Fifty years before Isocasius’ trial, the emperor Honorius could happily imagine that there were no pagans left at all ( Cod. Theod. 16. 10. 22); some seventy years after it, Justinian’s witchfinder-general, John of Ephesus, would find both the imperial court and Anatolian countryside riddled with them (Whitby 1991). Scholars have likewise tended to find in late antique paganism, perhaps more than in any other branch of the subject, what they were looking for. Conversion to Christianity and persecution by Christians are abundantly on record, and both have been energetically exploited; pagan decline and pagan survivals each has its careful monitors, who duly find their moribund corpse or their vital signs. John of Ephesus’ missionary exploits among the backwoods villages of sixth-century Asia Minor have thus been interpreted to indicate either that paganism had already been confined to isolated pockets or that a robustly traditional rural culture continued to find its own forms of religious expression (Trombley 1985; Mitchell 1993, ii: 118-19). The present survey, with its repeated emphasis on the tricks of perspective that even our most familiar texts are apt to play, has likewise reflected its author’s preoccupations.
A final example will bring together the various threads that have been interwoven through this chapter: the interplay between legislation and violence, the religious implications of classical rhetoric and civic patronage - and above all the impossibility of deriving more than provisional inferences from our sources. The small African town of Calama had erupted in violence in June ad 408; during the annual Bean Festival, dancers passing the city cathedral were accosted by clergymen and responded with a barrage of stones; when the bishop complained to an unsympathetic city council, the church was stoned again; a further complaint led to a full-scale assault, during which the cathedral was ransacked and a clergyman killed. The episode has been variously characterized, as proof that Calama had ‘‘not yet joined ‘the Christian empire’ ’’ (MacMullen 1997: 41) or as an example of the ‘‘devastating’’ powers of retaliation available to local Christians (Harries 1999: 89). These powers are at issue in the correspondence that provides our evidence for the episode, between Augustine of Hippo, a near neighbor, and the local notable Nectarius (August. Ep. 90-1, 103-4). Augustine’s painstaking itemization of the wrongdoing, in response to Nectarius’ first appeal for Christian charity, indicates not only the social complexity of the issue, which evidently involved a triangular tension between the local bishop Possidius, the city council, and the festival crowd, but also the problems facing church leaders, even when they were confronting demonstrably criminal pagan activity. For Augustine’s letter is clearly intended to pressurize the city bosses of Calama into conducting their own house-cleansing. As both he and Nectarius well knew, Christian bishops could gain little by taking responsibility for deploying the full sanctions of the law; Augustine’s position was further complicated, it has recently
Been argued, by Possidius’ unhelpful zeal in seeking redress from the imperial court (Hermanowicz 2004). The resumption of the exchange eight months later, with the question still pending, shows Nectarius still playing his hand most adroitly. Although he was Christian, Augustine had chosen to address him as a representative pagan; he responds in the same spirit, voicing the pagan perspective in a sympathetic but shrewd commentary upon Augustine’s dilemma - and even offering himself as a possible ‘‘convert’’ (August. Ep. 103). Nectarius’ paganism is thus at once a rhetorical device and also, since we must also assume that he was among the sponsors of the festival that had started the trouble, a living reality. This species of part-time paganism remains one of the least understood phenomena of our period, and offers rich potential for further study.
We do not know what subsequently happened at Calama. Our instinctive guesses, however, will reveal much concerning our assumptions about pagans, and about the Christian empire. The range of options that remain possible meanwhile offers a further reason why the investigation of these artificial pagans of Late Antiquity remains so fruitful. For us, no less than for the Christians who first invented them, the pagans are good to think with.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
An analytical overview of the subject is much needed. The narrative of Chuvin 1990 and the eastern case studies in Trombley 1993-4 meanwhile provide useful orientation, while there are further pointers and suggestive insights in Fowden 1998. Developments in Egypt, a crucial area neglected in this chapter, are brilliantly treated by Frankfurter 1998b, with implications relevant to other regions. For the endurance of pagan practice, see Harl 1990. The new framework for understanding religious legislation and its application in Humfress 2007 is of fundamental importance. Fresh perspectives on Libanius’ cultural and religious milieu are available from Cribiore 2007 and Sandwell 2007; the broader question of paganism in education is incisively tackled in Watts 2006. The religiosity of Symmachus, among the topics to be reassessed in Alan Cameron’s long awaited The Last Pagans of Rome, is judiciously contextualized in Sogno 2006. The case of Symmachus’ friend Nicomachus Flavianus provides the starting point for Hedrick 2000, a penetrating study that ranges far beyond its advertised scope.
World History
