A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  Throughout his poem (where the meter permitted it), Rutilius introduces friends and relatives. The inclusion of their names and, in many cases, the details of their professional or personal lives, helps us compile a profile of Rutilius’ social network. The following profiles will allow readers to personalize the dramatic decades of the early fifth century. They will also help us begin to sketch, albeit impressionistically at first, a more complex picture of how specific instances of change – like the migration of non‐Roman citizens into the empire’s borders and the violent conflict that could accompany it or result from it – affected daily life in fifth‐century Rome, Gaul, and beyond.

  Pictures of this period are sometimes painted in heavy black and white and for understandable reason. Greeks and Romans used these dark lines to stigmatize outsiders. They called foreign tribes “barbarians” (in the Greek, barbaroi; in Latin, barbari), “savages,” whose perceived inability or even unwillingness to talk, act, or behave as Romans fundamentally disqualified them from being included in civic society. Since at least the republican age of Cicero in the late first century BCE and of Tacitus in the late first century CE, recourse to this kind of stereotyping, even dehumanizing language drove public conversation about who was worthy enough to be counted a real Roman (for example, see Cicero, Against Verres 2.4.112, evoking the image of inhumane “barbarian”; and Tacitus, Annals 14.39, characterizing the people of Britain as such). This book asks students to adopt a more empathetic approach to history.

  Victorinus, vicarius of Britain

  And yet we cannot underestimate the effect that this steady trickle of nativist ideology had on molding the minds of elite Romans over the course of five centuries. Rutilius attests its effects. From his poem, we learn that at least one Roman in Gaul was not willing to welcome this new wave of change brought by Gothic settlers. This man was Rutilius’ friend Victorinus, a former vicarius of Britain and a native of Toulouse. “The capture of Tolosa,” Rutilius tells us, “had forced Victorinus, a wanderer in the lands of Etruria, to settle there and dwell in a foreign home” (On His Return to Gaul 1.495–496). Victorinus’ deliberate choice to relocate to Italy rather than continue to live in a city settled by Goths reveals much about his values and priorities.

  The office of vicarius, “vicar,” which Victorinus held prior to 414 CE, was a bureaucratic invention that had not existed in the earlier empire. At the end of the tumultuous political years of the third century CE, Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305 CE) had instituted several constitutional changes that were designed to make governing such a vast empire more efficient. One of these had been the creation of twelve “dioceses,” or super‐provinces, which would become the second most senior structural unit of the Roman state (the prefectures, of which there were four, were super‐dioceses). The long familiar units of empire, the provinces, meanwhile, were reduced in size – effectively allowing the provincial governor to manage a smaller, more self‐contained area. In his role as vicarius of Britain, Victorinus would have coordinated reports from each of his provincial governors (there were five), and then channeled that information to the palace. Rutilius tells us that, for his service, Victorinus was awarded an honorary title, comes, “special advisor to the emperor.”

  In the early fifth‐century CE western empire, however, none of this success apparently held any allure for Victorinus anymore. After a career that had taken him to the northwest territories, after a lifetime of calling the landscape of Roman Gaul his home, Victorinus opted for a pleasurable retirement in Tuscany, where, as “special advisor,” he could be consulted if needed, rather than take a desk and an office with the emperor. By the time the Gothic settlers had won their concessions from the government, Victorinus must have thought that the world he loved was simply changing too fast for him to play an active role in it anymore. In this way, he moved out of his house in Gaul just as new, different people were moving in.

  Was Victorinus’ outlook commonplace, or unique? That’s the question for the social and cultural historian. Rutilius’ other friends certainly didn’t share Victorinus’ perspective. Notwithstanding the ongoing negotiations taking place with Alaric and the Goths, many Romans throughout the empire were striving to ensure that the government continued to function and that life as they knew it adapted to the times. One attack in 410 CE, however psychologically jarring, was not going to be the end of their world (Political Issues 1.1: “Are We Rome?” Apocalyptic Thinking, Then and Now). We can observe this alternate perspective if we look at the lives of two more of Rutilius’ friends.

