Persecution and response in late paganism: the evidence of Damascius

The theme of this paper is intolerance: its manifestation in late antiquity towards the pagans of the Eastern Mediterranean, and the immediate reactions and long-term attitudes that it provoked in them. The reasons why, in spite of copious evidence, the persecution of the traditional cults and of their adepts in the Roman empire has never been viewed as such are obvious: on the one hand no pagan church emerged out of the turmoil to canonise its dead and expound a theology of martyrdom, and on the other, whatever their conscious religious beliefs, late antique scholars in their overwhelming majority were formed in societies whose ethical foundations and logic are irreversibly Christian. Admittedly a few facets of this complex subject, such as the closing of the Athenian Academy and the demolition of temples or their conversion into churches, have occasionally been touched upon; but pagan persecution in itself, in all its physical, artistic, social, political, intellectual and psychological dimensions, has not as yet formed the object of scholarly research.