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The Religion of Freelance Experts in Early Imperial Rome

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The Religion of Freelance Experts in Early Imperial Rome AT THE TEMPLE GATES: THE RELIGION OF FREELANCE EXPERTS IN EARLY IMPERIAL ROME BY Heidi Wendt A.B., Brown University, 2004 M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School, 2007 DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of PhilosoPhy in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2013 © Copyright 2013 by Heidi Wendt This dissertation by Heidi Katherine Wendt is accepted in its present form by the Department of Religious Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Recommended to the Graduate School Date________________ _______________________________________________ Dr. Stanley K. Stowers, Advisor Date________________ _______________________________________________ Dr. Ross S. Kraemer, Advisor Date________________ _______________________________________________ Dr. John Bodel, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate School Date________________ _______________________________________________ Dean Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii CURRICULUM VITAE Heidi Wendt was born May 12th 1982, in Bethesda, Maryland. After five years in Fairfax, VirGinia, her family moved to Danville, California, where she attended local public schools. In 2000, she entered Brown University as an underGraduate student. There she concentrated in International Relations and ReliGious Studies, with a focus on development and interactions between native reliGion and Christianity in West Africa that included field research in Ghana. After taking several reliGion courses with faculty whose expertise and research were in the ancient Mediterranean world, she grew increasingly interested in the Greco- Roman context of earliest Christianity. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Brown in 2004, Heidi enrolled in Harvard Divinity School, where she studied reliGion in the Roman Empire with an interdisciplinary approach that included coursework in Roman art and archaeoloGy. During this time she acquired archaeoloGical field experience from excavations in Pompeii and Ravenna, and also throuGh extensive academic travel in Greece, Western Turkey, and Italy. She received an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School in 2007. In 2007, Heidi returned to Brown as a doctoral student in the department of ReliGious Studies. While at Brown her research continued to focus on situating early evidence for Christians amidst the wider heteroGeneous landscape of reliGion in the early imperial period. She also pursued additional interdisciplinary training in the department of Classics and the Joukowsky Institute for ArchaeoloGy in the Ancient World. From 2009 to 2011, she managed the U.S. EpiGraphy Project, a diGital humanities initiative led by Dr. John Bodel that gathers and distributes information about ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions preserved in the United States of America. In 2011, Heidi was awarded the Emeline Hill Richardson Pre- Doctoral Rome Prize in Ancient Studies, which allowed her to spend a year in residence at the American Academy in Rome. Upon her return, she served as a visiting professor at Wesleyan University as she completed her final year of fellowship at Brown. She received an A.M. in Classics and a Ph.D. in ReliGious Studies from Brown in 2013. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To borrow an authorizing strategy from the figures I study, this dissertation is the product of a particular wisdom genealogy. Instead of Pythagoras, Orpheus, Moses, Zoroaster, or the Sibyl, however, I am fortunate to trace my own ‘expertise’ to the following cast of epic mentors. From Ross Kraemer I have received not only six years of doctoral, but also three years of undergraduate advising. It was Ross who first cultivated my interest in the study of religion and I am indebted to her for countless hours of instruction, counsel, and conversation, as well as the occasional single malt scotch. From John Bodel I have enjoyed the patience, support, and accountability necessary to acquire sound interdisciplinary training. Although my curriculum is a testament to Brown’s fluid disciplinary boundaries, the energy that John has devoted to my work is a reflection of his generosity and breadth. From Stan Stowers I have gained clarity, insight, and a vision of the way forward. For all of his students Stan models the perfect, if inimitable, balance of brilliance, intellectual investment, and fun, while devoting countless hours to the individual progress of each of us. He also throws the best Halloween parties, and makes exceptional wine. This project came together because of Ross, John, and Stan, and it is also for them. I have worked closely for many years with Nicola Denzey Lewis and Susan