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This dissertation explores in the ways in which decorum, or the appropriateness of form and behavior, served as an underlying principle in the patronage, design, and construction of monumental architecture, sculpture, and inscriptions by the aristocratic elite of late antique urban environments. Throughout the dissertation, I deliberately turn my attention away from imperial buildings like Emperor Justinian's (r. 527-565) Hagia Sophia and towards those projects financed by aristocrats and elites, with a focus placed upon those associated with the gens Anicii and their sphere. It is through the discussions of the built environments of Rome, Constantinople, and Ravenna in the fourth through sixth centuries CE, that my dissertation reveals the ways in which aristocrats and elites, like members of the gens Anicii and wealthy bankers like Julianus Argentarius, were able to concretize their power in periods of political change. Their employment of a decorum of architecture, based upon Vitruvian and Ciceronian ideals, demonstrates the central role these individuals played in the shaping of the visual culture of the late antique Mediterranean. It was through the patronage of statues and buildings that were thoughtfully dedicated, strategically located, and purposefully decorated that these wealthy patrons were able to galvanize their non-imperial authority. In historical moments wracked by war, plague, and political instability, the finance and construction of large-scale statuary on prominently inscribed plinths, as well as solid, immovable buildings afforded these elites with a sense of permanence and stability that, they hoped, would last in perpetuity. / Art History

The world of the late antique Mediterranean is characterized by its saints’ shrines—structures that housed the tombs, relics, and other objects associated with holy entities. These shrines—these distinct places—differed in size, status, and degree of ecclesiastical and bureaucratic recognition, but together formed a widespread network of pilgrimage destinations, arenas of miraculous healings, and gathering points for bodies both human and divine, alive and dead, afflicted and non-afflicted. In facilitating such mingling, the shrines served as earthly, localized sites of holiness and saintly intervention, and yet were also involved in broader social, theological, and economic affairs. This dissertation focuses on one late antique shrine—that of Saints Cyrus and John, which likely reached its height of usage and popularity in the sixth and seventh centuries CE. Once located at Menouthis (modern Abuqir) near the Canopic mouth of the Nile (just outside of Alexandria), the shrine is now characterized by its near-absolute lack of material remains. For that reason, it has not been subjected to the types of material analyses performed on comparative sites with extant remains. Moreover, the only literary accounts of the shrine are attributed to a single author: Sophronios, the patriarch of Jerusalem (c. 560-638 CE). Sophronios’ writing is vivid, however, and he depicts the shrine as a vibrant, visceral space of material, bodily, and faunal entanglements. Blood gushes, tumors burst, and figs appear. Snakes call to one another, attendants hasten, crowds gather, and camel feces are revealed as a saint-sanctioned cure for leprosy. A center for sensory encounters of every kind, the shrine literally overflows with human, animal, and material occupants. Sophronios’ texts therefore invite a material, synesthetic analysis of the space, context, and participants of the shrine. This dissertation utilizes methods from studies in the materiality of religion (including so-called “new materialisms”) in order to: 1) build a material analysis of the shrine of Saints Cyrus and John based on its literary sources, and 2) model how scholars might better grapple with late antique pilgrimage sites (both extant and non-extant) and the materia of divine healing. Individually, the dissertation chapters offer separate ways of reassessing and reconstructing the shrine of Saints Cyrus and John. Taken together, they constitute a methodological intervention in the broader study of late antique saints’ shrines.

At its greatest extent, the Roman empire represented one of the largest continuous areas of land to have been ruled by a single central administration in the classical period. While the extent of the empire may be determined from both the extensive body of literary evidence from the Roman world, and also from the physi- cal remains of great public works stretching from Britain to Arabia, the processes by which the Romans were able to apprehend larger spaces remain infrequently studied in modern scholarship. It is often assumed that Roman spatial awareness came from cartographic representations and that the imperial Roman administration must have possessed detailed scale maps of both individual regions and of the empire as a whole. In the first part of the present study, it is demonstrated that Roman spatial understanding may not have relied very extensively on cartography, and that any maps produced in the Roman world were designed to serve very different purposes from those that we might associate with maps today. Instead, it is argued that the extensive construction projects that defined the character of the imperial world would have pro- vided a means by which the larger physical spaces of the empire could be understood. However, as transformations began to occur within the built environment between the late-third and late-sixth centuries, spatial processes would have necessarily started to change. In the second part of the present study, it is suggested that attitudes toward the built environment would have led to changes in the physical arrangement of rural and urban spaces in late antiquity; furthermore the eventual dissolution of the constructed landscape that defined the Roman empire would have resulted in new approaches to the apprehension of larger spaces, approaches in which cartographic expression may have played a more central role.

