On Letter Writing

We live in an age when many say the art of writing a letter – and any need to do so – is dying, replaced by the ease and gratification of email, texting, Snapchat and Skype. But the difference between these new media and putting pen to paper can help think in more detail about the diverse reasons behind writing letters.

We have many letters from ancient Rome. Perhaps the most interesting are those written in the early 2nd century by Pliny (known to many as Pliny the Younger). We have discussed Pliny’s letters before, but particularly interesting are those he wrote while governor of the eastern province Bithynia-Pontus to the emperor Trajan back in Rome. Pliny’s letters while in office are often practical requests about complex judicial questions, doomed building projects and thorny financial tangles. These detailed reports and requests, and Trajan’s brief replies, have led to derogatory caricatures of Pliny as a weak and needy civil servant incapable of acting alone, constantly checking in with an exasperated emperor who had better things to do.

Roman cursus publicus (postal service) from a column in Igel, Trier (AD 250)

Pliny’s letters are even stranger when one takes into account the nuts and bolts of writing. Reliable and rapid correspondence was difficult in the vast and dangerous expanse of the Roman Empire. It was a little easier for those like Pliny who could use the imperial “postal service”. But even with an honest messenger and fair weather, it would have taken over a month, possibly two, for Pliny’s letter to reach Trajan in Rome. The messenger then had to wait for a response, before making the return journey. Pliny was writing while touring his province, so the messenger would not even necessarily know where to find him when he returned! These delays means that Pliny would be waiting many months for replies to his inquiries. And when he did receive a reply he might well be in a different city from the one where the problem arose!

So we ought to think more broadly about reasons for letter writing other than urgent requests. Perhaps Pliny was not as whiney, nor Trajan as terse, as first readings suggest. Trajan’s brief responses almost always affirm Pliny’s proposed actions, and encourage him to source local expertise to solve problems. In fact they sometimes look suspiciously like rubber stamping exercises. Perhaps Pliny was writing in order to be seen to be writing. How different are his letters from modern emails copied to senior colleagues to keep them in the loop and to cover one’s own back?

Finally, while the art of letter writing today is diminished, it nevertheless continues. It has become special act, a gesture to a close friend or loved one who will be thrilled to hear the thump of an addressed envelope falling from the letterbox. This physicality of letters is often forgotten. But a new world of instant communication has highlighted this value to the letter – an object the recipient can pick up, touch, read, put down, keep and pick up again. This is important for thinking about Pliny. The only reason we can read his letters to Trajan is because they were kept, collected and published (with recent scholarship arguing that this was done by Pliny himself). Pliny’s letters and Trajan’s replies are a polished collection cultivating the image of an harmonious relationship between emperor and governor. Pliny, two thousand years ago, was it seems more alive to the importance of public perception of one’s correspondence than certain officials in the modern world who should know better. The visibility of correspondence can be exploited by one’s opponents; it can also be manipulated positively by correspondents themselves.

Writing a letter is not just about the transmission of information. It’s about the communication gesture itself. And the physical preservation of that gesture can be more important than its content. Do you have any more ideas about our continuing love affair with the letter? Answers in the Comments section below. Or on a postcard.

The Girl with the Christian Tattoo

Check out Roberta Mazza’s wonderful post ‘The Girl with the Christian Tattoo’, on mummies, magic and marking your body!

The Roman Origins of Valentine’s Day

At kateantiquity today, the story of the Roman origins of Valentine’s Day. Check it out!!

Beware ‘Biblical’ Christianity

Meanwhile, over at the Guardian, Kate Cooper sets today’s debate on women bishops into a wider context: Female Bishops: Be wary of crude interpretations of Biblical Christianity (just to clarify: Kate did not write the headline, and therefore can’t answer questions about what it actually means – but she quite likes the idea that it is the female bishops who are supposed to be wary!)

Welcome, Sappho!

