ABSTRACT

Mr de Ste Croix, in his article in Past and Present, No. 26 (Nov. 1963) (chapter IX) has given what will for long rank among the most satisfactory treatments of this theme. But he is primarily concerned with popular opinion and the attitude of the government in the later second and third centuries when the administration had become aware of the nature and extent of the Christian phenomenon. Few will disagree that the central objection was then to the ‘godlessness’ of the Christians—their refusal to recognize a citizen's duty towards the gods of the local communities, and, in some circumstances, of Rome. But in what concerns motives Ste Croix's method is to begin at the end and to work backwards, and inevitably his treatment of the period before Hadrian is less satisfactory in this respect, although he concedes that other objections were on occasion then invoked against the Christians. Since Ste Croix starts from a criticism of some views expressed by myself, perhaps I may take up the question of the earlier period.