Domination: The Fall of the Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity

by Alice Roberts

Synopsis:

This is the story of the fall of an Empire – and the rise of another.

Who spread Christianity, how, and why? In her quest to find the answer, Professor Alice Roberts takes us on a gripping investigative journey. From a secluded valley in south Wales to the shores of Brittany; from the heart of the Roman Empire in a time of political turmoil to the ancient city of Corinth in the footsteps of the apostle Paul; from Alexandria in the fourth century to Constantinople.

As the Roman Empire crumbled in Western Europe, a shadow of power remained, almost perfectly mapping onto its disappearing territories. And then, it continued to spread. Unearthing the archaeological clues and challenging long-established histories, Professor Roberts tells a remarkable story about the relationship between the Roman Empire and Christianity.

Lifting the veil on secrets that have been hidden in plain sight, this story is nothing short of astonishing.

It took me a little while to properly get into Alice Roberts’ Domination, because it wasn’t as directly related to my interests as the other books of hers I’ve read. Late Roman and Christian history isn’t really my thing for the most part, but I wanted to give it a shot because I liked her other books (like Crypt) so much — and ultimately I was glad I gave it a try, because once the stage is set (after a certain amount of digging through hagiographies and looking at place names), there’s some very interesting analysis.

My favourite part was the discussion of the famous “conversion” of Constantine. Did he in fact paint Christian symbols on the shields of his men, or put a Christian symbol on a banner, in order to bring his men victory? I hadn’t really thought about what evidence we had for this, which would’ve tipped me off right away that it sounded a bit weird: the info comes mostly from a biography of him written by a Christian after his death. But even with that, it still sounded like he used some Christian imagery, like the chi-rho, on his coins… right?

Well, no, again it’s more complicated than that. The same symbol was used by pagans before that to mean “archon”: it seems the use of it as “chi-rho” for Christ post-dates Constantine, possibly even invented in order to co-opt Constantine for Christianity.

At the same time, Roberts makes it clear that Constantine did definitely engage with the growing early Church, offer it support, and seems to have legitimately preferred to discourage blood sacrifices. So there is a basis for considering him a supporter of Christianity, if not a Christian himself — but it’s complicated by all the things people have wanted him to be, and the things they want his action to have meant.

For me, that was the most interesting part of the book, along with the conclusion (painstakingly teased out) that the Roman Empire didn’t so much fall as become transmuted into the Roman Catholic Church. Much of the things that pertained to being Roman, Romanitas, simply became Christian, Christianitas, instead. The state was never separate from religion (the emperor was a living god, starting with Augustus), and Christianity displaced paganism quite readily, taking over various aspects of managing towns and cities.

I did find a couple of things annoying: first, no footnotes, only selected bibliography. Blargh to that. And secondly, Roberts keeps chipping in to remind us not to talk about abstract concepts (“the Church” as a whole) as if they have agency, when things are actually being done by individual people. It’s fair enough, but when she keeps doing it and then correcting herself multiple times (rather than merely doing better about it and editing herself if need be, at least some of the time), it gets in the way of the narrative a bit.

I didn’t like this as much as her books focused on archaeology (and specifically on archaeology of human remains), but in the end, it gave me a lot of interesting new stuff to ponder.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)