This book, a revised doctoral dissertation, surveys mentions of angeloi in Greek inscriptions of the second to fifth centuries c.e. The material has been published elsewhere by others, but by collecting it in a single volume, C. aims to bring the topic to wider attention among scholars of Roman religion.
C.'s main contribution is to show that ‘angels’ are not unique to Judaism and Christianity, but were also objects of speculation and worship in polytheist traditions, both philosophical and popular. Throughout, C. rightly cautions against trying to identify a single source or line of travel for this phenomenon. Instead, the wide distribution of angelos veneration is best understood in light of G.W. Bowersock's view of Hellenism as a medium through which diverse local traditions could make themselves intelligible to a cosmopolitan audience (Hellenism in Late Antiquity [1990]). Thus, rather than a set of identical or cognate religious forms, we have distinct phenomena communicated via a common vocabulary. Often implicit, but never addressed explicitly, is the other side of this coin: that shared language can obscure as well as facilitate communication, by smoothing over differences or suggesting false correspondences.
A terminological introduction (Chapter 1) explores cross-tradition debates about the meaning of the terms angelos and daimon: taking aim at contemporary Platonist views, Origen and Augustine insist that the two are not synonyms, since angeloi can be good or bad while daimones are exclusively evil; neither are deities or fit objects of Christian worship. The rest of the book centres on epigraphic references to angeloi, organised into rough categories: angeloi as mediators for henotheistic high gods, funerary invocations, and worship associated with springs and wells. The final chapter traces the domestication of angelos veneration by Christian authorities in late-antique Anatolia.
Chapters 2, ‘Angels of the Aether’, and 3, ‘Angels of a Pagan God’, collect allusions to angeloi understood in broadly Platonist fashion, as aspects or intermediaries of a supreme god. In the famous oracle of Clarian Apollo from Oenoanda, the Olympian gods are described as angeloi of the All-Seeing Aether. Variant versions preserved by Lactantius and the eighth-century Theosophy of Tübingen appear to stem from multiple different responses, suggesting that in the second and third centuries c.e., Claros had a policy of advocating a henotheistic theology and corresponding ritual practice. This inscription confirms that the notion of a high god who interacts with the world via angelic mediators was not confined to elite philosophy, but entered into popular cult practice in some places.
The same period also yields invocations of Theos Hypsistos and his angeloi from Asia, Arabia and the Cyclades, of Zeus Hypsistos/Panamaros and his angelos in Carian Stratonikeia, of the angelos of the Anatolian moon god Mên, and of the Phrygian pair Hosios and Dikaios, associated with (or attributes of?) Helios, Apollo and a ‘one and only God.’ Rather than look for a single geographic and religious origin for this phenomenon, C. notes the distinctive features of each set of dedications, showing how use of the Greek term angelos enabled local cults to make their practice intelligible to outsiders. Against S. Mitchell's attempt to reconstruct a cult of Theos Hypsistos, identified with the New Testament Godfearers (in P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede [edd.], Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity [1999]), C. points out that the title Hypsistos in conjunction with angeloi is applied to Zeus and other high gods as well as the Jewish God; these diverse expressions need not comprise a single cult.
The next two chapters discuss angeloi associated with tombs and fresh water. Worship at all the sites considered crosses or blurs religious boundaries, although the question of why such places proved so congenial to religious boundary crossings goes unexplored.
Chapter 4, ‘Angels of the Grave’, centres on a set of 60 epitaphs invoking angeloi from Roman Thera. C. argues that angeloi are envisaged as standing in a variety of relationships to the deceased (much like the di manes, unmentioned here): guardians of the living soul, perhaps identified with it; escorts of the soul after death; protectors of the tomb. C. wisely resists assigning a single religious label to the Theran epitaphs, whether pagan, (‘orthodox’) Christian or ‘Gnostic.’ As a result, however, gnostic Christian ideas about angelic companions (and antagonists) of the soul, which might have enriched the intellectual background of this chapter, receive short shrift.
Chapter 5, ‘Angels of the Spring’, focusses on four sites: the oak and well at Mamre, where Abraham received three visitors later regarded as angels and/or the pre-incarnate Christ; the late-antique Fountain of Lamps at Corinth, where four of c. 4,000 lamp dedications mention angeloi; the Pool of Bethesda in Judaea, where the water was believed to gain healing power when stirred by an angel (John 5:2–4); and a shrine of the archangel Michael at Chonae, an underground spring near Colossae. Why angels should be associated with water is never explained: are wells channels to another world? is angelos another name for ‘nymph’? Common threads emerge, though: lamp offerings (Mamre, Corinth), healing (Corinth, Bethesda, Chonae) and perhaps cursing (Corinth, the fountain of Anna Perenna at Rome) and, especially, religious hybridity. Mamre notoriously attracted Jews, Christians and pagans who worshipped side-by-side into the fifth century, despite the efforts of Constantine and his bishops. Bethesda at various times housed a Jewish healing site, a shrine of Asclepius and a Christian basilica, while dedications at the Fountain of Lamps evoke all three traditions without fitting securely into any. Again, the ‘polysemous’ flexibility of the word angelos seems to facilitate religious mobility. Increasingly, though, Christian authorities labour to wrest the sites – and the word – away from non-Christian users.
Chapter 6, ‘Angels of a Christian God’, traces fourth- and fifth-century Church efforts to distinguish between right and wrong ways for Christians to venerate angels, and to channel veneration of angels into acceptable forms. The centrepiece is Canon 35 of the Synod of Laodicea (c. 360 c.e.), which forbids Christians to ‘abandon the church … invoke angeloi, and hold meetings’, practices labelled ‘secret idolatry’. Since Theodoret of Cyrrhus, this has been interpreted as an attempt to suppress angelos veneration entirely. C. argues, however, that Laodicea's concern was specifically with extra-ecclesial gatherings that might undermine ecclesiastical authority or give rise to heterodox practices, whether ‘Judaizing’ (as in Colossians 2:18–19) or ‘magic’ (as in Laodicea Canon 36). On this reading, late-antique shrines of Michael are not signs of backsliding, but part of a process of harnessing the ritual power of angelos veneration in support of ecclesiastical authority.
C. does a useful service in assembling the epigraphic evidence for Christian and non-Christian angels. Many readers will want more, however. Any book that combines Christian and non-Christian, literary and epigraphic material risks leaving specialists in each area unsatisfied. I often wished for more systematic discussion of the philosophical or theological issues at stake; a clear discussion of Platonist daimonology is a particular desideratum in the early chapters. The Christian context in which C. locates his inscriptions is heavily slanted toward the ‘orthodox’, despite C.'s interest in the heterodox potential of angeloi. The case-study approach also renders the argument as a whole somewhat disjointed. It is left to the reader to discern patterns across chapters, and it is not always clear whether C.'s examples are representative or exhaustive of their category. Finally, the writing is frequently stiff and repetitive, the proofreading poor. The definitive modern study of ancient Mediterranean angeloi has yet to be written.
