Greek in Late Roman Gaul the Evidence of Ausonius

The flat cemetery of Frontovoe 3 was discovered in 2018 by a team of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Nakhimovskii district of modern Sevastopol, in the south-western area of the Crimean Peninsula. The site comprising 328 graves was excavated completely. The cemetery appeared ca. late first century AD and ceased to exist in the late fourth or early fifth century AD. The cemetery showed expressive spatial structure and contained eloquent assemblages with abundant grave goods allowing us to determine its chronological zones. This paper addresses the finds of silver crescent-moon-shaped pendants from graves 13 and 94. Similar ornaments occurred in burial assemblages in the Crimea and the northern Dagestan, Kalmykia, Lower Don area, and also in Sarmatian graves in the Great Hungarian Plain. The lunula pendants in question form a chronological reference point for the Pontic-Danubian antiquities in the Late Roman Period.

When and how did urban life in Roman Britain end? The excavations conducted by Philip Barker at Wroxeter from 1966–1990 produced evidence suggesting a post-Roman phase of urban activity that continued into the sixth or seventh century AD, up to 200 years beyond the traditionally accepted chronology. Careful re-examination of the evidence, however, throws doubt on these claims. More recent work on Late Roman Britain coupled with new discoveries in Wales and the west challenges the evidence for the post-Roman survival of Wroxeter as an urban centre and suggests that it may have been largely abandoned, along with other Roman towns, in the late fourth or early fifth century AD.

This paper publishes a unique woman’s costume with gold ornaments from the Hunnic Period. This find originates from a burial vault in Phanagoreia dated back to the late fourth or early fifth century AD. There are numerous gold foil badges uncovered in situ on a woman’s neck and chest. They were sewn on the collar of a robe and an outer garment. Gold ornaments appeared only on the front side of the cloths to be seen by the funeral ceremony participants. The find of the ornaments in Phanagoreia contributes to the suggestion that there was a universal set of gold ornaments for cloth in the Hunnic Period. It has been inferred that the costume decorated with fine gold ornaments played ceremonial role. It was made especially for funerals of noble and rich women belonging to the Bosporan elite. However, the culture of the barbarians living in the vicinity of the Bosporan Kingdom in the Migration Period possibly developed alternative perception of the costume in question

From 2014 on, the archaeological excavations of the Roman fort of Apsaros (Gonio, eastern Black Sea area) concentrated in the central area of early buildings, where a large architectural complex from the second half of the first to the first half of the secondcenturies AD was located. This structure probably was a praitorion, the residence of the garrison commander. There was an ancient looters’ pit discovered in one room; it appeared in relation to the construction works in the fort in the late second or early third century AD. The most outstanding find from this pit is a fragmented red slip beaker featuring a relief ornamentation. The beaker comprised an elongated conical body survived to the height of 8.8 cm and a ring-foot measuring 3.8 cm in diameter. The outer side of the vessel is ornamented with two rows of impressed ovals arranged as a chess-board pattern and divided by shallow incised horizontal lines. The vessel is unevenly fired: the clay is bright orange at the top and gray at the bottom. Bright orange slip covers the top of the beaker. No direct analogies to this find are known so far. The red slip beakers of a different shape and vase-like vessels with typical ornamentation of impressed ovals occurred among the products of the workshops from the second to fourth century AD located in northern Bulgaria. Similar vessels, also locally produced, appeared on the sites from the Roman period in the south-western Romania. It is considered that such vessels imitated the glass ware which existed in the same period. Although tumblers and beakers with oval designs on the walls were among the most widespread types of glass ware in Eastern and Northern Europe in the late third and early fourth century, their shape could not be considered the complete parallel to the find under study. The closest similarity appeared among the glass ware from the last quarter of the first to the second half of the second centuries AD, particularly conic beakers with a disc-foot ornamented with elongated ovals. The beaker discovered in Gonio probably dates from a similar period. The quality of the slip and the method of its application indicate that this vessel was possibly produced in the Black Sea area.

