The hermeneutic investigation of how religion evolved in late antiquity has expanded since historians widened their cognitive concepts by deploying approaches to the problems drawn from the social sciences. Students of late antique religion have now begun to ask questions about the fabric of polytheisms (how and why a god, ‘all the gods’ or the god are constructed), about their structures, and how they functioned. Since these divine worlds were open to change and naturally adaptable, the configurations of the evidence throw light on empirical processes – a sort of bricolage – that are determined by context rather than matters of dogma. Such research, in a word, is concerned with religion's dynamic development. The ‘organigramme’ of the pantheon that is invoked is always specific to the occasion or the place where it occurs, even if its starting point consists in a hierarchical representation fixed by institutions or conventions. Accordingly, the construction or reconstruction of the pantheon was a continuous process, which might modify the hierarchical order case by case, add new divine figures, or modify the outline of old ones.