Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.575
T. Newfield
Late antique plague has never been more contested. Recent scholarship has repeatedly questioned whether the Justinianic plague caused catastrophic mortality and supporters of the traditional narrative of a vast, depopulating sixth-century pandemic have dug in. Scholars have repeatedly assessed evidence thought to prove traditional narratives about the Justinianic plague, but never to everyone’s liking. Things have gotten ugly and no resolution is in sight. To advance the debate and shift the focus, these pages review the use of the Black Death in accounts of the Justinianic plague. What follows demonstrates that the claim the sixth-century pandemic killed many millions is founded on centuries of uncritical treatment of late antique sources reinforced in recent generations via the overinterpretation of the first pandemic’s plague diagnosis and the neglect of plague’s ecological and epidemiological complexities. That the Justinianic plague was another Black Death underpins research agendas and influences the interpretation of data in diverse fields, but it is an unsubstantiated claim, one stemming from deficient interdisciplinarity and neither proven by current evidence nor provable with current methods. Only by strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration, it is proposed in closing, can we begin to remedy our first-pandemic plague problems.
{"title":"One Plague for Another? Interdisciplinary Shortcomings in Plague Studies and the Place of the Black Death in Histories of the Justinianic Plague","authors":"T. Newfield","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.575","url":null,"abstract":"Late antique plague has never been more contested. Recent scholarship has repeatedly questioned whether the Justinianic plague caused catastrophic mortality and supporters of the traditional narrative of a vast, depopulating sixth-century pandemic have dug in. Scholars have repeatedly assessed evidence thought to prove traditional narratives about the Justinianic plague, but never to everyone’s liking. Things have gotten ugly and no resolution is in sight. To advance the debate and shift the focus, these pages review the use of the Black Death in accounts of the Justinianic plague. What follows demonstrates that the claim the sixth-century pandemic killed many millions is founded on centuries of uncritical treatment of late antique sources reinforced in recent generations via the overinterpretation of the first pandemic’s plague diagnosis and the neglect of plague’s ecological and epidemiological complexities. That the Justinianic plague was another Black Death underpins research agendas and influences the interpretation of data in diverse fields, but it is an unsubstantiated claim, one stemming from deficient interdisciplinarity and neither proven by current evidence nor provable with current methods. Only by strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration, it is proposed in closing, can we begin to remedy our first-pandemic plague problems.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.385
Ra‘anan Boustan
{"title":"Everyday Life in extremis","authors":"Ra‘anan Boustan","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.385","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.380
M. Salzman
{"title":"Review: Emperor and Senators in the Reign of Constantius II: Maintaining Imperial Rule Between Rome and Constantinople in the Fourth Century AD, by Muriel Moser","authors":"M. Salzman","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.380","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.209
Ophir Münz-Manor
{"title":"Review: Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Ephrem’s Hymns on Faith, by Jeffrey Wickes","authors":"Ophir Münz-Manor","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.209","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.248
Erika T. Hermanowicz
Recent studies on African churches in Late Antiquity (especially Donatist and Catholic) have argued for their robust wealth, especially after the Donatist church was forced to unify with the Catholics after the Conference of Carthage in 411. This paper employs archaeological, historical, and ecclesiastical scholarship to scrutinize assumptions about African ecclesiastical wealth from a number of different perspectives and probes the merits of how wealth is currently estimated, including tabulation and use of comparanda. Archaeological evidence to support the idea of massive church wealth, including evidence of involvement in manufacturing and basic collaboration or coordinated activity, is too thin to warrant credence. Once current assumptions about African church wealth have been critiqued, the paper turns to the role that the Roman administration played in African church finances. Archaeological and ecclesiastical studies on Africa identify the imperial court as the great financial supporter of the Catholic church, which became rich, it is argued, through the emperor’s gifts and economic favoritism. This paper argues that, to the contrary, repeated threat of confiscation before 411 and, in particular, attempts by imperial personnel to coordinate church mergers in Africa after 411 promoted the dispersal and scattering of resources away from churches and into private hands. Institutional structures of the church and the imperial administration encouraged financial atomization and dispersal, not consolidation and accumulation.
{"title":"African Ecclesiastical Wealth","authors":"Erika T. Hermanowicz","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.248","url":null,"abstract":"Recent studies on African churches in Late Antiquity (especially Donatist and Catholic) have argued for their robust wealth, especially after the Donatist church was forced to unify with the Catholics after the Conference of Carthage in 411. This paper employs archaeological, historical, and ecclesiastical scholarship to scrutinize assumptions about African ecclesiastical wealth from a number of different perspectives and probes the merits of how wealth is currently estimated, including tabulation and use of comparanda. Archaeological evidence to support the idea of massive church wealth, including evidence of involvement in manufacturing and basic collaboration or coordinated activity, is too thin to warrant credence. Once current assumptions about African church wealth have been critiqued, the paper turns to the role that the Roman administration played in African church finances. Archaeological and ecclesiastical studies on Africa identify the imperial court as the great financial supporter of the Catholic church, which became rich, it is argued, through the emperor’s gifts and economic favoritism. This paper argues that, to the contrary, repeated threat of confiscation before 411 and, in particular, attempts by imperial personnel to coordinate church mergers in Africa after 411 promoted the dispersal and scattering of resources away from churches and into private hands. Institutional structures of the church and the imperial administration encouraged financial atomization and dispersal, not consolidation and accumulation.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.284
Lucas McMahon
The arrival of the Langobardi to Italy disrupted centuries-old Roman overland communication networks. When the political situation stabilized around 600 CE, Rome and Ravenna, still under East Roman control, were linked by a thin tendril of territory encapsulating a militarized travel zone between the two cities, the “Byzantine Corridor.” This study uses GIS analysis, particularly least-cost path techniques, to provide further perspectives on how communication was managed between Rome and Ravenna. This technique forms the basis of a movement model in order to calculate some approximate travel times between the two cities. Having some sense of the speed and ease at which the two cities could communicate with each other creates a baseline on which to understand how decisions of political importance were made and how the geographies of communication were reconfigured in late antique and early medieval Italy.
{"title":"Digital Perspectives on Overland Travel and Communications in the Exarchate of Ravenna (Sixth through Eighth Centuries)","authors":"Lucas McMahon","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.284","url":null,"abstract":"The arrival of the Langobardi to Italy disrupted centuries-old Roman overland communication networks. When the political situation stabilized around 600 CE, Rome and Ravenna, still under East Roman control, were linked by a thin tendril of territory encapsulating a militarized travel zone between the two cities, the “Byzantine Corridor.” This study uses GIS analysis, particularly least-cost path techniques, to provide further perspectives on how communication was managed between Rome and Ravenna. This technique forms the basis of a movement model in order to calculate some approximate travel times between the two cities. Having some sense of the speed and ease at which the two cities could communicate with each other creates a baseline on which to understand how decisions of political importance were made and how the geographies of communication were reconfigured in late antique and early medieval Italy.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.467
Sonya S. Lee
{"title":"Review: The Sogdians: Influencers on the Silk Roads, by Arthur M. Sackler Gallery","authors":"Sonya S. Lee","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.467","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46503692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.292
Diliana N. Angelova
This essay challenges the idea that Constantine’s radiate statue on his Constantinopolitan column assimilated the Christian emperor to the pagan deity Apollo Sol, the Radiant Sun. Iconographic analysis of Roman coinage allows us to understand the imperial crown of rays as an attribute of Divus Augustus, Augustus the God. I argue that from Nero through Constantine, the last Roman emperor to use the corona radiata in his portraiture, the radiate crown signified the theomorphic assimilation of the reigning emperor to Divus Augustus. Every man who wore it claimed to be “the Divine Augustus of the Present Age.” The corona radiata was thus at once a religious and an imperial symbol that signified the continuity of the “Augustan line.” My analysis of imperial coinage affirms this conclusion in demonstrating that its uses were independent of the emperor’s personal patron deity, including Sol. These proposals have important repercussions for understanding Constantine’s faith. The religious compromise that the Christian Constantine entered in agreeing to a radiate portrait concerned imperial legitimation. Though a devout believer, the emperor still chose to remain the Divine Augustus in his new city, as that concession signaled something important that he could not communicate otherwise: his new city’s identity vis-à-vis Rome.
{"title":"Constantine’s Radiate Statue and the Founding of Constantinople","authors":"Diliana N. Angelova","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.292","url":null,"abstract":"This essay challenges the idea that Constantine’s radiate statue on his Constantinopolitan column assimilated the Christian emperor to the pagan deity Apollo Sol, the Radiant Sun. Iconographic analysis of Roman coinage allows us to understand the imperial crown of rays as an attribute of Divus Augustus, Augustus the God. I argue that from Nero through Constantine, the last Roman emperor to use the corona radiata in his portraiture, the radiate crown signified the theomorphic assimilation of the reigning emperor to Divus Augustus. Every man who wore it claimed to be “the Divine Augustus of the Present Age.” The corona radiata was thus at once a religious and an imperial symbol that signified the continuity of the “Augustan line.” My analysis of imperial coinage affirms this conclusion in demonstrating that its uses were independent of the emperor’s personal patron deity, including Sol.\u0000 These proposals have important repercussions for understanding Constantine’s faith. The religious compromise that the Christian Constantine entered in agreeing to a radiate portrait concerned imperial legitimation. Though a devout believer, the emperor still chose to remain the Divine Augustus in his new city, as that concession signaled something important that he could not communicate otherwise: his new city’s identity vis-à-vis Rome.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42855740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.432
C. Moss
Recent scholarship on writing and literacy in the Roman world has been attentive to the role of enslaved literate workers in the production of texts. Yet when it comes to evaluating the potential contributions of enslaved laborers we find ourselves at an impasse. How can we identify changes that an enslaved writer might have introduced? How could we assume that any element of the text comes from a secretary rather than the slaveholding “author”? And if enslaved secretaries were at liberty to make changes to a text, how would we recognize these alterations? Utilizing the method of critical fabulation and revisions to a particular literary fragment (P. Berol. 11632) as a test-case, this article explores the range of collaborative possibilities that can account for textual revisions and asks what difference it might make to view such changes as the product of enslaved workers and their experience.
{"title":"Between the Lines","authors":"C. Moss","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.432","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.432","url":null,"abstract":"Recent scholarship on writing and literacy in the Roman world has been attentive to the role of enslaved literate workers in the production of texts. Yet when it comes to evaluating the potential contributions of enslaved laborers we find ourselves at an impasse. How can we identify changes that an enslaved writer might have introduced? How could we assume that any element of the text comes from a secretary rather than the slaveholding “author”? And if enslaved secretaries were at liberty to make changes to a text, how would we recognize these alterations? Utilizing the method of critical fabulation and revisions to a particular literary fragment (P. Berol. 11632) as a test-case, this article explores the range of collaborative possibilities that can account for textual revisions and asks what difference it might make to view such changes as the product of enslaved workers and their experience.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48159584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.361
Simcha Gross
Over the past several decades, scholars have challenged longstanding assumptions about Christian narratives of persecution. In light of these revisionist trends, a number of scholars have reconsidered the “Great Persecution” of Christians under the fourth-century Sasanian king Shapur II. Where scholars previously argued that the cause of Sasanian imperial violence against Christians was a perceived connection between them and the increasingly Christian Roman Empire, these new accounts reject this explanation and downplay the scope of violence against Christians. This article reexamines Sasanian violence against Christians in the fourth century, navigating between the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis of positivist and revisionist approaches. It argues that the accusations against Christians must be situated within the broader Roman-Sasanian conflict. In this context, fifth-column accusations were a pervasive anxiety, animated—and deployed—by empires and inhabitants alike. Yet, rather than inexorably leading to indiscriminate violence against all Christians, fifth-column accusations operated in a variety of ways, resulting in targeted violence but also, it is argued, in imperial patronage. Seen in this light, concerns for Christian disloyalty were responsible for the drastic vacillations in Christian experience under Sasanian rule during the fourth and early fifth centuries, unparalleled for other non-Iranian Sasanian communities, such as Jews. It was the particular circumstances of Christians, caught between the Sasanian and Roman Empires, that account for their experience under Sasanian rule.
{"title":"Being Roman in the Sasanian Empire","authors":"Simcha Gross","doi":"10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2021.5.3.361","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past several decades, scholars have challenged longstanding assumptions about Christian narratives of persecution. In light of these revisionist trends, a number of scholars have reconsidered the “Great Persecution” of Christians under the fourth-century Sasanian king Shapur II. Where scholars previously argued that the cause of Sasanian imperial violence against Christians was a perceived connection between them and the increasingly Christian Roman Empire, these new accounts reject this explanation and downplay the scope of violence against Christians. This article reexamines Sasanian violence against Christians in the fourth century, navigating between the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis of positivist and revisionist approaches. It argues that the accusations against Christians must be situated within the broader Roman-Sasanian conflict. In this context, fifth-column accusations were a pervasive anxiety, animated—and deployed—by empires and inhabitants alike. Yet, rather than inexorably leading to indiscriminate violence against all Christians, fifth-column accusations operated in a variety of ways, resulting in targeted violence but also, it is argued, in imperial patronage. Seen in this light, concerns for Christian disloyalty were responsible for the drastic vacillations in Christian experience under Sasanian rule during the fourth and early fifth centuries, unparalleled for other non-Iranian Sasanian communities, such as Jews. It was the particular circumstances of Christians, caught between the Sasanian and Roman Empires, that account for their experience under Sasanian rule.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45741500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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