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 16 October

• 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?
• Today's major (planned) digressions cover subjects to which we will return:
  • What training did ancient Roman citizens identify as "education", and what did they not-identify in this way: compare and contrast to our own culture's ideas. What did the Romans expect education to do for the people who pursued it? Whom did they expect to pursue it?
  • What is meant by the term Neoplatonism? What importance did it have in late-antique intellectual history? Who were its major figures and what contributions did they make?
• How did Julian, in his capacity as emperor, try to support a religious revival within the Empire? What did he do? What did he refuse to do? How did he try to mobilize opinion? Identify and be able to analyze actions and intended effects of specific policies Julian promoted for pagan priests, and for educators.
• How could a Neoplatonic understanding (like Julian's) reconcile material sacrifice and ritual with a radically transcendent conception of divinity?

• Note the hard facts in the "Introduction" to the on-line translation of Julian's Misopogon, but IGNORE the moral evaluation it provides ("his mistake was..." "...frivolous city"): it is too subjective and unquantified to be useful. Also, correct the dates: Julian was in Antioch from July 362 to March 363.
• What does Julian say he has endeavored to do, during the time he has based his operations in Antioch? How does he say the Antiochenes have responded? Keep in mind that the conversational exchanges pictured in the satire are conventions of the literary form Julian is using, not something he or his readers took literally - but what ideas about the emperor and his relations with the people of the city does Julian use this literary form to represent?
• How does Julian satirize his own physical person in Misopogon? How does the physical image fit in with the moral values he claims to uphold? How does he contrast himself with the Antiochenes?
• What does Julian say in Misopogon about the city-space, social customs, and history of Antioch? How do these ideas relate to the commentary he makes on his own recent actions and policies? What other historical value should these remarks bear?
• What does Julian say about his own education in Misopogon? Why does he discuss it in a public document?

From today's class:

• Identify the circumstances surrounding Julian's writing and publication of Misopogon: what concerns brought him to Antioch? what other concerns did he have to face while he resided there?
• Misopogon presents challenges to historical analysis both in its loose structure ("diatribe," a form used for popular moralizing, rather than elegantly logical rhetoric), and in its use of irony, sarcasm, and humor. But if you look at how it confronts Julian and the Antiochenes dynamically, it falls into four main sections, as we have discussed. Get a handle on the satire by thinking about what themes center each of the four sections, and how Julian shows himself and the Antiochenes going head-to-head in each of them. Keeping in mind that the appeal Julian is making to the Antiochenes through this very sophisticated piece depends on their actually upholding cultural values much more similar to the ones he claims for himself in the piece than he says that they do -again, he's being ironical- what cultural values does he say inform his own behavior? What other late-antique works we have read reflect similar values? The more specific the examples you can think of, the better.
• What information does Misopogon contain about Julian's endeavors, as emperor and pontifex maximus, to promote religious reform? What goals has he pursued? What actions has he taken so as to pursue them? What consequences did he expect to follow on his actions? What consequences did follow? Why? Compare and contrast this account of Julian's actions to the direct documentation of his policies and methods we have read in Lee's selections.
• What information does Misopogon contain about Julian's endeavors, while he resided in Antioch, to improve civic life there? What policies did he initiate? What concerns of the urban population did he meet? What actions did he take? What consequences did he expect to follow on his actions? What consequences did follow? Why?

• How does Augustine frame his Confessions: what does he claim to be doing by giving this account of himself? to whom? why?
• How does Augustine analyze what he supposes he must have done and felt as a baby? He says he cannot exactly remember his own experiences of this period: on what basis does he make his analysis? What forces does he say operate in a baby's life?
• What aspects of his boyhood and schooling does Augustine discuss? Why does he choose them to discuss? How did he, and how does he, react to literature?
• When Augustine was a boy, which members of his family were religious? What religion(s) did they observe? How did their beliefs affect Augustine?
• What happens to Augustine at puberty? How does his father react? Why?
• What did the "Pear-Tree Incident" actually amount to? Why does Augustine dwell on it so?

