I’m continuing to read Adrian Goldworthy’s How Rome Fell (Yale University Press,
2009). Goldsworthy makes the point
throughout that our knowledge of ancient history is always as certain as some make
it out to be. For example, it is often
taken for granted that Christians made up only c. 10% of the Roman population
at the time of Constantine’s conversion.
Goldsworthy, however, observes:
…. All the evidence suggests that
at the beginning of the fourth century Christians were a minority in the
overall population. It is also regularly
asserted that they were a small minority, but this is by no means clear. As usual, there are no reliable statistics,
and, of course, we do not even know how big the empire’s population was. One recent study suggested that Christians
represented 10 per cent of the total, but this remains purely conjectural.
It is very unlikely that the numbers were smaller than this, and they may
easily have been two or three times higher…. (p. 183).
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