolleret’. Lactantius only sometimes distinguishes Cicero’s views from those of his characters (contrast, e.g., 1.15.5–​6 to 1.6.2); 2.8.13–​14 comments on Cicero’s Academic tendency to argue in utramque partem. Cf. Bowen and Garnsey 2003: 13 n. 31, ‘That the text of Cicero was deliberately manipulated and misinterpreted by Christian apologists needs no stress.’

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  33 scriptures were: that the speech of Cotta could, despite all of Cicero’s cautions, be taken as an attack on Roman religious practice.97 As Quintus Cicero replies to his brother in De diuinatione, ‘Cotta did indeed speak to that effect . . . and quite often, in fact, I think so as not to seem to transgress the common laws, but, in his zeal for speaking against the Stoics, he seems to me to remove the gods altogether.’98 Quintus takes the preceding speech by Balbus as a sufficient defence of religion, and the interlocutors leave the matter behind,99 but the statement testifies to the complexity of De natura deorum and the plausibility, in Cicero’s own mind, of an atheistic interpretation of Cotta’s speech. Cicero’s affirmation of the pro-​religious intent of the work, Cotta’s speech included, is made even more problematic by the work’s internal discontinuities. In the preface, Cicero imagines summoning all philosophers to state ‘what one should think  .  .  .  about religious duty, piety, sanctity, ceremonies, good faith, oath-​taking; temples, shrines, and solemn sacrifices; and the auspices themselves . . . for all these things should be referred to this enquiry concerning the immortal gods’.100 Nevertheless, the dialogue only touches occasionally on traditional cultic practice.101 Cicero appears to assume that the specific forms of traditional Roman religion would be validated along with the belief in providential divinities, which he takes as the bulwark of fides, iustitia, and the societas generis humani.102 However, the two views left open at the end—​Cicero has, quite unfairly, excluded Velleius’ Epicurean defence of piety103—​both render this assumption problematic. Balbus vigorously defends the predictive power of the auspices, for example, but dismisses the gods whose ‘forms, ages, clothing, and adornments are known to us’ as ‘fictional and made-​up [commenticios et fictos]’.104 In his reply, Cotta asserts the validity of Roman religious tradition and the reliability of its authorities, men such as C. Laelius, as guides to how to worship the gods; in so doing, however, he denies that philosophical argumentation can prove that the gods exercise providential care over human affairs.105 For Balbus, the quaestio de natura deorum shows the error of superstitio, but the images, at least, of the 97. Arnobius, Adv. nat. 3.7, ‘cumque alios audiam mussitare indignanter et dicere, opertere statui per senatum, aboleantur ut haec scripta quibus Christiana religio comprobetur et uetustatis opprimatur auctoritas’. Destruction of scriptural codices: Mort. 12.2; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 8.2.1, with Herrin 2009: 207–​15 on book burning in late antiquity. 98.  Div. 1.8, ‘dicitur quidem istuc, inquit, a Cotta, et uero saepius, credo, ne communia iura migrare uideatur; sed studio contra Stoicos disserendi deos mihi uidetur funditus tollere.’ 99.  Div. 1.9. 100.  ND 1.13–​14, ‘itaque mihi libet exclamare ut in Synephebis . . . “inploro fidem” non leuissima de re . . . sed ut adsint cognoscant animaduertant, quid de religione pietate sanctitate caerimoniis fide iure iurando, quid de templis delubris sacrificiisque sollemnibus, quid de ipsis auspiciis . . . existimandum sit (haec enim omnia ad hanc de diis inmortalibus quaestionem referenda sunt)’. 101. E.g., ND 1.81–​4, which discusses cult imagery. 102.  ND  1.3–​4. 103.  Classen 2008; Velleius expresses his desire ‘ut deos pie coleremus et ut superstitione liberaremur’ at ND 1.45. 104.  ND 2.7–​12, 70. 105.  ND 3.5, 43, 70–​93.

34  Worshippers of the Gods gods of contemporary state cult are in danger of being condemned along with the myths that are his explicit target.106 For Cotta, by contrast, the quaestio de natura deorum sheds no light on Roman religious custom, and Balbus’ attempt to elucidate mythology using philosophical allegoresis, far from proving the gods’ provident divinity, actually threatens to undermine the customary religiones by introducing foreign notions.107 After Cotta closes his speech, Balbus promises a response defending ‘the altars and hearths, . . . the gods’ temples and shrines, and the walls of the city’, but this speech is never delivered, and Cotta’s refutation of his Stoic arguments remains the last word.108 This device is, perhaps, intended to emphasise the open-​endedness of the debate,109 but it shows, yet again, how difficult it was for Cicero to make the (to his mind) murky and ultimately unresolvable philosophical quaestio on the gods an adjunct to traditional religion. In keeping with his promise to improve upon Cicero’s failures, Lactantius adopts Cicero’s emphasis on the objects of pagan (and, mutatis mutandis, Christian) worship but uses it to widen the gap between reasoned reflection on the divinity and traditional cult that his predecessor had left open. Lactantius’ way of approaching religion is profoundly Ciceronian. Like the interlocutors of De natura deorum, he focuses almost exclusively on the gods and not, apart from occasional gestures, as at 1.11.37–​9 to the Capitoline Triad or at 1.11.21 to the Nauigium of Isis, on the structure and ritual of their cults. The later books, likewise, say much about God and Christ, and about iustitia as the central element of uera religio, but allude to rather than describe Christian rituals such as baptism and the singing of hymns.110 Nevertheless, there is a decisive difference between Lactantius’ treatment of the pagan gods and the arguments of Balbus and Cotta. In a passage I sketched from a theoretical perspective in the introduction, Cicero’s Balbus described religio and superstitio as sober and excessive forms of worship; linked to a misunderstanding of the divine nature, superstitio nevertheless did not constitute a ‘false religion’.111 Lactantius, by contrast, has redefined these two key terms as ‘worship of the true’ and ‘of the false’.112 This redefinition—​which, crucially, makes the object of worship what determines its propriety—​allows Lactantius 106. Compare ND 2.70, where Balbus criticises the mythical gods’ ‘formae . . . et aetates et uestitus ornatusque’, to ND 1.81–​4, where Cotta distinguishes divine simulacra by their facies, ornatus, aetas, and uestitus. 107.  ND 3.60, which concludes a long account of the births and doings of various Greek gods thus: ‘atque haec quidem eius modi ex uetere Graeciae fama collecta sunt. quibus intellegis resistendum esse, ne perturbentur religiones; uestri autem non modo haec non refellunt uerum etiam confirmant interpretando quorsum quidque pertineat.’ 108.  ND 3.94, ‘est enim mihi tecum pro aris et focis certamen et pro deorum templis atque delubris proque urbis muris, quos uos pontifices sanctos esse dicitis’. 109.  Schofield 1986: 57 n. 20, and Taran 1987: 11, who offers Luc. 147–​8 and Fin. 5.95 as parallels. 110.  Cf., e.g., 3.26 on baptism and 6.25.7, 12–​14, on praise and prayers; 7.27.12–​13 contains baptismal and Eucharistic allusions (cf. Freund 2009: 617). 111. Cicero, ND 2.71–​2. 112.  4.28.11, ‘nimirum religio ueri cultus est, superstitio falsi’.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  35 to move beyond Balbus’ recognition that the gods of public piety and mythological discourse are ‘fictional and made-​up’ to the (for a Christian apologist) crucial thesis that pagan worship itself is false.113 His Ciceronian choice to focus on the gods rather than their rites, when combined with a Christian conception of religio developed by earlier apologetic writers,114 thus allows him to bring his contemporary readers to an un-​Ciceronian conclusion: certainty regarding the nature of God and confidence that the worship of the gods actually undermines the moral and social order that Cicero had been anxious to maintain and that the Tetrarchs placed at the foundation of their religious policy. Lactantius’ reading of De natura deorum reflects the religious situation of the early-​fourth-​century empire, in which a staunchly monotheistic Christianity challenged the association, still natural in Cicero’s day, of traditional polytheistic practice with the conviction that a divinity or divinities both existed and were active in the world.115 In this context, Cicero’s self-​confessedly ambiguous exploration of the natura deorum appeared, depending on one’s religious convictions, either to imperil established piety or to be a strikingly open admission of the irrationality of traditional cult.116 Cicero’s failure to translate Cotta’s Sceptical case against traditional piety into concrete political action seemed to Lactantius to be proof not of Cicero’s justifiable circumspection but of his cowardice, which induced him to ‘dig out his own eyes, so that all might be blind’.117 ‘But surely’, Lactantius says to an imagined Cicero, ‘you feared the prison of Socrates and therefore did not dare to take up the defence of the truth.’118 In Book 5, Lactantius, echoing his description of Cotta’s speech, attributes Socrates’ imprisonment to an attempt to ‘overthrow the religiones deorum’.119 Socrates’ fate foreshadowed ‘what was going to happen to those people who have begun to defend true righteousness and serve the only God’.120 By interpreting the most famous Classical example of persecution of religious dissidence in light of contemporary violence towards Christians, Lactantius claims the authority of Socrates’ philosophical martyrdom for Christianity—​and for his reading of Cicero as an imperfect forerunner of his own fellow Christians. The pagan habit of persecuting dissenters explains the failure of the summus philosophus to bring the most sustained

113.  E.g., 2.1.1; cf. 1.17.1–​5, which comments on Balbus’ ‘commenticios ac fictos deos’. 114.  Cf. Tertullian, Apol. 24.2, and Minucius Felix, Oct. 1.5, with Sachot 1985: 96, 112. 115.  As North 2005: 135–​6 notes, belief ‘in the gods and goddesses’ (emphasis in original) was virtually universal and therefore unremarkable ‘for . . . pagans of the pre-​Christian era’. 116.  Cf. Arnobius, as 32 n. 97, and DI 2.6.8–​16, where Lactantius upbraids Cotta for separating religious tradition from rational argumentation. 117. 2.3.3. 118. 2.3.5. 119.  5.14.13–​14, ‘quodsi iustitiae defensionem uel ipse [sc. Plato] uel quilibet alius implere uoluisset, in primis deorum religiones euertere debet . . . quod quidem Socrates quia facere temptauit, in carcere coniectus est’; cf. 2.3.2, ‘Cicero . . . cum multa dixisset quae ad euersionem religionum ualerent’. 120.  5.14.14. Socrates is not normally a proto-​Christian in Lactantius; contrast, e.g., 3.20.

36  Worshippers of the Gods theoretical discussion of traditional Roman religion to the conclusion at which Lactantius wants his readers to arrive. Nevertheless, even if Cicero had opposed the worship of false gods outright, he would not have been able to introduce the worship of the true. Cicero and his fellow opponent of traditional religiosity, Lucretius, ‘did not know what true religion was like or where it was’, since the human mind, unaided by God, cannot penetrate to the ‘divine sacrament and celestial mystery’ to which uera religio belongs.121 They could see the falsity of their religious practices but could not formulate a viable alternative, since this was reserved ‘for us . . . to whom God has handed down the knowledge of the truth’.122 De natura deorum, which was unable to solve the problem of ratio and religion to Cicero’s own satisfaction, much less Lactantius’, is only a stepping stone to the ultimate religious truth, which cannot be grasped even by a mind of Cicero’s or Lucretius’ power. Knowledge of true religio and sapientia requires the teaching and example of Christ, the Word that God breathed forth as a ‘a spirit like himself ’ before the foundation of the world, who took on human flesh in order to found the Church and teach righteousness.123 As Lactantius explains in the later De ira dei, recognition of the falsity of pagan cult must give way to acknowledgement of the one God and belief in Christ, so that ‘we, liberated from the error in which we were held entangled and formed for the worship of the true God, might learn righteousness’.124 Classical, especially Ciceronian, erudition is an essential tool in Lactantius’ attempt to liberate his readers from the error of the falsae religiones, but they must learn from Cicero’s failure and embrace uera religio in their place. To do otherwise is to miss ‘the supreme good of the human race’, which is found ‘in religion alone’ and is therefore overlooked by philosophers, who ‘are zealous for wisdom, but one that is false, because they have left out the religion of the supreme God’.125 In Lactantius’ Christian reinterpretation of Cicero, the ultimate conclusion to the quaestio de natura deorum is neither Cotta’s Sceptical fidelity to Roman tradition nor Balbus’ attempt to produce a rationally coherent polytheist theology but the abandonment of the many ancestral gods for the worship of the summus deus, which alone unites true piety with true knowledge.126 However, the same obstacle that prevented Cicero from openly refuting Roman religion stands in the way of Lactantius’ would-​be Christian readers: the violent supremacy of public cult. Lactantius prepares his answer to this fundamental 121.  2.3.12–​13,  21. 122.  2.3.6,  24–​25. 123.  2.8.3 (‘produxit similem sui spiritum’); on Lactantius’ Christology, cf. especially 4.8, 13, 24–​5, and see further 21 n. 190. The twin ideas of Christ as teacher of righteousness and as establisher of the true religion of God pervade DI 4; see especially 4.13–​14, 24.1–​25.2, with Loi 1970: 252–​64 and Gassman 2017a. 124.  Ira 2.2. 125.  3.10.1, ‘summum igitur hominis bonum in sola religione est’; 3.11.3, ‘student sapientiae, sed ideo falsae, quia religionem summi dei omiserunt’. 126. 4.3.7.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  37 problem at the end of Book 2, where he traces the religious history of mankind from Noah’s flood down to the invention of Jovian-​style ruler cult.127 The portents and miracle stories upon which pagan devotion depends are, he says, the work of demons, who invented ‘astrology, haruspicy, augury, so-​called oracles, necromancy, and magic art’ and ‘try to win for themselves the name and worship of gods’ through bogus ‘prodigies’.128 Demons used these very same means to spur the Tetrarchs towards persecution. As Lactantius reports elsewhere, Diocletian was moved by a failed attempt at haruspicy to purge the army of Christians and induced by an oracle relayed by a haruspex to conduct a more general persecution.129 Lactantius’ explanation of the spiritual machinations that underlie public cult thus enables him to fit the events that have shaped contemporary religious politics into a larger divine plan, in which God has allowed the demons to harass mankind and so provide the virtuous with vices to combat as they await the Last Judgement.130 For Lactantius, enquiry into divine affairs is vastly more expansive than it had been for Cicero: it embraces not only philosophical speculations on the gods, inherited religious traditions, and present religious-​political circumstances but the whole spiritual history of the cosmos, against whose backdrop the present ascendancy of the cultus deorum appears in grand theological perspective. The Return of the Golden Age: The Martyrs and the Millennial Kingdom In Divine Institutes 5, Lactantius reaches the heart of his apologetic, the defence of Christian refusal to participate in traditional cult, which the detractors of Christianity denounced as ‘stupidity’. We are now dealing not with polemic against polytheism per se (as in Books 1 and 2) but with the practical implications of the spiritual emptiness that Lactantius sees in the public cults. That emptiness, he argues, not only leads the defenders of public religiosity to persecute Christians unjustly; it also proves the righteousness and wisdom of Christians who have chosen to suffer torture and death in upholding their devotion to the only God and his worship.131 In fact, it is precisely to give his followers a test of their endurance that God has allowed the false religions to flourish. As before, Lactantius does not simply rebut pagan practices; he provides a wide theological backdrop against which their real significance can be seen in proper perspective: here as a passing, if excruciating, refinement of the Christian’s virtue.

127. 2.13. 128.  2.7.7–​23, 2.16.1,  9–​11. 129.  4.27.3–​9; Mort. 10–​11, on which see Borgeaud 2010–​11. 130.  2.17.1–​3. 131.  Iustitia, the subject of DI 5, is an essential part of the uerus cultus (6.25.7; cf. Ingremeau 2003), which 6.1.2 identifies as the ‘summum operis huius et maximum’. Stultitia: e.g., 5.12.3–​4, 13.2.

38  Worshippers of the Gods Again, Lactantius expands and reworks Classical religious and ethical discourse in order to demonstrate to his Latin-​educated readers the moral and spiritual superiority of Christianity to public religiosity. He builds his case around two themes drawn from Roman literature:  the ending of the Golden Age at Jupiter’s expulsion of Saturn and the debate on justice between L. Furius Philus and C. Laelius in the third book of Cicero’s De re publica. The mythological account, which draws on Vergil, Ovid, and Aratus’ Phaenomena (in both Cicero’s translation and Germanicus’), provides the narrative foundation on which Lactantius builds his defence of Christian justice.132 The Golden Age, Lactantius says, ‘should be considered not poetic fiction but truth’. ‘When Saturn reigned’ on earth and ‘the cults of the gods were not yet instituted . . . God was surely worshipped’, and justice was maintained.133 This idyllic time of universal generosity, private harmony, and public peace met a catastrophic end when Jupiter drove out his father, and ‘the people, depraved either by fear of the new king or of their own accord, ceased to worship God and began to consider the king a god’.134 So justice was driven from the earth, and ‘the pact of human society was broken’, as Jupiter ‘sowed hatred and envy and deceitfulness in men, that they might be as poisonous as serpents, as rapacious as wolves’.135 Mankind, driven astray by the greed and violence of their new king, descended ever deeper into injustice, ‘error, ignorance, and blindness’, and the Golden Age, ‘corrupted’ by Jupiter, ‘was soon removed altogether when he and all his offspring were consecrated and the worship of many gods adopted’.136 In keeping with his procedure in Book 1, Lactantius makes the mythical Golden Age of innocence and justice a real, datable phase in the history of human religion; however, his shift in focus from the falsity of the religiones to their encouragement of injustice (a theme foreshadowed in his treatment of Scipio and Hercules) leads him to reshape his account. Thus, Jupiter appears now as the inventor not only of king worship but also of injustice and strife, the necessary consequences of his contemptuous abandonment of the worship of God, whose fatherhood supplies the basis for human fellow feeling.137 Pagan cults are thus the historical root of human social ills, as can be seen not just from the poets but also from the corruption evident in Lactantius’ own day, when ‘those who persecute the just  .  .  .  and give to judges the power to rage against the innocent’ imitate Jupiter, their predecessor in supreme power.138 This statement has led some to take his account of Saturn and Jupiter as an allegorical comment on 132. 5.5. 133.  5.5.2–​3; cf. 1.11.50–​2. For a detailed, comprehensive discussion of the Golden Age in Lactantius, see Buchheit 1978–​9. 134.  5.5.4, ‘erant neque dissensiones neque inimicitiae neque bella’; 5.5.9. 135.  5.5.13, 10–​11, in allusion to Vergil, G. 1.129–​30. 136.  5.6.10, 13. 137.  5.6.1, 12. Lactantius elides the atheism and element worship that preceded Jovian polytheism in 2.13. 138. 5.5.11.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  39 the Tetrarchy,139 whose reign was hailed as a new Golden Age by a contemporary panegyrist,140 but Lactantius’ aim is, as usual, broader than the merely political. He is indicting the entire religious and social system that began with Jupiter’s tyranny and that the Tetrarchs and their officials now maintain. The emperors, like Jupiter, have made men into spiritual serpents and wolves; the defenders of the cultus deorum against the Christians are all beasts, therefore, of whom the emperor who started the persecution and infected others with ‘a rage not their own [furoris alieni]’ is the most savage.141 Lactantius was too shrewd a judge of those with whom he had associated at Nicomedia to imagine that all government officials shared the same antipathy to Christianity; he was equally too convinced a Christian thinker to suppose that a mere change in leadership would solve a fundamentally moral and religious problem. ‘Some officials dared more than was ordered because of their excessive fear, some because of their own hatred for the just’, others out of cruelty, others ambition, yet all showed that torture of Christians ‘is the teaching of the gods, to these works they train their worshippers, these rites they desire’.142 The Tetrarchs have whipped up their contemporaries to new savagery, but the roots of persecution are anchored in the falsae religiones of the world that Jupiter once ruled. The solution to human injustice is to be found in the antidote to the false religiosity that has given rise to tyranny and wickedness under both Jupiter and Diocletian: the worship of the true God, with whose revelation ‘the appearance of that Golden Age has returned’, at least to the ‘few people’ who embrace iustitia.143 Although the rebellion of the human race against God has prevented universal harmony from descending again upon human society, Lactantius’ readers can come, by embracing the religion of Christ, to experience within themselves the true peace and justice that were the hallmarks of the time before Jupiter’s reign and the invention of polytheism. ‘Put off all evil thinking from your hearts, and at once that Golden Age will return to you, which you cannot attain in any other way than by beginning to worship the true God.’144 Entering this personal Golden Age will not, however, free the worshippers of God from the oppression of the wicked heirs and adherents of Jupiter, since the good must display endurance (patientia) in order that their virtue might be perfected and their devotion to God be tested and found genuine.145

139.  Digeser 2000: 38. 140.  Pan. Lat. 9(4).18.5; cf. Nicholson 1984b: 266, but note, with Nixon and Rodgers 1994: 170 n. 74, that this is the only explicit allusion to a Golden Age in extant Tetrarchic panegyric. 141.  5.11.1–​7; Heck 1972: 144–​5 identifies the uera bestia of 5.11.5 as Galerius. 142.  5.11.10, 18; for the range of motivations, cf. Mort. 11.5–​6. 143.  5.7.1–​2. 144.  5.8.3, ‘deponite omnem malam cogitationem de cordibus uestris, et statim uobis tempus illud aureum reuertetur; quod aliter consequi non potestis, quam si deum uerum colere coeperitis.’ 145.  5.7.4–​6.

40  Worshippers of the Gods To prove the virtue of patientia and the wisdom of those who have chosen it over acquiescence to the emperors’ commands, Lactantius co-​opts for the Christian cause Cicero’s dialogue on justice in De re publica 3.  Here the main interlocutors, C. Laelius and L. Furius Philus, had presented arguments for and against justice that drew on the famous discourses in utramque partem by the second-​century Sceptic Carneades.146 As he had done with De natura deorum in Book 2, Lactantius takes Cicero’s dialogue as a reflection on his own time, reinterpreting and amending its arguments in order to display the superiority of Christian teaching to his Classical model. Thus, Philus’ lurid description of a virtuous wise man despised and tortured by his fellow citizens becomes a prediction of the suffering of contemporary Christians, whom their opponents denounced as stulti, much as Philus had denounced the iusti who chose principle over personal gain or to save others’ lives rather than their own in disaster.147 The Romans have Mucius and Regulus as models of fortitude in adversity, but Christians have ‘children and little women’ who ‘silently defeat their torturers’ and show that ‘not even fire is able to squeeze a groan out of them’, something not even hardened criminals, lacking inspirata patientia, can boast.148 The awesome endurance of the martyrs only increases the Christians’ numbers, as their watchers ‘conclude . . . that the perseverance of the dying cannot be vain nor endurance itself overcome such great tortures without God’.149 The spectators recognise instinctively what Lactantius goes on to argue, that Christians are not foolish for refusing to sacrifice, since, contra Carneades and Cicero’s Philus, the truly just man must also be truly wise.150 In fact, it is only in light of Christian teaching, which Laelius, like Cicero himself, was unable to grasp, that the true wisdom of the virtuous life can be seen: Christians, unlike pagan philosophers, know God, the ‘head and source of justice’, who will reward their suffering with ‘a better and longer life’ after death.151 Lactantius not only claims for Christianity the justice that Cicero’s Laelius sought to defend against Philus’ attack but expands its definition to include the cultus dei, the true virtue that God has kept hidden ‘under the guise of stupidity’.152 As he puts it in the conclusion to his discussion of the dialogue, ‘to prefer to be tortured and killed rather than to throw incense gathered in three fingers onto a hearth seems as 146.  For Carneades’ role in the debate, see 5.14.3–​5, Cicero, Rep. 3.7; Ferrary 1977: 152–​6 suggests that Cicero used an intermediary work by Carneades’ student Clitomachus. For further discussion of Lactantius’ reinterpretation of the Laelius-​Philo debate, see Kendeffy 2015: 66–​76, Colot 2016: 114–​17. 147.  5.12.5–​7 (quoting Rep. 3.13), ‘est apud Ciceronem non abhorrens a uero locus in ea disputatione, quae habetur a Furio contra iustitiam. . . . profecto quasi diuinaret, quae nobis mala et quomodo euentura essent propter iustitiam, hoc posuit exemplum’; principle versus pragmatism: 5.16–​18, Rep. 3.15–​16. On the use of iusti to designate Christians, see Colot 2016: 71–​5. 148.  5.13.12–​13; on Lactantius’ negative portrayal of Roman exempla, see Walter 2007. 149. 5.13.11. 150.  5.17.25–​6. 151.  5.17.2, 18.1–​10. 152.  5.18.9–​11.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  41 foolish as to care more for another’s soul in danger of death than for one’s own’, yet God, ‘the true lord and father’, will punish those who abandon his worship with ‘eternal fire’.153 Cicero again illustrates the superiority of Christianity to public religion, but only the Christian teaching that Lactantius expounds can put the truths at which the summus philosophus groped in their proper frame, by revealing the centrality of true religio to real righteousness and promising the divine reward (and divine punishment) that makes the rejection of earthly comforts genuinely wise. It is this theological frame that gives shape to the book’s most famous passage, the discussion of religious freedom in Divine Institutes 5.19. Following his engagement with De re publica 3, Lactantius challenges ‘pontiffs greatest and least, flamens, augurs, petty kings of sacrifices, and whatever priests and overseers of cults there may be’, to defend the public cults as he has Christianity, with reason and diuina testimonia rather than with violence.154 Their books, which report ‘the gods’ progeny, accomplishments, empires, deaths, and tombs’, will not avail them, nor will appeals to duty to public religion excuse their cruelty:155 Religion is to be defended not by killing but by dying, not by savagery but by endurance, not by wickedness but by fidelity. . . . For if you wish to defend religion by blood, by torments, by evil, it will not be defended, but polluted and violated. There is nothing so voluntary as religion, in which, if the mind of the sacrificer is averse, it is already removed, it is already nothing.156 Sometimes taken as an appeal for mutual religious toleration, Lactantius’ challenge is, in context, an unequivocal assertion of the emptiness of traditional public cults, which demand forced observance from Christians and an empty show of piety from their adherents.157 Like Tertullian a century before, Lactantius is protesting coerced participation in pagan rites, not proposing that a pluralistic society can or should be set up.158 Founded upon the same opposition between 153.  5.18.12, 16. 154.  5.19.8–​16. 155.  5.19.15, 20. 156.  5.19.22–​3, ‘defendenda enim religio est non occidendo sed moriendo, non saeuitia sed patientia, non scelere sed fide . . . nam si sanguine, si tormentis, si malo religionem defendere uelis, iam non defendetur illa, sed polluetur atque uiolabitur. nihil est enim tam uoluntarium quam religio, in qua si animus sacrificantis auersus est, iam sublata, iam nulla est.’ 157.  Empty show: 5.19.27–​9 (quoted on 19). On ‘tolerance’, see Girardet 2011: 216–​20, Walter 2006: 306–​19, Vogt 1968: 350–​5, contra Digeser 2000: 92, 107–​11, who takes patientia, the inspired virtue of the martyrs, to be ‘ “forbearance”  .  .  .  toward different religious beliefs’, Drake 2000:  208–​12 (cf. the more measured comments of Bowen and Garnsey 2003:  46–​8, Garnsey 1984:  15–​16). For insightful discussion of the intertwined conceptual roots of Christian tolerance and intolerance, see Stroumsa 2011 (with 1999: 100–​9). 158. Tertullian, Apol. 24.6, ‘uidete enim, ne et hoc ad irreligiositatis elogium concurrat, adimere libertatem religionis et interdicere optionem diuinitatis, ut non liceat mihi colere quem uelim, sed cogar colere quem nolim. nemo se ab inuito coli uolet, ne homo quidem.’ Ad Scapulam 2.2, ‘tamen humani iuris et naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod putauerit colere; nec alii obest aut prodest alterius religio. sed nec religionis est cogere religionem, quae sponte suscipi debeat, non ui’. Cf. the judicious conclusion of Streeter 2006:  35–​6, ‘The most that can be

42  Worshippers of the Gods good and evil, just and unjust, that undergirds his ethics, his cosmology, and his reading of Cicero’s reflections on the gods and on justice,159 Lactantius’ arguments imply, moreover, that suffering persecution is actually a necessary part of the righteous life. Virtus requires patientia to be complete, and so ‘the just and wise man must’, he says, ‘be in the power of the unjust man’.160 Religio, likewise, is to be defended by ‘endurance or even death’, rather than by meting out violence; for ‘fidelity, preserved by this means, is both dear to God himself and adds authority to religion’.161 Christians’ patientia does not merely show their religio superior to pagan cults; it establishes the virtue that renders them acceptable to God. ‘The most unjust persecutors’ are, therefore, inadvertently fulfilling the divine plan by testing the resilience of the righteous and winning over those who see the confessors proclaiming ‘amid torment’ their worship of ‘the living God who is in heaven’, yet Lactantius has only divine wrath, not political rapprochement, to offer the emperors and their unrepentant co-​religionists.162 The end to which Lactantius is looking is neither a pluralist consensus nor imperial support for Christianity against paganism. It is divine vindication of the persecuted, perhaps ‘at the present time’, certainly at ‘the day of heavenly judgement’.163 In Book 7, he explains how this final vindication of the just will unfold. This last narrative provides the apocalyptic conclusion to the history of religion traced out in Books 1–​2 and 4–​5, into which Lactantius weaves a number of contemporary allusions.164 As before, his aim is not to assimilate the current emperors to the Antichrist in any straightforward way165 but to affirm that both they and their eschatological successor are part of a larger divine plan, whose end he foresees arriving in ‘not more than two hundred years’.166 After the final tyrant has been defeated and ‘the prince of demons . . . bound with chains’, this plan will issue into a new and truer Golden Age, in which the just, reigning in a ‘holy city’ with ‘God himself, its founder’, will see the miraculous alterations to the natural order that the poets mistakenly assigned to the age of Saturn.167 Now the dominion of the gentes over the just will cease and their idols be destroyed.168 inferred securely from this passage [sc. Apol. 24.6] is that [Tertullian] advocates freedom to be a Christian.  .  .  . Neither Lactantius nor Tertullian made a positive case for toleration.’ 159.  Cf. 31 n. 89 on Lactantius’ dualism. 160.  5.22.2–​3, ‘nempe magna et praecipua uirtus est patientia . . . quodsi negari non potest, quin summa sit uirtus, necesse est iustum et sapientem uirum in potestate esse hominis iniusti, ut capiat patientiam’. 161.  5.19.24, ‘recta igitur ratio est, ut religionem patientia uel morte defendas; in quo fides conseruata et ipsi deo grata est et religioni addit auctoritatem.’ 162.  5.22.13–​14, 21; 5.23. 163. 5.23.3. 164.  Nicholson 2000: 316–​22. 165.  Pace Digeser 2000: 149–​50, 2004: 69–​70. 166.  Cf. Nicholson 2000: 322–​3. 7.25.5: calculations differ, but ‘omnis tamen expectatio non amplius quam ducentorum uidetur annorum’. On Lactantius’ eschatology, see Fàbrega 1974, with Freund 2009:  33–​71 on his sources. 167. 7.24. 168.  7.19.9, ‘non colentur ulterius dii manu facti, sed a templis . . . deturbata simulacra igni dabuntur’.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  43 When, at the close of the final thousand years, the Devil will be unleashed and incite the subjugated nations to rebel, God will defeat and cast both him and them into ‘eternal torments’, leaving ‘peace and everlasting rest’ for his people.169 Only uera religio will now remain: ‘And God will transform men into the likeness of angels . . . and they will sacrifice to their Lord and serve him forever.’170 Thus, the works and followers of the primordial fallen spirit and of Jupiter, the inventor of polytheism and the establisher of human injustice, will be ended. Only then, or so it seemed to Lactantius as the Tetrarchs and their subordinates continued to assail the ‘just’, would the need for patientia in the face of the worshippers of demons and dead men finally be removed and the true God made manifest to all. The Christian sacraments, to which Lactantius directs his readers in the work’s closing sentences,171 will reveal true religion and true wisdom to the receptive, but the falsae religiones will remain an indelible feature of human society until its forcible rearrangement by the victorious Christ himself. A New Order of the Ages? From the Tetrarchy to Constantine Lactantius intended Divine Institutes to be a lasting contribution to the defence of Christianity and so made his polemic against the public cults relevant, but not bound, to contemporary circumstances. Nevertheless, the religious-​political situation that his apology for patientia presupposes would be decisively altered within a few years of its completion, with the demise of the persecuting emperors and the collapse of their anti-​Christian policies. This development did not take Lactantius entirely unawares: he had expressed occasional optimism for the victory of Christianity, as at 5.4.8, where he predicts that enough learned apologists could make ‘the false religions vanish and all philosophy collapse in a short time’, and at 5.23, where he suggests that divine providence might judge the persecutors here and now. Nevertheless, his works from the Tetrarchic period do not anticipate anything like Constantine’s personal endorsement of Christianity and promotion of its interests against those of traditional cults.172 The abruptness of these developments makes the continuity between Lactantius’ later works and Divine Institutes all the more striking. In the tract De mortibus persecutorum, which he wrote to celebrate the demise of the Tetrarchs, Lactantius envisioned the defeat and death of the persecuting emperors as a

169.  7.26.1–​4,  6–​7. 170. 7.26.5. 171.  7.27.12–​13, with Freund 2009: 617. 172.  Cf. Girardet 2011: 225. Constantine recognised Christianity in 306 (Mort. 24.9, with Barnes 1973: 42–​6) but did not espouse it until his war with Maxentius in 312 (Mort. 44, Eusebius, VC 1.28–​32); but see Girardet 2012a: 126–​7, who suggests a date ‘vor Herbst 311’.

44  Worshippers of the Gods vindication of the kind that Divine Institutes 5.23 had anticipated.173 Here the victorious Constantine and Licinius appear as the chosen instruments of God, who ‘stirred’ them to liberate ‘the just’ from ‘the nefarious and bloody reigns of the tyrants’ who had been persecuting them.174 However, although Lactantius casts both emperors’ victories as the result of divine aid, crediting Constantine’s adoption of the ‘celestial sign of God’ and Licinius’ promulgation of a prayer to the summus deus to warnings imparted in dreams,175 he places little stress on the personal religiosity of the emperors. The ultimate protagonist of De mortibus remains neither Constantine nor Licinius but God himself, ‘the avenger of his religion and people’, whose providential defence of the Christian Church frames the work.176 Constantine’s devotion to God moves closer to the fore in the addresses to the emperor that Lactantius added to Divine Institutes some ten years later, in 324/​5, when Licinius had (so Eusebius reports) begun to oppress Christians in the East.177 These late addresses to Constantine show that imperial acceptance of Christianity had wrought subtle changes in Lactantius’ conception of the relationship between Roman power and the divine religio. Both here and in other post-​Tetrarchic works, including De mortibus, the Epitome of the Divine Institutes, and De ira dei, Lactantius modified his earlier rejection of all killing; thus, he acknowledged the right of judges to execute capital punishments (though Christians, he still insisted, were not to seek them) and endorsed warfare against pagan tyrants and persecutors.178 However, even these developments were not wholly unanticipated in the first edition of Divine Institutes, which affirms that there are ‘good judges’ and, in speaking of ‘wars against justice’, perhaps implies that some wars could be righteous.179 As Michel Perrin has stressed, Lactantius’ ‘non-​violence’ was the product not of absolute pacifism but of a biblical expectation of divine vengeance.180 His slight change in political perspective thus underscores the overall continuity of his theology. Now that God had raised up 173. Cf. Epit. 48.5, which updates DI 5 to note the persecutors’ deaths but still (52.10) awaits divine judgement. On the date of Mort., see Barnes 1973. 174.  Mort.  1.3–​5. 175.  Mort. 44.5, 46.3–​7. Lactantius’ account differs from the famous story of the celestial vision in Eusebius, VC 1.28–​32 (commentary in Cameron and Hall 1999: 204–​13). Weiss 2003 attempts to harmonise the two reports with each other and with the pagan theophany of Pan. Lat. 6(7).21.3–​7, unconvincingly; multiple visions are more likely: cf. VC 1.47.3, with Nicholson 2000: 309, 311 n. 9. 176.  Mort. 1, 52; quotation from 31.1 (in reference to the death of Galerius). 177.  DI 1.1.13–​16, 7.26.11–​17; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.8–​9, VC 1.51–​4, 56, 2.1–​2, 20–​2. For two different views of Licinius’ actions, see Barnes 2014: 100–​6, Drake 2000: 235–​7. Heck 1972: 128–​43 establishes the date for the addresses to Constantine in the second war with Licinius; cf. Heck 2009, refuting attempts by Digeser 1994, 2000: 169–​71, to date the second edition of DI to the early 310s. 178.  6.20.16 forbids Christians to become soldiers or bring capital charges; the latter injunction is retained in Epit. 59.5, ‘nec uerbo licebit periculum mortis inferre’. Judges and capital punishment: Ira 17.6–​7. Praise for the wars of Constantine (and, at first, Licinius) and for military service ‘pro patria’: Mort. 44, 46–​7, DI 1.1.15–​16, 7.26.12–​14, Epit. 56.4. Cf. Garnsey 2002: 174–​5. 179.  6.19.10, 6.12.21. 180.  Perrin 1993: 166–​7.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  45 Constantine as a defender of the just, imperial wars and civil judgements could be compatible with Christian iustitia in ways that had not seemed possible a few years before. It is Lactantius’ theological conviction, along with his Classical education, that determines his approach to Constantine and imperial power. His praise of Constantine in the additions to Divine Institutes is ‘bare-​bones panegyric’, to borrow the happy phrase of Peter Garnsey,181 and the vividly pro-​Roman mood of De mortibus follows largely traditional lines: the Tetrarchs mistreat leading senators, rape respectable virgins, and so forth.182 These occasional expressions, shaped to the rhetorical needs of Lactantius’ individual works, never coalesce into any articulate theory of Christian governance. Lactantius comes closest, perhaps, to laying out a sophisticated political theology in De ira dei, which compares divine wrath to the righteous anger of imperial officials, but even here he does not come very close. Such politically loaded analogies are already present in Divine Institutes, for which De ira was always intended to be a companion piece,183 and Lactantius’ interest in the actions of governors and emperors is an expression of a wider concern for the duty of earthly masters to chastise their subordinates, just as God, the heavenly paterfamilias, displays righteous anger towards the human beings who are his sons and servants.184 In De ira as in Divine Institutes, Lactantius’ focus remains on the moral, social, and theological underpinnings of Christian iustitia, rather than on imperial policy or jurisprudence.185 The transition from pagan to Christian rulership altered Lactantius’ vision of the Roman Empire only slightly, therefore, and does not seem to have changed his perception of Christians’ place within wider Roman society. In a late addition to the De opificio dei, even more emphatically than in Divine Institutes, true righteousness remains a secret revealed only to a small number of people.186 Thus, though Lactantius could have reconfigured Divine Institutes for life after persecution, especially by emphasising the inner struggle to control the affects, rather than outward patientia of mistreatment, he did not do so. In the 181. Bowen and Garnsey 2003:  50. The additions show no interest in Constantine’s legislation (Perrin 1991: 93). 182. E.g., Mort. 8.4–​5; Creed 1984: xl–​xli. Lactantius’ regard for Rome is already clear at DI 7.15.11, 25.6–​8, though it is stronger in Mort., e.g., 27.8; cf. Nicholson 1999. 183.  2.17.5. God compared to a governor or king: 6.18.12, 7.19.4, 20.1; Ira 3.2, 17.6–​7, 18.1, 19.9, 23.10. 184.  Cf. Walter 2006: 280–​5. Anger and subordinates: 6.19.7–​8, Ira 5.9–​12, 17.15–​19. Divine fatherhood: 4.1–​ 4, Ira 19.6 (with 6.10 and Ira 14.5 on human fraternity). 185.  Pace Ingremeau 1982: 54–​6. Walter 2006: 285 credits Ira with ‘Theologisierung des politischen Zornes’ rather than ‘Säkularisierung des göttlichen Zornes’. Liebeschuetz 1979: 276 underscores the minor role played by ‘the social and political custom of Rome’ in DI; cf. Bowen and Garnsey 2003: 45, ‘Lactantius has not faced up to the challenge of sketching out the appropriate acts and attitudes of Christians in a state which is not bent on persecuting them’ (emphasis in original). 186. Compare Opif. 19, bis 2, ‘ueritatem . . . paucissimis reuelauit’, to DI 5.7.2, ‘sed paucis adsignata iustitia est’. These passages offer insufficient basis for Inglebert’s inference (1996: 141–​2) that Lactantius rejected ‘l’Église établie’ because of Constantinian abuses.

46  Worshippers of the Gods Epitome, he still makes resistance to polytheist hostility and violence a vital part of Christian virtue.187 His post-​Tetrarchic works neither provide specific guidance for interaction with a professedly Christian emperor nor tell Constantine how to approach the publica sacra whose gods Divine Institutes had so forcefully attacked. Lactantius’ focus remains on the enduring religious realities of the Roman world, rather than on the new developments brought by Constantine’s reign. Though his insistence that true religio cannot be forced would preclude mandatory conversion, which he did not envision being required even in the chiliastic ciuitas,188 he never addresses the issue explicitly, nor does he formulate a Christian political policy on traditional religion. Precisely because Lactantius did not, before or after the fall of the Tetrarchy, tailor his presentation of Christianity to the vicissitudes of contemporary imperial politics, his critique of the falsae religiones was tied to a view of Christianity and its place in the Roman world that was fast becoming anachronistic. Settled theological conviction, and not just the habits of ‘reticence and passivity’ in the face of pagan domination that have been identified by Edward Watts, could ‘make it difficult for’ even an educated, politically experienced Christian ‘to imagine a Roman world dominated by Christianity’.189 The obsolescence of Lactantius’ apology would only accelerate as post-​Nicene Christianity decisively rejected theologies like his, which ignores the Holy Spirit and locates Christ somewhere between God the Father and the angels.190 Thus, Jerome would exclaim, decades after Lactantius’ death, ‘Lactantius, like some stream of Tullian eloquence—​would that he had been able to affirm our beliefs as easily as he destroyed other people’s!’191 Despite its eloquence and the breadth of its theological and cosmological vision, Lactantius’ defence of Christianity had not proven to be the decisive apologetic work that he had intended. For Lactantius, the two poles around which he constructed his polemic against paganism, the Classical literary tradition and the persecution of the just, remained fixed even after the great political changes of the 310s and 320s, and his Divine Institutes stands with them as a monument of pre-​Constantinian Christianity

187.  The affects: DI 6.19–​23, Epit. 56–​9. Persecution: Epit. 48.4, 52.8–​10, 61.1–​6. Barnes 1981: 292 n. 99 uses these passages and the reference to crucifixion in Epit. 46.3 to place the writing of Epit. in the East after Licinius’ crackdown on Christianity, but Lactantius’ exhortation to Christian virtue does not bear such political precision. 188.  Pace Walter 2006: 315. 7.24.15; pagans will nevertheless lose their ‘Kultfreiheit’ in Lactantius’ eschaton (7.19.9; Girardet 2011: 226). 189.  Watts 2015a: 198–​9. 190.  On Lactantius’ Christology, see McGuckin 1982, 1983, 1986; Grillmeier 1975: 190–​206, and Gehrke 2019. I thank Jason Gehrke for providing me with a draft of his article prior to its publication. Lactantius makes it clear that Christ must be worshipped (4.29) and that there is a difference between the Logos and the angels (4.8), but he never arrives at a clear description of the ontological position of the Son. Jerome, Ep. 84.7, Gal. 2.4.6, faults Lactantius for denying the substantia of the Holy Spirit in a lost epistle to Demetrianus, though 4.15.3 contains an apparently Trinitarian description of Jesus’ baptism (cf. Overlach 1858: 12 on 4.14.15 and Monat 1982: 222 on Epit. 42.3). 191. Jerome, Ep. 58.10.

Like a Stream of Tullian Eloquence  47 and of the reinterpretation of the Classical religious tradition that it made possible. Future Christian polemicists would have to consider not only how to present Christian doctrine to a new generation for whom the continued supremacy of civic cults was no longer a given192 but also how to approach a now accessible though still independent and unpredictable imperial power.

192.  Cf. Watts 2015b: 6.

2

On the Error of Profane Religions EMPERORS AND TRADITIONAL RELIGION AFTER CONSTANTINE

Some, I hear, are saying that the customs of the temples and the power of darkness have been removed. I would have advised all men to do this very thing, if the violent insurrection of wretched error were not fixed without measure in the souls of some, to the detriment of the common well-​being.1

W

ritten soon after the defeat of Licinius in 324, the closing lines of Constantine’s Letter to the Eastern Provincials mark the culmination of a religious realignment that had unfolded since the defeat of Maximinus Daza. In 313, Constantine and Licinius granted freedom of worship to the inhabitants of the East, restoring rights and property to their Christian subjects.2 Despite the emperors’ firm rejection of their predecessors’ anti-​Christian policies, the new law depended on a vague henotheism as amenable to traditional cults as to Christianity.3 All cults would now contribute to the public propitiation of the ‘supreme divinity’, the object of the emperors’ own worship. Over the next decade, Constantine did not articulate a single, universally applicable policy towards traditional religious rites, which he, like later fourth-​century emperors, regulated through laws aimed in the first instance at specific local and regional situations.4 His laws did, however, adopt a consistent rhetorical and moral stance that

1. Eusebius, VC 2.60.2, τινὲς ὡς ἀκούω φασὶ τῶν ναῶν περιῃρῆσθαι τὰ ἔθη καὶ τοῦ σκότους τὴν ἐξουσίαν· ὅπερ συνεβούλευσα ἂν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, εἰ μὴ τῆς μοχθηρᾶς πλάνης ἡ βίαιος ἐπανάστασις ἐπὶ βλάβῃ τῆς κοινῆς σωτηρίας ἀμέτρως ταῖς ἐνίων ψυχαῖς ἐμπεπήγει. In this chapter, Firmicus Maternus, Err., is regularly cited by chapter and paragraph number alone. 2. Lactantius, Mort. 48.2–​12; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.5.2–​14. On the differences between the Lactantian and Eusebian texts, see Lenski 2017: 38–​41. 3.  Cf. Drake 2000: 195: ‘[The new policy’s] effect was to add the Christian god to the tutelary divinities . . . of the Roman state.’ 4.  Thus, especially, Barnes 2002; cf. Errington 1997 on Theodosius I.

Worshippers of the Gods. Mattias P. Gassman, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190082444.001.0001

On the Error of Profane Religions  49 undercut the time-​honoured primacy of the worship of the gods and rejected attempts to set their cults on a level with Christianity. Constantine’s first extant laws on traditional religion were issued in 319–​20, when relations with Licinius had begun to sour. In an edict and letter addressed to the populus and prefect of Rome, Constantine forbade private haruspicy and defined its public practice as superstitio, the ‘custom’ not of the emperor himself nor of the Roman state but of those Romans who chose to pursue it.5 Imperial restriction of private, potentially injurious or subversive divination had long precedent,6 but Constantine was making a bold religious-​political move. By redefining haruspicy as a self-​chosen ‘superstition’ of his pagan subjects, Constantine not only disconnected the success of his own rulership from divination, which had played a key role in the religious politics of the Tetrarchs, but also implied that a vital aspect of official Roman religious practice was an offence against the most high God—​‘worship of the false’, as Lactantius had termed it.7 After the defeat of Licinius, Constantine took an even harder line against pagan cult, issuing a now-​lost law that forbade (in Eusebius’ paraphrase) ‘the foul practices of idolatry’ both urban and rural, including the erection of idols, divination, and sacrifices.8 The ban was broad but not absolute. In the slightly later Letter to the Eastern Provincials, Constantine bluntly acknowledged that traditional cults were too deeply rooted to be eliminated by imperial fiat. His laws on haruspicy had already shown him willing to compromise with the influential pagan aristocracy of Rome; when the urban prefect, acting on his own initiative, submitted a diviners’ report regarding a lightning strike on the Colosseum, Constantine officially authorised such reports for the future.9 In the Letter, Constantine concedes no ground to divination, denouncing an oracle of Apollo for encouraging persecution of Christians.10 Nevertheless, he forbade forced conversion of pagans,

5.  C.Th. 9.16.2 (ad populum), ‘qui uero id uobis existimatis conducere, adite aras publicas adque delubra et consuetudinis uestrae celebrare sollemia’; 9.16.1 (to the urban prefect), ‘superstitioni enim suae seruire cupientes poterunt publice ritum proprium exercere’. As Dillon 2012: 54–​5 notes, the letter to the prefect distances Constantine more sharply from haruspicy than does the edict, to which it was likely appended. On the dating, see Delmaire et al. 2009: 136–​9, and for discussion, De Giovanni 1977: 31–​6, Briquel 1997: 162, and Girardet 2012b: 307, contra Escribano Paño 2012: 91, who downplays Constantine’s religious motivations. 6.  Laws of Augustus and Tiberius against private divination are attested by Cassius Dio, 56.25.5 and Suetonius, Tib. 63.1; cf. Constantine’s distinction between noxious and innocent magic in C.Th. 9.16.3. 7.  Cf. Grodzynski 1974: 57, Curran 2000: 184–​5, and C.Th. 16.2.5 (323), which forbade ‘diuersarum religionum hominibus’ from compelling Christian clerics to perform the ‘ritum alienae superstitionis’. Haruspicy under the Tetrarchy: 36. 8.  The law is cited by Eusebius, VC 2.45.1 (ὁ μὲν [sc. νόμος] εἴργων τὰ μυσαρὰ τῆς κατὰ πόλεις καὶ χώρας τὸ παλαιὸν συντελουμένης εἰδωλολατρίας, ὡς μὴτ’ ἐγέρσεις ξοάνων ποιεῖσθαι τολμᾶν, μήτε μαντείαις καὶ ταῖς ἄλλαις περιεργίαις ἐπιχειρεῖν, μήτε μὴν θύειν καθόλου μηδένα), and a law of Constans of 341 (C.Th. 16.10.2, attributed to Constantius II but addressed to Madalianus, uicarius of Italy; cf. CIL VIII 5348 and Barnes 1981:  246). The scope of Constantine’s law is much contested; the maximalist position is represented by Barnes 2014: 107–​11, 2002, 1989: 322–​31, 1981: 210–​12, who limits its effect to the East, without positive evidence. For criticisms, see, e.g., Drake 1982 and Errington 1988; Bradbury 1994 is an especially balanced treatment. 9.  C.Th. 16.10.1, with De Giovanni 1977: 44–​50 and Krautheimer 1983: 38. 10.  VC 2.50.

50  Worshippers of the Gods refused to suppress their rites completely, and—​at least in the Letter—​proclaimed no punishment for those who continued pagan practices.11 ‘Let them have the groves of falsehood if they wish,’ he says. ‘We have the brilliant house of Your Truth.’12 Constantine’s antipathy for pagan cult was not toothless. Eusebius records destruction of temples of Aphrodite at Aphaca and Heliopolis and of Asclepius at Aegae, as well as of idolatrous shrines at Mamre and Jerusalem (both sites for imperial church-​building projects), amidst a general campaign to claim temples’ riches for Constantinople and the imperial treasury.13 However, the concessions of the Letter and Constantine’s shifting approach to cults at Rome indicate that he did not aim to stop all polytheistic worship at once,14 though many temples may have suffered damage or impoverishment or even (like those relatively few that Eusebius is able to name) may have been closed down.15 A  later reminiscence by Libanius in his Autobiography makes it clear not only that a pagan could fear capital punishment for ostentatious pagan devotion, at least by the early years of Constantine’s successors, but also that such a devout pagan could go on practicing his rites without official interference.16 As Scott Bradbury has argued, the effect of Constantine’s legislation was in great part moral: expressed in fiery rhetoric and buttressed by the threat of imperial disfavour and punishment, his laws sought to make traditional pagan rites, replete with idols and especially sacrifices, unacceptable.17 Whatever the precise provisions of his law on sacrifices, in 324, Constantine emphatically rejected the position that he and Licinius had formulated a dozen years earlier. As the close of the Letter states, traditional cults were a detriment, not an aid, to the ‘common well-​being’ (κοινὴ σωτηρία, 11.  VC 2.60.1. Drake 2000: 303 infers that Constantine wanted ‘to prevent or stop acts of violence against the temples from occurring’; this is plausible, but Constantine was still restricting pagan worship considerably (Barnes 2014: 110–​11). The lack of explicit provisions for punishment is noted by, e.g., Watts 2015b: 49. 12.  VC 2.56.2, οἱ δ’ἑαυτοὺς ἀφέλκοντες ἐχόντων βουλόμενοι τὰ τῆς ψευδολογίας τεμένη· ἡμεῖς ἔχομεν τὸν φαιδρότατον τῆς σῆς ἀληθείας οἶκον. Pace Errington 1988 and Elliott 1991: 170, this passage and the reference to the ‘customs of the temples’ in 2.60.2 need refer only to non-​sacrificial rites (cf. Barnes 1994: 8–​9). 13.  VC 3.26, 53–​8 (reporting both reuse of statuary as civic adornments and melting down of objects made of precious metals). For a succinct overview that follows Eusebius closely, see Barnes 1981: 247–​8, with cautions in Cameron and Hall 1999: 305. Lenski 2016: 230–​45 attempts to gauge the degree both of Constantine’s personal involvement and of local resistance to his destruction of temples. 14.  As Lenski 2016: 234 has put it, ‘Constantine likely did issue an edict against animal sacrifice late in 324, but one worded vaguely enough, constructed loosely enough, and enforced sporadically enough that it by no means put an immediate halt to the practice’; cf., more generally, Watts 2015b: 46–​51. 15.  Cf. Bradbury 1994: 123 n. 11. The ‘poverty’ of the temples under Constantine is also noted by Libanius, Or. 30.6, who asserts, quite tendentiously, that Constantine did not disturb traditional religious practice. 16. Libanius, Or. 1.27, θείου τινὸς ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀνθρώπου καὶ πλείω γε θεοῖς ἢ ἀνθρώποις ὁμιλήσαντος ἐν γῇ, καίτοι ὁ νόμος γε εἶργε καὶ ἦν ἡ δίκη τῷ τολμῶντι θάνατος, ἀλλ’ ὅμως σὺν αὐτοῖς ἐκείνοις πορευόμενος τὸν βίον νόμου τε πονηροῦ καὶ νομοθέτου δυσσεβοῦς κατεγέλα. For context, see Barnes 1989: 329–​30, Bradbury 1994: 127. Libanius describes the pagan devotion of the uncle of his friend Crispinus of Heraclea ca. 339, but the law in question appears to be Constantine’s. 17.  Bradbury 1994: 139, ‘the laws against sacrifice were generally cast as moralizing proclamations intended to create an atmosphere in which the risk of coercion was never far away’. Cf. Barnes 1981: 211–​12, ‘Constantine allowed pagans to retain their beliefs, even to build new sacred edifices. But he allowed them to worship their traditional gods only in the Christian sense of that word, not according to the traditional forms hallowed by antiquity.’

On the Error of Profane Religions  51 presumably representing communis or perhaps publica salus in the Latin original). In keeping with this stance, Constantine instructed pagan governors not to perform sacrifices,18 removed his images from the temples of the gods,19 and altered overtly pagan elements of his official nomenclature.20 The change from the Tetrarchy was sweeping. Where Galerius and Maximinus Daza had placed the worship of the gods at the root of the public well-​being, Constantine divorced both his own person and the welfare of the Roman res publica from the operation of traditional cults. The sacra of the cities of the empire had not ceased to be ‘public’ in the strict sense, that is, performed on behalf of the body politic with public money,21 but the emperor now denied them their traditional role in winning divine support for his reign. With Christian intellectuals such as Lactantius, Constantine agreed that the worship of the gods was superstitio; at once the product and the source of wickedness, even those rites that were not forbidden were to be derided and discouraged. As Constantine declared in the so-​called Oration to the Holy Assembly, the only one of his many speeches on religious themes to survive, ‘Depart, you impious people, . . . to the slaughter of victims, feasts, festivals, and drunken revels, where you pretend worship, but pursue pleasures and debaucheries’.22 On their face a straightforward inversion of previous anti-​Christian legislation, laws forbidding sacrifice likely curtailed many important religious practices. Modern scholars usually suppose that Constantine and later Christian emperors targeted blood sacrifices,23 yet fourth-​century laws singling out extispicy or animal sacrifice are exceptional.24 Most of the relevant laws in the Theodosian Code, including a law of Constans of 341 that alludes to Constantine’s now-​lost legislation, refer only to sacrificia, a term that embraces both animal and non-​animal offerings; one, the famous edict issued by Theodosius I at Constantinople in 392, carefully enumerated illegal rites, including the offering of animals, incense, and wreaths and even the lighting of lamps.25 In the 380s, Libanius would claim 18.  VC 2.44. 19.  VC 4.16 (cf. the Armenian text of Socrates, Hist. eccl. 1.18.1). 20.  Salway 2007, Barnes 2002: 200–​1; contrast Moser 2018: 79–​80, who explains the switch from Sebastos to Augoustos as an assertion ‘of Roman power in the Greek-​speaking East’. 21. Festus, De uerborum significatu 284.18–​20 Lindsay, ‘publica sacra, quae publico sumptu pro populo fiunt, quaeque pro montibus, pagis, curis, sacellis’, with Cameron 2011: 47–​8. 22.  Ad coetum 11.7, ἄπιτε δή, δυσσεβεῖς,  .  .  .  ἐπὶ τάς τῶν ἱερείων σφαγὰς θοίνας τε καὶ ἑορτὰς καὶ μέθας, προσποιούμενοι μὲν θρησκείαν ἐπιτηδεύοντες δὲ ἡδονὰς καὶ ἀκολασίας (most likely to be dated just after the defeat of Licinius; see Barnes 2014: 113–​20, with alternative datings in, e.g., Edwards 2003: xxiii–​xxix and Bleckmann 1997); on Constantine’s sermonic habit, see Eusebius, VC 4.29–​32. 23.  E.g., Bradbury 1995, Cameron 2011: 65–​7, Elsner 2012: 124–​5, Lenski 2016: 234. 24. Animals: C.Th. 16.10.10. Extispicy: 16.10.9; less explicitly, 16.10.7. Haruspicy or other kinds of divination, sometimes involving sacrifice, are also in view in 16.10.1 and the laws collected under 9.6. 25.  C.Th. 16.10.2 (Constans); C.Th. 16.10.12 (Theodosius); further, generic bans on sacrifice in C.Th. 16.10.4–​ 6, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17. For the broad semantic range of sacrificium, see, e.g., Festus, De uerborum significatu 57.16–​ 17 Lindsay, ‘calpar uinum nouum, quod ex dolio demitur sacrificii causa, antequam gustetur’; 423.1–​3 Lindsay, ‘sacrima appellabant mustum, quod Libero sacrificabant . . . sicut praemetium de spicis, quas primum messuissent, sacrificabant Cereri.’

