This thesis takes the three largest cities in Roman south Languedoc-Narbonne, Carcassonne and Toulouse -and reexamines the evidence, both archaeological and literary, about the city walls. I conclude that these walls, indeed built in the late third or early fourth century, were not hastily constructed and did not only enclose a small portion of the city. Further, the construction of monumental walls at this date shows a level of economic vitality. This argues against the commonly assumed dismal situation and suggests that the problems of the “third-century crisis” did not affect south Gaul in ways previously thought.
City of Narbonne in south of France, and the Saint Just cathedral viewed from the Gilles Aycelin dungeon. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
Update 1: Adrian now has actually blogged it and comments:
All of it looks good, but noteworthy is Poulter's article "The
Transition to Late Antiquity", Peter Heather's "Goths in the Roman
Balkans c.350–50"; Peter Guest's "Coin Circulation in the
Balkans in Late Antiquity" and Neil Christie's "From the Danube to the
Po: the Defence of Pannonia and Italy in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries
AD".
Our current read, Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem, centers around the barbarian invasion of 406 CE across the Rhein river, which our fictitious hero Paulinus Gaius Maximus is tasked to stave off by Stilicho, magister militum of the Western Roman Empire. (Note also Claudian at LacusCurtius re Stilicho.)
The Cambridge Medieval History by By J.B. Bury, Macmillan, 1911, page 266, gives a concise description. (The book may also be read at the Internet Archive.)
Gibbon's main source in Chapter XXXVIII is Gregory of Tours (c. 538 - 594). He was the son of a senator from Clermont (Sidonius Apollinaris' see) who seems to have died while Gregory was still quite young. Gregory was educated by his uncle Avitus, the bishop of Clermont. In 573 Gregory became bishop of Tours. Many of his predecessors were his relatives. He is best known for his "Ten Books of Histories" or as it is more commonly known these days "The History of the Franks."
The figures Gibbon particularly draws our attention to in the early history of monasticism are St. Anthony in Egypt and St. Martin in Gaul.
Monasticism seems to have started in Egypt, and we have accounts of some of the monks by
Rufinus and Palladius. Perhaps the most famous of the monks was St. Anthony, a
life of whom was written by his contemporary admirer, Athanasius.
The Catholic Encylopaedia has a more modern account.
… And it is the moment, with the
emperor at the absolute zenith of his achievement, that the world
encountered the first pandemic in history.
The
coincidence of timing does not, of course, prove that the pandemic
caused Rome to fall, or Europe to be born; as above, the uncertainties
of the three thousand-body problem makes such a claim fundamentally
uncertain.
So writes William Rosen in his Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe (Viking Adult 2007, 384 pages). Nonetheless, the tenor of this wide-ranging book is that the plague
was the instrument that caused a change in history and Rome to fall, as
outlined in the Introduction and Prologue. The reasoning for this particular version of the fall of Rome and
the "birth of Europe" is rather attractive but not wholly convincing.
Despite the enormous loss of life, the eastern empire still went on,
even expanded for a while with Belisarius' victories on the west.
As a member of the "educated public" (see below), I have been struggling lately with this question: What is Late Antiquity/Spätantike, and how is it framed? There are so many different views out there.
It is a matter of pure choice, convention, or convenience to what periods we apply the terms "Late Empire," "Byzantium," or "Late Antiquity." We can, for instance, quite reasonably choose to use "Byzantine" only for the period after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Libya to Islam. But we could also choose to see the long and stable reign of Theodosius II as the beginning of "Byzantium:" the first extended reign by an Emperor born in Constantinople; the first regime conducted from there (allowing for occasional minor excursions) continuously for four decades; the reign most emphatically marked by Christian piety; and the one for which our evidence allows us to see, far more fully and clearly than any other, the intimate relations between the Emperor and the Greek-speaking Church. (emphasis mine)
Gaius Sollius Modestus Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430 – after 489), poet, diplomat, bishop, is “the single most important surviving author from fifth-century Gaul” according to Eric Goldberg (see below). He was one of four late antiquity Gallo-Roman aristocrats whose letters survive in quantity. His letters have been compared to a literary Herculaneum, preserving under the accumulated centuries the most varied evidences of late Roman provincial life. (wikipedia and O.M. Dalton)
Bingley already briefly blogged Sidonius below, with his letters at the Early Church Fathers site. (Click on the page symbol at top and bottom to continue the letters content.)
Ammianus Marcellinus was born between 325 and 335 A.D. and lived until at least 395. He possibly hailed from Antioch, and was of noble birth. He soldiered under Constantius II, and under Julian the Apostate until the latter's death. He later lived in the city of Rome. He wrote, in Latin, a history of the Roman empire from the accession of Nerva to the death of Valens (96-378). This work, known as res gestae, consisted of thirty-one books; of these the first thirteen are lost, the remaining eighteen cover the period from 353 to 378. Online, they can be found in Latin only, at the Latin Library. There are excerpts in translation, especially the battle descriptions: The Siege of Amida in 359 and The Battle of Hadrianopolis 378, (probably the best known). I could not find an online translation of the Battle of Strasbourg 357. And there is The Luxury of the Rich in Rome …
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