A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  The discovery of Monica’s tombstone set off an explosion of interest in Augustine’s Ostia, as scholars vied with each other to deduce who had paid for the monument and when. The answer, it was thought, would bring us closer to that scene in the window and maybe even give us the name of the owner of the house who had hosted mother and son.

  Potential candidates were soon lined up for vetting, with many scholars focusing on the pool of Ostia’s wealthier residents, men and women who were alive in the decades immediately after Monica’s death. In doing so, scholars may have made a fatal error: by overlooking the stone.

  A new analysis of the inscription takes this story in a wholly different direction. “Mother of the Virtues” was a popular personification for the Christian virtue “Love” during the late sixth century and early seventh century CE. A funerary inscription written in a script similar to the one used on Monica’s has also been found at Ostia in a sixth‐ or seventh‐century CE context. The memorial for Augustine’s mom has now been dated to this time. The window has closed on finding “Augustine’s Ostia.”

  During his tenure as bishop of the city, Damasus (c.304–384 CE; bishop of Rome, 366–384 CE) composed many verse epitaphs, or grave markers, for the city’s saints. He then commissioned a renowned fourth‐century calligrapher, Furius Dionysius Filocalus, to inscribe these poems on marble. All of these texts were erected at the cemeteries, catacombs, and churches where the saints were thought to be buried. Many of these survive, in whole or in fragments. The entire collection numbers nearly forty poems.

  The poem which Bishop Damasus carved for Saint Agnes was erected at the church of the same name on Rome’s Via Nomentana. It was placed in front of Agnes’ alleged burial loculus in the catacombs underneath the basilica. This composition helped the bishop of Rome craft his own message about women in the early church and their rejection of Roman ideals and values in the age before Constantine: “Freely she trod under foot the threats and madness of the savage tyrant [the Roman emperor]/when he wished to burn her noble body with flames,” Damasus explained in his eulogy for Agnes (CIL 8.20753, lines 4–5, trans. by Dennis Trout in Being Christian in Late Antiquity, ed. by C. H. Harrison, C. Humfress, and I. Sandwell [New York: Oxford University Press, 2014], p. 224). Visitors to Agnes’ grave in the late fourth century CE would have come away with a mini‐history lesson, written by Bishop Damasus, about the events that had led to the rise of Christianity, as he understood them. Given the fact that Damasus had come to the role of bishop of Rome through a contested election – in fact, there were two bishops in the city until 378 CE – it is likely that this literary campaign also helped him win support from his political backers in Rome’s Christian community. (The story of this intra‐Christian conflict is recounted in a Latin text by the fourth‐century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus [Roman History 27.12–15].)

  Damasus’ decision to produce Christian literature also had a second aim. It promoted Rome’s pious tourism industry, attracting devoted visitors to popular Christian burials throughout the city and suburbs. Two centuries later, a poem honoring Augustine’s mother would be set up at Ostia, whose death her son had memorialized in his Confessions, to capitalize on the same phenomenon.

  12.7 Looking Ahead: “People of the Book”

  “People of the Book” is a label many people today invoke when talking about Jews, Christians, and Muslims because all three faith groups revere a set of sacred texts. By emphasizing a common denominator – books – a cultural object that unites three world religions, we draw attention to their shared cultural heritage and, by extension, to some of the shared values of their believers. By emphasizing these connections and shifting the focus of religious history away from conflict‐driven narratives, many commentators are trying to knock down walls that might divide people of different faiths. It’s an admirable, ecumenical mission.

  For all its modern power, however, “People of the Book” is actually an ancient phrase and one with a much more curious resonance. Drawn from a chapter, or sura, in the Qur’ān (Q 4: 171), the phrase was written in Arabic and displayed on the inside of the drum of a beautifully tiled building in Jerusalem known as the Dome of the Rock. This building – a Muslim shrine, not a mosque – sits atop the Herodian platform of the Second Jewish Temple. An octagonal building constructed at its base of gleaming white marble, it was erected in the late seventh century, on a site which had been left barren by non‐Christian and Christian Roman emperors alike, ever since the Jewish Temple had been destroyed in 70 CE (Figure 12.2). Begun in 688, finished in 691 CE by the Umayyad ruler ‘Abd al‐Malik, the Dome of the Rock glittered like a diamond, set into the void which loomed over the city.

