- Finnish Institute at Athens / Φινλανδικό Iνστιτούτο Aθηνών
Zitrou 16
Athina 117 42
Greece - +358503614681
Antti Lampinen
Other, Finnish Institute at Athens / Φινλανδικό Iνστιτούτο Aθηνών, Department Member
- University of Helsinki, Department of World Cultures, Department MemberUniversity of St Andrews, Classics, Department Memberadd
- Classics, Ancient History, Late Antiquity, Roman History, Greek Literature, Latin Literature, and 32 moreHistory of Ethnography, Classical philology, Hellenistic History, Classical Reception Studies, Hellenistic Literature, Narratology, Reception of Classics In English Literature, Celtic religion, Classical Literature, Romano-Celtic Religion, Posidonius, Ancient Gaul, Erich Gruen, History, Cultural Studies, Classical Archaeology, Race and Ethnicity, Latin Epigraphy, Barbarians Perception, Barbarians, Byzantine Studies, Roman Archaeology, Early Medieval History, Conferences and Seminars, Conférence, Call for Papers, Subaltern Studies, The Ancient Novel, Hagiography, Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Translation Studies, and Ancient Ethnographyedit
- Assistant Director of the Finnish Institute at Athens since September 2018. Before that, Newton International Fellow ... moreAssistant Director of the Finnish Institute at Athens since September 2018. Before that, Newton International Fellow at the School of Classics in the University of St Andrews (2015-17) and a Research Fellow of the Academy of Finland at the Department of Classics, University of Helsinki (2017-18). PhD from the Department of Classical Studies, University of Turku (2013).edit
Research Interests: Greek Literature, Latin Literature, Roman Historiography, History of Ideas, History of Religion, and 14 moreSocial Identity, History and Classical tradition studies, Ancient Ethnography, Classical philology, Imagology, Classical Reception Studies, Barbarians Perception, Classical Literature, Barbarians societies, Late Antiquity, Ethnogenesis, Funerary World, Goths, Vandals, Sueves, Alans, Greek Ethnography, History of Ethnology, Climatic Determinism, Social and Religious Anthropology, and Micro Aggressions
in: Translation and Transmission. Collection of Articles, J. Hämeen-Anttila & I. Lindstedt (eds.). Series: The Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East 3, Ugarit-Verlag, Münster, 139-79. Based on the workshop... more
in: Translation and Transmission. Collection of Articles, J. Hämeen-Anttila & I. Lindstedt (eds.). Series: The Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East 3, Ugarit-Verlag, Münster, 139-79.
Based on the workshop ‘Translation and Transmission in the Eastern Mediterranean , 500 B.C. – 1500 A.D.’, held on 25 September 2015 at the Finnish Institute in Rome.
Based on the workshop ‘Translation and Transmission in the Eastern Mediterranean , 500 B.C. – 1500 A.D.’, held on 25 September 2015 at the Finnish Institute in Rome.
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The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister is clearly a forged (or at the very least fraudulent) text in the sense that its supposed author/excerptor and occasional narrator, the Hieronymus presbyter who is meant to be identified as St. Jerome,... more
The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister is clearly a forged (or at the very least fraudulent) text in the sense that its supposed author/excerptor and occasional narrator, the Hieronymus presbyter who is meant to be identified as St. Jerome, cannot have been who he is presented to be. Neither was there an original text by a pagan sophist “Aethicus” behind the Cosmography. Some parts of the Cosmography might be considered parodies rather than forgeries, but in the absence of any secure reconstructions of its intended audience even this must remain conjectural.
On the whole, the approximation of ethnographical “feel” has been created in the Cosmography from almost the same set of texts that we have at our disposal. Isidore (always used without naming him) and Orosius are the primary sources for the ethnonyms, but Solinus and the Alexander matter are also behind some elements. By seeking to recreate and magnify the “epistemic rush”—complementing textual involution—that was part of the ancient ethnographicizing discourse, the Cosmographer explicitly set out to forge an example of a dis-course that by his time was associated with an earlier period of literature. Combining classical and biblical corroborations for his ethnographic inventions and creatively expanded lists allowed the Cosmographer to forge a style that he believed harked back to previous centuries. The resulting Late Antique feel, with church fathers and pious bishops pruning out the pagan wisdom traditions of self-important philosophers, heretics abounding, and a measureless world of strange peoples stretching out all the way until the Apocalypse, must have become a part of the Cosmographer’s aims at some stage—even if these aims mutated as his bold creation took shape.
Downloadable version is an abbreviation (first half) of the original print version - the full version will be uploaded onto the site in Jan. 2020. Before that time I encourage you to contact the publisher, Barkhuis.
