Chapter 12 Flashcards
Good Fortune. Regulations of the thiasos of Amandos have been ratified in two meetings: those in the association are to provide no less than fourteen obols; the association is to provide three lamps. A maenad is not to attack or abuse a maenad. Similarly a herdsman (boukolos) is no to attack or abused a herdsman. But if someone does this, they shall pay to the association for each utterance a fine of four drachmae. And for anyone is town who does not attend a meeting, the same applies. Anyone who does not assemble on the mountain owes a fine to the association of five drachmae.
IG IX.: An account of the regulations of the thiasos of Amandos: mandatory attendance, regulations, contributions and fines, etc.
It was (she said) a great crowd, almost a second state, including some nobles, both male and female.
Livy, History 39.13: This is testimony provided during the senate’s investigation of the Bacchic cult – clearly a large membership, with people of various social statuses mixing.
In due course, as the priest said, he escorted me in the company of a group of devotees to the adjacent baths. Once I had been washed in the usual manner, he cleansed me with a sprinkling of purest water, praying for the gods’ forgiveness. He led me back to the temple, now that the two parts of the day were over, set me before the feet of the goddess, gave me in secret certain instructions which could not be spoken out loud, and ordered me openly in the presence of all the witnesses to abstain for the next ten days from dietary pleasures, in particular to avoid eating any meat or drinking wine. Once I had duly observed the sacred fasting, there now arrived the day selected for my divine appointment, and the sun passed through the sky and led on the evening. Then hordes of devotees gathered from all quarters, each person presenting me with different gifts according to an ancient custom. Then, once all the uninitiated were sent away, he priests clad me in a new linen garment and took me by the hand and led me to the heart of the actual sanctuary.
Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.23-24: This is an initiation procedure into the cult of Isis. This is the concluding part of the Metamorphoses, after the narrator turns back into a human. The rituals happen at night, the initiate is treated like a child, and not all devotees are initiates.
You may perhaps, attentive reader, ask anxiously what was then said and done. I would tell you, if I could; you would find out, if you could be told. But your ears and my tongue would be equally punished for such rash curiosity. However, I will not any longer keep you on tenterhooks if you are inspired by religious longing. So listen, but believe, it is the truth. Having reached the boundary of death and having stood on the threshold of Proserpina, I was borne through all the elements and
returned. In the middle of the night I saw the sun shining with a brilliant light. I approached the gods below and the gods above and worshipped them close to. There, I have reported to you things which, even though you have heard them, you must fail to understand. So I shall tell you only what can be reported without sin to the minds of the uninitiated.
Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.23-24: An initiation procedure into the cult of Isis. A powerful religious experience with an emphasis on the importance of secrecy.
Once again then I shaved my head completely, and not hiding my baldness covertly, but displaying it proudly wherever I passed, I performed with joy the duties of that venerable priesthood, founded in the days of Sulla.
Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.30: Showing the life of an initiate and that religious identity can be visible.
For three days before the festivals of the idolaters it is forbidden to do business with them, to lend to them or to borrow from them, to repay them or to be repaid by them. (…) The following are the festivals of the idolaters: the Kalends, the Saturnalia, Empire Day, the Anniversaries of the Emperors, the day of their birth and the day of their death. This is the opinion of Rabbi Meir. But the sages say, ‘At every death at which burning takes place, there is idolatry, but when burning does not take place there is no idolatry.’ … In the case of a city in which idolatry is going on,
(business) is permitted outside it; if the idolatry is outside, then it is permitted inside.
The Mishnah on Alien Worship (Avodah Zarah) 1.1-4: Clarely shows the social separation between religious groups.
For women who were unmarried and were passionately attracted (to a man), those of high status who did not wish to annul their status through a legal marriage, he (Callistus) actually permitted to take any man they chose, household slave or ex-slave, as their bedfellow, and permitted a women, though not legally married, to consider him as her husband. Then the so-called Faithful women began to make use of abortive drugs and bindings to remove what had been conceived, because they did not want to have a child by a slave nor by a worthless man, on account of their good birth and extreme wealth.
Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies IX.12.20-5: A criticism against Callistus, who allowed high-born Christian women to live with lower class Christian men without formal marriage as a means of protecting the status of the women who would have lost all senatorial privileges by marriage to men of a lower rank. This is not social separation, but does show that social categories do not always apply in the same way inside and outside the group (and the challenges this could cause).
Marcianus, Institutes, Book III: By the imperial mandate to provincial governors it is laid down that neither fellowship societies be tolerated nor soldiers’ clubs in the camps be permitted; but it is permissible for the people of poorer means to pay a monthly subscription provided that they gather only once a month; this limitation is to prevent any pretext for an
illegal club. Divus Severus issued a ruling that this regulation applies not only in Rome, but also in Italy and the provinces. ‘But meetings for the sake of religio are not banned, as long as the meeting is not contrary to the decree of the senate that prohibits illegal clubs.
