The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire

The Conflict of Religion in the Early Roman Empire is a lengthy examination of the various emperors' relationships with religious matters across the Roman Empire during the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. through the reign of Tertullian, who died in 220 A.D. Of course, most of it deals with the relationship between Rome and Christianity, which was certainly tempestuous until Constantine the Great converted the empire in the early 4th century A.D., but this work also looks closely at Roman mythology and religion as well. To see the Founder of the Christian movement and some of his followers as they appeared among their contemporaries; to represent Christian and pagan with equal goodwill and equal honesty, and in one perspective; to recapture something of the colour and movement of life, using imagination to interpret the data, and controlling it by them; to follow the conflict of ideals, not in the abstract, but as they show themselves in character and personality; and in this way to discover where lay the living force that changed the thoughts and lives of men, and what it was; these have been the aims of the writer,—impossible, but worth attempting. So far as they have been achieved, the book is relevant to the reader.