A Chronicle of the Last Pagans. . Reviewed by Lee T. Pearcy, The Episcopal Academy. The answer will reveal much about one's approach to the conflict between pagans and Christians which forms the subject of this book. Chuvin would prefer the company of Symmachus.
H is pagans are lively, tolerant, and humane.
On the other side, the Christians, once Constantine's Edict of Toleration gives them access to the seats of government, seem to combine low bureaucratic cunning with intolerant anti- intellectualism. Their carefully worded edicts of repression leave popular festivals untouched but degrade antique sanctuaries and mock or abolish the picturesque rituals dear to the old pagan intelligentsia. Chuvin's Chronicle of the Last Pagans, then, will present a world whose dynamics are familiar to readers of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Chuv in would be the first to caution us against making too much of this familiarity. In his Introduction, he rejects the projection of present attitudes onto late antiquity's reality and urges us to lay down the advantages of hindsight.