Jerusalem and Athens: Cultural Transformation in Late Antiquity 978-3161505720

Table of contents :
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
I. Classical Antiquity and Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. The Beginning of Religious History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2. Group Religions in the Roman Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3. Synagogue and Church in the Roman Empire:
The Insoluble Problem of Toleration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4. The Impact of Paul’s Gospel on Ancient Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5. ‘Antike und Christentum’: Some Recent Work from Cologne. . . . . . . 69
6. ‘Antike und Christentum’: Towards a Definition of the Field . . . . . . . 80
7. Athens and Jerusalem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
II. Documents of Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
8. Jews, Proselytes and God-fearers Club Together. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
9. A State Schoolteacher Makes a Salary Bid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
10. The Ecumenical Synod of Dionysiac Artists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
11. The Puzzle of Christian Presence in Egypt
Before Constantine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
12. The Earliest Use of monachos for ‘Monk’ (P.Coll.Youtie 77)
and the Origins of Monasticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
13. Fourth-Century Monasticism in the Papyri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
14. The Quest for Mercy in Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
15. The Magical Use of Scripture in the Papyri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
III. From Ancient to Modern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
16. The Conversion of Rome:
Ancient Sources of Modern Social Tensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
17. Christian Innovation and its Contemporary Observers . . . . . . . . . . . 232
18. The Interaction of Biblical and Classical Education
in the Fourth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
19. Conversion in the Ancient World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
20. The Absence of Religion, Even in Ammianus? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
21. Biblical Sources of Historical Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
22. Ancient Beginnings of the Modern World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Occasional Papers of E. A. Judge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Index 1: Documents Recovered Direct from Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

Citation preview

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber/Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber/Associate Editors Friedrich Avemarie (Marburg) Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL)

265

E. A. Judge

Jerusalem and Athens Cultural Transformation in Late Antiquity Essays Selected and Edited by

Alanna Nobbs

Mohr Siebeck

E. A. J, born 1928; Emeritus Professor of History at Macquarie University A N, born 1944; Professor and Head of Department, Ancient History, Macquarie University

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151554-5

ISBN 978-3-16-150572-0 ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2010 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproduction, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by epline in Kirchheim/Teck using Minion typeface, printed on non-aging paper by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen and bound by Großbuchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier.

In memory of Patricia Joy Judge (1930–2005) who cared about both

Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis, quid Academiae et Ecclesiae? ‘What then has Athens to do with Jerusalem, or the Academy with the Church?’ Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 7 (34).9

Preface This third volume of Edwin Judge’s selected essays owes much to the support of Judge himself and to the excellent examples set by the two earlier editors of such collections, † David M. Scholer and James R. Harrison. Thanks are also due to those attached to the Ancient History Documentary Research Centre within the Ancient Cultures Research Centre at Macquarie University who have assisted in the production of the typescript. Jon Dalrymple compiled the indexes, Pat Geidans, Anne Irish and Beth Lewis all assisted with word-processing while Rachel Yuen-Collingridge handled the Greek passages. Financial support is gratefully acknowledged from the Society for the Study of Early Christianity (initially proposed to the Committee by James Harrison). The Department of Ancient History in the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University has provided necessary infrastructure. The project could not have happened without the judgement and encouragement of Professor Jörg Frey, WUNT series editor, and Henning Ziebritzki, Editorial Director (Theology and Jewish Studies), Mohr Siebeck and the skilled work of their staff. I would like to express my gratitude for the opportunity to teach and research in the area of Early Christianity and Late Antiquity at Macquarie University over the last forty years, and to thank my colleagues past and present for an ideal intellectual climate in which to do so. Finally thanks to my husband and family who have patiently borne Jerusalem and Athens for so many years. As a longstanding friend of Patricia Judge I am honoured to join Edwin in dedicating this collection to her memory. Alanna Nobbs May 2010

Table of Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

I. Classical Antiquity and Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1. The Beginning of Religious History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

2. Group Religions in the Roman Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32

3. Synagogue and Church in the Roman Empire: The Insoluble Problem of Toleration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

44

4. The Impact of Paul’s Gospel on Ancient Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58

5. ‘Antike und Christentum’: Some Recent Work from Cologne. . . . . . .

69

6. ‘Antike und Christentum’: Towards a Definition of the Field . . . . . . .

80

7. Athens and Jerusalem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

II. Documents of Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 8. Jews, Proselytes and God-fearers Club Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 9. A State Schoolteacher Makes a Salary Bid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 10. The Ecumenical Synod of Dionysiac Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 11. The Puzzle of Christian Presence in Egypt Before Constantine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 12. The Earliest Use of monachos for ‘Monk’ (P.Coll.Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 13. Fourth-Century Monasticism in the Papyri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 14. The Quest for Mercy in Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 15. The Magical Use of Scripture in the Papyri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

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III. From Ancient to Modern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 16. The Conversion of Rome: Ancient Sources of Modern Social Tensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 17. Christian Innovation and its Contemporary Observers . . . . . . . . . . . 232 18. The Interaction of Biblical and Classical Education in the Fourth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 19. Conversion in the Ancient World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 20. The Absence of Religion, Even in Ammianus? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 21. Biblical Sources of Historical Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 22. Ancient Beginnings of the Modern World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Occasional Papers of E. A. Judge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Index 1: Documents Recovered Direct from Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

Abbreviations ABR ACW AJP Anal.Boll. ANRW AULLA BAR BASP BE BG BIAO CIJ CIRB CP CPJ CPL CQ CR CSCO CSEL DACL EA FIRA GCS GRBS HSCP HTR JbAC JBL JCE JECS JHS JRH JRS JSNT JTS KS

Australian Biblical Review Ancient Christian Writers American Journal of Philology Analecta Bollandiana Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association British Archaeological Reports Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists Bulletin épigraphique Biblia gentium Bulletin de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale Corpus inscriptionum Judaicarum Corpus inscriptionum regni Bosporani Classical Philology Corpus papyrorum Judaicarum Corpus papyrorum Latinarum Classical Quarterly Classical Review Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie Epigraphica Anatolica Fontes iuris Romani anteiustiniani Griechische christliche Schriftsteller Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Harvard Theological Review Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Christian Education Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of Hellenic Studies Journal of Religious History Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal of Theological Studies Kleine Schriften

XII MH MSS New Docs OCD OLD PG PGM PL RAC RBi REG RE REJ RTR Sb SEG SIFC TDNT TynB VH WdF ZNTW ZPE ZRG ZTK

Abbreviations

Museum Helveticum Manuscripts New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxford Latin Dictionary Patrologia graeca (ed. Migne) Papyri graecae magicae Patrologia latina (ed. Migne) Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum Revue biblique Revue des études grecques Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (eds Pauly-Wissowa) Revue des études juives Reformed Theological Review Sitzungsberichte Supplementum epigraphicum graecum Studi italiani di filologia classica Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (ed. Kittel) Tyndale Bulletin Van Haelst Wege der Forschung Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

Introduction The use of the term ‘Late Antiquity’ to cover roughly the late third to the seventh century came into vogue in English in the early 1970s, though there were French, German and other counterparts around the same time which will have had their own history. There have recently been challenges mounted to the term and its associated concepts by some Western Medievalists. Much current research centres on issues of ethnicity/identity and cultural change versus continuity. Such new(ish) focal points may well enhance our perceptions of the interactions of the classical with the Christianised late Roman world, both east and west. They will expand and complement but not replace the insights offered here. These arise from close documentary studies into the interaction of Jerusalem with Athens and its ongoing significance for the present. Our volume is divided into three broad sections: ‘Classical Antiquity and Christianity’, ‘Documents of Late Antiquity’ and ‘From Ancient to Modern’. Within these sections the chapters are arranged in general chronologically but also with an eye to developing the major themes of the section coherently. *** Section I, ‘Classical Antiquity and Christianity’, takes us to the heart of the juxtaposition which is the core of this volume and the focal point of Edwin Judge’s lifelong studies. The first chapter marks the transition from the Augustan/New Testament world of the previous collection in this series which reflected Judge’s primary teaching in Roman political history. We move now to the broader changes wrought in Western thinking once the ‘Christian’ world view was dominant. It was in late antiquity from the time of Constantine that the intellectual framework for the future development of the West was set, notably by Augustine. The very term ‘religion’, as Judge foreshadows in the first chapter, needs to be critiqued in its ancient context. We now use the word loosely, but to the classical world, as Judge argues in this and the second chapter, the traditional cults were procedural, while Christianity fell more into the category of a philosophical movement, i. e. a set of beliefs with lifestyle consequences. Judge argues strongly and forcefully from the contemporary documents and literary sources that the classical meaning of the word changed during the late third

2

Introduction

and early fourth centuries, so that the very word ‘religio’ was taken over and indeed “usurped” by the “new counter-culture” (Christianity). The word gradually lost its original sense of ‘taboo’, ‘scruple’, ‘cult’, ‘ritual’, or ‘punctilio’ mixed with ‘awe’. A consensus is yet to be reached on this, not least because some would see the Graeco-Roman cults as less barren than the simple application of the Latin term ‘religio’ with its inherent sense of formal duty might suggest. Judge’s careful precision with terminology will serve to sharpen our understanding of the functions of cults in Graeco-Roman life, and of the shifts occurring by the mid-fourth century. Indeed it was Porphyry and Julian, both of whom had once been associated with Christianity, who highlight the shift. They attempted to make the old order compete with Christianity by drawing together the old philosophical traditions (with their lifestyle implications) with traditional and newer cults. Thus, Judge argues, the modern sense of religion encompassing a quest for the ideal life and an overarching world-view should be used only from around mid-fourth century onwards. With considerable detailed textual analysis (the ‘Judge’ method), the third chapter follows the ‘group’ theme of the second and shows how synagogues and churches (‘ecclesiae’) were treated differently from each other in Roman imperial thinking down to the time of Gallienus. The Jews were a ‘nation’, with a strong sense of their national heritage, while Christians were ‘Roman’, and were therefore expected to conform to the Roman state. From this scenario Judge traces the origins of the modern dilemmas of multiculturalism and toleration. It has been a critical issue for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that Jews and Christians have had so different a fate in Europe and in the Mediterranean world. The modern dilemmas of openness, toleration and ‘national’ values are encapsulated in the Roman state’s reaction to Judaism on the one hand and Christianity on the other. Other still relevant modern themes are explored in Chapter four, which looks at self-disclosure and the individual in relation to St Paul. Paul’s quest for the ‘inner man’ (pursued even more deeply by Augustine) ran counter to the self-display found in classical drama and thought. The last two chapters in Section I explicitly spring from the theme ‘Antike und Christentum’. In Chapter five, a review of the field in 1973, Judge, then fresh from a year’s study leave in Bonn, sets out his agenda of commenting on the ways in which the physical remains (see Section II) as well as the literary sources illuminate the transformation of classical civilisation into a Christianised culture. The Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (RAC, cited frequently throughout) gives the distillation of the immense German research concentration on this area. These pieces need to be read as the novelty they (largely) represented in the world of English-speaking, especially Antipodean, scholarship to that point. So much integration of ‘Antike’ with ‘Christentum’ has taken place since then that it is easy to overlook the impact of the intro-

Introduction

3

duction into the common arena of these themes arising from the scholarship of such classicists as Albrecht Dihle. The sixth chapter, to be read closely with the fifth, originally published in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW) 1979 is reproduced in an abridged form. It reviews to that point the weighty scholarship generated by the ideas of F. J. Dölger in early Christianity and classical culture, and gives an indication of themes to be pursued more fully by Late Antique scholars over the next thirty years. Finally another review in Chapter seven looks at the way Australian researchers from 1965 to 1990 took up the ideas behind ‘Athens and Jerusalem’. Since then Australian scholars have even more richly contributed internationally to the study of early Christianity, late Antiquity and Byzantium. *** In Section II, ‘Documents of Late Antiquity’, we find specific illustrations of Judge’s way of using documentary evidence from papyri and inscriptions. These material remains of antiquity are used to showcase particular examples illustrating the changes in society. The first chapter in this Section (Chapter eight) is taken from the series New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, a series fostered by Judge and published originally through Macquarie University and now by Eerdmans. All nine current volumes (the first five edited by G. H. R. Horsley and the subsequent ones by S. R. Llewelyn et al.) provide a rich array of texts relating to the theme of ‘Jerusalem and Athens’ during the first four centuries. Chapter eight, accompanied by an in-depth bibliography, reproduces and analyses the ‘God-fearers’ inscription from Aphrodisias, originally edited by Reynolds and Tannenbaum. Judge’s careful summary of the conflicting modern views over the existence of a group of gentile God-fearers associated with ancient Judaism constitutes a major treatment of this still-contentious topic. The next two chapters, also taken from the New Documents series, show how conclusions about Christianisation may be drawn from secular and apparently unrelated documentary material. Chapter nine discusses a papyrus text from AD 253–60 which provides the first documentary evidence attested from Egypt relating to a state school teacher. Judge’s commentary, as well as taking up specific linguistic points relating to the New Testament, addresses some broader questions of literacy and the churches. In Chapter ten Judge explores, again with a detailed bibliography, the implications of the use of the terms “ecumenical” and “synod” for their adoption within Christianity. Passing from close analysis of one specific document to an overview of the surviving papyrus evidence for the Christianisation of Egypt, Chapter eleven provides a detailed, tabulated and fully up-to-date (2010) distillation of all that can be deduced about the spread and organization of church life up to AD 324

4

Introduction

from the surviving papyrus evidence. The significance of this is profound. Judge opens with a challenge: in AD 325, sixty bishops from Egypt travelled to the council of Nicaea. Therefore there must have been a well organized system of churches well prior to that. The argument that Christianity owed its triumph to its adoption by Constantine cannot be sustained. Galerius before him had already conceded defeat and ordered toleration, and as Judge shows, Christianity was by then well entrenched in Egypt. There can be no doubt that the surviving papyrus evidence, though relatively sparse, clearly points to this conclusion. Judge’s treatment of this issue should be considered in all future discussions of this topic. When Chapter twelve originally appeared in 1977 in Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum it provoked a wave of scholarly attention since it chronicled what was at that time not only the earliest attestation of the use of the word monachos for monk, but also supplied his name, Isaac. What made it more striking was the fact that the word appeared in a dated secular document (6 ? June AD 324), being one of the papyri from the extensive archive of Isidore of Karanis. The archive itself is not at all concerned with Christianity, as it details the extensive business records of Isidore and contains numerous petitions over his affairs. What is striking is the completely matter of fact way the papyrus notes the intervention of the deacon Antoninus and monk Isaac in coming to Isidore’s aid when attacked by a neighbour. The integration of such church figures into village life by 324 (cf. Chapter eleven) is surely attested by this document, the significance of which Judge immediately appreciated and brought to public notice. Chapter thirteen is another tabulated analytical overview, this time of the state of the then (1981) papyrological evidence for fourth-century monasticism. Papyri also are the basis for Chapter fourteen which sets out the grassroots papyrus evidence for the permeation throughout Egyptian society of the notion of mercy: a legacy of Jerusalem, Judge observes, rather than Athens. It is well remarked here that mercy and justice may seem to be mutually exclusive concepts. Pity, a classical concept which was regarded as unworthy of the wise, was not generally admired in the Graeco-Roman world. It was the Judaeo-Christian notion of mercy which introduced a new element into the tension between Church and State – while, as Judge observes, Roman society was if anything becoming even more brutal (if that were possible given the murderous and well-documented practices of Nero’s day). Chapter fifteen deals with magic in relation to the kinds of everyday concerns which the Church preferred to address through intercessory prayer. The continued and pervasive appeal to magic (despite the attempts of the Church and in some cases of the state to suppress it) continued throughout the fourth century and beyond. Practitioners of magic naturally tried to harness the obviously powerful Christian God alongside other deities. Christians might, as

Introduction

5

Judge’s collected evidence suggests, use their sacred texts in a semi-magical way as an apotropaic counterblast to magic. Both Jewish and Christian texts were used prophylactically. By studying texts such as these we can get close to the ‘grassroots’ of the belief among ordinary people, something we simply cannot do by relying on literary texts. It is such close documentary studies which underpin the overview of the trends to be discussed in the final section. *** With Section III ‘From Ancient to Modern’ we move to another of Judge’s continuing concerns. To study antiquity in the way set out in this and in the other collected volumes of his work is not simply to lose ourselves in the fascination of the past, nor merely to reflect on the common humanity which binds us across the millennia. For Judge, as for many others, the roots of the attitudes which form the basis of modern Western culture lie in the period roughly from 500 BC to AD 500. The tensions between the classical and the Judaeo-Christian worlds still largely drive the mindset of their twenty-first century legatees. Chapter sixteen uses four papyrus documents to illustrate the outworkings of the conversion of Rome and to spell out its social consequences. Christianity, as Judge has consistently argued (and as is spelled out in more detail in his previous volume edited for Mohr Siebeck by James Harrison), encompassed all social classes and broke deliberately with the well-developed Roman system of rank and status. Nevertheless as a movement it was driven essentially not by the disadvantaged, though it worked in their favour, but initially at any rate by the well-to-do leaders of the local Hellenistic Jewish establishment in the Eastern Mediterranean. Intellectual combined with social forces to promote and spread the Gospel through the period to Late Antiquity. Julian’s reaction to the churches and his eager adoption of their methods is sufficient testimony to this. The “long and painful journey” (Judge’s words) to reconcile the tensions resulting from the conversion of Rome is still being played out in the twenty-first century. The fourth-century contemporary observers of the conflict (Chapter seventeen) show both by their understanding and by their bewilderment how complex this interaction was. Chapter seventeen sets out in broader detail fourthcentury reactions to Christianity. The education system (Chapter eighteen) was a front line of the fourth-century conflict. Worth noting in particular in Chapter twenty is the critical assessment of Ammianus Marcellinus, the last historian in the classical tradition to write a major history of events to his own day in Latin. The conversion not of individuals but through them of society was played out decisively for the next millennium and beyond, in the fourth century (Chapters nineteen and twenty). This process brought new concepts and new use of older vocabulary to express the transformation.

6

Introduction

Among all the fourth-century contemporary observers of society Ammianus Marcellinus stands out. His attitudes to Christianity have been variously interpreted and keenly debated over the last twenty-five years, and readers should note the bibliographical update of the opening note in Chapter twenty, while recognising that these newer studies have not substantially altered Judge’s arguments. Indeed, because they are based, as is Judge’s practice, on a close analysis of terminology, one finds the intrusion of Latin terms into ‘religious’ vocabulary, as noted by Ammianus, the more striking. Ammianus uses his terms carefully, because of his desire to follow historiographical precedent and not to introduce innovation into a historical work written according to classical conventions. He endeavours to explain the Christian phenomenon which was transforming his world and with which he must have been fairly well acquainted. Using specific terms such as lex (law) and cultus (worship, devotion, culture) coupled with the adjective ‘Christianus’, Ammianus carefully distinguishes the Christians from the fourth-century adherents of traditional worship. Judge indicates that by his precision of language Ammianus is saying far more than ‘Christiani’ (the Christians). He is seeking, in Judge’s words, “to express their character as a social movement”. This careful analysis does not place Ammianus in a particular ‘camp’: lapsed Christian(?), pugnacious ‘pagan’(?). It rather seeks to clarify by analysing Ammianus’ language what it was about the Christians that was causing such an impact and such havoc in public life. The discipline of history-writing itself, begun a millennium before by the forebears of Herodotus and sharpened and focused by Thucydides was profoundly affected by the conversion of Rome (Chapter twenty-one). Eusebius in his concern for dogmatic truth (perhaps partly influenced by the philosophers) records, as few historians before him had seen the need to do, the actual words of the documents he consulted and the names of those succeeding to the main episcopal sees. By doing so he laid the foundations for the modern footnote, so thoroughly provided in all Judge’s chapters in this volume. Our whole corpus can be summed up in the title of the last chapter (and final ‘official’ public lecture of Judge in his professorial post at Macquarie University): ‘Ancient Beginnings of the Modern World’. It ranges through documents from Egypt, through the Delphic canon and ends (appropriately) with Augustine, thus encompassing documents in the Egyptian language, Greek and Latin. The peroration is this: it is vital to our future that we understand the world as they (the people of the past) and we have made it. Here lies the challenge to integrate the world of scholarship, classical and Christian, with the concerns of our society. This challenge is being addressed in a comprehensive way at Macquarie University by Judge’s successors. In 1969 when Edwin Judge took up the chair of History in the field of Ancient History at Macquarie University he already had a well thought-out plan (in gestation since 1955) to integrate the study of

Introduction

7

Church and State in Late Antiquity with his interest in Roman History and in the historical background of the New Testament. A small amount of this had been put into practice while he was at the University of Sydney, but on his coming to Macquarie the first two appointments were those of Bruce Harris and Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs). The latter was privileged to be a pupil of Robert Browning and was completing a doctoral thesis on Ammianus Marcellinus. She was invited to initiate the undergraduate teaching of the period of Constantine to Justinian along with a thematic treatment of Church and State. This unit/course, which is still running, was to be one of the first such at undergraduate level in the English-speaking world and probably beyond. It encouraged a large number of research students and coincided with an explosion of work on the Later Roman Empire and its interaction with Christianity. In British scholarship this can be measured by the ever-increasing proportion of articles on Early Christianity and Late Antiquity in the premier Journal of Roman Studies from the late 1960s to the present. From that decade Arnaldo Momigliano, followed by Peter Brown, inspired a magnificent array of younger scholars. From my own perspective, as influences on Ancient History at Macquarie, one may mention Averil and Alan Cameron, John Matthews and their pupils (including Macquarie’s Brian Croke), along with Sir Ronald Syme’s move from the Principate towards the Late Empire and the insights of Sir Fergus Millar and Alan Bowman. My colleagues and I were fortunate to forge close links in the formative years of Ancient History at Macquarie with these and other scholars in London and Oxford, while Judge’s own personal links were mainly with Germany, Cambridge and the United States. Additional staff over the years considerably added to the Department’s strength in Early Christianity/Judaism together with Late Antiquity and Byzantium. The University recognized this in appointing as Judge’s successor in the chair now named after him Samuel Lieu, who was at the centre of publishing the new Manichaean discoveries linking the New Testament tradition to Late Antiquity. At the Department’s fortieth birthday celebration in August 2009 the research and outreach concentration in this area was magnificently encapsulated by Tessa Rajak. In 2010 out of thirty-one staff well over one-third are engaged in teaching, researching and supervising in the area of ‘Antike und Christentum’ (broadly defined). This has not led to a lessening of the holistic approach to Ancient History at Macquarie. The program extends currently from Predynastic Egypt via Greece, Rome and Byzantium to Ancient China, and is underpinned by language study in Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Akkadian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac and, vital for our theme, Coptic. The program is underpinned by documentary study in papyrology, numismatics, epigraphy, and archaeology. The modern implications are addressed through the associated Centre for the History of Christian Thought and Experience.

8

Introduction

No more fitting conclusion to the import of this volume can be found than in the words of the great Jewish historiographer Arnaldo Momigliano: “No fully self-aware historian of the ancient world … can get away with the refusal to recognize that ancient history makes sense only when it is seen to evolve in such a way as to end naturally in the rise of Christianity.”* Professor Alanna Nobbs Head of Department, Ancient History Macquarie University May 2010

* Cited from Giornale Critico della Filososofia (1935) in Peter Brown’s obituary for Momigliano in Proceedings of the British Academy vol. LXXIV (1988) p.408.

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Chapter 1

The Beginning of Religious History* In his Foreword to the opening number of The Journal of Religious History, Bruce Mansfield did not attempt to define ‘religion’. This was only to be expected, since even those who profess that subject notoriously disagree on what it is.1 In any case, the editors of the Journal were not proposing to study religion, but rather its connection with history. Yet “religious history” was not exactly defined either. Instead we wanted to leave the Journal open to contributions from any point of view, period or place. What might best be brought under the chosen title was indirectly suggested by the Editor in a review article on the work of Lucien Febvre.2 Bruce Mansfield himself went on to a decade of teaching at Macquarie University, where his foundation course, ‘The West in Early Modern Times’ (1967–1976), displayed the comprehensive approach to the study of human experience in history which the Journal had advocated. With its huge enrolments (reaching over 700 in 1976) and vividly sustained texture, the course must rank with A. H. McDonald’s ‘Ancient History’ at the University of Sydney twenty years before as one of the most luminous enterprises of our time in historical education in New South Wales. But there is a contrast between the two courses which brings me to my point. One cannot imagine a course on ancient history (in the classical sense) in which the great historical issues were caught up with questions of religious allegiance in the way they must be for early modern times. It is hardly an accident that the Journal has settled down to cater for the modern West more than for Antiquity or the Orient. The phenomenon of ‘religion’, and therefore of “religious history”, as we must understand it from the modern point of view, is not something universal in human experience. Rather it is one of the distinctive marks of the history of the West, and only then of the whole modern world in its westernising mode. When we ordinarily speak of ‘religion’ now – for example when asked to identify ourselves on a * JRH 15.4 (1989) 394–412, with sub-headings added. ¹ Raffaele Pettazoni, ‘History and Phenomenology in the Science of Religion’, in Essays on

the History of Religions, Studies in the History of Religions: Supplements to Numen 1 (Leiden 1967) 215–219, translated from the French of the first number of Numen (1954). ² B. E. Mansfield, ‘Lucien Febvre and the Study of Religious History’, JRH 1.1 (1960) 102– 111; also 11.1 (1980) 6.

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census form – we refer to an institutionalised set of beliefs and practices, supporting a general framework of life, which may mark us off in a social sense from those involved in other sets. Religious identity, whether inherited or acquired, residual or even rejected, implies an alternative commitment to that of others living in the same community. Such a commitment may be more or less reconciled with the public order, but its autonomous character shows that our ‘religion’ will in principle set its own terms for the relationship. Political multiculturalism attempts to cater positively for this independence on the condition of mutual toleration. But the contemporary debate in Australian politics suggests that the concert can only be sustained if conducted in the spirit of a strictly secular nationalism. At the other extreme, no-one seriously imagines we could go back to an established religion; the churches themselves are relieved to have stepped beyond the long shadow of Constantine. Are we then back with the bracing confrontations of the third century? Hardly, since our whole cultural tradition has been fundamentally transformed through the interaction of church and state. The modern world can no longer choose between Athens and Jerusalem. It depends too much on both of them. Their very contradictions maintain the ferment of the West.

I. The “Civil Religion” of Rousseau The modern American notion of a ‘civil religion’ has been advanced as the solution to this dilemma.3 Obliging each President in particular to acknowledge divine help, it accepts a sanction beyond the state itself, thus avoiding the quasi-divinisation of the latter implied in a merely secular nationalism. Enlarging its conception of the divine to embrace every belief or attitude capable of theistic expression, it avoids the establishment of any specific religion.4 ³ Robert N. Bellah, ‘Civil Religion in America’, Daedalus: Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 96.1 (1967) 1–21, proposed that Rousseau’s dream had imperceptibly fulfilled itself in the United States; see also his The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial (New York 1975). The phenomenon had been explored under other headings in earlier works, such as Will Herberg, Protestant – Catholic – Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (New York 1955; rev. ed. 1960) and Sidney E. Mead, The Nation with the Soul of a Church (New York 1955); note also Sidney E. Mead, The Old Religion in the Brave New World: Reflections on the Relation Between Christendom and the Republic (Berkeley 1977); Bellah, Herberg and Mead contributed to American Civil Religion (eds Russel E. Richey and Donald G. Jones, New York 1974) not seen by me; note also Robert N.Bellah and Phillip E. Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion (San Francisco 1980), where comparisons are made with other countries. For Australia see R. G. Ely, ‘The Forgotten Nationalism: Australian Civic Protestantism in the Second World War’, Journal of Australian Studies 20 (May 1987) 59–67. ⁴ Cf. Bellah and Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion, 44.

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Thus it overcomes the conflict of authority which Rousseau held had “made all good polity impossible in Christian states”.5 Rousseau envied the social unity of the ancient cultures, and of early Islam, where “there can be no pontiff save the prince, and no priests save the magistrates”.6 The trouble arose because “Jesus came to set up on earth a spiritual kingdom”. This “new idea of a kingdom of the other world could never have occurred” in the classical culture. Rousseau still admired “the religion of man or Christianity – not the Christianity of today, but that of the Gospel” in which “all men, being children of one God, recognise one another as brothers”. But because this religion had “no particular relation to the body politic”, a society based on it, far from being perfect, would be robbed of its bond of union. There would be no commitment to the good government and defence of the state. What was needed was a “purely civil profession of faith”. Unlike the philosophes, whose more radical Deism he rejected, and in spite of the doubts he had about the churches of Rome and of Geneva, both of which he had in turn joined and left, Rousseau insisted upon the importance of an authoritative doctrine of God. In this he remained, as he desired to remain, identified with the distinctively Christian tradition of his birth. But he retreated from it in rejecting the methods of learned debate by which Christian beliefs had characteristically been defined: “The dogmas of civil religion ought to be few, simple, and exactly worded, without explanation or commentary”.7 This was necessary if they were to have the effect required of them, which was to make each citizen love his social duty. They only mattered to the state in respect of this. In other respects the citizens might believe what they pleased, provided they did not make exclusive demands of each other. All religions ⁵ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discources (trans. G. D. H. Cole, London 1975) 270, from The Social Contract, 4.8 ‘Civil Religion’. “I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive”, 275. For discussion, see Robert Derathé, ‘La religion civile selon Rousseau’, Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau 35 (1959–1962) 161–180; Pierre Burgelin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la religion de Genève (Geneva 1962); Henri Gouhier, ‘La religion du vicaire savoyard dans la Cité du Contrat social’, in Études sur le Contrat social de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris 1964) 263–275; Ronald Grimsley, Rousseau and the Religious Quest (Oxford 1968) and Rousseau: Religious Writings (Oxford 1970; French text, English introductions and notes); J. McManners, ‘The Religion of Rousseau’, JRH 5.4 (1969); Christian Jacquet, La Pensée religieuse de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Louvain/Leiden 1975). I have not seen Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Das Verhältnis von Staat und Religion nach der Sozialphilosophie Rousseaus: Der Begriff der ‘religion civile’ (Berlin 1935). ⁶ The Social Contract, 273. For Islam see 271. But with the Shiites of Persia “the division between the two powers began again”. “Such are the religions of the Lamas and of the Japanese, and such is Roman Christianity, which may be called the religion of the priest” (272). For Jesus and what follows see 270. ⁷ The Social Contract, 276. The dogmas were stated as follows: “the existence of a mighty, intelligent, and beneficent Divinity, possessed of foresight and providence, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social contract and the laws”. To these positive dogmas was added a single negative one, “intolerance, which is a part of the cults we have rejected”.

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should be tolerated that tolerate others. Whoever dared to say “Outside the church is no salvation” should be driven from the state, along with those who would not believe the dogmas of the civil religion. As for anyone who did publicly recognise the dogmas, but behaved as though he did not believe them, there was a more drastic penalty: death. This spectacular paradox is made all the more puzzling by the fact that Rousseau did not specify the offending behaviour. The justification he adds for the extreme penalty is also curious: “He has committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the law”. The contents of the final section of Book 4, chapter 8, of The Social Contract were cut down from the draft which appears on the back of the Geneva manuscript.8 In the published version the penultimate paragraph justified the ban on intolerance by arguing that theological intolerance cannot be separated from its civil counterpart; so that kings become only the ministers of the priests. In the draft there followed a paragraph on the impossibility of peace if intolerance was not banned, and in particular if everyone was intolerant. As the inquisition showed, such a country became a society of demons, united only in tormenting each other: You must think as I do in order to be saved. This is the frightful dogma that desolates the earth. One will never do anything for public peace without removing from the city this infernal dogma. Anyone who does not find it execrable can be neither a Christian nor a citizen nor a man. He is a monster whom one must sacrifice for the repose of the human race.

In a third additional paragraph, Rousseau spelled out the limits on the freedom to think differently. Only opinions not contrary to the profession of the civil faith should be allowed, and only cults that are compatible with the public one. Thus there would be no interest in the discussion of dogma. No apostle or missionary would have the right to charge with error a religion that served as the base for all the religions of the world and condemned none of them. Anyone who came to preach his horrible intolerance would be punished without argument. He would be punished – a variant specifies the ultimate penalty – for sedition and rebellion against the laws, except that he could go off, if he wished, and tell of his martyrdom in his own country. The earlier draft thus makes clear that the behaviour that required the death penalty was intolerance, while the formal grounds for inflicting it would be akin to perjury or treason. Immediately before the prescription of the penalty, the draft makes this provision: ⁸ Robert Derathé, editorial notes in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, Volume 3, Du Contrat social; Écrits politiques (eds Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, Paris 1964) 336–342, with notes and variants, 1427–1429. The three inset paragraphs below are translated by me from 340–342. In variant (c), 341, noted on 1429, Rousseau asserts that the intolerance does not lie in constraining or punishing unbelievers, but in consigning one’s brother to the Devil in the other world.

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Every citizen must be bound to declare this profession of faith before the magistrate and to recognise explicitly all its dogmas. If anyone should not recognise them, he is to be excluded from the city but be free to remove all his goods in peace.

When these clauses were cut out, the word “publicly” was added to the following one, which now provided the death penalty for those who “publicly” recognised the dogmas but behaved as though they did not. It is clear that the fatal fault is not so much the non-belief – for which the penalty was exile, imposed “not for impiety” but because the offender was “anti-social” – as the false testimony, which broke the spirit of the social contract. The intolerant behaviour has become “the worst of crimes” because it now involves “lying before the law”, the citizen having explicitly recognised the dogmas before the magistrate. The crucial test is not personal belief but public conformity, and behaviour consistent with that. This interpretation is reinforced by the fact that another civil ceremony, cut out from the final version with the rest of the third paragraph, was to have provided for the annual renewal of the bond: This profession of faith once established, it is to be renewed every year with ceremony [solennité], and this ceremony should be accompanied by an august and simple act of worship [culte] of which the magistrates alone should be the ministers, and which rekindles in people’s hearts the love of their country. That is all the Sovereign is allowed to prescribe with regard to religion.

Derathé considers that the remodelling of the draft (in much of its other phraseology nevertheless identical with the final version) represents a striking attenuation of the force of certain formulations directed against Roman Christianity. But a student of Augustan Rome will I hope be excused for noticing rather the loss of the parallels in ceremonial with an earlier regime of the eternal city. While the American debate over civil religion attributes the concept (and even the term)9 to Rousseau, he himself acknowledged Hobbes as his predecessor,10 and Derathé believed the influence of Machiavelli was demonstrable.11 It ⁹ Bellah and Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion, 42, claim “Rousseau coined the term for it”. ¹⁰ The Social Contract, 271: “Of all Christian writers, the philosopher Hobbes alone has seen the evil and how to remedy it”. For “civil theology” in Hobbes, see Michael Oakeshott, ‘Introduction’ to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathian, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (Oxford 1946) lxi–lxiv, reproduced in Hobbes on Civil Association (Oxford 1975) 69–72. Oakeshott draws attention to the way seventeenth-century states were “reminiscent at least of the ancient world, where religion was a communal cultus of communal deities … it was left to Hobbes to return to a more ancient theological tradition (indeed, a pagan tradition) and to theorise it in a more radical fashion”. Oakeshott recognises the source of the term “civil theology” in Augustine and Varro (see below). ¹¹ Derathé, ‘La religion civile’, 165, 169, and Du Contrat social, 1504. For Machiavelli’s admiration of ancient Roman religion as an instrument of political order, in contrast with

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is of some importance, however, to observe the degree to which all three political theorists were reaching back to the long-lost religious polity of ancient Rome. So far as I am aware, the contemporary American discussion has not taken account of this either. Perhaps an imaginative historian will one day trace the many echoes of republican Rome in modern American political life. “The freest and most powerful people on earth”, for eighteenth-century writers, was ancient Rome.12 A phrase from Vergil announces the theme of The Social Contract on its title page.13 After the third book, on forms of government, the fourth provides the methods by which the “general will” may be safeguarded. Chapters on voting and elections are followed by a sequence of four on the Roman assemblies – the most extensive chapter in the whole work apart from that on the civil religion, – the tribunate, the dictatorship and the censorship.14 They present an idealised view of Roman government, taking the various institutions at their theoretical value, and failing to allow for their politicisation in practice.15 Cousin believes that Rousseau may have sensed this weakness, and then sought in the civil religion the uncorrupted incentive that was needed to sustain the social contract. But he does not appear to consider the possibility that here also Rousseau inclined towards the ancient Roman ordering of community life. A telltale difference, however, between Rousseau’s “civil religion” and the ancient “religion of the citizen”, seems to obstruct this conclusion. Rousseau saw the maintenance of national gods peculiar to each people as a source of the political disunity imposed on Italy by the Roman church, see Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, Book 1, Chapters 11–15, in Machiavelli, The Chief Works and Others (trans. Allan Gilbert, Durham, N. C. 1965), Volume 1, 223–234. R. J. Kilcullen has drawn my attention to the high valuation of Roman religion in Walter Moyle, An Essay Upon the Constitution of the Roman Government (c. 1699), in Two English Republican Tracts (ed. Caroline Robbins, Cambridge 1969). Moyle’s French translator of 1801 believed that his work had inspired the Considérations of Montesquieu (1734). ¹² The Social Contract, 253. Rousseau drew his Roman examples from the Discourses of Machiavelli, and from Sigonius, De antiquo iure civium Romanorum (Venice 1560), to whom they are more appropriate than to Rousseau, according to C. E. Vaughan, The Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Volume 1 (Cambridge 1915) 109, n.1. ¹³ Aeneid, 11, 321–22, foederis aequas/Dicamus leges, “let us make a treaty, with equal rights”, the words of Latinus, prefiguring the treaties on equal terms that bound the Romans to the Latins, and other preferred allies. ¹⁴ Derathé, Du Contrat social, 444, n.1, 1495, finds it all of little interest to the reader, being an essay offering only a distant connection with the principles of political rights. He says the only point in the digression was to pad out the fourth book in order to be able to add it to the chapter on civil religion which had been belatedly drafted. If so, it confirms the instinctive link I am suggesting in Rousseau’s mind between the civil religion and the practice of ancient Rome. ¹⁵ So J. Cousin, ‘J.-J. Rousseau interprète des institutions romaines dans le Contrat social’, in Études sur le Contrat social 13–34, claiming that Rousseau’s Roman inspiration has been neglected, and his interpretation of Rome (to which a quarter of the whole work is devoted) never studied. He does not, however, allow for a Roman dimension to Rousseau’s religion.

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intolerance.16 The absence of wars of religion in antiquity did not disprove this. It was simply that no distinction was made between the gods and the laws. There could be no missionaries other than conquerors.17 Even the Hebrews set the God of Israel on an essentially national plane. The new idea of a kingdom of the other world was seen as seditious, with Christians only feigning to submit. It turned, under Constantine, into “the most violent of earthly despotisms”.18 Several peoples had tried to revert to the old system, but the sacred cult had always made itself independent of the sovereign. Even the kings of England and the czars of Russia had turned out to be not the masters of the church, but its ministers. Hobbes must have seen that “the priestly interest would always be stronger than that of the state”.19 This modern “religion of the priest” was anathema to Rousseau: “All that destroys social unity is worthless”.20 Such a religion “gives men two codes of legislation, two rulers, and two countries, renders them subject to contradictory duties, and makes it impossible for them to be faithful both to religion and to citizenship”. Rousseau had both correctly identified the distinctive mainspring of Western culture, and at the same time recoiled from it in incomprehension of its positive force. He was frustrated, correctly, because he could not bring the resultant political process within the classical types of constitution. “It leads to a sort of mixed and anti-social code [droit] which has no name.” His dilemma has still not been resolved by historians. That is the key task of religious history. Paradoxically, by applying his negative criterion of intolerance, Rousseau had managed to bring the ancient “religion of the citizen” to the same end result as with the “religion of the priest”, antithetical though they were in historical terms. The latter converted theological into civil intolerance because “it is impossible to life at peace with those we regard as damned”, and thus “the sovereign is no longer the sovereign even in the temporal sphere”.21 The former, by providing a different god for each people, produced polytheism entrenched in national divisions, “and this in turn gave rise to theological and civil intolerance, which … are by nature the same”.22 The “religion of man”, however, or “the religion of the Gospel pure and simple”, natural though it was, failed to provide the state with good citizens, and could only work if all citizens were good Christians; and even then they would be overrun by foreign ¹⁶ The Social Contract, 268. He also objected, 273, to its “being founded on lies and error”, so that it “deceives men … and drowns the true cult of the Divinity in empty ceremonial”. ¹⁷ The Social Contract, 269. ¹⁸ The Social Contract, 270. ¹⁹ The Social Contract, 271. ²⁰ The Social Contract, 272. ²¹ The Social Contract, 276–277. ²² The Social Contract, 268.

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powers who believed in fighting: “they know better how to die than how to conquer”.23 For his “civil religion” Rousseau had therefore distilled a few dogmas of the most general application from “the religion of man”, thus avoiding the sheer untruth and jingoism of “the religion of the citizen” under polytheism, but had coupled them to the interests of the social solidarity he admired there by devices which closely paralleled the Roman arrangements. This conclusion is in fact invited by Rousseau’s claim, in the third additional paragraph of the draft version, that one can combine the advantages of “the religion of man” with those of “the religion of the citizen”. In historical terms, he was attempting to combine the best of two worlds. He wanted the dogmatic power and personal commitment of religion in the modern sense, but a cult harnessed entirely to the community’s well-being as in Roman religion. In addition to the Roman-sounding ceremonies of public acknowledgement and annual rededication specified in the first draft (see above, with parallels below), a scatter of allusions across the “civil religion” chapter of The Social Contract shows where Rousseau’s inclinations lay. He began dramatically with an oblique compliment to Caligula, no doubt the first ever received by that particular Caesar since the Romans put a swift end to his incarnate theocracy. That would have been the right type of government for mankind, in the beginning. In spite of his rather elaborate refutation of the social utility of polytheism, in the light of its destructive effects in international relations, Rousseau brought this stage of his discourse to a climax with a well-deserved tribute to the mildness of the religious demands the Romans made on their subjects: “They left the vanquished their gods as they left them their laws. A wreath to the Jupiter of the Capitol was often the only tribute they imposed.”24 He also spelled out the fact that Roman polytheism in practice overcame the nominal diversity: “thus paganism throughout the known world finally came to be one and the same religion”. Indeed an imperial Roman of the Stoic school could readily have subscribed to the dogmas of “the civil religion”. It is surely only Rousseau’s positive identification of “the religion of man” with the Gospel (as he understands it) that prevents us linking that too with Stoicism.25 In setting out the good side of “the religion of the citizen”, Rousseau came back to the theocratic principle: “To die for one’s country then becomes martyrdom; violation of its laws, impiety”. And above all he quoted that ultimate Roman sanction, sacer estod, by which the death ²³ The Social Contract, 273–274. ²⁴ The Social Contract, 270. ²⁵ See, for Stoic ideas on religion, E. V. Arnold, Roman Stoicism (London 1911) and, on

the social life, A. Bodson, La morale sociale des derniers stoïciens, Sénèque et Marc Aurèle (Paris 1967). Gisèle Bretonneau, Stoïcisme et valeurs chez J.-J. Rousseau (Paris 1977) discusses a number of other Stoic aspects of Rousseau’s work.

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penalty is construed as a committal to the gods.26 This perhaps helps to explain Rousseau’s own recourse to the death penalty: “The defence of the holy laws with be the glory of the God of mankind”.27 Rousseau’s long critique of the civil inadequacy of “the religion of man” is inspired by the contrast between the otherworldliness and pacifism of the true Christians and the patriotism of the Romans. The Christian “hardly dares to share in the public happiness, for fear he may grow proud of his country’s glory”.28 Christians did their duty, but did not care about the outcome: Set over against them those generous peoples who were devoured by ardent love of glory and of their country, imagine your Christian republic face to face with Sparta or Rome … The soldiers of Fabius … swore, not to conquer or die, but to come back victorious – and kept their oath. Christians would never have taken such an oath; they would have looked on it as tempting God.29

As for the Crusaders, they went back to paganism: “as the Gospel sets up no national religion, a holy war is impossible among Christians”. The brave Christian soldiers under the “pagan” emperors were only emulating the “pagan” troops: “When the cross had driven out the eagle, Roman valour wholly disappeared”. The articles of “the civil profession of faith” were to be fixed by the sovereign, “not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject”.30 Rousseau illustrated this from the trial of Catiline. Caesar, the Epicurean rationalist, argued against the death penalty on the ground that the soul was mortal (and thus death would only bring Catiline undeservedly quick relief). Cato and Cicero, in refutation, “did not waste time in philosophising”. “They were content to show that Caesar spoke like a bad citizen, and brought forward a doctrine that would have had a bad effect on the state.” This identifies Rousseau with the classic Roman position. An interest in doctrine, and other forms of personal commitment, were not the marks of religion (as they would be in the modern sense), but rather of “superstition”. Religion by contrast was the respect for observances and attitudes that were commonly accepted and could be fulfilled freely by anybody in the community, without his having to justify them. Their value lay in the solidarity they demonstrated with public interest, winning the secur²⁶ The Social Contract, 273, where Rousseau cites the Latin phrase preserved in a fragment of the Twelve Tables; see Remains of Old Latin, E. H. Warmington (ed.), Volume 3, 490. Rousseau does not draw either of the parallels here suggested. ²⁷ “La deffense des saintes lois sera la gloire du Dieu des hommes”, Du Contrat social (1e version), Derathé (ed.), in Oeuvres complètes (Paris 1964) 3.342. On 1429 Derathé records a variant which shows that Rousseau did not regard this as the best religious policy, but as the only one the Sovereign could prescribe without usurping a right he did not have. ²⁸ The Social Contract, 274. ²⁹ The Social Contract, 275. ³⁰ The Social Contract, 276.

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ity of whatever divine protection was available. Whether for the individual or the nation, “religion” underwrote the established pattern of things. “Superstition”, on the other hand, only provoked argument and innovation.31

II. The “Civil Theology” of Varro “Civil theology” was the term used for community practice towards the gods by M. Terentius Varro. Rome’s greatest polymath, encyclopaedist and antiquarian, especially productive in his old age under Caesar and Octavian, his work (once running to at least 490 books) is now largely lost. Of the forty-one books of Antiquities Human and Divine, the last sixteen were allocated to divine antiquities, and dedicated in 47 BC to Julius Caesar as pontifex maximus.32 The sequence from human to divine arose from the fact that the work was confined to Roman antiquities, rather than dealing with the nature of gods and men in general. For that reason the city took precedence, since it had instituted its own cults, as a painter does his picture or a carpenter his building (frag. 5 Cardauns). Similarly, within the Divine Antiquities, Varro began with the public priesthoods, proceeding by the way of temples, festivals and rites to the particulars of the various gods themselves (frag. 4 Cardauns). Varro had adopted from the Greek philosophical tradition a threefold classification of “theology”, or “the manner of treating the gods”.33 For the first ³¹ On the limited sense (and controverted origin) of the peculiarly Roman term religio (for which Polybius 6.56.6 offers the Greek deisidaimonia, or superstitio) and its transformation after the mid-sixteenth century into the comprehensive name for the very different pattern of behaviour that had by then been established on the basis of Christian belief, see Hendrik Wagenvoort, ‘Wesenszüge altrömischer Religion’, in Hildegard Temporini (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (hereafter abbreviated as ANRW) Part I, Volume 2 (Berlin and New York 1972) 348–376, translated as ‘Characteristic Traits of Ancient Roman Religion’ in Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion (Leiden 1980) 223–256; Robert Muth, ‘Vom Wesen römischer “religio”’, ANRW 2.16.1 (1978) 290–354; Michel Despland, La religion en Occident: Évolution des idées et du vécu (Montreal 1979); and Ernst Feil, Religio: Die Geschichte eines neuzeitlichen Grundbegriffs vom Frühchristentum bis zur Reformation (Göttingen 1986). For the contrasting sense of superstitio see sections of the articles of Wagenvoort and Muth (above) and Salvatore Calderone, ‘Superstitio’, ANRW 2.16.1 (1978) 377–396. ³² Burkhart Cardauns, M. Terentius Varro: Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum, Teil 1: Die Fragmente, Teil 2: Kommentar (Mainz 1976); and see his ‘Varro und die römische Religion: Zur Theologie, Wirkungsgeschichte und Leistung der “Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum”’, ANRW 2.16.1 (1978) 80–103. Most of the fragments survive as citations or allusions in Augustine’s City of God. On his use of Varro, see H. Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics (Gothenburg 1967) 589–630. On Varro’s work as a whole, see F. Della Corte, Varrone: Il terzo gran lume romano (2nd edn, Florence 1970) and C. O. Brink and others, Varron: Six exposés et discussions (Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 9, Geneva 1963). ³³ Augustine, City of God 6.5, for this definition, prefacing Varro, frag.7 Cardauns. G. Lieberg, ‘Die “theologia tripertita” in Forschung und Bezeugung’, ANRW 1.4 (1973) 63–115, considers it not possible to see it as the doctrine of a specific Greek thinker or school, though it is first attested for Panaetius.

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two types he retained the Greek names. The “mythical” (for which Augustine recommended the Latin term “fabulous”) was that type of theology used by poets. It attributed behaviour to the gods which could not apply even to the most contemptible of men, said Varro. The “physical” (which Augustine said was conventionally rendered in Latin as “natural”) was the type used by philosophers. It dealt with the origin and essence of the gods (frag. 8 Cardauns). Varro found nothing wrong with that, Augustine remarked, except for the controversy it stirred up. It could not be tolerated in the forum, and is better confined within the walls of the schoolroom. The third type, which the Greeks call “political”, Varro called “civil” theology. The first type was applicable to the stage, the second to the universe, and the third to the city (frag. 10 Cardauns). The first two were mutually contradictory, though both contributed not a few things to civil practice. The first fell below what the people ought to seek, while the second went beyond what it was in their interest to look into. Yet the interests of citizens ought to come closer to those of the philosophers than to those of the poets. The philosophers wrote to do good (utilitatis causa), the poets for amusement (frag. 11 Cardauns). The poets appealed more to the people, which is why the ancient Romans accepted stories of the marriages of gods; and a good end was served for the state when brave men, by believing, falsely, that they were descended from the gods, were thereby made the bolder to tackle great deeds (frags 19, 20 Cardauns). Conversely, there were many true things which it was not good to have commonly known, and many occasions where it was even in their interest for the people to believe falsehoods – which explains why the Greeks kept the mysteries secret (frag. 21 Cardauns). In concentrating upon the “civil” approach to the gods, and dealing with procedure first, and only then with the identity and function of the gods, Varro was undoubtedly reflecting the contractual pattern which formed the distinctive framework of Roman religio, though this term receives no particular attention in the fragments. Only the last three books were devoted to the gods themselves. Here Varro’s objective was to identify as exactly as possible the specific function of each. There was no point in knowing the doctor’s name and what he looked like, if you did not know what a doctor was for (frag. 3 Cardauns). All those whose function he was able to specify were treated in Book XIV, starting with those who presided over the details of a man’s life. At least a couple of dozen attended to the various facets of birth and infant care (frags 90–121 Cardauns). Another dozen assisted stage by stage at the conjugal union (frags 145–156 Cardauns). Book XV apparently treated the much smaller number for whom Varro could not assign a specific function (frags 204– 224 Cardauns). In the final book Varro discoursed at first upon “physical” theology and the divinity of the universe, before treating the twenty famous public gods of Rome, well known from their temples and statues. It is clear

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from the remains of this monumental work that Roman religion provided a comprehensive validation of community life from the most intimate needs of personal relations all the way to the interests of the nation as a whole. It is also clear that as a system it was collapsing under its long accumulated weight. Even Rome’s greatest scholar could not resolve all its obscurities. There is no indication that Rousseau was aware of Varro’s work, though he could easily have known it through Augustine. He would have been familiar in general terms with the critique of ancient polytheism which the Church Fathers took over from the philosophers. Even Varro’s much admired effort of rationalisation is stultified by his own implicit admission: the “civil theology” could only be sustained by denying most people access to the truth. Rousseau was right to see that if he was to retrieve the civil benefits of the ancient “religion of the citizen” it would have to be made intellectually tenable. Varro had no way of connecting his “physical” with his “civil” theology, though he seemed conscious of the weakness of tolerating the falsities of the latter because of the social inconvenience of the former. Rousseau could substitute for polytheism a unitarian doctrine of God that was not incompatible with the ancient philosophical tradition. How had he managed to resolve Varro’s dimly sensed dilemma? Varro knew nothing of ‘religious history’. That could only arise when the doctrines of “physical theology” were released from their ivory tower, and turned loose in the civil community. This was the historic contribution of Christianity. By vulgarising a doctrine of God that was independent of the state, and insisting upon the ethical consequences, the churches demolished the “civil theology” of antiquity, and thus destroyed the solidarity of the state.34 This was the beginning of religious history. Rousseau correctly saw that Christianity could not replace “the religion of the citizen”. In its socially active, dogmatic form (“the religion of the priest”) it was bound to challenge the civil power, and collaboration only led to domination by the church. Rousseau’s ³⁴ A. D. Momigliano, in a letter to Oswyn Murray of 30 July 1987, quoted in the JRS 77 (1987) xi–xii, said, “since the Christian era (not to speak of its Jewish antecedents) the organisation of the state depends on religious principles (or anti-religious, secular principles). The Greeks did not know of religion as conditioning the structure and tasks of the state: the question could at least be asked of the Romans.” Ben F. Meyer, in his ‘Preface’ to Jewish and Christian Self-Definition 3, Self-Definition in the Graeco-Roman World (eds Ben F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders, London 1982) describes the McMaster University project on “the historic movement towards normative self-definition both in Judaism and in Christianity during the first centuries of the common era” (p. ix); their 1980 symposium sought to find similar institutional developments in the Graeco-Roman world, a quest which “yielded an almost entirely negative result” (p. x). For a sketch of the long-term historical significance of this phenomenon, see E. A. Judge, The Conversion of Rome: Ancient Sources of Modern Social Tensions (North Ryde 1980), now ch. 16 below. For a detailed analysis of the formal consequences in late antiquity, see Elisabeth Herrmann, Ecclesia in Re Publica: Die Entwicklung der Kirche von pseudostaatlicher zu staatlich inkorporierter Existenz (Frankfurt 1980).

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desire was to escape from religious history. But his dream of a pure Christianity of the Gospel (“the religion of man”) also had intolerable consequences: the quietist believers would only let the state down in the last resort. Yet by making their innocuous doctrine into an obligatory “civil religion” he hoped to restore the social solidarity of the old “religion of the citizen”, freed from its burden of falsehood. That would have marked the end of religious history. In the last two years of his life the nonagenarian Varro witnessed a comprehensive revival of the “civil theology” at the hands of Augustus. Not a temple in Rome was left unrestored.35 Derelict priesthoods were reoccupied, and the regular celebration of festivals maintained at great expense.36 According to Augustus, people’s sense of dependence on the gods became focused upon him personally. It was not just that his health was made the subject of regular vows by the consuls and priests, with public games provided to celebrate their fulfilment.37 He went on to claim that behind this lay a local and indeed individual practice of supplication on his behalf which, according to him, was comprehensive: “In their private capacity even, and in their municipal units, the whole body of citizens with a single mind and without interruption at every shrine offered sacrifice for my health”. The fivefold articulation of this claim of complete commitment makes it certain that Augustus placed the greatest weight upon it. The Romans of old had often been summoned to supplication as a thanksgiving for victory.38 In a national crisis a mass rally of the citizens to the temples might be ordered “to beg peace from the gods by sacrifice” (Livy 3.3.7). Less frequent were the occasions when the people spontaneously (as may be seen from the fact that women would sometimes take the initiative) anticipated a danger by sacrificing in advance to avert it. But Augustus now claimed an altogether unprecedented scale of dedication. He apparently meant that the practice was sustained, uninterrupted, over forty-five years. Since the whole community was also individually pledged by an annual oath to protect his safety39 – and thereby also obliged to report anything being said or done to his disadvantage – one may imagine that people would have been prompted by the risk of exposure to maintain their sacrifices for his ³⁵ Augustus, Res Gestae 20. Pierre Gros, Aurea templa: Recherches sur l’architecture religieuse de Rome à l’époque d’Auguste (Rome 1976); J. E. Stambaugh, ‘The Functions of Roman Temples’, ANRW 2.16.1 (1978) 554–608. ³⁶ Martha W. Hoffmann Lewis, The Official Priests of Rome under the Julio-Claudians (Rome 1955); J. Scheid, ‘Les prêtres officiels sous les empereurs julio-claudiens’, ANRW 2.16.1 (1978) 610–654. In general, see J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford 1979); Alan Wardman, Religion and Statecraft among the Romans (London 1982). ³⁷ Augustus, Res Gestae 9. ³⁸ L. Halkin, La supplication d’action de graces chez les romains (Paris 1953); G. Freyburger, ‘La supplication d’action de graces sous le Haut-Empire’, ANRW 2.16.2 (1978) 1418– 1439. ³⁹ Peter Herrmann, Der römische Kaisereid (Göttingen 1968).

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health even if the inclination faltered. Horace, insisting that it couldn’t, imagined a farmer simply including Augustus amongst the family gods to whom he poured the libation after the first course of each evening meal.40 It was this easy transition of Caesar from divine beneficiary to divine benefactor that could not be tolerated by Jews or Christians.

III. The “Superstition” of the Christians Judaism, as another national cult, could in principle be accommodated.41 Sacrifices were made in the temple at Jerusalem for Caesar, and Roman governors understood that his image had to be kept out of it. In Rome the distinctive Jewish way of life was well enough understood to attract both mockery and imitation.42 The sabbath in particular began to catch on in the first century. A synagogue might enrol numerous Gentile donors in its welfare foundation.43 The Christians, however, quickly distinguished from Jews, pursued a “superstition”, and were therefore socially dangerous.44 By the early second century they had become an intractable problem in Bithynia.45 To Pliny’s surprise he was unable to obtain evidence of any actual crimes. The private oath they swore (which had implied such intent) turned out to have been a pledge not to commit any. Nevertheless recalcitrants were to be executed, for obstinacy. One could easily escape by renouncing one’s Christian identity. Pliny had discovered that this could be decisively tested by requiring three steps. Using the words he prescribed, one had to invoke the gods, sacrifice with ⁴⁰ Horace, Odes, 4.5.28–40. ⁴¹ E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule (Leiden 1976); A. Linder, The Jews in

Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit and Jerusalem 1987). ⁴² M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, Volume 1, From Herodotus to Plutarch (Jerusalem 1974). See no. 147 (a fourth-century epitome of Valerius Maximus), reporting Jewish private altars in Rome in 139 BC, which may imply a syncretistic cult (so Cumont) or altars put up by Romans to the Jewish God (so Bickerman) if it is not just a misunderstanding. Horace, Satires 1.4.143 (Stern, no. 127) implies active Jewish proselytising in pre-Augustan Rome. Seneca, contemporary with Paul, writing on superstition (Stern, no. 1186) criticises their influence, but recognises the historical and doctrinal consciousness of the Jews – they are “aware of the origin and meaning of their rites”. The contemporary satirists, Persius (Stern, no. 190) and Petronius (Stern, no. 195), demonstrate the impression made by sabbath-keeping. ⁴³ Joyce Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and God-fearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge 1987), analysing a new third-century inscription from Caria, of capital importance for this recently much debated issue. See also ch.8 below. ⁴⁴ Molly Whittaker, Jews and Christians: Graeco-Roman Views (Cambridge 1984); Marta Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire (Norman and London 1986). ⁴⁵ Pliny, Epistles 10.96 and 97. A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘The Early Persecutions and Roman Law’, in The Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford 1966) 772–787; T. D. Barnes, ‘Legislation Against the Christians’, JRS 58 (1968) 32–50.

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incense and wine before their statues, and curse Christ. For good measure Pliny had included the statue of Trajan along with those of the gods; but in confirming his procedure Trajan tactfully omitted this detail. A prompt revival of animal sacrifices in the temples of the province showed that the public knew how they were supposed to show their solidarity anyhow. The Christians agreed with their critics on one central point brought against them. Although they belonged by birth to the Roman (or some other) nation, they conducted their lives as though they were a nation of their own.46 They refused to accept a variety of inherited customs, and in the last resort rejected national allegiance. This position is clearly anchored in the New Testament.47 The embarrassing charge of innovation was countered by claiming the spiritual heritage of Israel.48 But in the last resort it came to the plain contradiction of the civil order. At the end of the second century Tertullian formulated this position: “We have no need to form a party (coetus), and nothing is more foreign to us than the res publica. We recognise only a single, universal republic, the world.”49 By the middle of the next century Origen had for the first time established the working principle upon which this claim rested: The first point in Celsus’ intended exposure of Christianity is that the Christians form associations with each other secretly and therefore illegitimately, since associations fall into two categories, the lawful ones being those that are open, while those formed illegitimately are out of view of the public. He intends to expose the so-called love of Christians for each other as arising from the common risk they take and being more potent than any oath. Now since he harps on the common law and claims the associations of Christians are against it, I must take up this point. Suppose one found oneself amongst ⁴⁶ Robert A. Markus, Christianity in the Roman World (London 1957); Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven and London 1984). ⁴⁷ Oscar Cullmann, The State in the New Testament (London 1957); P. S. Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Philadelphia 1960); D. R. Griffiths, The New Testament and the Roman State (Swansea 1970); U. Duchrow, Christenheit und Weltverantwortung: Traditionsgeschichte und systematische Struktur der Zweireichenlehre (Stuttgart 1970); K. Aland, ‘Das Verhältnis von Kirche und Staat in der Frühzeit’, ANRW 2.23.1 (1979) 60–246. ⁴⁸ Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: Études sur les relations entre chrétiens et juifs dans l’empire romain (2nd ed., Paris 1964); N. R. M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations in Third-Century Palestine (Cambridge 1976); D. J. Harrington, God’s People in Christ: New Testament Perspectives on the Church and Judaism (Philadelphia 1980). ⁴⁹ Apology 38.3. Man as a citizen of the universe was a Stoic commonplace of the second century. See the excerpts from Epictetus, Discourses 1.9.1–6 etc., and Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.4 etc., collected by Ernest Barker, From Alexander to Constantine (Oxford 1956) 313 ff. and 319 ff. But note that they both balanced it with a civil duty to one’s own city which is what Tertullian here rejects: his term coetus refers specifically to political assemblies, and the preceding deprecation of factionalism suggests he has the Rome of Cicero’s day in mind. It is therefore argued by some that this passage is a rejection of the ‘Roman Republic’ in the modern sense: cf. Richard Klein, Tertullian und das römische Reich (Heidelberg 1968) 79, n.36. For Tertullian more generally see T. D. Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford 1971); J.C Fredouille, Tertullien et la conversion de la culture antique (Paris 1972).

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the Scythians, who have unholy laws, and was forced to live there through having no means of retreat, it would be praiseworthy, for the sake of the law of truth, which would be unlawful amongst the Scythians, even to form associations with likeminded people in a way that was illegitimate there. Thus, judged by truth, the laws of the nations about images and atheistical polytheism are Scythian laws and, if anything, more impious than theirs. It is not therefore unreasonable to form associations illegitimately for the sake of truth. For just as where a tyrant has usurped control of a state it would be a noble act for people secretly to form an association to get rid of him, so it is that the Christians, with the devil (as they call him) and falsehood being the tyrant, form associations against him and contrary to his law, in order to rescue any others they might persuade to give up the law of the Scythians, as it were, and of the tyrant.50

Just as Tertullian had evaded the charge of forming an illegal association by claiming that the Christians had nothing to do with public life whatsoever, so Origen takes care to distance his argument from its political implications. It is the devil (and not of course Caesar) whose laws the Christian associations are formed to defy. But, construing the devil as a tyrant, he proceeds – apparently for the first time in the history of our culture51 – to formulate the principle that one may organise to overthrow a tyrant, in the name of a higher law. The problem in Origen’s day, however, if not that of Celsus (seventy years before), was that the increasingly frequent changes of power at Rome were beginning to be caught up with the question of a higher law in the sense in which the Christians had posed it. Rome had just been celebrating its millennium. The ruling Caesar, Philip the Arab, was believed to be a Christian and to have been subjected to public penance in church (at Antioch?), perhaps over his usurpation of power.52 Origen had written to him. The new millennium was greeted with a powerful reaction by his successor, Decius, in favour of the civil theology. Trajan, in his day, had decided against any systematic response to the novel independence of the Christians. He no doubt assumed they would go away in time, like any other superstition. A century later, in AD 212, Caracalla, delivered from an initial challenge to his rule, determined to unite the whole subject population in his thanksgiving supplication (no doubt fulfilling a vow): It is most fitting that, as I ascribe the causes and the reasons of events to divine origin, I should attempt to render thanks to the immortal gods for their preservation of me in so great a danger. I believe, therefore, that most magnificently and reverently I can perform a service not unworthy of their majesty, if I make my offerings to the gods in company with the foreigners who at any time have entered the number of my subjects, as well as

⁵⁰ Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (2nd corrected impression, Cambridge 1965) 1.1. p. 7; P. Nautin, Origène: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris 1977); J. W. Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-Century Church (Atlanta 1983). ⁵¹ Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum, p. 7, n.4. ⁵² Eusebius, The History of the Church (trans. G. A. Williamson, Harmondsworth 1965) 5.34, 36; Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire (London 1983) 97.

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with my own people. I grant, therefore, to all foreigners throughout the Empire the Roman citizenship.53

The mass grant of civil rights (only an unidentified category of “prisoners of war” was excluded) committed the whole free population of the Mediterranean to the kind of political cult that Augustus had boasted of amongst the more restricted citizen body of his time. The way was now open for an unprecedented tightening of the terms of the bargain. Decius is celebrated in a recently discovered inscription from Cosa in Italy as “the restorer of worship and of liberty”.54 But the letters of Cyprian,55 Bishop of Carthage, and of Dionysius,56 Bishop of Alexandria, reveal the price. The Christians were forced to participate on pain of death. Cyprian, Dionysius, and many others evaded the test. In Palestine, Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, died in prison, while Origen survived prolonged torture.57 The Roman government was interested in more than the deaths of martyrs. The object of the campaign is made clear by the forty-four affirmations of sacrifice preserved on papyrus: (No.) 433 To those chosen (to be) in charge of the sacrifices, from Aurelia Ammonous, (daughter) of Mustes, priestess of Petesouchus the great, great ever-living god, and of the gods and Moeris, from the Moeris ward. I always of course persisted in sacrificing to the gods throughout (my) life, and now yet again, in accordance with what was ordered and in your presence, I sacrificed and poured the libation and tasted of the offerings, and I ask (you) to certify (this) below.58

The serial number shows that official files were kept, these copies presumably bearing the petitioner’s signature (no. 433 is broken off at this point). Many other copies bear the signatures of the commissioners who had been appointed for this purpose. A certain pattern of folding on some copies implies that people were obliged to carry their personal copy (or wished to do so to prevent harassment). For a thousand years Roman magistrates had undertaken vows for the well-being of the city, and discharged them with sacrifice. The good faith was proudly recorded, for example on coins. Even where the people had been ordered to join in the supplication their goodwill was also assumed. ⁵³ Allan C. Johnson and others, Ancient Roman Statutes (Austin 1961) no. 277; for the textual problems in restoring this Giessen papyrus, see C. Sasse, Die Constitutio Antoniniana (Wiesbaden 1958). ⁵⁴ “Restitutor sacrorum et libertatis”, L’Année Epigraphique 1973, no. 235; the phrase may, however, refer only to a local rearrangement of temple and municipal rights. ⁵⁵ G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St Cyprian of Carthage 1 (New York 1984) 22–39. ⁵⁶ Eusebius, The History of the Church 6.40, 41. ⁵⁷ Eusebius 6.39. ⁵⁸ U. Wilcken, Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde 1.2 (Leipzig 1912) no. 125; cf. W. L. Leadbetter, ‘A libellus of the Decian Persecution’, in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, ed. G. H. R. Horsley, 2 (1982) no. 105; P. Keresztes, ‘The Decian libelli and Contemporary Literature’, Latomus 34 (1975) 761–781.

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Indeed the essence of the contract was that it was a spontaneous expense undertaken by men to enlist the help of the gods on a particular occasion in the community interest. But the Decian libelli reveal an obsessive and novel concern by the government not only with documentary proof but with the most literal fulfilment of the sacrifices. The formula “always … and now yet again” is never altered, although the idiosyncrasies of the scribes led to many minor variations in the text elsewhere. The phrase must have been specified in the edict. Its apparent simplicity is strangely oppressive. Trajan’s method had been openly to resolve the clash: curse Christ and all will be pardoned. But here there is no overt reference either to Christ or to Caesar, not even a prayer for his health. Instead there is an assertion, bound in many cases to create bad faith, of unvarying past conformity. Both Cyprian59 and Dionysius60 took the libellus as a declaration that one had never been a Christian. It is difficult to estimate what the intentions of Decius were, and he himself was dead by the following year. Valerian and Gallienus reverted to the classic position: that it was acceptable not to pursue the Roman religio provided one recognised Roman ceremonial.61 A second point insisted upon by Decius was the personal tasting of the sacrifice. Pliny had only required a pinch of incense and a libation. But the threefold action is invariably specified in the libelli. The commissioners were required to add to their signatures the statement “we saw you taste it”. We know that for many contemporary Christians a nominal or substitute participation would have been acceptable, and there were officials willing to sell certificates. But actually to taste the victim could set up a demonic conflict within the person who later partook of the Holy Communion.62 This then no doubt is an attempt to buy up the future. Decius, like Rousseau, was trying to blot out the problem of rival personal commitments by superimposing an elementary, but all-embracing and inflexible, commitment to the civil religion. After the failure of a series of much more direct and brutal attempts to destroy the social base of the churches, the government of the tetrarchs admitted defeat, with the ‘edict of toleration’ issued by Galerius at Nicomedia on 30 April, AD 311. The original grounds of objection were clearly spelled ⁵⁹ De lapsis 27, “contestatio est christiani quod fuerat abnuentis”. ⁶⁰ Eusebius, The History of the Church 6.41.12. ⁶¹ H. A. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, (Oxford 1972) 11.1.1, “eos qui Romanam

religionem non colunt, debere Romanas caerimonias recognoscere”. The view that Decius also was not meaning to exclude Christian practice is argued by J. Molthagen, Der römische Staat und die Christen im zweiten und dritten Jahrhundert (2nd edn, Göttingen 1975). See also R. M. Grant, ‘Sacrifices and Oaths as Required of Early Christians’, in Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten 1 (Münster 1970) 12–17. ⁶² Cyprian, De lapsis 25. In general on the Christian reaction to Decius see Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York 1987) 450–492; C. Saumagne, Saint Cyprien, Évêque de Carthage, “Pape” d’Afrique (248–258): Contribution à l’étude des “persécutions” de Dèce et de Valérien (Paris 1975).

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out and not in any way retracted. The solution in effect was to accept the Christians as a foreign body, and require in return the same kind of support from them as the Jews had once given: … since in some way such wilfulness had entered the said Christians and such folly seized them, that they were not following the ancient customs, which perhaps their own ancestors had instituted, but upon their own judgement and inclination were making up the laws for themselves to keep, and forming a different nation on different principles … Thus it will be their duty, in consequence of our indulgence, to beseech their god for the safety of us, of the commonwealth and of themselves, so that the commonwealth may be preserved unharmed in every respect and that they may be able to live in security where they are.63

A year later a new solution was attempted: apartheid. Various cities had requested Maximin to issue orders that Christians be physically excluded from their territorium. Maximin’s rescript has always been available in the translation Eusebius provided from the text on the stele at Tyre. Its strict territorial implications are now confirmed by a second fragment of the Latin original found at Colbasa in Pisidia: But if they persist in their accursed superstition, let them be, as you have requested, separated and driven out well away from your commonwealth and its territory, so that in this way your commonwealth, in accordance with its praiseworthy aim in the matter, may be separated from all taint and impiety and fulfil its inborn intention along with the reverence due to the ceremonies of the immortal gods.64

After the final victory of Constantine, such sentiments were increasingly restricted to intellectual circles. The premature death of Julian ended his attempt to reverse the new establishment. The predicament of the traditionalists in the later part of the fourth century may be observed in the work of Rome’s last great historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, an admirer of Julian. Like Eusebius he sensed the historical uniqueness of the churches, but had no adequate way of relating the phenomenon either to Roman religion or to public life. He knew not to confuse his terminology. “God”, “worship”, “temple”, “altar” and “sacrifice” are words exclusive to the civil cults. His favourite word for “deity” (numen) was used only once in a Christian connection – when Julian was still pretending to keep that up (22.1.5). (The term hinted at who he thought the deity really was.) Ammianus knows, and sometimes apologises for, the terms “bishop”, “presbyter”, “deacon”, “church”, “synod” and “martyr”, all institutional rather than cultic. He was aware that he was confronting a major social force, but did not know how to define it. The new-fangled label christianitas he did not use. The prac⁶³ Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 34.2, 5. ⁶⁴ Eusebius, HE 9.7.12; S. Mitchell, ‘Maximinus and the Christians in AD 312: A New

Latin Inscription’, JRS 78 (1988) 105–124. The English translation here is made from Eusebius’ Greek, but incorporating “superstition” from the Latin where Eusebius gives “futility”.

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tice of it was alluded to by ritus, religio, lex or cultus, the sense in each case specified with the adjective christianus. No other such determinant was used with any of these nouns by Ammianus, and they are all terms whose usage with him is primarily outside the ‘religious’ field. He had a penchant for metaphors from military command in his descriptions of church affairs. He was well aware of church impact on public life, and tried to grasp it by assimilation. He welcomed some uncontentious, ethically quietist and tolerant Christians, but could not explain the factionalism and brutality of others. He failed almost totally to see the intellectual and dogmatic sources of it all.65 The general supplicatio of Decius in AD 250 represents a clear-cut pivot in the historic transformation of ‘religion’. Far from supplying an unquestioned, comfortable endorsement of the established order any more, the old Roman religio was being drawn into a political battleground by the new counter-culture, which was to usurp its name. In the following century, and most conspicuously under champions such as Porphyry and Julian, the classical ‘religious’ and philosophical traditions were themselves drawn together to form a new ‘religion’ of the modern type – the personal life commitment of those who still hoped to save the old order from dismantling by the churches. Porphyry and Julian had both had close personal contact with the Christianity they rejected, and understood well the intellectual sources of its disturbing social activism.66 The churches for their part quickly clothed their radical posture with some of the reassuring trappings of classical ‘religion’.67 Yet their own internal disputes over orthodoxy and social discipline kept the drastic character of the movement in the centre of public attention. The absolutism threatened by the Eusebian doctrine of Constantine’s divine appointment was shattered from within by the dogmatic drive of the churches.68 Within a century the Augustinian solution of the ‘Two Cities’ set the intellectual framework for the future development of the West.69 Had Rousseau been a student of religious history, ⁶⁵ These observations are based upon my own study of the vocabulary of Ammianus (now ch. 20 below), and are made independently of R. L. Rike, Apex Omnium: Religion in the Res Gestae of Ammianus (Berkeley 1987). For Christianity as a social force in a contemporary Patristic author, see A. Stötzel, Kirche als ‘neue Gesellschaft’: Die humanisierende Wirkung des Christentums nach Johannes Chrysostomus (Münster 1984). ⁶⁶ E. A. Judge, ‘Christian Innovation and its Contemporary Observers’, in History and Historians in Late Antiquity (eds B. F. Croke and Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs), Sydney 1983) 13–29, now ch. 17 below. The idea of a shift in the meaning of the term ‘religion’ in the third century is well discussed by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York 1962). ⁶⁷ P. Stockmeier, Glaube und Religion in der frühen Kirche (Freiburg 1973). ⁶⁸ Elizabeth A. Isichei, Political Thinking and Social Experience: Some Christian Interpretations of the Roman Empire from Tertullian to Salvian (Christchurch 1964); R. Farina, L’impero e l’imperatore cristiano in Eusebio di Caesarea (Zurich 1966). ⁶⁹ Robert A. Markus, History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (Cambridge 1970).

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rather than a social theorist, he might have seen that it was from the irreconcilable tension between “the priest” and “the sovereign” that there had been generated much of the potential for the progress, freedom, and even tolerance, that he valued.

Chapter 2

Group Religions in the Roman Empire* What is the term ‘Gruppenreligionen’ meant to suggest? For the Roman imperial period, Jörg Rüpke (henceforth ‘R.’) explains (p. 1), the “classic question” of Religionswissenschaft over the “social forms of religion” has not been very effectively tackled by such classifications as ‘church’ and ‘sect’. Even the term ‘cult’ leaves open the question of what social formation might attach to the omnipresent sacral rituals. R. also means to avoid the old trap of positing a type of ‘oriental’ or ‘mystery’ religion that has been thought to have offered both personal salvation and a new community life. Likewise, the terms ‘collegium’ or ‘association’ have come to imply a lawful constitution that cannot in fact be substantiated. Instead, R. hopes to use the sociological concept of the ‘group’ to cover various phenomena without further classificatory regulation. Yet a strictly comparative study is also to be avoided. But what are these groups? In his particular contribution to this collection (p. 113), R. cites his own earlier definition: A ‘group’ is “a delimited number of people communicating with and thus influencing each other; such a social process (Gemeinschaftshandeln) involves a minimum of regulation and continuity”. (No doubt ‘minimum’ here means ‘at least a little’, rather than ‘as little as possible’.) As for ‘Gruppenreligionen’, they are also to be taken as a given (p. 113). They appear as a “self-evident variant (Spielart) in the religious landscape of ancient cities”. Hence the question of their relation to other forms of religious institutionalisation with which they may come into conflict in a great city of the second to fourth centuries. The sub-title of the book is ‘Sozialformen, Grenzziehungen und Leistungen’ (‘Social Forms, Boundary-markers, and their Contribution’), while R.’s own article is entitled ‘Integrationsgeschichten: Gruppenreligionen in Rom’ (pp. 113–126). Observing certain details of five ‘cults’ (so classified for this purpose, pp. 118, 121), namely Mithraism, the cults of Sol and of Jupiter Dolichenus, Christianity, and ‘Gebaute Religion’ (the public temples), R. distils five more general theses for future discussion (pp. 122–123): * Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 51 (2008) 188–195; review of J. Rüpke (ed.), Gruppenreligionen im römischen Reich (Tübingen 2007), slightly adapted.

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1. The groups cannot be shown to have followed any sustained calendrical timetable of their own (did the Christian reference to the Sabbath/Sunday, R. asks, in fact reflect a “sociological reality”?). 2. The religious groups aim at integrating themselves into the structure of public religion (a competitive situation is implied, with religio licita referring not to a legal category but to the opportune and temporary success of a group). 3. New migrants die younger and had not been the primary leaders in their community of origin, so immigrant groups are very fluid in content and structure, quickly adapting to the ranking system of the host society. 4. It is groups more than organisations that we see, hence the instability of their rapidly changing institutional forms, with the attractiveness of overlapping institutions perhaps pointing to group instability rather than organisational strength. 5. In public the groups are often seen only incidentally, for example in processions, without the permanency of prominent buildings, but it is not clear whether this lack reduces conflict or only provokes suspicion (how can a cult have no image of the divinity?).

The air of questing uncertainty which pervades these very condensed proposals must surely be deliberate. It matches the approach R. has already adopted in his introduction (pp. 1–6), reviewing the contributions of his collaborators. But before I comment on the historical shortcomings of setting such low-level sociological horizons, it is essential to recognise its place in the monumental enterprise to which R. is committed.

I. Imperial and Provincial Religion In his current position at Erfurt, R. is responsible by professorial title for the study of comparative religion. While previously at Potsdam, he had already in 1996, with his senior colleague H. Cancik (then at Tübingen, now in Berlin), presided over an international and interdisciplinary conference sponsored by the Werner-Reimers-Stiftung (Bad Homburg) on ‘Reichsreligion und Provinzial-religion’. One purpose was “to clarify the concepts, methods and issues for further work in this area, and to find the criteria by which the place taken by Christianity in the multi-dimensional field of ancient religions can be determined”.1 The book of this conference then lent its title to an elite ‘priority program’ (Schwerpunktprogramm) of the national research funding body (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, henceforth ‘DFG’). A sub-title indicated a focal point different from that identified in the preface to the Bad Homburg volume: Globalisierungs- und Regionalisierungsprozesse in der antiken Religionsgeschichte.

¹ Römische Reichsreligion und Provinzialreligion, eds Hubert Cancik und Jörg Rüpke (Tübingen 1997) iii.

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The web-site of the DFG program (at 26.11.2007), co-ordinated from Erfurt by R., identifies as its principal stimulus the analogous modern phenomena of colonisation, Europeanisation and globalisation. No reference is made to the place (if any) of religion in the modern processes, except by reference to their “fruitful tension” with the concept of imperial religion in the title of the program. By the year 2000 alone twenty-two projects had been accepted into the program, giving it the scale of a ‘special research area’ (Sonderforschungsbereich) under the DFG. In a national drive for research excellence that is geared to the natural sciences, this represents surely a unique achievement, both in the disciplinary field and in its geographically devolved character. Ancient historians world-wide recognise the very substantial contributions to Roman antiquities both of H. Cancik (Der neue Pauly) and of R. as DFG Co-ordinator (Kalender und Öffentlichkeit, 1995; Fasti sacerdotum 2005). Now this massive harnessing of German forces is delivering a great surge of strength in our field, strong also in its international collaboration. But amidst all its successes the present volume confronts us with a problem of definition common to ancient historians in general. It has already been faced in the DFGsponsored symposium, Eisenach 2003, and recognised by Cancik (p. 231) and R. (p. 221) alike in their contributions to the published papers.2 It is the problem of a definition for antiquity of the term ‘religion’ itself. Concluding his study of “universal and local religion” in Tertullian and Minucius Felix, R. states that their use of Varro’s Antiquitates rerum divinarum (lost to us apart from such citations) might give the impression that Varro worked with our conception of religion classified as to its city, provincial or imperial frame of reference. But such an impression is illusory, R. says. There is no such conceptual reflection to set alongside the new offer of a universal religion presented by the Christian writers. This indeed points to the heart of our misunderstanding.

II. The Definition of ‘Religion’ The modern sense of ‘religion’ as “the quest for … the ideal life, [its] … practices … and … world view” (The Macquarie Dictionary, 1981) developed only with the penetration of the Roman world by Christian belief and experience. The Oxford Latin Dictionary (1980), confined to sources down to AD 200 (the time of Tertullian and Minucius Felix but excluding them), offers a tenfold ² Texte als Medium und Reflexion von Religion im römischen Reich, eds Dorothee Elm von der Osten / Jörg Rüpke / Katharina Waldner = Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge 14 (Stuttgart 2006).

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definition of religio, which may be distilled in the following terms: ‘taboo’, ‘scruple’, ‘impediment’, ‘sanction’, ‘principle’, ‘awe’, ‘sanctity’, ‘ritual’, ‘cult’, ‘punctilio’. The classification of a series of alternative ‘religions’ arose only in the early seventeenth century when ‘paganism’ and ‘Mohammedanism’ were seen to stand in sequence with Judaism and Christianity.3 It has been the proposal of W. Cantwell Smith that the first religion in the modern sense (i. e. of a movement operating internationally and offering an alternative lifestyle to that of any national community) was third-century Manichaeism.4 But Mani saw himself as “apostle of Jesus Christ”, and the phenomenon he represents is manifested by the Christian movement as a whole from the beginning. In Mani’s own day, the boast of his Zoroastrian persecutor, Kirtir (or Karder), seems already to presume a sequence of rival religions: Jews, Buddhists, Brahmans, Nasoreans, Christians, Maktaks (Mandaeans, Manichaeans?), Zandiks (Mazdaean heretics?).5 Our problem however arises not from the difficulty of defining the history of what we now mean by ‘religion’, but from the arbitrary yet (in spite of Cantwell Smith) now almost unshakeable convention of applying that indiscriminately as a primary categorisation of what we judge to be religion in pre-Christian times or cultures. Yet everyone knows that neither Greek nor Latin (nor other national languages presumably, such as Hindi) had any such term, nor any other generic category for the cultural phenomena we now aggregate under that heading.6 Julian the Apostate, having been brought up as a Christian, baffled his fourth-century admirers by attempting to compel Hellenism itself to imitate the self-consciously didactic and interventionist practice of those he put down as “Galileans”. It is a striking if tacit indication of this incomprehension that Ammianus Marcellinus, though repeatedly attempting to characterise the Christians in this very epoch, and in general sympathetic to Julian, cannot see any link or parallel between them and Julian’s religion of Hellenism, as we might put it. The distinctive terminology of the classical cults is never used by

³ E. Feil, Religio. Die Geschichte eines neuzeitlichen Grundbegriffs vom Frühchristentum bis zur Reformation (Göttingen 1986); P. Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge 1990); M. C. Taylor (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago 1998). ⁴ The Meaning and End of Religion (New York 1962; repr. Minneapolis 1991). ⁵ M. Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism (Manchester 1984; reproduced Chicago 1990) 10.3.3.7; cf. Cambridge History of Iran 3/2 (1983) 882. ⁶ E. A. Judge, ‘Did the Churches Compete with Cult-groups?’, in J. T. Fitzgerald, T. H. Olbricht and L. M. White (eds), Early Christianity and Classical Culture (Leiden 2003) 501– 524, now First Christians, 597–618; G. A. Oddie, Imagined Hinduism (New Delhi 2006) 68– 83.

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Ammianus with reference to Christians. The latter have no deus, no templum, no sacra.7 Those who work under the modern rubric of ‘Religion’ are of course well aware of the conceptual incoherence of their discipline.8 Everyone understands (or should do) that this is not a universal anthropological category of human behaviour (such as marriage, or language), but that its modern invention as a construct presumed to apply universally has arisen from the sharpening of the missionary character of Christianity with the Reformation and the opening of the rest of the world to European navigation. It is ironic that in the Rüpke handbook (p. 18) C. R. Phillips III blames the Lutheran cause for saddling the ancient religion of Rome with the ritualism of its Catholic successor.9 Such a reaction against Luther, not unfashionable in American religious studies, overlooks the origin of our concept of religion. It also misses the crucial place of dogmatic controversy in creating the modern discipline of History itself.10 This no longer turns on the rhetorical presentation of the past as a guide to policy, but puts the truth of a matter to the test by appeal to its primary sources. An unresolved dilemma over how we are to understand the world has likewise generated the modern concept of religion. Religion is now a source of authority that may be set against the civil order. The prophet speaks for God against the king. The gospel is for all nations. The old is only temporary, until the new comes in. Instead of a perfect and therefore unchanging cosmos, we look to the challenge of an open future. It will be different. We must see things changed.11

III. Christianity and Roman Religion Why did it not occur to the Roman state over 250 years to accommodate Christianity within the time-honoured variety of the classical cults? Because it ⁷ E. A. Judge, ‘The Absence of Religion, even in Ammianus?’, in G. R. Treloar and R. D. Linder (eds), Making History for God (Sydney 2004) 295–308, now ch. 20 below. ⁸ J. Rüpke (ed.), A Companion to Roman Religion (Oxford 2007) 6; J. B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Oxford 2007) 4–7 (“fundamentally misleading”, 5), 13–14; J. P. Davies, Rome’s Religious History (Cambridge 2004) 7; D. C. Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome (Cambridge 1990) 12–13; B. Saler, Conceptualizing Religion (Leiden 1993), on the anthropology of the matter. ⁹ C. R. Phillips III, ‘Approaching Roman Religion: The Case for Wissenschaftsgeschichte’, in J. Rüpke (ed.), A Companion to Roman Religion (n.8 above) 10–28. ¹⁰ J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Origins of the Study of the Past’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 4 (1962) 209–246; A. D. Momigliano, The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford 1963) 149, refers to “the Eusebian form … brought back in full force by the Reformation”. ¹¹ W. Kinzig, Novitas Christiana (Göttingen 1994); G. G. Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (Tübingen 1999).

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was precisely that which the Christians threatened to destroy. They claimed as their own the intellectual heritage of Israel. The divinisation of the natural order, expressed in idolatry, was anathema. True, the Fathers drew upon the sacrificial cult of Israel, using its priesthood as a metaphor of the teaching ministry in church life. But the high doctrine of creation, radically distinguishing the cosmos from its maker, who would bring it to its end, remained intact. Once this too was freed from symbolic interpretation in the classicising mode, and the world taken literally as an artefact, the path was opened for experimental science, and an evolving universe.12 Likewise for proof from evidence in history, and for religion as an alternative order of society. The term christianoi brands the believers as partisans, while christianismos marks off their culture as a whole from ioudaismos and hellenismos alike. All three traditions are carried by their own canonical literature, driven by an elaborate scholarly enterprise, as they explain and propagate their positions. In this fundamental characteristic the Christian project is not at all similar to the classical cults. The better analogy within the classical tradition is with the philosophical schools, as was noticed on all sides by the second century. Yet the closest comparison in that case, with the Epicureans, shows how considerable the difference still is, particularly in social terms. Given that the modern concept of religion is defined by a combination of features essentially unique to Christianity, it is in effect a category mistake to impose the term upon other ancient phenomena. This may explain the frustration of C. R. Phillips III (n.9 above). Arguing for “a comprehensive history of the study of Roman religion” (p. 10), he advocates looking for “interpretive guidelines and comparative information from disciplines such as anthropology, religion studies, sociology” (p. 11). But he seems unable to explain why their “various theoretical guidelines” have left us now “less sure than ever what Roman ‘religion’ is” (p. 26). He has repeatedly dismissed the “empirico-positivist” concerns of classical studies. But, if the search for “the whole” has failed to discover what that might be, clearly it is time to go back to the texts and check again what they say. Often, of course, that will be nothing at all beyond the immediate particulars that are detailed. Not so, however, our translations, which habitually import the term ‘religion’ that our own minds call for. Anachronism is the historian’s version of this paradox of hermeneutics. The assumption of a universal category of ‘religion’ seems to be one of two reasons for keeping the term.13 The other is the desire to avoid the confessional implications of the word ‘theology’ (in the name of an academic depart¹² Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge 1998). ¹³ Cf. B. A. Pearson, The Emergence of the Christian Religion (Harrisburg 1997).

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ment, for example). But, since the modern sense of ‘religion’ is determined by the distinctive theology of Christians anyway, this covert evasion risks being charged with bad faith. Theologia, moreover, unlike religio, is a regular term of classical philosophy for academic discourse on the divine. In any case it is essential for non-confessional students to examine the momentum of theology if they are to gain a realistic understanding of the phenomenon of religion. There are various ways of providing for this, as well as alternative terms, such as ‘ideology’ or ‘mentality’.14 The current fashion for deprecating Christian ‘triumphalism’ risks missing the historic significance of the conversion of Rome. According to the great historian of historiography, Arnaldo Momigliano, the son of Israel, we are all heirs to this.15 In the work reviewed here, R. has adopted a scattered approach, setting his own essay on ‘Integrationsgeschichten’ (pp. 113–126) midway between three on early Christian topics and three on classical cults. It is not however his intention to develop this contrast, though he is well aware of it. Rather he means to link Christian and classical cases as examples of his category of Gruppenreligionen. The central question (amongst a diverse array of others) is how Gruppenreligionen (i. e. those functioning from place to place as part of a chain of groups with a common identity) interacted with the civic cults of a particular place (pp. 2–3). In R.’s article this place is the city of Rome itself, and he treats both Christianity and certain of the classical cults. But the three preceding articles on Christian topics are not mainly concerned with Rome, while the following three discuss different cults in three different provincial settings. Thus the whole collection, while rich in detail from case to case, leaves the big questions hanging. Even the meaning of Gruppe is put seriously in doubt when we find the opening article (by C. Schultz) devoted to ‘The Social Classification and Religious Practice of Women in the Roman Republic’ (pp. 7–29). R. states (p. 3) that in it “the concept of Gruppenreligionen enables us to see the complexity of traditional religion even within the structures of public cults”. In a carefully documented study, Schultz demonstrates that women’s participation in cult practices (where required or permitted) was conditioned by social class and wealth in much the same way as men’s, except that high personal reputation and probity were sometimes explicitly required. But for women to constitute a ‘group’ for the purposes of this collection they were supposed to be “commu¹⁴ G. Theissen, Die Religion der ersten Christen (Gütersloh 2000); C. Markschies, Zwischen den Welten wandern: Strukturen des antiken Christentums (Frankfurt 1997); C. Schneider, Geistesgeschichte des antiken Christentums (2 vols, Munich 1954). ¹⁵ P. R. L. Brown, Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1998) 414, translates Momigliano (from the Italian), “No fully self-aware historian of the ancient world … can get away with the refusal to recognise that ancient history only makes sense when it is seen to evolve in such a way as to end naturally in the rise of Christianity”.

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nicating with and thus influencing each other” (p. 113). Was there no women’s movement at that time?

IV. The Contribution of Hubert Cancik H. Cancik follows with what is in effect a stimulating test of the main theme of the collection. He writes on the organisation of “foreign religion” in Rome, 1st to 3rd c. AD (pp. 31–48). Disclaiming any sociological system (p. 32), he looks for group formation under household, school and association (conlegium). In each of these three forms the case of the Christians is discussed separately. The household is counted as a group by nature. In addition to its biological, economic and juristic functions it has a “religious” one. The head sacrifices daily to its guardian spirit (lar) before whom even the peasants on the estate are fed (Columella 11.1.19). But the imperial calendar of sacrifice must also be observed (challenging for a Christian wife). This in effect extends the definition of a group to any human society. But Cancik looks to more individually determined cultic practice that a household might take in. Cicero (Cato de sen. 45) has Cato turn his dining routine into a club (sodalitas) in honour of the Great Mother of Phyrygia, whose cult was introduced to Rome during his quaestorship of 204 BC. Ovid (Pont.4.9.105– 112) fitted out his house of exile as a shrine of the divinised Caesars. Within a year of the death of Augustus all the (leading) houses of Rome organised worshippers of him “on the model of the collegia” (Tac. Ann.1.43). From Torre Nova outside Rome under Marcus Aurelius comes the Dionysiac cult-group of 411 initiates within a major senatorial family (IGUR 1.160). Yet in each of these cases the initiative is wholly within the domain of the household head. As in Caesarea (Acts 10:24, 11:14), Philippi (Acts 16:34) and Rome itself (Rom. 16:5, 10, 11), conversion to Christ might begin with house-based groups. Four generations later (under Commodus) “whole households and families” are said to have been converted amongst the “rich and famous” of Rome (Eus. HE 5.21). Several of the parishes there go back to family foundations prior to Constantine. Cancik sees no evidence that this unit of development was conceived in Roman law as a private association (collegium). A house, however, was normally needed to provide the base for a school, Cancik’s second type of group. But he finds no evidence for an ongoing philosophical school in Rome (prior to the second century, no doubt?). Little as we know of school routine, it was not surely linked with the sacral system. Temples were not schools, teachers not priests. But education embraced mythology and ethics through the study of literature. It was only Julian who thought of subjecting this to a confessional test (n.54).

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Paul had listed teaching amongst the ministries in church (1 Cor.12:28). During his final two years in Rome he kept open house in premises large enough to accommodate anyone who wished to hear his teaching (Acts 28:30–31). Cancik had already stressed (p. 38) Cicero’s frequent hospitality to visiting philosophers. He now suggests, however, that the self-consciously philosophising stance of Christian teachers in Rome “could not have been foreseen” (p. 40). He is referring of course to the presentation of Valentinus, Heracleon and Marcion as philosophers in the second century, and sees the thirdcentury Neoplatonic school of Plotinus as matching that (p. 41). But at the same time the multiplicity of Christian schools and teachers, along with the house-churches, was being sidelined by the Catholicism which was soon to win privilege and public financial support. Led by bishops claiming orthodoxy, it drew strength also from organised charity. Cancik’s first two ‘groups’ stretch R.’s definition, but in largely also sidestepping the theoretical tangles created by the historically ambiguous category of ‘religion’, he makes telling gains in realism. Yet one should not underestimate the phenomenon of orthodoxy itself as a force in cultural development. On the one hand history often shows how a church that identifies too closely with its national culture may come to function like an ancient cult-group, merely underwriting conventional values, conservative and backward-looking. On the other hand Catholicism in particular has demonstrated time and again how the entrenchment of orthodoxy still preserves the prophetic voice and strongly didactic mission that can break out into new life. Cancik’s third form of socialisation, the ‘community’ (Gemeinde), more neatly fits the category of Gruppenreligionen. He sees in the second-century Isis-cult at Cenchreae and Rome, as presented by Apuleius, an anticipation of much subsequent Christian practice. The cult procession, for example, clearly marked off clergy from laity. This Isiac fashion, unlike that of the oldest mysteries, reflected a local society complete, it seems, with pastoral care by ‘priests’. Cancik cites evidence which leads him to believe similar developments were occurring with the cults of Mithras, the Great Mother, and Hercules. I have concurrently made a case against such a view.16 But Cancik is able to develop in that direction the contemporary allegation that the Mithras cult was merely imitating the eucharist.17 Only a monotheist of course would have been upset by such a parallel. Tertullian’s calculated use of technical terms suggestive of the Roman law of associations (collegia) sharpens his point that the Christians had never been so classified. Indeed it is precisely this point which gives force to Tertullian’s pro-

¹⁶ ‘Kultgemeinde’, RAC 22 (2007) 402–405, cf. ‘On this Rock’ First Christians, 619–668. ¹⁷ Justin Martyr, Apology 1.66.

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vocative assertion that, far from being localised, they have occupied every place and institution. Their only res publica is the world.18 Cancik thus concludes that, while house, school and community all offered a private framework for various groups, only the Christians carried this forward into an imperial or world-wide movement. They do not fit the ancient Religionsmodell (p. 46). But this persuasively demonstrated result puts the ‘model’ itself in question. Cancik has needlessly tied his case to the framework of his previous very impressive analysis of the ancient historiography of culture.19 There he approached the dual logoi of Luke as the history of an institution, namely the ekklesia, and sought a pattern for it in a section on ‘The Historiography of Religion from Herodotus to Lucian’ (p. 682). But Luke nowhere explains his belated and hardly extensive use of the term ekklesia. It does not occur at all in the first logos (contrast Matthew 16:18; 18:17). The preface there, which covers both logoi, addressed to a well instructed reader, clearly identifies the theme as “an orderly account of the pragmata accomplished among us, as handed down by those who from the outset were eyewitnesses and servants of the logos” (Luke 1:1–4). In Acts as well this master-logos is frequently identified as “the word of God”, “the word of the Lord”, or (once, Acts 15:7) “of the gospel”. The ekklesia is indeed multiplied (Acts 9:31, Cancik’s key text) but so is “the word of the Lord” (Acts 12:24). The whole of the second logos is structured around set speeches which show the origin and growth of this very particular logos, as it is led across entrenched cultural borders to culminate in the unrestricted preaching of the kingdom of God in the imperial capital (Acts 28:31, cf. 1:1–3). In spite of Cancik’s interesting attempt to establish a genre of the historiography of religion, the treatment within it of Lucian especially points rather to the next genre he establishes, ‘The Historiography of Philosophy from Dicaearchus to Cicero’ (p. 687). This is where both Luke and Eusebius belong. The central problem with the category ‘religion’ for the ancient world is that it fails to account for the massive and relentless drive for dogmatic truth which surely lies behind all the social and cultic apparatus of the church tradition it generated. It is the preaching of the word that has created the church, and that builds it up. The central gifts of the Holy Spirit are mediated orally. As the term logos requires, the worship of God is rational (Romans 12:1), leading to social transformation (12:2). This is why Jewish observers spoke of the school (hairesis, Acts 24:5; 28:22) of the Nazoraioi, parallel with Sadducees (5:17) and Pharisees (15:5), amongst the “philosophies” of Judaism as Josephus puts it.20 ¹⁸ Tert. Apol. 37–39, esp. 38.3, 39.1. ¹⁹ ‘The History of Culture, Religion and Institutions in Ancient Historiography: Philologi-

cal Observations Concerning Luke’s History’, JBL 116/4 (1997) 673–695. ²⁰ Jos. Ant. 18.1.2.11.

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V. New Testament Churches and Classical Cults In ‘Boundary Markers in Early Christianity’ James Dunn treats the key practices (circumcision, food laws) that set Jewish identity apart, themselves sometimes less rigid than intended; the arguments within Christian groups over them; and the other Jewish principles that Christians inherited as non-negotiable (monotheism, strict sexual morality) together with their new markers (belief in Christ, spiritual gifts, baptism and the Lord’s supper). In passing (p. 61) he refers to “the new religion” but without turning to the implications of this phrase. M. Bachmann treats the peculiarly Pauline concept “works of the law”, especially in respect of its reception across the following two centuries, and beyond. Examining the formulaic characteristics of the expression, he finds that the Augustinian tradition of both Protestant and Catholic exegesis is partly anticipated in taking “works of the law” to refer to “concerns over religious performance” (p. 80). But the so-called ‘new perspective’ is also to a certain extent anticipated in taking the “works” rather as corporate “boundarymarkers” (p. 81). As for the prior history of the Pauline formula, Bachmann sees the recently identified phrase from Qumran, “Some of the precepts of the Torah” (4QMMT C27), as remarkably close, though inverted by Paul for the purpose of including Gentiles within the corporate boundary (p. 84). J. Woyke treats the demonising of other cults (“polylatric monotheism”) in Paul’s argument over eating meat offered to idols (1 Cor.8 and 10). The rational accommodation of 1 Cor.8:4–6 (the many so-called ‘gods’ do not in fact compromise the one God and Lord) reflects Stoic popular philosophy mediated through Hellenistic Judaism (p. 98), so that the identity-marker need not be itself a boundary-marker. But Paul’s demonisation of the other cults (1 Cor.10:19–21) brings out the contradiction. The detailed and subtle philological analysis in the three New Testament papers only highlights the basic difference between the classical cults and the Christian tradition. The latter is essentially a philosophical movement, pursued through argumentation and recorded in books. But the former are essentially procedural, documenting their routine in monuments. The remaining three papers turn upon the inscriptions and buildings of three different cults in three different provincial regions: Mithras on the Western rivers as at Mainz, Strasburg, Lyons and Vienne; Dionysus in Asia Minor and in Dacia; Saturn in Roman Africa. W. Spickermann (‘Mystery Communities and the Public’) argues that in Roman Germany and Gaul the cult of Mithras (as also with Cybele and Isis) did not stand aside from established local practice, but interacted with it. Mithras in particular is frequently linked with other cults, especially that of Mercury. Yet Mithraism remained exclusive of women, reflecting its military

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origin. Spickermann’s scenario is documented extensively with recent discoveries and fresh interpretations of the archaeological data, above all for Mainz which he sees as a centrepoint for the public promotion of the main mystery cults. The integrating impulse was no doubt the imperial cult itself. A. Schäfer (‘Dionysiac Groups as an Urban Phenomenon’) similarly explores the private / public nexus. At Ephesus the exceptionally large residence of C. Flavius Furius Aptus catered for the cult of Dionysus ‘before the city’. The son of this family of asiarchs became a Roman senator. The house was expanded for hospitality. Various inscriptions of Ephesus attest the non-urban ethos of Dionysiac groups, yet the very existence of the documents implies their integration into the public scene. Similar questions are explored over the excavation of the Dionysiac sanctuary of Liber Pater at Dacian Apulum, where the author himself has been working. G. Schörner (‘The Cult of Saturn as a Group Religion’) takes up the question, stimulated by the rarity of Mithraic documents in Africa, whether the great mass of detail available on the cult of Saturn reveals a comparable group structure. Against the established opinion (based on Le Glay’s analysis of the monuments) that Saturn attracted mystery-type processes, Schörner argues that they are rather family-based rituals. The prominent display of rolls and capsae (book-boxes) on the reliefs need not imply religious instruction. They belong rather to the boyhood of those depicted. Night-time sacrifices of a lamb are offered by the parents. The boy is given centre stage. This is not to be linked to the other series of documents for entry upon the priesthood. Rather we seem to be witnessing a family ritual of Roman cultural confirmation, attested in this form peculiarly in Africa. Jörg Rüpke has drawn together these very different studies under the motif of “integration” (p. 113). The last three cultic essays show in detail how the exact study of the evidence may well support this in terms of inter-cultic accommodation. But Rüpke himself has explicitly and rightly offered no answer to the last of his “general theses”, that we cannot tell from the spasmodic character of our evidence whether lack of public presence reduces conflict or attracts suspicion (p. 123). The orderly gathering of data by itself too easily fosters assumptions of similarity.21 An extra degree of care is needed to establish differences. And contradiction takes us closer to the truth of Wissenschaft.

²¹ Jörg Rüpke, Römische Priester in der Antike: Ein biographisches Lexikon (Stuttgart 2007), sets second-century Roman senators, whose inscriptions show priestoods, alongside the shadowy bishops of the Roman church. Neither lot would have tolerated such a travesty of their place in the world.

