Heresiology was the combative theological genre for asserting true Christian doctrine. Rhetorical techniques such as labeling, and literary genres such as intellectual catalogues can be examined in historical context to reveal not only social or religious attempts at expulsion, but also theological negotiation with contemporary cultural problems of multiplicity and difference in Roman society. The increasing classification of error reflected the dynamism of the theological tradition as well as the general codification of Roman life and thought during the later empire. Like many products of late antiquity, heresiology was a hybrid of various local cultural and religious traditions that had been placed in dialogue by the unified Roman empire. The development of handbooks of heresies or the diptychs of holy ancestors were the expansion and public codification of early individual polemical techniques. The demonisation and exaggeration of the teaching of Pelagius theology was part of a means of excluding not only actual teaching, but theological possibilities, from orthodoxy.