by Douglas Boin
What did initiates do in the Mithraeum? Mithraic worship involved a ritual banquet, which the archaeological evidence makes clear. Many sites are lined on either side with benches where the initiates would have reclined and eaten. It also is apparent that the initiates likely reclined in a specific order, according to seven “grades,” or levels. At Ostia’s Mithraeum of Felicissimus, named for the donor, a man named Felicissimus, a third‐century CE mosaic floor shows the seven symbols associated with these levels. They are the Raven, Bridegroom, Soldier, Lion, “Persian” (depicted with the stereotypical “Persian” hat), the Sun‐Runner, and the Father. Although traditional scholars would claim that each “grade” correlates to a level of higher spiritual knowledge – representing a deeper initiation into the Mithras cult – there is a much less innocuous explanation for them. It is equally plausible that the names represent financial levels for the cult’s donors. The highest level, called “Father” (pater, in Latin), was the standard term used for many financial patrons, appearing in Latin, Greek, Roman, Christian, and Jewish inscriptions. This evidence should not be taken uncritically to suggest that all of Mithras’ worshippers were male, either. Scholars are currently investigating whether there is evidence for women initiates.
In the end, what did Mithras’ worshippers believe? How were their beliefs different from the people who followed Rome’s traditional cults? These questions are difficult to answer although not for lack of evidence. Many Mithraea, not just at Ostia, preserve traces of a common scene, in either painted or sculpted form. It is the scene depicting “the slaying of the bull,” or tauroctony, by the god Mithras. The ubiquity of this scene at Mithraea in Rome, Germany, and in Syria seems to suggest it was an important mythical story, one which Mithras’ worshippers cherished – like Christians prize the tales of Jesus’ birth in the manger. Yet not even that interpretation is certain.
One scholar of Mithras’ cult, Roger Beck, has proposed an interesting theory that the “bull‐slaying” scene actually commemorates an important astrological event. In Beck’s interpretation, Mithras’ slaying the bull is not a sacred story whose biographical details new worshippers were forced to memorize as part of their initiation, the way a Catholic learns the catechism of the church. Mithras’ slaying the bull, rather, was one way of personalizing the movement of constellations and of showing the triumph of the “Unconquered Sun,” as Mithras is frequently called – an astrological event around which the initiates built their own sense of community.
Emperor worship
Even though Ostia is filled with examples of Mithraea, Minucius Felix doesn’t mention Mithras’ worshippers in his dialogue. That’s one reason to be suspicious of using this Christian text to try to reconstruct how all Romans worshipped in the third century. Text and archaeology need to be read side‐by‐side to be historically and mutually informative. There were other ways of creating community in the Roman world which Minucius Felix doesn’t mention, either. The worship of the divine Roman emperor was one of the most important.
Since the time of Julius Caesar’s death in 44 BCE, Romans had been familiar with a cult to the Deified Julius (Divus Iulius). Caesar’s heir, Octavian Augustus, would famously promote the cult of the Deified Caesar – with its own temple, priest, and altar. Later, upon Augustus’ death, the practice of honoring successful leaders by worshipping them as gods continued. Over the course of the first and second centuries CE, well‐regarded rulers like Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian were granted the title divi, “divine.” Many were given temples in Rome and throughout the empire. At times, these honors conformed to local practice, such as the Greek custom of calling the emperor theos (the Greek word meaning “God”) or using the Latin term deus (also meaning “God,” as opposed to divus, meaning “Divine”). Coins and inscriptions from across the Mediterranean show a variety of terms at various times and various places. The provincial priests of the imperial cult were called flamines (the Latin singular is flamen). Municipal or local town priests of the emperors’ cult were called sacerdotes (sacerdos, in the singular).
The majesty of emperor worship can be observed at Ostia in the form of a monumental domed building that once stood in the city center. It has been dated to the early third century CE. This building, called today the “Round Temple,” once housed colossal portraits of several third‐century rulers. Although the remains are bare brick and mortar, we can get a better picture of what may have taken place here if we journey far across the Mediterranean. In the Syrian city of Dura Europos, a well‐preserved wall painting shows local citizens and Roman soldiers participating in an incense sacrifice in front of statues of the Roman emperors. Their performance of a cult act for the emperors probably looked very similar to the way people would have honored the Roman emperors at Ostia’s “Round Temple.”
Dedications and honors for the imperial family were a common feature of local cities by the third century, not just at Ostia. One inscription from the city of Volubilis in Roman Morocco tells us about an important local woman, Flavia Germanilla, who served as an imperial cult priest in the early third century. The inscription calls Flavia a “flaminica provinciae,” provincial priestess of the imperial cult (AE 1921, no. 19). A sculptural relief from Italy, now in Copenhagen, also shows a third‐century Roman woman acting in a highly visible civic capacity. She is shown on an altar in the traditional Roman act of pietas, covering her head in order to partake in the sacrifice of a bull (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek inv. 858).
