** you do not have permission to see this link **
A quick search confirms my memory that this book has been referenced in previous threads but a recent reread also confirms it deserves a review. Watts is a well regarded historian of the classical world. This book makes a nice companion to Pof Ehrman’s Triumph of Christianity. Kudos to both these scholars for writing histories that are not dull, a constant risk in the field, alas.
Watts defines the “final” pagan generation as the generation of pagans who came of age and assumed their responsibilities in Roman society before Constantine converted. Not the “last” pagans. In one of the interesting observations that counter common misconceptions about the era, Watts notes that there were regions of the empire dominated by pagans as late as the seventh century!
Watts focuses on the eventful fourth century. His work is bookended by a description of the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexander by mobs of Christians in 392, an event that shook the empire. It was a visible sign that the wind had changed direction and things would never be quite the same. But that event was the culmination of cultural and religious changes taking place since early in the century.
Watts follows the careers of four elite Romans: Libanius, Themistius, both pagans, Ausonius and Praetextatus, both Christians; all left extensive surviving literary remains. Libanius and Themistius were Greek pagans in the east, Ausinius and Praetextatus Christian converts in the West. The first three were members of local elites who were upwardly mobile. Only Praetextatus was born to the Purple, ultimately prefect of Rome itself. Their biographies are folded into an account of the great changes of the century.
Watts describes how pagan elites worshiped, were educated, and initiated into society. He illuminates just how the economy worked and how massive reforms midcentury consolidated political power enabling empire wide changes that in the end served to spread Christianity. I can say truthfully I learned more about pagan Rome in this book than I ever did in school. It certainly pays to have a good guide when visiting a place known only previously in a limited way.
The century was split temporally by one of the great “what-ifs” of history, the Julian “counter-revolution”. What if Julian, the last pagan emperor, had reigned for 25 years instead of two and a half? Could he have stopped the conversion of the empire to Christianity or even delayed it? (I suspect at that point it was inevitable and what you would have had was a pagan elite ruling uneasily over a majority Christian populace. Only a matter of time.)
Anyway, a terrific book. Full of suprises. If you’re at all interested in the subject this is the one to read. Watts also has a book about the infamous, mostly misunderstood, Hypatia.
Historical perspective tends to collapse time. It’s easy to suppose that the conversion of the Roman Empire from paganism to Christianity happened like someone flicking a light switch. But it was a long transition, with aspects that are easy to miss.
If you listen to fundamentalist sermons and watch sword-and-sandal Hollywood epics you’ll get the idea that the Romans were focused on the destruction of Christianity, obsessed even, right from the beginning. In her work, Candida Moss has shown that, while there were occasional persecutions, they were regional and isolated, and tended to be focused on social and civic issues. Romans by and large had zero interest in theology. They viewed Christians as rather odd ducks, the way modern Americans tend to view groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who don’t celebrate Christmas and ask for their children to be excused in class when the rest of the students give the Pledge of Allegiance. Christians refused to serve in the army and would not participate in cultic sacrifices to the Emperor. Romans, like many ancients, were deeply suspicious of the new-fangled. As troublesome as Jews could be politically, the ancients deeply respected the antiquity of Jewish tradition.
So the fact of the matter is that for many decades Christians and pagans lived side by side in relative peace.
Another thing to consider is that there wasn’t really such a thing as “paganism”. That’s just a word invented later to cover a vast range of polytheistic traditions and cultural practices. Largely as a way to describe “what went on before”. It’s common for a nascent ideology to define itself in terms of opposition and contrast to other groups. To create borders for itself. Criteria to determine who is “in” and who is “out”. The concept of “paganism” was mostly invented as such a conceptualization.
What really happened is not that one set of beliefs were simply replaced by another set. What happened is that over time an exclusivist sect absorbed and replaced many traditional views. Those traditions that could be eaten were digested and those that could not were spit out. What we call Christianity began as a Jewish sect but was unthinkable without Greco-Roman culture. The reason for this is that even if you were being educated as a Christian the template for what education must be was set by pagans. Even the most pious Christian was still forced to absorb assumptions and categories framed by centuries of paganism. Perhaps it’s best to think of Hellenized Judaism and Greco-Roman thought as having combined to create yet a third form of cultural expression – what we call “Christianity”!
There were ironies. If you look at the New Testament you will be initiated into the spiritualization of victimhood. As far back as the Sermon on the Mount, victimization is being elevated to a spiritual category. Christians are advised to expect opposition. it becomes a blessing! That reflected the marginal status of the early Jesus movement, a byproduct of their apocalyptic yearnings. Christians expected hostility from the evil forces ruling this age. They encountered antagonism from mainstream Jewish groups. Their refusal to participate in social and civic duties alienated them from larger Roman culture, as I said earlier.
So what happens when a movement oriented towards alienation and opposition, who fetishize and even sacralize suffering, gradually find themselves in charge of everything? We were supposed to win of course, but only when God swooped down and established His kingdom! What do we do now when we are the establishment, the rulers of the age? Now we have to fill the granaries and keep the plumbing working!
Failure can ennoble but success can corrupt. Politics! Suddenly it matters a great deal to Jesus that my local highway project gets that subsidy from the emperor or that my brother-in-law is made bishop. And then come the dissemblers who act, not out of personal piety, but merely to get ahead. One senses a great deal of confusion on the part of many Fourth Century Christian thinkers.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)