The third century has been seen as an ‘age of anxiety’, when people were driven to find comfort in religion.31 The idea has been challenged, but the surviving writings of the literate elites do show a new interest in personal religion, remote from the traditionalist respect for the old gods and the cultured cynicism which in easier times had been the received wisdom for aristocrats like Celsus. The worship of the sun became steadily more dominant, a natural universal symbol to choose in the brilliant sunshine of the Mediterranean. So Christianity was not the only religion to talk of oneness,
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