Journal of Early Christian Studies

Beginning with Plato, or perhaps even Pythagoras, philosophers reflected on their relations to and role in the contemporary social and political order. They frequently argued that their pursuit of wisdom and the insight it yielded served as the basis for their ability to advise rulers and weigh in on matters pertaining to the ideal governance of cities and states.¹ In the [End Page 481] third century, figures such as Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus refashioned the identity of the philosopher to include another facet, namely ritual expertise and the access it gave to divinity. This access could be put to use on behalf of both individual souls as well as states.² All three philosophers used hieratic terms to construct this new identity. Furthermore, they did not merely identify themselves with ordinary priests, but rather as "priests of the god who rules all."³ They did so, as this paper will demonstrate, at the expense of the reputation of ordinary more local priests of Mediterranean cult. In order to discredit or demote these priests, all three philosophers constructed complex daemonologies that ordered the realm of spirits in terms of a totalizing, universal hierarchy.⁴ Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus then associated ordinary priests with the worship of lesser spirits within this hierarchy and reserved the title of high priest for themselves.

Why was access to divinity important in the third century? As a number of scholars have noted, emperors increasingly chose to identify themselves with specific divinities and emphasized the importance of divine favor [End Page 482] in the legitimation of their often-tenuous claims to political authority. Additionally, as both James B. Rives and Garth Fowden have noted, the third century was a time of increasing emphasis on cultural universalism and religious centralization, a trend that would find new expression in the fourth-century struggles over Christian orthodoxy. But already in the third century, religious practice or ritual formed the basis for a number of movements in the direction of religious centralization.⁵ Rives cites as an example of this movement Decius's imperial mandate for empire-wide sacrifice.⁶ It should be no surprise, then, that philosophers in the course of positioning themselves socially and arguing for their place in civil society would do so in terms that emphasized their claim to knowledge and expertise regarding sacrifice and other ritual actions that established connections between the individual and the realm of spirits.

Daemons and daemonology played an as yet unexamined role in the construction of this authority. In his recent book, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, David Frankfurter demonstrates how daemonological writing flourished as a literary- theological pursuit in the changing religious landscape of the late Roman Mediterranean across a wide variety of religious communities. Although Frankfurter's focus is on Christian and Jewish daemonologies, non- Christian Platonists such as Porphyry and Iamblichus produced some of the most elaborate discourses on the realm of spirits in this period. These daemonologies were often superimposed upon more local experiences of spirits.⁷ According to Frankfurter, as well as many anthropologists who [End Page 483] work on similar topics cross-culturally, spirits at the local, everyday level are experienced as diverse, unclassified, individual, capricious, and ambiguous. Writers and ritual experts working in a daemonological mode seek to impose an order on this amorphous realm. These self-defined spiritual experts then show "the evil system behind inchoate misfortune," offering their audience "the tangible hope of purifying it."⁸ Frankfurter writes,

Demonologies seek to control—through order, through writing, through the ritual power of declaration—a chaotic world of misfortune, temptation, religious conflict, and spiritual ambiguity. ... Demonology collects from and attends to these various domains of apparent demonic action, yet its intent lies in grasping totality, simplifying, and abstracting immediate experience for the sake of cosmic structures.⁹

The daemonological focus of these third-century philosophers has been a source of ongoing scholarly consternation. In his article "Theurgy and its Relationship to Neoplatonism," Eric R. Dodds accused Platonists from Porphyry to Proclus of succumbing to the irrationality and superstition of their age.¹⁰ The theurgical focus of these figures, according to Dodds, was proof of "retrogression to the spineless syncretism" from which Plotinus had supposedly tried to escape.¹¹ He also contended that late antique intellectuals, in response to the sense that Christianity was "sucking the lifeblood out of Hellenism," turned to "vulgar magic."¹² According to Dodds, this move "is commonly the last resort of the personally desperate, of those whom man and God have alike failed."¹³ As a result theurgy became "the refuge of a despairing intelligentsia which already felt la fascination de l'abîme."¹⁴ [End Page 484]

Some scholars have come to the defense of these intellectuals against Dodds and others by focusing on their philosophical contributions, the complexity and systematic nature of their ideas.¹⁵ For instance, in her article "Dreams, Theurgy and Freelance Divination: The Testimony of Iamblichus," Polymnia Athanassiadi argues that theurgy, at least on the interpretation of Iamblichus, was about personal virtue and wisdom.¹⁶ [End Page 485] This interpretation leads her to conclude that Iamblichus would have been "horrified by the claim in modern scholarship," i.e. in Dodds's writing, that "theurgy and magic are disciplines resting on the same presuppositions and using some of the same methods."¹⁷ In order to divorce theurgy from magic, while still acknowledging the importance of prayer and sacrifice to the Iamblichan program, i.e. to the life of one who seeks union with god, Athanassiadi recasts theurgy in terms that downplay the importance of ritual. She also blames modern distortions concerning Iamblichus on the excesses and enthusiasms of post-Iamblichan Platonists who misunderstood their master.¹⁸ In other words, the trend in studies that have sought to redress the skewed vision of late antique Platonism found in the writings of earlier historians such as Wilhelm Kroll (in the nineteenth century) and Dodds (in the twentieth century) has been to distinguish these philosophers from their contexts and the supposed superstitions and propensities for magical practices exhibited in the population at large. But the work of Athanassiadi can and should be taken further, because, although it may spare the reputation of specific philosophers, it relocates the irrationalism Dodds attributed to them in equally problematic directions—either upon their followers or upon everyday people in late antique society.

