This has come up only once, so I mention it here in a topic:
“Because ancient Rome stands as the bedrock of western civilization…
Because Roman Virtues mean more than Family Values…
Because the Gods of Olympus are calling…”
[click]
ROMA RESURGENS
Dedicated to the restoration
of classical Roman
religion, culture and virtues.
Are you a member?
It’s always interesting to see how reconstructionists deal with the queasy question of animal sacrifice. I know less about traditional Roman rites, but for the Greeks a messy blood sacrifice was the central observance.
I suppose I’ll not be getting an invite to a taurobolium any time soon.
In honour of Hannibal, I pledge undying hatred of Nova Roma.
Thank you! That was the best laugh I’ve had all week.
Yes. I am Gaius Marius Mercurialis.
I forget how I found Nova Roma, but I do write the monthly “Internet Connections” column for the ANA Numismatist. Also, not suprisingly, I have an interest in ancient numismatics. I write for The Celator, for instance. So, I probably found Nova Roma while cruising the web for sites and pages about ancient coins.
I have not done much about learning Latin since I joined Nova Roma over two years ago, but here I am.
Michael
Mercurialis
Do you believe in the old gods, support slavery and the right of a father to kill his wife and children, support the official stratification of society under law, oppose democracy, and see personal names for women as superfluous?
If so, look out for elephants, they have a way of sneaking up on you.
to Mercurialis 
to eureka 
The old Gods are dead they didn’t even help those people of the day. there was a reason Christianity flurished, love (even enemies even when they kill your family rape your wife and put out your eyes), charitable welfare to fellow believers (Rome never had a welfare system), Morality (don’t need togo into various acts of fornication), must I go on?
Three hundred years those old Roman elites tried to kill the Asian religion (literally) and failed. Go ahead and pray to a rock if you want to but it don’t have ears.
I’ll side with the elephants 
Maybe you don’t believe so.
there was a reason Christianity flurished
Because emperors made it illegal to follow any other religion, perhaps. 
love (even enemies even when they kill your family rape your wife and put out your eyes)
I have yet to meet a Christian who practices this tenet, and they were certainly a more violent bunch back in Roman times.
charitable welfare to fellow believers
But no bounds to the punishment of those who are not. Christians weren’t all that nice to their “fellow believers” back then, and they aren’t now (Catholics and Protestants?)
Morality (don’t need togo into various acts of fornication), must I go on?
Since when did Romans lack morality? (moreso than any other culture at least)
Three hundred years those old Roman elites tried to kill the Asian religion (literally) and failed.
Their failure to do so does not prove or disprove the truth of any religion.
Go ahead and pray to a rock if you want to but it don’t have ears.
Who prays to a rock?
The Byzantine Empire – as close to a Christian Empire as we’ve ever had – did all those things and more, and usually much worse. They disfigured deposed emperors (lopped off noses, put out eyes, etc.) as a matter of course; taboo sexual trysts were commonplace (one emperor regularly had threesomes with I believe his sister and his wife; I’m not sure of the particulars); etc. etc. I don’t know the exact figure but I’m willing to bet that at least a hundred emperors were murdered. If you’ve ever taken Byzantine history, you’ll know that it’s a whole, whole lot. There wasn’t really charity, either; the budget went to the building of churches and not to the people.
Christianity flourished because it was simple and because there was an afterlife. In the old pagan religions (most of them, at least; I don’t know of any exceptions (not counting Zoroastrianism as pagan) but please correct me if you do), when you died, you died. See ancient epitaphs for the different take on death back then. With Christianity, you live forever in paradise so long as you live well.
And then there’s that whole matter ofits becoming the official religion of the Empire, and holding pagan ceremonies or consecrating temples thus becoming punishable by death. Convert-or-die is generally pretty useful for religious growth.
That’s not true at all, actually.
By the time Christianity appeared on the scene there were probably dozens of mystery cults that offered life after death, and a good number of those already offered a dying and resurrected god mythology - the cult of Isis was a popular one.
Except for the followers of Isis, who sometimes made a nuisance of themselves on behalf of their goddess, all the mystery cults tended to exist happily with others. I’m suspicious of any single idea theory of why Christianity became so popular [1], but one major part has to be the pairing of the monotheism with the well-established notion of a dying god finding the path to immortality.
Certainly when Christianity became endorsed by the state it was happy to use its coercive power to fill the pews, but that’s not a terribly good reason for Christianity’s huge success. It doesn’t explain how it got well enough established in the government in the first place.
[1] Whether something is true or not is independent of the number of people who believe it.
Thanks – I forgot about the mysteries. My professor insisted that it was the afterlife that appealed to the pagan commoners in the horrible third century, while the elite tended to ignore religion altogether and were more or less atheistic except for ceremony. Maybe it was also because it was contemporary and its founding events happened in the Empire, under Imperial rule.
As for how it got established in the government, it may have appealed to members of the Greek elite who rejected the pagan gods and followed that psuedomystical strand of Platonism in which the mythos and logos were father-and-son “divinities”, as in John 1:1 (but were the Greek scriptures written before or after it caught on?). From then I can only imagine that it spread to Rome, where Greece had always been hip (Constantine both converted to Christianity and moved the capital to Constantinople; they may be unrelated but his orientalism could have been a contributing factor).
