CLST 277 / CATH 200 / MSTU 298: The World of Late Antiquity Spring Semester 2012 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.

Wednesday 18 January

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
• periods of Roman history: Regal, Republic, Empire (including Principate and Later Roman Empire); have a general idea also of the development of the Roman state and its influence through these periods
• institutions of Roman government: Senate, dictatorship, province, princeps
• terms and concepts relevant to Roman Imperial government: Caesar, Augustus, "restoration of the Republic", dynasty, Antoninian Constitution, antoninianus

• 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?
• Briefly note figures Cameron identifies as significant for developments of the period, including points of orientation mentioned in the "from today's class" section and Septimius Severus, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, Diocletian, Constantine. What makes them important? When were they important: pin them down chronologically, so they can help serve as points of reference for other figures and events.

Friday 20 January

• 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?
• What 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 the various crises in the third century created social and administrative stresses that helped perpetuate or precipitate more crises. Be able to identify specific examples and to explain how cause and effect function in them. Consider: 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.

• Rael and Koeller (linked as Study Resources to the syllabus on Day 1) outline methodologies for looking at primary and secondary sources: not every source we'll look at will yield every detail they're thinking of, so don't worry about applying them too minutely, but do keep track for each primary source we use of its date (as closely as we can tell), the location with which it is connected and other salient information about the social, cultural, and historical context that produced it (again, as closely as we can tell), what type of item or text the source is and how it would have worked, as such, in the context for which it was produced, what information it bears that is relevant for our inquiries, and how you can connect it to historical developments we are tracking and other sources we are considering. (You can see I'm paraphrasing ideas in both historians' recommendations.) As you build up this network of background information, you will become better and better able to recognize patterns, understand significances, and make connections - keep examining, and enjoy the quest!
• Read through the selected passages in Lee as examples illustrating general trends. What patterns recur? 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?

Monday 23 January

• In the third-century Roman empire, as exemplified in our readings, what did traditional religious practices (pagan and Jewish) typically entail? Be able to put individual examples into their place in relationship to the whole spectrum of divinities, activities, and goals involved.
• How did traditional religious practices put individuals in relationship with their communities at various levels: families, occupation-practitioners or other purpose-oriented groups, local cities, or the Roman state as a whole? What "communities" are involved, and how does religious activity enact individuals' membership in the community?
• What private, individual goals did pagan worship typically pursue?
• 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 pieces of writing by a Christian woman to have been preserved and transmitted to the modern period.

• In what events does Perpetua take part? 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 25 January

• How do Roman authorities conduct the persecution to which Perpetua and Felicity fall victim: what do they do? How thorough is this episode of persecution? 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? How can you tell?
• 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 Roman people pursue, in their activities and in their meditations, that help tell us about the late Roman world? What kinds of literature were they 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? These questions too we will be coming back to.

Friday 27 January

• 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?

• How did Diocletian become emperor?
  • Unless of course you've already started doing so (), now 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, but you should be familiar with brackets of times and with sequences of important events, in order to understand how the forces of history operated in them. Keep track of the major figures and events as we talk about them all semester. As you read, relate individual sources to this major outline. Awareness of how individual events and items of evidence relate to historical developments makes one solid step toward historical understanding.
  • 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 when he became emperor, that challenged his abilities to rule successfully? What measures did he take to meet these challenges?

Monday 30 January

• What measures did Roman emperors of the third century take with the goal of holding on to their office longer and more effectively - and how did these measures nonetheless contribute to further destabilizing imperial power? Be able to identify specific examples of policies and to explain both their advantages (at least short-term) and their consequences (especially longer-term).
• Review the military engagements of the Roman Empire in the second half of the third century: continue to build your time-line of important developments.
• Summing up and looking forward, consider the results of the "Third-Century Crisis": what sorts of problems 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 challenges?
• Trace the stages in which imperial power was assumed and conferred, 284-293, and compare and contrast to Roman constitutional understandings before 282 (the accession of Carus).
  • 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" [as opposed to "billion"] 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?

Wednesay 1 February

• 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 each measure: 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 2/3.

Friday 3 February

• Compare and contrast what happened in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, in the Decian Persecution, and what was called for in the successive stages of the Great 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?
  • How does the nature of the source that gives you your information (part of its "purpose," in terms of Rael's basic steps for investigating a primary source, part of its "classification," in terms of Koeller's steps) shape the evidence it contains, and therefore the understanding you can derive? (Think about this sort of question as it applies to specific sources we're using, and as a general principle of historical investigation.)

