This chapter develops a view that casts moral heroism as a specific kind of moral achievement and argues it is superior to the virtue approach to moral heroism. I begin the discussion with J. O. Urmson’s account of moral heroism as overcoming fear, registering the limitations of that account before moving on to Gwen Bradford’s account of achievement as such, which centers on overcoming difficulty. She defends a view of difficulty that consists in the expending of effort, rather than in the surmounting of complexity. Her highly developed account is a good model for analyzing moral achievement, yet it is in need of significant modification in order to function in a specifically moral context. In order to give an account of moral achievement, I argue that Bradford’s key notion of difficulty should be replaced by sacrifice. Moral heroism consists in making high-stakes sacrifices. I develop an account of what sacrificing consists in, identifying features of actions that constitute sacrifices. I show how this concept offers us an account of moral heroism as a kind of moral achievement. I then argue that it significantly outperforms the virtue approach according to the desiderata from Chapter 2: accuracy, related phenomenon, and fitting responses.

This chapter completes the picture of moral heroism the book offers. I address the tension in the account that arises from the combination of my practical necessity explanation of the Non-Optionality Claim and the feature of sacrifices that they are chosen over an available alternative. I do so by distinguishing between ways in which an agent’s choice becomes constrained. Another tension is between the practical necessity explanation of the Non-Optionality Claim and the deontic status of being supererogatory. I show how an action can be practically necessary and supererogatory.

These arguments lead to a more general consideration of the supererogatory status of moral heroism, which unfolds in three phases: first in terms of the reasons and duties we might have to aspire to moral heroism, second in terms of programs designed to socially engineer moral heroism, and finally in terms of parents or caretakers raising children to become moral heroes. In all three phases, I argue that the goals of becoming morally heroic or helping others to do so are not simply universally laudable and fitting. This is an important quality of my view that is again an improvement over virtue thinking, which positions moral heroes more straightforwardly as models for emulation.

Chapter 4 turns to Cyril’s response to Julian in Against Julian. It provides an extensive overview of the narrative structure behind Cyril’s arguments against Julian. After surveying the setting, characters, and plot that frame Cyril’s arguments, it examines two leitmotifs that are crucial to Cyril’s reasoning and then provides examples of “narrative moments” in Against Julian. In broad outlines, the chapter reviews the well-known contours of emerging orthodoxy in the early church. But as a focused analysis of Against Julian, it also provides broad coverage of a text that has been understudied to date and further illustrates how a “narrative structure” lies implicit in something like a polemical treatise. It shows, finally, that despite Cyril’s exemplary status with most Christian communities he still had unique and idiosyncratic perspectives, some of which play noteworthy roles in Against Julian.

This second chapter on Julian’s Against the Galileans traces the second movement of Julian’s strategy of narrative subsumption: charting the apostasies that cascaded from, first, the Hellenic and, then, the Hebrew traditions, culminating in the Christian sect. Having pointed out the basic compatibility between Hebrew and Hellenic doctrine, Julian emphasizes next the most significant difference between the two: the glaring inferiority of the Hebrew to the Hellenic tradition. This basic framework makes sense of Julian’s claim that Christians are double apostates: Christians started out as Hellenes, and their first mistake was of degree rather than kind: they opted for the lesser Hebrew tradition, rather than the Hellenic one. They latched onto a deviation within the Hebrew tradition, however, which became the grounds for their second apostasy, now away from the Hebrews, to create a new sect.

Chapter 6 turns to a cluster of broadly cosmological episodes: the events and agents of creation, the texts that tell of these events and agents, and the authors who wrote these more and less authoritative texts. It focuses on two stretches of Cyril’s Against Julian, broadly concerning the modes of divine management of the cosmos but covering topics ranging from the breadth of human diversity to the Mosaic sacrificial system to the Tower of Babel and Homer’s Aloadae giant brothers. Cyril’s consistent objective is to dislodge the characters of the gods from Julian’s Hellenic story while also demonstrating how much better sense they make within the Christian story as fallen demons. That “all the gods of the nations are demons” (LXX Ps 95:5) was, of course, a common apologetic line. But this re-narrating claim is more than a polemical trope, structuring in fact a surprising range of arguments.

Atonement is a critical component of the cultic system described in Leviticus 1–7 and 16. Purification of sin and thanksgiving offerings shape the worship of Israel. This chapter describes the theology of sacrifice and atonement in Leviticus, the specific offerings, and how atonement has been interpreted by later commentators.

Chapter 4 is in part an examination of a Mycenaean divine Potnia, one affiliated with the “labyrinth,” the Potnia of the dabúrinthos (δαβύρινθος). The labyrinthine space with which she is associated is an Asian cult notion introduced from Anatolia to Balkan Hellas. This chapter also examines the Rājasūya, a Vedic rite of consecration by which a warrior is made a king and a likely cult counterpart to the Mycenaean initiation of the wanaks.

Chapter 2 examines the Vedic sacrificial post called the yūpa and its role in ritual performances. A Mycenaean Greek cognate term and comparable ritual implement lies behind the Linear B form spelled u-po – that is, hûpos (ὗπος). Among other topics treated in this chapter are the Mycenaean deity called the po-ti-ni-ja, a-si-wi-ja, the Asian Potnia, and the u-po-jo po-ti-ni-ja, the Potnia of the u-po (that is, húpoio Pótnia [ὕποιο Πότνια]), a term matched exactly by Sanskrit patnī-yūpá-.

Chapter 6 examines Iranian cult and myth as evidenced in the Nart sagas of Transcaucasia, but also among Scythians as well as in Zoroastrian tradition, including the psychotropic cult substances Haoma (Iranian) and Soma (Indic). The Greek polis of Dioscurias in the Caucasus is explored as a place where Hellenic and Indo-Iranian divine-twin myth and cult affiliation meet, as indeed they do in the Pontic polis of Sinope. Aeolian connections are conspicuous at both locales.

