A study of how the traditional Roman pagan elite experienced and responded to the rise of Christianity in late antiquity, focusing on a generation that came of age as imperial religion shifted; through close readings of laws, speeches, inscriptions and social networks the book shows that pagan institutions and rituals did not disappear overnight but were contested, negotiated, and gradually sidelined as Christians reconfigured public life, elite identity, and civic authority, producing a slow, uneven process of religious and cultural transformation rather than a single decisive rupture.