Hail to the Chief
Capponi has done a very good job recognizing that the persecutions in Gaul must have been related to the revolt of Avidius Cassius. She does this interestingly without identifying 'Mark' as the connecting tissue behind both events. Capponi also overlooks perhaps the most important testimony of all - the writings of the pagan Celsus, which make clear that the pagan had the revolt front and center of his mind when developing his diatribe against the Christians. In other words, Celsus was clearly thinking 'look at what happened with Avidius Cassius' when he said 'the Christians deserve to die.' What crimes were the Christians guilty of? A careful reading of the conclusion of a True Account reveals a most surprising answer - 'failing to repel the enemy.'
It is difficult of course to make complete sense of a text which only survives in delicate little strips in Origen's surviving commentary. Nevertheless if we compile the four successive references in Book Eight near the end of the Church Father's reply, we read Celsus make the following assertion:
If you are commanded to swear by a human king, there is nothing wrong in that. For to him has been given whatever there is upon earth; and whatever you receive in this life, you receive from him. We must not disobey the ancient writer, who said long ago, 'Let one be king, whom the son of crafty Saturn appointed.' If you set aside this maxim, you will deservedly suffer for it at the hands of the king. For if all were to do the same as you, there would be nothing to prevent his being left in utter solitude and desertion, and the affairs of the earth would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians; and then there would no longer remain among men any of the glory of your religion or of the true wisdom. You surely do not say that if the Romans were, in compliance with your wish, to neglect their customary duties to gods and men, and were to worship the Most High, or whatever you please to call him, that he will come down and fight for them, so that they shall need no other help than his. For this same God, as yourselves say, promised of old this and much more to those who served him, and see in what way he has helped them and you! They, in place of being masters of the whole world, are left with not so much as a patch of ground or a home; and as for you, if any of you transgresses even in secret, he is sought out and punished with death. Do you not see, good sir, that even your own demon is not only reviled, but banished from every land and sea, and you yourself, who are as it were an image dedicated to him, are bound and led to punishment, and fastened to the stake, while your demon— or, as you call him, 'the Son of God'— takes no vengeance on the evil-doer. Surely it is intolerable for you to say, that if our present rulers, are captured, you will still be able to persuade those who rule after them; and after these have been taken you will persuade their successors and so on, until at length, when all who have yielded to your persuasion have been taken instead of repelling the enemy, some prudent ruler shall arise, with a foresight of what is impending, and he will destroy you all utterly before he himself perishes. You should assist the king with all your might, and to labour with him in the maintenance of justice, and if he requires it, to fight under him, or lead an army along with him or take office in the government of the country, if that is required for the maintenance of the laws and the support of religion.
It is absolutely critical to note that the words 'failing to repel the enemy' have dropped out of Origen's initial citation of Celsus's own words. Nevertheless they do show up when Origen repeats the passage almost verbatim a second time in the same chapter. The omission of these words cannot be deemed to be accidental. They go to the heart of Celsus's charge against the Christians and his justification for their continued persecution in the immediate aftermath of the Egyptian revolt.
Celsus - perhaps sarcastically - makes reference to a kind of mental paralysis that overtakes anyone who adopts the Christian logos. The pagan's understanding here is certainly colored by a belief in magical possession. Jesus is portrayed as a demon who infects the logic of his believers. On the one hand they become seditious like the Jews who were fugitive slaves who revolted from their former rulers in Egypt.1 It is this demon which now causes the Christians to reject their lord and master, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. "If all were to do the same as you" says Celsus "there would be nothing to prevent his being left in utter solitude and desertion, and the affairs of the earth would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians." This had just occurred in Egypt under the Boucoloi, notes Celsus, and he adds "there would no longer remain among men any of the glory of your religion or of the true wisdom" if this were to happen again.
