Classics 371: Fall of Rome, Rise of Christianity

Did Rome fall, were Christians responsible, and how did a Jewish sectarian movement of widely despised outsiders eventually displace the ruling elite of one of the history’s largest empires? Seeking answers to these questions, this course examines the growth of Christianity and the transformation of classical culture in the Roman Empire of the first to the fifth centuries C.E. (or is A.D.?). Topics include changing attitudes to sexuality and the body, the recognition of the poor as a political class, and the emergence of the spiritual, and with it the secular, as categories of social thought, aesthetic experience, and political action.