From the sex trade as an essential element of the Roman economy in the second century to the tale of the “penitent prostitute” who takes up desert asceticism in the fifth, this work traces the transformation of Roman society into Christian by paying particular attention to sexual morality. As indicated by the title, the thesis is that sin, a theological concept, replaces shame, a social one, as the driving force of sexual ethics and legislation in the Christian period. Harper argues that the Greco-Roman morality of the imperial period embedded eros within the social structures of honor and shame. While sexual behavior was driven by both individual desire and social expectation, the logic of its morality inhered in the social order, with moral categories associated with social status. An aristocratic male, a female slave, and a prostitute each had different social expectations regarding both sexual behavior and its morality. However, following the transformation occasioned by the rise and success of Christianity, which Harper dates to Justinian, the moral logic became different—it was severed from social status and tied to the theological concept of sin, in which, he says, the “cosmos replaced the city as the framework of morality” (8). Harper also aims to pay special attention to the relatively unexplored categories of same-sex behavior and prostitution in this period. While this characterization of the shift between Roman and Christian sexual morality might not surprise historians of this period, Harper's assembling and placing in conversation a wide and deep range of ancient sources provides a significant contribution.

For his assessment of Greco-Roman sexual morality, Harper argues that the Greek novels provide a window into the relationship between erotic ideologies and social structure. Focusing on Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon, Harper argues that it both celebrates the eros of the free and noble lovers, and instantiates the social values of its age. The adventures required by the genre threaten, but never violate, the honor of the maiden Leucippe, whose destiny, the novel makes clear, is to be chastely married to Clitophon. Represented here is the honor of the book's title—for the Romans, sexual immorality consisted of sexual violation of socially inappropriate persons, such as the wives of peers or same-sex partners of the same age and social status. For aristocratic men, sexual excess with slaves or prostitutes was unwise, but not immoral. Harper takes the novels to be accepting and even celebrating sexual desire, but this desire is only respectably resolved in honorable marriage. While the “gloomy” Stoics (11) might argue otherwise, sexual desire was embraced by Roman culture, as long as it was appropriately embedded in the social structure.

Harper sees the seeds of change in two significant elements of the rising Christian ideology. Focusing primarily on Clement of Alexandria, he identifies the first as the rejection of desire. The purpose of sexuality, Harper argues, comes to be procreation, and, for Clement, desire needs to be moderated, and ultimately conquered by the intellect. This produces the second transformational element, the argument for free will. While, for imperial understanding, a person is so enmeshed in the physical and social worlds that it is appropriate to speak of fate or destiny, Harper argues that Clement's anti-eros arguments depend on a view of human nature as morally and radically free, able to make, and responsible for, its own choices. Here he sees a radical anti-fatalism, in which “sexual austerity was a symbol of absolute human freedom” (131).

The development of Christian public culture after Constantine completes the transition from shame to sin. Harper argues that Augustine dismantles the previous Christian position on free will—for Augustine, sexual desire is evidence of human bondage inescapable apart from grace. Imperial legislation makes public the attack on eros—sex is for procreation, focused entirely on marriage. While retaining elements of ancient social traditions, Theodosius and Justinian in an unprecedented way legislate against same-sex activity, divorce, and prostitution. Public rule and practice thus demonstrates a surprising, radical, even catastrophic change in sexual morality with the establishment of the Christian era.

This transformation extends to the literary genre of the romance. Harper argues that fourth- and fifth-century Christian stories like the apocryphal Acts, and later ascetic tales, invert the framework of the Greek romance. Now the prostitute, rather than the maiden, is the heroine. She is converted by the preaching of the apostle or the ascetic, and thus liberated from bodily eros into a cosmic salvation. Harper writes, “Sexual morality was now a troublesome inheritance of the flesh, in a universe whose true scale of values lay in the hope of the spirit to transcend its embodiment” (236).

This wide and seamless application of fascinating literature to a significant historical question is the strength of this book. While Harper engages with the standard works, from Foucault to Peter Brown, he provides a sweeping incorporation of primary works across genres—the ancient romance, philosophy, Hellenistic Jewish literature, and Christian texts from apologetic, to homily, to miracle stories, are all applied in an innovative way to hitherto unconsidered questions. Such a wide sweep might leave experts in each of these genres hoping for more depth, but his application of these texts to sexuality, in regard to both public policy and individual practice is enlightening and compelling. To a certain degree, however, these connections also work against a key element of his thesis—that the Christian transformation was revolutionary and radical. The arguments presented here indicate the connections between antiquity and the Christian era—they show that this transformation grew from the roots of its culture and are explicable within it. More interpretive depth is needed as well—his view that the move from shame to sin is one from a social or socially embedded ethic to a purely theological one is surely one-dimensional. To characterize shame as merely a social concept in Roman society and sin as merely a theological one leaves much out of our understanding of both. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating and instructive book.