This last sentence is of particular interest as Clement of Alexandria tells us that the honoured sanctuary (hieron) of Serapis' was reconstructed by 190, making it clear that it was destroyed during in the previous revolt. Celsus seems to be alluding to this building and the church of St Mark when he speaks of all the people of the Empire needing Caesar to preserve “the glory” (kleos) of the Christian threskeias and the alethines sophias of the pagans. For threskeia does not mean ‘faith’ in our modern sense of the word. It primarily refers to the ceremonial worship of a deity and can be used to identify any externalization of someone's internal beliefs, whether positive or negative. Threskeia, then, refers to the outward trappings of a religion rather than something abstract and internal - i.e. "the practice of sacred rites and observances."
Celsus after referencing the destruction of the Christian sacred building in Alexandria emphasizes the stake that all people in the Empire have in his continued success. "You surely do not say that if the Romans were, in compliance with your wish, to neglect their customary duties to gods and men, and were to worship the Most High, or whatever you please to call him, that he will come down and fight for them, so that they shall need no other help than his." This takes us back to the opening sentence and the refusal of Christians to support him or partake in the rituals that sustained the Empire. The Christians and Jews, Celsus says, have the same god, who promised to help the Jews revolt against Caesar but accomplished nothing for them and has now abandoned the Christians too.
Origen interestingly responds here by saying that Jesus was there when Moses and the Israelites sang the Song of the Sea and overcame the Egyptians. He does not address the original statement "if any of you transgresses even in secret, he is sought out and punished with death." However there is a clear sense that Celsus emphasized that Jesus abandons his victims in sacrifice. A little earlier he declares again to the Christians - "Do you not see, good sir, that even your own demon is not only reviled, but banished from every land and sea, and you yourself, who are as it were an image dedicated to him, are bound and led to punishment, and fastened to the stake, while your demon— or, as you call him, 'the Son of God'— takes no vengeance on the evil-doer."
One can intimate that Celsus's must have understood Avidius Cassius to have been the 'king' who gave assent to the Christians. His subsequent capture and murder by a centurion was likened to the fate of Christians in the games generally. Celsus similarly identifies Jesus as behaving like a fugitive slave - i.e. that he was captured (healw) when attempting to flee (pheugwn). The same word "capture" was earlier applied to the successive line of hypothetical Christian Emperors that followed Cassius. This is how Celsus also portrays the Christians of the period immediately following the Egyptian revolt. The pagan gods now "severely punish the scorner (blasphemounta) so that he must "either flee (pheugonta) and hide (kruptomenon) himself, or be taken (aliskomenon) and perish (apolumenon)."
The point now being brought forward by Celsus is that Avidius embraced Christianity and look where it got him. The Christians may have declared their affection for him as the city of Antioch is explicitly said to have done - another major Christian center where Christians must have been in the majority by the middle of the third century.1 The Historia Augusta even goes further and says that Cassius was "well loved by all the eastern nations, especially by the citizens of Antioch, who even acquiesced in his rule.2 The source of its information was a contemporary historian Marius Maximus. Marius goes further than Dio Cassius who only speaks of Marcus Aurelius "reaching the provinces that had joined in Cassius' uprising, treated them all very leniently and did not put anyone to death, whether obscure or prominent." According to Marius "the citizens of Antioch also had sided with Avidius Cassius, but these, together with certain other states which had aided Cassius, he pardoned, though at first he was deeply angered at the citizens of Antioch and took away their games and many of the distinctions of the city, all of which he afterwards restored."
We can only imagine that if there was limited punishment of the wealthy Antiochene citizens there must have been reprisals against their Christian slaves and Christians who were not citizens of the Empire. Indeed if we continue where we left off in our citation of the material in Celsus's conclusion we can allow Arthur Droge of the University of Toronto to make our closing argument for the connection with Avidius Cassius:
There are other references in Celsus which appear to support this range of dates (175 - 180 CE). For example, Celsus accuses Christians of disloyalty to the emperor and argues that if everyone were to behave as the Christians did the Empire "would come into power of the most lawless and savage barbarians." Even if the Romans were to call upon the god of the Christians, he would not come down and fight on their side (C Cels. 8. 68-69)". Celsus therefore urges Christians to "help the emperor. . ., cooperate with him . . ., fight for him, and be fellow-soldiers . . . and fellow-generals with him" (8.73), as well as to "accept public office" (8.75). These references seem to reflect the period of Marcus' campaigns against the barbarians on the Danube during 171-75 and in particular the revolt of Avidius Cassius in the summer of 1 75. Although conclusive evidence is lacking, I contend I contend that Celsus wrote his treatise attacking Christianity in 175 or early 176, just after the revolt of Avidius Cassius had been suppressed.
