This book is more than a biography of Rufinus, or an exploration of Origen and others. Spare, creative, and often blossoming into luxurious, expansive thought, Life challenges us to reconsider the vibrant, complex world of Mediterranean antiquity.--Laura Nasrallah, Buckingham Professor of Divinity and Religious Studies, Yale University From plants to stars, the aliveness of bodies takes center stage here, offering a crucial ingredient in the history of ancient Christianity. A work full of imaginative verve.--Patricia Cox Miller, Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor Emerita of Religion, Syracuse University In Life, Chin invites us into a late antiquity we have never experienced before. At the center is Rufinus of Aquileia, but this is no biography. It is, instead, an exquisitely and brilliantly written story of plants and stones, landscape and weather, water and air, and the stars all illuminated through the words of Rufinus. A reverberant and evocative history of possibility and transformation, with stories that are richly imaginative in the best sense of that word: alive and enlivening. As we become intimate with the late ancient universe through this book, we find ourselves changed.--Kim Haines-Eitzen, Hendrix Memorial Professor of Religious Studies, Cornell University