Some time in the 520s, the Great Old Man Barsanuphius, an Egyptian recluse, wrote from his cell in the vicinity of Gaza, in order to comfort a sick and dispirited monk:

Throughout the Christian world of the fifth and sixth century, the average Christian believer (like the sick monk, Andrew) was encouraged to draw comfort from the expectation that, somewhere, in his own times, even, maybe, in his own region, and so directly accessible to his own distress, a chosen few of his fellows had achieved, usually through prolonged ascetic labour, an exceptional degree of closeness to God. God loved them as his favoured children. He would answer their prayers on behalf of the majority of believers, whose own sins kept them at a distance from him.

The Roman empire was a structure created and sustained by force that had to be available for deployment both against external threats to the state’s existence and against any of its inhabitants who attempted to reject or avoid its authority. But for its first 250 years the empire managed to maintain a considerable separation between civilian and military spheres: soldiers were legally and socially distinct from civilians, and to a large extent geographically as well, since most major concentrations of troops were located along the empire’s frontiers. As a result, many of the ‘inner’ provinces could appear demilitarized: soldiers might pass along the arterial roads or be on hand when a new census was held, but they were outsiders, in the main recruited from, stationed in and demobilized into other less civilized (i.e. less urbanized) parts of the empire, either the periphery or the uplands and other marginal areas. There was also, however, a close mutual interdependence: the army consumed much of the surplus product of the prosperous peaceful provinces, so that soldier and civilian were tied economically; the emperor was both commander-in-chief of the armies and the ultimate source of law, political authority and social status; provincial governors and most other commanders of armies were members of the senate, the pinnacle of the civilian social structure.

In the late empire this tidy picture was greatly complicated, primarily as a result of extensive tribal invasions: provinces and cities that had once been unmilitary had to remilitarize themselves; the army became an important potential means of political and social advancement, successful tribes created new centres of power where new rules governed relationships; all the time the military had to extract resources from an economy that was often suffering the effects of war.

By the year 425, Egypt had achieved a provincial arrangement that would last for well over a century. A single province under the principate, it had come under Diocletian to be divided into three smaller provinces. It all began in the last decade of the third century when a new province of Thebaid, coterminous with the old Theban epistrategia, was created out of the southern part of the original province of Egypt (Aegyptus); subsequently, Libya was separated off to become its own province. Each new province had its own governor, but all three – Aegyptus, Thebaid, Libya – were subject to the plenipotentiary authority of the Augustal prefect, resident in Alexandria.

By the latter part of the fourth century, when Ammianus Marcellinus was penning his well-known digression on Egypt (22.15–16), the threefold division into Aegyptus, Libya and the Thebaid seemed to the historian to have dated ‘to ancient times’ (priscis temporibus); other subdivisions were the creations of more recent times (posteritas). A province of Augustamnica, a revival of the short-lived Aegyptus Herculia, consisting of the eastern Delta and the old Heptanomia, had been created out of the territory of Aegyptus, which retained the western Delta, including the city of Alexandria; and the province of Libya had come to be divided into Pentapolis (Libya Superior) and ‘Drier’ Libya (Libya Inferior).

INTRODUCTION

Buildings are the most tangible witnesses of the character of a civilization. Their scale, their function, their elaboration and their novelty as compared to earlier types are all significant pointers. A survey of architecture in the fifth and sixth century leads to one inescapable conclusion: mutatis mutandis, life in both city and countryside went on as before in areas under the effective control of the empire. If a citizen of Ephesus of a.d. 300 had been reborn in a.d. 600, he would not have found himself in an alien environment. The forum or agora remained a focus of city life (Fig. 43), as did the bath (Fig. 47) and circus. Of course, most of these traditional buildings were not newly built structures in late antiquity, since most cities had received lavish public buildings in the imperial period. Made to last, they needed upkeep but not replacement, unless they burnt or fell in an earthquake. Unless, therefore, a city was expanding (e.g. Constantinople (Fig. 40), Caesarea, Jerusalem, etc.), was a new foundation (Dara, Justiniana Prima (Fig. 41)) or had been raised in status (Dyrrhachium), there was little call for new public buildings. One novelty was the invasion of the city centres by large churches, but even in this domain, the essential structures had been architecturally developed in the century prior to a.d. 425, although there was still room for expansion. Other new architectural elements were monasteries (Figs. 49–50), martyria (Figs. 56–7) and welfare establishments.

