Both in academic circles and in the general press, popular culture tends to be viewed as a form of sacrilege. This may be meant positively or negatively, but in both cases popular culture is understood as performing the same act: to use a term itself current in popular culture, "disrespecting" the past; that is, not so much ignoring the past, but recycling and rearranging it at will.1 Consider the recent success of Xena: Warrior Princess, a television series now in its fifth season, which narrates the exploits of a proto-feminist warrior who does battle with the mythic figures of a vaguely classical past. One of Xena's essential features, something that charms its fans as much as it infuriates its critics,2 is its blithe anachronism: absolutely no effort is made to represent myth or history "accurately." In one episode Xena is present at the siege of Troy and, in the next, at Caesar's war with Cleopatra. This kind of historical manipulation is recognized as the distinctive mark of postmodern culture. But whether this tendency is praised or condemned, our reactions to popular culture today suggest an intense nostalgia for the past. Calling Xena "sacreligious," in other words, or accusing it of "disrespecting" the past, suggests we are still in search of the sacred.3
I would like to argue against the prevailing critical tendencies sketched out above, and suggest that popular culture has in fact made possible a newly-viable notion of the sacred: one that looks very much like a revival of the classical past. "There is not much to be said," argues Walter Burkert, "for either the Masons' or modern witches' claim that they are perpetuating ancient mysteries through continuous tradition. Mysteries could not go underground because they lacked any lasting organizations. They were not self-sufficient sects; they were intimately bound to the social system of antiquity that was to pass away."4 Agreed, but what if a new social system came into being that proved fertile ground for an organization very much like the mystery cult (mysteria)? This, I am arguing here, is precisely the case for contemporary culture, a culture dominated by pop icons and media stars, a culture that depends on the relentless functioning of the industry of idolatry. (Certain emblematic media events, or artistic renderings thereof, point to this culture of neo-idolatry: the assassination of JFK; the death of Diana; Warhol's lithographs; soap opera digests; the advent of Pokémon. Perhaps the most powerful contemporary treatment of the mechanism of idolatry is the work of William Gibson; above all, his last novel, Idoru, in which a virtual pop entity is effectively worshipped as a divine, and very real, being.)
I would suggest that mediated popular culture has made possible, in a way that was not before, the reemergence of something very close to the classical Greek and Roman mysteries: that is, ceremonial cults that depend on the adherence to certain prescribed, and generally secret, rituals. Such rituals may be performed by itinerant individuals, or supervised by a class of professional clergy attached to a sanctuary. More often, however, they assume the form of a lay community or association, a club of ordinary people engaged in extraordinary rituals, known in Classical and Hellenistic Greece as the thiasos.5 Along with the thiasos as a particular notion of community, I will also refer to a specifically classical notion of a sacred space allocated for the benefit of the cult, the temenos. For every association has its spaces (sanctuaries, temples, city precincts, groves) in which it congregates and performs its acts of devotion. Today's popular media, I will be arguing, has led to—and, indeed, depends on—the proliferation of what are, in effect, modern thiasoi and modern temene, pseudo-sacred communities convening in pseudo-sacred spaces (real or virtual). My example of these contemporary pop thiasoi will be those dedicated to Xena herself. Is it possible, I am asking, in effect, to approach the Xena phenomenon as something like a modern mystery cult? I believe it is, and that by defining it in these apparently anachronistic terms, we gain a better understanding of the complexity of popular culture, and its relation to the past.
