Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire

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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

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9780199297375 0-19-926714-6 978-0-19-926714-9

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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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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.

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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

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1. Map showing towns under jurisdiction of the praefectus urbi within 100-mile radius of Rome, from the Tyrrhenian coast to the Apennines. CHAPTER 11

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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 Constantine, 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.

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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.

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SIMON SWAIN is Professor of Classics and Ancient History, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Warwick. SUSAN WALKER is Deputy Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, The British Museum, London. (p.xiii)

MICHAEL WHITBY is Professor of Classics and Ancient History, Department of Classics aand Ancient History, University of Warwick.

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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 Page 1 of 18

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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 Page 2 of 18

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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 Page 3 of 18

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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 Page 6 of 18

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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 Page 9 of 18

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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 Page 10 of 18

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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 Page 11 of 18

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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. 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. (p.13)

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 Page 12 of 18

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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 Page 13 of 18

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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 Page 14 of 18

Introduction


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 popularphilosophical 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


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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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


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

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Index


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 Page 3 of 47

Index


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 Page 4 of 47

Index


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 Page 5 of 47

Index


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

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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 Page 8 of 47

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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

Page 10 of 47

Index


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 see also Arch of Constantine ; Chi-Rho symbol Page 11 of 47

Index


(p.472) Constantine II 246 Constantinople: administration in 111, 121, 124,132 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

Page 12 of 47

Index


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 Page 13 of 47

Index


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 see also Prices Edict Diogenes 86 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

Page 14 of 47

Index


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 Page 15 of 47

Index


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 Page 16 of 47

Index


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

Page 17 of 47

Index


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

Page 18 of 47

Index


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 see also Hellenic culture ; Hellenistic culture Greeks 16–18, 147, 190–2, 208,215–17, 219, 221, 222, 228,229, 318, 344, 346, 354,355–8, 380, 383, 396, 397 see also Hellenes Green, R. P. 352 Gregorius (legal codifier) 117, 128 Gregorius (prefect) 144

Page 19 of 47

Index


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 Page 20 of 47

Index


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

Page 21 of 47

Index


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 Page 22 of 47

Index


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

Page 23 of 47

Index


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 Page 24 of 47

Index


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 Page 25 of 47

Index


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

Page 26 of 47

Index


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

Page 27 of 47

Index


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

Page 28 of 47

Index


Molise 28 Mons Ciminius 74 Montserrat, D. 311, 316 Morocco 135, 146 see also Maghreb 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 Page 29 of 47

Index


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 Page 30 of 47

Index


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 Page 31 of 47

Index


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

Page 32 of 47

Index


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

Page 33 of 47

Index


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

Page 34 of 47

Index


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

Page 35 of 47

Index


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

Page 36 of 47

Index


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 see also Dominate ; Principate ; Tetrarchy Roman law 6, 8, 10, 17, 48–50,111–32, 169, 170, 184, 188,219, 224, 225, 233, 324, 363,385, 391 of citizenship 133–55 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 Page 37 of 47

Index


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

Page 38 of 47

Index


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 Page 39 of 47

Index


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

Page 40 of 47

Index


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 Page 41 of 47

Index


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 see also Fiscus Tchalenko 39 Tebtunis 321 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 Page 42 of 47

Index


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 Page 43 of 47

Index


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

Page 44 of 47

Index


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

Page 45 of 47

Index


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 Page 46 of 47

Index


Zosimus 161, 163, 165, 173, 179,180 Zoticus 349 Zuckerman, C. 9, 170–2

Page 47 of 47

Index




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——(1986), ‘Some Observations on Pre−Antoninian Roman Law in Egypt’, in R. S. Bagnall and W. V. Harris (eds.), Studies in Roman Law in Memory of A. Arthur Schiller (Leiden) l163–7 WOLFRAM, H. (1988), History of the Goths (Berkeley) WOOD, C. (2000), The Vienna School Reader (New York) WOODS, D. (1991), ‘The Date of the Translation of the Relics of SS. Luke and Andrew to Constantinople’, VC 45: 286–92. —— (1994), ‘The Baptism of the Emperor Valens’, Classica et Mediaevalia 45: 211–21. WOOLF, G. (1994), ‘Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East’, PCPhS 40: 116–43.

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WRIGHT, D. H. (1998), ‘The Persistence of Pagan Art Patronage in Fifth Century Rome’, in I. Ševčenko and I. Hutter (eds.), Aetos: Studies in Honour of Cyril Mango (Stuttgart) 355–69 WRIGHT, F. A. (1932), History of Later Greek Literature (London) YNTEMA, D.(1993),In Search of an Ancient Countryside: the Amsterdam Free University Field Survey at Oria, Province of Brindisi, South Italy (1981–1983) (Amsterdam) ZIEGLER, J. (1975) (ed.), Eusebius Werke 9: Der Jesajakommentar (GCS 57) (Berlin) ZUCKERMAN, C. (1998), ‘Two Reforms of the 370s: Recruiting Soldiers and Senators in the Divided Empire’, REB 56: 79–139.

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Bibliography




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


holding regular classes. 2 But when school resumed in October, find himself faced with?

3

what did he

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 (p.402)

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 Page 2 of 20



Gemina, and a number of young boys and girls who had been entrusted to Plotinus’ care on the death of their parents. Whether this was Gemina’s only residence, or just a house belonging to her, is not clear, but it was obviously a fairly large and elaborate establishment, in which young ladies and middleaged philosophers could live decently together. 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 Page 3 of 20



propose the rather wild project of establishing a philosophic city on a ruined site in Campania, to be called Platonopolis and to be run in accordance with Plato’s (p.405) Laws—presumably with Plotinus and his friends acting as a kind of Nocturnal Council. This project came to nothing, in fact, Porphyry tells us, by reason of opposition by certain parties at court. 11 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.

Page 4 of 20



Moving on from Plotinus, I merely note the school of Porphyry, since we know virtually nothing about it, save that it existed. He presumably set it up, in Rome, on the ashes of that of Plotinus (which seems to have simply dissolved at his death), after his return to Rome from self-imposed exile in Lilybaeum in Sicily some time after the death of Plotinus in 269, perhaps in the mid-270s. The philosopher Iamblichus is declared by Eunapius to have studied with him (and previously with a sort of deputy of his, one Anatolius, Eunap. VP 5.1.467), and we know the names of a number of other pupils, such as Gedalius, to whom he dedicated his vast commentary on Aristotle’s Categories. The school will have continued for upwards of thirty years (his death is generally fixed at shortly after 305). It is possible that his wife Marcella (to whom he addresses a rather pompous epistle at around the turn of the century) filled for him something of the same role as Gemina did for Plotinus. At any rate, reading between the lines of the distinctly defensive proem to his epistle, we may gather that there were many relations of Marcella (who was a widow with five children, her husband having been a ‘friend’—perhaps an aristocratic disciple—of Porphyry’s) who were highly indignant at the marriage, and who had been making trouble. Despite Porphyry’s high-minded denial, there must have been an estate there worth fighting about. (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 Page 5 of 20



and Euphrasius). The school appears to have had at its disposal more than one suburban estate (proast-eion, VP 1.12.458), whether provided through the beneficence of Sopater, or from Iamblichus’ own resources, on which the disciples could live a communal life. It seems that Iamblichus imposed something of a Pythagorean regime on his followers—as a back-up to which, no doubt, his Pythagorean Sequence, a set of ten works, put together largely from extracts from previous works, and serving as an introduction to all aspects of ‘Pythagorean’ philosophy, was composed. Eunapius tells us (VP 1.12.458) that he devoted himself unstintingly (aphthonōs) to his pupils, merely (p.408) retiring occasionally by himself to pray and meditate —a custom which led to the growth of wild rumours about levitation and suchlike! 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 Page 6 of 20



on the text of the dialogues in considerable detail. We have evidence of detailed commentaries by him on virtually all of those in his cycle, 21 and for each of them he proposed the radical notion that they had one single skopos, or subject-matter, to which all parts of the given dialogue, including the apparently casual details of the introductory portions, related. 22 The working out of this Procrustean system involved a large degree of allegorizing, and forcing of the text, but it was actuated by the belief that the divine Plato could have done nothing at random, and that a dialogue must be a single, coherent living whole, on the lines laid down by Socrates in the Phaedrus (264c). 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 Page 7 of 20



of Iamblichus’ life, 24 and this reminds us of a significant aspect of the philosopher’s Sitz im Leben, his relations with those in authority. Iamblichus’ position was secure so long as the anti-Christian Licinius was in power in the East—we have most interesting testimony to his relations with the court in the form of a series of letters addressed to him by an anonymous correspondent who was plainly a prominent member of Licinius’ staff, and very probably an ex-pupil 25 —but when Constantine took over, it became increasingly difficult to maintain such a prominent centre of Hellenic culture and religion, and the school, under Sopater’s successor 26 Aedesius, had to go underground, re-emerging somewhat later in Sardis. (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-àvis 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 Page 8 of 20



young man, remarked to Syrianus, employing that admirable expression of Plato’s about great natures (cf. Rep. 491e– 492a): ‘This fellow will either come to be a great good, or its opposite!’ 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. (p.412)

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 Page 9 of 20



the Timaeus (in 440, when Proclus was 28, as Marinus tells us), and he is generally agreed to have died around 437. In his last year, according to Marinus (ch. 26), having got through the Plato course, he gave Proclus and one of his fellow senior pupils, Domninus, the choice of a seminar on the Orphic poems or on the Chaldaean Oracles, but Domninus and Proclus could not agree (Domninus favouring the Orphics, Proclus the Chaldaeans), and while they were still dickering, Syrianus died; but we can observe from this the general direction that instruction might take—culminating, after a full course of Platonism, in more properly theological and even theurgic revelations. 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 Page 10 of 20



by dinner, attended by the whole School. After that, or perhaps during the siesta period, the great man might find time to compose his seven hundred lines (possibly dictated to a slave amanuensis). Later in the night, at any rate, Marinus tells us, Proclus devoted himself to prayer and occasionally the composition of hymns (some of which we still have), 40 since he was very sparing of sleep. No doubt this is an idealized picture, but still anything resembling this routine would be pretty gruelling, especially as one got older. 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). (p.415)

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



All this reminds us that the late antique philosopher was, after all, whether he liked it or not, a public figure, and if one was not of the now prevailing faith, that role could be troublesome. There does appear to have been at least one period where, Marinus tells us (loc. cit.), Proclus found it prudent to withdraw for a year from (p.416) the city, and undertake a cultural and religious tour of Asia Minor. Marinus speaks darkly of a ‘hail-storm and mighty wave of troubles’ (ζάλη καὶ τρικυμία πραγμάτων) which could possibly refer to the fall-out from the Council of Chalcedon in 451, but could have been something much more local; at any rate it was a period where a Hellene had to keep his head down. The Academy in this period, as we know from both Damascius (Phil. Hist. §102 Athanassiadi) and Olympiodorus (In Alc. 141, p. 92 Westerink), was very well endowed—Damascius talks of an income of 1000 gold nomismata (= solidi) and more in Proclus’ day, 41 the product of generations of endowments and legacies—and this, while giving the diadochos a certain clout in civic politics, and providing a comfortable living (especially for a man of such sober habits as Proclus), also gave hostages to fortune: there was the ultimate danger of expropriation, if Christian enthusiasm got out of hand.

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



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



was entered into by Ammonius in Alexandria in the 390s (and such as the Athenian philosophers disdained), the game was bound to be up sooner or later. In Athens, the shutters came down, effectively, in 529 (though philosophical activity, such as the writing of commentaries, did continue in private after that, as we know), while in the capital of Constantinople the end did not come until 726, with the closing of the university—and by that time the professors, men such as Elias, David, and Stephanus, had long been Christian.

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 Page 14 of 20



party, to which outsiders were invited, and at which formal discourses were presented. This would only be the tip of the iceberg, though; there was probably an informal dinner of the school on most evenings, at which philosophical questions might be raised. (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.

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(11) This may have been all for the best, after all, but it would have been intriguing to see how it worked out. Can we, in this opposition of a party at court, perhaps see the influence of a sort of ‘Athens lobby’, worried about Platonopolis becoming an intellectual counterweight to the schools of Athens, and thus bad for business—as was also once suggested to me by Peter Brown? But Gallienus was in any case not popular with the senatorial class; indeed, a too close dependence upon him and his wife may have jeopardized the continuance of the school after Gallienus’ assassination in 268 (and possibly contributed to Porphyry’s bout of depression). (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.

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(18) Edited most recently, in the Bude´ series, by Westerink et al. ( 1990 ). I follow here the corrected scheme set out by Westerink in the Introduction, pp. lxxi–iv (the received text is both corrupt and confused at various points). (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



(28) At any rate, Marinus remarks (VProcl. ch. 11 ) that Proclus was ‘much sought after by the teachers of rhetoric’ (περιμάχητος τοῖς ῥητορικοῖς γενόμενος), a situation which Nicolaus may have had something to do with. (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



(38) Dedicatee of the Platonic Theology, who is also accorded a mention in the Parmenides Commentary (872, 18–32 Cousin), as having contributed an interpretation of Parm. 131de, thus giving evidence of discussion in seminar within the School. Pericles, indeed, sounds more like a senior assistant, to judge from the mention of him in Marinus, VPlot. 29. (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.

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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


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, to which I shall return. But to take fourth-century oratory on its own is to miss something important, that it is part of a tradition of rhetorical studies running from the end of the first century BC. It is with the development of this tradition that I shall begin this chapter. I shall then compare Libanius with some of his illustrious predecessors to assess his own contribution. In the third section I shall look at the presentation of him by his younger contemporary, Eunapius, and his own account of the events Eunapius focuses on. Finally, I shall consider his relationship with two key emperors, Theodosius and Julian. 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



a steady recovery. This was certainly a matter of ideological self-awareness. But it also had a very physical manifestation in the urban regeneration of Greek cities, the rise of local coinages, the huge epigraphical trail of elite activity and investment, the resurrection and invention of festivals, the high profile of Greek aristocrats and their participation in the military and civilian services of the Empire. Two questions need to be addressed briefly. Who were these ‘Greeks’? And how did the Greeks view Rome? 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



cultural zone developed no ‘proto-nationalist’ feelings but was in important ways satisfied with Roman rule. 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



rapidly undermined it). Any religion that guaranteed property and slavery in addition to its other advantages was not destined to escape the notice of the elite for long. 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



rhetoric moved in a logical direction that was to make it appealing to (p.360) philosophers too, and the result of this was that philosophers stepped forward into the limelight. The course of rhetoric began with instruction on how to define the ‘issue’ of a case (fictitious legal cases being the basis of the system). The issue, or stasis, was the way in which the defendant (the main point of reference) should approach the case. This theory of issues was originally developed in late Hellenistic times. Since then it became more and more complicated, partly for internal academic reasons and partly because of a need to broaden its usefulness away from the courts and into political life in general. There were two major attempts at systematizing the theory in the second century AD by Minucianus and Hermogenes. That much of the system they and their predecessors had evolved was not in fact useful is clear from the fact that the published declamations of Libanius and others do not follow it to any great extent. 3 But its complexity and the fact it was universally taught would appeal to anyone who sought to extend instruction in logic. 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. 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 (p.361)

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(as opposed to the reactive philosophy of the first and second centuries) required good style. Good writing made Neo-platonists highly visible. But the effect was noxious. For the Neo-platonists pushed philosophy beyond the reach or tastes of most of the educated elite. Their individual relationship with a transcendent deity, their production of dense texts, their sense of sect—these recall intellectual Christianity. The association of an elitist rhetoric with an elitist religion further undermined the cultural oligarchy of Hellenism. It was this visibility and elitism of Neoplatonism that attracted the young Julian away from his Christian upbringing. His championing of Hellenic philosophy–religion–letters excluded Christian notables and led them to question their participation in the traditional education system which Julian notoriously forbade them to teach in. 5 His wish to extend his extreme Hellenism was highly counter-productive. For within thirty years of his death in 363, Hellenic religion had been placed under severe constraints and its public face was all but wiped out. 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



himself actually uses the phrase of the fictional declamations that were the bedrock of the sophists’ schools, and he makes Aeschines in the fourth century BC the inventor of this type of rhetoric. Earlier scholars such as Ernst Rohde took him at his word and applied the phrase ‘new’ or ‘second sophistic (Philostratus uses both) to the Greek literature of the entire Roman period down to the end of Antiquity. Some moderns use it this way. 10 Evidence for the teaching of the schools does come from the Second Sophistic period (as the term is now mostly defined): for example, the basic exercises or progymnasmata of Theon and others, the various works by or attributed to Hermogenes (On Issues, On Types of Style). But much comes from the fourth century and later—especially Sopater (cf. above), Choricius of Gaza (second quarter of the sixth century), and Libanius himself. 11 These figures are part of the literary tradition of the Second Sophistic. But the world they live in is quite different. The consequences of the establishment of Christianity are one major change; (p.363) the reorganized Roman Empire of the later third century and after is another. If in Libanius we can still recognize the combination of letters and political activity recorded by Philostratus, we can also see him trying to make sense of a changed world. In the person of Choricius, the last Greek sophist of Antiquity, Hellenic letters were firmly married to Christianity. 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

