HTR 78:3-4 (1985) 301-25 CHRISTIAN APOLOGISTS AND “THE FALL OF THE ANGELS”’: AN ATTACK ON ROMAN IMPERIAL POWER?* Elaine Pagels Princeton University God, when He had made the whole world, and subjected earthly things to human beings, committed the care of humanity and of all things under heaven to the angels whom He had appointed over them. But the angels transgressed their appointment, and were captivated by desires for women, and begat children who are those called demons, and afterwards, subdued the human race to them- selves, through . .. fear. (Justin 2 Apol. 5) Justin, a philosopher converted to Christianity, addresses these words to the Roman senate as he protests a recent case of arbitrary arrest and execution of Christians. Although outraged by the verdict, he cannot fault the judge, Urbicus, praetorian prefect of Rome, and personal friend of the imperial family. Justin knows that Urbicus only followed orders in pronouncing the mandatory death sentence against those convicted of atheism as evinced by their refusal to worship the gods or to sacrifice to the divine genius of the emperor.! Instead Justin invokes the story of Genesis 6—the story of the fall of the angels—to indict the whole system of imperial power, and to attack the divine pantheon that supports it as a false government, a form of demonic tyranny. Tam grateful to Professors Glen Bowersock and Peter Brown for their criticism and ‘comments on a previous draft of this article. ‘On the relationship between these, see Mason Hammond, The Antonine Monarchy (Rome: American Academy, 1959) 211; Fergus Millar, “The Imperial Cult and the Per- secutions,” and G. W. Bowersock, “Greek Intellectuals and the Imperial Cult in the Second Century A.D.,” both in Willem den Boer, ed., Le Culte des Souverains dans empire romain (Geneva: Vandoevres, 1973) 147-75 and 179-211302 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW The specific case that angered Justin involved an aristocratic lady, who, following her conversion to Christianity, refused to continue par- ticipating with her husband in drunken sexual parties involving their household slaves. Although she wanted to divorce him, her friends persuaded her to wait, hoping for a reconciliation. But when she learned that her husband, on a trip to Alexandria, had behaved worse than ever, she sued for divorce and left him. Outraged, her husband accused her of being a Christian—a crime that, since Nero’s time, bore a mandatory death sentence. When she succeeded in delaying her own trial by appealing to the emperor, her husband vented his rage by accusing Ptolemy, her teacher in Christianity. Arrested and imprisoned, Ptolemy was brought to trial before Urbicus, who asked him only one question: “Are you a Christian?” Receiving an affirmative answer, Urbicus pronounced the mandatory death sentence. But as Ptolemy was being marched out to die, Lucius, one of the court spectators, cried out in protest, challenging the judge: What is the ground for this judgement? Why have you punished this man, not as an adulterer, nor fornicator, nor murderer, nor thief, nor robber, nor convicted of any crime at all but who has only confessed that he is called by the name “Christian”? This judgement of yours, Urbicus, does not become the Emperor Pius, nor the philosopher, Caesar’s son Marcus Aurelius, nor the sacred Senate. (2 Apol. 2) Urbicus answered only that Lucius himself sounded suspiciously like a Christian: when he admitted it, the prefect ordered that he and another protestor in the audience follow Ptolemy to execution. As soldiers led the condemned from the courtroom, Lucius loudly thanked God for delivering him and his companions ‘‘from such wicked rulers,”’ and releasing them instead to the ‘Father and King of the Universe” (2 Apol. 2) Justin, relating this story, wants to answer the questions he knows it will raise in the mind of any Roman citizen: why do Christians refuse to worship the gods, or to perform the ordinary tokens of civic loyalty by offering sacrifice to the emperor’s genius? The Christians know, Justin explains, a terrible secret: that the power behind the magistrate’s demand—and, in fact, behind all such imperial commands—is not divine but demonic. Justin traces the sinister origin of this power back to the primordial fall of the angels: The truth shail be told; since of old these evil demons, effecting apparitions of themselves, both polluted women and corruptedELAINE PAGELS 303 boys, and showed such terrifying visions to people that those who did not use their reason . . . were struck by terror, and being car- tied away by fear, and not knowing that these were demons, they called them gods. (J Apol. 5) Justin sees the practical effect of this deception enacted in the law courts, from the condemnation of Socrates to the most recent case of arraignment of Christians: ‘And when Socrates attempted by true reason and investigation to deliver men from the demons, then the demons themselves, using men as their instruments, brought upon him death for being an atheist; and in our case, too, they do the same things. (/ Apol. 5)? But how could such government arise? If, as the Christians claim, their God created the world upon a foundation of goodness and justice, how has it come to be dominated by demons who sabotage human wel- fare? Or, to put the question in immediate terms, how has the world come to be ruled by men like Urbicus and his imperial masters, whose laws tolerate sexual promiscuity and support private vengeance, legally sanctioning the killing of innocent people? To answer, Justin intro- duces the story with which we began—the fall of the angels. The fault, he explains, lies not with God, but with his subordinates. After the angels to whom God had entrusted the administration of the universe had betrayed their positions of responsibility, seducing women and corrupting boys (so Justin amplifies the account of Genesis 6), they ‘‘begot children, who are called demons” (2 Apol. 5). Discov- ering the corruption in his administration, God expelled these angels from office. Then these exiled angels attempted to compensate for their lost power by joining with their own offspring, the demons, in attempting to enslave the human race. Drawing upon the supernatural powers that even disgraced angelic beings still retain, they awed and terrified people into worshiping them as gods. The majority of humankind, Justin explains, fell under their power; only an exceptional few, like Socrates, remained free from demonically induced mental slavery. This invisible network of supernatural energies proceeded to promote the fortunes of their henchmen who were driven by the same blind passions. ‘Taking as their ally the lust of wickedness ? For an excellent and illuminating discussion of Justin and the other apologists, see Heinrich Wey, Die Funktionen der bisen Geisten bei den griechischen Apologeten des zweiten Jahrhunderts nach Christus (Wintermur: Keller, 1957) 3-32 (on Justin).304 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW in everyone,”’ Justin explains, the demons became the patrons of powerful and ruthless men, and “‘instituted private and public rites in honor of those who are more powerful” (7 Apol. 10; Ps.