THE SOCIETY FOR LATE
ANTIQUITY
presents
Shifting Frontiers in
Late Antiquity VI:
Romans, Barbarians, and
the Transformation of the Roman World
An Interdisciplinary
Conference
The University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
March 17-20, 2005
Visigothic Buckle, courtesy the
Spurlock Museum, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
THE SOCIETY FOR LATE
ANTIQUITY
presents
Shifting Frontiers in
Late Antiquity VI:
Romans, Barbarians, and
the Transformation of the Roman World
An Interdisciplinary
Conference
The University of
Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
March 17-20, 2005
COLLECTED ABSTRACTS
Ralph W. Mathisen
Danuta Shanzer
Editors
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................3
ROSTER OF PARTICIPANTS ...................................................................................5
CONFERENCE PROGRAM ...................................................................................8
ABSTRACTS .................................................................................14
MAP .................................................................................32
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This conference was
supported by the generous assistance of
College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences, UIUC
The Medieval Studies
Program, UIUC
with additional support
provided by
The Department of
History, UIUC
The Department of
English, UIUC
The School of Art and
Design, UIUC, and
The Department of the
Classics, UIUC
Local Arrangements and Program Coordination:
Ralph Mathisen (UIUC)
Danuta Shanzer (UIUC)
Program Committee:
Thomas Burns (Emory
University)
John Eadie (Michigan
State University)
Hal Drake (Univ. of
California-Santa Barbara)
Ralph Mathisen (UIUC)
Danuta Shanzer (UIUC)
Spurlock Museum Exhibit
of Merovingian Artifacts:
Douglas J. Brewer,
Museum Director
Christa Deacy-Quinn,
Collections Manager
Barbara
Oehlschlaeger-Garvey, Guest Curator
Beth Watkins,
Education/Volunteer Coordinator
Jennifer White,
Registrar
Bailey Young, Guest
Curator
Publicity:
Rick Partin
Contact Information:
ralphwm@uiuc.edu,
shanzer@uiuc.edu
Student Assistants:
Michael Collart
Jen Edwards
Chris Fletcher
Karl Goetze
Marcus Heckenkamp
Andrew Johnston
Becky Muich
Stephanie Renguso
Sarah Scalziti
Loula Strolonga
Erik Thompson
Angela Zielinski
Webpages:
www.sc.edu/ltantsoc/sf6reg.htm,
home.earthlink.net\~ruricius\sf6reg.htm
The encouragement and
support of the following faculty and administrators, all from the University of
Illinois, also is gratefully acknowledged:
Robert Barrett, Dept. of
English
John Buckler, Dept. of
History
William M. Calder III,
Dept. of the Classics
Martin Camargo, Head,
Dept. of English
Jesse Delia, Acting
Provost, Univ. of Illinois
Karen Fresco, Dept. of
French
Kirk Freudenburg, Chair,
Dept. of the Classics
Peter Fritzsche, Chair,
Dept. of History
Anne D. Hedeman,
Director of Medieval Studies
Stephen Jaeger, Dept. of
Germanic Languages and Literatures
Marianne Kalinke, Head,
Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Richard Layton, Dept. of
Religious Studies
Sarah Mangelsdorf,
Acting Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Megan McLaughlin, Dept.
of History
Richard Mitchell, Dept.
of History
Robert Ousterhout, Dept.
of Architecture
Bruce Rosenstock, Dept.
of Religious Studies
Larry Schehr, Associate Dean,
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Carol Symes, Dept. of
History
Charlie Wright, Dept. of
English
ROSTER OF PARTICIPANTS
Presenters
Scott de Brestian
Univ. of
Missouri-Columbia
scd274@mizzou.edu
Amelia Robertson Brown
Univ. of
California--Berkeley
arbrown@socrates.berkeley.edu
Richard Burgess
Univ. of Ottawa (Canada)
rburgess@uottawa.ca
Gillian Clark
Univ. of Bristol
(England)
gillian.clark@bristol.ac.uk
Elizabeth Digeser
Univ. of
California-Santa Barbara
edigeser@history.ucsb.edu
Jan Willem Drijvers
Univ. of Groningen
(Netherlands)
j.w.drijvers@let.rug.nl
Linda Ellis
San Francisco State
Univ.
ellisl@sfsu.edu
Steve Fanning
Univ. of Illinois at
Chicago
sfanning@uic.edu
Salim Faraji
Claremont Graduate University
salim.faraji@cgu.edu
Moshe Fischer
Tel Aviv Univ. (Israel)
fischer@post.tau.ac.il
David T. Fletcher
Indiana Univ.
dfletche2004@yahoo.com
Greg Fisher
McGill Univ. (Canada)
greg.fisher@mcgill.ca
Walter Goffart
Yale Univ.
walter.goffart@yale.edu
Cam Grey
Univ. of Chicago
cgrey@uchicago.edu
Katharine C. Hunvald
Univ. of
Missouri--Columbia
kcha93@mchsi.com
Edward James
University College,
Dublin (Ireland)
edward.james@ucd.ie
Michael Jones
Bates College
mjones@bates.edu
Kimberly Kagan
Yale Univ.
kimberly.kagan@yale.edu
Young Kim
Univ. of Michigan
yrkim@umich.edu
David Klingle
Florida State Univ.
davekexpl@yahoo.com
Noel Lenski
Univ. of Colorado
lenski@colorado.edu
Scott John McDonough
UCLA
sjm1@ucla.edu
Jason Moralee
Illinois Wesleyan Univ.
jmoralee@iwu.edu
Luis Garcia Moreno
Univ. of Alcala de
Henares (Spain)
luis.garcia@uah.es
Ekaterina Nechaeva
Univ. of Siena (Italy)
neekaterina@mail.ru
Barbara
Oehlschlaeger-Garvey
Early American Museum,
Mahomet IL
bgarvey@earlyamericanmuseum.org
\
Patrick Périn
Musée des Antiquités
nationales (France)
patrick.perin@culture.gouv.fr
David Riggs
Indiana Wesleyan Univ.
David.Riggs@indwes.edu
Michele Renée Salzman
Univ. of
California--Riverside
msalzman@ucr.edu
Johanna K. Sandrock
Louisiana State Univ.
jsandr1@lsu.edu
Jeremy Schott
Duke Univ.
jms13@duke.edu
Andreas Schwarcz
Univ. of Vienna
(Austria)
andreas.schwarcz@univie.ac.at
Yuval Shahar
Tel Aviv University
(Israel)
syuval@gvat.org.il
Cristiana Sogno
Cornell University
csogno2002@yahoo.com
Dmitry Starostine
Univ. of Toronto
(Canada)
dstarostin@mail.ru
Kevin Uhalde
Ohio Univ.
uhalde@ohio.edu
Edward Watts
Indiana Univ.
edward.watts@gmail.com
Andrew W. White
Univ. of
Maryland--College Park
awhite@wam.umd.edu
Mary Williams
San Mateo
marywilliams30@hotmail.com
Bailey Young
Eastern Illinois Univ.
cfbky@eiu.edu
Hartmut Ziche
Univ. of Antilles and
Guyana (France)
hgz1000@cus.cam.ac.uk
Session and Plenary
Chairs:
Scott Bradbury
Smith College
sbradbur@email.smith.edu
Thomas Burns
Emory Univ.
histsb@LearnLink.Emory.Edu
William M. Calder III
Univ. of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
wmcalder@uiuc.edu
Hal Drake
Univ. of
California-Santa Barbara
drake@history.ucsb.edu
Kirk Freudenburg
Univ. of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
kfreuden@uiuc.edu
Judith Evans Grubbs
Washington University
jsgrubbs@artsci.wustl.edu
Stephen Jaeger
Univ. of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
csjaeger@uiuc.edu
Edward James
University College,
Dublin (Ireland)
edward.james@ucd.ie
Richard Mitchell
Univ. of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
rmitchll@uiuc.edu
Sarolta Takacs
Rutgers University
stakacs@rci.rutgers.edu
Elizabeth C. Teviotdale
W. Michigan Univ.
elizabeth.teviotdale@wmich.edu
Dennis Trout
Univ. of Missouri
troutd@missouri.edu
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
THURSDAY, MARCH 17
10:00 Tour of the Classics Library (419a
Main Library) by Bruce Swann,
Classics Librarian
(General Lounge,
210 Illini Union)
1:00-2:45 Registration and Refreshments
1:30-2:30 Tour of the Spurlock Exhibit of
Merovingian Artifacts by Barbara
Oehlschlaeger-Garvey (Early American Museum)
2:45-3:00 Welcomes:
Charles Stewart, Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences
Anne D. Hedeman, Director, Program in Medieval Studies
Paula Kaufman, University Librarian
SECTION I: DEFINING BARBARIANS
3:00-4:30 SESSION I: Literary Perspectives on
Barbarians and Romans
Chair: Kirk Freudenburg
(UIUC)
Mary Williams (San Mateo)
"Polybius and Ammianus on Barbarians"
Cristiana Sogno (Cornell U.)
"Barbarians as Spectacle: An Interpretation of Symmachus, Oratio
2.10-12"
Jason Moralee (Illinois Wesleyan U.)
"'The Barbarous-Sounding Enemy: Commemorating the Defeat of Barbarians in
a Recently Discovered Epigram from Late Roman Petra"
4:30-5:00 Refreshment Break
5:00-6:00 SESSION II: Internal 'Barbarians'
Chair: Judith Evans
Grubbs (Washington U.)
Yuval Shahar (Tel Aviv U.) (Israel)
"Unifying or Dividing the Barbarians? Diocletian, the Jews, and the
Samaritans"
Andrew W. White (Univ. of
Maryland--College Park) "Proper Care and Feeding of the Wild Mime: A Study
in Domestication from Late Antiquity"
6:00-7:00 Reception
7:00-8:00 Plenary Lecture introduced by
William M. Calder III (UIUC)
RICHARD BURGESS (Univ. of Ottawa)
(Canada) "Romans, Barbarians, and the Fall of the Roman Empire"
FRIDAY, MARCH 18
(Third Floor, Levis Center)
7:30-8:30 Continental Breakfast
8:30-10:00 SESSION III: Religion and the
Construction of Roman/Barbarian
Identity
Chair: Sarolta Takacs
(Rutgers U.)
Jeremy Schott (Duke U.)
"Porphyry's Allegorical Interpretations of Barbarian Religion and
Philosophy and the Construction of Identity in the Later Roman Empire"
Elizabeth Digeser (Univ. of
California-Santa Barbara) "Hellenes, Barbarians, and Christians: Religion
and Identity Politics in Diocletian's Rome"
Young Kim (Univ. of Michigan)
"A Theological and Historical Definition of Barbarism in the Panarion
of Epiphanius of Cyprus"
10:00-10:30 Refreshment Break
10:30-12:00 SESSION IV: Artistic Manifestations
of Romanitas and Barbaritas
Chair: Elizabeth C.
Teviotdale (Medieval Institute, Western Michigan U.)
Moshe Fischer (Tel Aviv U.) (Israel)
"Assimilation, Acculturation, Barbarization: The Corinthian Capital in the
Eastern Mediterranean"
Johanna K. Sandrock (Louisiana State U.)
"Cernunnos ego sum: The Myth of Actaeon on Provincial Roman
Funerary Reliefs"
Katharine C. Hunvald (Univ. of
Missouri--Columbia) "Breaching a Seventh-Century Artistic Frontier: The
Warnebertus Reliquary"
12:00-1:30 Catered Lunch in the Levis Center
SECTION II: ROMAN-BARBARIAN ENCOUNTERS
1:30-3:00 SESSION V: The Transformation of
Identity in Post-Roman Britain
Chair: Stephen Jaeger
(UIUC)
Michael Jones (Bates College) "Text,
Artifact and Genome: The Disputed Nature of the Anglo-Saxon Migration into
Britain"
Greg Fisher (McGill U.) (Canada)
"The Transformation of Romanitas: Creating a New Identity for
Post-Roman Britain"
David Klingle (Florida State U.)
"Romano-British vs. Anglo-Saxon Identity in England: The Evidence of
Burials"
(Colonial Room, 103 Illini Union)
3:00-3:30 Refreshment Break
3:30-6:00 SESSION VI: The Construction of
Identity in Western Frontier Zones
Chair: Edward James
(University College, Dublin) (Ireland)
Linda Ellis (San Francisco State
U.) "To Be or Not To Be Roman: Geographic Approaches to Analyzing Human
Relatedness in the Lower Danube Region (2nd-7th Centuries)"
Scott de Brestian (Univ. of
Missouri--Columbia) "Vascones and Visigoths: Creation and Transformation
of Identity in Northern Spain"
Luis Garcia Moreno (Univ. of Alcalà de
Henares) (Spain) "Building an Ethnic Identity for a New Gothic and Roman
Nobility: Cordoba, 615 A.D."
Dmitry Starostine (Univ. of Toronto)
(Canada) "Barbarians and/or Romans: Discourses of Justice in Merovingian
Court Verdicts and Narrative Sources"
Featured
speaker: Bailey Young (Eastern Illinois
U.) "Auguste Moutié and the Pioneering Days of Merovingian
Archaeology"
6:00-7:00 Reception
7:00-8:00 Plenary Lecture introduced by Bailey
Young (Eastern Illinois U.)
PATRICK PERIN (Musée des Antiquités
nationales) (France) "Identity and Ethnicity in the Era of Migrations and
Barbarian Kingdoms in the Light of Archaeology in Gaul" (co-author M.
