Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Number of quotes: 67
Book ID: 209 Page: 4
Section: 2B2
Astarte had worshippers at very early times in Punic Africa and Sicily, notably where she would assume the name of Venus on Mount Eryx.
Quote ID: 5112
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 4
Section: 2B2
Where the Greeks supplanted the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, their Herakles, a civilizing and colonizing god, quite naturally replaced Melqart, but this nominal Hellenization did not totally annihilate the personality of the Semitic god.
Quote ID: 5113
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 5
Section: 2B2
The same Timotheus wrote a work on the myth and religion of Cybele, who was readily identified with Demeter, the patron goddess of the Eleusinian initiations.
Quote ID: 5114
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 6
Section: 2B2
Antiochus I of Commagene, who claimed a double ancestry, Iranian and Macedonian, identified Mithras with Helios, Hermes and Apollo. Some generations later, Philo of Byblos, claiming to translate a book of Sanchuniathon, explained the theogony of the Phoenicians by giving their gods Greek equivalents. That is broadly what had been done about 500 years earlier by the great Herodotus, father of history and comparative religion.
Quote ID: 5115
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 7
Section: 2B2
To be more precise, rather than ‘Oriental religions’ one should speak of religions of eastern origin, or of Graeco-Oriental religions, which had been coated, or even penetrated, by a Hellenic veneer, sometimes for two or three centuries before their arrival in the Latin West.
Quote ID: 5117
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 8
Section: 4B
In his Error of Profane Religions, he accuses the Egyptians of worshipping water, the Phrygians earth, the Syrio-Phoenicians air, and the Persians fire: in other words, Isis and Osiris, Cybele, Tanit-Astarte and Mithras.
Quote ID: 5118
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 209 Page: 9
Section: 2B2
Of course Isis and Serapis are seen associated with Juno and Jupiter Dolichenus on this or that figured monument, {10} as if the two couples coincided in the minds of their followers. But in no way can it be inferred that the two cults were interchangeable.
Quote ID: 5120
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 10
Section: 3A2
Every ancient city defended its national identity by imposing its gods.
Quote ID: 5121
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 10
Section: 3A2,4B
‘Let no one have separate gods, either new or foreign, unless they are officially allowed’, wrote Cicero in the Laws (II, 19).
Quote ID: 5122
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 209 Page: 10
Section: 4B
In Rome, religio (national and authentic) was readily contrasted with superstitio (exotic and suspect). Anything that deviated from the ritual taught by the ancestors and legitimized by tradition smacked of superstitio, ...........
Quote ID: 5123
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 209 Page: 10
Section: 4B
Today, as then, one finds in the Roman church the same kind of mistrust towards anything that evades the necessary mediation of the institutional Church.
Quote ID: 5124
Time Periods: 047
Book ID: 209 Page: 11
Section: 2D3B,3A3A
‘Since we have taken into our hearth and home peoples with their disparate rites, their exotic cults or no cult at all an obvious allusion to the first Christians, this murky horde can be kept in check by fear alone’, Tacitus makes an anxious senator say (Annals, XIV, 44, 5).
Quote ID: 5125
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 209 Page: 12
Section: 2B2
Fifteen in number from the time of Sulla (whence their title quindecimviri sacris faciundis), they had naturalized notably the Greek Asclepius, the Semitic Aphrodite of Mount Eryx and the Phrygian Great Mother.
Quote ID: 5126
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 13
Section: 2D2
Before the end of the second Punic War, which had so gravely tested the morale and nerves of the Roman people, the Senate had to cut its losses. It came to an agreement with the king of Pergamum to send from Pessinus the black stone of Cybele, whose worship was made official in 204 BC.Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Yes!
Quote ID: 5127
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 13
Section: 4B
In Rome itself, freedmen of eastern origin played a growing part in the urban plebs who, in ‘clubs’ or collegia, guaranteed political agitators an ideal body of supporters to exploit.