  Figure 12.2 After Muhammad’s death in 632 CE, leaders of his movement took the title amir al‐mu’minin, or “Commander of the Believers.” Over the next two decades, these commanders led armies into neighboring Roman and Persian territory, eventually conquering and seizing lands from Spain to Pakistan. By the middle of the seventh century (c.661 CE), as deep, long‐lasting disagreements were beginning to arise within the community over who would be the true successor to Muhammad’s vision, one dynasty emerged as a powerful political voice: the Umayyads. ‘Abd al‐Malik was the second Umayyad ruler and the first of Muhammad’s successors to take the title khalifa, or “caliph.” He built the Dome of the Rock, seen here, a shrine – not a mosque – begun in 688 CE, finished in 691 CE. The mosaic on the interior features elegant Arabic calligraphy and promotes the oneness of God. Broadly addressed to the “People of the Book,” it also shows an awareness of Christian concepts of the Holy Trinity. Under the Umayyads, the Believers’ were beginning to articulate a vision of Islam which had more fixed boundaries than their movement may have originally had.

  Photo credit: Author’s photo, 2009.

  The mosaic on the interior dome of the shrine is filled with swirling vines that evoke a garden in paradise. Amid the tendrils are the regal crowns of several Mediterranean rulers, such as the Sasanian Persian diadem. The Qur’ānic chapter from which the phrase “People of the Book” was drawn was spelled out in mosaic tiles that lined the dome’s inner ring. It instructs readers not to believe that God was originally a three‐person entity, an allusion to the Holy Trinity of Christian theology (God the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit). “O people of the book,” the Arabic inscription reads:

  [D]o not exaggerate in your religion (din) and speak of God only the truth. The Messiah Jesus son of Mary was only the apostle (rasul) of God and His word, which he cast unto Mary, and a spirit from him. So believe in God and His apostles but do not say “three.” Desist! [It is] better for you. For indeed God is one God. (‘Abd al‐Malik’s mosaic inscription from the Dome of the Rock, trans. by F. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010], p. 234)

  This artistic inscription and the Qur’anic quotations woven into it tell us something significant about the seventh‐century eastern Mediterranean. By 690–691 CE, the time when the phrase “People of the Book” was put on display inside this important Muslim shrine, it is clear that followers of Muhammad had learned quite a bit about the theological beliefs of followers of Jesus.

  Yet as the building and the text show, cultural connections that may have bound Jews, Christians, and Muslims together – their love of books, for instance – did not necessarily create a social environment where everyone felt comfortable with sharing their ideas and beliefs. How and even whether individuals and communities in the past chose to find common ground with each other is more complicated than identifying the one or two aspects of culture they ostensibly shared, such as books.

  Summary

  The people of the Late Antique world spoke many languages: Syriac, Coptic, Greek, Latin, Armenian, Gothic, Nabatean, Pahlavi (Middle Persian), Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. As a result, the study of the period offers researchers many more voices and perspectives on the time than the classical history of Greece or Rome, which traditionally have been centered a
bout Greek and Latin. What is also truly remarkable about Late Antique history, then, is that the sources preserved in these languages – especially from realms on the empire’s frontier, or in places where Roman power withdrew – are more numerous than in earlier periods. The abundance of these texts, in multiple languages, allows us to recalibrate our historical vision, focusing on local environments and creating a more kaleidoscopic view of history instead of one told through a restricted set of lenses.

  The growing popularity and exchange of bound books broadened this world.