This is the first volume in the Honor Frost Foundation (HFF) Research Series, which will publish themed sessions from the foundation’s Under the Mediterranean conference program, as well as monographs, theses, and edited volumes, all peer reviewed. The foundation also supports a non-peer-reviewed General Series that will present collections of articles from seminars or round tables, reprints of Honor Frost’s articles, and other works relevant to archaeology underwater. Online versions of both these series can be read for free on the publisher’s website (www.sidestone.com). The volume under review is a collection of 19 articles in three sections reporting on recent research concerning the archaeology of shipwrecks (six), harbors (seven), and maritime landscapes in the Mediterranean region (six). These articles, with anywhere from one to ten co-authors, are expanded versions of papers presented at a conference with the same title held in Nicosia in October 2017, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Honor Frost’s birth (deceased 2010). Because of the large number of authors involved with individual articles, their names will not appear in the discussion. They can be found on the publisher’s website. This review will, however, provide a précis of all the articles, with some elaboration for those of particular interest.Of the original 143 presentations at the 2017 conference, 13 dealing with Frost and her legacy have already been published in the first volume of the HFF General Series. Although a relatively small percentage of the original conference papers appears in this Research Series volume, the introduction by the overall editors Stella Demesticha and Lucy Blue provides an interesting analysis of the patterns of submission of all the original conference papers by geographical location, chronology, subject matter, and the presenter’s country of origin. Nevertheless, the editors experienced “frustration” (16) at the small number of revised submissions submitted for publication, attributing it largely to a devaluation of published conference papers by academic institutions. Quite rightly, they point out the value of personal presentations and group interactions at conferences and promote a search for ways to preserve and distribute the resulting information. An Appendix at the end of the book lists all the presenters at the conference and the titles of their presentations. Fifty of the original conference papers concerned ships or shipwrecks, 34 focused on harbors, 43 involved the marine cultural landscape, and 16 explored other issues such as conservation and management, digital applications, connectivity, or new technologies. In the absence of chapter numbers in the resulting book, I simply follow the order of the papers and highlight the significant issues raised.The shipwrecks section of the volume examines excavated vessels from Modi Islet near Poros, Mazotos off Cyprus, the harbor of Naples, Narbonne, the port of Rhodes, as well as a sailing reconstruction of the Ma‘agan Mikhael ship. The presentations are all workmanlike and well documented, and each provides useful data on ship design, function, and site analysis. The water depth and configuration of the sea floor made excavation of the scattered remains of the LHIII B-C Modi ship very difficult, but careful reconstruction of the ceramic vessels—virtually all that remains of the wreck—has thrown new light on a critical historical period. Painstaking excavation of the fourth-century BC Mazotos wreck off Cyprus, combined with careful use of 3D digital tools, has allowed reconstruction of the method for stacking the cargo of Chian amphoras in the hold, the peg feet of the upper levels supported by the shoulders of the amphoras below. This conclusion is not surprising since it replicates the results of investigations of Roman amphora wrecks in the western Mediterranean, for example the Madrague de Giens and Spargi wrecks. Nevertheless, the careful recording of excavated material and use of 3D computer reconstructions provide useful examples of techniques for future wreck excavations.The four wrecks found abandoned in the Naples harbor, in contrast, were devoid of cargo but could be dated by stratigraphy to the late second century BC and to the third century AD. Wreck G, the most noteworthy because of a well-preserved transom at one end, is a rare example of a small harbor service boat or fishing craft. The other wrecks are fairly standard, although physically well preserved, examples of Roman cargo ships. Farther north, an early fifth-century AD barge found in the canal leading to Narbonne harbor is interesting largely for repair planks fastened to the hull with nails, and for a mast step in the forward third of the hull, suggesting a towing mast, cargo boom, or spritsail rig. A very large (L ca. 35 m) cargo ship of the late twelfth century found in Rhodes harbor provides welcome new evidence for frame-first hull construction techniques at this period, and for cargo ships of large size. The final paper in this section provides a fascinating account of the problems involved in the construction of a full-scale sailing replica of the Ma‘agan Mikhael ship, a modest but well-preserved trading ship of about 400 BC. Very few compromises were made in technique and design during the reconstruction, and even the fiddly mortise and tenon fasteners were recreated accurately, although with some use of modern electric tools. The overall attention to precision in the selection of materials was extraordinary, including the use of the same species of trees as in the original boat, and of naturally bent branches for the frames and other curved elements. This project was made possible by a “generous donation.” It would be interesting to know what the total cost of the project was, both for vicarious interest, and as a warning to potential ship reconstruction projects. The reconstructed Ma‘agan Mikhael II appears to be seaworthy. Some data on sailing characteristics would have been useful, but presumably the research team plans this for the future.The harbors section includes articles on sites from the Levant to Seville, looking at a variety of harbor defense systems and dockyards dating from the Hellenistic period to the twelfth century AD. The first article traces the evolution of the harbor of Patara in Lycia, founded around 600 BC and transformed into a closed military harbor (limen kleistos) in the fourth century BC, probably with shipsheds. The evolution of the harbor design and function are instructive. At ancient Torone in the Chalkidike, in contrast, the location of the harbor basin is still uncertain despite several campaigns with electrical resistivity survey equipment. There may have been a local shipbuilding center here, exploiting the thick forests of