CLST 277-WI The World of Late Antiquity Fall Semester 2006 Dr. Jacqueline Long

Study Questions

file in progress - perennially

The study questions in this file will be updated through the course of the semester from study questions used the last time this course was taught, with a slightly different arrangement of material. If the days are off, it's because the questions haven't yet been checked against the current progress and interests of the class. The old questions remain worth thinking about, but be sure double-check again later.

Monday 28 August

Today we briefly identified points of reference in the later Roman empire and its cultural heritage: they will help orient us in our material for the rest of the semester. Note particularly:

• Important cities: Rome, Milan, Athens, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage
• Institutions of Roman Republican government: magistracies, Senate
• Individuals and concepts relevant to Roman Imperial government and the image it projected: Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, "restoration of the Republic"

• How does Cameron in her introductory chapter begin to identify some of the cardinal figures for our study this term? Note especially Septimius Severus, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, Diocletian, Constantine. Why do they seem to be getting her attention - what makes them important? While you're at it, pin them down chronologically in your mind, so they can help serve as points of reference for other figures and events.
• Why have many scholars before Cameron identified the third century (more particularly, the half-century roughly 235-284) as a period of "crisis" for the Roman Empire? What sorts of activities, events, and circumstances were they worrying about? What considerations does Cameron suggest should limit or mitigate the impression of crisis? Identify the realm of trouble, the nature of the trouble, the consequences of the trouble, and limitations to the trouble.
• Was the third century, as Cameron presents it, notable for anything besides trouble? What?

Wednesday 30 August

• When Romans thought about how their state had evolved over time and what it meant in the world, especially when they considered what their state might reflect on them, what ideas about The Roman Achievement seem to have attracted them most? How can you tell? What does the fact they liked these ideas, rather than some others, suggest about the desires and understanding with which they formed their likings? What concrete evidence would help you confirm that they really did assess their state in the way that you're inferring?
  • Of course the question goes way beyond anything we covered in class. Play with it and see where it takes you. By trying to answer, you'll be exercising your historical vision: hypothesizing a historically contextualized perspective and seeing what it shows you. By paying attention to how you could confirm that the perspective you're adopting corresponds with Roman perspectives, you'll be exploring how evidence connects with inference and learning how to test and refine your ideas. Try it. It's fun. As we build up more knowledge of particulars, you'll be able to get much further making your ideas solid; right now we're just starting to figure out what some of the questions will be.
  • Trajan's honored place in Roman memory offers some evidence to bring to bear on other Roman assessments of the past: what did he do that was so great? What considerations made these particular things seem particularly great: how did they correspond to what Romans wanted their emperor to do for them, and how did they correspond to what Romans wanted to identify with themselves, as if they were the ones who had achieved something? How can you tell?
• How did the Roman state shift its center of gravity between Trajan's time and Septimius Severus's, and how did the ideology of Roman rulers shift in consequence? Why did they shift? What changes did the shifts cause in their turn?
• What was the Constitutio Antoniniana? Who was responsible? What was he aiming at, as far as we can tell? What unintended consequences did it have?
• Wat was the antoninianus? Who was responsible? What was he aiming at, as far as we can tell? What unintended consequences did it have?
• Trace how one kind of crisis in the third century created social and administrative stresses that helped perpetuate its own kind of crisis or precipitate other kinds of crisis in addition: disruptions in the succession of emperors, military conflicts (external and internal), money troubles.
• Besides causing more "crisis", how did these major historical trends of the third century alter balances of social power and centers of social life? Think of specific examples and relate causes and effects - at this stage the question can only be vague, but you will see it take shape as background to some of our other inquiries as the term progresses.

Look at the selected passages as examples illustrating general trends: don't obsess about details, but read through to see what broader patterns recur, then pick out a few specific instances that demonstrate the patterns in an interesting way.

• What types of observance were used to honor "pagan" divinities by worshippers during the third century?
• What types of divinities did they seek to honor?
• What types of goals did worship pursue?
• To "pagan" religious observance and participation, compare and contrast Jewish practices: Judaism too was a traditional religion within Roman territories, but consciously distinct from practices of "gentiles."
• How were emperors involved in their people's worship?

