This chapter situates classical education in late antique Gaul in its historical context, positioning the work within the current scholarly debates, and building on recent scholarship on late antique Gaul. Arranged thematically, Chapter 2 considers key developments in the political and military relationships between the western Roman empire, Gallo-Romans and barbarian groups, the prospects and prosperity of Gallo-Roman aristocrats, the increasing dominance of the Church and bishops in daily life, and the vitality and continuity of Gallo-Roman cities. It considers the conditions necessary for classical education to thrive and function and discusses how the structures that fostered education were affected by the political, military, religious, and cultural transformations of fifth-century Gaul.

The concluding chapter reflects upon how the themes and questions explored in the book speak to familiar concerns of families, communities, and societies across time. What is the purpose of education? What do we expect of our education, and in what ways does our pursuit of knowledge and our learning define who we are? The conclusion draws together the arguments from the preceding chapters, considering in what ways the ‘fall’ of Rome meant the end of the schools of grammar and rhetoric in Gaul. Without the superstructure of the Roman empire, the socio-political culture that valued literary education disappeared, and the schools soon followed suit; it was not primarily material changes caused by the political, cultural, and religious upheavals of the fifth century that led to the decline of the schools, but rather marked changes in the attitudes and mindset towards education and learning of the emerging power brokers of post-imperial Gaul – the barbarian kingdoms and the Church.

This chapter focuses on the practical aspects of education, such as the organisation and funding of the classical schools. It traces the status of classical education as a public institution in the late imperial period, during the transformations of the fifth century, and within the early barbarian successor kingdoms. The chapter begins by establishing the extent of direct involvement of the imperial government in education, arguing that cities and individuals had always played a far more important role in patronising and funding classical schools. It then considers opportunities for ‘graduates’ of classical schools in late and post-imperial Gaul, the crucial difference between literacy and literary education, and emphasises the important connection between classical education and structures of power that promote and demand literary training.

The introduction sets out the approaches, sources, and scope of the book. It acquaints the reader with the main features of classical education and places the book within the modern historiography.

Palmyra is usually studied for one of three reasons, either its role in the long-distance trade between Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, its distinctive cultural identity as visible in the epigraphic and material record from the city or its rise as an independent regional power in the Near East in the third quarter of the third century AD. While Palmyra was indeed a special place, with a private sorte, or destiny of its own, as Pliny famously expressed it (HN 5.88), the city’s ability to maintain its distinctiveness arguably rested on deep entanglements with her local and regional surroundings. This chapter addresses how the city engaged with its neighbours and its Roman imperial overlords. Actions, events and policies attested in the epigraphic record from the city and from the Palmyrene diaspora in the Roman Empire are discussed in light of theoretical insights from archaeology, sociology and economics. It is argued that Palmyra’s remarkable success built on the city’s ability to connect with the range of social networks that constituted the Roman Empire.

The Introduction sets out the theme of the book. It discusses the census qualifications (wealth minimum requirements) that prevailed in the Roman timocratic political system.

In the main, critics have regarded Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (also known as Plácido) as a tragic mulatto detached from enslaved black people yet unable to join the ranks of the white literary elite. This essay takes an innovative approach to Plácido by reading his poetry as transculturated colonial literature rather than a poor imitation of European aesthetics. Plácido produced poems situated at the crossroads between classical European deities and enigmatic African spiritual practices. I argue that Plácido transculturated Mars, the Roman god of war, with the Yoruba principles of the divine masculine most often attributed to the orisha Oggún. In Oggún philosophy, the divine masculine is the capacity to exploit the powers of devastation and dissension either to ensure the survival of a given polity or to remake it entirely. Plácido appropriated Aeolus, the Greek god of the wind, Jupiter, the supreme Roman god, and most prominently Mars, the Roman god of war to reimagine Cuban resistance as a just war between good and evil. Plácido’s portrayal of ancient deities divested of sacred authority enabled him to convey an alternative God concept without contravening censorship guidelines that forbade any criticism of Catholicism, the official religion of the empire.

Emperor Theodosius II commissioned and published the Codex Theodosianus, or Theodosian Code, in 439. It is a large anthology of legal issuances and statements from as far back as the era of Constantine, sole ruler of the empire from 324 to 337, and the latest sources come from the time of Theodosius II himself. The selections translated here were, in their own times, written in different contexts and sent to different audiences. There are edicts, made for a more general audience and applicable to many; there are decrees, which arise from the adjudication of a specific case; and there are letters written to specific city, provincial, and imperial officials, containing orders from one or another emperor. Yet as parts of this anthology, they are presented as having equal weight and equal applicability; they are statements by emperors, which establish a precedent of law, presented in this “Code” and accessible to officials and judges for consultation.

