Journal of Late Antiquity最新文献

{"title":"The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor by Justin A. Stover and George Woudhuysen (review)","authors":"Peter Van Nuffelen","doi":"10.1353/jla.2024.a926287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2024.a926287","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor</em> by Justin A. Stover and George Woudhuysen <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Peter Van Nuffelen </li> </ul> <em>The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor</em> J<small>ustin</small> A. S<small>tover</small> and G<small>eorge</small> W<small>oudhuysen</small> Edinburgh Studies in Later Latin Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023. Pp. xii + 525. ISBN 978-1-4744-9284-4 <p>Presses are encouraged to submit books dealing with Late Antiquity for consideration for review to any of <em>JLA</em>'s three Book Review Editors: Maria Doerfler (maria.doerfler@yale.edu); John Weisweiler (j.weisweiler@lmu.de); and Damián Fernández (dfernandez@niu.edu).</p> <p>There are few books that live up to the claims made on their back cover, but <em>The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor</em> by Justin Stover and George Woudhuysen surely is a \"radical rewriting of the history of fourth-century Latin literature.\" It is commonly accepted that Aurelius Victor was one of the fourth-century writers of historical <em>breviaria</em>, together with Festus and Eutropius, and that the <em>Historiae abbreviatae</em> (also called <em>Liber de Caesaribus</em>) represent the work as he wrote it. Scholars further tend to agree that a later summary history, the <em>Epitome de Caesaribus</em>, has been wrongly attributed to Victor and dates from the end of the fourth century.</p> <p>The meticulous sifting of all the evidence by Stover and Woudhuysen unearths, however, a different reality. In fact, the <em>Historiae abbreviatae</em> and the <em>Epitome de Caesaribus</em> are epitomes of a lost, much larger history by Aurelius Victor that covered imperial history from Augustus to Julian. An accumulation of arguments builds a compelling case for this thesis. On the one hand, there are positive indications, such as the titles for both works in the medieval manuscripts and parallels in content and text up to 360 <small>ce</small>, including an identical phrase in the first person (<em>Hist. Abr</em>. 8.7; Aur. Vict. <em>Epit</em>. 8.6). These are, on the other, flanked by surveys of ancient epitomizing and critical reflections on methodological flaws in the work of the predecessors of Stover and Woudhuysen, to show that their solution fits with what we know about ancient literary practices.</p> <p>Widely read in Late Antiquity, the history of Victor survived until the eighth century in Italy, when Paul the Deacon used it. Stover and Woudhuysen provide a convincing case that Paul actually created the <em>Epitome de Caesaribus</em>. A crucial piece of evidence are the <em>Scholia Vallicelliana</em>, composed by Paul on the basis of Victor, among other ancient authors. Stover and Woudhuysen also suggest that the <em>Origo Constantini imperatoris</em> (also called <em>Anonymus Valesia","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140938540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from History's Most Orthodox Empire by Anthony Kaldellis (review)","authors":"Giulia Freni","doi":"10.1353/jla.2024.a926291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2024.a926291","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from History's Most Orthodox Empire</em> by Anthony Kaldellis <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Giulia Freni </li> </ul> <em>A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from History's Most Orthodox Empire</em> A<small>nthony</small> K<small>aldellis</small> Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 248. ISBN: 97801906259480 <p>\"Byzantium is enigmatic enough by itself, but its popular reputation these days is also a mystery\" are the words with which Anthony Kaldellis opens <em>A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from History's Most Orthodox Empire</em>. This permits us to recognize the contrast between the mystery and the attraction that Byzantium causes, especially in undergraduate students. As explained in the preface, the book has a flexible approach: on the one hand, it includes material that makes the Byzantine world seem weird and alien, and on the other there is material which instead highlights the down-to-earth, pragmatic, inventive, and rational aspects of this culture. The primary aim of the book is to produce a work of entertainment, whose eighteen chapters could also be read in snatches. Taking into account several contexts and situations, the volume wants to provide \"a handy reservoir of tales and anecdotes\" (xi), with an explicit tribute to the Byzantine scholars who have intellectually stimulated Kaldellis throughout his life. Due to the autonomous and variegated nature of the chapters, it can be difficult to retrace the contents of the book. For this reason, it is more useful to focus on some of the aspects discussed, even some that are obscure.