Friday 1 September

• In the third-century Roman empire, as exemplified in our readings, how did traditional religious practices (pagan and Jewish) help construct individuals' identity - as individuals and as members of particular communities? What sorts of communities come into question?
• How did pagan worship contribute to relating individual Romans to the Roman state as a whole?
• What private, individual goals did pagan worship typically pursue?
• What other benefits of worship can we identify?
• What criticisms of pagan worship did Porphyry make? What attitudes did he prefer to uphold? How do his ideas relate to earlier traditions of philosophical thought?

Vibia Perpetua, daughter of an upper-class Roman family in the Roman province of Africa, was executed in the arena in Carthage on 7 March 203. The account of her martyrdom (technically called a "Passion") is one of the earliest extant pieces of writing by a Christian woman.

• What events happen to Perpetua? Trace the chains of decisions that produce these events, as well as the narrative permits: what objectives and values can you identify as helping to cause the events?
• What position does Perpetua seem to hold within the community of her fellow-martyrs? For what reasons?
• Why are Perpetua's dreams important - to her and to others? What powers does she or do others ascribe to her dreaming?
• How does the narrative of the final martyrdom relate to Perpetua's first-person account?

Wednesday 6 September

• How do Roman authorities conduct the persecution to which Perpetua and Felicity fall victim? How thorough is it? What do its aims seem to be? How can you tell?
• What does the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity tell us about the Christian community in Carthage at the beginning of the third century? What generalizations can you draw connecting this specific instance to bigger patterns of early Christian experience within Roman cities: think about not only who is involved in this story, in all their individual specificity, but also what sorts of people are involved, as Christians (baptised and catechumens, church officials and laypeople, martyrs and survivors), as non-Christians nevertheless sympathetic to Christians, and as persecutors. On what basis do people belong to one group or another? What are members of each group able to do, and what gives them power to do it?
• How do typical relationships of the Roman family figure in Perpetua's story? How does she weigh religious values against family values? Why? How far is she able to reconcile them?
• How do typical categories of the Roman juridical class-system figure in Perpetua's story? What does persistence in her crime of Christianity do to her father? Why?

• What concerns are reflected in the libelli ("certificates") associated with the empire-wide requirement for sacrifice enacted by Decius? What does the Roman government appear to have wanted to achieve?
• Note where Cameron's chapter covers items we will be using as sources later in the term, so you can check back and refresh your sense of background as we come to them.
• For right now, use this discussion as a basis to characterize, broadly, literary production and other source materials for our period. What interests did our late Romans pursue, in their activities and in their meditations, that help tell us about their age?
• Prepare Writing Exercise 1.

Friday 8 September

• Ideally, Writing Exercise 1, plus the further work you did on this inquiry collaboratively in class, model a good way to proceed with historical inquiry using primary, documentary sources: collect relevant information, look for patterns, formulate hypotheses that could explain your information and its patterns, test your hypotheses and refine them until you have formed a solid understanding of your material, and build an argument that sets forth your understanding, proving your interpretation from the evidence on which you formed it.
• Compare and contrast what happened in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity and in the Decian Persecution, so as to reconstruct as valid as possible an interpretation of what the persecuting authorities in each episode were trying to achieve.
  • How can you use evidence about what happened -the results- in order to make inferences about the purposes and causes that propelled the events?
  • What do these episodes tell you about Roman values regarding community and religion?
  • The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity offers not only evidence about what happened in this episode of Roman authorities treating Christian identity as a crime, but also an example of how Christians interpreted such episodes according to their own purposes: what does this text illustrate about how different interpretations can be brought to bear on the same facts and events?
• What do you need to know in order to tell what the people of Cosa meant when they called Decius "restorer of cults"? In default of information that would answer the question directly, what kinds of indication and what kinds of reasoning enable you to make a good inference?
• What kinds of literature were fourth-century authors most interested in writing? In what ways did their works reflect on the events of late antiquity?
• What are some of the most important non-literary textual sources for our period?

• How did Diocletian become emperor?
  • Unless of course you've already started doing so (), this is a great time to start amassing a time-line of important developments in Roman history, and key figures associated with them. I'm not going to bog down in minutiae of dates, but you should be familiar at least with rough brackets of times and with sequences of important events, in order to understand how the forces of history operated in them.
  • What groups exercised important influences on Diocletian's rise to power? What interests did they have? How were their interests met?
• What were the biggest problems Diocletian faced, that challenged Diocletian's abilities to rule successfully as emperor? What measures did he take to meet these challenges?