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reforms of Diocletian greatly increased the demand on local speech-makers to produce appropriate celebrations, greetings, and farewells. 14 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



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



dealing with Julian and his reign (Orr. 12–18, 24, 37), those dealing with the Riot of the Statues and its aftermath in 387 (Orr. 19–23), speeches to, and for the most part against, local and regional Roman governors (Orr. 4 [Eutropius], 10 [Proclus], 26–29 [Icarius], 33 [Tisamenus], 40 [Eumolpius], 41 [Timocrates], 44 [Eustathius], 46 [Florentius], 54 [Eustathius], 56 [Lucianus], 57 [Severus]). Comparable are the speeches on matters of public policy which are undoubtedly the most familiar works today: Or. 30 For the Temples, Or. 45 On the Prisoners, Or. 47 On the Protection System, Or. 50 For the Farmers, and Orr. 51–52 on corrupt petitioning of governors. 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. (p.367)

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

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What of Libanius? It is quite clear that not all of his orations were published. The extreme personal abuse of most of the speeches to or against governors and the frankness of his assessments of failures in public policy in For the Prisoners, etc., have been felt to preclude publication. 33 But there is publication and publication. At Or. 2.70 Libanius speaks of his expectation that his criticisms will eventually reach as far as the court (cf. 32.28). It is plausible to suggest that the orations addressed to the ‘king’ or to ‘Theodosius’ (19, 20, 24, 28, 30, 33, 42, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52) resemble Dio’s Kingship Orations in that they were not sent directly to the emperor nor delivered in front of him (note e.g. the fiction of Or. 19 in this regard 34 ). So far as we know, Dio had no contacts with senior figures in the Trajanic regime, and it is therefore unlikely that he envisaged the Kingship Orations percolating through court circles. But Libanius is quite different. He knew some of the most influential men at Theodosius’ court, and even if there is in fact no evidence for the assumption that he was given political honours by the emperor (see below), he clearly did enjoy his good will for Theodosius allowed him the privilege of transferring his property during his lifetime to his illegitimate son Cimon. 35 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



approached it along the road from Nicaea (8–10). The whole effect is more engaged, more original than its model. 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



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



the chronology are rarely those of sequence, but comprise gaps and some repetitions which are due to the several additions that were tacked onto the main part of the speech every so often to bring it up to date. 53 There is no parallel with the Sacred Tales. Third, health is certainly a major concern of Libanius, but his megrims and gout do not dominate the Autobiography. 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



examined, physicians who were exponents of rhetoric. Rhetoric and persuasion had always held an important place in Greek medicine. The ‘philosophizing’ of rhetoric in the High Roman Empire and the Galenic legacy of philosophical medicine reinforced an old attraction. After the sophists and doctors Eunapius says he ‘must return to the philosophers from whom we digressed’ (499 = XXII. 2. 4 G). Eunapius’ philosophy is the Iamblichan, ‘theurgic’ philosophy, which was taken up by Maximus, the advisor to Julian and pupil of Iamblichus’ pupil Aedesius. Eunapius shows Julian bidding farewell to another of Aedesius’ pupils, Eusebius, because of Eusebius’ harangue against Maximus’ theurgical practices (474– 5 =VII. 2 G). It has been suggested that he ignores two of Iamblichus’ other pupils, Theodorus and Euphrasius (mentioned at 458 =V. 1. 5G), because they too preferred ‘noetic’ Neoplatonism. 61 What is certain is that Eunapius idolized Julian and his preferred brand of wisdom. He was accordingly hostile to Christianity and the Christian Roman Empire. 62 The most notorious omission from the Lives— Themistius—is due to a combination of these factors. As we have seen, Themistius displayed no interest in Iamblichan philosophy, and his thoughts on the divine and the emperor’s relationship with it were as studiously nonpartisan as he needed. 63 His flexibility had in fact allowed him to praise Julian too. 64 But philosophy for Themistius was a vehicle for self-promotion, as it had been long before for Dio Chrysostom, whom he certainly used. 65 Eunapius evidently hated him. (p.374)

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



governor of Greece dismissed the three existing chair holders and Libanius was put forward for the chair of rhetoric. The governor changed his mind, but Libanius now felt threatened by the established professors. Fortune intervened in the family situation of his friend Crispinus who needed support at home. This was how he ended up in Constantinople in winter 340/1 (Or. 1.25 ff.). Here he clashed with and defeated the sophist Bemarchius, a pagan who had attached himself to Constantius and had just returned from a lecture tour promoting Constantius’ new Great Church. Libanius’ enemies took advantage of rioting in the city to charge Libanius with magical practices. A new proconsul of Constantinople tortured his copyist (bibliographos), 69 but expelled Libanius who took up an invitation to go to Nicomedia. The appointment was official: it had the backing of the archōn (48). 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 ̑ ζημια, ̑ ‘what it would have been a loss 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. (p.376)

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



the Antiochenes ‘promised a big salary’ (90–2). Libanius had to return to Constantinople, but in the winter (p.377) of 353/4 he came back. 72 The ‘sophist’ then gets a young boy to make an allegation of magic against him to the emperor Gallus (the reward: sex with a dancer in the sophist’s gift). This carries no weight; but ‘the promises I had received were not put into effect’ (100), since the official sophist, Zenobius, who had taught Liba-nius himself but was now evidently unwell, had ‘changed his mind’, i.e. he refused to resign for Libanius. Libanius reports that ‘Eubulus and his son had fled’ before the food rioters who killed the Consularis Syriae in summer 354. 73 It is likely that the ‘Phoenician’ of § 90 is this Eubulus. 74 The ‘sophist and his clique’ [οι] ἀμφ’ ἐκεινον ̑ τὸ σοφιστήν) will be the same as ‘Eubulus and 75 his party [moira]’ at § 116. Zenobius at this point fell ill and died, and Libanius took over his pupils and his lecture rooom in the council chambers (104). This whole section culminates with various triumphs down to the opening remarks of the new Praefectus praetorio Orientis, Hermogenes IV, who compliments Libanius’ uncle and summons Libanius himself (116). 76 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



when he had brushed off the dust and adorned it afresh he would bring it out into the light, draped with a whole new theme and appropriate sentiments, like the dainty slave girls of a mistress who has just come into money and has smoothed away the signs of old age. For these reasons the sainted Julian also admired him. (496 — XVI. 2. 5-6G) 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



lasted two days (Ep. 405.12–13). He makes no mention of Acacius, but in a later letter to Acacius himself, clearly written after Acacius had left for Palestine (so 361?), he tells how he had composed something which earned him universal praise because it praised Acacius’ exhibitions (Ep. 289.2). This surely is the same work, and it is clear that it suited.Eunapius to take Libanius as implicitly admitting his inferiority. 80

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



rebutted in Or. 4, On Talking Nonsense (Against Eutropius), perhaps of 388/9. But Or. 2 is far more general. Libanius goes through various groups who do not call him barus and then from § 26 to the end (74) acknowledges in detail that he is tiresome and boring about the present wretched conditions and constantly complains that things were better in the past. He implores the gods to restore the ‘temples, farmers, councils, and the language of the Hellenes’ (74). In §§ 7–8 he asks if the governors find him barus. Everyone knows the honoured seat he takes during visits (εἰσιὼν καθιζάνω) to them, ‘although I could have a more prestigious one’ (7). He goes on, 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



old (33.15). If that is right, the speech must date to 386 and specifically to December of that year on the basis of information about the tax cycle given in § 19. 92 The real problem is that, although there is common material between the two speeches (because Tisamenus exemplifies some of the general complaints of Or. 45), there are sufficient differences to make it entirely reasonable to put Or. 45 perhaps several years later. 93 If that is accepted, it becomes difficult to date Or. 30 For the Temples to 386 on the ground that Libanius makes reference to the same imperial benefaction (§ 1 ‘the greatness of the honour (timē) you have bestowed on me’) as the one he refers to at Or. 45. 1 (‘the greatest favour’). As Seeck thought, Or. 30 with its extremely hostile comments on the powerful Cynegius, Praetorian Prefect of the East 384–8, was surely written or published after Cynegius’ death in March 388, and that is true whether its publication was restricted (as it surely was) or not. 94 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 (p.383)

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 ‘peopleloving’ (philanthrōpos) monarch. The importance of the socio-political virtue of philanthrōpia is recognized in all Greek authors of the Empire, Page 22 of 47



Christian and non-Christian. It assumed a prominence in the ideology of the Christian kings. 100 It is very much to the fore in Themistius. (p.384) Libanius makes much of it in his panegyric of Constans and Constantius (Or. 59), the ‘embassy speech’ to Julian (Or. 15), and the fictitious address to Theodosius after the Riot of the Statues (Or. 20), and in other works too. Libanius was telling emperors what they wanted to hear—just like Dio Chrysostom nearly two centuries before. But like Dio, in presenting the emperor as having a certain virtue, he is also trying to suggest to his audience that he is able to exert some influence. 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. 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 (p.385)

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for his majesty in association with his sons. Yet there is no sense here or anywhere else that Libanius was seriously worried by false allegations in the Theodosian period. If we had letters of Dio to Trajan’s courtiers or letters concerning the allegation made against him of treasonable conduct, as reported by Pliny the Younger (Epp. 10. 81–2), the tone of the exchanges would not be different. But when it comes to frankness about the faults of the Roman Empire, Libanius leaves Dio far behind, virtually holding Theodosius himself responsible for failing to enforce the Law in some speeches (esp. Or. 30, below, p. 391). 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



to be taken with another from Libanius’ old age (precision is impossible, but see below) on the custom of inviting sons to the feasting associated with the Olympic Games, Or. 53 On Invitations to the Festivals. These Games ran for 45 days in July and August. The festival was of course one of the gloriesofAntioch for all the peoples who came there(Or.11.268–9). For Libanius and those of his views it was governed by antique custom and proper observance of it furthered the correct relationship between the city and the gods. It was an especially chaste occasion. New habits, specifically the extension of dining rights to minors, had ruined its nomos, ‘custom(s)’ (53.13, 17). Something triggered off Libanius’ displeasure, for although the change was introduced under Constantius (Libanius’ favourite figure of hate), he admits that he is only contesting it in his old age (53.12– 15). That something could well be the changes sought by Proclus. 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).

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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



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



ivory writing tablets. 114 Libanius ex-pupil Priscianus II, who had brought the presents, had left Constantinople after delivering a fulsome panegyric on Tatianus. Libanius knew the value of the reflected glory (cf. Or. 1.258 on another ex-pupil, Eusebius XXII, Ep. 1052.2 on another, Zeno), but was not to be outdone and promptly composed an encomium himself. In the summer of the next year Tatianus and Proclus were deposed by their bitter, efficient, and Christian foe, Flavius Rufinus. 115 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. 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. (p.391)

Or. 30 argues for the preservation especially of rural shrines from the depredations of the monks. The context is very probably the recent antipagan 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



that sacrifices were going on (in violation of Cod. Theod. 16.10.9 of 385). This is surely Cynegius, 119 and these remarks will be after his death. 120 The exact dating must depend on the pagan whom Theodosius has ‘even now … linked (καὶ νυν ̑ … παρέζευξας)’ to himself, ‘thinking it in the best interests of the kingdom’ (30.53). This should naturally refer to a consul; and the obvious candidate is Tatianus. 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



the fourth century it is only Libanius among pagans who speaks out like Dio and Aristides had before. 123 We have virtually no praise of governors from his pen. The warning speeches to Timocrates and Icarius (Orr. 26, 41) entertain the possibility of a good governor, but are also suspicious of their initial subservience to organized claqueurs. Only Or. 44 to Eustathius before he has arrived in Antioch is openly laudatory, and here the praise has more to do with the fact that Eustathius was an amateur rhetor who once annoyed a teacher by reading Libanius in school (44.3)! Libanius must have issued many flattering speeches to governors upon their entry to the city: that was his job. Or. 1 contains some positive remarks, 124 and he is capable of praising governors in passing in order to damn the principales (Or. 48.10). But nothing survives to compare with the elaborate, beautiful, sugary encomiums of Himerius. Both Florentius and Rufinus were Christians. But that is not an issue here. Rufinus was sensible enough to admire Libanius’ work (Or. 1.282, Epp. 1052.3–4, 1061.5–6), and Libanius seized his chance. The result (the catalogue of Florentius’ defects) may have squared with Rufinus’ imperial concerns, but it also certainly suited Libanius as the ‘sophist of the city’. The local intellectual is looking after local interests, and matters of religion are irrelevant. (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



over reform of the council, over hoarding food and causing, he alleged, artificial shortages, and for their mockery of his behaviour and appearance as a philosopher wearing a long beard (pōgōn). The attack on Christianity in the satirical Caesars, the devotional discourse To King Helios, and the infamous exposure of Christianity in Against the Galileans show his mood at this time. All this made Libanius’ position very difficult. Letters and the (p.395) Autobiography offer a clue to his responses. Publicly he kept quiet. After Julian had gone, he sent after him Or. 15 Embassy Speech to Julian, perhaps composed towards the end of March (§ 73) but never received by the emperor (Or. 17.37). The companion speech, Or. 16 To the Antiochenes, On the King’s Anger, was never published. 128 Immediately after Julian’s death on 26th June 363 Libanius composed the Monody for Julian (Or. 17), then not long after the famous Funeral Speech (Epitaphios) (Or. 18). 129 Perhaps about the same time he wrote Or. 37 To Polycles on the friend who had betrayed Julian’s memory. 130 Later, during the first ten months of the reign of Theodosius (which began 19th January 379), Libanius addressed to the emperor Or. 24 On Avenging Julian. 131 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



battle of Leuctra. As has been remarked, it is often said that Libanius was indifferent in matters of religion. This is not true. The myth of Apollo’s pursuit of the nymph Daphne may have been a mere story that required rationalization (Orr. 11.95, 31.43), 133 but Libanius believed in the stories of divine action in Or. 24 just as he believed—in a far more stable frame of mind—in Artemis’ deeds in mythological and historical times in Or. 5. The abiding presence of the gods was testified by such miracles. This is what proved that Artemis was a ‘friend of mankind and a friend of the Greeks’, as he puts it at Or. 5.33. ‘Has not the way Julian died and the way he has been neglected made the gods angry with the Romans—if Apollo was so angry with the Achaeans simply because someone did not give back Chryses’ daughter, etc.?’ (Or. 24.32). Tyche (‘fortune’/‘favourable circumstances’) is the result of the gods’ favour: if you listen to me, he tells Theodosius, and aid Julian, ‘you will acquire tychē’ (§ 40). 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



Greek, which is for him still a matter of descent, of biology, in genos from being Roman. 138

137

and different

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



was good. If not, he was bad. Religion was a complicating factor, but not an overriding one. Libanius did not adulate Julian unthinkingly. Eunapius’ critical stance towards him may show some awareness of this. As time went by, the problematical aspects of Julian’s character or reign retreated for Libanius and his merits could be idealized along with other good things from the past. This is the Julian of Orr. 62.17 (support for logoi), 147 2.58 (reform of the bureaucracy), 148 30.40–1 (a model king, supported by the gods in his Persian campaign), 149 41.16 (control over the claqueurs and public morality), 150 48.17–18 and 49.3 (expansion of the council), 151 50.11 (public morality). 152 The recollection of imperial service comes out also in three letters of the later period (after 388), Epp. 901, 929, 947, where Libanius mentions Julian’s success against the Persians, a strong theme, of course, of the Julianic orations themselves (except for Or. 37). 153 In Or. 30.40–1 Julian stands for Libanius’ own idea of emperors and religion, just as he exemplifies in Or. 24 (which this passage resumes) the correct relationship between the gods and the Empire. 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



Tit. 3:1, 1 Pet. 2: 13–14, cf. Jn. 19: 11). Whereas Roman emperors had never been prepared to become Greek, they had come to discover in Libanius’ own infancy that Christianity was made for them and with one exception they stayed Christian. Libanius was only doing what he was expected to do; he had not changed, but the world had.

