A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

Key Debates 6.1 Catastrophe or Continuity? Or a False Choice?

  Athens. Site of Pericles’ Parthenon, economic powerhouse in the classical era, a city‐state governed by the rule of its free male citizens (“democracy”), the home of a creative community where many poets and playwrights won lasting fame. Athens is usually thought of as a classical city, but it is also a Late Antique one whose fortunes raise many questions about urban life in the later Roman Empire.

  From the classical to Hellenistic to Roman periods, the agora was one of the most vibrant parts of the city. By the second century CE, almost every square foot of this roughly triangular plot of land, located just beneath the Acropolis, was crammed with temples, altars, fountain houses, meeting halls, a library, an indoor concert venue (the odeion, built by the Roman general Agrippa), and several covered porticoes, called stoas. City life pulsed as people flowed through its streets.

  What happened to Athens’ beating heart in Late Antiquity? Tackling that question involves more than collecting the evidence from this one city. It means wading into a debate that has traditionally divided scholars into two ideological camps.

  One side believes that, in Late Antique cities, catastrophe reigned. With the political disintegration of the Roman Empire in 476 CE, the benefits of urban living declined precipitously throughout the Mediterranean. As a result, city life became markedly worse than it had been in earlier periods. Countering this view are a group of scholars who maintain that the feel of city life remained vibrant and appealing, in both the eastern and western Mediterranean.

  As textual and archaeological material from Athens shows, however, it’s hard to shoehorn the historical evidence into these kinds of rigid ideological frameworks. In the excavated material, there are signs of obvious economic change. Beginning sometime in the third century CE, the market for a major Athenian export – carved marble sarcophagi, used for entombing the dead – severely contracted. There are also clear instances of archaeological destruction. In 267 CE, Germanic invaders, named the Heruli, attacked the city. They burned many buildings, and excavators have found the charred remains of this conflagration in Athens’ agora.

  What excavations have also revealed is that this attack did not lead to the end of Athens’ rich urban life. In the second half of the third century, a new city wall was erected, extending from the Acropolis. For reasons unknown, the area of the agora – which had been included inside the boundary of Athens ever since the fifth century BCE – was now left out of this new protection. In fact, many of the building blocks in the new city wall were harvested from the agora’s old buildings.

  These signs of architectural cannibalization are easy fodder for historians who wish to find societal gloom in the material evidence, but the picture from Athens is more complex still.

  By the fourth century, other regions of the city were thriving, as expensive houses were being built high above the old agora. A hundred years later, after Athens had weathered another attack, the situation changed again. In the center of the agora, around 400 CE, arose a large villa, which may have been the residence of a key government official. Some smaller houses nearby, like one on the Areopagus, would thrive until the late sixth century. Only at the turn of the seventh century – around the time of a Slavic invasion in 582 CE – do archaeologists find traces of abandonment and squatting in previously important neighborhoods.

  6.4 Diocletian’s Edict against Followers of Mani, 296 CE or 302 CE

  While military campaigns continued on the borders, particularly against the Sasanian state, the maintenance of traditional worship, incorporating animal and incense sacrifice for Rome’s gods, including the deified emperors, was seen as the best strategy for promoting cultural cohesion and articulating shared Roman values. The Arch of Galerius draws attention to this point, as the sculptural panels show several scenes of Romans partaking in incense sacrifice at public altars. Diocletian himself was not content to leave civic sacrifices to the whim of the Roman people, however. Like Decius, he too would summon the apparatus of the state to enforce participation. And like Valerian, he would address his decrees to two specific communities whom he felt needed to be policed: the followers of Mani, on the one hand, and the followers of Jesus, on the other.

  Mani (b. 216–c.275) was born in Parthia, became a follower of Jesus, and later founded his own prophetic movement. It was at once dualistic yet largely pessimistic about the material world and human bodies. Mani was executed by the Zoroastrian Sasanian state for his teachings.

  Much of what historians know about his life can be reconstructed from an extraordinary artifact: “a lump of parchment fragments the size of a matchbox” (“Cologne Mani Codex,” EI vol. 6.1, pp. 43–46) which contains, in Greek, a fifth‐century CE biography of the prophet. The text, written in 1 mm high letters, tells of Mani’s calling; how he “was led astray in this disgusting flesh,” a detail that refers to his negative view of the human body; and how he was given visions of “boundless heights and the fathomless depths” of his soul’s existence (translations of the Cologne Mani Codex from A. D. Lee, Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity [London: Routledge, 2000], pp. 176–177). A second document, written in Coptic, gives more detail about Mani’s worldview. “This whole world stands firm for a season, here … So soon as that builder will finish,/the whole world will be dissolved and set on fire…” (excerpts from The Manichaean Psalmbook, Psalm 223, trans. in Lee [2000], pp. 178–179). This text also helps us see that Mani saw creation as a battle between forces of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. In this unending battle, learning to become aware of the properties in matter – such as how many particles of light may have been contained in plants and other foods – was a vital step for measuring one’s success against the demonic cosmic forces. Foods with more light particles steeled the believer against them. Based on the teachings contained in both these documents, it is extremely likely that Mani’s followers would have harbored a strong apocalyptic worldview.