Friday 20 October

• Recurring again to Dr. Koeller's History Basics, how can we classify Augustine's Confessions as a source for late antique social life and personal religious reflection? As we endeavor to understand this source, in Dr. Koeller's terms, how do Augustine's purposes in writing intersect with the information he provides? The Confessions don't issue the same sharp challenge of bias that, say, Lactantius's On the Manner in which the Persecutors Died does, but selection and, especially, Augustine's memoiristic re-evaluation of past actions and feelings do filter the information he offers: how can we best take it into account?
• Compare and contrast what Augustine says about personal relationships within his family to other information we have encountered about late-Roman familial relationships. How typical or how rare does Augustine's experience of family seem to have been? In what ways do factors such as place of origin, class, education, and religion affect individuals' relationships? Identify specific examples from our source-material.
• Compare and contrast what Augustine says about learning -in general as well as in the context of his formal education- with other information we have encountered about late-Roman learning and education. How typical or how rare do Augustine's experiences of learning and education seem to have been? How can you tell?

• Trace the information Augustine reports about his mother Monnica and her life, as he seems to have judged it relevant to his own message across the Confessions. What aspects of her life does he single out? What does he report? What comparisons and contrasts can you draw between Monnica and other evidence we have seen about late-antique life (especially, but not necessarily exclusively, women's life and Christian life)?
• What ideas do today's selection of texts in Lee suggest about Christian women in the late-antique family, women's service in Christian church-communities, and Christian sexual ethics? Note where and when the texts each originated; how far do they let us generalize any set of "Christian ideas about women"?

Monday 23 October

• Situate Augustine in his own historical, social, and cultural context: from what distinctive angle are we looking through the window that he opens onto late-antique life?
• What part of Augustine's life is included within his Confessions? At what point in his career had he arrived when he began to write the Confessions? How does the perspective of Augustine-the-writer relate to the perspective Augustine-the-character takes within the narrative of the Confessions, and how does this perspective affect the use we can make of Augustine's Confessions as a literary source for late Roman history?
• According to what Augustine indicates, how was authority distributed in his parents' household: who effectively controlled what concerns of the household as a whole, and on what basis did he or she exert this control? How can you tell? Consider both religious and secular areas of concern and activity, and how Monnica connects her religious principles and her secular activities.
• What normative expectations of marital authority does Augustine suggest were generally held within his and his primary readers' society? Compare and contrast the norms Augustine seems to recognize as practiced (whether or not he thinks they are good norms to have) with other texts we have seen relating to family life; distinguish descriptive sources, where real-life conditions are reported, and prescriptive sources, where someone is recommending a particular idea of how things "should" be, either by endorsing "good" conduct or by censuring "bad" conduct.
• What religious activities does Monnica practice, at home in Africa and in Italy? To what extent does her activity conform with gendered standards of the late-antique Church?
• What practices and ideals of family life, and in particular of female conduct, does Monnica's childhood illustrate?

• What values and concerns do other people in Augustine's life connect with Augustine's education? What values and concerns connected with literature and education are especially important to Augustine himself?
• What aspects of Manichaean doctrine does Augustine recall (Book 3.6 and following)? In what light does he portray this phase of his spiritual life? How did Monnica react?
• How does Augustine reflect on astrology? How does this subject relate to his spiritual concerns?
• What happens to Augustine's friend at Thagaste? Why does it affect Augustine as it does?
• How does Augustine pursue his interests in beauty and in philosophy? What do these subjects have to do with one another, and with Augustine's other spiritual interests at the time? How does he look back on his investigations?
• Prepare Excursus 2 for Wednesday.

Wednesday 25 October

• Trace the course of Augustine's education, as he describes it in Books 1-4 of his Confessions. What kinds of things does he describe learning, at what stages of formal and informal education? What types of learning were a part of late-antique schooling? What types of learning were not part of schooling, and how did Augustine pursue them?
• Through what stages did late-antique schooling progress? Be able to identify and to distinguish "primary" education, studies with a grammaticus, and studies with a rhetor, and to track Augustine's formal education through these classes.
• With what purposes was formal education identified in late antiquity? How did what people did in formal education help advance these purposes?
• What people are involved in the different passages of Augustine's learning? In what ways? How did he form his relationships with them?
• In what extra-curricular but studious activities did Augustine engage, during and after his own time of being a student? Be able to identify what he did, why and on what basis, and how it related to formal studies.

• What major interests and developments in literary and visual culture does Cameron outline as having been important in late antiquity? Where in our study-material to date can you identify items that help illustrate ideas she discusses?
• How do Claudian's short poems about The Magnet (one poem) and The Crystal (7 short poems on the same topic) combine natural science with visual imagery, traditional mythology, and other ideas in order to make elegant verbal curios comparable to the objects they are describing? What aesthetic values discussed by Cameron do these poems represent?

