A commentary on Rémi Brague’s notion of secondarity and the Roman inferiority complex

It is a widely accepted view in modern political philosophy that European civilization contains at its core a dichotomy of Judeo-Christian theological understanding of the world, on the one hand, and Greek philosophy, on the other. The famous syntagma Athens versus Jerusalem expresses this view and is widely used in courses on the history of Western political thought.

Rémi Brague, a French scholar of Straussian persuasion, challenges this traditional view in his book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization. He argues that European identity is derived fundamentally from Roman culture rather than directly from Biblical and Greek traditions. Brague sees Rome as the mediator between classical Judeo-Christian thought and Greek philosophy on one side, and a nascent European culture on the other. Brague thus sustains the idea that European civilization is not defined by a direct inheritance and continuous assimilation of Greek and Jewish tradition, but that it’s culture is a deliberately assumed secondarity, mediated by Roman civilization.

Brague coins the term secondarity to describe a sort of civilizational inferiority complex. He sustains that the Romans manifested this complex with respect to the superior Greek civilization and culture. Brague eventually generalizes the term by defining it as such an attitude held by one culture with respect to a previous one. Brague sees secondarity as a recurrent theme in European history and he describes the relationship between Christianity and Judaism in the same terms.

I argue here that the term secondarity is not valid, even for the Roman/Greek case from which Brague derives and defines it initially. I will show that Brague supports his view by quoting Roman sources out of context and that he ignores completely the inseparable community of gods and men in the historically concrete civitas which Rome represented. This strong social creed gave Romans confidence that their world was both unique, and superior to any other existing social order.^[1]

I shall refute also Brague’s view that Christianity manifested a similar inferiority complex towards Judaism, by analyzing his reliance upon a single quote from Romans 11:24. I will show Rémi Brague applies a form of literalism^[2] to the ancient texts to which he refers, by changing the meaning of the symbols used by the ancient authors for the purpose of demonstrating his notion of secondarity.

In the first part of this paper I discuss the term secondarity as it is coined by Brague from the Roman/Greek case, together with a theoretical and methodological analysis. In the second part, I shall analyze the author’s view of Christian secondarity with regards to Judaism. I have formulated my arguments based mainly on Eric Voegelin’s^[3] understanding of the Roman and Christian worlds, and on Mircea Eliade’s^[4] work on the history of religious ideas.

PART I

The origin of secondarity: the Roman/Greek case

According to Brague, the concept of secondarity is derived from a Roman inferiority complex which they manifested in relation to the ancient Greek cultural model.  Brague tells us that the Romans were the “aqueduct” which linked Ancient Greece with the nascent European civilization, making possible the transmission of Greek culture. The general inferiority complex which the Romans felt towards the Greeks shaped the transmission of what the former had inherited from the latter. Brague supports his interpretation by presenting a few aspects of this relationship which he holds led eventually to this attitude. As a general remark, what Brague is looking at is the structure of the transmission of the Greek and Jewish cultures, arguing that, in fact, this is the content of the Roman contribution to the formation of European civilization.^[5]

The constitutive elements of Romans’ inferiority complex

Brague argues that the cultural borrowing from the Greek model which eventually led to the Hellenization of Roman culture had as its cause, as much as a consequence, a “certain Roman feeling of inferiority toward the Greeks.”^[6] He places the beginning of this cultural borrowing roughly between the first Roman contact with the Greek culture in southern Italy (including Sicily) and the time of the Punic Wars.

At the core of Brague’s argument for a Roman feeling of inferiority lies a philological comparison between Latin and Greek. The first constitutive element of the Roman inferiority complex toward the Greeks, as the author presents it, lies in the origins of the former in comparison with the origins of the latter.

Brague argues that the Greeks considered it a sign of honour that their origin did not pay tribute to another great civilization; that they did not have a “master” that contributed to the procreation of their culture and for this reason they proudly claimed their autochthony. By contrast, for the Romans, their origin was symbolized as a foundation, on new soils, of a second Troy, as Brague argues referring to Virgil’s Aeneid. Brague supports his statement by comparing the meaning of the word used in Latin and Greek to address the origins of the two peoples. On the Greek side we have the word phusys which expresses “the coming-into-being as a continuous movement of unfolding out of a particular origin, and as an installation in a permanence.”^[7] On the Latin side we have the word auctoritas which refers to a foundation and which represents in the Roman case “the initiative that spans the gap that innovation created in relation to the ancient, and which guarantees or ratifies the action of another as one’s own.”^[8] I would like to stop here and comment a little bit on this argument.

Brague refers to Virgil’s Aeneid as a source that indicates Romans’ relation to their origin and that the new city carried the symbolic meaning of a new Troy established on a new and foreign land. To make his case, Brague quotes an example purporting to demonstrate this important characteristic of the Roman ethos, which eventually developed into an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Greeks. Since the quote is from the Aeneid, an immediate question arises from this statement, making the reader wonder why Brague ignores the dream Aeneas has about the Italian origins of Trojans’ ancestors:

Change your country. These are not the shores that Delian

Apollo urged on you, he did not order you to settle in Crete.