  What the evidence does not support is the notion that Mani consciously or deliberately founded a separate “religion” called “Manichaeanism.” On this point, the evidence would suggest that Mani considered himself to be a believer in Jesus. He was someone who borrowed freely from Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian ideas; and he was a creative thinker who transformed these ideas into a community of like‐minded believers. It won a wide following.

  After Mani’s death, his teachings spread to Asia. By 296 CE or 302 CE, they had come to the Roman Empire. We know because at that time the Emperor Diocletian issued a decree categorizing Mani’s followers as adherents of a superstitio. Furthermore, although Mani had been executed by a Persian king, the prophet’s teachings were now spoken of by the Roman government as if they were culturally equivalent to the “accursed customs and perverse laws of the Persians” (Comparison of Mosaic and Roman Law 15.3, trans. in N. Lewis and M. Reinhold, Roman Civilization 2 [1990], pp. 548–550). Did Emperor Diocletian believe that Mani’s followers were secretly transmitting Sasanian values into the heart of his empire? We cannot say for sure, but looking at this period from the ground‐up, we do get a different perspective.

  In Solona in Roman Dalmatia (modern Croatia), a tombstone with a Greek inscription records the burial of a woman named Bassa. She was a young girl, a virgin, and a native of Lydia in Asia Minor who died in the late third or early fourth century CE, probably around the time that Diocletian was issuing his decree. On Bassa’s tomb, she was specifically remembered as a member of a “Manichaean” community (Texte zum Manichäismus [Texts for the Study of Manichaeanism], ed. by A. Adam [Berlin, 1954], no. 67). We should try to imagine her reaction to the world of Diocletian’s anti‐Manichaean policy. To her, Diocletian’s conviction that he could use the power of the state to unite the Roman people would not have been an abstract political campaign. It was a plan that would have directly affected her life and the lives of other real citizens, at least one of whom, Bassa, died in the very city where Diocletian had been born.

>   6.5 The Rise of Christianity: Assumptions and Starting Points

  By 303 CE, a similar set of legal proscriptions would be enacted against Christians. The story of Diocletian’s persecution, its repeal, and the rewriting of the constitution to include a legally recognized place for Christian worship is one that will be taken up in the next chapter on law and politics. Before we do so, we should conclude this chapter by looking carefully at three assumptions that have driven research on the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

  “Christianization” and evangelization

  Much work on Late Antiquity involves investigations into what historians have traditionally called the “Christianization” of Rome’s cities. This shorthand is used to describe how Christians changed urban life and Roman society over the course of the third and fourth centuries CE after their community was granted legal status. As an umbrella term for cultural change, however, “Christianization” carries too much baggage to be useful.

  For one, it is too imprecise. Sometimes scholars have used “Christianization” when the phenomenon they are really interested in describing is the spread of the Christian message, a phenomenon more properly called “evangelization.” Second, even when historians qualify their use of it in a broader sense – to refer generically to the spread of Christian ideas, imagery, and laws – the use of the term still places researchers “inside the ring” during the middle of an important fight. Since the founding of the movement in the first century CE, many followers of Jesus had adapted perfectly well to life in their local Roman cities and had accommodated their worship and beliefs to the practices of their non‐Christian family, friends, and neighbors. Other Christians did not.

  The job of the historian is not to take sides in this debate. It is, rather, to stand outside this conversation and play the role of an impartial umpire. That means starting from well‐grounded first principles. The first principle would be this: For three hundred years, it is documented fact that many Christians didn’t want to “Christianize” anything about the Roman world they lived in. So why should historians assume they had to do so starting in the late third century or early fourth century? (Political Issues 6.1: Emperor Constantine in Jerusalem.) For these reasons and more, Christianization as a word will always be a sloppy way of talking about historical change because it shows a stubborn refusal to engage with Christian politics.

  Political Issues 6.1 Emperor Constantine in Jerusalem

  In 135 CE, after three years of war had taxed the patience of Rome, Emperor Hadrian cruelly removed any reference to the Roman province of Judaea from imperial records. A relatively young Roman province – it had only come into existence in 6 CE – the land of Judaea would now be added to parts of the older Roman territory of Syria. Together, the new entity would be called Palestina.

  Life for Jews had suddenly changed. Jerusalem, the city revered as the location of the Second Temple, would now be called Aelia Capitolina. This new designation was an homage to Hadrian’s family name, Aelius, and to the most prominent cult in Rome, the worship of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva on Rome’s Capitoline Hill. Hadrian altered life in Jerusalem in other ways, too, building a temple to the important Roman goddess Venus (known in Greek as Aphrodite) in the center, or forum, of his new Roman colony.

  Hadrian’s Temple of Venus would stand for two centuries until Rome’s first Christian emperor, Constantine, demolished it. Constantine’s biographer, Eusebius, tells the story this way. “The pious emperor addressed himself to another work truly worthy of record in the province of Palestine,” Eusebius explains.

