Suppressing the Bacchanalians
T
ODAY THE TERM
BACCHANALIAN
refers to people committed to drunken orgies, because that’s what the Roman Senate claimed about the group when they “ferociously suppressed”
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the cult of Bacchus in 186
BCE—
although the charges probably were false.
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Unfortunately, there are only two quite unsatisfactory sources. The first is Livy, whose report seems more like fiction than history: it is a story of how a good boy is led by his evil mother into this dreadful group.
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The second source is the actual senatorial decree, which condemned the group and laid down regulations by which it must abide. Based on Livy’s account it has been assumed by far too many historians that this group engaged in all manner of vile deeds: human sacrifice, rape, unrestricted sex, drunkenness, and the like. According to Livy, at least seven thousand people were involved, including “certain nobles, both men and women.” Subsequently the male leaders of the group were rounded up and executed; others committed suicide, and the “women were handed over to their relatives for punishment.”
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But if these sentences were actually imposed, and if the charges brought against the group were true, then the restrictions laid down in the Senate decree were absurdly mild.
The Senate decree
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began by prohibiting Bacchic shrines (allowing ten days from the receipt of the decree for them to be dismantled). However, the group itself was not outlawed, but was only limited as to the size and functions of its gatherings. The Senate commanded that they no longer meet in groups larger than five (no more than two of the five being male), that they hold no funds in common, and that they not swear oaths of mutual obligations. In addition, they were forbidden to celebrate rites in secret, and men were not permitted to be priests. And that was it! Nothing was said about refraining from rape, drunkenness, group sex, or human sacrifice, which makes it obvious that these claims were “fantasies” knowingly invoked by at least some senators “to provide legitimation for... [their] very controversial decision.”
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Equally spurious is the frequent assumption that this was a group that had appeared suddenly and was of Roman origin. The Bacchanalians had been in operation for a considerable time before the Senate took action, long enough to have built up a substantial following all across Italy.
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Moreover, the cult of Bacchus did not originate in Rome; it was an Oriental import from Greece—even Livy blamed an anonymous Greek priest and missionary for bringing the cult to Rome.
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Consequently, we need not try to read between the lines of Livy’s account or of the Senate’s edict to discover the group’s origins, what it actually taught and practiced, why it was so attractive, and what it was that the Senate really feared. All that is required is that we to turn to the many studies of the group by historians of religion in Greece. Here one finds an extensive literature on the Bacchic or Dionysiac mysteries, including recent reports of many important new discoveries.
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Drawing on this literature allows insight into two fundamental questions. What was the movement really like? Why did it provoke such a violent, yet limited, response from the Senate?
Specifically, the cult of Bacchus (or Dionysius) promised the initiated that they would be welcomed into a blissful life after death, enjoying the company of their fellow initiates. A recently discovered gold plate shaped in the form of an ivy leaf instructed the dead to “Tell Persephone that Bacchus himself has set you free.”
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The ordinary person need only become an initiated and committed Bacchanalian in order to escape the dreary afterlife envisioned by the traditional religions of Rome and to gain everlasting joy: “Now you have died, and now you have been born, thrice blest, on this day.”
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This was a remarkable innovation and gave everyone, rich or poor, a substantial reason to join.
Had the promise of an attractive afterlife been the only unusual feature of Bacchanalians, it seems certain that the Roman Senate would have ignored them—as indeed it did for several generations. But of perhaps even greater importance in gaining converts, the cult of Bacchus surrounded its members with a very intense group life. Originally in Greece it had been a group restricted to women, and subsequently there were separate male and female groups. Transplanted to Italy, the congregations became mixed. Moreover, rather than meeting several times a year, as they had in Greece and as was typical of groups devoted to other traditional pagan gods, the Bacchanalians now met at least weekly. In order to do so without disrupting their affairs, they held their meetings at night in temples and shrines built for that purpose. To become a member required initiation into the group’s mysteries and the swearing of solemn oaths of devotion and loyalty.
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What these facts tell us is that the Bacchanalians were not casual participants in periodic sacrificial feasts; they were closely united into intense, very self-conscious congregations. And it was this that aroused the senators against them. No doubt senatorial fears also were inflamed by stories about lurid activities (similar claims were routinely leveled at many other “unpopular” religious groups, including Christians and Jews), but what the Roman Senate actually suppressed were the
congregational features
of the group—its regular meetings, its formal organizational structure, the strong ties among members, the prominent role of women in a group including both sexes, and, most of all, the high level of member commitment. These things, not noisy revelry, were what the Senate perceived as a threat and “wished above all to destroy.”
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Against Isis
I
SIS ALSO INSPIRED CONGREGATIONS.
Her followers set themselves apart and gathered regularly; they did not disparage the other gods and temples, but neither did they attend to them. This singularity did not escape official attention. In 58
BCE
the Senate outlawed Isis and ordered her altars and statues torn down.
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They repeated their ban ten years later, and Roman consuls around the empire responded by destroying Isiac altars as “disgusting and pointless superstitions.”
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Next, Isiacism was “vigorously repressed by Augustus”
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and Tiberius had the Isiac temple in Rome destroyed, the statue of the goddess thrown into the Tiber River, and its priests crucified.
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Indeed, it was the emperor Caligula, hardly a paragon of tolerance, but who had a taste for the exotic, who first allowed a temple dedicated to Isis to be built on the Campus Martius, and it was not until the reign of Caracella early in the third century that an Isiac temple was allowed on the Capitol.
