The fate of the native religions of the Mediterranean world in late antiquity has long fascinated historians, stimulating over a hundred years of both broad discussions, like Geffcken, Kaegi, and Chuvin, regional studies like those of Ramsay and Wilcken, and a large portion of the field of late antique history. Trombley has surely proven his point that native religions were alive and well in many parts of the late antique world, and we may thank him for the breadth of his documentation. The organization is ambitious, and chapter headings whet one's appetite. In many ways the chapter on legislation against sacrifice is the most useful in the volumes. The chapter on Christianization covers the familiar issues of the transformation of native gods, sanctuaries, and rituals.
Gods become saints occasionally, demons more often.
This terminological choice thus renders entirely incomprehensible the subtleties of supernatural powers as conceived by various communities and Christians in late antiquity. But, to avoid the simplistic parroting of what was originally an anti-Catholic polemic, the modern study of the phenomenon requires copious reference to the abundant recent archaeological and epigraphical work on local sanctuaries, work that has sought precisely to test the concept of continuity. The tendency to rely on outdated scholarship and uncritically literal readings of hagiography unfortunately plagues the rest of the volumes. His discussion of Ephesian religion and the image of Artemis is based on long-outdated theories. His description of the conversion of Gaza, which adheres strictly to the account of Mark the Deacon, required a long supplementary defense of the hagiographer's historical accuracy against the conclusions of other scholars.