Humanities

Conference announcement: "Imperial presence in Rome in late antiquity (third - sixth centuries AD)", to be held at the Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, from the afternoon of Friday 20th, Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd March, 2015.

The aim of this conference is to address the issue of the “absence” of the emperor from the city of Rome in late antiquity (particularly from the period of the Tetrarchy to Justinian’s reconquests), and to question whether the physical absence of the emperor himself should be considered to constitute an genuine imperial absence from the city as has generally been argued. Throughout late antiquity emperors often remained actively and deliberately involved in the life and politics of the city of Rome; and imperial presence could in fact take many forms aside from the physical proximity of the person of the emperor himself. Through this conference the different manifestations of an emperor’s presence in the city of Rome in the late antique period will be explored, including representation through imperial family members, imperial administration and legislation, and statuary representation.

Confirmed speakers include: Simon Corcoran (London), Caillan Davenport (Brisbane), Julia Hillner (Sheffield), Gavin Kelly (Edinburgh), Markus Löx (Munich), Silvia Orlandi (Rome), Michel-Yves Perrin (Paris), Michele Renee Salzman (California)

This conference is organised by Dr Muriel Moser and Dr Meaghan McEvoy, with the generous support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Attendance is free, however space is limited, so for further information, or to register for this event please email Mcevoy@em.uni-frankfurt.de

This article highlights the significant role played by Constantia, posthumous daughter of the emperor Constantius II, in late fourth century dynastic politics and ideology. Though Constantia has generally been neglected in modern studies of the period, close examination of the surviving sources reveals her pivotal position, even from her earliest years, as a coveted link between the Constantinian dynasty and new emperors seeking to establish themselves and their families in the turbulent years of the 360s, 370s and 380s AD. Through investigation of the source material relating to Constantia's short life, we gain further vital insight into the perennial importance to imperial politics of dynastic loyalty, and specifically loyalty to the Constantinian house, in the late fourth century, as well as emerging new ideas about the complexities of the marriages of imperial women.

This article examines four orations dedicated to, or concerned with, the first generation of imperial women of the Theodosian house. Exploring first the funeral orations delivered by Gregory of Nyssa at Constantinople for Pulcheria and Flaccilla in the 380s ce, and second Claudian’s poems in honor of Serena and for the marriage of Maria and Honorius at Milan in the 390s ce, it aims to highlight the particular insights these speeches offer concerning the women of the new ruling house and the courts within which they operated. In so doing, it will investigate the developing canon of virtues expected of a late Roman imperial woman at the end of the fourth century.

This paper examines the hagiography of Daniel the Stylite, believed to have been written by one of his disciples soon after the saint's death at Constantinople in the late fifth century. It first explores the identity of Daniel's named patrons, highlighting the status of these individuals as members of former imperial families who were not currently in power in the East, but who were competing with the reigning emperors of the day for patronage of the holy man. Second, it highlights the imperial-like manner of the hagiographer's presentation of Daniel, particularly his column-dwelling existence with its analogies to imperial columns in the city, and his ordination by the hand of God, and it suggests that the author was shaping his presentation of the holy man to appeal to the Christian court of his day. Both of these aspects of the text indicate that the hagiographer wished to present Daniel as the pre-eminent holy man of late fifth-century Constantinople, whose monastery was worthy of future patronage by emperors or aristocrats with imperial connections.

... 1 Amanda Nettelbeck* ... At the same time, he was a keen lay ethnographer who collected regional Indigenous vocabularies, accrued Indigenous 'artefacts', and in an aspiration to Australian 'nativeness', wrote of himself as a spiritual affiliate of Indigenous people. ...

:Historians have suggested that in Australia we now live in a "memorial culture" in which a public consciousness of history is stronger than ever. If this is so, how much is it visible in relation to the history of the colonial frontier? When the new National Museum of Australia opened in 2001 at the height of the History Wars debates,