There is a place the Greeks call Hesperia by name,

an ancient land powerful in arms and in richness of the soil:

There the Oenotrians lived: now the rumour is that

a younger race has named it Italy after their leader.

That is our true home, Dardanus and father Iasius,

from whom our race first came, sprang from there.^[9]

Once awake, Aeneas immediately recounts the dream to his father who recalls Cassandra’s prophecy which indicated the Hesperian or Italian roots of the Trojans but that no one had believed her because of the curse spelled on her by Apollo:

The rite completed, with joy

I told Anchises of this revelation, revealing it all in order.

He understood about the ambiguity in our origins, and the dual

descent, and that he had been deceived by a fresh error,

about our ancient country. Then he spoke: “My son, troubled

by Troy’s fate, Only Cassandra prophesied such an outcome.

Now I remember her foretelling that this was destined for our race,

and often spoke of Hesperia, and the Italian kingdom.

Who’d believe that Trojans would travel to Hesperia’s shores?

Who’d have been moved by Cassandra, the prophetess, then?

Let’s trust to Apollo, and, warned by him, take the better course.”

So he spoke, and we were delighted to obey his every word.^[10]

It is clear enough from these verses that the founders of Troy had Italian roots^[11] and that the meaning of the dream and of Cassandra’s prophecy is that Aeneas and his companions were in fact returning to their land of origin; that they were returning home instead traveling to a new and foreign land as Brague argues. Since Brague quotes from Aeneid to build his arguments it is logical to wonder why he ignores this very important episode of the poem. One would not be at fault in assuming that Brague is not ignorant of this episode in the poem and that he intentionally neglects it for the simple reason that it contradicts his view that Romans could not claim autochthony, which as Brague sustains, was an important factor in the development of their inferiority complex.

According to Brague, the attitude which the Romans had towards their origins cannot be reduced only to the meaning of the words that express it, as is the case with the term auctoritas. There is also the word altus which signifies both “high” and “profound” and which expresses how space was seen and understood by the Romans. Brague argues that Latin retained only a sense of distance relative to the speaker and not of an oriented position in space. In other words, the term indicates a unidirectional expression of space similar to what is seen from a point of view of one who looks forward and who neglects what is situated behind. He contrasts this view with the one seen from above, which provides a perspective of the  whole and of all directions of space. In support of this argument, Brague gives another example, the case of the word trivium, which signifies an intersection of three roads, and not four as for instance the word crossroad indicates.^[12] For the reason that language represents a tool to express observed reality, Brague concludes that the Romans neglected completely their origin for the simple fact that they were looking only forward, toward the future, “to the conquest of the world,” as he puts it.

Yet, it is not only language which can reveal the Romans’ view of themselves in the world. Architecture and the arts have peculiarities which indicate this specific perception of space. Roman temples, Brague tells us, are built in such a way that one cannot see the background but only the front side, in contrast with Greek temples which one could go around. He suggests that this type of architecture with an “unseen background” confirms their unidirectional space perception in which the origin or what has been before is forgotten or neglected. To complete the picture, Brague argues that Roman statues represent people in movement in contrast with the Greek ones which are at rest.

It is not necessary for one to be expert in the arts to observe that Brague’s conclusion that Roman art represented people on the “march”, in contrast with Greek art – and which is held furthermore to prove that the Romans’ origin and past had been confined to oblivion – is an overstatement, to put it mildly. It is neither my intention nor the purpose of this article to deal with Greek and Roman art. I am concerned instead with the Roman attitude regarding their origins as Brague pictures and interprets them. The author makes an important statement regarding the Roman inferiority complex saying that

It is not a question here of objective facts which are quite difficult to measure, but of an impression of an affective order.^[13]

The method he is using in building his arguments is also generally evoked in this phrase:

I will do so without pretending to objectivity, but on the contrary, by isolating particular features in function on my aim;^[14]

and presented explicitly in this passage:

I will take the liberty of abstracting ‘Roman attitude’ from the givens of history. This attitude I will characterize in a general way as that of one who is conscious of a call to renew the ancient. Thus, for example, I will neglect the orators’ ritual appeals to ancestral customs (mos maiorum). But, in return, I will support myself on a kernel of fact – that is, the Hellenization of Roman culture.^[15] 

These three quotes represent without doubt a succinct description of Brague’s scholarly approach to his main topic. Some theoretical observations regarding Brague’s research methods are necessary before presenting my arguments against Roman secondarity.

Some theoretical and methodological considerations

I have presented the theoretical core of Brague’s main concept of secondarity at some length in order to highlight the oddity of his line of argumentation. It seems that a major problem in Brague’s approach consists in the way he designs his research method by “abstracting the Roman attitude from the givens of history” and then supporting his idea of Roman inferiority on “a kernel of fact, that is the Hellenization of Roman culture.”

I have two observations to make regarding Brague’s research method and the first one refers to the fact that I do not see why the “Hellenization of Roman culture” – which Brague considers a fact – is not one of the “givens of history.” This aspect creates confusion about Brague’s research method. On the one hand he is abstracting the Roman attitude from the historical reality of that era with the aim of exposing it to study. On the other hand he eliminates or ignores those “givens of history” or textual evidence that do not match his view. There is, I think, a big difference between identifying from the “givens of history” the Roman attitude with the aim of differentiation^[16], and abstraction in the form of ‘cleansing’ the research area of inconvenient historical and textual evidence.

