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Approaching Late Antiquity The Transformation From Early To Late Empire (Simon Swain and Mark Edwards)

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Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to

Late Empire
Simon Swain and Mark Edwards

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Title Pages

APPROACHING LATE ANTIQUITY Approaching Late Antiquity

(p.iv)

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Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Acknowledgements

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.002.0004

The editors would like to acknowledge the material support of the

Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Warwick, the
Humanities Research Centre, University of Warwick, and All Souls College,
Oxford. We are extremely grateful to All Souls College, Oxford, and Christ
Church, Oxford for generously funding the colour illustrations. We would
also like to thank Graham Sells for his translation of Chapter 3 and to
acknowledge the assistance of Hilary O’Shea and her team at OUP in the
production of this book. Thanks too to Bert Smith for support at a crucial
stage, and especially to H. J., J. J., and J. E. V.

S. S. and M. J. E.

Shotteswell and Oxford

July 2003 (p.vi)

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Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to
Late Empire
Simon Swain and Mark Edwards

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

List of Colour Plates

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.002.0006

(to appear between pp. 242 and 243)

1. Trivulzio cage-cup, second half of the fourth century AD.

2. Theodolinda’s Gospel Book, c. AD 600, from Rome.
3. a and b. Late antique marble incrustation (Sta Sophia),
Constantinople, sixth century AD.
4. Painted stucco mummy with encaustic portrait of Artemidorus.
From Hawara, AD 100–130.
5. Painted linen shroud with a portrait of a woman in a dalmatic
with a mantle. From Antinoopolis, AD 300 –350.
6. Painted linen shroud with a portrait of a woman in a dalmatic and
stole. From Antinoopolis, AD 350 –400.

Page 1 of 1 List of Colour Plates

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

List of Figures

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.002.0007

CHAPTER 2

1. Wine amphorae at Ostia and Rome: percentage from Italy. Eight

samples with approximate dating.
2. Rural settlements in the Rhineland: percentage occupied in a
given period.
3. Site totals in the Segermes survey (sites with two or more
fineware sherds).
4. Public building in the African provinces: total per year AD 98–
395.
5. Sources of tableware AD 70–400, Ostia, Terme del Nuotatore
(percentages by region).
6. Documentation from Karanis (Arsinoite) AD 100 –399.
7. Numbers of documentary papyri from Egyptian finds AD 100 –
300 (shown as percentages of total).
8. Egyptian documentary papyri AD 284–540, yearly averages by
ten-year periods.
9. British stray coin-finds: percentage per year, AD 96 –402 (median
of Verulamium, Silchester, Piercebridge, Richborough).
10. Third-century silver hoards, average number per year, AD 200–
275 (major reigns).
11. Third-century silver hoards, median size in denarii, AD 200–275
(major reigns).
12. Dated imperial rescripts, AD 235–285.

CHAPTER 3

Page 1 of 3 List of Figures

CHAPTER 11

1. Flavius Palmatus, Aphrodisias, late fifth or early sixth century AD.

2. Samuel anointing David, Dura Europos Synagogue, c. AD 245.
• (p.xi)
3. Arch of Constantine, general view, Rome, c. AD 312–15.
4. a and b. Rubens Vase, late fourth century AD.
5. a and b. Ludovisi Sarcophagus, Rome, c. AD 250 –60.
6. Head of Constantine recut from Trajan, from Arch of Con-
stantine, Rome, c. AD 315.
7. Symmachorum ivory leaf, late fourth century AD.
8. Barberini ivory, sixth century AD.
9. Meleager Plate from the Sevso Treasure, fourth century AD.
10. Dionysiac amphora from the Sevso Treasure, fourth century AD.
11. Justinianic capital from St Sophia, Constantinople, fourth decade
of sixth century AD.
12. a and b. Stone reliefs from St Polyeuktos, Constantinople, third
decade of sixth century AD.
13. Agate head of the emperor Augustus (late first century BC or
early first century AD) with a later Byzantine inscription.

CHAPTER 12

1. View of the ruins of the city of Antinoopolis, drawn by Jomard for

Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt.
2. Painted stucco mummy portraits of a man and a woman, and an
unpainted mummy of a child, excavated at Deir el-Bahri, western
Thebes, AD 270 –300.
3. Painted linen shroud of a boy, from Antinoopolis, AD 300 –400.

Page 2 of 3 List of Figures

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Note on Contributors

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.002.0008

COLIN ADAMS is Lecturer in Ancient History in the School of Archaeology and

Ancient History, University of Leicester.

ALAN CAMERON is Charles Anthon Professor of Latin Language and

Literature, Columbia University, New York.

JOHN DILLON is Regius Professor of Greek, Trinity College, Dublin.

RICHARD DUNCAN-JONES is Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, University

of Cambridge.

MARK EDWARDS is Lecturer in Patristics, University of Oxford, and Student of

Christ Church, Oxford.

JAŚ ELSNER is Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, and Visiting Professor of Art History, University of Chicago.

PETER GARNSEY is Professor of the History of Classical Antiquity, University

of Cambridge, and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.

TONY HONORÉ is Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

NEIL MCLYNN is Professor in the Faculty of Law, Keio University, Japan.

EMANUELE PAPI is Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Provinces,

Department of Archaeology and History of Art, University of Siena, Italy.

Page 1 of 2 Note on Contributors

SUSAN WALKER is Deputy Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities,

(p.xiii)
The British Museum, London.

MICHAEL WHITBY is Professor of Classics and Ancient History, Department of

Classics aand Ancient History, University of Warwick.

Page 2 of 2 Note on Contributors

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Introduction

Simon Swain (Contributor Webpage)

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the purpose of

the book, which is to consider the factors already present in the society of
the High Roman Empire that developed and expanded into the world of Late
Antiquity, and what was new in this period and distinct from what preceded
it. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

Keywords: Late Antiquity, High Roman Empire, Roman world

What factors already present in the society of the High Roman Empire
developed and expanded into the world of Late Antiquity? What was new
in this period and distinct from what preceded? These complex questions
are the concern of this volume. The great variety of skills needed to answer
them—embracing as they do the fields of cultural history, politics, the history
of thought, art history, philosophy, pagan religion, Christian church, Greek
and Latin literature—are beyond the resources of the individual. It was for
this reason that we invited to seminars in Oxford and Warwick a number
of well-known experts on Roman history and culture to treat the material
they knew best under the general rubric of transformation in the Roman
Empire from approximately AD 200 to 400. The chronological limits were
a suggestion only and it was made plain that each subject had to be taken
according to its own organic development. Our concern was primarily with
the world of the later third and fourth century; but we also wanted to know,
where appropriate, how this world differed from that of the second and early

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third century and to what extent there was a continuity of development
between the two epochs. We did not intend that the resulting volume of
essays should function as an encyclopedia or a handbook, and readers
should not expect to find here acomprehensive coverage of the later Roman
Empire and its development. We discuss many key themes—aspects of the
economy, provincial organization, the law, the army, the Church, the arts,
literature, philosophy; but we are fully aware that there could be a similarly
sized collection on each of these alone, not to mention other areas of ancient
life that we do not address. What we would expect is that someone who
reads this collection will be enjoyably informed and challenged by the views
of some of the leading scholars of the day. Many of these authors have set
their contributions in the light of (p.2) current approaches and bibliography
and the volume should also prove useful in this regard. What follows here
serves to introduce the chapters and pick out the main arguments.

The difference between the Roman Empire in 200 and 400 is huge—if
one cares to see it that way. We are still brought up to think of the start
of the third century AD as a continuation of the Empire of Augustus, the
Principate. For Gibbon, following Cassius Dio and Herodian, everything went
to the bad after the death of Marcus Aurelius and the reign of his mad son,
Commodus. For many moderns it is the period after the murder of Alexander
Severus in 235 which ushers in the so-called ‘Third Century Crisis’. No one
can dispute that this period was one of real political and economic distress
for many regions of the Roman world. ‘Krisengeschichte’ has been big
business. Clearly, though, ‘crisis’ is a subjective interpretation and depends
on one’s agenda. The church historian Eusebius writes up the period from
the Severans to Aurelian according to the treatment of Christians. The
darkest period of the Crisis, the reign of Gallienus, is for him a very positive
one. By contrast the man who is credited with the restoration of the Empire
by those interested in a military or political reading, Diocletian, is a complete
disaster.

A number of the chapters below have something to say about the problems
of the third century and their legacy in the fourth, beginning with Chapter
2 . Failures to repel incursions by Sassanians or northern barbarians are
in the end about internal weaknesses. Internal weakness means economic
weakness, and that is why we asked Richard Duncan-Jones to think afresh
about the economy of the Roman world in the Crisis and beyond. His
conclusions are braced by an up-to-date bibliography on all aspects of the
period. His main concern is to lay out the inevitably contradictory evidence.
There is plenty of good testimony for the external invasions and internal

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turmoil of the third century. But if we are to measure the health of the
Roman world, we must pay special attention to its agricultural base. Debate
focuses on the question of whether cultivated land was abandoned. If we
take a long-range view, it is clear that there were always shifts in patterns of
cultivation. It is often suspected that rises in taxation caused rural decline in
the later period. Yet it is not easy to demonstrate real increases in demands.
The possibilities of taking tax depended on the success of agriculture, and
that success was controlled by the ever present (p.3) forces of weather and
disease. The archaeological record is crucial, but poses as many questions
as answers. Field survey in Italy shows a profound shrinkage in occupation
levels from the early to the late Empire. This concerns rural sites, and
also the economic evidence of wine production. In northern Europe the
aggregation of smaller sites into larger ones reflects another aspect of the
Italian picture. These sites also show clearly the decline in rural occupancy,
especially after the third century. Only Africa is different. Despite problems
at the margins, the evidence of datable public buildings reveals a lower but
still significant activity in the third century and after. Such field survey as
has been done points in fact to steady occupation into the fifth century. But
most striking and significant is the growing domination of the Mediterranean
overseas trade by African pottery exports. As Duncan-Jones observes, this
success must reflect the ‘sea barrier which protected the region from most
of the invasions and wars that affected other parts of the Empire in the third
century’.

Africa was not the only successful or resilient part of the Roman world.
Syria shows decisive growth in the later Empire. As a result it is felt that the
drop in finds of pottery from the High Roman period suggests changes in
supply rather than rural depopulation. Archaeologists of Greece, however,
take a different view of similar patterns in Boeotia and Keos: for them the
evidence shows recovery in the late period from real decline. Any in-depth
study must address the evidence of Egypt, where the weight of the evidence
paradoxically makes general conclusions as difficult as elsewhere. Here,
apart from the Arsinoite nome, where the villages of Soknopaiou Nesos and
Karanis show a decline through the second to the fourth century, Egyptian
documentation continues during the third century and then shows a surge
following the reforms of Diocletian that continues well into the second half
of the fourth century. Egypt provides good internal evidence for money
and prices too. Inflation and the debasement of metal content are familiar
ingredients of the Crisis. What is the truth? There were significant price
increases in the later third century; but we cannot know of the effects of
such inflation, either in or out of Egypt. Debasement seems to reflect a

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desire by the government to spend more on the one hand and an insufficient
resource of precious metal on the other. This could indicate disturbances in
mining regions such as Iberia, where activity can in fact be shown (p.4) to
have dropped dramatically between the second and fourth centuries.

What Duncan-Jones is saying is that the Roman Empire was a very local
place. In the current state of our knowledge of the Roman economy we
have to be wary of conclusions that are too general. We must take each
zone separately. That is why we asked Colin Adams and Emanuele Papi
to look at two major regions, Italy and Egypt, in more detail. One way to
account for rural depopulation is to envisage a corresponding rise in urban
populations. That is what happened at Rome during the third century. This
had consequences not just for the country, but also for the civic centres local
to the metropolis. In the region to the north of Rome (Regio VII), which Papi
takes as representative of Italy in our period, the cities where so much public
investment was made in the first and second centuries were by the start of
the third in clear decline. Contraction of inhabited zones, reuse of old marble
for new inscriptions with inferior scripts, abandonment of rural habitations
—these are well-documented signs. Yet economic difficulty is not the only
cause: changes in landholding patterns, in particular the acquisition of vast
tracts of countryside by the imperial purse, played a part. Ideology as well
as greed was to blame. For four of the third-century emperors positively
espoused the Etruscan heritage as the route to the genuine, ancient Italy
they needed to legitimate their regimes. This is a fascinating response to
a new empire where Italy was in fact rapidly on its way to becoming just
another province. The Severans in particular took a very close interest in the
administration of the region as part of their attempt to bring back the golden
age of Augustus (a concern of all the third-century emperors). The close link
between regional honours for the emperor and financial subvention from
centre to province is also clear. This trend continues into the fourth century
when investment in infrastructure at Rome and in the region here studied,
including especially investment in bathing facilities (a vital social amenity),
by Diocletian and others brought a certain general benefit, albeit at a very
low level compared with a vibrant zone like Africa. The care taken over
his territories by the Praefectus Urbi was due in large measure to Rome’s
building needs: in the period 350–400 three thousand cartloads of limestone
were required by Rome each year. Yet the rich and varied agriculture of the
region did not survive the onset of the third (p.5) century. For the most part
wine and olive cultivation was given up for grain, which at least offered some
local buffering for Rome against interruptions from abroad. The picture from

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the fourth century onwards is one of rural desuetude and desolation of the
towns.

If Italy, at least in the zone north of Rome, was dependent on the City for
its life and its demise, Egypt was very different. Colin Adams’ main focus
is two groups of documents from the Beatty collection of papyri which
preserve the incoming and outgoing correspondence of the strategos of the
Panopolite nome in central Egypt. These are crucial for understanding the
transitional period of the late third and early fourth centuries. Diocletian
came to Egypt in 297 to put down a rebellion. He found a land which, as has
been remarked, was not too badly affected by inflation or incursion. As a
self-conscious restorer and reformer he set about the administrative system.
In finance it may surprise some to learn that he introduced a ‘transparent
and more regularized system’ to fight corruption through meticulous record
keeping and to ensure maximum income. This is what Peter Parsons has
dubbed ‘the information system’. The system was not one-way. Nearly a
quarter of the Beatty letters concern official malversation, with a constant
berating of lower, local officials and their colleagues on the town councils.
This is a common theme of the late antique world, and is closely related to
another, the multiplication of documents. Although this record keeping can
be paralleled in earlier archives such as the Tabula Banasitana or the Letters
of Pliny, it is a hallmark of the later era. The imperial system depended on
propaganda and Adams argues that the official calls to clean up corruption
should be seen in the first instance as advertisement for the system, not
a concern with its flaws. But at the same time the state was concerned to
maximize efficiency. This is seen most clearly in attempts to increase the
amount of cultivatable land by procuring more accurate information about
ownership.

How should we read Diocletian’s reforms? Augustus had radically

reorganized Egypt nearly three hundred years before with a poll tax and
regular census. Thereafter we wait till the mid-third century and the reign
of Philip the Arab for clear signs of a major overhaul of the bureaucracy.
Later on Probus had issued a familiar call to clean up the administration.
Thus Diocletian’s reforms were not new, but represent an attempt to deal
once and for all (p.6) with age-old, intractable problems of corruption and
inefficiency. The tone, however, is uniquely conservative and self-righteous.
And this is why the failure of the reforms is rather striking: the fourth-century
evidence from Egypt points to considerable economic distress.

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Thus on one level the legalistic language of equity and punishment that
we see in the Beatty texts and in other fourth century documentation
shows a crude hegemonic purpose. But we must distinguish between the
intentions of jurists and politicians. In the Roman tradition lawyers had long
enjoyed a privileged position of formulating law and advising policy makers.
Simplistic condemnation of the law and of its effectiveness in delivering
justice for all is now seen as wrong by the leading scholars in the field. The
chief of these is Tony Honore´, and his chapter in this volume argues for
the continuing health of the law after the golden age of the Severan jurists
and for the centrality of this healthy legal system to the continuity of the
eastern Roman Empire. Between 200 and 400 there was a great increase
in the amount of legal machinery in the Empire as a result of Diocletian’s
conversion of ordinary governors into judges, the new system of ‘episcopal
audience’ devised by Constantine, which gave the Church a formal role in
the resolution of disputes, and of course the creation of many thousands of
new legal subjects by the reform of Caracalla in 212. This extension of law
gave the Roman state a cohesiveness which Honore´ sees as invaluable to
its survival. The old idea of a ‘decline’ in the law of Late Antiquity was based
on the very high quality of the work of the great Severan jurists and took
no account of the function of late antique law in society at large. As the first
non-Italian dynasty the Severans looked at the Roman Empire as an empire
of communities, and not just the fiefdom of one city. Their extension of the
Roman citizenship to virtually all free inhabitants of the Empire was matched
by the jurist Ulpian’s determination to extend Roman law to all the new
citizens. It is edifying to witnesss the sensitivity of Ulpian and other jurists of
the new age to existing procedure or ‘custom’. Thereafter the appropriation
of what constituted law by the emperors of the third and fourth centuries,
including the identification of a canon of the classic texts, reinforced the
emperor’s commitment to law. All of this is a development away from the
system of the High Empire, and resulted in the significant change whereby
private legal authorship became (p.7) defunct. Furthermore, rescripts
themselves were delegated to officials and were composed after models.
This led to the rise of laws of general application from Constantine onwards.

The importance of a core of trained legal experts was as important in the

late empire as it had been in the earlier period. But the numbers grew after
Diocletian. And schools grew up to cater for them in several important
centres. The actual delivery of law was left to the judges. Corruption seems
to be attested by prevalent threats against misbehaviour (cf. the evidence
of the Beatty papyri). That judges presided over fellow-citizens with rights of
appeal, no matter how difficult this might be in terms of practicalities, makes

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their corruption and abuse very different from that of their predecessors in
the Principate. From the juristic perspective the ‘culture of complaints’ (to
borrow from Jill Harries) shows the health of the legal system—though
a historian’s take on this, as in Colin Adams’s chapter, can still point to
strengths in the traditional view that government was simply not working.
Undoubtedly Christians were ready to complain—and to act to ensure justice
of some sort. The Christian passion for organizing records expressed itself
in the East in the growing self-consciousness of the legal bureaucracy
as a vehicle of rational government with an overt emphasis on civilian
administration. This bureaucracy sought both to consider new general
laws with great care and to restrain the emperor’s natural desire to make
exceptions for favoured groups or individuals. In this sense the late Roman
monarchy was not absolutist. If the rights—the theoretical rights—of the
ordinary citizen in law were better in this period than earlier, that was
something.

What was ‘Roman citizenship’ for this ordinary citizen in the later empire?
This is the question Peter Garnsey addresses in Chapter 6 . We cannot know
exactly what was in Caracalla’s mind when he extended the citizenship,
but we can ask what difference he made. It is important to realize that
many members of the elite in the East did not seek Roman citizenship
in the High Empire: they had their own sources of political prestige. The
bestowal of citizenship on manumitted slaves and discharged auxiliary
soldiers diminished its appeal. Yet the piecemeal extension of citizenship
before Caracalla did introduce change by the spread of Roman law, and
the juridical value of citizenship is what counts most both before and
after 212. As we have seen, local law— (p.8) ‘custom’—continued after
Caracalla. And citizenship still retained some value. There was a fundamental
recognition of the value of citizenship as freedom as opposed to slavery.
And there were still significant numbers of peregrini or ‘aliens’, mostly
amongst the ranks, but also created from citizens demoted as a punishment
for criminal or religious delicts. The case of the demoted citizen raises an
interesting question: how could such a person function in society and by
what law? Again, it is to be stressed that the Romanization of the East (and
the extension of the citizenship is Romanization) was not carried out so as
to displace local law. For people in the East Roman law might have been
seen as an alternative to be used to advantage on certain occasions, as
in petitions by Egyptian women for a tutor. The well-known comment by
Menander of Laodicea, the author of a third-century tract on how to praise,
that one can no longer praise a city’s own laws because all laws are Roman

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is probably to be explained by the likely audience, i.e. the Roman governor,
rather than the retreat of customary law.

The advantages of citizenship, the uses of citizenship, are brought out nicely
in Garnsey’s final section on Augustine. For the bishop the Roman state
was a model for the more important universal society of the Church. Here
he stretched back to the ideas of Cicero’s De Republica. But this had a
concrete application too in the coercion of religious opponents, the Donatists,
who differed less in faith than in political organization (hence particularly
objectionable).

Augustine is sensitive to the old charge that Christianity entailed a rejection

of the Roman state. His answer was to follow a usual dodge and remove
any awkward question to the ideal realm of the heavenly sphere. All of
this is of the utmost importance, because although Christianity from the
beginning had sought to present itself as compatible with any system of
earthly government, the idea that the foundation of the Empire and the
rise of the new religion were part of God’s plan contains within it an idea of
making use of Rome. This came to the fore in the collapse of the western
Empire and the survival and flourishing of western Christianity. For citizens of
the heavenly city the fall of the Empire did not matter.

The collapse of the (western) Empire was ultimately a military matter. At

least, the traditional picture is of decline (narrowly averted in the East):
power in the late Roman world lay with military juntas, the Romanness of
the army was diluted, Christianity (p.9) was not interested in the survival of
the secular state (cf. above). All these standard views of the problems of the
army in the later period go back to antiquity itself. Thus Michael Whitby’s
‘interrogation’ of them in Chapter 7 is not before time. As with so many other
areas of late Roman life we are dealing with neither change nor continuity
absolutely, but something between the two. The shape of the armed forces
as it appears at the beginning of the fifth century in the Notitia Dignitatum
shows much had changed from the days of the Principate; but when and
how? The issue turns on the development or not of the cavalry. It is an axiom
that cavalry were used extensively in Late Antiquity because of the changing
nature of the enemy and the changing nature of the forces themelves
following the introduction of the mobile field armies that accompanied the
emperor (the comitatenses). In fact cavalry were not superior in mobility to
infantry and most were deployed in the local provincial armies (where they
could be called upon for major campaigns, of course). Nor for the most part

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would they have looked like the medieval knights some military historians
have fancied.

Another orthodoxy Whitby questions is ‘barbarization’. Use of this term

already suggests an answer to the question of how far the Empire looked
beyond its borders to recruit during the Third Century Crisis and after.
There are complex cultural processes at work here: Rome was founded on
absorption. To become Roman was not all that difficult: if one was prepared
to speak, dress, and pray in the right way, other Romans were not going to
object. The evidence for widescale use of ‘barbarians’ is actually very poor.
The nub of the issue is whether there were enough soldiers. Politicians from
the Gracchi onwards had exploited this basic Roman fear. Does legislation
about recruitment problems in the Theodosian Code reflect the ‘culture
of complaints’ again or a real crisis? For Whitby contextualization of time
and place preserves the concerns without whipping them up into a massive
panic. Thus Zuckerman’s attractive thesis, that conscription was abandoned
following Valens’ decision to move responsibility for supplying soldiers
from local councillors to landowners (who might buy themselves out of the
process), is just not supported by the evidence.

The ill-discipline of these difficult recruits is another part of the orthodox

picture and closely connected with the theme of ‘barbarization’. If we
disregard Polybius’ awed account of perfect Roman (p.10) military order, we
can easily find problems in the armies of the Republic and the early Empire.
One additional incentive to a possible decrease in discipline (in the sense of
a lack of effectiveness in battle) is religion. As we have seen, some Christians
were negative toward the militarist state. Many others certainly were not,
and there is no evidence for any degree of generalized disaffection on this
basis. Within Christianity even the bitter trinitarian dispute between Nicenes
and Arians could be dampened in the interests of military priorities. Overall,
problems were more than outweighed by the morale building strength of a
common Christian community.

We want to know whether the leadership of society become more militaristic.

The traditional picture of the late Roman emperor as a military hardman,
soldierly and uncouth, owes much to late Roman historiographical fiction.
Just as emperors had to pay full court to Law, so they had to present
themselves as appealing to a civilian culture as well as, or more than, a
military one. They were politicians after all. And the increasing focus on the
Hippodrome and the cathedral (see below) as the places where power was
expressed and acclaimed quickly led a breed of emperors with no interest in

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campaigning in person. That said, the image of the ‘fellow-soldier’ remained
as important as it always had been, for defence of the Empire, externally
and internally, remained paramount. Thus the Christian philosopher Synesius
could tax the unwarlike Arcadius with a traditional demand to ‘associate with
the soldiers’. And the old image of the emperor as a common soldier came
easily to an orator and moralist like John Chrysostom. But for all that, we
have already seen that the rise of the Christian, ‘civilian’ emperor was what
mattered to the Roman Empire in the East.

In the West, on the other hand, emperors and armies—in a word, leadership
—failed. The military collapse led to a good deal of soul-searching—by
Augustine among others—about the contribution of Christianity to Rome’s
past glory and present demise. This is not a little connected with the story
of how the Roman see was viewed by Rome and how it viewed the rest
of the Christian community, and this is the subject of the first of Mark
Edwards’ studies in this volume. The first Christian emperor, Constantine,
may initially have thought that Rome was the metropolis of Christendom, but
for Christians, even at Rome, keeping one’s distance (p.11) from the secular
was valuable at all times. Roman and Christian identity have this in common,
that both could be adopted by living according to Roman (cf. above) or
Christian ways. As far as most firstcentury Christians were concerned,
the Roman state was there to be obeyed. So it is no surprise to find
‘Clement’ (the author of the early second-century Prima Clementis) aligning
Christian discipline with that of the Roman army. The one apologetic text of
the second century that has an Italian location—the Shepherd of Hermas—
appears to tie itself to Roman Antiquity by appropriating the Sibyl of Cumae
and annexing a traditional Roman idea of newness as something valuable.
At the end of the same century come unmistakable signs of a Roman
attempt to rule on questions such as the date of Easter. Pope Callistus at
the start of the next had a fully Roman sense of latitude and inclusiveness in
extending protection to the lapsed or the deviant. The Roman see was acting
in monarchical mode and the internal power struggle with the Novatianists
in the 250s and after shows its success. When it defeated the schism locally,
it then announced its right to reincorporate the dissenters, much to the
irritation of other churches. The way towards a convergence of interest
between Roman church and Roman state was recognized in the 270s by
Aurelian’s demand that the ‘Bishop of Italy’ (sic) should have the final say
over the see of Antioch. This background, quite as much as a commitment
to autocracy, explains Constantine’s bluster on behalf of the Catholic Church
of Rome in his dealings with the Donatist schism in Africa. Even when
Constantine went east and founded Constantinople, he imposed the western

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date of Easter on the eastern churches. The Roman Church continued on its
course by betting on the side of the troublesome Athanasius of Alexandria
and extending its authority by the restoration of his. The pagan reaction of
the later fourth century tried to recapture the heart of the Empire for pagan
Rome. If it was left to Ambrose and Prudentius to express a patriotic Roman
defence of Christianity rather than to the popes of Rome themselves, one
feels that these spokesmen of the late Roman Empire in the West were,
like Augustine, more interested in the survival of their religion than Roman
tradition.

These views may not have accorded with the intentions of Constantine in
harnessing Christianity to his idea of the Roman Empire. How exactly did
he envisage the coalescence of autocracy (p.12) and monotheism? That is
the subject of Mark Edwards’s second contribution. He begins with a rousing
condemnation of loose recent thinking on pagan and Christian ideas of
‘trinity’ and specifically the suggestion that Neoplatonists beginning with
Plotinus shared a trinitarian monotheism, which term is as Edwards observes
one of ‘classification, not devotion’. The central aspect of Christianity was
the incarnation, and the humanity of Christ was something totally foreign
to pagan thinkers. The Christian focus on the Christ-Man was recognized
by pagan opponents beginning with Lucian and Celsus in the later second
century. At the very end of the third century, just before Diocletian initiated
the Great Persecution, Porphyry sought to emphasize the differences
in favour of Platonist philosophy in his infamous fifteen books Against
the Christians. His unmasking of the Book of Daniel as a product of the
Maccabees’ struggle against the Seleucid king, Antiochus, undermined one
of the main bases of Christians’ belief in the enthronement of the saints and
the coming of the Messiah. He focused especially on the life of Jesus the
man, as did Arnobius (answering either him or Iamblichus), as the key to this
Christian faith.

Constantine’s conversion was, argues Edwards, entirely genuine. He allowed

others most of their pagan practices, but wrote polytheism out of history by
investing in the new belief of contemporary theologians that the Logos had
been active from the beginning right down to his last theophany in Christ. It
is Eusebius who particularly advocated this line of thought in his Preparation
for the Gospel. For Eusebius Constantine was the present image of Christ, for
both had made one people of all the nations. For Constantine the Eusebian
idea of ‘preparation’ was easily conjoined with one of a providential bestowal
of power on a personal being. And Constantine was happy in his role as
God’s servant, bold in fighting opponents and uprooting superstitions on

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His behalf (as Lactantius and Eusebius were pleased to present him). This
intellectual justification of his rule enabled him to make a joke about the
destruction of one of his statue images, and it enabled him to believe
sincerely that it was pious to refuse to share power with a Licinius or any
one. The goal of trinitarian speculation in the early fourth century was to
allow divinity to communicate its essential unity. That suited Constantine the
monarch very nicely.

(p.13) Constantine was of course the beginning rather than the end of
history. In Chapter 10 Neil McLynn uses the devotional routine of Constantine
and his successors to explore the question of how God’s ruler and God’s
priests negotiated power after the Peace of the Church. Constantine went
to church once, just before his death. The reason for this was the simple
difficulty of what to do with the emperor. What brought him to church then
was his preparation for a holy war against Sassanian Persia. But the emperor
remained in control of the bishops: he chose the venue of his final confession
and they came to him to offer a final baptism. Constantine’s intentions in
surrounding his tomb with memorials to the Apostles and in providing for an
altar and liturgical services are debatable, though we could recall that he is
the first and last Christian emperor to allow pagan cult to be offered to him
and it is not implausible to suggest that he wished to put himself on a footing
with the Apostles.

After Constantine came the age of great cathedral building. Both Constans
and Constantius were builders and churchgoers. But the change is political
as well as architectural, for the rivalry of the heirs of Constantine made them
vulnerable to use by Christian factions, and the church was the locus for
disseminating factional propaganda (for example, Constans and Athanasius
in the cathedral of Aquileia). At the same time emperors took care to align
themselves with the cult of martyr shrines which were independent of
ecclesiastical authority. The encounter between Constantius and bishop
Eudoxius in Constantinople following Constantius’ attempt to enforce unity of
dogma is a significant first upstaging of an emperor by a clever churchman.

The importance of baptism as a guarantee of insidership emerges clearly in

the reign of Valentinian and his younger brother, Valens. Baptism offered
confidence in dealing with the church authorities and McLynn brings
this out in the amazing description of Valens’ entry to Basil’s cathedral
at Caesarea. What lies behind the account is a carefully prepared and
managed integration of a powerful, hostile churchman and a king. In this
case the acceptance of offerings from the Arian emperor was a check on

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the prelate. We may see in John Chrysostom’s account of how St Babylas of
Antioch ejected a mid-third-century emperor from his church some wishful
thinking about how Nicene Christians might have dealt with the recently
deceased Valens during the (p.14) emperor’s years at Antioch in the 370s.
Unfortunately for John Valens’ churchgoing was welcomed by the then bishop
who was also an Arian. The attitude John evinces contributed in no small
measure to his own later downfall as bishop of Constantinople. But in the
figure of Ambrose of Milan it was again the bishop, not the emperor, who
triumphed. Theodosius the Great was a regular churchgoer. He installed
his first bishop in Constantinople, Gregory Nazianzen, then accepted his
resignation after only six months when the clash of personalities became
unbearable. His next choice, Nectarius, both included and controlled
the emperor. Ambrose in Milan behaved more boldly still by physically
repositioning and then bullying him in his cathedral. The reaction of
Theodosius’ son Arcadius was to avoid exposure to the new bishop of
Constantinople, John Chrysostom, altogether. There was no golden rule about
who would win such confrontations. Staying power, as always, has much
to do with it. The long reign of Theodosius II, son of Arcadius, shows this
very well. The younger Theodosius perceived the physical and ideological
spaces of the churches of Constantinople from his tender years, and when
the historian Theodoret chose to represent the conflict between Ambrose
and Theodosius I at Milan, the success of the emperor in appropriating the
ceremonial spotlight is really a reflection of the sophistication and ease of
grandson Theodosius’ Constantinopolitan processions from palace to church
as he wished.

The relationship between church and state, though it swung now in favour
of emperor, now bishop, must be seen against the background of the
gradual Christianization of the Empire—a longterm change. The impact of
Christianization on the representation of political and religious leaders is
the subject of Chapter 11 , by Jas´ Elsner. For late antique art notoriously
swings between a classical, ‘pagan’ aesthetic and the proto-medieval,
anti-naturalistic styles that appear in Dura Europos as early as the 240s.
The pluralism of style in the later empire can be matched earlier; but if,
as with Christianity, we take the long view, the transformation between
Graeco-Roman ‘naturalism’ and medieval ‘schematism’ is incontestable.
The question is, How and when did it happen? ‘Decline’ has featured much
in older explanations of the development, as in other fields. Owing to the
religious dimension the subject has been distorted by ‘Orientalist’ readings
of the changes. Elsner swops entrenched opinions for a reexamination
of the evidence. Decline (p.15) in quantity is not matched by decline in

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quality—in statuary, public relief sculpture, gems, cameos, as well as civic
monuments and infrastructure. If there is reuse of old statues and reliefs
(the phenomenon of spolia), there is also new production of sarcophagi (for a
while, at any rate), mosaic, book illustration, and textiles.

Christianity threw up problems about representation that were previously

unknown. Further, for much of Christian art the subject matter depended on
an existing text. ‘It created of every viewer a potential exegete.’ Christian
embarrassment about images is shown in the striking, virtual absence of
three-dimensional art. Much modern scholarship has tried to probe the
meaning of Christian art per se or in relation to social and political change.
But in so many respects Christianity, far from being a rupture with the past,
is a repackaging of familiar items. Nothing shows this better than the vogue
for spolia. The Arch of Constantine at Rome is the most famous and best
explored example, though the reemployment of visible, high-profile reliefs
taken from other public buildings in Rome began with the Severans (cf.
above). It represents both a homage to the past—antiquarianism/heritage
—and the creation of something new by refocusing the past for the benefit
of the present. Just as interesting is the elaboration of the small scale, the
miniature, in its own right or as part of a larger work. Cage-cups in glass,
exquisitely carved vases made from precious stones, and spectacular
undercutting techniques in ivory diptychs and other forms or in silver: such
pieces ‘speak of an absorbed viewing’ by loving owners. These tastes were
later transferred to monumental stone carving. Thus Christian Late Antiquity
displays a striking connoisseurial appreciation of ‘prize objects’, whether
taken over from past monuments and contexts or manufactured anew.
For Elsner this is its ‘cumulative aesthetic’, a love of exquisite detail and a
creative continuity with what went before.

This sense of continuity was, of course, important to pagans too, and to

exemplify this we asked Susan Walker toexplore the identity of the ‘Painted
Hellenes’, the famous Egyptian mummy portraits, in the last examples
of the series from the later third and the fourth century. These portraits
have been the subject of intensive recent debate. Mummification strongly
implies commitment to a traditional Egyptian paganism. But traditions
reflect the present, not the past. Examples from the High Roman Empire,
like the wellknown portrait of Artemidorus, look fairly typical of what we
know (p.16) of the elites of the eastern half of the Mediterranean. Portrait
fashions from outside Egypt, especially from Rome itself, seem to have an
effect on the style of presentation. But multiple identities were on display
too. At the cemetery of Ptolemais Euergetis many of the later portraits

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recall the (assumed) Greek ancestry of the local elite, the advertisement
of which was important owing to the fiscal privileges it brought with it.
This is true also of the Greeks who were settled in the Roman foundation
of Antinoopolis. It is here that shroud portraits continued to be produced
perhaps into the late fourth century. The tone of these later portraits is
different, for the marked individualization of the earlier examples has gone
and is replaced by an emphasis on the distinctive and costly apparel of
Late Antiquity. This presentation can be paralleled in locations outside
Egypt. In this period Antinoopolis maintained a very classical culture. It
is reasonable to hold that the portraits represent a continuity with earlier
examples from the Fayum whence the Antinoopolitan Greeks came. It cannot
be proved that any of these portraits is of a Christian: they are best seen
as ‘memorials of individuals following the old Hellenic tradition’, but who
perceived themselves as part of a larger, empirewide upper class.

This class were the patrons of the poetry studied in Chapter 13 by Alan
Cameron, a part of high culture which was every bit as important to them
as their clothes or funerary art. The composition of occasional verse was
a standard social accompaniment and there is plenty of evidence for its
continuation in later antiquity. In the East larger scale, public poetry had
taken a back seat in the High Empire owing to the dominance of prose
forms; but it never disappeared. From the fourth century verse begins to
rival prose as a medium for panegryic (the rhetoric of the Roman period);
it revived another Hellenistic genre, praise of local mythology; and it came
to be preferred for epigraphic dedications. This is an historical phenomenon
as much as a literary one. Cameron focuses on the poetry of the great
churchman, Gregory Nazianzen, written mainly in the 380s. Gregory
evidently found poetry a natural medium, not just for Christian material,
but also, for example, in a moral exercise Against Anger. Didactic poetry in
iambics, as used by Gregory, was recognized as especially convenient for
memorizing. This appeal to audience explains his combination of a classical
form with unclassical metrical touches which (p.17) reflect the changed
pronunciation of Greek under the Empire, a combination of old and new we
have seen exemplified in visual art. It also explains the expansion of this
brand of poetry in the fourth century. Why classicizing poetry at all? It was as
popular with Christians as pagans, for mythology, the food of poetry, was not
even slightly connected in Christian minds with pagan cult. Rather it was the
common language of all the elite. Moreover it was arguably an easier way of
demonstrating one’s familiarity with paideia (‘culture’) because education
still began with the rote learning of poetry, especially Homer. The higher

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education that brought a mastery of classical prose took too long to master
for most.

As Cameron observes, poetry flourished in Latin literature too. Here the

renaissance was based on the ever popular Virgil together with a revived
interest in the ‘rhetorical’ poets from Ovid to Juvenal. When Claudian
moved from Alexandria and Greek (in which a little of his work survives) to
Rome and Latin about 394, it now appears his audiences were waiting to
appreciate him, both in his panegyrical poetry and his notorious invectives.
Claudian was certainly in the vein of the Greek poets who travelled around
cities looking for patrons; but he also stands as the culmination of the fourth
century’s revival of the Silver Latin poets.

Claudian was bilingual and like the historian Ammianus chose to work in his
acquired language, Latin. In the Principate it was Latin-speaking Romans who
learned Greek to become educated, and though many Greeks must have
known some Latin they did not bother with Latin for its literature. The new
prestige of Latin in the East in later Antiquity was a product of the foundation
of Constantinople and the use of Latin in Roman law. Given this, it is not
surprising that some Greeks who had occasion to learn ‘the other language’
should have employed it for literary purposes. But this is a mere drop in the
ocean in comparison with the massive quantity of prose and poetry in Greek
itself from the later third century onward. While Alan Cameron concentrates
on poetry, the following chapter by Simon Swain looks at a very traditional
form of prose, the speech, and especially at its leading fourth-century
exponent and teacher, Libanius. Libanius remained very aware of being a
Greek who descended from Greeks. He maintains the widespread fiction of
Greek speakers from the Hellenistic expansion of Greek culture onwards
that they were biological (p.18) descendants of colonists from Old Greece.
And yet—perhaps a majority even of the elite had defected to Christianity by
the end of his lifetime (c.393). Hellenism was a powerful ideology but it was
artificial the further one went from Greece. The education system of Libanius
continued to base itself on immersion in an imaginary ‘Athenian’ world set
in the distant past. Christianity offered a far simpler and more attractive
alternative in terms of identity. And because of its social and religious appeal
to the masses it provided a ready made system that would sooner or later
have come to the attention of any ruling class. Hellenism depended on a
consensus. The extreme, ‘religious’ Hellenism of the Neoplatonists and Julian
contributed as much to the break-up of this as Christianity.

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As has been observed, the traditional cultural practices represented by
Libanius were common to both Christians and pagans. Indeed, the last
great exponents of Greek rhetoric were the Christians of the sixth-century
Gaza school. Thus Libanius’ school work—including the publication of many
model exercises—looks backwards and forwards in time, and his many
pupils from all over the eastern empire attest its enduring appeal. But in his
public role he is different. There were many official and unofficial teachers
in his day. They produced panegyrics, speeches of welcome, celebrations
of marriage, praise of their cities. But Libanius’ speeches focus for the
most part on public affairs including a remarkable series of attacks on
local and regional governors and the justly famous critiques of imperial
social and religious policy. He sees himself following in the footsteps of his
great predecessors such as Aelius Aristides; but his political outspokenness
recalls, if any of them, only Dio of Prusa. No wonder, then, that Eunapius
at the end of the fourth century found it difficult to deal with Libanius in
his Lives of the Sophists and Philosophers. This was not just a matter of
categorization. Eunapius’ hero was the emperor Julian. For Libanius Julian,
despite or because of his assumed Hellenism, was something of an outsider.
Much of Libanius’ presentation of the emperor is of the way a Roman king
should behave towards Greek culture. What he did not realize is that Julian’s
extremism (which he downplays) had made plain to Christians the need to
divorce Greek culture and education from pagan cult once and for all. This
had been achieved by the end of the century.

Rhetorical studies avoided being cast as anti-Christian precisely because

they could be separated from cult. Philosophy could easily (p.19) have
taken this direction too—think of Themistius’ servicing of the popular-
philosophical needs of emperors from Constantius to Theodosius, or in the
next generation of the intellectualist and socially elevated Synesius. But
the association of Neoplatonism with religion (particularly by Iamblichus)
inevitably made it a rallying point for those hostile to Christianity. Hence the
profession of philosophy and its organization incurred suspicion. This is in
part the theme of John Dillon’s chapter, which is the last in this volume. In
the pagan empire of the third century trouble seemed far away. Porphyry
and a few ‘companions’ collected happily around the ethereal Plotinus.
Their studiedly amateur pose is still visible in the later account of Proclus’
appearance at the school of Syrianus in Athens about 430. What did they
learn? For curriculum we can turn to Iamblichus at Apamea, where we can
follow their leisurely readings of Plato. Although the actual schools were
very small, Iamblichus reminds us of the power of letters, since by good
fortune moral letters survive to pupils and the political value of his Hellenist

Page 17 of 18 Introduction
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project is confirmed by the letters of an anonymous courtier under the
emperor of the East, Licinius. We get many of our incidental details about
the life of students and teachers from Eunapius, both for rhetoric (where of
course Libanius is the major source) and for philosophy. But Marinus’ life of
Proclus from 485, a combination of biography, encomium, and philosophical
history, gives a very full account of the acceptance of the young aspirant, his
introduction through Syrianus to the aged Plutarchus, and the progressively
theological/theurgic instruction he received from Syrianus himself, which
may stand for all such pedagogical encounters. Apart from the details of the
Athenian Platonist school we get precious testimony in this document of the
late antique philosopher’s interventions in public life, justified not just by a
streak of practical philosophy inherent in Platonism from the start but also
by the wealth of the Athenian Platonists, which must have caused fears of
the expropriations that would occur within a couple of generations. Proclus’
school was fortunate in being able to count on the support of a prominent
Constantinopolitan senator; but the dependency on one rich and difficult
individual shows the ultimate weakness of these elitist Hellenes at the end of
the Roman world.

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Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to
Late Empire
Simon Swain and Mark Edwards

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Index

Aachen 292, 296, 304

Abammon (pseudonym) 222, 223

Abbinaeus archive 164

Abydos 315

Acacius 247, 379

Academy 196, 405, 413, 416–18

Achilles 342, 397

Acquaviva 68

Actium 356

Adams, C. 4, 5, 7

Adrianople 157, 161, 163, 164, 169, 171, 174

Adriatic sea 28

Aedesius 374, 406, 410

Aelius Aristides 18, 363–5, 366–73, 390, 391, 393

Aemilianus 180

Aeschines 362

Aesculapius 197

Aesop 396

Africa(ns) 3, 4, 11, 225, 350

Page 1 of 47 Index
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and Christianity 187, 188, 196, 199–201, 203, 204

economy of 24, 26, 27, 32, 33,35–8, 50–2, 63, 64, 67, 69,78–80

law and administration of 109,114, 115, 122, 124, 145, 225

Agamemnon 397

Agathias 159, 343, 347

agriculture 5, 55–80, 104, 107

Agrigentum 175

Agrippa 70

Agrippina 61

Alamanni 163, 164, 174

Alaric 165, 210

Alcibiades (heretic) 196

Aleppo 27, 38

Alexander the Great 134, 221,291, 294, 329, 397

Alexander of Tralles 78

Alexander Severus 2, 49, 70, 116,134, 180, 359

Alexandria 94, 101, 122, 124,171, 177, 205, 243, 296, 318,325, 326, 330, 351, 391, 418

Alföldi, G. 159

Alps 203

Alsium 60

Altar of Victory 187, 188, 206,262

Alypius 409

Ambo of Henry II 292, 296

Ambrose of Milan 11, 14, 123,131, 175, 188, 205, 207–9,235, 236, 262–6, 268–70

Amelius Gentilianus 405, 407,409, 415

Amenemhat III 319

Ameria 59, 62, 71, 77

Ammianus Marcellinus 17, 73,121, 143, 158, 167, 171, 173,174, 178, 181, 345

Page 2 of 47 Index
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Ammonius (Neoplatonist) 418

Ammonius (teacher of Chaeronean Plutarch) 403

Ammonius Saccas 359, 409

Amphilochius of Iconium 336,337

anachōrēsis 101

Anastasius 172, 182, 183, 330

Anatolius 406,410,415

Anazarbus 330

Andrew 248

Andronicus of Hermopolis 337

Anicia Juliana 168, 331

(p.468) Anteros 409

Antinoopolis 16, 313, 314, 318,320, 321, 323–5, 336

Antioch:
as Christian city 11, 170, 201,202, 205, 244, 245, 249, 250,257, 258, 261

as Greek city 367, 370, 375–9,383, 385, 386, 388, 391–4, 397–400

as Roman city 13, 14, 39, 122, 124, 189, 247, 265, 344

Antiochus Epiphanes 12

Antonine dynasty 22, 31, 52, 60,70, 71, 112, 113

Antoninus Pius 71

Anubis 315, 316

Apamea 19, 407, 416

Apelles 291

Apennines 28, 53, 74

Aphrodisias 271, 277, 280, 330

Aphrodite 63, 229

Apollo 231, 291, 375, 391, 394,396

Apollodorus 334–6

Apollonius of Tyana 214, 219,221, 329, 359

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Apostles 13, 193, 197, 200, 219,242, 247, 248, 267
Acts of 190, 191, 332, 347

Appian 357

Apuleius 214, 231, 403

Aquila 360

Aquileia 13, 209, 243–5, 250

Arabia(ns) 35, 327, 402, 404

Arator 332, 347

Aratus 335, 337, 385

Arcadia(ns) 397

Arcadius 10, 14, 123, 125, 166,181, 185, 265–7, 278

Arch of Constantine 15, 279, 288,290, 304, 305, 307, 309

Arch of Marcus 293

Archiadas 413, 414, 417

Arco di Portogallo 291, 304

Arcus Novus 291

Ares 397

Arete 410

Argentario 60

Argyrius 387

Ariadne 182, 183

Arians 10, 13, 177, 184, 229, 255,257, 262

Aristaenetus of Nicomedia 379

Aristius Optatus 88, 95

Aristophanes (friend of Libanius) 395

Aristotle 220, 229, 231, 331, 334,405, 408, 412

Arles 204, 246

Armenia(ns) 160, 255

army 9, 10, 21, 22, 47, 49, 65, 75,102, 111, 114, 138, 143, 144,156–86, 190, 193, 250, 251

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barbarization of 165–73

cavalry in 162–4

discipline of 173–5

Arna 61

Arnobius 12, 187, 220, 221

Arrian 357

Artemidorus 15, 315

Artemis 369, 370, 396

Arsinoite nome 3, 41, 42, 84, 103,319

Arzygius 72

Ascarii 174

Asclepigeneia 417

Asclepiodotus 414

Asclepius 364, 371, 372, 397

Asia (Minor) 21, 51, 115, 143,196, 199, 200, 204, 331, 416

Asisium 61

Athanasius of Alexandria 11, 13,177, 205, 215, 229, 232, 233,243–5

Athanassiadi, P. 416

(p.469) Athenodorus 414

Athens 18, 19, 143, 315, 338,360, 363, 365, 376, 401,402, 404, 405, 411–13,416–18

Atticism 354, 355, 364

Atticus (philosopher) 227

Attis 220

Augusteum 64, 65, 269

Augustine 8, 10, 11, 143, 150,151–5, 176, 210, 215, 328,343

Augustus 2, 4, 5, 56, 57, 60, 62,63, 65, 100, 105, 107, 133,141, 142, 186, 209
as Octavian 291, 305, 306, 337,350, 355

Augustus, as title 263, 267,336

Aulus Gellius 336, 403

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Aurelia Artemis 106

Aurelian 11, 44, 46, 51, 67, 68,85, 161, 174, 180, 202, 204,218, 220

Aurelius (Aurelia), as name of enfranchized persons 143,147

Aurelius Abbinaeus 82

Aurelius Harpocration 103

Aurelius Isidorus 90, 95, 97,106

Aurelius Sakaon 106

Aurelius Silvanus 103

Aurelius Victor 156, 165, 166,174, 179, 180, 181, 384

Ausonius 119, 343

autobiography 366, 371–3, 388,395, 397, 396–9

Autun 122

Auxentius of Milan 251, 252

Aventine hill 70

Avienius 335

Avitus 332

Babylas 13, 247, 256, 257, 269,399

Babylon 192

Bagai 154

Baghdad 402

Bagnall, R. 318, 324, 325

Balkan peninsula 21, 51

Baltimore 283, 294

Banasa 64

barbarians 9, 104, 143, 165–73,186, 202, 203, 221, 222, 397

Barberini ivory 296, 297, 299

Bargello 296

Batavians 168

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Baschi 61

Basil of Caesarea 13, 176, 253,255

baths 55, 57, 58, 70–3, 388

Beatty papyri 5–7, 83, 84, 89, 106

Beirut (Berytus) 121, 122, 147,332

Belgica 32

Bemarchius 375, 376

Benivolus 251

Berenice 32, 37

Berkeley University 402

Beronicianus of Sardis 373

Bethlehem 229

Betitia Proba 351–3

Bible 332, 336, 344, 349, 352

Bibliothèque Nationale 278, 305

Bierbrier, M. L. 314, 315, 319,320

Biferno valley 28

biography 19, 218, 219, 221, 349,355, 359, 362, 373–9, 401,404, 406, 408, 411–18

Birecik-Carcemish dam 39

Bithynia 134, 187, 367

Blera 62

Blois, L. de 161

Bobastous 319

Bodleian Library 351

(p.470) Boeotia 3, 40

Bomarzo 75, 76

Boniface 154

Borg, B. 311, 314, 321

Page 7 of 47 Index
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Bowman, A. 319

Brahmins 221

Brasidas 397

Brescia 251

Brigetio tablet 184

Brindisi 28

Britain 21, 27, 45, 51, 116, 274, 311, 345

British Museum 293, 294

Brown, P. 334, 402

Brutus 192

building 34, 35, 55–60, 64–6, 68–77, 103, 194, 231, 232, 236, 244, 247, 278–83, 287–93,
404

Burckhardt, J. 224, 225

Byzacena 37

Byzantine phenomena 39, 52, 133, 275, 277, 278, 286, 303, 305, 306, 324, 338, 343, 346

Caecilian of Carthage 204

Caecilius of Caleacte 355

Caere 58, 71, 78, 79

Caesar, as title 190, 191, 232, 242,247

Caesarea (Cappadocia) 13, 254

Caesarea (Palestine) 122

Calama 150, 152

Calchas 397

Callimachus 330, 339

Callinicum 268, 269

Callistus of Rome 11, 198, 199,285

Callu, J.-P. 46

Calvary 190

Calvenus Taurus 403, 404

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Cameron, Alan 16, 17, 127, 166

Campania 27, 28, 76, 78, 404

Campbell, B. 155

Campus Martius 70, 74

Candidianus 177

Canducci 320

Capena 59, 60, 64, 67

Capernaum 190

Capitoline hill 85

Cappadocia 21, 171, 246, 254,407

Capri 186

Caracalla 7, 34, 36, 62–4, 70, 114,131, 134, 135, 137, 140, 143,145–8, 396

Carandini, A. 36

Caria 271

Carinus 350, 353

Carmen contra Paganos 354

Carmen Paschale 348

Carsulae 56

Carthage 122, 189, 201, 205, 210

Cartwright, C. 317

Cassandra 396

Cassius Dio 2, 114, 133–5, 137,175, 179, 357

Castricius Firmus 404, 405

Castro Pretorio 285

Castrum Novum 60, 65, 67, 71

Catalaunian Plain 173

Catholicism 150, 154, 202, 205

Catiline 207

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Cato Minor 192

Celsus (philosopher) 12, 212,216–19, 231, 359

Celsus (official and sophist) 379,398

censitor 96, 107, 108

Ceres 67

Cervidius Scaevola 125

Chaldaea(ns) 220, 221, 223, 413

Charlemagne 233, 330, 351

Chi-Rho symbol 178, 203, 226,231

Choricius of Gaza 362, 363, 365

(p.471) Christianity 1, 124, 159, 198, 281

and army 175, 177, 178, 182,186, 190

art and symbolism of 178, 203,226, 231, 276, 277, 280, 284,287, 293, 305, 325

definition of 211–34

in pre-Constantinian Empire 2,190, 191, 225, 391

in post-Constantinian

Empire 7–19, 123, 126, 165,177, 182, 184, 187, 206, 358,359, 418

of Emperors 111, 125, 154,165, 175, 178, 184, 224,226, 232, 236–70, 362,410, 416

of public figures 128, 152, 206,331, 361, 375, 376, 390, 398

of writers 142, 187, 206, 221,333, 340–4, 347, 348, 353,363, 392

opposed to paganism 8, 152,176, 189, 192, 193, 209,217, 219, 222, 229, 386, 391,418

Christianization 14, 125, 342, 415

Christodorus of Coptus 330

Chronicon Paschale 178, 248

Chryses 396

Chrysostom, John 10, 13, 14, 123,127, 128, 177, 185, 186, 232,258, 265–7, 269, 363,
399,400

Church 1, 8, 11, 13, 35, 38, 123,147, 154, 157, 176, 177, 179,183, 200, 201, 212, 218,
225,281, 286, 333
and state 202, 235–70

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in Rome 187–210

Cicero 8, 151, 152, 189, 195,200, 206, 207, 332, 346,367

Cilicia 21, 327, 379

Cimon 368, 383, 389

Cirta 200

Claros 332

Claudian 17, 168, 181, 330, 339,340, 347, 348, 351–5

Claudius 141, 186, 290

Claudius Gothicus 416

Claudius Marius Victorius 332

Clement of Alexandria 227, 358,359

Clement of Rome 11, 193, 196

Clermont 178

Clodius Albinus 21

Clusium 67, 68

coin 43–7, 83, 85, 104, 178

Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum 127

Colouthos 330

Commodus 2, 21, 61, 64, 76, 292,327

Constans 13, 243–6, 332, 376,384, 397

Constantine I 206, 207, 209,350

as builder 15, 69, 70, 231, 232,266

as Christian 6, 10–13, 184, 187,200, 203, 204, 211, 224–6,228–42, 410, 416

as commander 156, 159, 161–3,183, 203, 240, 241

as legislator 7, 118, 128, 129,141, 142, 144, 149, 224, 225,344

conversion of 110, 175, 178,226, 238

representations of 165, 228,229, 231–3, 270, 289, 290,305

sons of 242–6

as imperial seat 177, 200, 243,258, 265, 278–80, 344

Church in 13, 14, 177, 199,205, 210, 236, 240, 259, 261,263, 266–70, 347

culture of 296, 375, 383, 388,390, 417, 418

senate of 19, 170, 181–3, 241,243, 248, 361

Constantius I 68, 88

Constantius II 13, 19, 73, 111,162, 170, 174, 178, 183, 206,232, 244–8, 255, 257, 352,361,
375, 376, 384, 397

constitutio Antoniniana 113, 114,133, 134, 140, 143–8

Coptos 84, 330

Corcoran, S. P. 315

Cordoba 402

Corinth 189, 193, 289

Corippus 330

Cormack, R. 287

Cornelia Praetextata 60

Cornelius of Rome 199, 201

Cosa 30, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64, 67, 79

Creon 397

Crete 371

Crispinus 375

Crook, J. 120

Ctesiphon 174

Cumae 11, 194, 195

Cures Sabini 59, 62, 68, 69, 72

Cutiliae 61

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Cynegius 382, 391, 392

Cyprian of Carthage 201

Cyprianus Gallus 330

Cyprus 38, 317

Cyrenaica 32, 173, 318

Cyrus of Antaiopolis 336, 337

Dacia 289

Damascius 413–18

Damasus of Rome 205, 206, 209

Damocrates 334, 337

Daniel, Book of 12, 220, 223

Daniel the Stylite 168

Danube 160, 169, 171, 243

Daphne (shrine) 247, 387, 391,394, 399, 400

Daszweski, W. 311, 320

David (commentator) 418

David (king) 176,273,274

Decius 46, 61, 70, 180, 199, 201

dekaprōtos 98, 102, 103, 106, 108

Delphi 332, 352

Demosthenes 346, 361, 364, 368

Dexippus 410

Didius Julianus 114

Didyma 332

Dill, S. 157

Dillon, J. 19

Dio of Prusa (Dio Chrysostom) 18, 153, 359,362–4, 367, 368, 374, 384,385, 400

Diocletian 48, 159, 163, 329, 344,349, 363

as builder 35, 68, 69, 75

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as legislator, 6,7,48,51,75,78,121, 128, 148

as persecutor 12,202,219,221,223, 232

reforms in Egypt 4, 5, 41, 42,44, 82–107, 321, 322

Diogenes (sophist) 379

Diogenianus 327

Dionysiac amphora (Sevso) 299,300

Dionysius (poet) 329

Dionysius of Alexandria 202

Dionysius of Halicarnassus 355

(p.473) Dionysius of Rome 202

Dionysius Periegetes 327, 334–6

Diophantus 374, 375

Domergue, C. 47

Dominate 69

Domitian 186, 330, 354, 364,367

Domitianus, L. Domitius 84, 87,90, 93

Domitii 60, 76

Domitius Ahenobarbus 274

Domninus 413, 415

Donatists 8, 11, 145, 155, 184,204, 205, 225

Donatus (commentator) 342

Dorotheus 327

Doxiadis 316, 322

Drerup 314

Drypia 266

Duncan-Jones, R. 2–4

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Dura Europos 14, 143, 168, 273,274, 277

Dyscolius 410

eastern world 7, 8, 16, 17, 19–21, 43, 109, 111, 120, 124–7, 130, 132, 138, 143, 157, 162,
165, 169, 171, 172, 181, 182, 184, 186, 200, 205, 210, 245, 258, 270, 330, 336, 357, 375,
380, 382, 384, 385, 389, 410

Easter 11, 196, 236, 237, 239, 240, 241, 245, 250–2, 266

Edessa 179, 391

Edwards, M. 10–12

Effe, B. 335

Egnatia gens 66

Egnatius Dexter 115

Egypt(ians) 3–6, 8, 173

culture of 274, 282, 310, 311,313, 317, 318, 323, 325, 330

economy of 15, 16, 21, 24, 25, 36, 38, 41–4, 51

law and administration of 143,146, 149

religion of 196, 205, 221–3,314, 315, 320, 326

under Diocletian 82–108

El-Alamein 311, 320

Elagabalus 62

Eleusis 369, 375

Elias 418

elites 7, 16, 18, 172, 266, 287,294, 310, 320, 324, 325, 344,347, 357–9, 361

Elsner, J. 14, 15

Encaenia 245

Ennius 349

Epaminondas 397

Ephesus 177, 190, 196, 247

Epicureans 208, 217

Epidaurus 321

Epimenides 371

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Epiphanius 375

Epiphany 244, 246, 252, 253,255, 267

Erethius 389

Eros 409

er-Rubayat 311, 317

Etruria (Tuscany) 29–31, 53, 54,58, 60, 61, 63, 66, 67, 71–3,75, 76, 78, 79, 222, 274

Eubulus 402

Eubulus (Phoenician) 377

eucharist 241, 252, 255, 261,264

Eudoxia 267

Eudoxius 13, 248–50

Eugenius 165, 169, 174, 178

Eunapius 18, 19, 355, 373–9,393, 399, 401, 406, 407, 409

Euphrasius 374, 407

Euphrates 49

Europe 3, 160, 233, 276

Eusebius (sophist) 374

Eusebius XXII (sophist) 390

(p.474) Eusebius of Caesarea 12, 178,196, 201, 204, 218, 227–32, 235–9, 241, 242, 256,
257, 264, 270

Eustathius (official) 384, 393

Eustathius (philosopher) 407, 410

Eutropius (eunuch) 123, 127, 128, 145, 185

Eutropius (historian) 179

Eutychianus 129

Evagoras 360

Fabian of Rome 199

Falerii 29, 30, 56, 59, 60, 66, 71,72, 75, 77, 80

Faustina 71

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Fayum 16, 42, 87, 88, 96, 106,310, 311, 318, 319, 321, 324,325

Felix (saint) 348, 352

Ferentium 63, 71

Ferrill 173

Fiscus 60, 67, 68, 76, 79, 80

Flaminia et Picenum 68

Flavian dynasty 31, 60, 61, 192

Flavianus 123

Flavius, as name of enfranchised persons 144, 149

Flavius Areobindus 168

Flavius Cerialis 168

Flavius Dagalaiphus 168

Flavius Eugenius 383

Flavius Merobaudes 168

Flavius Palmatus 271–3, 280

Flavius Plinta 168

Flavius Rufinus 390

Flavius Zenon 169

Florence 296

Florentius 392, 393

Florus 345

Fortunatus 330

Forum Clodii 62, 71, 72

Forum Novum 56, 64, 67, 71

Fowden, G. 211, 225

Franks 164, 167, 168

Frede, M. 211–13, 229

Frigidus river 165

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Fronto 200, 349

Fulginiae 62, 76

Gadara 409

Gainas 166, 183

Gaius (Caligula) 186

Galen 114, 334, 374

Galerius (Maximian) 88, 225, 336

Galilaeans 192, 217, 395

Gallienus 2, 45, 46, 51, 56, 61,64–6, 72, 159, 160, 161, 404

Gallus (brother of Julian) 246,247, 377

Gamaliel 383

Garnsey, P. 7

Gaul 21, 27, 32, 33, 37, 45, 49,109, 122, 167, 175, 181, 203,251, 252, 280

Gayet, A. 311

Gaza 18

Gechter, M. 32

Gedalius 406

Gemina 403, 405, 406

Genesis 221, 332

Genseric 210

George of Pisidia 337, 339

German(y) 49, 161, 164, 167

Geta 114, 134

Giano dell’Umbria 61

Gibbon, E. 2

Gnostics 196, 219, 417

God 8, 12, 13, 127, 150, 151, 176,178, 185, 188, 191, 193, 201,203, 220, 231
Christian conception of 212,213, 215, 216, 218, 219,222–4, 228, 232, 233, 236,241,
242, 250, 286

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see also Trinity

(p.475)

Golden Church (Octagon) of Antioch 244, 257

Gordian III 48, 64

Gospel(s) 217, 224, 227–9, 260,305, 332

Goths 77, 144, 157, 163, 165–9,171, 173, 176, 177, 187,208–10

Gow, A. S. F. 335

Gracchi 9, 76

Graf, T. 311

Gratian 145, 173, 175, 181, 206,384

Gravina 28, 30

Graviscae 57, 78

Great Church of Constantius 375

Great Oasis 93, 94

Greco-Roman phenomena 14,150, 166, 271, 275, 285, 328,345

Greece 18, 21, 40, 143, 205, 276

(Hellas), 317, 320, 334, 375,376

Greek language and culture 1, 74,138, 182, 187, 221, 223, 238,315, 317, 329, 349, 355–7,
362, 373, 374, 400
in Christianity 189, 192, 193,195, 197, 201

poetry 327–31, 340, 343, 345,354

traditions of 136, 141, 147, 168,187, 229, 274, 319, 320, 392,397

transformation of 17–18, 115,182

Gregorius (legal codifier) 117, 128

Gregorius (prefect) 144

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Gregory the Great 305

Gregory Nazianzen 14, 16, 175, 253, 254, 256, 258–62, 333, 334, 336–40, 347–9, 353

Gregory Thaumaturgus 147

Grigg, R. 231

Grubbs, J. E. 141

Grumentum 67

Hadrian 24, 26, 60, 61, 71, 117,121, 289, 305, 307, 320, 327,349, 394

Hadrianus Sallustius 106

Haltern cup 317

Hannibal 175

Harries, J. 7, 122, 169, 170

Hathor 316

Hawara 311, 317, 319, 320

Hebrew 188, 191, 194, 221, 227

Hebrews (letter) 194

Hegias 414

Heikel, I. 231

Helena 226

Helenopolis 241

Helladius of Antinoopolis 336

Hellenes 15, 19, 381, 416

Hellenic culture (Hellenism) 15,19, 274, 310, 324–6, 356,358, 361, 362, 372, 395, 398,410

Hellenistic culture 15, 16, 18, 19,27, 39, 65, 188–90, 201, 274,275, 291, 328–30, 337,
340,355, 360

Henry II (Holy Roman Emperor) 292, 296

Heptanomia (seven nomes) 86,103, 108

Heracles (Hercules) 342, 397

Hermas 11, 194–6

(p.476) Hermeias (philosopher) 412, 413

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Hermeias (poet) 330

Hermetica 220, 222

Hermogenes 360, 362, 375

Hermogenes IV 377

Hermogenianus (legal codifier) 117, 128

Hermopolite nome 84, 86, 94,337

Hermouthiac area 319

Hermupolis 330

Herodes Atticus 404

Herodian 2

Herodotus 345

Heron (god) 323

Hibis 93

Hierius 414

Hierocles 218

Hierophantes 392

Himerius 355, 393

Hippo 150

Hippodrome 10, 181, 182

Hippolytus Ewer 299

Hippolytus of Rome 198, 199,210

Hispellum 61

Historia Augusta 67, 102, 103,126, 127, 179

Hobbes, T. 210

Holmes, Sherlock 402

Holy Spirit 176, 195, 200, 201,212

Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), church of 248, 269, 301, 302,306–9, 347

Homer 17, 181, 219, 285, 291,344–6, 361, 365, 389, 390

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Honoré, A. 6, 115, 120

Honorius 123, 145, 168, 181,184

Horus 315

Hostilianus Hesychius 407

Huns 161

Iamblichus of Chalcis 12, 19, 222, 223, 361, 374, 407, 409, 410, 411, 413, 416, 417

Iberia 3, 47

Icarius 385, 386

iconography 219, 226,228, 231–3, 277, 278, 284, 285, 286, 315, 322, 323

Iconoclasts 233, 278, 286

Ignatius of Antioch 193, 196

Illyria(ns) 160, 416

Incarnation 212, 215, 216

inflation, see coin

Ino 397

Interamna Nahars 62, 65, 67, 68, 80

Irenaeus 196–8, 215, 216

Irni 139, 140

Isaiah 237, 238

Isauria(ns) 169, 177, 330

Isidorus 414

Isis 197, 284, 315

Islam 146

Ispahan 402

Israel 237

Italicianus 370

Italy 3–5, 11, 21, 24, 27, 30–2, 37, 49, 50, 53, 54, 61, 64, 66, 67, 73, 79, 109, 122, 135–8,
157, 162, 173, 190, 201–3, 209

Jacob of Nisibis 178

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Jacoby, F. 337

Jason of Cyrene 188, 189

Jerome 202, 349, 350

Jerusalem 188, 196

Jesus Christ 12, 126, 152, 153, 176, 190, 200, 201, 209, 212, 215, 216, 222, 226, 227, 229,
231–3, 248, 249, 260

(p.477) Jews 124, 188, 190, 191, 196,211, 212, 215, 216, 220, 221, 228, 285, 332

John (deacon) 256, 257

John the Baptist 190, 352

John, Gospel of 332, 341

John of Stobi 410

Johnson, A. C. 85

Jones, A. H. M. 26, 84, 85, 131,140, 159, 172

Joppa 190

Jordan 35, 409

Jordanes 173

Jovian 175, 178, 250

Judaea 191

Judaism 189, 217, 284

Julia Domna 62

Julia Moesa 62

Julian 143, 162, 163, 184, 246, 250, 251

and Christians 175, 206, 361

and Libanius 355, 393–400

and pagan culture 13, 175, 208, 365, 372, 374, 377, 378, 381

as commander 143, 162, 163, 169, 173, 175

Julianus (proconsul) 145

Julio-Claudian dynasty 54, 61, 71,141, 305

Julius Alexander 91, 93, 101

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Julius Caesar 175, 203

Julius Julianus 106, 417

Julius of Rome 210

Junius Bassus 307

Juno 352

Justin II 330

Justin Martyr 196, 227, 359

Justinian 129, 131, 132, 172,297, 301, 302, 309, 332,416

Code and Digest 23, 48, 131,132, 172

Juvenal 17, 190, 328, 350, 351,353

Juvencus 210, 332, 350

Karanis 3, 36, 41, 88, 95, 106

Kaser, M. 112

katholikos (rationalis) 87, 90, 91,94, 96, 97, 99, 102, 108

Keos 3, 40

Keydell, R. 338

Kislan Höyük 39

Kitzinger, E. 276

Kurnow, J. 32

Kussite nome 96

Lachares 406, 411, 413

Lactantius 12, 86, 187, 203, 218,230, 232, 350

Laterna Baptistery 307

Latin 1, 17, 38, 120, 147, 185,187–9, 195, 199, 200, 206,208–10, 221, 225, 229, 231,264,
270
literature 328–32, 340, 341,343, 344, 346, 349–54

Silver Latin 346, 349, 350, 354

Latin status 136, 138, 139

Latium 70, 76

Lauricius 177

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Leo I (Emperor) 210

Leo III 233

Leo I (Pope) 210

Leonas 177

Leonidas 397

Lepelley, C. 24, 148

Leuctra 396

Levy, E. 111

Lewis, N. 91, 94, 96

Libanius 17–19, 120, 121, 174,356, 358, 360–73

and Julian 394–400

and Theodosius I 379–93

in Eunapius 373–9

(p.478)

Liber Pater 62

Liberius of Rome 210

Libya 317

Licinius 12, 184, 225, 229, 278,336, 410, 416

Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G. 172

Liebs, D. 109, 120, 122

Lilybaeum 406

Liris valley 28, 31

litigation 113, 119–23, 147, 191,360

Livy 79, 141

Logos 12, 215, 224, 226–9, 233,234, 260

Lombards 305

London 294

Longinus 360, 401, 402

Lorium 58, 60

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Louvre 296, 314, 323

Lucan 203, 328, 350, 351

Lucian of Antioch 241, 246

Lucian of Samosata 12, 214, 215,217, 357, 359

Lucianus 392

Lucillius 328

Lucretius 197, 208, 333

Lucus Feroniae 56, 57, 61, 65, 68,71, 72, 74

Ludovisi sarcophagus 287, 288

Luke 190, 191, 248

Lycia(ns) 173, 411

Lycurgus cup 293, 294, 299

Lydus, John 159

Lykopolite nome 96, 97

Lyons 143, 196, 217

Maccabees 12, 188, 220

McCormack, S. 343

Macedonius (Bishop) 247, 248,250

Macedonius (philosopher) 410

McLynn, N. 13

Macmullen, R. 175

Macrianus 174

Macrobius 341, 345

Maghreb 64, 79

Magi 221

magister rei privatae 87, 108

Magna Mater 192

Magnentius 162, 246, 352

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Mainz 143, 287, 288

Malachi 231

Malraux, A. 276

Manetho 328

Manichees 145, 202, 221, 224

Marcella 406

Marcellinus 152

Marcellus of Ancyra 232

Marcellus of Apamea 177

Marcellus of Side 328, 334

Marcellus Orontius 404

Marcian 363

Marcus Aurelius 2, 24, 71, 135,146, 200, 217, 289, 292, 293,305, 327, 363

Marcus Marcellus 101

Mardonius 385

Marinus 19, 349, 411–18

Marius (Caius) 137

Mark 296

Martial 327, 328

Martin, J. 384

Martin of Tours 176

martyrs 13, 192, 194, 196, 217,246, 247, 266, 305, 306, 400

Matthew 191

Mauretania 80

Mauricius (duke) 336

Maxentius 69, 70, 203

Maximian (Donatist) 154

Maximian (Emperor) 88, 185, 336

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Maximinus Daia 68, 225

Maximus (Neoplatonist) 374

Maximus Magnus 125, 165, 174,181, 206, 383, 384

Maximus of Tyre 213, 214, 219

(p.479) Mediterranean 3, 16, 36–8, 113,310, 311, 316, 317, 324, 326,356

Meleager plate 297–9

Melitius 257

Memphis 311, 324, 325

Menander of Laodicea 8, 148

Menander Rhetor 345

Meroe 370

Merovingian era 167

Messiah 12, 231

Mevania 61, 72

Middle Ages 271, 274, 275, 277

Milan 14, 122, 124, 160, 208,210, 252, 263–6, 268, 269,341

Miletus 330

Miltiades of Rome 204

Milvian Bridge 203, 238

Minotaur 396

Minucianus 360

Minucius Felix 200

Minturnae 404

Mithraism 62, 197, 220, 284, 285

Mithridates 356

Modestinus 111, 113, 115, 116,151

Moeris, Lake 41, 42

Moesia 21, 143

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Molise 28

Mons Ciminius 74

Montserrat, D. 311, 316

Morocco 135, 146

Moses 127, 195, 220

Mossakowska, M. 322, 325

mummies 15, 16, 306–26

Mursa 162

Muses 348, 352

Muslims 211

Nakle 330

Napoleon 313

Narbonensis, see Provence

Narnia 59, 75, 81

Naucratis 318

Nazarius 162

Nazianzus 260

Nazis 276

Nectarius 14, 150–2, 261, 262

Nemesianus 350, 353

Neoplatonism 12, 18, 19, 207,213, 349, 359–61

Nepet 60, 70

Nephthys 315

Nero 21, 36, 60, 61, 186, 190,192, 327, 334

Nestor (hero) 397

Nestor (poet) 329

Nestorius (father of Plutarch) 411

New Testament 191, 196, 219,222, 226

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Nicasie, M. 162, 167, 168

Nicaea 10, 13, 330, 369

Council of 134, 135, 177, 178,204, 205, 229, 235, 244, 249,255, 257, 259

Nicander 335

Nicias 397

Nicolaus 411

Nicolet, C. 135, 136, 139, 150

Nicomedia 241, 344, 361, 367,369, 375, 376

Nijmegen 32

Nile 86, 310, 311, 317, 320, 321,324, 325

Nisibis 178

Noetus 196

Nonnus 329, 331, 339, 341, 347

Norman, A. 396

Notitia Dignitatum 9, 158–61, 174

Novatian(ists) 11, 199–201, 204,210

novelty 195, 222, 227, 330

Nubia 49

Numenius 227

(p.480) Numerian 350, 353

Numidia 200

Nursia 64, 77

Ocriculum 56, 61, 72–5, 80

Oedipus 396

Old Testament 215, 216, 228, 332

Olympic Games 386, 387

Olympiodorus 416

Oppian (Cynegetica) 328

Oppian (Halieutica) 327

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Optatus of Milevis 204, 205

oracles 220, 332, 352, 413

Oria 28, 31

Oribasius 395

Oriens 160

Orientalism 14, 276, 277

Origen (Christian) 212, 215, 216,219, 227, 233

Origen (pagan) 406

Orontes 407

Orosius 210

Orphics 220, 413

Orvieto 75

Osiris 315, 316

Ostia 31, 32, 36, 37, 50, 78, 200

Ostrogoths 76

Ottonian Cross 292

Ovid 17, 77, 328, 350

Oxford 1

Oxyrhynchite nome 83, 103

Pack, R. 371

Palamedes 397

Palatine Anthology 331

Palatine hill 70, 79

Palestine 189, 195, 379

Palladius XVII 389

Palmyra 22, 161, 168, 318

panegyrics (encomia) 18, 19, 148, 162, 178, 185, 203, 225, 330, 336, 337, 346–52, 363,
364, 369, 376, 384, 388, 390, 393

Pannonia 160, 175, 251

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Panopolite nome 5, 83, 89, 90, 93,95, 97, 99, 104, 105, 325

Papi, E. 4

Papinian 111, 117

papyrus 77, 82–107, 133, 164,281, 319, 330, 331, 345

Paris 294, 314

Parlasca, K. 311, 314

Parsons, P. 5, 89, 101, 102, 104

Paul (apostle) 139, 140, 154, 187,190–3, 196, 204, 205, 215,216, 220, 233

Paul (jurist) 111, 117

Paul of Samosata 202

Paul the Silentiary 348

Paulinus of Nola 176, 210, 348,352

Peek, W. 331

Pelasgus 397

Peleus 397

Peloponnese 40

Pelousion 32

Pericles of Lydia 414

Persia(ns) 13, 21, 22, 163, 168,169, 178, 203, 231, 240, 274,394, 399

Persius 328, 350

Pertinax 24, 64

Perusia 61

Pervigilium Veneris 351

Peter 192–4, 204

Petit, P. 380–3

Petrie, W. F. 311, 319, 320

Petronius Probus 331

Phalacrine 61

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Phasganius 387

Philadelphia 84, 173

Philagrius 375, 376

Philip of Thessalonica 327

Philip the Arab 5, 46, 48, 89, 101,102, 239, 256, 264

Philippi 190

(p.481) Philippus (Christian) 376

Philo of Alexandria 222

Philo of Byblos 221, 223

philosophers 325
and Christians 212–23

and sophists 355–62, 364, 373,374, 398

schooling of 402–18

Philostratus 214, 219, 362, 365,367, 373, 398

Philoxenus 411

Phoibammon 337

Phoenicia(ns) 221, 223, 376,377

Photius 336, 337, 415

Phrygia 197, 208, 221

Piammiano 75–7

Piazza Armerina 324

Picenum 68, 70

Pietri, C. 210

Pindar 329

Piraeus 411

Pisander of Laranda 329

plague 22, 49, 50, 52, 84

Plato 19, 195, 211, 214, 215, 229,231, 285, 333, 345, 349, 359,361, 363, 397, 398, 404,
408,411, 412

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Platonism 12, 19, 212, 216, 222,223, 227, 231, 361, 401, 403,408, 411–13

Platonopolis 404

Plethron 386

Pliny the Elder 75, 77, 78

Pliny the Younger 5, 61, 82, 193,215, 385

Plotina 61

Plotinus 12, 213–15, 217, 218,349, 359, 360, 373, 401–6,409, 411, 415–17

Ploug, G. 318

Plutarch of Athens 19, 405, 411–14, 417

Plutarch of Chaeronea 214, 332,359

Po 136

Poetovio 243

Polemon of Laodicea 394

Polybius 9, 175

Polycrates of Ephesus 196

Pompeii 317

Pompey 137

Pomponius 120, 125

Pomponius Domnus 96

Pontica 375

Pontifex Maximus 197, 199, 205

Poppaea Sabina 61

Porphyry 12, 211, 213, 214,217–23, 227, 233, 360, 361,401–7

portraiture (statuary) 15, 16, 186,271–5, 278, 280, 287–91,297, 305, 306–26

Portugal 47, 50

Potenza 28

Pothinus 196

Pothos (of Skopas) 63

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Potter, T. W. 29

praefectus Aegypti 87, 88, 91, 93,101, 106, 108

praefectus urbi 4, 53, 73

Praetextatus 208

Praetorian Guard 65, 67

Praetorian prefect 121, 144, 145,376, 377, 380, 382, 384, 389

Priapus 208

Prices Edict 43, 78, 92, 105, 321,322

Principate 7, 9, 17, 23, 40, 53,124, 132, 137, 138, 179, 190,274, 280

Priscus 168, 398

Probus 5, 102, 103, 155, 174, 180

Proclus (Count) 385–90

Proclus (philosopher) 19, 349,405, 406, 411–18

(p.482) Proconnesus 306

Procopius 159, 303, 307–9, 363

procurator 87, 92, 94, 97, 102,108, 128, 148, 191

Prohaeresius of Cappadocia 374,375, 378

Prosper of Aquitaine 209

Proteus 397

Provence 32, 33, 76

Prudentius 11, 208, 209, 348

Prusa 364

Psalms 332

Ptolemaic era 314, 315, 318

Ptolemais Euergetis 16, 318, 319

Pulcheria 183, 269

Pupienus 60

Pyrgi 56, 71, 78

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Pythagoreans 221, 222, 359, 407,408

Qoueiq river 38

quaestors 118, 125, 126, 383

Radagaisus 176

Rathbone, D. W. 44, 85, 319

rationalis , see katholikos

Ravenna 122, 124, 280, 301

Reate 60, 62, 77, 78

Regionarii list 70

Re-Horakhty 315

rescripts 117, 118, 128, 129, 131

Revelation 192

Rhine(land) 32, 33, 50, 158, 161,165, 243

Richomer 382

Riegl, A. 275–7

Rieti 28

Riggs, C. 314

roads 53, 55, 57, 64, 68, 71, 73,80, 285

Roberts, C. 311

Rogatianus 404

Rohde, E. 362

Roman character 11, 190, 202,207, 208, 285, 293, 316, 317,325, 356
in art 274–7, 284, 291, 292, 309

in language and literature 337,341, 387

in religion 285, 318, 341

Roman citizenship 7–10, 110,113–15, 122, 189, 191, 193,357

Roman Empire:
as geographical area 22, 26,85, 119, 280, 286, 293,315, 317

as political unit 1, 2, 6, 7, 95,109, 124, 138, 146, 197, 202,317

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Christianity in 8, 11, 14,35, 111, 152, 187, 191,400

conception of 61, 137, 255, 364,396

decline of 2, 3, 9, 20–2, 83, 104

economy of 2–4, 23, 25, 43, 49,52, 56

epoch of 3, 16, 24, 39, 80, 99

Greeks in 344, 356, 362, 363,367, 385

provinces of 15, 27, 28, 30, 39,43, 50, 63, 107, 116, 310,314, 319, 320

religion in 195, 210–12, 223,225, 341, 399, 415

wars of 9, 10, 21, 51, 155–73

Roman past 10, 43, 153, 194, 307,327

(p.483) Roman Republic 59, 76, 77, 80, 111, 136, 150, 155, 164, 175, 187, 205, 207, 274,
291

Romanitas (Romanness) 8–11, 115, 140, 187–91, 200, 205–7, 209, 224, 316

Romanization 8, 29, 32, 59, 116, 147, 167, 202, 224, 316, 319

Romans 46, 75, 148, 189–92,202, 206, 221, 224, 225, 318, 320, 321, 396, 399
in Church 182, 193, 196, 198

Romans, Letter to 191

Rome 4, 113, 121, 122, 126, 135, 137, 143, 144, 148, 150, 285, 294, 317
as centre of Christendom 10, 11,187–210, 246

as centre of Empire 9, 21, 22, 27, 31, 36, 47, 50, 51, 111, 113, 124, 136, 137, 152,
153, 187, 197, 200, 206, 315, 319, 324, 325, 356, 380

disasters of 187, 192, 203, 209,210, 225, 226

images of 192, 203, 206–8

monuments of 15, 16, 53–73,279, 280, 287–90, 307

rivals of 210, 225

teachers in 196, 355, 357, 360,403, 406, 407

trade of 73–80

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Römer, C. 316, 320

Romulus (decurion) 384

Rose, H. J. 354

Rostovtzeff, M. 157

Rothschild cameo 278

Rubens vase 283, 299

Rufinus (official) 392

Rufinus (poet) 328

Rufinus of Aquileia 209, 264

Rusellae 56, 58, 72, 80

Sabas 171

Sabine territory 56, 58, 59, 61, 67,77, 78

Sabinillus 404

S. Denis 305

S. Paul’s School 346

S. Polyeuktos (Constantinople) 278, 301,304, 307, 331

S. Sophia (Constantinople), see Holy Wisdom

Ste-Croix, G. de 140

Sallust 153

Salonina 57, 65, 404

Salutaris 102

Salvian 209

Salvius Julianus 112, 115

Samuel 273, 274

San Giovanni di Ruoti 28

San Marco (Venice) 301, 304

San Vitale (Ravenna) 301

Santa Sabina (Rome) 307

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Sapores 393

Sardis 410

Sarmatians 167

Sassanids 2, 13

Saturnia 30, 31, 56

Saturninus 177

Saxa Rubra 60

Schmid, W. 362

Scipio Aemilianus 151

Scotland 114

Scymnus (Pseudo-) 334, 337

Scythia Minor 255

Sebaste 305

Second Coming 192

Second Sophistic 285, 293, 349,362–3

Secundus Salutius 175

Sedulius 332, 348

Seeck, O. 383

Segermes 34, 50

Seleucia 177

(p.484) Seleucids 12

senate 19, 38, 61, 72, 79, 114, 130, 134, 137, 141, 142, 144, 148, 149, 175, 179, 180, 182,
183, 200, 203, 206, 209, 261, 353, 357, 361, 404, 417

Seneca 328, 349, 350

Septimius Severus 34, 44, 62, 63, 65, 70, 101, 117, 125, 131, 134, 159, 161, 174, 179, 289

Serapeum 175

Serdica 205, 210, 225

Servius 341, 342

Settefinestre 31, 78, 79

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Severan dynasty 4, 6, 15, 22, 31, 35, 48, 51, 53, 56–9, 63, 64, 69, 76, 79, 109, 111, 113,
116, 117, 131, 140, 156, 158, 160, 173, 179, 198, 202, 278, 290, 359
see also Alexander Severus ; Caracalla ; Septimius Severus

Seville 403

Sevso treasure 297–300

Shapur I 21–3, 178

Sibyl 11, 187, 194, 195, 203, 226, 332

Sicily 324, 406

Sidonius 330, 339

Silius Italicus 350

Silvanus the Frank 167

Silvester of Rome 204

Sinai 195

Singara 174

Sinuessa 27

sitologos 102

Skeat, T. M. 99

Skopas 63

slaves 7, 59, 113, 138, 141–4, 198, 358

Smyrna 364, 369

Social War 135, 137, 138

Socrates (historian) 177, 183, 250, 267

Socrates (philosopher) 228, 359,365, 405, 409

Soknopaiou Nesos 3, 41, 42

Sopater 360, 362, 365, 407, 410,417

Sophia (wife of Sabas) 171

Soterichus of Oasis 349

Sozomen 183, 248, 257, 260, 267

Spain (Hispania) 29, 37, 45, 47,50, 71, 78, 138, 139, 184,191, 210, 350

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Sparta 396

Spawforth, A. 321

Spello amphorae 79

Split 122

spolia 279,280,288–93,303,304,306, 307

Statius 328, 330, 350, 351, 353

Statonia 75, 76, 78

Stephanus 418

Stephen of Rome 201

Stilicho 109, 127, 209

Stoics 113, 216, 217

Strabo 100

Strasburg 163, 171

Strategius 376

stratēgos 83, 86, 87, 90, 91, 94–9,103, 105, 108

Strato 328

Strzygowski, J. 275–7

Suetonius 102

Sulla 137

sun 202, 225, 226, 231, 233, 315

Sunday 225, 233, 237, 246, 252,260–3, 268

Sutrium 62, 71

Swain, S. 17

Symmachi 293, 294

Symmachus 120,206–8,346,384

Synesius of Cyrene 10, 19, 157,173, 185

(p.485) Syracuse 122

Syria(ns) 3, 21, 27, 39, 40, 65, 95,107, 114, 143, 168, 177, 190,196, 263, 274, 328, 375,
377,384, 392, 407

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Syrianus 19, 405, 406, 411–13,415

Syrion 106

Tabula Banasitana 5, 135, 146

Tacitus (Emperor) 180

Tacitus (historian) 175, 189, 192,345, 346

Tarquinia 75

Tarquinii 57, 63, 65, 71, 77, 78

Tarquinius Superbus 194

Tarracina 75

Tarraco 29, 37, 45

Tarsus (Cilicia) 191, 330, 367

Tate, G. 39

Tatian 196

Tatianus 384, 385, 388–92

taxation 5, 23–6, 86–108, 110,114, 127, 134, 177, 207, 318

Terme del Nuotatore 36

Tertullian 188, 189, 197, 199,200

Tetrarchy 69, 155, 174, 175, 180,185

Thalassius 388, 389, 398

Thamusida 64, 80

Theadelphia 96, 106

Theagenes 414, 417, 418

Thebaid 82, 86, 90, 97, 100, 108,311, 322, 324, 325

Themistius 19, 181–3, 261, 330,355, 360, 361, 364, 374, 384

Themistocles 397

Theoderic 76

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Theodolinda 305

Theodoret of Cyrrhus 14, 168,261, 267–70

Theodorus of Asine 374, 407

Theodorus IV (consular) 370,371

Theodosian Code 9, 23, 75, 118,119, 124, 126, 129, 142, 163, 164, 169, 170, 171, 176, 186,
392

Theodosius I 14, 19, 109, 111,120, 123, 125, 126, 145, 164, 168, 177, 205, 206, 235, 236,
258–65, 268, 270, 278, 355, 368, 395, 396, 400
and Libanius 379–93

Theodosius II 14, 129, 135, 183,184, 186, 267, 269, 270

Theon 362

Theophilus of Antioch 177

Theseus 397

Thessalonica 123, 178, 235, 344

‘Third Century Crisis’ 2, 3, 9,20–2, 83, 104

Thomas, T. K. 324

Thoth 315

Thrace 160, 397

Thrasea Paetus 192

Thrasydaeus 384

Thucydides 346

Thugga 36

Tiber 59, 60, 65, 67, 69, 73–5, 77,79, 80, 203

Tiberius 57, 101, 186, 190, 305

Tifernum Tiberinum 61

Timisitheus 65

Timothy 247

Tisamenus 382

Titris˛ Höyük 39

Titus 61

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Tomi 255

Tomlin, R. 175

trade 31, 33, 36–8, 77–80

(p.486) Trajan 34, 36, 57, 65, 71, 82, 289,305, 367, 368, 400

Tranquillina 64

Trastevere 70

Treadgold, W. 161, 162

Trebonianus Gallus 61

Trebula Mutuesca 65, 68, 72

Trier 124, 243, 244, 295, 299

Trinity 12, 212, 214–16, 228,232, 233

Triphiodorus 329

Tripolitania 37

Trivulzio 293

Tuder 56, 62, 72, 78

Tunisia 34, 37

Turkey 38

Tusca et Umbria 68, 69, 72

Tuscana 56, 68, 71

Tuscia 75

Tuscianus 379

Tyche 371, 396

Tyre 402

Tyrrhenian region 53

Ukraine 317

Ulfius Aurelius 103

Ulpian 6, 111, 113–15, 117, 131,133, 148

Ulpian (sophist) 364

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Ulpius Marcellus 112

Umbria 58, 61, 68–70, 72, 73

United Kingdom 116, 131

Valens 9, 13, 170–2, 181, 182, 250–8, 261, 262, 381

Valentinian I 13, 159, 168, 174, 181, 250–2, 262

Valentinian II 125, 131, 145, 181, 206, 207, 208, 264

Valentinian III 126

Valentinus 190

Valerian 22, 45, 46, 48

Valerius Apsines 380

Valerius Flaccus 350

Vandals 168, 174, 210

Varro 77–9, 195, 211

Vegetius 173, 175, 176

Veii 56, 57, 60, 77

Venice 180, 301

Venosa 28

Venus 352

Vergilius Capito 94

Verona 67

Vespasian 61, 101, 179, 190

Vestal Virgins 206, 207, 209

Vetranio 178, 184

Vettona 62

Vezza 75

Victor (general) 167, 177

Victor of Rome 196–8

Vienna 276, 311

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Vigna Barberini 74

Vindolanda 168

Virgil (Vergil) 17, 208, 209, 292,342–6, 349, 350

Vitellius 175

Viterbo 60

Vitruvius 74

Volcacius Sedigitus 334, 335

Vologeses 178

Volsinii 56, 61, 64, 68, 72, 75

Volusianus 152

Vulci 68

Walker, S. 15, 314–16, 319–23

Wandering Poets 330, 339, 354

Warwick 1

West, M. 345

western world 8, 10, 11, 21, 38, 49, 109, 116, 120, 124–6, 135, 157, 162, 165, 169, 171–3,
184, 186, 206, 210, 238, 245, 262, 270, 336, 351, 353, 354

Wetzler, C. F. 131

(p.487) Whitby, M. 9

Wieacker, F. 112

Wiemer, H.-U. 383, 384

women 8, 124, 141, 144, 146,147, 149, 198, 316, 317, 387,404, 405

Wright, F. A. 340

Xenophanes 214

Zeno 182

Zenobius 364, 377

Zenodotus 415, 417

Zethus (Zayd) 404

Zeus 85, 181, 220, 387, 397

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Zosimus 161, 163, 165, 173, 179,180

Zoticus 349

Zuckerman, C. 9, 170–2

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Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to
Late Empire
Simon Swain and Mark Edwards

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

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DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.004.0001

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Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to
Late Empire
Simon Swain and Mark Edwards

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

John Dillon

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0015

Abstract and Keywords

In the spring of 263, in his thirtieth year, the philosopher Porphyry, originally
of Tyre, but for some years previously studying with the distinguished
Platonist Longinus at Athens, decided on a career move and set out, with
one companion, for Rome to join the circle of the rather avant-garde and
somewhat mysterious philosopher Plotinus. This chapter considers what sort
of a set-up he found when he got there, and what sort of a set-up he had left
behind him in Athens.

Keywords: Porphyry, philosophers, Late Antiquity, Plotinus, Rome, Athens

I
In the spring of 263, in his thirtieth year, the philosopher Porphyry, originally
of Tyre, but for some years previously studying with the distinguished
Platonist Longinus at Athens, decided on a career move, and set out, with
one companion, for Rome, to join the circle of the rather avant-garde and
somewhat mysterious philosopher Plotinus. 1 What sort of a set-up he found
when he got there, and what sort of a set-up he had left behind him in
Athens, is part of what I wish to enquire into on the present occasion.

In fact, as Porphyry tells us in his Life of Plotinus (ch. 5 ), he found nothing

much going on at all when he arrived, since Plotinus was enjoying his
summer vacation (του̑ Пλωτίνου τὰς θερινὰς ἄγοντος ἀργούς), and not

Page 1 of 20 Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

(p.402) One of the first things we have to do, I think, when approaching the
study of ancient centres of higher learning, whether philosophical, medical,
legal, or rhetorical, is to think small. Even the model of the mediaeval
university presents us with something far too elaborate. A nearer analogue
to the situation in Late Antiquity, which was put to me many years ago in
Berkeley by Peter Brown himself, and which I find most attractive, might be
found in what we know of the centres of learning in the medieval Arab world,
from Seville and Cordoba to Baghdad or Ispahan, where even a world-famous
sheikh would gather with his little flock of students, who might themselves
have come to sit at his feet from any quarter of the Arab-dominated world, in
nothing more formal than an alcove of a mosque, or a corner of its courtyard,
and expound his doctrine, after which teacher and students would adjourn to
his house for dinner and further discussion. 4

Similarly, Porphyry, arriving at Plotinus’ school in Rome, joins a very

simple and informal institution indeed, by modern standards. But how
representative, after all, was the school of Plotinus of late antique
philosophical schools in general? Here, I think, on the analogy of Sherlock
Holmes’s dog that fails to bark, one may take note of certain interesting
features of Porphyry’s narrative. 5 Porphyry, certainly, is neither blind to,
nor reticent about, Plotinus’ various eccentricities, but at no point does he
suggest that the general organization of the school, or Plotinus’ position in it,
is noticeably peculiar. This I find significant. Porphyry, after all, as I say, had
come to Plotinus from Longinus in Athens. He was presumably also familiar
with the establishment of the Platonic diadochus Eubulus, even if Longinus
was not himself part of that establishment. 6 Yet he does not note in the Life
any startling change of structure, such as from a large, organized ‘research
(p.403) institute’ to a totally personal, informal group of ‘friends’. Certainly,
he notes that Plotinus’ method of commentary was remarkable (ch. 14 ), but
this in itself emphasizes that the overall set-up was not a shock to him at all.
My conclusion from this is that Plotinus’ school—apart from the personality of
the Master himself—was not in any essential way different in structure from
that of any other teacher of philosophy in these centuries.

What, then, was Plotinus’ situation? As far as we can gather from Porphyry’s
narrative, he lived, when Porphyry knew him, and presumably for some
considerable time before that, in the house of a wealthy widow called
Gemina (ch. 9 ). 7 The household included Gemina’s daughter, also called

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Around Plotinus in this establishment was gathered a circle of ‘companions’—

Porphyry does not speak of pupils (mathētai), only of companions, hetairoi.
These companions may be divided into three classes: (1) wealthy patrons,
(2) close companions, and (3) more casual auditors. The first category is
not, of course, exclusive of the other two, but the latter two categories
represent, I think, the same distinction that can be found in earlier centuries
in the schools of such figures as Plutarch’s mentor Ammonius, and that
of Aulus Gellius, L. Calvenus Taurus, between young men who attended
philosophical lectures to complete their education (as was the case, for
instance, with budding lawyers or rhetoricians like Aulus Gellius or Apuleius),
and serious students of Platonism, (p.404) who would go on to become
masters themselves, and one or other of whom would normally be their
master’s chosen successor.

In Plotinus’ case, patrons included the wealthy senators Castricius

Firmus, Marcellus Orontius, Sabinillus, and Rogatianus, 8 the last of whom
went rather overboard, giving away all his possessions and adopting
the philosophic way of life. This did wonders for his gout, it seems, but
presumably rather lessened his usefulness as a patron. The others, however,
seem to have found philosophy compatible with the bios praktikos. Castricius
Firmus was a particularly good friend. Plotinus was always welcome, one
gathers, at his country estate at Minturnae, and when the philosopher was
afflicted with his final illness in 269, it was to an estate adjacent to this in
Campania that he retired (VPlot. ch. 2 ). This estate belonged to, and was
presumably bequeathed to him by, a prosperous doctor of Arabian extraction
by the name of Zethus, who had himself been given it by Castricius—
interesting patterns of patronage are revealed here. 9 ‘His wants’, Porphyry
tells us, ‘were provided in part out of Zethus’ estate, and for the rest were
furnished from Minturnae, where Castricius’ property lay.’ We see in all this
Castricius providing very much the same range of services for Plotinus as,
back in the second century, we find Herodes Atticus providing for Calvenus
Taurus in Athens. 10

Plotinus’ patrons actually came to include the emperor Gallie-nus himself,

and his wife Salonina (VPlot. ch. 12 ), which imperial favour led Plotinus to

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The presence on the scene of the lady Gemina and of Castricius goes
some way to answer, perhaps, a question which must occur to the modern
observer. What were the financial arrangements, in an ancient philosophic
school, between master and pupil? Such indelicate matters are, after all,
never mentioned in our sources— though endowments are, much later,
in the case of the Academy in Athens. 12 The answer is, I would suggest,
that financial arrangements were left quite vague, in accordance with the
philosophic inhibition, dating from Socrates himself, against taking fees
for imparting knowledge. The pupil was expected to provide for himself
(Porphyry, at least, had a house or apartment of his own, VPlot. ch. 11 ), and
perhaps to contribute to such communal meals as were held. The pupil’s
father, or he himself, if he were mature and rich, might make the philosopher
‘presents’ of various sorts, but such matters would not be regulated to
the extent of constituting anything like an explicit fee. As far as one can
observe from the sources available to us, one simply presented oneself at
the establishment of the philosopher of one’s choice and hoped to be allowed
to enter his circle. It is thus that Porphyry arrives at the school of Plotinus,
and it is thus, nearly two centuries later, that Proclus arrives at the school of
Syrianus and Plutarchus. 13

About attending lectures there was, it seems, no great difficulty. Plotinus’

lectures, at least, were open to all (VPlot. ch. 1 ). Amelius (p.406) was
once able to bring along a friend of his who was a noted portrait painter,
to make sketches surreptitiously for a portrait of Plotinus, and no notice, it
seems, was taken of this by the great man (though here his students were
in collusion against him). Visitors in town might drop in unexpectedly—
as did once, to Plotinus’ great confusion, his former fellow-pupil Origenes
(ch. 3 ). In Pro-clus’ case, a century and a half later, it would seem that he
just turned up to a lecture by Syrianus, 14 and then commended himself to
Syrianus and one of his inner circle of followers, Lachares, by ostentatiously
worshipping the rising moon as he left the house at the end of the session
—as a result of which, it would seem, Syr-ianus asked him to stay to dinner,
and subsequently received him into his circle.

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(p.407) II
If we turn from the uncertainties surrounding Porphyry to the school
established by Iamblichus at Apamea after his departure from Porphyry, we
find more or less the same degree of informality manifesting itself as we saw
in that of Plotinus. 15 Iamblichus, it would seem, returned from his sojourn in
Rome to his native Syria some time in the late third century, and established
himself in Apamea, a flourishing town in the Orontes valley, already notable
as the birthplace (and perhaps also the place of work) of Numenius, and the
town to which Plotinus’ senior pupil Amelius had retired in the late 260s.
Amelius himself was probably already dead by the time Iamblichus arrived
16 (though his protégé Hostilianus Hesy-chius, to whom he bequeathed his
library, 17 may well still have been around). The important factor, though,
from Iamblichus’ point of view, was the existence of a local patron, in the
person of Sopater, scion of a prominent local family, who may or may not
have been acquainted with him previously.

