Share your thoughts as to why Marcion went to Rome

[lsayre]

Did Marcion go to Rome simply because he thought he could buy the Papacy? What other than this goal might have motivated him to go to Rome, if he ever factually did so?

[John2]

In the big picture I suppose it was because Rome was "where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular" (as Tacitus puts it). But as for what church writers say, I need to take another look at that.

[MrMacSon]

Did Marcion go to Rome simply because he thought he could buy the Papacy?

the Papacy? In the early- to mid- second century? yeah, Riiigght

[perseusomega9]

I wonder if it's not so much he went there but that at some point his gospel did.

[Charles Wilson]

Remember also, while you're considering why a Marcion would go to Rome, that Rome also came to Marcion (of Sinope):

Tacitus, Histories, Book 3:

"...A sudden outbreak had been excited in Pontus by a barbarian slave, who had before commanded the royal fleet. This was Anicetus, a freedman of Polemon, once a very powerful personage, who, when the kingdom was converted into a Roman province, ill brooked the change. Accordingly he raised in the name of Vitellius the tribes that border on Pontus, bribed a number of very needy adventurers by the hope of plunder, and, at the head of a force by no means contemptible, made a sudden attack on the old and famous city of Trapezus, founded by the Greeks on the farthest shore of the Pontus. There he destroyed a cohort, once a part of the royal contingent. They had afterwards received the privileges of citizenship, and while they carried their arms and banners in Roman fashion, they still retained the indolence and licence of the Greek. Anicetus also set fire to the fleet, and, as the sea was not guarded, escaped, for Mucianus had brought up to Byzantium the best of the Liburnian ships and all the troops...

"...The matter attracted the attention of Vespasian, and induced him to dispatch some veterans from the legions under Virdius Geminus, a tried soldier. Finding the enemy in disorder and dispersed in the eager pursuit of plunder, he attacked them, and drove them to their ships. Hastily fitting out a fleet of Liburnian ships he pursued Anicetus, and overtook him at the mouth of the river Cohibus, where he was protected by the king of the Sedochezi, whose alliance he had secured by a sum of money and other presents. This prince at first endeavoured to protect the suppliant by a threat of hostilities; when, however, the choice was presented to him between war and the profit to be derived from treachery, he consented, with the characteristic perfidy of barbarians, to the destruction of Anicetus, and delivered up the refugees. So ended this servile war..."

As the saying goes, this area produces more History than it can consume locally.
https://www.norwalkpontos.org/2020/09/2 ... of-pontus/ :

"In this city was born Mithridates the Great who decorated it with temples, galleries, neoria (testimony of Strabo). Finally in 70 BC, it was occupied by the Roman general Lucullus, who also granted it autonomy. In 44 BC, became a final Roman colony with Roman settlers, under Bithynia..."

From my POV, see also:
Acts 8: 28 - 39. This is the Treachery against Anicetus, who meets his doom.

[Edit Note: I often leave the conclusion unstated, to be drawn from the Data but this may require a more explicit statement:

"Here we have a person from an inflamed region of the Empire that has been pacified only recently. This person wanders around spouting some new religion and our College of Religious Thought declares that there are some dangerous ideas to be found in what this man espouses. We're all for supporting all of these oddball religions as long as they don't threaten the Empire. So this guy comes to Rome from somewhere near where one of out greatest enemies arose and he wants to come here to run the show?

"I don't think so."

The material gets rewritten to the benefit of Rome ('Natch.) and he's shown the door. His churches are taken over, the Dogma gets padded with some new stuff and the Heretical becomes the Orthodox. Nice and tidy.]

Oh, and uhhh...YMMV.

CW

[Jax]

Personally I find myself wondering if Marcion was from Asia Minor. This is something that SA brought up a while ago in a thread where he pointed out that Marcion was simply described as a man from Pontus, which could mean that he was from the region of the Pontic sea or that he was from the cult of Pontus, the God of the sea. SA further speculated that Marcion may simply have originally resided in Ostia near Rome and that as it was common for guild cults (marine in this case) to have more than one Godhead and that they adopted the cult of Christ that was probably brought in from the city of Rome.

