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A short thread on Maximus of Madaura, a pagan grammarian of the late 4th century CE who is (as in the quoted tweet) often treated as a prime witness to the existence of monotheistic tendencies in late antique paganism. https://twitter.com/bdaiwi_historia/status/1350157125008420865
Maximus is writing to a prominent Christian bishop, Augustine of Hippo. He begins with a conciliatory tone. Greek myth tells us, dubiously, that the gods live on Mt Olympus. Neither a Christian nor most pagan intellectuals can take this seriously (the latter haven't for a very
long time). "The forum of our city" also attests to the existence of many beneficent gods - through statues and various cults, presumably - and this "we" (pagans) approve of. At the same time, nobody can be so deranged as to deny that there is...
"one highest god, without beginning, without natural offspring, as it were a great and magnificent father." Maximus has very rapidly gone through what Varro calls the three theologiae, 'forms of discourse about gods'. First, the mythicon/fabulosum: this is basically unreliable.
Augustine knew well enough that this is what pagans thought, but like all Christian polemicists he likes to pretend he doesn't. Maximus is quite right to insist on it, establishing that this is not a real disagreement. Next, however, the politikon/civile, evidence of the forum.
This the Christians likewise rejected, but Maximus approves of. But he doesn't ascribe demonstrative power to it; it's persuasive (to pagans), not conclusive. The clincher is the physikon/naturale, which is where there is again basic agreement. One god is the highest,
and he doesn't have the kind of genealogical entanglements myth ascribes to him (perhaps "natural offspring" is a swipe at the Son of God as well but perhaps not!). He is eternal and supreme. This is indeed agreed on by Christians, Platonists, and Stoics.
Then we come to the part of the letter that really typifies pagan monotheism to those who don't know the actual intellectual background. I'll give this first in the old translation cited by OP and then give a more accurate one.
"The powers of this Deity, diffused throughout the universe which He has made, we worship under many names, as we are all ignorant of His true name, the name God being common to all kinds of religious belief. Thus it comes, that while in diverse supplications we approach...
separately, as it were, certain parts of the Divine Being, we are seen in reality to be the worshippers of Him in whom all these parts are one." I would translate as follows: "His powers are diffused through his cosmic creation." we'll return to the specific meaning of 'powers'.
"We invoke (the powers) under different names because we do not know the proper name of the whole." the whole, not the true! - Maximus is saying that pagans name+worship parts. "For 'god' is the common name of all forms of worship."
What Maximus is saying here is a little unclear: that all cults (incl Christianity) are tied together by this name? Or rather that the Christian convention of calling the highest god "God" is nonsensical? Somehow it must affirm the previous points, in any case, by stressing the
equivalence of all religiones: forms of worship, not "religious beliefs" (not an ancient category). "So it comes that, while we approach certain parts, as it were, individually through a variety of supplicatory rituals, we are in fact seen to worship the whole." Again, as I said,
the whole: Maximus is not operating with a true/false binary, as the Christians are!
Anyway, I hope this much suffices to show that Maximus is working in a pagan framework dating back to Varro (1st century bce) and beyond. In this framework the gods of civic cult
Anyway, I hope this much suffices to show that Maximus is working in a pagan framework dating back to Varro (1st century bce) and beyond. In this framework the gods of civic cult
are separated from mythic discourse (judged to be unreliable) and instead confirmed through tracing them back to natural philosophy, which asserts their unity. Note that this is very specifically a Stoic view, which in Late Antiquity had been largely abandoned by philosophers
but was maintained by the conservative grammarians. It is something entirely different from the 'pagan monotheism' of the Neoplatonists, the ascendent philosophers of the time, for whom the gods were not powers or parts of one god, but individual incorporeal Intellects.
But I want to jump to another part of the letter now, where Maximus has switched from apologetics (belief in a highest god is compatible with worship of many gods) to polemics. He demands: "Explain this to me, who is this god whom you Christians lay claim to as belonging to you,
and whose presence you claim to see in secret places? For we worship our gods in the light of day, openly, before the eyes and ears of all mortals. We use pious prayers, and we make them propitious with appropriate sacrifices, making sure that all can observe and judge."
Observe (cernere) and judge/approve (probare) are the same words that he used in his sentence about the forum. So clearly, at the end of the day the politikon is where the debate lies: pagan ritual practice is good, Christian ritual practice is bad. At a level of abstraction,
we can pretend they agree on the unity of the highest god. But if Maximus' conception of the highest god is right, then the Christians are not worshipping him. So the question remains: who is this god called only "god"? He does not make sense; the worship of many gods with
individual names does, and philosophy grounds the latter (not the former). If one pays attention to the background of the language of 'powers' and 'parts' one could have known this earlier in the letter. Moderns like to gloss this sort of thing as 'aspects', but that's baseless.
Calling gods "powers" is typical of a certain kind of discourse about gods that is quasi-philosophical, speculative - sometimes used by philosophers, sometimes by grammarians - but does not belong to any specific school of philosophy. Nor does it necessarily belong in
a hierarchy where all powers are powers *of* one god. Gods are often simply powers, or powers of each other. Maximus is joining this language to the Stoic language of parts. Which, once again, is not about true god versus false gods but natural one god versus conventional
many gods with conventional names. We can't fathom the entire god, but we can say, for example, at this point we're worshipping that part or power of the highest god which pervades the sea, called Neptune. This is not just an aspect of the highest god, it's a very clearly defined
part of him, obviously separate, if intimately connected, from Juno, the portion that pervades the air. It would be nonsensical to pray to Juno for a good catch of fish, or Neptune for a clear sky, even if they are both part of the same god. /Fin
Addendum: Maximus at no point argues that he is a monotheist. He says that everyone agrees there is "one highest god". This is not true, mind you, regardless of how we cash it out. But the point is that for Maximus, the highest god is made up of gods; for Platonists, the highest
god rules over other gods; for Christians, there are no other gods. That last position (which again can be cashed out in MAAAAANY ways) is what we call monotheism.
Ah heck Addendum 2: the entire 'pagan monotheism' project - which is not about PM being a useful heuristic but about proving that it existed - is based on imposing Christian terminology and ignoring the actual origins of ancient terminologies. Granted, the latter is hard, but
you could simply not write about the topic. This idea literally comes straight from Christian theologians like Eduard Zeller (cited by Martin West in the 1999 book that kickstarted this trend in research) who are elaborating on themes from polemicists and apologists.