We come upon him, in Eunapius’ narrative, already well established in

Apamea, with a flourishing school, including members from Cappadocia
(Aedesius and Eustathius), and even mainland Greece (Theodorus of Asine

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The business of the school would seem to have involved, after the study
of the basic principles of Pythagorean philosophy, first, a course in the
logic of Aristotle (if we may conclude that from the existence of a massive
commentary by Iamblichus on the Categories, and some evidence of ones
on the De Interpretatione and Prior Analytics as well), and then the study of
a carefully selected sequence of Platonic dialogues, designed to take one
through the philosophy of Plato in a coherent order. We are given some
account of this in the Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, a
(probably) sixth-century compilation (ch. 26). 18 First there came a sequence
of ten dialogues, beginning with the First Alcibiades, which inculcated the
basic self-knowledge which enabled one to embark upon a programme
of Platonic philosophy, and followed by the Gorgias (civic virtue), Phaedo
(purificatory virtue), after which one passed to the properly theoretic level,
the study of true reality (ta onta). Here one first worked through the Cratylus,
to acquire a theory of language, then the Theaetetus, for the study of
concepts, then the Sophist and the Statesman for the study of cosmic
realities, 19 and the Phaedrus and Symposium for the study of theology. As
the culmination of this whole course he chose the Philebus. This, however, is
only the first cycle; the course concludes with the study of the two ‘summits’
of Platonic wisdom, the Timaeus, covering ‘physics,’ the study of every
aspect of the physical world, and the Parmenides, for ‘theology’, the study of
intelligible reality.

How long all this was designed to take, in terms of years, we have no idea,
but the general impression that one receives of the procedure (p.409) of
ancient philosophical schools is that there was no hurry—a serious student
might spend upwards of ten years with his master (as Plotinus did with
Ammonius, and Amelius with Plotinus). 20 Iamblichus doubtless commented

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Apart from normal school seminars, there will have been public disputations
from time to time, as in the case of the visit to the school (related by
Eunapius, 5.3.406) of a rival philosopher, Aly-pius, who tries to put
Iamblichus on the spot by asking an awkward question—really a proposal
for discussion: ‘The rich man is either unjust, or the heir of one unjust, yes
or no?’ Iamblichus in the event deflects the question, but we can see here in
operation a procedure not unlike the mediaeval disputation, or indeed the
modern press conference, to which a philosopher might submit from time
to time, for purposes of self-advertisement or public relations. The school
also went on periodic outings, it would seem, as on one occasion to the hot
springs at Gadara—a considerable journey south, into present-day Jordan (VP
2.2.459)—where the great man impressed his followers by conjuring up a
pair of spirits, Eros and Anteros, out of adjacent wells.

Another kind of external relations in which a philosopher of Late Antiquity

might indulge was the composition of ‘letters’, popular (p.410) expositions
of aspects of his doctrine in epistolary form, addressed to friends, former
pupils, patrons (male or female), or distinguished public figures. Iamblichus
is actually the only later Pla-tonist of whom we have any surviving letters
(preserved in extracts by John of Stobi in his Anthology), and they illustrate
well the range of topics and recipients which might be covered. We find
letters to various pupils: to Sopater (also, perhaps, a patron), On Fate, On
Dialectic, On Bringing up Children, 23 On Ingratitude, On Virtue, and On
Truth; to Dexippus (whose short commentary on the Categories survives)
On Dialectic; to Eustathius, On Music. There is one to Anatolius, presumably
his old teacher, On Justice; two to a certain Macedonius, On Fate (perhaps
the weightiest, from a philosophical point of view), and On Concord; one
to the lady Arete, On Self-Control; and a number of others to persons
of unidentifiable status. One figure, however, Dyscolius, is identifiable
with probability as the governor of Syria around AD 323, towards the end

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(p.411) III
Let us turn now, moving forward a century, to the so-called Athenian School,
and to its most prominent figure, Proclus. We have already caught a glimpse
of the circumstances of his arrival in Athens in 431. 27 He was met at the
port of Piraeus by his friend Nicolaus, who was a fellow-Lycian, and was
prepared to offer him a place to stay until he found his feet. Nicolaus was
himself studying rhetoric, and may indeed have made some attempt to
enroll Proclus in the school of his master, 28 but Proclus’ inclinations were
firmly directed towards philosophy, and specifically towards Platonism,
and this led him, more or less inevitably, to the feet of its chief, if not only,
exponent, Syrianus, son of Philoxenus, himself the designated successor
of the grand old man of Athenian Platon-ism, Plutarchus, son of Nestorius.
Marinus (loc. cit., n. 13 above) gives us a pleasant description of what may
have been an introductory interview, at which there was also present one
Lachares, who seems to have been a kind of assistant, or senior student, of
Syrianus’ (holding a status analogous, presumably, to that of Amelius vis-à-
vis Plotinus, or Sopater with Iamblichus). I will let Marinus take up the story:
29

As they were still conversing, the sun came to set, and the
moon, emerging from her conjunction with the sun (ἀπὸ
συνόδου) made her first appearance. 30 So they moved to
dismiss the young man, seeing as he was a stranger, 31 so
that they could have leisure on their own to pay reverence to
the Goddess. But he, after proceeding just a short distance,
and himself observing the moon appearing from her (zodiacal)
house, stopped in his tracks, took off his shoes, and, as they
looked on, made his prayer to the goddess. At that, Lachares,
struck by the frank and fearless behaviour (παρρησία) of the

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(p.412) And at that, the young Proclus was accepted into the inner circle.
Syrianus took him into his house, 32 and then introduced him to the aged
Plutarchus, who had officially retired, but who was prepared to take on this
promising young man for private lessons. With Plutarchus, Marinus tells
us (ch. 12 ), Proclus read Aristotle’s De Anima and Plato’s Phaedo, 33 and
Plutarchus was so pleased with him that he suggested that Proclus should
take notes of his expositions and write them up; and, to encourage him in
this, he put it to him (rather significantly, in view of what we know of the
provenance of other surviving commentaries, such as that, ostensibly, of
Hermeias on the Phaedrus) 34 that in future times they would be regarded as
Proclus’ commentaries on the works in question.

There is no evidence, in fact, that Proclus took him up on this generous offer,
but he plainly owed a good deal to his association with the old man, which
went on for his first two years in Athens, after which Plutarchus died. It is
not clear, in this time, whether Proclus also took lectures from Syrianus,
but it rather sounds from Marinus’ narrative (chs. 12 – 13 ) as if Syrianus
had farmed the young man out to his own former teacher, until he should
have covered all the preliminaries to the ‘advanced’ course in Platonism,
which in fact amounted to a thorough survey of Aristotle’s works—as Marinus
specifies, ‘in logic, ethics, politics, physics, and theology’. Apart from the De
Anima, then, we may conjecture that in these first two years with Plutarchus,
Proclus was taken through the Organon, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics,
Physics, and Metaphysics (at least Met. Λ—but possibly A, M, and N as well,
on which Syrianus himself composed a commentary, which survives). That
would be quite a demanding schedule, but these works may well not have
been read in toto.

At any rate, when Proclus finally transferred full-time to Syrianus, he was

ready—after what Marinus describes (ch. 13 ) as ‘the preliminary initiations
and lesser mysteries’ (προτέλεια καὶ μιρὰ μυστήρια)—for initiation into
the central mysteries of Platonism. (p.413) This presumably means the
Iamblichean canon of dialogues, culminating in the two ‘summits’ of
philosophy, the Timaeus and the Parmenides.

Syrianus himself did not survive for many years after Plu-tarchus. He
was certainly dead by the time Proclus composed his own dialogue on

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We get no very clear idea, unfortunately, from Marinus about the communal
life of Syrianus’ school. Plainly, there were other students than Proclus,
though not many may have lived ‘in’, as Proclus did. We know of Lachares,
for a start, but there was also Plutarchus’ grandson 35 Archiadas (who may
also have shared his sessions with Plutarchus—at any rate, the old man
bequeaths him to Syrianus along with Proclus (Marinus, ch. 12 )—and of
course Hermeias. But how many more? I think it improbable that there
were many. We are dealing with tiny groups here—little more than half a
dozen serious students, probably, at any one time, though the number of
hangers-on and occasional attenders at lectures may have been larger. I
suppose, between one source and another (Marinus, Damascius, Proclus’
own dedications), we have names of about a dozen students of Proclus
covering the whole period of over forty years during which he was head
of the Athenian Academy. (p.414) A number of these, such as Archiadas,
Hierius, son of Plu-tarchus, Hegias, son of Theagenes, Damascius’ master
Isidorus, Marinus, Athenodorus, 36 Asclepiodotus, 37 or Pericles of Lydia, 38
will have stayed with him for a considerable time, but still the evidence does
not point to a group of more than half a dozen serious students at any one
time.

As for the day-to-day work of the School, Marinus tells us (VP 22) that Proclus
would deliver five lectures (praxeis) a day, 39 and sometimes more, while
also composing up to seven hundred lines. And this did not prevent him
from paying visits to other philosophers, and from giving informal evening
seminars (ἄγραφοι ἁσπεριναὶ συνουσίαι). The point of describing the evening
synousiai as agraphoi, ‘unwritten’ is presumably to contrast them with the
daytime lectures, which would be delivered from a written text. If we may
speculate about the daily timetable, I would suggest an early start (8.00
a.m., or even 7.30?), culminating in lunch around 2.00 p.m., followed by a
siesta, and then perhaps an agraphos synousia around 5.00 p.m., followed

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(p.415) Proclus’ school was not, so far as we can see, entirely a one-man
show, though the status of assistants is something on which we have little
guidance. Plainly, in all the schools we have looked at, senior students came
to be entrusted with pedagogical tasks of one sort or another, whether or
not this conferred on them any official position. In Plotinus’ circle, Amelius
and then Porphyry were set various such tasks, such as refuting the Gnostics
(Porph. VPlot. 16), but they are not explicitly said to be involved in teaching.
In the case of Iamblichus’ school, we have no evidence, but we have
observed him studying with, prior to Porphyry himself, Anatolius, whom
Eunapius describes as τῶν κατὰ Пορφύριον τὰ δεύτερα φερόμενος, which
seems to point to some kind of deputyship (the phrase is used later by
Photius—probably reproducing the terminology of Damascius—at Bibl. cod.
181, introducing the Philosophos Historia, to describe the position of Proclus’
pupil Zenodotus: διάδοχος καὶ ο̑ὑτος Пρόκλου, τὰ δεύτερα Mαρίνου φέρων—
which I take to mean ‘successor to Proclus, acting as assistant to Marinus’).
This is presumably also the solution to the mystery of the status of Domninus
as diadochos to Syrianus (Marinus, VP 26): he was an ‘associate diadochos’!
Apart from this, we also hear of such figures as Athenodorus giving seminars
(cf. above n. 36).

Certainly not every day can have taken the course outlined by Marinus,
because, despite his unworldly attitudes, Proclus’ life had a practical, political
dimension. Engaging in civic politics in an increasingly Christianized Empire
had its dangers, but Marinus tells us (ch. 15 ) that Proclus
sometimes took part in political deliberations, attending
public meetings on city affairs (τοῖς κοινοῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως
συλλόγοις παρ-γιγνόμενος), and proposing resolutions with
sound judgement. He also consulted with magistrates on
matters of justice, not only exhorting these men, but in a
manner compelling them, with plain speaking befitting a
philosopher (τῇ φιλοσόφ̨ω παρρησί̨α), to do their proper duty.

He also seems to have had some supervisory role in public education.

Page 11 of 20 Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

IV
These reflections bring me, finally, to touch on the topic of the philosopher
in politics in this era. As we have had occasion to observe, none of the holy
and divine men with whom we have been dealing was quite as untouched by
the ‘real world’ of society and politics as they would, no doubt, have wished
to be. Plotinus was a society figure in Rome (leaving aside speculation on
what political connections had been necessary to set him up there in the
first place), and was well connected at court; it is even possible, as I have
suggested, that the assassination of Gallienus, and the accession of the
rough Illyrian soldier Claudius Gothicus, proved a serious blow to the school.
The flourishing of Iamblichus’ school at Apamea was plainly intimately
bound up with the survival of the anti-Christian regime of Licinius; when
Constantine was victorious, the school simply dissolved. The Academy at
Athens survived, despite the vicissitudes hinted at by Marinus, until whatever
Justinian did to it in 529 42 —but whatever that really (p.417) was, it seems
effectively to have closed it down, and caused a scattering of the faculty.

In all three cases, it is interesting to note that, while the great man himself
is not involved in politics, someone in his immediate circle always is: in the
case of Plotinus, the Arabian doctor Zethus; in that of Iamblichus, his senior
pupil and probable patron, Sopa-ter (for whom his foray into imperial politics

Page 12 of 20 Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

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in Constantinople in the late 320s, after Iamblichus’ death, proved fatal, as
Eunapius tells us 43 )—but there is also his anonymous friend at the court
of Licinius, plainly a former pupil, and possibly, as I have suggested above,
none other than Julius Julianus. In the entourage of Proclus, we have above
all the figure of his close friend Archiadas, grandson 44 of Plutarchus, but also
Archiadas’ son-in-law, Thea-genes, who was plainly a prominent member of
society, and a useful patron of the school. At VP 14, Marinus tells us that,
while Proclus himself was too high-minded to enter actively into political life,
he ‘encouraged Archiadas to devote himself to it, instructing him, explaining
to him the political virtues and methods, acting like coaches who pace
runners, exhorting him to direct the affairs of his whole city, and at the same
time to render services to individuals, in every kind of virtue, but especially
in the area of justice.’ So Archiadas was in effect appointed the legal and
political adviser of the Academy, and he seems to have performed this role
effectively enough. He appears to have bequeathed this role to Theagenes,
to whom he gave in marriage his daughter Asclepigeneia (the Younger).
Theagenes must indeed have been one of the most prominent men in Athens
in the latter part of the century. He was an eponymous archon at some
unknown date, which in this era is a sign of great distinction, a patricius,
and a member of the Senate in Constantinople, and Damascius tells us (Phil.
Hist. §100) that he used his great wealth for various civic purposes: besides
supporting the Academy, ‘he spent money on (p.418) teachers, doctors, and
other matters relating to the welfare of his fatherland’—that is to say, he
paid the salaries of public teachers and doctors. Marinus speaks of him, in
VP 29, as ‘our benefactor (euergetēs)’—that is, benefactor of the Academy
—though Damas-cius, with his usual waspishness, speaks of Theagenes
being hostile to Marinus, when Marinus succeeded Proclus as diadochos,
despite Marinus’ efforts to conciliate him (loc. cit.). So it would seem, on the
whole, that, while our philosophers were not by any means as unworldly as
they make out, they did prefer to appoint surrogates when it came to really
getting one’s hands dirty.

All in all, then, the philosopher in late antique society was a respected and
active member of the community, sometimes, it would seem, in the direct
pay of the community in which he taught—though this is not the case with
the figures I have been dealing with—but always supported financially by a
patron or patrons of some sort. Only in the case of the late antique Athenian
Academy do we find a more or less self-supporting philosophical institution.
With the onset of Christianity, things became inevitably somewhat fraught—
though not by any means as promptly as one would expect 45 —and, unless
one came to some arrangement with the Christian establishment such as

Page 13 of 20 Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

Notes:

(1) Porphyry does not tell us what prompted his move from Athens to
Rome. He leaves us to assume that he came to sit at the feet of Plotinus,
presumably having heard some report of him at Athens. Eunapius, however,
in his brief life of Porphyry (VP 4.6.456), seems to imply that he came
to Rome initially to seek his fortune as an independent philosopher (ίνα
κατάσχῃ διὰ σοφίας τὴν πόλιν), but then came upon Plotinus, and was
captivated by him. Eunapius, however, is a generally unreliable man, at least
when out of range of his own personal experience.

(2) This is rather curiously phrased—συνόντος δὲ ἄλλως ἐν ταῖς ὁμιλίαις

—but it seems to imply getting together for discussions in a different way,
i.e. not in the regular way. Armstrong renders this as ‘only engaging in
general conversation with his friends’, which is a paraphrase rather than
a translation, but may indeed convey the true sense. The French Vie de
Plotin translation gives ‘néanmoins il enseignait d’une autre façon, dans ses
entretiens’, which is certainly nearer to the Greek, but leaves the situation
obscure. It is not made clear whether or not Plotinus is still in Rome, but
it is a reasonable assumption that he was holidaying in Campania, on the
estate of one of his friends, Zethus or Castricius, and talking informally with
his associates there. It is hardly conceivable that Plotinus would ever have
stopped philosophizing for very long.

(3) The summer vacation in the schools lasted normally from the end of July
to the middle of October. Cf. Marrou ( 1965 ) 393.

(4) Dining together was, of course, a central, and most attractive, feature
of the communal life of a philosophical school. We learn most about this
from Plutarch 150 years earlier, but we find both Longinus in Athens (Porph.
ap. Euseb. PE 10.3.1–85 = Fr. 408 Smith) and Plotinus in Rome (Porph.
VPlot. 15) celebrating Plato’s Birthday, the Platoneia, with a formal dinner

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(5) For the account of Plotinus’ school, I borrow from my earlier essay, ‘The
Academy in the Middle Platonic Period’ (Dillon 1979).

(6) On Longinus and his school, see Brisson ( 1994 ) 5223–8; but Brisson
can cast no light on the relations between Longinus and Eubulus. From
the evidence of Porphyry, Fr. 408 Smith (cf. above, n. 4 ), Longinus would
certainly seem to have run a school of his own.

(7) It is quite possible, as is suggested acutely by Saffrey ( 1992 ) p. 32,

that this Gemina was none other than Afinia Gemina Baebiana, the widow
of the emperor Trebonian, killed by his own troops in battle in the spring of
253. It would then have been perhaps in 254 or so that Plotinus might have
commenced this happy arrangement, about ten years after his arrival in
Rome, as Gemina in her widowhood turned to the patronage of philosophy.
She could also have introduced him into Roman senatorial society—if he did
not already enjoy that privilege from other sources.

(8) Porph. VPlot. 7. Castricius and Marcellus we do not know of outside the
pages of Porphyry, but Sabinillus was consul ordinarius, with the Emperor
Gallienus, for 266, and may have been the intermediary through whom
Plotinus was introduced to the emperor and to his wife Salonina, while
Rogatianus is perhaps the C. Iulius Volusenna Rogatianus who was proconsul
of Asia in 254 (CIL 3.6094).

(9) This Zethus (presumably Zayd in Arabic) is an interesting figure, and

may even be a link in the obscure chain of influence which brought Plotinus
to Rome in the first place, and set him up there so comfortably. Zethus,
Porphyry tells us (ch. 7 ), had married the daughter of one Theodosius, a
pupil of Ammonius—so we have an Alexandrian connection. Then Zethus
‘had an interest in politics’ (πολιτικὸς ὢν καὶ ῥοπὰς ἔ χων πολιτικάς);
whatever that precisely implies, it no doubt involved the ability to make
introductions with prominent figures. Do we see here some trace of an
‘Alexandrian Mafia’ at Rome?

(10) Cf. e.g. Aulus Gellius, NA 18.10. Herodes’ villa at Cephisia was plainly
something of a port of refuge for Taurus and members of his school.

Page 15 of 20 Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

(12) Notably by Olympiodorus, In Alc. 141.1–3—though Olympiodorus

mistakenly assumes that the Academy had been accumulating endowments
continuously from the days of Plato himself. More probably, these
endowments (διαδoχικá) go back no further than the days of Marcus
Aurelius, if that far, but that does not make Olympiodorus’ evidence any the
less valuable for the insight it gives into the funding of the Academy in late
Antiquity.

(13) Cf. Marinus, VProcl. 11–12. Of course, we do hear stories of touts for the
various schools waiting to nobble prospective students just off the boat in the
Piraeus, but that practice is more proper to the schools of rhetoric. Proclus
is in fact met off the boat by a friend and fellow-countryman Nicolaus, who
seems to have been studying as a sophist at the time, but there seems to be
no question of Nicolaus acting as a tout for anyone. Proclus finds his own way
to Syrianus.

(14) Marinus, loc. cit.

(15) We are dependent for our information on Iamblichus virtually entirely on

the rather superficial and sensational account of Eunapius in his Lives of the
Philosophers (5.457–61)—though Eunapius does claim (5.1.11.458) to derive
his information in part from his teacher Chrysanthius of Sardis, who in turn
was a pupil of Iamblichus’ pupil Aedesius.

(16) He was certainly dead by the time Porphyry composed his Life of
Plotinus, but we do not know when that was; and he was also dead by the
time Porphyry composed his Timaeus Commentary, since he tells a rather
sad little anecdote about him (Fr. 74 Sodano).

(17) Porph. VPlot. 3.47.

Page 16 of 20 Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

(19) This may come as something of a shock to many modern Platonists, but
in fact Iamblichus appears to have discerned the proper subject (skopos)
of the Sophist as the sublunary demiurge (performing as a sort of cosmic
sophist), and the Statesman as concerning the heavenly demiurge (on the
basis of the myth). It must be confessed also that these two dialogues have
been left out of the list by the dimwitted compiler, but Westerink (loc. cit.)
has shown convincingly that they must have been included, in this place.

(20) And indeed as Porphyry doubtless would have, had their relationship not
been interrupted by Plotinus’ death (Porphyry’s withdrawal to Lilybaeum was
for health reasons only).

(21) Only for the Theaetetus, Statesman, and Symposium is evidence

entirely lacking—no doubt simply because there are no surviving later
commentaries on those dialogues.

(22) Cf. on this Proclus, In Alc. p. 13, 17 Creuzer (= Iambl. In Alc. Fr. 2 Dillon).

(23) Sopater was a family man, producing, among others, two sons, Sopater
and Himerius, the latter of whom had a son, Iamblichus (called after the
philosopher), on whom see Cameron ( 1967 ).

(24) See PLRE 1.275.

(25) On this personage, whose letters to Iamblichus found their way,

mysteriously, into the correspondence of the Emperor Julian, see Barnes (
1978 ). I am much tempted by the possibility, not suggested by Barnes, that
the personage concerned is none other than Julian’s maternal grandfather,
Julius Julianus, who had been Praetorian Prefect and virtual head of
government under Licinius, which would provide a plausible reason for his
being confused with Julian himself. This would put Iamblichus in touch with
the top echelons of Licinius’ administration.

(26) Sopater himself, shortly after succeeding Iamblichus, had gone off,
in 326, rather rashly, to Constantinople to seek his fortune in the imperial
administration, and got himself executed through getting mixed up in the
politics of the court.

(27) Above, pp. 40–56.

Page 17 of 20 Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

(29) Either Marinus heard this story from Lachares himself in his old age, or it
had passed down in the folklore of the school.

(30) This refers to that period of the month when the moon first comes out
from contiguity with the sun, and so becomes visible at nightfall.

(31) This shows something of the caution with which practising followers
of the Old Faith tended to proceed under an aggressively Christian regime.
They could not be sure of Proclus’ allegiances.

(32) Presumably the large house excavated in 1955 near the south base of
the Acropolis, in which many traces of philosophical activity were found. See
on this Franz et al. ( 1988 ) 42−4.

(33) Psychology would seem to have been Plutarchus’s particular field of

interest. Cf. Blumenthal ( 1975 ).

(34) In fact, simply Hermeias’ written-up notes of Syrianus’ seminars on the

dialogues.

(35) Marinus’ describes him as Plutarchus’ engonos, which would normally

mean ‘grandson’, but we learn later (ch. 29) that Archiadas was married
to one Plutarcha, and had a daughter of the same name as Plutarchus’
daughter, Asclepigeneia. It seems to me possible that Plutarcha was another
daughter of Plutarchus (though she may have been just a more remote
relation), and that Archiadas was really his son-in-law, and his offspring in
a merely spiritual sense. Proclus, after all, liked to refer to Syrianus as his
‘father’ (patēr) and Plutarchus as his ‘grandfather’ (propatōr)— and Syrianus,
as we learn from Damascius (Phil. Hist. § 56 Athanassiadi), had wanted
to marry Proclus to his relative (niece?), Aedesia. When Proclus tactfully
declined, Syrianus married her to his other pupil Hermeias.

(36) Mentioned by Damascius at Phil. Hist. §66G. He is described there,

though, rather as an assistant of Proclus, giving exegeses of texts to
students himself. The role of such assistants we will discuss in a moment.

(37) Dedicatee of the Parmenides Commentary, who figures quite

extensively in Damascius’ Philosophical History (§§ 83, 86, 103 Athanassiadi);
he will have been a pupil only in Proclus’ last years, however.

Page 18 of 20 Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

(39) A praxis will have been about an hour long, to judge from the surviving
commentaries of Olympiodorus, which are divided into praxeis of 6–8
Teubner pages (these may, of course, have been amplified in being edited);
but this is a pretty formidable load, one would think.

(40) Recently published in an excellent edition by van den Berg (2001).

(41) To put this figure in perspective, the salary of a rhetor or grammarian

in Carthage at about this time was 70 solidi a year (Cod. Iust. 1.27.1.42).
Admittedly, Proclus had an establishment to run, but with no more than one
or two assistants to support, he should have been pretty comfortable.

(42) This is still controversial, even after Alan Cameron’s enlightening

discussion (Cameron 1968 ), but it does seem to have involved confiscation
of Academy assets, as well as a ban on teaching in public—not a total
confiscation, however, as Olympiodorus in the 560s attests to there still
being some assets, ‘despite the many confiscations that have taken place’.

(43) VS 462. It is remarkable, indeed, that Sopater should have had such
confidence of advancement at an aggressively Christian court, considering
his background; but he did in fact have considerable success, until he fell foul
of the Grand Chamberlain Agapius.

(44) Or possibly son-in-law. See n. 35 above.

(45) One of the redeeming features of the absolutism of the later Roman
Empire was its inefficiency in the enforcement of its own decrees.

Page 19 of 20 Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Simon Swain

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0014

Abstract and Keywords

Understanding the social and political function of Greek rhetoric in the 4th
century is not as easy as it might seem. Apart from Libanius, we have the
fairly extensive remains of the orator Himerius and the large surviving body
of work of the philosopher-cum-rhetor, Themistius. From the schools comes
the rhetorical handbook of Sopater with its vast number of exercises for the
young men who trained in rhetoric to begin their careers. There is also the
Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists by Eunapius of Sardis. It is important
to consider 4th-century oratory as part of a tradition of rhetorical studies
running from the end of the 1st century bc. This chapter compares Libanius
with some of his illustrious predecessors to assess his own contribution. It
considers the presentation of him by his younger contemporary, Eunapius,
and his own account of the events Eunapius focuses on. Finally, the chapter
looks at his relationship with two key emperors, Theodosius and Julian.

Keywords: Libanius, Eunapius of Sardis, Theodosius, Julian, Roman emperors

CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

Understanding the social and political function of Greek rhetoric in the fourth
century is not as easy as it might seem. Apart from Libanius—who is the
subject of this chapter—we have the fairly extensive remains of the orator
Himerius and the large surviving body of work of the philosopher-cum-rhetor,
Themistius. From the schools comes the rhetorical handbook of Sopater with

Page 1 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

It was, paradoxically, in Augustan Rome that the rhetorician and literary

critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus initiated the conscious turn of Greek letters
towards attikismos, the policy of making one’s language in formal contexts
as close as possible to the language of the Athenian authors of the classical
era. Many Hellenistic Greek rhetors thought they were already doing this; but
Dionysius and his contemporary Caecilius of Caleacte gave Greek a classical
feel by attempting to establish a canon of good classical authors and by
offering guidance on vocabulary. Anyone familiar with examples of puristic
language movements in modern history will know that purism can cover a
multitude of language (p.356) formations. Purism is a matter of ideology, not
grammar or syntax, and the important thing is the belief that one’s language
is ‘pure’. Atticism was in fact impossible to define with certainty because the
many guidebooks designed to enact it could never agree on which classical
authors they should base themselves. That did not matter, for linguistic
perfection was anyway a part—and given the centrality of language in Greek
culture—perhaps the key part of the general, intensified Hellenism which is
the most notable feature of the Greek world from the end of the first century
AD.

I use Hellenism here to designate the consciousness of the Greeks during

the High Roman Empire that they were Greeks who were descendants
of the ‘ancient Greeks’, as they called them. This Hellenism, including
language purism, is to some extent a reaction to the Roman takeover of
the eastern Mediterranean in the first century BC. Romans had of course
exercised effective control in the region from the 190s; but the organization
of provinces developed slowly. The takeover was a matter of encroachment,
and this, together with the severe economic impact of Roman wars against
themselves and against Mithridates, had thoroughly demoralized the Greek
world by the time of the battle of Actium. From this time on the Greeks made

Page 2 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Greeks were whoever wanted to be Greek. If a city (e.g. Antioch) claimed

Greek ancestry, i.e. that it had been founded by Greek heroes or historical
figures, and if it advertised this on its inscriptions, coins, and art, then it
was Greek. Entry into the Greek club was not, however, quite so simple. The
educated class in the city had to be immersed in Greek culture including
language before they could control local history and myth to the desired end.
What motivated them was peer competition, inside the city to demonstrate
familiarity with the most compelling cultural values on offer, and outside
the city to demonstrate their cultural standing to fellow-aristocrats in
neighbouring or faraway (p.357) towns. To understand this one has to
appreciate the close link between high culture, material wealth, and political
leadership. The governance of the cities was oligarchical. Oligarchs had to
speak to each other in the council chamber and had to communicate with
the people without. It was these pressures that made a rhetorical education,
a Greek education, absolutely essential.

As far as Rome is concerned, different answers will be given according to the

evidence one draws on. If one looks at prosopo-graphical evidence (as one
should), one can draw conclusions about the inclusiveness of the imperial
system, the participation of the provincial elites. From the later first century
AD eastern aristocrats entered the senate and played important roles in the
regime. But we should always remember that these men are part of large
aristocratic networks at home in the East. They and others had been granted
Roman citizenship; but there is no evidence to suggest that their attachment
to their home cities was diminished thereby. Ambition led them to power; but
they remained Greek in culture (and therefore at the level of local politics).
At least this is the evidence of the writers of this period, some of whom
(Appian, Arrian, Lucian, Cassius Dio) had posts in Roman government. Here
as in all cases identity is a complex, not to be reduced to either ‘Greek’ or
‘Roman’. Romans at this stage were imbued with Greek culture, just like
many aristocrats in the far-flung cities of the Greek East (who might have
absolutely no ‘racial’ connexion with the ancient Greeks). Greek culture
was recognized as the culture, and that is a principal reason why the Greek

Page 3 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Greeks in the Greek East were, as I have been suggesting, far from
homogeneous in racial origin, culture, language (many would have spoken
a ‘native’ tongue as well as Greek), or even religion (for paganism, like
Christianity, had its varieties). This precluded unification and remained an
inherent and insuperable weakness. Greek culture may itself be thought
of as an oligarchical formation and thus always prone to fragmentation.
While its members continued to enjoy its benefits, they supported the whole.
These benefits must again be seen as operating within the oligarchy and
outside it. By ‘outside’ I mean that group cohesion guaranteed power over
the masses. The masses participated in the same system, and elite power
depended on this participation. The (p.358) danger was that they might
reject parts of the package, which would severely damage the discourse
of power. Relations within the cultural oligarchy were at risk in a different
way. Cultural elitism required a balance between the educational investment
needed to sustain its myths and the desired control over the masses—the
product—that such investment brought with it. There were two dangers.
First, elitism could be pushed further by those capable of doing so, either
to establish an advantage by breaking away from the wider elite, or to
secure their own advantage in the event of a breach occurring. The second
danger was that an alternative might appear which to some offered a less
artificial or problematical identity and which was more effective in delivering
conformity among the ruled. This would entail an attack on the spiritual heart
of the Hellenist project.

These dangers were realized by Christianity. In trying to assess the rise of

a Christian society it would be wrong to speak of a ‘confrontation’ between
two systems of values: one must think rather of a remodelling of identities
with an inevitable degree of experimentation and oscillation between them.
Christianity had the advantage of a pedigree that was older than Greek
culture (as Apologists never tired of reminding Greeks). The texts of its
ancient parent proved by prophecy that its own, new texts were true. More
tangible advantages were its rapid extension among lower social groups,
its strong sense of community and clearly defined hierarchy, its provision of
miracles and salvation in a world full of disease and death. The continuing
appeal of Hellenism beyond the fourth century is not so extraordinary if
one remembers its long record of success. But Hellenism had nothing to
offer the social groups where Christianity began beyond the ‘world of the
festival’ (and Christian strictures against participating in this pagan world

Page 4 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

By AD 200 Christianity had gained a hold over intellectuals and their class.
Clement’s little homily on The Rich Man’s Salvation (late second century) is
a key text, as is Celsus’ anti-Christian True Doctrine from the same period,
which shows the perception of the threat from the other side. The first half of
the next century showed the development of trends which came to fruition
in the time of Libanius. The Greek elite did not fail to notice that its own
(p.359) members (or potential ones—for all elites must recruit) were now
espousing Christianity. Philostratus’ In Honour of Apollonius, a hagiography
of the first-century holyman Apollonius of Tyana, shows awareness of the
need to match Christian heroes. 1 We know it was widely read. It triumphs
the superiority of Greek culture and religion. From its opening line onwards it
promotes Pythagoras as the model figure of Greek religion. The resurrection
of Pythagoraeanism is a complicated phenomenon which goes back to the
period when the intensifed Hellenism I have been speaking of began itself.
The one is related to the other, for philosophers wanted classical models
too. Plato was not good enough, because Pythagoras had inspired him and
Socrates. Pythagoras was more authentic. Philostratus was aware of this
trend when he wrote Apollonius, and so was his audience, the Severan royals
around Alexander Severus. As Philostratus must have known, they were
interested in Christianity. But Pythagoras was bigger than Apol-lonius. It
was at this time that Ammonius Saccas the teacher of Plotinus was realizing
the full potential of the mysticism of Neo-pythagorean philosophy. Plotinus
systematized this in the 230s and 240s and gave birth to Neoplatonism.
This combination of esoteric philosophy and mystery religion was to have a
deleterious effect.

Before this time philosophers had largely kept themselves to themselves.

The word philosophos was paraded by some for its positive connotations;
the one real example who styles himself ‘philosopher’ for this purpose is
Dio Chrysostom (to whom I shall return), though the appellation is found
in inscriptions. 2 Most philosophers—with a very few obvious exceptions
such as Plutarch—were technical exponents of the words of the great
founders of their schools and had nothing original to say. That is why they
failed to satisfy Justin Martyr, Lucian, Clement, and others. It was rhetoric,
philosophy’s enemy since Plato, that offered social prestige and intellectual
glory and rhetoric that attracted the best talents. This constituted ‘culture’
or ‘education’ (the key term, paideia). But during the second century

Page 5 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

The key player here was Porphyry, pupil and editor of Plotinus. Before he
attached himself to Plotinus at Rome in 263 he had studied with the great
rhetorician Cassius Longinus. Porphyry aimed at a complete education
system. As part of this he wrote a commentary on Minucianus’ discussion
of issue theory, a technē on the subject, and a collection of ‘rhetorical
questions’, which were well known to the later commentators (frr. 414–17
Smith). At some point in the later third or early fourth century two other
Neoplatonist rhetoricians, Evagoras and Aquila, also commented on stasis.
By the later fourth century Hermogenes’ treatise had replaced that of
Minucianus among the commentators. Sopater of Athens, who wrote the
largest surviving collection of practice declamations divided according
to issue-theory (the Divisions of Questions), composed a commentary
on Hermogenes which begins with a philosophical prolegomenon on the
nature and origin of rhetoric. 4 This looks forward to similar, ‘philosophical’
prolegomena in the fifth and sixth centuries.

(p.361) The entry of a systematized rhetoric into philosophy was far more
than a matter of introductory logic. Several of Porphyry’s most important
works offer allegorical interpretation of Homer, an approach long familiar to
the grammarian and the philosopher but now reinvigorated by the addition
of religious zeal. Iamblichus, pupil of Porphyry and a major author in his
own right, wrote an essay on style (On the Choice of the Best Speech)
which recommended Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes as the best ancient
sources (Syrianus, In Hermogenem vol. 1, p. 9 Rabe). Creative philosophy

Page 6 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

It is worth remarking before I pass on that the combination of philosophy

and rhetoric was not necessarily exclusive. Libanius’ famous contemporary,
Themistius, was keen to stress the advantages of bringing philosophy to a
wider public through rhetoric from the very beginning of his career (Or. 24,
where he is trying to recruit pupils in Nicomedia). 6 The value of his talent
for communication is stressed by Constantius in the letter adlecting him to
the Constantinopolitan Senate in 355. 7 Themistius would have been quite
aware of the by now long-established integration of rhetoric and Neoplatonist
philosophy. But he was not interested in Platonism, and certainly not in
Neoplatonism. Rather he worked in a (p.362) tradition of popular philosophy
exemplifed by Dio Chrysostom and Maximus of Tyre in the second century
—with one crucial difference. Themistius was an arch-courtier who was
prepared to break ranks with traditional Hellenism to accommodate himself
and his message to the needs of the new Christian court. 8 Themistius too is
part of the fragmentation of Hellenism in the fourth century.

LIBANIUS AND THE SECOND SOPHISTIC

‘Second Sophistic’ is the modern name for the Greek culture of the
Roman period. Most recent work has applied the phrase, which is found in
Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists (481, 507), to the distinctive combination
of letters and political activity which Philostratus records for the sophists
—the rhetorical stars and specifically prominent teachers of rhetoric—of
the period from the mid-first to the mid-third century. 9 Wilhelm Schmid’s
1898 lecture is the first definitive statement of this relationship. Philostratus

Page 7 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

It is clear that there were many sophists. From the late first century onwards
Roman law gave them official recognition by allowing a few in each city to
enjoy exemption from the civic liabilities the rich were usually obliged to
undertake. In the 180s Marcus Aurelius established publicly funded chairs
of rhetoric (and philosophy) at Athens. Other cities must have followed suit,
and we may assume that after the second century cities had at least one
sophist who was the ‘sophist of the city’ (as John Chrysostom bitterly calls
his former teacher Libanius 12 ) and who drew a public salary. The work
of Choricius and his teacher Procopius at Gaza may illustrate the typical
duties of these official sophists in the late Empire. 13 Both have left us school
declamations. In addition Procopius published two elaborate descriptions of
local monuments, one a painting, the other a wonderful clock. From Choricius
there survives a marriage celebration, two funeral orations (one for the
mother of the local bishop, Marcian, one for Procopius) and three encomiums
(two of the bishop, one of a general who arrived and expected one). The
concentration on description, on encomium, reflects the growing domination
even in the High Empire of the oratory of praise, panegyrical oratory, a rise
which is due directly to the growing number of officials and governors in an
increasingly stratified society. The multiplication of these officials after the

Page 8 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

This range of work must have been typical of very many pagan and Christian
sophists. Libanius certainly has things in common with it; but his profile more
obviously recalls two virtuosos of the Second Sophistic, Dio Chrysostom
and Aelius Aristides. These are the only two orators of that period whose
work was considered good enough to preserve to any great extent. I shall
characterize (p.364) them briefly before turning to Libanius and asking how
he resembles them.

Aristides was a consummate Atticist, as perfect as Libanius himself, Dio

not far behind. But Dio is a very special case. He ‘reinvented’ himself as a
philosopher as a result of maltreatment by the emperor Domitian, sensing
the opportunity of an uncrowded domain where a man of talent might
have plenty of room to operate. It is doubtful that he ever did any technical
philosophy. Rather, he was like Themistius primarily an orator. He offered
advice on political theory (the Kingship Orations; cf. below), promoted
homonoia (‘like-mindedness’, a key term of political discourse in the High
Empire) between and within cities, offered moral advice, and addressed
the ‘people’ (dēmos) and the ‘council(lors)’ (boulē) in speeches which also
attacked political enemies. He reserved some of his harshest invective for
Roman governors. Aelius Aristides is quite different. He composed lengthy,
elaborate declamations, religious ‘hymns’ (in prose), encomia of cities
and persons, several speeches of advice to the cities, some attacks on
enemies of his rhetorical practices, and most famously the long record of his
relationship with Asclepius in the Sacred Tales (Orr. 47–52) and his defence
of rhetoric against Plato’s ‘slanders’ in the Gorgias and elsewhere (Orr. 2–4;
these form one third of his surviving work). Unlike Dio he had little interest in
politics.

How do these two men typify the culture of the Second Sophistic? Beyond
the fact that both rejected the term ‘sophist’ (though Aristides had pupils
and Dio probably did) and their renown as major intellectuals, there is little
on an individual level. But both do reflect the intensified Hellenism of the
Second Sophistic period and its expression in speech. Both did have local
allegiances (Dio to Prusa, Aristides to Smyrna) and a range of international
contacts that is usual for the aristocracies of this era. Both had contact with
Roman governors and emperors.

Libanius was an official sophist in a succession of sophists (he tells us of

Ulpian in the earlier fourth century, Zenobius in the middle till his own

Page 9 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

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appointment in 354). 15 He was plainly no more (p.365) troubled by the
term ‘sophist’ than Philostratus. This has to do with the official recognition
accorded to sophists during the later second century and their appointment
to chairs. Like Choricius and Sopater, Libanius published course work. His
corpus contains fifty-one practice declamations (meletai). At least ten of
these are spurious (reflecting his later standing), 16 and the first, the Apology
of Socrates, is distinctive by its great length and the circumstances of its
production (i it can be linked to Julian). 17 Of the others, the chronology of
which is impossible to ascertain, 18 about half handle imaginary themes
drawn from Athenian history and culture (in-cluding seven on the age of
Demosthenes), 19 classical mythology and Homeric epic, and half are on
purely fictitious legal cases involving the well-loved character types of the
‘morose man’, the ‘envious man’, the ‘greedy man’, the ‘tyrant’, and the
‘war hero’ (aristeus). These are highly elaborate and artistic pieces designed
to show students how to handle arguments and develop famous scenes and
stories from the classics. We may compare the twelve long declamations
of Aelius Aristides on historical and mythological themes (Orr. 5–16), albeit
these are beyond the level of the Libanian examples. Libanius also composed
a great number of basic progymnasmata, many of which were published
after his lifetime. 20 In addition he wrote summaries of the Arguments of
Demosthenes, one of the earliest surviving works and addressed to (p.366)
the proconsul Montius, which has come down to us in an adapted form. 21

Libanius’ fame in modern times is not due to this school work, but to the
sixty-four orations. What these have in common is that they are not course
work, though many concern education and its role in society, but touch
rather on Libanius’ relations with public figures and policies. The most
striking is the lengthy autobiographical Or. 1 Life (or Concerning his Fortune).
22 There are three other very long pieces, the encomium of Antioch (Or.
11, Antiochian), 23 the Funeral Speech for Julian (Or. 18), 24 and the Praise
of Constantius and Constans (Or. 59), 25 all of which were widely read to
judge by the large number of manuscripts. Many of the other orations
contain autobiographical information, but Orr. 2 (To Those Who Called Him
Tiresome), 3 (To his Pupils, Concerning the Speech), 4 (On the Allegation
that he Rambles) were grouped in antiquity with Or. 1 on account of the high
proportion of personal information in them. 26 The most important (other)
speeches on education are Or. 62 (To Those who Derided his Teaching), Or.
58 (To his Pupils, Concerning the Carpet), Or. 55 (To Anaxentius), Or. 43
(On the Pacts), Or. 36 (On the Instruments of Magic), Or. 34 (Against the
Slanders of the Pedagogue), and Or. 31 (To the Antiochenes, Concerning the
Rhetors). In addition there are a large number of political speeches: those

Page 10 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(p.367) Finally there are the Letters: 1,544 genuine ones, a number more
than double that of Cicero’s. 27 These run from AD 355 (a few are slightly
earlier) to Spring 365, then trail off and with perhaps two exceptions are
missing for the period 366 to 386 inclusive. They resume for 387 to 393. The
latter is the presumed year of Libanius’ death.

Libanius himself remarks at the start of his encomium of Antioch that none
of his contemporaries had written more than he (Or. 11.1). This boast may
probably be applied to all his predecessors and certainly to Dio and Aristides.
28 Libanius never mentions Dio. No-one has detected direct imitation. Yet the
very remarkable and unique series of attacks on governors and critiques of
social policy can be paralleled only in Dio. Dio had good personal reasons for
resenting the intrusion of Roman power in the Greek world, for he was either
exiled (as he maintained) or obliged to lie low (as Philostratus insists) by the
emperor Domitian. 29 More than this, he was extremely worried about the
health of Greek civilization in the Empire. Virtually all of his works stress the
need to revitalize Hellenic behaviour and culture. His criticisms of governors
come in speeches addressed to Nicomedia and Prusa in his homeland
Bithynia and to Tarsus. They reflect worries about the encroachment on civic
freedom and the destabilization of the civic regime by corrupt governors. 30
Dio’s Kingship Orations (Orr. 1–4) are amongst his most famous. In these he
purports to offer advice to the emperor Trajan. But there is no evidence in
the speeches or outside them that any of them as they stand was actually
delivered before the emperor. 31 Rather, all we can go on is Or. 57 (Nestor)
which introduces ‘the words we spoke to the emperor’ before a Greek
audience. The implication is that Dio’s attempt to Hellenize the behaviour of
the Roman emperor in the Kingship Orations was an attempt to show Greeks
that he could (p.368) stand up to Roman power, that the Roman authorities
listened to him, and that Greeks should listen too. 32

Page 11 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

What about Aristides? On account of his perfect atticism and the power
of his writing Aristides was recognized in his own lifetime as an equal of
Demosthenes, 36 and Libanius took a very close interest in him. Or. 64 (For
the Dancers) is an antilogia of Aristides’ speech against pantomimes. 37 The
work (of 361) contains explicit praise of Aristides who is for Libanius ‘the
very best’ (64.4–5). 38 Implicit imitation is evident in two other works, the
highly artificial (p.369) Monody for Nicomedia (Or. 61, recalling Aristides
Or. 18 Monody for Smyrna), and the prose hymn to Artemis (Or. 5) which
recalls several works of Aristides (who made a speciality of the genre),
especially Or. 37 Athena. 39 But the relationship is of equals, as Libanius
makes plain in For the Dancers. And in Orr. 5 and 61 he goes his own way,
just as we see him depart in the Declamations from the formulas of the
handbooks. The tone of Libanius’ work is far more personal. Consider the
monodies. Although the sophistic centre of Smyrna was home to Aristides
and he held its citizenship, 40 he preferred to reside on a rural estate outside
the city. Nicomedia was home to Libanius for only five years, but he calls
them the happiest of his life (Or. 1.51). Aristides’ monody is a formal lament,
less emotional than his earlier dirge for the destruction of Eleusis (Or. 22)
where he was evidently an initiate. 41 Libanius’ monody for Nicomedia is
remarkable for the threat to call the gods to account for failing to defend the
city. This is personal grief. Half-way through he deliberately abandons the
threnodic style to record his joyous impressions of the city when he had first

Page 12 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Again, Aristides’ prose hymns are formal praises of the gods. The Athena
is dry and banal. 42 Libanius Or. 5 has the traditional ‘aretalogy’ of the
goddess with a catalogue of her mythological and historical achievements.
But the whole speech comes alive in the very circumstantial, final story of
her intervention in his own school where she saved the lives of Libanius and
his pupils when the marble cornice above the doorway to the lecture room
came (p.370) tumbling down (43–53). The story is a fine piece of narration.
The religious background to the drama is significant. It was the day of
Artemis’ festival at Meroe, the ancient temple to the east of Antioch (42;
Or. 11.59–60). Libanius reminisces about the boxing competition that had
attracted entrants from the city’s tribes but was now a pale imitation owing
to the ‘times’ (43). The teachers of rhetoric remained in their classrooms
‘yielding to the times’. Libanius’ own pupils (neoi) had refused to come into
school owing to an irrational ‘fear’ which was of course Artemis’ method of
preserving the ‘flower of the city’ (45–6, 52) from danger. It is often said
that Libanius was not very religious. 43 This is true if it means he is not
theological. Traditional Greek religion was civic and social. Its main concern
was to establish a correct relationship for the city state with its gods. The
local–political axis of religion was expressed through mythological stories of
the gods’ activities including their involvement with humans. Personal belief
operated within this civic system. Libanius remains traditional here. He was
not influenced by Neoplatonic ideas of ‘noetic’ or ‘theurgic’ approaches to
the divine. The Artemis shows all this exactly. Artemis intervenes to save
the cream of the city’s youth (as Libanius calls his pupils); but the speech
is personal thanks (1–3) and Libanius reckons he is like Simonides who was
saved from a falling building by the Dioscuri because he had sung their
praises (53). 44 He connects himself with a famous classical figure thus
linking the goddess’ current help with her beneficial actions to communities
and individuals in the distant past narrated in §§ 4–41. His own preservation
is located within the long established civic frame-work. 45

In a letter of 365 to the consularis Bithyniae, Theodorus IV, Libanius writes,

‘I have the Aristides, something I’ve long wanted, and I owe you almost as
much gratitude as I would if you’d sent me the man himself. I’m sitting by
the portrait reading one of his works and asking him if he wrote this. I answer
myself, ‘‘Yes, he did indeed!’’. It fits that such a face was the mother of such
words’ (Ep. 1534.1–2). Another governor friend, Italicianus, had (p.371)
previously sent a bust during his vicariate of Asia which was said to be of

Page 13 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

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Aristides but was far too close to Asclepius to be credible. Theodorus acted
on the safe side by sending two pictures and Libanius was awaiting a third
which would show him the hands and feet of the man (3–5). 46 There are
in fact several references to Aristides in letters of 361–5. 47 Since we lack
the correspondence for the period 366–86 we cannot say whether Aristides’
influence waned after this. Some years ago Roger Pack suggested that
Aristides was in fact still in Libanius’ mind when he wrote the first instalment
of his Autobiography (Or. 1) in 374. He observed that the main features
of the Sacred Tales—Aristides’ illness and the history of its treatment, his
relationship with the god Asclepius who helped him, the deliberate inversions
and complications of the narrative—could be paralleled in Or. 1 by Libanius’
interest in his health, the chronological disruptions of his narrative, and the
devotion to Tyche (rather than Asclepius) 48 . Both works are remarkable
testimonies of the private thoughts and feelings of the two men; but they
are actually totally different in organization and feel. In the Sacred Tales
chronology is topsy-turvy, Aristides says, because of the difficulty of ordering
the ‘more than 300,000 lines of the record [apographē]’ of the dreams sent
by the god (Or. 48.1– 3, cf. 47.1–3). Rather than take this at face value, 49
a religious motivation may be advanced for the selected disclosure of key
moments in the god’s care, for this has the effect of magnifying the whole
by focusing on but a few of the many possible incidents. We should also note
that the first three Tales are largely concerned with the illness and its cures
while the last three focus on Aristides’ resumption of his oratorical career.
50 Aristides belief that his oratorical career was restored by Asclepius (esp.
Or. 50.14–30) led him to suggest that oratory—his oratory—was of a religious
calling. In Or. 34 Against Those who Burlesque the Mysteries (of (p.372)
Oratory) (κατὰ των ̑ ἐξορχουμένων) he attacks rivals for pandering to the
masses and forgetting the high purposes of rhetorical leadership. Playing on
the low status of professional dancers (whose performances were recalled
by some of the sophists) and the verb exorcheisthai (‘to dance out’), which
is used in the sense of disclosing (by mocking movements) the rites of a
mystery cult, 51 he implicitly accuses the sophists of profaning oratory.

Libanius was certainly aware of the Sacred Tales (cf. Ep. 1534.3 ‘his lengthy
disease’), which were recommended reading for orators (Philostratus,
Lives 581), and of Aristides’ devotion to Asclepius (ibid.). 52 He himself
had no special relationship with any particular deity. Tyche in Or. 1 has
partly a literary function, and acts as a structuring device to account for the
extraordinary turns of fortune in Libanius’ long career. It is also in part a
shorthand for the divine’s care of him. But there is no parallel with Aristides’
personal relationship with one god, Asclepius. Second, the disjunctures in

Page 14 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

There is a more important parallel between the authors in their attitude

to oratory. It has been remarked that Libanius equates logoi, ‘literature’,
specifically ‘rhetorical works’, and hiera, ‘holy things’/‘rites’. 54 The
suggestion has been made that it was Julian’s intensified, religiously
redefined Hellenism that established the link in Libanius’ mind. 55 Yet
Aristides’ conception of oratory as a higher, religious calling is an important
precedent. Aristides felt he had the right to tell others what to do in this
regard. Similarly in Or. 1 (to take a non-Julianic work) Libanius pictures
himself as the semi-legendary holy man of ancient Crete, Epimenides, when
he is (p.373) summoned to Athens ‘to deal with the disease which besets
the world of logoi’ (84). (The present illness of logoi is a major theme of the
Autobiography. 56 ) Aristides’ stress on the matter must have appealed to
Libanius. 57 It goes beyond the conception of the orator’s superiority which
had been elaborated centuries before by Isocrates, who was a model for
both men. 58 Thus Libanius did not need Julian to tell him that rhetoric and
Greek religion were allied. It is true that the decline in pagan religion and the
decline (he perceived) in Greek logoi must have reinforced the link, and that
Julian’s revitalization of both areas was clearly of great importance to him.
But the self-presentation of Aristides was as important.

EUNAPIUS, BIOGRAPHY, AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

How was Libanius seen in his own time? The major source for the lives of the
fourth-century sophists is Eunapius’ Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists,
which takes its inspiration from Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists. I start this
section with some brief comments on Eunapius’ techniques, and shall then
look at his account of Libanius and at Libanius’ own version in Or. 1 of the
events Eunapius relates.

The Lives was published about 396, shortly after Libanius’ death. 59 Only
about forty per cent of the work is devoted to sophists. The change of
focus (and of title) from Philostratus reflects the role played by rhetoric in
later Greek philosophy. 60 The philosophers, from Plotinus to the unknown
contemporary of Eunapius, Beronicianus of Sardis, are all masters of rhetoric.
Eunapius begins with them, then turns to the sophists. A third group is then

Page 15 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Eunapius was not a balanced biographer. For example, in the case of one of
his absolute favourites, Prohaeresius of Cappadocia who was a Christian, he
goes so far as to use the story that Julian (p.375) banned him from teaching
(‘since he seemed to be Christian’) to indicate his familiarity with pagan
religion by having him consult the hierophant of the Eleusinian Mysteries
about the duration of Julian’s reign (493 = X. 8 G). 66 Libanius was a genuine
pagan, but his biography is not favourable (495–6 = XVI. 1–2 G). Eunapius
begins by presenting the young Libanius refusing to study with Epiphanius
(who had first call on Syrian students) when he arrived in Athens in 336. Not
wishing to be outshone by a celebrity, Libanius also avoided Prohaeresius.
He was then kidnapped by Diophantus’ pupils, but preferred to work on his
own, and ambition next led him to Constantinople. He left the city following a
scandal involving ‘boys’, went to Nicomedia where the rumours pursued him,
and returned home to Antioch where he lived too long. 67

Here we may pause to compare Libanius’ own account. Libanius tells the
story of his arrival and kidnapping by Diophantus (without naming him) at
Or. 1.17ff., 68 but then diverges from Eunapius. Following student riots the

Page 16 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(p.376) Major themes of Libanius’ life are already displayed here: the clash
with a rival sophist, the ill-will of a governor, antipathy towards Constantius.
70 At Nicomedia (344–9) Libanius notes that he again dislodged a leading
sophist from whom the city council withdrew its support. After a while the
sophist alleged that Libanius has procured his wife’s death (Or. 1.62 ff.). Just
as Bemarchius had established a group to work against Libanius, so here the
sophist enlisted the help of a leading Bithynian who had Libanius arrested
by his friend Philagrius, Vicar of Pontica. Fortunately the Praetorian Prefect
of the East, Philippus, summoned Philagrius and Philagrius had to put his
house in order quickly (66 ff.). The incident ends with Libanius triumphant
against the sophist and his backer in a display of oratory: Philagrius was
grateful to be able to hear ἅ ἀγνοειν ̑ ‘what it would have been a loss
̑ ζημια,
to miss’ (72). What Libanius does not report is his delivery in late 348 or
early 349 of his elaborate panegyric to Constans and Constantius, Or. 59.
In preparing this oration (at the command of a Nicomedian notable, §§ 4, 6,
72) he perhaps felt he had gone too far: ‘there were some who asserted that
I associated with people whom Apollo would have deemed unworthy’ (Or.
1.74), i.e. Christians, perhaps specifically Philippus.

At this point Philippus summoned Libanius back to Constantinople ‘with a

royal letter’. In other words, he was to be the official, imperial sophist in
the city. Eunapius ignores the return (and the attempt by the educated
Proconsul of Greece, Strategius I, to recruit him to Athens, perhaps in 352
rather than the traditional 353 71 ), and perhaps justifiably, for Libanius’
own narration is concerned with his attempt to escape his duties and get
back to Antioch. First comes the visit in summer 353 when Libanius clashes
with the ‘Phoenician’, a resident sophist. As a result of Libanius’ successes,

Page 17 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Eunapius is not interested in recording any of these triumphs which Libanius

himself takes such care to narrate. Rather, having brought him back to
Antioch, he turns to the relationship with Julian. ‘I have composed a suitable
commentary on Libanius in my books on the reign of Julian, but I shall now
go over the details’ (495 = XVI. 1. 9 G). He was right to associate the sophist
and the emperor. For obvious reasons, Julian was an extremely congenial
prospect to Libanius: restoration of traditional religion, support for literature
and rhetoric, his high level of education and philosophy. Soon after his death
Libanius created a portrait of the ideal king, the strong warrior, the protector
of civilization, the fosterer of culture, the upholder of Greek values in social
and political life, above all the supporter of the gods. I shall return to this
later. How does Eunapius handle the relationship? He begins by charging
(p.378) Libanius with being all things to all men. One never knew who he
really liked; everyone was taken in by him. He adds that he lived with a
woman of inferior social status (495–6 = XVI. 1. 9–12 G). He then turns to
Libanius’ work. His declamations were so poor it was obvious ‘he had not
had the advantage of a teacher: indeed, he was ignorant of most of the
ordinary rules of declamation, things that even a schoolboy knows.’ The
Letters and Orations (sunousiai) were full of charm and comic raillery—this is
what Libanius considered the ‘crown of paideia’. None of this is uncritical. He
then attacks Libanius for an excessive, precious atticism.

Whenever he discovered some strange expression… he

cleansed it as though it were a sacred relic of the past, and

Page 18 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

A fragment of Eunapius’ History deals with similar material. ‘Although he

was busy with such important affairs, Julian took a great interest in rhetoric.
He particularly admired the Antiochene sophist Libanius, partly, perhaps,
to praise him, but also to upset the great sophist Prohaeresius by giving
more honour to someone else. In any case Acacius, who was a highly skilled
rhetorician, and Tuscianus of Phrygia constantly criticized these views’ (fr.
26. 2 Blockley, from Suda λ 486). 77

It is clear that Eunapius displays animus against Libanius. 78 The reference

to ‘the books on the reign of Julian’ shows the particular reason. Julian
admired Prohaeresius (Ep. 31 Bidez–Cumont), under whom he had studied.
But Prohaeresius had refused Julian’s exemption from the ban on official
Christian teachers and elected not to teach during his reign 79 .Julian then
(p.379) (presumably) turned against Prohaeresius and honoured Libanius to
spite him. This is what Eunapius could not take. In the History he says that
Acacius and Tuscianus advised the emperor against admiring Libanius. In the
Lives he appends to the account of Libanius a brief life of Acacius II in order
to criticize Libanius further for his pretentious atticism (497 = XVII. 1–3 G).
The main item is Libanius’ ‘pamphlet’ On Natural Advantage (Пερὶ εὐφυίας).
In this work, according to Eunapius, Libanius admitted Acacius’ superiority
and defended his own position on rare words, entirely missing the point as
far as Eunapius was concerned. Acacius was indeed a rival of Libanius at
Antioch. In a letter of 362 Libanius recalls to his former student Celsus I how
he staged ‘the defection of a pupil’ to ‘annoy Acacius’. The pupil, Diogenes
II, ‘performed better than expected’ and Acacius ‘paraded him riding along
as if he were his own pupil, but Diogenes dismounted outside his gates and
ran over to our people who were sitting there watching the show’ (Ep. 722.2–
5). The purpose of the story is to persuade Celsus, now Praeses Ciliciae, that
Diogenes deserves his help to recover a debt: he must be a good fellow to
play such jolly japes. This incident must have happened in the mid-350s
soon after Libanius arrived home for good. Later Libanius and Acacius
had been reconciled and there was an end to a ‘dispute which was never
really nasty’ (Ep. 274.6). In a letter of 355 to his old friend Aristaenetus of
Nicomedia Libanius calls the work On Natural Advantage a dialexis which

Page 19 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

THEODOSIUS
The only praise Eunapius offers Libanius is for preferring the title ‘sophist’ to
that of (honorary) ‘Praetorian Prefect’ which (he says) (p.380) was offered
by the ‘later kings’, i.e. emperors after Julian (496 = XVI. 2. 8–9 G). 81
Since Paul Petit’s important article on the date of Or. 30 (For the Temples),
it has been held that Libanius felt confident to make this and the other
political speeches of the Theodosian era (notably Or. 45 On the Prisoners,
Or. 47 On the Protection System, Or. 50 Concerning Forced Labour, Orr.
51 Against Those Who Attend on the Governors, Or. 52 Against Visits to
Governors’ Headquarters) because he did indeed hold the rank of an illustris.
82 There is the wider context to consider here of the historical relationship
between Greek intellectuals and Roman government. In his influential
book Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire Glen Bowersock suggested
that the importance of the Second Sophistic lay in the increased levels of
contact between the eastern aristocracies and Rome which resulted from
the new prestige of rhetorical studies and the availability, and consequent
employment, of sophists on embassies. 83 In other words, Greek rhetoric
was in the service of Rome. The facts never bore out this supposition, since
sophists were represented on embassies not because they were sophists
but because they were notables. 84 What of honours? Consular honours are
attributed in the Suda to Plutarch, but the information is garbled and involves
the aged philosopher in active government. 85 According to the same source
the sophist Valerius Apsines was also awarded consular honours, though we
do not know why. 86 Where does this leave Libanius? This is not the place
to go through all the evidence for the honorary prefecture; but some of the
material must be addressed.

Eunapius’ statement is at least clear. But it has too many parallels with what
Libanius says about honours in his second oration, To Those Who Called Him
Tiresome (Пρ##ς τοὺς βαρὺ αὐτὸν καλεσάντας). (p.381) This personal and
defensive speech was written when he was 67, i.e. in 380/1. Libanius starts
from the allegation, reported by a friend, that people were calling him barus,
‘tiresome’, ‘irritating’, ‘boring’, ‘complaining’, ‘arrogant’. A similar charge is

Page 20 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

I could mention that letter of authorization (γραμματειον)

̑
which I refused in case I should seem to have got above
myself. Had I accepted it, it was open to me to say I was being
treated extremely badly if governors did not come to see me,
and to fill their headquarters with uproar whenever I should go
to them… but I did not think it necessary to add the honours
conferred by that letter to what I already enjoyed as a result of
my own nature. (8)

It is quite likely that Libanius’ audience would not have known what he
was talking about. 87 Since Theodosius only came to power in January
379, Libanius is surely referring to something offered by Valens or Julian,
especially as he cites as examples of governors who imposed themselves on
him (τ̑η̨ τιμ̑η̨ βαρυνοίμην) several men who held office under Valens. 88 The
refusal must be a refusal of an honorary title which would have made him an
honoratus, who would then have commanded respect from imperial officials.

The grant of the honorary prefecture is held by Petit to have been made
by Theodosius in 383. This was the year when the (p.382) pagan general
Richomer was designated consul. Libanius was invited to his inauguration
by a letter from him and ‘one from the king, which had never happened
before’ (Or. 1.219). The letter ‘from the king’ is (on this interpretation)
Libanius’ nonchalant way of referring to his honour. 89 The reason for the
assumption is Libanius’ allusion to ‘having received the greatest favour
(χόριν)’ from Theodosius at the start of Or. 45. From its allusion to a law
regulating governors’ attendance at spectacles (Cod. Theod. 15.5.2 pr) the
speech has been dated to 386. The date of the law is open to objection; 90
but even if 386 is correct, there is no need to date the speech to that year.
Another suggestion of Petit’s is relevant here: that Or. 45 is a ‘doublet’ of
Or. 33. 91 Or. 33 To King Theodosius, Against Tisamenus, refers to the law
limiting expenses at public festivals and making them voluntary as two years

Page 21 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(p.383) For Seeck the grant of the honorary prefecture came in 388 with
the second letter Theodosius sent the sophist (Or. 1.258). But there is a
more serious problem. H.-U. Wiemer has resumed this whole matter in an
important recent article (1995). Building on the discussions by Petit and
Martin, 95 he concludes that Orr. 30.1 and 45.1 actually refer to Theodosius’
grant to Libanius of permission to transfer his property to his son Cimon.
Certainly this is spoken of in Epp. 845.4 (of 388) and 959.4–5 (of 390) as
a very great ‘honour’. When Libanius speaks generally of having been
‘honoured by letters from you’ at Or. 47. 16 (almost certainly after 388, cf.
§ 35 τυραννίδα referring to the usurper Magnus Maximus), he could again
mean Cimon or some other letter(s) conveying imperial pleasure. Wiemer
notes that only two honorary praetorian prefects are known at this time for
sure, Fl. Eugenius and the Antiochene Patriarch, Gamaliel. 96

What of the rejected γραμματειον ̑ of Or. 2? This must have been offered by
Julian and Wiemer suggests it was a grant ex comitibus like the one given in
425 to the professors of Constantinople. 97 He grinds down the received idea
that Libanius was in fact made a quaestor by Julian, which rests on the late
evidence of the titles of some of Julian s letters to the sophist. 98 Wiemer has
in act pricked a bubble. There is no good evidence for the assumption that
Libanius was offered and accepted an honorary position under Theodosius. 99

What, then, was Libanius’ relationship with Theodosius? Wiemer argues that
the emperor was happy with Libanius furthering his image as the ‘people-
loving’ (philanthrōpos) monarch. The importance of the socio-political
virtue of philanthrōpia is recognized in all Greek authors of the Empire,

Page 22 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Wiemer points out that Theodosius needed good relations with the
Kulturszene: power and paideia, as always. Thus the emperor promoted
various intellectuals to high office (e.g. Themistius, Sex. Aurelius Victor,
Symmachus, and others)—though we might wonder if intellectual endeavour
was a primary reason for advancement. 101 By contrast, Libanius received
modest honours. Theo-dosius sent letters, which Libanius mentions, he
allowed his son to inherit, and he refused to listen to charges of treason and
magic. The latter is important: magic and treason go together in the later
Empire. Libanius recounts three occasions when the emperor and his top
officials dismissed the allegations of his enemies. Two of these (Or. 32.27
by his ex-pupil Thrasydaeus; Or. 1.262–7 by the anonymous governor ‘with
the huge belly’) involve the usurper of Gratian, Magnus Maximus, whom
Theodosius overcame in 388. Fl. Eutolmius Tatianus, the pagan litterateur
who became Praetorian Prefect of the East in March 388, was instrumental,
Libanius says, in having the first charge dismissed at the start of his office:
Libanius received a letter to say he was ‘free’ (Ep. 840). Tatianus was also
involved in dealing with the second allegation, probably soon after (Or. 1.
265 ‘chief administrator’). The third charge is made by the governor of Syria,
Eustathius (in office c. June 388 to April 389) via Romulus, a decurion who,
according to Libanius, was first impoverished and then blackmailed by him to
accuse Libanius of treason by divination (Or. 54. 40). Eustathius stands out
in Libanius’ assaults on the Theodosian governors not only by the length of
the attack on him following his removal from office (Or. 54), but also by the
fact that we for once have a short speech from the period when Libanius was
prepared to regard him favourably, Or. 44. I shall return to this briefly later.

(p.385)It may be said that Libanius felt he had to tread carefully with
Theodosius. In Ep. 845 of 388 he tells the old eunuch Mardonius II, now
Praepositus Sacri Cubiculi of the young Arcadius, that everyone in Antioch
knows of his (Libanius’) prayers for the king, as do the gods who campaigned
with him against Maximus; and Libanius wishes for a long and happy reign

Page 23 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Libanius’ dealings with the Thedosian governors provides a good illustration

of his outspokenness. The pagan father and son, Tatianus and Proclus, are
a good test case. Proclus was Comes Orientis from summer 383 to summer
384. He honoured Libanius with a portrait hung in the council chamber
(Or. 42.43–4). 102 But Libanius recalls his year of office in the bitterest of
terms. Proclus was a great builder in Antioch, and this is a subject Libanius
also felt strongly about. In Or. 50 For the Farmers he addresses Theodosius
on the problems it was causing the local peasantry. In the context of the
continuing, massive redevelopment of the city (cf. Or. 11.227–9 ‘what was
last year a vegetable plot is this year built up’, already in the 350s 103 ), local
peasants coming to market had their animals requisitioned on the authority
of the Comes for use by the building trade in the disposal of rubble (50.2–
7, 23–31). As a consequence they were unwilling to come to town, thereby
exacerbating the food shortages that were a feature of Antiochene life in this
period (50.30–1, 34–5). The speech probably belongs to early 385 when the
Count of the East was Icarius, Proclus’ successor, who was himself charged
with the fault Libanius complains of in Or. 50 (see Or. 27 Against Icarius I
(p.386) 15–16). With Proclus Libanius has a particular axe to grind. In Or.
42 For Thalassius (of 390 104 ) Proclus is attacked for his corrupt, rowdy,
and above all sanguinary justice (42.33–44). The same is said in Or. 1 in
a section additional to the original speech and written probably just after
Proclus retired: ‘when I call Proclus to mind, I call to mind storm and tempest,
flogging and blood’ (212). 105 These remarks are amplified in the following
additional section which was certainly written early in Icarius’ tenure of office
(221–4 on Proclus). 106 Here Libanius has no truck with his ‘slaughter and
bloodshed’ and ‘never wasted a single second’ on him.

We can trace the souring of the relationship to the year of office itself in
Or. 10 On the Plethron. This speech offers important light on Libanius’
perceptions of decline as caused in general by the aggrandizement of
mediocrity and in particular by the assaults of Christianity. The speech needs

Page 24 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

The Plethron (or Plethrion) was the place in Antioch ‘où se de´roulent les
e´preuves de lutte des Jeux Olympiques’. 107 In the good old days, says
Libanius in Or. 10, there were only two banks (p.387) of seats and the bigger
one next to the competitors where the bigwigs sat. There were no slaves,
no minors, no workers, no unemployed, no dandies. It was like a mystery
cult and the competition resembled a ceremony of initiation. The baton
(skēptron) kept order (6–8). Libanius’ uncles, first Argyrius, then Phasga-nius,
had started the rot by extending the site during their time as agonothete.
The result was ‘disorder’: drinking and shouting now heard within the
stadium and Roman cries joining the Greek. (Evidently Romans had long
attended the competition; but Libanius pretends that the Roman language
had only entered the site now.) Proclus could have been expected to abide
by ancient custom and tradition (9–18). Doctors cut off ‘excrescences’:
so must ‘my dear Proclus … to show his zeal for Zeus’. 108 The grudging
politeness is undone by blackmail of class and religion. Proclus would not
want to support unruly economic migrants (21–6). The custom is to exclude
dancers, whores, rent boys (29). As to women, he doesn’t want to act like
the ‘impious man’ who lifted the ban on women coming to Daphne during
the festival. 109 ’We cursed him… and not in vain, as the [horrible] manner
of his death showed.’ These civic concerns are wrapped up with personal
ones, which touch on Libanius’ official status within the city. ‘Proclus thinks
I do not like him. He wouldn’t have these charges made against him if he
wasn’t so suspicious of my advice’ (35). But the advice is about more than
the Games. Libanius begins the speech by saying that Proclus had arrived
already ‘determined not to pay attention to me on the grounds that I was a
corrupting influence owing to my excessive philanthrōpia’ (3).

Page 25 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

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By philanthrōpia Libanius means his requests to the governor for personal
favours/promotions/exemptions for clients and pupils. About a third of his
letters comprise such commendations. And Proclus did not escape these:
Epp. 847, 874, 885, 906, 922. Although he had suddenly left the office
of Comes Orientis in 384 (Or. 1.221), he was back in favour by mid-386
and his father Tatianus’ appointment as Praefectus praetorio Orientis in
March 388 led to his being named Prefect of Constantinople at the end of
that year. This presented Libanius with a problem. He was not the (p.388)
only one. Icarius had already advised Beirut not to bother pursuing its
grievances against Proclus (Or. 27.39). Now there were floods of panegyrics.
110 When Proclus reappeared in Antioch in 388 (perhaps to supervise building
projects), Libanius assures his father that the city ‘went beyond anything
it had done for her other governors, and rightly so, for you two have done
more for it than the others’ (Ep. 840.5). He was enjoying kissing his son too
(ibid.). Libanius’ unfavourable comments in the Autobiography might still
have been secret; but the attack he had made on Proclus’ government in
Or. 26, where he advises the incoming Icarius to avoid Proclus’ dangerous
and corrupt backers, and in Or. 27, where he begins to present Icarius as
exceeding the enormities of Proclus, were hardly so. Worse, Libanius had
called Proclus by his nickname ‘Kokkos’, probably referring to his florid
complexion, especially in Or. 27. 111 All of this is forgotten. And when Proclus
returned to Constantinople, Libanius busied himself writing. He could even
praise his ‘stoas, baths, and squares’ in Antioch (Ep. 852.2). The letters of
388–90 probably do not imply that Or. 10, let alone the advice to Icarius, was
unpublished and unknown to Proclus. Rather, we should be prepared to see a
familiar process of political reconciliation which necessitates the studied loss
of memory.

What is more of a surprise are the letters after Libanius’ unsuccessful

campaign to have his secretary and friend Thalassius enrolled as a
Constantinopolitan senator in 390. Proclus as Prefect of the city had led
the review which turned the application down. In the summer of that year
Libanius tried asking the chief figures to reconsider their verdicts (Epp. 922
to Proclus, 923 to Optatus; etc.). Shortly after this idea was rejected, he
attacked these men in the bitterest terms in For Thalassius (esp. Optatus,
another pagan: Or. 42.11–32). It is inconceivable that this speech was
seen by Theodosius, as Libanius implies (§ 1). The address is simply to give
Libanius’ remarks credibility at home. Yet even if the speech had a very
limited distribution, it seems fantastic that Libanius continued to write to
Proclus and Tatianus in the most flattering terms. Proclus had not written
back (Ep. 938). But after the affair (p.389) of Thalassius was finally decided,

Page 26 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

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he did write to patch things up (ibid.). Libanius’ reply is hazy and affected:
why had Proclus bothered to write to him (ibid. § 4)? This is an unusual
breach of etiquette, but not enough to put off someone as steeped in social
ritual as Proclus. We soon find Libanius writing to commend the ‘son of
Erethius’, but really to express his pleasure on receiving letters from Proclus.
He alludes, as often, to the intensely competitive society he lived in with
its constant reciprocal inspection: ‘you made my own position much better
with your recent letters, and some people I had seen with a smile on their
faces when you didn’t write were now looking downcast’ (Ep. 940.4). But
in a companion letter to Tatianus (who himself had been recommended
by Liba-nius 25 years before, Epp. 17, 1542, and perhaps first known to
Libanius as early as 355/6, cf. Ep. 456), 112 Libanius speaks darkly of ‘the
change’ and ‘the events’ and can scarcely bring himself to recommend
Erethius fils (Ep. 941). Other letters to Proclus follow (Epp. 952, 967, 970,
991—all of 390). The last of these refers to a distinct coolness the cause of
which Libanius feigns not to know and asks Proclus to tell him via a personal
messenger. The message is referred to in Ep. 1022 of 391. Libanius pretends
to be relieved that he now knew, and perhaps he was. ‘The relationship I
enjoy with your father I would be happy to have with you’ (§ 3). It seems that
this wish was granted. For the last letter to Proclus thanks him for writing
when Libanius is grief-stricken with the death of his son, Cimon (Ep. 1028
of 392). Proclus’ letters caused a ‘rush of our citizens amazed at you and
congratulating me (§ 2). Even in this miserable situation he cannot resist
analysing his social position.

The relationship with Tatianus was a long one, as has been said. The
surviving correspondence begins in earnest when Tatianus became
Praetorian Prefect of the East in March 388. But the affair of Thalassius
evidently put a strain on things. Ep. 990 (390) was sent via the outgoing
Comes Orientis, Palladius XVII. Libanius opens with a criticism: Tatianus
had neglected to tell him personally that he had had ‘this well deserved
honour’ conferred on him (i.e. his consulship for the next year, 391). But he
turns to praise right away, and in particular praise of Tatianus’ pastiche of
Homer’s Iliad. ‘This work was well regarded even before and (p.390) was
in the hands of both teachers and pupils enjoying the same attention as
the Iliad and Homer’s later poem. When it was revised for the third time
[ἀκριβωθεὶς δὲ τ̑η̨ τρίτῃ χειρί] …the work shone even more brilliantly, and
wherever one went in the class, one would find Tatianus. I too have been
improved by it, both by using the original and particularly when I devoted
time to the second version’ (Ep. 990.3). 113 The last letter (Ep. 1021 of 391)
shows further reconciliation, since Tatianus had sent a silver goblet and

Page 27 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

The relationship between Proclus and Tatianus and Libanius was a stormy
one. It was also a political one with accommodation 116 Given Libanius’ belief
in his own importance and his concern for his local prestige, clashes with
high officials were inevitable, even if they shared his cultural and religious
outlook. Unfortunately for Libanius, he had too strong a grip on reality to
adopt Aelius Aristides’ solution of dreaming of governors’ (and emperors’)
compliance with his wishes and adulation of his intelligence.

(p.391) The relationship between governors and intellectuals was now

complicated by a factor Aristides did not have to bother with, Christianity.
When the anonymous Christian Comes Orientis who was known for his ‘huge
belly’ had sought to cut down the sacred cypresses of Apollo at Daphne,
Libanius informed him that he would invoke the ‘king’s care [pronoia]’ (Or.
1.262). This led to the governor’s attempt to involve Libanius in a treason
charge. It was Tatianus, as we have seen, who disallowed the allegation
(1.265). The religious dimension of the fat governor’s grudge is clear. Some
time after 388, i.e. after Tatianus succeeded Cynegius as prefect, and before
the destruction in 391 of the famous Ser-apaeum at Alexandria, 117 Libanius
wrote Or. 30 To King Theo-dosius, For the Temples. This has been mentioned
above in connection with the ‘honour’ Libanius speaks of at the start of the
speech. Here I wish to consider it briefly for his presentation of Theodosius
and his governors in regard to Christianity.

Or. 30 argues for the preservation especially of rural shrines from the
depredations of the monks. The context is very probably the recent anti-
pagan campaign of the Praefectus praetorio Orien-tis, Maternus Cynegius.
118 Libanius is also concerned with the effect on the rural economy (cf. Or.
50). Throughout he stresses the need to uphold law (nomos) and he ends
by saying that if the monks are acting outside the law (and the law is not
upheld), ‘the landowners will defend both themselves and the Law’ (55).
In §§ 46 ff. Libanius blames the destruction of the great temple of Edessa
on ‘that foul man who deceived you, the enemy of the gods, cowardly and
avaricious’ who worked to his wife’s (p.392) orders’—he and his crew alleged

Page 28 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

If it is right to argue that For the Temples was in fact written early in 391,
we may adduce Libanius’ sad remarks in a letter to a certain Hierophantes
(perhaps a title 121 ) of about this time. Libanius speaks of the present
‘storm’, which means ‘the outrages committed against the images of the
gods (agalmata)’ and the fact that ‘the empire of our literature has been
trampled underfoot, its power removed elsewhere’ (Ep. 964.2). The theme
of the prominence of Latin in public life is common enough in Libanius’ later
years (Orr. 1.154, 213, 234; 2.44; 61.21 ff.). It is not one he mentions in his
speech ‘to’ Theodosius. Libanius was fully aware that Christianity entailed
suspicion of traditional Greek letters. What he wants from Theodosius in Or.
30 is for the emperor to live up to his own ideology of the caring monarch
and to enforce his own laws. Here he is not trying to mould the emperor
into a traditional Greek king. It is too late for that in the case of Theodosius.
Rather, the effect will be local: all the requests are to do with regional
problems.

In this regard Or. 46 Against Florentius is a good example to consider finally.

For here the denunciations of the consularis Syriae, Florentius, have been
rightly connected with the visit of Rufinus to Antioch in 393 to execute the
hapless Lucianus who was Florentius’ older brother. 122 This is probably
Libanius’ last work. But while he gathers allegations against the governor
(including building where he should not have done on ancient and holy
sites, (p.393) §§ 44–5), he is just as concerned to defend the interests of the
shopkeepers and tavern keepers who were suffering under Florentius as
a representative of the imperial system in general (cf. esp. § 23). Libanius
was careful not to interfere in matters of court politics that did not concern
him, as he makes plain to the rehabilitated general, Sapores, in Ep. 957 of
390. He did not want to seem to be overstepping the mark, to be thrasus
(‘bold’); and he did not want to set evil tongues wagging, for ‘such people
can light a pyre from a single syllable’ (§§ 3–4). But if Libanius knew his
place, he also knew its worth. When Eunapius says Libanius preferred the
title of sophist to an honorary political appointment (496=XVI. 2. 8–9G),
he has fastened on something essential. In the long tradition of Greek
intellectuals defence of one’s profession and one’s city is paramount. In

Page 29 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(p.394) Julian
Libanius continued to praise the memory of one ‘king’ throughout his life:
Julian the Apostate. No earlier sophist had such a close relationship with
an emperor, except perhaps Polemon of Laodicea with Hadrian. In this last
section I want to enquire what Julian meant to Libanius. There are eight
orations in the corpus concerning Julian. Or. 13 is Libanius’ carefully written
speech of welcome shortly after Julian’s arrival in Antioch in July 362 (cf.
Ep. 736.2). 125 Next is the important speech For Aristophanes (Or. 14). This
should be before the destruction by fire of the temple of Apollo at Daphne
(22 October), for the blaze is not mentioned. 126 Next, to mark Julian’s
inauguration as consul on New Year’s Day 363, Libanius composed Or. 12
To the Emperor Julian, Consul, 127 which Julian commanded him to publish
(Ep. 758.2). The winter months of 362–3 saw Julian’s relations with the
Antiochenes deteriorate severely. It is relatively certain that the majority of
the population was Christian. It is also clear that a majority of the landowning
class was Christian. Already in August these notables had refused to make
any civic offering at the feast of Apollo at Daphne, as Julian complains
bitterly in his brilliant denunciation of them at Misopogon 361d ff. This work
was composed in late February of 363 shortly before his departure for the
Persian campaign and is his response to his frustrations with the ruling class

Page 30 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

The legacy of ‘the most divine Julian’ (Eunapius, Lives VII. 2. 4 G et al.,
Oribasius, Synopsis ad Eustath. 1 pref. 1. 1) was bound to be a controversial
one. Julian had sought to impose a new style of Hellenic religion which
was not necessarily welcomed by people like Libanius. But at the same
time his support for traditional Hellenic culture in general and for logoi in
particular made him seem the only hope for the preservation of this culture’s
continuation. Libanius found it easier to deal with Julian when he was dead;
but others had to decide between abandoning and slandering him (like
Polycles) or mounting a querelous defence (like Libanius’ friend Aristophanes
132 ). It is not possible here to study the main speeches in any detail. What I
shall do is to look briefly at some aspects of the presentation of Julian and his
legacy.

By the time Libanius wrote Or. 24 On Avenging Julian he had come to regard
himself as out of step with contemporary views and felt extremely depressed
by personal tragedies. This is plain from (p.396) Or. 2 from the same period
(cf. above) and from the additional section of the Autobiography written
at this time (Or. 1.182 ff.). Or. 24 argues that the murder of Julian—this
is the version of his death that Libanius insists upon here—has brought
disaster upon the Romans because it has been unavenged. He sets the
key statement of this (§§ 31 ff.) in the context of Greek mythological and
historical examples of divine displeasure: the Minotaur, Oedipus, the murder
of Aesop, the rape of Cassandra, the curse upon Sparta which led to the

Page 31 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Norman has argued that Or. 24 appeals to Theodosius partly on the basis
of an ‘imperial esprit de corps’. 134 There is something in this; 135 but it is
better to situate Libanius’ appeal in an ‘epic cycle of offence, divine anger
and retribution’ (Norman). More than this, there is an outsider’s view of
what Romans should be doing. For several centuries Greek intellectuals had
possessed Roman citizenship and with that came a feeling for what it meant
to be Roman and a recognition of the benefits of the Empire in terms of its
peace and security. 136 For those of this class Caracalla’s (p.397) extension
of the citizenship made no difference. As to Julian, he is indisputably a
‘Greek’ in one way. In Or. 18 he is firmly incorporated within Greek myth and
Greek thought. He is, or is comparable to, e.g. Achilles (66), Nicias (127),
Socrates (155), Agamemnon (173), Proteus (176), Calchas and Tiresias
(245), Themistocles and Brasidas (281), Leonidas, Epaminondas, Sarpe-don,
Memnon, Alexander ‘son of Zeus’ (297), Plato (306). Similarly Constantius’
wife is Ino (27) and Constans is Creon (120, cf. 127). In Or. 13 Julian is
Asclepius (42), Plato (44), Themistocles (48), Nestor (53), even ‘Pelasgus
the Arcadian (hero)’ (46). In Or. 12 he is Theseus, Peleus, Palamedes (20),
Heracles (28, 44), Ares (44), etc. But at Or. 15. 25 Libanius puts things
differently: ‘if I consider all the things that make you philanthrōpos, the
first is that you are a Greek and rule over Greeks—for so I prefer to call the
opponent of the barbarians, and the race of Aeneas will not reprove me
for it.’ Libanius is here drawing on Julian’s words at Misopogon 367c: ‘since
I thought you (Antiochenes) were sons of Greeks and I myself a Greek in
my habits, even if I am a Thracian in race, I supposed we should really love
each other.’ In other words, Julian’s Greekness is cultural, as Julian observes
himself. Libanius plays this up; but he does not actually regard him as a

Page 32 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Libanius’ less public thoughts in the Autobiography are also interesting. 139
He records (writing in 374 140 ) that he was cautious toward the new emperor
(Or. 1.119–24) after their initial meeting and Julian’s command of what is
Or. 13. Part of the reason was perhaps personal. Julian was at this time still
hostile towards (p.398) Libanius’ close friend Thalassius. 141 Libanius was
no doubt also suspicious of Julian’s adherence to Neoplatonism. In his letter
written shortly after the meeting (18 July) to his former student and Julianic
aide, Celsus I (Ep. 736), he recounts that Julian almost failed to recognize
him, but then ‘showered’ him with ‘jokes sweeter than roses’. This is a little
pleasantry. 142 In the Autobiography (120) Julian demands to know, ‘When
shall we hear you?’ Norman argued that this echo of the second-century
sophistic world (Philostratus, Lives 537, 582) was Libanius’ way of affirming
his privileged status in the changed circumstances of the reign of Valens.
143 It is more likely to be one of the literary jokes mentioned in the letter to
Celsus (cf. also the quotation of Plato at Or. 1. 124). Either way it is a literary
comment and Libanius’ account of Julian not surprisingly stresses that Julian
promised honour for the gods and admiration for logoi (119). 144 Philosophy
is absent here (in contrast to, say, Or. 18). The enemy at the court who had
‘undermined our friendship’ cannot be identified (123); but the reconciliation
through the philosopher Priscus (who is not styled as such) leads Libanius
to speak from § 125 onwards entirely ad maiorem gloriam suam. He records
that Julian was wrong to oppose the council of Antioch and ‘bore no hatred’
of him for proving him wrong (126). Then at §§ 127 ff. he emphasizes the
triumph of Or. 12 and Julian’s acknowledged breach of etiquette in lavishing
praise on him. The final section on Julian concerns his leaving and death;
naturally Libanius finishes with a reference to his own funeral orations (135).

How special was Julian to Libanius? There were things about him that
Libanius did not approve of: explicitly his policy towards the council of
Antioch, implicitly his extreme Hellenism and his edict banning Christian
teachers from holding official positions. 145 Julian’s revitalization of the
temples and of letters are welcomed to the full (though assistance for
rhetoric was not his sole (p.399) preserve 146 ). In the main section of the
Autobiography where Libanius speaks of Julian he is praising himself to
his supporters among the political class at Antioch. These people wanted
to hear that he was tough defending what he was paid to represent. This
accounts for the tone of § 125 onwards. For Libanius’ attitude to Romans
is very traditional. If the emperor supported him or his aims, the emperor

Page 33 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

It was, however, easy to strip away these public, imperial benefits and
present Julian in retrospect as nothing more than a child sacrificer
surrounded by perverted priests and other deviants and enslaved to the
demonic Apollo of Daphne. This is how John (p.400) Chrysostom pictured
the emperor in his panegyric of the Antiochene bishop and martyr, Babylas,
whose remains Julian had foolishly moved from Daphne. This work was
almost certainly written between August 378 and September 379. 154 There
were internal Christian reasons for promoting Babylas, and the attack on
Julian (§§ 76–97, 118–24) is easy to understand in this context. The attack on
Libanius within this section (§§ 98–113) is less comprehensible. Hatred for
former teachers is common, but why did John go out of his way to ridicule
Libanius now? The answer may be Or. 24 On Avenging Julian, which was
written before November 379 and (as an address to the new emperor
Theodosius) was very likely composed quite early in that year. John’s
stubborn, uncompromising personality had little time even for Christian
kings. Thus Julian’s service against Persia was completely irrele-vant—in
Babylas he is simply put to use by God as a bad example for men. John
evidently found Libanius’ plea to Theodosius to follow and avenge Julian too
much to tolerate.

For Libanius the construction of Julian as a Roman emperor on Greek lines

takes us back to Dio Chrysostom and Trajan. The problem for Greeks was
this. Already in the days of Dio’s childhood the first Christian leaders had
prepared the ground for annexing the Empire to Christianity (Rom. 13: 1,

Page 34 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Notes:

(1) Swain ( 1999 ).

(2) e.g. Arrian was thus honoured on account of his learning and his edition
of Epictetus, Stadter ( 1980 ) 14, 198 texts.

(3) Declamation was the most conventional area of oratory and should
therefore be closest to the work of the schools. Cf. Eunapius, Lives of the
Philosophers and Sophists 491 (= X. 6. 5, 10 G) on the futility of sophists
wrangling over a stasis, also Eunapius’ criticism of Libanius for not knowing
the basic rules about meletai, ‘things that even a schoolboy knows’, 496 =
16. 2. 1 G (below, p. 378).

(4) The identity of the commentator and the rhetorician has been
questioned, of course: Russell ( 1983 ) 7 n. 23 .

(5) Cf. n. 66 .

(6) The date is the early 340s: Bouchery ( 1936 ) 195–6.

(7) Vanderspoel ( 1995 ) 87–9, Heather and Moncur ( 2001 ) 97–107.

(8) Cf. the career of Bemarchius (below, n. 70 ); further Penella ( 1990 )

50 ff. for the philosophers Sopater and Eustathius and Constantine and
Constantius.

(9) Cf. Bowie ( 1996 ).

(10) Anderson ( 1993 ).

(11) On all this Kennedy ( 1972 ) and ( 1983 ), Russell ( 1983 ).

(12) In Honour of the Blessed Babylas, Against the Hellenes 98 (ed. Schatkin
et al.).

(13) Downey ( 1958 ).

Page 35 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(15) The best accounts of Libanius can be found in the introductions and
commentaries to his Autobiography (Or. 1) by Norman ( 1965 ) and Martin
and Petit ( 1979 ). See also Foerster and Münscher ( 1925 ). For the political
and civic background see esp. Petit ( 1955 ) and Liebeschuetz ( 1972 ); on
the political and religious background Festugière ( 1959 ); and for Libanius’
teaching and students Wolf ( 1952 ) and Petit ( 1957 ). In the following
text and notes Roman numerals after proper names (e.g. Palladius VI)
refer to the prosopography in Seeck ( 1906 ). PLRE means PLRE volume 1.
Citations of Libanius are from Foerster ( 1903–27 ), and Foerster’s notes and
introductions are cited by volume and page number only (e.g. 2. 218).

(16) Nos. 18, 20, 23, 29, 34, 40, 43, 45, 49, 51. Cf. Foerster ( 1876 ) 209ff.

(17) The Apology of Socrates is 109 Teubner pages: the average for the
declamations is about 25 to 30 pages (but note Decl. 4 Legatio Ulixis 59
pages; Decl. 5 Achillis ad Ulixem Antilogia 58 pages; Decl. 23 Apology of
Demosthenes 61 pages— considered by Foerster as possibly spurious for this
reason). Julian: Russell ( 1996 ) 19–20.

(18) On the possibllity that Decl. 5 is an antilogia of Aristides Or. 16 and that
Libanius Ep. 615. 3 of 361 refers to it, see Foerster and Münscher ( 1925 )
2510 (Foerster discounts the idea). The suggestion that Libanius was inspired
by Aristides is perfectly respectable: cf. Behr (1986) 409; but Ep. 615 λόγους
surely refers, as Foerster thought, to Libanius Or. 64.

(19) The rhetors’ favourite era: Kohl ( 1915 ) 203–328, Drerup ( 1923 ) 144–
66.

(20) For these basic exercises see the introduction and commentary to Aelius
Theon by Patillon and Bolognesi ( 1997 ).

(21) Later generations made it into a general introduction to Demosthenes.

Montius: PLRE s.v. Magnus 2.

(22) 128 Teubner pages.

(23) 99 Teubner pages.

(24) 136 Teubner pages.

(25) 89 Teubner pages.

Page 36 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(27) Foerster and Münscher ( 1925 ) 2524.

(28) The word count given for Libanius in Berkowitz and Squitier ( 1986
) 202 is 260,527 for the orations alone (together with 220,316 for the
Declamations, 12,379 on the arguments of Demosthenes, 226,281 for the
Letters); cf. eid. 111 for Dio Chrysostom (c.197,000), 47–9 for Aelius Aristides
(c.284,500 for the genuine works).

(29) Swain (2002) 24.

(30) Orr. 34.15, 38–42; 38.33–8; 43.11–12; 45.4–5.

(31) Delivery is often assumed because it makes the speeches more

important: cf. e.g. Moles ( 1990 ).

(32) Cf. Swain ( 1996 ) 193–4.

(33) Synesius’ attacks on Andronicus, which offer the best parallel to

Libanius’ invectives in the later Empire, are channelled through church
circles or personal contacts: see n. 116 .

(34) Libanius begins by explaining the reasons for his long journey to see
Theodosius in the wake of the Riot of the Statues.

(35) On Cimon see further below.

(36) Phrynichus, Sophistic Preparation bk. 10 ap. Photius, Library cod. 158,
101a Bekker.

(37) Cf. n. 18 on Decl. 5 and Aristides Or. 16.

(38) Date: Foerster 4.406. On the relationship cf. Boulanger ( 1923 ) 453–4.

(39) Note also the instruction to pupils to follow Aristides’ (lost) declamation
against Callixenus (cf. Xenophon Hell. 1. 7. 8) in the protheoria to Decl. 46
(Foerster 7.552). In Ep. 631 Libanius looks forward to judging the ‘wrestling
bout’ between Aristides and his addressee, Palladius VI (to whom he sent?
For the Dancers, Ep. 615.3) on a theme to do with Thersites, who was
presumably opposed by Aristides (cf. Aristides Orr. 3.67, 28.16; the Libanius

Page 37 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(40) For Smyrna’s favoured status among the sophists, see Philostratus,
Lives 613.

(41) Cf. Behr (1981–6) 2.363.

(42) Cf. Martin ( 1988 ) 135.

(43) e.g. Athanassiadi-Fowden ( 1981 ) 206–7 (with references).

(44) For Simonides as a favourite poet cf. Ep. 405.2 (where there is, as it
happens, an echo of Aristides).

(45) Cf. Petit ( 1955 ) 191–216. The end of Or. 1 is another good example
of the link between myth and the present, and cf. below on Libanius as
Epimenides.

(46) Cf. Seeck ( 1906 ) 188 for the surmise that Italicianus had complimented
Libanius on his own resemblance to Asclepius (denied by Foerster 10.4 AD
Ep. 8.1).

(47) The reference at Ep. 965 (of 390) ὁ Ἀριστείδης Ἀσκληπιός should
probably be emended (‘ἄριστος Re, fortasse recte’, Foester 11.102), unless
there is some compliment to Asclepius III involving a play on his name with
Aristides’ favourite divinity.

(48) Pack ( 1947 ) 19–20; denied by Norman ( 1953 ).

(49) Still less the plea of confusion at home [ἀκρασί̨α των

̑ κατ’ ο̑ἰκον] during
these times’ (Or. 48.3, tr. Behr).

(50) Though little can be said about Or. 52 which is lost bar the very
beginning.

(51) Cf. Aristides Or. 22.13.

Page 38 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(53) Cf. 1.235 where a divine intervention is explicitly out of sequence ‘but
the logos will take no harm, as regards the chronology’. For the structure of
Or. 1 see the analytical table in Martin and Petit ( 1979 ) 8–16.

(54) Festugière ( 1959 ) 235. See for example Or. 62.8 on Constantius
spreading dishonour ‘from the temples to the logoi’.

(55) Norman ( 1969 ) xxxiii, 162 n. a.

(56) 1.154 with commentators ad loc., Liebeschuetz ( 1972 ) 242 ff.

(57) Comparable imagery in his older contemporary, Himerius (Or. 69.7, 9

‘let each mustēs and epoptēs listen … the shop of the Muses is declared
open!…In word and deed let us show the mustai the holy rites’, cf. 48.35) is
simply literary.

(58) Isocrates: see e.g. Norman ( 1965 ) on Or. 1.1, 155. This is a
consciousness of professional worth. We might compare Ulpian’s idea of the
lawyer as priest—see Honoré, above p. 113 n. 15 .

(59) The traditional date: Penella ( 1990 ) 9 may be right to accept

Banchich’s date of 399.

(60) Philostratus’ Lives contains a short section (484–92) on philosophers

who were called ‘sophists’ by virtue of their euroia or ‘fluency’. Among these
is Dio Chrysostom.

(61) Penella ( 1990 ) 62, Fowden ( 1982 ) 44.

(62) Cf. Penella ( 1990 ) 150.

(63) Heather and Moncur ( 2001 ) 1–42. Cf. Themistius, Or. 23, 295b, on the
contemporary Sicyonian philosopher who rejected Iamblichus’ ‘new song’ in
favour of the ‘traditional, ancient song of the Academy and the Lyceum’ (but
the philosopher’s knowledge that Apollo is waiting to confirm Themistius’
preeminent wisdom—‘like Socrates long ago’—makes his existence rather
doubtful).

(64) Libanius, Epp. 818.3, 1430. It is possible that the Suda is right in
recording that he was appointed huparchos (prefect) of Constantinople by

Page 39 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(65) Especially in Or. 1 On Philanthrōpia, or Constantius; the difference

being, of course, that Dio used his Kingship Orations for local political
purposes, not to feather his nest in the capital.

(66) Banned—i.e. Julian’s measure of June 362, Cod. Theod. 13.3.5

(henceforth a teacher must ‘decretum curialium mereatur optimorum
conspirante consensu’). Cf. nn. 79, 145.

(67) κἀκει ̂ τὸν πάντα ἐβίω χρόνον, μακρὸν καὶ παρατείνοντα γενόμενον.

(68) Cf. the reminiscence at Ep. 1458.1. On kidnappings and initiation

ceremonies see Gregory Nazianzen’s famous account of his and Basil’s
arrival at Athens, Or. 43.15–16.

(69) 1.46 ‘it was here for the first time that I heard of the torturers giving up
from exhaustion’, a common theme (e.g. Or. 57.14ff.).

(70) Bemarchius supported Constantius and the profane crew about him
(τοὺς ἀμυήτους). Libanius harshly attacks Constantius for undervaluing logoi
and ruining the Empire, cf. Orr. 14.17, 41; 15.45; 18.21; 53.13; 62.7–14; Ep.
697.2. Bemarchius was no doubt doubly unacceptable for supporting the
regime (see Suda β 259 for his 10 books on the deeds of Constantine) and
being a pagan (cf. Eunapius’ attitude to Themistius).

(71) Barnes ( 1987 ) 211. Libanius refused because of student violence in the
city: Or. 1.85.

(72) Or. 1.95, Ep. 386.3 (Honoratus I was Comes Orientis when Libanius
arrived) with Ammianus 14.7.2.

(73) Cf. Ammianus 14.7.6; Matthews ( 1989 ) 406–7.

(74) It is typical of Libanius to name names after an anonymous, allusive

introduction. Cf. Norman ( 1965 ) 172.

(75) The identification of the Phoenician with Acacius II (Seeck and many
others) cannot stand given Eunapius’ statement that ‘Acacius was born at
Caesarea in Palestine’; cf. Foerster 10.760–1.

Page 40 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(77) ὀ δὲ Ἰουλιανὸς ὀ παραβάτης, καίπερ τοσούτοις ἐμβεβηκώς, τ̑ης τε

περί λόγους ἥπτετο φιλοιμίας καὶ τὸν τ̑ης Ἀντιοχείας σοφιστήν, ὡ̨̑Λιβάνιος
ὄνομα, διαφερόντως ἐθαύμασεν, τὰ μὲν ἴσως ἐπαινων, ̑ τὰ δὲ ὅπως λυποίη
τὸν μέγαν σφιστὴν Пροαιρέσιον, προτιμων ̑ ἔτερον. Ἀκάκιος γουν
̑ τις αὐτω̨̑
των
̑ περὶ τὴν ῥητορικὴν δεινων
̑ καὶ ὁ ἐκ Фρυγίας Tυσκιανὸς ὰεὶ πρὸς ταυτα ̑
ἐπεκάλουν καὶ διεμέμφοντο τὰφ κρίσεις.

