Posts Tagged ‘Roman Empire’

The End of Roman Spain

The End of Roman Spain

By Michael Kulikowski

PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1997

Abstract: ‘The End of Roman Spain’ narrates the history of the last years in which the Iberian peninsula formed part of the Roman empire and argues that the lapse of Roman control came around the year AD 460, much later than the traditional date of 409. The first chapter sets the scene and discusses Spain in the fourth-century. The second, ‘The Defence of Roman Spain’, presents an analysis of the confused sources for the late Roman army in Spain and is linked to an appendix on the ‘ Notitia Dignitatum’ which argues that that document was in origin a single base text, composed at the eastern court around 394.

The third chapter revises the traditional chronology of usurpation and barbarian invasion in Gaul between 405 and 413, in the course of which events Roman authority in Spain was first challenged by barbarian invaders. The fourth chapter traces the history of the peninsula between 425 and 455, examining the effects on Roman control of a barbarian presence in the Spanish provinces. Chapter five looks at the Goths, whose role in the end of Roman Spain is crucial, and argues that their initial settlement in Gaul in 418 was designed by the central imperial authorities to prevent their provincial Roman subjects from supporting further usurpations.

Chapter six, finally, examines the careers of the last two emperors to take an interest in Spain, showing how they maintained their authority in the peninsula by using the Goths as their instruments. It argues that after Majorian left the peninsula in 460, having failed to mount a campaign against the Vandals in Africa, Roman Spain ended, because the structure of imperial office-holding in Spain disappeared.

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1 Sep 2010
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Pots and boundaries: On cultural and economic areas between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages

Pots and boundaries: On cultural and economic areas between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages

By Paul Arthur

Late Roman Coarse Wares, Cooking Wares and Amphorae in the Mediterranean : Archaeology and archaeometry, eds. Michel Bonify and J.C. Treglia (Bar International Series, 1662:1, 2007)

Abstract: The present contribution does not claim to resolve problems in the recognition of the significance of late Roman and early Medieval cooking wares, but it hopes to draw attention to certain factors that may have some importance in their interpretation. In particular, it hopes to show that comparison between cooking ware types and forms and data accruing from the analysis of other classes of archaeological data (faunal, botanical, etc.), may indicate some fruitful lines of enquiry. In particular, distributions of cooking wares may shed light on cultural or economic areas that are apparently defined more by environmental factors (and culinary tradition) than by political or administrative boundaries.

Introduction: For quite some time now, research has shown that ceramics, long used as indicators for ancient commerce, either directly, through transport containers such as amphorae, or indirectly, through the distribution of pots that rode ‘piggy-back’ as secondary cargoes, have much more information to offer. Particularly for late antiquity and early Byzantine times, studies of ceramic distributions by John Hayes, and later, particularly in Italy, by scholars such as Clementina Panella, Enrico Zanini and Lidia Paroli, have shown how certain vessels appear to be linked not only to Byzantine trade, but also to politics of supply. For instance, commercial amphorae and African Red Slip Ware, after the Lombard invasion of Italy, appear to represent directional trade that favoured Byzantine possessions in the peninsula, often to the exclusion of areas held by the Lombards. In such cases, we appear to be witnessing the movement of products from specific production areas to specific consumption areas under some form of controlled directive. Other areas were excluded.

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9 May 2010
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Land, freedom and the making of the medieval West

Land, freedom and the making of the medieval West

By Matthew Innes

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol.16 (2006)

Abstract:  In the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, barbarian warbands acquired property rights in the former provinces of the Roman west, in a process that established the broad structural characteristics of early medieval society in western Europe: that is the central contention of this essay. Focusing on the western Mediterranean heartlands of the Imperial government and senatorial aristocracy, it argues that these property transfers were fundamental to the emergence of ethnic identity as the crucial political marker in the post-Roman west. Latent conflict over the respective rights and obligations of barbarian ‘guests’ and their provincial ‘hosts’ structured the first attempts at post-Roman state-formation in the west, for the nature of the ‘hospitality’ offered to barbarian warbands accommodated within the Empire became a matter of contention as second and third generation ‘guests’ continued to enjoy the fruits of the property of their ‘hosts’.

