Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411–533

Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411–533
Author: Andrew Gillett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2003-08-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139440039

Warfare and dislocation are obvious features of the break-up of the late Roman West, but this crucial period of change was characterized also by communication and diplomacy. The great events of the late antique West were determined by the quieter labours of countless envoys, who travelled between emperors, kings, generals, high officials, bishops, provincial councils, and cities. This book examines the role of envoys in the period from the establishment of the first 'barbarian kingdoms' in the West, to the eve of Justinian's wars of re-conquest. It shows how ongoing practices of Roman imperial administration shaped new patterns of political interaction in the novel context of the earliest medieval states. Close analysis of sources with special interest in embassies offers insight into a variety of genres: chronicles, panegyrics, hagiographies, letters and epitaph. This study makes a significant contribution to the developing field of ancient and medieval communications.

Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411-533

Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411-533
Author: Andrew Gillett
Publisher:
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2003
Genre: Diplomacy
ISBN: 9780511073229

This book examines the role of envoys in the period from the establishment of the first 'barbarian kingdoms' in the West, to the eve of Justinian's wars of reconquest. It makes a significant contribution to the developing field of ancient and medieval communication.

Essence of Diplomacy

Essence of Diplomacy
Author: Christer Jönsson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2005-08-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 023051104X

Essence of Diplomacy explores the essential, timeless features of diplomacy, drawing on the historical record of over three millennia. In their effort at making international relations (IR) theory relevant to diplomacy, and diplomacy relevant to IR theory, the authors identify three essential dimensions of diplomacy: communication, representation and the reproduction of international society.

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity
Author: Nicola Di Cosmo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2018-04-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108548105

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity offers an integrated picture of Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppes during a formative period of world history. In the half millennium between 250 and 750 CE, settled empires underwent deep structural changes, while various nomadic peoples of the steppes (Huns, Avars, Turks, and others) experienced significant interactions and movements that changed their societies, cultures, and economies. This was a transformational era, a time when Roman, Persian, and Chinese monarchs were mutually aware of court practices, and when Christians and Buddhists criss-crossed the Eurasian lands together with merchants and armies. It was a time of greater circulation of ideas as well as material goods. This volume provides a conceptual frame for locating these developments in the same space and time. Without arguing for uniformity, it illuminates the interconnections and networks that tied countless local cultural expressions to far-reaching inter-regional ones.

Greek and Latin Letters in Late Antiquity

Greek and Latin Letters in Late Antiquity
Author: Pauline Allen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2020-09-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108916457

This is the first general book on Greek and Latin letter-writing in Late Antiquity (300–600 CE). Allen and Neil examine early Christian Greek and Latin literary letters, their nature and function and the mechanics of their production and dissemination. They examine the exchange of Episcopal, monastic and imperial letters between men, and the gifts that accompanied them, and the rarer phenomenon of letter exchanges with imperial and aristocratic women. They also look at the transmission of letter-collections and what they can tell us about friendships and other social networks between the powerful elites who were the literary letter-writers of the fourth to sixth centuries. The volume gives a broad context to late-antique literary letter-writing in Greek and Latin in its various manifestations: political, ecclesiastical, practical and social. In the process, the differences between 'pagan' and Christian letter-writing are shown to be not as great as has previously been supposed.

Crisis Management in Late Antiquity (410-590 CE)

Crisis Management in Late Antiquity (410-590 CE)
Author: Pauline Allen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2013-08-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900425482X

Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil investigate crisis management as conducted by the increasingly important episcopal class in the 5th and 6th centuries. Their basic source is the neglected corpus of bishops’ letters in Greek and Latin, the letter being the most significant mode of communication and information-transfer in the period from 410 to 590 CE. The volume brings together into a wider setting a wealth of previous international research on episcopal strategies for dealing with crises of various kinds. Six broad categories of crisis are identified and analysed: population displacement, natural disasters, religious disputes and religious violence, social abuses and the breakdown of the structures of dependence. Individual case-studies of episcopal management are provided for each of these categories. This is the first comprehensive treatment of crisis management in the late-antique world, and the first survey of episcopal letter-writing across the later Roman empire.

The Last of the Romans

The Last of the Romans
Author: Jeroen W. P. Wijnendaele
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2014-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1780938470

Despite his critical role in the western Roman Empire during the early fifth century AD, Bonifatius remains a neglected figure in the history of the late Empire. The Last of the Romans presents a new political and military biography of Bonifatius, analysing his rise through the higher echelons of imperial power and examining themes such as the role of the buccellarii as contemporary semi-private armies. The volume offers a reassessment of the usurpation of Ioannes and Bonifatius' indispensable role in the restoration of the Theodosian dynasty in the West. The Vandal invasion of North Africa is re-examined together with Bonifatius's putative role as the traitor who invited them in. The relationship between Bonifatius and Augustine of Hippo is assessed, bringing new light to the important, yet largely unstudied, influence of Christianity in Bonifatius's life. A further discussion revisits the rivalry between Boniface and Aetius. Although Procopius termed Bonifatius and Aetius the last of the Romans, this volume argues that they were the first of Rome's late imperial warlords. The volume closes with a reconstruction of the Odyssey of Sebastian, Bonifatius' son-in-law.

War and Warfare in Late Antiquity (2 vols.)

War and Warfare in Late Antiquity (2 vols.)
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1119
Release: 2013-08-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004252584

This two-volume publication explores the key factors determining the course and outcome of war in Late Antiquity. Volume 8.1 includes a detailed review of strategic and tactical issues and eight comprehensive bibliographic essays, which provide an overview of the literature. In Volume 8.2, thematic papers examine strategy and intelligence, fortifications and siege warfare, weaponry and equipment, literary sources and topography, and civil war, while papers focused on particular geographic regions home in on war and warfare in the West Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries, and the Balkans and the Eastern frontier in the 4th to 7th centuries AD. Contributors are Susannah Belcher, Neil Christie, Ian Colvin, John Conyard, Jon Coulston, Jim Crow, Florin Curta, Hugh Elton, James Howard-Johnston, Jordi Galbany, Jordi Guàrdia, John Haldon, Michel Kazanski, Maria Kouroumali, Michael Kulikowski, Christopher Lillington-Martin, Marta Maragall, Oriol Mercadal, Jordi Nadal, Oriol Olesti, Alexander Sarantis, Conor Whately, Michael Whitby and John Wilkes.

Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity

Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity
Author: David Brakke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351900315

Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity explores the transformation of classical culture in late antiquity by studying cultures at the borders - the borders of empires, of social classes, of public and private spaces, of literary genres, of linguistic communities, and of the modern disciplines that study antiquity. Although such canonical figures of late ancient studies as Augustine and Ammianus Marcellinus appear in its pages, this book shifts our perspective from the center to the side or the margins. The essays consider, for example, the ordinary Christians whom Augustine addressed, the border regions of Mesopotamia and Vandal Africa, 'popular' or 'legendary' literature, and athletes. Although traditional philology rightly underlies the work that these essays do, the authors, several among the most prominent in the field of late ancient studies, draw from and combine a range of disciplines and perspectives, including art history, religion, and social history. Despite their various subject matters and scholarly approaches, the essays in Shifting Cultural Frontiers coalesce around a small number of key themes in the study of late antiquity: the ambiguous effects of 'Christianization,' the creation of new literary and visual forms from earlier models, the interaction and spread of ideals between social classes, and the negotiation of ethnic and imperial identities in the contact between 'Romans' and 'barbarians.' By looking away from the core and toward the periphery, whether spatially or intellectually, the volume offers fresh insights into how ancient patterns of thinking and creating became reconfigured into the diverse cultures of the 'medieval.'

The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity

The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity
Author: Elizabeth DePalma Digeser
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2018-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0755605578

Late Antiquity, the period of transition from the crisis of Roman Empire in the third century to the Middle Ages, has traditionally been considered only in terms of the 'decline' from classical standards. Recent classical scholarship strives to consider this period on its own terms. Taking the reign of Constantine the Great as its starting point, this book examines the unique intersection of rhetoric, religion and politics in Late Antiquity. Expert scholars come together to examine ancient rhetorical texts to explore the ways in which late antique authors drew upon classical traditions, presenting Roman and post-Roman religious and political institutions in order to establish a desired image of a 'new era'. This book provides new insights into how the post-Roman Germanic West, Byzantine East and Muslim South appropriated and transformed the political, intellectual and cultural legacy inherited from the late Roman Empire and its borderlands.