The figure of the late Roman emperor dominated his society as few rulers before or since. To convey what it would be like to die and meet God, a contemporary evoked the emperor emerging from his palace, and an age obsessed with religion constantly linked emperor and God: ‘God needs nothing; the emperor needs only God.’ The emperor’s body was human, but his imperial power made him ‘like God’. Yet the all-powerful ‘Master of Earth and Sea and Every People’ never appeared alone: he was always accompanied by others, who bathed in the reflected glory of his splendour. Onlookers envied the luck of his closest attendants and companions, despite the realization that exalted rank at court was precarious.

The concept of court conveniently encapsulates the convergence of people and structures at the pinnacle of late Roman society around this awesome figure. The remarkable social group surrounding the emperor encompassed but transcended the chief institutions of government and now assumed more elaborate forms. The recent and definitive establishment of imperial residences in the new capitals of Constantinople and Ravenna helped precipitate this change. A travelling monarchy yielded permanently to a sedentary one, and stable palace milieux began to drive roots into capital cities. This occurred in both halves of the empire and affected all other developments, although the evidence is much richer for the eastern empire.

JUSTIN II

Imperial succession

Despite his age and the conspiracies of his latter years, Justinian took no steps to designate a successor. Whether he could not decide between the merits of various relatives, or stubbornly preferred to allow the traditional constituencies of senate, army and people to select a suitable candidate, is unknown, but as a result the succession was presented to the man on the spot, his nephew Justin, son of his sister Vigilantia and husband of Sophia, the ambitious and competent niece of Theodora. Since at least the early 550s Justin had been curopalatus, a position of modest significance but central to palace life, and had shown resolution in quelling faction rioting in 562, but his career does not appear as distinguished as that of his main rival within the extended imperial family, his cousin Justin, son of Germanus, who had won victories in the Balkans and was currently serving as magister militum on the Danube. Justin the curopalatus, however, was in Constantinople and was well supported: the comes excubitorum, Tiberius, was a protégé, and his presence in command of the imperial bodyguard indicates that Justin had been planning ahead; other supporters included the quaestor Anastasius, and the newly-appointed patriarch of Constantinople, John Scholasticus, who had transmitted the prediction of Justin’s succession made by Symeon Stylites at Antioch, and who now performed the coronation; Callinicus, a leading senator, invited Justin to accept the succession, while his brother Marcellus and son-in-law Baduarius were both patricians.

INTRODUCTION: THE QUESTION OF SOURCES

In the present state of our knowledge it is not difficult to describe the physical setting for pre-Islamic Arabian history, and new archaeological discoveries in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan and the Gulf are producing much valuable and unique evidence. Over the past century a vast body of epigraphical material – some 50,000 north and south Arabian inscriptions and the inscribed sticks now emerging by the hundreds in northern Yemen – has provided a wealth of information on the societies of the peninsula, especially the bedouins. But all this seldom provides a coherent picture of the course of events, as opposed to vignettes and bare details, and thus does not replace a literary historical tradition. There are external epigraphic records of the Arabs and Arabia, and historical sources – especially in Greek and Syriac – are often helpful. But this information too is profoundly discontinuous, and in any case represents the perspective of outsiders who regarded the Arabs as barbarian marauders and most of Arabia as a menacing wasteland.

There is voluminous material on the subject in the Arabic sources, but herein lies the problem. The relevant accounts, including a vast bulk of poetry, are frequently attributed to the pre-Islamic period or otherwise presented as describing events and conditions of that time, but apart from the Qur’ān the sources containing these accounts are at least two centuries later. In times past it seemed reasonable simply to compare the various accounts to determine which seemed most likely to be true.

At the beginning of the fifth century the senatorial aristocracy of the late empire seemed well assured of its future. Its great dynasties, the Anicii and Symmachi among them, appear full of confidence in the letter collections of the period – those of Symmachus himself, but also of Jerome, Augustine and Paulinus of Nola. Nor were they much shaken by the initial break-up of the western empire, despite panic-stricken reactions to the arrival of the barbarians and to the invasions of the Huns. At the end of the fifth century the Italian aristocracy appears as confident as ever in the inscriptions of the Colosseum and in the letters of Ennodius of Pavia. Its Gallic counterpart, a little less grand in status, but of nearly comparable wealth, dominates the letter collections of Sidonius Apollinaris, Ruricius of Limoges and Avitus of Vienne, as well as having a significant profile in that of Ennodius (Provençal by birth, albeit Italian in his career). By the mid sixth century, however, the greatest of these dynasties were no longer a power in the west: Justinian’s Ostrogothic wars had destroyed their Italian base, although the Anicii themselves were still of some importance in Constantinople. However, while the front rank of the aristocracy had collapsed in Italy, in the successor states of Gaul its provincial counterpart survived, as is again evidenced by a letter collection, this time the poetic epistles of Venantius Fortunatus. In all probability it had also managed to hang on to much of its wealth.