Kazanski)
SATURDAY, MARCH 19
(Colonial Room, 103 Illini Union)
7:30-8:30 Continental Breakfast
8:30-10:00 SESSION VII: Romans, Barbarians and
Religion in North Africa
Chair: Dennis Trout
(Univ. of Missouri--Columbia)
Gillian Clark (Univ. of Bristol)
(England) "Augustine and the Merciful Barbarians"
Kevin Uhalde (Ohio U.)
"Barbarian Traffic, Demon Oaths, and Christian Scruples: Augustine, Epist.
46-47"
David Riggs (Indiana Wesleyan U.)
"Vandal Contributions to the Christianization of North Africa"
10:00-10:30 Refreshment Break
10:30-12:00 SESSION VIII: Romans and Barbarians
Beyond the Eastern
Frontiers
Chair: Hal Drake (Univ.
of California--Santa Barbara)
Salim Faraji (Claremont Graduate U.)
"Rome and Kush: Cultural Encounters on the Egyptian Southern
Frontier"
Scott John McDonough (UCLA) "Were the
Sasanians Barbarians? Roman Writers on the 'Empire of the Persians'"
Jan Willem Drijvers (Univ. of Groningen)
(Netherlands) "Rome's Image of the 'Barbarian' Sassanians"
12:00-1:00 Lunch on your own
SECTION III: ROMANS, BARBARIANS, AND POLITICS
1:00-3:30 SESSION VIIII: Romans and Barbarians
in Imperial Politics
Chair: Thomas Burns
(Emory U.)
Kimberly Kagan (Yale U.) "Spies Like
Us: Treason and Identity in the Later Roman Empire"
Michele Renee Salzman (Univ. of
California--Riverside) "Symmachus and the 'Barbarian' Generals"
Edward Watts (Indiana U.) "Pope
Leo the Antichrist and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire"
Edward James (Univ. College, Dublin)
(Ireland) "Rex Francorum, Rex Romanorum Revisited"
Steve Fanning (Univ. of Illinois at
Chicago) "Reguli in the Later Roman Empire and the Germanic
Kingdoms"
3:30-4:00 Refreshment Break
4:00-6:00 SESSION X: The Barbarian Invasions
Chair: Scott Bradbury
(Smith College)
Amelia Robertson Brown (Univ. of
California--Berkeley) "'The Overthrow of the Temples and the Ruin of the
Whole of Greece': Rhetoric and Archaeology in Barbarian Invasions of Late Roman
Greece"
David T. Fletcher (Indiana U.)
"Constantine III and the Barbarian Invasion of Gaul"
Featured
Speaker: Walter Goffart (Yale U.) "The Three Meanings of 'Migration Age'"
7:00-11:00 Banquet, Dance, and Open Bar (Illini Union 170)
Guest dance instructors:
Ron Weigel and Susanna Vasquez Weigel
SUNDAY, MARCH 20
(Colonial Room, 103 Illini Union)
SECTION IV: SOCIETY AND ECONOMY
8:30-11:00 SESSION XI: Social and Economic
Manifestations of Roman-
Barbarian Encounters
Chair: Richard Mitchell
(UIUC)
Ekaterina Nechaeva (Univ. of Siena)
(Italy) "The Problem of Deserters in Roman-Barbarian Diplomatic Relations
in Late Antiquity"
Noel Lenski (Univ. of Colorado)
"Slavery, Captivity, and Romano-Barbarian Interchange"
Hartmut Ziche (Univ. of the Antilles and
Guyana) (France) "Barbarian Raiders and Barbarian Peasants: Models of
Ideological and Economic Integration"
Cam Grey (Univ. of Chicago)
"The ius colonatus as a Model for the Settlement of Barbarian
Prisoners-of-War in the Late Roman Empire?"
Andreas Schwarcz (Univ. of Vienna)
(Austria) "Visigothic Settlement, Hospitalitas and Army Payment
Reconsidered"
11:00-12:30 Farewell Brunch & Business
Meeting of the Society for Late Antiquity
COLLECTED ABSTRACTS
SECTION I:
DEFINING BARBARIANS
SESSION I: Literary Perspectives on Barbarians and Romans
Polybius and Ammianus on Barbarians
Mary
Frances Williams
San
Mateo
Although some
scholars have observed that Polybius and Ammianus write in the same
historiographical tradition, none has noted their similar descriptions and uses
of barbarians. Polybius' attitude was new in historiography since he defined
barbarism not by ethnicity or custom (Hdt. 8.144), or Greek language (Thuc.
2.83.5), but rather by culture, education, and law, which, he believed,
indicated a civilized man (Polyb. 1.65.6-8; 18.37.8-9). Polybius uses barbaroi
as a generic term for those on the edge of the world. Ammianus calls those
beyond the borders of Gaul, in Germany, and across the Danube barbarians (20.4.7;
20.8.16; 20.4.1; 21.4.8; 21.3.3; 21.9.1; 22.7.7; 24.3.4). In Polybius those
under Greek rule, such as the Persians, are not barbarians. Ammianus, likewise,
calls the Persian King Sapor, who attacks Rome, a barbarian, but does not use
the term either of auxiliaries who fight for Rome (eg., 20.4.2) or of the
Persians.
I focus on five
parallels: (1) both say justice derives from education and barbarism from lack
of education (e.g., Polyb. 1.656-8; R.G. 28.1.6, Huns are ignorant,
unreasoning beasts (31.2.11); but the Armenian eunuch Eutherius was educated
and upright (16.7.5) and Roman soldiers are trained in war (27.10.13); (2) both
authors are Stoic and connect irrationality, madness, disorder, and barbarism
(e.g, Polyb. 32.3.6-9; R.G.: insane man like beast 27.6.1; 27.7.4; Sapor
20.7.8; Goths 31.2.11; Saxons 30.7.8; Moors 27.9.1; Austoriani 28.6.4); (3)
barbarians in both are lawless (Polyb. 18.37.8-9; 21.40.2; 21.40.2; 3.3.5;
10.31.10-11; R.G. 31.2.10). Polybius believes that tyranny is barbaric
because it defies law and justice (2.59.4-6), the civilized man loves freedom,
and good laws produce good private behavior (6.47.1). Law and justice are the
basis of empire in Ammianus (14.1.4; 19.12). Barbarians rely not on law but on
violence (17.12.17); the Odrysae roam[ed] about without civilization or laws
(27.4.10). (4) Both use the wild beast simile to describe barbarians (Polyb.
1.67.4-11; 1.81.7, 10; R.G., 31.15.2; 14.4.1; 31.8.9; 16.5.17-18); (5)
Both historians transfer barbarian qualities and the wild beast simile to
rulers, and use education as an explanation. Philip V was cruel, unjust,
treacherous (13.3.1), and bestial (15.20.3-4). Polybius also says terror
teaches men to be beasts (23.15.2-3; 1.81.5). Constantius was treacherous
(21.3.4-5) and he and Gallus condemned men without law or justice (e.g., 14.7;
14.9.3-6). Valens was unjust because uneducated (31.14.5-8; 29.2.18); Probus
unjust (27.11.1-2); Valens (29.1.27), Rusticus (27.6.1), Gallus (14.9.8),
Paulus (14.5.6), and Procopius (31.7.9) were beasts; Maximinus was bestial
because of poor education (28.1.6).
Because Polybius
praises the Romans' laws (1.65.6-8) and links the Persian War and the Second
Punic War (9.9.5-8; 3.3.5), he raises Roman civilization to the level of the
Greek. The Greeks and Romans share common virtues and are opposed to barbarians
(21.40.1-4). In Ammianus, the Roman emperors claim to be freedom fighters
against the barbarians (20.5.5). But since Ammianus continually alternates his
descriptions of barbarians with the cruel despotism of the emperors who are
like barbarians, he shows that Roman civilization had become barbaric (e.g.,
14.6; 20.4.6) through brutality, disregard for law, and lack of education.
Barbarians as Spectacle: An Interpretation of
Symm. Or. 2.10-12
Cristiana Sogno
Cornell University
The focus of this
paper will be the second Oration delivered by Symmachus in honor of
Valentinian I on the occasion of the Emperor's third consulship, shared with
his brother and co-regent Valens in 370. The main theme of the panegyric is the
praise of Valentinian's fortifications along the Rhine. Valentinian's vigorous
defense of the limes is commended as the best investment of
tax-revenues: the tax-money is well spent for granting securitas imperii,
and a revealing contrast is drawn between the annual levies and the
"eternal" advantages of a strong frontier against the barbarian
menace (Symm. Or. 2.1, quae sumis, annua sunt, quae condis, aeterna).
Among the great enterprises witnessed by the Roman senator while campaigning
with the emperor, the building of the fort at Altaripa (2.4 and 2.18-22), the
grandiose line of fortifications along the Rhine (2.1 and 2.26), and an actual
fight against the barbarians (2.10-12) are given special emphasis. However, the
fight against the Alamanni amounts to little more than a skirmish, in which the
clearly superior Roman forces easily put to flight a disoriented group of
barbarians, and Valentinian was able to show his clementia rather than
his military prowess. The description of the battle strongly suggests that, if
Valentinian did not actually stage the battle, he carefully picked his enemy to
impress his guest and senatorial delegate. Military service was not part of the
regular experience of a late Roman aristocrat, and the safety of the Empire was
entirely the responsibility of the Emperor and his officials (and had been so
for centuries). As his correspondence shows, Symmachus was well-acquainted with
the staged violence of gladiatorial games, but had no direct experience of the battlefield.
But did his literary knowledge of military affairs lead Symmachus to suspect
that he was being fed a staged performance?
"The Barbarous-Sounding Enemy": Commemorating the
Defeat of Barbarians
in a Recently Discovered Epigram from Late Roman Petra
Jason
Moralee
Illinois
Wesleyan University
The 1998 American
excavation of the area defined as the northern ridge of Petra led to the
discovery of a church. In one of the rooms adjacent to the church was found a
ten-line hexameter epigram inscribed on a block. The inscription was in
secondary use, proving that it had been inscribed sometime before the
construction of the church complex, tentatively dated to the fifth century. The
epigram is of interest because it praises a man for routing the "barbarous-sounding"
enemy and saving the inhabitants of the city, the surrounding region, and
indeed the province of Palaestina Salutaris. In connection with this event, a
certain man (perhaps Orion or Dorion) paid for the construction of a defense
work, perhaps related to the wall adjacent to the church.
As this potentially
important inscription has received little notice and is as yet not fully
restored, it is important to draw attention to the text and to offer
suggestions for the historical circumstances that may lie at the root of the
narrative. First, I will provide a range of dates for the inscription based
primarily on the mention of the provincial name Palaestina Salutaris, which
apparently was organized after 358, but was renamed Palaestina Tertia by 388,
thus establishing a date in the middle-late fourth century. Second, I will
attempt to identify this "barbarous-sounding" enemy and the
"war" that is commemorated by the epigram. An attractive possibility
is the famous revolt of the Arab queen Mavia in 378, a conflict broad enough to
justify the scope of the "war" described in the epigram. If this
identification is correct, the inclusion of Petra in the defense of the east
against Mavia's forces increases our understanding of the conflict itself, the
history of late Roman Petra, and the local characterization of Arabs according
to their spoken language.
SESSION II: Internal 'Barbarians'
Unifying or Dividing the Barbarians? Diocletian, the Jews
and the Samaritans
Yuval
Shahar
Tel
Aviv University
Diocletian's
reforms in a number of fields B military,
economic, administrative, cultural etc. B were intended to
re-unite the Roman Empire after the chaos which preceded him. In many respects
he actually achieved this goal. His religious policies played a particularly
important role in this. In the eastern Roman Empire, including Palestine, these
religious policies tended towards the extreme, and included methodical
persecutions of Christians. The results were often the opposite of those he had
intended.
This paper will
examine a secondary process that took place in Palestine. Here, and
particularly in its capital Caesarea Maritima, two similar 'barbarian' ethnic
and monotheistic groups lived side by side: Jews and Samaritans. The Roman
religious policies of Diocletian strengthened the tendencies to division
between these two 'barbarian' groups. The legal status of the Jews in the Roman
Empire was long-established, and they were allowed to live according to their
own laws under an autonomous leadership. The evidence for the legal status of
the Samaritans is not so clear, but it seems that, at least de facto,
they enjoyed an autonomy similar to that of the Jews. Thus, up to the last
decade of the third century, the borderlines between Romans and Jews were very
similar to the borders between Romans and Samaritans. This impression is in
keeping with the detailed evidence in the Talmud concerning the relationships
between Jew and Samaritan on the one hand, and the attitude towards the
gentiles on the other hand.
Up to the beginning
of the 3rd C. CE, the Jews of Palestine tended to relate to their
Samaritan neighbors as distant relatives. During the 3rd C. however tendencies
among Jews to reject the Samaritans increased, but the latter were still
perceived by Jews as nearer to themselves than to non-Jews: the conceptual
borderline left the Samaritan nearer to the Jew and separated both these
distant relatives from the gentiles. Towards the end of the 3rd C.
and at the beginning of the 4th C., the frontiers shifted. Jewish
religious law and traditions pushed the Samaritan over the line and placed him
next to the gentiles. This process is clearly expressed in the Jewish religious
ban on drinking the wine of the Samaritans. For generations the drinking of
gentile wine had been forbidden, for fear that it had been used in pagan cult,
but Samaritan wine had been permitted. Now the Palestinian Talmud says,
"When Diocletian the king came here he decreed, 'all the nations, except
the Jews, have to make [pagan] libations', and because the Samaritans made
[pagan] libations, their wine was banned."
