dominion” (Aen. 4.232). Indeed, as the wings of the Roman eagle overshadowed more and more of the Mediterranean basin, it exercised “authority over every tribe and people and language and nation” (Rev 13:7). Minucius Felix, a second-century Christian, would write of the Romans that “their power and authority has occupied the circuit of the whole world,” referring once again to the concept of the orbis terrarium. “Thus it has propagated its empire beyond the paths of the sun, and the bounds of the