A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

  Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400–1000 (New York: Penguin, 2009).

  3

  How Do We Do Late Antique History?

  Rutilius needed someone to blame. Forced from his comfortable life in Rome – taken away from “the noise of the circus games” and the “blaze of cheers” from the theater; even cut off from the city’s welcoming mood, where “the very daylight which Rome makes for herself seems purer than all else” (On His Return to Gaul 1.200–203, LCL trans. by Duff and Duff [1935]) – he blamed Stilicho. Guardian of the child emperor Honorius, born of a mixed (“non‐Roman”) marriage, Stilicho was a convenient scapegoat. Many elite and non‐elite Romans, not just Rutilius, had lived through the attack on their city in 410 CE and were keen to identify who let this catastrophe happen and how. They pointed to the compromised “foreigner.”

  Never mind that Stilicho’s foreign lineage was Vandal and that Rome’s attackers had been of a different tribe entirely: Goths. To Rutilius and others who thought like him, all “barbarians” were the same. This man was a “traitor” to Rome whose back‐channel bargaining with Goths during the first decade of the fifth century had opened the door for “skin‐clad menials” to ravage the capital (On His Return to Gaul 2.49–51).

  In a way, Rutilius was doing what historians do. He was scouring his world for clues and causes to explain why things had turned out this way, not that way. In their research, historians, too, try to reassemble the web of explanations that might have motivated individuals, communities, and even states in the past to behave as they did. Rutilius, who blamed Stilicho’s ethnic identity and his questionable allegiances, found the causes for the attack on Rome in this one wisp of a web. Historians have traditionally been uncomfortable with these kinds of single‐issue explanations. The structure of a web is usually more complex.

  Therein lies a challenge for the Late Antique historian. Now that we’ve put a few names and faces on one of the most central turning points in our period and now that we’ve taken a more bird’s‐eye view of the crises that led to 410 CE, we should pause to reflect on our methods. How exactly do we start to do the history of this time? Where does the evidence come from: for the battles, for the biographies, for the political debates?

  3.1 Evaluating Sources, Asking Questions

  Comparing and contrasting

  The answers to these questions cannot be relegated to the teacher’s edition of a textbook, kept away from the eyes of students who don’t really need to know them. Every source that exists from antiquity, even a Latin poem like the one Rutilius wrote, needs to be interrogated for what it provides to our story before it can be deemed historically useful. Sources, put simply, do not just provide the “facts” of history. Sources beget questions that challenge the very outline of history. For that reason, this book is structured around discussions of specific pieces of evidence and how to interpret them.

  Comparison will be a crucial tool in this journey because it helps historians build a set of checks‐and‐balances for sources that would otherwise lack any real value if they weren’t compared or contrasted to something else. After all, there is no way to fact‐check a single writer or an isolated text unless it is brought into dialogue with another.

  Rutilius’ opinion of Stilicho offers a good reminder of the need for tracking down and lining up the right sources. Were Rutilius’ bigoted views of the Vandal‐Roman leader unique or were they widespread, and what might the answer tell us about Roman society on the eve of so much political crisis? There is no way to begin compiling this information from the poem; it’s simply not there. We have to interview other sources.

  In this case, the contemporary writer Claudian provides additional, helpful information. Claudian lived in the late fourth century and early fifth century CE. Educated at Alexandria in Egypt, he wrote fluently in two languages, Greek and Latin. His works in Greek no longer survive. His Latin writings are a fascinating set of archives because of when and why Claudian produced them. Invited to go to Emperor Honorius’ court in the western empire, with its capital moving between the northern Italian cities of Milan and Ravenna, Claudian wrote poetry praising the fortunes of the imperial family and lauding the achievements of other officials. He worked as a public relations guru who played up his clients’ accomplishments to drew more attention to them. Specialists call him a panegyrist.

  Among the many panegyric poems he wrote for Emperor Honorius, Claudian composed one three‐book work extolling the virtuous character of Stilicho. Written in 400 CE, to commemorate Stilicho’s successful term as consul of Rome, it features personifications of Spain, Gaul, Africa, and Italy who sing his military praises. It also is filled with Claudian’s optimistic take on the wide public support that Stilicho enjoyed as a Roman politician. “In Stilicho’s case alone, class rivalry has not raised its head: the knights welcome him with joy, the senate with enthusiasm, while the people’s prayers rival the goodwill of the nobles” (Claudian, On the Consulship of Stilicho 3.49–50, LCL trans. by M. Platnauer [1922]). The successes of previous military leaders had led to faction and partisanship. Not so in Stilicho’s case, Claudian argued. The soldier‐turned‐consul had brought Rome together when it needed it the most. The fact that he happened to have a complicated family story, born of a Vandal father and Roman mother, never merited any suspicion.

  Claudian’s poetry is important because it allows us to appreciate Stilicho’s successes whereas Rutilius, writing a decade later, wanted us to remember him as an unmitigated disaster. Both texts are important for piecing together the lost transcript of what people were talking about in the first decades of the fifth century CE. The search for answers to explain what had led to Alaric’s attack involved a debate about the legacy of a half‐Vandal, half‐Roman who had been given guardianship of the child emperor. This debate would have profound personal consequences for Stilicho. By 408 CE, he was dead on the road between Rome and Ravenna – assassinated by members of the emperor’s staff.