</p> <p>Of particular interest the section devoted to animals, where we find curious anecdotes. For example, while Saint Lazaros was climbing Mount Argeas in Cappadocia, he and a bear bumped into each other, froze, and then continued their own way (<em>Life of Saint Lazaros of Gelesion</em>, 25); another remarkable case is that of a certain Andreas, whose dog could sniff out pregnant women, adulterers, or misers (Joh. Mal. <em>Chron</em>. 18.51; Theoph., ed. De Boor, 224). These are only two of the various curious tales involving animals here, but there are so many others about saints or emperors, as well as fables and stories. For these last ones, the <em>Katomyomachia</em> (<em>The Battle of Cats and Mice</em>) and the <em>Synaxarion of the Honored Donkey</em> are probably the best known.</p> <p>Among the topics discussed, attractive are the science and technology of Byzantium, including also the medical practice. This aspect is debated in two separate chapters, the one devoted to medicine and the other to science, but we have to recognize the strict link between these two fields. Moreover, when talking <stron","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140938732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Eastern Mediterranean Fineware Imports to the Iberian Peninsula, 300–700 ce, and the Economic Impact of the Justinianic Pandemic","authors":"Henry Gruber","doi":"10.1353/jla.2024.a926285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2024.a926285","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Recent excavations in Spain and Portugal have recovered abundant fineware ceramics imported from the eastern Mediterranean and dating to the period after the fall of the western Roman Empire. The date of the latest sherds has been interpreted as showing the survival of trans-Mediterranean trade into the seventh century. However, archaeologists have tended to minimize a collapse in the volume of these imports around 550 ce. This article seeks to adjudicate between a survivalist interpretation (based on the continuity of some trade) and a catastrophist interpretation (based on decreased volume of trade). It analyzes the import volume and geographic distribution of ceramics at over 4,000 Iberian sites, 202 of which contain late Roman fineware imported from the eastern Mediterranean. The data suggest a steady increase in imports beginning by 450 ce, followed by a rapid drop in both import volume and network participation around 550 ce, with no observed recovery. This drop's magnitude has not yet been fully analyzed, and recent excavations in the eastern Mediterranean have allowed it to be fixed with greater chronological precision. Four causes are considered, three (warfare, shifting fiscal obligations, and changing tastes) that have been already proposed, and a fourth (pandemic disease) that has not.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140938380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism by Sarit Kattan-Gribetz (review)","authors":"Marie-Ange Rakotoniaina","doi":"10.1353/jla.2024.a926289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2024.a926289","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism</em> by Sarit Kattan-Gribetz <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Marie-Ange Rakotoniaina </li> </ul> <em>Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism</em> S<small>arit</small> K<small>attan</small>-G<small>ribetz</small> Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022. Pp. 408. ISBN: 9780691242095. <p>Upon sitting with Sarit Kattan Gribetz's <em>Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism</em>, the reader journeys through the multifaceted temporal worlds that the rabbis' imagination fashioned in Late Antiquity, from Roman Palestine to the Sasanian Empire, from Second Temple times to the Talmud. To reveal how these universes of time in turn intersect with the creation of forms of difference within and beyond the rabbinic community—such is the promise of the book. It does so with exquisite erudition and delightful readability, while distilling the conceptualization of \"rabbinic timescapes\" (1, 5, and 22)—as the author put it, \"the many dimensions of time that operate within any given society—similar to the use of 'landscape' to describe the variety of natural and human dimensions of space in any given location\" (258 n. 16). The approach taken does not merely spatialize time. It actualizes and classifies its multiplicity as contained in rabbinic texts: time reveals itself as at once mythic and quotidian, historical and lived, ritual and biological. The book aims at demonstrating how these dimensions of time function as vectors of cohesion and separation.