The subject of ‘pagan monotheism’ has been a hotly debated topic amongst ancient historians and classicists ever since the publication of Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (1999), a collection of essays edited by Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frede. Inspired by that project, this volume, which is dedicated to Michael Frede and contains a paper (ch. 4) completed by him shortly before his untimely death, arises from a research project on pagan monotheism undertaken at the University of Exeter by Stephen Mitchell, Peter Van Nuffelen and their team. More specifically, it draws together some of the key contributions from an international conference on pagan monotheism in the Roman world held at Exeter in July 2006, which has also resulted in a further publication, a collection of papers entitled Monotheism between Christians and Pagans in Late Antiquity, published by Peeters (2009). This volume consists of a comprehensive introduction by the editors and eight further contributions from some very well-known scholars, looking at a range of issues surrounding the concept of ‘pagan monotheism’ and its possible applicability to the religious and cultural milieu of the Roman Empire. While ‘pagan monotheism’ may sound like an oxymoron to the uninitiated, scholars have long attempted to categorize and define the acknowledgement of a supreme deity or a sense of ultimate divine unity attested to in various Graeco-Roman pagan philosophical and literary sources.

The 1999 papers edited by Athanassiadi and Frede have been criticized for focusing almost exclusively on philosophical and theological evidence without taking enough account of the evidence for cultic activity. As Mitchell and Van Nuffelen explain in their introduction, this volume differs in two important respects: they have deliberately shifted the emphasis of the enquiry to the pre-Constantinian period of the Roman Empire, before Christianity became the prevailing religious norm, and they have taken a broader view of the documentary information to encompass epigraphic (and other) sources of evidence of religious and cultic activity. Indeed five chapters (those by North, Markschies, Chaniotis, Beylache and Mitchell) examine cultic and religious practice in some depth. Additionally, the editors claim that ‘pagan monotheism itself is not assumed to have objective status as a religious phenomenon, but is treated as a concept or a heuristic device to ask further questions about the development of religion in the Roman world’ (6). This latter claim is substantiated by the inclusion of papers both criticizing and supporting the concept of ‘pagan monotheism’ as an appropriate description of religious phenomena within a pagan context and as an appropriate heuristic tool for exploring the nature of traditional religious phenomena in the Roman Empire. Two chapters (those by Beylache and Chaniotis) explicitly critique the notion of ‘pagan monotheism’, arguing strongly for the view that most of the documentary evidence for pagan cult should be interpreted from a polytheistic perspective, and claim that monotheistic readings of the evidence are anachronistic and do not take account of the social and psychological realities of a predominantly polytheist society. Mitchell contributed a paper to Athanassiadi and Frede's 1999 volume and revisits his argument here (ch. 9). Indeed Beylache and Mitchell offer radically different interpretations of the heis theos and Theos Hypsistos inscriptions which have been found over diverse areas of the Roman world; it is fascinating to watch this debate unfold. In this sense, the volume works well as a cogent collection of papers with a well-balanced and comprehensive scope.

Critics of the concept of ‘pagan monotheism’ have often noted two specific problems raised by labelling Graeco-Roman religious traditions ‘monotheistic’: firstly, monotheism is clearly an ideologically loaded term which has been associated with Christianity, Judaism and Islam for so long that its application to Graeco-Roman religion might be seriously misleading. Thus many critics have claimed that the term ‘henotheism’ might represent a more accurate delineation of pagan notions and practices relating to a supreme deity. Secondly, ‘pagan monotheism’ focuses on ideas about the godhead and so may misrepresent Graeco-Roman religion, which was often characterized by emphasis on orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy. These methodological issues are dealt with extensively by Van Nuffelen (ch. 2) in a customarily erudite fashion. Chaniotis' paper (ch. 7) introduces the neologism ‘megatheism’ as a designation of an expression of piety to a particular god seen as somehow superior to others, although he insists that this phenomenon remains embedded in local contexts and did not undermine the nature of polytheism.

The second criticism noted above raises a central issue: how do philosophical concepts of the divine connect with religious practice in antiquity? Van Nuffelen notes the complexities of this issue, given that theology (understood as theoretical reflection on the divine) was not an integrated part of traditional Graeco-Roman religion. North's contribution (ch. 3) deals sensitively with the subtle relationship between belief and religious cult, concluding that ‘monotheism’ and ‘polytheism’ were not central nor particularly meaningful categories in antiquity. Other key characteristics, such as the relationship between ritual and belief, the ‘profession’ of a commitment to a group and world-views, were more relevant as areas of religious development in the Roman Empire. Fürst (ch. 5) argues that discourses between pagan and Christian ‘monotheists’ do not centre around or disagree concerning the concept of ‘God’ but rather the appropriate worship of and approach towards the divine, a salient point to a certain extent — yet such an analysis surely elides the complex interaction between thought and praxis, although it must be noted that Fürst briefly discusses this issue in his conclusion.

The volume contains an extensive bibliography, general index, and index of authors, works and citations. It will be essential reading for all Roman and late antique historians, and historians of religion, as well as an important resource for postgraduate students, although its specialist nature could impede its use by undergraduates. This volume is dense in sophisticated and complex argumentation, presenting cases both for and against the usefulness and appropriateness of the concept of ‘pagan monotheism’; as such, it will probably intensify debate surrounding the applicability of the term ‘pagan monotheism’ to Graeco-Roman religious, philosophical and cultural contexts.