What Was the Conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity Really Like?

The transition from traditional Greco-Roman religion to Christianity in late antiquity has often been portrayed in terms of the so-called “triumph of Christianity over paganism.” This is an idea that originates from Christian triumphalist accounts of the era that portray Christianity as having eradicated “paganism” within a single generation.

Anti-Christian writers, especially in recent years, have seized upon this propagandistic idea of the “triumph of Christianity” and twisted the Christian propaganda into anti-Christian propaganda by portraying Christians as militant zealots and obscurantists who destroyed classical civilization in the span of a single generation because it was too great for their small minds. Unfortunately, this story is no more accurate than the story Christians have been telling for centuries; indeed, if anything, it is even less accurate.

In reality, the process of the Roman Empire’s “conversion” to Christianity was both far more gradual and far complicated than it has often been portrayed. In many ways, traditional religions were not so much “eradicated” as transformed. In many ways, Christianity and traditional religions melded so that the “Christianity” that emerged from late antiquity was not the same “Christianity” that had gone in, while “paganism” was more domesticated than vanquished.

Early Greek influence on Christianity

There was never really a “pure” Christianity—or, if there was, it is irretrievable to us. From the very beginning, Christianity has been under Greek philosophical and religious influence. In the Gospel of John, for instance, Jesus is described as the incarnation of the λόγος (lógos), which is a concept that originates in Greek philosophy.

The Greek word λόγος literally means “a thing that is spoken.” It can refer to a single word or a whole speech, story, argument, opinion, or explanation. Greek philosophers spent a great deal of time contemplating the nature of λόγος. Starting with the philosopher Herakleitos of Ephesos (lived c. 535 – c. 475 BCE), the word became used to refer to the ordered reason that supposedly pervades the universe as a whole. It is for this reason that the word λόγος has given us our English word logic.

The λόγος most likely entered Christianity through Jewish philosophy. The concept was used by the Jewish Middle Platonist philosopher Philon of Alexandria (lived c. 20 BCE – c. 50 CE). It is likely on account of Philon and other Jewish thinkers like him that this concept found its way from the pages of Plato into the Gospel of John.

I am pointing this out here to demonstrate that the idea of a “pure,” biblical Christianity free from outside influence being “corrupted” through the process of becoming a religion for the whole Roman Empire is a myth; “pagan” influences are already right there in the gospels. These influences would only become more pronounced as the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, bringing old religious ideas with them to the new religion.

ABOVE: Heraclitus, painted in 1630 by the Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Moreelse

The conversion of Constantine I: two different accounts

Two different surviving accounts written by contemporary Christian authors purport to describe the emperor Constantine I’s conversion to Christianity. The earlier and shorter account is by the Christian apologist Lactantius (lived c. 250 – c. 325 CE) in his treatise De Mortibus Persecutorum (On the Deaths of the Persecutors) 44, written sometime after around 316 CE.

Lactantius portrays Constantine as having been a pagan until, on the night of 27 October 312 CE, while he and his troops were preparing for a major battle against his rival Maxentius, he had a dream in which a voice told him that, if he painted the Chi Rho monogram—an important early Christian symbol, which I discuss in detail in this other post I wrote about the origin of the name Xmas—on the shields of his soldiers, he would win the battle. He did as he was commanded and, the very next day, he won a stunning victory over Maxentius in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

The second and longer account is by the Christian church historian Eusebios of Kaisareia (lived c. 260 – c. 339 CE) in his Life of Constantine 1.28–32, which he worked on from c. 337 CE until his death in 339 CE. Eusebios wrote his account much later than Lactantius, but, unlike Lactantius, he claims to have heard the story he tells directly from Constantine himself.

While Lactantius portrays Constantine’s conversion as spontaneous, Eusebios portrays Constantine as having already been essentially a Christian in all but name before his official conversion. Eusebios claims that Constantine told him that, at some unspecified time before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, while he was with his troops on military campaign, he was earnestly seeking God and was praying to him to reveal himself. Then, around midday, he looked up at the sun and saw, resting in front of the sun, the emblem of the cross made of light, with the words “ἐν τούτῳ νίκα,” which means “In this, conquer” in Greek.

ABOVE: The Vision of the Cross, painted between 1520 and 1524 by members of the school of the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, depicting Constantine’s vision as described by Eusebios of Kaisareia in his Life of Constantine 1.28–32

Eusebios claims that Constantine did not know at first what this vision was supposed to mean, so he spent the whole rest of the day puzzling it over until finally he went to sleep. That night, as he slept, Jesus appeared to him in a dream with the same symbol he had seen in the sky and told him to make a replica of the symbol and carry it on his standard into battle.

