A FEW THOUGHTS ON MONOGAMY AND MONOTHEISM

If I avoid using the term monotheism in my paper in connection with religious trends in the Roman East, it is because I take the word to mean what it says – the exclusive worship of a single god – exactly as monogamy means the state of being married to a single person at a time. Admittedly, monogamy has never prevented humans from having sex with other partners as well, hoping that the one and only would not find out about it – a soft monogamy as it were. It is only with a similar tolerance towards human weakness that we might accept as monotheism the situation in which an individual accepts the existence of a single god, but nevertheless worships many others, either because he thinks it would do no harm, or ‘just in case’. But I wonder whether it really helps us understand the religions of the Roman Empire if we modify the term monotheism beyond recognition through the addition of attributes, such as soft, pagan, inclusive, hierarchical, affective or whatever.

By saying this I do not deny the sporadic existence of genuine monotheistic ideas in intellectual circles. I also do not deny the existence of monotheistic tendencies. But I do find the term pagan monotheism misleading in as much as it reduces the quest for the divine in the imperial period to a question of quantity, whereas the textual evidence for this period shows that we are primarily dealing with a question of quality.

The hermeneutic investigation of how religion evolved in late antiquity has expanded since historians widened their cognitive concepts by deploying approaches to the problems drawn from the social sciences. Students of late antique religion have now begun to ask questions about the fabric of polytheisms (how and why a god, ‘all the gods’ or the god are constructed), about their structures, and how they functioned. Since these divine worlds were open to change and naturally adaptable, the configurations of the evidence throw light on empirical processes – a sort of bricolage – that are determined by context rather than matters of dogma. Such research, in a word, is concerned with religion's dynamic development. The ‘organigramme’ of the pantheon that is invoked is always specific to the occasion or the place where it occurs, even if its starting point consists in a hierarchical representation fixed by institutions or conventions. Accordingly, the construction or reconstruction of the pantheon was a continuous process, which might modify the hierarchical order case by case, add new divine figures, or modify the outline of old ones.

The debate about pagan monotheism, which was sparked by the publication of Athanassiadi and Frede's Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity and the critical response that it provoked, has run for several years, and has led to numerous related publications. The span of these contributions is wide and extends from the ancient Near East and Egypt to ancient Israel and Hellenistic Judaism, and as far as classical Greece, the Hellenistic world and the Roman imperial period up to Christian late antiquity.

This contribution does not aim to undertake another thematic approach but to pose the basic question of what the ancient discourse between pagan and Christian monotheists was in fact about. Monotheism was already a topic for discussion between Christians and non-Christians in the imperial Roman age, and this lent an explosive quality to the issue of what could be called monotheism in antiquity. Both types of monotheism were defined by rapprochements and confrontations, and these brought a series of issues to the surface. What were the basic themes of this discussion? What were the front lines that were established in this debate? How did the disputants conceive their respective positions, and what were the charges they brought against one another? I tackle these questions in the context of two controversies: those between Augustine and the Platonists and between Celsus and Origen.

Within the largely stable social and political structures of the Roman Empire, the most far-reaching change was the religious revolution by which the polytheistic environment of the age of Augustus gave way to the overwhelming predominance of monotheism in the age of St Augustine. The study of monotheism is not easy for students of classical antiquity. This transformation in religious ideas and behaviour had profound consequences for individuals, for social organisation, for the exercise of political authority, and, above all, for the way in which men and women understood their place in the world. The prevalence of monotheism now marks one of the largest differences between the modern world and classical antiquity. Precisely for this reason the differences between Graeco-Roman polytheism and the Jewish, Christian or Islamic monotheisms, which have dominated our own religious and cultural experience since the end of antiquity, pose a serious challenge to our understanding of the past. We view ancient religion through a filter of assumptions, experiences and prejudice. Monotheism contains its own internalised value judgements about polytheistic paganism, and these have always influenced, and sometimes distorted, the academic study of ancient religion.

Monotheism today seems not only to have triumphed historically but also to be morally superior to polytheism. This is one of the reasons why the study of paganism is often segregated from historical work on early Christianity or Judaism.