Monday 11 September

• Review the course of the defense of the Roman Empire in the second half of the third century: what sorts of threats would a Roman emperor in about 284 have to worry about being ready to face? on what fronts? How effectively were the military and administrative systems of the Empire functioning, so as to be able to support the emperor's efforts to meet these threats?
• Trace the stages in which imperial power was assumed and conferred, 284-293.
  • When did imperial power get assumed or conferred? Identify specific moments of "becoming emperor". What different levels or forms of "becoming" and of "emperor-ness" appear in this period?
  • On each occasion, why did imperial power get assumed or conferred? Who did the assuming or the conferring, and what considerations motivated the people who were involved?
  • On each occasion, on what basis did imperial power get assumed or conferred: what right to do the assuming or the conferring could the people involved claim? How did the nature of imperial legitimacy change over this period?

• In the preamble of the Price Edict, how do the Tetrarchs present themselves and their authority as issuers of this law: what do they claim to have achieved for the state, already?
• How do the Tetrarchs explain the problem the Price Edict addresses? How do they explain the causes of this problem? Who do they say suffers especially? What other parties do you judge the provisions of this law would have affected, whom the Tetrarchs do not refer to?
• For right now, use Dr. Harl's overview of Currency in the Age of Diocletian and Constantine to outline the main elements of the Roman monetary system Diocletian faced when he became emperor; later revisions of the monetary system, by Constantine and other emperors, we can worry about later.
  • What was the unit of account that notionally connected all the different denominations of coin to a single system of value?
  • How did the different metals and denominations relate to one another and to the unit of account? ("Billon" is a term for silver heavily debased with copper ; "radiate" means the emperor's image on the "heads" side wears a spiky crown supposedly evoking the sun's rays; "laureate" means the emperor's image on the "heads" side wears a laurel-wreath.)
  • Scrolling down the page, you come to sections on wages and prices. As set forth in the Price Edict and in other documentary sources from Diocletian's reign, how did they correlate with the monetary system: in human terms of labor and goods, what was the money worth?

Wednesday 13 September

• What were the main sectors of economic activity in the later Roman empire? Which was the biggest? What conditions of this sector affected the economy as a whole? Explain how.
• What administrative reforms that Diocletian instituted addressed the late-imperial economy? Identify what Diocletian did to change the way Roman government operated, and trace how these changes affected the economic activity across its territory.
• What activities of Roman government does the Price Edict stress? How do they relate to the problem of rising prices?
• How does the Price Edict analyze economic problems? What considerations does it recognize as affecting prices? How economically apt is its analysis? What other ends does its analysis serve?
• What were the main components of the monetary system of the later Roman empire as Diocletian inherited it? What problems were making it dysfunctional? What did Diocletian do to address these problems? How did his measures help solve the problems? What problems remained, and what caused them?

• Review the relevant paragraphs of Cameron's chapter on "Sources" in order to help classify Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History and On the Martyrs in Palestine, as sources for the Tetrarchic criminalization of Christian faith. What information would have been accessible to Eusebius when he wrote? What inferences does he make - on what basis? Do you detect any other forms of "spin" in his reporting - if so, what?
• According to Eusebius, exactly what did Diocletian, and later Maximinus, enact as "decrees of persecution", and exactly when did they enact it: what is the official "paper trail" of the Roman government's policy?
• How did Roman governmental records track the carrying-out of the policy (Lee, items # 3.3, 3.4)? Identify the locations and what was done there.
• Compare and contrast how the Roman policy was carried out according to these governmental records with the account given by Christian resistance-literature (at least the one instance presented as Lee, item # 3.5).
• What about the Jews? (Lee, item # 8.3)
• Prepare Excursus 1: Numismatics for Friday 9/15.

Friday 15 September

• What measures, in what stages, did Tetrarchic edicts direct be taken against the Christian religion? In purely practical terms, setting aside partisan evaluations of courage or malevolence, what and whom did these measures target? In what way might the Tetrarchs have supposed they would operate to oppose Christian worship and belief?
• How did Roman officials act so as to enforce the Tetrarchic edicts, in their sequence: what objectives did they pursue, and what means did they use to pursue them?
• What acts, at what stages of the persecution, caused Christians to be imprisoned? How, apparently, did Romans interpret these acts? How did Christians evaluate them?
• At what stage did the persecution become general? What acts were required? How were they enforced? What additional measures did Roman officials take to promote the objectives of the persecution?

