Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity

Jeremy M. Schott

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780812240924, 9780812240924
• eBook ISBN: 9780812203462
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Roman Ancient History
• Index: History

In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire.Schott focuses on the works of the Platonist philosopher and anti- Christian polemicist Porphyry of Tyre and his Christian respondents: the Latin rhetorician Lactantius, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the emperor Constantine. Previous scholarship has tended to narrate the Christianization of the empire in terms of a new religion's penetration and conquest of classical culture and society. The present work, in contrast, seeks to suspend the static, essentializing conceptualizations of religious identity that lie behind many studies of social and political change in late antiquity in order to investigate the processes through which Christian and pagan identities were constructed. Drawing on the insights of postcolonial discourse analysis, Schott argues that the production of Christian identity and, in turn, the construction of a Christian imperial discourse were intimately and inseparably linked to the broader politics of Roman imperialism.

Chapter 1

Philosophers, Apologists, and Empire

In the early 150s C.E. the Christian philosopher and teacher Justin responded to the persecution and martyrdom of his fellow Christian Ptolemaeus by penning his Second Apology. Justin feared that he too might “be plotted against . . . and fixed to the rack—maybe even by Crescens, that lover of empty chatter and glory-hound” (2 Apol. 3.1). Justin’s student Tatian would later write that the Stoic Crescens did indeed try to instigate Justin’s downfall (Orat. 19.2). Whether or not Crescens’s machinations were the cause of Justin’s martyrdom, it is clear from these accounts that friction between Christian and pagan intellectuals in second-century Rome could have very tangible, even violent, consequences. Why would pagan philosophers have felt such antipathy toward Justin and other Christian philosophers and, moreover, what common concerns might there have been between philosophers like Crescens and the Roman authorities? What was at stake for pagan intellectuals in the “Christian question”?

Irreconcilable theological differences between Christian monotheism and pagan polytheism have often seemed to explain animosity between Christian and pagan intellectuals. Yet Christian and pagan intellectuals were more similar than either would have liked to admit. The recent scholarly interest in “pagan monotheism,” for instance, points to a theological and philosophical koine shared among orthodox Christians, philosophical Judaism, Platonists, various Gnostics, and others. For Christian philosophers, as for their non-Christian contemporaries, “philosophy” was as much a way of life as it was an academic discourse. Accounts of Christian philosophical circles—such as those around figures like Justin, Pantaenus and Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and others—look remarkably like the circles of Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, and the later Platonic schools in Athens and Alexandria.¹ Both based instruction around the exegesis of sets of authoritative, “inspired” texts—Plato, Pythagoras, and inspired “barbarian” wisdom among Platonists, the Hebrew Bible and, later, the New Testament among Christians.² For pagans as well as Christians, philosophy was considered a spiritual exercise to be realized through diligent askēsis—the disciplinary practice of setting body, mind, and soul in correct relationship.

A great deal of academic energy has been spent categorizing the religious and philosophical literature of antiquity as “Stoic,” “Platonic,” “Christian,” and so forth. This research is important; indeed, understanding the lineaments of ancient philosophy is a necessary prerequisite to any study of ancient intellectual controversy, including this one. Nevertheless, recognizing the intense similarities among ancient intellectuals militates against assuming the fixity and stability of categories like “Stoic,” “Platonist,” or “Christian.” The grounds of the conflict between pagan and Christian intellectuals ought to be sought not in debates over the finer points of metaphysics and theology or in the a priori explanatory power of categories like “pagan philosophy” and “Christianity” or “polytheism” and “monotheism” but in these very similarities themselves. At the same time that this common philosophical and theological discourse enabled debates over the nature of God, the cosmos, and so forth, it also engendered anxiety. To differentiate themselves from others, philosophers and apologists alike resorted to the politics of ethnic and cultural identity as a more visceral strategy of distinction.

The Quest for a Universal Philosophy

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem, or with Rome, Alexandria, Tyre, Carthage, Antioch, or Edessa? What precisely marked the difference between Hellenes and barbarians, between Hellenicity and barbarism? Before Tertullian posed this rhetorical question at the end of the second century, Greeks had been pondering the same problem for centuries.³ Herodotus’s Histories, some of the earliest Greek prose, was concerned as much with barbarians as with Greeks. Writing in the wake of the conflict between Persia and Greece in the early fifth century B.C.E., Herodotus sought to explain recent turmoil by writing a universal history, an account that would cover all peoples of the known world. The Histories thus had an important ethnographic component, as Herodotus presented accounts of the habits and customs of the peoples he investigated. It would take several centuries, however, and the conquests of Alexander for the notion of universal history to come to full flower.

