Download PDF | THE RHETORIC OF POWER IN LATE ANTIQUITY Religion and Politics in Byzantium, Europe and the Early Islamic World Edited by Robert M. Frakes, Elizabeth DePalma Digeser & Justin Stephens, I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2010.
300 Pages
FOREWORD , John W. I. Lee
The field of Late Antiquity has come a long way—thanks in no small part to the scholarship of H. A. Drake. Hal Drake was the first person I met in Santa Barbara. As I stepped off the plane, dazzled by the California sunlight after a winter in upstate New York, Hal welcomed me with the warmth and sincerity that are his hallmarks. In the decade since I arrived here, Hal has been an unfailing colleague, mentor, and friend. I am honored to have the opening word in this volume dedicated to him.
Hal came to UCSB in 1971 after completing his Ph.D. training at the University of Wisconsin. His scholarship and teaching made an immediate impression. In 1976 he won the Harold J. Plous Memorial Award, given to the best assistant professor on campus. He has continued to publish and teach with distinction since then.
Hal’s scholarship is characterized by its command of the ancient and modern literature, its skillful and persuasive analysis, engaging style, and accessibility to non-specialists. As a historian of Classical Greece whose education included little of events after Constantine, I count myself as one of those non-specialists. I am especially grateful to Hal and his students for leading me to appreciate the vibrancy and significance of Late Antiquity.
Hal’s success in advancing the study of his field goes beyond publications. Working with the Multi-Campus Research Group on Late Antiquity and other collaborative groups, he has helped make the University of California system one of the world’s leading venues for the study of Mediterranean Late Antiquity.
At UCSB, Hal has trained a generation of outstanding graduate students, who have gone on to successful careers across the United States and beyond. Serving on graduate committees with him over the years, I have observed and admired his mentoring style. Hal demands the best from his students, and provides them the attention and support they need to thrive. Perhaps what most impresses me is that Hal’s students are not cookie-cutter copies of himself. As their contributions to this volume make clear, they have pursued diverse and innovative research projects, using new methods and approaches. In recognition of his achievements in graduate teaching, Hal received UCSB’s campus-wide Graduate Mentor Award in 2007.
Hal has also introduced thousands of UCSB undergraduates to ancient history. He was an early adopter of teaching technology, including multimedia lecture presentations and video-linked graduate seminars. Laws, Gods, and Heroes, a collection of documents for Western Civilization courses that he and Joe Leedom edited, is now in its third edition and is widely used in survey courses across the country. Hal’s former students, some from the 1970s, still come back to Santa Barbara to visit him.
Hal’s devotion to UCSB and its students has always extended beyond the classroom. He has been History Department Chair and Director of Graduate Studies, as well as serving on myriad departmental and campus committees. He helped found the UCSB History Associates, a non-profit group that raises funds to support graduate students.
For most of us, all that would be enough. Not for Hal. For many years, he and his wife Kathy have opened their home to students, faculty, and visitors. Together, they have created a convivial, welcoming environment, where intellectual discussion pairs with delicious food and drink—not least of Hal’s admirable qualities, by the way, is his ability to make a mean margarita. All of us who have enjoyed the Drakes’ hospitality are eternally grateful to Hal and Kathy for their generosity.
Hal’s commitment to ancient history and to students has continued even after his formal retirement. He and Kathy have established the Harold and Kathleen Drake Fund, which supports graduate students working in ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese history. Hal still teaches occasional courses on a recall basis.
Hal represents the very best of the historical profession and the University of California. I join with colleagues, students, and friends in celebrating his career, and wish him many more years of health, prosperity, and ancient history!
INTRODUCTION
When discussing Christians in Rome’s empire, we ate accustomed to rhetoric in black and white tones, not unlike the old films portraying Jesus’ followers as always righteous and the government they opposed as always decadent, slouching toward decline. For the era of Constantine, such binary oppositions have colored its rhetorical portrayals ever since Eusebius of Caesarea first named the emperor as the earthly savior of the Christian church.! Subsequent church historians willingly followed Eusebius’ lead, even while Constantine was, conversely, vilified as a murderous brute by the sixth-century Zosimus, whose Historia nova, nostalgic for Rome’s traditional cults, painted the emperor’s Christianity as chosen merely because the bishops had promised to absolve his many sins.*
Ironically, the legacy of Constantine’s policies—as is the case for most Roman emperors—has been shaped less by the emperor’s own words and intentions than by the appropriation of his deeds and edicts by authors eager to present them as evidence for their own quite distinct agendas. Accordingly, in studying the ancient record, modern historians have tended to preserve the rhetorical dichotomies of the sources.
For example, in the mid-nineteenth century Jacob Burckhardt, taking off from Zosimus, argued that Constantine abandoned traditional cults for cynical reasons of Realpolitik. 'T. D. Barnes, however, has more recently painted Constantine as a proto-Luther whose religious reforms eclipsed the moribund status quo.* Challenging these antagonistic interpretations, H. A. Drake’s signal contribution to the study of Late Antiquity, and the understanding of Constantine, in particular, has been to fill in the intermediate tones, to find nuance, sophistication, and subtlety both in Constantine’s policy and in the documents that testify to his reign. From Drake’s scholarship has emerged the concept that an emperor’s religious policies and beliefs are conceptually separable, together with the provocative, but now widely accepted argument that Constantine practiced religious toleration, allowing for the continuity of Rome’s varied religions.®
Drake’s contributions derive from his willingness to take seriously Eduard Schwartz’s suggestion that long versions of the manuscripts preserving Eusebius’ speech “For the Emperor Constantine on the Occasion of his Thirtieth Year” really preserved two addresses, one celebrating the emperor’s tricennalia, the other the bishop’s speech celebrating the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.° Drake realized that the sharp change of tone and approach between the two rhetorical pieces offered an unprecedented opportunity to distinguish Constantine’s policy, evident in the address to the emperor that the bishop delivered publicly in Constantinople (LC 1.1; cf. VC 4.46), from Eusebius’ own ideas about what the emperor’s involvement with the church represented, enunciated before a group of his peers in Jerusalem.’ Next came the question: Why would the bishop, such an outspoken Christian when celebrating the church’s founding, avoid all mention of Christ—speaking instead in guarded and nuanced forms about the Logos—when directing his remarks at the emperor himself? With In Praise of Constantine (1976), Drake’s realization that the bishop had to modulate his tone and speak in more inclusive terms to an emperor whose policy was to embrace pagan monotheists opened a new chapter in the history of Christianity in Late Antiquity.’
Sketched from his sensitive decoding of Eusebius’ two rhetorical pieces, Drake’s portrait of a tolerant Constantine was revolutionary. Since Edward Gibbon, historians had assumed that intolerant zeal was central to Christianity, an assumption not at all diluted by Burckhardt’s Machiavellian argument that Constantine merely pretended to support Christianity to increase his power. Both In Praise of Constantine and Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (2000) follow N. H. Baynes in accepting the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion? but show Drake successfully challenging the notion that “true” Christianity was synonymous with intolerance of other religious views. Drake argued that Constantine was reaching out to multiple audiences and trying to build common ground and, indeed, that the difference in the early fourth century between Christianity and elite Hellene monotheism—vigorously practiced in key imperial centers such as Rome and Antioch—might not have been as different as earlier imagined.'° Drake’s work also challenges the notion that Christianity was a monolithic entity in the early fourth century. In particular, Constantine rejected the attitude of Christian “puritans” such as the Novatian Bishop Acesius who refused to recognize as fully Christian many who had lapsed during Diocletian’s persecution.
In reaction to the hard-line religious leader, Constantine suggested that he “find a ladder and climb to Heaven alone.”!!
