ROMANS, GAULS, AND GERMANS: METUS HOSTILIS AND ETHNOLOOKISM AS TRIGGERS

Author(s):  
В.О. НИКИШИН

В статье исследуются те эмоциональные триггеры, которые на протяжении ряда веков оказывали психологическое воздействие на коллективное сознание римской этнокультурной и политической общности в процессе её противостояния варварству. В этом контексте автор обращается к такому феномену, как лукизм, под которым понимается дискриминация по внешности (применительно к варварам речь идёт о негативном лукизме). Основной материал статьи посвящён этнолукизму как повседневной дискриминационной практике римлян по отношению к северным варварам — галлам и германцам. Тот иррациональный страх, который римляне испытывали перед угрозой галльского или германского нашествия, в значительной степени был обусловлен негативным этнолукизмом. В данном случае роль эмоциональных триггеров играли характерные плащи и брюки, а также высокий рост, телесная мощь, голубые глаза и длинные светлые волосы северных варваров. Преодолевать панический страх по отношению к галлам и германцам римлянам помогал авторитет победоносных полководцев, таких как Гай Марий и Юлий Цезарь. Процесс варваризации римской армии в значительной степени способствовал краху римской государственности на Западе и образованию на месте Западной Римской империи варварских королевств. The article explores those emotional triggers that over the centuries have had a psychological impact on collective consciousness of the Roman ethnocultural and political community in the process of its opposition to barbarism. In this context, the author refers to such a phenomenon as lookism, which means discrimination in appearance (in relation to barbarians we are talking about negative lookism). The main material of the article is devoted to ethnolookism as a daily discrimanatory practice of the Romans towards the northern barbarians — the Gauls and the Germans. The irrational fear that the Romans experienced facing the threat of a Gallic or Germanic invasion was largely due to negative ethnolookism. In this case, the role of emotional triggers was played by characteristic raincoats and trousers, as well as the tall stature, bodily strength, blue eyes and long blond hair of the northern barbarians. The authority of victorious commanders such as Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar helped the Romans to overcome their panic fear of the Gauls and the Germans. The process of barbarization of the Roman army largely contributed to the collapse of the Roman state in the West and the formation of the barbarian kingdoms on the site of the Western Roman Empire.

STUDIUM ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Ignacio Jesús Álvarez Soria

Resumen En el presente artículo repasaremos someramente algunos de los hitos más reseñables de la historia militar del Imperio Romano Tardío, haciendo hincapié en el papel de los bárbaros que luchaban junto a los romanos, puesto que la barbarización del ejercito romano ha sido uno de los puntos de referencia en las investigaciones acerca de la decadencia y caída del Imperio Romano. En este sentido, haremos referencia al papel integrador que tuvo el ejército romano durante buena parte de la historia del Imperio Romano, y señalaremos los principales hechos que condujeron al final de dicho papel; esbozando también las desastrosas consecuencias que tuvo este hecho para el futuro del Imperio, especialmente del Occidental.    Palabras clave: Bárbaros, ejército, integración, migración, godos, reclutamiento. Abstract In this article we will briefly review some of the most important milestones in the military history of the Late Roman Empire. In it we will emphasize the role of the barbarians who fought with the Romans, since the barbarización of the Roman army is one of the points of reference in the investigations about the decay and fall of the Roman Empire. In this sense, we will refer to the role played by the Roman army in the integration of foreigners during a large part of the history of the Roman Empire. In addition, we will point out the main events that led to the end of this integrating role; we will also indicate the disastrous consequences this fact had for the future of the Empire, especially for the Western part. Key words: Barbarians, army, integration, migration, goths, recruitment.


2020 ◽  
pp. 267-283
Author(s):  
Athina Dimopoulou

This chapter presents a synthesis of the information available on law in Roman Lesbos, starting with the integration of the island into the Roman Empire through a combination of war and/or alliance treaties between Rome and the cities of Mytilene and Methymna. The terms of these treaties that are related to the legal realm will be examined, as well as senatus consulta, edicts, and letters by Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Augustus granting or confirming legal privileges, as preserved on inscriptions from Lesbos. Other issues that this chapter considers include: the role of local elites as carriers of ideas and innovations related to law and as ambassadors of local interests before the Roman administrators; the cursus honorum of descendants of the Romanized local elite; the strong presence of Roman negotiatores in local communities and gymnasia; the integration of the cities of Lesbos in conventa iuridicii of Asia Minor; the growth of imperial cult, the importance of priesthood in Roman Lesbos and related local legislation; the competence of local institutions; information on the operation of associations, familiae and cives romani; and finally the collection of Roman taxes under Diocletian.


Author(s):  
Simon Goldhill

How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? This book is an exploration of how ancient Greece and Rome influenced Victorian culture. Through Victorian art, opera, and novels, the book examines how sexuality and desire, the politics of culture, and the role of religion in society were considered and debated through the Victorian obsession with antiquity. Looking at Victorian art, it demonstrates how desire and sexuality, particularly anxieties about male desire, were represented and communicated through classical imagery. Probing into operas of the period, the book addresses ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and cultural politics. And through fiction—specifically nineteenth-century novels about the Roman Empire—it discusses religion and the fierce battles over the church as Christianity began to lose dominance over the progressive stance of Victorian science and investigation. Rediscovering some great forgotten works and reframing some more familiar ones, the book offers extraordinary insights into how the Victorian sense of antiquity and our sense of the Victorians came into being. With a wide range of examples and stories, it demonstrates how interest in the classical past shaped nineteenth-century self-expression, giving antiquity a unique place in Victorian culture.


Author(s):  
David Matijasevich

Outside of some states still struggling with post-communist transitions, Europe itself may be the first European democracy to collapse in decades. Though never a bastion of participatory democracy and even subject to continuous criticism due to its democratic deficit, the European Union (EU) has provided hope to those who envision a post-national democratic political community. As such, whether the EU survives its present crisis or not, cosmopolitan democrats will look to the EU as a vindication of their ideals. Though perhaps surprising given their track record, this paper will argue that political scientists, especially those concerned with democratization, can also be optimistic about what the EU has brought to the table in terms of how we conceive processes of democratic development. Throughout the paper it will be demonstrated that the creation and maintenance of the European democracy has challenged much of the literature's fundamental assumptions of what makes democracy work. Five key lessons from the European democratic experience will be presented in an attempt to disrupt some of these assumptions including lessons regarding the diversity of the demos, the contingency of democratic upkeep, the challenges of the state, the role of elites in political transformation, and the necessity of exclusion within inclusive spaces. Though a general theory of democracy will not be presented, suggestions will be made as to how we can incorporate some of these lessons into the dominant approaches to democracy found in the literature.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v7i1.214


1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Oldroyd

Previous authors have argued that Roman coinage was used as an instrument of financial control rather than simply as a means for the state to make payments, without assessing the accounting implications. The article reviews the literary and epigraphic evidence of the public expenditure accounts surrounding the Roman monetary system in the first century AD. This area has been neglected by accounting historians. Although the scope of the accounts supports the proposition that they were used for financial control, the impetus for keeping those accounts originally came from the emperor's public expenditure commitments. This suggests that financial control may have been encouraged by the financial planning that arose out of the exigencies of funding public expenditure. In this way these two aspects of monetary policy can be reconciled.


Author(s):  
Eduardo Manzano Moreno

This chapter addresses a very simple question: is it possible to frame coinage in the Early Middle Ages? The answer will be certainly yes, but will also acknowledge that we lack considerable amounts of relevant data potentially available through state-of-the-art methodologies. One problem is, though, that many times we do not really know the relevant questions we can pose on coins; another is that we still have not figured out the social role of coinage in the aftermath of the Roman Empire. This chapter shows a number of things that could only be known thanks to the analysis of coins. And as its title suggests it will also include some reflections on greed and generosity.


This interdisciplinary volume presents nineteen chapters by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing trade in the Roman Empire in the period c.100 BC to AD 350, and in particular the role of the Roman state, in shaping the institutional framework for trade within and outside the Empire, in taxing that trade, and in intervening in the markets to ensure the supply of particular commodities, especially for the city of Rome and for the army. The chapters in this volume address facets of the subject on the basis of widely different sources of evidence—historical, papyrological, and archaeological—and are grouped in three sections: institutional factors (taxation, legal structures, market regulation, financial institutions); evidence for long-distance trade within the Empire, in wood, stone, glass, and pottery; and trade beyond the frontiers, with the East (as far as China), India, Arabia, and the Red Sea, and the Sahara. Rome’s external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance to the fisc. But in the eastern part of the Empire at least, the state appears, in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth, to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation, both direct and indirect, to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration, which was in effect a fiscal partnership, in slightly different forms in East and West, in the longer term fundamentally changed the political character of the Empire.


Author(s):  
S. T. Loseby

The Merovingians inherited an urban network from the Roman Empire that remained substantially intact. Although Gallic cities had long been declining in extent and sophistication, during late antiquity their landscapes were adapted to contemporary priorities through the provision of walls and churches, and their politics was transformed by the emergence of bishops as leaders of urban communities. When the upper tiers of imperial administration disappeared, this equipped the vast majority of cities to survive as the basic building blocks of Merovingian kingdoms that were initially conceived as aggregations of city–territories. In ruling through their cities, the Merovingians expanded upon existing mechanisms for the extraction of taxes and services, while relying on centrally appointed bishops and counts rather than city councils for the projection of their authority. This generated fierce competition between kings for control of cities and among local elites for positions of power within them. In the later Merovingian period, however, the significance of cities diminished as stable territorial kingdoms emerged, political practice was centralized around the royal courts, and the Roman administrative legacy finally disintegrated. But the cities remained preeminent religious centers, and, with the beginnings of economic revival, continued to perform a range of functions unmatched by other categories of settlement.


Author(s):  
Stefan G. Chrissanthos

This chapter offers a brief history of military discipline in ancient armies, and also investigates how and to what degree societies inflicted discipline on their soldiers, and how, in various ways, soldiers imposed discipline on themselves. Then, it addresses the evolution of military discipline from Greece until eventually something similar to a modern system developed in the early Roman Empire. The death of Alexander had precipitated almost fifty years of continuous warfare that ultimately resulted in the development of the Hellenistic monarchies. The Roman army represented something completely new in ancient Mediterranean warfare. It is observed that the Principate represented a major step in the evolution of ancient military discipline.


2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 402-416
Author(s):  
Konstantine Panegyres

In this paper I discuss the ways in which the early Christian writer Arnobius of Sicca used rhetoric to shape religious identity inAduersus nationes. I raise questions about the reliability of his rhetorical work as a historical source for understanding conflict between Christians and pagans. The paper is intended as an addition to the growing literature in the following current areas of study: (i) the role of local religion and identity in the Roman Empire; (ii) the presence of pagan elements in Christian religious practices; (iii) the question of how to approach rhetorical works as historical evidence.


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