On the whole, the approximation of ethnographical “feel” has been created in the Cosmography from almost the same set of texts that we have at our disposal. Isidore (always used without naming him) and Orosius are the primary sources for the ethnonyms, but Solinus and the Alexander matter are also behind some elements. By seeking to recreate and magnify the “epistemic rush”—complementing textual involution—that was part of the ancient ethnographicizing discourse, the Cosmographer explicitly set out to forge an example of a dis-course that by his time was associated with an earlier period of literature. Combining classical and biblical corroborations for his ethnographic inventions and creatively expanded lists allowed the Cosmographer to forge a style that he believed harked back to previous centuries. The resulting Late Antique feel, with church fathers and pious bishops pruning out the pagan wisdom traditions of self-important philosophers, heretics abounding, and a measureless world of strange peoples stretching out all the way until the Apocalypse, must have become a part of the Cosmographer’s aims at some stage—even if these aims mutated as his bold creation took shape.
Downloadable version is an abbreviation (first half) of the original print version - the full version will be uploaded onto the site in Jan. 2020. Before that time I encourage you to contact the publisher, Barkhuis.
Research Interests: Ancient Ethnography, Apocalypticism In Literature, Forgery, Fakery, Fraud, Representation of Others, Early Middle Ages (History), and 10 moreLate Antique Literature, Otherness, Fantastic Literature, Speculative Fiction, Pastiche, Isidore of Seville, Orosius, Travel Narratives, Monsters and the Monstrous, and Aethicus Ister
This paper looks at the portrayal of northern barbarians’ aspirations from three interconnected angles: first, the hopes for a rebirth or an afterlife that certain northern peoples were supposed to harbour; then, what seems like their... more
This paper looks at the portrayal of northern barbarians’ aspirations from three interconnected angles: first, the hopes for a rebirth or an afterlife that certain northern peoples were supposed to harbour; then, what seems like their yearning or greedy hope for plunder or land; and lastly, their hope for a revenge or reversal. Finally, I will briefly look at how the Greeks and Romans imagined the hopes of the barbarians failing – the turning of hope into hopelessness – as well as the literary conventions and epistemic regimes that buttressed such reversals. The sources used range from the Hellenistic to the Imperial era, but they are unified by their joint technique of projecting affectively or emotively formulated expectations onto the barbarian outgroups of Europe in order to explain their behaviour. For the most part, barbarians were perceived to have internally valid grounds for their hopes – meaning that ‘madness’ or ‘foolishness’ as a characteristic of barbarian action was for the most part used as a metaphor, not a diagnosis of a pathology. In addition to being involved in emotively oriented causation, ‘mindreading’ the barbarians plays a natural role in emotionally charged ingroup communication. By tying the ancient discourse on barbarian hopes and aspirations into the broader ethnographical register, I wish to contribute to the study of the Greek and Roman emotional responses to their encounters with outgroups, as well as to demonstrate how perceptions of intentionality could be elided, in such contexts, with the ascription of collective emotions to outgroups. It is suggested that in the Greek and Roman thinking, hope was for the northerners an unreasonable and untimely expectation of a favourable but often immoral outcome, liable to be revealed as a misidentified or mistimed attempt. By looking at the hopes and hope-like expectations ascribed to the barbarians, it may be possible to discern that in addition to being treated as an emotion – with all the causations this implies – hope could also be debated as a cultural standard, and even used as a help for conceptualising the spread of rationality within the humankind.
Research Interests: Latin Literature, Social Representations, History Of Emotions, Ancient Ethnography, Essentialism, and 11 moreHope, Representations, Psychology of Hope, Barbarians Perception, Barbarians, Ancient Greek Literature, Hopelessness, Polemical Literature, History of Ethnography, History of Ethnology, and The Anthropology of Hope
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Skholion (Suomen Bysantin tutkimuksen seuran jäsenlehti) 2/2017, 2-8.
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The article studies the literary representation of subaltern religiosities in the context of Late Roman and Early Merovingian ecclesiastical writing in Gaul, and its relationship with Late Antique ideas about the characteristics of rural... more
The article studies the literary representation of subaltern religiosities in the context of Late Roman and Early Merovingian ecclesiastical writing in Gaul, and its relationship with Late Antique ideas about the characteristics of rural societies. By projecting an image of an ata-vistic rustic mass of religiously substandard commoners, who moreover were unable to participate constructively in most kinds of religious acculturation, the episcopal hierarchy of Gaul was able to tap into a powerful source of legitimacy for their privileges. These chains of utterances, examined through the acta of church councils and synods and compared with hagiographical writing, gained plausibility from their very participation in a literary tradition of ethno-graphicising expositions of subaltern religiosities. By studying techniques of vicarious memory ascription, knowledge ordering, and both intra-and inter-generic enrichment of ecclesiastical texts, I hope to provide some new angles into the Gallo-Roman and Merovingian ecclesiastical writing on lower-class religiosity, which is too often read as a straightforward reflection of conversion processes among the general population. It is suggested that in some historical contexts, socially unequal memory-ascriptions made within conversion narratives can usefully be examined through comparisons with colonial subaltern studies.
