399 BETWEEN AMBITION QUIETISM AND reaffirming their loyalty to the Emperor, the State, and its epigones, and a survey of the socio-political turmoil in Roman Empire cities (in the West and in the East), all favor a scenario in w h i c h local oligarchies and imperial authorities voluntary associations were viewed with extreme suspicion and distrust by . We will turn now to a quick survey of the evidence mentioned above. a) The Bacchanalian Cults The cult of Dionysus is epigraphically attested dating back to 187 BCE 30. Following the famous conspiracy, in 186 BCE the Roman Senate suppressed their Roman counterparts, the Bacchanales (Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus: CIL 1.2.581). More than a century and a half later, Livy still writes about the Bacchic cults and the ban that struck them in Rome and Italy, and qualifies those kinds of cult — which encouraged people to alter the status quo — as a form of “debased religion” (“I’m not without suspicion, citizens, that even among you there may be one who may slip into error, for nothing is more deceptive in appearance than debased religion [praua religio]”, Hist. 39.16.6) 31. Valerius Maximus also refers to the “mysteries of the Bacchanals” in Rome as “a practice newly introduced” which “were abolished when they passed into pernicious madness” 32. The Bacchanalian crisis cast a dark shadow on voluntary associations, and subsequent crises were viewed as a reiteration of the old nightmare. Note that the presence of uıasov ¥ Dionysoy is well attested in Macedonia and Thessalonica, along ¥ with a number of other guilds 33. K.P. DONFRIED, “The Cults of Thessalonica and the Thessalonian Cor- 30 respondence ”, Paul, Thessalonica, and Early Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI – Cambridge 2002) 23, originally published in NTS 31 (1985) 336-356. On Bacchic cults see 39.8, 9, 14-15, 17-18. See also J.A. SHELTON, As 31 the Romans Did. A Sourcebook in Roman Social History (New York – Oxford 1998) 393-397. 2 Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings. Books I-V (ed. 32 R.S. BAILEY) (LCL 492; Cambridge, MA – London 2000). In I.3.1 we read: “ [Story as recorded by] Nepotianus: There were mysteries of the Bacchanals at Rome. But when at night time men and women were together and became mad, the foreign rites were abolished with much slaughter of the participants”. Cf. Cicero, Leg. 2.37. ASCOUGH, Voluntary Associations, 52-53. 33