undervalued similarities in language, society, religion, and the arts, as well as current archaeological research, indicate paganism slowly declined, and that it was not forcefully overthrown by Theodosius I in the fourth century. Maijastina Kahlos writes that the fourth century Roman empire contained a wide variety of religions, cults, sects, beliefs and practices and they all generally co-existed without incident. Coexistence did occasionally lead to violence, but such outbreaks were relatively infrequent and localized. Jan N. Bremmer says that "religious violence in Late Antiquity is mostly restricted to violent rhetoric: 'in Antiquity, not all religious violence was that religious, and not all religious violence was that violent'". The Christian church believed that victory over "false gods" had begun with Jesus and was completed through the conversion of Constantine; it was a victory that took place in heaven, rather than on earth, since Christians were only about 15–18% of the empire's population in the early 300s. Brown indicates that, as a result of this "triumphalism," paganism was seen as vanquished, and Salzman adds that judging by the sheer number of laws, heresy was a much higher priority than paganism for Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries. Lavan says Christian writers gave the narrative of victory high visibility, but that it does not necessarily correlate to actual conversion rates. There are many signs that a healthy paganism continued into the fifth century, and in some places, into the sixth and beyond. According to Brown, Christians objected to anything that called the triumphal narrative into question, and that included the mistreatment of non-Christians. Archaeology indicates that in most regions away from the imperial court, the end of paganism was both gradual and untraumatic. The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity says that "Torture and murder were not the inevitable result of the rise of Christianity." Instead, there was fluidity in the boundaries between the communities and "coexistence with a competitive spirit." Brown says that "In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and, apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence." While conceding that Theodosius's reign may have been a watershed in the decline of the old religions, Cameron downplays the role of the emperor's 'copious legislation' as limited in effect, and writes that Theodosius did 'certainly not' ban paganism. In his 2020 biography of Theodosius, Mark Hebblewhite concludes that Theodosius never