Danuta Shanzer

MARTIANUS CAPELLA DE NUPTIIS PHILOLOGIAE ET MERCUR

Martianus (Capella.)

A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis Philologiae Et Mercurii

Ralph Mathisen

Late Roman Gaul is often seen either from a classical Roman perspective as an imperial province in decay and under constant threat from barbarian invasion or settlement, or from the medieval one, as the cradle of modern France and Germany. Standard texts and "moments" have emerged and been canonized in the scholarship on the period, be it Gaul aflame in 407 or the much-disputed baptism of Clovis in 496/508. This volume avoids such stereotypes. It brings together state-of-the-art work in archaeology, literary, social, and religious history, philology, philosophy, epigraphy, and numismatics not only to examine under-used and new sources for the period, but also critically to reexamine a few of the old standards. This will provide a fresh view of various more unusual aspects of late Roman Gaul, and also, it is hoped, serve as a model for ways of interpreting the late Roman sources for other areas, times, and contexts.

Revisiting the Sources

Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul

One of the most significant transformations of the Roman world in Late Antiquity was the integration of barbarian peoples into the social, cultural, religious, and political milieu of the Mediterranean world. The nature of these transformations was considered at the sixth biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity Conference, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 2005, and this volume presents an updated selection of the papers given on that occasion, complemented with a few others,. These 25 studies do much to break down old stereotypes about the cultural and social segregation of Roman and barbarian populations, and demonstrate that, contrary to the past orthodoxy, Romans and barbarians interacted in a multitude of ways, and it was not just barbarians who experienced "ethnogenesis" or cultural assimilation. The same Romans who disparaged barbarian behavior also adopted aspects of it in their everyday lives, providing graphic examples of the ambiguity and negotiation that characterized the integration of Romans and barbarians, a process that altered the concepts of identity of both populations. The resultant late antique polyethnic cultural world, with cultural frontiers between Romans and barbarians that became increasingly permeable in both directions, does much to help explain how the barbarian settlement of the west was accomplished with much less disruption than there might have been, and how barbarian populations were integrated seamlessly into the old Roman world.

Danuta Shanzer

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