Pagan and Christian Rome.

Rome is a city built in layers, and this classic study digs down through them to the great turning point in its history, the slow and dramatic transformation from pagan capital to Christian centre.

What it's about

Drawing on excavation and topography, the book examines the physical evidence of Rome's religious transition, the temples and shrines of the old gods, the catacombs and early churches of the new faith, the imperial tombs, and the monuments where pagan and Christian worlds overlapped. It moves through the city as an archaeologist would, reading its buildings and burial places to reconstruct how belief, ritual, and daily life changed as the empire turned toward Christianity. The result is history told through stone and site rather than through chronicle alone.

Themes

Continuity and transformation are its great subjects, how a civilisation carries its past even as it remakes itself. The book is attentive to the persistence of pagan custom within Christian practice, to the reuse of old buildings for new worship, and to the human realities of a society changing its gods. It treats the city itself as a document.

Why it still matters

The passage from paganism to Christianity is one of the pivotal transitions of Western history, and this study grounds that vast change in concrete, visible detail. For anyone who has walked Rome and wondered at its overlapping ages, it remains an illuminating guide.

Who it's for

Readers drawn to archaeology, ancient and early Christian history, and the story of Rome will find this both learned and evocative. It suits travellers, students of antiquity, and anyone fascinated by the meeting of two worlds.