Bibliographic Essay

The following works, more or less indebted to the traditional paradigm, provide good starting points for further reading. Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization: c.

Criticism of the paradigm can be found in Jan Bremmer's ‘Religious Violence and Its Roots: A View from Antiquity', ASDIWAL. Revue genevoise d’anthropologie et d’histoire des religions 6 (2011), 71-9, and ‘Religious Violence between Greeks, Romans, Christians and Jews', in A. C. Geljon and R. Roukema (eds.), Violence in Ancient Christianity: Victims and Perpetrators (Leiden: Brill, 2014), which highlights the biased reading of the ancient evidence and the deficient theoretical underpinning of identifying monotheism with violence. Wendy Mayer, ‘Religious Conflict: Definitions, Problems and Theoretical Approaches', in W. Mayer and B. Neil (eds.), Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), pp. 1-19 offers an overview of the positions and emphasises the importance of the neurosciences in providing a richer picture of the roles played by emotions and violence in human (and hence also religious) life. Peter Van Nuffelen, Penser la tolerance dans l’antiquite tardive (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2018), upon which this chapter substantially relies, is an intellectual history of how persuasion and coercion were conceptualised in late antiquity that enters into a dialogue with modern conceptions. For a wide-ranging criticism of the perceived link between religion and violence see William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Harold A. Drake, Emily Albu and Jacob Latham (eds.), Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) has a valuable section, with critical perspectives, on religious violence.

Drake, Albu and Latham's volume is also a good starting point for exploring other types of violence, for which see also Helene Menard, Maintenirl’ordre d Rome: IIe-IVe siecles ap.J.-C (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2004), which is focused on public order, and Rene Pfeilschifter, Der Kaiser und Konstantinopel.