Melania the Younger

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Clark
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Greek Version ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Melania the Younger: From Rome to Jerusalem analyzes one of the most richly detailed stories of a woman of late antiquity. Melania, an early fifth-century Roman Christian aristocrat, renounced her many possessions and staggering wealth to lead a life of ascetic renunciation. Hers is a tale of “riches to rags.” Born to high Roman aristocracy in the late fourth century, Melania encountered numerous difficulties posed by family members, Roman officials, and historical circumstances themselves in disposing of her wealth, property spread across at least eight Roman provinces, and thousands of slaves. Leaving Rome with her entourage a few years before Gothic sack of Rome in 410, she journeyed to Sicily, then to North Africa (where she had estates upon which she founded monasteries), before settling in Jerusalem. There, after some years of semi-solitary existence, she founded more monastic complexes. Toward the end of her life, she traveled to Constantinople in an attempt to convert to Christianity her still-pagan uncle, who was on a state mission to the eastern Roman court. Throughout her life, she frequently met and assisted emperors and empresses, bishops, and other high dignitaries. Embracing an extreme asceticism, Melania died in Jerusalem in 439. Her Life, two versions of which (Greek and Latin) were discovered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was composed by a longtime assistant who succeeded her in directing the male and female monasteries in Jerusalem. An English translation of the Greek version of her Life accompanies the text of this book.

Divine Powers in Late Antiquity

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Divine Essence ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Strong Claim

What are divine powers? What is their relation to divine nature? Is power the essence of divinity, or are divine powers distinct from divine essence? Are they divine hypostases or are they divine attributes? How are they manifested? In what do their differ from the physical powers we find instantiated in nature? In which way, if at all, can they be apprehended by our limited cognitive capacities? The twelve chapters in this volume examine the way in which such and suchlike questions were addressed in the philosophical and theological debates that took place in a broad geographical spectrum, extending from Syria to Italy and from Greece to Egypt and North Africa, over a span of four centuries, from the first down to the fifth century CE. The first part of the volume deals with the treatment of divine power in the work of the four major figures of Neoplatonism, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus, as well as in the Orphic Rhapsodies, the Neoplatonic ‘Sacred Discourse’ par excellence. The second part of the volume investigates the Christian doctrines of divine power from the beginnings to the Cappadocian Fathers. Special importance is attached to the canonical texts of early Christianity. Thus, through the close and careful analysis of the shared but disputed notion of divine power, the volume as a whole makes a strong claim that pagan Platonic and Christian thought of that period should be examined comparatively.

LATE CICERONIAN SCHOLARSHIP AND VIRGILIAN EXEGESIS: SERVIUS AND PS.-ASCONIUS

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 667-680
Author(s):  
Giuseppe La Bua
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Scholarly Activity ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
History Of

Late Antiquity witnessed intense scholarly activity on Virgil's poems. Aelius Donatus’ commentary, the twelve-bookInterpretationes Vergilianaecomposed by the fourth-century or fifth-century rhetorician Tiberius Claudius Donatus and other sets of scholia testify to the richness of late ‘Virgilian literature’. Servius’ full-scale commentary on Virgil's poetry (early fifth century) marked a watershed in the history of the reception of Virgil and in Latin criticism in general. Primarily ‘the instrument of a teacher’, Servius’ commentary was intended to teach students and readers to read and write good Latin through Virgil. Lauded by Macrobius for his ‘learning’ (doctrina) and ‘modesty’ (uerecundia), Servius attained supremacy as both a literary critic and an interpreter of Virgil, the master of Latin poetry. Hisauctoritashad a profound impact on later Virgilian erudition. As Cameron notes, Servius’ commentary ‘eclipsed all competition, even Donatus’. Significantly, it permeated non-Virgilian scholarship from the fifth century onwards. The earliest bodies of scholia on Lucan, the tenth-century or eleventh-centuryCommenta BernensiaandAdnotationes super Lucanumand thescholia uetustioraon Juvenal contain material that can be traced as far back as Servius’ scholarly masterpiece.

SYMMACHUS' VARRO: LATIN LETTERS IN LATE ANTIQUITY

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-105
Author(s):  
MICHELE RENEE SALZMAN
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Lost Work ◽  
Letter Collection

Abstract Symmachus opened his first book of letters by writing to his father Avianius, whom he depicted as a ‘new Varro’ writing learned epigrams on seven famous men in imitation of Varro's lost work, the Hebdomades. Symmachus was not alone in using Varro's work as an intertext. Based on my study of allusions to Varro and his works by late-fourth and fifth-century writers, I argue that Christian polemicists renewed their attacks on the Augustan scholar in the last decades of the fourth century. Consequently, Symmachusȧ choice of Varro was a forceful response in support of Roman religious as well as literary traditions in the late 380s or early 390s, the period in which I would date the dissemination of the first book of Symmachus' letters and the conceptualization of his seven-book letter collection.

