Chapter 9 | Table of
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The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia
W. M. Ramsay
1904
Chapter 10: The Province of Asia and the Imperial Religion
The Roman Province of Asia included most of the western half of Asia Minor, with the
countries or regions of Caria, Lydia, Phrygia, Mysia, and the coast-lands of the Troad,
Aeolis and Ionia. It was the earliest Roman possession on the continent of Asia. Conquered
by the Romans in the war against Antiochus the Great, it was given by them to their ally
Eumenes, King of Pergamum, at the peace which was concluded in 189 BC; and in 133 BC it
was bequeathed by his nephew and adopted son Attalus III to the great conquering people.
The real existence of this will, formerly suspected to be a mere invention of the Romans,
is now established by definite testimony. The King knew that the illegitimate Aristonicus
would claim the Kingdom, and that there was no way of barring him out except through the
strength of Rome.
Thus Asia had been a Roman Province for more than two hundred years when the Seven
Letters were written. Its history under Roman rule had been chequered. It was the
wealthiest region of the whole Roman Empire, and was therefore peculiarly tempting to the
greed of the average Roman official. Amid the misgovernment and rapacity that attended the
last years of the Republic, Asia suffered terribly. The Asiatics possessed money; and the
ordinary Roman, whose characteristic faults were greed and cruelty, shrank from no crime
in order to enrich himself quickly during his short tenure of office in the richest region
of the world. Hence the Province welcomed with the enthusiasm of people brought back from
death to life the advent of the Empire, which inaugurated an era of comparative peace,
order, and respect for property. In no part of the world, probably, was there such fervent
and sincere loyalty to the Emperors as in Asia. Augustus had been a saviour to the Asian
peoples, and they deified him as the Saviour of mankind, and worshipped him with the most
whole-hearted devotion as the God incarnate in human form, the "present deity."
He alone stood between them and death or a life of misery and torture. They hailed the
birthday of Augustus as the beginning of a new year, and worshipped the incarnate God in
public and in private.
In order to understand rightly the position of Christianity in Asia and the spirit of
the Seven Asian Letters, it is necessary to conceive clearly the means whereby the
Imperial policy sought to unify and consolidate the Province. There can be little doubt
that several of the features of Christianity were determined in Asia. Roman Provincial
unity, founded in a common religion, was the strongest idea in Asia, and it must
inevitably influence, whether directly or through the recoil from and opposition to it,
the growth of such an organisation as the Church in Asia, for the Christian Church from
the beginning recognised the political facts of the time and accommodated itself to them.
Meetings of representatives of the Asian cities were held at least as early as 95 BC,
and probably date from the time of the Pergamenian kings. Doubtless the kings tried to
make their kingdom a real unity, with a common feeling and patriotism, and not merely an
agglomeration of parts tied together under compulsion and external authority; and, if so,
they could attain this end only by instituting a common worship. In the case of the Asian
Commune a Pergamenian origin seems proved by the name of the representatives in the
official formula "it seemed good to the Hellenes in Asia." It appears improbable
that an assembly which had been formed by the Romans for diffusing Roman ideas would have
borne officially the name of "the Hellenes in Asia." But the Pergamenian kings
counted themselves the champions of Hellenism against Asiatic barbarism; and their
partisans in the cities were "the Hellenes."
Such common cults had always the same origin, viz., in an agreement among the persons
or cities concerned to unite for certain purposes, and to make certain deities witnesses
and patrons of their union. Thus every treaty between two cities had its religious side,
and involved the common performance of rites by representatives of both sides: these rites
might be performed either to the patron gods of the two cities (which was usual), or to
some god or gods chosen by common consent. The same process was applied when a larger body
of cities agreed (of course first of all by negotiations and treaty) to form a union.
Every such union of cities had its religious side and its religious sanction in rites
performed by representatives of all the cities. These representatives, as being chosen to
perform a religious duty, were priests of the common worship.
It is an easy step, though not a necessary one, to institute also city temples of the
same worship, so that the city may itself carry on the same ritual on its own behalf. All
that is necessary for the common worship is one sacred place where the meetings can be
held.