My second observation is addressed to another statement Brague makes regarding his approach and understanding of Roman inferiority:

It is of little importance to recall here that the inferiority felt by the Romans of the second century was perhaps unjustified, as the Greeks of that period were hardly superior to their Roman contemporaries. It is not a question here of objective facts which are quite difficult to measure, but of an impression of an affective order.^[17]

Again, I do not see how the constitutive elements of “an impression of an affective order” are easier to measure than any objective facts related to the same issue in question.

Moreover, it is clear from Brague’s statement that these “objective facts” show that there are little or no reasons to support an inferiority complex – though he does not specify what these objective facts might be and why they cannot be measured. But again, perhaps there are no objective facts at all that might reveal the Roman inferiority complex.^[18]

However, Brague has an explanation and a solution for this inconvenient lack of factual evidence. Despite the lack of factual evidence, he can look into written sources where the feeling of inferiority has been expressed. Brague proceeds by quoting from Horace’s Epistles, Book II, Epistle I, verse 156 where the poet talks about the beneficent role the Greek arts had on the rough Romans: “Captive Greece captivated the wild conqueror and introduced the arts into rustic Latium.”

Even if one accepts Horace’s verses as a real expression of Roman ethos on this matter, it is very difficult if not an error to draw the conclusion that this verse expresses a Roman inferiority complex. If the Romans grasped the truth about their “rustic” culture and the role the magnificent Greek culture had on them, and I have no reason to disagree on this point, it looks to me to be a proof of insight. By recognizing and accepting the salutary Greek influence on them, the Romans showed greatness of spirit rather than an inferiority complex.

Under these circumstances, Brague’s research method appears similar to the scientific method used in natural sciences – particularly in physics.^[19] However, it is hard to believe a scholar of medieval thought of Brague’s caliber would adopt such methods. It might be something else that makes his research method looks inappropriate to social science research and that could be his interpretation of ancient sources. To shed light on this issue I will discuss what exactly led Brague to his conclusion and how this cunning interpretative procedure affects the outcomes of his research.

Hypostatization in Rémi Brague’s case

I mentioned in the introduction that Brague practices what Eric Voegelin called literalism. This is an allegoric interpretation of a text that “splits the symbol from the experience by hypostatizing the symbol as a proposition on objects.”^[20]

What Voegelin means by hypostatization is a deformation of the meaning of a sentence that carries within it both the experience and the symbolic expression used to evoke that experience. The deformation in meaning takes place by transforming the predicate of the original sentence into a second substantive in the new sentence.

Just to give a very simple example of hypostatization, let’s say one has an experience tasting some coffee beans and communicates that experience through the sentence “The coffee beans are bitter.” Through hypostatization the new sentence becomes “The coffee beans possess bitterness.” The primary meaning is significantly altered in the second sentence by changing the predicate and by creating a new substantive, bitterness, which becomes a subject in itself despite the fact it does not exist initially.

In Brague’s case, we have a hypostatization with respect to the concept of inferiority. For instance, the proposition “The features of the Latin language are inferior to those of the Greek” turns into “The features of the Latin language contain the inferiority the Romans felt towards the Greeks.”^[21] As one can easily observe, the word “inferior,” which in the first sentence is part of the predicate (being a predicative adjective), becomes the noun “inferiority” in the second sentence.

The Romans realized through their experience of encountering the Greek language and culture that their language, Latin, was inferior to Greek because Latin was not as exuberant and rich in meaning. Brague cites several Roman sources such as Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the Younger, and Saint Jerome to prove this indisputable fact.^[22] From these texts, Brague concludes by creating a new idea in which the language issue is turned into the issue of an inferiority complex the Romans have developed towards the Greek.

Brague’s research method which consists in abstracting the subject of inquiry from the “givens of history,” which in this case is the Roman acknowledgment of the inferiority of their language in comparison to Greek. This procedure raises serious concerns regarding his interpretation of this fact. Eric Voegelin describes accurately this research issue as an endemic problem in both natural and social modern sciences:

When a new differentiation occurs, the area of reality newly articulated will be understood as an area of particular importance; and the overrating of its importance amidst the joy of discovery may lead to the neglect of other areas of reality that were contained in the earlier compact experience but now are neglected. The most important such event of neglect has occurred in the modern age in the wake of the newly differentiated natural sciences.^[23]

Brague’s observation that the Romans had a pressing problem of linguistic expression in comparison to their Greek counterparts makes him overrate this finding and neglect other meaningful aspects of Roman social reality. By neglecting other areas of reality, Brague ignores completely the inseparable community of gods and men in the historically concrete civitas which was Rome and splits the symbol of language inferiority from the Roman’s overarching communal experience. The effect this interpretation has on the bigger picture of the historical reality Brague covers in his book is more serious than it may seem and I’ll try to present it briefly.

The truth of reality, which in our case is the inferiority of the Latin language in comparison with the Greek, has been deformed into a doctrinal truth. The truth of linguistic inferiority is deformed into a doctrinal truth when Brague isolates it from the “givens of history” and overrates it, ignoring other important aspects of reality. Now, the new doctrine of linguistic inferiority has to address something, a social phenomenon or characteristic, for the importance given by the author to it is so elevated that it must have produced noticeable effects that cannot be neglected.