Quote ID: 5128
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 209 Page: 14
Section: 2B
In October 69, at the Battle of Cremona, the Syrian soldiers of the IIIrd ‘Gallica’ legion hailed the rising sun according to eastern custom. {14}
Quote ID: 5129
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 209 Page: 28
Section: 2D2
But the first deity from the East to be officially consecrated by the Romans within their walls was Cybele of Pessinus.PJ Note: The Cybele and Attis connection may be significant, esp. considering 2E6, Attis’ sun rays
Quote ID: 5130
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 35
Section: 2D2
. . . the Great Mother, who has a prominent place on a lion’s back on the great altar of Pergamum.
Quote ID: 5132
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 36/37/38
Section: 2A4,5C,2D2
Because of the war waged together with Attalus against Philip V of Macedon, common interests united Rome with the king of Pergamum, . . .. . . .
But an earth tremor is supposed to have indicated the irritation of Cybele, whose voice prophesied: ‘Rome is worthy to become the meeting-place of all the gods.’ To which King Attalus is said to have replied: ‘Go, then! You will remain ours. For Rome boasts of Phrygian ancestors’ (Fasti, IV, 265-72). According to Livy (History of Rome, XXIX, 11, 7), Attalus himself accompanied the Roman ambassadors to Pessinus to have the sacred stone handed over to them. It has been conjectured that in fact the king might already have transferred it to Pergamum. However that may be, in this affair (as in so many others) religion and politics were wonderfully in accord: . . .
. . . .
Henceforth, each year from 4 to 10 April festivals and spectacles or ‘Megalesian games’ commemorated the arrival of the Great (Megale) Mother on this sacred hill of Romulus.
. . . .
The dark aerolith from Pessinus was adapted as the head of the cult statue. {38} Like Artemis of Ephesus, Cybele was a black ‘virgin’.
. . . .
For the celebration of the Megalesian Games, the idol was borne ‘on the necks of the galli’ (Ovid, Fasti, IV, 185), by means of a kind of stretcher, as so many statues of saints are still carried on their feast day in Italy, Sardinia and Sicily. During the Lavatio procession, the goddess was enthroned in a chariot pulled by heifers, under a rain of spring flowers (ibid., 345-6).
Quote ID: 5133
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 38
Section: 2C
The Chief Pontiff, responsible for Roman religion, kept firm control over all cults of foreign origin, . . .
Quote ID: 5134
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 43
Section: 2D2
With the accession to sovereign power of a member of the gens Iulia which was descended from Aeneas, the Great Mother of Ida acquired a revived legitimacy. So she appears on several occasions in the Aeneid. On the prow of the vessel carrying the founding hero in company with Pallas, the son of Evander, who would give his name to the Palatine, a pair of Phrygian lions symbolizes the Mother’s divine protection (Aeneid, X, 157). It is she whom Aeneas invokes for victory, as the Romans would do to drive Hannibal from the Peninsula.. . . .
At the same time, it has been found that priests of the Mother-cult were recruited from among the household staff of the Palatine. Two freedmen of Augustus and Livia are known to have become respectively priest and priestess of the Great Mother (CIL, VI, 496).
Quote ID: 5135
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 209 Page: 44
Section: 2C
This grandson of Livia belonged to a family whose clan name Appius/ Attius went back to the famous Sabine Atta Clausus and recalled the very name of Attis (‘Papa’)
Quote ID: 5136
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 209 Page: 44
Section: 2E4
That was the beginning of nine days of penitence, a sort of ‘Lent’. People abstained from bread, pomegranates, quinces, pork, fish and probably wine as well. Only milk was drunk.
Quote ID: 5138
Time Periods: 2345
Book ID: 209 Page: 45
Section: 2A3
On that day, the high priest had prayers said for the protection of the emperor and the Empire. Tertullian (Apologeticus, XXXV, 5) may jeer at ‘this very respectable archigallus’ who, eight days after the death of Marcus Aurelius, ‘made liberations of impure blood by ripping open his arms’ and ordering public invocations for an already-dead sovereign..........