Over at Faces & Voices today, Roberta Mazza has a lovely and really useful new post on Sappho, Papyrology, and the Media.

Goths, Ancient and Modern

What do modern Goths have to do with ancient and medieval ones?

Ostensibly, the answer to this question is ‘not much’, apart from a name. The Goths were a group of Germanic tribes who during late antiquity sometimes fought against the Romans and sometimes served in the Roman army. They killed the Emperor Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, sacked Rome in 410, and later formed kingdoms in southern France, Spain and Italy that turned out to be quite ‘Roman’ in the way that they were run. Modern-day Goths wear black clothes, like depressing music and are generally a miserable bunch, at least if you believe South Park.

Some students and I did a bit of work on modern Goths in the last semester and here’s what we came up with by searching for videos on YouTube of people talking about what it meant to be a Goth in the modern world or that made some other kind of comment on Gothic identity:

The videos reveal how important it is to think about identity as a constructed by individuals and groups and that ideas of ‘who we are’ rely on a kind of interaction between both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ perspectives. The problem in antiquity is that we usually only have partial evidence and it’s often from a strongly ‘Roman’ or ‘Gothic’ perspective. For the modern Goths, that’s not such a problem – there’s lots of evidence out there, if you know where to look.

Modern-day Goths on YouTube self-define their identity culturally. According to them, Goths have a distinct sense of fashion and style. Musical tastes are often mentioned as important defining features of what is means to be a Goth today. This identity is grounded historically by reference to ‘the Gothic’ rather than to ‘the Goths’ of the past: for example, having read 19th century Gothic novels. Ancient Goths are only mentioned (infrequently) as fellow ‘outsiders’: they occupied a place outside the Roman imperial system just as Goths today often see themselves as standing apart from conventional society. Some Gothic YouTubers have a strong sense of what it means to be a ‘proper’ Goth and exclude from the category those who do not meet their criteria, while others are concerned to draw distinctions with other groups (Emos, Punks…) or to break down modern Goths into sub-groups.

YouTube also contains plenty of videos which provide us with ‘outsider’ views on the Goths, in the same way that we’re reliant on Roman source for early Gothic history in antiquity (and, some scholars would argue, for most of the rest of their history too). On YouTube this often takes the form of satire/ comedy, as in the case of South Park’s Goth Kids (see above) or Richmond from the IT Crowd.

Interestingly, the ‘outsider’ videos often pick up on the same characteristics as the ‘insider’ YouTube clips: music, fashion, attitude (though often satirised as unremittingly miserable). Culture defines identity for those poking fun at the Goths as well.

Viewing this topic through the YouTube videos provides a novel perspective on the issue of identity in ancient history which often seems so distant and abstract. Modern Goths may not have much at all to do with ancient ones, but they can help us think about some of the issues that confronted the Goths as outsiders within a largely Roman world.

For more on this and other teaching using digital methods at the University of Lincoln, see our Making Digital History website or follow us on Twitter @MakDigHist.

The Trouble with Hosting: the Qatar World Cup and the Roman Games

As Brazil prepares itself for the World Cup this summer, furor is building over the hosting of the 2022 World Cup (the one after the one after this one). Qatar won hosting rights back in December 2010, but ever since the international community has debated both the transparency of the original competition and the medical risks of playing – and watching! – sport in 50 degree heat.

In fact, the World Cup is not the only international sporting occasion of 2022 whose host is unclear. It has recently been revealed that the Commonwealth Games is struggling to find willing host countries, with the high cost cited as a contributory factor to the lack of volunteers. Normally the vast cost of hosting such an event is judged worth the international prestige and recognition. But in the current financial climate the value is apparently being questioned.

These modern concerns provide a lens to study spectacles in the Roman world. Games in the Roman provinces, involving theatrical shows, racing, and gladiatorial combat, were usually hosted and paid for by members of the local elite, sometimes risking bankruptcy, because of the opportunities for recognition and renown they offered men running for public office. But the 3rd C “Magerius mosaic” from Smirat in Tunisia seems, at first look, to cast doubt on this picture.