(78) The only other reference to Libanius in the fragments of the History
concerns his advice to a certain ‘Jacob’ to commit suicide because he had
tried to divine the successor of the emperor Valens (fr. 39. 2 Blockley, from
Suda i 14).

(79) Jerome, Chroniclepp. 242–3 Helm scholamsponte deseruit. Cf. above

atn. 66.

(80) Date: in Ep. 274 of 361 Acacius has now left Antioch permanently (for
Palestine: Ep. 754); but since the quarrel between the sophists was over
already Ep. 289 could be a little earlier, as Silomon ( 1909 ) 47–8 indicated.

(81) μετὰ ταυτα

̑ βασιλέων καὶ των ̑ ἀξιωμάτων τὸ μέγιστον αὐτω̨̑
προσθέντων (τὸν γὰρ τ̑ης αὐλ̑ης ἔπαρχον μέχρι προσηγορίας ἔχειν
ἐκέλευον), οὐκ ἐδέξατο φήσας τὸν σοφιστὴν ε̑ἰναι μείζονα. καὶ τουτό ̑ ἐστιν
οὐκ ὀλίγος ἔπαινος, ὅτι δόζης ἐλάττων ἀυήρ, μόνης ἥττητο τ̑ης περὶ τοὺς
λόγους, ‘When later emperors offered him the highest of honours (they gave
him the right to use the title of Praetorian Prefect), he refused saying that
‘‘sophist’’ was more distinguished. And this is indeed not a little to his credit,
that, though he was man who longed for fame, he was only interested in
being famous for logoi’.

(82) Petit ( 1951 ). Rank: Jones ( 1964 ) 528–30.

(83) Bowersock ( 1969 ).

(84) As demonstrated by Bowie ( 1982 ).

(85) Swain ( 1996 ) 171.

(86) Cf. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/heath/sudabits.html s.v. [A4735]

Apsines.

Page 41 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(88) Cf. Martin ( 1988 ) 250–2, cf. Martin and Petit ( 1979 ) 255–6.

(89) Cf. Norman ( 1965 ) 211.

(90) The names of the issuing emperors fit the given date of 20 May 386;
Rufinus as Praetorian Prefect means a date of 392–5, which is why Seeck (
1919 ) 94, 284 opted for 394 (Theodosius issuing the law at Heraclea).

(91) Petit ( 1956 ) 499, 504–5.

(92) Pack ( 1935 ) 93–4.

(93) In Or. 33 Libanius concentrates on Tisamenus’ misgovernment, esp.

in financial matters, and lack of attention to court work is not much of a
concern, let alone the problems of those in prison.

(94) Seeck ( 1895–1921 ) 5.218–19, 527. On the identification of Cynegius in

the speech, see below in text at nn. 118–19.

(95) Martin ( 1988 ) 248–50.

(96) Wiemer ( 1995 ) 93–4 (Eugenius, ILS 1244; Gamaliel, Cod. Theod.
16.8.22). He identifies three other possible honorary prefects.

(97) Cod. Theod. 6. 21. 1 ‘placuit honorari codicillis comitivae ordinis primi’.
Note that Or. 1.125 refers to a post given by Julian to Aristophanes of Corinth
(cf. n. 132 ), not to Libanius (as interpreted by Norman ( 1965 ) 73, corrected
at (1992a) 191.

(98) Wiemer ( 1995 ) 106–11.

(99) Wiemer 114–20 disposes of various other arguments in favour of this

idea, notably that Libanius acted as assessor.

Page 42 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(101) Cf. above on Bemarchius (n. 70 ), Sopater (n. 8 ), Themistius; in the

Princi-pate Arrian’s imperial military and political career had nothing to do
with his study under Epictetus.

(102) Cf. the practice ἔκφρασις γραφης

̑ ἐν τ̨ω̑ βουλευτηρί̨ω (but apparently
not of Antioch), Foerster 8.465–8.

(103) Petit ( 1983 ) plausibly connects Or. 11 with the Olympic Games of 356
and the speech of praise on Antioch mentioned in Ep. 36.

(104) Norman ( 1992 b) 459–61,

(105) In any case, this was surely not written during Proclus’ year of office,
as Martin and Petit ( 1979 ) 12 AD §§ 214–15 suggest.

(106) Date: cf. the praise of Icarius’ poetry at § 225, contrast ‘that fine poet’
at Or. 27.6.

(107) Martin ( 1988 ) 221. There were other facilities at the suburban centre
of Daphne.

(108) ἐχρην
̑ τὸν καλὸν κἀγαθὸν Πρόκλον … τὴν περὸ τὸν Δόα σπουδὴν
ἅπασιν ἐπιδειξαι.
̑

(109) i.e. a Christian magistrate who presumably allowed women to attend

one of the martyrs buried at the site, specifically Babylas.

(110) Seeck ( 1906 ) 249.

(111) Foerster 3.16 refers to a fragment of the 4th-cent. comic poet, Dromon
(τὸν Тιθύμαλλον … ἐρυθρότερον κοκκου,̑ II. 419 Kock).

(112) Seeck ( 1906 ) 285–6.

(113) Eudocia Augusta’s acknowledgement of Tatianus as a model for her

Home-rizing life of Christ—Ludwich ( 1893 ) 40–1, ll. 19–29—shows Libanius
was not simply indulging in flattery.

(114) On the force of such a gift see Or. 51.11.

Page 43 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(116) We may compare the political-religious indignation roused in Synesius

in the early months of 412 by the blasphemous praeses of Libya Superior,
Andronicus, Epp. 57 (= 41 in the Bude edn.), 58 (= 42 Budé), 72, 73,
79, 90. The first three of these are letters to the local bishops detailing
Andronicus’ vices and abuses, excommunicating him, then backtracking in
the face of local political support. Synesius then urges high-placed friends at
Constantinople to galvanize the Praetorian Prefect of the East, Anthemius,
to deal with the governor. The last letter is a Christian plea to the Patriarch
of Alexandria to judge Andronicus leniently. The criticisms of the governor’s
regime have no wider import, and his blasphemous outburst provides an
opportunity for the exercise of personal animus rather than Christian zeal.

(117) It is still standing at Or. 30.44.

(118) So Petit ( 1951 ). On Cynegius see Matthews ( 1967 ), PLRE Cynegius

3. The most recent discussion of the date—Wiemer ( 1995 ) 123–9—puts
the speech between 385 and 387 on the ground that Cynegius’ anti-pagan
campaign has not affected the cult of the Nile (Or. 30.35–6). Libanius uses
the example of the Nile to make an economic point as much as a religious
one. The report of Cynegius’ religious activities (for his political actions see
Or. 49.3) depends on Zosimus 4.37.3, who says that he ‘barred entry to hiera
throughout the East and Egypt including Alexandria and banned sacrifices’.
This will be in 387, since Cynegius died on his way back from Egypt (4.45.1)
in March 388. Zosimus’ report is highly exaggerated: temples were first
closed in Egypt by Cod. Theod. 16. 10. 11 of June 16th 391, and it was not
until the end of the next year that there was a comprehensive, general
measure against all forms of pagan cult everywhere: Cod. Theod. 16. 10. 12.
The fact that there is pagan cult in Egypt at the date of For the Temples does
not, then, mean that it was written before Cynegius’ mission there.

(119) He must also be the Comes Orientis who weakly assisted bishop
Marcellus’ demolition work at Apamea on the Orontes: Theodoret, HE 5.21.
5–16.

(120) As will be the criticism of his political failures at the start of Or. 49,
cf. also Orr. 4.20, 52.46. The attacks on Proclus, Optatus, and the ‘son of
Gaison’ in Or. 42 show well enough that Libanius could berate important,

Page 44 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(121) So Norman ( 1992 b) 366; but possibly uncle of Siburius II (see n. 153 ).

(122) Seeck (1920–4) 42. Lucianus himself is the subject of Or. 56.

(123) Cf. above n. 116 for Synesius.

(124) From the Theodosian period note Or. 1.206, 267, 282; Epp. 935 and
1038 (Iullus); on Rufinus see below in text.

(125) It scores the very high ratio of 5.27 in Rother’s table of figures of
speech in Libanius’ orations, (1915) 104 ff. (where Or. 60 has the highest
with 6.60, Or. 1 the lowest score with 1.56). Cf. Petit ( 1956 ) part 3.

(126) Parts of Libanius’ Monody (Or. 60) on the temple are imbedded in John
Chrysostom’s In Honour of the Blessed Babylas in his attack on Libanius, for
which see below.

(127) Eἰς Ἰουλιανὸν αὐτοκράτορα ὕ πατον. The official term autokratōr,

which is only used to Julian or about Julian in Libanius (cf. Oribasius, Coll.
Med. 1 pref. 1.1, Synopsis ad Eustath. 1 pref. 1.1), and by Himerius only of
the proconsul Hermogenes (Or. 48.31), is relatively common in Themistius
(though insignificant compared with basileus).

(128) Both pieces are mentioned by Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 3.17.

(129) Date: Socrates places it carelessly under Jovian (3.22) in order to place
his own refutation of it immediately after Julian’s death (3.23); presumably,
as Norman ( 1969 ) xxxiv–xxxv suggested, the speech was written before
the revolt of Julian’s relative, Procopius, in 365–6, which must have brought
danger to Libanius as a result of the involvement of his favourite pupils,
Andronicus II and Hyperechius I (quite apart from the allegation of a
panegyric on Procopius, Or. 1.163).

(130) The dispute between Libanius and Polycles only makes sense if Julian
had not been long dead. Cf. Martin ( 1988 ) p. 12 for a plausible link with Ep.
1264.6 (364).

(131) The terminus ante quem is the emperor’s victory over the barbarians
in mid-November 379, of which Libanius despairs at § 16; cf. Foerster 2.508–
9.

Page 45 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(133) Cf. John Chrysostom, In Honour of the Blessed Babylas 68.

(134) Norman ( 1969 ) xxxviii.

(135) Cf. esp. Or. 16.37 the position (tychē) of king deserves respect, 55
‘every future king will be your enemy …’

(136) Second Sophistic scholars used to play the game of totting up

instances of ‘our’ applied to Rome by Greeks. For Libanius the Empire is
under ‘our’ laws: Orr. 18.1, 282, its boundary is that of ‘our land’: Or. 18.264,
cf. 12.48; 17.1; 18.256; 32.24 (to Nicocles at Constantinople); and its soldiers
are ‘our men’: Or. 24. 21. These usages must be contextualized (esp. the
last). ‘Our’ may of course mean ‘Antiochene’: Or. 41.14, etc.

(137) See Antiochicus 57–8, 68, 91–2, 119.

(138) Antiochicus 130 γένει μόνον ἔδξε μεταβεβλησθαι

̑ τὸ της
̑ ἀρχης
̑ (on the
coming of Roman rule).

(139) The extensive praise of Julian in Or. 1 does not preclude circulation
(Libanius was known for his views: Or. 2.58) and there is no reason to think
the (main part of the) speech was hidden or heavily restricted. Rother ( 1915
) 104ff. made Or. 1 the least artistic of the orations with a ratio of 1. 56 which
could imply no regular publication; but the ratio is based on the whole work
including the additions, whereas the original part, §§ 1 –155, is highly crafted.
That said, the content of the speech does point to a circle of close admirers.

(140) Cf. Or. 1.51.

(141) Ammianus Marcellinus 22.9.16–17; the hostility did not last long. Cf.
Ep. 679 which seems to be part of an attempt to insure Thalassius’ brother
Bassianus against the rumour (phluaria) that he was opposed to Julian.

(142) Cf. Aristophanes, Clouds 1331 where the ‘roses’ are name calling.

(143) Norman ( 1953 ).

(144) Cf. 18. 158 (and see n. 146 on Ep. 1224).

(145) Cf. Norman ( 1983 ) 160–1; Scholl ( 1994 ) 163–6, and for the
Rhetorenedikt (cf. above n. 66 ) id. 115–22. Libanius passes over the

Page 46 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

(146) In Ep. 1224 to Salutius Secundus (whose prefecture under Julian was
continued by Jovian and Valentinian and Valens, the ‘two kings’ of the letter)
and Ep. 1233 to his assessor, the poet Callistio, Libanius lauds the practical
help these two were giving rhetoric and rhetoricians in Spring 364.

(147) Date: certainly after 366, possibly from 383: Foerster 4.342, Martin and
Petit ( 1979 ) 264.

(148) 380/1; above, p. 381.

(149) ? 391; above, p. 392.

(150) Late Theodosian, cf. Norman ( 1965 ) 227, 235.

(151) Both late Theodosian, cf. Norman ( 1977 ) 417.

(152) Probably 385, cf. above p. 385.

(153) There is only one further reference to Julian in the letters after 388, Ep.
983 to the educated Siburius II mentioning the Julianic orations.

(154) Schatkin et al. ( 1990 ) 20 ff.

Page 47 of 47 Sophists and Emperors: The Case of Libanius

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

Alan Cameron

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0013

Abstract and Keywords

The reign of Augustus was the golden age of Latin poetry, and it continued
to flourish throughout the first century (Ovid, Lucan, Persius, Seneca, Statius,
Martial, and Juvenal). But by the middle of the second it was in even steeper
decline than Greek poetry. There is little of any sort that can be dated to
the second half of the second or the third century. Yet by Late Antiquity
poetry had made a remarkable comeback. Indeed the resurgence of poetry
after centuries of hibernation is one of the most intriguing features of the
literary culture of Late Antiquity. Historically, Latin literature was heavily
influenced by classical and Hellenistic Greek literature. The influence of Latin
poetry on Greek is more problematic, as is the postulate of mutual influence
with knowledge of Greek declining sharply in the West. Despite important
differences between the two poetic revivals, this chapter suggests a common
or at any rate similar explanation.

Keywords: Latin literature, Greek literature, poetry, Late Antiquity

I
It is a commonplace that the first and second centuries AD represent a low
point in the long history of Greek poetry. 1 Some have exaggerated the
degree of decline, but a substantial amount of verse continued to be written.
We know from inscriptions of a great many poets who competed in the ever
expanding festivals of the Greek world of the high Empire, 2 and the first

Page 1 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

In addition to epigram, didactic poetry flourished continuously throughout

the first three centuries. From the first we have long fragments of an
elegiac poem by the medical writer Andromachus dedicated to Nero and
an astronomical poem by Dorotheus of Sidon preserved in Arabic. 6 From
the 130s we have complete Dionysius Periegetes’ Periegesis of the World
in 1187 hexameters. 7 Around 180 a Cilician poet called Oppian dedicated
a five-book Halieutica to Marcus and Commodus, and forty years later a
(p.328) Syrian poet of (apparently) the same name a four-book Cynegetica
to Caracalla. 8 Also from the 130s we have fragments from a medical poem
in forty-two books by Marcellus of Side and six books of astrological poetry
under the name of Manetho but from different hands (the horoscope at
3.738–50 gives 28 May 80 as the author’s date of birth). 9 While there can be
no doubt that sophists and rhetors enjoyed much higher popular esteem, it is
an exaggeration to proclaim that by the second century ‘poetry was dead’. 10

Yet by Late Antiquity poetry both Greek and Latin had made a remarkable
comeback. Indeed the resurgence of poetry after centuries of hibernation is
one of the most intriguing features of the literary culture of Late Antiquity. In
a world in many ways so very different we might have expected a new kind
of poetry, reflecting the virtual disappearance of the classical quantities and
(in Greek) the transformation of the accent from pitch to stress. In fact we
find surprisingly little innovation along these lines. 12 High poetry remains
overwhelmingly traditional classicizing poetry in the traditional metres. In the
fourth and fifth centuries, indeed, this sort of poetry actually expanded its
field, colonizing areas previously dominated by prose.

The fact that we find the same development in both Latin and Greek
literature encourages the hope of finding some common features. This
was, after all, a world in which many people knew both Greek and Latin,

Page 2 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

II
The most familiar category is the revival of mythological poetry. Not that
mythological epic ever entirely died out. While none are known from the first
century, by the second we have the Bassarica and Gigantias of a certain
Dionysius, of which a few fragments survive on papyrus. 13 But by the third
century we have the prolific father and son team of Nestor and Pisander of
Laranda, the former with a lipogrammatic Iliad and Metamorphoseis, the
latter with a Marriages of Gods and Heroes in sixty books. 14 Triphiodorus’s
691 hexameters on the Capture of Troy has acquired a new interest and
significance since a papyrus revealed that it is not (as previously thought)
a work of the fifth or sixth century, but (at latest) a product of the third.
15 The Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyrna is also most plausibly assigned
to the third century. 16 It is tantalizing that we have nothing but the titles
of a series of poems by Sotericus of Oasis, who wrote under Diocletian:
in addition to poems on Alexander the Great and Apollonius of Tyana,
Calydoniaca, Bassarica, and Ariadne. 17 But it was not till the fifth century
that the mythological revival took off in earnest, with the gigantic Dionysiaca
of Nonnus and his legions of followers. Classical scholars tend to take the
continued dominance of traditional epic and mythological subject matter in a
now largely Christian world for granted. Roman historians rightly find it more
puzzling.

Verse encomia on the great go back to the age of Pindar. With the decline
of lyric poetry in Hellenistic times, they were (p.330) mainly written in
hexameters or (on the Callimachean model) elegiacs. 18 They became a
regular feature of Hellenistic and Roman public life. Contemporary historical
epics were a Roman innovation, last attested before Late Antiquity in the age
of Domitian, with Statius’ De Bello Germanico. 19 In the early Empire prose
was the principal medium for panegyric, but from the fourth century on verse
began to rival and then eclipse it. Alongside more traditional star orators
like Libanius and Themistius, we find a host of poets who travelled from city

Page 3 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

Another Hellenistic genre that was to enjoy a revival in Late Antiquity is

poems on the mythical origins of cities. 22 Claudian wrote Patria (as they
were now called) of Anazarbus, Berytus, Nicaea, and Tarsus; a century later
Christodorus of Coptus Patria of Aphrodisias, Miletus, Nakle, Thessalonica,
and Tralles. 23 Horapollon wrote Patria of Alexandria, and Hermeias Patria
of Hermupolis (his native city), both in iambics. 24 Two fragments of an
evidently different Patria of Hermupolis (because in hexameters) (p.331)
have been identified on a fourth-century papyrus. 25 Much of this work is
reflected in the host of local traditions included in Nonnus’s Dionysiaca. 26

Not a revival but a new development is the increasing use of verse for
epigraphic dedications. As Louis Robert pointed out, the sort of routine
dedications in honour of public officials that in the first two or three centuries
of the Empire would have been expressed in the standard bureaucratic prose
of the age come to be written instead in classicizing elegiacs or hexameters.
27 If only Robert had been able to resist publishing his devastating review
of volume 1 of W. Peek’s Griechische Versinschriften (1959), Peek might
have gone on to publish volume 2, and this remarkable development could
have been more widely appreciated. 28 As it is, the thousands of inscriptional
epigrams, many of great interest and high quality, are scattered throughout
scores of publications seldom consulted by literary scholars. 29 To take one
striking example, book 1 of the Palatine Anthology preserves a poem in 76
Nonnian hexameters on the church of St Polyeuctus built by the fabulously
wealthy Anicia Juliana. Until the church began to be excavated in 1960
it had probably never occurred to anyone that the entire dedication was
actually inscribed, but then huge blocks of marble inscribed with letters
eleven centimetres high began to turn up. According to a marginal note

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This is a much more widespread and solidly documented phenomenon in

the Greek world (especially Asia Minor). But there are many Latin examples
deserving closer study than they have received. 31 To cite only one, the tomb
of the great Christian plutocrat S. Petronius Probus (c.390) was adorned
with two classicizing elegiac poems totalling 48 lines, incidentally a nice
illustration of (p.332) the fact that this development was a universal taste,
not limited to pagans. A much briefer example recently published is a silver
dish commemorating the Decennalia of the emperor Constans in 342,
inscribed in two hexameter lines inlaid in niello. 32 More remarkable still, we
find Latin elegiacs on the consular diptychs of the emperor Justinian as late
as 521.

In two dialogues written in the neighbourhood of 100 AD, Plutarch presented

a number of his friends discussing the decline of oracles and why oracles
were no longer given in verse. 33 On the latter point one of his interlocutors
claims that ‘nowadays few people have any real understanding’ of poetic
diction; the god took away from his oracles ‘verses, strange words,
circumlocutions and vagueness’ and ‘adapted to what was intelligible and
convincing’. 34 hat was a reasonable explanation o what was no doubt true
of Delphi in the late first century, but the fact is that Plutarch spoke too soon,
on both counts. Already before his death oracular shrines were beginning
to enjoy a remarkable resurgence which lasted almost as long as paganism
itself, notably at Delphi, Didyma and Claros—mostly given in their traditional
hexameters. And Sibylline oracles continued to be composed and circulate in
book form, many now Jewish and Christian. 35

Another rather surprising innovation is hexameter paraphrases of books of

the Bible, by the fifth century common in both Greek and Latin. 36 In Greek,
Nonnus for John’s Gospel, Ps- Apolinarius on the Psalms; in Latin, Iuvencus
and Sedulius for the Gospels, Arator for Acts, Cyprianus Gallus, Claudius
Marius Victorius and Avitus for Genesis and other early books of the Old
Testament. The practice of paraphrase as a rhetorical exercise goes back
to the age of Cicero and beyond. It is widely discussed by the rhetoricians
and a number of examples survive. Prose paraphrases of difficult works like
Aristotle are also found. But verse paraphrases of prose works in a more
elevated style than the original are a remarkable new development.

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especially those who take pleasure in literature, to provide

them with a sort of sweet medicine that will lead them to
believe what they need to know, softening by my art the
bitterness of my instructions.

He says much the same in the preface to his autobiography (again in iambic
trimeters): 39

Verse-making is pleasant as a medicine for low spirits and, by

sugaring the pill of instruction for young people, it also makes
sermonizing enjoyable.

The image of sweetening bitter medicine is best known to modern readers

from Lucretius, but it goes back to Plato and was surely a commonplace of
didactic poetry. 40

Despite the Christian subject matter, many of Gregory’s poems look familiar
enough in form and style: hymns and didactic poems in hexameters,
epigrams and occasional poems in elegiacs, and a few invectives in iambics.
But what do we make of a long didactic poem Against Anger in iambic
trimeters? 41 There is an extensive ancient literature on anger, and between
the 360s and 430s ‘no fewer than five church fathers wrote discussions
of anger which have survived’. 42 Nor was it a subject of purely academic
interest.

(p.334) Some vivid pages by Peter Brown have drawn attention to widespread
expressions of anxiety about anger and violence among the elite of fourth-
and fifth-century eastern society. 43 Gregory is thus addressing a living
concern, and is clearly familiar with the scholarly literature on the subject. 44

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There are also at least two examples in Latin. First, the De Poetis of the
probably first-century BC Volcacius Sedigitus (p.335) (so called, allegedly,
because he had six fingers on each hand). 49 The only substantial fragment
we have is a list of Roman comic poets:
Caecilio palmam Statio do mimico,

Plautus secundus facile exuperat ceteros …

This is a particularly clear case, since Volcacius is evidently a grammarian

writing about his speciality. The other is the mid-fourth-century De Ora
Maritima of Rufius Festus Avienius, presumably based on a now lost Greek
original in the same metre. 50

B. Effe’s comprehensive study of ancient didactic poetry simply dismissed

the entire sub-genre of didactic iambics as nothing more than technical
literature in verse, of no significance in the history of literature. 51 In itself,
this is perhaps fair enough comment on Apollodorus and his immediate
successors, who did indeed turn to metre as a mnemonic device. But why
did this simplified, more practical form of didactic come into being, and
why in the second century BC? It can hardly be coincidence that it emerged
at precisely the time traditional hexameter didactic took a turn into the
elevated, allusive, learned poetry of Aratus and Nicander and their followers.

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We should resist the temptation to call these iambics ‘popular’ verse, since
the learned Apollodorus can hardly have expected a chronicle based on
extensive research to be read by the man in the street. But the form must
have helped it to appeal to a wider public than such a work might ordinarily
be able to reach. 53

(p.336) There can be little doubt that Gregory was consciously writing in this
iambic didactic tradition (we have just noted his claim to be writing for the
young). Nor was Gregory its only fourth-century exponent. The surviving 337-
line Iambi ad Seleucum of his friend Amphilochius of Iconium is a treatise
on how Christians should deal with the secular world and what books of
Scripture they should read, a work of clear didactic purpose. 54 It is surely
not by chance that Amphilochius closes by bidding his addressee ‘remember
what he has written’. 55 Then there is the codex Photius came across
containing a series of iambic poems by fourth-century Egyptian poets. The
most intriguing is a learned collection (which Photius summarized in detail)
of mainly philological problemata in the manner of Gellius’s Attic Nights,
the four-book Chrestomatheia of Helladius of Antinoopolis. 56 Photius places
it under Licinius (308–25) and Maximianus, probably Galerius Maximianus
(Eastern Augustus from 305–11) rather than Maximianus Herculius, Western
Augustus from 286–305. Presumably the book was dedicated to Licinius and
Galerius as co-emperors, implying a date between 308 and 311. Improbable
though an iambic encyclopedia might seem, nineteenth-century critics
detected a number of iambic sequences in Photius’ summary, several of
three or four consecutive lines, and in one case nine. 57

Photius also gives the titles of a number of other iambic poems by Helladius:
Athens, Neilos, Aigyptios, Protreptikos, Rome, Pheme, Nike, and Antinoopolis.
58 Most of these were evidently poems praising cities, implying an expansion
of the scope of ‘didactic’ iambics to include praise poetry. In the same
volume as Helladius were panegyrics by Cyrus of Antaiopolis on the duke
Mauricius (p.337) (who can be dated to c.375) 59 and the mid-fourth-century
Andronicus of Hermopolis on his fellow citizen the count Phoibammon.
60 It has been claimed that George of Pisidia’s use of iambics for epics
and panegyrics in the early seventh century ‘was an innovation virtually

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Gregory spectacularly exemplifies this tendency to expand the scope of

didactic iambics, the most interesting (and best known) of his innovations
being a series of autobiographical poems. 63 But there is an instructive
difference between the iambics of Apollodorus and Ps.-Scymnus on the one
hand and those of Damocrates, Gregory and Amphilochius on the other.
When Ps.-Scymnus characterized Apollodorus’s lines as ‘comic’, what he
had in mind was (a) standard rather than epic or ‘poetic’ diction; (b) free
resolution of long syllables; (c) free substitution of anapaests for iambs; and
(d) disregard of caesura in the third or fourth foot. Apollodorus, Ps.-Scymnus
and Dionysius’ Periegesis all go beyond Attic comedy in these deviations
from tragic principles. But as F. Jacoby acutely spotted a century ago, the
practice of Damocrates and Gregory is much stricter, closer to tragedy.
64 Another iambic poem of quite uncertain date, the so-called Sphaera
Empedoclis, a star catalogue mainly based on Aratus, is even stricter, for this
reason probably Roman rather than Hellenistic. 65

(p.338) Yet though closer to tragic practice in cutting down the number
of resolved feet, few of these poets reveal any real familiarity with tragic
practice. For example, while the tragedians restricted anapaests to the
first foot, Gregory places them freely elsewhere and never in the first
foot. 66 He certainly knew and often imitated the tragedians, but he was
not imitating their metrical practice. The explanation for the reduction in
resolved feet is quite different. In an age when people no longer heard the
classical quantities, resolved feet obscured the simplicity of the iambic
rhythm, and more than one per line destroyed it. That is why Gregory never
allows more than one per line. He is well on the way to the form that was
to dominate Byzantine poetry for half a millennium, the so-called Byzantine
dodecasyllable, twelve syllables with no resolution, regular word break after
the fifth or seventh syllable, and a, ι, and υ, the so-called dichrona (δίχρονα)
scanned long or short according to need. 67 The more learned poets did their
best to observe the ancient quantities and produced what (but for the fact
that they never have more than twelve syllables) look like perfect iambic

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One curious feature about Gregory’s verse is that, though undoubtedly well
read, 69 he has a surprisingly large number o ase quantities, sometimes
repeating a word twice within a few lines with different scansion. According
to such a connoisseur of late Greek poetry as Rudolf Keydell, he ‘never
learned to write correct verses’. 70 It is true that he must have written
very fast, and sheer carelessness is certainly possible. Yet given the fact
that in everything but prosody Gregory shows considerable technical
competence, his ‘false’ quantities (a characterization that reveals our own
classicizing perspective) are not really likely to be the result of ignorance.
The explanation of the paradox is surely that he (p.339) deliberately ignored
classical quantities when it suited him. It was not inevitable that quantitative
verse could only be written according to the vowel quantities current in
the age of Callimachus—or even Augustus. Within the parameters of his
classicizing, Gregory was (I suggest) making a half-hearted attempt to come
to terms with the pronunciation of his own day, anticipating the Byzantine
doctrine of dichrona. 71

Gregory might have gone down as a pioneer, but for the fact that a decade
or two after his death Nonnus turned the clock firmly back again, resisting
even this concession to the passage of time. There is only one ‘false’
quantity in the 48 books of the Dionysiaca, λῐτὰ δειπνα
̑ ‘humble food’, in 17.
59. That this was generally identified as an error is proved by an epigram
of Agathias, one of Nonnus’ strictest disciples: 72 λῑτὰ δέ σοι καὶ δειπνα
̑ 73
This has to be seen as a deliberate correction o the Master s one slip. 74
Notoriously Nonnus also added many new rules and restrictions of his own,
75 which both he and most of his many disciples followed with astonishing
fidelity. Compared to the hyper-classicizing revival of Nonnus and his
followers, Gregory looks a mere incompetent. But with the breakdown of
classical culture in the seventh century the simpler (though still classicizing)
iambic, overshadowed by the hexameter in the fifth and sixth centuries,
came into its own with George of Pisidia.

IV
This poetic revival has hardly received the attention it deserves. The more
important individual poets (Claudian and Nonnus, for example, Agathias,
and even Sidonius) have now generated a considerable bibliography. But

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Though widely cited, my ‘Wandering Poets’ article has inspired

disappointingly little further research into the social context of (p.340) poetry
in Late Antiquity. Indeed in some ways it may actually have discouraged
such research, by implying that there was no need to look further than a
school of poets who so conveniently wandered from city to city all over the
Empire, especially since I included the bilingual Claudian in their number,
thus in effect deriving the Latin poetic revival from the Greek poetic revival
(second thoughts on this below). In a more recent study I traced the story of
the wandering poets of the Hellenistic age, a movement I was barely aware
of when I wrote my 1965 article. 76 But there is no simple continuity, since
the earlier poets travelled to compete in the great festivals of the age, all of
them long gone by Late Antiquity.

Existing literary histories are overwhelmingly descriptive, and tend to divide

Christian from pagan as well as Latin from Greek, 77 thus obscuring a number
of key features about the goals of Christian poets, as I hope to illustrate. All
too often in the past literary decline and recovery alike have been treated
as natural functions of political decline and recovery, requiring no further
explanation. In this simplistic perspective the revival of poetry could be
seen as nothing more than one aspect of the fourth-century revival of the
Roman Empire after its third-century crisis. But that does not explain why
poetry became so conspicuous an element in the revival, not least because
the early imperial decline of both Greek and Latin poetry long preceded the
political and economic decline of the empire in the third century.

One traditional explanation is that classicizing poetry was paganism’s last

fling. Thus F. A. Wright put the mythological poets in a chapter called ‘The
End of Paganism: 313–527’, 78 reflecting an assumption that still appears in
attenuated form in more recent and sophisticated studies, that anyone who
wrote on mythological themes, while not necessarily a serious pagan, was at
any rate not likely to be a serious Christian.

This assumption works badly for a Christian poet like Gregory Nazianzen,
the most prolific fourth-century user of classicizing poetic forms, even if his
subject matter is anything but traditional. But at first sight it seems to fit
late Latin poetry fairly well, the two (p.341) most prominent secular poets
of the turn of the fifth century being Claudian and Rutilius Namatianus,
both likely pagans. Actually it doesn’t really work well even for Claudian.
The ‘pagan’ imagery of which critics once used to make so much is simply

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The assumption also seems to work neatly enough for Nonnus, with his
pagan Dionysiaca and Christian Paraphrase of St John. We simply assume
that he was converted and decided to apply his poetic training to Christian
subjects. Unfortunately, some important recent studies have made it all but
certain that the Paraphrase was written first. 80 There can be little doubt that
Nonnus was already a Christian when he wrote the Dionysiaca. 81 Obviously
this discovery will have major repercussions on the study of Nonnus. But
it has even more serious repercussions on the presumed link between
pagan mythology and pagan cult. If the longest, most important and most
influential mythological epic of Late Antiquity was written by a Christian, then
paganism ceases to be any sort of explanation for the revival and popularity
of classicizing poetry.

A word or two more on the pagan hypothesis. In the form in which the
various scholia on the classical poets, Greek and Latin alike, have come
down to us, they are almost all (at earliest) late antique. Their goals vary
from poet to poet, but one thing they all do in considerable detail is explain
mythological allusions. Once more, it has often been assumed that the
compilers of these scholia were pagans, doing their best to keep alive the
study of the pagan classics. Since few are earlier than the fifth century, this
is unlikely on chronological grounds alone, but that is not really the main
point.

Let us look at Servius, the one late antique commentator we know (thanks
to Macrobius) to have been a pagan. No surviving Roman poet is more
permeated by the old Roman cults than (p.342) Vergil; the Aeneid in
particular is full of references to ritual and sacrifice. 82 Now anyone who
has made any serious use of the Servian corpus knows that there are
two versions: the original Servius, dating from c.420; and Servius Auctus
or Danielis, the original text expanded with material from an earlier
commentary, material that Servius had omitted. 83 This earlier commentator
is now generally identified as Aelius Donatus, dating from c.350. Servius
Auctus, that is to say Donatus, gives very detailed notes on all the cult

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The explanation is simple. Classical mythology was one of the indispensable

components of a liberal education. It always had been, and in this area at
least the Christianization of the Roman state made no difference. It was
indispensable for any reader of the poets, and of much other classical
literature; also most contemporary poetry and oratory as well. And since
both poets and orators regularly alluded to even the best known mythical
stories obliquely, using fanciful ethnics and patronymics (Laertiades,
Aeacides, etc.), nothing less than a comprehensive knowledge was enough.
Nor was it just for reading literature that knowledge of mythology was
required. Late antique art continued to be peopled by figures from ancient
myth, notably wall paintings, mosaics and (thanks to several recent finds)
silver plate, so much better known to us now than a generation ago. A
cultivated person was expected to be able to recognize and identify scenes
from the Achilles cycle or the labours of Hercules. Once again, many scholars
have seen the mythological decoration of late antique silver as proof of
pagan owners, but this sort of decoration (p.343) continues down into the
seventh century. It is inconceivable that the sixth- and seventh-century
patrons who commissioned such work were pagans. What the continuing
‘pagan’ themes on silver plate and floor mosaics really illustrate, and
illustrate abundantly, is the routine acceptance of such themes by the now
Christian elite of the Roman world.

This is why the commentators devoted so much care to explaining classical

mythology; this is why so many mythological handbooks survive, Greek
and Latin alike. For all its deep Christian piety, it would be impossible to
make head or tail of much Byzantine literature without a comprehensive
knowledge of classical mythology. By far the longest subject category
in the index to Hunger’s great work on Byzantine secular literature is
‘Mythologie’. In this perspective, it is not so surprising that a Christian would
write a poem like the Dionysiaca, nor why it should be such a huge success
with Christians. A long mythological poem was a constant test of one’s
educational attainments.

Page 13 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

(p.344) This is much more typical of the attitude of lay Christians of the day.
It does no harm to call Homer or Vergil a pagan bible, so long as we mean it
in the cultural rather than religious sense.

V
Until the third-century crisis the traditional paideia could be taken for
granted in members of the elites that monopolized power in the Greek
cities of the Empire. But Diocletian and Constantine brought about radical
changes in that world. To summarize and simplify, the central government
tightened its grip at every level. Provinces were subdivided into much
smaller units, each with its own governor, each governor with a staff of
his own. The central bureaucracy mushroomed to many times its former
size in response. These changes were bound up with a further radical
innovation: the foundation of imperial capitals in the Greek provinces,
Thessalonica, Nicomedia, Antioch, and, most important of all, Constantinople.
The Greek elites increasingly withdrew from their traditional role in the cities
to seek positions in the imperial service. And in order to succeed in the
imperial service it became desirable to learn Latin, which ran against all the
traditional cultural imperatives.

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The reason poetry qualified a man for office no less than rhetoric is that
poetry, classicizing poetry, was paideia in its most concentrated form. The
poets—above all Homer and Vergil—had always played a dominant role
in Greco-Roman education, and not only (as often thought) at the primary
stage, in the school of the grammaticus. They played just as large a role in
the school of the rhetor. Schoolboys kept returning to Homer and Vergil at
successive stages. After learning to form their letters by copying Homer line
by line, as we know from countless school exercises preserved on papyri,
when a little older they studied them word by word with the grammaticus,
committing whole books to memory. Then in their teens they would compose
paraphrases of Homer and Vergil, normally in prose, but occasionally in
hexameters of their own. Later again they would compose declamations or
poems on Homeric and Vergilian themes. It might come as a surprise to a
modern reader turning over the pages of a practical handbook such as the
rhetorical treatises ascribed to Menander Rhetor to discover that the most
frequently quoted authority is Homer.

Many Latin rhetoricians likewise took their themes from Vergil. As early
as the second century a certain Florus wrote an essay with the title Was
Vergil an orator or a poet? Vergil as the supreme orator is a pervasive
theme in Macrobius’ Saturnalia. Vergil came to be one of the dominating

Page 15 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

(p.346) With the poets taking over an ever larger part of elite education,
it is not surprising that the ability to write verse came to be regarded as
the purest and most complete demonstration of literary culture. The goal
of the man of letters, revealed in countless compliments, was to rival the
ancients, to be compared to Cicero or Demosthenes or Homer or Vergil.
This goal became increasingly difficult to realize in prose, with its cultivation
of abstract nouns, passive verbs, and poetic vocabulary. But in the much
more confined and formulaic medium of hexameters, elegiacs, or iambics,
it was much easier. Having spent more hours than I care to think of toiling
over verse composition at St Paul’s School as a boy, I know from experience
that, once you have mastered the technique, it is actually easier to write
passable Greek iambics or Latin elegiacs than a piece of (say) Demosthenic
or Tacitean prose. The tight, formulaic structure of the elegiac couplet in
particular places a curb on the natural tendency of late antique rhetoric to
indiscriminate expansiveness. Whether an orator like Symmachus was aware
how unlike his revered model Cicero his own oratory was is hard to say. But
after so minutely studying the ancient poets in school, he and his peers were
certainly capable of judging the technical competence of classicizing poets.
Many a passage in Claudian could pass for poetry of the Silver age.

It might seem incredible that Greeks writing in the fifth and sixth centuries
could get virtually all their quantities right. It must have been much harder
for them than it was for me as a schoolboy composer studying a dead
language. This was after all the language they spoke, though by then with
a strong stress accent that often worked against the ancient quantities. It
cannot have been easy to discover the ancient quantities of the so-called
dichrona. The point is nicely illustrated by a couple of early Byzantine
school exercises in which dichrona in two passages of Homer are equipped
with marks of quantity. 89 The quantities were a key part of the illusion of

Page 16 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

Yet artificial as this poetry was, it is wrong to dismiss it (as so often done)
as pure book-poetry. 90 There is plenty of evidence that late antique verse
panegyrics were publicly performed. Poems in (p.347) hexameters were
regularly equipped with prefaces in more down-to-earth ‘comic’ iambics
giving details of the circumstances and even location of the performance.
91 The prefaces to Claudian’s panegyrics and invectives are in elegiacs.
92 We may probably assume that poems without such prefaces were put
into circulation without a public performance. Even so polished a piece as
Paul the Silentiary’s ecphrasis of Hagia Sophia, more than 1000 Nonnian
hexameters, was performed in full. There are notes in the only manuscript
indicating where there were breaks in the recitation while the company
moved from one part of the church to another. 93 And Arator’s paraphrase of
Acts is accompanied by a subscription describing how it was publicly recited
for days on end with constant interruptions for applause and encores. 94
The books into which George of Pisidia’s poems were divided were called
‘hearings’ (ἀκροάσεις)

Of course, such works could only have been understood by a small, highly
educated elite, though whether significantly smaller than in earlier times
there is no way of knowing. The ability to appreciate such work was
itself a proof that one was a member of the elite. There was clearly a
public, however small, for poetry of this nature. Gregory’s poem on his
own life, in almost 2000 lines, is addressed to his former congregation
at Constantinople, and is full of justification of his conduct as bishop: ‘My
purpose is to tell the tale of my calamities or, if you will, my achievements.’
He must have been writing in the main for Christians, and yet he thought
they would prefer classicizing verse (‘verse makes a sermon enjoyable’).
Already by the 380s, it seems, Constantinople had a cultivated Christian
elite. Public appreciation of Paul the Silentiary’s ecphrasis may seem less
surprising if we bear in mind that among his listeners there will have been
the dozens of contributors to the collection of classicizing epigrams published
by his friend Agathias, all of them, to judge from titles like scholastikos,
referendarios, antekessor, and the like, professional men. 95 It is easy to see
why such men liked to have the dedications on the monuments celebrating
their governorships in verse rather than prose.

Winning an audience was certainly the goal of the many poetic

(p.348)
paraphrases of bible books in the high style. Whatever bishops and

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We have seen that the rationale of didactic iambics was that they could
easily be memorized. Whether or not anyone memorized Sedulius’ poem
in its entirety, brief passages and striking phrases may well have stuck in
the memory of people trained to memorize poetry. Interestingly enough,
he subsequently rewrote the poem in prose. As was only to be expected,
by classical standards the poetic version is more consistently successful.
An epigram of Claudian’s purports to be a reply to a friend who had asked
him for something in prose. Sorry, he says: ‘the Muses say no to prose; I
speak only poetry’ (‘verba negant communia Musae; carmina sola loquor’,
Carmina Minora 3). No doubt a joke, but probably in essence true enough
nonetheless. It is unlikely that Claudian could have produced classicizing
prose as pure as his classicizing verses.

There can be little doubt that poetry was more attractive than prose to
late antique men of culture. Why otherwise did Paulinus of Nola, a man
with serious reservations about the value of secular culture, write so many
classicizing poems in so many different genres? It is sometimes suggested
that Christian poets like Paulinus and Prudentius (who also wrote classicizing
poems in many genres) had a polemical purpose, to provide a Christian
alternative to classical pagan poetry. While there is no doubt some truth in
this, such an assumption seems to overlook the sheer pleasure someone like
Gregory confesses to taking in the process of versification. Paulinus’ series of
poems on St Felix are surely cast in the form of hexameter encomia because
verse was the standard medium for a praise poem (more below), and more
likely to appeal to sophisticated readers (who might have dozed off during a
regular sermon) (p.349) . Several of Gregory’s poems are likewise panegyrics
and invectives in form, exploiting the conventions for unconventional subject
matter. For example, a hexameter panegyric in the high style following

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The notion that the Christian biblical paraphrases might be polemical is

rendered doubtful by the occasional secular examples: Plotinus’s friend
Zoticus did one of Plato’s Critias, and under Diocletian Soterichus of Oasis,
in addition to a variety of mythical, historical, and panegyrical epics, wrote
a hexameter version of the life of Apollonius of Tyana. The Neoplatonist
Marinus produced a metrical version of his own Life of Proclus. 97

VI
I turn now to Latin literature, where something rather similar eventually
came to pass, but by a somewhat different route. In the Greek world,
classicizing poetry was at its lowest ebb in the first century AD, a period
when Latin poetry reached its highest point. But the Latin archaizers of
the second century rejected these new Latin classics, above all the writers
of the Silver age. Fronto despised Lucan and Seneca, and Hadrian was
said to prefer Ennius to Vergil. Fronto and his generation no doubt hoped
that an appeal to the past would renew Latin literature as it seemed to
have renewed Greek literature with the Second Sophistic, but however
disquieting the excesses of Silver Latin rhetoric, it was not possible to renew
Latin literature by turning back the clock. The only notable work to survive
from this age, significantly enough, is the Golden Ass of Apuleius, from the
linguistic point of view an unmistakable child of the archaizing movement,
but in its subject matter and treatment a version of a Greek novel. The few
Latin poets of the age, the so-called poetae novelli, were simply archaizers
in verse. 98 While Christian Latin literature flourished in the (p.350) second
and third centuries, secular literature suffered a catastrophic decline, prose
as well as poetry.

Sooner or later, a revival of interest in Silver Age literature was probably

inevitable. It was certainly a decisive factor in the subsequent development
of Latin literature. Without Vergil and Ovid and the poets of the Silver Age
the Latin poetry of Late Antiquity is unthinkable. Even at the height of
the archaizing movement, Roman elite education had remained basically
rhetorical in nature. By the end of the third century, as the corpus of the
Panegyrici Latini reveals, Latin oratory was flourishing once more. It was
inevitable that anyone with an interest and training in rhetoric who chanced
to pick up a text of Seneca, Lucan, Statius, or Juvenal would find it appealing.

Page 19 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

Lactantius was presumably educated in his native Africa. It is suggestive

that another writer to show early knowledge of the post-Augustans was also
an African, Nemesianus, writing in the 280s. Like Iuvencus, Nemesianus
too turned overwhelmingly to Vergil. Indeed he seems to have set himself
explicitly in the Vergilian succession, with a set of Eclogues, a didactic poem
(the Cynegetica), and the promise of an epic on the deeds of the short-
lived emperors Carinus and Numerian. While affecting the odd archaism,
Nemesianus was clearly familiar with Statius, both Silvae and Thebaid. He
has to be seen as a harbinger of the fourth-century (p.351) renaissance. The
author of the perhaps early fourth-century Pervigilium Veneris also knew
Statius.

The most remarkable, and certainly the most influential, Latin poet of Late
Antiquity is the bilingual Alexandrian Claudian. A number of earlier fourth-
century writers show knowledge of Lucan and Statius and Juvenal, but no
one before Claudian had so internalized the style of all three. As already
remarked, Claudian wrote many a passage that could easily pass for first-
century work. Notoriously, an otherwise undistinguished Bodleian MS offers
34 additional lines in Juvenal’s sixth satire, lines known to the scholia and so
no later than the fifth century. Sooner or later all defenders of these (in my
opinion probably spurious) lines resort to the rhetorical question: who but
Juvenal could have written them? Well, Claudian for one. 100

This revival of the whole range of early imperial Latin poetry is a central
feature of western elite culture at this time, once again Christian no less than
pagan. Among other things, it helps to explain the enormous and instant
success of Claudian in the West. To emphasize too exclusively Claudian’s
remarkable talent is to blind ourselves to the wider context in which he

Page 20 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

In addition, Claudian was clearly familiar with all the traditions of Greek
encomiastic poetry. In my book on Claudian in 1970, I suggested that it was
Claudian himself who married these two traditions and in effect created the
forms that were to serve as the medium of political and panegyrical poetry
from the fourth century to the age of Charlemagne. I still believe that the
Greek theory and expertise Claudian brought with him were crucial to the
maturing of Latin panegyrical poetry, but I am no longer so sure that he
created it virtually de nihilo.

There is at least one figure I overlooked: Anicia Betitia Proba. Though only
known from her surviving biblical cento, we learn from its preface as well
as from some biographical notices (p.352) preserved in manuscripts of the
work that she also wrote an epic on the civil war between Constantius II and
Magnentius. 101 Everything we know about Proba’s secular poetry comes
from the preface to her biblical cento, in which she proudly proclaims that
she no longer ‘leads down the Muses from the Aonian peak’; no longer does
she write of ambrosia or ‘talking rocks and laurelled tripods,’ i.e. the Delphic
oracle; no longer ‘quarrelling gods’. These ‘quarrelling gods’ must refer to
the divine framework of a traditional classicizing epic. Whether Proba was
first converted after writing this epic or simply rejected the Olympian epic
machinery as her piety deepened, it seems clear that she wrote a traditional
classicizing epic on a recent imperial campaign, the war against Magnentius
in the early 350s, almost half a century before Claudian.

Then there is the poetic oeuvre of Paulinus of Nola. One of his very first
poems (generally dated c.390, long before the first Latin works of Claudian)
is a eulogy of John the Baptist, Laus Sancti Iohannis (Carmen 6). As Green
remarks, it is better classified as a panegyric than a biography. Like so
much of Paulinus’ poetry, the very vehemence with which he rejects the
trappings of pagan poetry underlines his familiarity with it. 102 This is
particularly obvious in his one epithalamium, in which he explicitly rejects
Juno, Cupid, and Venus, thereby revealing his knowledge of their prominence
in traditional secular epithalamia. 103 The bulk of Paulinus’ poems were
natalicia, commemorating St Felix every year from 395 to 407 on his feast
day, 14 January. Here it is less the occasional debt to secular birthday poetry
that impresses me, 104 than simply the fact that he chose to honour his

Page 21 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

If Betitia Proba was writing such poems as early as the 350s, Claudian
surely had other predecessors, whose work was of such modest quality and
ephemeral interest that they failed to survive. We might also recall the epic
on Carinus and Numerian promised by Nemesianus in 283. It seems to have
been Statius who introduced the panegyrical epic into Latin, with his De bello
germanico on a campaign of Domitian, lost except for four lines quoted,
significantly enough, in the fifth-century scholia on Juvenal. It is natural that
interest in the genre should revive when interest in Statius revived, and
Nemesianus knew Statius. Statius’s epithalamia were also much read and
imitated in Late Antiquity.

There can be little doubt that Claudian is the key figure in the encomiastic
poetry of the Latin West. It is proof enough that his poems are the first of
their kind to survive and were so widely imitated by his successors. But the
fact that he had predecessors helps to explain that very success. In subject
matter and genre no less than in style, he was writing for an audience able to
appreciate what he had to offer.

The brilliance of Claudian’s invectives is likewise liable to blind us to the

fact that here too he had predecessors. One of the most intensely studied
Christian poems of the age is the notorious Carmen Contra Paganos, on the
death of a pagan prefect. But its form has attracted far less attention than its
controversial addressee. It is one of no fewer than three surviving Christian
hexameter invectives against prominent pagans. Why this form? Obviously
because their authors, like Gregory writing in the main for Christians, thought
they would reach a wider and more appreciative audience in classicizing
verse. Indeed the point is made quite explicitly in the so-called Pseudo-
Cyprianic poem addressed to a Christian senator who had lapsed into
paganism. It opens with the words: ‘Since you have always enjoyed poetry, I
hastened to respond to you in verse, to reproach you for preferring darkness
to light’ (‘quia carmina semper amasti, | carmine respondens properavi

Page 22 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

I close with a characteristically dated verdict on Claudian, by H. J. Rose:

‘Towering above all these pygmies comes one figure, as mysterious as it is
astonishing, which … wins a place in Latin literature worthy of better ages.’
105 But Claudian’s poetry is no isolated footnote to Latin literature, appearing
out of the blue. If we may set on one side such an imponderable as the
sheer quality of his work, he should be seen rather as the culmination of an
entire century’s revival of Silver Latin poetry throughout the West, and at the
same time as a typical Greek wandering poet of the age. In many ways he
represents the very essence of late antique literary culture.

Notes:

(1) e.g. Saïd, Trédé, and Le Boulluec ( 1997 ) 407–11.

(2) For a good collection of evidence, Hardie ( 1983 ) 22–30; see too
Cameron ( 1995a ) 47–53.

(3) Bowie ( 1990 ) 53–66 and Bowie ( 1989 ); on their dates, Alan Cameron (
1993 ) 56–69.

(4) Robert ( 1968a ); Burnikel ( 1980 ).

(5) Alan Cameron ( 1993 ) 86.

(6) Heitsch (1963–4) 2 no. 62; Dorotheus, ed. D. Pingree (Leipzig 1976).

(7) Geog. Graec. Min. 2.103–76.

(8) For a brief account of all these works, Bowie ( 1990 ) 66–80.

(9) Bowie ( 1989 ) 201–2 (Marcellus); Neugebauer and van Hoesen ( 1959 )
92 (Manetho); for papyri of Manetho, P. Oxy. 2546 and ZPE 21 (1976), 182.

(10) Habicht ( 1985 ) 130.

Page 23 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

(12) For what there is, see, briefly, Dihle ( 1994 ) 271, 571.

(13) Heitsch (1963–4) 1 no. 19.

(14) Heitsch (1963–4) 2.44–7; (S6) OCD 3 s.v. Septimius Nestor.

(15) P Oxy. 2946, with Cameron ( 1970 ) 478–82 and Whitby in Hopkinson (
1994 ) 118–22.

(16) Vian ( 1963 ) xix–xxiv.

(17) Suda s.v. Σωιήριηος PLRE 1.850.

(18) For the elegiac encomion, Cameron ( 1995 a) 149–50, 289–91; SH 982,
with Barbantani ( 1998 ) 255–344.

(19) Hardie ( 1983 ) ch. 2 ; Cameron ( 1995 a) ch. 2.6–9; see too ch. 10 on
the modern myth of Hellenistic historical epic.

(20) Cameron ( 1965 ) 470–509, further developed in Cameron ( 1982 ) 217–

89.

(21) Godman ( 1987 ).

(22) For Hellenistic examples, Cameron ( 1995 a) 26 and 51.

(23) See Cameron ( 1970 ) 7–11; Dagron ( 1984 ) ch. 1 .

(24) Photius, Bibl. Cod. 279, 536a 9–16 (on these iambics, more below).

(25) Heitsch (1963–4) 1 no. 24; see too the elaborate edition with
introduction and commentary by Gigli Piccardi ( 1990 ), assigning it to
Andronicus of Hermupolis (pp. 60–2).

(26) Chuvin ( 1991 ).

(27) Robert ( 1948 ).

(28) Robert ( 1959 ) 1–30 = Op. Min. Sel. 3 (1969), 1640–69.

Page 24 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

(30) Anth. Pal. 1.10; Mango and Sevcenko ( 1963 ) 243–7; Harrison ( 1986 ).

(31) See the brief account by Schetter in Herzog and Schmidt ( 1993 ) 258–
71.

(32) A. Kaufmann-Heinimann, JRA 12 (1999), 339 with fig. 10. The massive
hunt plate in the Sevso treasure of about the same date is engraved with a
similar inscription in an elegiac couplet.

(33) De Pythiae Oraculis and De Defectu Oraculorum (Mor. 394–409 and 409–
38).

(34) 406C (οὐ γὰρ μόνον νυν

̑ ὀλίγοι μόις ἐπαΐουσι) 406 Ф (ἀςελὼν δὲ των
̑
χρησμων̑ ἔπη καὶ γλώττας καὶ περιφράσεις καὶ ἀσάφειαν)

(35) Robert ( 1968 b) and ( 1971 ); Lane Fox ( 1986 ), 168–261; Potter ( 1994
).

(36) Roberts ( 1985 ).

(37) For a good selection of extracts with brief notes, Pellegrino ( 1939 ). The
last (more or less) complete edition is that of Caillau (1842), reprinted by
Migne in PG 37 and 38.

(38) δεύτερον δὲ τοις

̂ νέοις,|καὶ των
̂ ‘όσοι μάλιστα χαίρουσιν λόγοις,|ὥσπερ
τι τερπνὸν τουτο
̂ δουναι
̂ φάρμακον,|πειθοῦς ἀγωγὸν εἰς τὰ χρησιμώτατα,|
τέχνη γλυκάζων τὸ πικρὸν των ̂ ἐντολων̂ Carm. 2.1.39.37–41.

(39) Carmen 2.1.11; trans. Meehan ( 1987 ) 77.

(40) 1.935–50 = 410–25; Plato, Laws 659e. Von Staden ( 1998 ), 76

emphasizes, by contrast, that Galen repeatedly underlines the utility of
Damocrates’s verses.

(41) Carmen 1.2.25 (546 lines).

(42) Harris ( 2001 ) 125–6.

(43) Brown ( 1992 ) 48–58.

Page 25 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

(45) F. Jacoby, FGrH 244 F 3, 4, 26, 32, 43, 47, 53, 54, 55, 58–60; Mueller,
Geographi Graeci Minores 1 (1855) 196–237 and (for a radically revised text
of part of the poem), Diller ( 1952 ) 165–76.

(46) See the passages quoted and discussed by von Staden ( 1998 ) 65–94 at
75–8. In the course of three different works Galen quotes no fewer than 1684
of Damocrates’s iambics.

(47) Mueller, Geographi Graeci minores 1.238–43 with p. lxxx.

(48) Rhet. iii. 8, 1408b 32; cf. Poet. 1449a 24. ‘senarios vero et Hipponacteos
effugere vix possumus’ (Cic. Or. 189).

(49) Funaioli ( 1907 ) 82–4; Courtney ( 1993 ) 93–6; quotation from F 1. 5–6.

(50) Smolak in Herzog and Schmidt ( 1993 ) 370–1; for more details, see my
forthcoming Greek Mythography in the Roman World; for his name, Cameron
( 1995 b).

(51) Effe ( 1977 ) 184–7.

(52) Gow and Scholfield ( 1953 ) 18.

(53) So Pfeiffer ( 1968 ) 255.

(54) Oberg ( 1969 ), with useful preface and notes (p. 4. structure of poem,
pp. 87–90 metrical practice).

(55) ἔρρωσο καὶ μέμνησο των

̑ γεγραμμένων, line 334.

(56) For a brief account, A. Gudeman, RE 8. 1 (1912), 98–102 (no. 2); for
more detail, Heimannsfeld ( 1911 ). Photius was naturally distressed by
the first item, an attack on Moses, for which see Gager ( 1972 ) 129–32.
From the fact that Photius refers to Helladius’s book by the prosaic word
pragmateiva, Gudeman inferred that he did not excerpt it at first hand, but
from an existing epitome. Yet Dionysius uses this very word of his Periegesis
(line 21).

Page 26 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

(58) See Phot. 536a 4–8.

(59) See the introduction to P Oxy. 4381 and Fournet ( 1999 ) 286 n. 282;
PLRE 1.570.

(60) Phot. Cod. 279, p. 536a 12–13; PLRE 1.65–6.

(61) Frendo ( 1984 ) 162, followed by Tartaglia ( 1998 ) 11. Frendo strangely
argued that George’s iambics developed out of the comic iambics used for
prefaces to hexameter poems in IV–VI s.poets (Viljamaa ( 1968 ) 84–97;
Cameron ( 1970 ) 119–29).

(62) These poems are all now included in Tartaglia ( 1998 ); A. Pertusi’s
edition (Ettal 1959) included only the panegyrics and epics.

(63) The three longest (2.1.1; 2.1.12; 2.1.11) are translated in Meehan ( 1987
).

(64) F. Jacoby ( 1902 ) 60–74; West ( 1982 ) 183–5.

(65) No edition more recent than Wieck ( 1897 ); for the poet’s metrical
practice, pp. 23–6, though caution is required here, since the copy that has
come down to us carries a note by Demetrius Triclinius claiming to have
corrected the poet’s errors.

(66) See M. Sicherl’s section on Gregory’s metrical practice in Oberhaus (

1991 ) 26–36, especially 32–3.

(67) Kuhn ( 1892 ).

(68) Maas ( 1903 ), 278–323; for one of the more learned poets, Criscuolo (
1979 ), with pp. x–xii.

(69) He even knew that consummate metrician Callimachus well: see

Cameron ( 1995 a) 334–6.

(70) Keydell ( 1950 ) 134–43 at 142.

Page 27 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

(72) Mattsson ( 1942 ) 112–71.

(73) Anth. Pal. 9. 644. 3.

(74) A venial slip, given the existence of a different word, λῐτός = ‘suppliant.’

(75) Briefly listed by Maas ( 1962 ) 62–5.

(76) Cameron ( 1995 a) 47–70; for the abundant epigraphic evidence,

Guarducci (1926–29), 629–65.

(77) A notable exception is Dihle ( 1994 ).

(78) Wright ( 1932 ).

(79) Cameron ( 1970 ) ch. 8 .

(80) Vian ( 1997 ) 143–60.

(81) Cameron ( 2000 ) 175–88.

(82) e.g. Bailey ( 1935 ); Boyancé ( 1963 ).

(83) For a recent account and bibliography, Schmidt in Herzog and Schmidt (
1993 ), 163–81.

(84) All these points are treated in more detail in my two forthcoming books,
Greek Mythography in the Roman World and The Last Pagans of Rome.

(85) MacCormack ( 1998 ).

(86) ‘ante cenam cum ipsis dimidium volumen Vergili audire cotidie solitus
eram’, (De Ordine 1.8.26); cf. Contra Acad. 1.15 and 2.10.

(87) See the texts collected in Cameron ( 1995 a) 272–7.

(88) See his Teubner edition, Ilias i (1998) xxxviii–liv.

(89) Cribiore ( 1996 ), nos. 292 and 340, with Cribiore ( 1993 ) 145–54.

(90) ‘Augendichtung,’ in a famous phrase of Paul Maas.

Page 28 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

(92) Felgentreu ( 1999 ).

(93) For other Byzantine examples, Cameron ( 1995a ) 45.

(94) The only reliable edition of this subscription is by Chatillon ( 1963 ) 71–8.

(95) Cameron and Cameron ( 1966 ) 6–25.

(96) Carmen 1.2.1 (in 732 lines).

(97) There was something of a tradition of verse encomia among the late
Neoplatonists. Damascius wrote one for the funeral of the wife of Hermeias,
and Christodorus a poem in hexameters on the disciples of Proclus: Saffrey
and Segonds ( 2001 ) x–xi.

(98) Cameron ( 1980 ) 127–75.

(99) For a full account, see my forthcoming Last Pagans of Rome.

(100) I am not seriously suggesting that he did; merely pointing out that they
are not beyond his powers.

(101) I reject Danuta Shanzer’s misguided attempt to identify the poet Proba
as Anicia Faltonia Proba, the granddaughter of Anicia Betitia Proba. For
decisive arguments against see Matthews ( 1992 ) 277–304.

(102) Green ( 1971 ) 21–2; Walsh ( 1975 ), 17; Junod-Ammerbauer ( 1975 )

14–15; Trout ( 1999 ) 85–6.

(103) Carmen 25; Green ( 1971 ), 35–7; Roberts ( 1989b ) 337–8; Trout (
1999 ) 215–7.

(104) So Walsh ( 1975 ) 7; Green ( 1971 ) 29.

(105) Rose ( 1954 ) 529.

Page 29 of 30 Poetry and Literary Culture in Late Antiquity

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

Susan Walker

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0012

Abstract and Keywords

About one thousand mummy portraits have survived from Roman Egypt.
They constitute a unique record in colour of a group of individuals, many
resident in the towns and villages of the Fayum, but others living in the
settlements of the Nile Valley and even on the Mediterranean littoral. This
chapter explores the changes in representation of these persons in mummy
portraits of the later 3rd and 4th centuries ad, when the educated elite of
Hellenic cultural affiliation were concentrated in settlements in the Nile
valley.

Keywords: Roman Egypt, mummy portraits, Nile Valley, settlements

About one thousand mummy portraits have survived from Roman Egypt.
They constitute a unique record in colour of a group of individuals, many
resident in the towns and villages of the Fayum, but others living in the
settlements of the Nile Valley and even on the Mediterranean littoral. This
chapter explores the changes in representation of these persons in mummy
portraits of the later third and fourth centuries ad, when the educated elite
of Hellenic cultural affiliation were concentrated in settlements in the Nile
valley.

Page 1 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

The latter are often known today as ‘Fayum Portraits’, a name deriving
from the publication and exhibition, to great public acclaim a century ago,
of portraits found in the 1880s by W. Flinders Petrie, then excavating the
cemeteries of Hawara (Roberts ( 1999 ) 49–70), and by the Viennese dealer
and antiquarian Theodor Graf, who conducted largely unrecorded exploration
at er-Rubayat (Borg ( 1996 ) 184–5). Recently it has been reconfirmed that
Graf’s campaigns took place in the cemeteries of ancient Philadelphia in
the north-east Fayum (Roberts ( 1999 ) 49–50). However, an important
collection of portraits, including many shroud paintings of late antique
date, was excavated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by
Albert Gayet at Antinoopolis (Fig. 1 ), south of the Fayum in Middle Egypt. 1
Indeed, portraits are known from many other sites in the Nile Valley, from
Memphis (Saqqara) in the north to Thebes in the south. Recent excavations
by Professor Wiktor Daszweski at Marina el-Alamein on the Mediterranean
coast west of Alexandria have revealed portrait mummies (Daszweski ( 1997
) 59–65).

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP
Attracting considerable public and scholarly interest at the time of their
discovery (Montserrat 1998 ), for much of the twentieth century mummy

Page 2 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

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2013. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter
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Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg; date: 11 November 2013
portraits have proved a casualty of increasing scholarly specialization.
Too late in date to interest Egyptologists, they have been considered a
peculiar regional development by historians of Roman art. Their equivocal
status between archaeological and art object has also proved a barrier to
investigation. However, in 1964 Klaus Parlasca produced a comprehensive
study of mummy portraits in all media, and a monograph on funerary masks
appeared ten years later (Grimm 1974 ). In the meantime, Parlasca had
begun work on a corpus of portraits on wood and linen, of which all four
projected volumes have now been published. 2 In the 1990s four important
monographs appeared and a (p.312) (p.313) (p.314) series of exhibitions
brought the portraits to a wide and appreciative audience. 3 Academic
debate over the chronology and significance of the portraits remains lively.
Volume 3 of the corpus (Parlasca 1980 ) has proved especially controversial,
following Drerup ( 1933 ) in dating many of the portraits in tempera to the
fourth century ad. Borg ( 1996 ) has argued instead for an end to the series
in the first half of the third century ad, a conclusion independently reached
by Walker (Walker and Bierbrier ( 1997 a) 16). In 1998 a new permanent
gallery of funerary art from Roman Egypt was opened at the Muse´e du
Louvre, Paris. Amongst the many objects of absorbing interest were some
of the painted shrouds excavated by Gayet at Antinoopolis and recently
conserved. The new opportunity to study these shrouds led the present
author to revise her views on the dating, extending the series through the
later third and fourth centuries (Walker ( 1999 ) 74–8 and (2000) 34–6).
These views have been supported by Riggs ( 2002 ) in a wide-ranging survey
of recent research on the funerary art of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt.

Fig. 1. View of the ruins of the city of Antinoopolis, drawn by Jomard for
Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt.

CULTURAL INFLUENCES AND IDENTIFICATION OF THE

SUBJECT

Page 3 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

(a) Egypt

In the context of pagan Roman Egypt, the rite of mummification presumes a

belief on the part of the deceased and his or her surviving kin in the Egyptian
cults, and specifically in traditional teaching on the nature of death and
the afterlife. In very broad terms, the rites of pharaonic Egypt continued to
sustain the spiritual lives of the inhabitants of the country, even after three
(p.315) centuries of rule by the Ptolemies, and a further three centuries
of rule by Rome (Taylor ( 1997 , 2000 ) 9–13). However, current as yet
unpublished research points to a substantial reduction in the later Ptolemaic
period of the funerary apparatus and accompanying texts (Stephen Quirke,
personal communication, 2002).

Where the mummy survives with the portrait, it is often decorated with
symbols of Egyptian belief and funerary ritual. Very well known and recently
re-exhibited in the permanent galleries of Egyptian funerary archaeology,
opened at the British Museum in 1999, is the mummy of Artemidorus
(Plate 4: Walker and Bierbrier 1997 a) 56, no. 32). The conventional panel
portrait shows Artemidorus as a young man dressed in tunic and mantle,
an unexceptional figure within the educated classes of the eastern Roman
Empire at the time of his death in the early second century ad. Painted in
encaustic, most likely on limewood, the panel is inserted within a cartonnage
coffin painted red and decorated with gilded stucco relief. Immediately
below the portrait is an elaborate collar, its terminals in the form of the
god Horus wearing the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. Beneath are two
squatting deities in Egyptian dress, holding either the knives used to destroy
the forces of chaos, or the feathers denoting the concept of Maat, the ideal
state of cosmic order. Below this a conventional (though misspelled) Greek
inscription, Ἀρτεμίδωρε εὐψύχ(ε)ι (‘Farewell, Artemidorus’) would hardly
be out of place in an Athenian cemetery, but for the fact that it is enclosed
within a Roman tabula ansata. Beneath are three Egyptian scenes: the god
Anubis lays out the mummy on an elaborate lion-shaped bed, while two
goddesses, probably Isis and Nephthys, mourn at the head and foot; Thoth
and Re-Horakhty flank the fetish of Osiris associated with his cult at Abydos,
and Osiris himself, on a lion-bed, awakes to a new life. A winged sun-disc

Page 4 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

Corcoran ( 1995 ) offers a catalogue of this and other examples of Egyptian

religious iconography, arguing that the portraits in their original context had
a wholly religious function. However, such decoration is virtually unknown
on the inserted panels themselves, which present the individual as he
or she appeared in their lifetime, as a subject of Rome. It thus appears
that those who commissioned the panel portraits, at least, took trouble to
separate evidence of religious sentiment from the likeness of the individual.
(p.316) Surviving inscriptions on mummy labels, and in one case on an
inserted portrait panel, offer further evidence of the confinement of religious
sentiment, as do text and images incised on stone memorials, some of
which appear to follow the format of contemporary painted shrouds. 4 These
last represent the deceased as a Romanized man of culture, typical of the
eastern Mediterranean provinces, but set in the specifically Egyptian context
of being escorted by Anubis to the waiting Osiris, the scene accompanied by
explanatory hieroglyphic texts.

Such a clear distinction between the form of the portrait and the religious
affiliation of the subject suggests that the images are not to be understood
as a local form of the Roman practice of consecratio in formam deorum (so
Ro¨mer 2000), in which the subject is shown with contemporary hairstyle
and physiognomy combined with the attributes and the pose of the deity
in question. Instead they may be seen as representing the process of
abandonment of the mortal form for that of Osiris, in the case of men,
and Hathor, in the case of women. The stages of the transformation are
meticulously recorded on some shrouds (e.g. Walker and Montserrat 1998 ).

(b) Rome

In contrast to decoration or text that may in a literal sense be considered

peripheral to the portrait, the latter, whether it be a painted panel, plaster
mask, shroud or coffin case, offers a fashionably Roman presentation of the
deceased individual, in terms of hairstyle, dress and personal adornment.
If a number of mummy portraits are placed together they may look very
conventionalized, e.g. Doxiadis ( 1995 ) 58–9, nos. 41–4; indeed, the
appearance of Roman hairstyles, modish jewellery and current styles of
dress, all of which may be compared with portraits in other media and finds
of jewellery and clothing from Egypt and elsewhere, allow the construction of
a sequence of portraits, most of them datable within twenty years or so.

Page 5 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

Here two processes may be discerned: first, that the appearance of such
worldly portraits in mid-first century Egypt was less a local initiative than a
response to the imposition of Roman imperial rule, and, second, that in the
course of the second century AD the communities of Roman Egypt gained
a sense of local identity and self-worth, the latter reflected not only in the
appearance of local references in mummy portraits but also in ambitious
programmes of urban development and in the eventual establishment under
the Severan emperors of town councils which allowed a measure of self-
regulation. 6 The notion that mummy portraits were concerned with the
Roman world beyond Egypt is also reflected in recent research on their
materials, where a consistent pattern has been observed of the use of
woods such as lime (at Hawara) and oak (for paintings associated with er-
Rubayat), native not to Egypt but to the lands of the northern Mediterranean
(Cartwright ( 1997 ) 106–11), and even of pigments not previously known to
the Egyptian repertoire but well-established at Rome: lead-white at Hawara
and celadonite on an unprovenanced plaster mask from the Nile Valley,
also minium (an orange-red pigment), found in a paintsaucer from Hawara,
whose form imitates in local clay the so-called Haltern cup known from
sites throughout the Roman Empire. 7 (p.318) These observations support
the view that individual portraiture as seen on Roman mummies was a
genre inspired from and perhaps even developed outside Egypt. Indeed,
the painted portraits have been related to other forms of regional Roman
funerary portrait, such as the distinctive stone relief sculptures of Cyrenaica
and Palmyra, which are only known within the regions in question, but
were not known within them before Roman rule had been established for a
generation or so: on Cyrenaica, see Rosenbaum ( 1960 ); for Palmyra, see
recently Ploug ( 1995 ).

Page 6 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

Greeks settled in Egypt in large numbers following the establishment of

Ptolemaic rule at the close of the fourth century BC. Among them were
veteran soldiers who had fought for the early Ptolemies and as a reward
were granted land in the Fayum, drained in the third century BC to make
fertile agricultural soil. These persons, originating from various parts of the
Greek world, ‘went native’, many of their number marrying Egyptian women
and embracing Egyptian religion. By the time of the Roman conquest in 30
BC, the population of the Fayum and indeed of other parts of Egypt was
racially very mixed indeed (Bagnall ( 1997 ) 7–15).

Following the Roman conquest, a new classification of the population was

imposed, in which the Greek residents of the capital Alexandria, along
with those of the old settlements of Naucratis, Ptolemais (in Upper Egypt),
and, later, Antinoopolis enjoyed substantial privileges, notably in respect
of taxation, while the remaining population was classified as Egyptian
and subject to a hefty poll-tax (Bagnall ( 1997 ) 7). In such a climate the
descendants of the veterans settled in the Fayum found it necessary to
remind their Roman masters of their Greek ancestry (however diluted,
and, it must be said, in some cases assumed), and an arrangement was
apparently made whereby this group of persons, mysteriously but precisely
termed the 6475, was granted exceptional status as katoikoi—literally,
‘veteran settlers’, from whom the 6475 traced their descent. Others were
classed as metropolitai (city-dwellers, a residential qualification), and both
groups enjoyed a discount on their poll-tax, in return for undertaking certain
administrative tasks on behalf of the Romans (Bagnall ( 1997 ) 7).

(p.319) A number of references to the 6475 survive, most on papyri

concerned with census returns; these share a remarkable coincidence of
date, personal names and, where specified, domicile, with the painted
portraits and mummy labels recovered by the British archaeologist Flinders
Petrie in his excavations of the cemeteries at Hawara in the Fayum. For
example, a wooden label found at Hawara by Petrie describes a certain
Bobastous, ‘[who lived] near the gate of the Thermouthiac quarter of the
Arsinoite Metropolis’, in every likelihood the Hermouthiac area of Ptolemais
Euergetes, where numbers of the 6475 are recorded in census returns
(Walker and Bierbrier 1997 a) 181, no. 237).

Indeed, Hawara was the burial ground of the capital, Ptolemais Euergetis, of
the nome of Arsinoe, and the location of a pyramid, still extant, constructed

Page 7 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

Greek identity was especially critical to the inhabitants of Antinoopolis,

the city founded by the Roman emperor Hadrian in memory of his beloved
Antinous, who drowned in mysterious (p.320) circumstances in the Nile in
AD 130. The memorial city was composed of ethnic Greeks, selected by
Hadrian from existing Greek communities, among them the 6475 of the
Fayum (P Fam. Tebt. 30 = Canducci ( 1990 ) 216). Antinoopolis has produced
a distinctive series of mummy portraits, the panels cut in a steeply sloping
line following the shoulders of the deceased. The austere presentation of the
hair and faces of the subjects of portraits from Antinoopolis is particularly
striking, and might represent a deliberate revival of a modest personal style
favoured in classical Greece, though in Roman Egypt its simplicity is often
belied by the amount of jewellery shown in the portrait, e.g. Walker and
Bierbrier 1997 a) 107–8, nos. 100–1.

CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE PRODUCTION OF MUMMY

PORTRAITS
On this reading, then, the mummy portraits offer three cultures, Egyptian,
Roman, and Greek, each distinctly signalled by visual or writtenmeans.

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Thesocial contextinwhichtheseremarkable images were made is historically
specific, and may be reconstructed with reasonable certainty from written
sources. Unfortunately nothing is known of the exact circumstances in which
the portraits were produced. Petrie observed that only 1–2 per cent of the
mummies recovered from Hawara had painted portraits (Petrie ( 1911 ) 2).
At El-Alamein, the painted portraits were found on only two mummies in
the most elaborate tomb of Roman date, which contained bowls of Cypriot
sigillata (Daszweski ( 1997 ), 63–4 with n. 9 p. 65). The restricted numbers
suggest a small elite, and something is known from papyri of the funerals of
well-to-do families in Roman Egypt (Montserrat ( 1997 ) 33–44 with Ro¨mer
(2000) 142 n. 6). There were two distinct stages: the Greek rite of ekphora,
in which the shrouded corpse was borne through the town or village, and a
second phase in which, in place of burial or cremation, the corpse was taken
to the embalmers, located far from the village at the desert margin. There
is no direct evidence for the role of the portrait before mummification, but
it may be suggested that the portrait was commissioned as a panel to be
carried in the funeral procession and was cut to fit the mummy when the
body reached the embalmers. This might explain the presence of nail holes
in some of the panels, the survival of some uncut panels, and of a (p.321)
couple of double-sided portraits, indeed one of a youth found at Hawara who
was painted three times in all. 8 Portraits of the dead were carried in funeral
processions in Greece under Roman rule: a record survives of one boy from
Epidaurus who died aged 11, and had clearly represented his family’s hopes
for social and political advancement; he had a portrait for each year of his
life commissioned for his funeral (Spawforth (1983) 251–4). However, a
sketched portrait bearing instructions written in Greek for the artist was
found in a Roman cemetery at Tebtunis; the final version, modified according
to the instructions, was recovered from one of the tombs in the cemetery,
suggesting that this was where the artists were based (Walker ( 2000 ) 120–
1, no. 77).

MUMMY PORTRAITURE IN LATE ANTIQUITY

According to the dating established by Borg and Walker (above, p. 314), very
few portraits were made on painted panels after the mid-third century AD.
9 However, full-length portraits painted on linen shrouds continued to be
commissioned, at least in some urban centres of the Nile Valley, if not the
Fayum itself.

Recent research on the dress of the individuals portrayed in the shroud

paintings from Antinoopolis indicates that these portraits were made from

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the mid-third well into the mid- or even later fourth century (Walker ( 1999
) 74–8). Their subjects wear dalmatics, ample tunics secured by a belt, with
very wide sleeves, and rich decoration on the clavi, the cuffs, and in roundels
and squares woven into the body of the tunic (Plates 5–6; Figs. 2 – 3 ). These
costly garments were not widely adopted before the middle of the third
century, though achieving thirty-three entries in Diocletian’s Price Edict
(Lauffer ( 1971 ) 19, 29). Nor do dalmatics appear on the panel portraits
from the Fayum settlements: the exceptions noted above are, respectively,
probably from Antinoopolis and unprovenanced. A second type of tunic with
narrow sleeves, well represented in the shrouds commissioned for men and
boys from Antinoopolis, does not appear on any known (p.322) panel portrait
(Fig. 3 ). A chronological sequence of dalmatics may be established, the
tunics becoming ever more elaborately decorated, the embroidered clavi
eventually appearing as a stole standing proud of the tunic (Pls. 5–6: see
also Walker ( 1999 ) 77, figs.). This last development may represent the
dalmaticomaforium, listed in Diocletian’s Price Edict (Mossakowska ( 1996 )
30). Some figures (p.323) wear a decorated sash around the hips: Doxiadis
( 1995 ) 118, pl. 90 shows a woman, probably from Antinoopolis; a sash is
also worn by the god Heron in an icon painted on wood (Walker ( 2000 )
126, no. 80). This too could surely be worn as the maforium or mafurtium,
a shawl in everyday life worn over the head and shoulders—the ancestor,
perhaps, of that perennially useful and adaptable (p.324) modern garment,
the pashmina. Alongside the increasingly elaborate dress, the physiognomies
of the subjects gradually become less naturalistic, their oversized hands
and dominating eyes prefiguring the style of early Byzantine icon painting, a
development also seen in contemporary stone memorials (Thomas ( 2000 )
59). It is as if the individuality of the sitter, so striking a component of early
imperial mummy portraiture, had migrated to her clothes.

Page 10 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

Page 11 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

Though the geographical basis of such portraits appears much narrower

than that of the earlier panel paintings, individuals represented in late
antique shroud paintings continued to follow the fashions of imperial Rome.
The subjects of gold glass portraits from the metropolitan cemeteries are
similarly attired, as are the domina, her family and retainers in the well-
known commemorative mosaic panel from the villa at Piazza Armerina, Sicily.
Individuals represented in wall paintings decorating tombs in Rome and
elsewhere offer a similar presentation (Walker 1999 ).

These portraits offer a glimpse of a social elite evidently interested in

displaying their personal wealth and, on the evidence of the mosaic
panel, not confining their grand dress to a funerary context. It is also clear
that, though the subjects of the shroud paintings may have restricted

Page 12 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

Some of the later portraits suggest a Christian affiliation, yet none of the
symbols or gestures is overtly or exclusively Christian. It is known that
paganism continued to flourish throughout the fourth century if not the
fifth—again, roughly the range of the shroud portraits, which, like similarly
configured contemporary stone reliefs, are perhaps best understood as the
memorials of individuals following the old Hellenic tradition (Thomas ( 2000
) 37). Hellenism is visibly an urban phenomenon, alive in those communities
such as Panopolis (Achmim, Upper Egypt), which continued to nurture poets
and philosophers renowned beyond the valley of the Nile (Bagnall ( 1993 )
109). However, by the early fifth century, even in Antinoopolis the ascetic
Christian lifestyle was making an impact: a virgin confined to a convent for
thirty years had refused all offers of new clothes, whether mantles, shawls or
shoes (Mossakowska ( 1996 ), 28 with n. 10).

CONCLUSION
It may be suggested that the shroud portraits of late antique Antinoopolis
reflect the transfer of wealthier families from the declining settlements of the
Fayum to urban centres, of which Antinoopolis was the most conveniently
located, and had already absorbed individuals from the Fayum (Borg ( 1998 )
99–101). Memphis was perhaps another such centre; Thebes a third. Estates
were retained in the Fayum region by wealthy residents of the more secure
urban centres in the Nile valley (Bagnall ( 1993 ) 71, 93). In the fourth as

Page 13 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

A last important point: Alexandria has not been mentioned. There are no
mummy portraits known to have been found in (p.326) Alexandria. This
may be an accident (the climate is not favourable to their preservation), or
it may be a reflection of Alexandria’s exalted status: its citizens were too
grand to need advertisement of their Romanitas, and had lived for centuries
in the capital of Hellenic culture. For their memorials some commissioned
marble portraits of the sort found throughout the cities of the eastern
Mediterranean, but the metropolis also contained tombs decorated with
an interesting mixture of Hellenic and Egyptian views of life beyond the
grave, the two cultures painted in separate registers on the walls. 10 The kind
of self-representation described here belongs to the aspiring elites of the
smaller towns.

Notes:

(1) Doxiadis ( 1995 ) 147–52; Borg ( 1996 ) 185–6; Del Francia Barocas
(1996).

(2) Parlasca ( 1969 ), (1977), (1980), (2002). Though advertised as

published, the last volume was not available at the time of writing.

(3) Monographs: Borg ( 1996 ), ( 1998 ); Corcoran ( 1995 ); Doxiadis ( 1995

). Exhibition catalogues: Walker and Bierbrier ( 1997 ); Doxiadis ( 1998 );
Aubert and Cortopassi ( 1998 ); Seipel ( 1998 ); Parlasca and Seeman ( 1999
); Walker ( 2000 ).

(4) Inscribed label: Walker and Bierbrier ( 1997 a), 180–1, no. 235; inscribed
panel: 115–16, no. 111. Stone memorials: Walker and Bierbrier ( 1997 a)
154, no. 172; Walker ( 2000 ) 144, no. 197; (following formula of inscribed
shrouds) Walker and Bierbrier ( 1997 ) 153–4, no. 171; for an inscribed
shroud, see e.g. Parlasca and Seeman ( 1999 ) 260–1.

Page 14 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

(6) Bowman ( 1996 ) 68–9; Bowman and Rathbone ( 1992 ) 120–7.

(7) Unpublished research reported in Walker and Bierbrier ( 1997 ) 75–6, no.
53; 136, no. 141; 201, no. 270.

(8) Nail-holes: Walker and Bierbrier ( 1997 a) 69–70, no. 46; uncut panels:
Walker and Bierbrier ( 1997 ) 75–6, no 53; youth with three portraits:
Manchester Museum no. 5380–1 = Parlasca (1964) pl. 22, 1, 2, 4.

(9) Parlasca (1977) 86–7, no. 476 and Parlasca and Seeman ( 1999 ) 238, no.
146 are exceptions.

(10) Guimier-Sorbets and Seif el-Din ( 1997 ); Venit ( 1988 ), ( 1997 ), ( 1999
).

Page 15 of 15 Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Late Antique Art: The Problem of the Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic

Jaś Elsner

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0011

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter explores the category of ‘late antique art’. It considers some of
the changes in visual production — which fall basically in the 4th century —
and examines how some of the characteristic elements of late antique art
that emerged then were developed by the 6th century into a last spectacular
synthesis, which was truly antique but nonetheless new by contrast with
earlier production.

Keywords: Late Antiquity, art, sculpture, visual arts

I. SOME PROPOSITIONS
Is the notion of ‘late antique art’ more than a modern historiographic
invention: the artificially imposed transitional stage between the (broadly
naturalistic) art of Greco-Roman Antiquity and the (generally more abstract
or schematic) art of the Middle Ages? So necessary has this ‘middle man’
seemed, that rarely has the outrageous proposition of his non-existence
been entertained. Yet, if one focuses within the relatively narrow temporal
confines of— let us say—AD300 to 500, the overwhelming impression is of
great diversity of visual production encompassing a plurality of styles, kinds
of subject-matter and visual media. 1 The excavated visual production of
fifth- and sixth-century Aphrodisias, for instance, is remarkably traditional
—honorific statuary, busts of philosophers and so forth—and of very high
quality. Take for example the outstanding statue of Flavius Palmatus,

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consular governor of Caria, found in Aphrodisias in 1972 (Fig. 1 ). This
accomplished image from the late fifth or early sixth century, originally
placed atop a high base made from two recycled earlier statue bases
with a new inscription, shows the governor—in his stubby beard and mop
hairstyle—in his official toga, bearing mappa and sceptre. 2 Images like
this appear to look back—with some changes and differences, to be sure,
but no more than the parade of centuries would lead us to expect—to a
seemless continuity with the high imperial past, just as the monuments and
settings which housed these images were themselves the product of first-
and secondcentury patronage. By contrast, the third-century painted remains
of Dura Europos tell a radically different story. Take the scene of Samuel
anointing David from the Dura Synagogue, dated to the 240s AD (Fig. 2 ). 3
The figures are in a recognizably similar visual tradition to Palmatus, in both
drapery and pose, but they are flattened in a line, eschewing naturalistic
space, avoiding individualism of posture, facial features or expression, even
rejecting a realism of relative dimensions so that Samuel is significantly
larger than David and his brothers. In Dura, there are no traditional honorific
statues, but rather groups of religious images in proto-medieval styles
adorning competing cult centres, which have (quite reasonably) always been
taken to look forward, away from classical preoccupations (both in matters of
form and subject matter) towards the Middle Ages.

(p.272)

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Fig. 1. Honorific public statue of Flavius Palmatus, wearing toga and holding
mappa and sceptre. Marble. From the front of the west colonnade of the
Tetrastoon Square in front of the Theatre, Aphrodisias. Late fifth or early
sixth century AD. Photograph: courtesy of Professor R. R. R. Smith.

(p.273)

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Fig. 2. Samuel anointing David (as identified by a titulus in Aramaic), after
1 Samuel 16: 1–13. From the west wall of the Dura Europos Synagogue.
Mural painting al secco on plaster. c. AD 245. Photograph: Yale University Art
Gallery, Dura-Europos Collection.

(p.274) However, two points need to be put in defence of the category of

‘late antique art’. First, the diversity is not, in my judgement, any greater
than that within Roman imperial art of the first three centuries AD. Under
the Principate, visual production of the centre maintains a constant polarity
or dualism between Hellenistic naturalism and an anti-naturalist tendency
possibly going back to Etruscan art and certainly apparent in Republican
monuments like the ‘altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus’. 4 This dichotomy or
dualism of stylistic trends has variously been labelled a matter of classicism
vs. anti-classicism, 5 ‘pro-Hellenic’ vs. ‘pro-Etruscan’, 6 patrician vs. plebeian,
7 centre vs. periphery, 8 or psychological predispositions. 9 The dichotomy
might perhaps better be described as ‘pluralism’. 10 If one looks beyond
the main urban centres—to Roman Syria or Egypt, for instance, or to Gaul
and Britain—the range of styles is still more diverse. Moreover, one may
ask whether this range is any greater in Roman art than it already was
in Hellenistic art, which incorporated—alongside the Greek sculptural
traditions inherited from the fifth century BC — numerous styles and themes
encompassing Pharaonic Egypt, Syria, and the sphere of Persian influence as
far as western India.

(p.275) In effect, the range of late antique art is not in itself exceptional
within classical Antiquity, but this does not necessarily imply that the

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category is less meaningful than any other imposd by subsequent
scholarship (such as ‘Hellenistic’ or ‘Roman’).

Second, if one takes the long view, looking at the dominant visual trends
employed by elite artists and patrons, then there is no doubt that between
the first century AD and—say—the sixth or seventh there are fundamental
changes which reflect the abandonment of naturalism as the key canon for
how art should look (even if one accepts what was a fairly dominant view
in the middle of the twentieth century that various phases of classicizing
‘renaissance’ kept emerging to resist the long slide into abstraction). It
is this long view—admittedly one that is dependent both on empiricism
and stylistic analysis—which justifies the need for ‘late antique art’ as
something ‘in between’, a set of visual practices which might explain an
uncontestable transformation between the kinds of representation favoured
by Greco-Roman ‘naturalism’ and medieval ‘schematism’ (given that all
these definitions are gross generalizations).That does not mean the category
would have been meaningful to people living at the time that this art was
produced (but then neither would the concepts of ‘Late Antiquity’ or indeed
‘Antiquity’ itself!). ‘Late antique art’ exists entirely within the domain of
scholarly explanation, teleologically linked to what succeeded it (namely the
breakdown of naturalistic forms in the various arts of the Middle Ages). I do
not believe the concept to be any less valid for that, but I do think we may as
well be clear about what we mean by it. 11

The problem with the long view then becomes what vantage you choose
to look from. Late antique art has for decades been plagued with two
historiographies, effectively two methodologies, for its study—which (of
course) hardly communicate with one another. They represent the view from
Roman art history, looking forwards into ‘decline’ (or whatever word one
chooses for the demise of the Great Tradition); and the view from medieval
art (especially Byzantine art), looking backwards into the origins and genesis
of early Christian image-making. In 1901, two books were published which
effectively fixed the field for the next seventy years and more: Alois Riegl’s
Spätromische Kunstindustrie and Josef (p.276) Strzygowski’s Orient oder
Rom. 12 Riegl sought to explain the transformation of Roman art (himself
arguing persuasively against the notion of ‘decline’ as a valid hermeneutic
concept) by looking within its own formal and visual dynamics. He was
followed by many scholars working within the Roman branch of classical
archaeology, and remains one of art history’s heroic founder fathers. 13
Strzygowski, whose later career is clouded with arguments for Nordic
Aryanism (and who died in Vienna as a lauded servant of the 1000-Year

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Reich) represented Hellas suffocating in the embrace of the Orient, 14 and
argued that the art forms of the periphery—especially the East—took over
and smothered the naturalism of the Greco-Roman tradition. Although
his politics may have been rejected, and although many aspects of his
thesis have been refined, the governing suggestion of a religious and visual
tradition outside Hellenism as a basis for the special nature of early Christian
art has remained highly influential. As late as the 1970s, the excellent
Arts of Mankind series of art history text books (edited among others by
André Malraux, and published in all the European languages) followed
this historiographic rift by devoting two volumes to Late Antiquity, which
divided what is effectively a single field into the ‘Late antique’ and the ‘early
Christian’. 15 This division in a single series only replicates the de facto
division of approaches in earlier (and later) books on the period. 16 In 1977,
Ernst Kitzinger—himself born in Vienna where both Riegl and Strzygowski
once held chairs—attempted to synthesize both traditions (though writing
ultimately from the ‘early Christian’ side). 17

What dominates both these lines is the classic stylistic method of art
history, characteristic of the Viennese school. 18 Whatever their (p.277)
disagreements of emphasis, the adherents of both the Rieglian and
Strzygowskian camps conducted their trench warfare using the same
ammunition culled from stylistic analysis and teleologically directed to using
style to explain chronological change. 19 Despite the shift in the subject in
recent years away from issues of style, the legacy of two approaches—early
Christian and late antique—continues to focus the literature. 20 It is perhaps
a mark of the diversity of the materials that concentrating on different sites
—Dura versus Aphrodisias, for instance—supports one or other of the two
traditions.The discovery of Dura in 1920 provided immense support to the
early Christian brigade, and especially to Strzygowski’s Orientalism, which
has continued into the 1990s. 21 The digging and study of Aphrodisias in
the last three decades has effectively supported the dynamic of an internal
process of transformation in Roman art, with profound continuities well into
the sixth century. 22 As suggested earlier, this division of the field is due
on a deep level to the disciplinary prejudices and presuppositions of the
two historiographies (classical archaeology and early medieval/Byzantine
art history) which intersect in Late Antiquity. My own view is we have to
abandon not only the teleologies of a classical art heading for medieval
decline or a Christian art rising out of the ashes of Antiquity, but also any
attempt to brand different aspects of late antique art as more ‘Christian’
or more ‘pagan’, in a time of multiple artistic choices and interpretative
possibilities.

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Let us move from this historiographic impasse to some archaeological
‘facts’ about the production of images which may (or may not) help define
the object-base of ‘late antique art’. By comparison with, say, the second
century AD, there is—in the period 300–500—a significant decline in the
amount of honorific statues (p.278) produced, whether in marble or bronze,
but not in the quality of what was produced. 23 The same may be said of
mythological sculpture. 24 The same may be said of public relief sculpture,
but nonetheless the fourth and fifth centuries in Constantinople revealed
spectacular efforts such as the Theodosian obelisk base, the Theodosian and
Arcadian columns and the various surviving charioteer bases. 25 A series
of very crisply cut figured panels and heads of saints of very high quality
(possibly deliberately mutilated in the period of Byzantine Iconoclasm and
probably from the sixth century) were found in the dig of St Polyeuktos in
Constantinople. 26 The same may be said of sculpture in the very small scale
(but highly elite sphere) of cameo-cutting and gem carving, where less than
100 cameos survive datable to the period AD 250–600 by contrast with
thousands from the inception of the imperial era down to the Severans. 27 As
in the case of statuary, some of the few late antique pieces are nonetheless
outstanding (for instance the gem showing a fourth-century emperor and his
wife, known as the Rothschild Cameo, and the so-called ‘Triumph of Licinius’
cameo in the Cabinet des Medailles of the Bibliothe`que Nationale 28 ). The
same again may be said of civic monuments, though many major cities
(above all Constantinople) saw significant traditional urban projects such as
ceremonial ways, arches, fora and the like, as well as careful programmes
of repair and maintenance for the fabric of old buildings and public works
of art. 29 One fundamental (p.279) shift in late antique construction was
the incorporation of spolia as a major ingredient of new buildings from the
last years of the third century. 30 This is certainly the case with the new
churches built in Rome, and with the civic spaces of the new Constantinople.
31 Likewise, spolia from earlier periods figured in the visual arts, most
famously in the second century statues and reliefs reused on the Arch of
Constantine (Fig. 3 ) but also in the re-employment of second-century statue
bodies and bases for the addition of fourth- and fifth-century heads and
inscriptions, asin the case of the base on which Flavius Palmatus stood in
Aphrodisias (Fig. 1 ). 32 However, the recycling of bodies and the (p.280)
recutting of portrait heads was by no means a late Antique innovation:
the process was common since at least the inception of the Principate. 33
Whether the culture of spolia should be explained by reasons of pragmatism
(for instance a lack of artists and skilled craftsmen) or as a new aesthetic
(or both) remains an issue of debate. 34 But there is no doubt that it was a
feature of a marked antiquarianism in relation to the classical past which

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sits surprisingly comfortably beside the triumph of Christianity. 35 Indeed,
with the exception of churches, the bulk of public edifices and images
which would have confronted a late antique city-dweller in most parts of the
Empire between the fourth and sixth centuries (with the obvious exception
of Constantinople) would have been earlier monuments, albeit restored and
embellished with later additions.

Fig. 3. Arch of Constantine, general view from the north, Rome. c. AD 312–
15. Photograph: DAI, Rome, Inst. Neg. 61.2297.

The fourth century was a golden age of Christian sculpture in the form
of sarcophagi. But pretty abruptly after 400 the production of these
objects (which had been prolific since the sudden inception of sarcophagus
manufacture in the early second century) came to an end in Rome, though
it continued for a time in southern Gaul and in very small quantities through
to the sixth century in Ravenna and Constantinople. 36 At the same time
the fourth century appears to have been a golden age for silverware—
though the particular survival of hoards of high-quality work from this period
(rather than earlier or later) may be pure happenstance. 37 Just when Roman
sarcophagus manufacture and other large-scale (p.281) sculpture appears
to cease, the archaeological record offers the beginning of a remarkable
heritage of late-antique ivory carving—much of it of outstanding quality.
38 Why so little significant ivory sculpture survives from before the late
fourth century and so many pieces (relatively) from the fifth and sixth may
again be a matter of chance. But it may reflect changes in production, in
taste, in consumption and use, in collecting. 39 Again, the mid-fourth century
inaugurated a significant rise in wall and ceiling mosaics—principally in the
decoration of churches—as well as a high point in opus sectile marble veneer
for monumental interiors. 40 The wealth of remains may represent a real

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change in practice (which would mean in taste and in patronage), or just the
vast increase in chances of survival for buildings used and cared for by the
Church. The fourth century also saw a fundamental shift in the technology of
book production from the dominance of the papyrus roll to the triumph of the
vellum codex. In part this must be due to the demands of Christian liturgy
which called for excerpted daily readings that would have been difficult to
tabulate and impossible to find in rolls. Our first illuminated manuscripts
date from the early fifth century—perhaps again a matter of happenstance.
The significantly more fragile nature of papyrus may explain why so little
papyrus illustration survives, almost none of it before 400. 41 But it could also
be that the religious turn to a canonical scripture and the provision of a type
of book much more suited for leisurely contemplation were the necessary
conditions for the rise of illustration as a distinctive contribution from (p.282)
late antique art to later ages. Finally, most surviving ancient textiles come
from late antique Egypt. Obviously this provenance reflects particular local
circumstances (both of copious production in the period and the special
climatic conditions for preservation), but why does so little survive from
earlier? 42 By contrast with this litany of change in the archaeological record,
certain art forms appear to continue in broadly the same quantities with
roughly the same range in quality from the second century through to the
(p.283) sixth and seventh. One thinks especially of floor mosaics. 43 But other
adornments of elite villa life, such as glass ware, arguably got more intricate
and exquisite in the fourth century (one thinks of cage cups and exquisite
sculpted vases in glass or semi-precious stones like the Rubens Vase in
Baltimore, Fig. 4 ).

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Fig. 4. Two views of the Rubens Vase, so-called after the painter who owned
it in the seventeenth century. Honey-coloured agate, deeply undercut in
high relief. Late fourth century AD. Photographs: The Walters Art Museum,
Baltimore

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Putting these, rather dry, considerations together suggests fundamental
changes in patronage, demand, and production—not all of which, perhaps,
should be explained (away) by the advent of Christianity or the caprice of the
archaeological record. In particular, there is a move from large-scale work
in sculpture to the (p.284) making of exquisite miniatures (in ivory, silver,
glass, and precious stones, as well as in painted manuscripts). We shall
return to this below. Likewise there is a shift from imposing exteriors and
open-air monumental complexes to grand interiors, especially in the case of
churches. Where Christianity did exert a significant influence, in the area of
the thematic content and imagery expressed by the visual arts, it was more
than just a move to a new sacred iconography—a new mythology to replace
the traditional ones. Christian art, with its explicit reference to scripture and
other texts (commentarial, apocryphal, exegetic), stood in a fundamentally
different relation to its subject-matter from pagan art. Christian images
illustrated, commented upon, reformulated a pre-existing textual canon,
while pagan images were contributions in their own right to an undogmatic
culture of relatively unfixed mythical narratives. The viewer’s relation to a
prior text (always posited by Christian art) and to the initiations and dogmas
implied by Christian belief was a remarkable and radical innovation in Roman
visual culture. It created of every viewer a potential exegete. 44

The issue of reception is complex since the earliest Christian art is the
specific product of an initiate sect, commenting upon and illustrating an
esoteric mythological tradition. This makes it hardly comparable with the

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Roman public or domestic arts of its period, whose remit of meanings was
far looser and not delimited by scripture, ritual practice or exegesis. It also
makes it very different from the Christian art that developed after the Peace
of the Church as an official and public organ of the state. Rather, the range
of receptions for the earliest Christian images belongs to the world of the
exegetic arts in the mystery cults (such as Mithraism, Judaism, the cult of
Isis, and so forth). 45 But it differed fundamentally from these too (except
for Judaism, which like Christianity depended upon a written scripture) in
that the cults drew on multiple, probably varying and fundamentally oral
mythologies: with the cults, one cannot speak of ‘orthodoxy’. Apart from
functioning for the internal consumption of cult members, late antique
religious art has been presented (probably correctly) as an adver (p.285)
tising gesture in a world of intense inter-sectarian competition (the so-called
‘market place’ of Roman religions). 46 That is, before 312 Christian art—no
less than Jewish or Mithraic art—glanced (in a small way) outside the narrow
remit of specifically Christian viewers towards others who might be attracted
to Christianity and even become converts. This immediately implies a very
different level and range of viewer-receptions from that envisaged (by the
same images) for initiates. Given the multiple and highly competitive nature
of the active Christianities even within a relatively circumscribed location
(like the city of Rome) before the Peace of the Church, one might say that
the earliest Christian art also worked as a set of short-hand emblems or
manifestos for rival Christian groups in competition with their peers (for
instance the rivalry of the Callistus Christians, with their catacomb at the Via
Appia, and the Hippolytus faction, with its statue inscribed with a liturgical
calendar at their headquarters near the Castro Pretorio). 47 After the triumph
of Constantine, the move of Christian art from being the preserve of a small
cult to becoming a new language for the expression not only of an official
religion but also of aspects of the state’s temporal apparatus was to cause,
over the long term, the fundamental changes of the shift from classical to
medieval image-making.

