The Cults of the Roman Empire

As the cliche goes, this book often loses the forest for the trees. Full of boring and mind-numbing detail, it belongs in every scholarly or specialist library, but if you are neither a scholar or a specialist then you will probably be much happier with Burkert (Ancient Mystery Cults, Harvard U. Press, 1987) or Godwin (Mystery Religions in the Ancient World, Thames & Hudson 1981). Twenty years later (2008), I do feel that the time is ripe for a new popular survey of this subject, and hope that someone else will pick up the ball!

I used this text in preparing a 4 session workshop on ancient mystery religions (www.lukeion.org). I appreciate that this text is thourough and attempted a balanced position on the death of these religions and the rise of Christianity. I believe Turcan did a better job with task one than with task two. The primary drawback to this text is that it has the less-than-stimulating literary style of an older encyclopedia. Final summation: great reference work if you know the larger issues up for debate on Roman Cults. Excellent, scholarly, one-stop shopping for most cults of interest.

Turcan has given us the needed updating on Franz Cumont's work. The Cults of the Roman Empire, for the most part, avoids the unwarrented history-of-religions inferences Cumont made. Turcan sticks mainly to geographical evidence and iconographic description and analysis. This book is a necessary companion to Keith Hopkins' "A World Full of Gods" in that is conveys the individual and collective power of the so-called Oriental cults, which, in fact, were Romanized when they reached their zenith in the Antonine Age. According to Turcan the oriental gods who had the greatest following were Magna Mater (Cybele) and Isis. Mithras occupied a second tier in the popularity pole as did Jupiter Dolichenus. Other deities interested primarily local cultists. The chapter on Dionysus and his rites is especially interesting in that the author details the ritual and presents instructive data on the belief in afterlife. Turcan does stray from the positivist historian to offer his psychological explanations for the victory of christianity over the cults. While sympathizing with his views, I think he has glossed over the more important socio-political explanation: episcopal christianity alone provided the strongest social cohesiveness enforced by ecclesiastical sanctions. It was this strength that moved Constantine to attempt to co-opt the episcopal church rather than throw the future of his empire in with Mithras or Isis. The Cults of the Roman Empire is a must for students of christian origens. If they ignore the evidence contained in this volume, they will not fully appreciate some of the dynamic possessed by the victor.