the region. The premodern harbors of Akko, ancient Ptolemais, have been the object of archaeological investigation for decades, but it was only consolidation of the medieval city wall from 2009 to 2012 that finally allowed exposure of the remains of the Hellenistic harbor: a quay, mooring stones, and a shipshed. Presumably these initial results can be followed up in the future. In the Gulf of Fos, adjacent to the Rhone River delta, survey and excavation have exposed several very large structures in or next to the harbor at the termination of the fossae Marianae, a detour around the hazardous delta waters constructed by the Roman general Caius Marius in the early first century BC. The harbor basin and adjacent terrestrial structures now occupy a shallow bay 40 ha in area. Although the original functions remain to be determined, a square monumental complex 100 m on a side has been mapped, along with a 100 m long series of 12 masonry pilae (piers or pillars), both testifying to the importance and wealth of the Roman port. In a remarkable contrast, the city of Ashkelon on the southern Mediterranean coast of Israel is known to have been an important trade center from the Middle Bronze Age through the thirteenth century AD, but no harbor facilities could be identified along the featureless sandy shoreline. In 2002 and 2004, however, two installations of wooden pilings were found driven into the sea floor 130 m offshore in 5–7 m of water. Dated to the third or fourth century AD by radiocarbon, these structures may have assisted ships in anchoring offshore to allow transfer of cargo to and from the city by lighters, or access to moveable slipways allowing ships to be moved onto the beach for storage or maintenance. Featureless coastlines prevented economic development at many coastal settlement sites prior to the development of Roman marine concrete in the first century BC, but apparently there were ways of coping with the situation. In the same region, a survey of the 700 km Levantine coastline from Alexandretta to Gaza reviews the architecture and function of more than 20 fortified harbors constructed by the Frankish crusaders in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. While many of the physical remains have disappeared, for this period there are numerous literary descriptions and visual representations that provide important documentation. The final article in this section reviews the changes in the design of the Islamic harbor of Seville between 712 and 1248 AD, mainly in response to the major geomorphological and hydrological transformations that are typical of the Iberian coastline.Articles in the third section, concerning maritime cultural landscapes, combine data sets to examine human interactions with the sea: navigation from the perspectives of the accounts of early geographers, the skills required by the earliest sailors, and the contextual reconstruction of sea routes; coastal survey and resource use; and geoarchaeological evidence used to analyze the choice of harbor location. The engaging first article documents the transfer of people, new animal species, and crop plants to Cyprus from the Levant and Anatolia during the Neolithic period. Strong affinities in aspects of material culture, symbols, rituals, and social institutions continued to link the settlements on the island and the mainland. The authors infer that the mariners serving as the facilitators of these interchanges became increasingly specialized as a result of the profits and status, providing feedback for technological development. The second article attempts to reconstruct the landscape of anchorages and harbors around Akko as it evolved over the long period of the tell’s occupation. Siltation has changed the original landscape significantly. Next is a fascinating discussion of the reason for the accumulation of more than 50 shipwrecks around the small island of Fournoi, located south of the Fournoi Pass, the channel between the larger islands of Ikaria and Samos in the eastern Aegean. The island was not itself involved in significant sea trade, but the geography and sailing conditions of the Aegean led large numbers of ships to make use of the adjacent pass, a navigational choke point that often experiences difficult wind and wave conditions. Ships that took refuge in the bays around Fournoi Islet from dangerous conditions in the strait remained in danger of floundering, explaining the concentration of wrecks. Back on land, a program of geoarchaeological research and coring around the important seventh-century BC Greek colony of Istros on the Black Sea has provided new evidence for the location of the silted-up harbor basin. A challenging article on “Navigating Perceptions” uses theoretical terminology and geographical considerations to propose that ancient mariners along the Levantine coastline depended on a “practical geography” during the Roman imperial period, reacting to the “diverse environmental and cultural dynamics.” Along the Levant, this often resulted in the twinning of a port and an inland settlement, or use of a river mouth. According to the author, ancient scholars, geographers, mariners, merchants, and travelers developed “multi-faceted world views that co-existed and advanced based on the dynamics between coastal and inland communities, the nature of these interactions, and their geopolitical sphere.” (335). Although pretentious jargon makes interpretation of the article difficult, it presents an interesting approach to analysis of maritime activity in the region. The final article recounts the difficulty of interpreting the original function of the large number of Roman and Late Roman rock-cut features along the shoreline of Dana Island off Rough Cilicia. The numerous cuttings, puzzling in their number and location, and previously interpreted as slipways for ships, are, in fact, more likely the remains of quarrying, a salutary warning against facile interpretation of rock-cut features along a shoreline.The book is attractive and well produced, with a generous number of crisp color or black-and-white illustrations. The availability of the text for online reading without payment is a generous concession, most likely paid for by the Honor Frost Foundation. I did not notice any major typos, although the page number for the beginning of Demesticha’s article is missing from the Table of Contents; also, Figure 3 in the introductory chapter is the same as Figure 4, and it does not correspond to its caption. This book presents current research on various aspects of the maritime history and archaeology of the Mediterranean region, and it will be of interest to students and archaeologists researching these specific topics, as well as to all those interested in the wide range of recent advances in maritime archaeology.

