Mithraism, the Roman cult to the Persian mystery god Mithras, had a special following in the army–and a matchingly broad distribution across the Empire. The singularly uniform class of Mithraic temples came to an end in several ways, by abandonment, burning, deliberate destruction, even by planned and careful sealing. Comparison of these circumstances can shed light on the different ways in which pagan worship came to cease.

The Emperor Julian the Apostate (361–3) tried to reverse the policy of his kinsman Constantine the Great by restoring the pagan cults which he had subverted. One of his measures was to appoint chief priests for each province. Towards the end of his brief reign Julian wrote to Arsacius, the high priest of the province of Galatia. The emperor said he was pleased to see the worship of the gods so magnificently revived, but yet more could be done. Arsacius was invited to consider and attempt to imitate the practices which had made Christianity so successful, in particular Christian hospitality towards strangers, reverence for the dead and the pretended piety of Christian lives. Pagans too should practise works of charity. Provision should be made for the poor and hostels furnished in every city, so as to form a chain of confessional caravanserais.

Amasya, wrote a visitor at the turn of this century, is “the most picturesque town of all Anatolia, the Baghdad of Rûm”. Another called the city “l'Oxford de l'Anatolie”. One of its principal charms is the River Iris, the Yeşil Irmak, which runs through the town. Beautiful but not potable: “Tokat dumps in it, Amasya drinks it” is a Turkish proverb at least as old as Evliye Çelebi, who visited the town in the first half of the seventeenth century.

In ancient times the city would seem to have taken its water from a source in the neighbouring hills. It was carried along an aqueduct cut, for the most part, into the face of the cliffs which form the side of the river valley south and west of the town and on the right bank of the river (Fig. 1). The castle of Amasya, on the left bank, had its own arrangements for water supply described by the geographer Strabo, a native of the city, and these should not be confused with the aqueduct on the right bank.

In a recent article in this journal (JHS cvii [1987] 51–57) Garth Fowden has argued that the obelisk from Karnak erected by Constantius II in Rome in 357 had been promised to that city by his father Constantine, as Ammianus Marcellinus states, and was not originally intended, as was claimed in the (lost) inscription on its base, for Constantine's new foundation at Constantinople. The interesting suggestion is made that Constantine might have been in touch with Athenian religious experts over the matter, and the project is seen as an earnest of ‘his desire to conciliate the pagan Establishment of Old Rome’. The point of this piece is to enlarge on the possible significance of the obelisk to contemporary Christians that is hinted at by Dr Fowden.

Constantine paid three visits to Rome as emperor, in 312, after winning the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, in 315 during the celebration of his Decennalia, and in 326 for his Vicennalia; on at least one of these occasions, he gave offence to non-Christian Romans by declining to perform the customary procession to the Capitol to offer sacrifice.