Lampas - Volume 55, Issue 3, 2022

This introduction offers a brief overview of the features of Late Antiquity as a historical period in its own right, and of some trends in the emerging field of Late Antique Studies. By explaining some relevant evolutions, such as the shift away from Rome as the centre of the Empire, the gradual process of Christianisation, and the development of a new aesthetic and new reading styles in literature, it aims to place the other contributions to this issue of Lampas in their broader historical and cultural context.

In this article, I analyse two specimina of imperial panegyrical poetry, addressed at persons who hold lower ranks in the imperial hierarchy than the emperor: Constantine’s son Crispus in the first quarter of the 4^th century AD in Optatianus Porfyrius’ hexametric poetry, and Honorius’ cousin (and sister by adoption, as well as mother-in-law) Serena in the last quarter of the same century, praised by Claudius Claudianus in his Laus Serenae. The analysis fits into scholarship of recent decades focusing on imperial representation, also of secondary figures in politics. It will be concluded that in each instance, even if a person in the shadow of supreme power is praised, the highest reigning emperor is still the (indirect) object of imperial praise, be it in prose or verse panegyric.

With the rise of a mostly ceremonious palace emperorship in Late Antiquity, most emperors stopped leading armies in person and left the business of warfare in the hands of their generals. While this made the traditional ideal of the soldier emperor less important than it had been, we should not underestimate its enduring relevance as a cornerstone of imperial legitimacy in the eyes of influential interest groups. This article examines how five emperors from the late fourth and fifth centuries and from both halves of the Empire – Arcadius, Honorius, Theodosius II, Avitus and Majorian – continued to claim military prestige through panegyric, coinage, architecture and other media. Although only two of these rulers, Avitus and Majorian, were active as military commanders, the military representation of all five is characterized above all by similarities and continuity, while the failure of the first three to play an active military role prompted criticism from (at least some) Greco-Roman authors. Evidently, neither the complementary military prestige of generalissimos like Stilicho and Aëtius, nor the notion of imperial piety as a means to secure victory, could completely supplant long-established expectations that emperors should actively fight for their subjects.

Religion is a fundamental aspect of our reconstructions of the late antique world. Literary and theological texts present everyday life in Late Antiquity as a ‘world full of gods’, in which religious conflict defines the interaction between members of religious groups. This article examines late antique papyrus letters as sources for everyday life experience, highlighting on the one hand the open religious diversity and on the other hand the absence of daily melodramatic religious conflict. Through an analysis of three sets of papyri, we zoom in on the situational performance of religious identities of a fourth-century Egyptian priest, a flax merchant, and a Manichaean textile trader. To properly understand their letters – as well as their religious identity – we should employ the help of current ideas about religion, identity, and groups in the study of religion.

This article discusses the ideal of a philosophical rhetoric as propagated by the fourth-century philosopher and orator Themistius. His ideal, like that of his Neoplatonist contemporaries, is shaped by an intensive engagement with Plato’s dialogues dealing with this subject. Themistius imputes to his contemporaries the same vices that Socrates held against the sophists. He also claims that good rhetoric is always based on the truth, building upon statements found in Plato’s Phaedrus. Themistius is thoroughly convinced that it is a philosopher’s task to use rhetoric to benefit society and make people’s souls better. In his view, the usefulness of his words is raised by the pleasure they bring and guaranteed by his own practice of living honourably. Themistius thus ascribes a more important and philosophically relevant role to rhetoric than most Neoplatonists ever did.

The present article shows how in late antique literature Christianity and classical culture are intertwined like grapevines, by offering a literary comparison between Nonnus of Panopolis’ Paraphrase of the Gospel of John and his Dionysiaca. It gives an example of the way in which Nonnus’ spirit is present in both works, the former a biblical epic dictated by the rules of the paraphrase, the latter an exuberant free-flowing creative work on the pagan god Dionysus. After a brief sketch of the cultural context and the paraphrasing technique, I analyse Nonnus’ metaphors, relating them to the Gospel of John on the one hand and to the Dionysiaca on the other. I then demonstrate how Nonnus turns a simple remark about the apostle Peter jumping into the water (John 21:7-8) into a full-blown and vivid epic narration (Paraphrase 21.35-54). The swimming trunks of Peter show that the same writer’s blood pulses through both the Paraphrase and the Dionysiaca.