fully concede Christianity’s competitive edge. Its success in generating
brand loyalty is undeniable, and Stark’s demonstration of how this was
achieved, both through sharing and caring in the harsh environment of the
ancient cities (1997, chapters 4 and 7; cf. Muir, chapter 10) and through the
rewards and even the demands of the Christian life (1997, chapters 2 and
8), is masterful and moving. Somewhat confusingly, both the otherworldly
rewards extended by Christianity and the terms and conditions set for
their achievement are termed “compensators.” But Stark’s analysis of the
way in which compensators (in both senses) functioned to enhance group
coherence, to mitigate the “free rider” problem, and to drive up the perceived
value of Christian membership (its market capitalization, as it were), is
both elegant and convincing. My point is simply that certain pagan firms
were similar, if finally less effective, competitors in the market; they, too,
put collective goods on offer, though in most cases their product lines were
more limited than Christianity’s.
It is increasingly now recognized that much of religion in Greco-Roman
society, outside of the public cults (a huge other world that we shall look
at later), was mediated through local non- or sub-elite groups known (to
use a modern label) as voluntary associations (see Kloppenborg and Wil-
son 1996; especially Kloppenborg 1996; Wilson 1996; also Beck 1996b;
Remus 1996). Philip Harland (chapter 2) has admirably described these
associations and their role in the vigorous religious life of the post-classi-
calpolis.Essentially, voluntary associations were clubs, instituted for a com-
mon purpose, sometimes for clearly religious ends, such as the cells of
Mithraism, sometimes for more secular (or what we would call secular)
ends, such as the trade guilds. It would be a mistake, however, to discount
all the latter on the grounds that they were not real religious phenomena
(cf. Harland 1999). Granted, the self-styled “worshippers of Diana and
Antinous” at Lanuvium constituted a savings society for the funerals of its
members (CILXIV 2112, trans. MacMullen and Lane 1992, 66–69), and the
Iobacchoi at Athens a dining club (IGII 1368, trans. MacMullen and Lane
1992, 69–72). Nevertheless, these things were done under divine patronage.
Consequently, to their participants they were self-evidently religious enter-
prises. Besides, in the former, a decent funeral is itself a religious product;
so, in the latter, is partying—when the god so honoured is Dionysus. There
is more than a whiff of puritan disapproval in Stark’s characterization of
pagan good cheer; likewise pagan “lack of public reverence” (1997, 198–201).
Reprehensible though these features of paganism may have been—and
reprehended they certainly were by Christian contemporaries—they are
notipso factosigns of competitive weakness. The Iobacchoi, moreover, did
The Religious Market of the Roman Empire 237