Thus, Eusebios says that Constantine summoned his goldsmiths and jewelers and told them to make a beautiful golden cross, decorated with gemstones, with the Chi Rho monogram written on it. Constantine then mounted this emblem atop his imperial standard.

Eusebios also claims that Constantine declared that he would worship no God other than the one who had appeared to him in his vision and that he summoned the most prominent Christian bishops and made them his foremost advisors. Later, he says that Constantine, bearing the ornate cross atop his standard, defeated Maxentius in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

Neither Lactantius’s nor Eusebios’s account should be taken as an accurate description of historical events; both accounts include miraculous events and they blatantly contradict each other right and left about the details of exactly what happened.

What is clear, though, is that, somehow or another, Constantine adopted the Christian God as his patron and, in the years after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, he and members of his court came to tell the story that he had experienced some kind of vision before the battle in which God told him to bear a Christian symbol into battle in some fashion, promising him that, if he did so, he would defeat all his enemies.

ABOVE: The Battle of Milvian Bridge, painted between 1520 and 1524 by the Italian painter Giulio Romano

The “Edict of Milan”

After the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine began taking public actions that benefited Christianity in major ways. Most famously, in February 313 CE, he and his co-emperor Licinius met in the city of Mediolanum (which is now the city of Milan, Italy) and issued the famous so-called “Edict of Milan.”

Contrary to popular belief, the Edict of Milan did not make Christianity the “official religion” of the Roman Empire in any sense. For one thing, the Roman Empire never had an “official religion” in the way that some modern nation-states do, so the phrase “official religion” itself is inherently anachronistic. On top of this, though, the Edict of Milan did nothing to entrench Christianity in Roman governance in any way.

The Edict of Milan did not “legalize” Christianity either. The emperor Galerius had already ended the Diocletianic persecution in 311 CE through his “Edict of Toleration,” also known as the “Edict of Serdica.” As a result of this, Christianity was already “legal” before Constantine ever fought against Maxentius in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

The Edict of Milan did, however, do several important things. It affirmed the end to the Diocletianic persecution that Galerius had already enacted through his Edict of Toleration. It also declared that the state should place no obstacles to prevent or hinder Christians from worshipping. Finally, it declared that any property the state had previously confiscated from Christians should be returned, including both property that the state had taken from individual Christians and communal property that it had taken from the Christian church.

Constantine’s further actions favoring Christianity

In the subsequent years of his reign, Constantine promoted many Christians to important positions in his court, included Christians among his advisors, and gave special status and privileges to Christian clergy. He gave enormous amounts of money and property to the church and ordered the construction of many Christian church buildings, including the Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the original Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and the original Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.

Constantine’s support for Christianity certainly gave the religion a tremendous boost in both prestige and popularity. While it had previously been unfashionable to be a Christian, after Constantine started promoting it, it started to become seen as normal. It is accurate to say that Constantine did far more to promote the spread of Christianity than any other person of his time.

On the other hand, contrary to popular belief, unlike later Christian emperors, Constantine never attempted to outlaw traditional Greco-Roman religious practices and he never forced any of his subjects to convert to Christianity against their will. In fact, Constantine does not seem to have ever totally renounced his old pagan beliefs, since he continued to pay public homage to certain traditional deities even long after he began publicly supporting Christianity. His understanding of Christianity itself seems to have been very syncretic.

In particular, Constantine retained an affinity for the sun god Sol Invictus throughout his entire reign. Sol Invictus continued to appear on Constantine’s coins until around 324 or 325 CE. The Column of Constantine in Constantinople, which was dedicated on 11 May 330 CE, was originally topped with a colossal bronze statue of Constantine himself bearing the traditional iconography of Sol Invictus.

ABOVE: Image from Wikimedia Commons of a gold multiple minted by Constantine I in 313 CE, showing Constantine alongside the Roman sun god Sol Invictus, who continued to appear on Constantine’s coins for over a decade after the Battle of Milvian Bridge

Some evidence indicates that Constantine may have seen the Christian God as a form of Sol Invictus. The Christian writer Optatus of Milevis preserves in his book Against the Donatists a portion of a letter that Constantine wrote in 314 CE to the bishops of the city of Arelate in Gaul (which is now the city of Arles, France). In this letter, Constantine describes his Christian faith using solar language. For instance, at one point, Constantine writes this, as translated by Mark Edwards:

“The eternal and incomprehensible goodness of our God will by no means allow the human condition to carry on straying in error, nor does it permit the abhorrent wishes of certain men to prevail to such a degree that he fails to open up for them with his most brilliant beams a way of salvation by which they may be converted to the rule of righteousness.”