Interpreting these new social relationships in the light of established legal forms, barbarian kings identified agreed mechanisms for the legitimate transfer of Roman property to their followers: this process allowed Roman landowners to seek remedies for illegitimate or violent seizure, but at the price of acknowledging a significant redistribution of land to a new class of barbarian soldiers whose liberty was rooted in their military service. The result was the emergence, by the seventh century, of regionalised and militarised elites who appropriated the language of ethnicity to legitimate their position.

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22 Apr 2010
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Liberty and advocacy in Ennodius of Pavia: the significance of rhetorical education in late antique Italy

Liberty and advocacy in Ennodius of Pavia: the significance of rhetorical education in late antique Italy

By S.J.B. Barnish

Hommages a Carl Deroux, Vol.5 Christianisme et Moyen Age Néo-latin et surviance de la latinité, edited by Pol Defosse (Bruxelles: Latomus, 2002-2003)

Introduction: In two declamations composed to support his student protégés at Deuterius’ school of grammar and rhetoric at Milan, the Milanese deacon Ennodius (later bishop of Pavia) praised their master as the sustainer of ruitura libertas, of a liberty on the point of collapse. What did he mean by this?

First, let us look at the historical context. With due allowance for Ennodian hyperbole, Deuterius seems to have been partly responsible for a revival of rhetorical education in northern Italy following the devastation of the wars of 489-93 between Odoacer and Theoderic the Great. In another declamation, Ennodius saluted his achievement in transferring his school to the forum of Milan: From the lairs of wild beasts and the habitations of owls, you recall us to the fora, from which our forebears had long been all but absent.

In this, Deuterius was probably encouraged by the Ostrogothic regime of Theoderic. It was presumably Theoderic who bestowed on him the rank of spectabilis, an unusual honour for a grammarian. One of Ennodius’ poems hailed Deuterius as imperii custos, “guardian of the realm”. His title paralleled the encouragement given by the Ostrogoths to higher education in Rome, and the rhetorical establishments of the two cities fostered ties between them. Paterius, son of a senator, was his godson, as well as his pupil.

Ennodius’ correspondence suggests that a number of young gentry from the north trod a path from the school of Deuterius to those of Rome, assisted by Ennodius’ commendations to leading Roman senators and churchmen. Three at least of his protégés were among the north Italians who dominate the prosopography of Ostrogothic Italy for Romans in high office.

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19 Apr 2010
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Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius of Caesarea : the eastern campaigns of Julian and Justinian, 4th and 6th centuries A.D

Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius of Caesarea : the eastern campaigns of Julian and Justinian, 4th and 6th centuries A.D

By Ian Kelso

MA Thesis, Dalhousie University, 1998

Abstract: Ammianus Marcellinus, a historian of the fourth century, and Procopius of Caesarea, in the sixth recorded their time in a way that left us two excellent accounts of eye witnesses. Ammianus’s Res Gestae record the actions of many, but none as well as those of the emperor Julian (361-363 AD). Especially Julian’s brief reign. More importantly his campaign against the Persians was recorded by Ammianus vividly, due to the fact that Ammianus was a staff officer in Julian’s headquarters. This gave him insight into the man and his methods and the ability to write a history that was of a higher quality than most. Ammianus’s classical education also assisted in his writing.

Procopius had a similar experience in his own time, but as a legal adviser on the staff of the leading general, Belisarius. Though he was not a soldier, he was well acquainted with soldiers and their ways. He was present at many of the major battles of the day, which gave him the knowledge he needed to write his works the Bella in 8 books(two on the Persian wars), the De AEdificiis and the Anecdota. All of these, when taken together, help to give a full picture of the people and events. He is the best historian for the emperor of the day, Justinian (527-565 AD), who had grand ideas of re-conquering the western half of the empire, but was delayed by wars against the Persians.

By using both of these historians it is hoped that the Persian campaigns of Julian and Justinian will be made clearer in the context of the emperors and their goals and flaws. The two historians will also be looked at to see what their abilities and skills were and where these skills originated. A source of their inspiration for writing their histories will be sought out as well.

