Johnson - The Oxford handbook of late antiquity

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

LATE ANTIQUITY

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

EDITED BY

SCOTT FITZGERALD JOHNSON

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Oxford handbook of late antiquity/edited by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-533693-1
1. Civilization, Greco-Roman. 2. Civilization, Medieval. 3. RomeCivilization.
4. Byzantine EmpireCivilization5271081.
I. Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald, 1976 II. Title: Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity.
DE80.O84 2012
937dc23 2011018578

Frontispiece: The Barberini Ivory, depicting a sixth-century Roman emperor,
possibly Anastasius I or Justinian I (Runion des Muses Nationaux/Art Resource, NY).

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United State of America
on acid-free paper

To Averil Cameron and Peter Brown

Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Georgetown University and Dumbarton Oaks

Herv Inglebert, Universit Paris Ouest NanterreLa Dfense (Paris X) (Translation from French prepared by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson)

Michael Kulikowski, Pennsylvania State University

Michael Maas, Rice University

Craig H. Caldwell III, Appalachian State University

Tim Greenwood, St. Andrews University

tienne de la Vaissire, cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Philip Wood, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University

Arietta Papaconstantinou, University of Reading

Anne Boudhors, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) (Translation from French prepared by Arietta Papaconstantinou)

Christian Julien Robin, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), member de l Institut (Translation from French prepared by Arietta Papaconstantinou)

Scott McGill, Rice University

Gianfranco Agosti, University of Rome La Sapienza

Brian Croke, Macquarie University and University of Sydney

Aaron P. Johnson, Lee University

Edward Watts, Indiana University

Samuel Rubenson, Lund University

Gregory Smith, Central Michigan University

Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Georgetown University and Dumbarton Oaks

Jairus Banaji, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

Cam Grey, University of Pennsylvania

Kyle Harper, University of Oklahoma

Peregrine Horden, Royal Holloway, University of London

Ralph W. Mathisen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Kevin Uhalde, Ohio University

Jill Harries, St. Andrews University

Andrew Gillett, Macquarie University

Jaclyn Maxwell, Ohio University

David M. Gwynn, Royal Holloway, University of London

Susan Wessel, Catholic University of America

Ann Marie Yasin, University of Southern California

Glenn Peers, University of Texas at Austin

Joel Walker, University of Washington

Robert Hoyland, Oriental Institute and St. Cross College, Oxford University

Stephen J. Shoemaker, University of Oregon

John Haldon, Princeton University

Petre Guran, Institute of South East European Studies, Bucharest

Christopher S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University

SCOTT FITZGERALD JOHNSON
Georgetown University and Dumbarton Oaks

IN the year 845 C.E., in a monastery scriptorium in the northwest corner of Ireland, some 3,748 explanations of Latin grammatical points in the language of Old Irish were added by a pair of scribes to a precious manuscript of the Institutiones grammaticae (Elements of Latin Grammar) by the late antique scholar Priscian (Hofman 1996; Stokes and Strachan 1901). These represent some of the very first instances of an important vernacular tradition in Europe and testify to the vibrant intellectual culture of early medieval Ireland (; Law 1982). The Old Irish scribes were working in a far-flung corner of the former Roman worldreally just outside of what was the Roman world at its greatest extent. Their exemplar, Priscianus Caesariensis, had written his influential Latin grammar during the reign of the emperor Anastasius I (see frontispiece) in the Greek milieu of the sixth-century capital of Constantinople, three hundred years prior and half a world away (Averil Cameron 2009; Kaster 1988, no. 126). Constantinople and Ireland are two strange bedfellows, in the ancient world as much as today; yet such boundaries as existed were crisscrossed again and again during Late Antiquity, perhaps even more so at the end than at the beginning, despite the old Dark Ages chestnut. Clich or no, this story is one of intellectual transmission; that is, to quote a recent popular history (Cahill 1995), whether or not the Irish actually saved ancient civilization, these scribes were participating in it fully.

Half a century earlier than these Irish scribes, a different sort of real-world diglossia was put on display in central China. In 781 C.E., a large stele was set up, inscribed with both Chinese and Syriac inscriptions, to commemorate 150 years of East Syriac (aka Nestorian) Christian presence in the Tang capital of Xian (

Figure 0.1. Old Irish glosses on Priscians Institutiones grammaticae, 845 C.E. (St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek). See also color plate section.

Both the Old Irish Priscian glosses and the Nestorian Monument fall well outside the purview of Edward Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (17761788), the standard early-modern touchstone for students of Late Antiquity. Gibbon defined his subject (innovatively, including Byzantium) around the Mediterranean Sea and, specifically, around the portion of that world under the dominion of the Roman state. This statefrom the time of the emperor Constantine (307337) to the fall of Byzantium in 1453centered on the eastern imperial capital of Constantinople, the institutional successor to Augustus Rome, in the middle of an ever-shrinking and, in Gibbons view, ever-degenerating Byzantine empire. For Gibbon, the bulk of six volumes chronicling the long degeneration of the