  In this chapter, the sixth century CE, in particular, emerged as a key time period for analyzing literary and intellectual developments. Although Latin remained the language of law in Justinian’s Roman Empire, writers and intellectuals had been largely working in Greek throughout this time, as the works of Procopius of Caesarea and the inscription honoring the patronage of Emperor Anicia Juliana revealed. By the middle of the sixth century, however, Greek had become the official language of Constantinople. In the western Mediterranean, meanwhile, a Latin culture flourished. Bishop Damasus of Rome, in the late fourth century CE, is one person who gave this culture a Christian push. Books themselves were valued objects among non‐Christians, Christians, and Jews.

  Finally, the inscription from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem confirms that, by the late seventh century CE, many faith communities throughout the Mediterranean, like Christians, were often identified with their books. The extent to which Christianity caused the rising popularity of books throughout the Roman Empire, however, is far from certain.

  Study Questions

  Name one Late Antiquity community formed around the life of the mind. What did they believe? Who were some of its members?

  Who was Anicia Juliana? How did she contribute to the sixth‐century CE world of culture and ideas?

  Explain the historical challenge of writing about the sixth‐century plague.

  Was the Emperor Justinian right in trying to prevent Jews from reading their scriptures in Hebrew? If you support his policy, explain why. If you disagree with it, can you imagine what might have led him to this decision?

  Suggested Readings

  Scott Johnson (ed.), Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).

  Andrew Smith, Philosophy in Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2004).

  Jeffrey Spier, Herbert Kessler, Robin Jensen, and Steven Fine (eds.), Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art (New Haven: Yale University Art Museum, 2007).

  Dennis Trout, Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  Part III

  The Illusion of Mediterranean History

  13

  Geography and Society

  In the sixth century CE, contact between the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and other cities and regions of the globe rises to an astounding level. The western Mediterranean took on a different, more regional political focus. Two examples will help sketch the developments in western Europe before we turn our eyes, historically, in the other direction.

  In the kingdom of the Franks, a territory comprising parts of modern France and Germany, a new regal family would establish power in the late fifth century CE. Clovis, founder of the Merovingian dynasty of kings, would be baptized by the bishop of Rheims – just east of Paris – in 496 CE. By the thirteenth century, an important Gothic cathedral would be constructed in this city where subsequent French kings would go to be inaugurated.

  In Italy, meanwhile, Gothic kings would establish a dynasty in parts of the old Roman peninsula. Many features of daily life, such as the restoration of the Flavian Amphitheater for animal games, would keep the people of the peninsula anchored during this time of political turnover. But with the new rulers would also come a new language and new traditions. King Theoderic would sport some rather unusual facial hair, a mustache, in public and even on coins. In this way, like his Visigothic counterparts, who were settled in the Iberian peninsula, the Ostrogothic rulers of Italy would strike a creative balance between local and new custom. Many imperial offices, like consul, a position dating back to before the empire, for example, would retain their ceremonial function even as the constitutional framework changed around it under the new kings.

  The Frankish, Visigothic, and Ostrogothic efforts at keeping Rome alive spawned a sixth‐century European continent that politically and culturally looked much different than it did in the fourth century, when Gothic and Vandal tribes had first arrived in the empire. By the sixth century CE, so much time and distance had come between them that the Gothic community in Italy, the “Ostrogoths” (“Eastern Goths”), had even begun distinguishing themselves from Goths in Spain, the “Visigoths” (“Western Goths”). Neither Romans nor Goths had used these labels during the early fourth century. Only after the Gothic populations had moved from the lands above the Danube River to the territories where they settled – whether in the provinces of Roman Spain or in the city of Rome – did their new, distinct identities begin to emerge. Visigothic and Ostrogothic people and their customs would contribute to the social, legal, cultural, artistic, and economic story of western Europe from the fifth through seventh centuries CE.

