Roman persecution of paganism

"In A.D. 337 Constantine warned a town in Italy that a temple there to his family 'should not be polluted by the deceits of any contagious superstitio. Within a Christian frame of reference this would imply that there were to be no pagan sacrifices at the temple, but Constantine was writing to non-Christians, who might interpret him as ruling out (for example) only illicit divinatory types of sacrifice. Constantine may in fact have deliberately played upon the ambiguities of the term, which might usefully evade any very precise definition...

From A.D. 357 all divination (with the exception of that performed by state haruspices) was assimilated to indubitably noxious magic and banned. The new conflation of divination and magic helped to generate a spate of trials and an atmosphere of fear and suspicion. Accusations of magical practices were levelled in the highest circles; those who had achieved untoward prominence were wide open to accusations of having employed occult arts. Pagans were doubly vulnerable. Christians, who 'knew' that they worshipped demons, could easily and incontrovertibly suggest that they manipulated them to gain vain knowledge and for illicit purposes...

Until the sixth Century emperors ordered that Roman temples be preserved. Only then was a tem­ple in Rome (the so-called Temple of Romulus) converted to Christian usage, and for this imperial permission was needed. Elsewhere, by contrast, from the mid fourth Century on emperors ordered that temples should be closed (perhaps from fear of their use for illicit divination), thus giving implicit sanction to zealous Christian bishops who sought actively to destroy them...

The practice of sacrifice also fell under an imperial ban. Since Constantine, sacrifice had been in disfavour in imperial circles — but he and his successors took action directly only against magic and private divina­tion. So, for example, nocturnal sacrifices, long characteristic of magic, were prohibited; but Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, a well known traditionalist and governor of Achaia at this time, immediately persuaded the emperor not to enforce this ban in Greece - thus permitting the Eleusinian mysteries to continue; and in Rome and other major cities of the empire official sacrifices were for a time left untouched. However, in A.D. 391 the emperor Theodosius prohibited all sacrifices, closed all temples, and threatened Roman magistrates with special penalties if they broke the ban. The following year the prohibitions were repeated and made more specific. Sacrifice for the purpose of illicit divination was to be severely punished, even if it had not involved an enquiry about the welfare of the emperor. The forbidden curiosity that we saw alleged against Apuleius in chapter 5 became part of the rationale for a general prohibition on pagan sacrifice.

The effect of Theodosius' prohibitions in Rome was, however, limited. The ban of 391 was promulgated throughout the empire, but by 392 Theodosius was no longer in control of the west, and the western emperor Eugenius attempted to conciliate the pagan aristocracy by restoring the endowments that had been removed by Gratian - not to the priests directly, but to leading pagan Senators, who would put them to their proper use. As we shall see, some traditional cults of Rome continued into the fifth century, but repeated imperial enactments continued to clamp down on the practices of paganism. We cannot tell how far the repetition of these bans on traditional religion was a consequence of widespread disobedience; how far the series of different laws addressed subtly different aspects of traditional cult; or how far the point of the legislation was the public declaration of the emperors support for Christianity. But the overall message is clear enough: true (that is, now, Christian) religion was to be promoted and those addicted to superstitio punished...

Christianity did, however, pose a critical threat to the restructured traditional cults of Rome. When state funding of public rites in Rome was abolished and the altar of Victory removed from the senate house in A.D. 382, Symmachus as Prefect of the city of Rome wrote a lengthy memorandum to the emperor arguing for the restoration of the status quo. The traditional religious customs had served the state well for centuries; the altar of Victory was where Senators swore oaths of loyalty to the emperor; the ancestral rites had driven the Gauls from the Capitol (an argument used also by Livy); the imperial confiscation of funding had caused a general famine in the empire. Symmachus' arguments were directed not so much against Christianity, as in favour of toleration of the traditional cults: every people had their own customs and rituals, which were different paths to the truth. His memorandum was countered by two letters from Ambrose, bishop of Milan, to the emperor, which argued forcefully that it was the Christian duty of the emperor to fight for the church. After A.D. 382 with the partial exception of the (brief) reign of Eugenius (A.D. 392-394), the traditional cults did not receive the toleration Symmachus urged; and even Eugenius, himself a Christian, made only limited concessions to 'paganism'. There was now only one true religio.

The argument between traditionalists and Christians extended to other contexts. One (Christian) poem, which probably dates either to the period of Symmachus' memorandum or to the period of favour for traditional cults under Eugenius, attacked an unnamed Prefect of the city of Rome and consul for his participation in a wide range of pagan rituals, from Etruscan divination to the taurobolium. According to the poem, he supplicated Isis and mourned Osiris, he celebrated the festival of Magna Mater and Attis, with füll trappings, including lions to draw the image of Magna Mater through the city, he held the festival of Flora, and his heir built a temple to Venus. For some, eclecticism was the way of truth; for others, like the author of this poem, it illustrated the vacuity of paganism. After the fall of Eugenius, Theodosius' ban on sacrifices was more effectively applied, and the secular implications of the old calendar revised... Some Christians went on the offensive, destroying pagan sanctuaries, including sanctuaries of Mithras...

Emperors through the fifth into the sixth century elaborated Theodosius' ban on sacrifices"

--- Roman Religion and Christian Emperors in Religions of Rome, Volume 1. A History by MARY BEARD, Lecturer in Classics in the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Newnham College, JOHN NORTH, Professor of History, University College London and SIMON PRICE, Fellow and Tutor, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford