Appropriation, ‘making something one’s own’, is a modern way of thinking about social practices. This volume highlights the potential of this critical concept for the investigation of everyday religious practice – and more generally, everyday social practice – in Antiquity. Appropriation foregrounds the agency of the social actors against the strictures imposed by the dominant culture’s social order, whose ideas and practices they make their own, altering them in multiple, often subtle ways. How does appropriation transform pre-existing, traditional practices? What are the dominant structures against which the actors operate? Which tactics do they use? These are only some of the questions this volume seeks to address. The critical term ‘appropriation’ has yet to be fully discovered by Classicists; the case studies in this volume, ranging from classical Greece to Late Antique Egypt, endeavour to demonstrate its pertinence to the study of religion in Antiquity.

The changing sacred landscape, from one dominated by temples to one where churches and monasteries were omnipresent, is a main feature of Late Antiquity. In this chapter, we will use the concept of ‘appropriation’ to gain an impression of the diverse ways in which Christians responded to, and interacted with, the former sacred built environment. In order to grasp the full complexity of these responses and interactions the focus is on a local case study, Abydos, a site that functioned continuously as a necropolis and cult centre of Osiris up until the Graeco-Roman period. Based on recent fieldwork, the various ways in which Christians, and especially monks, used and reused the abandoned necropolis are discussed.

This chapter identifies three key features of theological discourse in the Roman empire during the first six centuries CE. First, theological language remained shared across the ‘pagan’–Christian divide. Secondly, truthfulness of religious practice was a central theological concern. Thirdly, theology progressively became the remit of professionals, philosophers and bishops. Offering an alternative understanding of the Christianisation of the Roman empire, the chapter argues that, from a Certeaunian perspective, the loss of plausibility that Late Antique ‘paganism’ suffered is reflected in the way in which Neoplatonist discourse distorted the balance between theology and ritual by fully subsuming the latter to the former.

By analysing surviving testimonies on the existence of a possible Commentary on the Sophist and some passages from Damascius’ Commentary on the Parmenides and Problems and Solutions, this chapter explores Damascius’ reading of the Sophist on not-being. It argues that Damascius, drawing on the Sophist, distinguishes not just two types of non-being but two types of nothingness. This nuanced interpretation, grounded in a close reading of the text, allows Damascius to offer a fresh interpretation of the ‘parricide’ of Parmenides, advancing the Neoplatonic discussion on nothingness.

This chapter concerns itself with the architectural context of Byzantine worship. Through selected examples from Late Antiquity and Byzantium, it traces the development of ecclesiastical architecture, its symbolism, and their theological significance. Starting with the church building in early Christian commentaries of Maximos the Confessor and Germanos of Constantinople, it follows Byzantine architectural developments through the transitional and middle Byzantine periods up to the final centuries before the fall of Constantinople.

What can a premodern narrative of legal change teach us? This brief epilogue raises the more complex question of the totalizing ambitions of states that operate from the assumption that law is a specialized practice, rather than something that emerges from daily life. The existence of a black-letter law urges states towards legislation as legal utopianism: the attempt to remake subjects in an optimal fashion and to exclude those they find problematic. This tendency towards utopianism - a form of state magic - is present in both late antique and modern contexts. Understanding the roots of it urges us towards humility with respect to our own projects of legal transformation.

Synesius of Cyrene (b. ca. 373–d. ca. 410) was trained in the classical literature that depicted war as an event with armies opposing one another in battle, but he experienced a different kind of conflict in his own life – namely, the periodic and unpredictable raiding that troubled late ancient Libya. Synesius’ letters and his treatise On Kingship show that these conflicts brought sentiment to the surface as a kind of evidence about people that could be implicitly trusted; Synesius’ sentiment was palpably xenophobic, aligned against both “barbarians” and “Scythians,” and so strong as to circumvent rational examinations of the evidence around him. This essay examines the scaffolded construction of stereotype, built in Synesius’ advice to a hypothetical ruler, and demonstrates how knowledge, even knowledge that seems intimate and trustworthy, can be bent through engagements with violence.

This chapter situates classical education in late antique Gaul in its historical context, positioning the work within the current scholarly debates, and building on recent scholarship on late antique Gaul. Arranged thematically, Chapter 2 considers key developments in the political and military relationships between the western Roman empire, Gallo-Romans and barbarian groups, the prospects and prosperity of Gallo-Roman aristocrats, the increasing dominance of the Church and bishops in daily life, and the vitality and continuity of Gallo-Roman cities. It considers the conditions necessary for classical education to thrive and function and discusses how the structures that fostered education were affected by the political, military, religious, and cultural transformations of fifth-century Gaul.

The concluding chapter reflects upon how the themes and questions explored in the book speak to familiar concerns of families, communities, and societies across time. What is the purpose of education? What do we expect of our education, and in what ways does our pursuit of knowledge and our learning define who we are? The conclusion draws together the arguments from the preceding chapters, considering in what ways the ‘fall’ of Rome meant the end of the schools of grammar and rhetoric in Gaul. Without the superstructure of the Roman empire, the socio-political culture that valued literary education disappeared, and the schools soon followed suit; it was not primarily material changes caused by the political, cultural, and religious upheavals of the fifth century that led to the decline of the schools, but rather marked changes in the attitudes and mindset towards education and learning of the emerging power brokers of post-imperial Gaul – the barbarian kingdoms and the Church.

The introduction sets out the approaches, sources, and scope of the book. It acquaints the reader with the main features of classical education and places the book within the modern historiography.