52  Worshippers of the Gods that the offering of incense was still condoned, yet little evidence supports his assertion, and his words imply that libations and grain offerings, at least, were forbidden.26 Bloodless sacrifices, an essential feature of Graeco-​Roman religion and a consistent target of Christian criticism,27 appear, therefore, to have been forbidden equally with the offering of animals.28 Yet even such wide-​ranging restrictions, however stringently or loosely they were enforced, left many prominent elements of pagan worship intact, including processions, festivals, temples, and priesthoods.29 As Constantine’s changing policy on haruspicy shows, it was unclear what rites should be permitted and the degree to which the emperor should be associated with them.30 No previous emperor had taken such moves against traditional religion, and the cults of the gods, which were numerous, diverse, and deeply rooted in local civic cultures, posed a very different problem than had Christianity to the Tetrarchs and their predecessors.31 A rescript issued to the city of Hispellum in Umbria, either by Constantine near the end of his life or by Constans in the interregnum of 337, exemplifies the practical and terminological complexities involved in legislating on traditional religious practices.32 The emperors granted the city, now to be called Flavia Constans, a temple of the Flavian gens and the right to perform ‘both stage games and a gladiatorial combat’, under one proviso, ‘that a shrine dedicated to our name not be polluted by the deceits of any contagious superstition’. The reference is probably to the performance of sacrifices, which Constans, like his father, associated with superstitio in his law of 341.33 The emperors thus retained the cultic forms, including local priesthoods, temples, and ludi, that the cities of their empire had long used to express their loyalty to the emperor and his house, but separated them from polytheistic worship. The rescript’s failure to spell out the exact limits of illicit superstitio serves to restrict the scope for action rather than widen it, since the magistrates and people of Hispellum could not be certain that any rite beyond the expressly permitted ludi

26.  Or. 30.7–​8, 17 (dated to 385–​7 by Nesselrath 2011: 33–​8), with Van Nuffelen 2014: 302–​4; the oration is addressed to Theodosius I, but may only have been released to a narrow audience (Petit 1951: 297–​8, with previous scholarship). 27.  Naiden 2013: 70–​81, Scheid 2012; e.g., Tertullian, Apol. 30.5–​6, Lactantius, DI 5.18.12, Arnobius, Adv. nat. 7.12, 20, 26–​32, Ambrose, Ep. 73(18).31, with Edwards 2015: 201–​4, 216. 28.  Thus, Belayche 2009: 196, ‘Le lois ne font pas de différence entre sacrifice animal et végétal; c’est le sacri­ ficium en tant que tel, et ses destinataires, qui sont récusés au titre d’une falsa religio’. 29.  Cf. Heather and Moncur 2001: 50–​1. 30.  For a stimulating discussion, see Watts 2015a: 200. 31.  On the lack of straightforward precedent for imperial restrictions of pagan rites, see Sandwell 2005: 88–​9, who notes overlap with laws on magic. 32.  Lenski 2016: 115–​17 summarises the dating controversy, opting for 333–​5 (see also Van Dam 2007: 363–​5, with synopsis of previous literature), contra Barnes 2014: 20–​3, who prefers 337. 33.  CIL XI 5265.46–​7, ‘ne aedis nostro nomini dedicata cuiusquam con/​tagios(a)e superstitionis fraudibus polluatur’; C.Th. 16.10.2. On all aspects of the rescript and its context, see Lenski 2016: 114–​30, with Girardet 2012b and Gascou 1967; see also Van Dam 2007: 23–​34 on the local political background.

On the Error of Profane Religions  53 would not stain the emperors’ good name with the taint of ‘superstition’.34 ‘The restriction against contagiosa superstitio is thus’, as Noel Lenski has argued, ‘a blanket ban on sacrifice and perhaps also idolatry at this new imperial cult site’.35 Nevertheless, the implication is remarkable. Some, at least, of ‘the customs of the temples’ whose demise Constantine had desired in 324 could be sufficiently sanitised to appeal to a self-​consciously Christian emperor. Constans took a similar approach to the traditional cultic ludi of Rome, whose continued popularity is reflected in the detailed calendar of festivals contained within a lavishly decorated almanac for the year 354.36 In a law sent to the urban prefect in 342, Constans forbade the destruction of the extramural temples—​ again with the proviso that superstitio was not to be allowed—​because of their alleged ties to the ‘games, circus festivals, and athletic contests’ from which the Roman people derived ‘the celebration of their old-​fashioned pleasures’.37 Constans’ definition of the spectacles as licit uoluptates was a useful expedient for a Christian emperor unwilling to alienate the urban Roman populace by drawing too broad a definition of ‘superstition’,38 but it glossed over the religious associations of the ludi, which Latin Christian writers from Tertullian to Lactantius had condemned.39 Thus, though Constans’ laws continued to weaken the links between the emperor and the public worship of the gods, they left the material, cultural, and political fabric of traditional religion largely intact.40 The visit by Constantius II to Rome in 357 demonstrates with particular clarity the complexity of the Constantinian dynasts’ approach to traditional religion. Just the year before, Constantius had restated his family’s opposition to pagan cult, forbidding sacrifices and idolatry on pain of death.41 Yet during his visit, he not only (as pagan authors still remembered some thirty years later) displayed a profound admiration for the city’s temples and monuments but also appointed priests to the public colleges, whose state subsidies he maintained.42 Even before his arrival, however, Constantius had ordered the altar of Victory, at which the Senate had offered incense and sworn their loyalty to emperors since Augustus, 34.  Pace Salzman 1987: 178–​80. Cf. Bradbury 1994: 137, who suggests that the ‘goal’ of imperial laws on sacrifice ‘was to create an atmosphere or climate of opinion in which people would consider it “imprudent” to conduct sacrifices in public’. 35.  Lenski 2016: 127; cf. Goddard 2002: 1064–​6, Gascou 1967: 655. 36.  Text in Inscr. Ital. XIII/​2: 237–​62. On the Chronograph of 354, see Burgess 2012 and Salzman 1990; texts of the other sections can be found in Chronica Minora, 13–​196. 37.  C.Th. 16.10.3, ‘nam cum ex nonnullis uel ludorum uel circensium uel agonum origo fuerit exorta, non conuenit ea conuelli, ex quibus populo Romano praebeatur priscarum sollemnitas uoluptatum’, with Delmaire and Richard 2005:  430. The similarity to the Hispellum rescript is noted by Lenski 2016:  234 and Belayche 2009: 198. A connection between suburban temples and public spectacles is not attested outside this law (Behrwald 2009: 63, 107). 38.  Cf. Lim 2012: 70–​5. 39. Tertullian, Spect. 4–​13, Novatian, Spect. 4–​5, Lactantius, DI 6.20.34–​6. 40.  Cf. Lenski 2016: 234. 41.  C.Th. 16.10.6. 42.  Ammianus Marcellinus, 16.10.13–​17; Symmachus, Rel. 3.7.

54  Worshippers of the Gods to be removed from the Senate house.43 In so doing, Constantius divorced himself, on a symbolic as well as legal level, from the traditional gods and their worship, even while he ensured that the public cults continued to function.44 Roman officials may (so Libanius suggests) have enjoyed a special freedom to continue sacrifices, which are attested at Ostia in 359.45 Still, when Constantius was present in person, he showed much the same regard for the competing demands of civic tradition and of his duty, as ruler, towards God that his father or brother had shown in response to the request from Hispellum some two decades before. Thirty-​three years had passed since Constantine had issued the first legislation against sacrifices and expressed his profound disdain for the non-​sacrificial worship of the many gods. Despite imperial disfavour, some moves against temples, and (perhaps) a decline in the more ostentatious and expensive animal offerings,46 the worship of the gods was still ‘fixed’, not just ‘in the souls’ of many Romans but in the communal life of the cities of the Roman Empire. Firmicus Maternus, from Astrologer to Christian Polemicist The laws of Constantine and his sons give more insight into the emperors’ will than into the complex social and intellectual realities of the contemporary Roman world. How did the inhabitants of the Roman Empire react to the sea change in imperial attitudes towards religion? How, in turn, did they seek to accommodate, mitigate, or inflame the emperors’ new pro-​Christian convictions, in a world in which the primacy of the traditional gods had been destabilised but their worship continued? The situation in the East is illuminated by the works of the bishops Eusebius and Athanasius, and perhaps also of Palladas, a pagan poet who has been speculatively redated from the late fourth century to the reign of Constantine, but few sources shed much light on Western attitudes before the late 350s.47 The key exceptions are the works of Julius Firmicus Maternus, a Sicilian of senatorial rank, one-​time legal advocate, and author not only of the most extensive ancient manual of astrology, the eight-​volume Mathesis, but also of De errore profanarum religionum, a compact but wide-​ranging Christian polemic

43.  Cf. Symmachus, Rel.  3.4–​6. 44.  For an alternative view, see Moser 2018: 294–​5, who suggests that the removal of the altar of Victory was meant ‘to meet certain Christian expectations rather than as proof of a deliberate imperial anti-​pagan policy’. 45. Libanius, Or. 30.7 (Constantius’ antipathy towards sacrifices), 33–​5 (sacrifices still allowed at Rome and Alexandria). Libanius’ assertion that Rome and Alexandria had a special status may be tendentious (Van Nuffelen 2014: 305). The sacrifice at Ostia was carried out by the urban prefect Tertullus: Ammianus Marcellus, 19.10.4, PLRE 1: 882–​3 (Tertullus 2); for context, see Cameron 2011: 66, Moser 2018: 297–​8. 46.  Bradbury 1995, Cameron 2011: 65–​7. 47.  Barnes 1989, 2014: 1–​26. On Eusebius and Athanasius as historical sources, see Barnes 1981, 1993, and on Palladas, Wilkinson 2009 and Barnes 2014: 126–​31.

On the Error of Profane Religions  55 against the cults of the gods.48 As the first post-​Constantinian Christian work on traditional religion and the first extant text to call for complete destruction of polytheistic cult by the emperors, De errore is a work of exceptional interest. Shaped not only by imperial legislation but also by its author’s former paganism, it takes an approach to the traditional cults that is strikingly different from the one Lactantius had adopted just a few decades before. Firmicus’ ‘profane religions’ include both public and private rites, which are united into a single theological and ritual complex counterfeited (he says) from the Christian scriptures. The polemicist’s aim, in the post-​Constantinian era, is no longer to attack the publica sacra specifically. Rather, it is to rid the Roman Empire of every rite that seduces mankind from the religion of the summus deus, to bring about the complete overthrow of polytheistic practice at which Constantine and his sons had gestured but which they had not effected.49 All of our evidence for Firmicus’ biography and intellectual development prior to his conversion comes from his astrological handbook, which was dedicated to the eminent senator Q. Flavius Maesius Egnatius Lollianus signo Mavortius and completed around 337.50 The Mathesis places Firmicus squarely within a Roman senatorial milieu.51 The aim of the work is, Firmicus says, to ‘transfer to the temples of the Tarpeian rock whatever the divine ancients brought forth from the Egyptian shrines’, by rendering astrological knowledge into Latin.52 Accordingly, Firmicus not only dedicated the work to a notable senator but also reported the horoscope of two of Lollianus’ prominent peers,53 called those proscribed by Sulla ciues nostri,54 and repeatedly referred to his broader audience as Romani.55 Firmicus presents himself to his Roman readers as an expert in a deep spiritual science. His book is not merely a manual of technical astrology but a mystic induction into divine secreta, which the practitioner must uphold with strict moral probity and take care to hide from ‘inexperienced ears and sacrilegious 48.  Math. 1.praef.4, ‘Siciliae  .  .  .  quam incolo et unde oriundo sum’, 4.proem (disappointing career in the courts); the rank uir clarissimus is attested in the explicits of the manuscripts of Math. and Err. (Monat 1992–​7, 3:  321, Turcan 1982:  155), whose common authorship was proved on stylistic grounds by Moore 1897. For lost or unfinished astrological works, see Math. 4.20.2 (De domino geniturae et chronocratore), 5.1.38 (twelve books of Moerogenesis, not yet written), 7.7.4 (De fine uitae), and 8.4.14 (a translation of Nechepso, not yet written). On Firmicus’ life and works, see further Turcan 1982: 7–​63, Monat 1992–​7, 1: 7–​25, and Hübner and Wlosok 1989. 49.  Cf. Watts 2015b: 86–​7, Barnes 1989: 331–​3. 50.  Mommsen 1894; PLRE 1: 512–​14 (Lollianus 5). 51.  The evidence for a Sicilian audience (Quacquarelli 1988: 304–​12; Vecchi 1957) is comparatively slight: only the descriptions of the island and of Archimedes’ sphere in Math. 1.proem.4–​5 (taken by Jaeger 2008: 72 as evidence of ‘[Firmicus’] patriotism as a Sicilian’), a few allusions to Sicilians in catalogues of ethnic stereotypes (always flattering but never uniquely extensive or prominent; Math. 1.2.3–​4, 1.10.12), and a nod to ‘Syracusanus Archimedes’ at Math. 6.30.26, which Skutsch 1896 emended to describe Archimedes as ‘ciuis meus’—​a change rejected by Monat 1992–​7. 52.  Math. 5.praef.6, ‘ut quicquid diuini ueteres ex Aegyptiis adytis protulerunt, ad Tarpeiae rupis templa perferret’. 53.  Math. 2.29.10–​20; Barnes 1975. 54.  Math. 1.7.27; cf. 1.7.28, ‘[Sulla] . . . exercitum nostrum in dispendia nostra conuertit’. 55.  Math. 4.proem.5, 5.praef.4, 8.32.1.

56  Worshippers of the Gods minds’—​at once a religious injunction and a precaution against prosecution for an illegal mantic art.56 The result is a deeply religious and profoundly pagan work, punctuated by lengthy prayers to the planets and to a remote ‘supreme God’; the astrologer, ‘who speaks daily about the gods or with the gods’, is ‘a priest of the Sun and Moon and other gods’, whose ‘divine power and majesty’ Firmicus will make known to his readers.57 The Mathesis thus reveals aspects of contemporary Roman religiosity that the many laws of Constantine and Constans directed to the city’s people and magistrates overlook: an interest in the intellectual underpinnings of religion, a concern for the moral purity of the worshipper, and, above all, a recognition of the divinity of the soul and its kinship to the astral gods and the summus deus, their common creator.58 ‘No other duty’, Firmicus declares, ‘requires our labour in this brief span of life . . . except . . . to return the intellect’s divinity uncorrupted and unpolluted by any contagion of wickedness to God our maker’.59 This process is effected by Firmicus’ greatest astral god, the Sun, ‘through whom the immortal soul is imparted to all living beings by divine dispensation, who alone [opens] the gates of the supernal realm’.60 Astrology provides a way into the heavens, not just knowledge about them. The lofty spirituality that the Mathesis offers the individual adept is nevertheless still firmly rooted within the traditional religious world of the Graeco-​Roman Mediterranean. The only rites Firmicus expressly forbids the astrologer are ‘nocturnal sacrifices’, public or private, which were commonly associated with illicit magical practices.61 His horoscopes group astrologers with other specialists in religion and revelation, including priests (sacerdotes), prophets (uates), haruspices, augurs, dream interpreters, and magi (‘spiritual adepts’ rather than vulgar ‘magicians’), as well as with philosophers, physicians, poets, orators, and other technical experts.62 Firmicus has little to say about the gods of traditional cult, but his first prayer to the planets secures their place within his system. Jupiter, the third-​ranking god after the summus deus and Sol, is at once the planet and

56.  Math. 8.33.2; on the need for morality and circumspection, cf. 2.30, and for astrology as instruction in secreta, see, e.g., 1.4.11, 2.30.13, 4.23.14, 5.praef.1. See further Dickie 2012, Sogno 2005, and Martínez Gázquez 2002. 57.  Math. 2.30.1–​2, ‘eum qui cotidie de diis uel cum diis loquitur  .  .  .  antistitem enim Solis ac Lunae et ceterorum deorum’; 1.6.1, ‘nos enim timeri deos, nos coli facimus, nos numen eorum maiestatemque monstramus, cum omnes actus nostros diuinis eorum dicimus agitationibus gubernari.’ Prayers at 1.10.14–​15, 5.praef; cf. the oath by the summus deus at 7.1.2–​3. The astrologer as priest: cf. 2.30.12 and 8.5.1, where the astrological authors Petosiris and Nechepso are called ‘sanctissimae religionis antistites’. 58.  Cf. especially Math. 1.5.11–​6.4, 3.proem., 5.praef., 7.1.2–​3. 59.  Math. 8.1.1, ‘nihil aliud in hac uitae breuitate laborandum nobis est . . . nisi ut . . . incorruptam animi diuinitatem et nulla scelerum contagione pollutam auctori nostri reddamus deo’. 60.  Math. 5.praef.5, ‘per quem cunctis animantibus immortalis anima diuina dispositione diuiditur, qui solus ianuas aperis sedis supernae’. 61.  Math. 2.30.10, with Dickie 2012: 330–​2. 62.  Math. 3.2.18, 3.7.6, 9, 19, 3.8.3, 3.12.16, 4.19.25, 4.21.9, 5.2.13, 15, 6.25.3. See further Dickie 2012: 339–​45, especially on the significance of magia in an astrological context.

On the Error of Profane Religions  57 Jupiter Capitolinus, ‘he who dwells on the Tarpeian rock’.63 It is a fitting emblem of Firmicus’ overall approach. The astrological doctrine of the Mathesis does not eliminate or replace the ancestral cults; it is an intellectual and spiritual superstructure raised above them. By contrast, De errore profanarum religionum, which Firmicus penned in the mid-​to late 340s, adopts a profoundly hostile attitude towards the worship of the gods.64 Panegyrical appeals urge its addressees, Constans and Constantius II, to abolish the ‘profane religions’ entirely, while frequent addresses to the adherents of traditional cults exhort them to repent and embrace the religion of Christ. These culminate in a series of exhortations in the last two sections. In the first, Firmicus cites numerous biblical injunctions against idols, bidding the emperors to remove ‘the ornaments of the temples’ and melt down the sacred images, adding their wealth to the imperial treasury. ‘After the destruction of the temples’, he says, probably in reference to whatever incidents provoked the law of 342 forbidding temple demolition, ‘you were carried on to greater success by the power of God . . . [trampling] the swelling and raging waves of Ocean’ during the British campaign of 343.65 Firmicus then urges his ‘profane’ targets to flee the hellfire that awaits; to them he declares, in a striking about-​face from the astrological fatalism of the Mathesis, ‘God has made you free: it is in your hand that you should live or die.’66 Yet, he reminds the emperors, they have their own duty to God, whether ‘the profane’ will heed or not. ‘But upon you also, most sacred emperors, a necessity is enjoined, to avenge and punish this misdeed; the law of the most high God commands your severity to pursue in every fashion the crime of idolatry.’67 If Constans and Constantius will heed God’s commandments, ‘[sparing] neither son nor brother’ nor wife and destroying cities that harbour idolaters, they will achieve victory with God’s help and, ‘carried on by the divine majesty, govern the world with a blessed reign’.68 This is a jarring change in tone from the Mathesis and an important new step in ancient Christian writing on Roman religion. For the first time on record, an author, apparently a recent convert to Christianity, has called upon the emperors to extirpate polytheistic cult.69 However, in contrast to his rough contemporary Eusebius of Caesarea or the pro-​Nicene bishops who attacked Constantius II for heresy in the 350s, Firmicus has benefited little from contemporary reappraisals

63.  Math. 1.10.14, ‘Iuppiter, Tarpeiae rupis habitator, qui  .  .  .  secundi globi possides principatum’; Stow 1978: 47. 64.  The terminus post quem is provided by an allusion to the invasion of Britain in 343 (28.6), the terminus ante by the death of Constans in 350. 65.  28.6, with Hübner and Wlosok 1989: 90 and Turcan 1982: 346. 66.  28.13, ‘liberum te deus fecit: in tua manu est ut aut uiuas aut pereas.’ 67. 29.1. 68.  29.1–​4, quoting Deut. 13:7, 9–​11, 15–​19, by way of Cyprian, Fort. 5. 69.  Cf. Hübner and Wlosok 1989: 92.

58  Worshippers of the Gods of late-​antique panegyric and invective.70 Instead, scholars have often read De errore from a narrowly political and psychological perspective, interpreting Firmicus’ apparently radical shift in religious sentiments as a smokescreen for his astrological past. Firmicus wanted, so the argument goes, either to show his loyalty to pro-​Christian emperors or to demonstrate his fidelity to a sceptical bishop reluctant to baptise a prominent pagan (the motivation that, Jerome says, had led Arnobius to write Aduersus nationes).71 Firmicus’ polemic may be a restatement of post-​Constantinian religious policy or a fanatic’s attempt to spur the emperors on to greater violence.72 In either case, it displays the cowardly intolerance of this ‘Christian ayatollah’ and reveals his ignorance of the Bible and of Christian theology,73 which led him to call for forced conversion through the violent intervention of the state, the Church’s ‘secular arm’.74 Closer examination reveals a subtler picture. Not only are the most extreme claims erroneous—​Firmicus calls, for example, for abolition of idolatry, not for forced baptism75—​Firmicus also had a deeper familiarity with Christian teaching than is generally supposed. Although he cannot have entered the Church more than a decade or so before he wrote De errore, it is clear from Firmicus’ repeated allusions to the sacraments that he was a baptised, communicant Christian,76 while his account of the Heilsgeschichte in sections 24–​25 places him firmly within the mainstream of Christian thought since Irenaeus.77 Firmicus drew most of his direct biblical quotations from Cyprian’s two scriptural compendia, Ad Quirinum and Ad Fortunatum, yet he alludes to many scriptural passages that are absent from these collections.78 The most plausible hypothesis is that 70.  Eusebius and panegyric: Johnson 2014: 143–​69, Damgaard 2013; cf. Barnes 1994, Av. Cameron 1997, and Van Nuffelen 2013 for a range of approaches to VC. Pro-​Nicene invective: Flower 2013 (with an up-​to-​date overview of panegyric on 33–​77) and Humphries 1997. 71.  Drake 1998, 2000: 424–​8, and Kahlos 2009b: 92–​3 entertain both possibilities; for variations on the first, see Lenski 2012: 478–​9, Sanzi 2006: 20, Turcan 1982: 22–​30, Ziegler 1969: 949, Hadot 1964: 385, and on the second, see Caseau 2007, Cameron 2011: 173–​4. Even Quinn 2013: 8, who calls negative readings of Firmicus’ motivations into question, assumes that he was ‘attempting to prove his conversion to Christianity’. On Arnobius’ conversion, see Jerome, Chron. 327 post Christum, with Simmons 1995: 122–​5. 72.  For the first view, see Caseau 2007:  61, Lenski 2012:  472–​9; for the second, Forbes 1960, 1970:  13–​18, Barnard 1990. Some scholars (e.g., Forbes 1960: 149, Turcan 1982: 26–​7, Sanzi 2006: 25–​6) have tried to link Err. 29.2, which refers to the emperors’ ‘avenging sword [gladium uindicem]’, to the ‘gladio ultore’ of C.Th. 16.10.4, but that law, dated to 346 in the C.Th., was actually produced in the 350s (Delmaire and Richard 2005: 432–​3). The ‘avenging sword’ is, in any case, a fourth-​century commonplace; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, 26.6.8, and the legal parallels collected by den Boeft et al. 2007: 145–​6. 73.  Paschoud 2001:  232, ‘une espèce d’ayatollah chrétien’. Cowardice:  Turcan 1982:  23–​4, 30 (cf. Hoheisel 1972: 22–​3); accusations of ‘intolerance’, ‘fanaticism’, and so forth abound: Annecchino 2012: 355, Fernández Ubiña 2008: 238–​9, Drake 1998: 133–​4, Barnard 1990: 520, Turcan 1982: 27, Pastorino 1956: 282, Geffcken 1978: 121–​ 2, Boissier 1903, 1:  68. Scriptural ignorance:  Turcan 1982:  22, Bartalucci 1967:  166–​7 n.  3; an ‘un-​Christian’ mindset: Annecchino 2012: 355–​8, Fernández Ubiña 2008: 239, 241, Pastorino 1956: 284. 74.  Forbes 1960: 149; cf. Turcan 1982: 30, Vogt 1968: 359, Hadot 1964: 385. 75.  Cf. Ziegler 1969: 957. 76.  E.g., 2.5, 18.2–​8. 77.  Di Santo 2012, demolishing the construal of Firmicus as an ‘Arian’ by Vermander 1980; on Firmicus’ theological knowledge, cf. Reatz 1920: 135–​46, Heuten 1938: 25–​6, Edwards 2015: 308. 78.  Firmicus’ usage of scripture has received brief and incomplete analysis from Dombart 1879: 375–​6, Martin 1923, and Vecchi 1957. In lieu of a more extensive treatment, I note non-​Cyprianic allusions at, e.g., 4.3 (the parables

On the Error of Profane Religions  59 Firmicus was familiar with a broad range of scriptural texts through individual or liturgical reading but had memorised or had to hand only Cyprian’s compendia, along perhaps with the Psalms and Epistle of Jeremiah, from which he quotes extensively.79 Firmicus was neither a great theologian nor an untutored catechumen zealous beyond his knowledge but an educated lay convert with an adequate, if unremarkable, knowledge of Christian teaching. Firmicus was also a writer with a definite theological vision. Although De errore never mentions Constantine, it is in effect an answer, some two decades after the fact, to the problems that Constantine had raised in the Letter to the Eastern Provincials. Firmicus tries to persuade Constantine’s sons that they really should (as their father had put it) ‘remove the customs of the temples and the power of darkness’ altogether. They had, after all, condemned sacrifices repeatedly but had not attempted to eliminate all of the many rites of the traditional cults; indeed, they had endorsed or expressly condoned certain features of polytheistic worship, at Rome and elsewhere, out of the apparent conviction that they could be stripped of their ‘superstitious’ elements.80 At the same time, Firmicus aims, by attacking the morality and efficacy of pagan cults and by exhorting the ‘profane’ to embrace the religion of Christ, to overcome the ‘wretched error’ that was (in his eyes and Constantine’s) harmful to the souls of the idolatrous and to the empire alike. Although the emperors play an important role in De errore, Firmicus’ vision, like Lactantius’ a generation before, is not restricted to the human, political plane. His goal is not just to change the law (or the emperors’ approach to its enforcement) but to end the dominion of the Devil over mankind, by persuasion as well as by the forceful destruction of the material fabric of traditional religion.81 Firmicus’ approach to pagan cults nonetheless differs profoundly from Lactantius’. His polemic adopts a broad geographic scope yet zeroes in on the public and private religious interests of contemporary Roman aristocrats. Though the ‘profane’ targets of De errore theoretically include all the inhabitants of the empire, their prototypes are the same senators to whom Firmicus had directed the Mathesis a few years before. Firmicus’ repeated attacks on Platonic and Stoic allegories suggest that he expected his readers to know a more recent and more of the lost sheep and the prodigal son), 9.3 (the Gerasene/​Gadarene demoniac), 13.1–​2 (Joseph in Egypt), 18.3 (Melchizedek and Abraham), and the complicated intertextual links in 15.4 (Mal. 3:19 [lxx], given in different form in Cyprian, Quir. 2.28, with echoes of Matt. 3:11–​12/​Luke 3:16–​17) and 19.6–​7 (Luke 12:35–​7, from Quir. 2.19, with Matt. 25:1–​13). 79.  Cf. Martin 1923. 80.  Cf. Watts 2015b: 87, ‘Constantius and Constans had carved out a position between the extreme calls of Christians for temple closings and the idea that traditional practices should continue without disruption’; Barnes 1989: 332–​3 stresses the reliance of Constans, in particular, on ‘the cooperation of the Senate’, including its many pagan members. For the idea that Firmicus was inviting the emperors to a more stringent policy, see 57 n. 72. 81.  For an especially clear-​cut recognition of Firmicus’ spiritual vision, see Quinn 2013, who provides a nuanced discussion of Firmicus’ attitude towards the Devil and demons; as Hübner and Wlosok 1989: 92 stress, ‘Belehrung und Bekehrung gehören immer noch zu den Absichten des Autors’ (cf. Opelt 1987).

60  Worshippers of the Gods Greek philosophical literature than Lactantius’ solidly Latin curriculum. In stark contrast to Lactantius’ insistent separation of the falsae religiones from the pretended wisdom of philosophy, Firmicus’ criticisms of philosophical exegesis of myth and cult assume throughout that the ‘profane religions’ do advance a theo­ logy and ethics or, rather, an anti-​theology and anti-​ethics. Their aim, he insists, is to teach mankind to commit crimes, fixate on death, and worship the Devil. The falsity of the profanae religiones only becomes fully apparent, however, when they are set  alongside the Christian truth. Despite Firmicus’ display of mythographic erudition, the Bible, not Classical literature, provides the crucial textual basis for his assessment of pagan cults. In the vivid euhemeristic accounts of the origins of individual ‘profane religions’ that take up most of the first half of the work (1–​17), Firmicus names only two pagan authors, Homer and Porphyry of Tyre, while Classical literature does not appear at all in the second half (18–​29).82 Instead, as Francesco Massa has underscored in an important article, Firmicus uses pagan ritual formulas and copious biblical quotations to set up contrasting pictures of Christianity and the profanae religiones as opposing religious systems, one established by God, the other counterfeited from it by the Devil.83 His view of polytheistic cults thus differs sharply from Lactantius’. For Firmicus, the many ways of worshipping the gods constitute something much closer to a single ‘religion’ in the word’s modern senses (discussed in the introduction) than they do for Lactantius; together, they form a ‘system of faith and worship’ whose teachings and immoral principles can be opposed to Christianity.84 Firmicus’ polemical method differs accordingly, pitting the diabolical religiones directly against Christian teaching. For both Lactantius and Firmicus, the divine truth is revealed in ‘mysteries’ (arcana or secreta);85 Firmicus, however, appeals directly to the divine ‘oracles’, without buttressing them with the Sibyls or other allegedly ancient authorities. The deceitful ‘persuasions’ of the Devil, exemplified in the pagan cultic symbola, can only be unmasked by the utterances of the true God. The argument is eased by the near disappearance of the names of particular divinities from Firmicus’ account. Where the Devil and his demonic minions had played only an occasional role in the first half of De errore, they are now revealed to be the true protagonists of the ‘profane cults’. By placing the Devil at the apex of all traditional cults, Firmicus subverts the henotheism typical of contemporary intellectual paganism. The supreme divinity can be found not through any pagan rites or doctrines but solely through the cross, sacraments, 82.  6.8, 13.4–​5. Turcan 1982: 49–​59 surveys Firmicus’ sources, which include Cicero, ND (e.g., in 4.1, 17.4), and ps.-​Quintilian, Declamatio 4 (in 17.1, 4; see Weyman 1898, Becker 1902, and Turcan 1982: 282, 284–​6). 83.  Massa 2013, with whose arguments my own are frequently in dialogue; Massa 2013: 499 offers a succinct formulation of Firmicus’ perspective on paganism and Christianity: ‘La religio profana si oppone dunque, come un insieme omogeneo e sistematico, all’unica vera dottrina, al solo vero insegnamento, quello dei cristiani.’ 84.  See, again, OED, s.v. ‘religion’, 4a, 5a; Massa 2013: 500 n. 28, also notes the contrast with Lactantius. 85. E.g., DI 2.9.1, ‘ad diuinam mundi fabricam reuertamur, de qua in arcanis religionis sanctae litteris traditur’ (discussion in Loi 1974–​5); Err. 19.5, 23.1, 28.2, 29.4.

On the Error of Profane Religions  61 and teaching of Christ, which Firmicus illustrates through an account of Christ’s resurrection and ascension that is no less dramatic than any of his renditions of pagan myths. Firmicus does not merely assert the superiority of Christianity; he attempts to demonstrate it through the same techniques that he used to denigrate pagan cults. ‘In Error, Therefore, Are the Nations’: Refuting the Gods in Post-​C onstantinian Rome De errore survives in a single manuscript of tenth-​century date, Vaticanus Palatinus Latinus 165.86 Written over a mid-​ninth-​century text from the monastery of Monte Amiata in Tuscany, the manuscript was discovered at Minden in Germany and published in 1562 by Matthias Flacius Illyricus, the Lutheran theologian and church historian.87 After the early seventeenth century, it disappeared from view, coming ultimately to Rome, where it was rediscovered by Conrad Bursian in 1856. By Flacius’ day, the opening two folios of the manuscript and some internal text had already been lost; the first side, to which Flacius made numerous, often ill-​conceived emendations in his edition and on the manuscript itself, was badly mutilated.88 The remnants of the text announce a complex of programmatic themes: the importance of ‘annual’ rites within traditional religions, the involvement of the Devil and his evil spirits in fomenting them, and the connection between cult and natural philosophy. Although Firmicus usually dismisses ‘natural-​philosophical explanations [physicae rationes]’ of mythology, he begins the body of his polemic with a scientific allegory of his own.89 ‘In error, therefore, are the nations’, he says, ‘ grant primacy of place to elements, still as if they were the supreme God, . . . since they do not know . . . that the elements themselves also have God as their maker, who them, establishing them individually in their places and orders’.90 Thus, as Firmicus explains, water was deified by the Egyptians, earth by the Phrygians, air by the ‘Assyrians and part of the Africans’, and fire by ‘the Persians and all the Magi who inhabit the borders of Persian territory’.91 86.  Digitised text at http://​digi.vatlib.it/​view/​MSS_​Pal.lat.165. Comprehensive discussion of the manuscript’s form, text, and history in Müller 1908, with summary at 92–​3. 87.  Iulij Firmici Materni v.c. De Errore profanarum religionum ad Constantium et Constantem Augustos liber: Nunquam antehac in lucem editus. Strasbourg: Paulus Machaeropoeus, 1562. 88.  For two reconstructions, see Turcan’s Budé (1982) and Ziegler’s Teubner (1907), which supplies an especially valuable apparatus and, for the opening paragraphs 1.1–​2.1, parallel texts from Flacius and the manuscript. On Flacius’ corrections and those added later in the manuscript by another early-​modern hand, see Müller 1908: 46–​50. 89.  On the concept of physica ratio, see Annecchino 1980. 90.  1.2 (in Turcan’s text), ‘in errore sunt itaque gentes elementis tribuant principatum adhuc quasi summum deum . . . nescientes . . . quod et ipsa habeant fabricatorem deum qui singula suis locis ordinibusque constituens ’. On the intellectual background, see Geffcken 1907: 49–​50. 91.  2–​5; the last quoted phrase, from 5.1, should perhaps be emended to read, ‘Persae et Magi omnes qui Persicae regionis incolunt fines’ (Mancini and Mari 2017).

62  Worshippers of the Gods The grand chronological and geographical sweep underscores the universal ambition of Firmicus’ polemic, whose first half will promise salvation to all repentant idolaters, even the effeminate priests of Caelestis,92 and culminate in an exhortation to the emperors to cleanse the entire ‘Roman world’ of the ‘deadly error of this presumption’.93 It also bears the stamp of the author’s urban Roman milieu. Firmicus focuses his attention primarily on cults that appealed to contemporary Romans. Of the ‘elemental’ deities attacked in the opening sections, only Caelestis (here a Syrian Venus conflated with the African Juno) was not prominent in fourth-​ century Rome,94 though she was still being publicly worshipped at Carthage during Augustine’s youth, some two and a half decades after the writing of De errore.95 The bulk of Firmicus’ attack falls squarely on divinities attested on the calendar of holidays from the Chronograph of 354, fourth-​century Roman inscriptions, and later Christian polemics written in the city. Besides Isis and Osiris (and Serapis, whom Firmicus treats separately), Magna Mater and Attis, and Mithras (paired with a triple goddess, probably Hecate, whose name is lost in a lacuna),96 Firmicus attacks Liber, Ceres, and Libera/​Proserpina; Sol; Venus and Adonis; and Vesta, the Penates, and the Palladium and its associated Minerva.97 He also expressly condemns the taurobolium and criobolium, sacrificial rites of the Magna Mater that had once been practised as far west as Spain but are best attested at Rome during the fourth century.98 In this context, the inclusion of Classical myths99 and of a few other divinities—​ Caelestis, Cyprian Venus,100 Jupiter Sabazius,101 and the Corybantes102—​strengthens the universalistic tenor of Firmicus’ polemic but hardly dilutes its Roman focus. It is thus an oversimplification to argue, as many scholars have, that De errore is an attack on ‘oriental’ cults, let alone to see Firmicus himself as the inventor of this anachronistic typology.103 Firmicus directs his attack not against any narrow 92.  4.3–​4. These may be male prostitutes attached to the Dea Syria, a plausible candidate for the Syrian ‘Venus Caelestis’ that Firmicus assimilates to the Carthaginian Juno (Lancellotti 2010: 94, 102). 93.  16.4, ‘ne diutius Romanum orbem praesumptionis istius error funestus immaculet’. 94.  Lancellotti 2010: 65–​8; the relatively scant Roman and Italian inscriptions are reproduced at 127–​8. 95.  Civ. dei 2.4. 96.  5.1, 3–​4. For detailed discussion of this passage, see Ziegler 1910. 97.  1–​9, 13, 14–​15. Many of these gods can be found on the calendar (on which see 53 n.  36)  or fourth-​ century inscriptions (86–​90); cf. Symmachus, Ep. 9.147–​8, Rel. 3, CCP, PV 113–​31 (attested in 380s Rome; see Corsano 2000: 39–​42 and, for speculations on its authorship, Poinsotte 1982), and CAS (also Roman; McLynn 2016, contra Cameron 2011: 324–​7). Evidence for the worship of Adonis is less secure than for the others, but PV 139–​40 associates him with the Vulcanalia, which was still performed in 354 (Inscr. Ital. XIII/​2: 253, ‘Vulcanalici’). 98. 27.8. 99. 12. 100.  Firmicus emphasises this Venus’ connection to prostitution (10.1) but does not mention the Veneralia (Inscr. Ital. XIII/​2: 245), which was frequented by prostitutes (Schilling 1982: 389–​95). 101.  No inscriptions to Sabazius (10.2) postdate 259 (Lane 1989: 20–​1), though Iamblichus, Myst. 3.9–​10, also appears to envision an active cult. 102.  Firmicus associates the Corybantes with the Cabiri, whose worship, he implies, is no longer current (thus, ‘quondam’, ‘supplicabant’, 11.2). 103. A  classic statement in Cumont 1929:  188–​9. For more recent examples, see Busine 2009, Bussières 2007: 58, Sanzi 2006: 71–​2 n. 5, Turcan 1996: 8. Massa 2013: 499–​500 recognises that Firmicus casts Err. as ‘una confutazione globale dei culti tradizionali dell’Impero’ but persists in using the concept of ‘oriental’ religions even so.

On the Error of Profane Religions  63 category of ‘eastern’ religions but against a broad array of religious practices, which centre upon, but are not limited to, those in which contemporary Roman pagans were involved.104 The terms of his polemic differ noticeably from those of the Tetrarchic-​era Latin apologists. Where Arnobius and especially Lactantius acknowledged the privileged place of public religion in contemporary society and imperial policy, Firmicus grants no special recognition to the civic sacra.105 Instead, he attacks official and unofficial rituals on the same terms and with equal insistency, even though he had recognised the traditional division between public and private rites in the Mathesis.106 His account of the ‘annual’ rites of the Egyptian and Phrygian gods and of Liber, Ceres, and Libera/​Proserpina is a case in point. Firmicus sets the spring festival cycle of Attis and the Isia and Hilaria, all public holidays at Rome, alongside the annual celebrations of Demeter and Persephone held at Syracuse and Henna (reputedly the goddesses’ oldest cult site), the Eleusinian mysteries, and a ‘biennial consecration’ of Cretan Liber Pater, the Dionysus Zagreus of Orphic mythology and Platonic philosophy.107 In so doing, he not only mingles private, initiatory rituals with public celebrations but also glosses over the fact that annual ceremonies of all these divinities featured on the Roman civic-​religious calendar. Firmicus’ reasons are polemical, at least in part. As his account of the suppression of the Bacchanals in 186 bc insists, the many cults of the Roman world are interlopers in the capital, foreign rites rather than respectable, legally sanctioned pursuits. During Postumius’ consulship, Firmicus asserts, ‘there were still intact morals in the city of Rome, and no one sought after immigrant superstitions on account of his dissolute morals.’108 By ignoring the legal recognition that had long been accorded the worship of Isis and of the Magna Mater, despite their still-​ ambiguous social status,109 and overlooking the Roman festivals of Ceres and her consorts, Firmicus can shift the reader’s attention from the traditional authority of Rome’s religious traditions to their allegedly disreputable origins. Only when he arrives at the Palladium and Minerva, the final objects of his criticism, does he admit the antiquity and social respectability of traditional religion. Their cult went back, he acknowledges, beyond the Gallic sack of Rome to Troy itself and 104.  Only Adonis (9.1) is expressly described as originating in the East. 105.  On Lactantius and public religion, see 21; cf. Arnobius, Adv. nat. 5.24, ‘sed non sunt, inquit, rei publicae nostrae haec sacra.’ 106.  Math. 2.30.10. 107.  ‘Annual’ rites are mentioned in 2.3, 8; 3.1, 3–​4; 6.5; 7.4; 8.4. Egyptian and Phrygian festivals: Inscr. Ital. XIII/​2: 243, 257–​8, with Turcan 1982: 177–​9, 190, and Salzman 1990: 164–​76. The Sicilian cults of Demeter and Kore (7.4–​5) seem to have lacked mysteries (a mystes of the goddesses in Sicily appears only at Plutarch, Dio 56.4–​6; so Hinz 1998: 30); for their antiquity, cf. Cicero, Verr. 2.4.106–​10 and Valerius Maximus, 1.1.1. The Ludi Cereales, the Cerealia, and the Liberalia (on which see Bruhl 1953: 15–​16, Le Bonniec 1958: 312–​41, and cf. Scheid 1995 on cults performed Graeco ritu) are listed on the Chronograph (Inscr. Ital. XIII/​2: 243, ‘Liberalici’, 245, ‘Ludi Cerealici’ and ‘Cerealici’). Dionysus Zagreus: 6.1–​5, 7.7, with Massa 2014: 104–​6 and Jáuregui 2010: 155–​9. 108.  6.9, ‘erant adhuc in urbe Roma integri mores nec quisquam peregrinas superstitiones dissolutis moribus appetebat.’ On Firmicus’ version of the events, see Opelt 1968. 109.  Magna Mater: Beard 2012, Latham 2012; Isis: Versluys 2013: 250–​7.

64  Worshippers of the Gods is a matter of ‘pontifical law’.110 He turns this potentially damaging admission, however, into an opportunity to argue that the Palladium was able to save neither Rome nor Troy, to mock the ‘stupid Trojans’, who (he claims) bought the idol from a Scythian huckster, Abaris, and to demonstrate the enormity of the public consecration of a woman who (he says) killed her own father, Pallas.111 Even solidly Roman cult furnishes only further proof of the inefficacy, cruelty, and obscenity of the ‘profane religions’. Another, deeper reason underpins Firmicus’ choice to conflate official and unofficial religion. In contrast to his Tetrarchic-​era predecessors, who were responding to violent, official promotion of public cultic practice, Firmicus is attacking a thoroughly intellectualised conception of pagan religion, in which the divisions between public and private practice are less relevant. Like Lactantius, Firmicus makes extensive use of broadly ‘euhemeristic’ explanations of traditional mythology. However, he never attempts to advance a single, coherent explanation for the origins of the gods.112 An organising system such as Euhemerus’ demythologisation of the family of Saturn and Jupiter is absent from his polemic, which juxtaposes contradictory explanations for the origins of traditional gods. Firmicus makes no attempt to explain how, for example, the Phrygian goddess can be both the earth herself, deified as ‘the mother of all’, and a human queen palliated, after her own murder of an unwilling lover, by the sycophantic offer of a temple and ‘annual sacra’.113 The unifying thread of his exposition is provided not by any single explanatory theory but by the conviction, relentlessly pursued through the first sixteen sections, that the rites and myths of the ‘profane religions’ are intended to instruct their adherents in moral depravity. Thus, Firmicus argues that the annual rites of Isis and Osiris and of the Magna Mater and Attis are meant not to allegorise agriculture but to perpetuate the dramas of lust and murder from which they arose.114 The worship of Mithras, in turn, is devoted to darkness, since Mithraists meet in caves,115 while the ‘biennial consecration’ of Cretan Liber Pater and the annual rites of Ceres and Libera/​ Proserpina are commemorations of murder and rape, not high-​minded symbolic instructions in sun worship or the concept of the ‘undivided and divided intellect’.116 A host of other divinities—​Venus and Adonis, the Corybantes, Cyprian Venus, Apollo, even Jupiter himself—​are worshipped because of acts of lust and murder, which their example encourages their followers to imitate.117 110.  15.3, 16.2. 111.  15.1–​3, 16.2. The link with Abaris is otherwise unattested (Turcan 1982: 273). 112.  Turcan 1982: 34 puts it bluntly: ‘Certains ont de l’ordre dans leur désordre. Chez Firmicus Maternus, on trouve beaucoup de désordre dans le cadre très schématique d’un ordre apparent’. 113.  3.1. Firmicus’ arguments can be harmonised, as Edwards 2015: 311 shows, but he does not do so himself. 114.  2.6–​8,  3.3–​5. 115.  5.2. A profoundly unfair accusation against a cult, one of whose ‘axioms’ was Deus sol invictus Mithras (Beck 2006: 5). 116.  6.5,  7.8–​9. 117.  9–​16.

On the Error of Profane Religions  65 Firmicus presents this idea most explicitly in section 12, at the end of an extended survey of the most lurid elements of Classical mythology: Move your temples to the theatres instead, so that the secrets of those cults of yours might be handed down on the stages; and, so that wickedness may leave nothing out, make actors your priests. No worthier place for those religions could be found. There, let the vile crowd sing the loves of the gods; there, let their misfortunes and deaths be commemorated in dance. There, a corrupted mind is more easily taught both adultery and crime by impure and criminal teachers through the example of the gods.118 Christians often complained about idolatrous stage shows, yet Firmicus’ targets are myth and temple ritual, rather than the theatrical performances denounced by Tertullian, Lactantius, and others.119 Unlike Lactantius, who spoke of a polytheistic religious ‘teaching’ only in the context of anti-​Christian violence, Firmicus accepts the premise, vital to pagan philosophical allegoresis, that the cults and myths of traditional religions really are intended to instruct their adherents.120 He does not dismiss the connection between philosophy and ritual, as Lactantius had, but instead subverts it. Rather than leading to any profound philosophical or spiritual truths, the profanae religiones corrupt their adherents with immoral examples and perverted rituals. For Lactantius, the public cults were false because they had nothing to do with sapientia;121 for Firmicus, pretend wisdom is all too deeply implicated in the practices and stories of ‘profane religions’. Firmicus’ approach implies that his targets are men interested in philosophical approaches to the worship of the gods, men, that is, much like the intended readers of the Mathesis or like Firmicus himself in his astrological days. Although scholars have often seen a strong Neoplatonic influence on Firmicus and his audience, the specifically Plotinian or Porphyrian elements of his thought are slight.122 In addition to On Philosophy from Oracles, which he quotes in De errore and perhaps cites obliquely in the Mathesis,123 Firmicus shows clear knowledge only of the Life of Plotinus, on which he bases an account of Plotinus’ death that may allude to the Enneads (albeit not in any depth), and possibly the Life of

118.  12.9, ‘ad theatrum potius templa transferte, ut in scaenis religionum istarum secreta tradantur, et ut nihil praetermittat improbitas, histriones facite sacerdotes. alter dignior locus religionibus istis inueniri non poterit. illic amores deorum uilis turba decantet, illic casus mortesque saltentur. illic deorum exemplis ab impuris et facinerosis magistris melius mens perdita et adulterium docetur et facinus.’ 119.  E.g., Tertullian, Spect. 4–​13, Cyprian, Don. 8, Lactantius, DI 6.20.34–​6, Augustine, Civ. dei 2.4, 8–​14. Err. is absent from the survey of ancient Christian attitudes towards the theatre by Lugaresi 2008. 120.  DI 5.11.18. Brisson 2004: 41–​106 surveys ancient philosophical allegoresis of mythology; cf. Van Nuffelen 2011b on Roman-​era philosophical views of religion prior to Plotinus. 121.  DI 3.11.3, 4.3.8–​10. 122.  Firmicus’ audience:  Turcan 1982:  28, Busine 2009. Firmicus himself:  e.g., Kahlos 2009a:  69, Turcan 1996: 8, Monat 1992–​7, 1: 21. 123. 13.4; Math. 7.1.1, with Beatrice 2005: 155–​7.

66  Worshippers of the Gods Pythagoras.124 He does discuss Platonist theories, such as an explanation of the triple goddess as the three parts of the soul, but his physicae rationes reveal no overall homology to the extant allegories of Porphyry125 and sometimes show a clear debt to older Stoic ideas.126 Thus, his allegorical association of Juno with the air, which resembles an identification advanced by Porphyry, draws directly on the speech of Balbus in Cicero’s De natura deorum.127 Both Porphyry and Firmicus connect Attis to vegetation, but Porphyry’s identification of Dionysus and Kore with other vegetative ‘powers’ in On Images differs radically from Firmicus’ astrological allegory.128 Another Porphyrian fragment associates Dionysus with the sun, as Firmicus does, but connects this idea to a triadic theory that has no analogue in Firmicus’ works.129 The summus deus of the Mathesis is not a member of a Neoplatonist triad but the supreme God of a more generalised henotheism.130 Firmicus’ arguments are firmly eclectic. Like Minucius Felix long before him, he was targeting not convinced adherents of a particular philosophical school but educated pagans who had dabbled in philosophical literature, even as he himself had as an astrologer.131 This conclusion coheres well with the idea that Firmicus aimed his work at contemporary Roman senators. As ­chapter 3 will show, an aristocrat with a smattering of modern Platonism and an enthusiasm not only for solidly Roman, ‘pontifical’ religion but also for the exotic initiatory cults of Greece and the lands farther to the east is a type well attested in fourth-​century Rome. Firmicus ad­dresses such senators directly at 18.6, during an extended attack on a ritual of Attis:  ‘You who walk in a temple so dressed in the toga praetexta, you who shine in purple, whose head is weighed down by gold or laurel, a shameful neediness follows your error’.132 Such a man will, Firmicus says, burn in hell like the biblical Dives, who neglected the godly beggar Lazarus. Firmicus’ imagined pagan worshipper is someone of wealth and high political status, either a curule magistrate clad in the traditional (though now largely outmoded)133 toga praetexta or, more probably, 124.  Firmicus and Porphyry:  Turcan 1982:  54–​6. Pythagoras:  Math. 1.7.10–​12, with Monat 1992–​7, 1:  149 n. 35. Plotinus: Math. 1.7.14–​22, with Henry 1934: 25–​43. 125.  Pace Busine 2009: 423–​6, who sees Err. as a response to Imag. and other Porphyrian works. Triple goddess: as 62 n. 96. 126.  On Firmicus’ engagement with Stoicism, cf. Busine 2009: 418–​20. 127.  4.1, ‘nam hunc eundem id est aerem, nomine Iunonis . . . consecrarunt. Iunonem sane ne et hinc deesset incestum, Iouis uolunt ex sorore coniugem factam. effeminarunt sane hoc elementum nescioqua ueneratione commoti. num qui aer interectus est inter mare et caelum, effeminatis eum sacerdotum uocibus prosecuntur?’ Cicero, ND 2.66, ‘aer autem, ut Stoici disputant, interiectus inter mare et caelum Iunonis nomine consecratur, quae est soror et coniux Iouis . . . effeminarunt autem eum Iunonique tribuerunt’. Cf. Porphyry, Imag. fr. 355 Smith. 128.  3.2, 7.7; Porphyry, Imag. fr. 358 Smith. 129.  Porphyry, fr. 477 Smith. 130.  Cf. Chapot 2001: 69–​71; pace, e.g., Caseau 2007: 42 (‘une vision néoplatonicienne de la divinité’) and Lenski 2012: 477 (‘a Neoplatonic Highest God’). 131.  Henry 1934:  43, ‘Porphyre écrit en philosophe et pour des philosophes. Firmicus écrit pour le grand public. C’est un publiciste, il cherche l’effet.’ Cf. Aland 1983 on Minucius Felix. 132.  18.6, ‘qui sic in templo praetextatus incedis, qui fulges purpura, cuius caput aut auro premitur aut lauro, errorem tuum turpis egestas insequitur’. 133.  Delbrueck 1929: 52.

On the Error of Profane Religions  67 a quindecimuir participating in a taurobolium.134 In either case, the adherents of Attis are not just peasants in far-​off Phrygia but the cream of Roman society, men whose participation in pagan processions and secretive rites was noticed, to the chagrin of Christian polemicists, by their peers in the Senate and by the people of a watchful city.135 In this context, Firmicus’ first appeal for the destruction of the profanae religiones appears all the more audacious.136 He is urging the emperors to abolish not just cults in distant lands but rites that continued to enjoy the patronage of Roman senators. This was a move that Constans had, despite his firm stance against sacrifices, refused to make, not least, perhaps, because of his need for support from pagan senators.137 Abolition, Firmicus assures Constantius and Constans, is for the pagans’ own good; by applying the necessary remedies, the emperors will cleanse the Romanus orbis of the stain of idolatry, liberating their subjects from the fate that awaits men whose ‘miserable mind learns both to worship and to commit acts of parricide, incest, and death from the ritual of their rites’.138 Not only has imperial support for Christianity made it possible for Firmicus to envision religious legislation as an instrument of Christian salvation, but the primary victims of pagan religion have also changed. Now the greatest harm polytheistic cults do is not to persecuted Christians, whom Firmicus names only in a blast at the injustice of ‘sacrilegious tyrants’, but to their former persecutors, the worshippers of the gods.139 The error and attendant corruption of the ‘profane’ themselves is both the source and the chief manifestation of the danger that the profanae religiones pose to the Roman world. Despite their shared conviction that the defeat of traditional religion is a fundamentally theological and spiritual problem, Firmicus’ perception of the social position of the profanae religiones had changed radically from Lactantius’, in ways less obvious but no less profound than his conviction that the emperors could bring about a lasting religious metamorphosis of the empire over which God had placed them. Christianity and the ‘Devil’s Discipline’ Firmicus’ emphasis on the intellectual and moral content of traditional religion leads him to develop a new approach to anti-​pagan polemic, which treats Christianity and traditional cult as opposing theological and ritual systems.140 This is a decisive departure from previous apologetic practice. As we saw in ­chapter 1, 134.  Quindecimuiri had the right to wear the toga praetexta: Mommsen 1887–​8, 1: 421–​2. 135.  Two later fourth-​century examples in CAS and CCP; see McLynn 2016, Trout 2016, Cameron 2011: 273–​ 319, with further discussion, below, 96–​99, 1​ 60. 136. 16. 137.  Barnes 1989: 331–​3; cf. Barnes 1995. 138. 16.3. 139. 12.9. 140.  Cf. Massa 2013: esp. 499–​500.

68  Worshippers of the Gods Lactantius had made the traditional Latin apologetic claim that Christianity was the sole true religion a key part of his polemic against the publica sacra. For Lactantius, the falsity of traditional cults was apparent, above all, in their separation of worship from the pursuit of wisdom; by denying God’s status as pater et dominus, ‘false religions’ lost any transcendent focus and were evacuated of real, personal devotion.141 Although Firmicus does not use the phrase uera religio, he shares his predecessor’s conviction. Pagan cults are the product of deception and folly, but Christian doctrine and practice are confirmed by ‘proofs’ (documenta) and ‘precedents’ (exemplis) and please the supreme God.142 Rather than simply excluding the intellectual and spiritual aspects of religion, however, Firmicus’ ‘profane cults’ pervert them, holding out to their adherents a distorted mirror of Christian revelation and aping the Christian sacraments, which provide salvation and divine favour. To support this argument, Firmicus makes extensive use of biblical citations and paraphrases. He is the first Latin writer to do so in a work that addresses pagans, except for Cyprian, whose dependence on the Old Testament in Ad Demetrianum had provoked mockery from pagans and criticism from Lactantius, who self-​consciously distanced himself from his revered predecessor’s method by invoking Classical texts and respectable ‘ancient’ authorities, the Sibyls and Hermes Trismegistus.143 Firmicus, by contrast, neither apologises for his use of the Bible nor masks his direct reliance on Christian revelation. Instead, he allows the ‘oracles’ of God to speak for themselves against the ‘persuasions’ and ‘fabrications’ of profane religion, in which they are represented as in a kind of photographic negative.144 Both men shared the conviction that Christian doctrine reveals the true workings of pagan religion, but Firmicus, unlike Lactantius, situated his polemic within an intellectual terrain explicitly defined by Christianity. Where Lactantius buttressed his firmly Christian demonology with citations not from the Bible but from Hesiod, Plato, Hermes, the Sibyls, and Vergil,145 Firmicus appeals to the scriptures to establish the link between pagan cults and evil spirits. Thus, he explains the snake-​handling rituals of Jupiter Sabazius as worship of the ‘deadly serpent’ who first deceived mankind, and he connects Mars’ destruction of Adonis in porcine form to the Synoptic account of the Gerasene demoniac, whose indwelling demons Christ drove into a herd of pigs.146 His only invocation 141.  DI 3.10–​11, 4.3–​4, 5.19–​21. 142. 22.2. 143.  Cyprian’s use of scripture: Gallicet 1982 and Fredouille 2003: 38–​44. Lactantius and Cyprian: DI 5.1.24–​ 28, 5.4.3–​8; McGuckin 1988 exaggerates the negativity of Lactantius’ attitude towards Cyprian, upon whose style he lavishes high praise. 144.  Divine revelation, oracles, etc.:  e.g., 18.4–​5, 7, 19.2–​6, 21.1. Persuasiones:  4.4, 7.9, 8.2, 9.2, 11.5, 12.7, 15.4, 19.1, 22.2, 23.3, 26.1–​2, 27.4, 28.10; commenta (never neutral or positive as at Math. 1.7.10, 8.33.3; cf. Dressel 1882: 14): 5.2, 4, 6.9, 7.7, 17.4, 27.2 (cf. 24.9). 145.  DI 2.14.1–​17.5; on Lactantius’ demonology, see Russell 1981: 149–​59 and Schneweis 1944: 81–​160. 146.  10.2, 9.3. Mark 5:1–​20, Luke 8:26–​39, Matt. 8:28–​34 (in the last account, two ‘Gadarene’ demoniacs; Firmicus’ description is too general to be linked to a specific Synoptic narrative).

