The Rise of Religious Competition in the Roman Empire

The Religious History of the Roman Empire

John North
Subject: Ancient Religion Online Publication Date: Dec 2017
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.114
Summary and Keywords
Historians of antiquity used to argue that, from the 6th century BCE onwards, the reli
gious traditions of Greek and Roman pagans became an empty shell maintained by elites
who no longer had any belief in them except as a device for keeping the masses sub
servient. In recent decades this theory, always highly speculative and over-dependent on
the views of ancient philosophers, has been largely abandoned. In fact, down to the 2nd,
even the 3rd century CE, pagan worship still seems to have been an important element in
the way cities and communities of the Roman Empire worked, sustaining the power of rul
ing elites, but also defining the way individuals expressed their private concerns and
problems. For the overwhelming majority, the old deities kept their hold, and there is a
strong tradition of dedications, in fulfillment of vows to gods and goddesses, that bears
witness to a continued tradition of individual piety. At the same time, although the Empire
was successful from the 1st century BCE onwards in maintaining widespread order and
prosperity, the nature of city life was changing in fundamental respects. With stability
came a high degree of mobility, and cities of both East and West came to find themselves
with religious groups living in tense proximity, first of Jews, then of Christians,
Manichaeans, and others. To those with a taste for broad generalizations, it has been ap
pealing to interpret these developments as a great conflict between polytheism and
monotheism, some rating monotheism as so superior that it could be treated as an in
evitable step up in the evolutionary progression of the human race. Paganism was there
fore doomed in advance.
What is certain is that pagan religion and its many deities became the target of a concen
trated attack by the Christian Fathers; but that alone can hardly explain why traditional
worship lost its appeal to so many of its adherents in quite a short period of the 4th cen
tury CE: pagans suddenly began to abandon age-old practices and join new cults that they
had once despised. Efforts at resistance to Christianity, in particular, once thought very
important, prove to have been evanescent at best in the light of recent research. To find a
new understanding of these very profound changes in religious history, analysis is need
ed: first, what were the fundamental differences between pagan traditionalism and the
competing religions, and, second, how did relations between religious groups change
over time. Answers cannot lie in studying only Christians, or only Jews, or only pagans, as
is still too often the practice, but rather in the nature of their interactions with one anoth
Page 1 of 31
PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, RELIGION (oxfordre.com/religion). (c) Oxford University Press
USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited. Please see applicable Privacy Policy
and Legal Notice (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).
date: 04 September 2019

er. The kind of religious competition for members that characterized this situation was
quite a new phenomenon to the great majority of the inhabitants of the Empire. They
were not accustomed to dealing with competing religious groups each with their own
ideas and doctrines. Pagan deities had always needed to attract worshippers to their
sanctuaries; but they were defined by myths, rituals, and the functions they performed,
not by having distinct theologies or creeds. It was the coming of competition and conflict
that radically changed the religious landscape and generated new elements in religious
life. Meanwhile, once the Emperors had adopted Christianity, paganism, which had al
ways been involved in the exercise of central power, retreated to the margins.
Keywords: pagan, Christian, Jewish, beliefs, ritual, religious groups, competition, power, polytheism, monotheism
Religious Change and the Rise of Competition

in the Roman Empire
This article sketches the main lines of change in the religious life of the region ruled by
the Romans, including much of Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa, from the later
Republic (c. 200 BCE–c. 31 BCE) into the earlier centuries of the Roman Empire (down to
the 4th century CE). The changes in question took place gradually over these centuries;
for that very reason, they were not for the most part observed or explained by contempo
raries and have to be reconstructed or inferred by historians. One major theme is the ter
minology used to discuss the practices, ideas, and institutions of the Greco-Roman world
when they were dealing with their gods and goddesses. This is inescapable, because of
the quite different implications of the words as we use them today.
What we can be certain about is that, in this period, there were major and wide-ranging
changes: the world as known to the Greeks and Romans in the centuries before the birth
of Christ was overwhelmingly populated by men and women who worshipped numerous
supernatural beings, classified today as pagan gods and goddesses, those of the Greeks,
Romans, Etruscans, Celts, Germans, and many other peoples; by the time of the later Ro
man Empire, the descendants of that population were divided between those (by then di
minishing in number) who were still pagans and many others who were Jews, or Chris
tians, of varying beliefs, or of other commitments. All these groups, and others, must have
been in competition for membership and this competition is one of the new elements in
the situation that need to be recognized and, if possible, explained.
To some extent, there would have been competition for members and resources in earlier
periods as well, but the basis of traditional pagan loyalty was largely determined by the
community to which you belonged. The gods were the gods of your city or community:
you might prefer to join particular local groups or worship in particular sanctuaries or
take vows to the god or goddess you thought most appropriate to your case; but, so long
as you belonged to a particular community, there was no question of joining another reli
gion, unless you moved your domicile to a different area.
Page 2 of 31

The traditional explanation for the rate of religious change in this period combines the
presence of new religious groups, especially Christians, with the supposed long-term de
terioration of pagan practice. The Roman antiquarian Varro (116–27 BCE) claimed, ac
cording to Saint Augustine, that he was saving the gods of his city from neglect and for
getfulness by including them in his writings.1 Modern historians of antiquity used to ar
gue that, roughly from the 6th and 5th centuries BCE onwards, the inherited religious tra
ditions of the Greek and Roman pagans were becoming an empty shell, maintained by
elites who no longer had any faith in them, except as devices for keeping the masses of
their cities subservient. In recent decades, this theory, always highly speculative and
over-dependent on the views of ancient philosophers who did discuss the deities and their
existential status, has largely been abandoned by historians of religion.2 In fact, down to
the 2nd, even the 3rd century CE, pagan worship still seems to have been an important
element in the way cities and communities of the Roman Empire worked, sustaining the
power of ruling elites, but also providing the means for individuals to deal with their pri
vate concerns and problems. There is every reason to think that the old deities kept their
hold; there is, for example, a strong tradition of dedications in fulfillment of vows to gods
and goddesses that bears witness to a continued and developing tradition of individual
piety.3
There was, and is, some seeming support for the older, negative view in the surviving
writers of the period, not least in individual texts such as that of Varro mentioned above:
But when he so much worshipped these same gods, and so much believed that
they ought to be worshipped, as to assert, in that same literary work of his, that he
was afraid they might perish, not through a hostile attack, but through the citi
zens’ neglect; and said he was rescuing them from this disaster and so in his
works storing them up and saving them in the memory of good men—an achieve
ment more valuable than those reported of Metellus saving Vesta’s sacred relics
from the flames, or Æneas saving the Penates from burning Troy.4
If this is a fair summary of Varro’s text by Augustine, it does imply that Varro thought
there was neglect of the deities in his own day, but leaves open the question of whether
his ambition was to restore their worship in his city, or merely to protect their memory
from total oblivion. We need to remember too that, if deities were being forgotten, they
were not the great gods and goddesses, but minor ones, whom Varro himself was digging
out from old records. The fact is that the forgetting of ancient deities and the discovery of
new ones went hand in hand in the life of Rome, which had countless deities great and
small.5 It would be fairer to characterize Varro’s views as a mixture of criticisms of his
contemporaries with regrets, devotion, and nostalgia for a lost golden age of a truer piety,
in which he certainly believed—rightly or wrongly. Whether deliberately or not,
Augustine’s summary leaves us without any clear idea of what Varro did think about the
Roman gods; but Augustine goes on to make quite clear that whatever, in Varro’s view,
should be “preserved in the memory of good men” was, in Augustine’s own view, so re
Page 3 of 31

volting that it should not be read by anybody at all. The clash of cultures here is brutally
exposed, but the interpretation of the passage remains highly problematic.6
It was not so much, however, the views of contemporary critics such as Varro that under
pinned modern skepticism and sustained it for so long, as the hostile, contemptuous atti
tude expressed by the great Christian writers of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries CE, of
whom Augustine was the prime example.7 Their business was to discredit traditional reli
gious practices as a route toward propagating their new faith and destroying any loyalty
to the old gods and goddesses that still survived in the Roman West. To do this more ef
fectively, they ransacked pagan Latin writings, particularly those of Varro, for everything
that could be regarded by Christian standards as repulsive and irreligious; or that might,
alternatively, betray the secret that the leading so-called pagans held views quite differ
ent from those of the credulous masses, but concealed them for fear of losing control.
There is no way, and no reason, to challenge all the criticism of pagan gods offered by
Christian writers such as Lactantius, Arnobius, and Augustine. At the same time, it is
clearly not the best way of assessing the character of any religious tradition to base one’s
views primarily on material accumulated by its open enemies with the explicit purpose of
destroying it; but this is in effect what the critics of Roman religion did in the course of
the 19th century. However, since so much has been made in the past of the assumed infe
riority of pagan religion, it is important to recall at once some of its very great strengths:
pagan gods and goddesses were in many ways far more accessible to the worshipper than
is their universal successor of today: they had human appearance and could be depicted
in familiar guise; they appeared in dreams to the pious; they sent messages by recognized
routes (oracles, diviners, signs, and prodigies); they were powerful enough to help with
human problems, but not so removed from human life as to be beyond imagination; they
belonged to local communities and were deeply involved in local festivals and rituals. In
many ways they were more like fellow-citizens than slave-masters in the sky. It is quite
anachronistic to assume that the educated elites of the ancient world, with whom modern
classical scholars tend to have strong sympathies, shared modern monotheistic assump
tions.
New Interpretations of the Religious Situation