And yet, there is no historical and textual evidence of such effects. Hence, Brague invents one “of an affective order”: a Roman inferiority complex vis-à-vis Greek culture. This is the reason why he states that the Roman inferiority complex is not a matter of objective facts but of affective order. Apparently, the new picture Brague presents to the reader is logical and implicitly makes sense if the reader takes for granted the new concepts produced by hypostatization.

Brague’s story goes this: when the Romans encountered Greek culture, especially poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy, they realized the limited resources that Latin had to express human thoughts in comparison with the richness and sophistication of the Greek language. This then led eventually to the development of a general inferiority complex.

What I wish to point out is that once the object of doctrinal truth is created, an author can make propositions about it as if it was a truth of reality. This becomes a serious problem for Brague when he defines secondarity based on the existence of an inferiority complex. Secondarity in its turn is used by Brague to define the reason for Roman expansion into an empire, the way they treated conquered peoples, and also the mode of transmission of the Greek and Judaic cultures to the nascent European civilization.

Moreover, Brague hypostatizes again his Roman secondarity (which was itself the result derived from the first hypostatization) and comes up with a new term he calls “Romanity” or the “Roman attitude”. “Romanity” represents a new doctrinal term defined as a consciousness “[desiring] to have above one a classicism to imitate and below one a barbarity to subdue.”^[24] Brague considers this Romanity as the main characteristic of Europe and he explains through it the entirety of European history, from the Crusades, the never-ending Renaissances, and colonialism, to the contemporary process of Europeanization.

In this section, I have analyzed and discussed Brague’s theoretical and methodological approach as presented by the author at the beginning of his book. I have pointed out the flaws of that approach and the consequences of those on Brague’s research essay (as he calls it) and the outcomes they produced. When I discussed Brague’s design of his research method I argued that the main flaw of his project consists in the fact that by abstracting the Latin language issue from the given Roman reality Brague ignores completely the inseparable community of gods and men in the historically concrete civitas which was Rome. In the next chapter I will give an account of this neglected area of reality which was contained in the Roman compactness and I will contrast it with Brague’s view.

Rome – the inseparable community of gods and men

In the concluding chapter of his book, Rémi Brague invites the reader to reflect upon the character of modern Europe by asking whether there is continuity in modern Europe with the spirit of the Middle Ages, or if modern times are characterized by an absolute departure from that heritage. Brague mentions Eric Voegelin as one who sustained the Gnostic character of modernity pointing to a continuity with the Gnosticism of the Middle Ages.

Brague criticizes Voegelin’s view by arguing that he lacks textual evidence to support the thesis. Brague stresses the fact that Voegelin does not even mention Marcion, the Christian Gnostic whom Brague considers to have played a decisive role in the history of Christianity.^[25] In a footnote addressed to this view, Brague mentions chapter four of Voegelin’s book The New Science of Politics, which refers to the Gnostic nature of modernity.

I have no reasons to believe Brague has read less than the entire book, which is, after all, only 189 pages long. Therefore, I must say that Rémi Brague ignores again very important aspects of the works he cites from. To be more specific, chapter three of The New Science of Politics, entitled “The Struggle for Representation”, deals exactly with the Roman ethos and how they saw themselves in the world. This is precisely the topic which I argue Brague ignores, therefore deforming historical reality.^[26]

In the following paragraphs I’ll provide an account of what Voegelin meant by “the inseparable community of gods and men in the historically concrete civitas which was Rome” and how that affected Romans’ ethos and creed. For a clearer presentation of my argument I’ll split Voegelin’s view on the Roman Empire into two parts. In this I will be following Brague’s definition of the Roman attitude and its two constitutive elements: on one end, a relationship defined by a Roman inferiority complex vis-à-vis Greek culture, and on the other end the Roman belief of having the duty to subdue and eventually to civilize the world.

I will present first Voegelin’s view on the Romans’ understanding of their encounter with Greek culture and how they positioned themselves in this relationship. The second part will refer to how Voegelin understands the Roman attitude towards the barbarians, the peoples they conquered, and how Rome shaped its politics in these provinces.

The Roman attitude towards the Greek culture

Voegelin points to the main principle of Roman religion, which in Latin is called do ut des. Translated into English, that means I give that you may give or the principle of reciprocity. According to this principle, the Romans understood the relation between man and gods as reciprocal in the sense that the offerings and sacrifices made by the former are expected to be returned by the divine in the form of something valuable for the worshiper.

By this light, the foundation of Rome by Romulus and the formulation of a religious dogma under the second king Numa Pompilius, created a strong belief that Rome could have never achieved its greatness without the ritual conciliation of the gods in its favour. This is a belief expressed by Cicero in his De natura deorum cited by Voegelin (see his note 41).^[27] The principle of reciprocity in religion is reflected also in society where a similar relationship develops between a citizen of a higher social position and those in need for favours such as political aid, personal gifts, or loans.

