Christopher Jones has a produced a pleasant book that winds its way from sources as ancient and varied as Homer, Hesiod, and Plato all the way to Saint Gregory the Great. Spanning a millennium of historical sources, Jones' work is concerned to show that there are not only different ways of being pagan, but also different ways that Christians defined the concept paganus. The relationship “between pagans and Christians” is varied across time and geographic extent, and extends much later than other scholars have been willing to admit. The basic form that Jones' argument takes, therefore, is to point out different kinds of pagans in different parts of the Roman Empire and at different times. In this respect, Jones is amazingly successful at referencing a broad variety of sources. This is surely the fruit of his long career as a professor of classics; the book has all the marks of being a collection of his notes from decades of study.

The first two chapters present Jones' major premises. First, he argues the philological claim that paganus has a somewhat broad semantic field and an even broader set of meanings in a rhetorical context. As an accusation against a Christian of questionable doctrinal opinion, the term can mean something like “seriously unorthodox but self-titled a Christian,” even though the term might also have the sense of one who worshiped at the altar of Olympian deities described by Homer. Second, Jones carefully dismantles the naïve (but commonly held) view that Constantine's ascendancy to the imperial throne marked a sudden and decisive overthrow of all things non-Christian. These two chapters would be useful for serious undergraduates who are prepared to discuss Greek and Latin terms and who are somewhat familiar with the basics of Roman imperial history.

The middle six chapters of the book select key themes (indifference and intolerance; God and other divinities; idolatry; sacrifice, blood, and prayer; debate; and conversion) and frame dozens of quotations in an extended compare-and-contrast-style essay for each theme. Again, the overarching point is that paganism extends in great variety much farther than previous scholarship (specifically Gibbon) has noted (145). Nevertheless, the evidence here is presented without direct and explicit ties to the overarching thesis, and so many different figures are covered that the chapters would seem useful only for graduate students already familiar with a broad range of Greco-Roman history. Indeed, the use of endnotes (and not footnotes) as well as a single note for each paragraph and not for each quotation suggests that Jones writes for an audience who can already recall the authors and passages he quotes. Additionally, there are numerous tantalizing opinions and comments from Jones that beg for more detailed discussion appropriate for a graduate readership. Melchizedek is cited as an example of an ancient pagan referenced in Genesis 14:18, but only the Septuagint is referenced in the notes, and there is no discussion of Abram's gloss on the key title used by Melchizedek to refer to Yahweh (44). The Lord's Prayer is treated in a single paragraph that also references the Pentateuch, Homer, and Aratus (75), leaving the reader longing for a more substantial discussion of prayer as a relationship between a human supplicant and a divine father. References to the numerous works on prayer in general (or the Lord's Prayer in particular) that were common to Christians of the era seem lacking. Caesarius of Arles is cited as a preacher concerned more with morality than abstract speculation, leaving the reader wondering about texts like De mysterio Sancti Trinitatae and whether the concept of “pagan” would apply equally to “barbarian” and “Arian” groups with whom Caesarius and many other theologians had varied contact (102).

The conclusions and arguments presented in their support that occupy the final chapters (“The West,” “The East,” and “Conclusion”) as well as the appendix on Macrobius should find their way into any number of graduate seminars that study Roman and Byzantine history or late antique religion. Jones is at his best in the final fifty pages of the work, organizing his comments by geographic region, even to the level of considering specific cities in detail.