Late antique philosophy grew out of the mé'lange of cultures and traditions flourishing during the Augustan pax Romana. It took its quintessential attributes in the pressures besetting the late Roman Empire, and it quietly came to an end when the Mediterranean no longer linked but divided the shores it washed, becoming a barrier separating the Islamic Abbasids, the Byzantines and the Frankish empire. According to the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, when the long period of republican civil strife found its resolution in the principate of Augustus, 'old dissensions' and 'national' boundaries disappeared, and ideas then spread easily throughout an empire at peace. Eusebius was referring to Christianity, of course. Numenius, Apuleius' contemporary, even more vividly represents philosophical trends under the Antonines. The failure of the persecution to turn Romans against Christianity shifted power away from the group favouring sacrifice, and provided favourable conditions, not only for the rise of Constantine, but for the empire's acceptance of Christian rule.