Voegelin traces this contractual relationship in society to the need for political representation, pointing to its commonality with religious dogma. Voegelin argues that due to a rigid Roman constitution regarding political representation, which did not allow for public elections to Senatorial seats, a solution to the representation problem had been adapted to the situation. Outside of the legal provisions on this matter, but not in contempt of them, an institution of social and political leadership called princeps civitatis had been created. At the core of this institution was a contractual relationship between an individual with a high social or political position and lower rank citizens in need for favours they could not achieve by themselves. Once the agreement was reached, “a sacred bond under the sanctions of the gods was created between the two men; the accepting man, the client, became the follower of the patron, and their relationship was governed by fides, by loyalty.”^[28] The princeps civitatis were people of high official rank who had a considerable number of clients. A competitive environment among these patrons emerged, and as a consequence, Roman society became a complicated network of personal followers.^[29]

This represents what Voegelin means by “inseparable community of gods and men in the historically concrete civitas” and is the phenomenon which Brague decided to ignore. This strong social and religious creed gave Romans confidence that their world was unique and superior to any other existing social order. This view had an impact on shaping their relationship with the Greeks. Voegelin sustains that the Romans considered themselves superior to the Greeks in any matter regarding the polis.

Moreover, Voegelin argues that they saw Greek philosophy, which was by far more advanced at the time, as a tool for searching for and expressing the meaning of their existential experience. Voegelin cites Cicero on this matter, pointing to the famous Roman senator’s mixed respect and amused contempt for Greek philosophy. Although the Roman considered Greek philosophy as an enlargement of the intellectual and moral horizon,^[30] Cicero attributed no existential meaning of it for his fellow citizens.

Cicero was well aware of the spiritual revolution at the core of Greek philosophy, which could have undermined the established Roman order built upon the ancestors and the gods. Voegelin recognizes that Cicero’s attitude could also be determined by a less desperate political situation represented by the empire, relative to what the Greeks were facing during and after the Peloponnesian War. However, Cicero minimized the possible threat posed by the Stoic view that every man has two countries by transforming it into the idea that man had indeed two countries, one is his birthplace, Arpinum in his case, and Rome. Giving this specific interpretation of the Stoic view, Cicero makes the Roman Empire the existential embodiment of the cosmopolis of the philosophers.^[31]

This interpretation explains Cicero’s view of Greek philosophy as a spice that will add perfection to superiority.^[32] A concrete example of Roman superiority is pictured by Cicero in his De re publica where, through an imaginary dialogue in which Scipio is the main protagonist, he talks about the problem of the best political regime, thus bringing into discussion the Platonic view on this issue. He argues that instead of building a fictitious city or the city in speech as it was the case with Socrates in The Republic of Plato, the Roman will always look at the origins of Rome as the best possible political order.^[33] Voegelin sees this Roman superiority also as an expression of the fact that Rome possessed an archaic experience of social order which could not be observed in the Greek case due to the reorganization of mythical material by Homer and Hesiod.^[34]

All these observations and considerations compelled Voegelin to state that Rome was an archaic survival in the Hellenistic civilization of the Mediterranean comparing that situation with the role of Japan in a civilizational environment dominated by Western ideas.^[35] It is now evident that Voegelin presents us the opposite view of Brague regarding the relationship between Rome and Athens. Voegelin perceives an attitude of superiority among the Romans in their relations to the Greeks, being in agreement with Cicero who considered Greek philosophy and language a spice added to superiority to achieve perfection.

The Roman attitude towards the barbarians

The relations between Rome and conquered barbarians were defined by Roman religious creeds and practices, and I consider that a brief presentation of Mircea Eliade’s view on Roman religiosity is worthwhile to clarify the matter.

Referring to the specificity of Roman religiosity, Eliade finds it rooted in a non-metaphysical disposition expressed by a keen interest in immediate realities, both cosmic and historical. Their religiosity shared the Egyptian deep religious belief that the ideal norm was represented by the regularity of the annual cycle, represented in the orderly succession of the seasons. Any perturbation of the cosmic order and the order of things indicated a danger of a return to chaos caused by a crisis in the relations between gods and men. As a consequence of this religious interest in the concrete, the particular, and the immediate which gave originality to Roman religiosity, Eliade eloquently expressed this observation:

The Roman religious genius is distinguished by pragmatism, the search for effectiveness, and, above all, by the ‘sacralization’ of organic collectivities: family, gens, fatherland. The famous Roman discipline, their honoring of obligations (fides), their devotion to the state, and the religious prestige they attributed to law are expressed by depreciation of the human person: the individual mattered only in so far as he belonged to his group.^[36]

This specificity had a great role in shaping the official religious creed because political vicissitudes and turmoil had serious repercussions on the traditional religious institutions. Such an extreme event took place during the Second Punic War, when the very existence of the Roman state was seriously threatened. As a countermeasure to this critical situation, the Romans decided to appeal to all gods, regardless of their origins.

Eliade observes that the Romans manifested a need to control foreign cults and fear of losing their benefits. Eliade’s observation suggests that one of the reasons for Roman territorial expansions was a need to control, along with the hostile foreign military powers, also their religious cults, in order to avoid the eventual wrath of these foreign divinities.

