The 'Golden Age of Patristic Literature', the fourth and fifth centuries provides a mass of material which carries weighty literary and theological significance. Christian rhetoricians began to produce a new literature which had classical styles and genres but Christian content. The Constantinian revolution had reinforced the tendencies for Christians to come from the educated literary elites and to adapt classical modes of writing to Christian ends. History, for Eusebius, had become a kind of apologetic, an alternative method of proof that Christianity was true. Little of the Christian literature of the fourth and fifth centuries escapes influence from the classical traditions of antiquity, yet little of it can be analysed neatly according to the classical genres. The descriptions 'apologetic' and 'dogmatic' both appear as subsequent classifications, and raise questions about genre, and the point of generic analysis.

The main directions in the Church's development had been established in the first three centuries of its existence. The Church entered the fourth century with a set of beliefs and an organizational structure which gave it a recognizable identity. The Constantinian revolution gave a huge new impetus to the Church's spread and to the growth of its public importance. Christianity was becoming a way to prestige; conformity could pay. Christians came gradually to occupy public office and to achieve prominence at the imperial courts. Until the end of the century, however, Roman society remained very mixed. The new social relations of the fourth-century Empire brought greater mobility and provided opportunities for the advancement of new men. Political, cultural and religious exclusiveness merged to give rise to a new sense of Romania which was synonymous with civilization and Christianity. By the middle of the fourth century Christianity had gone a very long way in assimilating the dominant culture of pagan Romans.