Norma Fraccionaria L p

There are many individual works that could and should be mentioned in any review of the historiography of the Later Roman Empire in the past thirty years. Texts have been edited or re-edited,3 _{particular monographs have advanced understandings of particular}

authors or facets of period,4 _{and papyrological evidence has been brought increasingly}

into the historical mainstream.5 _{I would also consider the ever more frequent appearance}

of translations as a major advance, not least for the teaching of undergraduates. Now that classical languages in undiluted form play only a relatively minor role in school curricula, the future of the subject depends heavily on being able to spark the interest of students in the subject through sources in translation.6 _{The few examples given in the footnotes will}

have to stand for all such worthy individual contributions, and the bulk of this chapter will be devoted to more general historiographical themes and issues.

Perhaps the most obvious revolution in the study of the Later Roman Empire over the last thirty years has been brought about by the publication of a significant and growing body of archaeological data. Just over thirty years ago, A.H.M.Jones published his monumental study of the Later Roman Empire. The book is essentially based on literary

2 The project has five subgroups: Imperium, Gentes et Regna, Settlement in Town and Countryside,

Production, Distribution and Demand, Transformation of Beliefs and Culture, Power and Society.

Each group will eventually publish two volumes of papers, in addition to which there will be volumes of proceedings from the three plenary conferences. The first volumes should appear in 1997.

3 Important new editions of Late Roman texts have in particular appeared in the French Budé and Sources Chrétiennes series.

4 e.g. Cameron 1970; Sabbah 1978; Matthews 1989; Syme 1971; Dagron 1974; Hoffmann 1969; Demandt 1970. Note too, the important revisions of basic chronological matters in the works of T.D. Barnes such as The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (1982).

5 e.g. works such as Bagnall 1994 with refs. to the author’s countless joint works with others such as K.A.Worp. See now also Rathbone 1991.

texts, although there is within it one stray footnote to Tchalenko’s (1953) archaeological study of the villages of the Syrian limestone massif in the Late Roman period.7 _Jones’s

book remains indispensable, but no one would now dream of writing about Late Roman social and economic issues without having as firm a grasp of the archaeological as of the literary evidence.

There is no better place to begin than with Tchalenko’s study itself (Tchalenko 1953). This recorded his exploration of a series of villages, datable by inscriptions to the third century AD and beyond, flourishing in the Syrian countryside in the late imperial period. He suggested that that the villages’ evident prosperity was based on the commercial exploitation of olives, but the real impact of the book lay in its documentation of at least one area of solid rural prosperity under the Late Empire. Based on the texts—laws concerning fleeing peasants, for instance—Jones concluded that the Late Empire eventually taxed its rural economic base into general recession. Tchalenko’s villages thus challenged the entire concept of Decline and Fall. If one rural area could flourish under the late Empire’s tax structure, why not others? (Tchalenko 1953; cf. Jones 1964.) Full investigation of the archaeological evidence for rural prosperity across the whole of the Roman Empire (Hadrian’s Wall to the Euphrates) is no mean undertaking, and it is hardly surprising that, despite much activity in the meantime, no full picture has emerged. It is already clear enough, however, that Tchalenko’s villages are not an isolated example of rural prosperity, and that the overall picture is complicated. The currently available rural surveys would suggest, for instance, that the Italian countryside certainly saw considerable decline in the late imperial period. Rural dislocation is also visible in some areas of Britain in the fourth century, and the north-easternmost provinces of the Rhine frontier. On the other hand, rural prosperity in other areas peaked after c.AD 300 (North Africa, Syria and the Negev in modern Israel), and in others maintained itself at a, in imperial terms, historically high level (Spain, central and southern Gaul).8 _{The traditional}

model of global rural economic decline has been thoroughly undermined.