It is less important if the need for controlling foreign cults had been triggered by the threat of Rome’s destruction. What I would like to point to here is the fact that Roman decisions to conquer new peoples and their territories is not rooted in an inferiority complex felt towards Greek culture, which presumably made the Romans play the role of the Greeks by performing the universal mission of civilizing the uncivilized world. The decision was instead based on pragmatic grounds that reflected the established religious and social creed of Rome. Let me dwell for a moment on the social and political aspects of this issue as eloquently presented by Voegelin.

The patronate relationship within Roman society, which reflected to a certain extent the religious principle of do ut des, changed once the empire extended its territories. Due to new logistical demands, Rome needed professional armies to be in service in the newly conquered provinces for ten to twenty years. At the end of military service these soldiers had to be rewarded in some way for they had no home, land or other assets. In such new situations a similar relationship of patronage begin to develop between the soldiers and their military commanders who were princeps, a relationship that gave them insurance that once they became veterans they would all be rewarded by the state.

The outcome of these relationships was that whole armies became the clientele of a princeps. This patronate within the armies proved to be corrosive to class discipline and in the late republic these princeps formed principates and large parties that turned against the Senate and transformed political life into a personal struggle for power. Now, due to the great number of clientele the oath to the patron had to be reiterated and became a permanent institution.

The relationships that describes the principate pact, Voegelin argues, had extended to relations within the empire. Voegelin tells us “The patrocinial articulation of a group into leader and followers had expanded into the form of imperial representation.”^[37] In order to keep together the empire, the oath had to be transmitted to the provinces in order to have a similar sacramental bond as within Roman society.

Voegelin argues that Augustus’ legislation for moral and religious reform is part of an attempt to reinforce the sacramental bond not only within the empire but for Romans themselves as well, for their religious creed had faded by the time Varro wrote his Antiquities. Yet, the great variety of religious cults and beliefs within the vast territory of the empire made these legal reforms sterile and other solutions were sought. The one borrowed from the Hellenistic emperors, consisting in divinizing the emperor, proved insufficient due to the great number of deities worshiped. Another solution added to the previous one, which was also not new, was a process of religious syncretism or the mixture of gods. This solution had been adopted by previous Near Eastern empires. The idea was to unify all deities under one highest god who was represented by the empire-god.

Following this idea, a lasting solution was adopted by Emperor Aurelian who declared the official god of the Empire the sun-god, the Sol Invictus, and declared himself as his descendant and representative.^[38] With a brief interruption during Diocletian reign, this solution lasted until 313 AD when Christianity was legally accepted as religion.

Some important observations should be retained from this. One observation is that the Romans were aware of the greatness of the Greek culture and its role in shaping theirs. However, this acknowledgement did not follow the path of an inferiority complex as Brague argues. On the contrary, as pragmatic as they were, the Romans considered the Greek language as a great opportunity to express better the greatness of their society, city, and empire for they considered Rome superior to any other existing city, including Athens. The second observation is related to the reasons Rome expanded its territories and the attitude it manifested towards the conquered peoples. The reason for the territorial expansions and the way Rome treated the barbarians are rooted in the intimate structure of consciousness that defined the inseparable community of gods and men in the historically concrete civitas and not in a millenarian view of world civilizing mission born from an inferiority complex.

PART II

I mentioned in the introduction that Brague generalizes the term Romanity and explains through its lens the whole of European history. Referring to the Judeo-Christian heritage of European civilization, Brague argues that Christianity has been mainly Roman in its relation to the mother-religion of the Hebrew Bible aka. the Old Testament. Christianity, the author informs us, manifested an inferiority complex towards the ancient Israelite religion. This inferiority complex has not developed independent of the one in the Roman/Greek case but as a consequence of the fact that Christianity at its core is Roman.

Brague states that Christianity is to the Old Covenant what the Romans were to the Greeks, and for this reason he considers the Christians and the Church as “Roman”: “this ‘Roman’ structure is the very structure of the Christian religion.”^[39] Essentially, Brague tells us that Christianity is “Roman” for it manifested an inferiority complex towards its mother religion, and a messianic and redemptive attitude towards the gentiles. I will not comment on the Roman influence on the nascent Christian doctrine and Church, for it is not the topic of this article. Instead I will focus my attention on Brague’s thesis of a Christian inferiority complex towards the ancient Jewish religion.

In comparison to the Roman/Greek relations where Brague supported his case with several excerpts from ancient authors, in the Christian/Jewish case he clings to a single quote from Romans 11:24 attributed to Saint Paul. It is true he discusses at some length the importance of incarnation and of separation of the spiritual and the temporal, but these aspects represent the effects of the religious secondarity that characterizes Christianity in its relation to the Jewish religion, Brague tells us, and not what exactly defines the assumed inferiority complex as the author clearly states in the Roman/Greek case . Let me briefly present Brague’s position, followed by my analysis and comments.

I would like to begin with a useful reminder which is Brague’s definition of Romanity:

To be Roman is to have above one a classicism to imitate and below one a barbarity to subdue – though not as if one were only a neutral intermediary, a simple interpreter which is himself a stranger to what he communicates, but in knowing that one is oneself the scene in which everything takes place, in knowing oneself stretched between a classicism to assimilate and an inner barbarity.^[40]

It is also very important to keep in mind that Brague presents the duality of this relationship as being rooted in the inferiority complex the people in the middle felt towards their mother culture or religion.