Quote ID: 5139
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 209 Page: 45
Section: 2D3A
In fact, it is known that the disciples of Montanus claimed to prophesy in the name of the Paraclete, but their fasts and hallucinatory ecstasies were somewhat akin to Mother-cult practices. It was not by chance that this heresy was playing havoc in the Church (and as far as Lyon) at the very time when, in paganism, the cult of Attis was enjoying its greatest success.COPIED
Quote ID: 5140
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 209 Page: 49/50/52
Section: 2A1,3B
PJ Note: re: MithraismThe huge wound spouts a flood of hot blood.....which seethes in all directions...Through the countless channels provided by the perforations a stinking torrent falls. The priest enclosed in the pit gets the full force of it, exposing his befouled head to every drop; his robe and his whole body reek. Worse is to come! He tilts his head backwards, exposing his cheeks, his ears, his lips and his nostrils, even his eyes. Without sparing his palate, he soaks his tongue in it, until his whole body is impregnated with this horrible, dark blood. (Prudentius, Hymns, X, 1028-40)
. . . .
The victim is removed, the cover taken off, and then ‘the pontiff, dreadful to see’ is extracted from the pit. He is hailed ‘with the idea that vile blood ... has purified him while he was hidden in these shameful depths’ (see fig 1).
. . . .
The participant in the taurobolium is ‘reborn’, like Attis, born to a new life (hence the word natalicium found inscribed on some taurobolic altars).
Quote ID: 5141
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 209 Page: 60/70
Section: 2D2
Phrygianism came into its own in the Gauls. {02} No other region in the Empire has yielded so many taurobolic altars (over sixty).. . . .
From the end of the third century, and chiefly during the second half of the fourth, taurobolic monuments reveal the passionate adherence of pagan aristocracy to Mother-worship, at the same time as Isiacism and Mithraism.
Quote ID: 5143
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 209 Page: 63
Section: 2E4
Nor is there cause to extrapolate on the hypothetical coincidence in that year of the Christian Holy Week with the March Mother-cult cycle. {106}
Quote ID: 5144
Time Periods: 345
Book ID: 209 Page: 65
Section: 2B2,2E3
At Senj the cathedral dedicated to the Virgin approximately occupies a site formerly consecrated to the Great Mother.
Quote ID: 5145
Time Periods: 457
Book ID: 209 Page: 65
Section: 2B
In the early 1970’s, in the countryside around Medvida, a life-sized head of Attis was found, provided with holes in which gilded bronze rods could be fixed, thus likening the image of the dead and revived god to the Sun.PJ Note: Don’t know where Medvida is.
Quote ID: 5146
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 209 Page: 70
Section: 2B
The Christian apologists Arnobius and Firmicus Maternus were most indignant that anyone should dare to identify with the radiant star an emasculated shepherd over whom there was much noisy lamentation in the theatre and the streets every year in March. How could anyone ‘Attin castratum subito praedicere Solem’, ‘suddenly proclaim the castrated Attis “Sun”’. To take a line from the pamphlet published against Nicomachus Flavianus. {124}
Quote ID: 5147
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 209 Page: 74
Section: 2D2
But it was Cybele who survived in the Theotokos. It is known that the Nestorians rejected the epithet which permitted a parallel between the Mother of God and the Mother of the gods. In the early fifth century, Isidore of Pelusium took the trouble to examine this comparison. Did not Julian himself give the goddess the title of ‘Virgin’ (Discourse on the Mother of the Gods, 166, b, by the Emperor Julian)?
Quote ID: 5148
Time Periods: 012345
Book ID: 209 Page: 82
Section: 2D2
So we find on Delos as on Cos ‘melanophori’, wearers of the black robe of Isis which later would distinguish monks in the East.
