McOmish, David Malcolm (2011) The Roman elite and the power of the past: continuity and change in Ostrogothic Italy. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2430/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] The Roman Elite and the Power of the Past: Continuity and Change in Ostrogothic Italy David Malcolm McOmish PhD Thesis Department of Classics, Faculty of Arts University of Glasgow September 2010 © D.M. McOmish, 2009 Abstract This thesis examines the changes forced upon the Roman elite in the evolving political climate of Ostrogothic Italy. It examines what mechanisms the Roman elite employed to renegotiate their position of influence within the state. The relationship the elite had with the past provides evidence for wider changes in society. I assert that, using the language and landscape of the past, the elite formed discourses which responded to, and which attempted to facilitate a realignment in, a changing environment. The education system still provided the Roman elite with a mechanism through which they could define themselves and prepare for what they considered to be the important aspects of the world outside the classroom. Religious discussions and debate in the post-imperial Italy of Late Antiquity were increasingly directed toward attempts to reunite the fractured Roman Empire through a unified empire of Orthodox faith. Having such a close relationship with the Roman Empire and its political and philosophical culture, education and religion are particularly suitable fields to reflect the changes to the political map of the Roman Empire. Focusing on the elite’s relationship with education and religion, this thesis will uncover examples of continuity and change which are implied by the construction of, and interaction with, discourses designed to facilitate the elite’s renegotiation strategies. Reconstructing the education of prominent members of the elite from their writings provides the evidence for such discourses. The emphasis on this part of the thesis is on discovering how the discourses circulating in relation to education responded to the political and philosophical problems through the language of the past and what these responses tell us about changes in the present. The religious discussion focuses on the attempts of the opinion formers in Italy to create and direct narratives designed to establish the superiority of one religious world-view over another. An examination of the language of tradition in the construction of these narratives provides evidence for the potency of the past in the decision-making process and ideology- forming strategies of the Roman elite. It also provides evidence for the changes in society to which the strategies were responding. A final-chapter case study provides an opportunity to see evidence of the effectiveness of these discourse-forming strategies. In this chapter we see a contemporary historical source interacting with those narratives and discourses we witnessed the elite employing in the education and religion chapters. It also provides an opportunity to see how the past is used to justify the actions of the Roman elite in Ostrogothic Italy to a post-Gothic audience (as the work was composed in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Ostrogothic Italy). This final consideration provides an instructive contrast which brings into sharp focus the extent and nature of continuity and change brought about by the Ostrogothic state. 2 Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………Page 2 Acknowledgements .................................................................Page 4 Glossary and Abbreviations ....................................................Page 5 Introduction .............................................................................Page 6 Chapter 1: The Elite and Education ........................................Page 20 Chapter 2: The Power of Tradition in Religious Politics ........Page 104 Chapter 3: A Case Study: Anonymus Valesianus .....................Page 160 Conclusion ..............................................................................Page 215 Bibliography ............................................................................Page 221 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Roger P H Green for the years of patient, considered advice and direction, which have provided the bedrock upon which this thesis is built. I would also like to thank Graham Whittaker at the University Library for his support in managing to acquire texts which proved vital to the development of my argument. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Fiona, for her advice and unstinting support over the period of time taken to complete this research project. Without her, it would simply not have been possible. 4 Definitions/Abbreviations AV Anonymus Valesianus Pars Posterior CAH Cambridge Ancient History CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum CLP Clavis Patrum Latinorum CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum GLK Grammatici Latini de Keil MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary PG Patrologia Graeca (ed. J. P. Migne) PL Patrologia Latina (ed. J. P. Migne) PLRE Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, I (ed. A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris (Cambridge, 1971)), II (ed. J. Martindale (Cambridge 1980)) RIS Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 5 Introduction ...iam sinu in medio sic gentis invictae, quod tamen alienae, natalium vetustorum signa retinebunt: nam iam remotis gradibus dignitatum, per quas solebat ultimo a quoque summus quisque discerni, solum erit posthac nobilitatis indicium litteras nosse.1 Sidonius’ understanding of the ‘fall’ of the Roman Empire is one contemporary characterization with which one can at once sympathize and understand. This is a period of dramatic transformation and Sidonius’ own social and cultural biases naturally led him toward a view about what was - and was not - indicative of the empire and its end. It is difficult to argue that the removal of the offices of state in a major part of the West was not significant and marked the end of a historical process. However, attempting to comprehend and understand the ebb and flow of change and continuity in the later Roman World through the prism of a partial and partisan viewpoint is a limiting exercise.2 Such an approach runs the risk of diluting an appreciation of the significance and intensity of the myriad of changes and continuities which constituted the rich and diverse world of the 5th and 6th centuries. Throughout the West there is evidence that there were a multitude of changes, each following their own pace and logic. As we shall see as this thesis unfolds, Sidonius’ paradigm of fall is an inappropriate explanatory framework for what is happening elsewhere in the West. If we accept Sidonius’ characterization of Rome, we must also accept that the evidence from Rome and Italy suggests that this Rome did not fall. The cultural and political horizons of the group which Sidonius characterizes did not recede for some time. Above all, however, his narrowly restricted definition of a Roman (that of a highly educated secular office bearer) fails to provide us with a fuller representation of the Romans who created, developed, and maintained ‘Roman’ culture in this period. This representation presents Sidonius inhabiting a reassuring 1 Sidonius, Ep. 8.2.2. 2 The historian Marcellinus, writing of matters occurring at exactly the same time (476 A.D.), observed: Hesperium Romanae gentis imperium, quod septingentesimo nono urbis conditae anno primus Augustorum Octavianus Augustus tenere coepit, cum hoc Augustulo periit, anno decessorum regni imperatorum quingentesimo vigesimo secundo, Gothorum dehinc regibus Romam tenentibus The Chronicle of Marcellinus, 26 (in Croke’s 1995 edition). Macellinus also characterizes the ‘fall’ in a fashion sympathetic to his own cultural bias (a piece of retrospection favourable to contemporary Eastern sensibilities in the early 6th century, when the Goths were seen, as we shall see, as a barrier to Eastern political and religious ideology). Arnaldo Momigliano reminds us that the crash was not quite as noticable to other contemporaries: Momigliano (1980), "La caduta senza rumore di un impero" Sesto contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Roma, Edizioni di storia e letteratura. 6 cultural space which sets him apart from his new Germanic overlords, but it fails to alert us to the depth and extent of the continuities and changes Roman civilization was confronted with in the West. This thesis will attempt to unearth the nature and extent of the continuities and changes experienced by the Roman elite (a term, the semantic implication of which we shall define below) in Italy by examining the political, social, and cultural implications of their responses to these pressures (the narrative strategies they employed, the cultural milieu they inhabited - consciously and intuitively). As we shall see, Italy