</p> <p>The Introduction sets the scene upon the remains of a lost epoch: the disappearance of the temple leaving behind it a \"temporal trauma\" (9). Henceforth a \"conceptual temple\" commands the rabbinic effort to re-imagine and negotiate the shifting boundaries of timekeeping and community. The following chapters associate a particular configuration of time—from the units of the year and the week to that of the day and the hour—to the formation of a series of respective dualities: between rabbis and Romans, Jews and Christians, men and women, human and divine. Each chapter's textual analyses embody the playfulness of rabbinic engagement with time, their refusal to dwell in the past or linger in an uncatchable future. They would rather drink the promise of the present. Emulating this promise, the book offers itself as much as the linear unfolding of temporal scales as the sketching of a mosaic of identities generated by quotidian rhythms. In other words, imagine a rabbinic replay of Kazuo Ishiguro's <em>The Remains of the Day</em> or Marcel Proust's <em>À la recherche du temps perdu</em>.</p> <p>Time has captivated countless studies. In the context of the most recent <strong>[End Page 276]</strong> tide of this fascination (which Gribetz has elsewhere labelled as \"the temporal turn\"), the book bears affinities with investiga","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140938730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The \"Column of the Goths\" and Its Place in Constantine's New Capital","authors":"Michael A. Speidel","doi":"10.1353/jla.2024.a926282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2024.a926282","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>The column monument in Istanbul's Gülhane Park, commonly known by its colloquial name \"column of the Goths,\" bears a well-known inscription on its pedestal which states that this monument was dedicated to Fortuna Redux on the occasion of a Roman victory over the Goths. The monument, however, has not attracted much scholarly attention, probably because no consensus has yet been reached regarding its date. An inspection of the inscription in Gülhane Park and a fresh analysis of its text suggest that the emperor Constantine erected the \"column of the Goths\" in the context of the formal dedication of his new capital in 330 as a memorial for his victory over the Goths in 328 or 329. The monument highlights Constantinople's extraordinary political nature as more than just another imperial residence in the style of the tetrarchy. It bears witness to the emperor's efforts to give Constantinople the status of a second Rome as well as his determination, above all else, to establish his city as the home of triumphant victories. Moreover, the monument's dedication to Fortuna Redux, is another token of Constantine's at least partially ambiguous religious policy, which allowed traditional symbols to be visible in his new capital of Constantinople.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140938378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Expositio Notarum ed. by A. C. Dionisotti (review)","authors":"Scott G. Bruce","doi":"10.1353/jla.2024.a926295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2024.a926295","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Expositio Notarum</em> ed. by A. C. Dionisotti <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Scott G. Bruce </li> </ul> <em>Expositio Notarum</em> E<small>dited by</small> A. C. D<small>ionisotti</small> Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 64. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. 642. ISBN 9781316514795 <p>This book begins with a manuscript that presents a mystery. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Add. C.144 is a miscellany of late antique and early medieval grammatical and metrical treatises, a \"mass Latinsalvaging project\" (71) produced in central Italy in the eleventh century. On folios 114v to 132r, the scribe has copied a peculiar collection of Latin glosses entitled <em>Expositio Notarum</em> (<em>EN</em>). It comprises a series of around 1800 Latin keywords (<em>lemmata</em>) with explanations of their meaning ranging from single-word synonyms to discursive comments on their etymology and morphology. Most early medieval glossaries identify their textual sources or give them away by following the alphabetical or grammatical order of the text they are glossing, but this one is elusive. Taken together, the Latin keywords of the <em>EN</em> do not derive from any known literary or historical text from Roman antiquity. <strong>[End Page 292]</strong></p> <p>In the introduction to this study, we follow Dionisotti as she unravels the mystery of the source of this enigmatic collection of Latin glosses. The title of the work provides a valuable clue that the glossary is an explication of \"notes\" (<em>notae</em>), but what kind of notes? While chasing down some of the more unusual Latin terms (for example, <em>plausile, intolerat</em>, and <em>disdonat</em>), instruments of reference led Dionisotti time and again to the only other early medieval source that preserved the same rare words: the <em>Commentarii Notarum Tironianarum</em> (<em>CNT</em>), a dictionary of about 13,000 symbols of Roman shorthand (that is, Tironian notes) with their Latin equivalents. According to Isidore of Seville, Cicero's freedman scribe M. Tullius Tiro devised this system to facilitate the rapid transcription of oral information. Later generations of scribes expanded the list with new symbols. There is evidence for the use of Tironian notes throughout Late Antiquity in pagan and Christian contexts. The system retained its currency in the early Middle Ages; sixteen manuscripts of the <em>CNT</em> survive from the Carolingian period. As Dionisotti argues, the <em>EN</em> is a series of glosses on the meaning of Latin terms found in a handbook of Tironian notes similar to the Carolingian exemplar of the <em>CNT</em> (but likely predating it), with which it shares around 1,100 <em>lemmata</em> in common (about 61% of its contents).