Chapter 3

Synagogue and Church in the Roman Empire: The Insoluble Problem of Toleration* The Greek terms synagoge and ekklesia were ordinary words for a meeting or assembly.1 They were not cultic terms. Nor do they imply an association, let alone a community. But they have in either case come to do so, and the words also came to refer to the buildings where the community met. The common ground between synagogue and church has been actively explored in recent decades, with emphasis on how gradual the parting of the ways must have been. But Roman observers seem not to have noticed such a parallel, even though Greek philosophy later understood the intellectual link between Moses and Christ.2 Synagogue and church both irritated the Roman state over several centuries, presenting in either case unique problems. From their earliest contact in the second century BC, the Jews enjoyed Roman protection. Yet between AD 66 and 135 they came into violent conflict with Rome three times, affecting not only Palestine but Egypt and other provinces. The protection, however, was only reinforced. The Christians, by contrast, were total pacifists, avoiding conflict if possible. Yet they were given no guaranteed protection, nor even sought it. Across three centuries various attempts were made to break the momentum of their disconcerting growth. No one suggested a solution on Jewish lines. Neither synagogue nor church fits the pattern of private associations in Roman law. The conditional freedom of these was established as early as 450 BC in no.8 of the Twelve Tables. But the associations also proved contentious.3 * Reformed Theological Review 68/1 (2009) 29–45, edited text of the Library Lecture 2008, given at Moore Theological College on 17 May 2008. ¹ A. Runesson et al., The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 CE: A Source Book (Leiden 2008); L. I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue (New Haven 2000); K. Berger, ‘Volksversammlung und Gemeinde Gottes: Zu den Anfängen der christlichen Verwendung von “ekklesia”’, ZTK 73 (1976) 167–207; J. Y. Campbell, ‘The Origin and Meaning of the Christian Use of the Word ekklesia’, JTS 49 (1948) 130–142. ² ‘Judaism and the Rise of Christianity: A Roman Perspective’, Tyndale Bulletin 45 (1994) 355–368, reprinted in E. A. Judge, The First Christians in the Roman World (Tübingen 2008) 431–441. ³ ‘“On this Rock I will Build my ekklesia”: Counter-cultic Springs of Multiculturalism?’, in E. A. Judge, The First Christians in the Roman World (Tübingen 2008) 619–668; W. Cotter,

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I. Why Did Rome Limit Private Associations? 1. Gaius, Ad legem duodecim tabularum 4 (Digesta 47.22.4) (mid-II AD) Sodales sunt, qui eiusdem collegii sunt; quam Graeci ἑταιρείαν vocant. His autem potestatem facit lex pactionem quam velint sibi ferre, dum ne quid ex publica lege corrumpant. Associates are those who are of the same collegium, or hetaireia in Greek. The law grants them power to make any rule they like for themselves, subject to their not infringing any public law.

Gaius, Rome’s earliest extant teacher of law, attributes the right of association to Solon, the sixth-century Athenian legislator. They were to have power in effect to make their own by-laws on a contractual basis, as the term pactio implies. It would be better translated ‘compact’. Innumerable sodalitates across the empire set up stones giving their rules of association, frequency of meetings and names of members. Neither synagogue nor church did this. The inscriptions made clear that the associations functioned within legal limits. The government feared political activism. To avoid being taken as hetaeriae of this kind, the Christians in Bithynia stopped the pre-dawn metings they had been holding under oath (sacramentum, Pliny, Ep. 10.96.7). 2. Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus 19–22 (186 BC) Homines plous V oinvorsei virei atque mulieres sacra ne quisquam | fecise velet, neve inter ibei virei plous duobus, mulieribus plous tribus | arfuise velent, nisei de pr. urbani senatuosque sententiad, utei suprad | scriptum est. No-one may choose to perform a sacrifice with more than five men and women present in all, a maximum of two men and three women, unless by decision of the urban praetor and senate, as stated above.

In 186 BC Italy was overrun by a mania for the cult of Bacchus. Instead of discreet priestesses celebrating the sacrifice at intervals on an annual cycle, men and women were thronging together frequently after dark, suspected of scandalous liaisons. There seem even to have been structures, since the senate speaks of their destruction.4 By permitting only two men to three women the senate no doubt hoped to stop the orgies, while allowing any traditional Roman cult duties to be maintained. The consuls told the senate that the trouble had arisen from using foreign rather than Roman rites. The danger had been that the assemblies of the ‘The collegia and Roman Law’, in J. S. Kloppenborg and S. G. Wilson (eds), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (London 1996) 74–89; F. M. De Robertis, Storia delle corporazioni e del regime associativo nel mondo romano (Bari 1971). ⁴ J.-M. Pailler, Bacchanalia (Rome 1988); E. S. Gruen, ‘The Bacchanalian Affair’, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Leiden 1990) 34–78.

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Roman people could have been upstaged by the new populist movement, the consuls feared (Livy 39.15–17). A Julian law (of Caesar or of Augustus) later required senatorial approval for any new collegium (praeter antiqua et legitima, Suet. Aug. 32, cf. CIL 6.4416). 3. Augustus, Res Gestae 9, 18–20 (AD 14) Privati]m etiam et municipatim univers[i | cives unanimiter continente]r apud omnia pulvinaria pro vale||[tudine mea supplicaverunt]. | Individually also and by municipalities the citizens as a whole unanimously, uninterruptedly and at every shrine for my health did sacrifice.

The serious matter of national solidarity in sacrifice is flourished by Augustus. The six-fold emphasis on the totality of it leaves no room for the slightest deviation or neglect. As normal, supplicatio here specifies actual sacrifice; the Greek translation is ethusan. 4. Gaius, Ad edictum provinciale 3 (Digesta 3.4.1) (mid-II AD) Neque societas neque collegium neque huiusmodi corpus passim omnibus habere conceditur: nam et legibus et senatus consultis et principalibus constitutionibus ea res coercetur. paucis admodum in causis concessa sunt huiusmodi corpora: … Quibus autem permissum est … proprium est ad exemplum rei republicae habere res communes. No association or collegium or any other body of this kind is permitted to everyone, for it is restricted by laws, resolutions of the senate and the determinations of our leaders. For relatively few purposes are bodies of this kind allowed … For those to whom it is permitted … it is fitting for them to hold their common business on the model of the republic.

A century later Gaius registers the increasing restriction of collegia, reinforcing the point that any voluntary body should manage its affairs on the public model. 5. Gaius, Institutiones 1.1 (mid-II AD) Quod quisque populus ipse sibi ius constituit, id ipsius proprium est vocaturque ius civile … quod vero naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit, id apud omnes populos peraeque custoditur vocaturque ius gentium. What each people has determined to be right for itself, that is appropriate for it and is called civil law … but what natural reason has determined amongst all men, that is maintained equally among all peoples and is called the law of the nations.

Far above even the civil law lies the highest level in this pyramid, the common law of all nations, determined by natural reason itself. This is that rationality which constitutes nature as a whole. It is the logos which in Greek thought determines the coherence, perfection and changeless eternity of the cosmos.

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The same force of logic defines it as natural that men should live under law in a constituted state, which takes priority by nature over lesser units, notably the family (Aristotle, Politica 1.1.8–12). To say that an association should model itself on the republic locks it also into the cosmic whole. But how can a synagogue find a place in such a totalising structure? The when, where and why of its origin is unknown, but it clearly first appears under other names. The earliest referred to in Jerusalem is the “synagogue” of the Freedmen (Acts 6:9). The earliest buildings referred to as “synagogues” are those at Capernaum (Luke 7:5) and Corinth (Acts 18:7).

II. Why Were the Synagogues Tolerated? 6. Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 1.3.3 (summary, on 139 BC) Chaldaeos igitur Cornelius Hispalus urbe expulit et intra decem dies Italia abire iussit, ne peregrinam scientiam venditarent. Iudaeos quoque, qui Romanis tradere sacra sua conati erant, idem Hispalus urbe exterminavit arasque privatas e publicis locis abiecit. The astrologers therefore Cornelius Hispalus expelled from the city and ordered to leave Italy within ten days, to stop them selling foreign science. The Jews also, who had tried to pass on their sacrifices to Romans, the same Hispalus excluded from the city, and removed their private altars from public places.

How Jews in particular could have been erecting altars publicly in Rome is a multiple puzzle. If the epitomator has not botched it we might conjecture a hellenising cult, perhaps sprung from the rededication of the Jerusalem temple in 167 BC to the Olympian Zeus. The Thracian cult of Zeus Sabazius might offer an easier explanation. The epithet Sabazius was taken as akin to Sabaoth or Sabbath, and the cult came under Jewish influence as a result. Either way it was not lawful for foreigners to convert Romans to their cult, as the colonists at Philippi well knew. 7. Acts of the Apostles 16:20–21 (AD 50?) Προσαγαγόντες αὐτοὺς τοῖς στρατηγοῖς εἶπαν, οὗτοι οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἐκταράσσουσιν ἡμῶν τὴν πόλιν Ἰουδαῖοι ὑπάρχοντες, 21 καὶ καταγγέλλουσιν ἔθη ἃ οὐκ ἔξεστιν ἡμῖν παραδέχεσθαι οὐδὲ ποιεῖν῾Ρωμαίοις οὖσιν.

Bringing them before the praetors, they said, “These people are disturbing our town being Jews, and they are promoting customs which it is not permitted us to accept or practice, being Romans”.

The same issue may best explain the accusation of the Corinthian Jews that Paul’s way of worshipping God was “against the law”. Although Gallio declined to intervene on the grounds that this was a matter for their own law, this last phrase shows that the Jews had actually argued that it breached

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Roman law. They would in any case hardly have sought Roman arbitration on an internal matter. It must surely relate to Paul’s non-Jewish converts (many Corinthians, Acts 18:8), whom he urged not to seek circumcision (1 Cor. 7:18). 8. Acts of the Apostles 18:13–15 (AD 51?) Παρὰ τὸν νόμον ἀναπείθει οὗτος τοὺς ἀνθρώπους σέβεσθαι τὸν θεόν … εἰ δὲ ζητήματά ἐστιν περὶ λόγου καὶ ὀνομάτων καὶ νόμου τοῦ καθ᾽ ὑμᾶς, ὄψεσθε αὐτοί.

It is against the law (the way in which) he argues people should worship God … if the question is one of definitions, terminology, and the law (that applies) amongst you, see to it yourselves.

The Jewish community en bloc (homothumadon, Acts 18:12) no doubt objected to any implication that their privileged exemptions from Roman sacrificing might also be applicable to the Gentiles now claiming the heritage of Abraham (Romans 4:11). Paul was ready to reply (Acts 18:14), and might have defended himself, from the Roman point of view, in that his not circumcising them avoided that particular breach of Roman law.5 Since the original treaty granted to Judas Maccabaeus in 164 BC (Josephus, Antiquitates 12.417–419) Julius Caesar and others had extended its application to the Jews resident in Greek cities (Ant. 14.185–267). This remarkable recognition of an ethnic minority in other states that were nominally on equal terms with Rome highlights the privilege available to Jews living in Rome itself. When Caesar had banned meetings of cult associations (thiasoi) in Rome he excepted the Jews (Ant. 14.215). All collegia were dissolved except oldestablished ones (Suetonius, Julius 42.3). Provincial commanders then requested parallel enactments in the individual Greek cities. Their decrees sometimes cite the treaty with Rome as the model for their decision (e. g. Halicarnassus, Jos. Ant. 14.247), or else their own past practice (e. g. Sardis, Jos. Ant. 14.259). The Sardian Jews are granted a building where their “ancestral prayers and sacrifices (thusias)” may be offered, along with a guarantee of kosher food in the market (Jos. Ant. 14.261), as well as use of their own courts of law (Ant. 260). Since thousands of Jews had been paraded in Pompey’s triumph of 61 BC, and sold into slavery at Rome, their descendants would mostly by Paul’s day (over a century later) have attained Roman citizenship. The Jewish exemptions had been explicitly provided to those who were at the same time Roman citizens (Jos. Ant. 14.231–232). Gallio’s brother, Seneca the philosopher, admired Jews because, unlike Romans, they had kept track of the origin of their rites (causas ritus sui noverunt, Augustine, De civitate Dei 6.11). We may guess that ⁵ B. W. Winter, ‘Rehabilitating Gallio and his Judgement in Acts 18:14–15’, Tyndale Bulletin 57.2 (2006) 291–308.

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Gallio’s own liberalism led him to insist that the details of such matters were not actionable in a Roman court. Sosthenes, the Jewish leader, was then left to the rough justice of a resentful public, hostile to calumnious prosecution (Acts 18:17). The temple in Jerusalem received an annual subscription from Jews abroad, expressly permitted by the Romans (Philo, Legatio 156–157, 311–316). After its destruction in AD 70, this fiscus Judaicus (“Jewish fund”) was diverted to the reconstruction of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome. Under Domitian it was imposed on people who had dropped out of Judaism and no longer wished to identify as Jews. An old man was stripped in court to see if he was circumcised. Suetonius personally witnessed this humiliation (Dom. 12.2). Others were charged with the tax who had never been Jews but chose to live the Jewish life-style. People at the highest level were incriminated. After Domitian’s assassination the new government of Nerva declared this a calumny, and trumpeted its abolition on a coin. 9. Reverse legend of a sestertius of Nerva (AD 96) FISCI IVDAICI CALVMNIA SVBLATA S. C. Jewish tax misrepresentation abolished by resolution of the senate.

The consequences have proved historic. It turned out to be the watershed between Judaism understood as the national cult of the Judaeans, a nation with its own homeland and temple, and a new Judaism that has rested on the desire to identify culturally with that now lost tradition. This Judaism has displayed an unmatched feat of continuity. It may be claimed as a major source of that complex shift which moved away from the cultic tradition of one’s nation and created the modern sense of ‘religion’. We now mean by that term a self-determined world-view and lifestyle which can be be joined (or abandoned) through conversion.6 10. Tertullian, Apologeticum 18.9 (c. AD 197) Sed et Iudaei palam lectitant. Vectigalis libertas; vulgo aditur sabbatis omnibus. Even the Jews read (the Scriptures) publicly. Their freedom comes by taxation; they go in crowds every Sabbath.

It soon became apparent that the fiscus Judaicus was not so much a penalty for defeat as the safeguard for ongoing liberty of conscience. This must be why Tertullian speaks indignantly of Jewish privilege as “liberty through taxation”. We know from the Edfu ostraca that it was duly collected and receipts issued ⁶ M. Goodman, ‘Nerva, the Fiscus Judaicus and Jewish Identity’, JRS 79 (1989) 40–44.

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even during the Jewish revolt in Egypt (AD 115–117). The tax agents were themselves Jews. Even though also often Roman citizens, they were exempted from military service because of the idolatry involved in a soldier’s oath. 11. Modestinus, Excusationes 6, ap. Dig. 27.1.15.6 (AD 222–235) Αἱ γὰρ διατάξεις ἐκείνοις μόνοις ἀνενοχλήτους αὐτοὺς εἶναι κελεύουσιν, δι᾽ ὧν ἡ θρησκεία χραίνεσθαι δοκεῖ.

For the rulings order that they should be unencumbered only in respect of those mattters by which it seems their worship would be contaminated.

At grain distributions in Rome that fell on the Sabbath Augustus reserved their share for the Jews so that they would not lose their entitlement. Ordinary Romans admired and envied the Sabbath routine, while ethicists blamed it as laziness. Privileges once institutionalised are easily maintained, given the way Roman administrative practice was governed largely by the precedents cited by interested parties. The tax was clearly no handicap. Those who could produce a receipt could claim the privileges. The didrachm rate was never increased. It was still being collected in the third century, and possibly even in the fourth. 12. Acta martyrum, Pionius 13 (AD 251?) Ἀκούω δὲ ὅτι καί τινας ὑμῶν Ἰουδαῖοι καλοῦσιν εἰς συναγωγάς.

And I hear also that Jews are inviting some of you to synagogues.

But surely the synagogue authorities also had an interest in listing those who were eligible. The complaint of the martyr Pionius perhaps implies that the Romans by mid-third century simply took it for granted that those whom the synagogue vouched for need not be required to offer the sacrifices. These proved a fateful stumbling-block for Christians. But why did the latter not request a tax licence for themselves?

III. Why Were the Churches not Tolerated? In contrast with the obscurity over the origin of the synagogue, we know quite clearly when, how and why the churches came into being. Their highly unusual origin is the subject of a near contemporary history which calls itself ‘The Second logos for Theophilus’. Its later misnomer, ‘The Acts of the Apostles’, distracts attention from the point in favour of a pseudo-Hellenistic individualised encomium. The purpose of this logos is to explain how the gospel of Israel’s Messiah came to be detached from Jerusalem and focussed instead on the world capital of Rome itself.

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We then enter upon a flood of internal documentation of the Christiani, as the Romans called them, but precious little from the Roman point of view. This goes also for the great successor to the ‘logos for Theophilus’. Eusebius in the early fourth century amassed the documentary evidence for the re-focussed movement, now reconciled with Rome, and forward-looking. But it is only an internal history. It must be unique in the discipline of history for us to possess such full and precise evidence for a veritably axial point in world history, yet largely untouched by external evidence. 13. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.1 (prior to AD 250) Ἐπεὶ οὖν τὸν κοινὸν νόμον θρυλεῖ, παρὰ τοῦτον λέγων Χριστιανοῖς τὰς συνθήκας· … οὕτως παρ᾽ ἀληθείᾳ δικαζούσῃ οἱ νόμοι τῶν ἐθνῶν, οἱ περὶ ἀγαλμάτων καὶ τῆς ἀθέου πολυθεότητος, νόμοι εἰσὶ Σκυθῶν, καὶ εἴ τι Σκυθῶν ἀσεβέστερον. Οὐκ ἄλογον οὖν συνθήκας παρὰ τὰ νενομισμένα ποιεῖν, τὰς ὑπὲρ ἀληθείας.

Since he harps on the common law, saying this is infringed by Christians through their associations … thus judged by (the test of) truth the laws of the nations, about images and godless polytheism, are laws of the Scythians, or whatever is more impious than them. It is not therefore unreasonable to form associations against the (customary) law, (when that is done) out of regard for truth.

The most extensive negative treatment survives only in the citations of Origen who aims to refute it. Celsus had written in the latter part of the second century, Origen’s reply coming near the mid-third. By “common law” Celsus is not appealing to our humdrum Anglo-Saxon system, but rather to that high Platonic doctrine of the universal law of reason which undergirds all civil institutions, binding mankind as a whole into a natural unity, ‘human rights’ as we might now say. This unity is breached by the petty Christian associations. Origen appeals to an even more elusive principle, that of “truth” itself. On this principle polytheism is indeed godless. So although it may be enshrined in custom, to reconstruct one’s affairs to avoid it is not irrational (alogos, appealing to the same principle of logos as Celsus held) when “truth” itself is at stake. This is the first explicitly attested instance of an appeal to the absolute rectitude of opposition based on personal conviction of what is right. It is now an unquestioned axiom of all Western polity. Hence (e. g.) conscientious objection to military service, or the prosecution of generals for war crimes where they claimed they had been bound by their oath of loyalty. 14. The formula of the Decian libelli, distilled from forty-five copies (AD 250) Τοῖς ἐπὶ τῶν θυσιῶν ᾑρημένοις· ἀεὶ θύων τοῖς θεοῖς διετέλεσα καὶ νῦν ἐπὶ παρόντων ὑμῶν κατὰ τὰ προσταχθέντα ἔθυσα καὶ ἔσπεισα καὶ τῶν ἱερείων ἐγευσάμην. ἀξιῶ ὑμᾶς ὑποσημιώσασθαί μοι.

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To those selected (to be) over the sacrifices. Always have I continued sacrificing to the gods and now in your (pl.) presence according to what has been laid down I offered sacrifice, poured (the libation) and tasted the sacred things. I ask you (pl.) to certify below for me.

In the Roman world (and even in ours occasionally) the countervailing principle prevails. Whatever is part of inherited custom must be respected as sacred, especially when none of us really believe it any more. This is why cathedrals are precious and must not be touched, or why migrant groups must be praised for keeping up their primeval culture which we nevertheless hold to be misconceived. Decius, like Augustus (no. 3 above), needed to be certain that everyone was performing their traditional sacrifices; only then will the thousand-year-old city be secure. But it was notorious that people had been neglecting their duty. To avoid conflict Decius has reduced it to the bare essentials. A pinch of incense and a drop of wine will do (you need not provide the sacrificial animal). No particular god is required. There will be no witch-hunt, since everyone simply asserts that they have not been in default. Decius need not have spotted the crisis this was bound to cause for Christians. They would expose themselves as frauds in having professed loyalty to Christ. You also had actually to taste the sacrificial meat, the very thing bishops held to be physically incompatible with the Holy Communion. Worse, you had to do it in front of publicly appointed local officials who had to sign your petition, “I saw him sacrifice”. Many Christians, especially bishops since they could least afford falling into this trap, simply went into hiding. Others paid the officials to sign even though they had not actually tasted the meat – a de facto kind of “liberty through taxation” for which they might later be excused by their bishop. Perjury and bribery were not so bad as decisively to renounce Christ by tasting the idolatrous sacrifice. 15. Acta proconsularia Sancti Cypriani, Musurillo 1.1 (Valerian / Gallienus, AD 257) Qui Romanam religionem non colunt, debere Romanas caerimonias recognoscere. Those who do not endorse Roman cultic usage must (nevertheless) perform the Roman ceremonial.

Seven years later the government offered a sophisticated and classical solution. You no longer needed to perjure yourself nor to conceal your personal commitment (religio). It was not intellectual assent to Roman usage that was required, but the mere performance of the set ceremonies. Educated Romans (such as Cicero and many other philosophers) no longer believed personally in particular deities, but the divine element with which the cosmos as a whole

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was necessarily infused must be respected through customary safeguards. Valerian also dealt with the social reality of the Christian movement. Clergy were exiled (AD 257) and otherwise executed (AD 258). No more synods, no haunting the cemeteries where martyrs lay. Senators to be downgraded, or if unrepentant deprived of Roman citizenship altogether. Matrons were exiled. Civil servants sent in chains to the quarries. 16. Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 7.13.1 (AD 260) Αὐτοκράτωρ Καῖσαρ Πούπλιος Λικίνιος Γαλλιῆνος … Σεβαστὸς Διονυσίῳ καὶ Πίννᾳ καὶ Δημητρίῳ καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς ἐπισκόποις· τὴν εὐεργεσίαν τῆς ἐμῆς δωρεᾶς διὰ παντὸς τοῦ κόσμου ἐκβιβασθῆναι προσέταξα, ὅπως ἀπὸ τῶν τόπων τῶν θρῃσκευσίμων ἀποχωρήσωσιν …

Imperator Caesar Publius Licinius Gallienus … Augustus to Dionysius and Pinnas and Demetrius and the remaining bishops. The benefit of my concession I have ordered to be applied throughout the world, so that they must vacate those places that relate to worship.

Gallienus, son of Valerian, revoked all this after his father was captured by the Persians. He restored confiscated property, but the Egyptian bishops sought a ruling on the church buildings which now it seems had no individual owner. They spoke coyly of “places that relate to worship” (topoi threskeusimoi), picking up the harmless term used by the Jews in safeguarding synagogue life (no.11 above). It avoided any identification with the polytheistic sacrificial system that was anathema. The adjectival form of the word threskeia is a hapax legomenon. It will not have been devised by Gallienus, but replays the formula supplied by the bishops to bring church life safely under a conventional rubric. 17. Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 7.30.19 (AD 272) Βασιλεὺς ἐντευχθεὶς Αὐρηλιανὸς αἰσιώτατα περὶ τοῦ πρακτέου διείληφεν, τούτοις νεῖμαι προστάττων τὸν ο῏ικον, οἷς ἂν οἱ κατὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν καὶ τὴν῾Ρωμαίων πόλιν ἐπίσκοποι τοῦ δόγματος ἐπιστέλλοιεν.

On petition, (our) ruler Aurelian most opportunely settled the matter, prescribing that the house should be allocated to those with whom the bishops of the doctrine in Italy and the city of Rome were in correspondence.

Under Aurelian bishops again appealed to the government over property. Paul of Samosata held the episcopal house at Antioch, running a charismatic movement which he ruled like an imperial procurator (he was in correspondence with Zenobia in Palmyra who had taken control of the Roman East). Seeking to depose him, the bishops of the region put to Aurelian (who was in Syria in AD 272) that their nominee had a prior claim to the church house at Antioch because he was endorsed in writing by the bishops of Rome and Italy. Across

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the following generation the churches boomed, with Christians entrenching themselves in the established circles of the army and government. 18. Mosaicarum et Romanarum legum collatio 15.3.2–3, Riccobono, FIRA2, 1940, 580 (Diocletian / Maximian, AD 302) Maximi enim criminis est retractare quae semel ab antiquis statuta et definita suum statum et cursum tenent ac possident. 3 Unde pertinaciam pravae mentis nequissimorum hominum punire ingens nobis studium est: hi enim, qui novellas et inauditas sectas veterioribus religionibus obponunt … For it is a very serious crime to revise things once settled and defined by the ancients that maintain their status and hold to their course. Consequently we are strongly committed to punishing the stubbornness of the perverse minds of evil men; for they, setting up novel and unheard of causes against old-established obligations …

By contrast, the new-fangled Manichaean missionaries, recently working their way Westwards through the Mediterranean from their home-base in Mesopotamia, provoked total rejection by Diocletian in AD 302. They were alien intruders, from across the iron curtain of the Roman Middle East. Mani had died only within living memory, and Diocletian had presumably not been told that he had presented himself on Pauline lines as an “apostle of Jesus Christ”. Diocletian’s tirade was nevertheless ominous for the older denominations of this faith. After two and a half centuries they were hardly any longer an unfamilar presence at home. In the Eastern Roman capital, Nicomedia (below the Bosporus), there was now even a central and conspicuous church building. A year after the Manichaean edict this was suddenly demolished on imperial command. Valerian’s policy of the disestablishment of the churches was nationally reinstated, and pursued with several spurts of particular energy across the next decade. For the first time we find (in P.Oxy. 33.2673 of AD 304) the term ekklesia applied officially to a church building. It is only now that we find Eusebius from the Christian side also using the word that way. 19. Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 34.2, 5 (Galerius, AD 311) … ut etiam Christiani, qui parentum suorum reliquerant sectam, ad bonas mentes redirent, siquidem quadam ratione tanta eosdem Christianos voluntas invasisset et tanta stultitia occupasset, ut non illa veterum instituta sequerentur, quae forsitan primum parentes eorundem constituerant, sed pro arbitrio suo atque ut isdem erat libitum, ita sibimet leges facerent quas observarent, et per diversa varios populos congregarent … 5 debebunt deum suum orare pro salute nostra et rei publicae ac sua … … so that even the Christians, who had abandoned the cause of their parents, might return to a sound mind, given that such wilfulness and stupidity had seized the same Christians, that they were not following those customs of their elders which perhaps

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their own ancestors had instituted in the beginning, but on their own discretion and as it appealed to them, they made up laws for themselves to keep, and on divergent principles formed alternative communities … they will be obliged to plead with their god for our safety and that of the republic and their own.

Lactantius claimed that the driving force behind the campaign of Diocletian was his deputy and successor, Galerius. On the latter’s own death-bed he issued an order that was to solve the problem of the churches in an entirely novel way. Down to this point there has remained no direct evidence from the government side of what was allegedly wrong with the Christians. Even Pliny’s famous letter (Ep. 10.96) of AD 112 had only dealt with practicalities, taking the problem itself for granted. Eusebius for his part omits the rulings that tackled it head-on, giving us only those that reversed them. But from Diocletian’s complaint against the Manichees, and from the recantation of Galerius, we can see what was the insoluble problem with toleration. Galerius is presented by Lactantius as a monster. The first serious biographical appraisal of him is only now about to appear.7 But he deserves a greater place in history as the one who (so far as our sources go) was the first to lay down a policy on the general toleration of social dissidents.

IV. Insoluble Toleration Galerius formulated the essence of the problem. The Christians did not follow the customs of their own ancestors. This may sound banal in a world that has wholly abandoned the classic cosmology of the Greeks. We do not now see the universe as a perfect system where any appearance of change is only the endlessly repeated cycle of the unchanging whole. Modern science has only been built up through the experimental method validated and liberated by Genesis. Everyone now assumes there was a beginning, that every individual on earth is unique, and that we are yet ourselves answerable for the problems of the whole. Far from accepting that it is necessarily right to hold to the customs of our ancestors, we echo to the Gospel promise that the old has passed away, and all things will be made new. For Galerius, however, it was unthinkable that people should assume they might “make up laws for themselves to keep”, and “form alternative communities on divergent principles”. I am the only modern translator to render his words this way. Most simply say it means the Christians “formed various congregations in diverse places”. They fall into the trap Latin sets for us: English has taken up the Latin terms, but the nuances shift. Even language is no longer ⁷ W. L. Leadbetter, Galerius and the Will of Diocletian (London 2009).

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immutable! Galerius can hardly have uttered anything so beside the point unless one thinks him more stupid even than Lactantius did. The phrase must be declaring what is wrong with making up laws for oneself. This was indeed how Eusebius understood it when he translated it into Greek (HE 8.17). The Latin text was only retrieved in quite modern times. Prior to that, in AD 1659, Valesius translated the Greek of Eusebius back into Latin in much the same sense as I apply to it. Galerius is well informed about Christians. He perhaps knew that diversitas (‘divergence’) was a term current with them (for the deviancy of heretics). He surely knew that orare was their distinctive term for prayer. In classical culture prayer was a matter of begging or of contract (the vow). For the Christians prayer was “pleading”, that is advocacy (as in law) or intercession. One “pleaded”, typically on behalf of someone else, in a speech (oratio). Galerius has picked up this term, and asks the Christians to “plead” for him. They of course had been protesting all along that this was what they did. In particular, they had regularly been pleading for their earthly rulers, and only refused the contractual sacrifices because they were a blasphemy against divine truth. Why were the synagogues tolerated? Because they had been a national institution. Classical thought held the republican state to have a priority by nature over its constituent parts, and within a national tradition the definitive truth had been laid down in the past. Detested through the Jews often were as aliens, they were nevertheless respected for their tenacious and articulated grip on their national heritage. The great military struggles against Rome confirmed the national status of the Jews. In defeat they were given a recognised place in the multi-national empire, their distinctive culture carefully safeguarded by a tax. Why were the churches not tolerated? Because they were Roman, not part of a separate nation. They failed to uphold their national heritage. The churches had no place in the regular structure of the nation. To some extent they even provocatively parodied its pattern in structures of their own. The more this became apparent, the worse the threat to public order. The Christians seemed to be treating themselves as a new nation, within and against their own. History offers no solution to the problem of toleration. Popper’s ‘Open Society’ was the twentieth-century answer to totalisation whether messianic or Platonic (based that is on race or class). We may talk of freedom in a selfdetermined culture, but culture is carried by a shared language, and embedded in language are national values. Openness and values pull against each other. Both may be retrograde. Openness may break down into hostile tribalism. National values may retreat into nostalgic conformity. The dynamic progress of the West, for better or worse, is driven by the tension between the two as internalised within the minds of each of us. Our Classical heritage (including

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its ecclesiastical adaptation) ties us to established order, but the Gospel calls us to an open-ended future which we should anticipate now. Living in two worlds at once is our existential predicament. But trying to live in only one is a dangerous risk.

Chapter 4

The Impact of Paul’s Gospel on Ancient Society* This title (offered to me by the editors) was bound to tempt a footloose student of history onto very tricky ground. Our honorand himself has warned that Paul gave no direct instructions covering what we mean by ‘impact’. The new life of the churches was indeed revolutionary. But it was designed for fulfilment when the existing ‘society’ reached the end of its time. In this life it “remains hidden”.1 I know that this should not trouble an ancient historian. The reigning fashion is to insist that the conversion of Rome changed nothing of social consequence.2 If so, we may as well say the question evaporates. Paul converted the world all right, but since he was not looking for any particular changes in it, we need not bother looking for them either. Yet we know that our own world, the modern one, certainly bears the most profound imprint of biblical thought.3 We may, then, at least ask why that had not happened already in antiquity, or (if it had) why people have not noticed it. A further problem in looking for ‘impact’ is how to distinguish the impress of Paul from that of the New Testament as a whole. And if one were to go only for Pauline distinctives, one might well end up only with marginal issues rather than central ones. I propose therefore to treat as Pauline such positions as I judge basic to his thinking, even though they may be shared in one way or another with comparable positions in the Gospels or other writings. But they will be concepts that he decisively develops and which are terminologically identifiable as his. * Ch.20, in P. Bolt and M. Thompson (eds), The Gospel to the Nations: Perspectives on Paul’s Mission in Honour of Peter T. O’Brien (Leicester 2000) 297–308. ¹ P. T. O’Brien, ‘The Church as a Heavenly and Eschatological Entity’, The Church in the Bible and the World (ed. D. A. Carson; Exeter 1987) 88–119, 307–311, at 117. Paul’s “social theory of organisation” has been described as “truly novel and innovative. As a transition strategy, the pattern is emergent rather than imposed”: P. J. Marshall, ‘The Enigmatic Apostle: Paul and Social Change. Did Paul Seek to Transform Graeco-Roman Society?’, Ancient History in a Modern University, Vol. 2, Early Christianity, Late Antiquity and Beyond (ed. T.W Hillard, R. A. Kearsley, C. E. V. Nixon and A. Nobbs, eds (Grand Rapids 1998) 153–174, at 174. ² R. MacMullen, ‘What Difference Did Christianity Make?’, Historia 35 (1986) 322–343, at 341: “non-Christian moral history runs parallel to Christian. Or the two are one.” ³ E. A. Judge, ‘The Biblical Shape of Modern Culture’, Kategoria 3 (1996) 9–30.

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I propose to find a way around the main impasse by taking both key terms in the broadest sense. By ‘gospel’ I shall mean the whole body of Paul’s teaching (generated presumably from the gospel in its strict sense). By ‘society’ I shall mean not only the fabric of social relations but the formative ideas or conventions behind them which we might ordinarily refer to as ‘culture’. The question being taken this way (and allowing for my further caveat above), I then start with the following proposition: in the modern world the impact of Pauline teaching on our culture may be recognised most clearly at two focal points.

I. The “Inner Man” and the “One New Man” in Modern Society The first is our preoccupation with the “inner man” (Rom. 7:22; Eph. 3:16).4 In Classical culture interest was concentrated upon the individual and his fate, seen in relation to external events. So in Greek tragedy the drama typically centres upon the inability of even the well-meaning to spot the point in time. Their zeal then slips over into the fateful arrogance (hybris) that provokes doom (nemesis). Or in Stoic (and much other) ethical thinking the aim is to guard one’s own integrity unshaken by the emotional shocks of contact with others. Pity (if it lacks moderation, Alcinous 32.4) is as much a vice of the soul as cruelty. The cardinal virtues are generally properties of character: courage (arete, ‘enterprise’), prudence (phronesis), self-control (sophrosyne). Such qualities are not featured in Biblical culture, which focuses rather on constructive responses to others: trust (pistis), hope (elpis) and care (agape). Justice (dikaiosyne), the fourth cardinal virtue, is, however, in Greek inscriptions to be seen in social action, though it is not featured from that perspective in Biblical culture, where it means righteousness (in God’s sight).5 In Pauline thought it is credited to the believer “without works” (Rom. 4:6). In broad terms one may say that in the Hellenic tradition the problems of life centred upon keeping one’s balance, and preserving the good one possessed. Education would train one successfully in this.6 ⁴ The use of this translation is now banned by U. S. publishers, but if I say ‘inner being’ or ‘inner self’ I lose the strong sense, created by the use of anthropos (‘man’), that the inner self is the definitive person. I also destroy the verbal concurrence with my second focal point, the ‘one new man’, where anthropos would have to be translated ‘humanity’, wiping out the strikingly personal character of the Greek concept here also. Both ‘men’ are embodied “in Christ” (Eph. 2:13; 3:17). J. K. Chamblin, ‘Psychology’, in Dictionary of Paul and his Letters (1993) 765–775. ⁵ Dikaiosyne stands for fair dealing in the market-place, inscribed on weights and deified by magistrates: L. Robert, Documents de l’Asie Mineure méridionale (Geneva and Paris 1966) 25–29. ⁶ Many in antiquity, like Suetonius and Tacitus, appear to have thought character was fixed from birth: H. M. Lindsay, ‘Characterisation in the Suetonian Life of Tiberius’, in T. W.

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It was Paul who most dramatically shattered such self-assurance. Not only did he see the cosmos as itself corrupted from without (“sin entered”, Rom. 5:12, a notion unthinkable when the cosmos was by definition complete, perfect and unchanging), but the evil had enslaved even his own will (Rom. 7:14–25). The drama is no longer one of adjustment to fate within a closed system. Its limits explode at the cosmic level, while a microcosm of conflict is exposed within one’s own heart. The distant source of this apocalypse is clear: the Serpent in the Garden, and the demand of the Shema for total commitment of one’s inmost being (Deut. 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might”). A phrase similar to Paul’s “inner man” is found in both Plato (Rep. 9.589A) and Plotinus (Enn. 1.1.10) for the self-mastery of reason. But the Pauline scenario reaches out, from indwelling sin (Rom. 7:20) to the liberating Spirit of life (8:2). Transformed by the renewal of our mind (12:2), we take the body for the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), as we are daily renewed within (2 Cor. 4:16), a new creation (5:17). Paul’s searching of his own heart is, for his time, unparalleled in its candour. It was pursued even more ruthlessly by Augustine.7 The self-disclosure we now expect in autobiography was not a feature of ancient culture, which concentrated on self-display.8 Ancient romances waited on their happy ending with all the breathlessness of a soap opera. But modern novels and films are engrossed with our deeper dilemmas of motivation and morality. We look to them for a kind of psychological autobiography. The fact that the modern novel (as its name implies, an innovation) emerged in the period between the hey-days of the Puritans and of the Methodists may tell the tale. It is the cultural imprint, surely, of Paul’s inner quest.9 Similarly, our ideas of individual vocation and gifts are the cultural legacy of Paul’s doctrine of the Spirit. The second focal point of Pauline teaching that has profoundly marked modern culture is his concept of the “one new man” (Eph. 2:15). This is his answer to Hillard (ed. n.2 above), Vol. 1, The Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome, 299–308, at 301; C. Gill, ‘The Question of Character Development: Plutarch and Tacitus’, CQ 33 (1983) 469–487; S. Swain, ‘Character Change in Plutarch’, Phoenix 43 (1989) 62–68. ⁷ V. Grossi, ‘Anthropology’, Encyclopedia of the Early Church (New York 1992) 45: “Augustine … who definitively disjoined anthropology from cosmology, for whom man interrogates himself directly to find out who he is and filters the whole of the reality he encounters, not excluding God, through himself.” ⁸ G. Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity (London 1950; first published in German in 1907). On the psychology of the phenomenon, see R. A. Hutch, The Meaning of Lives: Biography, Autobiography and the Spiritual Quest (London 1997). ⁹ I. Watt, The Rise of the Novel (London 1957). For the view that fairy tales were driven out of English popular culture by the Puritans and other intellectual moralists, and that “novels … are an alternative to Methodism”, see J. P. Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (New York 1990) 143, 134. On the ancient romances see The Search for the Ancient Novel (ed. J. Tatum; Baltimore 1994).

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the polarisation of Jew and Gentile. The “one new man” is not, however, a new type of individual. The “one body” of the cross (2:16) reconciles the two, who are now “of joint body” (syssoma, 3:6). The neologism seeks to imply an organic unity that is in fact social. This has already been made clear by the repeated use of metaphors from the civil order. Previously excluded from the “commonwealth” of Israel as “foreigners” to the covenants (2:12), the Gentiles have exchanged their status of “resident aliens” for that of “joint citizens with the saints”, and thus “members of God’s household” (2:19). The figure then shifts again, to one forged for this very purpose. The whole “construction” (oikodome, elsewhere often ineffectively translated as “edification”, which itself arises from the Latin term for “building”) “grows” into a “sacred shrine in the Lord” (2:21). As a metaphor, oikodome seems to have been another innnovation of Paul’s. It is a favourite way of his expressing the social reconstruction for which the new “assemblies” meet. Everything is to serve that end (1Cor. 14:26).10 It is not clear to me how how Paul expected this to work out in practice, given the continuing synagogue assemblies from which the churches arose. But I have no doubt that the social autonomy asserted in the name of the “one new man” is the historic source of what we now call the ‘open society’. The right to an alternative lifestyle, grudgingly tolerated by ‘national values’, has been won, with painful slowness, from the blood of the martyrs. Rejection of status consciousness (prosopolempsia, a term first attested in Rom. 2:11) no doubt springs from the same source.

II. Paul in Later Antiquity Fragments of all the Pauline letters (except those to Timothy) survive from Egypt prior to Constantine’s taking control there. The earliest papyri happen to be from the letters to Titus and Philemon. The survival rate for the subsequent parts of the New Testament, and for the Gospels of Matthew and John, is stronger. From the early fourth century comes a writing exercise based on the opening of Romans. From the end of it there is a bilingual text of Ephesians (Greek and Latin), and an alphabetic acrostic in verse using Pauline terms and themes.11 This papyrus record shows the Pauline corpus in active use.12 The apocryphal Acts of Paul (and Thecla), a second-century romance that also filled in the missing correspondence between Paul and the Corinthians, ¹⁰ W. Barclay, ‘The One New Man’, Unity and Diversity in New Testament Theology: Essays in Honor of G. E. Ladd (ed. R. A. Guelich; Grand Rapids 1978) 73–81, making the point that ‘new’ (kainos) connotes not repetition but radical innovation. ¹¹ P. Oxy. 2.209 (Romans); PSI 13.1306 (Ephesians); P. Bodmer 47 (acrostic, published by A. Carlini, MH 48, 1991, 158–168). ¹² For the use of Scripture in church and community see R. Kaczynski, Das Wort Gottes in Liturgie und Alltag der Gemeinden des Johannes Chrysostomus (Freiburg 1974).

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was probably more popular still.13 In the year 307, however, the bishop of Thmuis in Egypt, Phileas, was interrogated by the prefect, Culcianus, on the facts about Paul. Two Greek papyrus transcripts of the trial have been published.14 The governor needed to persuade the bishop, a wealthy community leader, to offer the public sacrifices. The governor himself seems quite familiar with the weak points in the bishop’s position, or had been briefed by a wellinformed consultant. Several of the gambits use detailed knowledge of Paul to catch the bishop out. Culcianus asks whether Paul had not sacrificed (alluding perhaps to Acts 21:26). Phileas denies it. Later, on the resurrection of the body, Culcianus asks whether Paul had not rejected it (switching him with those he complains of in 1 Cor. 15:12?). Phileas flatly denies this too. “Then who did deny it?” “I’m not telling you”, retorts Phileas. After another change of tack, Culcianus asks whether Paul was not a persecutor (as indeed the latter affirms in 1 Cor. 15:9, Gal. 1:13, Phil. 3:6). Another flat denial (is Phileas losing his grip?). Culcianus presses home the advantage: Was Paul untrained (idiotes, the very word he cites against himself at 2 Cor. 11:6)? Was he not a Syrian, and did he not lecture in Aramaic? “No”, says Phileas, “He was a Hebrew. But he also lectured in Greek, and was of the highest distinction, excelling everyone.” They argue about whether Paul was superior to Plato (Phileas offers to teach Paul to Culcianus). “He was more profound than any man. He convinced all the philosophers.” Later Culcianus comes back for a last attempt. “Was Paul God?” “No,” answers Phileas. “Who was he then?” Phileas replies: “He was a man like ourselves, but the Spirit of God was in him; and so he performed signs and wonders and acts of virtue in the Spirit.” The key part assigned to Paul in this cross-questioning demonstrates that he had become far more than a romantic hero. His identity, intellectual standing and integrity are critical to the bishop’s resistance. As the champion of orthodoxy, the government has to be able to undercut him. It may not always have been so clear. For the earliest generations after the New Testament period Paul has been called “the thorn in the flesh” of the churches.15 Some of the most popular writings stood outside his influence. This is conspicuously true of the Shepherd of Hermas, which rivals Paul’s letters in its frequency of papyrus remains. The ¹³ Details of the extant papyri and translations in W. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha (6th edn, tr. R. McL. Wilson; Vol. 2, Cambridge 1992); discussion in The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla (ed. J. N. Bremmer; Kampen 1996). ¹⁴ A. Pietersma, The Acts of Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis (Geneva 1984); Latin text and translation available in H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford 1972). ¹⁵ E. Dassmann, Der Stachel im Fleisch: Paulus in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Irenäus (Münster 1979). A. Lindemann, ‘Der Apostel Paulus im 2. Jahrhundert’, The New Testament in Early Christianity: La réception des écrits néotestamentaires dans le christianisme primitif (ed. J.-M. Sevrin; Louvain 1989) 39–67.

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Didache, Epistle of Barnabas and the Apologists draw largely upon material from non-Pauline sources. They sought antiquity. Only Marcion is a thoroughgoing Paulinist.16 Some of the Gnostic traditions took Paul up, especially in his romantic dress. They understood 1 Corinthians 15:46–48 to justify their doctrine of three types of men with fixed natures. Not for nothing did Tertullian call him “the apostle of the heretics”.17 With Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Origen, spanning the second half of the second century and the first of the third, Paul comes into his own as a major authority.18 But his establishment, and the need to prove the self-consistency of Scripture, have blunted the response to some of his more challenging insights.19 It could not be admitted, for example, that his soulsearching was an authentic account of his own experience, since he must have been perfect, the model for imitation, as he had imitated Christ, a point he himself had made (1 Cor. 11:1). For Origen he was already “divine”. So his problems had only been assumed for our instruction.20 Neither the “inner man” nor the “one new man”, so far as I have seen, attracted particular attention from commentators during the first four centuries.21 Not, at any rate, for their potential social impact. Symptomatic of this is the case of Marius Victorinus.22 He was ideally placed to answer our question. Professor of Rhetoric at Rome in the time of Julian, he resigned his chair after the ban on Christian teachers (362). We possess quite extensive literary works of his, both as a believer and from the time before his conversion, which happened slowly while he was already a famous man. His baptism was a public sensation, according to Augustine (Conf. 8.2). He must have been fully con¹⁶ R. J. Hoffmann, Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity. An Essay on the Development of Radical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century (Chico 1984). ¹⁷ M. F. Wiles, The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge 1967) 29–30, 18 (citing Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 3.5.4); E. H. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia 1975). ¹⁸ R. Noormann, Irenäus als Paulusinterpret (Tübingen 1994). ¹⁹ M. M. Mitchell, ‘“A Variable and Many-sided Man”: John Chrysostom’s Treatment of Pauline Inconsistency’, JECS 6.1 (1998) 93–111. ²⁰ Patristic citations of Scripture across the first three centuries are tabulated in Biblia Patristica, vols 1–5 (Paris 1975–1991), the last covering Basil and his contemporaries. It emerges from these tallies that in all periods 1 Cor. is cited much more often than Rom. (except in the case of Origen), though the letters are of similar length, and far more often than the somewhat shorter 2 Cor., Eph. always more often than Gal., and Col. than Phil., two pairs also of similar length. ²¹ Patristic commentaries are catalogued, together with the homilies, in H. J. Sieben, Kirchenväterkommentare (The Hague 1991). Extracts from the commentators, in translation, are given in the new series Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (General ed. T. C. Oden), of which I have seen New Testament, Vol. 8, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (ed. M. J. Edwards; Downers Grove 1998). For evaluation, see Wiles (n. 17 above), and F. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge 1997). ²² P. Hadot, Marius Victorinus: recherches sur sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris 1971).

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scious of the cultural significance of what was happening to him and to his age. Yet his Pauline commentaries stick closely to the text.23 He amplifies it into a copious paraphrase, aiming to spell out the nuances of Paul’s thought strictly in Pauline terms. There is no symbolic interpretation such as others had used to escape the hard word. Yet he sometimes misses the point. Observers of our contemporary wave of Bible translators will recognise the problem. One slips too easily into one’s own ideas. Commenting on the “one new man” (Eph. 2:16) Victorinus says (tr. M. J. Edwards, n.21 above): Their souls have thus been reconciled to the eternal and the spiritual, to all things above. The Savior, through the Spirit, indeed the Holy Spirit, descended into souls. He thereby joined what had been separated, spiritual things and souls, so as to make the souls themselves spiritual. He has established them in himself, as he says, “in a new person”. What is this new person? The spiritual person, as distinguished from the old person, who was soul struggling against flesh.

Whatever one may think of this as an interpretation of Pauline anthropology (and the English translator has syncopated it somewhat towards the end), it appears completely to miss the point that Paul is talking about the uniting of Jew and Gentile in the “one new man”, a social and not a psychological aim. Nor can one say it is a temporary diversion on the part of Victorinus. When he comes in 2:19 to “fellow-citizens with the saints” he defines the latter as “the apostles, prophets and all who formerly experienced God or spoke divinely through the Spirit dwelling within them”. Yet in 2:17 he had recognised that “those who are near” are “obviously Jews”. In addition to the vast corpus of patristic homilists and commentators, there were being circulated at the time substantial critiques of Scripture. Most of these (e. g. Celsus, Porphyry and others that are anonymous) are preserved only by citation in the refutations that its defenders published.24 Of those that survive in their own right, the most instructive for our purposes are the works of Julian. As the last heir of the house of Constantine, he had been brought up on Scripture, though secretly rejecting it. On coming to power, he set out to reinvigorate the classical cults on the model of the churches. This illusion baffled his supporters, and the reforms would have perished through irrelevance anyway had his premature death not cancelled the question.25 The cen²³ Marii Victorini Afri commentarii in Epistulas Pauli ad Galatas, ad Philippenses, ad Ephesios (ed. A. Locher; Leipzig 1972). A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St Paul (Oxford 1927). ²⁴ The critiques are reproduced with translations in the order of the biblical books in G. Rinaldi, Biblia Gentium (= BG) (Rome 1989). Celsus can be largely reconstructed from the response of Origen: M. Borrett, ‘Celsus: A Pagan Perspective on Scripture’, The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity (ed. P. M. Blowers; Notre Dame 1997) 259–288. ²⁵ R. B. E. Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London 1995), is more reserved on these issues.

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tral preoccupation of both critics and defenders of Scripture is with its alleged inconsistencies. Since my assignment, however, concerns ‘impact on society’, I will take the two most spectactular public manifestations of the Gospel, allowing them as possible outworkings of the two Pauline focal points I have named. They are monasticism (for the “inner man”) and martyrdom (for the “one new man”).

III. The “Inner Man” and the Monachoi The earliest classical author to take a better than negative notice of “the school (diatribe) of Moses and Christ” was the medical polymath Galen, in the second century. He saw what we call monasticism and martyrdom as the two things Christians sometimes do that align them with true philosophers. We all see for ourselves, he says, that they despise death, and that they shun sex out of a kind of modesty. There are women and men among them who have avoided intercourse throughout their lives. There are also those so far advanced in self–discipline and dedicated study that they yield nothing to true philosophers.26 By the fourth century the practice of celibacy had institutionalised itself in the person of the monk (monachos, ‘solitary’ or ‘single–minded’). The term is first attested in this sense in a civil petition of 324.27 Commenting on 1 Corinthians 7:25 and 1 Timothy 4:1, an anonymous critic later asked, “How is it that certain people boast of their virginity as if it were some great thing, and say that they are filled with the Holy Ghost similarly to her who was the mother of Jesus?” (BG 708). In the churches too there were those who judged that the Pauline option had been upstaged by monasticism. We have polemical works by Jerome defending the new discipline against Helvidius (383), Jovinian (393) and Vigilantius (406). In the meantime an influential literature was developing around it, inspired by Athanasius’ idealising Life of Antonius, and the latter’s published letters.28 Asceticism was not itself a distinctive of the Christian tradition.29 But a Christian practice of ‘spirituality’ made use of it.30 At the social level, however, ²⁶ This fragment, preserved in Arabic, is reproduced in Latin in W. den Boer, Scriptorum paganorum I–IV saec. de Christianis testimonia (Leiden 1948). In general, see R. L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven 1984). ²⁷ New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 1 (1981) 124–126. ²⁸ D. Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford 1995); S. Rubenson, The Letters of St Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis 1995). ²⁹ Ascetic Behaviour in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook (ed. V. L. Wimbush; Minneapolis 1990). ³⁰ G. B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, Mass. 1959), entirely devoted to reform of the “inner man”. For a theological ‘deepening’ see Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St John of the Cross (London 1979).

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fourth-century monasticism produced reactions of horror or contempt. Julian (himself admired for his asceticism) accused the monks of exploiting their sacrifices for gain like the Cynics (Loeb ed., 2 p. 122). Their retreat to the desert came from misanthropy (p. 296). Libanius, who revered Julian’s memory, called them pale, tomb–living enemies of the gods (Or. 62.10). They pack themselves into caves, moderate only in dress (Or. 2.32). The black elephants attack the temples, concealing gluttony under artificial pallor, artisans aping philosophy (Or. 30.8–31). In the meantime the Christian Roman government strove to regulate the new craze. Legislation in 370 accused men of taking to the desert to escape civil duties (CTh 12.1.63). In 390, however, the monks were obliged to stay in their desert (16.3.1, revoked two years later, 16.3.2). In 390, bishops who admitted tonsured women to the altars were deposed (16.2.27). In 398 bishops were made responsible if monks in their territory gave sanctuary against the law (9.40.16).31 The historian Eunapius (fr. 55) complains that the Goths of Alaric had their own tribe of so-called monks, for admission to which one needed only sweep around in dirty cloaks and tunics, and to be evil and plausible. Those who destroyed the Serapeum at Alexandria in 389, he says, were human pigs, who needed only black clothes and public squalor to achieve tyranny, chaining the human race to the dishonest slave-cult of the martyrs (Lives of the Sophists 6.11.6). The poet Palladas quipped, “How can you be solitaries when you go around in crowds?” (Anth.Pal. 11.384). Writing of the year 403, the historian Zosimus asserts that the monks were taking over most of the land, impoverishing everyone (Hist.nov. 5.23.4). Can we call this the impact of Paul’s problems with the “inner man”? He would surely have joined the lost voices of those who condemned it. Yet the quest of Antony for a radical victory over the enemy within must owe something to his insights. Should the “inner man” have been locked away again?

IV. The “One New Man” and the Martyres From the official viewpoint, the “one new man” was a non–starter. Though many Romans were interested in Judaism, going over to it was disgraceful. All the more, to have tried to create a new (potentially universal) citizenship would have seemed superfluous. Rome was already well on the way in practice to achieving that much herself. In the event, the Jews were to be violently sup³¹ For a complete catalogue of legislation relating to Christian practice or ideals, see P.-P. Joannou, La législation impériale et la Christianisation de l’Empire romain (311–476) (Rome 1972).

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pressed in their main homelands in the late first and early second centuries. But their traditional autonomy of lifestyle was respected, and secured by a place in the tax system. In spite of of the fashionable assumption in New Testament studies that the demarcation between Jews and Christians proceeded only by slow and mixed stages, and was not inescapable, the Romans seem never to have seriously linked the two. No-one, Roman, Jew or Christian, across two and a half centuries of baffling repression, appears to have thought of the obvious: let the Christians go their own way and tax them too for the privilege. The whole point was that the Christians owed national loyalty to their own Roman or Greek culture, their birthright, and the law of their fathers. The Christians rejected this. They obeyed a higher law, and for ancestry appealed to Abraham.32 On one thing the Romans and the Christians readily agreed. They were treating themselves as a separate nation, a “third race”, as Tertullian put it, between Jews and Romans.33 In terms of political philosophy the matter was formulated for the Christians by Origen (Contra Cels. 1.1): “It is not wrong to form associations against the law for the sake of truth.” This is the first time in recorded history that the the right to self–determination was defined. Would Paul have shrunk from this as the outcome of his “one new man”? I think not. But the price was high. Paul understood the cost of witnessing. He had seen Stephen pay it. He paid it himself, no doubt.34 The Romans could accommodate the perverse will to die, within limits.35 There came the point, however, where it was, for the government, self–defeating. It risked the neglect of the very gods it was supposed to appease. In his edict of toleration of 311, the dying Galerius, a monster to the Christians, reiterated the unchanging complaint against them. They were creating deviant communities on divergent principles (Lactantius, De mort. pers. 34.2: per diversa varios populos congregarent). But the time had come when they should at least pray (orare, the distinctive Christian term) to their own God for their own safety, and for his. The wall came down. Rome accepted the Christian principle of self-determination. Three generations later, it was still unclear to Ammianus Marcellinus what the nature of the Christian community was.36 Ammianus is the last great his³² E. A. Judge, ‘Judaism and the Rise of Christianity: A Roman Perspective’, Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 7.2 (1993) 80–98, reprinted with slight adjustments in TynB 45.2 (1994) 355–368. ³³ A. Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity (tr. J. Moffatt, 1908, repr. Gloucester, Mass. 1972), section II vii, ‘The Tidings of the New People and of the Third Race’, 240–265; Excursus: ‘Christians as a Third Race in the Judgement of their Opponents’, 266– 278. ³⁴ H. W. Tajra, The Martyrdom of St Paul: Historical and Judicial Context, Traditions and Legends (Tübingen 1994). ³⁵ G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge 1995). ³⁶ The following remarks are based upon my own reading of Ammianus. Recent studies include T. D. Barnes, Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality

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torian of Rome, the heir of Tacitus. He toyed with various terms: ritus christianus, christiana lex, cultus christianus, christiana religio. He has no parallel for such an adjective with any of these nouns, and none of them in his usage relates primarily to what we call ‘religion’ in antiquity. He is casting about for a way of formulating the cultural phenomenon as a whole. His older contemporary, Marius Victorinus, had already adopted the neologism, christianitas. Ammianus coyly accepts, with apologies to his Latin readers, several Greek terms now making their way back into Latin (he is himself a Greek!): presbyter, diaconus, synodus, martyr. The latter two are very public phenomena which he carefully explains. He also habitually assimilates the episcopal system to a military command structure. He accepts the professionalism of the Christian calling, and the dedication of virgins and martyrs. He likes the uncontentious, ethically quietist and tolerant elements. He recognises the drive for orthodoxy, the political independence of bishops, the solidarity of the communities. He recoils from factionalism, brutality, pomp and superstition as he saw it already in the churches. Yet many crucial aspects escape him. He does not see the connection between doctrinal commitment and political troubles. He does not see the biblical sources of dogmatic controversy. He seems unaware of the influence of women in the churches, of the charitable enterprise, even of monasticism (apart from the virgins). But he fully grasps the impact upon public life of the phenomenon he cannot either clearly perceive or define. He wants to isolate its positive behaviour and assimilate that to the general good. In both his uncertainty and his intentions he is registering, as an instinctively responsible student, the historical novelty of beliefs about God creating an alternative culture, which is what we now mean by ‘religion’. Paul may not exactly have intended this for his “one new man”, but it holds within it still the keys to the higher destiny he had in mind. The social impact has been profound, but mostly very long delayed.37 However difficult it may be to trace historical cause and effect, one need have no doubt that in the long run a dominant source of cultural transformation in the West (and now worldwide) has been the churches’ repeatedly seeking a fresh start from Scripture.38 (Ithaca 1998); J. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London 1989); R. L. Rike, Apex omium: Religion in the Res Gestae of Ammianus (Berkeley 1987); E. D. Hunt, ‘Christians and Christianity in Ammianus’, CQ 35 (1985) 186–200; V. Neri, Ammiano e il cristianesimo: religione e politica nelle Res Gestae di Ammiano Marcellino (Bologna 1985). ³⁷ According to W. Kinzig, Novitas christiana: die Idee des Fortschritts in der alten Kirche bis Eusebius (Göttingen 1994), rev. R. L. Wilken, JTS 47 (1996) 271–274, Christianity did, probably, create the idea of cultural progress. ³⁸ In Dr Peter O’Brien we salute a master of that fine art, especially now in his searching commentary on the letter to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids 1999).

Chapter 5

‘Antike und Christentum’: Some Recent Work from Cologne* Under the title, Antike und Christentum, a new periodical was published during the ’thirties by that singular antiquarian, Franz Joseph Dölger, whose chair at Bonn was defined as being for “the Church History of Antiquity, Christian Archaeology and Patrology, together with General Religious History”.1 The journal was as unique as its author, and died with him, for from the start it was designed to contain his contributions alone. “The sending in of manuscripts is therefore pointless”, announced the editorial note. For twenty-five years Dölger had felt his way uneasily towards this point, seeking a means of expressing adequately the method of work he believed his discipline required. For the remaining ten years before his death all his studies were poured out through this channel. But he remained a master of detail who shunned the larger synthesis his efforts called for. It fell to Theodor Klauser, his successor in the Catholic Theological Faculty at Bonn, and an ever-growing circle of collaborators in Germany and abroad, to draw out the ideas implied in his work. This is still being done, in a piece-meal way, through the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (= RAC) and the other publications of the independent institute founded in his honour, and affiliated with the University of Bonn.2 ‘Antike und Christentum’ has become the accepted name of a field of study which, because it cuts across existing boundaries and does not have very clearcut limits of its own, may not be so easy to grasp as its simple title suggests. It has been consciously followed in the naming of the ‘Institute for Antiquity and Christianity’ at Claremont, California.3 But there is a clear distinction between the projects of the Claremont Institute and the objective of the Dölger-Institut. * Prudentia 5 (1973) 1–13. Written in grateful acknowledgement of help and hospitality received from members of the Dölger-Institut in Bonn and the Institut für Altertumskunde in Cologne, as well as from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, while on leave from Macquarie University. ¹ Th. Klauser, Franz Joseph Dölger. Leben und Werk (Münster 1956). ² Th. Klauser, Das Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum und das F. J. Dölger-Institut in Bonn (Stuttgart 21970). The Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, which continues the tradition of Dölger’s periodical, but on a freer basis, also gives a good view of the field. Its first ten volumes contain (amongst many other things) the serial publication of Klauser’s own ‘Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der christlichen Kunst’, an epoch-making work to which further reference is made below. ³ Bulletin of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, no. 3 (Claremont 1972).

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At Claremont a considerable number of separate enterprises (so far, thirteen), some already under way in other American or European centres, have been drawn together to be more actively promoted under common auspices. They are typically front-line or even emergency research projects (including ones that help towards the conservation and preparation for study of some Ras Shamra tablets, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi codices, and the Patmos Monastery library). Their common interest is in their having some bearing upon the study of the Bible, and ‘Antiquity and Christianity’ is meant to be a large enough term to cover anything connected with that, and to attract support for it. The Bible certainly comes within the province of the Dölger-Institut, and it, too, has occasionally promoted specific projects (the monograph series, ‘Theophaneia’, for liturgical and other themes, and the excavations at Abu Mena). But its main objective is an analytical one, centred upon a more specific period. The Institute’s purpose is said to be “research into late antiquity”, and the RAC is sub-titled ‘An Encyclopaedia of the Interaction of Christianity with the Ancient World’. By ‘interaction’ (Auseinandersetzung) is meant the many-sided process by which the classical civilisation, as it existed in the first three centuries, was transformed into the Christianised culture of the four centuries beginning with Constantine. It was Dölger’s belief that this process could never be understood by working from classical or patristic literature alone, and moreover that the way forward was by starting with the particular details of life, thought and behaviour as seen not only in literary sources but in the physical remains of antiquity. His vision has not yet been fulfilled, and it has to be reached across the twin hazards of fragmentation and schematisation, but there is wide recognition that it is a goal worth pursuing. In another place I hope to report on the current state of studies in this field in general, but it may be of particular interest to readers of Prudentia, in the light of the policies expressed in its sub-title and Foreword, if I draw attention here to several recent projects by people associated with the Institut für Altertumskunde at Cologne. As will be seen, there happen to be individual links between the Cologne Institute and the Dölger-Institut, and the work I mention falls within the latter’s sphere of interest. But my point in setting it out here is to show with what important results one ‘Department of Classics and Ancient History’ (which is what the Cologne Institute amounts to in our terms) has fostered studies in territory often left, in our tradition, to other disciplines, if not allowed to fall between the stools altogether. German studies of the ancient world have of course traditionally been more comprehensive and better interrelated than ours (thanks amongst other things to the fully established status of Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical and Patristic studies in the universities). But in the changing educational circumstances of today it is especially fitting that the style set in Berlin before the First World War should be developed (I think of the scale on which such men as Wilamowitz, Norden, Harnack and Ed.

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Meyer drew up their provinces of study).4 Prudentia has also put its finger on the need to encourage bridge-building work of this type.

I. Popular Ethics It is now twenty years since Albrecht Dihle published his first study of popular ethics, as a means of opening up the question of ‘Antike und Christentum.’5 His successive contributions have worked along lines clearly thought out at an early stage, so that although they are scattered they constitute together a very substantial and coherent analysis of the subject. It is marked both by the skilful balance with which diverse ideas from traditions and levels of culture are set in relation to each other, and by the illuminating treatment of individual authors and topics which this new vantage-point makes possible. My impression is that the full consequences of this achievement have by no means been appreciated, even in Germany. The fact is that few people now possess the familiarity with the whole range of ancient literature, Biblical, Classical, and Patristic, which is needed to judge it, nor the appetite for the multifarious petty literature of antiquity which the study of popular ethics particularly draws upon. Dihle himself has set a notable example of how to tackle such a task. Although his own range is exceptionally wide (quite apart from our subject he writes upon topics reaching from Homeric vocabulary to the ancient exploration of the East), he does not hesitate to seek out and incorporate the knowledge of specialists in particular matters, as he acknowledges at various points. In Britain and America, although he is personally well known, there seem to be few who have recognised the force of what he has done in this field (his work has not often been reviewed in English). The forthcoming Sather lectures, however, will certainly alter this, and it will be surprising if we do not hear much more of the subject in the coming twenty years than we have in the past. The study of humility (Demut) not only made clear the style of Dihle’s work, but brought forward the quality which he has continued to see as basic ⁴ E. A. Judge, ‘Some Reflections from Germany upon Ancient History Today’, Ancient Society: Resources for Teachers 2 (1972) no. 4, 27–42; id., ‘St Paul and Classical Society’, JbAC 15 (1972) 19–36 (now reproduced in Social Distinctives, 73–97); id., ‘“Antike und Christentum”, Towards a Definition of the Field’, in a forthcoming volume of Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, ed. H. Temporini (Berlin and New York). [Now 2.23.1 (1979) 3–58, partly reproduced as ch. 5 above.] ⁵ The following works of A. Dihle are relevant to this discussion: ‘Antike Höflichkeit und christliche Demut’ SIFC 26 (1952) 169–190; ‘Demut’, RAC 3 (1956) 735–778; Die Goldene Regel. Eine Einführung in die Geschichte der Antiken und Frühchristlichen Vulgärethik (Göttingen 1962); ‘Ethik’, RAC 6 (1964) 646–797; Der Kanon der zwei Tugenden (Cologne and Opladen 1968); ‘Gerechtigkeit’ to appear in RAC [now 10 (1977) 233–360]; Sather Classical Lectures, to be given in 1974 on the origin of the concept of the will [now The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley 1982)].

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to the new way of life, and therefore a touch-stone for tracing the complex patterns of popular ethics. In spite of the efforts of the Greek Fathers to relate it to Classical ethics (e. g. by identifying it with ‘apathy’), the ‘humility’ of the New Testament does not have any formal precedent, and indeed is not properly represented at all by the attempt to make it a measurable item in a system of ethics (here one sees the force and difficulty of the notion of ‘popular ethics’, which are by definition attitudes not neatly classified in an intellectual order). All Classical systems are based upon the specific self-appreciation of the individual, and such practices as the recognition of one’s natural limits, the cultivation of politeness, or the adoption of a low posture for utilitarian purposes, are not to be confused with self-renunciation. Philanthropia, comitas and clementia, for example, all commence with the superiority of the party exercising the virtue. In post-exilic Judaism developed the belief that the ‘poor’, because they were obedient to God, would eventually be exalted. The New Testament radicalised this attitude by transferring it to the neighbour, in whom God is seen. This subjection is not ethically measurable, but because of its centrality to the preaching of grace, it became increasingly the subject of definition as the need for conceptual security grew. The prodigal son was replaced by the ritualised penitent, and in the end John Chrysostom could argue that the taxgatherer of the parable was not practising humility because he was merely recognising his true baseness. The hierarchical ranking system of late antiquity provided opportunities for the exercise of humility as a formal virtue, but this accommodation to the Classical pattern was upset in the fourth century by two developments, monasticism and the thought of St Augustine. In monasticism the development of coenobitic life soon reintroduced opportunities for the formalisation of humility after the drastic reversion of the first hermits to the taxgatherer’s model. Augustine brought the conceptual refinement of the theme to its full development in such a way that the absolute subjection to God and one’s neighbour is preserved through making it the sine qua non of all virtues, which would otherwise be spoiled by pride. In Die goldene Regel Dihle then supplied an ‘Introduction to the History of Popular Ethics in Antiquity and Early Christianity’ (as the book is sub-titled) from a quite different angle. The Golden Rule is not, like the principle of humility, a new idea that was being worked into various relationships with existing systems of ethics, both modifying them and being itself modified. It is the relic of the primeval law of retaliation, persisting, in spite of the development of more adequate ways of thinking about man in society, thanks to the apparent loftiness supplied by its gnomic forms and its availability to cap an argument proceeding on other grounds. It is a mistake to think that it was changed from a negative to a positive form in the teaching of Jesus. The particular variety is a matter of convenience, and both are widely attested in various traditions. It occurs first amongst the Greeks and then enjoys something of a

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vogue in later Jewish ethics thanks to its somewhat greater compatibility with principles of the Jewish law. Jesus did not enforce it, but merely cited it (not ‘Do unto others …’ but ‘You do unto others …’). Reactions to this have differed, and the definition of ‘parallels’ is a tricky matter. But the book remains a most valuable contribution not only for its assembly of material (some of which, of course, has long been pointed out in connection with New Testament exegesis), but for its main purpose, the study of the way popular ethical ideas interact with more formal religious or philosophical systems. This goes far beyond the analysis of terms and ideas, moreover, for the strength of Dihle’s work lies in his capacity to use literary material to read the story of the social order itself. The substance of this book is not a catena of maxims, but the analysis of the breakdown of retaliation as a norm of behaviour and its replacement by other forms of relationship (from the household and its extensions to the acceptance of all men as neighbours), which do more justice to what one man expects of and owes to another. Yet another way in which popular ideas interact with more established systems is discussed in Der Kanon der zwei Tugenden, a little book of the widest interest, but so far virtually unnoticed in the literature of our discipline. Dihle opens his study by referring to the reinterpretation of the two familiar figures of ‘Christian’ iconography, the Good Shepherd and the Orans (Woman in Prayer), advanced in recent years in Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum (= JbAC) by Theodor Klauser. These are not Christ and the Soul, but Philanthropy and Piety. The identification is disputed, but fits better with the fact that the symbols are not confined to Christian monuments. Dihle’s own demonstration of the importance of the ‘canon of the two virtues’ in popular thought will do much to strengthen Klauser’s case. We are dealing here with a norm of popular ethics which ran more or less continuously through Classical Antiquity, and successfully bridged the gaps between Greek, Jewish and Christian ways of thinking. The development of philosophical ethics from the time of Plato as a science of human behaviour drove piety from its accepted place (though it was retained as part of social behaviour). This ensured the freedom of the schools to concentrate upon man. But the old dual obligation lived on in popular ethics, and enjoyed the support of the growing art of rhetoric. In Judaism and Christianity it found ready acceptance as a formula that gathered up their stress upon the unity of one’s duty to God and man. Dihle argues that it was concurrently finding its way back into philosophy proper as a result of the work of Posidonius. It was he moreover, in response to the ideals of the Hellenistic rulers, who replaced Righteousness with Philanthropy as the man-ward duty, a change vital to its acceptability amongst Christians. In this way the dual canon was able to cater for the assimilation of Christian attitudes to Classical society in the first three centuries, pending the full engagement between theology and philosophy in the fourth.

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All of this material and much more has been systematically discussed in Dihle’s comprehensive treatment of ‘Ethik’ in the RAC. The entry runs to 150 columns, and is an important work in its own right, quite apart from its function in the encyclopaedia. Graeco-Roman philosophy is treated typologically, particular attention being given to the various ways in which it adopts an individualistic approach to man, to the interaction between philosophy and popular ethics, to the distinctive developments of later antiquity, and to certain elements lacking in Classical ethics (namely the conception of radical evil, the concept of the will, that of the conscience, the duty to one’s neighbour, and the attitude of humility). Later Judaism is handled with separate analysis of Rabbinic ethics, the attitudes of the sects, and of Hellenistic Judaism. In the case of the New Testament most of the space is given not to Jesus, nor to Paul and John (who are subordinated, following Bultmann), but to the development of distinctive ethical attitudes in the primitive community. This reflects the importance Dihle attributes to popular ethics in the history of the subject. Gnosticism is also given careful attention, as a possible way forward in the intellectualisation of Christian belief, and then, as the alternative to this, the progressive adaptation of theology to philosophy through the work of Patristic scholars. The idea of using the distinction between popular ethics and the doctrines of the philosophical schools as a framework for discussing the interaction of ‘Antike’ and ‘Christentum’ has already proved exceptionally fruitful. It provides a system by which materials from philosophy and theology, from social, religious and literary history, can be related to each other, and shows how the joint study of both great traditions of Antiquity will yet contribute much more to our understanding of them. Here is a method by which Professor Dihle certainly has more to give, and which lies open to exploitation by others.

II. Literary Falsification To study ‘Antike und Christentum’ under the miscellaneous headings of an encyclopaedia may seem a somewhat haphazard approach to the question. The usual problems of determining a list of entries are compounded here by the novelty of the enterprise, and the policy of the editors has had to be adapted with experience. Even Germans, I gather, find it difficult to predict the entries under which a particular topic is likely to be handled. But there is another side to this. One is frequently confronted with a topic which one would not oneself have envisaged, and which has never perhaps before been systematically treated. Literary falsification is a notable case in point.6 ⁶ The following works of W. Speyer are relevant to this discussion: ‘Religiöse Pseudepigraphie und literarische Fälschung im Altertum’, JbAC8/9 (1965/1966) 88–125; ‘Fälschung,

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In 1962 Klauser requested Wolfgang Speyer to prepare an entry for the RAC on ‘Fälschung, literarische’. Speyer had made himself at Cologne a specialist in the minor literature, especially the poetry, of later Antiquity. But the new task soon proved to be one not likely to be satisfied simply by an entry for the encyclopaedia. Above all there proved to be no adequate systematic treatment of the subject at all. Appointed to a research fellowship at the Dölger-Institut, where he still works, Speyer was able to devote several years to a thorough exploration of it. The entry in the RAC appeared in 1966 as a digest of a much more comprehensive work, which appeared in 1971 as one of the introductory volumes in Müller’s Handbuch (Section I, Part 2). The scale of the new work undertaken is hinted at by the fact that the 350–page work replaces a 20–page sketch in an earlier volume of the Handbuch. Speyer nevertheless insists that his study is only a ‘first attempt’ at interpretation of the field. It attempts to define the typology of the subject, and is in no sense a history of literary falsification, a far more elaborate task for which Speyer sets out the preconditions in concluding his own contribution. The amount of material to be digested is certainly daunting. Speyer’s index refers to a good 350 false works or authors that go under their own name, quite apart from the far greater number of spurious works attached to the names of otherwise genuine authors. There are also indexed the names of some 200 pseudepigraphers responsible for such forgeries, including persons from modern times. With all this Speyer warns us that his collection is by no means complete, especially for the ancient literatures outside Greek and Latin. The study of forgery in itself may seem at first sight somewhat unrewarding. But many questions of great importance must be tackled in the process. Falsification is to be distinguished, for example, from such phenomena as the composition of documents or speeches for rhetorical ends (as in Classical historiography), or from a category which Speyer calls “genuine religious pseudepigraphy”. This term, the definition of which gave rise to a separate study published in the JbAC 8/9 (1965/1966) 88–125, applies to works attributed out of religious belief to a god (as with oracles, or scriptural revelations). The matter is not simple, since religious pseudepigraphy is not necessarily ‘genuine’, but may itself be a vehicle of the intent to deceive, or again be a purely literary device. Some other literary phenomena which are distinguished from falsification in Speyer’s sense are ‘mystification’, plagiarism, pseudonymity, the attribution of official documents to kings or popes, the attribution of the work of literarische’, RAC 7 (1966) 236–277; ‘Angebliche Übersetzungen des heidnischen und christlichen Altertums’, JbAC 11/12 (1968/1969) 26–41; Bücherfunde in der Glaubenswerbung der Antike (Göttingen 1970); ‘Büchervernichtung’ (Nachtrag zum RAC) JbAC 13 (1970) 123–152; Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum. Ein Versuch ihrer Deutung (Munich 1971); ‘Fälschung, pseudepigraphische freie Erfindung und “echte religiöse Pseudepigraphie”’, Pseudepigrapha, ed. K. von Fritz (Vandoeuvres-Geneva 1972) 333–366.

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disciples to the heads of philosophical or medical schools, and various types of confusion based on error or misunderstanding. Falsification proper is only possible after the development of the notion of literary property. Speyer puts up a strong case against those who have held that this is a purely modern idea. It clearly began with the Greeks. Falsification then is a pathological form of the claim to ownership of one’s work. Its object is deception, but the study of the motives for it opens up many interesting aspects of the changing tradition of ‘Antike und Christentum’: the idea of Classicism, the Hellenistic passion for collecting literary masterpieces, the notion of canonicity in Judaism and Christianity, the struggle over heresy and orthodoxy, and the use of forged documents in later times to secure privileges. In spite of the perversity of the theme, and the instinctive doubt that anything worthwhile can be achieved by working on deliberately contaminated material, Speyer rightly claims that the counter-criticism developed in Antiquity itself provides a sound foothold on slippery ground. Nor should one forget the positive developments to which falsification is a reaction. The modern concern for authenticity and proper documentation has not a little to do with the painful struggles of late Antiquity. Religious dogmatism in particular, however pathetic or poisonous some of its techniques may seem, has nevertheless, in its concern for validation, contributed to the establishment of modern intellectual standards. Speyer’s work also classifies the techniques of falsification, and he has published a separate monograph on one of these, the discovery of books from the past (in graves, for example). Here again the value of his work in general, in a field depressingly well occupied by religious writers, is to show how many-sided and complex the interconnections of ‘Antike’ and ‘Christentum’ in fact are.

III. The New Mani Codex Like many German Classical institutes, that at Cologne has paid particular attention to the study of the documentary sources for the ancient world. The last decade especially has seen the development there of a flourishing school of papyrology, associated in the first instance with Reinhold Merkelbach. His own interests are concentrated upon literature, and he has worked upon subjects as far apart as Hesiod and the Greek romances, for both of which the papyrus finds have become increasingly important. The leader of the papyrological section at Cologne is Ludwig Koenen, who keeps up the vital links with Cairo, and together with Merkelbach edits an active new periodical, the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. Its parts appear in rapid succession, affording quick publication to a multitude of often small contributions, both new texts and improved readings. For the edition of larger texts there are two

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monograph series, Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen, devoted to the publication of the Biblical commentaries of Didymus the Blind found at Tura in 1941, and Papyrologica Coloniensia, which has recently included the impressive Archiv des Petaus (1969), the reconstruction of a complete village archive of the second century from materials held in Cologne and Michigan, the joint work of the Hagedorns and the Youties. But for ‘Antike und Christentum’ the crown of this highly productive decade is the new Mani codex, extensively reported (though not yet fully published) by A.Henrichs and Koenen in 1970.7 The find is a palaeographical sensation, whose restoration is owed to the technical skill of Anton Fackelmann of Vienna. Only the size of a match-box, it is easily the smallest miniature codex yet found. Its 192 surviving parchment pages generally carry 23 lines of astonishingly tiny writing. A fifth-century production, probably from Oxyrhynchus, it is taken by Henrichs and Koenen to have been written as an amulet. Kurt Treu, however, in a valuable discussion, argues that the exceptionally fine and legible writing, the scale and character of the work, and the fact the text has been carefully corrected, show that the book was meant to be seriously studied. It confirms the high scholarly standard maintained in the propagation of Manichaeism. The importance of the new codex for religious history arises partly from the fact that we now have for the first time a Greek work by Manichaean writers, including citations from Mani himself. Until last century the success of the Church in obliterating its rival was virtually complete. Our knowledge was based upon the attacks on the other religion in Patristic writers, especially Augustine, and there was a false biography of Mani – a Christian forgery. Early this century there were discovered in Turkestan (where the religion had been established in the eighth century) some thousands of fragments of original Manichaean works, and in the ’thirties an even more important Coptic library was found in Egypt. Of this some parts have been published (a Psalmbook, of impressive literary quality, and a theological treatise, the Kephalaia), but others were lost in the war (the letters of Mani, most of a historical work, and a book of Logoi, thought to have been writings of Mani’s disciples).8 The new Greek work shows by the good quality of its expression that the linguistic difficulties with the oriental texts may be the result of the process of transla⁷ ‘Ein griechischer Mani-Codex (P. Colon. inv. Nr. 4780; vgl. Tafeln IV–VI)’, ZPE 5 (1970) 97–216; R. Köbert, ‘Orientalische Bemerkungen zum Kölner Mani-Codex’, ZPE 8 (1971) 243–247; L. Koenen, ‘Das Datum der Offenbarung und Geburt Manis’, 247–250; reviews of Henrichs and Koenen by K. Treu, ‘Christliche Papyri III’, Archiv für Papyrusforschung 21 (1971) esp. 212–214, and by C. Colpe, JbAC 14 (1971) 150–153. ⁸ A. Böhlig, ‘Die Arbeit an den koptischen Manichaica’, reprinted from the Wiss. Zeitschr. der M. Luther-Univ. Halle-Wittenberg 10 (1961) in the author’s Wahrheit und Mysterion (Leiden 1968) 177–187.

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tion and do not qualify the high reputation of Manichaeism as a literary religion. In terms of content there are considerable advances on the previous state of our knowledge. The biography covers the early part of Mani’s life (there may have been a series of several volumes covering the whole), which has been least well known. A number of dates are now established for the first time. Mani was born on 14 April 216, lived amongst the Baptists from his fourth to his twenty-fifth year, and received his two revelations on 1 April 228, and 19 April 240. Some dates in Sassanid history are also fixed for the last of these years. We now know that Mani’s heavenly ‘twin’ was not some kind of guardian angel, but his heavenly self: the new work is entitled ‘The Begetting of his Body’. Koenen has subsequently interpreted this “in the Pauline sense” as ‘The Begetting of his Church’, but this would be to build far too much on a very contentious element in Pauline exegesis. It is now clear, however, that Mani’s connection with Christianity was much closer than could previously be shown. The Baptist community turn out not to have been Manichaeans (who were anti-Christian), but Elchasaites (derived from Jewish Christianity). A long history of the prophets and apostles down to Paul provides authentication for Mani’s visions, and shows the connections in which he wished to be seen. The opening of Mani’s Gospel, cited in the codex and reproduced in Henrichs and Koenen, also shows by its Pauline formulae who his predecessors were supposed to be. Paul is, moreover, cited with impressive accuracy, a fact which invites confidence in the citations from Mani himself. The latter comes through clearly as more than an apostle. Although the Greek scribe follows Christian convention in the abbreviation of the divine names, the formula, “The Lord spoke”, refers not to Jesus, but to Mani. Both Henrichs and Koenen have announced further studies,9 and the full publication of the codex will open up a remarkable range of new possibilities in a field tantalisingly circumscribed by the destruction of books in both ancient and modern times. Carsten Colpe has envisaged a counter argument against the apparent implications of the new codex. The originality of the Iranian elements in developed Manichaeism could be defended by arguing that this is an attempt to fabricate a Jewish-Christian origin for Mediterranean consumption. Colpe himself sees now the possibility of tracing the growth of ⁹ Koenen expects shortly to publish a study of the larger work of which he takes the new codex to be a part, and also a study on Augustine and Mani (to appear in JbAC 15 [1972]) [but see now ‘Augustine and Manichaeism in the Light of the Cologne Mani Codex’, Illinois Classical Studies 3 (1978) 154–195]. Henrichs will report on ‘Okzident und Orient: Ein neuer Text zum Ursprung des Manichäismus’ in a forthcoming volume of Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt [but see now ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill a Tree, Greek, Manichaean and Indian Tales’, BASP 16 (1979) 85–108]. It is to be assumed that the full publication of the codex itself will take place in the series Papyrologica Coloniensia [see now L. Koenen and C. Römer, Der Kölner Mani-Kodex (Opladen 1988)].

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Manichaeism through Jewish heteredoxy into an Iranian dualistic system of Gnostic type. The important thing is that it has not hitherto been possible to conduct any adequate enquiry into the development of the religion. Nor need it now be only of antiquarian interest, for it promises to supply a fascinating parallel to the classical debate over the life of Jesus, who is also known to us through Greek documents which reflect the changing interests of his followers and the system of thought and practice they established.

Chapter 6

‘Antike und Christentum’: Towards a Definition of the Field* I. The Work of Franz Joseph Dölger Antike und Christentum was the title chosen by F. J. Dölger for his personal journal.1 When the first volume appeared, no less an expert than H. Delehaye at once expressed his astonishment.2 Anyone who knew the scale and quality of Dölger’s previous publications, he claimed, would be amazed to learn that, far from having emptied his drawers, he had found them overflowing, and had no other recourse but to create a journal for his exclusive use. Dölger was quite explicit about the last point. On the back of the title-page he stated: Antike und Christentum ist eine Zeitschrift, die vom Herausgeber allein bestritten wird. Die Zusendung von Manuskripten ist daher zwecklos.

He also threatened to keep any books sent for review. These rubrics were retained (out of pietas?) when the sixth volume was completed ten years after his death. Its editor, Th. Klauser, however, foreshadowed that, beginning with a prospective seventh volume, a new series would be open to others as well. The new Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum commenced in 1958, and has fulfilled this promise, though, as intended, pride of place was given (for the first ten numbers) to the ongoing publication of papers Dölger had left. * ANRW 2.23.1 (1979) 3–20, with new ‘Afterword’ and digest of sections V–VIII. The original was written in 1977 at the F. J. Dölger-Institut in Bonn during leave from Macquarie University supported by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. The script was not shown to the Dölger-Institut prior to publication. ¹ Antike und Christentum: Kultur- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien (6 vols, Münster 1929–1950, repr. 1974). The volumes were planned to appear in quarterly parts, but the regular sequence, already delayed, was broken off after vol. 5 in 1936 while Dölger laboured on the remaining parts of the fifth volume of his series of monographs entitled ΙΧΘΥΣ. (He had launched these in 1909, but after the brilliant achievements of the earlier volumes he found completion difficult.) Only two parts of vol. 6 of Antike und Christentum had been produced by his death in 1940. The third was virtually ready, and the fourth was made up from his Nachlass by his executor, Th. Klauser, only to be destroyed at press stage in 1944. Resetting was not possible until 1950. ² H. D(elehaye), Anal. Boll. 48 (1930) 179. To appreciate even the first volume, he complained ominously, “une science encyclopédique suffirait à peine”. The ‘Wort- und Sachverzeichnis’ indeed already looks like a first draft of the list of Stichwörter for the subsequent Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum.

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What was the reason for this singular form of independence? Dölger certainly seems to have been an isolated, even wilful figure.3 After his first Würzburg thesis (in 1904, on the sacrament of confirmation) he quickly stepped beyond the traditional use of the patristic writers as sources for the history of dogma. Instead he turned to a new kind of history of belief, and to the vast fund of non-patristic sources that lay ready to hand in the apocryphal or gnostic writings, in the inscriptions, papyri and monuments. His second thesis (in 1906, on exorcism) already made the new style startlingly clear. He then pursued this course with unrelenting concentration throughout his life. The enlargement of range beyond the received corpus of patristic sources may be likened to the one Th. Mommsen had achieved in the secular history of the era. But where Mommsen had been at the centre of many collaboratory projects on the sources, Dölger went his own way. Not that he was averse to the give and take of research. He hoped to open up a whole stream of studies by others, he said. Antike und Christentum published 134 pieces under the heading, ‘Echo aus Antike und Christentum’, in which Dölger discussed, and sometimes conceded, points taken up by his readers. But it is clear that what led him on was a highly individual conception of his task. On leaving Würzburg for Rome in 1904, Dölger turned aside to visit Albert Ehrhard in Strasburg, who he knew would sympathise with his disquiet over the current state of historical study of the early centuries in Catholic circles. Ehrhard gave him the charge which was to govern his life’s work, and set the keynote for what has followed from it:4 ³ A full biography by Th. Klauser is in preparation. In the meantime he has published brief accounts of Dölger’s life and work in the following places: Hist. Jahrb. 61 (1942) 455– 459, reprinted in: F. J. Dölger, Leben und Werk: Ein Gedenkblatt (Münster 1956) 5–10; Veröff. der Gesell. für fränkische Gesch., 7. Lebensläufe aus Franken, 9 (1960) 128–137; Bonner Gelehrte (Bonn 1968) 123–130, reprinted in: Gesammelte Arbeiten (Münster 1974) 405–412. See also the obituary by K. Baus, Röm. Quart. 47 (1939) 1–8. The tabula gratulatoria in his Festschrift ‘Pisciculi’, ed. Th. Klauser and A. Rücker (Münster 1939), draws most heavily from the places in which he had worked (Würzburg, Rome, Münster, Breslau and Bonn). There are only a few names from such leading German universities as Berlin, Leipzig and Munich, and only one (Hugh Last) from Britain. The academic common market was not flourishing in 1939. ⁴ Quoted by Dölger in the preface to Antike und Christentum 1 (1929). Ehrhard had retreated to Strasburg after being superseded in his chair at Vienna as a result of ecclesiastical disputes. He was later to hold the chair in early church history at Bonn in which Dölger succeeded him in 1929. Although much more of a public figure, he was equally a loner in his scholarly work, which was dedicated to a task of comparable magnitude, the opening up to critical study of the entire hagiographical tradition of the Greek church. He undertook this for Harnack’s Kirchenväter-Kommission in 1897, but it was only in retirement in 1937 that he was able to bring out the first of his preliminary volumes, so vast was the mass of unresearched material (2750 MSS); and though his subsequent work is preserved, it may never now be published. See W. Abschlag, ‘Wann wird Albert Ehrhards Lebenswerk benutzbar?’, Theol. Lit.zeitung 91 (1966) 797–800; F. Winkelmann, Albert Ehrhard und die Erforschung der griechisch-byzantinischen Hagiographie (Texte und Untersuchungen 111, Berlin 1971).

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Wenn Sie von Rom die eine klare Erkenntnis mitbringen, wie sich das frühe Christentum mit der antiken Kultur auseinandergesetzt hat, dann hat sich der römische Aufenthalt gelohnt.

But what is meant by the ‘Auseinandersetzung’ of ‘Antike und Christentum’? The term presumably covers both ‘coming to grips with’ and ‘coming to terms with’ an opponent. It is both an encounter and a settlement. Following loosely Dölger’s own statements in the preface to Volume 1 of Antike und Christentum, we might put it in the following way. On the one hand there is the intellectual tradition of the Fathers, a reasonably clear lineage of ideas, beginning with Scripture, worked out in the debates over orthodoxy and heresy, and formulated from time to time in the councils. This tradition had provided the substance of the history of dogma as regularly studied in the theological schools. On the other hand, Dölger now proposed, there is the interaction between the outlook of believers themselves, including not only the Fathers, but the great array of their little-known followers, and that of their neighbours who had kept to the old ways of the Greeks and Romans. The history of this interaction must be traced not only through the works of the Fathers, but by studying the ceremonial of church life, the intellectual and linguistic features of the way ideas were formed, and their expression in the daily life of believers and representation in the physical remains of church building, house and grave. The interaction must include not only conscious reaction against customs and ideas which conflicted with a believer’s faith, but unconscious accommodation to and acceptance of secular themes and habits, however inconsistent they may have been with the faith. Church history hitherto, Dölger claimed, had been not unjustly criticised for confining itself to mission history, to the story of the church’s struggle against persecution and heresy. His new undertaking, however, would open up the inner life of the churches. What had been written hitherto on the domestic and religious life of ordinary believers he considered not worth mentioning. What do the six volumes of Antike und Christentum, and Dölger’s series of articles which have followed in the Jahrbuch, actually amount to? For all the multiplicity of detail, and the kaleidoscopic effect of the constant switching of scene, there swiftly emerges a familiar pattern, already established in the monographic and other works which had come earlier.5 Dölger’s eye is most As with Dölger, the road he pioneered can now only be fully opened up by an elaborate collective effort. ⁵ For a full bibliography of and index to Dölger’s published work (prepared by K. Baus) see Th. Klauser, F. J. Dölger: Leben und Werk (Münster 1956) 11–22. The principal monographs are: Das Sakrament der Firmung historisch-dogmatisch dargestellt (Vienna 1906, repr. Sinzig [Rhein] 1990); Der Exorzismus im altchristlichen Taufritual. Eine religionsgeschichtliche Studie (Paderborn 1909, repr. New York 1967); ΙΧΘΥΣ: vol. 1: Das Fischsymbol in frühchristlicher Zeit (Rome 1910, Münster 21928); vols 2, 3: Der heilige Fisch in den antiken Religionen und im Christentum (Münster 1922); vols 4, 5: Die Fischdenkmäler in der frühchristlichen

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sharply focussed upon a very specific type of phenomenon: the physical signs, symbols and gestures by which Christians expressed their beliefs, and the comparable practices in the common usage of antiquity. He did not in the end move far from his original interest in sacrament and liturgy. But he expanded it to embrace the ritual and customary procedures of the whole of life, and above all he moved beyond the framework of the history of dogma to adopt the more anthropological approach of social and religious history – or rather antiquities. A list of some of the topics prominent in Antike und Christentum will most simply illustrate this: bread-stamps; seating arrangements in the basilica at Milan; branding as a form of dedication; the ritual kiss; religious tattooing; burning oneself to death; the sun as symbol of the Logos; images of suffering after death; symbols of baptism; the fish as a symbol; baptism in blood; the cross engraved on the forehead; coins in the fountain; the cross as phylactery; spitting; abortion; epilepsy; the octagon; sacrifice of children; bells; the greeting of the lamp; barefootedness; Nile water and baptismal water; ceremonial aspects of the Mass; names for the church building; the sign of the cross.

Such a list gives no impression of the way in which Dölger works out from his cultic starting point into the popular culture. But it will be apparent that, for all the erudition and thoroughness with which such a line of study may be Plastik, Malerei und Kleinkunst (Münster 1927 Tafeln, 1932–1943 Text); Sphragis: Eine altchristliche Taufbezeichnung in ihren Beziehungen zur profanen und religiösen Kultur des Altertums (Paderborn 1911, repr. New York 1967); Die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit und der Schwarze: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Studie zum Taufgelöbnis (Münster 1918, repr. 1971); Sol salutis: Gebet und Gesang im christlichen Altertum mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Ostung in Gebet und Liturgie (Münster 1920, 21925, repr. 1972).

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pursued, it is not going to answer more than a small range of the questions that are thrown up by the theme ‘Antike und Christentum’. The sights were set too low. For one thing, the reaction against the dogmatic tradition has gone too far. One can readily see that, for a scholar trained to view the past through that rare science, the discovery of the routine world of antiquity should come with all the force of a new revelation. But to the ordinary student of ancient history the more important phenomenon may well be that very orthodoxy which imposed the ideas of Scripture with such force upon the mind of late antiquity. From the classical side one must also say that Dölger’s method is not well suited to answer some of the large questions which face the student of ‘Antike und Christentum’ – questions, for example, about the social order as a whole, or about the pattern of ethical belief and practice. The indexes of sources cited in Antike und Christentum tell their own story: apart from the inscriptions and papyri the secular sources most often cited are writers such as Apuleius, Aelius Aristides, Lucian, Ovid, and Pliny the Elder. They are the repositories of antiquarian detail for the period during which the interaction first developed. It is to F. J. Dölger that ‘Antike und Christentum’, as a field of study, owes its name and much of its inspiration. He provided, through his life’s work, an extraordinary and highly individual display of what could be done. But the task he set himself raises wider questions, and has been take up in different ways. It is the purpose of this survey to sketch the pattern of work that is developing.6

II. The Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum From 1935 onwards preparations were under way for the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (henceforth RAC). It commenced publication in 1941, and from 1955 was brought under the auspices of the institute founded at Bonn in Dölger’s honour.7 Dölger himself had participated in the work of the RAC only ⁶ Dölger’s profound attachment to the ecclesiastical point of view is suggested by the coin device that was used on the title page of each volume of Antike und Christentum: Constantine’s labarum transfixing the dragon (which Dölger took in the Eusebian sense of the old religion, vol. 1, p. v), with the legend spes publica. The Jahrbuch adopted the more peaceful but no less one-sided device of the fisherman, itself classical, but converted by its legend (see Klauser’s Gedenkblatt, 23–24). The Reallexikon tried a sketch of the deceptively unecclesiastical façade of the Constantinian basilica of St Peter on the Vatican on the cover of the first volumes, but then gave up altogether. Perhaps symbols are not the key to the ‘Auseinandersetzung’ of ‘Antike’ and ‘Christentum’ after all! ⁷ Th. Klauser, F. J. Dölger, Leben und Werk, 8; preface to RAC, vol. 1; Das Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum und das F. J. Dölger-Institut im Bonn: Berichte, Erwägungen, Richtlinien (Stuttgart 21970) 38. This booklet (henceforward noted as Berichte) is supplied by the

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in an advisory capacity, though his ideas had stimulated the project. From the beginning the editor has been Th. Klauser, who had succeeded Dölger in his chair at Bonn, in co-operation at first with J. H. Waszink (Leiden) and L. Wenger (Vienna) and subsequently with others.8 Alongside Dölger’s name in the place of honour on the title page of the first volume is that of H. Lietzmann. An older contemporary of Dölger’s, Lietzmann had early come under the influence at Bonn of Hermann Usener, to whom Eduard Schwartz attributed the first breach in the walls that had been contrived between classical and theological studies.9 Like Dölger, Lietzmann was to respond to the work of the ‘religionsgeschichtliche Schule’, and like him committed himself to a lifetime of study that would set the ecclesiastical material (archaeological as well as literary) in its full relationship to the classical sources. Unlike Dölger, however, Lietzmann had the capacity for synthesis which led to his comprehensive history of the early church. As Harnack’s successor in Berlin, he was, moreover, at the centre of German scholarly enterprise in ancient world studies.10 Dölger-Institut free on request. The institute was controlled by an independent association formed for the purpose, but affiliated with the University of Bonn. Since 1967 this association, while continuing to work in support of the projects, has passed formal control of the institute to the university (which has nevertheless preserved its academic independence by not bringing it under the administration of a particular faculty), and of the RAC and JbAC to the Akademie der Wissenschaften of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf. The academy works through an ad hoc commission consisting of B. Kötting (Münster), chairman, Th. Klauser, E. Dassmann (Bonn), A. Dihle (Heidelberg), N. Himmelmann (Bonn), J. Straub (Bonn), A. Stuiber (Bochum) and J. H. Waszink. Reports of the association are printed yearly in the JbAC, which is currently edited by Klauser, Dassmann, Stuiber, and K. Thraede (Regensburg). Professor Dassmann currently holds the chair at Bonn previously occupied in turn by Ehrhard, Dölger, Klauser and K. Baus, and is director of the F. J. Dölger-Institut. ⁸ From vol. 6 (completed in 1966) were added C. Colpe (Berlin), Dihle and Kötting, and from vol. 9 (1976) Dassmann and W. Speyer (Salzburg). Since vol. 3 (1957) the RAC has listed as its founders Dölger, Klauser, H. Kruse (Stuttgart), Lietzmann and Waszink. Their respective contributions are noted by Klauser, Berichte 38. ⁹ See H. Lietzmann, ‘Eduard Schwartz zum Gedächtnis’, Die Antike 16 (1940) 77–80 (= Kleine Schriften 3 [Berlin 1962] 325–328). H. Herter, in his ‘Aus der Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Bonn’, published for the first time in his Kleine Schriften (Munich 1975) 648–664, calls Usener the “Heros Ktistes der modernen Religionswissenschaft” (659). Usener worked from the classical side of the fence, and was highly conscious of the novelty of his position, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Bonn 1911, repr. Hildesheim 1972), p. x: “Und vielleicht ist es ganz zweckdienlich, wenn einmal ein nichttheologe es wagt über den gletscherwall der jahrhunderte zum firne vorzudringen. In der hoffnung auf viele und tüchtigere nachfolger bin ich der gefahren gewärtig, denen der vorderste wagehals schwer entgeht”. This was written in 1888. He was a Protestant, but as with Dölger the principal focus of his attention was the liturgical and hagiographical material of the early church. The origins of the division between classical and theological studies lay in the eighteenth century, hardly as remote as Usener’s glacial image might imply: See J. Irmscher, ‘Patristik und klassische Philologie’, in Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der alten Welt, vol 2: Römisches Reich, ed. E. C. Welskopf (Berlin 1965) 315–325. ¹⁰ On Lietzmann see the following: his autobiographical essay in Die Religionswissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, vol. 2 (Leipzig 1926) 77–117 (= KS 331–368); his An-

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The different styles peculiar to its two patrons may be taken to mark the poles of the dilemma which has faced the RAC from the beginning, and which will continue to face all those who confront the question of the relations between ‘Antike’ and ‘Christentum’. Should one take the high road or the low road? The high road may be faster, but you could get to the other end with little or no sense of the country you have been through. The low road is so intriguing, you may be tempted to give up the journey altogether. In his stocktaking,11 Th. Klauser has set out the RAC’s approach to this issue. The task of the Dölger-Institut is said to be die Erforschung der Spätantike (‘the investigation of late antiquity’) and this formula is used in official publications, though it is not enshrined in the constitution. Klauser says that it means in particular answering the hitherto neglected question: how the many-sided and by no means fully unified ancient culture that flourished in the Mediterranean world in the first three centuries turned into the late antique, Christian culture of the fourth to the seventh centuries. The constitution of the Dölger-Institut adopts another perspective by saying that it is concerned with the clarification of the late antique foundations of Western culture.12 It may be noted that these formulations (adopted in 1955) are in principle far more comprehensive than what Dölger had understood by the phrase ‘Antike und Christentum’ and than the pattern of analysis that had already been built into the structure of the RAC. Klauser implicitly recognises this expansion by saying that an exhaustive treatment of the question would involve the progressive examination of every sector, indeed every individual element, in both cultures – the ancient pre-Christian one, as well as the lateantique Christian one. The former must embrace not only the Greek- and Latin-speaking world, but the hinterland with its national languages, and above all Palestinian and diaspora Judaism. How then was so vast a task to be approached? One might have started with such central themes of intellectual culture as the idea of God, or the notion of the will, or conception of the after-life, and worked out from there. Or one might have started with the ‘material’ culture, and first settled all the individual topics that belong to the total field before beginning the research proper. The latter was the course chosen, and Klauser insists it is the more rational way, ensuring that no aspect of culture would be left unconsidered and that every detail, whether central or not, would be consciously worked over, under the discipline of alphabetical order. The phrase “before beginning the research proper” implies a sharper curbing of intellectual curiosity than most minds can trittsrede before the Prussian Academy, Sitzungsberichte der phil.-hist. Klasse, 1922, lxxxiii– lxxxvi (= KS 369–471); H. Bornkamm, ‘Rede bei der akademischen Trauerfeier, Berlin, 15. Juli 1942’, ZNTW 41 (1942) 1–12. ¹¹ Berichte 5,6. ¹² Berichte 41.

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(or should?) be expected to bear. But Klauser has shown in his own favourite province, the history of art, that he means it seriously. In his reviews of other people’s work in the Jahrbuch the leitmotiv comes through clearly: one must “chop plenty of kindling wood first”, he quotes with approval13 – before expecting to set the world on fire? The 40–year history of the RAC, including wartime disasters and the shifts in editorial policy that can be read between the lines, also illustrates the problem. A Reallexikon is supposed to present data: as the sub-title says, this one is a Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des frühen Christentums mit der antiken Welt. The trouble is that though the data themselves may be solid enough, in this case they are to be presented in such a way as to document a highly subtle social and intellectual interaction. To make it more difficult, the previous sorting of material from late antiquity has been mostly governed by more limited interests. Indexes to the Fathers, for example, often cater for theologians only. It is hardly surprising that some of the earlier articles in the RAC now seem perfunctory. In retrospect, the original scale of the project can be seen to have been quite inadequate to the ideal, as subsequently stated by Klauser, of searching every corner of the ancient cultures. In March, 1945, 500 manuscripts which had been safely stored against airraids were destroyed by military action, including the irreplaceable work of masters such as Cumont.14 This must have been more than a quarter of the whole work, since in 1949 the list of Stichwörter (including cross-references?) ran to 2,000.15 To have gone ahead on that basis would have produced a very different kind of work from that which is now appearing. For one thing, the fresh start has led to a huge increase in scale, as a comparison of similar entries makes clear (all entries beginning with ‘A’ were first published between 1941 and 1945): ‘Adler’ (Th. Schneider and E. Stemplinger) ‘Aegyptus’ (A. Böhlig)

‘Geier’

7 cols:

39 cols

19 cols:

140 cols ‘Gallia’

‘Apfel’ (S. Zenker) 2 cols: ‘Aristoteles’ (J. H. Waszink 10 cols: and W. Heffening) ‘Arnobius’ (G. Bardy) 2 cols:

42 cols ‘Feige’ 138 cols ‘Epikur’ 29 cols

‘Fulgentius’

(W. Speyer, 1973) (E. Demougeot and W. Speyer, 1971) (V. Reichmann, 1967) (W. Schmid, 1961) (P.Langlois, 1970)

¹³ A saying of E. R. Curtius, the Bonn Romanicist, JbAC 10 (1967) 237. ¹⁴ Preface to RAC, vol. 1 (1950) iii. ‘Hellenistische Mystik’, by A. J. Festugière, appeared in

its French draft in his Hermétisme et mystique paienne (Paris 1967) 13–27, minus the second section, which had contained the notes and references, but did not survive in any form. ¹⁵ Berichte 7.