It is clear that
Diocletian wanted to strengthen and broaden the common ground between Romans
and barbarians alike, and to reduce the number of exceptions B in this case the
Jews. His policy was aimed at re-defining the borders between Romans and
various ethnic barbarian groups, but he was not aware of its possible
repercussions upon the relationships between two neighboring ethnic groups, the
Jews and the Samaritans. The Talmudic evidence demonstrates that shifting the
borders between Romans and Samaritans, by demanding pagan libations, hastened
the process of shifting the borders between Jews and Samaritans.
Proper Care and Feeding of the Wild Mime: A Study In
Domestication From Late Antiquity
Andrew
W. White
University
of Maryland -- College Park
This presentation
will attempt to expand concepts of Roman vs. barbaric identity by discussing
the evolution in status of the mime, arguably the most conspicuous alien within
the Empire's borders. Excluded from Caracalla's much-hyped edict of
"universal" citizenship, mimes were regarded as outside the purview
of the ius civile and B like other aliens B remained subject
to magisterial coercitio. Unable to quit the stage and subject to both
economic and sexual exploitation, the mime in Late Antiquity had occupied a
shadowy, effectively alien world for centuries.
The rise of
Christianity and the new faith's vision of universal brotherhood (among
converts, at least) initiated an often contentious process that sought to
integrate theatre artists into the fabric of Roman society. In reviewing the
Theodosian and Justinianic codes, as well as patristic writings and canons of
the early Church councils, a picture emerges of a mass rebellion among late
antique theatre artists, many of whom sought to leave the profession in search
of social respectability and citizenship. Unfortunately, this profound internal
revision of the concept of Romanitas has gone under-investigated:
theatre histories prefer an epic battle between the forces of good B
"Theatre" B and evil B
"Church," while Byzantine histories tend to focus on Procopius of
Caesarea's mythic whore-cum-Empress Theodora. Both approaches result in
caricatures of the late antique actor, and have failed to address adequately
the questions of who the mimes of Late Antiquity were, what happened to them,
and why.
Beyond the legal
and canonical realm, the results of this social upheaval are reflected in two
unique specimens of late antique literature: Choricius of Gaza's oration in
defense of the mimes, and the hagiographic sub-genre of the mime martyrology. A
detailed analysis of Choricius' Apologia Mimorum, translated into
English for the first time by the present author, reveals a concerted effort to
humanize the actor and, as part of that process, to reveal some of the more
basic aspects of her/his craft. And a survey of tall tales about martyred mimes
-- who convert to Christianity live, onstage, and usually in the middle of
satiric baptism sketches B reveals the
challenges inherent in the Church's attempts to "convert the
inconvertible" and integrate them into the Christian community.
PLENARY LECTURE
Romans, Barbarians, and the Fall of the Western Empire
R.
W. Burgess
The
University of Ottawa
For a number of
centuries now scholars, philosophers, amateur historians, journalists, retired
generals, and just ordinary people have been writing books and articles
claiming to have discovered the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire:
over-taxation, lack of morale, barbarian invasions, military weaknesses,
dependence on slavery, lack of technological advance, chance or accident,
economic collapse, inflation, economic corruption, moral corruption, oppressive
bureaucracies, old age, an ineffective legal system, climatic change, soil
exhaustion, class warfare, Christianity, race mixture, systematic extermination
of the most capable and brightest in Roman society, disease, fate, fascism,
communism, widespread and systemic lead poisoning, the natural and inevitable
collapse of complex systems, and so on. I now include myself among them. I
begin first by wholeheartedly accepting of the ideas of both decline and fall,
and I then describe the actual circumstances of the fall itself. I then proceed
from first principles to analyze the multiple causes of that fall. This paper
is not intended as the final word (I wish!) but as the starting point for a
renewed discussion of what once was the most important yet recently has become
the most neglected event of Late Antiquity.
SESSION III: Religion
and the Construction of Roman/Barbarian Identity
Porphyry's Allegorical Interpretations of Barbarian Religion
and Philosophy
and the Construction of Identity in the Later Roman Empire
Jeremy
Schott
Duke
University
The Neoplatonic
philosopher Porphyry of Tyre was one of the most influential figures in later
Greek philosophy. In addition to writing commentaries on Plato and Homer, an
introduction to Aristotle's Categories, and editing Plotinus' Enneads,
Porphyry was also interested in the traditions of Egypt, Phoenicia, Persia, and
other forms of "barbarian wisdom." Whether cast positively as a form
of ancient "multiculturalism" or described more negatively as the
"orientalization" of classical Greek thought, the interest of late
ancient philosophers in "barbarian wisdom" has often been seen as a
fruitful site for the cross-cultural exchange of literature, religion, and
philosophy in the later Roman Empire. Drawing on the insights of post-colonial
theorists concerning constructions of identity and power in imperial contexts,
this paper examines three Porphyrian texts (On Abstinence, On
Statues, and On Philosophy from Oracles) in order to understand the
ways in which this late ancient philosopher applied techniques of allegorical
interpretation to these foreign religious and philosophical traditions.
Far from being a
balanced and level exercise in cross-cultural appreciation Porphyry's
intellectual project was based on classic asymmetrical distinctions between
Greeks and barbarians. While Porphyry thought that the ancient traditions of
all peoples were philosophically valuable, he did not think that all peoples
were of equal value. Allegorical interpretation draws an important distinction
between inferior "literal" or "corporeal" meanings and
higher, "intellectual" or "universal" meanings. I argue
that Porphyry applies these distinctions to non-Greek mythologies and religious
iconographies in order to recover "universal" philosophical truths
from barbarian artifacts by distinguishing them from their "native"
Egyptian, Phoenician, or Persian contexts. By making a distinction between (for
instance) the ancient wisdom hidden in Egyptian mythology and native Egyptians,
Porphyry's interpretive methods paralleled and in many ways dovetailed with the
division of the Roman Empire into metropolitan center and provincial periphery.
Porphyry's interpretive strategies, I go on to argue, are integrally related to
the way in which Porphyry constructed his adopted identity as a Greek
philosopher. His own transformation from "Malchus," a Syrian
provincial from Tyre, to "Porphyry," preeminent Greek philosopher
living in Rome marks an erasure of his "native" identity that
parallels his treatment of "barbarian" traditions. By situating
Porphyry's allegorical readings of "barbarian" traditions in the
context of the social and material realities of imperial power and subjugation,
this paper encourages scholars to view ethnic and cultural identity as fluid
and dynamic, rather than fixed and monolithic, and challenges the divisions
between "philosophical" and "political" fields of knowledge
and action that underlie many discussions of political and religious change in
late antiquity.
Hellenes, Barbarians, and Christians:
Religion and Identity Politics in Diocletian's Rome
Elizabeth
Digeser
University
of California, Santa Barbara
Although Eusebius
of Caesarea found the tremendous acculturation of Christianity in the late
third century to be a reason for celebration (Eus. HE 8.1), certain Neoplatonist
followers of Plotinus believed in response that Christian belief and practice
was undermining the divine legal foundations of the various ethnic communities
(ethnoi) that comprised the Roman polity. In the view of these
philosophers, this situation not only jeopardized the relationship between
these ethnoi and the divine and so challenged the foundation of Rome
itself, but also threatened the potential for particular individuals to draw
closer to the divine through Greek philosophy. The best evidence for their
position exists in fragments of Against the Christians (ca. 293) and the
Philosophy from Oracles (ca. 302) by Porphyry of Tyre. Thanks to
Arnobius (2.11, 62), we know that Porphyry's ideas were shared among a circle
of "new men."
Drawing on the
recent work of J. O'Meara, this paper will argue that these philosophers, and
Porphyry in particular, felt compelled to address these issues publicly.
Adopting Plato's model society from the Laws, their goal was to
encourage the Tetrarchy to repress Christian practice. They did so by arguing
for the validity of traditional "barbarian" religio as a first
stage in the soul's enlightenment, where truths about the divine were conveyed
symbolically through rites and images. For the many, these practices would
ensure that their communities were well-protected in that they were governed in
harmony with divine law. For the few, perceiving the truth about the divine in
these traditional rituals prepared them to understand the deeper truths of
Greek philosophy. Not only was the engagement with philosophy good for these
individual souls, it was also good for the many in that one of the
philosopher's duties was to advise the sovereign about the content and
enforcement of divine law. There is substantial evidence that these arguments
circulated widely ca. 300, and that Porphyry presented some of them at
Diocletian's court in 302. So, although we often think of Greeks as denigrating
the peoples whom they termed barbaroi, in the view of these pagans
living under the aegis of Rome, barbaroi were an essential fiber in the
makeup of society -- a society whose fabric they believed it was Christianity's
goal to rend.
A Theological and Historical Definition of Barbarism
in the Panarion of Epiphanius of Cyprus
Young
Kim
University
of Michigan
Traditional
perceptions of barbarian identity in the Roman world focus on cultural,
linguistic, and geographic differences. The world of Late Antiquity experienced
new realities in Roman and barbarian interaction, and the construction of
barbarian identity consequently shifted away from established factors of
differentiation. The introduction of Christianity into outside communities
certainly added another complicated dimension to the formation of barbarian
identity. Modern scholars have closely examined in particular the adoption of
what was traditionally called Arian Christianity among certain barbarians and
how doctrinal allegiances affected the social and political climate of the
later Roman Empire. Thus belief became an added ingredient in the recipe for a
barbarian. However, my aim is not to revive any discussion of barbarians and
Christianity per se; rather, I will discuss how one particular Christian,
Epiphanius, conceptualized barbarian identity in theological and historical
terms and how his geographical orientation may have also colored his perception
of the reality of barbarians in the late fourth century. Scholars have written
a great deal especially concerning Christian attitudes toward barbarians in the
Latin West. I will argue that Epiphanius' eastern orientation afforded him a
different perspective.
The Panarion was
an encyclopedic heresiology consisting of eighty different heresies, each of
which Epiphanius sought to expose and refute. Curiously the first four entries,
entitled "Barbarism," "Scythianism," "Hellenism,"
and "Judaism," were not heresies at all. Together these four entries
constituted a history of humanity and civilization, with a particular emphasis
on the development of sin, culminating in Greek culture and heresy. In his own
reconstruction of human history, Epiphanius revealed that ever since Adam and
Eve had been ejected from Eden, barbarians had always existed. Two factors
defined barbarism in Epiphanius' eyes: first, the function of natural law as a
moral guide among humans and second, the absence of any developed sectarian
beliefs or practices. All men at some time were barbarians, and the subsequent
developments of various civilizations were actually morally and spiritually
worse than those of the earliest men. Epiphanius offered this rather
pessimistic view of humanity in order to highlight the longevity and purity of
true Christian belief from Creation down to his own time.
The Panarion
was written in the early 370s, just before the disaster at Adrianople.
Pressures on the eastern frontier had not yet damaged the empire's stability,
so eastern Christians may very well have had a different perspective on
barbarians from Western ones. Epiphanius wrote from the safety of the island of
Cyprus in a time of relative stability. However the ensuing events of the late
fourth century brought to the forefront the reality of barbarians existing
within the empire. I will examine how other Christian authors, especially those
in the east, considered barbarians in a Christian world, and I will compare
their perspectives to Epiphanius'. Ultimately, Epiphanius' unique perspective
became less and less meaningful as the century drew to a close and the social
and political realities of the Roman empire changed dramatically.
SESSION IV: Artistic Manifestations of Romanitas
and Barbaritas
Assimilation, Acculturation, Barbarization?
The Corinthian Capital in the Eastern Mediterranean
Moshe
Fischer
Tel
Aviv University
Changes which occurred
in the Roman world throughout its long history have been the object of many
scientific works dealing with political, social, ethnic and cultural
transformations. To the latter we propose to add transformations in
architecture and its decoration, focusing on the Corinthian capital. This
architectural decorative element became from its very beginning a typological
and chronological feature reflecting artistic and implicitly social
developments, changes, and interactions. Introduced to the Middle East during
the Hellenistic period Corinthian capitals were designed according to Classical
Greek and Orientalizing principles reflecting the syncretistic trend of the
last three centuries BCE. Roman expansion in the Mediterranean and its
establishment during the Empire had their impact on the diffusion of the
Corinthian building style, including the Corinthian capital. The development
signalled now is of great importance: a more or less canonical/orthodox type
("the 'Vitruvian' capital), which was assimilated by the provinces mainly
following the extensive marble importations spread over the whole Empire, was
undergoing changes resulting from the Hellenistic-Orientalizing process and
cultural contacts with the regions at the fringes of the Empire. Components of
the capitals completely changed their original meaning, and their decoration
became the reflection of an 'art pour l'art' tendency. Artistic changes
in the capitals reflect transformations in the design and purpose of the
buildings themselves. An insight into the design of the Corinthian capital
during the Byzantine period and its transfer into the Early Islamic period
leads to interesting thoughts not only concerning the longue durée of
this artistic element but also its ability to accommodate itself to religious
changes and artistic taste. This paper attempts to interpret these changes as
reflecting, on the one side, assimilation and, on the other side, acculturation
and even barbarization of societies that tried to keep alive an earlier,
"Roman," way of life.
