Echos du monde classique: Classical news and views

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 495 accumulating large estates. Thus by the end of the 1st c. BC, tenancy had become one of the chief mechanisms by which wealthy landowners could derive income from their holdings. The effect of this exposition is to shift further back in time the appearance in Italy of widespread farm tenancy, which is conventionally placed in the 1st c. AD (see e.g. K.D. White, Roman Agriculture [London 1970] 404-5), although the issue of tenancy---rrseT1' In the Late Republic is not really in doubt (see e.g. J.A. Crook, Law and Life of Rome [London 1967] 155-6; M.1. Finley, "Private t==arm Tenancy In Italy before Diocletian" in Finley, ed , . Studies in Roman :~~~c~~~')IY[C~~~:~~;e o~97~~e 1~;~;t1~. of T~:Ii:~I~je~~i~~n~~nt~~:IO~~~ Republic, so the author is able to berate practically every scholar who appears in his bibliography for not previously recognizing the truth as he himself now perceives it. Nevertheless, Finley's caveat against the legal evidence needs to be remembered: the higher number of juristic references to tenancy is not necessarily a safe guide to historical reality (art. cit., 104) . De Neeve's book started its life as a dissertation, and this presumably explains its combative tone and its author's firm devotion to tortuous discussion of the fine philological and legal point. But the overall product makes for far from enjoyable reading, and, given its controversial subject-matter, the book will serve as a basis for further debate rather than as a definitive statement. UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA K. R. BRADLEY Ramsey MacMullen's latest book is difficult to assess fairly. On the one hand, MacMullen writes in a lively, often colloquial style, and he offers many individual observations which will make even those readers who are familiar with the subject ponder, reflect and perhaps change cherished opinions. For he draws on a vast range of varied evidence to provide many realistic glimpses of life and religion in the Roman Empire, and he is widely read and alert: he has noted, for example, the relevance of a Syriac account to Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Gregory the Wonderworker (59ff.) and the disturbing implicatiOnS f~ ~~eP~:~;;;~~e~~~~~~~~futM~a~i~~:ri~~aaC~t7~~e~~eA~fal:~~fh~;lta~~~~~ 59 (1941) 65-216 (86ff.) . On the other hand, the overall argument has a very old-fashioned air. MacMullen presents a Christian church which "before Constantine had only a tiny share in what was at all times a tiny segment of the population, the elite" (33), and which, from the population of the Roman Empire as a whole, had about five million adherents by 300 (32) . Before 312, the Christians avoided attention, because they did not enjoy toleration (29, 35), which comes only with the conversion of Constantine and the "Edict of Milan" (here paraded without inverted 496 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES REND US commas as an indubitably attested fact}. As a result of imperial policies, the church then declined in virtue as it increased in numbers: by 400, there were about thirty million Christians, t houg h they did not yet constitute a majority, for lit he empire overall appears to have been predominantly non-Christian in AD 40011 (83) and "paqans still made up a good half of t he population" (85). MacMullen obtains his picture partly by defining his subject as lithe growth of the church as seen from outside" (vii), and treating non-Christian evidence as better and more reliable than Christian ev idence. He thus generalises from the polemics of Celsus to the whole of the period between 100 and 312, missing the emergence of upper-class Christians in the Severan age. And he inexplicably fails to discuss a document such as the Oidascalia Apostolorum, which shows how Christian communities functioned In the pagan society of early 3rd c. Syria. He also shows a certain selectivity in his use of modern works: he makes no reference to Werner Eck's discussion of Christian senators before Constantine (Chiron 1 [1971] 381-406) or to Fergus Millar's study of Paul of Samosa~S 61 [1971] 1-17), both...