RELIGION 197citizens, as soldiers and as members of the governing class itself, was not
matched by a broadening of the base of the state religion. The offi cial
response to innovation was either negative or, more often, passive.
Unauthorized religious cults and organizations that could not be controlled
or eradicated were simply allowed to exist. This attitude falls far short of the
policy of toleration with which the Roman state is usually credited.^19
Meanwhile, the steadfastly maintained impermeability of the ancestral
religion deprived it of the infusion of strength it needed to face a new foreign
cult that was monotheistic, universal, exclusive and intolerant.
The rise of Christianity
Christianity was the main benefi ciary of the failure of the defenders of the
state religion to control innovation. Christians invited persecution by their
denial of the gods of Rome, which earned them the label of atheists.^20 They
even refused to take an oath by the emperor’s guardian spirit, thus giving
rise to the suspicion that they did not accept his earthly supremacy. However,
no emperor before Decius in the mid- third century tried to root out the
Christians. Instead, they were inclined to follow the policy established under
Trajan not to hunt down the Christians ( conquirendi non sunt , Pliny, Ep.
10.96). When the authorities did become involved in confrontation with
Christians, this was in individual, local contexts, where law and order, the
supreme Roman desiderata, were placed in jeopardy, thanks to the agitations
of opponents among the pagans and less often among the Jews. Justin
Martyr claimed that the Christians were innocuous ( Apol. 1.68). Melito,
bishop of Sardis, produced the bold, sophistic argument for the benefi t of
Marcus Aurelius that Christianity was worthy of protection because its
fortunes and those of the Principate were linked in history from a shared
beginning and mutually guaranteed:
Our philosophy fi rst grew up among the barbarians, but its full fl ower
came among your nation in the great reign of your ancestor Augustus,
and became an omen of good to your empire, for from that time the
power of the Romans became great and splendid. You are now his happy
successor, and shall be so along with your son, if you protect the
philosophy that grew up with the empire and began with Augustus. Your
ancestors nourished it along with other cults, and the greatest proof that
our doctrine fl ourished for good along with the empire in its noble
beginning, is the fact that it met no evil in the reign of Augustus, but on
the contrary everything splendid and glorious according to the wishes of
all men. (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4.26.7ff.)Nevertheless, Christians did become from time to time the centre of civil
disturbance. Insofar as a religious factor lay at the root of the problem, it