Product Description

How did Christianity compare and compete with the cults of the pagan gods in the Roman Empire? This scholarly work from award-winning historian, Robin Lane Fox, places Christians and pagans side by side in the context of civil life and contrasts their religious experiences, visions, cults and oracles. Leading up to the time of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, the book aims to enlarge and confirm the value of contemporary evidence, some of which has only recently been discovered.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #156691 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 800 pages

About the Author
Robin Lane Fox is Britain's most widely admired ancient historian. He was born in 1946 and educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and a University Reader in Ancient History. His other books include Alexander the Great (of which Penguin has now sold over 100,000 copies), Pagans and Christians and The Unauthorized Version. He was historical advisor to Oliver Stone on the making of Stone's film Alexander, for which he waived all his fees on condition that he could take part in the cavalry charge against elephants which Stone staged in the Moroccan desert.

Customer Reviews

A balanced look at both worlds.
I'm a general reader fascinated by the Ancient World, not a historian or scholar. I picked up this book because I'd just finished Fox's highly readable 'The Classical World.'

This book is a 'heavier' read in some ways, but I found it utterly fascinating. The author treats both Pagans and Christians with equal respect, showing the admirable and less-than-admirable characteristics of both. As a Christian reader it gave me a whole new understanding of the world in which the first Christians lived.

The book is never less than scholarly, but even when the going gets heavy, the author throws in little gems that maintain even a general reader's interest. It's also very clear that this book contains a lot of original work and research.

As I read, I frequently found myself scribbling down the title of some work quoted by the author, thinking, 'Oh, that sounds interesting!' As a result, I'm currently reading the fascinating 'Oneirocritica' (Interpretation of Dreams) by Artemidorus, with several other ancient texts on my reading list after that!

The highest praise I can give Pagans and Christians is that, having finished it, I want to read it again as soon as possible and re-enter that weird and wonderful world.

Pagans and Christians is both educational and enjoyable, and I recommend it highly.

Build up to a revolution
In the autumn of 312CE a revolution took place. It was a relatively violent one that had an improbable beginning. The classical world was turned upside down. The old gods were banished. The temples destroyed and ancient festivals and rituals were forgotten or appropriated in a new guise. The revolution extended over the whole of Europe and much of Turkey and Egypt over a period of some two centuries during its most intense and violent phase. The improbable event was emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity - and once this became the "legal franchise" any competition was ostracised or hunted out of existence.

Yet what kind of world was the world of the "Pagan"? This book lovingly brings to life the kind of religion that prevailed in the civilised Western world from around 500BCE to around 400CE and its increasingly fraught relationship through its ups and downs with Christianity. Most of the action centres from 150 to 312CE. Paganism is losely defined and we can see that all it stands for is "other than Christianity". We begin to see the world of the Pagan that existed not just in the areas once occupied by the Romans but also extending east to the Middle East and beyond. Regions that were subsequently overrun by alternative versions of monotheism, perhaps taking their cue from Western Christianity.

This subject would be too vast for any canvas. Noted scholar Robin Lane Fox teases together the most vital threads of Paganism and Christianity, how they were similar, how they differed and how they were united. The book is a monumental work of some 800 plus pages yet we can see that the scope is yet narrow. Nothing here about architecture or specific details of daily life. You are expected to come with some background knowledge though the book is suitable for the interested beginner.

Paganism gives way to Christianity in a well balanced gradation of chapters. Towards the end, the revolution is only summarised. This book is concerned with the build up. We note that Christianity's triumph was slow and convoluted - even improbable.

We are treated to topics such as oracles, the prominent sites of paganism with good maps, the distinctions between Greek and Roman approaches to paganism - the attitudes of Pagans to different gods, their views on sex and marriage and their topics of concern. Civic metropolitan life (including private lives) in general leaps out of the pages. We begin to understand what the gods meant to the ancients. Many details are blurred, e.g., on Pagan attitudes to re-incarnation. I feel that Fox's grasp of this issue is vague and uncertain. He does not advance the ideas from Protograros and Meno (Plato) or Pythagoras. There may be other areas in this book that a Classical scholar could pick holes in. Perhaps the ideas of Gnostic Christians and the various sects of Christianity and their differences are not highlighted.

On Christianity in general the topics are fuller than for Paganism - the latter is presented more as a pastiche to contrast it to its evolving rival. A very large chapter on the Christian view of sex, marriage or celibacy. On bishops, martyrdom, Constantine's conversion and a blow by blow analysis of one of his famous speeches which is restored to its true context. Fox seems to have done quite a bit of detective work and his brilliant knowledge of Latin and Greek has given him a razor sharp understanding of certain issues that other scholars would miss. There is a section on Mani and his religion.

Entertaining, gripping, this book never gets too sentimental and remains a balanced portrait of the nuts and bolts of the evolution of early Christianity as a gentile religion. We can see the good and bad sides of both camps - wanton animal sacrifice vs., intolerance and irrationality? Perhaps the Christian intolerance was a symptom of how they had been persecuted quite a few times by successive emperors. The persecution is put under a microscope. Christianity's claims to compassion are also vivified.

This is a book on the general evolution and involution of that aspect of culture we call religion in a very broad sense and thus useful for anyone interested in history. Sensitive, poignant with blunt edges.