Download or read book Romans Barbarians and the Transformation of the Roman World written by Ralph W. Mathisen and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most significant transformations of the Roman world between the fourth and seventh centuries C.E. was the integration and impact of barbarian peoples into the social, cultural, religious and political Mediterranean world. This was the theme of the 2005 Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity Conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The selection of conferences papers published here remind us that the transformation of the Roman world took place in a Roman context and that Romanitas always was the touchstone against which social, intellectual, and political developments were measured.
Download or read book Romans Barbarians and the Transformation of the Roman World written by Ralph W. Mathisen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most significant transformations of the Roman world in Late Antiquity was the integration of barbarian peoples into the social, cultural, religious, and political milieu of the Mediterranean world. The nature of these transformations was considered at the sixth biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity Conference, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 2005, and this volume presents an updated selection of the papers given on that occasion, complemented with a few others,. These 25 studies do much to break down old stereotypes about the cultural and social segregation of Roman and barbarian populations, and demonstrate that, contrary to the past orthodoxy, Romans and barbarians interacted in a multitude of ways, and it was not just barbarians who experienced "ethnogenesis" or cultural assimilation. The same Romans who disparaged barbarian behavior also adopted aspects of it in their everyday lives, providing graphic examples of the ambiguity and negotiation that characterized the integration of Romans and barbarians, a process that altered the concepts of identity of both populations. The resultant late antique polyethnic cultural world, with cultural frontiers between Romans and barbarians that became increasingly permeable in both directions, does much to help explain how the barbarian settlement of the west was accomplished with much less disruption than there might have been, and how barbarian populations were integrated seamlessly into the old Roman world.
Download or read book Rome China and the Barbarians written by Randolph B. Ford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-23 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of ethnological thought in Greece, Rome, and China and its articulation during 'barbarian' invasion and conquest.
Download or read book The Fall of the Roman Empire written by Peter Heather and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2007-06-11 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how Europe's barbarians, strengthened by centuries of contact with Rome on many levels, turned into an enemy capable of overturning and dismantling the mighty Empire.
Download or read book Empires and Barbarians written by Peter Heather and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-04 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empires and Barbarians presents a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds--the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire--into remarkably similar societies and states. The book's vivid narrative begins at the time of Christ, when the Mediterranean circle, newly united under the Romans, hosted a politically sophisticated, economically advanced, and culturally developed civilization--one with philosophy, banking, professional armies, literature, stunning architecture, even garbage collection. The rest of Europe, meanwhile, was home to subsistence farmers living in small groups, dominated largely by Germanic speakers. Although having some iron tools and weapons, these mostly illiterate peoples worked mainly in wood and never built in stone. The farther east one went, the simpler it became: fewer iron tools and ever less productive economies. And yet ten centuries later, from the Atlantic to the Urals, the European world had turned. Slavic speakers had largely superseded Germanic speakers in central and Eastern Europe, literacy was growing, Christianity had spread, and most fundamentally, Mediterranean supremacy was broken. Bringing the whole of first millennium European history together, and challenging current arguments that migration played but a tiny role in this unfolding narrative, Empires and Barbarians views the destruction of the ancient world order in light of modern migration and globalization patterns.
Download or read book Transformations of Romanness written by Walter Pohl and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-07-09 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman identity is one of the most interesting cases of social identity because in the course of time, it could mean so many different things: for instance, Greek-speaking subjects of the Byzantine empire, inhabitants of the city of Rome, autonomous civic or regional groups, Latin speakers under ‘barbarian’ rule in the West or, increasingly, representatives of the Church of Rome. Eventually, the Christian dimension of Roman identity gained ground. The shifting concepts of Romanness represent a methodological challenge for studies of ethnicity because, depending on its uses, Roman identity may be regarded as ‘ethnic’ in a broad sense, but under most criteria, it is not. Romanness is indeed a test case how an established and prestigious social identity can acquire many different shades of meaning, which we would class as civic, political, imperial, ethnic, cultural, legal, religious, regional or as status groups. This book offers comprehensive overviews of the meaning of Romanness in most (former) Roman provinces, complemented by a number of comparative and thematic studies. A similarly wide-ranging overview has not been available so far.