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



(14) Pernot ( 1993 ). (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



(26) The last is really a bitter attack on a consularis Syriae, Eutropius V. There is much on Libanius’ character also in Or. 29, which was grouped with Or. 2 in a number of manuscripts. (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



letter is not among his recognized fragments) and defended by Palladius (as in Libanius’ practice encomium, Foerster 8.243–51, cf. Apology of Socrates 93–4). It is worth remarking that Libanius here asks Palladius for a theme against Hadrian, who is Hadrian of Tyre ( Philostratus, Lives 585–90), the only other sophistic figure of the early Empire he explicitly praises (Or. 64.41), though note Or. 4.7–8 for Herodes Atticus and others. (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.

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(52) Cf. the citation of Homer’s ‘gates of death’ at Artemis 1 and Aristides Or. 49.4. (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



Julian (Brauch 1993 ), but confusion is more likely with the later appointment by Theodosius: Errington (2000) 899–902, Heather and Moncur ( 2001 ) 140– 1. (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.

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(76) ‘[T] hereupon Eubulus and his clique nearly collapsed’. Hermogenes is the subject of Himerius’ longest surviving encomium, Or. 48. (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.

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(87) Martin ( 1988 ) 11–13 argues that Or. 2 was a public discourse in keeping with normal sophistic activity (which seems dubious), whereas Norman ( 1977 ) 6–8 assumes a ‘deliberate restriction’. Libanius sometimes addresses an imaginary individual (§§ 33, 55, 56, 63), but more often a plural group who are clearly Christians (50, 59, 61), in which case restriction is indeed plausible (cf. the traditional slur about alcohol in Christian gatherings, here spiced up by Libanius’ topos of corrupting young men, for which cf. e.g. § 57 in this speech). (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.

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(100) Downey ( 1955 ), Pack ( 1947 ) 70 ff. For the Principate note Martin ( 1961 ). (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.

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(115) Cf. Cod. Theod. 9. 38. 9 after the fall of Rufinus himself and renewing the rights of all the Lycians which had been taken away when their most famous citizens, Tatianus and Proclus, fell from power. (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,

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living political figures (Proclus being a current office-holder); but these were not as powerful as a Count of the East. (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



(132) See Ep. 1264. (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



issue of the Christian teachers in silence, which is exactly what Ammianus Marcellinus recommends, 22.10.7. (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.

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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


century saw something of an Indian summer for the Greek epigram. The Garland of Philip of Thessalonica collected a generous selection under Nero, followed by Rufinus and Strato, who wrote erotic epigrams under Nero and Hadrian respectively. 3 Lucillius virtually created the satirical epigram, again under Nero, and was a major influence on Martial. 4 A certain Diogenianus published a further collection in the third quarter of the second century. 5 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 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 let alone quality that can be dated to the second half of the second or the third century. 11 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



a world with what we sometimes rather glibly call a Greco-Roman culture. Notoriously, the significance of that hyphen varies from context to context. Historically, Latin (p.329) 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, especially in Late Antiquity, with knowledge of Greek declining sharply in the West. Despite important differences between the two poetic revivals, I shall in fact be suggesting a common or at any rate similar explanation.

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



to city in search of patrons, mostly from Egypt, as I showed in an article I published in 1965 under the title ‘Wandering Poets’. 20 The praises of local gentry did not have the staying-power of classical myth, and most perished, with only Claudian and (in the Greek world) a handful of papyrus fragments to illustrate the way lesser poets of the age earned their bread and butter. It is tantalizing, for example, that Colouthos’ Rape of Helen survives while his epic on the Isaurian wars of the emperor Anastasius perished. For some reason panegyrical poetry came to have a more lasting appeal in the West. Nearly a score of such poems by Claudian have come down to us, and a substantial number by Sidonius and Fortunatus. The only verse panegyrics on eastern emperors we have are in Latin (Priscian on Anastasius and Corippus on Justin II). Wandering poetpanegyrists were to enjoy a further lease on life in the West in the Carolingian age. 21 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 Page 4 of 30



in the only manuscript, lines 1–41 were inscribed round the nave, and it has been calculated that they must have covered 135 metres of stone. The whole poem will have covered 250 metres! 30 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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(p.333)

III

Perhaps the most solid single illustration of the poetic revival is the massive but little read poetic oeuvre of Gregory of Nazianzus, more than 300 poems in close to 18,000 lines, mostly written in the 380s. 37 If mentioned at all they are usually dismissed patronizingly as verse rather than poetry—and bad verse at that. Yet their importance lies precisely in the fact that, though obviously a theologian and rhetorician rather than poet, Gregory nonetheless chose to write so much of his work in verse. He more than once explains this choice. In a poem On his own verses he claims that he did it for the benefit of the young, 38 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. Some vivid pages by Peter Brown have drawn attention to widespread expressions of anxiety about anger and violence among the elite of fourthand fifth-century eastern society. 43 Gregory is thus addressing a living concern, and is clearly familiar with the scholarly literature on the subject. 44 (p.334)

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Although the hexameter was the normal medium for classicizing didactic poetry (Dionysius, Marcellus, the Oppians), there was also a well-established but little studied didactic tradition in iambics, beginning in the second century BC with the Chronica of Apollodorus and the Periegesis of the socalled Pseudo-Scymnus, 45 and continued by the prolific Neronian medical writer Servilius Damocrates. 46 Ps-Scymnus describes these iambics as ‘comic’, and gives Apollodorus’ reasons (and by implication his own) for writing in this particular metrical form: clarity (τ̑ης σαφηνείας) and easy memorization (εὐμνημόνευτον lines 34–5). Dionysius son of Calliphon wrote a Periegesis of Greece in similar iambics, 47 explicitly making the same point that they could easily be memorized (lines 18–19). And Galen repeatedly says the same about the versified antidotes of Damocrates, contrasting his iambics with the elegiac poems on the same subject by Andromachus: Damocrates’ work is much clearer and easier to remember, and the constraints of the metre preserves it from errors (if it doesn’t scan it can’t be right). Hexameters and elegiacs use more elevated diction and archaic forms (genitives in - oιo, epic correption and the like), whereas, as Aristotle put it, ‘the iambic is the language of the many, and of all metres it is the one people most often utter in ordinary speech’. 48 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. Page 7 of 30



Though (judged by classicizing standards) little more than doggerel, the iambic verses of Apollodorus and his followers pursued a genuinely didactic purpose now abandoned by traditional hexameter didactic. As Gow and Scholfield tartly put it, ‘the victim of snake-bite or poison who turned to Nicander for first-aid would be in sorry plight’. 52 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 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 337line 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 (p.336)

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 Page 8 of 30



without precedent’. 61 There is in fact abundant precedent as early as the fourth century. The fact that the panegyrics of Cyrus and Andronicus are now lost does not mean they can be left out of account. They survived till Photius’s day, and Gregory wrote both panegyrics and invectives (albeit unconventional ones) in iambics. That George fits squarely into this welldocumented tradition is put beyond doubt by the fact that he also wrote a long iambic Hexaemeron and a number of shorter poems that answer to a Christian definition of didactic. 62 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 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 (p.338)

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trimeters complete with caesura. Others completely ignored the ancient quantities and simply counted syllables. 68 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 73 of Agathias, one of Nonnus’ strictest disciples: 72 λῑτὰ δέ σοι καὶ δειπνα ̑ 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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little has been done to set them in the wider context of the resurgence of classicizing poetry as a whole over the best part of 300 years. 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 Page 11 of 30



literary, in a sense I hope to make clear shortly. While there is no way of discovering his personal beliefs, there is one thing we do know for certain. All Claudian’s poems were written for Christian patrons, and most of them publicly performed in front of an overwhelmingly Christian audience at court in Milan. 79 Beyond question his poetry appealed to at any rate lay Christians. Even if Claudian himself was a pagan, his work cannot have been thought to reflect pagan or subversive values by those who knew him best. 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 Page 12 of 30



references in Vergil, preserving much valuable information not otherwise extant. Servius omitted most of this material. And when he does include a sentence or two on cult practices, he always changes Donatus’ present tenses to imperfects, thus relegating paganism firmly to the past. 84 Whatever his reasons, Servius was evidently not very interested in the details of pagan cult. But he never passes up an opening to explain an allusion to myth. That was something every student needed, whether pagan or Christian. 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



To be sure there were Christians who disapproved of pagan poetry and art, but to suppose that all did is to commit what I call the ecclesiastical fallacy: the failure to differentiate between lay Christians and professed ecclesiastics, heavily overrepresented in the surviving texts. Ausonius, for example, used to be dismissed patronizingly as a ‘luke-warm’ Christian because of his classicizing poetry. More recent studies have accepted that it was possible, then as now, to be a sincere Christian and yet write on secular rather than Christian subjects. For most lay Christians, classical culture, culture based on the poets and ancient mythology, was the only culture there was. Augustine notoriously had a love–hate relationship with Vergil, traced in a recent book by Sabine MacCormack. 85 In his later works he warned the faithful against Vergil’s insidious charms, and he did so precisely because he knew, as a former teacher, how powerful those charms were. But consider the dialogues he wrote immediately after his conversion, with himself, his son and some pupils as interlocutors. Quite casually he describes how this company of Christian converts listened to half a book of Vergil after dinner every day, and at one point broke off their discussions to spend seven days reviewing Aeneid 2– 4. 86 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. (p.344)

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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A new sort of elite began to emerge. But despite conservative protests about low-born bureaucrats, the ideal that magistrates should be men of culture retained its hold. The inroads of Latin only served to enhance the standing of the traditional Greek paideia. Paideia ceased to be the natural hallmark of a hereditary elite, and became instead a passport to a job in the imperial service, a qualification that could be acquired by hard work. Instead of being a dilettante pursuit for gentlemen, poetry became in effect a profession. Public demonstration in the form of a rhetorical declamation or the recitation of a poem was regularly rewarded by a post in the administration or a provincial governorship. Proficiency in rhetoric might seem to be no more than a straightforward qualification for the duties performed by some officials, given the ornate chancery style of the paperwork generated by the late Roman bureaucracy. But that would not apply to all or even a majority of offices, and no public office required the ability to write poetry. The main reason is simply that men of culture were thought to have an authority that won general respect. To put it in antiquated terms, paideia bred leadership. We might recall that until barely a (p.345) generation ago plum jobs in the British civil service and foreign office went to those who excelled in the composition of Greek iambics and Latin elegiacs. 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



influences on imperial Latin prose, with Tacitus and Ammianus Marcellinus as striking examples. At a much lower literary level, there are a surprisingly large number of direct quotations from Homer in Chariton’s novel Chaereas and Callirhoe. Finally, the few who went on to study philosophy would find allegorical and mystical meanings in Homer and Vergil. Homer is simply ubiquitous in Greek literature of every sort, as a moral or religious exemplar, as an exemplar of the purest Greek or the most perfect oratory. All the Greek classics are described somewhere by someone as heirs of Homer: Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato no less than the poets. 87 The sheer number of Homer papyri tells its own tale, according to Martin West 1500 for the Iliad alone. 88 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. (p.346)

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

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antiquity. Their very artificiality, the erudition required to get them right, was a large part of their attraction. 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 paraphrases of bible books in the high style. Whatever bishops and (p.348)

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commentators might say, cultivated lay Christians evidently still found the plain style of the bible unappealing, and needed the incentive of classicizing verse to sweeten the pill. Sedulius’ preface to his Carmen Paschale is particularly revealing: There are many for whom the attraction of studying secular literature lies in the charms of poetry and the pleasures of verse. These men pay little attention to anything they read in prose because they take little pleasure in it. But anything they see sweetened with the blandishment of verse, they greet with such eagerness of heart that they commit it to memory and store it away by constant repetition. 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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all the rules of the genre—but on virginity. 96 Gregory also wrote elegiac funerary poems by the score, as (on occasion) did even Ambrose and Jerome. 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.

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When and where did people start reading again the books that had been gathering dust through most of the second and third centuries? Already under Constantine, Lactantius quotes several times from Ovid (both Fasti and Metamorphoses), Persius once and two lines each from Juvenal and Lucan by name. Still under Constantine, we find the Spanish presbyter Iuvencus imitating Ovid, Lucan, Statius, and even Silius and Valerius Flaccus in his Evangelia, dated by Jerome to 329–30. Iuvencus is perhaps untypical in that, as an epic poet, he had a particular motive to familiarize himself with the Latin epic tradition. His principal poetic source and model was unquestionably Vergil, imitated on every page. Nonetheless, it is clear that texts from the entire range of post-Augustan poetry were available where and when both Lactantius and Iuvencus wrote. 99 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 shortlived 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 fourthcentury 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 firstcentury 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



wrote. It is just as important that he came at exactly the right moment. A century earlier literary circles would not have been ready for a new Statius or a new Juvenal. By 395 they were. Educated westerners in 395 were able to appreciate Claudian as connoisseurs. 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



local martyr with a hexameter poem. In retrospect, his annual poems on St Felix may remind us of Claudian’s regular performances at the court of Honorius during those very same years (395–408). As time passed Paulinus no doubt heard of and read Claudian’s work, but he cannot yet have done so when he recited his first natalicium in January 395. The natalicia are in some ways the least classicizing (p.353) of Paulinus’ poems, unsurprisingly, given their subject matter, the life and miracles of a Christian saint. But he must nevertheless have been writing for an audience that appreciated and was accustomed to public recitation of praise poetry in classicizing hexameters. 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 PseudoCyprianic 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



scribere versus, | ut te corriperem tenebras praeponere luci’, 3–5). All three date from a decade or (p.354) so before the earliest poems of Claudian. Like Claudian’s invectives, they too show the influence of Juvenal, especially the Carmen contra paganos. Once again, Claudian is following, not initiating a trend. 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.

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(11) Just how little can be seen from the thorough and well-documented chapter by K. Sallmann and P. L. Schmidt in Herzog and Schmidt (2000) 649– 86. (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.

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(29) Part of the gap is now filled by the three sumptuous volumes of R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber (1998–2001). (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 ̑ χρησμων ̑ 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 ̂ ἐντολων ̂ 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.

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(44) As proved by numerous parallels with other treatises on the subject, assembled in Oberhaus ( 1991 ). Whether or not Gregory directly consulted Plutarch’s Пερὶ ἀοργησίας, he must have drawn on one or two similar works (in addition to Basil, Hom. 10). (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).

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(57) Principally I. Bekker, Photii Bibliotheca 2 (Berlin 1825), p. 534; A. Meineke, Philologus 14 (1859), 20–22; M. Haupt, Opuscula 2 (Berlin 1876), 423–7. (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.

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(71) There are also many ‘false quantities’ in most late antique Latin poets. I know of no systematic study, but there is much material collected in Mueller ( 1894 ) 430–69. (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



(91) Cameron ( 1970 ) 1192−9. (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.

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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.

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Painted Hellenes: Mummy Portraits from Late Roman Egypt


MEDIA AND PROVENANCE Some of the finest portraits, those most familiar to us today, were painted on wooden panels which were inserted into elaborately bound linen wrappings; many others were painted on linen shrouds used to envelop the mummified corpse. Some portraits were painted on cartonnage, which formed the upper lid of the case enclosing the mummy. A large series of portraits was made in the form of plaster masks, of which the face was made in a mould, but the eyes were inlaid in glass or stone and other features such as ears and hair were added in plaster, fashioned by hand and painted to give an approximation of individual skin tone and physiognomy. Many of the masks served as part of a coffin lid, on which the deceased would then appear as an effigy. Other masks were set on the mummy, or were even attached to a linen base, reinforced with stucco and painted with a three-quarter length portrait, which was then sewn to a plain linen bag enclosing the mummy. This last type, and the full-length portrait painted on a shroud, are particularly characteristic of the later Empire. Indeed the shroud portraits (p.311) enjoyed a longer currency than any of the other genres, the start of the series slightly pre-dating that of the painted panels. 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



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 Museé 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

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Who were the likely subjects of the painted portraits? A reasonably certain identification of the class of person who commissioned such images may be proposed from consideration, first, of the cultural influences identifiable in the surviving portraits, and secondly, from reviewing the papyrological evidence for the social and political structure of 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



appears above the ankles, and the gilded feet, shod in thonged sandals, flank an atef-crown. 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



Within the process of adoption of Roman fashions, apparent in the earliest mummy portraits of the mid-first century ad, certain trends may be distinguished. The earliest portraits appear very Roman indeed, with clothing and jewellery similar to those known at sites such as Pompeii, at the heart of the Empire. By the second century, however, the jewellery is of a sort known also from sites in the Greek-speaking eastern Mediterranean, of great geographical range, from the Ukraine through Cyprus, Greece, and Libya, and the clothing is less formal and more local in focus. Finally, a strong relationship is indicated in hairstyle and physiognomy between mummy portraits of men and imperial portraits in marble made in Rome, while portraits of women and children were less dependent in those respects on imperial fashions. 5 (p.317)

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 selfregulation. 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 erRubayat), 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 ).

