the customs, social structures, and deep reflexes of both communities. The oracular pronouncements did not suggest novel approaches to the crisis, nor did they propose unconventional ethical behavior—ethics were not within the purview of the gods. In Asia Minor the crisis of the Antonine Plague left the habitus of the communities intact. In Carthage in the 250s, eighty years after the Antonine Plague, the Christian community responded to a renewed outbreak of plague