“This indeed I have learnt by many examples, but I measure these by myself. For there were initially in me many obvious defects in righteousness, nor did I believe that the supernal power saw any of those things that I did in the secrecy of my heart.”

“So then, what lot awaited these offences of which I have spoken? Obviously that which abounds with all ills. But Almighty God who sits in the vantage-point of heaven bestowed upon me what I did not deserve; it is certainly impossible to tell or enumerate those benefits that his heavenly benevolence has vouchsafed to his servant.”

Notice how Constantine says that God has “most brilliant beams” and that he “sits in the vantage-point of heaven.” Both of these are qualities that are traditionally associated with the sun.

Constantine was also apparently perfectly happy to let people worship him as a god. A rescript from the town of Spello in Italy dated to between c. 326 and c. 335 CE records that the town requested Constantine to rename their town after a member of his family and grant them permission to build a pagan temple to him. Constantine granted the request. Consequently, the town was renamed Flavia Constans and a new temple to Constantine was constructed.

Finally, although Constantine is venerated in many Christian denominations today as a saint, his personal conduct was anything but saintly. He fought many battles and he was brutal towards the people he defeated. His cruelty even extended to his own family; in 326 CE, he executed both his eldest son Crispus and his wife Fausta for unknown reasons and had all official records of their existence expunged.

This doesn’t mean that Constantine was a pagan imposter who was merely posing as a Christian (as some Evangelical Protestants have occasionally suggested), but it does mean that his religious beliefs were complicated.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the colossal head of the emperor Constantine I in the Capitoline Museums

Constantine I and the First Council of Nicaea

Constantine I did convene the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE to resolve the conflict between Arianism and Trinitarianism that was tearing the Christian church apart, but he was present at the council only as an observer and he left the actual decision-making part of the council to the bishops.

Furthermore, as I discuss in this article I published in August 2019, contrary to popular belief, neither Constantine I nor the First Council of Nicaea were responsible for determining which books were going to be included in the New Testament canon. In reality, the New Testament canon was mostly established by the end of the second century CE and what lingering questions there were about the canon in Constantine I’s time weren’t resolved until long after his death.

Ultimately, the First Council of Nicaea resulted in the verdict that Arianism was heretical and that Trinitarianism was the correct doctrine. The council, however, didn’t bring an end to the conflict between Arians and Trinitarians in any sense. Honestly, it probably just exacerbated the conflict even further.

One thing that is worth noting about the council for our purposes is the fact that both Arians and Trinitarians relied on both scriptural and philosophical arguments to support their theological positions. The importance that philosophical arguments held in early Christianity is partly the result of Greek influence.

ABOVE: Greek Orthodox icon from the Megalo Meteoron Monastery in Greece, showing the artist’s imagining of Constantine I at the First Council of Nicaea

Constantine’s death and successors

Constantine was baptized by the Arian Christian bishop Eusebios of Nikomedeia when he was on his deathbed. He died as a fully baptized Christian on 22 May 337 CE. His body was laid to rest with a Christian burial service in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Perhaps surprisingly, however, he was also posthumously deified in the manner traditional for Roman emperors.

He was succeeded by his three sons Constantine II, Constantius II, and Constans. Under their joint rule, traditional religions were tolerated—just as they had been under Constantine I. Constantine II died in 340 CE and Constans was assassinated in 350 CE, leading Constantius II to become sole emperor.

After he became sole emperor, Constantius II began to implement some somewhat stricter policies against traditional religions. In 353 CE, he banned public sacrifices to the traditional deities, ordering the death penalty for those who violated this ban. He also prosecuted astrologers, magicians, soothsayers, and those who claimed to possess divination abilities. In 357 CE, Constantius II also ordered the removal of the Altar of Victory from the curia of the Senate.

Constantius II’s policies, though, were actually fairly moderate. They were generally not directed towards eradicating traditional religion in general, but rather towards abolishing certain practices that even many practitioners of traditional religion by this time did not approve of. After his death in 361 CE, Constantius II was declared to be a god, just like his father Constantine I.

Constantius II’s successor Julian, who had been raised as a Christian but abandoned the religion in adulthood, tried to promote a form of Neoplatonic Hellenism and revive traditional Greek and Roman religious practices. For this reason, he has become known to history as “Julian the Apostate.” Julian gained something of a reputation as a “philosopher king,” but he ultimately died on 23 June 363 CE while campaigning against the Sassanians. His successor Jovian was a Christian, making Julian the last non-Christian emperor of the whole Roman Empire.