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(c) Greece: The Papyrological Evidence 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). 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). (p.319)

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



by the pharaoh Amenemhat III in the first development of the Fayum nearly two millennia before the advent of Rome. It seems possible (though it cannot be proved by direct association) that the finest portraits from Hawara may represent members of the 6475, and that portraits from other cemeteries represent members of privileged local families who had some formal engagement with Rome and perhaps enjoyed the status of metropolitai. Hence the Romanized form of their portraits; hence too the need, evident in many paintings, to stress the Greek ancestry of their subjects. This was not only of importance to the establishment of a sense of personal identity within the framework of the Roman Empire, but of contemporary relevance to the way in which the communities of Roman Egypt functioned. Before the days of town councils, communities were run by an elite of men who had been educated in classical Greek fashion in the gymnasium, and who were formally admitted after careful scrutiny of their parentage at the age of 14 to the ephebate, like the gymnasium a classical Greek institution dedicated to the athletic and military training of young males (Bowman and Rathbone ( 1992 ) 224). This last group is strongly represented in the corpus of surviving portraits: very careful attention is paid to recording their age at death (shown by the amount of facial hair), and their physique (they often appear naked, well-muscled and sun-tanned (Walker and Bierbrier 1997 a) 67–9, nos. 44–5). 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. Page 8 of 15



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 Page 9 of 15



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.

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Fig. 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. Photograph: courtesy of Egypt Exploration Society.

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Fig. 3. Painted linen shroud of a boy, from Antinoopolis, AD 300–400. Photo-´ graph: Museé du Louvre, De´partment des Antiquite´s Egyptiennes AF 6486 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 wellknown 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



their domicile to the safer urban centres of the Nile Valley, they followed conventions of dress which operated across the Mediterranean. The liturgists and councillors, those with most at stake in upholding the old Hellenic traditions, had deserted the Fayum, which was no longer able to support in security an educated elite, though many residents of Antinoopolis at least held land there, sufficient to provide an income (Bagnall ( 1993 ) 69, 99, 316). Of the cities in the Nile valley, Antinoopolis had included members of the 6475 among its founders, and throughout the fourth century maintained instruction in rhetoric, law, medicine, the sciences, and theology (Bagnall ( 1993 ) 104). The cemeteries of Thebes and Memphis have also produced full or three-quarter length portraits of the elite, dressed in the fine clothes post-dating the radical change in fashion of the mid-third century (Fig. 2 ). The textile industry is known to have flourished throughout this period, and it is significant that it should provide linen, the medium of choice for the later funerary portraits. Apparently the lime and oak woods used for the (p.325) painted panels were no longer available; perhaps they had been imported, or were introduced only to the Fayum. 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



in the preceding centuries, a consistent style of representing the elite was retained, a style which survived the division of empire. More generally, it may be suggested that, where representations of local elites are found in metropolitan Roman dress (of whatever date), they may be taken as portraying a settled population with some formal engagement with Rome. Such people may move from one area to another, but their style of selfrepresentation goes with them, and may survive seachanges in political or economic fortune and religious belief. 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.

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(5) Portraits following first-century fashion: Walker ( 2000 ) 38–42, nos. 1– 4; 149–50, nos. 100–1. 2nd-cent. fashions: Walker ( 2000 ) figs. 152; Walker and Bierbrier ( 1997 ) 91–2, no. 81; 72–3, no. 50. Male dependence on imperial fashion: Walker ( 2000 ) 86–7, no. 47 and Fittschen and Zanker ( 1985 ) 123, no.103. (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 ).

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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, Page 1 of 40

Late Antique Art: The Problem of the Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic


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 firstand 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. 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.274)

In effect, the range of late antique art is not in itself exceptional within classical Antiquity, but this does not necessarily imply that the (p.275)

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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 Page 5 of 40



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. Page 6 of 40



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 Page 7 of 40



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 Page 8 of 40



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 Page 11 of 40



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 Page 12 of 40



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 Page 13 of 40



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 handheld, 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 Page 14 of 40



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) Page 15 of 40



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 Page 16 of 40



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 (socalled centos) on themes that ranged from the sacred to the pornographic, Page 17 of 40



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 Page 18 of 40



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 fourdeep 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 highrelief ivories ever carved—with a maximum depth of relief of 28mm. 85 The Page 19 of 40



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 Page 20 of 40



(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 Page 21 of 40



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 semiprecious 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. Page 22 of 40



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 Page 23 of 40



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 largescale 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 Page 24 of 40



(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 vineleaf 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 Page 26 of 40



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 smallscale 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 Page 27 of 40



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, goldcovered 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 midair 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, Page 30 of 40



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 Page 32 of 40



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 ). Page 33 of 40



(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 semiprecious 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. Page 37 of 40



(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. Page 38 of 40



(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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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 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.’ 1 Even in their military role emperors can no longer be judged merely by their battlefield performance: as much could depend on their effectiveness in organizing victory parades as upon

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The Transformation of Imperial Churchgoing in the Fourth Century


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 ‘selfconscious 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



with’—συνδιενυκτέρευσε—thepeople; 6 the expression can only mean that he took part in the liturgy of the Easter vigil. This was only six weeks before the emperor’s death, yet it is the first time that he is attested setting foot inside the cathedral of Constantinople or indeed of any city of (p.237) his empire. And there are strong reasons for thinking that he had in fact never previously done so. 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



when he exalts in the fact that great men were now bending their knees inside the churches. 10 There is a clear division of labour. The emperor supported the church by authorizing benefactions; it was his officials who administered these and participated in the liturgy. 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 Eusebius’ 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



difficulty in envisaging such a confrontation. Unable (it would seem) to imagine a bishop laying down the law to an emperor, he makes the latter his grammatical subject: Philip ‘was not permitted to enter’ until he had confessed his sins; nor ‘would he have been received’ had he refused to do so. Two important points emerge from this account. An emperor would be the central object of attention if he actually entered the church, just as he was grammatically for Eusebius; and even this most eloquent of bishops struggled to assign him a place. The orders his bishop gives the emperor are not only indirect, but self-contradictory: Philip is assigned to the place of penitents as if he were a baptized Christian, although this is clearly not the case. 13 The episode then concludes with the emperor’s ready obedience, which Eusebius interprets merely as evidence of his authentically pious disposition. So Philip’s penitence is an isolated gesture: he is not absorbed into the church community, but is simply registered as yet another of the highly-placed Christian sympathizers whom Eusebius took pains to record. 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.

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In 337, however, Constantine was planning a dramatic change in the terms of the implicit concordat that had developed since 312. He was about to embark upon an invasion of Persia that was conceived as a crusade. 15 He had devised a tent where he could hold prayer-meetings with the group of bishops selected to accompany him; furthermore, he had made plans to receive baptism in the River Jordan, either en route to Persia or after his triumphant return. 16 The campaign was therefore to carry a more momentous charge than those he had launched from Constantinople in the previous few years; his unprecedented arrival at the cathedral of Holy Peace for the Easter vigil was an appropriate way of marking (p.241) the difference. The circumstances charged Constantine’s withdrawal from the church before the Eucharist began with a positive significance: like the candidates who were due to receive baptism that night, he would leave the church prepared to return as an initiate. And whereas the Easter service itself usually revolved around the bishop and the neophytes whom he had just initiated, at Constantinople in 337, Eusebius assures us, Constantine ‘illuminated the festival for himself and for everyone’ (VC 4.60.5). 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



obtaining divine rites and mystic liturgies and enjoying participation in holy prayers’ (4.71.2). The emperor thus belongs simultaneously to the worshipping community and the venerated saints. The same ambiguity, notoriously, (p.242) runs through Eusebius’ earlier explanation of the purpose of the monument where this scene is set, the complex of Holy Apostles (4.60). As a result, controversy has continued concerning the emperor’s intentions in surrounding his tomb with memorials to the Apostles, and providing for an altar and liturgical services. 19 But the emperor’s intentions were already irrelevant when Eusebius wrote—and Constantine must have known that he would be unable to legislate the nature of his posthumous treatment. For by combining (in whatever precise sense) his mausoleum with a church he was committing his memory into the hands of the Christian priesthood, whose pronouncements he had hardly been able to control when alive. At the same time, the priests who came to conduct services at the tomb would not have as much control as usual over the responses of the faithful who worshipped there. Eusebius’ account in the Life is therefore an exercise in persuasive exegesis, an attempt to rationalize the emperor’s obtrusive physical presence inside a church. 20

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 Page 7 of 38



done not only in Alexandria by his predecessor, but also at Trier and Aquileia, where at the great liturgical festivals, because of the pressure of numbers, assemblies were held in churches that were still under construction. And to clinch the case, he had seen Constantius’ brother Constans take part in such a service at Aquileia (Apol. ad Const. 15). Other evidence allows us to identify the occasion as Easter 345. 22 The emperor was en route from the Danube frontier (he is attested earlier that year in Poetovio) to his Rhineland base of Trier. 23 The first directly attested imperial visit to a cathedral, then, occurred in a very different situation from Constantine’s appearance at the vigil in Constantinople, with the emperor in transit at a part-time capital. 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



naturally have played a prominent role in the inauguration. 29 His presence added a further distinction to a council already remarkable for taking ninety bishops from their sees during one of the major feasts of the Christian year. And where Constantine had invited the bishops to his palace, Constantius sat with them in their church. At Nicaea Constantine had brokered a peace, here his son was a dignified spectator as the bishops treated him to a demonstration (p.245) of unanimity: suspected deviants proved their orthodoxy, and all combined to put forward a creed that expressed their common faith. 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



place near Aqui-leia at around the time of Easter 340; 35 and the war that he in turn threatened against Constantius had the nature of a crusade. 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 martyrshrine, 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



relics of the Apostle Timothy from Ephesus, to be placed under the altar. 43 These imperial initiatives at the site are to be connected to an episcopal one: at some point in the decade Constantine’s body was removed to the nearby martyrium of St Acacius. In organizing this transfer, Bishop Macedonius could argue the urgent need for repairs to the mausoleum; he nevertheless provoked a bloody riot, and the emperor’s wrath. 44 At issue was the question of who controlled the site. Worshippers at Holy Apostles, as the episode showed, were not easily subjected to episcopal discipline: the further development of the site might well, therefore, have alarmed the cathedral clergy. Macedonius was not acting in opposition to the emperor, but in asserting control of the church he nevertheless seemed to encroach. The (p.248) bishop was duly deposed, but not before witnessing the arrival, by imperial command, of two further saints in the harbour of Constantinople. Shortly afterwards, Constantius will have witnessed the triumphal installation of Andrew and Luke in Holy Apostles. 45 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



charged the event with a symbolism that, for once, justifies the metaphor of an encounter between ‘church’ and ‘state’. And there was good reason for the audience to feel a nervous excitement as the new bishop prepared to speak. For Eudoxius was not in any sense an appointee of the emperor. Only two years previously he had received a stinging rebuke from Constantius following his appointment as bishop of Antioch; 51 and barely two months had passed since he had been pressed to defend his theological credentials during a hostile examination conducted in the emperor’s presence. 52 Moreover, Eudoxius’ use of language—especially in his sermons—had only the previous year been the subject of debate at another church council, at Seleucia. 53 We need to imagine the atmosphere as the famously upright and solemn emperor waited to hear the unconventional bishop speak, if we are to appreciate the full force of Eudoxius’ sally. 54 The setting also helps us understand what the bishop was doing. 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



that they be seen as antagonists. Rather, they were partners in a common enterprise who were nevertheless struggling to impose a final definition on the nature of the project: and Constantius was as conscious of his own part as God’s most conspicuous servant on earth as the bishops were of theirs as his sole authorized intermediaries. The same issues were therefore present on this occasion as in the earlier conflict between Constantius and Macedonius over the redevelopment of Holy Apostles. In considering the emperor’s relations with the church we too easily forget how much rested on publicly acknowledged symbolic prerogatives, and how jealous of these, as a result, their holders were.

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 fellowparishioners. 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



Participation in the intense liturgical activity of Holy Week will then have given Valentinian an opportunity to show himself to his new subjects. Easter would continue to be a high point in the annual round at Valentinian’s court. 61

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 Page 14 of 38



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 psalmsinging 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. He constructs his story of imperial nerves, episcopal inscrutability and the fit of trembling with its near-disastrous consequences around two (p.254)

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untoward occurrences that will have been visible, a delay in receiving Valens’ offerings, and the extension of a steadying hand to him—both of which could easily have been the innocent fault of the clergy, an initial bout of flustered hesitation followed by a gesture of unnecessary solicitude. This confusion was probably caused, at least in part, by the need to redesign the usual offertory procession at Caesarea in order to provide the emperor with a suitable role. This was still an age of liturgical experiment; and every time an emperor visited a church there would need to be consultation between palace staff and local clergy, to co-ordinate ceremonial agendas. Although the fumblings at Caesarea were probably not remotely as serious as Gregory implies, they nevertheless indicate the uncertainty an emperor faced when operating upon alien ceremonial ground. 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



who attended him. Valens thus neatly turned upon its head the ‘strategy of communion’ through which Basil maintained the integrity of the orthodox; 71 or it might be that Basil’s determined campaign to create a reliable network of properly accredited colleagues was itself a response to the emperor’s Eucharistic initiatives. If so, there is grudging flattery in the imitation. 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



John then conjures up the effect of the arrival of the emperor and his entourage: If you want to discover the exact extent of the miracle, do not pay attention to a prosaic account but picture the spearmen, the armour bearers, the military leaders, the officials—those who work in the imperial palace and those who are assigned to cities—the pride of those who led the procession, the multitude of those who followed proudly, and all the rest of the retinue. Then picture him in the middle, advancing with great haughtiness, appearing more dignified because of his clothes, and his purple robe, and the gems scattered all over his right hand, over the buckle of his coat, and over his head, where they gleamed from the diadem. (32) 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). (p.257)

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



had become a presbyter and was now preaching in (p.258) the same cathedral at Antioch where Valens had worshipped, to a congregation including many who would have seen the emperor at prayer. This context helps explain a curious aside to the deacons during a sermon about receiving people for communion, where he reminded them that: ‘no small punishment is reserved for you, if you allow someone you know to have committed any wickedness to share at this table. His blood will be exacted from your hands. Even if he is some general, or a prefect, or the wearer of the imperial diadem himself, if he comes forward unworthily, stop him. Your power is greater than his.’ He then provides an escape-clause: ‘if you do not dare to do this yourself, bring the offender to me: I will not allow his recklessness.’ 79 In such bravado one might again detect a compensatory reaction to clerical impotence under Valens: and now there was no imperial court at Antioch to provide Chrysostom a touchstone with reality. The new, more strident attitude that was thus developing would have some important consequences in the next generation.

