The re-evaluation of classical education (paideia) recurred throughout the Roman period, reaching a particularly fevered pitch during the late fourth century, as the empire became Christian. The political consequences of Christian learning become particularly clear in the debate between two learned, Latin-speaking Christians who translated Greek works: Jerome and Rufinus. In the course of their acrimonious conflict over the theological legacy of Origen, these two prominent intellectuals resorted to name-calling: Jerome accused Rufinus of being unlearned, and Rufinus claimed that Jerome’s erudition signalled impiety. These accusations over education, culture, and linguistic expertise convey a deeper anxiety over the nature of knowledge and power at the dawn of the Christian Roman Empire. To what extent can Christians appropriate and transform the knowledge of ‘others’? When is translation an act of piety and when it is an act of hubris? What kinds of cultural capital will be valued in a newly Christian world, where classical paideia is valued and held suspect at the same time?