A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
by Pierre Chuvin
On This Page
Description
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans is a history of the triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire as told from the perspective of the defeated: the adherents of the mysteries, cults, and philosophies that dominated Greco-Roman culture. With a sovereign command of the diverse evidence, Pierre Chuvin portrays the complex spiritual, intellectual, and political lives of professing pagans after Christianity became the state religion. While recreating the unfolding drama of their fate--their gradual show more loss of power, exclusion from political, military, and civic positions, their assimilation, and finally their persecution--he records a remarkable persistence of pagan religiosity and illustrates the fruitful interaction between Christianity and paganism. The author points to the implications of this late paganism for subsequent developments in the Byzantine Empire and the West. Chuvin's compelling account of an often forgotten world of pagan culture rescues an important aspect of our spiritual heritage and provides new understanding of Late Antiquity. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
This short book does a marvelous job narrating the slow, inexorable death of classical civilization. Chuvin has full command of the original sources and weaves them into a threnody that is poignant (Justinian's closing the School of Athens and the quixotic departure of the philosophers for Persia), brutal (is there another religion besides Christianity that sends heretics to burn at the stake with such elan?), and occasionally absurd (Anatolias, the governor of Antioch, running away to the local bishop from a ceremony honoring Zeus when the Byzantine police closed in and pretending to be consulting the bishop on a matter of scripture).
Careful studies of the destruction of the Pagan religion of Rome and Greece, such as this one, make it clear that the decline was neither inevitable nor welcomed by the whole of society. The Sunday school vision of a world in which only ignorant peasants believed in the old gods while the philosophers merely pretended to a awaited the new faith is definitely destroyed by works such as this.
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
Some Editions
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
- Original title
- Chronique des derniers païens. La disparition du paganisme dans l'Empire romain, du règne de Constantin à celui de Justinien
- Original publication date
- 1990 (1e édition originale française, Histoire, Les Belles lettres) (1e édition originale française, Histoire, Les Belles lettres); 2009-05-22 (Réédition française, Histoire, Les Belles lettres) (Réédition française, Histoire, Les Belles lettres)
- Original language*
- Français
- Disambiguation notice
- The 1990 English translation is of part one only of Chronique des derniers païens. Versions in other languages that are currently cataloged are for the full-length work. Please do not combine.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 121
- Popularity
- 270,530
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.89)
- Languages
- English, French, Italian
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 2