It is essential to remember that the ancient thiasoi dedicated to a particular hero or deity promulgated no unified orthodoxy, and possessed no shared structure or credo. There is generally no collective designation in Greek for the individual adherents (mystai) to a particular mystery cult: no word for Eleusinian devotees, or Bacchic worshippers. This is important. For in much the same way, despite the existence of collective or essentializing terms like "Xenites," "Xenaphiles," and "Xenaverse," there is no organized Xena-faith, but rather a vast plurality of intersecting and unstable faith-communities. If fact, my discussion here, while recognizing this plurality, will focus on one particular set of thiasoi, those devoted to Xena as lesbian icon: the self-named "Subtext Enthusiasts." It is by now no secret that a veritable lesbian sub-cult(ure) devoted to Xena has emerged: fans, both gay and straight, who celebrate a putative erotic connection between Xena and her faithful Pylades, the innocent Gabrielle. Lesbian fan clubs vie for the most popular site on the
Web, and lesbian bars host spectacles, where members of the audience look for signs of a romantic subtext. In New York City, "Xenites" gather at the lesbian bar Meow Mix every second Tuesday of the month to watch three or four episodes in a row. In Atlanta, an annual Xena Party is sponsored by a club called Atlanta Xena Enthusiasts (AXE) and a gay bar called My Sister's Room.6
I focus on the Subtext Enthusiasts because they so clearly reenact the mechanisms of revelation and concealment that are essential features of devotion in the mystery cult. For there is no mystery without something hidden, something to be revealed only to those "inside" the thiasos. Thus the attention to a "subtext," a "hidden"truth which, in the case of Xena, is no longer really hidden. It doesn't matter that the "truth" is "out"; structurally, a thiasos reinforces its internal community ties by the dedication of its members to a secret truth. Again, this truth is not a Credo, an article of faith to which one must subscribe, body and soul. Whether or not one "believes" in the "subtext" is irrelevant: what is important is the outward representation of this belief, the performance. That is why arguing that the fans of Xena are not really serious, that their enthusiasm is ironic, their dedication tongue-in-cheek, is beside the point: the thiasos depends only on the outward gestures of devotion, not its sincerity.
Evidence on ancient thiasoi (from inscriptions and, in Egypt, papyri) suggests there were an enormous variety of such organizations in ancient Greece and Rome. There were large and small thiasoi, more or less "official" in nature. Semi-public clubs (only the mysteries of Mithras were truly secret) existed honoring heroes or gods not officially acknowledged by the state: Amynis, Asclepius, or Dexion, the heroized Sophocles (Tod).7 In Attica we hear of the orgeones, members of a society "devoted to the rites (orgia) of a particular hero or god,"8 who formed an "organized corporation" (thiasos) with a constitution, officers, organization loosely affiliated with the structures of the city, and a precinct (temenos). Thus the Homeric heroes Menelaus and Helen were worshipped "like gods" at a sanctuary called the Menelaion outside the city of Sparta.
Along with the thiasos, then, there is usually an accompanying designation of space: a precinct or sanctuary. This is the temenos: a "demarcated sacred land, subject to rules of purity, reserved as a sanctuary."9 Aristotle speaks of such temene thiasiotika (serving cults of particular groups). The word comes from the notion of the community at large "cutting off" (temnein) and allocating a portion of land. There is no clear sense of spatial demarcation in the Homeric alsos (sacred grove); but by the early classical period one sees instances of socially sanctioned sacred spaces, precincts with clearly demarcated boundaries, set apart from both private and public lands by the polis. What of the internal structure of the thiasos? The thiasos, although fluid in shape, always has some kind of hierarchical structure, even if that hierarchy is unstable. Most of the members of a mystery cult are worshippers (cultores) without particular rank or function.10 Others represent a more privileged group. In the thiasos of Agripinilla in Rome, the term boukoloi, or cowherds, designates the ordinary members or initiates (mystai). But a few are elected as hieroiboukoloi, or "sacred cowherds,"11 and have greater power. Sometimes the privileged caste is a real clergy, as in the mysteries to Meter.12 There may also be an additional "superstructure" of state control (Roman officials, for example, helped run the sanctuary of Mater Magna). Such a hierarchy is present amongst Xena clubs as well, with their organizers, leaders, webmasters, not to mention television actors, authors, producers, and studio executives, the entire machinery devoted to the production and distribution of the "product."
One might object that Xenites are not truly dedicated members. The communities to which they belong are casual and inchoate affairs; they do not seriously subscribe to a novel faith. But all of these objections presuppose a strictly postclassical understanding of devotion. Here is Burkert's description of the members of the thiasos: "the members of a club are and remain autonomous, detached individuals with private interests, occupation, and property. Since joining the group is a matter of individual decision, there is hardly a problem in leaving it again; there is no loss of identity or fear of trauma and curse."13 Again, this articulates perfectly the kind of community at work amongst the Xena Subtext Enthusiasts. Initiates in the classical thiasos, "remain fully integrated into the complex structures of family and polis; but they contribute interest, time, influence, and part of their private property to the common cause."14 It is a good description of the Xenites today, who are only, at least the great majority of them, only part-time Xenites.