The radical revision of the earlier negative judgments has resulted in part from detailed
re-examination of texts that show quite clearly the great care with which the Romans pre
served and maintained the regular worship of their gods and goddesses, not just in the
1st century BCE, but throughout the early centuries of the Empire,8 partly from a recog
nition that the Roman poets reflect the seriousness of their concern with their own tradi
tions and myths;9 partly from a recognition that it makes little sense to argue for a situa
tion in the last two centuries of the Republic in which the Romans claimed, as they did, to
be the most religious of peoples10 and were in fact uniquely successful in their enterpris
es of war, conquest, and the formation of an Empire, exactly where the gods were sup
posed to help, but never made connections between gods and triumphs.11 The fact is that
Page 4 of 31

the deities of Rome were richly rewarded by the successful (and grateful?) imperialists
with temples and gifts throughout this period.12 The only escape from this argument is to
postulate that there was deep division between the skeptical ruling elite and the credu
lous masses, a division for which there is little or no serious evidence.13 Of course, here
as anywhere else, there will have been individual skeptics and occasional anecdotes,
whether apocryphal or not, to imply the currency of skeptical attitudes:
It is a well-known saying of Cato’s that it astonished him that one haruspex
did not burst out laughing when he saw another.14
Haruspices are not Roman priests, but Etruscans. All the same, they played a major role
in the religious rituals of Cato’s lifetime (234–149 BCE) and the sneer against them is un
deniable.
The unifying assumption that underlay these 19th and 20th century judgments was at
root quite a simple one, derived from religious assumptions shared by the critics and
their ancient Christian authorities, which they would have regarded as a common-sense
assumption, scarcely meriting discussion or debate. In its basic form, this would have
been the conviction that any rational person would agree, once it was put to her or him,
that the idea of there being a single power controlling the cosmos and its working was an
infinitely more powerful and plausible conception than that of a multiplicity of distinct
deities with limited, local overlapping powers. What is now being recognized is that un
derstanding the religious ideas of an ancient city cannot be achieved by such a simple ef
fort of modern common sense. It should be accepted that we need a new vocabulary and
a new set of conceptions, if we want to grasp how ancient human beings interacted with
ancient supernatural ones. Our understanding of the religious life of the ancients is inter
woven with the problems of the vocabulary we use to describe it. The discussions that fol
low should not be seen as debates about words, but attempts to disentangle the connec
tion of words with institutions and actions.
However successful the gods, goddesses, men, and women of Rome had been in the re
publican centuries, the 1st century BCE saw the system fall into political conflict, confu
sion, and eventually civil war. But Augustus Caesar, the victor and heir to Julius Caesar,
re-established civic peace and resumed the rapid expansion of the Empire’s borders until
it stretched from Spain to Syria and took in swathes of central Europe. The new order
created by Augustus was remarkably successful in maintaining widespread order and
prosperity, and during these years, the nature of city life was changing in fundamental re
spects. With long periods of widespread stability, travel, and trading, there came a high
degree of mobility of peoples and deities. The cities of both East and West came to find
themselves with groups living in tense proximity with Greeks and Romans: first there
came groups of Jews, Egyptians, and Syrians, identified on the basis of their ethnicity; lat
er, groups of Christians and others, identifying themselves more specifically by their reli
gious commitments.15 One effect of this population movement must have been to create
Page 5 of 31

new linkages at least between urban centers across the width of the Empire. This situa
tion implies two areas of change:
1. For Greeks and Romans, at least those living in the major cities of both East and
West, living in proximity with groups of foreign origin and different religious prac
tices must have become a familiar part of life.
2. The universal prevalence of slavery throughout the Empire will have meant that
the same would have been true even in their homes and on their farms.
Elite Romans probably did not like associating with either of these groups of newcomers,
but their existence must over time have widened their knowledge and ideas, arguably in
cluding toleration.
The Romans did not seek to regulate the lives of the peoples in their provinces, beyond
what they thought necessary to keep order and collect taxes. Worship of the imperial fam
ily was expected, but the initiatives were often local and not imposed from the center. In
their religious activities, as in their civic lives more generally, local elites were allowed
freedom of action in return for accepting and largely administering Roman rule in their
areas, subject to limited oversight by Roman administrators. The names of Roman deities
are found widely, but often as translations of local gods and goddesses. There is no ques
tion that the Empire provided both the context within which the mixture of different prac
tices and the evolution of new ones became possible.16
Discussions Triggered by New Interpretations

What Was Paganism?
As Greek and Roman enquirers looked around the world they knew, they found a great
deal of similarity, as well as variety, in detail between the religious practices and ideas of
their own societies and those of their contemporaries in other parts of the world they
knew. For the most part, they would have found a multiplicity of deities; their gendered
division; the regular use of domestic animals as sacrificial victims; the presence and pow
er of priests and diviners of various kinds; a deeply local character in the activities of
communities, cities, and tribes; and a close connection between the rituals, the rulers,
and the authorities of their societies.
Because they found such widespread similarity, they did not look to classify or give a
name to this type of activity, which seemed to them a normal aspect of the life of human
societies. We today use the word paganism to describe such religious activities; this pro
vides a useful name (which will be used in this account) for this huge range of religious
practices. But the word is a modern invention, intended to bring such practices into line
for classification purposes with Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and others.
Meanwhile, the Latin word paganus—pagan in English—was not used before the Roman
imperial period and was invented by the early Christians to refer to those not of their
faith; a recent and highly plausible explanation of the word is that it simply meant a civil
Page 6 of 31

ian, as opposed to soldiers in the army of Christ.17 Before this invention, nobody thought
of her- or himself as a pagan; no such word existed. At the same time, it is important to be
aware of the messages encoded in this invented –ism language: Christianity is not an –ism
like the others (apparently implying that it, unlike them, conveys the truth), and pagan
ism is further put in its place by the insistence that it (unlike all the others) must be
spelled with a lower case p: Judaism, we write, Christianity—but paganism. At the same
time, the word is misleading to the non-expert. There are some characteristics that are an
essential part of an –ism religion. The member, or at least the student, must be able to ex
pound the beliefs and doctrines, as well as the rituals and ceremonies that go with the
name. But so far as we can tell, there is no real common ground among the many vari
eties of pagans beyond the common belief in there being a substantial number of deities
and the attachment of importance to the performing of rituals.
It is true that the ancients already sought to identify equivalences between at least their
high gods and goddesses and those of neighboring peoples. As early as Herodotus Book
2, written in the 5th century BCE, Greek deities are identified with Egyptian ones.18
Somewhat earlier, Roman deities were matched with Greek ones.19 Similarly, Roman
deities were later matched with Celtic ones by Caesar in his Gallic Wars.20 We do not
know how this process of identification started, whether through practical contacts or
theoretical research, but it must have fostered a general sense that all normal human be
ings worshipped supernatural beings, with whom they interacted. In fact the assumption
was that they worshipped largely the same gods and goddesses, but called them by differ
ent, local names. What happened could therefore be called the translation of a set of
names into the corresponding set of Greek or Latin ones, which must have presupposed
that the correspondences between the deities were already established, albeit newly iden
tified.21
If this is the right interpretation of the overall situation, various implications must follow.
First, it is confusing to use the term polytheist, which implies an awareness of and rejec
tion of monotheism. It is important to be conscious of this point because, throughout the
centuries, when pagan cults were widespread, we know that in many societies, language
could be used that we think of as monotheistic: the many gods and goddesses who were
the object of worship could be spoken of as if they formed a unity, or one particular deity
might be treated as supreme over the others. Second, it is not at all surprising that there
was no effective conception of a religious war between the various pagan peoples, tribes,
and cities: the gods of both sides were duly evoked (the playwright Plautus has a neat
parody of this custom).22 There can have been no conception of going to war to destroy
the religion of the enemy, when there was no awareness of their having a religion of their
own rather than worshipping the same gods, each in their own way. We might call this a
form of toleration, but it is toleration rooted in indifference not in principle: pagan ob
servers might see the customs of their neighbors as weird or eccentric, but rarely as
wrong or wicked. If they did see good reason to condemn a particular religious practice,
they felt no compunction based on principle to abstain from banning or expelling the
practice.
Page 7 of 31

The Concept of Religion in the Roman Period
A crucial issue is what ought to be included under the category “religion,” if we are not to
avoid using the word at all.23 There is no word in either Latin or Greek that corresponds
to the range of what we understand by modern terms, but historians often and legitimate
ly introduce terminology that does not correspond to the vocabulary of the past, as long
as they define it and relate it to the conditions of the period. Thus the word religion might
apply to the complex of rituals, festivals, and practices related to superhuman agents and
supervised by the Roman colleges of priests. That definition would exclude areas of activi
ty that we would expect to be included, such as theological ideas and discussions, spiritu
al advice, guidance for individuals, and explicit concern for the welfare of the poor and
sick. However, before pursuing this line of thought, it needs to be remembered that a
great deal was thought and done in a city-state, at the level of local areas, families, asso
ciations, and groups of various kinds. Rituals wherever conducted would have fallen in
principle under the supervision of the city’s priests, but ideas and opinions about gods
and goddesses did not. The point was crisply made already by Francis Bacon.24
In that case, it is not so much that the Romans ignored areas that moderns regard as es
sential components of a religion, as that they did not regard such areas as parts of a sin
gle complex conception, but rather categorized them separately. For instance, theology
was generally seen as part of philosophy having little to do with priests, diviners, or ritu
als; religiosity, another word for which there is no Latin equivalent, belonged with myth
and poetry; while spiritual support and comfort would have seemed part of family or city
life, or perhaps belonging in the sphere of clubs and associations.
It would follow that Christianity, when established, did not so much invent a new form of
religious life as bring activities and ideas previously thought of separately under the over
sight of ecclesiastical authority. This is why it is so misleading to use the same word priest
for both pagan and early Christian religious authorities. Pagan priests were primarily con
cerned with rituals and, in their capacity as priests, paid little attention to beliefs, while
early Christians had little time for rituals and soon began to define and argue about their
beliefs. Roman literature, however, does give us at least one example of a priest offering
an individual spiritual advice: this happens when the main character in the Golden Ass
seeks priestly help as he moves towards acceptance of initiation into the cult of Isis.25
Other elements that were to play an important part in later religious lives, such as mar
tyrdom and conversion, seem not yet to have existed in the republican period. For us,
they serve to mark some of the profoundest changes brought about in the years of con
flict between the pagan Roman authorities and the new religious forces of the imperial
years.
The Character and Role of Beliefs and Believing
Romans, like Greeks, placed a very high value on inherited rituals and on their scrupu
lous performance. Even the smallest aberration could lead to the failure of the ritual; if
the failure could not be remedied, perhaps by the repetition of the ritual, the conse
Page 8 of 31