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This article attempts to provide a realistic, securely contextualised estimate regarding the formation and extent of Posidonius of Apamea's (c. 135-51 BCE) contribution to the Greco-Roman tradition of ethnographic writing about the... more
This article attempts to provide a realistic, securely contextualised estimate regarding the formation and extent of Posidonius of Apamea's (c. 135-51 BCE) contribution to the Greco-Roman tradition of ethnographic writing about the population groups of Europe - and his much-discussed 'Gallic ethnography' in particular.
The significance of being able to assess correctly the contents and the context of Posidonius' so-called 'ethnography' is obvious, especially when keeping in mind the optimistic and trusting tone that some past reconstructions of his fragments have exhibited. With all the accruing understanding of the tradition of ancient ethnographic writing, a critical eye must be cast at a contribution so often postulated as unsurpassed in its influence.
In this article, I submit the texts usually taken as Posidonian fragments to a reading informed by recent advances in the study of knowledge ordering (e.g. in eds. König & Whitmarsh 2007), information generation 'on the middle ground' (Woolf 2011), and the interplay of Greek writers and Roman audiences (Clarke 1999). There existed a wide range of interlocking 'middle grounds' which the ethnographical writers of the Late Republic navigated, even when they pursued goals to which ethnography was wholly subservient – as ancient ethnography nearly always was. Rather than being a record of his personal observations and meetings with Gauls, to a much greater extent the northern ethnography of Posidonius was constructed through literary processes based on his reading and his conversations with Romans and Greeks.
The significance of being able to assess correctly the contents and the context of Posidonius' so-called 'ethnography' is obvious, especially when keeping in mind the optimistic and trusting tone that some past reconstructions of his fragments have exhibited. With all the accruing understanding of the tradition of ancient ethnographic writing, a critical eye must be cast at a contribution so often postulated as unsurpassed in its influence.
In this article, I submit the texts usually taken as Posidonian fragments to a reading informed by recent advances in the study of knowledge ordering (e.g. in eds. König & Whitmarsh 2007), information generation 'on the middle ground' (Woolf 2011), and the interplay of Greek writers and Roman audiences (Clarke 1999). There existed a wide range of interlocking 'middle grounds' which the ethnographical writers of the Late Republic navigated, even when they pursued goals to which ethnography was wholly subservient – as ancient ethnography nearly always was. Rather than being a record of his personal observations and meetings with Gauls, to a much greater extent the northern ethnography of Posidonius was constructed through literary processes based on his reading and his conversations with Romans and Greeks.
Research Interests: Celtic Studies, History of Anthropology, Ancient Geography, Fragmentary Greek Historiography, Roman provinces, and 11 moreAncient Celts, The Gallic War, Posidonius, Greeks and indigenous people, Gallia Narbonensis, Ancient Gaul, Poseidonios, History of Ethnography, History of Ethnology, Ancient Germans, and Othering and Alterity
This article seeks to demonstrate that dramatically illustrated examples of the Celts’ sense of justice emerge as a minor trope in Greek and Roman ‘lighter literature’. In sources ranging from the Hellenistic to the Imperial era,... more
This article seeks to demonstrate that dramatically illustrated examples of the Celts’ sense of justice emerge as a minor trope in Greek and Roman ‘lighter literature’. In sources ranging from the Hellenistic to the Imperial era, novelistic narratives taking their cue from the register of lighter literature—with its emphasis on pathos, cultural difference, and romantic themes—feature several barbarian characters, characterised as ‘Celts’ or ‘Galatae’, who act according to a code of conduct that was constructed purposefully as barbarian, archaic, and alien. This set of motifs I venture to call the trope of ‘Celtic justice’. While almost certainly devoid of historical source value to actual judicial cultures of Iron Age Europeans, neither are these references mere alterité. Instead, their relationship with other literary registers demonstrate the literariness of certain modes of thought that came to inform the enquiry of Greek and Roman observers into the Celtic northerners. Their ostensibly ethnographical contents emerge as markers of complex textual strategies and vibrant reception of literary motifs. While lacking ‘anthropological’ source value, these texts demonstrate the variety and intensity with which the contacts between Greeks and Celts affected the epistemic regime of the Mediterranean societies.
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Presented on 9 Feb 2019 in the international colloquium "Creating and Strengthening Identities: Greek and Roman Stereotypes of the East", held at the Finnish Institute at Athens, Zitrou 16.
