Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity
Jeremy M. Schott
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008

"Jeremy M. Schott has done a masterful job of elucidating the points of connection—even debate—between Porphyry of Tyre, Lactantius, Constantine, and Eusebius. These men were the most prominent participants in the conversations, debates, and policies that guided Rome's transformations from pagan to Christian state. How their ideas respond to one another has, until now, not been satisfactorily mapped out."—Elizabeth Digeser, University of California, Santa Barbara

In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire.