Emperor Theodosius had adopted Christianity as the Roman state religion and banned pagan festivals, but the ludi have continued, very gradually shorn of their stubbornly pagan munera.

Honorius had legally ended gladiator munera in 399, and again in 404 CE, at least in the Western half of the Empire.

The last known gladiator fight in Rome occurs on January 1, 404, usually given as the date of the martyrdom of Saint Telemachus, a Christian monk who was stoned by the crowd for trying to stop a gladiators' fight in a Roman amphitheater.

John Cassian was born around 360, likely in the region of Scythia Minor (now Dobruja in modern-day Romania and Bulgaria), although some scholars assume a Gallic origin.

As a young adult he and an older friend, Germanus, had traveled to Palestine, where they had entered a hermitage near Bethlehem.

After remaining in that community for about three years, they had journeyed to the desert of Scete in Egypt, which was rent by Christian struggles.

There they visited a number of monastic foundations.

Approximately fifteen years later, in about 399, Cassian and Germanus had fled the controversy provoked by Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria, with about 300 other Origenist monks.

John Cassian and Germanus had gone to Constantinople, where they appealed to the Patriarch of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, for protection.

John Cassian was ordained a deacon and was made a member of the clergy attached to the Patriarch while the struggles with the imperial family ensued.

When the Patriarch is forced into exile from Constantinople in 404, the Latin-speaking Cassian is sent to Rome to plead his cause before Pope Innocent I.