I can’t pretend to be an authority on the matter but that’s what I’ve been taught and what I conjecture, you probably know much better than I do. Whatever the real answer is, it’s far more complex than what just a few paragraphs can say. All the best, and thanks for giving some food for thought on a miserable rainy day.
Sorry if I offended;
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Go ahead and pray to a rock if you want to but it don’t have ears.Who prays to a rock?
When I said “pray to a rock” I meant the concept of thinking a carved stone or hammered metal in the image of some thing, to which the initiant,makes votives and offerings to-ward. Perhaps in the days of Rome , greece, and other civilizations an individual or the society itself thought of such man made things as representations of the diety and not the diety itself, perhaps not. But it would appear that much attention and offerings and desires were expressed to these man made things.
To compare to Christianity as a whole one may see the same things. my mothers family were (some are still) Roman Catholic. My aunt had a shrine in her home with two statues, one supposing to represent Christ and one Mary. Along side these were many canddles. Her prayers were done with a rosery wrapped in her hand. To me these are no different than the Idols of the Ancients. In looking into the Bible God never wanted his people to have such things (Ex 20:3-4, and Isaiah 40:18-20) and paul concerns himself with this in Athens (Acts17:29).
I do agree with you that trying to kill out a belief does not prove or disprove anything. Nor does it assume the aggressor or its victim is better than the other. The point is that Rome did not trust the Christian Movement until it took control of it in the 300’s. here is a link to add to the flavor of this point http://www.earlychurch.org.uk/persecution-russell.html After that Christianity became Rome ( in the since it was now a combined church and state). So from the first century to the third Romans tried to, at various times, eradicate the belief.
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love (even enemies even when they kill your family rape your wife and put out your eyes)I have yet to meet a Christian who practices this tenet, and they were certainly a more violent bunch back in Roman times.
for a list of torturous deaths consider “Fox’s book of martyrs”.
I am sorry that those that claim to be Christian have not this tenant. In fact if they do not have this tenant of love then they are probably not christian at all{or if they are they have to work on this and change it within themselves}.
Consider this: Matt 22:37 - 40, “love the LOrd your God with all your Heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… and… You shall love your Neighbor as yourself” on these two things depends the whole Law (Bible). in fact every law in the old testament can be traced to one of these two commandments in some way or other. and a neighbor is whoever is in need and whoever has the ability to fulfill that need as taught in the parable of the good Samaritian (Luke 10:30-37), of which this parable makes a “true” believer responsible to all.
Based upon this Christ taught that his followers are to be Humble, gentle, desire and practice righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, adn peacemakers. (Matt 5:3-9) and immediatly follows it up with how blessed are they when persecuted, spoken evil of, and have insults cast at them.
In the Sermon on the mount he tells them they are the salt of the earth and tells them not only not to murder but not to even to say to a brother Racca(good for nothing) nor even look upon a woman so as to lust after her (need to see her as a person not an object of self gratification). these are just some of the attitudes that are to be displayed to ALL men not just to fellow belivers.
Concerning a christians enemy Matt 5:38 don’t resist him. if he hits you slaps you beats you don’t strike back! In verse 43 love even that individual that is causing you pain. This even goes as far as judging another Matt 7;1-6. Jesus didn’t only preach this he lived it and christians, meaning christ like, have to be the same way or they are not “Christ like”.
I have a feeling those in Roman times that were violent, and claiming to be christian, were those spoken of by Paul the apostle as the ones causing dissensions and hinderences (Rom 16:17; 2Tim 3:1-13). I say this because the teaching of the apostles were as Christ teaching.
as a matter of fact, to Roman Christians, Paul the apostle says(Rom 13:1-10) that they were to be in subjection to the governing authorities, for it is God’s avenging agent on earth, and to pay thier taxes. and as for becoming indebted they were told not to except in Love, and in the earlier chapter 12:9-21 Christians do not retaliate.
No, In Roman times those who were violent, trouble causers, irreverent, were not christians at all, regardless what name they elicited or what the Histories may call them, and that even goes for today.
When I made my post, it was with tounge in cheek. but I wanted to clarify the difference between a true christian and one in name only. Just because many evil things have been done in the name of… doesn’t give them a relationship to it. Jesus said “Not every one who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will will enter the kingdom of heaven. many will say on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles? an then I will declar unto them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness’”
If someone raped my wife and killed my family. I would try as hard as I could to send them to death in the worst possible fashion I could imagine. It’s only human. I do consider myself a follower of Christ (not yet Christ like, Christian, as it is a very hard road to walk.) and I do not consider it wrong to take revenge for such an act (I pray it stays only hypothetical). I’m sorry, but I think that I would love my family and (at this point) hypothetical wife to simply let their murder/rape go unpunished.
The Romans weren’t horribly immoral anymore than humans have been throughout the ages. It’s only our perception of immorality that changes. Besides, we do things in our modern culture which are just as ‘immoral’ or ‘worse’ as what the romans did. (i.e. biological/neurological/neuclear/suicide warfare, incest, rape, tyranny, religious/racial intolerance, hate crimes, threesomes (and _more_somes), political/moral apathy, crimes against children, etc. I could go on. aaanyway… the Romans weren’t that bad, but our perception/definition of ‘morality’ has certainly changed and been re-defined by our own dominant moral code.
that said, there’s nothing wrong with Christianity, but we can’t judge everybody by our own standards.