On the Error of Profane Religions  69 of a pagan demonological authority, Porphyry’s On Philosophy from Oracles, rounds out a biblical account of the origins of Serapis, who, Firmicus says, was actually the patriarch Joseph.147 The Christian scriptures do not simply convey the true revelation of God; they make the spiritual underpinnings of the ‘profane religions’ visible. This conviction allows Firmicus not only to unmask the ‘diabolical’ workings of traditional cults but, even more important, to link particular pagan rituals to analogous Christian doctrines and sacraments and so employ the rites and myths of ‘profane’ cult to point towards the true path to the summus deus. This approach plays a key role in the second half of De errore, but Firmicus already uses it to frame his arguments in his opening critique of the Isis cult. For Firmicus, the Isiac Inuentio ceremony, the joyous re-​enactment of Isis’ rediscovery of Osiris with which the ritual lamentation of the autumn festival cycle concluded, is merely the last, most execrable act in a sordid drama of which Isis, Osiris, and Typhon (Set) are the dramatis personae.148 By inducing the worshippers to ‘send funereal sacrifices year by year to [their] kings’, it distracts them from the ‘light’, ‘liberty’, ‘salvation’, and ‘forgiveness won through repentance of past crimes’ that the summus deus offers them.149 Rightly understood, it also mirrors Christian revelation. Firmicus exhorts the Isiacs: Weep rather that you are erring, and bewail your error with lamentations ever renewed. Do not look for another’s funeral in annual rites; rather, prepare a source of solace for your own funerals, year by year. . . . Seek, rather, the hope of salvation; seek the beginning of light; seek what may commend or return you to the supreme God, and, when you have found the true way of salvation, rejoice and then . . . shout, ‘We have found it; let us rejoice together!’ since you were freed, after your repentance, from these calamities by the indulgence of the supreme God.150 Firmicus reworks the imagery and even the formula (εὑρήκαμεν, συγχαίρωμεν) of the Isiac rituals to advance his Christian message, substituting penance for Isiac lamentation and the pursuit of divine grace for the quest for the murdered Osiris.151 All of the elements that he has assigned to Egyptian religion find their true meaning in Christianity. Thus, water is not the Nile but baptism, through

147.  13; the identification is widespread in ancient Christian and Jewish authors (Mussies 1979). 148.  2.1, ‘in sacris suis quae mysteria uocant addunt tragica funera  .  .  .  Isis soror est, Osyris frater, Tyfon maritus’; on the Isia and Hilaria, see Salzman 1990: 169–​73. 149. 2.4. 150.  2.8–​9, ‘deflete potius quod erratis, et errorem uestrum restauratis semper luctibus plangite. nolite annuis sacris quaerere funus alienum. uestris potius funeribus parate solacia per annos singulos. . . . quaere potius spem salutis, quaere exordium lucis, quaere quod te summo deo aut commendet aut reddat, et cum ueram uiam salutis inueneris gaude et . . . proclama: εὑρήκαμεν συγχαίρωμεν, cum ab his calamitatibus post paenitentiam tuam summi dei fueris indulgentia liberatus.’ 151.  Cf. Turcan 1982: 188.

70  Worshippers of the Gods which ‘salutary sanity is irrigated . . . over the old scars upon the conscience’;152 the fruits of the earth are not symbolised by Osiris but ‘bestowed by the divine liberality of the Supreme God’;153 and lamentation accompanies the repentance through which the pursuit of divinity reaches its true end. Firmicus is not, therefore, simply explaining the cult of Isis through Christian revelation and ritual but using them to turn polemic into protreptic. Exposition of ‘profane’ religion has become proclamation of Christianity. In the second half of De errore, Firmicus applies this same method on a grander scale, presenting a new exposition of pagan religion structured around liturgical utterances (symbola, responsa, signa) ‘that the discipline of the Devil has handed down . . . in the assemblies of those sacrilegious acts’.154 The aim of this exposition is not simply to describe and refute pagan rites but to persuade Firmicus’ readers of the superiority of Christianity, for which they serve as a foil.155 He thus uses various pagan symbola to identify the god of the profanae religiones as the Devil156 and to draw out particular elements of Christian teaching and practice that, he says, ‘profane’ rites have copied: the Eucharist,157 spiritual light, the divine bridegroom,158 God-​as-​rock,159 the ‘horns’ of the cross,160 salvation from death,161 the anointing of Christ,162 the wood of the cross, and Christ as sacrificial ram (aries) or lamb (agnus).163 The claim that polytheistic myths and rituals ape divine revelation goes back to Justin Martyr and Tertullian, but Firmicus develops the idea in much greater length and detail.164 His argument stresses the spiritual supremacy, rather than the chronological priority, of Christian revelation and sacraments. Although the Devil’s schemes belong within a historical arc beginning with the deception of Adam and Eve in Genesis, Firmicus does not, unlike Tertullian or Justin (or Lactantius), explicitly argue that the sheer antiquity of Christian religion, traced back to the patriarchs, proves it superior to pagan cults.165 As in the polemic 152.  2.5; on water, especially that of the Nile, in the Isiac cult, see Wild 1981: 149–​60. 153.  2.6–​8. 154.  18.1, ‘habent enim propria signa, propria responsa, quae illis in istorum sacrilegiorum coetibus diaboli tradidit disciplina.’ 155.  Cf. the appeals to pagans to convert at, e.g., 18.2, 8, 19.2, 7, 21.6, 24.1. 156.  21.2; 26. 157. 18. 158. 19. 159. 20. 160.  21.4–​6. Not, perhaps, an obvious theme to a modern reader of the Gospels, these feature in, e.g., Justin, Dial. 91.2; Tertullian, Aduersus Marcionem 3.18.3–​4. 161.  22.1–​2,  24. 162.  22.3–​23.3. 163.  27 (without a symbolon, though Firmicus cites a number of rites that involve trees or wooden effigies, to which he connects the offering of a ram). 164. Justin, Apol. I 54, 62, 64, 66, Dial. 69–​70; Tertullian, Praesc. 40, Cor. 15.3–​4; Reed 2004:  164–​8, Beskow 1994. 165.  Pace Turcan 1982: 45. To 25.1–​2, contrast, e.g., Justin, Apol. I 54.5–​6; Tertullian, Apol. 19 (including the so-​called Fragmentum Fuldense, on which see the speculations of Garstad 2002 and Becker 1954: 149–​62; cf. the summary of scholarship in Georges 2011: 1–​8); Lactantius, DI 2.13.

On the Error of Profane Religions  71 against Isis, he emphasises instead the spiritual goods claimed by ‘profane’ cults but actually, he says, supplied by Christianity: divine food, true light, entry into heaven, and so forth.166 Here, however, the ritual and mythological particularities of the individual cults largely disappear, to be replaced by a relentless focus on the pagan symbola and the Christian scriptures, which function as opposing systems of diabolical and divine revelation; only one god, Attis, is named in any of the symbola, and that symbolon is the only one supplemented with a Latin version, which omits the name.167 All but stripped of their identifying features, the polytheistic ‘assemblies’ of the Roman world are shown to be vehicles for a single ‘profane religion’ stolen from ‘the holy and venerable oracles of the prophets’ by the Devil, through whose baleful ‘persuasions’ they damn their deluded adherents.168 Since the falsehood of the Devil’s persuasiones only becomes apparent when they are set alongside the scriptures, Firmicus’ polemic against ‘profane religion’ is inevitably an exposition of the Christian religion as well. Even more emphatically than in the first half of De errore, his aim is not simply polemical but is persuasive and protreptic. Like Lactantius, Firmicus assigns a purely preparatory role to human, rational proofs of the errors of traditional religion, which can only clear the path for ‘the mercy of God in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ to ‘raise up the fallen, call the fleeing to himself, strengthen the hesitant, correct the erring, and, what is greatest, bestow life on the dying’.169 In addition to his running exposition of Christian theological motifs, therefore, Firmicus not only summarises the prophetica disciplina for enquirers into the Christian Heilsgeschichte.170 He also delivers an account of Christ’s passion, resurrection, and ascension written in the same dramatic, visual terms from which his accounts of the myths of Isis, Liber Pater, and Ceres had drawn their power.171 ‘Learn, learn what you do not know; learn what you do not see!’ Firmicus exhorts his readers. ‘Christ, the son of God, truly bore all these things, to liberate the human race from the snares of death, to lift the yoke of harsh captivity, to return man to the Father’.172 Firmicus recounts the three-​day struggle between Christ and ‘the tyranny of death’, after which Christ ‘shut the doors of hell’ and ascended on high, leading ‘the crowd of just men and saints’ in his train.173 As in other ancient accounts of the harrowing of hell and the ascension, Firmicus 166.  18.2; 19.1–​2, 7. 167.  18.1; particular cults reappear in 26.2 and 27.1–​2 but receive no detailed exposition. 168.  18.1, 21.1; 19.1, ‘quid sic miserum hominem per abrupta praecipitas, calamitosa persuasio? quid illi falsae spei polliceris insignia?’ For a similar interpretation of Firmicus’ portrayal of profana religio, and especially of his decision to omit the names of the gods whose cults he is attacking, see Massa 2013: 499–​507, but note that Firmicus nowhere emphasises (as Massa does) the specifically written character of his pagan symbola. 169.  8.5; reasoning and error: 17.4. 170.  Cf. 24.9, 25.4. 171.  24.1–​8. 172.  24.1–​2, ‘disce, disce quod nescis; disce quod non uides. Christus filius dei ut humanum genus a mortis laqueis liberaret uere omnia ista sustinuit, ut captiuitatis durae iugum tolleret, ut hominem patri redderet’. 173.  24.2, 4.

72  Worshippers of the Gods weaves his description of the aduentus of Christ in heaven around quotations from Psalm 23 (lxx).174 In a series of antiphonal questions and answers made up of verses from the psalm, Christ commands the angels to open the gates of heaven to him, as they, ignorant of the timing of the incarnation, marvel at his coming.175 At last, the gates are opened, and Christ is exalted to ‘the throne of the kingdom’, from which he rules forever with God the Father.176 Firmicus’ description of Christ’s exaltation emphasises the superiority of Christianity in precisely those moral and theological areas in which he has been attacking pagan religion. Christ provides the victory over death that is not enjoyed even by the divinities of the pagan sacra, whose ‘wretched crowd’ of worshippers stands in sharp contrast to the blessed ‘crowd of just men and saints’ who have followed Christ up to heaven.177 Pagans flee both spiritual and physical light, and their myths drag down the Sun itself into earthly sufferings,178 but Christians worship ‘Christ, the omnipotent God’, who rose, after his victorious suffering, ‘adorned with rays more splendid than the sun’.179 Hellfire awaits the Devil and those who, deceived by his ‘persuasions’, continue to adhere to counterfeit sacra. ‘If you ask after the day of the Devil’s death, he was stricken when he saw the God-​Man, when the divinity of Christ appeared to us’, Firmicus says. ‘After that day, he who has followed the teaching of this serpent must die with the serpent.’180 Christ, by contrast, will not only spare his worshippers from torment, just as he liberated the patriarchs from hell and rewarded their righteous deeds at long last, but he will also conduct them into ‘the bridal chamber of heaven’, from which they will behold the ‘palace of the cosmos’.181 Christ alone, not the many-​ headed hydra of pagan cult, provides the path to heaven and the summus deus that Firmicus had once traced in the stars for the senators of Rome. Offering light, salvation, and immortality as the antidote to the ‘parricide, incest, and death’ spread by the venomous lies of the ancient serpent, the foundational story of the Christian religion is Firmicus’ answer to the myths and rites of pagan religion. His extensive reliance on scriptural texts, far from reflecting intellectual vacuity or a lack of Christian conviction, is actually part of a concerted polemical and evangelistic strategy that aims to unveil the deeper spiritual forces at work in ‘profane religions’ and to direct his readers to the Christian realities still reflected in the Devil’s distortions. De errore supplies a spiritual and

174.  24.2–​6. Cf., e.g., Ambrose, De fide 4.1; discussion and further citations in Kähler 1958: 50–​64. 175.  24.4–​5. 176. 24.6. 177.  24.4; 18.1. 178.  5.2 (cf. 19.1); 8.1–​3. 179.  24.4, ‘omnipotens deus Christus splendidioribus solis radiis adornatur’ (probably a genitive of comparison, on which see Wölfflin 1892; cf. the translation of Heuten 1938: 102). 180.  26.3–​4, ‘si mortis eius diem quaeritis, tunc percussus est cum hominem deum uidit, cum Christi nobis numen apparuit. post illum diem qui serpentis huius secutus fuerit institutum, necesse est ut cum serpente moriatur.’ 181.  25.3; 19.6.

On the Error of Profane Religions  73 theological solution to what is, for Firmicus, at root a spiritual and theological problem:  the nexus of false belief and false cult in the religiosity of his fellow senators and of many others in the contemporary empire. In formulating an answer to senatorial pagan piety, Firmicus has developed a new, explicitly Christian way of conceptualising the traditional religions of the Roman world. Eschatology and Imperial Action Firmicus’ polemic offers a glimpse not only of contemporary senatorial religiosity and of a developing polemical tradition at Rome, both of which c­ hapter 3 will bring into sharper focus, but also of the depth to which the first generation of pro-​Christian imperial rule had reshaped Christian conceptions of the religious future of the Roman world. Despite their shared deployment of apologetic tropes such as pagan immorality, the mortality of the gods, and the inanity of philosophical allegoresis of mythology, there is a deep divide between Firmicus’ and Lactantius’ understandings of the place of traditional religion within the contemporary empire and the trajectory of human spiritual history. Lactantius emphasised the longue durée, describing the development of the falsae religiones through an extended historical and political process; by placing the origins of the publica sacra within a concrete historical and geographical context and arguing that they had no transcendent content, his euhemeristic account relativised traditional public religiosity on both chronological and spiritual grounds. The narrative of the misdeeds of Jupiter and his family not only allowed Lactantius to connect the diverse public cults into a coherent scheme; when embedded within his wider eschatological and cosmological narrative, it also helped to rationalise the social position that they had held throughout Graeco-​Roman history and still held under the Tetrarchs. For Lactantius, the practice of ‘false religion’ could be explained through Christian truth and individual cultores deorum liberated by the teaching and baptism of Christ, but the public cults were too deeply implicated in the human condition to be eradicated without direct and decisive divine intervention. For Firmicus, by contrast, the many profanae religiones, public and private, are connected not by a common history, an overarching narrative of which he never tries to construct, but by their shared spiritual origin as diabolical counterfeits of Christianity.182 Lactantius had likewise credited the public cults to the inspiration of demons, ‘whose chief is the devil’,183 but Firmicus’ ‘profane religions’ are reducible, in a way Lactantius’ public cults had not been, to a single system,

182.  Cf. Turcan 1982:  44, ‘L’institution et l’organisation des mystères païens sont données comme un vaste complot diabolique destiné à contrecarrer le plan divin de rédemption en plagiant et en paganisant les “signes” de la revelation.’ 183.  DI 2.14.5, ‘quorum idem diabolus est princeps’.

74  Worshippers of the Gods with a coherent (if wholly plagiarised) theology and a practice that reveals the working of a single, diabolical mind.184 Where the separation between polytheistic cult and philosophy had proved, to Lactantius’ mind, the deficiency of both as routes to true religio and sapientia, for Firmicus it is precisely the philosophical content of ‘profane religion’ that reveals its true weakness. As an astrologer, he had placed the supreme God at the remote apex of a divine order that extended down through the celestial spheres and encompassed the gods of traditional cult. Now he used pagan henotheism against the cults that it rationalised and united:  the god beyond all the profanae religiones is not, so their symbola reveal, the summus deus but the Devil.185 Rather than created planets or parts of the supreme God, the many subordinate gods are the demonic offspring that grow, like the heads of the hydra, from God’s already-​conquered enemy, the ‘malicious serpent’ of Genesis and the ‘twisting dragon’ of Job.186 The proliferation of polytheistic cults is a sign not, in Firmicus’ view, of their ongoing dominion over the religious-​political order of the human world but of their impending demise, which is guaranteed by the spiritual victory won at Calvary. Firmicus’ expectation that idolatry would someday be abolished was still rooted in theological convictions integral to Christian tradition; the victory had, however, come much closer to realisation, or so it seemed a few years after the death of the first Christian emperor. Tellingly, Firmicus presents his appeal as a spiritual and theological exhortation, a statement of the divine will rather than of human policy; he has no practical vision, beyond the sobering judgements of Deuteronomy, for the achievement of this victory in an empire still filled with powerful pagans. The implication that Rome itself might have to fall under imperial judgement is especially bold, and implausible, as even the zealously anti-​pagan Constantius II would later moderate his desire to abolish sacrifices with willingness to conciliate pagan senators by appointing them to their customary priesthoods.187 Nevertheless, Firmicus’ new theological vision marks a striking conceptual shift: pagan cults will meet their end soon, and at the hands of earthly agents of God, not the returning Jesus Christ. Like Lactantius, Firmicus grounds his polemic in an expansive

184.  Cf. Massa 2013, who notes the contrast with Lactantius (500 n.  28)  and describes Firmicus’ target as (495–​6) ‘un quadro dei culti e dei miti pagani, che fosse privo di contraddizioni interne e che potesse apparire in qualche modo omogeneo, e pertanto più facilmente opponibile al “cristianesimo” ’, and (500) ‘un nemico unico, coerente, più facilmente opponibile alla vera religione’; similarly, Lössl 2013: 84 n. 72 (on the opening sections of Err.), ‘One might even argue that Firmicus artificially constructs a synthetic pagan religion. . . . His aim is to refute the system which he thus creates comprehensively, but also individual cults in detail.’ 185.  21.2, 26.1. 186.  21.2; 13.4, ‘daemonum . . . qui diaboli procreatione generatur’. 187.  Cf. Barnes 1989: 332–​3, ‘As pontifex maximus he coopted new members into the traditional priesthoods, and he confirmed their endowments. To balance this, however, he removed the altar of Victory from the senate-​house’.

On the Error of Profane Religions  75 soteriological and (to a lesser extent) eschatological frame,188 but his interpretation of the shared theological heritage of ancient Christianity has changed markedly. Rather than postpone the demise of polytheistic cult to the eschatological millennium, as Lactantius had, Firmicus grounds his conviction that the emperors can and must destroy pagan cult on his belief that Christ has destroyed the power of the Devil.189 To borrow again the terms of Constantine’s Letter to the Eastern Provincials, the ‘customs of the temples’ can and must be abolished, since the ‘power of darkness’ has already been removed by Christ. The religiones of the Roman world are not the enduring realities that they had been for Lactantius but a desperate rearguard action by the defeated Devil, his final, evanescent attempts to destroy the human race by loosing among them ‘a crowd of dying snakes’, the manifold gods of traditional cult.190 All that remains is (in the words of Peter Brown) a cosmic ‘ “mopping-​up” operation’, the end for which God granted imperium to Constantius and Constans.191 It is an attitude that Firmicus would share with many later Christians, not least the triumphalist authors of the Theodosian era to whom Brown applied the phrase,192 and that sharply distinguishes his understanding of the place of pagan cults in the Roman Empire from what had seemed possible to Lactantius even after Constantine’s rise to power. For Firmicus, pagan religion is not only more systematic and unified than it had been for Lactantius, but its survival into the near future is much less assured.

188.  Cf. the references to divine judgement at 15.4–​5, 16.2, and 27.1–​2 and to John’s Apocalypse at 24.7, 27.7, and 28.8, 13; 25.3 states that Christ came ‘at almost the final week of saecula’, in reference to the ‘weeks’ of Dan. 9:24–​7, or perhaps to the widespread expectation that creation would last for seven millennia (Daley 1991: 93). 189.  Cf. Quinn 2013: 5. 190. 21.2. 191.  Brown 1998: 634; Err. 16.4, ‘ad hoc uobis deus summus commisit imperium ut per uos uulneris istius plaga curetur.’ 192.  See further Markus 1988: 27–​33.

3

‘The Manifold Divinity of the Gods’ ‘PAGANISM’ IN FOURTH-​CENTURY ROME

I

n the 370s or early 380s, an anonymous Roman cleric produced a brief anti-​pagan polemic as part of an extensive collection of answers to problems of exegesis and doctrine.1 This polemic, the 114th of 127 Quaestiones Veteris et Noui Testamenti attributed to ‘Ambrosiaster’, presented a streamlined reply to the snobbery of contemporary pagans.2 He does not give as clear a portrait of his opponents as Firmicus Maternus had, yet their lofty social position is evident: Ambrosiaster’s pagans scorn the ‘stupidity’ and poverty of Christians, preferring the antiquity and arcane secrecy of traditional cults, which have spread through the influence of ‘those who are called nobles’.3 Ambrosiaster responds by illustrating the most lurid features of pagan rites: eunuch priests of the Magna Mater, the quest of Anubis for ‘Osiris the adulterer’s limbs’, and Mithraic initiation rituals.4 As this choice of targets suggests, Ambrosiaster’s polytheism closely resembles Firmicus Maternus’, although he does not allude to De errore or any earlier Christian polemic.5 I will devote the bulk of this chapter to the theological, ritual, and social contours of this new polytheism, to which many inscriptions bear witness. For now, however, I wish to focus on Ambrosiaster’s main contribution to the ancient religious discourse sketched in broad lines in the introduction: the 1.  Text and introduction in Bussières 2007. On late-​antique question-​and-​answer literature more generally, see Papadoyannakis 2006 and Av. Cameron 2014. 2.  On ‘Ambrosiaster’, as he has been known since the sixteenth century, see Lunn-​Rockliffe 2007, with Di Santo 2008 on apologetic themes in his works. Some of the questions answered by Ambrosiaster were known to Jerome and Damasus before the latter’s death on 11 December 384 (Jerome, Ep. 35–​6; Ambrosiaster, Quaestiones 6, 9–​12; on the exchange, see Cain 2009: 53–​67; Cain 2005 and Williams 2006: 278 refute the argument of Nautin 1983 that Jerome forged Damasus’ letter). The collection has been plausibly located then (Cracco Ruggini 1976; cautions in Lunn-​Rockliffe 2007: 24–​5) or in the 370s (Cumont 1903). Pace von Queis 1972: 26, 179, and Bussières 2007: 40–​ 1, the passing reference to provincial appeals for imperial aid in Quaestio 115.40 need not allude to the specific provisions of C.Th. 9.27.6 (386); cf. Cecconi 2012: 74 n. 58. Another ancient edition of 151 Quaestiones (150 now extant) does not contain this text; the relationship of this collection to the 127 Quaestiones is uncertain (speculations in Martini 1946, 1954; Souter 1905: 8–​12, 17–​19, 189; Bussières 2006). 3.  Quaestio 114.9: ‘Christiani autem, utpote pauperes, quos stultos uocant’ (on Ambrosiaster’s answer to the charge of Christian ‘stupidity’, see further Di Santo 2008:  259–​367); 114.13, ‘nam qaestus turpitudinis tunc est, quando hi, qui nobiles dicuntur, dehonestari uidentur; facile enim imitatores inuenit dehonestata nobilitas.’ 4.  Quaestio 114.7, 11. 5.  Firmicus: Turcan 1982: 60–​2, contra Heuten 1938: 22, 191–​3. Bussières 2002 collects parallels with Tertullian but fails to demonstrate verbal dependency.

Worshippers of the Gods. Mattias P. Gassman, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190082444.001.0001

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  77 conception, in even sharper clarity than Firmicus had reached, of polytheistic cults as a theological and moral system, a singular ‘paganism’. Like Firmicus, Ambrosiaster foregrounds both the variety and the unity of traditional cults and emphasises their theological aspects, denouncing polytheism and its gods as human inventions that convey an immoral, corrupting doctrine and lead mankind away from the one God.6 He gives a checklist of divinities—​‘Janus, Saturn, Jove, Mercury, Apollo . . . Minerva, Isis, that Phrygian one [the Magna Mater], Venus, and Flora the prostitute’—​the ‘diversity’ of whose cults he attributes to the particular characters of their human inventors.7 He insists at the same time, however, on the basic uniformity of the ‘error’ expressed in each form of ‘idolatry’ and imputes a common immoral teaching to the sacra of the same gods that Firmicus had found most useful for his arguments, the Magna Mater and Attis, Isis and Osiris, Mithras, and Liber Pater.8 However, where Firmicus only occasionally foregrounds the singularity of ‘profane’ religion, preferring instead to emphasise the common diabolical origin of the whole multiplicity of polytheistic cults, Ambrosiaster takes their unity for granted. His targets are not merely vehicles for a single, diabolical ‘discipline’, as Firmicus’ had been; they are aspects of a singular lex of the pagans (lex eorum or lex sua; the precise phrase lex paganorum does not occur) that can be opposed to the true lex of the Christians.9 Lex was a standard contemporary term for Christianity, appearing in laws and the correspondence of emperors and officials.10 Like Firmicus, Ambrosiaster envisions traditional religion not simply as a complex of moral ‘precepts’ but also as a ritual system, devoted to the many gods, in which that doctrine is embedded.11 However, his desire to answer pagan critics of Christian ‘stupidity’ leads him to develop the parallelism between the Christian and pagan ‘laws’ in a decisively new direction. In an extraordinary development of a common apologetic trope, Ambrosiaster argues on cosmological rather than chronological grounds that the Christian religion is older than that of the gods. Departing from his own assertion, in another quaestio, of the genealogical continuity of Christianismus from Adam down to Christ, Ambrosiaster argues that Christianity is older than polytheism not by strict historical continuity, since the ‘knowledge of God’ had disappeared between Adam and Abraham, but in virtue of the eternity of its object.12 The inferiority of pagan cults is not merely 6.  Quaestio 114.1–​2, 6–​8, 11–​13, 30. 7.  Quaestio 114.9 (identifying ‘Frux illa’, with Souter and Bussières, as Phryx illa, the Magna Mater), 12. 8.  Quaestio 114.11–​12. 9.  Quaestio 114.8. 10. E.g., Collectio Auellana 6.2; Symmachus, Rel. 21.1; C.Th. 16.2.11, 16, 41, 4.6, 5.1. 11. ‘Precepts’: Quaestio 114.11 (comparing the praecepta of ‘lex nostra’ and ‘paganorum traditio’); rites: 114.8, ‘mysteria “legis” eorum’, 114.9, ‘conferamus nunc tenorem legum. pagani deos deasque colere se etiam literis [sic] profitentur’. 12.  Quaestio 114.29–​30; contrast Quaestio 3.4. The argument parallels Tertullian’s attack on heresy in De uirginibus uelandis 1.2–​3 (Bussières 2002: 112–​13). Di Santo 2008: 231–​58 discusses Ambrosiaster’s response to the charge of Christian novelty.

78  Worshippers of the Gods proven by their lack of the clear evidence of divine uirtus that Christians can supply;13 it resides, more fundamentally, in the fact that their adherents ‘worship the creature, but we the creator’.14 ‘If,’ Ambrosiaster declares, ‘the world is before God—​unthinkable!—​so also can paganitas be preferred to Christianitas.’15 Ambrosiaster was not the first to call polytheistic religiosity ‘paganism’, but his argument puts a new stamp on the term, which had appeared a few decades before. Originally denoting a person from a rural district (pagus), paganus had become a common word for ‘civilian’ in imperial-​era Latin.16 In Christian parlance, it acquired an additional sense, ‘gentile, worshipper of the gods’, derived from one of these meanings or perhaps from a more generic (but sparsely attested) reference to any ‘outsider’.17 How and when this development occurred remains as obscure as the new sense’s etymology, which was debated even in antiquity.18 Was paganus a designation of regional origin, of idol worshippers, of the followers of a ‘Hesiodic’ King Paganus,19 a metaphor for ‘aliens from the city of God’ who dwell in the spiritual ‘byways and country districts [pagi]’,20 or an antiquarian allusion to the rural shrines of Athens?21 The absence of the word, which was still marked as colloquial by Augustine and an imperial ruling of 409, from even the most ‘vulgar’ texts in the Cyprianic corpus suggests, at any rate, that ‘pagan’ was not yet a synonym for the biblical ‘gentile’ in the day-​to-​day speech of the Christian communities of Rome and Africa in the mid-​third century.22 Only in the early fourth century does paganus first appear in an unambiguously religious sense, on an epitaph that was erected before the mid-​320s by a Sicilian from the vicinity of Catania. The deceased, an eighteen-​month-​old named Iulia Florentina, had been ‘born a pagan [pagana nata]’, her father wrote, but died ‘after being made one of the faithful [fidelis facta]’.23 This first instance of paganus as a synonym 13.  Quaestio 114.1, 16, 25. Ambrosiaster is aware of pagan attacks on the Christian scriptures (Rinaldi 2012: 44–​6), but they are not a major concern (Perrone 1994, with the history of scholarship in Zamagni 2011). 14.  Quaestio 114.29. 15.  Quaestio 114.30, ‘si mundus ante deum est—​quod absit!—​, sic potest et paganitas anteponi Christianitati.’ 16. The most accessible overview of the word’s etymology is Cameron 2011:  14–​32; cf. also Jones 2012, 2014: 1–​8, Jürgasch 2016. TLL, s.v. paganus, supplies copious citations of all senses. 17.  ‘Pagan’ from paganus = ‘country dweller’: especially Zeiller 1917, 1940, O’Donnell 1977; from paganus = ‘civilian’: Zahn 1899, Altaner 1939, Lucarini 2010; from paganus = ‘outsider’: Mohrmann 1952, Cameron 2011: 22–​3, Jürgasch 2016: 118–​21 (but see the criticisms of Löfstedt 1959: 78 n. 1 and Lucarini 2010: 442–​3). 18.  Altaner 1939: 136–​9 remains an especially judicious study of the ancient and early mediaeval etymologies. 19. Filastrius, Div. haer. 111 (a difficult text, of which Chuvin 2002: 8–​9 provides a partial elucidation). 20. Orosius, Hist. 1.prol.9 21. Isidore, Etym. 8.10.1. 22. Colloquialism: Augustine, Ep. 184A.5; C.Th. 16.5.46. Cf. Altaner 1939: 135, Cameron 2011: 16, who note paganus’ absence from elite Christian texts. 23.  CIL X 7112.1–​7, ‘Iuliae Florentinae infan[t]‌i dulcissimae atq(ue) in/​nocentissimae, fideli factae, parens conlocauit. /​quae pridie nonas Martias ante lucem pagana /​nata Zoilo corr(ectore) p(rouinciae) mense octauo decimo et uices[i]/​ma secunda die completis fidelis facta hora no/​ctis octaua ultimum spiritum agens, superuixit /​ horis quattuor’. Discussion in Cameron 2011: 23–​4, Grégoire and Orgels 1952: 379–​83, Zeiller 1917: 10–​11. Boin’s argument (2014: 172–​4) against the religious interpretation of pagana gives insufficient weight to the parallelism between ‘pagana nata’ and ‘fidelis facta’. Moreover, his implication that the inscription could have been ‘redacted or erected’ centuries after Iulia’s death is excluded by the unambiguous statement that her father ‘dedicated’ (conlocauit)

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  79 for ‘gentile’ is also the last until Marius Victorinus, a prominent urban Roman rhetorician and convert to Christianity, wrote his biblical commentaries in the 360s.24 The new usage must have been well established nonetheless, as Iulia’s epitaph provides no gloss to help its readers, and Victorinus could use pagani to explain the Pauline Graeci—​those who ‘say there are many gods’—​to contemporary Christians.25 Despite its uncertain origins, the word’s basic meaning was as clear as its popularity. By Ambrosiaster’s day, paganus was in use throughout the Latin-​speaking world, from Barcelona and Donatist Africa to the imperial court in Trier,26 to refer to those who are ‘devoid of the mysteries’, are ‘outside the Law’ of Christ, and worship idols.27 The proliferation of the religious sense of paganus is an important development in ancient Christian religious vocabulary. It is, however, less momentous an event in Western intellectual history than has sometimes been suggested. A significant body of contemporary scholarship has seen in the rise of paganus the development of a new theory of religion, which homogenised the diverse polytheistic cults of the Graeco-​Roman world and set them in an artificially straightforward opposition to Christianity. As Garth Fowden has put it, ‘as Christianity’s fortunes improved, it felt the need to define, as diminishingly as possible, “the other”. Hence—​in the Latin-​speaking world and, with any frequency, only from the mid-​fourth century onward—​“paganism”, from paganus’.28 Such ‘paganism’, Fowden argues, was a purely polemical construct, ‘a single cultural hypostasis, undifferentiated either spatially or chronologically’, that was invented (as he puts it elsewhere) ‘by the lazy cunning of Christian apologists . . . to discredit all their opponents at one go’.29 This developed conception of ‘paganism’ as (in the words of Robin Lane Fox) ‘a system of doctrine and an orthodoxy, as Christian religion knows one’, is much more common in modern scholarship than in late-​antique authors, who seldom the epitaph; the inscription must thus be dated around the time of her interment ad martyres on 5 October of the year of Zoïlus’ correctorship, which cannot postdate ca. 324 (Barnes 1982: 165, with AE 1966, no. 167). 24. For an overview of Victorinus’ biography and the dating of his commentaries, see Cooper 2005: 16–​40,  136–​9. 25.  Cf. Zeiller 1917: 11. Marius Victorinus, Homoous. 1, ‘Graeci, quos Ἕλληνας uel paganos uocant, multos deos dicunt’; cf. Gal. 2.3, 4.3. Pace Cameron 2011: 20, this does not constitute an ‘attempt . . . to introduce “hellene” into Latin in the form of graecus’: except for Homoous. 1, the few instances in Victorinus and Augustine (De opere monachorum 13.14, Quaestiones euangeliorum 1.14) all occur in exposition of Pauline texts. 26.  Cf. Zahn 1899: 20–​2; Pacian, Ep. 2.5.1 (possibly as early as the 350s or as late as 392; see Shuve 2016: 53–​5), Optatus, 2.1.12, and C.Th. 16.2.18 (370). 27. Ambrose, Ep. extra collectionem 7.7, ‘uacuos omnes mysteriorum atque ut eius uerbum exprimamus paganos fuisse . . . episcopos’; Optatus, 2.1, ‘numquid pagani extralegales possunt . . . cantare Deo . . . et non sola ecclesia quae in lege est?’; Filastrius, Div. haer. 111.2, ‘si autem de idolis . . . nominabantur pagani, id est gentiles’. Boin 2014 would make paganus primarily an intra-​Christian slur; as these examples show, the word was used in heresiological polemic precisely because it denoted idolaters. 28.  Fowden 2005: 521. 29.  I combine Fowden 2005: 521–​2 with Fowden 1988: 176, whose words are echoed in the key study of traditional religion in late-​antique Egypt, Frankfurter 1998: 33–​4. Cf. Bowersock 1990: 6, Caseau 2007: 46, Rauhala 2011: 76 n. 111, Kahlos 2011: 166–​7.

80  Worshippers of the Gods spoke of paganitas or paganismus.30 Marius Victorinus supplies our first instance of ‘paganism’ in his commentary on Galatians, where he refers to worship of deified elements as conversion ‘ad paganismum’.31 Paganismus and paganitas appear afterwards in mainstream Latin Christian literature some twenty-​one times before ca. 500.32 Gentilitas, by contrast, is used around one hundred times over the same period, following its first appearance in a religious sense in Lactantius,33 and idolatria and idololatria around 450 times in post-​Nicene authors alone.34 Like gentilis itself, whose scriptural authority ensured that it remained the most common word for ‘non-​Christian’ through the Middle Ages,35 ‘gentility’ and ‘idolatry’, not ‘paganism’, dominated the ancient Christian vocabulary for polytheistic religion. The development of a new term that fitted, whatever its precise etymological nuances, into the same lexical slot as the biblical gentilis did not in itself mark a profound shift in Christian ways of theorising non-​Christian religion. Broad references to ‘pagans’ or even to ‘paganism’ certainly imply indifference to the distinctions among non-​Christians, but so had references to ‘gentiles’ as far back as Tertullian, who used words such as ethnicus freely in works aimed at Christian audiences but largely avoided them in his exoteric, apologetic works, which highlight the diversity of polytheistic cults.36 Later Christian authors, who tended not to use paganus when addressing traditionalists,37 show a similarly strategic awareness of ‘gentile’ diversity. Thus, Lactantius, for example, opposed gentilitas to religio dei precisely in order to draw attention to the recent origins and local diversity of the many religions of the gentes.38 Augustine, likewise, could bring up minute details of local cult when dealing with an African pagan interlocutor such as Maximus of Madauros but refer in a sermon to the four ‘ “sects”: Jews, pagans, Christians, and heretics’, glossing over not only the niceties of traditional practice

30.  Lane Fox 1986: 31; see Salzman 2008: 187 for a rare recognition that the notion of ‘paganism’ is a modern development of ancient ‘Christian usage’. 31.  Gal. 4.9, ‘si ergo haec pagani faciunt, quasi et hoc quoque reprehendit, illos etiam ad paganismum esse conuersos’. 32. So LLT, whose databases supply instances of paganitas and paganismus in Filastrius (five), Ambrosiaster (three), Augustine (five, plus two in quotations from Faustus of Milevis), Salvian (one), Peter Chrysologus (one), Leo (one), and the C.Th. (one); a few examples in more obscure texts, especially those translated from Greek, may be found under the relevant entries in the TLL. 33. Lactantius, DI 2.13.12–​13; cf. TLL, s.v. gentilitas. 34.  I excluded the Tertullianic and Cyprianic corpora, Novatian, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Lactantius from an LLT database search of Patristic authors from ca. 200 to 500. 35. The LLT databases allow an approximation: 2,576 hits in a search, among authors from 501 to 1500, for words from the root pagan-​versus 8,311 for gentil-​. Even if one allows for duplicates and false positives, gentilis certainly seems to have been more common than paganus. 36.  Ethnicus and synonyms appear some forty-​one times in Idol., e.g., 10.1, 14, 15.1–​2, and Spect., e.g., 1.3, 6.3, 11.1; in the apologetic works Nat., Apol., and Ad Scapulam, only nationes appears, always in reference to the addressees of Nat. (so Nat. 1.7.29, 17.3, 20.1, 2.1.1). Diversity: especially Nat. 1.8, Apol. 24.8. 37.  O’Donnell 1977. 38.  DI 2.13.12–​13, ‘sic aberrantes a notitia dei gentes esse coeperunt. errant igitur qui deorum cultus ab exordio rerum fuisse contendunt et priorem esse gentilitatem quam dei religionem’.

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  81 but also the doctrinal differences that distinguished heterodox teachings.39 When a unified conception of polytheistic cults begins to take shape in Firmicus’ De errore, its theorist uses only descriptive labels such as profani, eschewing even established Christian vocabulary for ‘gentiles’; gentes and nationes, tellingly, occur only in scriptural citations or in reference to specific nations.40 Firmicus has, as it were, ‘paganism’ without the ‘pagans’, where most later Christian authors have ‘pagans’ without a coherent vision of a singular, polytheistic theological or cultic system. What is remarkable about Ambrosiaster’s 114th Quaestio, therefore, is not its use of the vocabulary of ‘paganism’ in itself but that it, uniquely among ancient Christian polemics against the worship of the gods, expresses a systematic vision of polytheism, theorised as a lex comparable to Christianity, through the new terminology of paganitas. Ambrosiaster does not deny the diversity of polytheistic cults but explicitly draws attention to their manifold origins and proliferation of rituals, as previous writers such as Lactantius had also done. However, he also opposes a singular Christian ‘law’ to a singular pagan ‘law’ (one is tempted to translate lex as ‘religion’ or perhaps ‘doctrine’) and argues that this ‘paganism’ has a discernible moral content, which can be gleaned from the rituals of its many cults. Ambrosiaster’s paganitas has ‘a system of doctrine’ in a way that Lactantius’ falsae religiones, for example, did not, despite their common historical origins, common spiritual underpinnings, and common political opposition to Christianity. Ambrosiaster differs, therefore, from previous polemicists (and, still more, from a pre-​Christian theorist such as Cicero) not just in his terminology but, more important, through the assumption, shared with Firmicus Maternus, that the manifold rites of the gods form a single religious system that is unified at a theological level.41 This idea, Peter Van Nuffelen has suggested, is a Christian development of Middle-​and Neoplatonic traditions of philosophical speculation that attempted to tease out the arcane truths hidden within ancient religious traditions.42 Van Nuffelen focuses primarily on Greek thinkers, yet a similar case can be made for Ambrosiaster and his urban Roman setting, on which Van Nuffelen touches only briefly.43 Ambrosiaster and Firmicus Maternus were not the only fourth-​century Romans who approached traditional cults as constituent parts of a wider polytheistic system. A substantial body of epigraphic evidence shows that to many contemporary senators at Rome, all cults, public and private, 39.  Ep. 17, Enarrationes in Psalmos 45.13, ‘inter sectas, inter iudaeos, paganos, christianos, haereticos’. 40.  Err. 1.2, 23.3, 24.8, 28.2, 28.5, 29.1. 41.  Cf. Massa 2013: 500, on Firmicus Maternus, whose procedure he contrasts with Lactantius’ focus on the plurality of polytheistic cults: ‘l’uso del singolare [sc. of profana religio] sottolinea la tendenza all’unificazione, alla presentazione omogenea delle religioni pagane, al di là delle loro differenze interne, al fine di presentarle come un nemico unico, coerente, più facilmente opponibile alla vera religione’. 42.  Van Nuffelen 2011a. 43.  Van Nuffelen 2011a: 107.

82  Worshippers of the Gods ‘Roman’ and ‘foreign’, had become paths to divine favour and (of no less importance to competitive Roman aristocrats) personal prestige. These senators left no philosophical treatises, and their brief inscriptions do not allow us to discern their theological ideas in any detail. What evidence we do have, however, implies that their eclectic religious interests were united not only by a broad henotheistic theology but also by a belief that the many cults of the gods were vehicles for deep truths. It is this eclecticism, amply attested in both epigraphic and literary texts, and the now largely vanished theological speculations of these senators that offer the most striking links between their approach to polytheism and Christian attacks on it. For this reason, I have started here, with the idea of a unified ‘paganism’, whose significance for the ‘pagans’ themselves the next section will attempt to tease out. However, the main focus of the Roman inscriptions is not on theology. Rather, it is on the performance of particular priestly offices and ritual acts, which play an important role in the more theoretical works of Firmicus Maternus and Ambrosiaster as well. Like Lactantius before them, Firmicus Maternus and Ambrosiaster were trying both to refute pagan ideas on the gods and to dissuade others from participating in the worship with which those ideas were bound up. For Lactantius, Classical literature (reinterpreted through Christian eyes) provides the key intellectual framework and imperial persecution the overarching social context for his critique of polytheism. For Firmicus and Ambrosiaster, the key framework is a Christian interpretation of pagan henotheistic theology and the context, the ritual and social milieu that is recorded, in flattened and sometimes distorted form, in the inscriptions of their senatorial targets. The Roman evidence thus presents an unusual opportunity, not just to set Christian alongside pagan theological views of traditional cults and gods but also to set the theory (pagan and Christian) of a particular approach to polytheistic religion alongside its practice, including rites, priesthoods, and social display and competition. To many twentieth-​century scholars, urban Roman paganism seemed to be dominated, as I  noted in the introduction, by evolution towards, or competition with, Christianity; it was these senators who embodied the ‘oriental’ piety theorised by Franz Cumont and others. Recent scholarship, shaped in particular by the work of Neil McLynn, has moved away from these paradigms, reinterpreting the senators’ participation in their rites—​and their choice to commemorate them on their inscriptions—​not as a response to Christianity but as an example of aristocratic self-​promotion. Though the evidence is partial in every sense, a more nuanced picture is possible. In the surviving inscriptions and literary evidence, we can indeed, as McLynn and others argue, catch glimpses of the ways in which these senators presented themselves to their peers and their social inferiors by participating in initiations, public processions, and other rites. We can also see expressions of their devotion to the gods and aspects of the beliefs with which those expressions were bound up.

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  83 A full account of this much-​studied approach to polytheism, which would encompass its theology, rites, and relationship to Christians at Rome, is still lacking.44 My aim in this chapter is to supply just such an account: to describe ‘paganism’—​as Ambrosiaster, at least, chose to term the systematic, eclectic polytheism of contemporary Roman senators—​both as an object of polemical theory and (so far as the fragmentary evidence allows) as a system of belief and practice. The chapter has begun with theology, which will dominate the next section also. As I have already suggested, the eclecticism of the senators’ cultic interests and the few scraps of their religious theories are congruent with the ‘paganism’ formulated and attacked by their Christian critics; in this next section, I will try to lay out just what can be said with certainty about the senators’ beliefs. The following section will describe the rites and ceremonies in which the senators participated and through which they made themselves and their gods known to observers at Rome; here I focus especially on the diverse motivations for cultic involvement that can be gleaned from the inscriptions. I will then suggest ways in which the senators’ presentation of themselves and their cults may have shaped Christian views of polytheistic religion beyond the formulation of a singular conception of ‘pagan’ religion. Because the Roman epigraphic, literary, and polemical material is so fragmentary, many important features of this eclectic polytheism will remain obscure. Still, as I will argue in the conclusion, its theology and rituals both preceded and informed Firmicus’ and Ambrosiaster’s polemics. Thus, their ‘paganism’ was not an empty polemical construct but a description, shaped by Christian vocabulary and theology, of a polytheistic piety whose devotees likewise saw the many cults of the gods as parallel, overlapping paths to a single spiritual reality. Eclecticism and Henotheism on the Roman Taurobolium Inscriptions In the early seventeenth century, a cache of seven altars was excavated near the south facade of St Peter’s Basilica (CIL VI 497–​503).45 Each altar recorded the performance of a taurobolium, the sacrifice of a bull and its testicles to the Great Idaean Mother of the Gods, by a Roman of senatorial rank.46 The altars were later displayed in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, where their inscriptions were transcribed by contemporary antiquarians. Two still survive in the collections of the Louvre (497) and the Musei Capitolini (503). Together, these seven 44.  McLynn 1996 is an especially complete discussion; see also Bricault 2014 and Cameron 2011: 132–​72. 45.  The contemporary reports are collated and excerpted at CIL VI 497–​504. 46.  On the taurobolium in fourth-​century Rome, see McLynn 1996, who, with Borgeaud 1998, decisively refutes older theories that made the rite a ‘blood baptism’ (for which, see, e.g., Duthoy 1969 and Rutter 1968). Alvar 2008: 261–​76 is an up-​to-​date discussion of the rite prior to the fourth century, while Duthoy 1969: 5–​56 gathers most of the literary and epigraphic evidence.

84  Worshippers of the Gods inscriptions are the most extensive archaeological remnant of the Phrygianum, the temple of the Magna Mater on the Vatican that is mentioned by two Roman topographical handbooks redacted in the fourth century, the so-​called Curiosum and Notitia Vrbis Romae.47 They also provide an important body of evidence for a new movement in Roman senatorial piety, which is reflected in around two dozen other taurobolium dedications, epitaphs, and other senatorial monuments that were erected at Rome, the first in 295, the last in 390.48 Although the find-​ sites of some of the altars are unknown and others were scattered around Rome,49 a substantial corpus can be linked more or less securely to the Vatican and thus to the Phrygianum itself.50 For many of these inscriptions, we are dependent, as for CIL VI 498–​502, on the reports and drawings of early-​modern antiquaries, whose reliability is not always certain (examples, drawn from Pirro Ligorio, in Figures 3.1 and 3.2; compare Figure 3.3, below, p. 92f).51 Several inscriptions are still extant, however, including four found on the Vatican or elsewhere in Rome during the twentieth century.52 The proliferation of taurobolic altars at Rome testifies to a remarkable reconfiguration of senatorial religiosity. The Phrygianum must already have been a significant cult site by the mid-​second century, since the first extant inscription commemorating a taurobolium to the Magna Mater, which was erected at Lyons in 160,53 recorded the transferral of the testicles of the sacrificial bull ‘from the Vatican’, probably in reference to a local cult site modelled on that in Rome.54 However, it does not seem to have attained a high social profile until just before the fourth century. Prior to the reign of Diocletian, the only senator known to have performed a taurobolium was a man of consular rank named Pompeius Rusonianus.55 A  member of the quindecimuiri sacris faciundis, the ancient priestly college responsible for administering the sacra peregrina, the foreign rites (including those of the Magna Mater) that had been officially adopted by the Roman state, Rusonianus had also taken part in the Secular Games of 204.56 47.  Texts in Nordh 1949: 95 (‘Frigianum’); on the transmission of the texts from a probably Severan Vorlage, see Behrwald 2006, 2009: 185–​211. 48.  The other inscriptions that can be securely placed in fourth-​century Rome are AE 1953, nos. 238, 1971, no. 35; CIL VI 504–​12, 1675, 1778–​80, 30966, 31940/​41331; ILS 1264; and CCCA III 359. AE 1923, no. 29, 1953, no. 237, CIL VI 513 and 30780, are undatable but likely belong with the rest. Cf. also AE 1945, no. 55, from Ostia. McLynn 1996 remains the best comprehensive study of the inscriptions; see also Cameron 2011: 132–​72, Rüpke 2011, Bricault 2014, and Matthews 1973. 49. E.g., CIL VI 505–​6, 509–​11. 50. Besides CIL VI 497–​503, also 504, 512, 30780; cf. the map of find-​sites in Liverani 2008: 40. 51.  Ligorio’s text and drawings are reproduced in Orlandi 2008: 55–​6. Other early modern depictions of CIL VI 505 can be found, with a modern photograph, in Mandowsky and Mitchell 1963: pl. 17–​18. 52.  AE 1923, no. 29, 1953, no. 237–​8, 1971, no. 35; cf. also AE 1945, no. 55, from Ostia. 53.  CIL XIII 1751. 54.  Cf. Duthoy 1969: 73 and Liverani 2008: 41–​2. 55.  CIL XIV 2790, ‘Matri Deum /​Magnae Ideae /​Pompeius Rusonianus /​co(n)s(ularis) XVuir sacris /​ faciundis /​taurobolium mouit’. 56.  Eph. Epigr. VIII: 282. Festus, De uerborum significatu, 268.27–​33 Lindsay, ‘peregrina sacra appellantur, quae aut euocatis dis . . . aut quae ob quasdam religiones per pacem sunt petita, ut ex Phrygia Matris Magnae . . . quae

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  85

Figure 3.1.  Pirro Ligorio’s depiction of the taurobolium altar of Ulpius Egnatius Faventinus (CIL VI 504). Image from Naples Cod. XIII.B.7, bk. 34, p. 56, repro­ duced by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli. Photo by Giorgio Di Dato. His taurobolium, which he commemorated on an inscription erected at Gabii in Latium, certainly could have taken place at Rome, but the only direct evidence for pre-​Tetrarchic taurobolia in the city is a story reported by the notoriously

coluntur eorum more, a quibus sunt accepta’, on which see Van Doren 1955. The ‘foreignness’ of the peregrina sacra was, as, e.g., Scheid 1995 and Beard 2012 have stressed, a carefully maintained construct of Roman religion.

86  Worshippers of the Gods

Figure  3.2. Pirro Ligorio’s depiction of the taurobolium altar of L. Cornelius Scipio Orfitus (CIL VI 505). Image from Naples Cod. XIII.B.7, bk. 34, p. 57, repro­­ duced by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli. Photo by Giorgio Di Dato. unreliable life of Elagabalus in the Historia Augusta.57 The rite seems to have expressed a distinctly provincial religiosity, providing an opportunity not only for individual worshippers to declare their devotion to the goddess but also for local elites to underscore their cities’ loyalty to the emperor and his house, on whose behalf the sacrifices were often performed.58 Under the Tetrarchy, the situation began to change. Around the time of the last recorded taurobolium performed pro salute imperatoris, at Mactar in Africa during the joint rule of Diocletian and Maximian,59 Roman senators began to take an interest in the rite. The first holder of a traditional Roman priesthood to commemorate a taurobolium after Rusonianus was a senator whose name hints 57. SHA, Heliogab. 7.1 says of its protagonist, ‘Matris etiam deum sacra accepit et tauroboliatus est’. Matthews 1973: 179 n. 29 judges the anecdote ‘historically valueless’. For two assessments of the date, authorship, and purpose of the Historia Augusta, see Cameron 2011: 743–​82 and Paschoud 2012: 380–​5; cf. also the detailed study of the work’s literary allusions by Rohrbacher 2016. 58.  Thus, already CIL XIII 1751 in 160; cf. CIL XII 1567 and XIII 511 for examples involving particularly grand civic entourages. On ‘public’ and ‘private’ taurobolia, see further Rutter 1968: 236–​7, Van Haeperen 2006: 44–​7, and Alvar 2008: 268–​9. 59.  CIL VIII 23401.

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  87 at exceptionally ancient ancestry, L. Cornelius Scipio Orfitus, who performed the rite in 295,60 perhaps on his estate on the Via Appia, where his inscriptions were found, perhaps on the Vatican.61 Orfitus was followed in 305 by Julius Italicus, the first of many quindecimuiri who performed the taurobolium over the course of the fourth century.62 The quindecimuiri had traditionally taken part in Rome’s public festivals of the Magna Mater and are known to have certified local priests of her cult as late as 289, at Cumae.63 Now, however, they had become involved in the taurobolium not only as individual devotees but even (as I will discuss below) as priestly actors. The next altar, erected by C. Magius Donatus Severianus in 313, does not list any of the old Roman priesthoods but records Severianus’ participation in the mysteries of Mithras, Liber Pater, and Hecate.64 The altar is the first piece of evidence for a striking trend in the fourth-​century epigraphy:  the accumulation and advertisement of offices and initiations in a broad array of cults, many, like Severianus’, of dubiously ‘Roman’ credentials. Three inscriptions from 377 give a particularly clear illustration of this religious eclecticism. One, dedicated by Caelius Hilarianus, is unique; it does not record the performance of a taurobolium but simply proclaims the dedicator’s special relationship with the Magna Mater and Attis, ‘his preservers’.65 Hilarianus was religiously engaged, holding an obscure public priestly office as duodecimuir urbis Romae and, like Severianus and three recent initiates, priesthoods of Mithras, Liber Pater, and Hecate.66 Neither of the two initiates of his year, a woman named Sabina and her probable relative, Rufius Caeionius Sabinus, shared these interests precisely. Sabina, like the four other female initiates attested on contemporary inscriptions, could not join the all-​male cult of Mithras or the public colleges; we know of no Vestal initiates.67 Sabinus was not a devotee of Liber Pater but had found a grand place for himself in official cultic life, as an augur and a pontifex of Vesta, both priesthoods that, together with the pontificate of Sol established by Aurelian, the quindecimvirate, and the septemvirate, are well attested on the taurobolium inscriptions.68 Although other cults do not appear as often as those of Mithras, Hecate, Liber Pater,69 or, of course, the Magna Mater herself, there was widespread enthusiasm for Egyptian

60.  CIL VI 505–​6; cf. CCCA III 359, CIL VI 402, and PLRE 1: 651 (Orfitus 1). 61.  For the two possibilities, Bowes 2008: 18, 42, and Vermaseren 1977: 59, respectively. 62.  CIL VI 497; cf. 498–​9, 501, 509, 1779, 30780, ILS 1264. 63. Festivals: Lucan, Bell. 1.599–​600, with Alvar 2008: 282–​93. Cumae: CIL X 3698. For further references to local sacerdotes quindecimuirales, see Wissowa 1912: 320 nn. 9–​10, with Van Haeperen 2006: 40–​4. 64.  CIL VI 507. 65.  CIL VI 500, ‘MDMI /​et Attidi Meno/​tyranno conser/​uatoribus suis’. 66.  CIL VI 504, 510, AE 1953, no. 238; duodecimuiri: Wissowa 1912: 340. 67.  CIL VI 30966. 68.  CIL VI 511; cf. 497–​9, 501, 503–​5, 509, 846, 1779. 69.  For adherents of one or more of these divinities, see CIL VI 500, 504, 507, 509–​10, 511, 846, 1779–​80, 30966, AE 1953, nos. 237–​8, 1971, no. 35; cf. CIL VI 749–​54 for a separate series of Mithraic initiations by senators.

