Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

580 21a. asia minor and cyprus
although less lavishly during the sixth century, and the synagogue at Side
was being repaired in the late fourth and early fifth century.
Although the great civic temples were disintegrating during the fifth
century, it is clear that pagan worship did continue in Asia Minor and
Cyprus throughout the period. The mentions of Christ and of Apollo on
the fifth-century mosaics of the house of Eustolius at Curium are paralleled
by invocations of Aphrodite in inscriptions from Aphrodisias in the
late fifth century. It is rash to place too much weight on the use of pagan
imagery and language, when this was the normal means of expression for
all educated people. But at Aphrodisias we know of an avowedly pagan
circle, at least among the élite, who welcomed the pagan philosopher
Asclepiodotus of Alexandria when he came to settle there. Such people
might have been the owners of small pagan statuettes and two figures of
Egyptian divinities found in the excavation of a lavish house, probably of
the fifth century.
These discoveries might only suggest a taste for the old-fashioned at
Aphrodisias, but recent excavation has uncovered a striking series of
sculpted portraits of philosophers from the late fourth or fifth century in
a substantial and centrally-located building. This seems to confirm the evidence
that Aphrodisias was a centre for Neoplatonist teaching at this
period, where Asclepiodotus would have had a valuable contribution to
make. He and other philosophers travelled throughout the eastern
Mediterranean, and were concerned to keep alive the traditions of pagan
worship – thus Proclus, who originally came from Lycia but made his career
in Athens, visited Lydia, both to study and to encourage proper pagan religious
practice there. Paganism could even have political significance: pagans
at Aphrodisias made sacrifices for the success of the revolt of Illus in
Isauria. But perhaps more significant than this activity in the upper levels
of society is the fact that when John of Ephesus was working as a missionary
in the 540s, he could claim to have baptized 80,000 pagans in Asia,
Caria, Lydia and Phrygia; this suggests that in some cases cities with an
apparently ‘Christianized’ civic centre might be surrounded by a relatively
unaltered pagan countryside. 20
Even if a cultivated élite retained an interest in philosophy, however, the
old idea of a civic education for all the young men of a city seems to have
evaporated in the third century, and there seems to have been no further use
for the great gymnasia of antiquity, which were expensive to run. In at least
two abandoned gymnasia at Ephesus, churches were built. But the bath complexes
which were often associated with gymnasia stayed in use; thus at
Salamis-Constantia in the fifth century, while the ruins of the gymnasium
20 Lydia: Marinus, Life of Proclus 15, with Fowden (1990); Illus: Zacharias of Mitylene, Life of Severus
40; John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints (PO xviii.681). For a discussion of paganism in Asia
Minor at this period see Trombley, Hellenic Religion ii.52–133.
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