This book compares identity formation and rhetorical performance within social networks of sophists, Christians, and philosophers in the second and early third century Roman empire. Broadly speaking, the book studies social and discursive modes of forming identity, defining boundaries, and claiming authority. Secondarily, the book studies the continuing formation of the categories of orthodoxy and heresy within these Christian communities. It places formative early Christianity as an intellectual movement comparable to the Second Sophistic, a point made often by scholars but not hitherto followed through in such detail. Eshelman does not claim direct influence of one movement on the other but rather shared cultural techniques.

The introduction argues cogently for the comparison of Christianity and the Second Sophistic, acknowledging other possible comparisons to the household and voluntary associations and to groups such as doctors and rabbis. Chapter 1 studies how identity as a sophist, philosopher, or orthodox Christian hinged in part on access. To be present often signaled being part of the group. Different norms of access governed, in theory, the different venues for teaching and sophistic performance, ranging from intimate houses to the streets and baths to large theaters. Christian identity in this period was in many ways determined by spatial access to the local community rather than empire-wide institutional practices and beliefs. Both communities shared an “impostor problem,” often amusingly portrayed in Lucian's portraits of philosophers. Attendance by the right people, moreover, was a source of prestige. Christian concerns and controls over attendance and imposters was even more pronounced (e.g. Ignatius, Didache; 2 John).

The book proceeds in paired chapters addressing sophists and philosophers and then Christians. Chapters 2 and 3 treat internal definitions of expertise, an important aspect of identity for these intellectual communities, and the rhetorical definition of outsiders or idiotēs, laypersons or non-specialists. Arguments against lay opinions could both heighten autonomy and authority for sophists as well as be used against rival schools. Patrons, usually idiotēs, posed particularly difficult negotiations (an academic social problem from antiquity to today). Sophists, like their contemporary academic heirs, insisted on internal self-definition in tune with the “producer-driven” modes of building intellectual communities analyzed in chapter 1. Earlier Christians claim the identity of idiotēs for themselves as a rhetorical strategy but by 150–200 CE, authors such as Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Clement begin to label believers as idiotai and emphasize the importance of expertise within Christianity; Irenaeus, in contrast, portrays Valentinians as sophists leading the ignorant astray. This shift corresponds to an increasing emphasis on the authority of ordained leaders and the monoepiscopate. Christians similarly faced delicate negotiations with patrons who attempted to define orthodoxies (Acts Pet., 2&3 John, Herm. Mand.).

Chapters 4 and 5 look at how circles of sophists and orthodox were defined and functioned rhetorically. Chapter 4 offers the important critique that Philostratus presents the Second Sophistic in terms of his academic lineage, centered on Herodes Atticus, and should not be read as the “real” social history of the movement; there were other sophists and circles. Eshelman writes, “Aiming to define a sophistic canon, Philostratus has succeeded in largely effacing those whom he excludes” (142). She locates a possible “alternative center of gravity” around the students of Isaeus. Chapter 5 studies the family trees of orthodox and heretical constructed in Christian heresiology. Eshleman highlights parallels with rhetorical strategies in Philostratus and Diogenes Laertius and the ways these replicate the community-forming techniques analyzed in chapters 1–3. Networks of authority and heresy were discursively self-constructed in Christian circles, similar to Philostratus. Chapters 6 and 7 focus on succession narratives (diadochai, “golden chains” of practitioners) in Quintillian, Pomponius, Diogenes Laertius, Clement of Alexandria (within the chapter on sophists and philosophers) and Numenius; and, among Christians, Justin, Irenaeus, Hegesippus, and Hippolytus. Identifying the “golden” ancestors, the true successors, and the sources of deviance redefine boundaries and identities in the contemporary social worlds of the authors.

Scholars have long compared early Christianity with both sophists and the philosophical tradition, in particular doxography, but Eshleman's marks the most sustained treatment to date of sophistic parallels and promises to be an important contribution. The book also fits well with the revival of interest in Classics in the Second Sophistic and other late antique texts. The attention is primarily on sophists and Christians, so the subtitle is a bit misleading. She demonstrates a firm grasp of the sources and the scholarship in a detailed study. Chapters are laid out in sections that help divide up the sometimes dense exegesis, but it is a strength that arguments are tied closely to the text. Extensive footnotes include sources in the original languages. The writing is lively and peppered with entertaining literary anecdotes.

While very strong methodologically, the study falters somewhat on a circular use of texts. The discursive nature of the social processes is always in the foreground but the textual nature of the self-fashioning is deconstructed in chapters 4 and 5, rather than the beginning or end of the book, which might have been more effective. And while she very effectively deconstructs Philostratus's veracity as a source of the “true” Second Sophistic (thereby calling into question some of the social historical conclusions based on Philostratus in the other chapters), she uses the fourth-century historian Eusebius throughout as a source for the second century without examining similar motives and rhetorical constructions, save for one mention of this potential problem with regard to Hegesippus (225). Thus the book includes an unresolved tension between the textual sources and the realia of the social networks and in-groups studied here. Given that rhetorical performance was a preoccupation of the Second Sophistic and is a major focus of the book, however, this tension does little to mar a fine work of scholarship.