{"id":9849,"date":"2018-10-06T14:25:19","date_gmt":"2018-10-06T20:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9849"},"modified":"2018-10-08T08:56:11","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T14:56:11","slug":"review-the-final-pagan-generation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9849","title":{"rendered":"Review: “The Final Pagan Generation”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A review from the most recent (20.1) issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studie<\/a>s<\/em>. While the publisher does charge for articles, book reviews are free downloads.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Edward J. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation<\/em> <\/a>(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015) 344 pp., 29 B&W photographs, map. $34.95 (hardcover, ebook).<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the fourth century CE, the Mediterranean world\u2014the Roman empire<\/a>\u2014\u201cwas full of gods. Their temples, statues, and images filled its cities, downs, farms, and wildernesses… Traditional divinities also dominated the spiritual space of the empire as figures whose presences could not be sensed but whose actions many felt they might discern.\u201d So writes Edward J. Watts at the beginning of The Final Pagan Generation<\/em>. By the century\u2019s end, he notes, \u201cThe cities of the empire remained nearly as full of the sights, sounds, and smells of the traditional gods in the 390s as they had been in the 310s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet much had changed. After Julian\u2019s attempt in the 360s to sustain Pagan temples and education with imperial favor and financing\u2014as those had sustained them in the past\u2014the pendulum swung back, and it swung hard. Emperors such as Gratian (r. 367\u201383) in the West and Theodosius I (r. 379\u201395) in the East sought to cut the financial aqueducts that sustained large temples and celebrations. In those times, subsidy was not merely a matter of line items in the imperial budget, but a cut could mean handing over agricultural estates whose profits had sustained a temple to new owners. With sacrifice already banned, Theodosius by the 390s was punishing judges who set foot in Pagan temples and also forbidding private household rites. That these edicts were not always enforced is not the issue; the point is that Nicene Christianity enjoyed imperial favor while traditional religion no longer did.<\/p>\n

From the days of Edward Gibbon (1737\u20131794), who essentially blamed the \u201cfall of Rome\u201d (the Western Empire, at least) on its embrace of Christianity, the question has been asked: \u201cWhat changed?\u201d The question also obsesses some contemporary Pagans (and not just members of the Julian Society), who ask, \u201cWhy did our ancestors abandon the old gods? Were they bribed, coerced, or tricked?\u201d In the case of the four upper-class men on whose lives Watt concentrates, we can only use Gibbon\u2019s favorite adverb, insensibly<\/em>. Gibbon writes, for instance, that \u201cthe active and successful zeal of the Christians had insensibly diffused them through every province and almost every city of the empire\u201d (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,<\/em> vol. 1, chapter 16). Likewise, these men are presented as insensible to the structural changes that occurred while they rose to the pinnacle of their careers.<\/p>\n

Three of four were rhetors and philosophers who left extensive writings behind: Libanius (314\u2013c.393), a high-profile teacher of rhetoric, something like a tenured professor today; Themistius (317\u2013390), another rhetorician, statesman, philosopher, and counselor to sev- eral emperors; and Ausonius (310\u2013395), poet, teacher of rhetoric in the imperial household of Valentinian I, later a consul and praetorian prefect variously of Gaul, Italy, and Africa, also the only Christian of the four, converting late in life. The fourth was Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (315\u2013384), a wealthy aristocrat, holder of various Roman priesthoods, and praetorian prefect of Rome, a post that might be compared to a cabinet ministry. As prefect of Rome, he oversaw the reconstruction of major temples, sponsored public rituals, and reinforced the city\u2019s Pagan identity as against that of Milan, seat of the now-Christian Western emperors of the late fourth century.<\/p>\n

Watts describes these men\u2019s careers against the changing political landscape of the century, including Julian\u2019s short reign. The last Pagan emperor, he writes, had a different, more Christian upbringing than Watts\u2019 four exemplars: \u201cUnlike those older men, Julian understood that Constantius\u2019 [who preceded him] initiatives pointed toward a world in which traditional religious practices were suppressed and temples replaced by churches\u201d<\/p>\n