Download or read book The Fall of Rome written by Bryan Ward-Perkins and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-07-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Rome fall? Vicious barbarian invasions during the fifth century resulted in the cataclysmic end of the world's most powerful civilization, and a 'dark age' for its conquered peoples. Or did it? The dominant view of this period today is that the 'fall of Rome' was a largely peaceful transition to Germanic rule, and the start of a positive cultural transformation. Bryan Ward-Perkins encourages every reader to think again by reclaiming the drama and violence of the last days of the Roman world, and reminding us of the very real horrors of barbarian occupation. Attacking new sources with relish and making use of a range of contemporary archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans, in a world of economic collapse, marauding barbarians, and the rise of a new religious orthodoxy. He also looks at how and why successive generations have understood this period differently, and why the story is still so significant today.
Download or read book Kingdoms of the Empire written by Walter Pohl and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frühmittelalter - Grab/Gräberfeld - Europa.
Download or read book Romans and Barbarians written by E. A. Thompson and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of twelve essays examines the fall of the Roman Empire in the West from the barbarian perspective and experience.
Download or read book The Tragedy of Empire written by Michael Kulikowski and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping political history of the turbulent two centuries that led to the demise of the Roman Empire. The Tragedy of Empire begins in the late fourth century with the reign of Julian, the last non-Christian Roman emperor, and takes readers to the final years of the Western Roman Empire at the end of the sixth century. One hundred years before Julian’s rule, Emperor Diocletian had resolved that an empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, and from the Rhine and Tyne to the Sahara, could not effectively be governed by one man. He had devised a system of governance, called the tetrarchy by modern scholars, to respond to the vastness of the empire, its new rivals, and the changing face of its citizenry. Powerful enemies like the barbarian coalitions of the Franks and the Alamanni threatened the imperial frontiers. The new Sasanian dynasty had come into power in Persia. This was the political climate of the Roman world that Julian inherited. Kulikowski traces two hundred years of Roman history during which the Western Empire ceased to exist while the Eastern Empire remained politically strong and culturally vibrant. The changing structure of imperial rule, the rise of new elites, foreign invasions, the erosion of Roman and Greek religions, and the establishment of Christianity as the state religion mark these last two centuries of the Empire.
Download or read book Barbarians in the Greek and Roman World written by Erik Jensen and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did the ancient Greeks and Romans think of the peoples they referred to as barbari? Did they share the modern Western conception—popularized in modern fantasy literature and role-playing games—of "barbarians" as brutish, unwashed enemies of civilization? Or our related notion of "the noble savage?" Was the category fixed or fluid? How did it contrast with the Greeks and Romans' conception of their own cultural identity? Was it based on race? In accessible, jargon-free prose, Erik Jensen addresses these and other questions through a copiously illustrated introduction to the varied and evolving ways in which the ancient Greeks and Romans engaged with, and thought about, foreign peoples—and to the recent historical and archaeological scholarship that has overturned received understandings of the relationship of Classical civilization to its "others."
Download or read book Peoples of the Roman World written by Mary T. Boatwright and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly-illustrated book, Mary T. Boatwright examines five of the peoples incorporated into the Roman world from the Republican through the Imperial periods: northerners, Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and Christians. She explores over time the tension between assimilation and distinctiveness in the Roman world, as well as the changes effected in Rome by its multicultural nature. Underlining the fundamental importance of diversity in Rome's self-identity, the book explores Roman tolerance of difference and community as the Romans expanded and consolidated their power and incorporated other peoples into their empire. The Peoples of the Roman World provides an accessible account of Rome's social, cultural, religious, and political history, exploring the rich literary, documentary, and visual evidence for these peoples and Rome's reactions to them.
Download or read book Barbarian Tides written by Walter Goffart and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Migration Age is still envisioned as an onrush of expansionary "Germans" pouring unwanted into the Roman Empire and subjecting it to pressures so great that its western parts collapsed under the weight. Further developing the themes set forth in his classic Barbarians and Romans, Walter Goffart dismantles this grand narrative, shaking the barbarians of late antiquity out of this "Germanic" setting and reimagining the role of foreigners in the Later Roman Empire. The Empire was not swamped by a migratory Germanic flood for the simple reason that there was no single ancient Germanic civilization to be transplanted onto ex-Roman soil. Since the sixteenth century, the belief that purposeful Germans existed in parallel with the Romans has been a fixed point in European history. Goffart uncovers the origins of this historical untruth and argues that any projection of a modern Germany out of an ancient one is illusory. Rather, the multiplicity of northern peoples once living on the edges of the Empire participated with the Romans in the larger stirrings of late antiquity. Most relevant among these was the long militarization that gripped late Roman society concurrently with its Christianization. If the fragmented foreign peoples with which the Empire dealt gave Rome an advantage in maintaining its ascendancy, the readiness to admit military talents of any social origin to positions of leadership opened the door of imperial service to immigrants from beyond its frontiers. Many barbarians were settled in the provinces without dislodging the Roman residents or destabilizing landownership; some were even incorporated into the ruling families of the Empire. The outcome of this process, Goffart argues, was a society headed by elites of soldiers and Christian clergy—one we have come to call medieval.