88  Worshippers of the Gods religion, which appears on inscriptions erected across the whole period from 295 to 390,70 and Ceres and Proserpina had at least a few devotees.71 The hallmarks of the inscriptions are multiplicity and individuality within a broad pattern of shared devotion to official Roman cult and to more mystical (and often unofficial) rites. They provide evidence not of the formation of a new religious organisation but of an interrelated array of similar yet ‘personalised’ approaches to polytheistic religion.72 Such religious eclecticism was neither new nor limited to senators, though it was perhaps, as Garth Fowden has suggested, ‘more common in late antiquity’ than before.73 Devotees with multiple initiations or priesthoods can be found in imperial Roman settings as far flung as provincial Tripolitania,74 Brundisium,75 the Neoplatonist school of Proclus at Athens,76 and the much less sophisticated Roman circles inhabited by the child who was, by the time of his death at age seven, ‘priest of all the gods’.77 The Roman inscriptions are remarkable not for their eclecticism in itself, therefore, but for the social level of the dedicators and their cults. The public cults of the city of Rome had become, for some of their highest priests, expressions of a wider religiosity that embraced a broad array of rites without regard for their legal status or traditional prestige.78 The practical effects of this shift on the ritual performance of polytheistic cult are visible on only one Roman inscription, which was carved into a now-​ lost altar and recorded by the fifteenth-​century antiquary and travel writer Cyriacus of Ancona.79 The altar commemorates a set of ritual observances performed in April 319 by Serapias, a woman of moderate social distinction (honesta femina) and devotee of the Mother of the Gods and Proserpina, who had elected to offer both the taurobolium and the criobolium, a sacrifice of a sheep to the Magna Mater. Officiating over the rites was the Supreme Phrygian Priest Flavius Antonius Eustochius,80 together with a group of even loftier figures. As Serapias’ altar boasted, her sacrifices were performed ‘while Men from the Most Distinguished and Most Holy College of the Fifteen Men for Performing Rites 70.  Pace Cameron 2011: 148. CIL VI 402, 512; cf. CIL VI 504, 846, 1779 (calling Vettius Agorius Praetextatus a neocorus, that is, a ‘temple warden’, most likely of Serapis; cf. Bloch 1945: 242-​4), 1780, and AE 1971, no. 35. 71.  CIL VI 508, 1779–​80. 72.  McLynn 1996: 323, ‘The taurobolium had become not “personal,” but personalized’; Rüpke 2011: 271; cf. Salzman 2011, Bowes 2008: 43–​4. Contrast the ecclesial metaphor of Cumont 1929: 189: ‘les cultes . . . se regardent comme des divisions d’une même église, dont leurs clergés forment, si j’ose dire, les congregations’. 73.  Fowden 1993: 48. 74.  IRT2009 567, ‘T(ito) Flauio /​Vibiano u(iro) p(erfectissimo) fl(amini) p(er)p(etuo) et pont(ifici) /​ cur(atori) rei pub(licae) Lepcimagn(ensis) /​sac(erdoti) Laur(entium) Lab(inatium) et sac(erdoti) M(atris) D(eum) /​praef(ecto) omnium sacr(orum)’. Vibianus was also sacerdos prouinciae Tripolitanae (IRT2009 568). 75.  CIL IX 6099 (with CCCA IV 123), ‘L. Pacilius Taur(us) /​sac(erdos) Matr(is) Magn(ae) et /​Suriae Deae et sac/​ror(um) Isidis’. 76. Marinus, Vita Procli  18–​19. 77.  IG XIV 1449; pace Vermaseren, CCCA III 271, the son of people named Aurelia Antonia and Aurelius Onesimus is unlikely to have had anything to do with the senators of the fourth-​century inscriptions. 78.  Cf. Bricault 2014: 358. 79.  CIL VI 508; CIL VI: xl–​xli summarises Cyriacus’ contributions to the epigraphy of the city of Rome. 80.  Eustochius presumably held the ‘Phrygian’ priesthood mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 2.19.4. Pace McLynn 1996: 324, he was probably not an archigallus (thus, rightly, Thomas 1971); the provincial

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  89 were present and handed over’ the cernus, a dish in which the testicles of the sacrificial victims were gathered.81 These quindecimuiri were no mere observers but had moved beyond administration and regulation of the cult to priestly involvement in a ritual that expressed the piety of an individual adept.82 The previous three centuries had witnessed extensive erosion of the cultural and social barriers between the respectably ‘Roman’ and (once) dangerously ‘Phrygian’ elements in the worship of the Magna Mater, which had originally been kept separate, or so Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports.83 Now rituals expressing personal spiritual aspirations, which had once been managed by low-​ranking provincial priests, were performed by some of the most distinguished senatorial officials of Roman public cult.84 Although the other inscriptions give no comparable description of the rites that they record, they reveal a similar elision of the traditional distinction between publica and priuata sacra. With the exception of three inscriptions erected to honour one Alfenius Ceionius Julianus Kamenius, which present a loose chronological sequence of priestly and civic offices, all of the Roman taurobolium inscriptions that list both public and private cult titles list the former first, but after non-​religious civic offices, when those are present.85 Apart from this vestigial recognition, none of the dedications gives any special status to the official cults. Sabinus, therefore, could vaunt his pontificate and his unofficial initiations as religious distinctions of similar merit: O well-​born man of ancient house, whom, as pontifex, the fortunate palace of Vesta serves with consecrated fire, the self-​same man augur, venerable worshipper of three-​fold Diana, Babylonian priest of Persian-​ speaking Mithras, and, of the temple and taurobolium at once, the mystic leader of the great rite.86 taurobolium inscriptions show the archigallus sometimes instigating the rite through prophecy but never taking part in the ritual, over which sacerdotes usually presided (CIL XIII 1752, ‘ex uaticinatione . . . archigalli’; likewise, VIII 8203, XII 1782; cf. Frag. Vat. 148 and CIL II 5260, which reports a taurobolium performed ‘sacerdote Docyrico Valeriano /​arcigallo Publicio Mystico’). 81.  CIL VI 508.5–​6, 8–​10, ‘taurobolium criobol(ium) caerno perceptum . . . praesentib(us) et tradentib(us) /​c(larissimis) u(iris) ex ampliss(imo) et sanctiss(imo) /​coll(egio) XVuir(orum) s(acris) f(aciundis)’, with McLynn 1996: 322 and Duthoy 1969: 95–​101. Lesser priests are reported to have ‘handed over’ on, e.g., CIL VIII 23400–​1, IX 1542, AE 1961, no. 201. 82.  Thus, McLynn 1996: 323 n. 41, contra Matthews 1973: 178. 83.  Ant. Rom. 2.19.3–​5. See further Latham 2012, on the growing respectability of the rites of the Magna Mater (but contrast Beard 2012); Belayche 2000: 571–​5 and Alvar 2008: 282–​93 discuss their evolution during the early and middle Empire. 84.  Cf. McLynn 1996: 323–​4, Rüpke 2011: 271. 85.  CIL VI 1675, 31940/​41331, ILS 1264. Contra Matthews 1973: 185 and Cameron 2011: 146, the order is not ‘strictly chronological’: Kamenius always lists his taurobolium after his quindecimvirate, although he does not seem to have held that office when he performed the rite (cf. his Phrygianum inscription, AE 1953, no. 238). The priesthood took precedence, it seems, over the rite for which it was responsible. 86.  CIL VI 511.12–​16, ‘antiqua generose domo, cui regia Vestae /​pontifici felix sacrato militat igne, /​idem augur, triplicis cultor uenerande Dianae, /​persidiciq(ue) Mithrae antistes Babilonie templi /​tauroboliq(ue) simul magni dux mistice sacri.’

90  Worshippers of the Gods Public priesthoods had become vehicles for individual spirituality, and private cults for religious distinction. As Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price have put it, ‘some senators at least wished to place [Hecate and Mithras] within the bounds of religio’, while, as Jörg Rüpke has observed, the ‘public priesthoods’ had ‘moved into a private realm, not in a legally technical sense, but as form [sic] of a religious individualisation and spiritualisation’.87 The breadth of these senators’ religious involvements has been explained in two main ways. One strand of recent scholarship has seen the reconfiguration of senatorial religiosity in the fourth century as a product of aristocratic competition for personal prestige. The accumulation and advertisement of priesthoods was, by this view, a way to impress the senators’ own importance upon their contemporaries. This argument has real merit, but it does not (as the next section will argue) fully capture the religious aspects of the inscriptions. The other approach sees the new senatorial interest in the breadth of ancestral and exotic religious practices as a response to the rise of Christianity. It was, in Laurent Bricault’s words, an attempt to produce ‘a sort of polytheist orthodoxy’ that could stand over and against Christianity.88 In so doing, the ‘pagans’ ended up mirroring Christians’ own polemical preconceptions. As Hartmut Leppin has put it, ‘Their self-​portrayal would thus have assimilated itself to others’ picture of them.’89 The argument is attractive but unlikely on chronological grounds. Although it is possible that the senators were influenced by the presence of a visible Christian alternative to traditional polytheism, the key features of the new senatorial piety, the tendency to accumulate cultic titles and the involvement of high Roman priestly officials in private, mystical, and traditionally suspect cults, are already visible at the beginning of the fourth century. The senatorial reconfiguration of traditional piety is parallel and (as far as can be seen) prior to Christian formulations of a unified ‘paganism’, which only begin to appear with Firmicus Maternus in the 340s. Nevertheless, there is a marked homology between the approach to traditional religiosity found on the inscriptions and the polemical theories of Firmicus Maternus and Ambrosiaster. For both polytheist senators and Christian polemicists, the distinctions between private and public cult that Lactantius and Arnobius had still recognised under the Tetrarchy had by now lost most of their significance. Although holding a public priesthood was still a mark of distinction, once denigrated cults such as those of the Magna Mater and Isis had come to play a key role in defining polytheistic piety and could even involve the participation of public priests. The

87.  Beard, North, and Price 1998: 384, Rüpke 2011: 271. 88.  Bricault 2014: 358, ‘une sort d’orthodoxie polythéiste’; cf. Fowden 1993: 48–​9. 89.  Leppin 2004: 62, ‘Die Selbstdarstellung hätte sich demnach dem Fremdbild angeglichen’, 79; cf. also Selter 2006: 73–​4. I thank Hartmut Leppin for extensive discussion of these issues.

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  91 meagre evidence of the inscriptions does not allow us to discern many details of the thought of Ambrosiaster’s pagan contemporaries, but it appears that for them, too, the vast multiplicity of polytheistic cults was unified at a theological level. The key epigraphic text is the epitaph of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, which sketches the outlines of the henotheistic theology that held together this senator’s religious interests, the widest ranging (with some eleven priesthoods and initiations) of any Roman contemporary. As his wife, Fabia Aconia Paulina, wrote: You, a pious initiate, hold in the secret place of your mind the things you have discovered through the sacred initiations, and, as a learned man, worship the manifold divinity of the gods, kindly binding your wife to the rites as a partner who is conscious of men and gods and faithful to you. . . . You, husband, redeeming me—​through the benefit of your teachings pure and chaste—​from the lot of death, lead me into temples and declare me a servant to the gods. With you as my witness, I am imbued with all mysteries: you, a pious consort, honour the priestess of Dindymene and Attis with bull initiations, you teach the minister of Hecate the three-​fold secrets, you make me worthy of the rites of Grecian Ceres.90 Chapter 5 will discuss Paulina’s presentation of Praetextatus in more detail. The important point, for now, is that the couple’s shared religious interests were directed towards a single divine reality, which Paulina calls ‘the manifold divinity of the gods [diuum numen multiplex]’. The couple’s many cults were grounded in a mystical doctrine capable not only of being discerned through ritual participation but also of being passed on to others through the instruction of the priestly adept. A contemporary Christian polemic likely aimed at Praetextatus, the so-​called Carmen contra paganos, implies that he allegorised Attis as the sun,91 but we can say very little about the specific contours of Praetextatus’ beliefs, for which we have only late and largely unreliable evidence.92 The only extant exposition of Praetextatus’ solar theology is an elaborate disquisition put into his mouth in the Saturnalia of Macrobius.93 Written some fifty years after Praetextatus’ death, the dialogue does not show any particular fidelity to the thought of its interlocutors, Praetextatus

90.  CIL VI 1779d.13–​17, 22–​9, ‘tu pius mouestes [sic, for mystes] sacris /​teletis reperta mentis arcano premis, /​ diuumque numen multiplex doctus colis, /​sociam benigne coniugem nectens sacris /​hominum deumque consciam ac fidam tibi. /​ . . . tu me, marite, disciplinarum bono /​puram ac pudicam sorte mortis eximens, /​in templa ducis ac famulam diuis dicas; /​te teste cunctis imbuor mysteriis; /​tu Dindymenes Atteosqu[e]‌antistitem /​teletis honoras taureis consors pius; /​Hecates ministram trina secreta edoces /​Cererisque Graiae tu sacris dignam paras.’ 91.  CCP 103–​9, ‘uidimus  .  .  .  egregios proceres  .  .  .  Attin castratum subito praedicere solem’; in context, the target, an anonymous prefect probably to be identified with Praetextatus (Cracco Ruggini 1979, Cameron 2011: 273–​319; more cautiously, Trout 2015: 26–​38), is the main aristocrat in view. 92. Boethius, In Arist. Int. 1 (pp. 3–​4 Meiser) mentions that Praetextatus translated Themistius’ commentaries on Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics, but we can credit no specifically religious or theological work to his name; see further Kahlos 2002: 134–​40 and Cameron 2011: 542–​4. 93.  Saturnalia 1.17–​23.

92  Worshippers of the Gods included; as Alan Cameron has pointed out, the absence of Mithras is a particularly telling gap in a speech credited to a Mithraic pater patrum.94 Praetextatus’ reputation for arcane astral erudition also gained him a place in the treatise De mensibus, whose author, the sixth-​century bureaucrat and antiquary John Lydus, credited ‘Praetextatus the hierophant’ with an allegory that made Janus the ‘power positioned upon each Bear [i.e., in the northern sky] and that sends the more divine souls off to the lunar dance’. This philosophical titbit is joined, however, to the improbable story that Praetextatus (then probably a small child) took part in the foundation of Constantinople with the Neoplatonist philosopher Sopater.95 A genuine fragment it may be, but if so, it is wedded to a legend apparently intended to place two pagan heroes at the origin of the New Rome.96 The most we can say with any certainty, therefore, even about Praetextatus, the best attested of the fourth-​century Roman initiates, is that he sought theological insights in the arcana of the mysteries, most likely through a system of astral allegoresis similar to Macrobius’ theories or to the allegories lampooned by Firmicus Maternus in the 340s. The details, however, lie beyond recovery. The other Roman inscriptions reveal only scattered hints of their dedicators’ beliefs. Rufius Caeionius Sabinus seems to have shared Paulina and Praetextatus’ conviction of the simultaneous unity and diversity of the divine; if the reading by the sixteenth-​century antiquarian Pirro Ligorio (Figure 3.3) can be trusted, his inscription appears to conflate Hecate and the Magna Mater by referring to ‘the venerable triple-​goddess signs of Cybele’.97 Explicit philosophising appears, however, only on a dedication put up by a married couple, who (if the reconstruction of a lacuna is correct) lauded Attis as ‘most high, the one who holds together the universe’.98 The statement resembles the emperor Julian’s description of Attis as ‘the holder together of forms material and sub-​lunar’, and so may display an awareness of philosophical exegesis of the Attis cult.99 Julian, who 94.  Cameron 2011: 231–​47, 265–​8, Kahlos 2002: 186–​200, contra, e.g., Bloch 1945: 206–​8 and Wytzes 1977: 141. For a more optimistic assessment of the speech of Praetextatus, see Van Nuffelen 2011a: 107, and cf. Liebeschuetz 1999, who suggests (albeit tentatively) that Macrobius might have drawn on Praetextatus’ now-​lost works. 95.  Mens. 4.2, ὁ δὲ Πραιτέξτατος ὁ ἱεροφάντης, ὁ Σωπάτρῳ τε τῷ τελεστῇ καὶ Κωνσταντίνῳ τῷ αὐτοκράτωρι συλλαβὼν ἐπὶ τῷ πολισμῷ τῆς εὐδαίμονος ταύτης πόλεως, δύναμιν αὐτὸν εἶναί τινα βούλεται ἐφ’ ἑκατέρας Ἄρκτου τεταγμένην καὶ τὰς θειοτέρας ψυχὰς ἐπὶ τὸν σεληνιακὸν χορὸν ἀποπέμπειν. 96.  Cf. Barnes 2014: 127, contra Cracco Ruggini 1979: 131–​41, who accepts Lydus’ account. 97.  CIL VI 511.6–​7, ‘ueneranda mouet Cibeles triodeia signa /​augentur meritis simbola taurobolii’. Ligorio often drew items to suit his taste or to ‘restore’ damage (Mandowsky and Mitchell 1963: 41–​51), but the basic accuracy of some drawings, for example, of CIL VI 505 (L. Cornelius Scipio Orfitus, Figure 3.2) and 504 (Ulpius Egnatius Faventinus, Figure 3.1) can be confirmed from surviving inscriptions or the reports of more reliable contemporaries (cf. Mandowsky and Mitchell 1963: 25–​7, 67). The Sabinus inscription presents a more complicated case, as other antiquaries gave more fragmentary texts of the opening lines; that of Stephanus Pighius, for example, which is also reproduced in CIL VI 511, confirms only a few scattered words, though his reading of the cursus and the concluding lines is in general harmony with Ligorio’s. The altar does not survive. 98.  CIL VI 509 (with CCCA III 236), Ἄττει θ’ὑψίστῳ καὶ συν[έχο]ντι τὸ πᾶν, /​τῷ πᾶσιν καιροῖς θεμε[ρωτέρ]α πάντα φύοντι. 99. Julian, Or. 8(5).5, 165d, τὸν τῶν ἐνύλων καὶ ὑπὸ σελήνην εἰδῶν συνοχέα. On theological and philosophical speculations regarding Attis, see Lancellotti 2002: 119–​42.

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  93

Figure 3.3.  Pirro Ligorio’s depiction of the taurobolium altar of Rufius Caeionius Sabinus (CIL VI 511). Image from Naples Cod. XIII.B.7, bk. 34, p. 57, reproduced by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli. Photo by Giorgio Di Dato. omitted the taurobolium from his oration To the Mother of the Gods and probably did not undergo the rite himself, is unlikely to have influenced the Roman devotees, whose piety took shape more than half a century before he became sole ruler in 361.100 Nevertheless, Platonist thought was certainly not unknown in Roman senatorial circles, as the works of both Firmicus Maternus and Marius Victorinus, two converts to Christianity with strong pagan credentials and aristocratic connections, make clear.101 The sparseness of the evidence precludes a well-​defined picture of the Roman devotees’ beliefs. If Firmicus Maternus, as a contemporary convert to Christianity from an intellectual kind of polytheism, is any guide, the theological beliefs of his fellow senators were likely an eclectic melange of Platonist, Stoic, and other philosophical theories. Whatever the precise shape of the Roman devotees’ religious convictions, their altars, epitaphs, and other inscriptions make it clear not only that they participated in many official and unofficial cults, but also that they saw 100.  Cf. Cameron 2011: 152, contra, e.g., R. Smith 1995: 173–​5, Hadot 1971: 46, 57–​8. Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 4.52, says that Julian renounced his baptism by sacrificing; this has been taken as a reference to the taurobolium by, e.g., Smith 1995: 138, Fear 1996: 44, but the inference depends on the now-​rejected conception of the fourth-​ century taurobolium as a ‘blood baptism’ (on which see 83 n. 46). 101.  Firmicus Maternus and Porphyry: 65; Marius Victorinus, nobles, and paganism: Augustine, Conf. 8.2.3. Augustine mentions Victorinus’ translation into Latin of ‘quosdam libros Platonicorum’, perhaps (Clark 2009: 127) ‘the late antique equivalent of a Neoplatonist Reader’.

94  Worshippers of the Gods fit to memorialise these diverse religious interests on equal terms. The senators’ religious and epigraphic choices are signs, on the practical level of ritual and self-​ representation, that the many cults of the Roman world had begun to coalesce for them, if not into ‘a singular cultural hypostasis’, then at least into a looser system bound together by their shared orientation towards the divine. The cults in which Sabinus participated as pontifex of Vesta, augur, devotee of Mithras, and ‘mystic leader’ of the taurobolium were probably not united into a single ‘church’, as older scholarship sometimes suggested.102 All, however, formed apparently equivalent parts of a wide-​ranging spirituality, in which, as Van Nuffelen has suggested, the cultural, social, and geographical divisions that had once separated ‘different religions’ were overshadowed by the access to divine favour and (as the next section will argue) personal prestige that they afforded in common.103 Viewed against the backdrop of this eclectic polytheism, the polemics of Firmicus Maternus and Ambrosiaster appear not as capricious fabrications but as attempts to turn a new approach to Roman polytheism against itself. The senators’ inscriptions and the polemicists’ anti-​‘pagan’ works adopt a basically parallel approach to traditional religion, combining interest in numerous cults of diverse social and geographic origins with a belief that all polytheistic cults ultimately lead to the same spiritual reality. The polemicists simply inverted the moral polarity of pagan allegoresis. By reinterpreting the ‘manifold divinity of the gods’ as the Devil and his malicious demons and by demonstrating that the deep secrets sought in traditional cult by men such as Praetextatus and Sabinus were really banal lies and immoral commandments, Firmicus and Ambrosiaster sought to expose the nefarious foundation that, they believed, really underlay the practices of contemporary polytheists. The procedure was a tendentiously Christian one, just as ‘paganism’ was a word apparently unique to Christian discourse, but the idea that the many cults of the gods all reflected the same spiritual realities and contained a common doctrine was shared by both pagans and Christians in fourth-​century Rome. Promoting Senators and Their Religion The polemics of Firmicus Maternus and Ambrosiaster and the senatorial inscriptions provide a series of parallel (though often contrasting) images of the beliefs and practices of fourth-​century polytheistic devotees at Rome. As the prominent foregrounding of priesthoods and rites in each of these ‘images’ makes clear, the ritual and social aspects of the senators’ religiosity were an 102.  Esp. Cumont 1929: 189 (quoted at 88 n. 72). 103.  Van Nuffelen 2011a: 107, ‘it may be rather that behind this accumulation of office is the more general belief that all these different religions are fundamentally identical, rendering Praetextatus’ actions not a personal expression, but a reflection of a general train of thought in his age’; cf. Liebeschuetz 1999: 204, who speaks of the senators’ ‘personal syncretism’.

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  95 essential focus not just of the senators’ own perceptions of their piety but also of contemporary Christian attacks on it. ‘Paganism’, as practised by men such as Sabinus and Praetextatus or attacked by Ambrosiaster and Firmicus Maternus, was more than a theory; it was a living religion performed and advertised within the city of Rome. The aim of the next two sections is to give as detailed a picture of the social and ritual aspects of the senators’ eclectic polytheism as the literary and epigraphic evidence will allow, to put meat, as it were, on the epigraphic skeleton, and reveal a (relatively) full-​bodied picture of senatorial ‘paganism’ as an approach to polytheistic religious practice. This is not a straightforward task, and the results will often be inconclusive, since the practical outworking of the senators’ religiosity is even more difficult to discern than the precise shape of the theology (or theologies) by which it was informed. How did being a pontifex influence a senator’s experience of the rites of Hecate or being pater patrum of Mithras affect his performance of augury, if at all? How, moreover, did the senators who dominate both the epigraphic and the literary evidence for pagan piety in fourth-​century Rome interact, on an intellectual or ritual level, with less exalted adherents of their gods or with the Christians from whose ranks their critics were drawn? In the absence of unambiguous evidence, radically divergent hypotheses have been advanced. In recent discussions of Mithraism in fourth-​century Rome, Jonas Bjørnebye has argued that the numerous senatorial patres patrum attested on the inscriptions were linked through ties of patronage and ‘religious authority’ to the many Mithraea scattered throughout the city.104 The only direct evidence that we have for senatorial patronage of a particular Mithraeum, however, comes from a series of inscriptions tied to one senatorial family, that of Nonius Victor Olympius, the builder of the now-​vanished shrine in which the inscriptions were uncovered, near San Silvestro in Capite, in the fifteenth century.105 These inscriptions, most of which have since been lost, show the adult members of the family ‘handing over’ various mystical grades to others who, with the exception of Olympius’ thirteen-​year-​old grandson Aemilianus Corfo Olympius, remain nameless.106 Another grandson, Tamesius Olympius Augentius, boasted, probably in the 380s, that he had repaired the shrine with his own money.107 Of the Mithraists from the Phrygianum, we hear nothing here or anywhere else that would allow us to ascertain whether they constituted the uppermost level of a Mithraic hierarchy with any expansive base.

104.  Thus, Bjørnebye 2012: 371–​2; cf. Bjørnebye 2015, 2016, and see also Griffiths 2000. 105.  CIL VI 749–​54, with discussion in CIMRM 399 and Cameron 2011: 142–​4; Nonius’ building of the shrine is implied by CIL VI 754, ‘olim Victor auus, caelo deuotus et astris, /​regali sumptu Phoebeia templa locauit.’ 106.  CIL VI 751b. 107.  CIL VI 754.

96  Worshippers of the Gods If Bjørnebye’s theories extrapolate too much from the limited evidence of the inscriptions, it would nevertheless be hazardous to affirm, with Alan Cameron, that the senatorial priests were not simply the protagonists but virtually the sole actors on the contemporary pagan stage: ‘There was no need for a congregation; if a ritual required an audience, retainers on their estates sufficed. If this was a battle against Christianity, it was fought by an army in which everyone was a general.’108 The obscurity of the senators’ place within the wider social topography of pagan cult at Rome is in great part a product of the rhetoric of the inscriptions, which focus single-​mindedly, as McLynn has emphasised with particular clarity, on the devotees themselves.109 Even ordinary priestly functionaries are all but excluded from their inscriptions. All of the initiates, except for Serapias, who was the only devotee to mention the participation of a sacerdos in her taurobolium, were of senatorial rank and far more interested in celebrating their personal distinction (or in the case of female initiates, that of illustrious male relatives) than in recording the participation of the priests who helped conduct their rites. Accordingly, the only Phrygian ‘chief priest’ who appears after 319 is a sacerdos maxima of senatorial rank who offered the taurobolium herself, while the priestly involvement of a quindecimuir in another’s taurobolium is mentioned only by Paulina when she commemorates her husband’s dedication to her religious improvement.110 As with priests, so too with lower-​ranking devotees of the gods: we cannot see the lower echelons of pagan cult, not necessarily because they had become demographically or ritually irrelevant but because the senators did not care to let their contemporaries see them. What we can glimpse is the public visibility and influence of the senators themselves, gained through the religious activities of which their lists of offices provide a chronologically flattened record. The interest of Roman senators in pagan cult was noted by many contemporary observers. As Augustine put it, ‘nearly the whole Roman nobility’ of the middle of the century had been addicted to ‘idols and sacrilegious rites’, worshipping the ‘monstrous forms of all kinds of gods and Anubis the barker’.111 A dramatic example is offered by the so-​called Carmen ad quendam senatorem, a polemic probably written in the 380s, which upbraided a professed Christian ex-​consul for committing ‘one lapse’ into pagan religion.112 ‘Now I have even learned’, the poem chides, ‘that your devotion, not your age, has made you bald.  .  .  . Who would not laugh that you, who were a consul, are now a servant of Isis?’113 The 108.  Cameron 2011: 150. 109.  McLynn 1996: 322–​5. 110.  CIL VI 502, ‘sacerdus maxima /​M(atris) D(eae) M(agnae) I(daeae)’, 1779d.26–​7, ‘tu Dindymenes Atteosqu[e]‌antistitem /​teletis honoras taureis consors pius’; cf. McLynn 1996: 323. 111.  Conf. 8.2.3, echoing Vergil, Aen. 8.698–​700. 112.  CAS 78–​9, ‘disce deo seruare fidem, ne forte bis unum /​incurras lapsum’. McLynn 2016: 247–​8 suggests an identification with Q. Clodius Hermogenianus Olybrius, cos. 379 (PLRE 1: 640–​2 [Olybrius 3]). 113.  CAS 21–​2, 26–​7, ‘nunc etiam didici, quod te non fecerit aetas /​sed tua religio caluum . . . quis te non rideat autem, /​qui fueris consul, nunc Isidis esse ministrum?’

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  97 ex-​consul’s interest in Isiac cult is, the author insinuates, born of an even more repugnant belief, that ‘the Magna Mater can be called a goddess and ought to be worshipped again’,114 and has occasioned both public notice and aristocratic opprobrium: ‘you are not ashamed . . . to damn your intellect through base hymns, as the people respond and the senate rails at you’.115 Here the mention of the Magna Mater appears to be a rhetorical ploy intended to discredit the ex-​consul’s show of pagan devotion,116 but senatorial interest in her cult was notorious. The Expositio totius mundi et gentium, a Latin translation of a Greek text written by a pagan around 359, noted these features of Roman senatorial religion: the Vestal Virgins, haruspicy, the prominence of Jupiter and Sol (presumably in connection with the two pontificates), and ‘the rites of the Mother of the Gods’.117 The taurobolium had gained sufficient notoriety that a pseudonymous author with pretensions as a historian could (as we have seen) imagine an emperor, the notorious Elagabalus, ‘receiving the rites of the Mother of the Gods and being tauroboliated’ a century and a half before.118 As the so-​called Carmen contra paganos complained, ‘We have seen . . . eminent nobles attending the chariot of Cybele, which the assembled band was leading in the Megalensian festival’.119 This tract provides a harsher analogue to the relatively restrained polemic of the Carmen ad quendam senatorem. It lambasts its target, a recently deceased prefect probably to be identified (as I noted above) with Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, for participating in rites ranging from the sacrifices taught by ‘Numa Pompilius, first haruspex among many’, to the same laughable worship of ‘rattle-​bearing’ Isis, ‘wretched Osiris’, and ‘the barker Anubis’ for which the Carmen ad quendam senatorem mocked its ex-​consul.120 The prefect has not, like the ex-​consul, merely flirted with the worship of the Mother of the Gods; he has taken part in the Megalensia, performed the taurobolium, and been taught by the ‘Berecynthian mother to take up soft thyrsi and shake the cymbals’.121 The poem’s bitter invective gives an especially strong impression of the public impact that a prominent senator’s participation in pagan cult could make. The many festivals listed on the calendar in the Chronograph of 354 provided venues for senatorial priests to display their devotion to the gods.122 In the Africa of

114.  CAS 6–​7, ‘quis patiatur enim, te Matrem credere Magnam /​posse deam dici rursusque putare colendam’. 115.  CAS 28–​30, ‘te non pudet . . . /​ingeniumque tuum turpes damnare per hymnos /​respondente tibi uulgo et lacerante senatu’. 116.  McLynn 2016: 240–​1. 117.  Expositio 55, ‘sunt autem in ipsa Roma et uirgines septem ingenuae et clarissimae . . . colunt autem et deos, ex parte Iouem et Solem; nec non et sacra Matris deum perficere dicunt, et aruspices [sic] ad eos certum est’; on the work’s date, religious content, and language, see Rougé 1966: 9–​26, 48–​55, 89–​103. 118. SHA, Heliogab. 7.1 (see 84 n. 57). 119.  CCP 103–​7, ‘uidimus argento facto iuga ferre leones . . . egregios proceres currum servare Cybelae, quem trahere conducta manus Megalensibus actis’. 120.  CCP 35, 98–​102. See 96. 121.  CCP 72–​ 3, ‘quem  .  .  .  molles sumere thyrsos /​cymbalaque imbuerat quatere Berecyntia mater’; taurobolium: 57–​62; Megalensia: 65–​6, 77,  103–​9. 122.  On the festivals, see Salzman 1990: 116–​89.

98  Worshippers of the Gods Augustine’s youth, the Lauatio, a holy day of the Magna Mater, could still gather ‘a most abundant multitude of either sex who watched and listened’ to the stage performances put on in her honour.123 At Rome, the public rites will have been even grander. Thus, or so the Carmen contra paganos claimed, the Megalensia acta featured a parade of eunuchs, a tree trunk carried ‘through the city’, and a chariot of Cybele drawn by lions.124 The firmly ‘Roman’ rites in which men such as Praetextatus and Rufius Caeionius Sabinus would have participated as pontifices are less vividly attested, but they may have been no less impressive. A letter written by Symmachus to Praetextatus described the performance of a ‘public obsequy’ by the citizens at the direction of the publici sacerdotes (that is, the pontifices); the event was, he reports, ‘a heavenly honour performed much more ornately than used to be usual’. The vague language does not allow us to understand what the ‘heavenly honour’ involved or how the priests interacted with the ‘citizens’ into whose ‘guardianship’ they had ‘handed over the care of the gods’, but their success at making a public splash is clear.125 Much beyond such generalities, the contemporary evidence cannot take us. Even in the relatively detailed description in the Carmen contra paganos, the prominent position of the prefect is clearer than the actual events or their social backdrop. Not only does the polemicist seem to conflate Arbor intrat, part of the March festival cycle of Attis, with the Megalensia, an older festival once described by Cicero as ‘exceedingly chaste, solemn, and religious’,126 he, like our other fourth-​century sources, is more interested in gods and priests than in the practical and material details of cultic performance. The relationship between the different aspects of the prefect’s religiosity is thus left unarticulated, as on the inscriptions of Praetextatus and the other senators themselves. It is possible that the Phrygianum itself housed more than one of the many cults espoused by the senators whose altars were erected there,127 but the practice of each cult was presumably kept distinct, since neither the inscriptions themselves nor our Christian sources suggest syncretism at the level of ritual.128 We cannot even be certain whether the Phrygianum played a role in the public, processional cult of the Magna Mater, none of whose rituals, except the taurobolium and 123.  Civ. dei 2.4, ‘per publicum agebant coram deum matre spectante atque audiente utriusque sexus frequentissima multitudine’. Augustine mentions both the Berecynthia mater and the uirgo Caelestis, but he is probably describing a rite of the former alone (thus, Lancellotti 2010: 80–​1, 101–​2). 124.  CCP 65–​6, 72–​3,  103–​9. 125.  Ep. 1.46.2, ‘conuenit inter publicos sacerdotes, ut in custodiam ciuium publico obsequio traderemus curam deorum . . . ergo multo tanto ornatior quam solebat caelestis factus est honor.’ Pace Salzman 2011: 172, I do not think we can infer from Symmachus’ obscure expression ‘in custodiam ciuium . . . traderemus curam deorum’ that ‘official priests or magistrates’ were absent from the festivities; Symmachus’ words seem to me to imply only that the event saw considerable involvement from the general public, alongside the priests who initiated it. 126. Cicero, Har. resp. 24; cf. John Lydus, Mens. 4.59, with Fishwick 1966. 127.  Cf. Bjørnebye 2015: 234, who suggests the presence of a Mithraeum. 128.  Liebeschuetz 1999: 204; Bjørnebye 2016: 203–​4. A statement by Symmachus in Or. 2.32, written in 370 and lauding Valentinian I and Valens for a parsimoniousness greater than that of the gods, is relevant despite its

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  99 criobolium themselves, can be definitely connected to the temple.129 Although the Phrygianum was prominent enough to garner a notice in the regionaries,130 it may have been a venue solely for the personal piety of a few, mostly high-​ranking devotees. This does not mean, however, that the performance of a taurobolium was of interest only to a narrow coterie of senators. That much is clear not only from the fulminations of the Carmen contra paganos but also from the existence of two inscriptions of Alfenius Ceionius Julianus Kamenius, set up in the atrium of his home by men who had been his subordinates during his governorship of Numidia, which listed his taurobolium among many priestly and civic offices.131 A taurobolium was an accomplishment worth boasting about, to one’s inferiors as well as to one’s peers. Nevertheless, it is problematic to argue, with Alan Cameron, that the altars erected to commemorate the performance of a taurobolium were a straightforward extension of typical patterns of aristocratic self-​promotion, aimed at showcasing ‘every honor’ the dedicator had won to a wide public audience.132 Cameron and others have argued that the many inscriptions found on the Vatican must have been visible to a broad public,133 but the scant archaeological evidence for the Phrygianum allows us to infer little more than its general location.134 We simply do not know how the altars were displayed, who had access to the temple, or whether the inscriptions were visible to passers-​by. The only evidence on whose basis we can judge the target audience of the altars is thus the text of the inscriptions themselves. These, as detailed examination makes clear, certainly do not list ‘every honor’ won by the dedicator, in contrast to the epitaphs and other inscriptions set up in honour of Kamenius or Praetextatus. Of some sixteen Roman taurobolium dedications erected by men and supplied with any list of titles, only three list non-​religious offices.135 There is thus a marked religious bias to the corpus as a

rhetorical colour: ‘illis [sc. dis] singula templa fundantur et sua cuique locantur altaria. inde, ut arbitror, maluerunt dispares ritus, ne in consortium cogerentur: nulli cum altero fas est dicare puluinar; hunc Phrygius antistes placat, hunc pontifex’. 129. A  festival called Initium Caiani took place on 28 March, immediately after a five-​day Metroac festival cycle (Inscr. Ital. XIII/​2:  243); it was presumably celebrated at the Gaianum, the exercise ground of Gaius Caligula (Cassius Dio, 59.14.5–​6, with Coarelli 2008–​9:  3–​11), which the fourth-​century regionaries place near the Phrygianum (texts in Nordh 1949: 95). The Initium is probably, however, to be connected not to the Magna Mater (pace, e.g., Liverani 2008: 44) but to Gaius’ entrance, as a new emperor, into Rome on 28 March 37 (Hülsen 1903: 359–​60; cf. Nock 1948: 156–​7, Fishwick 1966: 193–​4 n. 2). For a survey of the limited evidence on the topographic setting of Metroac cult activities at Rome, see Pensabene 2008. 130.  See previous note, 83 n. 37. 131.  CIL VI 1675, 31940/​41331. 132.  Cameron 2011: 147 (emphasis in original). 133.  Cf. McLynn 1996: 313, 325–​6, Salzman 2011: 173–​4, Gee 2011–​12: 78. 134.  Further speculations in Biering and von Hesberg 1987 and Coarelli 2008–​9. 135.  CIL VI 499, 510, 512; the two prefectures of Volusianus Lampadius (PLRE 1: 978–​80 [Volusianus 5]) are also noted on an inscription (AE 1945, no. 55) attached to a statue of Dionysus in the precinct of the Magna Mater at Ostia (on the statue, see Calza 1943: 219–​20; on the sanctuary, Meiggs 1973: 354–​66).

100  Worshippers of the Gods whole, and in at least two or three instances, the dedicators seem to have omitted their civic titles intentionally. On his epitaph and the two inscriptions set up in the atrium of his home, Kamenius included a quaestorship and a praetorship; uniquely, these are absent from his earlier taurobolium dedication (dated to 374), whose cursus thus becomes a string of purely priestly titles.136 On the altar that he set up in 376, Ulpius Egnatius Faventinus listed only the ubiquitous v.c. and numerous cultic titles, even though he had held office in Numidia under Jovian, perhaps as a legate, and again under Valens and Valentinian I, as governor.137 A third, fragmentary inscription is probably to be reconstructed with the words u(ir) c(larissimus) [et inlust]ris after the name; if the conjecture is correct, this man’s doubtless lofty offices were omitted, as cultic titles follow immediately.138 Each of these three men chose to commemorate only his religious titles along with his taurobolium, conforming to the general ethos of the corpus, most of whose dedicators positioned themselves specifically as priests. Individual devotees were free to develop their own image as they wished—​Sabinus, for example, boasted of his birth, eloquence, and physical stature139—​but the typical focus of the taurobolium inscriptions remains on religion. It would be rash, therefore, to press the diverse motivations underlying the initiations and their commemoration into a single mould. Though the inscriptions rarely give profound insight into their dedicators’ thoughts, their variations suggest a range of attitudes towards pagan piety and its commemoration. For a few of the initiates, cultic offices and initiations formed part of a broader civic career; for most, they existed, at least within the confines of the Phrygianum itself, as distinctly religious activities in parallel with public life. For some such as Sabinus, priestly authority, closeness to patron divinities, and the exoticism of ‘foreign’ cults were powerful attractions to a philosophically explicable elaboration of traditional piety.140 For many, especially the female devotees whose inscriptions advertised their connection to distinguished husbands or fathers, there were ties of family and friendship to cement.141 For all, perhaps, there was the allure of belonging to a sophisticated circle made up of persons of their own class and social set, whose religious superiority was repeatedly underscored by the erection of inscriptions that advertised the access of these ‘Very Important

136.  AE 1953, no.  238; contrast CIL VI 1675, 31940/​41331 (the quaestorship is lost in a lacuna but was doubtless present in the original), ILS 1264. Such omissions are frequent (Cameron 2011: 137, 146; cf. Weisweiler 2012: 343), but that does not explain why Kamenius left out the titles on the Phrygianum inscription alone. 137.  CIL VI 504; cf. VIII 4647, AE 1946, nos. 108–​110, and PLRE 1: 325 (Faventinus 1). 138.  AE 1953, no.  237, ‘[Sextius Rus]/​ticus u(ir) c(larissimus) [et inlust]/​ris pater pat[rum dei in]/​uicti Mithr[ae -​  -​  -​]’. 139.  CIL VI 511.2, 12, ‘nobilis in causis, forma celsusq(ue) Sabinus . . . antiqua generose domo’. This is again the reading preserved by Pirro Ligorio (see ­figure 3.3). 140.  Cf. Rüpke 2014: 180, 2011: 269–​71. 141. Martínez-​Maza 2003, Griffiths 2000; cf. the familial connections underscored on CIL VI 509, 512, 1779–​80,  30966.

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  101 Persons’ to what Fabia Aconia Paulina called the ‘manifold divinity of the gods’.142 Religious excellence and social prestige are intimately allied. The connection between religion and aristocratic glory is a particularly clear feature of the literary and epigraphic evidence for pagan cults in fourth-​century Rome, which is, as I have repeatedly underscored, too narrowly focused and too impressionistic to allow us to draw certain inference about the demographics or even the rituals of ‘paganism’. The lower echelons of the cults, however large or diverse they were, are largely invisible, as is the shape of most of the processions, sacrifices, and other rituals of the gods who are named on the fourth-​century Roman inscriptions. What the evidence does allow us to discern is how the dedicators of the inscriptions, the kind of people whose participation in official and private rituals was noticed by both pagans and Christians, wanted to be seen. In the Phrygianum—​or so the inscriptions imply—​only a person of the ‘right sort’ could be a devotee of the gods, but devotion to the gods was the focus and the source of aristocratic glory. ‘Pagans’ and Christianity From the middle of the fourth century, the rites performed at the Phrygianum took place against an imposing new backdrop:  the basilica of St Peter, constructed by Constantine over a shrine of the apostle roughly contemporaneous with the first extant allusion to the Phrygianum in 160.143 The construction of St Peter’s was an important step in the Christianisation of the Roman civic topography, whose history is often told as a story of the inward expansion, over the fourth and especially the fifth centuries, of Christian architecture from the originally less significant (and religiously more neutral) periphery to the monumental (and profoundly pagan) centre of the city.144 On the Vatican, however, a flamboyant architectural gesture of imperial favour for the Christian religion stood in direct proximity to the leading centre of a new kind of polytheism, which had risen into unprecedented social prominence in the two decades before Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge. Under the influence of the grand narrative of senatorial resistance to Christianity, scholars have often interpreted the relationship between the Phrygianum and the Christian Church as one of hostility. The argument is an old one: Jacobus Grimaldi, a key source for the inscriptions found at St Peter’s in the early seventeenth century, already assumed that the damage they had

142.  CIL VI 1779d.15; ‘Very Important Persons’: I repurpose the language of Cameron 2011: 148. 143.  Shrine: Apollonj Ghetti et al. 1951, 1: 136–​40, Thümmel 1999: 72. Liverani 2015 defends the traditional assignment of St Peter’s to Constantine, on the whole convincingly; contrast Bowersock 2002 (Constans), Westall 2015 (Constantius II), and the mediating position of Gem 2013 (begun under Constantine, completed under Constans). 144.  E.g., Krautheimer 1983: 26–​9 (with previous literature), Guyon 1996: 219–​23, Salzman 1999: 127–​8, but contrast Curran 2000: 96.

102  Worshippers of the Gods suffered prior to discovery must have resulted from ancient Christian ‘disgust for this idolatry’.145 In a similar vein, Filippo Coarelli has credited the rise of the Phrygianum in the fourth century to anti-​Christian animosity,146 and many scholars, following Margherita Guarducci, have argued that the building works on St Peter’s must have disrupted the operations of the nearby pagan shrine,147 at which only one taurobolium dedication, erected in 350, can be securely dated between 319 and 370.148 In the absence of reliable archaeological reports, Grimaldi’s conclusions can no longer be assessed, but neither modern argument convinces. The hypothesis that the Phrygianum ceased operating during the building of St Peter’s rests upon a mistranslation: Guarducci argued that an undated Greek dedication found on the Vatican described the performance of the taurobolium after ‘twenty-​eight silent years’, that is, at the end of the long gap between 319 and 350.149 However, the key adjective, ἠρεμέοντας, actually connotes fixity or rest rather than silence.150 The allusion is thus to ‘twenty-​eight tranquil years’, and so to the dedicator’s long experience of divine favour, not to a lapse in cult.151 The epigraphic and literary record confirms this philological judgement. The continuity of pagan ritual activity and philosophical efforts is clear from Firmicus Maternus’ report in the 340s and from the continued patronage of influential senators.152 Inscriptions bear witness to the interest of L.  Aradius Valerius Proculus signo Populonius, a quindecimuir and holder of other public priesthoods, in the cult of the Magna Mater, and to the participation of C. Ceionius Rufius Volusianus signo Lampadius, a pontifex of Sol, in the worship of Isis, Mithras, and Hecate.153 The altar commemorating Lampadius’ taurobolium, which was recorded separately at Ostia, does not survive,154 but he would become a leading figure in pagan senatorial circles in the 370s and 380s, when most of the datable taurobolium altars were erected, many by his friends and relatives,155 including a son,156 two daughters and a son-​in-​law,157 and an old

145.  Thus, Grimaldi, Codex Vaticanus 6438, f. 43, quoted at CIL VI 497–​504, ‘alcuni di quali [sc. altari] erano stati spezzati con mazzi di ferro da Christiani, et gettati et sepeliti in disprezzo di questa Idolatria’. 146.  Coarelli 2008–​9: 12, ‘una precisa volontà di polemica anticristiana’; cf. Gee 2011–​12: 79. 147.  Guarducci 1953: 64–​9, 1982, developing a suggestion of Josi 1949–​51, 1950: 434–​5, and followed by, e.g., Liverani 2015: 498, Coarelli 2008–​9: 12, Giordani 1987: 352–​4. 148.  CIL VI 498. 149.  AE 1923, no. 29 (text as given in the more accurate printing by Fabre 1923: 6), ὀκτὼ γὰρ λυκάβαντας ἐπ’εἴκ[ο]σιν ἠρεμέοντας /​νύκτα διασκεδάσας αὖθις ἔθηκε φάος; Guarducci 1982: 115, ‘ventotto anni silenziosi’ 150.  LSJ, Lampe, s.v. ἠρεμέω, and Fabre 1923: 12, ‘ “pour vingt-​huit années paisibles” ’. 151.  Cf. McLynn 1996: 328–​9 n. 66, Curran 2000: 111–​12. 152.  Pace Cameron 2011: 151–​2. 153. Proculus: CIL VIII 24521 (attesting restoration of a temple of the Magna Mater and Attis in Carthage ca. 331–​3); see further Matthews 1973: 185–​6, Lepelley 2011: 275–​6, PLRE 1: 747–​9 (Proculus 11); he was famous for his piety: Symmachus, Ep. 1.2.4. Lampadius: CIL VI 846 (dated by Cameron 2011: 148 ‘no later than the 350s’); PLRE 1: 978–​80 (Volusianus 5). 154.  AE 1945, no. 55. 155.  McLynn 1996: 326–​8; Cameron 2011: 144. 156.  CIL VI 512. 157.  CIL VI 30966, 509; cf. PLRE 1: 975 (Volusiana).

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  103 political crony.158 If the senators’ worship of the gods was disrupted by Christian interference (let  alone motivated by anti-​Christian animus), their inscriptions give no hint of it, any more than they do of the presence of Christians within Roman senatorial society.159 Here lies the profoundest difference between the pagan epigraphic and Christian polemical evidence for this strand of senatorial piety. To both Firmicus Maternus and Ambrosiaster, the real character of traditional religion becomes most visible when it is placed alongside the true, Christian religion. No corresponding conviction can be discerned in the inscriptions of the ‘pagans’ themselves, most of which commemorate a particular ritual act. The rest are epitaphs or senatorial résumés, and none is the kind of text on which we could expect to see mention of competing religions. The traces that our other late-​antique texts supply of the devotees’ personal interaction with Christians hint at subdued rivalry within a context of general amity, rather than open hostility. Thus, an indignant Jerome reported a jibe that Praetextatus, ‘a sacrilegious man and worshipper of idols, used to tell the blessed Pope Damasus as a joke: “Make me bishop of Rome and I’ll be a Christian at once.” ’160 Though uncomfortable for Damasus, whose contested position as bishop of Rome Praetextatus had secured, at imperial order, as urban prefect,161 the joke hardly implies unique enmity. Damasus, too, seems to have seen the benefits of cooperation, unleashing his bitterness, if Alan Cameron’s ingenious imputation of the Carmen contra paganos to the poet-​ pope is correct, only after his illustrious rival was dead.162 A story in Ammianus Marcellinus puts Volusianus Lampadius on the Vatican, bestowing his largesse on beggars.163 The date has been contested, but the incident is probably to be placed after the completion of St Peter’s,164 whose clergy Lampadius’ ostentatious generosity might easily have irked. Yet even if so, we have no reason to think that his actions were motivated by any other impulse than the one Ammianus names: to insult the Roman plebs, whom Lampadius thought too demanding of his wealth. Status, not religion, was the main social battleground.165 Whatever their personal sentiments, such men were able to cooperate with an increasingly Christianised imperial court. Thus, Lampadius held two prefectures,

158.  CIL VI 510; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, 15.5.4. 159.  Cf. McLynn 1996: 328 on the ‘mutual indifference’ of Christian and pagan aristocrats. 160. Jerome, Contra Iohannem 8, ‘miserabilis Praetextatus, qui designatus consul est mortuus, homo sacrilegus et idolorum cultor, solebat ludens beato papae Damaso dicere: facite me romanae urbis episcopum et ero protinus christianus.’ 161.  Cf. McLynn 2012:  307. For Praetextatus’ role in the controversy with Ursinus and his followers, see Ammianus Marcellinus, 27.9.9, Collectio Auellana 5–​7, with Kahlos 2002: 115–​24. 162.  Cameron 2011: 273–​319, but note the cautions of Trout 2015: 26–​38. 163.  Ammianus Marcellinus, 27.3.6. 164.  Two arguments reaching this conclusion from opposing directions in Westall 2015: 237–​9 and Liverani 2015: 500; contrast, however, Brown 2012: 70. 165.  Pace Liverani 2013: 24–​5, who sees Lampadius’ actions as an attempt ‘to compete against the Christians on their own turf ’.

104  Worshippers of the Gods and Praetextatus, also twice prefect, died as consul-​designate. Both of these eminent pagans, moreover, may have had zealously Christian relatives. One of Jerome’s letters tells how Praetextata, ‘a very noble woman’ and wife of Hymetius, the paternal uncle of his ascetic protégées Blesilla and Eustochium, had tried to make Eustochium adopt clothing and a hairstyle more suitable for a young aristocratic maiden than was her preferred monastic garb.166 He does not connect this Praetextata to the famous pagan senator, but the name suggests that she was a relative, perhaps his sister.167 Lampadius, André Chastagnol has likewise suggested, was probably brother to another of Jerome’s circle, Albina.168 Her daughter, Marcella, to whom Jerome dedicated an entire book of epistles, may thus have been a cousin to several of the initiates of the Phrygianum, including two ladies of similarly aristocratic stature.169 ‘Religious enthusiasm’ seems to have been a common trait of the Ceionii Rufii, pagan and Christian.170 So too, perhaps, was the ‘holy arrogance’, the confidence ‘that you are better than those people’, that Jerome told the young Eustochium to cultivate in the open letter On preserving virginity.171 Jerome was trying to convince Eustochium that her freely chosen chastity put her above her married peers, who boasted of their husbands’ dignities. A no less religious yet more worldly ‘aristocratic hauteur’ (as McLynn has called it) is visible in the inscriptions that Eustochium’s pagan peers and (possible) relatives set up at the Phrygianum and elsewhere in Rome.172 There is no hint of anti-​Christian animus in the epigraphic evidence, but hatred is not the only attitude that can make its target chafe. The inscriptions reflect not animosity but arrogance, a lofty, self-​assured indifference to the religious pursuits of lesser persons, whether ‘pagan’ or Christian. This confidence in the superiority of the senators’ beliefs and persons may help to explain the intense reaction that the senators’ religiosity excited in certain Christian circles. As can be seen from the involvement of Lampadius’ many associates in the Phrygianum, priesthoods and initiations were not just an avenue to social distinction and to closeness to patron divinities but also a way of affirming and cementing the bonds of family and friendship. The domination of the rites by senators added to those powerful attractions the allure of belonging to an exclusive religious group restricted to persons with the right connections and personal attainments.173 An ambitious senator might well have been moved 166.  Ep. 107.5. 167.  PLRE 1: 721 (Praetextata); cf. Rebenich 1992: 173–​4. 168.  Chastagnol 1956; cf. PLRE 1: 1138 (Stemma 13), Rebenich 1992: 172–​3. 169.  See 102 n.157. 170.  Cameron 2011: 147, ‘Volusianus [Lampadius] was obviously a religious enthusiast.’ 171.  Ep. 22.16, ‘disce in hac parte superbiam sanctam, scito te illis esse meliorem’; for the title, cf. Vir. ill. 135.3; on the context, see Cain 2009: 101–​2. Laurence 2010: 9–​25 provides an overview of Ep. 22; for a jaundiced introduction and detailed philological commentary, see Adkin 2003. 172.  McLynn 1996: 328–​9. 173.  Cf. Bjørnebye 2012: 352; this is a positive corollary of Cameron’s dismissal (2011: 4) of the cults as mere ‘upper-​class freemasonry’.

The Manifold Divinity of the Gods  105 to seek the favour of a successful man like Volusianus Lampadius by joining in his religious pursuits. The Carmen contra paganos hints as much when it accuses its target of having destroyed the souls of ‘Christ worshippers’ by his ‘honours’, bestowing offices on men named Leucadius and Marcianus in exchange for their abandonment of the Christian ‘law’.174 The vehemence of the poem’s rhetoric obscures the events it relates, but the shared initiations and priesthoods of Lampadius’ circle supply a model. The two men may have joined in the prefect’s cults in order to gain valuable connections to him and his social set, furthering their careers yet turning their backs on Christ (or so it would have seemed to more committed Christians) for their own advancement.175 The tensions felt by devout Christians need not have been the product, therefore, of intense sectarian hostility. They could have arisen instead from the continued social prestige, visi­ bility, and vitality of pagan religiosity, which offered an illustrious alternative to the single-​minded Christianity championed by Firmicus Maternus and the anonymous Roman polemicists. ‘Paganism’ Revisited The evidence for fourth-​century polytheism at Rome is at once relatively abundant and narrow in scope. The numerous inscriptions from the Vatican Phrygianum and elsewhere in the city give a clear picture of the diversity of senatorial religious interests and the importance of familial and other personal ties for the proliferation of pagan eclecticism. Together with the verse polemics, the works of Firmicus Maternus and Ambrosiaster, and briefer references in other texts by both pagans and Christians, the inscriptions also give a sense of the wider social and cultural impact of this new kind of senatorial religiosity. The epigraphic and literary data only gesture, however, at other issues of particular importance to the history of late-​antique paganism at Rome. We simply do not know, for example, how the senators who were initiated at the Phrygianum interacted with their Christian peers or even with persons of lesser social rank who worshipped the same gods they did. How they explained the increasing political and social ascendency of Christianity in philosophical or theological terms, if they did at all, is equally unclear, and none of the inscriptions, even Praetextatus’ epitaph, suggests more than the bare outlines of the theological theories through which the senators explained the divine realities that underlay and united their cults. The importance of religion for the self-​presentation and social life of these senators is clear; what their religion looked like in practice is much harder to see.

174.  CCP 78–​ 81, 85–​ 6, ‘Christicolas multos uoluit sic perdere demens, /​qui uellent sine lege mori, donaret honores /​oblitosque sui caperet quos daemonis arte, /​muneribus cupiens quorundam frangere mentes /​ . . . Leucadium fecit fundos curaret Afrorum, /​perdere Marcianum †sibi† proconsul ut esset.’ 175.  Cf. Cecconi 2012: 79–​80, Cameron 2011: 300–​1.

106  Worshippers of the Gods Although the evidence for the specific practices and beliefs of these fourth-​ century senators is sparse, what remains suggests a new perspective on a key development in late Roman discourse on traditional religion:  the rise of the vocabulary of ‘paganism’. The use of this terminology has often been seen, as I discussed in the introduction, as a way for zealous Christian polemicists and clerics to police a boundary between Christians and outsiders that their own rhetoric had created.176 Such a view does not do full justice to the way in which the concept of paganitas was developed by Ambrosiaster in his peculiarly Roman religious and intellectual context, where prominent polytheists took a visible part in the ceremonies of numerous cults and espoused a unifying philosophical theology. Although the boundary between ‘pagans’ and ‘Christians’ that Firmicus Maternus, Ambrosiaster, and the other Roman polemicists asserted may not have loomed as large in the minds of their senatorial targets as it did in the polemicists’ own, the intellectual frameworks adopted by the urban Roman polemical tradition parallel the senators’ practices and ideas. Like Lactantius, whose assault on Tetrarchic-​era public religion drew on the Classical literature that was central to his own teaching and his readers’ education, the later polemicists were reshaping contemporary conceptions of polytheism, not imposing a capriciously Christian view from outside. The systematised pagan religion described by Firmicus Maternus and Ambrosiaster is a Christian elaboration of currents that can also be discerned, despite the gaps in our evidence, in the epigraphic texts emanating from the pagan circles on which their polemics focus. Although the pagans may not have known ‘they were pagans until the Christians told them they were’, as Henry Chadwick once quipped,177 the polytheist senators of fourth-​ century Rome did not need Christians to tell them to worship ‘the manifold divinity of the gods’. The term paganus was a Christian invention; the idea—​and, crucially, the practice—​of a polytheistic religion that united the worship of many gods was not.

