al structure to assist in pinpointing relationships between people, time and space (2). MacMullen maintains that the historical records of late antiquity are not only insufficient, but also distorted. The Late Antique historical record seems to falsely suggest that paganism was not only defeated!
             by the end of the fourth century, but had in fact successfully converted all of the pagans. In addition to the fact that the majority of historical records involving a conflict tend to focus on the winner, he asserts that the reason the historical records of Late Antiquity are unintelligible is because ecclesiastical and secular authorities destroyed or distorted them. The Late Antiquity serves as a "permeable membrane" through which historical records must pass. This explains the disproportionate amount of Christian literary material.
             The biases of both Christian and pagan historians had a tremendous impact on their version historical events. This point is clearly illustrated by their distinctly different accounts of the fifth-century crisis of the Roman system. Pagan historians of the period laid the blame for recent disasters squarely on the shoulders of the Christian successors of Constantine. Their incompetence and folly were exposed, the chief folly being the abandonment of rites and gods that had long protected the Roman people. Olympiodorus reported one pagan explanation for the entry of the Goths into the empire (3). Sometime in the fourth century, the governor of Thrace had found, buried, three solid silver statues of bound barbarians. Although locals said they were sacred treasures, consecrated according to an ancient rite, the governor, with imperial approval, had the statues removed. "As soon as the statues were removed, a few days later the whole Gothic nation poured over Thrace and sho!
             rtly afterwards the Huns and the Sarmatians were to invade Illyricum and Thrace also (3)." More important to the pagan case...