The Final Pagan Generation - Part II

Christianity Unbound

This is the second post of three on Edward Watts’s fantastic book The Final Pagan Generation. (I had intended to finish the review in two posts, but was having too much fun and reverted to the rule of three!)

Before reading this one, you should check out the first post, which addresses the book’s structure, introduces the four men it profiles, and touches on Rome’s traditional religion and its first Christian emperor, Constantine.

Icon depicting Constantine and bishops at the Council of Nicaea

Transitions

Constantine died in 337. While he abandoned Diocletian’s Tetrarchy to rule as sole emperor from 324, he restored the power-sharing system, after a fashion, by dividing the empire among his three sons and his nephew. Even in death, Constantine thus managed to be all things to all people, regardless of faith: the succession of his sons, born to the purple, harked back to the Severans, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and, in intent, even Augustus himself. But those three new emperors were the first in Rome’s history that weren’t raised in the traditional religion—and also the first to exhibit outright hostility to it.^[1]

This radical aspect of the succession, however, was probably lost on most Romans. For soon after taking power, the co-emperors engaged in one of the most Roman activities imaginable: civil war.

The resulting dynastic struggle, which lasted 19 years, was of great importance to the final pagan generation for two reasons. First, civil strife necessarily put changes to imperial religious policy on the backburner. The warring emperors couldn’t afford to alienate potential pagan supporters by persecuting them. Second, despite instability at the top, the imperial government largely functioned as normal. Though the armed conflict certainly may have proved challenging for our subjects to navigate, Watts makes clear that it didn’t have as large an impact on their day-to-day life as we might think.

That each factor—a lull in the Christianization of the empire, and the continued functioning of governmental institutions during a time of nominal unrest—coincided with the end of the final pagan generation’s formative years, and their first professional experiences in their 20s and 30s, had dramatic influence on their response (or lack thereof) to the destruction of the traditional religion that occurred later in their lives.

The Real World

The decades of relative stability provided by Diocletian and Constantine allowed for each emperor to create and maintain a complex civil administration, with hopes that new apparatus would prevent a repeat of the Crisis of the Third Century. Their bureaucracy—located not only in the Senates and imperial courts of Rome and Constantinople, but also in the gubernatorial offices in the provincial capitals—“bestowed positions of influence on men whose names were pushed forward from the vast web of family and social connections that bound together the later Roman elite.”^[2]

Praetextatus, Libanius, Themistius, and Ausonius were all, to varying degrees, members of that elite. During the years of unrest that followed Constantine’s death, each man managed to launch his career, and some even prospered.

Praetextatus, as befitting a man of his station, pursued the cursus honorum (or what was left of it), serving as a priest, augur, quaestor, and praetor in the 340s. Themistius initially worked at a school in Nicomedia. After giving an oration praising one of Constantine’s sons, Constantius,^[3] in front of the man himself, Themistius became a close associate—or, as Watts rightly says, a “propagandist”—of the emperor, who made him a senator in Constantinople. While Libanius has initial difficulty in finding a position, he became a publicly funded teacher of philosophy and rhetoric in Constantinople and his native Antioch. After a brief career as a lawyer, Ausonius also worked as a teacher in Bordeaux, and married into a wealthy senatorial family.

Note that each member of the final pagan generation was able to succeed professionally in the 340s and 350s without regard to his religious beliefs. Status as an educated Roman, and the intricate network of social connections that status provided, was sufficient.

This state of affairs began to change—rapidly—with the ascendancy of Constantius.

Warning Signs

Constantine’s middle son, Constantius, who ruled as Augustus in Constantinople, had a mostly harmonious relationship with his younger brother Constans, who ruled as Augustus in Rome. While differing in temperament—Constantius was piously (and publicly, and perhaps annoyingly) Christian; Constans was debauched and rumored to be overfamiliar with his (always handsome) bodyguards—they worked together to fend off various challenges to their joint rule.

In 350, however, one of these challengers, Magnetius, succeeded, murdering Constans and declaring himself emperor. Understandably outraged, Constantius marched west. His army^[4] met Magnetius’s forces in Pannonia and barely defeated them, with tens of thousands of casualties on both sides. While forces loyal to Constantius eventually retook Magnetius’s territory and forced him to commit suicide, the war lasted until 353 and sapped Roman martial strength at exactly the wrong time.^[5] Constantius had to contend with related minor rebellions for two years thereafter.

But by 355, Constantius ruled the roost. And he planned to rule as he saw fit:

After the spate of civil conflicts ended in 355, Constantius’ moderation dissipated. Without Constans to balance him and usurpers to challenge him, Constantius could govern the empire in a way that reflected his priorities. He rewarded those who had been dependable, punished those he suspected, and pursued objectives that would have been impractical if government was shared with another sovereign.^[6]

Those objectives included the aggressive suppression of the traditional religion and persecution of its devotees. From 355, Constantius, encouraged by a coterie of radical Christian advisors, issued laws and edicts that:

• Made animal sacrifice punishable by death: “If any persons should be proven to devote their attention to sacrifices or to the worship of images, We command that they be subjected to capital punishment.”^[7]

• Barred access to pagan temples: “All temples should be immediately closed in all cities and access to them forbidden so as to deny to all abandoned men the opportunity to commit sin.”^[8]

• Condemned provincial officials who did not enforce the above: “The governors of the provinces shall be similarly punished if they should neglect to punish such crimes.”^[9]

• Transferred temples owned by the emperor to the church.