<p>Rome’s Eastern trade flourished for over two centuries, from reign of Augustus to that of Caracalla, bringing highly valuable goods from India and East Africa to consumers in Rome, and this thesis examines the traders who operated in Egypt and transported goods between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Chapter 1 examines the identities of the traders, in terms of ethnicity, wealth, and social standing, and also examines the evidence for the involvement of the imperial family in the Eastern trade, while Chapter 2 analyzes the many different customs dues, transit tolls, and other taxes imposed upon Eastern traders operating in Egypt. Chapter 3 presents an analysis of customs abuses, including the forms of abuses which occurred, legislative attempts to curb abuses, and the frequency of abuses. Chapter 4 investigates the potential for profits in the Eastern trade, taking into consideration the various expenses, such as transport fees and customs dues, incurred in the course of transporting the goods across Egypt, as well as the evidence for the value of Eastern goods at Rome.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Scholarship dealing with the phenomenon of Christianisation in the Roman Empire has overwhelmingly been Christian-centred, often ignoring the importance of the declining pagan communities in the fourth century A.D. During this period of cultural and religious transformation in the Empire, the construction of religious identity by the Church resulted in the need for pagan communities to adapt themselves to a Judeo-Christian understanding of religion, in order to establish their place in an increasingly Christianizing society. Consequently, the isolation of pagans from, and their vilification within, the growing Christian world were factors that had aided the development of a pagan socio-religious identity which had not existed in previous centuries. Therefore, this paper will examine the question of what elements constituted the pagan identity in late antiquity, and, perhaps more importantly, how this identity had come to be formed.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

The present thesis examines probably the ultimate focal point in the history of the Christian South Caucasian Cultures – the Caucasian Schism that occurred in the early seventh century – a major scandal that ended the ecclesiastical communion between the Georgian and Armenian Churches and gave impetus to the rise of the so-called national Churches. The schism became the central point of reference in both medieval and modern Caucasian historiographies. Modern scholarship has advanced different claims concerning the nature, reasons and results of the Schism, in many cases arguing that almost all aspects of the respective cultures have been affected by the Schism. As for medieval Armenian historical narratives, they made a good conceptual use of the schism, presenting the schism as a major interpretive schema for the explanation of all aspects of their relations with their northern neighbours. Contrary to such view, I argue that our knowledge of the reasons behind the schism and theological controversies that preceded, accompanied or followed the Schism in the sixth century is in most cases determined by the conceptual framework created in the Middle Ages together with the changes in political state of affairs in the Caucasus. In the period between the tenth to thirteenth centuries, when all major South Caucasian powers were struggling for the unification of the Caucasus under their aegis, the remembrance of the schism became particularly important. The remembrance and indeed forgetting of the Caucasian unity and separation became a rhetorical tool in medieval Armeno-Georgian debates. Therefore instead of taking the Schism at face value, I propose to abandon the traditional liminalist perception of the history of unity and separation in the Caucasus, and adopt a more rewarding approach, that is to say to try to understand when, why and by whom were the crucial events of the Late Antique Caucasian history conceptualized and adapted for contemporary ideological needs.

This dissertation analyzes the struggle between the imperial court and the periphery in the context of Justinian’s reforms in the early A.D. 530s. The reforms targeting select Roman provinces sought to reduce the size of the imperial bureaucracy while simultaneously attempting to maintain imperial vertical authority. The reforms epitomize the imperial court’s struggle to rein in the imperial bureaucracy in the provinces of the Roman Empire. The analysis is framed within the cultural, social, political and economic evolution occurring in Late Antiquity. It shall be proposed that the reforms are one example of the imperial court’s attempt to limit the distance between itself and its provincial resources, particularly with regard to fiscality. The reforms also embody the political dynamics between the emperor and his bureaucracy, which is composed of the Roman elite. Roughly two centuries earlier, the Tetrarchic reforms fundamentally changed the relationship between both parties. Specifically, the upper stratum of the aristocracy saw the balance of power tilt in its favor substantially.

This dissertation focuses on images of Christ that date from the first half of Late Antiquity, defined as the three centuries between AD 200 and 500. The cultural dynamics of this period left a distinct impression on Christian art, and this dissertation traces that impact. Unlike other studies that attempt to resolve ambiguity within the corpus of Christ images, the argument here maintains that ambiguity was a key component in the creation and subsequent interpretation of the Late Antique Christian iconography. The dissertation proceeds in three parts, each comprising two chapters. In the first section, the history and historiography of the image of Christ is explored, and a methodology capable of accommodating the diverse meanings assigned to the Christ’s discrepant and ambiguous iconographies is developed. In order to better understand the socio-religious environment in which the first images of Christ were produced and interpreted, the second section of the dissertation moves away from material culture and towards method and theory. The notion that interpretation is a group level phenomenon is critiqued, and a model explaining how individuals in Late Antiquity could have made sense of ambiguous images of Christ is advanced. The final section turns back to the material culture and applies the framework developed in the second section to two artworks: (1) the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus and (2) the floor mosaic from the Hinton St. Mary Roman Villa now in the British Museum. By complementing the standard analyses of Christian art with interpretations grounded in the diverse interactions viewers had with artworks, new perspectives will emerge that provide a fuller picture of Late Antique Christianity and the iconography of its godhead alike.