quences might be dire. This heavy emphasis on the ritual side of religious action has re
cently led to the controversial re-assessment of the part played by belief.26 In this debate,
there should be no need to question that most Romans accepted the gods and goddesses
as a regular and unavoidable part of their lives: all social and political actions involved
some act of worship to them; their images were visible everywhere; buildings and offer
ings for them were ubiquitous. What they might well have said themselves, had they been
asked, is not that they “believed,” but that they “knew” the gods existed: the doubt about
it is ours, not theirs.27 There is therefore much to be said for the view that belief in the
traditional deities in the simplest sense of the word was so much taken for granted that it
attracted little attention or conflict. We might call this implicit as opposed to explicit be
lief.
Belief, in modern religious contexts, is inextricably linked with doubt: both belief and
doubt imply uncertainty as to the truth, so the believer is by definition the one who re
jects his or her doubts. Logically, at least, believer and doubter ought to share recogni
tion of the uncertainty, though in practice they usually do not. This phenomenon must be
limited to circles where religion is a subject of regular debate and discussion and the is
sue of believing attracts a great deal of conscious attention. We do know of sustained de
bates between Greek intellectuals from the 6th and 5th century BCE onwards.28 Such de
bates concerned fundamental questions about whether the gods existed, whether they
were powerful or powerless, or were simply uninvolved in human affairs.29 But we do not
know of anxieties and interrogations about belief in the context of civic life or the duties
of priests or magistrates. Persecution does take place, as discussed here, but it is very un
usual and may have been linked far more to practices than to belief.
The proposition that pagan religion was primarily a matter of performance rather than
belief can lead—and has— led to the suggestion that ritual action was supposed to take
place with no accompanying cognitive activity at all. One approach to the evidence, some
times adopted, is to argue that actual beliefs can be inferred from ritual actions: so we
might reconstruct, say, those that underpinned Roman concern about warning messages
from the gods. However, reconstruction of this kind is hardly needed when a good deal of
recorded thinking does make the required connection between ritual and cognition. It
might be argued:
1. That belief (conviction) was simply taken for granted in religious contexts, but not
foregrounded, as it was going to be in in later religious systems. There were no
creeds or religious books; no systems for seeking to unify the ideas of citizens; no au
thority looking out for aberrant ideas.
2. That ritual inspired reflection—that ritual was good to think with and promoted in
novation and exploration, precisely because religious claims always border on the ab
surd and incomprehensible. Ovid’s Fasti, a poem wholly devoted to the Roman calen
dar, consists of reflections on ritual, sometimes serious and respectful, sometimes
cheeky and flippant, sometimes diversionary and entertaining.30
Page 9 of 31

3. That the performance of a ritual was in itself a form of expressing belief, for in
stance that the relations between men and deities were expressed by the perfor
mance of a sacrifice.31
All these possible directions of understanding are compatible with the proposition that
ritual rather than belief was the main focus of pagan worship, without committing to any
total separation of ritual performance from cognition. In different contexts, all these
forms of thinking can be seen as creative elements in Roman culture.
New Groups
Persecution for Your Beliefs?
If it is true, as argued today, that Roman emphasis lay on ritual not on belief, we should
expect that persecution on religious grounds could scarcely arise, since it belongs to a sit
uation in which there was a common demand for orthodoxy of belief and a search for
heresies, as familiarly in later periods. It is, indeed, a widespread suggestion that perse
cution arrived together with monotheism or at least emerged from the conflict between
monotheism and polytheism, and that pagan polytheism was in essence tolerant.32 There
is, however, at least one spectacular example in the Roman republican period of a reli
gious movement throughout Italy that was methodically suppressed by the Roman author
ities, in a series of campaigns starting in 186 BCE. The events of this year are not reliably
known in any great detail.33 But there is enough evidence to prove that groups devoted to
the worship of one deity, Bacchus, were widespread in a number of areas of Italy; that
membership of the groups crossed class, gender, and ethnic boundaries; that the Bacchic
groups were violently suppressed, and that the senate subsequently ordered radical re
form of their future permissible structure.34
The terms of the Senate’s reform agenda forms a picture of how the groups had been
working in the years before the persecution: the Bacchus worshippers were organized in
groups; these groups had both priests and lay officials (magistri); there were oaths bind
ing the groups and protecting their secrecy; the members held a common fund; finally,
meeting places were used at regular intervals, said to have increased infrequency.35 The
Senate’s future settlement allowed worship to continue and female, though not male,
priests were to officiate, but it banned all the other practices. Persecution on this scale
was a rare event in paganism, and nothing similar happened until the Christians had be
gun to establish themselves. All the same, many aspects of the situation are illuminating:
first, the priestly authorities of Rome played no part in events, while the actors were con
suls, senate, and soldiers; second, there seems to have been no vocabulary in use that
specifically belonged to a religious area. To express membership, they used the rather
odd phrase “they must not go to the Bacchic women.”36
It would be a serious misunderstanding to infer from the apparent lack of priestly involve
ment, or specialized vocabulary, that the persecution of the Bacchists was regarded as a
Page 10 of 31

purely political decision. The Senate, the body that took the major decisions, was the
highest authority on all state matters, while the priests, many of whom were senators,
acted as advisors not decision-makers on matters concerning the gods and goddesses.
Moreover, the persecution was a highly sensitive decision: Bacchus was a powerful god
who had strong traditions all over Italy, which explains why the final settlement made
such concessions to the continuation of his worship. The important message here is that
Rome at this date had no idea of a separate religious decision-making area. There were
no boundaries between the political, the social, and the religious.
Two conclusions follow from these arguments: first, that it is quite wrong to claim that
paganism was tolerant by its nature and that persecution was invented only later; the sit
uation is rather that most of religious life did not generate conflicts leading to the sup
pression of any groups, but that the Roman authorities, when they saw a situation they
thought dangerous, acted without compunction. Second, there was no separate religious
sphere controlled by the priests. The senate decided on the persecution, and they carried
it out. The great priestly colleges were powerful in the area of ritual rules and conduct,
but they were very far from running a religion as we would understand that conception
today.
Religious Associations in the Roman Empire
There is a great deal of evidence concerned with associations, called in Latin collegia, in
Greek thiasoi. These groups have quite a wide variety of functions, but also a common
structure: they are usually connected to the worship of some deity and have a priest or
priestess; the bulk of their members were citizens or freedmen, though slaves in small
numbers were also often admitted; they could be democratic in their working, but have
non-priestly leaders of different grades; they generally have a common fund. They some
times have regulations, defining their activities. It used to be argued that their basic func
tion was as burial clubs for the benefit of poor citizens, in effect to insure the costs of the
funeral.37 But it is clear today that this is too narrow a definition; the balance of their ac
tivities varied and they could be adapted to different purposes. In general, they cannot be
characterised as specifically religious institutions, but we have seen that the Bacchic
groups of the 3rd and 2nd century BCE used this structure and certainly were religious in
character. Otherwise, they might be simply social groups, or they might, especially in the
troubles of the late Republic, be involved in political agitation.38
Such groups were recognized by the state and in some circumstances could be controlled
or even on occasion forbidden by the authorities.39 But they were an accepted feature of
Roman life under the Empire, and they clearly provided a recognized structure within
which a group of fellow worshippers or immigrants from a particular area could operate
and organize their social life. The structure of the association was useful to non-pagans as
an acceptable form of being socially visible, but Christians could hardly make use of it
while in fear of persecution. It did, however, accommodate the worshippers of Isis, Attis,
and Mithras. These quite clearly presented themselves as having origins in the Eastern
Mediterranean area, Isis coming from Egypt, Attis from Western Asia, Mithras from Per
Page 11 of 31

sia.40 There is some disagreement among scholars about the seriousness with which the
claim to remote origins should be seen, especially in the case of Mithraism, which was
quite probably first invented in the form we know it during the first century CE in the
West.41
These so-called “Oriental Religions” have sometimes been put forward as stepping-stones
on the way to Christianity, reflecting the inevitability of evolution away from polytheism
and toward monotheism. Clearly the members of such groups were, like the Bacchus wor
shippers of the 2nd century BCE, focusing their religious energies on one particular deity
in preference to others; it is also possible that the effect would have been to create more
space for individual religious experience than had the traditional civic cults.42 They also
had an appeal to women and by doing so may well have attracted support and a certain
amount of hostility from men.43 In fact, however, all these cults seem to have been com
patible with and acceptable to the pagan authorities; after the Bacchanalia, they attract
ed little persecution, though a good deal of misogynistic abuse from satirists.44 The char
acteristic step that marks the beginning of conflict between pagans and monotheists is
not the proclamation of one god, but the condemnation of pagan gods, whether in the
form of denying their power altogether or calling it demonic. Either way, we have no evi
dence that this conflict arose between the many varieties of paganism. Henotheism, in
the sense of emphasizing one of a divine collectivity without denying the others, is a phe
nomenon that could be and was accommodated within the very wide boundaries of pagan
practice.45
Paganism and Christianity
The most sensitive relationship for the present discussion is that between Christians, who
were the most creative and innovative of the new groups, and pagans who at least during
the 1st and 2nd centuries CE provided the greatest supply of potential converts. The in
crease in the size of the Christian population was initially very slow and incoherent; but
by the end of the third century CE, Christians constituted a major element of the Empire’s
population.46 It is very hard to find evidence of Christian efforts to find converts, as one
might expect after a long period of expansion.47 It can never be easy in peaceful times to
persuade people to abandon the religious practices inherited from their forefathers and
mothers, and yet there is little direct evidence of a vigorous Christian mission after the
period of Paul and his contemporaries; there is one pagan author who claims that the
Christians used to approach families by talking to the women and slaves of the
household.48 This may be viewed as a hostile comment, but should serve to remind us
that seeking converts would have been a dangerous activity, so long as Christians were a
small and persecuted minority. Recording such activities would have been as dangerous
as participating—that may partly explain the lack of evidence. It is very unsatisfactory to
argue, on the grounds that there is no surviving evidence of a particular development
that no such development was occurring. In any case, the growth in Christian numbers by
the end of the 3d century CE is itself evidence that recruits were joining; there is no plau
sible source for the increase except the pagan populations of the Empire.49
Page 12 of 31