Emma Clarke raises similar misgivings about certain attempts to rescue Iamblichus from the charge of irrationalism. She writes:

Iamblichus did not see his treatise as predominantly philosophical, indeed his main point was to reject this method of approach and take a wholly new tack. While I do not deny that there is "philosophy" in the De mysteriis, and that some considerable reward lies in digging it out, I would query the tendency to keep our reading of the treatise within these confines; to assess the De mysteriis in philosophical terms, to squeeze this square peg into a round, intellectual hole, seems to me an extraordinary oversight. Iamblichus viewed philosophy as a worthwhile but fundamentally limited method of understanding.¹⁹ [End Page 486]

Athanassiadi rightly argues that Iamblichus sought to distinguish his own theurgical enterprise from the practices of others identified by her as "magicians."²⁰ But she assumes that he did so because what he was doing was, in reality, very different. She does not, however, ask after the identity of these "magicians," who they might be to Iamblichus and other intellectuals. She also uses the so-called Greek magical papyri (Papyri Graecae Magicae) to represent the kinds of practices she argues Iamblichus eschewed.²¹ But it is necessary to inquire after the source of these artifacts, who created and used them, and whether they actually represented "magical practices."²²

This paper will draw on recent scholarship that argues that the source of some of these artifacts were Egyptian priests.²³ Furthermore, Iamblichus and his contemporary Platonists may have even perceived some priests as rivals for certain kinds of social goods, such as authority and prestige. As [End Page 487] Athanassiadi herself notes, On the Mysteries "contains an apology for traditional cult while playing down the importance of sacred places as compared with the authority of holy men, the theurgists who are repeatedly contrasted with mere craftsmen of spirituality."²⁴ Iamblichus was doing this in a period when other holy men, for instance, members of traditional Egyptian priesthoods, were moving outside temple precincts and offering their ritual services to a broader clientele, in part in response to extenuating economic circumstances.

Athanassiadi and others have done a great deal to rehabilitate the philosophical reputation of Iamblichus by responding directly and convincingly to the negative characterizations of third-century intellectuals propounded by earlier historians. But this corrective, namely, the attempt to situate these third-century Platonists—and Iamblichus, in particular—more squarely within a philosophical lineage and to demonstrate the rationality and consistency of their views has laid the groundwork for subsequent scholars to inquire about the ways in which these figures were in dialogue with their society more generally. My argument is that it is necessary to rethink the age itself in the ways in which scholars such as Garth Fowden and Polymnia Athanassiadi herself have done for the philosophers. If one forgoes the language of irrationality and superstition in defining the third century, then the issue is no longer whether people such as Origen, Porphyry, or Iamblichus were rational and free of superstitions. Rather, it becomes an issue of the degree to which they took account of the local construction of spirits in their rational discourses and the reasons that may have motivated them to do so. Their respective references to the philosopher as priest serves as one helpful means of approaching these questions.

We begin our investigation with Origen's interpretations of the figure of the high priest in the Hebrew Scriptures and his conjunction of this priestly status and daemonological expertise. In his Homilies on Leviticus,²⁵ [End Page 488] Origen reflected at length on the figure of the high priest and employed a number of different levels of interpretation in his reflections.²⁶ Sometimes he discussed the Israelite priests and the prescriptions that pertained to them in very literal terms, marking the difference between the conditions that obtained in earlier epochs and in the post-resurrection age. He also carefully interpreted the priestly role and the Levitican laws in figural terms. In this context, priests came to stand for a wide range of different things. At times Origen's interpretative focus is on Christian priests. In other instances, the Israelite priests stand for any true Christian. In other homilies, Christ is the high priest, the ideal intercessor on behalf of the sinful community because he spilled, not the blood of animals, but his own blood. Origen moved between these levels and at times it is unclear which sense of the mysterious or level of interpretation he was engaging. But it is difficult to miss certain connections he drew in this corpus of sermons between the high priests he interpreted in figural terms and the real priests of the Christian church, an order to which he himself belonged.

Origen's status as a presbyter was not, however, uncontested—a fact which may have contributed to his eagerness to associate himself with the high priests of the ancient Hebrews. Origen's troubles seem to have begun even before he was ordained a priest. In spite of the fact that bishop Demetrius of Alexandria had put Origen in charge of teaching catechumens, he [End Page 489] objected to Origen's teaching in church, something which Origen did when he visited bishops Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctistus of Caesarea in Palestine around 215 c.e.. Demetrius, hearing word of Origen's preaching in Caesarea at the enthusiastic behest of the two bishops, ordered the philosopher back to Alexandria. The tensions between the two continued over the next decade. Jerome's letter to Paula (Ep. 33) suggests that the enmity was fueled by jealousy on the part of Demetrius because of Origen's popularity as a teacher.²⁷ The situation reached a crisis point when Origen made a second trip through Palestine en route to Athens. On this journey the same bishops who had earlier asked him to preach ordained him by laying their hands on him. When Origen returned to Alexandria, he found his presence wholly unwelcome and decided to move permanently to Caesarea around 231 c.e. Demetrius called a synod of Egyptian bishops in order to bar Origen from ever teaching in Alexandria again, and shortly thereafter he also had Origen excommunicated. This decision was affirmed by the bishop of Rome.²⁸

Origen lived and worked as a priest and teacher in Caesarea until 251 c.e. when he was imprisoned and tortured during the Decian persecution. But even during this period, as Pier Franco Beatrice argues, he was involved in actively trying to rehabilitate his status and reputation as a priest beyond Palestine. According to Beatrice, Origen went back to Alexandria after the death of Ammonius Saccas (242 c.e.), his philosophy teacher of ten years and the founder of an important school of Platonism.²⁹ He may have been trying to reestablish himself as a teacher in Alexandria under the patriarchate of his former student and friend Heraclas. But the new bishop also had Origen expelled (243–244 c.e.).³⁰ On Beatrice's account, Origen proceeded to travel to Rome via Athens, perhaps to appeal [End Page 490] directly to Emperor Philip the Arab and his wife Severa (244–249 c.e.).³¹ Whether or not Beatrice is correct in his chronology and his evaluation of Origen's actions and intentions, it is the case that Origen's status as a presbyter was in question in a number places outside Palestine, including in his homeland of Egypt, for at least the last two decades of his life. His theology was also subject to vigorous scrutiny and opposition from certain quarters even during his lifetime. Hence, these concerns about his ordination and priestly standing should be placed alongside his statements about the priesthood in his Homilies on Leviticus if one is to understand how these sermons may have functioned to legitimate the Christian priesthood in general and Origen's own position as a presbyter in particular.