• Review the relevant paragraphs of Cameron's chapter on "Sources" in order to help classify Lactantius, On the Manner in which the Persecutors Died, as a source for the Tetrarchic criminalization of Christian faith. What information would have been accessible to Lactantius when he wrote? What inferences does he make - on what basis? Do you detect any other forms of "spin" in his reporting - if so, what?
• Who was Lactantius's dedicatee Donatus? What connections does Lactantius draw between Donatus's experience and Lactantius's writing?
• What information does Lactantius supply as background to the Tetrarchic persecution?
• According to Lactantius, what considerations helped motivate Diocletian to persecute Christians? How does Lactantius claim the other Tetrarchs were involved?

Monday 18 September

• Identify, then compare and contrast, what experience of the Tetrarchic persecutions of Christians Eusebius and Lactantius each had. Where were they each? What happened to them each? What were they each in a position to know? What interests did Lactantius and Eusebius have in recording the events of the persecutions? How do their knowledge of events and their objectives in writing about them affect their value as sources?
• How does mention of Donatus in On the Manner in which the Persecutors Died affect the overtones of Lactantius's narrative?
• What emperors, before the Tetrarchy, does Lactantius identify as persecutors? How full and accurate is his information? What impression does Lactantius's account create - of Roman emperors and of the history of the Christian faith in the Roman empire?

• How does Lactantius characterize each of the Tetrarchs? What actions of theirs does he comment on?
• How does Lactantius depict the Tetrarchs' interactions with one another?
• Who are Constantine, Maxentius, Maximin Daia, and Licinius? How do they each get involved in Lactantius's narrative?
• What document does Lactantius quote? Contextualize it and classify it as a source. Whose interests does it represent?

Wednesday 20 September

• How does Lactantius organize his account of the persecutions through which he and Donatus lived? What types of information does he include in addition to information about the persecutions themselves? How does this information relate to the persecutions in a completely rational, dispassionate assessment of causes and effects such as you make for purposes of historical inquiry? in an emotionally affecting narrative such as Lactantius makes for his purposes, whatever we suppose them to be?
• What techniques (such as characterization and narrative of dynamic scenes) does Lactantius use to make his account more vivid than bare-bones reporting of publicly accessible facts might be? What techniques does he use to lend the appearance of fact to tendentious interpretation? What tests can historical inquiry use to validate things Lactantius says?

• Why, according to Lactantius, does the persecution not stop with Galerius's Edict of Toleration and then his death? Who takes over the role of instigator? Why? How? How is the second round of persecution resolved?
• How does Lactantius portray Constantine? What actions does he take? What sympathies does he display? What does he achieve?
• How does Lactantius portray Licinius? What actions does he take? What sympathies does he display? What does he achieve?
• How does Lactantius use female characters to enhance his main story-line?

Friday 22 September

• Review Lactantius's On the Manner in which the Persecutors Died overall, in order to see how the techniques we have analyzed closely in specific episodes of the Great Persecution play out in the larger picture Lactantius draws.
  • What moments does Lactantius identify as crucial turning-points?
  • What literary devices does Lactantius use to make these moments arrest the reader's attention?
  • How does Lactantius combine and select facts (relating to the Great Persecution specifically and to the reigns of the Tetrarchs generally), interpretation, and invented scenes, in order both to record a particular memory of what happened in the Great Persecution, and to suggest what the Great Persecution should mean to his Christian readers, as the events themselves receded into the past?
• How can historical inquiry separate Lactantius's coloring of the events and purposes of the Tetrarchic persecution -which tells us many important things about the way the Christian community of the early fourth century remembered this period- from practical facts that can serve other inquiries?