[Charles Wilson]

Jax --

You make a good point:

Suetonius, 12 Caesars, "Claudius":

"By such conduct he won so much love and devotion in a short time, that when it was reported that he had been waylaid and killed on a journey to Ostia, the people were horror stricken and with dreadful execrations continued to assail the soldiers as traitors, and the senate as murderers, until finally one or two men, and later several, were brought forward upon the rostra by the magistrates and assured the people that Claudius was safe and on his way to the city."

"Ostia" is, of course, "Over There" and sufficiently far enough out-of-sight to promote such thinking. Claudius does play a large role in the NT. Also, as has been pointed out, the Heretics are convenient. They are placed in the past and also have been "Overcome" by a still Vibrant early church. It's very curious: Order events in the past and then attempt to hide those events from later sight. VERY curious.

"There's something about Marcion".

"Marcion came to Rome". There still may be something in the telling of the tale that would make it more explicit. "Why Rome at all?" if the religion was generated by a solitary figure in a small Province in the middle of a severe famine. Marcion knows much about Rome and so, apparently, did Rome know about Marcion. That part leads to a banishment and that is where it gets interesting.

Good Point, Jax.

[Jax]

Jax --

You make a good point:

Suetonius, 12 Caesars, "Claudius":

"By such conduct he won so much love and devotion in a short time, that when it was reported that he had been waylaid and killed on a journey to Ostia, the people were horror stricken and with dreadful execrations continued to assail the soldiers as traitors, and the senate as murderers, until finally one or two men, and later several, were brought forward upon the rostra by the magistrates and assured the people that Claudius was safe and on his way to the city."

"Ostia" is, of course, "Over There" and sufficiently far enough out-of-sight to promote such thinking. Claudius does play a large role in the NT. Also, as has been pointed out, the Heretics are convenient. They are placed in the past and also have been "Overcome" by a still Vibrant early church. It's very curious: Order events in the past and then attempt to hide those events from later sight. VERY curious.

"There's something about Marcion".

"Marcion came to Rome". There still may be something in the telling of the tale that would make it more explicit. "Why Rome at all?" if the religion was generated by a solitary figure in a small Province in the middle of a severe famine. Marcion knows much about Rome and so, apparently, did Rome know about Marcion. That part leads to a banishment and that is where it gets interesting.

Good Point, Jax.

While I would love to take credit for someone else's work I think that you will find that SA is the architect of this. This is where he gets into it viewtopic.php?p=121510#p121510

Enjoy Charles

Lane

[Charles Wilson]

...and thank you SA...

[MrMacSon]

A large part of the [former] Kingdom of Pontus lay within the immense region of Cappadocia. In fact, the kingdom as a whole was at first called “Cappadocia towards the Pontus” (πρὸς τῷ Πόντῳ), then simply “Pontus.” The name Cappadocia being henceforth restricted to the southern half of the region previously included under that title.

With the destruction of this kingdom by Pompey in 64 b.c., the meaning of the name Pontus underwent a change. Part of the kingdom was now annexed to the Roman Empire, being united with Bithynia in a double province called “ Pontus and Bithynia”: this part included (possibly from the first, but certainly from about 40 b.c. onwards) only the seaboard between Heracleia (Eregli) and Amisus (Samsun), the ora Pontica.