In Homily 2, Origen identified the high priest as the one "who was anointed; he who kindles fires on divine altars; who sacrifices to God gifts and salutary offerings; he who intervenes between God and men as a propitiator." ³² One might be inclined to think that here Origen was speaking of Christ, but in fact he was not. For even such a priest, he writes, cannot be entirely free from sin. What sets the priest apart from other sinners, however, is that "he knows and understands his own sin."³³ Hence, in this case knowledge and wisdom define the priest for Origen. In Homily 6, while reviewing the process by which a high priest is chosen, he once again affirms that wisdom distinguishes the priest from the rest of the congregation: "For in ordaining a priest, the presence of the people is also required that all may know and be certain that from all the people one is chosen for the priesthood who is more excellent, who is more wise, who is more holy, who is more eminent in every virtue...."³⁴ But in addition to understanding his own sin, what kind of knowledge sets the priest apart from the rest of the church? What sort of mysteries does he fathom while others remain content with literality? If one stays with the Homilies on Leviticus, then priestly knowledge focuses on the hidden meaning of rituals and in particular, the ritual of sacrifice.³⁵ But in the preface to [End Page 491] On First Principles, the mysteries that the philosopher-priest apprehends go far beyond the meaning of ritual to include doctrines about the origin, nature, and fate of all rational souls, all spiritual beings, both good and evil. Indeed, embedded in Origen's cosmology is a complex daemonology that encompasses humans, angels, and evil spirits, an account that includes both cosmogonical and eschatological elements. Understanding of these doctrines, which in Contra Celsum he called "esoteric and mysterious" (), was not granted to everyone in the apostolic teaching.³⁶ Origen claimed that the reason Christ and the apostles left so much unexplained was without doubt "to supply the more diligent of those who came after them, such as should prove to be lovers of wisdom, with an exercise on which to display the fruit of their ability."³⁷ In the beginning of his Commentary on John, Origen associates this order of wise exegetes and philosophers with the high priests of the order of Aaron and distinguishes them from the run-of-the-mill believer as he also does in Contra Celsum and On First Principles.³⁸ He writes:

Most of us who approach the teachings of Christ, since we have much time for the activities of life and offer a few acts to God, would perhaps be those from the tribes who have a little fellowship with the priests and support the service of God in a few things. But those who devote themselves to [End Page 492] the divine Word and truly exist by the service of God alone will properly be said to be Levites and priests in accordance with the excellence of their activities in this work. And, perhaps, those who excel all others and who hold, as it were, the first places of their generation will be high priests in the order of Aaron....³⁹

So the priest, the one who exceeds all others in wisdom, understands both the proper practice of ritual and its hidden meanings. He also knows all about the various spiritual beings that inhabit the cosmos, as well as the specific roles they play in the salvation of the human soul. As we will see, it was also this ritual, daemonological, and soteriological knowledge that set the philosopher apart from others as "the priest of the god who rules all"⁴⁰ for both Porphyry and Iamblichus.

It is important to note that by this time actual sacrifice had ceased in the Christian, Jewish, and Jewish-Christian ritual orders. This was not the case, however, for traditional polytheistic religion. But allegorizing Greek and Roman sacrifices was not an avenue Origen could take anyway. Although Jewish sacrifice had ceased, Origen still felt a strong imperative to recast the entire priestly order and the sacrifices it used to perform in Christian terms. In Homily 6, for instance, he carefully interpreted each piece of the priestly vestments in minute detail. And in Homily 1, he explains the meaning of each sacrificial animal, associating them one by one with the various orders within the Christian congregation and the kinds of transgressions they were prone to. For example, when discussing the sacrifice of a calf, Origen explains that this animal is the flesh which must be sacrificed and the priest "is in you the mind which is also its understanding in you who are rightly called a priest and 'sons of a priest.'"⁴¹ Here the Platonic faculty of mind, traditionally associated with the philosopher and the wise ruler, is transposed into a religious mode and becomes the priest.⁴² [End Page 493]

In different places, Origen gave accounts of both Hebrew and Greek ritual. In the case of the former, he interpreted the Levitican prescriptions regarding blood sacrifice in figural terms in such a way as to preclude the necessity of actually performing such sacrifices. The only ritual he claimed was necessary and efficacious after Christ's resurrection was baptism.⁴³ When it came to interpreting Greek sacrifice, his main contention, like that of so many other Christian thinkers before him, was that all blood sacrifices were made to evil daemons posing as gods and good spirits. In Contra Celsum, where one finds Origen's most extensive discussion of these matters, knowledge about sacrifice and knowledge about various orders of spirits are treated together. In this work, Origen stated that "'all the gods of the heathen' are gluttonous daemons, who wander around sacrifices and blood and the portion taken from the sacrifices, and deceive those who have not fled for refuge to the supreme God."⁴⁴ These spirits occupy images and places "either because they have been invoked by certain magical spells" or "because in some other way they have been able to get possession of places for themselves, where they greedily partake of the portions of the sacrifices and seek for illicit pleasure and for lawless men."⁴⁵ Implicit in Origen's association of evil daemons with blood sacrifices is the understanding that the personnel who perform them, namely priests, were in service to spiritual beings other than the highest god or gods. Rather, they offered worship to evil spirits.