• Note Cameron's comments on the primary (and even secondary) sources for Constantine and his reign, and continue to reflect on how his having been the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity affects the way he is remembered.
• Trace the steps in which Constantine advanced in public stature from being the son of a Tetrarch to being the sole Augustus and founder of a new dynasty in the Roman empire. What positions did he occupy? What allegiances supported him? How did he acquire support -and what sorts of support did he get- by which to rise further?
  • How did contemporary assessments of Constantine's acts and fortunes, such as the literary and documentary sources selected by Lee for today's assignment, contribute to Constantine's public image and his acquiring of political support?
• Compare and contrast to Diocletian and the Tetrarchy how Constantine administered the empire, outside of religious considerations. What problems still made the work of government hard to do? How did Constantine endeavor to solve them?
• What religious policies did Constantine pursue? How much did he change, compared to earlier emperors? What things did Constantine not change? How fast did consequences of Constantine's policy-changes penetrate the Empire?
• What important public works did Constantine undertake, especially in urban and religious building?

Monday 25 September

• How did Christian writers interpret the somewhat cryptic emblem Constantine began using, according to Lactantius, as early as his war against Maxentius? What reasons did they have to interpret it the way they did (both motivation for the interpretation and ostensible support for it)? What other interpretations does our cultural knowledge of the Roman empire in the third and fourth centuries enable us to recognize the symbol could have suggested to Constantine's contemporaries?
• Trace shared ideas within the claims for divine support made on Constantine's behalf by the Panegyrist of 310 (Lee, item #4.1), Lactantius, and Eusebius in his Life of Constantine, and correlate them with Constantine's protracted use of solar imagery and self-representations as a divinely-supported ruler. Although different sources identify different divinities, what ideas about Constantine's position in the Empire and cosmos, his responsibilities, and his fortunes are communicated by the sources consistently?
• What did Constantine do while his father Constantius served as the First Tetrarchy's Caesar in the western part of the Empire? How would his position have seemed to compare with other sons of other emperors in other periods?
• What did Constantine do while his father Constantius served as the Second Tetrarchy's Augustus in the western part of the Empire? When? Where? On what basis of official standing? What other considerations might reasonably have been expected to frame people's thinking about him and his potential to become an emperor at some time?
• As Constantine rose from the soldiers' first proclamation of him to recognized Caesar and ultimately to sole Augustus in the Roman Empire, what cultural expectation and what constitutional structures of authority helped to legitimate the power he wielded?
• Conversely (for this question is in some senses the flip-side of the last), in what stages, for what reasons, did Tetrarchy as a system of Roman government fall apart, to be replaced by Constantinian dynasty?

Our verbal selections from the Book of Pontiffs (Lee) and Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History (on-line) emphasize Christian concerns in Constantine's building at Rome and Byzantium/Constantinople; Dr. Kathryn Andrus-Walck's visual selections sample the extant remains of Constantine's secular public building at Rome (click on images to get a close-up view).

• In addition to having the Lateran basilica built at Rome (dedicated to the Savior), what resources did Constantine assign to it?
  • Cross-check values in Dr. Harl's Currency in the Age of Diocletian and Constantine: the solidus was minted at the rate of 72 solidi to the Roman pound of gold.
  • The weights are given in Roman pounds: they weighed a little less than 3/4 of a pound of our measures.
• What features does Sozomen say made Constantine's refounded Byzantium, Constantinople, especially Christian?
• What features of Constantinople does Sozomen note apart from their religious significance?
• What types of scenes are included on the Arch of Constantine? Compare and contrast to literary treatments of emperors' activities.
• Looking ahead: Study Guide for Exam 1

Wednesday 27 September

• What "message" did major imperial building projects suggest to the Roman people? Using specific projects of the Tetrarchy, Maxentius, and Constantine to illustrate the concepts involved, explain how material structures conveyed ideas about the Roman state, Roman power, and Roman emperors.
• How did Maxentius use public building to promote his claims to imperial authority? What were his major projects?
• How did Constantine have himself memorialized in public building at Rome's center? How do his public works relate to earlier building projects?
• How did specifically Christian projects figure in Constantine's building at Rome? What sort of church-building did Constantine provide for, when, and where?
• Compare and contrast Constantine's building at Byzantium, when he refounded it as Constantinople, to his building at Rome: what did he have built where? How did he integrate religious and non-religious structures in his new capital?

