Most readers of history are familiar with the Emperor Constantine's reported vision of the Cross before his victory at the Milvian Bridge and his deathbed baptism to Christianity, yet few probably know about the emperor's first biographer, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (260-339 C.E.). University of Toronto Professor Timothy D. Barnes devotes this scholarly volume to the two men. With copious footnoting, the first third of the book details the era from Diocletian's reforms to Constantine's consolidation of power as sole emperor of a united Roman Empire. In introducing Eusebius, Barnes backtracks to Third century Caesarea, a cosmopolitan seaport in Roman Palestine, and the Christian scholar Origen. Origen's interest in the relationship of God with humankind led him to a synthesis of Platonism and Christianity, believing that God had revealed himself - imperfectly - through Holy Scripture, and on three levels of understanding that encompassed body, soul and spirit. Eusebius was influenced by Origen, but interpreted the Bible from a historical perspective, with the Holy Spirit as the ultimate author. As scholar-historian, Eusebius compiled Chronicle, a guide to biblical place names, with a chronology that dated Moses and the Hebrew prophets in relation to Christ's Incarnation. Eusebius met Constantine in 325, at Nicea, during a council of some 300 bishops, which the emperor called primarily to settle the heresy of Arianism. A bishop by then, Eusebius was under suspicion and presented a formal creed of orthodoxy to refute reports of his Arian sympathies. In 330, when Constantine dedicated New Rome on the site of ancient Byzantium, Eusebius was asked to provide 50 bibles for churches in the new capital. The bishop was there again in 336 for the emperor's 30th anniversary, and read his Panegyric to Constantine, a poem of praise that likened the emperor to Christ. Eusebius then began a 4-book Life of Constantine, another panegyric that he transformed into a biography. In the final chapter Barnes discusses the historical value of the Life and provides a summary of the book's contents. Although Eusebius only met Constantine 4 times and received 6 letters, which reflect respect but not intimacy, he had access to documents after 324, yet glosses over the bloody succession to power by Constantine's 3 sons. An Epilogue treats of the criticism of Constantine by Julian II, Zosimus and others, and the renewed interest in the emperor during the Renaissance and Counter- Reformation. Barnes's conclusion, "Constantine... was neither a saint nor a tyrant. He was more humane some of his immediate predecessors, but still capable of ruthlessness and prone to irrational anger.... After 312 Constantine considered that his main duty as emperor was to inculcate virtue in his subjects and to persuade them to worship God. Constantine's character is not wholly enigmatic; with all his faults and despite an intense ambition for personal power, he nevertheless believed sincerely that God had given him a special mission to convert the Roman Empire to Christianity." Albert Noyer M.A. Author: The Saint's Day Deaths.

This book, one of a number of excellent titles from the Religion, Culture, and Family Project of the University of Chicago Divinity School, takes the reader behind the frequent rhetoric concerning the biblical family to the reality of family life in early Christian communities. Setting the New Testament teachings on the family within the social and cultural context of the Greco-Roman world, it moves through an analysis of Greek and Roman household architecture to an analysis of family life. The open architecture of ancient Christian houses, unlike modern houses, had large entryways which invited anyone who passed by into their spacious and semi-public courtyards. Balch and Osiek's work shows how the architectural patterns of Greek and Roman homes formed and influenced relationships in early Christian house churches and how worship in these house churches influenced Christian families. For example, with respect to gender relations, it shows that early Christian women enjoyed wider ranges of freedom and leadership and that early Christian men learned to think of themselves as servants. This outstanding piece of scholarship shed new light on the early Christian household.

You don't need to know New Testament Greek to follow Trobisch's arguments. Although an astute reader and clever interpreter of textual evidence, Trobisch spares us the usual myopia and nit picking textual critics like to heap upon their readers. He avoids discussions of authorial authenticity that so easily put many people on the defensive. Instead, he helps the reader appreciate larger redactional issues of how the different components of the New Testament relate to one another. By making comparisons to familiar modern publishing practices, Trobisch makes his arguments easily accessible to the modern reader (for example, he shows how the decisions publishers and editors make and the conventions they establish can affect the final form of the text as much, perhaps, as those of the authors.) There's much here I'll want to re-examine when I've done more reading in this area, but on my first read-through I found Trobisch's thesis exciting and refreshing. This book has certainly changed the way I'll be reading the New Testament from now on.

