The Introduction sketches the history of modern scholarship on Eusebius’ History and situates this book in relation to it. It identifies two broad attitudes towards the first Christian historian in scholarship through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, one critical and one more positive of his historical value. Both, however, were united by an interest in his reliability and a denigration of his literary capacities. More recently, a renaissance in Eusebian scholarship has revealed him as a writer capable of subtlety and sleight of hand. This new scholarly trend has yet, however, to significantly impact study of the History. Eusebius and Empire thus offers a new, full-length treatment, the first to systematically study the History in the light of its fourth-century circumstances and its author’s personal history, commitments, and literary abilities. It tries to answer the question of how and why this author wrote this text. These questions are particularly promising in Eusebius’ case, because his appetite for quotation and regular discussion of other writers allow us to trace his influences and thus to situate his innovative picture of early Christianity within broader intellectual trends in both Christian and wider Graeco-Roman thinking.