In the Pergamenian time the common cult was probably the worship of the typically
Pergamenian deities (whose worship also spread to some of the Asia cities, as is pointed
out later). The policy of Rome allowed free play to this religion, as it always did to any
social institution which was not disloyal and dangerous. But the Asian assembly soon began
to imitate the example set by Smyrna in 195 BC of worshipping the power of Rome; and from
95 BC onwards there occur cases of Asian cults of beneficent Roman officers (Scaevola, Q.
Cicero, etc.), as well as of similar municipal cults. Such an Asian cult could be
instituted only by an assembly of representatives of the Asian cities, and the old
Pergamenian institution thus served a Roman purpose. The name Commune occurs first in a
letter sent by M. Antony in 33 BC to "the Commune of the Hellenes of Asia"; the
older references give various names, implying always an assembly of Asian representatives.
It was Augustus who constituted the Commune finally, using its loyalty to Rome and himself
for an Imperial end.
In that agglomeration of various countries and nations, differing in race and in
speech, the one deep-seated unifying feeling arose from the common relation in which all
stood to the Emperor and to Rome. There was nothing else to hold the Province together in
a unity except the enthusiastic loyalty which all felt to the Roman Imperial government.
There was not then in any of the races that inhabited the Province a strong national
feeling to run counter to the Roman loyalty. It does not appear that Lydian or Phrygian
patriotism and national feeling had much power during the first two centuries of the
Province. Circumstances had long been such that national patriotic feeling could hardly be
called into existence. There was plenty of strong feeling and true loyalty among the
inhabitants of each city towards their own city. But Greek life and the Greek spirit,
while favourable to the growth of that municipal feeling, did not encourage a wider
loyalty. It remained for the Roman organisation and unifying power to widen the range of
loyalty; and the first important stage in this process came through that intense personal
devotion to Augustus as the Saviour of the civilised world and bearer of the Majesty of
Rome.
In the condition of human thought and religious conceptions that then prevailed, such
an intense feeling must take a religious form. Whatever deeply affected the minds of a
body of men, few or many, inevitably assumed a religious character. No union or
association of any kind was then possible except in a common religion, whose ritual
expressed the common feelings and purpose. Thus the growth of an Asian Provincial religion
of Rome and the Emperor was natural.
The Imperial policy took advantage of this natural growth, guided it, and regulated it,
but did not call it into existence. Augustus at first rather discouraged it--doubtless
because he dreaded lest its anti-republican character might offend Roman sentiment. But it
was too strong for him; and after a time he perceived the advantages that it offered, and
proceeded to utilise it as a political device, binding together the whole Province in a
common religious ceremonial, and a common strong feeling. The one and only Asian unity was
the Imperial cult. It was directed and elaborated by the Commune or Common Council of
Asia, a body which seems to have had more of the "representative" character than
any other institution of ancient times, and thus was the prototype of a Parliament. Asia
was divided into districts, apparently, and a certain number of cities had the title of
metropolis; but the details regarding the representation of the districts or the
metropoles in the Commune are unknown.
The relation of the Christian organisation in Asia to the Commune, or rather to the
tendency towards consolidation which took an Imperial form in the Commune, is brought out
in striking relief by several facts. The Commune was the common assembly of the Hellenes
of Asia. The tendency towards consolidation was a fact of Hellenism, not of the native
Anatolian spirit. Now it has been elsewhere shown that Christianity was at first far more
strenuously opposed to the native spirit than to the Hellenic. The one reference to the
Commune in the New Testament outside of the Apocalypse is in Acts 19:31, where certain
members of that body, "chief officers of Asia," are mentioned as friends
of St. Paul, and took his side against the mob of worshippers of Ephesian Artemis, a
typically Anatolian goddess.
Again Christianity in Asia expressed itself in Greek, not in any of the native
languages. Although the majority, probably, of the people of Phrygia spoke the Phrygian
language and a large number of them were entirely ignorant of Greek in the first century,
yet there is no evidence and no probability that Christianity ever addressed itself to
them in Phrygian. St. Paul avoided Phrygia, with the exception of the two cities in the
Phrygian Region of the Roman Province Galatia, viz., Antioch and Iconium (Acts 16:6). The
Church in Asia was Greek-speaking, and had become, by the fourth century, the most
powerful agent in making a knowledge of Greek almost universal, even in the rural parts of
the Province. The Greek character of the entire Church in its earlier stages--for even the
Church in Rome was mainly Greek in language until the middle of the second century--was
chiefly determined by the character of the Province Asia. The relation of the Province to
the Greek language therefore needs and deserves attention.