Porphyry agreed with Origen on this association of evil daemons with blood sacrifices. He did so in two places that we know of, in fragments from On Philosophy from Oracles⁴⁶ and in his On Abstinence from Killing Animals. [End Page 494] In this latter work, Porphyry's reasoning formed part of a sustained argument for vegetarianism among philosophers. Yet in the course of making his argument, Porphyry elaborated a complex conspiracy surrounding blood sacrifices, a conspiracy in which the original order of sacrifices of plant matter, whether gathered or grown, was perverted through homicide and ritualized in animal sacrifice.⁴⁷ This perversion was accompanied by a desire on the part of humans to eat meat, an activity that was also made licit once blood sacrifices became socially accepted.⁴⁸ For Porphyry, this perversion of a primordial sacrificial relationship between gods and humans was both instigated and perpetuated by evil daemons, who, as in Origen's writings, rejoiced "in the drink offerings and smoking meats on which their pneumatic part grows fat."⁴⁹ According to Porphyry, the pneuma of the daemon gone bad, "lives on vapors and exhalations in a complex fashion and from complex sources, and it draws strength from the smoke that rises from blood and flesh."⁵⁰ Origen limited this congress with evil daemons to the context of ritual sacrifices.⁵¹ But Porphyry, in making [End Page 495] his argument for vegetarianism, extended it to all consumption of meat. Implicit in the arguments of both writers is the conclusion that priests who perform these kinds of sacrifices are in reality feeding evil spirits.

In fragments from On Philosophy from Oracles, Porphyry qualified this implication somewhat by interpreting what he thought were Phoenician and Egyptian practices in such a way as to preserve the reputation of priests from these ancient cultures for wisdom in religious matters. He claimed that these priests violently cracked leather thongs or whips () in the temples and dashed to earth () animals before worshipping the gods.⁵² According to Porphyry, they did this to drive out the daemons from the temple by giving them the pneuma (the breath or spirit) and blood of animals. Once these evil spirits departed, then the true parousia or manifestation of the god could occur. On this account, then, killing animals in temples had nothing to do with the actual worship of the gods. Rather it was merely a preliminary step, a prophylactic measure against daemonic interference in proper ritual. This view is still consistent with the one Porphyry held in On Abstinence, because these evil spirits are attracted and sated by the same things in both works, and one is warned in both cases to avoid eating meat.⁵³ Furthermore, his views accord, for the most part, with Origen's on the matter of blood sacrifices.

Modern readers may find themselves surprised by the close agreement between Origen and Porphyry on these matters, and by Porphyry's demonization of animal sacrifice. But this is only surprising if one assumes that [End Page 496] religious identity was the primary determinant of third-century intellectuals' views. It is less surprising when one begins to consider the actual connections between these two Platonists. First, both stood directly in the lineage of Ammonius Saccas, the mysterious Alexandrian Platonist and teacher to both Plotinus and Origen.⁵⁴ Porphyry was Plotinus's student and wrote a biography of his teacher that highlights his connections to Ammonius. In a passage preserved in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, Porphyry indicates that he knew Origen in his youth.⁵⁵ As Beatrice points out, Porphyry was close enough to Origen at some point in his life to become familiar with the contents of the Alexandrian's library and to be able to identify his main philosophical influences.⁵⁶

It may even be the case that Porphyry derived his ideas about evil daemons directly from Origen. Both Porphyry and Longinus tell us that Origen wrote a work called Concerning the Demons.⁵⁷ Furthermore, a number of modern authors have argued for Porphyry's dependence on Origen for his views on evil daemons. Lewy, who subscribed to the view that Origen, the author of the work on daemons, was not the same person as the Christian Origen,⁵⁸ devoted his Excursus Eleven in Chaldean Oracles and [End Page 497] Theurgy to establishing that Porphyry's "long description of demonology" in On Abstinence, a discourse which he attributes to "some Platonists" () was, in reality, based on Origen's work Concerning the Demons.⁵⁹ This opinion is not limited to supporters of the two Origen hypothesis. Beatrice, who identifies the two Origens as one and the same person, agrees with Lewy about the likelihood that Porphyry's daemonology was based on this treatise.⁶⁰

Origen and Porphyry also agreed in their insistence that the high priest was the one who serves the highest god,⁶¹ and that one becomes a priest of this kind by living a philosophical sort of life, by being the one who, on the characterization of Origen, is most eminent in knowledge and wisdom by having made a study of things mysterious and esoteric. As a matter of fact, Porphyry's claim to ritual knowledge on the question of blood sacrifices put him at odds not with any Christian intellectual, but rather with his one time student and fellow Platonist, Iamblichus.⁶² Hence, by focusing on the daemonic, one finds not only unexpected agreement between Christian and non-Christian philosophers, but also internecine disagreement within the latter group, namely between Porphyry and Iamblichus.

Iamblichus wrote his On the Mysteries in response to a work by Porphyry called Letter to Anebo.⁶³ This work was supposedly directed to Iamblichus, who found in it a number of objectionable positions that he [End Page 498] thought required extensive corrective comment.⁶⁴On the Mysteries was a defense of the importance of theurgy, even over and above theology. The term theurgy (), meaning "god work," originated with secondcentury Platonists who used it to refer to the "deifying power of Chaldean rituals."⁶⁵ In his Letter to Anebo, Porphyry asked whether certain rites such as standing on characters could invoke the presence of the gods by constraining them to follow the will of the ritualist. Iamblichus disagreed with this characterization of the way ritual works, maintaining that the gods cannot be constrained, but rather are always predisposed to help those who make use of the connections already built into the fabric of the cosmos between gods and souls, connections that are activated by certain god-given rituals, such as prayers and sacrifices. Iamblichus included traditional religious rituals among these, arguing that they were established and given to human souls by the gods and that these cult practices exemplified divine principles that provided for the deification of the human soul.