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



is apologetic exaggeration, designed to lend a dreadful inevitability to his subsequent resignation. One nevertheless wonders whether Theodosius can have sincerely meant his polite praise to Gregory for resisting the congregation’s demands that he occupy the episcopal cathedra: 82 Gregory’s refusal denied the emperor the opportunity to play the gracious patron. 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



by heretics. The preceding section, moreover, had consisted of a severe lecture aimed at the eunuchs of the imperial household. Gregory’s manner was not calculated to demonstrate his credentials as a reliable conduit for imperial interests. 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 fourthcentury 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



debate foundered, in part thanks to Nectarius’ ability to mobilize allies in unexpected quarters. 90 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. 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. (p.263)

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The first encounter recorded by historians was when Theodosius took his usual place in the sanctuary but was ordered out. Ambrose, significantly, had assigned him a place elsewhere: there was a Milanese ritual to provide an alternative to the Constantinopolitan, with a seat prepared for the emperor in a prominent position at the front of the congregation. 95 Emperor thus sat opposite bishop, an arrangement that provides the setting for a celebrated episode that consisted essentially of an exchange between the two thrones. Ambrose, campaigning to overturn the emperor’s decision concerning a case of Christian vandalism in Syria, took the opportunity of Theodosius’ presence at a service (an ordinary Sunday, as the day’s readings make clear) to preach a pointed sermon on the subject. 96 When he had finished preaching and had ‘descended’, the emperor remarked bluntly: ‘You were speaking about me.’ 97 From this point emperor and bishop were competing to rewrite the script of the ceremony. Ambrose’s account shows him succeeding, eventually, in producing the conclusion he (p.264) wanted, with Theodosius promising to rescind his orders. But such an outcome was not inevitable. Theodosius might, for example, simply have marched out of the church. 98 Explanations for his passivity have been sought in his superstitious piety; 99 but more important was probably Ambrose’s success in isolating him from his entourage. The bishop’s most spirited intervention, certainly, 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



For example, when Rufinus of Aquileia produced a Latin version of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, with two further books continuing the story through the reign of Theodosius (and including an account of the emperor’s penance) he was able to eliminate the confusion in Eusebius’ account of Philip’s visit to church. Rufinus’ emperor seeks merely to ‘share the mysteries’; at stake is his right to the Eucharist, not an (p.265) undefined participation in prayer. 102 Ambrose perhaps contributed as much to the western conception of the ‘Christian emperor’ as to that of the bishop.

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



bishop. Our narrative accounts of John’s episcopate emphasize the indirect nature of contacts between cathedral and palace—reports about the bishop’s sermons were brought to the imperial couple, and sinister constructions put upon his exuberant rhetoric. 110 The pattern of the dealings between Valentinian II and Ambrose’s cathedral seems to have been reversed. Whereas key members of Valentinian’s government elite had defeated the emperor’s pro-Arian policies by rehearsing in cabinet sessions the message they heard in church from the bishop, Arcadius’ ministers undermined his sympathy for Chrysostom by conveying dark reports from the cathedral in Constantinople. John’s preaching continued to reflect the peculiarly confrontational posture he had argued himself into while still a deacon at Antioch, and so jarred painfully against the expectations of a court audience. 111 So the bishop never got his chance to debar an emperor from the sacrament. Instead, it was Arcadius who announced that he would not attend the cathedral for the Easter service, and John who fell. 112 Constantine’s city was unlike Ambrose’s Milan: the emperor did not need to go to church to display his piety, for the facilities for personal worship devised by the founder were still in place. 113 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 fifthcentury 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 (p.267)

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long reign (proclaimed Augustus four days after his baptism, he would bear the title for longer than any of his predecessors, presiding alone over the East from 408 until 450) Theodosius would thus establish a new pattern of relations between the palace and the churches of the capital. 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 fourthcentury (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 fifthcentury 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



church (5.18.13), again reflects the geography of Constantinople (where the square of the Augusteum separated the palace from Holy Wisdom) rather than Milan. 121 The narrative also suggests the progressive elaboration of churchgoing routines: whereas John Chrysostom had had Babylas confront the emperor inside the cathedral, the emperor’s church visits could now be tracked from the palace. 122 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



Constantinople, while the disappearance of emperors from the Latin West would transform perspectives there. The developments described in this paper are therefore to be seen as the successive experiments of new regimes faced with ceremonial choices and constraints. They are also but one aspect of a broader picture: during the same period, for example, the deportment of churchmen inside palaces changed significantly, as precedents were established and expectations created. Nevertheless, by focusing upon the liturgical self-presentation of successive emperors (and its subsequent representation in ecclesiastical literature) we can hope to isolate an important aspect of the relationship between ‘State’ and ‘Church.’ The changing ceremonial interactions between emperors and bishops might indeed prove as important for an understanding of this relationship as the more narrowly political, or the more abstract ideological, trajectories that are charted in the standard accounts.

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



(9) Ibid. 32, 194. (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 selfrepresentation. (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.

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(22) Athanasius’ Festal Letter for Easter 345 was addressed from Aquileia: Index 17. (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.

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(34) Drinkwater ( 2000 ) 135–6 presents the last days of Constans as a ‘catand-mouse game’: baptism might thus have been the mouse’s last throw, an ingenious means of excluding the suicide expected of him. (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.

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(46) Chron. Pasc. s.a. 360. For the chronicler’s use of a reliable contemporary source for this material, see Whitby and Whitby ( 1989 ) xvi. (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.

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(61) The Versus Paschales of Ausonius illuminate the character of Easter celebrations at Valentinian’s court. (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. Antiariana 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



(72) Soz. HE 6.21.3–5. (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.

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(84) In Or. 19 Gregory makes the peraequator Iulianus the focus of his speech yet contrives to ignore him until turning to him with a dramatic injunction to conduct the census ‘fairly’ (Or. 19.12). (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.

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(96) For an interpretation of Ambrose’s account (Ep. extra coll. 1 [41]), see McLynn ( 1994 ) 298–309. (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.

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(108) J. Chrys. Homilia dicta praesente imperatore (Migne, PG 63. 473–8: the sermon was in fact delivered after the emperor had withdrawn); cf. Kelly ( 1995 ) 140–1. (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.

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(120) Theodosius’ approach, ‘as was the custom’ (5.18.2) coincides in Theodoret’s account with his first arrival in Milan. (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.

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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


germinate they lose their truth as images, and this I believe to have been the fate of ‘monotheism’ in recent scholarship. A monotheist, as we apply that term to Muslims, Jews, and Christians, is one who believes in a single god, or supramundane being, who governs the world omnipotently and either without an instrument or with those of his own creation. I shall argue in the first part of this chapter 2 that there was no such thing as pagan monotheism in the Roman Empire, even where the pagan was, like Porphyry, a monist in a certain sense and in every sense a theist. In the second part, where I follow the coalescence of autocracy and monotheism in Constantinian government, I am entering land that has been well charted already by Garth Fowden; 3 I hope to show more (p.212) clearly, however, what was entailed by the worship of a single God who also has a Son.

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



adored a single deity, that did not mean that their god was the same as his. Similarly, the Church proclaimed not trinitarianism, but the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It was not disposed to agree with the modern pluralist for whom any two faiths are congruent if they posit a threefold order in the transcendent source of being. 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’. (p.213)

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



it was possible to join Lucian in scoffing at the idols without adopting any religious view at all. Two illustrious pagans were reported to have combined their monotheism with a denunciation of images; but Xenophanes, even if everything ascribed to him is genuine, lies well outside our period, and we owe our only account of Apollonius of Tyana to Philostratus, who can hardly have been untouched by Christianity. Plotinus was perhaps the first professional philosopher whose theology forbade him to engage in public cults (Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 10.35). 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, Page 4 of 23



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



was made for humanity and not also for the beasts. Origen responds with an argument that might have been employed by Stoics disputing with the Platonists (Contra Celsum 4.40 etc.), but here he seems for once to have lost sight of the primitive doctrine. Almost any Greek would have agreed that human beings are closer to God than any animal because of our capacity for reason: the Stoics declared that everyone participates in reason or the logos, the Platonists that everyone has a particle of divinity, a daemon, as his intellectual soul. Paul and Irenaeus, on the other hand, asserted that the image of God is in us only partially and proleptically, to be made complete by fellowship with Christ. 10 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



avers that Christianity makes bad citizens, and asks why God cannot control the world through his subordinates, as a king will rule his empire through his governors. The tenor of his remarks is clear enough when we reflect that he and Lucian were both writing (perhaps in concert) in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and within ten years of the outbreak that produced a host of martyrs in Lyons. Both local and imperial assaults in the second century were sporadic, but in the third attempts were made by the emperors to root out Christianity. In this new climate, fifteen books were written against the Christians by Plotinus’ student, Porphyry of Tyre. 11 The evidence that he (p.218) wrote under Diocletian, though still not universally accepted, seems stronger than any argument for a date around 270. For one thing, the latter theory rests primarily on a false inference from Eusebius; for another we can only think of Porphyry and Hierocles when Lactantius censures two illustrious writers for inflaming the tribulation of 303. 12 Even if the earlier date is sound, it suggests that Porphyry was the mouthpiece of Aurelian, who died before he could add his name to the list of persecutors. Thus we see a consistent pattern, men of letters taking up their pens against Christianity as their masters took up arms against the Church. 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



Ecclesiastical History 6.19). Despite this hint to the magistrates, he does not deny that Origen made full use of a Greek education, and Porphyry the philosopher was not ashamed to rob the man whom Porphyry the courtier had branded as an outlaw. The title which he attached to one of his master’s works includes the phrase ‘three hypostases’, which was Origen’s contribution to the doctrine of the Trinity; and in naming the highest principle as ‘God above all’ (ho epi pantōn theos), he was culling a phrase which Origen had adapted from St Paul. 13 Some insinuations against the Church were to be expected in the edition of the Enneads and the accompanying Life, which were produced either on the eve or in the course of Diocletian’s persecution. I have argued elsewhere that the Gnostics, whom he accuses in the Life of having turned ‘the old philosophy’ into a heresy for Christians, were also the unnamed target of his essay on the Cave of the Nymphs in Homer’s Odyssey. 14 Its principal thesis is that we acquire knowledge of the invisible by sublation from the visible: as cults entrust their secrets to initiates, as texts unseal their wisdom to the persevering scholar, so the material icon, rightly scrutinized, is found to bear the impress of the Forms. In his book On the Statues (Peri Agalmatōn) however, he is plainer and more polemical, defending the use of images in stronger terms than Maximus of Tyre. 15 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



matter, like that of crystal or Parian stone or ivory they obtained a notion of his light; and through that of gold, a conception of fire and his incorruptibility, since gold suffers no corruption. (De Statuis Fr. 353 Smith) 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



to his countrymen, the Phoenicians. He even surmised that the object of Plotinus, when departing from Alexandria, was to acquaint himself with the teachings of the Magi and the Brahmins, as Apollonius had already done (Life of Plotinus 3). Such principles were suited to a time when every freeborn man was a citizen, a time when every citizen could be asked to give a proof of his goodwill to the Roman state. Diocletian expected all his subjects to be married by the Roman form, to abhor the foreign practices of the Manichees, 18 to sacrifice to the right gods on demand. This did not entail the annihilation of ethnic difference: for a people to remain distinct, yet loyal, it was necessary only to go on doing as its ancestors had done. The Jews, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Chaldaeans, and the Egyptians each produced their own apologies; each, by making the most of itself and the worst of others, sought to raise its standing in the Empire. Only the Christians, who were not a race, declined to play this game with equals. If they wrote in Greek, they denounced all Greeks (which would include of course all educated Romans); if they were Latin-speakers, they did not stop short of Rome. 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



that Arnobius conceived his work as a refutation of Porphyry, whose attack upon the Christians had given due prominence to the life of Jesus. Porphyry and Arnobius are certainly at opposite poles in their estimate of barbarian religions, and Porphyry could well have been the mentor of the new sect of philosophers (novi viri) whom Arnobius condemns in his second book. These, it seems, were Greeks who had fallen into the vice of novelty by marrying the Hermetic lore of Egypt with Etruscan divination and the recent errors of the Pythagoreans. 19 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. 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? (p.223)

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We cannot speak in the reign of Diocletian (if we ever could) of a war between monotheism and polytheism; but, perhaps for this very reason, the conflict between philosophers and Christians in the same period was all the more intense. For Christians any tolerance of idolatry, and sanction for the worship of lesser gods, was blasphemy; for Platonists, the higher the conception, the lower was the propensity to worship. Platonism ennobled all religions by suggesting that all were avenues to wisdom; Christianity levelled all religions by maintaining that all were equally far from Christ. Platonists aspired to set the soul free from the body, but could use the material instruments of a polyglot and polytheistic Empire. Christians proclaimed the unique and instantaneous descent of God to matter, and this, as the book of Daniel assured them, was the great stone that would shatter all the idols and all the kingdoms of the world (Daniel 2:44–5).

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



pattern of oecumenical sovereignty. Yet, though he ruled on earth as a second Logos, Constantine’s theology allowed him to depart from the archetype in two respects: he did not feel bound to practise the milder virtues, and he made himself ubiquitous through images, as well as through his laws. 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



portraying Constantine as a solar deity was not a modification of an existing pagan statue, but an original design. 21 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



or logos; and it was in the age of Constantine that Christian theologians first spoke plainly of a truth revealed by the universal logos even to those outside the covenant. As the sole Creator and redeemer of the mind, he is its only source of knowledge, and therefore must have visited the philosophers before his last theophany in Christ. 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. (p.227)

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



notions of divine governance, Eusebius has already described the moral illumination of the universe before he speaks of its physical constitution. In words reminiscent of Socrates, he declares that mortal eyes cannot detect supernal beauty, but the Logos, in his unique bond with the Godhead, is the parent of every being imbued with reason, and imparts to all his offspring the emanations of his father’s majesty. In Jewish scripture, Wisdom is the Father’s emanation, and means primarily the religion of the Law; Eusebius states, however, that the seeds of virtue and the arts of life have been dispersed in equal measure by the Logos, not only among barbarians, but even to ‘all the Greeks’. 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) 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 (p.229)

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of the Logos rather than the Son, and he does not say that he is eternal in his origin or nature; above all, he employs a laborious periphrasis to avoid any duplication of the name ‘God’. The same passage shows that monotheism was also an ‘issue’, now that it had become the creed of a theocratic monarchy. Twenty-five years before, in his Preparation for the Gospel, Eusebius had noted that the preaching of the divine monarchy by the Church had coincided with the extinction of ‘plural kingship’ (poluarchia) by the Empire of Augustus. Constantine himself, in his Oration to the Saints, employed the same arguments to demonstrate our inveterate propensity to sin, and the astonishing philanthropy of the God who came to redeem us at his own cost. This God, though born on a certain day in Bethlehem, is nonetheless eternal, and was already known to Plato: He posited first the God who is above being, in which he did well, and to him he subordinated a second also, and distinguished the two beings arithmetically, both sharing one perfection, though the being of the second god owed its existence to the first. For the former is clearly the transcendent creator and governor of all things, while the one after him, ministering to his decrees, brings back to him the origin of the universe fabric. (Constantine, Oration p. 163 Heikel) 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



persons of the emperors that the gods themselves contract to human stature: the persecutor Maximinus Daia proclaimed that gods were necessary to the order of the cosmos, but did not proceed to the Aristotelian commonplace that many gods would lead to strife, and therefore that we must posit only one. Neither, we may imagine, did Licinius, for his brand of monotheism, the belief in a single unnamed God, could easily be reconciled with the claim that God controls his world through a number of human agents. Aristotle’s argument had also escaped defenders of Christianity before Lactantius drew it to the attention of Constantine; after him, it was taken up by his subjects Athanasius and Eusebius, but without the hidden motive that we perceive in his Oration. By hinting that plurality in high places was as dangerous to the state as to the universe, the partner of Licinius discreetly avowed, at least to Latin-speakers, his aspiration to undivided rule. 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) 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 (p.231)

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mercy; after his conversion, we never hear that it crossed his mind to spare them. Yet this was a sign of his Christianity, not a defection from it. The pagan ruler aspires to be exactly like his gods because he is one of them; the Christian is a servant with other duties to fulfil. Christ’s precepts sometimes differed from his practice, and Constantine believed that he would wear a fiercer aspect on the day of his return. 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



statues to illustrate the disparity between God the Father and his living Word. 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



the plenipotentiary of the Father, a plurality of ministers would inevitably be inferior by the mere fact of being many; Christ is divine because and not in spite of the unalterable simplicity of God. 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.

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(8) Pliny, Letters 96.7; Lucian, Peregrinus 13. (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

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rebut the false teachings of philosophers. See Justin, First Apology 44–45; Clement, Stromateis 6.42–3; Origen Philocalia 13. (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.

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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


an African, had he not taught in Bithynia, had he not become a Christian on the eve of persecution, Lactantius might have entertained this prospect with less artificial sorrow. Some of his co-religionists believed that Rome, the imperial metropolis, was also that of Christendom; Constantine adopted this as his principle when he occupied the capital and began to rule the West as a Christian emperor in 313. The coalition of spiritual and secular hegemony is the subject of this chapter, from the time of Paul, when death in Rome was the peroration of the martyr’s testimony, to the last years of the fourth century, when the Altar of Victory fell to Christian rhetoric as the city itself would soon fall to the Goths. 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



Tell me now, if Romanitas is everyone’s salvation, your dealings with Greeks are surely not honourable. Whence otherwise, in provinces that have known a better discipline, whose peoples nature fitted rather for toiling on the land, are there gymnastic sports, decadent and fruitlessly elaborate, with gleaming oil and whirling dust and banquets of dry food? (On the Philosopher’s Cloak 4.1). 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



Rome professed to be an eternal city; Christians were inhabitants of the new Jerusalem, which was already built ‘above’. 5 There remained of course, at every epoch of (p.190) imperial history, a difference between the Roman citizen and the native Roman. The pride of the Italian aristocracy survived the erosion of its powers and duties, and if anything revived in the late fourth century, along with a vogue for Juvenal’s cruel satires on the Syrians, Greeks and Jews who had stormed the capital under the Principate of the first twelve Caesars. Yet Juvenal had not foretold that the Christians, ignored by him and despised by his contemporaries, were due to become, not simply another foreign tribe, but a state within, or rather above the state. 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.

