The Second-Century Apologists. Alvyn Pettersen
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Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons and Vienne [fl.178], meanwhile, wrote of the peace and security then enjoyed even by Christians. In words that echoed Aristides’s, Irenaeus paid tribute to the imperial law, noting that through Rome’s agency “the world [was] at peace and [even Christians could] walk the highways without fear and sail where [they] wished.”5
Such self-confidence, peace, and security were due in large part to the above-average ability as soldiers and administrators of the rulers of the empire from Nerva [96–98] to Marcus Aurelius [161–180]. This ability these rulers put at the service of their overarching aims, made known to all through the coinage then circulating, namely security, with an ensuing freedom of movement, growth in trade, with an increasing prosperity for many, and a uniform system of justice for all; and these overarching imperial aims were then to be realized locally by a provincial élite. At the same time, the way in which the empire was understood was changing. The former division of “Greek” and “barbarian” was gradually giving way to the distinction between “Roman” and “non-Roman”; provinces increasingly were thought of as a part of the empire; and provincial élites were viewed as the equals of the élites in Italy, and even of those in Rome.
Peace and prosperity, it is true, were not unbroken. There were occasional raids by groups based in northern Africa and in parts of Asia Minor. There were, for example, intermittent persecutions of Christians in eastern Bithynia in 112 and in Gaul in 177. There was a resumption of the war against the Germans in 178. However, these were interruptions in an otherwise lengthy period of general political stability.
In this generally long season of peace, and as a result of it, almost every level of society of the many city-states of the second-century Greco-Roman world benefitted. Romanization led to better buildings being erected; streets increasingly were paved; public sanitation was greatly improved. It was, however, not only life in the individual city-states that was enhanced. So too were the relationships between the various city-states. For trade, common currency, and increasingly similar administrative systems began to bind not only individual city-state to individual city-state but also many city-states together within the one empire. No wonder then that Celsus, taunting Christians in c.178, wrote that whatever Christians received in this world, they received from the emperor.6 Nor was Celsus alone in thinking so. By the end of the second century there were not many provincials who would have questioned the statement that the benefits that they all enjoyed derived from their emperor. Indeed, there were not many provincials who would have balked at the suggestion that, in some sense, the emperor embodied the empire, even as the head of a family embodied a family. For, even as in a family, the traditional basis of Roman society, the paterfamilias exercised almost complete authority, especially in and through his providing for and protecting his family members, so any emperor, committed to following Augustus’s example in rebuilding the empire’s security and stability, exercised similar authority. In some sense, the emperor was the paterfamilias of the empire. He was the empire’s ultimate provider and peace-maker. He was to be honored and obeyed.
That said, it is not possible to understand the second-century Greco-Roman Empire simply in terms of ruling emperors, well-administered provinces, and any ensuing peace and prosperity. For the empire then was not deemed to be secular in the modern sense of the word “secular.” Celsus’s thought that whatever people received in this world they had received from the emperor was held to be true by many. It was, however, also held by many to be less than the whole truth. For it was then also believed to be true that the gods of the Greco-Roman cults played a significant role in the maintenance of the empire’s peace and prosperity. Without the pax deorum, the “peace of the gods” of the empire, there could be no pax Romana, Roman peace. Religion was therefore an inalienable part of daily life, in both the home and the public sphere.
Religion in the empire
The worship of the gods of the imperial cult was an ancient practice, founded upon the belief not only that the cult had helped individuals and their cities come into being, and then come so far and for so long, but also that, had the cult not been faithfully practiced, the life of the few for whom life had been bleak would have been yet bleaker. It was therefore commonly held that a person, and, by extension, a city, could not be too careful. It was better to honor all the gods than to offend even one. For even one offended god might wreak havoc on the life of a person or a community. It is true that some with philosophical inclinations had more sophisticated understandings of the gods. For instance, the Skeptics thought that the gods were modelled on people’s social relationships on earth, that the cults and the images of the gods were valid only because they already existed, and that their purpose was but to promote civic cohesion. Platonists too approached the gods differently from the general populace, having long held that the Homeric epics and the ancient myths of the gods were allegories, that, when interpreted aright, explained the world and humanity’s place within it. Such ideas, however, were too subtle for most people and were largely ineffective when it came to changing the attitudes and practices of the vast majority. So, the vast majority of people continued to worship the gods and practice the ancient cult. Indeed, an individual might continue to worship a number of gods, not necessarily in succession, but at one and the same time. Certainly, it must be admitted, an individual might adhere to one particular deity as his or her particular protector; but that individual would not have “converted” to that deity, to the exclusion of all other deities. Indeed, there was no need to “convert.” For some understood a local god as the local expression of a god worshipped elsewhere and many operated with a form of polytheism, which, stripped to its essentials, could be reduced to the formula, “you cannot be too careful; so worship them all.” An extreme example of this urge in late classical piety to cover all eventualities is manifest in the erection of an altar on the Areopagus in Athens dedicated to the “unknown god.”7 Furthermore, many, while honoring one god, deemed to be the “high” god, were yet conscious that, in honoring their “high” god, they were, at one and the same time, also honoring lesser deities, subordinates of “their” one high god. For some, in fact, the more local, lesser deities were included in the Roman imperial pantheon, and the more these were honored, the fuller and the richer became the honor and worship of the one who was the “high” god of that pantheon. The worship of such a “high” god did not therefore amount to monotheism, even as it did not preclude a priest being a priest of more than one deity.
Such was possible for the vast majority of the second-century Greco-Roman world for two main reasons. Firstly, in the pursuit of religion it was rites that were important. What therefore the cult demanded of an individual was an act, particularly the religious ceremony of sacrificing to the gods. Secondly, there was no particular interest in a person’s beliefs, no demand that an individual should affirm certain beliefs and deny others. So, to accuse people of being “atheists” was therefore to accuse them, not of failing to believe in a god or gods, but of being unwilling to engage in the act of sacrificing to the empire’s gods, which, to most people then, amounted to both an unreadiness to honor the god or gods and a refusal to seek to appease them, and so to take part in the common effort to sustain or to restore the pax Romana. Heresy (haeresis) then, therefore, had no sense of “heresy” as now generally understood. Rather, it meant “choice,” an individual’s choosing the thinking and associated practices of one or more schools of thought. Thus, “heresy” for most people then bore not a sense of false doctrine but of choice, where no choice in and of itself was wrong. The opposite of heterodoxy therefore was not orthodoxy, but homodoxy, “agreement.”
At least two social consequences followed from this. Firstly, given that, in the second-century empire, there was a galaxy of gods, a variety of cults, and a readiness of people to respect, if not to engage in, the differing religious practices of the time, imperial religion, not surprisingly, became a very strong, widely shared bond that held the empire together, particularly in times of internal turmoil and external threat.
Secondly, beliefs were important for people like the Jews and the Christians, even to the point of being the basis both used for excluding certain religious choices, certain “haereses,” and for directing the doing of (or refraining from) particular acts, whatever the cost. Any belief-based resistance on the part of a Jew or a Christian to, for example, sacrificing to a Roman deity therefore reeked of obstinacy and intransigence.8 Indeed, often