This book is a comprehensive study of the experience of alienation in its many and
inter-related manifestations as attested in the late-antique East. It situates Christianity's
enduring legacy in its early historical context and explores the way estrangement from all
worldly attributes was elevated to the status of a cardinal religious virtue. The author
analyzes the reasons for the new faith's concern for the marginalized and shows the
contemporary relevance of social utopia as an antidote to alienation. Christianity's
contradictions are also examined as in opposing the existing legal order the followers of the
monotheistic religion inadvertently supported the violence of the imperial authority and its
laws. Further the study focuses on the existentialist and psychological dimensions of
time-honoured metaphors such as Life is a theatre and Dead to the world and investigates
mental illness in late antiquity. Finally the early origins of the modern concept of the self
are traced back to the ideological transformations that marked the slow transition from
antiquity to the middle ages.
