A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity

by Douglas Boin

  This text follows a pattern that was familiar to many Roman jurists. It introduces a case study, then a question, and concludes with an expert’s response. Roman laws written as late as the sixth century CE used this formula (Justinian, Digest 21.2.11). For historians, this similarity is a sign of overlooked Christian, Roman, and Jewish dialogue in the later empire.

  Summary

  At the start of the fourth century CE, Emperor Diocletian used state power to coerce Christians to hand over their scriptures, creating an environment where churches could be legally burned and Christians themselves could be threatened with the forfeiture of their Roman citizenship. This policy of dividing citizens and families from each other, separating Christians and non‐Christians into two legal camps, was born out of a long‐running concern to unify the empire around traditional Roman values. Since the time of the Republic, proper worship, or what Romans called religio, was an essential part of this legal framework. There was no concept of secular society in the Roman world.

  When Constantine and Licinius met at Milan, the constitutional underpinnings of the state were modified to include Christianity as one of the empire’s official religiones. This decision did not make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, but it did guarantee Christians new legal protection in the way they worshipped. This political triumph was something many people throughout the Roman Empire could appreciate, as access to the courts and the use of the legal system were crucial to the way all citizens – not just Christians – resolved conflict in their daily lives.

  Study Questions

  Summarize some of the cases that came to the attention of magistrates in Roman Egypt.

  What do scholars mean by doing history “horizontally”?

  Describe the process by which Roman laws were made.

  How did the Edict of Milan reshape the Roman constitution?

  Suggested Readings

  Ari Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

  Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

  Caroline Humfress, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  John Matthews, Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

  8

  Urban Life

  Material culture has featured in each chapter up until now. We have studied archaeological objects, like flashy cameos, to talk about cultural dialogue and the exchange of craftsmen and ideas between empires outwardly at war. We have traced some the bare outlines of buildings on the ground and contemplated grander remains which opened our eyes to the physical world of Late Antique cities. We have also read imperial laws, written on stone, and everyday petitions, written on papyrus, which have given us a feel for the tangible presence of Roman power in people’s lives. Material culture is an inescapable, indispensable, and, above all, necessary part of doing history.

  This chapter shows why by looking at material culture and the archaeological remains from two of the empire’s most important cities: its beating cultural heart, Rome, and its rising political center, Constantinople. We will also look at material culture from other sites, in Roman Egypt, for example, to help us hear and feel the rhythms of life among the empire’s citizens in the decades after Christianity’s legalization. This period, the fourth century CE, would be a crucial one for the political narrative of the empire, too.

  The century which had opened with Constantine and Licinius’ dramatic publication of the “Edict of Milan,” in 313 CE, would be bracketed by an even more momentous announcement, in February 380 CE. That year, the three joint rulers of the Roman world, Emperors Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, would release the text of their “Edict of Thessaloniki.” Announced in Constantinople but addressed to “all the various nations which are subject to [the emperors’] Clemency and Moderation,” the Thessaloniki edict instructed everyone throughout the Roman world to profess “the worship practices [religio]” associated with the Christian faith. More importantly, it advocated that all Romans now believe in “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy trinity.” Followers of this law, the emperors explained, were to use the name “catholic [universal] Christians.” Everyone who did not subscribe to the new, mandated, official religio of the Roman world would be henceforth stigmatized as “foolish madmen.”

  The text of the Thessaloniki decree has been preserved in the Theodosian Code (16.1.2, trans. by C. Pharr, The Theodosian Code and Novels, and the Sirmondian Constitutions [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952], with modifications). Virtually overnight, it changed the power dynamics throughout the Roman Empire, as everyone who had followed Rome’s traditional worship practices now confronted a government that was hostile to their beliefs and rituals. Naturally, the logistical intricacies and complications of publishing this law and raising public awareness for it guaranteed that its enforcement would never nearly match the zealousness with which it was drafted. Laws could be ripped down; others could simply be ruined in bad weather. For that reason, how quickly the 60 million citizens of the Roman Empire, post‐380 CE, accepted they were now required to identify as “catholic Christians” is impossible for a historian to measure. Temple doors may have been closed throughout Roman cities, charred altars may have lain void of any new animal sacrifice, but one Roman law did not suddenly change what people believed – at least, not immediately.

  8.1 Daily Life in the Fourth Century CE and Beyond: Starting Points and Assumptions

  Even though all Roman citizens of the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE would soon be required to be “Christians,” a historian faces a truly Sisyphian task when trying to push the massive pieces of the fourth century into the fifth. How many “real Christians” were there during this time? And why did Christian politicians choose to outlaw traditional worship practices? If it is true that we can’t know the precise demographic breakdown of specific faith groups throughout the empire – if our task really is a precipitous uphill climb – then this uncertainty needs to be acknowledged right away, not ignored or replaced with theologically driven assumptions. Evidence, not our own religious beliefs or our own anti‐religious preferences, needs to drive our approach to the past.

