Free Drink by Iain Gately Page B

perfumed and flavored,’” or other such rare and costly vintages, with which he betrayed an evident familiarity. Luxurious tastes were as sinful as overindulgence. The old men Clement envisaged as doing most of the drinking in Christendom were advised to accept whatever was put in front of them and to consume it in a dignified manner: “We are to drink without contortions of the face, not greedily grasping the cup, nor before drinking making the eyes roll with unseemly motion; nor besprinkle the chin, nor splash the garments while gulping down all the liquor at once. . . . Eagerness in drinking is a practice injurious to the partaker. Do not haste to mischief, my friend. Your drink is not being taken from you. It is given you, and waits you.”
    The third century AD, in which Clement had composed his Pedagogia, was a period of mixed fortunes for the Christians. While they continued to multiply in number, they were subject to sporadic persecution under the emperors Maximin, Decius, and Diocletian. The last great purge of Christians occurred in the final two years of the reign of Diocletian, who instructed his officials “to tear down the churches to the foundations and to destroy the sacred scriptures by fire.” Before, however, they could complete their task, Diocletian abdicated, and his resignation marked a turning point in the history of Christianity.
    Diocletian’s final act as emperor had been to divide his empire into three portions comprising western Europe, Italy and North Africa, and the Roman East. The division was implemented because imperial Rome had become too unwieldy to be managed by a single ruler. Whereas its hinterlands had once been home to submissive barbarians who kept to their hovels and paid their taxes, centuries of Roman occupation had been a significant economic stimulant, and the barbarianshad taken to growing cash crops, drinking wine, wearing togas, and building cities. Former backwaters such as Gaul demanded the full-time attention of the imperial administration—it was no longer sufficient to send a letter or a legion every now and then. Moreover, the non-Romanized barbarians beyond the outer limits of the empire were becoming more numerous, and more aggressive. In the East, the Sasanids of Persia were seeking to reclaim the empire Asia had lost to Alexander the Great; in the center and to the west, various tribes were making raids across the Danube and the Rhine. No single ruler could counter all these threats at the same time.
    No sooner had Diocletian partitioned his dominions and retired to a splendid villa in Salona than the rulers of the new divisions attacked one another, each with the aim of governing the entire empire alone. The victor was Constantine, the first Roman Christian ruler. A vision on the eve of an engagement at Milvian Bridge, in which a cross had appeared in the heavens, persuaded him to adopt it for the standards of his legions. He won the battle and converted to Christianity out of gratitude. Thereafter, the fortunes of his adoptive religion flourished. It received the imperial seal of approval in 313, when Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which proclaimed that it would be legal throughout his dominions.
    However, at the time of the edict, the Christian population was no more than a fifth of the total of the western part of the empire and a third of that of the East. The pagan majority resented the preference that had been given to what they saw as an intolerant and upstart creed. They bombarded Constantine and his successors with petitions: Pagan senators demanded that they be allowed to worship their ancestors in a traditional manner, souvenir sellers from the temple of Diana at Ephesus complained that Christianity was driving them out of business. They found a last champion in a brilliant, if short-lived, emperor, Julian, who confiscated the wealth of the Christian church and revoked the privileges of its clergy. But Julian ruled for only two years, and