Friday 27 October

• Extend your understanding of late-antique education from the people it involved and the processes and concerns it entailed further to its social and cultural effects: how did the education of one set of people affect other members of the groups involved in education and members of groups not involved in education? How did education connect with late-antique visual and material culture? Identify specific examples and be able to explain how education is either involved or parallel.
• How did late antique Christians react to the prevalence of pagan elements in traditional literature and art? N.b.: several different answers apply - distinguish them, and consider why all the differences appear. Identify concrete examples that illustrate the interface of Christianity and pagan elements in traditional culture, and be able to explain what they show about Christian attitudes toward tradition and toward paganism.
• Depending what you read about late antique art, you may see contrasts made between the naturalism of artistic styles identified with earlier periods, and more schematic visual presentations that start to appear in our period. The distinction is worth making, but it has been over-drawn (recent scholarship is doing a better job now). Think of examples of naturalistic and schematic representation in late antique art, and be able to explain how the style chosen for a particular representation contributes to the artistic impression it makes.
• What aesthetic values were particularly admired by late antique viewers of late antique art and visual culture generally? Think of examples to illustrate what they saw and what they liked.

• What did Basil of Caesarea think was the "Right Use of Greek Literature"? What distinctions does he draw between form and content, or between religious and moral content? What standards of evaluation does he recommend?
• Form a general impression of the elite foods represented by the late-antique recipes collected and presented by Apicius - we won't bog down on technical details, but one nice thing about late antiquity is the chance this text offers to think concretely about a different sense than academic discourse often gets to address. What sorts of foods featured as major ingredients in these recipes? (For an example from the American table, "Irish stew" would be classed as a recipe for lamb, though of course it includes other ingredients too.) What sorts of flavorings and combinations played an important role seasoning major ingredients in different dishes? What cooking techniques get used often?

Monday 30 October

• Compare and contrast the diet partially represented by the recipes in the text ascribed to Apicius with the standard fare most people within the Roman Empire ate.
  • What foods were principally involved?
  • What were the preparations like - what tastes were especially appreciated?
  • What indications of social and economic status are implicated in Apicius's recipes?
• What does the format of Apicius's recipes imply about the late-antique users of this text?
• Who was Basil of Caesarea? Apart from his treatise On the Right Use of Greek Literature, for what other reasons was he an important person to know about in our period?
• What does Basil argue is the "right use" of literature with pagan content? In what way does his treatise demonstrate, as well as legislate, this "right use"? What values and principles does he use to determine what is "right" about the "right use" he recommends?

• Who was Mani, as the Cologne Mani Codex remembers him? What does the Codex record that Mani identified as the crucial event of his life? What did Mani say he learned from this experience? What does the Codex record that he did, in consequence?
• What figures does the Manichaean Psalmbook identify as theologically important? What does it say they do?
• What features of Manichaean doctrine and practice does the Christian author of P.Ryl. 3.469 object to? Why?
• What rights did Roman emperors try to deny to Manichees? On what basis?
• How does Augustine, as a Hearer, begin to find problems with Manichaean doctrine? How has he signalled these difficulties in earlier parts of his account, before he comes to the time when he confronts them? How does he try to solve them: where does he look for clarification? Does he find it? How does he react?
• Trace the advance in Augustine's career Confessions 5 adds to his trajectory in in Books 1-4, from teaching at Thagaste and Carthage now to Rome and Milan. What further information about the profession of rhetoric and the position of learning in public life does Augustine reveal?
• How does Augustine encounter Ambrose? How do they interact?

Wednesday 1 November

• What were the main ideas of Manichaean doctrine? What affinities with other spiritual and intellectual movements in the later Roman empire did Manichaeanism claim or exhibit - whether because Mani was influenced by them in forming his doctrine, or with the result that Roman citizens were more sympathetic to Manichaeanism than they might have been to more alien doctrines?
• In what ways did Mani's actions and the texts that he and his followers produced help spread his doctrine? Consider both pragmatic and emotional aspects. Identify specific pieces of evidence for your assessments, and be able to explain and justify them.
• Compare and contrast Augustine's reactions to Manichaeanism, both as a young man, within the narrative of Confessions, and as an older man, writing Confessions, with both Augustine's reactions to Christian Scripture and to classical literature including philosophy, and other contemporary reactions of ecclesiastical writers and Roman emperors. What dangers in Manichaeanism does Augustine's period of interest illustrate? How accurately do reactions against Manichaeanism portray the religion and its doctrine?

