Methodius of Olympus has often been relegated to unique status, somehow cut off from the wider trends of late Imperial literature. This is partially due to the difficult status of his corpus and the opaque nature of his biography, but also partially due to the period in which he lived. Because we do not know much about the late third century, scholars are often left to think about this period very quickly and as a transition. And while there have been many attempts to look squarely at it as a period of political transition, there have been fewer attempts to linger over this period as a holistic literary landscape. The despair of either well-known primary sources or ancient historical narratives to guide such a study has not encouraged scholars to dedicate much energy to such a task, and even those who have tried often ignore the writer who is the subject of this book. In neglecting Methodius, scholarship has also neglected the opportunity to create a fuller picture of the literary world of the third century.