The Late Roman Army and the Defence of the Balkans

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL WHITBY
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Considerable Success ◽  
Significant Area ◽  
Late Roman

In Late Antiquity, the Balkans were transformed from a relatively prosperous region to one of great insecurity, with emperors increasingly inclined to ignore problems as long as they did not threaten the security of Constantinople itself; the Roman troops in the Balkans might appear inadequate in both quality and quantity for dealing with the challenges from beyond the Danube, particularly those posed by the great federations of Huns and Avars. Huns and Avars both shattered the Roman Empire's defences, but the process took time. Overall, the performance of the Roman army in the defence of the Balkans might seem mixed for such a significant area, although periods of considerable success should be recognized. Logistics as well as strategic and tactical thinking were powerful advantages for the Romans, and were exploited right through until the early seventh century.

RECREATING THE LATE ROMAN ARMY

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 523-567
Author(s):  
John Conyard
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
Standard Work ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Late Roman

This paper attempts to give some insight into the role that Roman military reconstruction archaeology can play in the understanding of Roman military equipment from Late Antiquity. It can only provide a brief introduction to some of the equipment of the Late Roman army though, and Bishop and Coulston’s Roman Military Equipment, first published in 1993 (2nd ed., 2006), must remain the standard work.1 This contribution will chiefly aim to examine how items of equipment were made, and more importantly, to consider how they were used.

scholarly journals Late Antiquity and the Antiquarian

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-358
Author(s):  
Duncan E. MacRae
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
Augustine Of Hippo ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Roman

Arnaldo Momigliano, the most influential modern student of antiquarianism, advanced the view that there was a late antique antiquarianism, but also lamented the absence of study of the history of antiquarianism in this period. Part of the challenge, however, has been to define the object of such a study. Rather than “finding” antiquarianism in late antiquity as Momigliano did, this article argues that a history that offers explicit analogies between late antique evidence and the avowed antiquarianism of early modern Europe allows a more self-conscious and critical history of late antique engagement with the past. The article offers three examples of this form of analysis, comparing practices of statue collecting in Renaissance Rome and the late Roman West, learned treatises on the Roman army by Vegetius and Justus Lipsius, and feelings of attachment to a local past as a modern antiquarian stereotype and in a pair of letters to and from Augustine of Hippo.

The Stigmata in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Introductory Overview ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Biblical Commentaries

Francis of Assisi’s reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs received, like the apostle Paul, in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages holy women like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) were more frequently described as having stigmata than their male counterparts. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants. This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata as expressed in theological discussions and devotional practices in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. It also contains an introductory overview of the historiography of religious stigmata beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to its treatment and assessment in the twenty-first century.

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.

The Fate of Small Towns, Hilltop Settlements, and Elite Residences in Merovingian-Period Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-640
Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Many

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.

Fortresses of the Tur Abdin and the confrontation between Rome and Persia

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 181-229
Author(s):  
Anthony Comfort
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Satellite Imagery ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Substantial Risk ◽  
Urgent Necessity ◽  
Late Roman

AbstractAlthough research is currently impossible on the ground, satellite photographs allow some further information to be gleaned concerning the region of the Tur Abdin, of crucial importance during the wars between the late Roman Empire and Sassanian Persia in the fourth to seventh century AD. This article examines the ancient sources and the reports of visitors to the area in the light of what is now visible to all via Google Earth and other suppliers of free satellite imagery. Apart from describing the remains of the fortresses and their role in defending an important redoubt against Persian attacks, it draws attention to the urgent necessity for proper ground surveys of what remains of the fortifications of various periods before these are completely destroyed by looting and reuse of building materials. Dams also present a substantial risk to some of the monuments discussed here.

scholarly journals New perspectives on Byzantine Spain: the Discriptio Hispaniae

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-308
Author(s):  
Oriol Olesti Vila ◽  
Ricard Andreu Expósito ◽  
Jamie Wood
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Territorial Division ◽  
Short Section

AbstractThe Discriptio Hispaniae is a passage from the Geometry of Gisemundus, also entitled Ars Gromatica Gisemundi (AGG), a medieval treatise of agrimensura written by an unknown author, probably a monk known as Gisemundus who had some agrimensorial experience. The work was compiled around AD 800 by collecting passages of a range of sizes, from just a few words to several pages, extracted from ancient and medieval sources. Although modern research into Roman agrimensorial texts has admitted the importance of the AGG, its corrupt condition has not invited sustained analysis. The passage now known as the Discriptio Hispaniae, a short section from chapter three of the second book of the AGG entitled III De segregatione provinciarum ab Augustalibus terminis, is particularly interesting for the information that it provides concerning the territorial division of Hispania in Late Antiquity. This article presents an edition and English translation of the Discriptio Hispaniae and argues that the most likely point of origin for the Discriptio Hispaniae is during the Byzantine occupation of parts of southern Spain during the second half of the sixth century and the first quarter of the seventh century. We suggest that the Discriptio Hispaniae was preserved because the Byzantine authorities were keen to keep on record information about the borders of the province of Carthaginensis, perhaps the main theme in the text.

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