Finally, because images had been just part—a significant part— of

polytheistic religious practice and culture before Christianity, the notion
and status of the image itself had not been subject to a rigorous conceptual
critique. To be sure, Greco-Roman culture had a long history of art criticism,
from the Platonic attack on mimesis and the long heritage of ekphrasis
going back to Homer to the vivid literary discussions of how images relate
to their viewing and description in several writers of the Second Sophistic.
But Christianity, and Christian writing, put the notion of the image (єἲκωv)
through an unparalleled theological critique (p.286) implicated in deep

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issues of idolatry, the correct methods of representing and worshipping an
invisible God, the appropriateness of aniconism and even iconoclasm. 48
Despite the recent consensus that the earliest Christians were not opposed
to images per se, nonetheless the rich seam of anti-iconic writing in the
Church, the curious absence of three-dimensional Christian art for the most
part (especially the avoidance of statues) and the later history of Byzantine
Iconoclasm all speak of a certain embarrassment about images, conditioned
by the rigour of theological stricture, which even the most enthusiastically
popular promulgation of art could never entirely assuage.

These considerations, and particularly the possibility of a transformation in

response (or viewing and interpretation) as well as in the forms and styles
of late antique art, have led to some study of the function and reception of
art in the later Roman world. There have been a number of intellectualist
interpretations of the nature of late antique art—concentrating on responses
to ‘abstraction’, 49 and on the special nature of Christian typology and
exegesis in the visual arts. 50 Likewise, there have been a few attempts
to place early Christian art broadly within social, 51 cultural, 52 or political
contexts within the period, 53 in all these cases seeing the arts as not only
reflecting wider social discourses but also formulating them. My aim here,
however, is not to follow the focus of those who have explored reception
(much as I value this approach). Rather, I want to begin with some of the
changes in visual production outlined above—which fall basically in the
fourth century—and to see how some of the characteristic elements of late
antique art which emerged then were developed by the sixth century into a
last spectacular synthesis which was truly antique but nonetheless new by
contrast with earlier production.

(p.287) II. NOTES TOWARDS A LATE ANTIQUE AESTHETIC

In his recent survey of the visual arts from 425 to 600, Robin Cormack
emphasizes the flux, creativity, and variety of innovations in a context
which showed Christian art not only as a ‘religious art under development’,
but also ‘responding to a whole matrix of demands from religious beliefs
and practices’. 54 The general picture of a wholesale cultural re-evaluation
under the influence of Christianity must be right, though the many elements
of continuity as outlined above are significant. Here I want to take two
traditional forms or artistic tropes and observe not only how they changed
in Late Antiquity, but how those changes—in connection with all the other
cultural changes in the period—gave rise to a form of monumental art that
was simultaneously traditional and innovative. First, I shall examine the

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vogue for spolia, which appears to be a feature that entered mainstream
Roman artistic activity (in its late antique form) in the third century and
developed from there into being a frequent characteristic of late Roman and
much medieval art and architecture. Second, I will turn to the production
of what I shall call ‘exquisite miniatures’: the apparent move in patronage
from large scale and three-dimensional sculpture to expensive and highly
wrought small-scale deluxe work for the elite. Whether we look at glass,
stone, ivory, or even silver, we find an interest (not exclusive to be sure, but
widespread) in turning the two-dimensional relief surface three-dimensional
with flamboyant undercutting and deep-relief work that threatens to make a
small object simultaneously intricate and monumental by seeming sculptural.
Again, this is not unique to late antique art. Numerous earlier sarcophagi,
for instance, exhibited spectacular depth of carving and undercutting
(most flamboyantly in the third century, for example, one thinks of the
great Ludovisi sarcophagus of about AD 260, now divided between Mainz
and Rome, Fig. 5 ). But the move to a very small-scale, almost gem-like,
treatment in the fourth and fifth centuries for objects that could be hand-
held, and then the transference of the ornate intricacies characteristic of
such objects to the monumental scale of column-capitals and friezes, is what
I mean by ‘exquisite miniatures’.

Fig. 5. Ludovisi Sarcophagus, showing (a, on the lid) a victorious general

granting clemency, a plaque reserved for an inscription, and defeated

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barbarians below, and a portrait of the wife or mother of the deceased
between masks, and (b, on the main coffin-box) a victorious general, carved
with the features of the deceased, triumphant over defeated barbarians.
Marble. Rome, c. AD 250–60. Photographs: lid: Römisch-Germanisches
Zentralmuseum, Mainz; base: DAI, Rome, Inst. Neg. 58.2011

(p.288) Spolia

First, let us take the case of spolia. The Arch of Constantine (Fig. 3 ), that
locus classicus for the advent of Late Antiquity in the visual arts of the
city of Rome, contains two forms of spolia. As the recent cleaning and
restoration have now re-emphasized, the arch’s architectural structure—
especially such decorative details as (p.289) architraves, columns, and
Corinthian capitals, but also some of the very blocks of marble used for the
construction of the arch— was largely made up from recycled items gathered
from earlier monuments. 55 These spolia were reused to create a highly
traditional monument in architectural terms, fundamentally indebted as
a formal structure to the nearby arch of Septimius Severus, set up in the
Roman Forum in AD 203. 56 They were ‘invisible’ within the monument’s
appearance—not in any sense standing out as spolia but rather embedded,
even hidden away, within what professed itself a fundamentally conservative
structure. 57 By contrast, this architectural frame was employed as a display
case for a series of carefully crafted earlier relief sculptures, themselves
recycled from monuments (some of which at least had occupied prominent
positions in the city of Rome itself). These—comprising eight tondi from what
was probably a Hadrianic hunting monument, eight panels in high relief
from what was once an arch of Marcus Aurelius in Rome and four sections
of a great Trajanic frieze (perhaps from that emperor’s forum in Rome) as
well as eight statues of defeated Dacian prisoners (also Trajanic and very
likely from Trajan’s Forum)—were decoratively juxtaposed not only against
each other but also against stylistically different monumental sculpture from
Constantine’s own time. 58 The recycled panels were carefully treated as
display pieces— placed so as to be relatively clearly seen with the naked
eye (by contrast with such decorative schemes as the friezes of Trajan’s or
Marcus’ Columns, for instance), 59 and with the imperial heads (of Trajan,
Hadrian, and Marcus) meticulously and rather brilliantly re-carved mainly in
the image of Constantine (e.g. Fig. 6 ) and, in the case of four of the tondi,
with the head of one other emperor (whose identity remains the subject of
remorseless dispute). 60

(p.290)

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Fig. 6. Head of Constantine recut from Trajan, from the Arch of Constantine,
Rome. c. AD 315. Photograph: DAI, Rome, Inst. Neg. 32.51

These kinds of spolia are very different. The first are an ‘invisible’
reinforcement of the traditional nature of the structural frame and its
decorative elements. While this kind of ‘invisible’ use may reflect pragmatic
concerns, it can also be argued that—in the context of a deliberate
comparison with the nearby Severan (p.291) arch—it was also an ideological
statement of similitude that took advantage of the pragmatic case for
reusing existing blocks and columns rather than making new ones. The
second group of spolia are a highly visible set of prize pieces deliberately
collected, selected and displayed for ideological reasons. 61 Neither kind
of spolia, in this definition, is incompatible with a pragmatic motivation
for using old stones, 62 and indeed together they reflect the innovative
ideological potential which particular pragmatic constraints (such as a
possible shortage of sculptors or a decline in the quarrying and provision
of newly worked marbles) could spark in patrons, artists and designers.
Moreover, both kinds had extremely long pedigrees in Roman artistic
practice. The reuse of building materials goes back to the Roman Republic,
but it only became a regular feature of the more visible parts of public

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buildings during the third century AD. 63 The wholesale reuse of earlier
works of art as display pieces on public monuments is certainly attested
in the early imperial period—for example in the remarkable fifth-century
BC Greek sculptures reused in the pediment of the Augustan temple of
Apollo Sosianus, 64 or the famous fourth-century BC paintings of Alexander
by Apelles displayed by Augustus in his Forum and altered by Claudius
in having Alexander’s portrait replaced by that of Augustus. 65 Likewise,
in Roman domestic art, the finest mosaic panels inset within floors were
emblemata— set in their own trays of stone or terracotta—which were
either made separately in artists’ studios or imported from elsewhere (some
possibly as spolia from the Hellenistic East). 66 But the deliberate selection
and re-employment of elegantly carved historiated reliefs from Roman public
buildings appears to be a development of the third century AD —especially
in the two (no longer surviving) arches known as the Arcus Novus and the
Arco di Portogallo. 67 The kind of syncretistic bricolage of contemporary
(p.292) works with prized spolia, created by the Arch of Constantine, would
be a persistent feature of some of the grander projects of medieval religious
dedications, like the Ottonian Cross of Lothar and the Ambo of Henry II at
Aachen. 68

For my current purposes, it is the second kind of spolia—old objects

reused and marked as special in their new display—which are particularly
interesting. It is worth noting that before their collecting and recutting
under Constantine, some of the pieces had already been recarved—notably
the Aurelian scene of the distribution of largesse from which the figure of
Marcus’ son and heir Commodus (once apparently his father’s companion
in generosity) was carefully removed and turned into the bodies of Marcus’
entourage on Commodus’ damnatio memoriae in AD 192. 69 This was done
expertly in order to airbrush any hint of Commodus’ presence out of the
pictorial space of the finished piece. In other words, the integrity of these
panels as finished works of art was respected and—despite significant
later interference—an appearance of cohesion and undamaged finish was
carefully contrived. This antiquarian respect for a fine object from the
culture’s past (by no means always a mark of such alterations in Roman
art) 70 was combined with an eclectic museology that willingly juxtaposed
objects of different style, provenance and date for ideological ends that
owed much not only to specific political concerns but to a new syncretistic
asethetics. That aesthetics, apparent in parallel form also in religious uses
of relics after the fourth century, and in the pillaging of canonical literary
texts like Vergil and Homer to create whole new poems out of their lines (so-
called centos) on themes that ranged from the sacred to the pornographic,

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had as its guiding principle a respect for the pastness and integrity of the
spolia it pressed into use (from sculpture to relics to Vergil’s verses) and at
the same time a willingness to combine these items with others (some also
ancient, some modern) in a creative cocktail. 71 Of course, a cento allowed
one to read the new poem (made up of Vergilian fragments) side by side with
Vergil’s original, whereas archaeological spoliation destroyed forever (or,
more likely, (p.293) profited from the earlier destruction of) the Hadrianic
hunting monuments or the Arch of Marcus, for instance, in order to create
new forms. But it is worth noting the extent to which spoliation flourished
in a Christian dispensation—perhaps because Christianity was itself the
ultimate spolium, refashioned from Judaism and adapted with spectacular
panache to the rituals, rhythms, and models of (pagan) Roman life. 72

Miniatures

My second case is what might be called ‘exquisite miniatures’. I mean by this

the apparent shift from large-scale public commissions towards exquisite
private pieces (something apparent in literary culture too from the Second
Sophistic in the second and third centuries into Late Antiquity in the form
of cameo-pieces, prolaliae, ekphraseis and epistolography), 73 and within
private art to the elaborate undercutting and carving of at least one category
of the most precious objects. 74 As suggested above, this change may in part
be a mirage caused by the nature of the surviving evidence (and the relative
lack of survivals of such material from the earlier Roman imperial period).
But in the case of one medium—glass— which is attested in large quantities
throughout the Roman world and from all periods, there is undoubtedly a
development after the third century towards spectacular cage-cups—some
figurative, like the Lycurgus cup in the British Museum—cut with complete
mastery of all the skills of the gem-carver’s craft. 75 Admittedly, the earliest
period of blown glass manufacture (the first centuries BC and AD) also gives
evidence of what might be called gem-cups in the form of cameo glasses,
like the Portland Vase. 76 But these represent a fundamentally different
technique and aesthetic approach from the deep undercutting and three
dimensional finesse of such miniatures as the Trivulzio cage-cup (Plate 1) or
the Lycurgus cup. It might be added that Late Antiquity also saw an (p.294)
elaboration of flatter display glasses—some engraved with great panache
(like the fragment of a dish celebrating an imperial vicennalia from Rome),
some with gold-leaf decoration, like the thirdcentury Alexander plate. 77 A
parallel process is observable in the (admittedly much smaller) corpus of
vases made from precious stones—an incomparably more expensive medium
than their glass imitations (though no more skilful from the maker’s point of

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view). 78 Here the cameo cutting of onyx and sardonyx cups in the Ptolemaic
and early imperial periods gave way to simpler forms in the second and third
centuries, only to hit a new apogee in exquisitely carved vases in high relief
(and similar technique to the Lycurgus cup) in Late Antiquity, for example
the Rubens Vase made in honey-coloured agate, now in Baltimore (Fig. 4
). 79 What the late-antique objects show is a profound concern with turning
the flat (though curving) surface three-dimensional through technically
spectacular undercutting that renders the sculpture in very deep relief.

Similar issues are observable in the manufacture of ivories, which became a

popular medium for elite self-promotion and patronage from the late fourth
century. Perhaps depending on the thickness of the ivory blank available,
in certain cases late antique ivory cutters employed techniques of very low
relief with little undercutting—often of high quality works for major patrons
like the Symmachorum–Nicomachorum diptych from the late fourth century,
whose two panels are now in London and Paris (Fig. 7 ). 80 But master
craftsmen in ivory were also given to much deeper relief work—searching for
almost three-dimensional effects, in objects sometimes apparently carved
for the same patrons as the bas-reliefs. For a relatively modest example of
the search for sculptural three dimensionality, one might think of the British
Museum’s apotheosis ivory, probably also made for the Symmachi family,
with its undercutting of the horses’ legs in (p.295) its quadriga and also of
some draperies. 81 In the beautifully preserved ivory showing a procession
carrying relics, now in the Cathedral Treasury at Trier, a much greater depth
of carving (up (p.296) to 20mm within a panel that is only 23mm thick) is
brilliantly marshalled to create a crowd scene with figures receding four-
deep into the arcades of what is visualized as a major public portico. 82
The date and provenance of this plaque have been much disputed—from
the fifth to the ninth century, from Alexandria to Constantinople, 83 but its
combination of depth and virtuoso technical skill is certainly in keeping with
a series of other late antique ivories from the later fifth and sixth centuries.
These include the Louvre panel, possibly from Alexandria, showing a saint
—perhaps St Mark—enthroned amidst a crowd of ecclesiastical dignitaries
(his successors in the see of Alexandria?) within an elegant building, the
exquisitely deep-cut set of ivory panels of pagan deities and other figures
(perhaps sixth century and perhaps from Alexandria) subsequently set
into the Ambo of Henry II at Aachen, as well as a related piece in Paris, the
standing empress in the Bargello in Florence which has a depth of 20mm
and above all the great Barberini ivory of an equestrian emperor now in the
Louvre (Fig. 8 ). 84 This latter must be one of the most spectacular high-
relief ivories ever carved—with a maximum depth of relief of 28mm. 85 The

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Barberini ivory is a composite (‘five-part’) diptych made of five panels—
four plaques around the sides in relatively shallower relief and the central
rider plaque, with its deep relief as well as the wonderful undercutting of the
rearing horse’s legs and the imperial spear, set off against the sides.

Fig. 7. Right-hand leaf from a diptych issued in the names of the Symmachi
and Nicomachi families in Rome, inscribed ‘Symmachorum’. From Rome.
Ivory. Late fourth century AD. Photograph: Victoria and Albert Museum,
London

The different kinds of ivory-working—in low and high relief— are echoed in
silver. Even in a single treasure, which may represent items from one hoard
and hence a genuine late antique collection, the Sevso treasure, several
very different treatments of the decora (p.297) (p.298) tive surface are
apparent. The central medallion of the Meleager Plate, for example, is raised
in high relief from a cast blank hammered out into the shape of the plate

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(Fig. 9 ). The metal is cut away from the front and sides to produce solid,
effectively sculpted, figures of varying depths to a maximum relief of over
(p.299) 6mm. In some instances, the depth of the relief was increased by
soldering extra silver onto the plate (for instance for Meleager’s face). 86
This is work (in a very different medium of course) that is parallel to the
Barberini or Trier ivories and to the cage-cups. Other items give evidence
of very different decorative treatments. Sevso’s hunting plate, for instance,
was hammered out of a single piece of silver but its design was created
by chasing, engraving, and punching from the front. Between the chased
figures, the silver background was gouged out to create a hollow for a black
niello ground, against which the silver figures (some gilt) would stand out.
87 Many other items from the Sevso treasure, such as the Hippolytus Ewer,
the Dionysiac amphora (Fig. 10 ) and the toilet casket, were decorated in
repoussé technique—the figures hammered from the front onto a mould and
then worked from front and back. 88

Fig. 8. Five-part panel of an emperor in triumph, known as the Barberini

ivory. The central panel, with a heroic emperor on horseback, is very
deeply undercut in high relief; the surrounding panels, in much lower relief,
show Christ between angels (above), an officer carrying a statuette of a

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winged victory (to the left), and conquered natives of the east offering
homage and ivory to the emperor (below). The right-hand plaque is lost.
From Constantinople. Ivory. Sixth century AD, probably from the period of
Justinian. Photograph: Louvre, Paris/Réunion des musées nationaux

Fig. 9. Central medallion of the Meleager Plate from the Sevso Treasure,
carved from a cast blank in high relief. Silver. Fourth century AD.
Photograph: courtesy of the Trustee of the Marquess of Northampton 1987
Settlement

Such silver objects and ivories, like the Rubens Vase and Lycurgus Cup,
were certainly made for the elite (in the case of the Barberini ivory almost
certainly for the court, in the case of the silverware perhaps for less elevated
but still wealthy patrons). 89 They were designed for their patrons to handle
—only in turning the Barberini diptych is its rich detail of sculpture revealed,
so that (for example) the barbarian’s head, obscured by the emperor’s
lance when seen from the front, comes into view when the spectator
turns the object and peers from the side. 90 Not only in ivory, like semi-
precious stones, an expensive medium with an aristocratic market, but
also in glass and silver (relatively cheaper materials, if not cheaper in their
craftsmanship), we have a similar gem-like focus on the exquisite miniature.

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In all these cases, the miniature may be in low or high relief (with very
different effects summoned from the same medium). Ivories may have been
coloured, 91 although the jury is still out on this question and also on the
extent of the use of colour, if the fragmentary survivals of (p.300) pigment
discovered by scientific analysis are indeed antique. 92 But like the glass
and stone vessels, they speak of an absorbed viewing, (p.301) relishing
the quality and virtuosity of craftsmanship and revelling in the miniature
elegance of supremely expensive possessions.

Fig. 10. Amphora from the Sevso Treasure with animal, Dionysiac, and
marine scenes. Hammered in relief in the repousse´ technique and partially
gilt, with solid-cast handles in the form of panthers. Silver. Fourth century
AD. Photograph: courtesy of the Trustee of the Marquess of Northampton
1987 Settlement

Turning to the monumental scale of public architecture, it is striking to find

the care and panache of the making of such luxurious one-off miniatures
lavished on large-scale and mass-produced objects like capitals. But by

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the late fifth century and especially in the great aristocratic and imperial
commissions of the sixth century, such as the churches of St Polyeuktos
(built 524–7) and St Sophia (built 532–7) in Constantinople, or that of
San Vitale in Ravenna, we find similar high relief, profound undercutting
and a regard for the object as a prime opportunity for virtuoso sculptural
investment in the cutting of capitals for imposts, pillars and piers. 93
Effectively, the Justinianic basket-capital (Fig. 11 )—with its characteristic
monogram and its lattice of intricate stone-work raised from the main body
of the object—is a giant cage-cup in stone. The impact of these objects in
relative decorative isolation (on a column and supporting a further column
or arcade) was sufficiently great for many to have served as spolia in their
own right: San Marco in Venice is literally crammed with sixth-century
Constantinopolitan capitals, carried off after the sack of 1204, 94 and a
number of these as well as other spolia such as the ‘pilastriacritani’ are now
known to have come from St Polyeuktos (Fig. 12 a and b). 95 But when such
elements are combined with arcades made from spectacularly deep-cut
relief-work, topped with elaborately wrought marble cornices, combined with
inlaid coloured stones and lavish opus sectile panelling—as still survives
at Justinian’s great church of St Sophia and was certainly the case at St
Polyeuktos—the effects are remarkable. All the brilliance of the isolated,
carefully crafted miniature, made to be relished in its own right, becomes
incorporated on a monumental scale in an aesthetic whose impact (whether
gauged as a matter of exquisite workmanship, huge expense or vast labour)
is breathtaking.

I hope in this section to have shown that certain elements typical of

the luxury arts of the fourth and fifth centuries—undercutting, (p.302)
an elaboration of relief surfaces with a three-dimensional depth and a
corresponding richness of texture and shadow—were adapted to large-
scale monumental stone carving by the sixth. This represents but one
item in what would become great sixth-century synthesis of earlier late
antique artistic developments, but it is a telling example of the originality
with which late Roman artists adapted and transformed traditional skills in
traditional materials to innovative ends. The sixth-century appropriation of
these developments—especially in Justinian’s mighty building programme
of churches (celebrated in Procopius’ De Aedificiis) 96 —would result in the
last great flowering of Roman art (in the sense that everything created in this
period has deeply traditional precursors and is founded on fundamentally
traditional principles) that was simultaneously a glorious new high-water
mark of Byzantine Christian art. Its major creations were not only innovative
in their own time, but would prove paradigmatic for later periods. 97

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(p.303)

Fig. 11. Justinianic capital from the eastern bay of the south aisle, church
of St Sophia, Constantinople (built AD 532–7). White marble, bowl shaped,
and sharply undercut, with acanthus and palm leaves, and the imperial
monogram in the centre, capped by small ionic volutes. Fourth decade of the
sixth century AD. Photograph: Ernest Hawkins Archive, Courtauld Institute of
Art

(p.304)

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Fig. 12. Two slabs of architectural sculpture from the church of St Polyeuktos,
Constantinople (built AD 524–7). The first (a) shows a peacock niche (only
the flared tail of the peacock survives) from the main entablature with vine-
leaf decoration and a fragment of the great poetic inscription carved in the
church interior. Marble. Third decade of the sixth century AD. The second
(b) shows a relief sculpture of Christ, possibly from the sanctuary screen
whose defacement is probably due to iconoclast attack in the eighth century
AD. Marble. Third decade of the sixth century AD. Photographs: courtesy of
Elizabeth Harrison

The Cumulative Aesthetic

My purpose in choosing spolia and ‘miniatures’ on which to focus here has

been to tease out two archetypally late antique developments in artistic
practice (both already in operation by the fourth century) which are in
some senses parallel. The kinds of high-quality artistic spolia represented
by the second-century reliefs reused on the Arch of Constantine or the
‘Arco di Portogallo’ and the ‘miniatures’—whether ivories or capitals—
that would themselves come to be spolia in the later Middle Ages at San

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Marco or Aachen, are prize objects, respected as such in their own right. In
a spirit of antiquarian esteem or connoisseurial admiration for outstanding
workmanship, these objects were preserved and given pride of place in a
new context. The cumulative aesthetic of late antique art allowed these
pieces both to be themselves and to become parts of a new whole. This
enabled the new work to make a delicate gesture of continuity with earlier
eras whereby the past could be respected in the integrity of its original
pieces but transformed through a new framing. This was as true of small-
scale works as it was of the Arch of Constantine. Take, for instance, the gold
Gospel covers, incrusted with jewels and incorporating 6 Roman cameos,
given by Pope Gregory the Great to the Lombard Queen Theodolinda in
603 and subsequently deposited by her in the Cathedral at Monza (Plate
2). 98 Here, as in the Arch (p.305) of Constantine, a monarchical lineage
of present ruler and past imperial precedent is established through a use
of spolia that may be called typological. That is, it functions in a similar
way (though in political and historical rather than religious matters) to that
by which Christian typology uses the Old Testament to presage and be
fulfilled by the events of the New Testament. 99 The Monza cameos valorize
the royalty of Theodolinda as well as the Pontificate of Gregory with the
generalized aura of Roman imperial grandeur made specific through actual
precious examples; their evocation of ancient monarchy is fulfilled in the
Papal gospels and their royal dedication. Likewise, in the Arch, the images
of Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aureliius prefigure the glorious imperium of
Constantine, whose principate is the fulfilment of theirs. At the same time,
the treasures of the ancient Roman past—especially gems and cameos
—are subsumed into and come to celebrate explicitly and archetypally
Christian objects, like gospels and jewelled crosses, which would in their
own right come to be visual symbols of triumphant Christianity in a host of
late antique mosaics. 100 In Byzantium, for instance, a number of the most
spectacular Julio-Claudian cameos were re-employed to Christian ends: an
agate head of Augustus, subsequently in the Treasury of S. Denis and now
in the Bibliothéque Nationale, was supplemented with a Greek inscription
turning the ever-youthful emperor into one of the forty young martyrs of
Sebaste (Fig. 13 ), while the Grand Camée de France extolling Tiberius (the
largest of all surviving imperial gems) was mounted in a complex Byzantine
frame of gilded silver that was decorated with enamel portraits of the four
Evangelists as well as roundels of a further 20 saints which were disposed
about the border. 101

Just as spolia became the raw material for syncretistic juxtapositions from
public arches to jewel-covered crosses, so miniatures of the same period or

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earlier were exploited in similar ways—as framed objects in their own right
and as exquisite parts of a greater whole. In St Sophia, the monumental
cage-cup capitals function within a visual totality that includes column-shafts
of porphyry, (p.306) grey-white Proconnesian marble and verde antico, 102
and a great richness of arcading—from carved marble to coloured marble
inlays. 103 St Sophia’s coloured marble incrustation (Plate 3) represents the
late antique apogee of a traditional Roman method of elite wall decoration
that had entered a brilliant late Roman (p.307) phase in such buildings as
the basilica of Junius Bassus, the Lateran Baptistery and the church of Sta
Sabina in Rome. 104 The particular late antique fascination with combining
relief-work and coloured-stone inlay is differently apparent in the elaborate
columns cut with a grid of hexagons and squares to which amethyst, gold-
covered glass and green glass inlays were applied at St Polyeuktos, 105 and
—much earlier—in the use of an inlaid porphyry ground against which to
display the Hadrianic medallions of the Arch of Constantine as well as a now
lost coloured marble frieze beneath the same arch’s cornice, which may
have exhibited a decorative pattern but may even have been figured. 106 In
the case of St Sophia, all this was topped with a canopy of golden mosaics
to which Procopius refers more than once in his famous ekphrasis of the
building (De Aedificiis 1.1.46 and 54). In St Sophia, in addition to spolia in the
form of reused columns and almost certainly also the reuse of some of the
coloured marble veneering that constitutes the opus sectile incrustation, 107
there was an accumulation of exquisite details brought together to be more
than the sum of their parts.

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Fig. 13. Agate head of the emperor Augustus (late first century BC or early
first century AD) with a later Byzantine inscription saying ‘Part of the relics
of the forty saints’ (referring to the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste). Photographs:
Cabinet des Me´dailles, Paris

Underlying both the Arch of Constantine and St Sophia, as well as numerous

monuments in between, is a specific aesthetic of bricolage. Elements are
borrowed and adapted from the great quarry of the Roman past—literally
so in the case of spolia, but also by means of imitation and the reuse of
formal traits. 108 Both forms of appropriation—the actual and the virtual—
are subjected to creative transformation not only by their new placings and
contexts, but also through specific recuttings in the case of spolia and the
development of reused motifs into new forms—for instance, that of such
distantly borrowed models as cage-cups and earlier opus-sectile into their
heirs at St Sophia. It has been argued that this kind of creative syncretism
of collected fragments is far (p.308) from being limited to the visual arts
of the period—it appears in literary culture, 109 and it belongs to the cult of
relics. 110 Critics have spoken of an ‘aesthetics of discontinuity’ or ‘dissonant
echoing’ in which the different fragments are synthesized in a dense and
textured play of repetition and variation: not only do the seams show, but
they are positively advertised. 111

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But perhaps we may turn to Late Antiquity itself for a formulation of how the
‘cumulative aesthetic’ worked and was perceived. Here is part of Procopius’
description of St Sophia:
All these details, fitted together with incredible skill in mid-
air and floating off from each other and resting only on the
parts next to them, produce a single and most extraordinary
harmony in the work and yet do not permit the spectator
to linger much over the study of any one of them, but each
detail attracts the eye and draws it irresistibly to itself. So the
vision constantly shifts suddenly, for the beholder is utterly
unable to select which particular detail he should admire
more than all the others. But even so, though they turn their
attention to every side and look with contracted brows upon
every detail, observers are still unable to understand the
skilful craftsmanship, but they always depart from there
overwhelmed by the bewildering sight. (De Aed. 1.1.47–9). 112

If for a moment we disregard the architectural dispensation of Procopius’

rhetoric and his interest in spatial interconnections in ‘mid-air’ (very
appropriate in the context of St Sophia’s revolutionary floating dome), this
passage is germane to artistic issues much more generally. Procopius’
concern is with the specific artistic detail and its place in the whole. He wants
to do justice to both—in particular to the ‘skilful craftsmanship’ which is of
the essence to the ‘exquisite miniature’, but also to a totality in which the
details, however attractive (even ‘irresistible’) to the eye, are subsumed
by the whole. In particular, he dramatizes two possible and contradictory
responses through focusing on the beholder’s place in relating to the object.
One is for the spectator to be caught in a ‘single and most extraordinary
harmony’; the other is for him or her to be confused, the attention drawn
from side to side by an (p.309) overwhelming and bewildering plethora of
riches. In any actual church building seen in its ritual context, these riches
would have been multiplied beyond the architecture and its embellishment
to portable icons, the hanging of fabrics and cloths, the use of figured
decoration in church furniture, the jewelled splendour of processional crosses
and other liturgical paraphernalia. Both responses of course, dependent
on the ‘incredible skill’ with which St Sophia was devised in the Procopian
dispensation, speak to a unique grandeur and vision—a vision that Procopius’
panegyric clearly seeks to redound upon Justinian. St Sophia is, of course,
the zenith of the late antique aesthetic I have been examining. But its every
detail, as well as its architectural structure (including structural innovations
new to Roman architecture) are deeply indebted to, indeed embedded in,

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earlier tradition. 113 What Procopius says of Justinian’s great church, in terms
of relating lavish details that demand to be enjoyed in their own right (like
spolia and ‘miniatures’) within a totality of which they are part but which
far surpasses them, is essential to the ‘jewelled style’ of the ‘cumulative
aesthetic’ already in the Arch of Constantine.

Notes:

(1) For a quick glance at the diversity of materials, some recent exhibition
catalogues provide an excellent entrée: Weitzmann ( 1977 b), Sena Chiesa (
1990 ), Ensoli and La Rocca ( 2001 ).

(2) See Inan and Alfo¨ldi-Rosenbaum ( 1979 ) no. 208, 236–8; Smith ( 1999 )
168.

(3) See e.g. Kraeling ( 1956 ) 164–8.

(4) For a summary of the literature and its various approaches, see Brendel
( 1979 ) 101–37; for recent restatement of ‘bipolarity’, see Torelli ( 1996
) esp. 930–1, 956–8. For a critique of some of the theoretical assumptions
underlying this model, Elsner ( 2000 a). Most recently on the so-called
‘Ahenobarbus base’, see Kuttner ( 1993 ) with bibliography.

(5) See Rodenwaldt ( 1939 ) 546–7 and (1944/5) 84 and 87.

(6) See Furtwängler ( 1900 ) 289–99.

(7) See e.g. Bianchi Bandinelli ( 1970 ) 51–105 and (1978) 19–48.

(8) Ultimately this formulation goes back to Strzygowski ( 1901 ) 1–10 and
(1905) 21–4. For more recent versions, see Kitzinger ( 1940 ) 7–12, Grabar (
1972 ), Kit-zinger (1977) 9–12, Trilling ( 1987 ).

(9) See e.g. Kaschnitz von Weinberg ( 1961 ) 42–51 (esp. 48–51), and also
Brendel ( 1979 ) 108–18.

(10) See Brendel ( 1979 ) 122–37, Ho¨lscher (1987) and Settis ( 1989 ) 827–
78.

(11) An excellent review of many of these issues is Cormack ( 2000 ) esp.

884–6.

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(12) Riegl ( 1901 ), Strzygowski ( 1901 ). The polemic between the two was
soon intense: See Riegl ( 1988 ) and Strzygowski ( 1905 ).

(13) Further on Riegl, see Olin ( 1992 ), Iversen ( 1993 ), Olin ( 1994 ).

(14) Strzygowski ( 1905 ) 23. Further on Strzygowski, see Marchand ( 1994 )

and Olin ( 1994 ) 113–15.

(15) Bianchi Bandinelli ( 1971 ) and Grabar ( 1967 ).

(16) On the late Rome side, for instance: Berenson ( 1954 ), L’Orange ( 1965
), Kiilerich ( 1993 ). On the early Christian side, for example: Morey ( 1942 ),
Grabar ( 1969 ), Mathews ( 1993 ), Jensen ( 2000 ).

(17) Kitzinger ( 1977 ) 1–21. The most recent attempt to synthesize the two
traditions is in the title of a collection of essays on late antique art published
in 2001, ‘Imperial Art as Christian Art—Christian Art as Imperial Art’: Brandt (
2001 ).

(18) A good introduction is now in Wood ( 2000 ) with extensive further

bibliography at 73–81.

(19) For some acute remarks on this tendency in Riegl, see Pächt ( 1999 )
117–20, 127–31.

(20) On the early Christian side, the recent contribution by Koch ( 1996 )
remains an unashamed apology for ‘Christliche Archäologie’, while—for all
its intense controversy—Mathews ( 1993 ) upholds a post-Strzygowskian
anti-Roman position in its perverse denial of any assimilation of the image of
Christ with the iconography of Roman imperialism.

(21) The title of the first English language publication of Dura says it all:
Breasted ( 1924 ) and recently the insistence on Dura and Christian origins
is the governing thesis of Weitzmann and Kessler ( 1990 ). For an excellent
critique of the Dura literature and its Orientalist underpinnings, see Wharton
( 1995 ) 17–23, and more generally 1–14.

(22) See Smith ( 1990 ), ( 1991 ), ( 1999 ), and ( 2002 ).

(23) On bronzes, see Kluge and Lehmann-Hartleben ( 1927 ) 53–8. On

marble in the Theodosian period, see Kiilerich ( 1993 ) 27–30, 82–92, 96–
100 (imperial portraiture), 103–25 (non-imperial portraiture). Fundamental
generally are L’Orange ( 1933 ), Delbrueck ( 1933 ), Stichel ( 1982 ). On the

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material from Aphrodisias, see Smith ( 1999 ) and on Ephesus, see e.g. Inan
and Alföldi-Rosenbaum ( 1979 ) nos. 149–56, 185–90.

(24) On this see Hannestad ( 1994 ) 105–49; Kiilerich and Torp ( 1994 ),
Bergmann ( 1999 ).

(25) On reliefs see Kiilerich ( 1993 ) 31–41, 50–64, 126–35. Most recently
on the obelisk base, see Effenberger ( 1996 ), Kiilerich ( 1998 ). On the
charioteer bases: see Cameron ( 1973 ).

(26) On St Polyeuktos, see Harrison ( 1986 ) 156–61.

(27) See Engemann ( 1979 ), Spier ( 1993 ), Mango and Mundell Mango (
1993 ).

(28) On the Rothschild Cameo, see Kiilerich ( 1993 ) 92–4 with bibliography.
On the ‘Triumph of Licinius’, see e.g. Engemann ( 1979 ) 305–6.

(29) For repairs to public buildings, see Mundell Mango ( 2000 ) 926–40. For
a detailed account of the changing topography of Rome in the 3rd and 4th
cents., see Curran ( 2000 ) 1–157. For repairs to old works of art in Rome,
see Hannestad ( 1994 ) 20–104.

(30) The Literature on spolia is vast. Fundamental are: Esch ( 1969 ),

Deichmann ( 1975 ), Settis ( 1986 ), Poeschke ( 1996 ), Pensabene ( 1993 )
and ( 1995 ) and Pensabene and Panella ( 1993 –4). For a most useful English
discussion of this literature see Kinney ( 1995 ), ( 1997 ) and ( 2001 ).

(31) On Rome see e.g. Pensabene and Panella ( 1993 –4) 166–74,
Brandenburg ( 1996 ) Brenk ( 1996 ). On Constantinople, see Mu¨ller-Wiener
(1983) 370–5.

(32) On the Arch of Constantine, see for instance Elsner ( 2000 b) with
bibliography. Statues: Smith ( 1999 ) 161–2 (Julian/Theodosius), 162–5
(Oecumenius base), 165–7 (Alexander).

(33) See e.g. Blanck ( 1969 ), Rollin ( 1979 ), Jucker ( 1981 ), Bergmann and
Zanker ( 1981 ), Kinney ( 1997 ), Varner ( 2000 ) with bibliography.

(34) Berenson ( 1954 ) 13–14, 34–5 put the pragmatic case strongly, and it
has recently been persuasively argued by Ward-Perkins ( 1999 ). Different
aspects of the aesthetic case have been put by Brenk ( 1987 ) and Cox Miller
( 1998 ).

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(35) On antiquarianism in the period, the best account is Bowersock ( 1990
), with relatively little discussion of art, but see 48–53. For aspects of visual
antiquarianism see Hannestad ( 1994 ) and Elsner ( 1998 ) 169–97. On late
antique collecting in Constantinople, see Mango ( 1963 ) 55–9 and (1991),
Mango, Vickers and Francis ( 1992 ), Guburti Bassett ( 1991 ), ( 1996 ) and (
2000 ). On collecting elsewhere, see Hannestad ( 1994 ) 105–49.

(36) On Gaul see Beno^ıt (1954); on Ravenna see Lawrence ( 1945 ),

Kollwitz and Herdeju¨rgen ( 1979 ), Dresken-Weiland ( 1998 ) 118–26; on
Constantinople, ibid. 126–30.

(37) Recent discussions include: Johns ( 1990 ), the papers in Antiquite

Tardive 5 (1997) and Leader-Newby ( 2003 ). The most important recent
discovery is published by Mundell Mango and Bennett ( 1994 ).

(38) See e.g. Cutler ( 1993 ) and Cameron ( 1998 ). The main corpus is
Volbach ( 1976 ).

(39) One intriguing issue is that, while medieval metalwork frequently took
advantage of imperial Roman cameos and other gems of all periods as well
as of specifically late antique ivories for inclusion among its spolia, so far
as I know, no pre-late antique ivories were so exploited. Did they not exist?
Were they in too bad a condition by the time the spoliation fad hit luxury
early medieval utensils? Or did ivory undergo a change in its precious status
and value which ensured the preservations of so many late antique examples
against earlier ones?

(40) On the development of opus sectile in Late Antiquity, see Becatti ( 1969
) 123–215, Kleinert ( 1979 ) 45–71 with further bibliography, Sapelli ( 2001 ),
Guidobaldi ( 2001 ).

(41) On ancient book illustration, the published orthodoxy remains that of

Weitzmann ( 1947 ), ( 1959 ) e.g. 2–3, 128–35 and (1977b). For a different
view, see Lowden ( 1999 ).

(42) On textiles, see Rutchowskaya ( 1990 ) and Vickers (1999).

(43) See e.g. Ling ( 1998 ) and Dunbabin ( 1999 ). The most interesting
recent theoretical account is Muth ( 1998 ) and ( 1999 ) specifically on Piazza
Armerina.

(44) See further Elsner ( 1995 ) 249–87.

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(45) See my argument in Elsner ( 1998 ) 199–235. On Jewish art, see for
instance Levine and Weiss ( 2000 ) with bibliography.

(46) On ‘advertising’ see Grabar ( 1968 ) 27–30 and Mathews ( 1993 ) 3–10
(which is indebted to Grabar on this point but fails to acknowledge him!). On
the religious ‘market place’, see North ( 1992 ).

(47) On inter-Christian competition in 3rd-cent. Rome, see Brent ( 1995

) 398–540. On the Callistus catacomb, see Finney ( 1994 ) 146–230 with
bibliography; on the Hippolytus statue, see Brent ( 1995 ) 3–114 with
bibliography. On inter-Christian competition and art, see Elsner ( 2003 ) 73–
4.

(48) Again, this is a vast literature. For the origins of the Christians’
philosophical problem in Plato, see Osborne ( 1987 ). The classic account
remains Kitzinger ( 1954 ) and the recent revisionism comes from Murray (
1980 ) and Finney ( 1994 ). Significant recent discussions of the notion of the
image in early Christianity include Barasch ( 1992 ) and Belting ( 1994 ).

(49) e.g. Grabar ( 1968 ) and Onians ( 1980 ) 1–24; cf Elsner ( 1995 ) 1–13.

(50) e.g. Malbon ( 1990 ) but see also Elsner ( 1995 ) 249–87 and esp.
Schrenk ( 1995 ).

(51) e.g. Schneider ( 1983 ).

(52) e.g. Elsner ( 1998 ).

(53) There has been no Zanker (yet) for Late Antiquity, but see MacCormack
( 1981 ).

(54) Cormack ( 2000 ) quotes at 891 and 886.

(55) See Ka¨hler (1953) 28–36, Pensabene ( 1988 ) and ( 1999 ) 24–40, also
Pensa-bene and Panella ( 1993 –4) 174–215.

(56) See e.g. Wilson Jones ( 1999 ) 95–9.

(57) For some more demonstrative implications of architectural spolia, see

Kinney ( 2001 ) 142–5 on column displays.

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(58) The classic and fundamental discussion is L’Orange and von Gerkan (
1939 ). For later bibliography see Elsner ( 2000 b) 152 n. 3 . On the stylistic
impasse, see Elsner (forthcoming).

(59) On visibility, see Veyne ( 1988 ).

(60) For a bibliography of these recuttings see Elsner ( 2000 b) 163.

(61) This at least is my argument in Elsner ( 2000 b), following L’Orange

and von Gerkan ( 1939 ) as well as Pierce ( 1989 ). Kinney ( 1997 ) 142–6
makes a good counter case in relation to the charged issue of whether a
Trajan (or Marcus or Hadrian) recarved as Constantine was now wholly and
solely Constantine or still carried traces of the memory of being Trajan (as I
believe).

(62) Cf Ward-Perkins (1999) 227–33.

(63) A useful survey is in Kinney ( 1997 ) 122–9.

(64) See La Rocca ( 1985 and ( 1988 ).

(65) Pliny, Natural History 35.38.94.

(66) See e.g. Dunbabin ( 1999 ) 38–52.

(67) See Elsner ( 2000 b) 154 with bibliography.

(68) See Forsyth ( 1995 ), Mathews ( 1999 ).

(69) See Angelicoussis ( 1984 ) 154–8; Koeppel ( 1986 ) 72–5.

(70) For example, the erasure of the images of Geta by his brother Caracalla
in 211. See e.g. Varner ( 2000 ) 18–19 with bibliography.

(71) See Cox Miller ( 1998 ), Elsner ( 2000 b), Roberts (1989a).

(72) For the importance of the imperial cult to pre-Constantinian Christianity,

see Brent ( 1999 ). For the assimilation of 4th- and 5th-cent. Christianity to
the public demands of urban ritual and civic religion, see Limberis ( 1994 ).

(73) For a brief account, see Anderson ( 1993 ) 190–6.

(74) On the demand for such objects, see Cutler ( 1997 ).

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(75) See for these objects Harden ( 1987 ) 185–8, 238–58, which corrects but
does not wholly supplant Harden and Toynbee ( 1959 ) 189–93 and 203–12.
On the technical issues, see Scott ( 1995 ), and now Lierke ( 1999 ) 104–28,
arguing for simpler and hence cheaper workmanship in glass than in semi-
precious stones.

(76) See Harden ( 1987 ) 53–84.

(77) On the Vicennalia dish, see Harden ( 1987 ) 223–4. For less grand
engraved vessels, like the Wint Hill bowl, see Harden ( 1960 ). For the
Alexander Plate, see R. Brilliant in Weitzmann ( 1977 b) 89–90. More
generally on gold glass, see K. Painter in Harden ( 1987 ) 262–8.

(78) On the place of rock-crystal as the bridge between carving in costly

hardstones and in glass, see Vickers ( 1996 ).

(79) For a catalogue, see Bühler ( 1973 ) nos. 108–110, pp. 78–9 for the late
antique deep-cut examples, along with Weitzmann (1977b) no. 314, pp. 334–
6.

(80) This diptych is no. 55 in Volbach ( 1976 ). On its working, see Cutler (
1994 ).

(81) See Volbach, ( 1976 ) no. 56. For the date, which remains controversial,
see Cameron ( 1986 ) 45–9 and for a different view (putting the piece in the
middle of the 5th cent.) see Wright ( 1998 ) 259–64.

(82) See Volbach ( 1976 ) no. 143. For stylistic and technical discussion,
see Spain ( 1977 ) 286–9. The most recent discussion with bibliography is
Brubaker ( 1999 ) esp. 270–7, with measurements of the depth of relief
carving at 274.

(83) The current consensus tends towards 5th-cent. Constantinople, see

Holum and Vikan ( 1979 ). The most recent discussion moves the date to
the 9th cent., see Brubaker ( 1999 ) 276–7. In the absence of compelling
stylistic parallels for all aspects of this object, I find no arguments for its date
absolutely convincing, but tend towards an earlier date in the 5th or 6th
cent.

(84) The Louvre ‘St Mark’ is Volbach ( 1976 ) no. 144. The Aachen and Paris
panels are ibid. nos. 72–8. The Bargello Empress (and a related plaque now
in Vienna) are ibid. nos. 51–2. The Barberini ivory is ibid. no. 48. See the brief
comparisons drawn by Spain ( 1977 ) 286–9.

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(85) This object and its technical aspects are discussed by Cutler ( 1991 ).
For the polemic this occasioned, see Speck ( 1994 ) and Cutler ( 1998 ) esp.
2–3.

(86) See Mundell Mango and Bennett ( 1994 ) 99–152, esp. 103–8. See also
the Achilles Plate in the same treasure, ibid. 153–80.

(87) See ibid. 55–97, esp. 58–60.

(88) See ibid. 365–401, esp. 369–73 and 445–73, esp. 451–7.

(89) On the value of silver, see Cameron ( 1992 ). Note that this view (‘silver
is not all that valuable’, 183) has been contested, e.g. by Painter ( 1993 ).

(90) See Cutler ( 1991 ) 332–5.

(91) As strongly proposed by Connor ( 1998 ) esp. 15–17 and 43–5 for
discussion of late antique examples.

(92) See the reviews of Connor by A. Cutler, online in caa.reviews and by H.

Evans in BZ 93 (2000) 195–7.

(93) The fundamental study of late antique capitals remains Kautzsch ( 1936
) with some updating in Deichmann ( 1982 ) esp. 532–41 and Besch ( 1977 ).
Specifically on St Polyeuktos and St Sophia, see Strube ( 1984 ).

(94) See the study by Deichmann, Kramer and Peschlow ( 1981 ).

(95) See Deichmann ( 1982 ) 649–63 and Harrison ( 1986 ) 131–3, 164–5.

(96) On which see now the useful collection of essays edited by C. Roueche´
in Antiquité Tardive 8 (2000) 7–180.

(97) For the influence of San Vitale on Aachen, see Bandmann ( 1965 ) esp.
439–42; and Untermann ( 1999 ) 152–65 with extensive bibliography. For the
influence of St Sophia on Ottoman mosque architecture, see Ahunbay and
Ahunbay ( 1992 ) 179–94 and Necipoglu ( 1992 ) 195–225.

(98) See Talbot-Rice (1966), Conti ( 1983 ) no. 21, 38–41.

(99) See Elsner ( 2000 b) 169–75 on the typological functions of the Arch of
Constantine.

(100) For discussion and examples, see Janes ( 1998 ) 105–39.

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(101) See Mango and Mundell Mango in Henig and Vickers ( 1993 ) 58–9.

(102) Interestingly, by the 9th cent., both the porphyry and the bigger verde
antico columns were believed to be spolia. See Mango ( 1992 ) esp. 46.

(103) The best English discussion of St Sophia is Mainstone ( 1988 ). The

finest photographs are in Ertug ( 1997 ).

(104) See Kleinert ( 1979 ) esp. 7–44 on St Sophia and 45–71 on the earlier
tradition.

(105) See Harrison ( 1986 ) 129–30.

(106) On the use of coloured stones in the Arch of Constantine, see

Pensabene and Panella ( 1993 –4) 184, 191–2; Elsner ( 2000 b) 153, 165.

(107) On spolia in St Sophia, including the twelve porphyry columns, see

Main-stowne (1988) 181 (with n. 28 ), 189.

(108) This is described as ‘virtual spoliation’ by Kinney ( 1997 ) 137, who

borrows Richard Brilliant’s clever distinction of spolia in se (for the reuse
of tangible objects) from spolia in re (for the reuse and copying of formal
principles). See Brilliant ( 1982 ) and Settis ( 1986 ) 399–410.

(109) See esp. Roberts (1989a) 66–121; also Cox Miller ( 1998 ) 124–30 and
Elsner ( 2000 b) 175–7.

(110) See Cox Miller ( 1998 ) 122–3, 125, 130–3; Elsner ( 2000 b) 157–62,
176–7.

(111) In the spirit of late antique spoliation, I plagiarize the fragments that
comprise this sentence from Roberts (1989a) 3, 61 and Cox Miller ( 1998 )
114.

(112) On Procopius’ ekphraseis in the De Aedificiis, see Webb ( 2000 ).

(113) On structure and design, see MacDonald ( 1992 ) and Curcic ( 1992 )
16–38.

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Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to
Late Empire
Simon Swain and Mark Edwards

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

Neil McLynn

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords

Historians of late antique government have at last become accustomed to

taking imperial ceremonies seriously. ‘The increase in the frequency and
elaboration of public ceremonial’ during the period is no longer dismissed
as an irritating distraction, but is credited with a ‘central role in the relations
between emperors and their subjects’. This chapter explores the ceremonial
impact of the most dramatic of all the changes to the character of imperial
rulership during the period — the allegiance pledged by Constantine and
subsequent emperors to the Christian God. Examination of the evidence
for the frequency and character of church attendance by the emperors of
the first three Christian dynasties, and for the representations of imperial
churchgoing in contemporary literature, will bring into focus the piecemeal
character of what is too easily seen as a straightforward evolution.

Keywords: Late Antiquity, Constantine, Christian God, church attendance, Roman

emperors, imperial ceremonies

Historians of late antique government have at last become accustomed to

Page 1 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

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their courage or strategic competence. 2 The purpose of this chapter is
to explore the ceremonial impact of the most dramatic of all the changes
to the character of imperial rulership during the period, the allegiance
pledged by Constantine and subsequent emperors to the Christian God. The
importance of the manner in which different emperors acted out their beliefs
in public as evidence for the quality of their commitment to Christianity
has long been recognized, but seldom explicitly discussed. Scholars have
instinctively chosen to construct their analyses of such questions around
the great formal occasions when the state encountered the church. A ‘self-
conscious transformation of political power’, from emperor to bishop, has
been articulated with reference to the contrast between Constantine’s suave
hospitality towards the bishops at the council of Nicaea and Theodosius’
submission to Ambrose after the massacre of Thessalonica; 3 a similar
comparison between Constantine’s demeanour when confronting his bishops
(p.236) in his palace and Theodosius’ when being confronted by Ambrose in
the latter’s cathedral has served to frame an analysis of a creeping politics
o intolerance. 4 However, we still struggle to place such scenes in a precise
context. In what follows I shall therefore explore the changing ceremonial
routines within which these celebrated encounters occurred. Examination of
the evidence for the frequency and character of church attendance by the
emperors of the first three Christian dynasties, and for the representations
of imperial churchgoing in contemporary literature, will bring into focus the
piecemeal character of what is too easily seen as a straightforward evolution.
The material is fragmentary and in many cases yields only provisional
conclusions. It nevertheless suffices to demonstrate that regular attendance
in church was by no means an automatic consequence of an emperor’s
commitment to Christianity. The successive experiments by fourth-century
emperors in organizing a devotional routine instead offer a sense of the
difficulties experienced in negotiating satisfactory terms whereby a ruler
could be accommodated physically within the (in principle) undifferentiated
mass of the ‘people of God,’ and so subjected, at least implicitly, to the
authority of the deity’s duly anointed priests.

I. CONSTANTINE
The missing page from the last book of Eusebius’ Life of Constantine
continues to tantalize scholars. 5 Not the least consequence of the loss
is that it has deprived us of an account of what seems to have been the
first ever visit by a Roman emperor to a church service. The heading
to ch. 57, which seems to quote verbatim from the missing chapter,
states that on Easter eve in 337 Con-stantine ‘spent the night together

Page 2 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

The argument is from silence, but the silence is a highly significant one.
Elsewhere in his Life of Constantine, Eusebius gathered all the evidence he
could to prove the emperor a loyal servant of Christ and faithful minister
of his church. He shows the emperor allowing his soldiers to attend church
services on Sundays (4.18.3); he shows the emperor’s mother frequenting
church services (3.45). He shows Constantine inviting bishops to the palace,
sitting down to dinner with them, standing respectfully to hear their orations,
sitting among them at their councils, even taking them on campaign with
him (1.42, 44; 3.15; 4.33). But he never— with the one probable exception
of this last Easter vigil—shows him going to a service himself. Instead,
Eusebius shows Constantine establishing a personal Christian liturgy that ran
parallel to what went on in the cathedral. There was a palatine devotional
routine: he made the palace into a church, leading his staff in a course of
readings followed by prayer (4.17). This routine involved regular sermons
(4.29–32); 7 it also followed the rhythms of the ecclesiastical calendar. While
the faithful packed the churches during the Easter season, the emperor
‘fulfilled the duties of a hierophant, and gave a lead to all others for the
celebration’ (4.22.1). This leadership took concrete form for ordinary
Christians in the candles and lamps with which he illuminated the city for the
Easter vigil, and also in the gifts which he announced at daybreak (4.22.2).

Even more telling is the evidence of Eusebius’ Commentary on Isaiah, an

exegetical work that reflects (as a recent study has demonstrated) the
exhilaration of the new Christian Empire. 8 One evocative passage, where
Eusebius declared that ‘we have seen with our own eyes’ the realization
of Isaiah’s prophecy to Israel that ‘kings will be your foster-fathers and
queens your nursemaids’ (Isa. 49:23) has been interpreted as evidence that
(p.238) Constantine participated in church services. 9 But in fact, it attests
the exact opposite. For Eusebius is very precise, distinguishing between
emperors, Isaiah’s ‘kings’ (βρχαι καὶ ἐξουσίαι), and the ‘principalities and
powers’ (ἄρχαι καὶ ἐξουσίαι) who administer the various provinces and
government branches on their behalf, and who represent (more plausibly
in Greek than English) the prophet’s ‘queens,’ ἀρχουσαι.̑ And he repeats
exactly the same phrase, ‘principalities and powers,’ in the next sentence

Page 3 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

We must therefore explain why the first Christian emperor should have
stayed away from the services of his co-religionists, even as he urged his
officials to attend. Several overlapping reasons can be suggested. The first
relates to the chronology of the conversion. Constantine had discovered
his faith in the camp, and the liturgical structures that were improvised
for his initial prayers formed the basis for what developed into his palatine
chapel. Geography will have encouraged this liturgical self-sufficiency: the
first decade after the Milvian Bridge saw Constantine operating largely in the
ecclesiastically underdeveloped West, and constantly on the move. Political
prudence might also have recommended that he maintain his distance.
Although Constantine now presented himself as the Christians’ patron he
could not afford to appear their prisoner—an appearance that attendance
at the mysteries conducted by the Christian bishops would certainly have
encouraged. Nor, finally, is there any reason to believe that any churchmen
took pains to bring their most celebrated convert to mass. We should not
underestimate the difficulties that such a parishioner promised to pose for
the clergy.

The practical problems—and even more, the sheer difficulty of

conceptualizing a place for the emperor in church—are nicely suggested
by a scene described by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History. This text has
recently, and convincingly, been reinterpreted as a unitary work dating
from 313, the time when eastern (p.239) Christians were just beginning to
come to terms with the existence, tantalizingly beyond reach on the other
side of the Empire, of a Christian emperor. 11 Eusebius reports (HE 6.34)
that the third-century Roman emperor Philip, being a Christian, wished to
attend ‘the last paschal vigil’: although the story is almost certainly false,
it provides excellent evidence for the imaginative challenge that Christian
emperors represented for the church. 12 Philip’s faith did not make him, for
Eusebius, part of the congregation: it was only on this special occasion (the
same that drew Constantine in 337) that he conceived his wish ‘to share
with the multitude the prayers of the church’. He thus belonged neither
to the multitude nor to the church. There was also a vague but powerful
taint of sin, ‘many accusations in relation to his affairs’. The bishop in Euse-
bius’ account therefore denies Philip admission: but this is not a scene of
heroically righteous rebuke. Eusebius’ tortured syntax reflects instead his

Page 4 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

Philip thus remains an outsider. Emperors simply do not belong inside

Eusebius’ church, a point which does much to explain Constantine’s
behaviour. Accommodating the bloody exigencies (p.240) of imperial rule
to the strictures of ecclesiastical discipline was only part of the problem
(although probably a more substantial part than the long procession of
subsequent baptized but bloodstained rulers make it appear in hindsight).
There was the more general, but no less contentious issue of negotiating the
terms by which an emperor could share a bishop’s ceremonial space; and
until the very end of Constantine’s reign, there is no sign that either party
felt the need to open this potentially fraught question. Certainly, the church
could offer the emperor nothing to match the quasipriestly position he had
established for himself in the palace.

Any discussion of Constantine’s dealings with the bishops ought to take into
account the fact that these stopped short at the cathedral door. Where we
tend to see intrusively heavy-handed patronage, Christian contemporaries
were probably more impressed by the ritual space which he left untouched.
There was perhaps a wistful note to his famous reflection over dinner that
he was ‘bishop of those outside the church’: part of his meaning may have
that while the bishops ‘oversaw’ their flocks he could not even see what his
subjects were doing when they were within the churches. 14 Until the very
eve of his death Constantine did not know what went on during the holy
mysteries.

Page 5 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

A sudden, and fatal, illness thwarted Constantine’s plans for his Persian
crusade. But his last days, as reported by Eusebius, provide a hardly less
magnificent showcase for his piety. Having gone to Helenopolis for a thermal
cure, the emperor established himself inside the ‘chapel of the martyrs’ and
prayed (4.61.1); then, realizing that the end was near, he ‘did confession in
the martyrium itself’ and there ‘obtained the prayers that go with laying-on
of hands’ (4.61.3). Constantine thus set the terms of his own initiation. The
small settlement of Helenopolis had been adorned, through his generosity,
with an imposing circuit of walls—and the shrine to the martyr Lucian. 17
By conducting his prayers in a town which owed its identity to the imperial
family, and not at a cathedral but a martyr’s grave, he kept these his own
business rather than submitting to established pastoral disciplines; the
bishop of Helenopolis (if indeed there was one) does not feature in Eusebius’
account. 18 We see the bishops come to Constantine, not him to them:
only when he had made his peace with God and moved to the suburbs of
Nicomedia did he summon them, explain his intentions and receive baptism
(4.62).

It remained difficult, even after he had put aside the purple and died a
baptized Christian, to find Constantine an appropriate place inside the
church. Eusebius’ account brings home the difficulty of reconciling the
emperor’s claims with the devotee’s obligations: his tomb ‘shares the
glory of the name of the apostles and is counted among the people of God,

Page 6 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

II THE CONSTANTINIAN DYNASTY

Despite the suddenness of his death, Constantine had made careful provision
for the future. Four Caesars—three sons and a nephew—represented him
at different points across the empire, each attended by a court and staff
that amounted to a government-in-waiting for his allotted portion of the
realm. When Eusebius came to write his Life of Constantine in 339, the four
had already been reduced to three, but the biographer could still proclaim
that the Constantinian inheritance was secure: the emperor had been
‘multiplied in the succession of his sons’, who had ‘put on his mantle of
godfearing virtue’ (VC 1.1.3). The ‘godfearing’ companions that Constantine
had provided his sons embodied this sense of continuity (4.52.3); and the
new rulers surpassed expectations by their earnest devotion to the service
of God, ‘observing the ordinances of the church even within the palace itself,
with all the members of their households’ (4.52.2). However, they were
(p.243) soon to go further, taking their religious observations beyond the
palace doors and into the churches.

One of the charges against which Athanasius of Alexandria defended himself,

in the Apology that he addressed to Constantius II in the mid-350s, was
that he had held a service at Alexandria in an unconsecrated church. 21 He
appealed to his own experience for precedents. He had seen the same thing

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There is no reason to think that this was Constans’ first visit to a church.
However, the construction work in progress on the cathedral of Aquileia
was characteristic of the decade; and the setting helps explain how the
sons of Constantine came to be accommodated inside the churches. The
northern hall of the existing twin-halled cathedral (itself only a generation
old) was replaced by a much grander edifice, covering nearly four times the
area and equipped with a monumental forecourt and interior colonnade. 24
But the change was not merely a matter of size. A sober, uniform mosaic
now covered the delightfully variegated floor of the earlier church, which
had consisted of a patchwork of mosaic panels donated by parishioners
and clergy. 25 Local idiosyncrasy was thus neutralized. And if Constantine
had been inhibited, as was earlier suggested, by the prospect of intruding
into a (p.244) well-developed routine which had no place for him, Constans
was no more a stranger in the uncompleted cathedral of Aquileia in 345
than were the local congregation. Constantine’s sons came to power at a
moment when grand new cathedrals were being built (often with imperial
subsidies) across the Empire: Athanasius would attend services in another
such uncompleted building, in Trier. 26 There was therefore an opportunity to
reorder procedures, to accommodate the imperial presence.

The first time that Constans’ brother Constantius II is recorded in a church,

significantly, was also in a building where all the participants were on an
equal footing. The emperor attended the council held at Epiphany 341 in
Antioch, to mark the dedication of the splendid new cathedral, the famous
‘Golden Octagon’. 27 This building was not, as has sometimes been assumed
from its position close to the imperial palace, on the Orontes island, a ‘palace
church’ designed specifically to accommodate the devotions of the emperor;
as a gesture of imperial benevolence, it was simply built on a site where the
emperor happened to possess suitable land. 28 The emperor, whose role in
the project was commemorated (with seemly modesty) on an inscription, will

Page 8 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

Constantius’ presence in the church was important to the bishops as a

means of reinforcing their message to the principal intended audience for
their deliberations. The death of Constantine meant that rival churchmen
could call upon different sources of political authority: and interested parties
lost no time in exploiting the mutual resentments and suspicions between
the brothers. The ‘elegantly composed and lawyerly letter’ that the council of
the Encaenia at Antioch sent to the bishop of Rome, deploring his ill-informed
support for Athanasius and other exiled bishops, carried greater force for
bearing the imprimatur of an emperor. 30 This was arguably a crucial factor
in prompting the western bishops to mobilize their own imperial patron.
31 When Constans attended the Easter service at Aquileia, he was deeply
implicated in the campaign to promote the return of Athanasius—and had
done much to summon into existence a united ‘western’ church to redress
the balance of the East. By now the eastern bishops were addressing their
letters to him also, and he in turn went so far in supporting the western
episcopate’s response as to write to his brother, at about the same time as
he appeared with Athanasius at the cathedral of Aquileia, threatening war.
32 The involvement of rival rulers with ecclesiastical factions (and vice versa)
thus help explain the change in the emperors’ profile in churches; and that
heightened profile in turn affected the character of imperial involvement
in ecclesiastical politics. Whereas Constantine’s ability to remain at arm’s
length from his Christian subjects had depended upon the absence of any
rivals who might slip in for a closer embrace, his sons expressed their rivalry
in competitive demonstrations of Christian piety; these in turn were probably
encouraged by the increasingly well-organized factions of a church whose
divisions largely mirrored the political map. This process of pious escalation
perhaps even reached the point whereby the (p.246) emperor Constans
received baptism: 33 if this was not (as is entirely possible) 34 a last resort
while he was being hounded to his death by the usurper Magnentius, we
might associate it with one of his military ventures. When his eldest brother
Constantine II invaded his territory, for example, the decisive battle took

Page 9 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

However, if emperors now began appearing in churches—and even, perhaps,

sharing the Eucharist—there is no need to believe that they did so regularly.
One item of evidence in fact demonstrates that they were not expected to
appear except for the major festivals. When Constantine’s nephew Julian
launched his usurpation against Constantius he tried various means to rally
support in the provinces he controlled: one of these was to appear in the
church of Arles ‘on the festival day which the Christians celebrate in the
month of January and call the Epiphany’. 36 Julian’s purpose here was to
conceal his apostasy: it is therefore clear that a Christian emperor—even a
baptized one 37 —would not be missed from his cathedrals on the ordinary
Sundays of the Christian year.

Julian, along with his brother Gallus, had been baptized as a child after
their father’s murder in the aftermath of Constantine’s death: the gesture
had probably been intended to advertise their ineligibility for a political
career. But capital could be made from demonstrations of Christian
commitment. While confined to Cappadocia, the two young princes lent their
patronage to the shrine of an obscure local martyr; the vehemence of later
denigration of Julian’s contributions suggest the impact, at least locally, of
the gesture. 38 No potentially compromising negotiations with churchmen
were necessary: as Lucian’s had for Constantine, martyrs’ graves could
offer an unconstrained stage for imperial piety. (p.247) Gallus, moreover,
would continue in the same vein when, as Caesar in Antioch, he conducted a
flamboyant transfer of the relics of the martyr Babylas to a new shrine in the
resort Daphne. 39 No churchmen are recorded; and henceforth Babylas would
rest snugly among the suburban villas of the court elite, five miles away from
the bishop of Antioch and his clergy. 40

Nor was Constantius behindhand in seeing the advantages of associating

with the martyrs. The sole explicit reference in the sources to the emperor’s
presence with a bishop in a church concerns not a cathedral but a martyr-
shrine, and the bishop is not conducting a service but attending the
emperor in a subordinate, personal capacity, ‘to offer him comfort’. 41
But Constantius’ most systematic and spectacular involvement with the
sainted dead concerned his father’s remains at Holy Apostles. He adorned
the site by adding a lavish cruciform basilica, thus promising to transform
the character of the services offered there. 42 As part of the project, in 356
he developed the precedent set by Gallus and organized the transfer of

Page 10 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

At about the same time, moreover, another ceremony set the emperor
against the new bishop of Constantinople. In February 360 the cathedral
of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople was at last dedicated: Constantius was
there, to present the new church with ‘great gold and silver treasures, many
jewelled and gold-threaded altar cloths, and various golden curtains for the
doors’; and also to present gifts to the entire clergy, and to the orders of
widows and virgins. 46 Here, then, was an occasion where the emperor could
take centre stage in a bishop’s cathedral.

However, the congregation’s attention seems to have been diverted from

the emperor’s gifts. A different source, the historian Sozomen, describes
the sermon that Eudoxius, installed as Macedonius’ replacement only a
fortnight earlier, preached on this occasion. 47 ‘The Father is impious,’ he
began, creating uproar in the congregation; ‘the Son is pious’. Eudoxius then
explained that the Son is pious because he reveres the Father, but the Father
reveres nobody and is therefore, logically, ‘not pious’. Tumult dissolved
into laughter, reports another orthodox historian, deploring the fact that
the joke was still repeated in his own day, a century later. 48 As reported
(and as usually interpreted), Eudoxius’ quip certainly seems gratuitously
offensive to the sensibilities of ordinary Christians. 49 But it is reported out of
context; or rather, historians have neglected the evidence that the Paschal
Chronicle provides to illuminate the context. We may assume that (p.249)
many of the seventy-two bishops who had attended Eudoxius’ consecration
a fortnight earlier had remained for this occasion. 50 Their presence, and the
awesome display of imperial piety with which the service will have opened,

Page 11 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

Eudoxius’ words can best be read as a theology lesson, about who possessed
the right to speak of God and how they might do so. In shocking his audience
Eudoxius was giving a practical demonstration not only of the ‘rhetoric of
paradox’ but also of episcopal authority: having raised and then stilled the
tumult, he could launch into the main body of his sermon with his audience
chastened and attentive. Nor were his words merely a casual joke, for
they recur in his ‘Rule of Faith’; and just as this document proceeds to
draw some notably trenchant conclusions about the incarnation of Christ
and the inapplicability of the Nicene homoousion, so Eudoxius’ opening
provided ample scope for a serious discussion of the implications of the
homoean creed that the assembled bishops had just subscribed. 55 For our
purposes, (p.250) however, what matters is that Eudoxius had upstaged the
emperor, whose presence had been long forgotten when Socrates recounted
the incident. As attention shifted from the emperor’s gifts to the bishop’s
words, proper order was restored to the liturgy, in readiness for Constantius’
withdrawal with the other catechumens at the end of the sermon before the
commencement of the solemn mystery of the Eucharist.

Eudoxius’ opening words were thus a means to an end, to reassert episcopal

authority over an occasion that was important for the whole church. As the
biggest assembly to bring together emperor and bishops (and the most
convincing celebration of Christian unanimity) since the council held to
celebrate the dedication of the cathedral of Antioch in 341, this ceremonial
climax to the council of Constantinople promised to be a defining moment.
The suggestion that emperor and episcopate were each concerned to stamp
their authority upon the occasion does not, it should be stressed, require

Page 12 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

III VALENTINIAN AND VALENS

It is possible that among the Christian courtiers who had crowded the
Aquileian cathedral at Easter 345 was one Valentinian, a young officer of
the imperial bodyguard. What is certain is that when he became emperor in
364, following the death of Julian’s short-lived successor Jovian, Valentinian
brought a new set of assumptions and expectations to the performance of
the role of Christian emperor. For like Julian, he came to power as a baptized
Christian; 56 (p.251) and unlike Julian, his faith remained an important aspect
of his imperial image. His baptism probably relates to an episode that had
seemed likely to bring his career to an abrupt end. In 357 he returned in
disgrace to his home in Pannonia, after being cashiered when his troops
failed to intercept a Gallic raiding party and so contributed to the frustration
of an elaborate combined operation between Julian and one of Constantius’
generals. 57 By entering the service of Christ in baptism he could put a
positive colour upon his abrupt departure from the emperor’s service. Later
in the century, the ex-courtier Benivolus would likewise become a pillar of
the congregation of Brescia; and as Benivolus’ local prestige rested upon
his defiance of a persecuting regime, so the remote part that Julian had
played in Valentinian’s downfall probably served, once the apostate’s mask
had been removed, to enhance the latter’s standing among his fellow-
parishioners. 58 The tale certainly seems to have grown in the telling. 59

There was an explicitly Christian aspect to the new regime’s ceremonies

from the outset. Called to appoint a colleague, Valentinian singled out his
brother Valens for promotion by appointing him tribunus stabuli on March
1, but did not raise him to the purple until March 28: which in 364 was Palm
Sunday. Since this was the first major feast of the reign, it is therefore highly
likely that Valentinian combined the procession into Constantinople that
marked his brother’s accession with some sort of religious observance. 60

Page 13 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

However, it also seems that there was a significant change in the pattern
of church attendance under Valentinian. In 364 Hilary of Poitiers launched
an accusation that Auxentius, installed as bishop (p.252) of Milan under
Constantius, ‘believed differently from the emperor and everybody else’.
He failed to make his case before a panel appointed by the emperor; and
subsequently ‘the king came to communion’ with the bishop, ‘to mark the
soundness of his faith’. 62 This statement supplies the first direct evidence
for an emperor receiving communion from a bishop, and so participating in
the central Eucharistic mystery of the Christian rite. And Hilary’s wording
implies that this happened as a matter of course, presumably on the Sunday
following the hearing of the case. It is of course possible that the occasion
was an Easter or Epiphany mass, and therefore that Valentinian was merely
continuing past practice; but the emperor was not bound by the routines
of his Constantinian predecessors. He had not been educated into the
devotions of the palatine chapels, but had become accustomed to the part
of a (presumably privileged) layman in a regular congregation. He therefore
had nothing to fear from weekly exposure to the ministrations of the clergy.

Indeed, it is the clergy who seem to have been co-opted into Valentinian’s
projects. For by taking communion the emperor introduced a new conception
of orthodoxy. He was now available as a standard: all bishops who accepted
his offerings and from whom he received communion perforce acknowledged
one another. This was the significance of his gesture to Auxentius, as Hilary
clearly recognized. When Valentinian, as mobile as his imperial predecessors,
left Milan for Gaul, the bishops of the successive cities where he established
his court were implicitly accepting Auxentius as a colleague every time
they received the emperor for communion, despite the fact that they had
solemnly voted to depose the bishop of Milan a few years previously. 63
Valentinian’s reputation as a dour secularist, rigorously excluding religion
from his politics, is perhaps due for reassessment.

Valentinian’s brother Valens, as noted above, was still a catechumen when

he was appointed emperor in 364: at any joint appearance in church during
the Easter season, his status as the junior partner will have been made
visible when he was compelled to withdraw. He remedied the deficiency
by receiving baptism in (p.253) (probably) 366: 64 and, like his brother but

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in a much more activist way, he used his baptized status to make himself
a standard for orthodoxy among the bitterly divided eastern bishops. He
was even able to include opponents in his embrace. In a famous passage
Gregory Nazianzen shows him entering the cathedral of one of the leaders
of the opposition, a bishop who considered him a dangerous heretic, Basil of
Caesarea:
The emperor entered the holy place with all his bodyguard (it
was the feast of Epiphany, and crowded) and took his place
among the people, thus making a token gesture of unity. But
when he came inside, he was thunderstruck by the psalm-
singing that assailed his ears, and saw the ocean of people
and the whole well-ordered array around the altar and nearby,
which seemed to consist of angels rather than humans—for
Basil stood completely still, facing his people, as scripture
says of Samuel, with no movement of his body or his eyes or
in his mind, as if nothing unusual had occurred, transformed
so to speak into a stone monument dedicated to God and the
altar; while his followers stood around him, in a sort of fear
and reverence. When the emperor saw this spectacle and was
unable to relate what he saw to any previous experience, he
reacted as any ordinary man would—his vision and his mind
were filled with darkness and dizziness from the shock. And
this was still hidden from the people, but when it was time for
him to bring the offerings that he had prepared to the altar,
and nobody took them from him as was the custom, for it was
not clear if they would be accepted, then his condition became
clear. For he started trembling, and had one of those from the
altar not reached out his hand and steadied him, he would
have had a fall worthy of tears. (Or. 43.52)

Gregory produced this version of the incident twelve years after the event,
when both the protagonists were safely dead. But the account must have
been based closely upon what actually happened in 372, foritwas part of
a speech addressed to the same congregation whose lusty singing had
contributed to the emperor’s discomfiture. 65 What Gregory offers them
here is a view from the apse: he had seen clearly (and could now interpret)
a scene that his audience must have remembered well. 66 Hence his loving
attention to detail.

(p.254)He constructs his story of imperial nerves, episcopal inscrutability

and the fit of trembling with its near-disastrous consequences around two

Page 15 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

The episode shows, above all, how finely the uses of ceremony were
balanced. The emperor’s vulnerability is clear from Gregory’s account,
with its exquisite awareness of the dreadful consequences if an imperial
ceremony went wrong; and whatever the exaggerations, such tales were
liable to be told by unsympathetic critics once an emperor had moved on.
Serious failure could undermine a ruler’s legitimacy. 67 But Gregory tells
only one side of the story. He fails to mention the inconvenient detail that
the emperor’s gifts were, in fact, accepted; and we might infer (although
Gregory tries to suppress the inference) that he duly received communion.
68 For unprejudiced members of the audience, the psalms that greeted the
emperor’s arrival would reinforce rather than diminish him. Such spectators
there undoubtedly were. For it was not a routine journey that brought
Valens to Caesarea in the bleak Cappadocian mid-winter. The emperor
had come, we may confidently suppose, to stage his new year festivities
(p.255) where they could be shared by his Armenian allies, to reinforce
the recent reassertion of Roman power and prestige in a crucial theatre.
69 The offerings that Valens brought to the cathedral for Epiphany thus
complemented the gifts he had distributed at the palace when the new
consuls were inaugurated a week earlier: for spectators, the two ceremonies
amounted to the enactment of a partnership between church and state.

There was a broader political element to Valens’ churchgoing. He did

not attempt to impose a creed upon Basil, as Constantius had (and as
Theodosius was subsequently to) upon the bishops of the Empire. No less
zealous than these other emperors for Christian unity, he secured this by
exploiting his own position as a baptized emperor. 70 When Basil accepted
his gifts he was recognizing him as a Christian in good standing; and,
through him, he thus implicitly recognized as orthodox the ‘Arian’ bishops

Page 16 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

Another story told of Valens shows similar processes in operation, but less
smoothly. When the emperor went to Tomi, in the province of Scythia Minor,
and tried to bring the local bishop to communicate with the bishops in his
train, the prelate instead (according to a fifth-century orthodox source,
highly unsympathetic to Valens) preached a frank sermon in defence of the
Nicene creed and then led the whole congregation out of the building to
another church, leaving the emperor and his entourage haplessly stranded.
72 We shall never know what lies behind this report, and (p.256) to what
extent Valens was the victim of a deliberate ambush as opposed to innocent
confusion, and inadequate briefing, concerning local liturgical custom. 73
The most striking feature of both Sozomen’s and Gregory’s accounts of
Valens’ discomfiture, however, is the way that they gloat over the emperor’s
helplessness. We might take it as a tribute to Valens’ success in imposing
himself upon the churches that such play was made, in retrospect, of the
moments when he could be argued to have lost his grip.

Such were the occupational hazards of imperial mobility. But Valens spent
much of his reign based in a single city, Antioch, where he remained almost
uninterruptedly from 372 to 377. And one source reflects, with particular
vividness, the impact of Valens’ processions to worship in the cathedral
there. This is a retelling of the story of Babylas and Philip which had caused
Eusebius such difficulties. But this time the reporter, a young deacon called
John, saw no difficulties whatever. In a pamphlet written immediately after
Valens’ death, he attributes to the bishop a much sterner attitude than had
Eusebius two generations earlier: 74

He ejected from the church… the ruler of the greater part of

the whole world, the murderer himself, possessor of many
nations, many cities and an immense army, formidable in
every respect by reason of the magnitude of his power and his
reckless disposition: he ejected him like a vile and worthless
slave, with the calmness and fearlessness of a shepherd who
separates a mangy and diseased sheep from the flock to stop
the disease of the one infected beast from spreading to the
rest. (De Babyla 30)

Page 17 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(p.257)But the emperor’s church parade is blocked by the bishop: the

audience was asked to picture how he approached; pushed aside the guards;
opened his mouth; spoke; convicted; laid his right hand upon the breast ‘still
flaming with anger and seething with murder’—and repulsed the murderer
(33).

The crucial difference between John’s version and Eusebius’ is the detail
and clarity with which John visualizes the scene. The reason, quite simply,
is that he could project Babylas into an established routine of imperial
churchgoing. For six years Valens had been processing ceremoniously to the
Golden Church of Antioch at regular intervals (albeit perhaps reserving his
attendance, like Constantius II, for the great festivals) 75 , to be greeted by
an Arian bishop who was a loyal ally. 76 John was writing for the benefit of the
Nicene congregation, who had meanwhile been holding their own separate
services. And his imagination was probably sharpened by the urgent need,
in the aftermath of Valens’ death, to establish this congregation’s claim
to be the authentic representatives of Antiochene Christianity. The main
problem for the Nicene clergy was that they had, in fact, failed to defy this
heretical emperor; their performance compared unfavourably to the bursts
of parrhēsia that had been produced by visiting holy men. 77 The efforts that
John and his bishop Meletius invested in their campaign to commemorate
Babylas, and the transformation of the traditional account of the penance
that he imposed, look likean attempt to show that the orthodox church of
Antioch did, after all, have a tradition of standing up to evil emperors. 78

So the departure of an emperor who had established a tradition of church

attendance helped shape a new clerical mindset. Within a few years, John

Page 18 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

IV THEODOSIUS AND HIS RIVALS

Meanwhile, the arrival of a new emperor in Constantinople had inaugurated
a new phase in relations between emperor and church. We are accustomed
to expressing the impact of Theodosius in doctrinal terms, in terms of his
support for the Nicene creed. However, imperial practice was arguably as
important as imperial doctrine in creating the Theodosian system. When
the emperor arrived in Constantinople in November 380, eighteen months
after his accession, he was a recently baptized Christian. A westerner who
had grown up at the court of Valentinian I, Theodosius brought the latter’s
churchgoing habits with him to Constantinople. This transplanting of western
customs to eastern soil bore unexpected fruit.

An account survives of Theodosius’ first entrance to the cathedral of

the capital. After the bishop of Constantinople had rejected his terms,
Theodosius ordered him to surrender the churches; the following day
he escorted Gregory Nazianzen, who for over a year had been playing a
somewhat ambiguous role (p.259) ministering to a Nicene congregation,
to Holy Wisdom. 80 The emperor and his new bishop thus marched into
the church and entered the sanctuary together for an occasion that
symbolized the inauguration of a new partnership. But Gregory would later
describe the match as doomed from the start. He shows himself sandwiched
uncomfortably between the emperor and his army, shuffling into the church
sick, broken and hardly breathing, staring vacantly up into space. 81 This

Page 19 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

The issue of Gregory’s right to the episcopal throne recurs in his Oration 36,
‘On Himself and Against Those Who Said He Desired the Bishop’s Throne
of Constantinople’, which has the distinction of being, in all probability, the
earliest surviving sermon delivered before an emperor. 83 But Gregory waits
until the very end before invoking Theodosius. He spends most of the sermon
teasing responses first from those people whose over-zealous enthusiasm
had compelled him, at last, to accept the throne, then from those who now
condemned him for having done so, and finally from those ‘ashamed’ by
the insults heaped upon him by this latter group. Only after he has turned
from these alleged critics to demand right belief and upright conduct from
his ‘flock’ (Or. 36.10), and offer appropriate instructions to its different
components, does he address the ‘kings’—to command them (amid a flurry
of polished paradoxes, alternately exalting and diminishing the monarch)
to ‘respect the purple’ and recognize the trust placed in them (11). Here
Gregory is using the momentum generated (p.260) during his exchanges
with his core audience of long-standing supporters in the main body of the
speech, in order to impose himself upon the emperor and his court. One
recalls how Basil’s choir had served to impress Valens nine years previously;
and Gregory himself had practised a similar technique upon an eminent
visitor to his modest church of Nazianzus. 84 Gregory makes Theodosius first
an auditor and then an actor in his drama, but does so in such a way as to
keep him at a distance from the body of the Christian people.

There is a similar pattern in Gregory’s Oration 37, ‘On the Word of the
Gospel: ‘‘When Jesus Finished These Words.’’’ As the title implies, this
sermon is a discussion of points arising from the day’s Gospel text—and
from the text it is perfectly clear that the occasion is an ordinary Sunday. 85
Yet Theodosius is once again (in all probability) present; and again, Gregory
waits until the very end of the sermon before turning to those ‘entrusted with
rule’ and requiring them to ‘help the divine word’ with a law against heretics
(Or. 37.23). In thus signalling imperial legislation that was (we may presume)
already pending, Gregory seems to have been attempting in the cathedral
something very similar to what the philosopher–panegyrist Themistius had
made a career of doing in the senate. 86 But the plea is almost casual, and
half-buried within a typically clever conceit about the ‘murders’ committed

Page 20 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

No disrespect to Theodosius was intended. However, there was room for

only one star in Gregory’s performances. In these orations he was applying
techniques of self-presentation that he had (p.261) been developing for
almost twenty years; and in his present need to impose himself upon a new
and demanding audience he neglected the new emperor’s urgent priority of
establishing his own identity as a Christian monarch. This helps to explain
Theodosius’ ready acceptance of Gregory’s resignation less than six months
later. For Theodosius was intending to be much more than an occasional
visitor to the church of Constantinople. He would in fact surpass Valens’
five years at Antioch with a seven-year stretch at Constantinople, a fourth-
century record for sustained imperial immobility: 87 and his appearances on
ordinary Sundays had already announced his determination to incorporate
himself in the church of the capital.

A distinctive feature of Theodosius’ churchgoing was the enduring

partnership he formed with the bishop of Constantinople appointed to
succeed Gregory in 381. The elderly senator Nectarius was a much tougher
and more capable character than the conventional picture, of a nonentity
or a transitional figure, would suggest. 88 Emperor and bishop (who was
not even baptized at the time of his appointment) started on equal terms
as strangers to the church of Constantinople, and in their fourteen years
together (Nectarius would outlive Theodosius by two years) they transformed
it. As a senator and former city prefect, Nectarius knew exactly what was
needed to show lay piety off to best advantage. A controversial feature of
the liturgy at Constantinople, reported by Sozomen (7.25.9) and Theodoret
(5.18.20–4), is plausibly to be attributed to him: Theodosius had been
allowed to remain inside the sanctuary at the altar, beside the priests, for
the Eucharistic rite. 89 The historians deplore this as a symptom of slackness
or slavishness, but the explicit inclusion of the emperor within the clergy
worked to Nectarius’ advantage. By associating the emperor so visibly
with the clergy he ensured that Theodosius (p.262) was identified, as no
emperor had been before, with a single doctrinal faction in the church. For
Theodosius, unlike Valenti-nian or Valens, spent the great majority of his
reign in a single city, attending only one church. There are signs that he
found the constraints uncomfortable. The ‘Conference of Sects’ in 383 looks
like an attempt to reassert a more traditional imperial role, but the planned

Page 21 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

These developments had repercussions in the West. 91 There, Valentinian’s

style of operation had been continued through his son Gratian, who is best
understood as a devout, baptized Christian who, like his father, imposed
his own conception of orthodoxy by sharing communion with those bishops
he recognized. Yet as Gratian was drawn into competition with Theodosius,
he was ultimately driven into the arms of Ambrose of Milan. Ambrose was
a western Nectarius, who created at Milan a church where Gratian and his
court could feel at home: and where the emperor could be implicated in the
bishop’s agenda. And when Gratian was assassinated and his army defected,
his young half-brother Valentinian II discovered that this church had become
(almost by default) the chief repository of his uncertain prestige. Quite by
accident, Ambrose thus became the first bishop to exercise systematic
leverage over an emperor—the first, that is, who could seriously threaten
to undermine the ceremonial credibility of a regime. This was the threat
he made during the Altar of Victory controversy, when he warned the
emperor that he might come to church and find there either no bishop
at all, or one who would oppose him. 92 The government’s subsequent
flirtation with ‘Arian’ alternatives were probablyspurredlessbyconfessional
commitmentthanbythe need to obviate the threat; but Ambrose would make
it good, in dramatic circumstances, during the controversy over the basilicas
at Easter 386. 93 The dynasty which had been inaugurated when Valens was
raised to the Purple on Palm Sunday 364 was effectively overthrown on Palm
Sunday 386, when Ambrose refused to make a basilica available for imperial
use.

(p.263) The eventual consequence of this refusal was the triumphant arrival
of Theodosius in Milan. The subsequent encounters between Ambrose and
Theodosius, important landmarks in any account of the evolving relationship
between church and state, were much more than the clash of two strong
personalities. When they met in 388 Theodosius had become used to a
mode of churchgoing at Constantinople specially tailored for him; and
unlike previous emperors, he had little experience of adapting to local
conditions elsewhere. Ambrose, meanwhile, after growing accustomed to an
imperial presence earlier in the decade, by 388 had probably not received
an emperor in his cathedral for several years; he had compensated for this
meanwhile by directing uncompromising sermons at the absent Augustus. 94
It is not surprising that their initial exchanges proved awkward for both men.

Page 22 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

was a crushing rebuke to a general who tried to join the discussion. Left
sitting alone while the bishop stood looming over him, Theodosius eventually
conceded the point. But Ambrose both forfeited the emperor’s favour and
lost the element of surprise; such tactics could not be expected to work
twice. So although the episode demonstrated an emperor’s vulnerability
when participating in ceremonies not subject to his own control, it also
taught Ambrose the futility of using the cathedral liturgy against an emperor
who (unlike the hapless Valentinian II) retained other ceremonial options.

Ambrose learnt the lesson quickly. The penance that he imposed on

Theodosius after the ‘Massacre of Thessalonica’ in 390 offered the emperor
a much more significant, and satisfying, role in the sacred drama of the
Milanese cathedral. 100 Theodosius had become thoroughly at home in
Ambrose’s cathedral by the time he again led his army westwards in 394.
He again underwent a brief period of excommunication following this
renewed round of civil war, but this time the sanction was self-imposed. 101
Theodosius, it seems, was eager to reprise a favourite role.

The effects of Theodosius’ high-profile participation in the Christian liturgy

can be seen in the ways that Christian authors now began to view the past.

Page 23 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

V THE THEODOSIAN DYNASTY

Ambrose addressed a final sermon to Theodosius in the cathedral of Milan
after the emperor’s death, before sending his coffin off on its long journey
to Constantinople. One conspicuous feature of the ceremony was the
presence of Theodosius’ young son Honorius at the altar. 103 But the new
emperor subsequently goes missing from the records of the Milanese church.
Ambrose was at the height of his fame, yet in the following two years there
is at most a single, isolated indication in the bishop’s works that Honorius
was worshipping in his cathedral. 104 The only time Ambrose’s biographer
Paulinus mentions the new emperor, he is sitting not in church but in the
circus, presiding over the games. 105 Perhaps, therefore, the young prince’s
managers had eased him out of reach of the powerful bishop, reserving his
appearances for the major festivals.

Such certainly seems to be the situation in Constantinople, where

Theodosius’ elder son Arcadius had inherited his father’s position. In 397
John Chrysostom was summoned from Antioch to succeed Nectarius: very
few of his many surviving sermons give any indication that the emperor
was in attendance. The imperial presence seems to have been reserved for
special occasions. 106 The translation of relics, in particular, when imperial
authority had helped secure their transfer to the capital, offered a special
role to the emperor; 107 such occasions also saw experimental variations to
(p.266) ceremonial routine. Arcadius created a sensation when he attended
at the climax of the deposition of three martyrs at Drypia, eight miles
from the city centre: his bodyguard left their weapons outside the church
building, and he himself removed his diadem. 108 These were occasions
where the emperor could determine the character of the church service, and
monopolize the people’s attention. 109

The withdrawal of the emperor from regular participation in the cathedral

liturgy had serious and unexpected consequences for his relations with the

Page 24 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(p.267) Two further scenes from John’s episcopate help further to illustrate
the dynamics of the relationship between the Theodosian dynasty and the
churches of Constantinople, and also introduce some developments of great
significance for the subsequent generation. In the first, reported by Socrates,
the Augusta Eudoxia, Arcadius’ wife, on learning that John was visiting Holy
Apostles followed him there in an effort to broker a reconciliation between
him and a rival churchman. Taking her infant son Theodosius II and placing
him on the bishop’s knees, she beseeched him in the child’s name to end
his quarrel until he agreed. 114 Several months earlier, at Epiphany 402,
John had been a spectator at a similar exercise in emotive manipulation
by the empress. After John had performed the baptism of Theodosius, and
the imperial party was returning in solemn procession from the baptistery,
a visiting bishop presented the eight-month old baby with a petition.
Eudoxia had arranged that one of the men bearing young Theodosius on
his ceremonial cushion should then jerk the child’s head, as a signal of
assent. The crowd roared its approval, and Arcadius felt obliged to confirm
the decision. 115 The part played by Eudoxia in these episodes introduces
the new role of ‘Theodosian Empresses’ as Christian role models for fifth-
century Constantinople. Equally important, the focus of both episodes was
the young Theodosius II: no prince had been exhibited so prominently in
church so young, and Theodosius would grow up to be far more at home
in the cathedral of Constantinople than any of his predecessors. During his

Page 25 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

It is beyond the scope of this chapter to pursue these fifth-century

developments in detail. However, Theodosius II’s reign is of direct relevance
to the episodes so far discussed: for the three Greek ecclesiastical historians
who provide our principal narrative framework for these events, Socrates,
Sozomen, and Theodoret, knew no other ruler. The shadow of Theodosius II
can be felt upon their accounts of the dealings between successive fourth-
century (p.268) emperors and the churches, flattening their perspectives.
The awkward discontinuities of these earlier experiments are therefore
blurred. One example must suffice. The most thorough and drastic reworking
of a fourth-century episode is Theodoret’s account of the excommunication
of Theodosius I by Ambrose at Milan (HE 5.18). The historian presents a
spectacular confrontation between bishop and emperor at the threshold of
the church, which (as further interpreted in subsequent representations) has
made the episode a defining moment in the relationship between emperors
and bishops. 116 But if Theodoret’s version has displaced contemporary
accounts, so its own nuances would be obscured by later retellings. 117 The
confrontation he offers is in fact surprisingly muted: and in it we catch an
authentic glimpse of the spirit of the mid-fifth century church.

Theodoret’s Ambrose greets the emperor with a long sermon that

concentrates upon the sinfulness common to all humanity (5.18.2–4). 118
His main accusation, that the emperor was ignorant of his sin, in fact proves
misdirected, for Theodosius, having been ‘educated in the divine scriptures’,
‘knew clearly’ what was proper to kings and what to priests. 119 So when
Ambrose proposes that he ‘accept the bond’ of excommunication Theodosius
duly heads back for the palace (5.18.5): the effect of the sentence is not to
impose penance, but to invite reflection.

The setting here is not fourth-century Milan but fifth-century Constantinople.

Theodosius had come to the church not on an ordinary Sunday (as
Theodosius I had in fact done when Ambrose preached on Callinicum) but
as part of a ceremonial arrival in the city; 120 the eight months that then
elapse before he is stirred to (p.269) resolve the question (5.18.5) mark
the period between Pentecost and Christmas, the longest period in fifth-
century Constantinople the emperor would not be expected in church. The
emperor’s abortive procession from the palace, across the agora and to the

Page 26 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

When the emperor presents himself to the bishop, who is seated in his
reception-hall (5.18.13: the positions of the confrontation over Callinicum
have thus been reversed) he again proves the latter’s criticisms misplaced,
and agrees readily with the proposal that he promulgate a law to muzzle
the imperial temper for the future (5.18.14–18). He is then free to enter
the church, but spontaneously does his praying ‘lying prone upon the
ground’ (5.18.19). The penance was thus not at Ambrose’s behest but
on his own initiative: Theodoret cites biblical precedent, not episcopal
command. This version belongs to a world where an emperor (as Theodoret
himself shows in his account of another episode) could overrule the bishop
of Constantinople to impose, in effect, a sentence of excommunication
upon himself. 123 All this, moreover, is only the first round of the episode.
For Ambrose again rebukes Theodosius (during the same service!) when
he comes for communion into the sanctuary (5.18.20). The stage is set
for an explosive confrontation: precisely this issue had sparked a clash
between a bishop of Constantinople and Theodosius II’s sister Pulcheria, the
consequences of which were still being felt when Theodoret composed his
history. 124 But here the emperor is able to explain the misunderstanding; he
has the last word in the exchange, shares the honours equally in Theodoret’s
summing-up, and returns to (p.270) Constantinople to berate his bishop
there for his laxity (5.18.21– 4). Theodoret’s account, here too, reflects the
contemporary experience of an emperor who explained, in an edict, his
refusal to intrude upon the sacred precincts of the sanctuary. 125 The way
that Theodoret shows the initiative subtly shifting from Ambrose’s hands
to Theodosius’ faithfully reflects Theodosius II’s success, in the course of
his long reign, in appropriating the ceremonial spotlight of the church in
Constantinople. 126

This was a situation Eusebius would hardly have envisaged when he wrote
his Ecclesiastical History, or even when he wrote Constantine’s Life in
old age; nor would either Ambrose or the elder Theodosius have easily
recognized themselves in Theodoret’s account. Nor indeed does the reign
of Theodosius II mark the end of the story. His successors in the East
would struggle to match his easy self-possession inside the churches of

Page 27 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

Notes:

(1) Matthews ( 1989 ) 248–9; contrast the scarcely veiled impatience a

generation earlier of Jones ( 1964 ) 1.337, describing the same procedures.
The fullest discussion of ceremonial practice remains MacCormack ( 1981 ).

(2) McCormick ( 1986 ). See also the paper by Michael Whitby in this volume.

(3) Bowersock ( 1986 ).

(4) Drake ( 2000 ).

(5) Fowden ( 1994 ) argues for deliberate excision; against this, Cameron and
Hall ( 1999 ) 336–7.

(6) For the chapter headings in VC, see Winkelmann ( 1992 ) xlix.

(7) In describing these speeches to invited audiences (4.29.2: συνεκαλει)̑

Eusebius clearly does not envisage any preaching in churches. This should
govern interpretation of the example he appends, the oratio ad sanctos,
and especially of Constantine’s evocation of his audience (orat. 2.1):
‘helmsman possessing holy virginity, [church] nursemaid of unripe and
unknowing youth,’ and ‘you also who revere God sincerely.’ Heikel ( 1902
) 155 expressed reservations about ἐκκλησία here in his apparatus; in any
case, the ‘nursemaid’ was only part of the audience.

(8) Hollerich ( 1999 ).

Page 28 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(10) I follow the text of Ziegler (1975) 316:ll. 9–22 at 14, 18. Hollerich (
1999 ) 21, blurs the point by translating the phrase differently on its second
occurrence.

(11) Burgess ( 1997 ).

(12) For the (lack of) historical evidence, see Pohlsander ( 1980 ).

(13) Compare the sequence of confession and penance required for a lapsed
bishop, in a document quoted by Eusebius at HE 6.43.10.

(14) For full discussion of this remark (quoted at VC 4.24) see Straub ( 1967
). Drake ( 2000 ) 71, 226–7, plausibly sees it as an attempt to assert common
ground with the bishops; but as such it also brings home a crucial point of
difference.

(15) Eusebius’ account of Constantine’s war preparations was contained in

the missing section of VC 4 (cf. above, at n. 5 ); information from the chapter
headings can be supplemented by Socrates, HE 1.18. See, in general, Barnes
( 1985 ); Fowden ( 1993 ) 94–7.

(16) The tent is described at Socrates, HE 1.18. For the planned baptism, VC
4.62.2 with Fowden ( 1994 ) 147, 151.

(17) Mango ( 1994 ).

(18) The earliest attested bishop of Helenopolis is Chrysostom’s biographer

Palladius, appointed at the very end of the 4th cent.

(19) Mango ( 1990 ) 58 argues that Constantine was proclaiming himself the
‘equal of Christ’; Leeb ( 1992 ) 93–120, interprets the evidence differently
but reaches equally striking conclusions about Constantine’s intended self-
representation.

(20) Mango ( 1990 ) 58, sees Eusebius having to ‘explain away’ an

arrangement ‘that verged on the blasphemous’.

(21) On the form and purpose of Athanasius’ Apologia ad Constantium, see

Barnes ( 1993 ) 63–4, 112–14, 123–4.

Page 29 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(23) Details in Barnes ( 1993 ) 225.

(24) Bertacchi ( 1972 ). The earlier church is conveniently described in White

( 1997 ) 2. 199–209.

(25) Menis ( 1965 ).

(26) Apol. ad Const. 15. Athanasius does not mention the presence of
Constantine II, who was resident there at the time (335–7). This might
reflect the latter’s damnatio memoriae, as emphasized by Barnes ( 1993
) 51–2; but the eastern evidence, confined to the province of Asia, hardly
demonstrates that Constantius shared Constans’ zeal in enforcing this. After
Constans’ death in 350, moreover, perspectives will have changed again—in
a panegyric of 355 Julian happily reminds Constantius of his plural brothers
(Or. 1 18–20) where in 344/5 Libanius, discussing the same events, had used
the singular (Or. 59.75). Perhaps, therefore, Constantine II simply did not
attend the cathedral during his father’s lifetime. For the new basilica at Trier
(still incomplete in the 360s) see Wightman ( 1985 ) 289–90.

(27) The emperor’s presence is attested by Athanasius, De Syn. 25.1. The

fullest recent discussion of the council is Schneemelcher ( 1977 ); cf. Hanson
( 1988 ) 284–90.

(28) Deichmann ( 1972 ).

(29) The inscription is quoted by Malalas, Chron. 326B.

(30) The letter is summarized at Soz. HE 3.8.4–8; its effect is apparent from
Julius’ needled reply: Ath. Apol. c. Arianos 21–35.

(31) For analysis of the relevant politics see Barnes ( 1993 ) 56–70, who
perhaps overestimates the role of Paul of Constantinople in prodding
Constans into action (62, 66–67).

(32) Soc. HE 2.22.5, Soz. HE 3.20.1; for the date, Barnes ( 1993 ) 89.

(33) Athanasius attests that Constans was baptized at the time of his death:
Apol. ad Const. 7.

Page 30 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(35) Constans issued laws from Aquileia on April 9 340, in what must have
been the aftermath of his victory over Constantine II near the city (Cod.
Theod. 2.6.5, 10.15.3); Easter fell on March 30.