</p> <p>With this mystery solved, Dionisotti spends the rest of the introduction explaini","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140938495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pontius' Conscience: Pilate's Afterlives and Apology for Empire in John Chrysostom's Antioch","authors":"Ben Kolbeck","doi":"10.1353/jla.2024.a926279","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2024.a926279","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This article explores apologetic early Christian approaches to Pontius Pilate, demonstrating the popularity of the idea that Pilate was innocent of Jesus's death, regarded Christ as innocent and just, and even became a Christian himself. Focusing on the exceptionally detailed image of the man who condemned Jesus to the cross found in the New Testament homilies of John Chrysostom, this article connects Chrysostom's treatment of Pilate to his interaction with a real-life (and pagan) governor of Syria. It suggests that apologetic interpretations of Pilate were used not merely to denigrate Jews but also to allow Christians who were themselves both Christian and Roman to believe that Rome had witnessed their Messiah—a historical example which proved the congruence of Romanness and Christianity.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140938539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Imitations of Infinity: Gregory of Nyssa and the Transformation of Mimesis by Michael Motia (review)","authors":"Bradley K. Storin","doi":"10.1353/jla.2024.a926290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2024.a926290","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Imitations of Infinity: Gregory of Nyssa and the Transformation of Mimesis</em> by Michael Motia <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Bradley K. Storin </li> </ul> <em>Imitations of Infinity: Gregory of Nyssa and the Transformation of Mimesis</em> M<small>ichael</small> M<small>otia</small> Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Pp. 288. ISBN: 9780812253139 <p>In this fine new monograph on late antique intellectual history, Michael Motia broaches a question that scholars of late antique religion don't ask as much as they perhaps should: what precisely do late antique Christians think Christianity in Late Antiquity is? Put differently, why should anyone identify as a Christian and participate in Christian community and ritual life? For his part, Gregory of Nyssa (around 335–395 <small>ce</small>) provides a direct and succinct answer: \"Christianity is <em>mimesis</em> of the divine nature\" (<em>On What It Means to Call Oneself a Christian</em> 85 [<em>GNO</em> 29: 136], quoted on page 1]). And what does <em>that</em> mean? How can a human being (corporeal and finite) imitate the divine nature (incorporeal and infinite)? What exactly are Christians imitating, and with which practices and guidelines? Motia's learned study guides readers through the many nooks and crannies of Nyssen's thought and writings to reveal that, at least for this late ancient theologian, imitating infinity means infinitely extending the Christian's desire toward God. Mimesis was a program for Christian life.</p> <p>Hardly configured in an intellectual vacuum, Nyssen's formulation represents his contribution to longstanding philosophical debates about the value of mimesis that began with Plato and continued throughout late antiquity. Motia's first chapter identifies two unresolved \"mimetic tracks\" (41) in Plato's writings—aesthetic representation and ontological participation. The former (articulated in the <em>Republic</em> and <em>Symposium</em>) involves a mode of desiring, or an \"erotic,\" built on a love for beauty and truth, that manifests in literary, artistic, and argumentative representation. The latter (articulated in the <em>Timaeus</em>) involves an erotic, constructed on attraction to the intelligible order, that manifests in a creature's transformation into an image of the transcendent in order to participate in the divine nature. In the second chapter, we learn how the heirs of the Platonic tradition—Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and to a lesser extent Julian—attempted to resolve these two tracks in light of their own concerns. Whereas Plotinus welded them with a focus on intellectual activity and assimilation with the One (thus emphasizing the soul's ascent out of creation), Iamblichus did so with a focus on liturgy as the site of mimesis. For Plotinus, mimesis consists of thought and becoming like t","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140938384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Pen