Mattias Gassman is Assistant Professor in the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. A Classicist and scholar of the late antique world, he was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and the University of St Andrews. His research centers on a core theme in the history of Western culture: the transformation of the Roman Empire by Christianity. He has published two books with Oxford University Press. The first (Worshippers of the Gods: Debating Paganism in the Fourth-Century Roman West, 2020) shows how Christians and pagans rethought traditional Roman religion from the last empire-wide persecution of Christians (303–313) to the end of public funding for the Roman civic cults in the 380s. In the second (Citizens of the Earth: Pagans and Their Gods in Augustine’s North Africa, 2025), he provides the first comprehensive account of the ideas on Roman religion advanced by the most influential of all late Latin writers: Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius (354–430). Together, the two books offer a wide-ranging new account of late antique religious theories and the social and cultural context in which they took shape, and test modern organizing concepts such as “secularity,” “paganism,” “identity,” and “religion” against the ideas actually articulated by ancient thinkers.
Gassman has also co-authored a book, aimed at a general audience, on fourth- and fifth-century theological controversy. Written with Brendan Wolfe and Oliver Langworthy (University of St Andrews), Arianism Revisited: An Introduction to Non-Nicene Theologies appeared from Fortress Press in June 2025. In addition, he has published nearly two dozen articles in venues such as Journal of Early Christian Studies, Journal of Late Antiquity, and The Journal of Roman Studies.
“The Debate over Conversion,” in Brill’s Companion to Roman Prosopography, edited by Marietta Horster, et al., Brill’s Companions to Classical Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2026) (invited contribution)
“Semi-pagans? Some mutations of non-Christian thought in late antiquity,” Studies in Late Antiquity 9 (2025), 85–116 (open-access)
“‘A thing like God’: Re-reading Gothic Philippians 2.6-8,” New Testament Studies 70 (2024), 531–545 (co-authored with Brendan Wolfe; open-access)
“The chronology of the final books of City of God: data and hypotheses,” Revue benedictine 134 (2024), 193–218
“A Consul for a Heavenly Rome: Reclaiming Aristocratic Virtue in Prudentius, Peristephanon 2,” Hermes 152 (2024), 100–13
“The Downfall of Caelestis: Salvian of Marseille and the End of Public Cult in Roman Carthage,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 73 (2024), 103–125
“Converting after Constantine: Firmicus Maternus and the Scriptures,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 31 (2023), 459–92
“The composition of De consensu euangelistarum 1 and the development of Augustine’s anti-pagan arguments,” Augustinian Studies 54/2 (2023), 157–75
“Christianity and Graeco-Roman Paganism,” St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (20,000-word invited contribution, open-access) (2022)
“A Late Antique Preacher in Action: Augustine, Ep. 29,” Journal of Late Antiquity 15 (2022), 130–59.
“Arnobius’ Scythians and the Dating of Aduersus nationes,” The Journal of Theological Studies 72 (2021), 832–42.
“An Afterlife of a Scholarly Epic: Frazer’s Golden Bough and Lewis’s Argument from Myth,” Journal of Inklings Studies 11 (2021), 133–152.
“An Ancient Account of Pagan Origins: Making Sense of Filastrius, Diuersarum hereseon liber 111,” Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques 67 (2021), 83–105
“Directing the Eye of the Soul: Form and Function in an Ancient Scenic Monologue (Cyprian, Ad Donatum),” Journal of Early Christian Studies 29 (2021), 371–96.
“On an Alleged Senatus Consultum against the Christians,” Vigiliae Christianae 75 (2021), 548–55.
“The Ancient Readers of Augustine’s City of God,” Augustinian Studies 52/1 (2021), 1–18.
“A Feast in Carthage: Testing the Limits of ‘Secularity’ in Late Antiquity,” The Journal of Roman Studies 110 (2020), 199–219.
“Cyprian’s Early Career in the Church of Carthage,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 70 (2019), 1–17.
“Debating Traditional Religion in Late Fourth-Century Roman Africa,” Journal of Late Antiquity 11 (2018), 83–110.
“The Roman Kings in Orosius’ Historiae Adversum Paganos,” Classical Quarterly 67 (2021), 617–30.
“The Conversion of Cyprian’s Rhetoric? Towards a New Reading of Ad Donatum,” Studia Patristica 94 (2017), 247–57.
“Et Deus et Homo: The Soteriology of Lactantius,” Studia Patristica 80 (2017), 35–41.
“Eschatology and Politics in Cyril of Jerusalem’s Epistle to Constantius,” Vigiliae Christianae 70/2 (2016), 119–33.