The mosaic shows four gladiators fighting four leopards. Both gladiators and beasts are individually named, so these may be celebrities; Cristiano Ronaldo toying with Pudsey. Most interesting is the central figure carrying a tray with four bags of money. The Latin on either side of him announces that at the completion of festivities, a herald has asked that somebody pay the Telegenii, who have provided the beasts and fighters. The price is 500 denarii per leopard. The crowd has taken up the call, goading the local bigwigs to pay up. Then Magerius has sent in his representative with four bags, each containing 1000 denarii – double the requested figure. His extraordinary generosity is, predictably, praised by the crowd.

The Magerius Mosaic, Smirat Tunisia, 3rd C AD

This suggests that the event was put on without a guaranteed financial backer. A risky procedure – it’s hard to imagine the World Cup being staged on a similar basis. It also raises a number of troubling practical issues, about preparations beforehand. So many, in fact, that it seems unlikely this post-payment ever occurred. Like the 2022 World Cup, perhaps we should be suspicious of this bidding process.

A more likely scenario emerges if we consider the medium on which this message is recorded. This is a mosaic, likely paid for by Magerius himself, preserving in a permanent medium a necessarily temporary occasion. It was designed for display, probably in a dining room (since the images face outwards on three sides, where diners could have reclined looking in). The mosaic is an ostentatious demonstration of Magerius’ generosity. Moreover, he has paid double the requested amount. Is it not more likely that Magerius orchestrated this theatrical gesture where he rescued  the town in order to be seen as more generous than his fellow townsmen? Or even that he has simply memorialised the event in this way, however he actually paid for it?

Protective Awning the Pompeian Riot Fresco, 59AD (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. nr. 112222)

Whatever the truth, to earn the good reputation he clearly craved Magerius will have had to be as concerned for the wellbeing of his spectators as the modern opponents of a Qatar World Cup. The summer sun in North Africa wouldn’t fall far short of Qatar’s, and the hosts of Roman games needed to take precautions to protect their spectators from its worst excesses. This was often done via vast awnings fixed atop amphitheatres to provide shade. But rather more ingeniously, in a manner reminiscent of the recent Australian Open where “misters” pumped cooling air onto grateful tennis fans, Seneca tells us about “a means of spraying saffron perfumes to a tremendous height from hidden pipes, [which] fills or empties channels in one sudden rush of water… (Letters 90.5)”

It remains to be seen whether Sebb Blatter’s FIFA prove kinder organisers than Caligula, who famously removed the awning from the Colosseum and left his fellow Romans to bake in the afternoon sun (Suetonius, Life of Caligula 26.5).

Epigraphy Skills Workshop: Corbridge, June 2014

British Epigraphy Society

Practical Epigraphy Workshop

CORBRIDGE

24-26 June 2014

The British Epigraphy Society will hold its sixth Practical Epigraphy Workshop this summer from 24 to 26 June at Corbridge, Northumberland. The workshop is aimed primarily at graduates wishing to develop hands-on skills in working with epigraphic material, though we also welcome applications from those at any stage in their career who would like to acquire a greater sensitivity to the gathering of epigraphic evidence. With expert tuition, participants will gain direct experience of the practical elements of how to record and study inscriptions. The programme will include the making of squeezes, photographing and measuring inscribed stones, and the production of transcriptions, translations and commentaries. Participants may choose to work on Latin or Greek texts, and the workshop will be open to those either with or without epigraphic training. The course fee will be £90 for this three-day event.

Please direct enquiries about the workshop to Peter Haarer: peter.haarer@classics.ox.ac.uk

Application Forms can be obtained from Maggy Sasanow: margaret.sasanow@classics.ox.ac.uk.