-Justin De mon. 1). The result of these primordial events Justin sees at every turn— above all in the vast panoply of imperial ideology, which claims, for the Roman emperors and their governors, magistrates and armies, the power and protection of the gods. What happened in Urbicus’s court- room, where the prefect protected the interests of a ruthless and immoral man while condemning a Christian teacher and his defenders to torture and death, evinces, Justin believes, the same demonic inver- sion of justice: For Justin and his contemporaries, the story of the mating of the angels with the daughters of men and of its dire consequences for the peace of society was not a distant myth: it was a map on which they plotted the disruptions and tensions around them? Christians share in common with pagans the conviction that invisible networks of superhuman beings energize human activity, and above all, empower the emperor and his subordinates to dominate the world. But there agreement ends. What pagans revere as assuring divine protec- tion, Christians abhor as demonic tyranny. Justin launches, as we shall see, nothing less than a frontal attack upon the theology of imperial power—the massive official propaganda that the Antonine emperors inherited from their predecessors. It vigorously promoted, publicizing on coins, through imperial edicts, on public monuments, and in circuses and public festivals, the claims to divine sanction for their dynastic ambitions. The emperors themselves, officially praised as embodying divine cosmic rule, are, Justin suspects, actually enslaved to the powers of darkness. What role, then, do the emperors play in this sinister cosmic drama? Justin, subject to two of the most distinguished emperors in Roman history, Antoninus Pius and his son, the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, initially addresses them respectfully as pious philosophers, protectors of justice, and lovers of learning. But as soon as he brings up the treatment of Christians, Justin breaks into a tone of sharp rebuke: “Rulers should make decisions in obedience to piety and 3 Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978) 75, Among recent studies see esp. Jean Beaujeu, La religion romaine a Vapogée de "empire (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1955)ELAINE PAGELS 305 philosophy, not violence and tyranny” (J Apol. 3)5 Enforcing a manda- tory death sentence on persons guilty of no crime, he declares, would suit ‘‘public executioners, not good princes.’’ Justin turns abruptly from appeal to invective, challenging and defying nothing less than the legitimacy of their power: ‘‘But if you . . . being foolish, prefer custom to truth, do what you have the power to do. But robbers in a desert have the same power” (1 Apol. 12). Who is he to admonish emperors? Justin identifies himself with a proud tradition of philosophers who, like Socrates himself, dared stand up to unjust rulers, fully prepared to face the consequences.” Claiming the prerogative of such philosophers, his accusations echo traditional charges, denouncing as ‘‘robbers”” or usurpers® those who base their power on force, and not justice. Justin insists that Socrates, ‘‘accused of the same crimes as we ourselves,”’ stands as the clearest model of Jesus’ suffering, and for that of his followers (2 Apol. 10).9 He appeals to the emperors as fellow philosophers—or to the spark of philosophic reason within them—as his only hope for a fair hearing. While Justin chooses to identify with philosophers who criticize the government, and draws some of his weapons from their arsenal, his appeal proves him to be, in fact, far more radical. From the emperor’s viewpoint he speaks less as a philosopher than as a religious fanatic. For he goes on to give a religious theory of government that brands the whole imperial system as false, as representing an usurpation, as a demonic inversion of divinely ordained order. Justin’s theory directly reverses what the French scholar Beaujeu calls the “theology of imperial power’ that had come to dominate Roman idealism by the early second century. This theology presented the emperor (as Beaujeu says of Trajan) as the agent, Jupiter’s delegate on earth, invested with his power and charged with governing all men in his name. ... He is the viceroy on earth of the sovereign of the universe: a grandiose theory, per- 5 Cf. Tertullian Apol. 4. 6 For discussion, see n. 8. 7 See, eg., Ramsay MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966). 8 Idem, “The Roman Concept of the Robber-Pretender,” Revue internationale des droits de Vantiquité 3 (1983) 221 -26. 9 See also J Apol. 5; Herbert A. Musurillo, The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs: Acta Alexan- drinorum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1954) 237: “The death of Socrates, especially as idealized by Plato, was @ powerful influence in the development of death as a heroic ideal.””306 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW fectly adapted to the political situation ... , which gives the imperial regime an unshakable theological base.° Hadrian, too, although recognized as mortal, ‘‘appeared as the living incarnation of the divinity, as the god itself’s epiphany on earth.”’!! Even the reign of the cautious Antoninus Pius demonstrates how the tendency to make of the emperor a veritable god on earth was accentuated even in Rome. ... Without doubt the theocratic foundation of imperial power remained as Trajan had established it? Recalling the reminders of his own mortality that Marcus Aurelius wrote in his private journal, we can see how difficult it was for him to keep in perspective his public role as ‘greatest and most manifest of all the gods.”’!3 From Justin’s point of view the personal virtues of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius are far eclipsed by their direct relationship and willing service to demonic powers. Justin dares tell these emperors that he suspects that they, being subject to such evil influence, may be inca- pable of making rational judgments. Insofar as they retain their sanity, he assures them, he is willing to remain their subject; but, he contin- ues, ‘‘we warn you in advance to be on your guard, lest the demons whom we have been accusing should deceive you, and distract you from reading and understanding what we say” (J Apol. 14). These demons, Justin warns the rulers of the world, ‘‘strive to keep you as their slaves.”” Justin’s attempt to transform his readers’ perception of events involves nothing less than his intention to reverse the valences of power. Where outsiders might see the all-powerful emperor and his agents disposing of a handful of dissidents accused as Christians, Justin depicts a puppet-tyrant and his underlings, enslaved to demons and contending against those allied with the one invincible true God. Envi- sioning each episode of persecution as a skirmish in a cosmic conflict, Justin finds no language too grandiose: ‘Because of the seed of the Christians,’’ Justin assures his readers, “‘the destruction of the whole world is delayed; they know that they are the cause of the preservation of nature” (2 Apol. 7). Those who today stand condemned shall reign 'Beaujeu, Religion, 73 7 02.ELAINE PAGELS 307 one day with God himself; they alone, of all humankind, have retained the rationality and freedom with which God created the whole human race. To their number belong “‘all who have lived according to rea- son,” including Abraham and Elijah as well as Socrates, Heraclitus, “and others like them”? (2 Apol. 8). Justin’s faith emboldens him to declare that he is not so much pleading for mercy as exhorting the emperors “‘for your own sakes” (2 Apol. 15) to see the light of reason and renounce their role as the dupes of unseen demonic masters. Only demonic inspiration, Justin believes, could account for the irra- tional brutality of their policy against Christians. So Tertullian, too, will argue: Let this perversity of yours lead you to suspect that there is some hidden power involved in the case, under