A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  As it was for many minority groups throughout the empire, language was an important expression of cultural identity. For the Jewish community, the debate over whether to use the dominant language of their cities, Greek in the east or Latin in the west, was one that went back centuries and had little consistency. (Recall that the Jewish author of 2 Maccabees had vilified his fellow Jews for adopting Greek customs by writing a manifesto against them – in Greek.) Under Justinian’s reign, these kinds of internal debates continued to drive the community apart. Many bubbled to the surface of political life in Constantinople, demanding the emperor’s attention.

  In 552 or 553 CE, the emperor was forced to respond to one petition, in particular. A question had arisen amongst the empire’s Jewish communities about whether Greek or Hebrew should be used in synagogue service for reading Jewish Scripture. Justinian answered with a law published February 8, 553. In it, he was forced to recognize and to take sides in a thorny internal conversation.

  “From the reports made to us,” Justinian announced, “we have learned that some, knowing only the Hebrew language, want to use it in reading the Holy Scriptures. Others think that the Greek language also ought to be used, and they have for a long time disputed among each other.” The emperor then gave his opinion on the matter. “We, informed of this matter, think that those who also want to employ the Greek language in reading the Holy Scriptures are better” (The New Laws [Novels] of Justinian, no. 146, trans. adapted slightly from D. Miller and T. Kearley). Some will see this law as Christian meddling in a dispute that affected only a small fraction of the empire’s non‐Christian population, but Justinian’s belief – expressed in the law’s preface – helps explain why the emperor felt motivated to act on the issue of what language should be used.

  “The Hebrews, hearing the sacred scriptures, should not indeed have adhered to the bare letter [of these texts] but should have considered the prophesies contained therein, by which these announce the great God and Jesus Christ the Savior of the human race,” the Christian emperor reasoned. Language, in short, was part of the reason the Jewish people had “given themselves over to foolish interpretations” and “wandered away from the correct meaning” of their own sacred texts, or so Justinian was trying to argue (The New Laws [Novels] of Justinian, no. 146, trans. by D. Miller and T. Kearley). The emperor’s words barely conceal a scathing indictment of the Jewish people’s inability to recognize that Jesus had been the Messiah.

  12.4 Literature as a Source for the Study of Medicine and Disease

  As we have seen so far, literature and the world of ideas have been important for many reasons. Poetry and prose give us access to people’s cultural values. Legal writing allows us to analyze the political priorities of emperors and their advisors. Literature also plays a key role in helping historians reconstruct significant moments of crisis. The plague that devastated much of the Mediterranean world in the middle of the sixth century CE is one of those events. Not described by any ancient medical writer (and thus, not known by any precise diagnosis), the plague is best known from writers who worked in a literary, not scientific, milieu. This fact doesn’t necessarily disqualify what they report about the plague, but it does limit the kinds of questions we can ask of them.

  Procopius of Caesarea is one of the most important sources for the study of this sixth‐century plague. During the events of the year 542 CE, he reports:

  During these times there was a pestilence, by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated. Now in the case of all other scourges sent from Heaven some explanation of a cause might be given by daring men, such as the many theories propounded by those who are clever in these matters; for they love to conjure up causes which are absolutely incomprehensible to man, and to fabricate outlandish theories of natural philosophy, knowing well that they are saying nothing sound, but considering it sufficient for them, if they completely deceive by their argument some of those whom they meet and persuade them to their view. But for this calamity it is quite impossible either to express in words or to conceive in thought any explanation, except indeed to refer it to God.

  (Procopius, History of the Wars 2.22.1–3, LCL trans. by H. Dewing [1914])

  Procopius’ testimony about the physical effects of the plague, which is among the most extensive of our ancient sources, will be summarized in a moment. As these prefatory remarks of the author show, however, trying to use a writer with literary predilections to reconstruct the history, spread, or pathology of an ancient pandemic is a journey that can face serious headwinds. Many of Procopius’ contemporaries freely speculated about the plague’s origins, and some of their explanations struck him as “absolutely incomprehensible,” filled with “outlandish theories of natural philosophy.” Procopius himself, a Christian writing in a Christian state, attributed the cause of events to God.

  Historians, especially those who specialize in ancient medicine, do not need to accept all of Procopius’ claims or the claims of other literary documents to be able to reconstruct details of the pandemic. This way of approaching the sources – critically and with an eye to their literary audiences – is a slightly more nuanced method than trying to use these texts to make an accurate medical diagnosis fourteen centuries after the fact.

  What we know based on the number of sources who make mention of the disease is that it arrived in the empire around 541 CE. Its scale was enormous. By the end of that decade, it was showing up in places as geographically removed as modern Azerbaijan, where it appears in 542 CE, and the island of Ireland, where it appears in 544 CE. Within two decades, it had also come to Constantinople. By the end of the sixth century CE, it was located in the Black Sea. (For the details behind this timeline, see Peregrine Horden’s essay, “Mediterranean Plague in the Age of Justinian,” which she contributed to The Age of Justinian, a collection of essays edited by Michael Maas [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005], pp. 134–160.)