The Roman Gifts You Shouldn’t Give

As the holiday season dies down, we’re left with fond memories, aching stomachs, fading hangovers, and of course the debris of gifts given and received. But amid the toys, clothes, books and edibles, there are usually a few gifts we’d rather not have received – things not to our taste, novelty items, or tat churned out by gift shops the world over. Perhaps a relative thought we’d like it. Perhaps a cheeky friend knew we wouldn’t.

The tackiest gift? Queen bobble heads, in Niagara Fall’s Souvenir City

The Romans also had a mid-winter celebration, Saturnalia, many of the habits of which are echoed in our Christmas festivities (unsurprisingly, since the Christian holiday arguably “took over” from Saturnalia when the Roman Empire gradually Christianized in the 4^th and 5^th C). Gift-giving in particular was a key part of the festival. Like us, the Romans gave clothes, toys, books and foodstuffs (fish sauce, anyone?), often sourcing luxury imported goods at great expense (the womb of a virgin pig?). But is there any evidence that the Romans, like us, got gifts they’d rather not have?

Gladiator helmet glass dropper-flask (3rd C AD, Cologne), in the British Museum.

The archaeological record certainly preserves objects that seem temptingly close to novelty items. This perfume bottle is designed in the shape of a gladiator’s helmet. In a world where gladiators were both celebrities and sex symbols, it’s hard not to see it as the Roman equivalent of a One Direction duvet cover. The famously tacky character Trimalchio in Petronius’ Satyricon remarks at his dinner party that “I’ve got the fights of Hermeros and Petraites on a series of cups all of massive metal (Satyricon 52).” The Roman world did kitschy just as well as us.

Moreover, a shipment of crates which arrived in Pompeii on the eve of the infamous 79AD eruption hints at mass-produced gifts. It contained 76 pottery bowls from Southern Gaul (modern France) and 37 lamps from Northern Italy. There’s no shop connected to the find site, so the shipment doesn’t seem to have been for resale. Scholars have suggested instead that this is a box of gifts, to be split up and distributed. It arrived in late August/early September, near the end of the shipping season. We might complain about shops preparing for Christmas in November, but spare a thought for the Romans, who had to do their Christmas shopping even earlier. 

It’s harder for us to know whether these gifts would have been welcomed. But there are hints in Roman writings that gifts were sometimes neither appropriate or appreciated. The poet Martial (second half of the 1^st C AD) dedicated a whole book of epigrams to messages for gift tags. And as we’d expect from a tongue as ascerbic as Martial’s, these sentiments sometimes have a sting attached. When giving a leek, write, “Whenever you have eaten strong-smelling shreds of the Tarentine leek, give kisses with your mouth shut (Epigram 18).” Similarly, the Roman biographer-cum-historian Suetonius notes of the first emperor, Augustus, that:

“On the Saturnalia, and at any other time when he took it into his head, he would give gifts of clothing or gold and silver; again coins of every device, including old pieces of the kings and foreign money; another time nothing but hair cloth, sponges, pokers and tongs, and other such things under misleading names of double meaning.”

If the culture of Roman gift-giving was as fraught as our own, with pressure to buy imported gifts and a culture of double-edged presents, perhaps we can find new meaning in Virgil’s famous words, “I fear the Greeks, especially when they come bearing gifts.”

Celebrity, Sexting, and Pliny the Younger

The media has been filled with stories recently about the unintentional consequences of people’s writing. A driver was convicted for knocking over  a cyclist only because her tweet about it brought her to the attention of the police. Careers services tell job hunters to assess their “online profiles”, worried that a compromising photo or an unwisely expressed opinion could be the difference between dream job and dreaming of a job. And Snapchat’s seeming reassurance of “private” sexting has got parents lying awake in fear. All this comes in a world where people are desperate to be famous. We live in a world where people want to be known and remembered, but cannot necessarily control for what.

It’s usually thought that things were very different in the ancient world. There was no instant messaging, no mass media and no printing – if you wanted a friend to read something you had to physically take it to them, or else have someone take it for you. If you wanted a copy of a book, you had to physically copy out its contents (or get a slave to do it for you).