This is not to say that there is no real sense of a community, a real or metaphorical space (temenos) with boundaries, distinct from what is external to it. Secrecy or symbolism has its vital function here. Those who are "in," as Burkert puts it, do wish to be distinguished from those who are "out." Every mystery cult has its mystery: it depends on a "secret." But its goal is not to "spread the word," to "proselytize"; rather, it functions by "withholding" revelation. The worship of the Xenite, similarly, depends on "inclusion" in a club or a ritual; it may mean watching TV with the same group of friends once a week; it may mean attending Xena Night at the Meow Mix; it may mean registration at a particular web site. The content of the secret is not important here; what is important is that one continues to perform the gesture of withholding it. Every mystery cult entails some form of "celebration" by "integration" into an exclusive, even if temporary group.15 Meanwhile the life of the Xenite does not really change: one continues to perform one's other familial and civic duties. Similarly, the "civil life" of the Eleusinian initiate (mystes) does not change—until the next celebration.
As with any thiasos, what the Xenite values is both the celebration of the particular deity in question, and camaraderie with his/her fellow brethren or symmystai. This is expressed by way of activities and rituals: "Participants engage in common activities, especially in sacrifices with the ensuing
ceremonial meal, and also in demonstrations, pompai, which move through the city and make clear to everyone who belongs to the group."16 All of these are features of the pop thiasos. Xenites attend celebrations and conventions; they march as a group in parades, and contribute to common legal causes. Burkert notes that individual honor (timé) remains significant in the thiasos: initiates compete in terms of contributions and respect from their fellows. Xenites compete in just this fashion, participating for prizes in trivia shows, acting in skits, outdoing each other in enthusiasm and initiative.
One will object that none of this is "serious." It is the standard response leveled at "serious" treatments of popular culture. But one can be serious about that which refuses to be. Implicit in the objection is the assumption that what is sacred must be serious, and the serious sacred. But this is to ignore the possibility of a different approach to the sacred. That approach may be visible in the pagan mystery cults—for these, too, can not truly be considered "serious."
Xenites may be gay or straight. They may be Jewish, Muslim, or Catholic. They may be Gay Buddhists, or bisexual Methodists, or card-carrying members of the ACLU, or all of these at once. The point here is that the kind of multiple allegiances typical of Xena-fans suggests a kind of devotion foreign to our modern Western notions of religion. They are, however, typical of the ancient thiasos. Burkert puts it as follows: "The absence of religious demarcation and conscious group identity means the absence of any rigid frontiers against competing cults as well as the absence of any concept of heresy, not to mention excommunication."17 The Xenite, like the mystes, is a polytheist, or a syncretist, or a pluralist when it comes to faith. The very word "faith" is misleading in this context, since subscription to the cult is not really a matter of belief. If the mystes has a faith, it is a faith he or she can move in and out of with remarkable fluidity. Thus the attachment of the mystes to the cult needs to be distinguished from the kind of allegiance demanded by Judaism and Christianity. In contrast to the pagan cults, according to A. D. Nock, these new religions "demanded renunciation and a new start. They demanded not merely acceptance of a rite, but the adhesion of the will to a theology, in a word faith."18
With two thousand years of Christianity behind us in the West, we continue to think of initiation into the sacred as a form of conversion, a border experience. Once that border has been crossed, we assume, one cannot return. The classical paradigm here is that of Augustine's conversion in 386, as represented in the Confessions 8.12. For Augustine's embrace of a "truth" around which he had long been circling, is instantaneous and definitive. Augustine hears the voice of a child commanding him "Take and read, take and read" (the famous tolle lege, tolle lege). Augustine listens, and opens the Scriptures to Romans 13.13. At that moment, Augustine himself recounts, "I had no wish to read further, and no need. For in that instant, with the very ending of the sentence, it was as though a light of utter confidence shone in all my heart [luce securitatis infusa cordi meo], and all the darkness of uncertainty vanished away [omnes dubitationis tenebrae diffugerunt]."19 This remains the essential model for conversion in the Judeo-Christian West. Two details in the Augustinian topos are worth briefly mentioning, details which both tie it to and sever it from the pagan past. One is the fact that Augustine's conversion does not occur in some undifferentiated locale. On the contrary, the event transpires—takes place, one might say—in a defined space, a garden (hortulus) attached to Augustine's residence.20 Augustine's conversion is his definitive rejection of paganism, but its authority is guaranteed by the continuing rhetorical power of the cultic sanctuary. Augustine's garden, in other words, is a Christianized temenos. This is a very different kind of temenos, however. Once inside, one cannot leave. For the instrument of Augustine's conversion is a sacred book of laws: the Scriptures. Augustine's individual conversion is thus a confirmation of an absolute textual authority or canon.