  What was the plague’s genetic make‐up? DNA research into the matter is just beginning. But from the reports of ancient writers, it is difficult to say since none of our sources – including the Greek writer Procopius – was trained in medicine, nor did they specialize in writing medical treatises. Having said that, Procopius provides details about the plague’s symptoms and the extent of its devastation. It included a fever, which led to swelling of areas such as the stomach, armpit, next to the ears, and in the thighs. Some people went into a coma during this time or suffered delirium (Procopius, History of the Wars 2.22.6–39). When the epidemic reached Constantinople, bodies were being disposed of at the rate of five thousand a day. Later, the statistic rose to ten thousand a day (Procopius, History of the Wars 2.23.1–2).

  This plague was more than a public health crisis. As Peregrine Horden has pointed out in her study of the material relating to this pandemic, “Any disease is at once a biological, a psychological, and a social phenomenon; and the biological must not be privileged in defining it” (2005, p. 143) – however much our scientifically trained minds want to recreate the circumstances of the pandemic and reconstruct the nature of the disease. That said, genetic studies of sixth‐century bodies may soon suggest that this plague was Yersinia pestis, the “bubonic plague” that struck Europe during the early modern period, the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries.

  Whether such a clinical certainty will be established remains to be seen. For now, it might be better to conclude that our written evidence works best when it helps us explore the “psychological” and “social” aspects of this devastating pandemic.

  12.5 The Rise of a Book Culture

  Over the last few chapters, we have seen how things like ceramics, values, and now diseases could be shared over wide regions. Ideas and texts were spread this way, too. And by the fourth century CE, they were being traded in a form that looked much different than in earlier periods of Mediterranean history. They were being exchanged as bound books.

  Books, a natural part of our cultural landscape, were unco
mmon in Julius Caesar’s Rome. For centuries, people had traditionally read on scrolls, pieces of a reedy plant that had been pounded together to form long sheets. These were stored in a rolled‐up manner. Books, on the other hand – manufactured from either leaves of papyrus or pages of dried animal skin, called parchment – were rare.

  There is little evidence for their widespread use in the first through second centuries apart from the first‐century CE poet Martial (a non‐Christian). Martial wrote a series of poems, titled Epigrams, which he made available in book form (Martial, Epigrams 1.2.1–4). These books were later called in Latin codices (the singular form is codex). By the fourth century CE, books were one of the hottest advances in Rome’s technological landscape.

  Many codices have survived from this time. A fourth‐century copy of Virgil’s poem the Aeneid, showing scenes of the hero Aeneas sailing away from Queen Dido, is preserved in the Vatican Library. In Vienna, there is a sixth‐century copy of a medicinal and pharmacological text. Called De materia medica, “On Matters Related to Healing,” the text was composed in the middle of the first century CE by a Greek scientist named Dioscurides. The book that exists in Vienna was copied in the early sixth century CE (Figure 12.1). It includes nearly five hundred pictures of plants, animals, and insects that illustrate the detailed points of Dioscurides’ text. In its opening pages, it also depicts several men important to the history of medicine, such as the second‐century doctor and philosopher, Galen.

  Figure 12.1 For avid readers, codices, or books, were much more than carefully sewn‐together pages of text. They were treasure chests, potentially filled with all sorts of captivating illustrations drawn from the subject matter – the poetry of Virgil, for example, or a famous scene from scripture. Sometimes, they could even include a portrait of the person who had commissioned such a laborious commodity. This portrait of Anicia Juliana appears in the opening pages of an early sixth‐century CE codex. The codex itself is a medical text, authored by first‐century CE writer Dioscurides. Anicia Juliana’s portrait was included here likely because she had paid to have the codex copied. The privileged daughter of a Roman emperor (462–527/528 CE), she was one of the most high‐profile patrons of the residents of Constantinople. Juliana is shown seated between the personifications of Generosity and Wisdom. From the so‐called “Vienna Dioscurides,” Nationalbibliothek, cod. med. gr.1., fol. 6v. Bildarchiv der Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

  Books and patrons

  The Vienna Dioscurides manuscript was dedicated to a wealthy Roman of Constantinople, Anicia Juliana (c.461–527 CE), an important patron of book culture and of the Christian community in sixth‐century Constantinople. Anicia Juliana appears in the opening pages. She is shown seated on a throne surrounded by personifications of Magnanimity (megalopseuchia, or “greatness of spirit,” in Greek) and Prudence (phronesis, “good sense”). These representation allude to Juliana’s status as a much loved contributor to life in the capital. Her most visible benefaction had come, in the years prior to 525 CE, when she had paid to construct a church, Saint Polyeuktos, in one of Constantinople’s aristocratic neighborhoods, out near the city walls.

  Thanks to a few fragments of Greek inscriptions, combined with the preservation of a literary text in the Greek Anthology, we can say quite a bit more about Empress Anicia Juliana and the book culture of her day. The text which was erected to celebrate the construction of the church was itself composed as a poem. From it, we learn:

  Juliana, the glory of her blessed parents, inheriting

  their royal blood in the fourth generation, did not cheat the

  hopes of that queen who gave birth to noble children, but raised

  this from a small church to its present size and beauty, increasing

  the glory of her many‐sceptered ancestors. For all that she

  completed she made more excellent than her parents, keeping

  the true faith of a mind devoted to Christ [the Messiah].