Cernunnos ego sum: The Myth of Actaeon on Provincial Roman Funerary Reliefs
Johanna
K. Sandrock
Louisiana
State University
Reliefs depicting
the myths of the Greeks and Romans are characteristic of funerary monuments
from the provinces of Noricum and Pannonia in the second and third centuries
CE. Of 150 reliefs and 61 mythological scenes thus identified, the myth of
Actaeon appears on seven monuments. One depicts Actaeon spying on the goddess
Diana while she bathes, another six show his punishment for this transgression.
In varying degrees of artistic skill and preservation, Actaeon appears with
horns sprouting from his head and dogs attacking him. Scholars have remarked on
the appropriateness of this punishment scene in a funerary context, and usually
interpret it according to the tenets of Pythagoreanism, i.e. as punishment for
upsetting the balance between gods and men. In light of comparative
iconography, the Pythagorean interpretation may be only a piece of a much
larger puzzle.
The use of Greco-Roman
myth on provincial tombstones has traditionally been attributed to the
systematic Romanization of these provinces. Recently, however, the extent of
Romanization has been called into question, due to the one-sided nature of the
argument that the Romans entered conquered lands and spread Roman institutions
and customs. While the iconography of the Actaeon myth is undoubtedly
Greco-Roman, an overlooked factor in the interpretation is the reception of
these funerary monuments by the natives of the province.
The natives of
Noricum and Pannonia were primarily Celts, who had their own mythology and
belief system. They worshiped a hero similar to Hercules (another frequent
figure on provincial funerary monuments), and their god of the Underworld was
Cernunnos, depicted in art sporting deer antlers. Thus, when the natives saw a
depiction of Actaeon, they may not have recognized the figure as the Actaeon
familiar to the Romans from Greek mythology, but as Cernunnos, the Celtic god
of the Underworld.
The purpose of this
iconographic ambiguity may be explained by the unique position of Noricum and
Pannonia within the Roman empire. During the second and third centuries CE,
these provinces provided a buffer zone between Italy and the barbarian tribes
who lived north and east of the Danube. Because the native Celts had put up
such strong resistance to Roman rule, the Romans had to ensure that the
provincials would support Rome against barbarians invading from the north.
Benefits of Roman citizenship may have been subtly suggested, possibly through
the medium of art that transcended the language barrier between provincial and
Roman.
On the one hand,
Cernunnos would be an appropriate subject in a funerary context, and the
similarity in iconography may have demonstrated that the Celts and Romans were
ideologically close to one another. Underlying the Celtic image of Cernunnos
was the threat of punishment, represented by the myth of Actaeon, if the
natives turned against the Romans and sided with the barbarians. That art was
used as a medium of communication between Romans and native peoples has
far-reaching implications for the study of Roman provincial relations, and for
the interpretation of other mythological funerary reliefs in the provinces of
Noricum and Pannonia.
Breaching a Seventh-century Artistic Frontier: The
Warnebertus Reliquary
Katharine
C. Hunvald
Columbia,
Missouri
Decorative styles
of the 7th C. in western Europe generally fall into two large categories on either
side of an artistic and cultural divide. In one are found symbols and designs
derived from the artistic traditions of late Rome and early Byzantium. These
were popular throughout the Mediterranean region. In the other are symbols and
designs that prevailed in the Germanic kingdoms and can be traced back to the
art of the migrations. The Warnebertus Reliquary, an elaborate example of early
medieval metalwork, physically embodies both these decorative traditions, and
at the same time displays symbols of the Christian faith. By combining all
these elements on a single object, the reliquary reveals an instance in which
both artist and patron deliberately crossed an important artistic frontier.
The reliquary is a
luxurious Christian cult object named for the client who commissioned it c.
677. An inscription on the base plate informs us that Warnebertus was both an
abbot and a bishop. An individual fitting that description, who lived at a time
consistent with the style of the work, was abbot of the important monastery of
Saint-Medard in Soissons, as well as bishop of that Neustrian city in northern
France. Almost all that we know of Warnebertus can be found in a ninth-century
supplement to the Vita of Saint Medardus. Two recent studies offer an
explanation of the reliquary's unusual surface decoration that juxtaposes
designs and symbols drawn from very different cultural traditions. Close
examination of certain objects traditionally linked to the reliquary have
revealed the existence of a group of patrons who chose to demonstrate, through
the ornament and its placement, that they were Germanic in origin, Christian in
faith, and sophisticated in their attraction to designs typical of
Mediterranean decorative arts. The probable geographic origin of this type of decorated
object has been established by the important discoveries of the workshops in
the Crypta Balbi in Rome.
The Warnebertus Reliquary also is evidence of breached frontiers in another way. The earliest customers of this blended decorative style were probably Lombards, though Warnebertus himself was most probably a Neustrian. His reliquary may have been made in northern Italy and exported to the north whole, in sections or as models for casting. It could also have been begun in Italy and completed farther north, perhaps in Burgundy. In either case, it was carried north by an itinerant artist or commercial traveler, many of whom were responsible for the dissolution of artistic frontiers, as they sought clients at church councils and fairs throughout western Europe.
SECTION II:
ROMAN-BARBARIAN ENCOUNTERS
SESSION V: The Transformation of Identity
in Post-Roman Britain
Text, Artifact and Genome:
The Disputed Nature of the Anglo-Saxon Migration into
Britain
Michael
E. Jones
Bates
College
The historiography
of the Anglo-Saxon conquest and settlement has been shaped by a dialectic
defined by two extreme alternatives. Was the Anglo-Saxon migration into Britain
a mass popular movement that reshaped even the biological basis of British
history? Or was it a relatively small-scale migration of eventually triumphant
military elites?
Limited literary
and archaeological evidence may be used to support conflicting theories.
Recently, evidence from both ancient and modern DNA has joined archaeological
and textual information in the debate concerning the origin and identity of the
English. This paper offers a historiographical overview and summary of the
current state of the debate.
The Transformation of Romanitas:
Creating a New Identity for Post-Roman Britain
Greg
Fisher
McGill
University
The relationship
between the Britons and their Roman colonizers has recently come under fresh
scrutiny, with both archaeologists and historians re-assessing the impact of Romanitas
B the complex
quality of "being Roman" B on diverse aspects
of culture, religion and political organization in Britain. In particular, a
variety of theories have emerged that address the problematic question of
concepts of identity in sub-Roman Britain (400-900). Some scholars now argue
that the British maintained a distinct core of tribal identity which, predating
and surviving the Roman occupation, insulated the British from "becoming
Roman" (C. Snyder & N. Higham), a process aided by the failure of
Roman urbanism in Britain (R. Reece). Conversely, others suggest that a strong
nucleus of Romanitas persisted well into the seventh century, indicating
that the Britons consciously identified themselves with the Empire long after
its dissolution on the Continent and the evacuation of its administrators and
soldiers from the British Isles (K. Dark). A reappraisal of two key late
antique British texts, however B the De excidio
Britanniae of Gildas (c.540) and the anonymous Historia Brittonum
(c. 830) B offers a different
view: far from being somewhat passive recipients of either Romanitas or
"traditional" tribal values, the British adapted and re-used elements
of Romanitas with immense creativity to produce not only a new history
for themselves, but also a unique concept of identity which, as an indigenous
product, stood distinctly apart from the new histories written by the Germanic
heirs to empire on the Continent. The analysis of these two texts, as well as
of select Continental sources, emphasizes the extent to which the creation of
identity was an ongoing process as the British struggled to come to terms with
the colonial experience. Gildas, a cleric who had received a "Roman"
education, built on separatist leanings long evident in Britain and which spoke
to the shallow imprint of Romanitas on the culture and society of the
island. Writing of the British as a gens quite distinct from the Romans
and deriding Roman administration and law, Gildas nonetheless admired the Roman
military as the only force capable of successful resistance against the Saxons.
The triumphant leader of the British struggle against the Saxons was thus
symbolically endowed with an imperial lineage and a Roman name B Ambrosius
Aurelianus. Roman military assistance was only acceptable, however, when
offered, and not imposed, and it is possible to see in the De Excidio an
attempt to equate the post-imperial Britons with their erstwhile colonizers.
This process was completed by the Historia Brittonum, a text which not
only provided a Trojan origin myth for the British but also removed Ambrosius
and replaced him with an unambiguously British champion. The Historia confirms
Gildas' rejection of empire B but in resolving
the ambiguities of the De Excidio, the Historia clearly
demonstrates the process by which Romanitas was selectively rejected,
recycled and reused as the British developed their own distinctive sense of
identity in Late Antiquity.
Identity in England: Romano-British vs. Anglo-Saxon:
Evaluating the
Survival of Romano-British in England 400-600 CE
through the Archaeological Study of Burial Practices and
Osteological features
David
Klingle
Florida
State University
In 410 CE the Roman
Empire abandoned the island of Britain, and by 450 CE the Anglo-Saxons had
invaded eastern England. The Anglo-Saxon invasions seemingly led to the
destruction of the Romano-British inhabitants and their society, and by 600 CE
Anglo-Saxon kings ruled all of England. An archaeological analysis of Roman,
British, and Anglo-Saxon burials, though, shows that the Romano-British probably
survived the invasions to become acculturated into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of
the 7th century CE.
As many cultures
practice distinct interment styles, burial analysis is an appropriate technique
for understanding the ethnicity of a population. Scholars have argued that
identifiable features of "Christian" Romano-British burials are
relatively unfurnished inhumations, with west-east orientation, in linear
cemeteries. Typical "pagan" Anglo-Saxon burials are furnished
cremations or extended inhumations, with south-north orientation, in
cluster-based cemeteries. These groups also had goods that were culturally
distinct to them or placed in very ethnically specific arrangements. There have
even been arguments that the Anglo-Saxons were physically quite different than
the Romano-British and that larger, healthier bodies are evidence of their
presence.
Distinguishing
Romano-British from Anglo-Saxon burials and bodies, nonetheless, is
problematic, for the Anglo-Saxons and their Germanic relatives exchanged goods and
ideas with the Romano-British before and after their invasions. Factors such as
trade, tribute, intermarriage, and the reuse of old objects make ethnic
identification difficult. The material needs of a community often overshadowed
its emphasis on religious and cultural "strategies of distinction."
In the case of 5th-7th century England both the
Romano-British and Anglo-Saxons had been reduced to such similar levels of
subsistence and organization that distinctions in health, wealth, and
availability of resources and goods between these populations may have been
quite fluid and difficult for modern scholarship to detect. In conclusion, this
presentation will demonstrate that there existed such a state of economic,
political, and social flux that any attempt to use burial analysis for
judgments about ethnicity in England between 400-600 CE is fraught with
excessive difficulties and must be made with considerable care and scrutiny.
SESSION VI: The Construction of Identity
in Western Frontier Zones
To Be or Not To Be Roman: Geographic Approaches to Analyzing
Human Relatedness
in the Lower Danube
Region (2nd-7th Centuries)
Linda
Ellis
San
Francisco State University
The monolithic
label 'barbarian' raises the questions: What was the basis for the Roman
appellation 'barbarian'? What criteria were used in identification? Could
identity change and how? Modern scholarship on ethnicity is still haunted by
the elusive role of genetic bonds in defining human communities. Therefore,
proposed here is the application of ideas from new approaches to regional
geography for understanding "human relatedness" in Late Antiquity.
The concept of "human relatedness" analyzes groups of individuals
based on unifying cultural, social, and political structures, while separating
them from other communities, defined in a like manner. However, the criteria
for identifying human communities do not remain fixed--all human groupings
evolve over time, categories of relatedness can encroach upon one another, and
individual identification can change within one's lifetime. Equally problematic
for Roman-barbarian relations was Roman metageography itself: Roman
organization and categorization of geographic space, the linkage of peoples (nationes)
with place, and the shifting of military frontiers (limites). The Roman
Empire always felt under threat by disaffected groups, especially migrating,
transhumant, and displaced populations. Part of Roman colonial strategy was to
fossilize mutable populations, making behavioral diversity more manageable, and
to impose an ethnic appellation--whether correct or incorrect--onto people and
subsequently link them to place. The difficulties in reconciling cultural
identity with geographic space were reflected in Roman policies on official
languages, citizenship, religious conversion, urban residence, land ownership
privileges, military recruitment and deployment, and forced resettlement
initiatives. Foreigners were not identified as 'barbarian' exclusively on the
basis of today's standards of language, religion, national origin, etc., but
more probably judged by their pattern of behavior and whether that behavior was
(in)compatible with Roman norms concerning how a people should relate or
'belong' to place. Data from ancient texts and material culture illustrate both
how the Romans continually sought to both fix and transform human relatedness,
and, as a result, how personal alignments of "barbarians" could
change depending on the exigencies of politics, economics, and security under
Roman hegemony.
For the Romans, the
Danube River was a geomorphological limes that was porous to human
migration. The Roman province of Scythia Minor (SE Romania) was a strategic
area enclosed by the northward bend of the Danube as it empties into the Black
Sea and serves as a case-study on Roman-barbarian relationships and how human
relatedness intertwined with geographic space. Inheriting native Iron Age
populations and well-established Greek colonial cities, the Romans added yet
another layer to the cultural mosaic over the course of their five-century
occupation of Scythia Minor (2nd-7th centuries AD). The invasions of Goths,
Huns, and Slavs during Late Antiquity illustrate how their behavior was at
variance, and also could not be reconciled, with Roman paradigms of how these mutable
populations should be identified with space. The movements of foreign peoples
through Scythia Minor--a gateway to the Balkans--and their own evolving
identification with place beginning in Late Antiquity, would contribute to the
tragic consequences of competition over cultural linkage to contested space in
the 20th century.