Ancient Ostia at the mouth of the River Tiber into the Tyrrhenian Sea was largely significant for the economic supply of Rome. Ostia itself experienced an extraordinary period of prosperity in the second century AD. Starting in AD 42, a first new harbour at Portus was built by Emperor Claudius close to Ostia. It reached its full functionality under Emperor Trajan in the early second century AD, only. At Ostia itself, previous archaeological and geoarchaeological studies have brought to light a lagoon-type harbour at the western fringe of the city operating between the fourth and the second century BC in an artificially excavated harbour basin. From the second century BC onwards, a considerably smaller and shallower part of this western harbour basin was still in function as a fluvial harbour. So far, it was unclear whether Ostia’s western harbour was still in use when the harbour at Portus was set into function in the first to second century AD, or if the latter partially replaced Ostia’s harbour infrastructure. According to archaeological evidence, Ostia’s navalia-temple-complex, the main building at the eastern fringe of the western river harbour basin, was built in the second quarter of the first century AD. Was this prestigious harbour building erected although the associated harbour seemed to have been already given up before? We conducted detailed geoarchaeological investigations at the immediate western front of the navalia-temple complex. Results were compared with archaeological data obtained from excavations carried out in 2000/2001. A multi-proxy approach was used to reconstruct the history and evolution of the harbour. It was possible to identify subsurface structures and evaluate the local stratigraphy. Vibracoring brought to light a more than 1 m thick section of an opus reticulatum wall with parts of the original opus latericium on top. Such walls originally separated vaulted shipshed chambers of the navalia-temple complex at Ostia, which in turn formed the substructure of a temple complex located above it. Another core revealed the sedimentary infill of a former chamber of the building. Based on radiocarbon dating, the navalia was in use between the first and the fourth centuries AD with a water depth of maximum ca. 1.2 m at the immediate western front. This is in agreement with the date of construction of the navalia-temple complex in the second quarter of the first century AD. The relative sea level at that time was around 0.64 m below the present sea level. The harbour and the navalia were obviously accessible only for flat-keeled lighters and cargo boats. Larger cargo ships were either unloaded along the riverbank to the north of ancient Ostia (Hadler et al. 2019) or moored offshore, their freight being reloaded to smaller lighters. Chronostratigraphic data further show that the navalia-temple complex was in use until the second half of the fourth century AD. It was not before AD 355–363 or shortly afterwards, that the harbour site was abandoned. Ostia’s western river harbour was neither abandoned nor completely silted up before the harbour at Portus was established as previously assumed by other authors. Actually, the western front of the navalia-temple complex was hit by an extreme wave event, leaving a sand layer approx. 0.5 m thick, at or shortly after AD 355–363 which led to the final abandonment of Ostia’s western river harbour. This event is interpreted as a tsunami that may have hit the wider coastal region.