Download or read book Aspar and the Struggle for the Eastern Roman Empire AD 421 71 written by Ronald A. Bleeker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-04-07 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length biography in English of Aspar, the eastern Roman general and statesman, this book explores his central role in the history and politics of the fragmenting Roman Empire in the fifth century. It also considers what his life and career may suggest as to the differing fates of the eastern and western parts of the empire. Taking a chronological approach, Bleeker guides us through what is known of Aspar's life and his changing influence in the eastern Roman army and court. Born and raised in Constantinople, Aspar primarily viewed and presented himself as a Roman general, consul, and senator. Yet he also stood outside the Roman mainstream in two important ways–as a member of the empire's “barbarian” military leadership and as a devout Arian Christian. Early chapters treat his formative military experiences with the Persians, a Roman usurper in Italy, the Vandals in Africa, and the Huns of Attila, while later chapters focus on Aspar's political role in resolving the two imperial succession crises that struck the eastern Roman empire in the mid-fifth century and his extended struggle to control the succession to Leo I. Bleeker builds on earlier studies in three ways. First, previous work has largely concentrated on the role of “barbarian” generals in the western Roman empire, while much less attention has been paid to similar figures (such as Aspar) in the east. Secondly, while important recent work has explored the prevalence of “child-emperors” in the late-fourth and early-fifth centuries, this book suggests a further evolution of the imperial role in the mid-fifth century. Finally, while previous studies of this period have focused on Aspar's late career role in the succession struggles, a full study allows us to see how and why his relations with other key figures within and outside the eastern Roman government changed over the course of his lengthy career.
Download or read book Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius written by Alan Cameron and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explodes the common view that pro- and anti-German factions dominated Byzantine politics at the turn of the century, and in so doing it rewrites the history of a brief but crucial period in early Byzantium."--Robert Kaster, author of Guardians of Language
Download or read book Rome and Barbaricum Contributions to the Archaeology and History of Interaction in European Protohistory written by Roxana-Gabriela Curcă and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the ‘Barbarians’ influence Roman culture? What did ‘Roman-ness’ mean in the context of Empire? What did it mean to be Roman and/or ‘Barbarian’ in different contexts? 9 papers explore concepts of Romanisation and of Barbaricum from a multi-disciplinary and comparative standpoint, covering Germania, Dacia, Moesia Inferior, Hispania, and more.
Download or read book Why Rome Fell written by Michael Arnheim and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore an insightful and original discussion of the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire In Why Rome Fell: Decline and Fall, or Drift and Change?, celebrated scholar of Roman history Dr. Michael Arnheim delivers a fascinating and robust exploration of the causes of and reasons for Rome’s fall in the West. Steeped in applications of elite theory to the later Roman Empire, the author discusses several interconnected issues that influenced the decline of Rome, including monarchy, power structure, social mobility, religion, and the aristocratic ethos. Incisive comparisons of the situation in Rome to those in the Principate and the Byzantine Empire shed light on the relative lack of “indissoluble union and easy obedience” (in Gibbon’s phrase) in the later Roman Empire. Instead, the book reveals the divided loyalties of a fractured society that characterized Rome in its later years. Why Rome Fell also includes: A thorough introduction to the transition from the ancient to the medieval world, including discussions of monarchy, Diocletian and his relationship to the aristocracy, and Constantine’s reforms Comprehensive explorations of the rise of the Roman Christian empire and Constantine’s role Practical discussions of conflicting theories of what caused the fall of the Roman empire, including the Pirenne thesis, the malaria hypothesis, Gibbon’s ‘decline and fall’ theory, and the role played by religion An indispensable resource for students, scholars and the general reader with an inquiring mind about history, Why Rome Fell deserves a place on the bookshelves of anyone with an interest in a sophisticated and original take on historical continuity and change.