Who were ‘the pagans of Rome’ in the fourth century? This is the question at the heart of Mattias Gassman's Worshippers of the Gods. To answer it, G. turns to Christian apologists along with testimonies about adherents of traditional roman cults. Throughout the book he shows that the concept of a unified paganism — today mostly considered a rhetorical construct of Christian apologists — has a basis in Roman senators’ own view of their (traditional) religion as a philosophical henotheism.

G.'s starting point is to go beyond the idea that apologists simply constructed paganism as a foil to Christianity and to develop ‘an account of fourth-century ideas on Roman religion that is grounded more firmly in contemporaries’ own portrayals of traditional cults’ (13–14). He approaches his goal ‘by situating and interpreting a text or body of texts within its own intellectual, social, and religious world, and so revealing […] the nuances of both Christian and non-Christian conceptions of polytheistic religiosity’ (16).

The first two chapters are erudite studies of Lactantius’ Divine Institutes (ch. 1) and Firmicus Maternus’ De errore profanorum religionum (ch. 2). While Lactantius argues for a worship that has its place in the heart and not the forum and reveals the gods of Rome as deified virtues and men, Firmicus demands the destruction of everything pagan because it emerged from the devil's aim to morally destroy its adherents. Firmicus thereby ‘developed a new, explicitly Christian way of conceptualising the traditional religions of the Roman world’ (72–3).

The third chapter gets to the heart of G.'s argument. With reference to the anonymous author called Ambrosiaster, he states that his text first concretised ‘the conception […] of polytheistic cults as a theological and moral system, a singular “paganism”’ (76–7). But was this unified paganism just a construct of Ambrosiaster? G. shows that ‘the senators’ presentation of themselves and their cults may have shaped Christian views of polytheistic religion beyond the formulation of a singular conception of “pagan” religion. […] Thus, their [i.e. Firmicus's and Ambrosiaster's] “paganism” was not an empty polemical construct but a description, shaped by Christian vocabulary and theology, of a polytheistic piety whose devotees likewise saw the many cults of the gods as parallel, overlapping paths to a single spiritual reality’ (83). This can be seen e.g. in the epitaph of Praetextatus (CIL VI 31929), which embeds his multiple initiations in a henotheistic theology. G. concludes: ‘The senators’ inscriptions and the polemicists’ anti-“pagan” works adopt a basically parallel approach to traditional religion, combining interest in numerous cults of diverse social and geographic origins with a belief that all polytheistic cults ultimately lead to the same spiritual reality’ (94). It follows that the ‘term paganus was a Christian invention; the idea — and, crucially, the practice — of a polytheistic religion that united the worship of many gods was not’ (106). Due to the limits of the evidence (which G. himself acknowledges), these conclusions can only be drawn for senatorial ‘paganism’. The beliefs of other echelons of society remain obscure.

The fourth chapter treats the matter of the altar of Victory. G. argues that Symmachus not only makes a case for the utility of cult concerning the pax deorum, but also, ‘[b]y appealing to philosophical henotheism, […] raises all cults to a theoretical equality, at once acknowledging the Christian claim to have access to God and denying its uniqueness’ (124). Here, Symmachus uses pagan henotheism to persuade a Christian emperor.

The legacy of Praetextatus is the subject of the fifth chapter. Was this adherent of a pagan henotheism to be remembered especially for his civic virtues (as Symmachus argued in a climate ever more hostile to paganism) or for his pagan piety (as argued his wife Paulina)? That piety and honour were closely linked for both pagans and Christians is shown by Petronius Probus, whose epitaph presents baptism as the crown of his cursus honorum. For G., the debate about Preatextatus shows that the ‘pagan aristocracy of the 380s did not meet imperial repudiation of their ancestral cults with simple inactivity. Neither, on the other hand, did they meet it with unanimity. […]. [T]here was no consensus about what Praetextatus’ example had meant and how (or even whether) he was to be imitated’ (165–6). G. concludes that ‘paganism’ was in the fourth century still a vital social, practical fact of Roman society. What it meant and what its role in society should be was still subject to debate — among Christians as well as among ‘pagans’ themselves.

Though it is not within the direct scope of the study, it would have been interesting to have G's perspective on the processes that produced this senatorial pagan henotheism and to trace the influence of Christian monotheism and philosophical Neoplatonism on its development.

G.'s book is a very well written reminder that — regardless of the usefulness of modern narratological and speech-theoretical approaches and their justified popularity among contemporary scholarship of (late-)antique texts — we must always ask whether what we deem a mere rhetorical construct might have a basis in the conditions in the world.