Geoffrey de Ste Croix, who died in February 2000, was undoubtedly one of the most distinguished and unusual ancient historians of the twentieth century. Alongside his hugely important works on Greek history he also produced several seminal articles on early Christianity. The wide range of his interests, as well as his impressive industry, was indicated by his leaving, at his death, a veritable ‘mass’ of academic papers, comprising a number of essays in Greek history (now published as Athenian democratic origins and other essays), and a still larger array dealing with religious matters. These apparently took a variety of forms including lecture and seminar notes, both handwritten and in typescript: clearly, a good deal of work was required in order to turn at least some of this mass of material into the present volume. In fact, what the editors (Michael Whitby and Joseph Streeter) have done is to combine three of de Ste Croix's published papers together with four ‘new’ pieces, substantially edited, along with some useful introductory and supplementary material, including substantial bibliographical updates, written by them. The papers are grouped, albeit unevenly, under three main headings. The first deals with Christian martyrdom and persecution, a subject area in which de Ste Croix has been remarkably influential. Here his two important and well-known articles from the 1950s and 1960s (‘Aspects of the “Great Persecution”’ and ‘Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?’) are supplemented by three more, of related subject matter. Chapter ii, ‘The Fourth Edict in the west and the date of the Council of Elvira’, argues robustly that the council can provide no real evidence for the course of the Great Persecution. Chapter iv, ‘Voluntary martyrdom in the early Church’, is a useful compilation of evidence on the subject, the importance of which he had controversially asserted in his published articles. The next chapter, ‘Heresy, schism, and persecution in the later Roman empire’, finds the author at his most Gibbonian, examining how, in his words the Christian Church (or rather Churches) became the ‘greatest organized persecuting force in human history’. The second section is constituted by ‘The Council of Chalcedon’. (De Ste Croix comments, with characteristic mischievousness, that ‘I have sometimes tried to tease colleagues in “Ancient History” or “Classics” by insisting, half seriously, that we actually know more about the council than about any other event in ancient history’.) Well-known as it may be, the paper argues that it has been misunderstood, and seeks to demonstrate crucial and substantive elements of (imperially managed) coercion in the running and course of the council. The final section, consisting of the previously published ‘Early Christian attitudes to property and slavery’ demonstrates de Ste Croix's characteristic acuity but also his deep political and social commitment, as he shows, with some passion, how early (and indeed later) Christianity, rather than challenging the inequalities of the status quo had rather ‘explicitly underwritten the existing social and economic order in its crudest form’. While the most important pieces in this volume are already well known to scholars the collection is to be welcomed for gathering together the writings of one of the most interesting historians ever to write about early Christianity. It is notable that although in some cases scholarship has inevitably moved on, many of de Ste Croix's once controversial claims are now taken for granted. While the polemics of de Ste Croix will not be to everyone's taste, this volume remains a reminder of the power of history written with both intellectual acuity and personal political and social engagement.