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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)

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Tradition numbers Peter among the founders of the Roman Church, and certainly that city is represented under the name of Babylon in Revelation, the last and most disputed writing in the canon: Upon her forehead was written MYSTERY, BABYLON, THE GREAT MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. (Revelation 17: 5–6) 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



Clement would appear to be a loyalist, though his notion of the Church as a militant body would have worried a Roman governor like Pliny, to whom every combination for a private object savoured of conspiracy. The letter is written in Greek to the Corinthians, but the Roman congregation too would seem to have been on good terms with its rulers by the early second century, when Ignatius, ‘Bishop of Syria’, arrived there in the custody of soldiers. So powerful did he think their intercession that he begged them to let him consummate his martyrdom. At the same time he admitted that he had no right to command them like the founders of their community: I would not wish you to please men, but to please God, as indeed you do. For I shall never have such an opportunity to take hold of God; nor can anything be more to your credit than to be silent. For if you keep silent about me, I shall become the speech of God, but if you show love to my flesh, I shall be reduced to an echo….Not as Peter and Paul do I command you, for they were apostles, and I am condemned. (Ignatius, Romans 2: 1 and 4: 3) 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

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them, and each supply their own strength to a building that is destined to endure: On a square an edifice was being built by the young men who had come with [the Revealer]. There were many myriads of other men bringing stones, some from the depth, some from the earth, and they gave them to the six youths; but it was they who took them and built. (Hermas, Vision 3.2.5) 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



virtues, and his adoption of the Sibyl is a way of intimating that a Roman who has learned what virtue is from his own tradition will find more of this in the Church than in his own city after its long and fatal years of decadence.

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



an insult to a bishop who was exceeding the prerogatives of his office (On Modesty 1). Irenaeus, for his part, credits the Church in Rome with a primacy of some kind when he points her out to heretics as a touchstone of doctrinal orthodoxy: 20 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



neighbours, but by framing a moral system which was neither that of Christ nor of the world. 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



evangelical teachers of more modern times, he seems to have held that it is dangerous to relax the code of piety, and futile to attempt to change the perishable, but equally stringent, manners of the age. 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



Christ. Tertullian says little of Rome, except to mock the senate for inventing gods to whom it then gives worship. He pays an ungrateful compliment to the bishop of Rome by saying that he could have restored the peace of the church in Asia had he recognized, instead of condemning, the new prophetic movement which grew up there in the second century (Against Praxeas 1). Throughout his life, however, he suspected the pretensions of the clergy, and once he became a champion of the new prophecy, he argued that it was the Spirit, not the priests, who made the Church. 29 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. (p.201)

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



prestige. Dionysius of Rome was requested to examine the theology of the more famous Dionysius of Alexandria around the year 260; 33 in 268 the incumbents of both sees received proceedings of the Council which stripped Paul of Samosata of his bishopric in Antioch. When Paul stood firm, his judges petitioned the emperor Aurelian, who enforced the Council’s verdict. 34 Yet Aurelian was remembered as a persecutor, less for what he did than for what he is said to have intended; certainly his efforts to promote an ecumenical religion of the ‘Unconquered Sun’ can only have been impeded by the success of Christianity, especially where the latter was misconstrued as a solar cult. In contrast to his precursors, he invited all his subjects to abandon their ancestral ways for the worship of a single god; no wonder if he felt that a diversity of sects within the Church was incompatible with the unity of his government. He endowed the Church with the same concentric unity that he wanted for his Empire by dictating that the successor of Paul in Antioch was to be approved by the ‘Bishop of Italy’ (Eusebius, Church History 7.30.17). Perhaps he regarded Italy and Rome as a single territory; but after a hundred years, when further schism arose in Antioch, Jerome was in no doubt that the right of decision lay with the primate of the Roman see. 35 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



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



tendency of schisms in the Church. Like his able predecessor Aurelian, he decided that the best way to forestall them was to extend the monopoly of the Roman see; 41 thus, even when he had moved the seat of government, he imposed the western date of Easter on the Asian churches (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.5). Rome was still the grave of Paul and Peter, still the echochamber of the senate, still a centre of aristocratic patronage and above all else, the place from which the Empire took its name. 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



rejected the western candidate for the bishopric of Antioch and declared that, as the New Rome, Constantinople ought to hold the second rank in the Church as well. 46 The Empire was now frequently divided between two sovereigns, and thus had at least (p.206) two centres of authority; in the Church, as it was understood in Italy, there was one.

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



of the Roman spirit can be seen in his one allusion to the commonwealth (res publica), which is simply the tail of an argument that the Vestals have as much claim on their endowment as a freedman on a promised legacy (14). His next appeal to the sovereign is Roman in so far as it treats taxation, not as a social need, but as a private privilege which it might be a sign of majesty to waive (18; cf. 12). Time and again the orator pretends not to believe that a civil magistrate would rule in the interests of his own religion; the context of his own speech proved him wrong, but perhaps he nursed a hope that the royal novice could be won back to the policy which, until a hundred years before, had been the essence of Romanitas: Everyone has his own custom and his own rite; the divine mind has allotted a variety of religions to the city as its guardians. As different souls are distributed to the newborn, so are different spirits of destiny to each people. (Relation 8) 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)

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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



Thus we find two authors of the same time, but in different provinces, who regard the preservation of Romanitas as the duty and prerogative of the Church. Since he wrote at their behest, we may assume that Christians senators were ready to applaud the words of Ambrose, yet the silence of the church in Rome is a strange anachronism, most of all in the otherwise vehement Damasus. Ambrose was but one of a dozen authors, many of them Christians, who adorned a second Golden Age of Latin literature. The north Italian town of Aquileia produced the two leading scholars of the century in Jerome and Rufinus; from the south of Gaul came the theologians Prosper and Salvian as well as the poet (p.210) Paulinus, bishop of Nola; Juvencus and Orosius join Prudentius on the list of names from Spain. In 383 Augustine had arrived in Rome from Carthage, and was soon to commence new studies in Milan. Yet at this juncture it seems that, in the cradle of the Roman world, the Latin-speaking popes were hardly better exemplars of Romanitas than their early predecessors who had written (when they wrote at all) in Greek. 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).

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(2) See Origen, in Eusebius, Church History 6.25, where the book is none the less said to lie outside the Hebrew canon. Eissfeldt, ( 1965 ) 578–9 maintains that only 1 Maccabees was composed in Hebrew. (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.

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(18) Davis ( 1989 ) 6. (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



(33) Athanasius, On the Verdict of Dionysius. In interpreting this document we must remember how much the Egyptian patriarch Athanasius owed to Rome’s protection after he was exiled from Alexandria in 339. (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 (5thcent.) 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.

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(49) See Sallustius, On the Gods and the World; Porphyry, On the Return of the Soul, in Augustine, City of God 10. (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

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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 midthird 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


‘From this point on the power of the military increased and the right of appointing the emperor was snatched from the senate up to our own times.’ The changing relationship of emperors and their armies and the military background of emperors is connected with the culmination of the transformation of imperial power into a more visibly military monarchy during the Tetrarchy. 3 Constantine is associated with two developments which further affected this evolving relationship: the recruitment of substantial numbers of nonRomans 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



are fundamental, affecting interpretations of how the Empire was changing and developing. 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 (p.158)

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



Furthermore, Septimius Severus had earlier made changes in numbers, pay, privileges and dispositions, and the sixth-century narrative of Procopius’ Wars indicates that developments continued after 400, even if the lack of detailed evidence on the fifth century renders these obscure. 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



striking difference between the cavalry component in the mobile armies and the limitanei which needs to be probed. 25 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



edge for up to three or four days. The distribution figures for cavalry in the Notitia as calculated by Treadgold provide strong support for Nicasie’s thesis: c.400 the bulk of cavalry was normally deployed in local provincial armies, whereas the regional armies of the magistri militum had many fewer mounted units. 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. 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 (p.163)

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proportion of cavalry but that cavalry was based in the region rather than dispatched from the centre. 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



an undeniable fact’, 47 and Constantine bolstered his army with Franks and Alamans for civil conflicts. But it is the impact of Adrianople, when Theodosius I was excessively generous in agreeing terms in 382 with the Goths for settlement in the Empire and their military contribution, which is seen as crucial in affecting the identity and traditions of the army. 48 At the same time Roman (p.165) citizens, especially the more privileged, declined to participate fully in the defence of the Empire; as army commanders, in due course emperors too, came to be promoted from the ranks, and as emperors spent more time in the close company of their soldiers, the importance of common soldiers increased and their under-civilized nature could affect the whole running of the Empire. 49 Ultimately the Empire was defended by mercenary barbarians against barbarian incursions, with the result that the Roman army was deprived of its edge in training, discipline, and equipment, and might even be reluctant to annihilate ‘fellow barbarians’ attacking the Empire. 50 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 Page 8 of 33



might mean a weaker overall military establishment. 53 Alan Cameron’s detailed analysis of the Gäınas affair points, however, to the limitations of Gothic power in the eastern Empire, and at Constantinople in particular. Although it was convenient to exaggerate the danger from which Arcadius and the capital’s inhabitants had escaped, the incident did not have longterm implications for the employment of tribesmen as generals or soldiers. 54 The East continued to use non-Romans, even if we lack the evidence to compare numbers with the limited information we have for the fourth century. 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. 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 (p.167)

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junior officers and ordinary soldiers from beyond the Empire, the proportion may not have been as great as those in senior positions: members of tribal elites, for example younger sons or unsuccessful claimants for chiefdoms, may have been especially attracted to service in the Roman army. He also speculated, plausibly, that there were significantly fewer foreigners among the provincial units, or limitanei, than in the central armies: 62 limitanei relied in part on hereditary and other forms of local recruitment, so there would have been less need for outsiders. Non-Roman units played an important part in Roman armies; they may often have been selected for the prominent actions which attracted the attention of our sources, but the explanation might be expendability as much as quality. Overall the majority of Roman soldiers came from within the Empire. 63 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 DuraEuropus 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 halfVandal 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



house in Constantinople in 476; his grandson Flavius Areobindus Dagalaiphus Areobindus, married Anicia Juliana, held numerous offices under Anastasius, and in 512 was acclaimed by rioters as a suitably orthodox candidate to replace the monophysite Anastasius as emperor. 67 Such individuals are exceptional, but their successful behaviour is likely to have influenced (p.169) others, in the same way as Flavius Zenon’s career affected the behaviour of a generation of Isaurians. 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 Page 11 of 33



that the recruitment system was working, although a range of specific problems was thrown up for imperial scrutiny by interested individuals. Although I am sympathetic to this general thesis about the efficacy of late Roman law, the conclusions may not be quite appropriate to the military area. 77 The conditions and circumstances which generated the recruitment laws do suggest that the system was coming under severe strain at specific periods in the late fourth century. It was not always easy to produce large numbers of recruits quickly, especially if the military circumstances were difficult, and emperors had to intervene, but these crises did not have to produce a lasting change in the nature of late Roman armies. 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



it came to be regarded as a reasonable career, in marked opposition to the situation in the West. 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 Page 13 of 33



Eastern provincial elites depended on the imperial system for their position and status, and, at least down to the sixth century, they controlled a surplus rural population which could be surrendered for military service. 88 In the West, by contrast, there (p.173) is much less evidence for rural prosperity and, indeed, some areas such as Italy were in serious decline. Furthermore the families of the Roman senate were more powerful and independent than the eastern aristocracy, and they secured exemptions for their properties, with the consequent diminution of imperial control of recruits. 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



over their troops and have facilitated the condoning of misdemeanours, but victory in civil war might be followed by a reassertion of imperial control. 96 During the rapid turn-over of emperors in the mid-third century it would not be surprising if repeated usurpation led to greater sensitivity on the part of emperors in handling their troops: Aurelian showed deference to the common soldiers in consulting his army about the terms of an agreement with the Vandals (Dexippus fr. 7), while the death of Probus in 282 can be seen as the consequence of an ill-timed attempt to restore standards. 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



the conversion of Constantine to Christianity. It is difficult to identify evidence which casts specific light on this change, but Tomlin’s authoritative survey concluded that religion was not a major issue for soldiers and their commanders. 99 Thus Christians served in Tetrarchic armies without seeking to imitate attention-seeking martyrs (Acts of Maximilian 2.8); soldiers in Julian’s army had previously served under Christian command, and at Julian’s death they might have continued under non-Christian leadership if Secundus Salutius had accepted the succession before the Christian Jovian was proclaimed. 100 For their acceptance of Julian’s reintroduction of pagan practices Gregory of Nazianzus (Or. 4.64–5) criticized soldiers as habitual time-servers, both then and previously; the same could be said of the pagan Arbogast, friend of Ambrose of Milan and officer in Gratian’s army, who proclaimed the pagan senator Eugenius in 392. Most soldiers preferred to get on with their lives, obey orders, and avoid trouble. The military oath which had underpinned soldiers’ loyalties in the early Empire, survived the religious (p.176) change: ‘They swear by God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, and by the Majesty of the Emperor which second to God is to be loved and worshipped by the human race…. The soldiers swear that they will strenuously do all that the Emperor may command, will never desert the service, nor refuse to die for the Roman State’ (Vegetius 2.5). 101 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 Page 16 of 33



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 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 (p.178)

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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



whether this development was imposed on reluctant senators or accepted by them as welcome release from a difficult duty. The military nature of the emperor’s position was now revealed much more starkly: the fictions of a principate were swept away by the realities of a dominate, an oriental despotism. 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



absolute preference for military experience (p.181) and the prominence accorded to military qualities need to be questioned. 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

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according to their hostile critics, but it is reasonable to conclude that these were attributes which emperors wanted to claim. 132 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 preeminent, 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

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husband Theodosius II are another example of how elite literature sustained the link between palace emperors and the battlefield (Socrates 7.21.7–10). 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 fellowsoldier 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



a horseman and instructor in cavalry warfare (Oration 1.37c). The Latin panegyrics of the Tetrarchs repeatedly highlighted the incessant activity of emperors, their direct involvement in frontier defence, their victories and the benefits accruing from these to the provinces (e.g. Pan. Lat. 10.8; 11.3; 8.2–5; 9.18). 142 Provincials expected action from their rulers, and when this was not forthcoming they might complain: ‘philosophy demanded of the emperor that he should regularly associate with the soldiers and not stay in his chamber, for it showed that goodwill, the one solid safeguard of kingship, was strengthened by this daily contact’ (Synesius, De Regno 21). 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



the Augustan ideal of a civilian principate, but it is also questionable how many first-century emperors managed, or even attempted, to do so: in their different ways Tiberius’ inaccessibility on Capri, Gaius’ and Nero’s contempt for senators, Claudius’ domination by wives and freedmen, and Domitian’s desire to be regarded as ‘lord’, anticipate different characteristics of later Roman rulers. The multiplicity of imperial images c.400 is captured on the base of the Theodosian obelisk at Constantinople: 144 the emperor, his family and entourage, not always with armed bodyguards, are represented; one panel, that on the north-west, is a traditional representation of Roman triumph over barbarians who kneel in submission, but others display the emperor supervising activities in the Hippodrome, in particular his control of the games. From the mid-fifth century this was where eastern emperors had closest and most regular contact with their subjects, 145 a marked contrast to the image selected by John Chrysostom. Contemporary western emperors were less fortunate in that the complex systems which underpinned the late Roman army were seriously disrupted both by the usurpations of the 390s and 400s and by the tribal incursions and take-over of provincial land in the early fifth century. To survive the Empire needed a strong army that was subservient to the interests of ruler and state, as Augustus the first princeps had recognized; this had been preserved through the troubles of the third century, but failed in the West two centuries later.