MAP 1
MAP 2
Vascones and Visigoths: Creation and Transformation of
Identity in Northern Spain
Scott
de Brestian
University
of Missouri-Columbia
During the late 19th
and early 20th century, historians and ethnographers interested in
the origins of the Basque people sought to create a coherent picture from the
scattered literary and archaeological sources. As was the case with many
contemporary inquiries by ethnic minorities into the distant past, these
scholars sought to establish the roots of the Basques as a way to promote
national feeling in the face of Spanish political domination.
The traditional
model developed during this period incorporated both literary and archaeological
evidence. The late medieval Basque population was believed to descend directly
from the Vascones appearing in early medieval sources, and these in turn were
felt to be the same as the Vascones described by Roman geographers. The
discovery of cave sites throughout the País Vasco with Bronze Age occupation
levels followed by Late Roman material was thought to be evidence for an
autochthonous population that remained unchanged from the Bronze Age except for
a late and superficial Romanization. These people reasserted themselves after
the collapse of Roman power and formed the nucleus of the later Basque
population.
Over the last few
decades, both elements of this interpretation have been increasingly
questioned. Linguistic study of personal and place names throughout the region
shows that the vast majority are Indo-European in origin, with few Basque
examples. Close analysis of the cave data indicates that they were temporarily
reoccupied after a long hiatus, and the Late Roman material is not the tail end
of a continuous tradition. The discovery of Iron Age settlements in the
northern País Vasco has shown that there was no cultural divide during the
pre-Roman period. Despite these findings, many elements of the traditional
interpretation continue appear in scholarly works covering the period.
This paper suggests
alternative approaches to understanding the development of the region in Late
Antiquity. During the Early Imperial period, stratification within the region between
the agrarian south and the largely pastoral north was accentuated. This was not
due to resistance by the natives to Roman culture but to economic changes
brought about by Roman rule. The collapse of Roman power led both the north and
south to engage in a process of cultural self-dialogue that accentuated
existing differences. In the Ebro valley, elite identity became associated with
Christianity and the preservation of Roman culture. The lack of
Christianization among the inhabitants of the western Pyrenees and the position
of the region between Merovingian and Visigothic spheres of influence prevented
the political and cultural unity that had bridged these differences during the
period of Roman rule.
From the
perspective of ethnogenesis, the independence of the Vascones during Late
Antiquity should be seen as a gradual process of cultural differentiation
rather than rising Basque nationalism. The expansion of the term
"Vascones" to embrace a wider geographic and ethnic compass is one seen
in other instances in northern Spain and need not imply continuity of early
Iron Age political organization.
Building an Ethnic identity for a New Gothic and Roman
Nobility: Cordoba 615 A.D.
Luis
A. García Moreno
University
of Alcalá, Spain
In A.D. 615, in the
old Roman city of Cordoba, a document was signed establishing a dowry and other
gifts to be given at a marriage. The bride was a noble girl from a Gothic
family, also linked to the Assembly (Curia) of the former Roman colony.
The document contains as much information about Germanic and Gothic as about
Roman legal institutions.
This paper examines
how such a nobility of mixed ethnicity emerged in Cordoba early in the 6th C.
The power and the specially blended ideology of this nobility can help explain
both Cordoba's multiple attempts to obtain and keep a position of political
independence in the mid-6th C, and the extreme importance of the city, briefly
a royal residence, just before it became the seat of the new Islamic power in
Spain.
Barbarians and/or Romans:
Discourses of Justice in Merovingian Court Verdicts and
Narrative Sources
Dmitri
Starostine
The
University of Toronto
This paper will
suggest that descriptions of Merovingian royal justice represented narrative
strategies that had already become common for late antique writers, strategies
long employed to construct the representations of barbarians and Romans.
Depending on their perspective, court verdicts and narrative sources portrayed
settlement of conflicts in remarkably different ways. Using administrative
conventions of imperial rescripts, court records known as placita
described resolution of conflicts in terms that helped legitimize royal
authority as the Merovingian kings' power was waning. These records sought to
construct the Frankish identity in a way that illustrated how kings and
aristocrats followed the traditions of the imperial or provincial courts. But
in episcopal Lives and miracle stories educated monks and bishops used different
narrative strategies and paid less attention to procedures and orderly
character of proceedings. In their descriptions they contrasted Frankish
aristocrats, who respected episcopal authority, with the true
"barbarians" who questioned the ecclesiastical ideals these bishops
promulgated. In their narratives clerics described court proceedings as divine
providence and cast them in terms of Christian rituals that accompanied Easter
and other important church holidays. Depictions of the ways in which kings and
their courts sought to put an end to conflicts thus significantly differed
depending on the type of source. Although the two ways of describing the
workings of the royal court may seem to reveal a dichotomy between barbarian
and Roman identities, closer investigation reveals a more complex picture. Both
strategies of representation originated in the traditions of Roman Late
Antiquity and they can be traced back to authors such as Priscus, Sidonius,
Cassiodorus, and others. Merovingian descriptions of conflict resolution thus
illustrate how, as a result of continuous interaction between the Empire and
the peoples outside it, the dichotomy between "barbarians" and Romans
gave way to other, early medieval, ways of constructing the "Other."
FEATURED
PRESENTATION
Auguste Moutié, a Pioneer of Merovingian Archaeology,
and the Spurlock Merovingian Collection
Bailey
K. Young
Eastern
Illinois University
In 1832 Auguste
Moutié, a young man from Houdan (today in the Yvelines, west of Paris) was
shown a quarry site (La Butte des Gargans) where graves with artefacts had been
turning up for several years. Filled with enthusiasm, he himself bought some of
the land so that he could conduct excavations himself. By 1843, when he made a
report on his excavations to Société archéologique de Rambouillet, he had
concluded that this was a Merovingian site (a dozen years before the Abbé
Cochet published his La Normandie souterraine). His presentation was
supported by an Album with watercolor drawings of artefacts by his
friend, the artist Paul Guégan, today conserved at the Musée des Antiquités
Nationales at Saint-Germain-en Laye. In this, and in published articles, Moutié
displays an understanding of methodological principles for the excavation and
interpretation of cemeteries in advance of his time (he presents a number of
grave assemblages, for example). Many of the Houdan artefacts were conserved in
his personal collection, with precise descriptive labels. This passed after his
death into the hands of Dr. Baudon, a physician and prehistorian in the Oise
region. In 1924 Dr. Baudon's collection was bought for a new museum at the
University of Illinois--Urbana (today the Spurlock World Heritage Museum).
Research on this collection by Barbara Oehlschlaeger-Garvey led to the
discovery that Moutié's collection was preserved by Baudon, and that some parts
of the original tomb assemblages described in the 1843 Album, can now be
identified in the Spurlock collection.
PLENARY LECTURE
Identity and Ethnicity in the Era of the Migrations and the
Barbarian Kingdoms
in Light of the Archeology of Gaul
Patrick
Périn
Musée
des Antiquités nationales, Paris
(co-author
Michel Kazanski, University of Caen)
Ethnogenesis has
profited from spectacular advances on the part of historians, while the
approach of archaeologists remained stationary. It used to be customary to
assume without question that to each barbarian people there corresponded a
specific material culture that permitted its identification. Archaeologists
have now learned from historians. Today more emphasis is placed on the periods
when the migrating populations were resident in one location, for the majority
of them were settlers and were able to leave archeological traces, than on
their periods of movement or raids, when, in general, no material witnesses
could remain. The warlike aspect of the migrations is likewise balanced by all
the peaceful movements of barbarian populations, often less numerous and more
widely-dispersed than was formerly believed. In most cases the ethnic and
cultural heterogeneity of barbarian groups is stressed, as is the cultural role
that mobile international élites played, particularly with regard to fashions.
In the end it is clear that the barbarians who reached the Roman world were a
minority and that their acculturation was inevitable -- except in the few
special cases where their failure to acculturate led to their elimination
(Ostrogoths and Vandals).
It is thus only with
a prudent and a highly critical eye that one ought to assess archeological
criteria that might permit the possible identification of population-groups or
of isolated individuals as of possible foreign origin relative to the dominant
population, be it Roman or barbarian. Funerary practices can in this way be
significant in the later Roman world. Relevant examples would include deposits
of arms in graves, or -- for the very beginning of the Merovingian period --
cases of incineration, tumulus-burials, or adjacent burials of horses. In these
cases it is reasonable to see these as signs of genuinely Germanic settlement.
Other markers of
ethnicity seem equally significant: artificial cranial deformation, a practice
that originated in the Iranian steppe; ceramics made without using the potter's
wheel in a society where such simple handmade ware no longer existed; the
bearing of "ethnic" arms by men, foreign fashions for women (for
example the Danubian style); or also the diffusion in Gaul of the famous
"Second Germanic Animal Style." This enables us rationally to
assessment possible traces of "barbarians" in the archeological
record -- in this particular instance, in Gaul.
From the 4th
to the mid 5th C. archeological evidence permits us to confirm the
presence of the Germanic auxiliaries in the Roman army attested by the written
sources. Occasionally from the middle of the 4th C. certain Germans and eastern
nomads can be identified using archeological remains in places where their
acculturation in a later Roman military context is assured. Finally the second
half of the 5th C. saw the diffusion in the west, in a military context that
was still Roman, of strategies of distinction that perhaps issued from the
Danubian region, e.g. the Tomb of Childeric, father of Clovis, at Tournai.
From the end of the
5th C. and above all the 6th C. other more subtle
indicators allow us, to a certain extent, to identify not movements of peoples,
but the circulation of individuals. For this we are at the mercy of the
evidence for individual contacts suggested by texts (embassies, exogamy,
contacts occasioned by military expeditions) and reflected by women's fashion:
thus in the case of Gaul assemblages of jewelry suggestive of women of
Anglo-Saxon, Alamannic, Ostrogothic, or Visigothic origin.
From the 7th
C., at least for Merovingian Gaul, funerary archeology can no longer make its
contribution to the question of ethnicity, since the significant geographic
distribution of certain finds suggests that regional identities emerged
at that time, as in Burgundy and in Aquitaine, that is to say in the former
Germanic Burgundian (443-534) and Visigothic (418-507) kingdoms.
SESSION VII: Romans, Barbarians and
Religion in North Africa
Augustine and the Merciful Barbarians
Gillian
Clark
The
University of Bristol
Are barbarians
human or animal? Are they rational beings whose language is other than Greek or
Latin, or do they lack recognizable language because they are not rational? Can
they be Christian? Such questions have been debated from Aristotle to the early
modern period: this paper starts from Augustine's presentation of the
barbarians who invaded Rome in 410. "These Romans who are hostile to the
name of Christ - are they not those the barbarians spared on account of Christ?"
(City of God 1.1) Barbari pepercerunt, "the barbarians
spared," is startling enough, and Augustine piles on the vocabulary:
bloodstained raging enemies, frenzied slayers, monstrous urges to wound and
enslave, all are restrained. Why did Alaric's Goths allow Romans to take refuge
in martyr-shrines and basilicas? "It must be ascribed to the name of
Christ, to Christian timesYHeaven forbid that
any sensible man should ascribe it to the ferocity of the barbarians! It was
Christ who terrified, who bridled, who wonderfully calmed those most fierce and
savage minds" (1.7). Here are the stereotypes of the bestial barbarian who
must be controlled by taming, not by persuasion. Christian buildings become
sanctuaries, not because the Goths are Christians, but because Christ's power
is so great. But surely Christianity should transform barbarians? 'There is
neither speech nor language where their voices are not heard; their sound is
gone out into every land, and their words to the ends of the earth.' (Ps.
18[19]. 4) In Confessions (13.10.26) Augustine applied this psalm-text
to God's messengers who fly over the earth, beneath the firmament that is God's
scripture. If God's word has reached the speakers of every language, are there
any barbarians left?
It depends whether
'barbarian' means someone who does not speak Latin (or commits 'barbarisms' by
speaking it badly), or someone who lacks any articulate language. Earlier in Confessions
(11.3.5) Augustine talks of 'a truth without organs of speech or sound of
syllables, a truth neither Hebrew nor Greek nor Latin nor barbarian'. Here
'barbarian' means only 'foreign'; late Platonist philosophers agreed that
'barbarian' wisdom could express the truth. A century before Augustine,
Eusebius (PE 1.4) claimed that Christian teaching transformed the
behavior even of irrational and bestial barbarians. Late Antiquity saw the
first attempts to take barbarians the saving word in their own language. In
Augustine's lifetime, Goths came to church in Milan, and in Constantinople John
Chrysostom preached through an interpreter and found Gothic-speaking clergy.
But did Augustine think seriously about barbarians? City of God misses
opportunities. The savage barbarians of book 1 could reappear in book 19,
motivated, like all living beings however savage, by the desire for peace.
Augustine says (19.7) that language divides, and Latin as a universal language
is a force for peace, but again the barbarians are missing: he discusses the
cost in human life of imposing Latin on the world. Merciful barbarians remain a
contradiction in terms, and barbarians remain a stereotype, not potential
members of the City of God.
Barbarian Traffic, Demon Oaths, and Christian Scruples: Aug.
