Civilized Piety

The Rhetoric of <I>Pietas</I> in the Pastoral Epistles and the Roman Empire

T. Christopher Hoklotubbe

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781481307192
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Early Christians in Asia Minor had to navigate the troubled waters of Roman social, political, and economic life while also preserving their faith. The church faced a double threat: Greeks and Romans viewed Christianity as a barbaric and potentially seditious superstition and, at the same moment, wealthy Christian benefactors, and their client teachers, were both perceived to threaten theintegrity of the Christian community.

Christopher Hoklotubbe investigates how the author of the Pastoral Epistles (1, 2 Timothy and Titus) strategically appealed to the Greek and Roman virtues of piety ( eusebeia, pietas ) to ease these external and internal sociocultural threats. The Pastoral Epistles' rhetoric of piety—a term not found in the genuine Pauline epistles—becomes pointed when read alongside ancient discourses on piety from Roman imperial propaganda, civic benefaction/patronage, and moral philosophy. As Hoklotubbe demonstrates, piety was rhetorically potent in the efforts of the Pastoral Epistles to present the fledgling Christian communities in a compelling cultural light, as well aseffortsto unite communities around a sociallyconservativevision of the household of God. Civilized Piety reveals the value of pietas within an ideological marketplace of emperors, benefactors, and philosophers, all of whom contend with one another to monopolize cultural prestige. The Pastoral Epistles, by employing a virtue so highly esteemed by forces hostile to Christianity, manifest a deep desire to establish good order within the church as well as to foster goodwill with the church's non-Christian neighbors.

1

Piety in Caesar’s House

After the Roman emperor Augustus’ death on September 2/3, 14 C.E., and in accordance with his will, his Res gestae divi Augusti (Accomplishments of the Divine Augustus) were memorialized across the Roman Empire. Within the capital they were read before the Senate, engraved upon two bronze tablets, and inscribed upon pillars that may have marked an entrance gate into the mausoleum located at the Campus Martius adjacent to the Tiber River. Across Rome’s conquered provinces the Res gestae were copied in both Latin and Greek upon the walls of provincial sebasteia (temples dedicated to the imperial cult) and other monuments honoring Augustus and the imperial family. The most complete extant copies come from cites located in the province of Galatia in Asia Minor, including Apollonia, Antioch near Pisidia, and Ancyra.1 The following portion of Augustus’ Res gestae evidences how the virtue of pietas was closely identified with Augustus’ reign.

In my sixth and seventh consulships [28, 27 B.C.E.], after I had extinguished the civil wars, although I was in control of all affairs in accordance with the prayers of my fellow citizens, I transferred the rights of ownership from my power to that of the senate and the people of Rome. From this cause by senatorial decree I was called Augustus (Σεβαστὸς), and my entranceway was publicly crowned with laurels, and the oak wreath, which is given for saving fellow citizens, was set up above the gateway of my house, and a golden shield, set up in the council chamber [the Curia Julia] by the senate and people of Rome, bore witness through its inscription to my valor (ἀρετὴν/virtutis), clemency (ἐπιείκειαν/clementiae), justice (δικαιοσύνη/iustitiae), and piety (εὐσέβειαν/pietatis). I excelled all in rank, but I had no more power than those who shared office with me. (Res gestae 34)2

And so, engraved upon columns and walls belonging to edifices venerating Augustus and his imperial household within Asia Minor where the Pastoral Epistles were likely composed and received,3 these inscriptions were neither the first nor would they be the last promotion of the Roman emperor’s pietas.4

Claims to pietas proliferated as a coveted and contested quality during the early principate of Octavian Augustus and the later reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, servicing the ideologies and power of its imperial possessors. The association of pietas with the emperor’s character, household, and reign was marked by shrewd political calculation aimed at persuading Roman and provincial subjects about the legitimacy of the current political regime. Within imperial ideology,5 pietas signified a loyal devotion toward the gods, the nation, and family, which coalesced with Augustus’ vision of restoring Rome’s ancestral traditions and values (mos maiorum) and thus its moral grounding. Rome’s citizens and provincial subjects were conceptualized as an enlarged familia that owed due pietas to Augustus, the “father of the nation” (pater patriae). Additionally, pietas signaled the emperor’s devotion to the gods, whose munificent benefactions were secured through his prayers as the pontifex maximus. Pietas, along with other virtues including valor, clemency, and justice, was an important element of imperial propaganda that portrayed the emperor as possessing the qualities necessary to secure the welfare (salus) and peace (pax) of the empire.6

