Map 18 The divided Roman Empire, ca. AD 400.
In addition to establishing Constantinople as his capital, Constantine altered the character of the Roman
Empire in another way, by his adoption of Christianity and his development of Constantinople as a
Christian city. With only one exception, all subsequent Roman emperors were Christian, and eventually
paganism was purged from the empire by the use of either conversion or persecution. Persecution of
pagans was by no means either systematic or universal; rather, it occurred in isolated outbreaks at various
times in various locations within the empire. A particularly violent clash occurred between pagans and
Christians, for example, in Alexandria in the late fourth century. Hostility was especially directed at
pagan philosophers and their schools. This was because it was only in the philosophical schools that
anything resembling a “doctrine,” corresponding to the teachings of the church, could be imagined to exist.
Temples of the gods were places where worshippers interacted with the divinity by making offerings or
performing sacrifices; priests and priestesses served to oversee and facilitate those interactions, not to
propagate the faith. That is not to say that pagan temples and their contents were spared. Cult statues were
frequent targets of Christian zeal, particularly given the biblical injunctions against theworship of idols.
Many works of classical Greek and Roman sculpture that survive today bear the marks of defacement,
presumably at the hands of the faithful. Indeed, the fervid opposition to idolatry eventually reached the
point where some Christians condemned even the representation of Christ. In the eighth century, perhaps
influenced by Islamic practice, a movement arose in the Byzantine Empire that succeeded in condemning
the creation of images representing Christ or the saints. For a period of about a century, under the
influence of this “iconoclastic” movement, religious images were removed from the patriarchal basilica
of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and from other churches in the empire.