Well over half a century ago, Francis Haverfield (1912) discussed Romanization and defined it both in terms of historical process and material changes in native culture. These alterations were shown to have been brought about by the Roman presence and resulted in native culture more closely resembling that of Rome. Here, in attempting to evaluate these processes again, I intend to build on the foundations laid by Haverfield, but with the considerable advantage of the larger data-base for the understanding of changes in the material culture in the Empire provided by recent archaeological research. In summary, Haverfield stated: ’First, Romanization in general extinguished the distinction between Roman and provincial ... Secondly, it did not everywhere and at once destroy all traces of tribal or national sentiments or fashions’. This conclusion parallels the idea, developed by Brendel (1979), that ’Roman’ culture was by definition a cosmopolitan fusion of influences from diverse origins rather than purely the native culture of Rome itself.

Rome’s was a politics of all five senses. It was a city of noise, of refuse and bodies in the street, of massive crowds, of massive construction, and a size and opulence not equaled in Europe again for more than a millennium. In maps and inscriptions, Rome was the center of the world. How did Rome become this way? This chapter looks to intercity relations to resolve this puzzle. The Roman Empire was in effect a network of cities in the core–periphery mode – the ultimate “consumer city” supplied by vast hinterlands. Lacking the perfect local environment, Rome imported the commodities – and people – needed to construct an alpha city. The city grew as haphazardly and violently as the Empire itself. The greater the resources of the Empire, the larger the foundation for Rome’s growth. This hit crisis point in the Late Republic, as an increasingly dispossessed agrarian peasantry migrated en-masse to cities alongside inhabitants from across the world. In short, the context for Rome’s growth was a hitherto unparalleled age of globalization in the first and second centuries CE.

The fin-de-siècle aesthetes, of course, react against the moral project expressed in realist novels like Eliot’s and Ward’s. Indeed, Oscar Wilde uses liturgy to attack what he sees as realism’s stunted imagination. But, as this chapter and the next show, aestheticism too is deeply suspicious of how excarnation separates the material and the spiritual. Again, if modernity typically sunders these realms, liturgy joins them. It therefore offers the perfect channel for aestheticism’s veneration of material reality – of beautiful bodies, lovely objects, and stimulating experiences. Such devotion pervades Walter Pater’s novel Marius the Epicurean (1885) – itself a kind of liturgical and aesthetic bildungsroman. Set in second-century Italy, the novel follows the pious Marius, who cherishes the pagan rituals of his boyhood and finds their fulfillment in the early Christian Mass. For Marius, the Eucharist not only sacralizes material objects but also defends matter – specifically the body – against the ritual violence of imperial Rome. Just as Wordsworth depicts industrialism as a liturgy of desecration, Pater sees Roman imperial power in similar terms.

In this treatise, Bartolus of Sassoferrato explores the phenomenon of factionalism in the fourteenth-century Italian city republics. He gives an account of the local nomenclature of Guelfs and Ghibellines, relating these labels historically to the papal and imperial camps in the contested region of northern Italy. He explains that, nowadays, such labels have only local relevance, not ideological significance. He then analyses the legality of joining such parties, concluding that if the reason for doing so is to uphold the common good, it is lawful.

Chapter 3 begins the conceptual history of the nation where our current vocabulary originates, in classical Greece and Rome. It examines the conception of cultural-linguistic communities in the context of the two principal alternatives to the nation-state – city-state and empire. The chapter moves from Greek conceptions of ethnicity as depicted in Herodotus’ Histories to Cicero’s reflections on the relationship between national and political communities in the Roman Empire and concludes with an examination of the idea of the nation in the Vulgate, the late fourth-century translation of the Bible. The analysis shows that ethnos, gens, and natio referred to communities defined by descent, language, and geographical homeland but were not understood in a political sense. Moreover, Roman thinkers were not only acutely aware of the twofold loyalties to nation and polity; they also sought practical arrangements for accommodating diverse national groups within a single political order. The chapter discusses Roman ideas on citizenship, administrative subsidiarity, and legal pluralism.