Later Roman Empire Research Articles

M. Sághi et E. M. Schoolman (ed.), Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire. New Evidence, New Approaches (4th–8th centuries)

<i>M. Sághi et E. M. Schoolman (ed.), Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire. New Evidence, New Approaches (4th–8th centuries)</i>

The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique Rome: How Historiography Helped Create the Crypt of the Popes

Abstract:At some point in late antiquity, most scholars believe, Christians reversed the powerful valence of death pollution and considered corpses and bones to be sacred. The rise of the ‘Cult of the Saints’ or ‘cult of relics’ is widely accepted as a curious social phenomenon that characterized late antiquity. This paper argues that although present elsewhere in the late Roman Empire, no such ‘corporeal turn’ happened in Rome. The prevailing assumption that it did – fostered by the apologetic concerns of early modern Catholic historiography – has led us to gloss over important evidence to the contrary, to read our own assumptions into our extant textual, material, and archaeological sources. As a ‘case study’, this paper considers the so-called ‘Crypt of the Popes’ in the catacombs of Callixtus, which is universally presented unproblematically as an authentic burial chamber attesting to an age of persecution and the strength of Catholic apostolic succession. This paper argues, by contrast, that the chamber is not what it seems; it is, rather, a case of early modern historiographical artifice masquerading as late antique Roman Christianity.

Depositional and anthropic processes in the Holocene record of the Can Sadurní cave (Begues, Barcelona, Spain): microstratigraphic contributions

The geoarchaeological and microstratigraphic study of the Can Sadurní cave sequence (Begues, Barcelona) reveals the presence of detrital and anthropogenic depositional processes, alternating at certain stages. These influenced the location of the diagenetic processes. The cultural sequence of the site ranges from Epipaleolithic to Late Roman Empire, with some chronocultural interruptions. During the Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic, solifluction processes were responsible for sedimentation. From the Neolithic, mass wasting and colluvial processes were dominant. Dense flows are distinguished mainly during the Cardial Early Neolithic and Early Postcardial. This type of contribution is also present to a lesser extent during the Postcardial Middle Neolithic, Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age. Non-laminated colluvial inputs appear in the rest of the sequence. These episodes alternate with periods of stability, in which the rate of detrital sedimentation is lower or almost non-existent. This is replaced by the presence of in situ stabling areas during the Epicardial and Early Postcardial Neolithic, although evidence is detected from the Cardial Early Neolithic. Associated with these contexts, hydromorphic processes are accentuated leading to the formation of vivianite -an iron phosphate mineral- typical of a reducing medium with high organic matter.

Empires and Bureaucracy in World History: From Late Antiquity to the Twentieth Century ed. by Peter Crooks and Timothy H. Parsons