Trobisch's aim was "to describe the history of the Canonial Edition by analyzing the oldest existing copies and tracing the edition back to the time and place of first publication. With this method, Greek manuscripts became more important witnesses than the lists of canonical writings, quotes from biblical literature, and debates about the authenticity of certain writings, translations, and so on." (p. 37) By doing this, Trobisch is able to draw some interesting conclusions: (1) that the editors of the New Testament took great care in naming the different sections of the Bible, and in doing so validated, rather than minimized, the place of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible, (2) that the sequence of the four Gospels as we have it today is a tradition of long-standing, and one that makes good sense even though it means separating Luke from Acts (his explanation of the role of John 21 in this regard is truly fascinating, p. 96ff), (3) that the "first edition" of the New Testament would have positioned the General Letters after Acts and before the Letters of Paul (the logic being, in part, that the first half of Acts introduces the reader to Peter, John and James, and it is only in the second part that Acts starts to focus on the missionary efforts of Paul), (4) that the editors used an elegant system of internal cross referencing to validate both the authority of the leaders in Jerusalem and of Paul (this seeming harmony serving as a unified barrier against Marcionite error), and (5)that the editors managed to straddle the potentially devisive issue of the date upon which Easter should be celebrated by including both the Synoptic and Johannine traditions. Just to name a few! And don't skip the fascinating discussion of the codex ("bound book") v. the scroll in the establishment of the Canonical Edition of the Bible (p. 69-77).

I must admit the flow of Trobisch's argument was so engrossing that I never really examined the endnotes. But they're there and they're detailed. The bibliography is substantial, too (but be warned, it includes a high percentage of German works).

This book is truly worth the investment (both in money and in the time you'll spend digging into it). Treat yourself!

Everyone has his or her own idea as to which book is the best work of the past thousand years. Most lists are headed by "Lord of the Rings", and I don't have a lot of quarrel with that particular selection. My own personal selection, however, is Gibbon's masterful work, which I am now reading one volume at a time, with time-outs between them for other reading. My reason for this selection is that I am in total awe of the achievement of an author who could create such a masterful work almost 250 years ago, when the resources available to him were so scanty compared with today's plethora of information. He took what he had researched and seamlessly joined it into a composition that reads as easily today (despite some verbosity, common to the times in which it was written) as it did then. I am constantly learning more about this era and the people than I had ever known, and every page is a new revelation. This work is a long-term project, I realize, but I intend to stick it out and read every word of this masterful work!

This magisterial history improves with every page that I read. In this volume, we have the "controversial" chapters concerning the early history of the Church, and the comments of Gibbon that so inflamed the religious leaders of his time. At a distance of 250 years, it's amusing to see what excited them so very much. The author is, I think, rather mild in his criticism of the established religion of the day, and he appears to be a religious man who simply has a historian's interest in presenting what happened in the distant past as accurately as possible. His comments would probably not excite much reaction these days, but one never knows. The history of Constantine's reign is done very well, and this volume ends with his son's years on the throne. I'm looking forward to his take on the reign of Julian, who attempted to restore paganism to the Empire. That should prove to be very interesting!

What happened to the ancient Egyptian religion during the Roman rule and Christian incursion? This question is answered here. I am sure other people have read this book, but the book description delineates it so well it is difficult to add more.

David Frankfurter gives a balanced and well researched account of the survival, adaption and transformation of the indigenous Egyptian religion between roughly 100 to 600 C.E.- a time when Egypt was without a pharoah and under the governance of Rome, when Rome itself was becoming Christianized. All these things put pressure on the Egyptians to change.

