Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity

by Geoffrey Greatrex (Editor), Stephen Mitchell (Editor)

Overview

The period AD 300-600 saw huge changes. The Graeco-Roman city-state was first transformed then eclipsed. Much of the Roman Empire broke up and was reconfigured. New barbarian kingdoms emerged in the Roman West. Above all, religious culture moved from polytheistic to monotheistic. Here, twenty papers by international scholars explore how group identities were established against this shifting background. Separate sections treat the Latin-speaking West, the Greek East, and the age of Justinian. Themes include religious conversion, Roman law in the barbarian West, problems of Jewish identity, and what in Late Antiquity it meant to be Roman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780715630433
Publisher:	Classical Press of Wales, The
Publication date:	12/31/2000
Series:	Late Antiquity
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.17(h) x (d)

About the Author

Stephen Mitchell is the author of Anatolia. Land, Men and Gods in Asia Minor; Cremna in Pisidia and Pisidian Antioch. Geoffrey Greatrex is the author of Rome and Persia at War, 502-532.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations Preface and acknowledgements Introduction Stephen Mitchell and Geoffrey Greatrex PART 1: THE ROMAN AND BARBARIAN WEST 1. The conversion of Rome revisited - John Curran 2. Immigrants in late imperial Rome - David Noy 3. Roman law and barbarian identity in the late Roman west - John Matthews 4. Legal culture and identity in the fifth-century west - Jill Harries 5. Paganism in later Roman hagiography? - Hartwin Brandt 6. Gallic identity and the Gallic civitas from Caesar to Gregory of Tours - Catrin Lewis 7. Inscribing time and identity in the kingdom of Burgundy - Mark Handley 8. The barbarians in Salvian's De Gubernatione Dei - David Lambert PART II: IN AND BEYOND THE ROMAN EAST 9. Ethnicity, acculturation and empire in Roman and late Roman Asia Minor - Stephen Mitchell 10. The Bosporan kingdom in late antiquity: ethnic and religious transformations - Yulia Ustinova 11. Mithraism and Christianity in late antiquity - Engelbert Winter 12. Literary culture in the Reign of Anastasius I - Fiona Nicks 13. Re-thinking Jewish identity in late antiquity - Naomi Janowitz 14. Ecclesiastical furniture in late antique synagogues in Palestine - David Milson 15. Pagan images in late antique synagogues - Sacha Stern 16. 'The devil spoke Syriac to me': Theodoret in Syria - Theresa Urbainczyk PART III: THE SIXTH CENTURY 17. Roman identity in the sixth century - Geoffrey Greatrex 18. The nature of the sixth-century Isaurians - Hugh Elton 19. East Roman perceptions of the Avars in the mid- and late-sixth century - Rachael Pallas-Brown 20. Justinian and aphthartodocetism - Kate Adshead Index