This volume consists of essays presented to a conference held in 2010 in Erfurt, as a part of an ongoing research project entitled ‘Religious Individualization in Historical Perspective’, funded by the German Research Foundation and based at the University of Erfurt.

In a short introduction, the editors situate the volume within a debate which emerged from Foucault's claim in the third volume of Le Souci de soi, that a new sense of the self emerged in the high Roman Empire. Their contention is that interest in this matter has not extended to the religious realm, or at least not to the degree that it should have done, even if a number of scholars have seen these apparent changed understandings of the self as prefiguring Christianity.

The collection, reflecting the research project of which it is a part, is multi-disciplinary with contributors from the different branches of classical and religious studies taking part. Typical of conference proceedings, it presents a heterogeneous body of essays which the editors have divided into four parts dealing in turn with the philosophical tradition, religious concepts of the self, Second Sophistic Perspectives, and what is termed ‘practices of the self’. By and large the essays are clearly written pieces, which usually focus on individual texts.

What emerges from the work is not clear. To the question whether the second century, however conceived (one author refers to a long second century, but few authors address the complicated chronological question), was a turning point in perceptions of the self no clear view emerges. Anders Klosetrgarard-Petersen does make some suggestive comments in an essay on Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho about the introduction by Christians of what he terms ‘an excessive form of the same basic dualism which underlies Platonism’, a point which is partially supplemented by Christoph Markschies, who emphasises the use and misuse of Plato in Valentinian Gnosticism. Klostergaarrd-Petersen also addresses the question of conversion and its role in the construction of a Christian self, which, as Peter Gemeinhardt, quoting Tertuallian, states is not simply given but grows from other influences. A number of essays argue for the convergence of philosophical and religious ideas of the self, or their complex complementarity, in well-known writers like Plutarch (Eran Alamagor) and Epictetus (Jula Wildberger). The importance of the rise of cults is played up by some, with Richard Gordon in particular offering a fascinating analysis of the role of the mystagogue, perceived through Weberian eyes, in the period. A part of the latter's contribution is taken up with Lucian's Alexander of Abonuteichos, the account of a man taken by Lucian to be a religious huckster but by others to be a person of insight and importance. This work of Lucian, along with others, including his Peregrinus, is the concern of a number of essays, which use these and other texts to explore the construction of selfhood in this author (Wolfgang Spickermann's piece is especially instructive on this point). Other essays explore selfhood in relation to specific subjects (Jörg Rüpke on Hermas and the city of Rome; Harry Maier on Clement of Alexandria and dress; Dorothea Elm von der Ostern on the importance of the bodily habitus; Elena Muniz Gijalvo on what votive offerings in second-century Athens tell us about the self-understanding of the supplicants; and Peter Gemeinhardt on the various roles that philosophy plays in the construction of Christian identity).

The volume is a stimulating collection, at least in terms of its discrete parts. It could, however, have had a more substantive introduction in which the editors went to greater lengths to justify the reasons for choosing the second century as a particular subject of study, perhaps by focusing, inter alia, upon the importance of the Second Sophistic and the place of Christianity. As it is the reader is left to puzzle this out for him/herself, and emerges from the reading of the volume definitely the richer for the experience, but wondering about the volume's more detailed rationale. Similarly, there could have been more said about the meaning of ‘religious’ and ‘the self’, though in this respect the editors, both of whom are busy men, might complain that such an introduction would begin to look like a book.