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These essays on late antiquity traverse a territory in which Christian and pagan imagery and practices compete, coexist, and intermingle. The iconography of the most significant late antique ceramic, African Red Slip Ware, is an important and relatively unexploited vehicle for documenting the diversity and interpenetration of late antique cultures. Literary texts and art in other media, particularly mosaics, provide imagery that complement and enhance the messages of the ceramics. Popular entertainments, pagan cults, mythic heroes, beasts, monsters, and biblical visions are themes dealt with on the patrician and popular levels. With interpretive supplements from these diverse realms, it is possible to achieve greater insight into the life, attitudes, and thought of Late Antiquity.
Powerful religious elements for living in the aftermath of trauma are embedded within North African Christian hagiographies. The texts of (1) The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, (2) The Account of Montanus, Lucius, and their Companions, and (3) The Life of Cyprian of Carthage are stories that offered post traumatic pathways to recovery for its historical readership. These recovery-oriented beliefs and behaviors promoted positive religious coping strategies that revolved around a sense of safety, re-establishing community relationships, an integrated sense of self, and a hopeful story beyond trauma. This book vividly demonstrates that hagiographies played a vital therapeutic role in helping early Christian trauma survivors recover and flourish in the aftermath of disastrous persecutions.
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