Lucy Grig

Deconstructing the symbolic city: Jerome as guide to late antique Rome

This article considers the writings of Saint Jerome as a source for writing a cultural history of the city of Rome in late antiquity. Jerome is of course, in many respects, an unreliable witness but his lively and often conflicted accounts of the city do none the less provide significant insights into the city during an age of transition. He provides a few snippets for the scholar of topography, but these do not constitute the main attraction. Jeromes city of Rome appears above all as a textual palimpsest: variously painted in Vergilian colours as Troy and frequently compared with the biblical cities of Babylon, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. In the final analysis, it is argued, Jeromes Rome is surprisingly unstable, indeed a ‘soft city’.

Caesarius of Arles and the campaign against popular culture in late antiquity: Caesarius and the campaign against popular culture

This article analyses the preaching of Caesarius of Arles (in particular the Admonitiones) as a sustained attack on contemporary popular culture. It situates this process in the context of the question of the “democratisation of culture” in Late Antiquity, an enduring historiographical debate in which Caesarius plays a starring role. The analysis focuses in detail on the bishop’s programmatic letter, the so-called Sermo 1, and unpicks the strategies used to stigmatise key aspects of popular culture as well as considering the reception of his campaign. He also wrote sermons for particular festivals and places, 1 but against drunkenness and debauchery too, and against discord and hate, against anger and pride, against the sacrilegious and soothsayers, against the most pagan rites of the Kalends and against augurs, worshippers of trees and springs, and various sorts of vices. [V. Caes. 1.55] The Admonitiones of Caesarius of Arles, numbering around eighty of Caesarius’ sermons, can seem mind-numbing after a while, as the bishop returns time and time again to his favourite subjects for criticism. They focus on aspects of Christian morality but also on lifestyle, encompassing issues of culture and what Pierre Bourdieu influentially called habitus. The first-time reader is struck by the sweeping breadth of

Cities in the ‘long’ Late Antiquity, 2000–2012 – a survey essay

This essay surveys major themes and developments in the recent study of late antique urbanism. First, re-evaluations of the late phase of classical urbanism are discussed, whereby a simple narrative of ‘decline’ has been replaced by a much more chronologically and geographically nuanced picture. The importance of regional, indeed local, specificity is stressed, with different areas of the ancient world experiencing often radically different urban trajectories. Key aspects of late antique urbanism are considered, including the relationship between town and country, economic urban life, political versus social and religious urban history, before concluding with consideration of areas where future research is particularly needed.