What can we take away from these scenes of imperial cult participation in the third century, then, and deduce about the cult of the emperors more broadly? The first key point is to recognize that, from its first appearance in Italy in 44 BCE to the time that Flavia Germanilla was appointed provincial priestess at Volubilis, the system was never regulated by either the Senate or the emperors themselves from the central authority of Rome. By contrast, a laissez faire approach was common, ensuring that local communities had a degree of flexibility in how – or even whether – they wanted to participate in honoring the imperial family. Second, the precise, “divine status” of specific emperors was never pre‐determined in this system. Local communities could choose to worship a deus, a divus, or a theos and then debate the distinctions. Lastly, the leadership of the cult in local cities could include both men and women.
Summary
Roman worship involved many facets: traditional gods, who were constantly changing; the mystery cults, which provided a more intimate sense of community for their initiates; and emperor worship, which bound the empire’s center and its periphery together by promoting a set of shared values. There were still other ways Romans worshipped their gods: at home, where ancestral deities were important; or by practicing curses and magic, two avenues of communicating with the divine forces which the authorities did not condone. Magic itself was banned.
The short‐lived third‐century emperor Decius tried to navigate this complicated social world. He did so against the backdrop of an expanding body of Roman citizens, which Caracalla had brought into the empire. Christian writers like Minucius Felix or Eusebius can be colorful companions for looking in on this third‐century political landscape; but ultimately, their voices prove to be much more limiting than they might first appear. Later rulers would engineer their own strategies for unifying the empire. Some of these policies would soon prove disastrous to the civic fabric of Rome.
Study Questions
In Roman cities, who were the flamines?
Describe a picture of what daily life was like in a third‐century city. Fill it with as many different people as you can.
Did Emperor Decius persecute Christians?
Can historians assume that all Christian apologetic writing (apologia is an effort to “make a defense of the faith”) was intended to convert non‐Christians? Provide evidence to support your conclusions.
Suggested Readings
Jan Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).
Jörg Rüpke, From Jupiter to Christ: On the History of Religion in the Roman Imperial Period, translated by D. Richardson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
Michele Salzman, Marianne Sághy, and Ritta Lizzi Testa (eds.), Pagans and Christians in Late Antique Rome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
6
Social Change
Decius’ call for civic sacrifice caused an uproar among certain Christian individuals and communities who felt they were being “persecuted” for their beliefs. Ancient church historians like Eusebius and modern church historians, like the acclaimed twentieth‐century scholar Henry Chadwick, chose to write history from their vantage. In The Early Church Chadwick described Decius’ policy as “a systematic persecution” and “a deliberate attempt to catch people” (London: Penguin, 1993, p. 188). As we saw from evidence in the last chapter, Decius’ policy was much more open‐ended. There is no evidence to suggest the emperor maliciously designed it to entrap citizens.
Nevertheless, by the second half of the third century CE, two of Decius’ successors – Emperor Valerian (r. 253–260) and Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) – would begin to force Christians, by law, to participate in civic events. These decrees did specifically target Rome’s Christian community. They are the first and only historical instances in which the Roman government deliberately and with malice used the legal mechanisms of the state to discriminate against Jesus’ followers.
Only in the most general terms can the policies of Valerian and Diocletian be seen as an attempt to unify Rome’s cities. For at their heart, by explicitly identifying one minority group as the source of the empire’s larger social problems, these laws stained Rome’s long‐standing tradition of pluralism. This pluralism had, at times, been granted begrudgingly by Romans who feared the makeup of their changing cities, the foreign identity of merchants, or the advancement of non‐Roman groups. Yet for centuries, this system had worked, inspiring forms of civic participation that had allowed foreigners, initiates of mystery cults, even followers of an alleged superstitio – like Jews – to find their home in the empire. By the third century, in particular, many Jews had begun to build synagogues with the help of wealthy donors and patrons. From Ostia, where a dedication records the creation of a Torah Shrine “on behalf of the Roman Emperors,” to Dura Europos in Roman Syria, where Jews transformed a house into a worship space with colorful paintings, third‐century Rome witnessed an exciting rise in the visibility of many groups that otherwise are unattested in the archaeological record for previous centuries. To tell the history of the third century as one of widespread decline overlooks these smaller but no less important triumphs.
After a century that had seen emperors attempt to keep Roman society from fracturing, however, and against the backdrop of a state that was hemorrhaging leaders, Emperors Valerian and Diocletian had resorted to extreme steps to persuade the Christian population to join in the enterprise of being Roman. In doing so, they doubled down on the worst of many Romans’ cultural fears: by crafting legislation to punish Christians specifically for their beliefs. These laws were disastrous for the empire’s morale. They also succeeded in driving a wedge between the empire’s Christian communities who were, just as they had been from their first generation, divided amongst themselves about how to live in the Roman Empire. This Christian “identity baggage” would only grow more pronounced throughout the fourth century CE and, later, change many Roman towns.
To understand how and why these changes happened, we need to conclude our narrative of the third century with close‐up attention to events at the top of society combined with a wide‐angle view of what was happening at the bottom.