There were many differences that marked off the Christian groups from their pagan con
temporaries. Some of these were fundamental to the movement and were inherited from
their Jewish origins. For instance, they followed Jewish tradition in their acceptance of a
holy book, on which the faith was grounded; they took seriously the biblical prophecies
that looked forward to the birth of Jesus, who was identified as the Messiah; they rejected
all the gods of the gentiles. On the other hand, they later rejected the practice of animal
sacrifice, which was common to pagans and Jews, and still regular in the temple-cult as
accepted by Jesus and Paul.50 It is highly significant that they rapidly developed a name
for their group, the Christians, or followers of Christ, which became widely recognized
across the Empire.51 The name was already in use by 112 CE, when Pliny, as Governor of
Pontus, reported to Trajan the Emperor (reigned from 98 to 117 CE) about an outbreak of
Christian “superstition” in his province, and the Emperor in reply understood what he
was referring to.52 The establishment of a name for the group needs to be treated as an
important development. The name was already reported in the New Testament.53 Later,
the abstract noun formed from it (Christianismos), meaning the Christian way of life, oc
curs in Ignatius of Antioch, probably writing in the early 2nd century.54 As early as Justin
Martyr’s Apology, the claim was made that Christians were being persecuted only be
cause of the name, without their being accused of anything criminal.55
Many of these points of difference would have marked the Christians out as innovative
and potential trouble makers. They did not participate in city ritual events; they had wide
spread contacts outside their local communities; they denied the existence and power of
the city’s gods and goddesses; but perhaps worst of all, they came into existence and sur
vived on the basis of attracting new followers and members. To join the Christians, an act
had to be performed, through baptism, abandoning the worship of the old gods and god
desses and joining the new group. This act of choice was perhaps the most revolutionary
new action. It was quite different from any earlier turning to a new deity, because it in
volved (as the convert must have realized) the rejection of the past, of rituals stretching
back to the origins of their family and community, and the acceptance of a new exclusive
form of commitment.
How Did the Groups Perceive Themselves and

One Another?
Christian doctrine in antiquity took a very long time to formulate and debate. It is quite
clear that originally, whatever pagans may have thought of them, the earliest Christians
were an offshoot of Judaism, diverging dramatically in their acceptance of Jesus as the
promised Messiah, for whose arrival orthodox Jews had waited and continued to wait. It
is a matter of controversy at what date a separation was established and a new canon of
writings fixed.56 It is clear in any case that there were many other groups with varying
messages, claiming to be in the tradition of Jesus. It must have been difficult for an out
sider to have any clear picture of what was happening within the Jewish orbit at this
stage or what was involved in becoming a Christian.57
Page 13 of 31

However, it is also far from clear how any of the participants would have represented the
character of their own group. We might say with confidence that the various groups must
have been in a competition with the others for members. It might also be convenient for
us to classify the different groups as religions by arguing that they all offered their own
conception of the world, their own systems of worship, and their own relationship to su
pernatural powers. However, it is not at all obvious that any of the three main partici
pants in this competition would have regarded either their own group or the others as re
ligions, in any sense of that slippery term. They would certainly have thought of their ri
vals as very different from themselves and from one another. The Jews were identifiable
as a people or ethnos, scattered across the world because of their history, but sharing a
myth of their origins, strange customs, common ancestors, and above all a book that re
vealed the story of god and human beings from their origins. At least they could be cate
gorized in terms familiar to pagans, even if they provoked occasional hostility.58 The
Christians were also scattered across the world and to some extent kept in contact with
their brethren in other parts of the Empire and even outside it. In the early centuries of
their existence, there was very little clear determination as to how they were organized.
They were also sometimes referred to as an ethnos, but of a new kind, based not on racial
descent but on a shared commitment to a leader and prophet.59 Pagans had to be con
ceived quite differently: they consisted of many peoples across the whole known world
having some community of practice, but no joint identity, let alone a shared literary tradi
tion or shared religious doctrines. Each of them did, however, have a similar contact with
the centers of power within their own communities.
To lumpers as opposed to splitters,60 it has been appealing to interpret all these develop
ments as a growing conflict between polytheism and monotheism, some rating monothe
ism as so superior that it could be treated as an inevitable step up in the evolutionary pro
gression of the human race.61 Paganism was thus doomed in advance, and all the histori
an has to do is track the inevitable progression. In support of this idea, one can certainly
quote the ferocious Christian attacks on the Roman gods and goddesses, which they were
determined to paint as an assembly of horrors. On the other hand, this type of evidence is
particularly unreliable in its characterization of the nature of the opposing groups: to
take an extreme view, it could be argued that Christian bishops and their educated follow
ers had a particular investment in portraying the situation as a conflict between clearly
defined groups, doing so more in hope than in respect of the current reality, which may
have been far more fluid than they would have wished. The ferocity of their argument is
an index of the problem they faced. The question of how well defined the groups were.
As we have seen already, polytheism by itself is not a full or proper description of the reli
gious position of the pagans. They generally worshipped many deities and, in the case of
the Romans at least, were prepared to identify and accept new ones. But they were also
at all periods able to think of the gods as united, sometimes with a specific leader over
many; sometimes as a single unit, of which individual gods might be perceived as one ele
ment.62 There has also been much discussion of the notion of “henotheism,” which is the
promotion of one god or goddess, while still accepting all the others.63 It can also be ar
gued that both polytheism and monotheism are ideal types, never attained in reality, but
Page 14 of 31

to be seen as tendencies in opposition with one another. David Hume conceived them in
terms of a historical pendulum-swing, either extreme provoking a reaction towards the
other, but never reaching a stable state.64
The Emergence and Significance of Competition for Membership
In 1992, this author, in company with Tessa Rajak and Judith Lieu, argued that the effect
of the religious changes between the lifetime of Jesus and the adoption of Christianity by
the Emperor Constantine was to create a “marketplace in religion,” where nothing of the
kind had existed before.65 The idea of using this model was to dramatize the rise of com
petition among religious groups to attract members, where little if any such competition
had existed before; at least, the metaphor was a success in provoking argument and criti
cism. The three competing groups could be assumed to be at least incipient “religions”
and, indeed, that the presence of rivals in the market in the form of Jewish and Christian
groups might have had the effect of stimulating pagan self-conscious about their own sta
tus as a religion competing with the others.66
This perspective still seems fertile and useful, while exploring the notion of competition
between groups must always be essential to understanding what happened; but there are
many problems with the application of the market as a model.67 The three competitors in
the “market” were very different from one another, especially in their social location.
Even if one could argue that each might have seen itself as a religious entity, all three
would have had severe doubts as to the status of their rivals. Christians in particular, as
shown, viewed pagan practices with horror and, whereas they incorporated both pagan
and Jewish writings into their own culture, they seem to have regarded Jesus as having
replaced the Jewish religious tradition rather than paralleled it.68 Their respective atti
tudes towards the recruitment of new members were also very different. Pagans, howev
er erratically, sought to restrain defectors by bullying and persecution. The Jews showed
little sign of seeking to recruit new members, though they did always attract some pagan
support.69 However, it is quite clear from the expansion of Christian numbers over the pe
riod that they willingly accepted recruits, even if there is very little direct evidence of
them actively seeking converts in this period.70
It would be valuable to know how the conversion of new members took place, but there is
all too little information. The most plausible theory would be that, generation after gener
ation, some pagans, born into pagan families and brought up within pagan culture and
traditions, were persuaded to transfer their allegiance, perhaps as family groups rather
than individuals. In law and to some extent in reality as well, Roman families were domi
nated by the eldest surviving male, the paterfamilias, who was the leader of religious ac
tivity too. The family, in the Roman understanding of the word, included the slaves owned
by the paterfamilias as well as the blood relations and freed people.71 It may be possible
to argue that there were processes of change at work, affecting all members of the three
groups but producing different results in different areas of life. A candidate for this trans
forming force might be the individual’s religious experience, moving away from what had
previously been a social experience. Arguably, the presence in Judaism and Christianity of
Page 15 of 31

concern focused on a highly privileged sacred Book, and the intense reading of that book
in a religious space, would have been a strong contributory factor.
It would be an over-simplification to claim that competition was a completely new phe

