Arnaldo Momigliano's The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (1963), and especially Herbert Bloch on the ‘pagan’ revival, wrote the rules for the analysis of ‘paganism’ and Christianity in fourth-century Rome. In 1977, Alan Cameron's Entretiens Hardt essay convincingly dismantled the supposed ‘pagan’ revival — but, unfortunately, no revival has been taken to mean no ‘pagans’. Even so, in 1982 Brian Croke and Jill Harries published an immensely influential sourcebook, Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Rome, which seemed to document a ‘pagan’-Christian conflict. In 2011, Alan Cameron again tackled the ‘pagan’ revival and its association with classicizing cultural products in a massive handbook on late antique cultural production, The Last Pagans of Rome. And once again, the ‘pagan’ revival has proven to be a mirage, but, unfortunately, once again late ancient Rome has no ‘pagans’.

With the present volume, perhaps we can now admit that there was no revival, as Cameron rightly argued, just plain ‘pagan’ continuity, and that conflict does not adequately explain fourth-century Rome's religious realities, in which religious groups interacted along a variety of axes — conflict, on occasion, but also competition and, above all, coexistence. In other words, Pagans and Christians has revised the rules by which the religious history of late antique Rome should be written. For that reason, this volume is, I believe, the most important collection of essays (despite some rather evident copyediting and production errors) since Momigliano's.

A concise introduction reviews English language scholarship on fourth-century Rome's religious history and offers summaries of the nineteen chapters. Part I on the senatorial class opens with a contribution by Michele Salzman, which examines the relationship between Constantine and the Senate through the lens of the emperor's three visits to the city in 312, after the battle at the Milvian Bridge, 315 and 326 — a relationship marked by increasing tension, but not outright conflict or cowardly acquiescence, as traditional élites may have disguised their resistance to a pragmatic, but openly Christian emperor. Robert Chenault re-assesses the ‘Altar of Victory’ controversy, but from the perspective of Bishop Damasus, an often overlooked participant. According to Chenault, Damasus, a weak bishop, intervened in 383 on behalf of arriviste Christians to bolster his position among well-heeled senatorial Christians. Oddly, Damasus ignored Symmachus’ famous third relatio (official communiqué to the imperial court) just the next year, a failure which Chenault does not really address. Alan Cameron then rebuts, at length, the contention that Symmachus’ letters dissembled his traditional religious preferences — a recent proposition that attempts to reinvigorate the ‘pagan’-Christian conflict model. Cameron demonstrates that the adduced instances of dissimulation were, in fact, standard epistolary practice and not, necessarily, subterfuge. Though, I suppose, that is exactly what we would expect if Symmachus were, in fact, afraid to be too openly ‘pagan’.

Thomas Jürgasch leads off Part II on religious identities with the invention of ‘paganism’ in the late fourth century by imperially patronized Christians, who, Jürgasch argues, deployed ‘pagans’ as an Other against which to create a unified Christian identity. As it turns out, the next author, Douglas Boin, previously argued that Christian ‘soldiers’ had earlier labelled Christian ‘civilians’, who were supposedly insufficiently militant, pagani — a very useful term indeed. In his present contribution, Boin tackles the imperial cult under Christian emperors, a practice typically explained away by, for example, construing divus (deified) as ‘of blessed memory’. However, an inscription from 431 that rehabilitates the ‘pagan’ Nicomachus Flavianus names divus Theodosianus, which suggests that divus could have maintained its classical meaning, for some, while other evidence suggests that the imperial cult might have maintained some of its traditional appurtenances, including priests. Maijastina Kahlos addresses magic; here a normative term like ‘pagan’ that served as a powerful polemic tool, especially as magic was a crime liable to horrific penalties, as Ammianus amply recounts. In a theoretically informed essay, Daniëlle Slootjes examines late antique crowd behaviour, which was more than mere rioting as religion emerged as a novel factor in mass demonstrations.

Part III ‘Coexistence and Competition’ — themes which mark the entire volume not just this section — lumps together three sub-sections, which seem rather to be independent. Part IIIA treats ‘pagan’ practices in what the editors strangely call Christian Rome — strange because this (sub-)section clearly demonstrates that Rome was not yet Christian. In fact, Jonas Bjørnebye argues that the cult of Mithras grew and maintained its numbers into the mid-fifth century, as the cult readily coexisted with an increasingly powerful institutional Church. In the end, it was a casualty of a slow and steady process of Christianization, which lured the conformists who had previously filled its ranks. Dennis Trout, in a beautifully written essay, compellingly argues that anti-‘pagan’ polemic was not mere shadow boxing, but a means to police élite Christians and their ‘respectable’ (classicizing) Christianity by drawing bright lines between tradition and ‘proper’ Christianity. Neil McLynn examines the polemic addressed to a senator who supposedly returned to ‘idolatry’ by making an appearance in an Isis sanctuary. As McLynn contends, the poem was carefully choreographed boundary maintenance penned by an educated social inferior, possibly a grammarian, though such specificity might be an overreach. Francesca Diosono then argues that ‘pagan’ religious associations of some collegia were tolerated, even if curtailed, to ensure vital services, until the mid-fifth century when ‘pagan’ collegia were targeted and ultimately eliminated by the mid-sixth century.

Nicola Denzey Lewis challenges traditional pieties concerning the catacombs to open Part IIIB on death, and not the afterlife despite the (sub-)section title. As Denzey Lewis argues, fourth-century funerary practices were a family affair, not an ecclesiastical one and, more crucially, the ‘Christian’ catacombs are an invention of the early modern efforts to erase burial ‘miscegenation’. Monica Hellström reassesses circiform funerary basilicas, which have often been read as specifically Christian martyr sites, though Maxentius began at least one of them and they initially lacked ritual apparatus. They are best understood as prestigious imperial funerary monuments, much like the early imperial columbarium of Livia. Marianne Sághy, whose footnotes the publisher unfortunately omitted, treads a more traditional path, arguing that Bishop Damasus’ versified martyr inscriptions both Romanized Christianity with their Vergilian echoes and Christianized Rome by redrawing its sacral map. After Denzey Lewis's essay, this argument seems a bit overstated as the catacombs seem not to have been so significant. Gitte Lønstrup Dal Santo then argues that the apostles Peter and Paul were not in competition with Romulus and Remus, but rather their 29 June feast celebrated apostolic concordia and the city of Rome itself.

The final (sub-)section turns to religious imagery. Caroline Michel d'Annoville explores statuary in fourth-century Rome, when statues of all kinds became a problem and statues of all kinds moved — though there is no evidence for moving statues from temples to the Forum. Were these statues art, heritage or idolatry? Silviu Anghel argues that a remarkable late antique lararium stuffed with Egyptian deities was not, in fact, a site of ‘pagan’ continuity, resistance or privatization, but was rather piously walled up and preserved — an argument that may depend too much on the meticulousness of the late nineteenth-century excavation. Levente Nagy then considers Hercules imagery in supposedly Christian contexts, which suggests that Christians found Hercules good to think with. Though in mixed funerary contexts, perhaps one might also suggest that ‘pagans’ could have found Christian symbolism good to think with too.

Rita Lizzi Testa concludes this important volume with reflections on Momigliano's collection and the need to move beyond its Cold War conflict model. Indeed, the history of late antique Rome has begun to recognize the contingent quality of ‘Christianization’ and the continuity and adaptability of ‘paganism’. With this volume and its commendable range of topics and evidence, a more than worthy successor of Momigliano's, perhaps we can began to reassess all manner of traditional truisms.