There are countless other scholars who date the material here to "some date between the defeat of Avidius Cassius in 175, and the disasters that befell the empire at the hands of the Parthians and Marcomanni in 178,"3 or Alastair Logan senior lecturer at the University of Exeter in England "it may well have been Christian and Jewish support for Avidius Cassius' revolt that sparked off his criticism of both and contributed to his criticism of both."4
What is typically ignored however is that the earlier charge of Jesus the fugitive spirit causing slaves to destroy themselves while he escapes to transmigrate into other bodies is the very formula associated the heretical gospel of Mark in Irenaeus. Moreover it is the very formula used of the line of imaginary usurpers whom the Christians will soon line up to follow them - i.e. 'if our present rulers, are captured, you will still be able to persuade those who rule after them; and after these have been taken you will persuade their successors and so on, until at length, when all who have yielded to your persuasion have been taken instead of repelling the enemy' (me amunesthai tous polemious). The extra material italicized here is very significant especially since it appears as an allusion to Plato's Laws 779a - a philosopher greatly admired by Celsus.
Plato wrote here "the wall tempts men to flee within it instead of standing against the enemies, and makes them think they needn't always keep up a guard, night and day, in order thus to obtain safety, but can have the means for real security by going to sleep fenced in behind walls and gates." Why would Celsus have cited this passage from Plato at this critical juncture? The answer that is always overlooked is that Christianity at this time - especially Markan Christianity - was disproportionately made up of slaves and fugitives. The criticism seems to have been that these slaves abandoned their posts, refusing to defend their actual masters as well as the master of the world - Marcus Aurelius (cf. if you are commanded to swear by a human king, there is nothing wrong in that. For to him has been given whatever there is upon earth; and whatever you receive in this life, you receive from him).
The fact that the Boucoloi raided Egypt and large numbers of Christian slaves stood by and did nothing was a punishable offense as we read in the early third century jurist Ulpian's application of a much earlier legal precedent:
Cum aliter nulla domus tuta esse possit nisi periculo capitis sui, custodiam dominis tam ab domesticis quam ab extraneis præstare servi cognitur, ideo seu introducta sunt de publica quaestione a familia necatorum habenda
As no household could be secure in any way other than that the slaves should be compelled under pain of capital punishment to offer protection to their masters from dangers both from those within the house and from outsiders, for this reason, senatorial resolutions were passed concerning the public investigation (quaestio) to be conducted taking evidence from the familia of the person killed.
It is important to note that Ulpian is here commenting on what is called the Senatus Consultum Silanianum which was a resolution of the Roman senate (senatus consulta) passed in 10 CE which governed the use of force against slaves.
As Jill Harries notes "whatever their personal relation' ships with their slave establishment, senators were terrified of 'slaves' in the abstract. The reaction of the Younger Pliny, early in the second century CE, to the brutal murder by his slaves of an admittedly cruel master, was representative of this attitude: even kind and considerate masters were in danger, he wrote, because slaves were not reasoning beings but followed their instincts, like animals."5 Someone had to be blamed for the complete collapse of order in the region. The reality was that Marcus Aurelius's wife Faustina duped Avidius Cassius into leading an uprising by claiming her husband had died.6 This is the reason that the Emperor had to be so lenient with everyone. The real cause of the revolution that swept up the region was to be found under his own roof.
The Christians were not blamed for joining in with the rest of the world in Avidius Cassius's uprising but rather as scapegoats for the original crisis in Egypt that led to this insurrection. This was the cause of the persecution of Markan Christianity in Gaul, Asia Minor and other parts of the world and what prompted Celsus to write his book. Alexandria and much of Egypt had been destroyed and someone had to be made an example. In order to get information out of the slaves that labored in the homes of the wealthy Alexandrians to confess their involvement in the original uprising torture was customarily applied.
