Augury, the Syballine prophecies, oracles, haruspex etc all played an important role in Roman society. Major decisions of state were often subject to augury and liver inspections etc.
Why did those institutions lose importance over the centuries and indirectly open the door to foreign mystery cults like Mithraism and Christianity? Fedora tippers will say it was forced top down, christaboos will claim the strength of self evident argument etc but what were the societal forces that led to the old traditions being abandoned?
It was women. I'm not sure why so many people overlook it when it's well attested, Christianity replaced paganism because of women. Urbanite aristocratic ladies got enamored with weird foreign plebeian cults and eventually ended up dragging their powerful husbands into them too. It's similar to modern society when western women convert to buddhism or islam just because it's fashionable, but on a much larger scale.
Julian Garcia
Traditional Roman institutions really started to change during the 3rd Century. The shift from Principate to Dominate came as part of a much wider change in society, which is reflected in religion. The increased reliance on institutional authority didn't really gel with the decentralised nature of Greco-Roman paganism.
Isaac Carter
I have heard the argument that the only reason Mithraism didn't win out over Christianity was that women weren't allowed to join.
I think another part may have been the organised charity and poor relief lent itself well to Roman pleb life as they were used to living on food handouts.
Christopher Morris
do you have anything to back up what you said or are you just speculating by taking modern cultural traditions and placing them on the past?
Aiden Campbell
>inb4 thread degenerates into argument about Julian and a wild /pol/ appears blaming djoos.
To be fair if it weren't for women the astrology industry would probably collapse.
Evan Morales
right so this does go over in detail why women would be attracted to early Christianity, which nobody is contesting. it does not say anything about the earlier proposed idea that women dragged their husbands into converting on a scale so large that Christianity took over the Empire
Elijah Hernandez
i don't understand what that has to do with anything in this thread
Isaac Price
What kind of woman converts to Islam? Islam BTFO women at every turn.
Wyatt Reed
>In contrast, Roman concepts of the afterlife were varied and sometimes vague. Roman gods were also deeply fallible and their attitudes to humans ambiguous, while Christianity promised a perfect, loving god.
Interesting, Roman afterlife was a little vague, The Orphic mystery cult seems specifically aimed at remedying this by introducing post mortem judgment and the promise of a better afterlife through leading a virtuous life.
Hudson Allen
Who is in charge of the household, hangs about with slaves all day and raises the next generation of Roman elites?
Luis Edwards
Women love Alpha Muslim men. That's why white European women flock to Syria to be ISIS sex slaves.
Angel Moore
Lindsay Lohan converted to islam so yeah the woman pretty much has to be a retarded cunt.
Ryder Thompson
Women buy into all kinds of dumb "spiritual" shit
Aiden Thomas
the man was in charge of the household nobody interacted with the slaves outside of telling them what to do Nurses (usually Greek) raised the children of elites
Joshua Torres
Yeah but who ran the house while the man was away on business, campaign or other pursuits?
Slaves weren't just meek cooks and cleaners, some were a part of the family in the sense that a pet might be. Many were teachers, skilled craftsmen or otherwise talented. It depends on the master but people would inevitably form some relations with their slaves that weren't like the slavery meme. Being a slave could be pretty comfy.
Those nurses when used weren't reposnible for their upbringing and making major decisions about the child's life.
Lincoln Cruz
What Patrician lady would convert to Christianity when paganism was far more inclusive and respectful of the feminine. Point is women are poor critical thinkers. Fuck the reals, all about the feels.
Grayson Reyes
There were plenty of female roles in Greek and and Roman religion, you tard. Christianity doesn't let women do anything but be good to their husbands and keep their mouth shut during service. It's the best religion, dawg, sorry
Michael Carter
>St.Luke,who is generally accepted to be the author of Acts, had the opposite intention of Celsus to create a positive impression of Christianity by portraying it as the choice of the intellectually superior: he was biased also. Perhaps we would expect him, then, to omit female converts, since women were believed to be intellectually inferior to men in most cultures at that time.
>he was biased also The fucking irony. You did not just fucking link me to a 20 year old's blog post as a reference. kys
Thomas Bailey
Those cats are weird with their ears.
Jonathan Roberts
Slaves had tiers. Comfy skilled workers and horrible farm labour/miners.
Charles Perez
Constantine. Maybe that's just downplaying the role o the Roman people themselves but I think it was mostly down to him.
Brayden Mitchell
Christianity wasn't always so sexist
There were female apostles and deacons in Paul's church.
His statements about women being silent in church is considered by most scholars to be a later insertion and the epistles to Timothy wholesale forgeries.
See Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities for more
Nathaniel Roberts
Wrong.
Brandon Price
>(((Ehrman)))
Xavier Walker
Paganism and institutions such as the vestal virgins were simply destroyed because Christians had managed to wiggle their way to the top. By the time of Constantine the great and even Theodosius, Christianity wasn't the majority religion in the Roman Empire as a whole. They were just a vocal minority. They did eventually do stuff like close the olympics which had pagan roots but common people lived as they had before. It wasn't until the mid 1800's where literacy and bibles become widespread, that you could call Europeans and their societies Christians. Before that and after the fall of Rome, they were basically still just pagans.
Noah Richardson
great posts, really love those sources you brought to the discussion they really added to the quality of the thread
Jayden Morris
The Crisis of the Third Century pretty much demolished the Roman people's trust in almost every traditional institution. Even the ending of the Crisis of the Third Century was just another dagger in Roman Tradition's back; it ends with an Illyrian pretty much murdering the competition then declaring himself to be the master and god of the whole world and asserting the primacy of the sun in a bizarre and notably oriental turn. Mind you, some 26 people had held the title of Emperor and every last one of them had been officially declared Emperor by the Senate.
With the complete economic ruin that occurred during the Crisis came a drop in pretty much all religious function. Roman religion was concentrated on what was simply put paying the gods and their intermediaries for a service. No money, no sacrifices and feasts. Many of these religious activities were publicly funded by the wealthy but the Crisis hit everyone hard. The public feasts ground to a halt. The only religion that didn't suffer from this was Christianity both because early Christians took any chance they could get to become martyrs (Burning down buildings was always good for this) and also because Christianity was already at rock fucking bottom and couldn't get any worse.
The resulting power gap lead to Christians wiggling their way into bureaucratic and administrative positions. The persecutions of Diocletian and Galerius just made Christians pitied instead of actually routing them. After Constantine took power he found Christians to be close allies in the administration, and Christianity in the Roman bureaucracy flourished under his patronage. To demonstrate just how firm the Christian-Bureaucrat connection was, one of the first things Julian did was kicked Christians out of the Roman administration; he was loved by the still pagan majority, but quickly found that he'd fired the majority of people actually running the Empire leading to a mass hiring of new, Pagan, officials.
Colton White
Things like oracles and prophesies diminished in importance as the empire advanced because you had fairly accurate reports of events in faraway lands coming across the Roman roads, and the sorcerers just didn't get things right as often.
Hudson Scott
OP here, thanks for the long answer, have plenty to research now! Muchos appreciado.
Matthew Perry
And your point is what, nigger? That women cannot convert to a religion which requires their submission?