INTRODUCTION

Bacon is here making ― in a characteristically short space ― three separate points, all of them still much in contention today; his thought will provide the starting points for this paper. First, he is claiming that religious life in antiquity was not the site of specific conflicts. Others were later to turn this into one of the virtues of pagan religious life, its toleration of religious difference, but in this passage (virtually an aside) it is hard to detect a tone of anything but detachment from what the ‘heathens’ did. No doubt, it was a benefit that there should have been no ‘religious’ wars, but he is surely not making a claim for toleration as such. Secondly, he is seeing a contrast between matters of belief, or at least constancy of belief, and the maintenance of ritual traditions; and seeking to explain the freedom from religious conflict as the result of greater concern with ritual than with belief. Conflict, he is assuming, arises from consciously expressed religious views.

This volume has its origins in a research project on the intellectual background to pagan monotheism, financed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and directed at the University of Exeter by Stephen Mitchell from 2004 to 2007. The funding provided for a post-doctoral research fellowship, taken by Dr Peter Van Nuffelen, and a PhD studentship, awarded to Anna Collar. Within the framework of the project they have respectively completed a monograph on philosophy and religion in the Roman Empire, from the first century bc to the second century ad, provisionally entitled ‘Philosophical readings of religion in the post-Hellenistic period’, which has focused on the evidence of major writers from Varro to Numenius, and a thesis on networks and the diffusion of religious innovation in the Roman Empire, based on a theorised approach to the documentary evidence for three forms of worship, the cult of Iuppiter Dolichenus, Diaspora Judaism, and the cult of Theos Hypsistos. As a focal point, we organised an international conference on pagan monotheism in the Roman world, held at Exeter in July 2006, which included more than thirty papers. These have formed the basis for two publications, a collection of essays entitled Monotheism between Christians and Pagans in Late Antiquity, edited by Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen and published by Peeters, Leuven (2009), and the present volume.

Moving beyond regular and generally accepted practices and discourses, in this final chapter I turn to less usual and more ambivalent religious phenomena among senators. I seek to analyze senatorial religious aspirations that extend beyond the customs and norms created and accepted by their peers, and beyond the regulations enforced by imperial rule. Identifying these trends provides evidence for the investment of senators in the creation and application of innovative religious ideas, proving that senators were active agents in the construction of an imperial religion that was meaningful to them.

Significantly, as we will see, in turning to less mainstream religious interests senators focused on divine notions typically associated with the imperial cult, demonstrating the close connection between senatorial and imperial religion, a result discovered in Part II as well. Yet, as I argue, applying these divine associations to themselves, senators also appear to show an imaginary engagement with these religious phenomena, that is, an individual interest and investment in the forms of imperial religion closely connected to their own ideas about themselves. To make this point, I first discuss the worship of the genius of a living person, both for and by senators, showing that innovations in religious matters worked both ways: not only senators copying emperors, but also the other way around. Next, I consider the posthumous worship sought for and by them, practices that shared the religious framework of the imperial cult.

As in the republic, Roman religion in the empire was not grounded in a central and foundational theology, and therefore the common modern notion that religions are to be characterized by their central theological doctrines cannot adequately be applied in a discussion of Roman senatorial religion. The assertion that there was a “knowledge” component to the conceptualization of religion among senators requires further investigation, as does the place of imperial power, with its religious implication, within this conceptual framework. Chronology is key here: as Arnaldo Momigliano convincingly showed for the final years of the republic, the political upheavals of the times led Roman elites to a deeper engagement with religious questions. Though the pressing theological questions discussed by Cicero or Varro have no parallel in our period, their language and concerns feed into senatorial discussions about religion in the empire. To borrow Momigliano's phrase, “the theological efforts” of the upper classes continued during the empire as well; and in this chapter I shall keep “theology” in inverted commas in order to emphasize the difference between the less foundational role of these considerations among the Roman imperial elite and our modern expectations of the central role of theology for any religion.

The chapter begins with a consideration of imperial approaches to talking about religion, noting how religious discourses contributed to the conceptualization of the divine. These knowledge frameworks provided a variety of concurrent foci for understanding the religious.