Scholars often connect imperial expansion, first by Alexander the Great and later by the Hellenistic and Roman empires, with a broadening of cultural horizons across the Mediterranean. In this cosmopolitan setting intellectuals had unprecedented access to other cultures. As Alexander marched toward India for example, several philosophers, ethnographers, and other polymaths accompanied him. According to Diogenes Laertius, for instance, the philosophers Anaxarchus and Pyrrho of Elis traveled in Alexander’s entourage as far as India; both were reputed to have been impressed by Indian “gymnosophists.”⁴ Later, Alexander’s Ptolemaic successors in Egypt began to compile the famous library of Alexandria. Under the direction of Demetrius of Phalerum, the library “aimed at collecting, if possible, all the books in the world.”⁵ The library was to be a repository for all the knowledge of all the peoples of the world—an ancient universal catalogue of the world’s wisdom.

While the library at Alexandria aspired to catalogue the world’s history and literature, some historians sought to synchronize the histories of all peoples into a single grand historico-ethnographic narrative. Several narrative tropes facilitated the writing of universal history and ethnography. Herodotus had pioneered comparative ethnography by ascribing similarities between the religions of different peoples to migrations and imitation.⁶ During the Hellenistic period, Euhemerism—the notion that the deities of the world’s peoples were really ancient human beings who had been great rulers or made important contributions to human civilization—became a means to compare and relate seemingly disparate religious traditions. By ascribing various migrations and genealogies to these ancient humans/gods, universal historians could easily connect the histories of seemingly disparate peoples into one seamless narrative. As Raoul Mortley has put it, intellectuals were driven to provide a “sense of unity within diversity.”⁷ The most developed extant example of this type of history are the first books of Diodorus Siculus’s Historical Library. Composed at the end of the first century B.C.E., Diodorus’s work purports to record the entire history of human development, beginning with comparative accounts of the creation myths of various peoples, and extending to the rise of the Roman Empire in his own day.

This is not to say that every historian in the Hellenistic world was in a cosmopolitan mood. Under the Hellenistic empires some intellectuals began to compose “ethnic histories.” By deploying the techniques of universal history and Euhemerism, historians could ascribe the origins of all that was best about human civilization to their own particular ethnic groups. These histories served as a sort of parochial boosterism. The practice of ethnic historiography was not irenic. Rather, these ethnic histories should be seen as repeated attempts at “one-upmanship.” Diodorus Siculus, commenting on the variety of sources from which he compiled his Historical Library, offers an incisive critique of the genre: “Again, with respect to the antiquity of the human race, not only do Greeks put forth their claims but many of the barbarians as well, all holding that it is they who are autochthonous and the first of all men to discover the things which are of use in life, and that it was the events in their own history which were the earliest to have been held worthy of record.”⁸ Thus Hecataeus of Abdera and Manetho, each of whom composed his own History of Egypt, did not simply inquire into the ancient past but ascribed the origins of all aspects of Mediterranean cultures to the Egyptians. Philo of Byblos’s Phoenician History and Berossos of Chaldea’s Chaldean History served the same function for the Phoenicians and Mesopotamians, respectively.⁹ It was as part of this rise of ethnic historiography that Jewish historiography had its beginnings with writers like Artapanus and Eupolemus,¹⁰ while Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities stands as the sole example of an ethnic history from the Hellenistic period that has survived intact.¹¹ As they praised their own group, ethnic historians also disparaged the histories, myths, and traditions of their neighbors. The result was what Arthur Droge has aptly termed a “war of books” among Hellenistic intellectuals.¹²

There was a similar trend toward universalism among philosophers during the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods. This interest in ancient foreign wisdom is reflected in the many trips to foreign lands that were increasingly ascribed to the scions of classical Greek philosophy. Diogenes Laertius, for instance, reports that Plato visited the priests and sages of Egypt and had hoped to frequent the sages of Persia.¹³ Pythagoras was credited with even more exotic travels. In addition to his journey to Egypt, he is said to have met Persian wise men and to have learned arithmetic from the Phoenicians and astrology from Chaldeans.¹⁴ Philostratus adds a trip to India and Iamblichus credits him with visiting the Celts and Iberians as well.¹⁵

