Conflation of Rational Theology and Revelations
After Varro, the most important Roman theologian was Cornelius Labeo, probably
a Neoplatonist of the third centuryad. He often followed the ways of Varro. The
Etrusca disciplinawas again proposed as a serious form of ritual and divination;
etymology in a Platonic form was a good means to know the nature of gods; but
an oracle of Apollo could also provide us with unquestionable answers even about
the Jewish god Iaô (YHWH) and his identification with the sun and with Greco-
Roman gods (frag. 15 Mastandrea =Macr.Sat.1.18.19–21). In the second half of
the third century Porphyry wrote the De philosophia ex oraculis haurienda(fragments
ed. G. Wolff ), in which the oracles were evaluated as the main source of theology.
The theological oracles par excellencewere the Chaldean ones.
Pythagorean, Democritean, and Chaldean doctrines were supposed to be scientific
means to know the gods, but the Roman theologians of the imperial age had to face
the revealed verities and often resorted to syntheses of both forms of knowledge:
rational argumentation and revelation. Starting from the end of the republican age
a number of prophets, sibyls, and divine men of the eastern Hellenistic world
came into contact with Roman civilization, and their influence grew more and more.
The most influential were the heretical Jews, among whom many thaumaturgists,
exorcists, givers of apocalyptic prophecies, and followers of Solomonic wisdom were
able to persuade a number of Romans to believe in their doctrines.
Both pagan thinkers such as Apollonius of Tyana (Philostratus, Vita Apollonii) or
Alexander of Abonouteichos (Lucian, Alexander), and Christian Gnostic leaders such
as Marcellina the Carpocratian (Irenaeus, Adversus haereses1.25.6) or Marcus the
Valentinian, also resorted to Pythagoreanism in order to give a greater authority to
their philosophy, to their supposed miracles, or even to their Gnostic Christian faith.
The Pythagorean legend of Helen was used by Simon Magus in a new form of heret-
ical Judaism. The ways of reshaping the Greco-Roman religion and mythology were
many and the possibilities offered by such syncretisms were virtually endless.
In the same period, that is, by the end of the republic and especially in the im-
perial age, works on substances, stars, and gods circulated in the Greek and Roman
world under the signature of Zoroaster, Ostanes, and other famous Magi and pre-
tended to unveil the secrets of both the material and heavenly worlds. The Jewish
apocrypha, on the other hand, were rooted in the Jewish religion, in its orthodox
or heretic form, and the Persian ones were perhaps connected with Mithraism. Even
the Christians produced a few works on the occult properties of substances and animals,
such as the Physiologusor the Kestoiof Iulius Africanus (ed. J. R. Vieillefond) or
on astrology, such as the Hermippus(eds. G. Kroll and P. Viereck). A large major-
ity of Chaldean, supposedly Persian, Christian, and Jewish heretical theologians agreed
that the sun was the leader and guide of all heavenly bodies (a Pythagorean,
Chaldean, and Stoic theory), and that a supreme, spiritual, and unknowable god mani-
fested himself in the form of a spiritual and shining Man (a Mesopotamian, Jewish,
Christian, Gnostic, and perhaps Mithraic belief ), similar to the sun, or in the form of
a polymorphic creature (according to Orphic, Egyptian, and several Gnostic traditions).
384 Attilio Mastrocinque