The purity of the Israelite tent had a direct relationship to the purity of God’s tent, or the tabernacle. Understanding purity is critical to understanding Leviticus’ theology of holiness and holy space. This chapter discusses the difference between moral and ethical purity as well as the dietary laws and other commands for Israel around maintaining their holiness.

Chapter 7 examines the sheep’s fleece filter used in the preparation of Soma. A cult ideology in which such an implement played an important role was preserved for some time in Iranian tradition in the Caucuses, ultimately giving expression to Greek ideas about the presence of fleecy filters impinged with gold in the vicinity of Dioscurias – rationalizing accounts of the Golden Fleece of Aeolian Argonautic tradition. Particular elements of the Golden Fleece myth find parallels in Indic poetic accounts of the performance of Soma cult. The common Hellenic and Indic elements constitute a shared nexus of ideas that earliest took shape in Bronze-Age communities of admixed Mycenaean and Luvian populations into which Mitanni Soma ideas had spread via Kizzuwatna. The Golden Fleece mythic tradition, with its geographic localization in Transcaucasia, is a Mycenaean Asianism that took shape in Asia Minor under Indic and Iranian influences and that continued to evolve among the Iron-Age Asian Greeks.

Chapter 5 considers the Indic divine twins, the Aśvins (Aśvínā), or Nāsatyas (Nā́satyā), their association with the Indic Dawn goddess Uṣas, and their place in the Indic Soma cult. Discussion then shifts to the kingdom of Mitanni in Syro-Mesopotamia, a place into which Indic culture was introduced as Indo-Iranian peoples migrated southward through Asia, as also at Nuzi. There is good lexical evidence for the presence of a Soma cult in Mitanni, and Soma-cult ideas appear to have spread out of Mitanni, through Kizzuwatna, into the Luvian milieu of western Asia Minor, where such ideas would almost certainly have been encountered by resident Mycenaean Greeks, intermingled biologically, socially, culturally, and linguistically with Luvian populations. With that spread certain elements of Soma-cult ideology were mapped onto Anatolian cult structures.

Chapter 1 examines Pylos tablet Tn 316 in depth, giving particular attention to the Linear B forms spelled po-re-na, po-re-si, and po-re-no-, and related Sanskrit forms, and to the especial closeness of post-Mycenaean Aeolic to ancestral Helleno-Indo-Iranian in regard to this matter.

Chapter 3 examines the Mycenaean wanaks and lāwāgetās, figures responsible for leading Mycenaean society in specific ways and who correspond notionally to figures implicit in Indic and Iranian social structures – figures who descend from still more ancient Indo-European antecedents charged with the task of leading society through the spaces of the Eurasian Steppes and in migrations southward out of the Steppes.

This chapter discusses the evolution of pagan iconography in Late Antiquity, examining how depictions of traditional gods and rituals changed between 300 and 700 CE. It challenges earlier interpretations that associate this period with artistic decline, instead emphasising continuity and transformation in the representation of pagan themes across various media. Drawing on legal, literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence, the chapter provides a comprehensive perspective on the artistic and religious landscape of the period. It discusses key examples such as the Arch of Constantine, which repurposed older sacrificial motifs, and later fourth-century artworks like the Symmachi ivory diptych, which continued to depict pagan sacrifices despite the growing influence of Christianity. The chapter also examines the selective destruction of pagan imagery, particularly the mutilated reliefs from the Aphrodisias Sebasteion, demonstrating how sacrificial depictions were specifically targeted. The chapter concludes by noting that while sacrificial iconography faded, other pagan motifs – especially those associated with gods like Dionysus and Venus – remained prevalent in mosaics, silverware and textiles. This enduring presence underscores the adaptability of pagan imagery, which continued to influence artistic traditions long after the fall of the Roman Empire.

These sermons were aimed at inspiring believers to imitate the martyrs, who themselves imitated Christ, their archetype. Christ’s voluntary suffering and self-sacrifice defeated the devil and death, expiated our sins, and restored to believers the possibility of eternal happiness, with God’s grace. Augustine modifies the traditional definition of “martyr” as “witness” to make martyrdom contingent on suffering and self-sacrifice: the essence of martyrdom and mandatory for all who would be Christian. He provides examples of this ideal behavior, such as calmly accepting the loss of one’s property. Suffering proves the cause for which martyrs died is true; otherwise they would have failed their ordeals. Augustine draws on Cyprian, recognizing a literal martyrdom in times of persecution, and in times of peace, a spiritual martyrdom fought daily against temptation and sin. These sermons also document the obstacles Augustine faced when preaching: not only correcting the errors of the Donatists, Manichees, and Pelagians, but also accommodating his flock’s limitations. He thus presents an inclusive church, a concord of different levels of expertise ordered hierarchically.

This chapter analyses the auction milieu’s cultural responses to war-induced developments. Within societies deeply entrenched in the mentality of mobilisation and sacrifice, the commercialisation of art stirred moral apprehensions, feelings of possession, and envy, both among the general public and within the art industry. Debates on nouveaux riches and profiteers underscored the construction of antagonist figures during the war, highlighting threats to the market from both external and internal forces. The widespread destruction of heritage also catalysed nationalist feelings, deepening the cultural fragmentation of a formerly integrated trade sphere. By scrutinising the biographies of dealers, examining art’s vulnerability in wartime upheaval, and exploring the interplay between art and finance, this chapter also outlines how the war acted on the tensions characteristic of each market and brought them to a conflagration.