that a pagan formed new religious alliances usually did not entail his or her
abandonment of old ones. For example, we have the case of Aelius Aristides,
who, like most pagans of the first century CE, was an eclectic worshipper
of many gods. Although he switched primary allegiance from the Olympians
(Zeus, Apollo, etc.) and Egyptian gods (Sarapis and Isis) to Asclepius, when
the latter god seemed most effective in his personal cures, Aristides always
remained reverent toward the many other gods of his society, and offered
them the usual worship, consisting of specific acts of piety such as sacri-
fice, prayer, and inscriptions (Behr 1968; Muir 1995). In other words, reli-
gion in the ancient world was more manifest in one’s actions than one’s
inner thoughts. Modern scholars often overlook this fact.
In fact, there were explanations for plagues on both the pagan and
the Christian side of things. As Stark notes, the Christian explanation was
that their own sufferings were trials and tests and, sometimes, a speedy
ticket to the blessed afterlife. Christians usually saw pagan suffering as a
judgment or punishment visited by God on outsiders for their impiety and
persecution of Christians. Like Christians, pagans thought that plagues
and disasters were the result of the gods punishing humans for some act
of impiety or breach of social-religious laws, for example, neglect of proper
sacrifices and prayers, polluting acts, sacrilege (Walton 1894, 50; Amund-
sen and Ferngren 1982a, 70, 72, 83).
Was Christianity alone in offering a hopeful view of the future? Stark
assumes that this is the case. Stark’s statement (1996, 88) that “the pagan
gods offered no salvation. They might be bribed to perform various services,
but the gods did not provide an escape from mortality,” nonetheless does
not jibe with what we know of Greco-Roman religion, particularly the Mys-
teries. Admittedly, people in the Greco-Roman world held a variety of views
regarding the afterlife. The average person saw life after death as a shad-
owy existence. Heroes and the elite might expect a more glorious existence
in a paradise. Nonetheless, the initiates of various mystery religions hoped
for a better-than-average afterlife, and this benefit appears to have been one
of the attractions of the Mysteries.
Similarly, Stark’s assertion (1996, 86) that “the Christian teaching that
God loves those who love him was alien to pagan beliefs,” is an inaccurate
generalization. The pagan religions likely offered practitioners all the affec-
tively satisfying aspects we associate with any deeply religious experience:
as Stark himself suggests, “paganism, after all, was an active, vital part of
the rise of Hellenic and Roman empires and therefore musthave had the
capacity to fulfill basic religious impulses—at least for centuries” (1996, 94;
emphasis his). We have examples of personal devotion in mysteries (for
“Look How They Love One Another” 217