to the debate. In the end, Gillett asserts that the history, rather than a record of events for posterity, or a religious polemic, was a realistic assessment of affairs of state. Paganism Photius refers to Olympiodorus as a “heathen”, which may have denoted a “dynamic cultural tradition” rather than a “specifically religious commitment”. Olympiodorus was addressing a Christian court, but there was a certain amount of tolerance for pagan ideas: both Theodosius II and the Empress Eudocia were patrons of Hellenistic learning. He felt able to assert that pagan cult objects could help the empire if they were respected (and hinder it if they were not). He credits the downfall of Stilicho and his wife to their plundering of pagan temple treasures, and blamed the Romans’ capitulation to Alaric on their having melted down a statue of Virtus, who then abandoned Rome. In Sozomen’s account of the Tuscans who offered to call up a storm to save Rome from Alaric, they assert that their town was saved by “the devotion of its inhabitants to the gods, in the ancient mode of worship”. The Prefect took the suggestion to the Bishop of Rome, who gave permission for the pagan rites to be carried out in private. However, the visitors attested that their rites would have no power unless they were done in full view of the public, and so were sent away. Olympiodorus regarded the professed Christian piety of the “impious wretch” Olympius as incompatible with his public office, and applauds the principled refusal of the general Generidus, who resigned his position in protest at a law prohibiting pagans from holding office. He made ‘sour’ comments about the wealthy Anicii family, who were unhappy at the prospect of losing their near monopoly of the city’s wealth after Attalus’s appointment of officials “well acquainted with the management of affairs”: Baldwin & Baldwin suggest that his attitude was due to the Anicii being Christian, rather than to their wealth alone. Olympiodorus suggests that Attalus incurred the wrath of the gods by his arrogant words to the Senate "in which he told them with great ostentation that he would subdue the whole world to the Romans, and even perform greater things than that". Thompson refers to the “great attraction” of neoplatonist at the time, and suggests this was an early influence on Olympiodorus. However, he did not allow his religious beliefs to cloud his