Draft:Periodisation of Roman civilisation

The modern historiography of Rome is the study of historical interpretations developed during the late modern era for the state of Rome that underlay Roman civilization. This includes the Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic, Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire.

Differing opinions exist on what type of continuity existed across the entire 2206-year period of Rome's history, as well as when different periods start and what they are called. Although Rome the state started in the City of Rome, over time it would expand outside of the city and eventually the city was not part of the state. The dominance and control of the city of Rome underlined some of the contemporary disputes of who could claim to be representing the true citizens of Rome (Romans), and which continues today in disputes over modern historiography. A revised view of the history beyond the elites and Roman citizens (who were free men) has also driven recent scholarship. Competing interpretations have been motivated to define the origin of Western civilization.

Overview

The major narrative of Rome, for over 200 years since its publication in 1776, been taken primarily from historian Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall.. It wasn't until 1936 that scholars such as Arnaldo Momigliano began to question Gibbon's view.

In 1953, art historian Alois Riegl provided the first true departure, writing that there were no qualitative differences in art and no periods of decline throughout Late Antiquity. In 1975, the concept of "history" was expanded to include sources outside ancient historical narrative and traditional literary works. The evidentiary basis expanded to include legal practices, economics, the history of ideas, coins, gravestones, architecture, archaeology and more. In the 1980s, syntheses began to pull together the results of this more detailed work. In the closing quarter of the twentieth century, scholarship advanced significantly.

Summary of issues

Origin of western Civilization

Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "began the modern study of Roman history in the English-speaking world". The fall of Rome (with the western Roman Empire), influenced by Gibbon, was constructed by European and American intellectuals who feared the collapse of the 18th century civilization they belonged to. This view was challenged by what we now call Late Antiquity.

The term Spätantike, literally "late antiquity", has been used by German-speaking historians since its popularization by Alois Riegl in the early 20th century. It was given currency in English partly by the writings of Peter Brown, whose survey The World of Late Antiquity (1971) revised the Gibbon view of a stale and ossified Classical culture, in favour of a vibrant time of renewals and beginnings, and whose The Making of Late Antiquity offered a new paradigm of understanding the changes in Western culture of the time in order to confront Sir Richard Southern's The Making of the Middle Ages.

Anthony Kaldellis's The New Roman Empire: a history of Byzantium is the most recent graduate level narrative of the eastern Roman Empire. His history has the goal to dismantle "obsolete ideologies and the cognitive dissonance required to maintain them" and posits the eastern Roman Empire is the actual origin of the West's core elements, and not the classical Roman Empire.

Periodisation of Ancient Rome

Formation

Main article: Founding of Rome

The tradition states Rome was founded on 21 April 753 BC. However, archaeological evidence does not align with this. Pottery shards discovered in the Forum Boarium indicate human activity in the area around the Bronze age.

Conclusion

Mary Beard points to the Constitutio Antoniniana as a fundamental turning point, after which Rome was "effectively a new state masquerading under an old name".

Periodisation and terminology of the Byzantine Empire

Use of the term

It replaced the term "Empire of the Greeks" as convention in the 19th century. According to Anthony Kaldellis

The Crimean War had a profound—and unrecognized—impact by forging a new distinction between "Byzantine/Byzantium" and "Greek/Greece," in a context in which the "Empire of the Greeks" had become a politically toxic concept to the Great Powers of Europe. In response, European intellectuals increasingly began to lean on the conceptually adjacent and neutral term Byzantium in order to create a semantic bulwark between the acceptable national aspirations of the new Greek state, on the one hand, and its dangerous imperial fantasies and its (perceived) Russian patrons, on the other.

Empire of the Greeks

See also: Problem of two emperors

Starting with Charlemagne's Libri Carolini in the 790s, the Franks used the term "Empire of the Greeks" (Latin: Imperium Graecorum) and attacked the legitimacy of eastern Roman Empire.

Start date

It varies according to differing interpretations. Some use the Diocletian reforms, the foundation of Constantinople, the fall of the western Roman Empire, the loss of lands to the Arabs or the proclamation of Charlemagne as dates when the eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire. The traditional view set by Gibbon and the revised view by Late Antiquity historians that emerged from Germany and England have a heavy presence. Newer scholarship, such as by Anthony Kaldellis, reject the term all together and that there was no start date as it was a continuation of the Roman Empire.

Specific issues

Historians have explored how life of ordinary Romans was different and which supports the differing views of the changed state of Rome. Examples include:

• social class and questions of citizenship and how one enters and rises in the political career track
• the amphitheaters and ludi, the aqueducts and baths, visual culture, elite domus and villa life,
• whether you read from a roll or a codex
• Roman religion
• Constantinian shift

The wearing of the toga and its significance

The toga was a symbol of the Roman citizen. Clothing like language, was beneficial in defining Roman identity in a society where this identity was unstable. This was due the composition of the ruling class changing with extended Roman citizenship as well as external cultural influences as well.

See also

• Roman historiography
• Historiography of Romanisation
• Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire
• Historiography of Christianization of the Roman Empire

References

• Cornell, Tim J. (1995). The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 BC). Routledge. OCLC 31515793.
• Donato, Antonio (2013). Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy as a Product of Late Antiquity. Oxford: A&C Black.
• Jordan, David P. (1969). "Gibbon's "Age of Constantine" and the Fall of Rome". History and Theory. 8 (1): 71–96. doi:10.2307/2504190. JSTOR 2504190.
• Rives, James B. (2010). "Graeco-Roman Religion in the Roman Empire: Old Assumptions and New Approaches". Currents in Biblical Research. 8 (2): 240–299. doi:10.1177/1476993X09347454. S2CID 161124650.
• Testa, Rita Lizzi (2007). "Christian emperor, vestal virgins and priestly colleges: Reconsidering the end of roman paganism". Antiquité tardive. 15: 251–262. doi:10.1484/J.AT.2.303121.
• Salzman, Michele Renee; Sághy, Marianne; Testa, Rita Lizzi, eds. (2016). Pagans and Christians in Late Antique Rome: Conflict, Competition, and Coexistence in the Fourth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-11030-4.
• Testa, Rita Lizzi, ed. (2017). Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4438-7656-8.