  Incorporating textual and material culture

  How had public opinion turned against such a talented politician so quickly? It’s an interesting question, and another piece of evidence suggests how and why it may have happened. This evidence comes not from a published, polished piece of Latin or Greek literature, although it is written in an ancient language. It is a marble statue base that had been set up in one of the most prominent outdoor spaces in Rome, the Forum. The statue base had been put there, in the early fifth century CE, by Stilicho himself to honor the Roman troops who had fought with him against invading armies on the borderlands.

  By the time Rutilius Namatianus saw it as Prefect of the City, Stilicho had been murdered and his name had been violently scratched out of the marble. The message to anyone who walked past it was meant to be crystal clear. Stilicho died as an enemy of the state he had fought so bravely to protect his entire career. The stone’s erasure is perhaps the most vivid illustration of what a partisan hack‐job could look like in fifth‐century Rome. The statue base, missing Stilicho’s name, still survives (Figure 3.1); it has been catalogued in the Collection of Latin Inscriptions from Rome (CIL volume 6.31987).

  Figure 3.1 This Latin inscription praises the Roman Emperor Honorius and is currently on display in the Roman Forum. It was erected in view of the Senate House in the early fifth century CE. Interestingly, the text also originally honored a talented Roman general, Stilicho (d. 408 CE), for his help in repelling a Gothic attack from Italy. Born to a Vandal father, with a Roman mother, Stilicho had married into the imperial family and in the process had become a trusted advisor of Honorius. After his death, some people questioned his loyalty to Rome. Later, they erased Stilicho’s name from the monument. The inscription is printed in the Collection of Latin Inscriptions (CIL 6.31987).

  Photo credit: Gregor Kalas, with permission.


  This archaeological object is an example of what historians call, more broadly, material culture. Material culture comprises many things that might look on first glance like simple works of art – mosaics, architecture, wall paintings, jewelry, or kitchenware. For historians, however, much of this material has a story to tell about the people who paid for it, used it, stole it, or destroyed it. In this approach, the aesthetic value of the objects is but one part of what makes them historically significant.

  Material culture and textual culture can also overlap. The face of a coin might reveal an important “legend,” or set of promotional words; a marble block might be unearthed which has a public announcement chiseled on one side. In these cases, there is little use in trying to classify these objects as either textual or material evidence; they’re both. A broader, more important point to keep in mind is that text and material culture mutually inform each other as historical sources. Both sets of evidence are indispensable archives. Together, they fill out the stories of people like Rutilius, Claudian, Stilicho, and the boy emperor Honorius.

  A piece of material culture like Stilicho’s statue base, with its rubbed‐out lines, also teaches another powerful lesson. History is not just a list of names and dates to be studied and memorized; history is a continuing conversation about which names and dates should be considered important. History, in short, is an argument – supported with evidence – about who or what deserves to be remembered and why. Stilicho’s detractors knew this aspect of history well. That’s why they tried to erase him from it.

  3.2 The Past in the Past

  Doing Late Antique history should start to be a little less mystifying now. It involves finding texts and pieces of material culture, describing what they say, identifying who wrote them or made them, and why. It means considering when they were written so that we can analyze, compare, and contrast them while respecting the circumstances that led to their creation. And it involves putting them together, synthesizing them, so that we can step back and re‐evaluate what the big picture looks like.

  If applying this formula were all there was to doing history, however, the end result would hardly be satisfying. We would be writing about programmed robots, not real, three‐dimensional people. For people are not just filled with current ideas. People carry memories, too. Sometimes, things that they’re taught as children or learn as adolescents even go on to mold the way they see the world – for years, decades, sometimes their entire lives.

  One Late Antique example of this phenomenon comes from the world of the pharaohs. At the Egyptian city of Deir el‐Bahari, across the Nile from the regal Luxor, a powerful queen once built a large funerary monument for herself (Figure 3.2). Queen Hatshepsut constructed her memorial there during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, a period which we would date to the early fifteenth century BCE. Designed as a series of terraces, each raised above the desert valley and faced with a majestic row of columns, Queen Hatshepsut’s grand tomb complex is one of Egypt’s most iconic sites and a testament to ambitions of this powerful female ruler. It also continues to draw visitors who seek to behold the Egypt of the ancient pharaohs.

  Figure 3.2 The funerary and temple complex of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el‐Bahari in Upper Egypt. Hatshepsut was one of the rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (d. 1458 BCE). More broadly, she holds the distinction of being among a unique group of ancient female rulers, like Nefertiti and Cleopatra, who shaped the long history of ancient Egypt. That story would continue at Deir el‐Bahari two thousand years after the queen’s burial. In the sixth century CE, according to textual records from the time, a Christian monastery had been built somewhere in the vicinity of Hatshepsut’s tomb. Why Christians chose to use this ancient complex as the site of their monastic community is not entirely clear, but the site’s remarkable preservation today makes clear they did not destroy it. The funerary complex remains a popular destination for tourists intrigued by the pharaohs and queens of “Ancient Egypt.”

