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Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on the "sacralization" of Graeco-Roman techniques carried out by Emperor Julian (361-363): his antichristian discursive strategy, the link between foundation narratives and ritual prescription, the reconfiguration of divine powers, the consequences that this polemic produced.

Paper long abstract:

The relationship between divine powers and humans, such as divine gifts to improve conditions of humankind and the practices adopted as a result are a common theme in much ancient literature.

In Plato, some techniques are divine gifts (Plato, Phaedrus 274d) and humans started worshipping gods – through altars and statues – when Prometheus gave them a technical skill and fire (Plato, Protagoras, 321c-322a). Centuries later, Aelius Aristides as well linked cultic practices to technical development: before Zeus everything was chaotic, then humans had laws and altars (To Rome, 103).

According to Emperor Julian (361-363), who’s an heir of this tradition, the deities providentially oversee human existence: human developments, techniques, and knowledge, are divine gifts, including cultic practices, that have to be respected and preserved. This traditional topic is compelling in Julian’s works, given his anti-Christianism: knowledge and practices of the Graeco-Roman world are hierotechnai as a whole, “sacred techniques”, divine gifts, aimed at maintaining the relationship with the gods, for human well-being (Against the Galileans, fr. 45 Masaracchia). That’s why he tries to take Christians back to ancient traditions: apostates of the gods, the “Galileans” have exchanged divine gifts with a superstition that brings back humans to a feral condition and leads the empire into chaos.

The aim of this paper is to deepen Julian’s discursive strategy, the “sacralization” of Graeco-Roman techniques in a competitive perspective: the link, if any, between mythic foundation narratives and ritual prescription, the reconfiguration of divine powers in the light of this dynamic, and the consequences that this polemic may have produced.