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21 Feb 2010
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Emperors, Jurists and Kings: Law and Custom in the Late Roman and Early Medieval West

Emperors, Jurists and Kings: Law and Custom in the Late Roman and Early Medieval West

By P. S. Barnwell

Past and Present, No. 168 (2000)

Introduction: The character and workings of the laws issued by the ‘barbarian’ kings who replaced the Roman authorities in the western provinces in the fifth and early sixth centuries have long been the subject of debate. Although the topic has until recently been almost exclusively the preserve of legal historians, and the literature is both technical and inaccessible, it is intimately connected with the wider question of the way in which the world of antiquity was transformed into that of the early middle ages.

If the laws of the ‘barbarian’ kings represent Germanic tribal custom, their promulgation in territories previously subject to Roman law would suggest that the empire had ‘fallen’ and that Roman traditions counted for little. If, on the other hand, those same laws were at least in part derived from Roman customs, a very different picture of the end of the empire would be suggested: rather than a simple confrontation between Roman and ‘barbarian’, there would have been an accommodation between the two, leading to a more gradual (though still ultimately fundamental) transition from the empire to the successor kingdoms.

That transition did, of course, involve much more than the law – there are many other administrative, economic, social and religious dimensions to the question – but legal development is a crucial aspect of the subject, as it touches not only upon the activities of the elite who made and administered the law, but also on the lives of all those subject to its provisions.

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6 Jan 2010
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The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe

The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe

By Peter Heather

The English Historical Review, Vol. 110, No. 435. (1995)

Introduction: Based on the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire forged Europe as far as the rivers Rhine and Danube – and, for lengthy periods, extensive lands beyond those boundaries – together with North Africa and much of the Near East into a unitary state which lasted for the best part of 400 years. The protracted negotiations required to bring just some of this area together in the European Community put the success of this Empire into perspective.

Yet since the publication of Gibbon’s masterpiece (and long before), its very success has served only to stimulate interest in why it ended, ‘blame’ being firmly placed on everything from an excess of Christian piety to the effect of lead water pipes. The aim of this paper is to reconsider some of the processes and events which underlay the disappearance of the western half of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD. This was an area encompassing essentially modern Britain, France, Benelux, Italy, Austria, Hungary, the Iberian Peninsula, and North Africa as far east as Libya, whose fragmentation culminated in the deposition of Romulus Augustulus on or around 4 September 476. That groups of outsiders -so-called ‘barbarians’ -played an important role in all this has never been doubted. A full understanding of the barbarians’ involvement in a whole sequence of events, taking the best part of a hundred years, lends, however, an unrecognized coherence to the story of western imperial collapse.

There are two main reasons why this coherence has not been highlighted before. First, most of the main barbarian groups which were later to establish successor states to the Roman Empire in western Europe, had crossed the frontier by about AD 410, yet the last western Roman emperor was not deposed until 476, some sixty-five years later. I will argue, however (and this provides the main focus for the second half of the paper), that the initial invasions must not be separated from the full working-out of their social and political consequences.

Not just the invasions themselves need to be examined, but also the longer-term reactions to them of the Roman population of western Europe, and especially its landowning elites. While the western Empire did not die quickly or easily, a direct line of historical cause and effect nonetheless runs from the barbarian invasions of the late fourth and early fifth centuries to the deposition of Romulus Augustulus. The second reason lies in modern understandings of what caused the different groups of outsiders to cross into the Empire in the first place. These population movements did not happen all at once, but were stretched out over about thirty-five years, c. 376-410. Here again, however, a close re-examination of the evidence reveals that the years of invasion represent no more than different phases of a single crisis.

In particular, the two main phases of population movement – c. 376-86 and 405-8 – were directly caused by the intrusion of Hunnic power into the fringes of Europe. The Huns were very much a new factor in the European strategic balance of power in the late fourth century. A group of Eurasian nomads, they moved west, sometime after AD 350, along the northern coast of the Black Sea, the western edge of the great Eurasian Steppe. Illiterate, and not even leaving a second-hand account of their origins and history in any Graeco-Roman source, they remain deeply mysterious. Opinions differ even over their linguistic affiliation, but the best guess would seem to be that the Huns were the first group of Turkic, as opposed to Iranian, nomads to have intruded into Europe. Whatever the answer to that question, the first half of this study will reconsider their impact upon the largely Germanic groups of central and eastern Europe which had previously been the main focus of Roman foreign policy on Rhine and Danube.

