Dr Vishram R. Mullick

The decline of Hellenism, the Greek religion, cannot be explained by voluntary conversion. Imperial persecution and the systematic suppression of traditional worship played a decisive role in the disappearance of the ancestral religion of the Hellenes from public life. Under Constantine I (306–337 AD), Christianity received imperial privileges, while certain Hellenic sanctuaries were ordered destroyed. His sons, Constans (337–350 AD), who ruled the West, and Constantius II (337–361 AD), who initially ruled the East before becoming sole emperor, imposed further restrictions on traditional worship. Under Constantius II, sacrifices were prohibited under threat of death, and temples were ordered closed. Emperor Julian's brief reign (361–363 AD) reversed these prohibitions, reopened temples, restored their properties and revived Hellenic worship without outlawing Christianity. He also withdrew special privileges previously granted to Christian institutions. Following Julian's death, his Christian successor Jovian (363–364 AD) reversed important aspects of his predecessor's religious policies, reinstating the imperial privileges previously granted to Christian institutions. Under Valentinian I (364–375 AD) in the West and Valens (364–378 AD) in the East, temple estates restored by Julian were confiscated and returned to the imperial treasury, depriving traditional religious institutions of valuable property and income. Nocturnal sacrifices were restricted, while Christians were exempted from compulsory service guarding traditional temples. Officials who assigned Christians to such duties were threatened with execution and confiscation of their property. Under Valens, accusations of divination and treason led to the persecution, torture and execution of philosophers and intellectuals associated with Hellenic traditions. Among those executed was Maximus of Ephesus, the philosopher and teacher of Julian, while numerous books were confiscated and burned during the investigations. A further shift occurred under the Western Emperor Gratian (367–383 AD), who removed the Altar of Victory from the Roman Senate in 382 AD and withdrew financial privileges from traditional religious institutions. Following Gratian's death in 383 AD, his younger half-brother and fellow Western Emperor Valentinian II (375–392 AD) continued to rule and rejected appeals for the altar's restoration in 384 AD. Meanwhile, in the East, Theodosius I (379–395 AD) imposed increasingly severe prohibitions on Hellenic worship, extending even to private household rituals. Around 391 AD, the great Serapeum of Alexandria was destroyed amid religious violence. Theodosius I, who outlawed all pagan cults, curiously left Judaism untouched as a religio licita, with synagogues protected and Christians punished for attacking them. If the Hellenes had willingly abandoned their ancestral Gods, why were imperial prohibitions, threats of execution and the suppression of their religious institutions necessary? The Christianisation of the Hellenic world was not achieved through persuasion, but through imperial power, religious persecution and the systematic suppression of traditional worship, which played a decisive role in the decline of the ancestral religion of the Hellenes.