(36) Amm. Marc. 21.2.5

(37) Julian’s baptism is attested by Greg. Naz. Or. 4.52.

(38) See Greg. Naz. Or. 4.24–29.

(39) There is a vivid account in John Chrysostom, De Babyla 67–9.

(40) See below, n. 78 , for the burial of Bishop Meletius beside Babylas in
381: this can be seen as an attempt by the local church to appropriate the
relics, in the aftermath of the court’s departure.

(41) Sulp. Sev. Chron. 2.36–8, for Constantius with Valens at Mursa.

(42) I follow Mango, ‘Mausoleum’: the evidence of Passio Artemii 17 seems

conclusive.

(43) The arguments against the traditional date for the arrival of the relics of
Luke and Andrew do not apply to the case of Timothy: see below, n. 45 .

(44) Soc. HE 2.38.35–43. For the episode see Dagron ( 1974 ) 404–5: the
date of ‘359 ou peu avant’ depends upon the internally contradictory
testimony of Theophanes, Chron. A.M. 5852 (making it the second year of
Macedonius’ bishopric).

(45) Woods ( 1991 ) argues persuasively, on the basis of the Passio Artemii,
that the relics arrived in December 359 and were installed on 3 March 360.
Constantius departed from the city for his Persian war shortly after 14 March
(when he issued Cod. Theod. 7.4.5); Passio Artemii 18 names an attendant of
the imperial bedchamber among those who carried the relics in procession
from the harbour. Woods’s claim (at 290) that the Passio ‘suggests’ that the
Timothy relics arrived subsequently reads too much into a gloss that seems
to have been added by John of Rhodes.

Page 31 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(47) Soz. HE 4.26.1. For discussion of this episode in the context of Eudoxius’
career, see McLynn ( 1999 ) 80–5.

(48) Soc. HE 2.43.7–11.

(49) Dagron ( 1974 ) 399 is typical of modern scholars in describing it as ‘une

intervention malencontreuse de l’évêque’ (cf. 444).

(50) Chron. Pasc. s.a. 360, describing Eudoxius’ consecration on January 27.

(51) Soz. HE 4.14.

(52) Theodoret, HE 2.27.5.

(53) Hilary of Poitiers, Contra Constantium 13, describes the tumult inspired
by the reading of a particularly choice item of Eudoxius’ preaching.

(54) For Constantius’ somewhat wooden dignity and moral earnestness, see
Amm. Marc. 21.16.5–7.

(55) The issue of the Son’s piety (and Father’s lack of it) recurs in Eudoxius’
‘Rule of Faith’: Hahn and Hahn ( 1897 ) 261–2 (no. 191).

(56) Ambrose attests that he was ‘baptizatus in Christo’ (Ep. 75 [21] 5); he
was already baptized by 364 (below, at n. 62 ).

(57) Amm. Marc. 16.11.6–7.

(58) For Benivolus at Brescia see Matthews ( 1975 ) 184–6. A recent

precedent for Valentinian was the ephemeral usurper Vetranio, who retired
to a new career of pious good works in his home town of Prusa: Chron. Pasc.
s.a. 350 (540).

(59) In 392 Ambrose already had him ‘despising’ service with Julian: De obitu
Val. 55; more elaborate versions begin the next decade (Rufinus, HE 10.2)
and then proliferate (see esp. Theodoret, HE 3.16).

(60) For the acclamation and procession, see Amm. Marc. 26.4.2–3—the
silence over a Christian aspect signifies nothing in this author.

Page 32 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(62) Hil. Pict. Sermo contra Auxentium 9: ‘pro sinceritate fidei.’ The fullest
recent analysis of the episode is Williams ( 1992 ).

(63) The verdict of the Council of Paris (360) is preserved in Hilary Coll. Anti-
ariana Par. A i (CSEL 65, 43–7).

(64) Woods ( 1994 ) points out that Jerome’s Chronicle properly establishes
366 only as a terminus ante quem; but his further arguments depend upon
the false assumption that Valentinian was not baptized. Easter 366 remains
the most likely date for the baptism.

(65) For the speech see McLynn ( 2001 ) 179–83.

(66) Gregory’s presence at Caesarea is demonstrated by his use of the

first person to include himself among those who ‘entered in with’ Basil for
discussions with Valens (Or. 43.53) immediately afterwards. As a presbyter,
he will have joined Basil in the sanctuary.

(67) Flawed ceremony dominates Ammianus’ account of the proclamation of

the usurper Procopius, well discussed by Matthews ( 1989 ) 236–7.

(68) When Gregory claims at Or. 43.51 that Valens denied Basil ‘fellowship,’
I suspect that he is deliberately equivocating between the generic and
liturgical senses of the word. In Theodoret, HE 4.19.1, Valens sends his
prefect specifically to persuade Basil to accept ‘fellowship’ with Eudoxius of
Constantinople.

(69) The previous year had seen Roman forces in Armenia defeating the
Persians in a pitched battle: Amm. Marc. 29.1.1–4. Previous imperial visits
to Caesarea can all be related to Armenian events: in 338 Constantius was
restoring the Armenian king Arsaces to his throne, and in 360 he entertained
him there (Amm. Marc. 20.11.1–4); Valens in 365 needed to rebuild a
relationship shattered by Jovian’s peace treaty with Persia. Caesarea was not
on the direct route between Antioch and Constantinople.

(70) The fine analysis of Valens’ ecclesiastical politics in Brennecke ( 1988 )

188–242, fails to note this aspect.

(71) I take the phrase from the title of Pouchet ( 1992 ), a richly detailed
study of Basil as ‘le protagoniste de la communion’ (680–8).

Page 33 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(73) Sozomen reports that the bishop of Tomi had a somewhat unusual
pastoral brief, covering all the churches in the province.

(74) For the date and context see Schatkin, Blanc, and Grillet ( 1990 ) 20–2.

(75) The only explicitly attested visits belong at Epiphany and (presumably)
on the adventus into Tomi; Valens would be familiar with Constantius’
routine, inherited many of that emperor’s advisers, and lacked his brother’s
experience of being a baptized member of a small-town congregation.

(76) Euzoius was allegedly entrusted with command of a detachment of

troops to help install a bishop in Alexandria in 374: Soc. HE 4.21.

(77) Even when glorifying the Nicene achievement, Theodoret, HR 8.8 shows
the ascetic Aphrahat confronting the emperor, while the clergy work less
conspicuously to maintain the congregation.

(78) See Brennecke ( 1988 ) 154–5, for the propagandistic intentions behind
Meletius’ new church at Babylas’ shrine and his burial there; cf. 136–41 for
the homoean leadership of the resistance to Julian. Note that nearly half of
De Babyla (76–125) is devoted to polemic against Julian.

(79) Hom. in Matt. 82.6.

(80) Greg. Naz. DVS 1311–35. The standard view that the procession
was headed to Holy Apostles (most recently in McGuckin ( 2001 ) 325–7)
depends upon the fallacious arguments of Ullmann ( 1867 ) 76 n. 3 ; there
is no reason to doubt that Theodosius escorted Gregory to the cathedral.
Controversy concerning the immediate political dynamics is likely to
continue: for a lucid and shrewd recent contribution see Errington ( 1997 )
33–41.

(81) DVS 1336–41.

(82) DVS 1370–91.

(83) The speech is discussed by Bernardi ( 1968 ) 192–8; Gómez Villegas (

1997 ) 359–70; McGuckin ( 2001 ) 329–31. We cannot exclude altogether the
possibility that Gregory’s address to the purple is apostrophe.

Page 34 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(85) Bernardi ( 1968 ) 216–26; Go´mez Villegas ( 2000 ) 144–50. I consider

unlikely the suggestion at McGuckin ( 2001 ) 332–6 that the speech was
delivered not in church but at a legislative conference chaired by the
emperor.

(86) For a convincing interpretation of Themistius’ role, see Heather (

1998 ). Important members of the court—not necessarily all committed to
Theodosius’ religious policies—would accompany the emperor to church. One
wonders whether Themistius himself might have been among the bearded
and cloaked ‘philosophers’ invoked at Or. 36.12.

(87) Theodosius’ critics would make much of his perceived preference for the
ceremonial routines of the capital: Zosimus 4.33, 50.

(88) A typical modern verdict is Hanson ( 1988 ) 811, comparing Nectarius to

Warren Harding; more positive assessments, such as Liebeschuetz ( 1990 )
163–4 and Matthews ( 1975 ) 126, have emphasized Nectarius’ qualifications
for pleasing the crowds rather than for accommodating the emperor.

(89) It is of course possible that the rite was first devised for Valens, but
there was no liturgical continuity between the two regimes. Theodosius
had entered the sanctuary the first time he entered the cathedral at
Constantinople (Greg. Naz. DVS 1360–1): perhaps the custom was developed
from this precedent.

(90) For this ‘Conference of the Sects,’ see Wallraff ( 1997 ).

(91) For what follows, see McLynn ( 1994 ) esp. 170–219.

(92) Amb. Ep. 72 [17] 13.

(93) The course of this conflict shows that Valentinian no longer attended the
cathedral on a regular basis.

(94) There are some effective gestures towards the absent Valentinian in
sermo contra Auxentium.

(95) Soz. HE 7.25.9.

Page 35 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(97) Ambrose’s account does not make it unambiguously clear who first
interrupted the normal conduct of the mass: did Theodosius call out to the
bishop, or Ambrose leave the sanctuary and confront the emperor? For a
discussion of the terminology in relation to other evidence for the Milanese
liturgy, see Schmitz ( 1975 ) 354–6.

(98) The service was halted at the point where the catechumens would
normally depart: Schmitz ( 1975 ) 359–67 collects evidence for the
‘dismissal’ at Milan.

(99) King ( 1961 ) 66: ‘He gave in because he was at heart a Catholic of his
day.’

(100) For discussion of this celebrated but poorly-documented episode, see

McLynn ( 1994 ) 315–30.

(101) Ambrose, De Obitu Theodosii 34.

(102) Ruf. HE 6.34; the account of Theodosius’ penance is at 11.18.

(103) De Ob. Theod. 3. Honorius had earlier been formally presented inside
the Milanese church: Paulinus V. Amb. 32.1.

(104) Palanque ( 1933 ) 296–302, finds in Ambrose’s later works ‘un véritable
programme’ of advice preached to the emperor; but of his examples the
only direct address is Enarr. Ps. 37.19, and even here the invocation seems
suspiciously generic.

(105) Paulin. V. Amb. 34: the biographer (who seems to have come to
Milan in394) would have had little opportunity to see for himself Ambrose’s
dealings with Honorius’ predecessors.

(106) Kelly ( 1995 ) 109.

(107) For the galvanizing effect of the emperor’s presence at the reception of
relics of Phocas, see J. Chrys. De S. Hieromartyre Phoca (Migne, PG 50. 699–
706); described in Kelly ( 1995 ) 139–40.

Page 36 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(109) Socrates (HE 6.23.2–6) emphasizes the crowds that followed Arcadius
when he visited (attended by his bodyguards) the martyrium of Acacius at
Caryae.

(110) See esp. Soc. HE 6.15, Soz. HE 8.16.1, on the tales told to the palace
about John’s preaching.

(111) For the effect of John’s preaching on the elite, see Liebeschuetz ( 1990
) 174–8.

(112) For Arcadius’ message, see Soc. HE 6.18.12; Soz. HE 8.20.3.

(113) John’s supporters would emphasize the embarrassment caused the

emperor by the absence of the usual Easter crowds from the cathedral
(Palladius Dial. de vita S. Ioh. Chrys. 9); but the court was evidently able to
find a substitute.

(114) Soc. HE 6.11.20. For the context, Kelly ( 1995 ) 186.

(115) Marc. Diac. V. Porph. 46–49. See Kelly ( 1995 ) 168–73.

(116) Drake ( 2000 ) 441–8.

(117) Ibid. 442–3, on the background to Rubens’ famous painting of the

event. The image continues to cast its spell: Moorehead ( 1999 ) 211 has
Theodoret’s Ambrose calling Theodosius a ‘dog,’ when in the text the insult is
directed at the minister Rufinus.

(118) The central section (which was omitted from de Voraigne’s massively
influential version in the Golden Legend) echoes the language actually used
by Ambrose to Theodosius after the event (Amb. ep. extra coll. 10 [51]]); the
direct reproaches that frame this reflect the outspokenness that had come to
symbolize the 5th-cent. ‘holy man’s’ dealing with secular authority. Compare
the letter of Symeon Stylites to Theodosius II in the Syriac Vita Sym. Styl.
122.

(119) Theodosius II’s detailed knowledge of scripture (and ability to argue

points with churchmen) is commented upon by Socrates: HE 7.22.5.

Page 37 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

(121) For the processional route across this space in later Byzantine
ceremonial, see Dagron ( 1996 ) 106–18.

(122) Chron. Pasc. s.a. 444 describes how an old man presented Theodosius
with an apple as he ‘went in procession’ to church for Epiphany; the fictitious
nature of the story does not detract from the authenticity of the setting.

(123) At HE 5.37.1–2 Theodoret shows Theodosius accepting an

excommunication from a holy man that the bishop of Constantinople had
declared invalid.

(124) The episode is described in the Nestorian Letter to Cosmas 8 (PO

9.279).

(125) The full text of the law (abbreviated in Cod. Theod. 9.45.3) is preserved
in the proceedings of the council of Ephesus: ACOec 1.1.4, 61–5.

(126) Such interventions as the commandeering of a church for an

impromptu prayer-meeting (Soc. HE 7.23.11–12) had consigned to
irrelevance Ambrose’s threat (n. 92 ) that an emperor might arrive in church
and find no priest there; and in browbeating Bishop Flavian at Easter 449
(as described by Nestorius in The Bazaar of Heracleides: see Driver and
Hodgson ( 1925 ) 341–2) Theodosius entirely reversed the situation between
his grandfather and Ambrose over Callinicum.

Page 38 of 38 The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Mark Edwards

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter focuses on a decisive moment — the reign of Constantine,

who advanced his own religion by the suppression of idolatry and the
multiplication of written documents. It might be said in general that the
history of early Christianity is a story of words and images — one subject
rather than two, perhaps, if Plato is right to say that words are images
of meaning. Plato also said that words are seeds. It is argued that this
spermatic metaphor enabled a Christian sovereign to tolerate many religions
in his Empire while he aimed at the final victory of one. Finally, he warned us
that when words begin to germinate they lose their truth as images, this is
believed to have been the fate of ‘monotheism’ in recent scholarship.

Keywords: Constantine, Roman Empire, religion, idolatry, monotheism

Among the chapters in this volume, the present one is unusual in that its
subject is a decisive moment, not a smooth continuum of change. That
moment was the reign of Constantine, who advanced his own religion by
the suppression of idolatry and the multiplication of written documents. It
might be said in general that the history of early Christianity is a story of
words and images—one subject rather than two, perhaps, if Plato is right
to say that words are images of meaning. Plato also said that words are
seeds, 1 and I shall argue here that this spermatic metaphor enabled a
Christian sovereign to tolerate many religions in his Empire while he aimed
at the final victory of one. Finally, he warned us that when words begin to

Page 1 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

I
The authors cited in the present chapter agreed on little, but on one point,
I suspect, they would have been of a single mind. They would all have
declined to make peace on the terms proposed by Michael Frede in an
article on Origen’s Contra Celsum, which may be taken as a foreword to his
subsequent study of pagan monotheism. 4

Christian doctrine, as it came to be articulated, at least at

first sight, looks very much like a form of Platonism, as it
was understood in late antiquity…[T]he issue here is not of
monotheism versus polytheism. For Platonists such as Celsus
were monotheistic in that they believed in one ultimate divine
principle.

He goes on to suggest that Platonists could have reconciled themselves

to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, were it not for the Incarnation and
the obstinate refusal of Jews and Christians to concede that the ‘ultimate
principle’ of pagans was as single as their own. Yet the doctrine of God’s
becoming man is not, as I shall try to show, a casual increment to Christian
theism, but the heart of it, and indeed it is the doctrine which entails that
Christianity is essentially theistic, as philosophies seldom were. Even if
they had been, that would not have put an end to controversy. Frede is no
doubt correct to say that monotheism was not the issue, if only because
Antiquity did not possess the word. A term of classification, not devotion,
it is serviceable to the student of comparative religion, but useless to the
enthusiast who believes that no religion stands comparison with his own.
The Christian evangelist preached not monotheism, but God; if others too

Page 2 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

(p.213) In a subsequent article, 5 Frede contends that Platonists were

monotheists in so far as they traced all things to a single origin, and because
they held that providence and creation were the work of one benevolent
overseer. The ease with which he passes from one definition of deity to
another hides a profound equivocation. Nothing in logic, nothing in the
history of ancient thought, compels us to suppose that the Creator and
the first principle are identical; indeed the two appear to be distinguished
in the cosmogony of Plato’s seminal dialogue, the Timaeus. It is true that
later commentators often conflate the Demiurge with the Forms that
he contemplates; but it is also true, as Frede notes, that Neoplatonism
desiderates a third principle, superior to both and beyond the grasp of
thought or speech. I doubt whether Frede, even if it were his custom to
do so, could supply any evidence to justify his assertion that the Second
hypostasis of Plotinus, generally called the intellect or Nous, is merely an
aspect of the First, which he habitually styled the One or the Good. It remains
a fact that, while the First and Second in Plotinus—and even a Third in some
of his precursors—were entitled to the appellation theos, each of these,
unlike the transcendent being who was worshipped as Creator and Lord by
Christians, was more accurately denoted by another name than ‘God’.

Other classicists too adduce the doctrine of the Trinity as a proof that
Christianity could accommodate polytheism; the acumen of the greatest
Christian writers in the fourth century was devoted to showing that this
was not so. Before the political triumph of the Church, the triune nature
of God was not so frequently proclaimed by Christian preachers as his
unity. When the apologists dwelt upon the Trinity, it was either to defend
themselves from a charge of tritheism or to find a specious analogy with
some philosophic doctrine that would furnish an additional confirmation of
the faith. Nowhere is the Trinity confessed with the provocative repetition
that accompanied their statements on the unity of God. These frequently
commenced with an attack upon idolatry, and we, who are so familiar with
the coupling of the First and Second Commandments, fail to notice that the
conjunction of these arguments is far from being a logical necessity. It was
possible, with Porphyry and Maximus of Tyre, to defend the use of cultic
images (p.214) while professing the worship of a single deity; and equally

Page 3 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Even to credit Plotinus with a theology is misleading, if it tempts us to shift

the language of religion from the periphery to the centre of his thought.
As a loyal expositor of Plato, he could not espouse the popular style of
Apuleius, Maximus, and Plutarch, who employ the title theos as the proper
name of the highest principle. Neither the Good in Plato’s dialogues nor the
One in his unwritten doctrines was identified with the world-creating theos
of his Timaeus. In the Enneads of Plotinus, the One is sometimes theos,
but less often than the demiurgic Mind. 6 On the rare occasions when the
term is applied to soul, the third member of his triad, ‘divine’ would be the
most adequate translation; and thus, if we insist on speaking of a Plotinian
trinity, we cannot say that his Trinity is God. And since, for different reasons,
we cannot predicate unity of either the One or Mind, 7 we can sometimes
say that the One is God, but never that God is one. Finally, whatever we
described as God, we could not make Plotinus honour it in the way that
common piety would prescribe for such a figure: there is no room in his
system for cultic offerings, public hymns or private prayers.

For Christians the name of God could never be adjectival. The personal
designation, while not adequate to his nature, was peculiarly his, and
therefore prior to any such attributes as unity and goodness, which he
imparts in some degree to all his creatures. Our own existence being
dependent on his will and favour, should (p.215) evoke gratitude; there is
no belief without worship, no worship due to anyone but God. The divinity
of the Spirit, though not defined until the fourth century, can therefore
be inferred from the doxology and baptismal invocation of the apostolic
church, in which he shares the incommunicable prerogative of the Father.
Speculating later and without the help of liturgy, Plotinus could have done
no more than influence the interpretation of the Christian doctrine; even
this seems improbable in the light of modern study. The Father bears some
likeness to the One, in that they are both incomprehensible; the Son, as
the Word and Wisdom of the Father, resembles Mind; but we cannot equate
the soul, which is common to all humanity, with the Spirit, who in Irenaeus,

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Origen, and Tertullian, confines his saving action to the Christian elect.
These authors never argued that there were three gods in the Trinity. Those
who affirmed that Christ was God insisted that they were using the term
univocally, and yet that there was only one divine being. Only in the Old
Testament was there talk of a plurality of gods, and then the usage was
construed quite differently, as reference to angels, who as creatures of the
one true God were entitled to a certain honour, but not the same degree
of veneration. Celsus averred that Christians had transgressed this rule by
letting Christ enjoy the worship due to the foremost god; but such a charge
assumes the polytheism which all speculation on Christ and on the Trinity
was labouring to exclude. I say ‘on Christ’ as well as ‘on the Trinity’, because
Frede’s sketch of a common Trinitarianism not only obscures the different
names and functions of the elements in each triad, but ignores the Christian
claim that the Second Person of their own became a man. This is not such
a trifle as many Classicists imagine, for without the Incarnation there would
have been no Christian doctrine of the Trinity, while with the Incarnation
there was no possibility of coming to terms with either Greeks or Jews. This
truth was clearly seen by Paul and recognized once again by Athanasius
when he addressed himself to the Platonists in defence of this one point.
For Augustine the humanity of Christ was the one great truth that evaded
Platonists a full three centuries after the proclamation of the Gospel, and the
complementary worship of the man Jesus was regarded by our earliest pagan
witnesses as the heart of Christian piety. Thus Lucian scoffs at the sect of the
‘crucified sophist’, while Pliny, who reports that they sang hymns to Christ
‘as though (p.216) to a god’, obliged them to cement their recantations with
a curse upon his name. 8

It was this, the cult of a divine man, that forced Christians into conflict with
the ambient society. As Jews they could have tolerated Gentiles; as Gentile
monotheists they could have tolerated idols. The latter course, however,
was not possible for those who held that god himself had chosen to be
represented under a living form. Nor was it now possible to reconcile the
one God with the many by supposing that he delegated tasks to lesser
deities. The Septuagint declares that God distributed the nations among his
angels, while in Plato it is the acolytes of the Demiurge who allot rewards
and punishments to the soul. 9 If the God of Judaism is nevertheless more
personal than his ministers, Christians went further and alleged that the
Incarnation has made everything subservient to man.

This is another consequence that was better understood by ancient than

by modern pagans. Celsus asks how Christians can imagine that the world

Page 5 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Even in the mid-third century, therefore, Christianity and Platonism were

easily distinguished. God in Christianity is a personal name, in Platonism
an epithet of varying application. One maintained that God had become a
man, the other that every human is potentially divine. One seems to have
leapt with a single bound from the Incarnation to the Trinity; the other took
centuries to deduce a triad from the premises of ontology. One saw nothing
but blasphemy in images, the other assumed that images and worship
(p.217) were inseparable, though a true proficient might dispense with both.
Hence it was that the Christian was a discontented stranger in the Empire
where the Platonist enjoyed at least a temporary home.

II
Neither Christians nor their pagan critics were inclined to understate their
differences. It is true that Christian martyrs seem to have practised some
reserve before the magistrates, proclaiming only the unity of God and the
profanity of idols; but if this simple compound of philosophy and Judaism
had been their only crime, they would indeed have died for nothing. As
we have seen, our leading pagan witnesses in the second century knew
that the Galilaeans died for Christ. Had it been otherwise, the sneers of
Lucian would have carried no more venom than his ridicule of other Greek
philosophers, and the irony of Celsus would prove only that a Platonist saw
Christians, like Stoics or Epicureans, as proper objects of polemic. The attack
on Christianity by philosophers is of a special kind: for once, it seems to aim
at the extinction of its target, yet entails at least a provisional recognition
of Christianity as philosophy—a courtesy not extended by all writers of this
epoch to the Jews. Celsus knew well enough that his adversaries were a
race apart, and introduced a Jewish mouthpiece to upbraid them for their
apostasy. Having read the Gospels carefully, he denounces Christ as a
charlatan who exhibits human weakness while pretending to be a god. He

Page 6 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Porphyry was more of a philosopher than the earlier polemicists. Where

Lucian had confined himself to ridicule, and Celsus to the assertion of his
own tenets, Porphyry married the rational mysticism of Plotinus to the
common religious feeling of his age. In his account Plotinus fights his way to
truth with the guidance of the immortals; having not a daemon but a god for
his guardian spirit, he retains an abiding consciousness of divinity, not least
in the hour of death. At this point in the Life of Plotinus, we are told only that
he was bringing back the divinity or deity in himself to the divinity or deity in
the All; but later we hear that even during life he enjoyed communion with
the being whom his disciple knows as God:
[T]o Plotinus—God-like and lifting himself often, by the ways of
meditation and by the methods Plato teaches in the Banquet,
to the first and all-transcendent God—that God appeared, the
God who has neither shape nor form, but sits enthroned above
the Intellectual-Principle and all the Intellectual-Sphere. (Life of
Plotinus 23 Mackenna)

Christians rarely spoke of such translations in the third century, but

Origen, in a homily on the Song of Songs, alludes to his encounters with
the Bridegroom, ‘which the inexperienced cannot understand’. Origen, in
Porphyry’s view, was less to be commended (p.219) than his tutor, who had
deserted Christianity for a ‘life more in accordance with the laws’ (Eusebius,

Page 7 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

The premiss of this treatise is that God, being one and strictly
incomprehensible, consents to be revealed to our weak intellects under
divers names and symbols. So far, this might be an answer to the
iconoclastic sermons which Philostratus ascribed to Apollonius of Tyana; but
Philostratus was Greek to the point of vanity, a witty and polished stylist who
could never have been thought to deserve the epithets that Porphyry heaps
upon his adversaries:
It is no surprise that statues are thought to be nothing but
wood and stone by the most uneducated, just as those who
are ignorant of writing see pillars as stone, tablets as wood and
books as woven papyrus. (De Statuis Fr. 351 Smith)

Celsus had styled the Christians amathestatoi, while agrammatos is a word

that the New Testament applies to the first apostles (Acts (p.220) 4:13).
Porphyry, who knew that the apostles in their simplicity had spoken of the
immaterial nature as light and spirit, contrast the ethereal radiance of God
with his crepuscular appearances in matter:
Now the divine is fiery in aspect and dwells in a circumfusion
of ethereal fire, and is not apparent to the limited perception
that we enjoy in mortal life; nevertheless, through translucent

Page 8 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

As the fifth element of Aristotle, who was perhaps the first Greek monotheist,
aether was equated by some readers both with the God and with the
entelechy or formal perfection of the universe. 16 Some form of the claim
that God is light is attested in the Hermetica, another in Mithraism; but
the sun-cult of the emperor Aurelian was perhaps its most intelligible and
popular manifestation. Porphyry, who knew that God is not a physical
luminary but an intellectual being, must be practising some economy in this
paragraph; it is reasonable to suppose that his intention is at the same time
to discredit Christianity and to befriend the Roman state.

The alliance of philosophy and religion is cemented by the quotation of an

Orphic hymn to Zeus (Fr. 354 Smith = Orphica Fr. 168 Kern). The tradition
of expounding Orphic poetry was an old one, as was the equation of Zeus
with aether. Both were used by the Stoics to support their teaching that
the world is permeated by a fiery and sentient logos; the corollary that
Zeus is God was taken up by Jewish historiographers, through whom it
reached St Paul. Nevertheless, no Christian ever chose to speak of God by
a pagan name; neither, for that matter, did Plotinus ever speak of the one
as Zeus or subscribe to the pantheism of the Stoics. Before Porphyry, it was
generally the expositors of mysteries who claimed to have found the key to
all religions; he was perhaps the first accredited thinker to derive a whole
philosophy from oracles, drawing on Chaldaean and Jewish sources as well as
Greek ones, and declaring that he knew no universal way to liberate the soul.

Porphyry’s demonstration that the so-called book of Daniel is a Maccabean

forgery may be ranked among the glories of ancient (p.221) scholarship;
17 yet this proof of the defects in Christian learning did not lead him to
dispute the antiquity of the Hebrew canon. Even when he traced back the
cosmogony of Genesis to Philo of Byblos, his quarrel was not with Moses
but with Christ. By robbing the Church of Daniel, he deprived it of its most
persuasive evidence that the nations were under judgment. There was now
no ancient testimony that a sequence of four empires would conclude with
the enthronement of the saints, and there were only recent prophecies to
support the equation of a pagan monarch with Antichrist.

Porphyry wrote a biography of Pythagoras, which included the list of races

who are said to have been his teachers, but augmented it with a reference

Page 9 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Arnobius, a late convert who taught rhetoric in the age of Diocletian,

wrote seven books against the Romans, arguing that the conquerors are
responsible for everything that was practised or permitted in their domain.
They cannot, for example, disclaim the barbarous rites of Attis, merely
because they originated in Phrygia and were put into a Greek literary dress.
In any case, as Varro says (p.222) and Ovid proves, the springs of their own
religion are polluted by the same ignorance and folly. Against these human
impieties, the Church can set the austere and reverent worship of the one
God:
O greatest one, O most high procreator of things invisible,
thyself unseen and apprehended by no nature, worthy,
worthy thou truly art … For thou art first cause, the place
and seat of things, the foundation of all that is, infinite,
ingenerate, immortal, ever alone, denied by no corporeal form,
uncircumscribed by any principle. (Arnobius, Adversus Nations
1.31)

Some of this language strikes us as Platonic, or Philonic, even Gnostic;

it is therefore all the more striking that Arnobius makes the life of Jesus
Christ the principal subject of his first book. The apologists of the second
century stipulate the attributes of God, and then perhaps go on to speak
of his Incarnation; Arnobius follows the logic of the New Testament, which
makes Christ, in his humanity, the only way to God. It has been maintained

Page 10 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Yet Porphyry is not the only candidate: another would be Iamblichus of

Chalcis, a contemporary, and perhaps an exact contemporary, of Arnobius.
He was a pupil of Porphyry, and when the latter propounded a series of
questions about the mysteries of Egypt,it was Iamblichus who answered in
the name of the Egyptian priest Abammon. According to this mouthpiece,
the first cause is wholly ineffable and unparticipated, but is present in the
world through lower agencies, who are subject to our own passions and must
be appeased with prayers and sacrifices. Once it has made peace with the
lord of matter, the soul is free to pursue the higher levels of contemplation,
which, to judge by other writings by Iamblichus, are approached through the
symbolism of mathematics. There may be a higher way still for the rational
soul, but the grades of ascent are numerous and nothing can be styled
impious in itself.

(p.223) Iamblichus, despite his curious subject, was a disciplined philosopher

in the tradition of Plotinus. It need cause us no surprise, then, that while
he uses theos as a predicate, he has no proper appellative that we might
translate as ‘God’. The first cause is styled ‘one God, prior even to the first
God who is also King’; the latter is a self-sufficient deity (autarkēs theos),
whom we may call the God of gods. Some lesser gods are then enumerated
under Egyptian names with Greek equivalents (On the Mysteries 8.1 ff.).
Abammon displays a certain nationalism, devoting a book to hieroglyphs and
arguing that Egyptian incantations lose their power if they are rendered into
Greek. Yet this can hardly have been the finished doctrine of Iamblichus, who
was not Egyptian and demonstrates no more knowledge of that language
than Porphyry of his own Phoenician tongue. The very use of Greek is
prejudicial to a national monopoly, and the early books of the treatise are,
if anything, more beholden to Chaldaea than to Egypt. The Egyptians may
provide us with a fine specimen of theosophic reasoning, but how can any
language be the sole vehicle of a knowledge which is better expressed in
silence than in words?

Page 11 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

III
Thus we need not suppose that Diocletian, the ablest Roman emperor
since Severus, had succumbed to old age or illness when he launched his
persecution against the Christians. To adapt the (p.224) words of Jesus in
the Fourth Gospel, he knew which way the wind was blowing, even if he did
not know whence it came. It may seem strange that the still more able ruler
who eventually succeeded him should have taken Christianity as his personal
religion. In Constantine the king and pontifex maximus became a layman
in the royal priesthood; the ruler of many peoples forsook the ancestral
principles and enacted laws in favour of a new, adoptive race. Few would
agree with Burckhardt 20 that his conversion was not genuine; to say that it
arose from policy rather than conviction is almost equally implausible. In any
case, the antithesis is a false one, for there are men in whom sincere and
scrupulous piety conspires with the most incontinent of political and material
ambitions. Constantine’s religion shaped his policy and his policy shaped
religion, to produce in him the inalienable certainty that whatever seemed
good for him was the will of God.

I shall argue here that Constantine was faithful to the predecessors

who taught him the arts of government—so faithful, indeed, that far
from relinquishing the ancestral principle, he promoted its extension to
Christianity. He and the theologians of his era developed an account of
human history, or rather of inexorable providence in history, which began
and ended with the Word of God. As pre-existent Logos he was the author
of creation; as the incarnate Logos he was the saviour and exemplar of
humanity; as the exalted Logos he was the source, the overseer and the

Page 12 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

The principle that everyone should follow the religion of his fathers was
enunciated in Diocletian’s edict against the Christians in February 303. At
first sight, it would hardly appear compatible with that emperor’s general
scheme of making everyone a Roman, which was tacitly presupposed in his
decree of the previous year against the Manichees. It seems, however, that
just as every people within the Empire was now Roman, so was the religion
of that people in the eyes of Diocletian. A Christian was not yet a Roman,
even when his religion was inherited, because Christians had no (p.225)
territory and were therefore not a race. Diocletian’s laws required that
everyone should remain true to his territory, his religion, and his standing
in society; Christian and Roman were the only words coterminous with the
Empire, the former making possible a mobility that the latter was intended to
forestall.

Diocletian’s policy is upheld in one of the earliest extant documents to

bear the name of Constantine, an edict for the repeal of persecution. The
signatories, while urging that the writ of the previous emperors was justified,
declare that it has now become expedient to revoke it, as it has brought
distress and peril on too many of their subjects. The grandiose appellation
which precedes those of Licinius and Constantine may belong either to
Galerius, who died in 311, or to Maximinus Daia, who after the death of
Galerius shared the Empire with the other two until Licinius overwhelmed
him in 313. Constantine’s conversion occured between these dates, on the
eve of his capture of Rome in 312. From this time on, his adherence to the
Christian religion was unequivocal, at least when he was speaking to the
Church. In his own acts of repeal, he denounced the persecution; in 314
he responded to a Donatist petition by endorsing the authority of bishops
and declaring that he himself could give no judgment, since he awaited
that of Christ. In 315 he told an African magistrate, whom he took for a
fellow-Christian, that he wished the catholic faith to become the religion
of all his subjects. And yet against this we may set the notorious evidence
of ambiguity in his public symbols. He struck coins with solar images and
referred to Sunday as the Dies Solis; he put an end to private, but not to
public divination; circuses were not proscribed along with gladiators. Fowden
claims, with an innuendo worthy of Burckhardt, that the porphyry column

Page 13 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Nevertheless, to accuse him of syncretism, whether wilful or unwitting, is

to overlook the Oration to the Saints. Little need be said here on behalf of
its authenticity—only that the arguments which favour this also point to
an early date in the career of Constantine. 22 The use of Virgil indicates a
Latin speech, and therefore a Roman audience; the praises showered on
the ‘dearest city’ echo those with which the panegyrists reconciled the
Italian (p.226) capital to Constantine’s success. These compliments would
ring hollow after 316, when Serdica became his ‘second Rome’. Consonant
with an early date is Constantine’s admission that he was not brought up
as a Christian. Later admirers, following Roman principles, alleged that his
conversion was more properly a reversion, a return to his father’s piety, and
credited his mother with the aptly-named Invention of the Cross.

If we assign a date of 314 or 315 to the Oration, it reveals that the

Christianity of Constantine entailed an almost immediate rejection of pagan
deities, even if guile or charity induced him to permit the worship of them
among his subjects. The pagans may go back to their sacrifices, but only
so long as ignorance protects them: in the next life they will be judged
without mercy by the Saviour whom they put to death in this. Constantine
supports his threat by quoting a Sibylline Oracle, which contains the acrostic
Jesous Christos Theou Huios Soter—‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’—
together with a stanza which is not found in all versions and spells out
the word Stauros (Cross). This, the infamous sign of contradiction, does
not figure so much in early Christian texts as in the New Testament; but
Constantine, professing to have seen it in a vision on the eve of battle, made
it the insignium of his army, and put it at the centre of the pageant devised
to celebrate his entry into Rome.

Thus Constantine anticipated the work of his mother Helena. Surely, it will
be said, this veneration of an outrageous symbol proves the sincerity of its
conversion. It might have done, the sceptic answers readily, if the emblem
inscribed on the shields of the emperor’s troops had been a crucifix; but
why, if he were a Christian, did he borrow the labarum, which had served
the Roman state for generations as an emblem of the sun? This is not the
place to revive the old debate concerning the shape and provenance of
the labarum; we need only demonstrate that it was possible to adopt a
pagan symbol without being guilty of either apostasy or syncretism. Since
it contained the letters X and P it is legitimate to describe it as a verbal sign

Page 14 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

(p.227) The novelty of this theory is too often overlooked. Scholars have
attributed their own humanism to Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and
Origen, all of whom do hint from time to time that the pagan intellect was
prompted by the all-pervading logos. 23 Yet this cannot be called their settled
opinion, for they regularly teach that the Word of God was given only to
the prophets and to one elected people. The gentiles had indeed a rational
faculty, but no inkling of the truth except for what they could derive by
plagiarism from the scriptures. Only through Christ incarnate was the Word
communicated in its fulness to the nations, and this was not the climax but
the confutation of all philosophy.

Thus, while others had turned to Greek philosophy as a school of

hermeneutics, or had ransacked it for instances of theft from Hebrew
oracles, Eusebius was the first to represent the thought of Greece as a
preparation for the Gospel. To his monstrous treatise of this name, whose
fifteen books match those of Porphyry, we owe almost all our knowledge
of the Platonists Numenius and Atticus, a version of Porphyry’s Letter to
Anebo, and a host of other citations, from the recent or the distant past,
which are not adduced as evidence of plagiarism, but rather of a perennial
suffusion of divine truth into pagan intellects. This seems to us so natural a
strategy in apologetic writing that we are only surprised by the scarcity of
precedents; we begin, however, to scent peculiar motives when it recurs in
the Tricennalian Oration, composed to mark the thirtieth year anniversary
since Constantine became his father’s heir. If we find its length inordinate,
that is partly because the emperor is not its only subject: his reign is the
peroration of a sermon which the Logos has been preaching since he first
created minds.

Of course the work of the Logos can be traced in the very fabric of the
world, with its perfect harmony of four elements, its procession of days and
seasons, its celestial luminaries, its teeming creatures, and its fragrant robe
of flowers. But the latest and most honourable of all creatures is humanity,
because it is endowed (p.228) with a ‘logical’ faculty that enables it to
honour, serve and imitate its Maker. When humanity fell away a remedy was
needed; and, as though to reveal the gulf between the pagan and Christian

Page 15 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

The seeds were nonetheless distributed sparingly, and only to philosophers.

The founders of religion (with a few exceptions mentioned in the Old
Testament) began by paying honours to created beings, especially to their
own dead. Their rites at first were veiled in allegory, and when historians
traced them to their sources, the priests revived them under the more
elaborate form of mysteries. Thus the vaunted key to all religions is
discovered to be no more than a universal superstition. At a time when
philosophers were seeking confirmation from religions, Eusebius treats
religion as the antithesis of philosophy, arguing that only the latter had
inklings of the truth. He thereby made it possible for Christians to extend
to pagan thought the same esteem that was habitually accorded to the
Old Testament; but at the same time, he argues that, by cleaving to their
dogmas without acknowledging the Logos, the philosophers had fallen into
the errors of the Jews, who had falsified the scriptures by their obstinate
rejection of the Lord.

Two saviours, Christ and Constantine, could be said to have made one
people of all the nations. To Eusebius one is the archetype, the other his
present image:
Now the unique Word of God, ruling as his Father’s colleague
from ages without beginning, will continue for infinite and
endless ages; while the one who is dear to him, led by royal
emanations from above and empowered by the one who bears
the title of divinity, rules the things on earth for long spans of
years. (Eusebius, Triacontaetericus p. 199 Heikel)

(p.229) Here we see, incidentally, a refutation of Frede’s claim that

Trinitarianism was not ‘the issue’. How could it fail to be an issue between
Christians and pagans when, even after the Council of Nicaea in 325, it was
still giving rise to factions in the Church? Eusebius is careful here to speak

Page 16 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

While Constantine, in contrast to Eusebius, is prepared to call Christ God,

he continues to subordinate him more than later authors with a care for
orthodoxy would have done. Yet scholars who have looked here only for
evidence of a leaning to Arianism in the author (or an interpolative editor)
have failed to observe the function of this passage in the ‘Speech’. Neither
in Platonism not in the extant letters of Arius is Logos a habitual designation
of the second God, or cosmocratic agent; yet Constantine not only foists
the term on Plato here, but seems to have required Arius to confess it in the
wake of the Nicene Council. In the first case he has not so much made an
error as applied the Eusebian doctrine that Greek thought was a preparation
for the Gospel; in the second he indicated that the root of the matter lay
for him in providential government, rather than in the relation between
two supramundane (p.230) powers. Scarcely less essential than the Cross
itself to his faith was the belief that God had handed the reins of nature to a
personal being, equal in jurisdiction though subordinate in will. At the end of
his speech, he draws the pleasing inference that his own dominion rested on,
and therefore ought to imitate, the monarchy of God.

This profession of servitude did not diminish, but rather elevated, his
authority. It is when the honours due to gods are paid to the names and

Page 17 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

It may appear strange that one who was so pious in his own interest failed
to cultivate the salient virtues of his prototype. These, according to his own
Oration, were megalopsuchia (patience under injury) and philanthrōpia,
unqualified benevolence toward the human race. These were not the traits
of Constantine in Christian eulogy. For Lactantius he was a bold campaigner,
dextrously pursuing his own ambitions and infallibly disposing of his rivals.
Eusebius admires his ruthless vigilance in uprooting superstition from his
realm. After describing the atrocities inflicted on the Church by devotees of
Aphrodite, he continues:
When things stood thus, what ought the king of those who
were suffering to have done? Should he have passed up the
chance to save those dearest to him, and overlooked his own
people under this siege? But even a helmsman who acted
thus would not be deemed wise…nor would a good shepherd
have overlooked the wandering scion of his own flock without
suffering for it. (Triacontaetericus, p. 214 Heikel)

(p.231) Heikel has deleted from his text the word ‘God’ which stood in
apposition to ‘king’. No doubt he is correct, but the scribe divined Eusebius’
meaning well enough. The metaphor of the helmsman is Platonic, that of the
shepherd conflates the parables of all four Gospels. On the next page we
are told that the Great King in heaven appointed his retainer Constantine
to wage the battle against impiety. Where Celsus and Apuleius imagined
God as a Persian king with many satraps, Eusebius holds that a single God in
heaven carries out his will through a single man on earth. Before Constantine
professed his faith, the Latin panegyrics represent him as a half-reluctant
warlord, whose enemies maliciously forbade him to temper victory with

Page 18 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Once we accept that Constantine could look upon the past as a praeparatio
evangelica, we can readily acquit him of duplicity in his use of the labarum
and the iconography of Apollo Helios. Even if the labarum had not contained
the first two letters of the Messianic title, the sun was as legitimate and
natural an image in Christianity as it was in Platonism. If Plato could maintain
that the Good is the source of life and nourishment, to which all beings owe
both their existence and the knowledge of existence, Christians could say
as much of Christ, who had already been styled the ‘sun of righteousness’
in ancient Scriptures (Malachi 4:2). When they employed such metaphors,
and turned eastward in the act of prayer, it is easy to understand why their
religion, even in the second century, had been mistaken for a solar cult. For
Constantine to represent his own person under the aspect of Apollo Helios
was, of course, a striking innovation, but not an inexplicable one in a ruler
who perceived himself as a second Christ on earth.

Nevertheless, no Christian could be ignorant of, or indifferent to, the dangers

of uninterpreted iconography. Aware that Orthodox Christians made no use
of sacred images, while orthodox flattery still paid homage to an emperor’s
statues, Constantine showed himself conservative in both respects. As
Grigg has (p.232) shown, 24 he encouraged the veneration of relics, thus
forestalling rather than promoting the spread of images. At the same time,
he maintained the illusion of his own ubiquity through statues, yet did not
make either his person or its replicas the object of a cult. For him and his
admirers, who agreed in this if nothing else with Plato, the living archetype
is best expressed through a living image. In keeping with biblical precedent,
but in contrast to Diocletian, the Christian ruler made his sons vicegerents in
his own lifetime and his sole heirs after death. After describing Constantine’s
dissemination of statues through the inhabited world, Eusebius records that
his three sons were all made Caesars, each assuming power in a different
portion of the realm. 25 At first they were under guardians, but as they
increased in years they took their father as their sole model, and continued
to receive his royal commands (Life 4.51). Yet as copies remain inferior to
the original, so the son remains inferior to the father; in his treatise against
Marcellus Eusebius stresses the difference between an emperor and his

Page 19 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Under the weak and little-loved Constantius, Athanasius used this simile for a
different purpose, arguing that whatever is done to the statue is done to the
emperor, and therefore that when we worship Christ we truly worship God
(Against the Arians 3.6). But tradition ascribes to Constantine the opinion of
Eusebius, for when he heard, says Chrysostom, that a statue of his had been
cast down and broken in many pieces, he merely passed his hand across his
countenance, and smiled as he informed his cowering satellites that he could
not feel any change (On the Statues 21.11). True or false, this anecdote is
worthy of his political sagacity. To be visible is also to be vulnerable: if the
king lives in his images, any blow to them impairs his glory, even when it is
not perceived as an insult to the whole people. That Diocletian lived to see
the defacement of his statues is for Lactantius the clearest proof that he was
under the curse of God. The least fragile, the least tangible and the most
pervasive instrument of monarchy is not sculpture but legislation. (p.233) As
Porphyry’s sneers at Origen remind us, no iconoclast is so publicly resented
as a transgressor of the laws. European kings who were great iconoclasts
were great legislators also, as we see in the case of Charlemagne and Leo
the Isaurian. Constantine had more to gain than either from the cunning
elasticity of language. A marriage between his form and that of Helios could
be seen, both then and now, as double idolatry; but if his Sunday statute was
as beneficial to pagans as to Christians, that made it all the better as a law.

The preference for language over images also guaranteed the uniqueness
of Christ as the true and perfect image of the Father. If we repeat another’s
words exactly, we produce not an imitation but the same words over again;
a man may speak the words of God without violence to the integrity of
the Logos. But if I make a replica from matter, it remains distinct from its
archetype, and the eye that looks on one cannot see the other. Every word of
Scripture, Origen tells us, is the Logos; no one at this period would have said
that every statue of Christ is Christ. Monotheistic doctrine cannot allow for
an imparting of divinity which is not also a communication of unity, and the
goal of Trinitarian speculation in this period was to show that Christ can be
the Father’s image without entailing any multiplicity in his nature. Whatever
was true for emperors, the Athanasian principle was generally agreed to hold
good of incorporeal being: Christ is truly God, because (as Paul declared)
the fulness of God is embodied in him (Col. 2:9), and conversely it is only
this divine miracle, not any inherent duality in the Godhead, that makes it
possible for there to be a ‘second God’. Thus, whereas a single Christ can be

Page 20 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Theology had lent Constantine two models for the government of his
kingdom. It taught him, first, that the monarchy of God was indivisible, that
Christ was his only viceroy in the elements, that the same creative Word
had inspired philosophers in antiquity, proclaimed the Gospel in recent times
and would execute justice in the world to come. It was thus an act of piety
to refuse himself a partner; and when the frailty of nature forced him to
devolve his power, theology was at hand once more to show him that he
could (p.234) still be present, fully and inviolably, in his sons and in his word.
The names of his many acolytes were concealed by his biographer—and
quite properly, for he was above all an instrument of unity, drawing together
all peoples by a shrewd assimilation of their customs, just as the incarnation
of the Logos superseded and subsumed all previous avatars of truth.

Notes:

(1) I allude of course to Phaedrus 275–6, a seminal text for modern

interpretation both of Plato and of the purpose of philosophy. The application
of the same terms to Christ, with scriptural warrant, in the New Testament
(Gal. 4: 16, Col. 1: 15) is one instance of a recurrent homonymity that, when
taken for synonymity, tempts Christians to make a saint of lato and others to
make a Platonist of Paul.

(2) Responding to arguments in Athanassiadi and Frede.

(3) Fowden ( 1993 ).

(4) Frede ( 1997 ) 220.

(5) Frede ( 1999 a).

(6) Rist ( 1962 ) suggests that there is an incipient distinction between ho

theos and theos, corresponding to that between Father as autotheos and Son
as theos in some Christian interpreters of John 1: 1. He is, however, far more
aware than Frede of the gulf between the two religious views.

(7) That is, (a) we cannot strictly predicate anything, even unity, of the One,
and (b) Mind is not a perfect unity, but one-many.

Page 21 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

(9) See Deuteronomy 32: 8 in the Greek, with the admonitions of 32: 16–17.

(10) 1 Cor 15: 45; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.6.1.

(11) The figure of 15 is given by a late lexicon, the Suda, though some
scholars have proposed that the tripartite work, Philosophy from oracles, is
either identical with or an early draft of the same polemic. The title Against
the Christians is corroborated only by Augustine, letter 102, and the relation
between both works and The Regression of the Soul (which is cited copiously
in Augustine, City of God 10) is also in dispute. Even those who believe
in a 15-volume work entitled Against the Christians are divided as to the
authenticity of certain fragments which were assigned to it by Harnack. For
recent bibliography and discussion see Digeser ( 2002 ).

(12) Lactantius, Divine Institutes 5.11.5. See further Frede ( 1999 b).

(13) Enneads 5.1, Rom. 9: 5.

(14) Edwards ( 1996 ).

(15) See now Smith ( 1993 ) 407–34 and Maximus, Oration 2.

(16) For defence of the doxographical tradition see now Bos ( 1999 )

(17) Even if he was assisted by the labours of Christian scholars, as is argued

by Casey ( 1976 ).

(18) On his ‘Romanizing’ measures see Corcoran ( 1996 ) 135–6 and 173–4.

(19) On Arnobius see further Edwards ( 1999 a).

(20) Burckhardt ( 1949 ).

(21) Fowden ( 1991 ).

(22) For bibliography see Edwards ( 1999 b).

(23) Where they are not accusing pagans of plagiarism from the written
word, they appear to mean either that pagans were endowed with natural
reason (which is not to say that they had any a priori knowledge of God), or
else that God elected certain prophets, notably Hystaspes and the Sibyl, to

Page 22 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

(24) See Grigg ( 1977 ).

(25) He goes so far as to liken them to the Trinity at Life 4.40.2—a curious
simile for one who denied the equality of persons in the divine triad.

Page 23 of 23 Pagan and Christian Monotheism in the Age of Constantine

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Mark Edwards

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter shows that the Church in Rome was always more than a
stranger, and less than a friend, to its pagan hosts. It begins by showing
that even Christians who spoke Greek were not reluctant to appropriate the
Roman name or the commonplaces of Roman literature. It then argues that
the autocratic bishops of the city, while their measures sometimes legalized
what was not yet law in Rome, were more intolerant of variety in worship
than their rulers, and began to claim monarchical dominion in the Church at
the very epoch when the sovereignty of the Empire was divided. It was not
the pope but Ambrose of Milan who took the floor in the debate on the Altar
of Victory, even though his apology for Christendom included a panegyric on
the vigour of ancient Rome.

Keywords: Christians, Rome, Ambrose of Milan, Altar of Victory, Church

Romanitas is the quality that Romans of the capital shared with Romanized
provincials. I have shown elsewhere how two third-century Christian writers,
both from Africa, shook the pride of metropolitan Romans by alluding to the
vices of the Empire. Arnobius taxed the Romans with the folly and depravity
of their subjects, while the more urbane Lactantius tried to show that there
was more republican virtue in the Gospel than in the myths and superstitions
which imperial Rome had borrowed from the Greeks. 1 Yet he was also the
one who dared to quote the Sibyl’s prophecy that Rome herself would fall
and yield her empire to the orient (Divine Institutes 7.15). Had he not been

Page 1 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

It might seem only natural to imagine that the Church in Rome, being Greek
in origin, would have needed time to become familiar with the symbols of
the capital; that once it adopted Latin it would almost inadvertently begin
to share in Roman tastes and manners; and that soon it would take the
government of the Empire as its model, in the hope of tempering sanctity
with power. Though (p.188) some progression of this kind is visible, it will
be obvious from what follows that the Church in Rome was always more
than a stranger, and less than a friend, to its pagan hosts. In the first part
I shall show that even Christians who spoke Greek were not reluctant to
appropriate the Roman name or the commonplaces of Roman literature.
In the second I shall argue that the autocratic bishops of the city, while
their measures sometimes legalized what was not yet law in Rome, were
more intolerant of variety in worship than their rulers, and began to claim
monarchical dominion in the Church at the very epoch when the sovereignty
of the Empire was divided. In the third part we shall see that it was not the
pope but Ambrose of Milan who took the floor in the debate on the Altar of
Victory, even though his apology for Christendom included a panegyric on
the vigour of ancient Rome.

THE TWO CITIES

The abstract noun Romanitas appears to have been coined, like its Greek
counterpart Hellenismos, by an author who did not want any part in the
privileges that it connoted. The Jewish author Jason of Cyrene could see
nothing in the ‘Greek culture’ (Hellenismos) of his Macedonian overlords but
lewd gymnasia, modish dress, and superstitious rituals, which threatened to
defile the house of God (2 Maccabees 7). The Latin-speaking portion of North
Africa was the home of the Christian orator Tertullian (160–240), who added
the word Romanitas to the language in the course of his refusal to shed the
philosopher’s cloak, or pallium, for the toga:

Page 2 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Both men seek to strengthen the resistance of their readers by administering

a small touch of the plague. The second book of Maccabees was edited
in Jerusalem and acquired a Hebrew title, 2 yet was written in Greek for
Jews who lived in the midst of (p.189) Hellenism. Tertullian, the one great
Latin author of the third century, forged a new art for new conditions in
accordance with the precedents of Cicero and Tacitus, though sometimes in
his rhetorical pyromania he seems ready to burn up the whole tradition. Both
he and Jason therefore attack their rulers in the ruling idiom; nonetheless,
we must not assume that Hellenism in Palestine and Romanitas in Carthage
were alike in all but language. The terms may be analogously formed, but
they are not the names of sibling cultures, any more than Judaism and
Christianity are the names of sibling churches. Greeks had a language,
Romans had an Empire; a man with a Greek education was a Greek,
whatever his city or his status, but in a colony such as Antioch or Corinth,
a man might not speak Latin, yet be still a Roman citizen, enjoying the
privileges of those who did.

Jews were a race, but unlike Greeks were not defined by language. Christians
too purported to be a race or ethnos—not, however, one among others,
least of all, as others said, the ‘third’. 3 To themselves they were the soul
of the world, present invisibly in every nation (Epistle to Diognetus 6.1). By
contrast, the Greek, although he claimed as his own whatever was written
in that tongue, was far more likely to boast of his city than his race. Both
his culture, which was global, and his franchise, which was local, could be
inherited, like the race and the religion of the Jew. To Romans, the city of
Rome was more than either race or language. It was possible, in that city
and elsewhere, to be a Roman by descent, but no less usual to become one
voluntarily, by adoption or by purchase. Here at last we have something
more akin to Christianity, which came only by adoption, and even then ‘at
no small price’. 4 As the apologists noted, the analogies can be multiplied:
perhaps it took a Syrian, Caracalla, to frame the edict which made every
freeborn subject of his realm a Roman citizen, but Rome, like the Church,
began as an asylum for the debtor, the vagrant, and the dispossessed.

Page 3 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Rome is never mentioned in the Gospels, and apart from Pontius Pilate
soldiers are the only Romans. Most exhibit the arrogance of conquerors,
though centurions at Capernaum, Calvary, and Joppa prove to be wiser
than the Jews. 6 It is not clear how far any of the evangelists exonerates the
governor, but Luke at least professes his allegiance to the Empire, both by
dating Jesus’ ministry to a regnal year, the fifteenth of Tiberius (3.1), and by
putting the duties of soldiers and civilians into the mouth of John the Baptist
(3.13–14). In Luke’s sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, ‘Romans’ is the name
assumed by adversaries of Paul, at once persuasive to the magistrates and
flattering to themselves: ‘These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble
our city, and teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither
to observe, being Romans’ (Acts 16: 20–1). There could hardly be a more
forcible illustration of the difference between Romanitas and Rome, for these
petitioners are not natives of the imperial city, or even of a colony. Philippi
nonetheless proclaims its allegiance to Roman manners, in contrast to the
famous intractability of the Jews—though the latter, in Asia Minor at least,
were not guilty of contumacy, but only of imperfect assimilation to the Greek
culture which had made the East a single world before the Romans came
there. Romanitas and Hellenism stand together in this part of the Empire: the
citizens of Ephesus, a Greek metropolis since ancient times, had raised no
cry for either, but chanted ‘great is Artemis of the Ephesians’ (19: 34). Like
other Greeks, they cherished the illusion of self-government, which was soon
to be extended to the cities of the mainland under Nero, and was as easily
revoked by his successor Vespasian. 7 The antithesis (p.191) between Greek
and Jew is frequent in the New Testament, yet the earliest Greek-speakers
who oppose the Church present themselves as Romans. They were using a
political, not a cultural designation; it was only in the literary polemics of the
high Empire that the Christians identified their enemies as ‘Greeks’ and the
philosophers replied on their behalf.

Page 4 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

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It is only when the Christian asserts his own immunities as a citizen that
he has the opportunity to preach to the gens Romana. Paul claims Roman
status as his birthright, whereas the captain of the soldiers who have flogged
him at the instance of the Jews is merely a citizen by purchase (Acts 22:
28). In the same way, he meets all Greeks on equal terms by boasting of
his origin in Tarsus, ‘no mean city’, while proving himself at least as Jewish
as any of his accusers by addressing them in Hebrew (Acts 21: 39–40). In
short, he is more than faithful to the principle which he commends to every
Christian, of being ‘all things to all men’ (1 Cor 9: 22). In the course of a
long detention in Judaea, he is brought before successive procurators, who
can make no more of his gospel than of the Jewish rage against it (Acts 24:
25; 26: 24). The result of their perplexity and his own appeal to Caesar is a
voyage to Rome, preceded, as Luke tells us, by a premonition of martyrdom
(21: 13). This happy event, however, was long in coming, as we see from
the end of Acts and Paul’s own letters from captivity. Nothing could have
been further from his thoughts when he first announced his plan of visiting
the Christians in Rome as a preparation for ministry in Spain (Romans 15:
28). He foresees more danger to his correspondents: first from schism, which
may have been occasioned or inflamed by the expulsion of Jews from the
capital under Claudius, 8 and secondly from their own defiance of secular
authorities, whom Paul sees as the instruments of God:
Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there
is no power but God: the powers that be are ordained of
God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the
ordinance of God. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but
to the evil. (Romans 13: 1–3)

This is the only letter in which he deems such counsels necessary. But for
Christ’s obscure injunction to ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’ (Matthew
22: 21 etc.), we find only one other passage of (p.192) this tenor in the New
Testament, in a letter which is attributed to Peter and purports to have been
sent from ‘Babylon’: 9

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the lord’s

sake, whether it be to the king, as supreme, or unto governors,
as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of
evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. (1 Peter 2:
13–14)

Page 5 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

On the title ‘Great Mother’ (Latin Magna Mater), more will be said below.
It would be easy to contrast this sulphurous relic of Neronian or Flavian
atrocities 10 with the more eirenic language of the epistles. But we should
not forget that Peter and Paul are both said to have died for their unpopular
religion, while for his part the author of Revelation never hints that it is
lawful for a Christian to resist the pagan magistrate with anything but his
verbal testimony. Martyrdom is a form of civil obedience, an unqualified
submission to authority, espoused by those believers who were so sure of
an immediate Second Coming that they gave themselves no time to build
a church in opposition to the world. Thus it was that the Christians who
perished under Nero had been convicted of no crime against the ruler. Even
the unsympathetic Tacitus, who accuses them of a general animosity to the
human race, admits that they suffered more than they deserved and aroused
the pity of spectators (Annals 15.44). There was something of the Roman
spirit—something of Regulus, Cato, Thrasea Paetus—in their readiness to
bear witness against the tyrant by an unresisting death. It was only Greeks
who scoffed at the fortitude of the ‘Galileans’. 11 The Romans called them
Christians, as they called (p.193) themselves, and a shout of ‘Christianus
sum’, no less than one of ‘civis Romanus sum’, was guaranteed to change
the character of a trial.

If later, only a little later than these texts is the epistle which goes under
the name of Clement, an early leader of the Roman Church. 12 In fact we do
not know anything of its author, any more than of the troubles to which he
alludes in his introduction. If these were persecutions, they did not prevent
his citing the Roman army as a model for ecclesiastical discipline:
Let us consider those who do military service under our
governors, in what a regulated, willing and submissive
manner they discharge their orders. Not all are generals, or
commanders of thousands, hundreds, fifties and the like, but
each in his proper station performs what is commanded by the
King and governors. (1 Clement 37: 2–3)

Page 6 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

This is no evidence for papal primacy, not even for a continuous succession
of Roman presidents since the time of the apostles; it is evidence that
the city had already begun to enjoy a reputation as the apostolic see.
Nonetheless it was possible to commemorate the (p.194) martyrs without
encouraging an addition to their number; once it saw that the future was
to be longer than the evangelists had prophesied, the Church in Rome
took thought for its own survival. It could not regard the martyr’s career
as normative when so many were living out their natural term; it could not
maintain a rigour that would be bound to deplete its numbers, either by
death or by apostasy; it could not expect believers to abide in the world
without capitulating, once at least, to the ubiquitous corruption of the flesh.

Clement is the supposed recipient of Hermas’ Visions in the first part of his
Shepherd, which is said by an ancient source to have been composed in the
middle years of the second century. 13 This treatise extends an amnesty
to those who have once lapsed under persecution; even though this is not
to be repeated, it relaxes the severity of the letter to the Hebrews and the
second of those attributed to Peter. Hermas, however, demonstrates his
loyalty to the Roman saints by teasing out an allegory from a metaphor in
the first letter attributed to Peter. 14 The Church, he tells us, is built of living
stones, which—while they may not represent the whole yield of the quarry
and cannot all be hewn to a perfect shape—have each a place assigned to

Page 7 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Who revealed this to Hermas? According to his own narrative, he was on

his way to Cumae when he was greeted by an old woman, whom he took to
be the Sibyl. As they met again and again, she grew younger and disclosed
herself as the everlasting Church. 15 The Sibyl in Roman legend was
remembered as the old woman who appeared to King Tarquinius Superbus
and persuaded him to accept three books of prophecies, which were
subsequently consulted by the senate in times of great calamity. Christians,
on the (p.195) other hand, were familiar with a body of Greek verses which
they believed to have been uttered by the Sibyl at the instigation of the Holy
Spirit. Only such ample proofs of inspiration would have led a Christian writer
to identify the Sibyl with the Church; at the same time Hermas’ journey
shows that he takes her for the prophetess in Cumae who had foretold the
glory of the Roman people. Does he mean to indicate that the destinies of
Rome and of the Church are one? With equal plausibility, one might say that,
far from glorifying Rome, he has set out to supersede her by her own device
of carrying off the ancestral guardians of the foreign power. Finally we may
ask why the Church is younger than the Sibyl. Parallels can be quoted from
the apocalyptic literature of the time, but it is rare indeed for a Christian
writing Greek to dwell upon the recent origin of the Church. Instead the
Greek apologist contended that the patriarchs were Christians, that the
Church possessed the first covenant from Sinai, that Plato stole from Moses,
or at least that pagan philosophy had been a preparation for the Gospel.
It was Latin-speaking Christians who were happy to proclaim ‘we are of
yesterday’; they added that Rome herself was not ashamed to record the
improvements wrought by time in her religious and political insti-tutions. 16
Even in pagan literature, the prejudice in favour of antiquity coexists with a
delight in innovation. Cicero, while he slights the novi poetae (Orator 161),
was himself a novus homo in the senate, and a proud one; in philosophical
writings he defends the mos maiorum in religion with the methods of the
so-called new Academy, and credits Varro, the foremost antiquarian of
the period, with the claim that the new is better than the old (Posterior
Academics 2.4.13). Thus Hermas, though he writes in Greek, displays a
Roman tolerance of novelty; but even innovation must be true to ancient

Page 8 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

MONARCHY AND PRIMACY

Change was unavoidable and frequent in the Church of Rome, if only
because it mirrored the diverse character of the urban (p.196) population. It
is the one New Testament Church outside Jerusalem that is known to have
contained a Jewish element, 17 though nothing is heard of this in later times.
Among the Christian teachers who are said to have come in search of a
position or an audience were Simon Magus and Justin Martyr from Palestine,
Valentinus and certain ‘Gnostics’ from Egypt, Marcion and Noetus from Asia
Minor, Tatian and Alcibiades from Syria. Doctrine, discipline, government,
and liturgy evolved at a different pace in different centres, and as the
migrants brought their own practices with them to the capital, there was
no possibility of reconciling them in a single calendar. Perhaps there was
not even a single head, for neither Paul or Ignatius addressed the clergy,
Clement does not name himself and Hermas omits to say what his office
was. Lists of pontiffs date from the late second century, but none of them left
a trace before Victor, the first Latin-speaker, undertook to impose his own
authority on the discord. Tradition makes him an African, 18 and even if this
is false he clearly lacked the cosmopolitan sense of his predecessors. His
attempt, around 190, to force the western date of Easter on the Asians was
resisted by Polycrates of Ephesus and Irenaeus of Lyons (Eusebius, Church
History 5.24). Both men, writing Greek, invoked the memory of Polycarp, an
Asiatic martyr who had shaped their own conception of the episcopate. Its
purpose, they believed, was to corral the flock against heresy and the fear of
persecution, but as unity was a bond of sainthood, not an abstract principle,
it was not for any bishop to suppress, in the name of order, the observances
that another had consecrated by his death.

Irenaeus’ predecessor, Photinus of Lyons, had died a martyr in 177, 19 and

the episcopate was still for him a charismatic office, whereas for Victor
it was already a hierarchic institution. Nevertheless, it is Irenaeus who
gives us the oldest list of Roman leaders, though the fact that he speaks
indifferently of bishops and of presbyters or elders warrants the inference
that these were not so much sovereigns as chairmen of a synod. If this was
so, these presidents would have had more right than later popes to (p.197)
the title Pontifex Maximus, which denoted the elected chief of the college of
pontifices. In fact this name is first baptized in a late tract by Tertullian as

Page 9 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Ad hanc enim ecclesiam propter potentiorem principalitatem

necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc est, eos qui
sunt ubique fideles, in qua semper ab his qui sunt ibique,
conservata est ea quae est ab apostolis traditio. (Against
Heresies 3.2)

For with this church, on account of its superior authority [or

antiquity], it is [legally or practically] necessary for the whole
church [or every church] to agree [or come together], that is
those in every place who are of the faith; it is in this [sc. either
the Roman church, or the whole church] that the tradition
which comes from the Apostles is preserved by those who are
in every place.

What he means by principalitas, necesse, and convenire might be less

disputed had the Greek text survived. It is clear at least that truth is
guaranteed by the succession from the apostles, yet that truth is not the
privilege of the clergy but is verified by the consensus of the faithful. Rome
is a microcosm of this consensus, perhaps for no other reason than that she
is the principal city of the Empire. It is only for lack of space that Irenaeus
fails to name the other sees that uphold the purity of doctrine; he could
hardly fail to see that Victor’s ruling on the date of Easter had weakened
the accord between episcopal power and popular conviction that was taken
for granted in the eastern churches. The policy of the Roman state was
equally at odds with that of Victor. The city had imported new religions,
though selectively, since the time of the kings, and, though we are assured
that no true Roman ever celebrated the rites of the Phrygian goddess, they
were not beneath the notice of the great republican moralist Lucretius. 21
Imperial Rome played host to cults of Isis, Aesculapius, and Mithras, while
her subjects in the provinces were not only allowed but enjoined to follow the
(p.198) custom of their fathers. Unlike the Roman clergy, the emperors of the
third century saw no danger in religious pluralism, as is clear from the fact
that the dynasty of Severus in the third century did not reduce but added
to the forms of religious practice in the city; 22 by contrast, the variety of
styles in Christian worship was diminished by the triumph of the autocratic
principle. The Church secured longevity, not by stooping to the vices of its

Page 10 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Only a generation after Victor and Irenaeus, the church in Rome announced
its resolution to outlive the world by the purchase of a cemetery. Burial
clubs, which reserved funds for the funerary expenses of their members,
were a feature of ancient society, and some religious groups had special
precincts; but never were these so spacious, or so charitably funded, as to
house the rich and poor of a large community. The interment of the Christian
dead in private soil was an admonition to the living saints, who had still no
buildings for assembly, that their true hope lay in a life beyond the present
one; at the same time, the cemetery of Callistus (as it came to be known,
from the bishop who procured it 23 ) was a piece of Rome, the property
of a durable and wealthy institution which the pagans would not be able
to drive out of the world before God chose to end it. It is no surprise that
Callistus was alleged to have been a slave who stole from his master, and
took refuge in the Church to escape the penalty; it is no surprise again that
he was prepared to recognize cohabitation between high-born women and
men of lower status, though such unions were not legal marriages outside
the Church. 24

It may surprise us more that our informant, if he is indeed Hippolytus the

great commentator, was himself a Roman cleric who may have suffered
exile under imperial persecution in 235. Even ancient writers do not agree
in the designation of his office, but a probable theory makes him a suffragan
presbyter or bishop of (p.199) the capital, 25 more rigorous in doctrine than
his president Callistus, but adhering to a less autocratic theory of Church
government. Callistus finds his way into his catalogue of heretics because,
with a clear abuse of his authority, he protected those condemned by other
churches for their false teaching, and even gave the sacrament to those
whom other urban prelates had found it necessary to excommunicate
(Refutation 9.12.21). Worse still, he readmitted those who were guilty
of apostasy, homicide and fornication—the same three crimes to which,
Tertullian says, the Pontifex Maximus had offered amnesty (ibid. 9.12.22–4).
Hip-polytus has no opinion on the date of Easter, and, as a Greek speaker,
should have been on good terms with the Asians, if he was not in fact their
spokesman. Yet he seems as much offended by the low birth of Callistus and
his levelling of ranks in matrimony as by his laxity in cases of heinous sin. For
him, it seems the morality of the Church and of the world were two hermetic
spheres: we live in one by faith and in the other by necessity, and whatever
does not pertain to faith does not require the notice of the Church. Like many

Page 11 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Conflict between the rigorists and the latitudinarians was further inflamed by
the widespread tribulation under Decius in the middle of the third century.
By his decree of 251 any citizen could be required to sacrifice, and Christians
who did not comply could escape death only by paying for a certificate from
a friendly magistrate. Both sacrifice and the buying of certificates were
prohibited by the bishops, but when Cornelius succeeded the martyred
Fabian in Rome, he offered terms of reconciliation to the lapsed. Now
the resistance came from the indigenous community, for Novatian, who
contested his election to the see of Rome, was the earliest theologian from
that city to write in Latin. Once Africa had ratified the accession of Cornelius,
Novatian’s party soon decayed in Rome, but it spread abroad, and even in
the fifth century Novatianist and catholic bishops vied for precedence in
Constantinople. One reason for the strength of the Novatianists in this region
was the adoption by one faction of the Asian date for (p.200) Easter, 26 even
after it had been proscribed by Constantine. ‘New Rome’, as Constantinople
came to be known, was a natural headquarters both for those who defied the
incumbent and for those who denied the authority of the Apostolic See. The
failure of the Novatianists in old Rome does not imply that the congregation
was more loyal to the emperor; rather the sovereign ratified a victory that
had already been achieved by an episcopate more monarchical than any in
the East. 27

This monarchy was compromised less by any local sect than by the
episcopate in Africa. For the Roman church as for the Roman commonwealth
before it, this province was at different times the catalyst, the rival and
the trophy of expansion. If we owe the word Romanitas to Tertullian, we
owe to Minucius Felix, whom he either inspired or imitated, a gem of pure
Latinity in his dialogue called Octavius. He was a native of Cirta in Numidia,
no wilderness at that time, but the home of Marcus Aurelius’ tutor Fronto,
as he reminds us. 28 Nevertheless, he sets his play in the Roman port of
Ostia, describing its topography with half-redundant grace of a Ciceronian
dialogue. Even the argument of the pagan speaker—we know nothing of
divinity, so why should we not be guided by the custom of our ancestors
—is taken from the final book of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods. This
plagiarism illustrates the point that Rome is not the heart of Christendom,
but of a pagan realm, still plagued by daemons, where conversion is not
the immediate fruit of victory in debate and it is barely possible to mention

Page 12 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

(p.201) His eloquence did not prevent the rise of a strong episcopate in
Carthage, which dictated to the hinterland with a vigour that even Rome
could not surpass in Italy. In the time of persecution, Bishop Cyprian found
a middle way between laxity and severity; this, while it occasioned some
dissent, did not give rise to schism. Cyprian held that Christ had ordained the
unity of the Church when he gave the keys of heaven to Peter, but, except in
one disputed text, he stopped short of acknowledging the primacy of Rome.
30 He disagreed with Stephen, the successor of Cornelius, when the latter
decreed that baptisms administered by Novatianists were valid, and allowed
their proselytes to rejoin the catholic Church without a second rite. Once
again Rome had made a prudent compromise, 31 adding schism to the list
of sins that she had a right to pardon; once again, however, she demanded
uniformity of practice by refusing to acknowledge any formula for baptism
except the threefold name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. From Cyprian’s
wide-ranging correspondence we perceive that it was now the custom of
churches to communicate their affairs to one another. Cornelius took pains
to secure his papacy by addressing not only Carthage, but the distant see
of Antioch. In excellent Greek (perhaps that of a secretary) he magnified
his office by enumerating the forty-six elders, seven deacons, and fifteen
hundred widows under his pastoral authority (Eusebius, Church History 6.43).
No doubt this was a large number for the times, but, as many have observed,
it hardly indicates that Christians were a great force in a city which at that
time numbered a million inhabitants. 32 Zeal, cohesion, ostentatious charity,
and fatal self-advertisement no doubt enhanced the prominence of the
movement; but when Cyprian claimed that Decius feared no man in Rome so
much as he feared its bishop (Letter 55.9), one almost wonders whether he
knew how Fabian had died.

In the days of the Republic, Rome had been a willing arbiter to Hellenistic
states and African princes. Appeals from eastern churches to the western
see may have followed a similar principle, betokening not so much a
recognition of papal primacy as a (p.202) combination of distance and

Page 13 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Diocletian, who succeeded to the throne in 284, was a native of Illyricum, yet
he Romanized with vigour. His laws enjoined the Roman style of marriage,
forbade the taxpaying subject to desert his place of origin and denounced
the Manichees as a Persian threat. 36 Some have roundly called him a
barbarian, yet he saved the Roman Empire. Unlike the true barbarians of
the Severan age, he added no new figures to the pantheon, yet the abject
salutations which he demanded from his ministers would not have been
accorded to the gods by a true republican. To escape a hostile senate,
and to bring his forces nearer to the Persians, he transferred the seat
of government from Rome to the East, an act that may have helped to
convince Lactantius that the Sibyl was no liar when (p.203) she predicted
the destruction of the capital. He persecuted Christians, yet many of his
measures were espoused by Constantine, a Christian emperor who was
nevertheless the most determined autocrat since Caesar, considering himself
not a little deity on earth, but the mortal viceroy of the one and only God.

Constantine, a Latin-speaker born in Gaul or Britain, was acclaimed by his

troops in 306 as heir to the western half of the divided Roman Empire. In the
same year Italy and Africa fell into the hands of his adversary Maxentius,
and for Constantine this meant that his possessions were a jewel without
a crown. Nevertheless, before he could march on Rome, he had to subdue
the insurrections and irruptions of barbarians in Gaul; this, if we believe

Page 14 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

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his panegyrics, he achieved with a rapidity of decision, a versatile use
of tactics and machinery and a valiant disregard for his temperamental
love of clemency that had not been known since Caesar’s Gallic Wars.
The difference was that the senate had placed Caesar in Gaul to keep
him away from Rome; the poet Lucan writes that as he crossed the Alps
the spirit of the city came to meet him and implored him to return (Civil
War 1.186). Constantine’s encomiasts alleged that it was Rome herself
who stretched out yearning hands from beneath a load of high taxation
and brutal government. They add that, once he had hurled Maxentius’
legions into the Tiber, Constantine was received by jubilant embassies
from every town in Italy. 37 The conqueror himself remembered just such a
demonstration, at which, ‘coming forward, you gave yourselves up, relying
on your faith in God’ (Oration 22). The terms are all but identical with those
of the panegyrics, yet the audience in this case is not the senate but an
‘assembly of the saints’. According to Lactantius, it was on the eve of his
battle against Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge that Constantine saw a
vision of the Cross and learned that this was to be his sign of victory. 38 If
Constantine’s Oration to the Saints, as I have argued, dates from a year soon
after his seizure of the old capital in 312, 39 it is evident that he now believed
the integrity of his realm (p.204) to be linked inseparably to the dignity of
the city and Church of Rome. From that time up to his death in 337, the
Church regarded Constantine as a Christian, and his professed ambition was
to make not only Christianity, but catholic Christianity, the dominant religion
of his empire. 40 This first became apparent in his response to the African
crisis which, for him at least, began in 313.

In this year a Roman synod of nineteen bishops reviewed the charges laid
against Bishop Caecilian of Carthage by the ‘party of Donatus’, who were
soon to become the Novatianists of Africa. At the end of the council, which
had sat under the auspices of Constantine, the bishop of Rome, Militades,
declared his colleague innocent (Optatus, Against the Donatists 1.24). The
Donatists at once appealed to Constantine, who, far from taking for granted
the Roman judgment, forced Caecilian to appear at the Council of Arles in
314. Even then, his acquittal was not secure, and he was detained for some
months in Italy (ibid. 1.25–6). After 315, however, Constantine assumed a
tone of inflexible hostility to the Donatists, supporting the catholics even
where the sectarians were in a clear majority (ibid., appendix 9–10). In
other matters Constantine was a wary moderator, more disposed to make
peace than policy, and not intolerant even to many pagans. If we ask what
made him such a partisan in this case, the answer appears to be that, as a
Christian, he had even more to fear than pagan rulers from the centrifugal

Page 15 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Silvester, the successor of Miltiades, declined to attend the Council of Arles

or the ecumenical gathering at Nicaea in 325. 42 The departure of the
emperors removed the secular curb on the pope’s authority, and at the
height of the Donatist controversy even African bishops were disposed to
admit that communion (p.205) with ‘Peter’s chair’ was the test of catholicity
(Optatus, Against the Donatists 2.3–4). In 343 the catholic bishop of Carthage
was supported by a council of western ecclesiastics at the town of Serdica,
once a favourite resort of Constantine; a simultaneous council of easterners
seems to have acknowledged his Donatist rival. 43 The reason for the
division of the two parties was that Rome, defying even the recent provisions
of Nicaea, was protecting Athanasius of Alexandria against the all but
unanimous judgment of the eastern bishops outside Egypt. The subsequent
ascendancy of the catholics in Africa, and the triumph of Athanasius in his
own province, lent authority to this council, which had claimed for Rome
the right to take decisions for the whole Church independently of other
bishops, and even of the emperors, who professed to enforce what bishops
had determined. The Pontiffs of the mid-fourth century therefore failed to
exemplify the spirit of submission that had been enjoined on the Roman
Church by Paul.

A hallmark of the Republic was the union of secular with sacred office; by this
test there was nothing more deficient in Romanitas than the Church of Rome
in the late fourth century. In fact the separation of the spheres was now a
principle of government: the emperors shed the title Pontifex Maximus, 44
and, while they enjoyed the privilege of convening and intimidating councils,
they did not pretend to spiritual authority. Of course the distinction was
never absolute: eastern rulers drafted creeds, while the influence of a great
ecclesiastic in the West could touch the throne. The most sweeping laws
in favour of Christianity were enacted by Theodosius the Great, who in
return acquired immunities that would not have been granted to him by a
pagan cult: he was able, for example, to compound for crimes in Greece by
doing penance under Ambrose in Milan. 45 For all that, he could not compel
Pope Damasus to endorse the council held in 381 at Constantinople, which

Page 16 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

THE ALTAR OF VICTORY

We have seen above that Constantine was a lover, or at least a devoted
flatterer, of the capital, and that apologists of his time could be, at least
in tone, more Roman than the Romans. In the age of Theodosius Christian
senators were numerous, and their loyalty was tested in 384 when
Symmachus the prefect led a senatorial embassy to the emperor Valentinian
II to appeal for the restoration of the Altar of Victory in the Roman forum.
It had recently been removed by Gratian, ruler of the West from 378 to
383, and a vigorous partisan of Christian orthodoxy. Julian the Apostate
had reversed a similar measure by Constantius II, a son of Constantine
and perhaps the first oppressor of the pagans; now it seemed that the
wheel of fortune might turn once again. Valentinian was a young man,
who had succeeded Gratian only by the favour of the usurper Maximus
Magnus, and could therefore not afford to make an enemy of the senate. 47
This, moreover, was the first generation since the early second century in
which pagans rivalled Christians in the quality and volume of their literary
productions; with Symmachus Romanitas was born again in the cradle of
Latinitas. Bishop Damasus and the urban Christians wished to prove that
they could reject the pagan symbol without disowning Rome, but the only
man whom they found to voice their sentiments with an eloquence to rival
that of Symmachus was Ambrose of Milan.

Symmachus begins with the wreath of insubstantial compliments that was

mandatory in writing to an emperor of this period. At the same time he
speaks in the name of the senate, and addresses his correspondent by a
flattering periphrasis (‘Your Eternity’) rather than directly as Imperator.
Lamenting the extinction of the order of Vestal Virgins, whose property
Gratian confiscated when he removed the Altar, he looks back to the
clement policy of Constantius, who, whatever else he may have done, did
not withhold states funds from ‘Roman ceremonies’ (Relation 7). Then he
falls into a classical mode, personifying Rome as Cicero did in his (p.207)
Catilinarian orations; 48 but Cicero’s Rome was vigorous and angry, whereas
the Rome of Symmachus is a white-haired weakling, flaunting the trophies of
remote antiquity and pleading the rights of age (9). The same enfeeblement

Page 17 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

This position was not so easily ridiculed now as in the age of Constantine.
Then it had been necessary only to point out that most religions were
depraved, and that Rome’s tolerance of them therefore compromised her
own, unique tradition of moral rectitude. Since then the Neoplatonists had
shown that every myth can be tamed by allegory, and every rite, however
base, can yield a sacred meaning. 49 Thus it was not likely that the state
could be deterred from a liberal policy by appeals to Roman virtue. Ambrose
in his counter-pleas 50 eschews both constitutional pretences and pagan
epithets; with a characteristic mixture of cajolery and menace, he appeals
to Valentinian as the ‘most blessed’ and ‘most Christian’ emperor, does not
disguise the novelty of his faith, although he urges that in Rome, as in all
of nature, change (p.208) is common and salutary (Letter 18.23–30). He
flatly denies that many roads lead to God (18.8), and reminds the young
Valentinian that his predecessor had been a militant churchman (17.16).
Nevertheless, he takes the opportunity to demonstrate that his love of Rome
is as pure as his Latinity. With Roman pride, if not with Roman piety, he
makes the city speak for him, declaring that she owes her fame to the sinews
of her children, not the gods:
Let the Roman populace now have done with these invidious
complaints; they are not what Rome enjoins. She interrupts
them in quite another tone: ‘Why do you defile me every day
with blood from an innocent herd? It is not in the entrails of
cattle but in the strength of warriors that the prizes of victory
lie.’ (Letter 18.7)

Page 18 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press,
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Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg; date: 11 November 2013
Where the Milanese bishop merely sprinkles tropes, the Spanish poet
Prudentius undertook to baptize the whole of his Roman legacy by
immersion. His works include an allegorical epic on the war between vice and
virtue, another on the origin of sin and a collection of hymns to saints in a
variety of metres. He produced two books against Symmachus, some twenty
years after the original controversy, when the Goths were already closing on
the capital. 51 Writing in hexameters, he alludes to many lines from classic
authors, but the two works that he rifles most persistently are the Georgics
and Aeneid of the national poet Virgil. Nevertheless the first book is primarily
a satire on the ancient cults of Rome. Dionysus is introduced no doubt
because the senate had notoriously endeavoured to suppress him (1.122–
44). Priapus, well known from the Roman poets is a ‘Greek man’, and that is
made a point against him (1.103); the phrase Graius homo looks back, with
the irony of contrast, to Lucretius’ praise of Epicurus, slayer of false religions
(Nature of Things 1.67). The ‘Phrygian mother’ takes her place among the
civic deities because she was insulted by the same poet, and because it
was no longer the case that no true Roman marched beside her chariot.
52 Perhaps in homage to Julian, the last pagan and first scholar among the
emperors, the noble antiquarian Praetextatus, a friend of Symmachus,
appears to have (p.209) become her devotee. 53 Prudentius’ second book
lampoons both ancient and imported superstitions, marshals the usual
arguments for novelty (2.161–369), combines this with an attack on fatalism
(2.370–487), contrasts the reluctant chastity of the Vestals with the free
devotion of the Christian virgin (2.1064–1113) and maintains that God who
for his own purposes has first exalted then diminished Rome (2.578–633).
The city is his mouthpiece as he recites the failings of the pagan emperors
(2.669–78); it is she who reminds her sons that, in a time of more than usual
debility, they were rescued from the Goths and other predators by Stilicho, a
‘young man strong in Christ’ (2.715). 54 At that time, she says, our god was
Christ and simple virtue; the poet himself, more sonorously, had announced
that the world was in the hands of Christ and peace and Rome:
Now, Christ, the world receives thee, held as it is in a social
bond by Peace and Rome. These thou dost bid to be at the
head and summit of things, and Rome is not pleasing to thee
without peace. (Against Symmachus 2. 635–7)

Virgil had told the Romans that their task was to impose the arts of peace
(Aeneid 6. 853–4), and praised Octavian as the conqueror who made
Strife herself his captive (1. 294–6). This conceit had been transferred
to Constantine in a Latin panegyric; now Prudentius tells us that the pax
Romana is the peace of God.

Page 19 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Thus Julius was a lesser figure at Serdica than Hosius of Cordova. Liberius his
successor left his correspondence to amanuenses; what he wrote himself,
says Pietri, 55 was so lamentably drafted that his authorship has sometimes
been denied. The next bishop, Damasus, is an object of fanatical devotion
in Jerome’s letters, but he lives for us in these letters, not his own. 56 We
need not speak of decadence, for even in the third century Hippolytus
the dissident and Novatian the antipope had been the ablest spokesmen
of the Roman Church, the former writing Greek. In the middle of the fifth
century the papacy acquired a fluent mouthpiece, and the city an illustrious
defender, in Leo I, who is often styled the Great. Even he was more a patriot
for his see than for the Empire, resisting the coercion of his namesake, the
emperor Leo, when a council had made the bishop of Constantinople the
equal of the pope. 57 During his pontificate (around 451) Rome was sacked
by the Vandal king Genseric, but the calamity was not so great as that
inflicted in 410 by Alaric, a Gothic mercenary who had been in the pay of
both the eastern and the western Empire. Had it not survived Alaric, Rome
might have had no Leo, and the papacy might not have become, in the
famous phrase of Hobbes ‘the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire, sitting
crowned upon the grave thereof’. 58

Notes:

(1) Edwards ( 1999 a) and ( 1999 b).

Page 20 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

(3) Harnack, ( 1908 ) 1.266–78.

(4) Compare the words of the centurion (Acts 22:28) on the cost of his
citizenship with the sayings of Paul (1 Cor. 6: 20, 7: 23) and Jesus (Luke 16:
28) on the cost of salvation.

(5) Galatians 4: 26. Philippians 3: 20 appears to contrast the heavenly city

with the loss of civic status in the present. Cf Hebrews 13: 12–14.

(6) Matthew 8: 10 etc., Matthew 27: 34 etc., Acts 10: 1 ff.

(7) Jones, Greek City, 129–31.

(8) Acts 18: 2. See Beard, Price, and North ( 1998 ) 1: 230–3 on this and
related expulsions.

(9) On 1 Peter 5: 13 see Selwyn ( 1952 ) 243–5.

(10) Swete ( 1906 ) xcv–ci.

(11) Epictetus, Discourses 4.7.2 (c.100); the name ‘Galileans’ is also

preferred in the emperor Julian’s tract against the Christians (c.360).

(12) Clement appears in tradition as the first bishop after Peter or the third.
For an attempt to reconcile conflicting evidence see Be´venot ( 1966 ).

(13) Hermas, Vision 2.4.3. The Muratorian Fragment (traditionally, though

not certainly dated to the late second century) states that the Shepherd was
written during the pontificate of Pius I: see Hahnemann ( 1992 ), though he
challenges the evidence.

(14) 1 Peter 2: 4–5. Cf Psalm 118: 22, 1 Cor. 1: 23,

(15) Hermas, Visions 1: 1.4, 1: 22, 2: 12, 2: 41.

(16) See Tertullian, Apology 51, and Arnobius, Against the Nations, passim.

(17) Romans 2: 17 addresses a Jew; 11: 13 (‘I speak to you Gentiles’) implies
the presence of Jews, as does the mention of Prisca and Aquila at 16: 3.

Page 21 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

(19) For the letter (in Greek) from Lyons to Asiatic churches see Eusebius,
Church History 5.1. A number of Asiatics were among the martyred
Christians.

(20) For a discussion sceptical of papal claims see Abramowski ( 1977 ). On

apostolic succession see Molland, ( 1950 ).

(21) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2.19; Lucretius, On the

Nature of Things 2. 601–43

(22) The Syrian Elagabalus (217–22) introduced the cult of the god after
whom he was named; the catholicity of his successor Severus Alexander
(222–35) extended even to Christianity (Eusebius, Church History 6.28).

(23) Davis ( 1989 ) 7. Callistus himself was buried in the ‘cemetery of

Calepodius’: cf. Davis ( 1989 ) 28. His own on the Via Appia was evidently
larger: Davis ( 1989 ) 5–14.

(24) Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies 9.12, esp. 9.12.24–5.

(25) Following Brent ( 1995 ), rather than Döllinger ( 1876 ), who makes
Hippolytus an antipope.

(26) Sozomen, Church History 6.24. See ibid. 8.1 on the popularity of
Sisinius, Novatianist bishop of Constantinople.

(27) Constantine’s decree at Theodosian Code 16.5.2 is far more lenient than
his pronouncements on the Donatists, and the Bishops of Rome refrained
from persecution of the sect until the early 5th cent. (Socrates, Church
History 7.11).

(28) Octavius 9.6. On dating see Quispel ( 1951 ).

(29) On Modesty 10. See further Rankin ( 1995 ).

(30) See Benson ( 1897 ), 180–221.

(31) Attacked by Cyprian and Firmilian in Cyprian, Letters 74–6; cf. Eusebius,
Church History 7.5. Ecumenical ratification of Stephen’s verdict seems to
date from the Council of Trullo (682).

(32) Lane Fox ( 1986 ), 268–9, reducing Gibbon’s modest estimate.

Page 22 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

(34) See Eusebius, Church History 7.30, and, on political circumstances,

Millar ( 1971 ).

(35) Epistles 15.2; see further Pietri ( 1976 ) 1. 833.

(36) Collatio Legum Mosiacarum et Romanarum 15.3.

(37) Panegyrici Latini 4 (10).11.2; 5 (8). 2–3; Eusebius, Life of Constantine

1.39 attributes the demonstration to the senate and the whole populace.

(38) For divergent accounts, see Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 44;
Eusebius, Life of Constantine 1.27–32, the Invention of the True Cross (5th-
cent.) and Prudentius, Against Symmachus 1.481–510.

(39) Edwards ( 1999 b), 262–6, partly endorsing Drake ( 1985 ).

(40) Optatus, Against the Donatists, app. 3, with the notes of Edwards ( 1997
) 183–4. On Constantine and Rome see Alföldi ( 1948 ).

(41) C. Pietri ( 1976 ) 1. 170–6.

(42) Optatus, Against the Donatists, app. 4. On Optatus’ position, see Eno (
1973 ).

(43) Jonkers ( 1954 ) 65; Augustine, Against Cresconius 3.38.

(44) On the significance of this act see Beard, Price, and North ( 1998 ), 1.
374

(45) See McLynn ( 1994 ), 267–70.

(46) See Leo the Great, Letters 105–6; Pietri ( 1976 ), 1. 866–72.

(47) J. Matthews ( 1975 ) 176–81.

(48) Against Catiline 1.8. Brodka ( 1998 ) 34–55 notes that a more virile
notion of Rome prevails elsewhere in Symmachus’ writings, and also (p. 59)
that the senescence of Rome does not imply a weakening of her power at
Ammianus Marcellinus, Histories 14.6.3–6.

Page 23 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

(50) Letter 17 responding to the news of the Senatorial delegation, and 18 to

the speech of Symmachus.

(51) On restorations and attempted restorations of the Altar, see M.

Lavarenne ( 1948 ) 90–1. Prudentius appears to be responding to the Relatio
of Symmachus rather than to a later document, as he takes up the same
arguments and maintains the association between the Vestals and the Altar
of Victory.

(52) See n. 15 above; Lucretius, Nature of Things 2.601.

(53) See Ruggini ( 1979 ).

(54) Perhaps it is a sign of the times that Stilicho, the most successful
commander of his age, was half a Vandal. He was eulogized by Claudian, a
Greek poet who wrote in Latin, but denounced in a contemporary poem, On
his Return, by the Gallic senator Rutilius Namatianus.

(55) Pietri ( 1976 ) 1. 252–3.

(56) See n. 35 and Pietri ( 1976 ) 1. 837–41 on the anathemas of Damasus

against erroneous Christology, the one exiguous proof of theological
reflection.

(57) See Grillmeier ( 1987 ) 95–194.

(58) Hobbes, Leviathan ed. Minogue, ch. 47, p. 381

Page 24 of 24 Romanitas and the Church of Rome

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

Michael Whitby

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter shows that the relationship of emperors and armies had always
been intricate, with the realities conveniently concealed behind civilian
fictions. In the later Empire military need dictated various changes in Roman
military forces in terms of numbers, balance and disposition of forces, and
recruitment; the imperial adoption of Christianity also affected the religious
attachment of soldiers. These changes should not be seen in too negative
a light: after the difficulties of the 3rd century, the Roman army operated
as a powerfully effective fighting force throughout the 4th century, and it
remained an essentially Roman institution throughout.

Keywords: Roman Empire, Roman army, emperors

The most important study of the relationship between Roman emperors

and soldiers, by Brian Campbell, terminates at the end of the Severan
dynasty in AD 235: Campbell conceded that there was a case for continuing
to Constantine, but ‘decided that it was probably better to end before the
relationship between emperor and army broke down in the mid-third century,
and before the military reorganization of Diocletian and Constantine’. 1
The perception, that important things happened to the army in the mid-
third century and again during the Tetrarchy, with soldiers increasing their
influence or securing a dangerous pre-eminence, is standard in modern
literature, 2 and can be traced back to fourth-century reporters: Aurelius
Victor (De Caesaribus 37) commented on the death of Probus in 282,

Page 1 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

Constantine is associated with two developments which further affected

this evolving relationship: the recruitment of substantial numbers of non-
Romans and the adoption of Christianity as the Empire’s religion. By the
end of the century it can be assumed that there has been ‘a barbarization,
or more accurately, an un-Romanization, of the army. The general process
is too familiar to need discussion.’ 4 Some believe that the reputation of
military service (p.157) had declined so much that Romans no longer wanted
to serve in the army; 5 others, while accepting the switch to external sources
of supply, see this as a conscious decision based on the higher quality of
recruits. 6 The pressures of the Gothic influx of the 370s and the Roman
defeat at Adrianople in 378 accelerated changes in the army. 7 After 395
the western Empire was on course to destruction, with the commander of
the Italian army, who was often a non-Roman, virtually ruler of the Empire.
By contrast the eastern Empire revived, perhaps because it turned its back
on excessive reliance on barbarian troops and generals, 8 perhaps because
of the quality of the civilian politicians who controlled affairs in the early
fifth century. 9 Emperors now ceased to lead armies regularly in person, a
development which attracted some criticism on the grounds that they were
abrogating one of their principal roles (Synesius, de Regno). Christianity may
have discouraged potential soldiers from enlisting to defend their country,
while the growing power and wealth of the Church created within the Empire
an independent power structure whose objectives were not identical with
those of the secular state. 10 On the other hand the new religion helped
to elevate rulers above fellow mortals and so strengthened the position of
emperors.

This digest of some recent scholarly views on the late Roman army points to
the significance of the topic for any understanding of the development of the
late Roman state. What does not emerge is the extent to which these views
are dependent on the scholarship of the first half of the twentieth century:
for example Alföldi’s contributions to the first edition of Cambridge Ancient
History are cited with approval, but also Rostovtzeff and Dill. 11 Reliance
on such authorities may be justified, but the longevity of this scholarly
orthodoxy is also an invitation to interrogate it. The issues under discussion

Page 2 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(p.158) The late Roman army is regarded as different from its imperial
predecessors in terms of size, balance of forces, discipline, recruitment,
dispositions, command structures, and effectiveness: 12 indeed, granted
that these aspects interlock, it would be fair to say that the basic nature
of the army changed. Our knowledge about the army is certainly different.
The career records, dedications and other inscriptions which illumine the
organization of the early imperial army are much less numerous. Apart from
Ammianus Marcellinus’ narrative of the years 354–78 there is no detailed
contemporary account of Roman warfare, and even Ammianus, for all his
military experience, cannot automatically be taken as an accurate guide to
events; on detailed military matters his reluctance to use technical terms
means that his information on Roman armies is less clear than it might
have been, and his personal interests and literary agenda must always be
considered. 13 On the other hand, the shape of the Empire’s armed forces
c.400 is displayed in the Notitia Dignitatum, a revealing if problematic
document. It is not a single snapshot of the Empire’s forces, since the
western list reflects the desperate reshuffling of military resources after the
collapse of the Rhine frontier in 407; it records names and locations of units,
but not unit sizes, theoretical or actual; only Roman units are listed, so that
foreign contingents raised for particular campaigns are invisible. 14

The Notitia probably records a larger military establishment than had existed
under the Severi, and the proportion of cavalry within this number had also
increased. There are also new distinctions, with three main elements to
the armies: units designated as palatini who were attached to one of the
praesental armies; comitatenses who belonged to one of the regional field
armies; and units under the command of a provincial dux or comes, whom it
is convenient to refer to as limitanei even if the term is first attested in the
late fourth century. 15 A greater proportion of troops were (p.159) billeted
in, or near, cities as opposed to in frontier garrisons. Quite when the various
changes occurred is another matter, since it is difficult to read back from the
Notitia’s information: such factors as imperial titles for units or the pairings of
seniores and iuniores can be probed, 16 but there is insufficient corroborative
evidence for definite conclusions. Gallienus, Diocletian, Constantine, and
Valentinian all receive credit from scholars for different innovations, but it
is unrealistic to attempt to isolate a single creator of the late Roman army
since development was continuous; successive emperors responded to
particular circumstances but with their predecessors’ actions as a guide.