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As more than one reviewer has remarked, the RAC has become “une oeuvre de longue haleine”. Many authors, it appears, after laboriously gathering material that was nowhere else available in ordered form, have been unwilling to see it lost to view. But the human mind is not a computer. It cannot digest everything at once, and there comes a point (as one reviewer has said) “where less would have been more”. Klauser’s policy has been that the Jahrbuch should act as a relief train for overcrowded lines, but it has sometimes missed its connections. He has also encouraged authors to publish their work in monograph form and give the RAC a digest only, but there have not been many examples of this happy result.16 If the RAC is to be not just a reservoir, but generate fresh work, it must present its accumulated resources in a way that will feed the mind of the reader. This is not only a matter of length, but also of the choice of Stichwörter. At first it was considered that places and people should not be treated as such.17 Better to concentrate on the basic components of culture. (But what are they?) An early change of policy ensured that a limited selection of places (major cities and provinces) and of people (those judged to be key figures in the interaction of ‘Antike’ and ‘Christentum’) would be treated. The rest were to be dealt with, insofar as they counted, under general headings. Since no advance list of such headings has been published, it is often not easy to envisage where a particular figure will appear, if at all, or indeed whether he might not lie buried in an article already published. An interim index nominum would greatly ease the use of the existing volumes, as well as providing a trial run for the comprehensive index that will eventually be needed to provide the master-key to the whole work. Other kinds of Realien, by contrast, seem to have enjoyed special privilege. The beasts, plants and minerals, rich in medical and magical force, and eloquent as symbols of power in other spheres, have all been given their place. It might have been simpler, and more informative, to have treated them in groups, or under the headings of the manuals and collections through which Antiquity passed them on to the Middle Ages – the Physiologus, Horapollo, Cosmas Indicopleustes, the Cyranides, Timothy of Gaza, and so on.18 Experience with the first seven volumes (up to ‘Fluchformeln’, 1969) led to an important change in the method of entering abstract terms: to avoid repetition, Latin or Greek Stichwörter were henceforth to be used only where no appropriate ¹⁶ A notable one is W. Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum. Ein Versuch ihrer Deutung (Munich 1971), which is in effect summarised in advance in RAC ‘Fälschung, literarische’ (1966) 236–277. A new policy of settling the length of articles with contributors is described in the preface to vol. 9 (1976). ¹⁷ Berichte 7–10 explains editorial policy on Stichwörter; 48–49 gives a complete list of people to be covered, and 53–54 of places. ¹⁸ Some groupings have been attempted: e. g. A. Hermann, RAC, ‘Edelsteine’ (1958) 505– 552; D. K. Hill and I. Mundle, RAC, ‘Erz’ (1964) 443–502.

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German term existed. The use of German Stichwörter sometimes has the effect of lending a modern slant to the way the material is seen, by no means undesirable in a work designed to trace the roots of modern Western tradition. These examples will illustrate the built-in awkwardness of attempting to pave the way for the work of analysis and interpretation by means of an alphabetical listing of data. In spite of the avowed ideal of investigating everything, the RAC set out on the former course, but has been driven somewhat into the latter. This is all to the good if editorial policy will permit further development in the thematic treatment of major issues, and curb the piling up of detail on minor ones. As Klauser has made clear, the pioneering work has necessarily been experimental, and more criticism might have helped clarify the problems earlier. The RAC has not been as widely reviewed as its subject-matter called for; some journals regularly cover it, but not enough attention has been attracted from the classical side of the fence in particular. At different periods there have been long runs of reviews of successive fascicules in the following journals: L’Antiquité Classsique (F. Cumont and M. Hombert); Byzantinische Zeitschrift (F. Dölger); Journal of Biblical Literature (A. D. Nock); Journal of Theological Studies (S. L. Greenslade); Nouvelle Revue Théologique (Ch. Martin); Orientalia Christiana Periodica (I. Ortiz de Urbina); Recherches de Science Religeuse (C. Kannengiesser); Revue des Études Latines (J. Ernst); Revue de l’Histoire des Religions (P. Nautin and H.-Ch. Puech); Revue de Philologie, de Littérature et d’Histoire Anciennes (A. Ernout); Theologie und Glaube (E. Stakemeier); Theologische Literaturzeitung (H. von Campenhausen); Theologische Rundschau (R. Bultmann); Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (W. Schneemelcher); Zeitschrift der Savignystiftung für Rechtsgeschichte (W. Kunkel).

Most reviewers have been content, naturally enough, to concentrate upon the merits and faults of the individual contributions, but at least two reviewers have attempted a more general appraisal of the project. E. Peterson held that the RAC had become trapped in the phenomenological approach which Dölger had carried forward from the older style of Religionsgeschichte. As a result, there was a piling up of antiquarian detail without sufficient regard to time and place, which prevented justice being done to concrete historical relationships.19 To this Klauser replied that feeling one’s way beyond the facts and their immediate consequences was an exercise better ¹⁹ Riv. arch. crist. 31 (1955) 275–279; 33 (1957) 203–204. A study of the thought and work of E. Peterson (not seen by me) is given by F. Bolgiani, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 1 (1965) 1–58.

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practised in journal articles, as Peterson himself had successfully shown, than in a work of reference.20 The expansion of the scale of the RAC, and the broader Stichwörter that have recently been apparent, have in the meantime gone some way towards meeting the point that Peterson was making. H. Kraft draws attention to the significance of this change of character which has emerged in the last two decades, but asks whether anyone now has the capacity to handle so comprehensive a task anyway. He refers to the unmatched mastery of the field shown by Harnack and Bousset, Schwartz and Lietzmann, and their sense of being at home here rather than anywhere else:21 “Gerade dieses moderne Lexikon macht deutlich, wie gebrochen unser Verhältnis zu unserer Geschichte ist.”

But if that is true, it rather justifies the determination of the familia Doelgeriana in pushing on with their daunting task, for only by drawing together what resources we can muster will the foundations be built up again to rebuild the bridges to the past. Nor can I think, having surveyed the work currently being done, not only in Germany, but most notably in France, as well as in other countries, that the pessimism is warranted. The sense of distance from the older tradition of German scholarship will always arouse keen nostalgia in those who are conscious of what they owe to it. But the courage and persistence of Th. Klauser and the team of collaborators he has trained and gathered around the RAC will surely bring new growth in ways that cannot yet be foreseen. In this field everyone is conscious of how much is still unexplained. Only when the answers are eventually drawn together will we be able to see how much there was to be learned from the new discipline of ‘Antike und Christentum’.

III. The Viewpoint of the Present Survey It does not belong to the province of ‘Antike und Christentum’ to define the apostolic faith in Christ itself, but rather to study what happened to it in relation to the Greeks and Romans. To call it a religion is of course to see it already in the perspective of the ancient Roman culture. But it was certainly not that in Roman eyes to begin with – simply a kind of superstition, damaging to right religion. That the gospel should have converted itself into a religion (or a system of cultic order) was a mark of its acclimatisation to life in the Roman world, and a source of vast power in the social realm. This was the basic reason why it outstripped its greatest intellectual competitor, Neoplatonism; the latter, true to its Greek philosophical principles, remained to the end, ²⁰ Berichte 20. ²¹ H. Kraft, Gnomon (1972) 113–117.

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in spite of the best efforts of Julian, uncontaminated by ritual and impotent in society. In this respect the churches rather than Neoplatonism gathered in the harvest of ancient religion. The school of F. J. Dölger specialised in the fine detail of this process, and the RAC has maintained the interest, while developing others. I do not propose to cover it at all, however, in this survey. For one thing it must now need no emphasis that the RAC is a major point of reference for anything to do with ancient religion, and not only the liturgy and spirituality of the churches. More seriously, I do not believe that this is the way to the heart of the matter. Long before the Greeks and Romans found any reason to accept the phenomenon as a religion, the preaching of the gospel had generated another kind of social force, that of an elaborate intellectual enterprise. This sprang from two sources. From the very beginning, at Pentecost, a quite specific form of argumentation had to be developed if the idea of the resurrection of Jesus was to be given any acceptable meaning to Jewish minds. It had to be demonstrated by approved exegetical methods that the extraordinary vicissitudes of Jesus matched the prescription for the Messiah implicit in the prophets. Hence ultimately the immense effort of interpretation that was brought to bear on the Hebrew (and later the New Testament) scriptures throughout later antiquity. The other source from which the intellectual development of the faith sprang was the need, wholly unanticipated at first, to explain it to Greeks. The issue of ‘Antike und Christentum’ stems ultimately from the determination of St Paul to justify the opening of Israel’s hope to the uncircumcised. This could only be pursued by exploiting the intellectual apparatus of classical society, and it led increasingly to the setting of the biblical material into the sort of order that could be related to Greek thought. I regard this intellectual or ‘scholastic’ process as the fundamental historical phenomenon of our present subject. The transformation of faith in Christ into a kind of classical religion was a subsidiary effect, though certainly also of great historical consequence. This is the main reason why I have let it fall to one side here. Those who wish to pursue it have an up-to-date starting-point, apart from the RAC, in P. Stockmeier, Glaube und Religion in der frühen Kirche (Freiburg 1973). For another side to the story see Th. Maertens, Heidnisch-jüdische Wurzeln der christlichen Feste (Mainz 1965). The ‘scholastic’ development of the faith was governed by the two great literary corpora: the Hebrew scriptures (with the New Testament) and the work of the Greek philosophers. Both bodies of material were canonised, and both drawn upon through the methodology of ancient literary science and rhetoric. The definition of the received doctrine lies in either case outside the scope of ‘Antike und Christentum’. That study has already been brought to a high level of refinement by biblical and classical philology. Few great historical

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questions can have had their starting-points so carefully established. Yet it remains bafflingly difficult to define adequately the interaction of the two traditions. It is my impression that the principal weak point in our enterprise is our grasp of the mechanics of the scholarly process in antiquity; when we are more at home with the whole apparatus of learning, writing and debate in later antiquity we shall be better placed to understand the give and take at the level of ideas. For this reason I have tried in section VI to give examples of the work being done on literary culture before turning in section VII to the marriage – or divorce – of ideas that resulted. It was the scholarly discipline of late antiquity, with its attitudes to the authority of received texts, that ensured that there was no easy eclecticism or syncretism of traditions at the intellectual level, whatever might be happening in religion. We may thank this tenacity for the preservation of so much of both classical and biblical writing intact, and thus for many of the ideological tensions that have enlivened Western culture to our own day. The dual character of ancient Christianity as both an intellectual and a religious movement may be related to its hybrid social origins. It was promoted from the start by the arguments of people whose persuasiveness ensured them some social prominence, and in my opinion also presupposes substantial education and rank in the community. At the same time there was built up an extensive following amongst more ordinary people, no doubt at first through the household of well-to-do patrons. Once the churches had assumed the welfare and cultic activities of private associations, there was created a combination of intellectual authority with popular interest that distinguishes them from all other movements of ideas in antiquity, and threatened revolutionary consequences for the social order. Novel and independent institutions were built up, to prove in the end more durable even than city or empire: I refer in particular to the hierarchy and to the monasteries. Through them new demands could be made of the social system by Christian spokesmen, for example over the use of political power or of property. Such a critical stance towards society is quite foreign to the religious traditions of antiquity; yet its effectiveness in this case is tied to the popular religious substructure which lent social force to the arguments of the intellectual leaders of the churches. Whether in the long run the moral and social qualities of the community were seriously changed in response to such criticism is a matter of dispute amongst historians. For this reason I have tried finally in section VIII to draw together some of the contributions that have been made to the social history of ‘Antike und Christentum’. In section V I have listed a range of studies done on the individual writers in their times. But I have only mentioned works which give a substantial historical treatment of their subject. They may be general studies of a biographical form, or editions or translations of particular works which have been sup-

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plied with extensive introductions or commentaries of historical interest. Many of the recent productions of the series ‘Sources chrétiennes’ are outstanding in this respect. But I have not noted critical editions as such, nor other kinds of philological study. Similarly, technical studies of the philosophical, theological or spiritual thought of particular writers have been mostly passed over. It is clear of course that one must do justice to the main ideas of the two traditions in their own terms if one is to make a proper approach to ‘Antike und Christentum’. But for the reasons given above I have thought it historically sound to take as the starting point modern studies which deal with the two lines of transmission – the influence and use of the Classical authors and of Scripture as sources of ideas. There is another respect in which I have deliberately gone round the edges of the subject rather than to its central points. I have made no attempt to do justice to the work done in areas which because of their importance already attract concentrated attention: the New Testament, for example, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, or St Augustine. Since it is easy for the ancient historian to find a guide to such fields, it seemed better here to attempt a wider view by taking examples that include less well-known movements or figures. ‘Church and State’ is the one theme of our subject which has always been at the centre of concentrated historical research. For that reason I have left it also to one side in this survey. A major treatment of the subject by K. Aland follows immediately in this volume (ANRW 2.23.1.60–246). Archaeological studies are omitted for similar reasons. The material is very adequately indexed, and calls for treatment by a specialist. An up-to-date handbook is available in C. Andresen, Einführung in die christliche Archäologie (Göttingen 1971) and a good range of illustrations with discussion in A. Grabar, Le Premier art chrétien (200–395) (Paris 1966). The traditional position that the artistic tradition reflects orthodox theology has been emphatically restated by E. Sauser, Früchristliche Kunst: Sinnbild und Glaubensaussage (Innsbruck 1966). From the perspective of ‘Antike und Christentum’ however two more specialised works may be mentioned. A very far-reaching study of the way iconography may be related to the major topics of biblical exegesis in the second and third centuries is presented by E. Dassmann, Sündenvergebung durch Taufe, Busse and Märtyrerfürbitte in den Zeugnissen frühchristlicher Frömmigkeit und Kunst (Münster 1973). At the other end of the story belongs L. W. Barnard, The Graeco-Roman and Oriental Background of the Iconoclastic Controversy (London 1974). In selecting items for the list, I have confined myself to works published under their own titles, together with articles from the RAC. This was not only the simplest way of keeping the survey within practical limits, but has the academic advantage of directing attention to points where the work has been drawn together in a concentrated way. I see this as a middle road. On the one

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hand it means not referring to the more experimental work that normally appears in the learned journals. One of Th. Klauser’s most intriguing arguments, for example, is that the Shepherd and the praying woman (orans) are to be taken as the classical virtues of philanthropy and piety unless it can be explicitly confirmed by the context that Christ and the soul are intended. But it is when arguments of this order have come through the test of debate and been built into a broader treatment of their subject that it is appropriate to include them in a survey such as this. For similar reasons I have omitted collections of reprinted papers and of conference papers. On the other hand, I have stopped short of including the standard histories, manuals and handbooks, which tend to have left the debate behind them. My object is, by referring to examples of work that has reached a well-developed but not yet standardised form, to provide a large-scale map of recent research in the field. A good map would show the network of inter-connections, of course, but in the best late-antique style I present simply a series of catenae, and leave users to make their own crossreferences. Even within these limits no attempt is made to be complete. Almost everything published on later Antiquity has some bearing on our subject, but a restricted choice of examples may help to bring out more clearly the pattern of work. I have selected what seemed representative amongst the books immediately accessible to me in Bonn. Most dissertations have not been followed up. I have not included work originally published earlier than 1945, and I have had no systematic way of locating publications later than 1975. Nor is any attempt made at bibliographical completeness. I have cited works in the language and edition in which I have seen them (often not the original or latest version). Where more than one place of publication is given I have simply recorded the first. In the case of RAC articles from volume 3 (1957) onwards, I have cited the date of publication of the particular fascicule. This information is not included in volumes 1 and 2, so in those cases I have omitted dates altogether. All articles down to ‘Bauen’ (volume 1, 1950) first appeared in fascicule form or had at least been set in print between 1941 and 1945, while those from ‘Baum’ to ‘Christus’ (volume 2, 1954) presumably rest in most cases upon work written during the same period, though first published between 1950 and 1954. No evaluation is implied by the inclusion or exclusion of particular works, nor by the order in which they are listed here. I am well aware that many of them are contentious, or pull in opposite directions from each other, but I have chosen to leave the appraisal of that to those who can go more fully into particular topics. In so elusive a subject area, where there is a lack of established principles of work, critical evaluation is badly needed, but it obviously cannot be done except on the basis of detailed attention to the specific aspect under discussion. In drawing up this survey I have had in mind the student of

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antiquity in general, who may find it useful to observe the way in which a relatively new pattern of research is taking shape. There is a serious need for the provision of critical bibliographies in this area. The standard annual listings, however comprehensive, rightly reflect in their structure the requirements of the well established disciplines to which they belong (philology, church history, archaeology, patristics, biblical studies, etc.) and can hardly make provision for a disciplinary interest which is not always apparent in the titles of books and articles. In any case what is required is something between a bibliography and a ‘Forschungsbericht’. The Bulletin épigraphique of J. and L. Robert is more what is required: a listing that is cumulative, yet keeps a cutting edge, and endeavours to define the standards and style of work appropriate to the subject. The Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum could easily carry a regular stocktaking of this kind. It might be better not to try to cover all aspects every year, but to provide a series of more concentrated, interlocking reviews of differing aspects in different years. The Dölger-Institut is the proper home of such an enterprise, but the means would have to be found, and the people to do the work. We have seen the ‘Historia Augusta’ qualify for a whole series of colloquia, and the Rule of St Benedict for an international congress. Is it too much to hope that the thriving new Academy of the richest state in Germany will be able to do a little more to develop the project it has now adopted? The conception of ‘Antike und Christentum’ as a field of study has already proved itself a stimulating contribution of German scholarship to our understanding of the Roman past. It points the way to much greater gains that could be made.

IV. Some General Treatments of ‘Antike und Christentum’ The most extensive presentation of the material is that of C. Schneider, Geistesgeschichte des antiken Christentums (2 vols, Munich 1954). In a deliberate attempt to revert to what he sees as the nineteenth-century tradition of historical writing, the author has tried to set out systematically all the cultural and social phenomena of ancient Christianity. It is a project not dissimilar from that of the RAC, but the reaction to the certitudes of church history or the history of dogma has, to the minds of some readers, cast the subject matter adrift from its ties to historical order. The author sees Christianity as an essentially Hellenic phenomenon. Far from bowing to criticism of this, and having fortified himself with an even more extensive Kulturgeschichte des Hellenismus (2 vols, Munich 1967, 1969), Schneider has produced a condensed version of the earlier work, deliberately changing the title to Geistesgeschichte der christlichen Antike (Munich 1970) to emphasise his conviction.

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The point has been taken seriously to heart by R. Hernegger, Macht ohne Auftrag: Die Entstehung der Staats- und Volkskirche (Olten 1963). Making full use of Schneider’s work, and also of Dölger’s, and writing as a Catholic disenchanted with what they tell him, the author conducts a wide-ranging historical interpretation of the social structure assumed by the Church, especially in the fourth century, which is seen as a serious declension from the biblical pattern of belief. A Dempf, Geistesgeschichte der altchristlichen Kultur (Stuttgart 1964), however, starts from the perspective of medieval Catholicity, and relies upon the strength of the dogmatic and legal traditions of later antiquity to assert a picture of a unified Christian culture, somewhat immune to ancient society in its secular form. O. Gigon, Die antike Kultur und das Christentum (Gütersloh 1966), in a succinct but powerful general analysis, sets out the case for seeing the distinctiveness of Christianity as its most important feature, even in matters of religious practice. The main emphasis, however, lies upon the intellectual position of the leading thinkers, especially in the West, which the author takes to be decisive for historical development, as distinct from the social or religious force of Christianity as a popular movement. The book is based upon a clear view of the philosophical and literary tradition of Antiquity, and analyses the critique which it brought against Christianity. For a compact but comprehensive and illuminating account of the history of church life and thought, written with a clear eye for its setting in the ancient cultural tradition, one may turn to H. Chadwick, The Early Church (Harmondsworth 1967). M. Meslin, Le Christianisme dans l’empire romain (Paris 1970) is an historical pocket-book which skilfully embraces language, culture and religiosity, amongst other matters, in a swift review. A larger treatment of some of this material is found in R. M. Grant, Augustus to Constantine: The Thrust of the Christian Movement into the Roman World (London 1971). A remarkably substantial and impressive example of the genre ‘History of Civilisations’, rich in art-work, reference material and extensive discussion, has been provided by M. Simon, La Civilisation de l’antiquité et le christianisme (Paris 1972). Similar, but on a smaller scale, is R. A. Markus, Christianity in the Roman World (London 1974). Both pay concentrated attention to the questions of ‘Antike und Christentum’. Finally, what happened at the end of Antiquity? P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: From Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad (London 1971), has evoked the moods, sentiments and styles of changing times, as the unified tradition of Classical Antiquity began to resolve itself, under new impulses, into the threefold culture of the early Middle Ages: Catholic, Byzantine and Oriental. And, from the point of view of those who regretted the changes as sheer loss, we now have a powerful revival of Gibbon’s judgement in M. Grant, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A Reappraisal (London 1976) – the new religion

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destroyed Rome’s will to resist. Both these works, again, make brilliant use of illustrations. There are, of course, many other works which might be mentioned here. Some of them will be referred to below in connection with the periods to which they particularly relate. I have tried to mention a good variety of approaches, some of which I find easier to resist than others. But I think it is fair to say that, for all the attractiveness of individual insights and lines of interpretation, we are far from having a definitive and comprehensive analysis of the problem of ‘Antike und Christentum’.

Afterword (2010) with Overview of sections V–VIII After the “definition of the field” (sections I–IV reproduced above) there followed in sections V–VIII (pp. 20–58) the extensive “bibliographical survey” indicated by the original sub-title of the chapter. The sub-title of ANRW itself had been ‘The History and Culture of Rome as Reflected in Recent Research’, taken in this case as a retrospect of studies over the period from 1945 to 1975. The order of section headings makes clear that priority is given to intellectual over social history. This was not just because our main sources happen to be literary. It recognised rather the massive scale of them, and their substantial preservation (twice as voluminous as the whole corpus of the earlier classical literature). This construes the patristic era (the first six centuries AD) as a long-sustained and changing literary encounter (‘Auseinandersetzung’) between two essentially incompatible visions of the world.

V. The Ancient Authors and their Work 1. The Period of the Julio-Claudians and Flavians (pp. 20–22) In the literary history of ‘Antike und Christentum’ the first century is by far the weakest point. The intense and highly imaginative interest brought to bear upon the pre-history of the New Testament writings and the related Jewish literature is paired with an almost complete disinterest in the possibility of reconstructing in detail their Greek literary context. For classical historians the first century belongs to the Romans, and it is unrealistic to attempt to set early Christian writers in relation to Latin literature. The Greeks of the first century had little to offer to subsequent literary taste, and have been largely lost to view. But if we could restore from the relics a living picture of the professional and scholarly output of the Greek cities, we should surely find the literary character of the New Testament also greatly illuminated. How many

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puzzles of New Testament criticism might not be solved if we could define precisely the cultural niveau of St Paul? The re-discovery of the Hellenistic Age was one of the great achievements of an earlier generation, comparable with the task that is proposed under the rubric ‘Antike und Christentum’. But an artificial convention has cut it short at Augustus. The boundaries must be shifted if we are to make an historically valid approach to our present question. That this can be successfully done has been shown by F. E. Peters, The Harvest of Hellenism: A History of the Near East from Alexander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity (London 1972). A comprehensive literary framework for the imperial period has now been provided by A. Dihle, Die griechische und lateinische Literatur der Kaiserzeit (Munich 1989). It not only embraces both classical and patristic traditions, but reaches well beyond the mainstream and better-preserved authors. As a counterpart to the Hellenistic framework, one must consider the thesis of J. Daniélou, Théologie du judéo-christianisme (Tournai 1958). In a work which draws its insights from many quarters, including especially Qumran, the New Testament, the tradition of Elkesai and the Ebionites, the apocryphal literature and the Apostolic Fathers, it is argued that one may discern a clear formulation of central Christian doctrines in Hebraic terms, antedating the hellenisation which sets in with the Apologists in the subsequent epoch. 2. The Period of the Antonines and the Severi (pp. 22–27) The renaissance of philosophical Hellenism in this period gave pride of place to Celsus, who appears to have been the first to take seriously the threatened conversion of Platonism to the uses of the new way; for this we had the notable and comprehensive treatment of C. Andresen, Logos und Nomos: Die Polemik des Kelsos wider das Christentum (Berlin 1955). The Apologists were anxious to make the most of Middle Platonism in their cause. They signal this as an age of encounter with Hellenism, marked off as such from the previous one in the view of J. Daniélou, Message évangélique et culture hellénistique aux IIe et IIIe siècles (Tournai 1961). In an extensive description of the forms of thought and central ideas of Greek theology, Daniélou adopts the position that its hellenisation was more a matter of cultural style than of basic belief. For Clement of Alexandria’s full and positive exploitation of the resources of Greek literature and philosophy, there was W. Völker, Der wahre Gnostiker nach Clemens Alexandrinus (Berlin 1952) and R. J. Mortley, Connaissance religieuse et herméneutique chez Clément d’Alexandrie (Leiden 1973). For Judaism the best starting-point from our perspective was M. Simon, Verus Israel: Étude sur les relations entre chrétiens et juifs dans l’empire romain (135–425) (Paris 21964 with postscript).

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3. The Years of Crisis (235–312) (pp. 27–28) The main succession in philosophy was dealt with by J. M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge 1967). This troubled and poorly documented time has yielded a suggestive picture of its solidarity in religious psychology: E. R. Dodds, Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge 1965). A rich exploration of the diversity of religious experience has since been provided by R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine (London 1986). 4. The Age of Constantine (pp. 28–30) Arianism was treated as the first of a series of ways in which Hellenism survived as a Christian heresy by E. von Ivanka, Hellenisches und Christliches im frühbyzantinischen Geistesleben (Vienna 1948). M. Simonetti, La crisi ariana del IV secolo (Rome 1975), noted the difficulty of giving a merely social interpretation of the conflict. That Athanasius was methodologically indebted to a familiarity with Middle Platonism (though not with the Neoplatonists), in spite of appearances and his reputation as a champion of biblical orthodoxy, had been claimed by E. P. Meijering, Orthodoxy and Platonism in Athanasius (Leiden 1968). For Julian’s outraged determination to rescue the old order from such a takeover, see now P. Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian and Hellenism: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford 1987). 5. The Age of Theodosius (pp. 30–35) On the ambiguities of imperial policy after Julian we had A. Alföldi, A Conflict of Ideas in the Late Roman Empire (Oxford 1952), with A. Momigliano (ed.), The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford 1963). For the attempt by the contemporary historian Ammianus to assimilate such problems see now ch. 20 below. At the philosophical level the confrontation was explored through the thought of Ambrose, first the military governor, then bishop, at Milan, the Western capital: J. Pépin, Théologie cosmique et théologie chrétienne (Paris 1964); P. Courcelle, Recherches sur saint Ambroise (Paris 1973) and G. Madec, Saint Ambroise et la philosophie (Paris 1974). The great project on the Hellenisation of Christian thought as seen in the ‘Cappadocian Fathers’ (Basil, with the two Gregories) had been summed up in W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, Mass. 1961). But for the differentiation between the two intellectual traditions we now have J. Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Theology in the Christian Encounter with

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Hellenism (New Haven 1993). For its practical application we had S. Verosta, Johannes Chrysostomus: Staatsphilosoph und Geschichtstheologe (Graz 1960) and R. Kaczynski, Das Wort Gottes in Liturgie und Alltag der Gemeinden des Johannes Chrysostomus (Freiburg 1974). 6. The Collapse of Roman Power in the West (410–476) (pp. 35–39) Augustine is introduced at this point, as the pivotal figure in our field of study. It is not only that he is the amplest source of information for many aspects of it. He embraces in his own experience and knowledge as much of the heritage of classical and biblical antiquity as one can conceive to be humanly possible, and that at the stage where society’s grasp of it was already rapidly weakening. For that reason it was Augustine above anyone else who was to pass on to the Middle Ages what there was to save. For such themes see the classic work of H. I. Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, published in 1938, but reissued with an extensive ‘Retractatio’ (Paris 21949). The confrontations in the life and thinking of Augustine have been very extensively explored by A. Mandouze, L’Aventure de la raison et de la grâce (Paris 1968). See also J. J. O’Meara, The Young Augustine: The Growth of St Augustine’s Mind up to his Conversion (New York 1965), with E. König, Augustinus Philosophus: Christlicher Glaube und philosophisches Denken in den Frühschriften Augustins (Munich 1970), and P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London 1967), a history indeed of his mind. The fall of Rome, said to have been undermined by the Christians, provoked Augustine’s City of God. This entrenched the unresolved conflict between the two cities, setting the conceptual framework for the distinctively Western understanding both of society and of history, that by our own time has transformed the world: A. A. T. Ehrhardt, Politische Metaphysik von Solon bis Augustine, 3 vols (Tübingen 1959, 1969); R. A. Markus, History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (Cambridge 1970). 7. The Twilight of Classical and Patristic Culture (pp. 39–41) During the age of Justinian (sixth century) the classical heritage was distilled for the Latin (and now Gothic) West through the monumental learning of Christian scholars such as Boethius and Cassiodorus. But in the Greek East an explicitly Christian science of the world was pioneered, starting literally with Creation, as did the universal chronicle of John Malalas from Antioch. Alexandria produced the ‘Christian topography’ of Cosmas, and (most importantly for the ultimate breakthrough to modern science) the refutations by Philoponus of the last Neoplatonist and of Aristotle himself on the eternity of the world. See W. Böhm, Johannes Philoponus,

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Grammatikos von Alexandrien (6 Jh. n. Chr.): Christliche Naturwissenschaft im Ausklang der Antike (Munich 1967), and W. Wolska, La Topographie chrétienne de Cosmas Indicopleustes: Théologie et science au VIe siècle (Paris 1962).

VI. The Apparatus of Literary Culture 1. Education and its Methods (pp. 41–42) From the very beginning the churches were engaged in activities that presupposed quite a high level of intellectual and literary competence. In the New Testament authors such processes are explained by means of educational metaphors. I take this as a clear indication that the writers concerned had nothing to say about education itself: it was simply taken for granted. In the last resort, this attitude persisted to the end of late antiquity and beyond. It must be one of the fundamental considerations in our subject area that the conversion of the classical world left its educational system essentially intact. The adaptation of Christian ideals to it, on the other hand, raises serious questions about the continuity of Christian belief in the community. Educational ideals, especially in the fourth century, are discussed by M. L. W. Laistner, Christianity and Pagan Culture in the Later Roman Empire (Ithaca 1951), as well as by W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (noted above). See in general H. Fuchs, RAC ‘Bildung’ 346–362. Educational practice is treated by P. Blomenkamp, RAC ‘Erziehung’ (1964) 502–559, and by H.-I. Marrou, Histoire de l’éducation dans l’antiquité (Paris 3 1955). One of the few works to do justice, however briefly, to the setting of Christian authors amongst the scientific and rhetorical literature (as distinct from the philosophy) of late classical antiquity is A. Wifstrand, Die alte Kirche und die griechische Bildung (Bern 1967). 2. Books and Language (pp. 42–43). On the making, storing and destruction of books, see the following: L. Koep, RAC ‘Buch I (technisch)’ 664–688; V. Burr, RAC ‘Editionstechnik’ (1958) 597–610; K. Gross, RAC ‘Archiv’ 614–631; C. Wendel, RAC ‘Bibliothek’ 231– 274; and, as a supplement to the RAC, W. Speyer, JbAC 13 (1970) 123–152 ‘Büchervernichtung’. For the language scene across the Mediterranean we now have G. Neumann and J. Untermann (eds), Die Sprachen im römischen Reich der Kaiserzeit (Cologne 1980). The phenomenon of biblical Greek was a serious obstacle in the relations of ‘Antike’ and ‘Christentum’. Its peculiarity arose not simply from the Hebraic

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thought-forms which it embraced, but from the fact that the secular literary tradition, by a conscious effort, revived and held to the language-style of classical Athens. This process, for which see L. Früchtel, RAC ‘Attizismus’ 899– 902, was launched at the beginning of the New Testament period, and had established itself as an educated norm by the time secular writers began to take notice of the New Testament, in the second century. In the meantime what were rapidly to become the canonical scriptures of the church, and thus irreformable, had been composed in the standard professional prose of their day, henceforth to be regarded as a degraded form. On this see L. Rydbeck, Fachprosa, vermeintliche Volkssprache und Neues Testament: Zur Beurteilung der sprachlichen Niveauunterschiede im nachklassischen Griechisch (Uppsala 1967). The incongruities of this situation, which were felt keenly by the classicising Greek fathers of the fourth century, were amongst the basic reasons why formal education and ecclesiastical training went their separate ways. In the case of Latin, where Christian usage only began after the Ciceronian and Vergilian standard had been long established, the question has been raised whether the requirements of church life created a separate form of the language. Many contributions have been made to this subject by the school of studies associated with Nimeguen, but I refer simply to the work of J. Fontaine, Aspects et problèmes de la prose d’art latine au IIIe siècle (Paris 1968), and G. Bardy, La question des langues dans l’église ancienne (Paris 1948), and see now J. N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language (Cambridge 2003). Although classical standards persisted in literary education, the broadly based life of the churches called for a level of spoken language that was better adapted to the usage of ordinary people. For this see E. Auerbach Literatursprache und Publikum in der lateinischen Spätantike und im Mittelalter (Bern 1958), and now N. Horsfall, The Culture of the Roman Plebs (London 2003) with J. N. Adams, The Regional Diversification of Latin, 200 BC–AD 600 (Cambridge 2007). 3. Genre, Form, Figure, and Topos (pp. 43–45) In this area above all it is fundamental that the usage of Christian writers be set carefully in relation to the classical practice, since it went without saying that they must make use of the appropriate conventions if what they had to say was to be presented effectively in Greek or Latin. Most modern work on the subject is built into the introductions to editions of the ancient authors. Apart from that, the RAC has already made itself the major point of reference as the following examples at once make clear. ‘Dialog’ (1956) 928–955, A. Hermann/G. Bardy ‘Ekphrasis’ (1959) 921–944, G. Downey

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‘Epigramm’ (1960) 539–577, R. Keydell ‘Epitome’ (1961) 944–973, I. Opelt ‘Erotapokriseis’ (1964) 342–370, H. Dörrie/H. Dörries ‘Exitus illustrium virorum’ (1966) 1258–1267, A. Ronconi ‘Florilegium’ (1968) 1131–1160, H. Chadrick

4. Citation and Exegesis of the Classics and the Bible (pp. 45–47) H. Rahner, Griechische Mythen in christlicher Deutung (Darmstadt 21957), deals especially with the Christian use of Homeric figures, and shows how they were related to biblical ideas in Symbole der Kirche: Die Ekklesiologie der Väter (Salzburg 1964). See also G. Glockmann, Homer in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Justinus (Berlin 1968), and, for comparison, J. F. Kindstrand, Homer in der Zweiten Sophistik. Studien zu der Homerlektüre und dem Homerbild bei Dion von Prusa, Maximos von Tyros und Ailios Aristeides (Uppsala 1973). The RAC has already provided a long list of discussions of particular figures of Greek mythology in Christian usage, quite apart from the classical deities. The taking over of artistic traditions for Christian purposes is an important element in the process. For an example of the way a myth was developed to meet the requirements of new ideas, see M. Walla, Der Vogel Phoenix in der antiken Literatur und der Dichtung des Laktanz (Vienna 1969), and R. van den Broek, The myth of the Phoenix according to Classical and Early Christian Traditions (Leiden 1972). On the development of Christian exegesis, see G. Mayer, RAC ‘Exegese II (Judentum)’ (1966) 1194–1211; I. Christiansen, Die Technik der allegorischen Auslegungswissenschaft bei Philon von Alexandrien (Tübingen 1969); W. E. Gerber, RAC ‘Exegese (NT u. Alte Kirche)’ (1966) 1211–1229; V. E. Hasler, Gesetz und Evangelium in der alten Kirche bis Origenes: Eine auslegungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Zurich 1953); H.-J. Spitz, Die Metaphorik des geistigen Schriftsinns: Ein Beitrag zur allegorischen Bibelauslegung des ersten christlichen Jahrhunderts (Munich 1972). For New Testament themes see O. Michel, RAC ‘Evangelium’ (1966) 1107– 1160; F. Normann, Christos Didaskalos: Die Vorstellung von Christus als Lehrer in der christlichen Literatur des ersten und zweiten Jahrhunderts (Münster 1967); M. Mees, Außerkanonische Parallelstellen zu den Herrenworten und ihre Bedeutung (Bari 1975); M. F. Wiles, The Spiritual Gospel (Cambridge 1960); K. H. Schelkle, Paulus, Lehrer der Väter: Die altchristliche Auslegung von Römer 1–11 (Düsseldorf 21959); M. F. Wiles, The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge 1967).

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VII. The Intellectual Tradition and Ethical Ideas 1. The Metaphysical Conditions of Human Action (pp. 47–49) Behind the conception of ‘Antike und Christentum’ as a field of study lies the assumption that there were two basically different sources of ideas. An emphatic definition of this difference has been presented by T. Boman, Das hebräische Denken im Vergleich mit dem griechischen (Göttingen 51968); the book aroused sharp controversy, to which the author replies in the new edition. Assuming that the distinction is sound, Christian thought is represented as the transformation of biblical ideas by Greek philosophy in J. Hessen, Griechische oder biblische Theologie? Das Problem der Hellenisierung des Christentums in neuer Beleuchtung (Munich 21962). The stages by which Christian theologians came to assume the philosophical title for themselves are traced by A.-M. Malingrey, Philosophia: Étude d’un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque, des présocratiques au IVe siècle après J.-C. (Paris 1961). H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers (Cambridge [Mass.] 1956), has studied extensively what they thought they were doing, namely using the methods and terms of classical philosophy to formulate what they conceived to be the true wisdom which it reflected. A study of the results, which goes a good deal beyond the theme indicated in the title, is made by J. H. Randall, Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis (New York 1970). The weight of research in this matter has gone towards defining how much of Greek thought the Fathers took over along with the apparatus of philosophy. A more concentrated effort is needed to clarify how much that was un-Hellenic persisted in spite of it. To this complex of thought Christian theology brought ideas that extended the range of possibilities at both extremes – a totally independent God and the fundamental corruption of man. Whether the change from a belief in a fated cycle of ages to that of a coming millennium was the ultimate source of the modern idea of progress has been much debated. See B. A. van Groningen, In the Grip of the Past: Essay on an Aspect of Greek Thought (Leiden 1953); A. Kurfess, RAC ‘Aetas aurea’ 144–150; G. B. Ladner, RAC ‘Erneuerung’ (1964) 240–275, and The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge [Mass.] 1959); see now W. Kinzig, Novitas Christiana: Die Idee des Fortschritts in der alten Kirche bis Eusebius (Göttingen 1994). 2. The Physical World and Man’s Reaction (pp. 49–50) For the earth and its physical properties see S. Sambursky, Das physikalische Weltbild der Antike (Zurich 1965); I. Opelt, RAC ‘Erde’ (1961) 1113–1179;

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W. Wolska-Conus, RAC ‘Geographie’ (1976) 155–222; D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, The Greek Patristic View of Nature (Manchester 1961); R. M. Grant, Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought (Amsterdam 1952). On man’s attitude to the world and his place in it, see R. A. Norris, God and World in Early Christian Theology: A Study in Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen (London 1966); and R. L. P. Milburn, Early Christian Interpretations of History (London 1954). The reactions to the shock of contact with the world advocated by the philosophical schools are dealt with by J. Stelzenberger, RAC ‘Adiaphora’ 83–87; P. de Labriolle, RAC ‘Apatheia’ 484–487; P.Wilpert, RAC ‘Ataraxie’ 844–854, and ‘Autarkie’ 1039–1050. 3. Human Society and Ethical Behaviour (pp. 50–51) A. Dihle, RAC ‘Ethik’ (1964) 646–797, has supplied a comprehensive analysis of the old and the new in ethical behaviour. See also E. F. Osborn, Ethical Patterns in Early Christian Thought (Cambridge 1976). On the question of whether the gospel introduced a new standard of personal relations see H. Pétré, Caritas: Étude sur le vocabulaire latin de la charité chrétienne (Louvain 1948) – covering a wide range of related ideas; R. Joly, Le Vocabulaire chrétien de l’amour est-il original? (Brussels 1968), and A. Dihle, RAC ‘Gerechtigkeit’ (1977) 233–360. In the popular ethics of antiquity piety stands beside philanthropy – the twin pillars of virtue. In general, see A. Dihle, Der Kanon der zwei Tugenden (Cologne 1968), and Die goldene Regel: Eine Einführung in die Geschichte der antiken und frühchristlichen Vulgärethik (Göttingen 1962). The high value placed upon regard for oneself in classical, and especially Roman, thought and attitudes created tension for those who followed the way of self-renunciation. See R. A. Gauthier, Magnanimité: L’Idéal de la grandeur dans la philosophie paienne et dans la théologie chrétienne (Paris 1951); A. J. Vermeulen, The Semantic Development of Gloria in Early-Christian Latin (Nimeguen 1956); A. Dihle, RAC ‘Demut’ (1956) 735–778; and S. Rehrl, Das Problem der Demut in der profan-griechischen Literatur im Vergleich zu Septuaginta und Neuem Testament (Münster 1961).

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VIII. Institutions of the Social Order 1. Marital Society and its Rejection (pp. 51–53) The institution of marriage may be taken as the basic bond of human society. Christian ideals both made more severe demands on it, and at the same time fostered a more drastic renunciation of it, than had ever been known in classical antiquity. The whole issue of the give and take between the two traditions, and of the reasons for the transformation of the ancient world into the medieval order, needs to be looked at again in relation to such fundamental changes. While the literature, traditions and spirituality of asceticism have been intensively explored, little has been done to estimate the effects of the withdrawal of so many people from the ordinary functions of society, and above all from marriage. The RAC omitted ‘Eheverzicht’. But see Th. Hopfner, RAC ‘Abstinenz (sexuelle)’ 41–44; H. Chadwick, RAC ‘Enkrateia’ (1960) 343–365; and now K. Niederwimmer, Askese und Mysterium: Über Ehe, Ehescheidung und Eheverzicht in den Anfängen des christlichen Glaubens (Göttingen 1975). Most interest has been concentrated upon the origins of monasticism, rather than upon its social significance. See B. Lohse, Askese und Mönchtum in der Antike und in der alten Kirche (Munich 1969); P. Nagel, Die Motivierung der Askese in der alten Kirche und der Ursprung des Mönchtums (Berlin 1966). 2. Labour and Property, Wealth and Poverty (pp. 53–54) Again, it seems to me that relatively little work has been done on the rich materials contained in the patristic sources for the economic life of the community. For slavery see H. Gülzow, Christentum und Sklaverei in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (Bonn 1969); G. Kehnscherper, Die Stellung der Bibel und der alten christlichen Kirche zur Sklaverei: Eine biblische und kirchengeschichtliche Untersuchung von den alttestamentlichen Propheten bis zum Ende des römischen Reiches (Halle 1957). The use of property and profit is dealt with by M. Hengel, Eigentum und Reichtum in der frühen Kirche: Aspekte einer frühchristlichen Sozialgeschichte (Stuttgart 1973); P. Christophe, L’Usage chrétien du droit de propriété dans l’écriture et la tradition patristique (Paris 1964. The pastoral and liturgical activities of the church, extensively studied and strongly represented in the RAC, are a valuable source of information on social need. See B. Reicke, Diakonie, Festfreude und Zelos in Verbindung mit der altchristlichen Agapenfeier (Uppsala 1951); and A. Hamman, Vie liturgique et vie sociale (Paris 1968).

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3. Community and Conflict in Church and Society (pp. 54–55) The ideals and structure of private associations in the ancient world were thoroughly examined in an earlier generation, so that not a great deal more has been contributed in recent years. But there have now been provided up-to-date treatments of these subjects by W. Popkes, RAC ‘Gemeinschaft’ (1976) 1100– 1145, and P. Herrmann, J. H. Waszink, C. Colpe and B. Kötting, RAC ‘Genossenschaft’ (1976) 83–155. See also J. du Q. Adams, The Populus of Augustine and Jerome: A Study in the Patristic Sense of Community (New Haven 1971). In phrases like ‘Church and Society’, where ‘society’ is always the second member against which the former is to be measured, we are dealing of course with a nineteenth-century construct. Such a concept was unknown in antiquity, as noted by K. Thraede, RAC ‘Gesellschaft’ (1976) 837–847. General treatments of the relations between church, law and society are given by A. Steinwenter, RAC ‘Corpus Iuris’ (1955) 453–463; F. Wieacker, Recht und Gesellschaft in der Spätantike (Stuttgart 1964); J. Gaudemet, La Formation du droit séculier et du droit de l’église aux IVe et Ve siècles (Paris 1957), and: L’Église dans l’empire romain (IV–V siècles) (Paris 1958) – the latter being concentrated upon the church as a social institution. 4. The Social Position of the Church at Different Times and Places (pp. 55–58) To conclude this list there were brought together here a very limited selection of works that deal with the economic, social and political characteristics of particular periods or regions, in order to suggest the framework of study in which an attempt to describe the social situation of the churches would have to be made. The standing of the earliest Christian communities in the society of their times has been the subject of very divergent pronouncements. It depends upon one’s point of reference in society. If one has in mind the metropolitan aristocracy of Rome, upon which our view of the first century tends to be focussed, there is nothing to be said except that the churches fell so far down the social scale as not to be noticed at all. Most statements on Christianity as a lowerclass movement are simply participating in this non-observation. For the social structure of the Roman world from this vantage-point, see J. Gagé, Les Classes sociales dans l’empire romain (Paris 21971). But there are other points from which one can begin, such as the life of the ordinary people of the countryside and the towns, for which see R. MacMullen, Roman Social Relations 50 BC–AD 284 (New Haven 1974). There is also a social history to be written which will build up the picture that arises from the detailed work recently done on the servile classes, including the ambitious bureaucracy of the familia Caesaris, treated under that title by P. R. C. Weaver

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(Cambridge 1972). Above all we need a picture centred upon the life of the major Greek cities of the Roman empire. Important projects have recently been started in the USA to clarify this. My guess is that our early churches will turn out to be socially mixed and mobile groups of people, enjoying the protection and leadership of persons of social consequence in their own communities. See finally now E. A. Judge, RAC ‘Kultgemeinde’ (2007) 393–438. The churches cannot be subsumed under any previous category. The modern concept of ‘religion’ was not available in antiquity, and arises only through the taking up of customary cultic practice into the far broader and radically different project of the churches. But from the beginning they had not been intended to sanctify the status quo, as cult-groups typically were. The churches were also far too argumentative and socially enterprising to be like any other kind of private association. In their concern for intellectual truth they may match a school of philosophy, but are far too popular and far-reaching in their social commitments. There was no mere fusion of ‘Antike’ and ‘Christentum’. Their unresolved encounter, and the reception of their rival canons of truth, is built into the minds of everyone in the West. This is the dynamic mainspring behind the transformation of the modern world.

Chapter 7

Athens and Jerusalem* “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? Or the Academy with the Church?” These forbidding questions were posed by Tertullian early in the third century. A Roman from Carthage, he was educated in the same classical tradition we follow. An expert in rhetoric and law, he was also the first major advocate of Christianity writing in Latin. His point was to disqualify heretics from the Church on the charge of compromise with philosophy. “What have heretics to do with Christians? … We have no need of curiosity since Christ Jesus, nor of enquiry since the Gospel.” Judaism was also entrenching itself in the same epoch, though the desecration of Jerusalem and the defeat of the Jewish national hope in the wars of the first and second centuries make that case historically more explicable. The churches moreover had split from the synagogues in favour of emancipation from the law. Paul, too, like other Jewish scholars of the first century, had been used to philosophical argument, though he would not have found it hard to support Tertullian. The unexpected establishment of Christianity in the fourth century soon turned things around. Chrysostom in the Greek Church and Jerome in the Latin were supreme masters of Classical philology, a tradition of learning already a thousand years old. Certainly deep-seated contradictions remained, but now became themselves the object of penetrating study, as one sees above all in Augustine. He is the Aristotle of the West, the most comprehensive and still the most studied of all writers in Classical Latin, preserving for us much that would otherwise have been lost from the ancient world. Throughout the Middle Ages it was the monasteries that kept and transmitted the texts of Classical authors, consolidated into hand-written codices (books). This was the great technological development, fostered by the Christian demand for accessibility of texts (as distinct from the Classical and Jewish retention of inconvenient scrolls for literary works), that has literally carried the body of ancient knowledge down to our century. With the Renaissance and the Reformation of the sixteenth century Biblical and Classical philology were both revived and pursued within a common dis* R. K. Sinclair (ed.), Past, Present and Future: Ancient World Studies in Australia (Sydney 1990) 90–98.

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cipline. Only in the late eighteenth century did the Enlightenment with its counterfoil, Romanticism, begin to reassert the ideal of a purely Classical scholarship. There then developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a separate tradition of Biblical criticism and learning. In Germany and Britain this was accommodated within universities in the faculties of Theology, attaining standards of scholarly excellence on a par with those of Classics in the separate faculties of Arts. In continental Europe the literature of the Church Fathers, rich in citations of the Classics as well as of the Bible, continued to provide a meeting ground of the disciplines. Its scope was vast. The corpus of extant authors in ancient Greek runs to twenty million words for the eight centuries from the sixth BC to the second AD, while the third and fourth (the era of the greatest Patristic authors) alone have left another twenty. These four last centuries (the third to the sixth) also provided the French and the Germans in particular with the sources of their national history; it was the Classical scholars who edited such texts for their historical colleagues. In Britain, however, the Classicists typically ended their curriculum early in the second century. The great Cambridge Histories fixed the end of Ancient History and the beginning of Mediaeval at Constantine. Now the new Cambridge Ancient History is set to retrieve some of the later centuries for antiquity. More particularly, we are now seeing the fairly rapid development of a new sub-field of study amongst English-language Classical scholars. It is called ‘Late Antiquity’. It embraces the third to the sixth centuries inclusive. The fact that books now often take this term to define their scope, whereas no journal has yet been created to serve it, points to its transitional status. The watershed was crossed by the late A. H. M. Jones, Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge. He demonstrated in the ’sixties how the reservoir of Patristic sources might be tapped for historical research on secular themes. Ancient historians at Oxford began to produce biographical and cultural studies of leading figures of Late Antiquity who had previously been the preserve of theologians. Notable here was Peter Brown’s work on Augustine. Antichthon was founded as “a journal of ancient world studies” embracing not only Greece and Rome, but “the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean from the beginning of civilisation to the Early Middle Ages”. It publishes articles relating to “the languages, literature, history, thought and archaeology of the ancient world”. This broad scope was adopted to allow, amongst other things, the inclusion of Biblical alongside Classical studies. So far as the journal goes, this has barely happened. Journals have a life of their own, and people prefer to publish where they will be read by their own kind. Antichthon has grown up to become no more than a regular Classics journal. But the last two decades have nevertheless seen a strong growth of academic work in Australia that spans the Biblical/Classical divide. In what fol-

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lows I mention only work done within the universities, and mainly therefore under the disciplines of Ancient History or Classics, omitting a great deal of professional publication in Biblical and Patristic studies done within the theological colleges. I group my comments under the three rubrics of I. Language, II. History, and III. Thought.

I. “The Songs of Zion … in a Strange Land” (Psalm 137:3-4) The partnership of Biblical and Classical philology in Early Modern times was not an unqualified bonus. It permitted at least two basic misconceptions which have been criticised especially by Australian researchers in the past two decades. Biblical Hebrew was analysed in the West by scholars for whom Latin was the lingua franca, and its rules, derived from Classical Greek grammar, were applied also to the definition of Hebrew. But while Greek and Latin are IndoEuropean languages, Hebrew is a Semitic one. There is no close family relationship (although it was a Semitic alphabet that established itself in the Mediterranean, presumably through early Greek trading contact with the Levant). Modern linguistic science has developed principles of analysis that can be applied to any language (the impetus for this often coming from the vast modern enterprise of Bible translation). The computerisation of languages has in turn supplied a mode of analysing them uncontaminated by any preconception as to their structure. Using this double advantage offered to our generation, Francis I. Andersen developed an altogether fresh syntax of Biblical Hebrew. His work both is massively challenging and has provoked criticism. But the emancipation of Hebrew from Greek will be a lasting gain. Biblical Greek, on the other hand, was often read in Early Modern times in the light of Hebrew. In particular the peculiarities of the ancient Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and of the New Testament, have been explained as ‘Jewish Greek’. This goes beyond the phenomenon of Semitisms in the New Testament, carefully analysed by Max Wilcox. There is no doubt that, by Classical standards, there are oddities to be explained. When the great papyrus discoveries began in Egypt at the end of the last century, Deissmann and Moulton were quick to observe the affinities between the Greek of the New Testament and that of the private letters and business documents of its times. Their work was influential, but in the field of semantics it was overrun by the Biblical Theology movement of the ’thirties. Fuelled by the opposition to Hitler, New Testament studies affirmed its Hebraic sources. But the analysis of the Greek language of those times proceeded with reference to the koine (‘common’) Greek. At Sydney the late George Shipp practised this historical treatment of the language. Antichthon opened with a sam-

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ple of his work, and others were published over the years. Work on the koine was maintained by John Lee. His lexical study of the Septuagint demonstrated that many of its peculiarities need not be explained as ‘Jewish’. They are attested in the ordinary papyrus documents of Ptolemaic times. Enoch Powell, in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Greek at Sydney in 1938, finished with the claim that, “with the possible exception of papyrology, there is no branch of Classical research which either now or at any conceivable future time can be carried on effectively at Sydney”. Microfilm and air travel have long since altered the scene. But his one positive prophecy has in fact been fulfilled. At Macquarie in the ’seventies, a start was made with the study of unpublished papyri. Stuart Pickering, curator of the growing collection, soon spotted a third-century fragment of the Acts of the Apostles. We were urged to update Moulton and Milligan’s fifty-year-old classic on the vocabulary of the New Testament, based upon the first wave of publication of documentary papyri. Greg Horsley then produced a five-volume series, bringing more recently published texts, including many inscriptions from the Eastern Mediterranean, to bear on the question of New Testament Greek. With the aid of recent linguistic work on how languages interact in a bilingual community, he has decisively fortified the conclusions of Deissmann and Moulton, and also refined the conventional polarisation between ‘atticising’ and koine Greek with reference to the concept of linguistic ‘register.’ So far as the New Testament goes, we cannot speak of ‘Jewish’, let alone ‘Christian’, Greek, as though there were a separate dialect being formed. The Latin language as used by the Church Fathers has also provided a key to cultural history. Deeply influenced as the Fathers were by the ‘Old Latin’ version of the Bible, as well as by the specialised vocabulary of church life, their writings must be understood both in relation to the ongoing norms of Ciceronian latinity, and to the way they reflect the life of the times. The strength of such an understanding has been richly demonstrated by Graeme Clarke in his five volumes of detailed commentary on the work of two North African compatriots of and fellow-believers with Tertullian, the ‘Octavius’ of Minucius Felix and the letters of Cyprian. They reveal the complex interrelation of Classical and Christian traditions during the cataclysms of the third century. In Egypt a flourishing Jewish community was largely obliterated in the revolt of AD 114–117. The documentary traces of Christianity do not begin until after that. In the third century, the ancient language of Egypt, long submerged for administrative purposes by Greek, reappeared in a popular form with a simplified script based on the Greek alphabet. It was the product of the Christian principle of translating Scripture into the vernacular. Thus Coptic (‘Egyptian’) emerged to survive into our own time as the language of the Egyptian Church. Geoff Jenkins studies the Coptic translations of the Bible, and

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works on the important Greek and Coptic papyri already found by the Melbourne expedition to the Dakleh Oasis, where a Christianised settlement of the third to the fifth centuries was abandoned until our own day. Michael Lattke is producing a five-volume treatment of the Odes of Solomon, early Christian hymns translated from Greek into Syriac and Coptic. With Syriac similarly the churches have preserved the Aramaic of Jesus’ time as an ecclesiastical language, much studied in the past generation at both Melbourne and Sydney Universities.

II. “Not Many Mighty … Are Called” (1 Corinthians 1:26) Language is an important index of social level. Deissmann drew an emphatic conclusion from his discovery that the New Testament was written in the ‘common’ Greek. The apostles then were common men, and it was as men of the people that they took over the ancient world. According to Arnold Toynbee, they were a classic “internal proletariat”, subverting the old civilisation from within. But the ‘common’ Greek was not spoken only by common people. It was the standard Greek of the professional and technical writers of its century. The half illiterate letters on papyrus are only a vulgar form of it. The Pauline communities especially were plainly dominated by highly articulate people with social pretensions. Paul put them down (“not many mighty”) to make a point of principle. The Pauline churches created a novel set of social relations, linking people of different status. Robert Banks produced an eloquent semi-popular presentation of these social arrangements. The evidence is so direct that its interpretation is tricky. The Oxford ancient historian Geoffrey de Ste Croix, writing as a Marxist, held that Paul wrote a blank cheque for the powers that be and sold out the proletarian initiative of Jesus. My own view is that Paul rather severed the bond between rank and status, endorsing any formally recognised responsibility within the existing social order but stripping it of social privilege: in his terms, converting leadership into service. It was more than his status-hungry promoters could tolerate. Peter Marshall explains the resultant imbroglio in terms of the classic ritual of enmity, which he defined from the contemporary sources and for the first time applied to New Testament interpretation. The first known attempt to set the experiences of the churches and the Pauline mission in an historical perspective, and relate them to the Gospel of Jesus, is preserved in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, a double work of the one author. The late Robert Maddox and Philip Esler have both treated the interpretative problems that arise, one in the more classic discipline, the other by a sociological approach. Historians of ancient Judaism contribute to the debate. The Jewish matrix of Jesus is explored by Max Wilcox.

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Paul Barnett, whose specialty is the Jewish revolutionary movements of the first century, writes of the ‘new quest’ for the historical Jesus. This does not so much distance the Gospels from historical contact with him (as the older ‘quest’ did), as use them to pin him down as an historically recognisable Jewish type. Alan Crown has specialised in the history of the Samaritans and other Jewish sects which formed a continuing link between Judaism and the churches in Patristic times. The Jews were a recognised nation, entitled to keep their ancient customs and having therefore a history, even though their state was lost. The Christians, however, had set themselves up in no-man’s-land. They impudently claimed the Jewish Patriarchs as validating their own position – in a backward-looking epoch one strove to capture the authority of antiquity. Though mostly Greeks and Romans by birth they neglected their social obligation, and made up customs for themselves. They and their opponents actually agreed on the interpretation of this: they were acting as if they too were a nation. The enterprise of Luke/Acts was picked up by Eusebius early in the fourth century. Yet the conversion of Constantine distracted him from understanding that state within the state that the churches have since demonstrated themselves to be. By the creation of a fundamental right to self-determination these paradoxical arrangements have become one of the foundations of Western political and social culture. The study of how it came to be historically sensed is approached in the treatment of the theme of recurrence by Gary Trompf and in two symposia, edited by Brian Croke and Alanna Emmett and then by Graeme Clarke with the support of his two predecessors and Raoul Mortley. The ancient writers, whether Classical or Christian, all failed to create an historical treatment that could cope with the incommensurability of the now parallel and rival traditions. We too have still to master this dilemma.

III. “Philosophy and Vain Deceit” (Colossians 2:8) Tertullian glosses Athens and Jerusalem as the Academy and the Church, not the Parthenon and the Church. The dispute is not essentially about the cult or worship of God. It is an intellectual dispute about the true understanding of the world and of man’s place in it. Philosophy is repudiated precisely because it is philosophy that occupies the high ground the Church will capture. ‘Religion’, in the common Roman sense of cultic practice, has little if anything to do with the issue. Many philosophers were just as critical of the intellectual contradictions of cult and myth as the churches were – indeed the latter happily took over the philosophical critique of them. The classical cults in general prescribed neither belief nor behaviour. The fact that we now mean by

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‘religion’ a system of behaviour based on beliefs is a measure of the success of the fourth-century churches in taking on the popular trappings of the old cults. Thus a basic shift of great historical moment was brought to pass in the ordering of public life. In classical times the cult of the gods was almost invariably devoted to safeguarding the status quo. Whether national or personal, the rituals anchored one in a unified order. The new monopoly of the churches detached ‘religion’ from the state. The fact that Caesar was a Christian did not alter this. Constantine quickly made clear that he submitted to the judgement of the bishops. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, successfully demanded penance of Theodosius for a political atrocity. At the same time the cultic power of the churches over the masses gave them their triumph over philosophy in the social arena. It was not that the churches lost their commitment to doctrine. Far from it. Rather they mobilised much of the community to doctrinal causes and drastically reshaped the social order into the bargain. (I have in mind the stunning impact on the fourth-century mind of such social innovations as synodical debates, charity for the poor, and the attempted repudiation of social life altogether in monasticism.) Philosophy was outclassed. The philosophers for their part could mount a telling critique of the churches in social terms, and in both Stoicism and Platonism they had long developed their own intellectual modus vivendi with religion. But their social impotence was displaced for the whole world to see when Julian attempted to convert the ancient cults into Church-like action-groups in the name of philosophical Hellenism. No one even took him seriously. Yet in his tragic way the young heir of the house of Constantine, brought up by bishops but a secret renegade to the old cults, saw more clearly than anyone on either side the historic consequences of what was happening before their eyes. The unity of the Classical culture of a thousand years was destroyed forever, and this had been achieved by the promotion of a rival kind of education. This gave Julian one other weapon against them. Since they did not believe in the gods, let the Christians not teach Classical literature either. Let them educate their own young from the Bible, since they believed in that. But the last thing the churches wanted was Christian schools. The Bible could not provide an education in Classical Greek. So it was hastily recast into the appropriate literary forms, a paradox saved from itself by the premature death of Julian. The competition with the philosophers, however, was not about literature nor even about methods of argument. The intellectual discipline was shared. It was not a matter of blind faith pitted against relentless reason. Both sides held tenaciously to a dogmatic tradition, yet one hotly contested in either case amongst its own adherents. The differences lay in their basic understanding of the world. On the one side a single cosmic order, self-contained, stable and

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eternal, embracing gods and men alike, each in his limited sphere. On the other, a world made by God, with man the centre of attention, vital decisions to be made and events to come. The ideals of behaviour were correspondingly at odds. The philosophical tradition sought individual development within social harmony, with the aim of preserving the integrity of the soul against the accidents of the body. The churches focussed on the consciousness of evil within man, and sought the solution within the sphere of physical life in the community, a life of commitment and compassion. Plotinus dismissed the suffering of the weak as a just reward for their misdeeds. Augustine, as one of the newly discovered letters reveals, forcibly rescued the victims of the press-gangs, and brought political influence to bear on the government to soften the law so that it could effectively be applied to the high-status perpetrators. In sharpening these antitheses I make no attempt to relate my observations to the notable series of works on the interaction of philosophical and Christian traditions produced by Eric Osborn and Raoul Mortley. I am well aware of the intricate ways in which the two traditions intersect. I am also well aware that the reigning position amongst ancient historians, both ancient and ecclesiastical, is that precious little changed in terms of actual behaviour. Indeed the life of many became more brutal in the christianised Late Antiquity. And certainly the new order drained away the civic spirit that had sustained classical culture. Yet the Classics remain, and their legacy is deeply imprinted on our own moral culture. The same goes for the Bible. The contradictions between them are built into everyone’s make-up now, whatever an individual’s particular commitments or behaviour. The rivalry within the soul of man, and the public confrontation of Church and State, both contribute decisively to the distinctive freedom and quality of life in the West. From an educational point of view the two traditions surely belong together.

Bibliographical details Works by Australian scholars of the past generation are here listed in the order they are referred to in the discussion above. I. Francis I. Andersen, The Hebrew Verbless Clause in the Pentateuch (Nashville 1970); The Sentence in Biblical Hebrew (The Hague 1974); Max Wilcox, ‘Semitisms in the New Testament’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.25.2 (Berlin 1984) 978–1029; G. P. Shipp, Modern Greek Evidence for the Ancient Greek Vocabulary (Sydney 1979); J. A. L. Lee, A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch (Chico 1983); G. H. R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, 5 vols (Sydney 1981– 1989); G. W. Clarke, The Octavius of Minucius Felix (New York 1974); The Letters of St Cyprian of Carthage, 4 vols (New York 1984–1989); Michael Lattke, Die Oden Salomos in ihrer Bedeutung für Neues Testament und Gnosis, 4 vols (Göttingen 1979–1986).

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II. R. J. Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community: The Early House-Churches in their Historical Setting (Sydney 1979); E. A. Judge, Rank and Status in the World of the Caesars and St Paul (Christchurch 1982); P. J. Marshall, Enmity at Corinth: Social Conventions in Paul’s Relations with the Corinthians (Tübingen 1987); R. J. Maddox, The Purpose of Luke-Acts (Edinburgh 1982); P. F. Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts: The Social and Political Motivations of Lucan Theology (Cambridge 1987); Max Wilcox, ‘Jesus in the Light of his Jewish Environment’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.25.1 (Berlin 1982) 131–195; P. W. Barnett, The Two Faces of Jesus (Sydney 1990); A. D. Crown (ed.), Samaritans (Tübingen 1989); G. W. Trompf, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought from Antiquity to the Reformation (Berkeley 1979); B. F. Croke and Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs) (eds), History and Historians in Late Antiquity (Sydney 1983); G. W. Clarke, with B. F. Croke, R. J. Mortley and Alanna Emmett-Nobbs, Reading the Past in Late Antiquity (Canberra 1990). III. E. F. Osborn, Justin Martyr (Tübingen 1973); Ethical Patterns in Early Christian Thought (Cambridge 1976); The Beginning of Christian Philosophy (Cambridge 1981); R. J. Mortley, Connaissance religieuse et herméneutique chez Clément d’Alexandrie (Leiden 1973); ‘Gnosis’, Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum XI (Münster 1980) 446– 537; From Word to Silence: I The Rise and Fall of Logos, II The Way of Negation, Christian and Greek (Bonn 1986); Désir et différence dans la tradition platonicienne (Paris 1988).

II. Documents of Late Antiquity

Chapter 8

Jews, Proselytes and God-fearers Club Together* A marble stele (pilaster?) from Aphrodisias, perhaps to be dated IIIp, ed.pr. J. Reynolds, R. Tannenbaum, Jews and God-fearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge 1987) pp. 5–7; SEG 36 (1986) 970. The 2.8m tall, rectangular stone was provided with margins on three sides, the fourth being only roughly dressed. It is slightly tapered, being designed probably to stand against a wall with the three sides available for inscriptions. Face c however remains blank. Face a has two plug-holes half-way down, from which presumably something was to be hung (a door, suggests G. W. Bowersock cited by Feldman, Jew and Gentile 575, n.116). Reynolds and Tannenbaum (= R. & T.) envisaged it standing to one’s left on approach. As one passed it one might then view face b. The text here is cut with more skill and symmetry than that of face a, and in a different hand. The hand of face b we have called m.1 to allow for the possibility that it was cut first. R. & T. considered this, along with the possibility that face a was cut much later. But they decided to apply m.1 to the hand of face a since face b lacks room for a proper heading (though they allowed this could have been on a superimposed stone, or on an adjacent one). Moreover, face a does refer to the founding of a monument (ll. 7–8), which seems odd if face b belonged to a separate statement of such a kind. Botermann, Bonz and others have however given more weight to the palaeographic and philological differences that point to a later date for face a (IV, V or even VI) and an earlier one for face b (late II). It is safer to keep open the implications of the surviving evidence rather than accommodate it to an “economical” (R. & T.) reconstruction. Face a, l.1 has been assigned to a third hand (m. 3). G. W. Bowersock judged this line at least to be “much later” (V?), using photographs that were clearer than those reproduced by R. & T. (Feldman, Jew and Gentile 577, n.138). Its sloping alignment contrasts awkwardly with that of m. 2. (J. H. M. Strubbe, SEG 1994, 1753, challenges this however.) A three-letter “graffito” is recorded by R. & T. as col. ii of face a, but is “not obviously meaningful”. Several other additions (some made soon after the basic text, but in other hands) are shown in italics. Some entries were made over erasures (face b, ll. 15, 20, 32, 39, 48). Samuel’s entry (face a, ll. 26, 27) had also been erased (and * New Docs 9 (2002) 73–80, with translation slightly adapted.

Σα- Saμου- muηλ el πρεσ- enβευ- voy τὴς Περ- from γε- Perούς ge.

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m. 3 m. 2

Face a (left side)

1 πατελλάδω̣ [ν] van Minnen ed.pr. 5 l. καί, παντευλογ(--ων) ̣

God, helper of those who offer food (?). Those set out below from the decury of the lovers of learning known too as constant in blessing for prevention of sorrow founded (it) for the community at their own expense as a memorial. Jael, patron(ess?), with son Joshua, rul(er?). Theodotus, (former?) official, with son Hilarianus (sc. Isaac?). Samuel, archd(ean?), prosel(yte). Joses (sc. Joseph), (son) of Jesse. Benjamin, psalm(singer?). Judas (the) good-natured. Joses, prosely(te). Sabbatius, (son) of Amachius. Emmonius, God-fear(er). Antoninus, God-fear(er). Samuel, (son) of Politianus. Joseph, (son) of Eusebius, prose(lyte), and Judas, (son) of Theodorus, and Antipeus, (son) of Hermi(as?), and Sabathius (the) sweet-tempered, [[and Samuel, envoy (and) priest.]]

3 τῆσδε καν(ονίδος) Bowersock 7 l. πλήθει

The last three-fifths of face a is blank except for a graffito.

Θεὸς βοηθὸς πατέλλᾳ ? δο[̣ ̣ 1 or 2 ̣ ] Οἱ ὑποτεταγμένοι τῆς δεκαν(ίας) τῶν φιλομαθῶ̣ [ν] τῶν κὲ παντευλογ(ούντων) ̣ εἰς ἀπενθησίαν τῷ πλήθι ἔκτισα[ν] ἐξ ἰδίων μνῆμα. Ἰαηλ προστάτης v. σὺν υἱῷ Ἰωσούᾳ ἄρχ(οντι?) Θεόδοτος παλατῖν(ος?) σὺν v. υἱῷ Ἱλαριανῷ v. Σαμουηλ ἀρχιδ(έκανος?) προσήλ(υτος) Ἰωσῆς Ἰεσσέου v. Βενιαμιν ψαλμο(λόγος?) Ἰούδας εὔκολος v. Ἰωσῆς προσήλυ(τος) Σαββάτιος Ἀμαχίου Ἐμμόνιος θεοσεβ(ής) v. Ἀντωνῖνος θεοσεβ(ής) Σαμουηλ Πολιτιανοῦ Εἰωσηφ Εὐσεβίου προσή(λυτος) κα[ὶ] Εἰούδας Θεοδώρ(ου) καὶ Ἀντιπέος Ἑρμή(ου?) καὶ Σαβάθιος νεκτάρις [[[?κα]ὶ Σ̣α̣μο̣ [̣ υ]ηλ̣ ̣ π̣ρε̣ σ̣ -̣ βε̣ υ̣ τ̣ ὴ̣ ς̣ ̣ ἱε̣ ρ̣ ε̣ ύ̣ ς̣ ]̣ ]

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[ ? first line completely lost] ̣ ]εραπίωνος v. [ v. ] [ ? ̣ ̣ c. 8 ̣ Σ [third line completely erased] [ Ἰωση]φ Zήνωνος v. [Zή]νων Ἰακωβ : Μανασῆς Ἰωφ sic Ἰούδας Εὐσεβίου v. Ἑορτάσιος Καλλικάρπου v. Βιωτικός : Ἰούδας Ἀμφιανοῦ Εὐγένιος χρυσοχόος v. Πραοίλιος : Ἰούδας Πραοιλίου v. Ῥοῦφος : ᾽Οξυχόλιος γέρων Ἀμάντιος Χαρίνου : Μύρτιλος Ἰακω προβατιον(όμος?) : Σεβῆρος v. Εὔοδος : Ἰάσων Εὐόδου v. Εὐσαββάθιος λαχα(νοπώλης?) : Ἀνύσιος Εὐσαββάθιος ξένος : Μίλων Ὀξυχόλιος νεώτερος v. Διογένης : Εὐσαββάθιος Διογέν(ους) ̣ ς Παύλου : Θεόφιλος v. [ Ἰού]δα [ Ἰ]α[̣ κ]ωβ ὁ κὲ Ἀπελλί(ων?) : Zαχαρίας μονο(πώλης?) [Λε]όν̣ τιος Λεοντίου : Γέμελλος [ Ἰο]ύδ̣ ας Ἀχολίου : Δαμόνικος v. Εὐτάρκιος Ἰούδα : Ἰωσηφ Φιληρ(?) Εὐσαββάθιος Εὐγενίου v. Κύρυλλος : Εὐτύχιος χαλκο(τύπος?) Ἰωσηφ παστι(λλάριος) :῾Ρουβην παστ(ιλλάριος?) Ἰούδας῾Ορτασί(ου) : Εὐτύχιος ὀρν(ιθοπώλης) Ἰούδας ὁ κὲ Zωσι(?) : Zήνων γρυτ(οπώλης?) Ἀμμιανὸς χιλᾶς : Αἰλιανὸς Αἰλια(νοῦ) Αἰλιανὸς ὁ καὶ Σαμουηλ Φίλανθος Γοργόνιος᾽Οξυ(χολίου) : Ἑορτάσιος Ἀχιλλέ(ως) Εὐσαββάθιος᾽Οξυχ(ολίου) : Παρηγόριος Ἑορτάσιος Zωτικοῦ Συμέων Zην(?) c. 6 lines blank

Face b (front)

[Jose]ph, (son) of Zeno. [Ze]no, (son) of Jacob. Manasses, (son) of Job. Judas, (son) of Eusebius. Heortasius, (son) of Callicarpus. Bioticus. Judas, (son) of Amphianus. Eugenius, goldsmith. Praoelius. Judas, (son) of Praoelius. Rufus. Oxycholius (the) elderly. Amantius, (son) of Charinus. Myrtilus. Jaco(b), sheepf(armer?). Severus. Euodus. Jason, (son) of Euodus. Eusabbathius, green(grocer?). Anysius. Eusabbathius (the) visitor. Milo. Oxycholius (the) younger. Diogenes. Eusabbathius, (son) of Diogen(es). [Ju]das, (son) of Paul. Theophilus. [Jac]ob, also called Apelli(o?). Zacharias, whole (saler?) [Le]ontius, (son) of Leontius. Gemellus. [Ju]das, (son) of Acholius. Damonicus. Eutarcius, (son) of Judas. Joseph, (son) of Philer (?). Eusabbathius, (son) of Eugenius. Cyrillus. Eutychius, bronze-(smith). Joseph, confe(ctioner?). Reuben, conf(ectioner?). Judas, (son) of Hortasius. Eutychius, bird(-seller?). Judas, also called Zosi(?). Zeno, rec(ycler?). Ammianus, stockfeeder(?). Aelianus, (son) of Aelianus. Aelianus, also called Samuel. Philanthus. Gorgonius, (son) of Oxy(cholius). Heortasius (son) of Achilles. Eusabbathius, (son) of Oxych(olius). Paregorius. Heortasius, (son) of Zoticus. Symeon, (son) of Zen(?).

[ … of S]erapion.

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34 l. θεοσεβεῖς

The remaining third of face b is blank.

Καὶ ὅσοι θεοσεβῖς : Zήνων βουλ(ευτής) Τέρτυλλος βουλ(ευτής) : Διογένης βουλ(ευτής) Ὀνήσιμος βουλ(ευτής) : Zήνων Λονγι(ανοῦ?) βου(̣ λευτής) Ἀντιπέος βουλ(ευτής) : Ἀντίοχος βουλ(ευτής) Ῥωμανὸς βουλ(ευτής) : Ἀπονήριος βουλ(ευτής) Εὐπίθιος πορφυρ(ᾶς) : Στρατήγιος Ξάνθος v. Ξάνθος Ξάνθου v. Ἀπονήριος Ἀπον(ηρίου) :῾Υψικλῆς Μελ(?) : Πολυχρόνιος Ξάν(θου) : Ἀθηνίων Αἰ(λιανοῦ?) Καλλίμορφος Καλ(λιμόρφου?) : ΙΟΥΝΒΑΛΟΣ Τυχικὸς Τυχι(κοῦ) : Γληγόριος Τυχι(κοῦ) v. Πολυχρόνιος βελ(?) : Χρύσιππος Γοργόνιος χαλ(κοτύπος?) : Τατιανὸς᾽Οξυ(χολίου?) Ἀπελλᾶς Ἡγε(μονέως?) : Βαλεριανὸς πενα(κᾶς?) Εὐσαββάθιος Ἡδ(υχρόος?) ?Μανικιος Ἀττά(λου?) v. Ὁρτάσιος λατύ(πος?) : Βραβεύς v. Κλαυδιανὸς Καλ(λιμόρφου?) : Ἀλέξανδρος πυ(?) Ἀππιανὸς λευ(?) : Ἀδόλιος ἰσικιάριος Zωτικὸς ψελ(λός) : Zωτικὸς γρύλλος Εὐπίθιος Εὐπι(θίου) : Πατρίκιος χαλκο(τύπος) Ἐλπιδιανὸς ἀθλη(τής) : Ἡδυχροῦς v. Εὐτρόπιος Ἡδυχ(ρόος) : Καλλίνικος v. Βαλεριανὸς ἀρκά(ριος?) : Εὕρετος Ἀθηναγ(όρου) Παράμονος ἰκονο(γράφος?) : v. Εὐτυχιανὸς γναφ(εύς) : Προκόπιος τρα(πεζίτης?) Προυνίκιος γναφ(εύς) : Στρατόνικος γναφ(εύς) Ἀθηναγόρας τέκτω(ν) v. Μελίτων Ἀμαζονίου v.

And the following God-fearers. Zeno, coun(cillor). Tertullus, coun(cillor). Diogenes, coun(cillor). Onesimus, coun(cillor). Zeno, (son) of Long(i a n u s?), coun(cillor). Antipeus, coun(cillor). Antiochus, coun(cillor). Romanus, coun(cillor). Aponerius, coun(cillor). Eupithius, purple(-seller). Strategius. Xanthus. Xanthus, (son) of Xanthus. Aponerius, (son) of Apon(erius). Hypsicles, (son) of Mel(?). Polychronius, (son) of Xanthus. Athenion, (son) of Ae(lianus?). Callimorphus, (son) of Cal(limorphus?). Junbalus (sc. Jubal?). Tychicus, (son) of Tychicus. Gregorius, (son) of Tychicus. Polychronius, bel(?). Chrysippus. Gorgonius, bron(ze-smith?). Tatianus, (son) of Oxy(cholius?). Apellas, (son) of Hege(moneus?). Valerianus, tab(let-maker?). Eusabbathius, (son) of Hed(ychrous?). Manicius, (son) of Atta(lus ?). Hortasius, stone-ca(rver?). Brabeus. Claudianus, (son) of Cal(limorphus?). Alexander, py(?). Appianus, leu(?). Adolius, mincer. Zoticus, arm(band-maker?). Zoticus, entertainer(?). Eupithius, (son) of Eupithius. Patricius, bronze-(smith?). Elphidianus, athle(te?). Hedychrous. Eutropius, (son) of Hedychrous. Callinicus. Valerianus, treasu(rer?). Heuretus, (son) of Athenagoras. Paramonus, portrait-(painter?). Eutychianus, fuller. Procopius, mon(ey-changer?). Prunicius, fuller. Stratonicus, fuller. Athenagoras, carpenter. Meliton, (son) of Amazonius.

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altered?), presumably so that he could be moved up to the more prominent but inelegant position in the margin alongside the opening entries. Apart from face a, l. 5, we have kept the text of R. & T., though sometimes reflecting in the translation conjectural restorations they had offered in their discussion. In face b the colons represent the actual form of the stops inserted by the stonecutter. The mix of ways in which individuals are identified is common in Greek documents, patronymics being given in many cases, occupations in some, personal characteristics in a few (some of which could be construed as second names), while others are given no identification at all beyond their proper name. The total lack of Roman nomina (legal family names), which became the official norm in AD 212 when Caracalla conferred citizenship on the whole free population of the empire, enrolling the new citizens in his own gens Aurelia, suggests a date either in the half-century before that point (since face b, ll. 29, 30, implies a date not earlier than Hadrian, whose nomen supplies Aelianus), or well after it once the strict use of Aurelius had been relaxed (though it need not have been enforced in a non-official document). R. & T. discuss the significance of each name (except Valerianus) individually. The purpose of the list remains unclear. But the grouping of nine bouleutai (city councillors) at the head of the section beginning with face b l. 34, and the fact that in its initial form the first occupation given is purple-seller (l. 39) and the last fuller (l. 59), implies the men were ranked on a basis reflecting their wealth, presumably the size of their donations to the building where the stele stood. Taking the texts from all of our three numbered hands as relating to the same purpose, R. & T. tentatively identify it as a communal welfare institution. Others (cf. McKnight 158, n.64) prefer to take it as a funerary monument. Our translations are deliberately made to leave these options open. The full discussions of R. & T. (R. primarily on epigraphic matters, T. on the historical interpretation) are models of caution, and must be carefully weighed before any conclusion is pressed. To promote this we have chosen to highlight alternatives to their preferred ones, where they have been advanced by others. (1) The main list (m.1, face b) is clearly divided into two sections of (55 and 52 men respectively) marked off by the six-line gap after l. 33, and the heading of l. 34 “And the following God-fearers”. The second section has no biblical names and only a small proportion (one in eight) of Greek names favoured by Jews. The nine councillors can hardly have been pious Jews given their necessary involvement in the public cults of the city (from which Jews were officially excused under Septimius Severus and Caracalla, AD 196–211, Dig. 50.2.3.3). It is virtually impossible therefore to construe the classificatory term theosebeis in this case as identifying a category of particularly observant Jews. It must surely indicate Gentiles whose piety inclined them towards Judaism, or at least, as Lieu argues (497), who were honoured in such terms by the Jewish community in recognition of their financial support. By contrast the

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names in the first section are overwhelmingly (three in four) either of Hebrew origin or Greek ones favoured by Jews. One must therefore suppose either that we have lost a heading, ‘The following Jews’, for this section, or that the context in which the list was originally displayed (e. g. in connection with a synagogue) made it clear that it was a list of people identified as members of the Jewish community. (2) The briefer (and later?) list (m. 2, face a) includes two theosebeis whose names are Graeco-Roman (though the rare Emmonius of l. 19 may echo the Hebrew ’emun, ‘faithful’) and the three “proselytes” with biblical names, like most of the ten others who must all be taken as Jews by birth, together with the patron (l. 9) and his(?) son (l. 10), and the son (l. 12) of the leading member. They constitute a formal association who have paid for a “memorial” (l. 8) that is to benefit the general community. The association appears to be a dekania (l. 3), or company of ten (‘decury’). If so, the first ten named after the patron (and omitting the two sons of ll. 10, 12) will have been the original founders, five of them being explicitly Gentiles by birth, and five (by implication of their names) born Jews. The head of the decury is a Gentile by birth (l. 13). Given the fact that proselytes are explicitly so identified (even though as Jews now they are presumably fully observant), it seems improbable that the theosebeis in this list are so called as being Jews of distinctive piety (the proposition of Bonz) rather than as being sympathetic Gentiles as in face b. It seems indeed that we have a consciously planned partnership between Gentile sympathisers, proselytes and Jews for specified ends. The possibility (cited from G. W. Bowersock by Feldman, Jew and Gentile 575, n.116) that face a, ll. 2, 3, should read Οἱ ὑποτεταγμένοι τῆσδε καν(ονίδος) (‘Those set out below on this door-frame’) should be discarded since it would have been otiose for the text to say it was on a door-frame when everyone could see that it was, and improbable that such a dedicated fraternity should have celebrated the munificence of only certain of its members. ‘Decury’ is needed in any case to avoid having to take the following genitives as partitive. The members are known for two commitments. They are first “lovers of learning” (l. 4), most probably “a private adult education society” (R. & T. 34) for the study of the law. Secondly, they are “constant in blessing” (l. 5), that is presumably in reciting the ‘eighteen benedictions’ of the synagogue liturgy (or meeting privately for prayer). Being a decury may imply that they supplied the quorum for synagogue services (R. & T. 37). But they will also have had beneficent or funeral activities, as is implied by the memorial they now create “for prevention of sorrow” (l. 6), whether bereavement or destitution. (3) The subsequent invocation of l. 1 (m. 3, face a) does not necessarily refer to the decury of ll. 2–8, but if it does the balance is tipped in favour of poor relief as the purpose on this occasion – the Latin loan-word patella is best construed here as ‘plate’ or ‘offering dish’. It passed into Hebrew. R. & T. inter-

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pret it as the equivalent of the Talmudic tamhui, and thus as a charity “soupkitchen” (27). Taking the case as dative, they then envisage the letters δο as indicating some form of ‘giving’ (whether noun or verb), and read the line as having two separate grammatical elements, the invocation of God as helper followed by a plea or statement about donations to charity. They judged this more likely (26) because they found no attestation for a noun πατελλᾶς (-άδος) which would have permitted the two elements to be integrated. It was possible, however, to read the last extant letter as omega (8), but this would have created a conceptually difficult name for a body with which the following decury was to be linked. Now that such a link may be set aside (on the grounds that l. 1 was written separately and later), the matter should be re-opened. Van Minnen (257) cites an inscription (first published in 1904 in the journal of the Russian archaeological institute at Constantinople) from the tomb of Constantina, daughter of Georgios πατελλᾶ, of the province of Pisidia. The first editor took the word as a patronymic but van Minnen plausibly construes it as the genitive singular of an occupational noun πατελλᾶς plural πατελλᾶδες, which he suggests might mean Imbissinhaber (‘snack-bar holder’). Such a formation is well attested from this period in Asia Minor, as well as in this inscription: b, 29 χιλᾶς, 39 πορφυρ(ᾶς), 47 πενα(κᾶς?), 50 v. l. πυ(ρηνᾶς). See C. D. Buck and W. Peterson, Reverse Index of Greek Nouns and Adjectives (Chicago 1949) 12. Our translation is intended to keep the options open. What bearing does the Aphrodisias inscription have on the debate over the ‘God-fearers’ in the Acts of the Apostles? The adjective theosebeis is not used there, but similar-sounding participial phrases refer to people linked with the Jewish community as “fearing” (phoboumenoi) or “revering” (sebomenoi) God. Those “fearing” are Cornelius at Caesarea (10:2) and the ones addressed by Paul at Pisidian Antioch (13:6, 26). Those “revering” are the “proselytes” (13:43) and “women of high standing” (13:50) there, Lydia at Philippi (16:14), others at Thessalonica (17:4) and Athens (17:12), and Justus at Corinth (18:7). It had been widely assumed that these were Gentiles who were attracted to Judaism, but without necessarily becoming proselytes. The Roman authors of the time repeatedly comment on such an interest. Arthur Hertzberg wrote of “an increasing number, perhaps millions by the first century”, Encyclopaedia Judaica, X (1971) 55. In 1981 Wilcox (115) argued that the ‘God-fearers’ of Acts “ought not without further external evidence be interpreted as referring to a class of Gentile synagogue adherents rather than to members of the Jewish community, whether Jewish by birth or by conversion”. Kraabel went further, arguing that they were a tendentious fiction on the part of the author of Acts, who dropped them (hence the “disappearance” of Kraabel’s title) once he had made the point that “Christianity had become a Gentile religion legitimately and without

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losing its Old Testament roots” (p. 127 in the 1992 reprint). There was “no clear independent record of them in the material evidence from the classical world”. With reference to the Miletus inscription (CIJ II 748), Robert had declared that theosebes “ne peut désigner un païen judaïsant” (45). In 1996 Levinskaya demonstrated that the Panticapaeum inscription (CIRB 71) also could not be emended to yield ‘God-fearers’ in this sense (75). But she accepted fully the implications of the new Aphrodisias inscription, seeing it as the later formalisation of the widespread interest in Judaism attested for the first century (80). Kraabel had safeguarded himself against this by asserting that “one clear inscription” would not be enough to disprove his hypothesis that “there never was a circle of God-fearers associated with ancient Judaism” (128). It need only attest the particular case. We do not know whether the Aphrodisias inscription was linked with a synagogue building. Kraabel’s study of the known synagogues has shown no parallel to it. But R. & T. are not inclined to be very surprised by the high proportion of ‘God-fearers’ in their text. “We know from the Book of Acts that there were God-fearers in many of the synagogues … it is entirely possible that the discrepancy in numbers between Godfearers in Aphrodisias [and Jews] … may not be atypical” (89). Most of the many discussions of the matter since have supported this assumption. In the weighty opinion of Feldman (1993, p. 363) the caution of R. & T. over its significance to the history of Christianity is “excessive”. Stanton identifies the “companions” of Trypho in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue as ‘God-fearers’. Lieu traces the ambiguities and polemics in the use of the term in second-century Christian literature. Finally, Mitchell has revived the proposition of Schürer: the cult associations of “the Highest God” represent the ‘God-fearers’ (cf. R. & T. 64–65, and for the ambiguities see now also Marek). B. B. Blue, in D. W. J. Gill and C. H. Gempf (eds), The Book of Acts in its Graeco-Roman Setting (Grand Rapids 1994) 178–183; M. P. Bonz, ‘The Jewish Donor Inscriptions from Aphrodisias: Are they Both Third-century, and Who are the theosebeis?’, HSPh 96 (1994) 281–299; H. Botermann, review of R. & T., ZRG 106 (1989) 606–611; ‘Griechisch-jüdische Epigraphik: zur Datierung der Aphrodisias-Inschriften’, ZPE 98 (1993) 184–194; B. Brooten, ‘Iael προστάτης in the Jewish Donative Inscription from Aphrodisias’, in B. Pearson (ed.), The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester (Minneapolis 1991) 149–162; S. J. D. Cohen, ‘Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew’, HThR 82 (1989) 13–33; L. H. Feldman, ‘The Omnipresence of the God-fearers’, BAR 12.5 (1986) 58–63; ‘Proselytes and “Sympathizers” in the Light of the New Inscriptions from Aphrodisias’, REJ 148 (1989) 265–305; Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton 1993) 342–382, esp. 362–369 and 577; J. G. Gager, ‘Jews, Gentiles and Synagogues in the Book of Acts’, HThR 79 (1986) 91–99; C. H. Gempf, ‘The God-fearers’, Appendix 2 in C. J. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (WUNT 49, Tübingen 1989) 443–447; M. Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford 1994) 117–119; A. T. Kraabel, ‘The Disappear-

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ance of the God-fearers’, Numen 28 (1981) 113–126; reproduced in Diaspora Jews and Judaism (Atlanta 1992) 119–130; ‘The Diaspora Synagogue’, in D. Urman, P. V. M. Flesher (eds), Ancient Synagogues (Leiden 1995) 95–126; L. I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue (New Haven 2000) 273 and passim; I. Levinskaya, ‘God-fearers: Epigraphic Evidence’, The Book of Acts in its Diaspora Setting (Grand Rapids 1996) 70–80; J. M. Lieu, ‘The Race of the God-fearers’, JTS 46 (1995) 483–501; S. McKnight, A Light among the Gentiles: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (Minneapolis 1991) 110–114; R. S. MacLennan and A. T. Kraabel, ‘The God-fearers – a Literary and Theological Invention’, BAR 12.5 (1986) 46–53; C. Marek, ‘Der höchste, beste, grösste, allmächtige Gott: Inschriften aus Nordkleinasien’, EA 32 (2000) 129–146; S. Mitchell, ‘Wer waren die Gottesfürchtigen?’, Chiron 28 (1998) 55–64; ‘The Cult of the Theos Hypsistos in Late Antiquity’, in P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (eds), Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford 1999) 81–148; J. Murphy-O’Connor, ‘Lots of God-fearers?: theosebeis in the Aphrodisias Inscription’, RBi 99 (1992) 418–424; G. J. Mussies, review of R. & T., Mnemosyne 44 (1991) 293–295; ‘Jewish Personal Names in Some Non-literary Sources’, in J. W. van Henten and P. W. van der Horst (eds), Studies in Early Jewish Epigraphy (Leiden 1994) 242–276; L. Robert, Nouvelles inscriptions de Sardes I (Paris 1964) 41–47; E. Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi III (Leipzig 1909) 150–188, esp. 174; Eng. tr. and revision, G. Vermes et al. (eds), III (Edinburgh 1986) 15–176, esp. 169; G. N. Stanton, ‘God-fearers: Neglected Evidence in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho’, in T. W. Hillard, R. A. Kearsley, C. E. V. Nixon and A. Nobbs (eds), Ancient History in a Modern University, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids and Cambridge 1998) 43–52; R. F. Tannenbaum, ‘Jews and God-fearers in the Holy City of Aphrodite’, BAR 12.5 (1986) 54–57; P. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge 1991) 152–155; P. W. van der Horst, ‘Jews & Christians in Aphrodisias in the Light of their Relations in Other Cities of Asia Minor’, in Essays on the Jewish World of Early Christianity (Freiburg / Göttingen 1990) 166–181; P. van Minnen, ‘Drei Bemerkungen zur Geschichte des Judentums in der griechisch-römischen Welt’, ZPE 100 (1994) 253–258; M. Wilcox, ‘The “God-fearers” in Acts: A Reconsideration’, JSNT 13 (1981) 102–122; M. H. Williams, ‘The Jews and Godfearers Inscription from Aphrodisias: A Case of Patriarchal Interference in Early 3rd-century Caria?’, Historia 41 (1992) 297–310.

Chapter 9

A State Schoolteacher Makes a Salary Bid* A short roll from Oxyrhynchus (19.2 x 55.6 cm.), dated AD 253–260, containing on the front (along the fibres) a partial draft of a petition to Valerian and Gallienus (A), and a draft of a letter about it to a friend at court (B), and on the back (across the fibres) a second, fuller draft of the same petition (C), all in different hands. Ed.pr. P. J. Parsons, P.Coll.Youtie 2 (1976) 66, pp. 409–46 (pl. 21–22) (=P.Oxy. 47.3366). Parsons conjectures that B, a small neat hand of the type used for commentaries, with frequent abbreviations, may be that of the petitioner, the schoolteacher Lollianus, himself, while A, a sub-literary script, could be his attempt at more formal writing, and C, a large, clear cursive, may have been written at his dictation. The bold symbols { and } represent the bold round brackets in B and C as given on the papyrus itself (B ll. 26, 27; 37, 40; C ll. 57, 60; 60?, 61). The roll, which was folded or flattened, and thus now has many gaps, was presumably his own file copy. The “vocabulary is determinedly choice and the syntax carefully elaborate; the grammarian shows in touches like the learned final optatives” (Parsons 411). A (Recto col. i)

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[τ]οῖς [γῆς κ]αὶ θα̣ λ̣ άτ[τ]ης̣ δε[σπό]τα̣ ι[ς] αὐτ[̣ οκ]ράτ[ορσι] [κ]αίσα[ρσι Πο]υπ[λίωι Λι]κιν[νίωι] Οὐα[λερια]νῶι [κ]αὶ Π[ουπλίωι] Λ̣ [ικιννί]ωι Οὐ[̣ αλεριανῶι Γα]λλιη[νῶι] ̣ εὐσε[βέσι ε]ὐ[̣ τυχέ]σι σεβ[αστοῖ]ς ̣ ̣ ̣ δημοσίου [γρ]αμπα[ρ]ὰ Λολ[̣ λ]ια̣ ν̣ οῦ τοῦ κ[α]ὶ῾Ομο ί̣ [ο]υ ματικοῦ τῆς᾽Οξυρυγχειτῶν πόλεως. ἡ [ο]ὐράνιος ϋ῾ μῶν μεγαλοφροσύνη `ἡ´̣ ἐπιλάμψασα τῆι ΰμε̣ ὶ̣ ̣ πα̣ ι̣ ̣]] τέραι οἰκουμένηι καὶ ἡ πρὸς τὰς Μούσας [[κα ̣ [[ ]] [οἰ]κείωσις πα̣ ι̣ δεία γὰρ ̣ ὑμεῖν σύ̣ ν̣ ε̣ δρο̣ ς̣ – – … [. .]ελπιστιαν . .[ . ] . . . . . ἀξίωσιν ἀνεν̣ [̣ ε]γκ̣ ε̣ ῖ̣ ν̣ ̣ ϋ῾ μεῖν δικαίαν τε καὶ νόμιμον, ἔστιν δὲ αὕτη· οἱ θεοὶ πρόγονοι ϋ῾ μῶν ὥρισαν κατὰ μέγεθος τῶν πόλεων καὶ ποσότητα δημοσίων γραμματικ[̣ ῶ]ν,̣ προστάξαντες καὶ συντάξεις̣ ̣ αὐτοῖς δίδοσθαι ὅπως εἴη [[ ± 17 ]] ἀνεμπόδιστος

ἡ περὶ τοὺς παῖδας ἐπιμέλεια.

* New Docs 1 (1981) 72–78.

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A: To the masters of land and sea, the commanders Caesars Publius Licinius Valerianus and Publius Licinius Valerianus Gallienus, pious, fortunate, august |5 from Lollianus also called Homoios, public grammar-school teacher of the city of Oxyrhynchus. Your celestial high-mindedness which has enlightened your (whole inhabited) world and your familiarity with the Muses [and … ] – for education is enthroned beside you – |10 [encourages me] to bring you a just and lawful petition, and it is this: – The gods your forebears determined a quota of public grammar-school teachers according to the size of the cities, prescribing also contributions to be paid to them |15 so that the responsibility for (school)boys should not be obstructed […].

B (Recto col. ii) (ll. 17–22 omitted as too fragmentary)

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̣ [̣ α]ραίτ κ(αὶ) παιδ [̣ ̣ ]̣ ασ̣ [[ ̣ ]̣ ] ὁ̣ ἀπ ̣ [̣ ητ]ος δεσμὸς εἴργει, ἐπι[στέλλω] σοι, ἄδελφ[ε ……]ε,̣ ταύτ(ην) τρίτ(ην) ἐπιστο̣ λ̣ (̣ ήν), [ἵ]ν[̣ α] με συνε[̣ χ]ῶς ευφραίνηις π[̣ ερὶ τ(ῆς) σ]ωτηρίας σου [[επιστελλ]] `ἀεὶ γράφ´ων· εὐπορήσει[ς δὲ ῥᾳ]δίως τ̣ (ῶν) εἰς Ἀλεξάνδρειαν ἀ(πὸ) τοῦ κομιτάτου εἰσϊόν[των] ἐὰ̣ ν Ἀμμωνιανῶι τῶι ὀπτίωνι τ[̣ (ῶν) βενε]̣ πέμ[[ψ]]`π´ηις ̣ ἑτ̣ α̣ ίφ̣ικιαρίων ρωι μου ὅντι εἰς τὰ μάλ[̣ ισ]τα̣ ̣ {[[ὃς̣ ̣ διαπέμψεταί μοι ἐνθάδε· κ(αὶ) γ(ὰρ) κ(̣ αὶ)]] `ἔστιν ̣ δὲ´ ὁ ἀνὴρ […] . ω . τος συγγενικὸς ὢ̣ ν τοῦ διασημοτάτου̣ ̣ Θεοδώρου̣ }̣ ἅμα δὲ καὶ ἀξίωσίν τινα̣ […] πρ̣ οσεοικ`υῖ´ αν ὁμ̣ [ο]ίωι χαρίσασθ(αι) ἐπέστειλα ἵνα μοι αυ [̣ ]̣ ]̣ ] κ(ατα)πράξηι εἰς ἐφόδια τοῖς παιδίοις [[και[̣ … ]τρ̣ οφῶν, `ἣν [ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ]̣ μ̣ ώνιος ̣ να̣ νικλαρίου̣ ̣ [ ̣ ]̣ ̣ τύ̣ πον ̣ δι(ὰ) τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ Ἡρακλάμμων[ος τοῦ] κα ̣ θά̣ ν̣ ε̣ ι αὐτὸ διην̣ υ̣ κώ[ς], ἵνα̣ ̣ μ[ὴ] ἔπεμψεν, ὧι καὶ κοινώσει πρ̣ ότ̣ ε̣ ρ̣ (ον) εἰ πρ̣ οφ ̣ ̣ δὶ̣ ς̣ ̣ περὶ το̣ ῦ̣ ̣ αὐ̣ τ̣ ο̣ ῦ ἡ αἴτ[ησ]ις γί̣ ν̣ [̣ ηται]·´ ψηφ̣ισθεὶς γ(ὰρ) ἐνταῦθα ὑπὸ τ(ῆς) βουλ[(ῆς) δημόσιος γραμματικὸς τὴν σύνταξιν τ(ὴν) εἰωθυῖαν οὐ πάνυ λαμβάνω, ἀλ(λ)᾽ εἰ τύχοι ποτὲ ἐν ὄξεσιν ἀν-̣ τὶ οἴνων καὶ σίτοις σητ[ο]κόποις [[δοκῶ̣ τι ἄρνυ̣ σ̣ θ̣ α̣ ι ̣]] ` [[ ̣ ̣ ]] ὡς κ(αὶ) αὐτὸς ἐπίστασαι τὰ παρ᾽ ἡμῖν πράγματα.´ ἔσται̣ [ο]ὖν̣ σοι [̣ ]̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ δυναμένωι κἀμοί τι συμβαλέσθ(αι) [[ϊ῞να κῆπόν τ[ιν]α τῶν ἐνταῦθα [[μοι]] κ(ατα)πράξ[[[η]ι ̣]] `ασθ(αι)´, ὃν ἐτυγχα[̣ ν ̣ ̣ ̣ ]̣ δρομευς `τις´ πρ̣ ότερον ηἰ̣ τ̣ η̣ [μέ̣ ̣ ὶ̣ ̣ νος ἀντὶ τῶν ̣ σ(̣ υν)τάξεω̣ ν ̣ [ ] ̣ ̣ ̣ [ ] συγχωρηθέ(̣ ντα), οὗ κ(αὶ) τ(ὴν) αἴτησι[ν] κα τ(̣ ὴν) σ(υγ)χώρ[ησίν] σο̣ ι ἀπέστειλα κ(αὶ) τὸν τύπον ̣ τῆς ἡμῶν ἀξιώσεω[ς ἵ]να ἤτ(οι) κοινωσάμενος το [̣ ` ̣ ]̣ ´̣ ταῦτα ἦ αὐτὸς ̣ [δ]ιακρίνας το(ῦτό) μοι χαρίσηι. ἔχει̣ ς̣ ̣ δὲ κ(αὶ) τὴ[ν] ποσότητα τ(ῆς) σ(υν)τάξεως δι(ὰ) τ(ῆς) αἰτήσεως ὅτ(ι) φ̄ εἰ̣ σ̣ ι̣ ν̣ ̣ ἀττικ(αί), κ(αὶ) τὸν φόρ̣ ο̣ (̣ ν) τοῦ κήπου ὅτ(ι) ἐν χ ̄ ἀττ̣ ι̣ κ(αῖς), κ(αὶ) τὸν ἐμὸν χρηματισμὸν ὅτ(ι) Λολλιανὸς ὁ καὶ Ὅμοιος̣ Ἀπολλωνι ̣ ̣ ̣ . σὺ γ(ὰρ) κ(αὶ) τοὺς ϋ῾ πάτους εἴσει κ(αὶ) ἁπλῶς τὸ σ(υμ)φέρον̣ ̣ ἡγήσει ὡς ϋ῾ πὲρ σχολαστικοῦ καὶ φίλου καὶ δ[εο]μένου ̣ σκοπῶν· ἔσται δὲ καὶ ἡ ἀντιγραφὴ ἀ[̣ ν]αμφίβολος πρὸς τὸ μὴ ὑ(πὸ) κακοηθίας [̣ ̣ ]̣ [̣ ̣ ἀ]να̣ σκευασθῆναι. (parenthesis, ll. 37–39, omitted: bracketed by the writer)

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B: [6 lines too damaged to translate] I send you, […] brother, this third letter, so that you can continually give me joy by always writing about your good health. You will easily have good access to those arriving in Alexandria |25 from the court if you make contact with Ammonianus, the optio of the beneficiarii, who is particularly close to me: {he will send word on to me here; and indeed} the man is […], being a relative of the most distinguished Theodorus. I also enclose a petition likely to be conceded to such a one, so that you can secure … for the expenses of my children. Ammonius (?) has sent the text of it through his brother Heraclammon, the cananiclarius, and you should consult with him first in case he has already won the point, so that a petition is not lodged twice on the same thing. Having been elected public grammar-school teacher here by the council, I am not receiving the normal contribution at all, but if I am lucky (I get it) in vinegar instead |30 of wine and in weevilly grain, as you yourself know is the case with us. You will therefore be able in your position to give me some help, by getting me one of the orchards here, which one of my predecessors (?) earlier had had allocated to himself on request in place of the contributions. I have sent you the request and the allocation, along with the text of our petition, so that you can do me this favour either in partnership with […] or by yourself. You have also the quota for the contribution included in the petition, namely 500 attics (sc. denarii), and the payment for the orchard, namely 600 attics, |35 and my correct designation, namely Lollianus also called Homoios son of Apolloni … You will also know (the names of) the consuls and in short you will take the right initiative, watching on behalf of a scholar, a friend and a man in need. And the rescript too will (have to) be unambiguous so that it cannot be overturned through malice.