Research Interests: Ancient History, Classics, Hellenistic History, Stereotypes, Stereotypes and Prejudice, and 10 moreImagology, Hellenistic History: Galatians and celts, History of Late Classical and Hellenistic Asia Minor, Barbarians Perception, Orientalism, Otherness, Galatians, National Stereotypes, Imagology, National Stereotpyes, and Imagology of the Other
Late Antiquity witnessed the ancient world’s third great proliferation of physiognomical argumentation and theory-building, following the two previous ones in the early-to-middle Hellenistic period and the High Roman Empire of the first... more
Late Antiquity witnessed the ancient world’s third great proliferation of physiognomical argumentation and theory-building, following the two previous ones in the early-to-middle Hellenistic period and the High Roman Empire of the first half of the second century CE. It was during this latest stage that the physiognomical work of Polemo of Laodicea, a rhetorician and physiognomist of the second century, was translated into Latin by an anonymous writer and excerpted by the ‘iatrosophist’ Adamantius of Alexandria. Ammianus Marcellinus, too, demonstrates a clear interest in physiognomical inferences, both in terms of individuals and entire peoples. This paper will first review briefly the evidence for Late-Antique physiognomical order of knowledge as it applied to entire peoples. The rest consists of a sample of case studies from Adamantius’ Physiognomica, the anonymous Latin De physiognomonia, and Ammianus Marcellinus’ ethnographical sections. Through them, it will be demonstrated that even within the intensely networked and multicultural Later Roman Empire, purported phenotypic distinctions between population groups were rhetorically emphasised in order to put forward physiognomical arguments. This also sustained the image of a ‘more perfect empire’ ruling over a triumphalistically displayed diversity of humankind. The associated physiognomical rhetoric gave free rein to arguments whereby the unitary, ‘perfect’ Greek physiognomy was used as a standard against which all the other peoples of the empire (and the world) were compared – and found wanting. This essentialized diversity could also give rise to arguments (as in Ammianus) about an ‘utilitarian plurality’, where each subaltern population could serve the enduring Roman wor(l)d-power in a particular role according to their ‘ethnic’ characteristics.
Research Interests: Second Sophistic, Rhetoric, Race and Racism, Physiognomy, Discrimination, and 10 moreLate Antiquity, Ekphrasis, History of Physiognomy, Racial and ethnic discrimination, Ammianus Marcellinus, Common Ingroup Identity, Ingroup & Outgroup Biases, Barbarians and Romans in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, History of Ethnography, and Polemon
When the Early Imperial Roman writers imagined the cultural processes taking place in the newly-conquered Gaul, they frequently had recourse to a rhetoric that can appear strikingly similar to some later, colonial narratives of... more
When the Early Imperial Roman writers imagined the cultural processes taking place in the newly-conquered Gaul, they frequently had recourse to a rhetoric that can appear strikingly similar to some later, colonial narratives of civilizational improvement and the abolition of nefarious ritual life. I will focus on the possible local informants of those Romans who, according to our literary sources (e.g. Pliny, Suetonius), rooted out the Druidic rites from Gaul. How did a Roman administrator recognize the forbidden ‘Druidic’ parts of Gallic ritual life? Who acted as the subaltern middlemen for the Romans in this process, and did they have any influence on the direction of the Roman gaze? This paper seeks to explore whether we might be able to use colonial analogies, particularly from British India, to aid us in distinguishing the knowledge-generation practices of the Roman administrators in the Early Imperial religious ‘middle grounds’ of Gaul.
Research Interests: Latin Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Colonialism, Subaltern, Lucan, and 14 moreBritish Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), British Imperialism, Subaltern Studies, History of Colonial India, Pliny the Elder, Roman Gaul, Celtic religion, Julius Caesar, Druidism, Pomponius Mela, British Raj, Gaule romaine, Subalternity, and Roman Britain and Gaul
Presented in workshop 'Northern Barbarians and their Representation', School of Classics, University of St Andrews; 21 March 2018.
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My paper, though modest in scope, is perhaps overly ambitious in the sense that it seeks to identify and discuss indications of religious affinity and/or affiliation in a text that is only a partial and imperfect in its preservation.The... more
My paper, though modest in scope, is perhaps overly ambitious in the sense that it seeks to identify and discuss indications of religious affinity and/or affiliation in a text that is only a partial and imperfect in its preservation.The Expositio/Descriptio has been studied primarily as a valuable testimony for Late-Imperial trade and economy, but I will argue that it is well worth the while to go through some of its other significant motifs - such as indications of religious affinity. We need to keep in mind the option that the author was neither Christian nor pagan – inasmuch as such religious affiliations existed in any monolithic way, at all – but belonged to the possibly very sizable portion of the population for whom it was expedient (or sufficient) to remain respectful of all cults and wisdom traditions. The author’s enthusiasm and loyalty seems to be devoted to the flow of goods, services and local specialities in the imperial network, into which the presence of the emperor(s) created notes of particularly heightened intensity. Yet I might want to hold back from decisively judging the writer’s identity as that of a ‘merchant-geographer’; it might be better to understand the network aspects of Expositio as an ‘archival’ ordering principle which was reinforced by contemporary texts – and possibly even by maps.
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Today, I would like to offer two rather heterogeneous but definitely city-based case studies on how literary considerations affected the ancient elite writers’ descriptions of urban unrest among the lower classes in the fourth and fifth... more
Today, I would like to offer two rather heterogeneous but definitely city-based case studies on how literary considerations affected the ancient elite writers’ descriptions of urban unrest among the lower classes in the fourth and fifth centuries. Rhetorical techniques such as outcasting, polarising the mob’s alleged motives, allegations of partisanship, and explaining unrest through generalised, sometimes ethnicised arguments will all be in evidence. I will not be able to draw many firm or final conclusions, but would rather like to offer broader reflections on two episodes which to me seem worth of further study in the given context. In both cases it appears that outcasting of either social or ethnicised nature is at work.
