miraculously fell into a deep sleep from which they were reawak-
ened (equally miraculously, of course: an angel was involved)
some two hundred years later, in the reign of the pious Christian
emperor Theodosius II (408–50). One of them undertook a quick
reconnaissance mission to Ephesus where he could scarcely
believe his eyes at the changes that had taken place: the city that
he had left had been a pagan one; the city to which he returned
was thoroughly Christian.
The transformation of the cities of the Roman empire
between the mid-third and mid-fifth centuries is one that is well
known from archaeology. Across the Mediterranean world, build-
ings associated with the urban culture of pagan classical antiquity
began to be neglected and their central place in the civic land-
scape was taken by Christian ones: to put it succinctly, where
once cities had been dominated by temples, now there were large
Christian churches. Of course, the rate of change varied from
region to region, and it is by no means true that all classical build-
ings were abandoned or that all changes in urban life were
wrought by Christianity (Ward-Perkins 1998). Nevertheless, it is
clear that, at a fundamental level, urban topography underwent
major changes in the century or so after Constantine’s conver-
sion. These changes are all the more impressive given the paltry
material record for Christianity in the three centuries between
Christ and Constantine. If it is generally desirable that studies of
the ancient world should take account of archaeological evidence
wherever possible, the simple truth is that the non-literary record
for pre-Constantinian Christianity is meagre indeed. Consider the
example just cited of church buildings. From the fourth and fifth
centuries we have dozens of churches, many of which were reno-
vated, rebuilt, and enlarged throughout that period. Thus we have
a large body of material from which to deduce conclusions about
late antique Christian architecture, liturgy, and society. For the
previous three hundred years, however, our sample of Christian
churches that can be studied in any detail is pitifully small: in
fact, there is only one, the third-century church at Dura Europos
in Syria.
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