Reviewed by: Empires and Bureaucracy in World History: From Late Antiquity to the Twentieth Century ed. by Peter Crooks and Timothy H. Parsons John Deak Empires and Bureaucracy in World History: From Late Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. Edited by peter crooks and timothy h. parsons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xxii, 474 pp. $126.00 (hardcover); $35.99 (paper); $29.00 (ebook). This volume of eighteen essays, spanning over 450 pages of text, collectively examines the intersection of empire and bureaucracy. Call them what you will: bean-counters, pedants, mustachioed Napoleons in love with their arbitrary authority, officials—"bureaucrats" is not necessarily a neutral term—were necessary for princes, kings, emperors, trading and colonial corporations, and imperial governments to project power and build and maintain their empire. Empires have been with us for millennia, but how did they "rule over different peoples across vast expanses of space and time?" Following the "imperial turn," which has established how much empires have been the rule and nation-states the exception, these essays ask how "real empires actually ran" (p. 3). Together these eighteen essays, including a very good introductory essay by the editors, examine empires in terms of their bureaucracies, the officials who did the work of ruling. Their subject then, is not on the discourses and mentalities that undergirded the economies of empires and the internalization of discipline, but rather on the "formal institutions of imperial governance" (p. 7). This is admittedly history of the old school, but one that has been informed by the accumulation of knowledge and practices of the social and cultural histories. [End Page 433] The essays themselves span a breathtaking breadth of time and space. Patricia Ebrey contributes an examination of bureaucracy in Song China (960–1276 a.d.). She argues that Chinese officials provided the necessary infrastructure to govern over 100 million subjects with relative effectiveness and stability. István T. Kristó-Nagy writes about Arab rulers and Persian administrators in the early years of Arab-Islamic conquest. From there we move forward in time to the Incan Empire (Chris Given-Wilson) and the Ottoman Empire (Karen Barkey). These essays help expand our idea of administrators, who they were and what they did, and how often enough they could come up with effective ways of projecting power from the center. From there, the book shifts back to the center of Europe with five essays covering the period from the late Roman Empire to the Middle Ages. Michael Whitby argues in an essay on the late Roman Empire that it was above all administrative competence combined with a unified and unifying culture that glued the disparate pieces of the Roman Empire together. A strong essay by John Haldon on bureaucracy in Byzantium makes the argument that the Eastern Roman Empire was indeed a bureaucratic state. It was the deeply-rooted institutions, staffed by Byzantine officials, which allowed the empire to weather crises. Moreover, the bureaucracy itself, belonging to a common social class, could forge connections with one another—often enough providing flexibility to a system that may have looked more rigid on paper than it actually was or needed to be. Essays follow on Carolingian military administration, for bureaucrats were often needed to raise and maintain an army; the crisis of the English State and the Angevin Empire in the turn of the thirteenth century (John Gillingham); and an essay on the importance of the word and the medium of parchment in the Late Middle Ages (Len Scales). Finally, Peter Crooks contributes an essay on England and the "brittleness of bureaucracy" from 1259 to 1453. The last section of six essays turns to the modern period and the commercial empires of Spain, Britain, and France. Christopher Storrs' essay on Spain elaborates on how an effective bureaucracy gave way to encroachment by local elites in the New World, so much so that when Spain sought to reassert its authority by promoting administrative efficiency in the early nineteenth century, it provoked resentment among its colonial subjects. Jack P. Greene's essay on Britain's overseas empire echoes this sentiment, the American colonies being a case in point. A wonderful essay by Michael Broers on Napoleon's empire...

Descoperiri monetare la Histria – Sectorul Sud (2013–2017) / Monetary discoveries at Histria – South Sector (2013–2017)

În cursul cercetărilor sistematice întreprinse în Sectorul Sud al sitului Histria în perioada 2013– 2017, au fost recoltate 85 de piese monetare, dintre care au fost identificate 68 exemplare (80%). Săpăturile au vizat limita nord‐ vestică a sectorului, corespunzând părții de vest a incintei și compartimentărilor unui important edificiu identificat încă din anii 2011– 2012. Dimensiunile lotului monetar indică o anumită dinamică a prezenței monetare într‐ o zonă probabil intens locuită din Histria romană între a doua jumătate a secolului al II‐ lea p. Chr. şi sfârşitul Tetrarhiei. Datorită restrângerii incintei fortificate şi implicit a suprafeţei urbane în perioada Imperiului târziu, zona fostului edificiu monumental a ajuns în partea extra muros și a fost suprapusă de două niveluri ale necropolei. Cele 68 monede sunt repartizate cronologic după cum urmează : șase exemplare din perioada anterioară stăpânirii romane, 40 monede din perioada Principatului (șapte denari, 18 antoninieni, un sestertius, un dupondius și 13 emisiuni provinciale), 16 monede din perioada romană târzie și șase monede bizantine din secolul al VI‐ lea. Alături de emisiuni deja atestate în descoperirile de la Histria, au fost înregistrate și rarități, precum : o monedă din perioada târzie a autonomiei atelierului istrian, purtând o contramarcă inedită (nr. 6) ; emisiuni istriene puțin cunoscute de la Antoninus Pius și Caracalla (nr. 8 şi 13) respectiv o monedă pseudoautonomă cu legenda ICTPI gravată într‐ un mod neobișnuit (nr. 14) ; 4 assaria de la Nicopolis ad Istrum cu revers de tip încă neatestat pentru perioada când L. Aurelius Gallus a fost guvernator al Moesiei Inferior, mai precis anii 202– 205 (nr. 12) ; unicul antoninian de la Gordian III înregistrat până acum la Histria (nr. 27) ; un antoninian emis de Vabalathus (nr. 38). Structura lotului confirmă în general observațiile anterioare – prilejuite de publicarea în 2014 a unui prim lot de monede – privind prezența monetară în sudul Histriei. Cele mai multe monede au apărut în poziție secundară, neavând semnificație stratigrafică. Excepție fac unele exemplare găsite în dărâmătura zidurilor și pe nivelul de călcare contemporan edificiului cercetat, cel puțin 16 dintre ele putând fi folosite ca repere cronologice. Materialul monetar indică o ipotetică ridicare a marelui edificiu, probabil de utilitate publică, în prima parte a secolului al III‐ lea p. Chr. După o posibilă distrugere prin incendiere în timpul „ războiului scitic”, acesta a fost probabil parţial refăcut, eventual în vremea lui Aurelian sau Probus şi a funcţionat cel puţin până la începutul celui de‐ al doilea deceniu al secolului al IV‐ lea, când a fost devastat definitiv, aparent în cursul unui alt incendiu. Monedele pătrunse sporadic ulterior nu mai reflectă o locuire a zonei, ci sunt de pus în relaţie mai curând cu amenajări funerare din a doua jumătate a secolului al IV‐ lea şi mai târzii. Pentru o imagine generală, este anexată lista completă a descoperirilor monetare de la Histria – Sectorul Sud.

"Better to burn": The Prima Mimarum and Political Friction in Fourth-Century Antioch

This essay argues that in the transitioning socio-sexual economy of late antiquity, the mima (female actor) posed a problem for cultural classifications and uses of feminine identity. Personified through social imaginaries of her performance was an incongruent somatic politics (the commingling of extra-legal, pansexual agency, and juridically martyred inexistence), a corporality fracturing ideological constraints both to contain and rupture the harlot/saint dichotomy caught between two religio-social structures: one based on civic shame, the other on universal sin. In the late Roman Empire, women of the stage (thymelicae; mulieres scenicae) were affiliated with, but escaped confinement to, either binary term (for better or worse), and the performer's civic power, her erotic multiplicity, and her mobility were incendiary forces that the law and Church sought to capitalize on, refashion, or curtail. To unpack the material-discursive basis for the hagiographic account of Pelagia, a fifth-century prima mimarum turned saint, the essay investigates late-fourth-century Antioch under the imperium of Theodosius and the spiritual guidance of John Chrysostom. In the essay's first section, "Ethos," mimae (and Pelagia as a concrete instantiation) are viewed through postclassical writings on (and against) sexuality to extrapolate an extra-legal, pansexual agency that eludes comfortable authoritarian circumscription. Section 2, "Kairos," mobilizes Arjun Appadurai's concept of commodity situation to identify the discursive mechanics that circulate the prima mimarum as depersonalized/martyred transitive property in specific cultural-economic modalities. In the late-antique Roman east the bodies of women were fungible "riches" traversing the friction of a shifting politico-financial economy, but the bodies of actresses, certainly pliable with legal statutes guaranteed by a centuries-old backstory of infamia, proved to be an imprecise and uncontainable excess when the two models of pagan civics and Christian universals came into conflict.

Monede şi „vârfuri de săgeţi” descoperite recent la Argamum şi Enisala / Coins and „arrowheads” recently discovered at Argamum and Enisala

Materialul mai jos prezentat provine din cercetările arheologice organizate în cadrul proiectului „ ANR‐ Pont Euxin. Orgamè, nécropole et territoire”, coordonat de Alexandre Baralis (Musée du Louvre) și Vasilica Lungu (ISSEE). Dintre cele 16 monede, cele mai multe datează din perioada secolelor VI– III a. Chr. și epoca Imperiului roman târziu, după cum urmează : cinci „ vârfuri de săgeţi”, o monedă istriană de tip Apollo din seria timpurie, o mică piesă grecească dificil de încadrat cronologic și nouă nummi din secolul IV (între care o imitație), în succesiune cronologică de la Constantin I la Valens. În ciuda numărului mic, monedele din catalogul de mai jos completează informațiile cunoscute până acum, inclusiv cu două exemplare mai rar întâlnite. Acestea confirmă un nivel ridicat al activităţilor comerciale la Orgame/ Argamum și împrejurimi în secolele VI– IV a. Chr., dar și în epoca Dominatului, așa cum atestă cel puțin trei tezaure mari de „ vârfuri de săgeţi”, de asemenea un tezaur monetar important și mai multe piese descoperite izolat, datând din secolul IV p. Chr.

The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages

The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages

Continuity and change in animal exploitation at the transition from Antiquity to the early medieval period in the Belgian and Dutch loess region

This article studies the evolution of livestock exploitation during the late Roman Empire and the Merovingian period by highlighting significant and progressive changes in husbandry practices that are discernible from archaeozoological data relating to five settlements in the Belgian and Dutch loess region. The intensive exploitation of cattle for agricultural activities, transport, and meat supply of consumer sites during the Roman period was progressively abandoned. Pigs grew in importance during the late Empire and became predominant at all sites from the 5th century onwards. Reduction in demand for powerful draught animals for agricultural work in the loess belt is reflected by strong decrease in cattle size and robusticity in the 6th century. Kill-off patterns, sex-ratios, and pathologies related to the use of cattle for traction also point to changes in the objectives of breeding cattle. There was a shift from intensive exploitation for traction during the late Roman period to mixed breeding for meat and milk production in addition to traction during the Merovingian period. The archaeozoological results suggest a less intensive exploitation of agricultural land and a more significant exploitation of woodland. An increase in cattle is recorded at the end of the Merovingian period, in particular at the sites of the Meuse valley, coinciding with an increase in agricultural production.

Bondage by contract in the late Roman empire

Legal codes and other documents of the late Roman Empire reveal a system, the colonate or sometimes (redundantly) the bound colonate in which farmers (coloni) had their (head and land) taxes paid by estate owners in whose census rolls they were registered. If the land changed ownership coloni were entitled to stay and were registered in the tax roll of the new owner. However, coloni and their offspring lacked the right to migrate. Developing some previously advanced ideas about patrocinium “patronage,” this article argues that the pristine or original form of the colonate is a voluntary contractual arrangement among free farmers, estate owners, and the imperial Fiscus which acquired a public law dimension because it required a change in the personal status of the farmer. By means of this bondage contract the contractors expected to share in the aggregate gains from reducing tax-collection costs and from stabilizing tax revenues. The paper goes on to consider the implications of the colonate for economic efficiency and concludes with some observations on the reasons for changes over time in its importance.

Late Antiquity and World History

The flourishing of late-antique studies in the last half-century has coincided with the rise of “world history” as an area of academic research. To an extent, some overlap has occurred, particularly with Sasanian Persia being considered alongside the late Roman Empire as constituting an essential component in what we think of in terms of the “shape” of late antiquity. Yet it is still the case that many approaches to late antiquity are bound up with conventional western narratives of historical progress, as defined in Jack Goody's The Theft of History (2006). Indeed, the debate about whether late antiquity was an age of dynamic transformation (as argued by Peter Brown and his disciples) or one of catastrophic disruption (as asserted, most recently, by Bryan Ward-Perkins) can be regarded as representing two different faces of an essentially evolutionary interpretation of western historical development. This article argues, however, that we can challenge such conventional narrative frameworks by taking a world historical perspective on late antiquity. It shows, first, that our interpretation of late antiquity depends on sources that themselves are representative of myriad local perspectives. Secondly, it argues that since Gibbon's time these sources have been made to serve an essentially western construct of and debate about history. The final section considers how taking a more global perspective allows us to challenge conventional approaches to and narratives of late antiquity.

Decadence and the Reinvention of Modernismthe Decadent Republic of Letters: Taste, Politics, and Cosmopolitan Community from Baudelaire to Beardsley

Decadence and the Reinvention of Modernismthe Decadent Republic of Letters: Taste, Politics, and Cosmopolitan Community from Baudelaire to Beardsley

Serfdom by Contract in the Late Roman Empire

Serfdom by Contract in the Late Roman Empire

Fortresses of the Tur Abdin and the confrontation between Rome and Persia

AbstractAlthough research is currently impossible on the ground, satellite photographs allow some further information to be gleaned concerning the region of the Tur Abdin, of crucial importance during the wars between the late Roman Empire and Sassanian Persia in the fourth to seventh century AD. This article examines the ancient sources and the reports of visitors to the area in the light of what is now visible to all via Google Earth and other suppliers of free satellite imagery. Apart from describing the remains of the fortresses and their role in defending an important redoubt against Persian attacks, it draws attention to the urgent necessity for proper ground surveys of what remains of the fortifications of various periods before these are completely destroyed by looting and reuse of building materials. Dams also present a substantial risk to some of the monuments discussed here.

