Averil Cameron

Government and administration

The late Roman period saw the development, for the first time in the Roman world, of complex bureaucratic structures which permitted emperors, who had now abandoned the campaigning or peripatetic style of most of their predecessors during the first four centuries of imperial history, to retain their authority. The emperor and his court with its glittering ceremonies in Constantinople was the focus for the eastern empire, and from there issued the laws which announced imperial wishes. The armies, though no longer directly commanded by emperors, strove to preserve the frontiers and maintain law and order inside them. But the smooth functioning of this system required administrative structures which had to become more complex and intrusive as the curial elites in individual cities, who had traditionally performed many vital tasks in the areas of revenue generation, dissemination of imperial wishes and preservation of local order, slowly declined in authority or surrendered control of some of these duties; here was a cyclical process, with administrative developments responding to, but also encouraging, a weakening of the curial class. The impact of administration is reflected in a story from the Life of Theodore of Sykeon: devils being exorcized cried out: ‘Oh violence! Why have you come here, you iron-eater, why have you quitted Galatia and come into Gordiane? There was no need for you to cross the frontier. We know you have come, but we shall not obey you as did the demons of Galatia, for we are much tougher than they, and not milder’.

Coinage, society and economy

From the last decades of the second century to the first decades of the fourth, the economy of the Roman world without doubt suffered the aftershocks of the violent tremors that shook the empire, most of them of a military and political nature. The Roman economy has left behind a large body of material evidence which it has become possible to study more systematically in recent decades thanks to advances in archaeology and epigraphy. This evidence consists of artefacts that have resisted the passage of time: coins; pottery and what can be deduced from it, such as the products transported and sometimes stored in the amphorae-wine, oil and garum. The prosperity of the towns often also has a sumptuary dimension, and bears witness to the structural imbalances in the Roman economy and society. For an economy in which building has always been one of the most prosperous activities, investments in cities are always considered to be a positive sign.

The Language of Images: the Rise of Icons and Christian Representation

One has to be brave to return to the subject of Byzantine Iconoclasm, a subject which, we may feel, has been done to death. But the division in Byzantine society which lasted off and on for over a century, from 726 to the ‘restoration of orthodoxy’ in 843, was so profound that any Byzantine historian must at some time try to grapple with it. This is especially so if one is trying to understand the immediately preceding period, from the Persian invasions of the early seventh century to the great sieges of Constantinople by the Arabs in 674-8 and 717. It is well recognized by historians that this was a time of fundamental social, economic, and administrative change, which coincided with, but was by no means wholly caused by, the loss of so much Byzantine territory to the Arabs. However, the connection, if any, of this process of change with the social and religious upheaval known as Iconoclasm still leaves much to be said; indeed, no simple connection is likely in itself to provide an adequate explanation. In this paper I want to explore further some of the background to the crisis, without attempting here to provide a general explanation for Iconoclasm itself. I shall not venture beyond the first phase of Iconoclasm, which ended with the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, and after which the argument is somewhat different. Indeed, I shall be focusing here not even on the period known as ‘first Iconoclasm’, but mainly on the preceding period, when the issues inherent in the controversy were already, and increasingly, making themselves felt. Though we shall inevitably be concerned with some of the arguments brought against icons by their opponents, it is the place of images themselves in the context of the pre-Iconoclastic period which will be the main issue. Finally, while I want to offer a different way of reading the rise of icons, I do not pretend that it is the only one, or even possibly the most important. I do suggest, though, that it can help us to make sense of some of the issues that were involved.

The early religious policies of Justin II

On 14 November AD 565, Justinian died and his nephew Justin was raised to the throne in a well managed senatorial coup. He was already of middle age and had spent the latter part of his life building up useful connections at court which served him well when the critical moment came: his rival, cousin and homonym was far more glamorous, being a military man, but he was not on the spot and Justin was easily able to have him removed. We are told that the murder was engineered by Justin’s empress, Sophia, the niece of Theodora, a lady who emerges as a figure as powerful and in many ways more interesting than her aunt. From the first the reign was a partnership; Sophia is shown in a novel way together with her husband on Justin’s coins, and is named with him in the headings to decrees preserved on papyri. So Justin at least acquiesced in her prominence, even if he did not like it, and it was natural for poets and historians to give as much attention to the empress as to the emperor. When the loss of the Mesopotamian border fortress of Dara to the Persians in 573 drove Justin out of his wits Sophia very naturally took control, even though nominally the government had to be put into the hands of a man (Tiberius, appointed caesar in AD 574 and augustus in 578); yet her influence had been strong from the beginning, and we shall see that if it is right to see her driving force behind the harsh persecutions of monophysites in the 570s, we must also seek her initiative in the religious policy of the late 560s.

