scorning of luxurious dress in, 100
spread of Christianity in, 21, 34, 41, 47, 59
tolerance of the Romans, 127n
Rovelli, Carlo, 40
The Royal Museum at Naples, Being Some Account of the Erotic Paintings, Bronzes and Statues Contained in that Famous “Cabinet Secret,” 186
S
Sanctus, 84
Satan, 3, 4, 6–7, 13, 15, 45, 194, 206, 216
Sauer, Eberhard, 115
Savonarola, 168
Seneca, xxix, 175, 206
Serapis, temple of
church built to St. John the Baptist on its ruins, 93
description of, 89–91
destruction of, 93, 115, 118, 119, 141
Great Library of Alexandria in, 90–91, 94
statue of god Serapis, 91–92, 93
Seven Sleepers story, 105–6, 128
sex. See erotica
Shapur I, King, 66
Shaw, Brent D., 78, 157, 237
Shaw, George Bernard, 64
Shenoute, St.
book-burning, 168
breaks into house of Gessius, 227–29
description of, 226
monks terrified of, 232–33
punishments used by, 235
sainthood, 225
wrestles with the Devil, 233–34
Sienkiewicz, Henryk, 62
Simeon Stylites the Younger, 171, 213
Simon Magus, 45–46
Sisyphus, 8
slaves, slavery, 3, 23, 40, 64, 71–72, 84, 172, 188, 202, 216, 237
Socrates, xxv, 162
Sophocles, 139
Sorbonne, Paris, 140
Sozomen, 103
Sparta Archaeological Museum, 114
Stark, Rodney, 64
statues
of Augustus, 129
in bathhouses, 206–7, 209
in the British Museum, 113
as cause for hilarity, 121–22
demonic connections, 18, 122, 124
destruction and vandalism of, xvii–xix, xxiv, xxv–xxvi, xxxiii, xxxiv, 93, 94, 104, 106, 113–16, 121–24, 127–28, 209, 228–29
of gods and goddesses, 104–5, 113–14, 115, 120, 122–23, 128–29
offerings made to, 79
of Pliny the Younger, 71
plundered from temples, 93, 94, 101–5
at Serapis, 89, 90, 91–92, 93
of Simon Magus, 45–46
spontaneous destruction of injures two “idolators,” 123–24
Stephen, St., 62
Suetonius, 32, 56, 188–89
Symmachus, 130–32
Syria, xxxi, xxxiii, 117, 141
T
Tacitus, 32, 59
Tantalus, 8
temples
built to imperial family, 23
as centers of demonic behavior, 18, 19
Christian questions and attitudes concerning, 19–21
desertion of, 74
destruction and vandalism of, xvii, xxv–xxvi, xxxiii, 89, 94–95, 102–15, 127–28
inscriptions in, 76
Pliny’s comments on, 74, 76
stones re-used to build houses and churches, 123, 128
Tertullian, 21, 153, 159, 161, 209
theater, 201–4, 209
Themistius, 127
Theodore, St., 216
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, 176
Theodosius I, Emperor, 118–19, 208
Theodosius II, Emperor, 50
Theon, 140–41
Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, xxix, 92, 93, 117, 120–21, 142
Tiberius, Emperor, 59
Tibullus, 168
Timaeus (Plato), 169, 255
Trajan, Emperor
agrees that Christians should be punished, 85
correspondence with Pliny, 72–74
declares that Christians “must not be hunted out,” 85
involvement in minutiae of the province, 73, 74
sends Pliny the Younger to Bithynia, 71–72
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 149
U
Ustinov, Peter, 62
V
Valens, Emperor, 117
Valentinian I, Emperor, 117
Valentinian III, Emperor, 50
Valerian persecution (AD 257–260), 66
Vatican, 149
Venus, 122–23
Vespasian, Emperor, 46
Vesuvius, 72n, 184, 188
Veyne, Paul, 188
Victoria, Queen, 187
Vienna, 175
Vindiciae Geologicae (Buckland), 43
Virgil, 151, 175
Virgin Mary, 33, 35–36, 141, 170
W
Waugh, Evelyn, 194n
White Monastery, 225–26, 231–33
Winckelmann, Johann, 187
women
appearance of, 195–97
at the bathhouse, 206
as drunk, 195
erotic depictions of, 184–85, 186, 188–90
as lesbians, 4, 186, 192
as martyrs, 65, 81–82, 83
as prostitutes, 45, 122, 188, 203, 220
and story of Hypatia, 137, 141–42, 145–46, 164
Z
Zachariah of Mytilene, 167, 172, 243
Zeus, 125, 126, 153, 250, 259
Zoroaster, 138
Zosimus, 100
About the Author
Catherine Nixey is a journalist and classicist. Her mother was a nun, her father was a monk, and she was brought up Catholic. She studied classics at Cambridge and taught the subject for several years before becoming a journalist on the arts desk at the Times (UK), where she still works. The Darkening Age, winner of a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award, is her first book. She lives in London.