Page 3 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

Attempts have been made to reconstruct the size of military forces, and how
these developed. 17 John Lydus in the sixth century recorded (De Mensibus
1.27) the Diocletianic establishment as 389,704 in the armies, 45,562 in the
fleets (435,266 in total). 18 John’s precision might suggest access to reliable
information. Writing slightly later Agathias offered 645,000 as the total
military establishment at an unspecified date, in the context of a rhetorical
attack on the depleted Justinianic military forces of only 150,000 (5.13.7–8).
Extrapolation from the units recorded in the Notitia is very uncertain, but on
the basis of interlocking assumptions, none of them beyond question, Jones
managed to come close to Agathias’ higher total. 19 This might suggest a
substantial increase in military numbers in the early fourth century, when
John Lydus alleged that Constantine doubled Diocletian’s army (De Mens.
1.27). Such totals have aroused incredulity on the basis of the relatively
small size of forces recorded on campaign in narrative histories, 20 but such
scepticism is unfounded since a large overall establishment was required to
generate mobile armies of (p.160) 20–30,000. 21 Any significant expansion of
numbers will have intensified problems at a time when changes in methods
of payment had complicated relations between soldiers and taxpayers and
military reverses prompted reflections on cost-effectiveness. The army
had always been the largest item of imperial expenditure, and strains were
already evident in the Severan period. 22

Composition is as important as size. Calculations of the proportions of

infantry to cavalry in the different elements of the eastern armies as listed
in the Notitia are revealing. 23 These calculations are based on assumptions
about unit size which are likely to be wrong in detail, but the overall
impression is what matters and this is probably more secure. With regard
to the mobile armies, cavalry comprise 28.6 per cent of the two eastern
praesental armies, while the three regional armies range from 5.7 per cent in
Illyricum, through 14.3 per cent in Thrace, to 25 per cent in Oriens. 24 In the
local armies in individual provinces (i.e. limitanei) the range on the eastern
frontier is between 60.6 and 71.4 per cent, with only the Duchy of Armenia
standing outside at 40.6 per cent; on the lower Danube it is between 32
and 39.1 per cent, but between 53.3 and 59.5 per cent in the Pannonian
provinces on the middle Danube. The distinction between Europe and the
eastern frontier reflects the nature of the enemies to be faced, but it is the

Page 4 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

It is widely accepted not only that cavalry numbers increased but that its
military role changed in Late Antiquity. One standard theory is that Gallienus
created a mobile army, primarily of cavalry units, to act as a strategic
reserve to accompany the emperor (a comitatus) when he responded to
varied and sustained frontier pressure; 26 Gallienus’ force was initially based
at Milan to protect (p.161) Italy and react to any deep invasion; he may
have been following the lead of Septimius Severus, if it were accepted that
the latter had used legio II Parthica as the basis of a central reserve. 27
This comitatus became the Empire’s principal strike-force, replacing the
temporary groupings previously created by withdrawing units (vexillations)
from frontier legions. 28 The cavalry element may have represented
vexillations of the Balkan legions, assuming that the term equites Dalmatae
refers to their station, a core province in Gallienus’ shrunken Empire, rather
than their place of recruitment. 29 Some units of armoured cavalry, clibanarii
and catafractarii, might have been introduced after Aurelian experienced
the mailed cavalry of Palmyra, even though he had managed to overcome
their threat. 30 Gallienus’ central force can be seen as the precursor to the
comitatenses of Constantine and the later praesental armies. 31 Treadgold,
however, placed the expansion of cavalry numbers later, in the fourth
century, noting that the percentage of cavalry in the four Constantinian
Civil War armies recorded by Zosimus (2.15.1–2; 22.1–2) is less than 10 per
cent, and that a number of the most recently-formed units in the Notitia,
particularly those raised after Adrianople, were cavalry. 32

Certainty is impossible on the date of the growth in cavalry numbers, and

there was a continuing development through the fifth century under the
impact of Hunnic tactics, 33 but suggestions can be made about their likely
role. In his study of Gallienus de Blois, though endorsing the theory of
the mobile reserve as an anticipation of the military system of the late
Empire, also claimed, on the basis of Zosimus 1.30, that Gallienus’ cavalry
development was connected with the need to defend the Rhine crossings
against a powerful horde of Germans. 34 This suggestion was not taken up,
perhaps because Zosimus does not in fact mention cavalry in relation (p.162)
to this military threat, but the relevance of cavalry to frontier defence rather
than as a strategic reserve was pursued on other grounds by Nicasie, who
pointed to the fact that cavalry are not more mobile in strategic terms than
infantry: 35 an infantry unit will move further in a week, and remain in better
fighting condition, than a cavalry one, though cavalry have a decreasing

Page 5 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

The nature of the late Roman cavalry is also believed to have changed, with
heavy mailed cavalry, a direct precursor to the medieval knight, becoming
more prominent. 36 The Notitia, however, records only nine units of clibanarii
and eight of catafractarii, seventeen in total with four located in the West
and thirteen in the East, that is only about 5 per cent of the cavalry units
recorded. 37 Mailed units are impressively described in panegyrics, for
example Nazarius on Constantine’s opponents in northern Italy (Pan. Lat.
4.22.4) or Julian on Constantius’ cavalry at Mursa (Julian, Oration 1.37c–
38a; 2.57b–c), but the former serves to build up the might of the enemy
who is overcome by Constantine’s bravery and tactics (Pan. Lat. 4.23–4),
while Julian’s praise enhances the grandeur of Constantius’ preparations.
Armoured cavalry had its uses, especially against disorganized opposition,
but it is clear that the Romans could cope with these unwieldy opponents.
Even at Mursa, where Julian implies that Constantius’ heavy cavalry swept
the field (2.57d), Magnentius’ men stood their ground and provided fierce
resistance, and Julian also notes the decisive intervention of Constantius’
archers (36d–37a; cf. 60a–b). Constantius may have developed the use of
mailed horsemen (Julian, Or. 1.37c), but they probably remained a minor
element of the Roman cavalry.

(p.163) Cavalry provided tactical mobility, as well as an imposing presence

which suited their role in the imperial guard, but infantry remained the
backbone of the Roman army. At the two major fourth-century battles for
which we have anything approaching a reasonable description, Strasburg
and Adrianople, the serious fighting was done by the Roman infantry,
successfully at Strasburg, valiantly but unsuccessfully at Adrianople. 38 At
Strasburg, the Roman cavalry on the right wing, which included a unit of
catafractarii, was routed by the Alamanni cavalry, while at Adrianople the
cavalry units on the Roman left were shattered by the late arrival of the
Gothic horsemen. Cavalry were not a strategic reserve. When an army was
required for a specific campaign, the mobile armies might be supplemented
by federates, and equally importantly, by provincial forces, limitanei. 39 As
a result, especially on the eastern frontier, major campaigns such as Julian’s
invasion of Persia were fought by armies which contained a substantial

Page 6 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

The significant contribution which limitanei might make to major campaigns

needs to be stressed against the persistent belief in their declining status
and hence military effectiveness: 40 at its most extreme, limitanei are
reduced to the status of undertrained peasant soldiers long before we have
evidence for the existence of the term, which is first attested in a law of
363 (Cod. Theod. 12.1.56). This thesis goes back to the contrast drawn by
Zosimus (2.34) between the efficient frontier defence of Diocletian and
Constantine’s disregard for provincial security. Some scholars are prepared
to accept Zosimus’ presentation; 41 even those who rightly discount Zosimus’
religious bias may accept that he has anticipated a development of the later
fourth century in order to attack Constantine, while also noting the evidence
for the continued usefulness of limitanei on some frontiers into the sixth
(p.164) century. 42 It is worth remembering that, although the privileges
and rewards accorded frontier troops were lower than those for members
of mobile armies, and smaller and weaker recruits were assigned to them
(e.g. Cod. Theod. 7.20.4; 22.8), there were also attractions to local service.
Among the papyri in the Abbinaeus archive there is a plea on behalf of a
recent recruit, who seems to have been enrolled because his father had been
a soldier; the request is to secure release or, if that is impossible, at least to
avoid being sent away with the draft for the comitatus (P. Abbin. 19). 43 It is
conceivable that extra pay and privileges were needed to make service in
the comitatenses palatable to recruits who might otherwise have opted for
their local units. In due course many, perhaps most, units of comitatenses
were dispersed across their respective regions, which brought them closer to
the limitanei in function as well as location. 44 Ultimately, the most significant
distinction in the army lay between the praesental units, or palatini, and the
rest. 45

The size of the armed forces and the role of cavalry units in them are
relevant to a fundamental aspect of the alleged changing nature of the
army, the recruitment of non-Romans (‘barbarians’): if the Romans needed
to find more troops, especially of a type which they were not accustomed
to supplying, an easy option would be to look outside the Empire. Roman
armies had always relied on large numbers of outsiders, with Germans
being recruited for service from the late Republic onwards, and Goths
from the second century. The third-century conflicts, however, led to
increased recruitment from beyond the frontiers, 46 so that the ‘progressive
‘‘barbarization’’ of the army, especially during the third century AD is

Page 7 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

This perception can be challenged. Aurelius Victor, whose evidence

contributes towards negative assessments of the Roman quality of the
later army, in fact criticized the imperial army from the earliest reigns as
barbarized, corrupt, and prone to civil war. 51 Zosimus (4.26–33), another
important interpreter, was as hostile to the aggressively Christian Theodosius
as he was to Constantine, and so his evidence is suspect. It is unclear quite
how independent the Goths were when serving in Roman armies. Although
the Goths had their own leaders, they were under overall Roman command;
52 they appear to have resented their exploitation by Theodosius, especially
after the heavy losses they sustained at the Frigidus River in 394, and the
desire for a less oppressive arrangement prompted Alaric’s long search
for security and territory for the Gothic remnant. On this view the Goths
had solved a short-term recruitment problem in the eastern Empire, but
thereafter a more traditional balance was restored and there is no evidence
for a fundamental change in the character of the army. By contrast for the
western Empire the bloody defeats of the usurpations of Magnus Maximus
and Eugenius entailed an increased reliance on outsiders to make good
heavy losses in the short term; there was no time to re-establish the balance
of the armies before the major breaches of the Rhine frontier in 406/7. This
analysis might suggest that one factor in the survival of the eastern Empire
in the fifth century was that its armies remained more ‘Roman’ than those
of the West. Thus it is argued that in the (p.166) aftermath of the Gaïnas
crisis of 399/400 the eastern government appreciated the folly of excessive
reliance on outsiders and took steps to purge their armies and control future
recruitment, even to the extent of accepting that the exclusion of tribesmen

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Discussion of non-Romans in the army is in danger of being swept away by

prejudice, since ‘barbarization’ is a vague but loaded term. If it is glossed to
mean ‘the estrangement of the soldiers as a class from the traditional ideals
of Graeco-Roman civilization’, 55 the obvious response is that for centuries
soldiers had been primarily recruited from rural and upland areas whose
inhabitants would have been regarded as less than civilized by the urban
populations whose privileges they secured: thus Aurelius Victor, though often
cited for the unfortunate consequences of the prominence of soldiers from
the mid-third century onwards, is critical of their behaviour from the very
start of the Empire. 56 It is inappropriate to blame the peasant qualities of
soldiers and their lack of appreciation for the benefits of urban life as causes
for the problems of the third century. 57 Even if ‘barbarization’ is clarified
to mean a ‘gradual approximation to the culture of the tribes beyond the
frontier’, 58 the concept remains imprecise and begs questions about the
direction of cultural, and other, influences. Further, if frontiers are seen as
zones of interchange rather than lines of division, 59 the issue of cultural
demarcation becomes less relevant.

(p.167) The problems in identifying barbarians in Roman service have been

reviewed by Nicasie: 60 Ammianus sometimes informs us of the provenance
of a particular commander, and on other occasions an ethnic origin may be
inferred from an individual’s name—which is safe as long as one assumes
that Romans did not give Germanic or Gothic names to their offspring, a
practice which complicates identifications in Merovingian Gaul in the seventh
century. Even being generous in the identification of barbarians, Nicasie
concluded that over 70 per cent of senior generals in the fourth century
were Roman, and observed that most of those outsiders who made it to
the top (e.g. Silvanus the Frank, Victor the Sarmatian) were thoroughly
Romanized. 61 At lower levels it is much harder to identify outsiders, not least
because we have so little specific information about individuals below the
senior ranks. Nicasie suggested that, even though there must have been

Page 9 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

Nicasie also insisted upon the continuing capacity of the Roman army
to Romanize its members: even recruits from outside the Empire were
largely drawn from areas which had experienced generations of contact
with the Empire, whether through trade, (p.168) local employment or a
tradition of military service. 64 From the early Empire the Vindolanda tablets
illustrate the potential rapidity of the process on a western frontier, if Flavius
Cerialis and his wife are first-generation Romanized Batavians. The cultural
complexity of the East was far greater and influences pulled individuals in
different directions, but even here the third-century documents from Dura-
Europus relating to the Twentieth Cohort of Palmyrenes reveal that this unit,
only recently incorporated into the Roman army, had a distinctive impact on
a city where Greek and Palmyrene traditions were very strong. 65

There is no specific evidence which would permit a detailed analysis of the

position in the third and fourth centuries. Most of our information relates
to men of high status, who are likely to have been more susceptible to
influence than the rank and file. Nicasie cited Flavius Merobaudes, a Frank
who preserved the Empire for Valentinian’s family, and Stilicho, the half-
Vandal protector of Honorius and recipient of Claudian’s panegyrics. 66 The
argument is based on impressions, but can be extended. The Goth Flavius
Plinta chose Epigenes as companion on an embassy to the Huns in the 430s
because of his wisdom as well as his status as quaestor (Priscus, fr. 2.17–
20), which suggests that Plinta recognized that classical learning was an
asset. Another Goth, the comes foederatorum Flavius Areobindus, led the
elite foreign units in Roman service in the Persian War of 422, when he killed
an enemy commander in single combat, but later became a substantial
landowner in Syria in which capacity he received letters from Theodoret of
Cyrrhus; his son Flavius Dagalaiphus gave Daniel the Stylite shelter in his

Page 10 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

One of the factors used to explain the enlistment of non-Romans is the

apparent difficulty in securing recruits within the Empire: the reluctance
of Romans to serve supposedly increased during the late fourth century,
so that when the losses of Adrianople and the Frigidus had to be made
good the status of the army was so low that the only solution was to secure
external recruits. 68 Such a pronounced split between military and civilians
would have implications for the functioning of the state and the emperor’s
position. Book 7 of the Codex Theodosianus is devoted to military matters
and includes a long series of laws on recruitment problems (7.13), which at
first sight appear to substantiate this thesis of Roman reluctance: people
mutilated themselves or offered slaves in order to escape conscription, while
exemption from the levy was a privilege. If taken together these laws might
suggest that the Empire as a whole faced a crisis, with the laws unable to
keep up with devices to dodge conscription, but it is vital that the legislation
is considered in its geographical and chronological contexts before such
conclusions are drawn; 69 the existence of problems in the early Empire also
needs to be acknowledged. 70 It emerges that the reestablishment of the
western army after Julian’s failure in Persia, the arrival of the Goths on the
Danube and the consequences of Adrianople for the eastern Empire, and
the aftermath for the West of the defeat of Eugenius all generated laws; 71
there was a flurry of increasingly desperate legislation in the West at the
start of the fifth century when the emperor, even in a military crisis, could
not extract recruits from senatorial estates. 72

An alternative, though to my mind less satisfactory, interpretation of these

military laws could be extrapolated from Jill Harries’ (p.170) study of the
Theodosian Code. 73 In her discussion of the effectiveness of late Roman
law, where she confronted the old-fashioned view that late Roman law was
often ignored, 74 Harries argued that repetition was not a sign of disregard
or disobedience; indeed it should often indicate the opposite. The Empire
functioned well because people challenged and used the laws; 75 ‘Even
repeated laws do not demonstrate that a difficulty was serious … Repeated
laws were laws that worked.’ 76 On this basis the military laws would indicate

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A different change in the armies has been argued by Constantin Zuckerman

in his study of one of the late-fourth-century recruitment laws, that issued by
Valens at Antioch in June 375 (Cod. Theod. 7.13.7) as part of a broad-ranging
overhaul of procedures. 78 Previously recruitment was organized through
cities, as and when needed; it was a personal charge on curiales who
supervised the production of recruits from the city territory by identifying
suitable locals and/or paying bounty money to elicit volunteers; the normal
exemptions applied, so that inhabitants of Constantinople, and above all
senators, escaped the burden—a particular problem after Constantius’
expansion of the eastern senate. The law of 375 effectively changed
recruitment into an annual property charge from which no one, not even
senators, was exempt; landowners, either individually if they were rich
enough, or organized (p.171) into consortia, provided the recruit; within a
consortium financial compensation was paid by other members to the person
who supplied the required body.

According to Zuckerman this reform exacerbated the problems of desertion

and submission of unsuitable recruits, since landowners were empowered
to select the recruit while the unfortunate individual no longer received the
previous bounty money; weak, unsuitable and unenthusiastic recruits were
provided who no longer had a direct incentive to remain in the army. 79 On
the other hand the law provided an efficient system for raising money, and it
was soon exploited by Valens as the basis for an Empire-wide commutation
of recruits into gold (adaeratio), which the Gothic crossing of the Danube in
376 had permitted (Ammianus 31.4.4; Socrates 4.34.4–5). Adrianople briefly
interrupted this new system of the complete adaeratio of provincial levies,
but from the early 380s this became the standard arrangement: conscription
could be abandoned because taxation always produced sufficient money
to attract recruits or hire mercenaries. 80 The result was that from the late
fourth century attitudes changed towards military service in the East, where

Page 12 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

We in fact have very little evidence about recruitment in the East after
the 380s, but the lack of legislation on conscription in action does not
demonstrate that the earlier system was abandoned; 81 the absence of laws
from the fifth century may indeed mean that ‘the routine was operating
smoothly’, 82 while the fact that captive Sciri settled within the Empire
were exempted in 409 from the obligation to provide recruits suggests that
this was a requirement for other landowners (Cod. Theod. 5.6.3). 83 The
enrolment of John, father of the future St Sabas, in the early 440s is more
likely to have been conscription than volunteering, since the new soldier had
to leave his native Cappadocia to serve in an Isaurian unit at Alexandria,
taking with him his wife Sophia but entrusting the 5-year-old Sabas to
a maternal uncle (Life of Sabas 1). In contrast (p.172) to Zuckerman’s
hypothesis of a late-fourth century change in eastern attitudes to military
service, Treadgold argued that it was Anastasius who transformed the appeal
of recruitment and permitted the abandonment of conscription by increasing
military pay by 50 per cent in c.498; Jones implied that the change came
even later, under Justinian, with an increasing shift towards local service as
the main factor, though declining economic conditions in the countryside
may also have played a part. 84 One approach to this scholarly dispute is to
interrogate the evidence, legal and literary, used to prove the unpopularity of
military service: if the army emerges as less unpopular than supposed, there
is no need to seek a major shift in its reputation.

To my mind, it is most unlikely that an emperor ever abolished the system of

local conscription, though the extent to which it was used will have varied.
The recruiting units of property-holders are referred to in the Justinianic
Code, and recruitment on the basis of lists is attested in the late sixth
century, which suggest the continued availability of conscription. 85 The
debate about conscription lies beyond the bounds of this chapter, but it
underlines the difficulties in accepting Zuckerman’s thesis. The law of Valens
is best seen as part of a wider process, identified by Liebeschuetz, whereby
duties were transferred from curiales to overlapping but rather broader
groups of local landowners. 86 In the East the law of 375 formed the basis for
subsequent recruitment, either by the supply of individuals or of substitute
money, aurum tironicum, and helped to ensure that emperors retained
control of military manpower. The overall prosperity of the eastern provinces,
and the density of settlement in the countryside for which there is increasing
evidence, provided classic conditions for healthy military recruitment. 87

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Increased recruitment of barbarians is associated with an alleged breakdown

of discipline among Roman troops; this is the basis for Ferrill’s thesis about
the fall of the western Empire and contributes to other analyses of changes
in the late Roman army. 89 Evidence can be cited: Ammianus asserted
that Julian had to rectify serious defects in discipline (22.4.6–7); Vegetius
(1.20) criticized the decline of the infantry after Gratian’s death, when
traditional training regimes were abandoned so that the normal armour
seemed too heavy and the men asked to be excused from wearing it;
Synesius complained that the troops in Cyrene were incapable of defending
his province against the raids of Austurians (Catastasis on the Great Raid
1); Attila encouraged his troops before the battle of the Catalaunian plains
to disregard the Roman troops as completely ineffective and concentrate
instead on the Goths and Alans (Jordanes, Getica 204–5). 90 Barbarian
troops might act with less restraint than Romans, as in an incident recorded
at Philadelphia in Lycia where a well-behaved Egyptian unit confronted
an indisciplined barbarian one (Zosimus 4.30.4–5). 91 Poor discipline is
usually related to the supposed decline of the army in the fourth century,
92 although it is also used to explain the rapid succession of mutinies in the
third century. 93

The issue of indiscipline can indeed be pushed back into the earlier Empire,
with the Severan period and the Year of the Four Emperors demonstrating
the limitations of imperial control; 94 (p.174) poor discipline is also a
standard complaint about legions stationed in eastern cities. 95 Here it is
worth distinguishing between a decline in the capacity of emperors to control
Roman armies and a decline in the disciplined fighting capability of those
armies, between disloyalty and indiscipline. Armies that were prepared to
oppose a current emperor by supporting their own commander were also
capable of fighting each other ferociously; the troops of Septimius Severus
may not have been much different from the fourth-century armies of the
usurpers Magnentius, Magnus Maximus, or Eugenius. The pressures of civil
war will have made it harder for commanders to exercise traditional control

Page 14 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

It is likely that more traditional levels of discipline were reestablished during

the Tetrarchy, a development which is compatible with a certain amount
of evidence for lapses. Ammianus, in moralizing mode, complained of the
general fickleness of soldiers (26.1.6); on occasion, before the battle of
Strasburg and during the retreat from Ctesiphon (16.12.33; 25.6.11–13),
troops had to be called to order; commands were sometimes disobeyed, as
when the Ascarii killed an Alamannic king, or Valentinian failed to capture
Macrianus because his troops had started pillaging (27.2.9; 29.4.6). Aurelius
Victor also took a dim view of the quality of soldiers: ‘being the sort of men
who are very greedy for money and loyal and true solely for profit’ or who
‘lacked restraint through their self-indulgence and wantonness.’ (26.6; 31).
Libanius excused Constantius’ failure at the battle of Singara through his
men’s excessively eager pursuit (Oration 59.106–20), and the indiscipline
of a cavalry unit has been blamed for Adria-nople. 97 The issue of discipline
in camp was sufficiently important (p.175) for Vegetius to devote a chapter
to its maintenance (3.4). These criticisms may all be true and there may be
many more unrecorded, but they need not represent a significant decline in
the performance of the Roman army. Polybius attributed a Roman victory
at Agrigento in 262 BC to iron discipline (1.17.11–12), and he transformed
this into a general rule in his analysis of Roman military practices (6.38).
But during the Hannibalic War Roman troops surrendered themselves and
acted insubordinately (Livy 22.6.11; 25.21), Caesar’s army in Gaul was
not perfect (1.40; 7.47–52), Vitellius’ troops in 69 were extremely unruly
(Tacitus, Histories 1.64–9; 2.56), and Cassius Dio had a very low opinion
of the soldiers whose discipline he had attempted to improve in Pannonia
(80.4.1–5.1). There is a danger in setting up a model of a perfect military
machine in the Republic or early Empire and then denigrating the later army
for not sustaining this mirage. 98 Things may not have changed all that
much.

Another factor regarded by MacMullen as central to the decline in the

effectiveness of the army is religion, the consequences for soldiers of

Page 15 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

There was, however, a tradition in Christianity of opposition to participation

in military activity, articulated for example by Tertullian in the early third
century. 102 That this belief continued into late antiquity is demonstrated as
much by the need for Augustine to argue strongly in favour of the propriety
of military service to promote general peace and safety, with King David
being deployed as a biblical prototype, as by the specific example of the
career of Martin of Tours who, in spite of his beliefs, was forced into service
by his father. 103 Religious convictions might offer an escape from enrolment
(Cod. Theod. 7.20.12.2); Basil of Caesarea reprimanded subordinate
bishops for ordaining people to escape the draft, and decreed that recent
entrants to the priesthood be expelled until each case was examined on
its merits (Letter 54), though this example also shows the ability of the
Church to support the Empire. 104 As potentially damaging as the attitude to
recruitment was the psychological impact of the attribution of the problems
of this world to sin: preachers might give general moral exhortations to
congregations at times when more practical solutions were needed. 105
Resort to physical weapons might be thought useless if an invasion was a
manifestation of divine anger, with victory only being possible through the
intercession of a saint, as in the case of Paulinus of Nola’s interpretation of
Stilicho’s victory over Radagaisus and his Goths (Paulinus, Carmen 21). 106

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Another possible threat to the Empire’s power was from the Church’s wealth,
since its increasing property holdings enjoyed (p.177) freedom from tax.
107 But, in many respects the Church provided support and undertook tasks
which had previously been financed from the properties of individual cities
or their elites, and the use of its new resources was kept under scrutiny.
108 It is also unlikely that the Church’s wealth was a threat to that of the
state, even by the fifth century. 109 A more serious issue could have been
the role of the army in Christian disputes, both the enforcement of the
new religion and doctrinal disagreements. Church Councils required the
presence of senior military officers to keep order: for example the comes
Leonas and the comes et praeses Isauriae Lauricius attended the Council of
Seleucia in 359 (Socrates 2.39); at the First Council of Ephesus in 431 the
comes domesticorum Candidianus lacked the physical backing to overcome
the supporters mobilized by the local bishop (ACO I.i.5, pp. 121.21–31,
127.36–128.13). Under Theodosius I the destruction of the Serapaeum
at Alexandria on the instigation of Bishop Theophilus, and the campaign
against pagan shrines in Syria led by Marcellus of Apamea both involved
the participation of imperial troops and officers (Sozomen 7.15). 110 The
turbulent episcopal careers of Athanasius of Alexandria and John Chrysostom
at Constantinople illustrate that Christianity created new challenges for the
army in maintaining law and order; 111 the installation of Macedonius as
bishop of Constantinople resulted in 3,150 deaths as soldiers struggled to
suppress rioting crowds (Socrates 2.16). The triumph of Nicene Christianity
under Theodosius I, which included legislation against Arians, created
problems for leading generals such as Victor and Saturninus, who may have
responded by patronizing monasteries, and for the rank-and-file, especially
Goths who had acquired their faith at a time when Arian views received
imperial support. 112 Special allowance had to be made for Arians in the army
to worship, a situation which persisted in the late sixth century. 113

(p.178) Although Christianity might distract soldiers, there were also positive
aspects to the conversion of the Empire. Soldiers had always recognized
the need to have God on their side, and Christianity had been officially
adopted precisely because it gave victory to Constantine, a message
propagated by his religious panegyricists (e.g. Eusebius, Life of Constantine
4.5–14). Coinage issued by the usurper Vetranio in 350 explicitly referred
to Constantine’s religion, with Chi-Rho standards and, on one issue from
Siscia, the legend hoc signo victor eris: 114 the likely targets of this coinage
were Vetranio’s troops, who appear to have been expected to appreciate
the allusion to Constantine’s faith and the rewards which it brought. In spite
of its divisive potential, Christianity was also a unifying force, ‘a community

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builder’, 115 and so could bolster the military capacity of the Empire if it
served to mobilize civilian enthusiasm, since the ordinary inhabitants of the
Empire’s cities played a vital part in defending their provinces in the fourth
and sixth centuries. 116 The history of Nisibis in the mid-fourth century is a
good example of the impact of Christianity. Ammianus celebrated the city’s
valour as a bulwark for the East because of its resistance to three great
attacks by Shapur; he used this reputation to blacken the Christian Jovian
for agreeing its surrender to the Persians despite the local inhabitants’ plea
to be allowed to fight on by themselves (25.8.13–14; 9.1–6). The sieges are
unfortunately not covered by the surviving portion of Ammianus, but the
seventh-century Chronicon Paschale (536.18–539.3) preserves an account
of the 350 assault which originated in a letter of Vologeses, the bishop
of Nisibis. In this contemporary version, the city was saved as a result of
a divine apparition of Emperor Constantius which toured the walls and
overawed Shapur. This close coupling of Christianity and emperor proved
unpalatable to the orthodox religious tradition because of Constantius’
opposition to Nicene doctrine, and so the emperor was eliminated and
credit given to Jacob, the city’s first bishop. 117 Nisibis is an early example
of a phenomenon which the histories of Clermont, Thessalonica, or (p.179)
Edessa in the fifth and sixth centuries corroborate. 118 Christianity bolstered
local morale and hence the security of particular cities; because the defence
of individual cities underpinned Roman control of frontier provinces, the
Church and its hierarchy became vital elements in the maintenance of
Roman authority. 119

From its inception the Roman Empire had been a military monarchy,
the product of victory in civil war, but emperors who secured the most
favourable reputations were those who best managed to preserve the
image of civilian rule by a first citizen who consulted and collaborated
with the senate. Bouts of civil war threatened this image, although it could
be sustained with the connivance of the senate, for example through the
back-dating of Vespasian’s grant of imperial powers. The Severan dynasty
proved a more serious challenge, since Severus’ death-bed advice to
his sons, ‘Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and despise the rest’ (Dio
77.15.2), reflected the principles of his own reign, including his attitude to
the senate. However, the invasions of the mid-third century meant that the
‘military credentials and leadership qualities of the emperor thus became
more critical and the relationship he maintained with the armies, on both
a personal and a symbolic level, assumed an even greater significance’.
120 The disappearance of senators from positions of command after 260
increased the separation between military officers and civilian authorities,

Page 18 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

The military element of the emperor’s duties undoubtedly increased in

importance in the third century, but at the same time it is essential to
remember the historiographical agenda which operates in our main sources
for the period: all were produced in the late fourth century (Aurelius Victor,
Eutropius, the Scriptores Historiae Augustae) or depended on writers
of that period (the sixth-century Zosimus). These authors stressed the
antagonism of senate and emperor, which had been a theme of Roman
imperial (p.180) historiography, by highlighting the separation between
the thuggish values of military rulers and the senate with its concern for
propriety. 121 The murder of Severus Alexander and the succession of the
uneducated Maximinus in 235 precipitated the change: ‘men were put in
power indiscriminately, good and bad, noble and base-born, even many of
barbarian extraction’ (Victor, De Caes. 24). The senate was given a chance
to reassert its authority on the murder of Aurelian in 275 (SHA Aurelian
40; Tacitus 4–8; Victor, De Caes. 35), but after the death of Probus the
choice of emperor was definitively snatched by the soldiers (Victor, De Caes.
37). Soldiers preferred experience (Zosimus 1.21.2, of Decius), although
they also had expectations about the behaviour of their ruler: Aemilianus
was deposed because his men thought he acted more like a soldier than
a commander (Zosimus 1.29.1). 122 Armies might fortuitously make good
choices (Victor, De Caes. 34), and the Tetrarchs, even if far from ideal, had
their virtues: ‘although they were deficient in culture, they had nevertheless
been sufficiently schooled by the hardships of the countryside and of military
service to be the best men in the state’ (Victor, De Caes. 39). Senators had
to share the blame for these developments, since their devotion to leisure
surrendered the initiative to the armies (Victor, De Caes. 37). 123

The element of fabrication in this whole picture is recognized, 124 but it

also conditions the standard picture of late Roman rulers for whom the
most potent image is that of the Venice Tetrarchs, tough military men who
appreciated the need for solidarity. A similar message can be derived from
the portraits and slogans on imperial coinage whose overwhelmingly military
character has been noted: 125 the soldiers were the main recipients of these
coins in the first instance, and the warlike propaganda was clearly directed
at them. The continuation throughout the fourth century, however, of an

Page 19 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

Dynastic considerations provided a powerful alternative. When presenting

his son Gratian to the army as his new imperial colleague in 367, Valentinian
acknowledged that he had not been trained in adversity and the dust of
battle; his intellectual education would have its uses, but he would also
have to learn soldiering (Ammianus 27.6.8–9, 12). Valentinian II, aged only
four at his elevation in 375, lacked even Gratian’s experience of camp life,
but was preferred to the possibility of a usurper proclaimed by the Gallic
legions (Ammianus 30.10). Like Gratian, the young Honorius received a
literary exhortation to experience army life at the end of a very long speech
of advice delivered by his father (Claudian, IV Cons. Hon. 320–52). 126 In
these cases the continuing influence of the military ideal is clear, even if
dynastic expectation is substituted for reality, and the overthrow of Gratian
by Magnus Maximus revealed the consequences of disappointed hopes; on
the other hand neither Honorius nor his equally unwarlike brother Arcadius in
the East succumbed to military usurpation.

It was appreciated that there was more to being a successful emperor

than military might. The historiographical complaints about developments
in the third century, noted above, may not have had much impact, but
after the proclamation of Valens in 365 Themistius, the court orator at
Constantinople, proclaimed: ‘For do not think, gentlemen, that the soldiers
were in charge of such an important election. It is from above that this vote
descends, it is from above that the proclamation—which Homer calls the will
of Zeus—is performed through the agency of men’ (6.73c). 127 The status
of Themistius has been debated. To some he has seemed an independent
adviser who was prepared to challenge emperors by offering suggestions
which were sometimes unpalatable; 128 on this basis the comment about
the involvement of soldiers would have no more force than the grumblings
of Aurelius Victor. However, the consistent convergence of Themistius’
sentiments with changing imperial priorities over a generation in public
prominence argues strongly for the view that he was a spin doctor fully
(p.182) committed to whatever the current imperial message happened
to be. 129 On this view it could be inferred that Valens wanted the public
perception in the East of his accession to be something more than a military
coup. Themistius’ speeches are important for much more than just the
history of Greek political ideas under the Roman Empire; 130 he may often
praise qualities which emperors most conspicuously lacked, 131 at least

Page 20 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

Is is instructive to jump forward a century to the accession of Anastasius

in 491, which is described in detail in De Caerimoniis (1.92). 133 Although
Zeno had a brother, he had made no attempt to groom him for succession so
that at his death there was no clear heir and the Hippodrome was filled by a
crowd of civilians and soldiers, awaiting developments. The empress Ariadne
ascended to the royal box with a few senior officials and the city’s bishop,
from where she engaged in a dialogue with the people. The crowd first
requested an orthodox emperor, and then in the following chant a Roman
emperor; in her reply Ariadne explained that ‘even before your requests
we have instructed the most illustrious officials and the sacred senate to
select, in common deliberation with the most noble [soldiers], a man who
is a Christian and a Roman, one endowed with every imperial virtue so
that he is not subject to money or to any other human failing that occurs
among men’. 134 In fact the senate referred the choice to Ariadne herself,
and she selected the elderly silentiarius Anastasius, a man with no military
(p.183) experience; the subsequent inauguration ritual included the standard
military elements of elevation on a shield and coronation with a torque, and
Anastasius immediately proclaimed the traditional donation, but overall the
army played a very small part in proceedings.

There is a considerable distance between the late-fourth century

proclamations and the ceremony of 491, but the latter was the product
of a gradual shift of emphases whose beginnings should be sought much
earlier: military prowess was not the only, nor even necessarily the pre-
eminent, imperial quality. Emperors still required victories, as is abundantly
clear from the acclamations to Ariadne and Anastasius, but these no longer
entailed direct participation. The need for an orthodox emperor in 491
can be connected to Sozomen’s praise for the Augusta Pulcheria whose
piety brought numerous benefits to the Empire including the nullification
of all unrest and war (9.3; cf. 9.5); where Constantine had received divine
support when participating in battle, Theodosius II achieved comparable
success without running personal risks and the same could be hoped for
Anastasius. Changes to the creation and organization of victory celebrations,
and their increasing focus on the Hippodrome and Church, also facilitated
the transition to non-military rulers. 135 The memory of Arcadius’ triumph
over Gaïnas was preserved in an epic poem by the scholasticus Eusebius
(Socrates 6.6.35) as well as on his column, and the poems of Eudocia for her

Page 21 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

Military success was no longer the emperor’s only duty; indeed with
rare exceptions it never had been. Constantius, writing to the senate at
Constantinople in 355, proclaimed two objectives: ‘I am always making
the attempt at one moment to add some realm to the Roman imperium
through force of arms and at another to discover some benefit for the subject
nations through the rule of law’ (Themistius Or. 2, 18c). 136 Oversight of
the judicial system had always been a major item of imperial business,
137 although if Themistius’ wording was to be pressed Constantius could
be credited with a more active or interventionist attitude towards (p.184)
legislation than is ascribed to earlier emperors. One factor which may have
contributed to a certain modern disregard for non-military aspects of late
Roman imperial behaviour is the low reputation enjoyed by late Roman
legal activity. As long as this was regarded as a vulgarization of classical
traditions, this decline could be linked with other ways in which the cultured
ideals of the early Empire were corrupted in the less civilized world of Late
Antiquity. The refutation of this approach and the assertion of the quality and
vitality of later legal work are an important corrective. 138 The codification
of Roman law achieved by Theodosius II was a massive undertaking which
demonstrated the emperor’s commitment to efficient civilian rule as well
as serving as a monument to his non-military prestige. 139 Christianity
provided emperors with a further set of duties of considerable complexity, as
Constantine discovered through his attempts to settle the Donatist dispute in
Africa and then the Arian heresy in the East.

While suggesting that fourth-century emperors were aware of the benefits of

a balanced presentation of their regime, I would also accept the continuing
importance of the military element. The image of the emperor as fellow-
soldier remained important, not only for emperors who could genuinely claim
it, as shown for example by Licinius’ explanation of privileges to his soldiers
in the Brigetio Tablet (FIRA 2 1.93), Constantine’s exchanges with veterans
about privileges (Cod. Theod. 7.20.2), or Constantius’ address to the soldiers
of the usurper Vetranio (Zosimus 2.44), but even after emperors had ceased
to campaign in person: in the 410s Honorius appealed to troops in Spain
as commilitiones nostri, even though he had never been on campaign and
probably had never had direct contact with these men. 140 Themistius,
while presenting a ‘philosophical’ image of emperors, accepted that other
orators focused on military issues when addressing Constantius (Or. 1.2a–
b); 141 Julian included praise of Constantius’ personal (p.185) abilities as

Page 22 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

The example of an educated civilian complaining about an emperor,

Arcadius, for being insufficiently military is evidence enough for the
complexity of expectations of emperors and of the balance between civilian
and military roles; that emperors had to switch between these is accepted
in the primarily military panegyric of the soldier Maximian (Pan. Lat. 10.6.4).
The presentation of emperors did change in Late Antiquity, but constant
warfare and their military role was only one factor. Although the increasing
grandeur of imperial ceremonies is regarded as a sign of the divide between
emperor and people, a consequence of his life with the armies, it is worth
noting that the area where emperors were most accessible was on active
service. John Chrysostom used the analogy of the emperor in camp to
illustrate the accessibility of God in the splendour of the heavenly city: ‘how
quickly you were allowed, as in an army camp, to see the basileus in person.
Down here a basileus does not always show himself in the splendour of
his royal dignity, but often puts aside his diadem and purple and puts on
the soldier’s cloak’ (Comm. Matthew 2.2; Migne, PG 57/58.26c). Synesius
complained about the seclusion of Arcadius in the barbarian pomp of a
palace dominated by the eunuch Eutropius, contrasting the traditional
austerity which had won the Empire (De Regno 14–17); at the same time the
army, with which Arcadius is urged to engage more closely, is bemoaned as
un-Romanized (de Regno 22–3).

The relationship of emperors and armies had always been intricate, with the
realities conveniently concealed behind civilian (p.186) fictions. In the later
Empire military need dictated various changes in Roman military forces in
terms of numbers, balance and disposition of forces, and recruitment; the
imperial adoption of Christianity also affected the religious attachment of
soldiers. These changes should not be seen in too negative a light: after the
difficulties of the third century, the Roman army operated as a powerfully
effective fighting force throughout the fourth century, 143 and it remained an
essentially Roman institution throughout. Emperors were unable to sustain

Page 23 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

Notes:

(1) Campbell ( 1984 ) viii–ix; id. (2002) is a broader-ranging study and does
not devote much attention to the mid-3rd cent.

(2) Cameron ( 1993 ) 5; Potter ( 1990 ) 13– 15.

(3) Cameron ( 1993 ) 41–2.

(4) MacMullen ( 1963 ); quotation from id. (1964) 446; MacMullen’s comment
is specifically related to clothing, but the observation is given more general
application.

(5) Southern and Dixon ( 1996 ) 53.

(6) Zuckerman ( 1998 ).

(7) Carrié ( 1986 ) 479; Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) ch. 2 .

(8) Cameron ( 1993 ) 139, 150.

Page 24 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(10) Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) 2; Momigliano ( 1963 ) ch. 1 , esp. 7–14; Taft (

1995 ) 22–8.

(11) Watson ( 1999 ) 170 cites Alföldi (1939) 218–19 on non-Roman

recruitment, as does Christol ( 1975 ) 805 on Gallienus; Potter ( 1990 ) 6,
cites Rostovtzeff ( 1957 ) 466 for attention to military defence; Southern and
Dixon ( 1996 ) 53, cite Dill ( 1905 ) 236 for the diminished reputation of the
army.

(12) For a clear discussion of one particular issue, the evolution of the legion
as a unit, see Tomlin ( 2000 ).

(13) Barnes ( 1998 ); see also many of the contributions to Drijvers and Hunt
( 1999 ). Crump ( 1973 ) and ( 1975 ).

(14) The basic discussion and analysis is in Jones ( 1964 ) 3.1417–50. The
problems of making any use of the Notitia would be compounded if the
suggestion of Brennan ( 1996 ) were accepted, that the western portion
of the Notitia, at least, was a propaganda document intended to bolster
flagging imperial authority.

(15) For discussion of the term, see Isaac ( 1988 ).

(16) Nicasie ( 1998 ) 24–35.

(17) Treadgold ( 1995 ) ch. 2 is by far the most thorough reconstruction, but
the attempts at precision may be self-defeating.

(18) Treadgold ( 1995 ) 45 infers that the figures relate to Diocletian’s brief
period of sole rule in 284/5, but this is uncertain.

(19) Jones ( 1964 ) 683–4.

(20) E.g. MacMullen ( 1980 ) 459–60.

(21) Sensible treatment by Treadgold ( 1995 ) 58–9; see also Nicasie ( 1998 )
202–6.

(22) See Campbell ( 1984 ) 161–76 for a review of the early Empire, and
Jones ( 1964 ) 623–6 for a digest of the later situation. The comes sacrarum

Page 25 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(23) A meaningful calculation is impossible for the west since the lists in the
Notitia reflect the transfer of numerous units from frontier commands to the
regional comitatenses.

(24) All figures from Treadgold ( 1995 ) 50–2.

(25) Coello ( 1996 ) 16 notes the difference as surprising, but offers no

explanation.

(26) Eadie ( 1967 ) 168; Watson ( 1999 ) 10–11; M. Christol ( 1975 ) 826;
Southern and Dixon ( 1996 ) 11–14.

(27) e.g. Coello ( 1996 ) 13 following Birley ( 1969 ); Carrie´ and Janniard
( 2000 ) at 329, though they also stress the fundamental importance of
specific circumstances for the creation of the Constantinian mobile armies.

(28) Potter ( 1990 ) 63.

(29) Speidel ( 1975 ) 225.

(30) Alfo¨ldi (1939) 218; Eadie ( 1967 ) 171 is less certain, partly because
some armoured, or partly armoured, cavalry units already existed (168).

(31) Southern and Dixon ( 1996 ) 13–14.

(32) Treadgold ( 1995 ) 56–7.

(33) Bivar ( 1972 ) 283, 289; Coulston ( 1986 ) 60, followed by Haldon ( 2001
) 24.

(34) de Blois ( 1976 ) 84–7.

(35) Nicasie ( 1998 ) 36–7. Note too Tomlin ( 2000 ) 162 for cavalry units
stationed at strategic road junctions behind the frontiers.

(36) Nicasie ( 1998 ) 196–8.

(37) Eadie ( 1967 ) 169, 171. For most units it is impossible to identify
whether the cavalry is heavy or light, but if full armour for horse and rider
brought prestige this might be expected to be reflected in the titles of such
units.

Page 26 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(39) Carrié ( 1986 ) 459–60; Carrié and Rouselle ( 1999 ) 632; Coello ( 1996 )
17.

(40) e.g. MacMullen ( 1963 ) 153; (1980) 459. Isaac ( 1990 ) 208–13
trenchantly defends the quality of limitanei.

(41) van Berchem ( 1952 ) 113–18; Paschoud ( 2000 ) 252; Ferrill ( 1986 ) 46,
49, though at 83 Ferrill is less precipitate.

(42) e.g. (though with different emphases) Jones ( 1964 ) 649–54; Luttwak (
1976 ) 170–3; Southern and Dixon ( 1996 ) 35–7.

(43) Cf. P Oxy. 1666 for a possible 3rd-cent. parallel, and Jones ( 1964 ) 669
for 6th-cent. evidence for service in local units as a privilege.

(44) Carrié and Janniard ( 2000 ) 378.

(45) Lee ( 1998 ) at 215.

(46) Watson ( 1999 ) 169–70.

(47) Speidel ( 1975 ) 203.

(48) Jones ( 1964 ) 157; Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) ch. 1 ; Carrié ( 1986 ) 479;
Southern and Dixon ( 1996 ) 50–1, are more circumspect.

(49) Potter ( 1990 ) 13–14; Charanis ( 1975 ) 554.

(50) Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) 52–3; Ferrill ( 1986 ) 84–5.

(51) Bird ( 1984 ) 41–52.

(52) Wolfram ( 1988 ) 133; Heather ( 1991 ) 162.

(53) Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) ch. 11 ; Southern and Dixon ( 1996 ) 51–2;

Cameron ( 1993 ) 150.

(54) Cameron and Long ( 1993 ) 199–223, 250–2, 323–33; the point was
made more briefly by Kaegi ( 1981 ) 25.

Page 27 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(56) See Bird ( 1984 ) 41–52.

(57) As does Charanis ( 1975 ) 554.

(58) Speidel ( 1975 ) 203 n. 4 .

(59) Whittaker ( 1994 ) esp. ch. 3 – 4 .

(60) Nicasie ( 1998 ) 97–107.

(61) Ibid. 102–3.

(62) Ibid. 115. Contrast the bald assertion in Garnsey and Humfress ( 2001
) 89 that non-Romans outnumbered Romans in the army, with the Romans
concentrated particularly in the officer class and the field army.

(63) For discussion of this issue in the sixth century, for which similar
conclusions can be reached, see Whitby ( 1995 ) 103–10.

(64) Nicasie ( 1998 ) 114.

(65) Discussion in Millar ( 1993 ) 467–71, and more generally on the

problems of grasping the complex cultural processes, ch. 13 , esp. 523–32.

(66) Nicasie ( 1998 ) 103.

(67) References in PLRE 2. 892–3 (Plinta), 143–6 (Areobindus 1 and 2), 340–1
(Dagalaiphus 2).

(68) Southern and Dixon ( 1996 ) 53, 67–9; Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) 19–21.

(69) Whitby ( 1995 ) 77; cf. Zuckerman ( 1998 ) 81. Zuckerman argues (81–
6) that texts from the Abbinaeus archive, which are usually interpreted to
relate to conscription problems in villages, in fact concern the apprehension
of malefactors.

(70) Augustus had to take exemplary action against a Roman eques who
mutilated his sons to save them from military service (Suet. Aug. 24.1); cf.
Dig. 49.16.4.12 for Trajanic legislation on the issue.

Page 28 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(72) Cod. Theod. 7.13.16–21, issued from Ravenna to western officials.

(73) Harries ( 1999 ).

(74) e.g. MacMullen ( 1988 ) 93–6, 168. For an excellent discussion of the
creative quality of late Roman law, see Garnsey and Humfress ( 2001 ) ch. 4 .

(75) Harries ( 1999 ) 77–88.

(76) Ibid. 212.

(77) Harries does not specifically consider the military laws.

(78) Zuckerman ( 1998 ) 97–121.

(79) Zuckerman ( 1998 ) 108–13.

(80) Ibid. 113–17.

(81) Ibid. 116–17.

(82) Jones ( 1964 ) 619.

(83) Zuckerman ( 1998 ) 116 stressed that this law did not prove that the
rest of the population retained this obligation, but it is difficult to see why an
unnecessary exemption should have been recorded.

(84) Treadgold ( 1995 ) 153–5; Jones ( 1964 ) 668–70.

(85) Whitby ( 1995 ) 75–87.

(86) Liebeschuetz ( 2001 ) ch. 3 .

(87) Banaji ( 2001 ) ch. 1 .

(88) The conflict between major landowners and provincial governor which
underlies the 6th-cent. inscription discussed by Feissel and Kaygusuz ( 1985
) suggests that the position had changed in some areas; population decline
might be relevant, but equally the eastern aristocrats might by then have

Page 29 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(89) Ferrill ( 1986 ) 127–30, 140; MacMullen ( 1963 ) ch. 7 ; Boak ( 1955 ) 23;
Southern and Dixon ( 1996 ) 170–4.

(90) Ferrill described Jordanes’ evidence as a ‘fascinating commentary on the

fate of the Roman army in the fifth century’ ( 1986 : 153), on the grounds
that, whether or not Attila actually gave such a speech, the words ‘must
describe a historical reality’ ( 1986 : 180 n. 259).

(91) Speidel ( 1975 ) 229–30, pointed out that non-Roman units were
responsible for especially bloody sacks at Edessa, Laodicea, and Tyre in the
2nd cent.

(92) For a powerful refutation of this belief, see Lee ( 1998 ) 232–3.

(93) e.g. Campbell ( 1984 ) 198; Potter ( 1990 ) 15.

(94) Campbell ( 1984 ) 190–8; Bird ( 1984 ) 41–52.

(95) A topos according to Pollard ( 2000 ) 35.

(96) Campbell ( 1984 ) 195 on Severus in the 190s.

(97) Tomlin ( 2000 ) 173–4.

(98) Cf. Nicasie ( 1998 ) 218, in the context of a discussion on standards.

(99) Tomlin ( 1998 ); ( 2000 ) 166.

(100) For discussion of Jovian’s succession, on which Ammianus is

tendentious, see Heather ( 1999 ).

(101) For discussion of the date of this Christian oath, see Milner ( 1993 )
xxv–xxix.

(102) Ubina ( 2000 ) 257–70; cf. Barnes ( 1971 ) 132–5 for discussion of
Tertullian’s De Corona Militis.

(103) Augustine, Contra Faustum 22.74–5; Letter 189.4; Sulpicius Severus,

Life of Martin 2; discussion in Ubina ( 2000 ) 530–71.

Page 30 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(105) Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) 177 on John Chrysostom’s preaching during the

Gaïnas crisis.

(106) Discussion of Paulinus’ attitudes in Ubina ( 2000 ) 558–64.

(107) Dagron ( 1974 ) 500–1 argued that this feeling contributed to imperial
hostility to John Chrysostom.

(108) Discussion in Brown ( 2002 ) ch. 1 .

(109) Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) 222.

(110) Fowden ( 1978 ). The involvement of the praetorian prefect Maternus

Cynegius is another example of the diversion to religious activities of an
official with indirect military responsibilities.

(111) Discussion respectively in Barnes ( 1993 ) and Liebeschuetz ( 1990 )

Part III.

(112) Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) 145, 148.

(113) Kaegi ( 1981 ) 74, 85, for the continuing problem.

(114) Kent ( 1981 ) Siscia 270–92.

(115) Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) 145.

(116) Isaac ( 1990 ) 252–5 for the eastern provinces; this was just as true for
Balkan or Gallic cities.

(117) Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 2.30. The different legends are

discussed in Peeters ( 1920 ); see also Lightfoot ( 1988 ).

(118) Whitby ( 1998 ).

(119) Liebeschuetz ( 2001 ) 401–3, and (1990) ch. 2 is too negative: see
Whitby ( 1998 ) 200.

(120) Watson ( 1999 ) 4.

Page 31 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(122) Paschoud ( 2000 ) 27 renders the contrast as being between general

and emperor (‘il gouverne en ge´ne´ral plus qu’en empereur’), but the Greek
is stratiotikos.

(123) Cf. Ammianus’ digressions on Rome (14.6; 28.4); for discussion, see
Matthews ( 1989 ) 414–16.

(124) Syme ( 1971 ) 240–2; Bird ( 1984 ) 33–9.

(125) Sutherland ( 1967 ) 110; Bruun ( 1966 ) 36, 46–56.

(126) Cameron and Long ( 1993 ) 137–8.

(127) Translation by Heather and Moncur ( 2001 ) 182–3.

(128) Vanderspoel ( 1995 ) ch. 1 .

(129) Heather and Moncur ( 2001 ) ch. 1 , esp. 29–42.

(130) The verdict of Cameron and Long ( 1993 ) 82, following Dagron ( 1968
). Cameron and Long ( 1993 ) 82, complain that Themistius provides no
insight into the private culture of emperors, and not much into their public
patronage.

(131) Cameron and Long ( 1993 ) 139, quoting Dagron ( 1968 ) 84 n. 2 .

(132) Cameron and Long ( 1993 ) 82, point to the contrast between
Themistius’ praise for Constantius’ love of learning and the criticism in
Libanius (Oration 62.9). Libanius undoubtedly gave no weight to Constantius’
considerable interest in and ability at theological discussions, which
Ammianus noted albeit with a hostile slant (21.16.18).

(133) For discussion of late Roman accession ceremonies, see MacCormack (

1981 ) 240–7.

(134) De Caerimoniis 1.92, p. 419.7–12; slightly later Ariadne glossed the

explanation as follows: ‘we have instructed the most illustrious officials
and the sacred senate, the choice of the most noble armies also being
convergent, to make their selection with the holy Evangelists open in front
of them and in the presence of the most sacred and holy patriarch of this
imperial city’ (491.16–420.11).

Page 32 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

(136) Heather and Moncur ( 2001 ) 108.

(137) Millar ( 1977 ).

(138) Garnsey and Humfress ( 2001 ) ch. 4 ; also Liebs ( 2000 ).

(139) For the undertaking, see Matthews ( 2000 ) ch. 1 – 2 ; Harries ( 1999 )
ch. 3 .

(140) The letter is discussed by Sivan ( 1985 ); note too Kulikowski ( 1998
) on the difficulties of establishing the text. The reference to commilitiones
is incidental, and the letter is most interesting as evidence for a crucial
aspect in the collapse of the West in the 5th cent., the failure of the logistical
underpinning of the army and hence a decline in military mobility.

(141) On Themistius’ exploitation of Philosophy, see Heather and Moncur (

2001 ) ch. 1 .

(142) For discussion of the military element in the panegyrics, see Mause (
1994 ) 183–204.

(143) In addition to Lee ( 1998 ), see also Elton ( 1996 ).

(144) Killerich (1998).

(145) Whitby ( 1999 )

Page 33 of 33 Emperors and Armies, ad 235–395

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

Peter Garnsey

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter shows that Roman citizenship in the days of Augustine, while
widely possessed (though not universal), was still to some extent a social
divider, marking off Romans from external barbarians and foreigners within
several categories, not to mention slaves. Its use among citizens and
usefulness to them was uneven. The general function of citizenship was, and
always had been as, an enabling mechanism, offering access to the judicial
procedures and remedies of the society at different levels. In practice, only
a minority are likely to have exploited the juridical status that it conferred,
and even fewer the potential for social and political advancement that it
possessed. This was a reflection not so much of a supposed lack of content
in citizenship itself, as of the profound social inequalities that rendered the
mass of the population powerless to make citizenship work for them.

Keywords: Roman Empire, Roman citizenship, Carcalla, Roman law

I. INTRODUCTION
Some time in 212, by an accident of history, the free inhabitants of the
Roman world were transformed into Roman citizens. An absolute monarch
decided this would be a good idea, and it was done. ‘Quod principi placuit
legis habet vigorem’ wrote one of his top civil servants and jurists, Ulpian
(Dig. 1.4.1 pref.). By another, rather more predictable hazard, the record
that has come down to us of this extraordinary happening is poor. It derives

Page 1 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

In late February 212, the son of Septimius Severus, Caracalla, became sole
emperor after having murdered his brother and co-Augustus, Geta (Dio 77.2–
3). His first move after the murder was to win over the praetorian guard
with spectacular gifts and promises: ‘I am one of you, and it is because of
you alone that I want to live, to confer upon you favour after favour. All
the treasuries are yours.’ Next day he visited the senate. Pleading a sore
throat he made no formal speech, but on his way out of the senate-house, he
wheeled around and addressed the astonished senators: ‘I have an important
announcement to make: All exiles, condemned on whatever charge or in
whatever way, are hereby restored. Let the whole world now rejoice!’ At
some point in the same year, probably not long after, the emperor ‘made all
the people in his empire Roman citizens’. Dio provides no context, but does
assign a motive which connects the edict with Caracalla’s first act as sole
emperor:
Now this great admirer of Alexander, Antoninus, was fond
of spending money on the soldiers, great numbers of whom
he kept in attendance upon him, alleging one excuse after
another and one war after another; but he made it his business
to strip, despoil, and grind down all the rest of mankind, and
the senators by no means least. [The text goes on to talk of
the exaction of gold crowns, provisions, gifts, and new and
higher taxes.] This was the reason he made all the people
in his empire Roman citizens; nominally he was honouring
them, but his real purpose was to increase his revenues by this
means, in as much as aliens did not have to pay most of these
taxes. (Dio 77.9–10)

Page 2 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

The issue just alluded to of the prevalence of Roman citizenship prior to

212 cannot be evaded, though neither can it be resolved. I think a very
substantial number of people in the eastern part of the empire (in city and
countryside) and in the West (especially in the countryside), received a
status from Caracalla that they had previously lacked. Caracalla was not
mopping up a few stragglers, not merely capping a development that was
all but complete. There were more citizens just prior to the edict than ever
before and their numbers were continually on the increase, but they were
still a minority of the total population. Nor do I think that the eventual
universalization of Roman citizenship was inevitable, let alone that it was
attainable in the foreseeable future. If left to the normal processes, those
that are visible for example in the Tabula Banasitana, which shows a tribal
chieftain from Morocco and his family winning citizenship by petitioning
the emperor Marcus Aurelius (the dates of the relevant documents are 168
and 177), then citizenship would have continued to spread by a slow and
laborious process, piecemeal (Sherwin-White ( 1973 b)). As it was, a decision
was taken by imperial initiative or rather whim, and whims are unpredictable.
The central issue however is what difference did Caracalla’s constitution
make? That is tantamount to asking what citizenship was worth in his day
and subsequently, and how its role or roles changed. This chapter explores
these matters. 2

II. CITIZENSHIP BEFORE THE EDICT OF CARACALLA

Roman citizenship did not mean the same thing in archaic Rome, the
period of the Social War (91–89 BC.), the reigns of Augustus, Caracalla,

Page 3 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

As Rome became an expansionist state, the exclusivity of Roman citizenship

and its territorial and communitarian base in a city-state came under strain
and eventually gave way. This occurred in consequence of the Roman
practice of establishing communities of citizens at some distance from Rome,
and therefore in no position to participate actively in Roman public life. Prior
to the late republican period, a few, but only a few, of these were foreigners
who had received citizenship willingly and as a reward for services rendered
Rome and for their potential value to Rome in the future. For before the
late first century BC, Roman citizenship was not an attractive prospect for
non-Romans, who would have lost their local citizenship at the moment of
acquiring that of the Romans. Thus, apart from those Roman citizens who
were deposited in colonies in strategic locations near enemy territory or
in newly conquered territory, citizens living away from Rome were on the
whole members of vanquished tribes and cities that had been incorporated
into the Roman state instead of being wiped out or dispersed. The size of
this latter group was spectacularly increased in consequence of the Social
War. This war, forced on the Romans by their sustained exploitation of
subject communities in Italy whether of Latin or allied status, proved to be a
landmark and turning-point in the history of Roman citizenship and Rome’s
relations with her subjects in general. By a sequence of measures initiated
during the war, all free inhabitants of Italy south of the Po became Roman
citizens. This was a ‘Pyrrhic defeat’ for both sides: the Italians had sought
freedom from Rome rather than incorporation in Rome, while the Romans
were forced to enrol masses of (p.137) foreigners as citizens. In retrospect,
we can see that the spread of citizenship held the key to the prodigious
success of Rome as an imperial state. But it was in the Imperial rather than

Page 4 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

The enfranchisement of Italians, and three hundred years later the

enfranchisement of the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire, are of a kind.
The backgrounds and contexts of course form a sharp contrast. The Social
War had long been brewing, Rome was compelled to fight it, and though
victorious, had to give ground. The edict of Caracalla came out of the blue.
No one had anticipated it, least of all his provincial subjects. It was an act
neither of necessity nor, if we follow Dio, of statesmanship. Also the content
of the beneficium being bestowed in each case differed. For Italians of the
age of Marius, Sulla, and Pompey, registration on the Roman census lists was
an entrée into the politics and society of Rome itself; or, at any rate, those
Italians who wanted to participate in, most notably, the activity of the various
electoral and legislative assemblies at Rome, were now eligible to do so.
In practice, of course, some were less willing or less able to take part than
others; and in particular, the highest pinnacle of achievement of a citizen,
office-holding in Rome, was jealously guarded by the existing senatorial
nobility as long as the Republic survived.

In Caracalla’s time, in contrast, the citizen’s public, political role in

Rome itself had long since vanished. With the transition from republican
government to monarchy more than two centuries earlier, Roman politics,
progressively reduced to the level of administration and public service,
became the preserve of the very few men who were advanced into the
Roman senate and into equestrian posts by the emperor with the assistance
of his close associates. Citizenship under the Principate was a qualification
for promotion into the higher orders, but a very basic one, necessary but
not in itself sufficient. Conversely, aliens who lacked such higher ambitions
and were satisfied to be socially prominent and (p.138) politically active
in their own patriae did not need Roman citizenship, and frequently are
found without it, especially in the Greek East. The value and prestige of
citizenship varied according to the size and social-catchment area of the
citizen-group in any particular place. Citizenship was not necessarily a mark
of high social status. It was, or could be, a reward for select members of local
elites, in particular, councillors and magistrates, but it was also bestowed
(with certain restrictions) on slaves at manumission, and on auxiliary soldiers
on discharge.

Page 5 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

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Citizenship was and never ceased to be a juridical status, giving access to
Roman private law, the law that governed personal, family, and commercial
relations. This remained the case in Late Antiquity, and any evaluation
of the role of Roman citizenship in the late Roman empire has to take
cognisance of this fact. In many areas of the Empire—and now I am talking
again of the Principate before Caracalla’s edict—citizens could choose
between Roman and local law. For numerous communities retained their
own legal arrangements. Only ‘free’ cities, and these were few in number
by the Severan period, were officially entitled to use their own laws (suis
legibus uti). But local legal systems, where they existed, particularly in the
eastern portion of the Empire, were both clung to by individual communities,
and tolerated by the Roman administration, with the status of, in effect,
customary practices. 4 This accords with the traditional policy of the Roman
state towards provincial communities. Local autonomy was permitted, indeed
encouraged. (Even the continuation of local citizenships were tolerated
although technically they were incompatible with Roman. They existed
on a lower level; in the minds of the Romans they were subsumed under
the superior citizenship of the dominant power.) Of course cities of Roman
citizens, whether technically municipia or coloniae, were in a different
category: only one legal system operated in them, and it was Roman. This
became the situation of Italian cities after the general award of Roman
citizenship following the Social War. Under the Principate block grants of
Latin (not Roman) rights were made to some individual cities in provinces of
the West, and very extensively in the Spanish provinces by courtesy of the
(first) Flavian dynasty.

(p.139) Latin rights carried the guarantee of full Roman citizenship for the
leading inhabitants (only) of these cities. At the same time such cities
received general laws, substantial parts of which survive on bronze, which
laid down principles and procedures in both public and private law clearly
based on Roman practice. The recently discovered law for Irni, of which town
nothing previously had been known, after detailing a number of specific
Roman procedures (for example the rules for judicial adjournments) makes
the following, remarkable, pronouncement:
For matters for which it is not expressly written or provided
in this statute what law the citizens of the municipality of
Irni should use among them selves, for all those matters let
them use the civil law which Roman citizens use and shall use
among themselves… (Gonzales (1986) ch. 93; Rodger ( 1996 ))

Page 6 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

We are here witnessing a regional rather than an Empire-wide policy, the

origin of which remains obscure. Clearly Roman governments were capable
of introducing their law as a package where circumstances favoured it—for
example, the absence of an existing, indigenous body of law which Romans
regarded as worthy of the name (no doubt a great many communities
in the western provinces came into this category), or a high degree of
Romanization among the inhabitants. This does not however seem to have
happened on so spectacular a scale anywhere else than in southern Spain.
Without the Spanish municipal laws we might easily underrate the extent of
the diffusion of Roman law in the Roman Empire; having this evidence, we
should be careful not to err in the other direction. However, a great many
Roman citizens who lived in the provinces, especially in the eastern part
of the empire, must have been able to choose between Roman and local
law, and between lower and higher Roman tribunals. Nicolet wrote: ‘Roman
citizenship meant above all, and almost exclusively, the enjoyment of what
might be called a right of habeas corpus in the shape of an appeal to the
Roman people in the person of the emperor.’ (Nicolet ( 1980 ) 19). How St
Paul exploited his rights as a citizen is a familiar story. Roman citizens of Irni
could in principle have pulled the same levers.

(p.140) There is a complication, in that Paul was not a man of any social
distinction; that is, Roman citizenship was the main, or only, social asset
he possessed (Meggitt ( 1998 )). At Irni on the other hand councillors
and magistrates formed the nucleus of the (minority) group of Roman
citizens. Their political leadership is certain to have reflected their social and
economic prominence in the town and its territory. And this was something
of which Roman judicial authorities were increasingly expected to take
note. By the Severan period there had developed an established practice,
supported by formalized legal rules, of favouring men of social standing and
means (honestiores) as against the lower-classes (humiliores), especially
in the realm of legal procedure and criminal law. There were citizens on
both sides of the line, on one side the elite of a place such as Irni (though a
more inconspicuous town it would be hard to imagine), and on the other, a
tentmaker such as Paul.

III. CITIZENSHIP AFTER THE EDICT OF CARACALLA

Page 7 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

(p.141) Citizens and Slaves

Not everybody was a citizen after the edict. Some were slaves. It was worth
being a citizen if only not to be a slave, for a slave was rightless, a non-
person. But one can make a stronger statement than this. In classical Greek
and Roman civic ideology, civitas and libertas went hand in hand. In history,
or myth, Roman citizenship was born and first experienced in the sovereign
community of free men that followed the expulsion of the kings and the
inauguration of the republic. The Roman people were no longer slaves to
kings (cf. Livy 2.12.2); it was axiomatic that their new-found political liberty
and civic rights were incompatible with their being slaves of other men. An
edict of Caracalla that levelled free men and slaves— that would have been
something.

There is a possible reply to this. Just as the Roman legal system had been,
so-to-say, ‘taken over’ by the honestiores, so at the other end of the social
spectrum the gap between the free lower classes and slaves had become
so blurred that it was in danger of disappearing altogether. Already in penal
law humiliores were receiving treatment that was traditionally meted out to
slave suspects or criminals—torture, crucifixion, and so on. Roughly at the
same time, according to Judith Evans Grubbs ( 1995 ), the confusion of free
humiliores and slaves in the sphere of marriage and the family had markedly
increased, driving Constantine to legislate extensively on the matter.

Page 8 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

(p.142)Secondly, the legislative attention that Constantine paid to mixed

unions, and status confusion in general, reveals more about the concerns
and the mentality of Constantine and his close advisers than about the
incidence of these problems, let alone their increased incidence.

Thirdly, my impression is that the ‘partnerships’ that were most disturbing

to Constantine (as indeed they had been to Augustus) were those linking
slaves and people of high station. Senators and curiales were the object of
his special attention and, when they were thought to err, his condemnation.
This has nothing to do with a supposed elision of the free/slave division at
the bottom of the social scale.

Finally, whatever was happening in the field of sexual and ‘marital’

relationships in the period in question—and we shall never know—the
concern of Roman legislators was to uphold, not abrogate, the traditional
social hierarchy, including the vital distinction between slave and free. In
reaffirming the slave/free distinction they were taking the side of masters, to
be sure; but they also showed sensitivity to the value placed by free men on
their freedom. A law of Constantine of AD 322 addressed to the prefect of the
city of Rome captures this graphically. It begins thus:
If any persons who are enjoying their freedom and who are
in possession of it should unexpectedly be brought to a trial
involving the risk of the loss of their freeborn status and if
by chance such persons should lack a sponsor [adsertor] for
making a formal claim of freeborn status, they shall be granted
the right to be conducted around bearing a written notice
indicating that they seek a sponsor, in order that the grounds
of a person’s claim may not remain unknown through silence

Page 9 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

The next law in the Code (also to the urban prefect) deals with the rights of
those sold into slavery as minors; I cite the prolegomenon:
So much importance was attached to freedom by our forebears
that fathers, to whom was granted the right of life and the
power of death over their children, were not allowed to rob
them of their freedom. (Cod. Theod. 4.8.6, 323)

Christian writers of the late Empire frequently exhibit anxiety over the
enslavement of free provincials in consequence of kidnapping by slave-
dealers or capture by ‘barbarians’. Falling into servitude (p.143) is on
Augustine’s short-list of dire misfortunes that can befall a human being (City
of God 19.8).

So, not everyone was a citizen (equals free man) after the edict of Caracalla,
and the free/slave distinction was still fundamental, despite fuzziness at the
edges.

Citizens and Aliens

Next, not every free person in the Roman Empire after 212 was a Roman
citizen. Masses of aliens were enfranchised by the edict. They advertise
themselves (from the beginning of 213) as Aurelii, and are especially
conspicuous in the East—in Greece, Asia, Syria, Egypt. But the citizen/alien
distinction did not cease to exist.

There were still peregrini around. (I am not concerned here with individuals
described as peregrini who were citizens of one city and residents or visitors
of another—the kind of people who were liable to be expelled in times of food
shortage. It appears that the historian Ammianus Marcellinus was forced out
of Rome in such circumstances (Amm. 14.6.19, with Matthews ( 1989 ) 13).

In the third century aliens turn up among the soldiers at Dura Europus
(though in fewer numbers than before); they live in groups in the northern
confines of the Empire; they are sometimes, as of old, distinguished from
conventus of Roman citizens, as at Lyon and Mainz, and in villages of Lower
Moesia; and citizenship (or only conubium) is still conferred on auxiliaries
by military diploma (Jacques and Scheid ( 1990 ) 285). All of this makes
one wonder how the terms of the edict were carried out, how systematic
and thorough the registration procedures were, how many geographically,

Page 10 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

Then there were newly arrived peregrines. This group was predominantly
barbarian, from across the frontiers, and it was substantial, forming the
bulk of the late Roman army (Demouguet (1981)). A single army might
have both peregrines and citizens in its ranks. So Julian in addressing the
Athenians recalled how one of his escorting officers had exhorted his troops,
both peregrines and citizens, to stand by the emperor (Julian, Or. 5.11). But
peregrines must have heavily outweighed citizens, the governing factors
being the status of the military unit and the rank of the individuals (p.144)
concerned. Comitatentes were more likely to be awarded citizenship than
ripenses/limitanei, officers than rank-and-file. We know of around seventy
officers of citizen rank and barbarian origin, almost all of them named
Flavius, the gentile name of Constantine and his successors. The situation
changed in the 380s with the emergence of new kinds of barbarian soldiers
of ‘federate’ status, who were not integrated into the Roman army and the
body of Roman citizens. Even so, it seems that individual Goths, for example,
were honoured with Roman citizenship (Heather ( 1991 ) 164–5; cf. 109–13).

A third group of peregrines consisted not so much of new arrivals as of

demotions, individuals deprived of citizenship because they had fallen foul
of the law. The mechanism by which this occurred was the imposition of
the penalty of infamia (Greenidge ( 1894 ); Neri ( 1998 ) ch. 4 ). Infamia,
sometimes supplemented by other punishments, is threatened for a score
of diverse offences in the legal texts. Cod. Theod. 4.6.3 of 21 July AD 336 (to
Gregorius, later attested and perhaps already in post as praetorian prefect of
the African diocese) is a typical text:
It is our pleasure that Senators or persons of the rank of most
perfect or those adorned with the honours of the duumvirate or
the quinquennalitate in the municipalities or with the honour of
flamen or of the civil priesthood of a province shall suffer the
brand of infamy and shall become foreigners in the eyes of the
Roman law, if by their own judgement or by the prerogative
of our rescript they should wish to consider as legitimate the
children born to them of a slave woman, a daughter of a slave
woman, a freed-woman, a daughter of a freedwoman, whether
made a Roman or a Latin, a woman of the stage, a daughter of
a woman of the stage, a mistress of a tavern, a daughter of a
tavern keeper, a low and degraded woman, the daughter of a

Page 11 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

As these people confront us in the Codes and Novels, they are a legal
category rather than a living reality. Their actual numbers are unknown
and unknowable. Assuming as we surely can that they were not an empty
class, we note that they might be people of some significance, including
people who were part of the machinery of government, officials, men of
rank. Infamia removed them from participation in public life, put them out of
circulation. Moreover, it was open to the government to innovate in this area,
to identify new activities as ‘infamous’ and to make new groups of offenders
(p.145) social outcasts. A striking example of this is heresy. 5 I cite two laws
against the Manichees:

Cod. Theod. 16.5.7, 381, Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius to Eutropius,

praetorian prefect:
‘If any Manichaean man or woman … has transmitted his own
property to any person whatsoever, by the execution of a will
or under any title of liberality whatever or any kind of gift, or if
any one of the aforesaid persons has become enriched by the
bestowal, through any form whatever, of an inheritance upon
which he has entered, inasmuch as We forthwith deprive the
aforesaid persons under the perpetual brand of just infamy of
all right to make a will and to live under the Roman law, and
since we do not permit them to have the right to bequeath or
to take any inheritance, the whole of such property, after due
investigation conducted by our fisc, shall be appropriated to its
resources …

Cod. Theod. 16.5.54, pref., AD 414, Honorius and Theodosius to Julianus,

Proconsul of Africa:
We decree that the Donatists and the heretics, who until now
have been spared by the patience of Our Clemency, shall
be severely punished by legal authority, so that by this Our
manifest order, they shall recognize that they are intestable
and have no power of entering into contracts of any kind, but
they shall be branded with perpetual infamy and separated
from honourable gatherings and from public assemblies …

The citizen/alien distinction was far from extinct if it could be employed to

define the position of religious deviants. The actual impact of the sanction
of infamia would of course have varied from case to case. The status of the

Page 12 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

IV. ROMAN LAW AND LOCAL LAW AFTER CARACALLA

The generalization of Roman citizenship did not by itself create a myriad of
little Romes operating Roman-style institutions and (p.146) laws. 6 Caracalla
does not appear to have insisted that Roman law be applied everywhere and
to have laid down how this should be done. No later emperor is associated
with the issuing of a general edictum municipale of this kind—a law which
assimilated peregrine populations, tribal groups and civitates to Roman
municipia and coloniae, and in the process suppressed local law and put
Roman law in its place. It was long-established practice to permit local
customs and institutions to continue where they did not clash with Roman
principles and interests. As recently as the reign of Marcus Aurelius,
citizenship had been conferred on a Moroccan tribal chieftain and his family
salvo iure gentis (as the Tabula Banasa records). If a gap in the papyrus text
of Caracalla’s edict is filled as it is commonly done, the edict contained a
clause safeguarding the rights or laws of the cities (Sherwin-White ( 1973 b)).

There is a paucity of evidence concerning the relation of Reich-srecht to

Volksrecht in the late Roman Empire. The province which supplies the
best information, Egypt, shows that the Roman administration continued
to be broadly tolerant of local procedures. Local law can be said to have
undergone a status change in two stages: from the time of conquest, local
legal rules were in practice relegated to the status of customary norms; then,
following the edict of Caracalla, local, peregrine, customs were integrated
into the system of Roman provincial law and custom. In the process,
individual rules and procedures were treated in roughly speaking three
different ways: they were accommodated as juridically uncontroversial (thus,
the enfranchisement of slaves by notarial act, or the use of women for the
tutela of minors); they were positively endorsed and taken up into official
law (women were allowed the capacity to adopt in certain circumstances);
or they were annulled (endogamous unions, the sale or pledging for debt
of children and adolescents). And at the end of Antiquity, local customary
law and practice survived in the Near East and Egypt to make an important
contribution to Islamic law (Crone 1987 ).

Page 13 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

There was more demand for Roman law after the edict. Many more people
now had entry tickets for the Roman judicial system, and some of them
wanted to use them. Women are found in a number of third-century papyri
petitioning the prefect of Egypt for a tutor (Modrzejewski ( 1974 )). Similar
petitions survive from the second century, that is, before Caracalla’s edict;
but the third-century women carry Caracalla’s name—they are Aureliae;
without the edict they would have lacked the capacity to lodge this particular
request. Why they should have wished to do so, why anyone should have
seriously contemplated getting involved with the Roman judicial system, is
another matter, to which I will return.

Some steps were taken to cope with the increased demand for Roman
law. An infrastructure was gradually built up, the legal educational system
expanded, advocates and jurisconsults trained.

(p.148) It looks as if after the edict Rome’s leading jurisconsults increased

their output of treatises on Roman law notably, no doubt providing, inter
alia, core reading for students and legal practitioners alike. It is intriguing if
true (Honoré ( 2002 )) that Ulpian composed a manual De Officio Proconsulis
in 213, in which he dealt (in some way unknown and among other things)
with the question of the governor’s relation to municipalities. I do not think it
likely that those chapters contained directions for large-scale reorganization

Page 14 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

Looking ahead, the latter part of the third century witnessed some sort of
sea-change in the relation of central and municipal government. Lepelley
( 1996 a) 212–13) talks of ‘rupture’. Most scholars would agree with him
that direction from the centre became heavier, and that the provincial
authorities exercised a greater supervisory role. There were more governors,
as provinces were broken up into smaller units, those governors had a more
specialized juridical brief, and were expected to carry it out more actively
than their predecessors had done. Lepelley identifies as a witness to the
change Menander of Laodicea’s treatise on epideictic rhetoric (Russell
and Wilson ( 1981 )). Menander complains that it is no longer possible to
compose a suitable eulogy of a city, because ‘all the cities are Roman’.
It is useless to discuss the laws, because they are ‘the common laws of
the Romans who govern us’. If this is rhetorical exaggeration, one can
talk in more measured tones of a greater degree of centralization, and a
levelling down of the cities, as individual communities lost such special
privileges as they had (Jacques ( 1984 ); Lepelley ( 1992 a)). Lepelley cannot,
however, locate an ‘e´dit municipal’ of Diocletian or anyone else, a grand law
reforming municipal structures and procedures, and I do not think there is
any point in looking for one.

In sum, there is no need to suppose that the cities of the Empire, or those
which did not already have a legal system modelled on Rome, received
the treatment meted out long before to the cities of southern Spain by the
emperor Domitian. Roman law did not eliminate Hellenic and other local
law, although that law was reduced to the status of custom. Menander the
rhetorician is certainly witness to this; for after bemoaning the fact that the
cities no longer have laws (nomoi), he notes that each of them retains ‘the
(p.149) customs (ēthē) that are proper to it’, and he finds comfort in the fact
that the orator can happily eulogize these.

Roman law did penetrate into the localities. It did so not at a rush, on the
back of any general regulation sweeping out existing indigenous systems,
but piecemeal, through the application in particular cases of authoritative
judgements and decisions, especially imperial constitutions. Over time, and
the process antedates the edict of Caracalla, a considerable body of case-law
was built up in this way. The women who petition the prefect of Egypt for a
tutor, before and after the edict, do so ‘in accordance with the Lex Iulia Titia

Page 15 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

As hinted at earlier, I believe that fewer people used Roman laws and
procedures than were entitled to do so. The qualification of Roman
citizenship conferred a right or privilege of using actions and remedies
reserved for citizens, but imposed no obligation to do so. Out-of-court
settlement by negotiation or arbitration must always have been the
preferred option (cf. Gagos and van Minnen ( 1994 )). That aside, one can
well imagine that a significant number of potential users, perhaps the mass
of ordinary people, preferred to keep their distance from Roman law courts
if they could. Roman judges were not renowned for considering the interests
of the common man. Those who chose to use Roman private law were people
with property and social status, and those who were playing some public
role or aspired to do so. It would not surprise me if, within Egypt, Roman law
was used most systematically by those with a more elevated social position
or with a clearly defined role to play in the Roman system—that is, by the
Flavii and the Marci Aurelii rather than the Aurelii (Keenan ( 1973 ; 1974 );
Hagedorn ( 1979 )).

(p.150) V. CIVITAS ROMANA AND CIVITAS DEI

By making it easily reconcilable with the autonomy of laws and
customs, Rome created an original conception of citizenship:
not dual citizenship (since civitas Romana excludes any other,
independent civitas), but, so to speak, a citizenship at two
levels. Roman citizenship bore within itself the notion of
cosmopolis that was almost realized by the empire, rival of the
Civitas Dei, and the oecumenism which it bequeathed directly
to the Catholic tradition.

So Claude Nicolet unexpectedly, and prophetically, concludes the opening

chapter of his classic book, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome (at
46–7). His notion of two competing global ‘citizenships’, each claiming the
allegiance of the inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world, both compatible with

Page 16 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

A remarkable sequence of letters exchanged in AD 408–9 between Augustine

and Nectarius, a leading member of the government of the African town of
Calama, and a pagan, treats of two patriae as possible objects of allegiance
and affection: they are, the home town, and ‘a much finer city’, ‘the
everlasting city of heaven’ which assembles all those who worship the true
God. The two men acknowledge that they share common ground. Nectarius
begins his initial letter thus: ‘I need not describe the power of patriotic love,
for you know it already.’ Augustine can reply in all sincerity:
I am not surprised that your heart still glows with such warm
love for your home-town, even though your limbs are not
starting to be chilled by old age, and I praise you for this.
Furthermore, I am not reluctant, but on the contrary, delighted,
to see you not only recalling accurately, but also showing by
your life and your behaviour, that ‘a good man’s service of
(p.151) his home-town has no limit or terminus’. That is why we
should love to count you too as a citizen of a certain country
beyond …

Augustine has recognized the allusion to Cicero’s De Re Publica, and takes

it further in the interests of his own argument. Nectarius’ response (Ep. 103)
is to give ‘grateful welcome’ to ‘your effort to persuade me to attend to our
heavenly homeland’, and to recall Scipio’s vision of a pagan heavenly home
for civic heroes, as outlined in the sixth book Cicero’s work:
I did not take you to be speaking of the city that is enclosed
by a circle of walls, nor of the city that philosophers’ treatises
call world-wide, and declare to be common to all. Rather,
you were talking about a city where the great God lives and
dwells, along with those souls that truly deserve it, a city
that is the goal at which all laws aim, by various paths and
ways, a city that we cannot fully describe in speech, but can
perhaps discover by contemplation. This therefore should be
our principal goal and our principal love.

Page 17 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

Augustine in reply (Ep. 104) does not dismiss these ideas out of hand. He
writes (section 3 ):
The philosophers whom Cicero calls the ‘consular philosophers’
because he considers their authority so weighty, believe that
the soul is not destroyed when we complete the last day of our
life, but departs. They also contend that it endures in a state
of either blessedness or wretchedness, corresponding to its
deserts, whether good or bad. This agrees with the view of
Holy Scripture …

In this intriguing exchange, civitas Romana and Rome as the communis

patria of the world (cf. Modestinus, Dig. 50.1.33) are totally ignored. And this
in a discussion which constantly seeks a (p.152) reference point in Cicero.
It was of course Cicero who pronounced canonically on the relationship
between Roman and local citizenships (De Legibus 2.2.5; Pro Balbo 28–9; Pro
Caecina 100). Our correspondents appear to be debating the compatibility of
heavenly and local citizenships.

The dilemma is only apparent. Behind the elaborate courtly dancing or

shadow-boxing of the two correspondents, a serious contest was being
fought for the soul of this town, precipitated by the anti-Christian rioting of
its pagan citizens. It was the problem of the incompatibility of the values
of the civitas dei and of Calama that Augustine wanted to resolve; with
local patriotism as such he had no quarrel, only with the wrong-headed,
destructive form it had taken in Calama. He had no fault to find with the civic
institutions and the norms and practices which governed social and political
life in the town. For it goes without saying that Calama was one of countless

Page 18 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

In many other places, not least in his magnum opus De Civitate Dei,
Augustine considers the conflict of heavenly with earthly values and the
duties of citizenship incumbent on Christians against the broader backdrop
of the Roman Empire. The correspondence with Marcellinus, a high placed
imperial official and a Christian, over the criticisms of Christianity made by
the (pagan) high official and vir illustris Volusianus, is a case in point. Volu-
sianus had argued (among other things) that ‘the teaching and preaching of
Christ must be incompatible with the claims of citizenship.’ (Aug. Ep. 138.9
ff.). Augustine continues,

For he [sc. Christ] told us—it is agreed—to ‘return to no one

evil for evil’, to ‘offer the other cheek to an assailant’, to ‘give
our cloak to someone demanding a tunic’, and to ‘go twice
the required distance with someone who wants to requisition
us’. They allege that all these commands are contrary to the
ethics of citizenship. ‘Who would allow an enemy to steal
something from him’?, they say. ‘Who would be unwilling to
inflict evil, (p.153) in the form of a just war, as recompense for
the ravaging of a Roman province?’

Augustine’s reply prefigures much of the argument of De Civitate Dei: he

surveys in a few, broad brushstrokes the history of Rome’s expansion,
impossible, he says, without the pursuit, in just wars, of states which had
wronged the Romans, and Rome’s decline, a consequence, he asserts, not
of the advent to power of Christian emperors, but of the abandonment long
before of the virtues of ‘the first Romans’—see Sallust. Those virtues when
combined with true religion would produce eminently suitable ‘citizens of
the other city, whose king is truth, whose law is love, and whose limit is
eternity’ (Ep. 138. 17). In the meantime, the citizens of the City of God, while
in the temporary status of aliens within the earthly city, were not called to
passivism. This is established by some skilful manipulation of scriptural texts.
The argument reaches the rousing conclusion:

Page 19 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

Christians made the best citizens of the empire, that is the claim. True
or false, Christians were among those who made most active use of their
citizenship. None more so than bishop Augustine. I illustrate his energetic
activity with the aid of two texts.

In Sermon 302 Augustine teases his congregation by threatening to cease

lobbying the authorities on their behalf:
People often ask about me, ‘Why does he go to the authorities?
What does a bishop want with the authorities?’ But you all
know that it’s your needs that force me to go there, even
though I don’t want to. I have to wait my chance, stand outside
the door, queue while they go in—worthy and unworthy alike
—have my name announced—then sometimes I only just get
admitted! I have to put up with the humiliation, make my
request, sometimes succeed, sometimes leave disappointed.
Who would put up with all that if he weren’t forced to? Please
do put me out of a job. Let me off it all! Please don’t let anyone
make me do it. Look, just allow me this much—just give
me a holiday from it all. Please, I beg you, don’t let (p.154)
anyone make me do it. I don’t choose to have dealings with
the authorities. God knows that I am forced into it.

A second text (Ep. 185 to Boniface) boldly compares the appeals to the
emperor of St Paul the Roman citizen threatened with beating and death,
and of Maximian, the Catholic bishop of Bagai, fighting Donatists for his
church and his life. The incident, however, is the whole Catholic/Donatist
conflict in miniature; it stands for the sustained and ultimately successful
drive by Catholic bishops, led by Augustine, to bring down the judicial and
coercive apparatus of the state on the heads of their opponents:
Now the bishop of Bagai mentioned above (sc., Maximian), in a
hearing between the parties in a civil court (sic), had regained
by the verdict of the court a certain basilica, which they had
seized although it was Catholic. When he was standing at the

Page 20 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

Therefore he requested assistance from the Christian emperor,

not so much to avenge himself, as to protect the church
entrusted to him. If he had omitted to do this, we ought not
so much to have praised his patience as, quite properly,
blamed his negligence. Indeed, the apostle Paul also was not
concerned for his own ephemeral life, but for the Church of
God, when he arranged for the plans of the men conspiring to
kill him to be betrayed to the tribune. As a result, an armed
soldier brought him to the place where he had to be taken,
so that he could avoid their ambush. He had no hesitation
in appealing to Roman laws, and declaring himself a Roman
citizen (for it was not allowed at that time to beat a Roman
citizen) (sic). Again, he begged help from Caesar to escape
being handed over to the Jews who desired to put him to
death, when Caesar was a Roman ruler but not a Christian one.
Here he showed clearly enough what the stewards of Christ
ought to do later on when they found emperors who were
Christians and when the Church was in danger. (27–8)

(p.155) Citizenship, then, was significant to Augustine as a tool by which

he and his allies could accomplish concrete ends, in the current case,
outmanoeuvring Donatists by bringing into play against them the judicial
and coercive apparatus of the state. One might suggest in addition that
citizenship served as a useful model, for Augustine rather than for his
Donatist opponents, of the expression of collective identity with reference to
a wider community, here the universal church.

Page 21 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

Notes:

(1) See Sasse ( 1958 ) and ( 1962 ); Wolff ( 1976 ); Jacques and Scheid (
1990 ) 280–9. From the juristic literature we have only the summary (and, as
it stands, incorrect) statement from Ulpian excerpted from his Commentary
on the Edict: ‘Everyone in the Roman world has been made a Roman citizen
as a consequence of the enactment of the Emperor Antoninus’ (Dig. 1.5.17).
My thanks go to Margaret Atkins, Alan Bowman, Caroline Humfress, and
Greg Woolf for suggesting improvements to earlier drafts of this chapter. See
Garnsey and Humfress ( 2001 ) 88–91 for a summary statement, composed
after the present chapter, on the issues addressed here.

(2) The bibliography for this subject is substantial. I single out here the
work of Sherwin-White, Nicolet, Gardner and Mouritsen on the history of
citizenship, of Modrzejewski on legal aspects and of Lepelley on the late
imperial city. See bibliography for details. The periods of Republic and
Principate are relatively well served. I have not come across a general
treatment of my theme which provides adequate coverage of Late Antiquity.

Page 22 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

(4) See Modrzejewski ( 1970 ), at 317–47 (pre-Caracalla) for Egypt; Cotton (

1993 ) for Arabia (the Babatha dossier). On free cities see Jacques ( 1984 ).

(5) On heresy and the law, specifically, the process by which heresy was
criminalized, see Humfress ( 1998 ; 2000 ; 2001 ).

(6) In this section I generally follow Modrzejewski ( 1970 ), who steers a

convincing course between Mitteis ( 1891 ) and Arangio-Ruiz ( 1946 –7),
on the one hand, and Scho¨nbauer (1931), on the other. See more briefly
Jacques and Scheid ( 1990 ) 284; Kaser ( 1996 ) 167–8. The question how
far Roman law was itself transformed by contact with local law is part of the
wider issue of the supposed ‘vulgarization’ of Roman law. See Humfress (
1998 ); and in Garnsey and Humfress ( 2001 ) ch. 4 .

(7) This is the case even if though it is true that the Greek East produced
some distinguished individual jurists who rose to high office in Rome during
the Severan period. See Millar ( 1999 ; 2002 ) concerning Licinius Rufus and
Ulpian, respectively.

(8) Bagnall and Lewis ( 1979 ); cf. Kraemer and Lewis ( 1937 ). For the
defensor civitatis, see Taubenschlag ( 1952 ); Mannino ( 1984 ).

(9) See Inglebert ( 1996 ) for a comprehensive account of Christian attitudes

to Rome.

(10) Atkins and Dodaro ( 2001 ) usefully collects and translates relevant
documents and provides a nice introduction to Augustine’s political thought.
See now Atkins ( 2002 ) on Augustine’s exchange with Nectarius of Calama
and the use of Cicero’s De Re Publica therein.

Page 23 of 24 Roman Citizenship and Roman Law in the Late Empire

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

Tony Honoré

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords

How did Roman civil government evolve between ad 200 and 400? The
period stretches from the Severan age, when citizenship was extended to
all free people of the Empire, to the years following the death of Theodosius
I in 395. The administration of the eastern empire then survived the threat
from foreign military commanders, while the western administration was
dominated by Stilicho, a half-foreign general. This chapter presents an
unorthodox view of legal and constitutional developments during this period.
The view rejects the straightforward model of decline, and seeks to strike a
balance between elements of decline and elements of progress, elements
of continuity and elements of change. It is argued that the ordinary man or
woman, the artisan, tradesman, municipal councillor or minor official, as
opposed to the wealthy landowner, was better protected in ad 400, in the
East at least, than he or she had been under the Principate.

Keywords: Roman civil government, Roman Empire, Late Antiquity, constitutional

development

How did Roman civil government evolve between AD 200 and 400? The
period stretches from the Severan age, when citizenship was extended to
all free people of the Empire, to the years following the death of Theodosius
I in 395. The administration of the eastern empire then survived the threat
from foreign military commanders, while the western administration was
dominated by Stilicho, a half-foreign general. This chapter presents an
unorthodox view of legal and constitutional developments during this period.

Page 1 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

The newer view rejects the straightforward model of decline. It seeks to

strike a balance between elements of decline and elements of progress,
elements of continuity and elements of change. Societies may decline in
one respect and progress in another. In a polity as far-flung as the Roman
Empire it would be odd to find a uniform pattern of change. Instead, I argue,
government in the East, especially towards the end of the period, developed
along different lines from the West. And within the West recent scholarship
has unearthed differences in legal culture between the prefectures of Italy,
Africa, and Gaul. 1 Throughout the Empire, however, lawyers remained to
some extent an independent profession, attached to rule of law values. They
and the bureaucrats who shared some of these values formed a significant
pressure group, especially but not only in the East.

In some areas of civil administration there was little change between AD

200 and 400. The emperor had a duty to secure the (p.110) legal rights
of citizens and, if necessary, to devote long hours to seeing to this. 2
Diocletian’s reforms reduced the load, but it was still heavy. The emperor
had to answer petitions by citizens, including questions put by them about
their legal problems. He had in effect to provide a free legal advice service,
by which authoritative rulings on points of law issued from the imperial office
of petitions (scrinium libellorum). By constitutional convention private law
bound the emperor in matters such as inheritance. In tax disputes the state
was bound by law in that actions could be brought against the fisc. There
was however no legal mechanism for bringing emperors to book if they
disregarded these conventions. 3 They had power to legislate, a power that
they exercised freely in public and to some extent in criminal law, but very
little in private law. In AD 400 private law, though simplified and improved in
some areas, especially civil procedure, remained much as it had been in 200.

Despite these marks of continuity, there were substantial changes. The

range of people who had the status, rights and obligations of Roman citizens
was greatly extended. Citizens had better access to legal advice and to
the courts. The quality of judicial decision improved because more judges
had legally trained assessors. General legislation was enacted, normally
in the imperial consistory, by a more formal procedure and after wider
consultation. Exceptional laws and concessions were downgraded, being
subordinated as far as possible to general rules. To take the developments
chronologically, the Severan age saw the extension of citizenship to the

Page 2 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

DECLINE?
The survey that follows will be panoramic, perhaps none the worse for that.
To begin with the theme of decline, on an older view this took the form, after
the military disorders of the third century, of downgrading the senate and
so undermining the constitutional balance that existed in the Principate.
It was replaced by a pure autocracy inaugurated by the Illyrian soldiers
and structured by Diocletian. The Christian Empire reinforced the tendency
to concentrate power in God’s representative, the emperor. Legal decline
set in from the end of the classical period of Roman law, the age of Paul,
Papinian, Ulpian, and Modestinus. 6 From about 240 mainstream legal writing
dried up. In the 1950s and 1960s Levy 7 and (p.112) Kaser 8 argued that
in the later empire western legal culture degenerated. We enter the age of
vulgar law, a simplified version of the law tainted by non-Roman elements.
9 Imperial legislation loses its grip even on elementary legal principles, like
the difference between ownership and possession. In the 1970s, thanks to
Wieacker, a modest concession was made. 10 Classical law lingered on in
an attenuated form until the end of the third century, during the so-called
epiclassical period. 11 Values were diluted but not obliterated. Authors

Page 3 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

This gloomy assessment of the course of legal culture is notable for its
literary bias. It focuses on the quality of legal writing and imperial law-
making. But these, though weighty, are not the only elements that go
to make a healthy civil society. There are other factors. Does the whole
population or most of it have access to legal advice and to the courts? Are
the judges competent? Are they honest? Are the rights of citizens, arising
from their property, status, and contracts reasonably secure? Is their liability
to taxes and other public burdens protected against arbitrary exactions by
those in power?

So far as legal literature and imperial law-making are concerned, there is

a sense in which the story of decline is correct. The highminded Antonine
emperors of the second century were better educated than their successors.
The law of the period, particularly private law, as expounded by the Antonine
writers, was assured and sophisticated. Second-century lawyers such as
Salvius Julianus and Ulpius Marcellus take careful account of the interests
of the parties to civil disputes and achieve a good balance both between
the rights and obligations of private citizens and between these and the
needs of government. The authors of the Severan age, on the whole less
sophisticated, fall somewhat short of their predecessors.

(p.113) But the impressive body of Antonine expertise was at the disposal of
a restricted group, consisting of those who had acquired Roman citizenship
and had access to legal advice. In contrast the Severans, particularly Ulpian
and Modestinus, had a wider vision. They were concerned to expound Roman
law as the law, not of the geographical city of Rome and a limited body of
citizens, but of a cosmopolis that embraced the Mediterranean world and
its hinterland. With the constitutio Antoniniana Roman law had become
a universal law. From a municipal system that took account of the law
common to various Mediterranean peoples, the ius gentium, it became the
ius gentium. Roman law now purported to apply to the whole civilized world,
claiming to be founded on reason and a basic nature shared by all. 12 The
roles of the ius civile, the civil law of Rome and the ius gentium are now
reversed. The starting point is the law common to all peoples. As Ulpian
13 puts it, we have our own special law, Roman civil law, when we add to
or subtract something from the common law. 14 Not that the common law
is immune from criticism. In Ulpian’s outlook law, conceived as the true
philosophy of which lawyers are the priests, 15 draws on the Stoic theory

Page 4 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

Historians, including legal historians, often fail to perceive the radical

character of the constitutio Antoniniana. 19 To treat it with a senatorial
historian, Cassius Dio, as a tax-raising measure 20 is superficial and, since
few of the newly enfranchised citizens would have been rich, implausible.
The motive of appeasing the Gods, offended by Caracalla’s fratricide, is
closer to the mark. But it points at best to the occasion for, not the deeper
causes of, the extension of citizenship. It is like explaining the grant to
Scotland of a separate Parliament with its own powers of legislation as a
tactical move by the Labour party to secure Scottish seats in the general
election of 1997. The constitutio Antoniniana fitted a cosmopolitan age
in which the centre of political power had moved away from Rome and
in which legal expertise now came predominantly from the periphery.
21 Didius Julianus, endorsed by the senate, had been rejected in favour
of three provincial contenders for the throne. The family that was in the
end successful had connections with Africa and Syria. It was concerned to
improve the status of soldiers. It shared, at least in the case of Caracalla,
the egalitarian outlook of intellectuals such as Galen and Ulpian. It was
hostile to the senate. To extend citizenship to all free people, whatever
their sex, economic status, or ethnic origin, could not be popular with
those whose privileges were diluted as a result; but it fitted the Zeitgeist.
It gave many millions, perhaps a majority of the empire’s inhabitants, new
names, new capacities (for example (p.115) to hold public office), and a new
consciousness of being Roman. It put them under a new system of law.

The change is soon reflected in legal writing. Sometime after 222 Herennius
Modestinus 22 sends to Egnatius Dexter, a friend in Asia Minor, a treatise

Page 5 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

The extension of citizenship did not at first dramatically affect the

administration of the law in the provinces. 24 Provincial governors showed
patience and tact in applying Roman law to the new citizens. Those who
find this surprising underestimate the Roman administration. Why provoke
discontent by rigidly insisting on unfamiliar norms of Roman law? Indeed
until governors had regular legal assistance in the form of assessors, which
became standard practice in the fourth century, they were not well placed to
do so. They and other judges imposed the Roman legal system on the new
citizenry incrementally, and more cautiously in a province like Egypt that had
its own well-developed legal institutions than in underdeveloped areas. The
legal technique available for this policy of gradualism was custom. Custom
was an important supplementary source of imperial Roman law from the
time of Salvius Iulianus, a lawyer from Africa of the mid-second century, 25
onwards. Ulpian endorses it in that role 26 and Modestinus expresses the
(p.116) change of perspective needed in a cosmopolitan society. ‘All law’, he
says, ‘is the creation of consent, necessity, or custom.’ 27 All three sources
are independent of authority. No one is arbitrarily to be made subject to legal
rules—a rose-tinted view, of course, but significant. Modestinus, who was
probably secretary for petitions (a libellis) under Alexander Severus between
late 223 and late 225, 28 will in this capacity have drafted an important
rescript of 26 March 224. This is to the effect that the provincial governor
will reach a decision after ascertaining what has been decided in the town in
question in disputes of the kind with which he is now faced, since preceding
custom and the reason that led to the adoption of the custom must be
respected. The governor will therefore make it his concern to avoid departing
from settled practice. 29 Custom, then, is to be respected provided there is a
sound reason for it. This reverses the policy that in the early Empire sought
to assimilate the law of provincial municipalities, at any rate in the West, to
that of the city of Rome. 30 It left the government free, however, to strike

Page 6 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

From the Severan age legal literature declined. This was partly, no doubt,
because of the unsettled conditions of the later third (p.117) century. After
the spate of private writing and imperial rescripts in the Severan age,
the market dried up. A development internal to law was also important.
Private writing could no longer compete with rescript law, which had greater
authority. The emperor’s rulings, though in fact often drafted by the same
lawyers whose replies on points of law (responsa) were collected and
published, were weightier than private responsa. On top of this Constantine
discouraged private writing. He assumed the power to list those treatises
that were authoritative and could be cited in court, accepting pseudo-Paul’s
sententiae 34 as genuine 35 and rejecting the notes of Paul and Ulpian on
Papinian. 36 There was now in embryo a canon of legal writing parallel to the
canon, not finally settled, of the Christian scriptures. It could not be added to.
This tidy move was inspired by the view that there is only one right answer
to legal problems and that the emperor is entitled to decide what it is. It
brought original legal writing, as opposed to collections of material, to an
end.

