How much of a role did the downfall of the Roman Republic play in its rise?
>>18421070Elogabalus inadvertently opened the door for Christianity.He was the first to introduce a foreign, Eastern god into Roman public religion, even putting them above the traditional pantheon. This opened the floodgates, and by the time the empire was shaken by civil war, and the official state religion weekened, it was completely normal for even emperors to elevate their own gods. This is when Mithras and Sol Invictus overtakes Jupiter, and the Sol cult pawed the way to Roman Christianity.
>>18421070NONE AT ALL.CHRISTIANITY DID NOT CAUSE THE FALL OF ROMA; WHATEVER SURVIVED OF ROMA WAS PRESERVED BY CHRISTIANITY.
>>18421115blud read the wrong rome
>>18421070The Republic was pretty much out of living memory by the time it started spreading out of Judea
>>18421083>Elogabalus inadvertently opened the door for ChristianitIt was Caracalla's edict. Giving everyone Roman citizenship made Christians into Roman citizens. Future emperors requiring sacrifice to the God's from all citizens was the major catalyst for conflict.
>>18421115Except it was the onset of Christianity that ended pagan traditions to begin with. Preserving a couple texts relating to larger traditions that you yourself are responsible for eradicating isn’t a service to paganism, it’s more like putting a bandaid on a stab wound that you yourself inflicted. Imagine if I burnt down your house, but went inside and grabbed the television before it got destroyed and handed it to you. Would you get on your knees and thank me, obviously not. Besides, it means nothing anyways since most lost texts such as Varro’s Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum, the Chaldean Oracles, Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, etc were intentionally discarded or destroyed because the full works weren’t deemed “useful” to Christians and many texts were literally scraped off their parchment so that monks could write sermons or prayer books over them. The texts we do have only survived because they were essential for teaching Greek and Latin grammar or rhetoric, not because Christians appreciated the content itself. Pagans had already been copying these texts for centuries and would have continued to do so without Christianity; it's foolish to suggest that Christianity was somehow necessary for their preservation (especially when the pagan institutions tasked with preserving them like Neoplatonist academies were literally shut down by Christians).
>>18421070It played a bit of a role