Porphyry did not dismiss the utility of theurgy entirely, but it appears that he wanted to place limits on its effectiveness for returning the soul to its primordial condition or reunifying it with its source. According to Augustine, Porphyry, perhaps in clarifying his position in response to Iamblichus' criticisms, held the view that the spiritual element of the soul could be put into a "proper condition, capable of welcoming spirits and angels, and of seeing gods" by means of theurgy.⁶⁶ But, according to Augustine, Porphyry limited the effectiveness of these rites and argued that they did not "affect any purification of the intellectual soul which would fit it to see its God and to apprehend the true realities."⁶⁷ [End Page 499]

Iamblichus's criticisms of Porphyry's questions and positions on the issue of theurgic practices, such as sacrifice, are very pointed. But at stake for Iamblichus was not only the salvation of the philosopher's soul, but also the salvation of all souls. For implicit in Porphyry's view that priests who sacrificed animals were worshipping evil spirits was the corollary that anyone who partook of these sacrifices was also participating in this worship. Furthermore, Iamblichus was also concerned about the place of the philosopher as ritual expert in a changing religious and ideological landscape. Iamblichus's daemonology in On the Mysteries is one place where all of these points of disagreement between the two philosophers are highlighted.

Throughout significant portions of On the Mysteries, Iamblichus chides Porphyry for his almost global failure to understand the nature of daemons, both good and evil, as well as other kinds of spiritual beings. First, his former teacher attributed a kind of corporeality to these entities that they, on philosophical grounds, could not have.⁶⁸ Porphyry confused questions about their essence with questions concerning accidental qualities, of which daemons have none because of their incorporeality. But the worst blunder of all was Porphyry's claim that some daemons were "ensnared by the vapors of animal sacrifices," and that these sacrifices nourished spirits of this sort who are somehow dependent on them.⁶⁹ Iamblichus objected to the entirety of Porphyry's opinion on this issue. First, according to Iamblichus, all sacrifices were divinely ordained.⁷⁰ All ordained practices worked in such a way as to affirm and strengthen the bonds of philia and sympatheia established by gods, heroes, daemons, and other good spirits with human souls. And when humans performed these rites, they set in motion or activated these relationships already built into the fabric and order of the cosmos.⁷¹ Accordingly, each cosmic level had its [End Page 500] appropriate set of rituals.⁷² In the case of blood sacrifices, these rites did not propitiate evil daemons, rather they were the "perfect sacrifice" for those "material gods" () who "embrace matter within themselves and impose order on it."⁷³ He writes, "And so, in sacrifices, dead bodies deprived of life, the slaughter of animals and the consumption of their bodies, and every sort of change and destruction, and in general processes of dissolution are suitable to those gods who preside over matter."⁷⁴ These animal sacrifices helped and healed the worshipper who was constrained by the body and must suffer accordingly. They also aided in the release of the soul from its attachment to the body. Indeed, Iamblichus argued that human beings were frequently involved with gods and good daemons that watch over the body, "purifying from impurities, freeing it from disease, cutting away what is heavy or sluggish."⁷⁵

Iamblichus used fire to explain how sacrifices symbolize the way in which these spirits help human souls to become free. He writes, "The offering of sacrifice by means of fire is actually such as to consume and annihilate matter, assimilate it to itself rather than assimilating itself to matter, and elevating it towards the divine and heavenly and immaterial fire."⁷⁶ This explanation of sacrifice's transformative power ran counter to Porphyry's mere propitiation of evil spirits. One sacrificed and burned animals, their flesh and blood, in order to become free from flesh and body. Instead of being a polluting practice, it was a purifying one.

Iamblichus also insisted that the order of sacrifices could not be confused or circumvented. Even the person who dedicated his or her life to philosophical pursuits and theological speculation must, if he or she wished to be healed of the suffering associated with embodiment and generation, perform the proper sacrifices in the correct order and manner.⁷⁷ This position [End Page 501] ran counter to the one Iamblichus represented as Porphyry's, namely that one can think one's way out of the bonds of nature. According to Iamblichus, Porphyry was of the opinion that the philosopher did not need theurgy but could reach God by virtue of the intellect. Not only was it the case for Iamblichus that philosophers could not think their way to union with the One, but everyday people and communities or states were left with no soteriological recourse according to Porphyry's view of things.⁷⁸

On the one hand, then, Iamblichus appears to have been defending a key ritual of traditional cult against one of its detractors. Yet Iamblichus was neither defending animal sacrifices nor lending support for the religious and ritual status quo of his day; rather, he was constructing a certain image of cult by way of an apologia for sacrifice. And he wrote himself into this construction as an expert on, not just theological matters, but ritual ones as well. The first indication he gives is his choice to write under the guise of an Egyptian priest, Abamon.⁷⁹ He elaborates this identity in more detail as he proceeds.

In Book Five, Iamblichus asserts that sacrifices have a proper order that reflected the cosmic order.⁸⁰ The law of cult (), he writes, "assigns like to like, and extends their principle from highest to the lowest levels."⁸¹ This implies that in order for one to follow the laws of cult, one must have an extensive knowledge of the god to whom one sacrifices and all the appropriate connections—from highest to lowest—that obtain within the physical cosmos to each particular deity. And if one wished to make contact with what Iamblichus called "the gods of [End Page 502] theurgy" (), this required considerable knowledge and preparation. In order to emphasize just how rare such an individual is, i.e. one who knows the laws of cult, Iamblichus notes that

one should not therefore take a feature that manifests itself in the case of a particular individual, as the result of great effort and long preparation, as the consummation of the hieratic art, and present it as something common to all men, but not even as something immediately available to those beginning theurgy, and not yet those who have reached a middling degree of proficiency in it; for even these latter endow their performance of cult with some degree of corporeal influence.⁸²

