University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 5-2021 Monsters in Mesopotamia: Edessa, Goths, and Roman Identity in Euphemia and the Goth and the Julian Romance Emma Elisabeth Pugmire [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Recommended Citation Pugmire, Emma Elisabeth, "Monsters in Mesopotamia: Edessa, Goths, and Roman Identity in Euphemia and the Goth and the Julian Romance. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2021. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/6188 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Emma Elisabeth Pugmire entitled "Monsters in Mesopotamia: Edessa, Goths, and Roman Identity in Euphemia and the Goth and the Julian Romance." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in History. Jacob A. Latham (co-chair), Christine Shepardson (co-chair), Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Monsters in Mesopotamia: Edessa, Goths, and Roman Identity in Euphemia and the Goth and the Julian Romance A Thesis Presented for the Master of Arts Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Emma Pugmire May 2021 ii Dedication For my grandfathers, Ronald Pugmire and Robert Barrus. Brilliant scientists and paragons of kindness, I will forever cherish their guidance and encouragement. iii Acknowledgements I am very grateful for the many people in my life who made this project possible. I am especially grateful for the kindness, encouragement, and help of my committee co-chairs, Dr. Christine Shepardson and Dr. Jacob Latham, who have expertly guided me through this thesis for countless hours of discussion, reading, and commenting. I wish to give special thanks to Dr. Shepardson for introducing me to the Syriac texts, for aiding me in translation, and for her patience and compassion. I wish to also thank my committee member, Dr. Felege-Selam Yirga, whose comments and enthusiasm were helpful and insightful. I am also grateful for the many professors and seminars in the History Department that have shaped my understanding of history and its importance. I also wish to thank my friends who have kept me sane through much needed breaks of movies, games, trivia nights, and stargazing. Jonathan Gomez and Natalie Cleghorn always brighten my day and bring me joy. Bethany Dunn has been a stalwart supporter of me on my path to graduate school, and our many years of friendship are dear to me. And finally, Brittany Barnes, who has been my cheerleader, support, thesaurus, and cherished friend. Thank you for the countless hours of laughter, and thank you for letting me write the majority of this thesis in your chair. I’ll need to replace the cushion. Finally, I wish to thank my family, whose support has made these past two years possible. To my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, I cherish your love and support. And to my parents, David and Lorie Pugmire, who are my best friends, I am so grateful for your unending love and support, and for teaching me the importance of education. Thank you, mom, for your wise advice and patience. And thank you, dad, for your kind but ill-advised offer to write a chapter about “leafy hats.” iv Abstract The late antique Mediterranean world was a time of great changes. The historiography of the time period is often divided geographically and linguistically, with the Latin West focusing on decline and rupture and the Greek East focusing on continuity and transformation. This paper examines Euphemia and the Goth and the Julian Romance, two Syriac texts from Edessa, a city in northern Mesopotamia on the Roman eastern frontier. Even though Edessa was situated on the borderlands of the Roman empire, these two texts engage in Roman imperial ideology and discourse in the late fifth and sixth centuries to critique Roman leadership and assert their own Roman identity as a “Rome” of the eastern empire. Using borderlands and “monster” theory, I argue that these texts portray Edessa as the exemplary model of Romanitas through their commitment to Roman law, justice, and pure Christianity and piety. This Roman identity is constructed against “barbarian” Goths, “monsters” of Syriac literature, who are represented as the antithesis of Roman values. In a time when Edessa’s Roman identity was in question by the imperial core, “Gothic” figures could serve as powerful rhetorical tools to critique the failures in the Roman West and the perceived “corruption” of Roman identity. I conclude that Edessa’s viewpoint shows the interconnectedness of the late antique world, too often broken by the historiographical divide. v Table of Contents Chapter I: Introduction ....................................................................................................................1 Euphemia and the Goth: Summary and Scholarship .......................................................... 3 The Julian Romance: Summary and Scholarship ............................................................... 8 Paper Overview ................................................................................................................. 12 Chapter II: Historical Context ....................................................................................................... 15 Late Antiquity: Rome, Persia, and the “Fall” of the West ................................................ 15 Perceptions of Goths ......................................................................................................... 19 Edessa: Historical and Political Context ........................................................................... 22 Edessa and Syriac Christianity.......................................................................................... 30 Chapter III: Borderlands and Postcolonial Theory ....................................................................... 39 Chapter IV: Edessa as the Exemplar of Roman Civic Virtue and Justice .................................... 49 Chapter V: Edessa as the Exemplar of Roman Christian Virtue .................................................. 67 Chapter VI: “Monstrous Romans”: Goths and Romanitas ........................................................... 90 Chapter VII: Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 112 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 116 Vita .............................................................................................................................................. 133 1 Chapter 1 Introduction In Tacitus’s Germania, he describes witnessing a civil war between German tribes and remarks: “Long may it last, I pray, and persist among the nations, this—if not love for us—at least hatred for each other: since now that the destinies of the Empire drive it on, Fortune can guarantee us nothing better than discord among our foes.”1 Here, Tacitus hints at the purpose of his writing. As Ellen O’Gorman points out, Tacitus does not lead the reader through Germany to create an ethnography of the German people; rather, “[t]he search through Germany […] is a search for Rome and what are seen as Roman values.”2 Writing in the late first and early second century CE, Tacitus used the Germans as a literary tool to critique the state of the Roman empire itself which he argues had become corrupted by “eastern” morals and luxury.3 The “Roman gaze” on Germany claims it as barbarous and inferior to Roman might and civilization, but Tacitus also points to the “precarious position of supremacy, from which it may at any point be toppled.”4 The discourse of barbarism Tacitus draws upon uses difference to highlight the perceived “otherness” present within the Roman empire.5 1 Tacitus, Germania 33.2, “maneat, quaeso, duretque gentibus, si non amor nostril, at certe odium sui, quando urgentibus imperii fatis nihil iam praestere fortuna maius potest quam hostium discordiam.” In M. Hutton and W. Peterson, trans., Tacitus. Agricola. Germania. Dialogue on Oratory, Loeb Classical Library 35, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914), 182-3. 2 Ellen O’Gorman, “No Place Like Rome: Identity and Difference in the Germania of Tacitus,” in Rhiannon Ash, ed., Oxford Readings in Tacitus, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 95-118, here 114. 3 O’Gorman, “No Place Like Rome,” 112-3; see also Donald C. Earl, The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 19; and Erich S. Gruen, Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992). 4 O’Gorman, “No Place Like Rome,” 111. 5 O’Gorman, “No Place Like Rome,” 112; see also D.F. Kennedy, “‘Augustan’ and ‘anti-Augustan’: Reflections on Terms of Reference,” in A. Powell, ed., Roman