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I will present two case studies of a Late Antique and an Early Medieval text which chose idiosyncratic ways of operating between the polarities of Christianity and paganism when describing the wisdom traditions of outgroups or ‘ethnically... more
I will present two case studies of a Late Antique and an Early Medieval text which chose idiosyncratic ways of operating between the polarities of Christianity and paganism when describing the wisdom traditions of outgroups or ‘ethnically presented’ past groups. The cases are those of the Res gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus and the Cosmographia Aethici of ‘Pseudo-Jerome’. At the first glimpse, there is barely anything linking these two texts, beyond the fact that both are written in a Latin that is idiosyncratic to say the least. There are, however, some interesting commonalities between my two texts today – and they come particularly to the fore when attention is paid to the way both Ammianus and Pseudo-Jerome handle the theme of barbarian sages and the pagan wisdom tradition – the ‘alien wisdom’ of Arnaldo Momigliano. One important shared aspect is that both of these writers inhabit a doubled role in-between paganism and Christianity. In some ways, the Cosmographia is trying to conjure up the world that Ammianus operated in, but from a Merovingian point of view.
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The Cosmographia Aethici is a fascinating and somewhat tricky piece of literary forgery from the earlier half of the eight century (probably not long after 727). Essentially, the Cosmography is a prosimetrum text of indefinable genre by... more
The Cosmographia Aethici is a fascinating and somewhat tricky piece of literary forgery from the earlier half of the eight century (probably not long after 727). Essentially, the Cosmography is a prosimetrum text of indefinable genre by an unknown author, with some ties to Southern English monastic centres and Irish learned tradition but possibly writing in Northern Italy or Merovingian Francia – a writer pretending to be Saint Jerome engaged in producing an expurgated breviarium of a text originally written by a pagan philosopher Aethicus several centuries prior to Jerome’s time, indeed before Christ (72). This ‘Aethicus’ is said to be a ‘Scythian’ from (H)Istria (2), but whether this means the city of Histria in Scythia Minor, by the Black Sea, or the Istrian peninsula of the Adriatic, seems to fluctuate within the text.
Today I would like to examine, however briefly, the ways in which the Cosmographer manipulates his inherited religious polemics and imagery of pagans. Basically, only a handful of scholars has studied the Cosmographia in the past forty years, and there is much to be said about the ‘ethnographicising gestures’ therein, as well, but today will be about religion. Essentially, the themes of religion and ethnography circumscribe the basic ambiguity of the Cosmography, its fine balancing act between tongue-in-cheek narrative of marvels and a pessimistic, even quasi-apocalyptic reflection on the limits of human knowledge. I think what will emerge will demonstrate the many instances of irony and subversion in the treatment of Aethicus’ supposed material – but also reveal the limits of seeing this text as entirely devoid of seriousness.
Today I would like to examine, however briefly, the ways in which the Cosmographer manipulates his inherited religious polemics and imagery of pagans. Basically, only a handful of scholars has studied the Cosmographia in the past forty years, and there is much to be said about the ‘ethnographicising gestures’ therein, as well, but today will be about religion. Essentially, the themes of religion and ethnography circumscribe the basic ambiguity of the Cosmography, its fine balancing act between tongue-in-cheek narrative of marvels and a pessimistic, even quasi-apocalyptic reflection on the limits of human knowledge. I think what will emerge will demonstrate the many instances of irony and subversion in the treatment of Aethicus’ supposed material – but also reveal the limits of seeing this text as entirely devoid of seriousness.
Research Interests: Latin Literature, History and Classical tradition studies, Eschatology and Apocalypticism, The Classical Tradition, Forgery, Fakery, Fraud, and 12 moreApocrypha/Pseudepigrapha, Late Antique Literature, Merovingian period, St Jerome, Patristics and Late Antiquity, Isidore of Seville, Ancient Thaumasiology, Forgeries, fakes, Mirabilia, History of Ethnography, History of Geographical Thought, and Aethicus Ister
The context of the Roman Empire, in addition to fostering the tradition of writing about the ‘barbarian’ groups outside the empire, proved to be a fertile ground ethnographical or ‘ethnographicising’ accounts about the provincial groups... more
The context of the Roman Empire, in addition to fostering the tradition of writing about the ‘barbarian’ groups outside the empire, proved to be a fertile ground ethnographical or ‘ethnographicising’ accounts about the provincial groups and their past. But why was the religious past of the provincial groups still ‘good to think with’ in the second or third centuries of the empire? What were the primary aims for writers in a wide variety of genres and registers as they referred to the religious practices and antiquities of provincial – essentially subaltern – groups in an ‘ethnicising’ fashion? What difference did the spread of Christianity, with its strong and exclusionary religion-based but occasionally ‘ethnicised’ identity, make?
