?This elegant volume, appropriately dedicated to the memory of Louis Robert, is a significant contribution to the reawakened interest in the political and social dimensions of Christian martyrdom, as well as in the martyrological narratives themselves. The narratives of the early Christian martyrs (?) have increasingly come under the scrutiny of classical scholars and historians of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Their perspectives have two broad fronts. The first is a renewed attention to the texts as objects of literary criticism. (?) The other facet is marked by the increasing involvement of historians of the Roman empire with the problem of Christian martyrdom. (?) Iconoclasm and martyrdom are a powerful and inflammatory mix, but it is precisely this combination with which Glen Bowersock (?) confronts the reader in the four concise, precisely argued essays that constitute the core of this book. (?) The leanly written essays form sequential investigations into the creation of the Christian concept of martyrdom, the manner of its literary recollection, the civic function of martyrs, and, finally, the problem of martyrdom and suicide. They are supplemented by an equal number of valuable appendixes on technical matters. (?) Bowersock prefers an ?archaeological? analysis of Christian martyrdom that seeks to understand the phenomenon more firmly within the context of Roman imperial society and to make the behavior of the martyrs both more Christian, and, significantly, more Roman than is usually allowed.(?) He insists that the shift in the fundamental meaning of the word ?martyr? (Greek: ?marts?) from its bare original sense (of a ?witness? to events or in courtroom proceedings) to its signification of a peculiar concept of death and suffering was one that took place in tandem with the very novelty of the Christian practice. (?) In the imperial urban context in which martyrdom arose, Bowersock argues that it was the experience of Roman trial and judicial procedure, and especially the formal interrogation before the governor or judge, that was critical to the making of Christian martyrdom. (?) During the formative phases of Christian martyrdom, it was not the values of this (Hellenistic - ND) world, but rather the peculiar value that the Roman social order of the western Mediterranean placed on the noble suicide that so informed Christian behavior. In Bowersock?s view, this Roman moral context of self-annihililation was so important that ?without the glorification of suicide in the Roman tradition, the development of martyrdom in the second and third centuries would have been unthinkable.? (?) That his main theses are (?) argued with the clarity and magisterial command of the original sources that is characteristic of the author will make this book a pivotal work in the impending debates over the meaning of Christian martyrdom.? (BRENT D. SHAW in THE CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW, 1996, pp.488-491). From the library of Prof. Carl Deroux.