I’m currently interested in the proposition that being an asshole sort of negates a lot of well-intentioned political views and vice versa, BUT have fun with that attitude on the sidelines because that’s not what people believe when years happen in weeks
Man I just took my kid to the Apple Store to scope out which model of Apple Watch we want to get for cheap on eBay and wow do rich people like to complain
Also interesting that the Roman patricians remained pagan very late, some into the Fifth Century, because the old polytheistic religions were institutionally bound to civic identity
It was in this lower middle “half-educated” and newly mobile and anxious group that the Eastern mystery cults found popularity, and of course Gnostic and Pauline Christianity.
In second century Roman society especially in the East the upper classes were hyper-local and chauvinist. The “well-off poor” and commercial classes were cosmopolitan and (more) universalist.