If the mystery cult also depends on the affirmation of the border, as in the space marked out in physical terms by the temenos, it is a far more flexible and permeable sort of boundary. The mystes does not renounce his or her past to embrace the new rite; rather, he or she adds the new rite to the old rites. This is not conversion, in the Christian sense; it suggests, rather, a "deepening or extending of preexisting piety through a new intimacy with the divine in both familiar and novel shapes."21 And so with the Xenite, whose attachment to Xena is not exclusive or radical, but who integrates his or her devotion into a large set of preexisting affiliations. Thus the Xenite may be said, if I may borrow Nock's illuminating and influential distinction, to engage not so much in conversion as in adhesion. Nock defines the latter as "an acceptance of new worships as useful supplements and not as substitutes, not the taking of a new life in place of the old."22 New faiths in the pagan world, Nock argues, were "as a rule supplements, rather than alternatives to ancestral piety"23—an assertion that could well apply to the contemporary embrace of popular culture.
The heterodox mystery cult is thus far more flexible than the orthodox religious sect, but also far more fragile. Another way to understand this is through the difference between ritual and faith. Mystery cults do not depend on "articles of faith," a Credo, a set of authoritative principles "to be believed and to be confessed";24 rather, they only demand attachment to a "sequence of rituals that have taken place." We have seen the spectacle of belief in Augustine's Confessions. Such a genre is an impossibility in the pagan world. There is nothing to confess. And to whom, or in accordance with what law or text, would one confess? Hence the significance of the sacred text in Judaism and Christianity, and its absence from the pagan cult. As Gilbert Grindle argues: "The Pagans had no definitive dogmatic teaching, no sacred books whose unquestionable authority might be appealed to. There was also a complete want of organization in the Pagan hierarchy whereas Christianity had the advantage of intense conviction in most of its members."25 There are texts, in mystery cults, but no Text; organizations, but no Organization; convictions, but no Conviction. For all of these reasons, the mystery cult is indeed something that, in a very real sense, cannot be taken "seriously."
What binds one mystes to another is not so much a shared inward faith or belief as an agreed set of performative acts. Mystery cults do not claim to transform one's identity (as in the model of conversion); they never led to the formation of churches (ekklesia).26 Judaism and Christianity, of course, are not simply rituals: they are faiths, Credos, ethical systems that demand absolute and inward belief.27 As a result, they lead to tenacious and enduring communities. Paganism in the early Roman empire is not a matter of passion, but it is intimately bound up with the political and economic interests of the ruling class. It is, one might say, state-supported. Once that support is removed, little is left to keep paganism standing. The mystery cult cannot long survive this "separation of paganism and the state."28 Thus when Christianity is embraced by the emperor, such as the conversion of Constantine in 313, the pagan cults are already doomed to disappear. They do not do so overnight, of course; the history of the empire in the next two centuries suggests a process of gradual erosion, as the state shifts its stance from one of tolerance to open hostility. There are essentially three basic strategies in the long war against paganism: economic, physical, and legal.29 Economic: in 382 the emperor Gratian blocks the use of imperial treasury funds for the maintenance of cults and the payment of priests. Physical: from Constantine on, pagan idols are stripped and temples are razed. In 324 during the reign of Constantine, for example, a grove (temenos) and temple dedicated to Aphrodite in Aphaca is destroyed. In 353 the emperor Constantius orders the temples closed, and forbids the practice of sacrifice. Legal: with the imperial edict issued by Theodosius in 392, all pagan cults are effectively made illegal. It is only logical that most of the laws issued in opposition to pagan cults by Rome target their visible practices and rituals: for these, after all, have always constituted pagan worship. It is only in 529, with Justinian and the closing of the Neoplatonic School in Athens—the famous Academy—that the state seeks to suppress pagan belief itself. But it not clear that such a law was ever needed.
