The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, 395-700 AD

THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITY

change in personal faith, even here individual belief is often hard to detect
beneath standard formulae.

Pagans and Christians

It is nevertheless obvious that Christianity became increasingly important
during late antiquity, both in terms of practice and – especially through
preaching, personal contact and the regulation of membership of Christian
congregations – in the personal lives of many people. This was certainly more
evident in the cities, where the church was, as we have seen, highly organized,
and it seems likely that pagan practices continued in the countryside much
longer than in the towns; if we are to believe his own account, John, bishop
of Ephesus under Justinian, converted 70,000 pagans in Asia Minor in the
mid-sixth century.^52 ‘Conversion’ is perhaps not quite the right word; a Greek
inscription from Sardis, for instance, records the internment of ‘unholy and
abominable pagans’ there by the referendarius Hyperechios.^53 The persistence
of pagan cult antagonized aggressive Christians and worried the authorities
suffi ciently for them to resort at times to violent measures, such as orders for
the forcible closure of certain temples. Much of the polytheism of intellectuals
centred on the philosophical schools of Athens and Alexandria (Chapter 6),
and it is extremely hard to judge the broader extent of pagan survival when
so much of the evidence is highly biased; however, it seems clear that pagan
cult continued in many places long after it was offi cially outlawed.^54 Many
reasons, of course, combined to make people adopt Christianity, including
personal advantage for those hoping for preferment from a Christian govern-
ment, simple convenience and avoidance of the strong anti-pagan measures
taken by successive emperors. Conversion was not always whole-hearted or
exclusive, and many, as always, continued with habitual practices and held
a variety of confl icting beliefs at the same time; they would probably have
been surprised to have this pointed out to them, though Christian writers
and bishops did their best. There were still pagans among well-to-do families
in early sixth-century Aphrodisias, and the student body at Alexandria in the
same period contained both pagans and Christians; the two groups sometimes
clashed (Chapter 6). Trials of pagans were still being held in Constantinople
in the late sixth century after a scandalous series of events at Heliopolis (see
below);^55 Justinian also conducted purges of pagan intellectuals in high places
at Constantinople which led to death and confi scation of property, as well as
the effective closure of the Neoplatonic Academy at Athens (Chapter 5):

This caused great fear. The emperor decreed that those who held Hel-

lenic [i.e. pagan] beliefs should not hold any state offi ce, whilst those who

belonged to the other heresies were to disappear from the Roman state,

after they had been given a period of three months in order to embrace

the orthodox faith.

(Malalas, Chronicle, trans. Jeffreys, 263)