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6 results

  • Chapter 6 - The Decline of the Ecumenical Synods

  • from Part I - History
  • Bram Fauconnier, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
  • Book:
    Athletes and Artists in the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    02 February 2023
    Print publication:
    09 February 2023, pp 169-180

  • Summary

    This chapter studies the decline and disappearance of the ecumenical synods in late antiquity. As agonistic festivals were the raison d’être of the ecumenical synods, their fate was intertwined with that of the agonistic network. The fourth century ad saw a gradual unravelling of the festival circuit, due to financial problems, socio-political changes in the Greek poleis and changing mentalities and habits. As a result, evidence on the ecumenical synods declines sharply from the late third century on. Important sources discussed here are a tetrarchic rescript on the privileges of competitors, issued in response to a request of the two synods, and a long and complex inscription from ad 313 that was erected in the xystic synod’s headquarters and dealt with a donation by a rich family. This chapter refutes the opinion of some earlier scholars who argue that the synods were absorbed by the circus factions. Rather, it appears that they remained tied to the world of traditional Greek agonistics and that they disbanded when the last of the important Greek agones ceased to be held, that is by the 420s ad at the latest.

  • Reconsidering the frieze on the Arch of Constantine

  • C. Brian Rose
  • Journal:
    Journal of Roman Archaeology / Volume 34 / Issue 1 / June 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 March 2021, pp. 175-210
    Print publication:
    June 2021

  • This article proposes that nearly all of the sculpted frieze of the Arch of Constantine in Rome, generally regarded as Constantinian, derives from a triumphal monument of Diocletian commissioned shortly after his Vicennalia in 303 CE. The basis of the argument is the sculptural technique evinced by the frieze, especially the separately-worked heads of the emperor in four of the frieze slabs, together with the missing legs and feet of several of the other figures. These anomalies suggest that much of the frieze was spoliated from another monument that had honored a different man; Diocletian is the only emperor whose career fits the iconography. A Diocletianic date for most of the frieze blocks necessitates a reconsideration of long-standing interpretations of the spolia on the arch and, in turn, its historiography.

  • 2 - Imperial Fathers and Their Sons

  • from Part I - Contexts
  • Edited by Young Richard Kim
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea
    Published online:
    17 December 2020
    Print publication:
    07 January 2021, pp 19-42

  • Summary

    During the formative period of disputation over the theology of Arius, the emperor Licinius ruled over the eastern Roman provinces. The emperor Constantine was directly involved in the doctrinal controversy only after his victory over Licinius in 324. But Constantine’s engagement in imperial politics had already shaped his thinking about theology. In imperial successions sons were sometimes promoted but also sometimes overlooked. Emperors introduced a new five-year cycle for calculating taxes and often held annual consulships. Emperors identified with deities such as Jupiter and Hercules. At the Council of Nicaea, Constantine was hence ready to debate with bishops over the theology of Father and Son, the annual date of Easter, and the simultaneous divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ. One bishop who attended the council was Eusebius of Caesarea, whose panegyric equated the emperor with the Son of God. Constantine himself strengthened the association by funding churches in honor of Jesus’s nativity and resurrection in the Holy Land and by publicizing a story about his own vision of a cross in the sky. The Council of Nicaea had been a crucible for the formation of both a theology of God and a political philosophy of a Christian emperor.

  • 7 - Christianity and paganism, II: Asia Minor

  • from Part II - Christianity Contested
  • Edited by Augustine Casiday, University of Wales, Lampeter, Frederick W. Norris
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Christianity
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    30 August 2007, pp 189-209

  • Summary

    Significant communities of Jews and Christians populated the cities and their territories in Asia Minor amid the great pagan Greek majority. Christianity's institutional expansion is reflected in the fact that, in 325, the representatives of some 150 episcopal sees in Asia Minor attended the Council of Nicaea. This posed a serious ideological challenge to the pagan temple cults of Asia Minor. The co-operation between the Tetrarchs and city councillors provoked Christian attacks on Greek temples. This was a response to the destruction of churches, beginning with the Christian basilica lying opposite the imperial palace in Nicomedia. The formalities of Christianisation, in terms of baptising the population of Asia Minor, were completed by the late sixth century, but the full acculturation of villages to the standards of the Mediterranean cities was a longer process that was still incomplete in some villages even in the early twentieth century.

  • 3 - Diocletian and the first tetrarchy, a.d. 284–305

  • from PART I - NARRATIVE
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 67-89

  • Summary

    The two decades of Diocletian's reign saw the re-establishment of political, military and economic stability after half a century of chaos, at the price of a more absolutist monarchy, a greatly expanded army and bureaucracy and a more oppressive tax regime. Probably in 286 or 287, a new feature of the imperial collegiality emerged. Diocletian and Maximian began respectively to use the adjectival epithets Iovius and Herculius, bringing themselves into some sort of relationship with the cognate deities, Jupiter and Hercules. The years 287-90 had also seen important developments in the eastern half of the empire, to which Diocletian had repaired after the appointment of Maximian and perhaps a campaign against the Sarmatians in the autumn, reaching Nicomedia in Bithynia by 20 January 286. Iovius for Diocletian and Galerius, Herculius for Maximian and Constantius, epithets survived in the naming of new provincial divisions in Egypt some years after the end of the first tetrarchy.

  • 6d - The new state of Diocletian and Constantine: from the tetrarchy to the reunification of the empire

  • from 6 - The emperor and his administration
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 170-183

  • Summary

    In 293, two soldiers, Constantius Chlorus and Maximianus Galerius, were raised to the purple as Caesars. The diarchy was transformed into a tetrarchy. With the partition into four areas, the western parts to Maximian and Constantius Chlorus, the eastern to Diocletian himself and Galerius, the centres of decision were brought closer to the more critical frontier zones. It was an attempt to resolve a structural problem in a large territorial Byzantine empire. To strengthen the new regime a new legitimation of imperial power was devised: one that exploited a particular religious climate, while at the same time aiming to trace its roots in the Roman tradition. The administrative reforms, which were connected with the reorganizations of the army, of taxation and even of the coinage, were an effective response to danger from without and to the threat of disintegration. The main feature of Aurelian's reform was the division of the existing provinces into smaller territorial entities.