whose influence you act against the forms, against the nature of public justice, even against the very laws themselves. (Apol. 2) Justin admits that he and his fellow believers once shared the same enslavement that still subjugates the whole of pagan society, from the emperors themselves down to their humblest subjects: We who out of every race of humans, used to worship Bacchus . . . and Apollo (who in their amorous adventures with other men did things too shamefull to mention) and Prosephine and Venus, or some one or other of those who are called gods, have now, through Jesus Christ, learned to despise these, though we will be threatened with death for it. (J Apol. 25) Now, Justin boasts, the Christians are free. Repudiating pagan wor- ship, they reject as well the demonically powered passions for sexual gratification, wealth, and ethnic pride: We who formerly delighted in immorality, now embrace chastity alone. ... We, who valued above everything else acquiring wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and share with everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and .. . refused to live with people of a different race, now . . . live intimately with them. (Ibid.) Many former pagans, Justin says, including himself, ‘‘have changed their violent and tyrannical disposition” (1 Apol. 16), transforming the whole structure of personal, social, and political relationships to con- form to the integrity, justice, and generosity God’s rule demands.308 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW Some Roman officials, dumbfounded by the Christians’ defiance, agreed with Marcus Aurelius’s private assessment: what motivates the Christians is not courage, but a perverse desire for notoriety. Other officials burst out angrily, as if suspecting that they were being manipu- lated by suicidal fanatics: “If you want to die, go kill yourselves, and do not bother us” (2 Apol. 4). Pagans might well suspect their motives. If Christians, believing that demons rule the world, thank God for their death sentences, why do they not kill themselves and be done with it? Why do they claim, on the contrary, to be good—even exemplary— citizens of a regime they profess to despise? Why does Justin, for all his defiance, insist that Christians ‘more readily than any other peo- ple” (7 Apol. 17) pay their full share of all taxes, and that “we, more than any other people, are your helpers and allies in preserving peace” ( Apol. 12)? Justin explains to the emperors that, in each of these cases, Chris- tians intend only to obey God, not the human government. As for sui- cide, he says: I will tell you why we do not do so, and yet why, when interro- gated, we fearlessly confess. We have been taught that God did not make the world aimlessly, but for the seke of the human race. If then we kill ourselves, we would be acting in opposition to the will of God. But when we are interrogated, we make no denial, because ... we consider it impious not to speak the truth in all things, which we know pleases God. (2 Apol. 4) Christians pay their taxes, Justin continues, in obedience to Christ’s own command (‘‘Render unto Caesar ...”; / Apol. 17). As for their civic behavior, Christians serve One who demands complete righteous- ness, whose judgment no secret act or thought escapes (/ Apol. 12). God commands his people, too, to render obedience—although strictly limited and secularized obedience—to the human authorities. Justin and his fellow Christians had inherited the capacity to make this distinc- tion from the experience of Jews living for centuries under foreign imperialism. Irenaeus borrows a rabbinic image to interpret Paul’s say- ing that the ‘‘powers that be are ordained of God’’: Earthly rule has been appointed by God for the benefit of nations, so that, under the fear of human rule, men may not devour one another like fishes, but, by means of the establishment of laws, may restrain an excess of wickedness among the nations. (Adv. haer. 5.24.2) Finally, Justin and his Christian contemporaries, having foundELAINE PAGELS 309 themselves, like the Jews, often the target of public violence, had come to appreciate the government’s role in preserving public order. So Athenagoras informs Marcus Aurelius and Commodus that Christians, like the Jews, pray for your government, that you may .. . receive the kingdom, son from father, and that your empire may receive increase and additions, and all people become subject to your rule, since . . . this is for our advantage, too, that we may lead peaceful and tranquil lives. (Legatio 32) Yet Justin, Irenaeus, and Athenagoras, each writing in full awareness of the immanent dangers of persecution, each acknowledge that, if human rulers may serve the purposes of God, others serve those of Satan. Athenagoras explains that because the demonic movements and functions proceeding from Satan ... sometimes move men in one way and sometimes in another, as individuals and as nations, separately and collectively, some have thought that this universe is constituted without any definite order. (Legatio 25) Christians believe, nevertheless, that even at their worst, demonically inspired rulers, “‘in spite of their disobedience, cannot transgress the order prescribed for them.’’ God retains ultimate power over his universe, and holds in his hands the final vindication of his servants, and the coming destruction of his enemies. Meanwhile, like Socrates who, himself freed from demonic deception, “‘tried to deliver people from the demons” (J Apol. 5), the Christians maintain the truth of their freedom by repudiating pagan worship: ‘‘You consecrate the images of your emperors when they die, and you call them gods; but we do not honor such deities as human beings have made and placed in shrines” (J Apol. 9). Far from expressing the ‘“‘enlightened’’ or skeptical attitudes that later historians often have projected upon them, Justin’s Christian con- temporaries usually regard pagan practices with utmost seriousness, recoiling from them in disgust. Pagan critics of government observe the convention of refraining from naming the names of rulers they crit- icize;!4 Justin, on the contrary, boldly reminds Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus of the notorious folly of Hadrian, their own revered adoptive father. When Hadrian, overcome with grief at the 1 MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order, 19, 36.310 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW death of his male lover, instituted divine honors to deify the boy, Jus- tin says scornfully, ‘‘everyone hastened, through fear, to worship Antinous as a god, although they knew both who he was, and what his origin was” (/ Apol. 29).!5 Justin sees far more than the human lust for power lurking behind such images: he sees the presence of the hostile, fallen angels who contrive to enslave the minds of people belonging, by tight of creation, to God alone. How else, Justin asks, would anyone ‘made in the image of God,”’ seeing in his or her own person the liv- ing image of the King of heaven, worship mere statuary images of dead emperors—or worse, of an emperor’s slave lover? Demons, Justin explains, being insatiable in their lust for power, invent many other devices besides the imperial cult to blind men and women to their own rationality, and to strip them of all human dignity. The mores of Roman society, especially in matters of sexual conduct, betray the influence of those same angels whose lusts drove them into transgression. Accusing those who raise abandoned children to sell as child prostitutes “‘like herds of goats or sheep,’ and who train them “only for this shameful evil,” Justin castigates the emperors not only for allowing but also for profiting from this sordid business: ‘You receive income ... and taxes from those you ought to exterminate from your realm’? (/ Apol. 27). Justin cannot resist contrasting Hadrian's infatuation with Antinous with a nameless young Christian’s devotion to chastity. This young man vowed himself to a life of chas- tity after his petition to the governor of Alexandria for permission to castrate himself was denied (/ Apol. 29). Justin and his fellow Christians further charge that religious myths serve to sanction such common (and generally legal) practices as prosti- tution, sexual use of slaves, homosexuality, and even infanticide. Stories of the gods’ amorous adventures, in particular, ‘‘have all been put forward for this purpose—to gain certain authority for human vice.”