Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
![Triumph of Christianity by Tommaso Laureti (1530-1602), ceiling painting in the Sala di Constantino, Vatican Palace. Images like this one celebrate the destruction of ancient pagan culture and the victory of Christianity.](/images/thumb/200px-Tommaso.Laureti.Triumph.of.Christianity.jpg)
Triumph of Christianity by Tommaso Laureti (1530-1602), ceiling painting in the Sala di Constantino, Vatican Palace. Images like this one celebrate the destruction of ancient pagan culture and the victory of Christianity.
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Religion in the Greco-Roman world at the time of the Constantinian shift mostly comprised three main currents:
- the traditional religions of ancient Greece and Rome;
- the official Roman imperial cult;
- various mystery religions, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries and the mystery cults of Cybele, Mithras, and the syncretized Isis.
Early Christianity grew gradually in Rome and the Roman Empire from the 1st to 4th centuries, when it was legalized and, in its Nicene form became the state church of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Thessalonica of 380. Hellenistic polytheistic traditions survived in pockets of Greece throughout Late Antiquity. The Neoplatonic Academy was shut down by Justinian I in 529, a date sometimes taken to mark the end of Classical Antiquity.
See also
- Christianity and paganism
- Christianization
- Constantinian shift
- Damascius
- Early Christianity
- Hellenistic Judaism
- Hellenistic religion
- Historical persecution by Christians
- Late Antiquity
- Mithraism
- Neoplatonism and Christianity
- Persecution of pagans by the Christian Roman Empire
- Pseudo-Dionysius
- Roman imperial cult
- Roman polytheistic reconstructionism
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