• Review all material assigned to date for Exam I on Friday, and organize your thoughts about important central focuses of our inquiry; see the Study Guide for suggestions with which to start. What are the big events that set the course of Roman history through the periods we have been tracing? Put them together in sequence. Analyze their causes and effects, so that you can understand the sequence as a progression, not just an arbitrary series.
• Review all the assigned study-materials to date, and your notes on them. What information have they presented us with? How have they presented it? How does this information relate to the events, causes, and effects we have been tracing? Identify good items of relevant source-material you can cite and explain in support of your insights into our shared historical inquiry.
• Review all class-discussions to date, and your notes on them (including Excursus 1, group-notes from in-class exercises, and the notes on Lactantius that put together all the groups' work). What types of analysis have we brought to bear on our sources? What have we learned? Identify good examples of source-analysis that you can explain in support of your insights. Think also about how you can apply the same techniques to other sources we have maybe examined from different angles - capitalize on your intellectual resources.
• The study-questions in this file are typically fairly open-ended. They encourage you to think through the implications of our material, and explore the connections you find. Exam questions will suggest a tighter focus, in the interests of being possible to answer within the confines of an in-class exercise. The two sets of questions will come together in that if you have been thinking about the issues raised by class discussions and these study questions, and noting where our sources provide important evidence and how we can use it, you will be well prepared to write concrete, specific, persuasive essays on the exam. The more you can back up your ideas with specific, concrete evidence and clear explanations, the more impressively you will make your exam demonstrate your mastery of the material.

Friday 29 September

• CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed the first examination.
• Keep thinking about the exam questions: in an even-more-perfect world, what more could you say about this history, these sources, and these techniques of historical inquiry?

• Tonight's set of texts in Lee tracks Constantine's position in relationship to various religious traditions, beliefs, and religiously-identified groups within the Roman empire. Each item represents a slightly different configuration. The differences relate both to how Constantine advanced within his relationships of power inside the Empire, and to who is looking.
  • Classify and identify the context of each item. What variety of text does it belong to: who "speaks" the item, on what kind of occasion, to what audience? What kind of a transaction is involved, either effected by the source-text pr reported in it? When does the item date from, and what was Constantine's political position at that time?
  • What religious references does each source-text make? What controversial or non-controversial concerns are at issue? What does the transaction that concerns the source suggest was understood about Constantine's relationship with divinity?
  • What human communities are concerned in relationship to each text? How does the text portray Constantine's relationship with them?
• What does Cameron report about the the Donatist Schism? the Arian controversy? (Look back at the relevant pages of Ch. IV, too, and in connection with the Arian controversy note also information about the Nicene Council and the terms homoousios/"homoousian".) Who was involved? What was at stake? How does this information relate to Lee, item # 3.3 (a document of the Great Persecution, assigned in this class for 9/15) and Lee, item # 4.6 (assigned for tonight)?
• What kind of a relationship did Constantine form between himself and Christian bishops? What social role and public position did bishops tend to occupy, apart from and in connection with their relationship with the emperor? How did relations evolve after Constantine?
• Meanwhile, what happened to the relationship between the emperor and the traditional pagan cults observed within the Empire?
• How did relations between pagans and Christians evolve?
• What new forms of Christian religiosity developed?

Monday 2 October

• How did the organized personnel and power-structure of the Christian community networked across the Empire -"the Church", as an institution- help to sustain individual Christians and their Christian faith? In what ways did it regulate them - whether you think of the regulation as supportive or restrictive, what did it entail? As we read ahead this term, continue to look for indications of when individuals or groups at the time felt the Church's regulation to be supportive or restrictive, and why, and what other evaluations others made of the same regulation at the same time.
• How were bishops chosen? How were they endowed with the authority that made them bishops?
• How did the choice and authority of bishops and other clergy figure in the Donatist schism? How did the Church deal with the problem? How did the emperor's authority get involved? How far did the emperor involve his authority in dealing with the problem? What precedents did this episode establish?
• What controversies provoked the Nicene Council in 325? In what way does the emperor seem to have expected form, proceedings, and conclusions of the Council would help to resolve the controversies? Did they? Why or why not? What precedents for the operations of the Church did the Council establish?
• What principles, what goals, and what sense of how things worked can you trace in Constantine's policies regarding the religious faiths and practices of his realm? Analyze specific incidents and identify general trends.

The first 13 books of Ammianus Marcellinus's history are lost. The text we know begins in the wake of Constantius II's campaign against the usurper Magnentius, in the West, in 353; 14.1 moves to the East, to the administration at Antioch of Constantius's Caesar, his cousin Gallus.

