From chrisica@email.msn.com Fri Apr 6 10:40:48 2001 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.03) with ESMTP id f36HejK19642 for ; Fri, 6 Apr 2001 10:40:46 -0700 Received: from cpimssmtpu08.email.msn.com (cpimssmtpu08.email.msn.com [207.46.181.83]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.03) with ESMTP id f36HejM15909 for ; Fri, 6 Apr 2001 10:40:45 -0700 Received: from chrisica ([63.28.96.229]) by cpimssmtpu08.email.msn.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.3225); Fri, 6 Apr 2001 10:40:40 -0700 From: "Christopher Robbins" To: Cc: Subject: Aurelius at the watershed (was: religious foundations/virgin hero cults) Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 13:40:40 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 X-OriginalArrivalTime: 06 Apr 2001 17:40:41.0468 (UTC) FILETIME=[B3215BC0:01C0BEC0] Jumping ahead to John Stuart Mill, John Francis Ryan wrote: I surely applaud Mill's deployment of Aurelius as a lever to advance the "liberal" (in its, dare I say, classic sense) paradigm, for Aurelius tended to be a respected figure indeed to his audience. This also to the fusion of classical (antique variety) and liberal notions found in certain historically crucial circles - in America especially - in the c18 and expressed here by Mill in the century which followed. Whether this speaks to matters religious in the Antonine period itself may be another matter. "The starting-point in the age of the Antonines is not so much enlightenment as the diffused and well-regulated superstition by which many a well-rooted and successful governing class persuades itself that it lives in as good a world as possible. The attitude is summed up in the motto that frequently occurs on coins of the second and third centuries: _Providentia deorum_. 'The gods are always there to show their power', Marcus Aurelius wrote. 'They help us in their marvellous ways.' ... Educated pagans felt at home in their universe. According to the philosophers, the universe was ruled by One High God, who was quite inexpressible and thus 'above' everything. This one God, however, was fully represented on earth by the ministrations of the many gods of traditional belief... The average man was quite content with these homely figures. There was no period in the ancient world in which the average man could be quite as certain that he knew exactly what the classical gods looked like: they were everywhere in the second century... Throughout the Roman world, cities and individuals were giving the old gods every opportunity to look after their worshippers. "This care was obtained by following rites regarded as being as old as the human race itself. To abandon such rites provoked genuine anxiety and hatred. Christians were savagely attacked for having neglected these rites whenever earthquakes, famine or barbarian invasion betrayed the anger of the gods. "Traditional belief in the activity of the gods in the universe presented a singularly unified and unbroken surface. The thoughts and anxieties of the 'new mood' after 170 drove fissures across it... First, the individual had a growing sense of possessing something in himself that was infinitely valuable and yet painfully unrelated to the outside world... After generations of satisfying public activity, it was as if a current that had passed smoothly from men's inner experience into the outside world had been cut. The warmth drained from the familiar environment. Traditional concerns seemed trivial, if not positively oppressive. Already Marcus Aurelius looks at the world as if through the small end of a telescope: the Danubian campaigns by which he saved the empire in 172-75 and 178-80 strike him as 'puppies fighting for a bone.'" * CRR NYC Chrisica@msn.com * P. Brown, _World of Late Antiquity_, Norton _en rustica_ (1989), pp. 50-51 .