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Footnotes
* In Palmyra the goddess became associated with the local goddess Allat, to become “Athena-Allat.”
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* The status of what used to always be called the “Edict of Milan” is, and has been for the past century, the subject of much academic debate. Many now argue that its importance has been exaggerated and that it was, in fact, no more than a letter. The scholar H. A. Drake argues convincingly that, letter or not, it was far from insignificant.
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* The term “empiricist,” in the context of Galen, is a fraught one. Adherents in a medical school in Galen’s time were actually known as the “empiricists.” Galen, naturally, loathed them (Galen loathed everyone). Moreover, Galen was not a perfect empiricist in the modern sense of the term. His methodology leaves a lot to be desired: for instance, his experiments had no control group. However, Galen was considerably closer to the empirical ideal of observation and testing than many of his contemporaries—and certainly of his successors. Therefore I have used the term empiricist (with caution).
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* Those books that were approved of by the Catholic Church would be stamped or marked by the word “Imprimatur”—“let it be printed.” As late as the 1950s, those who were educated in Catholic schools in this country would have seen books in their libraries so labeled.
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* This name is similar to the Greek word for virgin,parthenos, the insinuation—or perhaps pun—being that Jesus was not born from a virgin but from a man whose name sounded like “virgin.” This general story was one that would tempt humorists—and outrage Christians—for centuries. In the 1979 film Life of Brian, the father of the messiah-like Brian turns out to be a Roman centurion called “Naughtius Maximus.” The film was banned in several countries. It was later marketed in Sweden as “So funny it was banned in Norway.”
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* Where, as pious Christian historians would note with somewhat unchristian glee,
he spent his final years being used by King Shapur as a royal mounting block for his horse.
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* This was not the first time Pliny had almost missed a date with history. On the morning of August 24,AD 79, he had been staying with his uncle’s family in a villa on the Bay of Naples when they noticed a strange cloud emanating from the mountains across the bay. Pliny’s uncle set out to investigate and asked his nephew whether he wished to go with him. The younger Pliny declined, giving the somewhat feeble excuse that he had homework to do: “I replied that I preferred to go on with my studies.” So Pliny the Elder set out without him, declaring that “Fortune favors the brave.” It did not favor him. Within less than twenty-four hours he was dead. Pliny the Younger’s decision was undoubtedly a sensible one but it has hardly left him with a reputation for heroism.
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* The unwieldy name most probably came from their lifestyle: they were farm workers who had a habit of hanging “around” (circum) the “cellars” (cella) of farms.
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* It is best not to press The Golden Legend too hard on dates: 362 years is the amount of time it gives for their slumber; 120 years would be closer to the true timespan between the two emperors mentioned whose reigns bookend the sleep of the seven men.
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* The question of whether Romans were “tolerant” is a vexed one. It is possible to argue that they were not, since true tolerance implies first disagreeing with what someone is doing, then allowing them to do it anyway. Voltaire’s stance on freedom of speech—“I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”—is a perfect example of such true toleration. Therefore, it is argued that while the Romans were infinitely more tolerant of other religions than the Christians were, they did not, by this yardstick, show true “toleration”: it had simply not occurred to them to be intolerant. However, to say that what matters is the intention and not the deed feels an anachronistically Christian—even Augustinian—way to look at Roman toleration.
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* In 2017, in London, a pamphlet by Jehovah’s Witnesses advocated similar caution. Under the heading “Intrigued by the Supernatural!” this issue asked whether films and books about witches, wizards and vampires were merely harmless fun. Quoting Deuteronomy (“There should not be found in you . . . anyone who employs divination, anyone practicing magic” because “whoever does these things is detestable to Jehovah”), the article concluded that it was not, before telling the story of Michael. Michael was a teenager who was once an enthusiastic reader of fantasy novels and who then went on to read books about magic and satanic rituals. However, after studying the Bible in depth, Michael realized his error. “I drew up a list of everything that had a link with spiritism and got rid of it all,” he says. “I learned an important lesson.”
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* The Catholic Waugh would later disparage Brideshead Revisited (1945), declaring that it was written in “a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster—the period of soya beans and Basic English—and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language which now, with a full stomach I find distasteful.” Clement would have approved.
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* The whole list makes for fascinating reading. Particularly pleasing is point “II.D” where, under the subheading “Bodily Excellences,” the author advises praising the “bubbling vitality and capacity for deep feeling of the deceased.” And, no doubt, the deep feeling of the speaker, too.
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* The existence of monks in the Egyptian desert remains otherworldly. When the writer William Dalrymple traveled to St. Antony’s monastery (a visit recounted in his wonderful book From the Holy Mountain) he found himself sitting at breakfast next to a brother who pointed to a space between two abbey towers. “In June 1987 in the middle of the night,” the monk explained, “our father St Antony appeared there hovering on a cloud of shining light.” You saw this? Dalrymple asked. “No,” the monk replied. “I’m short-sighted . . . I can barely see the Abbot when I sit beside him at supper.”
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The Darkening Age Page 33