On 04-08-98 Frank Masingill wrote to Day Brown... 
 FM>    I don't think anybody really knows what kind of experience of order
 FM> permitted the Pontifex Maximus to continue to celebrate the official 
 FM> Roman 
 FM> religious rites while as philosophers not subscribing to the various 
 FM> religions 
 FM> of the "people."  It seems to be obvious, though, that these rites had 
 FM> quite convenient points of merger with the dominant sect. 
Agreed that for him, or any particular emperor, at any particular 
time, the judgements must be withheld; but as the pattern that we 
see over the centuries remained, I can set myself as judge, and I 
see the Machiavellian machines work even better with Christianity 
than they ever did with paganism. 
 
Paganism for one, never suggested that the emperor had the divine 
right to rule as Paul did in Romans 13.  The claims of divinity a 
particular emperor may have made, would have been seen as counter 
to the authority of Zeus/Jupiter as defined by earlier traditions 
dating from republican days.  Even afterwards, the Senate had the 
privilege of declaring, or denying, divinity after the death of a 
particular emperor, and many of the latter modified behavior, and 
operated with some restraint beleiving the senate had that right; 
which on several occasions, it exercised by condemning some to an 
afterlife in hell. 
 
After Justinian, the Christian emperors operated with impunity as 
long as they did not challenge the church, which was their friend 
in supporting tyranny. 
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 * OFFLINE 1.58 * I'm an iconoclast; I hate GUIs. 
--- Maximus 3.01
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