Harries notes with respect to that last statement in Ulpianus that "the opening part refers to the punishment, which, under Tacitus' 'ancient custom', awaited slaves who failed to protect their masters from danger, when they could have done so." They were compelled to protect him 'periculo capitis sui.'7 Harries also adds that:
the second part refers specifically to the court of investigation, quaestio, established by the SC Silanianum and its successors. As part of this process, slaves resident 'under the same roof' (sub eodem tecto) would become liable to judicial interrogation, which, for slaves, entailed the automatic use of torture, a rule which had the incidental effect of violating the principle established by Augustus and his successors that torture should not be used as a first resort.
The original purpose of the quaestio process was not to punish the slaves for failing to protect their masters but to find out what they knew about the murderer and his accomplices. Yet this changed over the course of two centuries since their introduction to the point that slaves were being tortured for failing to protect their master.
We should see this discussion as having a direct impact on our understanding of the revolt in 172 - 176 CE. It must have been impossible for the authorities to determine who gave support to the Boucoli as Avidius Cassius's insurrection immediately followed thereafter. Moreover it is worth noting that those who plotted with him - including the governor of Egypt - were all dead by the time war was over. Christians could have been tortured both as a means of punishing them for their failure to protect their masters and as a means of extracting information about the causes of the revolt. After all Tzalas's research has demonstrated that large numbers of Christians were living in the environs of the Boucolia and especially in the immediate vicinity of the Church of St Mark.8
In the chaotic aftermath of two revolts in Egypt, society at large no less than the Emperor would have would have been eager to find out answers about the involvement of Christians. Tertullian's defence of his Christian brethren was only intended to offer up a justification of the Christian refusal to swear by Caesar. His point was merely, Avidius Cassius and those usurpers that came after him had all sworn allegiance to the Emperor and look what security that offered society. This does not mean that the events in Egypt weren't understood to have a negative effect on the way the rulers of the Empire viewed the Christians. Quite the opposite. Tertullian has merely been forced to defend his tradition by saying that the Christians aren't as bad as the soldiers who participated in the revolt.
The actual situation then wasn't that the Christians fought alongside Avidius Cassius - an unlikely prospect to begin with in contemporary Roman history - but rather that they were suspected of assisting the enemies of the state in more subtle ways. Because there was such a disproportionate number of slaves among the faithful this kind of accusation seemed to have followed the Christians throughout the third century. We see it not only during the revolt of Zenobia of Palmyra but also an even more interesting testimony associated with Origen's pupil Gregory Thaumaturgus in the third century.9 After an incursion of Scythian barbarians in his native Pontus we hear Gregory develop a specific canon or rule to punish those Christians who were suspected of either helping the invaders or taking advantage of the resulting disorder to loot their neighbors' properties or make slaves of others.
The initial investigations in Egypt were unlikely to be seen as a 'persecution of Christians' given the customs of Roman society at the time. Slaves had no rights and their testimony was only valid after the application of sufficient brutality to induce them to tell the truth. We should regard the subsequent extension of these trials to regions that were unaffected by Avidius's rebellion (i.e. Gaul, Asia Minor) as something wholly unprecedented and undoubtedly are what caused such outrage in the Christian community at large.
We should also take note of Celsus's citation of Odysseus’s speech in the Illiad Book Two immediately following the complaint that Christians won't swear allegiance to a human king. "Let one be king, whom the son of crafty Saturn appointed" In the beginning of Homer's narrative Paris steals the wife of King Menelaos who in turn asks his brother Agamemnon rouse up an armed force to bring her back. Zeus sends Agamemnon a dream where it is explained that the city of Troy will soon be captured, and that the Achaians must attack immediately. In order to rouse up his soldiers Agamemnon comes up with a rather ingenious plan.
