ABSTRACT
This chapter will concentrate on issues of religious change in the Imperial period. Understanding changes in religious practice in the Roman Empire in this period requires an examination of the nature of religion, and it will be argued here that the close relationship between religious, political, and social structures was central to the ancient religious mentality and that the modern distinction between sacred and secular was much less clearly drawn in the ancient world. Further, I shall suggest there was a surprising diversity in religion in this period. It is this diversity, above all, which requires explanation.