But who is the individual sufficiently trained in the hieratic art to be able to perform the proper ceremony, a ceremony not simple, but "multiform" () and "panharmonic" () and composed of everything contained in the world ()? He answers that it is the theurgist: "... only the theurgists know these things exactly through having made trial of them in practice, then only these can know what is the proper method of performing the hieratic art."⁸³ Only these theurgists "realize that any elements omitted, even minor ones, can subvert the whole performance of cult."⁸⁴ And only such a one is able to ascend to the One, "which is supreme master of the whole multiplicity (of divisions) and in concert with that, at the same time, pay court to all the other essences and principles."⁸⁵

The reader of these passages is led to ask after the identity of these ritual experts, these high priests of the hieratic arts. Certainly Iamblichus would have us count his pseudonymous Abamon among this elite group, and thereby himself. But was he making a similar claim for all Egyptian priests? In fact, he was not. Unlike Origen and Porphyry, however, who [End Page 503] both claimed that the priest offering blood sacrifices to the gods was, in reality, worshipping evil daemons, Iamblichus granted these practitioners a role in proper cult. As already noted, these priests made offerings to material spirits (),⁸⁶ i.e. good daemons or material archons. But such priests did not offer worship to the higher gods. In other words, they fell short of the expertise of the true theurgist. Hence, like Origen, Iamblichus was positioning himself in such a way as to supplant other religious experts and to claim the highest priesthood for himself.

Elsewhere in On the Mysteries, Iamblichus addressed the status of certain religious personnel in a more explicitly negative fashion while at the same time refuting another claim of Porphyry's. In his Letter to Anebo, Porphyry had asserted that "there are generators of effective images" ()⁸⁷ and that they make these images "with the aid of the stars in their revolutions."⁸⁸ An effective image of this sort would have been one that incited the god to take up some sort of residence in it. This ritual of statue animation is frequently referred to in the "magical" papyri. But Platonic theurgists also practiced this art, seeing it as a kind of demiurgical work, an ensouling of matter.⁸⁹ And Porphyry himself made explicit reference to the practice of making cult statues when he discussed the philosopher as priest in On Abstinence from Killing Animals:

The real philosopher has knowledge of many things: he notes signs, he understands the facts of nature, he is intelligent and orderly and moderate, protecting himself in all respects. And just as a priest of one of the particular gods is expert in setting up cult-statues of this god, and in his rites and initiations and purifications and the like, so the priest of the god [End Page 504] who rules all is expert in the making of his cult statue and in purifications and the other rites by which he is linked to the god.⁹⁰

In this quote we see how close Porphyry and Iamblichus really were in their understanding of philosophers as priests and theurgists. This is likely part of the reason why Iamblichus marked their differences so dramatically.

Iamblichus objected to the idea that an ordinary image-maker might be able to invoke divinities. He responds:

Then, in accordance with the truth, we must demonstrate that the imagemaker does not use the astral revolutions or the powers inherent in them, or the powers found naturally around them, nor is he at all able to control them; rather he operates with those emanating last from nature in the visible [realm] about the extreme part of the universe, and does so purely by technical skill, and not by theurgic skill.⁹¹

Presumably, then, by theurgic skill, one can participate in the demiurgic activity of ensouling matter. But this is the purview of specialists, not everyday "craftsmen." But who were the image-makers at the center of this disagreement between Porphyry and Iamblichus? The one kind of artifact extant from this period that describes the actual ritual of making a cult statue and animating it are the corpus of "magical" papyri. Who would have created these artifacts and used them? More often than not, they would have been some kind of local religious expert, a priest of a local temple or shrine. If David Frankfurter is correct in his assessment of the third-century religious landscape in Egypt, ordinary temple priests would have engaged in activities such as the creation of amulets and small, portable cult images with increasing frequency as they tried to supplement their dwindling state incomes and bolster their authority and prestige.⁹² According to Jacco Dieleman, the Greek and bilingual (Greek/Demotic) "magical" papyri bear important resemblances to the Corpus Hermeticum in terms of when these texts first started to be produced and their international content and influence.⁹³ Scholars used to think that [End Page 505] both corpuses were produced in a Greek cultural context. But more recent research suggests that they reflect Egyptian religious thought and a priestly milieu.⁹⁴ In his book on the Chaldean Oracles, Hans Lewy correctly notes that what we know of theurgical rites—the lustrations, "conjunctions," supplications and invocations, the telestic arts, and other practices aimed at eliciting epiphanies and autophanes—are all found in the papyri.⁹⁵ The authors, temple archivists, preservers, and copyists of these ritual or hieratic descriptions were, according to Dieleman, well-educated Egyptian priests who were creating religious products that catered to a Hellenistic and Roman clientele: "Egyptian priests who had lost their state subsidies with the introduction of Roman rule, had to look for new sources of income and found those in a Greco-Roman clientele willing to pay for divine illumination."⁹⁶

So Iamblichus was, in essence, discrediting everyday Egyptian priests as creators and purveyors of religious products that merely engaged the lowest of all natural forces using mere technē. This is peculiar because at the same time he was posing as one of them. In other words, while he wrote as an illustrious and authoritative Egyptian priest, Abamon, and garnered cultural capital based on this image, he undermined everyday priests. Because the religious landscape of Egypt (and much of the Mediterranean) was in flux and priests were purveying their services, expertise, and products to broader clientele with new applications, Iamblichus was able to take on this malleable identity and use it for his own ends.⁹⁷