176.  See 4–​5. 177.  Chadwick 1985: 9.

4

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors RETHINKING THE ALTAR OF VICTORY AFFAIR

I

n 382, around the same time that Ambrosiaster penned his attack on ‘paganism’, the emperor Gratian issued new restrictions on the public cults of the city of Rome. As with Constantine’s edict on sacrifices of 324, the text of Gratian’s orders is now lost, and their precise shape is thus unclear; the emperor appears to have issued at least one law, followed, perhaps, by clarificatory rescripts. The broad lines of Gratian’s legislation can nonetheless be reconstructed from references made by contemporary Christian and pagan controversialists and a law of Honorius of 415.1 What this evidence reveals is a strikingly new strategy for dealing with traditional cult. Where previous Christian emperors from Constantine onwards had restricted specific practices such as sacrifice, Gratian removed the financial foundations of the Roman sacra. Breaking with the lenient policy of his father, Valentinian I, who had expressly condoned ancestral Roman rites in a law directed to the Senate in 371,2 Gratian confiscated the estates that supported the operations of the public priesthoods of the people of Rome,3 forbade the Vestal Virgins from receiving inheritances,4 rescinded the priests’ immunity from public duties,5 and ordered the altar of the goddess Victory to be removed from the Senate house.6 The new policy marked a decisive change in the relationship between the Roman Empire and the traditional religion of Rome. The altar of Victory had stood in the Senate house since 29 bc, when Octavian installed a statue of Nike originally taken from the city of Tarentum in the centre of the newly dedicated 1. Symmachus, Rel. 3, Ambrose, Ep. 72(17)–​73(18), C.Th. 16.10.20, with Seeck 1883:  liii–​liv and Cameron 2011:  39–​51. C.Th. 16.10.20, directed to the province of Africa, refers to ‘constituta’ of Gratian that confiscated temple estates, while Ambrose, Ep. 72(17).5, speaks of Gratian’s rescripta. I thank Neil McLynn and the participants in the Oxford Late Roman Seminar in 2016 for discussion of the intricacies of the evidence. Lizzi Testa’s attempt (2007: 259) to distinguish the constituta mentioned by Honorius from the law(s) of 382 does not convince (see further Cameron 2011: 43). 2.  C.Th. 9.16.9, ‘haruspicinam ego nullum cum maleficiorum causis habere consortium iudico neque ipsam aut aliquam praeterea concessam a maioribus religionem genus esse arbitror criminis’; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, 30.9.5, on Valentinian’s generally tolerant approach to religion. 3. Ambrose, Ep. 73(18).3, 13, C.Th. 16.10.20; cf. Symmachus, Rel. 3.11–​13. 4. Symmachus, Rel. 3.11–​18. 5. Symmachus, Rel. 3.11, Ambrose, Ep. 73(18).11; cf. the more general reference to priuilegia at Ep. 72(17).4, 73(18).11–​13. 6. Symmachus, Rel.  3.3–​6.

Worshippers of the Gods. Mattias P. Gassman, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190082444.001.0001

108  Worshippers of the Gods Curia Iulia.7 Since Augustus’ day, the altar had been a crucial focus for the religiosity of the Senate as an official body, providing a place for senators to swear their loyalty to the emperors and to offer incense and wine at the beginning of meetings.8 It had been removed from the rebuilt Diocletianic curia for Constantius II’s visit to the city in 357, as mentioned in c­ hapter 2, but had been replaced in the meantime, perhaps upon Constantius’ departure, perhaps under Julian.9 Whatever happened afterwards, Constantius had avoided ruffling pagan aristocrats’ feelings during his visit, openly showing admiration for the city’s monuments (including temples, pagans were later happy to note) and appointing senators to the Roman priesthoods.10 His removal of the altar was thus a carefully calibrated religious-​political statement. It affirmed, on a symbolic level, the repugnance towards pagan sacrifices and idol worship that the emperor had recently underscored in a law issued from Milan but left him room to manoeuvre in dealing with the city’s wealthy and influential senatorial elite.11 In this, he was successful: so far as we know, neither Constantius’ removal of the altar nor its later restoration provoked comment, let  alone controversy, in contemporary Rome.12 Gratian’s choice to remove the altar of Victory was a declaration of a different kind. By breaking the link between the res publica and the traditional priesthoods, Gratian severed the well-​being of the Roman state and its rulers from the operation of the publica sacra, which were defined by their dependence on public funds.13 The late-​fifth-​century historian Zosimus claimed that Gratian rejected the title pontifex maximus at his accession, either, that is, in 367, when he was declared Augustus as an eight-​year-​old, or in 375, when Valentinian I died. The report seems to be legendary, since Gratian is recorded with the title in both 370 and 379, but Zosimus’ claim still echoes the basic tenor of Gratian’s policy towards traditional Roman cult, of which he appears to have been otherwise ignorant.14 The removal of the altar from the curia was a concrete, visible symbol 7.  No ancient source explicitly ties the installation of the altar on 28 August of an unnamed year (Fasti Maffeiani, Inscr. Ital. XIII/​2: 79) to the dedication of the Curia Iulia and erection of the statue, which followed the triumph on 13–​15 August 29 bc (Cassius Dio, 51.22.1–​2; cf. Suetonius, Aug. 100.2), but the closeness of the dates suggests that all three events occurred at the same time (Hölscher 1967: 7). 8. Suetonius, Aug. 35.3; Herodian, 5.5.7; Symmachus, Rel. 3.5; Ambrose, Ep. 72(17).9. 9. Symmachus, Rel. 3.6, Ambrose, Ep. 73(18).32; on Constantius’ visit and its context, see Thompson 2005, Moser 2018: 276–​312; speculations on the altar’s replacement in, e.g., Cameron 2011: 33, Sheridan 1966: 187. On Diocletian’s curia, see Kalas 2015: 143–​9. 10. Symmachus, Rel. 3.7; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, 16.10.13–​17. 11.  C.Th. 16.10.6 (19 February 356). 12.  Cf. Moser 2018: 295, pace Cameron 2011: 33–​4, who extrapolates an elaborate series of appeals by pagans and Christians over the reigns of Julian, Valentinian I, and Gratian. 13. Festus, De uerborum significatu 284.18–​20 Lindsay, ‘publica sacra, quae publico sumptu pro populo fiunt, quaeque pro montibus, pagis, curis, sacellis’; cf. Zosimus, 4.59.3, τῶν δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς γερουσίας μὴ κατὰ θεσμὸν εἰπόντων πράττεσθαι τὰ τελούμενα μὴ δημοσίου τοῦ δαπανήματος ὄντος, with Cameron 2011: 47–​8 and Baynes 1946: 175–​7. 14.  Zosimus, 4.36.5, with Cameron 2007: 348. For Gratian as pontifex maximus, see CIL VI 1175 (370) and Ausonius, Grat. act. 9.42 (379), with the extensive discussion by Cameron 2007. Some (e.g., Dewar 1996:  392, O’Donnell 1979:  76, Palanque 1933:  117–​18) suggest relocating the event to 382, but no evidence supports the

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  109 of the new state of religious affairs that Gratian had inaugurated. Neither the emperor himself nor his relationship to the senators who had previously sworn their allegiance at the altar would depend henceforth on the worship of the ancient gods of Rome. The Senate sent an embassy to protest the new legislation, but it was countered by a petition from Christian senators mobilised by the most influential Italian bishops of the day, Ambrose of Milan and Damasus of Rome; forestalled by hostile courtiers led, perhaps, by the powerful magister officiorum Macedonius, the Senate’s representatives did not even obtain an audience.15 The mood of the court was decisively against traditional Roman religion. Yet only months later, Gratian was dead, killed in the usurpation of Magnus Maximus, and Rome was suffering from severe famine.16 The empire of Valentinian II, Gratian’s twelve-​year-​old brother, was now dependent on support from the courtiers of Milan and senators of Rome, and two prominent pagan aristocrats, Vettius Agorius Praetextatus and Q.  Aurelius Symmachus, were elevated to leading administrative positions as praetorian prefect and praefectus urbi.17 The situation may well ‘have appeared’, as Meaghan McEvoy has suggested, ‘highly favourable for a reopening of the issue of pagan privileges’.18 To pagan senators, the situation certainly seemed urgent—​ and seemed to vindicate the wisdom of the ancient ways.19 As Symmachus, who had been a member of the failed senatorial legation, exclaimed in a letter to his friend and fellow pontiff Nicomachus Flavianus, ‘Ancestral gods, pardon the neglect of your rites! Drive off the miserable famine!’20 In connecting the loss of prosperity to the decline of ancestral religion, Symmachus gives voice to a pagan conviction familiar from the anti-​Christian legislation attacked by Lactantius and the other pre-​Constantinian apologists. As Symmachus’ letter hints, the senatorial response to Gratian’s legislation, in which he took an important role, revealed another, more public face of fourth-​ century discourse on ancestral religion than is visible in Firmicus Maternus, Ambrosiaster, or the taurobolium inscriptions. At issue, as in Lactantius’ day, was redating. Cameron’s suggestion (2011: 51–​6, 2007: 360–​77) that Gratian or Magnus Maximus adopted the less pagan title pontifex inclitus in 382–​3 does not convince, since the new title appears only in two much later imperial letters, of Valentinian III and Marcian (Concilium Chalcedonense, Actio 3[2]‌.104) and of Anastasius (Collectio Auellana 113). I owe this last point to Evers (forthcoming). 15.  PLRE 1: 526 (Macedonius 3). Denied audience: Symmachus, Rel. 3.1, ‘diui principis denegata est ab inprobis audientia’. Some (e.g., Palanque 1933: 132 n. 39, Dassmann 2004: 85) have identified the inprobi with Ambrose (and Damasus; so Zelzer 1982: 22; cf. Groß-​Albenhausen 1999: 71), yet Rel. 3.2 puts the blame on ‘courtiers’ (aulicorum); Vera 1981:  26–​7 suggests Macedonius, who was under criminal investigation in 384 (Symmachus, Rel. 36; cf. Paulinus, VA 37, and see also Lizzi Testa 2015: 409–​11). Petition: Ambrose, Ep. 72(17).10, on which see McLynn 1994: 151–​2. 16.  Gratian’s death: McLynn 1994: 154–​5; famine: Symmachus, Ep. 2.6, Rel. 3.15–​17. 17. On the political background, see esp. Matthews 1975:  173–​203, with McLynn 1994:  164–​6, McEvoy 2013: 67–​70, and Watts 2015b: 184–​5. 18.  McEvoy 2013: 68. 19.  Cf. Matthews 1975: 205. 20.  Ep. 2.7.3, ‘dii patrii, facite gratiam neglectorum sacrorum! miseram famem pellite!’

110  Worshippers of the Gods not the spirituality of individual pagans but the continuation of the cults by which the Roman people had long secured the well-​being of both city and empire. Now, however, in the changed political order of the post-​Constantinian empire, it was not the Christians who needed to defend their rejection of the public cults but the pagans (as many Christians now called them) who had to argue for the continuation of traditional religion in the face of hostility from Christian emperors. The result was a protracted series of senatorial embassies to the courts of Valentinian II, Theodosius I, and Eugenius, the last in 394, and the production of the only extant apology for traditional Roman religion by a senator and pontifex.21 A carefully worded appeal for the restoration of the altar of Victory and of imperial funds, this text, the famous Relatio 3, was written by Symmachus in summer 384, when the Senate made its second attempt to have Gratian’s policy reversed. Acting in his capacity as praefectus urbi, the emperor’s immediate subordinate at Rome,22 Symmachus conveyed the wishes of his fellow senators through an official communiqué (relatio) to Valentinian II. Ambrose of Milan again intervened, this time without the support of his Roman colleague Damasus. Immediately after the communiqué’s delivery, he sent a brief letter to the emperor that sternly exhorted him to refuse the senators’ request (Ep. 72[17]); after Valentinian had rejected the Senate’s appeal, Ambrose followed up this initial address with a detailed refutation of Symmachus’ arguments (Ep. 73[18]). He would later publish all three texts in his tenth book of epistles, bracketing Symmachus’ relatio between his two letters.23 This editorial decision has exercised a profound influence on the reception of the events of 384, of which Symmachus himself seems to have left no version of his own: the forty-​nine relationes from his prefecture were published long after his death, with the appeal for the ancestral cults in third place.24 At the beginning of the fifth century, Prudentius reworked Symmachus’ and Ambrose’s arguments into a two-​volume poem, Contra Symmachum, while Ambrose’s biographer, the deacon Paulinus, cast Symmachus’ failure to reply as the silence of a defeated man, not of a busy magistrate who had chosen to ignore an outsider’s intervention in an official exchange between Senate and emperor.25 Ambrose’s presentation of these texts long encouraged historians to view the events of 384 as he presented them: as a debate between an influential Christian bishop and 21.  Embassies after 384: Ambrose, Ep. extra coll. 10(57).4–​12; Paulinus, VA 26; with Cameron 2011: 56–​89, 337–​49 (against the hypothesis of a further embassy in 402), and Lizzi Testa 2015. 22.  On the relationship of the prefect to the emperor, the Senate, the people of Rome, and other imperial officials, see Chastagnol 1960: 66–​80 and Sinnigen 1959. 23.  On the composition of this book, see Nauroy 2012: 55–​9. 24.  On communication between prefects and emperors, see Harries 2010: 12–​14; that Symmachus’ relationes were published posthumously can be inferred from the pervasive errors in the addresses to the emperors (Vera 1977, contra Seeck 1883: xvi–​xvii, Callu 1972–​2009, 5: liv–​lv, 1: 20–​2). 25.  Cf. Chenault 2008: 246–​8. Paulinus, VA 26.2, ‘qua relatione adcepta praeclarissimum libellum conscripsit, ut contra nihil umquam auderet Symmachus vir eloquentissimus respondere’. On the C. Symm., see Cameron 2011: 337–​49, Gnilka 2000–​3b.

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  111 a senatorial champion of traditional paganism.26 A  few even went so far as to polemicise on Ambrose’s behalf, casting Symmachus as a self-​interested senator hungry to maintain the wealth and influence of his class.27 Such perspectives are now decidedly out of favour. Following Neil McLynn’s exposure of Ambrose’s often one-​sided presentation of the controversies of his long episcopal career,28 recent scholarship has aimed to dismantle what McLynn has since called the ‘wickedly deceitful framework’ of Ambrose’s epistles.29 Gratian’s legislation has accordingly been recast as a fiscal and political measure developed in ignorance of (or naive disregard for) the intensity of senatorial feeling.30 Though the initiative naturally revealed the emperor’s religious priorities, it was (so the argument goes) probably a reaction to an opportunistic appeal by Roman Christians made during the prefecture of a prominent Christian, Anicius Auchenius Bassus.31 Gratian’s measures were born less of religious principle than of a desire to shore up imperial finances and vindicate victory as a personal prerogative of the emperor.32 Indeed, the very idea that Gratian targeted all traditional Roman priesthoods is probably, so Rita Lizzi Testa has suggested, the product of Ambrosian spin, since Symmachus makes explicit reference only to the Vestals.33 Even the basic terms on which Symmachus’ relatio are commonly read have, as Peter Brown, for example, has argued, been subtly skewed by Ambrose’s presentation of the events: ‘It was Ambrose and not Symmachus who ensured that the debate between the bishop and the prefect has gone down to history under the misleading name of the “Altar of Victory Controversy.” ’34 The newly critical approach to Ambrose has highlighted some of the rhetorical subtleties of the bishop’s epistles, but a real danger lies hidden within modern revision of Gratian’s religious legislation and the controversy of 384. Ambrose was not the only cunning politician who was trying to shape the reception of Gratian’s measures by Valentinian and his court.35 In answering Lizzi Testa’s arguments, Alan Cameron has highlighted the slipperiness of Symmachus’ rhetoric,36 but 26.  Thus, still, Lassandro 2012: 360–​1 (qualifying all three texts as ‘documenti uffiziali’); cf., e.g., Rosen 1994, Matthews 1975: 210. Parodi Scotti 1990 even reads the texts in Ambrose’s order, rather than that of composition. 27.  Most baldly, Paschoud 1965, who evinces an almost partisan preference for Ambrose, as does Casini 1957: 511–​12; cf. McGeachy 1942 and Małunowicz 1937: 108–​19 for more nuanced perspectives. 28.  McLynn 1994. 29.  McLynn 2009: 581; for earlier criticism of Ambrose’s ‘distortion of his opponent’s arguments’, see Matthews 1975: 209. 30.  McLynn 1994: 151, Lizzi Testa 2007: 262, Brown 2012: 103–​4, McEvoy 2013: 123. 31.  Errington 2006: 124, 200–​1, Lizzi Testa 2007: 262, Cameron 2011: 40. McLynn 1994: 151 n. 259, notes ‘the apparently concurrent tenure of the urban and praetorian prefectures by the Christian aristocrat Valerius Severus in the spring of 382’. PLRE 1: 152–​4 (Bassus 11), 837 (Severus 29). 32.  Thus, Brown 2012:  103–​7; cf. Roueché 2002:  544 (victory belonging to the emperor) and Lizzi Testa 2007: 261–​2 (financial motivations). 33.  Lizzi Testa 2007, followed by Brown 2012: 103–​7. 34.  Brown 2012: 107. 35. Cf. Weisweiler 2015:  41, who describes ‘Ausonius and Symmachus’ as ‘highly sophisticated political operators’. 36.  Cameron 2011: 42.

112  Worshippers of the Gods the relatio has not yet come under the same scrutiny as Ambrose’s epistles. When Brown, for example, describes Gratian’s law as ‘a mean-​minded budgetary cut, framed by bureaucrats in a distant city’,37 he echoes Symmachus’ insinuation that the measure could only have been the product of a misplaced stinginess,38 while Lizzi Testa explicitly credits her narrowing of Gratian’s measures to the superior authority of the relatio, as an ‘official document’, to Ambrose’s merely ‘rhetorical pieces’.39 The influence of Symmachus runs deep: even the widespread assumption that Gratian was ignorant of the real wishes of Roman senators is a direct mirror of Symmachus’ plea to Valentinian to ‘cover over a deed that [your brother] did not know to have displeased the Senate’.40 In Ambrose’s eclipse, Symmachus has set the terms of the debate. This chapter offers a different reading of Relatio 3 and of Ambrose’s initial appeal to Valentinian in Ep. 72(17), which appears, unlike the later, triumphant Ep. 73(18), to have been written before Valentinian’s policy was decided. As I  will argue, Symmachus was a cagier defender of Roman religious tradition, and Ambrose’s arguments a more acute response to his relatio, than the modern communis opinio allows. Neither older, pro-​Ambrosian accounts nor revisionist interpretations that follow Symmachus do full justice to the subtleties of the arguments advanced by both prefect and bishop. Even though they were not constructed as part of a preordained ‘debate’, Symmachus’ relatio and Ambrose’s epistle continue the dialogue between Christian and pagan ways of thinking about public religion that we have already encountered, in a decidedly pro-​pagan political setting, in Lactantius’ Divine Institutes. Together, they show how men of affairs, writing around the same time that Ambrosiaster assailed the wide-​ranging ‘paganism’ of some of their senatorial peers, presented alternative models of Christian imperial engagement with traditional public religion. Revisiting many of the same themes, including the value of religious tradition and the danger of persecution, that had been raised by the Tetrarchs’ legislation and Lactantius’ response, they reveal not only the continuity of late Roman approaches to traditional religion but also the profound social and intellectual changes worked by seven decades of almost uninterrupted imperial support for Christianity. Symmachus and Ambrose offer a window into contemporary attitudes towards traditional religion. Neither, however, can be trusted to give a reliable, complete account of Gratian’s legislation and the considerations that motivated it, not least because neither enjoyed consistent access to the Milanese court. Ambrose achieved notable political successes under Gratian and Valentinian II, circumventing the Senate’s appeals on the ancestral cults and, in 385–​6, successfully asserting his 37.  Brown 2012: 104. Gratian’s court was not as distant, however, as Brown implies: Gratian had been based in Milan, not Trier, since 381 (for a convenient tabulation of Gratian’s movements, see Barnes 1999: 166–​8). 38.  Rel. 3.11–​14. 39.  Lizzi Testa 2007: 254. 40.  Rel. 3.20, ‘tegite factum quod senatui displicuisse nesciuit’.

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  113 congregation’s claim to a basilica that had been contested by his ‘Arian’ rivals, who enjoyed the support of Valentinian and his mother, Justina.41 As a bishop who lacked an official courtly position, however, he long remained vulnerable to exclusion from court business even under firmly ‘orthodox’ emperors.42 Thus, he fell out briefly with Theodosius I following his unsolicited intervention in yet another pagan embassy;43 under Gratian, he found himself shut out of the office of Macedonius the magister officiorum, who also successfully circumvented his opposition to the controversial ascetic Priscillian of Avila.44 Symmachus, likewise, had been foiled in his embassy to the court in 382, perhaps by the same bureaucrat,45 and was now separated from Milan by his ongoing office at Rome. Although historians have sometimes imagined him going to Milan to present his defence of the traditional cults, he could hardly have left in the middle of his prefecture for a journey of more than three hundred miles, and Ambrose says that the relatio was ‘sent’ to the court.46 Neither man was without influence or information, however, in 384. Ambrose had recently been entrusted with a crucial embassy to Magnus Maximus, and his court connections sufficed to give him a working knowledge of Symmachus’ relatio before he ever saw a copy.47 Symmachus now had a highly placed ally at court, his fellow pontiff Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, praetorian prefect of Italy, Illyricum, and Africa, with whom he collaborated in drafting a measure that aimed to restore vandalised Roman temples.48 This move was, perhaps, a mark of the new confidence of pagan senators in the court of a young emperor who needed senatorial backers.49 Nevertheless, the measure eventually failed, and Symmachus himself received imperial censure, as he reports in Relatio 21, the key source for the events.50 This outcome is another sign that what he, like Ambrose, presents is not the privileged insight of a court insider into the process that had led to Gratian’s enactment two years before but the partisan perspective of a man trying to influence the young Valentinian’s court. Both, accordingly, focus not on the specifics of Gratian’s political position but on its relevance to Valentinian’s. 41.  On the basilica controversy, see Ambrose, Ep. 75(21)–​76(20), Collectio Auellana 39, Augustine, Conf. 9.7.15–​16, C.Th. 16.1.4, and Paulinus, VA 12–​14. Reconstructions of the chronology and topography of the events differ: cf. Van Haeringen 1937, Lenox-​Conyngham 1982, Gottlieb 1985, McLynn 1994: 170–​219, and Barnes 2000. 42.  Cf. Smith 2007 and, on the (often complex) protocol of imperial courts in the later Roman Empire, Matthews 1989: 253–​78. 43.  McLynn 1994: 313–​15. 44. Paulinus, VA 37.1; on Priscillian in Milan, see McLynn 1994: 149–​51 and Burrus 1995: 84–​9, 92–​3. 45.  See 109 n. 15. 46.  Ep. 72(17).13, ‘detur mihi exemplum missae relationis’, with Evenepoel 1998–​9: 284 n. 5. Cf. McGeachy 1942: 143 n. 2, contra Chastagnol 1960: 161, Cracco Ruggini 1974: 437. 47.  Ep. 72(17).13, 73(18).1. On Ambrose’s embassies to Maximus, see OV 28 and Ep. 30(24), with McLynn 1994: 160–​4 and the thorough literary and historical analysis by Dörner 2001. 48.  Rel. 21. 49.  Cf. McEvoy 2013: 68, Watts 2015b: 185, ‘Praetextatus and Symmachus evidently believed that their support for Valentinian II . . . gave them the freedom to roll back Gratian’s anti-​pagan policies.’ 50.  See further 147​.

114  Worshippers of the Gods Neither mentions even basic details of Gratian’s career:  his progress from the powerless eight-​year-​old child-​emperor to a grown ruler of twenty-​three;51 his friction, as senior emperor, with an older colleague, Theodosius I, who not only charted a distinct ecclesiastical policy but also unilaterally named his young son Arcadius Augustus in 383;52 his lack of military authority and experience, which led to the fatal defection of the magister peditum Merobaudes, consul for 383, to Magnus Maximus.53 Nor does either author attempt to trace out the negotiations that must have preceded Gratian’s legislation. For Symmachus, Gratian’s moves against traditional cult were a sad mistake, the work, or so he asserted with proper circumspection, of nefarious courtiers that smacked of an ‘avarice’ unbecoming an emperor.54 For Ambrose, they were proof of Gratian’s desire to advance the triumph of the Christian faith over the Devil and the world.55 The aim, in each case, is not to explore the motivations of the now-​dead Gratian but to chart a course for his younger brother. Symmachus’ relatio and Ambrose’s first letter must both be read, therefore, as rhetorical pieces aimed, in the first instance, at shaping the religious attitudes and policies of Valentinian II and his advisors. A thirteen-​year-​old boy who had been deprived of real power before Gratian’s death,56 Valentinian was so greatly overshadowed by his courtiers that Magnus Maximus could accuse him of being a puppet for the magister militum Bauto (or so Ambrose would allege, at any rate).57 It is tempting to suppose that Bauto and others behind the throne were the true audience of Ambrose’s and Symmachus’ appeals.58 However, Ambrose’s self-​contradictory reports, on which we are totally dependent, do not allow us to see through imperial image-​making to the inner workings of the court, which, as John Matthews has stressed, combined ‘formality and protocol’ with the potential for dynamic intervention by, and debate among, the emperor and his officials.59 In his post-​mortem panegyric of Valentinian II, Ambrose portrays the young emperor as a new Daniel who resisted all his advisors—​both pagan and Christian—​ and decreed that he would not depart from his family’s religious policy by offending the ‘author of salvation’.60 The declaration may, according to a plausible 51.  On Gratian’s two accessions, as a child and as a sixteen-​year-​old, see McEvoy 2013: 49–​66. 52.  Policy: McLynn 1994: 88–​149; cf. also Williams 1995: 161–​9. Arcadius: McLynn 1994: 154. 53.  PLRE 1: 598–​9 (Merobaudes 2); McEvoy 2013: 111–​13; Rodgers 1981. 54.  Rel. 3.12, 20. 55.  Ep. 72(17).15. 56.  McEvoy 2013: 61–​4, Errington 2006: 32. 57.  PLRE 1: 159–​60 (Bauto). Ep. 30(24).4, ‘ad postremum erupit dicens: “quoniam me lusistis! et ille Bauto, qui sibi regnum sub specie pueri uindicare uoluit” ’. Liebeschuetz 2010: 349–​51 has called the reliability of Ambrose’s letter into question, but contrast Dörner 2001: 242–​3. 58.  Cf. von Campenhausen 1929: 177–​9. 59.  Matthews 1989: 267–​9. For an overview of the functioning of imperial consistories, see Harries 1999: 38–​42. 60.  OV 19–​20, ‘et cum uniuersi, in consistorio qui aderant, Christiani pariter atque gentiles, dicerent esse reddenda, solus uelut Danihel excitato in se dei spiritu arguebat perfidiae Christianos, gentilibus obuiabat dicens  .  .  .  [appeals to his brother’s and father’s policies follow, concluding thus:] “postulet parens Roma alia, quaecumque desiderat: debeo adfectum parenti, sed magis obsequium debeo salutis auctori.” ’

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  115 conjecture, be an echo of Valentinian’s now-​lost reply to the senatorial request,61 but Ambrose’s depiction of Valentinian as an autocrat self-​possessed beyond his youth is undermined by his report, in a later letter to the usurper Eugenius, that Valentinian received the ‘acquiescence’ of Bauto and another comes, the devout pagan Rumoridus.62 The decision was, it would seem, the product of a consensus between the young emperor and his most powerful advisors. The semblance of political clarity is deceptive. In the letter to Eugenius, the true mover of Valentinian’s request is Ambrose himself, whose ‘pamphlets were read in the consistorium’ for the approval of the emperor and his advisors. The contradiction between this report and De obitu Valentiniani has led some scholars to suggest that the latter actually describes Valentinian’s rejection of an embassy sent to him in 391–​2, to which Ambrose refers later in the eulogy.63 This solution is too easy. Not only does Ambrose depict Valentinian responding to the precise arguments that Symmachus had voiced in 384,64 but the letter to Eugenius claims more influence for his own writings than his other reports of the events allow. At the opening of Ep. 73(18), Ambrose had placed Valentinian’s decision prior to the writing of his longer refutation and even insinuated, in a sentence of studied ambiguity, that Valentinian had reached a resolution before he wrote his initial appeal.65 It is a flattering suggestion but one that clashes badly with the anxiously monitory tone of Ep. 72(17), which assumes throughout that the emperor has not reached a final decision and may still be won over by his courtiers’ persuasions.66 Like Gratian’s motivations, the events in Valentinian’s consistorium take shape according to the author’s immediate rhetorical aims and political needs. The key fact that can be gleaned from Ambrose’s shifting portrayal of Valentinian’s decision, and, even more clearly, from his insistent exhortations to the emperor not to be swayed by the reasoning of anyone else, pagan or nominal Christian, is that he expected both his own appeal and Symmachus’ relatio to shape debate within the consistorium and the final decision that was reached. The tripartite ‘dialogue’ between Symmachus and Ambrose is, as McLynn has stressed, a post hoc editorial construct of Ambrose himself,67 but Relatio 3 and Ep. 72(17) are still the sole surviving contributions to the now-​lost negotiations that took place in the Milanese consistorium in summer 384. Even though their works 61.  Moroni 1996. 62.  Ep. extra coll. 10(57).3, ‘lecti sunt libelli mei in consistorio. aderat amplissimus honore magisterii militaris Bauto comes et Rumoridus, et ipse eiusdem dignitatis gentilium nationum cultui inseruiens in primis pueritiae suae annis. Valentinianus tunc temporis audiuit suggestionem meam nec fecit aliud nisi quod fidei nostrae ratio poscebat. acquieuerunt etiam comites sui.’ PLRE 1: 786 (Rumoridus). 63.  Ep. extra coll. 10(57).5, OV 52. Survey of opinions in Biermann 1995: 172 n. 93. 64.  Palanque 1933: 136 n. 74, Liebeschuetz 2010: 373 n. 3. 65.  Cf. Liebeschuetz 2010: 257 n. 5. Ep. 73(18).1, ‘cum . . . Symmachus ad clementiam tuam retulisset . . . et tu, imperator,  .  .  .  obsecrata gentilium non probares, eodem quo comperi puncto libellum obtuli, quo, licet comprehenderim quae suggestioni necessaria uiderentur, poposci tamen exemplum mihi relationis dari.’ 66.  Ep. 72(17).6–​8. 67.  McLynn 1994: 264.

116  Worshippers of the Gods do not allow us to reconstruct the details of day-​to-​day political manoeuvring in Gratian’s court or Valentinian’s, Symmachus and Ambrose do allow us to hear two of the voices to which the Milanese authorities listened in 384. Through Relatio 3 and Ep. 72(17), we can recover part of the substance of contemporary religious politics, even though we can only dimly glimpse the practical realities in and on which the bishop’s and prefect’s appeals were meant to work. What this chapter will provide, therefore, is a reconstruction not of Gratian’s motivations, or even of Valentinian’s (or his advisors’), but of the ways in which spokesmen of two very different sources of authority, the Roman Senate and the Christian Church, could present traditional religion and Christianity to a professedly Christian emperor. With the turn against Ambrose and his appeals to the authority of God and bishop, scholarship has also emphasised the role of political expediency and power building in the affair’s resolution. ‘In the end,’ as Edward Watts has put it, ‘the fight came down not to rational arguments but crassly transactional politics. Ambrose had done more for Valentinian II than Symmachus or Praetextatus had—​and he knew it.’68 There is indeed a political element in the controversy, and we can, at times, read between the lines to see the hidden weaknesses of Symmachus’ and Ambrose’s positions. Each man’s claim to authority was more tenuous than his rhetoric admitted, Ambrose’s because of his controversial position vis-​à-​vis rival Christian groups,69 Symmachus’ because of the religious diversity of the Senate and the Roman populace, which his relatio papers over. Nevertheless, as I  have emphasised, the reception of both appeals remains obscure. We do not know through what negotiations Valentinian and his court reached the decision to continue Gratian’s policy or on what grounds. Moreover, although backing from Senate and Church may have been particularly valuable to the young and vulnerable Valentinian II, neither pagan senators nor Ambrose were simply exploiting a weak emperor.70 Both had manoeuvred to influence the religious policies of the relatively secure Gratian, and the senators would present their case not just to Valentinian II a second time but also to Theodosius I and Eugenius.71 Although there are topical references in both Ambrose’s and Symmachus’ appeals, especially to the embassy to Gratian and to the famine of 383, and more oblique allusions to the need for victory and to the influence of powerful courtiers, both men put their focus on the religious, moral, and legal considerations that should drive Valentinian’s decisions, not on passing political or military circumstances. Some of their words, such as Ambrose’s threat to 68.  Watts 2015b:  187; cf. McLynn 1994:  167 and Brown 2012:  107, who stresses the autocratic will of the emperors to ‘claim to be closest to the beneficent power of Victory’. 69.  Examined by McLynn 1994, Williams 1995: 104–​232. 70.  Thus, rightly, McEvoy 2013: 68–​9. 71.  Embassies after 384: Ambrose, Ep. extra coll. 10(57).4–​12; Paulinus, VA 26, with Cameron 2011: 56–​89, 337–​49 (against the hypothesis of a further embassy in 402), and Lizzi Testa 2015.

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  117 oppose Valentinian publicly, may have held a particular charge in 384, when a young, weak emperor faced a powerful rival in the person of Magnus Maximus. However, even that display of episcopal boldness reflects an authority that Ambrose asserted in less perilous times, too, and it is Valentinian’s ‘salvation before God’, not his own ability to further Valentinian’s earthly success, to which he gives the final word.72 In focusing on Symmachus’ and Ambrose’s arguments, rather than on the power politics that might have helped them to be heard, we can see two competing visions of the role of religion in the public life of an empire whose rulers had embraced Christianity. Each text works by advancing a particular image of the emperor and his relationship to fundamental sources of religious and political authority.73 For the pagan Symmachus, the key facts of the religious world that he presents to the emperor are the Senate, ancestral tradition, and Rome itself. In his account, the Christian emperor stands over and outside a basically polytheist city and Senate. Symmachus voices no objection to Valentinian’s Christianity but keeps it within the private sphere, where it will not disturb the age-​old public religious order of Rome. For the Christian Ambrose, as for Lactantius some eighty years before, inward devotion of the heart is the mark of true worship, which is offered only to the one God; thus, the commandments that that God has laid upon his followers transcend every other claim on a Christian emperor. Ambrose does not merely differ from Symmachus in advancing a Christian view of religious duty, however. He also attacks Symmachus’ portrait of an uncontroversially pagan public sphere on both historical and theological grounds, reminding Valentinian of past persecution of Christians and underscoring the offence that imperial authorisation of sacrifice would cause to the numerous Christians in the Senate. In trying to persuade Valentinian to take a particular course on the intertwined issues of the altar of Victory and funding for priesthoods, Symmachus and Ambrose are each trying to persuade him to adopt his own vision of the relationships that connect religion, the emperor, and Roman society itself. Symmachus’ and Ambrose’s appeals to Valentinian are not simply partisan representations of Roman religious tradition and his imperial predecessors’ policies but attempts to cement the right of the authors—​and of pagan Senate or Christian Church—​to direct the emperor’s approach to the traditional Roman cults.

72.  Ep. 72(17).17; for Ambrose’s complicated negotiations with Theodosius I, for example, see McLynn 1994: 298–​330. 73.  Cf. Chenault 2008: 256, who sees the affair ‘as a competition between two aristocrats for influence over the emperor, which was embodied in their different visions of emperorship’. As Matthews 1975: 203 puts it, ‘This debate . . . presents, not merely a difference of opinion on a particular, limited issue, but profound divergences of attitude to the entire history and present obligations of the Roman state, as well as to a social and cultural change [i.e., the Christianisation of the aristocracy] which, as the protagonists set down their views, was palpably and irreversibly surrounding them.’

118  Worshippers of the Gods Pagan Rome and Christian Emperors in Symmachus, Relatio 3 When the Senate, most distinguished and always yours, first learned that vices had been made subject to the laws and saw that the ill repute of recent times had been purged by pious princes, it, following the authoritative example of your good reign, poured forth the sadness that it had long restrained and ordered me to be an ambassador again for its complaints.74 Symmachus’ opening address is an attempt to win the favour of Valentinian II and his courtiers for the Senate’s request.75 Historians have often sought specific political allusions behind his rhetoric, pointing, for example, to the short-​lived initiative, launched at the suggestion of Praetextatus and eventually scuttled by the intervention of well-​connected Christians, that would have seen Roman temples refurbished by imperial order.76 Relatio 3 never mentions these events explicitly, however, even though they would have established a plausible precedent for its requests, and the only ‘vices’ to which Symmachus will refer are the machinations of hostile courtiers, which, he claims, led the previous imperial administration to refuse the Senate’s embassy in 382.77 His vague words aim less to allude to a precise political move, therefore, than to conjure up a moral and political mood. Symmachus does not simply declare the loyalty of the Senate to Valentinian II, the actual addressee, and to Theodosius and Arcadius;78 he makes the renewal of the senatorial appeal a natural response to a new moral climate established when Valentinian took power. In so doing, he not only glosses over the turmoil that had led to the young emperor’s accession but also implies that resistance to his relatio is out of step with the times. What will soon be revealed as a controversial request on behalf of traditional religion is therefore framed, before Symmachus has even voiced the specifics, as a plea for justice firmly in line with the emperor’s own political aims. As prefect and senatorial legate, Symmachus represents, or so he claims, the interests of emperors and ‘citizens’ alike. By contrast, the failure of the senatorial embassy of 382 was, he asserts, the work of self-​interested ‘courtiers’, 74.  Rel. 3.1, ‘ubi primum senatus amplissimus semperque uester subiecta legibus uitia cognouit et a principibus piis uidit purgari famam temporum proximorum, boni saeculi auctoritatem secutus euomuit diu pressum dolorem atque iterum me querelarum suarum iussit esse legatum.’ 75.  Zwierlein 1974: 772, ‘eine subtile captatio beneuolentiae’. This relatio is transmitted separately in Ambrose’s tenth book of epistles and Symmachus’ relationes. Both texts must descend, as Seeck 1883:  xvii argues, from Symmachus’ own autograph, and neither tradition is unambiguously preferable to the other at every point (variants compared by Seeck 1883: xvii–​xix; cf. the detailed apparatus of Zelzer 1982). I use Zelzer’s text, but note particularly significant variations between the two traditions. 76.  Rel. 21; Zelzer 1982: 21, Vera 1981: 25, Canfora 1970: 139 n. 3, Palanque 1933: 130–​1. 77.  Rel. 3.2. 78.  Here the Ambrosian tradition of Rel. 3.1, which contains an address to ‘domini imperatores Valentiniane Theodosi et Arcadi, incliti uictores ac triumphatores semper augusti’, is more complete than the Symmachian, which has simply ‘ddd. nnn. imperatores’; on the frequently garbled addresses to emperors in the manuscripts of Symmachus’ relationes, see Vera 1977.

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  119 who allowed their ‘private rivalries’ to ‘injure the res publica’ and sought ‘their own power’ at the expense of ‘the reputation of the prince’.79 In defending the ‘instituta maiorum’, Symmachus and the Senate are looking out for the ‘rights and destiny of the fatherland’; their opponents in 382, by implication, were concerned only with their own advancement. These programmatic themes recur constantly as the focus of the relatio shifts from the altar of Victory and the traditional religious order of Rome (3.3–​10), to a detailed appeal for the restoration of the monetary privileges of the Vestals (3.11–​18), to a brief peroration that makes Valentinian I an examplar for a policy amenable to traditional religion (3.19–​20). Throughout, Symmachus consistently portrays traditional religion as the object of the Senate’s undivided devotion and the bulwark of the Roman Empire.80 In a sequence of paragraphs in the middle of the relatio, he also appeals to henotheistic theology and religious diversity, portraying Rome herself pleading, in a brief prosopopoeia, for the restoration of her ancestral cults (3.8–​10). The inclusion of these arguments has led many scholars to take the relatio as a plea for toleration produced in the hope, as McLynn has put it, ‘that the petition would remain nonpartisan, a sensible remedy for a bitterly held grievance’.81 Yet, as is already clear from the opening sections, the ‘nonpartisan’ character of the relatio is a work of careful rhetorical manufacture. As Ambrose’s counter-​blast reports, the senatorial appeal in 382 was rejected in part because of the resistance of Christian senators, who threatened a general walkout if the pagan embassy were to be accepted.82 A participant in the embassy of 382, Symmachus can hardly have been ignorant of the objections that Christian fellow senators had expressed.83 By glossing over them, he reduces a complicated religious controversy into an unequal contest between short-​sighted political operators and pious senators devoted to the well-​being of Rome and the emperors. It is an effective rhetorical strategy but hardly more equitable to dissenters than is Ambrose’s response. The main body of the relatio advances a similarly dextrous, and similarly one-​ sided, presentation of the religious situation of contemporary Rome. Throughout, 79.  Rel. 3.2, ‘gemino igitur functus officio et ut praefectus uester gesta publica prosequor et ut legatus ciuium mandata commendo. nulla est hic dissensio uoluntatum, quia iam credere homines desierunt aulicorum se studio praestare si discrepent. quis ferat obfuisse rei publica priuata certamina? merito illos senatus insequitur qui potentiam suam famae principis praetulerant. . . . cui enim magis commodat, quod instituta maiorum, quod patriae iura et fata defendimus, quam temporum gloriae?’ 80.  Pace McLynn 2009: 581–​2, who questions the ‘argumentative coherence’ of the relatio. 81.  McLynn 1994:  166 (but see McLynn 2009:  581–​2 for a reading that exposes some of the complexities of Symmachus’ rhetoric). For Symmachus as the ‘tolerant’ party, see also Kahlos 2009a: 97–​9, Klein 2006: 25–​6, 1971:  83–​92, Groß-​Albenhausen 1999:  76–​7, Evenepoel 1998–​9:  285, 288–​9, Ando 1996:  188, van Stekelenberg 1993: 43–​4, Salzman 1989: 350, and O’Donnell 1979: 73, and cf. Armstrong 1984: 8 and Brown 2012: 106–​7. Against such views, see Gnilka 2000–​3a: 478–​81, Vera 1981: 14–​15, Sordi 2008: 145–​6, Meslin 1964: 16–​20, and Boissier 1903, 2: 290–​1. 82.  Ep. 72(17).10. 83.  There is thus no reason to suppose, with Lizzi Testa 2007: 254, that Ambrose made available early drafts of Ep. 72(17) for Symmachus to use in composing Rel. 3.

120  Worshippers of the Gods Symmachus consistently elides opposition to his appeal or casts it as the result of petty self-​interest indifferent to the well-​being of Rome and of the emperors, whose relationship to each other and enjoyment of divine favour depends upon the continuation of traditional cult by the Senate. Though Symmachus is careful to recognise the basic spiritual validity of other religious practices, his aim is not to broker a general religious rapprochement, and still less to demonstrate, in the words of a prominent Symmachian scholar, ‘that [all religions] also possess a general and equal right to be recognized and practiced in a state’.84 On the contrary, Symmachus is trying, through all his subtleties of rhetoric, to defend the traditional social supremacy of Roman religion that seventy years of pro-​Christian legislation had undermined and Gratian had rejected altogether. As Gaston Boissier said long ago, ‘it is not tolerance that Symmachus requests . . . but domination.’85 The argument of the relatio unfolds with studied care for the ambiguous religious climate of Valentinian’s reign. Throughout, Symmachus balances pagan conviction with arguments more innocuous to Christian sensibilities. After his opening address, he immediately states the central aim of his appeal. ‘We are asking, therefore,’ he says, ‘for the state of religions which long benefited the res publica.’86 He acknowledges the real changes in imperial religious attitudes since Constantine, conceding that there have been ‘princes of either sect, of either opinion’, but denies that imperial adoption of Christianity should sway Valentinian. On the contrary, the religio of older emperors, who ‘practised the ceremonies of the fathers’, and the dissimulatio of their later peers, who ‘did not remove them’, ought to encourage him to maintain the ancient cults. At first glance, Symmachus seems simply to be requesting a kind of laissez-​faire approach to traditional religion, but, as the following sentences make clear, more is at stake in the restoration of the old religious order than simple preservation of long imperial tradition. ‘Who’, Symmachus asks, ‘is so friendly to the barbarians that he does not want an altar for Victory?’ To remove the altar, he protests, is an evil omen. ‘Let the honour’, he says, ‘at least be restored to the name, which is denied to the divinity. Your Eternity owes much to Victory and will owe still more.’ Symmachus’ framing of his appeal is shrewd. The relatio’s position is profoundly pagan. For Symmachus and his allies in the Senate, the public cults were not simply a deeply rooted tradition of their own order.87 They were practices

84.  Klein 2006: 25, ‘daß [alle Religionen] auch ein allgemeines und gleiches Recht besitzen, in einem Staat anerkannt und ausgeübt zu werden’. 85.  Boissier 1903, 2: 290, ‘ce n’est pas la tolérance que demande Symmaque . . . c’est la domination’; cf. Gnilka 2000–​3a: 481. 86.  Rel. 3.3, ‘repetimus igitur religionum statum qui rei publicae diu profuit. certe numerentur principes utriusque sectae, utriusque sententiae; prior eorum pars caerimonias patrum coluit, recentior non remouit. si exemplum non facit religio ueterum, faciat dissimulatio proximorum. quis ita familiaris est barbaris ut aram Victoriae non requirat? cauti in posterum sumus et talium rerum ostenta uitamus. reddatur tamen saltem nomini honor, qui numini denegatus est. multa Victoriae debet aeternitas uestra et adhuc plura debebit’. 87.  Paschoud 1965, McGeachy 1942: 151.

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  121 vitally necessary for the maintenance of the pax deorum and, through it, the well-​being of the empire.88 As Symmachus remarked in a letter to Praetextatus that described the performance of a public religious ritual, ‘The goodwill of a superior, unless it be held by cult, is lost.’89 However, Valentinian’s court included both well-​connected pagans, such as Praetextatus and the comes Rumoridus, and Christians, among whom Bauto may have been numbered.90 Symmachus thus weaves into his argument appeals to the value of tradition and decorum with which Christians might also have agreed. For example, he casts the restoration of the altar as a sign of respect to the name of Victory, upon whose importance all barbarian-​hating Romans can agree, and suggests that its removal was a small-​ minded insult to the physical beauty of the Senate house, which posterity will soon regret. As he says in the next paragraph, even ‘if the avoidance of this omen were not just, one ought at least to abstain from the ornaments of the curia. . . . The love of custom is great; deservedly the deed of the deified Constantius did not stand long. . . . We take care for the eternity of your fame and name, lest a future age find anything to correct.’91 From this perspective, the restoration of the altar appears to be little more than the sensible reversal of an ill-​considered policy, and so, if we can trust Ambrose’s later report, it was initially received by Valentinian’s Christian courtiers.92 Despite his strategic admixture of banal rhetoric, Symmachus is not aiming at ecumenical compromise. ‘Let no one deny’, he says, ‘that she should be worshipped whom he professes should be hoped for.’93 For Symmachus, as for Ambrose, the altar is of capital importance, not just because its removal was a symbol of imperial disregard for the traditional priesthoods but also because of its own religious significance. ‘Where’, he asks the emperor, ‘will we swear to your laws and words? By what religious awe will the false mind be terrified, lest it lie in its testimonies?’ Gratian’s legislation has not simply offended Victory; it has removed the site on which senatorial religiosity was focused. ‘All things are indeed full of god’, Symmachus says, ‘but it does much to instil fear of wrongdoing to be pressed by the presence of divinity as well’ (or, in the Ambrosian tradition of the relatio, ‘the presence of religious obligation’).94 Claudian’s panegyric 88.  Cf. Salzman 1989 on the religious aspects of Symmachus’ conception of tradition. For an explicit reference to the pax deorum (here in allusion to the hoped-​for restoration of a friend’s health), see Ep. 1.48. 89.  Ep. 1.46.2, ‘benignitas enim superioris, nisi cultu teneatur, amittitur.’ 90.  Some, e.g., Dudden 1935, 1: 260 and Cracco Ruggini 1974: 437, have thought Bauto a pagan, but Ambrose’s emphatic foregrounding of Rumoridus’ paganism when he mentions the two in Ep. extra coll. 10(57).3 (quoted at 114 n. 63) suggests that Bauto was a Christian of some kind; cf. PLRE 1: 159–​60 (Bauto). 91.  Rel. 3.4, ‘quodsi huius ominis non esset iusta uitatio, ornamentis saltem curiae decuit abstineri.  .  .  . consuetudinis amor magnus est, merito diui Constanti factum diu non stetit. . . . aeternitatem curamus famae et nominis uestri, ne quid futura aetas inueniat corrigendum.’ 92.  OV 19. 93.  Rel. 3.3, ‘nemo colendam neget quam profitetur optandam.’ 94.  Rel. 3.5, ‘ubi in leges uestra et uerba iurabimus? qua religione mens falsa terrebitur, ne in testimoniis mentiatur? omnia quidem deo plena sunt . . . sed plurimum ualet ad metum delinquendi etiam praesentia numinis [or religionis].’

122  Worshippers of the Gods On the Sixth Consulship of Honorius gives a keen sense of the numinous power that Victory held for Symmachus’ contemporaries: ‘Winged Victory herself was present in her temples, the guardian of the Roman toga, who fosters with her splendid wing the reverend sanctuaries of the patrician assembly. She, the tireless companion of your camps  .  .  .  promises you to Rome and herself to you for all time to come.’95 Some scholars have inferred from Claudian’s verses and a description of Victory in Prudentius’ Contra Symmachum that the statue was removed with the altar in 382, only to be replaced later on,96 but the controversy in 384, at least, was not about statuary, to which Symmachus and Ambrose refer, if they do at all, only in ambiguous allusions to the ornamenta of the Senate house.97 For both prefect and bishop, the key issue was cult, not only of Claudian’s tutelary divinity but of all the gods who had (in the eyes of pagans) preserved Rome from her first rise to old age.98 The removal of the altar was not, for Symmachus, just a threat to the integrity of the empire but a grievous break in the relationship that bound the senators to one another and the Senate to the emperors. ‘That altar’, Symmachus says, ‘holds the concord of all, that altar demands the fidelity of each individual, and nothing grants greater authority to our opinions than that the order decrees everything as if under oath.’99 To this claim an obvious objection could have been posed: that Constantius II’s removal of the altar had not, in fact, caused any dire alteration of the traditional relationship between Senate and emperors. To head off the argument, Symmachus places the removal in the context of Constantius’ other actions towards the cults of the city of Rome.100 During his visit in 357, Constantius ‘took nothing from the privileges of the sacred Virgins, filled the priesthoods with nobles, did not deny the Roman ceremonies their expenditures, and, having followed a happy Senate through all the streets of the eternal city, looked with tranquil eye at its shrines’.101 In Symmachus’ telling, Constantius’ tour of Rome 95.  Cons. Hon. VI 597–​602, ‘adfuit ipsa suis ales Victoria templis, /​Romanae tutela togae, qua diuite pinna /​patricii reuerenda fouet sacraria coetus /​castrorumque eadem comes indefessa tuorum /​ . . . omne futurum te Romae seseque tibi promittit in aeuum’; cf. Cons. Stil. 3.202–​20. 96. Prudentius, C. Symm. 2.27–​66. E.g., Birt 1892: lviii, Pohlsander 1969: 596–​7, Gnilka 2000–​3b: 312–​17. 97.  Thus, rightly, Pohlsander 1969: 597, Cameron 1970: 237–​41. The key passage is Ambrose, Ep. 73(18).10, ‘sed uetera, inquit, reddenda sunt altaria simulacris, ornamenta delubris’. The first clause seems to imply that the altar of Victory was removed but not her statue (so Cameron 2011: 340–​2), yet the second, read alongside Symmachus, Rel. 3.4 (‘ornamentis saltem curiae decuit abstineri’), may imply that the statue, more properly an ‘ornament’ than the altar, was also removed (Mazzarino 1974: 351–​7, Gnilka 2000–​3b: 304–​12, but see Vera 1981: 31–​2). 98.  Old age: Rel. 3.10. The conceit is widespread in fourth-​century authors: cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, 14.6.3–​ 6 (with Barnes 1998: 173–​5), Lactantius, DI 7.15.14–​16 (expanding a sentiment he credits to Seneca), SHA, Carus et Cari et Numerianus 3.1. 99.  Rel. 3.5, ‘illa ara concordiam tenet omnium, illa ara fidem conuenit singulorum, neque aliud magis auctoritatem fecit sententiis nostris quam quod omnia quasi iuratus ordo decernit.’ 100.  Rel.  3.6–​7. 101.  Rel. 3.7, ‘nil ille decerpsit sacrarum uirginum priuilegiis, repleuit nobilibus sacerdotia, Romanis caerimoniis non negauit impensas et per omnes uias aeternae urbis laetum secutus senatum uidit placido ore delubra, legit inscripta fastigiis deum nomina, percunctatus est templorum origines, miratus est conditores, cumque alias religiones ipse sequeretur has seruauit imperio.’

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  123 was an encounter between a Christian emperor and a basically pagan city and Senate, whose harmonious relationship was buttressed, despite the emperor’s ill-​ considered removal of the altar of Victory, by the respect that he demonstrated for the priestly and architectural structures of its traditional religion. Not only did Constantius carry out the duties of patronage that befitted an emperor; he also allowed the Senate to take the lead, quite literally, in his experience of Rome’s religious landscape, ‘and, though he himself followed other religious practices, he preserved these for the empire’. Symmachus thus neutralises the main imperial precedent for Gratian’s enactment and turns its enactor, despite his vehemently anti-​pagan legislation, into an ally for his own traditionalist cause. Immediately after this, Symmachus introduces his appeals to religious plurality and philosophical henotheism. ‘For each has his own custom’, Symmachus says, ‘each his own rite; the divine mind has distributed various cults as guardians to the cities. As souls to those who are being born, so the genii of destiny are distributed to peoples.’102 This statement must be read against the backdrop of the discussion of imperial and senatorial religiosity that precedes it. In that context, Symmachus’ declaration is not an appeal for imperial toleration; it is not even quite an assertion, as Brown has argued, ‘that a religious establishment as complex, massive, and deeply soaked in time as was the universe itself should [not] be made subject to the personal whim of a single ruler, acting under pressure from a single religious faction’.103 It is instead an assertion that Rome was and remains an essentially pagan city, devoted by the will of the divinity to its cults, just as the Senate is a basically pagan institution, united around the altar of Victory. In sharp contrast to Ambrose, who would assert, as the next section will discuss in more detail, that the majority of senators were now Christian,104 Symmachus shows no concern for the actual religious make-​up of the senatorial order, let alone of the Roman world as a whole.105 Neither sectarian ‘factions’ nor the wider religious ‘universe’ enters into serious consideration, as Symmachus has suppressed the religious element of the opposition in 382 and ignores the religious situation of the rest of the empire. For Symmachus, adherence to Christianity is a legitimate individual choice; ‘each has his own custom’, after all, and may follow ‘other religions’ as Constantius II did. Nevertheless, the Roman people has its

102.  Rel. 3.8, ‘suus enim cuique mos, cuique ritus est; uarios custodes urbibus cultus mens diuina distribuit. ut animae nascentibus, ita populis fatales genii diuiduntur.’ 103.  Brown 2012: 107. 104.  Ep. 72(17).10, ‘sed absit ut hoc senatus petisse dicatur; pauci gentiles communi utuntur nomine.’ The assertion has occasioned extensive debate. From the ambiguous prosopographical data, Salzman 2002 (to be read with Mathisen 2002, 2007, and Salzman 2005) infers large-​scale Christianisation of the aristocracy ‘only after Gratian and Valentinian I, especially after 367’ (Salzman 2002: 79; cf. von Haehling 1978: 569–​75), but Barnes 1995 argues for a shift as early as Constantine’s day (response in Salzman 2016). 105.  Cf. Sheridan 1966: 193, pace Lizzi Testa 2007: 254, who takes ‘senatus amplissimus’ in Rel. 3.1 to refer to ‘the clear majority of the senate’. On the local quality of Roman religion in Symmachus, see Chiai 2016.