• Sanctioned the destruction of other temples.

• Permitted private citizens to take statues and building materials from temples for use in their homes.

To us, with the benefit of hindsight, this all seems VERY extreme—and a calculated, forceful attempt to destroy the traditional religion.

But the Romans of The Final Pagan Generation didn’t see it that way. While they privately criticized and voiced alarm at Constantius’s polices, none of them did so in public. Why not? In short—for the same reasons their fathers didn’t attack those of Constantius’s father 30 years earlier.

Watts wryly points out that while “[t]here was no legal penalty per se for speech critical of the emperor or his policies . . . possible social and professional consequences made such criticism inadvisable.”^[10] In Constantius’s case, “social and professional consequences” meant “death.” Then, as now, it takes an unusually strong character (or unusually high stakes) to motivate people to take such a risk.

The coercive policies described above would seemingly be a high-stakes proposition—that, if successful, would result in the end of the traditional religion. They certainly were intended to be by the emperor’s Christian advisors, and perhaps even by Constantius himself. But things didn’t work out that way:

Constantius’s . . . religious policies were largely ineffectual. Sacrifice continued despite [his] ban, temples remained open despite his injunction to the contrary, and the emperor himself even toured the (still open) temples in the city of Rome when he visited in 357. The gods remained present everywhere in forms that could be seen, heard, smelled, and touched in every city across the empire. Constantius’s polices may have been disagreeable, but they hardly seemed to be a pressing or universal threat.^[11]

If Constantius’s anti-pagan agenda was unsuccessful, what was the point in attacking it—especially if, as in Themistius and Libanius’s case, you owed your position to the goodwill of the emperor?

[T]here were careers to advance, honors to be earned, positions to be gained, transfers to better jobs to be secured, deaths to mourn, issues of inheritance to resolve, new marriages to arrange, and fun to be had. This was not a good time to raise concerns about ineffectual religious policies or to wage foolish crusades against a powerful emperor. It made much more sense to swallow one’s discomfort with a set of largely symbolic policies and work with the emperor and his administration. While great rewards awaited those who could succeed in doing so, principled opposition to the regime promised nothing and posed significant risks. On balance, these seemed like foolish risks to run.^[12]

Perhaps the final pagan generation’s calculus would have altered had Constantius’s reforms had broader success. And if Constantius had lived longer, maybe they would have. But he didn’t. The emperor died in 361, just six years after his initiation of his anti-pagan policies. He hoped his successor, a seemingly devout cousin named Julian tutored by none other than Eusebius himself,^[13] would finish what he started. Observing Julian’s reign from the afterlife, Constantius would soon discover what every zealot seems to learn too late: God has a wonderful sense of humor.

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^[1]                There were earlier emperors—notably Elagabalus—who favored foreign cults over the traditional Roman gods. That being said, their favoritism involved integration of the foreign deity into the pantheon of Roman gods—a practice of assimilation in which the Romans had been engaged for hundreds of years. By contrast, Christians (and Jews) not only refused to contribute God to the pantheon—they also claimed that God was superior to the gods and the only legitimate object of worship. This Christian and Jewish intolerance of Roman syncretism was the cause of Rome’s intolerance for and persecution of Christian and Jewish believers.

^[2]                TFPG, p 79. Watts accurately observes that this system also made the Roman empire more autocratic, by removing provincial elites from autonomous civil administration (in the local senates and councils of the provincial towns and cities) and placing them under the direct supervision of imperial officials (military and civil governors of the emperor in the provincial capitals). 

^[3]                Constantius is often referred to as “Constantius II” to distinguish him from his grandfather, Constantius Chlorus, who was known in Roman times as “Constantius I.” Throughout this post, I’ve followed Watts in referring to Constantius II as “Constantius.”

^[4]                But not Constantius himself. Gibbon notes that “after animating his soldiers by an eloquent speech, [Constantius] retired into a church at some distance from the field of battle.” Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chapter XVIII – Character of Constantine and his sons – Part IV.

^[5]                Gibbon, again: “The number of the slain was computed at fifty-four thousand men, and the slaughter of the conquerors was more considerable than that of the vanquished; a circumstance which proves the obstinacy of the contest, and justifies the observation of an ancient writer [Zonaras – ed.], that the forces of the empire were consumed in the fatal battle of Mursa, by the loss of a veteran army, sufficient to defend the frontiers, or to add new triumphs to the glory of Rome.” Decline and Fall, Chapter XVIII – Character of Constantine and his sons – Part IV.

^[6]                TFPG, 85.

^[7]                TFPG, 87.

^[8]                TFPG, 88.

^[9]                TFPG, 88.

^[10]              TFPG, p 89.

^[11]              TFPG, p 89.

^[12]              TFPG, p 102.

^[13]              We met Eusebius, who suggested that Constantine, per the Bible, physically tear down pagan temples, in the first post.