  For it had been in time past the endeavor of impious men … to consign to the darkness of oblivion that divine monument of immortality to which the radiant angel had descended from heaven and rolled away the stone for those who still had stony hearts … This sacred cave, then, certain impious and godless persons had thought to remove entirely from the eyes of men, supposing in their folly that thus they should be able effectually to obscure the truth … by building a gloomy shrine of lifeless idols to the impure spirit whom they call Venus and offering detestable oblations therein on profane and accursed altars [erected at the site].

  (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.25–26, trans. by E. Richardson in the NPNF series [1890])

  The “divine monument of immortality” to which Eusebius refers is “the cave” where Jesus had allegedly been buried. According to Eusebius, it was located beneath the site where Hadrian had built his Temple of Venus. In this retelling, Constantine clears away the “gloomy” temple to build a church commemorating the Anastasis, the Greek word for “Resurrection.”

  Today’s pilgrims, tourists, and residents of Jerusalem know this building as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It was the first imperially funded church in Jerusalem. With it, Constantine made two powerful statements. First, Hadrian’s Temple of Aphrodite had been removed. Second, he had kept the Jewish Temple Mount barren. Both were divisive political decisions. Within three generations of Constantine’s order, Christians would use the example of the empty Temple platform to argue for their supremacy over the Jewish people and their faith.

  As John Chrysostom would preach, “Even now, if you go into Jerusalem, you will see the exposed foundations [of the Temple Mount]. … Consider how conspicuous our victory is. … Do you wish me to bring forward against you other prophets who clearly state the same fact: that your religion [Judaism] will come to an end, that ours will flourish and spread the message of Christ [the Messiah] to every corner of the world?” (Against the Ioudaioi 5.11–12, trans. adapted by A. J. Wharton [“Erasure”] from P. Harkins, John Chrysostom: Discourses against Judaizing Christians [Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1977], p. 140).

  Constantine’s decision about what to build – and what not to build – in Jerusalem led some Christians to the mistaken view that their Jewish Roman neighbors were people of an obsolete faith.

  Maps which purport to illustrate the “Christianization” of the Roman Empire are particularly unhelpful for historians since they never explain what, exactly, they are registering as an example of “Christian” identity or “Christian” behavior. In this regard, the dangers of using the word “Christianization” in the writing of history can best be grasped by looking at the way some political commentators have written about the “Islamization” of contemporary Europe or America. As used in these current contexts, the word “Islamization” implies a cultural threat from the Muslim community; and it is based around the assumption that Muslims are incapable of living peacefully alongside their neighbors without radically wanting to impose “their” law or “their” customs on “traditional Western values.”

  The belief that all members of a monotheistic faith are unable to live in diverse social settings without wanting to change them is a shaky foundation for doing historical research. In this same manner, to tell the story of Late Antiquity as if it were the gradual, inevitable march of Christian customs across the landscape of traditional Roman values perpetuates gross stereotypes about Christians as a group.

  Christian demographics and faith‐based narratives of rapid conversion

  Other questionable presumptions have guided scholarship on Christians and city life in the Roman Empire. A second one is that the ranks of the Christian faithful must have swelled over the course of the third and fourth centuries CE because Romans of this time were gradually becoming more disenchanted with their own faith traditions, abandoning their temples and letting the sacred spaces of their cities decay. Christianity succeeded, in this scenario, because Rome’s worship failed. This approach gained its strongest support in the 1980s and 1990s when one sociologist, Rodney Stark, tried to connect Christianity’s allegedly meteoric rise in Rome to the exponential growth that was then being predicted for the Mormon community in America.

  In the last few decades, however – notwithstanding an increase in the group’s social visibility – membership in the Church of Latter Day Saints in the U.S. has not risen as exponenti
ally as sociologists once forecasted. It now appears, by contrast, that minority religious groups in a pluralistic society can remain demographic minorities for much longer than scholarly models once predicted. This reality does not deny that certain individuals within a minority group can find a level of integration which is ultimately disproportionate to their group’s population. Contemplating the case of the 2008 U.S. Republican presidential campaign, which featured a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, might be a useful comparative exercise. Although a milestone in American politics, the rise of this one Mormon presidential candidate cannot be used to explain, across the United States, a new tide of new conversions to the Church of Latter Day Saints. Public visibility and conversion are two social phenomena that are not necessarily correlated.

  With this case study in mind, we should be extremely cautious about connecting the rise of early Christian visibility with notions of widespread Christian conversion throughout the Roman Empire. Even attempts at measuring Christian demographics in Rome may be a bit of misdirection.

  Many historians, for example, still assume that Christians did succeed in growing their numbers through sermons, outreach, good works, and Bible education. That’s how a small 10 percent of the empire eventually converted the remaining 54 million people of the Roman world over time. In these reconstructions, researchers need Christian numbers to grow over the course of the fourth century, for only then can they truly begin to explain why Christianity was declared the official “religion” of the empire in the late fourth century. If Romans overwhelmingly embraced Christianity by the middle of the fourth century CE, this argument goes, Christian politicians would have been perfectly within their rights to outlaw older “pagan” practices.