It was the middle of winter and the north wind was strong and it was
icy cold, and the pebbles were fixed to one another by the frost so that
they seemed like a continuous piece of ice....When the divine manifes-
tation [i.e., Asclepius’ to Aristides, commanding the ordeal/cure] was
announced, friends escorted us, and various doctors...And there was also
another great crowd, for some distribution happened to be taking place
beyond the gates. And everything was visible from the bridge....When
we were at the river, there was no need for anyone to encourage us.
But being still full of warmth from the vision of the God, I cast off my
clothes, and not wanting to be massaged, flung myself where the river
was deepest. Next, as in a pool of very gentle and tempered water, I
passed my time swimming all about....When I came out, all my skin had
a rosy hue and my body was comfortable everywhere. And there was a
great shout from those present and those coming up, shouting that cel-
ebrated phrase, “great is Asclepius!” (Aristides, Or.48.19–21; trans. Behr
1968, 227)Note the way in which even the rigorous compensator becomes a joyful duty.
Note, too, how the admiring throng endorses both compensator and reward,
boosting through its collective response the value of the Asclepian firm
and its products. Here, indeed, pagan religious behaviour within a major
public cult does appear to conform to the Starkian model. But it does so only
because, exceptionally, cult activity is here a matter of personal religious
option. An autonomous religious consumer makes his choices, pays the
price, and enjoys the product. The necessary conditions and players are in
place for the classic economic model to work.
The incident just described also illustrates to perfection why the “free
rider problem” is an irrelevance to public paganism. In Stark’s model, free
riders pose a problem because they consume a religion’s product oppor-
tunistically as occasion serves and without real commitment (1997, 174–76).
The agnostic’s church wedding is a classic modern example. In ancient
public paganism, however, the “free ride” was precisely the point. Ordinary
folk were not expected to play an active, committed role. Instead, what was
required was that one should honour the gods by participating, passively,
in their festivals: attend, admire, applaud, and consume; in other words,
accept the free ride proffered by a munificent patron. We should observe
the exemplary behaviour of the crowd on the bridge and the river banks
at Pergamum, much of which had turned out, as it was supposed to, for
a “distribution,” one of those ubiquitous dividends of the euergetic
machine. The free rider, far from being a problem, was an essential com-
ponent of Greco-Roman religion. After all, the entire timocratic enterprise