Between Patronage and Prejudice: Freedman Magistrates in the Late Roman Republic and Empire

Between Patronage and Prejudice: Freedman Magistrates in the Late Roman Republic and Empire

French erudités and the construction of Merovingian history

This article addresses the ways in which scholars of history who worked in France in the 16 th century attempted to describe and consider early medieval history and how in the course of this process they made slight adaptations to the image of the early medieval Frankish history that corresponded to the needs of the educated community and the emerging French monarchy. Thus, the article compares how the scholars Claude Fauchet, Bernards de Girarnd Sieur Du Haillan and others looked at the process of construction of the Frankish kingdom and how they addressed the relationship between the Mediterranean core of the Late Roman Empire and the diocese of Gaul which had long attracted the attention of the Franks, who became Roman soldiers and foederati. It is suggested that the bifurcation in historical knowledge took place in the 1570s in the works of Claude Fauchet and Bernard Du Haillan, one of which may still be ascribed to the earlier group of humanists who operated within the framework created by Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo, whereas Bernard Du Haillan, on the other hand, sought to overcome the ideas and terms used by them and conceived of Frankish history in different terms. He emphasized the discontinuity between the Roman Empire and the Frankish Gaul, but at the same time sought to avoid the use of the discourse of national self-identification that permeated the works of earlier humanists.

Law, Heresy and Judges under the Thedosian Dinasty

Summary Religious legislation against heretics was an innovation in the Late Roman Empire and its enforcement involved great difficulties. The provincial governors who, except in the period of the persecution of Christians, had tolerated religious diversity, were to implement exclusion laws against pagans and heretical groups. This paper analyzes the form of interaction between bishops, emperors and judges in the issuing and enforcement of the laws against heretics, as well as casting light on the relevance of episcopal intervention as a method of informing and shaping the imperial will.

JEDAN KRATAK PREGLED POLITIČKIH PRILIKA RIMSKOG CARSTVA U 4. I 5. VEKU

U drugoj polovini 4. veka Rim je ušao u poslednju fazu svog postojanja kao jedinstvene imperije i velike vojne, ekonomske i kulturne sile. Problemi koji su se godinama taložili u Rimskom carstvu kulminirali su u ovom periodu, i na kraju, nekoliko decenija kasnije, doveli i do pada tzv. Zapadnog rimskog carstva1 i početka novog doba – nazvanog srednji vek.

LUCIAN AND LATIN - E. Bozia Lucian and his Roman Voices. Cultural Exchanges and Conflicts in the Late Roman Empire. (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies 19.) Pp. xii + 222, ills. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Cased, £90, US$145. ISBN: 978-1-138-79675-1.

LUCIAN AND LATIN - E. Bozia Lucian and his Roman Voices. Cultural Exchanges and Conflicts in the Late Roman Empire. (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies 19.) Pp. xii + 222, ills. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Cased, £90, US$145. ISBN: 978-1-138-79675-1.

Defence in Depth: Beyond Roman Grand Strategy

Many scholars have struggled to define and characterize the Late Roman Empire's defensive policy, in order to understand the underlying causes of the defensive deterioration, which some have seen as a factor in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In 1976 American theorist Edward Luttwak published his Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, which defined the defensive evolution of the third century as Rome's pragmatic shift towards a policy of 'defence in depth', whereby the military would abandon their traditionally static frontier security policy in exchange for a fundamentally elastic one. Was the Empire capable of designing a ‘grand strategy’, and did it have the command‐control capacity for such endeavours? Did the Romans commit a devastating strategic blunder by withdrawing the military presence that had for so long subdued the will of the migratory peoples in the periphery? Critics have accused this 'defence in depth' hypothesis of failing to factor in strong literary and archaeological evidence that contests the theory, while relying heavily on modern military concepts and terminology. Ongoing research has indicated that while this Late Roman strategy was executed in various forms throughout the empire, the essential approach of the military was dictated through a well defined operational framework. This paper asserts that Roman defence in depth was a consciously adopted policy of the Roman state and addresses some of the main criticisms presented by scholars who refute the possibility of this system's existence.