ABOVE: Julian the Apostate Presiding at a Conference of Sectarians, painted in 1875 by the English Academic painter Edward Armitage

Jovian was succeeded by Valentinian I, who appointed his brother Valens, an Arian Christian, as emperor of the eastern Empire. Both Valentinian I and Valens were generally tolerant towards non-Christians. After Valentinian I died in 375 CE, though, he was succeeded by his sixteen-year-old son Gratian and his four-year-old son Valentinian II.

Gratian, under the influence of Ambrosius, the bishop of Milan, began to implement more stringent policies against traditional religion. He was the first emperor to refuse the title of pontifex maximus. He also shut down all temples to the traditional deities and confiscated their funds. He removed the Altar of Victory, which had been restored to the curia under Julian.

Valens was killed in the Battle of Adrianople on 9 August 378 CE, leading Gratian to become the senior augustus of the whole Roman Empire. In 379 CE, Gratian appointed Theodosius I, who would later become known for his harsh policies against traditional religion, as emperor of the eastern Roman Empire.

It was not until over half a century after Constantine I’s death that Nicene Christianity was finally effectively declared what we might anachronistically describe as the “official religion” of the Roman Empire through the Edict of Thessalonica, which was issued on 27 February 380 CE as a joint declaration by Gratian, Theodosius I, and Valentinian II. This edict declared Nicene Christianity the One True Religion and denounced those who did not hold to Nicene Christianity as “foolish madmen.”

Theodosius I became emperor of the whole Roman Empire upon the death of Valentinian II in 392 CE. He issued decrees reiterating the ban on public sacrifices to the traditional deities and the closure of all temples to the traditional deities. He did nothing to prevent Christians from vandalizing or demolishing the temples that were now officially closed. He also took away money that had been given to temples to the traditional deities, disbanded the Vestal Virgins, ended the Eleusinian Mysteries, and discontinued the Olympic Games.

Nonetheless, even Theodosius I did not prohibit people from worshipping the traditional deities in private and many people continued to worship the traditional deities on their own without the public sacrifices and temples that had been so important to worshippers of earlier generations.

ABOVE: Photograph of a copy of the Missorium of Theodosius I, a ceremonial silver dish proabbly made in around 388 CE

Christian destruction of pagan temples and statues?

Some prominent temples to the traditional deities were destroyed during the reign of Theodosius I. For instance, the Temple of Apollon at Delphoi was mostly demolished by Christians in 390 CE, although its impressive foundations remain. In 391 CE, a group of Christians led by the bishop Theophilos I of Alexandria demolished the Serapeion, a temple to the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis in the city of Alexandria.

Most temples to the traditional deities, though, were either simply abandoned or converted into Christian churches. For instance, the Parthenon in Athens was originally built in the fifth century BCE as a temple to the virgin goddess Athena, but, in the late sixth century CE, it was converted into a Christian church to the Virgin Mary. (I discuss the Parthenon’s history as a church at much greater length in this post I wrote about how the temple became so famous.)

Likewise, the Temple of Hephaistos in the Athenian Agora became a church of Saint Georgios Akamates and even remained in use as a church until the establishment of the modern nation-state of Greece in the nineteenth century.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the remains of the Temple of Apollon at Delphoi, which was mostly demolished by Christians in around 390 CE

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the ruins of the Serapeion in Alexandria today

Some statues of the traditional deities were destroyed or vandalized. For instance, there is a head of the goddess Aphrodite from the Athenian Agora now on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens with a cross chiseled into her forehead. Likewise, when Theophilos I and his followers destroyed the Serapeion, they also destroyed the cult statues it contained.

Nonetheless, the vast majority of pagan statues were left alone. In fact, as I discuss in this article from January 2020, Constantine I actually decorated the city of Constantinople with cult statues of traditional deities removed from various Greek temples. Many of those statues put on display by Constantine I remained on display in the city until it was sacked by the Crusaders in 1204 CE.

As I discuss in this article from July 2019, some people have a tendency to blame any damage they see on any ancient sculpture on early Christian vandalism, but the vast majority of the damage we see on ancient sculptures is actually the result of natural wear. Indeed, it is the same kind of wear we see on other sculptures of similar age from other cultures around the world.

