Download PDF | New Perspectives on Late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire
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EDITORS’ NOTE
All transliterations of Greek proper names have been made according to The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan) 19912005. In the case of Greek names not appearing in the Dictionary, the same rules have been followed for the transliteration of Greek, except in those names more widely accepted in other Latinised forms. In case of proper names from other languages, the criteria of each individual author have been followed.
PREFACE
ROSA SANZ SERRANO UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID
The IV International Conference “New Perspectives on Late Antiquity. From the Frontiers to the New Rome: profiles of the Eastern Empire”, held jointly at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED), between Madrid at Segovia (Spain), on October 24-26, 2012, focused on various historical and cultural aspects of the Eastern Roman Empire and, specifically, on the dynamics between the Eastern capital, Constantinople, and the boundaries of the Empire.
This symposium was a continuation of others previously organised on different subjects by the academic society Barbaricvm, established within the framework of the Department of Ancient History of UCM, and the International Centre for Late Antique Studies “Theodosius the Great? (UNED Segovia).
Barbaricvm is a research group devoted to promoting and developing historical research, specifically on the dialectics between concepts such as “Barbarism” and “Civilization”, particularly in Late Antiquity, by organising activities such as the series of conferences entitled “New Perspectives on Late Antiquity”, or the International Conference “Tempus Barbaricvm. El Imperio y las Hispanias al final de la Antigiiedad”, held in Madrid in 2011. The ‘Theodosius the Great’ Centre for Late Antique Studies at UNED Segovia, with participation of the Department of Ancient History of UNED, has hosted several academic seminars and research activities from 2009, such as the conferences “New Perspectives on Late Antiquity”.
Studies on the Roman East are many and diverse in their approaches, which is the reason why an attempt has been made in the present volume to present some of the most relevant and current interests among specialists. For contemporaries, the Eastern Empire represented the last stronghold, the reference point of the ancient splendour of the Roman world in the West when the former provinces were transformed into the new Germanic kingdoms.
Constantinople, and the provinces ruled by its court, served as a factor of cohesion and assurance in a hostile environment where foreigners and barbarism constantly threatened its borders, endangering its unity and the permanence of structures created by Rome, although these were already very weak in the last centuries of its history.
The “New Rome” neither escaped the internal problems that Roma Aeterna had had to overcome for centuries (and which were replicated in the new pars Imperii), nor learned to successfully manage its relationships with cultures and peoples at its boundaries and beyond them, neither in its Western part, nor within the borders of either their African provinces, such as the Cyrenaica, or in the Euphrates or the Black Sea. Attempts made by Eastern emperors to effectively control the borders meant — as it had been the case of Western emperors before them — being overwhelmed by adverse developments of the system itself, a heavy burden to the stability of the Empire, and, eventually, these very attempts prompted a number of important changes in the structures of the government, in the economy and in Roman society.
These attempts turned it into a fragile and sensitive State in terms of its relations with the outside world, and forced it to face the question of its survival. Once again, the Jimes and their peripheries were decisive elements of change, and became also strong destabilising factors, while acting at the same time as political underpinnings of their rulers.
The Eastern Empire did not elude its destiny by defending itself against the process of Barbarisation that was threatening Western provinces with the arrival of peoples from the Rhine and the Danube, whom the Empire believed to have got rid of. Empires include peripheral territories difficult to control, where population flows determine important changes by imposing and surpassing the control of governments.
The East could not survive the fall of the West, partly because it repeated the same errors of Western emperors, and also because it trusted that the situation at its boundaries, and that of their own citizens, had little or nothing in common with the other part of the Empire. Attempts of influencing Western Germanic states across the Mediterranean, which at certain times became true dreams of reconquest and recovery of lost Roman territories, are, on the one hand, actually part of the massive recovery effort of a non-existent Empire and, on the other, the development of forms of state following an inefficient tradition which was out of order at its time.
Both the new aristocracy of Germanic origin, well established in the West, as well as new populations from steppes and deserts that threatened the Eastern provinces were important determinants of the policy developed by the Eastern Empire but, at the same time, they meant the decline of its hegemony mirage in the former Western Roman territory.
Neither the skirmishes in Western territories, nor the development of major diplomacy in its relations with the neighbouring states of West and East, nor attempts to control the Mediterranean, nor the Byzantine currency strength in international markets, nor the influence of intellectuals and Christian missionaries could finally overthrow Western Germanic kingdoms: they could neither stop the push of others threatening its cities and borders, nor the ambitions of their provincial aristocracies and imperial judges.
