The Last Pagans of Rome

[Jona Lendering]

This is high on my list, too! Waiting for the final verdict, Jona ;-) ...

I just finished reading it. It is overwhelming, and very very very good. I will write about it later, at some length I guess. Before you run to your bookshop: the book is also extremely technical. Men like Symmachus, Claudian, and Macrobius are not introduced, you're supposed to know their work.

For us RATs, the demolishing of the Gibbonesque image of the battle of the Frigidus is probably the most interesting part. It was certainly not the clash between Paganism and Christianity we're supposed to believe, reading the later sources. Eugenius was a Christian, who could be blamed for not being orthodox first, which was interpreted as being Pagan later. Most details of the battle are inventions by later authors.

I already suggested an article in Ancient Warfare to our Jasper.

Apparently this book discards the abundant proof of paganism stretching at least as far as the Frankish realm if not further into the middle ages.

As the title indicates, it's about The Last Pagans of Rome. It's about the so-called Pagan Revival of the late fourth century, which, according to Cameron, is a mirage.

After Gratian had ended the payments to the Pagan shrines, the Roman aristocracy was forced to make a choice: either they paid the cults themselves and associated themselves with the old gods, but lost influence at court, or they gave up the lost cause. They overwhelmingly chose the latter, prefering their own dignity over the dignity of their deities.