Epist. 46-47
Kevin
Uhalde
Ohio
University
"Not only on the
frontier, but throughout all the provinces," wrote Augustine of Hippo to a
landowner named Publicola around 397, "the security of peace rests on the
oaths of barbarians." Claude Lepelley recently commented on this letter
and the one that provoked it, in which Publicola asked what danger might come
from contact with pagan rituals, particularly demonic oaths barbarians swore to
Christian estate managers and military officers in frontier regions.
Lepelley argued that Publicola's questions reveal "a crude religiosity and
a strongly mediocre intelligence," and that his understanding of oath
swearing in particular reflected antiquated "scruples." Swearing, of
course, was old-fashioned: neither the rise of Christianity nor the passage of
centuries significantly affected the types of oaths Publicola mentioned.
Moreover, oaths remained part of everyday life in the countryside, along
frontiers, and in diplomacy for many future generations. The first part of this
paper will present a survey of the literary and documentary evidence for oath
swearing, especially where a literary source describes, or a documentary source
survives from, frontier zones. Although indirect or circumstantial evidence
drastically outweighs direct testimony of oath rituals, it will be clear that
the situation Publicola described was an ordinary part of conduct along the
borders of the later empire. Augustine's answer to Publicola's main question,
whether a Christian must refuse to engage barbarians with oaths sworn by
demons, was practical: borders need securing, business needs alliances, and in
this world oaths stand in the place of trust between friends and strangers
alike. The second part of this paper will suggest that his response reflected
how much the practical limits of political and religious authority influenced
the way Christian intellectuals viewed their world. Oaths like those Publicola
described sealed associations that cut across religious, ethnic, and political
boundaries. Publicola's letter exposed to Augustine, not lowbrow religious
attitudes, but the prevalence of pragmatism over ideology, whether the ideology
in question were political or religious. Even while the church famously enjoyed
its triumphal moment, information of barbarians swearing oaths with Christians
caused Augustine to reflect on how much work was yet to be completed within the
frontiers of empire and church. Therefore, by combining an assessment of
Augustine's intellectual stance on oaths with a survey of testimonia to
oaths taken at frontiers throughout the later Roman Empire, this paper will try
to illuminate the form and function of those oaths that officers, landowners,
and bishops all hoped could preserve the peace for a troubled empire.
Vandal Contributions to the Christianization of North Africa
David
L. Riggs
Indiana
Wesleyan University
According to
Salvian, the Vandals viewed their occupation of the African provinces as
divinely ordained and employed various measures to try to suppress vice and
impurity in the cities of late Roman Africa (among which Salvian includes the
persistence of pagan rites). While one cannot take Salvian's rhetoric at face
value, his representation of Vandal efforts in North Africa might prompt us to
ask: what possible impact did these barbarians have on the local narrative of Christianization?
The conventional (if unfounded) conviction that Christianity had already
supplanted Romano-African paganism as the dominant religious force in late
Roman Africa has left scholars little inclined to pose such a question.
Instead, scholarly interest in Vandal contributions to North African religious
life has been limited to their persecution of Catholics. This paper will
demonstrate, however, that if one sets traditional notions aside, there is
sufficient testimony in the literary and archaeological records to suggest that
the Vandals did in fact play a rather significant role in advancing the process
of Christianization in North Africa: both in terms of undermining pagan
infrastructure and practice and in terms of enhancing the architectural
prominence of African Christianity.
SESSION VIII: Romans and Barbarians
Beyond the Eastern Frontiers
Rome and Kush: Cultural Encounter on the Southern Frontier
Salim
Faraji
Claremont
Graduate University
The church
historian Eusebius in his Church History and Life of Constantine
created a portrait of the emperor Constantine that portrayed him as a
divinely-favored king and triumphant conqueror of the known world who had
subdued barbarian nations from Britain on the northern frontier of the Roman
Empire to the Blemmyans and Ethiopians in the south. Despite this portrayal of
the "southern frontier," the Roman Empire in fact co-administered the
Dodekaschoinos in Lower Nubia with the Meroitic-Kushite state of the
"Ethiopians." The major location of cooperation between Rome and Kush
was the temple of Mandulis at Kalabsha. This religious center brought together
and blended Roman and Kushite religious and military culture, creating
Greek-speaking Nubians and Roman soldiers who worshiped Nubian gods. After the
political collapse of the Meroitic state in the mid-4th C. Rome would have to
enter into a complex of political alliances by establishing federate status
with the successor states, the Noubadae and the Blemmyans, in order to secure
the southern frontier. Ultimately, in the mid-fifth century, the Noubadae
defeated the Blemmyans in Lower Nubia and claimed -- in a radical twist of
history -- that the Roman Christian god had given them the victory. In sum,
during Late Antiquity Rome's southern frontier in the Middle Nile Valley was a
zone of cultural encounter and dialectical exchange between two imperial
traditions that exercised strong mutual effects upon each another.
Were the Sasanians "Barbarians?" Roman Writers on
the "Empire of the Persians"
Scott
McDonough
University
of California -- Los Angeles
Late Roman writers
purveyed an image of "barbarians" rooted in a firm belief in their
own society's organizational, military, cultural and moral pre-eminence. Yet their
long established literary paradigm of Roman versus barbarian was fundamentally
challenged by the vexing conundrum of Sasanian Iran. The Sasanians remained
stubbornly un-subdued, and quite possibly un-subduable, by Roman arms or
diplomacy. Moreover, the urban, hierarchical "barbarian" polity of
the Sasanians fundamentally challenged Roman writers' confidence in the
absolute superiority of their own civilization. Indeed, Iranian kings claimed
to be the heirs of Near Eastern civilizations vastly more ancient than Rome,
and the chosen defenders of a Magian faith already ancient at the time of
Augustus and Christ.
In this paper I
will categorize and contrast varied Roman literary responses to Sasanian Iran
throughout Late Antiquity. On the one hand, Roman authors emphasized the
foreign and repugnant aspects of Sasanian culture, eventually extending
Herodotean notions of the conflict of civilizations to encompass an
eschatological vision of the Sasanians as the great apocalyptic foe of
Christian Rome. Yet many of these same authors evince a wary respect for the
sophisticated empire of the Sasanians, likening its organization and military
achievements to past Roman examples, extolling the justice and valor of its
kings, while elevating the Sasanian King of Kings to a state of equality with
the Roman Augusti.
This multiplicity
of perspectives represents the long effort by Roman thinkers to find a place
for the Sasanians in their vision of the world. In their conflicted, and
occasionally contradictory, rhetoric about Sasanian Iran, Roman authors
struggled to define a conceptual category for a aggressive, organized, and,
above all, successful challenge to the universal ambitions of Roman
imperial power. In the end, Roman portrayals of these "barbarians"
owed as much to the limitations of the late Roman literary imagination as they
did to any real contact with their Sasanian foes.
Rome's Image of the "Barbarian" Sassanians
Jan
Willem Drijvers
The
University of Groningen
Modern discussions
about Romans and barbarians focus mainly on northern and western barbarians
such as Alamanni, Franks, Goths, Huns etc.; these peoples are considered the
barbarians par excellence. Rome's "greatest enemy" in Late
Antiquity, the Sassanian Persians, are generally not ranked among the barbarian
peoples. It is even said of the Persians that the Romans considered them their
political and cultural equals. However, this image of the two superpowers of
Antiquity as equals is far too simple. The Persians were in fact thought of as
barbarians but in a more complex way than the northern and western types.
Since the
'invention' of the barbarian in 5th-century Greece, Persian society was
considered inferior to the Graeco-Roman world. In particular for the Romans,
whose first serious contacts with Persian society date from the 1st century
BCE, Persian civilization was an alter orbis. In spite of frequent
contacts B economic,
political, military, and cultural B between the Roman
and Persian empires, there existed a wide gulf between the two powers.
Unfortunately, through lack of sources hardly anything is known about how the
Persians perceived Roman society, but we do know that for the Romans the
Persian world was a world which they found hard to understand, about which they
were prejudiced, and to which they felt superior. This conception of Persian
society in turn helped shape Roman identity as a predominant power. The concept
of Orientalism as formulated by Edward Saïd is not a notion relevant to the
modern world alone.
In the world of
Late Antiquity friendly and less friendly interactions between the Romans and
the Sassanian Persians took place on a regular basis. Whereas the Roman image
of Parthian society has received considerable attention, this cannot be said of
the perception the Romans had of Sassanian society. In my paper I suppose to
reconstruct the way in which the Romans perceived the Sassanian Persians and
their society. Three historiographic sources B the works of Ammianus Marcellinus, Procopius and
Agathias B will form the
basis of my investigation. Environmental, physiognomic, military, and political
aspects were important for shaping the Roman image of the Sassanian
"barbarian" and these factors will be referred to in my analysis. It
is to be expected that the late antique Roman image of the Sassanians and their
society was traditional and consistent with the view the Romans had of the
Parthians in the Late Republic and early Empire. It is also to be expected that
this image conformed to some extent to that of the barbarian but also that it
was more balanced and subtle than the view the Romans had of Huns, Alamanni and
other peoples.
SECTION III:
ROMANS, BARBARIANS,
AND POLITICS
SESSION VIIII: Romans and Barbarians in
Imperial Politics
Spies Like Us: Treason and Identity in the Later Roman
Empire
Kimberly
Kagan
Yale
University
What makes a Roman
or a foreigner a traitor to his country, according to fourth-century Roman
norms? Did the Romans have differential attitudes toward treasonous behavior on
different frontiers in the 4th C.? The idea of defection seems peculiar to the
eastern frontier, as the cases of the Roman official Antoninus to the Persians
in A.D. 359 (Ammianus 18.5) and of Hormisdas from Persia to Rome, show. Are
barbarian kings who enter Roman service at this time seen as defectors to Rome?
Other incidents to investigate include the scutarius who casually
reveals to the Lentienses information about Gratian's movements, the satrap of
Corduene who helps Ammianus spy on Persian movements, a Roman army deserter
employed as a spy by the Persians, and deserters in Africa helping Firmus.
These episodes tell us about permeability of frontiers: which identities can
acceptably be held together, and which cannot, what happens to one's identity
when one betrays the state, and what is considered acceptable political
exchange between two states or peoples.
Symmachus and the "Barbarian" Generals
Michele
Renee Salzman
University
of California, Riverside
Even if many
scholars now agree that the Romans were unconcerned about the ethnicity or
ethnogenesis of particular barbarian groups, the elite literature of the fourth
and fifth centuries is filled with negative, antibarbarian images and
sentiments. So, for example, in his Contra Symmachum the poet Prudentius
summed up the sentiments of many a late Roman aristocrat: "What is Roman
and what is barbarian are as different from each other as the four-footed
creature is distinct from the two-footed or the dumb from the speaking."
(2.816-817) The fourth century panegyrists frequently maligned barbarians as
unreliable, cruel and destructive. Some aristocrats veiled their antibarbarian
sentiments by disparaging barbarians on aesthetic grounds; so, for example,
Sidonius Apollinaris (cf. Ep. 1.7.6; 2.1.2, 5.5.3) mocks barbarians for
their being skin-clad, smelly and uncultured. Despite these negative attitudes
toward barbarians, late Roman aristocrats had to come to grips with the reality
of a growing number of barbarians in their midst. It would become increasingly
necessary for late Roman aristocrats to build friendships with the growing
number of barbarians, and especially with those barbarians in high military
office. But given these antibarbarian sentiments, how could fourth century
Roman aristocratic society encompass the barbarian in their midst? This paper
will argue, using the Letters and Orations of Symmachus, that
late Roman amicitia was exceptionally useful and flexible for building
social networks across the Roman/ barbarian divide. Analysis of Symmachus'
letters to Richomeres (Ep. 3.54-69) and of his letters to Stilicho (Ep.
4.1-14) indicates that the language of amicitia took precedence over any
notions of "barbarian" difference. There is little to suggest the
non-Roman origins or culture of these two important men. The prominence of
these two men led Symmachus to adopt a carefully crafted prose style that
conformed in content and style to the norms of elite epistolography with no
trace of antibarbarian sentiment. Symmachus' letters to Arbogastes (which most
scholars presume were omitted from the collection after the failed usurpation)
were probably likewise cast in the obliquely formal and impersonal language of amicitia.
Symmachus' Letters
to Bauto (Ep. 4.15-16), however, are different. As Ep. 4.15
shows, Symmachus adopts a critical and superior stance to point out Bauto's
serious breach of etiquette: Symmachus did not receive a consular gift from
Bauto at the beginning of his year in office (385). Given Symmachus' position as
Praefectus Urbi, this was a serious lapse. The letter defends Symmachus'
reputation. Perhaps Bauto was not familiar with the rules of amicitia,
or perhaps he been deceived. Symmachus' letter may also be a veiled comment on
Bauto's non-Roman, non-elite origins. Nonetheless, their friendship can survive
this breach, claims Symmachus. Symmachus' willingness to engage the more
powerful Bauto on this breach of etiquette reveals the ways in which the bonds
and language of amicitia can build ties between Romans and barbarians. A
brief overview of the Orations reinforces the impression left by the Letters:
regardless of antibarbarian stereotypes held by late Roman aristocrats, the
language of amicitia was serviceable precisely because it could, when
desired, make little distinction between Romans and "barbarian
generals."