nomenon in the religious life of the Empire. The numberless gods and goddesses of the
Roman Republic offered many options between which there would have been freedom to
choose.72 So far as we know, all members of the community and even slaves might belong
to an association that honored a particular deity. Or they could express their gratitude for
benefits received or offer gifts and sacrifices in return for benefits requested. All such ac
tivity would have fallen within the public and private cults accepted by the city and over
seen, in theory, by the priests and the Senate. In Rome itself, even the rituals practiced by
families and passed on from generation to generation were controlled by rules defined by
the college of pontifices.73 There certainly were choices, however constrained by authori
ty, family, and tradition, that individuals had to take—but nothing with the profound per
sonal implications or hazards of the decision to transfer from pagan or Jew to Christian,
or back again.
All the same, using the concept of religion does risk confusion by importing anachronistic
ideas. The obvious alternative is to think in terms of the vaguer term religious groups.
However, there is a current tendency to argue that groups too are an illegitimate con
struction, and there is now even a new word to condemn this particular vice—groupism,
on the analogy of sexism.74 A definition is needed to understand what might be a religious
group in this context. The great innovation in this period is perhaps best thought of in
terms of religious identity, a conception, as we have seen, quite inapplicable in the tradi
tional pagan world, where having a religious identity different from your home communi
ty was not yet thinkable. By the 3d and 4th century CE, however, a person could meaning
fully combine being a Christian or a Jew with continued citizenship of Rome or of other
cities of the Empire. A convert from paganism to Christianity would be a Christian as well
as Roman and a member of the local community. The conversion might have been danger
ous or treated as a criminal act, but it would be comprehensible. It does not follow, of
course, that the existence of a religious group implies that all its members had acquired
an exclusively Christian identity or spent all their time together pursuing Christian objec
tives. It is a commonplace that all humans, at least those living in historical periods, have
multiple identities and commitments to family, to community, to their trade or circus-fac
tion, and so on. The right of a golf club to be called a club is not challenged because its
members share only one of their many different identities. As in any group, there will of
course be members more or less committed, those who intend to commit but fail to main
tain their intention, those who succeed for a time but drift away, and so on—though also,
notoriously, there are those who can think of nothing else but their golf.
There are indeed many questions to be asked about how such religious groups actually
worked and whether we should conceive of them as entities of which contemporaries
were fully aware or rather as retrospective analytic tools invented by modern scholars.
Éric Rebillard, in his ground breaking study of 3rd to 5th century CE Christians in North
Africa, has collected the data as to how and where group membership would have been
Page 16 of 31

visible and identifiable, using the literary evidence of Tertullian, Cyprian, and
Augustine.75 However careful one may be about avoiding the reification of groups, as Re
billard is, his conclusions would make little sense unless contemporaries at least believed
that those who professed themselves Christians were engaging in a communal activity,
not just a private whim. It may well be true that the priests and bishops of the new move
ment were exaggerating the degree of universal commitment, because that is what they
were trying to promote.76 But that joining the Christians was a meaningful social act in
this period should not be open to doubt.
Does it follow from these arguments that we should no longer be thinking of profound
changes in the whole religious order? Was it an exaggeration to talk in terms of revolu
tionary change? Critics have sought to argue, first, that there had always been choice and
competition in pagan religious life. Second, there is a good deal of evidence showing that
the role of religious conflict in the Roman Empire has been exaggerated, and there was
much peaceful co-existence, even collaboration, across the religious groups.77 So, for in
stance, there has been much discussion of pagan monotheism as an intermediate phase of
the transition to monotheism.78 At the same time, practical considerations would have en
couraged if not necessitated collaboration in politics between the various competitors.79
It has to be accepted that much co-existence thrived, at least on a temporary basis; and
that education for some time continued to rely on the great pagan classical texts, espe
cially those of Virgil.80 It is also now very clear that too much has been made in the past
of a great pagan resistance based in Rome in the 4th century CE.81 It can also be agreed
that the decline of animal sacrifice spread gradually across Jews (who always hoped for a
restoration of it), Christians (who rejected it from the 2nd century onwards), and finally
spread to the pagans as well.82
These studies, and many others, have undoubtedly made major contributions to our un
derstanding of the co-existence of group members in the crucial decades when Christiani
ty was asserting itself for the first time as a major force in the Empire, but still under se
rious threat of persecution. All the same, such research analyzes the historical changes of
the period from a relatively narrow perspective. We need also to assess the effect of
changes over the whole period, from the late Republic, through the establishment of the
imperial regime, and the subsequent centuries of Roman dominance. In this longer view,
the possibility had been established of individual pagans making decisions in the area of
their religious commitments that would have been of an importance inconceivable in ear
lier centuries. The implication would have been that their religious identities (and what
ever commitments might have followed from them) could be separated from local, politi
cal, social, or economic statuses.
There can be no questioning the fact that profound issues must have been at stake for the
individual until the early 4th century: openly abandoning your pagan commitments and
declaring yourself a Christian would lead to a radical rethinking of your place in society, it
might lead to a complete rupture of relations with your family.83 It could even result in
persecution and death. Even if such dramatic consequences were rare in practice (and we
have no means of estimating the chances), these were far more seriously life-changing—
Page 17 of 31

or life-threatening—decisions than any to be imagined in the religious lives of Romans of

the 2nd or 1st century BCE.84 Whatever we make of the Christians as they moved toward
a position of dominance, men and women of all statuses were living in a religious environ
ment in which the profession of beliefs acquired a new importance. Once a succession of
Christian Emperors had been established in the 4th century, the situation was reversed.85
Gone, in any case, were the days when beliefs as such, even if strongly held, were not ex
amined, tested, or concealed, but rather assumed.
Review of the Historiography

The first half of the 20th century saw the reputation of the religious life of Rome at a par
ticularly low ebb. Roman historians, even those who respected and sought to reconstruct
the institutions of early Rome, emphasized the decline of these institutions in the middle
and late Republic.86 In retrospect, the actual arguments in favor of this view may seem
flimsy, but it had been close to being a universally agreed view since the beginning of the
history of Roman religion in the early 19th century.87 The idea derived in part from theo
ries that postulated an evolutionary progression starting from the origin of gods and god
desses and leading through polytheism to Judaism and Christianity; polytheism was thus
suffering its inevitable phase of decline.88 Another factor in the assessment was an im
plicit comparison between religious activities in the Greco-Roman world and those in the
religions familiar to scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries. Even allowing for the great
variety of modern religions, scholars saw ancient religions as defective in the provision of
personal, spiritual, and theological experiences. Roman religion in particular was seen as
arid and mechanical. Its gods and goddesses had lost the commitment of the city elites
and appealed only to popular superstition, and hence lent themselves to elite
exploitation.89
The second half of the 20th century saw strong reactions against this characterization.
There were various lines of attack: it was argued that relevant texts had been misinter
preted or over-interpreted in the past and that critical judgments were subjective and
based on misleading comparisons with some forms of Christianity, especially Protes
tantism; but perhaps the most powerful arguments were generated by the claims for both
Greek and Roman city life that religion should be understood as a civic phenomenon,
deeply involved with other aspects of city life, but not conceived as an autonomous area
of thought or action, as it was to be in later periods.90 Emphasis was placed on the role of
rituals in the maintenance of relations and communication with the city’s gods and god
desses and correspondingly less on the role of beliefs, to which it was claimed relatively
limited attention was paid. It was no part of the thesis that the city’s authorities sought to
coerce citizens into participation, rather that city rituals set the model for all religious ac
tivities within the system, whether public activities or private rituals held by families or
by religious associations.91
This position, in turn, drew critical comment on the lines that, when stripped down to its
essence, it amounted to saying that pagans in Rome had no belief in their gods and god
Page 18 of 31

desses, but that their religion consisted in performing inherited ritual actions in a mind
less way. This was seen as an accidental recapitulation of the position originally under at
tack.92 Another line of criticism was to emphasize evidence of individual activities as op
posed to public or social ones on the grounds that these were outside the civic religion’s
remit. In fact, there is no doubt that the priests’ authority went far beyond public rituals,
but how effectively they asserted such authority over families and groups is far from easi
ly proved.93 A third, even more fundamental controversy followed, in which it was debat
ed whether it is misleading to use the terms for religion from modern European lan
guages to describe ancient dealings with supernatural beings. It is a fact that there are
no Greek or Latin words that can be consistently so translated, and the result of using,
say, religion to translate religio is often misleading to readers, who necessarily think in
terms of modern institutions, profoundly different from ancient ones.94
At the same time as these debates were in progress, the whole character of the society
and culture of the later centuries of the Roman Empire was being re-thought and re-as
sessed; even more significantly for this discussion, it was recognized that, during its earli
est period, Christianity was far from being well understood, that its basic character was
constantly being negotiated and defined.95 There can be no doubt that, by the 3rd and 4th
centuries CE, competition for membership between groups—at least between pagans,
Jews, and Christians—had become a major element in the religious life of the period.96
How the groups were differentiated at the time, how they were interpreted by contempo
raries, and what vocabulary we should use in referring to them are all still matters for de
bate. But the course of events makes it clear enough that, for whatever reasons, the flow
of converts was already from paganism into Christianity, before the Emperor
Constantine’s actions brought an end to the association between the Roman State and its
traditional gods and goddesses.
Further Reading
For original and stimulating essays on the methodology of writing the religious history of
any period:
Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2004.
Good introductions to Roman religion from a pagan viewpoint would be:
Beard, Mary, John North, and Simon Price. Religions of Rome, 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Rives, James. Religion in the Roman Empire. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.
There has been much debate between those who follow the well-established view that
Greek and Roman religion was strongly based on the community and especially the city,
the so-called polis, or civic, model, and those who emphasize variation, deviance, and the
role of the individual worshipper.
Page 19 of 31

For a recent, very effective, defense of the polis model:
Scheid, John, Les dieux l’État et l’individu: réflexions sur la religion civique à Rome. Paris:
Seuil, 2013.
Scheid, John, and Clifford Ando. The Gods, the State, and the Individual. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. English translation of Scheid.
For recent exploration of the role of the individual:
Rebillard, Éric, and Jörg Rüpke, eds., Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late
Antiquity. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015.
The early history of Christianity and its relationship to the Jewish tradition from which it
derived has been the site of much debate, leading to a wide range of different approach
es, for instance:
Byron, Gay. Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature. New
York: Routledge, 2002.
Cameron, Averil. Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian
Discourse. Sather Classical Lectures 55. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Lieu, Judith. Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004.
Paget, J. Carleton, and Judith Lieu, eds., Christianity in the Second Century: Themes and
Developments. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
On the relationship between the emerging character of Christianity in late antiquity and
the Roman Empire within which it grew up:
Elm, Susanna. Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of
Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Thinking about the gods of Greeks and Romans is found in Greek as well as Roman stud
ies: Henk Versnel’s work argues that it is a mistake to try imposing a system on a multi
plicity of gods in constant evolution:
Versnel, Henk. Ter Unus: Isis, Dionysos, Hermes: Three Studies in Henotheism. Inconsis
tencies in Greek and Roman Religion, I. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1990.
Versnel, Henk. Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual, Inconsistencies in Greek and
Roman Religion, II. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1993.
Peter Brown’s work over recent decades has brought about fundamentally new ways of
thinking about Christianity in its later imperial context. One very influential contribution
was:
Page 20 of 31

