Decline and Change in Late Antiquity: Religion, Barbarians and their Historiography

by Liebeschuetz,J.H.W.G.

• ISBN13: 9780860789901
• ISBN10: 086078990X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-07-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The essays in this second collection of articles by Professor Liebeschuetz deal with several aspects of the history of Late Antiquity. One theme is the prehistory of Late Antique ethical monotheism, which is illustrated by studies of pagan cults, Mithraism and Judaism. Several essays discuss the nature of the people who took over large areas of the Western Roman Empire, especially the Visigoths and the Vandals. The author insists that the continuing 'ethnogenesis' of these groups was made possible by customs and traditions, some of them going back before the entry of these peoples into the Empire. It is argued that the fact that formal possession of Roman citizenship became unimportant, helped the barbarian settlers to expand their groups and to consolidate their ethnic solidarity. Other papers deal with the historiography of Late Antiquity, and, more generally, with the writings of historians from Thucydides to A.H.M. Jones and Peter Brown. The anxiety of today's historians to reject the concept of decline is linked to current political concerns, especially to the ideology of multiculturalism. A recurring theme is the relationship between the historian's own background and his or her writing.

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix
HISTORIOGRAPHY: CLASSICAL-LATE ANTIQUE
I Thucydides and the Sicilian expedition	289
Historia 17. Wiesbaden, 1968
II Ecclesiastical historians on their own times	151	(26)
Studia Patristica 24. Leuven, 1993
III Pagan historiography and the decline of the Empire	177
Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity: Fourth to Sixth Century A.D., ed. Gabriele Marasco. Leiden: Brill, 2003
IV Realism and phantasy: the Anonymous de rebus bellicis and its afterlife	119	(24)
The Roman and Byzantine Army in the East, ed. E. Dqbrowa. Kraków: Drukarnia Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 1994
V Malalas on Antioch	143
Topoi. Orient-Occident, Suppl. 5. Lyon, 2004
RELIGION
VI Religion A.D.	68	(167)
The Cambridge Ancient History, volume XI, 2nd edition: The High Empire, A.D. 70-192, ed. Alan K. Bowman, Peter Garnsey and Dominic Rathbone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000
VII The influence of Judaism among non-Jews in the Imperial period	235
Journal of Jewish Studies 52. Oxford, 2001
VIII The expansion of Mithraism among the religious cults of the second century	195
Studies in Mithraism, ed. John R. Hinnells. Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1994
IX The significance of the speech of Praetextatus	185	(80)
Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, ed. Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frede. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999
BARBARIAN SETTLEMENT
X The end of the Roman army in the western empire	265
War and Society in the Roman World, ed. John Rich and Graham Shipley. London: Routledge, 1993
XI The Romans demilitarised: the evidence of Procopius	230
Scripta Classica Israelica 15. Studies in Memory of Abraham Wasserstein, Vol. I. Jerusalem, 1996
XII Citizen status and law in the Roman empire and the Visigothic kingdom	131	(4)
Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300-800, ed. Walter Pohl with Helmut Reimitz. Leiden: Brill, 1998
XIII Cities, taxes and the accommodation of the Barbarians: the theories of Durliat and Goffart	135
Kingdoms of the Empire: The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity, ed. Walter Pohl. Leiden: Brill, 1997
XIV Gens into Regnum: the Vandals	55
Regna and Gentes: The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz, Jörg Jarnut and Walter Pohl with the collaboration of Sören Kaschke. Leiden: Brill, 2003
LATE ANTIQUITY
XV The birth of Late Antiquity	1	(1)
Previously published in Antiquité Tardive 12. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004, pp. 253-261
XVI A.H.M. Jones and the Later Roman Empire	1	(638)
The Later Roman Empire Today: Papers given in honour of Professor John Mann, ed. D.F. Clarke, M.M. Roxan and J.J. Wilkes. London: Institute of Archaeology, 1993
XVII Late Antiquity, the rejection of "decline", and multiculturalism	639
Atti dell'Accademia Romanistica Costantiniana, XIV Convegno Internazionale in Memoria di Guglielmo Nocera, ed. G. Crifò and S. Giglio. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2003
Index	1