124  Worshippers of the Gods own religion, whose guardian deities were assigned by the same ‘divine mind’ that bestows souls on human bodies. The need for traditional cult has been made clear, Symmachus asserts, by the experience of Rome throughout its history. ‘For, since all reason is hidden, whence more rightly than from the memory and records of favourable events does knowledge of divinities come?’106 Symmachus’ appeals to the divine order of the universe have encouraged some scholars to see him as a Neoplatonist;107 others have taken his dismissal of ratio, which echoes the arguments of Cicero’s Cotta in De natura deorum and of the pagan Caecilius in Minucius Felix’ Octauius, as proof of his Sceptical bona fides.108 Symmachus is, however, making tactical use of commonplaces, not propounding developed philosophical convictions.109 In contrast, for example, to the orator Themistius, who praised the emperor Jovian for encouraging the full diversity of religious practices through his policy of toleration, Symmachus is not aiming at diversity for its own sake in his appeal to religious plurality.110 Rather, he is trying to secure the central place of public religion in maintaining the public well-​being and to outflank Christian challenges to Rome’s ancestral religious order.111 From the beginning, Christians had asserted that their religion was the sole path to the supreme God.112 By appealing to philosophical henotheism, Symmachus raises all cults to a theoretical equality, at once acknowledging the Christian claim to have access to God and denying its uniqueness.113 As he asks, ‘what difference does it make by what wisdom each person seeks the truth?’114 The answer, by implication, is very little, except to the future of Rome.115 ‘It is just to think that whatever all men worship is one’,116 Symmachus says, but he reminds the emperor that not every cult has contributed equally to Rome’s rise and prosperity. As Rome herself declares in her prosopopoeia,

106.  Rel. 3.8, ‘nam cum ratio omnis in operto sit, unde rectius quam de memoria atque documentis rerum secundarum cognitio uenit numinum?’ The correct reading, operto, is preserved only in a few Ambrosian manuscripts; the rest have operato or aperto, as do the Symmachian codices. 107.  E.g., Döpp 2009: 95, Gnilka 2001–​3a: 478–​81, Wytzes 1977: 124–​9. 108.  Klein 1971: 86–​8, 2006: 54; cf. Evenepoel: 1998–​9: 287. 109. Symmachus’ philosophical learning has rightly been questioned by Cameron 2011:  535–​42, Kahlos 2009a: 97; as Bertolini 1987: 198 puts it, Symmachus’ theology ‘si realizza, non come organica adesione al pensiero neoplatonico, ma come partecipazione alle generiche posizioni teistiche del tempo’. 110. Themistius, Or. 5, which is probably a reaction to a law enacted by Jovian, rather than a mere policy proposal (thus, Marcos 2014, Heather and Moncur 2001: 154–​8, and, more cautiously, Errington 2000: 876 n. 83, contra, e.g., Vanderspoel 1995: 148–​54). As Cameron 2011: 541–​2 argues, it is unlikely that Symmachus had read either Themistius, as Cracco Ruggini 1974: 437 n. 82 suggests, or Porphyry, whom Vanderspoel 1995: 24–​6 makes a common source for both authors. 111.  On the key differences between the two works, cf. Ramelli 2005: 460–​1 and Cerutti 2006: 183; a similar contrast between Libanius and Themistius has been drawn by Van Nuffelen 2014: 313–​14. 112.  John 14:6, to which, Ramelli 2005: 461 suggests, Symmachus may be replying. 113.  Cf. Vera 1981: 40; for a different view, Cerutti 2006: 203–​6. 114.  Rel. 3.10, ‘quid interest qua quisque prudentia uerum requirat?’ 115.  Cf. Bertolini 1987: 192. 116.  Rel. 3.10, ‘aequum est quicquid omnes colunt unum putari.’

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  125 Best of princes, fathers of the fatherland, revere my years into which pious worship has brought me. Let me use the ancestral ceremonies; for I am not ashamed to live by my custom, because I am free. This cult reduced the world to my laws; these rites repelled Hannibal from the walls and the Senones from the Capitolium. Have I  been preserved, therefore, to this end, that I should be chidden in my old age?117 Again, this is not an appeal for toleration for pagans at Rome; it is a declaration that Rome was, is, and should remain devoted to its ancestral religious customs.118 Although Symmachus’ acknowledgement of the diversity of individual religious practices theoretically extends to all mankind, he never addresses the ‘sectarian’ choices of anyone but the emperor himself.119 The only allusion to the religious devotion of individual senators appears in Rel. 3.5, where he credits ‘the concord of all’ (concordiam . . . omnium) and ‘the fidelity of each individual’ (fidem . . . singulorum) to the oath to Victory. Although Symmachus is ostensibly defending the institutions of a public religion to which not all adhere, he insinuates that pagan cult enjoys the universal and uncontroversial devotion of the whole order in whose name he is speaking. In Symmachus’ Rome, Christianity is not a serious competitor for the devotion of society as a whole, and Christianisation is a sudden, almost inexplicable work of courtly caprice imposed from outside on an unwilling Senate and city.120 ‘Late and quarrelsome’, as Rome says in the close of her speech, ‘is change in old age.’121 There is thus an additional rhetorical layer to Symmachus’ second appeal to philosophical henotheism. ‘We all look at the same stars, heaven is a common possession, the same universe wraps us round. What difference does it make by what wisdom each person seeks the truth? It is not by one route alone that one can arrive at so great a secret. But this is a disputation for men at leisure; now we are offering prayers, not contentions.’122 After the flow of philosophical commonplaces, Symmachus’ sudden return to the petition of the Senate is jarring. By banishing philosophy from the consistorium to the scenes of gentlemanly retirement that had been the setting of Cicero’s philosophical dialogues and that

117.  Rel. 3.9, ‘ “optimi principes, patres patriae, reueremini annos meos in quos me pius ritus adduxit. utar caerimoniis auitis; neque enim paenitet, uiuam meo more quia libera sum. hic cultus in leges meas orbem redegit, haec sacra Hannibalem a moenibus, a Capitolio Senonas reppulerunt. ad hoc ergo seruata sum ut longaeua reprehendar?” ’ 118.  Cf. Cerutti 2006: 177–​8. 119.  Rel. 3.3; cf. Rel. 3.8, 19. 120.  Cf. Sordi 1976: 227, ‘per Simmaco il paganesimo è ancora la religione di Roma, anche se l’imperatore segue une religione diversa.’ 121.  Rel. 3.10, ‘sera tamen et contumeliosa est emendatio senectutis’, assigned by Gnilka 1990 to the prosopopoeia, contra Zelzer 1982: 27, who places the break at the end of 3.9. 122.  Rel. 3.10, ‘eadem spectamus astra, commune caelum est, idem nos mundus inuoluit; quid interest qua quisque prudentia uerum requirat? uno itinere non potest perueniri ad tam grande secretum. sed haec otiosorum disputatio est; nunc preces, non certamina offerimus.’

126  Worshippers of the Gods still attracted intellectuals and aristocrats in contemporary Italy,123 Symmachus heads off any expectation that he should defend his sweeping theological claims. At the same time, he centres his audience’s attention on the one kind of religion appropriate to the serious political setting at hand: the public cults of Rome, whose priests have just suffered grave financial insult. The Christian sentiments of Valentinian II (or his courtiers) are thus confined to the private sphere of personal devotion and leisured debate, where they have no relevance to Rome’s public practice and future prosperity. In the paragraphs that follow, Symmachus presents a lengthy defence of the Vestals and their privileges.124 Though it is unlikely, as Alan Cameron has argued, that Gratian’s legislation was aimed at them alone, the Vestals made a particularly effective pagan rallying point. Not only were ‘spinster ladies’ likelier ‘objects of sympathy’ than powerful male senators,125 but the Vestals also played a central role, as Symmachus did not hesitate to emphasise, in the preservation of the pax deorum and of Rome itself.126 Against these priestesses, dedicated for at least thirty years to the worship of the gods and the safety of Rome,127 Gratian’s legislation was an especially insulting display of official ingratitude. As Symmachus puts it, ‘What good does it do to dedicate a chaste body to the public well-​being and to buttress the eternity of the empire with heavenly defences, to apply friendly powers to your military, to your standards, to take up efficacious vows on behalf of all, and not to have legal rights in common with everyone else?’128 In the plight of the Vestals, the offence of Gratian’s legislation against the whole of traditional religion is clarified and crystallised. As in the proem, Symmachus makes the matter an unequal contest between miserliness and a public good anchored in religious devotion. ‘Under the most generous emperors’, he asks, ‘will that be denied which the most frugal provided?’129 The treasury should profit, Symmachus argues, from the spoils of war, not from the loss of the Vestals, who swear their ‘virginity to the public well-​ being’; Gratian’s enactment smacks of an ‘avarice’, he tells Valentinian, unbefitting ‘your character’.130 For Firmicus Maternus forty years before, the financial gains offered by a crackdown on pagan cult had been an additional incentive for the emperors to follow a course set by fundamental theological considerations.131 123.  Cicero, e.g., Rep. 1.14, Brut. 10, Fin. 1.14, Tusc. 1.5, Amic. 16–​17. Otium in the late fourth century: e.g., Claudian, De consulatu Manlii Theodori 7–​16, 113–​17; Symmachus, Ep. 1.47.1, 1.51, 7.16.2–​3, 8.64, 8.69; Augustine, Conf. 6.14.24, with Courcelle 1968: 155–​6, Matthews 1975: 1–​12. 124.  On the legal details of Symmachus’ argumentation, see Hecht 2006: 81–​92 and Dihle 1973. 125.  Cameron 2011: 42. 126.  Cf. Wildfang 2006: 1. 127.  Wissowa 1912: 507–​11 remains a convenient overview of the Vestals’ duties and social status. 128.  Rel. 3.14, ‘quid iuuat saluti publicae castum corpus dicare et imperii aeternitatem caelestibus fulcire praesidiis, armis uestris, aquilis uestris amicas adplicare uirtutes, pro omnibus efficacia uota suscipere, et ius cum omnibus non habere?’ 129.  Rel. 3.11, ‘sub largissimis imperatoribus denegatur quod parcissimi praestiterunt?’ 130.  Rel. 3.11–​12. 131.  Err. 28.6.

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  127 Even if Gratian was motivated by financial arguments, therefore, his choice may well have been driven by a similar mixture of monetary hard-​headedness and religious duty.132 Symmachus does not consider such possibilities. Fourteen years before, he had flattered Gratian’s father and uncle for their parsimoniousness, which had made the veneration of two united emperors cheaper than the worship of the many gods, Vesta included.133 Now it was convenient to cast imperial opposition to those same cults as the product of a stinginess so unbridled that it endangered the ‘heavenly defences’ of the empire itself. Although, as McLynn has pointed out, Symmachus does not directly address the reliance of ‘the formal validity of the traditional cults’ on ‘public funds’,134 he assumes throughout that the removal of the moneys and privileges of the traditional priesthoods will endanger both the empire and its rulers. ‘Let no one think’, Symmachus says, ‘that I am defending only the cause of the cults; from misdeeds of this sort have arisen all the misfortunes of the Roman race.’135 The proof, given grandeur by suitable Vergilian allusions, can be found in the famine of the preceding year. ‘Through sacrilege, the year dried up.’136 It is only now, at the end of the appeal, that Symmachus finally gives voice to a Christian objection to his arguments. ‘Someone will say’, he observes, ‘that the public expenditure has been denied to the costs of another’s religion.’137 Symmachus adds to the appeals to tradition that he has already advanced an appeal to legal technicality. Since the property of the priesthoods was ultimately given by individual people, it should not, he argues, be claimed by the emperor for his own use; besides, ‘what was a beneficence in the beginning becomes, through use and age, something owed’.138 By restoring to the priesthoods the funds that long use has made their desert, Valentinian will restore Rome’s old prosperity. ‘Let the arcane defences of all sects favour your clemency, and especially those which once helped your ancestors.’139 The reference to ‘all sects’ is the closest Symmachus comes, in the whole relatio, to giving Christianity a role in preserving the empire. In the very next sentence, however, he reasserts the unique importance of Roman public cult: ‘We are seeking that state of religions which preserved the empire for the deified parent of Your Highness’. For Symmachus, and for Valentinian if he accepts the prefect’s arguments, traditional public cult 132.  Cf. McLynn 1994: 151. 133.  Or. 2.32, ‘quanto parcior uestri numinis cultus est quam deorum!’ The sentences that follow list, among others, the worship of Hercules, the Magna Mater, Venus, and Vesta. For context, see Sogno 2006: 12–​15. 134.  McLynn 2009: 582. 135.  Rel. 3.15, ‘nemo me putet solam causam religionum tueri; ex huiusmodi facinoribus orta sunt cuncta Romani generis incommoda.’ 136.  Rel. 3.16, ‘sacrilegio annus exaruit’; on the allusions and Ambrose’s response to them, see Gualandri 1995. 137.  Rel. 3.18, ‘dicet aliquis sumptum publicum denegatum alienae religionis impendiis.’ 138.  Rel. 3.18, ‘quod a principio beneficium fuit usu atque aetate fuit debitum.’ 139.  Rel. 3.19, ‘faueant clementiae uestrae sectarum omnium arcana praesidia et haec maxime quae maiores uestros aliquando iuuerunt. uos defendant, a nobis colantur. eum religionum statum petimus, qui diuo parenti culminis uestri seruauit imperium’.

128  Worshippers of the Gods must remain the spiritual bulwark of his rule. Though the Christian emperor will not himself take direct part in the rites—​as Symmachus says, ‘let them defend you; let us perform them’ (uos defendant; a nobis colantur)—​the Roman religious order will be ratified for the age of Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius. When Valentinian has ensured the empire’s prosperity and ‘abolished’ the measures his brother was deceived into promulgating,140 the relationship between Senate and emperors, and between Rome and the gods, will be restored. Symmachus’ peroration holds out to Valentinian and his courtiers a delicate compromise between the emperor’s Christianity and his duty to the res publica, which had suffered such harm in the preceding year. Aiming much higher than mere toleration, the relatio seeks the full restoration of the pre-​Gratianic religious status quo ante of the Roman Empire.141 Its vision of that status quo rests, however, upon a construal of recent imperial history very different from the triumphalist paradigm for which Christians had been advocating since Firmicus Maternus’ day. For Symmachus, as we have seen, the shift in imperial religious allegiance since Constantine was a change only of private devotion. The emperors’ new secta had neither relevance for nor lasting impact upon their relationship, as rulers of Rome, to Rome’s gods and cults. The empire of Valentinian I had depended as much on the traditional religionum status as had the Rome of Camillus or of the Scipios. The basic religious realities of the Roman world remained unaltered by seven decades of imperial Christianity. Nevertheless, there was no ignoring the fact that the political reality had changed. The emperor was now a Christian, and there was an acute danger that Christian senators, bureaucrats, and bishops would again interfere and convince Valentinian that his religious sympathies forbade him from restoring traditional cult. Symmachus thus suggests a way for Valentinian to maintain his Christianity and the religious underpinnings of Roman prosperity at once. The traditional cults of Rome will endure, performed as they had been for centuries by the senators on behalf of the emperors, and the emperor, though Christian in his private devotion, will preside over a Senate and city of Rome that remain as resolutely, unanimously, and publicly pagan as they always had been.142 If Valentinian grants the Senate’s appeal, therefore, he will be accepting more than the mere restoration of funding and prestige to the Roman priesthoods; he will be accepting his dependence upon the primordial religious order of the Roman world, which was put in place by the divine will and which Symmachus seeks to secure for posterity.

140.  Rel. 3.20, ‘pro existimatione est temporum superiorum, ut non dubitetis abolere quod probandum est principis non fuisse’. 141.  Cf. Cerutti 2006: 183, ‘nell’appello simmacheo dietro un’apparente richiesta di tolleranza è l’auspicio di un ritorno alla status religionum antecedente’. 142.  Cf. Sordi 2008: 146, ‘i pagani non volevano la tolleranza . . . ma il riconoscimento che l’unica religione pubblica era ancora e soltanto quella pagana.’

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  129 Defending a Christian Senate: Ambrose, Ep. 72(17) Symmachus’ relatio was a bold yet subtle attempt to set the relationship between emperor and Senate, and between Rome and the gods, in a resolutely traditionalist key. Its appeals to Roman tradition and to the practice of past Christian emperors seem to have worked, winning (or so Ambrose reports) the initial assent of Valentinian’s advisors.143 In reply, Ambrose immediately penned an exhortation to the young emperor, waiting neither to obtain a copy of the relatio nor even to muster the Christian support that had fatally undermined the embassy in 382.144 Although Ambrose likely edited the resultant Ep. 72(17) when he published it in the tenth book of his epistles, the changes were probably slight, or so the small alterations he made to a later letter to Theodosius suggest.145 The urgent rhetoric still evident in the published text of Ep. 72(17) reflects the political uncertainty of the moment, as the Milanese bishop sought not only to undermine the senatorial request but also to counter the arguments, real or anticipated, of Valentinian’s courtiers.146 Ambrose picked his battles carefully. Although his adherence to Nicene Christianity would soon lead him to contest the control of local church buildings with Valentinian II and his mother, Justina, who favoured Ambrose’s Homoean, ‘Arian’ opponents,147 the bishop steered around inflammatory theological topics, addressing the emperor not as a doctrinal deviant in need of correction but as a pious worshipper of God.148 His epistle also avoids point-​by-​point refutation of Symmachus’ case, which he would provide in the later Ep. 73(18), written (or so he says) after Valentinian had decided against the senatorial appeal.149 Instead, Ambrose challenges the central religious, historical, and social assumptions that had underpinned the compromise between private and public religion advocated by Symmachus’ relatio. The epistle begins on a bracingly Christian note. Where Symmachus had framed his relatio with a politic appeal to the emperor’s devotion to good government, Ambrose begins by reorienting the basic religious terms of the controversy. Symmachus had approached the intertwined issues of priestly funding and of the

143.  OV 19, ‘et cum uniuersi, in consistorio qui aderant, Christiani pariter atque gentiles, dicerent esse reddenda’. 144.  Ep. 72(17).10, 13. 145.  Ep. 74(40) is an edited version of Ep. extra coll. 1a, written to Theodosius about the synagogue of Callinicum, which had been destroyed by Christians led by the local bishop (McLynn 1994:  298–​315). Zelzer 1982:  xx–​xxiii discusses the differing passages; the most significant change is the addition of a few concluding sentences to Ep. 74(40).32–​3, which defend Ambrose’s choice to address Theodosius directly in a sermon (for which see Ep. extra coll. 1[41].1, 26–​8). 146.  Ep. 72(17).6–​8. 147.  See 114 n. 31. 148.  Contra Chenault 2008: 249–​50. 149.  Ep. 73(18).1.

130  Worshippers of the Gods altar of Victory as matters to be negotiated between a basically pagan Senate and an emperor privately devoted to Christianity but still dependent on the public religious order of Rome for his well-​being. Whatever the truth of a particular religion (and, he acknowledges, all may well lead to God), it is the practical efficacy of public religion that should determine Valentinian’s decision. Ambrose presents the matter in different, emphatically Christian terms. The emperors, he declares, ‘fight for the omnipotent God and the sacred faith’, just as all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire ‘fight’ for them (the verb is militare, used of both civil and military service in the later Empire).150 The supreme divinity is not, as it had been for Symmachus, a ‘great secret’ to be reached by a multiplicity of paths while the Senate continues the vital ritual work that preserves divine favour for the empire. It is the ruling spiritual reality at the apex of the religious order of the Roman world. Ambrose thus places at the centre of Valentinian’s religious policy the personal devotion that Symmachus had sequestered in the world of leisured philosophical disputation, away from serious political affairs. At stake is salus, which ‘cannot otherwise be secure, unless each and every one truly worships . . . the one God, that is, the God of the Christians’. Ambrose has in mind not just the well-​being of the empire but also a more urgent goal, the emperor’s own ‘salvation before God’.151 Valentinian’s religious policy must thus be decided by his own Christian devotion, rather than the authority of tradition and the Senate. Ambrose decisively cuts off the many philosophical and cultic avenues to the divinity that Symmachus had left open. ‘For he alone’, Ambrose says, ‘is the true God who is worshipped in the inner mind; for the gods of the nations are idols’ (Ps. 95:5 [lxx]). God demands not the ‘dissembling’, therefore, for which Symmachus had asked but ‘to be worshipped with inner affection’, which forbids ‘anyone from extending even his consent . . . to worshipping idols and the profane cults of the ceremonies’.152 The argument puts a new stamp on Christian ideas familiar from earlier fourth-​century works that deal with Roman religion. Ambrose adopts the Christian redefinition of religio as true, inner worship of the true God that was given its most comprehensive statement in Lactantius’ Divine Institutes but extends its implications to the political sphere, in a way that Lactantius (as we saw in ­chapter 1) never did even after Constantine’s rise to sole power.153 Ambrose’s terms of engagement with the emperor are more sober, however, than those in 150.  Ep. 72(17).1, ‘cum omnes homines qui sub dicione Romana sunt uobis militent imperatoribus terrarum atque principibus, tum ipsi uos omnipotenti deo et sacrae fidei militatis. aliter enim salus tuta esse non poterit, nisi unusquisque deum uerum hoc est deum Christianorum, a quo cuncta reguntur, ueraciter colat’; cf. TLL, s.v. milito. 151.  Ep. 72(17).17, ‘peto ut id facias quod saluti tuae apud deum intellegis profuturum.’ 152.  Ep. 72(17).1–​ 2, ‘ipse enim solus uerus est deus qui intima mente ueneretur; dii enim gentium daemonia sicut scriptura dicit. huic igitur deo uero quisque militat, et qui intimo colendum recipit affectu, non dissimulationem . . . sed fidei studium et deuotionis impendit. . . . consensum saltem aliquem non debet colendis idolis et profanis caerimoniarum cultibus exhibere’. 153.  DI 4.28.

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  131 which Firmicus Maternus had imagined imperial abolition of idolatry forty years before. For Firmicus, the destruction of the idols and their temples had been an invitation ‘to the secret things of the venerable law’, an act of devotion from which Constans and Constantius II would derive ‘victories, wealth, peace, abundance, health, and triumphs’.154 Ambrose speaks as a pastor, not a panegyrist, reserving such effusions for a speech placed in the mouth of the dead Gratian, who declares, ‘I had raised these tokens of pious virtue; I offered this booty taken from the world, these spoils from the Devil, these goods stripped from the adversary of all, in which there is eternal victory.’155 In his own voice, Ambrose casts Valentinian’s resistance to idolatry not as a work of heroic piety but as a necessary extension of his duty to the one God. As Hartmut Leppin has put it, ‘The position of the emperor is consequently for Ambrose not an institutional but a pastoral problem; the ruler is loosed from his institutional contexts and treated as an individual human being, who must be concerned for his salvation.’156 With this transformation of the religious basis for imperial policy comes a profound reconfiguration of the social backdrop of the controversy. Christian emperors had long shown an unusual deference to the religious traditions of the city of Rome, or so the pagan orator Libanius asserted in a roughly contemporary oration,157 and it is on that deference that Symmachus’ arguments implicitly rely. Ambrose denies the Roman cults their special status both in practice and in theory. Thus, he casts Gratian’s legislation as a straightforward extension of the sweeping restrictions imposed on pagan cult elsewhere in the empire,158 while he dismisses Symmachus’ dii patrii, the ancient, ancestral gods of Rome, as dii gentium, the biblical ‘gods of the nations’, for whose ‘profane sacrifices’ no Christian may lawfully erect an altar.159 This lexical move signals an even more sweeping revision of the religious history of the empire. In place of Symmachus’ ‘memory and evidence’ of divine favour for Rome, Ambrose appeals to a different, Christian past. ‘They even complain’, he says, ‘about expenditures, who never spared our blood, who demolished even the buildings of the churches.’160 A few years later, Ambrose would make strategic use of the martyrs to settle a major intra-​Christian dispute, advertising the discovery of the relics of Gervasius and Protasius to silence his ‘Arian’ 154.  Err. 29.4, ‘deus summus . . . his uos interim remuneratos insignibus ad arcana uenerandae legis inuitat. . . . sic uobis feliciter cuncta prouenient, uictoriae, opulentia, pax, copia, sanitas et triumphi’. 155.  Ep. 72(17).15, ‘hos ego titulos piae uirtutis erexeram, has de saeculo manubias, haec spolia de diabolo, has ego de aduersario omnium exuuias offerebam, in quibus aeterna uictoria est.’ 156. Leppin 2008:  43, ‘Die Position des Kaisers ist für Ambrosius mithin kein institutionelles, sondern ein pastorales Problem; der Herrscher wird aus den institutionellen Kontexten gelöst und als einzelner Mensch betrachtet, der um sein Seelenheil bemüht sein sollte.’ 157.  Or. 30.33–​5; but see Van Nuffelen 2014: 305 for qualifications. 158.  Ep. 72(17).5. 159.  Rel. 3.10; Ep. 72(17).1, 3. 160.  Ep. 72(17).4, ‘et de dispendiis queruntur qui numquam nostro sanguini pepercerunt, qui ipsa ecclesiarum aedificia subruerunt.’

132  Worshippers of the Gods opponents in Milan.161 Here Ambrose places the martyrs’ sufferings at the beginning of a century of ‘gentile’ hostility, which stretches from the destruction of churches under the Tetrarchs, past Julian’s law on teachers, to the present attempt to preserve the ‘privileges’ of the old cults. Throughout, he casts pagan senators as cunning opponents of Christians, whom ‘they have wanted to ensnare by those privileges in part through their victims’ imprudence, in part because their victims desire to get out of the annoyances of public obligations’.162 Ambrose’s conflation of Christian careerism with pagan persecution is hardly fair, yet his accusations are not wholly unfounded. Julian’s law was not the work of Roman senators, but it had claimed one of its most illustrious victims, Marius Victorinus, at Rome, probably, as McLynn has argued, through the agency of influential Romans resentful of a visible convert to Christianity (and of Christians uncertain of the sincerity of a prominent pagan’s conversion).163 The material and social attractions of a priesthood were also real. Not only could membership of priestly colleges offer the kind of prestige at which senators like the initiates of the Phrygianum aimed; it could also provide financial stability to a man of uncertain means. As Symmachus said in a letter recommending a ‘pauper’ named Tuentius for a provincial priesthood, ‘Add, if it pleases you, the privilege of a priesthood to his security, and multiply the defences of one man.’164 Even after the passing of violent persecution, the social dominance of the traditional cults still posed a deadly temptation, or so it seemed to the watchful bishop: ‘even under Christian princes,’ Ambrose says, ‘many have fallen’.165 Ambrose’s Rome is a city in which it is altogether too difficult to be a faithful Christian. The same concern for the spiritual welfare of Valentinian himself and of upper-​class  Christians at Rome drives the central arguments of Ambrose’s exhortation. Unlike Symmachus, who had reduced the religious divisions at Rome and Milan to a straightforward juxtaposition (if not opposition) of polytheist Senate and Christian emperor, Ambrose shows an acute awareness of the diversity of religious opinions in the Milanese court and the Roman Senate. He warns Valentinian against heeding either ‘gentile’ or Christian critics of Gratian’s legislation. The importance of individual Christians’ devotion to God remains the key argument against both. The zeal of his pagan advisors for their own cults ought, Ambrose argues, to be a lesson to Valentinian, which shows ‘to what degree you ought to be zealous for the true faith, when the gentile defends things

161.  McLynn 1994: 209–​19. 162.  Ep. 72(17).4, ‘nonnullos enim illis priuilegiis partim per imprudentiam, partim propter publicarum necessitatum molestias declinandas inretire uoluerunt’. 163. Augustine, Conf. 8.5.10, with McLynn 2014: 130–​1. 164.  Ep. 4.61.1, ‘adice, si placet, securitati eius sacerdotii priuilegium et unius hominis munimenta multiplica’, with Callu 1972–​2009, 2: 142 n. 1. 165.  Ep. 72(17).4, ‘etiam sub principibus Christianis plerique sunt lapsi’.

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  133 empty of truth with such great effort’.166 Nevertheless, God must remain the ruling authority in religious affairs, just as a military man is on a military matter (Ambrose is, perhaps, making a polite nod to the magister militum Bauto).167 For the ‘gentiles’ to demand the emperor’s assent to cults not his own would thus be an unconscionable infringement upon Valentinian’s own duty to worship God as he sees fit. ‘Each and every person ought freely, after all, to defend the fidelity of his own mind and to preserve his conviction’.168 Although Ambrose is not, as this declaration makes clear, proposing the replacement of traditional public cult with Christianity, it misrepresents his argument to see it, as some have, as the product of principled opposition to state intervention in religion.169 Like the Christian proponents of generosity studied by Brown, Ambrose is concerned not with the policies of an abstract ‘state’ but with the spirituality of individual people, of whom the emperor is only the greatest (and now, paradoxically, perhaps the most vulnerable).170 His arguments are an outworking of the traditionally Christian approach to religion adopted at the outset of the epistle. If Symmachus had limited the importance of personal piety, Ambrose has virtually denied any place to public religiosity in Valentinian’s decision-​making. It is an approach that Lactantius, who had similarly devalued public in favour of personal, inward religiosity, might have appreciated, despite the great religious changes of the intervening seven decades. If the appeal to religious self-​determination echoes a Lactantian argument in a post-​Constantinian age, Ambrose’s attack on Christian critics of Gratian’s legislation sounds an even more traditionally Christian note. ‘But if ’, he says, ‘some people, Christians by name only, think that you should decree something of this kind . . . let not empty words deceive you. Whoever argues this sacrifices, and so does whoever makes this decree.’171 Almost two centuries before, Tertullian had condemned as idolatry the indirect involvement of artisans, incense sellers, and even schoolteachers in the worship of the gods.172 Now Ambrose extends a similar criticism to the highest levels of Roman government. What is at stake, he insists, is something even more urgent than the soul of an individual courtier or emperor: ‘this whole Senate of Christians is in danger.’ In the sentences that follow, he presents a lurid scene to Valentinian and his courtiers: Christian senators forced ‘to be present when people are sacrificing, so that the ash from

166.  Ep. 72(17).6, ‘sed proprio studio docere et admonere te debet, quemadmodum uerae fidei studere debeas, quando ille tanto motu ueri uana defendit’. 167.  Ep. 72(17).7; cf. Palanque 1933: 133. 168.  Ep. 72(17).7, ‘libere enim debet defendere unusquisque fidele mentis suae et seruare propositum’. 169.  E.g., Pizzolato 1997: 145. 170.  Brown 2012: 54–​7. 171.  Ep. 72(17).8, ‘quod si aliqui nomine Christiani tale aliquid decernendum putant . . . nomina cassa non fallant. quisquis hoc suadet sacrificat, et quisquis hoc statuit. tolerabilius tamen est unius sacrificium quam lapsus omnium. totus hic Christianorum periclitatur senatus.’ 172.  Idol. 8, 10–​11, with Rebillard 2010.

134  Worshippers of the Gods the altar, the spark from the sacrilege, the smoke from the burnt offering, might fill the breaths and faces of the faithful’.173 This would, he reminds the emperor, be considered persecution were ’some gentile’ to demand it. Ambrose plays skilfully upon Christian horror of pagan sacrifices, which was rooted in scripture and had been echoed by Christian apologists and hagiographers down to his own day.174 Even more cunning is his exposure of a key weakness in Symmachus’ argumentation. Although Symmachus had been careful to offer a settlement that would not compromise the emperor’s Christian devotion, he had made universal participation in the oath to Victory the core of the Senate’s collective religiosity. A bold attempt to impress upon Valentinian the vital importance of the altar and the wider religious tradition that it embodied, this move left Christian senators no room for dissent. Ambrose takes full advantage of the misstep. ‘With you, therefore, as emperor’, he asks, ‘are Christians to be compelled to swear at an altar? What is swearing, unless to confess the divine power of him whom you call to witness as protector of your fidelity?’175 The performance of the oath is unquestionably a religious act, by Symmachus’ account every bit as much as by Ambrose’s. Even a Christian courtier of Valentinian might have been able to reject Ambrose’s earlier accusations of persecution as overzealous exaggeration; this argument, which again echoes a long-​standing Christian sentiment,176 would have been much more difficult to dismiss. Ambrose’s insistence on the primacy of Christian devotion has already opened up a crack between Valentinian and Symmachus’ firmly traditionalist Senate. Now he uses the Christian counter-​petition of 382 as a wedge to drive prefect and emperor even farther apart: About two years ago as well, you see, when they tried to ask for this, the holy Damasus, priest of the Roman Church chosen by the judgement of God, sent to me a libellus that Christian senators had given him (and indeed their number was countless). They protested that they had made no such command, that they did not agree with such petitions from gentiles, that they did not grant their consent, and they complained also, in public and in private, that they were not going to meet at the Senate house if such a thing were to be decreed.177 173.  Ep. 72(17).9, ‘si hodie gentilis aliquis, imperator, quod absit, aram statueret simulacris et eo conuenire cogeret Christianos, ut sacrificantibus interessent, ut oppleret anhelitus et ora fidelium cinis exa ara, fauilla de sacrilegio, fumus ex busto . . . persecutionem esse crederet Christianus . . . te ergo imperatore Christiani in aram iurare cogentur?’ 174.  The fanciful account of the taurobolium in Prudentius, Perist. 10.1006–​60 is a particularly spectacular example. 175.  Ep. 72(17).9, ‘te ergo imperatore Christiani in aram iurare cogentur? quid est iurare nisi eius, quem testere fidei tuae praesulem, diuinam potentiam confiteri?’ 176. Tertullian, Idol. 21.1–​2. 177.  Ep. 72(17).10, ‘nam et ante biennium ferme cum hoc petere temptarent, misit ad me sanctus Damasus, Romanae ecclesiae sacerdos iudicio dei electus, libellum quem Christiani senatores dederunt et quidem innumeri,

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  135 The offering of the petition proves, Ambrose alleges, that the relatio represents the will not of the Senate but merely of ‘a few gentiles’ who are ‘using the common name’.178 From a procedural perspective, his argument is weak. Ambrose has no good explanation for the failure of his ‘countless’ Christian senators to shape the senatorial deliberations, and protests, with feeble bluster, that their absence and eventual petition to the emperor were declaration enough of their opinion.179 Quite possibly, as McLynn has suggested, he and Damasus had been reliant on the support of Christian senators ‘who had earned their senatorial rank through service . . . and normally took little interest in the curia’s business’.180 Yet the point still carries rhetorical weight. Even though Ambrose overstates his case, he not only acknowledges the presence within the Senate of men who do not hold to his religion but also points to concrete evidence of the strength of his opinion within the order. Symmachus had done neither.181 The epistle concludes with a series of appeals to authority, not least Ambrose’s own as bishop.182 He first invokes his episcopal position just before his account of the Christian counter-​petition of 382: ‘I beseech Your Fidelity as priest of Christ’, he says, then insinuates that his opinion expresses the sentiments of the wider episcopal order, who would have assembled had they not been pre-​empted by the swiftness of the senatorial petition.183 Ambrose claims for his words a wider authority than they actually possessed; even Damasus, his ally in 382, seems not to have reacted to the renewed petition.184 He inserts himself into the controversy again two sections later, where he says, ‘And, therefore, mindful of the embassy most recently entrusted to me, I beseech Your Fidelity again . . . not to think that you should give a response that accords with such a petition from gentiles’.185 As McLynn has observed, Ambrose had not participated in any formal embassy on behalf of the Christian senators; the legatio is thus to be identified, he argues, with the bishop’s most important political favour for Valentinian, the embassy to Trier in which he had for a time averted the invasion of Italy that Magnus Maximus would later undertake in 387.186 The suggestion is attractive, but it makes Ambrose’s rhetoric unduly clumsy. The transition works better, both

postulantes nihil se tale mandasse, non congruere gentilium istiusmodi petitionibus, non praebere consensum, questi etiam publice priuatimque se non conuenturos ad curiam si tale aliquid decerneretur.’ 178.  Ep. 72(17).10, ‘sed absit ut hoc senatus petisse dicatur; pauci gentiles communi utuntur nomine.’ 179.  Ep. 72(17).11, ‘satis loquuntur quid uelint qui non interfuerint; satis locuti sunt qui apud imperatorem locuti sunt.’ 180.  McLynn 1994: 152. 181.  Cf. the remarks of Matthews 1975: 207. 182.  Ep. 72(17).12–​16. 183.  Ep. 72(17).10, ‘conuenio fidem tuam Christi sacerdos. omnes conueniremus episcopi, nisi incredibile hoc et repentinum ad aures peruenisset hominum’. 184.  For speculation on the reasons for Damasus’ silence, see Chenault 2016. 185.  Ep. 72(17).12, ‘et ideo memor legationis proximae mandatae mihi conuenio iterum fidem tuam . . . ne uel respondendum secundum huiusmodi petitionem gentilium censeas’. 186.  McLynn 1994: 167 (with the discussion of the embassy itself at 161–​3); cf. Watts 2015b: 187–​8.

136  Worshippers of the Gods rhetorically and logically, if the legatio is the Christian petition to which Ambrose has just referred.187 Even so, Ambrose is overreaching, putting an unofficial request forwarded through episcopal backchannels on a level with an official embassy conducted by leading members of the Senate. Buttressing this manoeuvre with a reminder of his own ecclesiastical power, Ambrose threatens to break the relationship between Valentinian and the Milanese church, either by absenting himself from the basilica or by ‘resisting’ Valentinian upon arrival.188 This is not a threat of excommunication, since Valentinian was not baptised.189 Nevertheless, it is a warning that a declaration of support for ‘gentile’ cults could have public as well as spiritual consequences for the emperor. ‘Why’, Ambrose imagines himself asking Valentinian, ‘do you ask for the priests of God, to whom you preferred the profane petitions of the gentiles?’190 In Ambrose’s Milan, pagans are not the only sacerdotes with whose influence the emperor must reckon. Ambrose drives the point home in twinned prosopopoeiae of Gratian and Valentinian I, whom he makes models for the young emperor. In keeping with his threatened opposition to Valentinian II, he portrays Gratian as a dutiful Christian upbraiding his younger brother for betraying the profession of faith that his anti-​ pagan measures had embodied. ‘If you willingly acquiesced,’ he imagines Gratian saying, ‘you condemned my faith; if you yielded unwillingly, you betrayed your own.’191 It is as interested a portrayal as Ambrose’s other post-​mortem portraits of Gratian,192 but the threat of episcopal resistance gives bite both to it and his equally one-​sided picture of Valentinian I, whose inaction on the altar of Victory he credits to well-​intentioned ignorance.193 Whatever may have motivated Gratian, Ambrose can take further, more embarrassing steps to defend his construal of the implications of Gratian’s legislation, for example, by confronting the emperor openly, as he would later do to Theodosius I over another religious cause célèbre, the rebuilding of the synagogue of Callinicum in Syria, which had been destroyed by local Christians.194 Ambrose meets Symmachus’ focus on the traditional authority of the Senate and Rome with a nimbler episcopal authority of his own,195 which makes him responsible for policing the relationship truly vital to the controversy, that between the emperor and God. ‘If this were a civil case,’ he says, ‘the response would be reserved to a different party. It is a case of religion; I approach you as bishop.’196 187.  As suggested by, e.g., Klein 1972: 182 n. 8, Zelzer 1982: 17. 188.  Ep. 72(17).13–​14. 189.  Dassmann 2004: 87, contra, e.g., Palanque 1933: 134, Williams 1995: 202. 190.  Ep. 72(17).14, ‘cur sacerdotes dei requiris, quibus petitiones profanas gentilium praetulisti?’ 191.  Ep. 72(17).15, ‘ “si uolens acquieuisti, damnasti fidem meam, si inuitus cessisti, prodidisti tuam.” ’ 192.  McLynn 1994: 155–​7. 193.  Ep. 72(17).16. ‘ “nemo ad me detulit aram esse in illa Romana curia.” ’ 194.  See 129 n.  146; as McLynn 1994:  315–​30 has argued, the even more famous confrontation between Ambrose and the penitent Theodosius after the massacre at Thessalonica in 390 seems to have been prearranged. 195.  Cf. Brown 2011: 18 for Ambrose as a ‘nimble lightweight’. 196.  Ep. 72(17).13, ‘si ciuilis causa esset, diuersae parti responsio seruaretur. causa religionis est, episcopus conuenio.’

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  137 For Ambrose, both the eternal salus of the emperor and his subjects and the preservation of the empire depend upon their faithful devotion to God,197 which a repeal of Gratian’s legislation would weaken. He sums up his position in the epistle’s concluding line: ‘I ask that you do that which you understand is going to benefit your salvation before God’.198 Imperial religious policy is not simply a matter of the emperor’s personal Christian allegiance, as it had been for Firmicus Maternus or for the emperor Constantine in 324; it also falls, for that very reason, under the pastoral responsibility of the bishop. In Ambrose’s Milan, the privileges of the traditional priests of Rome are outmatched by the claims of a new, more independent sacerdos. For Ambrose, the emperor’s private devotion must determine his public religious policy, but the bishop also has the authority, given by God, to safeguard and direct the emperor’s Christian piety. As Ambrose would remind Valentinian during the basilica controversy, ‘in a dispute over the faith—​ in a dispute, I  say, over the faith—​bishops are accustomed to judge Christian emperors’.199 Ambrose and Symmachus disagree not just about the relationship between private and public religion; they also see the religious reality of the Roman world in fundamentally different terms. Claiming Rome Valentinian and his advisors decided against the Senate’s appeal, but their refusal was not the end of the controversy. After Valentinian’s decision, Ambrose published the lengthy refutation of Symmachus’ relatio that he had proposed in his initial epistle.200 Ep. 73(18) repeatedly sounds the note of Christian triumph that the anxious uncertainty of its predecessor had muted. ‘The uncompromising muscularity’, as McLynn has termed it,201 of Ambrose’s Christianity is summed up in a long prosopopoeia in which the bishop’s Rome rejects the unbending traditionalism expressed by her pagan counterpart in the prefect’s relatio. Ambrose’s Rome is also weighed down with age, but not, she assures her readers, with the outmoded practices of idolatrous cult. ‘Why’, she asks, ‘do you bloody me day by day with the useless blood of the innocent flock? Not in the muscles of beasts but in the strength of warriors are the trophies of victory. With different disciplines did I  subdue the world.’202 Rome sketches her history, matching Symmachus’ allusions to the Gallic sack and the defeat of Hannibal with the victories (entirely 197. Thus, Ep. 72(17).16 makes Valentinian I credit the preservation of his imperium to ‘fides mea’ rather than ‘superstitio aliena’. 198.  Ep. 72(17).17. 199.  Ep. 75(21).4, ‘quis est qui abnuat in causa fidei, in causa inquam fidei, episcopos solere de imperatoribus Christianis . . . iudicare?’ On the basilica controversy, see 114 n. 31. 200.  Ep. 72(17).13, ‘Detur mihi exemplum missae relationis, ut et ego plenius respondeam’. 201.  McLynn 2009: 581. 202.  Ep. 73(18).7, ‘quid me casso cottidie gregis innoxii sanguine cruentatis? non in fibris pecudum sed in uiribus bellatorum tropaea uictoriae sunt. aliis ego disciplinis orbem subegi.’

138  Worshippers of the Gods unaided by the gods, of course) of Camillus and Scipio Africanus, the bravery of Regulus, and the unhappy reigns of pagan emperors, Nero and Valerian among them. ‘Was there not also an altar of Victory even then?’ Rome asks. She has now, she assures Ambrose’s readers, repented of her former folly: ‘I do not blush’, Rome says, ‘to be converted in old age together with the whole world.’203 Together, Ambrose’s letters and Symmachus’ relatio reveal both the continuity of thought on Roman religion since the pre-​Constantinian era and the changes wrought by the Church’s legal and social advancement during the intervening decades. For Ambrose, as for Lactantius and the apologetic tradition before him, true religion is a matter of inward commitment and public obedience to the one God. In intervening in Valentinian’s religious affairs, the bishop has merely extrapolated this conviction, as Lactantius had not, to encompass the devotion and duty of the most powerful Christian of all. Traditional cults must remain without imperial subsidy precisely because the emperor is obligated to worship God alone. In asserting the necessity of public cult, Symmachus likewise restates long-​standing pagan conviction, but in a new, less friendly political climate. Despite his desire to present a Rome unswervingly devoted to its ancestral cults, Symmachus’ arguments not only admit the decisive shift of imperial religious allegiance to the new, Christian secta but also reveal a deeper weakening in the social position of public religion. Eighty years before, when Lactantius had protested against the Tetrarchs’ religious policies, the continued polytheism of the Roman world had seemed inevitable even to the Christian polemicist himself. The emperors had aimed high, trying to compel the few inhabitants of the empire who rejected the worship of the gods outright to return to what Galerius called ‘the sect of their parents’. Symmachus’ goal is more modest. His case and his pagan conviction require him to present the traditional cults as the divinely ordained defence of the empire and of each of its cities. Nevertheless, his political vision is limited entirely to Rome itself and to the senatorial order, whose religious diversity he seeks rather to evade than to squelch. Imperial legislation is now needed not to restore universal devotion to the city’s ancestral cults but to ensure their continued survival as public institutions. For all Symmachus’ insistence on the indifference of the emperors’ personal ‘sectarian’ leanings, the very fact that he has to appeal to the emperor for the return of public funds and of the altar of Victory shows how tenuous the position of traditional religion had become. The triumph of Christianity was nevertheless not so complete as Ambrose’s second epistle to Valentinian made it appear. In the Rome Ambrose sets before the eyes of his readers, the victory over polytheistic cults of which Firmicus Maternus had dreamed was now achieved. However, as the discrepancy between his arguments and Symmachus’, or, still more strikingly, between the new epistle 203.  Ep. 73(18).7, ‘numquid et tunc non erat ara Victoriae? . . . non erubesco cum toto orbe longaeua conuerti.’

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors  139 and his first, anxious exhortations, implies, neither city nor empire was so fully converted as the bishop wished to pretend. By 394, at least three more embassies had been sent from the Senate to the imperial court to request the restoration of funds. All are known solely through Ambrose’s report to the would-​be emperor Eugenius and a garbled account that Ambrose’s biographer, Paulinus, derived from the bishop’s letter.204 The irony of this historical accident underscores the rhetorical dexterity and political subtlety of Ambrose’s and Symmachus’ presentations of the religious situation of contemporary Rome.205 For both bishop and prefect, to portray one’s own religion as the obvious, uncontroversial religion of Rome was essential for ensuring that it would indeed attain, or retain, that privileged status. The existence of their writings makes clear, despite their own efforts, just how malleable the public religion of Rome and its empire—​and the meaning of its emperors’ personal religious devotion—​still were in 384, seventy years after Christian emperors had first begun to grapple with the religious traditions of the world they ruled.

204.  See 110 n. 21. 205.  Van Dam 2010:  33–​41 offers a lucid survey of competing portrayals of Rome’s political and religious significance in late antiquity, amid the city’s practical marginalization and the emperors’ embrace of Christianity.

5

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus SENATORS AND TRADITIONAL RELIGION IN 380S ROME

S

everal of Symmachus’ letters offer vignettes of the workings of the pontifical college in the 370s and early 380s: a festival performed by the citizenry at the direction of the pontiffs,1 anxious attempts to expiate an unfavourable omen by sacrifices made ‘in the public name’,2 the sending of a pontifical treasurer to Africa to secure the college’s hold on an estate.3 In the letter that accompanied the treasurer, Symmachus appealed to the religious dutifulness of his brother Celsinus Titianus, the uicarius of Africa: ‘Make, I pray you, the aid of your office seem something divinely offered, and remember that you are priest of each of the two priesthoods’ (that is, the pontificates of Vesta and of the sun).4 So, Symmachus says, his brother and fellow pontiff will win the esteem of having aided the publica utilitas. Religious duty, the good of Rome and its empire, and the honour of the noblemen who administered both civic office and ancestral priesthoods all blend seamlessly together, as they had for generations of senators.5 Nevertheless, the links that had traditionally bound res publica and public religio, and service to both in the careers of Roman aristocrats such as Symmachus and Titianus, were coming under increasing strain. Three centuries before, the younger Seneca had imagined an ambitious career man complaining that he had not yet received a priesthood or, more gallingly, that he had been co-​opted into only a single college.6 ‘Now’, Symmachus complained in another 1.  Ep. 1.46. On Symmachus’ letters and their senatorial world, see Brown 2012:  100–​1, Matthews 1974, 1975:  1–​31, 1986, with the discussion of their place within Symmachus’ political career by Sogno 2006:  59–​85. Salzman and Roberts 2011, Cecconi 2002, and Roda 1981 give commentary on Books 1, 2, and 9, respectively, which hold most of the epistles cited in this chapter. 2.  Ep. 1.49, ‘inpendio angor animi, quod sacrifiis multiplicibus et per singulas potestates saepe repititis necdum publico nomine Spoletinum piatur ostentum.’ See further 164 n. 139. 3.  Ep. 1.68. 4.  Ep. 1.68, ‘effice, oro te, ut diuinitus uideatur oblatum tui honoris auxilium, et utriusque te sacerdotii antistitem recordare.  .  .  . multum in gratiam tuam publica utilitas promouebit.’ PLRE 1:  917–​18 (Titianus 5); priesthoods: Salzman and Roberts 2011: 137. 5. Pliny, Ep. 4.8 is a succinct summation of traditional senatorial attitudes towards public priesthood. 6.  De ira 3.31.2; on priesthoods in senatorial careers under the early and middle Empire, see Várhelyi 2010: 57–​69. ‘At least as early as the 260s multiple membership of the old colleges . . . was becoming normal, at least

Worshippers of the Gods. Mattias P. Gassman, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190082444.001.0001

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  141 letter, ‘being absent from the altars is a way for Romans to get ahead.’7 The embarrassing ‘absenteeism’ of senatorial pontifices in the midst of a public crisis (perhaps the famine of 383) suggests a lack of conviction that service to the ancestral cults would further either the public well-​being or the priests’ own careers under Christian emperors.8 Although many senators continued to hold multiple priesthoods, the traditional religious-​political consensus, which had made the publica sacra guarantors both of public stability and of senatorial prestige, was no longer so obvious as it once had been,9 especially after Gratian had removed the tempting priestly priuilegia that worried zealous Christians such as Ambrose.10 Nor was the henotheist acceptance of personal religious choices as uncontroversial as Symmachus made it seem when addressing a Christian emperor. Occasional glimmers of pagan animosity towards Christianity shine through Symmachus’ Epistulae.11 ‘Perhaps you are amazed’, Symmachus says at the opening of another letter to Titianus, ‘that I  am recommending a bishop. His cause, not his religion, persuades me to do this: Clemens, performing the duty of a good man, . . . has safeguarded Caesarea, his fatherland.’12 Symmachus’ disavowal of sectarian sympathies testifies to the disdain in which a pagan pontifex could be expected to hold his Christian counterparts.13 His choice to emphasise the patriotism of this small-​town African bishop, who had defended his local curia from imperial demands for repayment of treasury funds lost in a barbarian attack,14 sends an implicit message to the readers of his first book, which he probably edited for publication in the 390s.15 For Symmachus, devotion to town and class is a more important measure of a man’s character than his private religious pursuits. As another letter shows, a bishop of good character can be not only a figurative ‘brother’ to Symmachus but ‘praiseworthy by the testimony of all

for those few individuals known to us’ (Rüpke 2008: 60–​1); for some second-​and early-​third-​century precedents, see Saquete 2006. 7.  Ep. 1.51, ‘fuerit haec olim simplex diuinae rei delegatio: nunc aris deesse Romanos genus est ambiendi’, with the translation and comments of Salzman and Roberts 2011: 108–​10. 8.  For the dating, cf. Callu 1972–​2009, 1: 113 n. 1, but Salzman and Roberts 2011: 109–​10 are more cautious. ‘Absenteeism’: Cameron 2011: 163–​4, who notes that the central concern is priestly dereliction, not pagan adoption of Christianity (contra, e.g., Van Haeperen 2005:  679–​80); for further cautions against positing a pagan demographic decline from such statements, see Lizzi Testa 2009. 9.  Cf. Salzman 2002: 65. 10.  Ep. 72(17).4. 11.  Cf. Matthews 1986 for the personal tensions evident in the epistolary corpus. 12.  Ep. 1.64, ‘commendari a me episcopum forte mireris. causa istud mihi, non secta persuasit. nam Clemens boni uiri functus officium Caesaream, quae illi patria est, . . . tutatus est.’ 13.  Pace Brown 2012: 102; Matthews 1974: 87 refers to Symmachus’ ‘deliberately pointed objectivity’. 14.  On the social and political background, see Weisweiler 2011. 15.  Salzman and Roberts 2011: liv–​lxii argue for publication ‘by the early 390s’, with extensive discussion of divergent scholarly opinions; Cameron 2011: 167–​8 preferred a date ‘in the late rather than early 390s’ but later suggested (Cameron 2016: 94–​5) that the text was edited but unpublished at Symmachus’ death in 402. Kelly 2015 suggests that Symmachus published the book in 381–​2, in order to show ‘his readiness and competence for a prefecture’; it is difficult, however, to see how Symmachus’ choice to foreground his diligent paganism in the epistles to Praetextatus (1.44–​55) would have gained him favour in Gratian’s court.

142  Worshippers of the Gods sects’.16 Publica utilitas is at once the basis for the public religion and a creed broad enough to ensure properly cordial relations among all men of the ‘right sort’, whatever their beliefs—​or so Symmachus wishes to convince his readers.17 The smoothly traditionalist surface of Relatio 3 therefore covers over a diversity of attitudes towards Christianity and public cult alike that Symmachus’ carefully choreographed collection of epistles, the era’s greatest monument to aristocratic collegiality, allows us just barely to glimpse.18 This diversity of opinion belies not only the simplistic dichotomies that early-​twentieth-​century scholarship drew between stalwart ‘traditionalist’ and radically ‘orientalist’ pagans, or between rising Christians and a coherent pagan ‘resistance’, but also the more modern emphasis on ‘the formidable solidarity’ (as Peter Brown once called it) ‘of the “Romans of Rome” in the face of the religious tensions of the age’.19 What these epistles reveal is not the unquestioned dominance of a non-​partisan ‘solidarity’ but the care with which fellow feeling had to be maintained in the face of religious differences. Recent scholarship has proposed subtler pictures of senatorial attempts to push back against Christian legal and cultural encroachment.20 This chapter aims, in a similar vein, to expose the diversity of senatorial approaches to polytheistic religion, both public and private, in the Rome of the early 380s, into which Symmachus’ relatio, presenting as it does the ostensible consensus of a unified senatorial order, gives little insight. While the political and personal negotiations that preceded the senatorial embassies and the Christian counter-​ petition of 382 lie beyond recovery, we have much more extensive evidence for the aftermath of Valentinian’s rejection of the second senatorial appeal. The range of attitudes towards religion adopted by Roman aristocrats can be seen especially clearly in their reactions to an event that occurred later in 384: the death of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, urban prefect in the late 360s, now praetorian prefect of Illyricum, Italy, and Africa, and holder (as we saw in c­ hapter  3) of priesthoods ranging from pontifex of Vesta to pater patrum of Mithras. The death of Praetextatus shortly before his investiture as consul for 385 caused a sensation at Rome.21 The populace of the city, so Symmachus reported to the emperors, ‘refused the appointed pleasures of the theatre and, bearing witness to his illustrious memory with much acclamation, bore ill the envy of fortune, because she had taken the benefits of a renowned leader from them’.22 Even an 16.  Ep. 7.51, ‘fratrem meum Seuerum episcopum omnium sectarum adtestatione laudabilem’. 17.  Cf. Salzman 2010 for a perspective that emphasises the ‘secular’ aspects of Symmachus’ ideal. 18. For the metaphor, Matthews 1986:  175 (‘the smooth surface of Symmachus’ correspondence’); on Symmachus’ ‘old-​fashioned collegiality’, see Brown 2012: 101. 19.  Brown 1961: 11; see 4 n. 20, for citations on the ‘secularity’ of late-​antique society. 20.  Two views in Lizzi Testa 2015 and Hedrick 2000 (the latter sometimes veering too close to the old ‘resistance’ narrative); cf. Salzman 2016: 35–​42 on Constantine and pagan senators. 21.  Kahlos 2002 surveys Praetextatus’ life, career, and Nachleben; Cracco Ruggini 1979 remains a brilliant and erudite study. For two attempts to date Praetextatus’ death, see Vera 1981: 95–​7 and Cecconi 2002: 267–​71. 22.  Rel. 10.2, ‘recusauit populus sollemnes theatri uoluptates memoriamque eius inlustrem multa adclamatione testatus grauiter egit cum liuore fortunae, quod sibi inclytorum principum beneficia sustulisset.’

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  143 unabashedly hostile Christian observer, the controversial exegete and ascetical guru Jerome of Stridon, concurred: ‘at his death the whole city was disturbed’.23 No record has come down to us of the crowd’s chants, of the ‘benefits’ for whose loss they mourned Praetextatus.24 Instead, a rich dossier of epigraphic and epistolary sources attests to several parallel campaigns to memorialise Praetextatus, as leading aristocrats, officials, and makers of religious opinion sought control over his personal, civic, and religious legacy.25 These commemorations provide unique insight into the fraught relationship between personal religiosity and public eminence in a Rome in which the publica sacra had been officially decoupled from civic life but continued to attract senatorial allegiance. Symmachus himself took a leading role in one commemorative campaign, which he negotiated between the Senate at Rome and the imperial court at Milan; he attempted, as the next section will argue, to steer around the fallout of Valentinian’s decision by upholding Praetextatus as a model of non-​sectarian civic virtue. For Symmachus, consensus among senators and the goodwill of the emperors were more vital, and more attainable, goals than continued defence of traditional rites that the emperor had decisively rejected. The official monuments erected in the Roman forum and elsewhere followed Symmachus’ vision, but not all senators concurred. An epistle of Symmachus and an inscription to the chief Vestal by Praetextatus’ wife, Fabia Aconia Paulina, report the dedication of a statue to Praetextatus by the Vestals, with the backing of most of the college of pontiffs. We have only indirect access to this memorial, but it is probable that the Vestals’ statue was intended as much to strengthen the priestesses’ now-​ weakened position as to honour an eminent pontifex. As an initiative of an ancient and distinguished Roman priesthood, the Vestals’ commemoration likely highlighted the civic aspects of Praetextatus’ religious devotion, which Symmachus and the official monuments had carefully omitted. A different, more personal view of Praetextatus appears in the elaborate epitaph that Paulina erected for her husband, whose philosophical content ­chapter 3 has already discussed. For Paulina, Praetextatus’ most important pursuit was religion, which was embedded within a life marked by civic devotion, literary learning, and, above all, marital harmony and devotion. Paulina expressed gratitude to the chief Vestal for the honour given her husband, yet her inscription suggests that his many priesthoods and initiations aimed at something higher than the well-​being of Rome (the focus of the Vestals’ rites and of Symmachus’

23.  Ep. 23.3, ‘ad cuius interitum urbs uniuersa commota est’; on Jerome’s chequered career at Rome, see Cain 2009: 43–​128. 24.  The eloquent discussion of the relationship between the urban populus and its benefactors in late antiquity by Brown 2012: 65–​71 may help to fill the gap. 25.  Cf. Polara 2000:  117, who refers to Paulina’s ‘programma di celebrazioni di Pretestato’, and Weisweiler 2015: 40, who speaks of ‘the struggle around Praetextatus’ memory’. For general discussion of the commemoration of Praetextatus, see Kahlos 2002: 150–​79 and Salzman 2010: 253–​6.