Harvey, absorbing much from each of them. I am especially obliged to Nicola for orchestrating my first visit to Rome, which seems to have made quite an impression. She has been an invaluable mentor at each phase of my graduate education, first at Harvard, then at Brown, and it is my good fortune that our lives have thus intertwined. While I owe my initial interest in Roman art and archaeology to Nicola, I am grateful to Rabun Taylor and Sue Alcock for transforming that enthusiasm into actual knowledge and skills. I would also like to thank David Frankfurter, Cliff Ando, Eric Orlin, Greg Snyder, Barbette Spaeth, Nancy Evans, Joe Manning, Sarah Iles Johnston, Christina Clark, Greg Bucher, Jörg Rüpke, Richard Gordon, Greg Woolf, Jay Reed, Lisa Mignone, Ron Cameron, Merrill Miller, and Bill Arnal, each of whom has provided useful feedback and encouragement at some stage of this project. My classmates at Brown have likewise been tremendous resources and wonderful friends, as were the staff, fellows, and fellow travelers of the American Academy in Rome during the fruitful year that I spent there at a critical point in my dissertation research. I would also like to acknowledge my parents, Nancy and Robin Wendt, for seeing me through this lengthy endeavor with unwavering encouragement and optimism, as well as more than their fair share of dog sitting. Also, Delphi, who has managed to unwittingly trample many chapter drafts, but whose antics have been a pleasant distraction. Finally, as with all things, this dissertation has been supremely enriched by Aaron Glaim, my liveliest conversation partner, most honest critic, and dearest friend, whose incisive comments are always softened by a perfectly cooked meal and a thoughtfully chosen craft beer. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Freelance Religious Experts and the Study of Religion………………..1-47 Chapter One: Varieties of Religion in Early Imperial Rome…………………………….49-96 Chapter Two: The Case for Entrepreneurial Religion in Early Imperial Rome…………………………………………………………………………….98-142 Chapter Three: Ethnically Coded Experts and Forms of Religion at Rome……………………………………………………………………………………………….144-198 Chapter Four: From Magus to Magician: Rethinking ‘Religion’, ‘Magic’, and ‘Philosophy’……………………………………………………………………..…………200-248 Chapter Five: Paul, A Rare Witness to the Religion of Freelance Experts……………………………………………………………………………….250-327 Conclusion: The Religion of Freelance Experts and the Problem of Christian Origins……………………………………………………………………………..…329-350 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………..352-375 vi INTRODUCTION Freelance Religious Experts and the Study of Religion They readily discerned that human life is swayed by two great tyrants, hope and fear, and that a man who could use both of these to advantage would speedily enrich himself. 1 If one were to take it on Lucian’s authority, there was no faster or surer way to gain standing and celebrity in antiquity than through religious entrepreneurship. Not that this was a good thing. Rather, the impression that one gathers from many of his writings is of a second-century world plagued by a veritable pandemic of ‘charlatans’ in religion and philosophy, among other specialized cultural offerings. Many of Lucian’s works read as primers on religious enterprise and the credulity of any who would put stock in the religion of self-styled experts. His Philopseudes investigates both halves of the equation, the sheer mendacity of people and their willingness to believe in nearly anything. As the characters in the dialogue avow the existence of ghosts, the efficacy of mysterious cures, and unusual divine interventions in human affairs, we encounter, in turn, the facilitators of such marvelous happenings: a Babylonian magos (µάγος) who rids a 1 Lucian, Alex. 8.4-10 (trans. A. M. Harmon; LCL). 1 man of poisonous venom with incantations, charms, and purifications; a Syrian exorcist who adjures daimones (δαίµονες) in their native tongues; a Pythagorean who in Corinth exhumes a ghost (δαίµων) from the house it haunts after consulting Egyptian works on such matters; and Pancrates, a scribe who learned from Isis in underground Egyptian sanctuaries, who frolics with crocodiles, and who enchants brooms or pestles to serve him.2 The narrator’s skepticism about such experts is plain: one bitten by their lies is like one bitten by mad dogs; not only does he go mad and fear water, but he bites others, filling their souls with spirits (οὕτω δαιµόνων µοι τὴν ψυχὴν ἐνέπλησας).3 Lucian’s biography of Alexander, the founder of an oracle that achieved widespread fame in the second-century, provides further insight into how self- authorized specialists set up shop.4 In his early years, the goēs (γόης) of Abonoteichus apprenticed with an expert in ‘magic’, then wandered the countryside of Bithynia plying his services to wealthy women.5 After recognizing
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