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Religious Toleration and Political Power in the Roman World Religious Toleration and Political Power in the Roman

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Religious Toleration and Political Power in the Roman World Religious Toleration and Political Power in the Roman RELIGIOUS TOLERATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE ROMAN WORLD RELIGIOUS TOLERATION AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE ROMAN WORLD By ANGELA COWLEY, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University © Copyright by Angela Cowley, August 2008 MASTER OF ARTS (2008) McMaster University (Classics) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Religious Toleration and Political Power in the Roman World AUTHOR: Angela Cowley, B. A. (University of Guelph) SUPERVISOR: Professor Evan Haley NUMBER OF PAGES: v, 68 11 ABSTRACT This thesis examines religious toleration in the Roman world throughout the republic and empire and its connection to Roman political power. While studies have examined the role religion played in Roman political success, few have looked at the reactions of the Romans in multiple situations involving religious groups that were incompatible with Roman society in order to draw broad conclusions about the nature of Roman religious toleration and how it was meant to maintain Roman supremacy. By examining a number of such groups, this study aims to outline the place of religion in the Roman political system, to show why certain religious groups were met with various forms of hostility, and finally to consider what these incidences reveal about Roman religious toleration and the place of religion in Rome's political landscape. This study finds that Roman religion had very specific characteristics and was a pillar of the Roman state, so that when a religious group caught the attention of the Roman authorities and did not fit the requirements of the Roman state religion, it was perceived as a threat to Rome's position of power. Each group examined received different treatment from Rome depending on other stresses endangering Roman political stability and the structure and practices of the group in question. Those that could be made into acceptable Roman cults were permitted to exist in their new form while others were completely rejected. Allowing groups to continue in any form, though, was done so under the supervision of the senate or emperor which shifted power back to the Roman state and re-established its control over the religious and hence political sphere. Such treatment of religious groups should not be called toleration and this thesis helps to correct such misjudgements which deny the importance that religion played in Roman political power. 111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must ftrst thank my advisor, Dr. Evan Haley, for agreeing to supervise such a broad thesis and for his invaluable research suggestions and grammatical corrections. I am convinced that there is no topic concerning the Roman world that evades his scope of knowledge. Thanks to my committee members, Drs. Claude Eilers and Alexandra Retzleff, for also not shirking a thesis with many topics and for helping me "cut off some limbs". I am grateful to all of my colleagues in the classics department who support each other and always lend an ear. A special thanks goes to Michael who always believed in me and faithfully listened whenever I needed to discuss ideas and for always managing to make sense out of my confused dribble. Without his unfailing support, understanding, and patience, which were given without complaint, I know I would have given up long ago. Thank you to my brother for remaining convinced that I am brilliant and talented and for being proud of me. I'm so thankful that I have someone like you to talk with. Finally, thank you especially to my mother. I don't even know where to begin thanking her; I must thank her for her ftnancial support, without which I could not have focused solely on school. I think, though, that I am most grateful for her love and emotional support which have absolutely no limits. No matter what choices I made or will make, she always makes sure that I know that she is there for me and that she is proud of me. Thanks for listening, making suggestions, comforting me, taking me for walks, making sure I eat healthy, letting me make my own decisions and helping me to pick up the pieces when those decisions don't work out, and for being so strong. I strive everyday to be the kind of person you are. I dedicate this work to my father, who instilled in me a passion for knowledge and is constantly on my mind. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: Roman Religion and its Role in Political Control ...................................... 3 Chapter 2: Suppression of Non-Judaeo-Christian Cults ............................................. 18 1. Bacchanalia............................................................................................................ 18 2. Cult of Isis .............................................................................................................. 23 3. Druids ..................................................................................................................... 29 4. Magicians and Astrologers ..................................................................................... 31 Magicians ................................................................................................... 32 Astrologers ................................................................................................. 36 5. Cult of African Saturn............................................................................................ 38 Chapter 3: Suppression of Jews and Christians .......................................................... .43 1. Jews ........................................................................................................................ 43 2. Christians ................................................................................................................ 53 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... .. 60 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 62 v MA Thesis - A. Cowley McMaster - Classics From the beginning of the Roman republic to the end of the empire, a theory of religious toleration never existed to give the people ruled by Rome a choice as to which deities and rituals they wanted to believe in. While the Romans and those they conquered were polytheistic for the most part, it did not equate that any deity or ritual brought into Rome or that the Romans encountered in the provinces was automatically accepted. Whatever course of action was taken in religious situations, in the Roman context it could rarely be termed toleration. Ritual and tradition used in government and religious matters were vital to the way in which the Roman state functioned. Through the participation in rites, citizens living far from the center of the state identified with the larger political forces that could only be seen in symbolic form. 1 In Rome for example, religious rites were especially used for this purpose and were funded and arranged by the state. They were performed in highly structured, standardized sequences at specific places and times making them very repetitive, and these factors served as important means of directing emotion, thought, and loyalty? Ifthese rites were disrupted by any other rites which caused citizens to identify themselves with an entity other than the Roman state, the complete power of the state over its citizens was seen as compromised, which was not tolerated. The word toleration is used when trying to define how far, short of some standard, someone is willing to fall, or how much someone will put up with a particular situation which could, in theory, be corrected.3 Toleration is an active concept with those in power deliberately not taking action against a perceived threat and is not the opposite of intolerance, but rather indifference. 4 The following five elements are determined by Crick as necessary in any situation for toleration to apply: (i) The society must feel threatened by something (ii) There must be power to give or withhold (iii) Moral disapproval must exist against whatever embodies the threat (iv) There is some reasonably accurate knowledge of the character of the threat (v) The threat must be accepted.5 These parameters of toleration have been used by both lA. North in his article "Religious Toleration in Republican Rome" and Peter Garnsey in "Religious Toleration in Classical Antiquity" to snow IhafThe popular view-bfllie-Roman wbnoastolerant to foreign religions is false. Examples of persecution against such groups as the Druids, Jews, and Christians are typically listed as being the exceptions to an otherwise tolerant paganism. 6 There is little extant scholarship which compares and contrasts these examples in an attempt to discover what generally caused Roman religious toleration to 1 David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), l. 2 Kertzer (1988), 9. 3 Bernard Crick, "Toleration and Tolerance in TheOlY and Practice," Government and Opposition 6, no. 2 (1971): 145. 4 Crick (1971), 149. 5 Crick (1971),156-157. 6 Ramsey MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981),2; See also Jill Ha..rries, "The Rise of CILristianity," in The Roman World Volume II, ed. Jolm Wacher (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 796-811, at 800. 1 MA Thesis - A. Cowley McMaster - Classics 7 break
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