• Review all material assigned since Exam I, in preparation for Exam II on Friday. 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.
  • Besides "event-history", we are now also engaged with the history of broader social and cultural trends - what important developments of our period shaped the way people interacted with one another or the way they looked at and thought about their world? Where in our study-material have we seen particular moments in these trends? What elements of the trends drew on earlier traditions? What is new? Identify and analyze the causes and the effects.
• 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, ideas, trends, 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 study-questions in the other file and above in this file so as to refresh your insights into important lines of inquiry.
• Review all class-discussions to date, and your notes on them (including Excursus 1&2, group-notes from in-class exercises, and the notes on Augustine, Confessions Books 1&2 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 the other file and this file are 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.
• Good luck!

Friday 3 November

• CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed the second 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?

• Trace the succession of emperors from Julian (the last successful member of the Constantinian dynasty) to Theodosius: who came to power? On what basis? What important events for the Empire as a whole took place during their reigns? Use the succession of emperors as a set of points of reference for chronology of this period.
• How did the parameters of social class (especially at the upper ranks) shift during this period? How did class relate to positions in the Roman army or imperial government? How did class relate to economic power? What other kinds of social power did superior rank confer?
• How was the class of coloni, tenant-farmers, defined? To what regulations were these people subject, and when were these rules instituted? What concerns does the Roman government seem to have been trying to guarantee by these rules? What other consequences did they have?

Monday 6 November

• What authority made Jovian emperor? What problems did he have to address? What measures did he take so as to resolve them? How were his policies evaluated by his contemporaries, and what traditions of Roman values informed their evaluation?
• What authority made Valentinian emperor? What authority made Valens and Gratian emperors, at what rank? What authority made Valentinian II emperor? What ideas and emotions concerning imperial legitimacy does the succession of this dynasty illustrate the Roman armies and people felt?
• What religious policies are associated with Valentinian and other members of his dynasty?
• What constellations of power did the phenomenon of child-emperors create? What stake did people besides the child-emperor himself have in his position: senior emperors of the same dynasty, officials of his court, non-office-holding members of the imperial family, Roman citizens in the area where his court was based, potential usurpers?
• What military pressures did Valens have to face? Note both specific events and their consequences: how well-equipped was Valens to meet the challenges that confronted him?

• Map the breadth and variety of military challenges Roman emperors had to face throughout the fourth century AD. What patterns of conflict stand out, in which regions? What consequences did these conflicts create?
• How did Theodosius resolve the crisis that climaxed in the Battle of Adrianople? (As Cameron notes, that climax is more a matter of Roman memory than of absolute military significance, but close enough.) What consequences did this solution create?
• What dynamics of threat, defense, and accommodation evolved in the west in the fifth century, between the Roman empire and tribal groups?
• What dynamics of threat, defense, and accommodation evolved in the east from the third and fourth centuries and beyond, between the Roman empire and the Persian empire? How were tribal groups involved?
• How did Romans evaluate their defenses in the fourth and fifth centuries? What problems did they identify? Compare and contrast to modern analysis: what were they looking at that is different from what we tend to look at, and what concerns motivated them to form the analysis they did? What political problems were related to concerns about the defense of the Empire?

Wednesday 8 November

• What objectives can be identified on either side of the later Roman empire's military conflicts with tribal groups? What means did the Romans and the tribes each use to pursue their objectives? What resources did they call on?
• What objectives can be identified on either side of the later Roman empire's military conflicts with the Persian empire? What means did the Romans and the Persians each use to pursue their objectives? What resources did they call on?
• What other occasions called on Roman military resources? What other dynamics did these conflicts generate?
• What measures generally credited to Diocletian endeavored to address problems with the military defense of the Roman empire: what was done, and how would it have helped?
• What measures generally credited to Constantine endeavored to address problems with the military defense of the Roman empire: what was done, and how would it have helped?
• Trace the historical patterns of non-Romans' service in Roman military forces. How did they change in the mid- and later fourth century? What events and dates mark significant change? What consequences were caused?

• Identify the sequence of events and the significant individual and group-participants in them, whose decisions and actions propel further events. Who does what? what consequences ensue?
• How does Ammianus characterize different barbarian groups relevant to the chain of events and their causes: what cultural values does his account incorporate?
• How does Ammianus characterize Roman officials who play a significant role in the action: what objectives are they pursuing? How do their actions relate to their official responsibilities? Compare and contrast to Roman officials elsewhere in Ammianus's narrative: what picture of Roman administration does his history produce?
• To what extent are Valens and Gratian able to coordinate their actions? Why or why not?