Hand in hand with this has gone some reassessment of the modes of agricultural exploitation being employed. The traditional orthodoxy held that smaller landowners and free peasantry gave way increasingly in the late imperial period to large estates

(latifundia). Here the evidence is much less clear cut and opinions vary greatly. The

archaeological evidence does suggest, however, that, whatever their size, estates were not being worked by gangs of slaves. Rather, most land seems to have been parcelled up into smallholdings, being worked by tenant farmers, operating under a variety of tenurial conditions. This provides a plausible general context for the collapse of legal distinctions between free and unfree tenants (coloni and servi), which is a marked feature of fourth- to

6 There are too many relevant contributions to mention, but let me just note that volumes in the Budé and Sources Chrétiennes series all come with French translations, and that a series from Liverpool University Press, Translated Texts for Historians, is building up momentum rapidly, publishing a whole series of broadly Late Antique texts in translations from Greek, Latin and Syriac.

7 Jones 1964. Tchalenko’s findings are mentioned in the last paragraph and footnote to chapter 20, ‘The Land’. My thanks to Bryan Ward-Perkins for pointing this out to me.

sixth-century imperial legislation.9

The archaeological revolution has also fed into understandings of urban transformation. Once again, an assumption of uniform decline (based largely on literary accounts of curials wanting to escape their towns) has given way to a much more variegated picture. Claude Lepelley (1979–81), for instance, using inscriptions and surviving monumental evidence, has documented the survival of traditional urban forms in North Africa on a hitherto unsuspected scale. Substantial urban excavations particularly at Antioch, Aphrodisias and Carthage have added to the picture. The imperial government continued to uphold traditions of monumental construction at Antioch into the middle of the sixth century, for instance, rebuilding the central areas of the city in a traditional manner even after the Persian sack of 540. Not, of course, that nothing changed. For one thing, the whole agenda of public building was certainly transformed by the Christianization of the Empire as the new religion powered a reorientation in the monumental geography of the ancient city. Not only did temples close and churches appear at the heart of cities, but Christianity (with its positive emphasis on the Holy Dead) also brought cemeteries inside town boundaries. Likewise, by the fourth century the imperial centre had confiscated control of most of the cities’ traditional revenues, and it was increasingly imperial appointees rather than local men who decided what was going to be built, and where. One key to urban prosperity in the new conditions, well documented in the cases of Aphrodisias, Antioch and Carthage, seems to have been the acquisition of capital status— whether at provincial, diocesan or prefectorial level—within the imperial administrative hierarchy. Such cities became natural centres for rich men, and, it seems, continued to benefit from heavy spending.10 _{For other cities, the situation is much less clear. The}

imperial government sometimes used the endowments of less important cities to the benefit of more favoured towns, and, in parts of the Empire beyond the Mediterranean, the city was anyway more of an artificial, cultural insertion than a naturally generated economic form. Thus relative urban decline was seemingly the fate of many smaller cities in Asia Minor, and some archaeologists of later Roman Britain consider that the provinces’ civitates had already become centres of secular and religious administration rather than living economic and social centres by the year 400. Issues remain, but models based upon literary sources have been entirely superseded.11

The same is true for understandings of patterns of trade and exchange, both local and long-distance. From numerous excavations of late Roman urban and rural sites, and rural survey work, there has emerged a truly vast quantity of pottery evidence: sherds from

9 Again, there exists a very convenient introductory review: Wickham 1988: esp. 187–9 with refs. Jones had already emphasised the erosion of the distinction: Jones 1964:792–803.

10 Particularly important for Antioch is Lassus 1986. Aphrodisias: Erim 1986; Roueché 1989. The British mission and University of Michigan team have published separate volumes of their findings. More generally, it now seems clear that Procopius is not far off the mark in portraying imperial governments of the sixth century as continuing to invest heavily in monumental urban building: Whitby 1987, and the same author’s two papers in Freeman and Kennedy 1986.

11 Useful introductory reviews, replete with references, are: Barnish 1989; Brooks 1986. On Asia Minor, see Mitchell 1993. Also very much to the point is Ward-Perkins 1984.

amphorae (storage jars for a wide variety of products such as wine and olive oil), fine wares, coarse wares, lamps, etc. In many cases, provenances and closely dated typological sequences have been established, together with, in the case of some amphorae, a clear idea of what they originally contained. It is now possible, therefore, to map over time the changing distribution of certain wares (and hence, in the case of certain amphorae, of certain goods as well) from their particular places of origin across the Mediterranean world. Two points are already apparent. First, large amounts of both fine wares and oil and wine were being moved long distances around the Mediterranean in the fourth century. The products of North Africa predominated, but the Near East, particularly Syria, also exported substantial amounts of material. Second, throughout the Empire, more local pottery industries supplied the needs even of quite humble habitation sites.12 _{Debate continues, however, on the broader significance of this evidence. An}

important Italian school, for instance, has argued that the long-distance movements represent genuine ‘trade’ in the goods concerned. Likewise, the more local industries raise the question of whether pottery manufacture and distribution can provide a model for the general level of sophistication in the economy. If so, one would envisage that even quite humble agriculturalists regularly sold or exchanged surpluses for the goods and services of specialists. Both lines of argument challenge strongly held traditional views of the ancient economy as consisting essentially of a series of self-sufficient landed estates with almost no room for the operation of market forces. But the jury is still out and intermediate positions have already been suggested.13

Apart from the archaeological revolution, assessments of the overall cultural context of the late imperial period have also been transformed, this time the reconsideration of old sources. In the anglophone world, the doyen of this movement has been Peter Brown. The mind goes immediately to his ground-breaking work on Augustine, but numerous essays and lecture series have given well-deserved attention to the likes of Paulinus of Nola, Ambrose of Milan and a host of others. Above all, it seems to me, as this kind of list suggests, that his work has brought a series of particularly Christian individuals and Christian writings (not, of course, by any means that Brown’s work has been limited to Christian authors or topics) from the field of Patristics into that of general historical discussion. More particularly, he has explicitly and implicitly challenged the familiar refrain that the rise to prominence of miracle-working saints signalled both that superstition had replaced philosophy as the mood of the times, and led the population of the Empire to refuse to defend it in its hour of greatest need. Debate has moved on so far that it is hard to remember the impact of the famous article on the Holy Man, which argued that it was prosperity not poverty which drove Late Roman Syrians to consult holy problem-solvers. In every page of Brown’s work, there is a refusal to subscribe to the tradition of Decline and Fall, and an emphasis on the excitement of the

12 Hayes (1972), Late Roman Pottery is the basic guide to African Red Slip Ware (ARS); cf. Carandini et al. 1981 and a host of other studies. Ipswich and Oxford were centres of local pottery production, for instance, in later Roman Britain.

13 A good introductory review which also posits its own hypothesis is Wickham 1988:190–3. The maximalist position has been adopted by Italian researchers, see Carandini et al. 1986. Others take the view that trade was not important, and that the late Roman economy, as other ancient

economies, was overwhelmingly subsistence: e.g. Garnsey and Saller 1987 (following in the tradition of Finley 1985). A useful collection of papers is Garnsey et al. 1983.

cultural dynamic let loose by the intrusion of mass Christianity into the late classical world. New value-structures, new subjects worth writing about, a whole new literary language: all have been noted and discussed with analytical and linguistic vigour.14 _The

broader impact of his career can perhaps also be measured by the series of monographs from California University Press under his general editorship, and the overall title The Transformation of the Classical Heritage. The first volume in the series, drawing upon anthropological methods and lines of enquiry, undertook a general reconsideration of the role of public ceremonial in the fourth century and after. Currently numbering twenty- two, subsequent volumes have ranged from studies of pivotal figures and texts, to much broader manifestations of the transformations of the period.15

Not, of course, that Late Antiquity required Peter Brown to invent it. The range of source materials and subjects is much too interesting to have been left undisturbed for long. Indeed, the French might claim that they ‘invented’ it. In his obituary of Henri Marrou in

Le Monde, André Mandouze commented, ‘The name of Marrou will forever be attached

to the discovery (or the rediscovery) of a huge field: that of this “antiquite tardif et chrétienne”.’ The French tradition has certainly proved particularly powerful with a range of scholars interested in a wide variety of subjects, and, in particular, the different admixtures of classical and Christian cultures which emerged at different points between the fourth and seventh centuries. Beyond Marrou who was interested amongst other things in St Augustine and, of course, the whole history of education in antiquity, the works of Jacques Fontaine are perhaps worth particular mention. Like Marrou, his writings again display a career-long interest in the dynamism of late classical, particularly but not solely Latin, culture, and of the interaction of Christianity with established cultural modes. It is also indicative that French is the only language with an entire periodical—L’Antiquité Tardif (established as recently as 1993)—dedicated to Late Antiquity.16

Overall, a much stronger sense has emerged of the dynamism of the interaction between Christianity and the Graeco-Roman world. From the standpoint of the traditional value systems of the latter, the period is one of decline. One measure sometimes used is the declining number of volumes per century in the series of standard editions of classical texts as one reaches the third and fourth centuries. But many of the best-educated classicists of the fourth century (Augustine, Jerome, Rufinus, Basil, John Chrysostom; or, indeed, the mid- and later third: Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea) were attracted by their faith to turn their educations to a new purpose: Christianity. To make any real comparison, therefore, one would have also to include in the count volumes in such standard and comprehensive Christian series as the various Patrologia (Latina, Graeca, and perhaps also Orientalia).17 _{And much recent work has indeed stressed the degree to}

14 A few sample works: Brown 1967; 1972; 1981; 1992; 1971. For Brown’s own view of his work in retrospect and a series of responses, see Symbolae Ostoerus 72, 1997.

15 First volume: MacCormack 1981. A full listing of titles can be found in the front of any book in the series; the most recent publication is McLynn 1994.

16 Posthumously, in the year of his death, Marrou published the significantly entitled volume Décadence romain ou antiquité tardive (1978). Fontaine’s works include Isidore de Seville et la

culture classique dans l’Espagne wisigothique 1959.

which established techniques were applied by educated Christians to their new concerns. The general impact of Stoic and Platonic philosophy upon Christianity is well known and requires no belabouring here, but it is perhaps worth emphasizing the extent to which Christianity was still forming in the fourth century. The religious disputes of the period were traditionally characterized as curbing deviations from an established doctrinal norm: Orthodoxy. Much work of the last thirty years or so, particularly on the Arian dispute, has shown very clearly that much of what is now generally accepted as Orthodoxy was actually created in the course of these fourth-century debates. In these, a new Christian elite of classically-educated clerics, with (here and there, at least) a smattering of classical philosophy, used their intellectual armoury to attempt to make sense of their Christian source-texts.18

The degree to which fully-fledged Christianity was a product of dialogue with the Graeco-Roman world can be illustrated in less obvious but equally profound ways. The standard early medieval Christian mode of preaching from biblical texts—taking the audience through various layers of meaning from the literal/historical to the metaphorical/philosophical—deliberately echoed the approach of the secular classical grammarian to his canon of texts. Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose likewise were conscious literary stylists who made traditional kinds of choices between different modes of discourse, according to their perception of the audience for any particular piece of work (e.g. Young 1989; Oberhelman 1991, with refs.)

The encounter between classical culture and Christianity thus sponsored a mutual transformation: arguably to the enrichment of both. At least, Christian ideologies authorized new subject matters and genres. Classical culture was elite in one way, or sets of ways defined by wealth, education and the privileging of certain forms of social action. And Christianity recognized new forms of elite behaviour: a man no longer had to be rich and well-educated if he was holy, and women could sometimes be more or less equally holy. Thus new social contexts, groups and classes are documented in saints’ lives and miracle collections (not to mention sermons), opening up new worlds for the social historian. The need to spread the Gospel also provided an extra impetus for the creation of literatures. Particularly in the Near East, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian and other languages spawned exciting forms of literacy as the new religion made its impact.19 _{Many scholars}

still mourn the passing of the old classical order, but, when applied to the cultural transformations of the late Roman period, the paradigm of decline and fall seems wildly insufficient.

Broadly the same judgement seems applicable to the political culture and institutions of the Later Roman Empire. There are, of course, too many relevant studies to mention. I would specifically draw the reader’s attention to the legal historical work of A.M.Honoré,