Historians of Late Antiquity rely on a limited corpus of surviving evidence for their interpretations of the past. Working strictly within the confines of this evidentiary corpus, they cannot hope to devise metrics for christianization, itself a form of sacralization, nor for secularization or desacralization, without having to contend with the problematic nature of their sources. While these processes will no doubt continue to function as favored categories in historical analysis, to come to a satisfactory understanding of each one, and of each in relation to the other, requires first the careful interpretation of textual strategies and deployment of forms of representation as historical acts. Here the historian would do well to take the ‘‘rhetorical turn,’’ in order to grasp, through reading the surviving texts closely and contextually, the ideological claims put forward by those who were seeking to shape their worlds in accordance with their own beliefs and interests (Clark 2004). If we are to interpret secularization not as a large-scale historical development but as a set of discrete counter-claims (both written and read first and foremost in relation to the demands of christianization), we have to pay close attention to the strategies of textual representation that the ancient authors employed. To achieve this goal will require us to set aside the imperative of using past evidence to arrive at a master narrative of religious change in accordance with the model of ‘‘secularization theory.’’ The reward in doing so will be a richer, more nuanced grasp of the historical challenges faced by individuals and communities in the past.
The latter approach depends largely on the survival of textual evidence, and the process whereby traditions are formed and texts transmitted clearly favors the entrenchment of select Patristic perspectives. This means that secularization and christianization tend to be approached exclusively from the points of view of select Christian writers. Possible balancing strategies include the practice of reading between the lines, trying to decide what the intended or historical audiences of works such as Tertullian’s On Spectacles, John Chrysostom’s sermons against the public shows, or Jacob of Sarugh’s Homilies against Spectacles (Moss 1935) might themselves have thought or believed. But such ventures, critical as they are, are fraught with hermeneutical difficulties of the first order.
On the other hand, historians do occasionally have access to other texts that approach the issues in markedly different ways. One such corpus is the set of imperial laws that were codified under Theodosius II and Justinian. While the selection of laws for preservation and transmission was also determined by a process of tradition formation such as one finds in Christian texts, it reflects mainly the concerns of a nonecclesiastical elite in late antique society. While by the late fourth and early fifth century the emperors and imperial administrators had become mostly Christian in personal conviction and outlook, they sought in word and deed to validate a secular sphere whose qualities were significantly at odds with the ideals of Christian sanctity that were being preached from the pulpit at the time. Even as they incorporated christianizing language in the promulgation of some of their laws (Harries 1999; Matthews 2000), the overall effect of imperial legislation was not to place an ascetic imprint on society but rather to devise a middle way whereby many traditional institutions and practices that were deemed important to the common weal could be maintained even against the objections of critical Christian voices. It is in this context that the emperors and the political elite more generally played an active role in secularizing Roman public spectacles.
A devout Christian, Constantius II issued in ad 341 the decree of cesset superstitio or ‘‘Let superstitio cease!’’ (Cod. Theod. 16. 10. 3). As the emperor openly took the field against what was being presented as pagan superstition, others began to wonder which elements of traditional society would come to be so categorized. Some Christians clearly thought that the measure ought to bring about the demise of public spectacles, given the latter’s association with the worship of the gods. But when the question was put before the emperor, he made it known that he believed the answer to be otherwise - namely, that the games were indeed secular in character. In a law to Catullinus, urban prefect of Rome ad 342-4 (who happened to be the father-inlaw of the senator Praetextatus, a known worshiper of the traditional gods), Constantius II publicized the view that his ad 341 ban on superstitio was in no way to be applied to celebration of festivals and games. In the emperor’s view, since the accompanying public sacrifice had already been taken out of the equation, traditional festivals and spectacles ought to be seen as having been sufficiently cleansed or desacralized as to be unobjectionable to Christians.
As if to underscore how far this principle might be extended, Constantius went on to explain that indeed those extramural temples associated with festivals and public spectacles or voluptates must be carefully preserved for that very reason:
Although all superstitions must be completely eradicated, nevertheless, it is Our will that the buildings of the temples situated outside the walls shall remain untouched and uninjured. For since certain plays or spectacles of the circus or contests derive their origin from some of these temples, such structures shall not be torn down, since from them is provided the regular performance of long established amusements for the Roman people. (Cod. Theod. 16. 10. 3, tr. Pharr 1952: 472)
Through this and similar enactments, Christian emperors were actively seeking a way to establish a compromise position that would balance their own interests with the agenda of Christians who advocated a radical form of christianization. They reached the solution by placing the games and other aspects of traditional civic culture in a new and neutral category of the secular, defined as neither pagan nor Christian. Such a justification for public spectacles even enabled the emperors to include a plea to preserve the temples on account of the latter’s traditional association with spectacles. Having desacralized the games by representing them as essential public services rather than sacral rites, the emperors were later able to use the imperative of offering spectacles to transform even otherwise objectionable temples into neutral cultural heritage sites that merited preservation rather than destruction.