But our concern with audience would have been familiar to many Romans. The late 1st/early 2nd century writer Plinius Secundus (who we now usually refer to as Pliny the Younger) seems as hungry for celebrity as any X-factor contestant. A letter of his to a friend, for example, records his pleasure at being recognised at a dinner party a long way from Rome, and cites it as just reward for his labours (Letter 9.23). In another he envisages the wide audience his writings will have and the praise they will garner (Letter 7.17).

Pliny also seems desperate to be remembered. He had given a lot of speeches as a lawyer, the records of which he hoped would secure his legacy. This Plinian “tweet” (Letter 7.20, to his friend Tacitus, the acclaimed historian of the day) for example seems to make clear his craving for fame.

Pliny carefully collected and edited his private letters into nine books of letters that he intended for publication. But there is a tenth book containing (often fawning) letters between Pliny and his boss, the emperor Trajan, from a period towards the end of his life when Pliny served as governor of the Roman province of Bithynia-Pontus (in Asia Minor). Many scholars in the past thought Pliny didn’t intend the general public to read these letters. They therefore seemed to offer secret glimpses into aspects of Pliny’s personality that he would have preferred to have remained in confidence. But more recently, it has been suggested that perhaps Pliny also intended this tenth book to be published as well. In which case, perhaps we’re better off looking at them as deliberately “leaked” documents. In the ancient world as much as today, historians have to ask why we have access to a document. Who gave us access? And did they mean to?

The Family Silver

Make sure you check out the most recent post over at kateantiquity about crockery, the possible pitfalls in re-telling family stories, and how they can guide us in reading ancient writers!

Deporting Romans

Check out Julia Hilner’s discussion of ancient exiles in the light of modern disputes over deporting extreme preachers!

Band of Angels in New York

Just found this lovely account of Kate’s talk on early Christianity as a household-based movement, which took place last week at General Theological Seminary in New York.

http://news.gts.edu/2013/11/kate-cooper-converses-with-deirdre-good-about-early-christian-women-2/

Buried Romans

A 1st-2nd C Roman tomb discovered near Corinth

Over the last few weeks, there have been a number of exciting discoveries of Roman burial sites. Just the other day, news broke that roadwork in Corinth has unearthed a beautiful 1^st-2^nd century AD burial chamber. The chamber is so well preserved that the original paint jobs have survived in their striking original colours and designs, including a coffin painted to resemble bed-covers.

ChangingRomans also recently tweeted about the  exciting discovery of the site of a Roman naval battle, the first such find. That site has  extraordinary potential to transform our understanding of how Roman maritime warfare actually worked; already for example the ancient battering rams found suggest that these weapons were designed as much for defence as for attack. But the site of a battle is also of course an impromptu burial ground, where soldiers or sailors died in likely large numbers.

Roman child’s coffin, 4th-5th C, Tamworth

At another very recently unearthed site at Tamworth in Warwickshire here in Britain, archaeologists have found a lead tomb believed to contain a Roman child. As they begin their work, the archaeologists are holding an online poll to decide on a name to call the child. But it’s also important to remember that this child already has a name – the name they were given by their loved ones when they were born, and the name those loved ones spoke in choked farewell at their burial.

When we bury our friends and family, we don’t envisage them being exhumed by the archaeologists of the future. We tend not to think of burials as being like copyrights, expiring after seventy years. But it is only this kind of careful archaeological work that allows us to peek behind the standard historical narratives and allow us to glimpse the real lives of ancient Romans. Burials in particular give us precious information about clothing, artefacts, disease, diet and even drug-use. But in gleaning that precious information it is important to remember too that these were people first and burials second.

