ABSTRACT
Historical studies in the twentieth century were profoundly influenced by the introduction of quantitative analysis. For premodern periods this is particularly evident in the insistence of the Annales school on the fundamental importance of statistics in establishing the contours of demographic, economic, and social life. The use of quantitative analysis allows the formation of a whole set of more precise questions to be kept in mind. For historians of antiquity the use of statistics has been still more problematic, for many have been skeptical of – even hostile to – the notion that meaningful statistics can be had for the ancient world. The process of the Christianization of the Roman world was already controversial in its own time, and at least since Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire it has been a central preoccupation of historians studying late antiquity.