Pope Leo the Antichrist and the Fall of the Western Roman
Empire
Edward
Watts
Indiana
University
The supposed fall
of the western Roman Empire in 476 is one of the great manufactured historical
moments. Though the event soon became, and long remained, a prominent part of
the late antique historiographic tradition, a link between Odovacer's
deposition of Romulus Augustulus and the moment when "the western Empire
of the Roman people perished" (Marcellinus Comes, 476.2) first appears in
historiography only in the early decades of the sixth century. This fact
suggests that 476 was an apparent turning point only when glimpsed
retrospectively. The coup itself evidently did not seem particularly different
from earlier coups, at least to mainstream Italian and Constantinopolitan
authors.
This paper will
take a slightly different approach to illustrate how the events of 476 can
inform our understanding of late Roman political identity. Instead of focusing
upon the parts of the world most directly effected by this event, it will
direct attention towards an underutilized Palestinian Anti-Chalcedonian
perspective on the "fall" of the western Roman Empire. This comes
from the Plerophories of John Rufus, a rather belligerent
anti-Chalcedonian monk living in Gaza. The Plerophories is a work
designed to preserve and disseminate the apocalyptic oral traditions that
circulated in the anti-Chalcedonian monastic circles of Palestine and Egypt.
These traditions generally were attributed to respected Anti-Chalcedonian
leaders such as Peter the Iberian or Timothy of Alexandria. They single out the
leaders of the Chalcedonian movement, especially patriarch Juvenal of Jerusalem
and Pope Leo, and describe the misfortune either already brought about or soon
to come because of their deeds.
John's mention of
the fall of Rome comes in just such a context. It is preserved as an oral
tradition derived in part from a statement made by bishop Timothy of Alexandria
(460-77). In it, we are told that, because of the apostasy represented by the Tome
of Leo, the "Roman Empire has ceasedYand the city which was the mistress of the world has
been taken and placed under the dominion of barbarians (Syr. barbarya)."
This statement is significant for two reasons. First, it seems to be the
earliest classification of Odovacer's coup as the "fall of the Roman
Empire" (if this is accepted as a genuine oral tradition, it must date
from 476 or 477). Second, the ambiguity of Odovacer's action, which it seems
was left unresolved (at least initially) by Italian and Constantinopolitan
sources, is stripped away by John Rufus. To John, the Goths are barbarians, who
control Rome politically, and their political domination of the city of Rome signals
divine displeasure. This tradition relies upon a simplistic dichotomy between
Romans and barbarians to make a point to an audience living far from Italy in a
Palestinian monastery. At the same time, this statement also further underlines
how, for those authors with more experience of the Gothic regime, the
historical division between Roman and "barbarian" control of the
state was neither clear-cut nor particularly worth emphasizing.
Rex Francorum, Rex Romanorum
Revisited
Edward
James
University
College, Dublin
In Gregory of Tours's History II.12 we read that the Roman
general Aegidius became rex Francorum,
while at II.27 we read that Syagrius, the son of Aegidius, became rex Romanorum, based in Soissons. Back
in 1988 I questioned the habit -- particularly common among cartographers -- of
assigning much of northern Gaul before the time of Clovis to a "royaume de
Syagrius" or a "royaume de Soissons", and suggested that Gregory
need not, or should not, be read in that way. Since then, the work of several
scholars, including Steven Fanning and Penny MacGeorge, have looked at this
question. This paper revisits the question, and attempts to reassert, with
modifications, my earlier stance that the answer lies in Gregory's purposes and
methods rather than in the realities of fifth-century Gaul
Reguli
in the Later Roman Empire and the Germanic Kingdoms
Steven
Fanning
University
of Illinois at Chicago
The study of the
political structure of the Germanic peoples is almost entirely dependent on the
Latin sources and their Latin political terminology. One of the most common
figures encountered in that study, especially for the period when they were
outside the Roman Empire and for the early Anglo-Saxons is that of the regulus
(a term also used at times for Roman emperors). The interpretation of
the position and role of these often rather obscure reguli is commonly
based on the standard definition of regulus as a petty king or kinglet,
which produces the view that they are relatively insignificant figures. This
paper will explore the meaning of regulus and its related word subregulus
in Latin texts from Livy in the early first century AD to the eighth century,
for both Roman and Germanic figures, and will conclude that the meaning of regulus
that is most consistent with textual usage throughout these centuries is not
'petty king,' but rather 'co-king' or 'joint ruler,' and that subregulus
is best seen as a joint ruler of subordinate authority but not necessarily with
reduced power. Thus the reguli and subreguli of Late Antiquity
and the early Middle Ages ought to be considered to be figures of much greater
significance than they are in modern scholarship.
SESSION X: The Barbarian Invasions
'The Overthrow of the Temples and the
Ruin of the Whole of Greece':
Rhetoric and Archaeology in Barbarian
Invasions of Late Roman Greece
Amelia Robertson Brown
The University of California, Berkeley
Ancient
and modern historians alike have long blamed a series of 3rd-6th
C. barbarian invasions for the final destruction of most ancient Greek cities
and sanctuaries, and archaeologists have followed suit. The few surviving
ancient accounts of these invasions, however, were mainly composed in
Constantinople or Rome, by authors practiced in imitating the accounts of
Classical historians and employed in praising their present patrons and new
religion. Their rhetoric and biases, however, have customarily been overlooked
or minimized by archaeologists assembling narratives of destruction at their
sites in Greece. Those historical narratives have remained largely
unquestioned, too, since excavation in Greece has been devoted mainly to
finding beginnings and not clarifying endings of sites.
Recently,
some historians and philologists have begun to recognize and chart the biases
that writers such as Eunapius of Sardis, Claudian, and Zosimus brought to the
subject of the barbarian invasions of Greece. However, few archaeologists
working in Greece have translated this recognition into a much-needed
reappraisal of the literary sources that underlie both their narratives of
invasion and their dates for destructions. In this paper I outline the
surviving sources for barbarian invasions of later Roman Greece, point out some
of their biases, and suggest some ways in which archaeologists and historians
might cooperate to construct a new framework for approaching the archaeology of
Late Roman Greece. For while Costobocs, Herulians, Goths and Slavs all invaded
Graecia or Hellas on paper, their concrete effect on the material record at
specific sites must take ancient writers and modern excavation methodologies
into consideration.
Constantine III and the Barbarian
Invasion of Gaul
David T. Fletcher
Indiana University
Despite
a lengthy debate among scholars and a paucity of illuminating evidence which
might be called upon to clear away the lingering mysteries, the question of the
relationship between Constantine III's rebellion in Britain and the barbarian
invasion across the Rhine (in 406-7 CE) refuses to die. What more can we make
of sources which tell us that Constantine III was the last of three successive
usurpers in Britain, that he ostensibly took power to defend the west from
rampaging barbarians in 407, but that he seems to have done more fighting
against Sarus and the forces of Honorius than against the barbarian raiders?
I
propose five interrelated arguments, all of which fit together to create a
plausible explanation for the ancient contention that Constantine III became a
usurper to defend the west from barbarians. First, Constantine III and his
supporters did not usurp the throne for the express (or even the primary)
purpose of fighting the Gallic invaders; on the contrary, barbarians were not a
serious problem in the eyes of the western military -- rather, Honorius's
government was the problem. Second, the invasion occurred at an opportune
moment for Constantine nonetheless, and was subsequently utilized as a
justification for his clearly illegal action. Third, Constantine's propaganda
(which stated that he stepped forward to save Britain and Gaul) outlived
Constantine himself, and was ironically maintained by his foremost political
opponents after his death -- for political reasons that involved the need to
rebuild relations between the northwestern Roman troops and Honorius's court.
Fourth, the main literary accounts of Constantine III's rebellion which are
extant today, Orosius and Olympiodorus of Thebes repeated this propaganda
without attempting to change it, and thus perpetuated the false cause of
Constantine's rise to power. Fifth and finally, the reason that these two
writers (neither of whom desired to defend Constantine III, and who each
composed his history after the usurper's execution) perpetuated this myth was
perhaps two-fold. They seem to have both used a common literary account
(written in Latin, but now lost) for their own versions of western events in
these years -- an account written with the intent to rebuild harmony between
Honorius and the western Roman soldiery, as these troops were still needed in
c.411-13 to maintain order in Gaul; and further, neither Orosius nor
Olympiodorus probably wished to alter that harmony (if they knew another reason
for the usurpation), as this also remained highly important in their own
respective times of writing. The implications of this theory extend to both
Roman-barbarian relations in the early fifth century and to late antique
historiography.
FEATURED PRESENTATION
The Three Meanings of "Migration
Age"
Walter Goffart
Yale University
The
term "Migration Age" is the English counterpart of German Völkerwanderung
or Latin migratio gentium. In whatever language, "Migration
Age" is a concept in everyday academic use, similar to "the
Crusades" or "the Hundred Years War" as the name for a
historical period. While the phrase "barbarian invasions" is
earthbound, a major shift takes place when the neutral term
"migration" enters the discussion, as it did as early as the
sixteenth century. "Migration Age," or Völkerwanderung, associates
a certain set of events with timeless anthropological, sociological,
historical, and biblical processes of human movement. This talk explores the
three meanings of "Migration Age" in common use: the primary or core
meaning, identical to "the barbarian invasions," and its two
chronological and spatial expansions, one Asian and the other
"Germanic." It describes and discusses these three meanings and
argues that the period name should be limited to its core sense, clearly
defined in time and space.
SECTION IV:
SOCIETY AND ECONOMY
SESSION XI: Social and Economic
Manifestations of Roman-Barbarian Encounters
Phygades,
kataphygontes, apodidraskontoi,
aytomoloi:
The Problem of Deserters in Late Antique Diplomacy
Ekaterina
Nechaeva
The
University of Siena
A border can both
divide and unite the people who cross it. The crossing of frontiers has always
been part of life, throughout history. For Late Antiquity this aspect of
interaction of the two worlds B barbarian and
Roman B seems to be especially
important.
The question of
deserters was one of the most discussed in the late antique diplomacy.
Deserting has various aspects, showing different ways and forms of Roman and
barbarian integration and interaction. Individuals frequently fled from the
Roman empire to the territory of an enemy or vice-versa, in war as well as in
peace. The importance and danger of such escapes was certainly primarily
connected with the problem of information, intelligence brought to an
adversary, and such cases are well attested in the written sources. But on the
other hand there existed the phenomenon of fleeing, in a sense of the passing
over to the enemy's side, of rather large groups of people, a part of a tribe
or even a whole one. Both for individual and for "group" deserters
ancient authors writing in Greek often used the same or similar terms, such as phygades
and kataphygontes and this, as it seems, caused some confusion in
ancient and in the modern times.
Special attention
will be paid to the problem of deserters in the context of Roman-Hunnic
relations, especially Attila's negotiations with the eastern Roman Empire.
Examination of Priscus of Panium leads to the problem of the apparent (but
maybe only seeming) misunderstanding between Attila and Roman diplomats: all
the treaties contain a stipulation about the return of the deserters who had
left the Empire of Attila for the Roman one, yet only a handful of them was
later repatriated. A detailed analysis of the evidence from Priscus, as well as
that from Menander and Procopius seems to allow to suppose that kataphygontes
in Priscus was a terminus technicus to define the groups of people and
even peoples who had seceded from a "Hun unit" and joined the Roman
Empire. This approach may also explain the passage in Menander Protector, where
he speaks of the gold kalodia sent to the Avars among the other
diplomatic gifts being used to ergein te ton apodidraskonton B this traditional
set of gifts was a honorable donation, but at the same time marked the
subordinate state of the tribe who received it. In this connection another
subject, also to be touched upon in the presentation is the problem of
perception of these groups of deserters by the Romans, by the Persians and by
different barbarians.
Slavery, Captivity, and Romano-Barbarian Interchange
Noel
Lenski
University
of Colorado at Boulder
Sometime in the
370s Ausonius sent his friend Paulus a series of delightful poems describing
the Suebic girl Bissula, with whom he was infatuated and whom he had, until recently,
owned. Bissula pleased Ausonius not just because of her blond hair and blue
eyes but also because of her charming obsequiousness and perfect command of
Latin. She embodied, for him, the ideal admixture of domesticity and exoticism:
delicium... horridulum non solitis sed, domino venustum. Bissula's
charms of course eventually won her freedom, but probably only at the cost of
submitting to the sexagenarian's advances. Bissula's situation was hardly
unique. Certainly the most intimate and probably the most regular contact
between Romans and barbarians in Late Antiquity occurred between slaves and
masters, between captives and conquerors. This applied in both directions, for
by the period of Late Antiquity the traffic in humans was as likely to lead to
the capture of Romans by barbarians as the reverse. In either instance, the
effects were profound. Covering the broad span of Late Antiquity both
geographically and temporally, this paper will examine the effects that this
traffic had on individuals, politics, cultures, and societies.
The impact of human
trafficking on individuals was of course profound. The capture of exogenous
prisoners for ransom, generally Romans captured by barbarians, put cives
romani at regular risk of losing their freedom or fortune, and even when
they were redeemed, former captivi often owed money debts or client
services to their redeemers for years to come. The sale or capture of slaves,
generally barbarian slaves, brought non-Romans into humiliating servitude while
helping reinforce the assumptions of Romans about their cultural superiority.
The political ramifications were also substantial. The political turmoil
resulting from the Roman defeat at Adrianople in 378 had its roots in the Roman
trade in Gothic prisoners, and the Hunnic wars of the early fifth century were
provoked at least in part by the breakdown in negotiations over the exchange of
captives. Cultural consequences could also be profound. Barbarian
house-servants such as Bissula were something of a cliché in Late Antiquity,
setting a fashion which fed Roman aesthetic preferences. So too, Roman captives
like Ulfilas and the unnamed servant girl of the Georgian king Mirian III
played a crucial role in the conversion of barbarian peoples to Christianity.