The Province of Asia included the most civilised and educated regions of the Asiatic
continent, ancient and famous Greek cities like Cyme, Colophon and Miletus, the realms of
former lines of monarchs like the Lydian kings at Sardis, the Attalid kings at Pergamum,
and the Carian kings at Halicarnassus. It was the most thoroughly Hellenised part of all
Anatolia or Asia Minor. The native languages had died out in its western parts, and been
replaced by Greek; Lydian had ceased to be spoken or known in Lydia, when Strabo wrote
about AD 20; Carian was then probably unknown in the western parts of Caria, though the
central and eastern districts were not so far advanced. Mysia, the northwestern region of
the Province, was probably in a similar condition to Caria, the west and the coasts
entirely Greek-speaking, the inner parts less advanced. Most thoroughly Anatolian in
character, and least affected by Greek civilisation, was Phrygia. West Phrygia and
especially the parts adjoining Lydia were most affected by Hellenism; whereas in the
centre and east the Greek language seems to have been hardly known outside the great
cities until the late second or the third century after Christ. Even in the western parts,
it is proved that in the rustic and rough region of Motella, not far from the Lydian
frontier, Greek was strange to many of the country people at least as late as the second
century. In the extreme southwest of Phrygia, in the district of Cibyra, Strabo mentions
that four languages were spoken in the first century, viz., Greek, Pisidian, Solymian and
Lydian. The last had died out in Lydia, but survived in the speech of a body of Lydian
colonists in Cibyra, just as Gaelic is more widely preserved and more exclusively spoken
in parts of Canada today than it is in the Highlands of Scotland.
But the great cities of the Province Asia (as distinguished from the rural parts),
except a few of the most backward Phrygian towns, were pretty thoroughly Greek in the
first century after Christ; and everywhere throughout the Province all education was
Greek, and there was probably no writing except in Greek. It seems to have been only in
the second century that the native Anatolian feeling revived, and writing began to be
practised in the native tongues; at least all inscriptions in the Phrygian language
(except those of the ancient kingdom, before the Persian conquest) seem to be later than
about AD 150.
Religion, too, was in outward appearance Hellenised in the cities; and the Anatolian
deities were there commonly called by Greek names. But this was only a superficial
appearance; the ritual and the character of the religion continued Anatolian even in the
cities, while in the rural districts there was not even an outward show of Hellenisation.
Thus, in the Province Asia, there was a great mixture of language, manners and
religion. Apart form the Roman unity, the various nations were as far from being really
uniform in character and customs and thought, as they were from being one in blood. The
Imperial Government did not attempt to compel the various peoples to use Latin or any
common language: it did not try to force Roman law or habits and ways on the Province,
still less to uproot the Greek civilisation. It was content to leave the half-Greek or
Graeco-Asiatic law and civilisation of Asia undisturbed. But it discouraged the national
distinctions and languages; it recognised Greek, but not Phrygian or Pisidian or Carian;
it tried to make a unified Graeco-Roman Asia Provincia out of that agglomeration of
countries. The attempt failed ultimately; but it was made; it was the ruling feature of
administration in the first century; and the whole trend of Roman feeling and loyalty in
all the provinces of Asia Minor during the first century was in favour of the Provincial
idea and against the old national divisions. The term which Strabo uses to represent in
Greek the Latin Asia Provincia expressed the true Roman point of view. He speaks of
the Province as "the nation of Asia": i.e., the Roman Province took the place of
any national divisions: loyalty considered that there was only one nation in Asia, that
the Province was the nation.
As time went on and the past pre-Imperial miseries were forgotten, the fervour of
loyalty, which had for a time given some real strength to the Imperial religion, began to
cool down; and there was no longer strength in it to hold the Province together, while
there was a growth in the strength of national feeling. Polemon the Sophist of the time of
Hadrian and Pius was called "the Phrygian," because he was born of a Laodicean
family; and when Ionians were using such a nickname, Phrygians naturally began to retort
by assuming it as a mark of pride. It was Hadrian probably who saw that the Roman ideal
was not strong enough in itself without support from local and old national feeling; and
from his time onwards the Imperial policy ceased to be so hostile to the old national
distinctions. He did not try to break up the vast Roman Provinces; but there are traces of
an attempt to recognise national divisions: e.g., the new Province of the Tres Eparchiae
was left in fact and name a loose aggregate of three countries, Cilicia, Isauria,
Lycaonia, which kept their national names and had probably three distinct Communes or
Councils. The union of Asia was already old; but he tried to strengthen it in a way
characteristic of ancient feeling, viz., by giving it a support in Anatolian religion as
well as in the Imperial religion.