The reason why we often see statues with missing noses or missing limbs is because parts of statues that stick out are more likely to break off or get damaged if the statue falls over or gets bumped with something heavy. Marble can be a surprisingly brittle material.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a famous head of Aphrodite from the Athenian Agora with a cross carved into her forehead, one of a handful of surviving examples of ancient sculptures vandalized by early Christians

Hypatia’s murder debunked

There were isolated instances of violence against practitioners of traditional religion. Most famously, in March 415 CE, a group of supporters of Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, brutally murdered the pagan Neoplatonic philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria. As I discuss in this article from August 2018 and this article from February 2020, however, Hypatia’s murder is often misrepresented.

In popular culture, Hypatia is usually portrayed as having been murdered because she was a pagan or because she was a philosopher, but, in reality, as far as we can tell from the surviving contemporary sources, Hypatia was actually primarily murdered due to her involvement in a bitter political feud between Cyril and Orestes, the Roman governor of Egypt. In other words, her murder was really more of a political assassination than anything else.

Furthermore, Hypatia’s assassination was widely viewed as an atrocity by both Christians and non-Christians alike. Every single Christian writer who wrote about it within a hundred years after it happened deplores it as a horrific crime. The contemporary Christian church historian Sokrates Scholastikos (lived c. 380 – after c. 439 CE) praises Hypatia in his Ecclesiastical History 7.15 as a great intellectual and a shining beacon of virtue to the whole Alexandrian community. This is how he describes the reaction to her murder, as translated by A. C. Zenos:

“This affair [i.e. the murder of Hypatia] brought not the least opprobrium, not only upon Cyril, but also upon the whole Alexandrian church. And surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions of that sort.”

Although no one was ever punished for Hypatia’s murder, shortly after it happened, a law was amended to expressly forbid violence against non-Christians.

ABOVE: Imaginative illustration of the death of Hypatia by Louis Figuier from 1866 depicting how the artist imagined it might have looked

Christians destroying pagan texts?

There is a popular notion that early Christians went around destroying pre-Christian texts. The most common version of this story claims that Christians deliberately destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria. This is certainly not true, however. We don’t know exactly when the Library of Alexandria ceased to exist, but there is no way it could have survived any later than the third century CE.

In 272 CE, the forces of the emperor Aurelian inadvertently destroyed the entire Brouchion quarter of Alexandria where the Library of Alexandria had been located as part of the emperor’s campaign to recapture the city of Alexandria from the Palmyrene Empire. if the Library of Alexandria still existed at that time, it certainly would have been destroyed.

As I explain in this article from July 2019, the idea of militant Christians destroying the Library of Alexandria comes from the conflation of the Great Library with the Serapeion, a temple in Alexandria to the god Serapis that at one point had housed some scrolls from the Great Library. The Serapeion was destroyed by a group of Christians in 391 CE. The Roman writer Ammianus Marcellinus (lived c. 330 – after c. 391 CE), however, who wrote about the Serapeion’s collections shortly before the temple’s destruction, speaks of them in the past tense, implying they no longer existed.

We also have multiple accounts of the Serapeion’s destruction, including an account by Eunapios, a pagan philosopher who hated Christians, and none of the accounts mention anything at all about scrolls being destroyed when the Serapeion was demolished. If scrolls had been destroyed, we must imagine Eunapios surely would have mentioned this. All the evidence suggests that the Serapeion probably did not contain at large number of scrolls at the time of its destruction.

ABOVE: Color illumination from the Alexandrian World Chronicle, dating to the fifth or sixth century CE, illustrating the destruction of the Serapeion in 391 CE. The man on the left is Theophilos, the bishop of Alexandria from 384 until 412.

There is also popular legend claiming that Christians intentionally destroyed all the poems of the Greek poetess Sappho because they knew she was a lesbian, but, as I explain in this article from December 2019, this story originated in the Renaissance among classical scholars in western Europe and is not supported by any kind of historical evidence. In fact, all the evidence we have goes against this idea.

Early Christians did intentionally destroy some ancient texts, but these were generally of three kinds: esoteric texts dealing with magic and divination, sacred writings of Christian sects that were deemed heretical, and anti-Christian polemics. We have plenty of surviving ancient magical writings, many of which are included in the Greek Magical Papyri, and plenty of surviving heretical Christian texts, such the ones from the Nag Hammadi Library.

We don’t have any surviving anti-Christian polemics, but we know a lot about what anti-Christian writers were claiming thanks to Christian apologists who somewhat inadvertently preserved record of many of the accusations that were being made against early Christians by quoting them or summarizing them and arguing against them.