Quote ID: 5149
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 209 Page: 93
Section: 2B
Later, the Augustan History and Aurelius Victor would state that Caracalla introduced Egyptian cults to Rome, for in fact he was the first to consecrate them on this side of the augural wall. This was the period when, in the Baths of Caracalla, an inscription proclaimed: ‘One and only is Zeus Sarapis Helios, invincible master of the world’. {88} But after 217 the name of Sarapis was hammered out to be replaced by that of Mithras.
Quote ID: 5150
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 209 Page: 97
Section: 2B2
It appears that Serapis was particularly venerated in Proconsularis (roughly present-day Tunisia). There he was assimilated to Ball-Hammon and Saturn and (as in a dedication from Aquincum) Neptune as god of aquatic fruitfulness, which presumes identification with Osiris, the fertilizing water of the Nile. On a bas-relief from Makthar the god wears the solar rays of Heliosarapis.
Quote ID: 5151
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 209 Page: 98
Section: 2D2
All in all, Isis was better adorned than a Spanish Virgin! The Guadiz inscription, incidentally, gives her the title puellaris. In the fourteenth-century BC, a text from Abydos had her say, ‘I am the great Virgin’.
Quote ID: 5152
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 107
Section: 2E2
The Serapeum in Alexandria on its enormous platform, with its body of lodgings occupied by the pastophori, ‘the priests who had taken a vow of chastity’ (Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History, II, 23, 294) . . .
Quote ID: 5154
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 209 Page: 111
Section: 5C
. . . (to say nothing of other epigraphic testimony like that of Delos and Pergamum) refer to the existence of wardrobes that were as rich as those of the imperial palace.
Quote ID: 5155
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 209 Page: 111
Section: 2E1
This water was piously kept in store, ‘holy’ water said to have come from the Nile.
Quote ID: 5156
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 209 Page: 112
Section: 2B
This office of the reborn day, which coincided with the resurgence of the god (Serapis-Helios), continued.....
Quote ID: 5157
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 209 Page: 113
Section: 2E4
At the eighth hour (around two in the afternoon), after a kind of ‘vespers’ intoned by the officiants and taken up in chorus by those in attendance (Martial, Epigrams, X, 48, 1).. . . .
A similar discipline in devotions, which prefigured that of cloistered monks, radically transformed the customs of pagan worship. It was no longer a matter of sacrificing once a month or once a year to this or that god.
Quote ID: 5158
Time Periods: 17
Book ID: 209 Page: 116
Section: 2A4
...the uraeus [Egyptian snake symbol] of Isis (Apuleius, Metamorphoses, XI, 11, 4). According to inverted hierarchic order, still observed in the Catholic ritual, the high priest brought up the rear.
Quote ID: 5159
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 209 Page: 124
Section: 2B2,2E6
Until the second century AD, Egyptian zoolatry remained an inexhaustible topic of mockery or indignation among Rome’s pagans. With even greater reason there was astonishment at the cult of plants! ‘Egypt invokes garlic and onions among the gods in its oaths’, lamented Pliny the Elder (Natural History, II, 101). ‘It is sacrilege to insult the leek and the onion by sinking your teeth into them. What devout populations, whose deities grow in vegetable gardens!’ Continued Juvenal (Satires, XV, 9-10).