  13.1 Seeing the Sixth Century Through the Eyes of an Emperor and a Traveler

  Let’s pick out one or two strands from the fraying Roman world and see where they take us. One person who can lead us in fascinating directions is a man, Cosmas, nicknamed “He Who Sailed to India.” Cosmas wrote c.545 CE during the reign of the Emperor Justinian (r. 527–565). His nickname is the translation of an ancient Greek adjective, Indicopleustes, given to him by medieval copyists who passed down the manuscripts of his texts. Cosmas’ writings reveal an important part of the puzzle of the rapidly expanding sixth‐century CE globe (Exploring Culture 13.1: Literature, History, and Material Culture in Armenia, Crossroads of Empires; Figure 13.1). A look at the lives of both him and the emperor whom he lived under can lead to intriguing ways of thinking about Mediterranean history, seen‐from‐above and from‐below, during the middle of the sixth century CE.

  Figure 13.1 At Ptghni, Armenia, stands a lonely shell of a building that used to be a Christian church. All that remains of it are a set of sturdy walls, remarkably preserved almost roof‐high. Stacked from local reddish‐black stone, they are punctuated by a series of windows, which once looked in to the single‐aisle nave. This photograph shows the south wall of the church at Ptghni, built in the late sixth or early seventh century CE. It is a detail of the stonework on the lintel, the frame around the doors. whose iconography reveals a mixture of local customs and artistic styles found broadly throughout the Late Antique world. At left, we see a man on horseback hunting with his bow, a popular pastime among local elites in sixth‐century CE Armenia. To the right are framed portraits of saints, similar to portraits of other holy men and women in churches in western and eastern Mediterranean cities. The ancient kingdom of Armenia was a perennially contested territory in political and military struggles between Rome and Persia.

  Photo credit: Bertramz at Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons, Attribution‐ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

  Exploring Culture 13.1 Literature, History, and Material Culture in Armenia, Crossroads of Empires

  The Black Sea lay to its west and the Caspian Sea to its east. The Caucasus Mountains formed its northern boundary; and Mesopotamia, its southern. This was the ancient kingdom of Armenia. It was a plot of land that would come to occupy slices and slivers of many modern countries: of Georgia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Iran. The modern Republic of Armenia is a much reduced footprint of this ancient kingdom, but its land bears many traces of the two empires, Roman and Sasanian, that came to shape its people, its customs, its language, and its architecture.

  Armenia was long kept on the Roman state’s periphery, governed by client kings who were its strong allies. Under the reign of Emperor Nero (54–68 CE), the King of Armenia, Tiridates I, made
the journey to Rome to pledge allegiance to the empire. “While the king made supplication,” Suetonius tells us, “Nero took the turban from [King Tiridates’] head and replaced it with a diadem” (Life of Nero 13.2, LCL trans. by Rolfe [1913–1914]). The act of investiture established a dynasty that remained loyal to Rome for two hundred years.

  By the third century CE, the kingdom’s relationship with Rome had grown complicated. The rise of Sasanian Persia to the kingdom’s south posed one of the most urgent crises because Sasanian leaders began to claim the territory as their own. Armenia’s capture would restore a part of the glorious Persian Empire of the fifth century BCE. From the third through the sixth centuries, soldiers in the Sasanian and Roman army became an unavoidable presence in the region. Armenia’s client kings and its people saw their relationship with Sasanian and Roman governments fluctuate greatly during this time.

  According to the earliest written history of Armenia, composed by a man who lived in the kingdom, it was King Tiridates IV (r. 298/299–330 CE) who was the first ruler to convert to Christianity. This story comes from the History of the Armenians, written in the language of Armenian by a man known as “Agathangelos,” or Good Messenger (aggelos, in Greek, is pronounced angelos; it can mean either “messenger” or “angel”). His text has been dated to the mid‐fifth century CE (Anne Redgate, The Armenians [Oxford: Blackwell, 1998]). Unfortunately, the circumstances, even the date, of King Tiridates IV’s conversion are not easy to fact‐check, given that they are recounted in only one source.

  Two centuries after King Tiridates IV, however, a dramatic rise in material culture does attest to the growing social profile of Christianity. One sixth‐ or seventh‐century church is exemplary. At the town of Ptghni (ancient Ptlni), a worship space was constructed out of colorful local tufa, or volcanic rock. Above its southern door the artists were commissioned to carve a man on horseback in a hunting scene alongside depictions of the saints and the risen Jesus.