ABOVE: Fourth-century CE magical papyrus from Egypt, written in Greek. Despite the censorship efforts of early Christians, we still have reams of this stuff.

In general, many early Christians were actually admirers of Greek literature and philosophy. The early Christian Church Father Ioustinos Martys (lived c. 100 – c. 165 CE) argued that “τὰ σπέρματα τοῦ λόγου” (tà spérmata toû lógou), or “the seeds of the Word,” had been planted long before the coming of Christ, meaning that Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Plato had, in fact, been effectively unknowing Christians and that their works were divinely inspired.

The Church Father Klemes of Alexandria (lived c. 150 – c. 215 CE), who was a Greek-speaking convert to Christianity, was such an ardent fan of Greek philosophy that he regarded it as nothing short of a secondary revelation. In his treatise Stromateis 1.5, Klemes gives a famous description of what Christianity is like. He writes, as translated by William Wilson, “The way of truth is therefore one. But into it, as into a perennial river, streams flow from all sides.” The “streams” in this simile represent many different ideas from many different cultures. Certainly, Klemes saw Greek philosophy as one of those streams.

The Christian theologian and scholar Origenes of Alexandria (lived c. 184 – c. 253 CE) was, like Klemes, deeply learned about Greek philosophy and literature and he taught ideas from all different schools of Greek philosophy to his students. Origenes’s student Gregorios Thaumatourgos writes in his Panegyric 13, as translated by David T. Runia:

“Origen considered it right for us to study philosophy in such a way that we read with utmost diligence all that has been written, both by the philosophers and the poets of old, rejecting nothing and repudiating nothing, except only what had been written by the atheists . . . who deny the existence of God or providence.”

Mind you, there were some early Christians who rejected Greek learning. The Christian apologist Tertullianus (lived c. 155 – c. 240 CE), who lived in North Africa and wrote in the Latin language, was one such individual. Tertullianus famously deplored Greek philosophy as a source of heresy in chapter seven of his apologetic treatise De Praescriptione Haereticorum (On the Proscription of Heretics), writing, as translated by Peter Holmes:

“Whence spring those ‘fables and endless genealogies,’ and ‘unprofitable questions,’ and ‘words which spread like a cancer?’ From all these, when the apostle would restrain us, he expressly names philosophy as that which he would have us be on our guard against. Writing to the Colossians, he says, ‘See that no one beguile you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and contrary to the wisdom of the Holy Ghost.’”

“He had been at Athens, and had in his interviews (with its philosophers) become acquainted with that human wisdom which pretends to know the truth, whilst it only corrupts it, and is itself divided into its own manifold heresies, by the variety of its mutually repugnant sects.”

“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from ‘the porch of Solomon,’ who had himself taught that ‘the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.’ Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.”

People like Tertullianus, though, seem to have been a small minority. When he wrote this passage, Tertullianus was a member of the Montanist sect, which bears a certain resemblance to modern-day fundamentalist Pentecostalism. Other Christian authors attack Montanists like Tertullianus as heretical extremists.

ABOVE: Engraving made by the French illustrator André Thevet for the book Vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres grecz, latins et payens, published in 1584, showing what he imagined Tertullianus might have looked like. (No one knows what he actually looked like.)

Jerome (lived c. 347 – 420 CE), the Dalmatian-born translator of the Latin Vulgate, is another interesting case. He adopted an extreme, ascetic lifestyle so that he could devote himself completely to his faith. Nonetheless, he remained such an avid reader of Cicero that, in his Letter 22.30, he claims to have experienced a frightful vision, in which it was Judgement Day and God rejected him from the Kingdom of Heaven, telling him that he was a Ciceronian, not a Christian. He writes, as translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis, and W.G. Martley (with some edits of my own to modernize the language):

“Many years ago, when for the kingdom of heaven’s sake I had cut myself off from home, parents, sister, relations, and—harder still—from the dainty food to which I had been accustomed; and when I was on my way to Jerusalem to wage my warfare, I still could not bring myself to forego the library which I had formed for myself at Rome with great care and toil. And so, miserable man that I was, I would fast only that I might afterwards read Cicero. After many nights spent in vigil, after floods of tears called from my inmost heart, after the recollection of my past sins, I would once more take up Plautus.”

“And when at times I returned to my right mind, and began to read the prophets, their style seemed rude and repellent. I failed to see the light with my blinded eyes; but I attributed the fault not to them, but to the sun. While the old serpent was thus making me his plaything, about the middle of Lent a deep-seated fever fell upon my weakened body, and while it destroyed my rest completely—the story seems hardly credible—it so wasted my unhappy frame that scarcely anything was left of me but skin and bone. Meantime preparations for my funeral went on; my body grew gradually colder, and the warmth of life lingered only in my throbbing breast.”

