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Greek and Latin inscriptions are now fully embraced within the study of Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Era. At Constantinople, inscriptions of the Byzantine era were displayed along with ancient texts imported from elsewhere in the Empire, symbolising the welding of Hellenism and Romanitas. While the number and variety of texts do not match those of earlier eras, they can furnish evidence for several aspects of society. Personal names recorded on inscriptions reveal the impact of the Latin West and of Christianity on the Greek East, in the choice of names and the styles of nomenclature. The survival of names of local origin, from Thrace, Anatolia and Syria, areas where Greek was later imposed on an earlier substrate not always written, reveals the vigour of local traditions.

The split between Greek East and Latin West has been contributed by theological and non-theological factors. There was a difference between those who understood the Church of Jesus' disciples to have its centre located in Jerusalem, in observance of the Mosaic law and those who came to think of the Church with St. Paul as a worldwide body consisting of Gentiles. This chapter also discusses the celebration of Easter, pre-Christian roots of East and West divergence, and also social difference between Greeks and some Romans characterized by wearing or having beards.

This chapter argues that there is no simple explanation for the introduction of Roman patronage in the Greek East. The causes (or, better, catalysts) that brought about its appearance may have ceased to be relevant. Patronage potentially offered significant benefits and no disadvantages. Once one city had patrons, it would be natural for others to follow its lead and co-opt patrons of its own. Presumably there were other factors contributing to the discovery of patronage that the poverty of our information has obscured. Several factors have been considered — a wave of immigration and an influx of Roman culture, the development of the equestrian order and their interest in the exploitation of Rome's provinces, the crisis in Asia that had developed in the decades after its annexation. In a sense these are the results of C. Gracchus' reforms. Perhaps the sudden appearance of patronage of cities was itself, therefore, in some sense an unforeseen by-product of the Gracchan programme.

This chapter focuses on the correspondence of Pope Innocent III, his interlocutors, and his successors in order to understand more fully the conditions that gave rise to the first papal pronouncements asserting that Greek theological error was so egregious that it warranted violence, occupation, and larceny. The subjugation of the schismatic Greeks may have provided certain opportunities for those eager to assert the supremacy of the papacy as the governing body of the Church, but the use of military force to achieve and sustain Greek subjugation also called into question the integrity of the crusading endeavor and, more importantly, it upended previous assumptions regarding the boundaries of the Christian community. The events surrounding the Fourth Crusade and the subsequent maintenance of the Latin territory in the Greek East triggered a striking ambivalence in papal articulations of whether and to what extent the Greeks were “Christian” in the proper sense. As papal rhetoric gradually moved toward a more hostile characterization, the papacy became more willing to authorize a number of colonial enterprises previously inconceivable. These include violence against Greek Christians, the permanent settlement of Byzantine territory, and the extraction of Byzantine treasure.

This chapter outlines the main elements of religious co-existence, competition, and conflict between Christianity and Judaism in the Greek East, ad 379–450. It first describes the essential features of Jewish legal status in the Christian empire and the impact of the legislation of ad 379–450 on Jewish communities of the Greek East. The chapter then analyses epigraphic and archaeological data to place them in a wider Christian context. Finally, it examines the evidence of Christian sources for the presence of Jews, and for Christian relations with them.

A decree of Chersonesus Taurica, found by R. Loeper in 1908, but only published by I. Makarov in 2005, throws significant new light on the operation of local courts in the mid-first century ad and on the history of Chersonesus in that period. The decree deals with the reform of the local jury-courts (whose survival into the Roman period has not been previously attested), necessitated by the lack of eligible jurors. Some of the provisions of the new model seem to be taken over from the Roman practice on the initiative of the Chersonesites themselves, without any intervention of the Roman authorities. The first part of this chapter includes the text with some new textual suggestions. The second part is concerned with the significance of the new provisions for jury-courts and with their implications for legal history of the Greek East under Rome.

An honorary decree from Chios, dated after Apamea (189/8 bce), offers interesting evidence for the interaction between Rome and the Greek East at the beginning of the second century bce. This chapter contributes to the understanding of this document in two ways: by proposing a new restoration in a crucial point of the text; and by returning to a much-discussed question: what is the nature of the object dedicated to the goddess Rome, in which there is a reference to the story of the birth of Romulus and Remus and the origins of Rome? On l. 25, a new possible restoration can be διήγησις, ‘narration, description, oral or written tale’, to indicate what was the content of the votive offering dedicated to the goddess Rome. If we were to visualize this dedication, we could think of a votive relief representing Romulus and Remus, combined with a text summing up briefly what preceded, and what happened after, the represented scene.