Brown, Peter. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Haskell
Lectures 1978. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Eighteen years later, Brown’s work produced a whole volume of discussions and apprecia
tions:
Howard-Johnston, James, and Paul Antony Hayward, eds., The Cult of Saints in Late An
tiquity and Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
More recently:
Brown, Peter. Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of
Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
For controversial, but very interesting attempts to look at religious history as part of the
evolution of the culture of homo sapiens:
Bellah, Robert. Religion in Human Evolution: From the Palaeolithic to the Axial Age. Cam
bridge, MA: Belknap, 2011.
Bellah, Robert, and Hans Joas, eds. The Axial Age and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2012.
In recent years, cognitive scientists, anthropologists, and philosophers have developed a

new approach to the understanding of religions of the past and present, called CSR, or
the cognitive science of religion. The idea, dismissed by many scholars of classical antiq
uity and ancient history, has begun to make some impression on the study of ancient reli
gion. An example of this approach, chosen from among a large body of work:
Lawson, Thomas, and Robert McCauley. Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and
Culture. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Notes:
(1.) Only fragments of Varro’s Divine Antiquities survive, ed. Burkhart Cardauns (Mainz,
Germany: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1976).
(2.) For arguments by major historians claiming religious decline, see W. Warde Fowler,
The Religious Experience of the Roman People from the Earliest Times to the Age of Au
gustus (London: Macmillan, 1911), 270–379; and K. Latte, Römische Religionsgeschichte,
Müller’s Handbuch 5.4 (Munich: Beck, 1960), 264–293. For a thoughtful account of the
history of Roman religion, see John Scheid, “L’impossible polythéisme: Les raisons d’un
vide dans l’histoire de la religion romaine,” in L’impensable polythéisme. Études
d’historiographie religieuse, ed. F. Schmidt, (Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines,
1988), 425–457.
Page 21 of 31

(3.) See, for instance, in The Individual in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, ed.
Jörg Rüpke, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); James Rives, Religion in the Roman
Empire (Malden MA: Blackwell, 2007), 9–12; and on individualism, see Jörg Rüpke and
Wolfgang Spickermann, eds., Reflections on Religious Individuality (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2012).
(4.) Varro, Divine Antiquities, fgt. 2d ed. Cardauns, (as summarized by Augustine at City
of God 6.2).
(5.) John Scheid, “Hiérarchie et structure dans le polythéisme romain: Façons romaines
de penser l’action,” Archiv fur Religionsgeschichte 1.2 (1999): 184–203; and John Scheid,
“Hierarchy and Structure in Roman Polytheism: Roman Methods of Conceiving Action,” in
Roman Religion, ed. Clifford Ando (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 164–
189.
(6.) For Varro’s view more generally, see John North, “The Limits of the ‘Religious’ in the
late Roman Republic,” History of Religions 53 (2014): 225–245; and see Jörg Rüpke,
“Varro’s tria genera theologiae: Religious Thinking in the Late Republic,” Ordia Prima 4
(2005): 107–129.
(7.) For Augustine’s treatment of Varro, see Harald Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin
Classics, vol. 2: Augustine’s Attitude, Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia (Stock
holm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967), 601–630.
(8.) For the continuity of Roman practice in the later imperial period, see John Scheid,
“Roman Animal Sacrifice and the System of Being,” in Greek and Roman Animal Sacri
fices: Ancient Victims, Modern Observers, ed. Christopher Faraone and F. S. Naiden
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 84–95; and Nicole Belayche, “Ritus
et Cultus ou Superstitio,” in Le code Théodosien: Diversité des Approches et Nouvelles
Perspectives, ed. Sylvie Crogiez-Pétrequin and Pierre Jaillette, Collection de l’École
Française de Rome 412 (Rome: École Française de Rome,2009), 191–208.
(9.) Dennis Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts and Beliefs
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 123–133.
(10.) See e.g., Cicero, Nature of the Gods and On Divination 2.8 (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus, 1997).
(11.) See, e.g., the claims made in a letter to the people of Teos in 190 BCE: “The fact that
we have, absolutely and consistently, treated reverence towards the gods as of the high
est importance is proven by the favour we have received as a result.” SIG3 601 ed. W. Dit
tenberger, (Leipzig, Germany: Hirzel, 1917), 133–134; and Robert K. Sherk, ed., Rome
and the Greek East to the Death of Augustus (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 1984), doc. 8, 9–10.
(12.) Eric Orlin, Temples, Religion, and Politics in the Roman Republic (New York: Brill,
1997), 34–75, with a list of temple foundations at 199–202.
Page 22 of 31

(13.) Arnaldo Momigliano, “Popular Religious Beliefs and Later Roman Historians,” Stud
ies in Church History 8 (1971): 1–18 (reprinted in his Quinto contributo alla storia degli
studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1975), 75–92) is
sometimes cited in this regard, but the article in fact deals with history writing only.
(14.) Vetus autem illud Catonis admodum scitum est, qui mirari se aiebat quod non rid
eret haruspex haruspicem cum vidisset (Cicero, Nature of the Gods and On Divination, 2.
24 51).
(15.) On this mobility, see James Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Malden MA: Black
well, 2007), 132–141.
(16.) Hubert Cancik and Jörg Rüpke, eds., Römische Reichsreligion und Provinzialreligion
(Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1997) includes the chapter Jörg Rüpke, “Römische
Religion und ‘Reichsreligion’: Begriffsgeschichtliche und methodische Bemerküngen,” at
3–24; John North and Simon Price, The Religious History of the Roman Empire: Pagans,
Jews and Christians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 9–36; also Greg Woolf, “Po
lis-Religion and its Alternatives in the Roman Provinces,” in Roman Religion, ed. Clifford
Ando, (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 71–84; Clifford Ando, The Matter of
the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 200); and Clifford Ando, Religion et gouvernement dans l’empire romain, Bibl. de
l’École des Hautes Études, Sciences Religieuses (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2016), 172.
(17.) Alan D. E. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011), 14–25.
(18.) Herodotus 2.42–50.
(19.) Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, 2 vols. (Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 2, 19–22.
(20.) John North, “Caesar on religio,” in Gods of the Others, ed. J. Rüpke, Archiv fur Reli
gionsgeschichte, 15 (2014): 167–200.
(21.) On the notion of the translatability of gods, see Jan Assmann, Of God and Gods:
Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press,
2008), 54–58.
(22.) War-rituals parodied at Plautus, Amphitruo, 184–247; both generals take vows to
Iuppiter at 229–230, before addressing their troops. But note that the comment by the
god Mercury (at ll. 248–249) implies that the whole account was a fiction.
(23.) As some have recommended: see, Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a
Modern Concept (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013). An argument not without
merit, but limited by a failure to distinguish consistently between proving the existence of
a religion in Rome and proving contemporary awareness of a concept of religion in Rome
Page 23 of 31

(24.) Francis Bacon, Essays, 3: Of Unity in Religion, “The quarrels and divisions about Re
ligion were evils unknown to the Heathen. The reason was, because the Religion of the
heathen consisted rather in Rites and Ceremonies than in any constant belief. For you
may imagine what kind of faith theirs was when the chief Doctors and Fathers of their
Church were the Poets.”
(25.) See Apuleius, Golden Ass, 11.15–16. Cf. Arthur D. Nock, Conversion: The Old and
the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford: Clarendon,
1933), 140–155; and Jan Bremmer, “The Representation of Priests and Priestesses in the
Pagan and Christian Greek Novel,” in Historical and Religious Memory in the Ancient
World, ed. B. Dignas and R. R. R. Smith, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 136–
161.
(26.) For the debate on belief: Malcolm Ruel “Christians as Believers,” in Religious Orga
nization and Religious Experience, ed. J. Davis. ASA Monograph 21 (1982); reprinted in
Malcolm Ruel, Belief, Ritual, and the Securing of Life (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill,
1997), 36–59; Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992) (esp. on the relation between thought and action); Nancy K. Frankenberry,
ed., Radical Interpretation in Religion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
2002); esp. Maurice Bloch, “Are Religious Beliefs Counter-Intuitive?” in Frankenberry,
Radical Interpretation in Religion, 129–148; and E. Eidinow, J. Kindt, and R. Osborne,
eds., Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
2016). On Rome in particular, see Simon Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial
Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 7–11; Charles
King, “The Organization of Roman Religious Beliefs,” Classical Antiquity 22.2 (2003),
275–312; John Scheid, Quand faire c’est croire: Les rites sacrificiels des Romains (Paris:
Aubier, 2005); Henk Versnel, “Did the Greeks Believe in their Gods?” in Coping with the
Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011) Ap
pendix IV: 539–559; and Jason Davies, “The Values of Belief: Ancient Religion, Cognitive
Science, and Interdisciplinarity,” in Theorizing Religion in Antiquity, ed. Nickolas
Roubekas (Equinox, forthcoming, 2018).
(27.) On belief and doubt: see Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt, a History: The Great
Doubters and Their Legacy Of Innovation (HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), see esp. xii–xvi.
(28.) Xenophanes of Colophon (late 6th-early5th century BCE) Fragments, ed. and trans.,
with commentary, J. H. Lesher, Phoenix, Supp. vol. 32 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1992), 78–119.
(29.) As argued by the Epicureans: see Anthony Long and David Sedley, The Hellenistic
Philosophers. vol. 1 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 139–149; Dirk
Obbink, “‘All Gods Are True’ in Epicurus,” in Dorothea Frede and André Laks, eds., Tradi
tions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, Its Background and Aftermath (Leiden,
The Netherlands: Brill, 2002), 183–221. On issues of fate and determinism: Tim O’Keefe,
Epicurus on Freedom (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Page 24 of 31

