Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

31 From Diocletian to Constantine 217
be acknowledged and applied by the counsel and decisions of many virtuous, eminent
and very wise men 38 (it is against the right order to step against and oppose
this), and that the ancient religion may not be questioned by a new one. For it is
the greatest crime to open to debate what was once decided on and defined by the
forefathers and what develops steadily and has its fixed place. 39 (3) We are therefore
intent on punishing the stubborn and deprived minds of the most useless people:
for these are people who try to replace the old religions with new and unheard-of
sects in order to – through their own false judgement – cast out what we were once
given by divine providence. 40 (4) The Manichaeans, about whom you reported to
Our Serenity with much insight, as we have heard, have come into existence and
entered our realm only recently from our enemy, the Persian people, just like new
and unexpected portents, and they commit many crimes here because they disturb
quiet peoples and certainly also inflict harm on civilised states; and we have to be
afraid that, as tends to happen, by scandalous customs and the bad laws of the
Persians over the course of time they will try to infect people of a more innocent
nature, modest and quiet Romans and our whole empire with their malign poison.
(5) And as everything you set out so well in your report about their religion by
our statutes is obviously a crime and crazy lies, we have decided to punish these
with deserved and appropriate punishments. (6) For we give order to punish the
authors and leaders severely and to burn them in the flames together with their
abominable writings; we give instruction that the followers who remain stubborn
receive capital punishment and we decide that their property will be confiscated
by the imperial treasury. (7) If officials or people of considerable rank or influence
have joined this unheard-of, despicable and utterly infamous sect or the doctrine
of the Persians you will take care that their property will be taken over by our
imperial treasury and that they themselves will be handed over to the mines at
Phaeno or Proconnesus. 41 (8) In order, therefore, that this superfluous pestilence
can be removed from our most blessed times, may Your Devotion hurry in carrying
out our orders and decisions. Given in Alexandria on the day before the calends
of April. 42
The so-called ‘Edict against the Manichaeans’ was issued by the emperor
Diocletian either in the year 297, during the Persian War and before the
peace of 298 (17) was concluded, or after this event in 302. 43 It has been
transmitted in the Collatio legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum, a compilation
38 As part of their invectives against Christianity, Celsus (e.g. Orig. Centr. Cels. praef. 5) and Porphyry
(e.g. frg. 1) also referred to famous and learned men who had postulated the worship of the traditional
gods.
39 This reminds one of the famous speech of Maecenas by Cassius Dio (lxx.36.1–2), in which the
ancient author postulates not to tolerate those who failed to worship the proper gods.
40 These words reflect an attitude and religious policy among Diocletian and his colleagues that formed
the background for the renewed persecutions of the Christians under the tetrarchs.
41 The island of Proconnesus, situated in the western part of the Sea of Marmara, was famous for its
marble quarries; in late antiquity the island’s city of the same name was a bishop’s see and a place of
exile.
42 This is 31 March. 43 Seston 1940: 345–54 (= Widengren 1977: 374–84).