In 17 bce, during a week-long celebration around the ludi saeculares, numerous members of Roman society ritually enacted the social renewal brought about by the Augustan period. The new saeculum introduced by the ludi in actual fact delivered a new era: that of the rule of emperors and that of a new position, next to the emperor, for the Roman senate and its members. The involvement of the senatorial priesthood of quindecemviri sacris faciundis in the ludi, along with the associated role played by an oracle from the Sibylline Books, was said to be traditional, yet, in fact, their participation was probably invented for the ritual celebration of 17 bce. While the Sibylline Books allowed the emperor a claim to set this time for the festivity, which was more Greek and “knowledge”-based than the traditional portent-based system, the involvement of senators allowed them to take a principal and charismatic role in the event, as would not have been the case with the Etruscan, and non-senatorial, haruspices. The names of the senatorial priests participating were carefully listed in the detailed commentarium of the ludi, which was inscribed, at least in part, to set the model for future ludi saeculares. Involving the senatorial priests partially enabled the (specious) claim that the ritual was traditional, as a connection between past and future, and it was symbolically inscribed, along with the names of senators and the emperor, into the collective sense of renewal that the new saeculum represented.

RELIGION AND POWER IN IMPERIAL ROME

In this book I analyze the related inter-workings of power and religion in the Roman empire by studying the religious involvements and interests of the Roman imperial senate and individual senators in the first two and a half centuries of the empire, from the reign of Augustus to the death of Severus Alexander. Augustus' establishment of a concentration of religious and political power in the same imperial hands offered a new central image of the emperor as prime sacrificer, an unprecedented development in Roman history. Analyzing the dynamics of this new conjunction of politics and religion, this study explores changes that found their way also into the coming of Christianity as Rome's state religion. Religion in Rome once functioned mainly as a polis religion and was therefore within the purview of the senatorial elite. I propose that in the empire religion came to play a new and prominent role in the processes of claiming and negotiating power relations between the emperor and the senate; along the way, the notion of power itself underwent a transformation. The position of the emperor was theorized and performed, in part, in religious terms. Similarly, individual senatorial posts gained religious significance, however political they might appear to us. Further, the divine associations of imperial power became part of a complex web connecting socioeconomic elements (such as the notion of Roman social order or the habit of euergetism) to transcendental notions of what makes a good leader, and in ways that approach what would later be considered theological ideals.

As the symbolic capital of the empire, the city of Rome has always been the center of attention. It was from here that power emanated, here where the stakes were the highest and representations the most charged. Under the empire this role of Rome as traditional center, of both religion and political representation, continued with diffuse lines of more or less intense influence. There was, on the one hand, attention focused on the capital, which, however, did not exert a concentrically weakening affect around itself but rather compiled a complex hierarchy in which certain provincial capitals could fare better than many Italian municipalities. On the other hand, we can also observe the growth of another, converse dynamic in which the person of the emperor himself came to represent the symbolic center of the empire, which was, however, now movable: as the emperor traveled around his realm, he moved the center of power with him and drew the focus of attention to the various places he visited. The purpose of this second part of the monograph is to analyze the “geography” of senatorial religion in light of these two distinct dynamics: the enduring importance of the city of Rome and the new symbolic weight of the emperor.

In a detailed survey of evidence for senatorial religion from Rome, Italy, and the provinces, these chapters study primarily epigraphic evidence and archaeological remains.

In Chapter 1 I discussed the religious authority that the whole Roman imperial senate, as a body, claimed for itself in the face of the almost unlimited political and military control of the emperor, and how this religious authority contributed to the cultural identity of the imperial senate. We saw this religious claim expressed primarily at senate meetings, in what appear to be highly charged and potentially precarious situations, in which the senate benefited from appearing as a unified group: it was only their corporate power that could stand up to that of the emperor. As I showed, this communal religious power was a key element in the power of the imperial senate as a body. Yet it is also true that the situations in which we can observe how power – and establishing what was to be seen as normal – was negotiated within the whole senate can offer us only limited insights into what motivated senatorial decisions about any debatable matter. Did senators discuss religious matters in smaller senatorial circles, amongst themselves? Did senators form any distinct subgroups, in which they laid claim to their unique authority with regard to the divine? Can we find any level, other than the whole senate, in which they understood themselves to have special access to the divine? In studies of Judaism and early Christianity for the same period, such issues of “group formation” or “community formation” have been the subject of intense study.