Now, to the Christian/Jewish case Brague brings the thesis of Christianity’s Romanity, pointing to Christianity’s messianic and redemptive attitude towards the gentiles. If we retain the isomorphism with the Roman/Greek case it follows that Christianity’s messianic mission is a result of and inferiority complex Christians felt towards the Jews which is absolutely not the case. Rather, it is Jesus, the Messiah, who set the apostolic mission to his disciples gifting them divine powers; it is the resurrected Jesus who anointed Saul on the road to Damascus as the Apostle to the Gentiles to spread His Word. In other words, the apostolic and the redemptive attitude towards the gentiles and unbelievers is not an attitude per se but a performative act to accomplish a divine mission; it is not an attitude arising due to a decision the first Christians took to spread the words of Christ to the gentiles but arising from their submission to a divine command.

It is true that the apostolic mission began with Jesus’ disciples and Saint Paul but eventually the Catholic Church defined itself as Apostolic and a continuator of God’s command. Therefore, the parallel Brague draws between the Roman belief in their world-civilizing role and Christian messianic and redemptive mission towards the gentiles is groundless. It remains to be seen whether the Christians manifested an inferiority complex towards their mother religion.

Brague’s main argument in support of a Christian inferiority complex is the acknowledgement of the Christians that they were “grafted onto the Jewish people and of Jewish experience of God.”^[41] That means, he argues, that whereas the “Covenant is connatural with the Jews”, for the Christians the Covenant is something that must be learned. From this observation Brague draws the conclusion that the Christians have been grafted onto the Jewish people “against nature” and to support this conclusion he cites Saint Paul from Romans 11:24:

For you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.

Brague’s quotation from Saint Paul represents one of the reasons I argue the author cites out of context. Let me explain that. Talking about the content and the significance of Saint Paul’s Epistles, Mircea Eliade points out what transpires in these letters:

The Epistles do not constitute consecutive chapters of a systematic treatise. They continue, clarify, and define certain questions of doctrine and practice – questions that are carefully discussed in his teaching but that were not correctly understood by the community or questions whose typically Pauline solutions were criticized or sometimes even rejected by other missionaries.^[42] 

Paul’s primary objective in his letters is to correct his addressees’ beliefs and discipline their behavior. The arguments and rhetorical techniques Saint Paul is using in his letters dealing with various problems the small Christian communities were facing, represent also potent weapons to refute various oppositions to his teachings.

It is evident that Saint Paul, in order to persuade newly converted Christians, had to appeal to rhetorical tools adapting each letter to the specificity of the community in question. The quote which Brague uses comes from the letter addressed to the Roman Christians who encountered theological and practical difficulties in establishing a durable Christian community and church. Now, the Romans were very proud people and, as I have already presented, they had faith in the superiority of their civilization. We learn that Saint Paul knows very well this aspect from this passage where he sustains the divine institution of the Roman Empire touching a sensible cord of Roman ethos:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.^[43]

His position on the Roman Empire is in contrast with his earlier view that the present world is ruled by demonic forces expressed in 2 Corinthians 4:4. Saint Paul’s inconsistency on this subject reflects his rhetorical intentions. In my interpretation, his comparison of the converted Gentiles to wild olive branches grafted onto the cultivated olive tree which is Israel represents the right dose of humbleness Saint Paul administers to moderate the excessive Roman pride. An earlier passage supports my view:

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive branch shoot,/ were grafted in their place to share the/ rich root of the olive tree, do not boast/ over other branches. If you do boast,/ remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you.^[44]

In other words, Saint Paul is urging the Roman Christians to not “boast” over the Jewish Christians or other converted Gentiles trying to impose themselves as the main voice of the Church. A good reminder any Roman Christian should preserve is that Israel is at the core of the faith in God and not the Romans. This particular address to the Romans comes within a context of some doctrinal and practical problems the Christian communities in the capital of the Empire were facing. One issue is related to dietary habits, for the Romans were consuming pork which was forbidden for any Christian Jew due to the Mosaic Law. Another important issue, and perhaps more important, was whether the converted Gentiles should be circumcised or not. In both cases Saint Paul pleaded in favour of the Gentiles invoking the universality of spiritual salvation of Christ’s teachings. He does not lower the importance of the Torah but he argues that the Law came after and as a consequence of Abraham’s obedience to God. Hence, the faith in God transcends any written law and represents the core of the creed.

To conclude on this issue, it is helpful to observe that the problems created between the Jewish Christians and the Gentiles, in our case the Roman Christians, are related to some practical rituals mentioned in the Torah which for the Romans were difficult to follow. Since Saint Paul defended Gentile’s plea to follow their customs and tradition, I do not see any Christian inferiority complex towards the Old Testament expressed in Saint Paul’s olive tree comparison. What I see is a rhetorical tool to persuade both the Roman and the Jewish Christians to set aside the legalistic quarrels and start living together as brothers and sisters in the love for Christ.

