the tribal leaders of the Khazars in central Asia actually converted
to Judaism. Finally, while Christianity certainly expanded in the
territories of the Roman empire, not all those gains lasted. In
Britain, the end of Roman rule and later the advent of the Anglo-
Saxons seems to have weakened Christianity to such an extent
that pope Gregory the Great (590–604) felt the need to send
missionaries there. Even in the Middle East, where Christianity
had been born, the faith experienced a decline in the aftermath
of the Muslim Arab conquests in the seventh century. Such
vignettes hint at the fragility of Eusebius’ optimistic vision of the
interlocked destinies of Christianity and the Roman empire. Even
in late antiquity, some came to dissent from it. In the troubled
years of the early fifth century, as Roman power faltered, the north
African bishop Augustine of Hippo commenced his great medi-
tation on the role of God in history, the City of God. For Augustine
there could be no easy equation between Christian and Roman
success: the mind of God was much too inscrutable to be read
easily in the events of human history (e.g. City of God14.11,
18.53; Markus 1988).Case study: Pliny the Younger and the Christians
We noted earlier that our view of the history of Roman persecu-
tions of Christianity is largely dependent on, and shaped by,
Christian texts. There is only a pitifully small number of inde-
pendent pagan sources that we might use as a control on the
Christian accounts. There are, of course, the notices of Tacitus
and Suetonius on the purge at Rome under Nero. For the ‘great’
persecution of the early fourth century, we possess a number
of documents. Two fragmentary inscriptions from Asia Minor
substantially confirm Eusebius’ account (Ecclesiastical History
9.7.3–14) of a letter from the later tetrarchic emperor to cities
eager to repress Christians (Mitchell 1988); while a papyrus from
Egypt records the seizure of a church by local officials (White
1996–7: II, 166–70). Our most important pagan source for
actual measures being taken against Christians is much earlier.EARLY CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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