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  • Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
  • Joseph P. Amar
Garth Fowden . Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Pp. xviii + 205; 14 plates, map. $12.95.

Garth Fowden, the author of this provocative and well-argued study, sets out to develop an overall theory about empire in the Fertile Crescent from Cyrus to Islam. His central thesis is that universalism, the kind of political and cultural domination which underlies the ancient notion of oikoumene and orbis terrarum, is "more realizable in the context of monotheism" (p. 9). Fowden distinguishes among the components of universalism as a political force, and of monotheism as a determining theological principle, to explain how what we know today as the "Christian West" and the "World of Islam" came to be. At the same time, his work contributes significantly to the discussion of the role of Eurocentrism in the formation of historical perspectives.

The recurring focus of this book is on the ancient, perennial conflict between Iran and Rome, both of which aspired to world empire, and both of which generally succeeded in canceling out each other. The ongoing struggle between these two ancient superpowers made Cyrus and Alexander role-models of world conquest. Cyrus was the first in antiquity to realize the goal of world empire on a purely political level. But with the defeat of Iran by Alexander, cultural pluralism was replaced with the Hellenocentric vision of Greek domination. Building on this legacy, Constantine enlisted the strength and fervor of Christianity to give his quest for empire coherence and direction.

Chapter 1 opens with a topographical tour of the arena in which military and diplomatic confrontations between Iran and the West were played out. The author argues that world empire in antiquity required control of the eastern Mediterranean basin, the Iranian plateau, and everything in between. This unification was achieved twice: first under Cyrus, whose power base lay in the Iranian plateau, and second, with the emergence of the Abbasid Islamic Empire with its capital at Baghdad, the geographical nexus of this strategic area. [End Page 507]

In chapter 2, the discussion shifts to polytheist Rome in an effort to discover cultural antecedents of the kind of Christian Roman universalism that would come to be associated with Constantine. Such elements as the role of the cult of the emperor and his family figure prominently in the discussion. But the author concludes that polytheism, even when it professed belief in its universal significance, remained too locally identified ever to amount to a political force.

Chapter 3 extends the survey of religions to the cultural crossroads of the Fertile Crescent. The author surveys four religions, all born of this region, and all claiming some form of universalism: the Sabians of Harran, who gave Syriac-speaking paganism (hanpûtâ) a good name, but who were too territorially restricted to achieve anything more than local appeal; Judaism, whose monotheism was so ethnically defined that it never seriously set out to proselytize; Manichaeism, which was so culturally accommodating that its designation in Arabic (zandaqah) became a synonym for heresy. Finally, with the success of Constantine's Christian Roman Empire, the seed of the "First Byzantine Commonwealth" took root.

Constantine's alliance of throne and altar accomplished what neither Cyrus nor Alexander had been able to achieve, as Fowden shows in chapter 4. Political and cultural domination, combined with the evangelical mandate to "make disciples of all nations" (Matt 28:19), encouraged ecclesiastical historians to intertwine the histories of Church and Empire into a single, seamless narrative. The simplicity of Christian monotheism and the moral imperatives it carried with it seemed to be tailor-made for an alliance with a political machine bent on world empire. But Christianity was not prepared to be as ecumenical as Manichaeism. The rigidity required of Christian monotheism invited heresy, specifically Monophysitism, which heralded the "First Byzantine Commonwealth."

In chapter 5 Fowden may well be at his most original and insightful as he plots the progress of Monophysite expansion throughout the Byzantine heartland and along the periphery of the empire which he distinguishes as the "Mountain Arena": Iberia and Armenia, Southern Arabia and...

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