Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [128]
All of the similarities between Saturnalia and Christmas are no accident. Christians in the fourth century assigned December 25 as Christ’s birthday because pagans already observed the day as a holiday. This would sidestep the problem of eliminating an already-popular holiday while Christianizing the population. In 350, Pope Julius I declared that Christ’s birth would be celebrated on December 25. There is little doubt that he was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans to convert to Christianity; the new religion went down a bit easier with them when they realized that their feasts would not be taken away from them. (Another mythical connection to this special Christian date is the birth of Attis, a vegetation god from Asia Minor who was the consort of a goddess known as Cybele, another “foreign” goddess that the Romans were drawn to worship. Her temple in Rome, appropriated by Christians in the fourth century, was on the site of the Vatican.)
From the time Rome had conquered Greece, even more exotic religions were finding their way into the empire, including the worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis and Mithraism, a Persian mystery religion of male initiates that flourished in the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries CE. Roman soldiers may have brought this cult of the Persian god Mithra back to Rome, one of a whole crowd of mystery religions competing for converts in the empire. The historian Plutarch (46–125 CE) reported that the worship of Mithra was introduced to Rome by captive pirates brought back from Cilicia. By around 100 CE, it had become widely popular among Roman bureaucrats, soldiers, and slaves. Among the legions, this was especially so, with Mithraism’s strong emphasis on honor and courage, the brotherhood of the Good combating Evil. It had several similarities to Christianity, including a holy day celebrated on December 25, and was popular enough to warrant suppression by the Christian fathers by the fourth century.
It was in this rather fertile ground of competing cults that Christianity made its debut in the Roman world. Despite persecutions, usually at times of civic tensions beginning with Nero—who was, according to many biblical authorities, the “Beast” with the infamous number 666 in the Book of Revelation—Christianity steadily gained converts. Things changed permanently with the reign of Constantine I, who was named emperor of Rome’s western provinces in 306 CE. In 312, Constantine defeated his major rival after having a vision promising victory if he fought under the sign of the Christian cross. In 313, Constantine and Licinius, emperor of the eastern provinces, granted Christians freedom of worship. And after Constantine defeated his coemperor in 324, he moved his capital to Byzantium in 330, renamed the city Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey), and made Christianity the officially supported religion in the Roman state.
After Constantine died in 337, his three sons and two of his nephews fought for control of the Roman Empire. One of the nephews, Julian—later called the Apostate—became emperor in 361. A student of the Greek classics, Julian had been drawn to the Greek gods and underwent a “pagan conversion.” As emperor, he tried to check the spread of Christianity and restore the traditional Roman religion. In 363 CE, Julian was killed in an attempt to invade Persia. By the late 300s, Christianity was well established as the official religion of the empire, and Rome was becoming Christianity’s central city. All cults, save Christianity, were prohibited in 391 CE by an edict of Emperor Theodosius I. The empire was permanently split into the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire after Emperor Theodosius I died in 395.
The Western Roman Empire grew steadily