One possible objection to my efforts to put Iamblichus into closer proximity, and even rivalry, with the priest-ritualists who created, preserved, and used artifacts like the papyri handbooks, amulets, curses, spells, and so forth is that he himself came from a very important family of the highest standing in Syrian society. For instance, Eunapius tells us that Iamblichus was of "illustrious ancestry" and he belonged to an "opulent and prosperous family."⁹⁸ In other words, one might wonder why Iamblichus would [End Page 506] even bother with these "craftsmen of spirituality" at all, being from the social class he was. But another aspect of his ancestry complicates the picture further. One of Iamblichus's ancestors, Sampsigeramos, was a founder of the line of priest-kings of Emesa, a group active in governing the area well into the imperial period.⁹⁹ This means that Iamblichus's own identity as a member of the Syrian elite had a religious dimension that he seems to have taken rather seriously given the topics to which he devoted some of his most important thinking. He is not the only Syrian to have taken this aspect of his ancestry and identity seriously. We need only look at the way in which the emperor Elagabalus both came to power and conducted himself during his reign to find a compelling example of just how far a member of the Syrian provincial elite from a priestly family could go in the third century. Although most of his Roman contemporaries saw his behavior as bizarre and offensive, there are other possible perspectives that make sense of some of Elagabalus's actions and choices. For instance, he may have been enacting his role as pontifex maximus in a Syrian idiom. And he may have seen this role as the most important facet of what it meant to be emperor and to rule. The reign of Elagabalus makes the point that in a time of increased social mobility, such as the third century, someone like Iamblichus may have had even more at stake as a provincial elite than in earlier periods and hence situated his own social standing within this more fluid late Roman arena. Further support is lent to this interpretation when we consider that members of traditional priesthoods with philosophical predilections in both Syria and Egypt were actively engaged in the production of theological texts, such as the Chaldean Oracles and Hermetic writings.

In fact, a certain irony emerges when one asks what Iamblichus's sources might have been for his understanding of Egyptian myth, ritual, and hieratic practice. It is unlikely that he would have known the Egyptian language. Native Egyptians who wished to better their situation in life learned Greek under both the Ptolemies and the Romans. But it was rare that Greek speakers perceived any advantage in learning Egyptian. Although it is unlikely that Iamblichus learned Egyptian, he probably spent time in Egypt. Both B. Dalgaard Larsen and Polymnia Athanassiadi [End Page 507] argue compellingly that Iamblichus spent considerable time in Alexandria as a young man.¹⁰⁰ It may have been in Alexandria that he studied with Anatolius, the future bishop of Laodicaea. Scholars generally accept that Iamblichus was born around 240 C.E.¹⁰¹ and that Anatolius left Alexandria after the destruction of the Brucheon quarter around 270 C.E., the area of the city where most of the teachers and philosophers were known to have resided.¹⁰² Thus, because Iamblichus studied with Anatolius before going to Porphyry's school in Rome in his early thirties, Alexandria seems the most likely place for his studies with the former.¹⁰³ So although Iamblichus was a descendent of an important family of priest-kings in Emesa he chose to assume the identity of an Egyptian priest. Iamblichus may have also drawn on this Egyptian identity because of the importance of Alexandria to the Platonic lineage of Ammonius Saccas, a lineage that, as Beatrice notes, was not uncontested.¹⁰⁴

Based on the foregoing considerations, one can understand why Iamblichus may have chose to fashion his priestly identity in Egyptian terms. The question remains as to the textual sources of Iamblichus's knowledge of Egyptian religion. Garth Fowden suggests that Iamblichus relied on Hermetic writings in this regard. We find evidence of this Hermetic focus in Book 8 of On the Mysteries, where Iamblichus provided his reader with an account of Egyptian theology. Here he interpreted Egyptian cosmology in terms of Platonic emanation, from an original triadic unity mediated to the heavenly gods through Hermes and leader of the heavenly Kneph, working down to the demiurgic Nous and beyond to Amun, Ptah, and [End Page 508] Osiris. Fowden notes that scholars have found this account puzzling: "There is some traditional Egyptian material (though not such as was unavailable in the Greek literature on the subject), jumbled together with relatively late Greek philosophical speculation and little clue to how it all fits together."¹⁰⁵ Fowden claims that we can only really understand what is going on in Book 8 if we look back to Plutarch to determine what Iamblichus may have been reading. In On Isis and Osiris, Plutarch refers to the "so-called books of Hermes" and explains what can be learned from them regarding Egyptian religion. Fowden concludes that Iamblichus must have compiled his account of Egyptian doctrines concerning the gods based on these Hermetic works, texts that already mediated Egyptian religion through a Hellenic/Platonic lens.¹⁰⁶

Fowden also notes that Iamblichus would have thought of the Hermetica as essentially Egyptian and hence representative.¹⁰⁷ But Hermetism was already a hybrid religious movement. Like the Chaldaean Oracles, which mediated eastern religion through a Greek philosophical lens, Hermetism did something very similar for Egyptian religion. As noted earlier, scholars now believe that the Hermetic corpus was produced in an Egyptian clerical milieu. For instance, Fowden believes that the authors of these works would have been Egyptian priests of a learned bent. And he bases his hypothesis on a number of observations regarding this priestly class in late antiquity. First, he notes that "it became less and less uncommon for members of the native priesthood to assimilate like Chaeremon to the politically dominant culture."¹⁰⁸ Furthermore, he notes that [End Page 509]

as the old priestly culture and especially its languages and literature fell increasingly into desuetude, clerics of a learned bent found it natural to frequent the schools of the Greeks. We quite often encounter representatives of the native clergy teaching grammar or philosophy in Late Antique Alexandria. Such men will naturally have been well-disposed towards a doctrine which associated the traditions.¹⁰⁹

These observations and hypotheses bring the milieu of the elite Platonic philosopher, represented here by Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus, and that of everyday priests of traditional religion(s), into much closer proximity than might be expected. One certainly finds evidence for cross-fertilization in both the conceptual and ritual realms. But as this paper argues, one also finds indications of competition between these groups for the same kinds of social goods.