During the first century the State religion was simply the worship of the Emperor or of
Rome and the Emperor. But that was only a sham religion, a matter of outward show and
magnificent ceremonial. It was almost devoid of power over the heart and will of man, when
the first strong sense of relief from misery had grown weak, because it was utterly unable
to satisfy the religious needs and cravings of human nature. From a very early time there
seems to have existed in the Eastern Provinces a tendency to give more reality to this
Imperial religion by identifying the Divine Emperor with the local god, whatever form the
latter had: thus the religious feelings and habits of the people in each district were
associated to some extent with the Imperial divinity and the State religion. Perhaps it
was Domitian who first saw clearly that the Imperial religion required to be reinforced by
enlisting in its service the deep-seated reverence of men for their local god. In the
second century the custom of associating the Emperor with the local deity in a common
religious ritual seems to have spread much more widely, and the old tendency to make
certain local gods into gods of the Province became more marked. Under Hadrian a silver
coinage for the whole of Asia was struck with the types, not merely of the Pergamenian
temple of Augustus, but also of the Ephesian Diana, the two Smyrnaean goddesses Nemesis,
the Sardian Persephone, etc., thus giving those deities a sort of Provincial standing.
This class of coins was struck under the authority of the Commune. But it was in the
Flavian persecution that this approximation between the native religions and the Imperial
worship began first to be important. This approximation put an end to the hope, which St.
Paul had cherished, that the conquest of the Empire by the new faith might be accomplished
peacefully. It now became apparent that war was inevitable, and its first stage was the
Flavian persecution.
Figure 7: The Temple of Augustus at Pergamum. Coin of the
Commune of Asia
In Asia the Ephesian religion of Artemis was the only native cultus which had by its
own natural strength spread widely through the Province. Before the Roman period the royal
character of Pergamum had given strength to its deities, especially Asklepios the Saviour
and Dionysos the Guide (Kathegemon). The latter was the royal god, and the royal family
was regarded as sprung from him, and the reigning king was his representative and
incarnation. Asklepios, on the other hand, was the god of the city Pergamum. Hence in
several cities even in distant Phrygia the worship of those two deities was introduced;
and after the Roman period had begun, the respect felt for the capital of Asia was
expressed by paying honour to its god. This is very characteristic of ancient feeling. The
patron god is the representative of his city, just as the angel in the Seven Letters
stands for his Church. Municipal patriotism was expressed by worshipping the god of the
city; and other parts of Asia recognised the superior rank of Pergamum by worshipping
Asklepios the Saviour.
Figure 8: Ephesus and Sardis represented by their goddesses
In Roman time, also, the natural advantages of Ephesus had full play. Ephesus was
brought into trading relations with many cities; many strangers experienced the protection
and prayed for the favour of the Ephesian goddess. Thus, for example, she is recognised
alongside of the native god Zeus and the Pergamenian Asklepios in the last will and
testament of a citizen of Akmonia, dated AD 94. Many cities of Asia made agreements with
each other for mutual recognition of their cults and festivals and common rights of all
citizens of both cities at the festivals; and such agreements were usually commemorated by
striking what are called "alliance-coins," on which the patron deities of the
two cities are represented side by side. The custom shows a certain tendency in Asia
towards an amalgamation and fusing of local religions; and Ephesus concluded more
"alliances" of this kind than any other city of Asia. Hence in AD 56 the
uneducated devotees of Artemis of Ephesus spoke of their goddess, "whom all Asia
and the civilised world worshippeth."
The machinery of Roman government in the Province--the Proconsul (who resided mostly in
the official capital, though he landed and embarked at Ephesus and often made a progress
through the important cities of the Province) and other officers--does not directly affect
the Seven Letters, and need not detain us.
More important is the Provincial religious organisation, directed by the Commune. The
one original temple of the Asian cultus at Pergamum was soon found insufficient to satisfy
the demonstrative loyalty of the Asians. Moreover, the jealous rivalry of other great
cities made them seek for similar distinctions. Asian temples were built in Smyrna
(Tiberius), Ephesus, Sardis, etc. Each temple was a meeting-place of the Commune; and
where the Commune met, games "common to Asia" were celebrated (such as those at
which Polycarp suffered in Smyrna). The Commune was essentially a body charged with
religious duties, but religion was closely interwoven with civil affairs, and the Commune
had other work: it had control of certain revenues, and must therefore have had an annual
budget, it struck coins, etc.
The most interesting side of Imperial history is the growth of ideas, which have been
more fully developed later. Universal citizenship, universal religion, a universal Church,
were ideas which the Empire was slowly, sometimes quite unconsciously, working out or
preparing for. The Commune contained the germ on one side of a Parliament of
representatives, on another side of a religious hierarchy.
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