Along with Meow Mix and its Subtext Enthusiasts, there are a vast range of Xenite thiasoi thriving today. These thiasoi are sometimes referred to in their totality as the Xenaverse—a collective term meant to point to the vast range of organizations devoted in one way or another to Xena.30 The term, in fact, is a misleading one, since thiasoi never form a unified or organized realm. When speaking of a "Xenaverse," or a "Xenite," then, one should keep in mind what Gilbert Grindle says about "paganism": that there is "no such religion as Paganism—only a body of cults."31
What Meow Mix has suggested is that the urban bar, for example, could be considered a form of modern temenos. Anyone who has ever hesitated at the threshold of a seedy tavern will know this is true. The gay or lesbian bar is only the most obvious form of urban temenos, a space allocated for a particular group devoted to particular rituals.32 And what "Xena Night"at Meow Mix offers us is only the most explicit case of a thriving contemporary thiasos.
Consider one of the iconic moments in that sacred and yet immensely popular American cinematic genre, the Western: the Stranger comes to town; ties up his horse; and hesitates—only for a moment—at the threshold of the saloon. The Stranger enters the Saloon, pushing the double doors aside. The saloon, only a moment ago full of laughter and piano music, falls instantly silent. Conversation has ceased. All eyes are upon the Stranger. The temenos has been violated. And yet it has not been punctured, or torn. The space coagulates, almost instantaneously, absorbing the Stranger. A moment later, the piano player is back at his business, and the laughter has resumed.
I experienced a moment like this, upon the occasion of my first visit to the "Xena Palace." Palaces are virtual worlds organized around particular themes. They suggest in dramatic fashion the extent to which popular culture continues to depend on architectural and spatial notions of community. They also demonstrate the centrality of performance as the principal mechanism of participation in that community. Based on almost all of its essential features, The Xena Palace is a perfect example of the contemporary thiasos and temenos: 1) The Palace is "policed," in a sense—but a very limited one indeed. One must load the proper software; obtain the proper password; one must learn and acknowledge the code of conduct, posted and enforced by the Palace "administrators." But all of these are more a gesture of exclusion than a desire to adhere to any coherent dogma or ideology; 2) Once inside the Palace, one can wander through different rooms or landscapes, all represented as coherent and readable spaces; 3) Within the confines of the Palace, one adopts a particular persona with a matching icon—a stock of possible options are provided by the Palace administrators. As one wanders through the topography of the Palace, one encounters other symmystai. Dialogue ensues, and it does so by miming the choreography of "real" social interaction: the proximity of two icons suggests the potential for discourse; one can choose to "sit" at a "table" with a fellow Xenite. Identity here is performative and fluid: for one can shed one icon and adopt a new one at will, metamorphosing, as I did at one visit, from Ares to Gabrielle to a dancing beetle; 4) Dialogue itself in the Palace is a performance; one's words can be represented both graphically, in a comic book, and acoustically, in any number of particular voices miming particular characters.
Like the Stranger at the Saloon, in my first moments in the Palace—in the tavern, as a matter of fact—I felt "out of place." But after a moment it seemed that the piano started up again and I was welcomed as just another Xenite, just another mystes, passing through, my horse tied up "outside."
Appendix: A Selection of Xenite Thiasoi and Temene
What follows is only a sampling of Xenite thiasoi and temene, and is not meant to be comprehensive. Emphasis is placed on Subtext Enthusiast Xenites.
Domestic Spaces. Pop devotion is often a solitary endeavor, practiced in the comfort of one's own home. The temenos may be the den, living room, "TV room" or the "media center." It is by now a commonplace to suggest that the television is the new altar (bomos, a conspicuous feature of the temenos), the center of the domestic hearth. These comparisons are generally made facetiously. Perhaps it is time we took them seriously.