All of the philosophers under investigation here—Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus—presented themselves as priests. Their claims to be priests were not merely symbolic or metaphoric. Each of them claimed to know about proper and improper ritual, sacrifices, and salvific actions. And each of them made claims that their ritual knowledge and priestly status were founded upon deep philosophical contemplation and the esoteric, mysterious, divine insight it yielded. Finally, all three argued that normal everyday or local priests were priests of mere daemons. In other words, they made the claim that ordinary priests only dealt with lower spiritual beings, even evil ones, and failed to engage with higher beings, not to mention the highest god of all. For Origen, these ordinary priests were priests of evil daemons with no exception, and Christian priests such as himself served the highest God. In his Philosophy from Oracles, Porphyry did state that there are some Egyptian and Phoenician priests who used bloody animals to sate and then chase off evil daemons prior to real worship. But for him, the priest of the god who rules all was the philosopher and none other, and priests who offered blood sacrifices to gods were mistakenly worshipping evil spirits. For Iamblichus, the priest/imagemaker accomplished his work using the lowest powers to emanate from the divine, those spirits involved with matter and generation. Theurgists, such as him, were the only ones who had sufficient ritual knowledge to save their own souls and those of others.

But why did intellectuals such as Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus choose to situate themselves socially in this rather unprecedented manner as priests at this particular historical juncture? A complete answer to [End Page 510] this question would require an entire essay and would involve looking closely at two precedents. In the first place, one would need to consider the philosophical and theological writings of the "Middle Platonists," figures such as Numenius and Plutarch. It would also require consideration of the social location of various members of the Second Sophistic in relation to local, provincial, and imperial power and the precedents these relationships established for third-century philosophers and theologians. One approach to the question of why intellectuals incorporated priestly elements into their identity considers broader social and political trends of the third century. The century has been characterized as a period of significant upheaval and disruption. As Hartmut Leppin points out, in antiquity, "contemporaries were predisposed to decode any crisis in religious terms. The mercy of the gods (or God) had to be regained somehow." ¹¹⁰ In the third century, "Some strove to practice the old cults with more care; others sought a more personal contact with the gods; many went both ways."¹¹¹ We find both responses expressed in the lives of our philosophers. Furthermore, the fact of empire itself made possible a new way of thinking about religion.

In Empire to Commonwealth, Garth Fowden argues that the "political universalism" of the Roman Empire, i.e. the existence of a single hierarchical political structure for the entire Mediterranean world, made possible thinking about "cultural universalism." Fowden also contends that monotheism—the religious order to which a large group of political, intellectual, and social elites subscribed—suited this cultural universalism. The fruit of this association between religio-philosophical and political ideology is certainly evident in the writings of Christian historians and apologists in the Constantinian period, such as Lactantius and Eusebius, as well as in those of subsequent epochs. However, it is not a purely Christian phenomenon.

The third century was a time when political leaders at all levels were faced with increasing heterodoxy, and more importantly, increasing heteropraxy. Jews no longer had the Temple in which to sacrifice. Christians eschewed sacrifices altogether, an act which constituted a breach of "national security." As James Rives notes, the emperor Decius (201–251 C.E. ) chose sacrifice as the basis for an empire-wide expression of [End Page 511] religious conformity and patriotism, an expression of what Fowden might call "cultural universalism." Furthermore, philosophers felt the need to respond to Christian criticisms of "heterodoxy" and "heteropraxy." As Fowden notes, intellectuals who subscribed to some form of traditional religion "sought to explain themselves and rationalize their uncontrollably complex heritage."¹¹² One approach they took was to create ordered spiritual hierarchies and universal, totalizing daemonologies, in a manner similar to their Christian counterparts.

There is, however, a further implication of the efforts of these intellectuals to create totalizing discourses about religion and to establish themselves as ritualists and priests expert in prayers and initiations and salvific rites. When philosophers became apologists for traditional religion in this way, they potentially adopted a new role vis-à-vis political authority with respect to this question of "national security" and its dependence on the well being of the relationship between divinity and humanity in the ancient world. Namely, the scope of their potential influence became much broader than your average priest. In reality, it too became universal or empire-wide. This political influence was borne out in reality and in narrative.

For instance, there is evidence that both Christian intellectuals (for instance, Lactantius) and apologists for traditional religion (Hierokles and another anonymous philosopher) were part of Diocletian's court where the latter group weighed in heavily on the issue of what to do about the Christians.¹¹³ Origen was called to Antioch to consult with Julia Mammea on questions of philosophy and theology. This formidable woman was a member of an important family of priests to the Syrian god Baal. She was also Julia Domna's niece, Julia Maesa's daughter, the emperor Elagabalus's aunt, and the emperor Alexander Severus's mother and regent, a man whose household shrine supposedly contained images of both Jesus and Moses.¹¹⁴ In their accounts of the life of Pythagoras, whom they portray as an expert on sacrifice and religious rites, Porphyry and Iamblichus both depict the philosopher advising kings and city rulers as to how to structure and administer a state.¹¹⁵ Finally, in Eunapius's biographies of the [End Page 512] later Platonists, he emphasizes their expertise on spirits and their ability to perform various wonders.¹¹⁶ He also frequently depicts his heroes advising political rulers and spending time at the imperial court.¹¹⁷ It seems, then, that the image of the high priest—the image that third-century Platonists sought to construct for themselves—met with considerable success. This is certainly the case in the post-Constantinian era with regard to Christian priests. But it is also the case that the images of high priests constructed by non-Christian philosophers may have allowed traditional religion to flourish for much longer than scholars have sometimes acknowledged. It is certainly the case that we can no longer think of people like Porphyry and Iamblichus as marginal figures living in an age of decline and retrogression. They found new ways to reinvigorate old images and roles, and in so doing, they carved out a sphere of influence that extended beyond what many intellectuals can lay claim to in most times and places.