My paper will focus upon the Roman discourse that sought to portray the provincial groups as ‘remembering’ their pre-Roman pasts even in the context of the High and Late Empire. Memory of the past cults and heroes could, on occasion, be portrayed as a holding of grudge towards the Romans, and some uprisings in the provinces seem to have been imagined to have strong religious, even millenarian, motivations. Generally, however, the empire of peoples, regions, and practices was much more useful for rhetorical or knowledge-ordering purposes if its varietas could be maintained – but for this purpose, it was necessary to relegate the provincials to their ‘ethnic’ roles, about which centuries-earlier material could still be circulated. Such a mind-set is essentially colonial, and thus amenable to readings informed by Subaltern Studies, but it can usefully be studied from the point of view of the Greco-Roman tradition of religious ethnography – or perhaps more aptly ‘ethnographicising outgroup religiosities’. This is the particular ‘relocation of religion’ that my paper explores.
The portrayal of what provincials ‘remember’ about their past displays even broader linkages when bearing in mind that during the second and third centuries the concept of religious communities as an ethnos became a more widespread notion – partly through the increasing Judeo-Christian influence, as well as the recirculation of originally Hellenistic ideas about ‘barbarian wise men’. Both inside and outside the empire, peoples’ religious practices and antiquities were suspended in a rhetorical state of ahistoricity, while the only religious change imaginable was the inexorable progress of Christianity’s linear time. For the pagan writers, on the other hand, exploration of the religious traditions of their own past or those of the far-away foreign groups’ supposed present (as in the case of the Brahmans) appeared as an attractive, prestige-building option.
My paper will focus upon the Roman discourse that sought to portray the provincial groups as ‘remembering’ their pre-Roman pasts even in the context of the High and Late Empire. Memory of the past cults and heroes could, on occasion, be portrayed as a holding of grudge towards the Romans, and some uprisings in the provinces seem to have been imagined to have strong religious, even millenarian, motivations. Generally, however, the empire of peoples, regions, and practices was much more useful for rhetorical or knowledge-ordering purposes if its varietas could be maintained – but for this purpose, it was necessary to relegate the provincials to their ‘ethnic’ roles, about which centuries-earlier material could still be circulated. Such a mind-set is essentially colonial, and thus amenable to readings informed by Subaltern Studies, but it can usefully be studied from the point of view of the Greco-Roman tradition of religious ethnography – or perhaps more aptly ‘ethnographicising outgroup religiosities’. This is the particular ‘relocation of religion’ that my paper explores.
The portrayal of what provincials ‘remember’ about their past displays even broader linkages when bearing in mind that during the second and third centuries the concept of religious communities as an ethnos became a more widespread notion – partly through the increasing Judeo-Christian influence, as well as the recirculation of originally Hellenistic ideas about ‘barbarian wise men’. Both inside and outside the empire, peoples’ religious practices and antiquities were suspended in a rhetorical state of ahistoricity, while the only religious change imaginable was the inexorable progress of Christianity’s linear time. For the pagan writers, on the other hand, exploration of the religious traditions of their own past or those of the far-away foreign groups’ supposed present (as in the case of the Brahmans) appeared as an attractive, prestige-building option.
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This paper studies the ways in which – and the aims for which – ‘ethnographicised’ information or topoi are wielded across differing second-century genres in the Greek- and Syriac-speaking East. The paper’s source texts represent four... more
This paper studies the ways in which – and the aims for which – ‘ethnographicised’ information or topoi are wielded across differing second-century genres in the Greek- and Syriac-speaking East. The paper’s source texts represent four second-century authors (Polemo of Laodicea, Claudius Ptolemy, Lucian of Samosata, and Bardaisan of Edessa), as well as referring to the rebuttal of Celsus by Origen, which casts interesting light upon the monotheistic doctrinal disputes within which ‘ethnicised’ themes became increasingly used during the Later Antiquity. Common to all of these texts is that they stem from the cross-pollinating exchange of ideas, theoretical structures, and rhetorical tropes which took place in the context of the Imperial Eastern Mediterranean, facilitated by common language and almost as widely shared common understanding of how ethnographical-seeming details could help to build a winning argument – no matter what the occasion. Inter-generic interactions are evident in many stages of the ancient tradition of ethnographical and ‘ethnographicising’ writing, but the often antiquarian-seeming elements about population groups that are time and again recirculated in Imperial literature have not been extensively studied in terms of their rhetorical and epistemic underpinnings. Their usefulness seems to be confirmed by their constant presence in a variety of registers, and essentialist – often physiognomic – arguments could be deployed both about individual characters and broader group characteristics alike. The orators of the ‘Second Sophistic’, represented by Polemo and Lucian in this paper, found many uses for the technique of keeping provincials ‘ethnic’ for the purposes of their own arguments. The technical literature represented by Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos – and to a certain extent the surviving evidence for Bardaisan’s Book of the Laws of the Countries – found much use for essentialist representations of provincial character(istic)s. Origen, hailing from Alexandria like Ptolemy did, demonstrates in his rebuttal of Celsus’ True Discourse (Orig. Contra Celsum) the freedom with which the supposed ‘ethnic’ antiquities of a number of peoples could be put to use in expositions which had very little to do with ‘real’ ethnography. Identities and religious affiliations are also crossed among this selection of writers in ways that highlight important dynamics (and ironies) associated with the ‘conditioned co-opting’ of provincial backgrounds into the ranks of cultural/doctrinal insiders. Lucian and Bardaisan are Syrians, but while Lucian is in many ways comparable to Polemo, a native of Laodicea, in his approach to the cultural belonging as a ‘sophist-as-Hellene’, Bardaisan has some points in common with both Ptolemy (in terms of his astrological subject matter), and Origen (in the moralising argumentation that pervades his cultural critique). Social and personal interactions become thoroughly enmeshed in some of the examples of rhetorical one-upmanship and self-fashioning involved, whether we are dealing with sophistic set-pieces or doctrinal disputes. For such agendas, the cultural and phenotypic plurality of the Empire’s provinces formed a common pool of ‘embodied knowledge’, to be used when necessary by the learned writers.