  Who has not heard of Juliana, that in her care for piety

  she glorified even her parents by finely labored works?

  (Greek Anthology 1.10, lines 7–15, LCL trans. by W. Paton, rev. by M. Tueller [2014])

  It becomes clear why the anonymous artist of the Vienna Dioscurides manuscript pages dedicated his book to this wealthy woman of Constantinople. At the time Anicia Juliana’s church of Saint Polyeuktos was built, it was the most glorious in the capital. Twelve years after its dedication, Emperor Justinian, perhaps feeling a sting of inadequacy, would start work on a building to surpass Anicia’s ambitions. Justinian’s church of Hagia Sophia, dedicated in 537 CE, would be the result.

  Books and beliefs

  We should be wary of making theological inferences from the beats and silences in this story, however. The fact that there is no literary and archaeological evidence for the widespread circulation of books during the “pagan” Roman Empire, followed by a rise in book popularity during the rise of the Christian state, does not mean that Christians popularized the book as a writing form. Nor does it mean that Christians of Late Antiquity only used books while non‐Christians, like Jews, used earlier, old‐fashioned technology, like scrolls.

  When seen in its entirety, the evidence suggests that, throughout the fourth through sixth centuries CE, all kinds of faith communities used and passed down texts as codices. In the middle of the fourth century, around 354 CE, a wealthy senator in Rome commissioned a calendar of city festivals. Known as the “codex‐calendar” because it was bound in book form, this artifact is one of the most crucial pieces of evidence for the longevity and preservation of traditional Roman worship practices in the Roman Empire. It was hardly what Christians today would classify as a “Christian” object. Along similar lines, the codex known as the Ashburnham Pentateuch, today found in the collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, is an important book example of the Pentateuch, that is, the first five writings in the Hebrew Bible. Thought to have been produced in Italy around 500 CE, its surviving pages suggest that Jewish communities, too, recognized the value of the codex.

  The “codex‐calendar” from Rome and the Ashburnham Pentateuch are two manifest examples which suggest that the rise of this new “book” technology had less to do with people’s faith identities than is sometimes assumed. Even examples from material culture, such as scenes on Christian sarcophagi, show that Christians themselves depicted each other reading and using scrolls, in addition to books, throughout the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Explanations for cultural change which depend primarily on the “religious identity” of book users, such as the assumption that a Christian preference for the book was somehow a feature unique to the Christian faith, fail to take into account this wider evidence. These theories should be treated suspiciously.

  12.6 Latin Poetry and Christian Communities in Rome, c.366–600 CE

  Throughout the Mediterranean, other poems, written in languages like Latin, would be erected for famous Christian men and women. A poem honoring Augustine’s mother would be set up at Ostia in the late sixth or early seventh century CE (Working With Sources 12.1: A Tombstone for Monica, Mother of Augustine). It was part of a long tradition of funerary poetry, erected in Latin in and around Rome, which went back to one of the most influential bishops of Rome, Damasus.

  Working With Sources 12.1 A Tombstone for Monica, Mother of Augustine

  In 387 CE, Augustine, fresh off visits to Milan and Rome, was waiting at the harbor with his Christian friends for a boat back home. “We sought for some place where we might be most useful in our service to you, God, and were going back together to Africa,” he recounts in his autobiography. “And when we were at Ostia on the Tiber, my mother died” (Augustine, Confessions 9.8.17, trans. in the NPNF series [1870]).

  Monica and Augustine, mother and son, had bonded in the days before her unexpected death. Augustine would later remember how “she and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window, from which the garden of the house we occupied at Os
tia could be seen; at which place, removed from the crowd, we were resting ourselves for the voyage, after the fatigues of a long journey. We then were conversing alone very pleasantly,” he remarks (Confessions 9.10.23). The scene has etched itself in many readers’ mind. Even scholars, when they write today about Ostia in the late fourth century, can’t avoid the trap of wanting to experience the city just as Augustine and Monica did – even though they were transients, even though they were just passersby.

  Archaeology has contributed to these imaginative exercises. In 1945, kids were digging a hole near the basilica of Saint Aurea – the modest cathedral of modern Ostia – when they found the fragment of a tombstone. It had Augustine’s name on it. Damaged on the right side and missing half its text, these six lines of Latin became like the tantalizing clue in a hunt for ancient treasure. Scholars soon filled in the missing parts of the text with a poem known from a seventh‐century manuscript; someone around that time had seen the inscription and copied it down. What they soon recognized was the epitaph, or memorial, erected for Monica. The complete poem reads:

  Here the most virtuous mother of a young man set her ashes, a second light to your merits, Augustine. As a priest, serving the heavenly laws of peace, you taught [or, you teach] the people entrusted to you with your character. A glory greater than the praise of your accomplishments crowns you both – Mother of the Virtues, more fortunate because of her offspring.

  (Douglas Boin, Ostia in Late Antiquity [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013])