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Section: 2B2 - Blending of the gods.

Number of quotes: 287

A History of the Arab Peoples
Albert Hourani
Book ID: 7 Page: 55

Section: 2B2,2E3

Although Muslims regarded Muhammad as a man like others, the idea became accepted that he would intercede for his people on the Day of Judgement, and Muslims would visit his tomb in Madina during the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Shi’i imams, particularly those who had suffered, attracted pilgrims from an early time; the tomb of ‘Ali at Najaf has elements dating from the ninth century. Gradually the tombs of those who were regarded as being ‘friends of God’ and having powers of intercession with Him multiplied throughout the Muslim world; no doubt some of them grew up in places regarded as holy by earlier religions or by the immemorial tradition of the countryside.

Quote ID: 110

Time Periods: 7

A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 16/17

Section: 1A,2B2,3C

The story that Constantine experienced a vision of the cross in the sky prior to battle {3} is in other versions presented as a vision of the pagan Sun-god. This deity was certainly of enduring importance to him. The coins he issued in his early years as emperor included images of Sol Invictus, “the Unconquered Sun,” as well as symbols of various other pagan gods, and the still-extant triumphal arch later erected in Rome to celebrate his victory over Maxentius also depicts Sol Invictus as Constantine’s protector and refers simply to “the Divinity,” unspecified. When in 321 Constantine declared the first day of the week as a public holiday (or at least a day when nonessential labor was discouraged and public institutions such as the law-courts could be open only for the charitable purpose of freeing slaves), his stated reason was not to facilitate Christian worship or practice as such but to respect “the venerable day of the Sun.”

If there is any truth in the account of Constantine’s vision of the cross, it is conceivable that he somehow associated a personal guardian deity, the Sun-god, with the God of the Christians.

….

Christian preachers had often connected the notion of Christ as the light of salvation with the nature of the sun as the source of human light, and there had long been popular rumors that Christians were involved in a version of sun-worship because they met together on Sundays. A mosaic from the late-third- or early-fourth-century tomb found under St. Peter’s in Rome expressly depicts Christ as Apollo the Sun-god in his chariot, and Constantine utilized an image of Apollo in a public statue of himself in his new city of Constantinople on the Bosphorus. For Constantine, the amalgamation of the conventional symbolism of his preferred deity with the doctrine of the Christian God may have been quite easy.

….

Did Constantine genuinely become Christian or not? Some interpreters believe he never became a true disciple of Christ but simply chose to exploit the significance of Christianity within the Roman world for his own ends. The consequences of his actions, it is said, were disastrous for the spiritual integrity of the church and rendered its doctrine and practice liable to political pressures and cultural fads in ways that have never been entirely undone, even in the 20-first century.

Quote ID: 127

Time Periods: 4

A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 46/47

Section: 2B2,3C

The support of the gods was always essential, and Constantine himself told of a vision of Apollo who, accompanied by the goddess Victoria, promised him a reign of thirty years. Apollo was represented by images of the sun, and this underpinned Constantine’s association with the cult of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. On a coin minted in 313, Constantine is shown alongside Apollo with the latter wearing a solar wreath.

Quote ID: 179

Time Periods: 4

A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 77

Section: 2B2,3C

Among the ceremonies of the official foundation on II May 330, a chariot bearing a statue of Constantine, which itself carried a statue of Tyche, ‘good fortune’ personified as a goddess, was paraded in the hippodrome, watched by the bejeweled emperor himself from the imperial box he had installed at the edge of the palace.

Quote ID: 197

Time Periods: 4

A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 77

Section: 2B2,3C

Constantine appears to have left Severus’ foundation intact and constructed, just outside its walls, an oval forum with a statue of himself in the guise of the sun god, Helios, placed on a column in the centre.

Quote ID: 198

Time Periods: 4

A.D. 381 Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 11 Page: 77

Section: 2B2,3C

Churches were also built, but their dedications to Wisdom (Sophia), Peace (Eirene) and the ‘the Sacred Power’ suggest that Constantine was working with an imagery that was as much pagan as Christian.

Quote ID: 199

Time Periods: 4

Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 57

Section: 2B2

It was a religion that had grown almost casually over the centuries, with no obvious plan, no body of doctrine, no contours. We speak sometimes of the Roman religion as though it possessed a firm basis, but in fact it was constantly changing, the gods melting away and being replaced by others.

Quote ID: 273

Time Periods: 014

Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 61

Section: 2B2

Like Mithra and Isis, Jesus was excluded from the Roman pantheon, and although a pagan emperor might worship a statue of Jesus in private, Christianity remained obstinately remote from the state cult. Christ and Jupiter belonged to different worlds, and there could be no peace between them.

Quote ID: 275

Time Periods: 34

Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 88

Section: 2B2

With the looting of Greece’s art treasures and with the importing of Greek ideas, a more mature Rome came into being - one in which worldliness and self-indulgence mixed with individuality and enlightenment.

Quote ID: 279

Time Periods: 34

Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 220

Section: 2B2

(In A.D. 222, at the age of thirteen) Alexander Severus . . . is said to have kept in his private shrines images of Abraham, Apollonius of Tyana, Orpheus, and Jesus, along with busts of Vergil and Cicero.

Quote ID: 299

Time Periods: 3

Ancient Rome by Robert Payne
Robert Payne
Book ID: 16 Page: 249

Section: 2B2,3C

This victory over Maxentius confirmed his devotion to Christianity. But to speak of the conversion of Constantine is to misunderstand the quality of his mind. He did not immediately try to impose the Christian faith on his subjects. He continued to celebrate pagan festivals, minted coins in honor of Apollo, Hercules, Mars, Jupiter, and even after his conversion, presented himself on coins wearing the spiked crown of sol invictus, the unconquered Sun. He was tolerant of all religions, and as Augustus had, he showed a special predilection for Apollo.

Quote ID: 316

Time Periods: 4

Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 191

Section: 2B,2B2

Their difficult work took ten years, after which they reported their finds in the famous Esplorazioni of 1951. The following description follows their findings rather closely.

The excavators found an extensive Roman necropolis under the Constantinian floor of St. Peter’s (fig. 36). Though the mausolea there are among the finest of their kind ever uncovered, there were basically no signs of Christianity. However, two exceptions should be noted. As indicated under mosaics (see above, p. 73), Mausoleum M contained the only certain pre-Constantinian Christian mosaic, that of Christ Helios. In addition, there were patterns for Jonah Cast out of the Boat and for the Fisherman. Guarducci would argue for late Christian burials in Tomb H, where she discovered an inscription with a petition to Peter and a reference to Christ or Christians. Her thesis has not been widely accepted (see under inscriptions, pp. 260-61; Fig 49).

Quote ID: 456

Time Periods: 34

Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 480

Section: 2B2

Your theologians, then, and authors on unknown antiquity, say that in the universe there are three Joves, one of whom has Æther for his father; another, Cœlus; the third, Saturn, born and buried {7} in the island of Crete. They speak of five Suns and five Mercuries, . . . But there are five Minervas also, they say, just as there are five Suns and Mercuries;

PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, IV.14.

Quote ID: 9474

Time Periods: 34

Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 480

Section: 2B2

Book IIV

15. ….the same theologians say that there are four Vulcans and three Dianas, as many Æsculapii and five Dionysi, six Hercules and four Venuses, three sets of Castors and the same number of Muses, three winged Cupids, and four named Apollo;

PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, IV.15.