Texts. Communities of readers can constitute thiasoi. Xena texts of all kinds have proliferated, suggesting a whole textual Xena industry at work: magazines, yearbooks histories, images, vocabularies, posters, and numerous forms of merchandise, collectibles and memorabilia, are offered as signs of devotion, the way medieval churches offered relics. From the Hercules and Xena Yearbook fans can order videotapes, autographed trading cards (icons) and action figures (idols). Xena X-Posed: The Unauthorized Biography of Lucy Lawless and Her On-Screen Character provides a pseudo-idiolect, a language for the initiates of the thiasos, including a list of "Xenaisms," or memorable quotes from the show, and a glossary, "An Encyclopedia of the Xenaverse." Xena: All I Need to Know I Learned From The Warrior Princess purports to be a 'sacred text,'"a chronicle authored by Gabrielle, "Bard of Poteidaia, and "translated" by Josepha Sherman. That this is all a farce—one that stands to produce real revenue for the television show—is part of the point. Mystery cults do not encourage devotion to authoritative texts, but experiences.
Fan Clubs and Conferences. Fan Clubs are loosely knitted communities, more or less officially authorized by the television show itself. Some are essentially promotional arms of the show itself, places to sell and purchase merchandise, like the "Official Xena Fan Club" . Here you will find promoted the Annual Hercules/ Xena Convention at Cherry Hill, NJ, and the Official Hercules/Xena Convention at Las Vegas. The word official, of course, is a way of proclaiming orthodoxy. But orthodoxy is ultimately incompatible with the flexibility of the thiasos, and official sites are the least active, the least interesting, and the least thiasos-like.
Web Sites. The internet, in much of the hyperbole of the last few years, has been touted as a new free zone for exchanging information, a new modern village green or agora. These comparisons are misleading. First, they idealize and distort both the village green and the agora, which were never free spaces, but highly restricted spaces, controlled or tolerated by governmental structures (there is evidence that the agora was an officially sanctioned municipal temenos, a sacred space, in effect). Second, they fail to recognize the extent to which the internet is not a vast, open space, but a highly complex set of intersecting and overlapping temene, community spaces more or less restrictive, but all armed with mechanisms for policing boundaries. Those boundaries may be porous, but they are still necessary structural features. As far as internal structure goes, the webmasters or mistresses, hosts or hostesses of the web site, occupy a privileged position in the functioning of the thiasos. They are the equivalent of the elite members of a mystery cult. Here are a few representative web sites:
- In "Xena: Cyber Princess" (The Advocate, March 2, 1999), Liz Friedman, co-executive producer of Xena, remarks that "the Internet provides a natural opportunity for there to be a community of fans" (25). At the web sight for Xena Night at Meow Mix posted as part of the Whoosh site , the fan is encouraged to visit with the pitch: "Can't get here physically? 8-9 PM EST, Virtual Xena Night."
- "Whoosh,"< www.whoosh.org>, designates itself a haven for "Subtext Enthusiasts," and publishes, online, The Journal of the International Association of Xena Studies, and features all the standard elements of the Xena community: details of past and upcoming shows, gossip about characters, links to other sites.
- "Absolutely XenaCrazed," , recommended by the gay/lesbian magazine Advocate, announces: "You are Xenite number 24634 to grace us with your presence since July 4, 1997." One noteworthy feature: the guestbook, in which fans respond to a set of prepackaged questions, giving them free rein to express their thoughts on the show, display their affection, etc.
- "Yahoo!Clubsxenasubtexttalk,"is "An adult lesbian club to discuss Xena subtext."
- The very name "Allyson's Xenanite Sanctuary," , emphasizes the temenos as a spatial idea. This site also emphasizes its links to other Xena paths, including various "web rings," which link preexisting Xena sites into a prepackaged itinerary. ("Xena Web Ring," "Xena Pyramid Ring," "Ring of Subtext Seers").
Notes
1 See, for example, Fredric Jameson Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, 1991), on postmodern architecture as a bricolage of classical motifs.
2 Here is an example of a charmed fan on the subject of anachronism: "Xena's appearance on screen, and her adventures, are the discovery of an alternative take on history. She is found to have played a forgotten role in David's victory over Goliath, helped Bodecia defeat Caesar, prevent a murder attempt on Cleopatra. Despite the historical inaccuracy and the convenient meshing of great historical events and figures into the life span of one warrior, these scenarios create a sense of forgotten history" (Catherine O'Sullivan, "Xenaphile, and Proud of It," Fireweed 63 (1998): 44. )
3 The most influential theoretical model here is probably the work of Walter Benjamin, and in particular his attempt, in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," to salvage the category of the sacred, a category rendered obsolete, according to Benjamin, by modern technologies of reproduction. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations. trans. Harry Zohn (New York,1968).