Mention of rescripts evokes the quality of imperial law-making, and its

supposed decline in the period under review. From Hadrian onwards
lawyers of equestrian rank entered paid government service as advisers.
37 Septimius Severus increased the number of paid posts available to them
and their pay. In the third century composing rescripts for the emperor on
points of law became an enviable, well-paid stage in a successful lawyer’s
career, as imperial rescripts gradually came to replace private legal opinions
(responsa) as a vehicle for developing the law. We know, I suggest, seven
or eight lawyers who held the office of secretary a libellis or magister
libellorum between 193 and 305. 38 The names of others escape us. The
legal quality of these rescripts was naturally high. But after Diocletian had
encouraged Gregorius and Hermogenianus to compile their respective
Codes, which consisted (p.118) mainly of rescripts, it was possible to

Page 7 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

Because bureaucrats tried to curb arbitrary indulgences by emperors, and

because of the instructions given to the commissioners for the Theodosian
Code, 41 surviving laws from Constantine on are mostly general laws
composed by laymen, rather than rescripts composed by lawyers. Hence the
quality of law-making appears to deteriorate and to some extent does so.
It is true that those drafting laws had access to good quality legal advice,
especially from the office of petitions, the scrinium libellorum. 42 But since
the quaestors were chosen mainly for their literary expertise, they tend to
avoid writing in the plain style favoured by most lawyers. 43 Instead many of
them aim at a high style, which can obscure the legal content of the text. On
the whole, however, a reasonable compromise was reached between style
and matter. The quality of the laws of this period, though variable, does not
deserve the (p.119) dismal reputation that attaches to it. 44 It is true that
a mixture of propaganda, rhetoric, and law such as is to be found in third
century constitutions is not to everyone’s taste. But contemporaries could
usually read between the lines and see what was meant. Mistakes were
certainly possible and Ausonius, for example, seems to have misunderstood
at least one of the texts he was charged with drafting, so that it had to be
corrected when he left office. 45 What has come down to us through the
Theodosian Code is a simplified version of the laws, omitting the preamble
and executory formula. All the same the texts often needed to be elucidated.
The need was met, at least in the fifth century, by ‘interpretationes’,

Page 8 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

LAWYERS AND JUDGES

Though the way in which laws are expressed is important, the quality of
civil society and the legal culture central to it depends on the availability of
enough trained lawyers. In the ancient world secular law as an intellectual
discipline, of which interpretation formed the core, was found mainly in the
Roman world. Even there law was never more than the interest of a minority.
It was, so to speak, a post-graduate study taken up by some of those who,
having mastered grammar and rhetoric, wanted to qualify in a discipline
that promised to be rewarding, materially or intellectually or both. Legal
study was exacting, and demanded even more (p.120) dedication in the East
than in the West, since one might have to learn Latin or improve one’s Latin
before embarking on it. The few who studied law did so because law ran in
the family or offered a promising path to a government career or to lucrative
private practice or teaching. Moreover it was, and had from the beginning
been, a path of upward social mobility. Prestige as a lawyer was in the end
dependent on professional expertise rather than family connections, useful
as these were in launching one on a career. The word ‘professional’ needs
explaining. It highlights a difference of opinion between Liebs 47 and myself
on the one hand and Crook on the other. 48 Lawyers were not organized in
a professional body as they are today but formed a self-conscious group
that regarded itself as an elite by virtue of its mastery of a difficult subject
and its attachment to what we would now call rule-of-law values. Lawyers
read and cited one another’s opinions. This did not close their eyes to the
needs of the society they served, since a lawyer engaged in improving the
law day by day, as the secondcentury author Pomponius advocates, 49 must
take account of current moral opinions and social aims. The close relation
of law and morality was underlined by Theodosius I, who was committed
to securing good behaviour by moral pressure, if possible: if not, by the
use of law. 50 A lawyer could be an advocate, but advocacy was a separate
discipline. Lots of people (e.g. Symmachus) knew some law without being
lawyers. They did so as a result of their experience, say, of holding public
office and trying cases. That is not the same as soaking oneself for years in

Page 9 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

It was only exceptionally that provincial governors or the advocates who

argued before them were legally trained. 51 From Libanius it is clear that
fourth-century advocates were not usually (p.121) expert in law. 52 The study
of rhetoric, including training with a view to making speeches in court (genus
iudiciale), did not teach even the elements of law. The ‘law’ presupposed
in rhetorical disputations was for the most part imaginary. 53 Ammianus is
also clear that Roman judges lacked legal expertise. He criticizes them in
this regard and compares them unfavourably with their Persian counterparts.
54 Real legal study took at least three years and ultimately, in the fifth and
sixth centuries, five. So difficult was it that even in the fifth century only the
150 advocates practising before the praetorian prefect in Constantinople
had to possess a legal qualification for admission to the bar. 55 To form
an idea of the proportions between the professions, Libanius’ pupils seem
to have included forty-five advocates and twenty-five assessors. 56 Law
and advocacy never became a unified profession, 57 even though training
in both became essential to practice at the praetorian prefect’s bar in
Constantinople and useful in other courts.

But if trained lawyers were a minority, they were well paid and highly
regarded. From Hadrian onwards some lawyers attained government office
or membership of the imperial council (concilium). Severus increased
their number and pay. It came to be accepted that magistrates exercising
jurisdiction under Diocletian’s reforms, including provincial governors, should
have a legally trained assessor. A law student from Rome or Beirut could
count on an assessorship in which he might spend his whole career but which
at least gave him security. With luck and ability he might join an imperial
bureau, in particular the bureau of petitions (scrinium libellorum), which
was largely staffed by lawyers. Diocletian’s reforms, with the appointment
of extra prefects and vicars, increased the demand for legally trained
assessors. So in the period under review lawyers grew in numbers and
in their influence on judges. 58 There were now perhaps 100 provincial
governors, ten prefects, and twenty vicars to be serviced, besides the
emperor and the central offices. No wonder Libanius (p.122) complains that
talented students of rhetoric are seduced by the lure of law study in Beirut.
59 There were also lawyers outside government service. These included some
advocates, an increasing number, but mainly legal consultants (iuris consulti)
in private practice. These consultants specialized in giving legal advice

Page 10 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

How good were the judges? Judicial corruption is a favourite rhetorical

theme. But, as Harries remarks, it is hard to point to instances in real life of
judges found to be corrupt. 65 There were controls in place. Laws threatened
corrupt judges and their staff with financial penalties if they failed to enforce
the law or were negligent in doing so. 66 They invited provincials to lodge
complaints against governors. 67 Unlike his early imperial predecessor,
the provincial governor was on the bottom rung of the official ladder. He
presided over a smaller province, almost entirely inhabited by Roman
citizens, all of whom had a right of appeal to a (p.123) higher court. 68 ‘The
imperial state did all it could to control its judges, and we should not assume
that such controls were ineffective.’ 69 Gubernatorial misdeeds did not go
unchecked. The younger Flavianus, proconsul of Asia in 382–3, was sacked
for flogging a decurion, 70 despite the high standing of his family. It is difficult
to resist the inference that the rights of provincials were better protected
against corrupt or illegal governors in the later than in the early Empire. ‘The
difference in late antiquity was not that judges were more corrupt but that
emperors, provincials and the ever-critical Christian Church were more often
prepared to say so.’ 71

Mention of the church invites reflection on the constitutional role of

Christianity and its critical stance towards authority. The advent of
Christianity imposed limits on the powers of Christian emperors. Though
they could summon councils and exert pressure on them, only bishops could
define Christian doctrine. Honorius, writing to his elder brother Arcadius
in 404 says that ‘the interpretation of matters divine is the concern of
bishops, compliance with religion is ours’. 72 The humiliation of Theodosius

Page 11 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE RULE OF LAW

During our period civil government, especially in the East, became more
professional, a movement to which Constantius II gave an impetus. By the
end of the fourth century many of the elements of a civil society committed
to the rule of law had emerged, but more strongly in the East than in the
West. By 400 the eastern government, ruled by a nonentity, possessed a
well-organized civil service which, whatever its shortcomings, was committed
to the rule of law. Behind the fac¸ade of imperial autocracy the East had
a bureaucratic system of civilian rule that could survive even under weak
rulers. The same was not true in the West. In the upshot the ordinary man or
woman, artisan, tradesman, municipal councillor or minor official, as opposed
to the wealthy landowner, was better protected in AD 400, in the East at
least, than under the Principate.

Some elements in this process can be dated. From February 398 onwards
Constantinople kept proper records of the laws enacted in the eastern
empire. We can date this development precisely, because from then on the
commissioners for the Theodosian Code ceased collecting laws addressed
to middle-order officials in the provinces. 76 It was no longer necessary to
search at Alexandria, Antioch and other provincial centres for general laws
in order to make a complete collection. In the West nothing similar occurred.
As late as 429 western laws to be included in the projected Theodosian Code
had to be collected from Africa. 77 This contrast may have something to do
with the fact that the West did not have a settled capital, the administration

Page 12 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

Coupled with the better recording of laws was the fact that the official
responsible for drafting them, the imperial quaestor, was more often a
lawyer. Here again, there is a contrast between East (p.125) and West. In the
East the quaestor was in my view from the time of Theodosius I quite often
a lawyer. 78 There were two or three lawyers among Theodosius’ eleven
recognizable quaestors. Under Arcadius there were one or two lawyers out
of five. The legal infiltration, if one may so describe it, became a takeover
only in the next reign, but the ground for it was prepared earlier. In 396–9
under Arcadius we find, throughout the dominance of the eunuch Eutropius
and for some months after his fall, a lawyer– quaestor who remains in office
for a full four years. The drafter of 111 surviving laws, he left a lasting
mark on the eastern administration. His name, like that of many important
figures in bureaucratic societies, is unknown. No similar development
occurs in the West. There was a lawyer–quaestor serving Valentinian II in
389, after Theodosius I had defeated the western emperor Maximus and
restored Valentinian. The suspicion must be that Theodosius insisted on
the appointment with a view to giving the western government a more
professional character. 79

To return to the East in the time of Eutropius, the outlook that emerges from
the laws of this period is interesting. The legal sources cited include the
second-century classical author Cervidius Scaevola, the first such citation
to survive for two generations. But though the laws stress continuity with
the pagan empire they are not conservative. The pagan law and that of
the early Christian emperors forms a continuum that embodies the spirit of
Pomponius’s remark: a state requires magistrates to exercise jurisdiction
and legal writers to expound the law, since law cannot exist without trained
lawyers to improve it day by day. 80 Day to day improvement took place
in Pomponius’ day through legal advice (responsa) and writing. Then there
was a shift, especially from Severus onwards, to developing the law by way
of lawyers’ input into imperial rescripts. In the Christian empire the main
agency was general legislation to which lawyers might contribute either as
quaestors or as members of the scrinia, especially of the office of petitions
(libellenses).

In the laws of 396–9 in the East the need for laws to be rationally justified,
not merely by way of preamble but as an integral part of the operative text,
is accepted. For instance, no one without a (p.126) house in Constantinople

Page 13 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

Consonant with this concern for legal rationality is an effort to reform the
law, not by radical change, but by pruning over-refinement and adapting it
to changed conditions. The effort is seen early in the reign of Theodosius
I in a mini-code of 17 June 380 that contains a number of reforms and
clarifications. 82 Reform continues from time to time under him and his
successors. There is no similar movement in the west. Law reform does
not appear on the western agenda until well into the fifth century, under
Valentinian III in 446–7. 83 Of course laws enacted in one part of the empire
were issued in the name of the whole imperial college. They were in principle
valid throughout the empire, unless intended to have a more restricted
scope. In practice knowledge of eastern laws in the West and vice versa was
limited until the enactment of the Theodosian Code in 438. The initiative
for reform came exclusively from the East. The West seems to have been
resistant to the idea of law reform, even on a modest scale. One ground for
this may have been that reform was seen as bound up with the acceptance
of Christianity and that, in Rome at least, the pagan resistance relied on
conservatism in law as in religion. In the East there are three quaestors
before 400 and many more later who openly compose as Christians, using
phrases like ‘our faith’, ‘the true religion’, ‘Christ the saviour’, and so
on. A good many of them are lawyers and it was clearly in order in the
East in the later fourth century to proclaim oneself both a Christian and
a lawyer. We do not have a western parallel until 407. 84 No doubt there
were some Christians drafting imperial laws, but they do not proclaim
themselves such. It is not that jurisprudence has withered in the West. On
the contrary, the author of the Historia Augusta has a good grasp of classical
and contemporary law. 85 But the western attachment to (p.127) law seems
on the whole to have gone hand in hand with hostility to the new religion.
Certainly that is the impression one gathers from the Historia Augusta on
one hand and, on the other, from the Christian counter-current expressed
in the Law of God which God gave to Moses. 86 This work, the so-called
Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum, belongs to the same period as
the Historia Augusta. It draws a distinction between the penalties for theft by
day and by night, and admonishes Roman lawyers that Moses had enacted a
law on these lines before the Romans. 87 The project of showing that Moses
anticipated the rules of Roman law could not be carried through in detail, but
the idea is hostile to the pretensions of lawyers.

Page 14 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

One aspect of legal culture, on the surface technical, but really of

constitutional importance, was that of the subordination of special to
general laws. Lawyers and civil servants were throughout the fourth century
hostile to derogations from general laws. These took various forms and
were described by a variety of terms: rescripts, annotations, pragmatic
sanctions, benefits, indulgences. Rescripts were of two main sorts. They
could be replies on the emperor’s behalf to an inquiry that raised a point of
law (rescripta AD ius). These replies were drafted by secretaries or masters
of petitions (procuratores a libellis, magistri libellorum) and in the third
century operated as an imperial legal advice service. These legal rescripts
also served, when collected in volumes such as the Codex Gregorianus and
Hermogenianus, to disseminate knowledge of the current state of the law.
There were also rescripts (beneficia) that consisted in written replies to a
petition for a purely personal favour, indulgence, pardon, or other benefit. 92

Rescripts on the law were in principle conditional on the facts being found
to be as stated in the rescript. The emperor did not purport to decide issues
of fact without hearing the evidence and the arguments of the parties or
their advocates. He might lay down by rescript, for example, that if the

Page 15 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

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petitioner’s goods were pledged by her husband without her consent, the
goods were not subject to the pledge. 93 But the judge might find that the
wife had in fact consented to the pledge, in which case the legal position was
different. Rescripts on the law were meant to operate hypothetically. This
was not true of privileges (beneficia), which were normally unconditional.
After Diocletian, as explained, legal rescripts no longer required the personal
attention of the emperor. Hence in the fourth century it became easier to
confuse the two classes of rescripts. So when the line between rescripts
on the law and concessions became blurred, the hypothetical character of
rescripts on the law suffered erosion. For this reason, and so that officials
could challenge unwise concessions by the emperor, there was a movement
from Constantine onwards to subordinate special to (p.129) general laws.
Which laws counted as general was not always clear, but laws enacted in the
imperial consistory and resolutions of the senate were prima facie general.
In the end the problem of distinguishing between general and special laws
was solved by listing all the general laws from Constantine onwards in the
Theodosian Code. But the principle that general laws prevail over beneficia
was strongly marked earlier, for instance in the eastern laws of 396–9.
Indeed the most dramatic attack on rescripts comes in December 398 when
a law addressed to the praetorian prefect Euytchianus rules that past and
future rescripts, given when a judge has consulted the emperor on a point in
the case before him, have effect only for the case about which the emperor
was consulted. Such rescripts lack general force and cannot be cited in other
lawsuits. 94 Thereafter rescripts never recovered the force they had earlier
possessed, though Justinian, unlike Theodosius II, treated himself as entitled
to give a particular rescript the full force of law if he chose.

To insist on the superior force of general laws, though making for tidy
administration, was also self-serving. As a law of March 396 states, those
who occupy imperial property and rely for their title on an improperly
obtained rescript, on long possession or a recent census, are not entitled to
do so if their alleged title is contrary to an earlier census. 95 Obtaining special
privileges is described in pejorative terms such as subreptio and obreptio,
akin to theft. Nevertheless the movement in favour of general laws did cut
down the emperor’s powers, and made him appear gullible. 96 It did so at the
expense of those who thought they could rely on a concession or exemption
they had been granted. There was a tug-of-war between the civil service and
the emperor by which the bureaucracy tried to force the emperor to bring
proposed (p.130) concessions before the imperial consistory as the body
responsible for enacting general laws. In consistory any proposal could be

Page 16 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

The enactment of laws by the imperial consistory was not a haphazard

process. 97 It can be reconstructed for our period from the eastern law of
446 that sought to involve the senate in the legislative process. 98 Leaving
the senate on one side, the process described involves three main stages.
Usually legislation results from a written proposal (suggestio) put forward by,
for example, the praetorian prefect. The leading palace officials (proceres
nostri palatii) i.e. presumably the prefects, counts of the treasury, quaestor,
heads of scrinia, masters of the army and the palace chamberlain, then meet
and discuss the proposal. If they agree that legislation is needed and on what
lines, the quaestor then composes a draft text. At the second stage they
meet again to discuss his draft (denuo recenseri). At a third stage the whole
consistory meets. It includes not merely the high officials but the Counts of
the Consistory who hold no office but are co-opted to advise on policy. Since
there has to be universal agreement (universorum consensus), members of
the consistory may no doubt ask for changes in the text and may succeed
in getting amendments agreed. If at this third meeting there is agreement
the approved text is read out and subscribed by the emperor, whereupon
it has the force of law. If further changes were agreed at the third meeting
no doubt a fourth or fifth meeting was called until agreement was finally
reached and the law was then enacted. The new law was promulgated by the
master of records (magister memoriae) who adapted the text to its various
addressees without changing its substance. 99 The elaborate procedure
described is meant to ensure that general laws (p.131) coming before the
consistory are properly considered. If the emperor had conferred ill-judged
privileges by way of rescript or annotation, at least these did not have the
status of general laws and could not derogate from them.

A. H. M. Jones doubted whether this procedure for enacting general laws

was regularly followed. 100 He points out that some general laws were
repealed or amended soon after they had been enacted. But the doubt is
unjustified. Not all members of the inner group were free to attend every
meeting. Some may have been temporarily absent and so unable to put
their point of view. On their return, they were influential enough to secure
a repeal or amendment of the earlier law. Some laws, then as now, proved
unworkable or provoked a violent reaction, so that after a year or two
complaints from the prefects and provincial governors who had to apply the
law led to a review. The consistory was not a rubber stamp. It was a body
in which serious debate took place and strong views were expressed. 101 It

Page 17 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

Wetzler is therefore justified in seeing in the late imperial Roman state, if not
a constitutional monarchy, at least a monarchy with some characteristics
of a Rechtstaat. 104 The limitations to which the emperor was subject can
be understood from the example of the UK, where the constitution greatly
depends on conventions about the exercise of power, for example by the
monarch and the House of Lords. These conventions are not justiciable.
We should understand in this sense the principle, formulated by Ulpian and
endorsed by Severus, Caracalla, and Justinian that the emperors, though
not bound by the laws, live by the laws. 105 They properly treat themselves
as if bound by law. In a similar spirit Theodosius on behalf of himself and
Valentinian II in 446 declares that he will not in future enact general laws
except (p.132) in the form set out in the text which involves, besides the
palace officials and imperial consistory, consultation with the senate. 106
He could not be held to this procedure, as there was no procedure for
challenging a law as unconstitutional on the ground that it violated the 446
text. But it remained a convention that the procedure should be followed.
Justinian, despite his autocratic temperament, retains the text in his Code. As
a political commitment, it had to be taken seriously.

In sum this chapter has argued that the ordinary man or woman, the artisan,
tradesman, municipal councillor or minor official, as opposed to the wealthy
landowner, was better protected in AD 400, in the East at least, than he or
she had been under the Principate. ‘For all its drawbacks, the determination
of the bureaucracy at Constantinople from the late fourth century onwards to
impose, order, generality and system on all the diversities of empire was far
from futile or ineffective.’ 107

Notes:

(1) Liebs ( 1987 ; 1993 ; 2002 ).

(2) e.g. Ammianus on Valens: Ammianus 30.41–2 cf. Matthews ( 1992 ) 47–
57.

Page 18 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

(4) On which see Harries ( 1999 ) 191–211.

(5) Below nn. 73–4.

(6) A main theme of Kunkel ( 1967 ) 290–304, for whom jurisprudence

declines when it gets into the hands of government-paid equites rather than
senators (‘Verbeamtung’) and vanishes at the end of the classical period.

(7) Levy ( 1951 ; 1956 ); Wieacker ( 1961 ) 222–41 is more nuanced.

(8) Kaser ( 1959 ).

(9) The concept is valuable but in the history of the later Roman empire
should not be applied prematurely or indiscriminately: Liebs ( 1993 ) vii cf.
Voss ( 1982 ) passim.

(10) Wieacker ( 1971 ) 201–23.

(11) On legal literature at this period see Liebs ( 1987 ) 19–55. Arcadius
Charisius (secretary a libellis 290–1) links the ‘epiclassical’ to the ‘classical’
when he says of Modestinus (secretary c.223–5) ‘ut Herennius Modestinus
et notando et disputando bene et optima ratione decrevit’ (Dig. 50.4.18.26).
Modestinus was still active in 239: Cod. Iust. 3.42.5 (12 Feb. 239).

(12) Honoré ( 1998a ); cf. Gaudemet ( 1998 ).

(13) On Ulpian see now Honoré ( 2002 ); Liebs ( 1997 ) § 424.

(14) Dig. 1.1.6 pr (Ulp. 1 inst.): ‘Ius civile est, quod neque in totum a naturali
vel gentium recedit nec per omnia ei servit: itaque cum aliquid addimus vel
detrahimus iuri communi, ius proprium, id est civile efficimus.’

Page 19 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

(16) Honoré ( 2002 ) ch. 3 .

(17) Dig. 47.10.9.4; 47.10.15.35,44 (Ulp. 57 ed.): ‘Itaque praetor non ex omni
causa iniuriarum iudicium servi nomine promittit: nam si leviter percussus
sit vel maledictum ei leviter, non dabit actionem: at si infamatus sit vel facto
aliquo vel carmine scripto, puto causae cognitionem praetoris porrigendum
et ad servi qualitatem: etenim multum interest, qualis servus sit, bonae frugi,
ordinarius, dispensator, an vero vulgaris vel mediastinus an qualisqualis: et
quid si compeditus vel male notus vel notae extremae? Habebit igitur praetor
rationem tam iniuriae, quae admissa dicitur, quam personae servi, in quem
admissa dicitur, et sic aut permittet aut denegabit actionem.’

(18) ‘Er hat die constitutio Antoniana in den Rechtsalltag u¨bersetzt’: Liebs (
1997 ) 176.

(19) Good treatments in Sasse ( 1958 ); Bourazelis ( 1989 ).

(20) Dio 78.9.5.

(21) Liebs ( 1997 ) §412.

(22) Paraitēseōs epitropēs kai kouratorias biblia hex (De excusationibus

libri VI); Lenel ( 1889 ) 1.707–18; Peters ( 1912 ) 511–13; Masiello ( 1983 );
Honore ( 1983 ) 163–9.

(23) Modestinus seems to have come from Pontus and perhaps to have been
originally Greek-speaking: Dig. 50.16.10 (Mod. 8 reg.: ‘Latine loquentibus’);
38.10.4.2 (12 pand.: ‘apud Romanos’); Liebs ( 1997 ) § 427.

(24) On Volksrecht see Mitteis ( 1891 ); Pringsheim ( 1950 ); Taubenschlag (

1955 ).

(25) Dig. 12.3.32 (Iul. 84 dig.).

(26) Dig. 1.3.33 (Ulp. 1 off. proc.)

Page 20 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

(28) Honore´ ( 1994 ) 101–7.

(29) Cod. Iust. 8.52.1 (26 March 224): ‘praeses provinciae probatis his, quae
in oppido frequenter in eodem genere controversiarum servata sunt, causa
cognita statuet. nam et consuetudo praecedens et ratio quae consuetudinem
suasit custodienda est, et ne quod contra longam consuetudinem fiat, ad
sollicitudinem suam revocabit praeses provinciae.’

(30) e.g. the Flavian municipal law, as evidenced by the lex Irnitana chs. 91,
93 (Gonzales ( 1986 ) 147–243).

(31) Cod. Iust. 5.5.2 (11 Dec. 285).

(32) Cod. Iust. 6.24.7 (3 Dec. 285).

(33) Cod. Iust. 8.4.6 (15 Nov. 287).

(34) On which see Liebs ( 1993 ) 28–109, 121–210.

(35) Cod. Theod. 1.4.2 (27 Sept. 327/8).

(36) Cod. Theod. 1.4.1 (28 Sept. 321).

(37) Liebs ( 1997 ) § 410.

(38) Papinian, Ulpian, Arrius Menander, Modestinus, Arcadius Charisius,

Hermogenianus, and possibly Gregorius. We should perhaps add Licinnius
Rufinus, in view of an inscription from Thyateira, published by Herrmann
( 1997 ) 111, where the phrase epi tōn apokrimatōn lends itself to the
interpretation that the lawyer was secretary a libellis viz. in the 220s, in my
view from Oct. 222 to Oct. 223. See Millar ( 1999 ) 90–108.

(39) Harries ( 1988 ); Honore´, ( 1998b ) 11–20.

(40) Honore´ ( 1998b ) 17–20.

(41) Cod. Theod. 1.1.5 (26 March 429): ‘colligi constitutiones decernimus …
edictorum viribus aut sacra generalitate subnixas.’

(42) Voss ( 1980 ) 199–256.

Page 21 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

(44) Honoré ( 1998b ) 20–3.

(45) Honoré ( 1984 ) 75–85. Coskun ( 2001 ) 312–43 rejects this unfavourable
assessment of Ausonius’ legal competence.

(46) e.g. Cod. Theod. 1.2.10 (20 March 396 Const.): ‘Dubium non est
contestationem intellegi etiam si nostrae fuerint tranquillitati preces oblatae,
easque adversus heredem quoque eius, in quem porrectae sunt, vel ab
herede eius, qui meruerit exerceri. Nam sicut ex causis numerosis etiam
haec actio transmittitur ad heredem, quae testatori competisse monstratur,
et e diverso definitione iuris consultorum omnium consona responsione
firmatur ab herede actionem non incipere, quae non conpetierit testatori.’

(47) e.g. Liebs ( 1987 ) 16, 58–60; (2002) 22–4.

(48) Crook ( 1995 ) 37–46, 154–8. Crook, who talks of two Roman legal
professions, seems to me mistaken. There were two professions, but not
two legal professions. But Crook is right to stress that advocacy remained a
distinct and important discipline throughout the later empire.

(49) Dig. 1.2.2.13 (1 enchir.): ‘constare non potest ius, nisi sit aliquis iuris
peritus, per quem possit cottidie in melius produci.’

(50) Honore´ ( 1998b ) 34–8.

(51) Schulz ( 1961 ) 57–70, 130–46, 340–52.

(52) Libanius, Or. 2.44–5; 18.288; Ep. 1170, 1203; Petit ( 1957 ) 179 f., cf.
Lac-tantius, De Mort . Pers. 22; Ammianus 30.4.9–19.

(53) Liebs ( 2002 ) 23.

(54) Ammianus 23.6.82; Liebs ( 1987 ) 99.

(55) Cod. Iust. 2.7.11 (1 Feb. 460 Const.)

(56) Seeck ( 1906 ) 59–60, 80, 123, 174, 211, 271–2, 278; Festugière ( 1959 )
363–5.

(57) As assumed by Jones ( 1964 ) 1.499–501.

(58) Liebs ( 1989 ) § 502.

Page 22 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

(60) Liebs, ( 2002 ) 23.

(61) Liebs ( 1987 ).

(62) Liebs ( 1993 ).

(63) Liebs ( 2002 ).

(64) A mistake made by Savigny, who thought that there was no legal culture
outside Rome in the early Middle Ages because there were no western law
schools: Liebs ( 2002 ) 21.

(65) Harries ( 1999 ) 153–71.

(66) Honoré ( 1998b ) 26–9.

(67) Cod. Theod. 9.27; 9.28.1.

(68) Harries ( 1999 ) 167.

(69) Ibid.

(70) Libanius, Or. 28.5.

(71) Harries ( 1999 ) 171.

(72) Collectio Avellana 38.4 (after 20 June 404): ‘ad illos <viz. episcopos>
enim divinarum rerum interpretatio, ad nos religionis spectat obsequium.’

(73) Liebs ( 1987 ) 62–3; Sargenti and Bruno Siola ( 1991 ); Gaudemet ( 1979
) 71, 76–8, 85 f.; (1976) 286–300. He seems to have been a prote´ge´ of the
Christian praetorian prefect Petronius Probus.

(74) Reflected in an attempt by Theodosius to rein in his own impulsiveness:

Cod. Theod. 9.40.13 (18 Aug. 390)

(75) In Matth. hom. 82.6 (Migne, PG 58.744); Kelly (1996) 39.

(76) Honoré ( 1998b ) 137–9.

(77) Ibid. 140–1.

Page 23 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

(79) Honoré ( 1998b ) 186–7.

(80) Dig. 1.2.2.13 (Pomp. 1 enchir.); above n. 49 .

(81) Cod. Theod. 14.17.13 (30 July 396 Africano pr. urb.): ‘Eos, quos in
hac urbe domos non habere cognoveris, annonis novis quolibet titulo
acceptis privari tua magnitudo praecipiet nec ullis emolumentis civicis
adiuvari. Neque enim fas est, ut qui urbis adfectum domus indicio monstrare
neglexerint, eius commodis perfruan-tur.’

(82) Honoré ( 1998b ) 41–2.

(83) Ibid. 270–1.

(84) Ibid. 22–3.

(85) Straub (1986) 196–217; Liebs ( 1987 ) 104–19; (1980) 115–47; (1985)
221–37; Honore´ ( 1998c ) 191–211.

(86) Liebs ( 1987 ) 162–76.

(87) Coll. 7.1.1: ‘scitote, iuris consulti, quia Moyses prius hoc statuit, sicut
lectio manifestat.’

(88) Cameron and Long ( 1993 ) 336.

(89) Cod. Theod. 11.24.1 (4 Feb 360); 11.24.2 (12 Nov. 368); 1.29.8 (9 Apr.
392); 11.24.3 (30 Sept. 395); 11.24.4 (10 March 399); 11.24.5 (25 May 399),
all eastern texts.

(90) Stein ( 1949 –59) 234.

(91) Hom. in Eutropium eunuchum, patricium ac consulem ( Migne, PG

52.392–4).

(92) Dig. 1.4.1.2 (Ulp. 1 inst.)

(93) Cod. Iust. 4.29.5 (Popiliae, 17 June 224)

(94) Cod. Theod. 10.1.15 (Eutychiano pr.pr. 6 Dec. 398): ‘Rescripta ad

consultationem emissa vel emittenda, in futurum his tantum negotiis
opitulentur, quibus effusa docebuntur.’

Page 24 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

(96) e.g. Cod. Theod. 10.10.15 (16 Nov. 380): ‘sed quoniam plerumque ita
in nonnullis inverecunda petentum inhiatione constringimur, ut etiam non
concedenda tribuamus, ne rescripto quidem nostro adversus formam latae
legis loci aliquid relinquatur.’

(97) Honoré ( 1986 ) 136–44.

(98) Cod. Iust. 1.14.8 (17 Oct 446): ‘Humanum esse probamus, si quid
de cetero in publica vel in privata causa emerserit necessarium, quod
formam generalem et antiquis legibus non insertam exposcat, id ab
omnibus antea tam proceribus nostri palatii quam gloriossisimo coetu
vestro, patres conscripti, tractari et, si universis tam iudicibus quam vobis
placuerit, tunc allegata (a. edd. legata libri) dictari et sic ea denuo collectis
omnibus recenseri et, cum omnes consenserint, tunc demum in sacro nostri
numinis consistorio recitari, ut universorum consensus nostrae serenitatis
auctoriatate firmetur. 1. Scitote igitur, patres conscripti, non aliter in
posterum legem a nostra clementia promulgandam, nisi supra dicta forma
fuerit observata.’

(99) Honoré ( 1998b ) 14–15, 135.

(100) Jones ( 1964 ) 1.339–41.

(101) Stein ( 1949 –59) 210; Matthews ( 1989 ) 267–9.

(102) Cod. Theod. 12.12.10 (5 Nov. 385).

(103) De obitu Valentiniani. 16.

(104) Wetzler ( 1997 ) 200–10.

(105) Above n. 3 .

(106) Above n. 98 .

(107) Harries ( 1999 ) 216.

Page 25 of 26 Roman Law ad 200–400: From Cosmopolis to Rechtstaat?

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Transition and Change in Diocletian’s Egypt: Province and Empire in the Late Third Century

Colin Adams

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter considers the early reforms of Diocletian in Egypt and places
some of the changes that occurred during his principate into their broader
historical context. The intention is to use particular evidence from Egypt
to illustrate and inform some issues of importance to the central theme of
this volume — the transition from the third to fourth centuries of our era.
The chapter focuses on two lengthy and important papyri, dating to ad 298
and ad 300 respectively, which originate from the city of Panopolis in Middle
Egypt. Between them, they contain some 735 lines of text, which preserve
the outgoing correspondence of the stratē of the Panopolite nome, and the
incoming correspondence to the stratē from the office of the procurator of
the Lower Thebaid, in whose administrative district the Panopolite nome lay.

Keywords: Diocletian, Egypt, Late Antiquity, papyri, Panopolis

In this chapter, I wish to consider the early reforms of Diocletian in Egypt

and to place some of the changes that took place during his principate into
their broader historical context. The intention is to use particular evidence
from Egypt to illustrate and inform some issues of importance to the central
theme of this volume, the transition from the third to fourth centuries of our
era. I focus on two lengthy and important papyri, dating to AD 298 and AD
300 respectively, which originate from the city of Panopolis in Middle Egypt.
1 Between them, they contain some 735 lines of text, which preserve the
outgoing correspondence of the stratēgos of the Pano-polite nome, and the

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incoming correspondence to the stratēgos from the office of the procurator
of the Lower Thebaid, in whose administrative district the Panopolite nome
lay. 2 The first papyrus is doubly valuable, as it concerns (in large part)
arrangements made for the visit of Diocletian to Panopolis in AD 298. As
it stands, we have an archive of documents which bears comparison with
the letters of Pliny the Younger to the emperor Trajan, written almost two
hundred years earlier, or the archive of Aur-elius Abbinaeus. We have
evidence, albeit a snapshot, of the (p.83) working of internal administration:
relations between officials of various levels, the dynamics of contact between
state and local government in the form of town councils and liturgists
performing compulsory public services, and clues as to how all of this was
documented.

Although there are few direct references to imperial directives within the
documents themselves, the concerns and actions of the officials involved,
when compared with what we know of Diocletian’s administrative reforms
from other sources, can give us a vivid picture of imperial policy. It is that
with which we are concerned here. What can we say of Diocletian’s motives
in his reforms? Were they revolutionary or reactionary?

‘CRISIS, WHAT CRISIS?’

In what follows, I want to briefly assess the nature of the third-century
crisis in Egypt and outline Diocletian’s reforms, before concentrating on
two central themes of the Beatty texts—bureaucracy and land reform—in
an attempt to determine Diocletian’s motives and success in dealing with
problems he may have found.

We should consider first the state of the Empire in the late third century.

… tumult and war … and it will go badly with the rich. Their
arrogance will be cast down and their goods confiscated and
handed over to others who have … and the king will leave his
own throne and another will overpower him, that is, the king
will die in his own house. And a great man will be ruined …
Famine and sickness will appear in many places … But after
this the king will be great and will punish his adversaries. 3

Such prophetic statements were not out of place in the late third century
AD. 4 Indeed, evidence from papyri is often used to illustrate this period of
so-called ‘Crisis’: for example the seemingly clear financial and economic
problems illustrated by a well-known papyrus from Oxyrhynchus which shows

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a distrust of imperial coinage and an order of the senior nome official, the
stratēgos that such coinage must be accepted. 5 There is good evidence for
(p.84) administrative abuse, of which a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus dating to
early in Diocletian’s reign is a good example:
Serbaeus Africanus to the stratēgoi of the epistrategia of
Heptanomia and the Arsinoite nome, greeting. It is apparent
from the accounts alone that many persons wishing to
batten on the estates of the Treasury have devised titles
for themselves, such as administrators, secretaries, or
superintendents, whereby they procure no advantage for the
Treasury but eat up the revenues. It has therefore become
necessary to send you instructions to have one competent
superintendent chosen for each estate on the responsibility
of the municipal council concerned, and to put an end to the
other offices, although the superintendent chosen shall have
the power to choose two or at most three to assist him in the
superintendence. In this way the wasteful expenses will stop,
and the estates of the treasury will receive proper attention.
You will, of course, make sure that only such persons are
chosen to assist the superintendents as will be able to pass the
tests. Farewell, Year 5/4, Thoth 16th. 6

But, of course, such maladministration was nothing new in this highly

bureaucratic province; it is fair to say that it was almost a perennial problem,
but there may be reason to believe that the problems were worse in the third
century as there was no long-term attempt to improve matters. Well-known
papyri from the city of Hermopolis preserving accounts of the business of the
city council, all dating to the late third century AD, show a concerted effort
by the council to fund extensive repairs to public buildings, possibly needed
as a result of internal disturbances. 7 The final years of the third century
are marked by the revolt of Lucius Domitius Domitianus in 297, which was
so serious that it demanded the presence of Diocletian himself. 8 Much of
Egypt fell under his control, and many flocked to his side, as is illustrated
by a document from the archive of private letters of a man named Paniskos
from Philadelphia, who travelled to Coptos in order to fight for the rebels. 9

This matches the traditional picture of the third century as a period of crisis,
well described by Jones in his magisterial work:

(p.85)

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The condition of the empire … remained precarious in
the extreme. There were still many local disorders … land
continued to go out of cultivation. The finances remained
chaotic, the inflation of the currency gained momentum, and
the government lived from hand to mouth by requisitioning
supplies. The city governments on which the administration
depended showed signs of breaking down under the strain.
Above all it seemed impossible to achieve political stability. 10

This view has been challenged, and it is arguable that papyri can provide
a new picture of the third century. Johnson has proposed that the city
accounts of Hermopolis, rather than showing the economic hardship central
to Jones’s view of the third century, show reasonable levels of prosperity
in the cities of Egypt. 11 More recently, Rathbone has argued that there is
little evidence for inflation before the reign of Aurelian in the late 270s, and
that the rise in the price of goods at this time, and into the fourth century,
should more accurately be regarded as a symptom of monetization rather
than inflation. 12 He argues also that the effects of inflation are exaggerated
by those following the traditional view of the crisis, and that the buying
power of individuals, if anything, increased in the early fourth century.
Essentially, people were better off. There is good reason to think, then, that
the economic realities faced by individuals in the late third and early fourth
centuries were not as harsh as the traditional picture suggests.

Some degree of uncertainty there may have been, but it is unlikely that
an Empire-wide crisis, according to the traditional view, really existed.
However, Diocletian sought to bring order throughout the Empire, although
a hexameter poem preserved on a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus exaggerates
the extent and speed with which his reforms might have affected Egypt (but
probably suited his purpose):
Capitoline Zeus took pity at last on the human race and
gave the lordship of all the earth and the sea to godlike king
Diocletian. He extinguished the memory of former griefs for
any still suffering in grim bonds in a lightless place. Now a
father sees his child, a wife her husband, a brother his (p.86)
brother released, as if coming into the light of the sun a second
time from Hades. Gladly Diogenes, saver of cities, received
the favour of the good king and swiftly dispatched to the
cities the joyful forgetfulness of griefs. The whole land takes
delight in its joy as at the light of a golden age, and the iron,
drawn back from the slaughter of men, lies bloodlessly in the

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scabbard. You too have rejoiced to announce the royal gift to
all, governor of the Seven Nomes, and the Nile has praised
your mildness earlier still, when you governed the towns on
Nilotic Thebes with care and righteousness. 13

DIOCLETIAN’S EARLY REFORMS

The chronology of Diocletian’s reforms in Egypt is difficult to trace, but it is
likely that they were implemented as part of a gradual process rather than
some preconceived plan. Here I outline the current understanding of the
nature and chronology of Diocletian’s reforms in Egypt.

Lactantius states that ‘provinces too were cut into fragments; many
governors and even more officials were imposed on individual regions,
almost on individual cities, and to these were added numerous accountants,
controllers and prefect’s deputies. The activities of all these people were
rarely civil; they engaged only in repeated condemnations and confiscations,
and in exacting endless resources—and the exactions were not just
frequent, they were incessant, and involved insupportable injustices’ 14 .
Administrative divisions and new officials figure highly in Diocletian’s early
reforms. Before him, Egypt had been divided into three, or possibly four,
administrative regions known as epistratēgiai, each under an equestrian
epistratēgos. 15 Possibly in 295, but certainly by 298, Diocletian divided
Egypt into two provinces. The The-baid came to include the Hermopolite
nome, and was placed under the charge of a praeses; it was further divided
into the Upper and Lower Thebaid, perhaps in 295: each controlled by a
(p.87) procurator. The other province, consisting of Lower Egypt and the
Fayum, remained the responsibility of the praefectus Aegypti. 16

Administrative changes saw the introduction of the katholikos in place of

the dioikētes, and the replacement of the idios logos and usiac account
(patrimonium) with the magister rei privatae and procuratores privatae.
17 These were responsible for the administration of imperial property, and
figure highly in the Beatty documents. The office of the katholikos became
one of great importance: Egypt may have been split up into two provinces
under a prefect and praeses, but the financial administration was not so
divided. The katholikos thus assumed much greater power in respect of
the provincial governors. 18 Below these important posts, other changes
occurred. The disappearance of epistratēgoi was probably concomitant with
the new administrative divisions and the introduction of procurators, and
indeed these latter absorbed many of the former’s functions. 19

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In the organization of taxation, Diocletian made what are usually seen as
innovative changes. In 287/8 a new system based on five-year epigraphai
was introduced, which remained in place until the introduction of fifteen-
year cycle indictiones in 312. There is good reason to think, however, that
the system of epigraphai underwent some change during its third cycle in
297 (possibly linked to the revolt of Domitianus), when it may have become
an indiction or diatuōpsis. 20 The date suggests a link with Diocletian’s
other major reforms of the tax structure in 297, the introduction of a new
arrangement for tax assessment and different units of measurement,
perhaps a step towards wider reform. This, in turn, was connected to a
census, land survey, and general (p.88) registration of property, which was
ordered by Diocletian in 297. 21 The new system of tax assessment was
designed to introduce a more equitable state, which is clear from our best
evidence for the reforms, the edict of Aristius Optatus, prefect of Egypt,
preserved on a papyrus from the village of Karanis in the Fayum:
Aristius O[pt]atus, the most eminent prefect of Egypt, declares:

Our most provident Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, the

Augusti, and Constantius and Maximian, the most noble
Caesars … having learned that the levies of the public taxes
were being made capriciously so that some persons were
let off lightly while others were overburdened, decided in
the interests of the provincials to root out this most evil and
ruinous practice and to issue a salutary rule to which the taxes
would have to conform.

Thus it is possible for all to know the amount levied on each

aroura in accordance with the character of the land, and the
amount levied on the head of the rural population, and the
minimum and maximum ages of liability, from the imperial
edict which has been published and the schedule attached
thereto, to which I have prefixed for public display the copies
of this edict of mine.

Accordingly, since in this too they have been treated with

the greatest beneficence, let the provincials take care to
make their contributions with all speed in accordance with the
imperial regulations and in no wise wait for the collector to
exercise compulsion. For it is fitting that each person discharge
most zealously the full burden of loyalty, and if anyone should

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be detected doing otherwise after such beneficence he will risk
punishment.

The magistrates and presidents of the councils of each

city have been ordered to dispatch to each village or place
whatsoever a copy both of the imperial edict together with the
schedule and also of this (edict of mine) as well, to the end
that the munificence of our Emperors and Caesars may come
as speedily as possible to the knowledge of all.

The collectors of every kind of tax are also reminded to look to

their duties to the best of their ability, for if anyone should be
detected in transgression, he will risk capital punishment.

Year 13, 12, and 5 of our lords Diocletian and Maximian,

Augusti, and Constantius and Maximian, most noble Caesars,
Phamenoth 20. 22

(p.89) Setting aside the details of tax regulation, the sentiments of the
edict and the reforms that it concerns are clear. The new system was being
established to introduce a transparent and more regularized system of land
categorization to ensure equity of assessment and collection of tax, and to
prevent officials abusing the system. 23 It is important to note that the last
general census for which we have evidence took place in the reign of Philip
the Arab (AD 244–9). 24 There are two main motives: the improvement of
record-keeping and bureaucracy, and maximizing the tax yield of Egypt. 25
Such motives, and indeed, the expression of such motives, which could be
described as propaganda, were not new in Egypt.

EVIDENCE FOR REFORM IN THE BEATTY PAPYRI

It is these two motives, improving what Parsons calls the ‘information
system’ (or the methods by which the state bureaucracy generated registers
of persons and property amongst other information), and increasing the tax
yield of Egypt, that I want to concentrate on here, as they provide a good
backdrop for observing reforms in operation. They are well illustrated by the
eighty-seven letters and programmata which make up our two texts from
Panopolis.

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(a) State Bureaucracy

Official corruption was not new in Egypt, and we have already seen one good
example from early in Diocletian’s reign. 26 But nearly one quarter of the
letters in the Beatty papyri relate to dereliction of duty or abuse of official
power. 27 The offences recorded are varied—from general neglect of duties,
through delays in sending reports or documents, to criminal activities such
as fraud. We should consider some examples. The first is a letter from the
stratēgos of the Panopolite nome to the president of the city council (p.90)
of Panopolis. It concerns the appointment of liturgists to oversee the receipt
of supplies for the army and the organization of each kind of ‘species of
provision’, and it states that appointments have not been made, despite
two previous instructions. 28 The stratēgos issues the order again, with the
threat that both he and the president would be ‘placed in jeopardy’ if the
appointments were not made and the supplies received and organized.
The letter suggests a number of points: that the relationship between state
bureaucracy and the town councils was an uneasy one, that the councils
were less than enthusiastic about meeting the demands for requisitions
to supply Diocletian’s entourage, and finally that it took a threat to spur
action from the president. The chain of responsibility is in evidence. The
orders for requisition originate from Aurelius Isidorus, the procurator of the
Lower Thebaid, as only such high ranking officials could order requisition,
which in itself was an attempt to limit abuse. The stratēgos then delegates
responsibility to the president of the council, which despite his mention
of potential punishment for himself if the president fails to act, effectively
absolves him of blame. It is possible to describe the administration of Egypt
during this period as a dyarchy of state and local government, but what we
see here is a system that devolves much of the burden onto town councils
and local officials.

The next example shows the importance of efficient recordkeeping, one of

the central themes traceable in both papyri. In a letter to the katholikos,
the senior financial official, the stratēgos states that he has sent his letters
and memoranda of business for the month of Mesore (August), with the
exception of the corn account, which his predecessor’s assistant had failed to
produce. 29 In the next letter, the katholikos instructs the stratēgos not only
to ensure that these accounts should be sent, but also that accounts going
back to the month of Tybi (January) should be appended for inspection. 30
One of the principal administrative duties of the stratēgos was the regular
submission of accounts to his superiors. No doubt such a dereliction of duty
had occurred before, but the frequency with which such breakdowns of

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bureaucracy occur in our papyri is notable. There might be a connection
with the aftermath of the revolt of Domitius Domitianus, suggesting that
abuse was uncharacteristic, but a history of such occurrences in the (p.91)
papyrological record militates against this. In another letter to the katholikos,
the stratēgos states that, when first appointed to his office by the katholikos,
he retained the services of his predecessor’s assistant in order that ‘major
discrepancies’ in the registers could (presumably) be fixed. 31 The assistant
placed the blame on his own predecessor, and despite requests made in
writing by the stratēgos he has not been able to resolve the matter. The
letter was sent to the katholikos with a copy, and a copy of the notes of
action of the stratēgos. Multiple copies of documents in Egypt are common,
but what is interesting here are the lengths to which the stratēgos goes to
cover his back in the event of future enquiries, with careful documentation
of procedure, but also the apportionment of blame where it was deserved,
especially, perhaps, on those least able to defend themselves.

The very regularity of letters concerning administrative abuse is suggestive

of a number of points—major administrative problems, a continual attempt
to find solutions, but more significantly, a failure to do so. It is important
to note at this stage that in all but one case, it was the state, rather than
the local population, which was being defrauded through carelessness and
loopholes in the administrative system. Perhaps this is why so many letters
appear. As Lewis puts it, with regard to an earlier attempt to stop such
practices, officials were ‘not milking the populace but bilking the fisc’. 32

Familiar phrases appear, the real interests of the state are betrayed,
underlying problems are revealed. There are numerous references to
the interests of the treasury, and perhaps the most telling of these is the
simple statement, made on three occasions, ‘that the Treasury should be
secured from loss’. 33 This sentiment turns up often in documents from
Egypt. The prefect Tiberius Julius Alexander, in his edict of AD 68 (discussed
again below) makes a similar statement in response to complaints about
irregularities of tax collection. The implication is that corrections could be
made to the system, but ultimately the ‘fisc should not suffer’. Many of the
abuses of administration adversely affect the profit of the treasury—this is
the problem, not the fact that abuse takes place; indeed, it is probable that
they were accepted as (p.92) commonplace in administration. There is a
definite conflict of interest among local officials, and the pattern is circular.
The state makes demands which have to be met, officials fail to meet
them, are fined in order to make up or supplement the state’s demands,

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the officials then try to make up their own losses by further administrative
abuse.

One question which arises is whether threats of punishment were taken

seriously. 34 Similar threats of punishment exist in the Edict on Maximum
Prices of AD 301. Capital punishment is threatened to those who do not
adhere to the price system dictated in the edict, and it is added that this
should not be considered harsh—the best way to ensure one’s safety was to
observe moderation. 35 There is no evidence or such threats being carried
out, and there is also the probability that how strictly the letter of the law
was interpreted depended on each provincial governor.

The only document preserved in our two papyri to mention the nature of
punishment is a public notice issued by the procurator concerning wrongful
collection of tax payments by collectors of military supplies: ‘I had thought
that every pretext for the collection of money had been wholly removed,
because the divine decree has limited to a stated figure the amount of each
tax liability.’ 36 The procurator continues by saying that money had been
collected in lieu of meat, and not a sum equivalent to what was demanded,
but greater. The procurator states that this was intolerable to the taxpayer,
and so that these practices should stop, the procurator writes:
I have thought it expedient to call upon all by means of this
public notice, enjoining the collectors to abstain completely
from such actions, understanding that should they be detected
in such enormities they will not merely be visited with financial
penalties, but will be facing the risk of capital punishment;
and the contributors, on the other hand, must not submit
to such demands, but furnish the provisions for the military
commissariat precisely as laid down by regulation.

(p.93) As we have seen, the threat of punishment in other letters is left

vague, so why the difference in this instance? It must be because it is a
public notice designed to address matters of public concern, and therefore
the state must be seen to act in a stringent and effective way, both by
curbing the greed of collectors and giving legal weight to the individuals’
right not to pay up more than required. This is a matter of local importance,
but must be seen in the context of a system claiming concern for the general
weal.

The posting of such public notices was common in Egypt. 37 Perhaps the
best example of this practice, and one that is certainly relevant here, is the
edict of the prefect Tiberius Julius Alexander of AD 68. 38 In this well-known

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text, the prefect of Egypt addresses a string of complaints such as wrongful
appointment to liturgies, or excessive collection of tax based on inaccurate
estimates of yield; he promises rigorously to enforce proper procedure. The
text was inscribed on the gateway of the temple of Hibis in the Great Oasis
for public consumption—it was a vigorous exercise in public relations. 39

We could say the same of the public notice from Panopolis. If we assume,
and there is good reason to do so, that the revolt of Domitius Domitianus
had its roots in economic distress or, perhaps, discomfort with the new tax
system imposed in AD 297, the concern of the procurator that collection
should be equitable, the public should be aware of what they were expected
to pay and have the backing of the state not to pay more, and that there
should be a visible, harsh, and widely advertised punishment for abuse of
collection procedures, starts to make sense. Other forms of administrative
abuse could be dealt with internally, but if taxpayers were affected, there
had to be a public line. This must be a visible one, if Diocletian were to assert
his authority after the revolt. We should note here a similar purpose in the
edict of Tiberius Julius Alexander, when the prefect attempts to make clear
that offenders will be punished by saying that he ‘shall widely publish how
I have (p.94) exacted retribution from informers already condemned’. 40
Such practice is also clearly seen in the earlier edict of Vergilius Capito in
AD 49, who, in connection with his edict on malpractice in state requisition,
instructed the stratēgos of the Oasis as follows: ‘I have sent you a copy
of the edict which I have posted up in the city [Alexandria]. I wish you,
therefore, to post it up in a visible place both in the metropolis of the nome
and in each village, in clear and legible letters’. 41

But to return to the issue of threats of punishment and whether they were
taken seriously, a useful indicator appears at the end of the public notice just
discussed. After the threat of capital punishment, the procurator adds that,
if anyone is found guilty, they will be sent under guard to the katholikos ‘to
receive just retribution’. Lewis makes the point that the procurator’s threat is
weakened by the very fact that he may be able to issue threats, but he had
no sanction to carry them out. 42

Throughout the two papyri there is a clear drive towards administrative

transparency. This seems to have been one goal of Diocletian’s reforms
in Egypt, but there is a feeling that it had begun to lack impetus, and thus
appears to be pursued in a more determined manner in our documents
from Panopolis. Day books and other registers of tax collection, grain
accounts, and provisions for the army are all to be provided to the office

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of the procurator—accurate and up-to-date. Action was threatened against
discrepancies and irregularities of book-keeping. Officials guilty of fraud
or embezzlement would be brought to task. The speed and efficiency of
communications were maintained through the careful administration of the
cursus publicus, the imperial postal system. It is no coincidence that we
have considerable evidence for its workings contained within the letters
making up our two papyri. 43 There is good evidence for the breakdown of
the communications system. In one blanket letter from Aurelius Isidorus,
the procurator of the (p.95) Lower Thebaid, to the seven stratēgoi of his
procuratorial district, he orders them not to entrust letters to the conveyors
of military supplies, but rather to messengers (ὑπєρέται) 44 It seems that
failures to deliver supplies to soldiers had been taking place because letters
were not arriving at their destinations or were late. Ultimately, improvements
in the efficiency of Egypt’s bureaucratic structures were central to state
policy.

(b) Tax Yield and Land Economy

The mission of the state to improve bureaucracy has a direct bearing on its
second main purpose, extending the amount of land under cultivation. Early
in 297, an imperial edict which is not preserved, issued orders for an Empire-
wide census and registration of property. 45 This was closely connected to
the new system of land measurement and taxation mentioned in the edict
of Aristius Optatus, quoted above. There is good contemporary evidence
for the activities of surveyors preserved in the Archive of Aurelius Isidorus
of Karanis. 46 We have evidence also for their activities in Syria, and others
continue their work in the second of our Panopolis papyri. 47

Such improvement in the information available to officials was the first

step in bringing land into cultivation and categorizing existing land. 48
There certainly seems to be a serious attempt to increase the amount of
cultivable land during the period 295 to at least 302, and no doubt this
was a continuing initiative running alongside more effective cultivation
of good land. 49 This must include land restored to cultivation: we have
evidence, for example, from the archive of Aurelius Isidorus for land ‘first
(p.96) sown’ in 298. 50 Lewis has argued persuasively that this must mean
land ‘restored to cultivation’. Another papyrus from the Fayum dating to 302
shows that surveyors were active in assessing how much land had previously
been derelict (ownerless), but could now be classed as ‘seed land’. 51 The
documents from the archive of Aurelius Isidorus show a similar pattern, as
do two papyri from the village of Theadelphia which, taken together, show

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a concerted effort to increase cultivation. 52 This was not confined to the
Fayum, as similar documents appear from the Hermopolite and Kussite
nomes, which surely indicates universal practice, despite several internal
differences in the texts.

A group of three documents preserved in our second Panopolis papyrus

is particularly instructive on the issues of restoring land to cultivation and
the general procedures of categorization and registration. 53 The first is a
letter from the procurator addressed to the stratēgoi and iuratores of the
procuratorial district, and concerns a disturbance which had broken out in
the Lykopolite nome on account of ‘sown land reclaimed from the derelict
category (ἀπὸ ὑπολόγου ἀφόρου). It states that the katholikos, Pomponius
Domnus, has ordered that revenues owed to the state from previous years
are to be paid to the treasury in Lykopolis, and throughout the district similar
arrears are to be collected. Interestingly, as far as administrative practice
goes, the stratēgoi are instructed carefully to check the land registers drawn
up by the censitores, in order that they could identify the names of the
owners of this land from the census returns. The stratēgoi are to provide, in
writing, these names, along with the districts, toparchies, or villages in which
the land lay—in short, as much information as could possibly be gathered.
The disturbance had not broken out because of the collection of arrears,
but, it seems, because some landowners had been evading tax payments
by taking on this reclaimed land. Such land carried with it incentives in the
form of reduced tax rates, or remission from tax, but it is probable that in
this case the (p.97) land was not fully unproductive. Other taxpayers might
have been jealous. 54

The second document is a copy of the original letter of the katholikos to the
procurator, Aurelius Isidorus, appended to his letter to the stratēgoi. This
details the fraudulent practice of the stratēgos of the Lykopolite nome, who
seems to have sold land at too low a price. 55 Additionally, he had not held
the requisite number of auctions, presumably designed to achieve as high
a price as possible. Whatever the details, it was not the local population
which was being defrauded but the state, and this explains the lengths to
which senior officials were willing to go to clear the matter up. The katholikos
orders that the proper procedure for auction be followed, and that the
highest bidders are to be held to their bid, unless a higher bid was found.
Encouragement was to be given ‘to those who are willing to contribute
additional property to the treasury’. As we noted above, arrears in tax
payments were to be collected so that, using that familiar phrase, ‘the
treasury can be secured against loss’.

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The final document of the group is a copy of a proclamation by Aurelius
Isidorus, the procurator of the Lower Thebaid, which was to be published
throughout the nomes of his procuratorial district. In the light of the events
in Lykopolis, it offered the opportunity in all of the nomes for individuals to
make offers for reclaimed land, through a process of six auctions.

Several salient issues arise. The fundamental purpose of the state in this
matter was to increase the amount of land under cultivation. Derelict or
ownerless land generated no profit for the state; it made good sense to sell
it, offering tax incentives for a limited period, in order to generate profit on
two levels—the purchase price and, eventually, normal levels of appropriate
taxation. The property census and resulting registers provided the state
with information necessary to implement the proper taxation of all land,
no matter what its category, and permitted (p.98) the identification of
those individuals not paying their proper dues. Therefore, the extension of
land under cultivation, and the increase of revenues in Egypt, could only
take place as a result of improvements in bureaucracy. The defrauding
of the state was taken seriously by senior officials, but the lot of ordinary
citizens was of minor concern. These letters of AD 300 show that steps taken
in 298 (evidenced in the first Panopolis papyrus) to eradicate fraud and
maladministration had failed.

Closely connected to the extension of land under cultivation was the

perennial struggle to sustain and improve irrigation systems in Egypt—a
feature of any hydraulic civilization. 56 Annual surveys of the embankments
and channels were carried out, and the results sent to the office of the
procurator. 57 Supervision of irrigation occurs in one letter and an associated
public notice. The letter instructs the stratēgoi of the procuratorial district
to ensure that the surveys of the embankments are quickly finished and the
registers submitted to the procurators office. 58 The procurator states that
some surveys have already been received, probably to speed up the return
of outstanding ones.

The public notice was published seven days later, and offers a view of the
state’s approach to the local population, informing it of what was going
on. 59 The stratēgoi were instructed to place copies in the metropoleis
and the chief villages of the nome. The notice explains that the stratēgoi
have been requested to carry out the survey and oversee the work on
the embankments and canals, as well as any other work which may have
been neglected (and here he publishes what amounts to an amnesty). The
remainder of the notice, however, comprises an unusual request:

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I have thought it appropriate in addition by public notice to
appeal to the proprietors and farmers in all localities, and at
the same time to the dekaprotoi, who are primarily exposed to
the risks involved in (p.99) tax-collection, asking that should
they consider any such measure profitable to them, they
should apply to the stratēgoi and overseers of embankments
and surveyors, indicating those works which could be usefully
undertaken but have hitherto suffered neglect.

It seems that the public is being urged to make suggestions towards

improving the irrigation system, and the implication is that it is in their best
interests. No doubt their land would benefit, but so too, of course, would
the coffers of the treasury through increased yields in tax. The feeling that
the notice gives is that everyone, land-owners, farmers, tax-collectors, the
state, was acting together for the general good—an interesting exercise in
propaganda. It is doubtful, however, if many were blind to the underlying
purpose of the procurator. We should be mindful here of previous initiatives
designed to enhance the prosperity of all Egypt—for example in earlier
prefectural edicts. It is noteworthy also that this unusual request is made
after the survey had taken place. This has prompted an interesting
suggestion by Skeat, that the procurator had identified problems or errors
within the surveys that he had received and was anticipating criticism from
his superior, the katholikos, by being seen to act pro-actively in seeking ways
to improve the system. 60 If Skeat s suggestion is correct, this gives us a
valuable insight into the dynamics between officials of various levels, from
the stern rebukes and threats issued by the procurator, to his fear of rebuke
from his own direct superior.

PRECEDENTS FOR REFORM

Now that we have considered some aspects of the two Panopolis papyri
and considered some of the details they contain, it is time to begin to place
Diocletian’s reforms and their purpose into a wider historical context. The
similarity in language and intent between the documents preserved by our
papyri and earlier prefectural edicts has already been noted; it is clear that
the documents provide evidence for a more generally valid picture of life in
Egypt throughout the Roman period and beyond. The history of Roman Egypt
is punctuated throughout by economic hardship, high levels of taxation,
administrative malpractice, and attempts to curb these.

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(p.100) But was the third century any worse than previous centuries, and did
Diocletian really provide a new beginning for Egypt, solving many endemic
problems?

There is little doubt that the accession of Diocletian heralded a period of

change after considerable unrest. For Egypt, this was not the first time
such changes had occurred. A major period of innovation and restoration
took place after the annexation of Egypt by Augustus in 30 BC. As with
Diocletian’s reforms, it is likely that no single body of reform should be
envisaged, but rather gradual changes and restructuring moulded the
shape of the province. 61 The length of Augustus’ reign itself allowed for
considerable but gradual change, although some developments, such as
the introduction of private ownership of land, had a rapid effect. Augustus’
efforts concentrated upon the improvement of agricultural production and
irrigation systems, and the development of a new system of taxation. 62
The new system was based upon a regular census and poll-tax, the earliest
evidence for which dates to AD 11–12, but which was in place by 11/10 BC
and possibly as early as 19 BC, if not earlier. 63 The whole system depended
on an intricate information system, which, although possibly based on certain
Ptolemaic precedents of administrative practice, was a new and very Roman
development. It is entirely possible that the new system paved the way for
the development of an Empire-wide census and levy of poll-tax. 64 There is
evidence for a general ‘shake-up’ of administration early in Augustus’ reign,
and we may be able to link this with a revolt which broke out in the The baid
in 27 BC, which Strabo informs us took place ‘because of the tributes’. 65
It is possible that the revolt broke out, not because taxes were higher, but
because under the new regime they were collected more efficiently, or were
different. The introduction (p.101) of the new poll-tax, if it can be placed this
early, can hardly have been popular.

We have seen already that the edict of the prefect Tiberius Julius Alexander
of AD 68 attempted to address many problems inherent in the administrative
system, but was really more an exercise in propaganda than anything else.
Certainly, there are signs of similar economic distress in the papyri not long
after Vespasian’s accession, and moving well into the second century the
fortunes of Egypt fluctuate between prosperity (perhaps only an illusion of
government propaganda) and hardship. There is good evidence for high
levels of anachōrēsis, or fleeing tax or liturgical obligations, and that the
state’s response was only to increase the burden on those remaining in
their villages, to the point where only a moratorium on tax payments could
resolve the issue. 66 The state’s response did nothing to solve the underlying

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administrative problems and conflicts of interest, but rather offered a short-
term remedy so that, to paraphrase the emperor Tiberius, the population
could continue to be shorn, rather than flayed. 67

A full survey of evidence from the third century is beyond the scope of
this chapter, but much can be made of some specific examples. Early in
the century, Septimius Severus, apart from instituting town councils in
Alexandria and the nome metropoleis, may have encouraged the reclamation
of land by selling it to soldiers or offering tax incentives. 68 But two emperors
stand out as being particularly important: Philip the Arabian and Probus.

In an important paper, Peter Parsons has drawn attention to a small

concentration of documents in the reign of Philip (AD 244–9) which
demonstrates a considerable level of bureaucratic activity, and provides
a good example of how such texts can illuminate important features of a
period otherwise little known. 69 He studies seven documents which make
up the dossier of Marcus (p.102) Marcellus, the rationalis, and Salutaris,
the procurator Augustorum; all concern registration of land or taxes or the
organization of liturgies. 70 Without doubt, the two were senior officials,
and as Parsons notes, it is unusual that they act together, and that they
do so only during the reign of Philip. This unusual arrangement suggests
special duties. The first of these may have been a general improvement of
bureaucracy, the ‘information system’, as three papyri attempt to resolve
errors made in tax-registers. 71 Secondly, it is possible that they ordered
a general registration of property, which, until the third century, had been
a regular feature of administration, but had fallen into abeyance. It is
important to note that the next such general registration was that ordered
by Diocletian in AD 297/8. Thirdly, attempts to reduce the burden of liturgies
included the appointment of more officials to spread the burden, and these
accompanied various innovations in taxation, which may have included the
replacement of sitologoi (involved in the collection of taxes in kind) with
dekaprōtoi, or at least an extension in their duties. 72 These were not the
only officials to appear. There is good reason to believe that the rationalis
(katholikos) appeared for the first time under Philip, and there is no doubt
that the appointment of such a senior official was a major encroachment on
the power of the prefect. 73 All of these reforms must be seen as part of a
general attempt to improve and revamp the administrative machinery of
Egypt, which during the third century had declined.

The emperor Probus (AD 276–82) seems to have embarked on a series of

similar initiatives, although less is known. His biographer claims that he used

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soldiers to clear irrigation channels, which had fallen into disrepair, although
the similarity with Suetonius’ comments (p.103) about Augustus is intriguing.
74 However, a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus sheds further light on the issue,
and contains all the familiar formulae:
Aurelius Harpocration, stratēgos of the Oxyrhynchite nome,
to the dekaprōtoi of the nome greeting. A copy of the circular
letter written to us, the stratēgoi of the Heptanomia and
Arsinoite nome, by his highness the dioikētes, Ulpius Aurelius,
concerning the building up of dykes and the cleansing of
canals is sent to you, dear friends, in order that you may be
informed and follow his instructions. The one of you who is the
first to receive this missive should communicate it to the rest.
I pray for your health, dear friends. The 3rd year of our lord
Marcus Aurelius Probus Augustus, Pharmouthi [.].

Ulpius Aurelius to the stratēgoi of the Heptanomia and the

Arsinoite nome, greeting. The season for the building up of
the dykes and the cleansing of the canals having arrived, I
thought it necessary to announce to you by this letter that
all the cultivators and … ought now to build these up with
all zeal on the … belonging to them, with a view to both the
public gain of all and their own private advantage, for I am
persuaded that everyone is aware of the benefit resulting from
these works. Therefore let it be the care of you, the stratēgoi
and dekaprōtoi, both to urge all to devote themselves to this
most necessary labour, and to see that the overseers usually
elected for the purpose are chosen from magistrates or private
persons, who will compel everyone to perform his proper
work by personal service, according to the rule given in the
constitution of the appointment, with no malice or favour, so
that the dykes are raised to the ordained height and breadth
and the breaches are filled up, in order that they may be able
to withstand the flood of the most sacred Nile auspiciously
approaching, and that the canals are cleansed up to the so-
called standards and the usual width, in order that they might
easily contain the coming influx of water for the irrigation of
the fields, this being for the common weal, and that absolutely
no money is exacted from people in place of work. If anyone
dares to attempt exactions or neglect these orders, let him
know that not only his property but his life will be at stake for

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injuring measures designed for the safety of all Egypt. I pray
for your health. The 3rd year …

Presented by Aurelius Silvanus, assistant, in the 3rd year,

Pharmouthi 6. 75

This is a circular letter, which shows a general directive rather than a

response to a local short-term problem. The concerns of the state (p.104)
officials are clear, that a stop should be put to administrative malpractices;
malice or favour shown in who was chosen to perform liturgies, and the
exaction of money in place of labour are already familiar to us from the
Panopolis texts. The drive is towards administrative efficiency and the
maximizing of land under cultivation through proper irrigation. Another
familiar feature is the threat of capital punishment should the proper
procedures not be followed. The administrative hierarchy also appears—the
stratēgos passes on the directions of the prefect, and by implication, passes
on responsibility for any failure. Lastly, there is the familiar statement that all
of this is in the best interests of Egypt: it is doubtful if many were fooled.

FROM PARTICULAR TO GENERAL

The brief survey of earlier periods offered here shows that neither the two
principal motives of the early reforms of Diocletian as illustrated by the
Panopolis papyri, the improvement of bureaucracy and the extension of land
under cultivation, nor the reforms which they generated were new, although
viewed collectively the reforms may add up to something. Successive
emperors struggled against perennial problems: embezzlement and fraud,
the conflicts of interest among state officials, neglect and incompetence
among administrators, the problems that these created within the land
economy, the insatiable demands of the state, and disgruntled provincials
(although this was of secondary importance, and nothing that a few well-
chosen words of propaganda would not solve). Parsons has eloquently
described the underlying purpose of emperors with respect to bureaucracy
and the land economy: ‘these are the objects of any regime which wishes to
run Egypt at a profit: full cultivation of the available land, full and accurate
records.’ 76

But that Diocletian’s reforms in Egypt were not new in spirit or design does
not mean that the third century was not a period of crisis. Although the
traditional constituent factors of the crisis— inflation, successive emperors,
barbarian invasions, increasing size and power of the army—have all been

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attacked by modern scholars in some way, the sum total is undoubtedly a
period of unrest and uncertainty.

(p.105) What were the solutions? New administrative systems, censuses, and
registrations, it was hoped, would improve matters. Under Diocletian, new
units of measurement replaced a less equitable and less regular system. New
officials, who were often special appointments, joined the already swelling
ranks of civil-servants. The duties of officials were streamlined, assistants
appointed. Encouragement and threats, perhaps not in equal measure, were
meted out. Punishments to fraudulent or negligent officials were ordered
after they had been tracked down.

The motives for reform, and the details contained within the papyri from
Panopolis allow us to make some general observations about Diocletian’s
government. First, rather than showing him to be a radical reformer, they
confirm the opposite view of him as a prudent and conservative emperor
facing serious economic and social problems. 77 He introduced a series of
reforms in many ways similar in design to those introduced by Augustus
three centuries earlier and a number of subsequent reforming emperors.
The reforms were thus tried and well tested; they regularized and re-booted
existing bureaucratic systems. They were therefore not innovative, and
the only feature that could be considered revolutionary is that they were
applied to Egypt at roughly the same time by one emperor. Second, the
hierarchy of government displays a remarkable degree of centralized control.
Arguably this had always existed in Egypt, but this was exactly what had
broken down in the course of the three centuries leading to Diocletian, and
which successive emperors had tried to retain. Increased central control is
demonstrated, for instance, by the decline in importance of the stratēgos
at the beginning of the fourth century and Diocletian’s municipal reforms.
78 Third, this profoundly interventionist stance, shown by the willingness
of state officials to intervene directly in local affairs and to issue threats
against inefficiency and corruption, finds parallels in other Diocletianic edicts,
such as the price edict. What can we make of the high moral tone and harsh
threats? Was this a government that could enforce them, or was it idealistic
and naïve?

(p.106)Perhaps the answer lies in the years following Diocletian’s reforms.

There is a reasonable body of evidence from the early fourth century
preserved in documents from the Fayum—perhaps most importantly the
archives of Aurelius Isidorus (ad 275–324), from Karanis, and the roughly
contemporary Aurelius Sakaon, from Theadelphia. Whilst we should

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remember that both of these archives come from a defined region within
Egypt, and therefore may not be fully typical, both provide evidence for
considerable economic distress. 79 As both the Aurelii Isidorus and Sakaon
were better off in comparison to ordinary farmers, they were in a position
more easily to petition state officials and seek redress. 80 In AD 280, Aurelia
Artemis petitioned the prefect Hadrianus Sallustus concerning the theft
of her husband’s livestock, claiming that one Syrion, a former dekaprōtos
had used his ‘local power’ to appropriate the animals. 81 Such abuses were
what Diocletian tried to stop. Both archives contain valuable evidence
about the imperial edicts ordering the general registration of property,
and fit in well with the Panopolis papyri. But documents from the archives
dating after AD 300 show the same problems. For example, in AD 314
Aurelius Isidorus petitioned the prefect of Egypt Julius Julianus concerning
the unlawful behaviour of the praepositus of the pagus in which the village
of Karanis lay and the komarchoi of the same village. Unauthorized tax
assessments, extortion of money and livestock, and fraud, formed the basis
of his accusations. 82 A fragmentary document from the archive of Aurelius
Sakaon, dating to AD 324, mentions an imperial order that ‘no one should
be subject to undue demands’—perhaps by now a conventional formula of
words, which shows widespread administrative abuse. 83

The Chester Beatty papyri from Panopolis offer a rich illustration of the
reforms made by Diocletian in the tax and information systems of Egypt
before the turn of the fourth century. His motives (p.107) were twofold: to
improve the bureaucratic machinery and to increase the agricultural yield
of the province. In these respects, his motives and even the nature of his
reforms were not new. His reforms failed to alleviate the problems they
addressed, just as those of previous emperors had failed. This was because
they did not address the underlying issues—the rapacity of taxation and
liturgies. The burden of administration lay chiefly with the local population,
but they saw no benefit, and were given few incentives beyond words of
propaganda to improve efficiency. This was the cause of the conflict of
interests that led to fraud and negligence. Officials had no incentive to
improve administration—efficiency was not in their own interests.

There was a wider aim in Diocletian’s reforms—more fully to incorporate

Egypt into the wider Roman Empire. 84 To this extent, a universal system
of taxation was introduced (we have noted the activities of censitores in
Syria). But this, again, was neither new nor revolutionary—Augustus had
done just that early in his prin-cipate. Egypt emerged into the fourth century
no better off than it had been in previous centuries. It is doubtful if the lot of

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ordinary provincial people changed much. Diocletian’s reforms probably had
only a short-term effect. Greater efficiency of tax collection, and perhaps a
decline in opportunities for fraud amongst officials, may have been promoted
briefly, but contemporary archives show that it was not long before Egypt
was returned to its normal, administratively corrupt pattern of life. This was a
symptom of failure, the subsequent fourth-century changes in administrative
structures, as well as, arguably, the increasing presence of the military,
betray a continuing instability. 85 There is good reason to accept that there
was a general drive in the fourth century towards a society based on the
rigorous and fair dispensation of justice and a commitment to the rule of
law; it is perhaps the evidence of papyri that might show just how such aims
succeeded. 86

(p.108) APPENDIX: SOME OFFICIALS MENTIONED IN P PANOP. BEATTY 1 AND

Praefectus Aegypti: the prefect of Egypt. Previously the equestrian governor

of the whole province, after the division of Egypt into two provinces by
Diocletian in AD 295 (?), the prefect retained control of the province of
Aegyptus, which was made up of Lower Egypt and the Fayum.

Praeses: the governor of the second province of Egypt, the Thebaid (Upper
Egypt).

Katholikos: replaced the Dioikētes as the senior financial official in Egypt. His
responsibilities covered both provinces of Aegyptus and the Thebaid.

Magister rei privatae: a senior official who took over the responsibilities of
the idios logos, an equestrian with responsibilities for administering the
imperial patrimonium (usiac account).

Procurator (ἐπιτρόπoc): after the province of the Thebaid was further

divided into two, Upper and Lower, each was placed under the control of
a procurator. Their responsibilities were essentially those of a governor,
co-ordinating and supervising more junior officials in all aspects of
administration.

Stratēgos: previously the senior nome official, with responsibility for

the collection of tax and administration of the land economy, which role
continues until the early fourth century, when the significance of the office
declined. Stratēgoi were responsible to the procurators, to whom they had to
supply written reports at regular intervals.

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Censitor: a surveyor, with responsibility for measuring land in accordance
with the imperial edict of AD 296. Their authority extended across the whole
province.

Iuratores: officials who assisted with the measurement of land, especially

the inspection of boundaries. Often found in conjunction with censitores and
dekaprōtoi.

Dekaprōtos: an official with responsibility for collecting various taxes.

Nome: administrative subdivision of Egypt. The number of nomes is not

known with certainty, and indeed their number and character change over
time, but is usually thought to be over thirty.

Toparchy: administrative subdivision of a nome.

Notes:

(1) P Panop. Beatty 1 and 2 = T. C. Skeat (ed.) (1964) Papyri from Panopolis
in the Chester Beatty Library Dublin (Chester Beatty Monographs 1) (Dublin).
All papyri are cited using the standard conventions in J. F. Oates et al. (5th
edn., 2001) Checklist of Editions of Greek and Latin Papyri, Ostraca and
Tablets, BASP Suppl. 7

(2) I append a brief glossary of technical terms below.

(3) P Oxy. 31.2554 (3rd cent.).

(4) See similar material discussed in relation to the thirteenth Sibylline

Oracle in Potter ( 1994 ).

(5) P Oxy. 12.1411 = Sel. Pap. 2.230 (ad 260). See Rathbone ( 1996 ) for a
new interpretation of this document.

(6) P Oxy. 1.58 (AD 288).

(7) Drew-Bear ( 1984 ).

(8) There is much debate on the chronology of this revolt. AD 297 is now
accepted as a secure date, see Thomas ( 1976 ) and Barnes ( 1996 ).

(9) P Mich. 3.216 (AD 297).

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(10) Jones ( 1964 ) 35. See also Alfo¨ldy ( 1974 ). For a general survey of the
uncritical view of the 3rd-cent. crisis, see Cameron ( 1993 ) 3–12.

(11) Johnson ( 1951 ), although, as noted above (p. 84), expenditure on

building repair could be in response to damage caused by civil unrest.

(12) Rathbone ( 1996 ).

(13) P Oxy. 63.4352 (ad 285). Similar restoration motifs appear in imperial
panegyric (e.g. Pan. Lat. 10 (2) 1.4) and on coinage (eg. the Arras medallion
legend (Constantius c.ad 297)—redditor lucis aeternae). We might also
compare speeches prepared for the adventus of a provincial governor.

(14) Lactantius, De Mort. Pers. 7.4. It is now generally accepted that

Lactantius’ pro-Christian bias serves to obscure fact and weakens his
credibility.

(15) The definitive work is Thomas ( 1982 ), esp. 15–29.

(16) Lallemand (1963) remains the basic work on administration; on the new
provincial structures, see 42–57. See more briefly, Bagnall ( 1993 ) 62–7.
Bowman (forthcoming) offers a survey of Diocletian’s reforms, on which I
here rely.

(17) On these offices, see Jones ( 1964 ) 411–27. On Severan precedents

for the katholikos, see Rostovtzeff ( 1957 ) 725 n. 53 . This should now be
rejected, based on a new reading of BGU 7.1578; see Parsons ( 1967 ).
The katholikos (rationalis) is unattested between 249 and 286. It can be no
coincidence that Diocletian reinstated this official.

(18) Noted by Skeat, P Panop. Beatty, pp. 111–12

(19) On the disappearance of epistratēgoi, see Thomas ( 1982 ) 64–8.

(20) See Thomas ( 1978 ).

(21) Egypt was not alone in being surveyed—there are inscriptions from
Syria, which may be connected to tax reforms there. See Millar ( 1993 ) 535–
44, and Corcoran ( 2000 ) 175–6.

(22) P Cairo Isid. 1 (16 March AD 297). We should, of course, be wary of its
propagandist tone.

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(23) See Rowlandson ( 1996 ) 63–9. Different land categories seem to have
been used from AD 297, which demonstrate, as Rowlandson points out, little
change on the surface, but important changes in detail.

(24) See below 102.

(25) More generally on Diocletian’s economic reforms, see Ermatinger ( 1990

) and ( 1996 ), with Jones ( 1964 ) 61–8. For a rosy contemporary view, see
Pan. Lat. 5 (8), with the comments of Nixon and Rodgers (1994).

(26) See Lewis ( 1954 ).

(27) Noted by Lewis ( 1991 ).

(28) P Panop. Beatty 1.109–19

(29) Ibid .v1.64–70

(30) Ibid . v1.71–6

(31) Ibid . v1.90–106

(32) Lewis ( 1954 ) 154.

(33) P Panop. Beatty1.200; 2.143; 2.219.

(34) Lewis ( 1991 ) 167–73 lists the various crimes and punishments.

(35) For bibliography, see Corcoran ( 2000 ) 178–9.

(36) P Panop. Beatty2.229–44. I do not use ‘extortion of money’ as Skeat

translates ἀργυρ[ογογία]ϲ; this word is not normally used in a pejorative
sense. There is no sense in this letter of intimidation or the use of violence,
but money was collected instead of meat, in the course of normal procedures
of collection, where levies in kind should have been made. The actions are
described further on in the letter as ἀπληϲτία which again has no sense of
intimidation, but merely greed.

(37) There is no indication in the text about how it was done in this instance
— either in the form of an inscription or a less durable medium.

(38) OGIS 669. See Chalon ( 1964 ).

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(39) Traditionally, this inscription has been taken as evidence for a general
economic crisis in the reign of Nero, but evidence from papyri shows that
economic problems were of longer standing, and the edict should more
properly be seen as an exercise in propaganda, the prefect assuring the
inhabitants of his province that things will be better under the reign of Galba.

(40) OGIS 669.1.45.

(41) OGIS 665. On the publication of edicts and the geographical range of
prefect’s pronouncements, see Hobson ( 1993 ) 196.

(42) Lewis ( 1991 ) 168.

(43) We have evidence of the collection and dispatch of letters (1.31–2),

receipt of postal registers (1.46), provision of ships for the postal service
(1.6–62; 252–5), mansiones (1.256–63), animal requisition (2.256–8), and
pay and fodder for animals engaged by the cursus publicus (2.274–6). On
communication, see Thomas ( 1999 ) specifically on papyrological evidence,
and generally Kolb ( 2000 ).

(44) PPanop. Beatty2.117–27

(45) See Corcoran ( 2000 ) 174–7 for details. The imperial edict is mentioned
by Aristius Optatus, in his edict of AD 297, see P Cairo Isid1, quoted above.

(46) P Cairo Isid2 (1 Dec. AD 298); 3(11 Sept. AD 299); 4 (Sept. AD 299); 5
(11 Sept. AD 299); 7 (ad 298/9). These were declarations of land made to
the censitor Julius Sabinus, and were used by him to construct a register of
land, evidence for which is provided by P Cairo Isid6 (ad 300–5). A revision of
these details took place later, see P Cairo Isid8 (ad 309). See also P Sakaon
76 (Nov./Dec. AD 298) addressed to Julius Sabinus the censitor. From AD
300, see P Sakaon 2 and 3 for declarations of land at Theadelphia.

(47) On censitores in Syria, see Millar ( 1993 ) 535, and Corcoran ( 2000 )
175–6. See P Panop. Beatty 2.87–90; 131; 142–6, cited by Corcoran ( 2000 )
176–7.

(48) On land categorization in the Roman period, see Rowlandson ( 1996 )

27–69.

(49) See Lewis ( 1943 ).

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(50) P Cairo Isid5 (AD 299) γ̑η ϲπαρείϲη ιδ ἔτουϲ The land would not have
been uninundated, as the general term for this was ἄβροχοϲ

(51) P Corn. 20 (ad 302). See generally Lallemand ( 1964 ) 174−80, with full
references to relevant papyri.

(52) P Thead. 54 and 55 (ad 300) = P Sakaon 2 and 3.

(53) P Panop. Beatty2.128–34; 135–44; 155–60. After AD 297, ἄβροχοϲ no

longer enjoyed such tax incentives, only unproductive land known as χέρϲοϲ
See Rowlandson ( 1996 ) 64.

(54) This is Skeat’s suggestion in his notes to the text, and it seems sound,
although there may be other explanations. We will probably never know the
details.

(55) The katholikos states that he received 2500 atticae for the land, but that
offers as high as 45 talents had been made from certain individuals, some
twenty-seven times the price for which the land was sold. It is possible that
the stratēgos sold the land to an acquaintance, or bought it himself through
an agent. On currency see Bagnall ( 1985b ).

(56) See generally Butzer ( 1976 ), Bonneau ( 1964 , 1972 , and 1993 ), and
most recently Bowman and Rogan (1999) passim.

(57) Nome stratēgoi certainly had a supervisory role in the land economy,
and there is evidence of some overlap in the responsibilities of epistratēgoi
and the dioikētes in the reign of Probus, but this may have been a temporary
measure, see Thomas ( 1982 ) 173. With the disappearance of epistratēgoi
and the dioikētes, it is likely that supervision of the irrigation systems was
subsumed by the procurator. This may also represent a move towards a
more centralized system.

(58) P Panop. Beatty2.76–9 (14th Mecheir AD 300).

(59) Ibid . v2.222–8 (21st Mecheir AD 300).

(60) Skeat, in P Panop. Beatty, p. 137 Alternatively, he may have simply

wanted to avoid the expense and trouble of having to repeat the survey.

(61) There is substantial debate on the level of continuity between the

Ptolemaic and Augustan periods; see Lewis ( 1970 ) and ( 1984 ). Lewis
argues for considerable Roman innovation.

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(62) Suet. Aug. 18, notes that soldiers were used to repair and construct
irrigation systems, which had fallen into disrepair under the later Ptolemies.

(63) See Bagnall ( 1991 ) and Bagnall and Frier ( 1994 ).

(64) As argued by Rathbone ( 1993 ) 112, who sees Egypt as a testing

ground for tax innovation. On taxation, see Sharp ( 1999b ) for a recent
discussion and up-to-date bibliography.

(65) Strabo 17.1.53 (C 819) διὰ τοὺϲ φόρουϲ. Rathbone ( 1993 ) 86–8
suggests that the revolt was in response to the introduction of poll-tax, which
he places in 28 BC.

(66) The introduction of ‘collective responsibility’ was an innovation of

Trajan. For a tax moratorium of Hadrian, see SB 3.6944 (ad 136); for the tax
concession of AD 168, see SB 14.11374, with Lewis ( 1980 ). See Sharp (
1999b ) 227–28, and note especially the evidence from Thmouis for regular
moratoria. Still important is Lewis ( 1937 ), with Lewis ( 1993 ).

(67) Dio 57.10, with P Oxy. 55.3807 n. 39 .

(68) See the comments of Rostovtzeff ( 1957 ) 725 n. 53 .

(69) Parsons ( 1967 ), with comments of Bowman ( 1976 ).

(70) Further documents from Philip’s reign have been published in P Oxy.
42.3046-50. The last of these documents adds to the dossier of Marcellus
and Salutaris.

(71) P Leit. 16 (ad 244/7) = P Wisc. 2.86 = SB 8.10208 from Philadelphia; P

Mil. Vogl. 2.97 (ad 245/6), from Tebtunis; and P Oxy. 1.78 (reign of Philip). P
Oxy. 42.3050 concerns the restoration of boundary markers on plots of land,
which again shows a concern for accurate records.

(72) See most recently, Thomas ( 1975 ). There may have been a complete
overhaul of tax collection systems, see Schwartz ( 1947 ), noted by Parsons
( 1967 ). P Oxy. 42.3049 (ad 247) is the earliest text from Oxyrhynchus to
mention dekaprotoi, and adds support to the view that they were a new
creation of Philip’s.

(73) Parsons ( 1967 ), who also notes that special appointments were a
feature of the 3rd cent.

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(74) HA, Probus 9, with the comments of Schwartz ( 1970 ).

(75) P Oxy. 12.1409 (AD 278).

(76) Parsons ( 1967 ) 135.

(77) For the traditional view of Diocletian, see Cameron ( 1993 ) 30–46,
Williams ( 1985 ), and MacMullen ( 1988 ) for a bleak view of Roman
administration. More recently, Ermatinger ( 1990 ) and ( 1996 ) has adopted
a more zealous view of Diocletian as a radical reformer.

(78) See generally, Bowman ( 1974 ) on aspects of municipal reform. On the

decline of the stratēgos, see Thomas ( 1960 ).

(79) e.g. P Sakaon 42 (c. AD 323) regarding the breakdown of the irrigation
system.

(80) On the readiness of wealthy individuals to seek redress, see Bagnall (

1993 ) 168.

(81) P Sakaon 36 = Sel. Pap 2.293 (c. AD 280).

(82) P Cairo Isid. 73 (ad 314). From the same year, P Cairo Isid. 72 concerned
the use of donkeys owned by the village for the private gain of the
praepositus.

(83) P Sakaon 41 = P Ryl. 4.659 (ad 324).

(84) Lallemand ( 1964 ) 33.

(85) The best book on Egypt in the 4th cent., and later, is Bagnall ( 1993 ).

(86) See Harries ( 1999 ) on the efficacy of law, and Honore´ in this volume,
who argues that the ordinary individual was better protected by law in the
fourth century than in the Principate.

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Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to
Late Empire
Simon Swain and Mark Edwards

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

A New Golden Age? The Northern Praefectura Urbi from the Severans to Diocletian

Emanuele Papi

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter shows that in the region to the north of Rome (Regio VII),
which is taken as representative of Italy, the cities where so much public
investment was made in the first and second centuries were by the start of
the third in clear decline. Contraction of inhabited zones, reuse of old marble
for new inscriptions with inferior scripts, abandonment of rural habitations
— these are well-documented signs. Yet economic difficulty is not the only
cause: changes in landholding patterns, in particular the acquisition of vast
tracts of countryside by the imperial purse, played a part. Ideology as well as
greed was to blame.

Keywords: Late Antiquity, Roman Empure, Italy, economic decline

INTRODUCTION
The early years of the fourth century AD saw a great increase in the
population of Rome. The number of proletarian residents can be estimated
at hundreds of thousands, a figure based on the quantity of pork consumed
yearly, the number of tenements (insulae) per city regio, and the visitors to
the public baths with which emperors had unceasingly continued to endow
the city (Lo Cascio 2001 , with bibliography). The city had not seen such
a large population since the times of the early Empire. Decline had set in
the reign of the Severans, but after this numbers had picked up and there
was a steady rise in population (Morley 1996 : 33–9). Where did all these

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people come from, what places did they leave behind when they made their
way to the city, and what reasons could have driven these newcomers to
swell the ranks of indigent city dwellers? Let us try shifting our viewpoint
away from Rome itself to survey the landscape of town and country in the
surrounding area. For example, let us take the territory under the jurisdiction
of the praefectus urbi for a radius of 100 miles from Rome, stretching from
the Tyrrhenian coast to the Apennines (the via Salaria would form an artificial
limit to the east), typical of central Tyrrhenian Italy and comprising around
fifty cities which were capitals of administrative districts, ancient Etruscan–
Italic centres, or new towns built by the Romans (Fig. 1 ). Wandering about
these cities in the third century you would have seen buildings all around
you, displaying the architectural and decorative styles of the early Principate,
when the Roman model of the city saw a rapid diffusion. It was a time when,
thanks to beneficentia organized to serve (p.54) community and regime
alike, together with the contributions from the wealthier residents, these
centres had gone through the most important transformations in their history
to endow themselves with running water, sewers, paved roads and squares,
buildings for all sorts of entertainments, new temples, porticos, public
areas with all the facilities life in the city might call for, houses fitted out in
accordance with the taste of the times, and, at every turn, finely worked
marble embellishments, with altars, steles, statues, and inscriptions (for
baths, as we shall see, the citizens had to wait a little longer). Change had
also come to the landscape beyond the city limits, with new bridges, roads,
substructures, infrastructure, and, scattered over the countryside, villas,
country houses, and farmhouses amid well-organized systems of fields, and
monuments marking where many landowners had chosen to be laid to rest
(Papi 2000 for southern Etruria). By the second century the period of great
change was already over; many Italic rentiers had turned to dust leaving
no heirs behind them, their place taken by strangers who set little store by
the cities where their fundi happened to be. Management of the agrarian
economy was now seeing the first signs of change, with extensive farming
gradually taking over from the ancient plantations. The cities’ building
operations were now characterized by works to check advancing decay and
the ravages of time (that vetustas so often mentioned in epigraphs). Special
attention was reserved for one type of building alone, as we shall see, while
the emperors increasingly concentrated on the repair of old buildings and
basic construction work. Of course, private euergetism did not disappear, but
the funds now supplied were a mere trickle in comparison with the capital
lavished in the past. If the Julio-Claudian age had seen individuals supporting
the foundation of theatres or amphitheatres, donations were now mainly
made at the level of banquets, dinner parties, oil for the baths, sportuli, tips,

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and the giving of games. So we come to the third century and the focus of
this chapter.

(p.55)

Fig. 1. Map showing towns under jurisdiction of the praefectus urbi within
100-mile radius of Rome, from the Tyrrhenian coast to the Apennines.

TOWN AND COUNTRY

As the third century went by the cities around Rome lost once and for all
the identity that had been constructed and organized in the first decades
of the Julio-Claudian era and finalized in the second century AD. The form
they had assumed under the early Empire (p.56) slowly but surely became
unrecognizable, disfigured, or obliterated. Whole districts, raised during
the building boom of the early Empire, now stood uninhabited, abandoned,
or used to bury the dead. Thus at Pyrgi the inhabited area had shrunk
back within the limits of the ancient colonia maritima; immediately outside
the walls poor graves were dug in the remains of the Augustan buildings
(Colonna 1965 ). Likewise at Tuscana the smart residential districts of the
first century AD were in ruins by the early fourth, while the roads, no longer
traversed or maintained, were covered in earth and weeds (Gianfrotta and
Potter 1980 ). Again, at Veii, repopulated and reconstructed under the early
Empire as municipium Augustum Veiens, as the forum fell into ruins a villa
rose nearby as if it were in the open countryside (Baratte 1970 ). At Rusellae
the public buildings of the Etruscan age that had served important civil
and religious functions were now abandoned (Celuzza and Fentress 1994 :
606), while the richest domus were taken over for inappropriate activities
(Michelucci 1985 : 61, 115). At Volsinii the amphitheatre was still being

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used for the traditional annual gathering of the Etruscans in the mid-third
century (Gabrici 1906 : 78–88), but by the end of this century the city had
seen the most radical changes in its whole history, and a hundred years
later the forum was a cemetery (Gros 1981 ). Throughout the third century
Cosa saw epigraphs appearing to honour the many emperors who came
and went, but after the rule of the Severans not a trace is to be found of
the life of the Cosani. It is difficult to gauge the size of the populations of
these cities with any precision; for Saturnia (nearly twenty hectares) we
have firm data for the year AD 234 suggesting somewhere between five
hundred and a thousand (Jacques 1993 ), but as we have no comparisons
with other periods we can only take the figure for what it is. Nor do the towns
of Umbria (where there is any life at all) show any signs of construction
works whatsoever. Such is the case of Carsulae (Morigi 1998 ), for example,
and Tuder (Tascio 1989 ), and indeed of Ocriculum as far as we can judge.
At Cures, in Sabina, only a very limited area shows signs of habitation for the
early third century (Muzzioli 1980 ), while excavations at Forum Novum still
under way do not seem to be revealing a particularly happy picture. 1 Where
the odd building operation did get under way, marble and stone were (p.57)
extracted from the noble edifices that had fallen into disuse (as in the case
of the baths of Lucus Feroniae: Gazzetti 1992 : 33f.) and little account was
taken of the public land that had so far remained free from occupation by
private citizens (as at Graviscae, for the new, unsystematic domus: Torelli
1971 ). The use of recycled material in the new workyards is not only a sign
of economy but also suggests that the stone quarries were in disuse, while
the brick factories were no longer producing for the local market but only
to meet the needs of the capital: we find broken-up tiling, bricks of various
sizes, and small blocks of tufa and travertine taken from grand structures.
Improvisation seems often to have played a part in the techniques applied,
in sharp contrast with previous masonry work (from the Augustan reticulate
to Severan brickwork) that had been constructed in new materials with order
and symmetry. It actually looks as if the masons were no longer capable of
raising buildings with straight walls and right angles (comparison between
the bath complexes of Lucus Feroniae, Trajanic baths, and the later baths
says it all: Papi 2000 , figs. 90 and 121).

Particularly illuminating here is the use of marble. At Veii, between AD 202

and 210, to honour Septimius Severus and his son a slab of marble was
used that dated back to the times of Tiberius; the inscription that named
a porticus Augusta and that had originally been erected for Augustus’
successor was overturned, the marble smoothed down, adorned with simple
decoration, and finally inscribed with the names of the two emperors (CIL

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11.3784–5). This is the first reuse we know, the first of a long series. From
then on, it became customary to recycle ancient stones (inscriptions,
columns, and marbles) with no particular qualms, nor any ideological intent;
indeed, the families named on them had long disappeared, and there was
no one left who might care to save them from oblivion. The dedication stone
of the theatre of Falerii was used to honour Gallienus and Salonina (CIL
11.3089), while a cipollino column was cut down and turned into a plinth for
a statue at Veii (CIL 11.3807), and at Lucus Feroniae one of the columns of
the portico was taken down and cut to fashion an honorary milestone (AE
1988: 559). In the third century commemorative epigraphs would generally
be incised on the back of reused slabs, as can be seen in the thermae of
Tarquinii, refurbished in the mid-third century, and the thermae of Falerii,
restored on the orders of the emperor Gallienus (see below). For (p.58) the
statues of sovereigns which followed one another in rapid succession marble
would be used as sparingly as possible, facing existing plinths with a veneer
of small slabs and making increasing use of the local stones that could be
found in situ with no great labour. From the Severans onwards it had even
become more or less impossible to find anyone capable of inscribing the
stone with a fine hand, practically all the inscriptions showing an evident
falling off from the standards of the past (Di Stefano Manzella 1979 : 105–8).

Things cannot have been any better in the countryside. The results of
research carried out over the last decades should have convinced most
archaeologists that a large part of the lands of Etruria, Umbria, and Sabine
territory underwent a serious economic and demographic crisis in the course
of the third century, followed by radical transformation of the traditional
economy. By the fourth century rural landscapes and urban fabrics had
undergone dramatic change, and the evidence forcefully suggests that
from the third century onwards nothing could ever be quite the same again.
Some may indeed have moved from their homes to take up residence in the
imperial villae, for example, or spas with health-giving waters (Cambi 1993
), but all too clearly the entire region to the north of Rome bears signs of
a sharp decline in the number of human habitations, as they fell into final,
irrevocable abandonment. The picture ranges from conditions of ruin in
the ager Cosanus, where two-thirds of the villae ceased to exist (Carandini
1994 ), and the drastic disappearance of settlements between Vulci and
Tarquinii (Corsi 1998 ) to rather less dramatic scenes of decline in areas
closer to Rome or more remote from the great roads. In the course of the
second century the land under the administration of Rusellae witnessed the
disappearance of 50 per cent of the villas (a good fifty) and farm houses,
while workshops were closed down and dismantled. Rural settlements were

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again halved over the period from the third to the sixth century, only two
villas surviving into the sixth century (Citter 1996 : 35–7). At Caere the
second century saw decline setting in, to grow progressively worse in the
following century until, of over fifty villae laid out during the early imperial
age, more than forty disappeared between the fourth and sixth century
(Enei 1995 ). In the surroundings of Lorium, a famous holiday resort not far
from the capital, 236 sites have been counted for the second century, but
(p.59) only 134—hardly half—were to survive into the third (Tartara 1999 ).
In the Tiber region the picture is not quite so dramatic: at Lucus Feroniae
a third of the dwellings scattering the countryside were left to stand or
fall, while the farms in the surroundings of the old colonia were practically
halved in number, without any new building projects emerging. Between
Lucus Feroniae and Capena the number of settlements fell from forty-five
to thirty, in the territory of Capena and Falerii (Gazzetti 1992 ) however, the
changes seem to have been somewhat less drastic thanks to the favourable
geographical location of these lands which were near to the Tiber and of
particular importance for the capital’s supplies (Camilli and Vitali Rosati
1995 ; Camilli et al. 1995 ; Cifani and Munzi 1995 ). Beyond the Tiber the
situation is much like that of Etruria; along the course of the Tiber the ager
of Ameria numbered a good forty rural settlements between villas, farms,
and smallholdings dating back to the closing decades of the Republic. The
buildings began to be taken down in the second century, and by the third
all were in an advanced state of decay if not totally abandoned (Monacchi
1991 ). Things were even worse in the rest of Umbria, where abandonment
of the villas had already got under way in the course of the second century
(Manconi, Tomei and Verzár 1981 ; Ville 1983 ). In the third century, as
we learn from the names on tombstones, the area of Narnia saw a drift of
individuals of modest extraction, replacing inhabitants who had preferred
to leave for other destinations (including Rome for certain) that, we may
imagine, offered better economic conditions (Mansuelli 1973 ). To complete
the picture, let us now move on to Sabine territory, for which we have the
evidence of two surveys. In the late Republican period the territory of Cures
Sabini, a centre dating back to remote antiquity which had seen the birth
of two kings of Rome and had later become a fairly prosperous town due
to Romanization, was very thick with settlements of all sorts created to
exploit to the full the area’s economic potential with slaves, free colonists, or
seasonal workers. Public inscriptions conjure up a scenario of considerable
vitality for the second century, flourishing until the last of the Severan
interventions (as was the case with Capena), but the rest of the third century
did not pass without leaving indelible traces: if we compare the number of
sites visible from the late Republic and the first two centuries of Empire with

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the evidence of the late imperial period the ratio works out at practically
ten to one— (p.60) from over 160 sites to a mere eighteen (Muzzioli 1980 ).
Surveys have also been made on the territory of Reate, although the authors
tend to play down the extent of the changes (Coccia and Mattingly 1992 ,
1995 ). Actually, the dynamics shown by this area are fairly typical of the rest
of the region, and the fact that by the fourth century there survived here less
than a third of the sites that arose between the first century BC and the first
century AD is surely significant. The tone of the villas of the Sabine territory
that were still standing and inhabited in the third century reveals a distinct
decline from the standards of previous centuries (Sternini 2000 ).

