[3] From 313, with the exception of the brief reign of Julian, non-Christians were subject to a variety of hostile and discriminatory imperial laws aimed at suppressing sacrifice and magic and closing any temples that continued their use.

[21]: 13 Brown reminds his readers, "We should not underestimate the fierce mood of the Christians of the fourth century", and, he says, it must be remembered that repression, persecution and martyrdom do not generally breed tolerance of those same persecutors.

[26]: 302 Constantine ruled for 31 years and never outlawed paganism; in the words of an early edict, he decreed that polytheists could "celebrate the rites of an outmoded illusion," so long as they did not force Christians to join them.

'[34] Constantine made many derogatory and contemptuous comments relating to the old religion; writing of the "true obstinacy" of the pagans, of their "misguided rites and ceremonial", and of their "temples of lying" contrasted with "the splendours of the home of truth".

[5] In a later letter to the King of Persia, Constantine wrote how he shunned the "abominable blood and hateful odors" of pagan sacrifices, and instead worshiped the High God "on bended knee".

[33]: 81 Scott Bradbury, professor of classical languages, writes that Constantine's policies toward pagans are "ambiguous and elusive" and that "no aspect has been more controversial than the claim he banned blood sacrifices".

[50] Therefore, private divination, astrology, and 'Chaldean practices' (formulae, incantations, and imprecations designed to repulse demons and protect the invoker[51]: 1, 78, 265 ) all became associated with magic in the early imperial period (AD 1–30), and carried the threat of banishment and execution even under the pagan emperors.

[61]: 131  According to historian Hans-Ulrich Wiemer [de], there is good reason to believe the ancestral temples of Helios, Artemis and Aphrodite remained functioning in Constantinople.

[62] Using the same vocabulary of restoration he had used for Aelia Capitolina, Constantine acquired sites of Christian significance in the Holy Land for the purpose of constructing churches, destroying the temples in those places.

For example, at the sacred oak and spring at Mamre, a site venerated and occupied by Christians, Jews and pagans alike, the literature says Constantine ordered the burning of the idols, the destruction of the altar, and erection of a church.

[77]: 37 Under Constantine, (and for the first decade or so of the reigns of his sons), most of the temples remained open for the official pagan ceremonies and for the more socially acceptable activities of libation and offering of incense.

[12]: 36 [81] Orientalist Alexander Vasiliev says that Constantius carried out a persistent anti-pagan policy, and that sacrifices were prohibited in all localities and cities of the empire on penalty of death and confiscation of property.

Bury dismisses Constantius’ law against sacrifice as one which could only be observed "here and there", asserting that it could never, realistically, have been enforced within a society that still contained the strong pagan element of Late Antiquity, particularly within the imperial machinery itself.

[83]: 68  According to author and editor Diana Bowder, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus records in his history Res Gestae, that pagan sacrifices and worship continued taking place openly in Alexandria and Rome.

Yet, Valentinian II still refused to grant requests from pagans to restore the Altar of Victory and the income of the temple priests and Vestal Virgins or to overturn the policies of his predecessor.

[72] John Moorhead says that Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan is sometimes referred to as having influenced the anti-paganism policies of the emperor Theodosius I to the degree of finally achieving the desired dominance of church over state.

[133][130]: 192  Neil B. McLynn[134] observes that the documents that reveal the relationship between Ambrose and Theodosius seem less about personal friendship and more like negotiations between the institutions the two men represent: the Roman State and the Italian Church.

[137][138] Harold A. Drake quotes Daniel Washburn as writing that the image of the mitered prelate braced in the door of the cathedral to block Theodosius from entering, is a product of the imagination of Theodoret who was a historian of the fifth century.

He reiterated his Christian predecessors' bans on animal sacrifice, divination, and apostasy, but allowed other pagan practices to be performed publicly and temples to remain open.

[143] A number of laws against sacrifice and divination, closing temples that continued to allow them, were issued towards the end of his reign, but historians have tended to downplay their practical effects and even the emperor's direct role in them.

[149][146][150] During his first official tour of Italy (389–391), the emperor won over the influential pagan lobby in the Roman Senate by appointing its foremost members to important administrative posts.

Theodosius voiced his support for the preservation of temple buildings, but passively legitimized the monk's violence by listening to them instead of correcting them, thereby failing to prevent the damaging of many holy sites, images and objects of piety by Christian zealots.

The institutional cults continued in Rome and its hinterland, funded from private sources, in a considerably reduced form, but still existent, as long as the Western Roman Empire lasted.

[200] Peter Brown has written that, "it would be profoundly misleading" to claim that the cultural and social changes that took place in Late Antiquity reflected "in any way" an overall process of Christianization of the empire.

[235]: 26, 47–54 [236]: 121–123  Lavan and Mulryan indicate that archaeological evidence of religious conflict exists, but not to the degree or the intensity to which it was previously thought, putting the traditional catastrophic view of "Christian triumphalism" in doubt.

[232]: 41  Rita Lizzi Testa, Professor of Roman history, Michele Renee Salzman, and Marianne Sághy quote Alan Cameron as saying that the idea that religious conflict is the cause of the swift demise of paganism is pure historiographical construction.

[166] While some historians have focused on the cataclysmic events such as the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria, in reality, there are only a handful of documented examples of temples being entirely destroyed through such acts of aggression.

[239] As Peter Brown points out with regard to Libanius’ anger: “we know of many such acts of iconoclasm and arson because well-placed persons still felt free to present these incidents as flagrant departures from a more orderly norm".

[235]: 49  Scholars such as Cameron, Brown, Markus, Trombley and MacMullen have lent considerable weight to the notion that the boundaries between pagan and Christian communities in the 4th century were not as stark as some prior historians claimed because open conflict was actually something of a rarity.

[243][244] Previously undervalued similarities in language, society, religion, and the arts, as well as current archaeological research, indicate that paganism slowly declined for a full two centuries and more in some places, thereby offering an argument for the ongoing vibrancy of Roman culture in late antiquity, and its continued unity and uniqueness long after the reign of Constantine.