(30.) On Ovid’s Fasti, see Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome, 123–136 (see note 9);
Carol Newlands, Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1995); on the creativity of reactions to ritual and its evolution, Sally Humphreys,
The Strangeness of Gods: Historical Perspectives on the Interpretation of Athenian Reli
gion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), esp. 223–275; and on the role of books in
the religious experience of Rome, see
D. Macrae, Legible Religion: Books, Gods, and Rituals in Roman Culture (Cambridge, MA;
London: Harvard University Press, 2016).
(31.) Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, ch. 4; and John Scheid, Quand faire
c’est croire (see note 26).
(32.) See Jan Assmann (see note 21) for the view that intolerance develops from the dis
tinction between false and true religion, originating in monotheism: the argument is qual
ified in Jan Assmann, Die Mosaische Unterscheidung: Oder der Preis des Monotheismus
(Munich, Germany: Hansen, 2003), esp. 28–37. In English, Robert Savage, trans., The
Price of Monotheism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), esp.15–23. For reac
tion, see Christophe Markschies, “The Price of Monotheism,” in One God: Pagan Monothe
ism in the Roman Empire, ed. Stephen Mitchell and Peter van Nuffelen (Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 100–111.
(33.) The details of Livy, 39.8–19, are far from reliable: discussion in Clara Gallini, Protes
ta e Integrazione Nella Roma Antica (Bari, Italy: Laterza, 1970); John North, “Religious
Toleration in Republican Rome,” in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society
1979, 85–103; Clifford Ando, Roman Religion; Jean-Marie Pailler, La Repression de 186 av.
J.-C. à Rome et en Italie. BÉFAR 270 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1988); and Jean
Christian Dumont, Servus: Rome et l’esclavage sous la République (Rome: École française
de Rome, 1987), 169–197.
(34.) A copy survives of a letter publishing the Senate’s regulation of the cult: A. Degras
si, Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Reipublicae, II. no. 511; and Beard, North, and Price, Re
ligions of Rom, vol. 2.12.1b.
(35.) According to Livy’s account of the evidence presented to the authorities, at Livy
39.13.9, they were to meet five times a month instead of three times a year.
(36.) Livy, 39.8–19, lines 7–9.
(37.) Philip Harland, Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians: Associa
tions, Judaeans, and Cultural Minorities (New York: T&T Clark, 2009); Richard Ascough,
Philip Harland, & John Kloppenborg, Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Source
book (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012); and Andreas Bendlin, “Associations, Funerals, Sociality
and Roman Law: The Collegium of Diana and Antinous in Lanuvium CIL 14.2112 reconsid
ered,” 207–296.
Page 25 of 31

(38.) On the collegia in politics, see Augusto Fraschetti, Roma e il Principe (Roma-Bari,
Italy: Laterza, 1990), 226–236.
(39.) Famously, Trajan, in Pliny, Letters 10.34, even forbade the formation of a fire
brigade on security grounds.
(40.) Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, Soteriology and Mystic Aspects in the Cult of Cybele and
Attis. EPRO 103 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1985); Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Di
vine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Richard Gordon, Image and Value in the
Graeco-Roman World: Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art (Aldershot, U.K.: Variorum,
1996); Richard Gordon, “Ritual and Hierarchy in the Mysteries of Mithras” in ARYS,
Antigüedad: Religiones y Sociedades 4 (2001): 245–273; North and Price, Religious Histo
ry of the Roman Empire, 325–365; Roger Beck, Beck on Mithraism: Collected Works with
New Essays, Ashgate Contemporary Thinkers on Religion: Collected Works (Burlington
VT: Ashgate, 2004); Jaime Alvar, trans. and ed. Richard Gordon, Romanising Gods: Myth,
Salvation, and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras, Religions in the Graeco-Ro
man World (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2008); Anna Collar, Religious Networks in the
Roman Empire. The Spread of New Ideas (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
2013), 79–145 (on Iuppiter Dolichenus); John North, “Power and its Redefinitions: The Vi
cissitudes of Attis,” in Panthée: Religious Transformations in the Graeco-Roman Empire,
ed. L. Bricault and C. Bonnet (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. 2013), 279–292; and James
B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire, Vol 1: Individual Appropriation in Lived Ancient
Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2015).
(41.) Roger Beck, “The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of their Genesis,” Journal of
Roman Studies 88 (1998): 115–128.
(42.) For arguments about individualism, see ed. Jörg Rüpke and Wolfgang Spickermann,
Reflections on Religious Individuality (RGVV 62. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012); ed. Jörg Rüp
ke, The Individual in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford Universi
ty Press. 2013), esp. Greg Woolf, “Ritual and the Individual in Roman Religion,” at 136–
160; Nicole Belayche, “Individualization and Religious Rhetoric in Imperial Anatolia” at
243–266; ed. Éric Rebillard and Jörg Rüpke, Group Identity and Religious Individuality in
Late Antiquity. CUA studies in early Christianity (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Univer
sity of America Press, 2015). Isabella Sandwell, Religious Identity in Late Antiquity:
Greeks Jews and Christians in Antioch (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
2007). For the idea of the Oriental cults being “stepping-stones,” see the hugely influen
tial work of Franz Cumont, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain: con
férences faites au Collège de France en 1905 (4th ed. Paris, Geuthner, 1929); on
Cumont’s ideas, see, R. L. Gordon, Cumont and the doctrines of Mithraism, in Mithraic
Studies, vol. 1, ed. J. R. Hinnells (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975), 215–
248.
Page 26 of 31

(43.) For the place of women in religious life: Ross Shepard Kraemer, Her Share of the
Blessings: Women’s Religions among Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Graeco-Roman
World (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); ed. Emily Hemelrijk and Greg
Woolf, Women and the Roman City in the Latin West. Mnemosyne Supplement 360 (Lei
den, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013), 109–168; K. Cooper, “The Household as a venue for
Religious Conversion: the case of Christianity,” in A Companion to Families in the Greek
and Roman Worlds, ed. B. Rawson (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
(44.) See, for example, Juvenal, Satire 6.522–541; in English, Beard, North, and Price,
trans., Religions of Rome, II.12.4d; and in general see the texts at 297–304.
(45.) On henotheism, see Henk Versnel, Ter Unus, Isis, Dionysos, Hermes: Three Studies
in Henotheism, Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion, I (Leiden, The Netherlands:
Brill, 1990); and Henk Versnel, Appendix II “Unity and Diversity: One God or Many?” in
Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology, Readings in the Graeco-Ro
man World, 173 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011), 517–525.
(46.) K. Hopkins, “Christian Number and its Implications,” Journal of Early Christian
Studies 6 (1998), 185−226; and Jan Bremmer, “Perpetua and Her Diary,” in W. Ameling,
Martyrer und Martyrakten (Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner, 2002), 77–120 (esp. 84–86).
(47.) Ramsay Macmullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (100–400 AD) (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 25–42.
(48.) Celsus, as quoted by Origen, Contra Celsum 3.55, trans. H. Chadwick (Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 165–166.
(49.) For an alternative explanation, but to my mind speculative and unconvincing, see
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1996), 49–71 and 95–128.
(50.) Maria-Zoe Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek Religion, Judaism, and
Christianity, 100 BC to AD 200 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 127–206.
(51.) So far as our evidence goes, other groups in the Greco-Roman era (worshippers of
Attis, Isis, Mithras, etc.) did not exploit group-names in this way.
(52.) Epistles 10.96 (where Pliny says: “I have never attended hearings about Chris
tians .|.|.”); and 10.97 (Trajan’s reply).
(53.) Acts of the Apostles 11.26.
(54.) Ignatius, Letter to the Magnesians 10.1.
(55.) Justin Martyr, Apology 1.4; and see also Apology 2.2.16.
(56.) Judith Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek? Constructing Early Christianity (New York: T&T
Clark, 2002), 11–29 and 69–79; Judith Lieu, “The Forging of Christian Identity and the
Page 27 of 31

Letter to Diognetus,” in Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek? 171–189; and Daniel Boyarin, Bor
der Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2004). See also Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 103–161.
(57.) On Christian explanations of themselves: Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman, and Si
mon Price, eds. Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the
Greek East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); for a pagan effort to characterize
such a group, in Palestine, see Lucian, Death of Peregrinus 11–16; on which see J. A.
North, “Pagan Attitudes,” in Christianity in the Second Century: Themes and Develop
ments, ed. J. Carleton Paget and J. Lieu (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
2017), 265–280.
(58.) Tessa Rajak, “Jews, Pagans, and Christians in Late Antique Sardis: Models of Inter
action” in The Jewish Dialogue, 447–462.
(59.) Denise K. Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
(60.) For the origin of these terms, see J. H. Hexter, On Historians: Reappraisals of Some
of the Masters of Modern History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 242,
reviewing the work of Christopher Hill.
(61.) For the influence of evolutionary theories of religious history: John Scheid,
“L’impossible polythéisme” (see note 2); and J. A. North, “The Religion of Rome from
Monarchy to Principate,” in Companion to Historiography, ed. M. Bentley (London: Rout
ledge, 1997), 59–62.
(62.) For the Greek and pre-Greek origins of these ideas, see M. L. West, “Towards
Monotheism,” in Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, ed. Polymnia Athanassiadi and
Michael Frede (New York: Clarendon, 1999), 21–40.
(63.) See Versnel, Coping with the Gods (see note 45).
(64.) John North, “Pagans, Polytheists, and the Pendulum,” in The Spread of Christianity
in the First Four Centuries, ed. William Harris, Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradi
tion (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 125–143. For an attempt to show that this pa
per argues the opposite of what the author intended, see P. van Nuffelen, in ed. Eidinow,
Kindt and Osborne, Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion, 343–347.
(65.) Judith Lieu, John North, and Tessa Rajak, (eds.), The Jews Among Pagans and Chris
tians in the Roman Empire (London: Taylor & Francis, 1992), 1–8; John North: “The De
velopment of Religious Pluralism,” in The Jews Among Pagans and Christians, 174–193.
(66.) The thought is raised—tentatively—in Lieu, North, and Rajak, The Jews Among Pa
gans and Christians, at 188–189.
Page 28 of 31

