The number of Roman sarcophagi without explicit Christian iconography conventionally dated to the fourth century is not commensurate with any reasonable estimate of the number of well-to-do pagans. This article explores several possible explanations for the anomaly. One approach would be to attempt to correct the archaeological record by finding errors in the religious classification of monuments that exaggerate the Christian corpus, adding non-Christian sarcophagi that have escaped published inventories, or establishing a systematic misdating of pagan sarcophagi. Alternatively, the preserved monuments could be taken as an accurate reflection of original production, the shortfall implying some change in commemorative habits specific to non-Christians. The author concludes that neither of these theories is likely to reduce the pagan sarcophagus deficit substantially. Instead, the shortfall is ascribed mainly to differential rates of preservation. This hypothesis is consistent with certain medieval practices of reuse that suggest a higher probability of survival for antique sarcophagi bearing Christian imagery.

中文翻译：

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所有的异教徒都去哪儿了？4世纪罗马的非基督教石棺

传统上可以追溯到四世纪的没有明确基督教肖像的罗马石棺的数量与任何对富裕异教徒数量的合理估计都不相称。本文探讨了该异常的几种可能解释。一种方法是尝试通过在纪念碑的宗教分类中发现夸大基督教语料库的错误来纠正考古记录，添加未公布的清单的非基督教石棺，或确定异教石棺的系统错误日期。或者，保存完好的纪念碑可以被视为原始生产的准确反映，不足之处意味着非基督徒特有的纪念习惯发生了一些变化。作者得出结论，这些理论都不太可能大幅减少异教石棺的不足。相反，短缺主要归因于不同的保存率。这一假设与某些中世纪的再利用实践一致，这些实践表明带有基督教图像的古董石棺的存活概率更高。