WHAT DID HIST OF PAGAN ROME REP 4 AUG Flashcards
represents in some ways Augustine’s personal
spiritual journey as both he and pagan Rome were corrupted by ‘the deep chasm of ungodliness’
also ‘saved’ by their conversions to Christianity
the ‘greatness of the Roman Empire’ was ‘established by divine providence’(V:I)
not by the pagans of Rome who ‘deny the foreknowledge of God’
pagan Rome, whilst under God’s ‘divine providence’, symbolised a D&D
dislocated and disconnected ‘earthly city’ for Augustine and its history is crucial to his criticisms of the ‘ungodly’ Roman republic
‘a republic cannot be administered without justice’ and thus the history of pagan Rome becomes an example of a society
‘without justice’, as a result of free will exercised by the pagans
Augustine extracts the faults in pagan Rome society and crafts a?
moral didactic manual De Civitate Dei using such examples of pagan sinfulness to serve a specifically Christian purpose
The history of pagan Rome represents an impious model for the ‘earthly’ society, yet Augustine makes its history useful as a corrective to
Christian complacency and Christian pride
This distinction between Rome as ‘earthly’ rather than ‘heavenly’ ‘City’ – or more so of an ‘earthly’ than
‘heavenly’ nature as he explains life on earth is a combination of both
In Book XIX Augustine classifies the two terms and the ‘earthly advantage or desire’ of Rome becomes deeply
negative as pagan Rome lacked the concern for an immortal, or ‘heavenly’ ‘advantage or desire’ which could be achieved by faith in God
!!!!Pagan Rome as an ‘earthly city’ represents an undesirable, sinful society ‘which
does not live by faith, desires an earthly peace, and establishes an ordered concord of civic obedience and rule in order to secure a kind of co-operation of men’s wills for the sake of attaining the things which belong to this mortal life’ (XVII).
futility of the ‘earthly advantage’ of which Rome concerns itself, that of ephemeral peace… q 4 the sake
‘for the sake of attaining the things which belong to this mortal life’
‘Heavenly City’ not futile as
‘which lives by faith’ with the ‘promise of redemption’ possesses virtuous value, and it is this ‘godly’ virtue which Augustine values most highly
the ‘sin’ and ‘vanity’, as embodied by the ? desires of its citizens, represents the history of pagan Rome for Augustine, at least until 312
earthly
what was central to Augustine’s perception of pagan Rome as a sinful enterprise
moral corruption
which Two factors failed the Romans of a virtuous pursuance of these values
‘wealth’ and the ‘worshipping of false gods’
what did aug say wealth did
which ‘corrupted their morals and led them to plunder their miserable citizens to lavish bounty on vile actors’
what did aug say about the wicked
who ‘had no virtue even though they longed to have honour’
Deane comments on the ‘imperfect’ result of earthly peace - aug says
this ‘imperfectness’ arguably derives in the values of the pagans, which lack virtue
Whilst Augustine believes God distributed ‘power to Marius, also gave it to Gaius Caesar’, his disapproval lies in their
‘preference [prefer] to govern wicked desires more than any people whatsoever’ (V:XXI).
Thus the history of pagan Rome represents the wrong order for the right
right motives of a ‘commonwealth’, and its sinfulness is key to understanding Augustine’s theological commentary
primitive Romans’ who ‘worshipped
false Gods’ (V:XII)
describes the ‘impudent, sacrilegious and ungodly argument’ of those ‘persuaded that the Roman empire was not propagated and preserved by the worship of these gods’, rather than ‘to the all-powerful will of the most high God’
what reduced the glory of Rome
its profanity
Rome ‘sacrificed victims not to God, but to demons’
The Romans ‘established temples of the gods’, specifically ‘those of Virtue and Honour’ – yet Augustine condemns the pagans
for they took the gifts of God to be gods themselves’
Daly argues that Augustine’s aim
‘is to demonstrate that Rome’s gods never saved Rome from disasters’ , and this is clear as he ‘demythologizes imperial ideology’ - attribute success to ‘one true God’
The success of Rome was clouded by its
‘ungodly impudence’
attributes this to the ‘impious’ (XII:XXV) model of a great empire that represented pagan Rome
By examining the faults of pagan Rome, Augustine could establish solutions and present them to Christians to salve their
complacency and pride, as well as establish a ‘harmonious’ (XIX:XVII) uniting of ‘Heavenly’ and ‘earthly’ cities
In Book V, Augustine described the Romans, ‘for the sake of human glory’ – not
not ‘heavenly’ glory, ‘profiting from the kindness of the Lord our God’
‘impious’ meaning 4 aug that fault pagan Rome
believe that any being other than God is the creator of the universe’
Throughout De Civitate Dei Augustine directs his argument at a ? Audience
Christian
designed partially to use against pagans
For example in Book V:IX, Augustine recounts the impious route the Romans took to gain success QUOTE
‘the Romans performed such works and underwent such evils for an earthly country which they possessed already’
look 2 evils 4 moral instruction quote
‘We should not look upon ourselves as having accomplished any great thing if we have performed some good works or endured some evils in order to attain it’
provide clear ways to instruct on the QUOTE
‘ruthless elimination of deviations’ (Momigliano, 1963)
what is profitable from pagan Rome 4 augy
‘considering what great things the Romans despised, what they endured and what lusts they subdued’
example when he directly addresses his Christian audience
writes ‘Let this consideration, then, be useful to us in subduing pride’
In Book XIX, Augustine agrees with Cicero’s argument in De republica that there was never a
Roman ‘commonwealth’, and he dissects its history to establish instructions on what is required to provide one
what Rome lacked for it to b a ‘commonwealth’
‘was no property of people’ as ‘there is no true justice’, therefore ‘there can be no association of men ‘united in fellowship by common agreement as to what is right’
what Rome lacked for it to b a ‘commonwealth’ justice
imperial city to which a great commonwealth belongs must govern her provinces by means of justice’
Augustine breaks down what a polity means – ‘let us say that a ‘people’ is an
assembled multitude of rational creatures bound together by a common agreement’
common agreement founded on what he believes is
is ‘the objects of their love’
what was the object of love for pagan romans
they possessed a love of ‘wealth’, ‘glory’ and ‘dominion’
he teaches Christians that ‘to discover the character of any people, we have only to examine what it loves’… what is this 4 christians
this must be God for such ‘creatures’ to be glorious and virtuous – ‘true justice has no existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ’
instructs ‘true felicity’ can ‘be found in full measure … BOOK V
as a gift from God’, and it will provide ‘the virtues’ to join God in his ‘eternal city’
USES SECULARISATION AS BROWN - ‘religious coercion’?
‘the general quality of his thought’
argument: considering the capability of pagan Rome performing extraordinary deeds motivated by vanity and greed, yet
transforming the approach for Christians, urging them to follow suit but by a motivation of ‘true glory’ and ‘true virtue’ to improve the reality of a Christian remnant present.
The history of pagan Rome for Augustine represented a vain, gluttonous and powerful political system, void of
piety and moral virtue
Christians strive to form a perfect union with Christ in the ‘eternal city’
by they ‘must strive against himself’ which pagan romans did not do
Mommsen argues that Augustine was ‘deeply conscious
of the problem presented by the worldly-minded Christians after the fall of Rome’ and thus for Augustine to view the history of pagan Rome as a representation of past faults to instruct present faults is viable
istory of pagan Rome represents a model for the ‘earthly’ society which seeks improvement for a union
with the ‘Heavenly city’, and Augustine provides the moral guidance as a reaction to the faults of Rome to elucidate the means of reaching De Civitate Dei