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



(9) Liebeschuetz ( 1990 ) Part II. (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

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largitionum Ursulus bewailed the cost of the army on seeing the ruins of Amida after its capture by the Persians in 359: Ammianus 20.11.5. (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



(38) Analysis in Nicasie ( 1998 ) 219–56; also Tomlin ( 2000 ) 173–4. Cf. Coulston ( 1986 ) 60 for the basic point, though Mursa shows that cavalry could make a major contribution in battle. (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.

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(55) Speidel ( 1975 ) 203 n. 4 . (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.

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(71) Cod. Theod. 7.13.2–6 (367– 70), 8–11 (380–2), 12–15 (397–402). The legislation on deserters fits into this pattern: 7.18.1 (365); 2–8 (379–91); 9– 17 (396–412; all western). (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

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acquired some of the independence that western senators cherished two centuries earlier. (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.

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(104) Momigliano ( 1963 ) 14 suggested that there were significant regional differences in the Church’s attitude to the Empire, with the West being much more negative than the East. (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.

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(121) Watson ( 1999 ) 160; already noted by Alföldi (1952) 99. (122) Paschoud ( 2000 ) 27 renders the contrast as being between general and emperor (‘il gouverne en geńe´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



(135) McCormick ( 1986 ) ch. 2 , esp. 47–64. (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 )

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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 the main from a Byzantine summary of the narrative of a contemporary senator, Cassius Dio, who had nothing good to say about the emperor in question; and from a piece of papyrus (P. Giessen 40). 1 The papyrus, but not the historical epitome, yields the information that dediticii were excluded from the imperial dispensation. This word, which remains undefined in the papyrus scrap, originally designated captives on whom an ignominious settlement was imposed, as distinct from surrendered enemies permitted a negotiated capitulation. The class of dediticii had been extended in AD 4 by the Augustan Lex Aelia Sentia to include freedmen who had committed criminal and infamous acts when in the condition of slaves (Gaius, Inst. 1.14); it was swelled in Late Antiquity by (p.134) various tribal groups from across the frontiers, who presumably were held to meet the old criteria. 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)

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Dio offers us only a partial (in two senses) understanding of the background of the edict. He does more or less admit that the initiative might have had an honourable intent had it issued from a good emperor. However, he would probably have thought of it as essentially a symbolic gesture. Roman citizenship still carried some cachet at the beginning of the third century AD, especially in the eastern provinces, where it was far from ubiquitous even among the local elites. But Dio came from a family (from Nicaea in Bithynia) that had won Roman citizenship long before, in the first century ad, when it had had true rarity value. Dio’s father (at least) had been a Roman senator, Dio himself pursued a full senatorial career culminating in a second consulship, as ordinarius, with the emperor Severus Alexander as his colleague (in AD 229). The family was for (p.135) all practical purposes resident in Italy, until Dio returned to Nicaea, disillusioned and unwell, in old age (Millar ( 1964 )). 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



or Theodosius II. Early Rome is impenetrable, but there may have been a time—Claude Nicolet, the doyen of citizenship studies, thinks that there was—when Rome was a small (p.136) sovereign city-state not unlike a Greek polis, in which all free inhabitants were citizens with public rights and duties, political, military and financial, and with equal standing in the eyes of the law. The hallmarks of Roman citizenship were exclusivity and equality, even if that equality was geometric, an equality which reflected social and political divisions. As Nicolet wrote: ‘The magistrates charged with carrying out the census distributed the citizens according to a system (ratio) which assigned each one a precise place in a rigorous hierarchical order. This place was essential: every citizen had to know it or demand its definition.’ (Nicolet ( 1993 ) 26). On the political implications, Nicolet is forthright: ‘The history of Rome, especially Republican Rome, is above all, the history of an oligarchy’ (Nicolet ( 1980 ) 1). 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



Republican period that Roman governments developed as a positive policy the (selective) extension of citizenship, targetting especially foreigners who were prepared to back the Roman imperialist enterprise and were well placed to do so, geographically and socially. 3 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.

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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. 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 )) (p.139)

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In this humble town, Roman law was apparently ‘laid on’ for all free inhabitants, of whom only a small minority were Roman citizens. 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. 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. (p.140)

III. CITIZENSHIP AFTER THE EDICT OF CARACALLA

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For some modern observers, it was all over for Roman citizenship after Caracalla’s edict. Citizenship was now more or less universal and had therefore lost whatever residual value it formerly possessed. The citizen/ peregrine distinction had been replaced by the honestiores/humiliores distinction, its continued existence rendered ‘unnecessary and irrelevant’ (de Ste Croix ( 1981 ) 455). As for the use of Roman law, it must be true that the numbers having access to Roman law increased in the ensuing centuries, even if we may doubt that it ever became universal. Jones is optimistic on that score, while regarding Roman citizenship as of little value. It was for him less significant that ‘eventually a unified legal system was established than that unity of sentiment was achieved’. ‘By the fourth century at any rate,’ he says, ‘the provincials thought of themselves as Romans’ (Jones ( 1964 ) 17). Must it be conceded, however, that the legions of new Roman citizens had been given something of purely symbolic value? As we shall see in the rest of this chapter: not everybody was a citizen after the edict; local law continued to be a force in some areas; and not all citizens, perhaps indeed only a minority, used Roman law and from choice. (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 nonperson. 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



I am not persuaded, for the following reasons. First, the problem of mixed unions involving slaves, whether male or female, was not a new one. In addressing it, Constantine was following in the footsteps of, in particular, Augustus and other Julio-Claudian emperors and their senates: a regular point of reference for Constantine is the Senatus Consultum Claudianum of AD 52 which penalized free women living in ‘marriage’ with someone else’s slave. Similarly, the confusion between slaves and the lower-class free (whether freed or freeborn) had been remarked upon by various writers of the early Principate. Status confusion was at root a consequence of the relative frequency of manumission, and the fact that the social and economic roles performed by certain categories of slaves (the kind who were most readily manumitted) and by humble free men, freed or freeborn, overlapped. 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. (p.142)

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



or should be proclaimed in an absurd manner. (Cod. Theod. 4.8.5, 322) 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 slavedealers 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



ethnically, and culturally marginal people were allowed to slip through the net. 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

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procurer or of a gladiator or a woman who has charge of wares for sale to the public … 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



person or persons, their position in society, made a difference; so did their place of domicile. Loss of access to Roman legal procedures and remedies might have been a severe blow where alternative systems were lacking. This raises the question of just how universally Roman law was applied in the Empire, how far it had displaced local, indigenous legal practices, and who used it, in the period after Caracalla’s edict.

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



A thesis of radical, imposed transformation of legal rules and practices throughout the length and breadth of the empire is inherently implausible. The Romanization of the East was a less likely prospect than ‘becoming Roman, staying Greek’ (or staying Near Eastern or Egyptian: cf.Woolf ( 1994 )). And that is without taking account of the special challenges posed by Roman law outside its natural cultural orbit. Gregory Thaumaturgus, an intending student at the Roman law school of Beirut before he was captured by Origen for the service of the Church, bears witness to this in his Discourse of Gratitude to his master, composed in the late 230s. He concedes the wisdom, precision, subtlety and genius of the Roman laws—these qualities in fact make them ‘thoroughly Greek’. After the ironical accolade, Gregory comes clean: the study of the laws in depth and in breadth (the Greek is obscure) is burdensome for him, and the fact that they are written in Latin is a pain (Sources Chrétiennes 148.1.7; Modrzejewski ( 1971 )). It can be assumed that experts in Roman law were in short supply in the Greek East in the decades after the issuing of the edict, and that this would have gravely impeded the general Romanization of local law, had that been the intention of central government. 7 (p.147)

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. 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 (p.148)

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of the legal system. The fact that the treatise concerned proconsuls, of whom there were very few left, as distinct from legates, praesides and procuratorial governors, is not encouraging. 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



and the senatorial decree’ (Modrzejewski ( 1974 )). The report of a court-case before a delegate of the prefect (called a sundikos, probably the equivalent of a defensor civitatis), dated c.325–33, shows that Roman law continued to impinge on Egypt in the same way in the fourth century. An otherwise unknown constitution of Constantine on praescriptio longi temporis is here cited and followed by the judge; it ruled that possession uninterrupted over forty years created ownership, no matter how the possession had originated. 8

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



active membership of the local patria or place of origin, but not with each other, finds an echo in much (but not all) early Christian apologetic. This is not the place to survey that copious literature. 9 Instead I sample the thought of the man who produced the most comprehensive account of the civitas Dei and its relation to earthly citizenship, cities, and sources of authority, in his classic De Civitate Dei and in others of his works: Augustine of Thagaste and Hippo. 10 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.

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Nectarius goes on to insist that this does not entail turning one’s back on one’s patria: I do not think that we need to abandon the city in which we were born and brought to life, which first granted us the enjoyment of the light we see, which nourished us and brought us up; furthermore (to say what is specifically appropriate to the issue) for those heroes whose fine service to the city merits it, a home is being prepared in heaven—so the philosophers tell us—for after their bodily deaths. In this way, the people who have served the town of their birth well are promoted to the city above; the people who are shown to have secured safety for their own homeland, by their advice or their efforts, are the ones who will live closer to God. 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



social and administrative units that made up the Roman Empire, that its free inhabitants were Roman citizens, fellow-members of the communis patria that was Rome, and as such could make use of the law, and be brought to book under the law. It was precisely the issue of the punishment that should be dealt the rioters of Calama that precipitated the correspondence between Nectarius and Augustine. That the criminals should be brought to justice in accordance with Roman law was not in question. 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. Volusianus 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:

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Let them give us provincials, husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, kings, judges and finally even tax-payers and tax-collectors, of the sort that the teaching of Christ demands. Then let them dare to say that his teaching is opposed to the commonwealth! Indeed let them even hesitate to admit that, if it were observed, it would contribute greatly to the security of the commonwealth! (15). 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



altar, they rushed on him, attacking him horribly, brutal in their fury; they beat him viciously, with clubs and any other sort of weapon, and finally even with wood broken off from the altar. They also stabbed him in the groin with a dagger…. Next, under the impression that Maximian was already dead, they lifted him into a tower, and then threw him down from it, while he was still alive. He landed on a heap of something soft, and some night-time travellers spotted him by lamplight and recognized him…. Rumour carried the story that he had been outrageously killed by the Donatists even across the sea. When he turned up after this, and there could be no doubting the plain fact that he was alive, he was still able to show by his many scars, which were large and fresh, that the rumour of his death had not been groundless. 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) 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. (p.155)

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VI. CONCLUSION Roman citizenship in the days of Augustine was not what it had been, especially in the palmy days of the Republic, in terms of social distribution, role, and prestige. However, while widely possessed (though not universal), it was still to some extent a social divider, marking off Romans from external barbarians and foreigners within in their several categories, not to mention slaves. But in addition, 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 which rendered the mass of the population powerless to make citizenship work for them. Citizenship was efficacious for those involved in government and public life as a whole, for those who had resources to protect or increase, for those who most obviously had a stake in society. For the rest, it was at best a badge of membership. Whether it was worn with pride or worn at all—whether ordinary provincials thought of themselves as Romans—is another matter, and not the subject of this chapter.

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



(3) Mouritsen ( 1998 ) is a challenging and convincing critique of traditional interpretations of the history of Roman citizenship down to and including the Social War. (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.

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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 ideas it embodies are not new, but have been developed by myself, Detlef Liebs, and others over the past thirty years. 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



free people of the empire. Three-quarters of a century later Diocletian’s reforms turned provincial governors almost exclusively into judges and administrators. They were assisted by assessors, now for the most part legally trained. In the next generation Constantine’s conversion created a (p.111) Christian society, alternative to the official res publica, including an alternative system of dispute resolution, episcopal hearings. 4 These did not in practice supplant the ordinary courts, but Christians were supposed to resort to them in their disputes with one another and, if they did, episcopal judgments were unappealable. Imperial power was also limited by the convention that religious doctrine fell within the jurisdiction of bishops, not emperors. As Theodosius I found to his discomfiture, Christian emperors were subject to ecclesiastical discipline. 5 There was increasing pressure on the ruler to respect general rules and to enact general laws according to settled procedures. The administration, beginning with Constantius II, became more professional. One consequence was the rising prestige of lawyers, which led to a modest programme of law reform and prepared the ground for the fifth and sixth century Constantinople codes. By 400 the ideology of the rule of law or Rechtstaat, especially in the East, helped to counterbalance the weakness of a state that had lost its military superiority and was increasingly dependent on foreign soldiers and generals. Rome has now left the world of arma virumque for that of arma et iura.

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



continued to write summaries and epitomes of the law, though on a reduced scale. 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 lawmaking. 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. 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 (p.113)

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that we are all born free and equal, and that slavery is contrary to nature. 16 Reflecting the cosmopolitan outlook of the period, he is the first lawyer in any society to take freedom, equality, and human dignity as the basis of his exposition of the law. This he does by applying these notions, so far as authority permits, to conflicts in the real world in which peoples’ status and rights can be radically different. His vision, going beyond the constitutio Antoniniana, is not confined to free people. Slaves possess dignity, and, if a slave is seriously beaten or insulted, an action can be brought, in the name of the slave’s owner, in which the legal issue is not the owner’s standing and capacity, but the slave’s, the (p.114) persona servi. 17 Whether or not Ulpian actively promoted the constitutio Antoniniana, he is its leading contemporary expositor, 18 concerned to show that Roman law is based on reason and conforms to nature. So it can properly govern the doings of citizens new and old. 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



in Greek on the duty of adult male Roman citizens to take on three unpaid guardianships for those under puberty or curatorships for those of the age of puberty but under 25. A serious burden, since fathers often died relatively young and mothers were treated as incapable of acting as guardians or curators themselves. (Suppose there were a duty in Anglo-American law to take on three unpaid trusteeships). Modestinus deals with the excuses that can be put forward to avoid or reduce the burden. He tries in doing so to create a Greek vocabulary for the terminology of Roman law. 23 In this he was not successful. The legal Greek of the later Empire is law school Greek dating from the fifth century. But Modestinus’ effort was a pointer to the future. 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



down customs such as polygamy, 31 the adoption of brothers, 32 or public disinheritance 33 that were repugnant to Roman mores. Respect for custom, then, provided the legal framework within which Roman law was applied to the new citizens. The gradual nature of the process does not detract from its long-term importance. In the end it made provincials even in outlying provinces in some sense Roman, much as in the nineteenth century the four nations that made up the United Kingdom, together with the inhabitants of some of the colonies, became in some sense British, irrespective of habitat or ethnic origin. 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



leave the composition of rescripts in future largely to officials who could consult these models. This relieved the emperor of the duty of attending to them personally. There were no more officially inspired collections of rescripts. Though the rescript system continued and the rescripts issued bound judges in the case for which they were given, they no longer had the status of general laws binding in similar cases. Instead what mainly survive from Constantine onwards are general laws of the sort found in the Theodosian Code. These were, at any rate from the 370s and perhaps earlier, normally composed by quaestors. The imperial quaestor, a palace official whose original function, like that of the earlier quaestor principis, had perhaps been to read out the emperor’s speeches or act as speechwriter for him, was not usually a lawyer. Quaestors were drawn from various walks of life, for example aristocrats, persons of literary distinction, notaries, provincial governors, and especially bureaucrats from the central offices. 39 On the whole the qualities looked for in a quaestor were literary. He was a government spokesman. Towards the end of our period, however, we find some lawyer-quaestors, mainly under Theodosius I and Arcadius in the East. 40

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



explanations of the laws in the Code. Does this imply that Roman law had become debased? That does not follow. Legal education, grounded in the classical texts, retained its standards of style and substance. When a lawyer– quaestor is in office we may find in a law phrases reminiscent of a second- or early third-century classical author. One example comes in an eastern text of 396 that updates a rule about the need to initiate legal proceedings during one’s lifetime. 46

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



the classical legal texts. Those who had studied law thoroughly were iuris periti, iuris consulti, or nomikoi, designations that are not used of advocates, who are advocati, causidici, or scholastikoi. 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



in provincial towns. Then there were law teachers, both those teaching publicly at law schools in Beirut, Rome, and later Constantinople, and private teachers. Private law teachers either taught pupils freelance for payment or gave legal instruction as a favour to a friend or relative—a favoured method of teaching in the ancient world, not only in law. Not every important town had law teachers. We know of teaching in Palestinian Caesarea, Alexandria, Carthage, Autun, Syracuse, and Split, but not in Milan, Antioch or, later, Ravenna. 60 Our understanding of law teaching and practice in the provinces has been greatly advanced by Liebs’s studies of late imperial lawyers and jurisprudence in Italy, 61 Africa, 62 and Gaul, 63 which have shown the extent to which legal culture spread to the provinces. Legal culture can flourish even when there are no law schools close by. 64 At the end of our period it might still be advisable to study law in Rome or Beirut, but legal advice was widely available to both litigants and judges in provincial towns. 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



I by Ambrose, who may possibly himself have had legal training, 73 for his complicity in the Thessalonica massacre of 390, showed that church discipline did not spare the emperor himself. 74 Christian emperors were subject to a set of sanctions in the next world that might give them pause in this. Even a deacon, says John Chysostom, is bound to stop a general, a consul or a member of the imperial family who comes forward for communion unworthily. ‘Your authority is greater than his.’ 75 It is true that Christianity had little impact on the content of legislation, apart from the laws against heretics. But this should not blind us to the fact that it institutionalized criticism of officials and members of the imperial family. Bishops could and did badger governors about their (p.124) handling of cases. A tradition of outspoken criticism, perhaps ultimately derived from the Jewish prophets, was endemic in Christianity, and could coexist with loyalty to the empire and to established institutions.