!6 Even the solemn festivals of religious drama, according to Justin’s student Tatian, offer, in effect, public demonstrations of pro- miscuity: ‘‘Your daughters and sons see (the gods) giving lessons in adultery on stage!”’ (Or. Graec. 22). In private, too, Clement of Alex- andria says, many people depict in their houses the unnatural passions of the demons. They decorate their bedrooms with paintings hung there, regarding licentiousness as religion; and, lying in bed, in the midst of their 'S For discussion, see Beaujeu, Religion, 242-46. 18Clement of Alexandria Prot. logos 2, 33; Tatian Or. Graec. 8, 16-17,ELAINE PAGELS 311 embraces, they see Aphrodite locked in the embraces of her lover. . Such are the theologies of arrogance (hybris), such are the instructions of your gods, who commit immorality along with you. (Prot. logos 4, 60) A famous example is Tiberius, who is later said to have kept in his bed- room a masterpiece painting of Hera doing fellatio with Zeus! !7 So Clement declares with irony, ‘“‘Let such gods be worshipped by your wives, and let them pray that their husbands be such as these, so temperate.’ Recalling the myths of Zeus’ and Hercules’ adventures with male lovers, Clement continues, ‘‘Such gods let your boys be taught to worship, so that they may grow to be men in the accursed image of fornication, which they received from the gods” (Prot. logos 2, 33). Stories celebrating Zeus’ rape and seizure of the boy Ganymede not only lend false glamour to such acts as Hadrian’s affair with Antinous but also encourage those who set up marketplaces for immorality, and establish infamous resorts of the young for every kind of vile pleasure, who do not abstain even with males, males with males committing shocking abominations, outraging all the noblest and most beautiful bodies in all sorts of ways. (Athenagoras Legatio 34) Like Justin, Clement attacks the custom of allowing infants to be exposed and abandoned, then raised and sold as child prostitutes: “‘I pity the boys owned by slave dealers, who are dressed up for shame” (Paed. 3.3 [21]) he says, then sold and abused to gratify their owner’s sexual tastes. Minucius Felix goes so far as to charge that religious myth offers, in effect, divine precedent for infanticide: ‘‘I see that you sometimes expose to wild animals and birds children that are newly born; at other times, you strangle them with a miserable death.” Such acts, he says, ‘‘certainly came down from the teaching of your gods; for although Saturn did not expose his children, he devoured them” (Oct. 30). If stories of the gods implicitly condone immoral practices, the laws of the Roman Senate and people legitimize them: ‘‘These things your wise laws allow: people sin legally, and the execrable indulgence in pleasure they consider morally indifferent’ (Paed. 3.3 [22]). The Christians’ attempt—and their success—in demonizing the gods of '7 Suetonius, The Caesars, Tiberius, 44.312 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW paganism involves a total revaluation of social mores. ‘‘Is Zeus,” Cle- ment asks ironically, ‘“‘the good, the prophetic, the patron of hospital- ity, the protector of suppliants, the avenger of wrongs?’’ No! He is instead unjust, the violator of right and law, the impious, the inhuman, the violent, the seducer, the adulterer, the incestuous . . . so given to sexual pleasures as to lust after everyone, and to indulge his lust upon everyone, (Prot. logos 2, 37) The lord of heaven, thus betraying his sordid origin as a fallen angel, often acts all too humanly; he acts, indeed, much like the emperors who represent him, and even like the worst among them. Had Marcus Aurelius and his colleagues bothered to read such impassioned diatribes, they might well have perceived at once the Christians’ essentially subversive message. While claiming to be exem- plary citizens, Justin and his fellows attack the whole basis of Roman imperial power, denouncing its divine patrons as demons, and its tulers—even those most distinguished for their wise and tolerant reigns—as unwitting agents of demonic tyranny. Imperial magistrates confronted in their courtrooms the practical result of such teaching: men and women, accused of sacrilege, who obstinately refused to offer sacrifice to the gods, or to honor the emperor’s genius. Justin himself, as he anticipated and feared, one day stood in court before Rusticus, the urban prefect of Rome, arrested and charged with professing Christianity. Justin probably knew that his judge’s own name evoked the very political philosophy with which he himself identified. Q.Iunius Rusticus, stoicae disciplinae peritissimus, proudly claimed direct descent from a Stoic philosopher who had defied the tyranny of the self-styled ‘‘lord and god,” the emperor Domitian, and who paid for his courage by his execution.!® Rusticus himself, long- time advisor and intimate friend of Marcus Aurelius, had exercised the greatest influence in shaping the young emperor’s political philosophy. Marcus declared that such teachers had inspired him with ‘‘the idea of a state based upon equality and freedom of speech, and of a monarchy which values above all the liberty of the subject.’’! '8 For a fine discussion, see Edward Champlin, Fronto and Antonine Rome (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980) 106. 18 Anthony Birley, Marcus Aurelius (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966) 122ELAINE PAGELS 313 Yet Rusticus, far from acknowledging the affinity with Justin—much less any affinity Justin dared claim between his own position and that of Socrates—saw in this itinerant philosopher only a defiant nonconformist who refused, for reasons either subversive or superstitious, to obey Rusticus’s simple command: “‘Obey the gods and submit to the emperors.’ Both the judge and the accused took for granted the implied connection between religious sacrifice and political submission. But Rusticus saw both as the minimum obligations of any citizen, while Justin and his companions saw such acts as the betrayal of Christ, their true King. Refusing sacrifice, they accepted instead the death sentence Rusticus pronounced: ‘Those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to yield to the emperor’s edict are to be led away to be scourged and executed in accordance with the law.””2! Later generations of readers, their own consciousness shaped by Christian ideas, often miss, as Rusticus did not, the radicality of Justin’s stand. Themselves taking for granted the distinction Justin draws between political and religious loyalty, they have tended to sym- pathize with the apologists and to take their professions of loyalty to Rome at face value. Such readers fail to grasp the issues Justin and Rusticus consider literally a matter of life and death. Justin and his companions are challenging traditional patterns of piety, in which the demands of the community, including family, city, and state, are per- ceived as sacred, unconditional, and inviolate, wholly bound up with religious sanction. Discriminating between religious and civil disobedi- ence, Christians intend to secularize—and so radically to diminish—the power of these obligations. Simultaneously they defy the power of the gods, upon whom the common welfare rests. No wonder that the majority of responsible people, educated or not, agreed that those who refused to participate in acts promoting the public welfare should be treated as public enemies. Anyone tempted to regard Justin as a misunderstood ‘honest citizen” would do well to note the tone of even his most compliant concessions. While discriminating between religious and civil disobedi- ence, Justin voices doubts about the emperors’ judgment by assuring them that the Christians are praying for their sanity, and threatens any who ignore his warnings with eternal fire: 2 Acts of the Martyr Justin and His Companions, B, 2, in Herbert Musurillo, ed., The Acts of the Christian Marrs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972) 48, 21 Thid., 52.314 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW To God alone we render worship, but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and human rulers, and praying that with your royal power you may also possess sound judgment. But if you pay no attention to our prayers and clear explanations . . . we shall suffer no loss, since we . . . are convinced that every man shall suffer punishment in eternal fire according to the merit of his work. .. . Consider, therefore, the end of each of the preceding kings, how they died the death common to all which, if it brought insensibility, would be fortunate for the wicked. But since sensation remains, and eternal punishment see that you do not fail to be persuaded . . . that these things are true. (J Apol. 17-18) Other readers, themselves rationalists, tend to dismiss what the apol- ogists say about hellfire or demons, as if no one, pagan or Christian, could possibly take such statements seriously. Yet many pagans actively hostile to Christians believed that open toleration of atheists, and especially of those who so boldly insulted the gods, endangered the pax deorum. Even those who no longer worshiped the gods themselves, as the classical scholar P. A. Brunt points out, often were “‘ready to regard the traditional cults as allegorical truth, and to treat their perfor- mance ... as a symbolic expression of sincere and enlightened piety toward the divinity that governed the world.”’?? Even if a philosopher like Marcus Aurelius had taken a strictly utilitarian view of religion, Brunt continues, he still would have held, like many more sceptical thinkers before him, that the old religion, false as it might be, served a very useful purpose: for the masses who were incapable of philosophic insight, it was indispensable as a source for morality and as a social cement. Whatever his own convictions, Marcus and his colleagues probably would have agreed that toleration of open and avowed “‘atheism’’ could only tend to sub- vert popular faith, with results harmful to society. It made no difference that, as the apologists contended, the Christians person- ally adopted a life of social piety: it was not their own morals that 22 p. A, Brunt, “Marcus Aurelius and the Christians,” in Carl Deroux, ed., Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History (Brussels: Latomus, 1979-83) 1. 516.ELAINE PAGELS 315 were in question, but the moral basis of a whole society supposedly built on the ancestral religions. Yet the much-debated question whether and to what extent educated pagans ‘‘believed in’? the gods or the emperor’s divinity is, as the clas- sicist Simon Price points out, anachronistic.24 Far more important, to pagans and Christians alike, was the Christians’ refusal to participate in acts that expressed what the majority regarded as their community’s proper relationship to the ‘powers that be” in both their divine and human manifestations.2> Even the Jews, who privately despised the gods of paganism, offered sacrifice to their God on behalf of the emperor. But Christians, having rejected the practice of sacrifice, lacked any effective means of accommodation. The result, as Mason Hammond points out, is that under these emperors (Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius), gen- erally so mild and humane, the policy of persecuting the Christians seems first to have been widespread, and the failure to offer sacrifice to the emperor's statue, used sporadically as a test since Pliny’s day, to have become a regular test for disloyalty which exposed recalcitrants to prosecution for treason2¢ Their losses, however, failed to stop the Christians. Tertullian, addressing the rulers of the Roman Empire, boasts that executions actually accelerate the Christian movement: ‘‘The more we are mown down by you, the more we multiply: the blood of Christians is seed!”” (1 Apol. 50). About fifteen years after Justin’s death, Athenagoras, a 3 Ibid., 516-17. 4S. R. F, Price, Rituals and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) pas- sim, 2SPrice’s critique (ibid.) could well be applied to the much-debated—and equally anachronistic—question of whether Paul in Romans 13:5 refers to human or divine authorities. 1 believe he has both in mind simultaneously, since he sees them as wholly interconnected. For a review of the discussion, and a recent, typically one-sided analysis, see Wesley Carr, Angels and Principalities: The Background, Meaning, and Development of the Pauline Phrase HAI ARCHAI KAl HAI EXOUSIAI (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) 26Hammond, Antonine Monarchy, 211. Hammond goes on to comment, “This ano- maly is significant not so much of a deliberate change in policy as of the increasing hostil- ity of the populace which forced the government to act ... and to the feeling . . . which became so prominent in the third century, namely, that all men of good will should rally to the authorized cults to secure the favor of the gods who had watched over Rome's rise, but who had, through men’s neglect, been led to turn their eyes away from her mis- fortune.”316 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW converted Athenian philosopher, followed his example. Daring to iden- tify himself as an advocate for Christians, he addressed another protest and appeal directly to the emperors. Addressing Marcus Aurelius, now senior emperor, and his son Com- modus as “‘conquerors, and, above all, philosophers,’’ Athenagoras expresses first his ‘“‘admiration of your mildness and gentleness, and your peaceful and benevolent disposition toward every man, so that individuals live in the possession of equal rights ... and the whole empire, under your intelligent rule, enjoys profound peace” (Legatio 1). But Athenagoras well knows that imperial policy concerning Chris- tians remains arbitrary and brutal. Recently, for example, a certain act of imperial legislation, although not directed specifically against Chris- tians, had increased public violence against them. Marcus Aurelius, pressed by war, and anxious to increase the number of army recruits, authorized conscripting gladiators, previously ineligible, into military service. This move depleted the supply of trained athletes available for public entertainment, enormously raising the cost. Influential citizens required to provide such entertainment, especially at major games and on imperial