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This book approaches the manifestation and evolution of the idea of Rome as an expression of Roman patriotism and as an (urban) archetype of utopia in late Roman thought in a period extending from AD 357 to 417. Within this period of about a human lifetime, the concepts of Rome and Romanitas were reshaped and used for various ideological causes. This monograph unfolds through a selection of sources that represent the patterns and diversity of this ideological process. The theme of Rome as a personified and anthropomorphic figure and as an epitomized notion 'applied' on the urban landscape would become part of the identity of the Romans of Rome highlighting a sense of cultural uniqueness in an era when their city's privileged status was challenged. Towards the end of the chronological limits set in this thesis various versions of Romanitas would emerge indicating new physical and spiritual potentials.

A narrative of decline punctuated by periods of renewal has long structured perceptions of Rome's late antique and medieval history. In their probing contributions to this volume, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars provides alternative approaches to understanding the period. Addressing developments in governance, ceremony, literature, art, music, clerical education and the construction of the city's identity, the essays examine how a variety of actors, from poets to popes, productively addressed the intermittent crises and shifting dynamics of these centuries in ways that bolstered the city's resilience. Without denying that the past (both pre-Christian and Christian) consistently remained a powerful touchstone, the studies in this volume offer rich new insights into the myriad ways that Romans, between the fifth and the eleventh centuries, creatively assimilated the past as they shaped their future.

What has Alexander the Great to do with Jesus Christ? Or the legendary king's conquest of the Persian Empire (335-23 BCE) to do with the prophecies of the Old Testament? In many ways, the early Christian writings on Alexander and his legacy provide a lens through which it is possible to view the shaping of the literature and thought of the early church in the Greek East and the Latin West. This book articulates that fascinating discourse for the first time by focusing on the early Christian use of Alexander. Delving into an impressively deep pool of patristic literature written between 130-313 CE, Christian Thrue Djurslev offers original interpretations of various important authors, from the learned lawyer Tertullian to the 'Christian Cicero' Lactantius, and from the apologist Tatian to the first church historian Eusebius. He demonstrates that the early Christian adaptations of the Alexandrian myths created a new tradition that has continued to develop and expand ever since. This innovative work of reception studies is important reading for all scholars of Alexander the Great and early church history.

This article analyses dance as a language of knowledge and power in late antique and medieval Christianity, focusing on women’s bodies as mediators between grace and disrepute. From the earliest biblical interpretations, dance emerged as both an inspired act and a sign of otherness and impurity. The study examines this duality through emblematic figures such as Salome, Theodora, Miriam and the Virgin Mary, and sources including the Church Fathers, Justinian’s legislation, and Dante’s Paradiso. In this context, dance takes shape as a communal form of knowledge, a symbol of cosmic harmony, and an instrument of redemption. While the male gaze often reduced the dancer to a guilty or demonic body, Christian tradition reinterpreted the Platonic choreia with spiritual and pedagogical overtones. By reinstating the role of women’s dance as a vehicle of wisdom, it was thereby transformed from a symbol of exclusion into a paradigm of order, grace, and access to the divine.

Existing mortality estimates assert that the Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) caused tens of millions of deaths throughout the Mediterranean world and Europe, helping to end antiquity and start the Middle Ages. In this article, we argue that this paradigm does not fit the evidence. We examine a series of independent quantitative and qualitative datasets that are directly or indirectly linked to demographic and economic trends during this two-century period: Written sources, legislation, coinage, papyri, inscriptions, pollen, ancient DNA, and mortuary archaeology. Individually or together, they fail to support the maximalist paradigm: None has a clear independent link to plague outbreaks and none supports maximalist reconstructions of late antique plague. Instead of large-scale, disruptive mortality, when contextualized and examined together, the datasets suggest continuity across the plague period. Although demographic, economic, and political changes continued between the 6th and 8th centuries, the evidence does not support the now commonplace claim that the Justinianic Plague was a primary causal factor of them.

Following the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, local Christian leaders were confronted with the problem of how to conceptualize and administer their regional churches. As Gregory Halfond shows, the bishops of post-Roman Gaul oversaw a transformation in the relationship between church and state. He shows that by constituting themselves as a corporate body, the Gallic episcopate was able to wield significant political influence on local, regional, and kingdom-wide scales. Gallo-Frankish bishops were conscious of their corporate membership in an exclusive order, the rights and responsibilities of which were consistently being redefined and subsequently expressed through liturgy, dress, physical space, preaching, and association with cults of sanctity. But as Halfond demonstrates, individual bishops, motivated by the promise of royal patronage to provide various forms of service to the court, often struggled, sometimes unsuccessfully, to balance their competing loyalties. However, even the resulting conflicts between individual bishops did not, he shows, fundamentally undermine the Gallo-Frankish episcopate's corporate identity or integrity. Ultimately, Halfond provides a far more subtle and sophisticated understanding of church-state relations across the early medieval period.

The last century of archaeological exploration has brought to light many late antique villae (mid-3rd – early-5th centuries CE), and much has been made of the ways these sites visually reinforce the increasingly fraught patron-client relations that characterize the late antique world in scholarship. My paper challenges these assumptions, using material evidence to illustrate a more complex, symbiotic relationship between late antique villae and the rus. The late Roman countryside was stratified, but to presume an especially oppressive relationship between estates and rural populations is to perpetuate synthesis of this period as synonymous with decline, and to disregard more nuanced evidence in the archaeological record. I discuss cult structures on three estates in the Ebro River Valley in ancient Tarraconensis (Spain) to argue that villae courted and catered to sub-elite rural population groups, who were themselves receptive to such offerings. By highlighting these interdependencies, this paper aims to bring greater contour to our understanding of the mechanisms animating the provincial countryside in late antiquity. En el último siglo de excavaciones, muchas villae tardoantiguas (siglos III-V d. C.) han sido descubier tas en el Mediterráneo occidental, y la investigación ha analizado el modo en que estas villae refuerzan visualmente las relaciones entre comitentes y clientes, que se creen más tensas en la Antigüedad tardía que en el periodo imperial. Este artículo cuestiona esas suposiciónes, se utiliza la arqueología y la cultura material de las villae tardorromanas para proponer una relacion más compleja y de simbiosis entre comitentes y clientes, y entre las villae tardoantiguas y el campo. En la Antigüedad tardía el campo era estratificado, pero suponer una relacion especialmente opresiva entre las villae y las poblaciones rurales es perpetuar el estereotipo de la Antigüedad tardía como un periodo de decadencia al igual que supone ignorer las realidades de la arqueología. Para demostrarlo, se analizan los edificios de culto de tres villae tardorromanas del valle del Ebro en la provincia Tarraconense. Se discute que las villae proveyeran espacios de culto a las personas del campo (algunos que no pertenecientes a la élite); esas personas eran receptivas a estos servicios. Este estudio pretende recalcar las independencias entre villae y las populaciones rurales, y comprender mejor los mecanismos que organizan el campo tardorromano.

Archaeobotanical analyses of charred seeds, fruit and wood charcoal from the residential part of the ez-Zantur area at Petra, Jordan, provide new data on the agricultural economy and use of the landscape in this famous merchant Nabataean city from the middle of the 2nd century BC to the beginning of the 5th century AD. The study is based on analyses of 7,640 whole and fragmented seeds, pips and fruit stones and 624 charcoal fragments sampled from household deposits. The results show that the food supply was based on common Mediterranean cultivated taxa such as cereals (Hordeum vulgare, Triticum aestivum/durum), pulses (Lens culinaris) and fruit (Olea europaea, Ficus carica, Vitis vinifera), which were probably cultivated both in the city and its hinterland. The by-products from the processing of cereals and fruit trees played a significant role in fuel supply, supplementing woody wild plants obtained from rocky slopes and the desert valley. The variety of fuel resources shows a major capacity to manage complex supply networks and perhaps the rarity of natural woodland cover. The existence of orchards within the city centre and notably olive groves is indicated in the Early Nabataean period (mid 2nd century to mid 1st century BC) but they expanded during the Classical Nabataean period (mid 1st century BC to 1st century AD), probably reflecting specialised fruit growing. Unusual plant remains such as Prunus armeniaca (apricot), P. persica (peach) and Juglans regia (walnut) are considered to be social indicators of prosperity. These archaeobotanical results fit with others from this region and match with the urbanization and social dynamics of the city of Petra.

Los trabajos de excavación arqueológica desarrollados en el yacimiento de Santa María de Abajo (Carranque, Toledo) entre 2009 y 2011, centrados en el espacio ocupado por el palacio tardorromano, han permitido conocer una larga secuencia ocupacional desarrollada entre época romana y los primeros años del s. XX. En este trabajo presentamos el estudio de diez contextos cerámicos asociados a los niveles tardoantiguos localizados en estas excavaciones, contextos que han permitido identificar nueve grupos cerámicos, cuyas características presentamos, y caracterizar, a partir de la secuencia estratigráfica asociada, la ocupación tardoantigua--desde mediados del s. V a finales del VII. d. C.--instalada sobre el antiguo edificio palacial de Carranque. El estudio realizado ha permitido comenzar a caracterizar los ritmos de esta ocupación tardoantigua en el solar analizado e identificar tres momentos: los dos primeros coinciden con estructuras de hábitat--Fase 2--y el tercero se asocia a una necrópolis--Fase 3--.