Finally the traffic in slaves and captives deeply affected social frameworks.
The Germanic law codes reveal the presence of slaves in fifth and sixth-century
Germanic societies on a previously unheard-of scale. This growth in
slave-holding must have stemmed at least in part from the demand created by
Roman slave markets and the ready supply of money and goods from ransomed
captives. Indeed, much as the colonial slave trade in west Africa generated new
and fiercer social structures -- thankfully kept at a distance from Europe and
the new world by geography -- the Roman thirst for barbarian slaves and desire
to redeem captives contributed significantly to the new and fiercer barbarian
social structures that came to dominate the geography of the former empire.
Barbarian Raiders and Barbarian Peasants: Models of
Ideological and Economic Integration
Hartmut
Ziche
Université
des Antilles et de la Guyane
Traditionally, both
in Roman contemporary writing and in much of the subsequent scholarship on the
late Roman world, barbarians are depicted as a disruptive and destructive
force. This paper does not intend to deal with the impact of barbarians, either
positive or negative, on Roman culture or the institutions of the Roman state,
but will limit itself to a discussion of the effect of barbarians upon the late
Roman economy and perceptions of their impact in this sphere among contemporary
Roman observers. The time-frame for this discussion will include developments
from the 4th to mid-5th C., but will exclude the economic
role of the barbarians in the independent kingdoms in the west during the
latter parts of the 5th C.
The first part of
the paper will examine various contemporary opinions on the destructive impact
of barbarians on the economic development in the provinces which were exposed
to their incursions. Writers to quote in this context include Ammianus, who
deals with barbarian depredation during of Julian's Gallic campaigns, and also
sections of the anti-Gothic tirades of Synesius of Cyrene. However, some were
able to see the influx of barbarians as a potentially positive contribution to
the economy of the border provinces. E.g. Themistius' comments on the Goths
settled in Thrace by Theodosius. Some analysis of the motivations of particular
writers is necessary: are accounts of barbarian depredation simply the result
of an anti-barbarian ideology? Is Themistius' positive opinion pure flattery
for his emperor? Are contemporary opinions solely shaped by personal
observation? Or, on the other hand, are we dealing already with instances of
analysis by contemporaries who interpret the barbarian presence as just one
element in the wider context of economic development?
The second section
of the discussion will contrast the varying opinions of contemporaries on the
economic role of the barbarians in their time with a plausible model for the
integration of barbarians into the rural economy of the late Empire. This model
must take into account the disruption in the countryside caused by barbarian
raiders, but should be able to balance the damage caused against positive
factors such as the availability of additional labor and the creation of a new
class of consumers, the barbarian federates. A model which deals with both
positive and negative contributions of the barbarians to the development of the
rural economy should allow a better understanding of the divergent descriptions
of their economic impact in contemporary sources. We can postulate in fact that
the opinions of a particular writer depend very much on local conditions, i.e. whether
barbarians for him are predominantly settlers or exclusively raiders. These
local perceptions, however, cannot necessarily be used by modern scholarship to
evaluate the "barbarian factor" in late Roman economic development.
What is required is an analysis which provides a more theoretical
interpretation of the economic impact of the barbarians, independent of the
local and also regional developments that seemed most important to
contemporaries.
The ius colonatus as a model for the settlement of barbarian
prisoners-of-war
in the late Roman
Empire?
Cam
Grey
The
University of Chicago
In April of 409,
having successfully repulsed an invasion of Thrace by the Hunnic leader Uldin,
the emperor Theodosius II issued an edict (Cth 5.6.3) to the PPO of the
East, Anthemius, concerning the treatment of the Sciri, whom Uldin had
abandoned when he retreated. The text is fragmentary, but its central thrust
can be reconstructed. It proposes making members of this tribe available as
rural cultivators to landowners who petition the office of the praetorian
prefect, but places certain limitations upon their deployment. They are to be
taken on non alio iure quam colonatus -- that is, only under the terms
of some kind of tenancy arrangement. They are not to be enslaved, or pressed
into service in urban contexts, and landowners who receive fugitive Sciri are
threatened with the same penalties prescribed in earlier legislation for those
found to have either received or enticed coloni registered in the tax
declarations of others. Further conditions of the edict detail the terms under
which these tribesmen are to be settled, the areas in which such settlement is
permitted, and the liability of landowners receiving them for supplying
recruits to the army.
This text has long been
employed in two separate, yet connected debates over the political, social and
economic history of the late Roman empire. On the one hand, while arguments for
locating the origins of the 'colonate of the late Roman Empire' in the
settlement of barbarian dediticii have now been rejected, some scholars
maintain that these barbarian prisoners-of-war were settled under conditions
that resembled the 'colonate' -- that is, a series of arrangements that
together conferred a distinct legal status of registered dependent tenancy upon
these individuals, and served to define them as a particular class of
cultivators. On the other hand scholars working on the settlement of barbarians
in the period have suggested that this edict provides a model for other
instances mentioned in historical accounts and panegyrics of the third, fourth
and fifth centuries, where defeated barbarians are installed on land as rural
cultivators.
However, recent
scholarship has progressively dismantled the concept of the 'colonate' as a distinct
legal status, and this in turn raises questions about the prominent place that
this text has occupied in accounts of barbarian settlement. To what extent do
the provisions envisaged here match the heterogeneous collection of
prescriptions and restrictions that came to surround the phenomenon of
registered tenancy over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries? For whose
benefit, and in whose interest was this edict promulgated? The imperial
government? Landowners? The Sciri themselves? Can its provisions be interpreted
as instituting, encapsulating or formalizing a general set of principles, or
are they a product of unique political, social and economic conditions in early
fifth-century Thrace? It is the purpose of this paper to explore these questions,
and to reassess this edict in the light of developments in both the economic
history of the late Roman world, and the history of interactions between Romans
and barbarians.
Visigothic Settlement, Hospitalitas and Army Payment
Reconsidered
Andreas
Schwarcz
University
of Vienna
LATE ANTIQUITY
in the Dept. of History at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Department of History at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announces a new field in the
study of Late Antiquity, encompassing the Late Roman, Early Medieval, and Early
Byzantine periods (third through seventh centuries AD). Late Antiquity now is recognized as one of the most
significant periods of the human past. In the west, Late Antiquity saw the
gradual withering of classical society, government, and religion, and the formation
of a strictly western European, Christian society that eventually would
culminate in the modern‑day western European nations. And in the eastern
Mediterranean, the Roman Empire continued and evolved as the "Byzantine
Empire," and the seventh century saw the birth of another major world
religion, Islam, along with the Islamic caliphate. The field in Late Antiquity has interdisciplinary aspects ranging from
geographical (eastern and western Europe, North Africa, the Near East), to
methodological (including palaeography, epigraphy, numismatics, prosopography,
and computer applications), to topical (too numerous to mention), and to
disciplinary (cited below). It is the only program of its kind in the state and
surrounding area. Its associated faculty in Ancient and Medieval Studies in the
Department of History and in other university Departments have international
reputations in their fields and provide the opporunity to craft a program of
study in Late Antiquity of unparalleled richness and depth.
Electronic Resources. The field is the home of the Biographical Database for Late
Antiquity; the Geography of Roman Gaul Web Site; the Society for Late Antiquity
website; the Late Antiquity Newsletter; and the Internet Discussion
Lists LT‑ANTIQ, NUMISM‑L, and PROSOP-L..
Library Resources. Containing more than eight
million volumes, the University of Illinois Library is the third largest academic library in the nation. We also are
affiliated with the Newberry Library of Chicago, which boasts particularly fine
collections in Renaissance and early modern Europe.
THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
Illinois ranks among the top ten departments of
history in public institutions. Our faculty in early European history has grown
over the past few years, as we have added two new members with ancient and
medieval specialties. Our treatment of Late Antiquity benefits from strong
fields in ancient, medieval, and early modern Europe. Themes in which our
department is particularly strong include women and gender, the new cultural
history, social history, religious history, the history of work, and the
history of war and society. Individuals pursuing the study of Late Antiquity
will benefit not only from courses with primary faculty, but also from a
graduate student readings group, a faculty/graduate student colloquium, and
presentations by visiting scholars. Plans are also underway to bring together
other Illinois faculty concerned with early Europe from the English and foreign
language departments, art history, and other units. The campus already benefits
from two interdisciplinary meeting grounds, the Medieval Colloquium and the
Renaissance Seminar.To learn more about the Department, see our web page (http://www.history.uiuc.edu/). To apply
for admission and financial aid, please write: Graduate Secretary, Department
of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 309 Gregory Hall, 810
South Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801. You may also contact the graduate
secretary by phone at (217) 244-2591. The deadline for admission applications
is January 15.
For further information, contact Ralph Mathisen:
ralphwm@uiuc.edu, or visit http://www.history.uiuc.edu/areas/lateantiquity.html
LATE ANTIQUITY
in the Dept. of Classics at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Now that Ralph Mathisen and I have both moved to the University of Illinois (from South Carolina and Cornell respectively) we are in the happy position of being able to co-supervise historical and literary dissertations on the later Roman Empire. Our interests span many aspects of the history and literature of Late Antiquity (a.k.a. the very longue durée Later Roman Empire) from the 2nd to the 7th C. A.D. We have expertise in ecclesiastical history, Romans and barbarians, prosopography, numismatics, and law (Mathisen) and palaeography, textual criticism, literary history, and hagiography (Shanzer). We are firm believers in cross- and inter-disciplinary work, and of the benefits that accrue from mastery of both history and philology. We work on both major and minor authors: documents and sources are all-important. We believe not only in looking at the “big picture,” but also in finding significant discoveries in out-of-the-way places. We have worked as a team, editing Culture and Society in Later Roman Gaul : Revisiting the Sources (Ashgate 2001), and are currently co-authoring a translation and commentary on the Vita and Epistulae of Desiderius of Cahors for the TTH series (Liverpool). Both of us are well-connected and professionally active in editing journals, and attending and organizing conferences in the U.S.A, and abroad. Our Ph.D. students hold tenure-track jobs at:
Marquette University
The University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Virginia
Troy State University
If you want to dive head first into Late Antiquity and thoroughly immerse yourself in its literary and historical world, if you really want to “get under the hood” of a topic and not just scratch the paint, UIUC very well could be the place for you. With one of the premier classical and historical libraries in the world, you will be able to pursue your research in whatever direction it takes you, while at the same time working with a faculty who have “put in their time” and will help to steer you along the via regia, as Faustus of Riez put it. Our Classics Library is truly special in that it houses all the major resources needed to study Christian Late Antiquity in the same room as all the classical materials.
We are active supervisors. We teach the skills you will need to do your research, and we take our graduate students' writing seriously. This means that it will be read promptly and that we will engage with it, argue with it, and (if need be) send you to rewrite it! The end result will be something of which you can be proud, and which can serve as a jumping off point for a professional paper, dissertation chapter, or publication.
Students can apply to work with us (and all the other fine scholars in this area at UIUC) either via History or via Classics (depending on preparation and interests). A concentration in Medieval Studies is likewise an excellent option.
Language preparation: Strong Latin and
Greek are necessary to study Late Antiquity and are required for admission to
the M.A.
Program in Classics in the Classics Dept. But even if you have not yet had
the opportunity to study Greek, you can apply to the M.A.
Program in Latin, and plan intensive study of Greek to catch up. If you are
planning to concentrate exclusively on the Western early Middle Ages, you can
manage with Latin alone, and apply to the History
Department
For further information, contact Danuta Shanzer: shanzer@uiuc.edu, or visit https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/shanzer/www/joint2.htm.
PROGRAM IN MEDIEVAL STUDIES
at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The purpose of the Program in Medieval Studies at University
of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana, is to foster the interdisciplinary and
cross-cultural study of the history, literature, art, sociology, religion,
philosophy, archeology and languages of the European continent, Scandinavia,
the Near East and the Mediterranean region in the period from approximately the
4th to the 15th centuries. The program aims above all to create a community of
scholars and students sharing interests in these fields both within the
University of Illinois and between UI and participating institutes and
departments in the US, Canada and Europe.
Each year the Program sponsors a
variety of seminars, colloquia, conferences. Regular visiting faculty and
lecturers enrich the culture of Medieval Studies on campus. Team-taught
interdisciplinary courses are offered each year at both graduate and
undergraduate levels through the Program in Medieval Studies and the
contributing departments. Participating faculty at present include 21
professors teaching in 14 departments.
The program offers a Certificate in Medieval Studies to students who wish to pursue a concentration in this area. The graduate degrees, MA or PhD are offered through a student's home department. Advanced training is offered both in the various disciplines of medieval studies and in the technical skills appropriate to the field. Financial aid is available on a competitive basis to graduate students working for the Certificate in Medieval Studies. The Program also offers an undergraduate emphasis in Medieval Studies for students who major in any of the cooperating departments and programs. The Library of University of Illinois is one of the finest research libraries in the world and has particular strengths in the area of Medieval Studies. Through its financial resources the Program can lend support to individual research projects of students and faculty through grants-in-aid.
For information please contact:
Program in Medieval Studies
4072 Foreign Language Building, MC-175
University of Illinois
707 South Mathews Avenue
Urbana, IL 61801
or visit http://www.medieval.uiuc.edu/about/overview.html
NOTES