The British Museum recently finished its first ever exhibition, Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, on two of the most iconic ancient cities, preserved forever by the rapid eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. Arguably the most impressive thing about the exhibition was that it took material which has been for generations the purview of school textbooks, and which has therefore become “academic” for many, and reminded us that these were real people, living real lives and suffering terrifyingly real deaths. Most moving was the exhibit’s manner of displaying the plaster casts of the victims of Mount Vesuvius’ rapid eruption in 79AD. These casts – made from the cavities in the lava where the victims were encased – preserve their agonising final moments.

Plaster cast of a dog. From the House of Orpheus, Pompeii, AD 79

By putting these casts in the positions in which they died – one figure curled up protectively in a corner, hidden and isolated; a family of four huddled together for mutual protection – they provide a vivid reminder that what have become symbols of the extraordinary state of preservation, and thus academic potential – at Pompeii and Herculaneum are in fact the final resting places of real changing Romans.

The Importance of Story-Telling

Over at kateantiquity.com, you’ll find Kate’s account of Historians, Invisible Women, and the World of Stories, her recent round table discussion with Bettany Hughes, Tim Whitmarsh, and modern historian Selina Todd, who writes about working-class oral narratives in the modern world. Do have a read, and let us know what you think!

Historians, Invisible Women and the World of Stories

Event: Historians, Invisible Women, and the World of Stories, Weds 6 November @12:30

A roundtable discussion with Prof Kate Cooper (Ancient History), Dr Bettany Hughes (Historian and TV presenter), Dr Selina Todd (Modern British History) and Prof Tim Whitmarsh (Classics) to mark the publication of Kate Cooper’s Band of Angels.

In Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women, ancient historian Kate Cooper considers how modern theories of lived religion, the power of networks, and viral sharing can shed light on the nature and purpose of early Christian story-telling – and on what we know about the ‘hidden people’ of the ancient world. Drawing on what ancient historians have discovered about women’s situation in the Roman provinces of the first centuries CE to illuminate the context and significance of early Christian narratives by, for, and about women, Cooper argues that the nature of early Christianity – and the place of women in it – has been deeply, but not irretrievably, misunderstood.

The Roman Religious Marketplace

When we think about the ancient world today we often forget about the clutter. One of the wonderful things about the recent HBO TV series “Rome” was that it showed how dirty and noisy life on the street would have been in ancient Rome. But that messiness also applies metaphorically. People’s lives – their problems, decisions and choices – were just as messy and complex as they are today. In particular, like today, people had a choice of what groups to join. And the range from which they could choose was vast. It’s useful to think about ancient religion in this way too – people were presented with a range of groups they could associate with. This has been compared by the historian John North to a marketplace, with different “stalls” competing for custom. Among those stalls were the Christians, flogging their religious wares to their fellow Romans. But the Christians didn’t have only one stall. They had many.

A drawing of a mid-3rd C house church at Dura Europos in Syria

The earliest Christians met in houses – there were no institutional Christian meeting places for hundreds of years. In cities like Rome, houses meant flats, squeezed into tenement buildings to make the most of limited urban real estate. You wouldn’t be able to get many more than twenty people into a room. So an early Christian urban community would have had to meet in a number of different places. Add to that the geographical spread of Christianity over the Mediterranean, with groups popping up in different places, founded by people who had become Christians in diverse ways and with varying interests and priorities, and you start to get a picture of a multitude of scattered cells. That’s what ancient Roman societies were like.

The fraught nature of communication at that time meant that keeping all those little groups on the same page would have been nearly impossible. Letters, for example, took a long time to arrive; there was no guarantee they ever would arrive. So early Christianity was really early Christianities – groups loosely affiliated but holding differing views. That variety is apparent even in the first generation of Christians. In the New Testament we have the letters of Paul, who had founded most of the earliest Christian communities in Asia Minor. In some cases, Paul had only left these groups a few months before. But his letters show him already wrestling to hold  quickly fracturing groups together. That the messiness continued is shown by the Nag Hammadi codices, discovered in 1945. These extraordinary books, found hidden in a jar in the Egyptian desert, give voice to the views of countless Christian groups other than the one we now think of as the “catholic” church.