Agamemnon gathers his troops the next day and stands in front of them holding his royal scepter tells them that Zeus has commanded them all to go home. The soldiers all start running for their ships. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades Odysseus, who had been hanging back, and had not even touched his own ship, to intervene. First he borrows Agamemnon's scepter and then goes among the soldiers; whenever he sees a soldier of high rank, he asks him politely not to run away. Whenever he sees a soldier of lower rank, he gives him the same message – by hitting him with the scepter. As we shall see, not only Marcus Aurelius's plot with Avidius Cassius is drawn into the Illiad allusion but also the abuse of the Christians by the Imperial authorities in the aftermath of this 'mini-Trojan war.'
The words of Odysseus that Celsus calls attention to are “no good thing is a multitude of lords, let there be one Lord, one king, whom the son of crooked counseling Cronos hath vouchsafed the scepter and judgments that he may take counsel for his people.” The literary context would be immediately recognized by Celsus's audience no less than its implied contemporary historical context. Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius plotted with Cassius before his rebellion. Avidius Cassius and Faustina were Paris and Hellen, Marcus Aurelius was Menelaos and the people of the Empire the soldiers who have to rally to their kings defense.
However another reason Celsus quotes Odysseus's speech is that to draw attention to the fact that the Christian slavesfailed to rally for the Emperor. When Celsus follows up with the statement that “if you set aside this maxim, you will deservedly suffer for it at the hands of the king" he also citing what comes after Odysseus's speech. For Homer says that after Odysseus called all soldiers out of their boats a certain Thersites proceeded to rail against the king telling the gathered soldiers to get back in their ships back to their homes. Odysseus beats the living daylights out of Thersites with Agamemnon’s golden scepter and morale is restored once again in the ranks of the army.
To this end we should see that the punishment of Markan Christians in Egypt and later Gaul, Asia Minor and perhaps even Rome was understood by Celsus to have the same effect. They were the necessary scapegoats abused and killed in order to encourage the population to rally round their king again. The irony of course in Celsus's words - "if our present rulers, are captured, you will still be able to persuade those who rule after them; and after these have been taken you will persuade their successors and so on, until at length" - is of course that during the reign of Marcus Aurelius's successors a particular form of Christianity was embraced and a brutal war was waged against the followers of Mark. The rest, as they say, is history.
Notes
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17 The Historia Augusta cites the contemporary historian Marius Maximus to this effect twice. The first "while in the East, he proclaimed himself emperor, some say, at the wish of Faustina, who now despaired of Marcus' health and was afraid that she would be unable to protect her infant children by herself, and that some one would arise and seize the throne and make away with the children." And again "Marius Maximus, wishing to defame her, says that it was with her connivance that Cassius attempted to seize the throne." Dio Cassius reports this very same story regarding Faustina ‘the wife of the king’ plotting with Avidius Cassius during the revolt of 173 – 176 CE "When Cassius rebelled in Syria, Marcus in great alarm summoned his son Commodus from Rome, as being now entitled to assume the toga virilis. Cassius, who was a Syrian from Cyrrhus, had shown himself an excellent man and the sort one would desire to have as an emperor, save for the fact that he was the son of one Heliodorus, who had been content to secure the governorship of Egypt as the reward of his oratorical ability. But Cassius in rebelling made a terrible mistake, due to his having been deceived by Faustina. The latter, who was the daughter of Antoninus Pius, seeing that her husband had fallen ill and expecting that he would die at any moment, was afraid that the throne might fall to some outsider, inasmuch as Commodus was both too young and also rather simple-minded, and that she might thus find herself reduced to a private station. Therefore she secretly induced Cassius to make his preparations so that, if anything should happen to Antoninus, he might obtain both her and the imperial power. Now while he was considering this project, a message came that Marcus was dead (in such circumstances reports always represent matters as worse than they really are), and immediately, without waiting to confirm the rumor, he laid claim to the throne, on the ground that he had already been elected by the soldiers who were then in Pannonia. "Clearly it wouldn't take much to remind people of this scandal. The story of the wife of the king plotting with a general reminded contemporaries of the Illiad.
18 We hear “thou shouldst not take the name of kings in thy mouth as thou protest, to cast reproaches upon them, and to watch for home-going.” The crowds of soldiers who witness this beating serve as a chorus echoing the literary purpose of this scene “Never again, I ween, will his proud spirit henceforth set him on to rail at kings with words of reviling.”4