The first chapter lays the groundwork and background and is a bit dry. Chapters 2 through 6 are the heart of the book and well worth it. Modern Pagans might be surprised and happy to see themselves in the domestic aspects of local religions discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 5 was my favorite; it dealt with the transformation of the Priest into the Magician. Just how did the Egyptians get the reputation of high magic and deep wisdom among the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans? How did they use this? How did this survive into the Christian and Muslim eras?

The seventh chapter is the last chapter and a conclusion of sorts, delineating how the Christian leaders excoriated the Pagan (Hellenes, as they were called at that time) customs, yet how these customs were adapted into the new religion. And more importantly, why.

There is a great bibliography and a vast amount of footnotes for those who want to look further.

Those interested in ancient Egyptian religion, comparative religion or the interaction of the Pagan and Christian worlds will find this book both useful and informative.

One might assume Magie's book, originally published over 50 years ago, is out of date. But it is so thorough that it is still valuable -- even 'invaluable'. The second volume, in small print, consists of notes and indices to the chapters in volume one, and is very impressive. I consider it a must for anyone working on Roman Asia Minor. To see where new scholarship has made advances, those who have access to an academic library might check the work of French master epigrapher Louis Robert, and, more recently, Stephen Mitchell, notably his *Anatolia*.

This book is great.

Anyone fascinated by ancient history can learn a great deal from a book like this. The book provides drawings of typical homes, the markets and the bath houses as well as many other features of daily Roman life.

Besides being loaded with drawings portraying ancient Roman life, there are also brief descriptions of things such as Roman religion, personal security, money, medical treatment, etc.

This is a good book to add to your collection.

David Forgacs' monograph on 'Rome Open City' is as thorough an examination of a major cinematic milestone as you could hope for. Roberto Rossellini's breakthrough film, the story of Resistance activity during the German Occupation of Rome 1943-44, was conceived, made and released in the immediate aftermath of the Liberation, and was exultantly acclaimed as a new kind of cinema, where documentary-style authenticity (largely non-professional cast, basis in recent history, real locations etc.) were seen as an answer to the lies of Fascist film in particular, and the illusions of commercial cinema in general, heralding the Golden Age of Neo-Realism.

Forgacs takes as his starting point Italo Calvino's remark that neo-realist works about the resistance were not 'direct representations of events in reality' but 'textual elaborations of already represented events'. Although the major stories depicted in the film - the street murder of a pregnant woman, the torture of a communist resistant, the execution of a dissident priest - were based on real events, they had already been mythologised in oral accounts, newspaper articles, diaries, paintings, sculptures etc., which representations Rossellini synthesised in his film.

More damagingly, the myth of Resistance offered in 'Rome Open City', which Forgacs suggests was necessary to displace collective guilt and anger as well as provide Romans with a narrative of unity and memory, evades or distorts the more troubling aspects of the Occupation - the natives' 20-year complicity with the Fascist regime; the collaboration of the Fascist police and their network of spies with the brutalities of the Germans; the silences and compromises of the Church. The deportations of the Jews, for instance, are not even mentioned. The 'patriotic myth' was also a way for Rossellini to atone for his own Fascist past, having directed three features for the army.

This is not to suggest that Forgacs simply demolishes the film, which was immensely influential and is still the director's most accessible work. After all, Rossellini himself later disowned the more manipulative and melodramatic aspects of thw work, which were incompatible with his more austere and viewer-challenging later films. By offering a detailed historical and cultural context; by recreating the conditions of the film's conception, production and contemporary reception; and by analysing the film's techniques and themes (most brilliantly in his discussion of urban space, the different uses made of it by occupiers and resisters), as well as the 'polluted' (Rossellini's own phrase) ideology that informs the pretensions to objectivity (in particular the demonising of 'bad' sexuality), Forgacs replaces the monolithically 'important' and 'truthful' film of legend with something much more complex, contradictory and intellectually satisfying.

Cet ouvrage se veut la synthèse de l'histoire sociale de Rome. Il examine les institutions à travers les groupes sociaux. Pour une recherche historique sur le monde romain, ce document est extrêmement utile.