REVIEWS A A n c i e n t and Medieval/L'Antiquit et le M o y e n A g e Subversive Virtue: Asceticism and Authority in the Second-Century P a g a n World, by James A. Francis.

University Park, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. xviii, 222 pp. $32.50 U.S. Asceticism is a quality which we generally associate with the "holy men" of Christianity. There is good reason for that. It was Christianity which took over the ascetic tradition and transformed it into a mass movement. Pagan holy men, by contrast, tended to be isolated figures, and not well served by their biographers. The Cynic philosopher, Peregrinus, for instance, is best known to us now through the sketch of the satirical writer, Lucian of Samosata, who considered him an exhibitionist, though not, we should note, entirely a fraud. Peregrinus, after sampling Christianity, or rather, if we are to believe Lucian, imposing upon the Christians, reconverted to Cynicism and finally, like Heracles, whom the Cynics made their hero, cremated himself. He chose an Olympic festival for his welladvertised auto-da-f, and it is clear even from Lucian's astringent account that he attracted a large, devoted following. Nonetheless he was not a mass movement. The Christian ascetics numbered thousands. Students of asceticism in the Roman world generally pass over the second century. The Antonine period has never quite recovered from being chosen by Edward Gibbon as the happiest age in the human history, and asceticism is a symptom of stress in society. That, I think, is a better exegesis of it than Francis's attempt to connect it with subversion: it is not in itself subversive, he grants, but it accompanies and manifests subversion. But the figures whom Francis chooses to examine show no signs of subversion. They are the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, Lucian's two victims, Peregrinus and Alexander of Abonuteichos, Apollonius of Tyana, and finally, Celsus, an odd fellow traveller in this group. They are Stoics and Cynics, and the last of them, Celsus, is an intelligent defender of paganism against the inroads of Christianity. None of them are even companions of subversion. The title of this book, "Subversive Virtue," misstates its thrust. Marcus Aurelius is a case in point. We have his Meditations, and because of them we may feel that we know his mind as well as we know any in the Roman world. Whether or not we should admire him is another question. His legal enactments show little sign of humanity. His edicts on slavery are chilling: Marcus Aurelius not only prescribed harsh treatment for runaway slaves, but he also insisted that Roman citizens co-operate with slave catchers to a degree that circumscribed citizen rights. Francis recognizes this. Likewise, Marcus Aurelius was fiercely anti-Christian. Francis notes Sordi 's thesis that Celsus's True Doctrine was inspired by him and articulated his anti-Christian mindset. For Marcus, the most heinous sin was antisocial behaviour. The man who fled from the rational law of society was a fugitive; the rebel who cut himself off from the reason of our common nature because he was displeased with it, was "an abscess on the universe" (Med. 4.29). The status quo had nothing to fear from such a man.

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Peregrinus belonged to the Cynic school, and the Cynics did challenge social norms. It is unfortunate that Lucian is our major source for Peregrinus's life, for a scrap of evidence from Aulus Gellius is more favourable. Cynics could threaten the status quo, though there is no reason to think that Peregrinus, or Alexander of Abonuteichos with his snake god, Glycon, were much of a menace. Cynic preachers did articulate popular discontent, but they had no system to replace the one they attacked. As political thinkers they were anarchists troublesome but not dangerous subversives. With Apollonius of Tyana we come to a different figure. It is clear that by the time Philostratus wrote his biography, Apollonius was regarded by some as a pagan rival of Jesus Christ. Francis calls him a "genuine ascetic." He abstained from bathing, as did some Christian ascetics; he was a vegetarian; he rejected sex and marriage alike. Philostratus puts his emphasis on the sweet and light aspects of Apollonius, but it is clear that even by later Christian standards, his asceticism was severe. It was not for the layman: Apollonius did not challenge propertyrightsor prescribe ascetic poverty for the general populace. He undoubtedly possessed authority, and here Francis is on strong grounds: Apollonius is a precursor of the Christian holy men and stylite saints who admonished emperors and acted as ombudsmen in their communities. Francis argues that Philostratus refashioned the legend of Apollonius to make him a "paragon and exemplar" of culture and society. Celsus provides a link with Christianity. Before him, no pagan as far as we know had taken Chiistianity seriously enough to examine its doctrines critically. Pagan society in the second century was aware of the subversive power of the ascetic, Francis argues, and thus they conceptualized Jesus in familiar terms. Pagan thinkers instinctively recognized the menace of Christianity because they recognized ascetic behind the Christian saint. This is a discursive book, full of insights. The reader is likely to put it down, unconvinced. A study that looks at subversive charisma among second-century philosophers who range from an emperor with a conservative mindset to a critic of Christianity must stretch and constantly rework its thesis. There is not much subversion among the second-century philosophers: less than in the century earlier. But this is a book worth reading by the historian of imperial Rome. University of British Columbia JA.S. Evans

The Gernianization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Socio-historical Approach to Religious Transformation, by James C. Russell. D o n Mills, Ontario, Oxford University Press, 1994. xiv, 258 pp. $59.50. The author has read widely and has filled his pages with quotations from anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and professors of literature, chosen according to their adaptability to his thesis. He fits those quotations together one after another in a sort of catena which is too disorganized to call a florilegium but too long for a run-on sentence. For example on pages 202-3 : "McKitterick describes the fundamental problem of Germanic awareness of the scope ...," followed by a short quotation; "This lack