Friday 10 November

• Ammianus double-frames the events of Book 31, first as the concluding episode of Valens's life, then as the concluding episode of his history as a whole. First, note how he does so; then see what new events alter the overall trajectory. What does this epilogue show about Roman resources for recovering from a disaster like the Battle of Adrianople? Finally, think about how looking at an episode of history from different angles changes the way it can be evaluated: what does it matter if you think of it as something for which a particular individual is ultimately responsible -even taking into account the deeds and misdeeds of his subordinates and the conflicting interests to which he is subject- or else as a problem for a whole people?
• What safeguards does Valens attempt to set around the Gothic immigration? Why do they fail? What does Ammianus use this episode to suggest about Roman administration of a frontier zone?
• What other problems of the eastern Empire keep Valens from being able to deal more effectively with the Gothic immigration and its consequences? What bigger problems of imperial resources does this episode illustrate?
• What support is Valens able to call upon Gratian and the western administration for? Why is it not more effective? What problems of the distribution of resources and authority in two halves of the Empire does this episode illustrate?
• What judgments does Ammianus draw from the episode, implicitly as well as explicitly? How does he show that he's drawing them? What cultural and social values (ethnic, national, military, moral, and political) inform his judgments?

Get the complete texts of our documents for tonight on-line: Symmachus, Referral 3 and Ambrose, Letters XVII and XVIII; you may find it helpful also to refer to Lee's introductions to his selections from these documents, items #6.4, 6.5.

• What arguments does Symmachus advance in favor of retaining the Altar of Victory in the Senate House of Rome? How does it, according to him, relate to the well-being of the Roman state? How do emperors' acts concerning the Altar reflect on them as emperors, and on the success of their reigns? What values underlie Symmachus's arguments?
• What arguments does Ambrose advance against retaining the Altar of Victory in the Senate House of Rome? How does Ambrose account for the religious history of the Roman state? What values and assumptions underlie Ambrose's arguments?

Monday 13 November

• Who was Symmachus? Compare and contrast what stake in the Altar of Victory his background and his career gave him, as a representative of his class, with Ambrose's interest.
• Trace the history of the Altar within the Senate House in Rome. What function did it serve: what did people actually do with it? What symbolic value did they attach to it? What changed, from the early Empire to late antiquity?
• Analyze Symmachus's arguments for returning the Altar to its traditional place. What values and understandings -both religious and political- does he attach to the Altar? Based on your other knowledge of late antique cultural values (held by Christians as well as pagans) relating to traditional paganism, how acceptable would Symmachus's arguments have seemed? Be able to cite specific, concrete evidence and to explain how it relates to the arguments Symmachus makes. Are there any arguments an accurate understanding of traditional Roman state cult might have advanced, that Symmachus could not use? What and why?
• How apt and fair are Ambrose's counter-arguments? How does he pick up and reinterpret elements of Symmachus's arguments? How accurately does he represent the functions of the Altar and the traditional state cults of Rome?

• Take Ambrose's On the Sacraments (Lee #14.6) as an example of his rhetorical technique as a bishop: how does he present ideas to his listeners? How does he use imagery? How does he involve his listeners in the experience he is talking about? How does he relate ideas and images from the Old Testament to his Christian message?
• What images does Ambrose use in his evening-hymn (Lee #14.10)? What relationship between worshiper and divinity does he suggest? In what way do Ambrose's language and imagery promote these ideas?
• According to his Letter XX, how was Ambrose involved in controversy over whether a basilica church should be set aside for Arian Christians in Milan, in 385? What was he asked to do? What did he do? How does he justify his position?

Wednesday 15 November

• What are generally recognized as Ambrose's main contributions to the western-European traditions of Catholicism?
  • How did Ambrose's innovations relate to intellectual trends within the late-antique Roman Empire and to specific events of Ambrose's life?
  • Think of relevant examples from Ambrose's preaching, hymnody, and negotiations with emperors, that you can identify and analyze in order to support your insights about what Ambrose did and why it matters.
• What issue was in conflict that Ambrose reported to his sister in Letter XX?
  • Who were the stakeholders? What stakes did Ambrose identify them as having; what conflicting interpretations does his report indicate also operated in the controversy? On what principles were the conflicting claims based? How broadly recognized were those principles, in this period: compare and contrast Ambrose's account to other material we have read this term that touches on related points of imperial and ecclesiastical prerogative.
  • How did the sermon on Job that Ambrose reports he delivered during the conflict relate to the conflict? By referring to this Biblical story, What authority, for what actions, was Ambrose claiming? How did the reference operate this claim?

