Roman emperor Theodosius II married Aelia Eudocia (pictured), who later helped to protect Greek pagans and Jews from persecution.

Theodosius II, called "the Calligrapher", was Roman emperor from 402 to 450. He was proclaimed Augustus as an infant and ruled as the Eastern Empire's sole emperor after the death of his father Arcadius in 408. His reign was marked by the promulgation of the Theodosian law code and the construction of the Theodosian walls of Constantinople. He also presided over the outbreak of two great Christological controversies, Nestorianism and Eutychianism.

Aelia Eudocia Augusta, also called Saint Eudocia, was an Eastern Roman empress by marriage to Emperor Theodosius II. Daughter of an Athenian philosopher, she was also a poet, whose works include Homerocentones, or Homeric retellings of Biblical stories. After an estrangement with Theodosius, she permanently settled in Jerusalem, where she supported the local population.

Religious practices in ancient Greece encompassed a collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythology, in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices. The application of the modern concept of "religion" to ancient cultures has been questioned as anachronistic. The ancient Greeks did not have a word for 'religion' in the modern sense. Likewise, no Greek writer is known to have classified either the gods or the cult practices into separate 'religions'. Instead, for example, Herodotus speaks of the Hellenes as having "common shrines of the gods and sacrifices, and the same kinds of customs".