  Copyright © Ian Dagnall/Alamy Stock Photo.

  It would be easy to compartmentalize a monument like Queen Hatshepsut’s funerary monument in historical studies by relegating it to art history classes on the pre‐Christian world. Queen Hatshepsut lived and died fifteen hundred years before Jesus was born; why should someone so old steal the spotlight from much later figures? A closer look at the site of Deir el‐Bahari, however – and a better appreciation for how the past was a living presence for people of the Late Antique ancient Mediterranean world – tells a more complex story. For there, on the upper terrace of Hatshepsut’s sanctuary complex, a Christian monastery was established in Late Antiquity. This monastery was dedicated to a man named St. Phoibammon. Textual records dating from the sixth century CE make abundant reference to St. Phoibammon’s monastery although nothing of the monastic community building remains today. Astonishingly, its traces were largely destroyed not by later, religious militants but by “modern” excavators, who tore the archaeological site to pieces without any proper record keeping. (To learn more about this story, consult the contribution by F. Dunand in EBW [2007].)

  As this example shows, Queen Hatshepsut’s sanctuary held many Christians in Roman Egypt under its cultural spell. Other Christians would pay to be mummified to maintain their connections to Egyptian mores, continuing a cultural tradition that Queen Hatshepsut herself would have valued and appreciated. For these reasons, Late Antique history is more than a collection of sources arranged in chronological order. Childhood joys, long‐standing cultural customs, even traumatic events can seep into people’s lives in different ways at different times. All of these episodes affect how a person responds to their surroundings and influence the decisions they make. There would always be those who naturally tried to escape the more haunting realities. But in Egypt and elsewhere, a swirl of memories would worm its way into the minds of poets, home decorators, even the people who paid for fancy tombs. That’s why researchers have to find a way to describe how the people in the past carried the past with them, too. Memories shaped their present lives.

  Our poet Rutilius Namatianus was also someone for whom, even in the early fifth century CE, the memory of the past was still regrettably a feature of the present. In this case, Rutilius didn’t like Jews. “Would that Judaea had never been subdued by Pompey’s wars and Titus’ military power,” the poet writes after meeting a Jewish merchant on his way home. Rutilius was unrelenting in his vitriol, calling him “a creature that quarrels with sound human food.” The poem continues:

  He charges in our bill for damaging his bushes and hitting the seaweed, and bawls about his enormous loss in water we had sipped. We pay the abuse due to the filthy race that infamously practices circumcision: a root of silliness they are. Chill Sabbaths are after their own heart, yet their heart is chillier than their creed. Each seventh day is condemned to ignoble sloth, as if it were an effeminate picture of a god fatigued. The other wild ravings from their lying bazaar methinks not even a child in his sleep could believe. (On His Return to Gaul 1.384–394, LCL trans. slightly modified)

  These appaling sentiments are usually left out of historical commentaries or only embarrassingly alluded to. One can understand why. Amid all Rutilius’ lyricism about fifth‐century Rome and his father’s accomplishments, amid all his reflections on the successes of his friends and of the failures of men like Stilicho, Rutilius’ opinions about Jews seem like an irrelevant theological aside, something best kept away from more serious history students of the period. And yet, Rutilius’ anger was scathing and his rhetoric about Jewish people, disease‐driven: “The infection of this plague, though excised, still creeps abroad the more: and it is their own conquerors that a conquered race [now] keeps down” (On His Return to Gaul 1.397–398). Late Antique historians should not dismiss these lines as literary imagination.

  Rutilius’ bigotry rips the band‐aid off the idea that Late Antiquity represents a cleaned, sterilized time, fundamentally different from more difficult periods of early Christian hi
story. Rutilius’ view of Jews, in particular, shows us that many people in Late Antiquity lived with a deep wound that was still fresh. This wound was suffered when Judea, the territory around Jerusalem, was first captured by the Roman general, Pompey, in 63 BCE. It was exacerbated by the events of 70 CE, when another Roman general destroyed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem itself. It would be easy, if not perhaps justifiable, to crop these difficult events out of Late Antiquity because they do not fall within the period’s chronological limits. Rutilius’ poetry, however – and other disturbing events, like the destruction of synagogues and the drafting of legislation which targeted the rights of Jewish people living in the Christian Roman Empire – provides an important counterweight. Earlier historical periods cannot necessarily be omitted from our story because they don’t fit within the boundaries we’ve decided to draw around our sources.

  In the end, the history of Late Antiquity, as much as it can be narrated sequentially year after year, is one in which complicated memories snagged the straightforward unspooling of time (Exploring Culture 3.1: Studying Memory, or the Past within the Past). The Christians who tried to heal this open wound and the Christians who let it fester and rot – until it would become a debilitating infection on their history – cannot be omitted from the narrative.

  Exploring Culture 3.1 Studying Memory, or the Past within the Past

  In antiquity, fiery attacks like the Persian sack of Athens, in 480 BCE, or Rome’s destruction of the Jewish Temple, in 70 CE, seared the land and smoldered in the memory of people who witnessed them. Conflict scars a country. Even political fights can bruise it.