C (Verso cols i–ii) (Lines marked (a) are superscript) [τοῖς γῆς καὶ θαλάττης καὶ παντὸς ἀνθρώπων ἔ]θν̣ [ο]υ[ς αὐ]το̣ κ̣ [̣ ρά-] ̣ ι κ[αὶ] [τορσι καίσαρσι Πουπλίωι Λικιννίωι Οὐ]α[λε]ριαν̣ ῶ [Πουπλίωι Λικιννίωι Οὐ]α[̣ λεριανῶι Γαλλιη]νῶ̣ ι εὐ̣ σ̣ εβέσ[̣ ιν] [εὐτυ]χέ̣ [̣ σι σεβαστ]οῖ̣ ς̣ (m. 2) [παρὰ] Λ̣ ολλιαν[̣ οῦ] τ[̣ οῦ καὶ]῾Ομοί̣ ου̣ . 45 (m. 1) [ἡ οὐρ]άνιος ὑμ̣ [ῶν] μεγαλοφροσύ[ν]η, μέγιστοι [αὐ]τοκράτορες, ̣ τ[̣ ὴ]ν ̣ αὑτ̣ ῆς ̣ φιλανθρωπίαν ἐκ̣ τείνα̣ σα ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ὑμῶν τ[̣ ὴν ο]ἰκ̣ [̣ ου]μέ̣ ν̣ η̣ ν̣ ̣ καὶ ἐφ᾽ ἅπαντα̣ ̣ τ[̣ ό]πο̣ ν̣ ἐκ̣ πέμψασα ̣ εὐ̣ ε̣ λ̣ πιστίαν ἤγαγεν ἀξίωσιν ἀνενεγκεῖν κἀμ̣ ὲ̣ ̣ εἰ̣ [ς] τῆ̣ `ι ̣´ θε̣ ί̣ α̣ ι̣ ̣ ὑμ̣ ῶ ̣ ̣ ν ̣ [τ]ύχηι, ἐχομένην̣ ̣ καὶ λόγ[ο]υ καὶ νόμου. 50 ἔστιν δὲ ̣ [αὕτη]· ο[̣ ἱ] θεοὶ πρόγονοι ϋ῾ μ[ῶν οἱ κατ]ὰ̣ χρόνους ̣ βασιλεύσαντε̣ ς̣ ̣ ἐν̣ ̣ ἀρετῆι καὶ πα[̣ ι]δε̣ ίαι ἐπι[λάμ]ψαντες ̣ τῆ̣ ι̣ ̣ αὑ̣ [̣ τῶν] οἰ̣ κουμένηι ὥρισαν κατὰ [μέγ]εθος τῶν ̣ π[̣ ὸ]λε̣ ων [καὶ ποσό]τη̣ τ̣ α̣ δημοσίων γραμ[ματικ]ῶ̣ ν ̣ πρ[οσ]τά̣ ξαντε[ς ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ (col. i, ll. 54, 54a and col. ii, ll. 55a–57 omitted as too fragmentary) ̣[̣ ] ̣ σα̣ ιτου ̣ ̣ ̣ ε ̣ [̣ ]̣ χλε[ ]̣ [̣ ]μ ̣ σ̣ ̣ [̣ ] καὶ τὰ πρ̣ ὸς 58 ̣ τὸν βίον ̣ χρ[ε]ι-̣ 59 ώδη επε ̣ ̣ ̣ [ ] δύνασθαι τῶν παίδων ἀσχολούμενον ἀ̣ εῖν 60 εὶ ̣ [τ]ῇ̣ αἰτήσει προσλει̣ παρ ̣ } [{?] ἀνά̣ γκην ἔσ̣ χ̣ [ο]ν̣ τὴν ἱκ̣ ε̣ 61a [[μὲ̣ ν̣ ̣ προσφέρω̣ ὑμῶν τοῖς ῎ϊχ[ν]εσι, θειότατοι αὐτοκράτορες 61 τη̣ ρ̣ ίαν ̣ ταύτην τοῖς ῎ϊχνεσιν ϋ῾ μῶν προσενεγκεῖν} ἄλυ62a μὲν 62 πον τῶι τῆς πόλεως λόγωι κατὰ τὸ δικαιότατον δέ μοι λυσιτε-

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63a 63 64a 64 65a 65 68

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ε

λοῦ̣ σ̣ αν, ὥστε̣ κῆπον τῆς πόλεως ἔνδον τ[ι]χῶν ὅντα καε

οὖσι

λούμενον παράδισον Δικτύνου σὺν τοῖς [[ἄλλοις]] φυτοῖς καὶ ε

[τ]ῷ̣ πρὸς ἀρδείαν ϋδ[α]τι̣ , φέροντα [ἐ]ν μισθώσ[ι] χ ̄ ἀτ᾽τικάς ̣ ι τὴν με̣ γ̣ ίστην δο̣ θ̣ ῆ̣ ναί ̣ μοι κ[ελεῦ]σα ϋ῾ [μ]ῶν τύ[χην], ̣ [ἵ]να̣ αὐτόθεν ἔχων τὰ πρὸς χρείαν πρόσφορα τῇ [τ]ῶν παίδων διδασκαλίᾳ προσευκαιρεῖν δύνω[μ]αι̣ καί (ll. 69a–70 with mention of τὴν οὐράνιον ὑμῶν φιλανθρωπίαν omitted)

C: |40 To the commanders of earth and sea and of every race of men, the Caesars Publius Licinius Valerianus and Publius Licinius Valerianus Gallienus, pious, fortunate, august, from Lollianus also called Homoios. |45 Your celestial high-mindedness, greatest commanders, having extended its philanthropy over all your (inhabited) world and sent it out over every place, had led me too to the good hope of presenting a petition to your divine fortune, (a petition) related to both reason and lawfulness, |50 and it is this:– The gods your forebears who reigned from time to time and enlightened their (whole inhabited) world through virtue and education, determined a quota of public grammar-school teachers according to the size of the cities, prescribing [5 lines too damaged to translate] even the necessities of life, since, being kept busy by the (school)boys I was not able |60 always to be persistent in petitioning, and was compelled to bring this plea before your footprints, most divine commanders, (a plea) that on the one hand is harmless to the city’s accounts but on the other is profitable to me in a most just way, namely that the orchard of the city, being within walls, called the garden of Dictynus, with the plants there, and |65 the water for irrigation, yielding in rentals 600 attics, your greatest fortune should order to be given to me, so that having from it the income I need, I may be able to devote my best time to the teaching of the (school)boys and [2 lines too damaged to translate apart from “your heavenly philanthropy”].

This is the first case of a state schoolteacher attested in Egypt, though, as Lollianus claims, it was a long-established imperial policy to encourage the cities to establish them. Parsons (441–446) reviews the evidence for the policy, relating mostly to II and later, and concludes that Lollianus is probably overstating the position if he is implying that there was an obligatory number to be appointed. A. H. M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford 1940) 220–226, contrasts the apparent decline of interest in the public provision of primary education in the first three centuries with the public attention paid to higher (ephebic) education. Grammar, rhetoric and philosophy all benefited from this. On the Hellenistic institution of grammar schools, see H. I. Marrou, Histoire de l’éducation dans l’Antiquité (3rd edn, Paris 1955) 223–243 and M. P. Nilsson, Die hellenistische Schule (Munich 1955). The papyri provide two particular kinds of evidence on basic education in Greek: school exercises, catalogued in R. A. Pack, The Greek and Latin Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt (2nd edn, Ann Arbor 1967) nos 2642–2751 [ed.: see now R. Cribiore, Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta 1996); id., Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenis-

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tic and Roman Egypt (Princeton 2001)]; and the frequent references in documents to the illiteracy of the person signing them. Recent discussions of these matters (not all seen by me) include: – D. Bonneau, ‘Le droit de l’enfant à l’éducation dans le monde grec (III siècle avant notre ère au III siècle de notre ère)’, Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 39 (1975) 101–115; R. P. Duncan-Jones, ‘Age-rounding, Illiteracy and Social Differentiation in the Roman Empire’, Chiron 7 (1977) 333–353; P. Schmitter, ‘Compulsory Schooling at Athens and Rome? A Contribution to the History of Hellenistic Education’, AJP 96 (1975) 276–289, M. Hamdi Ibrahim, Ἡ ἑλληνορωμαϊκὴ παιδεία ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ (Athens 1972): P. J. Sijpesteijn, ‘De eerste schreden van een schooljongen in de oudheid’, Hermeneus 42 (1971) 251–255; H. C. Youtie, ‘ Ὑποφραγεύς. The Social Impact of Illiteracy in Graeco-Roman Egypt’, ZPE 17 (1975) 201–221; id., ‘Because They do not Know Letters’, 19 (1975) 101–108; id., ‘Between Literacy and Illiteracy. An Aspect of Greek Society in Egypt’, Akten des XIII. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses (Munich 1974) 481–487; id., ‘ Ἀγράμματος. An Aspect of Greek Society in Egypt’, HSCP 75 (1971) 161–176; id., ‘Βραδέως γράφων. Between Literacy and Illiteracy’, GRBS 12 (1971) 239–261. Some of these studies by Youtie, with others on the subject, are collected in his Scriptiunculae II (Amsterdam 1973). [Ed.: for up to date bibliography on the whole area see now M. Choat & R. Yuen-Collingridge, ‘A Church with No Books and a Reader Who Cannot Write: The Strange Case of P.Oxy. 33.2673’, BASP 46 (2009) 109–138.] In NT and later times there was no particular interest in literacy amongst the churches, in spite of the fundamental importance of it to their work, and of the fact that the preaching raised vernacular languages, such as Coptic, for the first time to a generally accessible literary expression. Julian’s attempt in midIV to compel the churches to provide their own education based on Scripture provoked a crisis and discloses the cultural reality. They were in fact dependent upon the Hellenic educational system to maintain their place in the common culture, while the scriptural catechesis was essentially incompatible with formal education, and addressed to other objectives altogether. See E. A. Judge, ‘The Conflict of Educational Aims in the New Testament’, Journal of Christian Education 9 (1966) 32–45 (rpr. First Christians, 693–708), id., ‘St Paul and Classical Society’, JbAC 15 (1972) 19–36 (rpr. Social Distinctives, 73–97), and The Conversion of Rome: Ancient Sources of Modern Social Tensions (North Ryde [NSW] 1980), now ch. 16 below. The first draft (A) of Lollianus’ petition was left incomplete, while the second (C) incorporated the substance of the request as elaborated in the meantime in the letter (B) to his friend at court. There are interesting differences between the two draft preambles to the petition. The image of the ruler irradiating the world with education is transferred from Valerian and Gallienus themselves in A to their predecessors in C. Perhaps Lollianus decided it was

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more subtle to tempt the present Caesars with the prospect of winning their predecessors’ reputation rather than accord it to them by way of flattery in advance. The documentary record offers several sets of texts illustrating redactional processes which may be of use in NT criticism. For other examples see the epigraphic copy from Lyons of the speech of Claudius in 48 on the admission of Gallo-Romans to the Senate, E. M. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero (Cambridge 1967) no. 369, trans A. C. Johnson, Ancient Roman Statutes (Austin 1961) no. 175, compared with the version of Tacitus, Annals 11.24, on which see K. Wellesley, ‘Can You Trust Tacitus?’, Greece and Rome 1 (1954) 13–33; and P.Fouad. 21 compared with P.Yale.inv. 1528 (both reproduced in Smallwood 297), two rival contemporary versions of a mutiny in the Roman army in Egypt, on which see A. Segrè, ‘P.Yale inv. 1528 and P.Fouad 21’, JRS 30 (1940) 153–154, and W. L. Westermann, ‘Tuscus the Prefect and the Veterans in Egypt (P.Yale inv. 1528 and P.Fouad I 21)’, CP 35 (1941) 21–29 [ed.: see now Judge ‘Setting the Record Straight’, First Christians, 378–384]. The drafts of Lollianus also illustrate the complex process of correction, bracketing and supplementation by which a careful writer made up his mind about the wording of an important document. Several NT hapax legomena are illustrated by this papyrus. διανύω (l. 28) supplies a documentary parallel for Acts 21:7; none was cited in MM, though BAGD refer to P.Oxy.12 (1916) 1469, l. 4, of 298, and others are noted in Spoglio. σητόκοποs (l. 30) is now (for the first time?) attested outside the handful of late literary sources cited in LSJ. Its equivalent, σητόβρωτοs (Jas 5:2), has in the meantime also attained documentary illustration from P.Fam.Tebt. (1950) 15, l. 3, 24, l. 66 (II, of moth-eaten files). The occurrence of the noun χρηματισμόs (l. 35), corresponding with the passive sense of the verb (‘I am officially addressed in such-and-such a style’), provides the occasion to mention that MM surely misconstrue the papyrological instances they cite on the noun when it corresponds with the active sense (‘I pronounce’) in translating them as ‘report’: the term refers in the documents rather to a magistrate’s rescript or decision, which lends an appropriate colour to its use in Rom. 11:4 of God’s ‘response’. κακοήθεια (l. 37) provides a parallel with Rom. 1:29 closer in time than that cited by MM. The old question of the status of two documents in Acts is sharply illuminated by the use of τύποs in the letter of Lollianus (ll. 28, 32). Since he applies the term both to the copy of his petition sent through Heraclammon and to the one now being sent to the unidentified friend at court, and since he has adopted this double approach as a fail-safe technique, it sees to me inescapable that two identical texts were sent (though Parsons wonders whether the second copy may have been an outline only). In Acts 23:25, however, τύποs seems now often to be taken to imply a rhetorical approximation. The letter of Clau-

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dius Lysias is thus put on a par with the speeches in Acts. But may the treatment of speeches by the ancient historians not have been different from that of letters, the one genre providing the vehicle for the historian’s presentation of the leading ideas expressed upon an occasion, while the other provided what we should now call documentation? This would correspond with a difference in the originals themselves: written speeches will often have arisen only as retrospective stocktaking by their authors, their text remaining within their own discretion, while letters passed at once into the possession of their recipients and would be preserved by them as proof of the point they documented. The value of copies of letters would lie precisely in their being made verbatim. The word τύποs, anyway, ought always to refer to replication in some form or other (e. g. a seal impression, an image, an archetype, an outline, a set form – for the diversity of particular uses see LSJ) and one should not expect it to mean ‘roughly as follows’. Certainly the τύποι ἐπιστολικοί of Demetrius are standard models for letters on various occasions, but that is hardly what we have in Acts 23:26–30. The letter of Lysias is highly individualistic and appropriate to its occasion, as is that of Philopator in 3 Macc. 3:12–29, where the τύποs of it is also said to be given (30). TDNT (Goppelt, 248) rightly states that this must mean the ‘text’ of the letter. The term surely prevents us treating the letters on the same basis as the speeches. We must ask both with regard to the letter of Lysias and to that which transmitted the decision of the Jerusalem council (Acts 15:23–29) whether the author of Acts did not mean his readers to take them as the direct citation of transcripts available to him.

Chapter 10

The Ecumenical Synod of Dionysiac Artists* Excerpt from a papyrus roll of Oxyrhynchus, dated 26 July AD 288, ed.pr. J. R. Rea, P.Oxy. 27 (1962) 2476, re-edited by P.Frisch, Zehn agonistische Papyri, Papyrologica Coloniensia 13 (Opladen 1986) 3 (= P.Agon. 3), p. 52. οἱ 13 ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκο[υμένης περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται κ]αὶ ἡ ἱερὰ μο[υ]σι[κ]ὴ περιπολιστικὴ̣ ̣ οἰκουμέν[ι]κὴ̣ [Διοκλητιανὴ Μαξι]μιανὴ εὐσ[ε]βὴ‹ς› εὐτυχὴ‹ς› 14 σεβαστὴ με[̣ γάλη σύνοδος τῶν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχ]νιτῶν ̣ ̣ ν στ̣ εφαν[ι]τῶν το̣ ῖ̣ ς ἀπὸ ἱερ̣ ο̣ ν̣ ι̣ [κ]ῶ τῆς α[ὐτῆς συνόδου τεχνί]ταις ̣ ἱερονί̣ κα[ις στ]εφανίτα[ι]ς 15 χαίρειν. γι[νώσκετε (?) καταταγέ]ν[τα εἰς τὴν ἱερὰν] μουσικὴν [ ̣ ̣ π]εριπολειστικὴν οἰ̣ κ̣ ο̣ υ̣ μ̣ ενικὴν Δ[ιοκλητιανὴν Μ]αξιμ[ι]ανὴν μ[ε]γάλην σύνοδον ̣ 16 Αὐρήλιον Ἁ[τ]ρ[ῆν Πετε]ησ̣ ί̣ ου Νεχ[θενίβιος ἀρ]χιερέα ̣ Ὀξ[υ]ρυ̣ [̣ γ]χεί[τ]ην καὶ ἀποδε̣ δωκότ̣ [̣ α] τὸ κατὰ τὸν νόμον ̣ β[ασιλικ]ὸν̣ ̣ [ἐν]τά̣ γιον πᾶν ἐκ̣ ̣ πλήρους (δηνάρια) ω̄ ν ̄ 17 καὶ τὰ εἰς τὰ ἱ[ε]ρὰ̣ σ[̣ ε]βαστὰ τελέσματα. ἐ[γράψαμ]εν̣ ὑμεῖν ἵν᾽ ἰδῆται. ἔρρωσθαι.

The [artists] from the inhabited world [who support Dionysus] and the sacred musical inter-city ecumenical Diocletianic] Maximianic loyal successful august grand [synod] of the world-champion gold-medallist [artists who support Dionysus] to the world-champion gold-medallist [artists] of the [same synod] send greetings. [Take notice (?)] that there has been [admitted to the sacred] musical [..] inter-city ecumenical Diocletianic Maximianic grand synod Aurelius Hatres (son) of Peteesis (grandson) of Nechthenibis, high priest, of Oxyrhynchus, having paid under imperial law the whole fee of 850 denarii in full and the dues for the Augustan sacrifices. We have written to inform you. Farewell.

17 l. εἰδῆτε, ἔρρωσθε

This archival roll of 26 July 288 is the latest-dated document of the ecumenical synod of Dionysiac artists (the date is that at which the dossier was sent on to Oxyrhynchus from Panopolis, where Hatres had been installed as the high priest of the Seventh Quadrennial Great Festival of Pan). Under imperial * New Docs 9 (2002) 67–68.

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patronage they had developed into an empire-wide association of victors in the major international musical contests, alongside the parallel association of athletes (known respectively as the “thymelic” and “xystic” synods). Because world champions (lit. “sacred victors”) who had won gold medals (lit. “crowns”) had to be regularly on the move around the international circuit, entitlement to membership was certified on behalf of the central synod in Rome (in this case by three delegated archontes) to the synod of the new member’s home city, which secured for him the coveted tax-exemption and other privileges. As our excerpt shows, membership privileges could also be won by undertaking a costly magistracy. A few years later (between 293 and 305) Diocletian tightened the rules, requiring three actual victories at world-champion level before admission (P.Lips. 44 = Mitteis, Chr. 381 = CPL 241, a private copy taken down at the reading of the rescript later condensed as Cod. Iust.10.54.1). The joint ecumenical synod seems to have been the only civil body in the empire to act internationally. (The financial houses of the publicani had long been marginalised, New Docs 8 [1997] 58–59.) It treated with cities through its own ambassadors, but like them was totally dependent upon imperial patronage. The political significance of its special status, structure and function deserves further exploration, along with that of the apparent parallel with the ecclesiastical synods (cf. New Docs 8 [1997] 144). The term is first used of a church council for the 60 bishops who met in Rome in 251 (Eus. HE 6.43.2– 4, 21–22). Aemilianus, acting for the governor, forbade Dionysius of Alexandria in 257 to hold synods (HE 7.11.10). In the year 338 the epithet “ecumenical” is first added (in reference to the Nicene Synod of 325) both by Eusebius (Vit.Const. 3.6 f.) and by Athanasius (Apol. c. Arianos 7.2). Chadwick takes this as “borrowed”, perhaps for the sake of tax-exemption. Ammianus Marcellinus (ob. 395), a Greek writing in Latin, twice (15.7.6f, 21.16.18) feels obliged to note that synodos is a term Christians use (he perhaps did not know that it had passed into Latin centuries before, OLD, s. v. synhodus, and had been used by Diocletian). Ammianus displays elaborate distaste for synodical activism, describing it (self-consciously) in militarist terms (as indeed Eusebius had proudly done). As for the analogy between civil and ecclesiastical provincial systems, any conscious or causative connection once contemplated (c. f. Abbot and Johnson, 175 f.) now faces the objection that the term ‘synod’ was never used of the imperial provincial councils (Deininger, 187 f.). By and large the civil currency of what became key ecclesiastical terms (ecclesia, episcopus, presbyterus, diaconus, anagnostes) seems to have fallen away prior to public recognition of their ecclesiastical use. The matter should be clarified by the steadily accumulating documentary evidence.

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F. F. Abbott and A. C. Johnson, Municipal Administration in the Roman Empire (Princeton 1926); C. Andresen, Die Kirchen der alten Christenheit (Stuttgart 1971) 186–191; R. S. Bagnall, review of Frisch (with list of other agonistic papyri), Gnomon 60 (1988) 42–45; W. Brashear, Vereine im griechisch-römischen Ägypten (Konstanz 1993); J. Deininger, Die Provinziallandtage der römischen Kaiserzeit von Augustus bis zum Ende des dritten Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (Munich 1965) 186–187; H. Chadwick, ‘The origin of the title “Oecumenical Council”’, JTS 23 (1972) 132–135; École française de Rome, L’Association dionysiaque dans les sociétés anciennes (Rome 1986); P. Foucart, De collegiis scenicorum artificum apud Graecos (Paris 1873); E. Herrmann, Ecclesia in Re Publica: Die Entwicklung der Kirche von pseudostaatlicher zu staatlich inkorporierter Existenz (Frankfurt 1980); A. H. M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford 1940) 231, 280; E. A. Judge, ‘Contemporary Political Models for the Inter-relations of the New Testament Churches’, Reformed Theological Review 22 (1963) 65–76; J. A. O. Larsen, Representative Government in Greek and Roman History (Berkeley 1966); A. Lumpe, ‘Zur Geschichte des Wortes σύνοδος in der antiken christlichen Gräzität’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 6 (1974) 40–53; F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London 1977) 456–463 (‘The Synods of Athletes and Performers’); F. Perpillon-Thomas, Fêtes d’Égypte ptolemaïque et romaine d’après la documentation papyrologique grecque (Louvain 1993); A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (2nd edn: London 1968) 279–321 (dossier of texts) 336 (bibliography); F. Poland, ‘Technitae’, RE V A (Stuttgart 1934) cols 2473–2558 (with complete list of documents); M. B. Poliakoff, review of Frisch, Journal of Roman Archaeology 2 (1989) 295–298; C. Roueché, Performers and Partisans at Aphrodisias (London 1993) 49–60 (‘The Organisation of Performers’), 223–237 (‘The Activities of the Synods’); A. J. S. Spawforth, ‘Dionysus, Artists of’. Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn: Oxford 1996) s. v; I. Stefanes (Stephanis), Dionysiakoi technitai (Heraklion 1988) listing 3023 artists known across 1000 years; P. Stockmeier, review of Herrmann, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 76 (1983) 89–91.

Chapter 11

The Puzzle of Christian Presence in Egypt Before Constantine* Fragments of Christian papyri from Egypt before Constantine are mostly literary. These are dated by the handwriting, as also are the private letters. No closely dated text formally records church life from the inside. But six civil documents with exact dates show that church institutions already had a settled place in the broader community. Only five percent of the individuals named in them or in the private letters of believers have biblical names. So the tally of other documents where this is the only sign of Christian practice may be multiplied ten to twenty times to give us the scale of Christian presence. Unlike trade or professional clubs, or temple cults, which regularly document themselves, the churches form a novel movement of adult education. They argue as in a philosophical tradition, but pass down their convictions and discipline to social levels not used to such intensive demands on literacy.

No formal document of church life in Egypt can be dated with certainty prior to the defeat of Licinius by Constantine in AD 324. Yet in the following year sixty bishops from Egypt travelled to the council of Nicaea.1 There must therefore have been an elaborate and well-established organisation of churches all the way up the Nile to the Thebaid long before that. Coptic tradition traces its origin back to St Mark two and a half centuries earlier. These are the very centuries that have in our time yielded a great flood of papyrus records from Egypt. Even at village level life was wrapped around with voluminous documentation. Did the churches not use secretaries? How did they manage without proper records? The gods of Egypt and their temples are well documented.2 But perhaps our puzzle arises just at this point. Should we not be looking for church life amongst gods and temples after all? M. K. Hopkins half sensed our problem.3 * A. Woods, A. McFarlane and S. Binder (eds), Egyptian Culture and Society: Studies in Honour of Naguib Kanawati I (Cairo 2010) 263–278. The study of ancient Egypt was part of the History program at Macquarie University from 1969. By 1971 papyrology was scheduled for Master’s candidates within a course unit on ‘The Documents of Ancient History’, and N. Kanawati had won a Commonwealth Postgraduate Research Award for his PhD project. ¹ A. Martin, Athanase d’Alexandrie et l’ Égypte au IVe siècle (328–373) (Rome 1996) 637670. There were 73 towns in Egypt and the Thebaid in 325 (p. 98), only a few of them not represented at Nicaea. ² J. Whitehorne, ‘The Pagan Cults of Roman Oxyrhynchus’, ANRW 2.18.5 (1995) 3050– 3091. ³ K. Hopkins, A World Full of Gods. The Strange Triumph of Christianity (New York

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His book was called A World Full of Gods but sub-titled The Strange Triumph of Christianity. Hopkins claimed (p. 1), “the Jesus movement rapidly evolved into an independent religion … against all the odds … Constantine converted to Christianity”. The mistake here, as in the titling, is to have set “the Jesus movement” in the ancient framework of “religion”. But it had neither gods nor temples as required by the ancient understanding of the way what we call ‘religion’ worked.4 The Christian movement was instead denounced as atheist.5 Hopkins further claimed (p. 77) that “without state support, Christianity could not have triumphed”. Yet even our scanty documents show the movement well on the way before that. Table I tallies those papyrus (or similar) fragments that can plausibly be judged to refer in some way to the presence of Christians in Egypt before Constantine. The impressive total does not contradict my opening assertion. Many civil documents from Egypt contain exact dates, but these happen not to have survived in the 19 cases that most concern us, with the exception of the following: P.Oxy. 42.3035 (#2) 28 February 256 P.Oxy. 33.2673 (#4) 5 February 304 P.Harr. 2.208 (#5) 9 February 304 P.Oxy. 41.2969 (#12?) 3(?) March 323 P.Col. 7.171 (#14) 6 June 324 P.Neph. 48 (#17) 15 September 323(?) (The numbers marked with # give their position in the PCE list)

Each of these will be discussed briefly below, but the main point for the moment is of course that they are civil and not ecclesiastical documents. They do not show us church life from the inside. The 23 early documents with names now taken as Christian (Table I, section 3) pose a rather different dilemma. Though all of them are securely enough dated they must remain of doubtful value for our question simply because the personal names are the only element present that points towards Table I. Papyri from the Rise of Christianity in Egypt 1. 2. 3. 4.

A. Civil Documents Public documents dealing with Christians Civil documents with terms used in their church sense Early documents with names now taken as Christian Documents with expressions suggesting Christian belief

Number Total 8 11 23 11 53

2000). The sub-title replaced that used earlier, Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire (London 1999). The second quotation is from p. 77 (New York) or p. 79 (London). ⁴ E. A. Judge, ‘Was Christianity a Religion?’, in J. R. Harrison (ed.), The First Christians in the Roman World. Augustan and New Testament Essays, WUNT 229 (Tübingen 2008) 404– 409. ⁵ Evidence collected by W. Nestlé, ‘Atheismus’, RAC 1 (1950) 869–870.

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Number Total B. Personal Letters Letters dated II or III suggesting Christian contact Formal Christian letters of recommendation Letters dated III / IV Archives of apparently mixed belief Letters dated early or first half IV

15 10 23 2 17

67

10. 11. 12. 13.

C. Minor Literary Texts Texts with biblical echoes for magical or other such use Prayers for individual use Liturgical prayers and hymns Separate sheets with unattributed theological content

9 5 14 8

36

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

D. Non-canonical Books Fragments of unidentified books with theological content Fragmentary books of identified authors Excerpts from apocryphal books Apocryphal or gnostic books in roll form Apocryphal or gnostic books in codex form

31 25 4 5 20

85

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

E. Canonical Books Exercises using biblical material Excerpts from biblical books Books of the Septuagint in roll form Books of the New Testament in roll form Books of the Septuagint on parchment in codex form Books of the Septuagint on papyrus in codex form Books of the New Testament on parchment in codex form Books of the New Testament on papyrus in codex form

17 12 6 4 9 59 5 59

171

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Total number of papyri

412

(PCE: www.anchist.mq.edu.au/doccentre/PCEhomepage.html)

Christianity. Even at its best, however, this cannot be decisive. We know that a fashion for choosing personal names for their Christian resonance had arisen by the middle of the third century.6 But what may well seem the most obviously Christian name of all, Peter, promptly lets us down. The earliest instances of it in the papyri not only lack supporting evidence of a Christian identity, but sometimes show us a Peter engaged in things a Christian was not supposed to do.7

⁶ Dionysius of Alexandria (bishop 247–264), cited in Eus. Historia Ecclesiastica 7.25.14, is the first to notice it. In 310 five Egyptian brothers on trial changed their names to Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Samuel and Daniel, Eus. De martyribus Palaestinae 11.8. ⁷ Peter wins the prize as a herald in 282 (presumably at a festival of Dionysus), P. Oxy. 22.2338.2.61; Peter, son of Maria, accused of goat-stealing in 318 (but his name may be read differently), P.Sakaon 39.11.

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The appearance of Christian names therefore may indeed show that having such a meaningful name had appealed to some people at some stage, but cannot settle particular cases. A Peter may only have been given that name because his parents had noticed its currency, without their knowing what it might imply. Or even if they had intended to mark young Peter as a Christian believer, he may have distanced himself from that as an adult. Nevertheless the recent debate over the changing scale of Christian adherence across the third and fourth centuries has won support for taking personal names as a mark of the progressive Christianisation of the community in general.8 Table II. Named Christians / Christian names 1. 2. 4.

A. Civil Documents Public documents dealing with Christians Civil documents with terms used in their church sense Documents with expressions suggesting Christian belief

5/– 22 / 1 3/–

Total

5. 6. 7. 9.

B. Personal Letters Letters dated II or III suggesting Christian contact Formal Christian letters of recommendation Letters dated III / IV Letters dated early or first half IV

29 / 2 25 / 4 34 / 1 39 / –

157 / 8

More remarkable, however, is the evidence of Table II, which shows that of 157 persons whose names occur in a context which makes their Christian belief either certain or very likely only 8 have names which might on their own have suggested that. They are as follows: 2. 5. 6. 7.

Civil documents Letters II / III Letters of recommendation Letters III / IV

Isaac (#14) Paul (#61), Peter (#62) Peter (#70), Paul (#71), Thomas (#75), Paul (#75) Symeon (#91)

This implies that across the period concerned as few as five per cent of known Christians had recognisably Christian names. If so we might multiply the suggested rate of Christianisation by as much as twenty times. It could go higher if we eliminated section 6 on the grounds that such formal letters of recommendation may have actually belonged more closely together (as a feature of early monasticism, for example.) and may lie chronologically just after our cut-off point. We might in any case eliminate the three Pauls on the grounds that Paul ⁸ R. Bagnall, BASP 19 (1982) 105–124; E. Wipszycka, ZPE 62 (1986) 173–181; R. Bagnall, ZPE 69 (1988) 248–250. Assuming that by the sixth to eighth centuries the whole population may be taken as Christian, Bagnall applies the two-thirds proportion with Christian names to the evidence for earlier periods, recognising of course that it had started in the third century from nothing. Martin (n. 1 above) 641 shows that of 273 Egyptian bishops known from Athanasius (mid-fourth century) only 13 per cent had clearly Christian names.

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had always been an honourable Roman name. It is also suggestive that in contrast with the letters of recommendation (section 6) the 39 named Christians in letters dated to early or first half of the fourth century (section 9) include not one with a Christian name. Against this rather surprising consideration (implying far more extensive Christianisation than meets the eye) must be set the necessary safeguards that point in the opposite direction. Many of our texts depend for their dating upon circumstantial evidence, or upon comparison with similar handwriting seen in more firmly dated cases. The Christian identity of some of the people named is only implied through the way they are alluded to by the clearly Christian author of a letter, for example. And in any case the tallies are not large enough to support a strong conclusion. Yet even if we draw back somewhat it is surely reasonable to say that there appear to be at least ten times as many Christians in this period as those that have Christian names. Documents and letters together do not provide much more than a quarter of the ostensible evidence for Christianity in the early papyri. The rest comes from literary fragments. The significance of that will be discussed below. But first we must consider their validity for our question. Documents and letters are typically written at or relate to the places where they are found, and reflect the state of affairs at the time of writing. But with literary papyri the case may be very different. They may well have been written far afield, in Alexandria, or even abroad, though they were presumably at the end in use where they were found. Their typically fragmentary survival could mean that they remained in use long after their time of writing, being discarded only as they literally fell apart. We must therefore keep in mind not only the difficulty of firmly dating any handwriting, but the possibility that the early date of writing is not giving us an early date of use in the places where the fragments are found.9 Only three individuals are actually named as Christianoi in the papyri of our period. This distancing term had been coined two centuries earlier. It surely expresses an outsider’s perspective, the very form of the word itself implying an overtly factional commitment that arouses distaste in the observer.10 Believers had not sought it. But by the second century it came to be fiercely asserted once it was made the fatal test for those charged with the offence it stood for (in effect disloyalty to national values). For the martyrs it

⁹ H. Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church. A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven 1995); K. Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters. Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (New York 2000); W. E. Klingshirn et al. (eds), The Early Christian Book (Washington 2007); C. M. Chin, Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World (Philadelphia 2008). ¹⁰ H. Karpp, ‘Christennamen’, RAC 2 (1954) 1133–1138; O. Montevecchi, ‘Nomen christianum’, Bibbia e papiri (Barcelona 1999) 155–172.

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became the badge of their prior loyalty.11 But no shadow of such fearful tension falls across our humdrum papyrus trio. On 28 February 256 the prytanis (annual president) of Oxyrhynchus instructed the village officials of Mermertha either to send them Petosorapis or to report in town themselves, P.Oxy. 42.3035 (#2). The implication is that they will have to answer personally for the complaint if they cannot find Petosorapis. For that very reason it is not likely that this lies in the epithet chresianos (sic) attached to his name.12 There would be no point in charging the officials with being Christian if they could immediately deny it. In any case such a complaint would hardly be pursued locally except on orders from the provincial level, and we know from Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, that he was far from expecting any such action at this time.13 A typical concern of the rotating officials of town and village was how to meet the grain quotas set by the state. Since Petosorapis is already well identified by the names of his father and village the only further clarification (if any was still needed with such a relatively uncommon name) might have been his occupation. But when the documents do start to use church titles they are the long-established ones, while “Christian” surely applied indiscriminately to believers of any grade. A different possibility however arises from a less securely dated but perhaps somewhat earlier case, SB 16.12497 (#1). Antonius Dioscorus, son of Horigenes the Alexandrian, is nominated (in a draft list of minor property-holders of the Arsinoite city) to take his turn at funding the local water-supply. For each of the 67 extant names a second scribe has entered on a supplementary line details of how the nominee may be more easily identified, by his occupation or locality, for example. In the case of Dioscorus the term chrestianos is used (not necessarily in the nominative case). This implies that neither his historically significant family name (Antonius) nor his father’s distinction (the “Alexandrian”) was the way local people referred to him. Many people in the regional city could have had the name Dioscorus. This one will perhaps have had some publicly familiar connection with the thriving church life of the Fayum at the time.14 The draft list was written on the back of an unpublished text from the Heroninus archive. This related to one of the thirty or more farms making up the ¹¹ See, for example, the relentless interrogatory routine at the trial of Justin and six others, Recension A. 4, H. Musurillo (ed.), The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford 1972) 44–45. ¹² But note U. Hagedorn, ‘Das Formular der Überstellungsbefehle im römischen Ägypten’, BASP 16.1–2 (1979) 61–74, at 69. ¹³ Eus. HE 7.11.4; it was not until 30 August 257 that the ruling of Valerian was announced in Carthage: Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs 11.1.1. ¹⁴ Eus., HE 7.24, discussed below, and more fully by G. W. Clarke, ‘Two Mid-third Century Bishops: Cyprian of Carthage and Dionysius of Alexandria. Congruences and Divergences’, in T. W. Hillard, R. A. Kearsley, C. E. V. Nixon and A. Nobbs (eds), Ancient History in a Modern University, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids 1998) 317–328.

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large Fayum estate of Appianus. It has been demonstrated that his employees were protected against the random impact of the liturgical tax-system by the practice of isophorion, ‘equal liability’.15 The estate guaranteed to meet all payments while charging the individuals itself on a more even basis. The administrators of the Appianus estate appear from time to time in public appointments and will have taken such arrangements for granted. Is it conceivable that the churches were also providing a burden-sharing service? The term “Christian” might then refer to a person’s financial security. The only two other papyrus references to “Christians” in our period also arise over financial matters. P.Oxy. 43.3119 (#3) is the fragment of an official roll apparently containing copies of administrative letters, each with a summary introduction. One surviving letter (from an imperial ‘seventh’ year) seems to treat the property assessment of chrestianoi, classified as such both in the summary and the body of the letter.16 SB 12.10772 (#64) is a letter from Sarapammon to his family (in Oxyrhynchus, presumably, where it was found) mentioning that he has been at Antioch and has sent them two talents which they can draw upon through Sotas, the chresia[nos?]. Both these papyri might be dated around the middle of the third century. Maximus, the bishop of Alexandria from 264 to 282, is referred to as papas in P.Amh. 1.3a (#63) in connection with financial transactions, along with a Theonas (which happens to be the name of his known successor) and others, including a reader, anagnostes. The writer and recipients of the letter are lost, but their commercial network extends from Rome itself to the Fayum. A somewhat earlier letter was sent to the Fayum from Rome by Irenaeus, a grain-shipper who reports that he was received by the topos there “as God willed”, BGU 1.27 (#54c). The Christian community can be referred to this way, but in the absence of any explicit reference it is better left as a reference to the association of grain-traders. From 5 February 304 we possess (in triplicate) the certificate of Ammonius, “reader (anagnostes) of the former ekklesia of the village of Chysis”, P. Oxy. 33.2673 (#4). It affirms on oath that he has handed over “all the effects in (en) the said former ekklesia”. From 9 February 304 comes the fragment of an all but identical oath from Oxyrhynchus, P.Harr. 2.208 (#5), though no surviving part of it actually refers to the confiscation of church assets. The certificate of the ‘church reader’ is the earliest precisely dated official document on papyrus to use the term ekklesia for a church, and the first in-house term (ana¹⁵ D. Rathbone, Economic Rationalism and Rural Society in Third-Century AD Egypt. The Heroninus Archive and the Appianus Estate (Cambridge 1991) 121–123, 133–134, 405–406. ¹⁶ The seventh year of Valerian and Gallienus (259–260) saw property confiscations of high-ranking Christians who did not recant, Cyprian, Epistulae 80.1.2. The fragment was therefore assigned to this year by J. Whitehorne, ‘P.Oxy. XLIII 3119: A Document of Valerian’s Persecution?’, ZPE 24 (1977) 187–196. But there are six other seventh years during the third century.

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gnostes) for one of its ministers. The Greek preposition en (in), like its English equivalent, need not refer to a physical locality, but to a company of people amongst whom something happens, an assembly (ekklesia), for example. The list of effects which the reader certifies were not held “in” the ekklesia includes landed property (oikopeda), which may imply that the ekklesia did not as yet own its own oikos (the term commonly used for a church meeting-place). The ‘edict of Milan’ (AD 313) carefully spells out the fact that the Christians as “a body” may have been owning real estate (as distinct from their using buildings owned by a benefactor, for example). From 3(?) March 323 we possess (also in triplicate) the remnants of a contract by which three residents of Oxyrhynchus undertake to the auditor (logistes) of the nome to protect and maintain the persea tree recently planted near their properties, P.Oxy. 41.2969 (#12), with 2993 and 2994. They are identified by name and occupation: Timotheus, coppersmith; Euporion, clothdealer; Morus, reader. Because of the injury to his eyes, the anagnostes had a fourth party sign for him. Although readers occur in public documents when an illiterate person needs something read out for him, it is not clear that such a service constituted a regular occupation. That a “reader” should still be so classified after his eyesight had failed seems more plausible in the case of an anagnostes of the church, where the term by now applied to one of the minor orders in the hierarchy. Against that assumption, however, should be considered the case of a diakon (agent), Apphous, who appears in a tax-list somewhat earlier but stated explicitly to be a deacon “of the ekklesia”, P. Oxy. 55.3787 (#13). If the ekklesia of the reader Ammonius in 304 is taken as a building this is not only the earliest instance so far of that term used in its Christian sense in an official document, but possibly also the earliest certain case anywhere in our sources of the Christian ekklesia being understood as the name of a building. It is only when writing after this that the word is used that way by Eusebius, and its Latinised form likewise by Lactantius. They were of course writing about the catastrophic events that began in 303 and led to the confiscation of church assets at Chysis in 304. The explosive origin of it all was the spectacular demolition of the grand church building at Nicomedia, the imperial capital for the East. Was it this very sensation which imprinted on everyone’s consciousness the use of ekklesia to mean a building? Ammianus, writing later in the fourth century as an outsider, uses it only in this way.17 From 6 June 324 comes our most impressive contact with church life from the public side, P.Col. 7.171 (#14), matching in historic significance the certificate of Ammonius lodged twenty years earlier. It is a petition from Isidorus of ¹⁷ E. A. Judge, ‘The Absence of Religion, Even in Ammianus?’, in G. R. Treloar et al. (eds), Making History for God (Sydney 2004) 295–308, now ch. 20 below.

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Karanis (in the Fayum) to the district authority, seeking prosecution of two neighbours whose cow had ruined his crop. When he had tried to confiscate the cow, they knocked him down. Only the arrival of two passers-by saved his life. Isidorus is well-known to us from an archive of 146 documents reaching as far back as 267, including 21 earlier petitions.18 Aged now in his fifties, the assault may have proved fatal after all. He had been of a moderate though deteriorating livelihood both as landowner and tenant farmer. Frequently rostered for compulsory service in local government, he is a classic victim of the obligatory generosity which the more powerful may have found means to avoid. The files show no personal awareness of Christianity (its presence is reflected in names such as Peter, Paul, John, Irene and Elijah). Yet Isidorus registers it implicitly in the way he identifies the witnesses. The petition is to be sent up to the governor’s court itself. Tracing the witnesses will be important. They must be identified securely, without discrediting the petitioner. But both of them are named without patronymic (or village), only by occupation. Antoninus, diakon, and Isaac, monachos, must therefore both be taken for granted under those titles. The diakon must of course be the ‘agent’ (or attendant) in a familiar local institution, but the identity of his presumed companion makes that very probably the church. Yet he has not been named ‘deacon of the ekklesia’ as with P.Oxy. 55.3787. There is no uncertainty in the mind of Isidorus. Isaac displays his Christianity not only in his personal name (no longer current in Jewish usage), but in his occupation, monachos. Unlike the other technical terms of Christian life, which are taken over from ordinary civil (and not cultic) use, such as ekklesia, anagnostes, diakon, presbyteros, episkopos, the term monachos for an occupation is unique to the new movement. It means ‘solitary’, and denotes a man practising the celibate life. More striking still is the observation that this may be the earliest instance of the term in that sense anywhere in our sources. It only occurs some years later in the literary tradition with Eusebius. Thereafter the monastic phenomenon becomes a major preoccupation both for Christian authors and its critics. Dramatic presentations were developed on the origin of the practice, looking back to Antony, the legendary first hermit, and to the first monasteries. Isaac of Karanis, however, does not seem to fit either of these idealised patterns.19 More important for our purpose is the fact that his presence is not only taken for granted by Isidorus, but presents no threat to the credibility of his claim. ¹⁸ A. E. R. Boak and H. C. Youtie (eds), The Archive of Aurelius Isidorus (Ann Arbor 1960). ¹⁹ E. A. Judge, ‘The Earliest Use of monachos for “Monk” (P.Coll.Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism’, JbAC 20 (1977) 72–89, now ch. 12 below; J. E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert (Harrisburg 1999) 54–58.

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If the date (15 September 323) has been correctly restored to P.Neph. 48 (#17) it strongly confirms the implication of the petition of Isidorus. The apparatus of ecclesiastical life is already (prior to Constantine’s taking control of Egypt) an established part of the public community. But P.Neph. 48 adds a further dimension. A monastic community is already settling down at Mt Hathor where the later monastery appears to be taking shape. The papyrus is the deed of sale by which a two-storey house there is formally transferred from one resident to another. The names are lost, but the purchaser is a monachos, while the vendor may well be one also. He has acquired the property (by inheritance?) from Dioscorus, a presbyteros. In this location we may safely take him to have been an ordained ‘elder’ of the church, and (if the date holds) the earliest one of that rank precisely documented. We now turn to the far richer literary fragments for a possible answer to the puzzle of the early centuries of undocumented church life. The 36 ‘minor literary texts’ (sections 10–13 in Table I) present a tantalising mosaic. Like the personal letters they depend mainly upon the type of script for their early dating, and give us a glimpse into the mental world of the writers that will be contemporary, since they mostly seem to be ad hoc products for local use. Their place of discovery in Egypt is mostly unknown, but they reflect a culture where the personal needs of individuals are succinctly expressed in written form. The list of fragmentary books by patristic authors (Table III) presents several features of importance. It is not dominated by Alexandrian authors, with only two fragments of first-century Philo and one of second-century Clement, both prominent authorities for the educated Christian community. The early copies of third-century writers, Julius Africanus, Origen and Eusebius, tell of the prompt circulation of their work upstream from Alexandria. The dominant place of Hermas in this list points to something else. His works must have enjoyed a currency matched only by the leading books in the canonical library of Scripture itself. Yet Hermas was from a different century, without apostolic ranking. One might compare the esteem of his Shepherd with that of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which was treasured alongside the Bible in English culture for two centuries, a guide to spiritual discipline. But (leaving Hermas out of the picture) the most important feature of the list is that it is completely eclipsed in scale by the 31 fragments of unidentified works (section 14) that share the intellectual world of the patristic authors. The case with classical Greek authors is the opposite – they altogether dominate in scale the fragments of their unidentified peers. The Christian adespota, however, are typically identified as works of theology because they cite Scripture. Editors are tempted to categorise them by such familiar patristic genres as homily or commentary (of which Origen and Jerome distinguished different modes according to the educational level of the

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Table III. Early papyrus fragments of patristic authors (in order of their floruit) PCE Author

Provenance

198 Philo 199 Philo

Alexandria c. 40

203 211 195 189 196 197 190 200 201 192 202 193 185 209 n/a 188 194 207 208 180 192 204 172 256 175 205 206

P-siglum

BN Suppl.Gr. 1120 P.Oxy. 9.1173 (+ 4 other fragments) ‘Barnabas’ Alexandria c. 80 PSI 7.757 Aristides Athens c. 140 P.Lit.Lond. 223 Hermas Rome c. 150 P.Iand. 1.4 Hermas P.Oxy. 69.4706 Hermas P.Oxy. 50.3528 Hermas P.Oxy. 50.3527 Hermas P.Oxy. 69.4705 Hermas P.Mich. 2.2.129 Hermas P.Oxy. 69.4707 Hermas P.Mich. 2.2.130 Hermas P.Oxy. 15.1828 Hermas BKT 6.2.1 Hermas P.Oxy. 1.5 Hermas P.Oxy. 3.404 Tatian Mesopotamia c. 170 P.Dura 10 Irenaeus Lyons c. 180 P.Oxy. 3.405 Irenaeus Jena (Philolog. Seminar) Melito Sardis c. 190 P.Bod.13 Melito Crosby-Schøyen Codex Clement (?) Alexandria c. 200 Washington MS V (Freer) Julius Africanus Caesarea c. 220 P.Oxy. 3.412 Origen Caesarea c. 240 P.Bon. 1.1 Origen (?) P.Lond.Christ. 2 Origen (?) P.Oxy. 36.2745 Origen (?) P.Giss.Univ.Bibl. 2.17 Origen P.Amst. 1.25 Eusebius Caesarea c. 300 P.Berl.inv. 17076

Century III (?) III III (?) early IV II II / III II / III early III early III III III III III III / IV III / IV III / IV III (pre–256/7) II / III III or IV III / IV III / IV III III (227–275) III III III / IV III / IV III / IV III / IV

intended user).20 But the most important feature of the unidentified works for the history of culture is that they demonstrate the scale and intensity of the didactic drive of the churches, and its wholesale adaptation of the philological methods of classical scholarship as developed in the Museum (the famous ²⁰ É. Junod, ‘Wodurch unterscheiden sich die Homilien des Origenes von seinen Kommentaren?’, in E. Mühlenberg et al. (eds), Predigt in der alten Kirche (Kampen 1994), 50–81; G. W. Most (ed.), Commentaries – Kommentare (Göttingen 1999); M. Simonetti, Origene esegeta e la sua tradizione (Brescia 2004).

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library) of Hellenistic Alexandria. By the late second century AD the ‘university’ of that city had been joined by the ‘catechetical school’ which produced Clement and Origen.21 It has been an authoritative view that for their first three centuries the churches were not concerned with education, at the primary and grammarschool levels in particular. They relied upon church discipline to eradicate the idolatrous and immoral mythologies embedded in Homer and the later poets and rhetoricians from whose texts one learned to read and write. Competence in the language of classical literature was the unquestioned test of education, even though the language itself had moved on (as the New Testament writers regrettably showed). The correctness of this view was vindicated by the ruling of Julian in 362 demanding that Christian teachers be excluded from public schooling. They could not teach the language of the poets whose gods they mocked. Let them form their own Christian schools and learn to read and write from the Bible. It was intended as a deadly blow to a cause that Julian himself had been trained up in. Bible-educated children would be confined to effective illiteracy.22 In an apparent contrast with this scenario, the 171 surviving early papyrus fragments of canonical books (Table I, section E) surely display an elaborate educational enterprise. The ‘exercises’ of section 19 together with some of the ‘excerpts’ from section 20 reveal four distinct practices illustrating this. There are half a dozen cases where the script can be shown to be that of a person still learning to write, so that its educational stage can be defined.23 A further halfdozen scripts have been spaced or marked to indicate the syllabification, a necessary stage for those learning to read. Another group of texts is devoted to bi-lingual education, setting Coptic beside Greek, or offering the Hebrew meanings for words written in Greek script. Yet a fourth group show the same exercise or study book used for copying texts from both the classical and the biblical canons. With the great mass of early biblical papyri one must note several broader features. First there are many cases where the attention to formal elegance and flawlessness in writing falls far below the ideals set for the copying of classical literature or the Hebrew Bible. Secondly the strong preference for copying onto the more utilitarian codex (modelled on the work-book formed from wooden tablets) rather than the traditional high-fashion roll seems to have spread far more quickly with Christian than with classical texts. The roll was ²¹ C. Scholten, ‘Die alexandrinische Katechetenschule’, JbAC 38 (1995) 16–37. ²² H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (London, 1956), followed by E. A.

Judge, ‘The Interaction of Biblical and Classical Education in the Fourth Century’, Journal of Christian Education 77 (1983) 13–29, now ch. 18 below. ²³ R. Cribiore, Writing, Teachers and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta 1996); Gymnastics of the Mind. Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton 2001).

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well suited to the formal reading of a composed whole (e. g. one of the dozen ‘books’ that might make up an epic poem), but the codex was more useful for detailed analysis of a text, making it easier to refer back and forth. Thirdly, Christian copyists soon developed signature devices of their own, converting the ordinary ways of contracting or abbreviating a word, or of ligaturing certain letters, into a miniature but meaningful art-form displaying the presence of what we now call a nomen sacrum (sacred name). 24 A further sign of a consciously educational movement lies in the quite full coverage of its authoritative tradition. Tables IV and V indicate that with only a few intriguing exceptions (e. g. Ezra and Nehemiah from the Septuagintal canon, 1 and 2 Timothy from the New Testament) we possess from these early stages scraps that have managed to survive from almost all the very diverse components of what was later established as a coherent canon. Only in rare cases do we possess them in collected form, the minor prophets, Freer MS 5 (#326); the four gospels with the Acts, P.Beatty 1 (#364); and the Pauline epistles, P.Beatty 2 (#359). Some of the other 168 biblical texts will also have come from such collections, no doubt, but most of them are probably fragments from copies of single books in the later Scriptural canon. We know from the New Testament itself that the work of Jesus and the apostles quickly generated a multitude of accounts which it superseded. The orthodox fathers of the church in turn denounce many scores of attempts to retrieve lost ground that circulated in the second century especially. Surprisingly little of this has appeared amongst the early papyrus fragments, as Table V shows, and even less later (though more survives in languages other than Greek). The implication of all this is that the bishops were well able to concentrate attention upon the texts judged most authoritative, even in the up-country reaches remote from Alexandria. A vivid glimpse of the intellectual life of the church in the Arsinoite nome is provided by the excerpts from the works of Dionysius of Alexandria which we have from Eusebius, HE 7.24. A recently deceased Egyptian bishop, Nepos, had left a work, The Refutation of the Allegorists, which insisted on taking the Revelation to St John literally. There was to be a thousand-year reign “of bodily indulgence” on earth. Dionysius praises the “diligent study (diatribe) of the Scriptures” and “abundant psalmody” of Nepos. But other teachers made too much of his views, discrediting law, prophets, gospels and epistles. Dionysius called a meeting of the “elders and teachers” from the villages of the region, with lay people free to attend, to debate the matter. It lasted three full days, apparently in the open air. Both sides were willing to give and take, until Coracion, the flag-bearer (archegos) for the theory of Nepos, accepted the argu²⁴ L. W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts. Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids 2006).

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Table IV. Septuagintal papyri (110). Legal books Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy

Historical Books Joshua 2 Chronicles Esther Judith Tobit 2 Maccabees

13 9 2 1 4

total: 29

1 2 3 1 2 1

total: 10

Poetical books Psalms Proverbs Ecclesiastes Song of Solomon Job Wisdom Ecclesiasticus

34 3 3 1 4 2 2

total: 49

Prophetic books Minor Prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations Ezekiel Daniel Bel Susanna

3 5 3 1 2 5 1 2

total: 22

Most notable absentees: Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah.

Table V. New Testament papyri (89), with 20 apocryphal fragments for comparison. Gospels Matthew Mark Luke John Acts of the Apostles Canonical Epistles Paul Hebrews James Peter John Jude Revelation John

16 1 5 17

total: 39

7

total: 7

24 3 3 4 2 2

total: 38

5

total: 5

Apocryphal fragments Thomas Peter Mary James miscellaneous

3 2 2 2 4 total: 13

John Paul Peter

1 3 1 total: 5

Paul (3 Corinthians)

1 total: 1

Sibyllines

1 total: 1

Absent: only 1 and 2 Timothy, 3 John. Note: The apocryphal NT fragments are drawn from each of sections 16, 17, 18 and 19 in Table I; the remaining items in those sections being mostly presented under the names of Enoch, Moses, Jannes and Jambres, Solomon, Elijah or Ezekiel.

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ments of Dionysius. This appears to have taken place after Gallienus in 260 had restored freedom of assembly to the Christians. It is the kind of scene one might have imagined in the agora of classical Athens, a sustained academic debate, yet not restricted to the experts and their students. This is the hallmark of the churches for our question. They were engaged in a highly literate enterprise, but deliberately breaking the leisured privilege that had largely shielded philosophy from the vulgar. People like Dionysius and Coracion were makers of opinion on a grander scale, with all the risks of popular action which that incurred. So long as prosecutions could be brought against them the leaders might be executed if they refused to endorse national values. But even that only stimulated devotion to the martyrs. At the trial of Phileas, bishop of Thmuis, in 307, the governor Culcianus had been fully briefed on how to outwit the bishop with arguments over contradictions in his biblical authorities, P.Beatty 15 (#7). If he could be trapped into retreat in front of the huge crowd, the whole province would come over to the government’s side. This, not execution, was the objective of Culcianus. Not only did he fail, but the bishop had his own secretarial staff record the exchange in verbatim detail. It was to be built into a martyrology, potent for centuries to come. Eusebius (HE 8.13.7) held that local eyewitnesses had a duty to record and preserve such vital words. The churches were presumably not running schools for childhood literacy. But they were promoting an unprecedented educational campaign for adults. Literacy was being pushed down in the social scale by highly educated and philosophically skilled bishops. It no doubt led to half-educated or uneducated people being drawn into church work, for example as readers. Two letters of recommendation certify for the travellers named the stage they had reached in the catechetical curriculum, “at the first stage of the gospel”, PSI 9.1041 (#71), “undergoing instruction in Genesis”, P.Oxy. 36.2785 (#72). The copying and study of the written texts need not have been confined to experts. It precipitated even the spread of literacy (for the first time?) amongst lower-level nonGreek speakers in Egypt. Coptic with its new Greek-based alphabet develops in just this period. 25 Why then were they not documenting themselves more thoroughly? Presumably because their affairs were not of the sort that conventionally needed public record. The churches were not small trade-based or professional clubs requiring lists of members, minutes of meetings or accounts of the fees due. Nor did they supply priestly rosters attending to a temple cult. 26 They were ²⁵ E. Lüddeckens, ‘Ägypten’, in J. Untermann (ed.), Die Sprachen im römischen Reich der Kaiserzeit (Bonn 1980) 241–265; S. Emmel, ‘Languages (Coptic)’, Anchor Bible Dictionary 4 (New York, 1992) 180–188. ²⁶ E. A. Judge, ‘Kultgemeinde (Kultverein)’, RAC 22 (2007) 393–438; ‘Did the Churches Compete with Cult-Groups?’, in J. R. Harrison (ed.), n.4 above, 597–618.

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baffling and frustrating to governors and intellectuals alike precisely because they were not part of any recognised pattern. For the same reason they puzzle the modern observer, who longs for reassuring similarities with something. But these are not good reasons to assume the churches owed their triumph to Constantine. His rival, and their opponent, Galerius, had already fully conceded defeat, and ordered toleration.27

²⁷ E. A. Judge, ‘Synagogue and Church in the Roman Empire: The Insoluble Problem of Toleration’, RTR 68.1 (2009) 29–45, now ch. 3 above.

Chapter 12

The Earliest Use of monachos for ‘Monk’ (P.Coll.Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism* The newly published petition of Aurelius Isidorus of Karanis, dated to 6(?) June 324,1 cites a monachos, Isaac (along with a diakon, Antoninus) as having rescued him from death by assault. This is the earliest reference so far known to the ‘monk’ as a recognised figure in society. The fact that it should appear in a secular document, especially one of such early date,2 has an important bearing on the question of the origins of monasticism. In particular, it is a signpost of a quite unexpected kind on the way to discovering how the style monachos came to be applied to ascetics, and what it meant.3 Isidorus has given us little more than the name and title of Isaac to help us envisage what our first ‘monk’ was like. Yet he was eloquent on his own affairs, leaving us a long trail of petitions amongst his voluminous business records.4 * JbAC 20 (1977) 72–89. ¹ A. E. Hanson (ed.), Collectanea Papyrologica. Texts published in Honor of H. C. Youtie 2

= Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen 19 (Bonn 1976) 77, edited by N. Lewis. The text has been re-edited by R. S. Bagnall, and will appear (with a few modifications) as P.Col. 7.171. On the key term, Bagnall informs me that both editors agree that “there is no doubt that the reading is correct”. I have found no other title or proper name that can be reconciled with the photograph kindly lent by Columbia University. ² E. A. Judge & S. R. Pickering, ‘Papyrus Documentation of Church and Community in Egypt to the mid-Fourth Century’, JbAC 20 (1977) 47–71 (= J. & P.), list no other certain secular reference which can be dated before mid-century (J. & P. 22, discussed below). Julian refers to apotaktitai in 362 (224 B = Or. 7.18 Bidez). The other attacks on the monks by him (288 B = Ep. 89 Bidez) and Libanius (Or. 2.32, 30.8 Förster) do not mention their name, but monachos is used (with the scholar’s conventional apology for the neologism) in that of Eunapius (Vit. soph. 6.11.6 [472]), written after 396. There are references to monks in imperial mandates of 370 or 373, where refugees from curial duties are spoken of who (cod. Theod. 12.1.63) cum coetibus monazonton congregantur, and of 390 (cod. Theod. 16.3.1), where monachi are to be compelled to live in deserta loca. Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, writing in 417, introduces the term monachi as the self-appointed, “Greek” name of the detested hermits (Red. 1.441). ³ For historical survey see K. Heussi, Der Ursprung des Mönchtums in der alten Kirche (Tübingen 1936), B. Lohse, Askese und Mönchtum in der Antike und in der alten Kirche (Munich/Vienna 1969); for word usage, F.-E. Morard, ‘Monachos, moine. Histoire du terme grec jusqu’au 4e siècle’, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 20 (1973) 332–411. ⁴ The 146 documents in A. E. R. Boak & H. C. Youtie, The Archive of Aurelius Isidorus (Ann Arbor 1960), go back as far as 267, become much more frequent from late in the third century, and run down to 324. There are 21 petitions in this collection, and P.Merton 2 (1959) 92 (31 May 324) and our text (a week later) are the last. The beating was perhaps fatal.

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In no other document of the archive has any reference to Christianity been established, though it has been suggested that the name Johannes implies a former Christian or Jewish family that had lapsed.5 The barenesss of this record makes the matter-of-fact appearance of a deacon and a monk at the very last all the more striking. Antoninus is the earliest of a number of deacons who are mentioned in or who initiate formal documents of public life in the villages of Egypt during the generation which runs down to the middle of the century.6 Taken together they show that deacons were active and prominent figures in village affairs. Antoninus is the only instance in this group where the deacon is mentioned by another person who can be assumed not to be a member of the church. That he can be cited in this way by an outsider appealing to the praepositus pagi confirms the local effectiveness of the Constantinian establishment. His rank adds weight to the petition, and his evidence will be available to support the plea. P.Col.inv. 187 = Collectanea Papyrologica 2.77 (Text and translation of N. Lewis, modified by R. S. Bagnall in P.Col. 7.171)

5

10

15

Διοσκόρῳ Καίσωνι ̣ πραιπ(οσίτῳ) ε πάγου ί̣ δ̣ ο̣ ς̣ ̣ παρὰ Ἰσιδώρου Πτολεμαίου̣ ̣ ἀπὸ κώ(μης) Κ̣ αρ̣ [α]ν ̣ τοῦ ὑμετέρου πάγου· τῶν θρεμμ[άτ]ω̣ ν ̣ Παμού̣ ̣ ν ̣ ἣν̣ νεω̣ ς καὶ Ἁρπάλου κατα̣ λυμην̣ α̣ [̣ μέ]νω ἔχω σπορὰν καὶ μὴν καὶ τῆς β[οὸ]ς ̣ α[̣ ὐτῶν] πα̣ λ̣ ι̣ ν ̣ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ τόπῳ καταβοσκηθείσης̣ ̣ ὥ̣ στ̣ ε̣ ̣ ἀχρή̣ τ̣ α̣ λ̣ αβοσιμόν μοι τὴν γεωργίαν γενέσθαι, καὶ κα μένου μου τὴν βοῦν καὶ ἀνάγοντος αὐτὴν ἐπὶ τῆς κώμης ἀπαντήσαντές μοι κατὰ τοὺς̣ ̣ ἀγροὺς μεγά‹λῳ› ῥοπάλῳ καὶ χαμιρι̣ φ̣ ̣ῆ̣ ἐμ̣ ὲ ποιησάμενοι πληγαῖς κατέκοψαν καὶ τὴν βοῦν ̣ ἀφείλαντο ὥσπερ καὶ αἱ περὶ ἐμὲ πληγαὶ δηλοῦσιν, καὶ εἰ μὴ βοηθείας ἔτ̣ υχο(ν) ὑπὸ τῶν παραγενομένων Ἀντωνίνου διάκονος καὶ Ἰσὰκ μοναχοῦ τάχα ἂν τέλεόν

⁵ This judgement of Boak & Youtie (op.cit. 377–378, n. 2) is based upon the fact that Johannes (“certainly descended from a Jewish or Christian family”) was a former or present gymnasiarch, a post they consider virtually incompatible with the Jewish faith at this stage (304) and “unusual” in one of Christian faith. Against this should be weighed the evidence summarised by J. & P., p. 69, though none of that is decisive. Boak & Youtie (p. 315, n. 3) think that Polion son of Peter is a Christian on account of his father’s name, and the name, Paul, used of several people in the archive, has been mentioned in the same connection by J. van Haelst, ‘Les sources papyrologiques concernant l’Église en Égypte à l’époque de Constantin’, D. H. Samuel (ed.), Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology = American Studies in Papyrology 7 (Toronto 1970) 497–503, at 498. ⁶ J. & P., p. 62. But could diakon have been a monastic title?

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με ἀπώλεσαν. ὅθεν ἐπιδίδω̣ μι τάδε̣ τὰ ἔνγραφα ἀξιῶν αὐτοὺς ἀχθῆναι ̣ ἐπὶ σοῦ καὶ περὶ τῆς σπορᾶς καὶ περὶ τῆ̣ ς̣ ̣ ὕβρεως τηρεῖσθαι ἐμοὶ καὶ τὸν λόγον̣ ̣ ἐπὶ τοῦ ̣̣̣̣̣̣ ἡγεμονικοῦ δικαστη̣ ρίου ̣ τοῖς ἐσομένοι̣ ς̣ ̣ ὑπάτοις ̣ τὸ̣ ̣ δ̣ Παῦνι ιβ̣

To Dioscorus Caeso, praepositus of the 5th pagus, from Isidorus son of Ptolemaeus of the village of Karanis in your pagus. The cattle of Pamounis and Harpalus damaged the planting which I have and what is more [their cow] grazed again in the same place so thoroughly that my husbandry has become useless. I caught the cow and was leading it up to the village when they met me in the fields with a big club, threw me to the ground, rained blows upon me and took away the cow – as indeed (the marks of) the blows all over me show – and if I had not chanced to obtain help from the deacon Antoninus and the monk Isaac, who happened by, they would quickly have finished me off completely. Therefore I submit this document, asking that they be brought before you to preserve my claim (to be heard) in the prefectural court … both in the matter of the planting and in the matter of the assault. The consuls-to-be for the fourth time, Payni 12.

Similar considerations apply to the monk, Isaac, whose position, from Isidorus’ point of view, parallels that of Antoninus. It is taken for granted that he can be identified by the public authorities. He is no remote hermit. On the other hand, his association with the deacon suggests that he is in some way church-related, and not a monk from a coenobitic monastery. Since no further details are given, it can be assumed that he belongs to the village of Karanis. The citing of his style in a civil document implies that it offered Isidorus a familiar and respectable security. It is the purpose of the present discussion to try to place this irreducibly solid and domestic figure who has suddenly appeared in the very dream-land of monasticism’s heroic age. But what did he actually do? Did he join in the fight? Or did his mere appearance work the trick? And if the latter, is he already on the way to becoming that ‘holy man’ of the village, whose patronage has been shown to be such a universal resort in the Syrian villages of a later time?7 There is nothing to suggest this last possibility, and a good deal against it. For one thing, the deacon is named first, so that no special appeal to the monk is implied, but if anything the opposite. One might imagine that a supernatural deliverance would have advanced the cause of Isidorus; but the absence of any hint as to to how the help was applied leaves us only the likelihood of a routine encounter. Even a serious struggle is ruled out by such considerations. Since only two assailants are named, and only one club, it is next to certain that there were no more; Isidorus’ case does not stand to gain by under-reporting the scale of the assault on him. My guess is that when the numbers changed from 2:1 to 2:3 ⁷ P. R. L. Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, JRS 61 (1971) 80–101.

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the incident was over. Since the others made off with the cow, Isidorus still came out seriously the worse for the encounter. Isaac had proved a friend in need, but no wonder-worker. The first instance of monachos in an eccclesiastical writer is found in the commentary on the Psalms by Eusebius of Caesarea, written, it seems, early in the last decade of his life, which began in 330:– 8 τὸ γοῦν πρῶτον τάγμα τῶν ἐν Χριστῷ προκοπτόντων τὸ τῶν μοναχῶν τυγχάνει.

Eusebius is reflecting on the significance of the four different Greek versions of Psalm 67:6 he has before him, of which that of Symmachus, the second-century Ebionite, read μοναχοί. On the strength of this word, Eusebius appears to take the verse to refer to the monks (with whom he expects his readers to be familiar?) and uses the alternative translations to spell out different aspects of monasticism. “Giving the μοναχοί a home” was God’s first and greatest provision for mankind, because they are the “front rank” of those “advancing in Christ”. By the same token they are “rare” (σπάνιοι). This explains why Aquila in his version called them μονογενεῖς, likening them to the “only-begotten” Son of God, while the Septuagint translation μονότροποι draws attention to the fact that they do not chop and change, but hold to the “one way” that leads to the pinnacle of virtue. The ‘fifth edition’ called them μονόζωνοι. This word shows that they were μονήρεις and “girded up on their own” (καθ᾽ ἑαυτοὺς ἀνεζωσμένους). Reitzenstein,9 writing before the publication of the archive of Apa Paieous (see below), was able to assume that the term μοναχοί was not in use for ‘monks’ before the middle of the fourth century. He held the passage in Euse⁸ PG 23.689 B. For the date, see J. Moreau, RAC 6 (1966) 1064. The full comment (689 A– D) runs: Κατοικίζει, φησὶ, μονοτρόπους ἐν οἴκῳ. Κατὰ δὲ τὸν Σύμμαχον, δίδωσιν οἰκεῖν μοναχοῖς οἰκίαν· καὶ κατὰ τὸν Ἀκύλαν, καθίζει μονογενεῖς οἴκονδε· κατὰ δὲ τὴν πέμπτην ἔκδοσιν, κατοικίζει μονοζώνους ἐν οἴκῳ. Καὶ τοῦτ᾽ ἦν τὸ πρῶτον αὐτοῦ κατόρθωμα· ὃ δὴ καὶ μέγιστον τῶν αὐτοῦ κατορθωμάτων τῷ τῶν ἀνθρώπων δεδώρηται γένει. Τὸ γοῦν πρῶτον τάγμα τῶν ἐν Χριστῷ προκοπτόντων τὸ τῶν μοναχῶν τυγχάνει. Σπάνιοι δέ εἰσιν οὗτοι· διὸ κατὰ τὸν Ἀκύλαν μονογενεῖς ὠνομάσθησαν ἀφωμοιωμένοι τῷ μονογενεῖ Υἱῷ τοῦ Θεοῦ. Κατὰ δὲ τοὺς Ἑβδομήκοντα μονότροποι τυγχάνουσιν, ἀλλ᾽ οὐ πολύτροποι, οὐδὲ ἄλλοτε ἄλλως τὸν ἑαυτῶν μεταβάλλοντες τρόπον, ἕνα δὲ μόνον κατορθοῦντες, τὸν εἰς ἄκρον ἥκοντα ἀρετῆς. Μονοζώνους δὲ αὐτοὺς ἡ πέμπτη ἔκδοσις ὠνόμασεν, ὡς ἂν μονήρεις καὶ καθ᾽ ἑαυτοὺς ἀνεζωσμένους. Τοιοῦτοι δὲ πάντες εἰσὶν οἱ τὸν μονήρη καὶ ἁγνὸν κατορθοῦντες βίον, ὧν πρῶτοι γεγόνασιν οἱ τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν μαθηταί, οἷς εἴρητο· Μὴ κτήσησθε χρυσόν, μηδὲ ἄργυρον εἰς τὰς ζώνας ὑμῶν, μὴ πήραν εἰς ὁδόν, μηδὲ ὑποδήματα, μηδὲ ῥαβδόν. Ἐν γὰρ τῷ λέγειν μὴ δεῖν κτήσασθαι χρυσὸν μηδὲ ἄργυρον εἰς τὰς ζώνας ἀνεζωσμένους αὐτοὺς εἰσάγει. Οὕτω δὲ καὶ πᾶσιν ἡμῖν ὁ Ἀπόστολος παρακελεύεται λέγων· στῆτε οὖν περιζωσάμενοι τὴν ὀσφὺν ὑμῶν ἐν ἀληθείᾳ. Καὶ οἱ τὸ Πάσχα δὲ ἐσίοντες ἐκελεύοντο τὰς ὀσφῦς ἔχειν περιεζωσμένας. Τοῦτο δὴ οὖν πρῶτον κατορθοῖ τοῖς ἐν δυσμαῖς οἰκοῦσιν ἐπιδημήσας ὁ θεσπιζόμενος. Ἀπὸ γὰρ τῶν προλεχθέντων ὀρφανῶν καὶ τῶν δηλωθεισῶν χηρῶν ἀφορίσας, ἐξαίρετον καὶ τιμιώτατον ἑαυτῷ τάγμα τὸ τῶν μονοτρόπων κατοικίζει αὐτοὺς ἐν οἴκῳ, δηλαδὴ ἐν τῇ Ἐκκλησίᾳ αὐτοῦ, παραμένειν καὶ κατοικεῖν ἐν αὐτῇ καταξιῶν αὐτούς. ⁹ R. Reitzenstein, Des Athanasius Werk über das Leben des Antonius = Sb Heidelberg 1914, Abh. 8, 47, 60, 61.

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bius to be corrupt in any case, and emended it by filling a lacuna after σπάνιοι. But his main argument for there being no reference to ‘monks’ here was that, when summing up the discussion, Eusebius picks up again the idea of a τάγμα but applies it to the μονότροποι, thus showing that neither of the terms had any particular force for him. But Eusebius only does this because he is expounding the Septuagint text and needs to pick up its terminology again before passing on to the next phrase. Other patristic commentators interpret the μονότροποι entirely in terms of personal morality, without referring to the alternative version of Symmachus.10 But the retention of τάγμα (‘rank’ or ‘order’ in society) by Eusebius, linked as it is with a reminder of the orders of widows and orphans referred to in the previous verse of the Psalm, clearly implies an organised body of people. The new papyrus must put the matter virtually beyond doubt, since if the μοναχοί were already a public institution in Egypt by 324, and even the first coenobitic monasteries were under way in Palestine by 330, Eusebius and his audience are already in a position where they are only too likely to take the word as a reference to monks. But what does Eusebius mean by calling them μονήρεις? Morard, who holds that the historical function of the word μοναχός must have been to carry forward into Greek and Coptic usage usage a Semitic ideal of life that centred on celibacy (Heb. yāḥîd, Syr. iḥîdāyā), believes (in this detail following Reitzenstein) that it is possible to show that μονήρεις specifically refers to sexual continence.11 She is supported by the fact that, immediately after saying that they are “girded up on their own”, Eusebius identifies them as all those who “lead a solitary and chaste life” (μονήρη καὶ ἁγνὸν κατορθοῦντες βίον). There can be little doubt that this is a reference to continence (though whether μονήρης on its own would convey this sense is another matter), nor would one expect a treatment of monasticism without that feature of it being brought out. The chief preoccupation of Eusebius is, however, surely with a different, if related, feature. He is concerned with their homelessness and lack of means of support. The first example, he says, of those who chose the “solitary and chaste life” was that of the disciples, whom Jesus had commanded not to carry gold or silver in their belts ζώναι – which shows how one can speak of them as “girded up on their own” (thus explaining the μονόζωνοι of the ‘fifth edition’), suggests Eusebius. I take this to mean that he is invoking the saying about the money-less belts to interpret the μονόζωνοι as those who abandon their normal ¹⁰ E. g. Athanasius, PG 27.293, Cyril of Alexandria, PG 69.1145, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, PG 80.1485, though Morard, op.cit. 352–353, thinks the comments of ‘Athanasius’ can be harmonised with those of Eusebius. Jerome, PL 26.1013, uses the word monachi in his commentary, but defines it in a way (in quibus non cohabitat peccatum) which shows he does not have monks as a social rank in mind, but all those of moral purity. Rufinus, PL 21.912, ignores the monks. ¹¹ Morard, op.cit. 381, Reitzenstein, op.cit. 61. For the Syrian background see A. Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient 1, 2 = CSCO Subsid. 14, 17 (Louvain 1958).

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means of support. This, he goes on to say, is why they are favoured first after the widows and orphans of the preceding verse, and “given a house to dwell in”, which is the subject of Psalm 67:7. This house, Eusebius then explains, is the church. In all of this (quite lengthy) flight of ‘exegesis’, Eusebius makes no attempt to draw out celibacy as the guiding principle of monasticism. He is concerned to use the various renderings to show that μοναχοί are ‘singleminded’ in their social situation, and thus in need of a home provided by God. But even if I have misunderstood this point, and Eusebius does mean us to understand the μοναχοί essentially as celibates, that does not settle the crucial historical question. Could it really have been the phenomenon of continence that had suddenly led to the recognition of a new rank of persons in (or out of) society, shortly before the time at which Eusebius was writing? As Morard shows, there was a deep-seated tradition of this kind in Jewish circles, going back at least to Qumran,12 and the ideal of enkrateia has roots also in the Graeco-Roman culture.13 More especially, for at least two centuries now, celibacy had been a feature of church life, celebrated by many of the Fathers, and attracting the admiration even of an outsider in Galen.14 It is no doubt the case that monachos in Symmachus did pick up this ideal.15 But in spite of the outstanding qualifications of Eusebius as an historical archivist, in expounding the psalm-translators he is making no attempt to use them as sources in the history of ideas. He seems simply to be assuming that they function as authoritative guides to the meaning of the ancient Hebrew texts for an ecclesiastical institution of his own day. People’s habits, ideas or traditions require a name (and thus indicate a social status) when they have to be marked off from those of other people, or when others react to them when they need to be organised in some way. This happened very early with the ‘virgins’ and ‘widows’, but down to the fourth century the Fathers heap their praises on the male equivalents without finding any need to create a name for such people. And all along, if Morard’s theory is correct, the word monachos was sitting there, with the required meaning ready-made, waiting to be used.16 The belated need to have a status name for ¹² Op.cit. 354–357. ¹³ H. Chadwick, RAC 5 (1962) 343–365; A. Meredith, ‘Asceticism, Christian and Greek’,

JTS 27 (1976) 313–332. ¹⁴ H. Koch, Quellen zur Geschichte der Askese und des Mönchtums in der alten Kirche (Tübingen 1933); on Galen, R. Walzer, RAC 8 (1972) 783. ¹⁵ The word is also used by Theodotion at Psalm 67:7, and by Symmachus at Gen. 2:18. Aquila uses it at Gen. 2:18, 22:2, Psalms 21:21, 24:16, 34:17 and (in a verbal form) 85:11. The full range of alternative translations for each of these passages is set out by Morard, op.cit. 348. They are discussed by A. Adam, ‘Grundbegriffe des Mönchtums in sprachlicher Sicht’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 65 (1953–1954) 209–239. ¹⁶ A study of the circumlocutions that helped them do without it would be an instructive contribution to the discussion of the origins of monasticism. E. g. masculus continens, Ps.Cyprian, De singularitate clericorum 19 (CSEL 3.3).

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male ascetics (whatever the name in itself might ‘mean’ in terms of its historical origins or the sense given to it by a particular writer at an earlier stage) is not therefore likely to have arisen from the fact of celibacy itself – there was nothing new about that. It will have been caused by some other, novel feature of their affairs. The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius is surely a good pointer to how recently this had occurred. It went through four revisions (between 312 and 325 according to Schwartz), as Eusebius tried to keep pace with the rapidly changing affairs of the church in his own day.17 But he still had not had any occasion to apply a special term to the ascetics. Whatever the history of its origin in Egypt, there can be little doubt that the success of the term monachos as the universally accepted name for monks is due to the propaganda of Athanasius and Jerome. Athanasius had tried to mobilise the monks against Arian infiltrators, as an epigraphic copy of his letter to them makes clear. They are addressed as follows:– 18 [Ἀθ]ανάσιος τοῖς ἁπ[ανταχοῦ ὀ-] [ρθ]οδόξοις μοναχο[ῖς τοῖς τὸν μ-] [ον]ήρη βίον ἀσκοῦσ[ι καὶ ἐν πίστ-] [ει] Χ(ριστο)ῦ ἱδρυμένοις, ἀ[γαπητοῖς καὶ] [πο]θεινοτάτοις [ἀδελφοῖς ἐν κυρ-] [ίῳ] χαίρειν.

This defines monasticism both in terms of personal discipline (“practising the solitary – or single – life”) and of domestic arrangements (“residing in the faith of Christ”). I judge this to be stating in effect that monks are ascetics whose “single life” (whether in relation to marriage or in some more general moral sense) has expressed itself in a change of residence, so that they depend directly upon Christ (presumably as anchorites or in a coenobitic monastery) rather than upon the ordinary pattern of domestic and civil life. One must note also the clear implication that the monks need to be claimed for orthodoxy. Athanasius was a confidant of Antony, the great hermit, and inherited one of his two sheepskins – his only legacy – on his death, c. 356. Shortly afterwards (? 357) he brought out his ‘Life’ of Antony, with a view to promoting ¹⁷ For the dates, J. Quasten, Patrology 3 (1963) 315, with J. Moreau, RAC 6 (1966) 1072. Eusebius speaks of asceticism either as the “apostolic” or as the “philosophic” life (Reitzenstein, op.cit. 54–59). Eus. HE 2.17 shows no awareness of any contemporary monasticism of a residential kind. ¹⁸ SB 5.8698, ll. 4–9. Full epigraphic text in W. E. Crum & H. G. E. White, The Monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes 2 (New York 1926), no. 585. The letter may have been composed during the period (355–361) which Athanasius spent with the monks. Cf. PG 25.692 A. The epigraphic fragments confirm the superiority of the Old Latin version over the Greek text preferred by Migne, PG 26.1185–1188. The phrase containing monachos is unique to the epigraphic copy, dated IV by SB (Lefebvre) but VI–VII by van Haelst (Catalogue des papyrus littéraires juifs et chrétiens [Paris 1976] no. 625).

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him as a champion of orthodoxy, and thus binding a now powerful social force to the right cause. He recognises that there is a longer tradition of the singleminded life (Antony himself took up the ascetic way c. 271, and the old hermit he followed had already done twenty years). But he reserved the term monachos precisely for the point at which the practice became the centre of public excitement and began to constitute a social movement. This occurred about 305, when Antony broke out of his twenty-year self-imprisonment (καθ᾽ ἑαυτὸν ἀσκούμενος – surely not a reference to celibacy) in the ruined fort (or fountain-house), and began to challenge others to take up the call:– 19 ἔπεισε πολλοὺς αἱρήσασθαι τὸν μονήρη βίον, καὶ οὕτω λοιπὸν γέγονε καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὅρεσι μοναστήρια, καὶ ἡ ἔρημος ἐπολίσθη ὑπὸ μοναχῶν, ἐξελθόντων ἀπὸ τῶν ἰδίων καὶ ἀπογραψαμένων τὴν ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς πολιτείαν.

It is to be noted here that the “solitary life” is not presented at all in terms of celibacy (although everyone would know that was part of it), but rather as “the abandonment of one’s own” and “enrolment in the citizenship that is in heaven”. It is an expressly socio-political notion, or indeed geo-political, which dares even to conceive of the desert (the home of demons) as a polis.20 In view of our new papyrus monk, one should note that the centre of these activities of Antony was a day’s walk from Karanis. The only detailed episode attributed to this time is that in which Antony was preserved from the crocodiles, when he had to cross the Arsinoite canal “because he needed to inspect the brothers” (vita 15: χρεία δὲ ἦν ἡ τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἐπίσκεψις). This is meant to imply that Antony took responsibility for other monks in the Arsinoite nome, ¹⁹ Athanasius, Vita S. Antonii (PG 26.835–976) 14. The other sheepskin of Antony went to Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, who in writing to the monks (and not about them, as Athanasius was), at some time later than the vita, addresses them by the still much more common name of monazontes (PG 40.925–941). ²⁰ On the literary structure and sources of the vita, see Reitzenstein, op.cit., who demonstrates the effects of a (lost) life of Pythagoras on aspects of the work, and H. Dörries, ‘Die Vita Antonii als Geschichtsquelle’, NachrGöttingen (1949) 357–410 = Wort und Stunde 1 (Göttingen 1966) 145–224, who shows by a comparison of the 38 apophthegms of Antony with the vita that the historical teaching and life-style of Antony differed in important ways from that presented by Athanasius, who had axes of his own to grind (e. g. Antony as champion of orthodoxy, the submission of monks to the hierarchy). In particular, Apophthegm 23 (Dörries 156) shows that Antony recognised a superior tradition of ascetic fathers before his own day. But none of this prevents us from allowing that Athanasius could be right in putting the origins of public interest in the movement in the first decade of the century, and in applying the term monachos first at that stage. – In the incident in vita 46, where Antony and his brother-monks tried to appear in court to support the martyrs (c. 310), Athanasius has the judge pronounce against the presence of the monks. It is a fair assumption that in his view the word monachos was properly applied only to this publicly recognised profession, though he does not explicitly say what he understood the word to mean, or whether he thought it had had any prior currency. – For dates, and a narrative reconstruction of the movement, see D. J. Chitty, The Desert a City. An Introduction to Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (Oxford 1966).

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to which Karanis belonged. There is no reason why our Isaac should not have been one of them, but it is important to note the difference between his pattern of life and that favoured by Antony.21 In about 313 Antony abandoned the hornets’ nest he had stirred up in the settled heartland of Egypt, and set off across the desert to spend his remaining 43 years as the complete hermit in a distant mountain retreat. By about 320, Pachomius was to take up the task of bringing order to the rapidly growing numbers who remained closer to home, by setting up the first coenobitic monastery. In the deserted village of Tabennisi the voice had said to him:– 22 παράμεινον ὧδε καὶ ποίησον μοναστήριον· ἐλεύσονται γὰρ πολλοὶ πρός σε, γενέσθαι μοναχοί.

By the time of Jerome, it was unthinkable that a monk could be anything but a hermit or a coenobitic, two types which had in common not only celibacy, but the determination to detach oneself as completely as possible from the ordinary social pattern of the community. The only meaning available to monachos in Latin was ‘solitary’ in the social sense; there was next to nothing left of the ‘single-minded’ ethical ideal to which the Greek term had alluded in its premonastic life.23 Jerome furiously repudiates a third type of monk, which seems ²¹ An Isaac replaces Macarius (who is elsewhere given as a leading disciple of Antony) in the sixth-century Syriac version of the letter of Serapion of Thmuis written on Antony’s death in 356 to his disciples (and otherwise lost except for a later Armenian version), R. Draguet, ‘Une lettre de Sérapion de Thmuis’, Le Muséon 64 (1951) 1–25, at 12, n. 1. But our Isaac had certainly not followed Antony into the desert, at least before 324. ²² Vita Prima S. Pachomii 12, ed. F. Halkin, S. Pachomii vitae Graecae (Brussels 1932). On the terminology of the Pachomian monastery, see F. Ruppert, Das pachomianische Mönchtum und die Anfänge des klösterlichen Gehorsams (Münsterschwarzach 1971) 60–84. On the dependence of Pachomius upon anchoritic ideals, see H. Bacht, ‘Antonius und Pachomius. Von der Anachorese zum Cönobitentum’, Antonius Magnus Eremita = Studia Anselmiana 38 (1956) 66–107, reprinted in K. S. Frank (ed.), Askese und Mönchtum in der alten Kirche = WdF 419 (Darmstadt 1975) 183–229. ²³ So the linguists, but see my remark at n. 10 above on Jerome’s commentary on Psalm 67:7. The earliest attested use of monachus is in the anonymous translation of the Vita Antonii, dated to about 370, though monasterium was only introduced in that of Evagrius of Antioch. The former is edited by G. J. M. Bartelink, Vita di Antonio (Milan 1974). The vita was translated by 360 according to R. Lorenz, ‘Die Anfänge des abendländischen Mönchtums im 4. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 77 (1966) 1–61. Jerome’s earliest dateable use of monachus is from 374 (Ep. 3, to Rufinus). On the history of the two words in fourth-century usage, see L.Th. A. Lorié, Spiritual Terminology in the Latin Translations of the Vita Antonii with Reference to Fourth- and Fifth-Century Monastic Literature = Latinitas Christianorum Primaeva 11 (Nijmegen 1955) 24–34, 43–51; J. T. Lienhard, Paulinus of Nola and Early Western Monasticism = Theophaneia 28 (Cologne/Bonn 1977) 60–69. Jerome comes closer than Athanasius (who simply implies it) to claiming that the name monachus was devised by or for Antony, when he states that Amathas and Macarius, the two disciples, maintained that Antony’s forerunner Paul principem istius rei fuisse, non nominis (Vita S. Pauli primi eremitae 1 [PL 23.18]). The meaning of “solitary” is established by Jer. Ep. (CSEL 54) 58.5 monachus, id est solus, 14.6 interpretare vocabulum monachi, hoc est nomen tuum:

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in fact to be none other than that of our monachos of Karanis, living still within his village, and participating actively in its civil and church affairs. According to Jerome, such monks live in small household communities. They are quarrelsome, profiteering, over-dressed, and abuse their church connections, and, if words could kill, Jerome would gladly be rid of them (35: his igitur quasi quibusdam pestibus exterminatis). The root of his objection is clear: they will not submit themselves to orders:– 24 Tria sunt in Aegypto genera monachorum: coenobium, quod illi sauhes gentili lingua vocant, nos ‘in commune viventes’ possumus appellare; anachoretae, qui soli habitant per deserta et ab eo, quod procul ab hominibus recesserint, nuncupantur; tertium genus est quod dicunt remnuoth, deterrimum atque neglectum et quod in nostra provincia aut solum aut primum est. hi bini vel terni nec multo plures simul habitant suo arbitratu ac dicione viventes et de eo, quod laboraverint, in medium partes conferunt, ut habeant alimenta communia. Habitant autem quam plurimum in urbibus et castellis, et, quasi ars sit sancta, non vita, quidquid vendiderint, maioris est pretii. Inter hos saepe sunt iurgia, quia suo viventes cibo non patiuntur se alicui esse subiectos. Apud hos affectata sunt omnia : laxae manicae, caligae follicantes, vestis grossior, crebra suspiria, visitatio virginum, detractio clericorum, et si quando festior dies venerit, saturantur ad vomitum.

These strictures of Jerome are matched in virulence by those of Julian, when he denounces the Cynics by likening them to the ones the “impious Galileans” call apotaktitai.25 They make small sacrifices, he says, only to get their hands on everything else, and enjoy special attention and flattery into the bargain:– τούτων οἱ πλείους μικρὰ προέμενοι πολλὰ πάνυ, μᾶλλον δὲ τὰ πάντα πανταχόθεν ξυγκομίζουσι, καὶ προσκτῶνται τὸ τιμᾶσθαι καὶ δορυφορεῖσθαι καὶ θεραπεύεσθαι.

Now Julian is writing this in 362, but he claims it has long been his practice to use the term apotaktitai as a nick-name for Cynics. Since we know that the idea behind this word has a distinctively Christian history (derived from the use of the verb in Luke 14:33),26 there can be little doubt that Julian is correctly preserving from his Christian upbringing the name of a distinct order in the churches which attracted attention by its collective practice of renunciation. Epiphanius, who had been for thirty years from c. 335 head of a monastery in Judaea, writing c. 376 (PG 41.1040 C), uses the name as the self-chosen style of an heretical sect in Phrygia, Pamphylia and Cilicia, whose principal name for quid facis in turba, qui solus es? That the Greek term came to be understood in the same way is shown by the epigram of a cynical observer of about 400, Palladas (A. Cameron, ‘Palladas and Christian Polemic’, JRS 55 [1965] 17–30, at 29): – Εἰ μοναχοί, τί τοσοίδε; τοσοίδε δὲ πῶς πάλι μοῦνοι; ὦ πλῆθυς μοναχῶν ψευσαμένη μονάδα. (Anth. Pal. 11.384) ²⁴ Ep. 22.34 (CSEL 54). ²⁵ 224 B = Or. 7.18 Bidez. Libanius, Or. 30.8, also deals with this type of monk, while Jul. Ep. 89b and Lib. Or. 2.32 condemn hermits. ²⁶ M. Rothenhäusler & Ph. Oppenheim, RAC 1 (1950) 558–564.

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themselves was apostolikoi. But there is frequent reference to their place in orthodox church life in the diary of Egeria, which may have been written in Jerusalem as early as 381–384. What she knows in her Western homeland as monachi she found sub-divided in the East into ascites (who are clearly hermits), monazontes and aputactitae. Her aputactitae cannot be easily distinguished from the monazontes, and both appear to constitute a recognised rank in the activities of the church. Aputactitae may include both men and women (23.3, 23.6, 39.3), as is also the case with monachi. The aputactitae are especially noted for fasting (28.3, 41), and, with the monachi, they come together in Jerusalem to celebrate the Encaenia from Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt and the Thebaid, as well as from other (less monastic) regions (49.1).27 Lambert held that this intermediate form of monasticism flourished in the other eastern provinces (where Julian would have met it), but that in Egypt the majority of the monks took to the desert, carrying the adjective apotaktikos with them as a general badge of their profession. It is true that the desert veterans largely monopolise the pious literature of the fourth century. They became a magnet for tourists, especially from the West, and inspired countless imitators in the indecently hospitable climates abroad. But in Egypt huge numbers of apotactics withdrew within the shelter of their own towns and villages. They are Jerome’s remnuoth and Egeria’s aputactitae. True, Rufinus tells us in the Prologue to his History of the Monks (PL 21. 389–390) that while there were some in the suburban areas and others in the countryside, there were more scattered through the desert, and they were the ones of quality. But when he visited Oxyrhynchus he found more monasteries than houses in the city, with monks occupying public buildings and abandoned temples as well. The bishop told him the town had 10,000 monks and 20,000 virgins (PL 21.408–409). Far from abandoning the city, the retreat seems to have swallowed it up. These statements by writers later in the fourth century, when the fashion was at its height, do not of course settle the question of how it all began. But a slender trail of papyrus evidence may help us to work our way back. There survives a number of personal letters in which there is thought to be reference to a community of a more intimate kind than the church itself. Usually this suggestion arises because the letters speak of a group of “beloved brothers” associated with the writer or recipient, and in a number of cases the bearer is recommended formally from one group to the other.28 In this collec²⁷ Morard, op.cit. 403–406, A. Lambert, DACL 1 (1907) 2604–2626, esp. 2607, 2614. J. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels (London 1971) 35, does not accept the identification with Jerome’s remnuoth. G. E. Gingras, ACW 38 (1970) 15, allows 394 as the earliest date, but prefers 404 or 417. ²⁸ K. Treu, ‘Christliche Empfehlungs-Schemabriefe auf Papyrus’, Zetesis. Festschr. E. de Strijcker (Antwerp/Utrecht 1973) 629–636, deals with N. 19, 20, 28, 29, 50 and 94, together with P.Oxy. 36.2785, and is responsible for the revised reading of the last text, which is followed below. He appears to take the letters as being from congregations (“Gemeinden”)

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tion of letters, Naldini (= N.) has assigned the following cases, in each of which the presence of such groups has been suggested, to the late third or early fourth century:– 29 P.Alex. 29 SB 10.10255

(N. 19) (N. 20)

P.Gron. 17

(N. 24)

P.Gron. 18

(N. 25)

PSI 3.208 PSI 9.1041 PSI 15.1492

(N. 28) (N. 29) (N. 30)

a recommendation a form letter for recommending catechumens, with the name entered later a complaint about behaviour not befitting “the habit we wear”, ἡμῶν τῶι προσχήματι [ὃ ἀμ]φ̣ιπερικείμεθα a complaint, referring to the papas, from the Arsinoite nome a recommendation a recommendation of catechumens not between “brothers”, but written by Sotas, author of the preceding two, to a “son” who may donate land to the topos, κατὰ τὸ πα̣ λ̣ [̣ αιὸν] ἔθος

It has been proposed by van Haelst that all of these letters should be dated on palaeographical and stylistic grounds to the latter third of the third century rather than to the fourth, and he associates with them the following cases, which Naldini had dated, in the first case III–IV, and otherwise to the fourth century:– 30 P.Got. 11 (N. 23) P.Oxy. 31.2603 (N. 47)

asking help for women being taken before a magistrate a recommendation, asking for the travellers to be received, although not catechumens, and for the addressee to write to “the others” so that they may be received in each topos P.Oxy. 8.1162 (N. 50) a recommendation from a presbyteros to his fellow presbyteroi and diakonoi in each topos P.Iand. 100 (N. 87) a report to two “fathers” on the sale of goods, greeting all the “brothers” in the monasterion SB 5.7629 (N. 94) a recommendation to the “beloved brothers” in each topos P.Oxy. 12.1574 (not in N.) 15 Jan. 324, sending a jar of wine to “the brothers” (but nothing else that suggests Christian belief)

To these two lists must now be added: – P.Oxy. 36.2785 (not in N.) a recommendation of a “sister” and a catechumen to the papas, Sotas, and his “brothers”, from a group of presbyteroi

It will be apparent that, apart from P.Iand. 100 (which Naldini dates to the second half of the fourth century), nothing about the terminology suggests that these letters might have had anything to do with the type of coenobitic monrather than from more restricted groups, and refers to Julian’s attempt to imitate “episcopal” letters of recommendation (Soz. HE 5.16.3, Theod. Anag. 135). ²⁹ M. Naldini, Il Cristianesimo in Egitto. Lettere private nei papyri dei secoli II–IV = Studi e testi di papirologia 3 (Florence 1968). ³⁰ Van Haelst, op.cit. (n. 5 above) 498–499.

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astery established by Pachomius. It is however clear that there is an institution called the topos, and that “by long-standing custom” (PSI 15.1492) it accepts gifts of land. The members seem to express their status in their clothes (P. Gron. 17). It is also clear that the main business of these letters is to do with church life; the groups seem to be especially responsible for catechumens. One could envisage their being apotactic communities, especially if these may be supposed to have been supporting agencies in church life, providing disciplinary training for catechumens and hospitality for them in the community houses. But the fact that two of the letters are passed between ministers of the churches (P.Oxy. 8.1162, 36.2785) does not fit this picture. The topoi may simply be the churches themselves. There are certain public documents of Egypt, however, from the middle of the fourth century, which may be held to establish the presence of apotactics with a recognised rank in the civil community, though the first instance is rather doubtful:– P.Amh. 2.142

(J.&P. 28)

a farmer, Aurelius Germanus, petitions to the praeses, c. 340–345; his enemies despised his ἀπραγμοσύνη and his σχῆμα (the text breaks off here)

This is quite likely to be just the common plea of innocence in such cases, though the presence of the word σχῆμα does not form part of the usual formula. It is hard to imagine how a working farmer could claim his garb as a status symbol, though it was distinctive enough in town. An edict of Caracalla (P. Giss. 40, col. 2, l. 28) makes the point that the “appearance and dress” (σχῆμα) of rural Egyptians made them unsuited to city life. P.Gron. 17, noted above, shows that in church circles there was a costume (πρόσχημα) to which respect was due. But in a public document Germanus would surely have needed to indicate the status claimed for his dress if it was to have any effect, and, failing better evidence, it is probably safer to leave σχῆμα here as a reference to his way of life rather than to his “habit”. P.Würzb. 16

(J.&P. 37)

10 Oct. 349: a “deacon of the catholic church” gives surety for a village presbyteros, the document being written by Agathon, ἀποτα]κτικός, whose father had been a prytanis at Arsinoe

Subject only to no serious alternative restoration being proposed, one may safely take this as a reference to the church rank of apotaktikos, since the deacon’s position is clear, if not that of the presbyteros (does he hold a civil or ecclesiastical post?). The apotaktikos in this instance is using the social status of his father to add weight to his ecclesiastical dignity. [Ed.: “of the catholic church” in error by dittography from J. & P. 36]

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(J.&P. 22) Macarius, apotaktikos, is registered as a landholder in an official list of Hermopolis

Macarius is one of a small minority of landholders who are identified by status (along with other church figures and priests of other religions). The implication of this case is that the renunciation made by apotaktikoi did not prevent their holding land. Jerome presents the remnuoth as engaged in gainful labour and residing in a community house. PSI 15.1492 shows that it was customary for the topos to accept gifts of land. Later in the century, the position is illuminated by two further civil documents:– P.Lips. 28

(not in J.&P.) 31 Dec. 381: a widowed (?) woman at Hermopolis entrusts her orphaned grandson, Paesis, to his uncle Silvanus, apotaktikos, to be his son (by adrogatio) and heir to his property (pragmata) P.Oxy. 44.3203 (not in J.&P.) June/July, 400: lease of one ground-floor topos (an exedra) together with a vault in the basement, furnished, by Jose, Ioudaios, from two natural sisters, Theodora and Tauris, monachai apotaktikai

The nature of the pragmata which the ten-year-old Paesis will inherit from Silvanus is not specified, nor is there any reference to other heirs, but the adoption illustrates the degree to which an apotaktikos might retain family ties, though presumably living apart (the grandmother was perhaps to have the actual care of the boy). Theodora and Tauris are the only women in the cases reviewed to whom the terms monachos and apotaktikos are applied, and provide the only instance of the direct association of the two styles (though Egeria brings them together, in a way that is not at all clear). Presumably the apotaktikai of Oxyrhynchus are a sub-class of monachai. The two sisters will have been amongst the “20,000” virgines whom Rufinus heard to have been established in houses there at this time. Is their topos simply a residential suite for themselves, or does their reference to the ground-floor room as an exedra imply that a larger number of people were to use it? Later in the document it is referred to as a symposion. Before one advances too far on such slender evidence, however one must note another papyrus letter where the rank of apotaktikos might seem at first sight better related to one of Jerome’s other types of monk:– P.Herm.Rees 9 (N. 84)

Apa Johannes is addressed as apotaktikos in a request for prayer

In P.Herm.Rees 7 (N. 82) a different request is addressed to Johannes as anachoretes, a title he takes to himself in 10 (N. 85), while a third correspondent, in a typically anxious plea for help, P.Herm.Rees 8 (N. 83), does not specify his status, but greets also “all the brothers labouring with” him. Johannes is not therefore a solitary anchorite, nor does he live far away from the action – the

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correspondent who calls him anachoretes (7) is seeking his intervention in high places to have himself exempted from military service (he has already had to surrender his children for debt, and is ill). Johannes’ own letter (10), badly broken though it is, shows that he was involved with others in a civil court case, and is appealing for the help of a patron. Another anachoretes, Sabinus of PSI 13.1342 (N. 86), received an official demand from the sitologoi for tax payments in respect of a tradesman, for whom he must have been answerable in some way. In spite of his title of anachoretes therefore,31 Apa Johannes may not have been so far removed from the position of Jerome’s worldly remnuoth, and the addressing of him as apotaktikos may be a better index of his position in the civil community.32 One may contrast his situation with that of another intercessor known to us from the mid-fourth century:– P.Lond. 6.1925 (J.&P. 13)

Apa Paphnutius is addressed as anachoretes in a request for prayer

There are six other letters in his archive (P.Lond. 6.1923–1924, 1926–1929) in which no title is extant. In 1925 anachoretes is written on the verso, followed by a damaged address which appears to say that he can be found at the “monks’ station”, μονὴ μοναχῶν. Yet there is no other indication that he is caught up in community affairs. Paphnutius seems the very model of the ‘holy man’ of Egypt, as we know him from the hagiographical sources – as remote from the world as he is from his (high-class?) correspondents, who pour out urgent pleas for his prayers without stopping to explain their troubles. Only in the case of Valeria (1926) do we have details – she has a desperate problem with her breathing, but trusts in the revelations vouchsafed to ἀσκοῦντες καὶ θρησκεύοντες. Paphnutius is also spoken of as an athlete, pursuing a glorious and holy politeia of his own, in which he has renounced the world (1927, ll. 31, 37, 39). Here surely is the true anchorite, and no mere apotaktikos.33 Similar questions of classification arise with the very substantial body of evidence contained in the Meletian archive, of which the first two and most important of the texts are dated to 334 and 335(?) respectively:– ³¹ Morard, art. cit. 407–410, H. Henne, ‘Documents et travaux sur l’anachôrèsis’, Akten des VIII. internationalen Papyrologenkongresses Wien 1955, ed. H. Gerstinger = Mitteilungen aus der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek 5 (Vienna 1956) 58–66. Anachoresis was the time-honoured remedy of hard-pressed Egyptians – flight from responsibility by total disappearance, but modified by the Christian ideal of apotaxis, a withdrawal for moral reasons, which paradoxically made the anchorite a powerful source of help in social disasters. ³² Van Haelst, art.cit. 500, thinks one could date these letters to the first half of the fourth century, though the earlier editors had preferred the second half. ³³ For the social power of the anchorite, see Serapion of Thmuis, letter to the disciples of Antony (Draguet, art.cit., n. 21 above), sections 17, 22, and p. 23; id., letter to the monks (PG 40.929 A–B), where the fertility of the land, and especially the flooding of the Nile, is attributed to their prayers.

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P.Lond. 6.1913–1922 (J.&P. 12) correspondence of Apa Paieous, presbyteros, homologetes, and (?) monachos

In the first letter, Pageus (= Paieous?)34 reports to the προεστῶτες μονῆς μοναχῶν at Hathor that he has been called to Constantine’s council at Caesarea, and formally confirms the arrangements he has made for a deputy to take his place as head of the community of monks at his village of Hipponon. The “monks’ station at Hathor” is described as being “in the eastern desert of the Upper Cynopolite nome”. It could be an enclosed monastery of the Pachomian type. But it has collective leadership, to judge from the plural προεστῶτες, and Pageus is answerable in some way to it for the affairs of his own group. They are also μοναχοί and belong to a μονή (l. 9) but are hardly constituted on the Pachomian model, since the constitutional assembly described takes place “in the presence of” Patabeis, the presbyteros of Hipponon, Papnutius the deacon from Paminpesla, Proous the “former (or original?) monk”, and “of many others” (text here heavily restored). Pageus is himself a presbyteros, and responsible for the full administration of the μονή, including the appointment of oikonomoi (l. 14). The assembly has been called to approve the nomination of his own natural brother to take his place while he is away at Caesarea.35 There is an undertaking that no innovations will be made without reference to the προεστῶτες. Since Hipponon is in the Heracleopolite nome, it seems to me likely that its community is a different one from that at Hathor, although ultimately subordinate to its “patrons”. Whatever the arrangements in the desert at Hathor, the daughter house at Hipponon is closely integrated with the local church community, and is in some sense under the superintendence of its ministers as well. It is an apotactic monastery. The second letter (1914) in this archive is the famous report to Paieous on the mistreatment of the Meletian visitors to Alexandria by Athanasius, whose party had the use of the imperial troops. The writer calls the victims “brothers”, while in citing the restrictions placed on them he indicates that they were referred to by the Athanasian party as “the monks of the Meletians”. This confirms the implication of the later propaganda of Athanasius: the claim of ³⁴ K. Holl, ‘Die Bedeutung der neuveröfftentlichten melitianischen Urkunden für die Kirchengeschichte’, Sitzungsberichte der preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1925 = Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte 2 (Tübingen 1928, repr. Darmstadt 1964) 283– 297 at p. 293. The identity of the two leaders does not affect the case I put for seeing two monasteries where Holl (and Bell?) appear to assume only one. If they are right one has to explain why the assembly had to be reported at all, and why Patabeis should have been called presbyteros of Hipponon when he was at Hathor. But 1920 is addressed to Paieous at Hathor and greets a “Patabeit” with him, as does 1914. In any case a series of monasteries is implied in 1970. ³⁵ P. Rousseau, ‘Blood-relationships among Early Eastern Ascetics’, JTS 23 (1972) 135– 144; 25 (1974) 113–117, discusses a number of other exceptions to the rule that monks cut off natural bonds.