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Even so, as noted, there were more temples to Isis built in Rome than to any other god or goddess.
Despite these frequent attempts by the Roman authorities to suppress Isiacism, almost no details about these matters have survived. There are indications that attacks on Isis worship were said to be precipitated by sexual immorality associated with the temples.
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But this was a standard charge also leveled against every religious group that engendered opposition, and there is no reason to believe it. In this case, too, what upset the Romans was congregationalism. Cumont put it plainly: “Its secret societies... might easily become clubs of agitators and haunts of spies.”
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Moreover, there was nothing secret about the Isiac “commandoes” enlisted by Publius Clodius Pulcher (92–52
BCE
), who took to the streets in 58
BCE
when the Senate had demolished the temple. “The relentless pressure and obstinacy of the Isiasts gave the [Senate]... no respite. They [the followers of Isis] restored their places of worship [whenever they were destroyed].... Like the Christian faith later, Isiac perseverance was forged and strengthened in persecutions.”
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Isolating Cybele
J
UST AS
C
HRISTIANITY GAINED
immense influence by being credited with bringing Constantine victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Cybele (also known to the Romans as Magna Mater or Great Mother) was brought to Rome by order of the Senate in 204
BCE
(personified by a hunk of meteorite) because of a prophecy inferred from the Sibylline Books and confirmed by the oracle at Delphi that she would deliver victory for Rome over Hannibal. Within months after her arrival in Rome, the prophecy was fulfilled. Soon after, a temple was erected to Cybele on the summit of the Palatine, the meteorite was set as the face in a silver statue of the goddess, and she was officially recognized as one of the gods of Rome and was worshipped there for more than five hundred years. Every March 27, the silver statue of Cybele was borne by a procession of her priests to a nearby tributary of the Tiber River and bathed, then carried back to the temple.
The Romans soon learned that having Cybele on their side was a very mixed blessing. Cybelene worship was a wild, disruptive affair. “The enthusiastic transports and somber fanaticism of [Cybelene worship] contrasted violently with the calm dignity and respectable reserve of the official religions.”
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Her priests, known as the
galli,
excelled at ecstatic frenzies. Not only did they castrate themselves during their initiation; subsequently they cross-dressed, wore makeup, frizzed their hair, drenched themselves in perfume, and acted like women. Although Romans were not offended by homosexuality, they were absolutely appalled by effeminacy. Yet, they could not doubt the power of the goddess—she had ended the Carthaginian threat. Hence came the decision to isolate the religion before it could infect the populace, but to permit the “barbaric” rites to continue on her behalf. Once a year Cybele was honored by all Romans, and her “priests marched the streets in procession, dressed in motley costumes, loaded with heavy jewelry, and beating tambourines.”
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During the rest of the year the priests were “segregated and inaccessible to the Romans, their cultic activities were confined to the temple.”
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Moreover, Roman citizens were prohibited by law from becoming Cybelene priests.
Persecution of the Jews
A
NTI
-S
EMITISM WAS VIRULENT AND
widespread in the classical world. The great Roman philosopher and statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4
BCE
–65
CE
) denounced Jews as an “accursed race”
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and condemned their influence. The esteemed Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (56–117
CE
) railed against the Jews because they “despise the gods,” and called their religious practices “sinister and revolting.” Not only that, according to Tacitus the Jews had “entrenched themselves by their very wickedness,” and they sought “increasing wealth” through “their stubborn loyalty” to one another. “But the rest of the world they confront with hatred reserved for enemies.”
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And, as with the other Oriental religions, the Romans often justified repression of the Jews on spurious grounds of immorality: Ovid claimed that “the Jewish synagogue was an assembly place for prostitutes.”
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In any event, the Jews were expelled from Rome in 139
BCE
by an edict that charged them with attempting “to introduce their own rites” to the Romans and thereby “to infect Roman morals.”
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Then, in 19
CE
the emperor Tiberius ordered the Jews and the followers of Isis to leave Rome. The Jews were required to burn all their religious vestments, and all Jewish males of military age were ordered to serve in Sardinia to suppress brigandage, where, according to Tacitus, “if they succumbed to the pestilential climate, it was a cheap loss.”
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In addition, all other Jews were banished not only from the city, but from Italy “on pain of slavery for life if they did not obey,” as told by Paulinus Suetonius.
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In 70
CE
the emperor Vespasian imposed a special tax on all Jews in the empire, thereby impounding the contributions that had been made annually to the temple in Jerusalem. And in 95
CE
the emperor Domitian executed his cousin Flavius Clemens and “many others” for having “drifted into Jewish ways,” as Cassius Dio put it.
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Of special interest is that, as reported by Suetonius, in about 49
CE
, Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome for rioting at the instigation of “Chrestus.” Since
Christus
was often spelled with an
e
instead of an
i,
this report is taken to mean riots concerning Christ, as is acknowledged in Acts 18:2 where Paul is reported to have met two Christians in Corinth who had been forced to leave Rome. However, historians think that if the entire Jewish population of Rome, by then numbering many tens of thousands, had been banished, many other writers of that time would have at least mentioned it—and they did not. What seems more likely is that everyone involved in the riots, which probably involved Christians attempting to teach in the local synagogues (as Paul so often did elsewhere), was ordered out of Rome, but this probably only involved a few hundred people.
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