The pagan holy man in late antique society

Garth Fowden

289 citations0/0 files storedThe Journal of Hellenic Studies

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Classical Antiquity Studies Classical Philosophy and Thought Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies

Abstract

A Love and desire, to sequester a Mans Selfe, for a Higher Conversation … is found, to have been falsely and fainedly, in some of the Heathen; AsEpimenidesthe Candian,Numathe Roman,Empedoclesthe Sicilian, andApolloniusof Tyana; And truly and really, in divers of the Ancient Hermits, and Holy Fathers of the Church. F. Bacon,Of friendship The holy men of Greco-Roman paganism will never inspire either the reverence or the fascinated horror that the ascetics and monks of early Christianity have commanded ever since they first impinged on the common mind in the time of Antony and Athanasios. Writing for a Christian audience, Francis Bacon could dismiss the semi-mythical Epimenides and Numa, and notorious exhibitionists like Empedokles and Apollonios, as self-evident imposters; while in our own less devout times the abundance of the hagiographical literature ensures that the Christian saint will preoccupy scholars for the indefinite future, if only as the unwitting patron of a mass of historical and sociological data that is only just beginning to be analysed. Yet this is poor excuse for neglecting the pagan holy man, who came in the later Roman empire to play a conspicuous part in his own religious tradition, and also affords instructive points of comparison with his Christian competitors. This paper offers a first orientation towards such wider perspectives, by investigating the social and historical consequences entailed by the distinctive pagan concept of personal holiness. It will be suggested that a tendency to associate holiness with philosophical learning (Section I) determined the essentially urban (II) and privileged (III) background of the pagan holy man, and also encouraged his gradual drift to the periphery of society (IV).

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References

1971The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity 1979Antiochus and the Late Academy 1978A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book II 1962Anonymous prolegomena to Platonic philosophy 2006A Commentary on Horace, "Odes" Book III 1963The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century 1963The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century 1973Essays on Religion and the Ancient World

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1997The Cambridge Ancient History 1997Senators and senates 1997Rural life in the later Roman empire 2000Art and architecture 1997Emperors, government and bureaucracy 2005Developments in provincial and local administration 2005Maximinus to Diocletian and the ‘crisis’

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