Hereafter the simple name Pontus without qualification was regularly employed to denote the half of this dual province, especially by Romans and people speaking from the Roman point of view; it is so used almost always in the New Testament. But it was also frequently used to denote (in whole or part) that portion of the old Mithradatic kingdom which lay between the Halys (roughly) and the borders of Colchis, Lesser Armenia, Cappadocia and Galatia - the region properly designated by the title “Cappadocia towards the Pontus,” which was always the nucleus of the Pontic kingdom.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Enc ... ica/Pontus

Wikipedia-proper says

The larger part of Pontus, however, was included in the province of Galatia [see below] ...
Hereafter the simple name Pontus without qualification was regularly employed to denote just half of what had been a 'dual province', especially by Romans and people speaking from the Roman point of view; it was so used almost always in the New Testament. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontus_(region)

[Wikipedia-proper has much of below but more succinctly, and maps]

This region is regarded by the geographer Strabo (a.d. 19–20), himself a native of the country, as Pontus in the strict sense of the term (Geogr. p. 678). Its native population was of the same stock as that of Cappadocia, of which it had formed a part, an Oriental race often called by the Greeks Leucosyri or White Syrians, as distinguished from the southern Syrians, who were of a darker complexion, but their precise ethnological relations are uncertain. Geographically it is a table-land, forming the north-east corner of the great plateau of Asia Minor, edged on the north by a lofty mountain rim, along the foot of which runs a fringe of coast-land ...

The history of this region is the history of the advance of the Roman Empire towards the Euphrates. Its political position between 64 and 41 b.c., when Mark Antony became master of the East, is not quite certain. Part of it was handed over by Pompey to client princes: the coast-land east of the Halys (except the territory of Amisus) and the hill-tribes of Paryadres were given, with Lesser Armenia, to the Galatian chief Deiotarus, with the title of king; Comana was left under the rule of its high-priest.

The rest of the interior was partitioned by Pompey amongst the inland cities, almost all of which were founded by him, and, according to one view, was included together with the seaboard west of Amisus and the corner of north-east Paphlagonia possessed by Mithradates in his new province Pontus-Bithynia.

Others maintain that only the seaboard was included in the province, the inland cities being constituted self-governing, “protected” communities. The latter view is more in conformity with Roman policy in the East, which did not usually annex countries till they reached (under the rule of client princes) a certain level of civilization and order, but it is difficult to reconcile with Strabo’s statements (p. 541 sqq.). In any case, during the years following 40 b.c. all inland Pontus was handed over, like north-east Paphlagonia, to native dynasts ...

After the battle of Actium (31 b.c.) Augustus restored Amisus as a “free city” to the province of Pontus-Bithynia, but made no other serious change. Polemon retained his kingdom till his death in 8 b.c., when it passed to his widow Pythodoris. But the process of annexation began and the Pontic districts were gradually incorporated in the empire, each being attached to the province of Galatia, then the centre of Roman forward policy.

1. The western district was annexed in two sections, Sebastopolis and Amasia in 3–2 b.c., and Comana in a.d. 34–35. To distinguish this district from the province Pontus and Polemon’s Pontus it was henceforth called Pontus galaticus (as being the first part attached to Galatia).
2. Polemon’s kingdom, ruled since a.d. 38 by Polemon II., grandson of the former king, was annexed by Nero in a.d. 64–65, and distinguished by the title of Pontus polemoniacus, which survived for centuries. [But the simple name Pontus, hitherto commonly used to designate Polemon’s realm, was still employed to denote this district by itself or in conjunction with Pontus Galaticus, where context made the meaning clear (e.g. in inscriptions and on coins).] Polemoniacus included the sea-coast from the Thermodon to Cotyora and the inland cities Zela, Magnopolis, Megalopolis, Neocaesarea and Sebasteia (according to Ptolemy, but apparently annexed since 2 b.c., according to its coins).
3. Finally, at the same time (a.d. 64) the remaining eastern part of Pontus, which formed part of Polemon’s realm, was annexed [and] attached to the province Cappadocia, and distinguished by the epithet cappadocicus. These three districts formed distinct administrative divisions within the provinces to which they were attached, with separate capitals Amasia, Neocaesarea and Trapezus; but the first two were afterwards merged in one, sometimes called Pontus mediterraneus, with Neocaesarea as capital, probably when they were definitively transferred (about a.d. 114) to Cappadocia, then the great frontier military province.