Justinian, Digest 47.22.1: An attempt to prevent conspiracies.
“In the consulship of Commodus and Sextus Vettulenus Civica Pompeianus 5 days before Ides of June (9 June, A.D. 136) (At Lanuvium in) the temple of Antinous, in which Lucius Caesennius Rufus, (patron) of the town, had ordered that a meeting be called through Lucius Pompeius, quinquennalis of the worshippers of Diana and Antinous, he promised that he would give them from his liberality the interest on 1 (6)000 sestertii, namely 400 sestertii on the (birthday) of Diana, the Ides of August (13 Aug.) and 400 sestertii on the birthday of Antinous, 5 days before Kalends of (December) (27 Nov.); and he instructed the bylaws passed by them to be inscribed on the inner side of the porch (of the temples) of Antinous as recorded below. In the consulships of (Marcus Antonius Hiberus) and Publius Mummius Sisenna (A.D. 133), Kalends of January (1 Jan.), the Benevolent Society of Diana … and Antinous was constituted, Lucius Caesenius Rufus son of Lucius, of the Quirine tribe, being for the third time sole magistrate and patron.
ILS 7212; FIRA III, no.35: Many private societies, including those whose primary objective was to ensure decent burials for their members, met under the auspices of a god. Such societies were strictly regulated. The text records not only the local rules for this particular burial club, but also the terms of the Augustan decree of the senate which governed all such organizations. Basically a funerary insurance fund, but meets as a group at specific times.
For the well-being of the emperor, in honour of the divine house, to Sun unconquerable Mithras, Hilarus, ex-slave of the emperor, customs officer of the steward of the Norican kingdom and Epictetus, cashier of our emperor, repaired the temple which had collapsed through age at their own expense, along with its painting, when the emperor our master Gordianus Augustus and Aviola were consuls (CE 239), with the
priest Licinius Marcellus as father (of the rites?). Dedicated eight days before the Kalends of July.
ILS 4198; CIMRM 1438: Begins with wishes for the health of the emperor (also simply repairing what already existed). This is unthreatening. Mithraism was a legal group.
(Augustus) knew that the large district of Rome across the Tiber was owned and inhabited by Jews. Most of them were Roman ex-slaves, brought to Italy as war captives, they had been set free by their owners, without being forced to alter any of their ancestral customs. So he knew that they had synagogues and assembled in them, especially on the Sabbath, when they received, in public, instructions in their ancestral philosophy. He knew too that they collected sacred money from their tithes and forwarded it to Jerusalem through envoys who would offer sacrifices there. But in spite of this he did not drive them out of Rome or strip them of their Roman citizenship on the grounds that they remembered their Jewish citizenship as well; he took no forcible measures against the synagogues nor did he oppose the collection of tithes. In fact, he showed such respect for our customs that he, and nearly all his family, enriched our temple with lavish offerings; he ordered regular whole burnt sacrifices to be made each day in perpetuity at his own expense, as an offering to the most high god. These sacrifices continue to this day, and will always be offered, as evidence of truly imperial behaviour.
Philo, Embassy to Gaius 155-8: Philo, who served on an embassy to the emperor Gaius Caligula on behalf of the Alexandrian Jews, contrasts Gaius’ pretence to divinity and hostility towards the Jews with Augustus’ approval of Judaism. Ancestral customs identify this as okay. The daily sacrifices (which other sources imply were not at the emperor’s expense) are sometimes interpreted as for the health of the emperor (though not for the emperor), which makes them loyal.
No man shall be a priest. No man nor woman shall be a master. None of them shall seek to have money in common.
ILS 18; ILLRP 511.10: Refers to a suppressed group, the Bacchanalian cult in Republican Italy. The cult continues, but the group does not, at least not for most purposes.
And because all the types of crime which your Wisdom has revealed in your report on their religio have obviously been devised and lyingly contrived contrary to the statutes, we have determined on fitting and appropriate afflictions and punishments for them.
We order that the founders and leaders together with their abominable writings be subject to a severe punishment, to be burnt in the flames of fire; their followers, especially those who continue recalcitrant, we instruct shall be merely executed, and we rule that their property be confiscated to our Treasury. With those office holders or persons of any rank or distinction who have gone over (to) this previously unknown, disgraceful and entirely infamous sect, particularly to the doctrine of the Persians, you shall cause their estates to be added to our Treasury and the persons to be despatched to the mines at Phaena or Proconessus. In order then that this abominable plague be completely eradicated from our most happy age, your Devotedness will hasten to obey the orders and decisions of our Tranquility. Issued the day before the Kalends of April at Alexandria.
Edict of Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius and Maximian, cited in Comparison of Masic and Roman Law 15.3, quoting Gregorianus Book VI ‘On sorcerers and Manichees’, in FIRA II, pp. 580-1: The mannichees were both new and foreign (from Persia)– the late Roman government responds forcibly.