  Political Issues 1.1 “Are We Rome?” Apocalyptic Thinking, Then and Now

  Do you know the popular parlor game, “Are We Rome?” It’s an amusing pastime in which people use the past to talk, in code, about current concerns. In this diversion, the “Fall of Rome” is assumed to be a historical event, usually dressed up with real dates: 410 CE, 476 CE, or 1453 CE. Yet Rome didn’t “fall” in one year. Nor did it “fall” because of a series of mistakes. The “End of the Great Empire” is a powerful theological idea that has been around since antiquity. Scholars have identified it as one characteristic of an apocalyptic worldview.

  Although many writings called “apocalypses” are known from antiquity, elements of an apocalyptic worldview transcend this specific genre. One biblical scholar, John Collins, has identified eight characteristic motifs of this worldview: There is (1) a frantic expectation that the world will end and a belief (2) that it will come as an utter catastrophe. This hope is based upon the conviction that (3) the world unfolds in neat, discrete time periods. In addition, writers may also characterize their present time (4) as a “cosmic struggle” in which heavenly actors, such as angels and demons, battle for the soul of humanity. The outcome of this battle is (5) salvation, often evoked through ecstatic visions of paradise. In the end, (6) a divine kingdom will arrive with the aid of (7) a royal, savior figure, who will come bringing (8) glory.

  The roots of this worldview sink deep into time, perhaps dating back millennia to the Near East and Persia. One of the most famous – and influential – manifestations of it comes from the Hellenistic Jewish world: the Book of Daniel.

  Most biblical scholars believe this Jewish text was written around 165 BCE. In the age of Alexander’s successors, Hellenistic customs, ideas, and trade began arriving on the doorstep of Jerusalem in greater frequency. Their presence, including the practice of ruler cult, was sparking a heated debate among the Jewish people about how to balance cultural traditions and innovations, faith and politics. The Book of Daniel preserves a slice of this crucial historical moment.

  In the text, Daniel is living in Babylon during the time of King Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and taken the Jewish people as captives to Babylon in 586 BCE. While in prison, Daniel has a series of visions of “four great beasts [come] up out of the sea” (Daniel 7.2–8 [NRSV]). Puzzled by what they signify, he approaches an interpreter who tells him: “[They signify that] four kings shall arise out of the earth” (Daniel 7.16–17 [NRSV]). The author was using symbols to provide a coded message of hope for his readers. He was telling them that history had been “predicted” to unfold as a series of hostile empires. This divine plan had begun with Nebuchadnezzar’s “Babylon.” Daniel’s readers would know that it had been followed by two of the most powerful empires of ancient history: the Median and Persian. The Hellenistic rulers were the last of these four maniacal “beasts.”

  The Book of Daniel suggests that their time, too, would soon reach its end and that the Hellenistic empire would “fall.” This idea would have brought hope to people who saw the influx of Hellenistic ideals as incompatible with their Jewish faith. Both the Book of Daniel and the apocalyptic worldview which it encapsulates would be passed down to Late Antiquity. Many of these ideas still shape our own. They lie just beneath the surface of many “Are We Rome?” political laments.

  Rufius Volusianus and Palladius were two other men whom Rutilius mentions in
his poem. Their biographies suggest that not everyone in the early fifth century was necessarily demoralized or paralyzed by current events. These two men were not only staring head‐on at the changing Roman world; they were eager to make the changing future their own.

  Palladius, the law student from Gaul

  Alaric’s three‐day siege of Rome, in 410, had clouded the mood of Rome’s residents. Many wealthy Romans had fled, deciding to seek refuge from the aftermath of the precarious times by sailing to the comfort of their second homes in North Africa. Their stories, famously dramatized in a sermon on the Book of Daniel preached by Augustine that very year or the year following (Augustine, Sermon 397), create the impression of a city‐wide exodus, a self‐inflicted aftershock, that completed the decimation of the western capital. Yet during the first decades of the fifth century, not everyone was so eager to give up Rome.

  Palladius – a young man from Gaul, perhaps in his twenties, maybe younger – had just arrived. And he had come with a purpose: to learn from the best teachers of the city. He “had been sent of late from the lands of the Gauls to learn the laws of the Roman courts” (On His Return to Gaul 1.208, 212–213). A close friend of Rutilius’, Palladius was also the poet’s relative, a boy who held “the fondest ties of my regard,” Rutilius wrote. Their connection was deep and went back to two generations to Palladius’ father, born in Poitiers in Gaul. An “eloquent youth,” as Rutilius styles him, Palladius had potential. His family, however, was in a precarious state.

