Book Description

The foundations of European civilization as we know it today were laid in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World traces the roots of the attitudes and argumentation about religious or ethnic otherness in modern western culture. It aims at deepening the historical understanding of attitudes towards otherness as well as cultural and religious conflicts in world history. The Faces of the Other discusses the conceptions, depictions, and attitudes towards the other in Graeco-Roman antiquity. The book focuses on the perception of otherness, whether other peoples or religions, in the Later Roman Empire as understood broadly, from the first until the fifth century CE. These others are ethnic others such as the Persians, Huns, and the Germanic peoples were to Romans, or religious others such as Jews were to Christians or Christians to Jews, Christians to pagans or pagans to Christians, or different cults to the 'mainstream' Romans, or different Christian sects to each other. Dr Maijastina Kahlos teaches at the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies. Her main areas of expertise are: Roman history, the religions in the Roman Empire, cultures, ideas and religions in Late Antiquity.