Mark the Deacon The Life of Porphyry of Gaza Translated with Introduction and Notes, with a Translation of the Georgian Life

In Late Antiquity Gaza was an exceptionally prosperous city, with wealth derived from a flourishing wine trade across the Mediterranean, as well as an intellectual centre whose leading lights combined traditional classical and Christian learning. Bishop Porphyry is famous for effecting the transformation in the early fourth century AD of this thriving community from a bastion of pagan beliefs into a Christian city, primarily through the destruction of the main temple to the god Marnas and other pagan sanctuaries and the working of miracles for the benefit of the local population. Conversion was neither easy nor guaranteed, since the leaders of local society at the time were solidly pagan and prepared to mobilize violence to defend their traditional ways. His success required missions to the empire’s capital, Constantinople, where he interacted with the Patriarch John Chrysostom and imperial authorities. On one occasion he managed with the help of Empress Eudoxia to outmanoeuvre Emperor Arcadius into acceding to his request for imperial authority and physical backing to secure the closure and demolition of temples. The two key versions of Porphyry’s biography are here presented together in new translations for the first time.

Michael Whitby is Emeritus Professor at the University of Birmingham. His many publications include The Cambridge Ancient History XIV, Late Antiquity, Empire and Successors A.D. 425-600 (Cambridge University Press 2000) co-edited with Averil Cameron and Bryan Ward-Perkins; with Jeff Childers and Claudia Rapp, Mark the Deacon: The Life of Porphyry of Gaza (Translated Texts for Historians 89, LUP 2025); with David Gwynn and Richard Price, Documents of the Early ‘Arian’ Controversy and the Council of Nicaea (Translated Texts for Historians 91, LUP 2025) and Monastic Saints of Constantinople, 350–500
The Lives of Isaac, Hypatius, Marcellus, Domnica, Auxentius, and John the Calybite (Translated Texts for Historians 92, LUP 2026).