The present monograph, despite stemming from the 2010 conference, has become an independent collective academic endeavour. The fourth conference on Late Antiquity gathered specialists from Spanish and other European universities with the aim of exchanging views and discussing various historical and cultural aspects of the Late Eastern Roman Empire, as well as its relations with its enduring provinces, the ancient Roman provinces of the West and the barbarian kingdoms installed in them.
Some papers presented new documentation on topics that, especially in the field of archaeology, are subject to various interpretations, thus opening new paths for study in certain areas. Others made critical revisions of documentation already known, either offering alternatives to concepts, models and paradigms conventionally accepted, or raising new interpretations of known sources. This volume is structured as collection of what has been called ‘a portrait’ and four thematic sections consisting of various contributions (see “Table of Contents”).
Within the general framework of the Eastern Empire in Late Antiquity, contributions to this collective volume address some of the problems that Eastern emperors had to face both outside and inside their borders. David Alvarez Jiménez presents an analysis of the text by John Malalas about pirate activities and other bandit acts as a result of the revolt of the circus factions in Constantinople in 565, showing different forms of internal violence in which populations were involved due to riots revealing social unrest.
As another form of violence, Ana de Francisco Heredero focuses on the role of local aristocracies in defending Eastern provinces, specifically focusing on Synesios of Cyrene and the creation and use of private armies as a mechanism to counter Berber incursions from the periphery into the cities and villages of the Cyrenaica. It is precisely the political role of the bishop, and not his religious role previously studied by other specialists, that is highlighted.
Economic and legal aspects of the time are also discussed in the present volume. José Maria Blanch Nougués presents a detailed study on the characteristics and development of the collatio lustralis tax introduced by Emperor Constantine for negotiatores and general traders, that became in later decades one of the most questionable and unpopular taxes.
The author also proposes that maintenance costs could have caused the Empire to be beset by continual bankruptcy, due to enormous court expenses and a militaristic boundary policy, and therefore to be in bad need of a strong fiscal control over the province populations and the profits generated by trade. The study by Juan J. Ferrer-Maestro focuses on fiscal problems upon the analysis of some specific examples of tax abuses and pressure exerted by the state on farming and trading populations all over the Empire, and particularly on price speculation and currency devaluation that plunged the provinces on a very sharp inflation process, which became eventually unbearable for lower classes.
Also in relation to the economic aspects of the Eastern Empire, the contribution of Angel del Rio Alda analyses a little-known information of Timotheos of Gaza — a contemporary of the Eastern Emperor Anastasios — gathered in his Libri de Animalibus, concerning the arrival at Constantinople of an elephant and two giraffes from India.
The author connects this fact with the existence of an “incense route” that he reconstructs in an original and suggestive way, and that must have been into operation at a time well before the narrated anecdote, which, as late as in the 5" century, it must have been still a busy route and one of the main foci of trade with India. Aside from these economic overviews, the study by Elena Quintana Orive refers to a specific law from the Theodosian Code concerning the social and legal status of theatre actors in the second half of the 4™ century.
She thoroughly analyses the characteristics of this law, its formal aspects and provisions regarding actors, who, at the time under study, began to be appreciably affected by anti-pagan policies of Christian emperors, inspired by the attacks which members of this profession were subject to by Christian intellectuals and priests.
The present volume also includes a series of studies on religious aspects specific to the time. The first one, by Carmen Blanquez Pérez, is devoted to the beginnings of Christianity in Petra and in the southern region of Jordan, based upon archaeological evidence.
Thus, she presents a detailed study of the first churches built in the Nabataean territory in Byzantine times, similar to those in Madaba, Mount Nebo and Umm arRasas, but located in the north-south axis from Aqaba to Hawara, Petra or Phaino, following the famous Via Nova Traiana, where the author acknowledges the phenomenon is less well known than in close regions, such as the Holy Land. Clelia Martinez Maza has carried out an extensive tour of religious conflicts that took place in Egypt in the 4™ and 5° centuries, presenting the main legal sources on the persecution of pagans, more specifically the religious policy of emperors and city magistrates, as well as the involvement of monks in the destruction of the main pagan temples in major cities.
The author uses an important collection of sources which, as a whole, allows us to analyse this phenomenon with new perspectives, focusing more specifically on the question of the death of Hypatia and on the various versions we have about this shocking fact. Conversely, Angel Narro approaches the Christian environments of 5™ century Seleukeia through the narration of the priest, reputedly the author of the Life and Miracles of Saint Thekla, focusing on the construction of churches and altars dedicated to the saint both inside and outside the city, as well as the saint’s miracles and other hagiographical aspects composing her figure.
All these elements would also allow us to reflect upon the social and religious environment of the city at that time. Related to the adoption of Christian monotheism by Emperor Constantine, Juan Signes has conducted an interesting study on the term “Commonwealth”, a denomination coined by Slavic historians that is partly used in current historiography, in order to refer to this new religious policy of the Eastern Empire. For some scholars, particularly for Garth Fowden, there exists the aspiration of creating a culturally homogenous political world of universal nature over the social and ideological pluralism that composed the Byzantine Empire.
This aspiration reached its zenith in the 5" century, as it was defined at the Council of Chalcedon, and lasted until the arrival of Islam in the early 7" century. But the disappearance of the Empire did not end with the concept, and so we are able to identify a second stage in the Slavic ideological organisation. As for the rise of Islam and its militarised extension, we find a line of study that enhances the investigation of the interaction of the Eastern Empire with its borders. As Johannes NiehoffPanagiotidis defends, it is clear that the history of the Muslim conquests is an integral part of the war between Byzantium and Persia.
Focusing on the new capital of the Eastern Empire, José Luis Caftizar Palacios takes a tour of the changes experienced by the city of Constantinople and presents, contrary to traditional historiography, the interesting theory that many 4" century sources, especially Ammianus Marcellinus, rejected the idea of considering the new capital as the new Rome — even for some of them, particularly historians of pagan origin, the ancient capital of the Empire remained the undisputed centre of power at this time — to the point that Constantinople was qualified in these circles by the term “vetus Byzantium”, a way to remember its historical past as a Greek colony and its recent conversion as the capital. Meanwhile, in a similar line of research, Susana Torres Prieto presents an analysis of the fall of Constantinople and the existence of a relationship with the emergence of the myth of Moscow as the “Third Rome”.
In a parallel line of research, Fotini Hadjittofi approaches the study of Greek rhetoric and the Third Sophistic, which evidences the important cultural and intellectual changes of the time, specially the increasing stratification of society. She analyses the changes in 4" century discourses, taking as an example Himerios’ Oratio 41 addressed to emperor Julian during his stay in Constantinople in 361.
Continuing with contemporary literary aspects, David Hernandez de la Fuente examines the transformation of the aesthetic principles of early Byzantine arts and the interaction between poetry and philosophy in the literature of the Eastern Empire through the work of some poets of the so-called Nonnian School: among others Nonnos himself, John of Gaza, and George of Pisidia, who praises Emperor Herakleios campaigns and is also the author of important works in verse, showing a remarkable philosophical background and a rich classical tradition.
On a different field, Isabel Moreno has made a very thorough analysis of the idea of the East in Ammianus Marcellinus’s Res Gestae, specifying the content of reality and fiction that exists in the author’s discourse, and suggesting the possibility of a strong ideological baggage, which is attributable to ideas prevailing in the Western empire, dominated by traditional literature in both the imaginary, ideology and vocabulary.
The opening section named “A portrait” contains a detailed key-note study by Enrico Livrea on one of the last main pagan figures of the Eastern Empire in Late Antiquity: Pamprepios of Panopolis, a poet and politician at the court of Emperor Zeno.
This character was an active witness of the social and economic crisis affecting the Eastern Empire, and was actively involved in the struggle for power in the imperial court to the point of being involved in the usurpation of Leontios, loading with special literary significance the narration of the taking of the Papirios fortress by the Imperial army, occupied by the usurper in 484. His adventures and his verses are an emblematic token of this time of change and this historical and philological portrait may be used as a symbol of the Eastern Roman Empire in Late Antiquity.
Last, as an epilogue to this monograph, José Maria Blazquez Martinez, from the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), presents a general overview of the some of the latest theories about the fall of the Western Empire and its consequences for the stability of the Eastern provinces, as well as the endurance of the structures of the Roman world in it.
All the above-mentioned studies provide this volume with a multidisciplinary approach thanks to the diversity of topics included, but without losing its cohesion and the initial purpose of publication: presenting new perspectives to study the most controversial and determinant factors in the history of the Eastern empire in Late Antiquity through specific and innovative works, but without abdicating from the outlook that any publication of this type should offer its readers.
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