Worshippers of the Gods - Debating Paganism in the Fourth-Century Roman West

Worshippers of the Gods tells how the Latin writers who witnessed the political and social rise of Christianity rethought the role of traditional religion in the empire and city of Rome. In parallel with the empire's legal Christianisation, it traces changing attitudes toward paganism from the last empire-wide persecution of Christians under the Tetrarchy to the removal of state funds from the Roman cults in the early 380s. Influential recent scholarship has seen Christian polemical literature-a crucial body of evidence for late antique polytheism-as an exercise in Christian identity-making. In response, Worshippers of the Gods argues that Lactantius, Firmicus Maternus, Ambrosiaster, and Ambrose offered substantive critiques of traditional religion shaped to their political circumstances and to the preoccupations of contemporary polytheists. By bringing together this polemical literature with imperial laws, pagan inscriptions, and the letters and papers of the senator Symmachus, Worshippers of the Gods reveals the changing horizons of Roman thought on traditional religion in the fourth century. Through its five interlocking case studies, it shows how key episodes in the Empire's religious history-the Tetrarchic persecution, Constantine's adoption of Christianity, the altar of Victory affair, and the 'disestablishment' of the Roman cults-shaped contemporary conceptions of polytheism. It also argues that the idea of a unified 'paganism', often seen as a capricious invention, actually arose as a Christian response to the eclectic, philosophical polytheism in vogue at Rome.

Product details

• Authors: Mattias P. Gassman, Mattias P. (Latinist and Roman Historian) Gassman, Mattias Philip Gassman
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2020
• EAN: 9780190082444
• ISBN: 978-0-19-008244-4
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 162 mm x 243 mm x 23 mm
• Series: Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity; Oxford Studies in Late Antiqui; OXFORD STUDIES IN LATE ANTIQUITY SERIES
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Religion: general, reference works; HISTORY / Ancient / General, RELIGION / Antiquities & Archaeology, RELIGION / Ancient, Alternative belief systems, Ancient Rome, Ancient History, Ancient history: to c 500 CE, BCE to c 500 CE, 4th century, c 300 to c 399