4 Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 53.
5 The thiasos, or koinon (common), has its counterpart in the Roman collegia or sodalitates.
6 The show itself, meanwhile, has responded to this increasingly visible and vociferous clientele, capitalizing on the popularity of the Subtext by insinuating increasingly erotic undertones in the representation of the friendship between Xena and Gabrielle. According to Liz Friedman, the producers of the show began "consciously" tending to the subtext only with the "Altared [sic] States" episode, after the Village Voice and the Meow Mix began promulgating it. In "Hercules and Xena: Ancient Heroes for a New Day" in the officially-sponsored Hercules and Xena Yearbook, Robert Weisbrot writes: "The Xena-Gabrielle relationship has been discussed at length, and is carefully presented to allow various interpretations" (6).
7 In Rome, the political and religious group (the collegium) was something tolerated as long as it did not appear to threaten the political order.
8 R. C. T. Parker, "Orgeones" in Oxford Classical Dictionary. Eds. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (New York, 1996), 1074.
9 Malkin, Irad. "Temenos" in Oxford Classical Dictionary. (New York, 1996), 1481.
10 Burkert, 39.
11 Ibid., 34.
12 Ibid., 35.
13 Ibid., 44.
14 Ibid., 32.
15 Ibid., 43.
16 Ibid., 44.
17 Ibid., 48.
18 A.D. Nock. Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (London, 1933). P. Rousseau agrees with Nock, but cautions against overstating the differences. It is perhaps not always the case at all times that adherence to Judaism or Christianity means the rejection of all other religious practices—PhillipRousseau, "Conversion" (386-87); "Christianity" (325-28). Oxford Classical Dictionary. Eds. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (New York, 1996).
19 trans. by F. J. Sheed, Augustine. Confessions: Books 1-13. With Introduction by P. Brown. (Indianapolis, 1993), 146. The passage in the original reads: "nec ultra volui legere, nec opus erat. statim quippe cum fine huiusce sententiae, quasi luce securitatis infusa cordi meo, omnes dubitationis tenebrae diffugerunt" (W. H. D. Rouse, ed. St. Augustine. Confessions. With translation (1631) by W. Watts. (New York, 1912), 465.
20 F. J. Sheed, Augustine. Confessions: Books 1-13. With Introduction by P. Brown (Indianapolis, 1993).
21 Burkert, 50.
22 Nock, 7.
23 Ibid., 12.
24 Burkert, 46.
25 Grindle, 2-3.
26 P. Rousseau shows that the history of the Christian church represents in essence not only the codification of a fixed textual canon, but the confirmation of an elite hierarchical body—bishops, priests, etc.—endowed with the exclusive authority to interpret the significance of that canon (326).
27 Rousseau, again, reminds us that our tendency to represent Christian belief as an inevitable orthodoxy may itself be a simplification that ignores changing configurations at different historical moments (328). It may be that there has never truly been Christian orthodoxy—only the attempt to police it.
28 A translation of R. Rémondon's oft-cited phrase from La Crise de l'Empire romain (195). On the subject of the separation of cult and state, see also A. Cameron "Gratian's Repudiation of the Pontifical Robe," Journal of Roman Studies (1968): 96-102.
29 On the following historical developments marking the decline of paganism in Rome, see Pierre Chuvin, Chronique des derniers paiens: la disparition du paganisme dans l'empire romain, du règne du Constantin à celui de Justinien (Paris, 1991).
30 See, for example, the chapter "An Encyclopedia of the Xenaverse" in Nadine Crenshaw's Xena X-Posed: The Unauthorized Biography of Lucy Lawless and her On-Screen Character (1997), 201-204.
31 See my article "Freedom Within the Margin: The Café in the Poetry of Cavafy," for a treatment of the kafeneion—the urban Greek café—in the poetry of C. P. Cavafy as a transgressive semiotic space. Matthew Gumpert, "Freedom Within the Margin: The Café in the Poetry of Cavafy," Journal of Modern Greek Studies 9 (1991): 215-35.
32 Grindle, 1.
