Lane, Eugene N. : University of Missouri System Administration
Eugene N. Lane is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Missouri. He is the author of Corpus Monumentorium
Religionis Dei Menis (1971-1978), and of several other studies of Roman antiquity.
MacMullen, Ramsay : Yale University
Ramsay MacMullen is Dunham Professor of Classics and History at Yale University. Among his several influential
works is Paganism in the Roman Empire (1981).
Summary
This book is a collection of nearly 175 documents--from saints, emperors, philosophers, satirists, inscriptions,
graffiti, and other interesting types--that sheds light on the complex fabric of religious belief as it changed
from a variety of non-Judeo-Christian movements to Christian in late antiquity. These texts illuminate and bring
to life the bizarre and the banal of the social world of the Roman Empire, the world in which Christianity ultimately
gained preeminence. This treasury of texts leads the reader through the matrix of beliefs among which Christianity
grew. It includes both Christian and non-Christian sources, avoiding a common but obscuring division between the
two. The material is presented as one single flow that satisfies natural curiosity and whets the reader's appetite
for more. Brief explanatory introductions to the documents are included.
