ABSTRACT
The most prolific of contemporary sociologists, S. N. Eisenstadt has been an immense stimulus in revitalizing the comparative macro-sociological orientation of the discipline. He has done this through cross-cultural studies and through historical ones, with a fundamental concern for understanding the whys and wherefores of social change. At the core of this concern stands the problem of coming to grips with modernity. Modernity does have significance if it is treated in a structural sense, rather than only in an individual or psychological sense. The Roman Empire and its metropolis appear as an epicenter of modernity that lasted for several centuries, although it underwent a "degenerative phase" that was masked for a long while by the material opulence of its civilization. But the Roman Empire also became the locale for a new world religion, that of Christianity, which in its "Western" form was to have a profound effect on succeeding waves of modernity.
