ABSTRACT
Christianity was one of many religions which flourished in the Roman Empire. Zoroastrians, Mithraists, Jews, Manichees, traditional worshippers of the pagan gods: each sect upheld the truth of its faith and demanded the allegiance of its members. To the Christians, these groups were rivals, and their religious claims deserved only scorn and refutation. But the philosophical religion of Plotinus and Porphyry the Christians found it less easy to dismiss. In the earliest days of the Church, zealots had little need for abstract speculation in order to preach the commands of the Gospels and elaborate their obvious moral consequences. As Christianity became first the leading, and then the official, religion of the Empire, it gained more and more followers who would not so easily sacrifice the rational and humane values of a classical education. Some found it possible to cultivate traditional literary and rhetorical skills, whilst retaining a suspicion or wilful ignorance in the face of ‘pagan’ philosophy; Neoplatonism held too strong an interest for others to neglect it.