The Nag Hammadi Codices – books that preserve the variety of ancient Christian views

This great variety of Christian “stalls” continued long after the Roman Empire fell. Mediaeval historians argue that the lack of conformity among Christian groups continues throughout the first millennium, and that the church is only properly “institutionalised” in the 11^th century (if then)! The sheer variety in the early days of Christianity is only one example of the range of options available to Romans in their daily lives.

On Cleopatra’s Beauty

Over at kateantiquity.com today, the theme is Cleopatra’s Beauty – do please visit! Reactions are very welcome …

A New Christian Amulet

Dr Roberta Mazza with P.Ryl Add 1166

Tomorrow, the first public presentation of the new amulet:

Roberta Mazza (Manchester), A new Christian amulet from the John Rylands ‘Greek Additional’ papyri
THURSDAY 17.10.2013, 1 PM, Garstang Museum of Archaeology

Abstract: P.Ryl Add 1166 (provenance unknown, 5th/6th century AD) is a Christian amulet written on the recycled  back of a Byzantine document. It presents an interesting, unparalleled combination of lines from Psalms, Gospels and other Christian texts that seem to be cited by heart rather than copied. This presentation will discuss the material aspect of the amulet, including the results of multispectral imaging of the back, and will address wider issues concerning Christians’ attitudes to their Scriptures and the relationship between religion and magic in Late Antiquity.

Property and Power in Late Antiquity

Property and Power in Late Antiquity – New York, June 2014: Call For Papers

The next academic meeting of the International Late Antiquity Network (ILAN) will be held from 11-14 June 2014 on the theme of Property and Power in Late Antiquity, hosted by Professor Roger Bagnall, Director of New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.

Call for Papers

For most of the 20^th century, the distribution of land and other wealth has been central to scholarly discussion of late antique societies, not least in assessing the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. While the pace of scholarly discussion slowed down towards the end of the century, in recent years a new interest in the economic history of Late Antiquity has emerged. Much of this renewed interest has focussed on assessing the wealth and the power of secular elites, such as the influential contributions of Jairus Banaji on the social impact of the gold currency (2001) or the relevant sections in Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages (2005), among others. Renewed interest has also emerged in related areas such as the history of the household, with work such as Kyle Harper’s 2011 study of slavery, and the history of Christianity, with, for example, Peter Brown’s monumental study of the issue of wealth in the rise of ecclesiastical institutions (2012).

In light of these developments, a cross-disciplinary stock-taking seems more than welcome. ILAN 2014, Property and Power in Late Antiquity, will offer an opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues from numerous disciplines and as many countries.

Paper proposals are invited from all the disciplines of Late Antiquity – from the material cultures of archaeology, architecture, epigraphy, and papyrology to the diverse textual cultures of the Greek, Latin, and Semitic world – spanning the period from ca. 200 to ca. 700 CE. Discussion will include, but not be limited to, the following questions:

• The distribution of property in the late antique world and impact of political, institutional, and religious developments across Late Antiquity

• The social impact of property in local and regional societies and in supra-regional networks

• Property, power and material culture in late antique societies

• Decoration, display, and the culture of prestige

• Relations of property, power, status, and exploitation in the household (slavery, gender, patria potestas)

• Property and politics in the Later Roman Empire and beyond

• Concepts of and Discourses about wealth and poverty

• Wealth and the power of institutions, including but not limited to the Church(es)

Graduate students presenting a paper may apply for financial support to the organizers.

The deadline for proposals is 31 October 2013. Please e-mail a short (ca. 200-250-word) proposal to property.and.power.2014@gmail.com

Bishops and Zombies

Over at kateantiquity.com today, the theme is Bishops and Zombies – do please visit! Reactions are very welcome …

The Changing Jesus

Over at fragmentsfromthesun, Jesus imagined as one of our changing Romans!