When Rural Resilience Came to the City: Libanios on Villagers Moving through Fourth-Century Antioch

Abstract

In the fourth century AD, the relation between the city of Antioch and its hinterland underwent significant change. In response both to environmental transformation and the consequences of human intervention, resilient rural communities in the Amuq plain north-east of the city took on new political, economic, and religious significance. From a distinctively urban perspective, the sophist Libanios criticized and deplored this development, most famously in his oration 47 from around the year 390 with regard to the emerging political and judicial independence of larger villages in the Antiochene. The same phenomenon was addressed roughly 50 years later by the Christian author Theodoret of Kyrrhos, who, however, appreciated the new rural self-confidence as a religious revival spearheaded by holy men. But just as the late antique realities of villagers and city-dwellers rarely met, neither physically nor intellectually or culturally, also the contrasting perspectives represented by Libanios and Theodoret remained largely disconnected. In one instance, however, Libanios related an account of hinterland representatives that moved through Antioch’s urban space, confronted the city with a specifically Antiochene type of rural resilience, and challenged, according to Libanios, much of what Antioch stood for. As such, this episode highlights the importance of mobility in city-hinterland relations and, pointedly, its significance for the study of rural resilience in late antiquity.