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Aspects of Late Imperial Bureaucracy

pagan revival, for instance, includes not only the literature of Julian and his contemporaries, but also the 'monuments'—although when Dr. Bowder moves beyond dated inscriptions to pagan temples of less secure date (like the shrine of Syrian Jupiter on the Janiculum, or the Lydney temple) the Julianic links can only be speculative. What emerges throughout her description of the visible remains is the degree of coexistence of Christianity and paganism, even to the extent of the cults being practised side by side—as in the case of the Mithraea beneath the churches of S. Prisca and S. Clemente in Rome, or the temple of Mercury next to the cathedral in Cologne. Similarly striking is the ease with which pagan art themes were transferred to Christian contexts. Here Dr. Bowder distinguishes between decoration displaying an assertive variety of paganism, which (it is held) Christians would have rejected, and a more 'anodyne' type ('neutral personifications . . . and harmless creatures of mythology', p. 170) in which they would readily acquiesce. Yet one may wonder whether many worldly and wealthy Christians who (even after Julian's strictures) continued to find a place for pagan literature in their education would have fastidiously censored the content of the mosaics which lined their villas. The application of the labels 'pagan' and 'Christian' may thus be even less clear cut than Dr. Bowder allows. Such a conclusion would not be surprising in the light of increasing awareness (from a number of vantage-points) that it is easy to exaggerate the 'conflict' between paganism and Christianity in the fourth century by selective emphasis on polemical literature or those occasional flashpoints which opened up the religious divide. That this volume is not guilty of such exaggeration is to its credit; and the span of evidence which the author exploits brings positive gain in its confirmation of the degree of fluidity between pagan and Christian.