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orthodoxy upon the monks needed to be asserted precisely because that title was firmly established (from the beginning?) in the wrong hands. The violent abuse of the Meletian monks in Alexandria also makes one wonder what kind of “solitaries” they were – certainly not ones in full retreat from society. The rest of the archive consists of more private letters addressed to Paieous, who now (1920) emerges as a homologetes, one of the heroes of the Meletian resistance in the persecutions. Five letters are in Greek (1915–1919), two in Achmimic (1920–1921) and one in ‘Middle Egyptian’ (1922). The evidence they supply for Paieous’ style of life is conflicting. He receives pleas for money from a debtor whose children had been taken into slavery (1915–1916). A desperate renegade asks him to use his influence to reconcile him with his monastery, by writing “around the houses”, κατὰ μονήν (1917). He receives gifts, and requests for prayer (1918, 1921); traffic in food both ways is referred to (1920, 1922) and the two different correspondents claim a lebiton or tunic (the word is carried over into the Coptic), in one case (1920) made according to a pattern they had agreed upon. The same letter includes greetings to women and children. What kind of a monk then is Paieous, if he is one at all? Certainly not a withdrawn anchorite, although he enjoys a reputation as intercessor. But he corresponds more to Apa Johannes than to Apa Paphnutius: he is an influential political and community leader, as both Constantine and Athanasius recognised. In his own village he is both presbyteros and in charge of the church monastery. He is perhaps a member of the college of “patrons” which seems to take ultimate responsibility for a series of “stations” of Meletian monks. No wonder Athanasius and Jerome had to work so hard to make clear what a proper monk was! Who then first earned the style monachos? Athanasius and Jerome agree in implying (though I do not think they actually say so) that it was the special property of Antony and his kind, and is correctly applied to them from the point at which they began to mark themselves off openly from the community at large (c. 305). It then passed to the organised form of anachoresis in the monasteries of Pachomius. But in that case it seems to me highly unlikely that the ascetics who had long found their place privately within church life, but without breaking with the civil community, would have either wanted the name, or been likely to win it as a bonus. The total withdrawal of the others must have seemed a kind of censure on them (as Jerome certainly thinks it is) and their reaction would surely have been to coin a rival name for themselves to defend their time-honoured practice against the sensational innovation. But Isaac of Karanis proves that they had an established hold on the name, taken for granted in public life, in the very wake of the new developments. Must one not therefore conclude that it was first devised for them (because of some new turn in their affairs), and only later (by a spiralling competition in

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mortification?) carried forward to the more drastic types, so that it could eventually be half-denied to the original bearers by Athanasius and Jerome? If this calculation is sound, we must then posit an event, or change of fashion, different from and prior to the creation of either eremitism (in its Antonian form) or coenobitism, but perhaps close in time to them, and part of a swift series of developments that led on to them. The apotactic movement (as later attested) meets this requirement. It represents the point at which the men at last followed the pattern long set for virgins and widows, and set up houses of their own in town, in which the life of personal renunciation and service in the church would be practised. Thus although they broke visibly with their ordinary domestic ties, they retained a place in society, and so required a name. They ranked as an order in the church (the tagma of Eusebius, to whom God gave a home in the church) and we should therefore expect them to pass on their church name for formal use by the community in speaking of them, as happened with other church titles. This name was apotaktikoi in Egypt, or apotaktitai further north. The Coptic-speaking people called them remnuoth,36 at least to start with. Where then did the name monachos come from? My guess is that it was a popular nick-name for apotaktikoi, arising perhaps from some distinctive feature of their “withdrawal”. The word monachos is an adjective with a regular place in Greek thought, notably in Plotinus.37 It is also found in the documentary papyri in two practical connections.38 It denotes the original or top copy when documents are being multiplied. It also has a usage in relation to clothing, possibly to denote a single as opposed to a double thickness of cloth. This raises the possibility that the term was popularly applied to the apotaktikoi because they had not only changed their residence but adopted a distinctive style of dress. We know that the assumption of the monk’s habit quickly became the point at which emotionally and ceremonially the commitment was made.39 We also know ³⁶ For its meaning (‘people who live alone’ or ‘cell-dwellers’?) see Reitzenstein, op.cit. (n. 9 above), 45. The fact that it gained no currency in Coptic Christian literature (which took over monachos and anachoretes) led him to suppose that it must have had a pre-Christian meaning. ³⁷ Morard, art.cit. 336–340. ³⁸ Ibid. 341–346. ³⁹ Tertullian (De virg. vel. 10) regretted that there was no distinctive garb for male ascetics in his day. For the first decades of the fourth century there are retrospective allusions: Hilarion, immediately upon seeing Antony, took up residence with him (Jer. vit. Hilar. 3 [PL 23.31 A]) mutato pristino habitu; Antony confined himself to a single garment for the rest of his life (vit. Anton. 47); Palaemon invested Pachomius (Vita Pach. 7 [PL 73.233]). The rule of Pachomius 16 (PG 40.949) provided that ἐάν τις προσέλθῃ τῇ μονῇ, θέλων γενέσθαι ἀποτακτικός . . . ἐνδύσουσιν αὐτὸν τὸ σχῆμα τὸ ἀποτακτικόν, which Jerome rendered (49 [PL 23.73]) habitus monachorum. Cf. P. Gron. 17, P. Amh. 2.142, discussed above. The invention of monastic dress (in the Thebaid?) was attributed to Patermutius (PG 65.448 D). For a full collection of

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that the form of dress was carefully prescribed (e. g. the tunic had to be sleeveless).40 The dirty, or black, clothes of the monks were the physical features most singled out in secular denunciations of them.41 The critical question here would be whether the lebiton, or other characteristic garment, was in fact very unusual, or whether the particular form was being specified simply because it was the most ordinary.42 A new line of attack on the subject was opened up by the publication of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas (‘The Secret Sayings of Jesus’) discovered at Nag Hammadi.43 A key ideal of this work is that of human ‘singularity’. It does not matter for the present argument what the correct definition of this is (Klijn, for example, has argued that it refers to the winning back of the true human unity of primal Adam, through the overcoming of sexual differentiation). Two Coptic terms occur in this connection, but in three of the sayings the Greek loan-word monachos is found (16, 49, 75). At least three literary origins have been proposed for the Gospel: (a) an original composition in Coptic; (b) a translation from a Syriac original; (c) a translation from a Greek version of a Syriac original. This last possibility is supported by the correspondence between the Gospel and the Oxyrhynchus Greek fragments (P.Oxy. 1.654, 655) and, assuming it is the most plausible, evidence see P. Oppenheim, Das Mönchskleid im christlichen Altertum (Freiburg 1931), and for the symbolic use of dress for social rank, F. Kolb, ‘Zur Statussymbolik im antiken Rom’, Chiron 7 (1977) 239–259. ⁴⁰ ‘The Rule of Pachomius’, ed. A. Boon, Pachomiana Latina (Louvain 1932), 2: vestimentum, id est tunicam lineam absque manicis quam lebitonarium vocant. The Greek lebiton is found in the Coptic letters P.Lond. 6.1920, 1922, discussed above (where Bell translates it “cloak”), and possibly in P.Oxy. 14.1683 (N. 65). The lebiton appears to have been a particular form of kolobion (PG 34.1138 A). ⁴¹ Eunapius, Vit. soph. 6.11.7; 7.3.5 (472, 476), and other secular allusions referred to in n. 2 above. Jerome also attacked the blackshirts (Ep. 22.28), yet made a fetish of dirt himself: Ep. 38.5 nos, quia serica veste non utimur, monachi iudicamur; 125.7 sordidae vestes candidae mentis indicia sint; PL 30.346 D pallor et sordes tuae gemmae sint. ‘The Rule of Pachomius’ (67, 70 Boon), however, paid great attention to the washing of the lebiton. ⁴² Note the important difference in this respect between the formulation of the ‘Rule of Pachomius’ in the edition of Boon, praef. 4: duo lebitonaria, quod genus absque manicis Aegyptii vestimenti est, and the version given in PL 23.66: duo lebitonaria, quod Aegyptiis monachis genus vestimenti est sine manicis. The Coptic tunics preserved from the Fayum have “sleeves closed tightly at the wrists”, F. Boucher, A History of Costume in the West (London 1967) 101. ⁴³ Morard, art.cit., 362–377. Out of the extensive discussion note especially M. Harl, ‘À propos des logia de Jésus. Le sens du mot monachos’, RÉG 73 (1960) 464–474; A. F. J. Klijn, ‘The “Single One” in the Gospel of Thomas’, JBL 81 (1962) 271–278; A. Adam, ‘Der Monachos-Gedanke innerhalb der Spiritualität der alten Kirche’, Glaube, Geist, Geschichte, Festschr. E. Benz (Leiden 1967) 259–265; G. Quispel, ‘L’évangile selon Thomas et les origines de l’ascèse chrétienne’, Aspects du Judéo-christianisme (Paris 1965) 35–51 = Gnostic Studies 2 (Istanbul 1975) 98–112; id., Makarius, das Thomasevangelium und das Lied von der Perle (Leiden 1967); J. E. Ménard, L’évangile selon Thomas (Leiden 1975), together with articles in Nag Hammadi Studies 3 (Leiden 1972), 5 (Leiden 1975).

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our attention is directed (as with Symmachus) to the meaning of monachos in a second-century Greek work of Semitic inspiration. The Oxyrhynchus fragments just fail to survive for any of the three places at which monachos is used in the Coptic. But it is most likely that the loan-word would have been carried forward because it occurred only in those three sayings, and was either not open to being represented by a further variation of the Coptic terminology for one-ness, or was known to have a particular value in the Greek (no doubt as representing the Syriac iḥîdāyā). For reasons given earlier in this discussion, I do not consider it historically plausible that in second-century church circles the word could have signified the kind of socially identified figure to which it was applied in the monasticism of the fourth century. But, whatever the literary origin of the Coptic work, we must recognise the possibility that the Greek loan-word was adopted by the Coptic author (whether from a prior work, or from current usage in the first two cases above) because at the time he was writing he knew that monachos was the name of a recognised social type in Egypt. In that case the meaning of the word in the Gospel of Thomas could be that of ‘monk’, provided that the dating of the Coptic composition fell later than the time at which that sense became current in Egypt. The Nag Hammadi codex was most probably written early in the second half of the fourth century, and I suppose one should say on general grounds that a Coptic collection of Gospel sayings is not likely to have been prepared earlier than about AD 300. One must next ask whether it is likely that a Gnostic scholar would have fancied taking over the loan-word monachos if he knew that it meant one of the “front rank” of those “advancing in Christ” in the churches. Conversely, the question arises as to whether Athanasius would have been eager to secure the word to orthodoxy if he knew that it already had a safe place in Gnostic lore (cornering it from the Meletians would be a much less risky gambit). The former question becomes the more acute the further on into the fourth century one brings the date of the Gnostic composition of the Gospel of Thomas, while the latter is eased by a later date. If it could be placed within the first two decades of the century, a time of acute disorientation, before the councils and rival champions of doctrinal purity began to clear the theological air, and establish new party-lines, and while the monastic movement itself was still taking shape, we might simply envisage that the new style caught on quickly in unrelated circles. It was after all likely to appeal to the hearts of those of all persuasions who regretted their sexuality, and sought to alienate themselves from society. This is more easy to imagine if it was not a doctrinal term at all (as apotaktikos was) but simply a catchy style arising from some incidental popular reaction to the movement that had sprung up. It then lay with the passage of time and ecclesiastical propaganda to see who could assert

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a title to the word when the very great and paradoxical reverse-influence of the monks on society became apparent. Isaac of Karanis is thus left as the first landfall in a sea of speculation. In the hope that a critical reaction, and the better knowledge that others can bring to bear, will extend our new foothold, I sum up the discussion in a series of hypotheses. It must be stressed that they are not seen by me as conclusions. (a) Late in the third or early fourth century, the long tradition of male asceticism in the churches adopted for the first time a social form, matching the arrangements long before made for virgins and widows: the men became a tagma in the church (Eusebius). (b) Its socially distinctive features were a change of residence, from ordinary domestic circumstances to a community house (Jerome), and of dress (P. Gron. 17). (c) The community called themselves “brothers”, but their church name was apotaktikoi (Egeria’s and Julian’s apotaktitai) which passed into official currency in the community at large (P.Flor.71). (d) The general public responded with a new name, monachos, which would have picked up a feature that caught the popular eye (the ‘solitary’ lifestyle, or a detail of dress?). (e) The concealed eremitic tradition which Antony had inherited impinged on the new movement, with the result that many went over to a total withdrawal from the civil community, taking the new names with them, and resurrecting the old Egyptian style of anachoretes as well. (f) The Pachomian monasteries provided for coenobitic life, but at the new level of social detachment that had come in. (g) P.Coll.Youtie 77 demonstrates that by 324 monachos was a recognised public style for the original apotactic type of ascetic, ranking alongside the ministers of the church. (h) In the early 330s Eusebius shows that monachoi was then also a recognised name in church circles for the apotactic tagma. (i) In the 330s, the Meletian archive (P.Lond. 6.1913–1922) applies monachoi to the members of ‘stations’ that are still apotactic in being closely churchrelated, but overshadowed by the coenobitic discipline of Pachomian type, and the revered anchoritic individual. (j) About the middle of the century, the archive of Apa Paphnutius (P. Lond. 6.1923–1929) illustrates the sway exercised over people’s minds by a total recluse, while that of Apa Johannes (P.Herm.Rees 7–10) shows one still closely involved in the public community – a mixture of anachoretes and apotaktikos, as his correspondents indicate. (k) From the time of Antony’s death in 356, Athanasius and others run a literary campaign to vindicate the pure types of monasticism for orthodoxy,

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while the contempt of churchmen (Jerome) and secular critics (Julian and Libanius) alike demonstrates how the original apotactic form continued to flourish in the churches. (l) At the end of the century, P.Oxy. 44.3203 confirms that apotactics are an urban category of monks, and that the two terms can now be used of women as well as men, in both respects supporting the implications of Egeria’s account.*

* Supplementary note: P.Berl.inv. 13897 (N. 36) and P.Oxy. 14.1774 (N. 37) document an early fourth-century community of women. For another type of urban church-related association, the philoponoi, see E. Wipszycka, ‘Les confréries dans la vie religieuse de l’Égypte chrétienne’, in D. H. Samuel (ed.), Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology = American Studies in Papyrology 7 (Toronto 1970) 511–525. See also P. Barison, ‘Ricerche sui monasteri dell’Egitto bizantino ed arabo secondo i documenti dei papiri greci’, Aegyptus 18 (1938) 29–148, which provides a systematic catalogue from the beginning.

Chapter 13

Fourth-Century Monasticism in the Papyri* “Paulos from the Oxyrhynchite nome” condemned in Thebaid but cannot be traced in property register.] 1. P.Col. 7 (1980) Petition Antoninos διάκων and Isak μοναχός rescue Isidoros of Karanis from assault. 171 (Lewis) 6 (?) Jun 324 2. P.Lond. 6 (1924) Deed Pageus (i. e. Paieous?) πρεσβύτερος from Hipponon notifies τοῖς προεστῶσι μονῆς 1913 (Bell) 19 Mar 334 μονοχῶν at Hathor of locum tenens of μονή. 3. P.Lond. 6 (1924) Letter To Paieous on Athanasios maltreating τοὺς 1914 (Bell) May/Jun 335 (?) μοναχοὺς τῶν Μελιτιανῶν at Alexandria. 4. P.Würzb. (1934) Surety Written by Agathos [ἀποτα]κτικός for a διάκων about a πρεσβύτερος from Tristo16 (Wilcken) 10 Oct 349 mos (Fayyum). 5. P.Herm.Landl. (1978) Register Makarios identified as ἀποτακτικός (Sijpesteijn-Worp) Early-Mid-IV (?) amongst landholders of Hermopolis. 6. P.Lond. 6 (1924) Letter Appeal for prayer to ἄπα Papnoutios ἀνα1925 (Bell) Mid-IV χωρητής at μονὴ μοναχῶν (?). 7. P.Lips. (1906) Judgment IV Plousianos (Hermopolite) ἐπίσκοπος on 43 (Mitteis-Wilcken) Thaesis ἀειπάρθενος accused of appropriating “Christian books.” 8. CPR 5 (1976) Tax List [Incerta] μοναχή listed without parentage 26 (Sijpesteijn) IV as taxpayer of Skar (Hermopolite). 9. P.Herm. (1964) Letter Appeal for prayer to Joannes (Hermopo9 (Rees) IV lite) ἀποτακτικός who in 10 calls himself παναχωρητής. 10. PSI 13 (1953) Letter Appeal through Paesios διάκονος for ἄπα 1342 (Manfredi) IV Sabinos ἀναχωρητής to influence (Hermopolite) tax debtor. 11. P.Iand. 6 (1934) Letter Bessemios reports trading difficulties to 100 (Rosenberger) IV two “fathers” and greets τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς πάντας τοὺς ἐν τῷ μοναστηρίῳ. 12. P.Berl. inv. Tax List Anoubion ἀποτακτικὸς τοῦ μοναστηρίου of 11860 A/B (1975) 367/8 Tabennese pays tax on its land near (?) (Wipszycka) Magdola Mire (Hermopolite). [P.Oxy. 33 (1968) 2665 (Rea)

Certificate 305/6

* Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Papyrology (Chico 1981) 613–620.

Chapter 13: Fourth-Century Monasticism in the Papyri

13. P.Lips. (1906) 60 (Mitteis)

Certificate 371 (?)

14. P.Oxy. 46 (1978) 3311 (Rea) 15. P.Lips. (1906) 28 (Mitteis)

Petition c. 373/4 Deed 31 Dec 381

16. P.Oxy. 44 (1976) 3203 (Haslam) 17. SB 8 (1965) 9683 (Zilliacus)

Lease Jun/Jul 400 Complaint End IV

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Son, and daughter Didyme ἀειπάρθενος, receive requisition on a prytanis of Panopolis (presumably deceased). Ammonios ἀποπτακτικός had failed to bequeath the estate he controlled. Silbanos ἀποτακτικός, trustee for brother, adopts nephew and makes him heir to his property (Hermopolis). Two named sisters μοναχαὶ ἀποτακτικαί lease part of house to Jose Ἰουδαῖος. Timotheos reports anchor stolen from πολλῶν μονάζον ἀναχωριτõν of the μονή.

Although ecclesiastical writings from the first half of the century are not scarce, they offer no clear reference to the origins of monasticism. For Reitzenstein, writing only two-thirds of a century ago, the very name μοναχός was historically suspect (SbHeid. 8 [1914] 47, 60, 61). He thought it must be a retrojection of mid-century usage by Athanasius. The archive of Apa Paieous (items 2, 3 in the list above), published in 1924, demonstrated the existence of well-established monastic communities using the term μοναχός in the mid– 330s. This settled the meaning of the solitary instance of the term in Eusebius (PG 23.689B, in the commentary on the Psalms). Now we have the new petition of Isidoros of Karanis (no. 1), the latestdated document from his archive. This civil citation of a μοναχός decisively antedates the reference in Eusebius. The μοναχός, moreover, is coupled with a διάκων, the earliest instance of that title in the papyrus documents. The only ecclesiastical style attested in a public document that can be dated with certainty prior to this is the ἀναγνωστής of 5 February, 304 (P.Oxy. 33.2673). The matter-of-fact way in which Isidoros of Karanis cites the deacon and the monk is striking. In both cases the title has displaced the usual patronymic. We are dealing with ecclesiastics officially designated in terms of their profession. In June, 324, the world was awaiting the final confrontation between Licinius and Constantine. Licinius had allegedly been curbing the activities of the churches, and a victory by him would certainly have been taken as the vindication of the old gods. Yet in Karanis, firmly within his domain, the establishment of the church and of monasticism alike are apparently taken for granted. Since the archive of Isidoros suggests that he had no personal connection with Christianity, but that he can yet take deacon and monk for granted, we may safely project the emergence of monasticism onto the public scene back across the remaining two decades to the traditional point of impact – St Antony’s emergence from self-imprisonment to challenge others to take up the solitary life. It is with reference to this stage of his career (about 305?) that Athanasius first uses the term μοναχός, an historical instinct now implicitly justified by the new papyrus.

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It is just conceivable that another recently published document could vindicate the historicity of the figure Jerome set up to outdo the Antony of Athanasius: Paul of Thebes, the first hermit. In a certificate of 305/6 (unnumbered item at the top of the list) the property registrars report that they cannot trace either property or wife for “Paulos from the Oxyrhynchite nome.” He had been sentenced by the governor of the Thebaid, Satrius Arrianus. The conjunction of his increasingly fashionable name with that of the notorious persecutor in a text of that year invites one to envisage a Christian identity for Paulos, though the papyrus gives no positive hint of that. The inability of the officials to discover his lawful name, implied by lack of reference to his father, and their consequential inability to trace either property or wife, may then lead the imagination on to the solitary calling which was supposedly pioneered by Paul of Thebes. Yet Jerome does not make his hero a victim of the persecution. The papyrus evidence proves the early establishment, in both civil and ecclesiastical (or at any rate Meletian) usage, of the term μοναχός. But it does not resolve for us the question of its meaning or history.1 In spite of its early appearance, it does not become the prevalent term for ascetics in the papyri. More surprisingly still, in two documents published in 1976 (nos 8,16), it has now appeared in the feminine form (attested only once in Lampe). Otherwise in our list μοναχός occurs only in the damaged address of a letter (no. 6).2 The term μοναχός seems to have been coined for the male ascetics, who had long lacked a name to distinguish them from the female virgins and the widows in the churches. It may well have originated not in ecclesiastical usage but in the parlance of the general community, marking the point at which the phenomenon of male asceticism became publicly conspicuous. Its meaning would then have to be sought not in theology but in social convention. It could have arisen in response to some early fourth-century innovation in the pattern of residence or dress, and need not then be explained with reference to the ideals of single-mindedness or of celibacy, which had long flourished amongst men in the churches without supplying a name for those who pursued them. Cf. SB 4.7315, an inscription dated early IV, recording two martyrs, one called ὁ μακάριος παρθένος, the other ἐγκρατής, while the latter’s son is called μαθητὴς παρθένων.3 ¹ Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 20 (1977) 72–89, reproduced as chapter 12 above. ² A substantial addition to the fourth-century attestation of the term is expected from the

forthcoming edition of the documents preserved in the bindings of the Nag Hammadi codices, to be edited by G. M. Browne and J. C. Shelton. [Published Leiden 1981.] ³ For the complex question of the origins of monasticism in Egypt, and the bearing on it of the Cologne Mani Codex, see now the discussion by L. Koenen, ‘Manichäische Mission und Klöster in Ägypten,’ Das römisch-byzantinische Ägypten, Akten des internationalen Symposions, 27–30. September 1978 in Trier (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut; Mainz, forthcoming). [Published 1983, 93–108.]

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The commonest term for ascetics in the fourth-century papyri is ἀποτακτικός. There seems no doubt as to the origin of this name. It is apparently derived from the command of Jesus (Luke 14:33) that those who follow him should renounce all possessions (or should it be family connections? – Luke 14:26). Ephiphanius (Haer. 61.1), writing c. 376, says that the heretical ἀποστολικοί call themselves ἀποτακτικοί and make a practice of abandoning possessions. Julian’s taunting use of ἀποτακτῖται for the Cynics (Or. 7.18 Bidez) proves that this form had in-group currency in the church circles in which he was brought up, let us say in the 340s. The papyrus usage (nos 4,5,12,14,15) shows that by the same stage the form ἀποτακτικός was an accepted professional identification in civil documents. The two sisters (no. 16) who call themselves μοναχαὶ ἀποτακτικαί are presumably using the broad public appellation of monastics coupled with the official church term which indicates a particular category of them. Letters from the archive of Apa Joannes (no. 9), which has been dated both to the second and to the first half of the fourth century, address him both as ἀποτακτικός and as ἀναχωρητής, a style he assumes himself moreover. This term is also used in fourth-century papyrus letters in addressing Apa Papnoutios (no. 6) and Apa Sabinos (no. 10). In 17 it identifies one of several types of monk itemized. Two women are described in formal documents as ἀειπάρθενος (nos 7,13). This could, however, be simply a legal way of indicating that they were unmarried women. Apart from no. 3, these technical terms are confined to formal documents and the covering addresses of letters. They identify monastics as having a publicly recognized station in life of an occupational kind. It may displace their patronymic in formal references to them (so in nos 1,5,7 and 8, but not in 4,12,13,14,15 or 16). Within the thirty other letters and one other petition (P. Amh. 2.142) of the fourth century that have been held to refer to monastic communities there is a complete absence of such terms. The “brothers” or “sisters” simply address each other within familiar bonds that need no formal specification (as in no. 11). The fourth-century diversity of monastic nomenclature is not sustained in the papyrus record. In the fifth century (no. 17), the terms μονάζων/μονάζουσα take over. Μονάζων is the dominant term thereafter, though μοναχός (the prevalent title in the literary sources) is also prominent from the sixth century. Ἀναχωρητής continues in use, but the commonest fourth-century term, ἀποτακτικός, disappears, except for a limited reappearance in the ninth century, while ἀειπάρθενος is reserved for the ever-virgin Mother of God. Since four of the seven ἀποτακτικοί are from the Hermopolite nome, one may ask whether that term may not have had a particular currency there, and whether its relatively frequent appearance in property transactions points a way forward. All but one instance (no. 9) are in civil documents. Julian’s ἀπο-

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τακτῖται made small sacrifices with a view to getting their hands on everything else. The ἀποστολικοί of Epiphanius called themselves ἀποτακτικοί to celebrate their renunciation of property. The aputactitae whom Egeria observed towards the end of the fourth century seem to have been an order devoted to fasting and to the liturgical exercises of the church in Jerusalem. The term is also found in both Greek and Coptic in the Pachomian literature, where it was clearly one of the terms accepted for those who joined the monasteries. It may have been that apotactics were those who pooled their property in a small community that remained closely related to church life. Given that the technical terms for monks seem typically to arise in formal documents, and that formal documents typically relate to property transactions of some kind, it is not surprising that the papyrus record appears to indicate a close involvement of monastics with property (only nos 1 and 6 contain no such suggestion). But that hardly invalidates the general picture we have from the literary sources of monasticism as a movement which renounced property. Those who did that will have been the ones who have left no trace in the papyrus record. Moreover it is usually impossible to determine whether the monks who are recorded have any direct stake in the property transactions in which they appear. The new Berlin papyrus (no. 12) published by Wipszycka (in Hommages Préaux, 625–636) has shown the way in which the Pachomian monasteries stepped into the economic breach by taking up abandoned lands, thus sharing the tax burden of the public community. This could explain the other cases (nos 5,8) where monastics appear in tax connections. They too could have been acting for their monasteries. In both cases they are the sole monastics in long lists which include a number of other people with ecclesiastical titles. The ἀναχωρητής (no. 10) who is asked to persuade a reluctant taxpayer may also belong in this context. The trading difficulties of monasteries are referred to in the letter of Bessemios (no. 11), while the archive of Apa Paieous (the subsequent P.Lond. letters associated with my items 2, 3) contains a good deal of evidence for traffic in goods. Agathos the [ἀποτα]κτικός (no. 4) describes himself as the son of a πρύτανις of Arsinoe, but we do not know whether he had inherited the estate, or expected to. But Didyme ἀειπάρθενος (no. 13) and her brother were apparently responsible for the estate of their father, also a former magistrate. The two sisters μοναχαὶ ἀποτακτικαί (no. 16) are at least the managers, and one would have supposed the owners, of the house in which they let rooms. Joannes ἀποτακτικός (no. 9) was closely involved in the debt problems of one of his correspondents, and was himself prosecuted on charges he considered false. The evidence falls short, however, of proving that he held property. Silbanos ἀποτακτικός (no. 15) agrees to bequeath his property to the nephew whom he adopts. The ownership of personal property is clearly stated here, and one

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may note the implication that there will be no other children to contest the inheritance. Especially tantalizing is the case of Ammonios ἀποτακτικός (no. 14). This is the sole instance in our list where the meaning of the technical term appears itself to be a point of substance to the author. It is given three times in the course of an argument about property rights. Two sisters state that their paternal cousin had allowed his estate to pass under the control of his maternal uncle, Ammonios, although the ultimate title to the property would apparently fall to the sisters. Ammonios, however, died still being an ἀποτακτικός, and had made no will. Whether this is meant to explain why he had not made one is not clear. The sisters claim that the property is rightfully theirs but that it is being forcibly retained by a certain Ammon, who is neither son nor heir. Rea is inclined to think that this means that Ammon is indeed next of kin, but that the sisters are relying on the insinuation that the property had never been formally bequeathed to Ammonios by their cousin in the first place. But another possibility is that the cousin had permitted Ammonios the use of it for the benefit of his community, and that Ammon is a fellow ἀποτακτικός who desires to retain the use of it in the spirit of the cousin’s intention. The relationship of monastics to church life is also difficult to sort out. If Antoninos (no. 1) is a διάκων of the village church, the implication is that Isak the μοναχός is a related figure, but monastic communities also had deacons. In no. 17 it was the debt owed by one of the deacons of the monastery of Ankyronites in the Herakleopolite that led to the theft of the anchor by the creditor (a soldier), and the community consists of a large number, including presbyters and deacons as well as μονάζοντες and ἀναχωρηταί, together with a fifth, unidentified, category. In no. 10, a διάκονος is the avenue of approach to the ἀναχωρητής, while in no. 4 the ἀποτακτικός is writing for a διάκων who guarantees a πρεσβύτερος Wilcken assumed that the last was a presbyter of the church, but one should ask whether he might not have been a monastic one, or even a secular village elder. The documents are quite capable of specifying when a deacon or presbyter belongs to “the catholic church”, and this is done in no. 7 for the bishop. In no. 2 Pageus, the head of the monastery, is a πρεσβύτερος, from the village of Hipponon, and the council he summons to elect his locum tenens includes another πρεσβύτερος of Hipponon and a διάκονος from another village, as well as an “original” or “senior” μοναχός. One may ask whether the community itself is attached in some way to the village church. Only in no. 3 do we have a clear picture of the relation between monks and the churches, but the dramatic struggles in Alexandria are hardly to be taken as typical. As for the general life of the civil community, our monks do not seem especially remote. Their various styles are taken for granted, and they include their fair share of people in trouble in various ways. In nos 3,7,9 and 17, and per-

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haps 10 and 14, they are subject to accusations, usually financial. Only in no. 6 do we meet the archetypal anchorite, whose holiness has made him a desired source of intercession. But even he is surrounded by brothers. The true hermit will by definition not be documented. The purpose of this survey is to illustrate the questions that are raised by a systematic review of the documentary papyri bearing on the history of Christianity in Egypt. At Macquarie University, I and my colleagues in the School of History, Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs), B. F. Harris and S. R. Pickering, have undertaken to prepare a corpus of such material. We commend ourselves to the amicitia papyrologorum in the hope that our work may clarify some of the uncertainties that beset such documents.

Chapter 14

The Quest for Mercy in Late Antiquity* Mercy and justice are mutually exclusive concepts, D. B. Knox has observed.1 They cannot be rationally related to each other. Mercy indeed is not governed by reason at all. Hence no doubt the systematic attempts of the classical philosophers to curb the impulse. Like envy, pity was part of that disturbing emotional pathology of the soul that the rational man must learn to regulate. Pity may, however, be reasonable in some cases, as when the virtuous man is struck down by misfortune (Plato, Laws 936B). But the cry of the undeserving for mercy remained unanswered, whether it arose from guilt in the inner man, or from the evils of society at large. The gap between philosophical principle and human compassion was one which classical culture skirted in a variety of ways, already discussed by B. F. Harris.2 More serious tensions developed in later antiquity.3 The philosophical tradition reacted against the Stoic compromise of allowing some practical help to the afflicted provided it was not contaminated with sympathy. Instead the neoPlatonists reverted to the Aristotelian position. Pity was a defect of character unworthy of the wise and excusable only in those who have not yet grown up. It was an impulsive response based on ignorance of life. Plato had removed the problem of beggars from his ideal state by dumping them over its borders (Laws 936C). The necessity of the world order, according to Plotinus six centuries later, ensured that justice was done to all – being a slave or a prisoner of war was no accident, but a deserved retribution for something else (Enn. III 2 (47) 13.1–17). In any case, “the life in the Cosmos does not look to the individual but to the whole” (Enn. IV 4 (28) 39.29–30). Those philosophers, however, who turned to the God who is rich in mercy sought in that quality the key to the whole ethical system. Philo, arguing against those who would boil a lamb in its mother’s milk (De virt. 144), had already recognised mercy (eleos) as the emotion most intimately related to the * P. T. O’Brien and D. G. Peterson (eds), God Who is Rich in Mercy (Sydney 1986) 107–

121. ¹ The Everlasting God (Welwyn 1982) 109. ² ‘The Idea of Mercy and its Graeco-Roman Context’, O’Brien and Peterson 89–105. ³ In this and the next paragraph I draw upon material referred to by W. Schwer, ‘Barm-

herzigkeit’, RAC 1 (1950) 1200–1207; R. Ferwerda, ‘Pity in the Life and Thought of Plotinus’, Plotinus amid Gnostics and Christians (ed. D. T. Runia; Amsterdam 1984) 53–72.

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rational soul. For Clement of Alexandria it is by Jesus having had mercy (ἐλεήσας) on us that he has cured us of all pathologically self-serving emotions, so that we can in turn show mercy to the stranger, who proves to be our neighbour (Quis dives 29). Celsus objected to the Christian view that human beings, as rational creatures, were distinct from animals, pressing the analogy between human society and the economy of bees and ants. The latter could even be observed carrying one another’s burdens. Origen attributes this to providence, which perhaps wished thereby to deliver a reproach to men (Contra Celsum 48.1). He objects to the rationalisation of Celsus as likely to cut the nerve of human sympathy amongst those who lack the special motivation of Christian belief. A socially responsible philosopher would have done his best to maintain such generally beneficial attitudes and not sacrifice them to the attack on Christianity (4.83). The extensive social welfare program of the churches attracted not only theoretical criticism by philosophers,4 but also widespread popular acceptance.5 Julian was outraged that the “Galileans” should maintain the poor amongst the “Hellenes” as well as their own (2.236, 490, 3.70 Loeb). He mocked as immoral the preference of Jesus and the disciples for the weak (3.376, 430). But the fourth century reveals a more puzzling phenomenon than the Apostate’s frustration with charity. The society that was now converting to the God of Mercy seems at the same time to grow more brutal.6 It is not possible for me here to explore fully the question of cause and effect. Instead I will first set out the evidence of three Latin works which disclose contemporary awareness of the dilemma at a public level. Then I will give some examples of the appeal to mercy in the Greek papyrus letters of the time to see what popular consciousness of it there was.

⁴ R. L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven & London 1984). ⁵ A. R. Hands, Charities and Social Aid in Greece and Rome (Ithaca 1968) chap. 6, ‘Pity

for the Destitute’. For the scale of church activity, see Tertullian, Apol. 42.8, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 6.43.11. ⁶ No reader of Ammianus Marcellinus can mistake the horror with which he contemplates the cruelty of the fourth century (e. g. 29.1.23–24). Richard L. Anderson (The Rise and Fall of Middle-class Loyalty to the Roman Empire: A Social Study of Velleius Paterculus and Ammianus Marcellinus [Ph. D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley 1962] 129–52) defends him against charges of exaggeration. He was protesting at the extension of servile penalties to the curial class. The Christian empire saw no relaxation of torture, cf. G. Thür, ‘Folter (juristisch)’, RAC 8 (1972) 101–112, and merciless punishments even came to be justified as a corrective towards greater humanity, cf. A. Steinwenter, ‘Corpus iuris’, RAC 3 (1957) 453–463.

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1. Mercy Caught between Church and State In the immediate wake of his conversion Constantine showed himself keenly aware of God’s unmerited favour to him. This marks a fundamental reversal of classical values, and the beginning of a new conception of the answerability of rulers that continues in our culture to this day. The Caesars hitherto, standing in the tradition of heroic ethics rooted in Homer (who still, after a thousand years, provided the basis of all education), had always taken the divine favour of victory as a demonstration of their own merits. But the cross Constantine had seen in the heavens before the battle of the Milvian Bridge (AD 312) was interpreted to him in a radically new way. From only two years after the event we possess a letter in which he reveals to the Catholic bishops his reflections on the matter.7 The mercy (pietas) of God does not permit hateful self-will to block the way to safety, but by his light it is eventually turned around to accept the rule of justice. Constantine had proved this in his own case. There had been many things in him that lacked righteousness (iustitia), and deserved every kind of evil outcome. He had assumed the heavenly power could not see them. But God from on high had granted what was not deserved. His heavenly benevolence bestowed innumerable favours on Constantine. He was a family servant in God’s household. Such “truly victorious providence of Christ the Saviour” should have availed also for the Donatist bishops, who had appealed to him against the ruling of the Catholic councils. They only needed to agree with them to enjoy God’s favour. But true judgement did not prevail with the Donatists, and “the propitious divinity” did not enter their consciousness. It was not undeservedly therefore that the mercy (clementia) of Christ had departed far from them. One might plainly conclude that the heavenly providence itself now utterly hated them. The proof of it lay in the very fact of their having appealed to Constantine. They sought his judgement against the Catholic bishops when he himself awaited the judgement of Christ. The truth was that the judgement of the bishops should be taken as that of the Lord. To appeal against that, as though it were a civil process, was to betray Christ the Saviour. Since they had trampled upon God himself, how could they invoke humanity? In spite of the desperate contradiction into which he had been driven, Constantine offered the Donatists one more opportunity to choose the truth. The Catholic bishops, as followers of the Saviour, should still practise patience. But ⁷ C. Ziswa (ed.), S. Optati Milevitani libri VII (Vienna: CSEL 26, 1893) 208–210, trans. P. R. Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Christian Church 1 (London 1960) 59–61. No secretary would have dared attribute a confession of personal unworthiness to Constantine without knowing that he wished it said, but in any case Constantine is more likely to have written or dictated such correspondence personally, cf. Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London 1977) 213–228, 584–590.

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if the others persisted, the Catholics were to return to their sees, not forgetting to remember Constantine in their prayers, that the Saviour might always have mercy (misereatur) on him. Any recalcitrant Donatists would be sent to Constantine by the civil governors, there to experience “something worse than death”. This was necessary lest their practices incite an outburst of heavenly wrath on Constantine himself. It can be clearly seen in this reasoning how Constantine’s personal quest for mercy led him to deny it to others. In particular, it was the subordination of civil to ecclesiastical judgement that carried over into the church the merciless sword of the state. It was the divine authority of the church’s judgement, moreover, that removed the traditional Roman option of clemency from the ruler. “There are no wild beasts whose hostility to mankind can match the fatal savagery most Christians practise towards each other.” Julian (the Apostate) knew this from his own experience, says the contemporary historian, Ammianus Marcellinus (22.5.4). Julian was the last survivor of the murderous house of Constantine. He secretly repudiated the faith in which he had been brought up, and when he displaced his cousin Constantius as ruler of the Roman world in AD 361 he set out to cripple the impetus of the new way of life that was overrunning it. He insisted upon toleration amongst Christians. Each bishop was to commit himself to his own cause, he instructed them. The purpose of this, says Ammianus (22.5.3), was to increase dissension, and thus destroy the populist drive of orthodoxy which Julian feared. Although Ammianus could not explain it historically, Julian was experiencing in his own life the emergence of religion in its modern sense.8 He even attempted to convert the old folk cults into such a religion, complete with defined beliefs to match those of the bishops, and a total life commitment. As an ex-Christian, Julian took consistency between belief and life as necessary. He therefore debarred Christian teachers from using Greek literature as a means of instruction, since they did not believe in the gods it celebrated (25.4.20). They would have to teach Greek from the Bible instead.9 This challenge, impossible in a culture which was tied to an archaic form of the language, was met by Christian teachers actually transposing the Bible into up-graded Greek. It would thus display the full range of literary models necessary to the classicising curriculum. The unexpected death of Julian saw this blind alley promptly abandoned. The idea of church schools was left to be invented again in a later age, by the churches themselves. Julian had astutely identified the incommensurate character of education and Christian belief, and ⁸ E. A. Judge, ‘Christian Innovation and its Contemporary Observers’, History and Historians in Late Antiquity (ed. B. Croke & Alanna Emmett [now Nobbs], Sydney 1983) 13–29, reproduced as ch. 17 below. ⁹ E. A. Judge, ‘The Interaction of Biblical and Classical Education in the Fourth Century’, JCE 77 (1983) 31–37, reproduced as ch. 18 below.

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aimed by distinguishing them to debase the life of the churches and establish the cultural superiority of “Hellenism”. The old cults for their part were to be remodelled along the lines of the churches. They were even to develop a comparable social welfare program, in spite of Julian’s ethical objections to charity. How could Christians be both merciful to strangers and violent towards each other? Ammianus senses the paradox that he cannot solve. He shares Julian’s sentiments about the “fatal savagery” Christians practise on each other. The rare epithet feralis is reserved otherwise (in the extant books) for the “deadly” work of political informers. Like a “lethal” whirlwind they laid Rome waste after the betrayal of Silvanus (15.7.1), who we learn coincidentally was himself a Christian. The “diabolical” state-secretary Paul made Palestinian Scythopolis a stadium for the “fatal” tortures of the treason trials that were designed to stamp out consultations of the remote Egyptian oracle Besas which Constantius held to be threatening his security (19.12.8). The bishop of Alexandria, George, whose “viper’s fangs” the people had felt (22.11.3), had also descended to the “fatal” outrages of the informer (22.11.5), “forgetting his profession which calls only for justice and mercy” (nil nisi iustum et lene suadet). Ammianus several times savours the contrast. The Christian religio (a word which in his usage means something like scruple) is “straightforward and simple” (absoluta et simplex, just as he makes Constantius say the truth itself must be, 14.10.3 Seyfarth, cf. 17.5.4). But the superstitio of Constantius has made it a complicated matter of synods and argument. Squads of bishops shuttle back and forth like military units. The public transport system is brought to a halt. Each strives to win the rest over to his own view. Constantius should have imposed agreement (21.16.18). The late antique establishment had so lost contact with the ancient tradition of senatorial debate that public disagreement seems outrageous. The historian cannot see the social significance of open argument – the liberty of thought which aristocratic servility had long since surrendered to the Caesars was being revived in the community at large through the doctrinal disputes in the churches. It is the popular commitment to such causes which especially upsets Ammianus. The bishops with their mass followings are as bad as the circus factions.10 Doctrina should not be vulgarised by public discussion. It should be handed down authoritatively in learned schools (22.16.17). As for contending bishops, the more than human passions that inflamed the contest between Damasus and Ursinus for the see of Rome, and left 137 dead in the basilica on a single day, were understandable, given the social rewards and affluence to be won. But they would have done better to follow the example of certain provincial bishops who limited themselves to a restricted diet and cheap clothes, and ¹⁰ Cf. churches 22.5.3, 22.11.10, 27.3.12, 27.9.9, and factions 28.4.29/30; on the latter see Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford 1976).

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fixed their eyes on the ground (27.3.15). Unlike earlier writers, Ammianus approved the Christian ideal of humility. Its ostensible quietism coincided with his respect for authority. He could not however accept or understand the urgent need to work out the implications of doctrinal belief in a communitywide debate, nor how this generated the commitment that marked the new lifestyle. The charitable enterprise of the churches seems to have escaped his notice altogether (though it may be implicit in 27.3.14). Amongst the recently discovered supplement to the letters of Augustine is one which gives a dramatic picture of mercy at work in a violent world.11 He reports to Alypius (in Rome, AD 422/3) that Africa is being depopulated by the sale of free-born children abroad (*10.2.1). Their parents are entitled by Roman law to sell 25 years of their children’s labour. But once they are shipped overseas it might as well be slavery. Moreover, gangs of hooligans disguised as soldiers or barbarians were kidnapping village children to supply the trade. Augustine himself interrogated a girl who had been rescued by his church: her parents and brothers had hidden rather than face the “barbarians” (*10.3.4). Apart from the church, no one was sufficiently moved by “Christian or human pity” (miseratio) to intervene in the traffic (*10.4.4). The disease was catching. A woman of Hippo was selling other women after leading them to think they were being given work (*10.6.2). A respectable farmer, a member of the church, had sold off his wife. A 20–year old man had been abducted from the monastery. But the church had its answer by direct action. When a shipment was being organised from Hippo by the Gallic merchants who dominated the trade, it was reported to the church by a believer “who was privy to our practice in charities (elemosynis, the Greek loan-word is used) of this kind” (*10.7.3). Even though the bishop himself was absent, there was an immediate raid on the ship, and on the shore depot, which released about 120 people. Only five or six had been sold by their parents in terms of the law. So extensive is the rescue work that the church cannot feed all the people the Lord has recovered through them (*10.8.3). Augustine has a more long-term problem, however. The Gallic traders have influential patrons in Africa who put pressure on him to hand back the captives to the trade (*10.8.2). The law of Honorius against it, moreover, cannot be invoked because its penalties are too harsh for people of such consequence – flogging with lead-tipped whips and perpetual exile (*10.3.5). Augustine encloses a copy for Alypius, and asks him to have their “most pious and Christian leaders” amend the law to remove the penalties, especially the flogging, which can easily result in death (*10.4.3). ¹¹ J. Divjak, S. Aurelii Augustini opera 2.6, Epistolae ex duobus codicibus nuper in lucem prolatae (Vienna: CSEL 88, 1981). *The new letters were given asterisked numbers.

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The solution is very different from those of Constantine’s day, a century before. Augustine had long learned to allow for the mixed merits of both church and state. The church will be on the lookout to express “the mercy of God” (deo miserante, *10.8.1) in practical action, but within the law if possible. A principled acceptance of the social order, too, has led Augustine to extend the spirit of mercy even to the powerful oppressors. Their abuse after all grew from a legitimate provision for labour supply. By reducing the penalties to a socially and Christianly acceptable limit, he hoped to make the law work effectively against the abuse. Ammianus would surely have added this one to his pattern of approved provincial bishops.

2. The Appeal for Mercy in the Papyri The letters and petitions from private individuals preserved on papyrus frequently portray the complainant in pitiable circumstances. This implicit bid for sympathy reinforces the overt plea for family support, or for justice under the law. Explicit reference to mercy, however, is unusual. I set out below most of the examples referred to in the papyrological word-indexes. There will no doubt be others that have appeared in the publications of the past twenty years, which I have not checked. My collection is restricted to the first four centuries. In a letter dated 4 August, AD 41,12 Sarapion writes to his agent in Alexandria, Heraclides, on how to arouse the sympathy of a certain Ptollarion after the failure of some enterprise. Heraclides is to appeal to Ptollarion every day about the financial problem. Sarapion supplies a set of words by which he can represent himself as in personal danger: “I do not know what my patron (Sarapion) will do to me”. Sarapion adds, “Perhaps he will manage to take pity on you (σε ἐλεῆσαι)”, but specifies an alternative way forward if this fails. Clearly to play on his feelings would be simpler, but there is no suggestion that Ptollarion will be put to shame if he sticks to hard business. A petition of about 140,13 to the prefect Gaius Avidius Heliodorus, from Marcus Valerius Gemellus, protests that he has had to serve four years as superintendent of confiscated estates, in spite of an exemption by a regional administrator of the Arsinoite nome which is apparently prefixed and has secured the prefect’s endorsement. Gemellus is a certified doctor, and uses his petition to seek total relief from liturgies for the whole medical profession. ¹² V. A. Tcherikover & A. Fuks, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum = CPJ 2 (Cambridge, Mass. 1960) 152, l. 23. The letter is reproduced there because it includes a warning against association with Jews. ¹³ B. P. Grenfell, A. S. Hunt & D. G. Hogarth, Fayûm Towns and their Papyri = P.Fay. (London 1900) 106, l. 16.

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This will be received as a personal benefaction by me, says Gemellus, who seems a farsighted negotiator. But why had he not sought relief at the beginning if he had no obligation? The heart of his petition is a plea of ill-health brought on by the effort he has been put to. He begs Heliodorus as his saviour to have mercy on him (ἐλεῆσαί με). Perhaps his privilege has been overridden by influential people in the government (though no hint of that is given), and he sees his only hope as a direct approach to the prefect. Also from the Arsinoite nome is a petition to the prefect Lucius Valerius Proculus of about 146,14 submitted by a woman against a certain Hermias and her own brothers, who have apparently defrauded her in a property transaction. The damaged text does not permit a full reconstruction of the case, but it is clear that Hermias and the brothers have felt free to ignore legal decisions at the lower level. The woman appeals for redress against this outrage, but stands strictly on the lawful grounds, which receive the prefect’s endorsement. There is no pleading of personal distress, yet she asks the prefect to have mercy on her (ἐλεῆσαί με). It is one of two cases in this list where the term is used in a plea for justice without extenuating circumstances. By contrast, in a letter of about 263,15 an Arsinoite village blacksmith, Aurelius Epimachus, places himself under the protection of Antonius Philoxenus, pleading old age and growing blindness, in the hope that the latter will have mercy on him (μου…ἐλεήσεις). He has had to undertake work away from the village, but now seeks the help of Philoxenus to secure a discharge from that. In return he will work at Kaminoi without pay if Philoxenus supplies the iron and (by implication) keeps him. In any case, he adds, Kaminoi is where my apprentices are, and they need my direction. Although himself a master workman, then, Epimachus is totally dependent on the traditional system of patronage. It was this kind of social security that was by then increasingly being provided on a communal basis by the eleēmosynē of the churches. From the time of Constantine and Licinius, perhaps in 319/20,16 comes a submission of the city of Arsinoe itself to the imperial court. The document is too badly damaged to be read, but apparently relates to matters of taxation. It is striking that as well as the traditional reference to the spirit of benefaction (euergesia) in rulers, there is both a (broken) reference to someone’s being deserving of mercy (ἐλεειν-) and an even more unexpected use of the more emotive word, pity (oikteirein). Have the Arsinoites learned already that mercy is one of the ideals now invoked by the government?17 ¹⁴ O. Krüger, Ptolemäische und frührömische Texte (Tiflis: Papyri russischer und georgischer Sammlungen = P.Ross.Georg. 2, 1929) 20, l. 23. ¹⁵ P. Collart, Les papyrus Théodore Reinach = P.Rein. 2 (Cairo 1940) 113, l. 10. ¹⁶ E. Kiessling, Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten = SB 6.2 (Wiesbaden 1960) 9217, ll. 4, 8. ¹⁷ H. I. Bell (‘Philanthropia in the Papyri of the Roman Period’, Hommages à Franz Cumont [Brussels: Collection Latomus 2, 1949] 31–37) takes up Rostovtzeff’s charge that

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Three years later, in 322,18 a certain Arion of Theadelphia in the Arsinoite nome petitions the Roman governor Sabinianus to restrain the tax officials who are attempting to deprive him of his father-in-law’s property on a technical argument. Arion’s wife and children are dead, and he twice stresses the principle that everyone must “bear his own burdens” (i. e. pay his taxes). In the tradition of late-antique petitioners he declares that the officials are taking advantage of his moderation (metriotes) and uncontentiousness (apragmosynē). But after this classical plea he appeals to Sabinianus, in the new style, to pity (ὅπως οἰκτίρῃς) his old age and the disaster of his childlessness. In a complaint to the civic authorities of Hermopolis on 19 November, 326,19 a city councillor, Aurelius Didymus, describes how Eutychion, his household servant, had fallen under the control of one Hermes and been used to burgle his house while he was asleep. Didymus asks for the matter to be referred to the governor of the Thebaid, Valerius Victorinianus, at Antinoe, and the verso of the papyrus has been utilised by the authorities to refer the complaint on. This is not the plea of a helpless victim, and there is no suggestion that redress will call for Didymus to throw himself on the governor’s mercy. Instead, he writes as a man of substance whose opponent has treated him with contempt (καταφρονήσας). But coupled with this is the strangesounding claim that by humiliating him in this way Hermes has acted without mercy (ἄνευ ἐλεημοσύνης) toward him. [Ed.: The full reading, by P. Bureth, was ἐπεὶ δὲ [μετὰ] τοῦτ[ο ἄνευ ἐλ]εημοσύνης μου καταφρονήσας. In ZPE 69 (1987) 143–161, in the light of the reading by D. Hagedorn of a newly identified fragment, B. Kramer restored εἰς τοσοῦτο̣ ν τ[ῆς ἀπρ]αγ̣ μοσύνης μου καταφρονήσας. Hermes is thus accused of contempt for the easy temper (apragmosynē) of Didymus, not of mercilessness. See now SB 18 (1993) 14056.]

One may contrast this with the only earlier instance I have noted of eleēmosynē in the papyri. In a letter to Zeno, the well-documented estate-manager in the Arsinoite nome c. 260–240 BC,20 two swineherds appeal to him to have mercy on them (ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς). They admit they have done wrong and been fairly punished for it. But no one is innocent, they say, and the pigs and they alike will all perish if they are kept locked up any longer. No one else can help them. They take refuge only in his mercy (eleēmosynē). This word became a distinctively biblical term, without much currency otherwise in Greek litera“with the advent of the Roman governors…the voice of sympathy is dumb” and modifies this slightly by showing that, whereas Ptolemaic philanthropia as an ideal of rule declined somewhat (philanthropon becoming the word for a gratuity), it was to some extent replaced with that of euergesia. Bell does not discuss the language of mercy. ¹⁸ C. H. Roberts and E. G. Turner, Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John Rylands Library = P.Ryl. 4 (Manchester 1952) 659, l. 11. ¹⁹ J. Schwartz, Papyrus grecs de la Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg = P.Stras. (Strasburg 1963) 296, l. 10. ²⁰ C. C. Edgar, Zenon Papyri = P.Cair.Zen. 3 (Cairo 1928) 59495.2, 10.

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ture. The isolated attestation of it in a low-class papyrus document supports the argument that the Jewish translators of the Septuagint applied the vocabulary of the contemporary Greek of Ptolemaic Egypt.21 That it could have been a Jewish coinage reflected in the Zeno papyrus is especially improbable when one notes that it is two swineherds who are using the expression. For the better part of the next 600 years the word apparently fails to appear in the scores of thousands of papyrus documents we have recovered. Must we not then conclude that its rather incongruous reappearance in the far-from-abject statement of an upper-class Greek seeking redress against his servant and neighbour arises from a new high-level currency that is being given to the word by the Roman government’s assumption of the biblical ideal? Two decades after the complaint of Didymus, towards the mid-fourth century, we have an explicitly Christian application of the doctrine of mercy, in a letter addressed to Abinnaeus, commander of the Roman auxiliary forces. Since the author treats Abinnaeus as a “beloved brother”, uses the abbreviated nomina sacra and cites the New Testament saying (Mk 9:41, 42) on giving a cup of water, he may be assumed to be the presbyter Apa Mios who is known from other letters in the archive.22 He asks for his wife’s brother to be released from military service, or at least not drafted to be sent abroad with the expeditionary force. The widowed mother is dependent entirely on him (there is no suggestion that Abinnaeus and his wife might look after her). “May God recompense you for your mercy (ἐλεημοσύνην)”, adds the author, who takes it for granted his influence will prevail. It is noteworthy that in none of the instances of the word cited in this chapter (except for the story about Aristotle in n. 21) does it bear the technical sense of almsgiving. From 19 August, 328,23 we have the petition of the “unlettered” Aurelius Castor to the logistes of Oxyrhynchus, seeing enforcement of a property divi²¹ J. A. L. Lee (A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch [Chico 1983] 108) notes it amongst the many new formations of the koine vocabulary (3rd c. BC) that are taken into the Septuagint, demonstrating its close links with the contemporary vernacular. Our word is not low-class, however, since it is used in the same period by the Alexandrian poet Callimachus (Hymn to Delos 4.152). It is not found at all, however, in subsequent writers who might have been expected to use it, e. g. Josephus, Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, Lucian. Pending a more complete analysis one may therefore ask whether its reappearance in Diogenes Laertius (Vit. phil. 5.17, 3rd c. AD?) reflects the rapidly growing awareness of the term for the Christian charities of his time. He says that Aristotle was once criticised for giving alms to an evil man, and retorted that it was the man not his character that he pitied (ἠλέησα). One can imagine the Christian apologists using such a saying against the contemporary followers of the Aristotelian ban on works of mercy. Even if the episode did occur, the term for alms (ἐλεημοσύνην) will have been supplied by Diogenes in his re-telling of it. ²² H. I. Bell et al. The Abinnaeus Archive: Papers of a Roman Officer in the Reign of Constantius = P.Abinn. 2 (Oxford 1962) 19, l. 25. For another fourth-century allusion to the cup of water see G. H. R. Horsley (New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity 3 [1983] 100, l. 10) from a letter which illustrates the predicament of a man stranded without help in an accident. ²³ J. R. Rea, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri = P.Oxy. 43 (London 1975) 3126, col. ii, l. 11.

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sion against two women. He had bought a fourth share in the house they occupied jointly with the vendor, but they had been resisting his occupancy of it. Castor has already written to the prefect and obtained his endorsement, both documents being appended. In the petition to the prefect he protests that the others have taken advantage of his moderation (metriotes), and he casts himself at the prefect’s feet seeking as an act of mercy on him (ἐλεήσαντά μου) that he rule against the women. This parallels the case at n. 14 above where the plea relates simply to an injustice to be remedied at law, and there is no suggestion of a distinctively Christian emphasis in the term. Another plea to the logistes of Oxyrhynchus, however, probably from 331,24 may show that. Severinus submits a list of his creditors, an instruction he has obtained from the prefect to the logistes which invokes “the kindliness (eumeneia?) of the times” in favour of restraining them from their right of action against him, and a copy of his petition to the prefect claiming that “the piety (eusebeia) and humanity (philanthropia?) of the times demands help (boētheia) and mercy (eleos) for those who come to grief”. Invoking the high ideals of the time was a traditional part of the rhetoric of petitions.25 But since what is sought here is relief from a lawful debt it is not inconceivable that the petitioner is conscious of the Christian principle, though Constantine’s proclamations after his final victory (Eus. Vita Const. 2.24–60) do not go so far. Two private letters assigned by their editors to the fourth century make reference to the mercy of God. The first, found at Oxyrhynchus,26 is written by Hermias to his sister (sc. wife) about the unsympathetic response she is making to his inability to get his business away from home sorted out. Much of the letter is given over to pessimistic comments of a fatalistic kind. In the middle he asks whether he will be pressed to the point where God takes pity on him (ὁ θεὸς ἡμᾶς ἐλεήσῃ). Naldini reads this as showing noble resignation and an encouraging hope in the God of mercy. But the corresponding phrase used of the deliverance of Epaphroditus from illness (Phil 2:27) reflects a positive doctrine of divine control of the world. If Hermias is aware of this outlook on life, as he may well be, he may also be sarcastically rejecting it. The second letter, of unknown provenance27 does disclose a positive attitude to divine mercy, but is not included by Naldini in his collection. Eudae²⁴ G. Vitelli, Papiri greci e latini = PSI 7 (Florence 1925) 767, l. 37. ²⁵ J. L. White, The Form and Structure of the Official Petition (Missoula 1972); R. L. B.

Morris, ‘Reflections of Citizen Attitudes in Petitions from Roman Oxyrhynchus’, Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Congress of Papyrology (ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al.; Chico 1981) 363–370, noting the shift to appeals for pity in the second century – though none of them in fact uses the word; Napthali Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman Rule (Oxford 1983) 185–195. ²⁶ P. Grenfell & A. S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri = P.Oxy. 1 (London 1898) 120, l. 16; M. Naldini, Il Cristianesimo nell’ Egitto (Florence 1968) no. 62, l. 16. ²⁷ A. Bataille, Les Papyrus Fouad = P.Fouad 1(Cairo 1939) 80, l. 11; H. I. Bell, HTR 37 (1944) 193, n.17.

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mon, a cultivated doctor, complains to his mother and brothers of the lack of letters, and falls to speculating who is in the worse trouble. A court (?) victory however gave him momentary hope that they were to see at last the beginning of God’s mercy (ἀρχὴν … τοῦ ἐλεεῖσθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ).28 There follows a reference to Stethetos, identified as the priestess at the temple of (the goddess) Triphis, who has given three talents to stop something being referred to the prefect. Much later in the heavily damaged letter a reference is made to an inheritance followed by the expression, “Thanks be to God” (χὰρις δὲ τῶι θεῶι ἔσ̣ τ̣ ω). H. I. Bell cites a second-century, polytheistic parallel to this, but allows that the fourth-century date of Eudaemon’s expression is “perhaps an argument for a Christian origin”. It certainly discloses a more theistic view of the world than the letter of Hermias. There can be no doubt about the sentiments of a group of military recruits who took refuge in the monastery of Phoebammon in the Thebaid at the end of the fourth century.29 Their graffiti are preserved on its walls. They had deserted from the Roman army because of the harsh discipline of the commander, Secundinus. God had shown mercy to them (ἐλέησεν ἡμῖν ὁ θεός), led them to safety here and saved them all. Amongst the numerous liturgical and theological fragments preserved in the early papyri is an isolated sheet, written in ornate uncials, assigned to the end of the third or to the fourth century.30 It is entitled a “prayer” (proseuchē) on the verso, where someone also made notes of account (an offering?): – God, the ruler of all, who made heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them, help me, have mercy on me (ἐλέησόν με), wipe away my sins, save me in this and in the coming 5 age, through our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, through whom is the glory and the power for ages of ages, amen.

The text is of biblical (Ps 145:6, Acts 4:24, Rev 14:7; Eph 1:21) and liturgical inspiration (a form of doxology common in Egypt), but presumably adapted (note the singular pronouns) for personal use. The nomina sacra are not abbreviated as would be expected of an ecclesiastical copyist. No physical feature of the papyrus suggests that it was used as an amulet. But it represents the personal approach to God that was taught to believers, as has been seen in the case of Constantine. ²⁸ God here is ὁ θεός, a term that can have no connection with the goddess implied by the reference to her temple in what follows, nor does the mention of a priestess imply that Eudaemon had any connection with her cult. ²⁹ E. Kiessling, Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Ägypten = SB 8.1 (Wiesbaden 1965) 9802, l. 1. ³⁰ B. P. Grenfell & A. S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri = P.Oxy. 3 (London 1903) 407, l. 3.

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The need for intercessory prayer by others is stressed in a letter of Sourous preserved in the archive of Apa Paieous of c.330–340.31 Paieous is head of a monastery of Meletians, who were (like the Donatists) in schism from the Catholics over the looser discipline of the latter during the persecutions. Sourous asks Paieous to lift up his hands “in the semblance of a cross” so that God would annul the bond (cf. Col 2:14) of his sins. He had suffered “a diabolical transgression”, and is now writing to the heads of monastic houses up and down the land seeking their intercession. “To whom God is pitiful and merciful (οἰκτίρμων καὶ ἐλεήμων), do you also become pitiful and merciful by applying yourselves before God on my behalf.” Sourous is desperately complicated about his offence (and manages to give no hint of what it actually was) and was confused over the meaning of mercy, it seems. He appears to be claiming that God is giving him mercy, yet pleads frantically for the merciful intercession of his fellow monks. In later centuries the civil pleas and petitions continue. In the churches, mercy becomes institutionalised in both charity and liturgy. It also takes its place in the etiquette of polite address; the adjective “pitiable” (eleeinos) is a favourite self-designation of clergymen and monks in the sixth century. The seventh century, with Islam, produces a flood of formal references in the papyrus documents to the God who is “merciful” (eleēmōn). *** Modern Western society owes its deep-seated concern for the weak not to Athens but to Jerusalem. During the painful conflicts of late antiquity a profound reorientation of the culture took place. God was distinguished from the cosmos, as its creator. Man, too, was marked out from the rest of creation in God’s regard. It was a conscious dismantling of the supposed order of nature. At the same time the ladder of merit in society was dismantled. The powerful no longer rose to a god-like quality, leaving the weak to fall back to a subhuman level. The moral law of the Bible put all on the same footing. Just as all stood in need of the mercy of God, so none could justly despise or oppress another. In an age when the churches and their critics alike unite in telling us that Christians are a minority who should not expect others to adopt their standards, it would be profitable to concentrate on the true sources of the human values we all hold in common.

³¹ H. I. Bell, Jews and Christians in Egypt = P.Lond. 6 (London 1924) 1917, ll. 20, 22, 25.

Chapter 15

The Magical Use of Scripture in the Papyri* In his collection of Greek magical papyri (PGM), Preisendanz devoted a section to 38 texts which he classified as being of Christian origin. In addition, Christian (or Jewish) allusions occur in nine of the magical papyri proper.1 They are contained within the collection of 107 texts which Preisendanz had established by 1941, and which include the very extensive books of magic, such as ‘the great Paris magical papyrus.’2 Although the ratio of texts related in some way to Christianity to the rest of the texts in PGM is nearly 1:2, in terms of bulk the non-Christian ones take up nearly six times the space.3 The Fathers of the Church nevertheless would have been shocked by this association, although they were familiar enough with the facts which had given rise to it. Everyone in the fourth century knew that magic was one of the major forces in society. Like the state, the churches fought constantly to suppress it. But the trouble was that ordinary believers had to take practical steps to protect themselves, particularly against the demons that crept into their houses in the form of scorpions, or the various kinds of fever. It was hardly surprising if some of the protective devices took on the colour of the magical system which controlled the demonic world. What made the engagement between the church and magic so close and desperate was the fact that neither side doubted the reality of the forces to which the other appealed.4 * E. W. Conrad and E. G. Newing (eds), Perspectives on Language and Text (Winona Lake, IND. 1987) 339–349. This chapter was originally presented to the 14th International Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Winnipeg 1980. Some details have been contributed by S. R. Pickering and others at Macquarie University working towards the proposed ‘Corpus Papyrorum Christianarum’ [now PCE, ch. 11 above, table I] . ¹ K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae (2nd ed. A. Henrichs; Stuttgart 1973) III, IV, VII, X, XII, XXII, XXXVI, LXII, LXXVII, the nine items in col. 9 of my Table 1(a). ² PGM IV, the printed text occupying 57 pages. ³ For texts and discussions of some items that have appeared since Preisendanz, see G. H. R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity: A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1976 (1981), and subsequent volumes in the series, Index 3, s. v. ‘magic’. Other recently published texts include E. Bresciani et al., ‘Nuovi papiri magici in copto, greco e aramaico’, Studi classici e orientali 29 (1979) 15–130; Z. Ritoók, ‘Ein neuer griechischer Zauberpapyrus’, Acta antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 26 (1978) 433–456. ⁴ E. R. Dodds (Pagans and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine [Cambridge 1965]) explores the common ground. O. Böcher (Dämonenfurcht und Dämonenabwehr: Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte der

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Practitioners of magic aimed to harness to their ends every known source of supernatural power. The appearance of Jehovah in their lists proves only that they were not written by Jews or Christians, neither of whom could have coupled that name with the exotic range of other divinities that was drawn into them.5 Nor is there usually any point in trying to tell from which quarter the suggestion of this particular name has come. A reference to “Jesus the God of the Hebrews” shows that those who made up the lists were not too concerned with the finer feelings of true believers of any sort.6 On the magical merry-go-round, anything went. Some magical entrepreneurs had even noticed the Christian fad of abbreviating certain sacred names, and copied it in their products. The so-called nomina sacra are not necessarily proof of Christian authorship.7 From the Christian side, it is clear that some of the texts in PGM were composed as a counter-blast to magical operations, as is PGM 9 (VH 720). This is a sixth-century prayer to God, “despot” and παντοκράτωρ and Father of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and to St Serenus, to drive off from Silvanus, his servant, “the demon of enchantment”, and every kind of illness, so that he will be able to say the Lord’s Prayer, which he then cites, along with two gospel incipits and some scraps of the creed, before a final plea to St Serenus to intercede for his health. The question for us is whether this little battery of sacred texts itself constitutes a device of apotropaic magic. Since the papyrus was found folded and tied up with red thread, it is unlikely that Silvanus was using it as an aide-mémoire when saying his prayers. He surely knew them by heart anyway. The written version clearly secretes them for some more mysterious purpose even than reading. Another tempting case is PGM 15c (VH 1017), a sixth-century prayer for vengeance. It appeals to the Lord, the “despot of the οἰκουμένη”, for judgement on an adversary who has turned the writer out of his place. It is not restitution however that is sought, but retribution: “let him fall into hands more merciless than his own”. This vindictive spirit may suggest the malevolence of the socalled ‘sympathetic’ magic. But even though the author may have exceeded the gospel limit on passing judgement, one must ask where in this case the mechanism lies that would justify its classification under the heading of magic at all. Unless one is to class all intercession as magic, the worst one can say is that the aggrieved party has taken the rather obsessive step of having his christlichen Taufe [Stuttgart 1970]) details the various manifestations of demons and ways of meeting them. ⁵ PGM III.76: Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, followed by Mithras (80). ⁶ PGM IV.3019, 20; J. van Haelst, Catalogue des papyrus littéraires juifs et chrétiens (Série Papyrologie 1; Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1976), subsequently referred to as “VH”, no. 1074. ⁷ C. H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (London 1979) 26–48, 83.

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prayer cast into written form. PGM 16 (IV) is a more elaborate case, which confines itself to asking God to stop helping the adversary. Of the 38 Christian texts in PGM, 15 make conscious use of scriptural material. The catena of familiar texts in the prayer of Silvanus (PGM 9) is paralleled slightly earlier in PGM 5c (VH 897, which carries Ps 21:20–23, “Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog!…I will tell of thy name to my brethren….Stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel”, with incipits of Luke, Matthew, and John) and in PGM 19 (VH 423) which has all four gospel incipits, with John 1:23 (“He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’, as the prophet Isaiah said”), Ps 90:1 (“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High”), a doxology, amen, crosses, and abbreviated nomina sacra. Although this is the earliest text of its type (IV/V), the degree of mechanisation seems extreme. Ps 90:1 is actually followed by the words καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς (= etc.). Is the writer reminding Christ (or the devil? – who is supposed to read these things?) that the opening words are to do duty for the lot? An exorcism of the sixth century (PGM 10, VH 1002) reduces the matter to a simple reference to “the four (?) gospels of the Son”, with no actual citation to refresh anyone’s memory as to the words intended. The reduction of Scripture to a formal device is apparent both in the hands of the ignorant and in those of the clever. PGM 17 (VH 917) of V/VI copied out the Lord’s Prayer and the exorcism of Solomon in such a garbled way that the editor has proposed that in the original the two texts stood in adjacent sets of columns (three in either case), while the copyist must have transcribed each line right across the whole set of six columns without noticing the nonsense he was creating. Alternatively, he may have been a cunning man, adding to the mystification by confusing the trail. In PGM 4 (VH 341) of VI, Matt 4:23–24 (“And he went about…healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick…and he healed them”) is written out on a piece of parchment in such a way that the words themselves form a pattern of crosses. The writer clearly has his mind on what he is doing, and has chosen the verses for their content, as the title shows: “the gospel of healing according to Matthew”. The need for healing and for protection against illness gives rise to the studied appeal to healing episodes from the Bible. An amulet of the fifth century (PGM 5b, VH 959) invokes “the God of the sheep-pool”, a reference to the healing of the paralytic at Bethzatha (John 5:2). An ostracon of VI/VII (PGM O 3, VH 1055) likewise appeals to the Christ of “the sheep-pool of Soloam [sic] called Bethsaida” and of Solomon’s porch (the latter a reference to the healing of the lame man in Acts 3:11). An undated text (PGM 23, VH 876) adapts the story of Peter’s walking on the water (Matt 14:30–33). PGM 18 (VH 754) of V/ VI appeals to the raiser of Lazarus (John 11:11) and healer of Peter’s wife’s mother (Matt 8:14) and “of many unspoken healings beyond what is written

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in the gospels”, to heal the bearer of “this divine phylactery”. PGM 7 (VH 584) of the fifth century retails apocryphal encounters with Jesus by both men and angels in a context of medical prescriptions. It is clear that the details of the healing ministry in the canonical gospels did not go far enough for many people.8 But quite apart from explicit allusions to healing in the texts, editors have made the habit of attributing various excerpted passages of Scripture to the desire for healing or protection. Van Haelst’s catalogue of Christian and Jewish literary papyri now enables us to take a more comprehensive view of the position. It should be understood that van Haelst confines himself to Greek (and Latin) papyri (as does PGM), but including texts written on other materials (e. g., parchment, ostraca, wooden tablets, leaves of metal) that have been retrieved directly from where they were abandoned in antiquity, as distinct from those MSS handed down through the library tradition, whether by repeated copying or by direct preservation of ancient copies. Practically all the texts listed in van Haelst are of Christian origin, the Jewish texts being included because of the difficulty of attribution in the case of some biblical texts. The classification of van Haelst’s list in Table 1a is based largely upon the information given in his index of notabilia varia. This is, however, neither complete nor systematic. There is no heading for ‘magic’ for example. (The nine magical texts in my column 9 are those catalogued under that section by van Haelst, although there are others in his collection which need the benefit of a cross-reference to magic, at least.) Each text in van Haelst is, of course, only listed in one section, though many are appropriate to several at once. For example, Psalm citations often crop up in texts mainly composed of liturgical materials, and are placed rightly in that section. The Psalm citations in my cols 4–6 are those which van Haelst has judged to be the texts best classified in the biblical section. The three subdivisions, however, are mine, not van Haelst’s. Col. 6 contains cases where he has noted a strong suggestion that a text may have been used as an amulet, even where counter-suggestions have also been made. Col. 7 contains texts where such a suggestion is not recorded in van Haelst (or is not strongly made), but where the question should be raised for lack of a clearly recorded or convincing non-amuletic explanation of the excerpt. Such cases are often attributed to “private liturgical use”, whatever that is. The total in col. 11 (Table 1b) thus represents a gross figure of possibly magical texts that will need pruning by further checking on the details. Van Haelst himself is working on a corpus of Christian magical texts, and I believe ⁸ M. Naldini, ‘Testimonianze cristiane negli amuleti greco-egizi’, Augustinianum 21 (1981) 179–188, re-examines PGM 18 in reviewing the question of the gap between popular piety and theology in the fourth and fifth centuries.

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Table 1a. A Classification of the Texts Registered in J. van Haelst, Catalogue des papyrus littéraires juifs et chrétiens (1976) 1

2

Date

II + earlier II/III III III/IV IV IV/V V V/VI VI + “Byz.” VI/VII VII + late VII/VIII VIII VIII/IX IX IX/X X X/XI XI + later no date Omitted Total

4 5 6 Psalms on single sheets, ostraca, tablets: Are they amulets? No Poss. Prob.

7 8 Other ‘amulets’:

9

Total entries

3 Psalms, bookform (roll, codex)

Biblical

Magical Quasitexts magical texts†

25 14 104 32 160 53 111 86 142 101 124 43 23 3 11 9 17 23 18 113 18

4 1 4 6 12 4 8 5 6 8 3 7 2 1 – 1 3 2 1 3 –

– – – – 3 1 2 – 2 – 3 2 1 – – – – 5 1 – –

– – – – 4 – – 2 4 – 7 – – – 1 – – – – 1 –

– – – – 2* – 2 7 6 13 2 3 1 – – – – – – 2 –

– – 2* 2* 4* 3 – 1 2 1 2 1 – – – – – – – 1 –

1230

81

20

19 77

38

19

All the rest

10

1 – – 3* 6 7 7 8 13 4 6 1 – – – – – – – 3 –

1 – 2 – 4 2 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

1 – – 1 4 1 2 1 10 1 4 1 1 – – – – – – 5 –

59

9

32

* These texts, except van Haelst nos 359 (a pocket codex), 1136 (glossary), and 482 (Acts excerpts), are described in Table 2. † van Haelst’s exorcisms, imprecations, oracles, and Christian texts in PGM insofar as not already included in cols 5–9.

from personal communication that he expects to go further than many editors in using this classification. I guess, however, that this will result in the confirmation as amulets of many texts already included in my col. 6, but not in the classification as amulets of all or even many of the texts I have entered in col. 5. Nevertheless a comparison of the figures at the bottoms of cols 2 and 11 shows that as many as 14 % of all Christian literary texts retrieved directly from Egypt, in the judgement of some editors, reflect magical ideas or practice in some way. To allow a safe margin for ambiguous cases, and to make calculation easier, let us assume a proportion of 10 %.

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Table 1b. Some Comparisons of the Figures in Table 1a

11 Totals cols 5–10

12 Col. 11 as % of 2

13 PGM nonChristian texts

14 Cols 4–6 as % of 3

15 Cols 8–10 as % of 5–7

16 Date

3 – 4 6 24 13 11 19 35 19 21 6 2 – 1 – – – – 12 –

12 – 4 19 15 25 10 22 25 19 17 14 9 – 9 – – – – 11 –

15 10 16 6 20 8 6 2 3 3 1 – 4 – – – – – – 9 4

– – – – 75 25 50 58 180 200 163 400 209 71 100 – 11 62 – – 250 100 100 –

– – 100 200 140 333 450 90 192 36 91 50 100 – – – – – – 200 –

II + earlier II/III III III/IV IV IV/V V V/VI VI +“Byz.” VI/VII VII +“late” VII/VIII VIII VIII/IX IX IX/X X X/XI XI + later no date omitted

176

14

107

95

132

225 220

100

50

Total

The incidence of such texts is not evenly spread across the centuries. Literary texts on papyrus are almost always dated on palaeographical grounds. An experienced editor will normally assign a text to a particular century, or even to one half of it. Given the pace at which fashions in handwriting change, greater accuracy is impossible. Where rival estimates of date are given, I have chosen the one likely to reflect the better judgement and information. Where the dates were not confined to my schematic pattern, I have simplified them to make them fit, although this normally mis-states what the editors intended. Subject to all these cautions, however, a clear pattern emerges. The 10 % thresh-

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old is crossed at III/IV, and the Christian magical texts rise to a peak of 25 % in VI before sinking back below the 10 % in VIII. We may relate this in the first instance to the earlier wave of magical texts proper, represented by the sample of nine in col. 9 and by the 107 texts registered in PGM (which include the nine) in col. 13. They are concentrated heavily in the early centuries of the table. Over half are IV or earlier, with IV showing the largest tally, and including the largest individual texts.9 It is clear that there is an era of non-Christian magic which ushers in an era of Christian texts thought to be related in some way to magical thinking. The fourth century is the turning point. Here we face clearly another form of the classic dilemma of fourth century social history. Did the churches win the battle against magic by driving it out, or by taking it into their system? This brings us to the specific concern of the chapter. What was the function of the quotations from the Bible in this Auseinandersetzung? The popularity of the Scriptures was a novel cultural phenomenon. Nowhere else in the classical tradition had a body of ideas in written form been systematically propagated across the whole range of the social ranking system. The effects were profound, creating a new common culture, wider even than Hellenism had been. In the villages of Egypt the church reader led the way in familiarising people with Scripture, and the catechumenate systematically trained them in it. The ancient language of Egypt was revived, borrowing the simple alphabet of the Greeks. For the first time in 3,500 years of civilisation, the ordinary people achieved literacy: they could probably often read even where they could not write.10 The gospel which created Coptic literature centred on miracles, and it is clear from the papyri that people saw in the healings and exorcisms of Jesus the pattern and cause of their own deliverance. But the whole corpus of Scripture, especially the Psalms, presented models for the life directly protected by God against all evils. At first the books of the Bible were copied, whether individually or in groups, in book form only. We possess nearly 100 fragments of such copies, often selective or idiosyncratic in production, dating from before Constantine.11 There is practically no evidence, however, for the kind of excerpting that became the practice later. A III/IV century ostracon of Judith 15:1–7 (VH 80, the Israelite victory over the army of Holophernes after Judith had despatched him) may have been inspired by a persecution of Christians which ⁹ Six of the nine major magical papyri are dated IV, two III, and one IV/V. The first official ban on divination attested in the papyri dates to 199, the year Septimius Severus visited Egypt, G. M. Parássoglou, P. Coll. Youtie 1 (1976) 30, reproduced and discussed by Horsley, New Documents 1976, 12. ¹⁰ E. Wipszycka, ‘Le christianisme et le degré d’alphabétisation dans l’Égypte Byzantine’, paper read to the 16th International Congress of Papyrology, New York, 28 July 1980, cf. now, Études (Rome 1996) 107–126; on the broad point, see E. A. Judge, The Conversion of Rome: Ancient Sources of Modern Social Tensions (1980), reproduced as ch. 16 below.

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ended in a dramatic deliverance. Otherwise the earliest cases of excerpting are nos 1 and 4 in Table 2. In the fourth century, whole Bibles were first put together in our sense, by order of Constantine. From that time on excerpting becomes prominent. Take the case of the Psalms, and compare col. 3 with cols 4–6 combined (col. 14). There are no excerpts at all until the fourth century, but for the two centuries beginning V/VI there are more than twice as many excerpts as book copies. The practice then tapers off again. Is there any connection between this wave of excerpting, especially of the Psalms, and the Christian reaction to magic? One must also ask about the effect of Jewish practice.12 The tephillin, or phylacteries, of Matt. 23:5 followed out the command of Deut 6:4–9, 11:18– 23, in literally binding the Lord’s words to one’s person. But the passages themselves specify that this is intended as a sign of the covenant, and is part of the obligation which the sons of Israel took upon themselves to teach to their children. The Palestinian Talmud, however, permitted the use of Psalm 90 (“He who dwells in the shelter of the most High…”) as a prophylactic. The same psalm has an overwhelming preponderance amongst the Christian excerpts from the fourth century onwards. Its coupling with the gospel incipits and other formulaic texts helps to explain the purpose of invoking these combinations. John Chrysostom (Hom. 19.4=PG 49.196) speaks of women and children carrying the four incipits in a metal or leather capsule round their necks, for protection.13 But does this deserve to be called magic? Does the application of the written text unleash supernatural power, or does it step up what God is expected to do in any case? Is it a form of personal reassurance, or of public testimony? The fathers debated the finer points of the practice. It was clearly widespread in the churches. Canon 36 of the first Council of Laodicea (AD 360) forbids the clergy themselves from making them. Augustine believed he knew the difference between magic and medicine, the former being when you hang the herbs around your neck, unless you suppose their natural effect still works from there (De doc. Chr. 2.19.45). But he permits one to sleep with a copy of John’s gospel under one’s pillow when in fever (In Joh. tr. 6.1). Chrysostom however ¹¹ E. A. Judge and S. R. Pickering, ‘Biblical Papyri Prior to Constantine: Some Cultural Implications of their Physical Form’, Prudentia 10 (1978) 1–13. ¹² J. Goldin, ‘The Magic of Magic and Superstition’, Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity (ed. E. Schüssler Fiorenza; Notre Dame 1976) 115–147; J. H. Tigay, ‘On the Term “Phylacteries”’, HTR 71 (1979) 45–52; R. W. Daniel, ‘Some Phylakteria’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 25 (1977) 145–154. ¹³ R. Kaczynski, Das Wort Gottes in Liturgie und Alltag der Gemeinden des Johannes Chrysostomus (Freiburg 1974), shows that Chrysostom believed the Bible would keep devils out of a house, but nevertheless stressed the need to read it and internalise the message to ensure God’s presence: ordinary people however were coy about the private reading of Scripture, which seemed monastic.

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Table 2. The Earliest Christian Amulets Registered by J. van Haelst (a) Job 33:23–24 (b) Job 34:10–15 superior to LXX, fine textual sense, ns* Matt 6:10–13 2. 347 P.Ant. 2.54† III Antinoopolis correct text, but breaks Double leaf, off in mid-word crude literary hand III/IV (a) Jude 4–5 3. 558 P.Oxy. Oxyrhynchus (b) Jude 7–8 34.2684† eccentric text, Double leaf, amasubliterate spelling, ns* teurish half-cursive hand (a) Heb 1:1 4. 536 P.Amh. 1.3† III/IV (b) Gen 1:1–5 in both Square sheet cut LXX & Aquila versions from doc. of 268– Fayyum with omissions, & ns* 281 referring to in latter pope of Alexandria 5. 968 P.Princ. 159 III/IV κύριοι ἄγγελοι καὶ Palimpsest sheet, ἀγαθοί, allay fever of coarse papyrus, not known N. today, this hour, unlettered hand this moment, now! Echoes Ps 145 (6):6 6. 952 P.Oxy. 3.407 III/IV (= Acts 14:15), Unused sheet, ornate but Oxyrhynchus Eph 1:21 (?), irregular uncials ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος (a) Rom 1:1–17 7. 490 P.Oxy. 2.209† IV careless spelling, Unused sheet, large rude uncials Oxyrhynchus omission, ns* (b) cursive note on produce (?) IV (a) Matt 6:9–13 & 8. 345 P.Oslo 2 Cor 13:13 inv. 1644 Unused sheet, Oxyrhynchus (b) Ps 90 (1):1–4 & others (?) – all large unskilled (?) defective hand, mixed forms Ps 1:1 9. 84 P.Taur. inv. 27 IV Unused sheet, heavy, rounded hand not known IV (a) Ps 118:10–11 in 10. 222 Aeg. 15 Coptic p. 415† Limestone ostra- Deir el-Bahri (b) Ps 117:19–20 in Greek misspelled con, single hand 1.

c. 220 275 BKT 8.17† Sheet cut from 2c document, elegant not business hand known

† photograph included

Truncated excerpts focus on angeloi thanatephoroi and pantokrator, to pray for healing? But no folds or wear Miniature codex – slits cut for binding, ed. suggests a toy book: 6 lines per page Miniature codex – two holes for binding, each page twice as broad as high, and smaller than 2 above: 4 or 3 lines per page Genesis versions in single column with wide margins, so that if sheet was folded in onto it, Hebrews (also centred) became visible at the top ZAGOUREPAGOURE formula written in front of the prayer, botrueidōs, and sheet folded so as to fit into a cylinder Entitled proseuche on verso and invokes pantokrator to wipe away sins now and forever; verso: cursive notes On verso p(…)se apostolos in hand of (a); (b) begins Aurelios Paulo (s…); signs of folding; tied to doc. dated 316 Begins with cross; ornamental line between (a) and (b); verso blank; no signs of folding

Text in red, christogram at beginning After (a) “have pity on me, Papas”; no magical signs or content; both follow LXX, but (b) defective memory

* nomina sacra

said it was useless hanging a gospel text above your bed unless you also put alms into a container kept there for the purpose (Hom. 43–4=PG 61.373). Modern Western Christians who put up Bible texts in their houses or on their

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cars and put money into their missionary boxes presumably do not think that they are doing it for magical or protective purposes. W. H. Worrell has remarked on the comparative rarity of amulets in the Coptic tradition, as distinct from that of the Abyssinian church. He says they are also poorly attested from antiquity, and he wonders whether Shenute’s campaigns did not largely succeed in driving such practices out amongst the Copts.14 I am not in a position to examine the Coptic texts myself. In any case, there are serious dating problems, with the lack of any adequate palaeographical history such as we have for Greek papyri. But the Ausgewählte koptische Zaubertexte of A. M. Kropp do not show up any features not well-attested in the Greek record. One may contrast the modern Arabic MSS from Egypt which do something quite distinctive. There is a clear connection with antiquity visible in the style of drawing the magical characters, which has persisted with remarkable stability through 1500 years of copying and two changes of language and script since the time of the Greek magical papyri. The Arabic MSS provide a guide to the systematic magical use of the psalms. The direct transfer of potency is made very clear in many cases by the mechanisms prescribed.15 If you are planting vines, you write Psalm 26 on a piece of paper, wash it with water, and put the water on the plants. If you read Psalm 75 over a cup of water and drink it, you go to sleep – or in an alternative text, it disconcertingly notes, you stay awake. Psalm 89 read over a cup of water and shared between a man and a woman provides for contraception. But in other cases the application is quite general. Psalm 90 for example is a phylactery against anything you might be afraid of. One can see the sense of the content of the psalm in other cases, too, as with Psalm 33, to be said three times a day when captured by brigands, or Psalm 118 (the long one) to be read morning and night for 70 days by a governor in danger of dismissal. (On the other hand, the same psalm read three times over a fisherman’s line will stop him catching anything.) Psalm 31, for getting rid of unrequited love, is very well-chosen for content – and contrasts with the ruthless position of the Greek magical love-charms.16 Psalm 119 is also appropriate to its purpose – marital harmony. Mixed up with the more practical applications are more spiritual ones, and the basic theological viewpoint of the psalms is not lost sight of. Psalm 26, for example, providing for its efficacy to be applied through ointment to the sick, adds to the prescription, “if God wills”.

¹⁴ W. H. Worrell, The Coptic MSS in the Freer Collection (New York 1923) 127, 381–382. ¹⁵ N. H. Heinen and T. Bianquis, La magie par les Psaumes (Paris 1975), G. Viaud, Les 151

Psaumes de David dans la magie copte avec le clef (Paris 1977). ¹⁶ S. Kambitsis, BIAO 76 (1976) 213–223, publishes a new example, reproduced and discussed by Horsley, New Documents 1976, 8.

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II. Documents of Late Antiquity

These modern systematic guides do not provide a direct road back to our papyrus excerpts. I introduce them simply to sharpen the question of the kind of mentality and practice that is documented by the fragments of the ancient tradition. The systematic analysis and re-edition of the steadily accumulating papyrus evidence should enable us to define more closely how the Bible was applied to daily life in late antiquity.17

¹⁷ Recent stocktakings include J. Engemann, ‘Zur Verbreitung magischer Übelabwehr in der nichtchristlichen und christlichen Spätantike’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 18 (1975) 22–49; P. Crasta, ‘Graeco-Christian Magical Papyri’, Studia Papyrologica 18 (1979) 31–40; D. E. Aune, ‘Magic in Early Christianity’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.23.2 (1980), 1507–1557; J. Schwartz, ‘Papyri magicae Graecae und magische Gemmen’, Die orientalischen Religionen im Römerreich (ed. M. J. Vermaseren; Leiden 1981) 485–509; A. Biondi, ‘Le citazione bibliche nei papiri magici cristiani greci’, Studia Papyrologica 20 (1981) 93–127.

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Chapter 16

The Conversion of Rome: Ancient Sources of Modern Social Tensions* The basic proposition of this chapter is that the conversion of Rome to Christianity was effected through a combination of intellectual with social forces unprecedented in the experience of the classical world. The fourth century AD was the first age in which serious conflicts of ideas impinged directly upon government and the social order. It is the conflict between Athens and Jerusalem, which was built into our cultural tradition at that time, that has since brought us to the argumentative, progressive, open societies of the West.

The conversion of Rome is told in miniature in four papyrus documents from the villages of Egypt.1 In the first (P. Oxy. 42.3035, published in 1974), an order is issued for the arrest of Petosorapis, son of Horus. Where we should expect the name of his occupation, he is described as chresianos. Since no other explanation of this term has been found, one may assume that he was known as a minister of the society which the general public (though not its members) had long come to speak of as “Christian”. (The variant spelling may be explained as a phonetic one.) If so, this is not only the earliest dated papyrus evidence of the new faith (since the many earlier biblical papyri are not precisely dated2), but presumably the earliest known reference to it in an official document surviving in contemporary form from anywhere in the empire (28 February 256). It is noteworthy that the order is addressed to the officials of a village, Mermertha. Both classical civilisation and the life of the churches had been the exclusive property of the cities. But the papyri now begin to tell us the story of a profound cultural change. The churches are carrying urban institutions and ideas into * This chapter was first delivered as a lecture to The Macquarie University Convocation on 14 April 1978. Publication no. 1 of the Macquarie Ancient History Association (Sydney 1980) pp. 28, with sub-headings now added. ¹ The texts and translations are reproduced in an appendix. For the literature on them see E. A. Judge & S.R Pickering, ‘Papyrus Documentation of Church and Community in Egypt to the mid-Fourth Century’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 20 (1977) 47–71. For full details of works referred to by the conventional papyrological sigla (P. Oxy., etc.) see G. S. R. Thomas & S. R. Pickering, Papyrus Editions held in Australian Libraries, 2nd edition, North Ryde (1974). [Ed.: See now http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/ papyrus/texts/clist.html] ² E. A. Judge and S. R. Pickering, ‘Biblical Papyri prior to Constantine: Some Cultural Implications of their Physical Form’, Prudentia 10 (1978) 1–13, give a complete list and analysis of the evidence.

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the third world of ancient society, that of the peasantry whose unseen labour supported the parasitical glories of city life. We do not know why Petosorapis was to be arrested. There is no other action against Christians recorded for that year.3 But it looks as if the official eye is already clearly focussed on the new centre of influence in the villages. The second document (P. Oxy. 33.2673, published in 1968) was written for Aurelius Ammonius, son of Copreus, who calls himself “lector of the former church of the village of Chysis”. This is the earliest dated reference (5 February 304) in a papyrus document to the word ekklesia (though a list of street wardens from Oxyrhynchus, P. Oxy. 1.43, which seems to refer to two churches, could be earlier). Apart from a business letter (P. Amh. 1.3a, written between 264 and 282), which refers to Maximus, the pope (papas) of Alexandria, and to a “lector” (who need not be an ecclesiastical one), it is also the earliest instance in the papyri of the use of an ecclesiastical title. It is interesting that we should begin to pick up this terminology first in civil documents. Papyrus letters of an earlier stage between believers preserve no trace of such institutional terms. Again, note the village location, and the substantial range of property which the government expects a church to possess (although this one at Chysis, further up river, had nothing that was on the list). Note also that the lector cannot write Greek. Presumably he had read out the scriptures in church in Coptic, until it was broken up on Diocletian’s order. The government is well aware of the importance of the new institution, even in the most remote locality. From only twenty years later (6 June 324) comes the third document (P. Coll. Youtie 77, published in 1976), which shows the Constantinian establishment already in full effect.4 Isidorus of Karanis is an impoverished but litigious farmer known to us from a voluminous archive running well back into the third century. Since this is the last of many such petitions from him, we may suppose the assault he reports was fatal. Nowhere else in his papers had any reference to Christianity been detected. But here at the very end it has unexpectedly surfaced in the form of a deacon and a monk. Antoninus is the earliest deacon known from the papyrus record. Isaac is the earliest monk so far referred to anywhere. Even in the vast ecclesiastical literature all the references to monasticism are from works written later, so that it has been possible in the past to doubt the tradition that attributed the adoption of the term monachos for ascetics to St Antony, who is supposed to have started the fashion ³ I now think this implies too much. An order for arrest did not include the charge, which could have been an ordinary crime in this case, with chresianos being the official way of referring to the occupation of deacon or presbyter. ⁴ Though it should not have been, since this is still several months before the final overthrow of Licinius, who had in recent years been attempting to disestablish the churches again, without effect in the Fayyûm obviously. For full discussion of this document, see E. A. Judge, ‘The Earliest Use of Monachos for “Monk” (P. Coll. Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 20 (1977) 72–89, reproduced as ch. 12 above.

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about 305. Our new papyrus, however, sharply alters the scene, for here is a monk who can be taken as much for granted as a deacon (and that in a document that will have to stand up in a court of law), without any need to specify further what such styles might mean. It is noteworthy that our earliest monk should appear neither in the cities, where the literary admirers of asceticism were concentrated, nor in the remote desert or monasteries into which the tradition projected its heroes, but in the petty world of village violence and poverty – in a fight over a single cow. By the time of our fourth document, in the age of Constantius (P. Abinn. 55), deacons and presbyters, and their churches, have become prominent features of the papyrus documents of Egyptian village life. A presbyter from the Fayum could even call himself “pope” (P. Ross.-Georg. 2.28), like the great papas of Alexandria itself. The parish church for its part may now be referred to as the “catholic”, or principal, church of the village, to distinguish it from subordinate or rival bodies. This petition of the deacon, Heron, illustrates the high status in their small world assumed by the servants of such a church. Abinnaeus was the regional military commander, guarding a fort against desert raiders who never came. All the trouble is internal. There has been something worse than the usual breakdown of village justice. Abinnaeus is appealed to by everyone as the local magnate who can make things work. His own power stems from personal visits to Constantinople, months away from the Fayum. But Aurelius Heron also has influential connections. Unlike other petitioners, he is no humble suppliant. He begins with a sermonising note to remind Abinnaeus of his responsibilities, and ends with a firm display of rank. The army and the church speak to each other on more or less equal terms. In a Melitian papyrus (P. Lond. 6.1914) of the previous decade we even see a military commander in Alexandria making public amends for atrocities committed by his troops against the visiting clergy. We are already on the threshold of the medieval order of power, and the civil authorities are seriously overshadowed. Unlike other petitioners, Heron does not even bother to ask Abinnaeus to ensure that the authorities see that justice is done. He calmly requests direct restitution from the military itself, “for I am a deacon of the catholic church”. It is a symptom of the end for the thousand-year rule of republican humanism. We are watching it take place at a level in society that the Graeco-Roman city had ignored.

1. How Was Rome Converted? But let me not deceive you. It will not be the thesis of this lecture that the church emerged from below to conquer classical society as an “internal proletariat”. This has long been the reigning orthodoxy, cultivated alike by ecclesias-

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tical and Marxist historians, and summed up in Toynbee’s very misleading phrase. It is just twenty years since I began in this city to propound an alternative view, which has since been taken up elsewhere and substantiated, so that in the latest analysis of the matter it has been called the “new consensus”.5 It goes like this. The New Testament communities were not a popular movement in the sense that they arose from below, and were led by simple, uneducated people. Certainly they had nothing much to do with the metropolitan elite of Rome, with which most of the extant literature is concerned. But equally they were entirely remote from the vast mass of people, who were buried on the land. In their Pauline form especially, the New Testament communities belong to the great Hellenistic cities, the intellectual centres of the Greek East, and spring from the highly argumentative activities of well-educated travelling experts. In the various centres they are promoted by the well-to-do leaders of the local Hellenistic-Jewish establishment. In that respect, from the social point of view, the gospel was not differently placed from other sets of ideas that were being propagated at the time.6 From the start, however, a striking new development appears. Regular associations of people were formed which consciously cut across several distinct grades of the social status system. The well-established patrons who promoted St Paul and others were expected to draw their domestic servants and clients into a new order of relationships. This deliberate breaking of rank was imposed by St Paul not only for what may be called ideological reasons (that is, his conception of the meaning of the crucifixion), but because of his own experience of status reversal downwards, which helped him give meaning to the paradox of the rejection of Christ. The social effects of the new order are as clear as they were unprecedented in classical society. For the first time argumentation about God, man and the world, and about the grounds for human behaviour in society, is being lifted bodily out of the cultural sanctuaries of philosophy, to which an elite system of education had confined it, and put to work in confrontation with the accepted social order. Such ideas had hitherto been insulated by the ranking system against any test of social practicality. But now a response is demanded in terms of the re-ordering of day-to-day social relations. The result is the incredibly rich and influential experience of the New Testament communities.7 ⁵ A. J. Malherbe, Social Aspects of Early Christianity (Baton Rouge 1977) 31; R. Scroggs, ‘The Sociological Interpretation of the New Testament: the Present State of Research’, New Testament Studies 26 (1980) 164–179. ⁶ E. A. Judge, ‘St Paul and Classical Society’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 15 (1972) 19–36, reproduced now in Social Distinctives, 73–97. ⁷ E. A. Judge, ‘St Paul as a Radical Critic of Society’, Interchange 16 (1974), 191–203 (reproduced now in Social Distinctives, 99–115); R. J. Banks, Paul’s idea of Community (Sydney 1979).

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In no sort of philosophically predetermined form, a whole new range of ideas on behaviour is put into practice in a working experiment within the securely established Graeco-Roman order of society. Instead of the old status grades, bound up with nationality, culture, ownership and gender, there was to be created a new body of relations between people “in Christ”. Each would serve the others, on the strength of a fresh and individual endowment of the Spirit given to him for their good, and not for his own magnification. Paul envisaged a total liberation from the old order, but, paradoxically, not its immediate dissolution. It must even be sustained against premature collapse. It was the womb that must labour to give birth to the new world on the promised day. In the meantime the new way of life would be practised in the church. This paradox of now-but-not-yet reached an acute crisis with the conversion of Constantine. Was this the very dawning of the day, and was Christ now to rule the whole world through Caesar, or was the church merely to be sold out to the old order? So, on the one hand, Eusebius, and so, on the other, the Donatists and even, in a sense, their great antagonist, St Augustine. For the outside observer in the fourth century, like Ammianus, all that need have been involved was a change of religion. But the meetings which had first assembled in the wake of Paul’s preaching would hardly have been recognised by their contemporaries as religious societies. Their main activity was not that of a cult in any recognisable classical sense. That would have demanded ritual, order, decorum – not to speak of a cult image and shrine. The churches were later to acquire such trappings, and to take over many of the functions of the classical cults. Religion provided the supernatural guarantees for the existing order. In a recently published second- or third-century papyrus (P. Oxy. 36.2782) a priest writes to instruct a priestess to go to the temple of Demeter in the village of Sinkepha “to perform the usual sacrifices on behalf of our lords the emperors and their victory and the rise of the Nile and the increase of the crops and the healthy balance of the climate”. But by the fourth century we have a bishop, Serapion of Thmuis, writing to the monks to remind them that the Nile flood and the fertility of the land depended on their prayers.8 Yet a stranger entering a meeting of Paul’s followers would have thought he was in a dining club or a debating society. More important for our question, they combined these two exercises, for what they debated was how their beliefs ought to affect their social relations, and they rapidly built up a corpus of authoritative writings to add to the Hebrew scriptures with which it all began. Intellectual demands were multiplied by this process. Even though the churches transformed themselves into a religion, they still built firmly into their system the thoroughly un-religious activities from which they had taken their origin. The earliest minister in the ⁸ PG 40.929.

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papyri is a lector, not a priest. A recently published papyrus (P. Yale 1.3) contains a preacher’s handbook from about the end of the third century, with excerpts from the Acts of the Apostles, heavily marked with lection signs, and other aids for delivery and exposition. The scriptures were not only sacred books (as when excerpted for amulets), but sources of ideas for didactic use. Ammianus complained that Constantine spoiled what would have been a pure and straightforward religion by promoting the endless arguments of the bishops in their synods. Julian is said to have encouraged this to prevent them competing with his revival of classical religion – he knew from experience, says Ammianus (22.5.4), that when you got them in synods they were worse than wild beasts to each other. As Paul had soon discovered, it was not hard to turn the gifts of the Spirit to one’s own ends. The author of the Historia Augusta makes Aurelian (20.5) complain to the senate that they are prolonging the debate as though they had met in a Christian church and not the temple of all the gods. For an illustration of the way the new ideas worked out in a changed structure of social relations one may turn to a group of papyrus letters of the late third or early fourth century.9 They are letters of recommendation, to be taken from one group of believers to another when one was travelling. In one case the papyrus is clearly a form letter, prepared in advance, with the bearer’s name written in subsequently. Security and hospitality when travelling had traditionally been the privilege of the powerful, who had relied upon a network of patronage and friendship, created by wealth. The letters of recommendation disclose the fact that these domestic advantages were now extended to the whole household of faith, who are accepted on trust, though complete strangers. They are sometimes designated “catechumens”, with the stage of their instruction specified – “at the beginning of the gospel”, or “up the Genesis”, for example. An attractive picture of the freedom of movement which was opened up by the hospitality of fellow-believers is given by the diary of Egeria, written probably late in the fourth century.10 This lady from Spain travelled all over the wilderness of the Middle East seeing the old sites of Bible times, and the latter-day sensation of the monks into the bargain. She even scaled Mt Sinai. At every point she was met and looked after, and one may assume that the same service was provided for the many other religious tourists we hear of. The churches now disposed of funds on the scale that had only earlier been known in private hands, or those of the Caesars. The new discipline not only created a source of social security for those unprotected by the power structure, but was used to curb the powerful as well. Only a year after the edict of Milan had ordered governors to restore confis⁹ K. Treu, ‘Christliche Empfehlungs-Schemabriefe auf Papyrus’, Zetesis (Festschrift for E. de Strijcker, Antwerp 1973) 629–636; E. A. Judge, op. cit. n. 4 above, 80–81. ¹⁰ Translations are available by J. Wilkinson and G. E. Gingras.

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cated properties to the churches, the synod of Arles resolved to supply those governors who were believers with ecclesiastical letters of communion, plus instructions to the bishops to exclude them from communion if they began to act contrary to church discipline.11 A generation later Julian was to express his envy of the effectiveness of Episcopal letters by attempting to institute their equivalent in his revived Hellenic religion.12 The church network was not just a parallel to the civil hierarchy of power, however. Its ministers were not a professional caste, but were drawn from all ranks in society, and the call might come at any stage in life. The congregations assembled in the churches demonstrated on many occasions that they were more than willing to take these choices into their own hands.13 The basic proposition I have to put is this. The conversion of Rome was effected through a combination of intellectual with social forces unprecedented in the classical experience. For the first time a powerful new set of ideas, such as would normally have been confined to the philosophical schools, was promoted systematically at other levels in the community. It is interesting that Themistius, one of the more guarded outside observers of this process, argued that philosophy itself should be made available at large to the people.14 The novel organisation of the churches was the product of this social extension of ideas. While in some respects it was built up within the established structure of the community (for example, in the fact that bishops were located in cities), it was potentially, and sometimes actually, in conflict with its civil counterpart (for example, in respect of the status ranking system of the public community). The fact that the gospel enshrined itself in religious practices also lent vast social weight to the new arrangements. At the same time its intellectual vitality was far from being smothered. The canonisation of scripture, and the didactic and dogmatic drive that was built into church life, generated the perpetual debate that stunned refined observers in the classical tradition. Church writers for their part, in order to propagate their views, fully exploited the elaborate scholastic apparatus of exposition and interpretation that classical philosophy and literary science had built up. In this way they brought their new source of ideas into a working relationship with classical culture. By the end of the

¹¹ Letter of the bishops in council at Arles to Pope Silvester, preserved in the dossier of documents on Donatism attached to the work of St Optatus of Milevis, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 26, 208. ¹² Sozomen 5.16.3, Theodorus Anagnostes 135 (both in the series Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller). ¹³ W. Eck, ‘Der Einfluss der konstantinischen Wende auf die Auswahl der Bischöfe im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert’, Chiron 8 (1978) 561–585. For examples of election campaigns see Ammianus 27.3.12–13, Sulpicius Severus, Life of St Martin 9. ¹⁴ G. Downey, ‘Themistius and the Defense of Hellenism in the Fourth Century’, Harvard Theological Review 50 (1957) 259–274.

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fourth century, even the most conservative scholars of the older tradition were quietly going over to, or going along with, the new outlook.15

2. The Problem for Intellectual Observers The coupling together of the new ideas of the gospel with the social force represented by the church, which I am suggesting was the fulcrum for the conversion of Rome, is illustrated by the case of Marius Victorinus.16 A Neoplatonist scholar and leading rhetorician of Rome, he was long feared by Christians for his cutting tongue. Eventually he confided that he had been won over, through privately studying the scriptures. No one would believe it. But he duly presented himself for baptism in church, to be acclaimed there in a mass demonstration by the crowds. Augustine (Conf. 8.2 ff) celebrated this as an act of remarkable humiliation. He subsequently wrote the earliest Latin commentary on St Paul, practically incomprehensible according to Jerome (De vir. ill. 101): it was in advance of its times, being in principle much the same kind of commentary as a modern scholar might write. But he also knew how to speak plainly. He composed hymns setting out the gist of his new faith with extreme concision. Hymns had always been part of the solemn worship of classical religion, but they were put to a striking new use in the fourth century as a vehicle for the expression and instruction of the crowds in the churches. Ambrose introduced them into his basilica at Milan.17 A recently published Latin papyrus contains a very lively, popular hymn which takes you through the descent and life of Jesus under alphabetical headings, with a refrain for popular response.18 A. D. Momigliano concluded a recent study on popular religion in late antiquity by pointing out that there was no such thing any more. The old distinction between the educated elite and the masses had been swept away. The same ideas and beliefs had come to preoccupy the minds of people at all levels of society.19 ¹⁵ For the loss of heart in the old tradition in the West, see. A. Cameron, ‘Paganism and Literature in Late Fourth-Century Rome’, Entretiens Hardt 23 (1977) 1–40. ¹⁶ P. Hadot, Marius Victorinus: recherches sur sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris 1971). ¹⁷ Augustine, Confessions 9.7.15; Chr. Mohrmann, ‘La langue et le style de la poésie latine chrétienne’, Revue des Etudes Latines 25 (1947) 280–297; J. Fontaine, ‘L’apport de la tradition poétique romaine à la formation de l’hymnodie latine chrétienne’, ibid. 52 (1974) 318–355. ¹⁸ Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs), ‘A Fourth-Century Hymn to the Virgin Mary? Psalmus Responsorius: P. Barc. 149b–153’, Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Papyrologists (London 1975) 97–102; ‘The Subject of Psalmus Responsorius: P. Barc. 149b–153’, Museum Philologum Londiniense 2 (1977) 99–108. ¹⁹ A. D. Momigliano, ‘Popular Religious Belief and the Late Roman Historians’, in G. J. Cuming and D. Baker, eds, Popular Belief and Practice (Cambridge 1972) 1–18.

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But in terms of practical behaviour, had anything in the end been changed? When I once told A. H. M. Jones that I wanted to find out what difference it made to Rome to have been converted, he said he already knew the answer: None. Indeed, as his great work on the Later Roman Empire subsequently made clear, he thought that Christian belief, if anything, led to a lowering of moral standards in the community. The grounds for such a view are obvious enough. The church established its ascendancy during a century in which Roman power, and the old tradition of civic humanism, was moving into dissolution, or at any rate transformation. Are we to see the conversion of Rome as a principal cause of these changes? Or was the church itself being converted into a residual form of the old civilisation and helping to save the day, as Orosius was to argue?20 It is clear that our subsequent cultural tradition presents an ill-reconciled mélange of Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian beliefs. And whether or not much difference was made to Rome in the fourth century, the mixture has generated very powerful effects in subsequent times. But what did contemporaries think was happening to their civilisation? And how did they explain the conversion of Rome? In spite of generations of both popular and scholarly criticism of the new way at earlier stages, and sporadic attempts to suppress it, there is no trace of any serious historical analysis from the outside of the great shift of allegiance in the fourth century. This must be attributed basically to the conservatism of historical convention, which did not admit such questions as topics of historical study. But one might at least have hoped for a digression in Ammianus, or a monograph. The only analytical study of contemporary problems is the anonymous treatise De rebus bellicis.21 Amongst other things, it comes close to recognising the mechanism of the inflation which flowed from Constantine’s closing of the temples and the flooding of the market with their gold reserves. But the author was not working within the artificial limits of historical writing. Even the new style of ecclesiastical historiography, devised by Eusebius in the very decade of the Constantinian revolution, quickly imposed itself as an almost equally rigid convention. Being concerned with the records of episcopal succession, the preservation of the true faith, and so on, Eusebius was inspired to incorporate bodily into his work extracts from documents in their original wording. He thus became the founder of the modern historical practice of citing documentary evidence, the need for proof being born of dogma.22 But his many imita²⁰ B. Lacroix, Orose et ses idées (Montreal 1965). ²¹ E. A. Thompson, A Roman Reformer and Inventor (Oxford 1952). ²² A. Momigliano, ‘Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century AD’, The

Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford 1963) 79–99; R. M. Grant, ‘The Case against Eusebius, or, Did the Father of Church History Write History?’ Studia Patristica 12 (1975) 413–421; F. Winkelmann, ‘Probleme der Zitate in den Werken der oströmischen Kirchenhistoriker’, in J. Irmscher and K. Treu, eds, Das Korpus der Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (Berlin 1977) 195–207.

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tors in late antiquity were so reluctant to adapt this excellent departure to fresh needs, that Sozomen, for example, felt obliged to apologise for dealing with the monks. They had first come into public notice just after the time Eusebius was writing, and thus ecclesiastical history had no rules for dealing with them. Those who consider that the conversion of Rome changed nothing have the tacit but weighty support of Ammianus Marcellinus. The last great Roman historian, writing in the time of Theodosius, he lived through the crucial years of the establishment of Christendom. As a Greek who had taken up Latin studies, he possesses the broad and tolerant outlook, and the concern for Rome’s future, that one might have expected to lead him to grapple with the question of changing beliefs. His mind was not closed by the prejudices of the metropolitan nobility around Symnmachus, with whom he had no bond of sympathy. Yet he deliberately holds himself aloof from the question. It was not that he was unaware of the conflicts it caused. He admired Julian, but criticised his banning of Christian teachers in public schools. Ammianus condemned the luxury, ambition and violence of papal politics in Rome, but paid tribute to the ascetic example of provincial bishops. It can be shown by such examples that he was not indifferent to the affairs of the church. But his concern was mainly with standards of public morality and order. We must either say that he did not see the full extent of what was happening (there is nothing on the monks, for example, and no attention to the intellectual drive of the Church), or that he did not see it as of basic importance for Rome’s future. He certainly never suggests that the Christians are the cause of Rome’s troubles.23 This failure or refusal to take the matter seriously is shared with another Greek practitioner of Latin letters, the court poet Claudian, well enough at home with the new religion, but hardly a believer,24 and with Ausonius, the Gallic gentleman-scholar, a nominal adherent for whom only the slightest demands arose from his belief, without touching in any way his thinking or social attitudes.25 The Roman senatorial leader, Symmachus, was obliged by the lost cause he was fighting to refrain from any attempt at serious analysis of the triumphant policy. Absenting oneself from the altars of the Roman gods had become a matter of politics, he complained. He simply pleaded for tolerance.26 The Historia Augusta, with its occasional jibes, is an even more irre²³ P. M. Camus, Ammien Marcellin: Témoin des courants culturels et religieux à la fin du IVe siècle (Paris 1967); R. C. Blockley, Ammianus Marcellinus: A Study of his Historiography and Political Thought (Brussels 1975). ²⁴ A. Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford 1970). ²⁵ N. K. Chadwick, Poetry and Letters in Early Christian Gaul (London 1955); C. Witke, Numen litterarum: The Old and the New in Latin Poetry from Constantine to Gregory the Great (Leiden 1971). ²⁶ R. H. Barrow, Prefect and Emperor (Oxford 1973); J. F. Matthews, ‘Symmachus and the Oriental Cults’, JRS 63 (1973) 173–195.

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sponsible product of the vested interests of the old senatorial class.27 Other writers of the time – Macrobius, Martianus Capella, even the historical epitomators – utterly ignore the matter.28 Only the poet Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, writing in 417, allows himself a couple of bitter outbursts, against monasticism.29 There is no trace of the attempt to blame the Christians for the capture of Rome in 410, which provoked Augustine to begin his masterly treatise on the City of God. The proud champions of eternal Rome faced its end with eyes tight shut – or had their lips been sealed?30 The major Greek writers were more outspoken.31 Only Themistius, the court orator of Constantinople, is an obvious trimmer.32 Libanius, more independent in the Syrian metropolis of Antioch, made no attempt to conceal his disgust, especially at the monks.33 His attitude was fully shared by Eunapius, one of the founders of Byzantine historiography, whose work survives in extracts only.34 But there is nothing to suggest that he passed beyond contempt to serious criticism. The work of the emperor Julian is inspired by the same loathing. But since he alone enjoyed, briefly, a total freedom of action, his policies tell us plainly enough what he really thought was going wrong. One must remember, too, that as apostate from the new way, he was in a unique position amongst writers to get to the heart of the matter.35 Julian justified the ban on Christian teachers by appealing to the distinctively Christian principle of integrity. It was dishonest of them, and therefore bad for their pupils, to be teaching classical literature, full of the gods they denied. The evidence suggests that those outside the church – like Ammianus – could not see the point. But Julian had put his finger accurately upon a key link in the conversion of the Roman world – the exploitation of the intellectual ²⁷ R. Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (Oxford 1968), reviewed by A. Cameron, JRS 61 (1971) 255–267; Emperors and Biography: Studies in the Historia Augusta (Oxford 1971), reviewed by A. J. Graham, JRS 63 (1973) 259–260. ²⁸ A. Cameron, op. cit. n. 15 above; A. and A. Cameron, ‘Christianity and Tradition in the Historiography of the Later Empire’, Classical Quarterly 14 (1964) 316–328; J. Flamant, Macrobe et le néoplatonisme latin à la fin du IVe siècle (Leiden 1977). ²⁹ E. Doblhofer, ed., Rutilius Namatianus: De reditu suo (Heidelberg 1972), shows that lines 439–448, 518–524, hardly represent a Christian criticism of monasticism, as has sometimes been thought. ³⁰ F. Paschoud, Roma Aeterna: Études sur le patriotisme romain dans l’occident latin à l’époque des grandes invasions (Rome 1967). ³¹ P. de Labriolle, La réaction paienne: Étude sur la polémique antichrétienne du 1er au VIe siècle (Paris 1948). ³² G. Downey, op. cit. in n. 14 above. ³³ Or. 2.32, 30.8; P. Petit, Libanius et la vie municipale à Antioche au IVe siècle après J. C. (Paris 1955); A. F. Norman, Libanius’ Autobiography (Oxford 1965). ³⁴ I. Opelt, ‘Eunapios’, Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 6 (1965) 928–936; G. J. M. Bartelink, ‘Eunape et le vocabulaire chrétien’, Vigiliae Christianae 23 (1969) 293–303; R. T. Ridley, ‘Eunapius and Zosimus’, Helikon 9/10 (1969/70) 574–592. ³⁵ R. Browning, The Emperor Julian (London 1975); G. W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (Cambridge, Mass. 1978).

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tradition for Christian ends. The ban would also have social consequences for it would cut off Christian influence on the training of the educated classes – Julian always called Christians “Galileans” to emphasise their cultural inferiority. One of his own professors at Athens had been a Christian. Julian excused him from the ban, but Prohaeresius resigned anyway. So did Victorinus in Rome. The Christians took the point, and set to work to prepare for the church schools which Julian proposed they should now create. It was the first time the very modern question of ideology in education had raised its head. Apart from the charges of hypocrisy, and of the immorality of the doctrine of forgiveness, Julian’s main grievance against the “Galileans” was that they had introduced a sharp division between the sacred and the secular. Only Eusebius, in the first flush of Constantine’s conversion, had ventured to proclaim the full integration of the imperial power into the kingdom of Christ on earth,36 and Constantine himself was deeply conscious of his status as the unifier of all things and of the terrifying responsibilities he bore in this respect. He was infuriated by the fact that all the bishops wanted to do was argue, and dreaded that God might therefore take “some untoward step”, as he ingenuously put it.37 Clearly he did not know that blissful Jewish picture of the Heavenly Academy, where the rabbis dispute points of law daily, with the Almighty as their teacher.38 But Constantine’s heirs entered heartily into the doctrinal debates, and effectively put an end to the Eusebian illusion. Julian for his part, the last survivor of Constantine’s house and the archantagonist of its ideals, determined to realise the dream in reverse form, by converting the traditional Hellenic cults into a religious organisation of society modelled on church lines. They were to be brought under an episcopal hierarchy, and the priests were to officiate at set times in the temples so that the people could take part as a community. The intellectual and moral drive of the churches was also to be imposed on classical religion. Priests were to preach in the temples, and set an example of personal conduct, a requirement which flew in the face of religious tradition. The social contribution of the churches must be outclassed too. There were to be orphanages, hospitals and homes founded, “so that we may take care of the unfortunate among our enemies, and not they of us”. Even the detested monks must be countered by the foundation of monasteries and convents for the Hellenes. In all this Julian is ³⁶ D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, Eusebius of Caesarea (London 1960); F. Dvornik, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy (Washington 1966). ³⁷ A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (London 1948) 111; H. Dörries, Das Selbstzeugnis Kaiser Konstantins (Göttingen 1954); H. Kraft, Kaiser Konstantins religiöse Entwicklung (Tübingen 1955). ³⁸ Babylonian Talmud, Baba Mezia 85b–86a, which may be too late for Constantine to have known it, though the idea has very ancient roots in the pre-exilic life of Israel, where altercation with the Lord was acceptable, prior to the state when it was thought impious to dispute with God (for which information I thank Professor F. I. Andersen).

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showing how well, from his inside experience, he understood the social and intellectual dynamics of the movement he was determined to stop. But it is not obvious that anyone else ever saw the point so plainly.39 Even before his premature death, it was clear from the amused scepticism of his own potential supporters that the classical way of life did not have it in its heart to accept such a revolution from within. Julian’s deep belief in social commitment is another relic of his Christian upbringing. That was why he made it his habit, as he tells us, to insult the Cynics by calling them apotaktitai – a technical term used by the “Galileans” for those who withdrew from the world.40

3. Why the Problem has not Gone Away Apart from Isidorus of Karanis, Julian is thus the earliest outsider to refer to monasticism. The universally bad reaction to the monks in the secular sources, and the not infrequent doubts about them amongst Christians, draw our attention to the fact that we have here an unexpected development that no one really knew how to handle.41 We still do not know exactly how the fashion for retreat originated. Asceticism as a private discipline was admired in all traditions. In the second century Galen, the physician, even held that the practice of it showed that Christians were capable of philosophy. Monasticism was subsequently to draw much inspiration from classical sources. It has been shown that Athanasius’ Life of St Antony, the orthodox charter of the movement, is modelled on a lost life of Pythagoras. Neoplatonists regretted their bodies as heartily as any hermit. Evagrius Ponticus, the first monk to set down the tradition of spirituality in writing, begins his book with the disarming claim, “The kingdom of heaven is apathy…”42 It is pure Stoicism. But it was not such secure sentiments that gave rise to the reaction against the monks. The key to the matter is that they repudiated the established social order in the most emphatic way possible, by abandoning all the familiar ties: public obligations, property, even family bonds. The hagiographic literature that ³⁹ Porphyrius, who like Julian had once been close to church life, probably also saw it. His work, ‘Against the Christians’, survives only in fragments, ed. A. von Harnack (Berlin 1916). I now believe that both Maximinus Daia and Licinius, in their successive last-ditch attempts to stop Constantine, put into practice counter-revolutionary reforms which anticipated Julian’s, for which see Loeb translation II, 297–339; III, 55–73. ⁴⁰ Julian 224B, Loeb translation II, 123; E. A. Judge, op. cit. in n. 4 above, 79. ⁴¹ E. A. Judge, op. cit., for references to this and what follows. See also L. Gougaud, ‘Les critiques formulées contre les premiers moines d’occident’, Revue Mabillon 24 (1934) 145– 163; D. J. Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (Oxford 1966); P. H. Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford 1978). ⁴² A. and C. Guillaumont, Evagre le Pontique: Traité pratique, ou le moine, Vol. 2 (Paris 1971) 498.

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sprang up in their wake glitters with spectacular renunciations. The fashion grew into a mass movement, that had to be curbed by law to hold the civil community together. It must be one of the most determined movements of self-alienation known to history. By the end of the century, the bishop of Oxyrhynchus could proudly claim, the city had gone into mass retreat, 10,000 monks and 20,000 virgins. They had swallowed up half the buildings in the town, quite apart from the ones who had taken to the desert. For the rich in particular, a long battle was needed to achieve the ideal. You could not just give away property, because the maintenance of civil services depended upon its being passed down in the family as was required by law. Nor could you just abandon your marriage, since a noble house was obliged by centuries of expectation to perpetuate itself. It took the younger Melania years to outwit the vested interests that stood in the way of her profession, including driving her husband to abstinence by provoking a near-fatal miscarriage through an exacting night of prayer and vigil. Even her slaves refused to be freed, and rioted in the streets of Rome against this threat to their security, leading to many deaths.43 It is impossible to explain this drive to escape simply in social terms, although many social issues were caught up in it.44 The Messalians, for example, tried to reform the public community along egalitarian lines. But people of every rank and circumstance followed the call to the desert. The monastic literature gives an overwhelmingly consistent answer to the question of the motive of the monks. Their aim was perfection, and they were responding directly to the challenge of Jesus when he had said to the rich young ruler (Matt. 19.21), “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” It is the most clear-cut case, however unexpected, of the capacity of the church to generate social – or anti-social – action by the direct exploitation of its primary sources of ideas. No one seems to have stopped to observe that Jesus himself had not gone so far, nor to reflect that following him might mean not cutting oneself off from other people, but giving oneself up for them. Literalism in interpreting the gospel also gave way in the face of Jesus’ demand (Matt. 6.16–18) that fasting should be done in secret, and that one should not be like the Pharisees, but anoint one’s face so that no one would know you were fasting. The Didache (8.1) had solved that problem as early as the second century. Since the Pharisees did it on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the follower of Jesus simply had to do it on Wednesdays and Fridays. The great fourth-century fathers recognised that they had a real difficulty here, for the distinctive mark of fasting – dirty clothes – had become the glory of monasticism and all the ⁴³ D. Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie (Paris 1962). ⁴⁴ P. Nagel, Die Motivierung der Askese in der alten Kirche und der Ursprung des Mönch-

tums (Berlin 1966); S. Otto, Die Antike im Umbruch (Munich 1974).

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more untouchable for the fact that it revolted polite sentiment on the classical side.45 John Chrysostom came to the melancholy conclusion that Jesus could not have meant it literally, otherwise all the monks would be wrong, and even St Augustine, that most ruthless searcher of the heart, who recognised that dirt too can be a form of pride, ducked the issue.46 As for the left hand, which Jesus had said was not to know what the right hand was doing, some claimed that really meant you had to conceal your generosity from the unbeliever, or from your enemy, or from your wife – since she would have her mind on the household budget. In this strange mixture of the literal and the figurative, of the call of Jesus and the age-old ideals of asceticism, lies the peculiar impulse of monasticism. At the personal level, it is the counterpart of Eusebius’ attempt to set the emperor in relation to Christ in a unified and totally valid order, to build heaven on earth now. But in monasticism the social direction of the drive is reversed. Heaven is not to be built by renewing society from within, but by abandoning it altogether and finding heaven elsewhere. Athanasius said Antony had made the desert into a city, and Melania called the monastic life the citizenship of the angels. The desire for an ideologically coherent personal or public order of life is a distinctive hall-mark of the fourth century, and one that has left its imprint on the Western tradition ever since. The church has long since settled for Augustine’s much subtler conception of the coexistence of the two cities, and even monasticism seems at last to be relaxing its commitment to the externalisation of perfection. But in the meantime half the world has been engulfed by another attempt to give effect to absolute truth in the social order. Its roots may also lie in the fourth century, if it is true that the Hegelian structure which has shaped Marxist thought may be lined up with that of Proclus and the Neoplatonists, as Feuerbach observed.47 ⁴⁵ Jerome says, “Dirty clothes are the sign of a clean mind” (Ep. 125.7), but he had to insist that his nuns cut their hair, “lest they become covered with lice and encrusted dirt” (147.5). Antony (Vita 47) wore a single garment (from 311?) to the end of his life (356?), never taking it off, nor washing. Theonas never washed after becoming Bishop of Alexandria, except for one ceremonial ablution when touched by the shadow of a heretic (Journal of Theological Studies 4 [1903] 393). But the rule of Pachomius gives instructions on the daily washing of their clothes by his monks. ⁴⁶ John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 20–21 (Patrologia Graeca 57, 287). Augustine, On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount 2.12.40 (Patrologia Latina 34, 1287) says it is pride “if one deliberately attracts people’s attention by exceptional squalor and dirt”, but refuses to accept that Jesus could literally have meant that one should wash one’s face: it referred to inward joy. For what follows see ibid. 2.2.6–9. ⁴⁷ Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (New York 1966) 47; K. Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought (New York 1964) 39–40; Marx, however, claims that his dialectic is the direct opposite of Hegel’s, Capital, Vol. I (Moscow 1954) 29; and Engels claimed that dialectic philosophy destroyed all theories of absolute truth, cf. J. Anderson, Studies in Empirical Philosophy (Sydney 1962) 295–296. I am grateful to Dr J. Kilcullen for warning me of the complexities of the philosophical pedigree of

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Monasticism demonstrates that in the last resort man does not live by forces that arise from the social system itself, inasmuch as the mind and will of man may still defy them. It also demonstrates the tenacious hold on man’s mind exerted by the words of scripture, however perverse one may think the effects of that to be. For these reasons I do not think we shall ever explain the conversion of Rome simply in terms of a social or political analysis of what happened, even though I have been stressing the social force which the new faith brought to bear through the organisation of the churches and their assumption of a religious function in the community. But the engine that drove these changes along was the thinking and preaching and exposition of the great patristic writers. For sheer bulk their work outstrips that of what survives from classical antiquity, partly for the worst of reasons – they had the last word. But it was not just a confrontation. In recent decades an immense amount of detailed analysis has been carried out, tracing the intricate web of intellectual history in the fourth century, writer by writer. It is already clear that even with the most orthodox of the fathers, the pillars of catholic doctrine such as Athanasius, Ambrose and Augustine, the involvement with the dominant Platonic philosophy of their day is very profound.48 There is no general agreement as to whether they were simply “spoiling the Egyptians” and exploiting the cultural tradition for ends which remained uncontaminated by it, or whether the fourth century achieved a basic hellenisation of biblical ideas. It is not surprising that we find this very difficult to sort out. In addition to its own intellectual products, the fourth century was responsible for establishing and handing down to us in their canonical form the twin corpora of classical and biblical literature. This very phenomenon of the preservation of already classic norms shows that they were not simply promoting a merger of cultural traditions. It is to this duality of our cultural sources that we owe the successive renaissances, reformations and enlightenments that have generated the high intellectual productivity of the Western tradition. It is to the same feature that we owe the characteristic pattern of social tensions in our tradition. People have often debated the question of when the Roman empire may be said to have ended, with several attractive arguments pointing towards our this matter. For the broad historical comparison between two attempts to make the world conform to theory, see S. Otto, op. cit. in n. 44 above, and A. Dihle, ‘Antikes und Unantikes in der frühchristlichen Staatstheorie’, in D. M. Pippidi, ed., Assimilation et résistance à la culture gréco-romaine dans le monde ancien (Bucharest 1976) 323–332. ⁴⁸ E. P. Meijering, Orthodoxy and Platonism in Athanasius: Synthesis or Antithesis? (Leiden 1968); P. Courcelle, Recherches sur Saint Ambroise (Paris 1973); G. Madec, Saint Ambroise et la philosophie (Paris 1974); A. Mandouze, Saint Augustin: L’aventure de la raison et de la grâce (Paris 1968). On the question in general see E. Von Ivánka, Plato Christianus (Einsiedeln 1964); E. P. Meijering, ‘Wie platonisierten Christen? Zur Grenzziehung zwischen Platonismus, kirchlichem Credo, und patristischer Theologie’, Vigiliae Christianae 28 (1974) 15–28; H. Dörrie, ‘Zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen Platonismus und Christentum’, Platonica minora (Munich 1976) 454–523.

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own age, the twentieth century. Lest you think this professional imperialism on my part, let me turn the question around. When did the modern world begin? I have been putting before you the case for starting modern history in the fourth century. That was the first age in which the characteristic tensions of the West were drawn out. It was the first age in which serious conflicts of ideas impinged directly upon government and the social order. From the classical side the main objections to Christian doctrine were as follows.49 God’s relation to the world was presented as too anthropocentric, so that man took priority over the natural order, and the direct revelation of God’s mind to him took precedence over man’s own reasoning based upon the study of nature. Greeks did not in the last resort see God as omnipotent, and man by consequence was in the Greek view firmly bound into the order of nature as determined by fate. The Christians, they complained, profaned everything, by stripping both nature and government of its divine component. This destroyed the authority of the established order of things, and led to the unjust result of favouring the weak and sick in society rather than the good. The Christians for their part could charge that the Greeks debased both God and man to mere elements in the order of nature, and that their naturalistic system failed to explain the fundamental reality of evil. As for man, the lack of any adequate conception of the will or the conscience in Greek thought left him in the morally irresponsible position of a helpless victim of circumstance. The Christian view of the fallen nature of man and his need of redemption and divine endowment was the basis for the socially novel demand for humility and the subjection of each to the interests of the other. You will recognise from these themes how tangled our Western tradition has become. It would be very unlikely that you could find anyone who is consistently heir to one or other side of the argument. I hear Catholic nuns strenuously advocating humanistic ideals of self-development, and humanists taking their stand on such distinctively Christian slogans as integrity and commitment. And so it was in late antiquity. It is not easy to say in individual cases how much is owed to Athens, and how much to Jerusalem. But historically it is this conflict built into our cultural tradition that has brought us to the argumentative, progressive, open societies of the West. And whichever side you think is right, before you press ahead to subject man and the social order once more to cosmic truth, remember the long and painful journey which has been necessary for church and community to disentangle themselves from the consequences of the conversion of Rome. ⁴⁹ The propositions in this paragraph are based mainly on the evidence and analysis presented by W. Nestle, ‘Die Haupteinwände des antiken Denkens gegen das Christentum’, Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 37 (1941/42) 51–100, and by A. Dihle, ‘Ethik’, Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 6 (1964) 646–797.

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Appendix: Papyrus Documents of a Century of Change in the Villages of Egypt 1. P.Oxy. 42 (1974) 3035 ed. P. J. Parsons: an order to arrest of 28 February 256, from Oxyrhynchus.

5

π(αρὰ) τοῦ πρυτάνεως κωμάρχαις καὶ ἐπιστάταις εἰρήνης κώμης Μερμέρθων. ἐξαυτῆς ἀναπέμψατε Πετοσορᾶπιν Ὥρου χρησιανόν, ἢ ὑμεῖς αὐτοὶ ἀνέλθατε. (ἔτους) γ// Οὐαλεριανοῦ καὶ Γαλλιηνοῦ Σεβαστῶν Φαμενὼθ γ.̄

From the prytanis, to the comarchs and supervisors of the peace of the village of Mermertha. Send up immediately Petosorapis son of Horus, Christian (?), or else come up yourselves. Year 3 of Valerianus and Gallienus Augusti, Phamenoth 3.

2. P.Oxy. 33 (1968) 2673 ed. J. R. Rea: a declaration of 5 February 304, preserved in triplicate from Oxyrhynchus.

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ἐπὶ ὑπάτων τῶν κυρίων ἡμ[ῶν αὐτοκρατόρων] ̣ Διοκλητιανοῦ τὸ ἔνατον καὶ Μαξ[ιμιανοῦ] τὸ η’ Σεβαστῶν Αὐρηλίοις Νείλῳ τῷ καὶ Ἀμμωνίῳ γυμ[( ) βουλ(ευτῇ)] ἐνάρχῳ πρυτάνει καὶ Σαρμάτῃ καὶ Ματρίνῳ ἀμφ[οτέροις] γυμ( ) βουλ(ευταῖς) συνδίκοις τοῖς πᾶσι τῆς λαμ(πρᾶς) καὶ λαμ(προτάτης) Ὀξυρυγχιτῶν πόλεως (vac.) Αὐρήλιος Ἀμμώνιος Κορπέως ἀναγνωστὴς τῆς ποτε ἐκ‹κ›λησίας κώμης Χύσεως ἐπιθεμένων ὑμῶν ἐμοὶ ἀκολούθως τοῖς γραφ‹ε›ῖσι ὑπὸ Αὐρηλίου Ἀθανασίου ἐπιτρόπου πριουάτης ὡς ἐκ κελεύσεως τοῦ διασημ(οτάτου) μαγίστρου τῆς πριουάτης Νερατίου Ἀπολλωνί‹δ›ου περὶ τοῦ παραστῆσαι ἅπαντα τὰ ‹ε›ἴδη τὰ [ἐ]ν τῇ αὐτῇ ποτε ἐκ‹κ›λησίᾳ καὶ̣ ̣ ἐμ̣ οῦ προενεγ᾽καμένου μὴ ἔχειν τὴν ‹αὐτὴν› ἐκ‹κ›λησείαν μήτε χρυσὸν μήτε ἄσημον μήτε ἀργύριον μήτε ἐσθῆτα μήτε τετράποδα μήτε ἀνδράποδα μήτε οἰκόπαιδα μήτε ̣ ὑπάρχοντα μήτε ἀπὸ χαρισμάτων μηδ᾽ αὖ̣ ἀπὸ διαθηκῶν εἰ μὴ μόνην ̣ τὴν ̣ ευ̣ [̣ ρε]τῖ̣ σαν χαλκῆ[ν] ̣ πύλην καὶ παραδο̣ τῖ̣ σαν τῷ λογιστῇ πρὸς τὸ κατενεγ᾽χθῆναι ἐπὶ τὴν λαμ(προτάτην) Ἀλεξάνδριαν ἀκολούθως τοῖς γραφ‹ε›ῖσι ὑπὸ τοῦ διασημ(οτάτου) ἡμῶν ἡγεμόνος Κλωδίου Κο‹υ›λκιανοῦ καὶ ὀμνύω τὴν τῶν κυρίων ἡμῶν αὐτοκρατόρων Διοκλητιανοῦ καὶ Μαξιμιανοῦ Σεβασ(̣ τῶν) καὶ Κωνσταντίου καὶ Μαξιμιανοῦ τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων καισάρων τύχην ταῦθ᾽ οὕτως ἔχειν καὶ μηδὲν διε-

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ψεῦσθαι ἢ ἔνοχος εἴην τῷ θείῳ ὄρκῳ (ἔτους) κ’ καὶ ιβ’ τῶν κυρίων ἡμῶν Διοκλητιανοῦ καὶ Μαξιμιανοῦ Σεβαστῶν καὶ Κωνσταντίου καὶ Μαξιμιανοῦ τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων καισάρων Μεχεὶρ [ ι’ ]. (m. 2) Αὐρήλιος Ἀμμώνιος ὤμοσα τὸν ὅρκον ὡς (πρόκειται). Αὐρ(ήλιος) Σερῆνος ἔγρα(ψα) ὑ(πὲρ) αὐτοῦ μὴ εἰ-̣ (δότος) γρά(μματα).

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In the consulship of our lords the emperors Diocletian – for the ninth time – and Maximian – for the eighth time – the Augusti. To Aurelius Neilus alias Ammonius (ex-?)gymnasiarch, senator, prytane in office, and to Aurelius Sarmates and Aurelius Matrinus, both (ex-?)gymnasiarchs, senators and syndics, all of the glorious and most glorious city of the Oxyrhynchites, Aurelius Ammonius, son of Copreus, lector of the former church of the village of Chysis. Whereas you gave me orders in accordance with what was written by Aurelius Athanasius, procurator rei privatae, in virtue of a command of the most illustrious magister rei privatae, Neratius Apollonides, concerning the surrender of all the goods in the said former church and whereas I reported that the said church had neither gold nor silver nor money nor clothes (vestments?) nor beasts nor slaves nor lands nor property either from grants or bequests, excepting only the bronze gate* which was found and delivered to the logistes to be carried down to the most glorious Alexandria in accordance with what was written by our most illustrious prefect Clodius Culcianus, I also swear by the genius of our lords the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, the Augusti, and Constantius and Galerius, the most noble Caesars, that these things are so and that I have falsified nothing, or may I be liable to the divine oath. In the 20th and 12th year of our lords the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, the Augusti and Constantius and Galerius, the most noble Caesars. Mecheir 10th. (2nd hand) I, Aurelius Ammonius, swore the oath as aforesaid. I, Aurelius Serenus, wrote on his behalf because he does not know letters. [*Ed.: the other two copies showed that πύλην (gate) in l. 22 should have read ὕλην (material).]

3. P. Coll. Youtie 2 (1976) 77 ed. N. Lewis: a petition of 6(?) June 324, from Karanis (Fayum), modified by R. S. Bagnall in P.Col. 7.171.

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Διοσκόρῳ Καίσωνι ̣ πραιπ(οσίτῳ) ε πάγου παρὰ Ἰσιδώρου Πτολεμαίου̣ ̣ ἀπὸ κώ(μης) Κ̣ αρ̣ [α]ν ί̣ δ̣ ο̣ ς̣ ̣ ̣ τοῦ ὑμετέρου πάγου· τῶν θρεμμ[άτ]ω̣ ν ̣ Παμού̣ ̣ ν ̣ ἣν̣ νεω̣ ς καὶ Ἁρπάλου κατα̣ λυμην̣ α̣ [̣ μέ]νω ἔχω σπορὰν καὶ μὴν καὶ τῆς β[οὸ]ς ̣ α[̣ ὐτῶν] πά̣ λ̣ ι̣ ν ̣ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ τόπῳ καταβοσκηθείσης̣ ̣ ὥ̣ στ̣ ε̣ ̣ ἀχρή̣ τ̣ α̣ λ̣ αβοσιμόν μοι τὴν γεωργίαν γενέσθαι, καὶ κα μένου μου τὴν βοῦν καὶ ἀνάγοντος αὐτὴν ἐπὶ τῆς κώμης ἀπαντήσαντές μοι κατὰ τοὺς̣ ̣ ἀγροὺς μεγά‹λῳ› ῥοπάλῳ καὶ χαμιρι̣ φ̣ ̣ῆ̣ ἐμ̣ ὲ ποιησάμενοι πληγαῖς κατέκοψαν καὶ τὴν βοῦν ̣ ἀφείλαντο ὥσπερ καὶ αἱ περὶ ἐμὲ πληγαὶ δηλοῦσιν, καὶ εἰ μὴ βοηθείας ἔτ̣ υχο(ν) ὑπὸ

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τῶν παραγενομένων Ἀντωνίνου διάκονος καὶ Ἰσὰκ μοναχοῦ τάχα ἂν τέλεόν με ἀπώλεσαν. ὅθεν ἐπιδίδω̣ μι τάδε̣ τὰ ἔνγραφα ἀξιῶν αὐτοὺς ἀχθῆναι ̣ ἐπὶ σοῦ καὶ περὶ τῆς σπορᾶς καὶ περὶ τῆ̣ ς̣ ̣ ὕβρεως τηρεῖσθαι ἐμοὶ καὶ τὸν λόγον̣ ̣ ἐπὶ τοῦ ̣̣̣̣̣̣ ἡγεμονικοῦ δικαστη̣ ρίου ̣ τοῖς ἐσομένοι̣ ς̣ ̣ ὑπάτοις ̣ τὸ̣ ̣ δ̣ Παῦνι ιβ.̣

To Dioscorus Caeso, praepositus of the 5th pagus, from Isidorus son of Ptolemaeus of the village of Karanis in your pagus. The cattle of Pamounis and Harpalus damaged the planting which I have and what is more [their cow] grazed again in the same place so thoroughly that my husbandry has become useless. I caught the cow and was leading it up to the village when they met me in the fields with a big club, threw me to the ground, rained blows upon me and took away the cow – as indeed (the marks of) the blows all over me show – and if I had not chanced to obtain help from the deacon Antoninus and the monk Isaac, who happened by, they would quickly have finished me off completely. Therefore I submit this document, asking that they be brought before you to preserve my claim (to be heard) in the prefectural court … both in the matter of the planting and in the matter of the assault. The consuls-to-be for the fourth time, Payni 12.

4. P. Abinn. (1962) 55 ed. H. I. Bell et. al.: a petition of 11 February 351 = P. Lond. 2 (1898) 412 ed. F. G. Kenyon, from Fayum (Philadelphia?).

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Φλαουίῳ Ἀβιν[ν]έῳ ἐξ ̣ ἀποπροτη̣ κτώρων ἐπάρχῳ ̣ εἴλης κάστρ̣ ω ̣ ̣ ν Διονυσιάδος. παρὰ Αὐρηλίου Ἥρωνο[ς] διάκω[ν]ος ἀπὸ κώμης Βερνικείδο̣ ς τοῦ αὐτοῦ νομοῦ χαίρειν. εἰ μὴ ὑπῆρχεν ἡμεῖν ἡ τῶν νόμων ἀλ̣ ήθειᾳ πάλαι δ᾽ ἂν ὑπὸ τῶν κακουργ̣ ῶ ̣ ̣ν ἀναιλούμεθα. Εὔπορος τοίνυν υἱὸς Ἑρμεία ἀπὸ κώμης Φιλαγρείδος τοῦ αὐτοῦ νομοῦ ἐσύλησέν με ἔνδων τῆς οἰκείας, ἐπιβὰς λῃστρεικῷ τρόπῳ, καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν ἐσθῆταν συνελάβετο καὶ ε[̣ ἰς] τὸ ἴδιον ἀνεστίλατω μέχρεις δ[εῦ]ρω, ̣ δυναμ[έν]ου̣ ̣ μου καὶ τ[̣ ὰ]ς ̣ ἀπ̣ ο̣ δ̣ ίξει[ς ποι]εῖν ὡς τούτου τήνδε τὴν κ[̣ α]κουργίαν π[ε]πο̣ ιημένου. διὼ ἀξ[ι]ῶ, πραιπόσιται κ[ύ]ρι̣ ε,̣ ἀπραγμ̣ ώ ̣ ̣ νος ̣̣ χ̣ εθῆναί μο[̣ ι]· διάκων γὰρ ἃ ἀφήρπασέν μου [π]αρα σ τε̣ τ[ύ]χηκα τῆς ̣ κ[̣ αθ]ολικῆς ἐκ̣ ‹̣ κ›[λ]ησίας. καὶ τού̣ τ̣ ο̣ υ ̣ ̣ τυχὼν εἰσαείν σοι εὐχαρειστήσω. διευτύχει. ̣ τ̣ ε̣ ίαν Φλ(αουίων) Σ̣εργίου καὶ Νειγρεινιαν̣ `̣ οῦ̣ ´̣ [μετὰ τὴ]ν ̣ ὑπ̣ α ̣ ̣ [ν λαμπροτά]των, Μεχεὶρ ιζ. τῶ

To Flavius Abinnaeus, formerly one of the protectores, praefectus alae of the camp of Dionysias, from Aurelius Heron, deacon, of the village of Berenicis in the same nome, greeting. If we did not possess the truth of the laws we should long ago have been destroyed by evil-doers. Euporus then, son of Hermias, of the village of Philagris in the same nome, robbed me in my house, entering it in the manner of a robber, and seized

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all my clothing, and appropriated it to his own use until now, although I can demonstrate that it was he who perpetrated this outrage. Wherefore I ask, my lord praepositus, that what he robbed me of should be given to me without demur; for I am a deacon of the principal church. And obtaining this I shall owe you thanks forever. Farewell. After the consulship of Flavius Sergius and Nigrinianus the most illustrious, Mecheir 17.

Chapter 17

Christian Innovation and its Contemporary Observers* I. What the Historians Could not See Can the question of old and new in fourth-century historiography be related to that of the changes in the fourth-century world as a whole? In particular, what is the basic effect, in cultural terms, of the establishment of Christianity, and what does that have to do with the observations of Eusebius and Ammianus? At the most obvious level, the struggle over Christianity centred on the relations between divine worship and the public life of the community. Both sides held that the welfare of the nation depended upon worshipping the right deity. Custom had traditionally supplied a simple answer to this problem. One’s public duty was to respect the gods of one’s ancestors. Insofar as Christianity restricted the choice to one God, it was introducing only a qualified novelty, for unitarian ideas were common, and the Christians accepted the traditionalist terms of the argument: “Our worship can be shown (historically) to be the oldest anyway”. If this had been all there was to it, the fourth-century revolution would have been essentially a fortifying of the old order, as indeed many observers from both the classical and the Christian sides, both then and now, have held it to have been. But insofar as Christian beliefs rested, not on custom, but on arguments about theology and about man’s place in the world, it also came into conflict with the philosophical tradition of antiquity. At this level reconciliation was far less easy to secure. More important still for socio-cultural history is the fact that Christianity made a vastly more determined effort than other philosophical systems to remodel the ethical life (or at least the ideals) of the general community. The almost total success of this effort points to a development probably without adequate parallel till then in human affairs. A conceptual system which claimed to explain and predict everything about human life was actually being put into some kind of general effect, contrary to the prevailing outlook. The ideas of an intellectual élite were being passed on to the whole community, and even imposed by the government as the new ordering principle of its * B. Croke and Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs) (eds), History and Historians in Late Antiquity (Sydney 1983) 13–29.

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life. We may thus locate the beginning of modern Western history in the fourth century. From this point governments and traditions compete with organised systems of thought for control of the community. The dualistic pattern which has imprinted itself on the character of Western social and cultural life has been established.1 The confusion of this development with a change in religion, shared as it was in the fourth century by writers from either side, prevented it being seen this way. Not that the religious change was a superficial element in the process historically. It was the familiarity of religious practice which provided the means by which the ideological re-ordering of the whole community was effected. Religion, however alien to Christianity, conferred social power upon it. Contemporary observers show their consciousness of the fact that a fundamental social change was at stake by speaking of the Christians as a separate nation. This was of course in itself a traditionalist device: nations are the entities which are entitled to have different customs. But since Christians had no national past or homeland, the conception of them as a nation represents also a provocative assessment of what was happening. The Christians had successfully created within the Roman world a range of social institutions on a national scale which were essentially at variance with the traditional pattern of life. The disruptive flourishing of monasticism and synods, for example, precisely in the face of the new establishment, suggests that in the last resort Constantine and Theodosius were the followers and not the makers of the basic split that was taking place in the structure of the civilised community. Eusebius and Ammianus, being not simply honest men but historians, both suffer from the compulsion to limit their view of developments in their own day to what can be anticipated from the past. We are concerned with changes in historical method. But since one might have hoped that, if historians were capable of adapting their techniques at all, they might have done so in a way that would do more justice to what was actually happening, one may begin by posing that question. (a) Ammianus The historians would surely not have objected to the question, accepting as they did the principle of τὸ ἀξιόλογον, or concern for the things that were “narratu…digna”, as Ammianus puts it (28.1.15).2 Behind his frequently invoked principle of fidelity, there seems to lie a basic appeal to veritas, which ¹ A. Dihle, ‘Antikes und Unantikes in der frühchristlichen Staatstheorie’, in D. M. Pippidi (ed.), Assimilation et résistance à la culture gréco-romaine dans le monde ancien (Bucharest 1976) 323–332; E. A. Judge, The Conversion of Rome: Ancient Sources of Modern Social Tensions (North Ryde 1980), reproduced as ch. 16 above. ² H. Drexler, Ammianstudien (Hildesheim 1974) 3.

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he perhaps formulated in the lost Preface.3 The concern for the ultimate truth of history may of course have led Ammianus, as it probably did Eunapius, deliberately to refrain from giving special attention to Christianity. (Or was there a digression devoted to that subject in the lost books?) But the basic desire to assimilate what is feared as novel comes through alike in the pained reproaches of Ammianus and in the outbursts of Eunapius.4 Like some of the Christian apologists of his day, Ammianus is happy enough to accept the identification of Christianity with religion in the Roman sense. If the function of the gods is to protect the civil order, why should anyone object to Rome’s enjoying the patronage of a new and manifestly successful power in the heavens? Ammianus can even tolerate (or is it irony?) the murderous competition for succession to the see of Rome. Given the political and social rewards, including the generosity of rich matrons, it was explicable, within the traditional understanding of the place of religion in politics, that men should compete for such a prize (27.3.14). Certainly they would have been truly happy if they had preferred the more morally consistent restraint of provincial bishops (27.3.15). But Ammianus had less understanding of the argumentative confrontations over orthodoxy, which engulfed the court of Constantius and exhausted the public transport system with repeated synods. He could not see the importance of trying to persuade everyone else to one’s own opinion. It was a mere battle of words, an old woman’s superstition, compared with the simplicity of pure Christianity (21.16.18). Yet when you got them together, as Julian well knew, they were worse than wild beasts to each other, says Ammianus (22.5.4). The author of the Historia Augusta agreed. He makes Aurelian complain that the way the senators were going on one might have thought they were debating in a church (20.5). Our historians are both touching the point and missing it at the same time. The kind of open contention that had once been possible in the Senate was in fact now occurring in the churches. And because serious ideological struggles about the place of man in the world do tend to impose themselves upon public life, the churches were becoming a political arena. Ammianus has fundamentally mistaken what is happening because of his very readiness to accept Christianity as a religion in the Roman sense. The same mistake of understanding had led to the failure of the persecutions. It was not just a matter of adapting the pantheon to a new manifestation of “the highest divinity”. What we are witnessing is the challenging of civilisation for the first time by something which we now call a religion, that is, by a comprehensive set of beliefs on man and the world which is capable of determining the pattern of one’s life even in contradiction of the established social order. The western ³ G. Sabbah, La méthode d’Ammien Marcellin (Paris 1978) 19. ⁴ Ibid., 55.

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cultural tradition derives much of its vitality and argumentativeness from this phenomenon. W. Cantwell Smith has proposed that Manichaeism is historically the first example of a religion in this Western sense.5 It would have been easier for us and for Ammianus if the peculiarly Roman term ‘religion’ had never been taken over by Christianity in the fourth century. Manichaeans and Christians alike, and their critics, had already formulated an agreed terminology which more adequately described the situation: they were a new race or nation, complete with gods and customs of their own, but paradoxically residing within no national boundaries. They cut across the existing pattern of political communities. Hence the bewildering climax of the persecutions. But the solution to them did not work either. The attempt to make Christianity into the religion of the Roman Empire broke down on the incompatibility of the phenomenon with religion in the existing sense. The truth was that Christianity was also incompatible with the State, so long as it retained within itself the seeds of all this trouble: the doctrine of a predetermined revelation of the truth about man and the demand that his life be conformed to it. Hence, in spite of the best efforts alike of Constantine and of Julian, such mind-bending fourthcentury phenomena as synods and monasticism. (b) Eusebius In his Ecclesiastical History Eusebius is fully aware of being a pathfinder from a literary point of view, in that no other writer had previously collected the kind of material he proposes to bring forward (HE 1.1.3.4). But there is a double reason why his mind has not moved on to the possibility of using this opportunity to analyse the essential novelty of the great change he witnesses in his own day. In the first place, although he could not deny that the race of Christians was new (νέον ὁμολογουμένως ἔθνος, HE 1.4.2), their way of life (ὁ βίος … καὶ τῆς ἀγωγῆς ὁ τρόπος, 1.4.4) went back to creation, just as Jesus should not be thought of as novel merely because of the date of his incarnate politeia (HE 1.4.1). Raoul Mortley has recently argued that this by now familiar position was already worked out by Clement of Alexandria, who presented the Christians “as a lawful people under the quasi-kingly regime of Moses”. Since Plato, of course, was only “Moses atticising”, one could thus use history to represent the apparently novel race as the true heirs of the founder of the common culture of the Hellenising world.6 ⁵ In a lecture at the XIVth International Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, in Winnipeg on 21 August 1980, cf. The Meaning and End of Religion (New York 1962) 92–98. ⁶ R. J. Mortley, ‘The Past in Clement Alexandria: A Study of an Attempt to Define Christianity in Socio-cultural Terms’, in E. P. Sanders (ed.), Jewish and Christian Self-Definition (London 1980) 186–200.

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Secondly, a major purpose of Eusebius in composing the HE was to insist that it was the same word of God which had guided the churches to his own day, in defiance of Gnostic innovators (HE 1.1.1). It is no doubt his concern for orthodoxy that has led him to what has been hailed as a fundamental innovation in historiography, the extensive citation of primary documents.7 Citation of texts had always been part of the business of proof, for example in law. The conversion of history into a technique of testing the truth in disputed cases is itself a mark of the invasion of classical culture as a whole by arguments about ultimate truth. Eusebius is probably at both levels practically unaware of the historical significance of what he was caught up in. But it was not lost on everyone at the time. Both the philosophical and the political critics of Christianity displayed some sense of the profound changes that threatened the social order of their day.

II. How the Philosophers Saw It The collapse of the persecutions did not mean the end of the campaign against the churches. The basic objections had not been met by the political compromise, and there were other ways by which they could be pursued. Constantine hints several times at the sceptical observers whose criticisms he feared (Eus. HE 10.5.21, VC 2.60.2; Letter to Aelafius, CSEL 26.205). At some stage, perhaps prior to Nicaea in 325, he had condemned the work of Porphyry, Against the Christians, to be burnt (Soc. HE 1.9). Constantine proposes now to call the Arians ‘Porphyrians’. Their books are also to be surrendered for burning, subject to the penalty of death. Eusebius was aware that the 15 books of Porphyry had been written long before (about 270, in fact). But he seems not to have had to come to grips with them personally until the persecutions were over, which was after Porphyry had died (in 308). In his work Against Hierocles Eusebius thinks he is dealing with propaganda based on Celsus, but it is clear that the philosopher of the persecution had based his Logos philalethes on Porphyry. It was not long before Eusebius discovered the significance of the latter.8 Jerome records (De vir. ill. 81) that he then produced 25 books against Porphyry. Apollinarius (De vir. ill. 104) was later to produce 30. ⁷ A. Momigliano, ‘Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century AD’, in The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford 1963) 79–99, drawing attention (91) to Josephus as representing a similarly apologetic use of documents in history. ⁸ For the chronology I follow J. Sirinelli’s introduction to the Sources Chrétiennes edn (1974) of Eusebius’ Preparation for the Gospel. But it is now claimed that Eusebius had made extensive use of Porphyry Against the Christians in the first edition of his Chronicle (c. 300 or even as early as 280) : so B. Croke, ‘The Era of Porphyry’s Anti-Christian Polemic’, Journal of Religious History 13 (1984) 1–14.

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In the second decade of the fourth century, the influx of new members into the churches led Eusebius to compose an elaborate introduction for them. The Preparation for and Demonstration of the Gospel. It was to deal in an orderly way with the whole range of intellectual difficulties which might face the new believers. In it Eusebius constantly refers to Porphyry, and at the very beginning of the Preparation it is from Porphyry that he draws the vivid summary of the objections of the Greeks (1.2.1–5).9 “They say that we neither think like the Greeks nor act like foreigners. What then is it that is alien about us, and what is the novelty of our lifestyle?” The answer to this question is not that the Christians thought like Jews and lived like Greeks. Eusebius goes on to a series of questions which stress the unpardonable atrocity: the Christians have abandoned their national gods, to whom they are indebted for protection, and “by a mindless and unexamined act of faith” (1.2.4) adopted the universally condemned mythology of the Jews, who are the impious enemies of all peoples. But (and this is the heart of the objection) the Christians do not even apply themselves to the God of the Jews in the way their customs require, but follow a novel and solitary path of their own, respecting neither Greek nor Jewish ways (1.2.5). (a) Porphyry Did Porphyry go on to define or analyse this novelty? Probably not, for, with the characteristic conservatism of classical antiquity, he simply could not take seriously the possibility of an alternative way of life. Eusebius turns back on him his own catalogue of the methods of euthanasia amongst barbarian peoples (1.4.7). He claims that they have given up these atrocities solely on the strength of the teachings of Jesus as they have spread around the world. Eusebius thus admits the charges against “Christianism”, and offers it as an alternative to Hellenism and Judaism, “its very name advertising its novelty” (1.5.12). But the rest of his Preparation for the Gospel is nevertheless not devoted to questions of social life, but to basic points in the doctrine of God. He endeavours to show up the weaknesses of polytheism together with its oracles and underlying fatalism (Books 1–6), and the superiority of Hebrew wisdom, which is in agreement with the best Platonic philosophy (Books 7–15). Of the 20 books of the Demonstration of the Gospel, the first 10, which alone are extant, deal with the reasons why Christians reject Moses and with the proofs of the divinity of Jesus from Hebrew prophecy. The lost books 11–20 probably continued this theme before finishing with the origins of the church. It is not impossible that Eusebius here attempted an assessment of the peculiar character of “Christianism”, or he may have done it in the Praeparatio and ⁹ U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, ‘Ein Bruchstück aus der Schrift des Porphyrius gegen die Christen’, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 1 (1900) 101–105.

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Demonstratio ecclesiastica, to which Photius refers, if indeed these works are not simply the product of confusion on Photius’ part. On the other hand, the fragments of Porphyry’s work (mainly from the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes, who was answering an early fourth-century critique of Christianity, assumed to have been a digest of Porphyry) confirm that the intellectual issues were paramount. The scale and seriousness of his attacks confirm the impression given by Eusebius. Porphyry was basically concerned with the “mindless and unexamined act of faith” upon which the peculiar life of the churches rested. He clearly recognised the power exercised over the minds of believers by the teaching of the Scriptures in church. He does not seem to have anticipated that religious sociology might want to find other explanations of the success of Christianity. Nevertheless, his criticisms frequently involve him in comments on contemporary church life, which show that he was an acute observer of what was going on there.10 Knowing the doctrines of Scripture as well as he did, Porphyry could see the inconsistency of Christians imitating the temples with large buildings of their own, even though they had no idols or sacrifices, and nothing prevented their praying at home, since the Lord would hear them anywhere (fr. 76). But he was also aware of the teaching activities that went on in the churches, for he understands the distinction between the catechumens and the “faithful” (fr. 26), who were fully initiated. He does not consider even bishops and presbyters fit to count among the “faithful” (fr. 95), since they did not live up to the gospel test of the grain of mustard seed (Matt. 17:20). He also considers that Mark 16:17–18 would be a good test of fitness for the “priesthood” (he does not here use the Christian term), and especially of those competing for bishoprics (fr. 96). He knows that the churches uphold a “canon of truth” (fr. 38) handed down from Jesus, and is not impressed by the “tens of thousands” (fr. 36) who perished for it, which was pleasing neither to God nor to a reasonable man (fr. 64). Porphyry also recognises the universal spread of the gospel (fr. 13), which only goes to show the falsity of the prediction in Matt. 24:14, since the end has still not come. But the most illuminating comments from the social point of view are perhaps those relating to the place of women and their property in the churches. In an earlier work, the Philosophy from Oracles, Porphyry had recognised the tenacity of Christian women (Augustine, De civ. Dei 19.23).11 A husband asked ¹⁰ Yet Harnack’s classification of a few fragments under this heading is arbitrary; the allusions may well have been only incidental to his main attack on Scripture: A. von Harnack, Porphyrius gegen die Christen (Berlin 1916); T. D. Barnes, ‘Porphyry Against the Christians : Date and the Attribution of Fragments’, Journal of Theological Studies 24 (1973) 424–442; A. Benoît, ‘Le Contra Christianos de Porphyre : où en est la collecte des fragments?’ in Mélanges Simon (Paris 1978) 261–275. ¹¹ J. M. Demarolle, ‘Les femmes chrétiennes vues par Porphyre’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 13 (1970) 42–47.

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the oracle which god he should propitiate to retrieve his wife from Christianity. Apollo replied that it was easier to fly or write on water than recall to reason an impious and defiled woman – therefore leave her to her folly, for she mourns a dead god, condemned as he was by good judges and dishonourably executed in his prime. In Against the Christians (fr. 97), Porphyry alleged that women constituted their “senate” (so Jerome, who warns against the danger), dominating in the churches, and that the preference of the women “passed judgement on the priestly rank”. The voting power of women was not seen as a sign of social progress, however. There was nothing surprising in Paul’s having conquered the world (fr. 4). It was all done for profit. Men who were by origin peasants and paupers had used the familiar magic arts to induce “rich little women” to hand over their wealth. Porphyry took the saying about the camel and the eye of the needle (Matt. 19:24) as a claim that the poor had privileged access to heaven (fr. 58). It was too immoral for him to credit it to Jesus. It must have been invented by certain paupers who coveted the property of the rich. Similarly, the challenge to the rich young ruler (Matt. 19:21), which was to become the charter of monasticism, must have been invented by a distressed gentlewoman, like the ones Porphyry knew of, who had been persuaded to distribute all their property to the poor. The women had then started raising funds, abandoning their freedom for indecent begging, and adopting a pitiable appearance instead of happiness, and had moved into the houses of those who still had them. It was the ultimate outrage. Having given up their own property on the pretext of piety, they had been driven by want to covet that of others. Porphyry also knew of women committed to virginity who made a boast of it, claiming that they were filled with the Holy Spirit like “the one who had given birth to Jesus” (fr. 33). Porphyry’s contempt for such women is clear. Did he fear the challenge their new way of life made to the accepted social order? Yet a generation later he was to write to his own wife against marriage and in favour of reducing one’s material needs to the minimum. The ideals of the Christian women were probably closer to his own than he would have liked to admit. The prevailing sarcasm of Porphyry’s approach to Christianity probably prevented his making any rational appraisal of the contemporary social phenomenon. It also registers his concern at what he sensed as a form of religious mania. He had criticised the classical conception of the gods as well, and had given offence in that quarter. He was not concerned, as Celsus had been, with the national interest. (b) Celsus About the time of the ‘great persecution’ there were published at least three philosophical critiques of Christianity. One was the digest of Porphyry to

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which Macarius Magnes later replied, of unknown authorship. The second author, likewise unidentified, wrote the three books “against the Christian name” which are referred to by Lactantius (Div. inst. 5.2). The latter regards him as a power-seeker and profiteer masquerading as philosopher, and holds that his work was written in ignorance of what it was he was attacking. The only hints as to its contents do not rise above the usual stereotype – Christianity was a superstition suited to old women; the world would be better off when everyone attended again to the cult of the gods. The third author, also described by Lactantius (Div. inst. 5.2.12), can be safely identified with Hierocles, an experienced provincial governor who advised Diocletian on the opening of the persecution (Mort. pers. 16.4). He went on to govern Egypt, and was a particularly provocative persecutor there. The two books of his Logos philalethes, addressed not “against”, but “to” the Christians, are said by Lactantius to have concentrated on the inconsistencies of Scripture with such penetration that one might have thought he had once belonged to “our sect”. He was especially hard on Peter and Paul, and the other apostles, who were common and uneducated men, and who were mostly fishermen (Lactantius adds that this lack of culture is a good assurance against their having been liars!). As for Jesus, he was the leader of a brigand army of 900 (a novelty in the tradition of polemics), and not to be compared for miracles with Apollonius of Tyana. Lactantius also tells us that the work contained the praises of “the highest God” – the same style Licinius was to use in the prayer he was given for his troops before their battle with Maximinus. Eusebius (Contra Hieroclem 1) claims that the work was a blatant plagiarism, taken from Celsus. He was at this stage no more able than Lactantius to recognise the hand of Porphyry behind the work. It may be, however, that the shadow of Celsus lay more heavily over these debates than has been thought. As late as 335, when Eusebius delivered his speech ‘In Praise of Constantine’ at the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, he still thought it important to come to grips with a number of the criticisms that had been first raised by Celsus.12 It would perhaps be going too far to say that he was working from Celsus. But the similarity of the arguments that Eusebius faced is clear. The philosophical critique as he deals with it is inspired by two major sentiments. The first is a frustration with the fact that so many people should have been persuaded to accept a view of God that was intellectually untenable. It was quite arbitrary of the Christians to have singled out Jesus for divine honours when the world was rich in heroes, and polytheism corresponded well with the diversity of things. The incarnation was an impossible and unnecessary contamination of God’s per¹² C. T. H. R. Ehrhardt, ‘Eusebius and Celsus’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 22 (1979 40–49.

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fection, while the humiliation of Jesus on the cross proved that he could not have been divine anyway. The second kind of argument to which Eusebius replies is inspired by concern over the social promiscuity of the Christian movement. In contrast with the universal judgement that one should associate with God what is best in life, the Christians deliberately cultivated the worst people. Jesus himself was of mean origin, and the disciples paltry. Yet this vulgar company, appearing only the day before yesterday, and in a backward corner of the Empire, had had the impertinence to call in question hallowed national customs, and to address themselves without discrimination to people of any national tradition. This was a profanation of the State, stripping it of its divine sanctions. But in any case, the perverse judgement of the Christians had not been vindicated by their God in the passage of time. Andresen has argued that Celsus, in response to the novel development of a theology of history by Justin, had reacted uniquely amongst the critics of Christianity against the Greek tradition of understanding the cosmos in metaphysical categories.13 But arguments from social and historical reality lack the security of the timeless. The remarkable shift of fortune which Eusebius had witnessed enabled him to convert the social deficiencies to which Celsus had appealed into trump cards. Celsus had mocked the Jews as frogs holding Sanhedrin round a pond, while the Christian worms held their ekklesia in the dung-heap, arguing about which of them was the worst sinner. God had larger things to think of. Plotinus, the teacher of Porphyry, though by no means hostile to Christians, would have agreed. It was absurd to call the least of men brothers and deny this name to the sun and the heavenly bodies. It was all a gross anthropomorphism, hopelessly overestimating the importance of man in the cosmos. But if the universe is stable, remarkable things still happen in the world of men. History might yet reveal the hand of God. In Eusebius’ day the worms had suddenly turned, to rule the world. (c) Julian With Julian we meet at last a spokesman whose voice has not been stifled. We could hardly wish for a better qualified informant. Standing where he does, at the centre of power, and at a time when the significance of the recent changes must have been apparent to anyone with an eye to see, and above all with his close personal involvement, he must have known the answers to our questions. Yet Julian is equally clearly an untypical if not unique participant. His acute sensitivities sharpen all the issues, but no doubt overstate them too.

¹³ C. Andresen, Logos und Nomos: die Polemik des Kelsos wider das Christentum (Berlin 1955).

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Taking up the old complaint, he reproaches the Christians with “the spirit of apostasy” from the national religion (3.388).14 The same idea had already been turned against him by his half-brother, Gallus (if the letter is genuine), in response to the rumour that he was thinking of abandoning the religion of his family (3.288). As the heirs of Constantine, their personal and national obligation now lay where Constantine’s choice had fallen. In making his way back to Hellenism, however, Julian conceived of himself as called by Zeus and the other gods for the restoration of the true and truly ancient religion. He sets this out in a lengthy parable (2.130–148; cf. 3.12, 26, 148). At a critical point in his career he had prayed to the gods for a sign (2.282), and at other times received one apparently unsolicited (2.386; 3.4, 8). Julian’s mind was highly alert to the need for guidance. Homer and Plato are bound to him personally, like amulets (3.98). He was no doubt familiar with the practice, documented by the many extracts from the Bible preserved on folded pieces of papyrus, whereby believers literally bound themselves to the words of God. The Bible had made a deep impression on Julian too. He alludes to passages of Scripture, expecting his non-Christian readers to understand the point (2.6, 36, 298, 304, 308). It was said that in his youth he had learnt it all by heart (Eunapius, Vit. soph. 473). The ancient religion, however, which he was determined to restore, or, as he called it, “Hellenism”, could no longer be taken for granted. For all his intense conviction of its truth, Julian did not attempt to conceal from himself or anyone else the widespread disbelief and even disloyalty he faced. He defended himself with insults. “Dogs relieve themselves on the pillars in front of the schools and courts” (2.8). He admits the fact that the prefect of Egypt is openly ignoring his demand for the banishment of Athanasius (3.142). In the Misopogon, the satire on himself by which he reflects his frustration, he no doubt even exaggerates the degree to which the citizens of Antioch found his image and policies ridiculously outdated (2.470). But the omission of the city council to provide sacrifices for his visit to the temple of Zeus at Daphne, where it was left to the priest to find a goose from his private means (2.486), represents a tacit opposition to his wishes. He must have seen that it put a large question mark over the future. The temple of Apollo at Daphne had already been stripped for building materials (3.98). But Julian was actively encouraging the development of a national community (“koinon”, 3.28) of the Hellenes, which could also claim its dedicated patronesses (3.136). As the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, with the prospect of a long life ahead of him, he must have seemed to many a figure to be seriously reckoned with. He speaks of the unusual sight of crowded temple precincts, as people and magistrates hastened to applaud him and listen to his ¹⁴ All references to Julian are to volume and page in the Loeb edition of W. C. Wright.

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reproachful speeches (2.438). There were even bishops who kept their options open. Pegasius of Ilium had all along been a secret admirer of the old gods, and was now free to take up a priesthood publicly (2.48–54). George, the Arian bishop of Alexandria, assassinated by the Christian mob, had possessed a good classical library which Julian had used in the past, and which he now hoped to rescue (2.74, 122). Even Basil, the future bishop of Caesarea and formerly a fellow-student of Julian’s at Athens, received an invitation to Court, with a public travel voucher into the bargain. Julian hoped for friendly academic debate (3.82). Like his intellectual predecessors, and fortified in this no doubt by his Christian upbringing, Julian was fully conscious that the “madness of the Galileans” (2.36), by which they had introduced a novel “kerygma” and teaching (3.142) and inflicted a disease on the community (3.144), sprang from the study of Scripture. He recognised the passion for learning and argument that gripped the church at Alexandria, and the strong supply of teachers in it (3.150). But he also challenged the Galileans to put the matter to a proper educational test. Train a sample group of children in Scripture only, he proposed, and see whether they turn out any better than slaves (3.386). True to the philosophical ideal, Julian believes that knowledge is only possible for an élite. The Galileans were creating a false expectation amongst the people. For the same reason Julian objected to the Cynics taking seriously the opinions of common people (2.46). The churches, he rightly detected, had been tacitly relying upon the classical tradition to help them come to terms with educated society. But Jesus had only been known for 300 years, and his followers were really leeches, who sucked only the worst blood from the Jewish tradition to which they had attached themselves (3.376). He and the “fishermen-theologians” (3.188) had only been interested in the sinners, to whom Jesus immorally offered forgiveness (2.412), and in mean activities like curing cripples and blind paupers. You confined yourselves to backward peoples and places like this, Julian reminds them, because you never expected that “you would one day arrive at the position of power you now have” (3.376). Yet in spite of his contempt for their vulgarity, Julian recognised that the attraction of the churches lay partly in their charitable work (2.302, 336; 3.68–70). He recognised the power of Jesus’ command to “sell what you have and give to the poor”, even though he could see that it made economic nonsense (3.430). He complained that the councillors of Antioch who neglected the sacrifices nevertheless allowed their wives to empty the cupboards to feed the poor – and to enjoy the reputation they won from it (2.490). The same women were allowed to “govern themselves” and have control over the bringing up of the children (2.472). Julian was enraged that Athanasius should have baptised “eminent Greek women” during his reign (2.142). Although he regarded the life of women as pitiable and emotionally unstable (2.64, 440),

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he knew their importance in the spread of the gospel (3.376). He also recognised the solidarity of the social classes created by Christian belief (2.474), in spite of the economic conflicts and exploitation in which the groups concerned were involved (2.502–512). Features of church life new to his ear also took Julian’s eye. He was by no means confined to the conventional objections to Christianity. The insubordination he faced in Alexandria and Antioch made clear to him the fact that the governing classes in such cities were now closely connected with the bishops. If his policies were frustrated, he could assume that the bishops and presbyters had been sitting in secret session with the local administration (3.46). When the people of Alexandria had tried to stop the dismantling of the temples, the prefect had turned his troops on them, “perhaps because he feared George more than Constantius” (3.62). The troubles at Alexandria and elsewhere made clear another novelty of the age, the state of civil war between rival Christian orthodoxies. Julian knows the technical terminology, and his sharp tongue does not spare the atrocities either of “heretics” (3.128) or of “clerics” (3.130). Neither Jesus nor Paul had authorised them to slaughter each other “because they did not mourn the dead body [of Jesus] in the same way” (3.376). Julian loved to depict Christianity as a cult of death. He was familiar with the fetishism of the cross (3.372), but above all his barbs were directed at the cult of the martyrs. He hinted that the Christians had turned out to be polytheists after all (3.374). Because the bones of the martyrs were kept there, he called the churches “tombs” (2.134, 484; 3.134). By seeking the inspiration of the dead in this way the churches were breaking the scriptural ban on sleeping among the tombs (3.416). “You have filled everything with tombs and monuments, but it is nowhere prescribed for you that you should abase yourselves before them and revere them” (3.414). Apart from the petition of Isidore of Karanis (P. Col. 7.171), Julian is our earliest independent authority for monasticism. He admired asceticism as a philosopher. Marcus Aurelius “displayed a beauty beyond invention by the very fact that he kept himself uncared for and unadorned”; “His body shone with transparent light, most pure and clear, from lack of food” (2.371). Julian’s chosen company of seven at Antioch pursued a kind of collective asceticism (2.466). The people of Antioch found his matted and lice-infested hair and beard revolting, together with his long nails and ink-stained hands (2.422– 424). They objected to his sleeping alone (2.442). But he draws two vital distinctions. The Cynics did not go in for giving oracular advice, nor did they raise funds for the needy out of “mercy” as the Galileans called it. Here once more we find the two distinctive hallmarks of Christianity, this time explicitly identified for us by a peculiarly well-qualified disbeliever: the doctrine of revelation, and care for those in need.

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Although Julian was heir to the military burden of the Roman Empire, and lost his life campaigning against the Persians, he was not seriously concerned with Christianity as a threat to national security, as had been the persecuting emperors. Religion was not for him in the first place a matter of the public interest. Julian was concerned for the intrinsic truth of “Hellenism”, the recognition of which he believed to be central to the integrity of the classical tradition. His onslaught on Christianity set a style that was to find echoes amongst Greek writers of the old persuasion for a century or more. They immortalised their hero, and retreated into their academic preserves, prepared to sit out the siege indefinitely.15 Julian’s older contemporary, Libanius, the great rhetorician of Antioch, taught the generation of classicising bishops that followed them. Yet he did not hesitate to take up Julian’s criticisms of Christianity, as his speeches gave him opportunity. He was no campaigner, but the hypocrisy of the rabble-rousing monks, “the men clothed in black”, especially incensed him. Eunapius, though, like Julian, a pupil of the Christian sophist, Prohaeresius, at Athens, spoke out in very similar terms. In his Lives of the Sophists he gave expression to his sense of the importance for Greek education of the élite succession of scholars. The rhetorician Themistius, however, who worked for both Constantius and Theodosius, attempted no direct criticism of Christianity. Reversing the attitude of Julian, he advocated a philosophical education that would make ethics popular, in the hope of creating a cultural bond between ruler and subject. He was content to praise Constantius, Julian and Theodosius alike as philosophers. Such a spirit of compromise, which earned him the contempt of the intransigent sophists, secured the future of Hellenism more effectively that confrontation could ever have done. He showed the way to the Greek-Christian symbiosis of Byzantium.

III. How the Policy-Makers Tried to Stop It The philosophical critique of Christianity tells us how the movement was viewed within a limited circle of intellectuals. But their ongoing preoccupation with its illogicality and vulgarity, I believe, correctly identifies the mainspring: the beliefs of the Christians contradicted both the accepted ways of understanding the world and its hierarchy of social values. Beliefs and social action, moreover, were coupled together in a unique manner, with effects unknown before in classical antiquity. An alternative form of community life was being ¹⁵ For Libanius, see P. de Labriolle, La réaction paienne (Paris 91950) 429–433. For Eunapius, see I. Opelt, s. v., Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 6 (1965) 18–36, and R. T. Ridley, ‘Eunapius and Zosimus’, Helikon 9–10 (1969–1970) 574–592. For Themistius, see G. Downey, ‘Themistius and the Defense of Hellenism in the Fourth Century’, Harvard Theological Review 50 (1957) 259–274.

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created, and had begun seriously to disorient those who valued the old citybased culture. The persecutions demonstrate the fact that this threat not only arose in the conceit of philosophers, but was taken to heart by government and public as well. The reasons are also clear. The concern was for national security, a fully traditional reaction. But in the immediate aftermath of the persecutions we find a quite distinct kind of response at the public level, and one which is new to the classical tradition. If the Christians will not associate themselves in the proper way with the general community, they had better be excluded from it. The choice is now between full assimilation and apartheid. Coupled with this demand are attempts to generate a renewal of community support for the national cults. Their prestige had been injured by the capitulation of the government to the Christians. Now they are to be regenerated, but in a novel way. They will be reorganised so as to capture some of the sources of community strength and solidarity that had been effectively demonstrated in the organisation of the churches. (a) Maximinus It is not clear who first thought of this method of treating the problem. As soon as the death of Galerius became known in May 311, Maximinus Daia moved to occupy Asia Minor. He had given effect to the edict of toleration by a rather more guarded circular issued to the governors of the East by his Praetorian Prefect, Sabinus (Eus. HE 9.1.3–6). Eusebius himself alludes (9.2) to a period of six months’ respite for the churches. We may then imagine that the return of the exiles, and plans for the rebuilding of churches, would soon have created tension with those who had profited from their suppression.16 According to Lactantius (Mort. pers. 36.3), Maximinus then arranged for deputations from the cities to seek from him a ban on the construction of meeting-places (“conventicula”) by the Christians. This was followed by the creation of high priests for each city. They were to be selected from the leading citizens, and were to sacrifice daily to all the gods. The existing priests of the various cults were to be subordinate to the high priest, and together they were to be responsible for preventing any meeting-places being built by Christians, and indeed for preventing their meeting at all. The high priests of the various cities were grouped into provincial hierarchies, under a metropolitan. Eusebius stresses the novelty of these procedures (HE 9.7.1). The assimilation of the priesthoods to the pattern of civil authority ¹⁶ Moreover, H. Castritius has shown, in Studien zu Maximinus Daia (Kallmünz 1969), how the general economic interests of the cities were closely tied to the festivals and other commercial aspects of the public cults.

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parallels the development of such a pattern that had occurred amongst the churches. It represents a bid to upstage the Christians. At Antioch the campaign was originated by Theotecnus, the city treasurer. He is presumably the imperial curator civitatis, which might support the assumption that the ultimate initiative came from above, though by this stage the post was usually filled from the local nobility. Like Epitynchanus,17 he was able to produce oracles to give himself credence (9.3). They were presumably issued in the name of Zeus Philios, whose cult he managed. The cult-name is perhaps significant: the Christians are to be driven out in the name of the god of hospitality. Eusebius says (HE 9.4.1) that the fashion of appealing to Maximinus for the exclusion of Christians spread from Antioch, and he stresses the selection of civil leaders as the new city and provincial high-priests (9.4.2). They had guards, and a military escort (8.14.9). The campaign of Maximinus had also embraced public education. Fictitious ‘Acts of Pilate and Jesus’ were devised (Eus. HE 9.5.1). They were to be officially displayed by means of inscriptions, and used as teaching material in schools, to be learnt by heart by the children. Maximinus also published in every city and place the revelations (extorted, according to Eusebius, by the military governor of Damascus) of public prostitutes on the indecencies which were performed in “the Lord’s houses” (HE 9.5.2). Roman tradition was familiar with the public display of eulogistic treatments of history, but the convention had been to condemn the memories of the losers to oblivion. Now, however, the sense of ideological competition is apparent. The paradox of the deified criminal, which we know from the philosophers was a major source of offence in Christian doctrine, is to be dealt with openly, using even the elementary means of persuasion available through the schools. Does this reflect an awareness of the influence of Christian doctrine on children? Their enemies were ahead of the churches in recognising the uses of education for indoctrination. This must mark the beginning of what has become a major feature of western civilisation: the commitment of the state to a deliberate inculcation of its version of the truth, and conversion of education to this purpose. The ideologising of society is then, by reaction, one of the most far-reaching consequences of the dogmatic drive of the churches. (b) Licinius Although Licinius is seen by Eusebius as the vindicator of the Christian cause over Maximinus, one may reasonably assume that the concerns of the cities ¹⁷ For his inscription as “first high-priest, saviour of his country, and legislator”, found near Acmoneia in Phrygia, see H. Grégoire, ‘Notes épigraphiques I: La religion de Maximin Daia’, Byzantion 8 (1933) 49–56.

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upon which his campaign had rested remained the same, and that the new ruler would for political reasons at least be obliged to take them seriously.18 As the tension built up towards his final conflict with Constantine (in 324), moreover, he must have found it prudent to cultivate anti-Christian opinion, given the strong personal commitment of Constantine to the churches. Eusebius says that he came to admire the anti-Christian policies of his predecessors in the East (HE 10.8.2). He began to “besiege” the Christians gradually, and without drawing too much attention to it (10.8.8). First, he removed all Christians from his household (10.8.9). He then excluded from service (although Eusebius uses the term “soldiers”, this should probably be taken as a reference to the civil service) and downgraded those who would not sacrifice (10.8.10). Worse was to follow, but “must I recall all his deeds in detail?” asks Eusebius, “and the unlawful laws of that most lawless man?” (These remarks are important, in view of the claim that the HE does not justify our accepting the measures registered in the VC as authentic.) There was a ban on taking food to prisoners or those in chains. No one was to be subject to the same suffering they sought to relieve (10.8.11). The emotional reaction of Eusebius (more extensive than indicated here) shows that Licinius had put his finger on a sensitive spot. Presumably he recognised the social influence established by the charitable practices of the Christians, and quietly cut the nerve of their ministry. Eusebius then refers (without detail) to elimination of the most reputable bishops by having the governors lay traps for them. Unheard of means of death were employed (HE 10.8.14). The details given suggest only local atrocities on the part of the governors (10.8.17). Eusebius implies that the basis for the action was that the Christians were believed to be praying for the victory of Constantine (10.8.16). In Amasia, and other cities of Pontus, some churches were demolished, others locked up (10.8.15). There would have been a general persecution had not Constantine’s victory intervened (10.8.18–19). Although Eusebius was clearly not very well informed at the time of his final revision of the history (soon after 324?), the Life of Constantine (even if genuine, published apparently only after Eusebius’ death in 339?) provides striking additional details. The Eusebian authorship of this work has been seriously challenged on grounds of style and composition, which are rejected, with argument, by the latest editor.19 He also dismisses, though without giving reasons, the objections brought against the details of the persecution in particular, which have been held to be a fabrication, based upon the attested policies of Theodosius against the heretics.20 It is not possible here to debate this ¹⁸ That he did so is implied by Libanius, Or. 3.6 (ed. Foerster, 190). ¹⁹ F. Winkelmann, Über das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin (GCS 1.1) Berlin 1975). ²⁰ M. R. Cataudella, ‘La persecuzione di Licinio e l’autenticità della Vita Constantini’,

Athenaeum 48 (1970) 48–83, 229–259.

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argument, but instead I propose to ask the question whether the details can be given a plausible explanation in relation to what Eusebius tells us in the HE of the policies of Licinius. But first, what of the documents in the Vita Constantini? The letter which is said to have been sent by Constantine to Eusebius himself and to all the other bishops on the repair and extension of neglected church buildings (VC 2.46.1– 3), although it refers to the restoration of freedom from “that dragon” (Licinius), nowhere suggests that any buildings had been destroyed, nor that there had been any confiscations. What has to be made good is the result of neglect, based partly on the fear of possible action against the churches. Destruction of buildings is likewise not mentioned (though confiscation is) in the “complete provision” (VC 2.41) for restoration of rights which Constantine made in an edict addressed “to the provincials of Palestine” (VC 2.24–42), and which is said in one group of manuscripts to have been “the first letter sent after his victory over the tyrants by Constantine, Emperor of the Romans, to those in the Eastern land”. This is the edict of which ‘Eusebius’ claims to have a personal signed copy. Its authenticity has been established by the identification of a fragment of it in P. Lond. 3. 878. It directs that the following “cruel outrages and punishments” are to be reversed (26.2). On the personal front, the penalties specified are: exile beyond the frontiers (30.1); banishment to islands (31.1); condemnation to labour in mines or public works (32.1); loss of civil rank (32.2); loss of status in the government service (33); loss of social rank (34.1), with consequential condemnation to work in women’s apartments or linen factories (34.1) or reduction to the status of servant of the treasury (34.1); reduction to slavery 34.2). On the property front the penalties are: compulsory enrolment as councillor (which carried financial obligations) (30.1); confiscation of all property (30.2); confiscation of the deceased estates of martyrs (35.1) (next-of-kin are now to inherit or, in their absence, the churches); confiscation of church buildings, lands and orchards (39); confiscation of martyrs’ graves (40). In all these cases, restoration is required whether from individuals (37.1), who may have obtained the properties at auction (38), by purchase (41) or as gifts (41), or from the treasury (39). It will be apparent that this list implies a far more extensive range of action than Eusebius had indicated in the HE. It is hard to think that it was the result only of individual initiatives by the governors. That no particular prominence is given to the death penalty confirms the suspicion that in the HE Eusebius was making the most of it. On the other hand, the extensive range of status degradations and confiscations suggests a planned drive to reduce the wealth and social dignity of the church community. Two points not mentioned in the HE are particularly tell-tale. The compulsory enrolment of Christians as councillors presumably reverses the immunity granted to Catholic clergymen by Constantine in 313 (Eus. HE 10.7), and reinforced in 319 (Cod. Theod. 16.2.1,

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2), though by 320 Constantine himself had had to stop the flight of propertied persons from their civil obligations by confining access to the clergy-posts to those too poor for council service (Cod. Theod. 16.2.3). Secondly, the confiscation of martyrs’ graves presumably represents the same line of attack which had opened the campaign of Maximinus in 311. Thus although this catalogue does not and, being a list of individual penalties at law, could not substantiate the other measures attributed to Licinius in the VC, its diversity, and the emphasis on the social effects of the policy, certainly justifies serious consideration of the others. The first “law” attributed to Licinius (VC 1.51.1) is a ban on the bishops’ meeting in synod, or even visiting each other for consultation. The author notes (51.2) that this is the only legitimate method by which ecclesiastical decisions are made. If this act is authentic, it is a well-calculated move to break down the extraordinary international nexus which had been created amongst the bishops, and to which Constantine had quickly learnt to subject himself for guidance in matters ecclesiastical. Even the reorganisation of religion along provincial lines by Maximinus had not ventured to go so far. One can easily imagine how the tumultuous series of synods at Alexandria over Arianism may have given Licinius the excuse for a ban. Given the vast power which was shortly to be demonstrated by the councils, it could even be rated far-sighted. But quite apart from the threat of a state within the State, the socially disruptive factionalism in church life justified a curb on the politicking of bishops. It has been held that the purpose of the measure would have been to provoke the bishops into self-incriminating acts of retaliation.21 In that case it would be amongst the “traps” alluded to in HE 10.8.4. The second “law” (VC 1.53.1) prevented women meeting for prayer with men, and excluded them from attendance at “instruction in virtue”. The bishops were not to catechise women, but other women were to be selected to teach the women. Cataudella assumes that this represents a desire to prevent the kind of sexual scandals of which Maximinus had publicly accused the churches (HE 9.5.2), and that it must be unhistorical because the churches would not have found such a measure unwelcome in the circumstances assumed. But it is notable that in spite of gossip the Fathers of the church were generally inclined to justify the close associations they maintained with the patronesses who supplied them with funds and social prestige, while the orders of widows and virgins provided the backbone of the caring ministry of the churches. It might be sounder to suppose that the object of such a measure by Licinius would have been to break down this very effective system of social relations. One may also perhaps suspect in it an outworking of the contempt for the intellectual capacity of women which is a feature of the philosophical ²¹ H. Feld, Der Kaiser Licinius (Diss. Saarland 1960).

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tradition, if not of the ecclesiastical one (Eus. PE 1.4.14, 5.3). By making the women undertake the teaching of women, may not the hope have been that some of the impetus would be lost to the life of the churches through the intellectual degeneration which would follow on the notoriously productive female side? One of the historically troublesome aspects of these extra measures attributed to Licinius in the VC is their complete lack of attestation from other sources. It may be noted here, on the other hand, that a recently published papyrus documents a circle of women who ranked as “teachers” in the church (P. Strasb. Gr. 1900). The editor dates this text to later in the fourth century, and attributes it to heretical circles, who are known to have been willing to use women as teachers.22 But the date should perhaps be reconsidered in the light of a possible Sitz im Leben during the campaign of Licinius. A third measure requires church meetings to take place outside the citygates in the open air (VC 1.53.2). This is explicable in terms of the petitions to Maximinus requesting the exclusion of the Christians from the cities, while the denial of building rights may have been intended to cripple the charitable (or even indecent) activities which were associated with church buildings. These three items are the major additions of the VC to the account of the policies of Licinius given by Eusebius in the HE. None of them is inconsistent with the picture presented there of a ruler gradually limiting the risks of a program he knew from experience could easily backfire. We know that Eusebius of Nicomedia retained the confidence of Licinius throughout, and that a relative of this bishop, the Praetorian Prefect Julius Julianus, was honoured by Constantine with the consulship immediately after his defeat, and married into his family to become the grandfather of the Emperor Julian. It is clear therefore that Licinius had been following a policy of compromise rather than full confrontation. There is no reason to suppose that he was deliberately seeking a collision with Constantine: the pace was being set by the other side. But given the coming struggle he was bound to make the most of those who would not welcome the victory of the great patron of the churches. We should also not exclude the possibility that the main grievance of Licinius in ecclesiastical matters was with those who opposed Eusebius of Nicomedia as an Arian. Eusebius of Caesarea, however, has cast him as a total renegade, thus fully endorsing the propaganda of Constantine. Neither Eusebius nor any other author, composing the VC from that point of view, would have been likely to invent such peculiar and unspectacular offences on Licinius’ part as the three measures peculiar to the VC. The very difficulty of explaining them obliges the modern historian to consider more carefully the possibility that they are actual relics of ²² M. Nagel, ‘Lettre chrétien sur papyrus (provenant des milieux sectaires du IVe siècle?)’,

Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 18 (1975) 317–323.

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the policy of Licinius. Any rhetorically capable writer in antiquity would have had far more sensational allegations ready to hand had he needed to invent them. The difficulty of correlating the measures with other evidence for the history of the church in these times is a danger sign, of course. The innocent testimony of Isidore of Karanis (P. Col. 7.171) makes it quite certain that there was no serious constraint on church life in his corner of Egypt, and the same seems to have been the case with Alexandria. But we should remember that we do not know the chronology of the acts of Licinius. It is perfectly possible that a more detailed knowledge of the timing would enable us to fit in both the evidence for ecclesiastical freedom and the acts of repression. The same applies of course to the possibility that the policy was applied in different ways in different places. The VC says that some of the measures were greeted with ridicule. We may imagine that they were only successful where there was public support, and administrators willing to gamble on a victory for Licinius. The situation everywhere must have been confused. From the city of Hermopolis Magna, in Egypt, we possess from about the year 320 the correspondence of a lawyer, Theophanes.23 He was a cultivated man, with religious interests that are difficult to pin down, and had made a journey to Antioch to intervene in some questions of injustice arising from religious causes. Some editors have put him on the Christian side, others amongst their opponents. His sons say that they owe to their father an ability “to think little of those who think differently”. Two correspondents address him as their “beloved brother”, and another speaks of “the highest God” and yet another of “the grace of the Almighty God”. But another correspondent again is certainly a “chief prophet” in the cult of Hermes Trismegistus. There may have been more realism in the attempt of Maximinus to affiliate all beliefs into one social structure of religion than church critics could allow. Licinius appears to have made a distinctive and more limited attempt to curb the social independence of the churches. Although not a Christian, and necessarily dependent upon the support of the classical gods in his conflict with Constantine (VC 2.4; 2.5.2), he does not seem to have attempted to revive the city and provincial high-priesthoods of Maximinus. That, along with other more radical measures, was reserved for Julian.

IV. Who Saw Best What was Going On? The conclusion then is this. Neither Eusebius nor Ammianus seems to have been in a position to see directly the basic nature of the changes going on. ²³ E. A. Judge and S. R. Pickering, ‘Papyrus Documentation of Church and Community in Egypt to the Mid-fourth Century’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 20 (1977) 47–71.

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Eusebius was too preoccupied with the need to demonstrate the maintenance of the orthodox succession against innovators to appreciate the ways in which the struggle over orthodoxy was itself shifting the centre of power in the community out of the hands of the civil rulers. The official status accorded the churches, and their mass following, subsequently made it easier for Ammianus to see them as occupying an acceptable place within the old Roman pattern of religion. He failed to recognise the historical importance of things which repelled him, notably their argumentativeness, and assumed that it was an aberration rather than of the essence of Christianity. But the philosophers, and especially those who apparently had inside knowledge of the movement, Porphyry, Hierocles and Julian, saw the need to cripple the intellectual drive of the churches by discrediting Scripture. They saw the new pattern of social alignments which it generated, and clearly sensed the threat to the very integrity of classical civilisation. At the practical level, Maximinus and Licinius attempted to save the day by imposing a uniform religious structure on the community, and breaking down the institutions through which an alternative pattern of society was being built up within the Roman world. History was not repeating itself. Insofar as fundamentally new arrangements for life were being introduced, especially in the West, classical historiography ceased to provide useful conventions for viewing it. The new ecclesiastical history failed to expand its horizons far enough to take in the full range of public life. Chronography provided a step in the right direction, towards a teleological explanation of man’s progress through time, but its skeletal form left it also far short of the full analysis of the significance of the changes.

Chapter 18

The Interaction of Biblical and Classical Education in the Fourth Century* Church schools were invented in the fourth century by the arch-enemy of the churches, Julian the Apostate. He was determined to force upon the churches the educational consequences of the New Testament. The ideals of classical education were incompatible with those of the Bible, and one must choose between them. But why had the churches themselves not drawn this conclusion? As I have explained (in my earlier essay noted below), the confrontation is clear enough in the case of St Paul. It is important to recognise, however, that he was not concerned with methods of education, but with its effects. The test of teaching lay in people’s behaviour. So crucial is this to Paul, that he transposes to it the language of worship. The sacrifice that pleased God is the commitment of one’s practical life. This is the “worship” that engages the mind.1 Indeed we may say that the New Testament only endorses worship in this sense. The various procedures in church are not described as ‘worship’ at all, and the only ‘act of worship’ performed in a New Testament church is attributed to a hypothetical unbeliever.2 In the case of believers, God is to be honoured by the dedicated life, and the main purpose of meeting in church is for encouragement towards that. The teaching ministries are not an art-form or professional skill, performed with an eye to self-display, but have as their sole objective the sharing of the knowledge of God that will transform one’s thinking and life-style.3 When Paul here condemns ‘conformity’ to this world he echoes the term that embodied the ideal of culturally ‘well-informed’ person. The euschemon is entitled to social respect because of cultivation. The term was familiar both in New Testament times4 and in the fourth century.5 It was, of course, specific * Adapted from a tape-recorded conference address with the help of Mrs Elizabeth Gardiner and Mr I. R. Burnard; published in the Journal of Christian Education 77 (1983) 31–37, in sequence with ‘The Reaction against Classical Education in the New Testament’, ibid. 7–14. ¹ Rom. 12:1. ² 1 Cor. 14:25. ³ Rom. 12:2. ⁴ Acts 17:12. ⁵ A second-century letter, P.Hamb. 1 (1913) no. 37 (ed. P. M. Meyer) says, “Whenever I find the opportunity, I write to you. For I cannot but reflect on your gentlemanliness and

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to Greek culture. But although the New Testament preaching seems to have been promoted to some extent by educated people,6 it was addressed indiscriminately to all sorts and invited them to take up what was in effect a nonGreek way of life. Since it was not Jewish either, there was an awkward problem of definition, which bedevilled historical understanding of the matter both then and now. It is all the more significant that the churches and their critics actually agreed on the basic character of what they found hard to define. The “Christians” were not a cult-group (which would not have had such cultural consequences and would not have needed that sort of name), but a kind of nation with a whole culture of their own.7 The Pauline ideal of the transformed life has both individual and social aspects.8 The mind itself is renewed,9 and the endowment of the individual with divine gifts carries him out of the prison of a static personality to which Hellenistic thought in general had confined him. The new talents are not for display, but for use to the benefit of others, so that a new community is built up through relationships of love. From its earliest documented stages this novel process of social upbuilding was controlled by a consciously imitative tradition,10 carried by teaching.11 This teaching “echoed” the word of God,12 an idea with supplies the distinctively Christian term for instruction, ‘catechesis’.13 Under this formula the churches in subsequent centuries proceeded to hand down the teaching now registered in books of the New as well as the Old Testament. They developed their own quasi-educational system for this without apparently coming into conflict with classical schooling in practical terms at all. From the late third or early fourth century there is preserved on papyrus a series of letters which register this system at work.14 They are letters of recommendation. This in itself illustrates an important social effect of church life. The hazards of travel had been circumvented by the rich through the exchange of private hospitality. The rest had been left to the mercy of the public inns.15 your character of true philosopher. For you are a true philosopher and euschemon…and we are better educated by you than by all the philosophers.” ⁶ e. g. Acts 18:24. ⁷ R. A. Markus, Christianity in the Roman World (London 1974); E. P. Sanders, Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. 1 (Philadelphia 1980); John H. Elliott, A Home for the Homeless (Philadelphia 1981). ⁸ Eph. 4:11–16. ⁹ Rom. 12:2. ¹⁰ 1 Thess. 1:6,7. ¹¹ Rom. 15:14, 16:17. ¹² 1 Thess. 1:8. ¹³ Luke 1:4; Acts 18:25; Gal. 6:6. ¹⁴ Listed with further references by E. A. Judge, ‘The Earliest Use of monachos for “Monk” (P. Coll. Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Vol. 20 (1977) 80–81, reproduced as ch. 12 above. ¹⁵ L. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (London 1974).

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Already in the New Testament one notices the use of letters designed to secure hospitality on a community basis16 though the element of personal patronage is still unmistakably present in the case of Phoebe.17 The papyrus letters, however, are so formalised that we possess one case where the name has been written in later in a different hand – presumably one had a stock of letters with blanks left at the key point. Their standardised form has suggested to some that they come from early monastic communities. But the early date and lack of distinctively monastic terminology (the term monachos is not attested before AD 324)18 supports the judgement that such letters are part of the ordinary traffic of church life at that time.19 The new ‘nation’ is providing a system of protection open to all without reference to social rank or status. But the bearers are sometimes distinguished in terms of their position as catechumens. In one case five named men are introduced as “catechumens amongst those who assemble” (perhaps those admitted to church meetings on a probationary basis), while a fifth is to be received as “a catechumen at the beginning of the gospel”.20 Another letter introduces “a catechumen up to Genesis”.21 There was clearly a curriculum of biblical instruction common to the various churches, which would presumably be continued at the new location. The letters are more conventional in their greetings than the New Testament ones, but the impact of New Testament ideas is decisive. In both cases the “brothers” (a common enough secular term) who received the letters are addressed as “beloved” (using the adjectival form of the distinctively New Testament word, agape). In the second case there is a woman to be received “in peace”, while the catechumen up to Genesis is to be received “for upbuilding”. Again the New Testament cast of thought is clear. By the early fourth century the papyri begin to reveal to us a remarkable cultural development. For over three thousand years the ancient language of Egypt had remained locked into the privileges of those who could master its intricate hieroglyphs, or their successor scripts. Persian and Macedonian conquerors introduced a wider literacy through foreign languages, Aramaic and then Greek. But it was the teaching of the gospel in church that was at last to free the language of Egypt itself for common written use. Using a modified Greek alphabet, letters and theological works now begin to appear in Coptic. We possess a Greek document of AD 304 by which a church “reader” certifies ¹⁶ Rom. 16:1,2; Phil. 2:29,30. ¹⁷ Discussed by E. A. Judge, ‘Cultural Conformity and Innovation in Paul: Some Clues

from Contemporary Documents’, Tyndale Bulletin 35 (1984) 3–24. ¹⁸ See the article referred to in n. 14 above. ¹⁹ K. Treu, ‘Christliche Empfehlungs-Schemabriefe auf Papyrus’, in Zetesis (= Festschrift E. De Strijcker) (Antwerp and Utrecht 1973) 629–636. ²⁰ PSI 9 (1929) no. 1041, reproduced in M. Naldini, Il Cristianesimo in Egitto: Lettere private nei papiri dei secoli II–IV (Florence 1968) no. 29. ²¹ J. R. Rea, P.Oxy. 36 (London 1970) no. 2785.

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that all the property belonging to his village church has been surrendered to the authorities.22 At the end it states that he is illiterate. This may mean that though he could read Greek he could not write it. But more probably it means that he had been reading the Scriptures in church in a Coptic translation and had not needed to master the language of the dominant culture at all. Greek education was tied to the use of the Greek language (which even an educated Roman was assumed to know). The churches broke this monopoly by translating the Scriptures into the various ethnic languages both within and without the empire (note the other historically momentous cases of Syriac, Armenian and Gothic). Within the Greek cultural tradition the uneasy compromise implied in the New Testament was gradually explored. Clement of Rome, the first of the Apostolic Fathers, at the end of the first century, shows in his letter to the Corinthians a greater utilisation of rhetoric than any New Testament writer. With the Apologists of the second century, notably Justin who had himself practised as a philosopher, the attempt begins to correlate biblical ideas with the philosophical tradition. No one could deny the damaging charge that Jesus had only recently appeared, but ingenious arguments could be devised to show that Plato’s wisdom stemmed from Moses. By the early third century Christian Platonism became a prominent movement in Alexandria, for centuries now the leading metropolis of Greek culture. Under Clement and Origen a harmony of biblical and secular philosophy was elaborated, using allegory to distil philosophical meaning from the biblical narratives. The so-called ‘catechetical school’ of Alexandria, with its counterparts in Caesarea, Antioch and Edessa in Syria, was what we might call an institute of advanced Christian studies. It was a theological off-shoot of university life. Its transient existence does not alter the fact that the regular education of believers remained throughout the first four centuries fully within the secular system, in spite of the contradictions that posed. Biblical training at home and in church was used to counteract the dangers.23 Julian, as the last surviving heir of Constantine, had been brought up under this double system. But the personal commitment he learned from the Bible was transposed in his imagination back to the old culture. He took it as his divine calling to restore the ancient cults, which he integrated with philosophy by the allegorical method. The classical tradition itself was exalted into a divinely inspired mode of salvation for mankind. Julian’s most relentless contempt was reserved for the radical Cynics who physically renounced the benefits of ²² J. R. Rea, P.Oxy. 33 (London 1968) no. 2673, discussed in E. A. Judge, The Conversion of Rome: Ancient Sources of Modern Social Tensions (Sydney 1980), reproduced as ch. 16 above. ²³ For the general argument and full evidence see H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (London 1956).

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civilisation in their own lives. They were matched for wilful barbarism only by the monks; reacting perhaps to the triumph of the church, these fourth-century drop-outs insisted upon taking literally the call of Jesus to the abandonment of society. But Julian too was seized by the passion for drastic consistency. The priesthoods of the old cults were to be geared up to new demands, with central control, and an unheard-of responsibility for preaching and for welfare services. The intellectual and social drive of the churches was Julian’s conscious model here. Religion in classical times had been essentially a ritual endorsement of the established culture. The churches on the other hand had taken over from philosophy the basic questions of theology and ethics, but converted them into the ideology of a popular movement, creating a new lifestyle in a way that neither religion nor philosophy in antiquity had done. Julian proposed to reassert the supremacy of a visibly decaying culture by supplying it with an ideological system reorganised along church lines.24 The churches for their part were to be put firmly where they belonged. An edict on Christian teachers abruptly resolved the dilemma that had troubled Christian consciences now for centuries. No Christian could now teach Greek literature because on principle he dishonoured the gods by whom it had been inspired. Like Paul,25 Julian despised professional teaching as the work of mere “peddlers” if it was not consistent with the teacher’s own beliefs. He quotes the Christians’ idea of a “new birth” as being what they need in reverse if they are properly to teach the classics. Ironically this appeal to inward integrity (as distinct from harmonious form), like the demand for personal commitment (as distinct from philosophical detachment or “apathy”), shows how fundamentally Julian’s own attempt to revive classicism was affected by the biblical training he had rejected. The Christians were also going to have to live up to their ideals. If they really think the classical writers were wrong about the gods, says Julian, let them try educating their children in church out of Matthew and Luke. The children however were not to be penalised for the perversity of their Christian parents: the classical schools remained open to all students whatever their beliefs. Julian’s ruling threatened to cripple the education of conscientious Christians by compelling them to work from texts written in sub-classical Greek. It shocked two Christian scholars, both named Apollinaris, father and son, into an immediate remedy. The Bible was rewritten to constitute a pseudo-classical literature in itself, each book being converted into an appropriate Greek genre. The Pentateuch became a Homeric epic and the gospels Platonic dialogues. But with Julian’s premature death the first ingenious experiment in church schooling went to waste. ²⁴ P. Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian and Hellenism: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford 1981). ²⁵ 2 Cor. 2:17.

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In the aftermath of this brief upheaval, three scholars of the Greek churches of the East gave their minds to the problem, from the Christian point of view, of the proper use of classical studies. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, addressed to his nephews a treatise To Young Men on the Advantages of Greek Literature. This was no very positive approach, but a demonstration that one might derive from the classics certain impressions that were a suitable preparation for later initiation into the full body of Christian doctrine. It is essentially a conscientious effort, by one who had himself had a very thorough classical education, to show that schoolboys need not be corrupted by their work, but the onus is left fully upon parents and the teachers in church (the latter in second place) to see that they are trained in Christian belief.26 Gregory of Nyssa, the younger brother of Basil, and like him a great Cappadocian bishop, seems to have received all his formal education within the family. In addition to a work On the Life of Moses in which he allegorically applies Moses’ attitude to the spoils of Egypt to the problem Basil had discussed (Moses’ basket is a figure of the classical education in which the Christian child is reared for greater ends), he produced an important work On Christian Education itself. He was perhaps the first to express the process by which a man is born anew and formed on the model of Christ as an educational one. It is known that, in the monasteries which Basil had introduced to Cappadocia, for the first time education was being provided for poorer children, perhaps on directly religious basis. The possibility of a distinctively Christian system of education may be seen in these developments. Meanwhile something similar was happening in Syria, where the leading Christian scholar was John Chrysostom. In an early work Against the Detractors of the Monastic Life he actually proposed that young men might be more soundly brought up in a monastery than in the traditional schools. It appears that a public scandal had been caused when certain young men of the city had gone off to join the monks, and that John was anxious to seize the occasion to criticise the moral pitfalls of the common educational system. In a much later work On Vainglory or the Right Way for Parents to Bring up their Children he withdrew his impulsive approval of the monastic experiment, and while not relaxing his anxiety about the moral risks of education returns to the classical Christian position with an attractively practical account of how parents can instil Bible knowledge into their children at home. This is justly famous for its simile of the child’s mind as a city with its five gates of sense. ²⁶ This and the remaining paragraphs are reproduced from my paper ‘Christian Education in the Early Church’, originally set in 1966 as part of a correspondence course in Christian Education conducted by the Australian Teachers’ Christian Fellowship. For further reading on these and other ancient authors, see E. A. Judge, ‘“Antike und Christentum”: Towards a Definition of the Field. A Bibliographical Survey’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Part II, vol. 23 (1979) 3–58, partly reproduced as ch. 6 above.

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While the Eastern scholars discussed the duties of parental training in relation to public education, two great Western divines set down important principles on the ecclesiastical side of education. Jerome, the Roman biblical scholar, has left two letters (nos 107 and 128) in which he guides the parents of two little girls, Paula and Pacatula, in the best way of preparing them for the life of virginity to which they have been dedicated. He admits that such a task is a formidable one in the city, and wishes he could prepare them instead in the nunnery which he had founded at Jerusalem. For this reason it is obviously best to regard his extremely rigorous personal rules and entirely biblical study material as evidence for monastic training rather than as a model for the normal education of Christian children. The African bishop Augustine included in his vast output of academic work a very considerable amount of educational theorising, centred similarly upon ecclesiastical needs. His most important works in the field were On the Catechisation of the Uninitiated, On the Teacher and On Christian Instruction. In spite of the fact that this all represents a formidable program for theological training in relation to other disciplines, the more remarkable feature is that so masterful a figure as Augustine still made no attempt to implement it in a formal institution. It remains as a great body of private guidance for those preparing themselves for ecclesiastical service. In the course of the fifth century western Europe and Africa were overrun by the Germanic migrations and direct Roman rule collapsed. With it went much of the old standard of living, including the classical educational system. Bishops extended the practice of preparing men for the ministry personally into a new system of schools to make up educational deficiencies in their candidates, and by AD 529 it was obligatory even upon each parish to conduct a school to ensure a supply of educated persons for the services of the church. Scholarship in the higher sense found its refuge in the monasteries. But in the East, where Roman power remained unbroken, the monasteries retained their somewhat revolutionary character, and at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 the training of children for secular occupations in monasteries was banned, thus terminating the experiments foreshadowed in Chrysostom’s time in favour of the traditional system of education.

