THE FIFTH CENTURY:
AGE OF TRANSFORMATION
Proceedings of the 12th Biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity Conference

Descrizione

The fifth century CE represents a turning point in ancient history. Before 400 the Roman Empire stood largely intact and coherent, a massive and powerful testament to traditions of state power stretching back for the previous 600 years. By 500 the empire had fragmented as state power retreated rapidly and the political and social forces that would usher in the Middle Ages be-came cemented into place. This volume explores this crucial period in the six broad areas of natural science, archaeology and material culture, barbarian and Roman relations, law and power, religious authority, and literary constructions. Assembling the papers of the twelfth biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity Conference, The Fifth Century: Age of Transformation offers a comprehensive overview of recent research on this pivotal century in all of its ramifications.

Nella storia dell’antichità il quinto secolo d.C. rappresenta un punto di svolta. Prima dell’anno 400 l’impero romano si ergeva complessivamente integro e unito: una testimonianza massiccia e impressionante delle tradizioni di un potere statuale risalenti a seicento anni prima. Nell’anno 500 l’impero era già diviso in seguito al rapido indebolimento del potere statale e all’azione congiunta di fattori politici e sociali che avrebbero condotto al Medio Evo. Il volume analizza questo periodo cruciale, prendendo in esame sei settori generali: scienze naturali, archeologia e cultura materiale, relazioni romano-barbariche, stato e diritto, potere religioso, produzione letteraria. Riunendo i contributi presentati al XII convegno biennale di “Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity”, The Fifth Century: Age of Transformation offre una vasta panoramica degli studi più recenti su questo secolo decisivo.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Jan Willem Drijvers and Noel Lenski, Introduction

NATURAL SCIENCE

Kyle Harper, The Climate of the Fifth Century

Cam Grey, Climate Change and Agrarian Change between the Fourth and Sixth Centuries: Questions of Scale, Coincidence, and Causality

Dominic Solly, A Spanish Bonanza? A Reexamination of Roman Gold Mining Technology

ARCHAEOLOGY AND MATERIAL CULTURE

Anna Flückiger, Blind Dating: Towards a Chronology of Fifth-Century Material Culture in Augusta Raurica

John Hermann and Annewies van den Hoek, The Vandals and the End of Elite North African Ceramics: Relief Decoration on African Red Slip Ware

Marco Cavalieri, Gloriana Pace, Sara Lenzi, Aiano-Torraccia di Chiusi (San Gimignano, Siena): A Roman Villa in Central Italy during Late Antiquity

Zeev Weiss, Defining Limits in Times of Shifting Borders: Jewish Life in Fifth-Century Palestine

Young Richard Kim, The Little Island That Could: Cyprus in the Fifth Century

BARBARIAN AND ROMAN IN THE FIFTH-CENTURY WEST

Ralph W. Mathisen, The End of the Western Roman Empire in the Fifth Century CE: Barbarian Auxiliaries, Independent Military Contractors, and Civil Wars

Merle Eisenberg, A New Name for a New State: The Construction of the Burgundian Regio

Veronika Egetenmeyr, «Barbarians» Transformed: The Construction of Identity in the Epistles of Sidonius Apollinaris

LAW AND POWER

Kevin Feeney, The Emperor is Dead, Long Live the Emperor: Imperial Interregna in the Fifth Century

Meaghan McEvoy, Leo II, Zeno and the Transfer of Roman Imperial Rule from a Son to his Father in 474 CE

Felix K. Maier, Active Rulership Unrealized: Claudian’s Panegyric on Honorius

Marie Roux, Administrative Transitions in Gaul during the Second Half of the Fifth Century. The Example of the Visigothic Kingdom through the Breviary of Alaric

RELIGION AND AUTHORITY

Maijastina Kahlos, Shifting Sacrifices? Fifth-Century Developments in Ritual Life

Aaron P. Johnson, The Fifth-Century Transformation of Apologetics in Cyril and Theodoret

1. E. Tiggy McLaughlin, Ordinary Christians and the Fifth-Century Reform of the Church in Gaul

Bronwen Neil, Pope Gelasius’s Theory of Law and its Implementation at the End of the Fifth Century

LITERARY CONSTRUCTIONS AND CULTURAL MEMORY

Edward Watts, Hypatia in the Letter Collection of Synesius

Hajnalka Tamas, From Persecutor to Arbitrator of Orthodoxy: The Changing Face of Sextus Petronius Probus between the Fourth and the Fifth Century

Jason Moralee, Commemorating Defeat: Cultural Memory and the Vandal Sack of Rome in 455