  Palladius’ father, Exuperantius, had been assigned the task of quelling Gothic disturbances in Gaul. “Even now his father, Exuperantius, trains the Armoric sea‐board to love the recovery of peace; he is re‐establishing the laws, bringing freedom back and suffers not the inhabitants to be their servants’ slaves” (On His Return to Gaul 1.214–216). The duty was a thankless one. Roman Armorica occupied the peninsula of modern France which is roughly the region of Brittany, a territory that had, for geographic reasons, not been well integrated into the empire’s road system. Routes to and from the coast, originating in the interior of Gaul, near Roman Limonum (Poitiers), took a circuitous path. Midsummer, the fastest journey to the center of Armorica from Exuperantius’ home has been calculated to take almost twenty‐one days; Romans fleeing to Carthage in the wake of Alaric’s attack, by contrast, arrived at their destination in less than a week. Over the next two decades, the dedication that Palladius’ father showed in fighting for Roman values would make him an easy target for the disreputable pool of usurpers and revolters hiding out the isolated Armorica.

  In 424 CE, Palladius’ father was murdered during an uprising in the south of France, as confirmed in a list of events, or “chronicle,” compiled in Gaul in the mid‐fifth century (MGH, AA volume 9, The Gallic Chronicle of 452 CE, entry at year 424–425 CE). Sadly, we do not know what effect his father’s death had on Palladius. The student who had come to Italy to learn law, the boy who had bid goodbye to his father while he was policing Gaul, vanishes from the historical record after his appearance in Rutilius’ poem. Whatever dreams the young Palladius had for making a name for himself in the wake of Alaric’s attack may have been lost in Rome.

  Rufius Volusianus, the prodigy who went to Constantinople

  Anonymity was not a choice for our third and final individual: Rufius Antonius Agrypnius Volusianus. Rufius Volusianus was a child of an indisputable privilege; his father’s family traced its lineage through Rome’s historic Decii and Caeonii lines. His great‐grandfather had been a senator. His status among the membership of the empire’s elite was unimpeachable. His mother’s name is unknown. He was also a loyal friend who thought nothing about accompanying Rufinus on his trip to the harbor.

  “And now while others wend their way back to Rome, Rufius, living glory of his father Albinus, clings close to me on my way” (On His Return to Gaul 1.165–166). One imagines two young men running frantically to catch a ferry down the Tiber or a chariot down the Ostia Way. All the while, Rutilius must have appreciated the ridiculousness of the scene. His friend had forever bragged of having acquired his nickname – Volusianus – “from the ancient pedigree of [the name] Volusus,” one of the local Italian tribes that had risen to power during the first years of the Roman Republic, back during the sixth century BCE. An impressive connection, if it were true. When people pressed him to substantiate it, Rutilius says, Volusianus would hem and haw, boldly brandishing stories about the authority of “Rutilian kings on the witness of Virgil” (On His Return to Gaul 1.170). Whether anyone ever mocked such outrageous claims of lineage is never documented; Virgil’s Rutilian kings, their stories dramatized in the Aeneid, were fictional characters.

  Rufius Volusianus may have seen himself in Virgil’s poetry, but poetry could not contain someone who presented himself as larger than life. It was Rufius’ impressive “power of eloquence” that, Rutilius says, had skyrocketed his friend’s career (On His Return to Gaul 1.171). One of his earliest jobs was in the imperial house, acting as quaestor sacri palatini, or “Chief Legal Officer in the Sacred Palace.” The number of positions in the administration had grown since Diocletian’s time, just as the number of provinces had, at the end of the third century and beginning of the fourth century CE. Diocletian’s successors, among them chiefly Constantine, had continued to create new positions to assist in the day‐to‐day running of the empire. The “Communications Officer in the Sacred Palace” was one of these new roles.

  Historians would be at a loss to decode the roles in this puzzling bureaucracy were it not for the fact we fortunately possess a document that helps us crack it. Written around 400 CE and preserved in several early medieval manuscripts, it is titled the List of Offices (in Latin, the Notitia Dignitatum). It charts many government positions in both the western and eastern branches of the empire and, in some cases, explicitly states the duties associated with these roles. Unquestionably dry to read, lacking any plot or character, the List of Offices is, nevertheless, a valuable reference for understanding Rufius Volusianus’ political world. It tells us that Rufius Volusianus would have been responsible for “the formulation of laws [and] the formulation of petitions.” It also mentions that he would have been fortunate to have a staff (“subordinate clerical assistants from the various bureaus” [List of Offices, translation by W. Fairley, 1901]).

  With this government job came a high salary and the potential for advancement to an even higher salary, with more access and prestige. And less than two years after Alaric’s attack, Volusianus seems to have been on a path towards acquiring just that. By then, his ambition – with hints of political ruthlessness – had clearly imprinted itself on Rutilius. “In youth he was the fitting spokesman of the emperor [quaestor sacri palatini]. Still earlier [probably before 412 CE], a mere stripling, he had governed as pro‐consul the Carthaginian peoples and among the Tyrian folk [the Punic people of North Africa] inspired dread (in Latin, terror) and love (amor) alike” (On His Return to Gaul 1.171–174). It was these qualities, his ability to be a feared paper‐pusher with a delicate touch, that led Rutilius to speculate freely about his friend’s future: “His zealous energy gave promise of highest office. If it is permitted to trust desert, a consul he will be” (On His Return to Gaul 1.175–176).

  Rufius Volusianus never became consul, one of the honorary chief executives of the state, a position often held ceremoniously by many emperors during their own reign. He did, however, earn another one of the elite titles of the empire: vir illustris, “Illustrious Man.” Like the top‐tier “Platinum Status” for today’s frequent fliers, this Latin rank had been created in the fourth century CE to help distinguish levels of wealth and success among the already wealthy and successful. Vir clarissimus, “Distinguished Man,” and vir spectabilis, “Admirable Man,” functioned in similar, but less elevated, ways. Public texts inscribed in Greek and Latin throughout the Mediterranean usually include a proud reference, on the part of the dedicator, to one of these three levels of elite status.


  Rufius Volusianus, the platinum‐level office holder, would capitalize on it. By 418 CE, he would become the Prefect of the City of Rome. A decade later, in 428–429 CE, he would be given even more responsibility: the control of an entire praetorian prefecture. There were four of these state units: the prefectures of Gaul, Italy–North Africa, the Balkans, and the eastern Mediterranean, according to the List of Offices. Each had been drawn onto the map of the Roman state by Emperor Constantine (r. 313–337 CE) and functioned as the super‐provinces of the fourth‐century empire, just as Diocletian dioceses once had. The result of Constantine’s tweak to Diocletian’s design was a three‐tiered level of Roman government – prefecture, diocese, province – that would survive into the seventh century CE.

  The boy who had raced to the harbor with Rutilius would eventually command one of these four territories, “Italy–Africa,” and he would end his career as a confidant of the Roman emperor. When, in 437 CE, the ruler in the west, Valentinian III (r. 425–455 CE), announced his plan to marry the daughter of the emperor of the east, Volusianus’ connections must have opened doors. He was invited to the eastern capital to be a part of the ceremony. This imperial wedding must have been one of the grandest state functions in Constantinople’s young history. We know these things not from anything Rufius Volusianus wrote down but because his niece was living in the east, and she was eager to see her uncle.

  It is one of history’s great ironies that the story of her life – not his – would soon be circulating as a book. Motivated by an ascetic urge, Melania (383–439 CE) had convinced her husband they should sell their homes, in North Africa and elsewhere, and move to Jerusalem. There, they would endow monastic communities for Christian men and women in the city where Jesus had been executed. By the late fifth century, a Life of Melania, written in ancient Greek, would be providing inspiration for pious Christian ascetics and pilgrims throughout the empire. A Latin edition would shortly follow. Uncle Volusianus, who traced his lineage to Rutilian kings, political striver and platinum‐status aristocrat, would be reduced to a bit player in the Life of his ascetic Christian niece (Working With Sources 1.1: Writing History vs. Writing Church History).