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Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from

Augustus to Constantine. By J. B. Rives.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. xvii + 334 pp.

Gregory T. Armstrong

Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture / Volume 66 / Issue 03 / September

1997, pp 543 - 544
DOI: 10.2307/3169460, Published online: 28 July 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/

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How to cite this article:

Gregory T. Armstrong (1997). Church History: Studies in Christianity and
Culture, 66, pp 543-544 doi:10.2307/3169460

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BOOK REVIEWS 543

Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine. By J. B.

RIVES. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. xvii + 334 pp.
This study of religious life in Carthage during its most cosmopolitan era is
well documented with literary and archaeological evidence. Rives carefully
attends to the surviving inscriptions from religious and civic monuments of the
region and provides a thorough account of civic and religious life in Roman
Carthage and in its smaller dependency, Thugga, some 110 kilometers to the
southwest. Thugga preserves much more archaeological and epigraphical
evidence than Carthage, which permits a detailed analysis of the local elite.
Maps show the locations of public buildings, temples, and shrines in each city.
The book analyzes the interaction of religions in these two communities,
including Judaism and Christianity and the older cults of Punic (or Phoeni-
cian), Greek, and Egyptian deities. Most important were the various forms of
the Roman imperial cult, including the emperor himself, his family, the
Capitoline Triad (Jupiter,Juno, and Minerva), Roma (the divinized city), and
"the genius of the emperor" and "various divinized abstractions associated with
him (e.g., Victoria and Fortuna)" (p. 13). The imperial cult played a key role
"in creating a collective religious identity" for the empire which coexisted with
the equally Roman "civic model" of religion. The issue of religious coexistence
was critical for Jews and Christians.
Rives describes how religion functioned in the life of Carthage and for its
leading families. Many practices can be linked to the social and political
structures of the community. A particular focus is on the "supra-municipal
sources of authority, including the emperor, the governor, and the provincial
assembly" (p. 14). From Julius Caesar's establishment of a permanent colony at
Carthage, the city enjoyed Roman patronage, and the organization of public
religion in this era, especially the role of magistrates and priests, is carefully
examined. The local elite (the ordo decurionum) played the major role, paying
for temples, ceremonies, and the games that marked religious festivals. The role
of the ordo was like that of the senate in Rome, and most religious activities
honored the emperor. The famous Carthaginian games were held by imperial
permission, and the cult of Caelestis as the supreme deity of Carthage was
encouraged by emperors.
The author makes clear that the emperor, the proconsul, and the local elite
could enhance their status and strengthen their mutual bonds through patron-
age of religion. The provincial assembly which mediated between emperor and
municipality also had political and religious concerns. In all these relationships
the model for religion was civic rather than imperial. Carthage imitated Rome
and its most important cults and thereby was bound to the empire.
Chapter 2 examines the local elite in Thugga who played a significant role in
providing religious monuments and sponsoring cultic activities for African,
Punic, and Roman deities, notably Saturn, Pluto, and Aesculapius. As in
544 CHURCH HISTOR\
Carthage, the sacra publica or religious life of the community was civic or local
no matter how large the presence of Roman elements which encouraged
identity with the empire. The local elite, however, did not exercise real
authority, and "public religion gradually lost its political significance" (p. 171).
Such civic religion could not provide an official religion for the empire as a
whole, and religion throughout the empire became increasingly diverse and
beyond the control of the emperor.
The third chapter, "The Failure of the Civic Model," explores the variety of
cults and private religious activity, including magic, in Carthage. Cult associa-
tions such as those of Mithras, Dionysus, and the Magna Mater flourished. That
of Saturn is cited as "an ethnic cult." Jewish and Christian nonconformity
posed a special challenge to Rome. A crisis arose as religious identities in the
empire became more diverse just as "the empire was in many other respects
becoming increasingly homogeneous" (p. 249). Out of this arose the persecu-
tion of Christians.
The concluding chapter explores imperial efforts at religious conformity in
the third and early fourth centuries. Decius demanded sacrifice to "the gods"
without real definition and "tried to treat the empire as though it were a city"
(p. 260). Maximin Daia tried to establish imperial oversight for all the local or
civic priesthoods in a positive sense, "almost certainly drawing his inspiration
from . . . Christianity" (p. 261). Constantine saw the need for religious unity in
a way which coincided with the desire of Christian churchmen for religious
uniformity.
Rives analyzes three models for organizing religion in the Roman empire of
this era: mystery cults, diaspora Judaism, and Christianity. Tertullian and
Cyprian provide two distinct concepts of authority, the former grounding it in
"the collective faith of the members" (p. 283) or charismatic authority, and the
latter in the clergy (especially the bishops) or hierarchical authority-. Cyprian
put episcopal authority into practice during the Decian persecution, and this
model together with the holding of episcopal councils was available to Constan-
tine when he sought political and religious unity for his empire. The author
significantly increases our understanding of religion in the Roman empire with
this monograph.
Sweet Briar College GREGORY T. ARMSTRONG
Sweet Briar, Virginia

Gregory ofNyssa's Treatise on the Inscriptions of the Psalms: Introduction, Translation

and Notes. By RONALD E. HEINE. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995. xii + 221 pp. $55.00.
As Heine correctly remarks in his introduction, "Gregory ofNyssa's treatise