John Lydus: On the Months

conviction.⁵² The argument regarding John, however, is one of guilt by association; while Phocas was certainly accused of paganism, such accusations are notoriously unreliable and hardly a good gauge of an individual's inward spiritual convictions.⁵³ At the opposite end of the spectrum regarding John's religion stands the late Alan Cameron, whose massive book, The Last Pagans of Rome, attempted to drive the final nail into the coffin of the once-common reconstruction of a "pagan revival" in the late 4th century.⁵⁴ In that work, Cameron summarily dismisses Kaldellis's views, arguing briefly that antiquarianism antiquarianism: an interest in the customs, art, and social structure of the past should not be taken as an expression of a writer's deeply held religious views, if he even had any.⁵⁵ In his newer critique of Kaldellis's arguments about Justinian-era literati, he adds positive evidence that John depended on some Christian sources. He points especially, and most strikingly, to John's reference to the Sibylline Referring to the Sibylline Oracles, ancient collections of prophetic utterances. prediction of Christ's life and crucifixion, which makes it likely that John had at least some sincere attachment to the Christian faith.⁵⁶ Thus, although Kaldellis displays a sharp eye for the possibility of religious dissimulation in the environment of Justinian's regime—an important consideration to keep in mind⁵⁷—his analysis pushes too strongly toward a clean, unambiguous delineation of boundaries. He does this even when the subjects of his analysis frequently resist the attempt, and even while his method of argumentation smacks of the conspiratorial. One should be on the lookout not only for secret pagans, but also for opportunistic accusations of paganism, as well as for ambiguous or individualistic self-positioning. On the other hand, Cameron's push-back, to the effect that it is not

52. Kaldellis, "The Religion of Ioannes Lydos," pp. 304–5; compare id., "The Making of Hagia Sophia," pp. 348–53. Further on Phocas, see Maas, pp. 78–82; PLRE 2: 881–2; Meier, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians ["The Other Age of Justinian"], pp. 205, 299–300.

53. As Cameron, "Paganism in Sixth-Century Byzantium," pp. 264–5, points out: "Those denounced as pagans may often have been Christians accused of some practice considered pagan (consulting an astrologer, for example) for which a witness could be produced, rather than anything so vague as just 'being a pagan,' which is obviously difficult to prove." For politically motivated charges of "paganism," see Maas, p. 73, briefly; also I. Rochow, "The Accusation of Heathenism as a Means of Internal Political Polemic in Byzantium," in Salamon (ed.), Paganism in the Later Roman Empire and in Byzantium (Cracow, 1991), pp. 133–56. Cameron makes a further suggestion that there were really two men named Phocas who have been conflated in modern accounts—one implicated in 529, the other in 545/6 (p. 264)—if true, this would further weaken the case for "guilt by association" regarding John.

54. Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011).

55. Last Pagans, p. 652 n. 126.

56. Cameron, "Paganism in Sixth-Century Byzantium," in Wandering Poets, pp. 255–86 (258–62 on John Lydus specifically). John's reference to the Sibyl's supposed reference to the crucifixion (Oracula Sibyllina 6.26) is at De mens. 4.47.

57. See Bell, especially pp. 245–6, for a demonstration in effective detail that the political environment did truly make overt expression of paganism very difficult, if not impossible (while not actually exterminating pagan sentiments). The motivation for outward expression of conformity was strong despite any inward doubts or ideological opposition; in this context, there is a strong likelihood that many opportunistic conversions occurred. This does not, however, help judge any individual case a priori from the start.