birthdays, complained to the emperor. Marcus Aurelius responded by enacting legislation that allowed government officials, in certain cases, to substitute condemned criminals for professional gladia- tors at a fraction of the cost. In cases of a shortage of capital criminals, local government officials easily could, and did, increase their supply by accusing Christians.2? For although Athenagoras depicts Christians as harmless and compliant people who ask only to “‘live a quiet life... and... willingly perform all that is commanded us” (ibid., 32), they adamantly refuse, as he well knows, to do the one thing that imperial judges actually did command them: offering sacrifices to the gods or, as a test case, to the emperor’s genius. So Athenagoras, too, despite his effusive praise of imperial government, attacks its foundation. Using the framework of Genesis 1-6, Athenagoras boldly constructs a theology of politics that places legitimate government solely in the hands of the god of the Christians. By right of creation, the world belongs to Him alone. None of its elements, worshiped by deluded pagans as ‘‘gods,”’ deserves reverence, except the One who created and who transcends it: ‘If the world is a wel! tuned instrument, and moving in harmonious tune, I adore the Being who gave its harmony, and strikes its notes, and sings the harmonious melody; and not the 7" See W. H. C. Frend’s masterful treatment of this practice and the whole subject of persecution, in Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (New York: New York University Press, 1967) 5ELAINE PAGELS 317 instrument” (ibid., 16). Athenagoras goes on to put the emperors in their place—a merely instrumental, subservient place, as he sees it, within the cosmic scheme of things. God the Father and his divine Son rule over all things; consequently, Athenagoras explains to their human. counterparts, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, if ‘‘all things are sub- ject to you, father and son,”’ this means that “‘you, father and son, have received the kingdom from above” (ibid. 18). At best Athenagoras’ political theory makes the emperors instruments and ser- vants of his God; at worst it makes them slaves of the only other avail- able source of power—the devil. For, Athenagoras explains, “‘As we acknowledge a God, and a Son ... so also do we apprehend the existence of other powers which exercise dominion over matter and by means of it, and one in particular, which is hostile to God” (ibid., 29). Yet even God’s adversaries cannot stand independently of his sole and sovereign power: ‘‘The spirit which is in matter .. . and was created by God; just as the other angels were created by Him, and endowed with control over matter.” Some of these, Athenagoras goes on to explain, although created “‘to exercise supervision over created things, outraged both the constitution of their own nature, and the government entrusted to them.’ Having betrayed their charge, these faithless administrators themselves become enslaved to the very element God had commanded them to rule. Falling ‘‘into impure love of virgins, they were subjugated by the flesh” (ibid.). Expelled from their posi- tions of power in heaven, these fallen angels now roam the lower regions, air and earth, frustrated and angry: “‘If it were possible they would, no doubt, tear down heaven itself, with the rest of creation.” 28 Lacking power to challenge God Himself, these angels turn their frustrated energies instead to usurp power over the most available and vulnerable target: the human race. Although deposed, the fallen angels still wield ‘‘a control and management contrary to God” in order to “move human beings, as individuals and as nations separately and col- lectively,”’ bringing confusion and pain into both personal and political dimensions of human life. To these demons, Athenagoras says, ‘‘now belongs the administration of earthly affairs” (ibid., 25). Athenagoras and his fellow apologists, then, while professing to act as philosophic critics, ignore the conventions of that role along with its basic political premises. Unlike Plutarch, who ‘‘makes outspoken criti- cism of the self-deification of Hellenistic kings without any feeling that 2 Tatian Or. Graec. 16.318 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW what he says might be taken as reflecting Roman practice,” ° Christian apologists explicitly use ancient examples to indict contemporary prac- tice. Athenagoras, sketching the Euhemerian theory of religion, does not hesitate to bring it into the present. Having explained that ‘‘those ... to whom the subjects gave the honor, or the rulers themselves appropriated it, obtained the name (of gods), the former out of fear, the latter out of revenge” (ibid., 30), Athenagoras goes on to say to Marcus Aurelius and his son that ‘‘in the same way, Antinous, through the benevolence of your ancestors toward their subjects, came to be regarded as a god.’’ Clement of Alexandria expresses his own view of Hadrian’s folly more bluntly. Clement says that religious reverence for Eros first arose when a man named Charmus, inflamed with desire for a young boy, “‘built an altar to him in Academia . . . thus deifying uncon- trollable lust” (Prot. logos 3.44). Just recently, Clement continues, the same thing has happened: Another new deity was added to the number with great religious pomp in Egypt; and nearby in Greece as well, by the king of the Romans, who deified Antinous, whom he loved as Zeus loved Ganymede, and whose beauty was extremely rare; for lust is not easy to restrain, being devoid of fear, as it now is, and people now observe the “Sacred Nights of Antinous,” the shameful nature of which the lover who spent them with him well knew. Why count him among the gods—one honored because of impurity? ... And why should you expound on his beauty? Beauty maimed by vice is horrible. . .. Now the grave of the prostituted boy is the temple of Antinous! (Ibid., 4.47) Human beings, especially emperors, when driven by such passions, reveal that the fallen angels inspire their deeds. Clement accuses the poets who perpetuate pagan mythology of “‘corrupting human life . . . subjecting to the yoke of extremest slavery the truly noble freedom of those who once lived as free citizens under heaven” (ibid., 1.4). Humanity’s enslavement to the gods expresses itself concretely in the nearly universal practice of worshiping as gods those who “‘are them- selves only human—and often the worst of humankind.” Clement acknowledges that his own critique of paganism and of the imperial cult, although veiled, verges on treason. Declaring that he intends to reveal the truth masked by the ‘“‘folly and insanity”’ of cus- tom, Clement exhorts his readers to ‘‘strip naked for the contest, and 2 A. D. Nock, “Religious Developments from the Close of the Republic to the Death of Neto,” CAH 489 n. 2; cited by Bowersock, “Greek Intellectuals,” 189,ELAINE PAGELS 319 nobly contend in the stadium of truth” (ibid., 10.96). Clement may know the grim reality his metaphor suggests: those who follow his exhortation, publicly acknowledging the ‘“‘truth’’ he is about to pro- claim, must be prepared to face the public amphitheater as martyrs con- demned to torture and execution. Born in the reign of Antoninus Pius, having grown up subject to Marcus Aurelius, Clement probably wrote his Exhortation during the reign of Commodus. Yet, refraining from naming contemporary rulers directly, he indicts their model and prede- cessor, Alexander the Great: the “low rabble,” driven by insanity, ‘thas dared to deify men—Alexander of Macedon, for example.’’ Whoever worships visible gods and, most pathetic of all, worships actual men as gods, Clement continues, “tis more wretched than even the demons” (ibid., 10.97) themselves, at least, not deceived by the sham! As he writes, Clement visualizes, no doubt, those statues, pictures, and coins representing the emperor’s divinized image and those of his divine ancestors, which, most often depicted in the form of Jupiter, dom- inated his native city of Alexandria. Such images and, especially, he continues, “your Olympian Jupiter, the image of an image, who is greatly out of harmony with truth. ... These ... are but a perishable impression of humanity’ (ibid.). Clement urges his pagan hearers to give up their foolish enslavement to custom, accept baptism, and “enroll yourself as one of God’s people, with heaven your fatherland, and God your lawgiver!”’ (ibid., 10.92). Where, then, can one find images of God on earth? If one no longer reveres cult statues as images of the divine nor regards the living emperors themselves as ‘‘god incarnate,” where can human beings actually encounter the immanent presence of the divine? One finds God’s image, Clement answers, only within the human mind, which is created ‘“‘in the image and likeness of God.”” God’s presence is mani- fested within each person who recognizes, through this image, its true divine prototype: ‘I would ask you, does it not seem to you monstrous that you, human beings who are God’s handiwork . . . should be sub- ject to another master, and, even worse, serve the tyrant instead of the true King” (ibid., 10.92)? Turning, then, from “effigies sculpted in human form,” mere copies of mortal bodies, one must instead use the “eyes of the mind’’ to look inward. For the human mind itself bears the image of the Logos, a living, invisible image that alone offers access to the living, invisible God (ibid., 10.98). If Genesis 6 offers the impetus for rejecting pagan images, then Genesis 1 suggests their replacement: every human being bears the innate and hidden potential for manifesting God’s image on earth! Rather than rejecting the principle of divinization, then, Clement, in320 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW effect, democratizes it: ‘‘the sun of righteousness . . . pervades equally all humankind ... deifying humanity by heavenly teaching” (ibid., 11.114). What our creation in God’s image prefigures, Clement contin- ues, receives perfection through Carist, who “became human, so that you may learn from human nature how humanity may become God”’ (ibid., 1.8). Athenagoras, developing the same theme, declares to the emperors that “humanity, so far as He who created it is concerned, is well ordered . . . in its original nature, which has one common charac- ter for all’’ (/egatio, 25). Athenagoras goes on to say that every human being not only shares with every other an ‘“‘equal and common”’ bodily nature, but also that ‘‘all possess in common the same original power of rationality (Aoyeouds)”* (ibid). Athenagoras barely refrains from stating what anyone with a fraction of the emperors’ political acumen could see at once: Christians are teaching the masses that every one of them, educated or not, is morally and rationally equal to any other, including the emperor himself! Athenagoras knows, of course, that such teaching directly contradicts philosophic views derived from Aristotle, which assume the superior intellectual capacity—and hence the natural right to rule—of an elite few over the mass of their natural inferiors, including slaves, barbari- ans, and women. Athenagoras and his fellows may well be aware that Marcus Aurelius’s preference for Stoicism might have inclined him to agree with them, at least in theory. The apologists draw freely upon philosophic resources, especially Stoic, to amplify their conviction. But discussing Stoic views of universal human brotherhood in elegant conversations with one’s peers differs entirely from allowing “‘atheists”’ suspected of treason to publicize their version of such views among the masses. For all practical purposes, no doubt, Marcus Aurelius would have preferred the official propaganda concerning imperial power as a safer and more expedient form of public indoctrination. So Athenagoras, like Justin and Clement, invokes the creation account to appeal to a universal, divine order in which, they insist, all humanity participates equally. Some 1500 years later, the founding fathers of the United States took a similar stand, invoking Genesis 1 to support their own declaration of independence—religious and political—from the British monarch, George III: ‘‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . . .”’ Their Christian predecessors, not venturing so far as to claim explicit ‘‘rights,”’ » See, e.g., Cora E. Lute, Musonius Rufus: The Roman Socrates (YCS 10; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947) 1-1/2, P. Veyne, “La famille et l'amour sous le Haut- Empire romain,” Annales 33 (1978) 35-63.ELAINE PAGELS 321 nevertheless challenged, through their egalitarian claims, the dominant ideology of imperial power and class privilege. So Clement of Alexan- dria declares that both slave and free must equally philosophize, whether male or female in sex . . . for the individual whose life is framed as ours is may philosophize without education, whether barbarian, Greek, slave, whether an old man, or a boy, or a woman. For moral self- restraint is common to all human beings who have chosen it. And we admit that the same nature exists in every race, and the same virtue. (Strom. 4.8) The African Christian, Minucius Felix, writing a generation later, artic- ulates through the voice of a pagan critic the anger that such claims aroused in educated and thoughtful men: ‘‘Everyone must be outraged—or, rather grieved—that certain people, uneducated, illit- erate, without knowledge, dare to claim certainty concerning nature itself, and the divine being” (Oct. 30). Even the most sophisticated philosophers, the pagan continues, can reach no agreement on such topics, “‘and for good reason; since the mediocrity of human intelli- gence” is so far from understanding the divine that human beings understand virtually nothing about the mysteries of the universe. ‘‘We seem fortunate enough, and happy enough, if we can know ourselves well.” Minucius’s Christian character, however, challenges “‘my brother, who expressed rage, grief, and indignation that illiterate, poor and unskilled people” should presume to discuss subjects that baffle philos- ophers. Let him know that all people are begotten alike, with a capacity and ability for reasoning and emotion, without preference to age, sex, or social status. Nor do they gain wisdom by fortune, but have it implanted in them by nature ... for intelligence is not given to wealth, nor is it acquired by study, but is begotten with the very formation of the mind. (Ibid., 16). So Christians, gathering “‘the refuse of society,” those living in poverty and illiteracy, along with slaves and women, preach to them the welcome news that education, social status, and sex make no essential difference between human beings! Clement castigates any who ‘‘have not perceived the self-determination of the human soul, and its inca- pacity of being treated as a slave in matters that concern the choice of life.”? Clement, fully aware that such teaching bears explosive social potential, actively encourages such behavior: ““We know that children,322 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW women and slaves have often, against their fathers’ or masters’ and husbands’ will, reached the highest pitch of excellence” (Strom. 