Jews and Others
of Libanius, it is hard to find more than scattered hints of the functioning
of the traditional civic institutions of the Greek city, the assembly (ekklē-
sia), city council (boulē), and annual magistrates (archontes). Theodoret, for
instance, refers in passing to a man ‘‘of bouleutic rank’’ from the small city
of Zeugma on the Euphrates.^13 Or, in greater detail, the emperor Julian, in
his last letter, describes how he received a delegation from the city coun-
cil of Antioch at his stopping place at Litarbae, a village in the territory of
Chalcis, and then went on to Beroea, where he sacrificed on the acropolis
and delivered a brief address to its city council.^14 But how the internal gov-
ernment and communal life of the long-established pagan cities evolved in
this period it is not yet possible to say. There have, however, been important
studies of the survival of pagan cults and ceremonials,^15 and our sources also
give ample evidence of physical attacks on temples by Christians, and the
conversion of some of them into churches.^16 Mark the Deacon’sLifeof Por-
phyry, the bishop of Gaza, represents the fullest picture available to us of a
still-pagan city, whose temples succumbed to violent Christian assault early
in the fifth century.^17
In this context it will be sufficient to touch only in passing on the Greek
cities and on the peaceful or violent progress of their Christianisation, while
admitting the limited extent of modern study; for, whatever else was at stake,
issues of ethnicity and language do not seem to have been important in this
context. For, just as the cities seem all to have been, in the conduct of their
public business, Greek, so also was the Christian church. On the pagan side,
I know of almost no contemporary sources which represent any pagan cult
of this period as having been the expression of a non-Greek ‘‘ethnicity’’ or
communal identity, or as having employed any language other than Greek
(one puzzling exception is noted below, n. ). On the Christian side, there
is every indication, as we will see, that at least as regards its governing struc-
tures, its modes of communication between bishops, or between bishops
and the state, and in its public expression in the form of inscriptions (the
only strictly contemporary testimony), the church in the Near East was still
. Theodoret,Hist. Rel.,.
. Julian,Ep. (Bidez/Cumont).
. See esp. H. J. W. Drijvers, ‘‘The Persistence of Pagan Cults and Practices in Chris-
tian Syria,’’ in N. Garsoian, ed.,East of Byzantium: Syria and Byzantium in the Formative Period
(), , and F. R. Trombley,Hellenic Religion and Christianization, c. –I–II ().
. G. Fowden, ‘‘Bishops and Temples in the Eastern Roman Empire..–,’’
J. Theol. St. (): .
. H. Grégoire and M.-A. Kugener, eds.,Marc le Diacre, vie de Porphyre, évêque de Gaza
().