Chapter 19

Conversion in the Ancient World* ‘Conversion’ (Gk ἐπιστροφή, Lat. conversio) is the classical word for any ordinary ‘turning around’, for example in order to face someone else. Its figurative use however is rare. In Plato’s image of the cave (Rep. VIII 518D – 519C), it is only the shadows cast on the back wall that we all see in life’s cave as we peer further into it. The light of reality lies behind us. But there is an “art” by which the soul may turn itself round from shadow to reality. Plato uses no technical term for this ‘conversion’, however. It has been suggested that he has in mind the way in which the sets on a stage might be revolved. But this hardly fits the contrast between the shadow and the true light. Cicero, discussing the utility of picturing gods in human form (De natura deorum 1.77), says they may “convert” the hearts (animos) of the ignorant to worship. Stoics used the figure of ‘conversion’ for the periodic cosmic renewal (apokatastasis) which drove the eternal rhythm of nature. For Plotinus, ‘conversion’ was a stage in the psychology of action. For the moral life, however, the term used by Epictetus and Porphyry is not ‘conversion’ but “progress” (προκοπή). Seneca, Paul’s contemporary, describes what we might call his youthful conversion to Pythagoreanism (Ep. 108, 17–22). The Peripatetic teacher, Sotion, had explained to him why Pythagoras abstained from meat: the transmigration of souls meant you might be killing your own kind. After a year on vegetables Seneca felt the better for it anyway. But this was early in the time of Tiberius Caesar. Some foreign rites were being promoted. It was proof of commitment that one avoided certain types of meat. Seneca’s father therefore told him to snap out of it. His father wasn’t afraid of prosecution, but hated philosophy anyway. We know that Tiberius took action at this time against both Isiac and Jewish proselytising (Jos. Ant. 18.3.4–5, Tac. Ann. 2.2.85, Suet. Tib. 36). The idea of ‘conversion’ is still not conceptualised in these cases, however, nor even in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible for the demand that people turn back to the Lord, although English translations may suggest this (Deut. 30:2, “When you return and obey him”; Ps. 19:7, “The law of the Lord is * Notes from a dialogue with D. M. Schreuder on ‘Conversion Ancient and Modern’; published in Society for the Study of Early Christianity Newsletter 32 (1998) 3–4.

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perfect, converting the soul”; Ps. 22:27, “and all the ends of the earth shall turn to the Lord.”). Neither Philo nor Josephus makes any use of the noun ἐπιστροφή in such a sense: there has been no philosophical definition of the idea. The terminology of turning is less common in the New Testament than in the Old. In Lk. 1:16 John “will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord”. Jesus says to Peter (Lk. 22:32), “Satan has desired you (plural) … but when you (singular) are converted, strengthen your brethren”. James (5:18) says, “If any of you err from the truth, and one convert him … he shall save a soul from death”. Note that in these cases the idea is of restoration, not conversion from unbelief. That comes with Paul, when the apostles report to the council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:3) “the conversion of the Gentiles” (cf. 1 Thes. 1:9, “You turned to God from idols”). It is this unique use of the noun (ἐπιστροφή) in Acts which must be the trigger for the much later conceptualisation of the idea as the conversion of the heathen. The book of Acts, full of conversion scenes both personal and collective, is written to justify the opening of Israel’s covenant to the Gentiles. There are two revolutions called for. First, in thought. One must grasp the new vision of the world’s history as disclosed in the vindication of Christ. Secondly, in life. One must break with past idolatry, share one’s goods, restrain one’s sexual appetite. Such demands for right ideas and action, theology and morality, lay in the province of philosophy. The classical cults required neither correct belief nor behaviour, but rather the payment of dues in sacrifice and ritual purity. In classical studies we call this ‘religion’, but ‘religion’ in the modern world means the commitment of belief and life-style such as the gospel or philosophy demanded. This is why those who were converted to it in Acts are not called ‘worshippers’ but “disciples” (i. e. students). The Ethiopian statesman was converted through studying a book (Acts 8:30). At Athens Paul was cross-questioned by the philosophers (17:19). At Ephesus for two years he argued daily in the School of Tyrannus (19:9). Such episodes set a pattern of quasi-philosophical conversion. The great apologists (and converts), like Justin in the second century or Arnobius in the late third, demonstrate the intellectual take-over which was being organised. It had little to do at that stage with ‘religion’ in what we construe as the classical sense. On the contrary it helped shape the modern sense of ‘religion’ as a philosophical commitment of thought and life. The papyrus fragments that document the christianisation of Egypt tell a similar story. At first they are (during the second and third centuries) mostly literary in character. They document the attention paid to the study of biblical texts. Letters of recommendation survive, specifying the stage to which the bearer’s program has advanced: “at the beginning of the gospel”, “trained up as far as Genesis”. More remarkable still is the appearance of Coptic script. For

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the first time in 3,000 years of civilisation the language of Egypt was given an alphabetic form (derived from Greek). The impetus for this seems to have come from Bible translation. Converts had to be able to see and study the text in their own vernacular. Which is the more pivotal conversion historically, that of St Paul or of Constantine? As an erstwhile arch-opponent, Paul was ideally equipped to explain the significance of the conversion of the Gentiles. His mission and letters were clearly formative for the future of the churches internationally. Yet the initiative in preaching to Greeks had not lain with him (Acts 11:20). On Constantine, Jones wondered whether the conversion of Europe would have come about without his heavenly vision of the Cross (p. 258). But the East had been the seat of the more intense opposition, and there Galerius had already turned it in. Moreover in Egypt we know that on the eve of Constantine’s conquest (AD 324) people in the villages had already come to accept the deacon and the monk as part of the pattern of community life (New Docs 1, p. 125). Constantine surely needed more than his dream to interpret the cross he saw on the sun’s face – there will have been advisers at hand. The official recognition of the churches did not close off the intellectual options. Julian could privately find his way back again to the old system of understanding the world, sharpened by his Christian upbringing. Marius Victorinus resigned his chair of rhetoric at Rome when Julian denounced Christian teachers of the Classics for intellectual hypocrisy. Victorinus had worked his way through the questions by private study, but in the opposite direction from Julian. He is a remarkable case, having left us scholarly works from before his conversion as well as after it. To be able to choose for oneself how to think and live is the heritage of personal freedom that the ideal of conversion has embedded in our culture: “the old has passed away, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). It is an utterly unclassical prospect.

Bibliography A. D. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford 1933). A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (London 1948). P. Hadot, ‘Bekehrung’, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie 1 (1971) 1033–1036. R. W. Hefner (ed.), Conversion to Christianity (Berkeley 1993). G. Madec, ‘Bekehrung’, Augustinus-Lexikon 1 (1994) 1282–1294. M. Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford 1994). R. B. E. Smith, Julian’s Gods (London 1995).

Chapter 20

The Absence of Religion, Even in Ammianus?* There was no understanding of ‘religion’ in the Ancient World of Greece and Rome. No such conception as we now hold existed then, no such classificatory component (as in ‘religion and society’) or counterpart (as in ‘science and religion’), no particularising use (as in ‘Roman religion’), no pluralising use (as in ‘religions of the world’).1 We merely retroject onto the Greeks and Romans something that has become necessary to our understanding of life, thus turning history into a hall of mirrors in which we contemplate ourselves under the illusion that we are looking at the Greeks and Romans. One can tell this by crossing out the word ‘religion’ in any translation of any Greek or Latin text from prior to AD 200, and observing instead what the ancient writer actually said (sometimes nothing much at all, since at every turn English needs to cloak itself in abstracts in a way quite unnecessary in a highly inflected and thus more flexible language). Our vocabulary of ‘religion’ is not derived from the Greeks. They had no word for what we mean by it, and the odd words that prompt translators to say “religion”, e. g. eusebeia (piety), threskeia (worship), have not passed into the abstract vocabulary of English. They were not part of the classificatory apparatus of Greek philosophy or education. By contrast, much of the termi* G. R. Treloar et al. (eds), Making History for God (Sydney 2004) 295–308. The basic argument of this study was presented while I was Visiting Professor of Classics and History at Berkeley in 1984. Since then several other relevant treatments have appeared: E. D. Hunt, ‘Christians and Christianity in Ammianus Marcellinus’, CQ 35 (1985) 186–200; V. Neri, Ammiano e il cristianesimo (Bologna 1985); R. L. Rike, Apex Omnium: Religion in the Res Gestae of Ammianus (Berkeley 1987). J. M. Alonso-Núñez, reviewing Neri in CR 37 (1987) 103–104, says: “it would have been worthwhile to have studied systematically Ammianus’ attitude towards Christianity”. Subsequent treatments include John Matthews, ‘Religion and Philosophy’, in The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London 1989) 424–451; V. Neri, ‘Ammianus’ Definition of Christianity as absoluta et simplex religio’, in J. den Boeft et al. (eds), Cognitio gestorum: The Historiographic Art of Ammianus Marcellinus (Amsterdam 1992) 59–65; T. D. Barnes (n. 3 below); Thomas Harrison, ‘Templum mundi totius: Ammianus and a Religious Ideal of Rome’, in J. W. Drijvers et al. (eds), The Late Roman World and its Historian (London 1999) 178–190. ¹ W. Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York 1962; repr. Minneapolis 1991); E. Feil, Religio: Die Geschichte eines neuzeitlichen Grundbegriffs vom Frühchristentum bis zur Reformation (Göttingen 1986); E. A. Judge, ‘The Beginning of Religious History’, Journal of Religious History 15 (1989) 394–412, reproduced as ch. 1 above; P. Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge 1990).

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nology of our subject comes from Latin: ‘religion’, ‘superstition’, ‘piety’, ‘cult’, ‘sect’, ‘rite’, ‘doctrine’, ‘creed’, ‘faith’, etc. None of the Latin originals of these terms is primarily or even mainly concerned with what we now call “religion”. They reflect the take-over of the Latin language from the time of Tertullian (c. AD 200) for Christian purposes, and the transforming fusion of cultural traditions promoted by the Roman church in particular. In AD 371 Valentinian, himself a Christian, instructed the Senate that the ban on magical arts did not extend to the time-honoured divinatory practice of the haruspices (Codex Theodosianus [=CTh.] 9.16.9): I do not consider any rite permitted by our ancestors to be criminal. The laws issued by me at the beginning of my reign (imperii) are witness, whereby everyone was granted a free choice of practising whatever (religion) his mind determined.

English “rite” here translates religio (which might well imply ‘ritual’), “practising” translates colendi (implying more than ‘cult’), while I have added the brackets to “religion” to show that no such word at all appears (or was needed) in the Latin. But the eminent translator (A. H. M. Jones, LRE I, p. 150) has recognised that what Valentinian has in mind is what we now call “religion”. Its emergence in the fourth century has generated the principle of “free choice” (in contrast to inherited duty). Valentinian also understands that this was not simply “determined” in the mind, but developed there under influence: what he actually said was, “whatever his mind had drunk in” (imbibisset). A contemporary of Valentinian and the last great Latin historian to stand outside this verbal tsunami, Ammianus Marcellinus (himself a Greek), coyly notes the fact that Christians were also transplanting Greek words into Latin. All are derived from the common vocabulary of secular life, without cultic significance: ecclesia, synodus, basilica, episcopus, presbyter, diaconus, martyr. He might well have added others, such as monachus or coemeterium. Ammianus sees no connection at all or even analogy between the sacral life of Greeks and Romans and the affairs of the Christians. The latter have no deus, no templum, delubrum or fanum (‘shrine’), no sacerdos, no sacra, caerimoniae, hostia (‘victim’) or ara (‘altar’). These all belong exclusively to the gods. Likewise secta, doctrina and theologus belong to philosophy or literature. But Christians do have their religio, lex, cultus or ritus, none of which is a distinctively ‘religious’ term. The Oxford Latin Dictionary of 1982 (confined to authors writing before AD 200) shows the following senses (abbreviated) for religio: 1. 2. 3. 4. + 5. 6. + 7. 8. 9. 10.

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One must ask the question: What more, if anything, does ‘religion’ now mean? The Macquarie Dictionary (1981) offers: 1. the quest for the values of the ideal life, involving three phases, the ideal, the practices for attaining the values of the ideal, and the theology or world view relating the quest to the environing universe. 2. a particular system in which the quest for the ideal life has been embodied: the Christian religion. 3. recognition on the part of man of a controlling superhuman power entitled to obedience, reverence, and worship. 4. the feeling or the spiritual attitude of those recognising such a controlling power. 5. the manifestation of such feeling in conduct or life. 6. a point or matter of conscience, esp. when zealously or obsessively observed: to make a religion of doing something. 7. Obs. the practice of sacred rites or observances. 8. (pl.) Obs. religious rites. [ME, from L. religio fear of the gods, religious awe, sacredness, scrupulousness]

How does the Macquarie list differ from that of the OLD? The latter’s overall motif is constraint (ranging from ‘bond’ to ‘inhibition’) but in the Macquarie list intellectual outreach is given primacy, tapering off in senses 6–8 to something like those of OLD, significantly now labelled “obsolete”. The distinctives of a modern ‘religion’ are that it has (a) an articulate view of the world as a whole, (b) a coherent set of rules for life, and (c) a communal identity that marks it off from other such complexes: ‘creed’, ‘commitment’ and ‘community’; or ‘belief’, ‘behaviour’, and ‘belonging’. None of these items featured in the so-called ‘religion’ of Graeco-Roman antiquity. One’s daily sacrifice did not commit one to any doctrine or pattern of behaviour, nor define any communal life other than the general one. Each of these concerns lay rather with philosophy. The most sharply defined case was that of the Epicureans. They were in practice ‘atheists’, leaving the gods to the farthest reaches of the universe and forming inward-looking communities detached especially from religio. Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, “So great was constraint’s compulsive power for evil” (Lucretius 1.101). Other Romans contrasted religio with superstitio: Religio deos colit, superstitio violat, “Constraint cultivates the gods, credulity violates them” (Seneca, De clementia 2.5.1). Seneca was urging Nero to practise clemency, which is gentle and controlled (like religio), but not pity, for misericordia (like superstitio) is a vice of the weak mind that gives in to other people’s problems. Roman authors consistently denounced the Christians for superstitio, because their behaviour was “novel” and “dangerous” (Suetonius, Nero 16.2). By the fourth century the terms were inverted: the Christians claimed religio and denounced those loyal to their ancestral gods for superstitio. There were innumerable gods, and (for philosophers) a singular deity that underlay them all like a Platonic idea. Gods manifested themselves in particular places and functions. Within such domains a sanctuary (hieron, templum) was marked out, within which some object (e. g. a statue) embodied the god, before whom sacrifice must be offered. This was done in every communal or

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public institution on every occasion, daily in every household, and for every human process or experience. The multiple phases of childbirth, for example, were protected each by its proper divinity. Everything must be maintained as it always had been. It was inconceivable that the gods would change anything. But constant care was needed lest you discontinued or overlooked their requirements. The Christians rejected all the gods as demonic. They treated Christ of all people quasi deo, “as though he were a god” (Pliny, Ep. 10.96.8). Their intellectual premises were radically different from the naturalistic logic of the schools, turning instead on a re-orientation of history towards the future. They set out to reconstruct community life, shocking everyone by the abandonment of ancestral practice. But from the third century they began to claim the sacral terminology of the classical cults, treating it by analogy (the sacrifice of praise), inspired by the typology of the classic Hebrew cult. Ammianus was apparently unaware of this subtle plundering of ideas. It secured for the churches the public solidarity their pioneering had once undermined. Only in the seventeenth century did it become possible to set ‘paganism’, Judaism, Christianity and Islam alongside each other as a series of “religions”.2 Ammianus certainly did not see Christianity as a ‘religion’. Not only did he not group it with the various cultic practices that upheld the civic order, such as modern historians of antiquity classify under this term, but neither did he anticipate the modern phenomenon to which we now apply it. That is, he did not conceive of ‘religion’ as an alternative habit of thought and life, potentially critical of the civil order, and demarcating within that a particular community as a social whole in its own right. Yet Ammianus lived through many of the complex developments that eventually brought about this historically fundamental shift. He might well have sensed the restructuring of society from a unitary to a bi-polar form. He noticed and disliked some of the things about the Christians that marked this change. Yet he could not see it. Eusebius could not see it either. An historian may not be the best-placed observer to understand and interpret the historical changes of his own day. The sharper insight lies with those who cross from the old to the new, or back again – with an Augustine, or a Julian – who have something to explain about themselves.3 ² Harrison, p. 39, traces the series to E. Brerewood, Enquiries Touching the Diversity of Languages and Religions through the Cheife Parts of the World (1614). The plural had already appeared in R. Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1594), IV xi 2. ³ E. A. Judge, ‘Christian Innovation and its Contemporary Observers’, in B. Croke and Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs) (eds), History and Historians in Late Antiquity (Sydney 1983) 13–29, for discussion of several fourth-century examples, reproduced as ch. 17 above. T. D. Barnes, however, argues that Ammianus was indeed like Julian a renegade who had known it

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Ammianus is noticing things he has observed, but not experienced. Yet the witness who is not aware that he does not understand offers a certain primary innocence, unaffected by the need to explain. Had Ammianus taken up the new term Christianitas he must already have accepted that he had something to justify. Instead, he tentatively adapts conventional language to the demands of the phenomenon that is concealed from his imagination. He is the good witness, not conscious of the key to what takes his eye.4 It is clear in particular that Ammianus did not associate the Christians with any divinity. Neither Christ nor God is named in connection with them. The term deus arises solely in relation to the traditional gods, or to Ammianus’ central concept of the “sovereign will” or “power” (summum numen). This applies even where the speaker is a Christian (Constantius, 15.8.9–10). The Christians moreover practise no cult. All the terms distinctive of sacred buildings or ceremonies are exclusively used of the traditional cults. When aedes is used for a church (22.11.10) it is plural (house), not singular (temple). When a plural is required for the former the epithet sacrae is added (17.7.8; 27.9.10). The only apparent exceptions to this at least prove the rule, but are probably to be brought under it anyway. The see of Alexandria is referred to as sedes sacerdotalis (15.7.9), but this perhaps adopts the “priestly” epithet applied to the bishop’s chair by Constantius, whose subscriptio is referred to and would have been extant. Christian usage surely also explains the fact that Ammianus uses the plural antistites both for those who “preside over” the worship of gods (22.14.8, 23.6.24) and for bishops as a group (21.16.18, 22.5.3, 27.3.15, 29.5.15). The singular is once used for an anonymous bishop (20.7.7) and once for a named one (15.7.6). Individual bishops are otherwise identified by name and by the term episcopus. Christian Latin writers used antistes as a harmless equivalent of episcopus, and the variation in Ammianus need only be stylistic. Etymologically the word carries no sacral connotation, and was also used of the head of a philosophical school. For bishops it was the regular usage of the imperial chancellery.5 all from the inside but “closed his eyes” to engage in a “covert polemic”, ‘Christian Language and Anti-Christian polemic’, Ammianus Marcellinus and the Representation of Historical Reality (Ithaca 1998) 79–94. Yet a renegade polemic, however covert, could hardly have resisted any exposure of the central place of Scripture in Christian life, or any desire to claim its social momentum for Hellenism, both prominent in Julian. ⁴ Christianitas appears in CTh. 14.3.11 (AD 365), where the privilegium Christianitatis is cancelled in the case of those hoping to escape their duty as bakers. Marius Victorinus, in his commentaries on the Pauline epistles (post–362), begins to prefer Christianitas to the established loan-word Christianismus (also ignored by Ammianus). He understands how the term globalises the distinctive Christian combination of behaviour and insight: lex tota … et totum mysterium Christianitatis (Comm. in Eph. 1283A, p. 190 Locher, cf. 1269C, 1272B). ⁵ C. Mohrmann, Die altchristliche Sondersprache in den Sermones des hl. Augustin (Nijmegen 1932) 108–9; G. B. Pighi, ‘Latinità cristiana negli scrittori pagani del iv secolo’, in Studi dedicati alla memoria di Paolo Ubaldi = Pubb. della Univ. Catt. del Sacro Cuore 16 (1937)

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The virgins captured by Sapor are spoken of as “consecrated to divine service in the Christian way” (Christiano ritu cultui divino sacratas, 18.10.4), but this expression may be due to the assimilation of the virgins in Ammianus’ mind to the ancient Vestals (de Jonge, 1980, comm. ad loc.). Similarly the ritus Christiani sacrarium in which Hilarinus takes refuge (26.3.3) may have earned that cultic identity from the claim to sanctuary implied. Divinitas in 27.7.6 is sometimes taken as part of an interpolation (id est divinitati acceptos) since Ammianus has already given a careful explanation of the martyrs (22.11.10), but a monastic copyist would have offered a more adequate formula. Pighi takes the phrase as an echo of Cicero, Rep. 6.13 or Livy 1.19.5. In that case it is again hardly the Christian divinity that is in the mind of Ammianus. Alternatively it may be an ironic echo of Christian eulogy. Numen, the preferred term for the divinity in Ammianus, is twice used by him in connection with Christians, but on both occasions he means to claim them as worshippers of the true “power”. Julian, secretly, a “worshipper of the gods” (21.2.4), observes the festival called Epiphany by the Christians, goes to “their ekklesia” and “addresses the numen” (numine orato, 21.2.5), but not “their” numen (as in Rolfe’s translation), in spite of the characteristically Christian term for prayer (orare, not precari).6 Ammianus allows the “addressing” of the numen in a church because Julian is a true believer. Similarly, the life-style of some provincial bishops “commends them to the perpetual numen and its true worshippers as pure and reverent men” (27.3.15). The implication is that the metropolitan bishops who horrify Ammianus with their careerism are not acceptable to the divine power, whose true worshippers are not of course Christian. What then does Ammianus think Christians are? The Latin formation of their name will have suggested a political faction or following. In so far as cult-groups had names they were not formed that way.7 The Latin historical tradition does not treat Christus as the name of a god. The term Christiani had apparently been coined by Latin speakers in first-century Antioch in reaction to their contentious community behaviour, Christus being construed as the faction leader. Fourth-century politics was still producing such loyalties: the tetrarchic forces of Ioviani and Herculiani (22.3.2, 25.6.2 etc.), and the Constantiniani (29.5.22). New Christian factions were also named this way, the Damasiani (Coll. Avell. 1.7, CSEL 35), or Eunomiani (CTh. 16.5.8). 41–72; H. Janssen, Kultur und Sprache: Zur Geschichte der alten Kirche im Spiegel der Sprachentwicklung von Tertullian bis Cyprian = Latinitas Christianorum Primaeva 8 (Nijmegen 1938). ⁶ H. Wagenvoort, ‘Orare, precari’, in Pietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion (Leiden 1980) 197–209 = Verbum: Essays Dedicated to H. W. Obbink (Utrecht 1964) 101–111. ⁷ E. A. Judge, ‘Did the Churches Compete with Cult-groups?’, in John T. Fitzgerald, Thomas H. Olbricht, and L. Michael White (eds), Early Christianity and Classical Culture (Leiden 2003) 501–524, at p. 515, now reproduced in First Christians, 597–618.

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Ammianus clearly takes the name for granted. It calls for no explanation. That had been sufficiently dealt with by his predecessor, Tacitus (Ann. 15.44.2). No digression in the lost books need be posited in which he might have explained the matter further. One may assume this from the absence of any back-reference in the extant books, such as one finds, e. g., for the tides of Britain (27.8.4) or the topography of Africa (29.5.18). His lack of consciousness of the problems he was failing to address may be sensed in the perfunctory note with which he concludes the brief digression on the different political styles of the metropolitan and provincial bishops – “this will be sufficient digression” (hactenus deviasse sufficiet, 27.3.15).8 Used as a noun, Christianus is normally plural, and points to collective action, just as when qualifying other nouns it defines a social whole. The Christiani assert their characteristic terminology (14.9.7, 21.2.5, 27.7.5). They act together in the community (22.5.3–4, 22.11.10, 22.13.2, 27.9.9). Teachers may be categorised as Christiani (25.4.20). When the noun is used of individuals, they are anonymous (31.12.9, 31.15.6). When named, Christians may be identified as such by their ecclesiastical rank. But no named individual is called Christianus, and of all the figures in Ammianus otherwise known to have been Christians, only Jovian is explicitly identified as such (25.10.15). In all of this Ammianus marks off the Christians from the general community, signalling his own sense of distance from them, and incomprehension. But he also attempts to formulate the phenomenon more adequately, by coupling the adjective Christianus with four different nouns, ritus, lex, cultus and religio. This is more than a matter of stylistic variation.9 In that case we should have expected him to start with an agreed and common term (such as Christianitas). But this is the opposite process. Ammianus is looking for an effective term for something he does not adequately grasp, and which had no general name. But the four terms he experiments with have certain points in common. None of them (in particular neither religio nor cultus) is primarily used by Ammianus in connection with cultic practice. None of them is ever coupled by Ammianus with any other determinant parallel with Christianus. Ritus Christianus is his increasingly preferred phrase. But his usage is grammatically and semantically rather unusual. Apart from 18.10.4 and 21.16.18, all his other nine instances are in the genitive case,10 rare earlier. The genitive occurs otherwise in Ammianus only in 22.15.30 and 23.6.4. The word is nor⁸ Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs), ‘The Digressions in the Lost Books of Ammianus Marcellinus’, in B. Croke and Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs), op.cit., 42–53, conjectures that there were no digressions on lost “religious topics”, the treatment of these being concentrated around the figure of Julian in the extant books. ⁹ H. Hagendahl Studia Ammianea (Uppsala 1921) 99–104, notes the scale of variation in Ammianus – 28 alternative terms for dying, 35 for the dawn, etc. ¹⁰ 15.5.31, 22.10.7, 26.3.3, 27.3.13, 27.10.1, 28.6.27, 29.3.4, 29.5.15, 31.12.8.

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mally found only in the ablative. This singularity of usage points to a particular value he tends to give the term in the Christian connection. It is anticipated in the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs (Musurillo, p. 88) where the proconsul (of AD 180) reads his decree from its tablet, that the rest, who admitted living in the Christian manner (ritu Christiano se vivere), should be executed, since they obstinately persisted though an opportunity of returning to Roman custom (morem) has been offered them.

Ritus thus hints at the alternative life-style of the Christians, contrasted with the Roman way of life. It is something more consciously constructive and comprehensive than ‘practice’ – the Christian ‘movement’ perhaps. Christiana lex arises four times, more in the earlier books, and each time in the genitive case (15.7.6, 15.7.8, 20.7.7, 25.10.15). It is the forerunner of ritus Christianus, and helps to specify its meaning. The word is not otherwise used by Ammianus in the genitive, and never of traditional cult practice. Liberius (bishop of Rome) is Christianae legis antistes (15.7.6) “a superintendent of the Christian rule of life”, a term favoured by Christians themselves. Galletier (1978), comm. ad loc., compares CTh. 16.2.5 (AD 323), on eos, qui sanctissimae legi serviunt, “those who serve the holiest rule of life”, and 16.8.2 (330), qui … in memorata secta degentes legi ipsi praesident, (those Jews) “who live their lives in that cause and preside over its very rule of life”. The translation is justified, for Ammianus at least, by his tribute to Julian, whom a lex quaedam vitae melioris accompanied from his cradle to his last breath, “a kind of rule for a better life” (16.1.4). Cultus Christianus (21.2.4) is the “Christian culture” to which Julian pretends to “cling” (adhaerere) lest anyone spot that he is secretly one of the deorum cultores. The “cultivation” (cultus) of the gods is mentioned half a dozen times, along with that of many other matters, agriculture, vesture, modesty, humanity, studies, the mind. Only with the Christians is it left unclear what is actually being cultivated. Christiana religio (21.16.18) is the “Christian punctilio” or “commitment” which Ammianus finds “pure and simple” (absolutam et simplicem), as he has Constantius do for truth itself (14.10.13). It is only confused through the incessant argumentation fostered by the superstitio of Constantius. Religio in Ammianus, especially in the plural, mostly connotes the sanction of an oath, or scruple, and need not extend into what we call ‘religion’. Valentinian is complimented for not taking sides (medius stetit) between “alternative commitments” (religionum diversitates, 30.9.5). Christian writers use the term diversitas to indicate not a variety of interests but more particularly a “divergent” cause, as with a heresy. When Eupraxius speaks of religio Christiana cultivating the martyrs (27.7.6), he is highlighting the Christian ‘commitment’ to that.

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With each of these four terms, then, Ammianus is expanding the sense of the simple appellation Christiani. He instinctively seeks to express their character as a social movement. He knows that they are tenaciously opposed to the worship of the gods, and has no inclination at all to assimilate them to that. Although he lacks an adequate formulation of what he observes, there is a good deal of tell-tale detail that slips out in other comments. Ammianus is familiar with the term ecclesia (21.2.5, 22.11.9, 22.13.2, 28.6.27), which, like episcopus, calls for no explanation. It refers to a building, each time in the singular, not an assembly. Conventiculum (15.5.31, 27.3.13) should, however, refer to that, since in the former case it occurs within the regia, so it seems, or even in the aedicula (though that could be an unrelated room), while in the latter it occurs within the basilica Sicinini. But in 28.4.29 it refers to a place of assembly. Although episcopus is regularly used of named individuals, Ammianus twice uses presbyter for anonymous ones (29.3.4, 31.12.8), excusing the Greek word in the latter case by saying “this is what they call it” (ut ipsi appellant). Similarly he had distanced himself from the title of a (named) diaconus (14.9.7), ut appellant Christiani. Ephiphania (21.2.5) is similarly excused; this is what the Christians “customarily call” (dictitant) their January holiday. But Ammianus refrains from asking why. By contrast there are two novel features of Christian practice that magnetise his attention. In either case he twice circles around the point, citing the distinctive usage, and allowing the context to supply a vivid impression of his reaction. In his treatment of the intransigence of Liberius, Ammianus notes (15.6.7) that the “meeting” (coetus, a word also in use amongst Christians) which had deposed Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, was called by them synodus. He repeats the comment in his obituary of Constantius when condemning him for the disruption caused by synods to the public transport system (21.16.18). The term had long since made its way into the Latin inscriptions of collegia, while the “ecumenical synod of Dionysiac artists” should have made it familiar throughout the empire.11 Yet Ammianus surely used his (affected?) ignorance to express dislike. He shows no sense of the promising novelty of a representative and autonomous assembly that proved as difficult for Constantius to manage as were the popularly entrenched bishops individually. Instead he condemns him for taking the debate with such seriousness (superstitione, 21.16.18) as to promote discord, and at the same time (inconsistently?) condemns him for multiplying synods by trying to get the whole movement (ritum) to agree with him. ¹¹ E. A. Judge, New Docs 9 (2002) 67–68, reproduced as ch. 10 above, with the Latin ruling of the first tetrarchy addressed to the (combined) synodus of xystics and thymelics (CPL 241).

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The martyres however seem to be more positively featured by Ammianus. In 363, after the lynching of George, bishop of Alexandria, his body was incinerated along with others to prevent a church being built for their relics (22.11.10). This used to happen with those who, having been tortured for their religio (commitment), met a “glorious” death with intemerata fide (“unsullied trust”). Gloriosa sounds Christian, but is also a favourite epithet with Ammianus, used explicitly of his own expected death in action at Amida in 355 (19.2.4). Intemerata fides likewise fits the Christians well, yet it echoes the ironic protestation of the Greek “deserter” who deceived the Trojans over the wooden horse (Vergil, Aen. 2.143). As with the second reference to the martyres (27.7.6) they are seen as a problem to be avoided. But Ammianus seems to admire their forthright commitment to their trust, unless one also takes the explanatory id est divinitati acceptos (noted above) as ironic. It may well be then that Ammianus sees such dedication, as with that of the virgins captured by Sapor (18.10.4), as a feature of the ritus Christianus. But it is the submissive posture he approves. He is critical of Athanasius for raising himself above his professio (15.7.7) and trying to find out things that were extraneous (externa). Contrast the philosopher Maximus who did not divulge the oracle “out of respect for his professio” (21.1.42). In the case of George, who forgot it by stooping to become an informer (22.11.5), the obligation of one’s professio is spelled out: it “only calls for justice and leniency” (nihil nisi iustum suadet et lene). The Christian lex also had a propositum (“purpose”, 15.7.8), but Ammianus does not say what this might have been. In the case of Julian, his propositum was “to live correctly” (20.5.4), while that of the citizens of Rome was “peace and quiet” (quies, 27.9.9). Ammianus surely wished for as much from the Christians. Its improbability is reflected in his (unconscious?) penchant for talking about them in terms of an administrative or military command structure. This need not have been pejorative with a writer consciously at home in such matters, and Christians themselves were not averse from militancy, as a metaphor. But Ammianus expressly condemns Constantius for “feeding (their disagreements) with battles over words” (aluit concertatione verborum, 21.16.18). This is more than metaphorical. It led to the “hamstringing” (succideret nervos) of the transport service, with “squads” (catervis) of bishops “shuttling back and forth” (ultro citroque discurrentibus, the language of the battlefield). The synod “discharged (Athanasius) from the commission he held” (removit a sacramento quod obtinebat, 15.7.7). George was subsequently “appointed” (ordinatus, 22.11.4). Ammianus need not have known that “sacrament” and “ordination” already had their particular Christian use. Athanasius had been “in command” (praesidebat) over the Christian lex (15.7.8), but Liberius was “of higher rank” (auctoritate … potiore, 15.7.10). These were confronted by the rival champions. Julian had long since secretly “deserted” (desciverat,

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21.2.4) from the cultus Christianus. Plato had challenged Jupiter in fullness of speech, having “seen action” (militavit, 22.16.22) “in glorious wisdom”. Other phenomena are noticed without any discernible explanation being suggested. Hostility to the temple cult (22.5.1, 22.11.7–9, 22.13.2) was presumably clarified when Ammianus had dealt with Constantine. The same may apply to the use of tombs as sanctuaries (22.11.10, 27.7.5); but their Christian identity is not always noted (18.7.7, 19.3.1, 22.12.18). The power of popular opinion (15.7.10, 22.5.3–4, 22.11.10) is perhaps not peculiar to the Christians. The political independence of bishops surely is (15.7.6, 9–10, 22.11.3–11, 27.3.12–15); yet there is no reference to its legislative sanction (e. g. CTh. 16.2.12 of 23 September 355, exempting bishops from the civil courts). The drive for orthodoxy is noted (21.2.4, 21.16.18, 22.5.3–4, 30.9.5); yet its confused politicisation over Athanasius (15.7.6–10) is missed. Churches are seen as refuges (15.5.31[?], 26.3.3); their meetings expose the community to attack (27.10.1–2, 28.6.27); they supply anonymous mediators in war (20.7.7–9, 29.5.15, 31.12.8–9, 31.15.6).12 An uncontentious, ethically quietist, and tolerant movement would have the approval of Ammianus; he does not understand either the intellectual or the social turmoil stirred up by the Christians, and simply treats that as a vice. The life-style of the “provincial antistites” (27.3.15) which commended them to the “perpetual numen” consisted in “a slender diet” (tenuitas edendi), “drinking in a most sparing way” (potandique parcissime), cheap clothes, and eyes fixed on the ground. Those who preferred urban ostentation, with the regal life-style of the Roman see, funded by generous matrons, may as well fight for it (27.3.14). “They get their money” (mercedem, Matt. 6:2), he might well have added, for Ammianus goes on, it has been suggested,13 to echo the beatitudes: “They would be truly blessed” (beati re vera) if they copied the provincial bishops. As well as disliking the opulence of Damasus and Ursinus, riding in state, and dressing “elegantly” (circumspecte, 27.3.14), or the serious “religiosity” (superstitio, 21.16.18) of Constantius, Ammianus repeatedly blames “Christians” (sc. their leaders) for violent factionalism and personal brutality. It was their “disputes” (iurgia, 27.9.9) which stirred up mass factionalism (21.16.18, 22.5.3, 22.11.10, 27.3.12); Ammianus is equally disgusted by the circus factions (28.4.29–30). But with Christians there is a particularly horrible side: they turn on their own kind. Julian had learned from experience that most of them are more “fatal” (ferales, 22.4.5) to each other than wild beasts are to mankind. The adjective is otherwise used of the fatal “outrages” (ausa) of informers ¹² An implicit renewal of the old charge of disloyalty, according to L. Angliviel de la Beaumelle, ‘Remarques sur l’attitude d’Ammien Marcellin à l’égard du Christianisme’, Mélanges d’histoire ancienne offerts à William Seston (Paris 1974) 15–23. ¹³ Pighi, op.cit., p. 53.

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(15.7.1, 22.11.5) and of a treason-trial torturer (19.12.8). The Alexandrians turned on bishop George because they had too often suffered from his viper’s fangs (22.11.3). What Ammianus misunderstands in all this is the way it is driven by doctrinal controversy, and the Christian need for dogmatic orthodoxy, as in the disputes over Athanasius (15.7.8) and George (22.11.5). He cannot see how this sharpens popular loyalty (15.7.10) and intolerance (22.11.8). He misses the dogmatic principle behind Julian’s action against Christian teachers (22.10.7), and consequently misunderstands the point of Julian’s transferring to the Christians the jibe of Marcus Aurelius against the Jews (22.5.4–5). Behind it all lies the apparent unawareness of Ammianus in the face of the two most profoundly innovative features of the movement: the systematic passing down to the popular level of the demand for dogmatic rectitude, and the new kinds of social activism driven by that. Ammianus knew of the importance of theological learning and of sacred books in both classical (14.11.25– 26, 21.1.8) and Egyptian (22.16.20) culture, but these were of course élite traditions seeking and causing no social turmoil. The didactic use of the biblical literature was intended to transform the people’s life. Ammianus seems wholly unconscious of the social welfare programs that enraged his hero, Julian, unless they are implied by the “offerings” (oblationes, 27.3.14) of the Roman matrons. He is equally unaware of the passion for an angelic life, even though monasticism was currently horrifying other classical observers, unless that is acknowledged in the episode of the virgins (18.10.4) or his admiration for abstemious bishops (27.3.15). Overall Ammianus is well aware of the impact of the Christians on public life. He attempts to grasp it by correlating its problems (civil disruption, personal hostility) with the general predicament of the community. He would like to isolate and assimilate such good aspects as he saw (truth and modesty). But he misses the dogmatic sources of it all. Yet in tacitly avoiding any confusion of terms with the province of the gods and their cult, and casting around for a way of conceiving the movement as a social whole, he indirectly registers the historical novelty (‘religion’, in the modern sense) of beliefs about God creating an alternative culture.

Chapter 21

Biblical Sources of Historical Method* A. Identifying causes – nature or law? Classical Greek enquiry (historia) might be pursued in any field: ‘natural history’, for example, as ‘science’ could still be called at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was Thucydides, in the fifth century BC, whose ‘Enquiries’ into the Peloponnesian War decisively cornered the term for what we still call ‘History’ without further qualification. His principles and method are clearly stated.1 Where I have not been an eyewitness myself, I have investigated with the utmost accuracy (akribeia) attainable every detail … Possibly the public will find my unromantic narrative forbidding, but I shall be satisfied if it is favourably received by readers whose object is exact knowledge of facts which had not only actually occurred, but which are destined approximately to repeat themselves in all human probability. I have tried to make a permanent contribution to knowledge rather than an ephemeral tour de force.

Most historians nowadays do not tackle contemporary affairs. But eyewitness accuracy remains the ideal in the quest for sources. Thucydides’ method will indeed work for us all, as he assumed. But he was blind to the personal character of what the eye sees.2 His focus on the state, politics and war is only now being challenged by other ways of seeing history. Its power lay in the principle he implies. There was a predetermined pattern to human affairs, so one could objectively discern it. This permanency was an expression of the fixity of nature itself. The perfect order of the cosmos was eternal. Within it one could read in the heavens the rhythmic cycles by which what appeared to be ever changing was only for ever repeating itself. In Thucydides’ day philosophers therefore challenged human law (the nomos which presumed to assign to each his fair share). It was only a vain attempt to change the course of nature. They would have been shocked at our legislating to manage even the rhythms of evolution. But in the next century Aristotle struck a blow for civilisation. There was no conflict between nat* Kategoria 15 (1999) 33–39. ¹ Thucydides, Histories 1.22.2, 4, tr. A. J. Toynbee, Greek Historical Thought from Homer

to the Age of Heraclius (London 1924) 19. ² G. Crane, The Blinded Eye: Thucydides and the New Written Word (Lanham 1996).

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ure and law, for law itself was natural to us. “Man is by nature a political animal.”3 The civilisation of the state thus also became part of the eternal cycle of events. For Polybius, the great historian of the second century BC, the key to it was to recognise the three forms of its constitution: kingship, aristocracy and democracy.4 For he alone who has seen how each form naturally arises and develops will be able to see when, how, and where the growth, perfection, change and end of each are likely to occur again.

Perfect stability had been attained in Polybius’ day only by Rome, which combined the perfection of each form in the ‘mixed constitution’. This was why the Romans had conquered the Greeks and would continue to rule the world so long as they kept the constitutional balance. Polybius of course was aware that the Romans did not literally have a constitution. They had achieved it all by a kind of natural reason. Constitutional explanations of history have nevertheless dominated it ever since, climaxing in the nineteenth century. The twentieth century has witnessed a more novel analogue in the class struggle. But Marx did not accept that there is nothing to it all except ‘natural history’. He had drunk from the wine-skins of the prophets. Against the state which wanted to worship “all the host of heaven” (2 Kings 17:16) they declared the word (and law) of the Lord. It enshrined a principle that exalted history above nature, asserting the Creator himself as the source of truth, a reality experienced through lived events. Yet Judaism lost its distinctive historical drive through objectifying the law.5 The preface of Luke’s gospel, however, discloses a scholar using technical conventions to resuscitate the sense of encounter with an authority revealed in living experience.6 Since many have undertaken to set out an account (diegesis) of the affairs (pragmata) that have come to fruition amongst us, (2) as they have been handed on to us by those who from the start became eyewitnesses (autoptai) and agents (hyperetai) of the message (logos), (3) it seemed right for me also, Your Excellency, having traced everything accurately (akribos) from the beginning, to write it all up in an orderly way, (4) so that you may see the reliability of the messages (logoi) on which you have been instructed.

³ Aristotle, Politics 1.1.9, tr. B. Jowett. ⁴ Polybius, Histories 4.4.12, tr. W. R. Paton. ⁵ A. D. Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley 1990)

23: “even history a contrario, prophecy, ceases to count, and only the invariable obedience to the Torah remains meaningful”. Momigliano, exiled from Italy in 1939 as a Jew, became the sovereign master of the history of historiography, presenting “an overwhelming, yet deeply meditated, learning, that was as breathtaking as the first sight of Mount Everest” (P. R. L. Brown, Proceedings of the British Academy 74, 1998) 414. ⁶ Luke 1:1–4, tr. E. A. Judge, following the analysis of L. Alexander, The Preface to Luke’s Gospel: Literary Convention and Social Context in Luke 1.1–4 and Acts 1.1 (Cambridge 1993).

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Through the wordy conventions (unravelled by L. Alexander) that signal a technical monograph blows a fresh wind. Eyewitness evidence and accurate research are classically Thucydidean. But the eyewitnesses have now become also “agents” of the logos. In itself logos was a conventional enough term for any discourse on a serious topic, but the ‘agency’ of the eyewitnesses implies something new – a personal commitment to its propagation. Herodotus had spoken of historical records as logoi to distinguish them from romances (mythoi). Luke (Acts 1:1) refers to his own work as a logos. But when Theophilus (“Your Excellency”) is said to have been “instructed” in the logoi we are hearing a word new in this period (catechesis) which the gospel teachers were making their own. It points to a narrative of events, historically verified, to which a powerful interpretation is being applied. The earlier reference to affairs that have “come to fruition” is at first sight an ornament of flowery style. But now we realise (from the catechesis) that it carries a deeper meaning. These ostensibly bland “affairs” are no mere incidents in the endless cycle of politics and war. They are the fulfilment of what the prophets had foretold about the redemption of Israel. Luke proceeds to spend his first chapter telling how “angels” (i. e. messengers) announced the birth of the final prophet and of the redeemer himself. Thus history is switched from the natural round of recurrence to the outworking of a purposeful law (or plan) that breaks the cycle. Historians today are no longer much interested in recurrence.7 But development (the origin and growth of some institution far larger than the interests of the individuals involved) is a characteristic focus. They would do well to reflect on how this shift has arisen.

B. Testing for truth – models or documents? For one of the most conspicuous elements in his history Thucydides had accepted that accuracy was impracticable. Neither he nor his informants could recall exactly the words spoken on famous occasions.8 Therefore the speeches are given in the language in which, as it seemed to me, the several speakers would express, on the subjects under consideration, the sentiments most ⁷ The contrast between the cyclical and linear views of history was decisively drawn by Augustine, City of God 12.10–22. While they are broadly characteristic of classical and biblical thought respectively, and in principle antithetical, in practice different writers or schools in either tradition may take up positions that seem to us more akin to those of the other. See L. Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore 1967), and G. W. Trompf, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought from Antiquity to the Reformation (Berkeley 1979). ⁸ Thucydides, Histories 1.22.1, tr. C. F. Smith.

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befitting the occasion, though at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said.

In the hands of subsequent historians this necessary accommodation became a platform for the display of the author’s own rhetorical talent. Rhetoric was the basic discipline of higher education on the humane side. Even where the text of a speech had been published, the historian considered it a matter of professional elegance to render it in harmony with his own style. This also allowed him to do more credit to the talent of the person he is writing about, who may not have made such an effective job of it.9 Since, as Thucydides had stated, situations generally repeat themselves, the historian’s narrative, and especially his rhetorical compositions, became the vehicle of ethical modelling for future generations.10 What chiefly makes the study of history wholesome and profitable is this, that you behold the lessons of every kind of experience set forth as on a conspicuous monument; from these you may choose for yourself and for your own state what to imitate, from these mark for avoidance what is shameful in the conception and shameful in the result.

The modern equivalent of the speeches in classical historians is the generalising summary in which the historian formulates in his own words the considerations he judges would have influenced those he is writing about on the particular occasion. But if we mean to give their own words we must put them in inverted commas. The origin of this practice also lies in antiquity, but not within the classic histories of national politics. In Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century, the documents that protected the right of Jewish communities to practise their own life-style are cited verbatim. This is because where matters of law or diplomatic privilege arise the onus is on the stakeholders to produce their own evidence. But in Eusebius, the church historian of the fourth century, we see a different purpose in documentation.11 … nowhere can we find even the bare footsteps of men who have preceded us in the same path, unless it be those slight indications by which they have left to us partial accounts of the times through which they have passed … (4) We have therefore collected from their scattered memoirs all that we think will be useful for the present subject, and have brought together the utterances of the ancient writers themselves …

By calling his enquiry “Ecclesiastical” Eusebius plainly means to differentiate his History from those of Thucydides and his many successors in the classic ⁹ We can see this from comparing the speech of Claudius Caesar in Tacitus, Annals 11.23–25, with the transcript of the original preserved on a bronze tablet, from Lyons, Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 212, tr. A. H. M. Jones, A History of Rome, vol. 2, no. 23. ¹⁰ Livy, From the Foundation of Rome 1, Preface 10, tr. B. O. Foster, cf. P. G. Walsh, Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge 1961) 82–107. ¹¹ Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1.1.3–4, tr. K. Lake.

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tradition over the intervening 700 years. Perhaps unconsciously he has assumed as a model the various compilers of “Philosophical History”.12 These writers collected and digested the teachings of the succession of masters in their particular school of philosophy. The point was to define and pass on the doctrinal tradition of the school. The dogmatic interest required them to cite their authorities verbatim. Eusebius similarly set out, for the first time in 250 years, to record the succession to the main episcopal sees and to document the establishment of orthodox theology by ample citations. It is the concern for dogmatic truth that shifted the historical profession over from ethically exemplary modelling to the presentation of the actual words of its authorities. When we demand of our students that they cite the sources and document them with footnote references we impose on them the respect for authenticity that was required first by the prophetic tradition of the word of God.13 This breakthrough in the way historical truth was to be tested was first comprehensively demonstrated in the fourth century, but its establishment as the basis for the modern tradition of research came only after the Reformation. Disputes over the ancestral constitution of the state, and those between Protestant and Catholic over who was the true heir of the Fathers, hammered out the finished form of the documentary principle.14

C. Reacting to others – objectivity or commitment? Since the eighteenth century history has again been tempted to join the retreat of man into nature. Positivism objectified events, and providence was depersonalised, leaving only an iron law of progress. But the romantic movement (historicism) counter-emphasised the observer’s function, offering understanding rather than explanation. The mood of twentieth-century historiography has been called ‘ironic’. Historians take refuge in ambiguity. Each condemns the other for personalising judgement, and tries to shun it. This only pinpoints the fact that historical ¹² For example, the extant Diogenes Laertius, who probably wrote in the third century, a generation or two prior to Eusebius. ¹³ A. D. Momigliano, ‘Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century AD’, in The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford 1963) 79–99. Peter Brown, in his obituary cited in fn. 5 above, p. 408, cites Momigliano (from an Italian journal): “No fully self-aware historian of the ancient world … can get away with the refusal to recognise that ancient history only makes sense when it is seen to evolve in such a way as to end naturally in the rise of Christianity”. ¹⁴ Momigliano, fn. 5 above, p. 149, speaks of “the Eusebian form … brought back in full force by the Reformation”; cf. J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Origins of the Study of the Past’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 4 (1962) 209–246.

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enquiry is inescapably personal. It is in no essential respect different from any other human relationship. The present has no privilege of understanding. We complain that those closest to us misunderstand us. We do not understand ourselves. Approval or disapproval is the crux of identity for each of us. We cannot escape personal judgement because we need it most profoundly. It is the same with figures from the past. They plead for a fair judgement. My students defend their honour angrily if they think I traduce it. Why should the judgement of the past matter to us? No historian that I know has answered or even faced this question adequately.15 Yet we are all inescapably trapped in it. If we judge, we condemn ourselves (Matt. 7:1). Judging people by their own lights (the romantic, historicist or multi-cultural solution) only takes us half-way. We cannot depersonalise the engagement without injuring the integrity of both parties. The historian is bound to search for a criterion that will be valid for all. But above all we must accept that the last word is yet to be said, and will not lie with us.

¹⁵ E. A. Judge, ‘On Judging the Merits of Augustus’, Colloquy 49, Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture (Berkeley 1985) 1–80, corrected reprint in E. A. Judge, The First Christians in the Roman World (Tübingen 2008) 224–313.

Chapter 22

Ancient Beginnings of the Modern World* Reflecting on certain documents retrieved in our generation from the fringes of the ancient world – Upper Egypt in the Old Kingdom, Hellenistic Central Asia, Late Roman North Africa – one may question the assumption that the modern world marks the end of an order that has sustained itself since the Neolithic Revolution. How can one know that technology either creates or alters the basic dilemmas of the human condition? What is there that is essential to modernity but also novel to it? Key distinctives of the modern world (the experimental method as opposed to speculative philosophy; the open society as opposed to the republican state) arise from the conflict in late antiquity over the conditions and framework of social behaviour – displacing ethics by morality. The assumption of moral obligation drives modern social activism, and is now universally felt as essential to humanity. Attempts to explain the modern world in terms of a recent technological revolution, and to reconnect it to classical ethics, both fail to grasp the axial character of the way man and the world alike were reconceived in late antiquity. The modern world is the ultimate product of an ancient revolution in thought.

1. Ethical Instruction in Egypt The Macquarie excavations at El-Hawawish, whose rock tombs lie above Akhmim (Greek Panopolis), have presented us with two sculptured portraits of Memi.1 He lived early in the reign of Djedkare, in the late Fifth Dynasty (c. * The full texts of two of the three documents discussed, translations of all of them, and (very poor) reproductions of the photographs of the artefacts referred to, were published, along with the script of the lecture as delivered on the final night of the conference marking twenty-five years of the teaching of Ancient History at Macquarie University, in Ancient History: Resources for Teachers 23 (1993) 125–148. This slightly adapted and footnoted version was published in T. W. Hillard, R. A. Kearsley, C. E. V. Nixon and A. Nobbs (eds), Ancient History in a Modern University 2 (Grand Rapids 1998) 468–482. The documents are now added in the Appendix below. ¹ Museum of Ancient Cultures, Macquarie University, MU 1777 (wood) and 1778 (limestone); N. Kanawati, The Rock Tombs of El-Hawawish: The Cemetery of Akhmim, vol.5 (Sydney 1985) 45, with plates 8 and 9.

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2400 BC). One portrait, in wood, survives only for the central features of the face (between eyebrows, cheeks and chin). The other, a limestone head, has had its central features knocked off. But we can tell from the red colouring that it is the figure of a man. This is how history begins. We encounter somebody else. They are saying something about themselves. We want to find out what it is, because it may concern us. It is not enough just to find somebody’s bones. The bones may give us more data about our species, but there is no human encounter unless someone has treated them in some way to express their feelings. The bones may have been laid out in a certain way. There may be pollen grains, showing that it was a burial with flowers. In a famous case, the bones of a cripple were ringed with pollen grains.2 We know then that we have crossed the threshold of history, because we can recognise the human sentiment. Take the case of the Hagarsa mummies, whose DNA readings have been reported at this conference. One does not meet another man merely in the random individuality of the DNA code. It is finding the six mummies in one tomb that creates the historical phenomenon. Their DNA codes will then reveal any physical link between them, to sharpen the questions over their unusual manner of death and burial.3 Notice that I am making two assumptions about history. The first is that it is essentially about other people, whom we encounter. The word historia means ‘enquiry’. It was one of the achievements of Greek reason to formulate the principles of enquiry. The histor is the learned judge. He brings method to bear on his assessment, so that he can find things out, rather than just responding to the encounter. But it remains basically that, for all the method.4 We don’t of course enquire only about other people. There is also an enquiry into things in general. This used to be called natural history, or more ² R. S. Solecki, Shanidar: the First Flower People (New York 1971); A. Levoi-Gourhan, ‘The Flowers Found with Shanidar IV, a Neanderthal Burial in Iraq’, Science 190 (1975) 562–564 (several species, colours and the months of the year identified after 50,000 years); E. Trinkaus, The Shanidar Neandertals (New York 1983); A. Marshack, ‘Early Hominid Symbol and Evolution of Human Capacity’ in P. Mellars (ed.), The Emergence of Modern Humans: An Archaeological Perspective (Edinburgh 1990) 489; C. Stringer and C. Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins (London 1993) 158 (noting alternative explanations of the pollen levels); E. Trinkaus and P. Shipman, The Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind (London 1993) 418; C. B. Stringer, ‘Out of Africa – A Personal History’ in M. H. Nitecki and D. V. Nitecki (eds), Origins of Anatomically Modern Humans (New York 1994) 149–172; the last two items give histories of the debates over the past generation. ³ N. Kanawati, ‘El-Hagarsa and its Mummies’, Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology 4 (1993) 29–40. ⁴ G. A. Press, The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity (Kingston & Montreal 1982) 23–42; C. W. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley 1983) 47–52.

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recently ‘science’. But ‘history’ was from the beginning pre-eminently the attempt to find out about the affairs of other people, and not about things. In modern times it still means for most of us exclusively that. Yet there is a socalled history of the world that drops its sights below the personal level. It thus risks losing touch with the latter amidst the universe of things.5 If we begin with the big bang, rocket through the galaxies, career past planet earth, with a classificatory glance at the sequential technologies of man, and zoom on into seemingly boundless space, looking for hints of the final implosion – that is not history at all, in the ordinary sense. That is the old enquiry into nature. It reduces man to a phenomenon of the natural order. We cannot learn from that how to treat each other. This brings me to my second assumption about history. We are not studying only the past. All history looks to contemporary interests. The enquiry is driven by our own curiosity, about ourselves. I know we are intrigued by the other person too, but it is our own concerns that shape our questions. Is he like us, or not? What shall we learn from him? Professional historians nowadays often avoid this latter question. That is why the public takes its historical lessons more from journalists. But in fifthcentury Greece, and in nineteenth-century Europe – the two greatest ages of historical enterprise – the focus was contemporary. One wrote an account that led into the experience of one’s own generation, for the benefit of the next. You were also expected to be a man of action yourself. Mommsen despised the so-called historians who stood aside from the action of the day. He was dismissed from his own chair of law at Leipzig for treason. He wrote the grand History of Rome, that later won him the Nobel ⁵ For the Macquarie ‘Introduction to World History’, see D. G. Christian, ‘The Longest dureé: A History of the Last 15 billion Years’, Australian Historical Association Bulletin 59– 60 (1989) 27–36; id., ‘The Case for “Big History”’, Journal of World History 2 (1991) 223–238. It almost inescapably gives objectively causative force to natural history and, at the human level, to technological change. But “the proof of the social cannot be other than mental … We can never be sure of having reached the meaning and function of an institution, if we are not in a position to relive its impact on an individual consciousness … any valid interpretation must bring together the objectivity of historical or comparative analysis and the subjectivity of lived experience”: C. Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss (London 1987, tr. from the French of 1950) 28; cf. A. Momigliano, ‘Marcel Mauss and the Quest for the Person in Greek Autobiography and Biography’ in M. Carrithers et al. (eds), The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History (Cambridge 1985) 83–92 (stressing that, though Mauss had ignored the Greeks, Plutarch was acceptable to Christians because he anticipated the category of the person bearing moral responsibility); G. W. Bowersock, ‘Momigliano’s Quest for the Person’ in M. P. Sternberg (ed.), The Presence of the Historian (History and Theory, Beiheft 30, Middletown 1991) 27–36 (noting that Momigliano sees Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius as early instances of the examination of one’s own conscience); note, by contrast, “the Platonic vision of culture as a choral imitation of the cosmos”, James L. Miller, Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity (Toronto 1986) 17.

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Prize for Literature, to prove to his contemporaries that the ideal democratic leader was – a monarch. Mommsen was an inspired radical.6 Meeting another person in history places a demand on me. What is he saying to me? What am I to make of him? It is not different in kind from the encounters we have with each other. I can tell this when my students are angry with me for misrepresenting Caesar. The present has no privilege of understanding. We misunderstand each other. We can hardly trust our own judgement of ourselves. Meeting a figure from history is also a form of human contact, and neither more nor less problematic. It is because we find this testing that we retreat into the systematic classification of human affairs, which is much easier. We do the same with ourselves. Since we cannot live comfortably with the confusing reality we know, we set up explanations of ourselves, or take over the ones other people supply us with. This is at once the glory and despair of human thought. No other creature on earth appears to have the capacity to stand outside itself in self-contemplation. We both cling to our mental constructs and shrink from them, because they are manifestly only that, and we may be deluding ourselves. The historians, in particular, dare not join the retreat into theory. It is in the dialogue with another, with every other man, as history affords us the contact, that a better way to human self-understanding may be found. It is this that makes it an authentically human exchange. Has Memi anything else to say to us, then? We know from other cases that the way he is wearing his hair represents a convention. It may well be a wig. Is this a formal expression of rank or status? It is utterly different from the style used by the pharaohs, just as the whole approach to an ordinary man’s portraiture differs markedly from the highly stylised (yet still personal) mode of presentation used for a divine monarch. We cannot in fact tell from the headdress alone what rank is implied, just as the bowler hat in England is a mark of formality that spans different classes. But of course none but the great could build a monument in the Old Kingdom.7 The spacious scale and prime location of Memi’s tomb make it clear that he belongs to the highest level of the regional administration. We could safely have called him governor, except that the key terms do not survive in his broken titulature. He is in fact one of the earliest figures in Egyptian history to ⁶ A. Heuss, Theodor Mommsen und das 19. Jahrhundert (Kiel 1956); A. Wucher, Theodor Mommsen: Geschichtschreibung und Politik (Göttingen 1956); A. Momigliano, review of the two above, Gnomon 30 (1958) 1–6; E. Meyer, review of the same, Historische Zeitschrift 184 (1957) 625–627; L. Wickert, Theodor Mommsen: eine Biographie, vol. 3 (Frankfurt 1969) 399–422, 618–676; A. Heuss, review of the above, Gnomon 43 (1971) 772–801, esp. 791– 793; K. Christ, Römische Geschichte und die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft (Munich 1982) 58–78; id., Römische Geschichte und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, vol.III (Darmstadt 1983) 26–73. ⁷ E. Stachelin, Untersuchungen zur ägyptischen Tracht im Alten Reich (Berlin 1966) 86–88.

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receive burial honours on this scale in a regional centre. He marks the emergence of an administration decentralised to a higher degree, for economic reasons no doubt. We need not posit a movement towards independence. The quality of Memi’s statues matches the finest that survive at Giza and Saqqara, but provincial quality declines in later periods.8 As many as 24 engaged statues lined the main hall of Memi’s tomb, the largest number documented in Upper Egypt. Following the Macquarie expedition, we may claim that El-Hawawish is the best documented provincial cemetery of the Old Kingdom.9 Not everyone was comfortable with Memi’s presence, however. The tomb robbers didn’t want him around. They smashed his face to protect themselves. “The house of death is for life”, Hardjedef had said. “They are buried and made to live”, said Horemkhuf.10 But the physical replica had to be kept intact for the ka to survive. So Memi was consigned to the second death.11 There would have been inscriptions warning against desecration. The robbers could not read, of course. But they knew how the system worked. We know of a case where they were the very workmen who had built the tomb in the first place.12 Over the centuries the pharaohs had mastered that problem. Their technology simply overwhelmed the human scale. It could take five million tons of rock to build a pyramid – without the aid of wheel or pulley. We may think we are making a mark on the face of the earth nowadays, but I wonder whether anything we do will outlast that. The administrators who now began to be granted tombs needed other defences. From Memi’s time onwards we begin to get the earliest autobiographical inscriptions. The pharaohs had found no need for mortal self-justification. From Classical times we know, according to Momigliano, that autobiography began with self-defence.13 ⁸ N. Kanawati, Governmental Reforms in Old Kingdom Egypt (Warminster 1980) 128, 131; W. S. Smith, Sculpture and Painting in the Old Kingdom (Oxford 1946, repr. New York 1978) 55–56, 80–81. ⁹ N. Kanawati, Akhmim in the Old Kingdom (Sydney 1992) 201–202. ¹⁰ N. Kanawati, The Tomb and its Significance in Ancient Egypt (Gizeh, 1st Engl. edn 1987) 22, 31. ¹¹ Kanawati, The Tomb, 38, but the damage to the statue need not necessarily have been deliberate: Kanawati, The Rock Tombs, vol. 5 (1985) 40–41. ¹² M. Gutgesell, Arbeiter und Pharaonen: Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte im Alten Ägypten (Hildesheim 1989) 215–231; N. Kanawati, The Tomb, 34. ¹³ M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Autobiographies, Chiefly of the Middle Kingdom (Freiburg [Schweiz] 1988) 1: “The Egyptian autobiography arose in the context of the private tomb”. A. Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography (Cambridge [Mass.] 1971) 12, 29–38, 57–62, 89, 103; id., ‘Second Thoughts on Greek Biography’, Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wettenschappen Afd. Letterkunde 34.7 (1971) = Quinto contributo … (1975) 33–47.

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From the Sixth Dynasty (c. 2350–2180 BC) we have the inscription of Nefer-Seshem-Re (‘Sheshi’), on the false door of his tomb at Saqqara.14 I have come from my town, I have descended from my nome, I have done justice for its lord, I have satisfied him with what he loves. I spoke truly, I did right, I spoke fairly, I repeated fairly, I seized the right moment, So as to stand well with people.

I judged between two so as to content them, I rescued the weak from one stronger As much as was in my power. I gave bread to the hungry, clothes , I brought the boatless to land. I buried him who had no son, I made a boat for him who lacked one. I respected my father, I pleased my mother, I raised their children. So says he whose nickname is Sheshi.

Whom is Sheshi trying to convince? This is a strikingly positive self-image. From New Kingdom times we have the Book of the Dead, in which people rehearsed their negative virtues – the things they had not done – for the benefit of the judges in the after-life. But Sheshi seems to be appealing to the goodwill of his contemporaries.15 The ‘false’ door was the symbol of access to ongoing life. The living reality (or ka) of the deceased could reside still in his mummy and monuments but its vitality depended upon its being free to come and go, hence the ka-door. Is the inscription in effect a plea to those who might plunder the tomb? Is he bidding for the undying memory of his successors to cover the uncertainties of literal immortality? The Romans thought this way, says Cicero. Indeed the quest for glory was ethically justified because it alone could provide the incentive to public enterprise. Nam contemptu famae contemni virtutes (Tacitus) – “if you despise your reputation you bring your merits into contempt”.16 It was presumably the convention of self-appraisal that led to a second type of early Egyptian writing, the ethical instruction of others.17 Ptah-hotep was vizier under Djedkare, and thus a contemporary of Memi’s. But the work was ¹⁴ M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1 (Berkeley 1975) 17. ¹⁵ Lichtheim, vol. 2, 119, 124–127; J. Bergman, ‘Gedanken zum Thema “Lehre-Testament-

Grab-Name”’ in E. Hornung and O. Keel (eds), Studien zu altägyptischen Lebenslehren (Freiburg [Schweiz] 1979) 73–104. ¹⁶ Tac. Ann. 4.38.5: the critics of Tiberius point out that it was a sign of “a degenerate spirit” (degeneris animi) to block the public cult of himself, and that a lasting memorial is the only thing a leader actually needs ceaselessly to work for if his merits are not to be brought into contempt; Cicero saw the quest for glory as ethically justified because only this quasi-immortality paid merit its due: A. D. Leeman, Ciceros waardering van de roem en haar achtergrond in de hellenistische weijsbegeerte en de romeinsche samenleving (Rotterdam 1949); U. Knoche, ‘Der römische Ruhmesgedanke’, Philologus 89 (1934) 102–124, repr. in Vom Selbstverständnis der Römer (Heidelberg 1962) 13–30, and in H. Oppermann (ed.), Römische Wertbegriffe (Darmstadt 1967) 420–445; J. Graff, Ciceros Selbstauffassung (Heidelberg 1963). ¹⁷ Lichtheim, vol. 1, 5, 61–76 (‘The Instruction of Ptah-hotep’, originating in the Sixth Dynasty, but preserved by Papyrus Prisse, of the Middle Kingdom).

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composed in its present form in the subsequent dynasty, to judge by the language. The message is much more than a definition of the successful man’s practice for the use of his heir. It sets up an ethical pattern for people of various stations in life – the “poor” (para. 10), as well as the “man of trust”(8). If you are a man of trust, Sent by one great man to another, Adhere to the nature of him who sent you, Give his message as he said it. Guard against reviling speech.

If you are poor, serve a man of worth, That all your conduct may be well with the god. Do not recall if he once was poor, Don’t be arrogant toward him For knowing his former state.

Life is not without opportunity. You may become a leader (14). But the “maids at the grindstones” may also do well (1), and one must not take advantage of the weak (4). One may defy the powerful, but submission will show him up better (2). Types of ethical behaviour are studied – greed (19), and by contrast generosity (34). The art of personal relations is explored – listening even if you can’t do much (17), studying how to correct a friend without offence (33). There is also a clear psychology: “heart” and “belly” (14) – reason and emotion – with emotion to be firmly controlled. In the end destiny rules all (33).

2. The Delphic Canon Two thousand years later Egypt fell under the rule of the Macedonians. Their hegemony ranged cross the Iranian plateau to the upper reaches of the Indus valley, and north into Central Asia and the valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes, in longitude halfway round the world from Greenwich to Australia. Graeco-Bactrian dynasties ruled these parts for a couple of centuries.18 They took the Persian diadem as the sign of royalty, but without its turban. The Macedonian sun-helmet (kausia) also became a symbol of rule. After the idealism of the Alexander epoch, they presented themselves as tough realists. The portraiture dwelt on the physical marks of a hard life. Euthydemus was a Magnesian. His forebears came from the ranges east of Thessaly and south of Mt Olympus. The Magnesians had colonies of old in Asia Minor. In the 1960s the French opened up a hitherto unknown Greek city near the village of Aï-Khanum, on the Oxus. The clue to its existence came from the King of Afghanistan. He had spotted the capital of a Greek column in the vil¹⁸ M. Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age (rev. edn: New York 1961) 86–87, with figs 310–313 for two portraits of Euthydemus, king of Bactria and Sogdiana (Afghanistan and Tadjikistan), c. 230–190 BC. His son Demetrius took the Greeks over the Hindu Kush and down to the Khyber Pass. There were to be bilingual Indo-Greek coins. See M. Mitchiner, Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythian Coinage, vol. 1: The Early Indo-Greeks and their Antecedents (Sanderstead 1975).

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lage. On the base of a stele in the sanctuary of the city’s founder is preserved an illuminating epigram.19 Ἀνδρῶν τοι σοφὰ ταῦτα παλαιοτέρων ἀνάκει[τα]ι ῥήματα ἀριγνώτων Πυθοῖ ἐν ἠγαθέαι ἔνθεν ταῦτ[α] Κλέαρχος ἐπιφραδέως ἀναγράψας εἵσατο τηλαυγῆ Κινέου ἐν τεμένει.

These wise words of men of long ago are dedicated as sayings of the famous in most holy Pytho, Where Clearchus carefully wrote them up, setting them out to shine afar in the sanctuary of Cineas.

The founder is not known otherwise to history, but his name tells us a good deal. It is Thessalian. He will have been a cavalry officer in the army of Seleucus, the general who inherited the East from Alexander. We know he was the city’s founder because of the location of the shrine within it. Clearchus, who wrote the epigram, is no doubt the well-known Clearchus of Soli, in Cyprus. He was a student of Aristotle’s, specialising in the documentation of ethical culture. From other fragments we know he had been busy locating inscriptions at Delphi, and he cites unknown poets who also survive epigraphically. Accurate citation was a particular concern of his. He collected proverbs, and wrote on education. The comparison of Greek and Oriental cultures was another interest. An ancient historian for the modern world, let us say. He could even prove that the Jews came from India. “Learned, but sensational”, Walbank dubs him.20 When Clearchus claims to have transcribed the text for his stele accurately, we can trust him both as a professional scholar and as an educational entrepreneur. He has a mission to the new world. His lighthouse was Delphi (“Pytho”). But what was it he copied? On the right-hand side of the stele-base are inscribed the five ages of man. παῖς ὢν κόσμιος γίνου ἡβῶν ἐγκρατής μέσος δίκαιος πρεσβύτης εὔβουλος τελευτῶν ἄλυπος

As a child be well behaved, in youth restrained, in middle life just, in old age prudent, at the end no worries.

With only a single change of wording, from εὔλογος (“reasonable”) to εὔβουλος (“prudent”), they correspond exactly to the last five of the ‘maxims of the seven sages’, as transmitted under the name of Sosiades. We do not know who ¹⁹ P. Bernard, ‘Aï-Khanum on the Oxus: A Hellenistic City in Central Asia’, Proceedings of the British Academy 53 (1967) 71–95; L. Robert, BE (1969), no. 601; D. W. MacDowall and M. Taddei, ‘The Greek City of Ai Khanum’ in F. R. Allchin and N. Hammond (eds), The Archaeology of Afghanistan (London 1978) 218–230. ²⁰ OCD, s. v. Clearchus (3); F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles, 2nd edn, Heft 3, Klearchos (Basel 1969).

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he was, but his text was selected for the anthology of Stobaeus, compiled in the fifth century AD for the education of his son. The Greek title of this work implies that these were the maxims inscribed by the seven sages at Delphi.21 We know from Plato and Plutarch that the most famous of these at least were indeed inscribed at Delphi. They were the object of stimulating speculation. For all their apparent simplicity, or because of it, their meaning lay wide open to interpretation. You may therefore freely reject my translations and propose others.22 The classic three, that could be recited as a hexameter, begin with σαυτὸν ἴσθι (“Know yourself”; Sosiades, no. 8), more familiar in the aorist form of the Thera inscription, γνῶθ[ι] σεαυτόν (“Recognise yourself”), the word of Chilon of Sparta. This is the true laconic style. Knowledge begins with self-consciousness, but how can one recognise or accept what one sees within? Never fear. Moderation will keep it all under control. The second of the trio (no. 38) is attributed to Solon of Athens, μηδὲν ἄγαν (“Nothing to excess”). As for other people, one should not go too far with them either. The third of the great maxims is that of Thales of Miletus (no. 69), ἐγγ[ύα· πάρα δὲ ἄτα] (“Pledge: you’ll pay”). Why has Sosiades broken up the hexameter? And where are the famous sayings of the other four wise men? Only that of Pittacus of Mytilene appears – as no. 10, καιρὸν γνῶθι (“Pick your time”). Is there any pattern or sequence to the whole array? No one to my knowledge has ever taken Sosiades seriously. People have no doubt assumed he was a late accumulator of no historical substance. But a trickle of documentary parallels has come to light. (i) Thera (Aegean), IV BC, Gymnasium of the ephebes, Inscriptiones Graecae XII 3 (1898), 1020 (ed. F. Hiller von Gaertringen). ἐγγ[ύα· πάρα δὲ ἄτα] Pled[ge: you’ll pay] σ[πουδαῖα μελέτα(?)] [Care for the best(?)] μηδὲν ἄγαν Nothing to excess γνῶθ[ι] σεαυτόν Recognise yourself (ii) Miletopolis (Hellespont), IV/III BC, Gymnasium (?), Die Inschriften von Kyzikos und Umgebung. Teil II, Miletupolis: Inschriften und Denkmäler (Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien 26, ed. E. Schwertheim, Bonn 1983) no. 2: parts of two columns survive on a stone broken at the top and bottom. The string of 25 maxims from col. 1 spans nos 15 to 44 of Sosiades, but varying the order a little, omitting 10 of the maxims and adding 5. The string of 31 from col. 2 spans nos 92 to 117, with two slight changes of order, omitting 4 and adding 9. Since Sosiades has 147 maxims, we may assume that the Miletopolis stone carried them all. The ²¹ Σωσιάδου τῶν ἑπτὰ σοφῶν ὑποθῆκαι, in Stobaeus, Eclogae 3.1.173 (Hense, p. 125); for other collections of related sayings see J. F. Boissonade, Anekdota: Anecdota graeca e codicibus regiis (Paris 1829); F. Schulz, ‘Die Sprüche der delphischen Säule’, Philologus 24.2 (1866) 193– 226; J. Defradas, Les thèmes de la propagande delphique (Paris 1972) 268–283. ²² Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 385D; Plato, Protagoras 343A; Charmides 165A; Hipparchus 229A.

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diplomatic transcript of F. W. Hasluck, the first editor, shows how the stonecutter had to overcrowd the second column to fit them in – JHS 27 (1907) 62. (iii) Aï-Khanum on the Oxus (Afghanistan), III BC, stele erected by Clearchus (of Soli?) in the sanctuary of the city’s founder, Cineas, from a copy transcribed personally at Delphi (ed. L. Robert, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 1968, 416–457). (iv) Egypt, I/II AD, P.Athen.Univ.inv. 2782 (ed. A. N. Oikonomides, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 37 [1980] 179–183): the surviving fragment records the title, reconstructed (from Sosiades) as [ὑποθῆκαι τῶν ἑ]πτά, and eight maxims. ἕπου θεῶι τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ πείθου χρόνου φείδου θεοὺς σέβου γονέας αἰδοῦ νόμωι πείθου ὅρα τὸ μέλλον ἡ[ττῶ ὑπὸ δι]καίου

Follow God (Sosiades 1) Obey a good man (cf. Sosiades 65: ἀγαθοὺς τίμα) Save time (Sosiades 39) Worship the gods (Sosiades 3) Honour your parents (Sosiades 4) Obey the law (Sosiades 2) Look to the future (Sosiades 40) Yield to the just (Sosiades 5)

These texts show that similar lists were available in the early Hellenistic period (to which the Athens papyrus was assigned by its first editor), and that they were used for educational purposes. The I. Kyzikos II no. 2 text from Miletopolis and the Athens papyrus are both plainly related to the Sosiades collection. Everything on the papyrus is in Sosiades, but in a somewhat different order. I. Kyzikos II no. 2 also varies the order a little, and has added freely, perhaps omitting some of Sosiades’ maxims. The most dramatic detail of the Aï-Khanum find matches nos 47 and 48 of Sosiades. A small sliver of stone survives from the stele where it once rose from the base that carries the five ages of man and the epigram of Clearchus. εὐ[λόγει πάντας] φιλόσοφος γένου

Speak well of all (Sosiades 47) Become philosophical (cf. Sosiades 48, φιλόσοφος γίνου Be philosophical)

Louis Robert held that the sliver documents the last two lines of the first of three columns. On a reasonable calculation of spacing, the text should be identical with that of Sosiades. Whether this little tight-rope act has succeeded I cannot demonstrate here. But since it is not customary to doubt the grand master of Greek epigraphy, we may say that his feat has demonstrated the canonicity of the text of Sosiades.23 This means that we possess an authoritative guide to the ethical norms that were propagated across the whole Hellenistic world. They are delivered as imperatives, in the singular (to characterise an attitude), with the utmost brevity. They do not display the sustained or orderly ethical reasoning of Ptah-hotep, ²³ Robert’s case is accepted in Nouveau choix d’inscriptions grecques (Paris 1971), no. 37, as well as by Schwertheim and Oikonomides, (ii) and (iv) above.

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nor his awareness of the varieties of status in a community. Delphi concentrates exclusively on the individual. His behaviour mostly involves other people, yet is viewed in terms of his own interest. It enshrines the ethics of self-protection. Yet at the same time it establishes a moderate posture from which one may live harmoniously with others. In one of his earliest studies, Albrecht Dihle explored the difference in ancient culture between the ideals of courtesy and of humility. Courtesy is modest; it is attentive to the deserving; it fosters a mutual respect for status. Humility is driven by identification with the other; it does not make detachment the ideal, but surrenders its own interest by sharing the other’s plight; it lets status go.24 In no. 42 Sosiades cites the saying, ἱκέτας αἰδοῦ (“Respect suppliants”). The I. Kyzikos II no. 2 version says, ἱκέτας ἐλέει (“Pity suppliants”). The difference is tell-tale. The papyri often register the plea for pity.25 But the ethical theorists warned against it. Pity was a vice of the soul, in the same way that cruelty was, because it involved you too closely with someone else. When we were compiling our code of conduct at Macquarie, someone wrote into the draft an additional requirement – compassion. No one objected. To allow your behaviour to be set by the needs of another is to surrender the autonomy the philosophers prized. Bernard Williams, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford and Berkeley, distinguishes sharply between ethics and morality. In an ethical code one regulates one’s behaviour on rational grounds and in the general interest. Morality implies a personal obligation to someone else, whose demands or needs one accepts as one’s own responsibility – an “intimidating structure”, according to Williams, out of which we must escape. Williams argues that the shift from the one to the other as the ordering principle in human relations is an historical one. It arises in time between the Delphic canon and Augustine. But in Ptah-hotep we have already seen a combination of ethics and morality.26 ²⁴ A. Dihle, ‘Antike Höflichkeit und christliche Demut’, SIFC 26 (1952) 169–190; id., ‘Demut’, RAC 4 (1956) 735–778; O. Schaffner, Christliche Demut: Des hl. Augustinus Lehre von der Humilitas (Würzburg 1959); J. de Romilly, La douceur dans la pensée grecque (Paris 1979) 312; E. A. Judge, ‘πραΰτης’, in G. H. R. Horsley (ed.), New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, 4 (Sydney 1987) 169–170. (The formulations in the text are mine, not Dihle’s.) ²⁵ E. A. Judge, ‘The Quest for Mercy in Late Antiquity’ in P. T. O’Brien and D. G. Peterson (eds), God Who is Rich in Mercy (Sydney 1986) 107–121, reproduced as ch. 14 above; Philo, Spec. Leg. 3.156: “Unmanly is the nature you show in letting compassion (οἶκτος) overcome your reason, only to commit a double wrong in trying to deliver the guilty from chastisement and thinking that you should be punished in their stead when no blame at all has been cast over you” (tr. F. H. Colson); K. Rogers, ‘Aristotle on Loving Another for his Own Sake’, Phronesis 39 (1994) 290–302, at 300: “The virtuous man disinterestedly acts for his friend’s good, but only on condition that to do so under the circumstances would be noble.” ²⁶ The formulations in the text are mine, not those of Williams, whose opinions on morality are changing. B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London 1985) 182: “In

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It was Nietzsche who alerted the modern world to the way it had been trapped into morality. Our own School’s Ross Poole, in his book Morality and Modernity, however, says we can’t get out of it now. “Modernity both needs morality, and makes it impossible”, he says. But since we don’t accept the fountains of obligation from which our culture has drunk, we shall have to find new ones – we must try to build a new community, learning from feminism and environmentalism, he suggests.27 We certainly could not go back to Greek ethics, for that would mean deploring any passionate commitment as an aberration. Apathy is no longer the ideal (as it was for the Stoics) that makes a student’s heart beat faster. Apart from a rationalising philosophy, driven by brilliant speculation, the other classic achievement of Greek culture was the republican state. It was both radically democratic, and dependent upon institutionalised status. As in an Oxbridge college, the pure democracy was the privilege of the few. We by contrast use only a very limited democracy (the Greeks would have called Australia an aristocracy, since we choose the best to rule us), yet we spread access to it far more widely. Above all our community life contains authentic options. By Roman times the ideal of democracy had become general for the hundreds of Greek states within the Empire, yet Roman patronage fostered the local élites, co-opting them to the interests of the hegemonial power. As Ernst Badian has vividly demonstrated, Rome’s noblemen conducted her foreign policy by personal means and for private ends.28 The Roman republic was perorder to see around the intimidating structure that morality has made out of the idea of obligation, we need an account of what obligations are when they are rightly seen as merely one kind of ethical consideration among others. This account will help to lead us away from morality’s special notion of moral obligation, and eventually out of the morality system altogether”; 198: “very old philosophies may have more to offer than moderately new ones, and a historical study could be told to show why this is so. It would involve the coming and departure of Christianity (which helps to explain why the ancient world is nearer than it might seem) and the failures of the Enlightenment …” Id., Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (1972, repr. Cambridge 1993 with new preface) xiii: “… a certain verbal distinction which I have more recently found useful, between a broader conception of ‘the ethical’, and the narrower concerns (focused particularly on ideas of obligation) of what may be called the system of ‘morality’”. Id., Shame and Necessity (Berkeley 1993) 5: “… the notion of a developed moral consciousness … is basically a myth …”; 6: “… the Greeks … lacked a moral notion of responsibility”; 10: “… the Greeks … openly lived manifestations of the will to power that later outlooks, above all Christianity and its offspring liberalism, in their increased self-consciousness, have had to conceal”; 95: “In not isolating a privileged conception of moral guilt … the Greeks, once again, displayed realism, and truthfulness, and a beneficent neglect”. ²⁷ R. G. Poole, Morality and Modernity (London 1991) ix. F. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality ed. K. Ansell-Pearson (New York 1994) 19: “The slaves’ revolt in morality begins with the Jews, a revolt which has two thousand years of history behind it and which has only been lost sight of because it was victorious.” The formulations in this paragraph are again primarily my own. ²⁸ E. Badian, Foreign Clientelae (254–70 B. C.) (Oxford 1958) 289, showing how in this period clientela in public policy merges into the clientela of individuals, so that these relation-

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petuated as the model of statehood for the West, ruled for many centuries by the military and patronal monopoly of the Caesars. Republic and Empire are concurrent facets of the same structure. Or, more exactly, imperium is one of the properties that make up res publica – an imperial republic, let us say. The power of the Caesars is a classic example of what I see as the interaction of rank and status. I use these terms to draw a contrast.29 By rank I mean any formally recognised position that carries commitments to other people – an elected office, an appointment, the expectations created by convention, formalised social relations such as marriage or slavery. It thus includes the social grades which Paul Weaver and others refer to as status.30 Rank may be high or low, but what characterises it is the obligation it carries. Tiberius complained that the imperium was a burden.31 It sounds a familiar politician’s cry to modern ears, but it was very far from the entrepreneurial ethos of the buccaneer nobility he sprang from. They had been unabashed status-seekers. By status I mean the quest for a standing that is independent of commitments. It may be won by wealth, or by education; by publicity, or by mystique – auctoritas, rather than potestas, or in Oz-speak, perks and media-hype. As a holder of rank I like to evade its obligations by enveloping it with status. Yet as a holder of status I try to entrench it by enshrining it in rank, so that I can make a duty out of my privilege. Status regulates itself by ethics, imputing merit. Rank implies morality. Who imposed the burden on Tiberius, one might ask. In the second century it was discovered to be law itself that ruled the Caesars.32 Yet it was they who made it – incarnate law, perhaps. Who gives a judge the status to make the law? In the fourth century a more terrible master was revealed, to Constantine. He took refuge in bishops. But they could not agree.33 ships “for long a source of profit and prestige to the patron and an instrument of empire more solid than the legions, become instruments of domestic discord, as tension increases after 133”. ²⁹ E. A. Judge, Rank and Status in the World of the Caesars and St Paul (Christchurch 1982); id., ‘Cultural Conformity and Innovation in Paul: Some Clues from Contemporary Documents’, Tyndale Bulletin 35 (1984) 3–24. [Both now reprinted in Social Distinctives (2008).] ³⁰ P. R. C. Weaver, Familia Caesaris: A Social Study of the Emperor’s Freedmen and Slaves (Cambridge 1972) 4–5, however, refers also to “the multiplicity of opportunities for professional and social advancement, and corresponding differentiation between the successful and unsuccessful” even within the familia; it is these prizes of success which I refer to as ‘status’. ³¹ R. Seager, Tiberius (Berkeley 1972) 54–57; B. M. Levick, Tiberius the Politician (London 1976) 76–78. ³² Plutarch, To an Uneducated Ruler 3, discussed by E. Barker, From Alexander to Constantine (Oxford 1956) 309, 346. ³³ Constantine to the Catholic bishops, on the appeal of the Donatist bishops, AD 314 (CSEL 26, p. 209, l.23): meum iudicium postulant, qui ipse iudicium Christi expecto, “they demand my judgement, when I am looking for the judgement of Christ” (sc. through them?); T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge [Mass.] 1981) 56–61.

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Authority had slipped sideways, and downwards. Galerius had complained of “divergent communities” (varios populos) whose congregations cut across (per diversa) the life of the civil community, making up laws for themselves to keep.34 While the senate of Rome met in the solemnity of a temple, and passed its business now mainly by acclamation, the new synods met in what looked like courtrooms or market halls.35 Sanctity was out of the question anyway because of the ferocity of the debate. In an extreme case, demonstrators left 137 bodies on the floor of the basilica. At stake was the chair of the bishop of Rome, certainly a prize worth fighting for, in the view of the contemporary historian Ammianus.36 He recoiled from the synod-hungry bishops, speaking of them as though they were military leaders taking over control. He was right in a far more profound sense than he knew. But Julian, his hero, who had retreated out of it, recognised the conceptual and structural re-ordering of life that was under way.37 ³⁴ Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 34.2 (Creed): “tanta eosdem Christianos voluntas invasisset … ut sibimet leges facerent quas observarent, et per diversa varios populos congregarent”, tr. Fletcher (1886) as “drew together into different societies many men of widely different persuasions”. Moreau (1954), Corsaro (1970) and Creed (1984) however translate per diversa spatially (“in different places”) and take varios to mean “various”. But the spatial sense of per diversa typically arises with a centrifugal scenario, as when an army scatters “in different directions”. Eusebius translated the phrase by terms which cannot have a spatial sense: ἐν διαφόροις διάφορα πλήθη συνάγειν (HE 8.17), clearly indicating that it was the social/intellectual deviancy of the Christians that Galerius objected to. The translation of Valesius (1659) (PG 20) recognises this: “in diversis sectis atque sententiis diversos cogerent coetus” (“they formed divergent meetings on the basis of divergent commitments and persuasions”). But the translations of McGiffert (1890), Oulton (1932), Bardy (1960), Williamson (1965), Häuser (1967) and Ceva (1979) all miss the point. ³⁵ The basilica (Vitruvius, De architectura 5.1.4–10) was a pair of colonnades attached to the forum and roofed over. It provided both for markets and for the public hearing of cases before a magistrate. Vitruvius describes one he built at Fano with an apsidal opening in one side for the latter purpose. Such a structure, and not the temple or theatre, best met the demands of church life during its major expansion. It is implied for Antioch by the time of Aurelian (270–275: Eus. HE 7.30.9, cf. 10.4), and was suited also to “the ecclesiastical synods” (HE 7.30.9). Constantine was “a great friend of basilicas”: C. Schneider, Geistesgeschichte des antiken Christentums, vol. 2 (Munich 1954) 94. He provided them both for civil and ecclesiastical use, the latter being presented as spaces for moral/intellectual improvement under titles such as Sophia, Irene and Dynamis. The Roman senate, by contrast, had always met in a temple, with all the restraint that implied: R. J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton 1984) 113–120. Aurelian is represented as reproaching them for protracted debate “as though your procedures were being held at the meeting (ecclesia) of the Christians, and not in the temple of all the gods” (SHA 26.20.4–6). The ritual of simply voting by acclamation had crept up over the centuries (Talbert, 297–302; Jones, Later Roman Empire, 331). ³⁶ Res Gestae 27.3.11–15: the Prefect of Rome, Viventius (AD 366–7), abandoned responsibility for public order in Santa Maria Maggiore to the rival factions of Damasus and Ursinus; for Ammianus’ conception of bishops as military figures see especially 21.16.18. ³⁷ R. Browning, The Emperor Julian (Berkeley 1976) 167, 178–180; G. W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (London 1978) 83–93; P. Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian and Hellenism (Oxford 1981) 181–191; E. A. Judge, ‘Christian Innovation and its Contemporary Observers’

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Ambrosius, in the fifth-century mosaic in his church at Milan, is not shown dressed as a general, nor as a bishop.38 He is wearing the informal garb of any high official of the late fourth century. (It lingers on now as clerical dress.) As governor of the province, he had tried to prevent a riot in the cathedral of Milan, when the people there also split into factions over succession to the see. But the rival sides were caught up by unexpected consensus. They elected Ambrosius himself, by acclamation. He could neither shock them out of it by torturing some people currently in his court, nor did he manage physically to elude the obligation the people had placed him under. They put him under house arrest.39 It was to be Ambrose as bishop whose teaching completed the intellectual odyssey of Augustine, now in Milan as professor of rhetoric. Two papers in this collection present a fascinating contrast. The study by Kim Power (La Trobe) shows Ambrose still imprisoned in the hypotheses of Greek science. The man is hot and dry, the woman cool and moist. But the word of God will dry up the moisture of incontinence.40 Philip Rousseau (Auckland) declaims for us in Latin a discourse of Ambrose – all the rhetorical art that had been refined for a millennium in higher education, poured out before the throngs in the basilica to reorient the way they saw their life in the world. It would be a struggle now, but crowned above. The classical culture was to be coupled to a new set of priorities.41 The source of political sovereignty was publicly redefined. Ambrose excommunicated the imperator Theodosius for a military atrocity.42 His descendants acknowledged the new discipline. A generation later they ruled Rome, East and West, under the aegis of his daughter, Galla Placidia. But she ruled under the wreath one can see on her coinage. She is being crowned by the hand of God. But what crown is it? The laurel wreath of Roman victory? The crown of life promised to him that overcomes?43 in B. Croke and Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs) (eds), History and Historians in Late Antiquity (Sydney 1983) 19–22, reproduced as ch. 17 above. ³⁸ F. Homes Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose (Oxford 1935) 111–114 and frontispiece. ³⁹ Ibid. 66–70; N. B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley 1994) 1–13, for a more sceptical version. ⁴⁰ K. E. Power, ‘Philosophy, Medicine and Sexual Gender in Ambrose of Milan’, in T. W. Hillard, R. A. Kearsley, C. E. V. Nixon and A. Nobbs (eds), Ancient History in a Modern University 2 (Grand Rapids 1998) 379–390, esp. 388–389. ⁴¹ P. Rousseau, ‘“The preacher’s audience”: A more optimistic view’, ibid. 391–400, esp. 397–398. ⁴² S. Williams and G. Friell, Theodosius: The Empire at Bay (London 1994) 65, 68–70; McLynn, Ambrose, 315–330: he offers Theodosius a diplomatic solution that he welcomed. ⁴³ S. I. Oost, Galla Placidia Augusta (Chicago 1968); K. G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity (Berkeley 1982) 65–66, 129–130; J. D. MacIsaac, ‘The Hand of God’, Traditio 31 (1975) 322–328; G. Lacam, ‘La main de Dieu: son

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3. Augustine’s Advice to Alypius It was under Galla Placidia that Augustine wrote to Rome to have the law changed.44 I have attached this law to my present advice, even though it could perhaps be traced quite readily in Rome too: for it is advantageous and might cure this plague, but I have begun to apply it in so far as it secures the liberation of people, though not in respect of restraining with such a penalty those dealers, on whose account so many great crimes are being perpetrated. (2) For we frighten the ones we can with this law without punishing them; on the contrary we are afraid that once we have arrested them other people may perhaps carry off these men, detestable and damnable as they are, to the penalty owed under the law. (3) Hence I am rather writing expressly to Your Beatitude, that it may be established, if possible, by our most pious and Christian leaders, that those men not come under the risk of the penalty prescribed in this law, and in particular of the flogging with lead, which people easily die from, when people are being freed from them through the church. (4) And to restrain them it is necessary that the law perhaps be publicly displayed, lest because of the anxiety mentioned we should hold back, and the pitiable free-born be transported into permanent slavery, since if we do nothing for them who can readily be found who would not, if he has any authority over the ports, prefer to sell them their brutal journey rather than disembarking (even) one of the pitiable creatures out of Christian or human pity, or refuse permission for them to be put on board? (Ep.10*, para. 4)

He wants penalties reduced, so that powerful offenders can actually be punished – they would risk death if flogged with the lead-tipped whips currently prescribed. This is the year 428. Next year the Vandals will take over Africa. Already Augustine is in effective control. There are various competent authorities (para. 5,1), but Augustine clearly doubts their will to act. Certainly the offenders disregarded them (para. 8,3). This was big business, and the dealers have powerful patrons (para. 8,2). Status has swallowed up rank.

origine hébraïque, son symbolisme monétaire durant le bas empire romain’, Riv. ital. di numismatica e scienze affini 94 (1992) 143–161; J. Melville Jones, ‘Manus Dei’ in A Dictionary of Ancient Roman Coins (London 1990) 174. The hand first appears on a victory medallion of Constantius II, but is only occasionally used later, and then particularly for imperial women, so that victory does not seem to be its point – divine election perhaps: J. P. C. Kent, Roman Imperial Coinage, vol. 10 (London 1994) 52, 64; P. Grierson and M. Mays, Catalogue of Late Roman Coins (Washington 1992) 76. ⁴⁴ H. Chadwick, ‘New Letters of St Augustine’, Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983) 425–452; W. H. C. Frend, ‘The Divjak Letters: New Light on St Augustine’s Problems, 416– 428’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 34 (1983) 497–512; J. Rougé, ‘Escroquerie et brigandage en Afrique romaine au temps de saint Augustin (Epist. 8* et 10*)’, Les lettres de saint Augustin découvertes par J. Divjak (Paris 1983) 183–187; M. Humbert, ‘Enfants à louer ou à vendre: Augustin et l’autorité parentale (Epist. 10* et 24*)’, ibid. 189–204; J. Szidat, ‘Zum Sklavenhandel in der Spätantike (Aug. epist. 10*)’, Historia 34 (1985) 360–371; G. Corcoran, St Augustine on Slavery (Rome 1985) 24–25.

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It would have been lawful if the people they were shipping off for sale abroad had been ranked as slaves, or were being sold by their parents for 25 years (para. 2,2). But it was a press-gang (3). People panicked, and a girl could even be kidnapped from her parents’ house because they thought it was the barbarians coming (para. 3,2). Women were tricked into it by bargain-hunting (para. 6,2). A church tenant sold his own wife because he wanted the money (3). A presumably able-bodied minor professional was taken by force (4). The demoralisation is not blamed on the victims. They are rescued by a church action-group (para. 7,3) while the lawfulness of their sale is being tested. Their own bishops have to write to Hippo to establish their credentials (para. 8,2). In the meantime the church is feeding them, or billeting them out. Augustine sees the problem as one of government. Clearly the dealers believe what they are doing is lawful. The patrons will have been legal men themselves, no doubt, and probably well known to Augustine. So the legislation must be validly adjusted to make it enforceable. Augustine is at once seeking to promote legitimate policy-making and to protect the dealers against the inhumanity of the existing law. Yet he is clearly determined to stop the trade. There is an established practice for grappling with such social crises. People know of “our custom in acts of mercy of this type” (para. 7,3). The church will intervene with direct action if need be. It is not a coincidence that this sounds surprisingly modern. The validity of a self-regulating community life arises from the impasse first imposed on the unitarian state in the fourth century. The open society does not start with consensus. The very quest for consensus may become a trap: consensus, convention, conformity, control.45 For the modern discipline of History, J. G. A. Pocock has demonstrated how the critical method arose from the conflict of doctrine, in both ecclesiastical and legal disputes. History was forced to test the truth of rival claims over facts, as one would have to in a court of law, by probing the evidence.46 This was generally not the objective of history-writing in antiquity, which aimed rather to portray the truth of experience in an ethically persuasive form.47 ⁴⁵ A. Dihle, ‘Antikes und Unantikes in der früchristlichen Staatstheorie’ in D. M. Pippidi (ed.), Assimilation et résistance à la culture gréco-romaine dans le monde ancien (Bucharest 1976) 323–332. For a philosophical approach see N. Rescher, Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus (Oxford 1993). ‘Augustinian’ dualities have recently been proposed as the way forward in philosophy, by Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London 1988); in government, by Graham Walker, Moral Foundations of Constitutional Thought (Princeton 1990); and in sociology, by John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford 1991). ⁴⁶ J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Origins of the Study of the Past: a Comparative Approach’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 4 (1961–2) 209–246. ⁴⁷ R. M. Ogilvie, ‘Livy’ in Cambridge History of Classical Literature, vol. 2, part 3 (Cambridge 1982) 162–170; A. D. Momigliano, ‘Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth

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Similarly in community life we are all heirs of those who broke with the unified ideal of the classical republic, because they insisted on choosing for themselves how to live. But they could not have made such a choice without a rival doctrine of the nature of the world. Ancient science was locked into a series of false constructions of physical reality because of the doctrine of the perfection and eternity of the universe, open therefore to rational definition.48 The will to put speculative truth to the test arose from the rival doctrine that the cosmos itself was both subordinate to a higher power and open to corruption.49 Hence ultimately the need to found science on experiment. The Greeks in late antiquity found it grotesque and pretentious to put humanity at the centre of the world, interfering with it.50 Many of us may sympathise with that when we see the enormity of the consequences. But we can hardly turn back now without jeopardising the principles upon which we all depend, the critical testing of fact in science and in history, and the obligation to take responsibility upon ourselves for how to live and treat each other. The technological revolution has not created these principles. They created it. Technology has propagated them to all the world. Let’s hope the newer heirs will manage it better. Even though I am skimming over these large claims I am well aware that history is not simple. It is as endlessly complex as we are ourselves. That is why it is a mistake to seek a total, objective explanation of history. We should not dare to impose on others explanations we would reject as artificial in our own case. Since we cannot explain ourselves – and who would venture to claim that before his own conscience – how can we pretend to explain the whole of humanity? Yet we must attempt to understand each other, for it is out of such communication that our human identity is created. Its subjectivity Century AD’ in The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford 1963) 88–91. ⁴⁸ G. E. R. Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (Berkeley 1987) 113, 119–120, 278–284, 330–336; Jonathan Barnes, Aristotle (Oxford 1988) 69–72. ⁴⁹ A. R. Hall, The Scientific Revolution 1500–1800: The Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude (2nd edn: Boston 1966) 368–370; W. B. Glover, Biblical Origins of Modern Secular Culture: An Essay in the Interpretation of Modern Western History (Macon 1984) 9ff; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Mystery of Continuity: Time and History, Memory and Eternity in the Thought of St Augustine (Charlottesville 1986) 50–51, 151; W. J. Bouwsma, A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History (Berkeley 1990) 52: “Indeed it is likely that the sharp Augustinian distinction between creation and Creator, since it denied the eternity of the universe, also promoted that secularisation of the cosmos implicit in the Copernican revolution.” ⁵⁰ Origen, Contra Celsum (tr. Chadwick) 4.23: “He asserts that we are like worms who say: ‘There is God first, and we are next after him in rank since he has made us entirely like God, and all things have been put under us, earth, water, air and stars; and all things exist for our benefit, and have been appointed to serve us’.”

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is of its essence. It is by means of culture that we share and transmit our humanity. Modernity has not broken with the past. It is the outworking of the choices made by our predecessors over many centuries. But the message of late antiquity itself is that we are not locked into the past. The way forward is not to attempt to revert to the reduced or denied humanity of a so-called natural order. We must take a personal responsibility for each other and for all mankind as we build and rebuild a future to which all can contribute their own gifts. There is much more to be learned. The people of the past are not remote. They have much to say to us. It is vital to our future that we understand the world as they and we have made it.

Appendix 1. Ethical Instruction in Egypt (a) Inscription of Nefer-Seshem-Re (‘Sheshi’), on the false door of his tomb at Saqqara, Sixth Dynasty (c. 2350–2180 BC) (tr. M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1, Berkeley 1975, p. 17). (1) I have come from my town, I have descended from my nome, I have done justice for its lord, I have satisfied him with what he I spoke truly, I did right, [loves. I spoke fairly, I repeated fairly, I seized the right moment, So as to stand well with people.

(2) I judged between two so as to content them, I rescued the weak from one stronger than he As much as was in my power. I gave bread to the hungry, clothes ‘to the naked’, I brought the boatless to land. I buried him who had no son, I made a boat for him who lacked one. I respected my father, I pleased my mother, I raised their children. So says he (4) whose nickname is Sheshi.

(2) If you meet a disputant in action, (61 = 5, 11) A powerful man, superior to you, Fold your arms, bend your back, To flout him will not make him agree with you. Make little of the evil speech By not opposing him while he’s in action; He will be called an ignoramus, Your self-control will match his pile (of words). (4) If you meet a disputant in action, A poor man, not your equal, Do not attack him because he is weak, Let him alone, he will confute him, Do not answer him to relieve your heart, Do not vent yourself against your opponent, (81 = 6, 3) Wretched is he who injures a poor man, One will wish to do what you desire, You will beat him through the magistrates’ reproof. (9) If you plough and there’s growth in the field, And god lets it prosper in your hand, Do not boast at your neighbour’s side, One has great respect for the silent man: Man of character is man of wealth. If he robs he is like a crocodile in court. Don’t impose on one who is childless, (170) Neither decry nor boast of it; There is many a father who has grief, And a mother of children less content than another;

(1) Don’t be proud of your knowledge, Consult the ignorant and the wise; The limits of art are not reached, No artist’s skills are perfect; Good speech is more hidden than greenstone, Yet may be found among maids at the grindstones.

(3) If you meet a disputant in action Who is your equal, on your level, (70) You will make your worth exceed his by silence, While he is speaking evilly, There will be much talk by the hearers, Your name will be good in the mind of the magistrates.

(8) If you are a man of trust, Sent by one great man to another, Adhere to the nature of him who sent you, Give his message as he said it. Guard against reviling speech, (150) Which embroils one great with another; Keep to the truth, don’t exceed it, But an outburst should not be repeated. Do not malign anyone, (160 = 7, 5) Great or small, the ka abhors it.

(b) The Instruction of Ptah-hotep, Sixth Dynasty, as preserved on Papyrus Prisse from the Middle Kingdom (tr. Lichtheim, pp. 62–76, extracts only).

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(13) (220 = 8, 2) If you are in the antechamber, Stand and sit as fits your rank, Which was assigned you the first day. Do not trespass – you will be turned back, Keen is the face to him who enters announced, Spacious the seat of him who has been called. The antechamber has a rule, All behaviour is by measure; It is the god who gives advancement, (231) He who uses elbows is not helped. (16) If you are a man who leads, Whose authority reaches wide, You should do outstanding things, (260 = 9, 2) Remember the day that comes after. No strife will occur in the midst of honours, But where the crocodile enters hatred arises.

(18) If you want friendship to endure In the house you enter As master, brother, or friend,

(10) If you are poor, serve a man of worth, That all your conduct may be well with the god. Do not recall if he once was poor, Don’t be arrogant toward him For knowing his former state; Respect him for what has accrued to him, For wealth does not come by itself. It is their law for him whom they love, His gain, he gathered it himself; It is the god who makes him worthy And protects him while he sleeps.

(14) If you are among the people, Gain supporters through being trusted; The trusted man who does not vent his belly’s speech, He will himself become a leader. A man of means – what is he like? (240) Your name is good, you are not maligned Your body is sleek, your face benign, One praises you without your knowing. He whose heart obeys his belly Puts contempt of himself in place of love, His heart is bald, his body unanointed; The great-hearted is god-given, He who obeys his belly belongs to the enemy.

(17) If you are a man who leads, Listen calmly to the speech of one who pleads; Don’t stop him from purging his body

It is the lonely whom god fosters, While the family man prays for a follower.

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(280) In whatever place you enter, Beware of approaching the women! Unhappy is the place where it is done, Unwelcome is he who intrudes on them. A thousand men are turned away from their good: A short moment like a dream, Then death comes for having known them. Poor advice is ‘shoot the opponent’, When one goes to do it the heart rejects it. He who fails through lust of them, No affair of his can prosper. (20) Do not be greedy in the division, Do not covet more than your share; Do not be greedy toward your kin, The mild has a greater claim than the harsh. Poor is he who shuns his kin, He is deprived of [interchange]. Even a little of what is craved Turns a quarreler into an amiable man.

(33) If you probe the character of a friend Don’t inquire, but approach him, Deal with him alone, So as not to suffer from his manner. Dispute with him after a time, (470) Test his heart in conversation;

Of that which he planned to tell. A man in distress wants to pour out his heart More than that his case be won. (273) About him who stops a plea One says: ‘Why does he reject it?’ Not all one pleads for can be granted, But a good hearing soothes the heart.

(19) (298 = 10, 1) If you want a perfect conduct, To be free from every evil, Guard against the vice of greed: A grievous sickness without cure, There is no treatment for it. It embroils fathers, mothers, And the brothers of the mother, It parts wife from husband; It is a compound of all evils, A bundle of all hateful things. That man endures whose rule is rightness, Who walks a straight line; (314) He will make a will by it, The greedy has no tomb.

(21) (325) When you prosper and found your house, And love your wife with ardour, Fill her belly, clothe her back, Ointment soothes her body. Gladden her heart as long as you live, She is a fertile field for her lord.