144  Worshippers of the Gods third relatio): an immortality gained through mystical knowledge accessed in a multitude of cults. Not only did Paulina disagree with Symmachus about how best to commemorate Praetextatus, but her disagreement revealed a basically different conception of pagan piety. Paulina’s promotion of Praetextatus provoked attacks from Christians such as Jerome, whose writings offer yet another aristocratic approach to religious devotion, one focused on ascetic virtue and humility, rather than on the religious virtuosity, paralleled by political success, of which both pagan and Christian senators boasted. Here the issue at stake is less pagan religion itself than the broader senatorial lifestyle in which Praetextatus’ priesthoods had been embedded. Symmachus also revisited his friend’s religiosity in his first book of Epistles; now he foregrounded Praetextatus’ priestly expertise but maintained his focus on the public well-​being. For Symmachus, public religion remained an important aspect not only of Praetextatus’ legacy but also of the aristocratic world that his epistles were meant both to mirror and to influence. Civic Duty or Public Religion? Debating Praetextatus’ Legacy The attempts to shape the memory of Praetextatus began immediately after his death. The exact chronology of the different commemorative schemes is unclear, so I will begin with the first record of the official, senatorial efforts: a series of communiqués from Symmachus to the imperial courts in Milan and Constantinople.26 ‘Your own Praetextatus’, Symmachus tells the emperors in Relationes 10 and 11, was a ‘champion of old-​fashioned probity’, whom ‘the fates snatched away to the greatest grief of the fatherland’.27 Symmachus expands upon Praetextatus’ virtues in Rel. 12, where he relays the Senate’s request for honorary statues.28 He laments that this honour has been cheapened through overuse but assures the emperors that Praetextatus himself had never ‘desired earthly rewards’ and had ‘trampled . . . the joys of the body as transient things’.29 The real aim of the statues, therefore, is to incite others to imitate the virtues that Praetextatus had displayed so abundantly: Always loftier than his magistracies, temperate towards others, severe towards himself, good-​ willed without inspiring contempt, reverend without inspiring fear; if ever he received some benefit from an 26.  Rel. 10–​12, 24. The addresses are incorrectly transmitted in the manuscripts (Vera 1981: 97–​9, 102). 27.  Rel. 10.1, ‘Praetextatus uester, Praetextatus bonorum, antiquae probitatis adsertor . . . uir omnium domi forisque uirtutum’; 11, ‘Vettium Praetextatum ueteribus parem uirtutum omnium uirum fata rapuerunt summo patriae gemitu, cui decus insigne praestabat.’ 28.  On the social and political function of honorific statues in late antiquity, see Weisweiler 2012. 29.  Rel. 12.2, ‘non quod ille praemia terrena desideret, qui gaudia corporis, etiam cum hominem ageret, ut caduca calcauit . . . atque utinam nihil huic decori facilitas adulantium postea derogasset!’

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  145 inheritance, he soon turned it over to the testator’s next-​of-​kin; he was downcast at no one’s good fortune, smiled at no one’s ill fortune; he was innocent of undeserved generosity, whom office always found unwilling, to whose equity each of his neighbours entrusted his property lines.30 Symmachus’ praise is as fulsome as one would expect the obituary of a friend and ally for a newly deceased elder statesman to be, yet its straightforwardness is deceptive, as comparison with a superficially similar depiction shows. Writing some years later, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus—​Greek expatriate, retired army officer, and acute critic of the senatorial aristocracy of Rome, his new residence—​ praised Praetextatus for his ‘illustrious nature and old-​fashioned gravity’, for his ‘manifold acts of integrity and probity’, and for inspiring both love and fear in the citizenry as urban prefect.31 So far, Ammianus tracks closely with Symmachus. However, where Symmachus focuses solely on Praetextatus’ personal and public virtues, Ammianus also acknowledges his devotion to traditional religion: in the course of urban refurbishments, Praetextatus had, he reports, ‘separated from the sacred temples private citizens’ walls that had been shamelessly connected to them’.32 In Ammianus’ account, this action is but one duty of a good prefect, to be named with his just handling of lawsuits and pacification of strife between the adherents of the rival papal claimants Damasus and Ursinus. Yet Praetextatus’ interest in the religious topography of Rome, which is confirmed by an inscription attesting his restoration, as urban prefect, of the portico containing the ‘sacrosanct images of the Di Consentes’,33 merits not even a passing mention from Symmachus, Praetextatus’ fellow pontiff.34 The Praetextatus whom Symmachus presents in the Relationes is not just a model of aristocratic collegiality and old-​ fashioned virtue; he is a distinctly non-​sectarian statesman. This religiously neutral portrait of Praetextatus was endorsed by the emperors and Senate in their official memorials. Only a fragment is preserved of the statue base from the Forum Romanum,35 but its cursus honorum clearly began with civic titles, a fact that strongly implies that it omitted Praetextatus’ priesthoods, which appear in first place elsewhere.36 Another inscription, dedicated in a domus on 30.  Rel. 12.3, ‘ille semper magistratibus suis celsior; in alios temperatus, in se seuerus; sine contemptu facilis, sine terrore reuerendus; cui si quod commodum successionis euenit, ad testatoris proximos mox reuertit; qui nullius prosperis fractus est, nullius risit aduersa; indecorae nescius largitatis ille, quem semper inuitum secutus est honor, cuius aequitati conterminus quisque limites suos credidit’; Seeck 1883: 290 suspects a lacuna between the concluding references to office and to property. 31.  22.7.6, ‘praeclarae indolis grauitatisque priscae senator’, 27.9.8, ‘haec inter Praetextatus praefecturam urbis sublimius curans, per integritatis multiplices actus et probitatis . . . adeptus est id, quod raro contingit, ut, cum timeretur, amorem non perderet civium’; Ammianus and the senators of Rome: 14.6, with Cameron 1964. 32.  27.9.10, ‘discreuit ab aedibus sacris priuatorum parietes isdem inuerecunde conexos’. 33.  CIL VI 102, ‘[Deorum c]onsentium sacrosancta simulacra’, on which see Bruggisser 2012 and Iara 2015: 149–​53, with Nieddu 1986 on the portico itself; Kalas 2015: 130–​4 is too speculative. 34.  Cf. Vera 1981: 105. 35.  CIL VI 1779a; Weisweiler 2012: 333 provides a map. 36.  Cameron 2011: 157, contra Weisweiler 2012: 345–​6 n. 119.

146  Worshippers of the Gods the Aventine and preserved in the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, bears more complete witness to the Senate’s commemorative project.37 ‘To Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, uir clarissimus et inlustris’, it reads, naming off his chief civic offices in a list that concludes, ‘consul designate, legate of the most distinguished order seven times, always put forward in difficult circumstances to make requests, a parent deserving of reverence both publicly and privately’.38 The lines that follow are garbled, but they indicate the dedicator’s intent to honour Praetextatus in his own home ‘also’, that is, ‘privately’, just as he had been ‘publicly’.39 The domestic setting suggests the involvement of Praetextatus’ family in erecting this monument, but its language and content imply, as Heike Niquet has argued, that it formed part of the official senatorial initiative.40 Thus, the cursus underscores Praetextatus’ role in smoothing relations between the Senate and the emperors, which is also reflected in the reference to Praetextatus as parens, a term appropriate not only to a domestic context but also to imperial communication with high officials, as can be seen from the addresses in two imperial letters sent to Praetextatus during his urban prefecture.41 The evidence of the Aventine inscription confirms, therefore, that the Senate commemorated Praetextatus for his civic honours and for representing its interests before the emperors but not for his priesthoods, which are absent just as they seem to have been from the forum monument. This suppression of Praetextatus’ manifold religious involvements contrasts markedly with the last comparable senatorial inscription, dated to 377, which accompanied a gilded statue in the Forum Traianum of L.  Aurelius Avianius Symmachus signo Phosphorius, the orator’s father, whom it names both pontifex maior and quindecimuir sacris faciundis.42 Alan Cameron has credited the omission of Praetextatus’ priesthoods to his own family, rather than to official initiative; as he puts it, ‘It was not against the law to be a pagan, and few were likely to have been bothered if individual pagans chose to include all those silly titles in their cursus.’43 In light of the extended controversy over the altar of Victory, in which the traditionalist cause had just suffered a major check, Cameron’s conclusion is overconfident. Many people at Rome and Milan might have objected had a senatorial monument given official imprimatur to priesthoods that the emperor himself had just repudiated. More likely, the Senate’s choice to emphasise 37.  CIL VI 1777, with VI.1: 855 and VI.8.3: 4757; on the domus, see Guidobaldi 1995. 38.  CIL VI 1777.1, 5–​8, ‘Vettio Agorio Praetextato u(iro) c(larissimo) et inl(ustri) /​ . . . cons(uli) designato /​legato amplissimi ordinis septies /​et ad impetrandum reb(us) arduis /​semper opposito /​parenti publice priuatimq(ue) reuerendo’. 39.  CIL VI 1777.10–​12, ‘ut etiam statuae ipsius domus /​honoraret insignia constitui /​locarique curauit’; on these obscure lines, see CIL VI.8.3: 4757. 40.  Niquet 2000: 247–​52. 41.  Collectio Auellana 6.1, 7.2; cf., e.g., 2a.8 (to Cynegius) and 8.1 (to Olybrius), for the title ‘parens karissime atque amantissime’. See further Mommsen 1863: 407. 42.  CIL VI 1698, on which see Weisweiler 2012: 341–​3; PLRE 1: 863–​5 (Symmachus 3). 43.  Cameron 2011: 158.

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  147 Praetextatus’ civic virtues to the exclusion of his religious commitments resulted from the tense religious-​political negotiations that had taken place among the Senate, Symmachus, and the Milanese court over the preceding year.44 Not only had the Senate (and Symmachus as their representative) failed to secure funding for the ancestral cults, but Symmachus himself had also come under personal attack for his conduct as urban prefect. As the indignant Relatio 21 indicates, he was accused of imprisoning and torturing Christian clerics during his campaign, jointly spearheaded with Praetextatus, to restore vandalised pagan shrines.45 His critics, Symmachus says, accused him of ‘abusing the recommendations of Praetextatus the praetorian prefect, an excellent man and one who has done well by the res publica’.46 How deeply Praetextatus was implicated in these attacks Symmachus does not say, but he himself had been censured ‘by a sacred edict’ addressed to the people of Rome and written, he laments to the emperor, ‘in letters harsher than is Your Piety’s wont’.47 In his defence, Symmachus invoked a potent counter to Christian accusations: the word of Pope Damasus, who ‘has denied’ in writing ‘that the adherents of [the Christian] religion have suffered any insult’.48 Neither Symmachus’ reputation nor that of Praetextatus, who does not appear to have been attacked directly,49 suffered lasting damage, as Praetextatus’ elevation to the consulship for the next year shows. Nevertheless, the support of both men for what seemed to some well-​connected Christians a persecutory initiative cannot have been immediately forgotten, especially not when Valentinian himself had affirmed his antipathy to pagan cult. In this context, it was natural for Symmachus, as mediator between Senate and court, and for Valentinian (or his advisors) to pass quietly over Praetextatus’ thoroughly pagan religious distinctions. To honour an eminent statesman with lofty office, or to monumentalise him when dead, was one thing; to allow the Senate, acting in the emperors’ names, to glorify Praetextatus’ involvement in cults that the emperor had repudiated was another. The course that Symmachus suggested and that the Senate followed, doubtless with the emperor’s approval, was politically safer. By giving Praetextatus a statue in the imperially dominated Forum Romanum, they 44.  Cf. Niquet 2000: 252, who writes, pointing to the altar of Victory affair and Theodosius’ religious policies, ‘Das beharrliche Engagement des Praetextatus für die heidnischen Kulte öffentlich zu rühmen, muß sich in diesem Klima von selbst verboten haben. Die von Symmachus geführte Senatsversammlung machte sich jedenfalls bei der Gestaltung und Ausformulierung des Textes, der das Denkmal vom Aventin erläuterte, gerade jene besonnene Zurückhaltung zueigen, die sie an Praetextatus so ausdrücklich belobigte.’ 45.  Rel. 21.1–​2. 46.  Rel. 21.5, ‘suggestionibus uiri excellentis et de re publica bene meriti Praetextati praefecti praetorio abusus existimor.’ 47.  Rel. 21.2. 48.  Rel. 21.3, ‘respondeat litteris episcopi Damasi, quibus adsectatores eiusdem religionis negauit ullam contumeliam pertulisse’. The appeal may be disingenuous; McLynn 2011: 306–​7. 49.  Vera 1981: 160, ‘La forma dell’accusa rivolta a [Simmaco] . . . si voleva coinvolgere Pretestato, senza però attaccare frontalmente il potente prefetto del pretorio.’

148  Worshippers of the Gods not only glorified the memory of an illustrious member of their ‘most distinguished order’ but also publicised the ties that still bound Senate to emperors, without raising the controversial issues of the previous year.50 In the hands of Symmachus, who adopted a similarly non-​confrontational approach in other contexts as well,51 Praetextatus became the embodiment of a suitably secular moral consensus that senators (pagan and Christian) and the emperors could all endorse. Not all of Symmachus’ peers were content with this religiously neutral memorialisation of Praetextatus. A  letter from a frustrated Symmachus to his friend Nicomachus Flavianus described negotiations in the pontifical college that followed Praetextatus’ death. ‘To our friend Praetextatus’, Symmachus reports, ‘the virgin priestesses of the Vestal rite have resolved to dedicate the monument of a statue,’ and the pontifices, ‘except for a few who followed me’, have granted the request. Too hastily, in Symmachus’ judgement: his fellow pontiffs failed to ‘consider the reverence due the lofty priesthood or long-​established custom or the circumstances of the present time’.52 It was, however, precisely the ‘circumstances of the present time’ that must have motivated the Vestals and their supporters to make this unprecedented move.53 Not only was Praetextatus a distinguished pontifex of Vesta, but the dedication of a statue in his honour was also an excellent opportunity to emphasise the traditional prestige of the Vestals themselves, which had received two heavy blows:  first the loss of financial privileges through Gratian’s legislation and then the failure of Symmachus’ third relatio, which had leaned so heavily on the Vestals’ reputation to make its case. By reminding the Roman people and Senate of Praetextatus’ devotion to the Vestal cult, the Virgins and their pontifical supporters could buttress their tottering status with his fame. In memorialising Praetextatus, the Vestals were reinscribing their own priestly eminence literally in stone. However, as Symmachus protested to Flavianus, this attempt to lay claim to Praetextatus’ legacy could have backfired dangerously. The Vestals’ memorial was contrary to tradition, he says, since not even ‘Numa the founder’ or ‘Metellus the preserver of the cults’ had received such a distinction, and potentially deleterious to the Vestals’ good name, as ‘such acts of allegiance towards men do 50.  Cf. Weisweiler 2012: 321, 326–​9, 335. 51.  Thus, Lim 2012: 74 notes Symmachus’ avoidance, in Rel. 6, ‘of the religious associations of the ludi’ held at Rome during his prefecture. 52.  Ep. 2.36.2, ‘Praetextato nostro monumentum statuae dicare destinant uirgines sacri Vestalis antistites. consulti pontifices, priusquam reuerentiam sublimis sacerdotii aut longae aetatis usum uel condicionem temporis praesentis expenderent, absque paucis, qui me secuti sunt, ut eius effigiem statuerent, adnuerunt.’ The statue is now probably lost, or else reused an earlier monument; the only male statue found in excavations at the Atrium Vestae, which was identified by Lanciani 1897: 230 with the monument for Praetextatus, is likely of Trajanic date (Anti 1921, Reinach 1921, with Degrassi 1928: 519 n. 1). 53.  Cf. Matthews 1973: 192 n. 111, ‘one suspects that he was only too aware of the contemporary condition of paganism’.

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  149 not befit the dignity of the Virgins’.54 Symmachus has been accused of a narrow-​ minded hostility towards female political involvement, but this misplaces the emphasis of his argument: he objects not to the fact that women are dedicating a statue but very specifically to the involvement of the Vestal Virgins in honouring a man.55 His objections reveal a keen estimate of the religious-​political realia.56 For Symmachus, as for pagans in general, the traditional character of Roman religion was essential for its efficacy: as he had said in Relatio 3, ‘whence more rightly than from the memory and records [documenta] of favourable events does knowledge of divinities come?’57 He himself was confident of the traditions that underpinned Roman cult, as the relatio makes clear, but Christian intellectuals had put this certainty into question. Decades before, Lactantius, who was still being read in the Rome of Damasus and Jerome,58 had assured his readers that the pontifical books would affirm his tales of divine mortality and depravity.59 In the 340s, Firmicus Maternus, whose polemic might also have been known to Jerome’s circle,60 had objected that pagans lacked the ‘evidences’ (documenta, again) for their mythology that Christians could provide for the Resurrection.61 Now Ambrose, in his detailed rebuttal to Symmachus’ arguments on behalf of traditional religion, reminded Valentinian II and his courtiers of Rome’s long fascination with foreign cults.62 A particularly trenchant critic of contemporary senatorial religiosity, Ambrosiaster was harsher: pagans were not simply devotees of disreputable gods, such as Mithras, Attis, and Isis, but religious ‘revolutionaries’.63 Rather than confront the ever-​louder Christian refrain, Symmachus thought it best (as he told Flavianus) to pre-​empt Christian criticisms by staying silent about his own deeper objections to the Vestals’ memorial.64 There was a more insidious danger as well. The Vestals’ priestly identity and efficacy were deeply bound up with their virginity,65 whose hallowed reputation, Symmachus worries, might seem to be sullied by their commemoration of a man. This was hardly an idle concern, since the traditional status of the Vestals had suffered from the polemics of Christians such as Ambrose, who boasted of the 54.  Ep. 2.36.3, ‘ego, qui aduerterem, neque honestati uirginum talia in uiros obsequia conuenire neque more fieri, quod Numa auctor, Metellus conseruator religionum omnesque pontifices maximi numquam ante meruerunt’. 55.  Pace Cameron 2016: 93, Sogno 2006: 56, Frei-​Stolba 2003: 292, Cracco Ruggini 1979: 113–​15. 56.  Pace Salzman 1989:  363, who speaks of Symmachus’ ‘dogmatic traditionalism’; cf. Matthews 1973:  192 n. 111, quoted above, 148 n. 53. 57.  Rel. 3.8, ‘unde rectius quam de memoria atque documentis rerum secundarum cognitio uenit numinum?’ 58.  Cf. Jerome, Ep. 35.2, from Damasus; on this exchange, whose authenticity has sometimes been doubted, see the scholarship cited in 76 n. 2. 59. Lactantius, DI 5.19.15. 60.  Thus, Cracco Ruggini 1998: 507–​8, who notes a parallel between Jerome, Ep. 23.3, and Firmicus, Err. 18.6. 61.  Err. 22.2. 62.  Ep. 73(18).30, ‘si ritus ueteres delectabant, cur in alienos ritus eadem Roma successit?’ 63.  Quaestio 114.1, ‘nam quae cauta non habent proferunt, ut ipsi potius nouarum rerum auctores et defensores habeantur.’ 64.  Ep. 2.36.3, ‘haec quidem silui, ne sacrorum aemulis enuntiata noxam crearent inusitatum censentibus’. 65.  But not with their virginity alone; on the complex status of the Vestals, see Beard 1980, 1995.

150  Worshippers of the Gods superiority of Christian ascetic women, sworn, unlike the Vestals, to poverty and lifelong chastity.66 The arguments of their detractors had not, a few contemporary hints imply, gone without effect on the priestesses themselves. An undated letter of Symmachus probably written before 382 records rumours that an unnamed priestess wished ‘to depart from the hidden Vestal rite before the years set by law’,67 while the apparently targeted erasure of the name from an inscription honouring a fourth-​century uirgo uestalis maxima may reflect a high-​profile defection from the cult. In his poem in praise of Saint Laurence, Prudentius mentions a ‘Vestal, Claudia,’ who embraced Christianity; taken literally, these lines could refer to this woman, whose name began with a C.68 Symmachus also reports troubles of a more traditional kind:  another pair of undated epistles describes the scandalous case of Primigenia, a priestess at Alba, the mother city not only of Rome but of Rome’s Vestal cult, who was convicted of ‘contaminating her sacred chastity’ with one Maximus.69 Symmachus, speaking for the pontifical college, urged the urban prefect to punish Primigenia in the traditionally ‘severe’ fashion, presumably by interring her alive,70 but the prefect demurred, alleging ‘that it is not lawful for one guilty of so great a crime to enter the walls of the eternal city’ and that he himself could not go the few miles to Alba to punish her. Symmachus thus took the pontiffs’ case to another imperial official, the uicarius of the city of Rome, whose authority, independent of the urban prefecture, might extend to the present situation.71 Symmachus does not report the result of the affair, but his extended negotiations show how politically delicate a procedure it could be to maintain the Vestals’ reputation in the face of priestly dereliction. Faced by such challenges, Symmachus tried to steer his fellow pontiffs on a course that would not risk giving their Christian opponents more ammunition. Even the objections that he raised to Flavianus seemed to him too damaging to voice aloud, so he opted, in his public dissent, for a safer argument, that others less worthy than Praetextatus would rush after this honour, too, just as they already sought statues granted by more traditional means.72 By refocusing the debate on his fellow senators’ insatiable thirst for statues and other visible marks of honour,73 Symmachus deftly recast the Vestals’ religious-​political innovation as a 66. Ambrose, Ep. 73(18).11–​12. Cf. Cecconi 2002: 278–​9 and Lizzi Testa 1998. 67. Symmachus, Ep. 9.108; the reference to a law binding on the Vestals implies a date prior to 382 (cf. Seeck 1883: ccix, on 9.147–​8). 68. Prudentius, Perist. 2.527–​8, ‘aedemque, Laurenti, tuam /​Vestalis intrat Claudia’, with CIL VI 32422, PLRE 1: 206 (Claudia 4), and Leclercq 1953: 2988–​9; cf. Lanciani 1897: 230. Thomson 1949–​53, 2: 139 n. d suggests a figurative interpretation of Prudentius’ verses. 69.  Ep. 9.147–​8. Alban origin of Roman cult of Vesta: Livy, 1.20. 70.  Ep. 9.147, with Mommsen 1899: 928–​9. 71.  Ep. 9.148, with Roda 1981: 319. On the relationship of the uicarius urbis Romae to the urban prefect, see Sinnigen 1959, who does not comment on this incident. 72.  Ep. 2.36.3, ‘exemplum modo uitandum esse rescripsi, ne res iusto orta principio breui ad indignos per ambitum perueniret’. 73.  Cf. Polara 2000: 112–​13, Ammianus Marcellinus, 14.6.8, and Symmachus’ rejection of ostentation as prefect in Rel. 4, on which see Sogno 2006: 44–​5.

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  151 straightforward addition to Praetextatus’ already impressive CV and so shored up the civically focused consensus of which he had struggled to make Praetextatus an uncontroversial symbol. Paulina’s Praetextatus: CIL VI 1779 Symmachus’ attempt to divert attention from the explosive religious charge of the Vestals’ memorial to the banal dangers of personal ambition was shrewd, but he perhaps underestimated the religious potential of the contest for aristocratic prestige. Praetextatus’ widow, Paulina, was also seeking to secure post-​mortem glory for her husband. Where Symmachus and his fellow senators downplayed Praetextatus’ potentially embarrassing religious commitments, Paulina placed her husband’s religious devotion at the apex of his many civic, intellectual, and domestic achievements. Paulina’s response to the Vestals’ commemoration, a statue dedicated to the chief Vestal, Coelia Concordia, firmly underscored her difference of opinion with Symmachus.74 Unlike many extant inscriptions honouring Vestal Virgins,75 Paulina’s monument, whose inscription survives only in early-​modern manuscript copies, was erected not in the Atrium Vestae but in what appears to have been a domus belonging to Praetextatus and Paulina, where another, fragmentary inscription apparently in honour of Praetextatus has been found.76 Symmachus feared that the Vestals’ honestas would be imperilled by the dedication to Praetextatus. Paulina, by contrast, used the dedication as an opportunity to emphasise Coelia Concordia’s virginal excellences and Praetextatus’ own distinction.77 Not only has Coelia Concordia displayed the traditional Vestal virtues of ‘modesty’ and ‘holiness’;78 she has also, Paulina’s inscription reports, dedicated ‘a statue beforehand to Paulina’s husband, Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, uir clarissimus, a man singular in every way and worthy even to be honoured by virgin-​priestesses of this sort’.79 Not only does Paulina implicitly contradict the worries of Symmachus and his supporters in the pontifical college, but she also indicates that Praetextatus’ ‘singular’ virtue, of which Symmachus’ twelfth relatio had spoken,80 had a religious root, a claim that she would insistently advocate in the inscriptions she erected to commemorate her husband.

74.  CIL VI 2145. 75.  CIL VI 2131–​3, 2136–​8, 2141, 2143, 32409–​28. 76.  CIL VI 1781. Lanciani 1897:  230, with map in Lanciani 1990:  plate 23; Guidobaldi 1995. Frei-​Stolba 2003: 302–​9 provides comprehensive discussion of the monument’s physical and textual vicissitudes; the statue, now reworked to represent a muse, is housed at the Galerie Colonna (images in Frei-​Stolba 2003: 307 and Picozzi 1990). 77.  Polara 2000: 113 suggests a direct response to Symmachus. 78.  Cf., e.g., CIL VI 2132–​7. 79.  CIL VI 2145.9–​15, ‘tum quod /​haec prior eius uiro /​Vettio Agorio Praetexta/​to u(iro) c(larissimo) omnia singulari /​dignoque etiam ab huius/​modi uirginibus et sa/​cerdotibus coli statu/​am conlocarat’. 80. Cf. Rel. 12.4, ‘quod meruit a ciuibus, singulare est’.

152  Worshippers of the Gods

Figure  5.1. The cursus honorum of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus and Fabia Aconia Paulina (CIL VI 1779a). CIL Photo-​ Archive, Inv.-​ No. PH0005615. Reproduced by permission. While Symmachus was negotiating with the imperial court, Paulina had already begun to make her move. Only ‘a few days’ after Praetextatus’ triumphant procession through the city as consul-​designate, Jerome had heard Paulina proclaim that her now-​dead husband was exalted to ‘the milky palace of the sky’.81 Several monuments followed, the greatest a funerary altar inscribed with the couple’s offices (Figure 5.1) and, on either side (Figures 5.2 and 5.3), two poems 81.  Ep. 23.3.

Figure 5.2.  The right side of the funerary altar of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, showing a fragmentary poem to Paulina (CIL VI 1779b). CIL Photo-​Archive, Inv.-​No. PH0005617. Reproduced by permission.

Figure 5.3.  The left side of the funerary altar of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, showing a poem to Paulina (CIL VI 1779c). CIL Photo-​Archive, Inv.-​No. PH0005616. Reproduced by permission.

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  155 addressed to Paulina in Praetextatus’ voice; on the rear is a much longer reply from Paulina to her husband.82 This poem alludes to Symmachus’ twelfth relatio but gives a decisive statement of the pagan piety that Symmachus had glossed over.83 The Praetextatus of Paulina’s inscriptions is not just a man of personal integrity, noblesse oblige, and patriotism; he is a devoted husband, a man of letters, and, above all, a priest, who initiated his wife into the mysteries and imparted to her his profound religious knowledge. Paulina does not neglect the civic side of senatorial life but subordinates it to the couple’s religious and marital companionship. Theirs is a bond that will extend even beyond death, when Paulina goes to join the one whose mystic teachings brought her immortality; as the final lines of the long poem declare, Paulina is, despite her husband’s early departure, ‘nevertheless happy, because I am and was and after death will soon be yours’.84 ‘Soon’ but not yet. The monument’s intense focus on Paulina’s participation in her husband’s life has led some scholars to argue that part or all of it was inscribed after her death.85 Yet Paulina, faced with Symmachus’ claim to her husband’s legacy, would have had more cause than anyone else to give herself so prominent a role in an epitaph dedicated in first place to his memory.86 A more moderate version of this argument, that the original monument included only Praetextatus’ cursus and the long poem, to which Paulina’s cursus and the two other poems were added after her death,87 is ingenious but probably unnecessary. Every panel of the altar focuses on Paulina’s unanimity with her husband.88 In keeping with this marital emphasis, the cursus inscription, beginning as it does with the customary ‘D(is) M(anibus)’—​the only textual hint that Paulina might not still be alive—​and ending ‘hi coniuncti simul uixerunt ann(os) XL’, neatly stresses the couple’s shared religious and domestic pursuits and, implicitly, the life that they will share after death. It is thus a prose mirror to the poetic epitaph on the opposite face of the altar and so does not demonstrate that Paulina was 82.  CIL VI 1779, with VI.8.3: 4757–​9. The altar, which has suffered some damage, is now preserved in the Musei Capitolini. For inscriptions similarly focused on religion, cf. 1778 (to Praetextatus) and 1780 (to Paulina); another fragmentary inscription discovered in Etruria, where Praetextatus had an estate (Symmachus, Ep. 1.51), may also commemorate Praetextatus (Berti and Cecconi 1997). The epitaph has attracted extensive attention; see especially Nicolaas 1940, Lambrechts 1955, Polara 1967, 2000, Kahlos 2002: esp. 62–​90, 141–​50, 172–​9, Consolino 2006: 118–​34, 2013: 97–​102, Cameron 2011: 301–​5, DiLuzio 2017, and, on the inscriptions as an ensemble, Niquet 2000: 237–​52. 83.  Rel. 12.2, ‘non quod ille praemia terrena desideret, qui gaudia corporis . . . ut caduca calcauit’; CIL VI 1779d.18–​20, ‘quid nunc honores aut potestates loquar /​hominumque uotis adpetita gaudia, /​quae tu caduca ac parua semper autumans’. It is more likely, pace Cameron 2011: 303–​4, that Paulina alluded to Symmachus’ words (so Vera 1981: 104; Polara 2000: 122–​3) than that he referred to a funerary monument in all likelihood unknown to his imperial addressee. 84.  1779d.40–​1: ‘sed tamen felix tua /​quia sum fuique postque mortem mox ero’. 85. Thus, especially, Polara 2000:  120, ‘solo per una defunta, infatti, è lecita un’operazione retorica così smaccatamente strumentale, così evidemente ideologica’. 86.  Cf. Cracco Ruggini 1998: 505–​6 n. 25. 87.  Cameron 2011: 303, ‘On any hypothesis the monument was inscribed in two stages’; cf. the more cautious arguments of Consolino 2006: 128–​34. 88.  Cf. Polara 2000: 119–​20, Consolino 2006: 133–​4.

156  Worshippers of the Gods already dead when it was finished.89 Likewise, the cramped spacing of Paulina’s cursus suggests not (as Alan Cameron has argued) ‘that room was left beneath Praetextatus’s cursus for [its] subsequent addition’90 but, on the contrary, that the craftsmen had failed to plan the monument carefully enough. It betrays the same hasty composition evident on Praetextatus’ cursus, where an error of scribe or engraver led to his being credited with five rather than seven imperial embassies and an extra praetorian prefecture; the epitaph, like the inscription from the Forum Romanum, also omits Africa from his prefectural territory.91 The altar was thus most likely inscribed as a single monument at Paulina’s behest, very soon after Praetextatus’ death; though Jerome may not have known the extant inscriptions, his report confirms the centrality of Praetextatus’ immortality to Paulina’s commemorative efforts.92 Besides recording in intensely personal terms Paulina’s experience of her husband, the epitaph also stakes a claim to exemplary status for Paulina herself in the competitive world of the Roman aristocracy. Praetextatus’ religious instruction has, she asserts near the end of her poem, brought her worldwide fame and made her a model for ‘the Romulean mothers’.93 In his treatise On preserving virginity, written earlier that year, Jerome had condemned such vicarious glory-​ seeking, accusing noble matrons of being boastful ‘little women’ who are ‘accustomed to applauding themselves on their husbands’ governorships and sundry positions of dignity’.94 Jerome’s acerbic criticisms are aimed at wealthy Christian women, the peers of his ascetic patronesses and students, for whom a life of prestige was a constant temptation (or so Jerome would have us believe).95 Paulina’s inscriptions advance a variation on this theme. Priesthood, not civic office, is the foundation of Praetextatus’ glory and of Paulina’s pride in her husband. The centrality of religion for her monument is already evident on the front panel, whose cursus of Praetextatus groups his offices into separate priestly and civic classes. The religious offices, tellingly, come first, while the civic offices that follow are expressly bracketed off with the phrase ‘in [r]‌e publica uero’. Praetextatus’ official Roman priesthoods are listed first, followed by various private titles,96 but the epitaph draws no more explicit distinction between official and unofficial cults. All 89.  Pace Polara 2000: 116. Cf. Cracco Ruggini 1998: 498–​9 n. 11, who concurs with Boissier 1903, 2: 264, in crediting the whole monument to Paulina’s initiative. For further citations, see DiLuzio 2017: 434 n. 16. 90.  Cameron 2011: 303. 91.  Niquet 2000: 242; CIL VI.8.3: 4758–​9. The erroneous description of the prefecture also appears on CIL VI 1778, from 387, but not on the more accurate CIL VI 1777. 92.  Ep. 23.3, with Cameron 2011: 303–​4 and Consolino 2013: 98–​102, who cautions against Cameron’s hypothesis that the poems circulated ‘before the completion of the monument’. There is no evidence for Lambrechts’ hypothesis (1955: 9–​10 n. 5) that Jerome had heard a funerary speech by Paulina; cf. Polara 2000: 117 and Cracco Ruggini 1998: 498–​9 n. 11. 93.  CIL VI 1779d.30–​7. 94.  Ep. 22.16, ‘si sibi solent adplaudere mulierculae de iudicibus uiris et in aliqua positis dignitate . . . cur tu facias iniuriam uiro tuo?’ On this letter, see 104 n. 171. 95.  Curran 2000: 269–​98 sets this Hieronymean theme in its Roman aristocratic context. 96.  Bricault 2014: 350 suggests a three-​fold division (Roman, Greek, and oriental).

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  157 played a vital role in Praetextatus’ religious life, and all contributed to his singular distinction. The explicit grouping of religious offices into a single class separate from civic honours is a strikingly new development. As ­chapter  3 has argued, a number of roughly contemporary inscriptions from Rome blur the lines between official and unofficial cults, but Praetextatus’ epitaph is the only one to separate religious titles explicitly from civic offices or to put them in first place. Contrast, for example, the epitaph of Alfenius Ceionius Julianus Kamenius, who died the next year, which lists its dedicatee’s many priesthoods in a running sequence with his civic titles.97 Paulina’s adoption of a stringent division between Praetextatus’ priestly and civic offices thus reflects an intentional choice to privilege the religious over the political and to emphasise the basic unity of all these many cults as routes to what the poem on the opposite side calls ‘the manifold power of the gods’.98 Not only has Praetextatus gained his fame from unofficial as well as public cults, but his religion is a source of glory distinct from, and superior to, his service to the res publica. Paulina voices no quarrel with Symmachus’ focus on civic virtue and public religion, but her religiosity holds a higher, more personal level and promises a more lasting reward: immortality. The rest of the monument advances this message, and Paulina’s authority, as Praetextatus’ wife and co-​religionist, to proclaim it, with ever-​increasing force. The poems attributed to Praetextatus blend praise for Paulina as model matron with praise for her religious devotion. Thus, in the poem on the right (Figure 5.2), Praetextatus addresses his wife as ‘Paulina, conscious of the truth and chastity, dedicated to the temples and friend of the divinities’, before declaring that she ‘prefers her husband to herself, but Rome to her husband’.99 In the poem on the left (Figure 5.3), she is ‘pure love and fidelity sown in heaven, to whom I have laid open and entrusted the secret things of my mind [arcana mentis], the gift of the gods, who bind up the marriage bed with friendly and modest bonds’.100 With this rapid intermingling of the vocabularies of chastity, fidelity, and piety, the couple’s marital unity fuses indistinguishably with the religious unity won through their shared worship of the gods. As the right-​hand inscription puts it, Paulina is ‘utilis penatibus’, not only, that is, ‘useful in the home’ but also ‘suitable

97.  ILS 1264.11–​17, ‘Alfenio Ceionio Iuliano Kamenio, v. c. quaestori candidato, /​pretori triumfali, VIIviro epulonum, patri sacrorum summi /​inuicti Mitrhe [sic], hierofante Aecatae, arcibuculo dei Liberi, XVuiro /​s. f., tauroboliato deum matris, /​pontifici maiori, consulari /​Numidiae et uicario Africae; qui uixit annos XLII m. VI d. XIII, /​rec. II nonas Septemb. d. n. Archadio et Fl. Bautone v. c. conss.’ 98.  CIL VI 1779d.15, ‘diuumque numen multiplex’. 99.  CIL VI 1779b.3–​5, ‘Paulina, ueri et castitatis conscia, /​dicata templis atq(ue) amica numinum, /​sibi maritum praeferens, Romam uiro’. 100.  CIL VI 1779c.3–​6, ‘amorque purus et fides caelo sata, /​arcana mentis cui reclusa credidi, /​munus deorum, qui maritalem torum /​nectunt amicis et pudicis nexibus’. I concur with the interpretation of this poem’s awkward syntax by Courtney 1995: 61; for an alternative translation, see Lefkowitz and Fant 1982: 279.

158  Worshippers of the Gods for her household gods’, even as she is for the worship of the other divinities that she and her husband held in common.101 Praetextatus, similarly, is a dutiful husband, enlightened statesman, and gentleman of letters, but above and before all these, an outstanding priest and mystic. Through his careful attention to literature in both Greek and Latin, prose and verse, Praetextatus has improved the works of ‘the wise, to whom the gate of heaven lies open’ (soforum, porta quis caeli patet). Here Paulina alludes to the final line of Ennius’ epigram on Scipio (‘mi soli caeli maxima porta patet’), a key Classical authority for personal immortalisation, whose deployment against pagan religiosity by Lactantius ­chapter 1 explored.102 It is a subtle move. Previous authors, including Silius Italicus and Lactantius himself, had interpreted the epigram in a martial light,103 yet the appearance of these lines in a now-​lost portion of Cicero’s De re publica implies that it also bore a reference to Scipio’s prowess as a politician.104 Not only does Paulina imply, therefore, that her husband was equal in virtue to the great Scipio, who would still serve as a model for learned statesmen generations later, in Macrobius’ Commentarii,105 but she also transfers the epigram to the sphere of learning, in which her husband excelled even the ‘wise’ writers whose works he ‘improved’. Paulina thus tacitly subordinates civic excellence to Praetextatus’ erudition, which enabled him to ‘illuminate’ both the Senate and Rome itself. Next to his religious erudition, however, even ‘these things are paltry’, Paulina declares. ‘You, a pious initiate, hold in the secret place of your mind [mentis arcano] the things you have discovered through the sacred initiations, and, as a learned man, worship the manifold divinity of the gods, kindly binding your wife to the rites as a partner who is conscious of men and gods and faithful to you.’106 These words not only hint, as ­chapter 3 discussed, at Praetextatus’ philosophical interests. They also recall the other two poems on the epitaph, where Praetextatus declared Paulina to be ‘conscious of the truth and of chastity’, ‘entrusted’ to her ‘the secrets of his mind’, and spoke of the gods ‘binding’ the ‘marriage bed’. Here, however, the couple’s marital harmony and intimacy have been transposed from the merely human level to the even higher plane of religious expertise. Next to these arcane insights, Paulina says, she need say nothing more of Praetextatus’ 101.  CIL VI 1779b.7. 102.  CIL VI 1779d.9, Ennius, fr. varia 23; cf. Courtney 1995: 254, Selter 2010: 61–​2 n. 17. For Lactantius’ use of the epigram, see 30. 103. Lactantius, DI 1.18, Silius Italicus, Pun. 15.77–​8. Another couplet on Scipio that was preserved by Cicero, Tusc. 5.49, quoted in part by Pan. Lat. 11(3).16.3, and grouped with these lines by Vahlen (Ennius, fr. varia 21–​2, ‘a sole exoriente supra Maeotis paludes /​nemo est qui factis aequiperare queat’) supports the martial interpretation. 104.  Rep. fr. 2 incertae sedis Powell, quoted by Lactantius, DI 1.18.13, and Seneca, Ep. 108.34. 105.  Macrobius’ concern for statesmanship is especially apparent at In Somn. 1.8, 2.17.1–​12; cf. Zintzen 1969, Fiocchi 2003. 106.  CIL VI 1779d.13–​17, ‘tu pius mouestes [sic, for mystes] sacris /​teletis reperta mentis arcano premis, /​diuumque numen multiplex doctus colis, /​sociam benigne coniugem nectens sacris, /​hominum deumque consciam ac fidam tibi.’

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  159 offices in re publica or of ‘the joys’ that most men seek in their prayers, since Praetextatus has ‘always deemed them transient and paltry’, preferring instead to ‘gain renown’ for his priestly offices.107 The praeteritio should not be taken too literally. Paulina neither asserts that Praetextatus rejected the civic offices that the prose cursus lists nor implies a rupture between his religious and civic pursuits.108 On the contrary, his extraordinary religious virtuosity is the capstone of the erudition and distinction that he also displayed in more mundane learning and civic life. Paulina thus makes the integrity, singular merit, and political excellence that Symmachus attributed to Praetextatus subordinate aspects of a career whose real focus was the religious devotion that the Senate so carefully excluded from its commemorative efforts. With Symmachus, Paulina can agree that Praetextatus considered earthly ‘joys’ to be ‘transient’,109 yet her Praetextatus has something higher to which to look: knowledge of the gods and the immortality won through it. ‘You, husband, redeeming me—​through the benefit of your teachings pure and chaste—​from the lot of death, lead me into temples and declare me a servant to the gods. With you as my witness, I am imbued with all mysteries’: the ‘bull initiations’ of Attis and the Magna Mater, the ‘triple secrets of Hecate’, and ‘the rites of Grecian Ceres’.110 It is a significant choice of cults. Paulina describes only initiations in which the couple had both taken part; thus, she omits not only her membership in the cult of Isis, in which Praetextatus, a neocorus or ‘temple warden’ of (presumably) Serapis, might conceivably have taken an interest,111 but also Praetextatus’ other priesthoods, including those in the public cults. What place civic religion might have played in his personal religiosity, or how his priesthoods were integrated into his service to the res publica, his widow does not say. Her focus lies elsewhere, on the experiences and insights that Praetextatus shared with her. Though the Praetextatus that the monument presents is a well-​rounded spiritual connoisseur and ritual expert, his religiosity—​as far as Paulina’s poem allows us to glimpse it—​is emphatically Paulina’s own. If Paulina gives less place than the historian would wish to Praetextatus’ civic priesthoods, she has no room at all for the blandly civic Praetextatus of Symmachus’ Relationes, a man of benignly ‘old-​fashioned probity’ whose religion can be passed over in silence.112 Her husband was a devotee of the gods, 107.  CIL VI 1779d.18–​21, ‘quid nunc honores aut potestates loquar /​hominumque uotis adpetita gaudia, /​ quae tu caduca ac parua semper autumans /​diuum sacerdos infulis celsus clues?’ 108.  Pace DiLuzio 2017: 436–​7, Kahlos 2002: 143–​6, Festugière 1963: 135, who see Praetextatus as a philosophical ascetic. 109.  See 152 n. 83. 110.  CIL VI 1779d.22–​9, ‘tu me, marite, disciplinarum bono /​puram ac pudicam sorte mortis eximens, /​in templa ducis ac famulam diuis dicas; /​te teste cunctis imbuor mysteriis; /​tu Dindymenes Atteosqu[e]‌antistitem /​ teletis honoras taureis consors pius; /​Hecates ministram trina secreta edoces /​Cererisque Graiae tu sacris dignam paras.’ 111.  Paulina is called ‘Isiacae’ on CIL VI 1780; Praetextatus as neocorus: 87 n. 70. 112.  Cf. Consolino 2006:  130, who notes the contrast between Paulina’s portrayal of Praetextatus and the epigrams recorded in Symmachus, Ep.  1.1–​2.

160  Worshippers of the Gods and it is in that devotion that his aristocratic virtues were rooted. The implication is unambiguous: if a senator truly wishes to imitate Praetextatus or to gain the immortality that he secured for his wife, he must be a man of equal piety. Modern scholars have often emphasised the elements of the epitaph of which both pagans and Christians could have approved, including marital harmony and the pursuit of immortality.113 However, as we have seen, the poems interweave all these themes with a paean to Praetextatus’ pagan religious virtuosity. In Paulina’s hands, the common values of senatorial culture accentuate rather than camouflage her and her husband’s religiosity. Her Praetextatus is praiseworthy precisely because he was a devout pagan priest. Answering Paulina Paulina’s bold commemorative efforts for Praetextatus attracted the ire of local Christian publicists, who reacted vehemently to her assertion that her husband’s virtue and religious distinction had gained him immortality. The intemperate, almost hysterical invective of the Carmen contra paganos, which was probably written (as we saw in c­hapter  3) against Praetextatus, closes with a double-​ barrelled attack on its target’s claim to immortality and on the wife who had tied her own reputation to it. The prefect’s widow, the poem alleges, was now hovering, offerings in hand, at the altars of the gods, whom she ‘threatened in her desire to move Acheron by magic songs’.114 In the eyes of this anonymous polemicist, the prefect’s wife is a pathetic figure, devoted to the gods, as Paulina’s epitaph proclaimed, but tainted by illicit occultism and a superstitious over-​attendance at pagan rites. Her efforts, the poet asserts, have only cast her husband ever deeper into Tartarus.115 The poem concludes with a brutal rebuttal to Paulina’s wifely grief and stirring declaration of the life that she hoped to live with her husband beyond the grave:  ‘Stop mourning for such a husband after the dropsy, who wanted to hope for salvation from Latian Jupiter.’116 The Carmen contra paganos is an invective and rants against, rather than answers, the claims of Praetextatus’ pagan commemorators. In two contemporary epistles, Jerome offered a more substantial engagement with Praetextatus’ legacy. His assessment of Praetextatus and Paulina was equally harsh, yet he, unlike the author of the Carmen, admitted a grudging respect for the outspoken senatorial widow. In an epistle written late in 384, he rebuked his friend, the widow Paula, who may have been linked to Praetextatus’ family by marriage,117 for her grief at 113.  Cooper 1996: 97–​104; Selter 2010: 74, Matthews 2009: 137–​8, and Kahlos 2002: 179; cf. Trout 2001: 174. 114.  CCP 116–​19, ‘ipsa mola et manibus coniunx altaria supplex /​dum cumulat donis uotaque in limine templi /​soluere dis deabusque parat superisque minatur, /​carminibus magicis cupiens Acheronta mouere’. 115.  CCP 116–​20. 116.  CCP 121–​2, ‘desine post hydropem talem deflere maritum, /​de Ioue qui Latio uoluit sperare salutem.’ 117.  PLRE 1: 721 (Praetextata); cf. Rebenich 1992: 173–​4.

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  161 the death of her daughter Blesilla, who had passed away, around the same time as Praetextatus, from the effects of depression and excessive fasting provoked by her own husband’s death. ‘The Devil’s handmaid is better than mine’, Jerome imagined Christ telling Paula. ‘She pretends that her infidel husband has been translated to heaven; you either do not believe that your daughter is tarrying with me or do not want her to be.’118 The bluntness of Jerome’s language makes the juxtaposition all the more forceful. Paulina, ‘the Devil’s handmaid’, and Praetextatus, the ‘infidel’, whom Jerome would later call ‘a sacrilegious man and a worshipper of idols’,119 have become the spiritual foils for Jerome’s Christian elite of devoted ascetics—​a contrast that, if a provocative article by Meghan Di Luzio is correct, Paulina might herself have invited.120 The couple plays a similar role in Ep. 23, where Jerome tackles Paulina’s commemoration for Praetextatus head-​on. Written shortly after the deaths of Praetextatus and of its primary subject, the widow Lea, the epistle was addressed to the ascetic Marcella and published sometime the next year as part of the epistolary Liber ad Marcellam.121 Jerome describes with biting irony the sudden demise of the newly deceased ‘consul-​designate’, as he calls Praetextatus: O what a great change in fortunes! He, before whom all the highest dignitaries were walking a few days ago, who ascended the Capitoline citadels as if to triumph over vanquished enemies  .  .  .  at whose death the whole city was shaken, is now desolate, naked, not in the milky palace of the sky, as his unhappy wife feigns, but shut up in sordid shadows.122 Despite his direct allusion to Paulina’s praise for Praetextatus, Jerome’s account is curiously askew with the actual terms of her commemorative efforts, at least as they are represented on the epitaph. Not only does he gloss over her dismissal of her husband’s offices, but he completely elides the specifically religious features of Praetextatus’ career. Though some scholars have tried to find a religious significance in his terse description of Praetextatus’ ‘triumph’,123 Jerome himself makes Praetextatus a stereotype of aristocratic pomp, power, and pride. The dissonance with Paulina’s inscriptions has provoked one influential scholar to accuse Jerome of unwillingness to see that ‘his sentiments on the vanity

118.  Ep. 39.3, ‘ “melior diaboli ancilla quam mea est. illa infidelem maritum translatum fingit in caelum, tu mecum tuam filiam commorantem aut non credis aut non uis.” ’ 119.  Contra Iohannem 8, ‘homo sacrilegus et idolorum cultor’. 120.  DiLuzio 2017, suggesting that Paulina’s poem alludes to the Magnificat. 121. Cf. Ep. 23.3 and 163 n. 134. 122.  Ep. 23.3, ‘o rerum quanta mutatio! ille, quem ante paucos dies dignitatum omnium culmina praecedebant, qui quasi de subiectis hostibus triumpharet Capitolinas ascendit arces . . . ad cuius interitum urbs uniuersa commota est. nunc desolatus est, nudus, non in lacteo caeli palatio, ut uxor conmentitur infelix, sed in sordentibus tenebris continetur.’ 123.  Vera 1983, Cracco Ruggini 1979: 17; cf. Puglisi 1989 (a highly speculative account). Moralee 2018: 121–​3 offers a circumspect discussion.

162  Worshippers of the Gods of human wishes [were] shared by the great pagan senator’.124 Yet dissonance, surely, is the point. As we have seen, the civic distinction of Paulina’s Praetextatus fades easily into the even loftier glory brought by initiatory rites. Much the same perspective was shared by Praetextatus’ Christian peers, of whose attitudes the epitaph of another leading statesman, Petronius Probus, offers a particularly spectacular testimony. Now lost but recorded by the fifteenth-​century humanist Maffeo Vegio, the epitaph’s two poems staked the admission of this four-​time prefect to heaven at once on his civic offices and on his baptism.125 ‘For such merits, far be it from you to believe, Rome,’ one poem declares, ‘that your Probus has died: he lives and possesses the stars, the friend of virtue, fidelity, piety, and honour’.126 The other poem acknowledges the power of divine grace yet uses it to proclaim even more loudly Probus’ personal honours: Wealthy in riches and glorious of family, outstanding in honour, illustrious for the fasces, worthy of a consular grandfather, twice governing the peoples as prefect in a twin seat: these worldly decorations, these titles of noblemen, you transcend, bestowed with the gift of Christ in old age. This is true honour, this, your nobility. Before, you would rejoice in the honour of the royal table, the address of the prince, the friendship of the king; now nearer to Christ, having possessed the seat of the saints, you enjoy a new light: Christ, your light, is with you.127 Probus’ epitaph makes baptism the root of his blessedness and a grand addition to an imposing cursus honorum. ‘It is, in fact,’ as Dennis Trout has remarked, ‘the overwhelming effect of the verses of this poem to ensure readers that in death Probus has forfeited neither his nobility nor his intimacy with the powerful.’128 Jerome envisions a much sharper rupture between civic life and religion. By showcasing the power and wealth that the real Praetextatus had enjoyed, he punctures the assumption—​shared equally by Paulina, Probus, and Symmachus—​that a public career is compatible with real virtue and impresses upon his Christian audience the vast gulf that lies between civic-​minded men and models of true Christian humility such as Lea. Where Christians such as 124.  Matthews 2009: 137. 125. Vegio, Reb. ant. 106–​10 (71*–​72* Carnandet). For a critical text, see CLE 1347, with emendations and commentary in CIL VI.8.3: 4752–​3 and the lucid discussion of Trout 2001, who touches on parallels with the epitaph of Praetextatus on 173–​4 (cf. also Cooper 1996: 103–​4). 126.  CLE 1347A.11–​12, ‘sed periisse Probum meritis pro talibus absit /​credas Roma tuum, uiuit et astra tenet /​uirtutis fidei pietatis honoris amicus’. 127.  CLE 1347B.5–​14, ‘diues opum clarusque genus, praecelsus honore, /​fascibus inlustris, consule dignus auo, /​bis gemina populos praefectus sede gubernans /​has mundi phaleras, hos procerum titulos /​transcendis senior donatus munere Christi: /​hic est uerus honos, haec tua nobilitas. /​laetabare prius mensae regalis honore, /​ principis alloquio, regis amicitia: /​nunc propior Christo sanctorum sede potitus /​luce noua frueris, lux tibi Christus adest.’ The suggestion of Schmidt 1999 that Ambrose was responsible for this second poem does not convince (thus, rightly, Bruggisser 2003). 128.  Trout 2001: 165.

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  163 Probus boasted of their service to the patria, Rome was in Jerome’s eyes a city full of spiritual dangers, ‘in which it is misery to be humble’.129 The near-​simultaneous deaths of Lea and Praetextatus, interpreted through the lens of an ascetical reading of scripture, drive the point home. Jerome casts Lea as a model of a new kind of ascetical excellence diametrically opposed to the pursuit of civic glory. Lea was ‘the princeps of a monastery, the mother of virgins’; she wore sackcloth, not the soft garments that had once been hers; she spent her nights in vigil and provided a model of humility for her companions.130 With the beggar Lazarus, she has now ‘been taken up by the choirs of angels’ and received ‘to the bosom of Abraham’, where she ‘descries’ the designate consul, the new Dives, ‘asking for a drop from her little finger’.131 However much Praetextatus’ wife might wish to pretend that her husband did not really care for civic distinction, his actions are proof (so Jerome implies) of his actual priorities and thus of his actual post-​ mortem destination. Jerome’s Praetextatus is as tendentiously devoid of religiosity, at least in Ep. 23, as was the Praetextatus of Symmachus’ Relationes, for whom he is almost an exact foil, a negative image of senatorial ‘virtue’ viewed from the perspective of a Christian ascetic, who decries traditional aristocratic excellence as vainglory. Like the commemorations by Symmachus, the Vestals, and Paulina, therefore, Jerome’s portrait of Praetextatus contributes to contemporary controversy about the role of religion in Roman aristocratic life, but among Christians rather than pagans.132 In 385, Jerome would be driven from the city by his opponents, who were soured against him by a series of political, social, and theological missteps, including the death of Blesilla, for which he was blamed.133 In his Roman letters, many of which he published in or shortly after 385, Jerome appears in a guise similar to Paulina’s Praetextatus, as a sophisticated religious teacher educated in the relevant literature and able to instruct his noble female interlocutors in profound spiritual truths.134 Yet Jerome’s erudition and religion differ fundamentally from Praetextatus’: not the classics of Greek and Latin literature but Origen and the hebraica ueritas;135 not the lofty heights of the initiate peering into divine arcana but the rejection of wealth and Roman society itself for (comparative) 129.  Ep. 24.5; 43.3 enumerates the dangers of spectacle and gossip: ‘habeat sibi Roma suos tumultus, harena saeuiat, circus insaniat, theatra luxurient et . . . matronarum cotidie uisitetur senatus’. 130.  Ep. 23.2. 131.  Ep. 23.3, ‘excipitur angelorum choris, Abrahae sinibus confouetur, et cum paupere quondam Lazaro diuitem purpuratum, et non palmatum consulem, sed sacratum, stillam digiti minoris cernit inquirere.’ 132.  Similarly, Cooper 1996: 104, ‘Jerome . . . should be seen as striving to undermine a civic tradition close to the hearts of both Christians and pagans of the ruling class.’ 133.  Ep. 39.6; overview in Cain 2009: 99–​128. 134.  Vir. ill. 135.3, written in 393 (Nautin 1961), refers to the publication of ‘ad Eustochium de uirginitate servanda [i.e., Ep.  22], ad Marcellam Epistolarum librum unum, Consolatoriam de morte filiae ad Paulam [i.e., Ep. 39]’; on the composition and aims of the Liber ad Marcellam, see Cain 2009: 68–​98. 135. Origen:  e.g., Ep. 33; Hebrew:  e.g., Ep. 30. On Jerome’s sometimes shaky competence in Hebrew, see Rebenich 1993, with the methodological comments of Newman 2009.