The definition of orthodoxy between 425 and 600 finds expression primarily in the decrees or statements of the Oecumenical Councils of Ephesus I (431), Chalcedon (451) and Constantinople II (553), which to a large extent were held at imperial instigation. The difficulties of enforcing such definitions, which often had to be upheld by the legislative, military, and even theological and liturgical interventions of emperors, prove that orthodoxy so defined was by no means acceptable to all Christians in the empire. This was particularly the case with the Council of Chalcedon, for its reception and promulgation, or its rejection and condemnation, were played out not only in imperial and patriarchal circles, but also among great numbers of monks and faithful. What, in fact, constituted right belief? Both proponents and opponents of Chalcedon laid claim to orthdoxy, tracing their pedigree in right belief back to the Council of Nicaea (325). An additional complication in assessing the definitions of orthodoxy in this period and the manner in which they were enforced is caused by the development and differentiation in the expression of doctrine. The interpretation of Chalcedon by its sixth-century adherents, for instance, was to differ from the perception of orthodoxy among their fifth-century counterparts. Furthermore, imperial policies adopted for the enforcement of orthodoxy were often dictated by a desire for ecclesiastical unity rather than for the preservation of right belief, which in such cases was used as an administrative tool. Increasingly, different perceptions of orthodoxy, and contrary opinions regarding its enforcement, caused ruptures not only among Christians of the eastern empire, but between east and west as well.

Throughout the fifth and sixth centuries a.d., and to some extent later also, the education of the young followed patterns established in outline almost a thousand years earlier. Changes in content and in institutional arrangements had certainly taken place during the long period. The gradual disappearance in the Greek world of the element of physical training and of the institution which provided for it, the gymnasium, is an example. But change on the whole had been slow and almost imperceptible. Traditional attitudes, methods and values had sunk deep roots in ancient society, roots which remained relatively undisturbed by the social, political and religious changes of the period. Education of all kinds was marked by rigid conservatism. There was no resistance to innovation because there was no innovation to resist. In the words of a recent study, ‘Late antique schools of grammar and rhetoric were sound-proof against the outside world, their methods and their status largely untouched by the profound political and religious changes taking place around them.’ Such general statements call for some qualification when one looks more closely at particular regions, periods or ethnic groups, but on the whole they provide a valid and important characterization of late antique education and of the culture which it reflected and perpetuated.

Anyone seeking to write an account of law in the western kingdoms labours under two great difficulties. The student of Roman law can find comfort in the knowledge that his legal tradition was the creation of a political élite which prided itself upon its literary accomplishments. It was both a tool of government and one of the proudest manifestations of a literate culture. In the post- and non-Roman kingdoms, such comfortable assurance is only forthcoming in modest portions. The study of Roman law rests upon rich materials that have been analysed by some of the best minds of every generation since, in the eleventh century, Irnerius set out to teach the law of Justinian at Bologna. The written materials for a history of law in the western kingdoms are, however, much patchier and their relationship to the practice of law more uncertain.

The second great difficulty is partly a consequence of the first: the almost irresistible temptation to judge all other laws in late antiquity by their relationship to Roman law. Moreover, this temptation may take a particularly pernicious form if one is induced to think of Roman law as, in some sense, ‘modern’ in outlook, so that the other laws can then be judged as relatively modern or primitive according to how closely they resembled Roman law. One form of this dangerous preoccupation is the ancient conception – already well expressed, for his own purposes, by Cassiodorus – of the culture of Europe as a fruitful mixture of Roman and Germanic (or Gothic).

The eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean and its hinterland comprised some of the richest areas of the eastern Roman empire in late antiquity. Geographically, the area is most easily understood as a series of different climatic zones running north—south. Along the Mediterranean seaboard there is a well-watered strip which provides rich agricultural lands. In the north, this belt is comparatively narrow where the mountains of Syria and Phoenica Maritima come down almost to the sea. Only in a few places, like the vicinity of Antioch and inland from Tripolis, are there extensive fertile plains. In Palestine the fertile area becomes more extensive, though increasingly arid in the south. The mountains themselves vary greatly in character. In Syria II the mountains along the coast are poor and sparsely inhabited, and further south the high summits of Phoenicia Maritima form an effective barrier between coastal cities like Berytus and inland Damascus. In Palestine, on the other hand, the hills are gentler and more densely settled with villages and towns, including Jerusalem.