• What portrait does Augustine present of Ambrose: what does the bishop of Milan do that is important to this witness? Add the impressions Augustine gathers of Ambrose to information about Ambrose we have encountered in other sources, including Ambrose's own writings.
• Make a list of the people Augustine recognizes in Confessions (both in Books 6-7 and in earlier books) as having participated significantly in his spiritual development: teacher-figures, fellow-searchers, people Augustine himself instructs in some way - why are they each important to Augustine in this retrospective account of his life? What information does he give about them and their lives that is useful to historical inquiry about late Roman social life?
• How does Augustine finally reject the idea that astrology significantly relates to an individual's fate?
• How do Neoplatonic texts enable Augustine to change the basis on which he understands God's relationship to the created world? What does this way of thinking enable him to decide that "evil" amounts to? How does he experience this moment of recognition?

Friday 17 November

• What activities took up Ambrose's time as a bishop, according to Augustine, from day to day? What did the routine business of his job entail, apart from political lobbying such as over the Altar of Victory or crises such as the demand he allow a basilica be used for Arian worship? How did Ambrose fit in the intellectual research that informed his preaching in ways that were so useful to Augustine spiritually? Consider too what expertise and what interests of Augustine made him especially sensitive to these facets of Ambrose's experience - how does the nature of the source influence its selection of facts?
• What patterns of late antique society are reflected in Augustine's portrait of Alypius? Why are these general trends important to Augustine, in Alypius's particular case? For our purposes, how does Alypius's individuality enhance the generalized phenomena he illustrates?
• What expectations surround Augustine's prospects for marriage: who brings what objectives to the arrangements? What understandings and values inform the parties' dealings with one another?
• What intellectual problems relating to the nature of divinity and the requirements of religion does Augustine identify as occupying his attention in this period of his life? What information, what kinds of reasoning, and what standards of judgment does he apply to the business of trying to solve his problems?

• Who was Antony, according to Athanasius's account of his life? What did he do? Where did he get the ideas on which he acted, according to Athanasius - what instructions did he think of himself as following, and what examples did he follow?
• Define and be able to identify examples of the main varieties of ascetic lifestyle that late antique culture recognized.
• What problems with asceticism were discussed in our period? From what perspectives did aspects of ascetic lifestyles seem problematical?

Monday 20 November

• Trace how the concept of ascesis developed from Classical antiquity to the usage that gives English the meanings of our word "ascetic": who was using this term, and what did they use it to describe -what activity in pursuit of what goals- and how did the usage change over time?
• What were the main categories of things late antique Christian ascetics renounced for the sake of their spiritual practice? What ideas did they typically attach to their renunciation of these things - why did they think they were appropriate objects of renunciation, for their particular purposes?
• How did Christian ascetic renunciation relate to late-antique ideas about social responsibility? Consider both traditional secular ideas relating to families and the state and specifically Christian ideas about community and social needs. Identify passages in our texts that you can cite and use to explain who raised what concerns, from what perspectives.
• How did Christian ascetic renunciation relate to late-antique ideas about sexuality and family? Identify passages in our texts that you can cite and use to explain who raised what concerns, from what perspectives.
• How did Christian ascetic renunciation relate to late-antique ideas about individual and ecclesiastical authority? Identify passages in our texts that you can cite and use to explain who raised what concerns, from what perspectives.

• Once Augustine's intellectual difficulties with Catholic Christianity are cleared away, you might think, his story would be complete. But it isn't. What changes the nature of his commitment to Christianity? How does it affect him, in the moment and in longer term?
• What changes for Augustine with his conversion? What does not change?
• How does Augustine describe the parameters of Monnica's life in Book 9? How do the other parts of her life's story, that he presents here, recontextualize the way she has figured within Augustine's own spiritual life-story?
• What does Augustine, in retrospect within Book 9, recall about two climactic moments of Ambrose's episcopate during Augustine's time in Milan, the clash with Valentinian II's court over Arian use of a basilica in Milan and the discovery and installation of the relics of the Milanese martyrs Protasius and Gervasius? How does his baptism affect his relationship to these events?

Monday 27 November

• According to the Confessions, Augustine advanced toward his ultimate relationship with the Catholic Christian God along both intellectual and emotional tracks, which sometimes intersected and sometimes parted from one another; sometimes he proceeds in interaction with others, sometimes in private meditation with himself and God. Trace how the two tracks run, together and separately: what concerns arrest Augustine's intellect? where does his heart participate? how do both tracks ultimately converge in his conversion?
• Trace the motif of the "unintended message" impelling someone's spiritual movement, as reported or referred to in Augustine's Confessions. Identify specific episodes - there are good ones in Books 6, 7, and 8. How did this pattern work in social interaction? How did Augustine and other late antique people apply the principle in interpreting similar moments as spiritual messages?

