Becoming UnRoman: Romans and Romanness in Late Antique and Early Medieval Britain and Italy, AD 400-600 Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

Like many post-Roman successor states, late antique Britain and Italy struggled with geographic and political marginalization in the 5^th and 6^th centuries as barbarian raiding and invasion threatened their Romanness. Throughout its five centuries within the Roman sphere of influence, Britain had represented the marginalized and militarized periphery of the Roman world despite its legal status as a province (later diocese). When Rome’s imperial power in the West began to come under serious threat at the end of the 4^th century, Britain’s culturally unstable position left it vulnerable to the withdrawal of Roman military and civil government, an event traditionally dated to 410 CE. Italy, in contrast, continued to represent the Roman heartland and patria even after the Western Roman Empire ceased to have an emperor (traditionally dated to 476 CE) and the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire became the dominant Roman power in West and East. Because of its socio-cultural authority as the Roman homeland, Italy’s political and geographic marginalization on the edge of the Eastern Roman world meant that it could not be discarded in the same ways that less culturally significant Roman regions like Britain were, making it a politically-sensitive irritant whose innate Romanness could only be debased, not repudiated. As the shrinking remnants of the Roman West became increasingly politically marginalized in the Byzantine Empire, Italy simultaneously became both colonial periphery and imperial core, while Britain was forced to develop its own identity independent of the Roman world. Following the end of formal Roman imperial rule in the 5^th century CE, inhabitants of the former western provinces began to develop expressions of regional identity shaped by the Roman colonial failure, which nevertheless continued to allow individuals and groups to trade on their shared Romanness well into the Middle Ages. However, changing social and political dynamics in this period also led to the deterioration of shared Romanness across the post-Roman states. Britain’s and Italy’s positions on the periphery of the new Roman world made these societies vulnerable to being culturally delegitimized as non-Roman by both contemporary writers and modern scholars.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Memory of Rome

Chapter 1: Becoming British, Staying British: Ethnic Self-Identity in the Roman and Post-Roman Periods

Chapter 2: In Patria Perstabant: Gildas and Postcolonial Trauma on the British Landscape      

Chapter 3: Nec purpura nec regalibus uteretur insignibus: Roman Emperors, Barbarian Kings, and the Perception of Legitimacy in Italy 476-493          

Chapter 4: Utraeque res publicae: Constructions of Legitimacy and Authority in Theoderic’s Italy       

Chapter 5: Afterlives: Italy after Theoderic, Britain after Gildas

Conclusion: Becoming UnRoman: Failures of Romanness in Britain and Italy

Bibliography

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	History
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	History, Medieval History, Ancient Classical Studies
Keyword	Middle Ages Imperialism Late Antiquity Latin literature Post-colonialism
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Evans Grubbs, Judith, Emory University
Committee Members	Morey, James, Emory University Master, Jonathan, Emory University

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