The so-called Kingdom of Aksum in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea was the dominant African polity along the southern Red Sea in the first millennium AD. The polity emerged in central Tigray (northern Ethiopia) in the late first millennium BC, incorporated eastern Tigray and central Eritrea in the mid-first millennium AD, and eventually declined in the late first millennium AD. The adoption of Christianity as a state religion in the fourth century AD was a crucial event in the history of the polity. At present, the development of this polity is uncertain, as no real effort to understand the process of formation, consolidation, and decline has been made. In this paper I suggest that a local polity based on kinship emerged at Aksum in the fourth century BC to second century AD, incorporated most of the highlands in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in the third century, and consolidated as a kingdom organized on the same state-church relationship of other eastern Mediterranean Christian states in the fifth–sixth centuries AD. The inclusion of the polity in Roman-Byzantine long-distance trade between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, warfare, and adoption of Christianity were the crucial factors that sustained the main transformations of the polity through time.

This article examines the Greek epigraphic material kept at the Mu’tah University Museum. It is a collection composed of 23 inscriptions, 20 of them unpublished, which with one exception (no. 1 from Qasr el-Hallabat) originate from the Southern Kerak plateau, mainly from the sites of Ader, Mu’tah, Iraq, Nakhl and Maḥaiy. Apart from a dedication to Artemis (second century AD), all the remaining inscriptions are funerary and date between the late fourth and late sixth century AD. The present epigraphic material not only adds 20 new epitaphs to those hitherto known from Moab, but offers also an interesting onomasticon.

This paper presents the results of a study of Anglo‐Saxon style pottery in the northern Netherlands and north‐western Germany, involving macroscopic and microscopic analysis of fabrics and finish. Both regions show similar developments in form and decoration in the pottery of the fourth and fifth centuries ad, the late Roman and Migration period, resulting in the typical decoration and shapes that are known as the Anglo‐Saxon style. In the northern Netherlands, this style is traditionally associated with Anglo‐Saxon immigrants. It has, however, been suggested that this style was, rather, part of an indigenous development in areas in the northern Netherlands where occupation was continuous, though influenced by stylistic developments in north‐western Germany. That hypothesis is supported by the analysis of fabrics and finish presented here. The characteristic of fabrics and surface treatment indicate technological continuity. The use of local clay sources for Anglo‐Saxon style pottery and for contemporary regional types indicates that most of the Anglo‐Saxon style pottery in the northern Netherlands was not brought by Anglo‐Saxon immigrants or as imports, but must have been made locally. That applies to settlements with continuous habitation, as well as settlements in the coastal area that were not inhabited during the fourth century ad.

Reviewed by: Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change by Jörg Rüpke Duncan E. MacRae Jörg Rüpke. Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. vi + 321 pp. Cloth. $69.95. Once an almost moribund field, the study of Roman religion has been one of the most lively areas of classical studies over the last twenty-five years. Jörg Rüpke has been a central figure in this transformation. His recent Fasti Sacerdotum (German ed., Stuttgart 2005; English ed., Oxford 2008) is now an essential research tool for any historian interested in the social basis of Roman religions. [End Page 510] Religion in Republican Rome is a very different kind of book: a tightly argued but panoramic vision of the history of religion in republican Rome. Building on over a decade of publications in this area, this book provides a new picture of the relationship between religion and society in the period between the fourth century b.c.e. and the Augustan monarchy. The book’s central argument is that change is the key to understanding religion in Republican Rome. Rüpke offers an image of almost constant innovation in ritual practice, religious norms, and discourse on the gods across a period of almost three centuries. The older view that Roman religion was an archaic relic, preserved by a characteristically Roman conservatism (especially ritual orthopraxy), is rejected. Instead, Rüpke suggests that we can understand the changes in religious ritual and discourse in the Republic as part of a meta-historical process of “rationalization,” understood in expressly Weberian terms. This can be defined as “the systematization—or attempted systematization—of practice” (2) through public rule-making and in written texts. Almost all of the chapters have been published already, at least in some form, but even those familiar with Rüpke’s work will want to read this book: many of these individual studies, now framed as part of a single argument about change and rationalization, take on new significance. After a short introduction and a quick sketch of what we can and cannot know about archaic and early Republican religion, the argument proceeds in three movements, arranged broadly chronologically. Each of these movements is a set of short chapters, generally mixed between broad syntheses of developments in Roman Republican religion and society and more specific case studies that illustrate these developments. The first movement (chaps. 2–5) discusses the development of spectacular public rituals in the late fourth and third centuries b.c.e. In the context of the creation of the new plebeian-patrician nobility, Rüpke argues, the establishment of major religious spectacles in this period, notably the processions (pompae) associated with the ludi circenses, dramatic performances, and the triumph, provided opportunities for public communication and the creation of a Roman “public space.” Religion was integral to the creation of these new large-scale rituals: the gods were constantly present as actors, audiences, and as dramatic subject-matter in the spectacular public life of the mid-Republican city. For example, the reading (chap. 4) of the fragments of the tragedian Accius that touch on the gods and divination demonstrates how these ritual spectacles could be sites for public reflection on the problems of divinity. Given the obscurity of much of Roman history in the fourth and third centuries, some of the reconstructions in this part of the book are, inevitably, speculative. The claim that the development of the classical form of the triumph in the late fourth century is related to the contemporary concern with public statuary, for example, will not command universal assent (see Versnel’s response in Numen 53 [2006]:290–326, responding to an earlier version of chap. 5). Public writing is the central theme of the second movement (chaps. 6–9). Rüpke discusses the connections between literacy and the rationalization of Roman public religion and religious institutions. The development of the calendar [End Page 511] and the growing control of ritual action through legislation are the main topics for these chapters. The historical range in this section is extremely broad, from Cn. Flavius’ calendrical reforms at the end of the...