All of these new insights into the complex and varied religious culture of the fourth century derive from a recognition that Roman rhetoric must be taken seriously but that it cannot be read just at face value. Although classicists have long been expert in “decoding” the subtle advice to emperors laced through imperial panegyrics,'* late ancient religious rhetoric was once the exclusive province of church historians.!? Often doctrinally committed themselves, these scholars too often read ancient texts as confirming or opposing their own attitudes toward the Christian church.'4 Only with a more interdisciplinary approach to these documents, a perspective integral to the study of Late Antiquity as a period of transition, pioneered by Oxford scholars in the late 1960s, did these rhetorical texts get read as historical documents, and consequently analyzed with the same kind of attention to nuance and detail that had characterized the approach to imperial panegyric.!5 The new historical approach to Late Antiquity also drove scholars to situate these rhetorical texts in their broader historical context. This is the context in which Drake took a fresh look at Eusebius’ two speeches.
The adroit use of rhetoric to signal political and religious concepts to a knowing audience was, of course, not new in the fourth century. Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern states were equally political and religious entities, and kings in these regions often encouraged their subjects to use rhetoric to underscore the religious foundations of their power and public order. Such ideas evolved into theories of Hellenistic kingship that were in turn adopted by the Romans.'° By the mid-third century, some emperors stated they had a divine comes (or “comrade”) who aided them in their elevation and rule.'’ In addition, the supercharged religiosity and the recognition that ties to the divine could undergird the emperor’s legitimacy in Late Antiquity gave added weight to such crafted packages of imperial power. This process intensified even as Roman religion itself was evolving (evident in Drake’s approach to Constantine) from a spectrum of religious beliefs ranging from traditional polytheism and pagan monotheism, to an increasingly, though never completely homogeneous Christianity.
These trends continued unabated even into the seventh century as Muslims occupied the eastern and southern portions of the former Roman Empire, absorbing older traditions and institutions at the same time.'§ By exploring how various late antique authors described these Roman and post-Roman religious and political institutions in order to present a desired image to the broader public, the chapters in this volume not only illustrate the evolving rapport between policy and practice in Late Antiquity but they also sensitize the reader to ways in which even modern rhetoric can shape our perception of the relationship between religion and the state. In particular, Hal Drake's innovative and nuanced reading of the religious rhetoric of the fourth century across the span of his career has influenced this volume. Mirroring Drake’s approach, these chapters by former students and colleagues examine the connections between rhetoric, politics, and religion during Late Antiquity and as part of the late antique legacy to the Mediterranean world.
Part I, “The Image of Political and Episcopal Authority,” examines various connections between religion, rhetoric, political, and episcopal authority. Eric Fournier (West Chester University) reevaluates the historical accuracy of Ammianus Marcellinus’ description of Julian’s adventus in Sirmium. In doing so, he pays close attention to the rhetoric of Ammianus in an attempt to discern fact from fiction in his account of events. Robert M. Frakes (Clarion University) sets out a new theory for the cause of the famous riot of Thessalonika in 390 by applying a sensitive reading to the ancient historical sources describing the general Butheric’s arrest of a popular charioteer and how the resulting civic unrest led to rioting and the general’s death. Michael Blodgett (California State University, Channel Islands) examines Pope Leo’s embassy to Attila the Hun, arguing that scholars have underestimated the role that Leo's status as bishop of Rome played in Attila’s rhetoric, rationalizing his decision to abandon his Italian campaign. Last, Michael Proulx (North Georgia College & State University) argues that Ambrose carefully crafted the public’s perception of him as a close confidant and protector of Valentinian I in the hope that this persona would allow him a role in the administration of Theodosius I. Proulx argues against the current scholarly consensus that has tended to accept Ambrose’s account at face value.
The chapters in Part II address the role of Roman tradition in postRoman late antique societies. Tom Sizgorich (University of California, Irvine) examines how Muslim historians perceived the transformation of the former Roman and Persian empires. Sizgorich argues that early Muslim historians saw their empire not as embodying a dramatic break from the past but as a continuation of these older predecessors. Indeed, this view mirrored the view that Muslims took regarding the relationship between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. In both instances Muslims viewed their place in the narrative of history of the Mediterranean world as the ultimate fulfillment of previous imperial and religious traditions. The second chapter in this section, by Jim Tschen Emmons (Northern Virginian Community College), explores the rhetoric of the desert in sixth-century Ireland. He argues that Irish monks viewed their native forests and fens in a way analogous to earlier monks’ attitudes toward the desert. Just as late antique monks had waged holy battles in the deserts of Syria and Egypt, Irish monks applied these images to their own topography.
Part III examines civic elites in the Byzantine East. In this section’s first chapter, Miriam Raub Vivian (California State University, Bakersfield) examines St. Daniel the Stylite. Vivian finds valuable insights regarding late antique society amidst the rhetorical presentation of Daniel as a holy man and miracle worker. A two-part chapter on late antique Gazan philosophers follows. In the first, Frank J. Frost (University of California, Santa Barbara) examines a scene from the Grande Caccia, a mosaic in Sicily that depicts the capture of a tiger cub and a griffin, the mythological creature that featured the head of an eagle and body of a lion. Frost notes that the captor's strategy in the mosaic is very similar to Timotheos of Gaza’s description of such a capture partially preserved in a fourteenth-century manuscript containing several excerpts of his fifthcentury treatise on animals.
Frost suggests that this coincidence indicates Timotheos’ knowledge of the Sicilian mosaic (whether directly or indirectly) and thus is a rare instance in antiquity where both rhetorical description and artistic subject are extant. In the second chapter, Roberta Mazza (University of Manchester) examines the process of Christianization during the reign of Justinian through the lens of Choricus of Gaza’s sixth-century oration commemorating the emperor Justinian’s Brumalia. Mazza argues that traditional festivals like the Brumalia were too deeply rooted in the Roman calendar for emperors to eliminate easily. Moreover, she proposes that emperors could use such festivals to reinforce the empire’s political hierarchy. Although such holidays were rhetorically Christianized, they remained a vital reinforcement of the relationship between the emperor and elites.
The last section, Part IV (“Addressing Challenges to Sacred Texts and Rites”), contains contributions by three scholars. Elizabeth DePalma Digeser (University of California, Santa Barbara) incorporates and furthers the latest scholarship on Origen of Alexandria, arguing that the boundaries between philosophers and Christians familiar with Hellenic philosophy were very fluid and that Origen was the ultimate symbol of this fluidity. According to DePalma Digeser, the common ground between Origen and the Platonists with whom he studied and communicated was occluded by later third-century rhetoric seeking sharply to distinguish “Christian” and “Hellene” identities.
Accordingly, the Platonist philosopher Porphyry characterized Christian doctrine as corrupting Hellenism, while his antagonist, the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, argued that Origen’s theology drew on but also transcended his philosophical education. Next, Heidi Marx-Wolf (University of Manitoba) examines the discourse regarding demons in Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus, another late third-century Platonist. Marx-Wolf's analysis of the rhetoric of their daemonological debates suggests that philosophical views of daemons were not sharply distinguished along religious lines. Rather, as DePalma Digeser also suggests, these philosophers drew from a common heritage even as they set out competing totalizing discourses, both Christian and Hellene. Last, Paul M. Sonnino (University of California, Santa Barbara) compares ancient textual criticisms of the Hebrew Bible with the seventeenth-century biblical exegesis of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Isaac La Peyrére (1596-1676). Sonnino argues that ancient scholars were not unaware of contradictions in the biblical canon but that any concerns these caused were overridden by their belief in the "sanctified wisdom" of the ancient texts. In the seventeenth century, however, scholars had much mote faith in their own knowledge than that of the ancients and set out to improve upon textual criticisms in a new and revolutionary manner that mirrored the scientific revolution.
Although the chapters in this volume are diverse in terms of topics and chronology, they share a fascination for late antique rhetorical and religious traditions. These conventions are the starting point for examining late antique political, religious, intellectual, and social history. These works also share a touchstone in the legacy of Hal Drake. His leadership, scholarship, and friendship have inspired not only all of the essays in this volume but the lives of their authors as well.
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