Quote ID: 9475

Time Periods: 34

Augustine, NPNF1 Vol. 1, The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 652 Page: 233

Section: 2B2

From Maximus of Madaura to Augustine

“Who could ever be so frantic and infatuated as to deny that there is one supreme God, without beginning, without natural offspring, who is, as it were, the great and mighty Father of all? The powers of this Deity, diffused throughout the universe which He has made, we worship under many names, as we are all ignorant of His true name, the name God being common to all kinds of religious belief. Thus, it comes, that while in diverse supplications we approach separately, as it were, certain parts of the Divine Being, we are seen in reality to be the worshippers of Him in whom all these parts are one.”

PJ book footnote reference: Augustine, Letter XVI.1.

Quote ID: 9416

Time Periods: 4

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 20

Section: 2B,2B2

Mithras was identified with the “unconquered sun” whom Aurelian and other emperors recognized as the tutelary deity of the empire.

Quote ID: 591

Time Periods: 23

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 17

Section: 2B2

VI An Invitation to Paulus, Line 8, Phoebus bids us speak truth: although he suffers the Pierian sisters to swerve from the line, he himself never twists a furrow.

Quote ID: 3003

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 19

Section: 2B2

VI An Invitation to Paulus, Line 18, For in the first days after holy Easter I long to visit my estate.

Quote ID: 3004

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 25

Section: 2B2

VIII Ausonius to Paulus, Line 13, Ye songful children of Mnemosyne [goddess of memory] with tresses coiffed, nine wordy maids with locks begarlanded, come now with chant ridiculous and macaronic{3} lay, wear winged triumph on your brows - for ‘tis on you I call, a clumsy bottle-bard - compose for Paulus some mixed barbarian strain!

Pastor John’s note - the muses

Quote ID: 3005

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 27

Section: 2B2

VIII Ausonius to Paulus, Line 40, Here shalt thou find the fruit of Demeter, rich in crops.

Quote ID: 3006

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 45

Section: 2B2

XIII To Ursulus, A Grammarian of Treves, Line 29, he who gathered the mangled limbs of sacred Homer{4}.

Quote ID: 3007

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 63

Section: 2B2

XIX Ausonius to his Father on the Acknowledgment of his Son, Added (thanks to the gods above and to thy grandson, their instrument, who has laid upon our names a two-fold yoke). . .

Quote ID: 3008

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 65

Section: 2B2

XIX Ausonius to his Father on the Acknowledgment of his Son, Even further the Fates will have power to prolong thine age: but those prayers, methinks, are rather answered which are moderate.

Quote ID: 3009

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 71

Section: 2B2

XXI A Birthday Letter to his Grandson Ausonius, Lines 22-25, The Ides is an auspicious day, observed too by the genii of gods. In Sextilis Hecate, Leto’s daughter, claims the Ides; in May, Mercury, who was raised to the ranks of the gods. October’s Ides are hallowed by the birth of Maro [Virgil?] long ago.

Quote ID: 3010

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 125

Section: 2B2

XXXI Paulinus to Ausonius, Lines 19-21, Why dost thou bid the deposed Muses return to my affection, my father? Hearts consecrate to Christ give refusal to the Camenae, are closed to Apollo.

Pastor John’s note - Paulinus reproaches him for his faith in the gods.

Quote ID: 3011

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 096: Ausonius II, Books 18-20
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 139 Page: 267

Section: 2B2

XVIII Thanksgiving For His Consulship, Yet I must make a slight digression and turn not very far from you to God. Eternal Begetter of all things, thyself unbegotten, Creator and Cause of the universe, more ancient than its beginning, outlasting its end, Thou who hast built thine own temples and altars in the inmost hearts of the initiated{1} worshippers. . .

Quote ID: 3012

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 3

Section: 2B2,3C,3D

Book I Prefatory Pieces

Paragraph I Ausonius to his Reader, Greeting

My father practised medicine - the only one of all the arts which produced a god;

Pastor John’s note: This is at the end of his life, long after he became a Christian.

PJ Note: Check Ausonius for J word

Quote ID: 2925

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 7

Section: 2B2,3C,3D

Book I Prefatory Pieces

Paragraph III A Letter of the Emperor Theodosius

The Emperor Theodosius to his father Ausonius, greeting.

My affection for you, and my admiration for your ability and learning, which could not possibly be higher, have caused me, my dearest father, to adopt as my own a custom followed by other princes and to send you under my own hand a friendly word. . .

Quote ID: 2926

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 9

Section: 2B2,3C,3D

Book I Prefatory Pieces

Paragraph IV To my Lord and the Lord of All, Theodosius the Emperor, from Ausonius, your Servant

If yellow Ceres should bid the husbandman commit seed to the ground, or Mars order some general to take up arms, or Neptune command a fleet to put out to sea unrigged, then to obey confidently is as much a duty as to hesitate is the reverse.

. . . .

Behests of mortals call for deliberation: what a god commands perform without wavering.

. . . .

It is not safe to disoblige a god;

Quote ID: 2927

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 23

Section: 2B2

Book II The Daily Round or the Doings of a Whole Day

Paragraph III The Prayer Lines 79-85

These prayers of a soul devout, albeit trembling with dark sense of guilt, claim for thine own before the eternal Father, thou Son of God who mayest be entreated, Saviour, God and Lord, Mind, Glory, Word and Son, Very God of Very God, Light of Light, who remainest with the eternal Father, reigning throughout all ages, whose praise the harmonious songs of tuneful David echo forth, until respondent voices rend the air with “Amen”.

Pastor John’s note: But . . . . the “J” word!!!

PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.

Quote ID: 2930

Time Periods: 34

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 37

Section: 3C,3D,2B2

Book III Personal Poems

Paragraph II Easter Verses Composed for the Emperor Line 17

Thou, gracious Father, grantest to the world thy Word, who is thy Son, and God, in all things like thee and equal with thee, very God of very God, and living God of the source of life.

PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.

Quote ID: 2933

Time Periods: 34

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 49

Section: 3C,3D,2B2

Book III Personal Poems

Paragraph V A Solemn Prayer of Ausonius as Consul-Designate, when he assumed the Insignia of Office on the Eve of the Kalends of January

Come, Janus; come, New Year; come, Sun, with strength renewed!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

soon to behold Ausonius enthroned in state, consul of Rome. What hast thou now beneath the Imperial dignity itself to marvel at? That famous Rome, that dwelling of Quirinus, and that Senate whose bordered roes glow with rich purple, from this point date their seasons in their deathless records.

Come, Janus; come, New Year; come, Sun, with strength renewed!

PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.

Quote ID: 2934

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 63

Section: 3C,3D,2B2

Book IV Parentalia

Paragraph IV Caecilius Argicius Arborius, my Grandfather Line 1-3

Forsake not your sacred task, my duteous page: next after these let me celebrate the memory of my mother’s father, Arborius

PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.

Quote ID: 2935

Time Periods: 34

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 65

Section: 2B2,3C,3D

Book IV Parentalia

Paragraph IV Caecilius Argicius Arborius, my Grandfather Line 24

When you had lived a life of ninety years, you found how to be dreaded are the arrows of the goddess Chance. . .

PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.

Quote ID: 2936

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: 137

Section: 2B2,3C,3D

Book V Poems Commemorating The Professors of Bordeaux

Paragraph XXV Conclusion Line 5-6

For the living praise is a lure: to but cry their names will satisfy those within the tomb {4}.

[Footnote 4] To call aloud upon the dead was a recognised funerary rite: see Virgil, Aen. vi. 507

PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.

Quote ID: 2937

Time Periods: 3

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: xiv

Section: 2B2,3C,3C1,3D

Introduction

Further, the conception of the Deity held by Ausonius was distinctly peculiar - as his less guarded references show. In the Easter Verses (Domest. ii. 24 ff.) the Trinity is a power transcending but not unlike the three Emperors; and in the Griphus (1. 88) the “tris deus unus” is advanced to enforce the maxim “ter bibe” in exactly the same tone as that in which the children of Rhea, or the three Gorgons are cited: for our author the Christian Deity was not essentially different from the old pagan gods.

PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.

Quote ID: 2924

Time Periods: 4

Ausonius, LCL 115: Ausonius I, Books 1-17
Several
Book ID: 133 Page: xiii

Section: 2B2,3C,3D

Introduction

When and how he adopted the new religion there is nothing to show; but certain of his poems make it clear that he professed and called himself a Christian, and such poems as the Oratio (Ephemeris iii.) and Domestica ii., which show a fairly extensive knowledge of the Scriptures, sometimes mislead the unwary to assume that Ausonius was a devout and pious soul. But in these poems he is deliberately airing his Christianity: he has, so to speak, dressed himself for church. His everyday attitude was clearly very different.

....

Nor does Christianity enter directly or indirectly into the general body of his literary work (as distinguished from the few “set pieces”). In the Parentalia there is no trace of Christian sentiment - and this though he is writing of his nearest and dearest: the rite which gives a title to the book is pagan, the dead “rejoice to hear their names pronounced” (Parent. Pref. 11), they are in Elysium (id. xviii, 12) according to pagan orthodoxy; but in his own mind Ausonius certainly regards a future existence as problematical (Parent. xxii. 15 and especially Proff. i. 39 ff.).

PJ Note: Check Ausonius for the J word.

Quote ID: 2923

Time Periods: 4

Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 12

Section: 2B2,3C

The drastic rearrangement of so many classical traditions in order to create a whole new heraldry of power was one of the greatest achievements of the late Roman period. Yet, it would be profoundly misleading to claim that changes in this large area of social and cultural life reflected in any way a process of ‘Christianization’. What matters, in fact, is the exact opposite. We are witnessing the vigorous flowering of a public culture that Christians and non-Christians alike could share.

Quote ID: 680

Time Periods: 4

Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 69

Section: 2B2,4B

Potentially exclusive explanatory systems coexisted in their minds. The host of the monk, Peter the Iberian [c. 417-491], an eminent Egyptian, was a good Christian; but he was also ‘caught in the error of pagan philosophers, whose ideas he loved greatly’.28

Quote ID: 718

Time Periods: 4

Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 69

Section: 2B2,4B

A notable of Alexandria went to the healing shrine of Saints Cyrus and John, to receive a cure from their hands. But he claimed to have done so ‘in order that his horoscope should be fulfilled’.29

Quote ID: 719

Time Periods: 4

Barbarians Speak, The
Peter S. Wells
Book ID: 198 Page: 184

Section: 2B2

One of the clearest expressions of the changes that took place in the new Roman provinces of temperate Europe was the creation of new representations of indigenous deities that integrated Roman conceptions with local ones. The issue is complex, because in most instances we only learn of the identity and attributes of traditional deities after they have been named in inscriptions and represented on Roman-style sculpture. The indigenous Iron Age peoples generally did not portray their deities in human form, and, because these prehistoric peoples left no written record, no inscriptions inform us of their names or attributes. In order to study the character of the indigenous Celtic and Germanic deities, we must begin with their representations in the Roman media of stone and ceramic sculpture and Latin inscriptions.

Quote ID: 4482

Time Periods: 34

Cambridge Ancient History Vol. XII: The Imperial Crisis and Recovery A.D. 193-324
Edited by S. A. Cook, F. E. Adcock, M. P. Charlesworth, and N. H. Baynes
Book ID: 325 Page: 437

Section: 2B2

Greek thinkers had from early times supposed that the pantheons of all nations consisted of gods performing like functions and that these divine persons corresponded to one another, that Ammon was Zeus, and so forth. This theory did not in the popular mind destroy differences of identity; Alexander paid a visit to Ammon as Ammon and not as Zeus.

Quote ID: 7777

Time Periods: 234

Carthage: A History
B.H. Warmington
Book ID: 47 Page: 145

Section: 2B2

In common with most ancient Semitic peoples, the Phoenicians had a supreme male deity, a ‘Baal’, meaning ‘Lord’ or ‘Master’. At Carthage he was known as Baal Hammon. The meaning of the epithet is not entirely clear, but it appears to mean something like ‘burning’or ‘fiery’, and to derive from one of his characteristics as a solar deity.

Quote ID: 1066

Time Periods: 23

Carthage: A History
B.H. Warmington
Book ID: 47 Page: 145

Section: 2B2

Baal Hammon remained the supreme god as long as Carthage existed, and later had a long history in North Africa under his Roman identification as Saturn. But in the early fifth century he was outstripped in popular worship in Carthage and most of her dependencies by a goddess known as Tanit. It is not clear whether Tanit is even a Phoenician name—it may be Libyan.

Quote ID: 1067

Time Periods: 0

Carthage: A History
B.H. Warmington
Book ID: 47 Page: 146

Section: 2B2

When the Romans conquered Africa, Carthaginian religion was deeply entrenched even in Libyan areas, and it retained a great deal of its character under different forms. Even human sacrifice continued, though clandestinely and infrequently. {60} The deities received the names and epithets suited to them in Latin, and temples on a classical model replaced the open sanctuaries of the Carthaginians, but they were often on the same sites, even at Carthage itself, in spite of its destruction. Baal-Kronos became Saturn, Tanit became Juno, often with the epithet ‘Caelestis’ to show her position as a sky goddess.

Quote ID: 1068

Time Periods: 23

Carthage: A History
B.H. Warmington
Book ID: 47 Page: 146

Section: 2B2

One of the most widely worshipped deities in the east was a fertility goddess with the name of Astarte in Phoenician; at an early date she was identified with the Greek Aphrodite, whose home significantly was on Cyprus, where Greek and Phoenician met.

Quote ID: 1069

Time Periods: 23

Celsus On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians
Celsus: Translated by R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 49 Page: 56

Section: 2B2

Yet without rational cause, the goatherds and shepherds followed Moses, who taught them that there was but one God—deluded, apparently, by his rather naïve beliefs––and caused them to forsake their natural inclinations to credit the existence of the gods. For our part, we acknowledge the many: Mnemosyne, who gave birth to the Muses by Zeus; Themis, Mother of the Hours; and so on. Yet these goatherds and shepherds came to believe in one god and called him the Most High--Adonai, the Heavenly One--or sometimes Sabaoth, or whatsoever––and came to discredit all other gods. Yet in excluding the other names of the highest god, have not they (the Jews) shown their foolishness! It matters not a bit what one calls the supreme God--or whether one uses Greek names or Indian names or the names used formerly by the Egyptians.

Quote ID: 1112

Time Periods: 2

Celtic Goddesses
Miranda Green
Book ID: 50 Page: 194

Section: 2B2,2E5

Wells were the foci of pre-Christian curative ritual all over pagan Celtic Europe (Chapter 5), and many Romano-Celtic healing-spring sanctuaries belonged to goddesses, such as Sulis of Bath and the Burgundian Sequana. The continuation of the healing-well cult from a pagan to Christian context argues for a basic continuity of tradition, whereby magic and miracle merged in a seamless progression.

A number of early Welsh saints presided over Welsh holy well, which they may have inherited from pagan spirits

Quote ID: 1118

Time Periods: 6

Celtic Sacred Landscapes
Nigel Pennick
Book ID: 51 Page: 67

Section: 2B2,2E5

Just as the Roman deities absorbed their Celtic counterparts, Celtic or Catholic saints assimilated the earlier polytheistic deities. This is true for all sacred places, but is most notable at holy wells.

Quote ID: 1142

Time Periods: 6

Celtic Sacred Landscapes
Nigel Pennick
Book ID: 51 Page: 174

Section: 2B2

...it is typical of the change from polytheism to monotheism that the older gods and heroes should be assimilated into the newer pantheon.

Quote ID: 1153

Time Periods: 014

Christian History Magazine: When Religions Collide, pp. 26-27, Issue 63 Vol. XVIII No. 3
Terje I. Leiren
Book ID: 392 Page: 26

Section: 2B2

During the Christianization of Scandinavia, Thor, Odin, and Frey were replaced by Viking kings in popular iconography. Thor, with his mighty hammer, became Saint Olaf with his axe. Odin and Frey, likewise, became saint-kings Knut and Erik.

Quote ID: 8389

Time Periods: 47

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 34

Section: 2B2,3C

When Constantine, therefore, at the very center of his capital, the New Rome, placed his image portraying him as the Sun God, with rayed head and thunderbolt in hand, atop a huge red stone column, there receiving sacrifices and prayers exactly as Caesar’s statue on its column, in old Rome had once been the object of prayers and offerings, or again, when his smaller image was paraded about the hippodrome in the so-called Sun Chariot, among torches, and saluted ceremoniously from the royal box—by his successors, on their knees—no doubt ecclesiastical protest should have been instant.

Quote ID: 1275

Time Periods: 4

Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 13

Section: 2B2

Living worshipers, in the world we are considering, instead entered a shrine of Isis to put up a vow or an altar to Aphrodite, and the priest let them. They worshiped Mithras in Hadad’s temple. West or east, wherever one looked, there reigned a truly divine peace and undisturbed religious toleration.

Quote ID: 1414

Time Periods: 23

Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 44

Section: 2B2,3C

However deep or shallow its wellsprings, imperial preference was not at all influenced by strategy. Constantine himself, for years after A.D. 312, continued to pay his public honors to the Sun. They were paid in coin of the realm - rather, on coins, in the form of images of the emperor shown jointly with Sol; but other coins showed the Chi-Rho sign; so it was known that both compliments were acceptable to Constantine.

Quote ID: 1436

Time Periods: 4

Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 45

Section: 2B2,3C

Even the best reasoning must occasionally yield to fact; and it is no doubt a fact, even though reported by Eusebius - devout, obliging, panegyrical biographer of Constantine - that the emperor did some evangelizing among the Palace Guard and gave Sundays off to his coreligionists in the forces generally.

A capital error, however, leading to or showing all sorts of fundamental misunderstandings about the empire and its normal operations, is to suppose that after A.D. 312, specifically, on “Oct. 28, 312, the army of Constantine became officially Christian.” Evidence that there was widespread in the empire a sense of lawful norms in religion, other than mutual respect among all faiths, that these norms were customarily to be enforced by the chief officers of the state, or even that some vaguer kind of religious guidance was to be sought from the ruler, cannot be found so early in the century.

Constantine, then, was not expected to change the faith of his men “officially”, and made no great effort in that direction; but he and his remaining rival in the east, Licinius, could not avoid some statement on the subject - it seemed to be, after all, a moment only of hiatus in the persecutions. So they issued one of many most ambiguously worded calls, in those decades, for piety “toward the divine and holy” (or similar periphrases). Believers of every persuasion could certainly swallow that.

Quote ID: 1440

Time Periods: 4

Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 78

Section: 2A3,2B2

The tangible record gives the same impressions of shared territory. For example, among the grave-goods of late Roman Egypt, very much the same things are found whether the burial be Christian or not. In a Pannonian grave was placed a box ornamented with a relief of the gods, Orpheus in the center, Sol and Luna in the corners, but the Chi-Rho as well; elsewhere, in Danube burials, similar random mixtures of symbolism appear, with gods and busts of Saint Peter and Saint Paul all in the same bas-relief. The Romans who bought cheap little baked clay oil-lamps from the shop of Annius Serapiodorus in the capital apparently didn’t care whether he put the Good Shepherd or Bacchus or both together on his products. . . .

Quote ID: 1471

Time Periods: 23

Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 116

Section: 2B2,4B

The inscription and the cult, then, are not pagan themselves but, like many a glimpse we have of the veneration of saints, strongly colored by pagan tradition, which could not be suppressed. On other inscriptions, undoubtedly Christian but Italian not African, appear dedications “to the gods and spirits of the departed,” showing the survival of a pagan picture of the afterlife; and, in Egypt. Christians likewise held views on that subject essentially unchanged from their remotest past, . . .

Quote ID: 1501

Time Periods: 345

Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 58 Page: 117

Section: 2B2,3C

What had been a point difficult to cross before A.D. 312 was so no longer; yet people who did cross were reluctant to leave behind all their old ways. So they made such adaptations as were really necessary and kept what they could. In this process changes were slow but important.

Quote ID: 1502

Time Periods: 4

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 150

Section: 2B2

Book 3 dealt with heroes or divine men - for example, figures such as Heracles, the Dioscuri, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and so on. Porphyry placed Jesus in book 3 among the heroes, as a human being, a sage who had been elevated to divinity after his death.

Quote ID: 4582

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 152

Section: 2B2,4A

As an example of such an oracle, Augustine mentions one quoted by Porphyry from Apollo: “In God, the begetter and the king before all things, at whom heaven trembles, and earth and sea are hidden depths of the underworld and the very divinities shudder in dread; their law is the Father whom the holy Hebrews greatly honor.”

Quote ID: 4584

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 152

Section: 2B2,4A

“What I am going to say", says Porphyry, "may certainly appear startling to some. I mean the fact that the gods have pronounced Christ to have been extremely devout, and have said that he has become immortal, and that they mention him in terms of commendation;...."

Quote ID: 4585

Time Periods: 23

Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 154

Section: 2B,2B2,4A

On the basis of Augustine’s writings, Porphyry’s discussion of Christianity in the Philosophy from Oracles included the following: (1) praise for Jesus as a good and pious man who ranks among the other sages or divine men, for example, Pythagoras or Hercules, venerated by the Greeks and Romans; (2) criticism of the disciples, and of those who follow their teaching, because they misrepresented Jesus and inaugurated a new form of worship; (3) defense of the worship of the one high God; (4) praise of the Jews for worshipping this one God.

In his Adversus Nationes written in 311 C.E., Arnobius says that he is at a loss to explain why the pagans attack and the gods are hostile to the Christians. “We have,” he writes, “one common religion with you and join with you in worshipping the one true God. To which the pagans reply: ‘The gods are hostile to you because you maintain that a man, born of a human being.....was God and you believe that he still exists and you worship him in daily prayers’” (Adv. Nat. 1.36).

Quote ID: 4589

Time Periods: 23

Clement of Alexandria, LCL 092
Loeb Classical Library
Book ID: 140 Page: 90

Section: 2B2

Exhortation to the Greeks - Chpt. III

{a}To understand the point of Clement’s onslaught against the “daemons” it must be remembered that the best Greek teachers of his age, such as Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre, used the doctrine of “secondary divinities” as a means of preserving their own monotheism without altogether breaking away from the popular mythology. According to them, the one Supreme God worked through many ministers, to whom worship could rightly be offered. Clement attacks daemons and gods you worship, and of the demigods too.

Quote ID: 3021

Time Periods: 23

Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 174

Section: 2B,2B2

Although few people were prepared to join Aristarchus of Samos in asserting that the earth revolved round the Sun, {54} the next two hundred years witnessed the spread of the Sun-cult throughout the Mediterranean world. As Semitic, Iranian and Greek theology, astrology and philosophy intermingled, there was an ever-growing tendency to explain the traditional gods in solar terms. Mixtures and blending of deities were now universal {55}; the gods are of many names, but one nature, and their common factor is the Sun.

Quote ID: 4731

Time Periods: 23

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 57

Section: 2B2,4B

In the west, where city life was relatively undeveloped, new elites had to be created from the Celtic peoples, many of whom had been shattered by the campaigns of Julius Caesar. It helped enormously that the Romans were tolerant of local deities and that these could be absorbed into the Roman pantheon, as the gods and goddesses of Greece had been some centuries earlier.

Quote ID: 4799

Time Periods: 12

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 68/69

Section: 2B2

Often, over time, these local gods would become assimilated with the Roman deities. A local god of thunder might be Zeus, “in disguise” as it were, and the Romans would willingly make the connection by incorporating the local god into their rituals.

Quote ID: 4802

Time Periods: 12

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 70

Section: 2B2

All these groups accepted that there was at the apex of the hierarchy of divine forces one higher being, even if the form of this being was conceptualized in different ways and addressed by different names in different cultures. As the sophist Maximus of Madaura put it in A.D. 390 (in a letter for the Christian Augustine):

That the supreme God is one, without beginning, without offspring as it were the great and august father of nature, what person is there so mad and totally deprived of sense to deny? His powers diffused through the world that is his work we invoke under various names, because we are obviously ignorant of his real name. For the name “God” is common to all religions. The outcome is that while with our various prayers we each honour as it were his limbs separately all together we are seen to be worshipping him in his entirety.

Quote ID: 4805

Time Periods: 34

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 156/157

Section: 2B2,3C

The sun, as the source of light and heat, had traditionally been integrated into an enormous variety of spiritual and philosophical contexts. Apollo had been associated with the sun since the fifth century B.C., while in the fourth century B.C. Plato had used the sun as a symbol of supreme truth, “the Good,” the apex of the Forms. The cult of Sol Invictus had been imported from Syria in the third century. It had proved popular among soldiers, and the emperor Aurelian (270-75) had built a massive temple to the cult in Rome. So when Constantine began using the sun as a mark of imperial power, often portraying himself on coins or statues with rays coming from his head....

Quote ID: 8168

Time Periods: 034

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 160

Section: 2B2,3C

Constantine was still issuing coins bearing images of Sol Invictus as late as 320, and in the great bronze statue he later erected to himself in the Forum in Constantinople he was portrayed with the attributes of a sun-god, with rays emanating from his head.

One reason why this pagan association was so successful in maintaining the emperor’s status was that the sun was also used in Christian worship and symbolism. The resurrection was believed to have taken place on the day of the sun, the most important day of the week for Christian worship (as the English word “Sunday” still suggests). A third-century fresco from the Vatican Hill in Rome even shows Christ dressed as the sun-god in a chariot on his way to heaven.

Quote ID: 4824

Time Periods: 34

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 264

Section: 2B2,3C

So a conversion to Christianity need not have been abrupt. Often pagans compromised with Christianity by linking a particular martyr with and existing pagan festival so that the celebrations and rituals could continue as before.

Quote ID: 4962

Time Periods: 34

Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 320/321

Section: 2B2

Two martyrs from Asia Minor, Damian and Cosmas, who went through a particularly brutal martyrdom in which their bodies were cut up, re-emerge as patron saints of surgery. Similarly, St. Apollonia, whose teeth were knocked out during her martyrdom, is the patron saint of toothache. St Margaret of Antioch had been swallowed by a dragon. Making the sign of the cross while inside its belly, she was miraculously delivered and subsequently became a patron saint of childbirth.

Quote ID: 5001

Time Periods: 34

Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 52

Section: 2B2

Constantine’s attitude to Sun worship was significant, but ambiguous. Underneath St. Peter’s, as we have seen, there is a mosaic on which Jesus is represented as the Sun-god.

Quote ID: 5027

Time Periods: 3

Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 206 Page: 52

Section: 2B2,3C

Christians in the east and west, in their public and private prayers, turned to Oriens, the rising sun, in order to glorify its resurrection from the prison of the dark, which they identified with the Resurrection of Christ...Some people confused the two deities...That is partly why devotees of the Sun . . .were among the fiercest enemies of the Christians . . . St. Leo the Great (d. 461) complained that Christians still worshipped the Sun. {8}

[Footnote 8] Ibid., pp. 180ff. It has lately been argued that much of the Arch of Constantine is of considerably earlier date.

Quote ID: 5029

Time Periods: 4

Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 36/37

Section: 2B2,3C

In the ideology of the Tetrarchy, Constantius was both Herculius and, at least while Caesar, under the special protection of Sol Invictus, conventionally identified with Apollo. {77} In the early years of his reign, the coinage of Constantine advertised his especial patron as Mars, the god of war. {78} In 310, however, the coinage of Constantine replaces Mars, with Sol–a change clearly connected with the usurpation of Maximian. {79} In the new political situation, the change had clear advantages. Since Sol was the god who protected Constantius, emphasis on Sol stressed Constantine’s status as his father’s heir; {80} devotion to Apollo, the patron of culture and of the emperor Augustus, would appeal to the civilized parts of Gaul–and solar monotheism was far less objectionable than the normal pagan pantheon to the Christians, who formed an influential section of Constantine’s subjects.

Quote ID: 1569

Time Periods: 4

Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 179

Section: 2B2,3C2

Throughout, Eusebius has one main polemical aim: to demonstrate, against Porphyry, an essential harmony or identity between Christianity and all that is best in Greco-Roman civilization. The quotations of Greek writers thus form an integral part of the overall argument, which Eusebius has ordered into a carefully designed structure.

Quote ID: 1596

Time Periods: 4

Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Book ID: 65 Page: 15

Section: 2B2,3C

...his own father, the emperor Constantius I, had “honored the one Supreme God during his whole life” and ruled with both honor and success. Thus, he realized that this One God had been “the Savior and Protector of his empire, and the Giver of every good thing.”

Quote ID: 1671

Time Periods: 4

Constantine by Ramsay Macmullen
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 69 Page: 112

Section: 2B2,3C

Vague, evasive phrases bridging the gap between paganism and Christianity and thus facilitating spiritual movement from one to the other still served to link even such men as Anullinus to their master long after Constantine’s change of faith had become perfectly clear to everybody.

Monotheism under the presidency of the Sun; a family background somewhat sympathetic to Christianity; a current religion vocabulary of circumlocutions and ambiguities;

Quote ID: 1886

Time Periods: 4

Constantine by Ramsay Macmullen
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 69 Page: 120

Section: 2B2,3C

Inevitably the officers of the Church adopted certain distinctive features of secular officialdom for their costumes, for processions, and for address. Inevitably they presided over worship in surroundings reminiscent of a palace; increasingly in Christian art Christ borrows the ceremonial of imperial reception, oration, and adventus scenes. The Church, thanks to Constantine, had attained a new wealth and public prominence. To express it, there was only one obvious language of magnificence, the language of the imperial cult and court. But in that fact was implicit the danger of a friend becoming a master.

Quote ID: 1889

Time Periods: 456

Constantine by Ramsay Macmullen
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 69 Page: 164

Section: 2B2,3C

He encouraged Christianity in the army, without any sudden success. Sunday was marked off for rest and worship, and for the recitation of a prayer in Latin personally composed by the emperor.

….

- very much a soldier’s prayer, and one that a pagan could recite without heartburning, especially on the appointed Sun-day, dies Solis.

Quote ID: 1892

Time Periods: 4

Constantine by Ramsay Macmullen
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 69 Page: 224

Section: 2A3,2B2,3C

The Church had had no occasion to establish ceremonies in honor of a deceased Christian emperor, and pagan traditions rose to the surface. A comet was duly said to have foretold Constantine’s death. In a henceforward Christianized motif derived from paganism, coins depicted him drawn upwards by a hand extended from heaven. On his birthday, and on the birthday of the city that he had founded, his image received special veneration; to the statue on a porphyry column in the forum of Constantinople, Christians offered sacrifices, prayers, and incense. It was simply impossible to think of him as in any respect less than the deified emperors of paganism-his own father, or Marcus Aurelius, or any other.

Quote ID: 1896

Time Periods: 4

Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 129

Section: 2B2,4B

The opposite view, of course, was taken by Christian writers such as Lactantius, who sought to present his faith as compatible and harmonious with Romanitas, ....

Quote ID: 1707

Time Periods: 3

Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 177/178

Section: 2B2,3C,4A

...Constantine used to hold a regular ’salon’, a sort of religious-philosophical debating society (the members of which, in so far as they were pagans, must have found his interest in Christianity ridiculous and perhaps humiliating). His encouragement of higher education also implied a continued toleration of paganism. He called his friend Strategius ’Musonianus’, after the Muses. He even gave his churches at Constantinople the names of Greek personifications, such as Eirene (Peace) and Sophia (Wisdom), and the town itself was sometimes called ’Platonopolis’, owing to his admiration of Plato. Constantine also at times described the Christian clergy and monks as ’philosophers’.

Quote ID: 1760

Time Periods: 4

Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 178

Section: 2B2,3C

Thus we see him accepting Roman consulships, in the old traditional style, in 307 (in the west), and 312 and 313 and 315, and his Arch shows him sacrificing to the gods. Moreover, he even retained the office of pontifex maximus, a traditional and very pagan part of the imperial titulature.

Quote ID: 1761

Time Periods: 4

Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 178/179

Section: 2B2,3C

The graduality of the removal of paganism from the coinage, or, to speak more exactly, the gradual conversion of pagan concepts into neutral, ambivalent coin-types and inscriptions, demonstrates the care with which Constantine proceeded.

Quote ID: 1763

Time Periods: 4

Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 184

Section: 2B2,3C

Christianity, too, was apparently behind the elevation of Sunday as a public holiday and day of rest, despite a manifest solar background. ’All magistrates, city-dwellers and artisans’, decreed Constantine in 321, ’are to rest on the venerable day of the Sun, though country-dwellers may without hindrance apply themselves to agriculture...The day celebrated by the veneration of the Sun should not be devoted to the swearing and counter-swearing of litigants, and their ceaseless brawling.

Quote ID: 1771

Time Periods: 4

Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 206

Section: 2B2,3C

.....which was supposed to be the birthplace of Jesus (and pagan women had come there on a fixed date every year to mourn for the death of Adonis).

Quote ID: 1781

Time Periods: 4

Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 215

Section: 2B2,3C

Then Constantine was deified (made divus), as his coinage records: a curious indication that his adoption of the Christian faith did not prevent this pagan custom from being retained. The coins celebrating his deification show him, veiled, in a quadriga (reminiscent of the ascent of Elijah - but the chariot was also an attribute of Apollo and the Sun). A hand descends from heaven. Eusebius records the issue of these coins.

Quote ID: 1787

Time Periods: 4

Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 180/181

Section: 2B2,3C

...it is significant that Constantine’s coins stated his devotion to the Unconquered Sun. Sol Invictus had already come to be understood, in a proclamation by the emperor Aurelian in 274, as “the one universal Godhead,” as the historian J.N.D. Kelly summarized it, “which, recognized under a thousand names, revealed Itself most fully and splendidly in the heavens”{8}

Quote ID: 1826

Time Periods: 4

Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 182

Section: 2B2,3C

The inscription on the Arch of Constantine, which was erected within three years of the battle and still stands near the Colosseum, cites victory only “by the inspiration of the divinity.”{16}

Quote ID: 1827

Time Periods: 4

Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 183

Section: 2B2,3C

The potent movement toward monotheism among pagans is reflected in the fact that Summus Deus was by then a common Roman form of address to the deity.{19} As seen in Constantine’s originating piety, that supreme deity would have been associated with the sun, {20} and pagans would have recognized, with reason, their own solar cult in such Christian practices as orienting churches to the east, worshiping on “sun day,” and celebrating the birth of the deity at the winter solstice.

Quote ID: 1828

Time Periods: 4

Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 183

Section: 2B2,3C

Indeed, to the Teutons and Celts among them -- and an army mustered from Trier would have drawn heavily from such tribes -- the cross of Christ as the standard to march behind would have evoked the ancestral totem of the sacred tree far more powerfully than it would have Saint Paul’s token of deliverance.{21}

Quote ID: 1829

Time Periods: 4

Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 185

Section: 2B2,3C

That Constantine’s full embrace of a Christian identity -- and of martial sponsorship by the Christian deity -- took place gradually, and not all at once as in the legend, is revealed by the fact that Sol, the pagan sun god, continued to be honored on Constantine’s coins until 321.

Quote ID: 1831

Time Periods: 4

Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 198

Section: 2B2

What made the diversion of religious ceremonies non-sacrilegious was the nature of the Roman gods, the fact that they were not jealous. The gods of Rome insisted that they must be offered punctiliously all honours due to them but they did not worry about what honours were paid to other gods or to men.

Quote ID: 7611

Time Periods: 123

Continuity and Change in Roman Religion
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
Book ID: 313 Page: 262

Section: 2B2,4B

From beginning to end of his treatise, Lactantius supports Christian teaching with references to the Roman classics which it had been, and probably still was, his professional duty to teach to the young.{3} Cicero is quoted again and again.{4} Essential arguments are supported with quotations from Virgil or Seneca.

….

In contrast, biblical citations are conspicuous only in one of the seven books:…

Quote ID: 7615

Time Periods: 3

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 17/18

Section: 2B2

The Idea of Conversion and Greek Religion Before Alexander The Great

As a city’s interests expanded, the range of its cults might also be enlarged; to take an example, Athens, which had Thracian connexions, found a place for the worship of Bendis, a goddess whom Athenians had met and worshipped in Thrace. In time Bendis was, so to speak, naturalized and gave a convenient pretex for an additional torch race. There was in this nothing more revolutionary than there was in the introduction of the potato and tobacco into England from America.

Quote ID: 1899

Time Periods: 0

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 19

Section: 2B2

Before Alexander the Great

It was commonly held that the gods of different nations were identifiable, that the Egyptians worshipped Athena and Zeus and Dionysus under other names.....and there was no reason why we Greeks should desire a Lydian to sacrifice to Zeus by that name rather than to his own god, unless he happened to be staying in our city.

Quote ID: 1901

Time Periods: 2

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 19

Section: 2B2

Before Alexander the Great

When the Athenians sent settlers to the Thracian city of Brea, shortly before 441 B.C., they ordered them to leave the consecrated precincts as they were and not to consecrate others.

Quote ID: 1902

Time Periods: 0

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 36

Section: 2B2

A certain amount of convergent development; the native priests commonly learned Greek and accepted equations of Egyptian with Greek deities, giving the names side by side in their calendars of festivals (there is one at Sais of about 300 B. C.) and in Greek forms of temple oaths. The Greeks in their turn built few substantial temples for their own deities outside Alexandria, Ptolemais, and Naucratis. In these and in private cult associations they worshipped Greek gods but commonly they paid their devotions to the native gods.

Quote ID: 1912

Time Periods: 0

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 62

Section: 2B2

We hear of many proselytes in Antioch and we know elsewhere of many ‘fearers of God’, who conformed with those commandments binding on all mankind and participated in the sabbath worship of the synagogue without either the privileges or the obligations of the real Jew and without the social condemnation which commonly rested upon the Jew.

Quote ID: 1921

Time Periods: 3

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 62/63

Section: 2B2

But we find also, what we have learned to expect from the contact of Greeks with an Oriental national religion, first the recognition by Greeks of the god of the Jews as a fit object of worship and as capable of equation with a deity of their own ( Zeus or Dionysus or Antis); secondly, the formation of new composite products as a result of give and take on both sides. The god of the Jews (under the name Iao) is prominent in magic papyri and in ancient curses as a god of power.

Quote ID: 1922

Time Periods: 3

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 63/64

Section: 2B2

Late in the fourth century A.D. we hear of a sect of Hypsistarii in Cappadocia, survivors of this movement. The father of Gregory Nazianzen belonged to this before his conversion, and his son characterizes it as a mixture of Hellinic (i.e. Gentile) error and the humbug of the law, honouring fire (probably from the Persian element in Cappadocia) and lamps and the Sabbath and food regulations while rejecting circumcision. Similar believers existed in Phoenicia and Palestine, and even in the West. Again, we know in Cilicia a society of Sabbatistai, and there is evidence that a certain fusion took place between the cult of Jehovah as conceived by some of the Jews settled by Antiochus in Phrygia and the native cult of Zeus Sabazios. Such fusion was not then out of the question.

Quote ID: 1923

Time Periods: 4

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 64

Section: 2B2

Philo had to complain of Jews who felt themselves to be emancipated. The Jews in Phrygia married Gentiles, and we later find the descendants of such marriages as priest of the Emperor’s worship.

Quote ID: 1924

Time Periods: 34

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 66

Section: 2B2

An inscription at Puteoli dated 29 May, A.D. 79 says: ‘The god Helios Saraptenos (that is the Baal of Sarapta between Tyre and Sidon) came on ship from Tyre to Puteoli. Elim brought him in accordance with a command.’

Pastor John’s Note: visions

Quote ID: 1925

Time Periods: 1

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 67

Section: 2B2

The returning soldiery sometimes carried back strange cults with them, as Sulla’s soldiers perhaps carried Ma from Comana; it is said that their commander had a vision of her on his first march to Rome. Tacitus tells how as day broke on the desperate struggle before Cremona in A.D. 69, the soldiers of the third legion saluted the rising sun; ‘That is the way in Syria’ (Histories, iii.24).

Quote ID: 1926

Time Periods: 1

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 67

Section: 2B2

The influence of trade appears in the fact that the Syrian festival of Maioumas became a civic celebration at Ostia and that as early as 105 B.C.

Quote ID: 1927

Time Periods: 01234

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 76

Section: 2B2

The attempt of Elagabalus to make the worship of his god Elagabal the central worship of the Empire provoked a reaction: when Aurelian introduced the Syrian cult of the Sun it was in strictly Roman form.

Quote ID: 1937

Time Periods: 23

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 84

Section: 2B2

Now we possess on a papyrus of the second century A.D. the end of a short record of the type to which Aristides refers:

‘He said, For your sake I will grant the water to the men of Pharos: and having saluted him he sailed out and gave the water to the men of Pharos and received from them as a price one hundred drachmas of silver. This miracle is recorded in the libraries of Mercurium. Do all of you who are present say There is one Zeus Sarapis.’

There follows the book’s title, ‘The Miracle of Zeus Helios, great Sarapis, done to Syrion the Pilot.’

Quote ID: 1941

Time Periods: 2

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 92

Section: 2B2

Let us take an illustration from the third century B.C. Artemidorus of Perga settled on the island of Thera and put up inscriptions to Hecate and Priapus:

‘Artemidorus set up this Hecate, of many names, the lightbringer, honoured by all who dwell in the land. Artemidorus made these steps as a memorial of the city of Thera and stablished a black stone. I, Priapus of Lampsacus, am come to this city of Thera, bearing imperishable wealth. I am here as a benefactor and a defender to all the citizens and to the strangers who dwell here.’

Quote ID: 1942

Time Periods: 0

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 111

Section: 2B,2B2

But in the third century Porphyry as a young man wrote a work On the Philosophy to be drawn from Oracles, giving oracles from Apollo of Claros and shrines of Hecate which not merely prescribed cultus but also defined the nature of god and asserted the existence of one Supreme Being who is Eternity (Aion), the ordinary gods of paganism being his ‘angels: another oracle saying that the Supreme Being is Iao (that is Jehovah), identified with Hades, Zeus, Helios, is quoted by Cornelius Labeo, who probably belongs to the early part of the same century.

Quote ID: 1944

Time Periods: 23

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 125

Section: 2B2,3B,4B

It is therefore not surprising that the Flavian period saw a rise in the importance of the Egyptian gods. They remain outside the official city boundary, but appear on Roman coins in 71 and 73, and for the first time on the coins of Alexandria (which had an official character) Sarapis is called Zeus Sarapis.

Quote ID: 1953

Time Periods: 1

Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 136/137

Section: 2B2,4B

Its popularity is shown by the common ascription to various deities of the epithet pantheus and by the representations of one of them with attributes of others. The latter begin in the second century B.C., but the wildest extent of the development is from the end of the first century of our era.....It is a theology of unity and mutual understanding, and not of conflict. Adhesion to a new cult was thus made easier: it need involve no more than the devotion of Catholics to the cultus of a new saint.

Quote ID: 1958

Time Periods: 1234

Councils: First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their History and Theology, The
Leo Donald Davis
Book ID: 224 Page: 30

Section: 2B2,2E4,3A1

By law, the clergy were exempted from onerous public functions; wills in favor of the Church were permitted, and slaves could be freed in the Christian churches. Still these privileges were already those of pagan priests and institutions. Even the declaration of the first day of the week as a day of rest was ambiguous, since it was both the day of Christ’s resurrection and the day sacred to the sun.

Quote ID: 5632

Time Periods: 4

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 4

Section: 2B2

Astarte had worshippers at very early times in Punic Africa and Sicily, notably where she would assume the name of Venus on Mount Eryx.

Quote ID: 5112

Time Periods: 0

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 4

Section: 2B2

Where the Greeks supplanted the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, their Herakles, a civilizing and colonizing god, quite naturally replaced Melqart, but this nominal Hellenization did not totally annihilate the personality of the Semitic god.

Quote ID: 5113

Time Periods: 0

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 5

Section: 2B2

The same Timotheus wrote a work on the myth and religion of Cybele, who was readily identified with Demeter, the patron goddess of the Eleusinian initiations.

Quote ID: 5114

Time Periods: 0

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 6

Section: 2B2

Antiochus I of Commagene, who claimed a double ancestry, Iranian and Macedonian, identified Mithras with Helios, Hermes and Apollo. Some generations later, Philo of Byblos, claiming to translate a book of Sanchuniathon, explained the theogony of the Phoenicians by giving their gods Greek equivalents. That is broadly what had been done about 500 years earlier by the great Herodotus, father of history and comparative religion.

Quote ID: 5115

Time Periods: 0

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 7

Section: 2B2

To be more precise, rather than ‘Oriental religions’ one should speak of religions of eastern origin, or of Graeco-Oriental religions, which had been coated, or even penetrated, by a Hellenic veneer, sometimes for two or three centuries before their arrival in the Latin West.

Quote ID: 5117

Time Periods: 0

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 9

Section: 2B2

Of course Isis and Serapis are seen associated with Juno and Jupiter Dolichenus on this or that figured monument, {10} as if the two couples coincided in the minds of their followers. But in no way can it be inferred that the two cults were interchangeable.

Quote ID: 5120

Time Periods: 0

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 12

Section: 2B2

Fifteen in number from the time of Sulla (whence their title quindecimviri sacris faciundis), they had naturalized notably the Greek Asclepius, the Semitic Aphrodite of Mount Eryx and the Phrygian Great Mother.

Quote ID: 5126

Time Periods: 0

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 65

Section: 2B2,2E3

At Senj the cathedral dedicated to the Virgin approximately occupies a site formerly consecrated to the Great Mother.

Quote ID: 5145

Time Periods: 457

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 97

Section: 2B2

It appears that Serapis was particularly venerated in Proconsularis (roughly present-day Tunisia). There he was assimilated to Ball-Hammon and Saturn and (as in a dedication from Aquincum) Neptune as god of aquatic fruitfulness, which presumes identification with Osiris, the fertilizing water of the Nile. On a bas-relief from Makthar the god wears the solar rays of Heliosarapis.

Quote ID: 5151

Time Periods: 01

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 124

Section: 2B2,2E6

Until the second century AD, Egyptian zoolatry remained an inexhaustible topic of mockery or indignation among Rome’s pagans. With even greater reason there was astonishment at the cult of plants! ‘Egypt invokes garlic and onions among the gods in its oaths’, lamented Pliny the Elder (Natural History, II, 101). ‘It is sacrilege to insult the leek and the onion by sinking your teeth into them. What devout populations, whose deities grow in vegetable gardens!’ Continued Juvenal (Satires, XV, 9-10).

Quote ID: 5160

Time Periods: 01

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 245

Section: 2B2,3C

But to begin with, the first Christian emperor also wagered on the ambiguities of the solar cult. The famous vision of 312 was associated with the daystar, and until 320 Constantinian coins promoted Sol Invictus as ‘companion’ (comes) of the emperor. Moreover, he had benefited at Grand (Vosges) from an earlier Apollonian epiphany. Much has been written about his alleged hesitations; but he insisted on making the worshippers of Sol Invictus - Mithraists or not - understand that there was no other Sun but his God of the Armies. {135}

[Footnote 135] T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, Ambridge, Mass. And London, 1981, p. 36f, 48. Cf. A. Afoldi, The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome, Oxford, 1969, p. 48, 54ff.

Quote ID: 5173

Time Periods: 4

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 331

Section: 2B2

For a pagan god, the height of prestige was to dominate the others: there was no true sovereignty except in relation to other deities. Temples gloried in housing gods other than the titular divinity. A real oecumenism ensured that Atargatis would receive hospitality from Cybele. One could honour Serpis, Attis, Dionysus, Mercury, even the Gaulish Mercury of travellers, Cissonius, in a Mithraic crypt, or worship Mithras, Isis and Serapis in Jupiter Dolichenus’ temple on the Aventine. At Brindisi, a single priest carried out his ministry for the followers of Isis, the Great Mother and the Syrian Goddess (CIL, IX, 6099).

But this liberalism, which could turn annexationist in the case of Elagabal, also held the risk of diluting the gods’ personality in a vague syncretism, chaotic and undifferentiated. ‘At the conclusion’, says R. MacMullen, ‘confusion reigned’. {2} Syncretism and the physica ratio gave this melting-pot merely a semblance of coherence which it was easy for those in the Christian camp to deride.

Quote ID: 5176

Time Periods: 23

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 335

Section: 2B2

Maximus of Madaurus, St Augustine’s correspondent mentioned earlier, justified his pagan eclecticism in the same spirit:

Thus by honouring in various sorts of cults that which we regard as His various members, we worship Himself [God] in His entirety (Augustine, Letters, 16)

Quote ID: 5178

Time Periods: 2

Cults of the Roman Empire, The
Robert Turcan
Book ID: 209 Page: 335

Section: 2B2

These cults did not prohibit their respective followers from praying to the god next door. But this wandering polytheism wearied even the dilettantes. In contrast, Christianity categorically and effectively ruled out theological and intellectual chopping and changing.

Quote ID: 5179

Time Periods: 234

Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Jerome Carcopino
Book ID: 72 Page: 129

Section: 2B2

Hence, above all, the ease with which the Romans were converted to the gods of the East, not only because the Orient was rich and populous but because the Hellenistic civilisation in which Rome was steeped had moulded to one pattern cults derived from every quarter of the East – moulded them as it were in its own image and under the pressure of its own spiritual instincts.

. . . .

The numerous colleges devoted to these heterogeneous gods at Rome not only co-existed without friction but collaborated in their recruiting campaigns. There was in fact more affinity and mutual understanding between these diverse religions than rivalry.

Quote ID: 2010

Time Periods: 01

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 94

Section: 2B2,3C

On the summit of the pillar, above one hundred and twenty feet from the ground, stood the colossal statue of Apollo. It was of bronze, had been transported either from Athens or from a town of Phrygia, and was supposed to be the work of Phidias. The artist had represented the god of day, or, as it was afterwards interpreted, the emperor Constantine himself, with a scepter in his right hand, the globe of the world in his left, and a crown of rays glittering on his head.{3}

Quote ID: 8555

Time Periods: 4