  And yet we do need to pause, to step back and ask whether the emerging framework we’ve put in place might change the questions we are asking about the evidence. Here are some examples to consider. Should we write the story of the fourth century CE as if it were a world sharply divided into two camps, “pagans and Christians”? Or might that dichotomy imply a dangerous false equivalency – as if the cultural conversations of the fourth century were taking place between two equal sides – which might be historically misleading? Another question to ask might be this one: Were cities, in Constantine’s age and afterward, “bipolar” places, as one scholar has characterized them, urban worlds where these two faith groups now hammered out their differences in a debate which eventually led to the “triumph” of Christianity (Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012], p. 47)? Or might it be, rather, that the empire’s Christian community itself was bipolar – not the empire’s cities – because even on the cusp of the fourth century, Jesus’ followers remained sharply divided about what it meant to be a Roman citizen? These are important, big‐picture questions which every historian who writes about the fourth century needs to consider before analyzing specific pieces of textual or material evidence.

  In this chapter, we will start by exploring some of the complexities within the material record. To begin, not every Christian text or church building erected in the fourth century might have been part of an ideological campaign to convert people to Christianity, as sometimes assumed. In the tumultuous years that followed Galerius’s edict and the “Edict
of Milan,” many Romans remained unconvinced (to put it mildly) that Christians really could be successful partners in the enterprise of running the government; Maximinus’ edict to the Roman cities of the east, which we looked at in the last chapter, is one example of the intransigence which many members of the fourth‐century Christian community faced in their day‐to‐day interactions with family, friends, and neighbors.

  In this context, we should caution against thinking that Christian buildings, Christian art, or Christian inscriptions – all of which do show a spike in the material record of the Mediterranean during this time – somehow did the hard work of recruiting people to the Christian faith. Like mosques built in culturally conservative cities of modern America, Britain, or France, some of which have been greeted with open hostility, even violence, a greater visible Christian presence in Rome’s neighborhoods and the cities of the empire at large cannot be assumed to have been a cultural phenomenon that was wholeheartedly embraced by every Roman citizen. And yet that is exactly how many scholars continue to write about the significance of the admittedly undeniable fourth‐century building boom in Christian architecture. Luring the Roman people from their own stale worship traditions, the empire’s churches are said to have functioned as “safety valves for well‐to‐do persons who found the pace of life too fast and too expensive – driven too relentlessly by considerations of honor and reciprocity” (Brown 2012, p. 47). By the mid‐fourth century, it has even been suggested, these buildings were advertising “the air of a dignified, morally bracing, and even exciting experiment in countercultural living” (Brown 2012, p. 47).

  What we have seen in our discussion so far, however, suggests a more reserved approach. This particularly evangelical aspect of fourth‐century Christianity may only be one part of a wider cultural landscape. Because of the complexities of being Christian, which included the fact that many Christians adapted to mainstream Roman values, it becomes difficult to support the argument that all fourth‐century material culture was now deployed in an effort to “Christianize” the empire.

  In fact, if we remember that Christians remained a marginal community throughout the third and fourth centuries, that, too, will shape the way we interpret the available evidence, both textual and material. Christian buildings and Christian art can just as equally be signs of Christians talking amongst themselves as much as we think they were now trying to speak to the larger urban environment to recruit others to the faith.

  In this way, the social aspect of material culture, more broadly – not just the traditional study of aesthetic styles and trends in Christian architecture and Christian art – can lead us to details of daily life that might have otherwise escaped our notice. In what follows, we will see how the material culture of two cities, far from window‐dressing the story of Late Antiquity with interesting pictures, can give us an entirely different way of writing about life in the fourth‐century Roman world (Exploring Culture 8.1: Silver Gifts and the Roman Emperor on the Crimean Peninsula; Figure 8.1). This evidence comes from two key cities of the fourth‐century empire: Rome, the older, more historic capital; and Constantinople, a city inaugurated in May 330 CE.

  Figure 8.1 This silver plate shows the Roman Emperor Constantius II, one of the successors of Constantine. He ruled from 337–361 CE. The plate is embossed and engraved with an eye‐catching mixture of copper, silver, and black lead, called niello, and gilded. It was discovered in Kerch, near the Sea of Azov in the Bosporus necropolis on the Gordikov estate, on the northeastern slope of Mt. Mithridat, in 1891. Strikingly, no Roman writer ever mentions that Constantius II visited this distant area of the Black Sea – which lay far beyond Rome’s borders. For that reason, this piece of material culture is an important historical piece of evidence. It attests to and evokes cultural connections between the people of the northern frontiers and the Roman government which may not have been recorded in contemporary written sources. The dish is now in the collection of The State Museum, Hermitage, Russia (Inventory number 1820‐79). Measurements: diameter 25 cm (c.10 in.). Used by permission of the Hermitage.

