CUP (2016) h/b 419pp £74.99 (ISBN 9781107110304)
This is a great time for Late Antique studies as yet another excellent book appears, in this case on aspects of pagan/Christian interaction in Rome. Alan Cameron, in The Last Pagans of Rome (2011), showed how the notion of a pagan resistance finally defeated at the river Frigidus in 394 is no longer tenable. Here aspects of late 4th and early 5th century Roman life are reviewed in the light of the latest evidence, and the subtitle ‘Conflict, Competition and Coexistence’ pretty much gives the game away. Again we have scholarly papers (first presented in 2012), covering a wide range of subjects under the broad headings ‘Senatorial Politics and Religious Conflict’, ‘The Construction of New Religious Identities’ and ‘Pagans and Christians: Coexistence and Competition’. No unified group of pagan dissidents/activists, no civil war, no apocalyptic stand-off.
This review can sample only a handful of the eighteen essays in this volume. In Constantine’s dealings with the senate we can see hints of the modern approach to change management (unfreeze/change/refreeze), and Salzman proposes, instead of the conflict model, ‘a senate and residential senatorial aristocracy that were influential, but limited in political power, eager to cooperate with a pragmatic ruler who, although a Christian, was more interested in loyalty than in the conversion of Rome’s senatorial aristocracy.’ Imperial attitudes to pagan ornamenta changed during the period, and Robert Chenault covers the peregrinations of the altar and statue of Victory out of and back into the Senate House. Christian adaptation of its views of pagan art is picked up in a later chapter by Caroline D’Annoville who points out that, despite changes of attitude towards pagan statuary, Christians largely accepted it as an important heritage item, and oversaw the removal of pieces from neglected sites to central locations in Rome.
Thomas Jurgasch on ‘…the Invention of Paganism’ shows usage to be largely social (that is, outside the Christian community), that the word was used exclusively by Christians of any or all who were not Christian, and that from the 5th C it was replaced by the term gentiles. It’s not in Jerome. There’s an interesting chapter on accusations of magic (your magic is my miracle?—a polemical anti-pagan term) by Maijastina Kahlos, and another by Francesca Diosono on collegia, their changing role and the imperial response of ever-increasing regulation to ensure the ongoing safety of such state essentials as corn supply. Some early Christian communities seem to have adopted some aspects of collegial structure. When Valentinian proposed to tax collegia (for the first time), Symmachus wrote to the emperor of the importance of their work and of keeping them on-side.
So an excellent and fascinating addition to the growing corpus of new scholarly work on Late Antiquity. However, one cannot avoid drawing attention to the chapter title ‘Artis (for artibus!) heu magicis’, repeated in a footnote and, of course, in many references to this book on the net. This begins line 110 of the so-called carmen contra paganos, and slipped through despite line 119 (carminibus magicis) being quoted in the same footnote. And one more plea: this is a scholarly tome, but where highly technical and nuanced vocabulary is being used, the reader deserves a little help. When we read of the transfer of pagan statuary from squalentes pagan joints to prime spots in the forum, and that the meaning of squal- words has changed since Virgil’s usage, it would help to be told how and perhaps why. Or when, alongside collegium we see the obviously nuanced terms corpus and societas, let us have the nuances explained. Similarly with other collegiate terms such as maiores, minores, munera, obligatoria. So a plea for a glossary. But that said, scholarly though the book is, the writing rarely lets the words get in the way of the concepts. Highly recommended.
Adrian Spooner