164  Worshippers of the Gods poverty in the holy land.136 The common values of the senatorial aristocracy divide as much as they unite the most ardent adherents of Christianity and of the traditional cults. The letters of Symmachus provide a subtler demonstration of the enduring religious differences of the Roman senatorial aristocracy. Symmachus included twelve letters to Praetextatus in his first book of epistles, which he edited several years after his friend’s death.137 Presenting a broader, more nuanced portrait of Praetextatus than had the Relationes, these letters, some of which I mentioned at the opening of this chapter, showcase Praetextatus’ enjoyment of literary otium, his skill at assessing Symmachus’ own prose, and his devotion to Paulina nostra, as Symmachus calls her. The letters also put Praetextatus’ involvement in the college of pontiffs on display. Symmachus underscores Praetextatus’ interest in the performance of officially authorised religious rites by the Roman people. One letter, which I  have already quoted in ­chapter  3, related the performance of a ‘public obsequy’ in particularly ‘ornate’ fashion by the citizens of Rome, at the direction of the publici sacerdotes.138 The shape and even the occasion of the ceremony are unclear, but Symmachus implies that Praetextatus will have wanted a more exact report, which his brother, their fellow pontifex Celsinus Titianus, was to give when he delivered the letter. In another letter, Symmachus draws attention to Praetextatus’ concern for the details of priestly practice, describing to him the pontifices’ repeated attempts to propitiate Jupiter and Fortuna Publica following a portent at Spoletium.139 The missive concludes, ‘You understand where we are. Now the decision is to call our colleagues into assembly. I will make sure you know if the divine remedies have accomplished anything. Farewell.’140 Praetextatus was not, it appears, present for the initial sacrifices, but he was the sort of priest, Symmachus implies, who paid close attention to the college’s maintenance of the public welfare and who could be expected to come to a pontifical meeting when needed. Thus, when a few of the letters that apprise Praetextatus

136.  On Jerome’s ambivalent attitude towards Rome, cf. Laurence 1997; on Jerome and wealth during his time in Rome, Brown 2012: 259–​72. 137. 1.44–​55. On the controversial dating, see 141 n.  15. On the letters to Praetextatus, see Bruggisser 1993: 343–​73 and Salzman 2010: 251–​62. 138.  Ep. 1.46. Cf. 97. 139.  Ep. 1.49, ‘inpendio angor animi, quod sacrifiis multiplicibus et per singulas potestates saepe repititis necdum publico nomine Spoletinum piatur ostentum. nam et Iouem uix propitiauit octaua mactatio, et Fortunae publicae multiiugis hostiis nequiquam undecimus honor factus est.’ It seems more likely that the repetition of the offerings ‘power by power’ (per singulas potestates) refers to the repeated offerings to different divinities, rather than to their offering by different local magistrates (pace Salzman 2011: 169, Cameron 2011: 66, McGeachy 1942: 137); I can also see no reason to link necdum (as Cameron does) to publico nomine rather than piatur. The point of the report is the ongoing failure of the sacrifices, not that the expiation had been pursued privately. 140.  Ep. 1.49, ‘quo loci simus, intellegis. nunc sententia est in coetum uocare collegas. curabo ut scias, si quid remedia diuina promouerint. uale.’

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  165 of pontifical business chide him for his absence,141 they only reinforce the basic point: Praetextatus was a man whom an appeal to religious duty could sway.142 Duty, that is, to the traditional cults of Rome. Symmachus invariably describes their shared religious activities as ‘public’ and credits his own attention to the pontificate to the needs of the fatherland;143 he thus treats the ‘public duty’ of priesthood on the same level as the other kinds of ‘public business’ in which both he and Praetextatus were involved.144 Where Paulina had stressed the private religiosity that she shared with her husband, Symmachus’ new depiction of Praetextatus makes a final assertion not only of the centrality of civic duty in Praetextatus’ religious career but also of the enduring importance of the publica sacra to which both men had been devoted. Towards a New View of Religion in Late Fourth-​C entury Rome The movement of modern late-​antique historiography from a narrative of resistance to one of accommodation has had a particularly strong impact on contemporary views of the late Roman senatorial aristocracy. By the older view, pagan senators resisted Christian cultural iconoclasm through literary, political, religious, and even military means; by the newer and now dominant perspective, the real differences of belief and practice were dwarfed by the vast network of essentially secular cultural and social ties that bound Christians and pagans alike—​Brown’s ‘formidable solidarity of the Romans of Rome’.145 Alan Cameron’s magnum opus, The Last Pagans of Rome, has stated this view with particular force. ‘There was’, his final paragraph declares, ‘no pagan revival in the West, no pagan party, no pagan literary circles, no pagan patronage of the classics, no pagan propaganda in art or literature, no pagans editing classical texts, above all, no last pagan stand.’146 The real strength of senatorial culture in the early 380s was to be found in those secular pursuits that pagans and Christians shared alike and to which (Cameron argues) Christians made virtually all of the most important contributions. As this chapter has argued, this negative assessment of fourth-​century pagan senators does not adequately reflect the full complexity of their attitudes towards religion. The pagan aristocracy of the 380s did not meet imperial repudiation of

141.  Ep. 1.51. 1.47 also protests Praetextatus’ absence, requesting not his return to Rome but a reply to Symmachus’ letter; cf. 1.45, 50, for complaints about Praetextatus’ absence or silence in letters without religious colour. 142.  Pace Salzman 2010: 262. 143.  Ep. 1.46–​7, 49; 1.51. 144.  Ep. 1.47, 53. 145.  Brown 1961: 11. 146.  Cameron 2011: 801.

166  Worshippers of the Gods their ancestral cults with simple inactivity. Neither, on the other hand, did they meet it with unanimity. What our sources from 384–​5 present, on the contrary, is a complicated tangle of competing religious visions and political strategies, in which the shared values and pursuits of the senatorial aristocracy divided as much as they united their proponents. All of the authors whom this chapter has discussed, even Jerome and the writer of the Carmen contra paganos, agreed that Praetextatus was an example worth remembering; they also drew upon the same range of traditional means (inscriptions, statues, poetry, epistles) to commemorate him. Nevertheless, as is made clear by the sharp contrast between Jerome’s invective and Paulina’s poem, or the gentler disagreement between Symmachus’ Relationes and the Vestals’ now-​lost inscription, there was no consensus about what Praetextatus’ example had meant and how (or even whether) he was to be imitated. Had Praetextatus been a model of civic virtue? A well-​rounded priest of the public cults? A mystic devoted to the res publica, to learning, to his wife, and, above all, to the gods? Or was he, as his Christian critics asserted, an idolatrous adherent of inane gods, whose example displayed just the kind of self-​importance that the truly virtuous had to avoid? Praetextatus’ religion was not rendered irrelevant by the personal and cultural ties that bound his friends, relatives, and allies to one another and to would-​be opinion makers such as Jerome. On the contrary, their rival approaches to his commemoration show just how important a role polytheistic religion could still play in shaping a senator’s legacy in an increasingly Christian empire. None of the texts studied in this chapter comments directly on the loss of pagan finances and prestige under Gratian and Valentinian II, but the differing approaches that senators and other Roman observers took to Praetextatus’ commemoration give some idea of their attitudes towards the manifold religious traditions of which he had been a leading exponent. As Symmachus’ complaints about the Vestals’ statue make clear, even members of the same traditional priesthood might disagree about how best to approach religious politics in a Rome that was no longer uncontroversially pagan. Common ground, whether with Christians or among pagans of differing convictions, was something that had to be carefully cultivated, and not all aristocrats were anxious to do so. For Paulina, and, we may surmise, also for some of the readers of her inscriptions, religion was no mere addition to Praetextatus’ well-​rounded career in public service; devotion to the gods was the basis and the consummation of the moral and intellectual qualities that had made him praiseworthy to his peers and to the Christian imperial court. Even Symmachus, who adopted a strategy of conciliation in the face of Christian political power and personal hostility, changed his approach when he published his letters for posterity, re-​emphasising the importance of civic religion for Praetextatus and, implicitly, for the Roman state that both he and the

Commemorating Vettius Agorius Praetextatus  167 ancestral cults had served. The ‘formidable solidarity’ of common cultural values was a source, therefore, and not only a solution, for religious tension. Even at the point of its final separation from the res publica, the traditional religion of Rome still had the power to inspire both political controversy and personal devotion among the senators who had been its traditional protagonists.

 Conclusion

I

n an insightful note on fourth-​century Christian–​pagan controversy, Robert Markus attempted to explain why ancient Christian works on Roman religion focus less on the details of contemporary religious practice than on myths, theoretical paradigms, and rituals received from literary, philosophical, and antiquarian sources. The answer, he argued, was to be found in the sheer difficulty of coming to grips with phenomena so diverse and diffuse as the manifold traditional cults of the Roman world: The antiquarianism of the polemic is more than a literary device: it furnished a means which enabled the Christians to get an indeterminate and polymorphic reality into sharp focus. Tradition became the real issue at stake in the debate with educated, literate pagans. The argument cast in antiquarian terms was no mere antiquarianism.1 For Markus, the focus of Christian polemic on traditional literary representations of Roman religion was not only a pragmatic necessity but also a reflection of the character of contemporary pagan culture. Christian authors looked to the past because it was in literary sources that they could find clear paradigms and facts with which they could grapple much more easily than with the detailed, particular multiplicities of pagan practice. Through engagement with educated pagan devotion to tradition, however, they came to transcend mere antiquarianism. If Christians looked backwards to combat pagan cult, it was precisely because their polytheist peers and interlocutors were also looking to the past to defend and justify their beliefs and practices. For both pagans and Christians, the ‘polymorphic’ ancestral cults were, in a real way, defined by their imagined past. My aim in this study has been to bring into sharp focus the polymorphism of fourth-​century discourse, both pagan and Christian, on traditional Roman religion. The engagement of Christian authors with pagan myth and cult is more complex and varied than Markus’s schematic concept of ‘antiquarianism’ reveals. Deployment of motifs from the pagan literary and mythological past did not in itself, as comparison of Divine Institutes and On the Error of Profane Religions shows with particular clarity, determine the shape of a polemic or of the image of traditional religiosity that it presented. Instead, myth, like philosophy and cultic practice, was a resource that gave content to a picture of traditional religion 1.  Markus 1995: 80.

Worshippers of the Gods. Mattias P. Gassman, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190082444.001.0001

Conclusion  169 whose frame was shaped by each author’s rhetorical aims, social situation, and theological convictions. To debate traditional cults was not just a way to come to grips with tradition; it was a way to reshape that tradition for the particular present situation that gave birth to each particular text. Though our pagan evidence is too sparse to allow much detail, this diversity of perspective was not limited to Christians. The controversy that followed the death of Praetextatus gives a glimpse of the competing approaches through which pagans tried to negotiate a place for their cults in an increasingly unfavourable Roman society. Both the practice and the perception of traditional religiosity took on manifold shapes, therefore, over the course of the fourth century. This diversity precludes a single grand narrative of pagan evolution, decline, or resistance, or even of the formation of a new, universally accepted vocabulary and concept of ‘paganism’ or of ‘religion’. Nevertheless, the long arc of polemical discourse from Diocletian to Valentinian II testifies at once to the enduring value of Christian theology and established intellectual resources (Markus’ ‘antiquarianism’) for reflection on traditional religion and to the importance of the changing legal and political context that framed each author’s approach to pagan cult. The relationship of the emperor to religion is a particularly clear window onto the social realities that informed Christian interaction with pagan religion between the Great Persecution and the altar of Victory affair. For Lactantius as he wrote the first edition of Divine Institutes, the Tetrarchs were ravenous beasts, the pre-​eminent defenders, in his day, of illegitimate, vacuous cults and necessarily also the Christians’ chief enemies. With the victory of Constantine and Licinius, a new possibility opened up:  the emperors were now the chosen instruments of God to defend the just, as human history still marched steadily towards the rise of Antichrist, the final persecution of Christians, and the eschatological victory of Christ. For Firmicus Maternus, Constantine’s sons were pious servants of God, elected to bring about a victory over polytheistic cult almost (if never quite) identified with Christ’s eschatological triumph.2 Forty years later, Valentinian II has become, in Ambrose’s exhortation, a dutiful subject of God, whose policy on religious affairs is but a natural extension of the personal devotion that Ambrose, like Lactantius, placed at the core of real religiosity. Even against this changing political backdrop, however, key constants still held. For both Lactantius and Ambrose, the argument against traditional religiosity hinged on a peculiarly Christian way of thinking about worship:  it demanded (as we saw in the introduction) personal, inward devotion to the one God, rather than the steady discharge of inherited duties that Symmachus, as much as Cicero, put at the heart of Roman religio. For both authors, the Christian experience of persecution was also a crucial lens for viewing contemporary religious politics. Here, however, the changed political context left a particularly evident mark. In 2.  Cf. Vogt 1968: 360.

170  Worshippers of the Gods Divine Institutes, official hostility and violence towards Christians is a pervasive reality, which Lactantius expects to continue until the Last Judgement. Ambrose, by contrast, appeals to persecution not as an apologist defending Christianity from a hostile establishment but as a bishop expressing pastoral concern for the spiritual well-​being of Christian senators and the emperor himself. Persecution now lies in the past and in the day-​to-​day temptations of the aristocratic life, not in regular imperial policy. The dynamic position of the emperors within fourth-​century discourse on Roman religion complicates Peter Brown’s assertion that ‘in the fourth century, the emperors . . . controlled the rhetoric of Christianization’.3 The polemics produced by Christian intellectuals over the century certainly do reveal the influence of imperial legislation, which was a key (if never the sole) force that shaped the social context of their writings. However, even an author such as Firmicus Maternus, who engages explicitly with imperial legislation on pagan cult, does not simply follow the emperors’ lead. In attempting to entice the emperors to adopt an even more stringent approach, he produces a new, theologically informed account of pagan religiosity. In De errore, it is Firmicus himself, not Constantius II and Constans, who makes the key contribution to the intellectual Christianisation of traditional Roman religion. Ambrose presents an even more striking case. For Brown, the often ferocious rhetoric of imperial legislation, which sought ‘a definitive “end of paganism” ’ through ‘a series of spectacular interventions’, contrasts sharply with the slow, steady pastoral work of mid-​fifth-​ century bishops, who opposed the remnants of paganism by resisting ‘the dull force of habit in the faithful’. Ambrose, of course, was seeking the continuation of Gratian’s most ‘spectacular intervention’ against the old Roman cults, but he combined this expectation with a strong pastoral sensibility. Paganism was still a vital force in the 380s, yet the duty to oppose it was, for the emperor at least, merely one expression of his wider duty to God, or so Ambrose suggests. Even in the fourth century, Christian bishops and lay intellectuals laid claim to the right to advance and direct the ‘rhetoric of Christianization’. The surviving fragments of pagan discourse on religion do not allow us even to trace out a schematic picture of the kind that I have just sketched for the development of Christian attitudes towards emperors and traditional religion. Nevertheless, the evidence from the city of Rome, which is especially abundant, allows us to glimpse the outline of the relationship between Christian ideas on religion and contemporary pagan religiosity. The epigraphic and literary evidence for the eclectic senatorial piety that begins to appear around the beginning of the fourth century suggests that urban Roman Christian ways of thinking about polytheistic religion evolved in dialogue with pagan philosophy and ritual practice. The literary past was not the only tool available to Christians (or pagans) who sought to make sense of the polymorphism of traditional religion. Nor were 3.  Brown 2004: 115.

Conclusion  171 the similarities between pagan and Christian ideas on religion limited to the development of the idea of ‘paganism’. As the competing commemorations for Praetextatus reveal, the divide between a religiosity focused on public cult and a religiosity focused on individual devotion ran not only between Christians and pagans, as Lactantius or Ambrose would have it, but through even so tight-​knit a pagan community as the senatorial aristocracy of Symmachus and Paulina. It would nevertheless be dangerous to assimilate Christian and pagan ways of thinking about religion too closely. Though we do not have direct access to Praetextatus’ own thinking, his choice of religious interests implies that his public and private religious pursuits were compatible elements of a broad polytheistic piety united, on terms that are no longer clearly visible, by henotheistic philosophical ideas. To be pontifex, augur, and quindecimuir added to Praetextatus’ priestly reputation and personal religiosity, even for Paulina, who dismissed her husband’s civic offices as ‘caduca ac parua’ yet grouped all of his priesthoods together. Symmachus’ epistles, in turn, memorialised the public aspects of Praetextatus’ religion but did not question the private pursuits that Paulina’s epitaph had emphasised; they were irrelevant to the public business that united the two men but not for that reason illegitimate. For Praetextatus, as far as can be told, traditional, public religion was an essential part of his personal devotion. Neither man espoused the division between ‘authentic faith’ and ‘the more “political faith” ’ in the old Roman cults still sometimes advanced by modern scholarship.4 By contrast, the piety of Christians such as Ambrose, or the senators on whose behalf he lobbied in 382 and 384, could not be reconciled with the worship of the ‘demonic’ gods of traditional religion. For them, it really was possible to distinguish between ‘authentic faith’ and the emptiness of a traditional religion that would have included Praetextatus’ mystical initiations every bit as much as his public priesthoods. Accordingly, Ambrose attacked the Magna Mater and Mithras, as well as the old cults of Rome, in his refutation of Symmachus’ relatio.5 Pagan and Christian attitudes towards the nature of piety were not, perhaps, so different as Christians such as Lactantius or Ambrose wanted to imagine, yet this homology no more overcame the real differences in belief and practice than did the common conviction that God was one.6 Modern scholars have sometimes puzzled over ancient Christians’ insistence that pagans were inveterate polytheists, despite the widespread belief in a single supreme divinity.7 For serious Christians, however, the intended readers of works such as Ambrosiaster’s 4.  Cracco Ruggini 2013: 112, ‘However, it seems to me still important today to distinguish among various types of “pagan faith”, the authentic faith of a few (among them Praetextatus and his wife, Paulina, in the West, as, some years later, with greater destruens fanaticism, the historian Eunapius of Sardis in the Pars Orientis) and the more “political” faith of senators and intellectuals such as Quintus Aurelius Simmachus [sic] and Virius Nicomachus Flavianus in the Pars Occidentis or, later, the historian Zosimus in the East.’ 5. Ambrose, Ep. 73(18).30. 6.  Edwards 2004. 7.  Cf. Frede 1999: 67, who gestures in a direction similar to the one suggested here.

172  Worshippers of the Gods Quaestiones, the fact that a man such as Praetextatus believed his divinities to be aspects or parts of one God meant very little, as his polytheistic practice denied this philosophical claim.8 ‘Even they themselves confess God to be great and most high—​and neglect him’, said Ambrosiaster of the Roman pagans who were the main targets of Quaestio 114.9 Lactantius, who had mocked the bureaucrat and polemicist Sossianus Hierocles for praising the summus deus in the very work that was intended to defend the worship of many gods, might well have agreed.10 Neither the homologies between Christian and pagan religious convictions nor the fact that Christian apologists sometimes chose to ignore them ought to surprise us. Devout Christians and devout pagans were, as recent generations of historians have so forcefully emphasised, inhabitants of the same society and participants in the same culture. Equally, however, they were adherents of starkly different religious traditions, pagans of the age-​old cults of the many gods of the Mediterranean world, Christians of a self-​consciously new religion that opposed itself vehemently to the worship of the many ‘demonic’ gods, the idols of the nations. Both naturally shared common attitudes and common ideas, therefore, yet real differences of conviction still remained, the product of divergent beliefs and practices, not just of polemical identity making. Polemic sharpened and clarified the distinctions that already obtained between the worshippers of Christ and the worshippers of the gods; it did not create them from nothing. The pagan Roman inscriptions studied in c­ hapters 3 and 5 ignore Christians, despite their social and political progress at Rome over the course of the century. In Symmachus’ works, by contrast, there are traces of a response to the criticism of Christian opinion makers, which he feared that the Vestals’ monument for Praetextatus would inflame. He also engaged, of course, with imperial attitudes towards paganism. Symmachus’ Relatio 3 restates traditional public piety in an empire that was no longer unproblematically pagan. As in the Christian polemical material, we can see both change and continuity across the century. For Symmachus, as for Maximinus Daza and Galerius seventy years before, public religion is both a necessary bulwark of the empire and an unquestioned part of traditional Roman practice. Yet for Symmachus, the horizons have shrunk drastically. The emperors were not pagans anymore, nor is there any question of trying to bring about the universal devotion to the gods at which the Tetrarchs had aimed, following the precedent set by Decius.11 Instead, Symmachus’ efforts are directed solely towards Rome and the senatorial class that was its dominant social

8.  As Edwards 2004: 223 puts it, ‘For Christians any tolerance of idolatry, and sanction for the worship of lesser gods, was blasphemy’. For a forceful assertion of the importance of polytheism in pagan ritual practice, see North 2010: 40–​2. 9.  Quaestio 114.2, ‘deo, quem etiam ipsi magnum et summum fatentur et neglegunt eum’. 10.  DI 5.3.25–​6. 11.  Rives 1999.

Conclusion  173 order. Maximinus Daza and Galerius wanted an empire united around traditional religiosity; Symmachus is content with a pagan Senate and a pagan Rome. Symmachus did not get what he asked for. Valentinian II reaffirmed Gratian’s legislation, cementing the symbolic and practical steps that his half-​brother had taken against the traditional cults of Rome, which had been left relatively undisturbed by previous emperors’ legislation. The repeated laws against polytheistic practices issued by Theodosius I and his successors over the following decades confirmed their predecessors’ anti-​pagan stance.12 The once-​public rites no longer contributed, in practice or in theory, to the well-​being of the empire. Yet social institutions as old as the traditional cults did not vanish as easily as that. Some twenty years after the death of Praetextatus, the bishop of an important African town met with a group of laymen from his church before a Holy Week service.13 The bishop was a prolific public intellectual, and the laymen decided to hone their own defence of Christianity against him. As Augustine put it in the brief summary of the debate that he later published, ‘a conversation started about the Christian religion, against the presumption and allegedly wondrous and great knowledge of the pagans’.14 The chief topic of discussion was the ‘divination of demons’, the power of the pagan gods to make accurate predictions about the future, which had been proven, or so the lay interlocutors claimed, by one of the most spectacular triumphs of violent Christian progress, the destruction of the temple of Serapis at Alexandria in 392.15 The downfall of the Serapeum, Augustine reported, had been foretold by a pagan seer whom he did not name (perhaps the clairvoyant philosopher Antoninus, whose oracle Eunapius recorded in his Lives of the Sophists).16 The debate that followed hinged less on the mechanics of divination than on the social, theological, and moral position of pagan cult.17 Taking the partem diaboli,18 Augustine’s interlocutors argued that the ancestral cults had not, in fact, been evil, since God would not have allowed them to take place ‘unless they had pleased him’.19 The bishop met the argument with the obvious retort: ‘now, therefore, they displease him, when temples and idols are overturned, and those sacrifices of the nations, if they take place, are punished.’ In response, the laymen 12.  C.Th. 16.10.9–​24. 13. Augustine, Div. daem. 1.1, ‘quodam die in diebus sanctis octauarum, cum mane apud me adessent multi fratres laici Christiani, et in loco solito consedissemus’. Den Boeft 1996–​2002:  519 dates the work ‘between 406 and 410’. The laici were probably men from the city (van der Lof 1967, Brown 2000: 192, Shaw 2011: 364); nothing indicates, pace Van Antwerp 1955: 4, that they were close associates of Augustine. 14.  Div. daem. 1.1, ‘ortus est sermo de religione christiana aduersus praesumptionem et tamquam miram et magnam scientiam paganorum’. 15.  On the events, see Hahn 2008. 16.  VS 6.96; Nock 1949: 56. 17.  Div. daem. 1.1–​2.6. 18. Hence Div. daem. 1.1, ‘magis contradicendo quaerere uiderentur, quid paganis responderi operteret’; the description is not given sufficient weight by Brown 2004: 111, who sees the argument of the laici as a statement of their own opinion. 19.  Div. daem. 1.3.

174  Worshippers of the Gods appealed, inter alia, to the religious authority of traditional cult.20 Contemporary pagan practice involved ‘forbidden sacrifices’, they argued, which took place ‘secretly and illicitly’; the former practice, by contrast, had followed the ‘pontifical books’, which forbade such secretive worship. Thirty years after Gratian had decoupled ‘pontifical’ religion from the Roman res publica, it was still an essential reference point for assessing pagan cult, as it had been for Lactantius—​or for Symmachus—​decades before. The discussion, with which Augustine prefaced his tract On the Divination of Demons,21 provides a striking vignette of the intellectual life of an early-​fifth-​ century Christian congregation, whose members brought their bishop into a kind of rough-​and-​ready dialogue on religion, many years after he had ceased writing highbrow dialogues on Christian philosophy.22 It also shows how profoundly the cultural authority of traditional religion was rooted. Despite their political eclipse, the long pre-​eminence of pagan cults in Mediterranean public life, the prestige of ‘pontifical’ religion, and the mystical insights of oracles still shook the confidence even of religiously involved, intellectually engaged Christians such as Augustine’s interlocutors. They also, as the premise of the debate makes clear, inspired pagan arguments against Christianity. The epistle of Maximus of Madauros with which this book began is a fine example of an educated pagan apology for traditional religion.23 For Maximus, the civic cult of Madauros was undergirded by philosophical belief in a supreme God and by the authoritative past embodied in the Roman epic tradition. His brief apology deftly combined this self-​confident assertion of the authority of ancestral cult with an attack on a particularly visible feature of Christianity, the cult of the martyrs, whose excesses embarrassed Augustine himself.24 Christian worship, he asserted, was devoted to dead criminals and to an obscure god who lacked the public reputation of the gods of the forum, the many members of the ‘great and magnificent father’. In response to Maximus’ open letter, Augustine used Classical authorities and description of specific elements of Madaurian civic religion to unravel Maximus’ nexus of cult, philosophy, and literature.25 To refute traditional religion, late-​ antique Christians had not merely to attack its gods but (as Markus saw with particular clarity) to undermine or rework the cultural foundations that supported its social authority. In the late 390s and early 400s, traditional religion seemed to Augustine to be receding from Roman society, pushed out by the advance of the triumphant

20.  Div. daem. 2.5. 21.  Div. daem. 2.6. 22.  Geerlings 1953: 105–​6 defends the characterisation of Div. daem. as a dialogue; pace Clark 2008: 134, it is not quite correct, therefore, to say that Augustine ceased dialoguing when he became bishop. 23. Augustine, Ep. 16; further discussion in Gassman 2018. 24. E.g., Sermones 273.3–​9, Dolbeau 26.12. 25.  Ep. 17.

Conclusion  175 Christian Church.26 Yet the practical challenges of paganism remained. Thus, for example, Augustine warned his congregation against the dangers of local festivals;27 dialogued by letter with an interested pagan, a holder of multiple priesthoods;28 and gave advice to a concerned Christian correspondent, a landholder named Publicola, who reported that local polytheists continued to sacrifice in baths, leave out offerings of bread in rural shrines, and maintain sacred groves.29 Not all pagan sacrifices were, it seems, performed as secretively as Augustine’s interlocutors imagined in urban Hippo. The material reality of traditional religion was a visible reminder to Christians that their world was not yet fully Christian. In the sermon on a festival of the genius of Carthage on which I touched in the introduction, Augustine felt the need not only to warn the local congregation against participation in a potentially idolatrous feast but also to caution the zealous against taking the conversion of contemporary society into their own hands. ‘Many pagans have those abominations on their estates’, he said. ‘We do not approach and break them, do we? First, we act to break the idols in their hearts.’30 Others desired swifter action. Thus, a council of African bishops petitioned in 401 for imperial support in destroying rural shrines,31 while the emperors would address a law in 407 to the praetorian prefect of Italy and Africa that commanded the removal of cult images, the confiscation of all temples ‘to the public use’, and the demolition of altars.32 Though pagan cult was still a visible and culturally influential presence within the African society depicted by Augustine’s works, the gods were beginning to vanish from the landscape, displaced in a way that had not seemed possible when Lactantius wrote Divine Institutes and that was only beginning when Firmicus Maternus wrote his exhortation to Constantine’s sons. The Gothic sack of Rome, which seemed to confirm the pagan belief that the demise of the old cults had put the empire in danger,33 shook Christian confidence. To answer the criticisms that the disaster had emboldened,34 Augustine penned a massive historical, philosophical, and theological assault on traditional religion in the first ten books of City of God, which his associate Orosius supplemented 26.  Cf. Brown 1964: 110 on Augustine’s works from 399–​401, ‘But, in these early works of Augustine we can still sense the mood of heady optimism which the sudden collapse of paganism had induced, for a moment, before the disasters of the next decade’. On the Christian triumphalism typical of this period, see Markus 1988: 22–​44, who places its peak in 399–​400; Markus 2000: 202–​6 extends it another five years. 27. E.g., Sermones 62, Dolbeau 26 (on which see Scheid 1998). 28.  Ep. 233–​5 (Augustine and Longinianus), on which see Mastandrea 2013, Briquel 1997: 113–​15. 29.  Ep. 46 (reply in Ep. 47), on which see Bodin 2012–​13. 30.  Sermo 62.17, ‘multi pagani habent istas abominationes in fundis suis; numquid accedimus, et confringimus? prius enim agimus, ut idola in eorum corde frangamus.’ I thank Brendan Wolfe and the St Andrew’s Patristics reading group for discussion of this passage. 31.  Reg. Carth. 58 (CCSL 149: 196). 32.  Constitutiones Sirmondianae 12 (excerpted in C.Th. 16.10.19), to the praetorian prefect Curtius (PLRE 2: 331). 33.  Pagan criticisms: Augustine, Ep. 136.2, Sermones 81.7, 9, 296.9, and cf. Salzman 2015: 352–​7. 34.  Civ. dei 1.1.

176  Worshippers of the Gods with a pro-​Christian revisionist account of human history in his seven-​volume Histories against the Pagans.35 Augustine’s magnum opus et arduum provided to contemporary Christians an overview of Christianity, its theology, and its place in the world unrivalled by any ancient Latin work, even Lactantius’ Divine Institutes, its only predecessor in apologetic scope and Classical erudition.36 Both works were the product of political turmoil, Lactantius’ of the Tetrarchic persecution of Christians, Augustine’s of the ongoing disintegration of the Western Roman Empire, and both attempted to put the contemporary suffering of Christians into the perspective of Christian theology. Yet Augustine’s theological vision proved incomparably vaster even than Lactantius’. For Lactantius, the great challenge posed by polytheistic religion had been its political domination in general and the ongoing persecution of Christians in particular. Focusing solely on public cult, he excluded private devotion, cast the ‘false religions’ as empty superstitions devoid of inner piety and morality, and traced out, with the help of Christian cosmology, euhemerist allegoresis of myth and varied prophetic texts, the history, rise, and foredoomed defeat of the cults that Jupiter and his heirs had inaugurated. Augustine, by contrast, opposed both the political aspects of pagan piety and the personal aspiration for divine favour and immortality that plays so prominent a role in the fourth-​century pagan evidence. In the opening books of City of God, he reordered Roman history with the help of Christian theology. His aim was not simply to show the iniquity and inanity of pagan cult, a key theme of Divine Institutes and of Augustine’s second book, but also to demonstrate the inability of the pagan gods to provide the temporal goods for whose loss contemporary pagans, like their co-​religionists from Tertullian’s day to Symmachus’, blamed the Christians.37 The following five books, in turn, were meant to answer ‘those who contend that the gods of the nations, which the Christian religion has destroyed, ought to be worshipped not for the sake of this life, but for the sake of the one that is going to take place after death’.38 In these books, Augustine drew heavily on the Platonist philosophy of Porphyry and Apuleius but oriented his arguments explicitly around the theological theories laid out in Varro’s Antiquitates rerum diuinarum.39 Varro had been a contemporary of Lactantius’ great Classical interlocutor, Cicero, who expressed admiration for his erudition and to whom Varro dedicated his originally twenty-​five-​volume De lingua latina.40 The coincidence is fitting. Even after nine decades of almost unbroken Christian rule over the 35.  Cf. Orosius, Hist. 1.prol.9–​13; on Orosius, see Van Nuffelen 2012b. 36.  On Augustine and Lactantius, see 19 n. 3. 37.  Cf. the summary of Books 1–​5 in Civ. dei 6.praef. 38.  Civ. dei. 6.1. 39. Platonists: Civ. dei 9–​10. Varro features frequently in Civ. dei 6, 7, and, to a lesser extent, 8.. 40.  On the sometimes tense relationship between the two men, see Wiseman 2009: 107–​29. Cicero declares his regard for Varro’s learning at Acad. 1.3.9 and in a fragment attributed to Acad. 3 by Plasberg 1969: 25; both passages are quoted in Augustine, Civ. dei. 6.2.

Conclusion  177 entire Roman Empire, Classical theory was still an essential tool for Christian polemic against pagan religion and its claim not only to protect Roman society but also to bestow immortality upon faithful worshippers of the gods. A  century of profound political upheaval was bookended by the two greatest apologies for Christianity written by ancient Latin authors and two of the most extensive surviving engagements with Roman religion and its Classical theorists. I can do no more here, at the close of this study, than sketch a few themes of Augustine’s works, which supply the next great body of Latin material on paganism. The elements that I have highlighted nonetheless make clear not only the continued social influence of paganism in the decades following the death of Praetextatus but also the continued vigour of Christian discourse on traditional religion. The works of Latin-​speaking intellectuals and theologians from Lactantius to Fabia Aconia Paulina illuminate seven crucial decades in the legal and social Christianisation of the Roman world, showing not only how a few particularly articulate Christians worked to transform the thinking of educated contemporaries but also how pagans in the city of Rome continued to worship the gods, both publicly and privately, in the face of religious change. A generation after the altar of Victory affair and the death of Praetextatus, the ‘polymorphic reality’ of traditional cult and the manifold Christian texts that dealt with it both remained prominent features on the late-​antique social and intellectual landscape. For Christians, and indeed for pagans, in the early fifth as in the fourth century, traditional religion was not just ‘good to think with’. It was a still-​potent reality in a Roman empire that was no longer definitely pagan but not yet definitively Christian.

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Index

For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Academic Scepticism, 124 See also Carneades; Cotta, as character in De natura deorum Adonis, 62, 62–​63n.104, 64, 68–​69 Africa, 1–​2, 7–​8,  173–​77 Alexandria, 7–​8, 53–​54n.45, 173 altar of Victory affair, 107 and pre-​Constantinian religious debate, 109–​10, 112, 117, 138, 172–​73 centrality of religious ideas, 116–​17, 128,  136–​37 historiography, 110–​12, 116, 119 role of altar, 107–​9, 120–​22 role of ‘tolerance’, 119 See also Constantius II: visit to Rome altars. See eclecticism, pagan: epigraphy; Praetextatus, Vettius Agorius; taurobolium Ambrose and first embassy on altar of Victory, 109,  134–​36 and imperial court, 109, 112–​16, 129,  135–​36 and Lactantius, 117, 130–​31, 133, 138,  169–​70 as bishop and pastor, 130–​31, 132–​33, 135–​37,  169–​70

basilica controversy, 112–​13, 129 De obitu Valentiniani,  114–​15 Epistle 72(17), 129–​37 Epistle 72(18), 137–​39, 148–​49, 171–​72 on oath to Victory, 134 on persecution, 117, 131–​32, 133–​34,  169–​70 portrayal of Gratian and Valentinian I, 113–​14,  136 publication of works, 110–​11, 129 shifting portrayal of altar of Victory affair,  114–​16 Ambrosiaster, 76–​79, 81–​82, 83, 90–​91, 94–​95, 107, 109–​10, 112, 148–​49,  171–​72 concept of lex, 11, 77–​78, 81 dating, 76n.2 on paganism, 11, 76–​78, 81–​82, 94, 103,  104–​6 See also eclecticism, pagan Ammianus Marcellinus, 53–​54, 103, 145 antiquarian learning, ancient and modern, 78–​79, 83–​84, 88–​89,  91–​93 See also apologetic literature: ‘antiquarianism’ of Apollo, 24n.31, 29, 49–​50, 64, 76–​77

229

230 Index apologetic literature ‘antiquarianism’ of, 168–​69 as exercise in boundary/​identity formation, 4–​6, 12–​13,  79–​80 as reflection of pagan attitudes, 6–​12 Greek versus Latin, 14–​15 shift after Tetrarchy, 43–​47, 62–​63, 64, 73–​75, 90–​91,  169 Apuleius,  176–​77 Aratus, 38 Arcadius, 113–​14, 118–​19, 127–​28, 144, 173 aristocracy. See eclecticism, pagan; Senate Arnobius, 21–​22, 32–​33, 57–​58, 62–​63,  90–​91 astrology. See Firmicus Maternus: as astrologer Athanasius, 54 Athens, 78–​79, 88 Attis, 62–​64, 66–​67, 70–​71, 76–​77, 87–​88, 91–​92, 102–​3n.153, 148–​49,  159 allegorised, 64, 65–​66, 91–​93 festivals, 62–​63,  98–​99 See also Magna Mater augurate or augury, 24–​25, 36–​37, 41, 56–​57, 87–​88, 89, 93–​95, 171 Augustine, 1–​4, 6–​7, 11, 12–​13, 14–​16, 19–​20, 27–​28, 62, 78–​79, 80–​81, 96–​98, 125–​26n.124,  173–​77    Bacchus. See Liber Pater Balbus, as character in De natura deorum, 9–​10, 32–​36,  65–​66 Bauto, 114–​15, 120–​21,  132–​33 Bellona,  21–​22 Blesilla, 103–​4, 160–​61,  163–​64    Caelestis, 62, 97–​98n.123 Caelus, father of Saturn, 27–​28, 29–​31 Calendar of 354. See Chronograph of 354 Capitolium of Carthage, 7 of Rome, 7, 29 Carmen ad quendam senatorem,  96–​97 Carmen contra paganos, 91–​92, 97–​99, 103, 104–​5,  160–​61

Carneades,  40–​41 Carthage, 1, 7, 12–​13, 62, 97–​98, 102–​3n.153,  174–​75 Celsinus Titianus, 140–​42 Ceres, 62–​63, 64, 87–​88, 91, 159 Christianisation of the Roman Empire, 1–​3, 16–​17,  173–​75 Chronograph of 354, 53, 62, 97–​98 Cicero and Lactantius (see Cicero; Lactantius) as philosopher, 24–​25, 125–​26 as religious expert, 1–​2, 24–​25 De diuinatione,  32–​33 De legibus,  25–​26 De natura deorum, 8–​10, 25–​26, 31–​37,  124 De re publica, 25–​26, 28, 30–​31, 38, 40–​41,  158 deification of Tullia, 29–​30 on religio and superstitio, 8–​10, 33–​35,  81–​82 Pro Marcello,  28–​29 Cicero, Quintus, as character in De diuinatione,  32–​33 Classical literature, as resource for religious debate, 1–​2, 106, 168–​69 Claudian,  121–​22 Coelia Concordia, 151 Constans, 74–​75, 130–​31, 170 legislation on paganism, 52–​53, 57, 67 Constantine, 43–​47, 101, 120, 128, 136–​37,  169 legislation on paganism, 48–​54, 56, 107 Letter to the Eastern Provincials, 48–​50, 59,  74–​75 Oration to the Holy Assembly, 51 Constantius II, 57–​58, 67, 170 legislation on paganism, 53–​54, 74–​75 visit to Rome, 53–​54, 107–​8, 120–​24 Cotta, as character in De natura deorum, 9–​10n.58, 32–​36,  124 criobolium, 62, 88–​89, 98–​99 See also taurobolium cult, private. See eclecticism, pagan cult, public. See Lactantius: and public cults; eclecticism, pagan; Roman cults

Index  231 Cumae,  86–​87 Cybele. See Magna Mater Cyprian of Carthage, 7–​8, 19–​20, 58–​59,  68–​69 Cyriacus of Ancona, 88–​89    Damasus, 103, 109, 110, 134–​36, 145, 147,  148–​49 ‘de-​paganisation’,  15 See also Christianisation of the Roman Empire; imperial legislation on religion; Roman cults: loss of funding Decius, 6–​7,  172–​73 demons, 22–​23, 36–​37, 42–​43, 60–​61, 68–​69, 73–​75, 94,  171–​72 Diocletian, 15, 16–​17, 19–​21, 36–​37, 84–​87, 107–​8,  169 and Jupiter, 22–​23, 39 See also Tetrarchs Dionysius of Alexandria, 7–​8 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 88–​89 Dionysus. See Liber Pater divination. See Firmicus Maternus: as astrologer; haruspicy; oracles    eclecticism, pagan, 14–​15, 66–​67, 81–​106,  170–​71 and Neoplatonism, 66–​67 and self-​promotion, 90, 98–​101, 104–​5,  132 as religious endeavour, 99–​101 continuity across fourth century, 101–​3 epigraphy, 2–​3, 83–​94, 95–​96, 98–​103,  104 female initiates, 87–​88, 92–​93, 96, 100–​1, 102–​3 (see also Paulina, Fabia Aconia; Sabina) formation at Rome, 84–​88 kinship ties, 100–​1 limits of syncretism, 98–​99 public-​private distinction, 89–​91, 94–​95,  156–​57 relationship with Christianity, 90, 101–​5 ritual practice, 88–​89, 98–​99 social breadth, 88, 95–​96, 101 theology, 66–​67, 91–​94,  105–​6

See also Phrygianum (temple of the Magna Mater) ‘Edict of Milan’, 48–​49 Egyptian cult. See Isis or Isiac cult; Serapis Elagabalus, 84–​86, 97 Eleusinian mysteries, 62–​63, 91, 159 Ennius, Q., 1–​2 epigram on Scipio Africanus, 28–​29, 30–​31,  158 translator of Euhemerus, 27–​28, 29–​30 eschatology. See Lactantius: eschatology; Firmicus Maternus: eschatology Eugenius, 110, 114–​15, 116–​17, 138–​39 euhemerism,  27–​31 Euhemerus,  27–​28 See also Ennius, Q. Eusebius of Caesarea, 48–​51, 54, 57–​58 Eustochium, 103–​4, 163–​64n.134 Eustochius, Flavius Antonius. See Magna Mater: priestly officials Expositio totius mundi et gentium, 97    famine of 383. See Symmachus, Q. Aurelius: on famine of 383 Faunus,  21–​22 Faventinus, Ulpius Egnatius, 85f,  99–​100 Firmicus Maternus, 109–​10, 128, 130–​31, 136–​37, 138–​39,  148–​49 and Ambrosiaster, 76–​78, 80–​82, 83, 94 and Cicero, 65–​66 and Constantius II and Constans, 57–​58, 67, 74–​75, 169 and Lactantius, 54–​55, 59–​60, 64, 65, 67–​69, 70–​71, 73–​75, 82, 90–​91,  168–​69 and ‘paganism’, 60, 65, 70–​71, 73–​74, 76–​78, 90–​91, 94, 103, 104–​6 as astrologer, 54–​57, 72 as Christian convert, 57–​59 as evidence for pagan continuity, 102–​3 Christology,  71–​73 De errore profanarum religionum, structure and aims, 60–​61, 64 eclectic Neoplatonism, 65–​66, 68–​69,  92–​94 ‘end’ of paganism, 54–​55

232 Index Firmicus Maternus (cont.) eschatology,  73–​75 knowledge and use of Scripture, 58–​59, 60, 66–​67, 68–​69,  70–​73 pagan symbola,  70–​71 on ‘annual rites’, 61, 62–​64 on demons and the Devil, 60–​61, 67–​75 on physicae rationes, 61, 64 on public and private cult, 62–​63, 64,  73–​74 on the sacraments, 58–​59, 69–​70 senators as audience, 55–​56, 66–​67, 72 Flacius Illyricus, Matthias, 61 Flavianus, Nicomachus, 3–​4, 109, 148–​51 Flora,  76–​77 Frigidus, Battle of the, 3–​4    Gabii,  84–​86 Galerius, 7–​8, 20–​21, 23–​24, 51, 138,  172–​73 See also Tetrarchs genii, 12–​13,  123–​24 gentilis. See paganus Golden Age, 38–​39, 42–​43 Gratian, 113–​14, 130–​31, 136 legislation on paganism, 15, 107, 111–​12, 121–​23, 126–​27, 131, 132–​33, 136–​37, 140–​41, 148, 166–​67, 170,  173–​74    haruspicy, 97 in Firmicus Maternus, 56–​57 in imperial legislation, 49–​50, 52–​53,  107n.2 in Lactantius, 36–​37 Hecate, 62, 87–​88, 90, 91, 94–​95, 102–​3,  159 conflated with Magna Mater, 92–​93 henotheism, pagan, 6–​7, 48–​49, 119, 123–​26, 141–​42,  171–​72 Hercules, 21–​22, 38–​39, 126–​27n.134 paradigm for ruler-​divinisation, 28–​29,  30–​31 Tetrarchic patron, 22–​24, 28 Hermes Trismegistus, 24, 68–​69 Hierocles, Sossianus, 19–​20, 171–​72

Hilarianus, Caelius, 87–​88 Hispellum rescript, 52–​54 Honorius, 107, 121–​22, 173    identity. See apologetic literature: as exercise in boundary/​identity formation imperial legislation on religion, 6–​8, 16–​17, 19–​21, 48–​54, 107–​17, 137–​38, 170, 173 initiation. See eclecticism, pagan Inscriptions. See eclecticism, pagan: epigraphy; Iulia Florentina, epitaph of; Praetextatus, Vettius Agorius Isis or Isiac cult, 21–​22, 62–​64, 69–​71, 76–​ 77, 90–​91, 96–​97, 102–​3, 148–​49, 159 Isia and Hilaria,  62–​63 Nauigium, 34 Italicus, Julius, 86–​87 Iulia Florentina, epitaph of, 78–​79    Janus, 76–​77,  91–​92 Jerome, 3–​4,  57–​58 ascetical ideals, 103–​4, 162–​64 critique of senatorial aristocracy, 156–​57,  163–​64 on Lactantius, 24–​25, 46–​47, 148–​49 on Paulina and Praetextatus, 132, 142–​43, 144, 152–​56, 160–​64,  165–​66 Julian, 3–​4, 14–​16, 107–​8,  131–​32 and Roman senatorial pagans, 92–​93 Julius Caesar, 28–​30 Juno, 34, 65–​66 See also Caelestis Jupiter as historical king, 22–​24, 27–​31, 38–​39, 42–​43, 64, 73, 175–​76 as planetary god, 56–​57 Jupiter Sabazius (see Sabazius) Tetrarchic patron, 22–​24 worship of, 1, 21–​22, 29, 34, 56–​57, 64, 97, 160, 164–​65 Justin Martyr, 70–​71 Justina, 112–​13, 129    Kalends festival, 12–​13 Kamenius, Alfenius Ceionius Julianus, 89, 99–​100,  157

Index  233 Lactantius ancient reception, 46–​47, 148–​49 and Cicero, 24–​37, 38, 40–​41 and Constantine, 43–​47 and public cults, 21–​23, 26, 109–​10, 112, 117 and the Tetrarchs, 20–​21, 38–​39, 42–​43 career, 19–​21, 39 Christology,  46–​47 compared with Augustine, 175–​77 compared with Ambrose (see Ambrose: and Lactantius) compared with Firmicus Maternus (see Firmicus Maternus: and Lactantius) cosmology, 21–​22,  31–​32 Diuinae institutiones, structure and aims, 19–​20, 21, 23–​24, 27, 43–​45 eschatology, 42–​43, 45–​46, 73 Golden Age, 38–​39, 42–​43 later works, 43–​46 on iustitia, as the mark of Christianity, 26–​27, 33–​34, 37n.131, 39–​43,  44–​45 on pagan origins, 27–​32, 36–​37, 38–​39,  73 on persecution and patientia, 37–​43, 45–​46,  169–​70 on previous Christian writers, 19–​20,  68–​69 on religio and superstitio, 10–​11, 24, 26, 34–​35, 41–​42, 49, 51, 81, 117, 171–​72 on spectacles, 53, 65 on the sacraments, 24, 34, 46–​47n.190 scriptural and literary authorities, 24,  68–​69 terminology for pagans, 21–​22, 80–​81 Laelius, C., 33–​34 as character in De re publica, 38, 40–​41 Lea, 161, 162–​63 lex, as term for religion. See Ambrosiaster: concept of lex Libanius, 12–​13, 50–​52, 53–​54, 131 Liber Pater, 21–​22, 29, 62–​64, 65–​66, 71, 76–​77,  87–​88 suppression of the Bacchanals (186 B.C.),  63–​64 Libera, 62–​64,  65–​66

Licinius, 43–​45,  48–​49 Ligorio, Pirro, 92–​93 Lollianus, Q. Flavius Maesius Egnatius, signo Mavortius, 55–​56 Lucretius, 36 ludi. See spectacles Lydus, John, 91–​92    Macedonius, magister officiorum, 109,  112–​13 Macrobius, 91–​92, 158 Mactar,  86–​87 Magna Mater, 21–​22, 62–​64, 76–​77, 83–​89, 90–​92, 96–​99, 126–​27n.134, 159,  171–​72 conflated with Hecate, 92–​93 festivals,  97–​98 priestly officials, 88–​89, 96 See also Attis; criobolium; taurobolium; Phrygianum (temple of the Magna Mater); quindecimuiri sacris faciundis Magnus Maximus, 109, 113–​15, 116–​17,  135–​36 Marcella, 103–​4, 161, 163–​64n.134 Mars, 29, 68–​69 martyrs. See persecution Maximian, 28, 86–​87 Maximinus Daza, 20–​22, 48–​49, 51,  172–​73 Maximus of Madauros, 1–​3, 6–​8, 80–​81,  174 Mercury,  76–​77 Minerva, 34, 62, 63–​64, 76–​77 Minucius Felix, 10–​11n.67, 19–​20, 24–​25n.38, 65–​66,  124 Mithras or Mithraic cult, 22–​23n.23, 62, 64, 76–​77, 87–​88, 89–​90, 91–​92, 93–​95, 102–​3, 142, 148–​49,  171–​72 See also Olympii, Mithraeum of the monotheism, pagan. See henotheism, pagan mysteries. See Attis; Ceres; eclecticism, pagan; Eleusinian mysteries; Isis or Isiac cult; Liber Pater; Magna Mater; Mithras or Mithraic cult; Phrygianum (temple of the Magna Mater)

234 Index Neoplatonism, 14–​15, 65–​67, 68–​69, 81–​ 82, 88, 91–​94, 124 See also Plotinus; Porphyry of Tyre    Olympii, Mithraeum of the, 95 oracles and persecution, 36–​37, 49–​50 imperial policy on, 49–​50 See also haruspicy; Sibyls Orfitus, L. Cornelius Scipio, 83–​84n.97, 86f,  86–​87 oriental cults, 3, 6, 62–​63, 82 Orosius, 27–​28,  175–​76 Osiris. See Isis or Isiac cult Ovid, 38    paganism as singular religion, 11, 60, 81–​83, 94,  105–​6 distinct from Christianity, 6–​9, 171–​72 historiography of, 3–​5 ‘polymorphism’ of, 2–​3, 6, 168–​69 rarity of term in antiquity, 79–​80 scope and limitations of evidence for, 2–​3, 16, 54, 102–​3 terminology for, 4–​5, 7–​8, 21–​22n.15,  78–​81 See also eclecticism, pagan; Roman cults paganus etymology of, 78–​79 synonymous with gentilis,  79–​80 Palladas, 54 Palladium, 62, 63–​64 panegyric, 29–​30, 30–​31n.85, 38–​39, 44–​ 45, 57–​58, 114–​15, 121–​22,  130–​31 pater patrum. See Mithras or Mithraic cult Paula, 160–​61, 163–​64n.134 Paulina, Fabia Aconia, 96, 100–​1 and Coelia Concordia, 151 and Symmachus, 151, 152–​55n.83,  166–​67 as author of Praetextatus’ epitaph, 143–​44,  152–​56 commemorations for Praetextatus, 151–​60,  165–​67

self-​promotion,  156–​57 unity with her husband, 157–​59 Penates, 62, 157–​58 Petronius Probus, Sextus Claudius, 161–​62 persecution, 6–​8, 20–​21, 131–​32,  172–​73 See also Ambrose: on persecution; Lactantius: on persecution and patientia Philus, as character in De re publica, 38,  40–​41 Phrygianum (temple of the Magna Mater), 83–​86, 95, 98–​102, 103–​5, 132 Picus,  21–​22 Plotinus,  65–​66 polemic. See apologetic literature polytheism. See paganism pontifices, 41, 66–​67, 87–​88, 89, 93–​95, 97–​98, 102–​3, 109, 110, 113–​14, 140–​42, 143, 145, 146–​47, 148–​51, 164–​65,  171 pontifex maximus,  108–​9 pontifical books, 173–​74 See also Sol; Vesta Porphyry of Tyre, 14–​15, 19–​20n.3, 60, 65–​66, 68–​69,  176–​77 Praetextatus, Vettius Agorius, 3–​4 as husband, 157–​59, 165–​66 as imperial official, 103–​4, 113–​14, 142, 145 as man of learning, 158 as religious expert, 90–​92, 157–​60,  165–​67 Christian criticism, 144, 160–​64,  165–​66 commemorations by Vestals, 143–​44, 148–​51,  165–​66 epitaph,  151–​60 official monuments, 143, 144–​46 possible Christian relatives, 103–​4 public mourning for, 142–​43, 144 religious activities, 90–​92, 97–​99, 142, 145,  151–​60 relationship with Symmachus, 98–​99, 113–​14, 120–​21,  147–​48 Symmachus’ letters on, 164–​65, 166–​67

Index  235 Symmachus’ relationes on, 142–​43,  144–​45 See also Paulina, Fabia Aconia priesthoods, public, 41, 87–​88 See also augurate or augury; eclecticism, pagan: public-​private distinction in; pontifices; quindecimuiri sacris faciundis; Roman cults Proculus, L. Aradius, signo Populonius,  102–​3 Proserpina,  87–​89 See also Libera Prudentius, 110–​11, 121–​22,  149–​50 public cult. See priesthoods, public; Cicero: on religio and superstitio; Lactantius: on religio and superstitio    qualities, divine, 21–​22 quindecimuiri sacris faciundis, 66–​67, 84–​86, 87–​89, 96, 102–​3, 146–​47,  171    religio and ‘religion’, 8–​12 ‘religiosity’, 11–​12n.74 resistance, senatorial, 3–​4, 6 See also Senate: and emperors Roman cults, 21–​22, 30–​31, 140–​41 as bulwark of city and Empire, 109–​10,  123–​28 dissension within, 148–​51 festivals of, 97–​99 in imperial legislation before Gratian, 49–​50, 53–​54, 57 loss of funding, 107–​10 Rome, personified, 124–​25, 137–​38 Romulus,  29–​30 Rumoridus, 114–​15,  120–​21 Rusonianus, Pompeius, 84–​87    Sabazius, 62, 68–​69 Sabina, 88, 96, 100–​1, 102–​3 Sabinus, Rufius Caeionius, 87–​88, 89, 92–​95, ​93f, 97–​98,  99–​101 Sacra historia. See Ennius, Q.: translator of Euhemerus

sacrifices differentiating between pagans and Christians,  6–​8 encompassing both animal and non-​ animal offerings, 40–​41, 51–​52 restriction of, 49, 50–​54 St Peter’s Basilica, 83–​84, 101–​2, 103 Saturn, 21–​22, 27–​28, 29–​30, 38–​39, 42–​43, 64,  76–​77 Scipio Africanus, P. Cornelius, 28, 30–​31, 38–​39, 133, 158 secta, as term for ‘religion’, 7–​8, 11, 80–​81, 120, 127–​28, 138, 141–​42 secularity, 4–​5, 6, 12–​13, 142, 145–​48,  165–​67 Senate and emperors, 3–​4, 107–​10, 121–​23, 134–​35,  138–​39 religious composition, 119, 123–​24, 132–​33,  134–​35 Serapeum, destruction of, 173 Serapias,  88–​89 Serapis, 62, 68–​69, 159, 173 Severianus, C. Magius Donatus, 87–​88 Sibyls, 24, 24–​25n.38, 60, 68–​69 Smyrna, 7 Socrates,  35–​36 Sol, 22–​23n.23, 55–​57, 62, 64, 72, 97 pontificate of, 87–​88, 97, 102–​3, 140 spectacles, 52–​53, 65 Stoicism, 32–​33, 59–​60, 65–​66,  93–​94 See also Balbus, as character in De natura deorum superstitio in legislation, 49, 51, 52–​53 See also Cicero: on religio and superstitio; Lactantius: on religio and superstitio Symmachus, L. Aurelius Avianius, 146–​47 Symmachus, Q. Aurelius, 2–​3 and Praetextatus (see Praetextatus, Vettius Agorius: relationship with Symmachus) and senatorial embassy to Gratian, 109 argument for public cults, 118–​28, 138,  172–​73

236 Index Symmachus, Q. Aurelius (cont.) as political operator, 111–​12, 113–​14 attitude toward private religiosity, 124, 125, 127–​28,  141–​42 attitude toward religious diversity, 123–​24,  127–​28 centrality of public cult for, 165 imperial censure, 113–​14, 147 letter-​writing and amicitia, 97–​98, 132, 140–​42,  164–​65 on altar and oath to Victory, 119–​23,  125 on Christian emperors, 120, 128 on famine of 383, 109, 126–​27 on philosophical henotheism, 123–​26 on Vestal Virgins, 126–​27, 148–​51 Relatio 3, writing, aims, and publication, 110–​11, 112–​13,  119 restoration of temples, 147–​48    taurobolium, 62, 66–​67, 83–​94, 96, 97, 98–​100,  101–​3 Tertullian, 7–​8, 10–​11, 19–​20, 21, 41–​42, 53, 65, 70–​71, 80–​81, 133–​34 Tetrarchs, 2–​3, 6–​8, 15, 16–​17, 19–​21, 22–​ 23, 26–​27, 34–​35, 36–​37, 38–​39, 42–​ 44, 45, 49, 51, 52–​53, 73, 86–​87, 112, 131–​32, 138, 169, 172–​73, 175–​76 as Iouii and Herculii,  22–​23 See also Diocletian; Galerius; Maximian; Maximinus Daza; persecution Themistius, 91–​92n.92, 124

Theodosian Code, 16–​17,  51–​52 See also imperial legislation on religion Theodosius I, 51–​52, 110, 112–​14, 116–​17, 118–​19, 144, 173 tolerance, 41–​43, 119–​20,  123–​26 Tyre,  20–​21    Valentinian I, 98–​99n.128, 99–​100, 108–​9, 126–​27, 128, 136 and paganism, 107 Valentinian II, 15, 109, 110, 114–​17, 118–​ 38, 144, 146–​47, 169, 173 Valerian, 6–​8,  137–​38 Varro, 1–​2,  176–​77 Venus, 62, 64, 76–​77, 126–​27n.134 Vergil, 1–​2, 3–​4, 15, 24–​25n.38, 29–​30, 38, 42–​43, 68–​69, 96–​97,  126–​27 Vesta, 62, 126–​27 See also pontifices Vestal Virgins, 87–​88, 97, 107, 111, 119, 126–​27, 143–​44, 148–​51, 163–​64,  165–​67 Victorinus, Marius, 15–​16, 78–​80, 92–​93,  132 Victory Claudian’s portrayal of, 121–​22 See also altar of Victory affair Volusianus, C. Ceionius Rufius, signo Lampadius, 99–​100n.135,  102–​5 possible Christian relatives, 103–​4    Zosimus, 108–​9