Chapter 3 discusses the process by which Vandal Africa was transformed under Justinian’s reign into a province of the Roman Empire in which the Homoian presence declined and is no longer traceable in the sources. Our understanding of this development depends on two main aspects: the role of religious conflicts before and during the East Roman offensive on Africa and the measures (political, legal, ecclesiastical) taken to change the religious situation in Africa after the defeat of the Vandals.

Chapter 1 provides the broad context of Nicene–Homoian interactions in Africa, including those that preceded the Vandal conquest. It examines the involvement of the African church in the Trinitarian controversy of the fourth century and its intertwining with the Donatist crisis as these experiences explain the later attitude of the African clergy toward Vandal Homoianism.

The book is devoted to the relationships between Nicene and Homoian Christianities in the context of broader religious and social changes in post-Roman societies from the end of the fourth to the seventh century. The main analytical and interpretative tools used in this study are religious conversion and ecclesiastical competition. It examines sources discussing Nicene–Homoian encounters in Vandal Africa, Gothic and Lombard Italy, Gaul, and Hispania – regions where the polities of the Goths, Suevi, Burgundians, and Franks emerged. It explores the extent to which these encounters were shaped by various religious policies and political decisions rooted in narratives of conversion and confessional rivalry. Through this analysis, the aim is to offer a nuanced interpretation of how Christians in the successor kingdoms handled religious dissent and how these actions manifested in social practices.

Violence in Nicene–Homoian relations is abundantly attested in Africa and attracts most scholarly attention. Chapter 2 attempts to place the problems of violence and coercion in a larger context and examine issues such the role of wealth and political power in the establishment of the Homoian church in Africa and its ability to spread throughout African society and compete with the Nicene church.

Around 500 CE Colluthus, writing in Greek, and Dracontius, writing in Latin, each composed an epyllion on the Abduction of Helen. However, apart from title, date, and genre, the two works have very little in common. This chapter presents an interpretation of the two poems that connects them with contemporary historical and social developments. On the one hand, the role of Hermione in Colluthus is connected with the changing role of children in late antique society, under the influence of Christian morality. On the other, the attitude towards Vergil in Dracontius is explained from the late antique political context (being after the fall of Rome) and the perspective of the author as an advocate in Carthage under Vandal rule. A comparison between the two poems sheds interesting light on how the ‘antehomeric’ narrative was adapted respectively in the East and the West: in Colluthus' Egypt and in Dracontius' Africa.