Rome and the Barbarians (100 B.C. – A.D. 400)
Thomas S. Burns
Number of quotes: 17
Book ID: 190 Page: 7
Section: 4B
Alongside these natural factors were four fundamental ancient assumptions about life that are quite different from modern views. These were the deeply entrenched notions that (1) an individual’s character was established at birth; (2) society was fundamentally structured around patron-client relationships; (3) education involved a unilineal process in which rhetorical presentation was central; (4) technology was essentially static.Pastor John’s note: (2) & (3) emphasized in Christian Aristocracy
Quote ID: 4202
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 190 Page: 8
Section: 4B
The second of these, the ubiquity of patron-client relationships, influenced virtually all personal, governmental, and international relationships throughout the entire period under investigation.
Quote ID: 4203
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 190 Page: 11
Section: 4B
Under their custodianship, Rome prospered. They did so by manifesting traditional aristocratic virtues; foremost among these were manliness (virtus), respect for tradition and the gods (pietas), and clemency (clementia). At the center of each of these virtues stood the patron, that is, the father, the head of family, the head of government, acting as the defender, the link to the gods, and the stern but fair-minded judge.
Quote ID: 4204
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 190 Page: 11
Section: 1A
In Hades, Virgil’s Aeneas, in one of the most famous passages in all Latin literature and one clearly addressed to Augustus, hears his father Anchises say of Rome’s destiny:Others will cast more tenderly in bronze
Their breathing figures, I can well believe,
And bring more lifelike portraits out of marble;
Argue more eloquently, use the pointer
To trace the paths of heavens more accurately
And more accurately foretell the rising stars.
Roman, remember by your strength to rule
Earth’s people—for your arts are to be these:
To pacify, to impose the rule of law,
To spare the conquered, battle down the proud. {2}
The public display of these virtues was just as incumbent upon Augustus’s successors as it had been to noble Romans long before Augustus took over the fortunes of the Julian family. The same values in their Christianized forms outlasted the empire.
Quote ID: 4205
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 190 Page: 56
Section: 4B
Abandoning a patron was extremely dishonorable, and so was the reverse…. . . .
The ancient gods themselves—that is, when we can catch a glimpse of them in myth—also lived in a world of patronage with much bargaining, posturing, and display before decisions were taken and, usually even then, with much effort being made not to offend another god by inappropriate conduct.
Quote ID: 4207
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 190 Page: 307
Section: 4B
During the Principate, most internal barbarians had become Romans, while those beyond direct Roman administration were marginal to Roman civilization, literally and figuratively existing on the fringe of Roman civilization with its great cultural and political centers nestled along the Mediterranean Sea. By 300 the periphery had become the center. It was not merely the place where emperors were made and unmade, for it was the focal point of a uniquely military culture with its own values and largely self-sufficient economies.
Quote ID: 4210
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 190 Page: 308
Section: 4B
When the peripheries became central, the external barbarians became insiders in a new society. They still lived beyond the direct Roman administration, both they lived in the heart of the frontier zone that nourished an emerging composite society in which the old borders were slowly dissolving. The fruits of this coexistence within the militarized zones dominate the remainder of the Roman history and the rest of this book.
Quote ID: 4211
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 190 Page: 309
Section: 4B
The main features of the late Roman Empire were already apparent by the death of Diocletian in 305, but they continued to evolve throughout the following century and beyond. Except for Christianity, the contours of the late empire were most apparent along the frontiers. These trademarks included a new civil administrative system that channeled imperial government through dioceses under vicars to a proliferation of provinces each under the supervision of a governor. Between the dioceses and the emperor stood four regional prefectures plus the urban prefectures of Rome and Constantinople. In the immediate frontier zones, both civil and military governments were merged under the district military commander, the dux, whose authority very often included troops stationed in several adjacent provinces. His forces were spread thinly along the frontier in small but highly fortified encampments, between which ran the all important limes road and in many places a line of watchtowers within sight of each other. {1}Other than the dux, the only point of convergence of civil and military governments in the late empire was the person of the emperor himself. The emperor stood at the apex, far above the fray, and progressively out of touch.
Quote ID: 4212
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 190 Page: 335
Section: 3C2
As Ammianus reveals, however, normal recruitment had long meant accepting numerous barbarians, and many of Julian’s recruits came from among those barbarians who had remained loyal to his dynasty.. . . .
During the rest of the century whenever civil war broke out among the Romans, both sides immediately intensified their normal recruitment efforts among the barbarians.
. . . .
The final battle between Theodosius and the usurper Eugenius and his general Arbogastes pitted two closely matched Roman armies in a desperate struggle. The most striking similarity of the two armies was that both were led by Roman generals whose fathers or grandfathers had immigrated into the empire: the Gothic Gaines and half-Vandal Stilicho with Theodosius, Arbogastes at the head of the rebels. Their armies fought for two days with terrible losses on both sides, especially among the newly raised barbarian units.