Quote ID: 5160
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 209 Page: 126
Section: 3A2
One day when the bishop Theophilus had had the effrontery to close down a former Mithraeum for the benefit of his flock, the Christians taking possession of the premises had profaned it and ridiculed the remains of the religious furnishings. It would appear that skulls were exhumed in order to denounce the human sacrifices said to sully the nocturnal liturgies! Beside themselves, the pagans counterattacked. They hurled themselves on the profaners: there were blows and wounds, bloody confrontations. The affair took a nasty turn, the polytheists withdrew to the Serapeum, from where they made sorties to seize hostages whom they forced to sacrifice to the idols. Their positioin was too well fortified for them to be easily dislodged, even using troops. The philosopher Olympius, who was besieged with them, galvanized their energies.Powerless or hampered, the prefect of Alexandria and the military governor of Egypt referred the matter to the emperor Theodosius, who pardoned the pagan resistants, but advised the extirpation of the evil in other words, the destruction of idolatry. Confronted with the pagans who were downcast by this reply, the Christians exulted. Immediately roused to fanaticism by the bishop, they mounted an attack on the Serapeum, breaking, pillaging and sacking everything that fell into their hands [PJ: 391]. The doors were forced and broken down. There remained the gigantic idol whose two arms were said to touch the temple walls. If anyone dared to attack Serapis, it was believed that the earth would open and the sky fall. But Theophilus ordered that an axe should be taken to it. Even the wildest of the mob hesitated, when a soldier delivered the first blows to the jaw of the god, smashing the statue, which was made of fitted sections. At once thousands of rats fled from the worm-eaten statue, to the vengeful cries of the populace (Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, V, 22, 5). The dismembered idol was then set on fire. And it was not the end of the world: quite the reverse, that year’s harvest was said to be better than harvests in preceding years!
As a result, a crowd of pagans appears to have been converted, perhaps terrorized by the strong-arm monks and shock-troop Christians. Ruginus (Ecclesiastical History, II, 29) tells us that the priests of Serapis themselves humbly made a pretence of recognizing in the looped cross or ankh (hieroglyphic sign for life), a prefiguration of the Christian emblem of salvation. In polytheistic circles the event had painful repercussions. It inspired Eunapius to write these bitterly ironic lines:
Quote ID: 5161
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 209 Page: 127
Section: 3A2
It inspired Eunapius to write these bitterly ironic lines: "They gloried in their sacrilege and impiety. In these sacred places ‘monks’ were installed, those creatures who resemble men but live like pigs....In that period anyone who wore a black robe had despotic power! In the abode and in place of the gods, henceforward worship was rendered to the skeletons of a few wretched ex-convicts, slaves who deserved the whip: the ‘martyrs’ . . ." (Eunapius, Lives of the Sophists, revised text of 1878, ed. J.F. Boissonade, p. 472).
Quote ID: 5162
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 209 Page: 128
Section: 3A2
All the busts of Serapis which adorned and were formerly supposed to protect the walls, doors and windows were systematically broken and hammered. They were replaced by crosses. Egypt rejected its god, . . .
Quote ID: 5163
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 209 Page: 128/129
Section: 2D2
Isis of Many Names, ‘the initial progeny of worlds’ (Apuleius, Metamorphoses, XI, 5, 1) was a long time a-dying.She survived in those of her idols that were used as madonnas. All in all, the refrigerium animae Christianized the invocation to her husband, which was carved on tombstones: ‘May Osiris give thee cool water!’ And when, for the feast of the Epiphany, {16} after a solemn blessing of the water at midnight, the Christians in Egypt went with their pitchers to the banks of the Nile to draw from the beneficial flow, they were simply repeating in their own fashion a very ancient action of their pagan ancestors.
Quote ID: 5165
Time Periods: 047
Book ID: 209 Page: 131
Section: 3A2
In 591, Eusebius, a merchant of Syrian race, got himself elected bishop of Paris by means of handing out many gifts; upon which ‘he sacked all his predecessor’s staff and employed Syrians of his own race to serve in the ecclesiastical palace’ (Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, X, 26): a prime example of ‘spoils-systems’!
Quote ID: 5166
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 209 Page: 140
Section: 2D2
The Mother-worship cult, officially recognized, enjoyed the benefit of an established sanctuary and financial support.
Quote ID: 5167
Time Periods: 0123
Book ID: 209 Page: 143
Section: 2E1
‘So the superstitious Syrians hold it a sacrilege to serve it at table and refuse to soil their mouth by eating fish.’
Quote ID: 5168
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 209 Page: 153
Section: 2B1
Officially endowed with the same epithets (‘Best and Greatest’) as Jupiter Capitolinus, like him the Baal of Heliopolis was at the centre of a triad formed with Venus and Mercury.PJ: Three in one.