Concluding Remarks

Rémi Brague has rightly pointed-out Rome’s essential contribution to the transmission of the Greek and Judeo-Christian models of culture and civilization to Europe. The Roman role in this matter has been neglected or considered insignificant by many scholars and Rémi Brague sheds a new light and opens new horizons for discussions on the dawn of European civilization. However, Brague’s work is heavily affected by his interpretation of the causes of that specific mode of cultural transmission – especially as expressed in his concept of secondarity.

As I have showed in this article, the term secondarity has no correspondent in reality, it having been crafted by Brague with the aim of supporting his view that an inferiority complex, initially developed by the Romans with respect to Greek culture, is the key by which the whole European history can be unlocked and interpreted. By carefully selecting textual evidence out of context and by ignoring completely important aspects of reality “of an affective order” – which I, following Voegelin, have described as the inseparable community of gods and men in the historically concrete civitas which was Rome – Rémi Brague casts a shadow over his great insight into the role that the Romans played in influencing nascent European civilization.

As a final remark, my article touches a more general aspect of the serious problems that the use of the modern scientific method in social sciences faces today. It is clear from this particular case that no one is vaccinated against many the temptations which a great idea or a great discovery may open up.

Notes

[1] _ I do not contest here the subtlety of the Greek in comparison with more simplistic and pragmatic Latin. Nor am I downplaying the Greek influence on Roman culture by artificially elevating the latter. The richness of the Greek language and the superiority of Greek culture as a whole in comparison to the Roman culture are beyond any doubt. What I am contesting is Brague’s view on Roman secondarity and its supposed inferiority complex.

[2] _ I am using Eric Voegelin’s understanding of literalism which he defines as an allegoric interpretation of a text and which “splits the symbol from the experience by hypostatizing the symbol as a proposition on objects.” See Voegelin, Eric. Order and History,v.4 (ed. Michael Franz). University of Missouri Press: United States of America. 2000. Print. pp.85.

[3] _ Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was a German-born American political philosopher. At the time of his death, he was Senior Research Fellow at Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He published extensively in addition to his major five-volume work Order and History.

[4] _ Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. A History of Religious Ideas (three volumes), The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, Patterns in Comparative Religion represent his best known works on the history of religion.

[5] _ Brague, Rémi. Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization (trans. Samuel Lester). St. Augustine Press, 2009, pp. 32.

[6] _ Ibid., pp. 35.

[7] _ Ibid., pp. 34.

[8] _ Ibid., pp. 34.

[9] _ Virgil. Aeneid. translated by A. S. Kline, Book III, 161-168.

[10] _ Ibid., 178-189.

[11] _ I do not suggest here that Virgil’s view on Romans’ origins is historically accurate. I am just observing that Brague ignores a very important episode of the epic poem which he uses as source for his argument.

[12] _ A small observation has just crossed (pun intended) my mind in that a crossroad represent an intersection of two roads whereas trivium represents an intersection of three roads. It seems to me the Latin word “covers” more space in sight than the word crosswords.

[13] _ Rémi Brague, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, trans. Samuel Lester, 1st ed. (St. Augustine’s Press, 2009), pp. 37.

[14] _ Ibid., pp.32.

[15] _ Ibid., pp.35.

[16] _ I am using Voegelin’s understanding of differentiation which is the process by which the discernible features of consciousness as such and its objects are noticed and given expression.

[17] _ See 12.

[18] _ As I will show later in the article, there are both objective facts and elements “of an affective order” related to the Roman ethos regarding the Greeks and these facts have been already measured. Moreover, these facts show us that the Romans, in contrast with Brague’s view, considered their civilization superior to the Greeks.

[19] _ I will not discuss the problems the scientific method used in natural sciences creates in social sciences. There is an extensive literature on this matter.

[20] _ See note 2.

[21] _ Although the two sentences are mine they reflect exactly Brague’s view on Roman secondarity.

[22] _ For more details about the works cited see Brague’s footnote 29 at page 36.

[23] _ Voegelin, Eric, Autobiographical Reflections, edited by Ellis Sandoz, LSU Press, 1989, pp. 109.

[24] _ Rémi Brague, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, trans. Samuel Lester, 1st ed. (St. Augustine’s Press, 2009), pp. 39.

[25] _ Ibid. 57-59.

[26] _ I consider it necessary to mention that I am using the notion history or in this particular case historical reality in the sense Voegelin described it – as a stage of consciousness within the tension defined by both noetic and pneumatic experiences.

[27] _ Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, 1st ed. (University Of Chicago Press, 1987), 89.

[28] _ Ibid., 93.

[29] _ Ibid.

[30] _ Ibid., 91.

[31] _ Ibid.

[32] _ Ibid.

[33] _ Ibid., 90.

[34] _ Ibid.

[35] _ Ibid.

[36] _ Mircea Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity, trans. Willard R. Trask (University Of Chicago Press, 1985), 115.

[37] _ Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, 1st ed. (University Of Chicago Press, 1987), 96–97.

[38] _ Ibid., 98.

[39] _ Brague, Eccentric Culture, 54.

[40] _ Ibid., 39.

[41] _ Ibid.

[42] _ Mircea Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity, trans. Willard R. Trask (University Of Chicago Press, 1985), pp.347.

[43] _ Romans 13:1.

[44] _ Romans 11:17-18.

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