On the Error of Profane Religions

In the mid-340s, Firmicus Maternus, a pagan astrologer turned Christian polemicist, became the first-known author to ask the emperors to abolish traditional cults. This chapter sets On the Error of Profane Religions in the context of Constantinian legislation and of the urban Roman religious milieu to which Firmicus had previously belonged. Often (and too quickly) dismissed as a self-serving work by an ill-tutored convert, Firmicus’ polemic aims not just to spur Constantine’s sons towards greater zeal but to end the Devil’s dominion over mankind. In the work’s first half, Firmicus targets the cults most popular in the city of Rome. Dismissing philosophical allegories, he argues that traditional rites teach their worshippers immorality. Juxtaposing Christian scripture and pagan ritual formulas in the work’s second half, he depicts polytheistic cults as a unified religious system counterfeited by the Devil from the Christian truth—a major departure from earlier polemicists’ conceptions of polytheism. Firmicus’ appeals to the emperors were rooted in the fundamental Christian conviction that idolatry would someday be abolished; that victory had, however, come much closer to realisation, in the years after Constantine’s endorsement of Christianity, than Lactantius had thought possible.