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Comment by philosophty | Hacker News Reader

These people were non-Christian the same way they were non-Scientologists. They were unaware of Christianity and it had little to no impact on elite Romans by 79 AD.

"So since Philodemus makes up most of the library here, it's pretty safe to call it a "pagan" library."

You're confusing the tiny number of scrolls which have been preserved with what was likely in the complete library.

The complete library was much larger and likely contained the typical mix of philosophy, drama, poetry, and speeches copied over centuries from all over the Roman and Greek world.

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So is the “pagan” moniker a way of dating the work to before the rise of Christianity with the Roman Empire?

To put it simply, "pagan" was a Christian insult towards non-Christians. It is not a reasonable description for anything unless you're in a very Christian context, and even then viewing it from a modern context "pagan" is a bit of a slur.

Just because a slur happens to be the same word as a technical term doesn't mean it can't be used as a technical term anymore. Anyone working in the field or had awareness of it knows the appropriate connotation.

It causes me physical pain when scientists change their practice to appease pearl clutching amateurs

It's not a technical term, calling things that aren't Christian "pagan" especially from before Christianity was prominent is silly and inaccurate.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=%22...

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%5Bpre+-+Chris...

Clearly modern scholars disagree with you, and it's not a matter of pearl clutching.

It just doesn't make sense to, for example, define an ancient Roman library as "pagan" (or even "pre-Christian") as if that is its defining characteristic. Unless you happen to be a medieval Christian monk of course, and then it makes complete sense.

Pre-Christian would make a lot of sense for me, precisely because in the Christian era, many of the pagan (!) authors and their works would be considered "problematic", if not outright purge-able.

The content of Roman libraries is likely to depend on their pre-Christian vs. Christian characters.

It shouldn't.

Christianity wasnt the official state religion of Rome until 380 CE at which point it only had legal status for 67 years. Christianity wasn't done covering europe until iceland in 1000 CE.

What might count as prechristian wasn't at all clear and depended on where you were and how official you want things to be, it also was absolutely not like flipping a switch or even gradual, it was rocky and complicated.

Uh. The first page of that seems to consist entirely of articles about Christians and their views of the ancient Greeks except for one article on neo-Paganism.

If anything, that seems to prove people's point that the term is of questionable value, except perhaps when discussing early Christians or I suppose if one is writing about Christianity.

I wouldn't say it's an insult so much as a catch all. Romans could worship any and many gods. Rome being a hub also included foreign religions.

Romans were polytheistic and didn't really have a name for their religion, nor did they think of it collectively as one thing separate from other religions, though very occasionally a set of practices might be referred to as what translates to "the Roman religion". Separate religions is really more of a monotheism thing. "Pagan" wasn't ever a self-identifying thing until well after the Christians took over and called them that for a long time.

"Foreign religions" weren't really much of a thing either, there were lots of gods and each village and city (and family really) would have their own versions of gods. Sometimes when you'd conquer a city you'd go to the most prominent temple and steal the statue or alter or whatever and bring it back to Rome with the vibe that you were stealing the god of the place you conquered.

it was not an insult. They called themselves pagans. There was a civil war or two in rome with Pagans on one side, and monotheism on the other. They used the term pagan, as in the "old ways". Many people died to decide the fact of whether "Rome" was going to continue as pagan, or convert to monotheism under the Kai Row.

>They used the term pagan, as in the "old ways"

That's not what the latin origin of pagan ever meant, it meant peasant or rural usually in the negative connotation common for city folks referring to people who lived outside of cities\. Were there ever any recorded instances of Romans referring to themselves as "pagan" as a group? Maybe one.

>"Rome"

Weird usage of scare quotes, especially in the time frame you are referring to, the name of the empire or the city was never ambiguous.

Very commonly yes.

Christianity had a really transformative impact on the Roman world so it makes sense to classify texts as pre and post Christianity. The date - literally BC and AD - don’t work so scholars have for a very long time clarified by calling the pre-Christian “pagan”.

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