• As far as possible, distinguish what Ammianus says Gallus did and Constantius did in respect to Gallus (fact) from how Ammianus extrapolates motivations (speculation) and assesses character (evaluation).
  • How did the deputized rule of an Augustus's Caesar operate in Antioch at this period? What powers of office did Gallus exercise? In what ways does Ammianus assert those powers were abused - by whose agency?
  • Why does Gallus get in trouble with Constantius? What does he do that makes things worse? What (according to Ammianus) does Gallus's fate imply about Constantius and his rulership?
• Compare and contrast the revolt of Silvanus, in Gaul, to what happens to Gallus. Again, what powers were being exercised? How did the crisis evolve?

Wednesday 4 October

• Classify and contextualize Ammianus's work as a source for historical inquiry. What does he write about, with what scope and central focus? On what information does he draw? How does he select and interpret his source-material for the purposes of his own composition?
• Focusing our inquiry for today within Ammianus's reporting about Gallus, what norms and what violations of the standard responsibilities of a Caesar does Ammianus reflect: from his portrait of dysfunction, what ideas about normal functioning can you draw?
• What elements of dysfunction does Ammianus analyze: what went wrong, what was wrong about the way it went, and why did it go wrong (at least in Ammianus's view)? What expectations about imperial administration are reflected in Ammianus's assessments?

• How does Ammianus use his own personal experiences in writing his national history? To what information about events and persons did he have direct access: where did he himself personally go? what did he do? What does he include in his account, besides factually reporting events and persons? To what effects? Consider both the revolt of Silvanus and the siege of Amida.
• What resources for story-telling does Ammianus draw out of his own involvement with the revolt of Silvanus? Compare and contrast with his account of Gallus's execution, to show what kind of coloring he could insert without direct personal involvement: did being involved change his handling of the political considerations that frame both narrations?
• What experiences besides his own does Ammianus include in his narrative of the siege of Amida? From whose perspective does his narrative make the reader look at the events? How?
• Finalize your proposals for the collaborative research project - the proposals are due at the start of class Friday 10/6!

Friday 6 October

• Why does Ammianus, in "signing off" from his history, identify himself as "a former soldier and a Greek": what biographical facts specific to Ammianus, and what broader cultural-historical trends of the later Roman empire generally, is Ammianus referring to? What importance do they bear for the way he presents his whole work of history-writing?
• When he relates the story of Silvanus's usurpation, what parts of his own experience in the events does Ammianus emphasize? How does this emphasis help engage the reader? How does it help advance Ammianus's overall interpretation of how Roman government worked (or broke down and ceased working) during Constantius's reign?
• When he relates the story of the Persian invasion of 359 and the siege of Amida, what parts of his own experience does Ammianus emphasize? How does his personal-witness view color his presentation of events?
• What types of events and actions - of military people in warfare, and of civilians in territory subject to invasion and military action - does Ammianus use the episode of Persian invasion in 359 in order to illustrate? What information does Ammianus present as relevant to this episode? What elements of this particular series of event are also important to the experiences of war in later Roman antiquity, in general?

• Book 14.6 steps out of Ammianus's narrative to assess contemporary life at Rome - with a satirical eye, whose vision doesn't always coincide with the images Ammianus's narrative produces. In this semi-detachable overview, what qualities of Roman life does Ammianus emphasize? How does he characterize the interests of the rich, the poor, foreigners as opposed to native residents, separately and in their interactions with one another? How does he characterize the relationship of the Roman past with the Roman present?
• What events does Ammianus report going on at Rome under local administration (15.7, 19.10)? How do they compare with his set-piece characterization of 14.6?
• What special events does Ammianus report in connection with imperial action at Rome, in the case of Constantius's visit in 357 (16.10) and having an Egyptian obelisk imported and raised in the Circus Maximus (17.4)? What resonances - of what pasts - get imported together with the obelisk?