“Suddenly I was caught up in the spirit and dragged before the judgment seat of the Judge; and here the light was so bright, and those who stood around were so radiant, that I cast myself upon the ground and did not dare to look up. Asked who and what I was I replied: ‘I am a Christian.’ But He who presided said: ‘You lie, you are a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. For “where your treasure is, there will thy heart be also.”’”

Jerome says that, in the vision, God ordered for him to be scourged and he swore that he would never read any works of pagan literature ever again and that instead he would only read scripture. Jerome apparently kept this promise for many years, but it is generally thought that he did eventually go back to reading pagan literature. He just couldn’t stay away from it.

ABOVE: Jerome in his Study, painted in 1480 by the Italian Renaissance scholar Domenico Ghirlandaio

A melding of Christianity and paganism

Now, we tend to think of people in late antiquity as being either “Christian” or “pagan,” but, in reality, a lot of people were somewhere in between. There were a lot of people who worshipped the Christian God but still believed in or even still worshipped the traditional deities.

The Egyptian poet Nonnos of Panopolis, who lived in around the fifth century CE, for instance, is known to have written the Dionysiaka, an massive epic poem about the adventures of the Greek god Dionysos spanning 20,426 lines over the course of forty-eight books, making it the longest surviving epic poem from classical antiquity. He also, however, wrote a poetic Paraphrase of the Gospel of John.

It was once assumed that Nonnos was originally a pagan when he wrote the Dionysiaka and that he later converted to Christianity and wrote the Paraphrase of the Gospel of John, but there are indications that he actually wrote the Paraphrase of the Gospel of John first—before writing the Dionysiaka. Why would a Christian be writing a poem about Dionysos? Perhaps because the line between “Christian” and “pagan” is a bit less clear than we’ve been led to imagine.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a statue of the Greek god Dionysos from the second century CE

Then there’s the Chronograph of 354, an illustrated calendar of the year 354 CE made for a wealthy Christian man named Valentinus. The calendar was compiled and illustrated by another Christian man named Furius Dionysius Filocalus, a renowned calligrapher.

The original manuscript has been lost, but several copies of it, complete with copies of the original illustrations, have survived. What’s interesting is that thoroughly pagan holidays like Saturnalia and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti are listed alongside thoroughly Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter.

(On a side note, as I explain in this article from December 2019, Christmas as we celebrate it today is not “pagan” in any way. Meanwhile, as I explain in this article from April 2017 and this article from April 2020, Easter is not “pagan” either. Both of these holidays were originally Christian and, although some traditions historically associated with these holidays have been influenced by pre-Christian traditions, those traditions by and large died out long ago and most of the Christmas and Easter traditions we know today have only developed in the past two hundred years.)

The illustrations in the calendar, meanwhile, are filled with traditional iconography. It contains illustrations of the months with perfectly traditional iconography. The month of December, for instance, is represented by a man in winter garb holding a torch and standing next to a table with dice and a mask hanging on the wall, representing the festival of Saturnalia that was celebrated in this month. We even see the personifications of the cities of Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Trier.

ABOVE: Illustration for the month of December from the Berberini Manuscript of the Chronograph of 354, showing a man with a torch, a mask, and a table with dice—all things representing major Saturnalia traditions

Pagan and Christian iconography

Christians even adopted some practices from pre-Christian religions. In the traditional religions of the Mediterranean world, it was common for people to worship images of deities. Early Christians adopted this practice wholesale. Even today, in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, the veneration of icons representing saints and other holy figures is a common practice.

Early Christians didn’t just adopt the custom of venerating images; they also adopted many aspects of the images themselves. As I discuss in this article from March 2020, the icon image of Jesus as a handsome, pale-skinned man with long, flowing hair and beard developed in late antiquity under the direct influence of traditional Greek depictions of male deities like Zeus, Serapis, and Asklepios, who were depicted in precisely this manner long before Christianity came along. Early Christian artists simply adapted the iconography to already existed and applied it to Jesus.