(67.) Andreas Bendlin uses the model in a different context, in “Looking Beyond The Civic
Compromise: Religious Pluralism in Late Republican Rome,” in Religion in Archaic and
Republican Rome and Italy: Evidence and Experience, ed. Christopher Smith and Edward
Bispham (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 115–135; and Roger Beck, “Rod
ney Stark and the ‘Mission to the Jews:’,” in Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Em
pire and the Rise of Christianity, ed. Leif Vaage (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University
Press, 2006), 233–252, where Beck is critical of a different version of the market model,
that of Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity, 53.
(68.) Eusebius in his Demonstratio Evangelica treats the history of Judaism after Moses as
a deviation from the patriarchs, whose tradition had now been resumed in Christianity;
see Sébastien Morlet, La Démonstration évangélique d’Eusèbe de Césarée: étude sur
l’apologétique chrétienne à l’epoque de Constantin (Paris: Institut d’études augustini
ennes, 2009).
(69.) Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of
the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 60–90. On the god-fearers, see Joyce
Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias, Cambridge Philologi
cal Society, Suppl. 12 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Philological Society, 1987).
(70.) As argued by MacMullen, Christianising the Roman Empire.
(71.) The Roman family: Jane Gardner, Family and Familia in Roman Law and Life (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998); and Beryl Rawson, ed. A Companion to Families in the
Greek and Roman Worlds (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
(72.) See Andreas Bendlin, Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy.
(73.) As discussed at length in Cicero, On Laws, 2.47–53.
(74.) See Éric Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North
Africa, 200–450 CE (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 1–3.
(75.) Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities.
(76.) On the power of bishops in the late Empire, see Éric Rebillard and Claire Sotinel
(eds.), L’évêque dans la cité du IVe au Ve siècle: Image et autorité: Actes de la table ronde
organisée par l’Istituto patristico Augustinianum (Rome: École française de Rome, 1998);
esp. Lellia Cracco Ruggini “Vir sanctus: il vescovo e il suo “public ufficio sacro” nella cit
tà,” at 3–15. For the role of Christian rhetoric, see Averil Cameron, Christianity and the
Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse, Sather Classical Lectures,
55 (Berkeley: University of California Press), 120–154.
(77.) On the degree of commitment to be expected by members of the various groups, see
Simon Price, “Homogeneity and Diversity in the Religions of Rome,” Archiv für Religions
geschichte 5 (2003), 180–197.
Page 29 of 31

(78.) On pagan monotheism, Athanassiadi and Frede, Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity
(see note 29); Stephen Mitchell and Peter van Nuffelen, ed. Monotheism Between Pagans
and Christians in Late Antiquity (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2010); and Stephen Mitchell
and Peter van Nuffelen, eds., One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
(79.) Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire
(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); and on the gradual development of
interactions: Érik Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities.
(80.) On the continued influence of the pagan paideia: see Peter Brown, Power and Per
suasion, 86, 35–70; Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 82, 84–87;
and Sébastien Morlet, Les Chrétiens at la culture: Conversion d’un concept (Ie–VIe siècle)
(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2016).
(81.) Alan D. E. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (see note 17); and see reactions in Ri
ta Lizzi Testa, ed. The Strange Death of Pagan Rome (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013),
esp. Guido Clemente’s “Introduction,” at 13–29.
(82.) Guy Stroumsa, La fin du sacrifice: Les mutations religieuses de l’Antiquité tardive
(Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005); and Guy Stroumsa, “The End of Sacrifice Revisited,” in Philoso
phy and the End of Sacrifice: Disengaging Sacrifice in Ancient India, Greece and Beyond,
ed. Peter Jackson and Anna-Pya Sjödi (Sheffield, U.K.: Equinox, 2016), 99–121. However,
see note 8 for the persistence of the pagan sacrificial tradition.
(83.) See for instance, Justin the Martyr’s story of a wife’s conversion, with discussion by
P. Lorraine Buck, “The Pagan Husband in Justin 2 Apology, 2.1-20,” Journal of Theological
Studies 53.2 (2002), 541–546; and see Averil Cameron, “Early Christianity and the Dis
course of Female Desire” in Women in Ancient Societies, ed. Leonie Archer, Susan Fis
chler, and Maria Wyke (Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1994).
(84.) Except presumably at the time of the Bacchanalia, 15–17.
(85.) Marie-Francoise Baslez, ed, Chrétiens persécuteurs: Destructions, exclusions, vio

lences religieuses au IVe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 2014).
(86.) See the accounts of Fowler, Religious Experience, and Latte, Religionsgechichte
(both in note 2).
(87.) The earliest discussion, concentrating on the notion of decline (Verfall), was that of
L. Krahner, Grundlinien zur Geschichte des Verfalls der römischen Staatsreligion bis auf
die Zeit des Augustus (Halle, Germany: Buchh. Des Waisenhauses, 1837)
(88.) Hermann Usener, Götternamen: Versuch einer Lehre von der religiösen Begriffsbil
dung (Bonn, Germany: Cohen, 1896) offered a very influential discussion of staged reli
gious evolution. See Scheid, L’impossible polythéism 434–435 (see note 2).
Page 30 of 31

(89.) For the origin of these views, see G. W. F. Hegel, “Lecture Manuscript,” in Lectures
on the History of Religion II, ed. P. Hodgson, (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987), 211–231; with Scheid, L’impossible polythéisme, 434–435 (see note 2). For religion
as a political tool, see L. Ross Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley: Univer
sity of California Press, 1949), 76–97.
(90.) Discussion of Polis religion, in the context both of Greek and Roman religious sys
tems, originated with C. Sourvinou-Inwood, “What Is Polis-Religion?” in Oxford Readings
in Greek Religion, ed R. Buxton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 13–37; and see
the arguments as related to Rome in J. Scheid, Les dieux l’État et l’individu: réflexions sur
la religion civique à Rome (Paris: Seuil, 2013). This was translated and with a forward, by
Clifford Ando, The Gods, the Household and Family Religion in AntiquityState and the In
dividual (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
(91.) See J. Bodel, “Cicero’s Minerva, Penates, and the Mother of the Lares: An Outline of
Roman Domestic Religion,” in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, ed. John Bodel
and Saul Olyan (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 248–255.
(92.) For this argument, see Bendlin, Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy.
(93.) See Bodel, in Bodel and Olyan Household and Family Religion, 251.
(94.) For the bibliography on this topic see Ruel, in Religious organization and religious
experience; Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice; Bloch, in Frankenberry, Radical Interpre
tation in Religion; Eidinow, Kindt, and Osborne, Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion;
Price, Rituals and Power; King, “The Organization of Roman Religious Beliefs”; Scheid,
Quand faire c’est croire; Versnel, Coping with the Gods; Davies in Roubekas, Theorizing
Religion in Antiquity; and Hecht, Doubt, a History (see notes 26 and 27 for full informa
tion).
(95.) For a challenge to this view: see now L. Ayres, “Continuity and Change in Second-
Century Christianity: A Narrative Against the Trend,” in Paget and Lieu, Christianity in
the Second Century, 106–121 (see note 57).
(96.) Recent discussions of religious competition in this period include D. Engels and P.
Van Nuffelen, eds., Religion and Competition in Antiquity (Brussels: Editions Latomus,
2014); Jordan D. Rosenblum, Lilly C. Vuong, and Nathaniel P. DesRosiers, eds., Religious
Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World
(Göttingen, Germany: Vanderhock & Ruprecht, 2014).
John North
Department of Classics, University of London
Page 31 of 31

The Rise of Religious Competition in the Roman Empire

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Rise of Religious Competition in the Roman Empire

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Religious History of the Roman Empire

The Religious History of the Roman Empire

Summary and Keywords

date: 04 September 2019

Religious Change and the Rise of Competition

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

New Interpretations of the Religious Situation

date: 04 September 2019

It is a well-known saying of Cato’s that it astonished him that one haruspex

did not burst out laughing when he saw another.14

date: 04 September 2019

Discussions Triggered by New Interpretations

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

The Concept of Religion in the Roman Period

The Character and Role of Beliefs and Believing

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

Religious Associations in the Roman Empire

date: 04 September 2019

Paganism and Christianity

date: 04 September 2019

How Did the Groups Perceive Themselves and

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

The Emergence and Significance of Competition for Membership

date: 04 September 2019

It would be an over-simplification to claim that competition was a completely new phe­

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

or life-threatening—decisions than any to be imagined in the religious lives of Romans of

Review of the Historiography

date: 04 September 2019

Good introductions to Roman religion from a pagan viewpoint would be:

date: 04 September 2019

For a recent, very effective, defense of the polis model:

For recent exploration of the role of the individual:

date: 04 September 2019

In recent years, cognitive scientists, anthropologists, and philosophers have developed a

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

(18.) Herodotus 2.42–50.

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

(36.) Livy, 39.8–19, lines 7–9.

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

(53.) Acts of the Apostles 11.26.

(54.) Ignatius, Letter to the Magnesians 10.1.

date: 04 September 2019

date: 04 September 2019

(70.) As argued by MacMullen, Christianising the Roman Empire.

(73.) As discussed at length in Cicero, On Laws, 2.47–53.

(75.) Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities.

date: 04 September 2019

(84.) Except presumably at the time of the Bacchanalia, 15–17.

(85.) Marie-Francoise Baslez, ed, Chrétiens persécuteurs: Destructions, exclusions, vio­

date: 04 September 2019

Department of Classics, University of London

date: 04 September 2019

You might also like

It would be an over-simplification to claim that competition was a completely new phe

(85.) Marie-Francoise Baslez, ed, Chrétiens persécuteurs: Destructions, exclusions, vio