Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?

by Edited by John Drinkwater , Hugh Elton

• ISBN13: 9780521529334
• ISBN10: 0521529336
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-12
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The papers presented in this book take as their subject the military, political and economic changes forced upon the inhabitants of Gaul during the fifth century AD. They seek to describe and explain how Gallo-Romans of all orders of society reacted to barbarian invasion and the growing debilitation of the western imperial government. The unusually wide range of topics dealt with allows the Gallic experience to be viewed and interpreted from many different directions. Much is made of the problematic, because highly subjective, nature of the literary sources; but close attention is also given to modern advances in our understanding of the archaeological and numismatic data. The whole presents a picture of a society under immense stress, as the people of the Gallic provinces abandoned, perforce, their allegiance to Roman emperors and yielded to the rule of Germanic kings, while yet preserving a significant element of their late antique culture.

Table of Contents

List of figures	x
List of contributors	xi
Acknowledgements	xiv
List of abbreviations	xvi
Chronological table	xvii
Introduction	1	(4)
I The literary sources	5	(44)
Continuity or calamity: the constraints of literary models	9	(10)
I. N. Wood
From Gallia Romana to Gallia Gothica: the view from Spain	19	(9)
R. W. Burgess
Looking back from mid century: the Gallic Chronicler of 452 and the crisis of Honorius' reign	28	(10)
S. Muhlberger
Old Kaspars: Attila's invasion of Gaul in the literary sources	38	(11)
S. Barnish
II The Gothic settlement of 418	49	(46)
The settlement of 418	53	(11)
T. S. Burns
Relations between Visigoths and Romans in fifth-century Gaul	64	(11)
C. E. V. Nixon
Alaric's Goths: nation or army?	75	(9)
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz
The emergence of the Visigothic kingdom	84	(11)
P. Heather
III The immediate crisis: 406-418	95	(12)
Barbarians in Gaul: the response of the poets	97	(10)
M. Roberts
IV Recovery: social and economic	107	(58)
The Anicii of Gaul and rome	111	(11)
T. S. Mommaerts
D. H. Kelley
Meridional Gaul, trade and the Mediterranean economy in Late Antiquity	122	(10)
R. B. Hitchner
Town and country in late antique Gaul: the example of Bordeaux	132	(12)
H. Sivan
Bishops and cathedrals: order and diversity in the fifth-century urban landscape of southern Gaul	144	(12)
S. T. Loseby
The fifth-century villa: new life or death postponed?	156	(9)
J. Percival
V Recovery: political and military	165	(12)
Defence in fifth-century Gaul	167	(10)
H. Elton
VI A crisis of identity?	177	(108)
Roman, local and barbarian coinages in fifth-century Gaul	184	(12)
C. E. King
The origins of the Reihengraberzivilisation: forty years on	196	(12)
G. Halsall
The Bacaudae of fifth-century Gaul	208	(10)
J. F. Drinkwater
Slavery, the Roman legacy	218	(10)
R. Samson
Fifth-century visitors to Italy: business or pleasure?	228	(11)
R. W. Mathisen
The `affair' of Hilary of Arles (445) and Gallo-Roman identity in the fifth century	239	(13)
M. Heinzelmann
Crisis and conversion in fifth-century Gaul: aristocrats and ascetics between `horizontality' and `verticality'	252	(12)
M. A. Wes
Gaul and the Holy Land in the early fifth century	264	(11)
E. D. Hunt
Ethnicity, orthodoxy and community in Salvian of Marseilles	275	(10)
M. Maas
VII The resolution of the crisis	285	(34)
Emperors and empires in fifth-century Gaul	288	(10)
S. Fanning
Sidonius Apollinaris, Rome and the barbarians: a climate of treason?	298	(11)
J. D. Harries
Un-Roman activities in late antique Gaul: the cases of Arvandus and Seronatus	309	(10)
H. C. Teitler
VIII Conclusion	319	(45)
The Pirenne Thesis and fifth-century Gaul	321	(43)
R. Van Dam
References
Primary sources	335	(6)
Secondary works	341	(23)
Index	364