Quote ID: 5169
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 209 Page: 165
Section: 2E1
Following a practice attested in both the traditional Roman and Mother-worship cults, the defleshed heads or ‘bucrania’ of sacrificed bulls were displayed on the altars or walls of the temple.
Quote ID: 5170
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 209 Page: 216
Section: 2B
Unlike the other religions of oriental origin, Mithraism worship of Attis and Isis included no public ceremonies. People could take part in the festivals of Attis or Isis without being initiated or incorporated in the priestly body.
Quote ID: 5171
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 209 Page: 245
Section: 3A4
In the time of Commodus (180-92), but chiefly from that of the Severi (193-235), certain Christians had acquired an influential position in the various departments of the court. In the late third century, their faith had reached the executives of the administration and even of the army.
Quote ID: 5172
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 209 Page: 245
Section: 2B2,3C
But to begin with, the first Christian emperor also wagered on the ambiguities of the solar cult. The famous vision of 312 was associated with the daystar, and until 320 Constantinian coins promoted Sol Invictus as ‘companion’ (comes) of the emperor. Moreover, he had benefited at Grand (Vosges) from an earlier Apollonian epiphany. Much has been written about his alleged hesitations; but he insisted on making the worshippers of Sol Invictus - Mithraists or not - understand that there was no other Sun but his God of the Armies. {135}[Footnote 135] T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, Ambridge, Mass. And London, 1981, p. 36f, 48. Cf. A. Afoldi, The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome, Oxford, 1969, p. 48, 54ff.
Quote ID: 5173
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 209 Page: 327
Section: 4A
After having him captured and executed, the bishop of Le Puy forced the alleged Mary to confess that this ‘Christ’ led minds astray by devilish artifices.
Quote ID: 5174
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 209 Page: 330
Section: 2A5
Christians and pagans passed the ball back and forth. The former accused the demons of fraudulent borrowings from their form of worship, and the pagans in their turn imputed the same plagiarism to the disciples of Christ. It was the sign of a rivalry that at the time was vehement and close-fought. The defenders of the polytheistic tradition placed Christianity on the same level as ‘barbarian mysteries’, to use an expression of Celsus. This type of reaction was to be found two centuries later from the pen of Maximus of Madaurus (St Augustine’s correspondent), for whom devotions to the Punic martyrs Miggin, Sanam and Namphano resembled the monstrosities of Egyptian superstition - like Virgil’s latrator Anubis - battling at Actium against Apollo and the gods of Rome (Augustine, Letters, 16).
Quote ID: 5175
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 209 Page: 331
Section: 2B2
For a pagan god, the height of prestige was to dominate the others: there was no true sovereignty except in relation to other deities. Temples gloried in housing gods other than the titular divinity. A real oecumenism ensured that Atargatis would receive hospitality from Cybele. One could honour Serpis, Attis, Dionysus, Mercury, even the Gaulish Mercury of travellers, Cissonius, in a Mithraic crypt, or worship Mithras, Isis and Serapis in Jupiter Dolichenus’ temple on the Aventine. At Brindisi, a single priest carried out his ministry for the followers of Isis, the Great Mother and the Syrian Goddess (CIL, IX, 6099).But this liberalism, which could turn annexationist in the case of Elagabal, also held the risk of diluting the gods’ personality in a vague syncretism, chaotic and undifferentiated. ‘At the conclusion’, says R. MacMullen, ‘confusion reigned’. {2} Syncretism and the physica ratio gave this melting-pot merely a semblance of coherence which it was easy for those in the Christian camp to deride.
Quote ID: 5176
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 209 Page: 335
Section: 3A1B
The pagan intellectuals might reply, like Symmachus (Report on the Altar of Victory, 10;; from the translation by M. Lavarenne):What matters philosophy through which everyone seeks the truth?
One road alone does not suffice to attain so great a mystery!’