Quote ID: 4214
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 190 Page: 339
Section: 3D2
As if the lives of Romans and barbarians were not sufficiently entangled, some barbarians were able to move back and forth between Roman service and high rank among the barbarians. Mallobaudes is a case in point. Such individuals enjoyed elite status in both societies. A Frank by birth, he worked his way up the ranks of the Roman army from junior officer before retiring back to barbaricum where he became a Frankish king. Later we find him back in the Roman army as a comes domesticorum, at that time commander of the emperor’s household guard, a very important position indeed. {42}
Quote ID: 4215
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 190 Page: 340
Section: 3D
Although the emperor was originally supposed to be a god, the Christian emperors had to abandon that claim. The oath recorded by Vegetius as of ca. 400 is a Christianized version, noting the new role of the emperor not as God but as God’s interlocutor on earth:So when recruits have been carefully selected who excel in mind and body, and after daily training for four or more months, a legion is formed by order and auspices of the invincible emperor. The soldiers are marked with tattoos in the skin which will last and swear an oath, when they are enlisted on the rolls. That is why (the oaths) are called the “Sacraments” [sacramenta] of military service. They swear by God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, and by the Majesty of the emperor which second to God is to be loved and worshipped by the human race.
. . . .
{44} HA, Marcus, 14.1; note especially the terminology in the phrase, “a superioribus barbaris fugerant, nisi reciperentur, bellum inferentibus.” The HA is fairly well grounded through the Life of Marcus, but afterwards fantasy reigns rather than emperors. The emphasis on the last phrase of the translation is my own. On the reliability of the HA on Roman-barbarian relations, see T. Burns 1979.
Quote ID: 4216
Time Periods: 25
Book ID: 190 Page: 352
Section: 3A2A,4B
Ammianus Marcellinus, in the process of narrating a Roman raid across the Rhine in 357, describes what at first seems to be a highly atypical barbarian settlement: “Upon their departure our soldiers marched on undisturbed plundering barbarian farms rich in livestock opulentas pecore villas and crops. Sparing no one, they dragged the inhabitants away and took them captive. Then they set aflame their houses, which were carefully built in the Roman way ritu Romano constructa.” {62} His assertion that some barbarians were living as Romans, perhaps some even on villa-type farms, is very gradually being confirmed along some sections of the frontier, and what better things to raise in abundance than fresh meats and vegetables.
Quote ID: 4217
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 190 Page: 364
Section: 4B
Examples abound of sons getting a leg up the career ladder because of their father’s standing in the army. In that regard, as the century waned, even a vague allusion to a Germanic affiliation may have helped; there is no longer any evidence that it could have hurt one’s career.. . . .
None of these personal and group relationships undermined the vague but ubiquitous sense of being Roman. The Roman cultural paradigm was much alive and well, still capable of absorbing barbarian newcomers, but not into the old civilian world of the Mediterranean.
Quote ID: 4218
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 190 Page: 365
Section: 3B,4B
In speaking derisively of Caracalla, Herodian writing in the third century had commented that the emperor sometimes wore “a blonde wig elaborately fashioned in the German style” and that the barbarians loved him, apparently taking his false hair as a sign of his respect for their traditions. {82} The standard Roman view of barbarians was that they all wore their hair long, especially the nobility, but that was not always the case. The Alamanni did, but the Goths had cut their hair and adopted the short style traditionally favored among the Romans. Nevertheless, official monuments still depicted all barbarians, including Goths, with long flowing hair.
Quote ID: 4219
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 190 Page: 365
Section: 3A4C,3C1
The barbarians were not all the same and never had been, but because in literature and imperial propaganda they will served the same singular purpose—to be humbled before the power of the emperor—they were still portrayed as one people, thirsting after Roman blood and booty just as in all the centuries past. A slight crack in the monolithic portrait of barbarians occurred when Christian authors emphasized Alaric’s decision to grant Christians asylum in churches while his men sacked Rome in 410, but even this incident is actually just a transition from pagan stereotypes to Christian ones. Barbarian Christians were all seen as devoted Arian heretics, and as such they stood somewhere between pagan barbarism and full Christian piety. The same cultural dichotomy that had inspired Julius Caesar was being rewritten for a Christian empire. Arians were now supposed to occupy the middle position where the Celts of Gaul had once stood.
Quote ID: 4220
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 190 Page: 367
Section: 3D2
Another Goth, Alaric, emerged from obscurity around 390, but not at the head of an independent nation of Goths. Alaric’s foremost desire was a generalship in the Roman army. He got his wish, first from the government in Constantinople, but he lost it. Then he got his wish granted again, this time by the western government in Milan (later Ravenna), but he lost it for a second time. Then and only then did Alaric claim the title of rex Gothorum (king of the Goths) and begin his famous sieges of Rome. It was a last resort, taken only after all legal attempts to realize his cherished dream of Roman command had failed. Later a dynasty of Visigothic kings would base their claims to rule upon the legends of Athanaric and Alaric.
Quote ID: 4221
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 190 Page: 373
Section: 4B
All towns with bishops in 400 survived the Middle Ages, although, except in Italy, all became very small.. . . .
In late Roman legal terms, the barbarian honestiores merged with their Roman counterparts, and sooner or later the humiliores followed suit—soldiers and farmers, sometimes one and the same, sometimes not. The distinctions that lay at the heart of this book were vanishing without anyone taking notice.
Quote ID: 4222
Time Periods: 45
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