Lacking Julian\u2019s imperial authority, Libanius, for one, fought a long rear-guard action against the erasure of traditional religion, denouncing how \u201cthe black-robed tribe [of monks], who eat more than elephants … hasten to attack the temples with sticks and stones and bars of iron, and in some cases, disdaining these, with hands and feet.\u201d His methods were speeches, letters (perhaps the equivalent of an op-ed in the New York Times today), and appeals to the current emperor\u2019s vanity, arguing that letting extralegal Christian power structures develop would harm the emperor\u2019s authority and prestige. These stratagems worked for a time, but as each of the \u201cfinal Pagan generation\u201d passed away from their worlds of senates, classrooms, and dinners with important people\u2014 becoming truly insensible \u2014the imperial world, which might still have looked, sounded, and smelled much as it did in their childhoods, was irrevocably altered.<\/p>\n

Chas S. Clifton Colorado State University-Pueblo
\n\u00a9 Equinox Publishing Ltd 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review from the most recent (20.1) issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. While the publisher does charge for articles, book reviews are free downloads. Edward J. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015) 344 pp., 29 B&W photographs, map. $34.95 (hardcover, ebook). At the beginning of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,100,56,4],"class_list":["post-9849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christianity","tag-history","tag-rome","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2yR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8262,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8262","url_meta":{"origin":9849,"position":0},"title":"Call for Papers: Family, Home, and Ways of Life: Living Paganisms in a Globalized World","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Information on the upcoming Family, Home, and Ways of Life: Living Paganisms in a Globalized World conference in Krakow, Poland, 24-25 March 2017, may be found at this link. Presentations may address various issues within the following (suggested) topics: Everyday life of contemporary Pagans Understanding human relationships: from till death\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1041,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1041","url_meta":{"origin":9849,"position":1},"title":"Fooling the Cyber-Censors","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday I wrote a review of The New Generation Witches: Teenage Witchcraft in Contemporary Culture, a collection of papers edited by Hannah Johnston and Peg Aloi, for the upcoming issue of The Pomegranate.Teen Witches, a fluid and constantly changing group, have been heavily dependent on the Internet, because they are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7802,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7802","url_meta":{"origin":9849,"position":2},"title":"Take a Survey on Changes in Pagan Attitudes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This survey comes from Jim Lewis, a Pagan-studies scholar who has done a lot of good work over the years. He writes, I have conducted several Internet surveys with Helen Berger -- The Pagan Census Revisited (PCR) and a follow up, The Pagan Census Revisited II (PCR-II). Since the PCR-II\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10088,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10088","url_meta":{"origin":9849,"position":3},"title":"Call for Papers: The Impact of Traditionalism on Contemporary Magical Communities","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"For a special issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies Traditionalism is a philosophical school which has significantly impacted religious communities and political movements in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, yet it remains virtually unknown among scholars and the general public. Yet when Steve Bannon cited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Pagan studies\"","block_context":{"text":"Pagan studies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=pagan-studies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Pom-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8604,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8604","url_meta":{"origin":9849,"position":4},"title":"No “Neos” Here, We’re “Ethnic”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A letter from one of the leading Hellenic Pagan groups to the government of Lithuania supports a request by the Lithuanian Romuva for state recognition. Just as the Hellenic Ethnic Religion, Romuva is by no means a \u201cneo-pagan movement\u201d or a \u201cnew religious movement\u201d. It belongs to the category of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Romuva_flag-200x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2324,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2324","url_meta":{"origin":9849,"position":5},"title":"Quick Review: ‘Pagan Metal’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I watched Pagan Metal: A Documentary (dir. Bill Zebub, 2009) Saturday night. It was flaccid. We gave up on it midway through. (Netflix has it.) What we saw was primarily rambling interviews with members of three bands: Alan Averill of Primordial (Ireland), and musicians from Korpiklaani and Finntroll,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Finland\"","block_context":{"text":"Finland","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=finland"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/PaganMetal-116x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9849"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9864,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9849\/revisions\/9864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}