This chapter surveys the origins of monograms in the Hellenistic world and their early usage in republican and early imperial Rome, and continues with a general overview of quantitative and qualitative changes in their application in the third and fourth centuries ad. It also examines the more general cultural background to the increasing popularity of late antique monograms as protective and intercessory devices, suggesting that the growing use of such invocational monograms in visual communication paralleled the increasing popularity of acclamations in oral communication. Finally, it employs a contextualized study of the dedication monogram in the Calendar of 354 as a window into fourth-century Roman calligraphic culture. The concluding section discusses the development of a new, contemplative quality of calligraphic monograms in the late fourth century, and shows how some Neoplatonic ideas and their Christian adaptations affected late antique graphicacy.

The decline of Mithraism in the fourth century AD is used as a case-study for understanding the end of other classes of paganism' in the Roman western provinces. The author reviews epigraphic and numismatic evidence to date the final uses of Mithraea. He then discusses examples of wilful damage to Mithraic monuments. Drawing all this archaeological evidence into a historical framework, Sauer argues that rather than losing its social function as the Roman army became splintered, Mithraism was a healthy religion with active shrines until the very late fourth century. Rather than fading away, its desecrated monuments indicate that the religion was the victim of a sustained Christian attack which was also directed at other established faiths in the western provinces.

A magyarországi gemmaleletek feldolgozása során az a határozott sajátosság rajzolódott ki, hogy a legfontosabb lelőhelyek Északkelet-Pannoniában, a limes mentén találhatók, a következő központokban: Brigetio, Aquincum, Intercisa. A belső területekről csupán Gorsium emelkedik ki jelentősebb leletmennyiséggel. Bár egymástól nem távoli településekről van szó, mégis jelentős különbségek figyelhetők meg a gemmák időbeli megoszlásában, az ábrázolások tematikájában és a kivitelezés színvonalában. E különbségek meghatározása és lehetséges okaik megállapítása összegzés formájában olvasható az alábbiakban. A teljes leletanyagot tartalmazó katalógusok és elemzések egy része – többnyire idegen nyelven – már megjelent, más részük az összehasonlító vizsgálatokkal együtt egyelőre csak kéziratban hozzáférhető.

This chapter gives an overview of the Christianization of the Roman Empire in the fourth and early fifth centuries ad, especially in the Latin-speaking West. The emperor Constantine’s importance is discussed, as well as the survival of paganism and the increasing attempts from late in the fourth century onwards, under Theodosius and his successors, to undermine and suppress it. The evidence for continuity in Roman civic life, focusing on North Africa, is briefly considered. A survey is provided of ideological presentations, pagan and Christian, of the city of Rome as the symbol of empire in panegyric, in the Altar of Victory controversy, in historiography, in Christian martyr poems, and in architecture. The correspondence between Augustine and Nectarius in the aftermath of Christian-pagan violence in Calama in 408 is briefly explored for its exposure of conflicting values.

Analgesia and anesthesia: etymology and literary history of related Greek words.