ABSTRACT
The first five centuries of Christianity pose problems both of history and historiography. For Christian historians prospering under the fourth century Christian Empire, the workings of providence were far from inscrutable. The growth of Christianity from the time of the birth of Christ into a world united by Augustus so that the new religion could spread, to the conversion of Constantine in 312 was, for them, pre-ordained. It was also a demonstration of the power of God over the multifarious gods of the pagans in a world in which power, potentia, was to be found in many forms, and Christian writers were quick to combine explanations of the divine will with attacks on pagan interpretations of the past. Orosius, for example, in his History against the Pagans, written in 417, argued that the world was far worse off before the birth of Christ, under pagan gods, than it had been since. This polemical or apologetic purpose of Christian historiography inevitably coloured interpretations of the Christian past.
