ABSTRACT
By Late Antiquity texts had come to be fundamental to the religious activities of many Romans.1 Their prominence in everyday practice and in conflicts then presents an opportunity to assess one particular form of violence in the period, bookburning, in which writings, regarded as authoritative by believers, were publicly burned by their opponents.2 This essay briefly surveys the perpetuation of this ancient ceremony in Late Antiquity, for it will become evident that it had by then a lengthy history. However, the widespread evidence for its practice in the late Roman period allows a closer look at how one rite of violence changed in a period characterized by transformation and thereby to note the degree to which it diverged from earlier precedents. In this way a tentative explanation for its continued cultural relevance may be proposed.
