Chapter 29
Historians used to portray the third century as a catastrophic decline from the economic, social, and cultural heights of the first and second centuries c.e. The accumulation of new evidence and analysis over last fifty years paints a different picture. The heights of the earlier centuries have been overemphasized. Changes in so vast an entity as the Roman Empire in the third century varied enormously in pace and scale with local conditions. What might be true of one area might not hold in another. For example, there was often a contrast between the Greek East and the Latin West. The political and military crises of the third century may have accelerated some trends or retarded others. In either case, there were striking continuities as well as significant breaks with the past.
Economic life
In modern terms, the Roman Empire had an underdeveloped economy. It had reached its limited potential during the relative peace and stability between Augustus’ victory in the civil wars of the late Republic and the death of Antoninus Pius in 161. Beginning with Marcus Aurelius, invasions, civil wars, and plague disrupted production and trade in significant parts of the Empire. The increase in the size of the army and the civil bureaucracy to cope with these crises created heavy demands for money and manpower. These demands were very difficult to meet with an economy capable of producing only small surpluses per capita under the best of conditions. Increased demand without a concomitant increase in productivity created serious inflationary pressure.
The inflationary spiral
As seen in the previous two chapters, emperors, when faced with growing expenses for defense and a declining supply of precious metals, increased the number of coins by making them lighter and adding less gold and silver in proportion to base metal. By the 250s, the debasement of the coinage had become so bad that the continued increase in the number of debased coins in circulation caused inflation to spiral ever higher. Between 267 and 274, for example, prices had increased as much as 700 percent.
Fortunately, people could often avoid using cash. Barter could be used in many local exchanges of goods and services. Some taxes had always been paid in kind. Still, the poll tax and other taxes had to be paid in cash. Rapid inflation made it difficult to save up enough to satisfy the tax collector, particularly when inflation was increasing the amount of extortion in which tax collectors had habitually engaged. Therefore, ordinary people had less money to spend in the marketplace.
The great landowners were strong enough to resist the tax collectors and supply their wants from their own vast holdings. Members of the curial class, those of middling wealth who made up the bulk of municipal councils (curiae), were responsible for collecting local taxes. They could shift some of their tax burdens onto the lower classes or seek refuge by joining either the bureaucracy or the army. Soldiers were in a good position to demand raises and bonuses, which were often the objects of their mutinies and rebellions. On the average, however, their wages no more than kept pace with inflation. They often resorted to extortion or force against civilians to obtain what they could not buy.
Inflation, combined with the disruptive effects of military and political turmoil and destructive plagues from 235 to 285, had many negative economic consequences. The public and private alimentary and educational trust funds, one of the Principate’s finest achievements, were wiped out. Credit, never a very highly developed aspect of the economy, became almost unobtainable. Poverty, always extensive, became even worse.
Decline of trade and commerce
The volume of trade and commerce, both internal and international, declined severely in many parts of the Empire during the third century, particularly after 235. In the absence of any improvement in ships or seamanship, this decline is underscored by the smaller number of third-century commercial shipwrecks found in the Mediterranean. Progressively debased coins, high inflation, and the decline in trade probably hurt banking, which principally involved money changing.
The coastal raids of the Saxons and Jutes and the virtual collapse of the Rhine–Danube frontier severely disrupted trade in the northwestern provinces. In the East, the disintegration of the Parthian Empire after Septimius Severus and the collapse of the Han Empire in China at the same time disrupted the overland trade with the Far East and India. The sea routes to India across the Arabian Sea seem to have been abandoned early in the third century, too. The need for importing large amounts of grain at Rome kept trade flowing between North Africa and Italy. Yet, even that trade suffered temporarily in the third century.
Disruption of agriculture
The decline of trade and commerce accompanied the disruption of agriculture. A major component of trade was the transportation of basic agricultural commodities such as grain, wine, and olive oil. If the markets for these products declined or if the producing areas ceased to produce, trade between the two declined or ceased, too. For example, when the Roman market for olive oil shrank in the late second century as plague ravaged the city’s population, the rich olive-producing region of the Guadalquivir valley in Spain declined.
Agriculture in provinces along the unstable northern frontiers was particularly hard hit. Farmers suffered from invaders and impoverished Romans-turned-brigands. They often faced even more damage from Roman armies sent to drive off the attackers or fighting each other in civil war. It made little difference to the farmers whether their crops, animals, and supplies were stolen, requisitioned, or destroyed in the fighting. They were left destitute in the end.
Often an army just passing through a district en route to some other destination could spell disaster. Ancient armies on the march needed enormous amounts of local provisions. The emperor or his high commanders and the exalted personages of their retinues were a scourge. They had to receive lavish hospitality commensurate with their high station even if the locals were reduced to beggary.
If a farmer escaped the previous calamities, he still faced extraordinary taxes and requisitions. They were imposed to support unexpected wars elsewhere or to pay the expenses associated with the accession of the latest new emperor or local usurper. As a result of all of those pressures, much land, particularly of marginal quality or on unstable frontiers, went out of production.
Increase of great estates
In many cases, particularly in those parts of the West where agriculture still prospered, the number of latifundia, large holdings of estates farmed by coloni (tenants), increased. Coloni paid a percentage of their production to their landlords, many of whose villas were now fortified. The hereditary senatorial magnates and provincial elites or new men from the army and bureaucracy were the only ones with the resources to buy extra land or take over what others had abandoned. Often small farmers willingly surrendered their land to larger neighbors and became coloni in return. They needed the protection that powerful landlords—with their social connections, fortified villas, and private retainers—could provide against tax collectors, military recruiters, brigands, and outside attackers.
Like medieval manors, the landlords’ estates were largely self-sufficient. They produced most of what was needed for local consumption. Tenants, paying their rents in kind, supplied the landlords with raw materials, food, and textiles. Resident artisans provided most of the items needed for everyday use. Only specialized products, such as iron and luxuries for the landlord, had to be bought from outside.
Mining and manufacturing
The widespread decline in other areas of economic activity is paralleled by declines in mining and manufacturing. The inability to produce enough gold and silver to keep up with the demand for coins contributed heavily to the monetary chaos and inflation of the third century. The decline of trade and agricultural prosperity in many regions reduced the demand for manufactured goods such as tools and equipment; high-quality pottery and cloth; building materials, furniture, and decorative artwork; and carts, wagons, boats, and ships. The decline was so bad in the third century that when demand revived in the fourth, there was a shortage of people with the skills required to meet it.
Social trends
In the third century, the Roman Empire was, as it always had been, a vast multiethnic, multicultural conglomeration of peoples on three continents. By Caracalla’s Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, all of those who were of free status shared a common citizenship (pp. 522–3). In many ways, that was the logical culmination of a process that had begun with the first extension of Roman citizenship in Italy during the Republic. The progressive elimination of the distinction between Romans and non-Romans had been a hallmark of Rome’s successful expansion for hundreds of years.
Social role of the army
During the third century, the army had made it possible for provincials of non-Italian origin to rise to the top of the imperial hierarchy. Septimius Severus, a native of the province of Africa, is a perfect example. Maximinus, the Thracian whom the Pannonian legions had made emperor after Severus Alexander, had been appointed to several equestrian military offices by Septimius. The Emperor Philip the Arab came from an Arabian family that Septimius had favored. Philip himself had been promoted to the equestrian office of praetorian prefect in 243. The emperors Claudius Gothicus and Aurelian had been talented equestrian military officers from Balkan provinces. They were the first in a series of emperors generally identified as Illyrians that culminated with Diocletian and Constantine.
It was a long-standing Roman policy to post soldiers far from their home provinces. Under Septimius Severus, for example, there were Arabs serving in Gaul and Goths serving in Arabia. After completing their terms of service, soldiers frequently retired where they had been stationed. That trend was encouraged by Septimius Severus’ abolition of the prohibition against soldiers’ marrying. Although native soldiers from the provinces had learned Latin and become Romanized, they also brought some of their own traditions and customs to the areas where they settled.
Greater public recognition of important women
During the Republic and the first two centuries c.e., the women of elite families and emperors’ households had always been important. They were vehicles for building useful marital alliances. Many played significant, even if informal, roles in politics. Scandal and censure by horrified males was mostly their reward. For dynastic and propaganda purposes, the mothers and wives of emperors were positively portrayed in traditional female roles on coins, in inscriptions, and via honorific statues. In the third century, however, Septimius Severus and his family produced a change. They came from Syria and North Africa, where there was a tradition of placing greater public emphasis on important women. Women of prominent families received more public recognition as patrons of their communities in Roman Africa than anywhere else in the Empire. It probably seemed natural, therefore, to an emperor of Punic descent from North Africa to give great public prominence to the role played by his Syrian wife, Julia Domna.
No Roman woman, not even Livia, had ever before received the variety of honors bestowed upon Julia Domna. She was depicted on coins as Cybele or seated on the throne of Juno with titles such as Mother of the Camps and Senate or Mother of the Fatherland. Statues and inscriptions honoring her were set up everywhere. At Aphrodisias, in western Asia Minor, she even was hailed as the goddess Demeter and given a temple. Under Caracalla, she functioned almost as a prime minister or secretary of state with her own Praetorian Guard. She carried on much of the imperial correspondence in Latin and Greek all over the Empire. Julia Maesa and Julia Mamaea achieved even greater public prominence under Elagabalus and Severus Alexander (pp. 524–5).
Salonina, wife of Emperor Gallienus (253–268), did not gain the prominence of Domna, Maesa, and Mamaea, but she figured heavily in dynastic propaganda on the coins of Gallienus’ reign. Her portrait appears on literally hundreds of issues from the period, particularly on those minted at Milan. That was Gallienus’ main residence. Salonina often maintained the imperial presence among the troops there while Gallienus was off fighting elsewhere. She also supported Gallienus’ cultural agenda and was noted for accompanying him to hear the philosopher Plotinus lecture. Under the soldier-emperors who followed Gallienus, the women of the imperial Court became less visible again, but the stage was set for the emergence of women who would play dominant roles in the imperial Court, particularly in the eastern half of the Empire during the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.
At Carthage in 203, a young aristocratic woman named Vibia Perpetua and a pregnant slave named Felicitas achieved an entirely different kind of public prominence. These two women were among the early martyrs of the Christian Church. Their deaths are portrayed in The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas. Most of it is presented as Perpetua’s own account of her experiences between being arrested and marched off to face death in the gladiatorial arena. In the depiction of her confrontations with her father and the Roman governor and in her various dreams, Perpetua completely overturns the existing male-dominated social and political order. She, ordinarily a powerless woman, feels empowered by her sufferings and impending death. She is called a domina (mistress) and appears victorious over her normal masters. Perpetua, Felicitas, and their fellow martyrs are portrayed turning suffering and death into joy and eternal life. Shown unbowed and in control to the very end, Perpetua guides the sword of the trembling gladiator to her own throat. Whatever the facts may be, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas—along with similar tales of martyrs, often female—became a popular and powerful tool for converting others, particularly women, to a faith that promised the power to overcome suffering and powerlessness.
Decline of cities
The problems and changes of the third century caused suffering, anxiety, and a sense of powerlessness for many people. Urban dwellers were hard hit in many areas. Numerous factors caused cities to shrink and decline: natural disasters such as plagues and the large earthquakes that hit much of the Empire between 242 and 262, economic contraction, and attacks during invasions or civil wars. To survive, cities had to erect fortresses and walls that characterized cities in Europe and the Mediterranean world for centuries thereafter.
A sign of shrinkage is that walls sometimes enclosed only a fourth of a city’s former area, although there are cases where extensive habitations remained outside the walls. Inside the walls, public buildings and monuments often decayed. Even Rome, which was becoming the capital of the Empire in name only, began to recede from the high tide that it had reached in the first and second centuries. A few cities like Milan, Verona, Aquileia, Sirmium, and Antioch thrived as major defensive centers. Many cities regained lost ground slowly, if at all. Cities in the East, however, did not fare so badly as those in the West.
The plight of the curial class
The decline of trade, manufacturing, and agriculture and the shrinking of cities paralleled the progressive weakening of the curial class (curiales). It comprised the merchants, businessmen, and medium-sized landowners who served as local municipal magistrates and decurions, members of the municipal curia (council). In the past, the curiales appropriated municipal funds for public works, baths, temples, entertainments, and welfare. Through traditional euergetism, they often supplemented those appropriations with their own private wealth to gain reputations as benefactors of their communities. They also served as collectors of imperial taxes and provided for the feeding and bedding of troops in transit and for changes of horses for the imperial post (cursus publicus).
As the government and the army made more and more demands on communities in the form of requisitions and taxes, the curiales had less and less to spend on private benefactions. Unable to pressure the great senatorial landlords, they pressed harder on those below them to relieve their own financial burdens. Service as a decurion or magistrate had once been a highly sought honor. Now it became more and more a burden to be avoided. Many curiales sought escape by gaining positions in the imperial bureaucracy, becoming soldiers, or subordinating themselves to some great landowner as his tenants (coloni).
The urban poor
Only in Rome and a few other favored cities did the urban poor find any significant relief. In those cities, usually major imperial residences, the emperor tried to maintain his traditional role as patron and benefactor. There, the poor received food and entertainment on an incongruously generous scale. Most cities had to depend on local revenues and benefactors to support such generosity. Their poor could no longer be fed and entertained. Life became desperate for many. Crime, prostitution, the selling of children, military service, and flight to the countryside or even beyond the imperial frontiers were among the few options for survival. Those who professed Christianity, however, found relief through the growing charitable activities of the local churches. They encouraged more fortunate members to share what they had with the poor. Not coincidentally, the number of urban Christians increased significantly.
Slaves and coloni
Slavery remained a major feature of Roman social and economic life in the third and subsequent centuries. That is clear from the amount of attention devoted to issues involving slaves in the imperial law codes. By the second half of the third century, however, the supply of cheap unskilled slaves for agricultural labor probably was shrinking. Emperors who were successful in defeating attackers preferred to enroll captives in the Roman army or settle them on deserted lands. Therefore, large landowners increasingly welcomed those who wished to farm a portion of their land as coloni.
The expansion of upper-class landowners
As so often in times of great economic stress, the ranks of the very rich increased at the expense of those even greater numbers who were sinking lower and lower on the socioeconomic scale. Some of the old senatorial families in the West would reach princely levels of wealth, status, and power. Below them was a growing class of large, if not truly grand, landowners. Their ranks were swollen by an influx of numerous newcomers. Often, they had risen from a lower station through the army and imperial bureaucracy to positions where they had the power to enrich themselves. Among the military men were former non-Roman auxiliaries and soldiers from key frontier provinces like Illyricum, Pannonia, and Thrace.
The newcomers had conservatively invested their gains in land. When they retired, they imitated those of hereditary wealth by devoting the bulk of their attention to creating great holdings in the country. Their wealth enabled them to enjoy the luxuries that still came by way of foreign and domestic commerce, and they acquired more land whenever they could.
Increasing stratification and regimentation
The militarization of the government in the third century was reflected in the increasing stratification and regimentation of society in general. A primary example is the increasing official acceptance of harsher penalties for humiliores than those for honestiores (p. 518). As the great landowners rose higher, there was pressure to reduce the curiales to lower status and to tie the coloni to their landlords.
Third-century cultural life
The disruptions of the third century severely reduced the resources and leisure available for maintaining the cultural life of the old Greco-Roman elites. That was especially true in the hard-hit West, although some areas did better than others. In the East, where the urban and economic declines were generally less severe, the Greek-speaking urban elites more vigorously carried on the traditions of their class. Everywhere, however, the old elites’ control of the cultural agenda was weakened. Long-scorned native and popular influences began to make themselves felt at all levels. Nowhere was that more true than in the matter of religion.
Religion
The Roman Empire continued to exhibit much religious diversity during the third century. In particular, the people of the countryside, the pagani, continued to worship their traditional gods. On the other hand, the religious changes that were already visible in the cities, army camps, and administrative centers of the Empire during the first and second centuries (pp. 489–90) accelerated in the third.
Those trends were aided by Caracalla’s grant of universal citizenship in 212. It gave legitimacy to people and traditions that the old Roman and Greek elites had not sanctioned. One of the grant’s stated purposes was to allow all people to conduct religious sacrifices in common. It also enabled those who did not share the religious traditions of the old elites to gain power more easily as officials and even emperors.
Moreover, the disasters of the second half of the third century made many people question the power and value of both the old gods and the ration-alistic philosophies of happier times. More and more people were drawn to deities, religions, beliefs, and occult practices that had more universal appeal or promised to empower those who felt powerless. That was particularly true in the cities and army camps. There mystery religions, magicians, and charlatans who claimed to have power over the forces of evil continued to gain adherents.
Religion and the state
Various emperors tried to enlist religious support for the state by claiming the personal favor of some divinity who would protect it. Decius, who mounted the first general persecution of the Christians (250), was trying to regain the favor of the traditional anthropomorphic deities, to whom Rome’s success in better days had been attributed. He wanted to restore what the Romans called the pax deorum (Peace of the Gods), which the old public priesthoods and festivals were supposed to preserve. Many traditionalists in the Roman senate welcomed and participated in this movement. Pagan senators at Rome remained a bastion of the traditional state religion for at least another 150 years.
Autocracy and monotheistic religions
During the third century, the tendency toward absolute monarchy in earthly government paralleled the growing popularity of various religions with claims of universality and some kind of supreme deity. Emperors sought religious sanctions for their sole authority over the universal empire that they were trying to preserve. It was no longer easy to believe in the divine nature of the emperors themselves, who rose and fell with bewildering rapidity. None of the emperors after the Severi was deified. Still, people could accept the idea of an autocratically governed universal empire sanctioned by some kind of overarching supreme deity. The rise of the universal cosmopolitan state had precipitated the decline of the old national and local polytheism. It encouraged the acceptance of more universalistic Eastern religions and mystery cults. They were focused on some extraordinarily powerful deity, often paired with his/her consort, son, or helper (pp. 490–2). The idea of a supreme universal deity was also reflected in the rapidly spreading philosophy of Neoplatonism. It stressed the quest for knowledge of the divine One. The One was at the center of the universe. All else depended on it (pp. 554–5).
The trends toward autocracy and monotheism visibly manifested themselves at Rome. There Emperor Aurelian erected a resplendent temple to Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. He even established a college of pontiffs of senatorial rank to superintend the worship of this supreme god of the universe. Sol Invictus became the divine protector of the Roman Empire. Aurelian appeared on his new coins with a radiate crown representing the rays of the sun.
Isism and Mithraism
The mystery cult of Isis did not continue to gain strength as it had in the first and second centuries c.e. (pp. 490–1). Mithras, however, attracted the helpful interest of Commodus and the Severi. His cult grew, and he eventually became identified with Sol Invictus as Deus Sol Invictus Mithras (The God Mithras the Unconquered Sun). Had the Roman emperors remained devoted to Sol Invictus after the reign of Aurelian, Mithraism might have become more deeply entrenched in the population. Its all-male base, however, was too small to survive the emperors’ conversion to Christianity in the fourth century.
Manichaeism
One of the most potent forces in the second half of the third century and for the next 200 years was Manichaeism. It is the religion named for the Persian prophet Mani. He was a friend of the Sassanid Persian king Shapur (Sapor) I and started preaching with royal support in 242. A little over thirty years later, however, Mani was executed by Shapur’s grandson Bahram (Vahram, Varahan, Varanes) I under the influence of a conservative religious reaction.
Mani combined elements of Greek philosophy, Babylonian astrology, various Eastern mystery cults, Gnosticism, and Christianity. He counted Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus all as prophets. Zoroastrian dualism provided the fundamental starting point of Manichaean belief. Originally, the universe was divided between Two Principles or Roots, the Light and the Dark. The realm of Light contained everything good; the Dark, everything bad. At some time, the forces of the Dark invaded the Light. The ensuing struggle produced this world from the bodies of the forces of Darkness, who had swallowed part of Light’s realm.
Mani taught that Jesus had revealed this miserable state of affairs to Adam and showed him how he could gradually free the particles of Light from the prison of his physical body, which was composed of Darkness. In that way, Adam would be able to restore the original perfect state. Unfortunately, the agents of Darkness created Eve to entice him from his task. Adam then scattered the particles of Light still further by begetting children. Jesus, however, using the moon and the sun, set up a mechanism to distill the souls of the dead and reconstruct the Perfect Man. Eventually, according to Mani, the world will end with Jesus’ second coming. A great fire will refine its remains for 1468 years until all heavenly material is freed and the Realm of Light is completely restored. There was, however, no survival of the individual personality and no personal victory over the forces of evil in this world or over death in the next. Christianity promised both. Therefore, some have argued, many found Christianity more appealing. Also, the Manichees never enjoyed the advantage of converting a Roman emperor and lost the support of the Persian emperors, whereas Christianity eventually became the religion of Rome’s rulers.
Judaism and Christianity
Judaism maintained itself among the Jewish population dispersed throughout the Empire. It remained a legally recognized ancestral religion. Therefore, there was no official persecution, although local outbreaks of violence against Jews did occur. Christianity, because it had assumed an identity quite distinct from its Jewish origins, had lost any claim to special protection as an ancestral religion. Always liable to individual legal prosecution for refusing to worship the gods of the state, Christians became subject to systematic imperial persecution in the mid-third century as Decius and Valerian sought unity through religious means (p. 532). Early Christian writers support the oft-repeated popular view that great numbers of Christians suffered martyrdom through horrible forms of execution at the hands of Roman persecutors. The actual number, however, was quite modest, probably under a thousand. Still, the impact of the martyrs was enormous. Christian authors endlessly retold or replicated stories of martyrdom to demonstrate the power of Christianity to triumph over pain and suffering.
The blood that martyrs spilled in fact and fiction nourished the spirits of the urban middle and working classes. Facing an increasingly uncertain future, the excluded and marginalized members of society were largely cut off from the upper-class civic life and institutions of the cities in which they lived. They often found refuge in the tightly knit, yet accepting, communities of Christians. Therefore, during the period of toleration known as the Little Peace of the Church after Valerian’s death (260–302), the numbers of Christians continued to grow geometrically. Christianity became more firmly rooted than ever in the cities of the Empire’s core. It also spread deeply into the smaller cities and towns of the peripheral provinces. The soldier-emperors from remote rural villages in the Danubian provinces were too busy defending the frontiers or putting down usurpers to notice or care until Diocletian began to rebuild the Roman state.
Two factors prevented Christianity from becoming just another Hellenized Eastern mystery cult. The first is that Christians accepted as the foundation for and proof of their faith in Jesus as the Messiah the Holy Book of the Jews (the Christian Old Testament), which has a completely different spirit from the mystery cults. The second is the unity fostered by the idea of apostolic succession (pp. 492–3). Doctrinal and institutional unity must not be exaggerated in this period. Still, the emerging Christian Church was more united, particularly on a regional basis, than other religions. That situation helped to check the spread of beliefs and practices too radically divergent from the spirit of the Old Testament and the early Christian writings canonized by the beginning of the third century as the New Testament. Those writings were largely the work of men whose background was still more Jewish than Gentile. This Christian religious system appears already worked out in all its major details between 180 and 190 in the works of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, particularly his Five Books against Heresies and the Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching.
The Christian Church in the West
By 200, the Christian Church in the West had already matured to its familiar form. Irenaeus, a Greek who had come from Asia Minor, was the last major Christian writer in the West to use Greek. After him, Latin became the standard language of the Western Church for both theology and daily use. The form and order of Sunday worship and the celebration of the Eucharist had assumed their standard outlines. Already, the bishop of Rome was recognized as having primacy over other bishops and churches. He even received deference from the bishop of Carthage, the second largest Western bishopric and home of an important school of Christian thinkers.
In the mid-third century, disputes between Rome and Carthage arose over the question of treating apostates who wanted to return to the Church and over the validity of baptism by heretics. The Roman bishops tended to be liberal on both counts. The Carthaginians, led by Cyprian (p. 559), favored the more strict view of the Roman priest Novatian; however, the threat of persecution from without prevented a serious breach. Eventually, the issue erupted into the Donatist schism of the fourth century (pp. 586–7), but in the third, Carthaginian bishops generally remained loyal to the bishop of Rome. The Church at Rome rejected the Eastern practice of commemorating Christ’s death on the date of the Jewish Passover and established the observance of Easter Sunday. It also compiled the version of the New Testament generally accepted as canonical.
The Christian Church in the East
On the whole, the state of the Church in the East was much more fluid than in the West during the third century. Gnostic Christian sects flourished, particularly in Egypt. They espoused elaborate cosmologies and dualistic views similar to those of many Greek philosophies and dualistic religions such as Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. They saw the divine, immortal soul as being trapped in the evil, mortal body and believed that Jesus brought knowledge (gnosis) of these matters. Acceptance of the truth of this knowledge would free the soul from its mortal prison and allow it to return to the pure heavenly realm, where it naturally belonged.
The bishops of Rome and Alexandria maintained a close relationship in an effort to control the Gnostic Christians. Nevertheless, Greek-speaking Alexandria was much more open to the influence of Greek philosophical thought than the Latin-speaking West. By the end of the second century, Alexandria began to produce important Christian thinkers. The intellectual influence of Greek philosophy there stirred up many theological disputes (pp. 638–9).
Around 170 c.e., Tatian, a disciple of Justin Martyr, founded a Syriac-speaking Christian Church in the client kingdoms and borderlands east of the Roman province of Syria. Its basic testament was Tatian’s Syriac harmony (unified version) of the Four Gospels. It became known as the Diatessaron (Four-in-One). The conversion of King Abgar of Edessa gave great impetus to the Syriac Church. It remained strong and orthodox for many centuries.
It did produce one major heretic, however, Bardaisan (Bardesanes). He was a highly educated Aramaean trained in astronomy and astrology. Becoming a Christian about 180, he combined many of the ideas that he had picked up earlier with his new faith. This synthesis of Christian and non-Christian ideas was the basis of many of the views espoused in the third century by both the Persian prophet Mani (p. 550) and Christianized Mesopotamian Gnostics known as Mandaeans, who survive in modern Iraq.
In Asia Minor, whose churches were the earliest outside Palestine, Christians were numerous. They tended to remain on good terms with their pagan neighbors. In the mid-third century, an internal dispute arose over the question of readmitting to the Church those who had lapsed during the Decian persecution. A number of Christians in Asia Minor adopted the strict position of Novatian. His followers had become a schismatic sect and had extended to all major sins his view on the inability of the Church to grant absolution. The Novatians, therefore, were very puritanical. They tried to lead completely sinless lives, called themselves Cathari (Pure Ones), and insisted on the rebaptism of converts from other Christian churches.
In the late second century, a popular Christian movement had been introduced by Montanus, a convert in Phrygia. He began prophesying in the belief that the second coming of Jesus was near. Church leaders declared Montanus a heretic. If the validity of his prophetic movement had been granted, the doctrines of the Church would have been thrown into chaos by the constant occurrence of new revelations among those claiming divine inspiration. The vital unity of the Church would have been destroyed before it had had a chance to consolidate its position in the Empire.
The only other controversy of note involving the churches of Asia Minor was the refusal to bow to Rome over the question of when to celebrate Easter.
Magic and superstition
Magic and superstition continued to be popular with people of all classes. A collection of works under the supposed authorship of Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-Greatest) that dealt with astrology, alchemy, magic, and theurgy (the art of summoning and controlling divine powers) was very popular. Theurgy became a subject of great interest in the late third century as people sought more and more for a means of controlling an increasingly chaotic world.
Science and philosophy
The temper of the times was not conducive to objective scientific thought. The last creative, rigorously systematic philosopher of antiquity was Plotinus (205–270), a Greek from Egypt. He had studied at Alexandria under a mysterious philosopher named Ammonius Saccas. He also joined the expedition of Gordian III to Persia (243) in order to study the wisdom of Persia and India. When Gordian was killed the next year, Plotinus went to Rome, where he joined a group of ascetic philosophers and set up a school.
Starting with Plato’s philosophy, Plotinus created a systematic explanation of the universe and produced a new school of thought called Neoplatonism. This system is expounded in a magnum opus known as the Enneads (Groups of Nine) in six sections of nine books each. It is heavily influenced by the mystical Pythagorean elements in Plato. For Plotinus, everything is derived from the One. It is a single, immaterial, impersonal, eternal force. From the One, reality spreads out in a series of concentric circles. The utmost circle is matter, the lowest level of reality. Each level of reality depends on the next highest: Matter depends on Nature, which depends on the World-Soul, which depends on the World-Mind, which depends on the One. A person contains all of these levels of being in microcosm. By focusing the power of the intellect, an individual can attain a level of being equal to that of the World-Mind. At that point, one may be able to achieve such a complete unity of self that an ecstatic union with the One itself is achieved.
Obviously, Plotinus’ goal was shared by contemporary religions. It was philosophical, however, because it was reached entirely through contemplative intellect, not through magic, ritual, or an intermediary divine savior. Such rigorously intellectual mysticism, however, was far beyond most of Plotinus’ contemporaries. Neoplatonism soon was overlaid with the magical musings of people like Iamblichus (p. 635).
The Enneads was actually published by Plotinus’ pupil and assistant Porphyry (232/233–ca. 305). Porphyry did the most to popularize Plotinus’ ideas. He saw them as the bulwark of pagan philosophy and religion against the Christians, who threatened the old ways. He wrote a massive fifteen-book defense of tradition against the Christians. It set the stage for his own pupil Iamblichus’ even more vehement effort to rally the forces of paganism and block the spread of Christianity in the fourth century.
Education and the world of letters
During the second century c.e., the city of Rome ceased to be the Empire’s center of literary activity. A writer no longer had to go there and write for its elite to gain a significant audience and reputation. By the third century, authors from many different parts of the Empire were writing to satisfy the needs of diverse audiences in many different fields and genres. State and philanthropic support for education in literature and rhetoric was still strong in the first half of the third century, but it suffered heavily in the crisis of the second half.
Paideia
Even with support from the state and private benefactors, education remained an expensive luxury reserved for the wealthy and well-to-do. Most teachers and professors demanded fees on top of their public salaries. Advanced education usually meant the expense of sending students away from home in late adolescence to teachers of rhetoric and philosophy in major cities like Rome, Carthage, Athens, Antioch, and Alexandria. Women, therefore, were still generally excluded. To a large extent, the system defined the upper-class men whom it taught and set them apart from ordinary men. Educated aristocrats from diverse provinces all over the Empire often had more in common with each other than with the lower-class inhabitants of their hometowns, whose native language they might not share. In the eastern provinces, the local notables all spoke Greek and studied a canon of Classical authors beginning with Homer and ending with the Attic orators. They learned many by heart and, as a result, used a uniform dialect of Attic Greek that allowed them to recognize one another instantly.
In the West, elite boys first acquired a basic knowledge of Greek and a thorough grounding in the Latin classics of the late Republic and early Principate: Catullus, Cicero, Caesar, Vergil, Horace, Livy, and Tacitus. Then they capped their studies with a stint at one of the major educational centers in Greece so that they could deal as equals with the local leaders of the eastern provinces. In Greek terms, they had acquired the distinctive form of education, paideia, that marked them out as sharers in a common elite culture and code of gentlemanly conduct. It allowed them to blunt the invidious distinctions between the rulers and the ruled and to maintain a civil discourse based on mutual understanding and respect that facilitated the smooth functioning of imperial rule.
The system’s heavy emphasis on literature and rhetoric produced innumerable people who could turn a quick hexameter verse or make a fine-sounding speech. Hundreds of competent but second-rate examples exist, particularly in the Greek East. Many of the emperors were products of this system. They shared the literary interests of the educated upper class, on whom they depended to run the Empire. Septimius Severus was well educated in literature and law and wrote his autobiography (now lost) in Greek. His wife, Julia Domna, was very interested in philosophy and religion and patronized pagan sophists (p. 524). Severus Alexander had an intellectual circle that included historians, orators, and jurists. Carus’ son Numerian was highly regarded as a poet. Gordian I and Gallienus were also poets. The latter took an interest in Plotinus’ philosophy as well. He even had plans to set up a Neoplatonic state headed by Plotinus in Campania.
Introduction of the codex book
Along with the spread of education arose a greater need for a less expensive and less cumbersome form of book than the old volumen (roll). The need was met in the third century by the widespread use of the parchment codex, a form that had been available for more than a century but that had not caught on until now. It comprised individual leaves of parchment bound together in a stack along the left-hand edge in the manner of wooden-backed wax writing tablets. It was much more useful for taking notes and writing out individual exercises. Because it was cheaper and more convenient, it made books written in codex form accessible to a wider public. That feature made it particularly attractive to Christian writers.
Biography and history under the Severi
Julia Domna’s role as patroness has been exaggerated in the past to include almost every literary and intellectual figure of note in Rome at the time. The only known important member of her circle whose work has survived is Philostratus (b. ca. 170), a Greek sophist. He wrote a collection of biographies of previous sophists. At Domna’s request, he also composed a biography of the first-century c.e. Cappadocian mystic and miracle worker Apollonius of Tyana, whom he presented as a pagan equivalent of Christ. Probably not long after Philostratus, Diogenes Laertius, another Greek author, produced a collection of biographies of ancient philosophers that is useful in reconstructing the history of Greek philosophy.
Under Severus Alexander in 229, the Greek historian Cassius Dio produced his history of Rome from its founding. Although not an historian of the first rank, Dio used many good sources that are now lost, and he preserves much valuable information. A few years later, Herodian produced his less reliable but still important Greek narrative of events from 180 to 238. Marius Maximus, a contemporary of Dio and Herodian, wrote a continuation of Suetonius with Latin biographies of the emperors from Nerva to Elagabalus. These accounts often included spicy fiction with the facts but also contained much of value. Although they are now lost, they provided the basic framework for the biographies in the first and best part of the notorious Historia Augusta (p. 634).
Roman scholarship and legal science
The Severan and early post-Severan period saw the production of many commentaries on Classical Latin authors and learned treatises on technical subjects. They were aimed at teachers, students, and officials, who all needed to master basic information quickly. Some users came from non-Roman backgrounds and needed easy guides to Roman culture. Others just found that the material to be mastered was increasingly difficult to understand with the passage of time and too voluminous to be managed in its original form.
Some authors catered to people’s desire to learn more about the diverse places and peoples that made up the Empire. Under the Severi, Claudius Aelianus (Aelian), a Roman writing in Greek, preserved much curious information on animal and human life in his De Natura Animalium and Varia Historia. Gaius Julius Solinus covered the whole Empire in a wide-ranging Latin compendium called Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium. First, he traced Rome’s rise from its foundation to the creation of Augustus’ Principate. Then, after treating the Italian and Greek core of the Empire, he worked counter clockwise to cover Germany, Gaul, Britain, Spain, Africa, Arabia, Asia Minor, India, and Parthia. It is a compilation of information culled from previous works like Pliny the Elder’s Natural History on plants, animals, people, and customs. He is the first person known to have called the body of water that linked together many parts of the Empire the Mediterranean Sea (Mare Mediterraneum, “Sea in the Middle of the Land”).
Roman civil law, ius civile, was the glue that bound together the diverse peoples and places that made up the Empire. Previous officials and emperors had modified Roman law to fit new conditions and peoples as the Empire expanded. Over the years, a huge number of individual laws, edicts, and decisions had been issued. There was a great need to organize and explain them for ease of use. Three major jurists from different parts of the Empire took up the task under the Severi. Papinian (Aemilius Papinianus), probably a North African, became Septimius’ praetorian prefect in 203 and was executed in 212 after criticizing Caracalla. His legal commentaries in fifty-six books were so useful that later German kings used them as guides for establishing their own courts. Ulpian (Domitius Ulpianus) was a Phoenician from Tyre and praetorian prefect to Severus Alexander from 222 to 228, when he was murdered by disgruntled praetorian guardsmen. Among his numerous works are eighty-one books commenting on the praetor’s edict. Paul (Julius Paulus) succeeded Ulpian as praetorian prefect (228–235). His 319 books of commentaries surpassed both of his predecessors’ combined. Later in the third century, Herennius Modestinus analyzed the differences between similar-seeming cases. Near the end of the century, the Codex Gregorianus collected the rescripts of emperors from the previous two centuries.
Poetry and Greek romances
The third century was primarily an age of prose, not poetry. Significantly, the best poetry reflects the interests of aristocratic landowners more concerned with their rural worlds than philosophy or great contemporary issues. A late compilation called The Latin Anthology preserves a number of examples.
The best Latin poet of the age was Marcus Aurelius Olympicus Nemesianus (late third century). Nemesianus was from Carthage and was close to Emperor Carus and his son Numerian. He had hoped to write an epic on Numerian in the grand style of Vergil’s Aeneid. The deaths of Numerian and his father, however, ended that project. What remain are four fine pastoral poems in the manner of Vergil’s Eclogues and an unfinished didactic poem on hunting, the Cynegetica, in the tradition of Vergil’s Georgics.
Typical Greek writings of the age are popular prose romances. They usually involve a virtuous heroine and steadfast hero who are separated by some mischance after falling in love. They experience all manner of hair-raising adventures, disasters, and narrow escapes until they are happily reunited in marriage at last. This genre originated at least as early as the first century c.e. Five representatives have survived: Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Cleitophon is now dated to the mid-second century. Chaereas and Callirhoe by Chariton of Aphrodisias is probably from around 180. Heliodorus of Phoenician Emesa probably wrote his Aethiopica or Theagenes and Charicleia around 220. Longus (of Lesbos?) and Xenophon of Ephesus, respectively, seem to have written Daphnis and Chloe and the Ephesiaca or Anthia and Habrocames at some time in the third century.
The style of these works and the quality of production evident from surviving papyrus fragments indicate that they were aimed at the urban elites of the Greek East. They reflect the values of a privileged class that had the resources to withstand life’s misfortunes without really suffering. They also seem to promote standards of male and female behavior designed to confirm the elite position of the upper class within the social hierarchy. Those standards reinforced the stable family structure and harmonious social relations that helped the upper class to perpetuate its elite position.
Secular literature after the Severi
The mid-third century saw a steep decline in literary production. Little of note except in philosophy survives. Two relatives of the sophist Philostratus, a father and grandson each confusingly named Philostratus, wrote three volumes entitled Eikones (Images). In the sophistic style of rhetoric, they describe over eighty works of art. An even more important sophist than Longinus (p. 538) in the post-Severan period was the Athenian Dexippus, who had helped to drive off the Goths and Heruli from Athens in 268 (p. 535). He wrote a history of Alexander’s successors, a chronological summary of history down to 270, and a history of the Gothic wars from 238 to 275. Unfortunately, all three are largely lost, but quotations found in later authors like Zosimus (p. 707) show that he was a worthy historian who modeled himself on Thucydides.
Christian literature
During the third century, Christian literature came into its own. It usually did not have the same audience and purpose as secular works. It was also more creative because it had something new to say. Writings such as the Church’s official accounts of various martyrdoms and the less formal passion narratives were aimed at people from the bottom of the social hierarchy (“passion,” from the Latin passio, means “suffering”). The first in Latin appears around 180. It recounts the deeds of the martyrs of Scillum in North Africa, Acta Martyrum Scillitanorum. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas follows in ca. 203. Many others appeared throughout the century.
These accounts of suffering and death were subversive of the prevailing political and social order. In them, Roman authorities were delegitimized as they, often unwillingly, imposed violent and unjust punishments on innocent sufferers. Christians defined themselves through these narratives as a community of sufferers. They rejected the bonds of the dominant social order reaffirmed by the happy endings of Greek romances. Wives, husbands, children, parents, and friends were abandoned in the joyous pursuit of a martyr’s death. Others saw that death as an ignoble defeat and punishment, but Christians viewed it as a glorious triumph. Through suffering, they rejected this world and entered the glorious life with Jesus in heaven: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:25–26). For Christians, death was the happy ending.
The Christian rejection of prevailing norms also appears in the works of Tertullian (ca. 160–ca. 240), a North African from Carthage. Son of a centurion in the Roman army and trained as a lawyer, he was the first of the Latin Church Fathers and a master of the art of defending the faith (apologetics). He became one of the founders of Western Christian thought. Over thirty of his works survive on such subjects as martyrdom, the soul, baptism, the resurrection of the flesh, marriage, and the proper behavior of women, whom he regarded with puritanical distrust. He was a brilliant pleader full of aggressive zeal in proclaiming a new Christian vision of the world. Eventually, however, he became an adherent of the Montanist heresy (p. 553).
Not all Christian apologists were as hostile to the pagan world as were Tertullian and the writers of passions and martyrologies. For example, although he, too, was a lawyer from North Africa, Tertullian’s contemporary Minucius Felix was more upper class in origin. He shows how Christianity was beginning to penetrate the social elite, to whom he tried to appeal on their own terms in his elegant dialogue, the Octavius.
Occupying the middle ground is St. Cyprian (ca. 200–258), another Carthaginian and a younger contemporary of Tertullian. A well-educated member of the upper class, he was a famous teacher of rhetoric. After converting to Christianity and giving all of his goods to the poor in 246, he was appointed bishop of Carthage in 248. He admired Tertullian’s rigorous morality and wrote on many of the same subjects. Yet, he was more refined and less strident. He conducted his duties as bishop like an upper-class Roman magistrate striving for equity and justice. In his writings, he introduced legal language and concepts that helped to shape the Catholic Church in the West. Although he had courageously protected his flock during Decius’ persecution, he was ultimately martyred under Valerian. The Life of Cyprian, by his deacon Pontius, is the earliest known Christian biography.
The only Christian Latin poet of note in the third century probably was Commodian (ca. 250). He wrote at Carthage and mirrored Tertullian in his zeal and harshness. Unlike most other poets whose work survives from antiquity, he uses accent rather than long and short syllables to produce his hexameter verses, which give voice to the hopes, and prejudices, of the lower classes.
Christians who wrote in Greek had produced the earliest apologetic works and accounts of martyrs. Many such Greek writers were active in the third century. They were usually well-educated members of the urban Greek upper class. Their writings furthered Christianity’s appeal to that class in ways that reflected its traditions. Titus Flavius Clemens, Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 215), for example, was born a pagan, most likely at Athens. He was steeped in Platonic philosophy and Classical literature before he was converted and went to study with an unknown Christian teacher in Egypt. He eventually became head of a Christian school and an influential apologist. In such surviving works as his Exhortation to the Greeks, he argues with grace and serenity that Christianity is superior to paganism.
Origen, Origenes Adamantius (ca. 185–ca. 255), was the son of a martyr and gave catechetical instruction to Christian converts at Alexandria. He also may have studied with the Platonist Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus’ renowned teacher (p. 554). He had a famous personal library, wrote voluminously on textual and interpretive problems in the Bible, and systematically explained Christian beliefs in On First Principles. He countered the now-lost anti-Christian writings of the earlier (ca. 180) Platonist philosopher Celsus in Against Celsus.
In many ways, Origen was the founder of systematic theology. He made logic, dialectic, natural science, geometry, and astronomy standard parts of the Christian curriculum. With such training, the Alexandrian Church Fathers skillfully used Greek philosophy against their pagan critics and gave a more intellectual cast to Christian thought. It, in turn, gained greater respect among the pagan intellectual elite of the Empire.
The influence of Platonic thought, however, caused Origen to develop two controversial views: that this world resulted from evil and was not a perfect creation before the Fall; that the three divine persons who make up the Christian Trinity (God the Father, God the Son [Jesus Christ], and God the Holy Spirit) are not totally one and the same. With the first, Origen encouraged ideas linked with Christian Gnosticism. With the second, he set the stage for the divisive conflicts over the Trinity in the fourth century under Constantine (p. 587).
After a dispute with the bishop of Alexandria, Origen settled at Caesarea in Palestine and opened a school there. Tortured horribly during Decius’ persecution, he died a little later at Tyre. His influence remained very strong in Palestine through students like Pamphilus, who inherited his library. Origen’s friend Sextus Julius Africanus was a learned Christian from Jerusalem. He eventually went to Rome on an embassy to Elagabalus and later set up a library in the Pantheon for Severus Alexander. His Chronographies was the first attempt to rationalize biblical and Church history with secular history. It formed the basis of Eusebius’ later Chronicle (p. 565).
Less is known about the influential writer Methodius, one of Origen’s detractors. He wrote On the Resurrection to counter Origen’s denial of a bodily resurrection of the flesh. He also countered the Gnostics in his On the Freedom of the Will. Although those works are now fragmentary, his popular Symposium of the Ten Virgins, in which the Christian heroine Thecla gives a prize oration on virginity, is complete (p. 621).
The tales of Christian martyrs and the apologetic and theological writings of the Latin and Greek Church Fathers are a major accomplishment. They helped to spread Christianity among all classes during the third century. They made it strong enough to withstand the greatest persecution of all, which was soon to come.
Art and architecture
Despite all the troubles of the age, considerable art was produced for emperors and wealthy magnates. The influence of native traditions from all over the Empire mirrors the increasingly diverse origins of the imperial elite. Old styles, themes, and symbols were often creatively adapted to new times.
Sculpture
Portrait sculpture on coins maintained a high standard of realism as vehicles of official propaganda. Portrait sculpture in the round also continued the vigorous Roman tradition of such art. From the Severi to Valerian, sculptors strove for psychological realism in order to emphasize the true character of the subject. Under Gallienus, there was a preference for more idealized portraiture in the Classical Greek style. After that, the influence of Neoplatonism caused a shift to a more schematized, geometric style that gave a transcendent quality to the subjects, a style that prefigured the Middle Ages.
There were not many opportunities to produce monumental public relief sculptures through the difficult times of the third century. On the other hand, relief sculpture became a striking feature of the elaborately decorated private stone sarcophagi that wealthy Christians and pagans began to use as the new religious influences of the age caused the practice of bodily burial to replace cremation. Some feature groupings of Classical figures around a philosopher or poet, who symbolize the triumph of wisdom over death. Others feature a heroic figure in the midst of a chaotic battle to symbolize the triumph of good over evil. Christians depicted the Good Shepherd or Old Testament stories of God’s deliverance. Despite the unclassical lack of balance in many of these scenes, the individual figures are very skillfully carved and are thoroughly in the tradition of Greco-Roman realism.
Painting and mosaics
Painting and mosaic art continued to flourish throughout the third century. Painting is represented mainly by murals preserved on the excavated walls of homes, public buildings, tombs, synagogues, temples, and churches from around the Empire. Excellent mosaics also adorned many of these buildings, particularly their floors. The level of technical skill remained very high, and the scenes represented are valuable in reconstructing the life of the times.
FIGURE 29.1 Plan of the Baths of Caracalla, Rome. (From Roman Art, second edition, Nancy and Andrew Ramage, Prentice Hall, 1996)
Architecture
Despite the Empire’s serious economic problems, the building activity under the Severi was more than had been seen for many years. At Rome, the Arch of Septimius Severus still stands in the Forum (p. 521). Massive new additions were made to the imperial residence on the southeastern corner of the Palatine Hill. Below it, Septimius erected the Septizodium (or Septizonium), a huge marble façade resembling the architectural backdrop to the stage of a theater. About 275 feet long and three stories high, it was divided into seven bays, one for each of the planetary deities. The program of statuary and decoration probably honored members of the imperial family as well as the seven deities. It was meant to impress people passing by on the Appian Way, which it screened off from the Palatine. Caracalla built a huge new complex of baths and a new camp for the imperial bodyguards, both of which are now in ruins. In North Africa, Septimius’ hometown, Lepcis (Leptis) Magna, received a whole complex of monumental buildings. Their remains today provide a striking example of imperial architecture and urban planning. All of these remains, moreover, show solid Roman craftsmanship.
During the anarchy between the Severi and Diocletian, there was not much opportunity for public architecture other than defensive works, such as Aurelian’s partially preserved twelve-mile-long wall around Rome and fortifications in the provinces. Christian churches in various cities, however, had begun to accumulate enough wealth to erect some significant buildings. There is little that can be known about these churches now. Many were destroyed in the persecutions early in the following century or were replaced by more impressive structures after the persecutions ended.
Summary and prospect
As do all ages, the third century of the Roman Empire had one foot in the past and the other in the future. The massive inflation of the latter half of the century was rooted in the basic nature of the ancient economy and technological limits of the time (pp. 505–6). In the West, many cities and the once-prosperous curial class declined. Small landowners, unable to withstand the pressure of Roman tax collectors, military requisitions, raids on the frontiers, and pressures from rich neighbors, were often reduced to dependent coloni foreshadowing medieval serfs. On the other hand, the wealthy became ever richer as they amassed huge amounts of land and paid more attention to their great villas in the country. In the East, the cities and small farmers fared better and were poised for revived prosperity in the next century. In either case, the bulk of the population lived in the countryside, as it always had, and followed the traditional rhythms of life in a peasant economy that functioned largely apart from the inflation-ravaged commercial economy.
The free inhabitants of the Empire acquired citizenship, and military service brought “barbarians” and people from different parts of the Empire into greater contact with each other (pp. 612–3). Still, the provincial upper classes were mainly the ones who found greater opportunities for advancement in the army and government. Similarly, a few women of the privileged classes achieved greater public prominence, but most women saw little improvement in their conditions. Women and the lower classes, however, increasingly found refuge among the growing ranks of the Christian Church. It was much more inclusive then than was the aristocratically dominated secular society.
Christianity and other popular mystery religions gave greater expression to the cultural traditions of those who could not afford to acquire the educated polish of upper-class paideia. In fact, Christianity often represented a challenge to all that the privileged classes held dear. Nevertheless, as Christianity began to penetrate the upper classes, the upper classes, in turn, began to shape Christian institutions, thought, literature, and art along familiar lines. By the beginning of the fourth century and the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, Christianity was becoming as much a force for spreading Classical culture to the previously excluded as it was a challenge to that culture.
Suggested reading
Swain , S., Stephen Harrison , and Jas Elsner (ed.). Severan Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Langford , J. Maternal Megalomania: Julia Domna and the Imperial Politics of Motherhood. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2013.