6.1 Rome’s Laws Against Christians
Emperor Valerian, 257–258 CE
Textual sources suggest that Emperor Valerian issued two decrees against Christians. The first, announced in 257 CE, is known from a third‐century Christian account modeled on contemporary trial records, the Proconsular Judicial Proceedings. According to this Latin text, Valerian ordered everyone in cities throughout the empire who did not recognize “the worship practice [religio] of the Roman people … to acknowledge Roman rituals” (Acta Proconsularia 1.1, trans. by H. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs [Oxford, 1972]). Based on its imprecise language, this decree appears consistent with Decius’ own policy and would not, therefore, have posed an existential problem for all of the empire’s Christians – unless they specifically chose to claim a special social status.
In 258 CE, however, Valerian’s hostility grew more pronounced. A second decree, known from a Christian source, describes the emperor’s revised edict in this way. According to the writer, Valerian now decreed that:
[B]ishops, presbyters, and deacons should immediately be punished; [and] that [Christian] senators, men of importance, and Roman knights should both lose their dignity and, moreover, be deprived of their property. Furthermore, if, when their means were taken away, these people should persist in identifying as “Christians,” then they should also lose their heads. Wealthy women should be deprived of their property and sent into banishment. Finally, Christians in the imperial household … should have their property confiscated and should be sent in chains by assignment to Caesar’s estates.
(Cyprian, Letter 81.1, trans. by R. Wallis in the series ANF, slightly modified [1886])
This legislation, directed specifically at the Christian hierarchy, as well as financially well‐connected Romans, both male and female, must have had a profoundly disruptive effect on the Christian community. Unlike the decree of the previous year, which gave some latitude to Christians to make their own choices about sacrifice, now Christians had no legal recourse or room for creative manoeuvring. Their institutional structure was under assault, as was their donor class.
The situation ended thanks to Sasanian Persia. When Sapur I captured Emperor Valerian in 260 CE, the emperor’s discriminatory policy was no longer enforced. Christians must have been joyous. Later, by the early fourth century, they were passing down stories that Valerian’s capture had been divine punishment for his ill‐conceived campaign against Christians (Lactantius, On the Death of the Persecutors 5).
Christian sacrifice in context on the eve of the Rule of Four
In the long history of Christians living in the Roman Empire up until the third century, Valerian’s laws stand out as an aberration, but they can often distract scholars from seeing the broader picture. Throughout the empire’s cities, many intensely personal dramas were playing out both before and after the political programs of Decius and Valerian as Christians were making complicated decisions about whether to participate or not in Rome’s civic sacrifices. Many chose to do so for a variety of reasons, including, perhaps, the need for the approval of their family, friends, and clergy.
Some likely weighed the potential for personal and political advancement. When the government turned against them, in 258 CE, the range of emotions among them – especially among Christians who worked “in the imperial household” (a fact we just learned) – must have run the gamut: from betrayal to resignation to disappointment with their political leadership. One Christian writer working in the early to middle third century CE, Origen of Alexandria, gives us some sense of the panicked conversations that must have been filling the taverns and laundry mats and markets during this turbulent time.
Origen (b. c.185–d. c.255 CE) reports on a conversation he had with a non‐Christian, a man named Celsus, who expressed skepticism that Christians could ever really be good citizens of the empire. “To this [assertion],” Origen explained to his Christian readers, “our answer is”:
[W]e do give divine help to the emperors, if I may say, by putting on the whole armor of God when occasion requires. And this we do in obedience to the injunction of the apostle [who said]: “I exhort you, therefore, that first of all
, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all men, for emperors, and for all who are in authority” [quoting 1 Timothy 2.1–2].
(Origen, Against Celsus 8.73, trans. by F. Crombie in the series ANF [1885], slightly modified)
The fact that a third‐century Christian like Origen could appeal to “Paul,” “the apostle,” (“1 Timothy”) to support his argument that Christians were not a threat to the empire shows the malleability of Christian tradition in the hands of Late Antique thinkers. It conforms, too, with the broader picture we can piece together from material culture, such as at the excavations at Dura Europos, Syria, where a well‐integrated Christian home‐owner succeeded in renovating his house – turning it into a Christian worship space – without neighbors handing him over to the authorities. This Christian church, the earliest worship space ever excavated in a Roman city, dates to the decades prior to 256 CE before a Sasanian army destroyed the town. The construction of the church in the age before Valerian suggests that not all Christians in the third century feared either being seen or heard in their local towns.
It is indisputable, of course, that other members of the Christian faith stood up and stood out during this same time as loud champions of resistance. These Christians did so by suggesting that to call oneself a “Christian” required a non‐negotiable commitment to blood and martyrdom. Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, advocated exactly that position by appealing to the language of militancy, arguing that Christians everywhere were required to act as “God’s soldiers” (Letter 8). The Roman government may have tried to punish Christians or even torture them, Cyprian wrote, but it was Christian blood which was the real “spectacle … to the Lord. How sublime, how great, how acceptable to the eyes of God,” he claimed, “[was] the allegiance and devotion of His soldiers” when they stood up and opposed the Roman state (Cyprian, Letter 8, trans. by R. Wallis in the series ANF [1886]).