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If what he has seen escapes him, If he does a thing that annoys you, Be yet friendly with him, don’t attack; Be restrained, don’t let fly, Don’t answer with hostility, Neither part from him nor attack him; His time does not fail to come, One does not escape what is fated. (35) (489 = 15, 3) Know your helpers, then you prosper, Don’t be mean toward your friends, They are one’s watered field, And greater than one’s riches, For what belongs to one belongs to another. The character of a son-of-man is profit to him; Good nature is a memorial. (37) (499) If you take a wife a spnt Who is joyful and known by her town, If she is [fickle] and likes the moment, Do not reject her, let her eat, The joyful brings [happiness].

Do not contend with her in court, Keep her from power, restrain her – Her eye is her storm when she gazes – Thus will you make her stay in your house.

(34) (481) Be generous as long as you live, What leaves the storehouse does not return; It is the food to be shared which is coveted, One whose belly is empty is an accuser; One deprived becomes an opponent, Don’t have him for a neighbour. Kindness is a man’s memorial For the years after the function.

(36) Punish firmly, chastise soundly, Then repression of crime becomes an example; Punishment except for crime Turns the complainer into an enemy.

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2. The Delphic Canon (a) Σωσιάδου τῶν ἑπτὰ σοφῶν ὑποθῆκαι, from Stobaeus, Eclogae III 1.173 (ed. Hense, p. 125). (b) Documentary versions: (i) Thera (Aegean), IV BC, Gymnasium of the ephebes, Inscriptiones Graecae XII 3 (1898), 1020 (ed. F. Hiller von Gaertringen). (ii) Miletopolis (Hellespont), IV/III BC, Gymnasium (?), Die Inschriften von Kyzikos und Umgebung. Teil II, Miletupolis: Inschriften und Denkmäler (Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien 26, ed. E. Schwertheim, Bonn 1983), no. 2. (iii)Aï-Khanum on the Oxus (Afghanistan), III BC, stele erected by Clearchus (of Soli?) in the sanctuary of the city’s founder, Cineas, from a copy transcribed personally at Delphi (ed. L. Robert, Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 1968, pp. 416–457). (iv) Egypt, I/II AD, P.Athen.Univ.inv. 2782 (ed. A. N. Oikonomides, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 37, 1980, pp. 179–183). (a) SOSIADES

(b) DOCUMENTS

(iv) P.Athen.Univ.inv. 2782 1

ἕπου θεῶι

2 3 4 5 6 7

νόμωι πείθου θεοὺς σέβου γονεῖς αἰδοῦ ἡττῶ ὑπὸ δικαίου γνῶθι μαθών ἀκούσας νόει

1 2 6 4 5 8

ἕπου θεῶι τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ πείθου νόμωι πείθου θεοὺς σέβου γονέας αἰδοῦ ἡ[ττῶ ὑπὸ δι]καίου

Follow God Obey a good man Obey the law Worship the gods Honour your parents Yield to the just Learn your lesson Listen and learn

(i) IG XII 3.1020 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

σαυτὸν ἴσθι γαμεῖν μέλλε καιρὸν γνῶθι φρόνει θνητά ξένος ὢν ἴσθι ἑστίαν τίμα ἄρχε σεαυτοῦ

4 γνῶθ[ι] σεαυτόν

Know/recognise yourself Hesistate to marry Pick your time Think as a mortal Know you’re a stranger Honour the hearth Control yourself

(ii) I Kyzikos II 2 col. 1 15 φίλοις βοήθει 16 θυμοῦ κράτει

17 18 19 20

(see no. 68) φρόνησιν ἄσκει πρόνοιαν τίμα ὅρκωι μὴ χρῶ φιλίαν ἀγάπα

1 2 3 4 5 6

[φ]ίλοις βοήθει θυμοῦ κράτει ἄδικα φεῦγε μαρτύρει ὅσια ἡδονῆς κράτει τύχην νόμιζε

7 [π]ρόνοιαν τίμα 8 ὅρκωι μὴ χρῶ 9 [φ]ιλίαν ἀγάπα

Help your friends Keep your temper Flee injustice Attest what is holy Subdue pleasure Consider fortune Practise prudence Honour providence Use no oath Love friendship

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παιδείας ἀντέχου δόξαν δίωκε σοφίαν ζήλου καλὸν εὖ λέγε ψέγε μηδένα ἐπαίνει ἀρετήν πρᾶττε δίκαια (see no. 75) φίλοις εὐνόει ἐχθροὺς ἀμύνου εὐγένειαν ἄσκει κακίας ἀπέχου κοινὸς γίνου ἴδια φύλαττε ἀλλοτρίων ἀπέχου ἄκουε πάντα εὔφημος ἴσθι φίλωι χαρίζου

10 παιδείας ἔχου 11 δόξαν δίωκε

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

ἀρετὴν ἐπαίνει πρᾶσσε δίκαια χάριν ἀπόδος φίλοις εὐνόει [ἐ]χθροὺς ἀμύνου συγγενεῖς ἄσκει [κ]ακίας ἀπέχου [κ]οινὸς γίνου τὰ ἴδια φύλασσε

23 [ε]ὔφημος γίνου 21 φίλωι χαρίζου

Hold to training Pursue glory Be zealous for wisdom Praise what is fine Criticise no-one Praise virtue Act justly Return a favour Goodwill for friends Hold off your enemies Cultivate nobility/family Keep away from evil Be sociable Look after your things Lay off those of others Always listen Speak auspiciously Favour a friend

(i) IG XII 3.1020 38 μηδὲν ἄγαν

3 μηδὲν ἄγαν

Nothing to excess

(iv) P.Athen.Univ.inv. 2782 39 χρόνου φείδου 40 ὅρα τὸ μέλλον

3 χρόνου φείδου 7 ὅρα τὸ μέλλον

Save time Look to the future

(ii) I Kyzikos II 2 41 42 43 44 45 46

ὕβριν μίσει ἱκέτας αἰδοῦ πᾶσιν ἁρμόζου υἱοὺς παίδευε ἔχων χαρίζου δόλον φοβοῦ

22 ὕβριμ μείσει 24 ἱκέτας ἐλέει 25 [υἱ]ο[ὺ]ς πα[ίδευε]

Hate arrogance Respect/pity supplicants Fit in with everyone Train your sons Give what you can Fear a trap

(iii) Aï-Khanum stele 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

εὐλόγει πάντας φιλόσοφος γίνου ὅσια κρῖνε γνοὺς πρᾶττε φόνου ἀπέχου εὔχου δυνατά σοφοῖς χρῶ ἦθος δοκίμαζε λαβὼν ἀπόδος ὑφορῶ μηδένα τέχνηι χρῶ

1 εὐ[λόγει πάντας] 2 φιλόσοφος γένου

Speak well of all Be/become philosophical Judge as is holy Act on knowledge Refrain from killing Pray for what is possible Mix with the wise Test character Give back what you take Suspect no-one Use your skill

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58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

ὃ μέλλεις δός εὐεργεσίας τίμα φθόνει μηδενί φυλακῆι πρόσεχε ἐλπίδα αἴνει διαβολὴν μίσει δικαίως κτῶ ἀγαθοὺς τίμα κριτὴν γνῶθι γάμους κράτει τύχην νόμιζε

307

Give what you mean to Honour benefaction Envy no-one Take care Praise (deprecate?) hope Hate slander Gain justly Honour the good ones Know your judge Control your liaisons Consider fortune

(i) IG XII 3.1020 69 ἐγγύην φεῦγε 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

ἁπλῶς διαλέγου ὁμοίοις χρῶ δαπανῶν ἄρχου κτώμενος ἥδου αἰσχύνην σέβου χάριν ἐκτέλει εὐτυχίαν εὔχου τύχην στέργε ἀκούων ὅρα ἐργάζου κτητά ἔριν μίσει ὄνειδος ἔχθαιρε γλῶτταν ἴσχε ὕβριν ἀμύνου κρῖνε δίκαια χρῶ χρήμασιν ἀδωροδόκητος δίκαζε αἰτιῶ παρόντα λέγε εἰδώς βίας μὴ ἔχου ἀλύπως βίου ὁμίλει πράιως

1 ἐγγ[ύα· πάρα δὲ ἄτα] Avoid commitment / Pledge: you’ll pay 2 σ[πουδαῖα μελέτα(?)] [Care for the best(?)] Speak plainly Stick to your own lot Control expenses Enjoy what you have Respect shame Perform a favour Pray for good fortune Be content with fortune Look and listen Work at what you can get Hate strife Detest reproach Hold your tongue Guard against arrogance Judge what is just Use your money Unbribed while judging Blame someone to his face Speak when you know Don’t go in for violence Live without worry Be gentle in conversation

(ii) I Kyzikos II 2 col. 2. 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

πέρας ἐπιτέλει μὴ ἀποδειφιλοφρόνει πᾶσιν [λιῶν υἱοῖς μὴ καταρῶ γυναικὸς ἄρχε σεαυτὸν εὖ ποίει εὐπροσήγορος γίνου ἀποκρίνου ἐν καιρῶι πόνει μετ᾽ εὐκλείας πρᾶττε ἀμετανοήτως ἁμαρτάνων μετανόει

1 πέρας ἐπ[ιτέλει] 2 πᾶσιν φιλοφρό[νει] 3 4 5 6 7 8

Achieve your end, unflinching Look kindly on all Don’t curse your own sons γυναικὸς ἄρχ[ε] Rule your wife σαυτὸν εὖ πο[ίει] Look after yourself εὐπροσήγορος γίν[ου] Be affable ἀποκρίνου ἐγ καιρῶ[ι] Reply at the right time πόνει μετ᾽ εὐκλείας Toil gloriously Don’t regret your action [ἁ]μαρτὼν μετανόει If you err, regret it

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ὀφθαλμοῦ κράτει βουλεύου χρόνωι πρᾶττε συντόμως φιλίαν φύλαττε (see no. 84) 106 εὐγνώμων γίνου 107 ὁμόνοιαν δίωκε

102 103 104 105

108 ἄρjῥητον κρύπτε 109 τὸ κρατοῦν φοβοῦ 110 τὸ συμφέρον θηρῶ

καιρὸν προσδέχου ἔχθρας διάλυε γῆρας προσδέχου ἐπὶ ῥώμηι μὴ καυχῶ (see no. 110) 115 εὐφημίαν ἄσκει

111 112 113 114

116 ἀπέχθειαν φεῦγε 117 πλούτει δικαίως 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142

δόξαν μὴ λεῖπε κακίαν μίσει κινδύνευε φρονίμως μανθάνων μὴ κάμνε φειδόμενος μὴ λεῖπε χρησμοὺς θαύμαζε οὓς τρέφεις ἀγάπα ἀπόντι μὴ μάχου πρεσβύτερον αἰδοῦ νεώτερον δίδασκε πλούτωι ἀπίστει σεαυτὸν αἰδοῦ μὴ ἄρχε ὑβρίζειν προγόνους στεφάνου θνῆσκε ὑπὲρ πατρίδος τῶι βίωι μὴ ἄχθου ἐπὶ νεκρῶι μὴ γέλα ἀτυχοῦντι συνάχθου χαρίζου ἀβλαβῶς μὴ ἐπὶ παντὶ λυποῦ ἐξ εὐγενῶν γέννα ἐπαγγέλλου μηδενί φθιμένους μὴ ἀδίκει εὖ πάσχε ὡς θνητός τύχηι μὴ πίστευε

9 11 12 10 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 24 23 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

ὀ[φ]θαλμοῦ κράτ[ει] βουλεύου χρόνω[ι] πρᾶσσε συντόμω[ς] φιλίαν φύλασσε τὸ [δί]καιον νέμ[ε]

Control your eye Take time to think Act promptly Guard friendship Mete out justice Be considerate ὁμόνοι[αν] ἄσκει Pursue/practice consensus μηδενὸς καταφρόνε[ι] Despise no-one ἀπόρρητα κρύπτε Conceal the unmentionable τὸ κρατοῦμ φοβοῦ Fear what controls you Look for advantage χρόνωι πίστευ[ε] Trust to time ‹μὴ› λά[λ]ει πρὸς ἡδονήν ‹Don’t› speak to please προσκύνει τὸ θεῖο[ν] Worship divinity καιρὸμ προσδέχου Welcolm your opportunity ἔχθραν διαλύου Break up enmities / a quarrel γῆρας προσδέχου Welcolm old age ἐπὶ ῥώμηι ‹μὴ› καυχῶ ‹Don’t› boast in strength χρῶ τῶι συμφέροντ[ι] Use your advantage [silence) εὐφημίαν ἄσκ[ει] Practise auspicious speech (sc. ψεῦδος αἰσχύνο[υ] Be ashamed of falsehood ἀπέχθειαν φεῦγε Flee hatred πιστεύων μὴ α[ – ] Don’t [give up?] trusting πλούτει δ[ικαίως] Get wealth justly ὁμολογ[ίαις ἔμμενε] [Stick by] agreements Don’t let your reputation go Hate vice Take risks reasonably Don’t weary of learning Don’t fail in thrift Admire oracles Love those you rear Don’t fight an absent foe Respect the elder Teach the younger Don’t trust wealth Respect yourself Don’t begin raging Crown your forefathers Die for your country Don’t grieve at life Don’t mock the dead Sympathise with misfortune Favour without harming Don’t worry at everything Beget (sons) of the well-born Make no-one a promise Don’t wrong the departed Tolerate it as a mortal Don’t trust fortune

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(iii) Aï-Khanum base, right 143 144 145 146 147

παῖς ὢν κόσμιος ἴσθι ἡβῶν ἐγκρατής μέσος δίκαιος πρεσβύτης εὔλογος τελευτῶν ἄλυπος

1 2 3 4 5

παῖς ὢν κόσμιος γίνου As a child be well behaved, ἡβῶν ἐγκρατής in youth restrained, μέσος δίκαιος in middle life just, πρεσβύτης εὔβουλος in old age reasonable / prudent τελευτῶν ἄλυπος at the end no worries.

(iii) Aï-Khanum base, front, epigram Ἀνδρῶν τοι σοφὰ ταῦτα παλαιοτέρων ἀνάκει[τα]ι ῥήματα ἀριγνώτων Πυθοῖ ἐν ἠγαθέαι ἔνθεν ταῦτ[α] Κλέαρχος ἐπιφραδέως ἀναγράψας εἵσατο τηλαυγῆ Κινέου ἐν τεμένει.

These wise words of men of long ago are dedicated as sayings of the famous in most holy Pytho, Where Clearchus carefully wrote them up, setting them out to shine afar in the sanctuary of Cineas.

On Aï-Khanum (the ancient Alexandria Oxana?) see D. W. MacDowall and M. Taddei, ‘The Greek City of Aï-Khanum’, in F. R. Allchin and Norman Hammond, The Archaeology of Afghanistan from Earliest Times to the Timurid Period (London 1978), 218–232. 3. Augustine’s Advice to Alypius (Ep. 10* in the new series, AD 428) In 1981 there was published a collection of twenty-seven hitherto unknown letters of Augustine which had been identified in two manuscripts preserved in Marseilles and Paris. Also included are two letters from Consentius to Augustine, and one from Jerome to Aurelius of Carthage. The collection is edited by Johannes Divjak as vol. 88 of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna 1981). The text was re-edited, with French translation and commentary, as vol. 46B of Oeuvres de Saint Augustin (Paris 1987). Another English translation (by R. B. Eno) is available in Fathers of the Church, vol. 81 (1989). 1 Remeantibus sanctis fratribus et coepiscopis nostris, quamuis eos non uiderim, eorum tamen ammonitus litteris, ut si aliquid tuae sanctitati uellem scribere, Carthaginem mitterem, ista dictaui, (2) quibus salutaris ‘a me qui’ germanitatem tuam iam iamque etiam uidere desidero accedente spe reditus tui quam significasti litteris tuis. (3) Iam uero rescripseram quod peruenerint ad me cum tuo commo-

When our holy brothers and fellow-bishops came back, although I did not see them, I was advised by them in a letter that if I wanted to write anything to Your Holiness I should send it to Carthage, so I have dictated this. (2) It bears my greetings and I am very, very desirous of seeing Your Germanity now that the hope of your return has been raised, as you indicated in your letter. (3) I had already written back to say that the books of Julianus and Caelestius, together

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nitorio libri Iuliani et Caelestii quos per filium nostrum Commilitonem diaconum direxisti, et quod multum mirarer, quod mihi nihil nuntiasse curaueris de correctione Turbanti, ad quem scripsit libros illos quattuor Iulianus. (4) Hunc enim eandem haeresem satis humili confessione damnantem et in pacem catholicam a papa Coelestino esse susceptum a tali homine audiui quem non possum dicere fuisse mentitum. (5) Magis enim, cum ad me scriberes, hoc te oblitum fuisse potui suspicari. Quamquam ergo iam ista scripseram, tamen etiam nunc uolui commonere, ne fortasse pruis haec rescripta quam illa quae prius feci accipiat sanctitas tua. (6) Interea in quibusdam schedis nostris inueni exemplum commonitorii quod tibi feceras, quando ad comitatum de concilio primitus missus es, eoque perlecto uidi multa necessaria non te potuisse tunc agere, et detractis quibusdam quae uel acta sunt uel non multum uidentur urgere mittendum putaui, ne forte nunc agi possint.

with your advice (on them), had reached me after you had dispatched them with our son Commilito, the deacon, and I was greatly surprised that you hadn’t troubled to give me any report on the correction of Turbantius, to whom Julianus had addressed those four books. (4) For I heard that, after denouncing the same heresy in a sufficiently humble confession, he was received into the peace of Catholicism by Pope Coelestinus, my informant being such a man as I cannot say had lied. (5) It was possible, however, to suppose that you had forgotten the point when writing to me. So although I had already written the previous letter, I decided to advise you again now, in case Your Holiness received this one before the one written earlier. (6) Meanwhile amongst our papers I have found the copy of a note you had made for yourself when you were first sent to court by the council, and on reading it I see that it was not possible at the time for you to deal with many necessary things, so omitting certain things which have been dealt with or do not seem very urgent I thought I should write, in case they could be dealt with now.

2 Addo autem et aliud: tanta est eorum qui uulgo mangones uocantur in Africa multitudo, ut eam ex magna parte humano genere exhauriant transferendo quos mercantur in prouincias transmarinas et paene omnes liberos. (2) Nam uix pauci reperiuntur a parentibus uenditi quos tamen non, ut leges Romanae sinunt, ‘ad’ operas uiginti quinque annorum emunt isti, sed prorsus sic emunt ut seruos uendunt trans mare ut seruos; ueros autem seruos a dominis omnino rarissime. (3) Porro ex hac multitudine mercatorum ita insoleuit seducentium et depraedantium multitudo, ita ut gregatim ululantes habitu terribili uel militari uel barbaro ‘remota’ et agrestia quaedam loca, in quibus pauci sunt homines perhibeantur inuadere et quos istis mercatoribus uendant uiolenter abducere.

I add also another matter: the number of those who are popularly called mangones (‘mongers’) is so great in Africa, that they are to a large degree stripping it bare of the human race by transporting people for sale to the overseas provinces, and practically all of them free-born. (2) For hardly any can be found who have been sold by their parents, and even these they do not buy as labour for twenty-five years, which the Roman laws allow, but they buy them straight out as slaves and sell them overseas as slaves; there are practically no cases of authentic slaves sold by their owners. (3) Moreover out of this number of dealers the number of those who abduct and press-gang people has developed so outrageously, that they are said to overrun some ‘outlying’ and underpopulated country districts in howling gangs, dressed as soldiers or barbarians to intimidate the people, and forcibly abduct them for sale to the dealers.

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3 Omitto quod nuperrime nobis fama nuntiauerat in quadam uillula per huiusmodi aggressiones occisis uiris feminas et pueros ut uenderentur abreptos; sed ubi hoc contigerit, si tamen uere contigit, non dicebatur. (2) Verum ego ipse cum inter illos, cum ex illa miserabili captiuitate per nostram ecclesiam liberarentur, a quadam puella quaererem quomodo fuerit mangonibus uendita, raptam se dixit fuisse de domo parentum suorum; (3) deinde quaesiui utrum ibi sola fuisset inuenta; respondit praesentibus suis parentibus et fratribus factum. (4) Aderat et frater eius qui uenerat ad eam recipiendam et, quia illa parua erat, ipse nobis quomodo factum esset aperuit. Nocte enim dixit huiusmodi irruisse praedones, a quibus magis se quomodo poterant occultarent quam eis resistere auderent barbaros esse credentes. (5) Mercatores autem si non essent, illa non fierent. Nec sane arbitror hoc Africae malum etiam illic ubi estis famam tacere; quod incomparabiliter longe minus fuit, quando tamen imperator Honorius ad praefectum Hadrianum legem dedit huiusmodi cohibens mercaturas talisque impietatis negotiatores plumbo cohercendos et proscribendos et in exilium perpetuum censuit esse mittendos; (6) nec de his loquitur in ea lege qui seductos depraedatos-‘que’ emunt liberos quod paene solum isti faciunt, sed generaliter de omnibus qui uendendas familias transferunt in prouincias transmarinas: ita ut ea quoque mancipia fisco sociari iusserit † uindicari †, quod utique nullo modo de liberis diceret.

I pass over the fact that I recently heard the rumour that on one small property the men were killed in such an assault, and the women and children were abducted for sale; it wasn’t said where this happened, if it really did. (2) But when I myself asked a girl, who was one of those liberated from that pitiable captivity by our church, how she had come to be sold to the ’mongers’, she said she had been kidnapped from her parents’ house. (3) I then asked whether she had been alone at the time; she replied it had been done while her parents and brothers were there. (4) Since she was only small, her brother, who had come to take her back, explained to me how it had been done. The impression the robbers gave when they burst in at night was such that they were more concerned to hide wherever they could and didn’t dare resist, thinking they were barbarians. (5) But if there were no dealers, such things would not happen. Nor do I suppose that rumour will fail to mention this African evil where you are too. It was incomparably far less serious when imperator Honorius delivered a law to the prefect Hadrianus restraining trafficking of this kind, and ruled that businessmen of such impiety should be flogged with lead, proscribed, and sent into permanent exile. (6) Nor does he speak in that law of those who buy the abducted and press-ganged freeborn, which these ones are doing almost exclusively, but he speaks in general terms of all those who ship families (of slaves) for sale in the overseas provinces, with the result that he ordered those slaves to be added to the public service † as a penalty †, which he certainly would never have said of the free-born.

4 Hanc legem subiunxi huic commonitorio meo, quamuis et Romae facilius possit forsitan inueniri; utilis est enim et huic pestilentiae posset mederi, sed in tantum ea nos uti coepimus, in quantum sufficit ad homines liberandos, non ad illos mercatores, propter quos tot et tanta scelera perpetrantur,

I have attached this law to my present advice, even though it could perhaps be traced quite readily in Rome too: for it is advantageous and might cure this plague, but I have begun to apply it in so far as it secures the liberation of people, though not in respect of restraining with such a penalty those dealers, on whose account so

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tali poena cohercendos. (2) Terremus enim quos possumus ista lege, nec plectimus, quin etiam metuimus ne forte alii eos homines licet detestabiles atque damnabiles a nobis deprehensos ad poenam per hanc legem debitam trahant. (3) Vnde ad hoc magis ista scribo beatitudini tuae, ut constituatur, si fieri potest, a piissimis christianisque principibus, ne ad periculum damnationis quae hac lege definita est maximeque ad plumbi cohercitionem, unde homines facile moriuntur, ista perueniant, quando per ecclesiam ab eis homines liberantur; (4) et necesse est ad eosdem comprimendos hanc legem in publicum fortasse proferri, ne nobis haec metuendo cessantibus transportentur miseri liberi in perpetuam seruitutem, quoniam nobis nihil pro illis agentibus quis facile inueniri potest qui non, si habet aliquam in litoribus potestatem, eis potius nauigationes crudelissimas uendat quam de naui quemquam miserorum christiana uel humana miseratione deponat uel in naui non permittat imponi.

many great crimes are being perpetrated. (2) For we frighten the ones we can with this law without punishing them; on the contrary we are afraid that once we have arrested them other people may perhaps carry off these men, detestable and damnable as they are, to the penalty owed under the law. (3) Hence I am rather writing expressly to Your Beatitude, that it may be established, if possible, by our most pious and Christian leaders, that those men not come under the risk of the penalty prescribed in this law, and in particular of the flogging with lead, which people easily die from, when people are being freed from them through the church. (4) And to restrain them it is necessary that the (amended?) law perhaps be publicly displayed, lest because of the anxiety mentioned we should hold back, and the pitiable free-born be transported into permanent slavery, since if we do nothing for them who can readily be found who would not, if he has any authority over the ports, prefer to sell them their brutal journey rather than disembarking (even) one of the pitiable creatures out of Christian or human pity, or refuse permission for them to be put on board?

5 Quarum autem potestatum uel quorum officiorum cura lex ista, uel si qua alia de hac re lata fuerit, habere possit executionem, ut Africa suis non amplius euacuetur indigenis nec gregatim et cateruatim perpetuo quasi fluuio tanta hominum multitudo utriusque sexus peius quam captiuitate barbarica amittat propriam libertatem, ipsorum est prouidere. (2) A barbaris enim plurimi redimuntur, transportati uero in prouincias transmarinas nec auxilium redemptionis inueniunt; et barbaris resistitur, cum bene et prospere geritur Romana militia, ne barbarica Romani captiuitate teneantur; (3) his uero negotiatoribus non quorumcumque animalium sed hominum, nec quorumcumque barbarorum sed prouincialium Romanorum usquequaque dispersis,

Now whatever the authorities or offices with whom the responsibility may lie for executing this law, or any other that may be passed on the matter, so that Africa should not be emptied any longer of its indigenous population, and such a multitude of people of either sex should not lose their liberty, with hordes of them flowing out in a perpetual river worse than under barbarian captivity, it lies with those authorities to see to it. (2) For in the case of the barbarians many can be bought back, but those transported to the overseas provinces do not get the advantage of a ransom; and we stand up against the barbarians, when the Roman army is functioning properly, so that Romans are not kept in barbarian captivity. (3) But with these dealers spread about everywhere, not (dealing) in animals of some kind or other but in people, and not in barbarians of some kind or other but in

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ut in eorum manus pretia pollicentium uel uiolenter rapti uel insidiis decepti ubicumque et undecumque ducantur, pro libertate Romana – non dicam communi sed ipsa propria – quis resistit?

provincial Romans, so that those violently abducted or trapped in ambush are handed over to the ones who offer the money, who is there who stands up for Roman freedom – and I am not talking of the common form but of one’s personal freedom?

6 Immo uero satis dici non potest quam multi in eundem nefarium quaestum mira caecitate cupiditatis et nescio qua huius uelut morbi contagione defluxerint. (2) Quis credit inuentam esse mulierem et hoc apud nos apud Hipponem quae Giddabenses feminas uelut lignorum emendorum causa seducere, includere, affligere soleret et uendere? (3) Quis credat ecclesiae nostrae colonum satis idoneum uxorem suam eandemque matrem filiorum suorum nulla culpa eius offensum solo excitatum feruore huius pestilentiae uendidisse? (4) Adolescens quidam uiginti ferme annorum, calculator notarius cordatus de monasterio nostro est seductus et uenditus qui uix per ecclesiam potuit liberari.

On the contrary, it is impossible to exaggerate how many people have slipped into the same evil trade, remarkably blind in their greed as though it has infected them with some disease. (2) Who will believe that a woman was found, and even here at Hippo, whose practice was to ensnare ladies from Giddaba on the pretext of buying wood, to lock them up, beat them, and sell them? (3) Who would believe that a quite competent tenant of our church sold his wife and the mother of his sons, not because she had offended him by any fault but solely because he was seized by this pestilential fever? (4) A young man of about 20, a sensible secretarial accountant with our monastery, was kidnapped and sold, only just managing to get back his freedom through the church.

7 Si uelim quae nos tantum experti sumus enumerare talia scelera, nullo modo possum. Vnum accipe documentum unde cuncta conicias quae per Africam totam et per omnia eius litora perpetrentur. (2) Ante quattuor fere menses quam ista scriberem de diuersis terris et maxime de Numidia congregati a Galatis mercatoribus – hi enim uel soli uel maxime his quaestibus inhianter incumbunt – ut a litore Hipponiensi transportarentur, adducti sunt. (3) Non defuit fidelis morem nostrum in elemosynis huiusmodi sciens qui hoc nuntiaret ecclesiae; continuo partim de naui, in qua fuerant impositi, partim de reducto loco ubi occultati fuerant imponendi a nostris me quidem absente centum ferme et uiginti homines liberati sunt, in quibus uix quinque aut sex inuenti sunt a parentibus uenditi; (4) ceterorum autem uarios casus quibus per seductores atque praedones ad Gala-

If I wanted to enumerate only the crimes of this type that we have encountered, there’s no way I could. Take a single instance from which you can envisage all the rest that is going on throughout Africa and in all its ports. (2) About four months prior to my writing this there were brought in people assembled from various regions and especially Numidia by the Galatian dealers – for they either monopolise the trade or apply themselves to it with special relish – with a view to their being shipped out through the port of Hippo. (3) There was not lacking a believer aware of our custom in acts of mercy of this type who reported it to the church. Immediately 120 people were liberated by our members (in my own absence), partly from the ship onto which they had been loaded and partly from the place where they had been secreted prior to loading. Scarcely five or six could be identified as having been sold by their parents. (4) With the rest of the cases hardly anyone could keep back tears

314

III. From Ancient to Modern

tas peruenerunt uix ullus audiens a lacrimis temperat.

on hearing the different stories about how they had been kidnapped or press-ganged before being handed over to the Galatians.

8 Iam tuae sanctae prudentiae est cogitare quanta miserarum animarum transportatio ferueat per cetera litora, si apud Hipponem Regium, ubi deo miserante qualiscumque inuigilat ecclesiae diligentia qua homines miseri de captiuitate huiusmodi liberentur et talium mercium negotiatores longe quidem minus quam huius legis seueritate, tamen pretiorum saltem amissione plectuntur, tantum ardet cupiditas, tantum audet immanitas Galatarum. (2) Per caritatem obsecro christianam ne frustra haec scripserim ad caritatem tuam. Non enim desunt patroni Galatis, per quos a nobis repetant quos dominus per ecclesiam liberauit etiam suis iam quaerentibus et ad nos cum litteris episcoporum propterea uenientibus redditos. (3) Nonnullos autem fideles filios nostros, apud quos quidam eorum commendati tunc remanserunt – non enim sufficit ecclesia cunctos quos liberat pascere – iam perturbare coeperunt quando ista dictauimus ‘et’ si litteris a potestate quam timere poterant superuenientibus ‘****’, nec tamen omnimodo ab ista repetitiones cessarunt.

It now lies with Your Holy Prudence to consider the scale on which the transportation of pitiable souls must be flourishing in the other ports, if at Hippo Regius, where with God’s pity there is enough vigilance and diligence on the part of the church for pitiable people to be liberated from this kind of captivity, and the dealers in such merchandise are punished at least by the loss of their payments, though that falls far short of the severity of the law, so great is the profiteering drive of the Galatians, and their mostrous effrontery. (2) I beseech you by your Christian charity that I may not have written this to Your Charity in vain. For the Galatians do not lack patrons, through whom they claim back from us the ones the Lord freed through the church, even ones handed back already to their own people, who had applied after arriving with letters from bishops sent for that very reason. (3) There are some of our faithful sons, with whom certain of them have remained on trust – for the church does not have the means to feed everyone it frees – whom they have already begun to put under pressure as we dictate this, ‘even’ though a letter has come from an authority they could respect (restraining them?), but even so have not at all given up attempts to get them back.

9 Omnes qui nos per litteras uenerationis tuae ‘salutare’ dignati sunt pro eorum meritis in Christi caritate resaluto. Conserui mei qui mecum sunt mecum salutant sanctitatem tuam.

To all those who deigned to greet us through the letter of Your Veneration I send greetings in return according to their deserts in the charity of Christ. My fellow servants who are with me now with me also greet Your Holiness.

The following studies are available: H. Chadwick, ‘New Letters of Augustine’, Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983) 425–452. W. H. C. Frend, ‘The Divjak Letters: New Light on St Augustine’s Problems, 416–428’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 34 (1983) 497–512. J. Rougé, ‘Escroquerie et brigandage en Afrique romaine au temps de saint Augustin (Epist. 8* et 10*)’, Les lettres de saint Augustin découvertes par J. Divjak (Paris 1983) 183–187. J. Szidat, ‘Zum Sklavenhandel in der Spätantike (Aug. epist. 10*)’, Historia 34 (1985) 360–371.

Occasional Papers of E. A. Judge A chronological list of Ancient History studies and addresses, mostly prepared for particular occasions and sometimes only circulated locally. A fuller list was compiled by D. M. Scholer and printed with his collection. Those marked below with an asterisk did not appear there. Papers relating mainly to the modern world are omitted. Those marked A, B, or C were selected by the following three editors for their respective collections. The primary initiative in this matter was taken by the late D. M. Scholer of Pasadena, California, and by the late Martin Hengel of Tübingen. (A.) D. M. Scholer (ed.), Social Distinctives of the Christians in the First Century: Pivotal Essays by E. A. Judge (Hendrickson, Peabody, Mass. 2008) pp. 227. (B.) J. R. Harrison (ed.), The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Studies (Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2008) pp. 786. (C.) Alanna Nobbs (ed.), Jerusalem and Athens: Cultural Transformation in Late Antiquity (Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2010).

The pagination of individual chapters in these collections is given in each case after the relevant letter (A, B, or C) in the following list. ‘The Penetration of Graeco-Roman Society by Christianity’, Tyndale House Bulletin 1 (Cambridge 1956) 5–6. ‘Amicitia and clientela’, Bulletin of the Classical Association of NSW 4 (Sydney 1958) 8–14. ‘Some Factors Affecting Success in Roman Politics’, Iris: News-sheet of the Classical Association of Victoria 44 (Melbourne 1958) 3–4. ‘“The Times of This Ignorance”, Christian Education as a Reappraisal of History’, JCE 1 (Sydney 1958) 81–87, 127–136; 2 (1959) 28–31. Review of E. M. Blaiklock, The Acts of the Apostles: an Historical Commentary (London 1959), JCE 2 (Sydney 1959) 109–111. B (59–65). ‘Contemptu famae contemni virtutes. On the Morality of Self-advertisement Among the Romans’, Mens Eadem (1959) 24–29. A (1–56). The Social Pattern of the Christian Groups in the First Century (London 1960) pp. 77; based on the 1957 Tyndale New Testament Lecture, awarded the 1958 Hulsean Prize of the University of Cambridge. B (526–552). ‘The Early Christians as a Scholastic Community’, JRH 1 (1960) 5–15; (1961) 125–137. B (66–68). ‘The Literature of Roman Political Self-advertisement’, paper summarised in Proceedings of the Seventh Congress of AULLA (Christchurch 1961) 24. B (52–58). ‘The Roman Theory of Historical Degeneration’, Hermes 58 (Sydney 1961) 5–8.

316

Occasional Papers of E. A. Judge

Review of T. F. Glasson, Greek Influence in Jewish Eschatology (London 1961), RTR 20 (Melbourne 1961) 88. Review of J. C. O’Neill, The Theology of Acts in its Historical Setting (London 1961), JRH 2 (Sydney 1962) 152–154. Set of 34 entries (incl. Achaia, Asia, Augustus, Caesar, Claudius, Government, Greece, Rome, Roman Empire, Slavery, Tiberius). New Bible Dictionary (London 1962). B (416–423). ‘ “Signs of the Times”: The Role of the Portentous in Classical and Apostolic Narrative’, SCM Journal 1 (1963) 20–24. B (586–596). ‘Contemporary Political Models for the Interrelations of the New Testament Churches’, RTR 22 (1963) 65–76. B (464–525, translation adjusted, with new Preface). Christliche Gruppen in nichtchristlicher Gesellschaft. Die Sozialstruktur christlicher Gruppen im ersten Jahrhundert; aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Dr Hilde Nordsieck (Wuppertal 1964) pp. 79. B (69–71). ‘Roman Literary Memorials’, paper summarised in Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of AULLA (Melbourne 1964) 28–30. ‘The Mind of Tiberius Gracchus’, paper read at the Tenth Congress of AULLA (Auckland 1966), and partly reproduced in the Papers of the Macquarie Ancient History Teachers’ Conference (Sydney 2005) 73–90. B (693–708). ‘The Conflict of Educational Aims in the New Testament’, JCE 9 (1966) 32–45. Review of F. V. Filson, A New Testament History (London 1965), RTR 24 (Melbourne 1966) 65-67. B (442–455). ‘The Origin of the Church at Rome: A New Solution?’, RTR 25 (1966) 81– 94. (With †G. S. R. Thomas.) A (57–71). ‘Paul’s Boasting in Relation to Contemporary Professional Practice’, ABR 16 (1968) 37–50. ‘The Hellenistic Empires’; ‘Judah’s War of Independence’; ‘Cities of the New Testament’ (23 items), The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Atlas (Grand Rapids 1969) 227–247; 249– 271; 360–389. B (410–415). ‘First Impressions of St Paul’, Prudentia 2 (1970) 52–58. ‘The Set Authors for Ancient History: Some Current Translations’, Ancient Society: Resources for Teachers 1.1 (Sydney 1971). 19–31. B (34–51). ‘The Private Sources of Force in Roman Politics’, the John Thompson Lecture at the University of Queensland (1971), reprinted in Ancient History: Resources for Teachers 33 (2003) 135–152. B (456–562). ‘The Decrees of Caesar at Thessalonica’, RTR 30 (1971) 71–78. A (73–97). ‘St Paul and Classical Society’, JbAC 15 (1972) 19–36. Review of Bo Reicke, The New Testament Era (London 1968), TSF Bulletin 64 (London 1972) 31–32. B (568–585). ‘Demythologising the Church: What is the Meaning of “the Body of Christ”?’, Interchange 11 (1972) 155–167. Review of F. F. Bruce, New Testament History (London 1969), JRH 7.2 (Sydney 1972) 163–165. B (72–75). ‘Veni. Vidi. Vici, and the Inscription of Cornelius Gallus’, Vestigia 17 (1973) = Akten des VI. Internationalen Kongresses für griechische und lateinische Epigraphik, München 1972, 571–573. C (69–79). ‘Antike und Christentum: Some Recent Work from Cologne’, Prudentia 5 (1973) 1–13. B (670–683). ‘St Paul and Socrates’, Interchange 14 (1973) 106–116.

Occasional Papers of E. A. Judge

317

‘Reflections from Germany upon Ancient History Today’, Mitteilungen der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung 28 (Bonn 1974) 13–20. A (99–115). ‘St Paul as a Radical Critic of Society’, Interchange 16 (1974) 191–203. B (140–164). ‘Res publica restituta: A Modern Illusion?’, in J. A. S. Evans (ed.), Polis and Imperium: Studies in Honour of Edward Togo Salmon (Toronto 1974) 279–311. Set of 14 entries (incl. Alexander, Antioch etc.). The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids 1975). ‘The Acts of the Apostles’, Ancient Society: Resources for Teachers 5.2 (Sydney 1975) 66– 72. ‘How to Check on a Translation’, Ancient Society: Resources for Teachers 5.2 (Sydney 1975) 103–109. B (90–110). ‘Caesar’s Son and Heir’, Papers of the Macquarie University Continuing Education Conference for Ancient History Teachers (Sydney 1977) 76–101. ‘Papyrus Documentation of Church and Community in Egypt to the Mid-fourth Century’, JbAC 20 (Bonn 1977) 47–71. (With S. R. Pickering.) C (156–177). ‘The Earliest Use of monachos for “Monk” (P.Coll.Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism’, JbAC 20 (1977) 72–89. ‘Biblical Papyri Prior to Constantine: Some Cultural Implications of Their Physical Form’, Prudentia 10 (Auckland 1978) 1–13. (With S. R. Pickering.) B (182–223). ‘Augustus in the Res Gestae’, Papers of the Macquarie University Continuing Education Conference for Ancient History Teachers (Sydney 1979) 1–43. C (80–108). ‘Antike und Christentum: Towards a Definition of the Field. A Bibliographical Survey’, in H. Temporini and W. Haase (eds), ANRW II.23.1 (Berlin and New York 1979) 3–58. ‘Die frühen Christen als scholastische Gemeinschaft’, in Wayne A. Meeks (ed.), Zur Soziologie des Urchristentums. Ausgewählte Beiträge zum frühchristlichen Gemeinschaftsleben in seiner gesellschaftlichen Umwelt; aus dem Amerikanischen von G. Memmert (Munich 1979) 131–164. Review of R. M. Grant, Early Christianity and Society (London 1978), RTR 38.2 (Melbourne 1979) 55–56. Review of E. A. Livingstone (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford 1977), JCE 67 (Sydney 1980) 59–60. B (165–181). ‘The Eulogistic Inscriptions of the Augustan Forum’, Papers of the Macquarie University Continuing Education Conference for Ancient History Teachers (Sydney 1980) 1–26. * ‘Augustus: What Did they Think was Happening at the Time?’, in C. Dawson (ed.), Ancient History (Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney 1980) 17–23. C (211–231). The Conversion of Rome: Ancient Sources of Modern Social Tensions (Sydney 1980) pp. 28. A (117–135). ‘The Social Identity of the First Christians: A Question of Method in Religious History’, JRH 11/2 (1980) 201–217. C (178–184). Fourth-century Monasticism in the Papyri’, in R. S. Bagnall et al. (eds), Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Papyrology, New York, 24–31 July 1980 (Chico 1981) 613–620. B (348–359). ‘The Regional kanon for Requisitioned Transport’, New Docs 1 (1981) 36– 45. C (130–136). ‘A State Schoolteacher Makes a Salary Bid’, New Docs 1 (1981) 72–78. Articles: 81, ‘The Earliest Attested Monk’; 94 bis, ‘The Date of Ezana, the “Constantine” of Ethiopia’, in G. H. R. Horsley (ed.), New Docs 1 (The Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney 1981) 124–126, 143–144.

318

Occasional Papers of E. A. Judge

‘Legislation on Abortion in the Ancient World’, Genesis Review 1.1 (Sydney 1981) 7–15. B (378–384). ‘Setting the Record Straight: Alternative Documents of a Protest in the Roman Army of Egypt’, Papers of the Macquarie University Continuing Education Conference for Ancient History Teachers (Sydney 1981) 121–131, reprinted in Ancient History: Resources for Teachers 33 (2003) 153–159. Preface to G. H. R. Horsley, New Docs 1 (The Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney 1981) iv–v. A (137–156). Rank and Status in the World of the Caesars and St Paul. The Fourth Broadhead Memorial Lecture (Christchurch 1982) pp. 40. Articles: 83, ‘Moral Terms in the Eulogistic Tradition’; 84, ‘Greek Names of Latin Origin’; 107, ‘Divine Constantine’, in G. H. R. Horsley (ed.), New Docs 2 (Sydney 1982) 105–106, 106–108, 191–192. ‘Government in New Testament Times’, The Book of Bible Knowledge (London 1982) 153–59. B (709–716). ‘The Reaction Against Classical Education in the New Testament’, JCE 77 (1983) 7–14. C (254–260). ‘The Interaction of Biblical and Classical Education in the Fourth Century’, JCE 77 (1983) 31–37. C (232–253). ‘Christian Innovation and its Contemporary Observers’, in B. Croke and Alanna Emmett (now Nobbs) (eds), History and Historians in Late Antiquity (Sydney 1983) 13–29. A (157–174). ‘Cultural Conformity and Innovation in Paul’, The Tyndale Biblical Archaeology Lecture 1983, TynBul 35 (1984) 3–24. ‘Gesellschaft und Christentum III: Neues Testament’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin and New York 1984) 764–769. ‘Gesellschaft und Christentum IV: Alte Kirche’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin and New York 1984) 769–773. ‘Selection Criteria for the Corpus Papyrorum Christianarum’, in M. Gigante (ed.), Atti del XVII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia, Napoli, 19–26 Maggio, 1983 (Naples 1984) 117–122. ‘The House Next to the Augustan Forum’, paper summarised in AULLA XXIII Proceedings and Papers (Melbourne 1985) 10–11. Response to Bruce J. Malina on the Gospel of John in sociolinguistic perspective, Colloquy 48 (Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, Berkeley 1985) 24–29. B (224–317). On Judging the Merits of Augustus, Colloquy 49 (Berkeley 1985) pp. 80. ‘A Tribute to B. F. Harris’, Ancient Society: Resources for Teachers 16.1 (Sydney 1986) 2–7. C (185–197). ‘The Quest for Mercy in Late Antiquity’, in P. T. O’Brien and D. G. Peterson (eds), God Who is Rich in Mercy: Essays Presented to D. Broughton Knox (Sydney 1986) 107–121. B (395–403). ‘ “We Have No King But Caesar” – When was Caesar First Seen as a King?’, Papers of the Macquarie University Continuing Education Conference for Ancient History Teachers (Sydney 1986) 108–119. C (198–208). ‘The Magical Use of Scripture in the Papyri’, in E. Newing and E. Conrad (eds), Perspectives on Language and Text: Essays in Honor of Francis I. Andersen (Winona Lake 1987) 339–349. Augustus and Roman History: Documents and Papers for Student Use (Macquarie University, 2nd edn: Sydney 1987) pp. 298.

Occasional Papers of E. A. Judge

319

* ‘Had the Romans Already Heard of the Khmer People?’, Abstracts and Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Congress of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association (Christchurch 1987) 13. ‘Πραΰτης’, in G. H. R. Horsley (ed.), New Docs 4: A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1979 (Sydney 1987) 169–170. B (121–126). *‘Augustus and the Roman Nobility’, Macquarie Ancient History Association Study Day (Sydney 1987). B (127–139). *‘The Augustan Republic: Tiberius and Claudius on Roman History’, Macquarie Ancient History Association ‘Republicanism’ Conference (Sydney 1988). ‘Agrippina as Ruler of Rome?’, Teaching History 22.1 (Sydney 1988) 13–16. B (427–430). ‘The Gentile Response to Judaism in the First Century’, Papers of the Society for Early Christianity Seminar, ‘Jews and Christians: The First-century Dilemma’ (Sydney 1989) 19–27; summarised in Newsletter 6 (1989) 5–6. C (11–31). ‘The Beginning of Religious History’, JRH 15/4 (1989) 394–412. ‘Papyri’, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (New York 1990) 686–691 (2nd edn 1997) 867–872. B (368–377). * ‘St Paul and the Inscriptions of Ephesus’, Annual Lecture of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (1990). B (85–89). * ‘Caesar and Augustus’, Macquarie Ancient History Association Study Day (Sydney 1990). C (109–117). ‘Athens and Jerusalem’, in R. K. Sinclair (ed.), Past, Present and Future: Ancient World Studies in Australia (Sydney 1990) 90–98. B (424–430). ‘The Mark of the Beast, Revelation 13:15’, TynBul 42 (1991) 158–160. B (360–367). ‘A Woman’s Behaviour’, New Docs 6 (1992) 18–23. A (175–188). ‘The Teacher as Moral Exemplar in Paul and the Inscriptions of Ephesus’, in D. G. Peterson and J. W. Pryor (eds), In the Fullness of Time: Biblical Studies in Honour of Archbishop Donald Robinson (Sydney 1992) 185–201. B (385–394). * ‘What Kind of Ruler Did the Greeks Think Augustus Was?’, Macquarie Ancient History Association Study Day (Sydney 1992), reprinted in Classicum 33.2 (2007) 2–4. ‘Who First Saw Augustus as an Emperor?’, History Teachers Association Study Day (Sydney 1992), reprinted in Classicum 33.2 (2007) 2–4. ‘Pilate, Pontius’, in B. M. Metzger et al. (eds), The Oxford Companion to the Bible (New York 1993) 594–595. B (431–441). ‘Judaism and the Rise of Christianity: A Roman Perspective’, TynBul 45 (1994) 355–368. ‘Should History Teach the National Truth?’, review of C. Crabtree et al. (eds), Lessons from History: Essential Understandings and Historical Perspectives Students Should Acquire, Education Monitor (Sydney, Summer 1993–94) 30–32. Review of J. Podemann Sørensen (ed.), Rethinking Religion: Studies in the Hellenistic Process (Copenhagen 1989), JRH 20.2 (Sydney 1996) 246–247. B (717–732). ‘The Biblical Shape of Modern Culture’, Kategoria 3 (1996) 9–30. B (314–345). ‘The Second Thoughts of Syme on Augustus’, Ancient History: Resources for Teachers 27/1 (Sydney 1997) 43–75. ‘The Rhetoric of Inscriptions’, in S. E. Porter (ed.), Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period, 330 BC–AD400 (Leiden 1997) 807–828. C (261–263). ‘Conversion in the Ancient World’, Society for the Study of Early Christianity, Newsletter 32 (Sydney 1998) 3–4.

320

Occasional Papers of E. A. Judge

C (282–314). ‘Ancient Beginnings of the Modern World’, in T. W. Hillard, R. A. Kearsley, C. E. V. Nixon and A. Nobbs (eds), Ancient History in a Modern University, Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids and Cambridge 1998) 468–482. B (111–116). *‘The “Settlements” of Augustus: A Constitutional Reform?’, Ancient History Seminars of B. R. Brennan (Sydney 1998). C (276–281). ‘Biblical Sources of Historical Method’, Kategoria 15 (Spring 1999) 33–39. Review of R. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven 1997), JRH 23.2 (Sydney 1999) 240–241. Foreword to F. Münzer, Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families, tr. T. Ridley (Baltimore 1999) xv–xvii. Introduction to ‘C. G. Heyne’s Address on Roman Deportation: A 1791 comparison with Botany Bay’, tr. P. M. McCallum, Ancient History: Resources for Teachers 29.2 (Sydney 1999) 118–128. C (58–68). ‘The Impact of Paul’s Gospel on Ancient Society’, in P. Bolt and M. Thompson (eds), The Gospel to the Nations: Perspectives on Paul’s Mission in Honour of P. T. O’Brien (Leicester 2000) 297–308. B (76–84). ‘The Period of Augustus and the Julio-Claudians’, Papers of the Macquarie University Ancient History Teachers’ Conference (Sydney 2000) 123–128. C (137–139). ‘The Ecumenical Synod of Dionysiac Artists’, New Docs 9 (2002) 67–68. C (121–129). ‘Jews, Proselytes and God-fearers Club Together’, New Docs 9 (2002) 73– 80. B (117–126). * ‘The Real Basis of Augustan Power’, Ancient History Study Day, Macquarie University (Sydney 2002). Articles: 8, ‘Her Soul Went up on High’; 10, ‘Thanksgiving to the Benefactor of the World, Tiberius Caesar’, in S. R. Llewelyn (ed.), New Docs 9 (Grand Rapids 2002) 19, 22. ‘Paul Barnett and New Testament History’, foreword to S. R. Llewelyn (ed.), New Docs 9 (Grand Rapids 2002) ix–xii. Review of Nicholas Horsfall, The Culture of the Roman Plebs (London 2003), Ancient History: Resources for Teachers 33.2 (2002) 195–200. B (597–618). ‘Did the Churches Compete with Cult-groups?’, in J. T. Fitzgerald et al. (eds), Early Christianity and Classical Culture (Leiden 2003) 501–524. ‘Ergänzung. Australien und Neuseeland’, Der Neue Pauly 15/3, Rezeptions- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Stuttgart 2003) 1247–1250. B (684–692). ‘The Appeal to Convention in Paul’, in P. J. Williams et al. (eds), The New Testament in its First Century Setting (Grand Rapids and Cambridge 2004) 178–189. ‘McDonald, Alexander Hugh (1908–1979)’, in The Dictionary of British Classicists (Bristol 2004) 604–606. C (264–275). ‘The Absence of Religion, Even in Ammianus?’, in G. R. Treloar and R. D. Linder (eds), Making History for God (Sydney 2004) 295–308. ‘Latin Names Around a Counter-cultural Paul’, in S. C. Holt and Gordon Preece (eds), The Bible and the Business of Life (Adelaide 2004) 64–84. B (553–567). ‘The Roman Base of Paul’s Mission’, TynBul 56/1 (2005) 103–117. B (619–668). ‘On This Rock I Will Build My ekklesia: Counter-cultic Springs of Multiculturalism?’, the Petrie Oration, Australian Institute of Archaeology (Melbourne 2005), Buried History 41 (2005) 3–28. B (404–409). ‘Was Christianity a Religion?’, Society for the Study of Early Christianity, Newsletter 56 (2006) 4–7. ‘Kultgemeinde (Kultverein)’ in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 22 (2007) 393– 438.

Occasional Papers of E. A. Judge

321

‘Who first saw Augustus as an Emperor?’, Classicum 33.2 (2007), 2–4. ‘Richard Alexander Bauman (1919–2006)’, in The Australian Academy of the Humanities Proceedings 2006 (2007) 51–54. C (32–43). * ‘Group Religions in the Roman Empire’, JbAC 51 (2008), 188–195. C (44–57). * ‘Synagogue and Church in the Roman Empire: The Insoluble Problem of Toleration’, RTR 68.1 (2009) 29–45. C (140–155). * ‘The Puzzle of Christian Presence in Egypt before Constantine’, in A. Woods et al. (eds), Egyptian Culture and Society: Studies in Honour of Naguib Kanawati (Cairo 2010) 263–278. *‘What did Augustus Think he was Doing?’, Classicum 36.1 (2010), 3–6.

Index 1

Documents Recovered Direct from Antiquity For papyri see Oates et al. Checklist, and for inscriptions see Horsley and Lee ‘Preliminary Checklist’, Epigraphica 56 Aegyptus 15 (1935) 415–418 (Limestone ostracon)

206

L’Année épigraphique (AE) (1973) 235 27 (1988) 1046 29 Bulletin épigraphique (BE) (1969) 601 (Aï-Khanum) 289, 305–309 BGU 1.27

146

BKT 6.2.1 8.17

150 206

BN Suppl.Gr. 1120

150

CIJ 2.748

128

CIL 6.4416

46

CIRB 71

128

CPJ 2.152

191

CPL 241

138

CPR 5.26

178–184

Crosby-Schøyen Codex 150

Grierson, P. and Mays, M., Catalogue of Late Roman Coins 76 IG 12.3 (1898) 1020

290, 305–308

IGUR 1.160

39

IKyzikos 2 (Miletupolis) 2 290–291, 292, 305–308 IILRP 2.511 (SC de Bacchanalibus)

45

ILS 212

279

Jena, Philologisches Seminar 150 Johnson, A. C., Ancient Roman Statutes 175 135 277 27 Jones, J. M., Dictionary of Ancient Roman Coins 174 297 JHS 27 (1907) 62 (cf. I.Kyzikos 2.2)

291

JRS 78 (1988) 105–124 (Rescript of Maximinus, AE [1988] 1046) 29 79 (1989) 40–44 (Sestertius of Nerva) 49

324

Index 1: Documents Recovered Direct from Antiquity

Leges Duodecim Tabularum Warmington, E. H., Remains of Old Latin (Loeb vols. and pp.) 3.490 19 3.492 44 Lichtheim, M., Ancient Egyptian Literature 1 5, 61–76 287, 300–304 17 287, 300 Lichtheim, M., Ancient Egyptian Literature 2 119, 124–127 287 M. Chr. 381

179 138

Mitchiner, M., Indo-Greek and IndoScythian Coinage 288 New Docs 1 (1981) 33–36 1 (1981) 47–51 1 (1981) 72–78 1 (1981) 124–126 1 (1981) 125 2 (1982) 180–185 3 (1983) 141–148 4 (1987) 169–170 8 (1997) 58–59 8 (1997) 144 9 (2002) 67–68 9 (2002) 73–80

207 204 130 65 263 27 194 292 138 138 137, 272 121

Nouveau choix d’inscriptions grecques 37 291 Papyrus Prisse (Lichtheim 1.5, 61–76) 287 Pap. Colon. 13.3

137–138

P. Abinn. 2.19 55

194 213, 230–231

P.Agon. 3

137–138

P.Alex. 29

167

P. Amh. 1.3a 2.142

146, 206, 212 168, 173, 181

P. Amst. 1.25

150

P. Ant. 2.54

206

P. Athen. Univ. inv. 2782

291, 305–306

P. Barc. 149b-53

218

P. Beatty 1 2 15

152 152 154

P. Berl. inv. 11860 inv. 13897 inv. 17076

178–184 177 150

P. Bodmer 13 47

150 61

P. Bon. 1.1

150

P. Cair. Zen. 3.59495

193

P. Col. 7.171

P. Coll. Youtie 1.30 2.66 2.77

141, 147, 156– 159, 178–184, 229, 244, 252, 255 204 130–136 148, 156–159, 176, 212, 229– 230

P. Colon. inv. 4780

77

P. Dura 10

150

P. Fam.Tebt. 15 24

135 135

325

Index 1: Documents Recovered Direct from Antiquity

P. Fay. 106

191

P. Flor. 1.71

169, 176

P. Fouad 1.21 1.80

10

169, 170, 176 169, 176 169, 176, 178, 181 169, 170, 176

135 195

P. Giss. 40

P. Iand. 1.4 6.100

150 167, 178–184

26–27, 168

P. Giss.Univ.Bibl. 2.17

150

P. Lips. 28 43 44 60

169, 179–184 178–181 138 179–184

PGM 3 3.76 4 4.3019, 3020 5b, 5c 7 9 10 12 15 15c 16, 17, 18, 19 22 23 36 62 77

198 198, 202 199 198, 200, 202 199 200 198, 201, 202 199, 200 198, 200, 202 198, 202 200 199 200 198, 202 200 198, 202 198, 202 198, 202

PGM O 3

200

P. Got. 11

P. Herm. Rees 7 8 9

P. Lond. 2.412 3.878 6.1913 6.1914

230 249 171, 176, 178–184 171, 176, 178– 184, 213 6.1915, 1916 171, 172, 176 6.1917 171, 172, 176, 197 6.1918 171, 172, 176 6.1919 171, 176 6.1920 171, 172, 174, 176 6.1921 171, 172, 176 6.1922 171, 172, 174, 176 6.1923, 1924 170, 176 6.1925 170, 176, 178–184 6.1926, 1927, 1928, 1929 170, 176 P. Lond. Christ. 2

150

P. Lond. Lit. 223

150

167

P. Gron. 17 18

P. Mert. 2.92

156

167, 168, 173, 176 167

P. Hamb. 1.37

P. Mich. 2.2.129 2.2.130

150 150

254

P.Harr. 2.208

P. Mon. Epiph. 2.585

162

141, 146

P. Neph. 48

141, 149

178–184

P. Oslo inv. 1644

206

P. Herm.Landl.

326 P. Oxy. 1.5 1.43 1.120 1.654, 655 2.209 3.404 3.405 3.407 3.412 8.1162 9.1173 12.1469 12.1574 14.1683 14.1774 15.1828 22.2338 27.2476 31.2603 33.2665 33.2673

Index 1: Documents Recovered Direct from Antiquity

41.2993 41.2994 41.2969 42.3035 43.3119 43.3126 44.3203 46.3311 47.3366 50.3527 50.3528 55.3787 69.4705 69.4706 69.4707

150 194, 212 195 174 61, 206 150 150 196, 206 150 168 150 135 167 174 177 150 142 137–138 167 178–184 54, 134, 141, 146, 179, 212, 228–229, 257 206 150 215 154, 167, 168, 256 147 147 141, 147 141, 145, 211, 228 146 194 169, 177, 179–184 179–184 130–136 150 150 147, 148 150 150 150

P. Princ. 3.159

206

P. Rein. 2.113

192

34.2684 36.2745 36.2782 36.2785

P. Ross. Georg. 2.20 2.28

192 213

P. Ryl. 4.659

193

P. Sakaon 39.11

142

PSI 3.208 7.757 7.767 9.1041 13.1306 13.1342 15.1492

167 150 195 154, 167, 256 61 170, 178–184 167, 168, 169

P. Stras. 296

193

P. Strasb. G. inv. 1900

251

P. Taur. (Tor.) inv. 27

206

P. Würzb. 16

168, 178–184

P. Yale 1.3 inv.1528

216 135

Res gestae divi Augusti 9 18–20 20 27.3.11–15

23, 46 46 23 295

Reynolds, J., Tannenbaum, R., Jews and God-fearers at Aphrodisias pp 5–7 121 SB 4.7315 5.7629 5.8698 6.2.9217 8.1.9802 8.9683 10.10255 12.10772

180 167 162 192 196 179–184 167 146

327

Index 1: Documents Recovered Direct from Antiquity

16.12497 18.14056

145 193

SEG 36 (1986) 970 44 (1994) 1753

121–125 121

Smallwood, E. M., ed., Documents Illustrating the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero 297 135 369 135

Washington MS 5 (Freer) 150, 152 W. Chr. 125

27

ZPE 18 (1975) 317–323 37 (1980) 179–183

291, 305

Index 2

Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition Biblical and related titles in English; Classical, including Patristic, in Latin Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Musurillo) 6.14 10.13 11.1.1

271 50 28, 52, 145

Acts of the Apostles (see Luke) Acts of Paul (and Thecla) 61

Alcinous (sc. Albinus) Epitome doctrinae Platonicae 32.4 59

15.7.10 15.8.9–10 16.1.4 17.5.4 17.7.8 18.7.7 18.10.4 19.2.4 19.3.1 19.12.8 20.7.7 20.7.7–9 21.1.8 21.1.42 21.2.4 21.2.5 21.16.18

Ambrose 99, 226, 296

Ammianus Marcellinus

14.9.7 14.10.3 14.10.13 14.11.25–26 15.5.31 15.6.7 15.7.1 15.7.6 15.7.6–10 15.7.7 15.7.8 15.7.9 15.7.9–10

30, 35–36, 67– 68, 220, 233– 235, 267 270 189 271 275 270, 272, 274 272 189, 275 138, 268, 271, 274 274 273 271, 273, 275 268 274

22.1.5 22.3.2 22.4.5 22.5.1 22.5.3 22.5.3–4 22.5.4 22.5.4–5 22.10.7 22.11.3 22.11.3–11 22.11.4 22.11.5 22.11.7 22.11.7–9 22.11.8 22.11.9 22.11.10

273, 274, 275 268 271 189 268 274 269, 270, 273, 275 273 274 189 268 274 275 273 269, 271, 274 269, 270, 272 138, 189, 234, 268, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 295 29 269 274 274 188, 189, 268, 274 270, 274 188, 216, 234 274, 275 270, 275 189, 275 274 273 189, 273, 275, 275 274 274 275 272, 274 189, 268, 269, 270, 273, 274

329

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

22.12.18 22.13.2 22.14.8 22.15.30 22.16.17 22.16.20 22.16.22 23.6.4 23.6.24 25.4.20 25.6.2 25.10.15 26.3.3 27.3.12 27.3.12–13 27.3.12–15 27.3.13 27.3.14 27.3.15 27.7.5 27.7.6 27.8.4 27.9.9 27.9.10 27.10.1 27.10.1–2 28.1.15 28.4.29 28.4.29–30 28.6.27 29.1.23–24 29.3.4 29.5.15 29.5.18 29.5.22 30.9.5 31.12.8 31.12.8–9 31.12.9 31.15.6

274 270, 272, 274 268 270 189 275 274 270 268 188, 270 269 270, 271 269, 270, 274 189, 274 217 274 270, 272 190, 234, 274 190, 234, 268, 269, 270, 274, 275 270, 274 269, 271, 273 270 189, 270, 273, 274 268 270 274 233 272 189, 274 270, 272, 274 186 270, 272 268, 270, 274 270 269 271, 274 270, 272 274 270 270, 274

Anonymous Apophthegmata Patrum 23 163 De rebus bellicis 219 Anthologia Palatina 11.384

66, 165

Apollinarius De viris illustribus 104

236

Apuleius 40, 84

Aquila 159, 161

Aristides (apologist) 150

Aristides, Publius Aelius 84

Aristotle Politica 1.1.8–12 1.1.9

47 277

Athanasius Apologia contra Arianos 7.2 138 Vita Antonii 14, 15 46 47

65, 160, 162, 179–180, 223 162–163 163 173, 225

Augustine 72, 109 Confessiones 8.2 9.7.15

63, 218 218

De civitate Dei 6.5 6.11 12.10–22 19.23

20, 30, 100 20 48 278 238

Epistulae *8 *10 *10.2.1

190 297 297, 309–314 190

330

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

*10.2.2, 3 *10.3.2 *10.3.4, 5 *10.4 *10.4.3, 4 *10.5.1 *10.6.2 *10.6.3, 4 *10.7.3 *10.8.1 *10.8.2 *10.8.3 *24

298 298 190 297, 298 190 297 190, 298 298 190, 298 191 190, 297, 298 190, 297 297

(see Origen)

64, 236, 239–241

Chilon of Sparta 290

Chronicles, Second book of 153

Chrysostom, John 72, 109

260

Adversus oppugnatores vitae monasticae 259

205, 260

Ad populum Antiochenum (homilia 19) 205

De catechizandis rudibus De doctrina christiana 2.19.45

Celsus

De sermone Domini in monte 260 2.2.6–9 225 2.12.40 225

In espistulam i ad Corinthios (homiliae 43–44) 206

De magistro

De inani gloria et de educandis liberis 259

260 In Iohannis evangelium tractatus 6.1 205

222

Barnabas, Letter of 63, 150

Basil of Caesarea De legendis gentilium libris 259

Bel and the Dragon

Cicero Cato Maior de senectute 45 39 De natura deorum 1.77

261

De re publica 6.13

269

Clearchus of Soli 289

Clement of Alexandria 153

63, 150 Quis dives 29

Callimachus Hymnus in Delum 4.152

225

40

Babylonian Talmud Baba Mezia 85b-86a

In Matthaeum (homiliae 20–21)

194

186

Codex Iustinianus 10.54.1

138

331

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

Codex Theodosianus 9.16.9 9.40.16 12.1.63 14.3.11 16.2.1 16.2.2 16.2.3 16.2.5 16.2.12 16.2.27 16.3.1 16.3.2 16.5.8 16.8.2

Dio Chrysostom 265 66 66, 156 268 249 250 250 271 274 66 66, 156 66 269 271

28 28

Epistulae 27 146

Dionysius (bishop of Alexandria) 27–28, 152

Ecclesiastes, Book of 153

153

23.3, 6 28.3, 41 39.3 49.1

160

Daniel, Book of

Epictetus 261, 284 Dissertationes 1.9.1–6

25

Ephiphanius

61.1

165, 181–182 181

Esther, Book of 153

Dead Sea Scrolls

153

Eunapius 42 fr. 55

Didache 8.1

216 166 166 166 166

Adversus haereses

Cyril of Alexandria

4 QMMT C27

194

Peregrinatio 39

De singularitate clericorum 19 161

80.1.2

Vitae philosophorum 5.17

Egeria

Cyprian De lapsis 25 27

280

269

Columella De re rustica 11.1.19

Diogenes Laertius

Ecclesiasticus (book)

Collectio Avellana 1.7

194

63 224

221, 234, 245 66

Vitae sophistarum 6.11.6 6.11.7 (472)

245 66, 156 174

332

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

7.3.5 (476) 473

174 242

Eusebius 51, 114, 149, 150, 162, 235– 237, 267 Commentaria in Psalmos 159, 179 Contra Hieroclem 1

236 240

9.7.12 10.4 10.5.21 10.7 10.8.2 10.8.4 10.8.8, 9, 10, 11 10.8.14, 15, 16 10.8.17 10.8.18–19

Demonstratio ecclesiastica 237–238 Demonstratio evangelica

De laudibus Constantini 240 De martyribus Palaestinae 11.8 142

1–10 11–20

237 237 237

Praeparatio ecclesiastica 237–238

Historia ecclesiastica 1.1.1 1.1.3–4 1.1.3.4 1.4.1, 2, 4 2.17 5.21 5.34, 36 6.39 6.40, 41 6.41.12 6.43.2–4 6.43.11 6.43.21–22 7.11.4 7.11.10 7.13.1 7.24 7.25.14 7.30.19 8.13.7 8.14.9 8.17 9.1.3–6 9.2 9.3 9.4.1, 2 9.5.1 9.5.2 9.7.1

29 295 236 249 248 250 248 248 248 248

162 236 279 235 235 162 39 26 27 12 28 138 186 138 145 138 53 145, 152 142 53 154 247 56, 295 246 246 247 247 247 247, 250 246

Praeparatio evangelica 1–6 1.2.1–5 1.2.4, 5 1.4.7 1.4.14 1.5.3 1.5.12 7–15

236, 237 237 237 237 237 251 251 237 237

Vita Constantini 1.51.1, 2 1.53.1 1.53.2 2.4 2.5.2 2.24–42 2.24–60 2.41 2.46.1–3 2.60.2 3.6 26.2 30.1, 2 31.1 32.1, 2 33 34.1, 2 35.1 37.1

250 250 251 252 252 249 195 249 249 236 138 249 249 249 249 249 249 249 249

333

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

38 39 40 41

249 249 249 249

Evagrius of Antioch 164

Horace Carmina 4.5.28–40

24

Satirae 1.4.143

24

Irenaeus

Evagrius Ponticus Practicus 2.498

63, 150 223

Isaiah, Book of the prophet 153

Ezekiel, Book of the prophet 153

James Protevangelium of

Ezra, Book of

153 152

Gaius

Letter of 5:2 5:18

Ad edictum provinciale 3 46

Jeremiah, Book of the prophet

Ad legem duodecim tabularum 4 45 Institutiones 1.1

153

Jerome 65, 109, 149, 160, 162, 164– 165, 166

46

Galen 65, 161, 223

Gregory of Nyssa De instituto Christiano 259 De vita Mosis 259

Hermas Shepherd 62, 149, 150

Hierocles Logos philalethes 240

Historia Augusta (see Scriptores)

135 262

De viris illustribus 81 101

236 218

Epistulae 3 14.6 22.28 22.34, 35 38.5 58.5 107 125.7 128 147.5

164 164 174 165 174 164 260 174, 225 260 225

Vita Hilarionis eremitae 3 173 Vita Pauli primi eremitae 1 164

334

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

Job, Book of 33:23–24 34:10–15

153 206 206

John 153 First Letter 4:13

703

Revelation of Jesus Christ 152, 153 14:7 196 Testimony to what Jesus did (sc. ‘gospel’) 61, 153, 200 1:23 200 5:2 200 11:11 200

Josephus 194, 279 Antiquitates Judaicae 12.417–419 14.185–267 14.215 14.231–232 14.247 14.259, 260, 261 18.1.2.11 18.3.4–5

48 48 48 48 48 48 41 261

Joshua, Book of 153

Jude, Letter of 4–5 7–8

153 206 206

Judith, Book of 15:1–7

153 204

Julian 30, 35, 241–245 (Loeb vols. and pp.)

2.6, 8 2.36 2.46 2.48–54 2.64 2.74 2.122 2.130–148 2.134 2.142 2.146 2.236 224b 2.282 2.298 2.302 2.304 2.308 2.336 2.371 2.386 2.412 2.438 2.440 2.442 2.422–424 2.466 2.470 2.472 2.474 2.484 2.486 2.490 2.502–512 3.4, 8, 12 3.26 3.28 3.46 3.62 3.68–70 3.70 3.82 3.98 3.128 3.136 3.148 3.150 3.188 3.288 3.374

242 242, 243 243 243 243 243 243 242 244 243 242 186 223 242 242 243 242 242 243 244 242 243 243 243 244 244 244 242 243 244 244 242 186, 243 244 242 242 242 244 244 243 186 243 242 244 242 242 243 243 242 244

335

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

3.376 3.386 3.388 3.414 3.416 3.430

186, 243, 244 243 242 244 244 186, 243

Epistulae (Bidez) 89 (288b)

156, 165

Orationes (Bidez) 7.18 (224b)

156, 165, 181

149, 150

Justinian see Codex

40

66, 156, 165, 221 156, 165, 221 66 66

279 16 269 23 46

84, 194

Lucretius 266

Luke 113, 153, 200

128

Kings, Second Book of 277

Lactantius De mortibus persecutorum 16.4 240 34.2 29, 54, 67, 295 34.5 29, 54–55 36.3 246 Divinae institutiones 5.2 5.2.12

Ab urbe condita libri Praefatio 10 1.11–15 1.19.5 3.3.7 39.15–17

De rerum natura 1.101

Dialogus cum Tryphone

17:16

Orationes 2.32 30.8 30.8–31 62.10

Lucian 46 50 45 125

Justin (martyr) Apologia 1.66

37, 245

Livy

Julius Africanus

Digesta 3.4.1 27.1.15.6 47.22.4 50.2.3.3

Libanius

240 240

Lamentations, Book of 153

First logos for Theophilus (sc. ‘gospel’) 1:1–4 41, 255, 277 1:16 262 7:5 47 14:26 181 14:33 165, 181 22:32 262 Second logos for Theophilus (sc. ‘Acts’) 50, 113, 152, 153, 216 1:1 277, 278 1:1–3 41 3:11 200 4:24 196 5:17 41 6:9 47 8:30 262 9:31 41 10:2 127 10:24 39 11:14 39

336

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

11:20 12:24 13:6, 26 13:43, 50 14:15 15:3 15:5, 7, 17 15:23–29 16:14 16:20–21 16:34 17:4 17:12 17:19 18:7 18:8, 12 18:13–15 18:14 18:14–15 18:17 18:24, 25 19:9 21:7 21:26 23:25 23:26–30 24:5 28:22 28:30–31 28:31

263 41 127 127 206 262 41 136 127 47 39 127 127, 254 262 47, 127 48 48 48 48 49 255 262 135 62 135 136 41 41 40 41

Macarius Magnes 31, 240 Apocriticus

238

Maccabees, Second book of the 153

Maccabees, Third book of the 3:12–29

136

Macrobius 221

Meditationes 4.4

25

Marius Victorinus 63–64, 68, 218 Commentaria In Ephesios 1269c 268 1272b 268 1283a 268

Mark The gospel of Jesus Christ 153 9:41, 42 194 16:17–18 238

Martianus Capella 221

Mary, Gospel of 153

Matthew Book of genesis of Jesus Christ 61, 153, 200 4:23–24 200 6:2 274 6:9–13 206 6:10–13 206 6:16–18 224 7:1 281 8:14 200 14:30–33 200 16:18 41 17:20 238 18:17 41 19:21 224, 239 19:24 239 23:5 205 24:14 238

Melito 150

Marcus Aurelius 284

Minucius Felix 34

337

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

Modestinus, Herennius Excusationes 6

50

Mosaicarum et Romanarum legum collatio (FIRA2) 2.15.3.2–3

54

Moses, The Five books of Deuteronomy 6:4–9 6:5 11:18–23 30:2

153 205 60 205 261

Exodus 153

1.1 4.23 4.83 48.1

Ovid 84 Epistulae ex Ponto 4.9.105–112

1:1–5 2:18 22:2 Leviticus

153 Numbers

Vita 7 12

173 164

Regulae monasticae Praefatio 16

174 173

Palestinian Talmud 205

Palladas 66, 165

Paul of Tarsus Acts of 153 153

153

Nehemiah, Book of

39

Pachomius

Genesis 153 206 161 161

51, 67 299 186 186

Colossians, Letter to the 152

Odes of Solomon 113

Optatus Contra Parmenianum Donatistam 26.205 236 26.208 217 26.208–210 187 26.209 294

Origen 63, 149, 150 Contra Celsum 26

2:8 2:14

63 114 197

Corinthians, First letter to the 63 1:26 113 6:19 60 7:18 48 7:25 65 8 42 8:4–6 42 10 42 10:19–21 42 11:1 63 12:28 40 14:25 254 14:26 61

338

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

15:9, 12 15:46–48

62 63

Corinthians, Second letter to the 63 2:17 258 4:16 60 5:17 60, 263 11:6 62 13:13 206

8:2 11:4 12:1 12:2 15:14 16:1, 2 16:5, 10, 11 16:17

60 135 41, 254 41, 60, 254, 255 255 256 39 255

Corinthians, Third Letter to the 153

Thessalonians, First letter to the 1: 6, 7 255 1:8 255 1:9 262

Ephesians, Letter to the

Timothy, First letter to

1:21 2:12 2:13 2:15 2:16 2:17 2:19 2:21 3:6 3:16, 17 4:11–16

63 196, 206 61 59 60 61, 64 64 61, 64 61, 196 61 59 255

152, 153 Titus, Letter to 61 [Paul] Hebrews, Letter to the 153 1:1 206

Satirae

61

Acts of

63 195 256 62

Gospel of

Philippians, Letter to the

24

Peter 153 153

Petronius Satyricon

Romans, Letter to the 1:1–17 1:29 2:11 4:6 4:11 5:12 7:14–25 7:20 7:22

Timothy, Second letter to

63 62 255

Philemon, Letter to

2:27 2:29, 30 3:6

152, 153 65

Persius

Galatians, Letter to the 1:13 6:6

4:1

63 206 135 61 59 48 60 60 60 59

24

Philo 149, 150 De specialibus legibus 3.156

292

De virtutibus 144

185

339

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

Legatio ad Gaium 156–157 311–316

49 49

Photius 238

Polybius Historiae 4.4.12 6.56.6

Porphyry 30, 64, 223, 237– 239, 261

Plato Charmides 165a

290

Hipparchus 229a

290

Leges 936b 936c

185 185

Protagoras 343a

290

Respublica 8.518d-519c 9.589a

261 60

Pliny (the Elder) 84

40, 173, 241, 261 60 185 185

Plutarch 194 De E apud Delphos 385d

fr. 4 fr. 13 fr. 26 fr. 33 fr. 36 fr. 38 fr. 58 fr. 64 fr. 76 fr. 95 fr. 96 fr. 97

223, 236 239 238 238 239 238 238 239 238 238 238 238 239

De philosophia ex oraculis 238

153 24, 55 267 45 24

Plotinus Enneades 1.1.10 3.2 (47) 13.1–17 4.4 (28) 39.29–30

Contra Christianos

Proverbs, Book of

Pliny (the Younger) Epistulae 10.96 10.96.8 10.96.7 10.97

277 20

290

Ad principem ineruditum 3 294

Psalms, Book of 1:1 19:7 21:20–23 21:21 22:27 24:16 26 31 33 34:17 67:6 67:7 75 85:11 89 90 90:1

153 206 261 200 161 262 161 207 207 207 161 159 161, 164 207 161 207 29, 205, 207 200

340

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

90:1–4 117:19–20 118 118:10–11 119 137:3–4 145:6

206 206 207 206 207 111 196, 206

Pseudo-Cyprian

Sibylline Oracles 153

Socrates Historia ecclesiastica 1.9

236

Solon of Athens

De singularitate clericorum 19 161

290

Song of Solomon

Rufinus

153

Historia monachorum 160, 166

Sosiades 289, 290–291, 292

Rutilius Namatianus De reditu suo 1.441 439–448 518–524

Sozomenus 156 221 221

Scriptores Historiae Augustae 25, 220, 234 Aurelianus 20.5 216, 234 26.20.4–6

295

220 Historia ecclesiastica 5.16.3

167, 217

Stobaeus Eclogae 3.1.173

290, 305

Suetonius 59

Seneca (the Younger) De clementia 2.5.1

266

Augustus 32

46

Epistulae 108.17–22

261

Domitianus 12.2

49

24

Iulius 42.3

48

Nero 16.2

266

Tiberius 36

261

De superstitione

Serapion (bishop of Thmuis) ‘Letter to the disciples of Antony’ (Syriac) 164, 170 ‘Letter to the monks’ 163, 170, 215

Susanna, Story of

Severus, Sulpicius Vita Martini 7

153 217

Symmachus 160, 161, 220

341

Index 2: Authors and Works from the Literary Tradition

Tacitus

Thomas, Gospel of 59, 68

Annales 1.43 2.2.85 4.38.5 11.23–25 11.24 15.44.2

39 261 287 279 135 270

174, 175

Thucydides Historiae 1.22.1 1.22.2 1.22.4

Tobit, Story of

Tatian

153

150

Valerius Maximus

Tertullian 34, 63, 109 Adversus Marcionem 3.5.4

63

Apologeticum 18.9 37–39 38.3 39.1 42.8

49 41 25, 41 41 186

De praescriptione haereticorum 7 (34). 9 VI De virginibus velandis 10

173

Thales of Miletus

Facta et dicta memorabilia 24 1.3.3 47

Varro, M. Terentius 20–24, 34 Antiquitates rerum divinarum fr. 3 21 fr. 4 20 fr. 5 20 fr. 7 20 fr. 8, 10, 11 21 fr. 19, 20, 21 21 fr. 90–121 21 fr. 145–156 21 fr. 202–224 21

290

Vergil

221, 245

Aeneis 2.143 11.321–322

Themistius

273 16

Vitruvius

Theodoret of Cyrrhus 160

Theodorus Anagnostes Historia tripartita 135

278 276 276

De architectura 5.1.4–10

295

Wisdom, Book of 153

167, 217

Zosimus

Theodotion 161

Historia nova 5.23.4

66

Index 3

Selected Topics and Terms in one or more of English, Latin or Greek (e. g. ‘law’, ‘lex’, ‘nomos’) Abinnaeus 194, 213 Abraham 67 Abu Mena 70 Abyssinia 207 Academy 114 acrostic 61 Acts of the Apostles 136, 262 Acts of the Martyrs 145, 271 Adam 174 adespota 149 adult education 154 aedes 268 aeiparthenos 181–182 Aelius Aristides 84 Afghanistan 288 Africa 43, 260 Africanus, Julius 149 agape 59, 256 agora 154 Ai-Khanum 288–289, 291, 305, 309 Akhmim 280, 282 Aland, K. 93 Alaric 66 Alexander 288–289 Alexandria 144, 150, 171, 183, 213, 243– 244, 250, 257 aliens 61 allegory 152, 257 almsgiving 194 alternative 61 Ambrose 115, 226, 296 Ammianus 5–6, 29–30, 35, 67–68, 147, 188–191, 216, 220–221 amulet 77, 200, 202, 206, 207, 216, 242 anachoresis 172 anachoretes 170, 181 anagnostes 146–147, 179 anchorite 169

Andersen, F. I. 111 Andresen, C. 241 Anon. de rebus bellicis 219 anthropology 64 Antichthon 110 Antike und Christentum 2, 53, 69–70, 80–84 Antioch 221, 242, 244, 247, 252, 257 antistes 268 Antonius (monk) 65, 162–164, 172, 179–180, 212, 225 apartheid 246 apathy 72, 258 Aphrodisias 3, 121, 125–128 apokatastasis 261 Apollinarius 236, 258 Apollo 239, 242 Apollonius (of Tyana) 240 Apologists 63, 98, 257 Apostolic Fathers 257 apostolikos 182 apotaktikoi 166, 168–170, 173, 175, 181 apotaktitai 165, 173, 181 Apuleius 40, 84 aputactitae 166, 182 Aquila 159 Arabic 207 Aramaic 62, 113, 256 archaeology 93 arete 59 argumentation 91 Arians 99, 162, 236, 242, 250–251 Aristides, Aelius 84 Aristotle 185, 194, 276–277, 289 Armenia 257 army 213 Arnobius 262 Arsinoite 152, 163, 191–192

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

art 87 asceticism 65–66, 106, 181, 213, 223, 244 asiarchs 43 assimilation 246 associations 45–47, 107 Athanasius 65, 99, 162, 171–173, 175, 179–180, 223, 225–226, 242–243, 272, 275 atheists 266 athletics 138 Athens 154, 197, 291 Athens and Jerusalem 109–117 Atticism 102 Augustine 1–2, 21, 60, 63, 72, 77, 100,109, 116, 190–191, 205, 215, 225– 226, 260, 267, 292, 296–298, 309, 314 Augustus 23–24, 46 Aurelian 53, 216, 234 Aurelius, Marcus 39, 244 Auseinandersetzung 81, 97, 204 Ausonius 220 Australia 293 autobiography 60, 286 Bacchus 45 Bachmann, M. 42 Badian, E. 293 Banks, R. J. 113 baptism 63 Baptists 78 Barnett, P. W. 114 Basil 243, 259 basilica 272, 295 beatitudes 274 beloved brothers 166–167 Berlin 70 Benedict 95 Bible 115, 116, 149, 151, 188, 205, 242, 257, 259 bibliography 95 bilingual 61 bios 235 bishop 66, 68, 183, 187,189, 215, 243, 250, 268, 294–295 Bithynia 24 Bonn 69 Book of the Dead 287 books 101, 175 bouleutai 125 Bousset, W. 90

343

Bowersock, G. 14, 122, 126 brothers 181, 256 Brown, P. 96 Bunyan, J. 149 Byzantium 245 Caesar, Julius 19, 20 Caesarea (Cappadocia) 259 Caesarea (Palestine) 171, 257 Caesars 39, 187, 189, 294 Caligula 18 Cancik, H. 33–34, 39–41 canon 152 canonicity 76 Cappadocia 259 Cappadocian Fathers 99 Caracalla 26, 125, 168 Carthage 309 catechumen 168, 216, 238, 256 catechesis 255, 278 Catechetical School 150, 257 category 37 catena 200 Catholic 36, 69, 187–188, 197, 249, 280 ‘catholic church’ 183, 213 Catholicism 40 Catiline 19 Cato 19, 39 celibacy 65, 180 Celsus 26, 51, 64, 98, 186, 236, 239–241 Chadwick, H. 138 Chalcedon 260 charity 115, 197, 243 Chilon 290 chrematismos 135 chres(t)ianos 145–146, 211 Christ 65, 73, 187, 267–268 christiani 255, 269, 272 Christianism 237 christianismos 37 christianitas 29, 68, 268, 270 Christianity 37, 78, 186, 267 christianoi 37, 144 christianus 269–270, 272 Christus 269 Chrysostom (see John) church 42, 50–55, 188, 190, 298 Church and State 93, 188, 191 Chysis 212 Cicero 19, 39, 40, 52, 261, 287

344

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

citation 103, 201 citizenship 125 City of God 221 civil religion 12–19 Claremont 69–70 Classicism 76 Classics 37, 56, 110, 116, 151, 258–259 Claudian 220 Claudius 135 Clearchus 239, 291 Clement of Alexandria 63, 149–150, 186, 235, 257 Clement of Rome 257 clementia 72, 187 clerics 244 clubs 154 codex 77–78, 109 157, 202 coenobitics 158, 167–168 coetus 272 collegium 32, 39, 40, 46, 48 Cologne 70, 75, 76 comitas 72 commentary 64 Commodus 39 community 166–167, 168, 169, 183 compassion 185 conscience 74, 227 consensus 298 Constantine 12, 17, 29, 61, 70, 140–141, 149, 179, 187–188, 215, 216, 219, 222, 233, 235–236, 242, 248–252, 257, 263, 294 Constantinople 213 Constantius 188–189, 213, 234, 244– 245, 272 constitution 277 continence 160–161 conventiculum 246, 272 conversion 63, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219, 226, 227 Coptic 77, 112–113, 134, 151, 154, 172, 174, 182, 204, 207, 212, 256–257, 262– 263 copyist 152, 200 corpus 204 Cosmas Indicopleustes 88 cosmos 22, 37, 185, 299 courtesy 292 creation 37, 197 creator 277

creed 199 cross 197, 200, 244 crown 296 Crown, A. D. 114 crucifixion 214 Crusaders 19 Culcianus 62, 154 cult 32, 42, 45, 114–115, 154, 188 cult–groups 255 culture 37, 59, 88 cultus 270–271 Cumont, F. 87 curriculum 154, 256 custom 233 Cybele 42 Cynics 66, 165, 181, 223, 243–244, 257 Cyprian 27 Cyranides 88 Damasus 274 Daniélou, J. 98 deacon 257, 179, 212–213 Dead Sea Scrolls 70 debate 189 Decius 26–27, 30, 52 Deism 13 Deissmann, G. A. 111–112, 113 dekania 126 Delehaye, H. 80 Delphi 288–289, 292, 305 democracy 293 demon 198, 199 Demut 71 deus 268 diaconus 272 diakon 147–148, 156, 179 dialogue 258 diatribe 65, 152 Dicaearchus 41 Didymus 77 digression 270 Dihle, A. 71–74, 98, 105, 292, 298 dikaiosyne 59 Diocletian 54, 138, 212, 240 Dionysius 27, 138, 145, 152, 154 Dionysus 39, 43 disciples 262 diversitas 56 divinitas 269 DNA code 283

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

doctrina 189 doctrine 91 documentation 135–136, 219, 236, 279– 280 dogma 14, 84 dogmatism 76 Dölger, F. -J. 69, 80–86 Dölger-Institut 84–86 Dolichenus 32 Donatists 187–188, 215 doxology 196, 200 Dunn, J. 42 Ebionites 159 ecclesia 272 economics 106 ecumenical 238 Edessa 257 Edfu 49 edification 61 education 101, 115, 154, 214, 247, 254– 260 Egeria 166, 169, 182, 216 Egypt 141, 166, 240 Ehrhardt, A. 81 ekklesia 41, 44, 54, 146–147, 212, 241 Elchasai 78 eleemosyne 192, 193–194 eleos 185, 195 El-Hawawish 282, 286 elpis 59 emotion 288 Encaenia 166 England 17 enkrateia 161 Enlightenment 110, 293 environmentalism 293 Ephesus 43 epic 258 Epictetus 261 Epicureans 19, 37, 266 Epiphania 272 Epiphanius 165, 181–182 episcopus 268, 272 epistle 152 epistrophe 261–262 eremitism 173 eternity 299 ethics 71–74, 232, 282–292, 294 ethnos 235

345

eucharist 40 euergesia 192 Eunapius 66, 221, 234, 245 euschemon 254 eusebeia 195, 264 Eusebius of Caesarea 51, 56, 147–149, 159–162, 173, 179, 215, 219, 222, 225, 232–233, 235–237, 240–244, 246–249, 251–253, 267, 279 Eusebius of Nicomedia 251 euthanasia 237 Euthydemus 288 Evagrius Ponticus 223 evil 60, 74, 227 excerpts 205 exegesis 103 exorcism 200, 202 eyewitness 154 Ezra 152 Fackelmann, A. 77 factionalism 68, 269, 274 fall 227 Fälschung 88 falsification 74–76 fasting 224 fatalism 237 Fathers 198 Fayum 145–146, 148 Feldman, L. H. 128 feminism 293 feralis 189 fides 273 fiscus judaicus 49 flogging 190 France 90 Gaius (jurist) 45, 46 Galen 65, 161, 223 Galerius 28, 55–56, 67, 155, 246, 295 Galileans 35, 165, 186, 222–223, 243 Galla Placidia 296–297 Gallienus 28, 53, 130, 134, 152 Gallio 47–49 Gallus 242 Geistesgeschichte 95–96 Gemeinde 40 Genesis 55, 154 Geneva 13 genre 102–103

346

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

George of Alexandria 189, 243–244, 275 Gentiles 61, 64, 125–126 Germani 260 Gigon, O. 96 gloriosus 273 Gnostic 63, 175, 236 God 185–186, 196–197, 232, 240–241, 268, 296 God-fearers 121, 126, 127–128 gods 188 Golden Rule 72 Good Shepherd 73, 94 gospel 13, 18, 58–59, 238 Gospel of Thomas 174–175 gospels 152 Gothic 257 Goths 66 Greek 111–112, 113, 188, 194 Gregory of Nyssa 259 groups 32–33 habit (monastic) 173–174 Hadrian 125 Hagarsa 283 hagiography 223–224 hairesis 41 Hand of God 296–297 Harnack, A. 70, 85, 90 haruspices 265 Hathor 149, 171 healing 200 heart 60 Hebraic thought 98 Hebrew (language) 111, 160–161, 237, 267 Hebrews (nation) 199 Hegel, G. 225 Hellenes 222, 242 Hellenism 35, 115, 189, 204, 237, 242, 245 hellenismos 37 Hellenistic age 98 Helvidius 65 Heracleon 40 Hercules 40 heresy 76 heretic 109 Hermas 149 hermit 158 Hermopolis 252

Hermopolite 181 hierarchy 92 Hierocles 240, 253 Hippo 298 Hipponon 171 histor 283 historia 283 Historia Augusta 220 historian 284 historiography 41, 219, 233, 236, 288 history 267, 276–281 Hobbes, T. 15, 17 holy man 158, 170 Holy Spirit 41, 60, 65, 215, 239 Homer 151, 187, 242 homilist 64 homologetes 171–172 Honorius 190 Hopkins, M. K. 140–141 Horapollo 88 hospitality 216, 255–256 household 39 Humanism 227 humanity 299 humility 71–72, 74, 190, 192 hybris 59 hymn 218 idiotes 62 idol 238 idolatry 37 imitation 63 immortality 287 incense 52 ‘in Christ’ 215 incipit 199, 200, 205 India 289 ‘inner man’ 59–60, 65–66 innovation 275 intellectual 91–92, 97 intercession 184 intolerance 14, 17 ioudaismos 37 Iran 78–79 Irenaeus 63 Isidorus 156 Isis 40, 42 Islam 13, 197, 267 Israel 17, 25, 37, 278 iustitia 187

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 30 James 262 Jehovah 199 Jerome 109, 149, 162, 164–165, 169, 172–173, 260, 309 Jerusalem 24, 166, 182, 197 Jesus 13, 72, 152, 160, 174, 186, 199, 237, 240–241 243, 257 Jews 48, 56, 64, 121, 125–128, 199, 237, 271, 275, 279, 289 John Chrysostom 72, 109, 225, 259 John the Baptist 262 Jones, A. H. M. 110, 133, 218, 265 Josephus 262, 279 Jovian 270 Jovinian 65 Judaism 2, 24, 66, 86, 109, 214, 237, 267 judgement 280–281 Julian 29, 30, 35, 63, 64, 66, 115, 134, 151, 165–166, 181, 186, 188, 216–217, 220–223, 234–235, 241–245, 251, 253, 254, 257–258, 263, 267, 269, 271, 275, 295 Julius Africanus 149 Jupiter 18, 32 justice 185, 192 Justinian 100 Justin Martyr 128, 241, 257, 262 Kanawati, N. 282–283, 286 Karanis 156, 158, 163–164, 176, 179, 212, 252 kerygma 243 Klauser, T. 69, 73, 80, 85, 86, 94 Koenen, L. 76–78 koinon 242 Kraabel, A. T. 127–128 Kraft, H. 90 Kultgemeinde 108 Lactantius 55–56, 147, 240, 246, 295 language 101–102 lar 39 Late Antiquity 1, 110 Latin 102, 112, 265 Lattke, M. 113 law 51, 152, 294 lebiton 174 lector 212

347

Lee, J. A. L. 194 legislation 298 lessons 279 letters of recommendation 154, 166– 167, 216–217, 255–256, 262 Levinskaya, I. 128 lex 270–271 Libanius 221, 245 libelli 27–28 Liberius 272 Licinius 4, 85, 90 Lietzmann, H. 85, 90 Lieu, J. M. 125, 128 literacy 134, 154 liturgy 83, 191, 197 logic 267 logos 41, 46, 278 Lollianus 130 Lord’s Prayer 199 Lucian 41, 84 Luke 41, 278 Macarius Magnes 238, 240 McDonald, A. H. 11 Macedonia 256, 288 Machiavelli 15 McKnight, S. 125 Macquarie University 292 Macrobius 221 magic 198–208, 265 Malalas, John 100 Mani 76–78 Manichaeans 35, 54–55, 235 Mansfield, B. E. 11 Marcion 40, 63 Markus, R. A. 96 marriage 106, 239 Martianus Capella 221 martyrs 68, 154, 244, 249–250, 273 Marx(ism) 113, 214, 225, 277 material 86 Maximinus 29, 223, 240, 246–247, 250– 253 Maximus of Alexandria 146 medicine 205 Meletians (Melitians) 170, 171–172, 175, 180, 197, 213 Melania 224–225 Memi 282, 285–286 mercy 185–197, 298

348

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

Merkelbach, R. 76 Mermertha 145, 211 Mesopotamia 168 Messalians 224 Messiah 50, 91 metaphysics 104 Methodists 60 Meyer, E. 71 Middle Ages 88 Milan 147, 216, 218, 296 Miletopolis 290–291 military 189, 273 Minucius Felix 34 miracle 204 miseratio 189 Mitchell, S. 128 Mithras 32, 40, 42–43 mixed constitution 277 moderation 193, 195 Modern History 227 modernity 282, 293 Momigliano, A. 5, 38, 218, 280, 284 Mommsen, T. 81, 284, 285 monachos 65–66, 148–149, 156, 173, 175, 179–180, 256 monastery 259–260, 167–168, 171, 182, 190 monasticism 4, 72, 92, 115, 156–177, 178–184, 223–224, 244 mone 170–171 monk 156–177, 179, 212–213, 215, 257 monogeneis 159 moral obligation 197, 282, 293–294 Morard, F. E. 156, 160–161 Mortley, R. J. 116, 235 Moses 65, 235, 237, 257, 259 Mother, Great 39, 40 Moulton, J. H. 111–112 multiculturalism 12 museum 150 music 138 mystery 32, 40 mythos 278 Nag Hammadi 69, 174–175 Naldini, M. 167 names 142–143 nation 56 nature 197, 227, 277, 284 Nazoraioi 41

necessity 185 Nehemiah 152 neighbour 72 nemesis 59 neolithic 282 Neoplatonist 90–91, 185, 223, 225 Nepos (bishop of Arsinoe) 152 Nero 266 Nerva 49 new 59–61, 263 new birth 258 new consensus 214 new creation 60 new man (see ‘one’) New Testament 151–153, 214, 256, 262 Nicaea 140, 236 Nicomedia 147 Nietzsche, F. 293 Nile 215 nomen sacrum 152, 194, 196, 199, 200, 206 nomina 125 nomos 276 Norden, E. 70 novel 60 novelty 232, 235, 237, 272 numen 268–269 nuns 227 oikodomē 61 oikos 147 oikteirein 192 one body 61 one new man 59–61, 64, 68 open society 56, 61, 282, 297 oracle 202 orans 73, 94 orare 56, 269 ordination 273 Origen 25–26, 27, 51, 63, 67, 149–150, 186, 257 Orosius 219 orthodoxy 68, 76, 84, 162–163, 166 Osborn, E. F. 116 ostracon 200, 204 Ovid 39, 84 Oxyrhynchus 137, 147, 166, 224 Pachomius 164, 172 pacifism 44

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

pactio 45 paganism 267 Palestine 160 Palladas 66 Panopolis 282 papas 212, 213 papyri 61, 112, 130–139, 140–154, 156– 197, 211–213, 228–231 parchment 200 parents 260 Parsons, P. J. 130, 135 Parthenon 114 patella 126–127 Patmos 70 patristic era 97 patronage 190, 191, 192, 214, 250, 298 Paul of Samosata 53–54 Paul of Tarsus 40, 58–64, 91, 113, 143– 144, 214, 215, 218, 240, 254, 258, 261 Paul of Thebes 180 peasants 239 Pegasius 243 persecution 62, 172, 197, 204 Persia 256 Peter 142–143, 240 Peterson, E. 89–90 petition 130, 134, 148–149, 156, 191– 197, 212 Pharisees 224 Phileas 62, 154 philanthropia 72, 73 philanthropy 94 Philip the Arab 26 Phillips III, C. R. 37 Philo 149, 185, 262 philology 91 Philoponus 100–101 philosophical history 28 philosophy 65, 91, 104, 114–116, 154, 214, 217, 232, 236, 258, 262 Phoebe 256 Photius 238 phronesis 59 Phrygia 39 phylactery 201, 205, 207 physics 104–105 Physiologus 88 pietas 187 piety 73, 94 Pionius 50

349

pistis 59 pitiable 197 Pittacus 290 pity 185, 191 Plato 62, 73, 185, 235, 242, 257, 261, 290 Platonism 99, 115, 226, 257 Pliny the elder 84 Pliny the younger 24 Plotinus 40, 116, 185, 241, 261 Plutarch 284, 290 Pocock, J. G. A. 298 poets 151 politeia 170 Polybius 277 Poole, R. J. 293 poor 72, 239 pope 212, 213 Popper, K. R. 56 Porphyry 30, 64, 223, 236–240, 253, 261 portraiture 282–283, 288, 296 Posidonius 73 Powell, J. E. 112 prayer 56, 196, 238, 269 precari 269 Preisendanz, K. 198 presbyter 213 presbyter 272 presbyteros 149, 168, 171, 172, 183 priest 13, 17, 246 priesthood 37, 238 Proclus 225 procurator 53 professio 273 Prohaeresius 245 prokope 26 proletariat 113 property 106, 182–183 property, literary 76 prophets 152 propositum 273 proselytes 121, 126, 127 proselytism 261 prosopolempsia 61 Protestant 280 psalmody 152 psalms 204, 205 pseudepigraphy 75 psychology 99, 261 Ptah-hotep 287, 291–292, 301–304 Puritans 60

350

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

Pythagoras 223, 261 Qumran 42, 161 rabbis 74, 222 race 235 rank 113, 214, 294, 297 Ras Shamra 70 reader 146, 256–257 Realien 88 Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 84–90, 94 reason 60 recommendation, see letters of Reformation 36, 109, 280 Reitzenstein, R. 159–160, 163, 179 religio 21, 35, 37, 189, 265–266, 270–271 religio licita 33 religion 1–2, 11–12, 90–92, 108, 114– 115, 188, 215, 217, 222, 233–235, 258, 262, 264–275 religions 32–43 remnuoth 166, 169, 173 Renaissance 109 republic 47 res publica 25, 41 resurrection 62 retaliation 73 retribution 199 revelation 152 Reynolds, J. M. 121–129 rhetoric 279 rhetoricians 151 righteousness 73 ritual 83, 91 ritus 270–271 Robert, L. 291, 295 roll 151 romance 60, 61 Romanticism 110 Rome 13, 16, 38–39, 293–296 Rousseau, J. J. 12–19, 22 Rousseau, P. 296 Rufinus 166, 169 Rüpke, J. 32–34, 38 Russia 17 Rutilius 221

Sabazius 47 Sabbath 50 sacerdos 268 sacrament 83, 273 sacramentum 45 sacrifice 39, 52, 62, 215, 238, 266–267 saints 64 Samaritans 114 sanctuary 266, 269 Sanhedrin 241 Saqqara 287 Saturn 43 Schäfer, A. 43 schema 168 Schneider, C. 95 Schörner, G. 43 scholarship 260 scholastic process 91–92 school 37–39, 151, 188, 254–255, 258, 260 schooling 115, 134, 258–259 school teacher 130, 133–134 Schulz, C. 38–39 Schwartz, E. 276, 284 science 276, 284, 299 script 151 Scripture (see also Bible) 63, 64, 68, 91, 152, 198–208, 217–218, 226, 238, 240, 242–243, 253 sect 32 secta 271 sedes 268 Seleucus 289 self 60 senate 234–239 senatus consultum 45 Seneca 48, 261, 266 Septimius Severus 125 Septuagint 152–153, 159, 194, 261 Serapeum 66 serpent 60 Shanidar 283 Shema 60 Sheshi 287, 300 Shipp, G. P. 111–112 Simon, M. 96, 98 sin 60 Sinai 216 slavery 106, 190, 297–298, 314 Smith, W. C. 35, 235

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

social history 107 society 59, 107 sodalitas 45 Sol 32 Solon 45, 290 sophrosyne 59 Sosiades 289–292, 305 soul 73, 261 Sources Chrétiennes 93 Sozomen 220 Spain 216 Spätantike 86 speeches 136, 278–279 Speyer, W. 75–76 spirit 60, 62, 64 spirituality 91 Stanton, G. N. 128 state 188, 241 status 113, 214, 294, 297 Stephen 67 Stichwörter 87–88 Stobaeus 290 Stoicism 18, 42, 59, 115, 185, 223 superstitio 189, 271 supplicatio 30, 46 supplication 27 symbol 37, 83 Symmachus (author) 220 Symmachus (translator) 159–160, 175 sympathy 191 synagogue 24, 44, 47–50, 56, 126–128 synod 115, 137–138, 189, 217 synodus 138, 272 Syria 158, 166, 257, 259 Syriac 113, 160, 174, 257 tablets 151 taboo 265 tagma 160, 173 Tannenbaum, R. 121–129 tax, Jewish 67 teachers (see also school teacher) 151, 188, 251, 258 teaching (see also schooling) 37, 255 technology 282, 299 temple 39, 154, 222, 238, 242, 266 tension 92 tephillin 205 Tertullian 25, 26, 34, 40–41, 49–50, 63, 67, 114

351

Thales 290 Thebaid 166, 180 Themistius 221, 245 Theodosius 99, 220, 233, 245, 248, 296 theologia 38 theology 37, 260 Theophanes 252 Theophilus 278 theosebeis 125, 126 Thera 290 third race 67 Thomas 174–175 thorn 62 threskeia 53, 264 Thucydides 278 Tiberius 261, 294 Timothy of Gaza 88 topoi 53, 168, 169 torah 42 Torre Nova 39 Toynbee, A. J. 113, 214 tragedy 59 Trajan 25 Treu, K. 77 triumphalism 38 truth 51, 227, 238, 299 twin 78 typos 135–136 uncials 196 Usener, H. 85 universe 241, 299 Valentinian 265 Valentinus 40 Valerian 28, 53, 130, 134 Valesius 56 validation 76 Vandals 297 van Haelst, J. 167, 201 van Minnen, P. 127 Varro 20–23, 34 verbatim 154 Vergil 16 Victorinus, Marius 63–64, 68, 218, 263 Vigilantius 65 villages 157, 158, 183, 211–213, 257, 263 virginity 65, 239, 260 virgins 161, 166, 173, 269 virtues 59, 72

352

Index 3: Selected Topics and Terms

violence 189, 190 Waszink, J. H. 85 welfare 186, 189, 258, 275 Wenger, L. 85 West 12, 56, 92, 108, 116, 197, 233 widows 161 Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, U. von 70 will (testamentary) 183 will (voluntary) 74, 227 Williams, B. 292 Wilcox, M. 111, 127

women 38–39, 68, 181, 238–239, 250– 251 World History 262, 284 worship 254 Woyke, J. 42 Würzburg 81 Zeno 193–194 Zenobia 53 Zeus 242 Zoroastrians 35 Zosimus 66