Introduction

Abstract

This chapter opens with a pagan priest’s remarkable decision to reinscribe an epigram from the Persian Wars in the context of rising Christian dominance. This inscription demonstrates the continued vitality of ancient Hellenic culture even as pagan sanctuaries throughout the eastern Mediterranean gradually closed. Christian literature in this period was rife with calls for the destruction of pagan sanctuaries—but archaeology has shown that this rhetoric was rarely put into action. How do we explain this disconnect between rhetoric and reality? Sanctuaries were full of ancient inscribed texts, but they mainly dealt with civic matters, not with pagan religious beliefs. Stripped of their surrounding pagan ritual frames, these inscribed testaments of “polis religion” projected messages of civic privileges, illustrious rulers, and local benefactors. I argue that these inscriptions continued to be valued and engaged with in late antiquity, inflecting how people thought about, and reused, the remains of the pagan past.