The surge in interest in the history and archaeology of late-antique Ostia is quite a recent phenomenon, and at present we are still waiting for a global synthesis of the last centuries of Rome's old colony at the mouth of the Tiber. B.'s work is certainly a step in the right direction, even if, rather than a survey of late-antique Ostia, the book is a history of late-antique religion as seen through the lens of this urban ‘stage’. Yet, a perspective such as B.'s, interesting though it is for religious history, leaves many aspects of the archaeology and the history of the city in the dark.

The book is divided into two main sections: ‘Background’ and ‘Foreground’. The first includes two chapters that deal with B.'s theoretical perspective and the key features of Ostia's urban structure. The second part is dedicated to an analysis of change and survival with regard to identity and its relation to urban memory, especially concerning the ‘religious landscape’ of the city, a concept that includes small, but symbolically loaded, objects as well as cult buildings and the street network and urban nodes, according to K. Lynch's classification (The Image of the City [1960]), which B. adopts. This part is divided into four chapters, three of which cover one century each (from the third to the fifth), while the last covers two (sixth–seventh). The book closes with a small postscript.

The first chapter establishes the work's theoretical grounding, notably a series of anthropological perspectives which set much store by the role of ‘social memory’ and the transformation and survival of social identities through material culture. This phenomenological approach and its objectives may be summarised as follows: to trace the role of tangible memory (material culture) in the social formation of identity of the city, especially in the religious field.

The second chapter synthesises recent archaeological discoveries, starting with the inner harbour, and proceeding with the shipyards, the houses, the seats of professional corporations, the public spaces, the synagogue, the churches and the baths. The ‘continuist’ approach to everyday life in the city fits well with B.'s ideas on the resilience of places of memory and their role in the emergence and durability of citizen identity over time. His arguments, however, must be contrasted with those put forward by other specialists concerning the structural changes undergone by the city's urban structure in Late Antiquity.Footnote ¹

The third chapter challenges the traditional perspective on the crisis of the third century a.d. and its effects on Ostia. The arguments for the temporary nature of the crisis and for a minimal impact on the urban landscape are unconvincing, especially after Pavolini's workFootnote ² on the urban transformation of Ostia in the third century, which B. does not cite. Through the analysis of several urban buildings, B. stresses different aspects of religious life, including some remarks on individual cults and magic practices. This is followed by an interesting discussion on the chronology of Mithraic cults, which B. believes to extend beyond the fourth century. Finally, the chapter discusses the role of Christians, who were still not very visible in the city in contrast with the Jews. This section betrays B.'s tendency to (to a certain extent) dismiss the archaeological context and build upon the anecdotal value of evidence.

From its very title the fourth chapter announces its intention to deconstruct the ‘official version’ of the triumph of Christianity during the fourth century. B. insists on the permanence and vitality of the symbols of traditional religion. The idea of a pagan revival in the second half of the fourth century is challenged with arguments for a cultural and religious continuity, and this idea is, from B.'s perspective, supported by the survival of some of its religious spaces. In my opinion, however, B.'s reading of this continuity, which I see as essentially related to the official character of the city as an important place for the Annona as demonstrated by the epigraphic evidence, must be revised. On the other hand, despite these elements of continuity, the growing visibility of the Christian community and its cult spaces cannot be denied.

In Chapter 5, B. addresses the structural changes undergone by the city during the fifth century, not as a result of destruction, but rather owing to its internal transformation and movement towards a new identity; this is viewed from the perspective of public life in the streets, rather than the private perspective of houses or specific buildings. From the outside, the new monumentality of Christian and Jewish spaces represents the emergence of a new dominating identity and the reconfiguration of the identity of minorities and its relationship with the new norm. In this context, the martyrologic cult of St Laurence would not only be a reflection of the new identity, but the reformulation of a class-conscience also expressed through the ‘museographic’ treatment of pre-Christian iconography, the appropriation of the Classical past and the maintenance of certain memories of elite citizens’ pride.

Chapter 6 examines the role played by the growing presence of Christian architecture in social change. The chapter also analyses the challenge posed by the substitution of the new Christian calendar for the traditional one. Here, I think that B.'s arguments fail to take full advantage of the explicative potential of these phenomena; this is particularly noticeable concerning one aspect which he barely touches upon: the ‘processional’ connections between cults and spaces within and outside the city walls, resulting from the ‘itinerant’ nature of martyr cults. This is more complex than the simple absorption of ‘pagan’ festivities by Christianity, or the simple ‘dislocation’ of martyrologic cults to outside the city walls, the inner city being a space heavily loaded with traditional religious connotations.

There is little doubt that this is a valuable book which addresses the problematic relationship between the city as lived space and the city as a physical framework. This dialectic calls for a very fine balance. It is not just a case of using all the available evidence, as B. does, and does well, but of choosing which perspective to stress, as recently pointed out by H. Galinié (Ville, espace urbain et archéologie [2000]). The philological and material perspectives have very different outcomes. B. has privileged the former, and his book therefore yields a fresh account of the ‘Christianisation’ of the Empire as seen through Ostia. None the less, this account is woven at the expense of the peculiarity of the city as seat of the procurator annonae Ostiensis, an aspect that remains almost unnoticed, as are the complex relations of the city with Portus (cf. C. Pavolini, review of B. in JRA 27 [2015], 890–9, esp. 899). The city's own peculiarity, moreover, should prompt us to question the identity of Ostia as an example of the religious transformation of the Empire as a whole (for instance, with regard to the cult of MithraFootnote ³ ). B.'s response to these problems is sometimes convincing and sometimes not quite so convincing, paradoxically because too much emphasis is placed on the identitary nature of places and buildings, whereas limited attention is paid to urban changes that have little to do with identity and much in common with the general evolution of late-antique urbanism. I am referring to those transformations that reflect the material and social changes taking place in the Empire in parallel with the process of Christianisation: the monumentalisation of major thoroughfares at the cost of the rest of the fabric of the city; the emergence of funerary spaces within the walls; and the emergence of suburban areas connected to the city by the seasonal martyrologic processions.