An able ruler, Constantius was known to have adopted a pragmatic attitude toward the provision of games, at times checking excesses (Cod. Theod. 15. 12. 2), and also using them to forge a close connection with his favored subject populations, including the plebs Romana. Interaction with the people of Rome was particularly important during his adventus to Rome in ad 357, which culminated in chariot races in the Circus Maximus. Afterwards, the emperor thanked the people of the city for their warm reception by the gift of an obelisk that was installed there during the prefecture of Orfitus (Amm. Marc. 17. 4. 1).
Constantius thus demonstrated in practice how the notion that panem et circenses remained a vital element of Roman imperial ideology in the post-Constantinian world. His example was followed by other Christian rulers. In a law of ad 399, Arcadius and Honorius issued the following a law to a proconsul of Africa:
Just as We have already abolished profane rites by a salutary law, so We do not allow the festal assemblies of citizens and the common pleasure of all to be abolished. Hence we decree that, according to ancient custom, amusements shall be furnished to the people, but without any sacrifice or any accursed superstition, and they be allowed to attend festal banquets, whenever public desires so demand. (Cod. Theod. 16. 10. 17, Pharr 1952: 475)
In the above examples, the imperial rationale for safeguarding spectacles was premised on the ban on public sacrifices that was the cornerstone of imperial de-paganization (Barnes 1984; Bradbury 1994, 1995). Severed from their moorings in ostensibly pagan cultic practices, the public shows could henceforth be represented as belonging to a secular sphere, that is, to the part of the Greco-Roman past that could be retained for the unfolding Christian present. The imperial imprimatur on the shows drew on the language of tradition, expedience, and public utility. The public games were deliberately referred to as voluptates, pleasures of the people, and their appeal to the people repeatedly cited as the chief reason why the elite continued to safeguard their availability. Thus the main justification for the games was that, while regrettable, they responded to the voluntas spectandi of the urban plebs so that, as voluptates, the shows constituted key elements of the essential commoda that it was the duty of the elite to provide to the people.
This effort to secularize public spectacles needs to be placed in the context of a broader project to define the meaning of pagan in the late Roman law codes (Salzman 1987; Hunt 1993). One example of this can be found in the process whereby the practice of the ars magica came to be associated with pagan idolatry, even as the traditional cultic practices of temple priests came to be linked with all other illegitimate ‘‘religious’’ practices such as divination, astrology, and the practice of magic (Sandwell 2005). When the pre-Constantinian Roman elite discourse clearly distinguished between state and civic cult and these latter marginalized practices, all of them became officially categorized henceforth as forms of condemned superstitio.
The strategic desacralization of the public spectacles also had important functions to perform among other segments of the Roman elite. The senator Symmachus the Elder, often regarded a defender of the ancient religious tradition as represented by his advocacy for the return of the Altar of Victory to the Roman senate house, came to articulate a position on games that was very similar to the one articulated by Christian Roman emperors. Symmachus’ letters and official reports or relationeswhile urban prefect of Rome speak to the importance of the public spectacles in the life of the city and in the construction of relationships between the emperors, the senatorial aristocracy, and the people of Rome. The Christian emperors were then no longer interested in certain traditional forms of elite munificence such as the building of temples to the gods; they even began to allow local Christians to destroy certain rural temples. While in this respect, the emperors showed themselves resistant to the claims of tradition, as Symmachus discovered when his spirited fight for the return of the ara Victoriae came ultimately to naught, these same Christian rulers could be successfully asked to take part in a collaboration to provide the city with bread and circuses. Symmachus did not prevail in the partisan and divisive dispute over the restoration of the Altar of Victory to the curia. But he did win the imperial ear - to some extent - when, as urban prefect, he represented the people’s wish for panem et circenses without overt reference to the religious connotation of the ludi:
The Roman people looks for outstanding benefactions from your Divinities, but, my Lords Emperors, it now asks again for those which your Eternities voluntarily promised: for it regards them as owed. Not that it feels any doubt that they are to be rendered to it - for we can trust nothing with greater confidence than the undertaking of good emperors - but it does not wish, by not making an immediate demand, to give the impression of dissatisfaction with what is offered. And so it begs your Clemencies, after granting those subsidies [of food stuffs] which your generosity has made towards our sustenance, should furnish also the enjoyment of chariot races and dramatic performances to be held in the circus and in Pompey’s theatre. The city delights in these entertainments and your promise has awakened anticipation. Every day messengers are awaited to confirm that these promised shows will soon arrive at the city; reports on charioteers and on horses are being collected; every conveyance, every ship is rumoured to have brought in theatrical artists. Nevertheless it is affection for your Perennities, not avidity for entertainment, that has whetted the longings of the populace. (Symmachus, Relatio 6, tr. Barrow 1973: 56-7)
By speaking of the Roman people’s customary entitlement to shows but otherwise omitting references to the res antiqua, the traditional lore that could only underscore the association of the games to ‘‘pagan’’ religion, Symmachus was in effect desacra-lizing the shows so that religious partisanship no longer entered the equation when determining the allocation of resources for civic upkeep (Lim 1999).
Such examples, which can readily be multiplied, speak to the ways in which desacralization or secularization was invoked in the cause of advocacy. For the ruling elite in particular, secularization enabled a mode of constructive mutual engagement that transcended the claims of religious partisanship. By continuing to furnish both an occasion and an imperative for cooperation, it helped turn the otherwise fractious group into partners working toward a set of common goals.
World History