4.8). And what is that ‘“‘highest pitch of excellence”? What Clement praises is nothing other than open rejection of customs and defiance of the demands of pagan society, leading to the ‘‘glory”’ of public execution as a martyr. Minucius Felix, answering pagan charges that Christians are superstitiously afraid to make the ritual libation, declares that ‘‘our refusal is not an admission of fear, but an assertion of our true liberty!” (Oct. 38) These defiant Christians, however, understood ‘“‘liberty’” very differently than their Roman masters. The Antonine emperors cer- tainly prided themselves on providing a rule that, in Marcus Aurelius’s words, ‘honors above everything else the liberty of the subject.’’ That both invoke the same word does not mean, however, that its meaning is vague. Rather, as de Ste. Croix observes, ‘‘in most cases the mean- ing of libertas is specific enough; the point is that it is capable of expressing very different and even contradictory notions.’’3! Marcus Aurelius, like other men of wealth and power, tended to agree with Cicero that /ibertas meant living under the rule of a ‘“‘good emperor,” that is, an emperor of whom the Senate approved. From his own point of view, then, Marcus and his colleagues admirably provided for liberty, and men who have identified with their reign, from Plutarch through Gibbon, have agreed, praising it as a political golden age. In Gibbon’s famous words, If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty. The labors of these monarchs were overpaid by the immense reward that insepar- ably waited on their success; by the honest pride of virtue, and by the exquisite delight of beholding the general happiness of which they were the authors.*? 3°G. EB. M, de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981) 368. 2? Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 3. Emphasis mine.ELAINE PAGELS 323 Yet there were many—often at the opposite end of the social and Political scale—who dissented. Indeed, it was under the reign of these “good emperors,” famous for their caution and humanity, that the pol- icy of persecuting Christians first became widespread.?? Simultaneously, the province of Egypt, for example, ‘‘was wracked with its most serious disturbances: the revolt of the Jews under Trajan and Hadrian, and those of the Egyptians under Antoninus surnamed Pius, and under the philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius.” How many of those suffering the pressures of imperial power, the historian Naphtali Lewis asks, “‘would have recognized Gibbon’s words as a description of the world in which they lived?”34 Georges de Ste. Croix in his massive Marxist history indicts Chris- tians for failing to criticize the dominant ideology of the Roman empire. The Christians failed, he argues, because their ideas were moulded by “‘irresistable social pressures’35 (which he does not enumerate) and because of what he calls their “complete indifference, as Christians, to the institutions of the world in which they lived.’%° Yet Christian apologists certainly did attack not only the pagan gods and the imperial cult}? but also the traditional construct of the origins of the Roman empire. They offered in its place a damning and, in effect, ““demythologizing’’ view of Roman history. Tertullian, for example, challenges ‘‘the groundless assertion of those who maintain that, as a reward for their unique devotion to religion, the Romans have been raised to such heights of power as to become masters of the world” (Apol. 25). Is “the progress of the empire,” then, as Roman patriotic myth contends, ‘‘the reward the gods have paid to the Romans for their devotion?” On the contrary, says Tertullian, “‘if I am not mistaken, kingdoms and empires are acquired by wars, and expanded by victories. Moreover, you cannot have wars and victories without taking—and often destroying—cities” (ibid.). In their wars of conquest, he contin- ues, the Romans have destroyed and despoiled temples indiscriminately with houses and palaces. The Romans succeeded, he concludes, by subordinating their purported piety to their obsession for conquest. Minucius Felix, following Tertullian, offers his own hostile sketch of Roman history. Against those who say that the Romans “‘deserved 33 Hammond notes in The Antonine Monarchy, 211. > Naphtali Lewis, Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) 207. 35 De Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, 435. % Ibid., 439. 37 See, e.g., Tertullian pol. 10; Minucius Felix Oct. 29.324 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW their power’? because of their consummate piety, he argues that the empire originated from a defensive pact formed by criminals and mur- derers. ‘Did not (the Romans) in their origin, when gathered together and fortified by crime, grow by the terror of their own ferocity?” First they started wars, drove their neighbors from their lands, and destroyed nearby cities through military force. Capturing, raping, and enslaving their victims, they increased their power: ‘‘All their cities are built from the spoils of violence, that is, from the ruins of other cities . . . The Romans were not so great because they were religious, but because they were sacriligious with impunity” (Oct. 25). From this perspective on imperial power Christians took a very different view of liberty from that of their Roman masters. For, as de Ste. Croix observes, In the later republic there was a totally different kind of libertas, and for those who held it the optimate version of libertas—that of Cicero & Co.—was servitus (slavery, political subjection) while their libertas was stigmatized by Cicero as mere licentia (license, lawlessness)~a word used also by the Roman rhetorician Cornificius as the equivalent of the standard Greek word for free- dom of speech, parrhesia.® Christians, so long as they remained a persecuted illegal minority sect, sided, predictably, with the latter position. Spokesmen as diverse as Justin, Athenagoras, Clement, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix agreed that baptism conveys, above all, the gift of liberty: liberation internally from the rule of the passions, and externally, from enslavement to cus- tom and from coercion by imperial authority. Minucius Felix draws an unsparing picture of the Christian who, undergoing torture for his faith, maintains liberty: How beautiful to God is the spectacle when a Christian does battle with pain, when he is drawn up against threats, and punishment, and torture; when, mocking the noise of death, he treads underfoot the horror of the executioner, when he raises up his liberty against kings and princes, and yields to God alone ... when, triumphant and victorious, he tramples upon the very man who has passed sentence upon him. (Oct. 37) 38De Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, 368.ELAINE PAGELS 325 Tertullian goes so far as to state the radical doctrine that each human being has the right to religious liberty: ‘“‘It so should be considered quite absurd for one person to compel another to honor the gods, when he should voluntarily, and in the awareness of his own need, seek their favor, in the liberty which is his right” (Apol. 28). But acting out their version of liberty by refusing to perform ritual obeisance to the gods and to the emperor’s genius marked the Chris- tians as likely targets for arrest, torture, and execution. And so long as they remained members of an illegal society, suspected of treason, the boldest among them maintained that, since demons controlled the imperial government and inspired its agents, the believer could gain freedom at their hands only in death.