These travel narratives are indicative of a broader reorientation of philosophy that stemmed, in large part, from changes in the way philosophers of the Hellenistic period and early Roman Empire were coming to view the history of philosophy. Philosophers of the classical period tended to view philosophical inquiry as primarily critical and constructive. In the estimation of many Hellenistic and Roman philosophers, by contrast, philosophy had not gotten better over time; instead, time had caused true wisdom to become tainted, corrupted, and devolved. The pursuit of wisdom thus became a project of recovery.¹⁶ In particular, philosophers strove to articulate and defend orthodoxies grounded in the authority of ancient inspired texts. Antiquity guaranteed authenticity; “truth and tradition, reason and authority, were identified with each other.”¹⁷

According to the Stoics, for instance, all humans, both Greek and barbarian, shared in the Logos, the divine rationality that imbued the world with order and reason.¹⁸ Thanks to this ubiquitous Logos, the Stoics argued, “the first mortals and those who, uncorrupted, were descended from them followed nature.”¹⁹ According to Seneca, Stoics believed that the first stage of human development was pre-philosophical; because of their pure, unadulterated connection to the rationality of nature, the first humans had no need for the arts and sciences, including philosophy.²⁰ Rather, Seneca ascribes the most basic technological skills, such as tool making and hunting, to a natural survival instinct (sagacitas) rather than to philosophy (sapientia).²¹ The earliest humans might have seemed “wise” in a philosophical sense, but any likeness is due to the simple fact that these early people lived in accordance with pure nature.²² Philosophy, then, arose in later stages of human development as a corrective to greed and other perversions brought about by technological and cultural innovations.²³ The goal of the philosopher, then, was to live a life that imitated this original state of nature.

Most Stoics would have agreed with Seneca that the earliest humans lived an idyllic life according to nature and free of moral vice. The earliest humans were not philosophers, for philosophy, like other arts and sciences, was something that developed as part of human civilization. Posidonius, in contrast, locates the origins of philosophy precisely in the earliest periods of human development. Posidonius claimed that true philosophy had been present among humans at their origins by virtue of the Logos. Later, however, philosophy was altered when it was divided into different branches and corrupted as human vice followed upon the development of human civilization. Seneca reports that Posidonius believed “sovereignty was in the power of philosophers” in the earliest eras of human development.²⁴ This original philosophy had been obscured by gradual accretions of human contrivance. If the universal philosophy lay at the origins of human history, then philosophers must return to the most ancient sources. As a universally present divine rationality, moreover, the Logos was present among all peoples.²⁵ Only through a comparative study of the widest possible range of source material—both Greek and non-Greek—could a philosopher mine the pure, original philosophy from the centuries of accretion obscuring it. For Posidonius, this meant going beyond Plato, back to the wisdom of the Pythagoreans,²⁶ but also, for example, to ancient non-Greek sources, such as the Phoenician philosopher Mochus of Sidon.²⁷

The philosopher had to become historian and ethnographer. Posidonius conducted historical and ethnographic research for his History while on a number of world tours.²⁸ Posidonius’s History covers the period from 146 B.C.E. to the mid-80s B.C.E., is universal in scope, and discusses the habits and history of peoples from Africa to northern Europe and from the Iberian Peninsula to the Middle East. The extant fragments of the History provide a wealth of ethnographic details: the crops grown in Dalmatia, banqueting customs of the Babylonians, Romans, and Cimbri, the military habits of the Apameans and Celts, and the political structures of the Parthians.²⁹ Posidonius may also have studied Jewish traditions while on his world tours. Posidonius’s estimation of foreign peoples was not alwa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Identity Politics in the Later Roman Empire
• 1. Philosophers, Apologists, and Empire
• 2. Porphyry on Greeks, Christians, and Others
• 3. Vera Religio and Falsae Religiones: Lactantius’s Divine Institutes
• 4. What Difference Does an Emperor Make? Apologetics and Imperial Ideology in Constan tine’s Oration to the Saints and Imperial Letters
• 5. From Hebrew Wisdom to Christian Hegemony: Eusebius of Caesarea’s Apologetics and Panegyrics
• Epilogue: Empire’s Palimpsest
• Appendix: Porphyry’s Polemics and the Great Persecution
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments