Ursus

I shall read the book before I answer those questions. :-)

My copy of _Roman Britain_ will arrive soon. I believe I will post the eventual review here to help spark discussion.

I'm an American mutt, with ancestors from Germanic speaking regions, various Celtic countries, and at least one Native American tribe. Possibly other things I'm not aware of. Ethnic heritage has never been a critical part of my identity. I internalize cultural paradigms rather than ethnicities per se.

Pagan remnants are more prevalent in the "high" Christian churches than the low ones. Judaism and Islam are outside my purview...

Today with a minor resurgence of paganism, one is apt to meet individuals who claim their family has practiced an unbroken tradition of paganism since late antiquity. The problem is none can offer any objective proof. What I have seen is that there are often two versions of Christianity - the official version practiced by the establishment, and a popular version practiced by common people. This common version is much more open to outside influences than the official version. And if the commoners live in a countryside where tradition is strong, there may be strong traces of paganism which have been mixed into a Catholic or Orthodox template. Traces of paganism do in fact survive in popular Catholicism/Orthodoxy in many places. But I don't think there is such a thing as a pure, unadulterated, unbroken pagan tradition that has survived since Constantine. At least no one has ever been able to prove it.

There is one quote I'd like to share from the book, as a taste:

... and Christianity also was suspiciously similar to the worship of dionysius and Mithras. Depictions of Dionysius being crucified are contemporary with early christianity (early 2nd century). The interesting debate is who influenced whom. Did Christianity influence Mithraism and a crucified Dionysus, or vice versa? Or do they all have certain commonalities because of a common Greco-Oriental influence? Personally I believe in the common origin theory. But back to Julian. I think Julian was trying to find a more "pagan" version of Christianity to compete with Christianity. But it will still all very similar. Almsgiving, for instance, is something that had never been part of mainstream Greco-Roman paganism ... but as the Christians had discovered it helped attract the urban proletariat, and was a powerful conversion incentive. Thus to compete, paganism in later antiquity had to incorporate almsgiving.

I can appreciate Christianity is evangelical whereas Greek philosophy is not. However, they are still intellectual cousins so to speak, with something of an indifference to the wordly glories that made Rome what it was.

I've always been a bit perplexed how people can admire Greek philosophy but scorn Christianity. A good bit of Platonism and Stoicism went into the Christian mix. Greek philosophy was an intellectual link between the Pagan and Christian worlds. I do admire traditional Hellenic culture - aesthetically pleasing, an emphasis on arete, especially warrior arete, and duty to the state. But our Greek philosophers who told us to scorn the glories of the world were, from the standpoint of traditional Greek and Roman values, rather counter-culture at the time. Many of them were also rather hypocritical, if I do say so. Perhaps from that perspective, it was harmful.

Does this whole argument starting from the first post serve a point? You either believe in this stuff or don't. As this thread demonstrates, those that don't believe aren't really interested.

Smart guy, though. He's laughing all the way to the bank. I really need to break into mass market paperback someday.

I ate. That was my easter.

Those Brits always get culture before we colonials do. Hrumph.

Hmnm. I discovered a Romanophile group on MySpace. So I joined and put in a good word for UNRV. Actually, the group there is not bad. Some interesting discussions ... some intelligent people .... some attractive women (assuming they are using their real photos ...)

To a forum regular, Neos Dionysus. And to those who celebrate it, Happy Easter.

What exactly is a "pure Roman?"

What? Where do I put a thread that references not only Hannibal, but also Hellenic history and the two World Wars of the Twentieth Century in a rather rambling fashion? I suppose I'll put in in our "general history folder" for lack of a better space.

The main reason citizenship was extended was to increase the tax base. If the increased tax base helped to pay for more soldiers to fight Persia, et al., it can't have been all bad. My own feelings are at some point after the birth of the empire, citizenship did not matter so much as one's social class. The Empire was in practice a partnership between the imperial bureaucracy and the local elite. For all the differences of the various cultures conquered by the Romans, the aristocratic elements of those cultures had certain things in common which helped glue the empire together as surely as soldiers and roads and laws did. Thus it was better to be a local aristocrat in Greece sitting on the town boule advising the Roman governor than it was to be a poor citizen of Italy.

Well ... actually .... imperial practice was to identify local gods with gods of the Roman pantheon. The Jewish deity, YHWH, he whom you simply call "God," was identified with several of the Olympic pantheon. Most obvious and common was Jupiter. However, there was even a school of thought that identified him with - get this - Dionysus(!). Regardless of what we think of the logic of this, it's what the Romans did. A good Roman pagan would have seen the Jewish god as just another name for one of the Roman gods. I have to do more research on Constantine before I can make any grand assertions. But perhaps at this stage of the game Constantine was still an imperial pagan, the Jewish god simply a local variant of an Olympian god to him, and Christ was simply a demi-god/hero/god-man among many. Remember, the nature and doctrines of Christianity weren't even codified yet, and interpretations of who and what Christ was were open to debate. It was Constantine who had to settle these debates under pressure from his bishops, and methinks Constantine simply wanted token imperial unity rather than any great Orthodoxy when he called those councils.

I felt the evolving discussion on Constantine warranted its own thread. I split it from the broader inquiry regarding paganism and the Byzantines.

I have one, though it's ill used. My dial up doesn't like MySpace.

Constantine had a vision from a variety of gods through his lifetime. Anyway, Constantine did not formally end paganism. He merely removed it from its lofty height of State religion.

Although, in fairness, Julian's "paganism" was suspiciously like Christianity in some respects.

A blatant example of polytheistic influence on the cult of the saints comes from Ireland. Brigid, the Celtic triple goddess of fire, was considered by some to be the "foster mother" of Christ, and became a Saint upon conversion.

I took the liberty of splitting this into a separate topic.