Quote ID: 5177
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 209 Page: 335
Section: 2B2
Maximus of Madaurus, St Augustine’s correspondent mentioned earlier, justified his pagan eclecticism in the same spirit:Thus by honouring in various sorts of cults that which we regard as His various members, we worship Himself [God] in His entirety (Augustine, Letters, 16)
Quote ID: 5178
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 209 Page: 335
Section: 2B2
These cults did not prohibit their respective followers from praying to the god next door. But this wandering polytheism wearied even the dilettantes. In contrast, Christianity categorically and effectively ruled out theological and intellectual chopping and changing.
Quote ID: 5179
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 209 Page: 337
Section: 3D2
. . . repealed the edict of persecution, the Christians continued to explain the misfortunes of the Roman world as a punishment from God. Around the middle of the century, Commodian (Apologetic Poem, 805ff) prophesied: {9}“There will be a number of signs to mark the end of this immense ruin. The beginning of the end will be the seventh persecution directed against us. Lo, he is already knocking at our gate, and he is urged on by the sword, he who will swiftly cross the river with a stampede of Goths. They will have with them the Destroyer king [Apollyon] ... He marches on Rome with thousands of men and by the will of God he makes prisoners among the Romans. Then many senators will bewail their captivity. Defeated by the barbarians, they blaspheme against the God of Heaven!”
Quote ID: 5180
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 209 Page: 339
Section: 2B
In the third century, the major aspirations of Roman paganism had converged in solar henotheism and notably, in the end, in the official cult of Sol Invictus, held dear (at least apparently) by Constantine’s father himself. For Plato and the Platonists, the Sun was the perceptible image of Good, the supreme god. The second creator god Numenius, the luminous Nous who conceived the cosmos, prefigured the second hypostasis of Plotinus, whose triadic scheme answered the same need systematically to hierarchize the action of the divine on and in the world as the Christian trinity. All these simultaneously religious and philosophical trends were to crystallize in the representation of Christ-Helios, remarkably illustrated in a mosaic of the St Peter Necropolis in the Vatican: Lux mundi, the visible Word of the invisible God. {10}
Quote ID: 5181
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 209 Page: 339
Section: 3C
Thus not only did the divine and hypercosmic monarchy legitimize that of the emperor, but the emperor himself could appear as a permanent reincarnation of divine delegation. {11} ‘Whence came the communication of imperial power to a being of flesh and blood?’ asked an adulator of the first Christina emperor, {12} and he went on to speak of the Logos spread through the world, as the Stoics had done when speaking of the fiery breath of Zeus. Effigies of Constantine show him raising his eyes heavenwards, like Mithras looking at the Sun to accomplish his act of universal salvation.
Quote ID: 5182
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 209 Page: 340
Section: 3C
So soldiers could be expected to show the same fidelity to the emperor as to a ‘present and corporeal god’ (Vegetius, Treatise on the Military Art, II, 5). In the time of Justinian, Leontius of Byzantium would make him the eye of the world: {14}Between God and him there is no intermediary.
This was what has justly been called ‘Caesaropapism’. ‘Bishop of the outside world’, as Constantine designated himself, missionary and representative of Christ, the emperor embodied both the second and third persons of the Trinity. This logic of the Christian Empire was or might appear to be incontrovertible.
NOTE: This is the ultimate seductive flattery of an adulterous church to the emperor of the empire. The church is married now. "We have no king but Caesar!"
Quote ID: 5183
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 209 Page: 340
Section: 3A1
Even when they were hand in glove with the imperial cult, never had any of the religions of ancient Africa or Asia benefited from a theology that was so effectively coherent and appropriate to the antinomic demands of mankind as the Christian Empire, . . .
Quote ID: 5184
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 209 Page: 340
Section: 3A2,3A4,3C
. . . the imperial cult was but one religion among others, and was in no way exclusive. A true state religion made its appearance with Constantine and the Christian Empire. Before, the expression had no meaning, so to speak. Persecutions were not carried out in the name of one religion, but of civic traditions involved in loyalty towards the emperor.
Quote ID: 5185
Time Periods: 4
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