The new state of Diocletian and Constantine: from the tetrarchy to the reunification of the empire

In 293, two soldiers, Constantius Chlorus and Maximianus Galerius, were raised to the purple as Caesars. The diarchy was transformed into a tetrarchy. With the partition into four areas, the western parts to Maximian and Constantius Chlorus, the eastern to Diocletian himself and Galerius, the centres of decision were brought closer to the more critical frontier zones. It was an attempt to resolve a structural problem in a large territorial Byzantine empire. To strengthen the new regime a new legitimation of imperial power was devised: one that exploited a particular religious climate, while at the same time aiming to trace its roots in the Roman tradition. The administrative reforms, which were connected with the reorganizations of the army, of taxation and even of the coinage, were an effective response to danger from without and to the threat of disintegration. The main feature of Aurelians reform was the division of the existing provinces into smaller territorial entities.

The Reign of Constantine, a.d. 306–337

Constantine emerged as victor first over Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge in the late autumn of 312, and then over his erstwhile ally Licinius at Cibalae in 316 and Chrysopolis in 324; however, most of the surviving literature favours and justifies his success. Constantine was to reign as sole emperor from 324 until his death in May 337. The episodes of Constantines campaign are famously depicted on the arch of Constantine: these include his progress through northern Italy and the siege of Verona, as well as vivid scenes of the defeat of Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge and his armys dramatic engulfment in the Tiber. Constantines first move during the winter of 312-13 was to strike an alliance with Licinius, cemented by a marriage at Milan between Licinius and Constantines sister Constantia. Constantine himself was a product of the tetrarchic system and in many respects he behaved no differently from his colleagues and rivals.

Enforcing Orthodoxy in Byzantium

Following in the tradition of Montesquieu and Gibbon, Wolfgang Liebeschuetz has recently again argued that one of the two most revolutionary aspects of Christianity in its history since Constantine has proved to be religious intolerance. The Byzantine state certainly made many efforts to enforce orthodoxy, and the question arises whether Byzantium was therefore a ‘persecuting society’, to use the now-familiar formulation of R. I. Moore. In a telling aside, Paul Magdalino asked in the course of an important discussion of eleventh- and twelfth-century Byzantium whether it became ‘even more of a persecuting society than before’ (my italics). Another strand of scholarship however has seen a contrast in this respect between western and eastern Europe, and several recent authors have argued for a comparative degree of toleration in Byzantium, or at least for a limitation on the possibilities of real repression. However this desire to find a degree of toleration and religious freedom in earlier societies clearly derives from our own contemporary concerns, and despite recent attempts to claim the Emperor Constantine as the defender of religious toleration, I agree with those who argue that it is misguided to look for an active conception of religious toleration in this period. This paper starts from the position that Constantine himself, and successive emperors after him, inherited an existing assumption that religious conformity was the business of the state, and looks at some of the less obvious ways by which the Byzantine state attempted to promote and enforce orthodoxy.

The eastern empire: Theodosius to Anastasius

When he assumed sole rulership of the eastern half of the Roman empire in 408, Theodosius II became head of a state which during the short reign of his father Arcadius (395–408) had experienced an extraordinary array of crises. Gothic troops in Roman employ had risen in revolt under the leadership of Alaric in 395 and spent much time during the following years freely plundering the Balkan provinces until Alaric eventually decided to move westwards (401). Also in 395, nomadic Huns had invaded the empire through the Caucasus, bringing widespread destruction to Syria and eastern Asia Minor until 397. Another Goth named Gainas, who held a command in the Roman army, instigated a revolt which was only suppressed in 400 with much bloodshed in and around Constantinople. Within a few years there was further turmoil in the capital over the bitterly contested deposition and exile of the bishop John Chrysostom (403–4), while eastern Asia Minor suffered a prolonged bout of raiding by Isaurian brigands (403–6). In addition to all this, relations with the western half of the empire throughout Arcadius’ reign were characterized by antagonism and mutual suspicion, the result of the ambitions and rivalries of dominant individuals, such as Eutropius and Stilicho, at the courts of Arcadius in Constantinople and his younger brother Honorius in the west.

Diocletian and the first tetrarchy, a.d. 284–305

The two decades of Diocletians reign saw the re-establishment of political, military and economic stability after half a century of chaos, at the price of a more absolutist monarchy, a greatly expanded army and bureaucracy and a more oppressive tax regime. Probably in 286 or 287, a new feature of the imperial collegiality emerged. Diocletian and Maximian began respectively to use the adjectival epithets Iovius and Herculius, bringing themselves into some sort of relationship with the cognate deities, Jupiter and Hercules. The years 287-90 had also seen important developments in the eastern half of the empire, to which Diocletian had repaired after the appointment of Maximian and perhaps a campaign against the Sarmatians in the autumn, reaching Nicomedia in Bithynia by 20 January 286. Iovius for Diocletian and Galerius, Herculius for Maximian and Constantius, epithets survived in the naming of new provincial divisions in Egypt some years after the end of the first tetrarchy.

The north-western provinces

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.