• Identify clearly the authorship, context, and purpose of the various expressions of hostility towards Jews or Judaism tonight's reading-assignment includes.
  • What contacts between Jewish and Christian people got forbidden, as a matter of conciliar Church policy? What attitudes and values do the prohibitions express? On the other hand, what do they imply had been happening - why did the councils choose to articulate the prohibitions?
  • On what kinds of occasions did bishops advance anti-Jewish arguments? What events or what social pressures provoked them - and who was exerting the pressures? What goals were the bishops trying to re-direct by means of their arguments?
  • What policies did emperors enact into law concerning Jewish individuals and communities? Compare and contrast the general attitudes the laws express with the specific provisions they make. Note also the dates of these provisions - how did imperial policy regarding Jews shift from earlier periods?

Wednesday 29 November

• What considerations traditionally governed Diaspora Jews' stance in relationship to Gentile communities, Roman government's stance in relationship to Jewish communities, and the attitudes of ordinary citizens (pagan or Christian, but without particular investment in any institutional stance) towards Jews and Judaism?
• What considerations complicated the attitudes towards Jews and Judaism promulgated by Christian clergy?
• What considerations governed late-antique emperors' legislation concerning Jews and Jewish-Christian relations?
• Identify specific passages in our texts that illustrate your answers, and be able to explain how you can use that evidence to deduce the attitudes and purposes that generated the texts and the actions with which they are associated.

• According to Ambrose's Letter XL, what circumstances surrounded the burning of a synagogue at Callinicum? How did Theodosius react - what did he propose to have done? How did Ambrose come to be involved? What did he want Theodosius to do? How does he justify his position?
• According to Ambrose's Letter LI, what circumstances surrounded the soldiers' massacre of citizens at Thessalonica? How did Ambrose come to be involved? What did he want Theodosius to do? How does he justify his position?

Friday 1 December

• What statements by Ambrose in Letter XL, and what logical reasoning from those statements, enable you to reconstruct the burning of a synagogue in Callinicum in 388?
• Besides the events involved in the burning of the synagogue itself, what considerations enter into Ambrose's response? What facts and what relationships of power are involved? What statements in Letter XL and what reasoning enable you to recognize and assess these considerations? For example - but think also what further considerations you can identify: spiritual authority and the welfare of souls, the idea of persecution and its potential to spur popular resistance, economic burdens of secular social responsibilities on local upper-classes across the Roman empire, imperial authority and civil order.
• What happened in the massacre of citizens in Thessalonica in 390? What statements by Ambrose in Letter LI even touch on these events, and what logical reasoning from the statements do you need to apply in order to recognize references to the events?
• How was Theodosius's authority as emperor implicated in the massacre? Analyze how the mechanism of what Ambrose proposed Theodosius should do offered Theodosius a route out of the political problems the massacre caused for him. What additional consequences did this course of action create?

• What do the documents relating to pilgrimage show to have been components of this type of religious experience: what did pilgrims do? Where did they go? What did they hope to find? What other activities, besides those they specifically purposed, involved them on their pilgrimages? What did their activities mean to them?
• What criticisms of pilgrimage did Gregory of Nyssa make? To what goals does he give importance?

Monday 4 December

• Why did people in late antiquity go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land? What types of experience did they seek? How did they expect it would benefit them? In what ways do texts and objects give evidence for popular beliefs? Note how you are using sources in order to answer historical questions.
• What support of pilgrimage, and what criticism against it, did Christian doctrine give to writers who shaped the ideas of the Church? Compare and contrast these theoretically-informed perspectives on pilgrimage to popular sentiments: to what extent were these writers and the broad population of Christians in general concerned about the same elements of pilgrims' experience? Where they differed, what concerns made their outlooks different?
• How could non-pilgrims relate to pilgrims' experiences?
• Besides the religious value of pilgrimage, what other facts and ideas about the way life was lived in late antiquity does evidence about pilgrims' experience enable historical inquiry to learn?

• Who were Probinus and Olybrius, to the extent Claudian's Panegyric enables you to tell? Who were their parents, and what does Claudian say about them?
• What events does Claudian identify in the recent background to Probinus's and Olybrius's becoming consuls?
• What ideas about the city of Rome does Claudian weave into his story of Probinus's and Olybrius's becoming consuls? How does he do it?