We even have written record that early Christian artists were doing this! A fragment of a lost work written by the early sixth-century CE Greek writer Theodoros Anagnostes records a miracle story about how, in around 465 CE, God supposedly punished an artist who portrayed Jesus in a manner too closely reminiscent of the Greek god Zeus by causing his arm to wither. Theodoros Anagnostes writes, as translated by Joan E. Taylor:

“A certain artist painting an image of the Lord Christ lost strength in his hand, and they say that, as instructed by a certain Hellene, he’d painted the work of the image in the appearance of the name of the Saviour, but with the hairs of the head divided in two ways, so the eyes are not covered, since by forms such as this the children of Hellenes paint Zeus, in order for the observers to recognize that instead of the Saviour the adoration is to be assigned (to Zeus), being more truly curly-locked and hairy [than Christ].”

Obviously, I don’t really think that any ancient Christian artist was really punished by God for representing Jesus looking too much like Zeus, but this story does confirm what is already perfectly obvious from comparing classical Greek iconography with early Christian iconography, which is that many early Christian artists drew inspiration from older pagan models.

As I talk about in this article from December 2017, much of Christian iconography in general is derived from earlier pagan iconography.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Otricoli Zeus, a Roman marble copy of a fourth-century BCE Greek bust of the god Zeus

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a plaster cast of a Roman marble copy of a Greek bust of the god Asklepios from the late fourth century BCE

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble copy of a fourth-century BCE Greek bust of the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis, who is shown with long, flowing hair and a beard

ABOVE: Christian mural painting of Jesus from the Catacomb of Commodilla, dated to the late fourth century CE, showing Jesus as a man with long, flowing hair, a beard, and a halo behind his head

ABOVE: Detail of the Byzantine mosaic of Jesus from the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, dating to c. 526 CE

The survival of traditional religion

Traditional polytheism remained alive and well throughout most of the fifth century CE. Indeed, even as late as the early sixth century, there were still some people who openly worshipped the traditional deities. Most notably, the Neoplatonic philosophers Damaskios of Syria (lived c. 458 – after c. 538 CE) and Simplikios of Kilikia (lived c. 490 – c. 560 CE) lived roughly two hundred years after Constantine I, but they still openly worshipped the traditional deities.

Justinian I (ruled 527 – 565 CE) really cracked down on traditional religion. He defunded the Neoplatonic Academy where Damaskios and Simplikios taught in around 529 CE, forcing the Academy to shut down and the pagan philosophers who taught there to go into exile. In around 532 CE, they sought asylum at the court of King Khosrow I of the Sassanian Empire.

The next year, Khosrow I and Justinian I negotiated a peace treaty and, among the many conditions Justinian I agreed to, one was that the philosophers from Athens be allowed to return to the Roman Empire to teach and practice their religion unmolested. Justinian I agreed to this condition.

ABOVE: Mosaic of Justinian I from the Basilica di San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, dating to between 526 and 547 CE

Really, though, the story of paganism doesn’t end with Damaskios and Simplikios because the influence of traditional polytheism extends far beyond their lifetimes. In some cases, Christian holy figures came to be imagined as so similar to pagan deities that it was hard to even tell the difference. We have reports that, in the 580s CE, there were pagans who commissioned icons of Jesus that looked like the Greek god Apollon that they used to venerate Apollon. When this practice was discovered, the devotees of Apollon in question were tried and put to death.

Likewise, there is a legend that, supposedly, when the city of Constantinople was besieged by the Avars and the Sassanian Persians in 626 CE, the Virgin Mary appeared on the ramparts of the city, arrayed in full battle armor, clutching a spear, giving courage to the Christian inhabitants of the city. This description of Mary as a virgin warrior, though, sounds a lot more like the Greek goddess Athena than the mother of Jesus described in the gospels.

Stories like these are enough to make us wonder: when Athenians in the seventh century CE went to the Parthenon to praise “the virgin,” which “virgin” did they think they were praising? Was it Athena the Virgin, the goddess who leads soldiers into battle, or was it the Mary the Virgin, mother of Jesus? Or, maybe, for some people, they were one and the same?

This conflation of pagan deities and Christian holy figures continued into the modern era. When the British traveler Richard Chandler visited the site of Eleusis near Athens in around 1765, accompanied by the painter William Pars and the architect Nicholas Revett, he reported that there was ancient statue there, a Caryatid, which the locals venerated, believing it protected the crops.

They called the woman the statue represented “Saint Demetra” and held that she was a Christian whose daughter had been abducted by a malicious Turk. This story is remarkable because, in ancient times, Eleusis was the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which centered around the story of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Demeter was said to control the harvest and Persephone was said to have been abducted by Hades, the god of the Underworld.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a fragment of a red-figure ceramic vessel depicting Hades carrying off Persephone by force. (As I note in this article from February 2020, although some modern versions of the story have Persephone going with Hades willingly, in the original myth, Persephone was definitely abducted.)