  Exploring Culture 8.1 Silver Gifts and the Roman Emperor on the Crimean Peninsula

  The Straits of Kerch connect the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov. To the west is the Crimean peninsula; to the east, the Taman peninsula of modern Russia. This area may seem far from the classical world of the Roman Empire. But at the turn of the twentieth century, in the city of Kerch – located on the west side of the strait – a puzzling piece of material culture was discovered that raises questions about the reach and the workings of Roman power in the fourth century CE.

  The artifact is a medium‐sized silver bowl with a detailed engraving. It measures c.25 cm in diameter, about 10 inches, and shows three figures. In the center the Roman emperor in military dress rides horseback. He is carrying a lance, and his head is ringed by a nimbus, or “halo.” To the emperor’s left (the viewer’s right) is the winged female goddess known in Latin as Victoria or in Greek as Nikē. She carries a crown and palm branch. On the emperor’s right is a Roman soldier whose shield is engraved with the chi‐rho. This bowl was found with two others; excavation reports suggest all three were buried during the late fourth century CE. One of its companion pieces shows Emperor Constantius II (r. 337–361 CE).

  The silver dish from Kerch is a fascinating object, in part, because diplomatic relations between Constantius II and the rulers of the Crimean peninsula are otherwise unattested.

  The dish itself is not one of a kind. Eighteen other silver bowls, all dated to the fourth century CE, have been found across the Mediterranean. One, discovered in southern Spain, is gigantic (74 cm, or almost 30 inches in diameter). It shows Emperor Theodosius surrounded by his court and commemorates the tenth anniversary of his rule (388 CE). Scholars believe all these silver dishes were presented as imperial gifts (Ruth Leader‐Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity [Burlington: Ashgate, 2004]). Although his identity remains unknown, it appears a distinguished local resident in Kerch was the recipient of an imperial present, too.

  The people of the northern Black Sea had known about Mediterranean customs before the rise of Rome. As early as the sixth century BCE, Greeks had founded colonies there; its land proved rich for growing grain. Chersonesus, a Greek city on the southwest side of the Crimean peninsula, was established during this time. Two centuries later, close ties among Greek cities at home and abroad ensured an abundant food supply in Athens. It came from this region.

  The situation in the fourth century CE was much different. Rome maintained no direct control over the northern shore of the Black Sea. For centuries, the responsibility for managing this territory had been outsourced to client kings, local residents who worked with the Roman army to maintain control. In the first century BCE/CE, one city even renamed itself “Agrippeia” to retain the support of the general Marcus Agrippa (Collection of Inscriptions from the Bosporan Kingdoms [CIRB], ed. by V. Struve [Moscow, 1965], number 983, line 6). The Crimean peninsula would not officially be declared a Roman province until the reign of Emperor Justinian.

  By the end of this chapter, we will also begin to step beyond the horizon of the fourth century into the fifth and sixth centuries to notice both the continuities and changes in material culture that characterized Mediterranean life before and after Christianity’s establishment as an official religio – and before and after Rome vanished from its own empire, in 476 CE.

  8.2 The Archaeology of Rome

  A city as large as Rome can only be visited here in small scale, and there is no better way to think about the city than at the level of the neighborhood. Here, we will look at three neighborhoods that give us a rich picture of the fourth‐century city. These include the downtown, or Forum, district, an important venue for imperially sponsored projects during the earlier Roman Empire; the Aventine Hill, one of the most celebrated hills of the capital, whose streets reveal a diverse neighborhood of houses, temples, and, later, Christian churches. Third, we wi
ll look at an area of urban sprawl outside Aurelian’s city walls on the Via Appia, a road where many Roman families went to commemorate the burial of their loved ones. In this way, we will not try to list or categorize every detail about the fourth‐century city. But we will try to see how, as a capital and the site of the Senate, the experience of Rome’s streets contributes to our understanding of its people.

  The city center and the imperial fora

  Residents of Rome in the early fourth century had lived through history. Constantine’s defeat of Maxentius, in 312 CE, had taken place at one of the northernmost bridges to cross the Tiber, the Milvian Bridge. Constantine’s victory would be memorialized in the city center in multiple ways. A victory arch, the Arch of Constantine, was built near the Flavian Amphitheater to celebrate the emperor’s military triumph. On it, the Senate and the People of Rome – “SPQR,” in the abbreviated public language of Rome’s inscriptions – praised Constantine for his successes. These they attributed to the “inspiration of a divinity” and “the greatness of [Constantine’s] mind” (CIL 6.1139).

  Although the text of the dedication does not elaborate on these statements, the sculptural panels on the arch do. To construct this monument, the Senate’s workmen used panels from earlier imperial monuments featuring dearly popular emperors like Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. Scenes of the sun god, Apollo, in his chariot and the moon goddess, Diana, in hers appear on either side of Constantine’s monument. The arch itself was built in the shadow of the city’s most famous “colossus,” a gigantic bronze statue of Apollo which had once stood in the foyer of Nero’s Golden House. It had been moved to the Flavian Amphitheater in the second century CE and would later inspire an affectionate medieval nickname for the stadium – “place of the colossus,” or Colosseum.