Welcome to toldinstone.
This is an abridged version of a chapter in my first book, “Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators,
and War Elephants.”
At the end of the second century AD, Christians made up a tiny minority – less than 1% - of
the Roman Empire’s population.
By the end of the fourth century, most Romans were Christian.
Early Christian authors claimed that public cures, exorcisms, and other miracles won many
converts, and that martyrdoms during the empire-wide persecutions of the third and early fourth
centuries gained pagan sympathy.
It was, however, the conversion of Constantine that finally set the church on track to dominate
the Roman world.
From the time he ordered his soldiers to paint Christian symbols on their shields before
the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine consistently promoted the interests of Christianity.
Over the course of a long and busy reign, he freed Christians from all legal penalties,
granted important privileges to the clergy, called the first ecumenical council, and built
a series of monumental churches.
These actions set the tone for the rest of Roman history.
At the time of Constantine’s conversion, despite large communities in Rome and a few
parts of North Africa and Gaul, most Christians were concentrated in the cities of the Greek-speaking
eastern provinces.
Everywhere, the countryside remained largely pagan.
The fourth century, however, witnessed a spectacular expansion of the Christian ranks.
As Christian numbers and Christian confidence grew, the emperors closed temples, restricted
sacrifices, and finally banned the public practice of paganism.
At the same time, raids – often carried out by marauding bands of monks – destroyed
temples in many cities.
The final legal blows came during the reign of Justinian, who hounded the few remaining
crypto-pagans from his court, closed the last working temples, and ordered every remaining
pagan to accept baptism.
Near the end of Justinian’s reign, as a sort of symbolic coda, a mass burning of pagan
texts and statues of the gods was staged in the Hippodrome of Constantinople.
The old beliefs, however, lingered on – as we’ll see after a few words about this video’s
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Back to those beleaguered polytheists.
After the triumph of Christianity, the old ways lasted longest in rural areas.
There had often been a cultural barrier between the cities of the classical world and the
surrounding regions, particularly where the language of the countryside differed from
the Latin or Greek of the cities.
In many places, Christianity was slow to bridge the gap.
During the reign of Justinian, for example, the missionary John of Ephesus (known as “the
idol-smasher”) found tens of thousands of pagan villagers in the hills of Asia Minor.
A half-century later, Pope Gregory I was still trying to convince peasants near Rome that
they should stop revering sacred trees, and despaired of ever converting the rustic pagans
of Sardinia, who had bribed the local governor to leave their rites alone.
As late as the ninth century, shepherds in remote parts of southern Greece still worshipped
the old gods.
Paganism lasted even longer in a few corners of the Near East.
In 579, a Roman governor and local dignitaries were caught in the act of sacrificing to Zeus
near the Syrian city of Edessa.
Heliopolis, not far to the south, still had few Christians in the same period.
The most enduringly pagan of all Roman cities, however, was the Syrian border town of Harran.
The people of Harran worshipped a partly-Hellenized pantheon dominated by the moon god Sin.
By the sixth century, their stubborn devotion had won their city the nickname of Hellenopolis
(“Heathenville”).
The Romans were replaced by the Arabs, and one caliphate by another.
Through it all, the people of Harran remained loyal to their gods.
The Temple of Sin and its worshippers survived until the early eleventh century, when Harran
was destroyed by nomads.
By the time of Harran’s destruction, Greco-Roman paganism had effectively vanished.
Pagan practices and beliefs, however, left countless traces in the landscapes and mindscapes
of medieval Europe.
The most visible relics were the temples that still loomed over many cities.
The Parthenon became the cathedral of Athens; the Pantheon was converted to a church of
Mary and the Martyrs.
Although temples usually became churches only after a period of abandonment, they sometimes
passed directly into Christian use.
In Athens, for example, a church of Saint Andrew was built into a sanctuary of the healing
god Asclepius, and the incubation chambers – where worshippers slept, waiting for Asclepius
to heal or advise them in their dreams – continued to function under new divine management.
In Asia Minor, likewise, a healing spring sacred to Apollo was simply transferred to
the Archangel Michael.
Pagan statues could also be repurposed: until the end of the eighteenth century, villagers
near Athens venerated a statue from an ancient sanctuary of Demeter as “Saint Demetra,”
and claimed that it protected their crops.
Some pagan festivals also persisted.
The Lupercalia in Rome – a fertility rite that centered on naked and blood-spattered
men lashing women with strips of goatskin – lasted until the end of the fifth century.
The racy theatrical performances associated with the pagan Maioumas festival, popular
throughout the eastern provinces, were even more enduring, though ecclesiastical disapproval
eventually stripped the festival of its trademark nude swimming.
As a living religion, Greco-Roman paganism had vanished by the Middle Ages.
Yet it endured, and still endures, not only in odd corners of daily life – the days
of the week, for example, are named after the gods – but as an inescapable part of
the classical legacy.
In allusions and imitations, in art and literature, the gods, like so much and so little of the
classical world, are with us still.
For the full version of this answer and many others, check out my book, Naked Statues,
Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants.
Thanks for watching.