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31 Dec 2009
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THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF CURSE TABLETS [DEFIXIONES] IN BRITAIN AND ON THE CONTINENT

THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF CURSE TABLETS [DEFIXIONES]
IN BRITAIN AND ON THE CONTINENT

Adams, Geoff W.

Studia Humaniora Tartuensia, vol. 7 (2006)

Abstract

The central theme of this study is to analyse the idiosyncratic nature of the Romano-British interpretation of the use of defixiones and various ‘prayers for justice’. The prevalence of revenge as a theme within this comparatively isolated Roman province is notable and clearly illustrates the regional interpretation that affected the implementation of this religious tradition. The Romano-British curse tablets were largely reactionary, seeking either justice or revenge for a previous wrong, which in turn affected the motivation that led to their production. This regional interpretation was quite different to their overall use on the continent, but even these examples frequently also exhibit some degree of local interpretation by their issuers.

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28 Dec 2009
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Philosophies of Imprisonment in Late Antiquity

Philosophies of Imprisonment in Late Antiquity

By Mary Olson

Constructing the Past, Vol.9:1 (2008)

Abstract: One of the few things that prisons were not used for, in a legal sense, was punishment. However, a multitude of laws outlined the necessity of a quick trial and short jail time. Imprisonment was seen as an inconvenience to all parties involved, and a constant flow, rather than maintaining the status quo, was the way prisons were supposed to work. There existed no sense of the prison as a final destination for the guilty, “no one [was] to be condemned to permanent imprisonment.” Manifesting a distaste for imprisonment in general, Roman law prohibited jail time and simultaneously ascribed the uses of the institution while limiting its reach. Expediency was the best policy as far as prisons were concerned and the laws themselves upheld the preventative and practical facets of prison.

Introduction: Prisons in the Late Antique world were intended, by those in power, to function as a sort of half-way house for the accused awaiting trial or the condemned awaiting death. Legal understanding of prison was not, however, what resulted for all classes and social groups. Though it was unintentional, prisons became yet another form of punishment to the masses. And while philosophers like Libanius agonized over the miserable conditions in the prison for the poor, the Christians saw the prison as a time of seclusion, a time to reflect and grow spiritually. Christianity applied a new religious twist to the prison system; and from this ideological application, prisons were transmuted into theoretical havens that assisted the transition into the next world. Although prisons changed little during Late Antiquity, the perception and the understanding of prisons varied by social groups; from the law-makers to the common man, but it was the Christians who applied a higher spiritual meaning to what was an inconvenience to some and an unintentional form of suffering to others.

In order to understand how the conceptual perception of prisons changed with different social groups, one must first understand what prisons were meant to be and what they actually were. Prison structure was governed on logic, with different types of prisons to separate the accused from the condemned. From the structure, scholars can understand the purpose of the prison, and current scholarly debate revolves around the intention of the law-makers. The Digests of Justinian outlined what prisons were intended to be and how they should be used. Treatment of detainees, however, differed due to class. Libanius rallied against prisons, deplorable conditions, and the suffering therein. It was with the Christians that prison shifted from a place of suffering to a locale for salvation. Spiritual revelation became the main purpose of prisons. Despite their intention and structure, the purpose and perception of prisons changed throughout social groups within the Roman Empire of late antiquity.

Though few of the prison structures have survived in Rome, some physical evidence of prison complexes has been found elsewhere. In Athens, prison remains consisted of “eight cells and courtyard.”  The structure was more open; or at least this was the design of the main, outer prison. There is evidence that there were multiple parts of the prison system, the outer, more open area and “an inner (or deeper) [prison]..in which the accused might be shut up in darkness…” While the inner prison was dreary, “other parts of the prison were less terrible. Some had windows…The more desirable parts of the prison could sometimes be obtained by purchasing them from jailers…”This division begs the question: which type of prisons do the extant pr imary sources examine? While there is enough physical evidence left to distinguish various types of prisons, the sources themselves do not identify which type of prison they were discussing, or provide enough description to visualize its dimensions.