Behind the Pathogen: Yersinia pestis and the Lombard Conquest in Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum","authors":"Thomas Batterman","doi":"10.1353/jla.2024.a926284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2024.a926284","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Paul the Deacon's <i>Historia Langobardorum</i> has long underpinned histories of the First Pandemic in Italy, with the text's narrative account of a plague outbreak in Liguria, Venetia, and greater Italy typically dated to 565. The following pages examine the modern and premodern treatment of the Ligurian Plague, highlighting the problems with and debates about its date, reconsidering its murky origins in Paul's writing, and reframing it as an editorially complex account of disease. A thematic and structural analysis of Paul's text alongside those of other key western Mediterranean plague narrators—namely, Gregory of Tours and Gregory the Great—suggests this <i>Historia Langobardorum</i> plague passage was neither wholly original nor based on detailed accounts from northern Italy. Instead, it was a product of the geography of Paul's narrative and his wider attempt to rehabilitate the history of the Lombard conquest, resulting in an apocalyptically-tinged report of mid-sixth-century plague that is both geographically and chronologically unreliable. In calling into question popular claims about the Ligurian Plague's geography and chronology, this microstudy offers a novel method of interrogating late antique plague texts and further elucidates Paul's process as a narrator of Lombard and Italian history.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140938660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From the Editor","authors":"Sabine R. Huebner","doi":"10.1353/jla.2023.a906769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jla.2023.a906769","url":null,"abstract":"From the Editor Sabine R. Huebner This once again very well-filled edition offers an intriguing insight into the multidisciplinary study of Late Antiquity and covers a wide range of pioneering research on textual and material sources from the third to eighth centuries. The main focus of this issue is on late antique Syria: five of the seven articles examine various aspects of late antique religious history in Dura-Europos, Edessa, Caesarea, and Antioch. Hagith Sivan then turns the gaze to North Africa before Michael Herren looks at early medieval Western Europe. Finally, Mark Vessey concludes the tour with a review article of various recent new publications on Jerome in Rome. As for our cluster on late antique Syria in this issue, Karl Berg begins with a nuanced reconstruction of how the early Christians at Dura-Europos used water in their ritual of baptism. Berg speculates why the early Christians made extensive modifications to bring in water from the Euphrates for their baptismal ritual instead of using an existing cistern from an earlier construction phase. The new solution was very labor intensive, although there was already a more convenient alternative source of water from the cistern in the immediate vicinity. He persuasively places this particular procedure in broader Christian practice and in the general preference for river water rather than collected standing rainwater in the early Christian baptismal rite. Sabrina Inowlocki then illuminates the relationship between the cult of saints, martyrs and their relics, and the material production of texts and manuscripts in fourth-century Caesarea, using the example of the writings of Pamphilus of Caesarea, who suffered martyrdom in the Diocletian persecution. She makes the case that autographic copies and corrections took on a new significance from the fourth century onward, and she traces a shift in the cultural and religious significance of autography in which writing with one's own hand became interwoven with concepts of martyrdom and relic. Marianna Mazzola and Peter Van Nuffelen offer the first edition of the hitherto unknown first section of the Syriac Julian Romance that narrates the death of Constantius II. By a close analysis, they are able to demonstrate that the narrative was probably composed by a single author in early seventh-century Edessa. Chance Bonar sheds further light on Christian-Jewish rivalry in late antique Syria. He compellingly argues that John Chrysostom's Homily against the Jews 8 is meant as a warning to members of his community not to seek out the help of Jewish healers who seemingly enjoyed great popularity also among Christians in late antique Antioch. James Wolfe sets out to analyze the Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, written in Syriac by an anonymous author during [End Page 257] the reign of the Roman Emperor Anastasius in Edessa in the first two decades of the sixth century. The chronicle itself covers a series of misfortunes that befell Edessa and ","PeriodicalId":16220,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Late Antiquity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135300060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}