The imperial rhetoric of pietas that marked the reigns of Trajan (98–117 C.E.) and Hadrian (117–138 C.E. provides an informative cultural analogue and context for interpreting the rhetoric of piety in the Pastoral Epistles, which were probably composed during this period. This study lays the groundwork for the next chapter’s analysis of the social and political implications of the Pastorals’ rhetoric of piety, including 1 Timothy’s admonition for the ekklēsia to pray for governing authorities so that they might live a life “in all piety” (ἐν πάση εὐσεβείᾳ; 1 Tim 2:1-2) and for women within the “household of God” (οἶκος θεοῦ; 1 Tim 3:15) to be modest and well ordered—in effect, manifesting Roman pietas. Such admonitions and their reception among early Christians were informed by the representations of the piety of the emperor and the women of his household that proliferated through coins minted during the reigns of both emperors. These coins not only signaled that Rome’s empire was under the right management but also invited provincial subjects to recognize that the pietas that had favorably marked the reign of Augustus was present again in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. Augustus’ own pietas was not only memorialized in his Res gestae, which were inscribed upon monumental inscriptions in Asia Minor, but was also recounted with poetic flourish in Virgil’s popular epic, Aeneid, which had already become a standard of Roman literature by the second century. Augustus’ portrayal as the restorer of Rome’s ancestral customs and values (mores maiorum), which were promulgated through Augustus’ marriage legislation and poetry, further legitimated his imperial authority. Within the scope of Augustan ideology, the pius and well-ordered household constituted an essential element and symbolic emblem of a pius and well-ordered empire.

Additionally, many elite Romans understood pietas to be the distinctive quality of the Roman nation that set Romans apart from all other nations and explained why the gods sustained Rome’s imperial dominion. Within this elite discourse, non-Roman foreigners or barbarians were suspected of practicing an excessive pietas or superstition (superstitio), which was often perceived as posing a threat to Rome’s own ancestral traditions. The beliefs and practices of both Jews and Christians were susceptible to such racially charged prejudice and, as evidenced by Philo and Pliny the Younger, such stigmatism could lead to social ostracism and sometimes physical violence. Rome’s esteem for pietas and concern against superstitio frame the imperial situation of the Pastoral Epistles’ own appropriation of piety and its negotiation of imperial authority and culture.

The Pietas of the Households of Trajan and Hadrian

Pietas was especially emphasized among the social values associated with the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian.7 Coins featuring busts of the emperors Trajan (fig. 1.1) and Hadrian (fig. 1.2) were disseminated with depictions of the goddess Pietas on their reverse sides.8 The deification of abstract ideas like Pietas, Concordia, Libertas, Pax, and Victoria in Roman culture was a common phenomenon among ancient Indo-European cultures.9 The goddess Pietas was typically depicted as a draped and veiled woman, often seated or standing beside a lighted altar. The goddess’ hands are variously portrayed as pouring sacrificial libations with a patera, holding a scepter, covering her breast, or raised in prayer (compare figs. 1.1–1.4). When the goddess’ identity is not given in the legend, it can be inferred by her orans-posture of prayer with raised hands (fig. 1.1).10 In these portraits of Pietas, the goddess symbolizes a dutiful devotion to the gods that was powerfully at work within either the emperor’s character or the empire itself on account of the emperor’s pious reign. Pietas could also signal the emperor’s dutiful loyalty to the legacy of the preceding emperor, as seems the case with coins minted at the beginning of Trajan’s reign, which seem to commemorate Trajan’s own pietas toward his deified adoptive father, Nerva.11 A similar rhetorical tactic can be seen in coins minted early in Hadrian’s reign that display Hadrian’s pietas toward Trajan and thus support the legitimacy of Hadrian’s succession to the principate despite some public doubt.12 In fact, as Noreña has shown, coins displaying Pietas were minted more than any other virtue type coin during the reign of Hadrian.13 Such coins constituted a broader rhetorical strategy of imperial self-representation manifest in panegyrics, imperial benefaction, and monuments.14 Qualities and conditions like piety (pietas), peace (pax), and harmony (concordia) signaled the empire’s prosperity (felicitas) and the legitimacy of the rule of its capable and virtuous emperors.15

Figure 1.1. BMCRE 3.403, p. 85; 103–111 C.E.

Obv. Head of Trajan; IMP TRAIANO AVG GER DAC P M TR PRev. Pietas, draped and veiled, standing, dropping incense on a lighted altar with her right hand, holding a scepter in the left; COS V P P S P Q R OPTIMO PRINC, PIET. © 2017 Trustees of the British Museum

Figure 1.2. RIC 2.260, p. 370; 117–138 C.E.

Obv. Head of Hadrian; HADRIANVS AVG COS III P P.

Rev. Pietas seated, holding patera and scepter; PIETAS AVG.

© 2017 Trustees of the British Museum

Trajan’s own piety was further reified in Pliny’s Panegyrics, his arch at Beneventum, and his distribution of nourishment (alimenta) to the young. In a speech before the Senate in 100 C.E., the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Politics of Piety in the Pastoral Epistles
• Chapter 1. Piety in Caesar’s House
• Chapter 2. Piety in God’s House
• Chapter 3. Honoring Piety in the City
• Chapter 4. Honoring Piety in the Ekklēsia
• Chapter 5. The Mystery of Philosophical Piety
• Chapter 6. The Mystery of Pastoral Piety
• Conclusion: A Pious and Civilized Christian in the Roman Empire
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index