Research Interests: Latin Literature, History of Thought, History of Ideas, Ethnography, Social Representations, and 19 morePhysiognomy, History of Astrology, History of Physiognomy, Ancient Greek Rhetoric, Lucian, Roman provinces, Roman imperialism, Polemo, Ancient Greek Literature, Ancient astrology, Hellenistic and Roman Syria, Second Century Christianity, Interactions betwen literary genres, Lucian of Samosata, Claudius Ptolemy, Hellenicity, Bardaisan, Bardesanes of Edessa, and Knowledge regimes
The Late Antique literary culture, with its numerous classicising affectations mixing and interacting with new opportunities provided by Christian narratives and outlook, is hardly a transparent source for the realities of social... more
The Late Antique literary culture, with its numerous classicising affectations mixing and interacting with new opportunities provided by Christian narratives and outlook, is hardly a transparent source for the realities of social relations, identities, and religiosities. Yet the attraction of basing social histories upon such richly textured and compelling literary works is constantly present in the scholarship. My paper will aim to ground the source value of ‘Gallo-Roman’ textual evidence for popular culture, religiosity, and identities in the elite regimes of knowledge and processes self-fashioning. This has a bearing both upon the narratives of popular unrest in Late Imperial Gaul, the conversion narratives propagated as part of ecclesiastical discourse, and the co-opting, rejection, or negotiated acceptance of identities – including religious, ‘ethnic’, cultural, and professional ones.
In addition to providing measured criticism regarding the heuristic value of such modern scholarly concepts as the widely used ‘Gallo-Roman’, my paper will explore the possibilities of applying concepts from Subaltern Studies to the study of the literary self-fashioning and identity-projection of the Late Imperial and Post-Imperial Gallic elite. In particular, I will seek to canvass the ‘conditions for knowledge’ about the lower orders and groups which either through their subsistence or profession were relatively far-removed from the daily cultural and social interaction by the elite writers such as the likely author of Querolus, Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and other Late Imperial or Early Merovingian Gallic bishops.
In addition to providing measured criticism regarding the heuristic value of such modern scholarly concepts as the widely used ‘Gallo-Roman’, my paper will explore the possibilities of applying concepts from Subaltern Studies to the study of the literary self-fashioning and identity-projection of the Late Imperial and Post-Imperial Gallic elite. In particular, I will seek to canvass the ‘conditions for knowledge’ about the lower orders and groups which either through their subsistence or profession were relatively far-removed from the daily cultural and social interaction by the elite writers such as the likely author of Querolus, Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and other Late Imperial or Early Merovingian Gallic bishops.
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Josephus may be giving utterance to a widely shared stereotype about northern barbarians as he describes the unrest in the Rhenish border and Gaul in 69-70: the nature of the Germanoi, destitute as it is of reasoning, makes them always... more
Josephus may be giving utterance to a widely shared stereotype about northern barbarians as he describes the unrest in the Rhenish border and Gaul in 69-70: the nature of the Germanoi, destitute as it is of reasoning, makes them always ready to throw themselves after any small hope (Bell. Iud. 7.76). The trope would have been recognisable to Josephus’ audiences from a wide range of writings, for instance Caesar’s Gallic War, but I will argue that this vigorous theme had become particularly relevant and somewhat renegotiated after the Celtic/Galatian attacks of the third and second centuries BCE.
The two most common aims for the northern barbarians’ hopes in our sources emerge as plunder and revenge – both depending on the psychological stereotypes of European barbarians: their greed (avaritia), and their anger (ira) and love of freedom (libertas). Though unsettling in its conjuring-up of tumultus, the barbarian hope is most often a narrative motivator that the Greek or Roman audience already knew to be doomed. In addition to – and interacting with – their predatory and rebellious aspirations, there is also another side to the hopefulness of the northern barbarians. From the Hellenistic era onwards, the hope for the rebirth of their souls was used as an explanation for the proverbial readiness of the northerners to throw themselves to the fray. This outlandish notion was first met in connection of the Herodotean Thracians, but became soon ascribed to a wide range of European barbarians, who all appeared to the Romans as particularly dangerous due to this hope (cf. Lucan 1.454-62).
