Conversions

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-56
Author(s):  
Crawford Gribben
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Gradual Expansion ◽  
Fall Of Rome

This chapter discusses the gradual expansion of the Christian movement into Ireland. Despite widespread fears, the fall of the Roman empire did not herald the end of Christianity. Instead, it encouraged its expansion. Christian missionaries in Ireland worked to ensure that an island with an unfamiliar language and culture beyond the edge of the western empire would accept Christianity more than 100 years before the Anglo-Saxons, and centuries before other northern European peoples. For the fall of Rome and the crisis of imperial Christianity were contexts for the emergence in Ireland, and elsewhere, of a new kind of faith. From the early fifth century, and over several hundred years, the Irish converted to Christianity, shaping their new faith, exporting their theological and missionary cultures, and working for the conversion of the Picts, the Northumbrians, and Anglo-Saxons, as their Christian culture expanded throughout Europe, saving souls, if not ‘saving civilization’, at the end of the Roman world.

From Imperium to Imperialism

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Mattingly
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Behavior ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Archaeology ◽  
New World ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Recent Developments

This chapter reviews the traditional understandings of the Roman Empire and reflects on how recent developments in the study of imperialism more generally could influence the future of Roman studies. It explores problems with the orthodox paradigm of Romanization and highlights the need for alternative interpretative frameworks. It presents a case for applying the concept of creolization to the Roman Empire, despite its connotations primarily with the New World and slave society. Creole language and creole material culture are built up by the integration of the language and traditions of the underclass with elements of language and culture of the dominant colonial society, resulting in a “highly ambiguous material culture, in the sense that it is imbued with different meanings in different contexts.” In principle, these approaches adopted in North American historical archaeology to understand the material culture and social behavior of the slaves and underprivileged classes can also be applied to the archaeological record of the Roman world.

The invention of history in the later Roman world. The conversion of Isauria inThe Life of Conon

2009 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 129-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Wood
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Unsuccessful Attempt ◽  
Roman World ◽  
New Religion ◽  
Ethnic Origins

AbstractThe historiography of the later Roman Empire has emphasised the centripetal results of Christianisation, in which the new religion completed the earlier Hellenisation and destroyed independent languages, histories and notions of identity in Anatolia and much of Syria. However, the discourse of ethnic origins, drawn from Christian stories as well as the Classical past, allowed different kinds of cultural independence to survive this process on the edges of the Empire. While more famous cases are provided by the Armenians, Suryoye and Goths, here I examine an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at historical invention and cultural independence, that of the Isaurians from the end of the fifth century. I begin by discussing the stereotypes employed by a Roman élite to distinguish themselves from ‘barbarians’, both within and outside the empire, before examining the attempts of Isaurians to contest this in history and hagiography.

Secular Monograms, Social Status, and Authority in the Late Roman World and Early Byzantium

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Noble Identity ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter examines the use of monograms as graphic signs of imperial authority in the late Roman and early Byzantine empire, from its appropriation on imperial coinage in the mid-fifth century to its employment in other material media in the following centuries. It also overviews the use of monograms by imperial officials and aristocrats as visible signs of social power and noble identity on mass-produced objects, dress accessories, and luxury items. The concluding section discusses a new social function for late antique monograms as visible tokens of a new Christian paideia and of elevated social status, related to ennobling calligraphic skills. This transformation of monograms into an attribute of visual Christian culture became especially apparent in sixth-century Byzantium, with the cruciform monograms appearing in the second quarter of the sixth century and becoming a default monogrammatic form from the seventh century onwards.

Christograms as Signs of Authority in the Late Roman Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
Diachronic Change ◽  
Late Roman

The first section tests the main interpretations of Lactantius’ passage on Constantine’s victorious sign in 312 against existing graphic evidence from the 310s and early 320s, and consequently supports the interpretation of Lactantius’ description as a rhetorical device invented or modified by the Christian narrator. The next two sections support the argument that the perception of the chi-rho as Constantine’s triumphant sign became entrenched in courtly culture and public mentalities from the mid-320s onwards, and trace the diachronic change of the chi-rho from its paramount importance as an imperial sign of authority under the Constantinian dynasty to its hierarchic usage alongside the tau-rho and cross in the Theodosian period. The final section presents a contextualized discussion of the encolpion of Empress Maria and mosaics from several early baptisteries, illustrating the paradigmatic importance the chi-rho and tau-rho for early Christian graphicacy around the turn of the fifth century.

What Graeco-Roman Grammar Was About

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. H. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Secure Place ◽  
Present Understanding

This book explains how the grammarians of the Graeco-Roman world perceived the nature and structure of the languages they taught. The volume focuses primarily on the early centuries AD, a time when the Roman Empire was at its peak; in this period, a grammarian not only had a secure place in the ancient system of education, but could take for granted an established technical understanding of language. By delineating what that ancient model of grammar was, the book highlights both those aspects that have persisted to this day and seem reassuringly familiar, such as ‘parts of speech’, as well as those aspects that are wholly dissimilar to our present understanding of grammar and language.

Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
The Past ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Close Relationship

This volume approaches three key concepts in Roman history — gender, memory and identity — and demonstrates the significance of their interaction in all social levels and during all periods of Imperial Rome. When societies, as well as individuals, form their identities, remembrance and references to the past play a significant role. The aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World is to cast light on the constructing and the maintaining of both public and private identities in the Roman Empire through memory, and to highlight, in particular, the role of gender in that process. While approaching this subject, the contributors to this volume scrutinise both the literature and material sources, pointing out how widespread the close relationship between gender, memory and identity was. A major aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World as a whole is to point out the significance of the interaction between these three concepts in both the upper and lower levels of Roman society, and how it remained an important question through the period from Augustus right into Late Antiquity.

Greek Strategies of Adaptation to the Roman World: The Case of the Contests

Mnemosyne ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Aneziri
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Imperial Cult ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Past ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Imperial Power

This article examines strategies that made it possible for Greek contests and the professionals who were engaged in them to retain their identity in the Roman Empire while they adapted to the circumstances of the new era. In their efforts to preserve and to enhance existing prestige and privilege, the organizers and others who were involved in the contests attempted both to exploit the past and to establish links to the new Roman power. The consequent linking of the Imperial cult with festivals, artists, athletes, and their associations provided tools that assisted the promotion of Imperial power and ideology.

The Date and Circumstances of Olympiodorus of Thebes

Traditio ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gillett
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Western Half

Olympiodorus of Thebes is an important figure for the history of late antiquity. The few details of his life preserved as anecdotes in hisHistorygive glimpses of a career which embraced the skills of poet, philosopher, and diplomat. A native of Egypt, he had influence at the imperial court of Constantinople, among the sophists of Athens, and even outside the borders of the empire. HisHistory(more correctly, his “materials for history”) is lost, surviving only as fragments in the narratives of Zosimus, Sozomen, and Philostorgius, and in the rich summary given by the ninth-century Byzantine patriarch Photius. These remains comprise the most substantial narrative sources for events in the western Roman Empire in the early fifth century. Besides its value as a source, theHistoryis important as a monument to the vitality of the belief in the unity of the Roman Empire under the Theodosian dynasty. Olympiodorus wrote in Greek, and knowledge of his work is attested only in Constantinople, yet his political narrative, from 407 to 425, concerns only events in the western half of the empire. To understand the significance of these facts, it is necessary to set the composition of Olympiodorus's work in its proper context. Clarifying the date of publication is the first step toward this goal. Internal and external evidence suggests that the work was written in 440 or soon after, more than a decade later than the date of composition usually accepted. Taken with thematic emphases evident in the structure of theHistory, this revised dating explains why an eastern writer should have written a detailed account of western events in the early part of the century. Olympiodorus's account is a characteristic product of the highly literate class of eastern imperial civil servants, and of their genuine preoccupation with the relationship between the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire at a time when both were threatened by the rise of the new Carthaginian power of the Vandals.

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