The drift away from the rural areas and abandonment of the cities (definitive
for some centres, like the centuries-old coloniae maritimae) may seem all
the more surprising when we recall how widespread the imperial estates
were throughout the southern region (although evidently unable to withstand
general disruption), and how memories of the Etruscan and Faliscan past
were evoked for the purposes of propaganda and consensus, whether these
memories were true or imagined (again, however, they do not seem to
have sufficed to inspire initiatives and donations in favour of the inhabitants
who stayed on, except in a few odd cases). Thus all the territory to the
north of Rome was scattered with estates belonging to the imperial Fiscus,
yielding rents that represented a substantial contribution to urban supplies
(Papi 2000 : 179–80). These lands amounted to a vast patrimony covering
many thousands of hectares, beginning with the estates of Augustus and
his family (from the villa of Alsium, formerly Caesar’s, to the landholdings
of Saxa Rubra, taking in the Capena area as far as the lands of the Domitii
Ahenobarbi, which had become part of Nero’s property), to which were
added the praedia of the Flavians around Cosa. With the second century the
imperial estates became a significant presence, especially along the coastal
strip, starting from the Cosa region with the Antonines, who also had lands at
Castrum Novum, Alsium, and Lorium; at Pyrgi we find the estates of Hadrian,
and at Centumcellae of Trajan, as also in the region of Cosa (the Argentario
was the insula Matidiae) and at Nepet, in the hinterland. At Veii we know of
the lands bought by a forebear of the Severans, which then passed down to
the dynasts. Moving on to the Viterbo area we find the praedia of Cornelia
Praetextata, wife of Pupienus and domina of figlinae for bricks. There were
also imperial estates threading along the banks of the Tiber, from the (p.61)
property of the Julio-Claudians around Lucus Feroniae (with Hadrian the
villa of the Volusii found its way into imperial ownership), to Gallienus with
the hereditary estates of Falerii and then on to the praedia Statoniensia of
Commodus, with the brick factories to supply the urban markets. Records

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of landholdings at Volsinii date back to the early imperial age (CIL 11.2706,
7270, 7290). Continuing our peregrinatio along the left bank of the Tiber, we
encounter further latifundia at Ocriculum (fistula with the name of Gallienus:
AE 1945: 57), Baschi and Giano dell’Umbria (epigraphs with dispensatores:
CIL 11.6712. 6; Romanelli 1926 ), and yet more at Mevania (the property
of Agrippina, Nero’s mother: FGR 1179), Asisium and Arna (Poppea Sabina:
Prosperi Valenti 2000 ; Plotina: Bruschetti 1997 ). By the late second century
the famous villa of Pliny the Younger in Tuscis, standing at the heart of
a 1200-hectare estate at Tifernum Tiberinum, had entered the imperial
landholdings, although whatever became of the praedia said to have been at
Hispellum remains a mystery (CIL 11.5272). The Sabine land was the cradle
of the Flavians, and here they had various estates including the mother villa
of Phalacrine (Suet. Vesp. 2) and the villa of Cutiliae, which witnessed the
deaths of Vespasian and Titus (Suet. Vesp. 24 and Tit. 11).

‘Etruscan ideologies’ had scant practical effect. For at least four emperors
of the third century, connections with Regio VII played a fundamental part
in the construction of an Italic identity, the antiquity of their gentes a point
of pride, the relationships with the Etruscan and Faliscan aristocracies
good for political exploitation, and thus to be given the appropriate spin for
propaganda. It was above all the twenty-year period across the mid-century
that saw Etruria playing a key role in the Empire’s ideologies, with certain
senatorial clans rooted in Italy coming to the fore: Decius married a lady of
the region and called his firstborn Etruscus; Valerian married into a noble
family of Falerii that worked its way into a leading position, while Gallienus
would make his mother’s origo coincide with his own; he took up residence
on his lands close by the Tiber, and it was to his credit that some of the
towns in the region also saw a certain revival in public works. Trebonianus
Gallus had things mapped out even better, coming from a venerable family
of Perusia (Papi 2000 : 181). It was hardly a prosperous period, however.
Despite all the slogans circulated in these years to extol the affluent new
times, the communities of (p.62) central Italy had hardships and a host of
problems to face. Many left for the city, abandoning their lands of origin, but
there were of course others who stayed in the towns and rural areas where
they were born, and where their family roots lay. At this point we must take a
look at what became of these towns and country districts.

INTERNAL POLICIES AND IMPERIAL MEASURES

Between 194 and 213 we find a great many honours dedicated to Septimius
Severus and Caracalla (with the occasional addition of Julia Domna),

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in number second only to those made to Augustus and his kin (to the
documentation collected in Papi 2000 : 182–97 are to be added CIL 9. 2696,
4958–60, 4880, Suppl. It. 5.174–6 nos. 4–5). These dynasts must surely
have held dear the fortunes of the region around Rome. One sign of this
is the unprecedented number of curatores now seen at work. In the early
reign of Septimius Severus [S]alvius Satrianus Minicius (Jacques 60) was
at Blera and Ocriculum, C. Passienus Cossonius Scipio Orfitus (Jacques
29) at Sutrium, and possibly also C. Vibius Gallus Proculianus at Vettona
(Jacques XVI); M. Ulpius [---]tianus (Jacques XVII = XIX bis?) and then L.
Egnatius Marcianus (Jacques XX) at Cures in 201/2, 211/12, and 215, L.
Iulius Iulianus (Jacques 37) at Interamna Nahars between 198 and 208,
[Iasdius?] (Jacques 41) at Fulginiae before 210, Porcius Severinus (Jacques
44) at Cosa in 213, Domitius Antigonus (Jacques 45) at Tuder in 214. We
find further evidence a decade later at Forum Clodii, and Ameria; in the
former case, a dedication to Elagabalus with Iulia Moesa (CIL 11.3774)
and one to the curator L. Licinius Iulianus signo Laurentius (AE 1979: 216),
while at Ameria we learn of the presence of the curator M. Marius Titius
Rufinus (Jacques 56) between 224 and 229; an anonymous curator was sent
to Reate in 223/224 (Jacques 51). Some towns show particularly tangible
evidence of building activities. Cosa is a nice example since excavations
recently carried out here offer a detailed picture of what was going on, with
two insulae reconstructed, restoration of the forum portico, new granaries,
religious buildings including a Mithraeum and a shrine to Liber Pater, walls
concealing waste lots, works on the Arx, and abandoned districts brought
back to life (Fentress 1994 ). Dating from the early years of Septimius
Severus is the (p.63) second phase in the life of the theatre of Ferentium,
constructed nearly two centuries earlier: a new scenae frons was now
created according to the current taste, new decoration added in marble,
and new statues set in the wings: the muses, the Pothos of Skopas and
Aphrodite, but also members of the imperial house, like the child Caracalla
(Pensabene 1989 ). At Tarquinii we find work paid for by C. Fabius (Fabianus
Vetilius) Lucilianus (Torelli 1975 : 158–60 n. 9). It is also worth noting that
where we find relatively rich documentation the senatorial families happen
to be particularly visible (T. Atticius Strabo Romulus, M. Caelius Flavus or
– ius Proculus, L. Allius Volusianus, F]l. Vitellia Seleuciana, Rufii Festii, L.
Licinius Iulianus are the names of these nobles, Papi 2000 : 182–97), and
we might reasonably conjecture that their presence with the activities of
the curatores encouraged implementation of a municipal policy emanating
from the centre and from the consensus for the new dynasty, while there
are no signs of spontaneous initiatives along the government’s guidelines,
as had been the general case in the Julio-Claudian period. Nevertheless,

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building works did get under way, and we need only recall the forum of Cosa
and the theatre of Ferentium to appreciate the possible scale. We must
therefore consider the various sources of funding for the new workshops,
with imperial subventions or money from the municipal coffers. The arrival of
commissioners appointed by the emperor and their subsequent interventions
must have been providential, straightening the accounts, auditing the state
of the municipal assets, stamping out abuses and, possibly, also taking
an interest in the restoration of public buildings. Throughout Etruria (for
the north, Ciampoltrini 1992 ) the Severan period marked a break with the
order that had emerged with Augustus and began to be subject to change
in the course of the second century. It is tempting to imagine an imperial
plan for the communities to the north of Rome, as seen in other parts of the
Empire such as Africa Proconsularis (Gascou 1972 : 228–30), but we lack the
evidence. We may perhaps reach a better understanding of the available
data as a whole if we also take into account the propaganda mechanisms
to which Severus was particularly sensitive, especially when it came to
legitimating his authority and that of his descendants, reviving Augustan
glories and bestowing on the imperial power superhuman, cosmocratic
properties. The building projects launched in Rome answered to such
purposes well, and (p.64) with the Severans—so people were led to believe—
a new golden age was dawning. And indeed the endeavours of all the other
emperors down to Diocletian followed in this direction. For the government
of the Severans we might hypothesize the implementation of a specific
economic policy that Pertinax had already succeeded in launching in the first
quarter of 193 (Lo Cascio 1980 ). After Commodus had met his brutal fate,
the situation must have appeared critical from a number of points of view.
The two epidemics that scourged Italy for three years from 166, and again
in 189, had decimated the population and brought heavy repercussions
for production and consumption, and measures were needed to get the
economy back on its feet. Among the measures that certainly extended to
the towns to the north of Rome, and which help contextualize the evidence
available to us, were cuts in government expenditure, funding for public
works, support for agriculture, including facilitation of the cultivation of waste
land and the cancellation of the outstanding alimentaria compendia. The
supply of grain from Africa seems to have been beset by various problems,
as is suggested by certain measures introduced by Caracalla regarding
the insolvent African communities (Banasa: IAM 100) and the construction
of granaries extending to the remotest corners of Maghreb (the horrea of
Thamusida). Imports could be added to with local crops (the horrea at Cosa),
while new storehouses were made available for the grain sent to Rome (the
horrea on the via Lata).

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After Caracalla we must wait until April 238 and the arrival of M. Antonius
Gordianus for new signs of life in our towns, and the rebirth of works
subsidized by part of the senatorial aristocracy and some of the wealthier
domi nobiles. Indeed, Gordian was honoured with numerous inscriptions,
ranking close to Septimius Severus, Caracalla, and Gallienus. In 239 Capena,
Nursia and Forum Novum were the first to pay homage to the new Caesar
though he was still a boy (AE 1954: 164; CIL 9. 4539; Suppl. It. 5.176–7
n. 6); some time later came Cosa (CIL 11.2634) and Volsinii, where funds
were raised to restore a building, possibly an Augusteum (CIL 11.7281 a–
e). At Ameria and Forum Novum the honours extended to Tranquillina, the
imperial consort joined in wedlock in 241, while another epigraph mentions
a number of constructions (Suppl. It. 5.160; CIL 11.4352 and 4353 a–b,
p. 1369). We also find a modest revival of donations in the field (p.65) of
public building, after nearly half a century of partial or total neglect in the
private sphere. Obscure personages and eminent aristocrats found a new
interest in patronage: at Interamna Nahars T. Fl. Isidorus took charge of the
Flaminia restoration works (CIL 11.4209), while at Tarquinii Q. Petronius
Melior restored the baths donated to the city a century earlier by P. Tullius
Varro and L. Dasumius Tullius Tuscus (whose wife was also a patrona:
CIL 11.3367; Papi 2000 : 201–2). The patron couple of Trebula Mutuesca,
Aurelius Felicissimus and Aurelia Crescentia, must also have brought some
benefit to their city (CIL 9.4894). All the attestations appearing along the
Tiber banks and valley coincide in part with the distribution of the Severan
documentation and may well have a certain significance of their own, over
and above the official occasions: the revival of the Severan policy. In fact,
surveying the ranks of equites and senators participating in the government
we find a number who had emerged with Septimius Severus, representing
military valour and sound administration (C. Octavius Appius Suetrius Bassus
Sabinus, C. Flavius Iulius Latronianus, and M. Aedinius Iulianus, to name but
three). The same policy, promoting munificentia (limited by the penury of
the treasury) and cultured pro-Hellenism (as attested by the many festivals
instituted) was also pursued by Timisitheus, who owed his successful entry
into the arena to the Syrian empresses, after which he dedicated a long and
honourable career to service of the state and eventually rose to command of
the Praetorian Guard.

In 259 a novum saeculum aureum came in with Gallienus, but was fated to
last a bare nine years, until the assassination of the emperor in September
268 (for Etruria Papi 2000 : 205–22). Two years, 254–5, had seen some
displays of devotion towards the numen and maiestas of Gallienus’ hapless
father—the senatus populusque Visentinus with a modest cippus, the

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dicatissimus ordo Foroclodiensium with a marble-faced monument dedicated
to the restitutor publicae securitatis ac libertatis conservator and the
municipium of Carsulae with dedications incised on travertine to the father,
the son (CIL 11.4567, 4568), and the powerful Salonina (unpublished).
It was, however, with the principate of Gallienus that the emperor and
members of his family received brilliant tributes. At Lucus Feroniae the
emperor was treated like Augustus and Trajan, builder and refounder of the
colony, receiving a dedication in the city’s Augusteum. At Castrum Novum
thoughts turned to the (p.66) imperial couple and their firstborn, but it was
Falerii that surpassed all in showering honours on the sovereigns, and as
custom had it with a wealth of superlatives: he was victoriosissimus and
fortissimus, she sanctissima, and the princes Castores nobilissimi (this on
at least half a dozen monuments). At this point one might be wondering
what Gallienus and his family had done to merit all these honours. In the
case of Falerii it was quite evident: the emperor is called not only rector
orbis and dominus terr[arum but also redintegrator col(oniae) Faliscorum,
and following upon the redintegratio come the insignis munificentia and the
multi peculiares favores accruing to the benefit of the community through
a functionary sent there (Tyrius Septimius Azizus) for the purpose. It was to
the Faliscan origins of his mother, Egnatia Mariniana, that Gallienus drew
attention to underline his descent from the illustrious old peoples of Italy:
Falerii became his new hometown, Falerius the signum he chose for himself
and his lineage. However, the evidence we have of what in concrete terms
went on in Falerii is limited to a couple of fragmentary traces, apart from
the inscriptions on monuments dedicated to the emperor and his family.
In terms of building projects, infrastructures and major monuments seem
to have been the object of the imperial attention, with reconstruction of an
important city street and restoration of the[rmae. More baths were probably
built also at Lucus Feroniae, while various centres along the course of the
Tiber record personages who lavished donations on their fellow citizens, a
particularly memorable case being that of Cn. Caesius Athictus of Veii. In
the mid-century, as a certain climate of restoration began to make itself
felt, he undertook a number of projects for the ‘philological’ restoration of
monuments of significant symbolic importance dating back to the Augustan
age (e.g. closely copying the script of the old inscriptions). For a clearer
understanding of all the Etruscan and Umbrian attestations we must bear
three significant aspects in mind, namely the presence of the imperial
estates, the importance that Gallienus wished to see attributed to his Italic
patria, and the revaluation of the culture of the past in a court dominated
by dignitaries of Etruscan origin including, notably, a great many Egnatii
(although none actually did anything for the ancient cradle of their gentes).

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However, the government’s renewed interest in municipal policy seems to
have been dictated in part by certain other needs; elsewhere the reasons
were military (e.g. the colonia (p.67) Augusta Verona nova Gallieniana)
or had to do with the strategy of alliances with the local elites (e.g. the
Proconsularis), but in our case it was undoubtedly very much a matter of
the supply of cereals to Rome. For this we have fairly explicit attestations
along the course of the Tiber and the coast, and indeed the significance of
the cult of Ceres (AE 1954: 165–6), while the importance of the lands around
Rome for grain production is also indicated by the reduced imports from the
westernmost regions of North Africa (see below).

Over a third of all the inscriptions to Aurelian commissioned by all the

Italian communities come from the Umbrian–Etruscan– Sabine area (Sotgiu
1961 ), found in cities on the sea or along the Tiber valley (Cosa, Castrum
Novum, Clusium, Capena, Interamna Nahars, Forum Novum: Papi 2000 :
222–4). It is hard to tell whether the epigraphs betoken due devotion, or
whether they were installed in recognition of imperial funding: we know
of a number of other cities in Italy that would never have been able to
refurbish their damaged baths by themselves (Homo 1904 : 153 f.), and
we also know how essential these funds were for city food administration,
as in the case of Grumentum in the Regio III with its pigs. In the principate
of this emperor arises the question of wine, which various archaeologists
and historians have recently been discussing anew. Our starting point is a
passage in the Historia Augusta (Aurel. 48.1–4) recording how the imperial
administration planned the organization of vineyards in Etruria. The state
was to intervene in the planting of vines on the hills along the seaboard and
uncultivated land volunteered by the owners. The work on cultivation and
wine-making was to be carried out by some families of prisoners of war,
and nothing would come to the Fiscus since the entire production was to
go to the people of Rome. The projects left nothing unplanned, from the
tuns and casks to the boats and the structures to be installed at the ports
of Rome and for the distribution outlets. The project had the advantage of
exploiting abandoned land and distributing the local wines without recourse
to the Fiscus. Whether these plans actually got under way, or whether at
least some vines were planted, remains something of a mystery, but what
is certain is that subsequently all plans for the redevelopment of production
seem to have been halted. The emperor met his death prematurely, possibly
having come up against the opposition of the praetorian prefect. In the time
of the author of the Historia Augusta (end of the fourth century) the vina
(p.68) fiscalia collected as canon vinarius and distributed at a 25 per cent
discount were stored at the templum Solis, as Aurelian must have planned.

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Finally we come to the early years of the fourth century, which saw the
production of documents and monuments revealing the attention then
being shown to the suburbicarian lands of Tuscia et Umbria and Flaminia
et Picenum (Papi 2000 : 226–34). In southern Tuscia the evidence is
concentrated in the fifteen months from May 305 to July 306, and consists
mainly of honorific slabs: for Flavius Valerius Severus (Vulci: CIL 11.2928 and
Castrum Novum: CIL 11.3581), Maximinus Daia (Nepet: CIL 11.3202; Ameria:
AE 1996: 639 of 286/305), Constantius Chlorus (Veii: CIL 11.3796 and
Volsinii: CIL 11.2697; Cures Sabini: CIL 11.4962; Trebula Mutuesca: Torelli
1963 : 253–4 n. 4). Honorific inscriptions are also to be seen on construction
works including the building that Diocletian had erected at Tuscana by the
old and new Augusti and Caesares (AE 1964: 235), as well as the restoration
works and new decorations of the theatre at Ferentium (Pensabene
1989 : 22, 115f.) and the nymphaeum reconstructed on the orders of the
curator and patron of Cures [---] Atticus (CIL 11.4969; see Jacques LXI with
hypothetical chronology). However, the major works undertaken in these
parts had to do with reconstructing roads and associated infrastructures.
In 305/6 restoration of the via Tiberina is recorded on a milestone at Lucus
Feroniae, where the opportunity is also taken to sing the praises of the
invicti et clementissimi semper Augusti and the beatissimi Caesares (AE
1988: 559). In the same months the via Traiana Nova between Volsinii and
the fines Clusinorum was also reconstructed (the history of the inscriptions
conserved on a milestone well evoke the political events of those years:
AE 1926: 112; the same chronology of works on the Picene stretch of the
Flaminia is also indicated on a milestone at Cagli: CIL 11.6621). For the roads
we also have a couple of archaeological sources. Along the side turning of
the Flaminia running from Nahars to Interamna Nahars, in the vicinity of a
funeral monument of the early imperial age a statio was built, or rebuilt,
over the collapsed remains of the previous building. Excavated here is a
bath structure of the canonical type (Mascione and Papi 1995 ), in every
respect resembling the structure found on the Cassia a few miles from Rome
(Faccenna 1948 ). The post station of Acquaviva also conserves evidence
of major works (p.69) carried out in the fourth century (Potter, Reynolds,
and Walker 1999 ), and the growing importance that other stationes (ad
Rubras, AD Vicesimum, AD Vacanas) took on in the fourth century (Fiocchi
Nicolai 1988 ) may perhaps be explained by the works carried out on them
in the years of the Dominate and the care that continued to be devoted to
all routes to Rome (see CIL 9.5946 and Suppl. It. 13.80 f. nos. 13–14). The
reconstruction of a bridge of the Portus Curensis at the confluence of the
Corese with the Tiber could also be dated to these years. The bridge had
been destroyed when the torrent flooded, and the works are recorded in

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an inscription referring to the reconstruction of the two great piers under
the supervision of L. Baebius Celsus, a vir clarissimus who hailed from
these parts. 2 All roads leading to Rome were improved, with the apparent
exception of the via Aurelia, a coast road that may well have already
been rendered unusable by the encroaching marshlands. Such works also
continued with Maxentius (Ampolo 1968/ 9) and Constantine, both following
in the line of building works carried out by the Tetrarchs at Rome.

Let us now consider what all these attestations might be pointing to. In
the case of Rome they surely indicate the planning of building works,
championed by Diocletian (Pasqualini 1979 : 121–31; Coarelli 1999 ), as
clearly evidenced by the reorganization of the brick figlinae belonging
to the Fiscus where there was a return to the practice of brick stamps
(the stocks of bricks thus manufactured would continue to be used for a
considerable length of time). In charge of the new plans were the offices
of the urban prefecture, whose administration was extended to a radius of
a hundred miles round Rome, thus taking in the area where our evidence
was found. Since the age of the Severans this area had seen no building
projects on a truly appreciable scale, and no private liberality could now
suffice to rebalance the budget of public administration, for the fortunes of
the municipal aristocracies had dwindled or been turned to other purposes.
In Tuscia et Umbria no local notables opted to join in the building works
planned by Diocletian and his successors, as had happened in some
African places, for the simple reason that none of the notables or well-to-
do landowners here cared to enhance their personal prestige in such a way
(indeed, in (p.70) various cases corvées evidently had to be imposed to
ensure the necessary labour, skills, and supplies). We may conjecture that
a number of trustworthy emissaries were sent to look after the financial
side of the projects, such as the anonymous curator we find at Nepet,
who had previously served other communities of Picenum and Latium (CIL
10.6440; Jacques LXIII; however, this particular personage may be from a
later period). The main focus of the various projects was on the road system
and communications in general, and it was not only armies on the move or
the cursus publicus that benefited from the modernized infrastructures. Rural
areas must also have enjoyed a new lease of life after wholesale disaster of
the third century: in Umbria, for example, the ruins of various villas found
new use as shelters and modest dwellings (Ville 1983 ; Monacchi 1991 ).

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BATHS FOR THE PEOPLE
Baths met with particular favour among the populace. In Rome, if an
emperor had the good fortune to rule for a number of years during the
third century his mind would usually turn to endowing the capital with
new structures (see LTUR under the headings balneum and thermae),
restoring the baths already in use, or at any rate planning the construction.
Septimius Severus had set the style with the baths of Trastevere (thermae
Septimianae), in Regiones I (thermae Severianae) and V (thermae
Helenianae), and restoration of the thermae Agrippae, and his descendants
followed suit—Cara-calla with the thermae Antoninianae and Severus
Alexander with total reconstruction of the thermae Neronianae, thenceforth
called Alexandrinae. Gordian dreamed up a grandiose structure in the
Campus Martius but never saw his plans implemented, unlike Decius, who
saw his thermae Decianae rise on the Aventine hill, or Aurelian, who was able
to raise his thermae hiemales in Trastevere thanks to the spoils of Palmyra,
while 283 saw restoration of the thermae of Titus. Thus we come to the years
of the Tetrarchy and the thermae Diocletiani, inaugurated in 305, and the
works carried out by Maxentius, including restoration of the baths of Agrippa
and baths newly constructed on the Palatine Hill (thermae Maxentianae) and
in Regio VI (thermae Constantinae, inaugurated by his successor). Alongside
these grandiose structures were a host of smaller baths scattered throughout
the city. The Regionarii list (p.71) scores of them, and remains can still be
seen, for example, on the Sacra Via beside the Regia and at the Temple of
Antoninus and Faustina.

There was a distinct continuity in the succession of bathbuilding operations

around Rome. Throughout the second century private donations were
forthcoming for baths and little else; all the other monuments favoured by
benefactors in the early imperial age (first and foremost fora) now hardly
got a look in. During the fourth and fifth centuries the baths of the cities
that were still standing continued to receive a certain degree of attention,
at the expense of the other architectural works, and as the practice of
dismantling buildings became ever more drastic, many fine marble slabs
were removed from the public squares regardless of any inscriptions they
might contain, to be reduced to tiles to repair the flooring of the public
baths. As in Rome, in some cases it was the emperors themselves, directly or
through their commissioners, who saw to the building works, but more often
it was the city elders in their capacity as patrons or the communities that
took it upon themselves. There was hardly a city that did not have its own
public baths in the second century, when the baths built in the Julio-Claudian

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period also saw renovations (Caere, Tarquinii, Tuscana). Alternatively, the
architectural elements of the Greekstyle gymnasiums might be refurbished
(Ferentium). It was, however, above all from the time of Trajan onwards that
baths became an integral part of the cityscape, built in the forums, along the
main thoroughfares and in the central districts, construction being facilitated
by the presence of the aqueducts that certain emperors had graciously
decided to bestow on the cities (Trajan at Forum Clodi, Antoninus Pius at
Castrum Novum and Hadrian at Pyrgi), in some cases imitated by private
citizens (CIL 11.4786 Forum Novum). Many works remain anonymous (Nepet,
Sutrium, Ferentium, Tuscana), but it was Antoninus Pius who resolved upon
restoration of the baths of Tarquinii, and we may reasonably conjecture that
it was Trajan who took upon himself construction of the baths in the forum
of Lucus Feroniae (the emperor was restitutor coloniae). More often than
not, however, it was up to the private citizens to show willing: under the
rule of Trajan two honourable equites of Falerii, father and son (C. Nummius
Verus and C. Nummius C. f.), provided for a cella caldaria as well as mu[sium
et ornamenta]. In the early years of M. Aurelius’ reign (p.72) two Etruscan
ex-consuls related to the Spanish nobility undertook a project to build a
sizeable structure at Tarquinii (the second in the city) with 330,000 sesterces
bequeathed by P. Tullius Varro, to which was added a donation by his son,
L. Dasumius Tullius Tuscus. The thermae publicae of Forum Clodi were
completed in August 173, with P. Aelius Agathoclianus, an eques descended
from freedmen and local landowners (for the whole of Etruria see Papi 2000
: 121–72), to thank for the marmora et columnae. The situation appears
much the same in Umbria and the Sabine country; where we find baths,
they are almost always second-century ones, as can be seen at Ocriculum
with the best known example in the whole region (to which we shall shortly
return), at Ameria (Monacchi 1996a ), Mevania (Feruglio, Bonomi Ponzi, and
Manconi 1991 : 151–9), and Tuder (Bergamini 1989 ), as well as Trebula
Mutuesca (where one naturally thinks of the patron, Laberia Crispina, who
shared with her husband C. Bruttius Praesens a great many interests in the
area: Torelli 1963 ; cf. also 1962), and Cures (Reggiani 1985a ), where the
original building was entirely reconstructed, probably at the expense of the
community and the sevirales (CIL 11.4978).

The third century saw no decline in the popularity of the baths, but if
anything a falling-off in building activity and works, possibly because funds
were drying up or because there were now few local notables or well-to-
do landowners who cared to enhance their prestige with donations to the
community. There were some memorable cases, however. The thermae
of Tarquinii mentioned above were finally restored to good condition after

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a century by patron Q. Petronius Melior (of Etrurian origin, probably a
local rentier, he had already turned his thoughts to the city as curator rei
publicae: CIL 11.3367); the new baths of Lucus Feroniae, possibly connected
with an inn (on whose initiative we do not know: Gazzetti 1992 : 33–4); a
building at Falerii that should be interpreted as the [rmae rather than the
[atrum, and which Gallienus turned his attention to (Suppl. It. 1.148 n. 27;
Papi 2000 : 212). Volsinii brings us to a later period with restoration of the
thermae Tusciani (CIL 11.7298), as does Rusellae, where the famous senator
Betitius Perpetuus signo Arzygius in his role as consularis Tusciae et Umbriae
undertook construction of the new thermae in 367–369, immortalizing the
enterprise with a pompous inscription (Suppl. It. 16.125 f. no. 31; for the
building Celuzza 1993 : 126); these (p.73) were the city’s second baths,
the first having been built as usual in the second century (Celuzza 1993 :
132–3). Let is now move on from Etruria, crossing the Tiber into Umbria to
take a look at one of the most important cities of central Italy, in the fourth
century used by the praefectus urbi (Amm. Marc. 28. 1.22; AD 368) for
his activities, while the emperors travelling to Rome chose to break their
journey here before going on to their final destination (Constantius II in 356;
Amm. 16.10.4). Works on the baths at Ocriculum (Manderscheid 1988 :
157) are documented as far as the end of the fourth century, if not later;
regularly recorded in the epigraphy, they seem fairly characteristic of the
activities performed on this type of building in the surroundings of the capital
or along the roads leading to Rome, but let us see just what happened.
Ocriculum, too, had been able to see a great public building raised in the
second century thanks to the intervention of a generous patronus belonging
to a wealthy local family: L. Iulius Iulianus (thermas Ocricolanis a solo
extructas sua pecunia donavit: CIL 6.4090). The building appears to have
subsequently been extended with the addition of thermae hiemales (which
had enjoyed great success in Rome), restoration of which was completed in
mid-November 341, when the structures were inaugurated together with the
dedication of the statues of the two magistrates who, pro civica adfectione,
had seen fit to fund the works ad meliorem pulcritudinem (CIL 11.4095; cf.
4096 and 4097); their names are Sex. Cluvius Martinus and M. Caesolius
Saturninus. About fifty years later, between the late fourth and early fifth
century, it was the turn of another worthy magistrate to be rewarded with
a statue, having been appointed by the community to oversee the works;
his name was C. Volusius Victor, but nothing more can be found out about
him apart from his local curriculum and the fact that t(h)ermas iemalis AD
pristinam dig(nitatem) restauravit (CIL 11.4094); after him the baths left no
further traces.

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BUILDING MATERIAL AND PROVISIONS
The territories of the praefectura urbi were essential to Rome, above all
for the supply of building material and foodstuffs. Over time a number of
quayshad appeared along the banks of the Tiber(some of which was private
property) for the shipping of raw materials, the produce of the soil and
the manufactures of craftsmen. Some of (p.74) these small ports were set
up where the Tiber received its tributaries, others by the major centres.
In Rome itself the quays on the north side of the Campus Martius had
been reconstructed and organized to streamline reception of articles and
commodities arriving from the interior along the waterways, from where they
were distributed within the city (de Capraris 1999 ).

Actually, there was no building material that could not be shipped in along
the Tiber. For some time now the best quality girders, made with timber from
the forests of the Apennines and Mons Ciminius, had been transported to
Rome down the river (Strabo 5. 2. 5; Meiggs 1980 ). In the fourth century
a number of river ports were still being used for the transport of timber for
many and various purposes. We know of a woodcutter of Ocriculum, a certain
Aur(elius) Vrb(-), in charge of the weighing operations involved in this trade,
who is exposed by his own tools as a swindler: the marble weight bearing
the legend Ocric(uli) po(ndus) lign(arium) hab(et) Aur(elius) Vrb() po(ndo)
CL actually weighed seven and a half kilos less than the stated measure,
without even considering the handle (AE 1994: 577). By a lucky chance
we happen to know what trees and shrubs were used for beams, boards,
posts, planks, crossbars, stringers, and scaffolding. In fact, following Greek
treatises (Theoph. Hist. Plant. 5.1.1-11; Ginouvés and Martin 1985 ), Vitruvius
had already recorded the relevant data: oak, durmast, turkey oak, beach,
pedunculate oak, elm, alder, poplar, cypress, and fir (Vitr. 2.9.5 and 8–9;
Pallad. 1.9). The remains of bonfires lit by labourers employed in the Palatine
work-yards in the early third century yielded discarded pieces of the wood
used to build the majestic monuments in the area of the Vigna Barberini:
as well as trunks we have branches and sprays of all sizes, cut from alders,
beech trees, oaks, viburnums, hazels, and cornel trees, often quite young
(4–8 years), and all belonging to species that grew high on the hills and
mountains, at altitudes of 1000–1500 metres, while no sign is to be seen of
any species typical of the plains. 3

Then there was the lime. The possibilities offered by exploiting the limestone
outcrops of the lower Tiber valley had long been known, as evidenced by
the lime factory found in the Lucus Feroniae area (Fontana 1995 ). It had

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probably been set up by (p.75) some shrewd landowner, who chose the
location close to the Tiber’s banks as highly suitable for the transport of
the product. The work of extracting the raw material and transforming it in
limekilns must have continued in the course of the imperial age. Diocletian,
having extended provincial administration to Italy as a whole, exploited the
opportunities thus created obliging the new district of Tuscia to produce lime
for the architectural works that were to bring new lustre to the old capital
(Coarelli 1999 ). We know that in the fourth century for a year’s routine
building works the praefectura urbi needed 3,000 cartloads of lime, a third
of which (900 to be precise) was required of Etruria (Cod. Theod. 14.6.3);
the rest had to come from other areas including Tarracina, about sixty miles
south of Rome (Symm. Rel. 4.3).

It was, however, bricks and tiles that accounted for most of the cargoes
descending the Tiber to Rome, as we learn from the seals bearing the
inscriptions of the figlinae Narnienses, Ocriculanae, Pagi Stellatini,
Subortanae and Statonienses: Steinby 1974/5 (it was not worthwhile having
the tufas of Etruria sent all the way to Rome, excellent though the quality
was: Vitr. 2.7, Pliny, Nat. Hist. 2.209). The story of a village near Bomarzo,
which some identify as the Roman praefectura of Statonia (Stanco 1994
and Munzi 1995 ), offers a good example of how brick production was
carried out in the Tiber valley, to whom the quarries and factories belonged,
and what vicissitudes they went through in the course of the centuries.
Excavation here is still under way and many aspects remain to be clarified,
while further data and a fuller picture can be expected as research proceeds
(Papi and Peña 2000 ; Gliozzo 2001 ). We are on one of the series of plateaux
bordering the course of the Tiber one after another from Orvieto to Rome:
here, at the top of Piammiano (the modern name of the site) a settlement
covering about eight hectares had risen in the sixth century in a strategic
position on the borders of the area controlled by the Falisci and the territory
of Volsinii, the communities of Umbrians beyond the Tiber and Tarquinia,
whose influence found its way along the course of the Vezza torrent as far as
the Tiber. At the time of the wars between Etruscans and Romans a citadel
was built, fortified with a rampart and moat, which were razed to the ground
and filled in when the Romans stormed the town in the first half of the third
century. A new population moved (p.76) in at the end of the second century
BC—presumably as the agricultural policy of the Gracchi began to yield its
fruits—and reconstruction was carried out over the entire plateau on the
basis of a new town plan. However, destiny reserved a different future for
Piammiano: the excellent quality of the clay yielded by its slopes, together
with its proximity to the Tiber and the ready availability of fuel sufficed to

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turn the town into a centre for brick production and make the surrounding
praedia particularly attractive to people interested in investing in the
production of opus doliare. Some of the most famous factories belonged
to the Domitii, descendants of Cn. Domitius Afer, who came to Rome from
his native Narbonensis in the early Imperial Age to embark on a brilliant
career in the public administration and as a lawyer, investing his earnings
in the brick factories that had sprung up between Rome and Etruria, Latium,
and Campania (Steinby 1974–5 : 49 and Papi 2000 : 85). His adopted sons,
Tullus and Lucanus, followed in their father’s footsteps and increased the
investments. Below Piammiano they jointly organized a production which
duly flourished, and enhanced the infrastructures to transport output as far
as the Tiber, cutting into the natural tufa to open a road marked at regular
intervals with the legend iter privatum duorum Domitiorum (CIL II. 3042,
p.1321); at Fulginiae, too, the two brothers were, again jointly, patrons of the
community, where they presumably owned estates (CIL II. 3042). Naturally,
agricultural produce could be routed along the same ways as the tiles and
bricks. To judge by the stamps, the figlinae Domitianae of Bomarzo stayed
open until the second century ad, together with the other works supplying
the needs of Rome. Subsequently the evidence dries up completely: the
last bricks bearing stamps date to the times of the Severans, turned out
by the figlinae Publilianae and Terentianae (if identification with Statonia
is indeed correct, then we have evidence of acquisition of the praedia by
the imperial Fiscus under Commodus). In the third century the village living
off its workshops virtually ceased to exist (the main road became heavily
mantled with mud—a sure sign that it was no longer being used and that
nobody took any interest in its maintenance). Things picked up somewhat in
the sixth century with the Ostrogoths: the factories stirred to life once again
to supply material for the works Theoderic planned in Rome, and the centre
may well have found itself in the midst of the numerous imperial estates
then stretching (p.77) over much of that area of Tuscia. The Greco-Gothic
War spelt the end for Piammiano.

From the late republican age through the first century AD at least, the
produce of nature had enriched both the owners of country and seaside
villae and the traders who supplied Rome and the distant markets overseas.
The lands of the Tiber valley were well suited to stockbreeding; as early as
the second century BC reclamation had been carried out, as also recorded
in inscriptions on rocks, to prepare the soil and lay out the prata (Quilici
Gigli 1989 ). By the early imperial age the fertile lands of Falerii and its
fat livestock were virtually proverbial (Ov. Am. 3.13.1, 14; Fast. 1.83-4;
Pont. 4.431-2, 4.8.41-2; for its oxen, see Pliny, Nat. Hist. 2.230), and the

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mercatores bovarii, who supplied the capital with meat, came here attracted
by the opportunities of sure profits. Thanks to successful trade in the cattle
of Veii, for example, C. Valerius Faustus, originally from Rome, accumulated
a fortune, married the freed slave of one of the leading families of the
place, became magister augustalis and invested in the lands of the new
municipium, where he also had his tomb built (Papi 2000 : 5–6). Etruria was
also renowned for other types of livestock, including horses (Hist. Aug. Firm.
6. 4), sheep (Lycoph. Alex. 1241) and pigs, raised both in the coastal areas
and in the interior (Enei 1987 ). As far as stock farming was concerned, the
Sabine Tiber lands (Varro, RR 3.2.10) were of no less worth than Etruria
(Strabo 5.3.1), with their transhumant livestock (Varro, RR. 2.2.9, 3.17.9),
horses and mules of Rosea (Varro, RR 2.1.17, 2.7.6), and the even more
famous mules of Reate (Strabo 5.3.1; cf. also Spadoni Cerroni and Reggiani
Massarini 1997 ).

Further contributions to the wealth of the region came from its plant
products, growing more or less wild like the flax of Tarquinii (Liv. 28.45) and
Falerii (Gratt. Cyn. 1.36-7, 40-5; Sil. 2.223), the Ameria willow, ideal for a
particular type of basket (Monacchi 1996 b), or wetland plants like papyrus,
reedmace, and rushes whose feathery ‘plumage’ was used for padding and
stuffing (Strabo 5.9), and reeds (Varro, RR 1.7.7). Nor should we forget the
pastiones villaticae and fruit and vegetables, including the apples and pears
of Amerinum (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 24.67; 15.50, 55, 58, 59, Stat. Silv. 1.6.8,
Colum. 5.10.19), the peaches of the Sabine country (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 15.
40), the turnips of Nursia (p.78) (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 18.130), apiculture in agro
Falisco (Varro, RR 3.16.10), white snails from the Reatinum (Varro, RR 3.14.4;
Pliny, Nat. Hist. 9.173) and the oves ferae raised at Tarquiniii and Statonia
(Varro, RR 3.12.1)—all offering highly lucrative business to those interested
in this type of investment (the thrush farm of Varro’s aunt in the Sabine
country alone could bring in twice as much as a fundus of two hundred
iugera: Varro, RR 3.2.15).

Fish, coral, and wine were the products in demand from coastal Etruria in
the early imperial age. We know that trade in fish from Pyrgi was organized
by a company of Roman merchants (Athen. 6.224), and the number of
piscinae found give us a fair idea of the quantity of fish bred (Gianfrotta
1972 ). For information about the coral of Graviscae we have only Pliny to
look to, who considered it as fine as the coral of Campania in quality (Pliny,
Nat. Hist. 32.21). On the rich productivity of the vineyards of Caeretanum
we are of course well informed by Columella, who took a direct hand in the
management of his estates there (Carandini 1983 b), and by excavation

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of the Villa di Settefinestre in the Cosanum (Carandini 1985 ). The wine of
Caere was renowned (Mart. 13.12.4 and 6.73), as was the wine of Graviscae
and Statonia (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 14.67) and Tuder (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 14.36)
in the Tiber valley. The vines and olive trees of abundantly fertile Sabine
land were famous far and wide for their excellent quality (Strabo 5.3.1, Col.
5.8.5), and as early as the second century BC investors had been attracted
in considerable numbers, building their characteristic villas with terracing
in polygonal construction (Reggiani 1985 b; Alvino and Leggio 1995 ; Di
Manzano and Leggio 1980 ).

Of all this rich and varied range of agricultural production, only wine can with
a sufficient degree of certainty be said to have continued beyond the third
century, becoming a luxury item valued in Diocletian’s prices edict at 30
denarii the sextary (= 0.547 litre; an ordinary wine came in at 8). The Sabine
oil mentioned in various medical texts was in reality an extract of Juniperus
sabina L (cf. Alessander of Tralles 1.507, 2. 227 and 351 Puschmann), while
the bulk of oil imports came from the Spanish and African provinces (Panella
1993 : 624–41). Crisis in the wine sector was, however, irreversible to judge
by the data drawn from certain Roman and Ostian contexts (reconstructions
lack statistical value but offer the only evidence we have to form (p.79)
some idea of the quantities involved): the later Italian containers like the
‘Spello amphorae’ (Lapadula 1997 ) disappear between 190 and 210 while
the amphorae of the Ostia IV 279–280 type had dwindled away by the
middle of the third century; between 200 and 400 the Italian wine amphorae
accounted for less than 10 per cent of the total, while the Tyrrhenian type
fell below 5 per cent (Panella and Tchernia 1994 : 145–65; see also Carignani
and Pacetti 1989 ; in a find on the slopes of the Palatine hill dated between
290 and 312/15 Italian amphorae constitute 20 per cent of the total: Peña
1999 ; in general see Carandini and Panella 1981 ).

In the course of the second century many villae must have converted
their economic production in the direction of the new agricultural
systems and new produce as surpluses of wine and oil flooded in from the
provinces. At Settefinestre, for example, the production areas of the pars
rustica—fructuaria were abandoned to be replaced by two new buildings
for slave and pig breeding (Carandini 1985 ). The evidence suggests that
grain constituted the major import from the lands to the north and east
of Rome in this period. In the classical period cereal plantations (Spurr
1986 ) had always been a common sight alongside intensive vine and olive
cultivation (Scheidel 1994 ), and indeed had characterized the landscape of
certain areas like the lands around Caere, traditionally dedicated to cereal

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cultivation (Livy 28.45.15). The ancient agronomists concur in stressing
the high productivity of the lands of Etruria (e.g. Varro, RR 1.6,1.44.1),
and the extensive farms of the Tiber valley would naturally have seen
biannual or triennial crop rotation, and thus the sowing of cereals (as early
as the fifth century BC Etruria was looked to for grain supplies: Livy 24.5).
The disappearance of medium-size estates and the collapse of the villa
system with the accumulation of vast latifundia in the hands of the Fiscus
or a handful of senators were decisive factors in the transformation of the
coastal and interior farmlands, which were largely turned over to cereal
crops, as is well attested by the granaries built at Cosa in the Severan
era. However, there are various other factors to take into account here.
The African revolts—some extremely serious—repeatedly breaking out
throughout the third century (there were strikingly violent examples in 253–
4 and 257–60) must have brought a halt to imports from the whole of the
Maghreb, which in normal times met the needs of eight months’ supply (Jos.
BJ 2.383–6), and this (p.80) would have meant searching for new sources to
match the ever pressing demands for food provision. The mid-centurywas
marked by a profound crisis of military origin—possibly the worst of the
whole century—with attacks launched on all sides and, shortly after, the
abandonment of many African domains, which caused grave damage to
imports. It suffices to reflect that a small village like Thamusida, on the far
limits of Mauretania Tingitana, was able to send to Rome up to 0.5 per cent
of its annual requirements (Papi and Vismara 2002 for preliminary data).

EPILOGUE
The new order that emerged from the upheavals of the third century was
to last until the sixth century (Cambi 1993 ). Many cities had seen their
populations sadly depleted, while other centres had disappeared or at
any rate had been abandoned. In rural areas the soil was put to new use,
cereals replacing the crops that had made the fortunes of landowners in the
late republican and early imperial eras, and it was above all demand from
the urban market and the Tiber (‘Aethicus’ 83 Riese) that guaranteed the
existence of the new agricultural model. Much of the land belonged to the
imperial Fiscus or the great aristocrats (like the Iunii Bassi in the Faliscum:
Suppl. It. 1.136 f. no. 13), and assured supplies of grain to the capital along
with building materials and a moderate quantity of fine wine and freshwater
fish. Few indeed were the villas left standing at the heart of vast latifundia,
their function and organization no longer those they were made for. The
old scattered settlements had disappeared from the countryside and small
agglomerations had developed around post stations along the roads to Rome

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that still enjoyed a certain degree of maintenance. The centres still existing
for the administration of the territorial districts were simulacra of the old
cities: signs of town life could be seen in only a few cases; public spaces
were no longer respected, while the fora were reduced to quarries or turned
into cemeteries, and only the baths received some attention, as we saw in
the case of Ocriculum and Rusellae. Benefactors wishing to leave their mark
(like the Helvidii Burrenii, patrons of Interamna: CIL 11. 4180) were now
extremely rare, and few high dignitaries were notable for lavish donations
(Betitius Perpetuus at Rusellae: Suppl. It. 16.124 no. 29; Iulius Eubolida
at Interamna: CIL 11. (p.81) 4181; P. Publilius Ceionius Iulianus at Narnia:
CIL 11. 4118). After the fourth century none cared any longer to have their
generosity immortalized in inscriptions, while the fifth and sixth centuries
show a largely empty picture.

Notes:

(1) H. Patterson pers. comm.

(2) The port was still functioning in the 12th cent. when it belonged to
the boatmen’s corporation, serving for the transport of timber to Rome:
Romanelli ( 1956 ); see also Quilici Gigli ( 1986 ).

(3) Y. Thé bert pers. comm.

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Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg; date: 11 November 2013
Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to
Late Empire
Simon Swain and Mark Edwards

Print publication date: 2006

Print ISBN-13: 9780199297375
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-10
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.001.0001

Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

R. P. Duncan-Jones

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297375.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines potential indices of prosperity or decline in the 3rd

century. In the regions of the Empire considered, various chronological
pointers suggest worsening conditions in the 3rd century. Most of the zones
surveyed in the Rhineland show a drop by about one-third in site numbers
in the period 20-275. In a number of areas surveyed in Italy, the aggregate
percentage fall in the number of rural sites between ‘early’ and ‘late’ periods
appears to be 52-61 percent. A staggering fall in mining activity in Spain
and Portugal is implied by the 88 percent drop in the number of workings
after the second century. Even in Africa, site numbers at Segermes show
a setback of 19 percent in the second half of the third century. Records of
private legislation by the Emperor, prolific in the earlier 3rd century, almost
dry up from 260 until the 280s.

Keywords: Roman Empire, Late Antiquity, economic change, rural settlement, prosperity,
taxation

I. POSSIBLE APPROACHES
Traditional diagnoses have tended to consider change in the Roman Empire
in the light of its ultimate collapse, effectively assuming that ‘the Empire
declined because it fell’. 1 To explain how the western Empire could have
been weak enough to end in 476, they have looked for what weakened it,
and allowed the coming collapse to influence their interpretations. But if

Page 1 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

But in the third century much change took place. The catalogue of disaster
after 235 cannot be banished by revisionist preferences, nor are these
supported by the fact that the Empire still managed to survive. Nonetheless,
a minimizing view might see the third-century Crisis as essentially an
internal spasm, in which the Empire faced disruptions of a kind that
could be expected from time to time in a hereditary autocratic kingdom
whose enormous size potentially made it difficult to govern. The fortuitous
occurrence (p.21) of a series of boy emperors, and the collapse of the
dynastic system after the 230s could be regarded as crucial sources of
dislocation. 3 A long period followed in which most reigns were relatively
short, most ended violently, and the Empire was rarely free from warfare.
The many external attacks could have been encouraged by obvious internal
weakness. The eagerness of Rome’s neighbours to exploit any real weakness
had recently been shown by the invasion of northern Britain that followed
Clodius Albinus’ withdrawal of most of the garrison in 196/7. 4

Nevertheless, the third-century Crisis seems to have been so extreme in

itself that the Empire’s survival is almost surprising. The Crisis could be
regarded as no more than an extended repetition of the civil wars that had
followed the deaths of Nero and Commodus. But this chain of events was
far greater, because the wars were now external as well as internal, and
because they lasted so long that, by the 280s, there were few who could
remember an Empire free from warfare. The disasters included invasions of
Greece, Asia Minor, Moesia, Syria, Egypt, Gaul, and even Italy, the successive
formation and destruction of breakaway kingdoms in both East and West,
the permanent loss of one of the Balkan provinces, persistent plague, and
collapse of the silver currency. 5 The poverty of the written sources at this
point may be significant in itself, but it leaves us to look elsewhere for
serious evidence. 6

However, occasional vivid glimpses such as the accounts of Roman

catastrophe in the East in the inscriptions of the Persian monarch Shapur I
give a real sense of conflicts on an epic scale. Shapur defeated successive
Roman emperors in battle and sacked many of the leading cities of Syria,
Cilicia, and Cappadocia, transferring their inhabitants to Persia. 7 He
ransomed one Roman army (p.22) for 500,000 aurei, overcame a second

Page 2 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

Why did the Empire grow more difficult to defend? Was it simply an increase
in outside pressures, or was there disorganization and deterioration as well?
If there were internal causes, did they have social or economic elements?
In particular, did the plagues of the 250s and 260s weaken the Empire to
the point where her neighbours saw Rome as easy prey? 9 Did the plagues
strike the army hardest, granted the very heavy impact there of the Antonine
plague? 10 Two later sources mention plague in Valerian’s army at the time
of Shapur’s final victory. 11

Crucial though these questions are, we cannot usually press them beyond
a certain point. The half century after the Severi unfortunately remains
‘a period of rapid transition virtually un-illuminated by historical sources’.
12 A grand theory of the Crisis might take in dynastic breakdown, plague,
possible increased threats from outside, and strategic vulnerability due to
the Empire’s enormous size. But without good historical sources, no (p.23)
complete explanation can be constructed, and the spectacular military
history of the period, of which Shapur’s narrative provides a small taste,
remains largely inaccessible.

However, important economic changes can be uncovered in what survives

through archaeology. The evidence available here is actually growing. The
revolution of systematic survey archaeology, and the increasingly large
dossiers of coins, papyri, and inscriptions are capable of opening new
perspectives. Parts of the present discussion focus on the third century, while
others carry the perspective further into the fourth. The main aim is to find
potential indices of prosperity or decline. The Empire’s economy remained
heavily agrarian, despite the grandeur of its towns, and rural settlement
remains the most effective index of prosperity.

II. AGRI DESERTI AND TAXATION

As a background to the archaeological evidence, it is worth looking briefly
at land occupancy in the written sources. The theme of land falling out of

Page 3 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

More recent discussions have expressed considerable reservations about

this assessment. 14 The dossier of references to agri deserti in the Codex
Theodosianus can be made to fit a pre-existing picture of decline. But there
are difficulties. Legislation of the Principate was so heavily pruned by sixth-
century compilers that its absence from the Digest need not show any lack of
legislation about land-occupancy in this period. 15

(p.24) We do in any case have indications of earlier land problems from

other sources. Epibole, forced cultivation of vacant land, had a long history
in Egypt, and was in all likelihood practised else-where. 16 We know from
random survivals that early in the second century Hadrian reduced the rents
on crown land in Egypt in order to keep it in cultivation; and legislated to
promote the occupation of uncultivated land on imperial estates in Africa, in
the ‘lex Hadriana de ruderibus agris’. 17 Furthermore, a historian describes
Pertinax in 193 as allowing long tax holidays to promote the cultivation of
abandoned land in Italy and the provinces, on the lines of the legislation
already functioning on imperial estates in Africa. 18 The land-grants within
the Empire to foreign tribes also suggest land in disuse. The grants began as
early as the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and went on in the third century and
the late Empire. 19 This evidence is enough to show that land falling out of
cultivation was a recurrent problem, and one about which Roman rulers were
already concerned in the second century. 20

A handful of late juristic references quantify the amounts of vacant land.

But the loss rates are not very dramatic. 21 The only case where the figure
seems to be more than 20 per cent comes from a relatively late date, the
420s, and refers to the imperial estates in Africa. Lepelley has argued that
these figures imply the abandonment of inferior or marginal land, without

Page 4 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

It has been suggested that taxation made conditions harsher for a rural
population which by the late Empire bore its main weight. 23 Nevertheless,
it is difficult to establish decisive upward movements in tax levels, although
available comparisons are mainly confined to Egypt. From what we can
see, tax yields there tended to fall between the second and fourth centuries
AD. 24 However, that could suggest that earlier levels were already too
high to be sustainable. 25 The late evidence describes tax-collectors
who use unspeakable violence and extort far too much. 26 But a similar
archetype appears in earlier sources. 27 Thus, however painfully real, it
does not necessarily show that the character of taxation changed. Similarly,
manipulation of the tax system in favour of the wealthy, vividly attested in
the late Empire, is almost bound to have existed in earlier periods, where
sources are far less explicit. 28

There is an implied ebb and flow between a condition where land is fully
cultivated, and one where there are significant amounts of uncultivated land.
To move from one to the other needed only a string of bad harvests, which
would make marginal land uneconomic to cultivate after taxes had been
paid. Better to seek work as a day labourer or flee elsewhere than remain a
(p.26) cultivator if there was not enough to eat after paying rent and taxes.
The state would combat this loss of revenue capacity either by reducing
demands, as in Hadrian’s renegotiation of crown land, or by compulsory
assignment of land to existing landowners, or epibole. 29

The implicit struggle between a tax-hungry state and vulnerable cultivators

dictated that there would sometimes be vacant land, if the cultivators
departed, or land cultivated for lower amounts, if the state persuaded them
to stay. The first result led to agri deserti, the second to reduced tax yields.
Both outcomes can be seen in the late Empire, but neither seems to be
peculiar to that period. 30

The implication that peasants were sometimes brought to desperation is not

at all unrealistic. Jones assembled examples of peasants being driven to eat
grass or beg or camp out in towns in the hope of food, at times of famine
when there were sometimes still supplies locked up in granaries. 31 These
events bring home the desperate harshness of rural life at its worst. But
they do not show that the late Empire had any monopoly of such things. The
sources that might reveal them are generally missing from records of the

Page 5 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

III. A NOTE ON ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES

In recent decades, archaeological field survey has contributed important
evidence for rural settlement in the Roman world. This has been greatly
helped by pioneering work on the chronology of African fineware pottery,
which has provided a powerful dating tool. 33 The results appear to
show striking changes in settlement levels. But there are some potential
difficulties. One is the fact that within the rural settlement pattern, later
tendencies to (p.27) regrouping in larger units may partly undermine the
significance of raw number counts (n. 136 below).

African red-slip ware, readily available and no doubt attractively priced,

evidently supplied the more affluent dinner-tables of much of the Roman
world for centuries (IV c below). But imports were not necessarily constant,
even if there was no home competition in fineware. Production and supply
could both vary. A community did not necessarily cease at the point when it
stopped using new imported wares. Life could go on using local coarsewares,
which are usually difficult to date. Landlocked regions like inland Gaul,
or remote provinces such as Britain might always have limited access to
imported pottery. 34 And in an early survey of rural sites around Aleppo in
Syria, dateable fineware runs from the Hellenistic period to the seventh
century AD, but shows a blank in the first to fifth centuries. 35 Thus pottery-
based chronologies from survey evidence can easily contain pitfalls. 36
As a result, some of the existing findings of survey archaeology must be
provisional, and subject to revision or change in the light of current work. 37

IV. CHANGE IN THE WESTERN EMPIRE

IVa. Italy

In the Empire as a whole, Italy is the region where the archaeology of rural
settlement has been studied most intensively. Although the north and far
south have received rather less attention, in central Italy field survey of rural
areas has tended to show pronounced shrinkage in the number of occupied
sites by the time of the later Empire.

Page 6 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

Much further south, San Giovanni di Ruoti, between Venosa and Potenza,
showed 26 sites in the period AD 70–220, of which 15 were new. But by the
end of the third century, only 7 sites were still occupied. The drop is 83 per
cent, though there is also a new villa in the region in the fourth century.
40 But another survey near Venosa where the soil is fertile shows a quite
different pattern. There are 40 sites of the early Empire (30 BC–AD 70), 41 in
70–300, and still 34 in 300–600. Change here is slight. At Gravina, nearby to
the south, a survey gave comparable results, with 14 sites in the period from
30 BC to AD 70, 19 in 70–300 and 20 in 300–600. 41

At Oria near the Adriatic coast in the region of Brindisi, there is a decline
from 24 sites in the period up to the mid-second century to 14 or 15 in the
period 150 to after 300. By the mid-fourth century only 8 sites survived. The
falls are about 40 and 42 per cent. However the later sites again seem to
include larger villas, implying larger production units, as in the Liris valley. 42

In the Biferno valley in the region of Molise, survey work shows 11 definite
sites in the Upper Valley and 56 in the Lower Valley in 80 BC–AD 250. The
numbers have become 7 and 37 by the period 250–600. The falls are 36 and
34 per cent. 43

At Rieti in the central Apennines, the number of sites drops from 47 in the
early Empire to 39 in the early to mid-Empire and 22 in the late Empire. The
percentage falls are 17 and 44 per cent. 44

(p.29) The biggest item in the dossier of Italian surveys is also the one which
is now most subject to reservations. It comes from the south Etruria survey
of the 1960s and 1970s. Some results for the territories of Falerii and Veii
are summarized in Potter’s widely used book The Changing Landscapes of
Southern Etruria. Current reappraisals of this area in the light of more recent
pottery studies are likely to modify some of its findings. 45 But the indications
about the chronology of rural settlement, however approximate, still seem to
have potential interest.

Page 7 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

In the larger area of the ager Veientanus, 307 sites were assigned to AD 80–
320 and only 92 to 350–450. The long-term drop is 70 per cent. 46 But some
reservations have already been expressed about these findings for Falerii
and Veii, on the grounds that they give too little consideration to problems of
pottery supply. For example, it has been found in the Tarraco survey in Spain
that site numbers may decline very little even where the densities of date-
able pottery fall precipitously. 47

Table 1. Falerii: number of dated sites

c2 c3 c4 c5–6 Total
95 67 31 22 116

The evidence of African red-slip ware suggests that the proportion of larger
sites in the South Etruria survey rose quite considerably in the later Roman
period. Thus more than half the second-century villas in the Ager Veientanus
were still occupied in the fourth century, whereas smallholdings had dropped
by over 80 per cent by the end of the century. 48 Although redistribution
of population between country and town would be one (p.30) possible
explanation, there originally seemed to be suggestions of local urban decline
in this case. 49

In northern Etruria, a survey in the territory of Cosa revealed 49 sites of the

early Empire, and 32 of the mid to late Empire. Very few sites had material of
the fourth and fifth centuries. The apparent drop is 35 per cent. 50 A bigger
survey of territories around Cosa, not yet fully published, indicates that a
marked change takes place between second and third centuries, with 60 per
cent of second century villas disappearing by the third. And in the territory
of Saturnia there is a noticeable fall in the number of small properties in the
third and fourth centuries. 51

Table 2. Summary of changes in rural site numbers in Italian field surveys

Percentage fall Early Late

S. Giovanni 83 26 7

Page 8 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

These summaries use eleven samples of survey evidence from ten areas
of Italy. In one area, Gravina, site numbers hold their own in the late
Empire. But in the other ten areas, the decline in numbers is almost always
substantial. This can be seen in Table 2 . The main percentage falls range
from one-third to four-fifths. Using all the material, the aggregate fall is
61 per cent (317/807). The fall is still 52 per cent even if the older survey
material from the territories of Falerii and Veii is excluded (194/405). (p.31)
There is also a noticeable tendency for site areas to increase, especially in
south Etruria, at Saturnia, in the Liris valley and at Oria.

Another falling trend in Italy is seen in the evidence of wine amphorae. 52 In

samples from Ostia and the city of Rome, the proportion of Italian amphorae
remains stable at roughly 40 per cent from the Flavians to the mid-Antonine
period. But the early Severan sample shows definite decline, to 27 per cent,
with a more serious drop to 12–14 per cent in the mid-third century (Fig.
1 ). The first break follows the Antonine plague of AD 165–89. The villa at
Settefinestre in Tuscany seems to have been abandoned at about this date,
and there are other suggestions of change in Italy at this point. 53

Page 9 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

Substantial reductions in the Italian share of wine production for the Rome
market seem to be implied. Wooden barrels, which leave little archaeological
trace, were sometimes used for wine in the later period, but do not seem
to account for this decline. 54 (p.32) Another Italian ceramic product, fine
tableware, had already been overtaken by imports from Africa even in Italy,
as the Ostian samples show (Fig. 4 ). Similarly, Italian fineware is initially
important in the large samples from Berenice in Cyrenaica, before it dwindles
under the impact of African competition. 55

IVb. Gaul and Germany

In Provence (Gallia Narbonensis) a recent analysis reported on a survey of 41

rural sites.

At the end of the second and start of the third century,

another change seems to have taken place: a significant
number of the domains of medium size founder and are finally
abandoned, indeed absorbed into bigger units…These big
domains are still flourishing and productive during the first
half of the third century. In the second half of the century,
many of them stop maintaining the vast agricultural buildings
that are characteristic (wine cellars, presses, oil-plants,
water mills), and a number are totally abandoned. This trend
continues during the fourth century, though certain villas are
transformed and embellished during that period. 56

The increasing emphasis on large units of exploitation clearly echoes Italian

evidence seen earlier.

Page 10 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

More data about rural occupancy in the north comes from the Rhineland. The
study by Gechter and Kurnow assembled evidence for five zones, from local
archaeological surveys taking in (p.33) more than 300 dated sites. 58 This
evidence contains conflicting patterns up to the late third century (Fig. 2 ).
The biggest single sample, 125 sites in the Rheinische Loessplatter, shows
very little decline in the period up to 275; the drop after the second century
is only 5 per cent. By contrast, the remaining four zones with a combined
sample of 189 dated sites, drop by 36 per cent in the period 200–75. But the
samples converge in the final period, 275–400. Both show a more serious fall,
of 48 per cent in the Loessplatter, and 58 per cent overall in the remaining
zones. 59

Fig. 2. Rural settlements in the Rhineland: percentage occupied in a given

period. Rheinische Loessplatter (n = 125) compared with four other zones (n
= 189). Data: Gechter and Kunow ( 1986 )

Thus these detailed surveys from Provence, northern Gaul and the Rhineland
mainly suggest declining rural occupancy after the second century, and
certainly after the third.

Page 11 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

The wealthy African provinces provide us with three important economic

indices. The first is rural settlement shown by field survey, the second public
building, and the third tableware and its impact on overseas markets.

(p.34) The recent field survey at Segermes in central Tunisia shows an almost
unbroken increase in the number of sites recorded from the early second
to the end of the fifth century AD (Fig. 3 ). The sequences of pottery mainly
drawn from kilns in Tunisia provide a robust source. 60 This trend contrasts
with most of what has been seen so far; the only setback before the late fifth
century is a reduction in the second half of the third century from 32 rural
sites to 26 (a drop of 19 per cent). 61

Fig. 3. Site totals in the Segermes survey (sites with two or more fineware
sherds). Data: Dietz, Sebai, and Ben Hassan (1995)

Secondly, public building. A sample of almost 200 dated new buildings can
be compiled for the three centuries from Trajan onwards, starting in AD
98. 62 The resulting averages are very striking. We see the first half of a
‘Gaussian’ pattern, with a very steady climb up to 193–217, the period of
Septimius and Cara-calla. 63 But the picture changes dramatically at that
point, with a (p.35) drop to less than half for the rest of the period up to
Diocletian, and with several shorter reigns which show no dated activity (Fig.
4 ). 64 Quite heavy building under Diocletian is followed by a relapse to very
low levels for most of the fourth century. The eventual revival in AD 367–83
almost reaches the level of 222–38, but is still far below the levels achieved
in the boom years up to AD 217. Church building inevitably became a major
competitor for public funds at some point in the later Empire. But in Jordan
and Arabia at least, it did not become a serious rival to secular building
before the early fifth century. 65

Page 12 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

The sustained record of public building activity in Africa is a remarkable

contrast to what we see elsewhere. 66 Here the decades after the Severi
do not fully emerge as a time of crisis. Nonetheless Figure 4 shows a very
substantial check after AD 217. Its most (p.36) likely immediate cause
is increased tax charges or expropriations. 67 In Egypt the decade after
Caracalla likewise appears as a time of collapse, in the documentation
from Karanis (Fig. 6 ). In Africa the check also recalls earlier evidence from
Thugga, where the plentiful building series ceases for several decades
between Nero and Trajan. 68

The third index from Africa is the export of pottery. African products come to
dominate the finds of fine tableware in other parts of the Mediterranean, for
example at Ostia. Ostia became the seaport of Rome, and Africa was a major
source of grain supply for the capital, facilitating importation of other African
products at the same time. The pottery from the excavations in the Terme
del Nuotatore at Ostia by Carandini and Panella reveals a remarkable pattern
(Fig. 5 ). 69

Fig. 5. Sources of tableware AD 70–400, Ostia, Terme del Nuotatore

(percentages by region). Data: Panella ( 1993 )

Page 13 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

Very similar patterns emerge from pottery studies in other parts of the
Empire. 73 For example, in Tarraconensis in southern Spain, Spanish oil,
garum, and fineware are gradually overtaken by African products during the
third century. 74 And at Berenice in Cyrenaica, African red-slip ware from
Tunisia dominates the finewares, despite competition from producers in the
eastern trade area to which Cyrenaica essentially belonged. 75

African oil amphorae, in particular those from Tripolitania and Byzacena,

also achieved very wide diffusion in the Mediterranean by the third century,
indicating a flourishing export trade in olive oil. 76 Oil export had grown even
further by the fifth century, and African pottery lamps had become a further
significant export by the late fourth century. 77

This evidence thus shows increasing African domination of Mediterranean

overseas trade, both in ceramic finewares, and also in olive oil and later in
lamp production. Here commercial success accompanied expanding rural
settlement and continuing public building. Regular shipping links for wheat
export must (p.38) have helped Africa’s overseas trade. But similar links
for wheat export existed in the case of Egypt, yet Egypt did not flood the
Mediterranean with her artefacts. Exports of late Egyptian fine-ware (red-slip
type A) are largely confined to Cyprus and nearby coastal sites. 78

Africa’s outstanding economic success matched remarkable political

and cultural achievements, seen in the dynasty of African emperors, an
unrivalled array of Church Fathers, and heavy representation in the Senate.
79 Dominance on so many fronts probably gave Africa effective primacy in
the Latin West. But it remains significant that this was achieved behind a
sea-barrier which largely protected the region from the successive invasions
and wars in the third century. 80

Page 14 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

In Syria, field surveys strongly suggest expanding settlement in late

Antiquity. 81 They come from northern sites in present-day Syria and south-
east Turkey. In the River Qoueiq survey north of Aleppo, 52 sites have
Hellenistic pottery, 17 early Roman Empire, and 23 late Empire pottery.
Thus there is an apparent increase under the Empire. But 12 of the sites
which continue from the Hellenistic period into the late Roman show no early
Roman pottery,probablysuggestingnomorethanchangesinpotterysupply. 82

(p.39) Further north, at Kislan Höyük across the Turkish border, another
inland survey shows 11 sites of the Hellenistic period, and 17 of the late
Roman/Byzantine period. The average site density rises sharply between the
two, from 8 hectares per 100 km2 in the earlier period, to 25 hectares in the
later one. 83 This demonstrates the tendency towards larger units already
seen in Italy and Provence.

In another Syrian survey within modern Turkey, at Titris˛ Ho¨yu¨k, the

number of dateable sites again rises very sharply, from 20 Hellenistic/early
Roman to 33 late Roman/early Byzantine. Despite the broad chronological
divisions, growth in the late Roman period seems clear. 84

In the survey in the region of the Birecik-Carcemish dam, the number of sites
rises from 25 Hellenistic/early Roman to 42 late Roman/early Byzantine.
Once more the chronological divisions are broad, but again there is growth
by the late Roman period. The aggregate occupied area increases from 161
to 238 hectares. 85

Lastly, in the high limestone massif east of Antioch, studied by Tchalenko

and Tate, occupation seems to have grown in the late Empire, with fine
domestic stone buildings being constructed in the fourth to sixth century.
The imposing remains often survive to first-floor level. 86 But ‘no matter how
fine their stonework and how elegant their balconies, (these) were the homes
of peasants who kept their beasts on the ground floor and in the courtyard,
and built their houses close together in no regular plan’. 87

The five surveys all show northern Syria as a region where rural occupation
increased in the late Empire. The course of events within the third century
is not defined here, but increase in site numbers by the late Empire is quite
clear. 88

Page 15 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

The available surveys from Greece suggest a recovery in the late Empire
from low levels of rural settlement under the Principate. In Boeotia, one of
the prime agricultural zones of the Peloponnese, intensive surveys were
carried out in 1978–87. They suggested a very high population density for
the classical and early Hellenistic period (600–200 BC). In the following 500
years, 200 BC to AD 300, the number of occupied sites is greatly reduced.
But in the late Empire, 300–650 AD, there is a dramatic recovery. Something
like two-thirds of the classical sites were now reoccupied, nearly all after a
period of desertion. 89 Some figures for definitely identified sites are shown
in Table 3 . 90

Another survey in Greece on the island of Keos showed a similar progression

in the north-west of the island. The sequence is summarized in Table 4 .

Table 3. Site totals in Boeotia (1985)

Classical/early Hellenistic 70
Late Hellenistic/early Roman 33
Late Roman 45

Table 4. Site numbers in Nw Keos

Definite Possible Total

Classical 40 16 56
Hellenistic 30 4 34
Early Roman 10 0 10
Late Roman 25 3 28

Here again the late Roman period shows a strong rise, even though the
number remains well below the levels of the classical period. 91

Vc. Egypt

Egypt contributes unique documentation of third-century change, with

closer dating than pottery-based archaeology can achieve. (p.41) Two large
Arsinoite villages which are among the most abundant sources of documents
either cease altogether, or go into stark decline in the mid-third century. 92

Page 16 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

Karanis was significantly bigger. The available documentation there collapses

in the 220s before starting to recover in the 270s. But the renaissance of
this community from Diocletian onwards again takes its documentary totals
as high as in the peak of the 150s (see Fig. 6 ). It appears that Karanis may
have been almost abandoned at one point, but was revived again, although
by the fourth century its agricultural area had evidently dwindled very
sharply. 94

Fig. 6. Documentation from Karanis (Arsinoite) AD 100–399 (n = 828 papyri

and ostraka). Data: Van Minnen (1995)

(p.42) Before we can draw any conclusions from these two examples, it is
important to realize that the Arsinoite seems to have been a special case.
95 This region round Lake Moeris, the modern Fayum, was in slow decline,
apparently because its water regime was more vulnerable than that of
villages on the Nile. Outside the Fayum, Egyptian documentation does not
collapse in the mid-third century. 96 And even elsewhere in the Arsinoite,
documentation is still fairly strong in the mid-third century, although it has
fallen off by the last third of the century (Fig. 7 ). 97 Diocletian’s reign saw
a surge in Egyptian documentation outside the Arsinoite, which lasted for
six decades. This is echoed in the Arsinoite by a peak in the decade from
304, but is soon followed by a collapse in 324–33, from which recovery was
limited (Fig. 8 ). 98

Page 17 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

Thus some communities in Egypt go into serious decline in the middle third
century. Two of them, Soknopaiou Nesos and Pelousion, disappear from
the documentary record altogether. However, the Arsinoite nome was itself
starting to show signs of decline by the later part of the century, because
of special local factors. In other documented parts of Egypt, the volume of
evidence does not shrink drastically until the mid-fourth century (Fig. 8 ).
(p.43) Thus most of the documented inland regions of Egypt seem to retain
some prosperity into the late Empire. 99

Fig. 8. Egyptian documentary papyri AD 284–540, yearly averages by ten-

year periods. Data: Bagnall and Worp 1980 ; 1982 .

VI. THE EVIDENCE OF MINTING AND COIN FINDS

The deterioration and collapse of the silver currency in the third century is
seen as an accessible yardstick of change, and is often enlisted in accounts
of Roman decline. 100 Deterioration in the coinage tends to be seen as linked
in some way with price inflation. But almost the only explicit price evidence
comes from Egypt, a closed currency area which used its own coinage.
101 Regrettably, Egyptian price movements need not mirror those in the
Empire as a whole. 102 Nonetheless, the Price Edict of 301 promulgated in

Page 18 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

That still leaves price trends outside Egypt uncertain. Prices did not
necessarily rise as much as the debasements might suggest, because
discounting of the debased coin may have been quite inefficient. 106 But the
debasements seem to have had the aim of raising government spending by
increasing the amount of coin; and coin finds on a spectacular scale suggest
that the volume of money was greatly expanded.

The essential changes are relatively clear. 107 The silver currency was
withdrawn more and more rapidly in order to remint and increase its volume,
and precious metal content and coin weight both fell steeply. 108 The silver
content, about 50 per cent under Septimius Severus, had fallen to a few per
cent by the later part of the third century, sometimes as low as 3 per cent.
109 Meanwhile new gold coin became rare, and was reduced drastically in
weight. From 253 gold even began to be debased for the first time. 110

(p.45) The coin finds suggest important changes in volume. In Britain, stray
finds, heavily biased towards base metal coin, show a startling pattern. 111
An enormous change takes place under Gallienus from 260 onwards. Coin
of this date completely dwarfs all previous issues in a sample from four
excavated sites. Even after Gallienus, the amounts in the British sample
remain far above second century levels (see Fig. 9 )

Fig. 9. British stray coin-finds; percentage per year, AD 96–402 (median of

Verulamium, Silchester, Piercebridge, Richborough; n = 72,224). Data: Reece
( 1991 )

Page 19 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

Fig. 10. Third-century silver hoards, average number per year, AD 200–275
(major reigns). Data: Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ); Bland ( 1996 )

Thus the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus emerge as crucial in the coin-
find evidence. These emperors also paid the Roman plebs more than twice
as much as any of their predecessors. 118 The large (p.47) provincial coin
hoards from their reigns probably show corresponding largesse to Rome’s
armies. 119 There was evidently also an enormous escalation in production of
base metal coin at this time (Fig. 9 ).

Page 20 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

We could consider the debasement of silver and gold coin a simple casualty
of increased coin production. But the very scale of debasement, with silver
content shrunk to almost nothing, and gold coin seriously reduced in weight
and purity, must argue that precious metal was running short. Thus the great
third-century debasement was not merely a result of heavier spending, but
also indicates dwindling resources. That suggests in turn that mining was not
functioning efficiently, and implies that there was industrial disruption due
to war, invasion, and plague. In the Iberian peninsula at least, archaeology
seems to tell a brutal story. Domergue’s mine survey shows 173 sites in
Spain and Portugal being worked during the earlier Principate, against 21 in
the third and fourth centuries. The drop is 88 per cent. 120

(p.48) VII. LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY

This is so obviously a time of crisis that any index of government activity
has some interest. Public legislation of the emperors between the Severi and
Diocletian remains hidden from view, but much of their private legislation
is preserved in the Codex Justinianus. 121 It shows a revealing chronology
(Fig. 12 ). The level of activity is impressively high under Gordian III (238–
44). But it falls dramatically under Philip and his short-lived successors. A
partial revival takes place under Valerian in the late 250s. Virtual silence
then follows until the reign of Diocletian, with its avalanche of legislation in
the 290s. 122

Page 21 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

This period of blackout after 260 is the most striking feature. It seems
that now the legislative machine was either not producing rulings, or that
rulings were not being effectively preserved. 123 (p.49) A significant hiatus is
suggested in either case. The chronology of the dated legislation shows no
further significant break for more than two centuries. 124

VIII. LAND AND POPULATION

As has been seen, the archaeological picture from the western Empire
north of the Mediterranean shows shrinkage in the number of rural sites by
the fourth or late third century. In the west, shrinkage is drastic in most of
the Italian sites studied, and substantial in those from northern Gaul and
Germany. Reduction in site numbers is sometimes offset by an increase in
the average size of farms and villas. These findings almost certainly have
more meaning than the inconclusive juristic dossier about agri deserti.
Vacant land was already a visible problem in the second century (p. 24
above).

Decline in the level of rural settlement may imply something about

population. 125 One possible explanation is relocation to towns, while another
is absolute decline in numbers. 126 It has sometimes seemed that the second
possibility has been exorcised and banished from debate. 127 But there were
clearly major episodes of plague extending over more than 20 years from AD
165 onwards. 128 This was followed by plague in Nubia in AD 200. Although
disease is said to have struck Severus Alexander’s army campaigning on the
Euphrates in 232, detailed sources then soon disappear. 129 Nevertheless,
further serious episodes of plague certainly followed, extending from about
250 to 270. 130 Even without (p.50) this background of major epidemics,
demographic decline would have to be admitted as a possible explanation

Page 22 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

IX. CONCLUSION
In the regions of the Empire that have been considered, various
chronological pointers suggest worsening conditions in the third century.
Thus most of the zones surveyed in the Rhineland show a drop by about one-
third in site numbers in the period 200–275. In a number of areas surveyed
in Italy, the aggregate percentage fall in the number of rural sites between
‘early’ and ‘late’ periods appears to be 52–61 per cent (p. 30 above). 132 In
samples from Rome and Ostia, the proportion of Italian amphorae halves
between the early Severi and the mid-third-century. A staggering fall in
mining activity in Spain and Portugal is implied by the 88 per cent drop in
the number of workings after the second century. 133 And even in Africa, site
numbers at Segermes show a setback of 19 per cent in the second half of the
third century. Records of private legislation by the Emperor, prolific in the
earlier third century, almost dry up from 260 until the 280s.

Yet there are important exceptions to these trends, and the pattern
of change is not consistent. Rome’s vast Empire was very far from
homogeneous, and its different components cohered too little to achieve
economic integration. 134 In the third century we can see explicit differences
between a prosperous southern zone and a less vigorous northern zone,
in the contrast between a (p.51) flourishing Africa, and shrinking rural
settlement in many parts of Italy, and in some northern provinces (Figs. 1 –
5 ). 135 Rural depopulation under pressure of plague and warfare is clearly
a possibility. Nevertheless, some of the shrinkage in rural site numbers is
evidently due to concentration of landholding into larger units of exploitation
and larger units of ownership. 136 In the eastern Empire, northern Syria
shows some definite rural increase, as do parts of Greece. Rural prosperity
in a province on the troubled eastern frontier has a special interest. But this
has to be set against the devastation of many major cities by Shapur I and
his successors. 137 To define conditions in Syria more fully probably requires
survey material from the south. Egypt shows rural shrinkage in a zone with
special irrigation problems (Figs. 6 – 8 ).

There are also more general developments. Archaeology suggests an

enormous escalation in the volume of coin in the middle of the third century.
The most startling development in the coin-find evidence takes place

Page 23 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

This discussion began with the events that violently shook the Empire for
the half century after the Severi. Definite signs of their impact on rural
settlement are suggested by archaeology. The investigation has taken
samplings from most of the Empire, although further evidence from Asia, the
Balkans, and Britain is needed. 139 Although settlement evidence can rarely
be dated closely to the mid-third century, changes at that point are visible in
Figs. 1 , 3 , 4 , 6 , 7 , and 9 – 12 , and this period is clearly the biggest (p.52)
focus of change. In so far as epidemics affected levels of rural settlement,
some of the change may go back to the Antonine plague of the late second
century. 140

The partial signs of continued strength suggest that the Empire was not
in irremediable economic decline. Signs of prosperity are most clearcut
in Africa. Africa however remained virtually immune from invasion up to
the fifth century, and its commercial success seems to be connected with
that fact. In the east, the provinces of the future Byzantine Empire likewise
enjoyed a substantial strategic advantage, through their inaccessibility
to many invaders. 141 Conditions in the regions exposed to third-century
attack are the most crucial, and here, whether or not there is a causal
relationship, signs of settlement shrinkage are sometimes pronounced. In
some of these cases, there may have been greater exposure to plague as
well as to invasion.

Notes:

(1) Lewit ( 1991 ) 8. Traditionalist views are discussed by Lewit, 1–3, Jailette (
1996 ) and at length by Demandt ( 1984 ). See also discussions in Witschel (
1999 ).

(2) ‘The empire did not… totter into its grave from senile decay, impelled
by a gentle push from the barbarians.’ (Jones ( 1964 ) 2.1027, discussing
strategic differences between East and West).

Page 24 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(4) Birley ( 1988 ) 124–6, 171. A renewed Roman attempt to conquer

Scotland was made less than a dozen years later (Birley, 170–87).

(5) A recent book of translated sources provides a useful

introduction,including a year by year gazeteer of events: Loriot and Nony (
1997 ). For numismatic and other economic evidence, see Brenot, Loriot and
Nony ( 1999 ). The stimulating volume edited by J.-L.Fiches in 1996 provides
important archaeological evidence. The survey edited by King and Henig (
1981 ) remains valuable.

(6) ‘The temptation to exploit the fantasy-ridden biographies [for this period]
in the Historia Augusta is one to which too many still succumb’ (Birley (1975–
6) 255).

(7) Western sources have various echoes of these events (Dodgeon and Lieu
( 1991 ) 34–67). A brief summary of Shapur’s settlements of Roman prisoners
comes from an 11th-cent. Nestorian chronicle (ibid. 297). The garrisoned
town of Dura-Europos was among the many places sacked or destroyed,
as its excavations show, and there are other corroborations of Shapur’s
invasions from archaeology (ibid. 333; see Pollard ( 2000 ) 44–58).

(8) Translation in Loriot and Nony ( 1997 ) 59–64 (maps showing the cities
captured, 62–3). For this period, see Millar ( 1993 ) 159–73. According to the
9th-cent. chronicle of al-Tabari, Shapur also seized large sums of money in
Nisibis, and made Valerian provide labour for building a great dam (trans.
Dodgeon and Lieu ( 1991 ) 282–3).

(9) The plague is attested at dates as far apart as 251 and 270 (Loriot and
Nony ( 1997 ) 11, 15). Orosius 7.21.4 ‘a universal pestilence’; Zosimus 1.26
and 1.37 (successive outbreaks both said to be the worst up to that date).
Also Chronicon a.354 (Brenot, Loriot, and Nony ( 1999 ), 75).

(10) Duncan-Jones ( 1990 ), 72–3; Duncan-Jones ( 1996 ), 112 and n. 32 .

(11) Zosimus 1.36; Petrus Patricius frag.9, trans. Dodgeon and Lieu ( 1991
) 61–2. In an even later tradition, Valerian’s army suffers from famine,
Syncellus and Zonaras, trans. Dodgeon and Lieu 63–4.

(12) Reece ( 1981 ), 36.

Page 25 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(14) Jaillette ( 1996 ) and Whittaker ( 1976 ).

(15) The codification reduced 2,000 existing books of law to 66: the four
books of Institutes, fifty of the Digest, and twelve of the Codex Justinianus
(Digest, ed. Mommsen, 1).

(16) See Rostovtzeff ( 1910 ),368–99;and citations in Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ),

48,n. 4 .

(17) FIRA I.102. Johnson ( 1936 ) 100, no.35.

(18) Herodian 2.4.6; Whittaker questioned the passage on the ground that
extending tax-freedom to Italy, where land-tax did not yet apply, shows that
the measure as a whole is a historian’s fabrication. But this slip does not
seem to prove invention (Whittaker ( 1976 ) 140). The earlier scheme for
re-occupation of deserted land offering long rent-free periods sketched in
Dio Chrysostom’s Euboean Oration probably echoes initiatives such as this
and Hadrian’s law (Or. 7.35–8). Although often questioned, its details are too
close to the historical examples to be a sophist’s invention.

(19) Particularly revealing are Marcus’s grants of land to invading tribes (Dio
71.11.4–5). De Sainte Croix lists 13 land grants to ‘barbari’ before Diocletian,
and another 20 in the next three centuries (De Sainte Croix ( 1981 ) 509–18).

(20) The immediate triggers for Pertinax’s measure in 193 may well have
been losses due to the Antonine plague, which had come back with a
vengeance in 189, from Dio’s eyewitness account, together with the financial
deficits inherited from Commodus (Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ) 15; (1996) 115 and
n. 83 ).

(21) 5–17 per cent: table in Jaillette ( 1996 ) 390.

(22) Lepelley ( 1967 ) 142–4.

(23) Nonetheless, there is evidence from both East and West that urban
populations also paid poll-tax (Jones ( 1964 ) 1.63 with nn. 47–8).

(24) Note however the strong check in the 220s which is possibly fiscal
in origin (p. 36 below). Jones inferred increased tax-levels from papyri
at Antaeopolis (Jones ( 1974 ) 82–9). But further analysis of the limited

Page 26 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(25) Arguably it was an inherent strain for an economy based on low-

efficiency agriculture to sustain a big standing army, and large public
building programmes, together with (in the late Empire) an established
Church and more than one capital and court. But Jones’s arguments for
spectacular growth in the size of the army have been disputed (Duncan-
Jones ( 1990 ) ch. 7 ).

(26) Lactantius De Mortibus 7, trans. in Brenot, Loriot and Nony (1999) 115;
MacMullen ( 1987 ) 743.

(27) Philo, De Spec. Leg. 3.159 ff.; Plutarch, Lucullus 20.1–2.

(28) For the late Empire, see Bernardi ( 1965 ) 147–52. For the limitations of
tax evidence from the Principate, cf. Duncan-Jones ( 1990 ) ch. 12 .

(29) See nn. 16–17 above.

(30) For reduced tax-yields, see n. 24 above.

(31) Jones ( 1964 ) 2.810–11.

(32) Medical disorders of peasants reduced to eating famine foods after the
harvest has gone to the city: Galen 4,749 ff. (Kuhn); cf. Garnsey ( 1988 ) 26.

(33) Hayes ( 1972 ) and ( 1980 ). For a later typology, see Mackensen ( 1993
) with Lund ( 1997 ).

(34) Thus Hayes’s work suggests that in Gaul, African red-slip ware is found
no further north than Lyons (Hayes ( 1980 ) 521), and may not have reached
Britain until after Roman rule had ended there (Hayes ( 1972 ) 458). For
maps which vividly show the distribution zones for pottery, see Hayes ( 1972
) 453–68.

Page 27 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(36) For a vigorous discussion focusing on the transition from Late Antiquity
to the early Middle Ages, see Moreland ( 1993 ).

(37) For examples of disputed results, see Mackensen ( 1993 ) with Lund (
1997 ) 573. See also n. 47 below.

(38) Arthur ( 1991 ) 19.

(39) Hayes and Martini ( 1994 ) 70.

(40) Small, Buck (1995) 21.

(41) Small ( 1991 ) 212–13. For later prosperity in another sample area of
Italy, that of northern coastal Etruria, see Pasquinucci and Menchelli ( 1999 ),
134–6 (extensive imports from Africa, Spain, the East, and Calabria and Sicily
in the 4th cent.).

(42) Yntema ( 1993 ) 220–3.

(43) Lloyd ( 1995 ) 224, 232, 236, 238.

(44) Coccia and Mattingly ( 1995 ) 110, table 2 .

(45) I am much indebted to Professor Simon Keay for discussion and advice
on this subject. See also Section 3 above.

(46) Potter ( 1979 ) 140–1.

(47) Millett ( 1991 a) 178 and ( 1991 b). Sites: Republican 22; early Empire
19; late Empire 16. Pottery: Republican 26+ sherds per hectare; early Empire
5+ sherds per ha. (Millett ( 1991 b) 179).

(48) Potter ( 1979 ) 142.

(49) Potter ( 1979 ) 143, cf. 144–5. This is now subject to revision in the light
of the current work on urban settlement at Falerii.

(50) Dyson ( 1978 ) 260.

(51) Carandini ( 1994 ) 170–2; Attolini et al. ( 1991 ) 151.

Page 28 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(53) Duncan-Jones ( 1996 ) 121, n. 122 .

(54) Panella and Tchernia do not accept the adoption of barrels as the
explanation (1994) 159.

(55) 45 per cent in 25 BC–AD 100; 13 per cent in AD 100–200. Kenrick ( 1987
) figs. 4 and 5 . For the African figures, see nn. 70,71,74 below.

(56) Translated from Brun and Conge`s (1996) 248. Results from Lewit’s
survey, with its smaller samples (e.g. 18 sites for Provence, Lewit ( 1991 )
129–35), conflict with the results used here for Provence and the Rhineland.
For reservations about Lewit’s approach, see Lo Cascio ( 1993 ) 250 n. 29 ;
and (1997) 176–7 n. 53 .

(57) van Oessel and Ouzoulias ( 2000 ) 137. For decline in the number of
rural vici in Gaul, see Wightman ( 1981 ).

(58) Gechter and Kunow ( 1986 ). These summaries are calculated from the
totals given in their figures 2 – 6 . The percentages refer to the fraction of the
total number of dated sites occupied in any given period.

(59) The zones are: Köln-Bonner Niederterrasse, Erfttal, Hurtgener

Hochflache, and Kempener Lehmplatte.

(60) Supply of fineware pottery within what is now Tunisia seems to have
been relatively localized (Lund ( 1997 ) 574).

(61) Dietz, Ladjimi Sebai and Ben Hassen ( 1995 ) 2.771–99. For rural survey
in Africa, see further Mattingly and Hitchner ( 1995 ).

(62) For the period up to 276, Romanelli ( 1959 ) and Duncan-Jones ( 1990 )
178–83; for the later period, Lepelley ( 1979–81 ) 1.75. Building restorations,
frequent from 284 onwards, are omitted, because they need not represent
large expenditures.

(63) The small setback in the pattern at the reign of Commodus (180–92) is
probably caused by loss of data because of damnatio memoriae. In Italy the

Page 29 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(64) The gap at AD 218–22 could be due to damnatio of Elagabalus (n. 67 ).

(65) Di Segni ( 1999 ) 161, table 3a and 3b.

(66) Thus in Asia Minor apart from Pamphylia, there is little building in
the middle decades of the third century (cf. Mitchell ( 1993 ) 1.216 and
238). An unusual inscription series from Lydia continues into mid-century.
But because it is mainly funerary, it essentially reflects the functioning of
builder’s yards, and the ability of private customers to afford their products.
The pattern is ‘Gaussian’ pattern up to the 250s, with the peak in the 170s,
followed by a precipitous fall in the 260s, and eclipse in the Tetrarchic period
(MacMullen ( 1986 )).

(67) The disgrace of a ruler (damnatio) also brought a wave of destruction

to cities all over the Empire, in which statues were systematically destroyed,
and inscriptions and monuments defaced (cf. Duncan-Jones ( 1990 ) 60–
1, 168). The damnatio of Elagabalus in 222 came only ten years after the
orders to remove Geta from the record. The waves of destruction can hardly
have been an incentive to public building.

(68) Again perhaps showing the impact of traumatic expropriations,

coinciding in this case with Nero’s hunt for African treasure, and his seizure
of the assets of six senators who owned ‘half of Africa’ (Duncan-Jones ( 1990
), 64–5).

(69) Summaries from Panella ( 1993 ) 691–3. Similar developments are

implied by the south Etruria survey and the excavations at Cosa (Hayes (
1972 ) 416).

(70) Gue´ry (1979).

(71) Similarly at Berenice in AD 100–200, African slip ware is 55 per cent,

Italian sigillata 13 per cent (N = 1574 sherds), Kenrick ( 1987 ) fig. 5 .

(72) African red-slip ware is also 98 per cent of fineware at Berenice in AD

200–250 (N = 3,811 sherds), Kenrick ( 1987 ) fig. 6 .

(73) For a wider discussion of African exports, see Carandini ( 1983 a).

(74) Keay ( 1981 ) 463.

Page 30 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(76) Mattingly ( 1988 ); Panella (1983); Panella ( 1993 ) 628–9.

(77) Panella ( 1986 ) 438, 442, 444, 450; Pavolini ( 1986 ).

(78) Hayes ( 1972 ) 461, map 18.

(79) For senators, see Corbier ( 1982 ), Leglay ( 1982 ); cf. Panella ( 1993 )
694, fig. 13, from Whittaker. See also Birley ( 1988 ) 82–3. With few military
movements and little long-distance trade passing through her territory,
Africa also seems to have been less exposed to the Antonine plague than
many other regions (cf. Duncan-Jones ( 1996 ) 128–9).

(80) The upheavals in Africa itself were evidently not enough to change
this. They included the violent suppression of Gordian’s revolt in 238, and
the revolt in western Numidia and Mauretania in the 250s, also suppressed
(Loriot and Nony ( 1997 ), 33–4; 45, no. 16b). Brenot, Loriot and Nony ( 1999
), 206–7 associate Mauretanian hoards of the 250s with the second event,
but cf. n. 113 below.

(81) See Pollard ( 2000 ) 171–239. Another sign of economic vitality is seen
in the Syrian grinding bowls exported to the eastern Mediterranean and even
to the northern frontiers in the late 3rd and 4th cents. (Pollard, 231).

(82) Kenrick ( 1981 ) 439–55. Similarly, in other samples from Syria, dated
fine-ware at Epiphaneia/Hama falls to negligible levels from AD 150–400; at
Anemurium the drop is from AD 200–400 (Lund ( 1995 ) 160–1, pls. 10.7 and
11.7).

(83) Wilkinson ( 1990 ) 120–1.

(84) The survey area is 175 km2; Algaze (1992) 40–4.

(85) Algaze ( 1994 ) 82.

(86) Tate ( 1992 ) and ( 1997 ); Foss ( 1995 ) 216–23.

(87) Foss ( 1995 ) 217, following Tate ( 1992 ); for possible doubts about this
social interpretation, see Ball ( 2000 ), 232–3.

Page 31 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(89) Bintliff ( 1991 ) 123–6, with distribution maps.

(90) Bintliff and Snodgrass ( 1985 ) 157.

(91) Whitelaw ( 2000 ) 229. I am much indebted to Anthony Snodgrass for

helpful discussion of the Greek evidence.

(92) The present account follows van Minnen (1995). A third village in the
Arsinoite to suffer collapse in the mid-3rd cent. was Pelousion (van Minnen (
1989 )).

(93) Eighty priests of Soknopaios, a crocodile god, died in a plague outbreak

in AD 178/9 (van Minnen (1995) 43).

(94) Van Minnen (1995) 35, from Bagnall ( 1985 a). For its continued history
in the 5th and 6th cents., see Pollard ( 1998 ).

(95) See Bagnall ( 1985 a).

(96) See Habermann ( 1998 ), the source of data for Fig. 7 .

(97) In the absence of tabulations, the data had to be extracted from

diagrams in Habermann ( 1998 ), 152–3. They are plotted here with different
time-units.

(98) Bagnall and Worp ( 1980 ), (1982).

(99) Alston ( 2001 ) mainly interprets long-term urban decline as showing the
redistribution of population between town and country, in a discussion of the
archaeology of urban sites in Egypt.

(100) For a major overview of the coinage from 238 to 311, see Callu ( 1975
).

(101) The relatively few exceptions include a small dossier of AD 232–52

from the Middle Euphrates which gives amounts in denarii for slaves (three
prices), a boat, a mare and two loans (Feissel and Gascou ( 1989 )). For late
third-cent. building expenditures in Africa, see Duncan-Jones ( 1982 ) 66.

(102) Howgego ( 1995 ) 127.

Page 32 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(104) See e.g. Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ) tables 2.1–2.4, 26–7. After high wheat
prices in the 240s and early 250s, there was a reversion to lower prices in
253–63 (Rathbone ( 1997 ) 194).

(105) Rathbone ( 1996 ) 335. Callu suggested 276 for the price-leap (Callu (
1969 ) 402). Aurelian’s reforms followed spectacular fraud in the Rome mint
beginning under Gallienus, and their effects can be seen in the coin hoards
(Estiot ( 1995 ) 52 and 54).

(106) Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ) 29 and 198 n. 20 ; see also Hollard ( 1995 a)

1069–70. For debasement as a possible source of 4th-cent. price increases,
Bagnall ( 1985 b), discussed in Howgego ( 1995 ) 125 and 128.

(107) The large-scale survey of silver content by Walker (1976–8) was

unfortunately hampered by technical limitations; cf. Duncan-Jones ( 1994
) 224 n. 46 . Later work has revealed systematic errors in his readings for
heavily debased coin. For more reliable 3rd-cent. figures, see n. 109 below.

(108) Cf.Duncan-Jones ( 1982 ) 375 and Callu ( 1969 ) 256. Graphs of the
shortening periods covered by the coin hoards are shown in Linant de
Bellefonds ( 1980 ) table 4 , 584.

(109) See most recently Cope, King, Northover and Clay ( 1997 ) 72–80
(destructive analyses of coin from AD 260–75); and Hollard ( 1995 a) 1069.
Also Depeyrot and Hollard ( 1987 ) 67. For silver content from AD 295 to 368,
see Callu ( 1989 ).

(110) For average aureus weights from AD 180–253, see Bland ( 1996 ) 83,
and for AD 253–70 Hollard ( 1995 a) 1049. For gold debasement, Morrisson (
1985 ) 80–6.

(111) Data from Reece ( 1991 ). For aggregated site-find coin data for the
western provinces as a whole, see Hollard (1995b).

(112) Keay ( 1981 ) 466.

(113) See Brenot, Loriot and Nony ( 1999 ), 184–5, with distribution map. As
the peak in hoard numbers at this point is geographically widespread, their
inference that these Gallic hoards were buried as a crisis response to the
invasion of the Alamanni remains uncertain. If the hoard geography has any

Page 33 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(114) Data up to AD 235 from Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ) 265–6, and thereafter

from Bland ( 1996 ) 86–90. The threshold for inclusion here is at least 100
denarii per hoard. There is a small mismatch between the lists, as the first
deliberately excludes hoards from beyond the frontier.

(115) The later hoards typically consist of radiates, while some earlier ones
are in denarii or have a mixture of denarii and radiates. Here all values have
been recalculated in denarii (for the radiate as a double denarius, see e.g.
Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ) 222).

(116) Callu ( 1975 ) 604.

(117) The hoards in question are Reka Devnia, Dorchester, Eauze, and
Cunetio (Bland ( 1996 ) 87–90).

(118) 1,250 denarii and 2 aurei. Chron.a. 354; translation in Loriot and Nony
( 1997 ), 23–4). This source contains a zealous account reign by reign of the
Emperors’ congiarium payments at Rome, which even includes promised
payments that never took place (Quintillus, 24).

(119) Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ) 82–5. See also Bastien ( 1988 ).

(120) Domergue ( 1990 ) 219. The numbers would be consistent with an

overwhelming impact of the Antonine plague. For its potential impact on
mining, see Duncan-Jones ( 1996 ) 121 n. 118 . Edmondson concluded that
mining in the Late Empire showed reduced output and mainly small units of
production (Edmondson ( 1989 ) 99). Cyprian’s mention of gold and silver
mines running out, written in 252/3, may be dialectically convenient, as it is
juxtaposed with decline on other fronts. But it coincides with the period of
heavy debasement (Ad Demet. 3; trans. Loriot and Nony ( 1997 ) 56).

(121) For the dating profile of the material from the Digest and other sources
for the Principate up to AD 235, see Duncan-Jones ( 1990 ) 168–9.

(122) Cf.Honore´ (1994): the Diocletianic peaks in private rescripts are so

high that they cannot be shown in the graph without dwarfing everything
else (376 in AD 293, 492in 294, compared witha previous maximumof 98in
AD 223; Honore´ 189,187).

Page 34 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(124) Index to Codex Theodosianus, ed T. Mommsen, and Honore´ (1998).

(125) Sbonias ( 1999 ).

(126) In principle, one possibility need not exclude the other, because
pre-modern towns in the Mediterranean could easily be net consumers of
population (see e.g. Duncan-Jones ( 1990 ) 104, and Scheidel ( 2001 b) 28).
But for urban as well as rural shrinkage in south Etruria, see Potter ( 1979 )
143–5. And for urban shrinkage in Egypt, see n. 99 above.

(127) Thus Boak’s book on manpower decline (Boak ( 1955 )) was largely
dismissed in Finley ( 1958 ), while Gilliam’s very influential article on the
Antonine plague minimized its effects (Gilliam ( 1961 ); later contested at
length in Duncan-Jones ( 1996 )). Archaeologists confronted by Italian survey
evidence have nonetheless suggested overall depopulation (Potter, loc. cit.).

(128) Duncan-Jones ( 1996 ).

(129) Dio Cassius 75.13.2.1: Herodian 6.6.

(130) See n. 9 above.

(131) For visible shrinkage of the cultivated area of an Egyptian village in

the aftermath of plague, see Sharp ( 1999 a) 188. Jones noted the incidence
of plague in the 2nd and 3rd centuries when discussing decline in numbers
(Jones ( 1964 ) 2.1043). But his demographic inferences from the eastern
census inscriptions seem uncertain (see Duncan-Jones ( 1990 ) 207 and 199–
210).

(132) Ikeguchi calculates composite trend lines for some of the Italian survey
evidence (Ikeguchi ( 1999/2000 )).

(133) For trends in Spain see also text at n. 74 above.

(134) Notwithstanding the well known ‘taxes and trade’ arguments of

Hopkins ( 1980 ), contested in Duncan-Jones ( 1990 ) chs. 2 , 3 , and 12 .
For this debate, see now Hopkins (1995/6), Pollard ( 2000 ) 171–211, and
Duncan-Jones ( 2001 ).

Page 35 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

(136) For these important tendencies, see Vera ( 1995 ) and Duncan-Jones (
1990 ) 140–2.

(137) See n. 8 .

(138) Cf. Duncan-Jones ( 1982 ) 375.

(139) For Asia, see n. 66 above.

(140) Cf. n. 120 above.

(141) Asia like Africa shows much reduced levels of public building in the
mid-3rd cent. (n. 66 above).

Page 36 of 36 Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity

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