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20 Oct 2009
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Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani: Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire

Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani: Concepts of Citizenship and the Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire

By Ralph W. Mathisen

The American Historical Review, Vol.111: 4 (2006)

In recent years, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, increasing attention has been paid to changing concepts of citizenship in the context of the globalization of the economy, politics, and society. The interrelationships among citizenship, nationality, ethnicity, and identity have evolved as a consequence of factors such as a renewed role for religious identity and mass migrations that have altered the ethnic composition and influenced the cultural norms of the society of nearly every modern nation. Traditionally, in order to become a citizen of an established nation‐state, a foreigner has been expected to profess the acceptance of certain moral, cultural, and political views. At a 2005 press conference, for example, British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated, “People who want to be British citizens should share our values and our way of life.” In this model, citizens receive certain privileges and are liable to certain obligations.

A model of citizenship based on geographically delimited nation‐states now is sometimes considered to be unsuited to modern multiethnic, multiracial, and supranational societies.6 Rather than a formal juridical status based on fixed principles, citizenship also can be viewed as a process of negotiation between established values and the values of newcomers into a society. Increasing attention likewise has been given to metaphorical or philosophical forms of citizenship, and to the “relationship between … citizenship and moral and intellectual integrity.” Thus, one can be a citizen not only of a nation, but also of more diffuse and inclusive bodies, such as the European community or even the world. Cosmopolitanism, it has been suggested, now denotes a “world community … where relations between individuals transcend state boundaries” and a belief in “basic human rights that all individuals should enjoy.” As noted by April Carter, “The idea of world citizenship is fashionable again.” All of these manifestations of citizenship can supply unifying elements that are otherwise lacking in diverse societies, where citizenship “fosters social cooperation and identification that avoid the divisiveness of racial, religious, and ethnic affiliations.” Citizenship thus can provide forms of personal identity that are defined either narrowly, by how the population of a nation is defined and treated under the law, or broadly, by the acceptance of a set of philosophical and moral concepts.

Similar ideas were discussed or even implemented in antiquity in ways that have much to teach us. Although one must take care not to press apparent parallels too far, the ancient world, and in particular the later Roman Empire, can provide us with a laboratory for investigating what does and does not work in dealing with the interlocking issues of citizenship, ethnicity, and identity. It permits us to inform our understanding of emotionally charged phenomena from a more distanced and objective perspective. The concepts of cosmopolitanism and world citizenship go back at least to Hellenistic philosophies of the fourth and third centuries b.c.e. The Cynic Diogenes, for example, stated that he was “a cosmopolite”: “a citizen of the world.” The Stoics believed that the whole world constituted the only true city, whose citizens were of necessity “good” people. In the Roman Empire, in the early second century c.e., the Stoic philosopher Epictetus likewise spoke of being a “citizen of the world.”14 Even the philosopher‐emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180) called himself a “citizen of the world‐city,” opining that “under its laws equal treatment is meted out to all.”

In general, however, universal citizenship that transcends traditional legal, social, or national boundaries, that presupposes that all citizens are “good people,” or that does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens (or between “haves” and “have‐nots”) exists only in the mind and spirit, not as a formal juridical status. Not even Marcus Aurelius, fortified with the authority of a Roman emperor, manifested his concept of world citizenship in Roman legislation. And in the modern day, the recent problems with the passage of a European constitution, which states that “every citizen of a Member State is a citizen of the Union and enjoys dual citizenship, national citizenship, and European citizenship,” provide just one example of the practical difficulties inherent in creating forms of citizenship that transcend the borders of traditional nation‐states.

It may be, in fact, that the closest the world ever came to implementing a form of world citizenship was during the later Roman Empire. Beginning in the early third century, the Roman government worked to maximize the number of persons to whom Roman ius civile, the law of Roman citizens, applied. Emperors and jurists created a practical manifestation of universal citizenship that was rather different from the views of the philosophers.18 In the process, a number of problems with a curiously modern feel had to be confronted, including how to create a form of citizenship that was not predicated on an antithesis between “citizens” and “noncitizens,” how to deal with new concepts of Christian religious identity, and how to integrate multitudes of foreign immigrants (otherwise known as “barbarians”) with different cultural values who created a more ethnically diverse society.

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25 Sep 2009
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