Wednesday 6 December

• Trace the career of Claudian. What place did poetry play in the public ceremonial life of the Greek-speaking Eastern provinces? How did Claudian bring this tradition to the Latin-speaking West?
• Fill in the background of political events and relationships within which Theodosius named Probinus and Olybrius to the consulate. What objectives does Theodosius seem to have been pursuing by the nomination? How can you tell? Be able to explain clearly how you correlate facts and inferences.
• What cultural traditions and what aesthetic values inform Claudian's panegyric? Compare and contrast with other evidence we have seen for late Roman patriotism, ceremony, and literary culture. To what interests of his primary audience did Claudian play? Identify illustrative passages and analyze how they act upon audiences' sensibilities.

• How did the city of Constantinople develop after Constantine re-founded the ancient Greek colony Byzantium as "my Rome"? Compare and contrast Constantinople and its dynamics to Rome, to other late-antique imperial capitals (including Antioch and Alexandria), and to other Eastern cities.
• What considerations does Cameron identify as important factors in the "decline and fall" (or not) of the later Roman empire?
  • What causes and effects does she explain?
  • How do these themes and these chains of causes and effects relate to our study-material over the whole term? Look for specific connections. What new lights does this perspective cast on the other conclusions we have drawn from this material?
• Looking ahead: Study guide for the final exam.

Wednesday 3 May

• Trace the chronology of the Theodosian dynasty. What political obstacles did Theodosius surmount as he established it? What means did he surmount them? With what resources for ruling did he leave his sons when he died?
• What tendencies shaped the societies of the western and eastern parts of the Roman empire during the late antique period (continuing, in their turn, tendencies from the High empire and earlier periods), so that -besides the contingencies of how foreign invasions struck into Roman territory in the fifth century- the east survived more stably and eventually became the Byzantine empire, whereas the western parts of the empire eventually devolved into multiple successor-kingdoms? Identify evidence we have considered that illustrates these tendencies, and be able to explain causes and effects in concrete detail. Factors to consider should include the distribution of wealth and social power over class, stability of military defense and the connection of local populations to the central government of the whole empire, functionality of local communities, especially cities and towns, to meet citizens' needs, cultural affinities and integration of Roman and non-Roman populations; what else do you see as important? Consider, and explain why.

• What considerations does Cameron identify as important factors in the "decline and fall" (or not) of the later Roman empire?
  • What causes and effects does she explain?
  • How do these themes and these chains of causes and effects relate to our study-material over the whole term? Look for specific connections. What new lights does this perspective cast on the other conclusions we have drawn from this material?
• What was the Theodosian Code? (Check back on the relevant pages in Cameron, too.) How was its publication announced to the Roman Senate? How did the senators respond? In what form was their response recorded?

Friday 5 April

• Add to your consideration of significantly different social and historical trends between the western and eastern parts of the Roman Empire (see above), also the question of what evidence we have for commonalities between west and east, and what consequences arose from those parallels and points of contact: in what ways was the culture of the later Roman empire united?
• Review how the position of the Christian religion and its Church changed over the late antique period. What institutions and structures developed? Under what impulses? What did they change, in consequence, within late Roman society as a whole?
• What elements of late Roman imperial culture were perpetuated past the "fall" of Rome? Why?

Review all material assigned to date for the final exam on Friday.

• What do the texts we have studied (both separately and as exerpted by Lee) tell us about the actions and concerns of late antique Roman citizens, scholars, Jews, Christians, poets, soldiers, administrators, and emperors?
  • Review assigned readings and your notes on them. What are the major concerns we have been focusing on? What passages illustrate important historical moments particularly well? These key texts will be good things to refer to as evidence for proving points on your exam: be able to cite them and analyze clearly how they can serve historical inquiry.
  • Review your notes from class discussions. What types of analysis have we brought to bear on our texts? You can apply techniques of analysis we have used on one text, to another, and get still more out of it. On the exam, you will need to explain how the evidence you are citing helps to support your insights.
  • Study Questions in this and the other e-files flag important issues within the material we are studying. Typically they are 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. But if you have been thinking about the issues raised by class discussions and the study questions, and noting passages of our texts that provide important evidence, you will be well prepared to write concrete, specific, persuasive essays on the exam. Again, remember! Be ready to identify specific pieces of evidence and to show how they demonstrate your ideas.
• See also Study Guide for the final exam.
• Good luck!

Revised 5 December 2006 by jlong1@orion.it.luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/