• 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 6 February

• 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 within 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?
• Begin keeping score: how do Lactantius's "Persecutors" among the Tetrarchs each die?
• What document does Lactantius quote? Contextualize it and identify what type of document it is, therefore what sort of use it can be as a source. Whose interests does it represent?

Wednesday 8 February

• What types of information does Lactantius include in addition to information about persecution of Christians by Roman imperial authority? 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?
• How does Lactantius combine and select facts (relating to the Tetrarchic "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 does Lactantius portray Constantine? Compare and contrast what Lactantius reports Constantine actually does with what sort of person Lactantius claims everybody thinks Constantine is: how much do the two sets of ideas have to do with one another?
• 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?

• 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 Licinius? What actions does he take? What sympathies does he display? What does he achieve? Does Lactantius's portrait of Licinius remain consistent throughout the text?
• Continue keeping score: how do Lactantius's "Persecutors" among the Tetrarchs each die?
• How does Lactantius use female characters to enhance his main story-line?

Monday 14 February - Happy Valentine's Day!

• How does Lactantius organize his account of the persecutions through which he and Donatus lived? How does the structure of the text help push readers to interpret the information Lactantius provides in certain ways (which ways, we accordingly infer, were part of Lactantius's aim in writing)?
• Bring together your overall assessment of Lactantius's On the Manner in which the Persecutors Died as a primary source for the persecutions of Christians 303-311 and 311-313.
  • What information does Lactantius provide about the persecutions?
  • What information does Lactantius provide about other aspects of the Tetrarchs' rule, in addition to the persecutions of Christians they carried out?
  • How complete and how accurate is the information Lactantius presents?
  • By what techniques does Lactantius "spin" his information?
  • To what ends does Lactantius appear to be presenting the information he is presenting, "spun" or otherwise?
  • How can a dispassionate historical inquiry, not invested on any side of the controversies of religion and personal self-identification the persecutions and Lactantius's account of them entail, get the most value out of Lactantius's information?

• 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, outside of religious considerations, Constantine administered the empire. 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?

Wednesday 16 February

• 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?

• 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 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 18 February

• 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 or 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 Donatist Schism? Who was involved? Where? What was at stake? How does this information relate to Lee, item # 3.3 (assigned reading for 2/7)?
• What does Cameron report about the Arian controversy? (Note also information about the Nicene Council and the terms homoousios-consubstantial-homoousian.) Who was involved? What was at stake? How does this information relate to 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 21 February

• 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 the semester continues, 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.

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; the monuments on which research-groups are focusing for Excursus 2: Imperial Building provide a sample of still-existing examples of imperial building in capital cities of the empire, from the First Tetrarchy to the reign of Constantine's longest-reigning son and successor, Constantius II.

• 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?
• Prepare Excursus 2: Imperial Building for Wednesday 2/23.

Wednesday 23 February

• What "message" did major imperial building projects suggest to the Roman people? Using specific projects of the Tetrarchy, Maxentius, Constantine, and Constantius II to illustrate the concepts involved, explain how material structures conveyed ideas about the Roman state, Roman power, and Roman emperors.
  • What were important types of monumental projects late-Roman emperors typically undertook?
  • How did the form, decoration, and location of late-Roman emperors' monumental projects relate to the use their citizens made of the monuments and to the "messages" they could take away from them?
• 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?

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?
• Finalize your proposals for the collaborative research project - the proposals are due at the start of class Friday 2/25!

Friday 25 February

• 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?

Monday 28 February

• 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 Ammianus 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 2 March

• 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.
• 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?

Friday 4 March

• 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?
• Be able to identify key episodes in Julian's biography. What relationship did his life bear, even before he became Constantius's Caesar, to major events of Constantinian family politics?

• 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?
• Periodically, sort out the chronology of events about which our particular topics of focus are organized. In Ammianus Marcellinus, for example, we've skipped around in the text in order to follow certain themes, but we mustn't lose sight of historical sequence.
  • For Ammianus Marcellinus, particularly, it is also worth distinguishing passages of summary and general reflection from narrative passages where Ammianus himself is concerned to relate events in sequence.
  • How does Ammianus use reflection and narration in juxtaposition with one another?

Have a great break!

Revised 7 February 2012 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/