Inland, the rift valley runs all the way north–south from Syria I to Palestine III. In the north, where the Orontes flows through it, the rift valley is bordered on the east by the limestone massifs – rounded, rocky hills which supported intensive settlement in late antiquity. Further south, both the Biqa valley around Heliopolis (Baalbek) and the Jordan valley were well populated and included such important cities as Tiberias and Scythopolis (Baysān, Bet She’an). Even in the arid lands of the Wādī ’Araba south of the Dead Sea, the Byzantine period saw important settlements.

No other volume of The Cambridge Ancient History raises such major questions of periodization or historical interpretation as Volume XIV, the last in the series. Indeed, the very decision to extend the original coverage of the series by two extra volumes and to allow an overlap with the new Cambridge Medieval History is an indication of the lively state of research on this period and the variety of interpretative schemes currently proposed. We can no longer be content with a simple ‘transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages’, nor can we propose a single point where the line between them may be drawn. The conventional date of the fall of the Roman empire in the west, confidently placed by previous generations in the year a.d. 476, was already found inadequate by Edward Gibbon, while the lack of interest shown in the supposed event by contemporaries has been noted as a problem by many historians. ‘Transformation’ is now a term more commonly used than ‘fall’ to describe the process of historical change in the west from the last centuries of classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, and the search for a chronological divide is felt with less urgency than before as concentration focuses instead on a longer time-scale of change. Meanwhile, the historic changes in eastern Europe in the late twentieth century encouraged are-examination of the processes which led to the formation of Europe, and in particular a reconsideration of what the very concept of Europe might entail.

The period between the accession of the Roman emperor Valentinian III in 425 and the death of the Visigothic king Leovigild in 586 inevitably occupies a central position in the debates relating to the transition from classical to medieval in western Europe, and more specifically to the questions of continuity and discontinuity. There is, however, another way of reading this century and a half, and that is as a period in its own right. Several historians working on fifth- and sixth-century Britain have, for instance, argued that between the history of the late Roman province of Britannia and that of Anglo-Saxon England lies a shorter but none the less distinct period that has been called ‘sub-Roman’.

Britain can, of course, be seen as experiencing a history radically different from that even of the other parts of western Europe. Its western half was one of only two areas of the erstwhile Roman empire to witness the re-emergence of Celtic kings, and the other area where a similar development occurred, Brittany, had a history inseparable from that of Britain itself. Meanwhile, or perhaps subsequently, Latin language and culture were more thoroughly destroyed in the Germanic kingdoms of eastern Britain than in any other part of what had been the Roman west. Yet the distinctions between Britain and the rest of western Europe may seem clearer to us now, when examined with the benefit of hindsight, than they were at the time.

The late Roman armies of the fourth and early fifth century are relatively well documented: Ammianus and other narrative historians describe them at work in their main theatres of operations on the Rhine, Danube and Persian frontiers, as well as in Britain and North Africa; the Theodosian Code preserves a range of laws pertaining to their creation, sustenance and functioning; the Notitia Dignitatum offers a view, albeit complicated by partial revision, of the structure and disposition of forces in both east and west. The year 420 marks a convenient break: between then and the Persian wars of Anastasius’ reign (502–7), recorded by Procopius and Joshua the Stylite, there is little reliable narrative of Roman military action, and no Notitia; also, there are few relevant laws, since only seven of the 175 titles in Theodosian Code vii, the book devoted to military matters, date from after 420, though eleven laws among the Novels of Theodosius II and four of Valentinian III can be added. During these years the western Roman army ceased to exist as a state institution, being superseded by the military forces of the successor kingdoms in Gaul, Spain, Africa and finally Italy, none of which maintained a standing army. In the east, however, the army, and hence the empire, survived in a recognizable form through to the early seventh century. The nature and causes of these distinct developments require explanation; but first, an overview of the late Roman army.

EAST AND WEST: COMMON TRENDS

This chapter is concerned with the political evolution of the ancient city – that is, of a political unit comprising an urban core serving as administrative centre of a rural territory – in a period of great change. As the western empire broke up, the relatively uniform environment that had been provided by the imperial administration was replaced by a great variety of conditions. In view of this, it is perhaps surprising that the evolution of cities in different regions continued to a large extent to follow parallel lines and that comparable developments can be observed in the new barbarian kingdoms and in areas which remained under imperial control, regional differences often being a matter of timing rather than substance.

Taking the city of the second century as a standard of comparison, the type survived better in the east than in the west, but not uniformly well even there. The classical city with an urban population, monumental buildings, games and a highly literate upper class continued in at least the provincial capitals of western and southern Asia Minor, in Syria, Arabia, Palestine and Egypt right up to the Arab invasions, and in the areas under Arab rule even beyond that. In the west the Roman version of the classical ideal survived best in North Africa – but only up to the Vandal conquest – in southern Spain, in Provence and in much of Italy, especially the north.