Wednesday 11 October

• For what reasons is Rome important to Ammianus's contemporary History of the Roman empire, even though Rome had ceased to be a main center of government in his day?
• What responsibilities were assigned to the Roman Empire's two Urban Prefects, the Urban Prefect of Rome (PVR) and the Urban Prefect of Constantinople (PVC)? How old was each prefecture, as an office?
• Trace the pattern of observations Ammianus makes about urban prefects of Rome in sections 14.6, 15.7, and 19.10 (for example; he deals with other prefects in other sections).
  • What expectations and standards does Ammianus apply to the prefects in order to evaluate their performance of their office: what cultural and social and administrative values inform his judgments?
  • What events of their prefectures does Ammianus focus on? What do these episodes illustrate about urban life at Rome in the mid-fourth century, the duties and power of the urban prefect of Rome, and the way in which individual officials and the mass of lower-class citizens interacted in public?
  • Compare and contrast these episodes to Ammianus's general characterizations of Roman history and of contemporary residents of Rome: how well do Ammianus's specifics substantiate his generalizations?
• Compare and contrast the ceremony surrounding Constantius's visit to Rome in 357 (16.10) with Ammianus's other portraits of Constantius and his conduct of the imperial office. What ideas about the figure of the emperor are performed in the adventus? What ideas about Rome does Ammianus suggest in this particular narrative? How does this performance put ideas into action symbolically? Compare and contrast to the interactions of urban prefects and the Roman masses.
• How does Constantius's obelisk contribute to his visit's performance of late-Roman ideals for imperial conduct? Compare and contrast to other remarks Ammianus makes about Constantius, and monuments at Rome (think about what Ammianus reports about the obelisk's origins and about the associations it bears).

• As Ammianus describes it, with what ceremonial gestures and words does Constantius make Julian Caesar? What does the staged scene try to imply about Constantius and Julian and the empire? How does Ammianus reflect on those implications?
• Trace Julian's activity in his first years as Caesar: what tasks does he undertake? How well does he succeed? Compare and contrast to Ammianus's account of how Gallus (Julian's half-brother) earlier performed as a Caesar to Constantius.
• How does Ammianus characterize the relationship between Julian and Constantius? Compare and contrast to [the partial evidence we have for] Ammianus's account of Constantius's relationship with Gallus. How does the Caesar's performance of his responsibilities correlate with his relationship with the Augustus? How do Ammianus's portraits of Gallus, Constantius, and Julian individually correlate with the way he portrays their relationships as senior and junior emperors?
• Prepare Writing Exercise 2 for Friday 13 October.

Friday 13 October

• Sort out the chronology of events in our readings from Ammianus Marcellinus: we've skipped around in his text here and there in order to follow certain themes, but we mustn't lose sight of historical sequence. Also distinguish passages of reflection and summary, such as the "Rome digression", from narrative passages where Ammianus himself is concerned to relate events in sequence.
• What conventional ideas about how a Roman emperor consults and gets advice about important decisions are reflected in Ammianus's inferences about why Constantius elevated Julian as Caesar? Where else does Ammianus reflect the same conventional ideas about advice, in connection with Constantius or with other rulers?
• What ideas about Roman imperial power are reflected in Ammianus's account of the ceremony in which Constantius made Julian his Caesar? What elements of the performance do the reflecting? How? In short, analyze this public ceremony as a sort of pageant of imperial power, like Constantius's adventus to Rome and his conduct there: how did sensory elements (sight, sound, etc.) help make late Roman imperial public ceremonies into vehicles of communication between emperor and people?
• Trace Julian's first two years in Gaul as Constantius's Caesar. What duties do his activities reflect his having been assigned? What does Ammianus suggest Julian needed to learn in order to do his duties effectively? What do Julian's responses to these challenges reflect about him, as Ammianus presents these events - what evaluation of Julian as Caesar does Ammianus's narrative suggest? How does the evidence of the narrative compare to Ammianus's explicit evaluations in summary descriptive passages such as (though by no means limited to) 16.5?

• Review the feedback your work received on Writing Exercise 2, and reflect on how you can apply to your own work the insights you gained from reading and giving feeback on others' work. Revise and improve your work accordingly, so that you present your best judgment on the problem set for the assignment, in the most convincing way. Have your revised paper finished in hand, ready to hand in together with Friday's draft and its peer-review sheet, at the start of class Monday 16 October.
• Trace Julian's biography. What relationships, what events, what passions set the course of his life?
• What religious goals did Julian pursue? What measures did he take to pursue them?
• What other major policies did Julian pursue as emperor? What measures did he take?
• How did Julian's subjects evaluate his person and his policies as emperor? What interests of their own affected their estimations of him?

Have a great break!

Revised 13 October 2006 by jlong1@orion.it.luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/