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 façade 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

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being divided between Rome and wherever the seat of the imperial court happened to be, Trier, Milan, or (later) Ravenna. 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



is to claim free food (annona) there. For it is not right, says a law of 396, that those who have neglected to show that they love their city by having a home there should share its benefits. 81 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.

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In the East the political agenda fitted the legal outlook more comfortably. Eutropius’ administration, whatever his personal defects, promoted the interest of the state in an even-handed subordination of all to the law. He was determined to assert civilian rule. As Alan Cameron puts it, ‘perhaps the main achievement of Eutropius’ much-maligned administration was, at the critical moment, to have prevented a military takeover of the government by an eastern Stilicho, whether barbarian or Roman’. 88 The administration was, like its eastern predecessors, hostile to the attempt of wealthy landowners (potentiores) to intimidate provincial governors and establish a protective link (patrocinium) with countryfolk and country towns with a view to tax avoidance. 89 He energetically opposed feudalizing tendencies. 90 It is striking that there is no western legislation aimed at combating patrocinium. John Chrysostom criticized Eutropius on the ground that he had sponsored some anti-clerical measures. 91 There were laws insisting that episcopal jurisdiction, unlike that of the ordinary courts, is voluntary; that clerical exemptions must be kept within proper bounds; and that councillors cannot escape their obligations by appealing to the right of asylum or becoming clerics. Yet (p.128) Eutropius was a Christian and shared much of Chrysostom’s moral outlook. The rich should make a proper contribution to the needs of the state and there must as far as possible be equality before the law. 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



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

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debated and its possible impact, for example on revenue, could be assessed before it was approved. 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



constituted the forum for debating imperial policy and the decision-making body. 102 Ambrose was glad to obtain leaks of its discussions and he praises Valentinian II for the way in which he conducted consistory business. 103 Though not an imperial cabinet, it was a deliberative body that held together the various strands that made up the administration, particularly in its civil aspect. 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.

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(3) Inst. Iust. 2.17.8 (rescript of Severus and Caracalla composed by Ulpian: Honoré ( 1994 ) 83 n.127): ‘secundum haec divi quoque Severus et Antoninus saepissime rescripserunt: ‘‘licet enim, inquiunt, legibus soluti sumus, attamen legibus vivimus’’ ’; Cod. Iust. 6.23.3 (22 Dec. 232): ‘ex imperfecto testamento nec imperatorem hereditatem vindicare saepe constitutum est. licet enim lex imperii sollemnibus iuris imperatorem solverit, nihil tamen tam proprium imperatoris est, ut legibus vivere’; Dig. 32.23 (Pseudo-Paul 5 sent. c.300: similar); Cod. Theod. 4.4.2 (23 Jan. 389: imposing more stringent conditions on the emperor than on private citizens as regards gifts by codicil or letter). (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.’

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(15) Dig. I.I.I.I (Ulp. 1 inst.): ‘Cuius merito quis nos sacerdotes appellet: iustitiam namque colimus et boni et aequi notitiam profitemur, aequum ab iniquo separantes, licitum ab illicito discernentes, bonos non solum metu poenarum, verum etiam praemiorum quoque exhortatione efficere cupientes, veram nisi fallor philosophiam, non simulatam affectantes.’ (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.)

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(27) Dig. 1.3.40 (Mod. 1 reg.): ‘Omne ius aut consensus fecit aut necessitas constituit aut formavit consuetudo.’ (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.

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(43) Voss ( 1982 ) 39–72. (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



(59) Libanius, Or. 1.154, 214–15, 234, 243; 2.43–6; 40.5;48.22; 49.27– 9;62.8–18. (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 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



(78) List in Honoré ( 1998b ) 275–7. (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



(95) Cod. Theod. 10.1.15 (ad Paulum comitem domorum 28 March 396): ‘Rescripta igitur obreptionibus inpetrata cum praesciptione longi temporis et novi census praeiudicio submovebit auctoritas tua atque ita omnia suo corpori quae sunt avulsa restituet. Neque enim aut precatio colorata aut incubatio diuturna aut novella professio proprietatis nostrae privilegium abolere potuerunt.’ (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



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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 Page 1 of 30

Transition and Change in Diocletian’s Egypt: Province and Empire in the Late Third Century


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 Page 2 of 30



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 Page 4 of 30



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 Page 5 of 30



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 fifteenyear 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 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. (p.89)

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 Page 8 of 30



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. 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. (p.93)

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 Page 10 of 30



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 Page 11 of 30



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 Empirewide 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 Page 12 of 30



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’. Page 13 of 30



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: Page 14 of 30



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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But was the third century any worse than previous centuries, and did Diocletian really provide a new beginning for Egypt, solving many endemic problems? (p.100)

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 Page 16 of 30



administrative problems and conflicts of interest, but rather offered a shortterm 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 Page 17 of 30



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 socalled 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 wellchosen 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. 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. (p.105)

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? 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 (p.106)

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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 Page 21 of 30



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)

2

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. Page 22 of 30



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. Page 27 of 30



(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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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 Page 1 of 25

A New Golden Age? The Northern Praefectura Urbi from the Severans to Diocletian


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, Page 2 of 25



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 Page 3 of 25



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 Page 4 of 25



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 Page 5 of 25



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 Page 6 of 25



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 Page 7 of 25



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), Page 8 of 25



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, Page 9 of 25



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). Page 10 of 25



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 Page 11 of 25



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). Page 12 of 25



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. Page 13 of 25



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 Page 14 of 25



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-todo 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 Page 16 of 25



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-todo 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 Page 17 of 25



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 Page 19 of 25



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 Page 20 of 25



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 Page 21 of 25



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 Page 22 of 25



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 Page 23 of 25



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 Page 24 of 25



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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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

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Economic Change and the Transition to Late Antiquity


the arrival of new or stronger external forces was the effective cause, as the survival of the eastern Empire with its better strategic position might suggest, these later events need not be a product of damaging internal changes. 2 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



army of 60,000 men, and defeated a third one of 70,000, capturing all its officers, together with the emperor Valerian, who remained his captive in Persia. Despite all this, the pendulum was about to swing in Rome’s favour in the East, though only through the unexpected emergence of Palmyra as her defender. Shapur’s account of his campaigns, particularly the list of captured troops from twenty-eight parts of Rome’s Empire, gives a remarkable view of the scale of mobilization. 8 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

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cultivation often appears in discussions of the later Empire. Characteristic views have been summarized as follows: The shrinkage of cultivated area began in the third century, under the impact of population loss, itself caused by social changes, invasion, civil war, plundering, epidemics and soil impoverishment. Inadequately offset by the policy of installing barbarians on fallow land, reduction in cultivated area became widespread in the fourth century, exacerbated by the concentration of landowning patterns, but intensified above all by repeated legal provisions enacted by a State which was implacable and absolutist, especially in matters of taxation. 13 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 sixthcentury compilers that its absence from the Digest need not show any lack of legislation about land-occupancy in this period. 15 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 (p.24)

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



seriously affecting tax potential. 22 But identifying limitations in the (p.25) juristic evidence does little to establish the scale of agri deserti. Further investigation is needed, and the most revealing source is archaeology. 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



Principate. But in the late second century, Galen in an important passage casually reveals just such events in the countryside of his native Pergamum, not as social comment, but for their medical interest. 32

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 potterybased 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.

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In Campania, south of Rome, a survey near Sinuessa on the coast showed 138 sites of the first century BC to the second century AD, 80 of the second to third century, and 27 of the fourth and (p.28) fifth centuries. The percentage falls are 41 and 66 per cent. 38 In Campania further inland, the Liris valley survey suggests that ‘most of the smaller rural sites fail to produce clear evidence of occupation after AD 200. The evidence for later activity mainly comes from the larger rural sites, suggesting concentration of landholding in relatively few hands.’ 39 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 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. (p.29)

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The territory of Falerii yielded the pattern shown in Table 1 . Nearly 40 per cent of sites here appear to have been abandoned by about AD 300 and more than 50 per cent of those that were left, by the end of the fourth century. 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 dateable 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

S. Giovanni

83

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Early

Late

26

7



Sinuessa

80

138

27

Veii

70

307

92

Falerii

67

95

31

Oria

67

24

8

Rieti

53

47

22

Cosa

35

49

32

Upper Biferno

36

11

7

Lower Biferno

34

56

37

Venosa

15

40

34

Gravina

(43 gain)

14

20

Total

61 (average)

807

317

Note: For references and for the different chronological boundaries, see text. 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

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Fig. 1. Wine amphorae at Ostia and Rome: percentage from Italy. Eight samples with approximate dating. Data: Panella and Tchernia ( 1994 ) 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.

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For northern Gaul, a recent discussion concluded that ‘very few (rural) sites (showing Romanized forms of settlement) were created in the fourth century’. But ‘there were some geographic sectors where the population appears relatively stable. They include the region of Trier, the alluvial plains of the Rhine, and many parts of the plains of N. France … In other sectors however there was a significant drop … [They include] the north of Belgica, the region of Nijmegen, where the drop is over 80 per cent, and the sandy alluvial zones of the northern Rhine.’ 57 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.

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IVc. Africa 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. 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 (p.34)

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



Fig. 4. Public building in the African provinces: total per year AD 98–395 (N = 197). Data: Romanelli, Duncan-Jones, and Lepelley (see n. 62) 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



In the earliest period, from AD 70 to 96, the ceramic fineware at Ostia is mainly Italian, about 80 per cent, with the rest from the western Mediterranean, Gaul or Spain. The proportion from Africa is negligible, about 1 per cent. At this time Africa was herself importing fineware from Gaul on a significant scale. 70 In the next period, from 100 to 190, the pattern at Ostia changes dramatically. Africa shoots up to provide two-thirds of the Ostian material, Italy shrinks to less than 20 per cent, and the western Mediterranean also declines. 71 The next sample, from the years 230 to 250, is more dramatic still. African pottery now virtually monopolizes the picture, with a quotient above 98 per cent. 72 This continues into the fourth century with almost no variation. (p.37)

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

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V. CHANGE IN THE EASTERN EMPIRE Va. Syria In Syria, field surveys strongly suggest expanding settlement in late Antiquity. 81 They come from northern sites in present-day Syria and southeast 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 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. (p.39)

In another Syrian survey within modern Turkey, at Titris˛ Hoÿu¨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



(p.40)

Vb. Greece

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



One was Soknopaiou Nesos, whose large temple at its height was served by 160 priests. 93 This village on the northern shore of Lake Moeris depended heavily on cultivated land several miles away on the other side of the lake. Its dated documentary series ends in AD 239, by which date most of its inhabitants are thought to have moved elsewhere. 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) 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 (p.42)

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Fig. 7. Numbers of documentary papyri from Egyptian finds AD 100–300 (shown as percentages of total). Data: Habermann ( 1998 ) 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 tenyear 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



the eastern half of the Empire makes clear that chronic inflation had (p.44) set in by Diocletian’s time. 103 We can see significant price rises in mid-thirdcentury Egypt. 104 Much more dramatic increases then followed. Rathbone suggests a price leap of roughly tenfold in about 274/5, very soon after Aurelian’s coinage reforms of 274. These reforms affected Egyptian currency as well as the central coinage. 105 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 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 ) (p.45)

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



The chronology seems similar in other provinces. In Hispania Tarraconensis, coin of Gallienus from AD 259/60 accounts for 25–60 per cent of all Roman coin at sites. 112 And a great rash of hoards from these two years has been found in western Gaul and adjacent regions. 113 Taking the evidence as a whole, the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus show a staggering peak in the number of silver hoards. 114 The average per year more than trebles at this (p.46) point (Fig. 10 ). Hoard numbers then fall back under Aurelian, but median hoard size increases dramatically, soaring under Philip, under Valerian and Gallienus, and yet again under Aurelian (Fig. 11 ). 115 The trend is too consistent to be accidental. Callu suggests an enormous surge in output of the antoninianus, particularly in 266–74. 116 Also in this period, the biggest individual hoards reach levels never seen before, with peaks of more than 80,000 denarii under Decius in 251, 40,000 under Valerian, 59,000 under Gallienus, and 109,000 under Aurelian. 117

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 coinfind 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 ).

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Fig. 11. Third-century silver hoards, median size in denarii, AD 200–275 (major reigns). Data: Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ); Bland ( 1996 ) 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

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Fig. 12. Dated imperial rescripts, AD 235–285. Data: Honore´ (1994) 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



for drastic shrinkage in rural settlement. 131 At the same time, it remains important that available evidence from Africa and from parts of the east does not suggest shrinking rural settlement.

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 onethird 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



under Gallienus, whose joint hand-outs at Rome were also the largest ever seen. New peaks of this kind must imply increase in spending and minting, despite what were evidently shrinking metal supplies (Figs. 9 – 11 ). 138 The increases may have been necessitated by the demands of incessant warfare, but they probably also triggered the monetary reforms of Aurelian and Diocletian. Their economic impact must have been significant, but it remains difficult to assess in the absence of price evidence from outside Egypt. 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



(3) Elagabalus seems to have succeeded at the age of 14 or 15, and Alexander Severus and Gordian III both at 13 (Kienast ( 1990 ) 172, 177, 194). (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



(13) Translated from Jailette ( 1996 ) 338. He also gives a full text and translation of the evidence in the Codex Theodosianus. (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



evidence, and comparisons with specifically Egyptian data from earlier periods suggest that tax-yields had actually fallen (Duncan-Jones ( 1994 ) 57–9). The post-Diocletianic tax-system allowed flexibility in tax-levels from one tax period to the next. The mere fact that rates could vary, and therefore sometimes increase would readily give rise to complaints from contemporaries, like those on which Jones’s case for increased taxes is partly based. For a possible ‘steady state’ view, cf. MacMullen ( 1987 ) 753. (25) Arguably it was an inherent strain for an economy based on lowefficiency 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 (DuncanJones ( 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.

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(35) Kenrick in Matthers ( 1978 ) 147. No African red-slip ware was reported at the time of that survey, despite its strong presence in this region at Antioch on the coast. (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



(52) Panella and Tchernia ( 1994 ) give pottery totals on pp. 150–1 from which these percentages are calculated; the aggregates in the eight periods shown are 5,350 (all wine amphorae) and 1,973 (Italian only). Non-wine amphorae are omitted here. The pottery evidence comes from both Ostia and Rome, but the two patterns show no systematic difference. (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



amount of public building had fallen much more drastically by the 3rd cent. (Jouffroy ( 1986 ) 320–1). (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



(75) For early figures, see nn. 71–2 above. African red-slip ware forms 60 per cent of the total in the 4th–5th cents. (N = 713) and 72 per cent in the 6th– 7th cents. (N = 1206), Kenrick ( 1987 ) figs. 7 – 8 . (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.

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(88) But it is worth noting that the dated series of building inscriptions from the high massif (N = 273) shows a pronounced drop in the second half of the 3rd cent. (Tate ( 1992 ) 174). (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



(103) Corbier ( 1985 ); for Diocletian’s comments, which are essentially moralistic, see Giacchero ( 1974 ) 134–7. (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



meaning, it is more likely to reflect Roman troop concentrations (cf. DuncanJones ( 1994 ) 82–5). (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



(123) Roman lawyers show evident reluctance to cite rulings by disgraced rulers suchas Nero and Commodus; cf. Duncan-Jones ( 1990 ) 168 n. 73 . But that does not explain a collapse in citations half way through the reign of Gallienus. (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



(135) For African urbanization, cf. Lasserre ( 1977 ), and Lepelley (1979/81). (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).

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