The 1996 Excavations at Lepcis Magna

1997 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 43-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hafed Walda ◽  
Sally-Ann Ashton ◽  
Paul Reynolds ◽  
Jane Sidell ◽  
Isabella Welsby Sjöström ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Virtual Museum ◽  
Domestic Waste ◽  
Ground Plan ◽  
Animal Bone ◽  
Lecture Theatre

AbstractThe third season of excavation of a Roman town house adjacent to the theatre of Lepcis Magna took place in September 1996. The whole ground plan of the house had not previously been exposed and this was the primary task of the 1996 fieldwork. It appeared that the first building was constructed of well-dressed stone with interior mud-brick walls in the first half of the first century AD and continued in use until either the later first or the beginning of the second century AD. The site was then abandoned until the fourth century when the building was reoccupied, and the interior layout changed. Final abandonment seems to have taken place in the fifth century. The cisterns and well of the house were also examined, and probably what are the first waterlogged archaeological deposits from North Africa were sampled. They include large amounts of organic domestic waste.Ceramic assemblages of late coarseware and first-century coarse and fineware were studied by Isabella Welsby Sjöström and Paul Reynolds. Sally-Ann Ashton worked on the wall-plaster, architectural marble fragments, and other finds, including ivory and bone, bronzes, and sculpture. The animal bone of all three seasons was examined by Jane Sidell, and included much butchered material. Sheep/goat were the most common animal found, and cattle and pig were a great deal more common than had been expected for North Africa. Keith Wilkinson discusses the palaeoenvironmental material and future hopes for its scientific examination.During 1997 a Lepcis Magna web site has been opened to provide up to date news of the project. A virtual museum provides illustrations of many of the important finds, and an illustrated account of the excavation can be heard in the virtual lecture theatre. Its address is: www.alnpete.co.uk/lepcis/.

VII. Post-classical Veii

1961 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 75-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Ward-Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Urban Community ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Main Road ◽  
The Face

It is very unlikely indeed that any substantial urban community survived the events which culminated in the fall of the Western Empire. If the inscriptional evidence has been read aright, Veii was already in full decline in the fourth century. The reasons may well have been in the first place economic, namely the concentration of such wealth as there was in the hands of the well-to-do landlords whose villas are so conspicuous a feature of the local countryside, at the expense of a township which, lying off the main road and lacking any particular resources, had already begun to be something of an anachronism two or three centuries earlier. At the same time it lay near enough to the main road to be vulnerable to any marauding army; and, unlike so many other ancient Italian towns, it had no impregnable hilltop fortress to which its inhabitants could withdraw. As a functioning community Veii may well have ceased to exist by the fifth century.The villas were less exposed, those of them at any rate that lay off the main roads; and representing as they do a less complex economy than that of the towns, they were more resilient in the face of disaster. Even at an earlier date there are very few traces of any intensive agricultural specialisation, and a great many of them were certainly still functioning in Late Antiquity.

Coins

2019 ◽  
pp. 383-400
Author(s):  
John W. Betlyon
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Small Change ◽  
City States ◽  
Gold Coins

The coins of the Phoenician city-states were struck in the fifth and fourth centuries bce. Influenced by coins struck in Greece and eastern Greece, Sidon, Tyre, Byblos, and Aradus struck coins in silver and bronze. These coins functioned as the “small change” for the gold coins struck by the imperial mint of Achaemenid Persia. The production of these coins aided in everyday commerce and in the collection of tariffs and taxes. Early studies of these coins were inevitably connected to the great royal collections of Europe in London and Paris. Major studies of these coins appeared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More recent archaeological discoveries in Lebanon have included an inscription which expanded knowledge of the king list of the Phoenician city of Sidon in the fifth and fourth centuries bce. New historical sources such as this inscription published by Maurice Dunand in 1965 have enabled scholars to propose new and more accurate chronologies for the earliest coins of the Phoenicians. Sidon was the largest of the Phoenician mints, with coins struck between the late fifth century and the coming of Alexander the Great in 332 bce. Tyre, Aradus, and Byblos also struck coins, and together with those of Sidon, provided the denominations required to fuel the Phoenician (and therefore Persian) economy of the period. These coins enabled the Phoenician city-states to compete more favorably with their Greek and East Greek neighbors to the west. The coins of Tyre undoubtedly inspired the Tyrian colony of Carthage to strike coins beginning late in the fourth century bce.

Female Asceticism in Late Antique Georgian Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Shota Matitashvili
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Fictional Character ◽  
Typical Representative ◽  
In The Beginning

Abstract This article examines the forms of female asceticism preserved in the so-called extended recension of the Life of St. Nino – a young Christian Virgin who converted the eastern Georgian kingdom of Iberia in the beginning of the fourth century. This study attempts to reinterpret the traditionally-established point of view about the origins of this composition and investigates several aspects of early Georgian Christianity. According to traditional scholarly opinion, the Vita of St. Nino was composed during the eighth and ninth centuries in order to reinforce the cult of the holy virgin who converted Iberia but the contextualization of the vita into the literary realm of late antiquity reveals more ancient origins of various episodes and layers of the vita. We see martyrs, missionaries, miracle workers, prophets and apostles in the images of Nino and her fellow women. Nino is a typical representative of the female ascetic community formed in early Christendom. Apparently, after the invention of the Georgian alphabet, the literary interactions between Georgians and other eastern Christian peoples intensified. As the Martyrdom of the holy Queen Šušanik reveals, already in the fifth century Georgians had translated the acts of martyrs which certainly influenced the subsequent development of Georgian literature. Of course, the Life has an overwhelmingly legendary and fictional character but its ‘sacred fictions’ originated much earlier than has generally been thought in scholarship.

The Fort of Iatrus in Moesia Secunda: Observations on the Late Roman Defensive System on the Lower Danube (Fourth–Sixth Centuries ad)

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
GERDA VON BÜLOW
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Gradual Transition ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period

The seven years of excavation on Dichin (Bulgaria) have made a significant contribution to our understanding of the fifth century AD, a period that is still regarded as a ‘dark age’. The fort of Iatrus was situated in the province of Moesia Secunda, where Dichin is also located. Founded at the beginning of the fourth century, the fort was several times destroyed and then rebuilt over the 300 years of its existence until it was finally abandoned c.AD 600. What is not clear is whether Iatrus' role as a part of the Roman frontier (limes) on the lower Danube belongs to the final period in the history of the Roman Empire or whether it belongs to the early development of the Byzantine State. This chapter examines whether the archaeological discoveries at Iatrus, combined with the fragmentary literary sources for the fort, suggest a gradual transition or a radical break between Late Antiquity and the early Byzantine period.

The Transformation of Cities in Late Antiquity within the Provinces of Macedonia and Epirus

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.-P. SODINI
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
General Situation ◽  
Local Production ◽  
The Third ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The City

The provinces of Epirus and Macedonia, although divided into distinct regions by their mountains, were important for the Roman Empire, particularly because they were crossed by the via Egnatia which snaked its way eastwards, serving as the vital link between Rome and Constantinople at a time when insecurity was increasing along the Danubian frontier. From the middle of the third century, cities in this part of the Empire were under threat and their fortifications were reinforced in the fifth (Thessalonika) and sixth centuries (Byllis under Justininian). There was prosperity in the fourth century and beginning of the fifth. During the fifth century, the houses of Philippi were partly transformed into workshops. The sixth century was difficult and the second half was especially bleak. However, contacts between east and west were still maintained, along with local production. From 540–550, however, barbarian invasions and plague worsened the general situation. Graves appeared inside the city walls. Archaeology (Slav pottery and fibulae) and texts (Miracula Sancti Demetrii) all demonstrate how hard times were from the 580s to the 630s.

The Transition to Late Antiquity on the Lower Danube: the City, a Fort and the Countryside

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. G. POULTER
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Survey Method ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Roman Villa ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into

After excavations carried out on the site of Nicopolis ad Istrum in Bulgaria, the results were used to reconstruct the city's physical and economic character from its foundation under Trajan down to the end of the sixth century. The incentive for the subsequent programme, ‘The Transition to Late Antiquity’, was the discovery that the city was replaced by a very different Nicopolis, both in layout and economy, during the fifth century. A site-specific survey method was developed to explore the countryside. The survey discovered that the Roman villa economy collapsed late in the fourth century. The excavations on the site of the late Roman fort at Dichin provided an unexpected but invaluable insight into the regional economy and military situation on the lower Danube in the fifth and sixth centuries. The results of both these two research projects are summarized and an explanation proposed as to how and why there was such a radical break between the Roman Empire and its early Byzantine successor on the lower Danube.

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