The Age of Martyrs: Christianity from Diocletian (284) to Constantine (337)

Description

In The Age of Martyrs; the famous Catholic historian Abbot Giuseppe Ricciotti records the epochal events of Roman history from the rise of Diocletian (284) to the death of Constantine the Great (337); a period which witnessed the last and greatest of the 10 persecutions of the Christians by the Roman government. Impr. 318 pgs;

This passage by Abbot Ricciotti answered many of my questions regarding Roman polytheism and their worship of "tolerance" / religious indifferentism (an ubiquitous heresy today):

1. …the whole of polytheistic teaching [of the Romans] was being transformed. Already some fifty years before Diocletian [c. 284], a kind of hierarchical confederation had unconsciously been made which collected the innumerable deities in one list and put them all under one supreme god. People were asking what all these gods and goddesses, so various and often so contradictory, did really add up to? Were they a great crowd of deities who ruled the universe, each one independent of the other? Or was there perhaps a quid unum which was common to all of them? If there was, then maybe they could all be reduced to such an all-embracing supreme principle? Such questions did not really lead to monotheism. Philosophers sought to fit all these deities into a system which was reasonable, compact, and harmonious. They were trying to build a solid pyramid with one apex only. …

1. There were many who received this solution gratefully, and added proof and example from nature itself. It was sufficient to raise the eyes to the sky and to consider the function of the sun in the material world. Did it not animate everything?— Was it not the great giver of light and life? Other founts of life and energy were to be found in nature, but these were all derived from the supreme source of the sun without which everything would fall into inertia, into darkness and death. These lesser sources were subordinate to the highest source and acted as so many mirrors reflecting more or less faithfully the greatest light and did not differ from it substantially.

The same thing was true, they said, in the world of the gods. There were many gods and goddesses, but they were all partial reflections of the highest god Sol and whatever could be predicated of them could in the ultimate analysis also be predicated of Sol.

The Emperor Aurelian had been an enthusiastic supporter of the cult of Sol. The son of a priestess of Sol, he had constructed in Rome, in 274, a sumptuous temple to Deus Sol dominus imperii Romani , uniting in this god the different sun gods of the Greeks and the Orientals (Helios, Baal) and placing them in the official Roman pantheon. He himself, as the emperor, was the representative of this god with the title Deus et Dominus and was shown on coins in the act of receiving a globe from Sol, to indicate his world-wide rule.

This linking up of the Emperor with the sun-god— often identified or confused with Apollo— went on for a long time; even Diocletian, when he killed Aper, called the god Sol as a witness of his own innocence (par. 2). In doing so he did not deny the Roman gods headed by Jupiter. Jupiter seemed more suited to political affairs and Diocletian himself later chose the name of Jupiter (par. 5), whereas the judicial business of the condemnation of Aper was better suited to Sol, the source of all light. The two gods, in any case, were very much alike and the greatest star in nature corresponded with the greatest god in the Roman pantheon.

Regarding tolerance, ibid. §30 says:

1. …During the early years of his [Diocletian's] rule he had no hostility toward religions which were not Roman and, in fact, regarded them with that ancient Roman tolerance which derived partly from theoretical skepticism and partly from practical prudence.