Understanding the way Greeks and Romans looked at the motivations and psychology of the barbarian groups gives us a crucial tool in understanding the decision-making processes of the ancient shapers of policy, but it is also elemental for examining the power that the literary education and topical traditionalism held over the world-views of the educated elite. The supposed barbarian hopes were impious, deluded, and destructive, but – like natural forces – something that the Greeks and Romans could overcome by their own set of perceived characteristics.
The two most common aims for the northern barbarians’ hopes in our sources emerge as plunder and revenge – both depending on the psychological stereotypes of European barbarians: their greed (avaritia), and their anger (ira) and love of freedom (libertas). Though unsettling in its conjuring-up of tumultus, the barbarian hope is most often a narrative motivator that the Greek or Roman audience already knew to be doomed. In addition to – and interacting with – their predatory and rebellious aspirations, there is also another side to the hopefulness of the northern barbarians. From the Hellenistic era onwards, the hope for the rebirth of their souls was used as an explanation for the proverbial readiness of the northerners to throw themselves to the fray. This outlandish notion was first met in connection of the Herodotean Thracians, but became soon ascribed to a wide range of European barbarians, who all appeared to the Romans as particularly dangerous due to this hope (cf. Lucan 1.454-62).
Understanding the way Greeks and Romans looked at the motivations and psychology of the barbarian groups gives us a crucial tool in understanding the decision-making processes of the ancient shapers of policy, but it is also elemental for examining the power that the literary education and topical traditionalism held over the world-views of the educated elite. The supposed barbarian hopes were impious, deluded, and destructive, but – like natural forces – something that the Greeks and Romans could overcome by their own set of perceived characteristics.
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In my paper I will offer a series of case studies from four separate chronological and cultural contexts – ranging from the Hellenistic era to the Early Middle Ages – which taken together demonstrate some of the widely divergent ways in... more
In my paper I will offer a series of case studies from four separate chronological and cultural contexts – ranging from the Hellenistic era to the Early Middle Ages – which taken together demonstrate some of the widely divergent ways in which the Greco-Roman processes of knowledge ordering dealt with ethnonyms as parts of the received and evolving literary tradition. On the one hand, ethnonyms can be interpreted as readily recognizable markers for cultural contacts and the transmission of ethnographical information, but on the other hand they also played a longstanding role in learned writing, the antiquarian register, and rhetoric.
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Within the classicising mindset of many Late Antique Gallo-Roman writers, we witness examples of the learned minority appropriating the right to represent the alleged historical memories of the majority’s pagan past. Distrust towards... more
Within the classicising mindset of many Late Antique Gallo-Roman writers, we witness examples of the learned minority appropriating the right to represent the alleged historical memories of the majority’s pagan past. Distrust towards demotic morality and civilizational aptitude – never very far from being uttered aloud by the Imperial elites – are explicitly commented upon in the fifth-century Gallic play Querolus. Ausonius’ confidence within his textual universe in constructing the personal memories of his slave girl Bissula and the Gallic pagi alike can be compared to the received Lucanic topoi of dark Celtic groves, and to the development of these stock scenes in the episcopal gesta of the Merovingian Gaul. The vicarious creation of memories for the silent majority by the learned minority (with its mixture of Christian identity and a thorough knowledge of the classics) is not limited to narrative genres. An intriguing paratextual space for the construction of demotic religiosities is framed by the already-mentioned ecclesiastical writings and the scholia to Lucan and Juvenal, all pointing to creative re-imagining of the divinities worshipped by Gallic vulgus (implied to be changeless in an almost colonialist sense). The Gallic cult of Diana as a literary artefact is a particular case in point.
Research Interests: Sociology of Knowledge, Peasant Studies, Social Representations, History and Memory, Medieval Latin Literature, and 16 moreMedieval Ecclesiastical History, Religious Conversion, Merovingian period, Subaltern Studies, Late Antique Hagiography, Late Antique Religion, Homiletics, Roman Gaul, Pagan/Christian Relations in the Early Middle Ages, Medieval Peasantry, Medieval Episcopacy, Caesarius of Arles, Social Order, Merovingian Gaul, Late Antique Bishops, and Conversion In Antiquity
Ethnonyms in ancient literature are commonly agreed to be unreliable witnesses to past population groups. The usual distinction is focused on judging whether a given ethnonym is an endo- or exonym, or even at its most minimalistic stance,... more
Ethnonyms in ancient literature are commonly agreed to be unreliable witnesses to past population groups. The usual distinction is focused on judging whether a given ethnonym is an endo- or exonym, or even at its most minimalistic stance, whether there existed an actual referent group for an ethnonym attested in literature. But the relationship of ethnonyms not only to actual historical ethnicities but even to the register of ethnographic – or perhaps ‘ethnographicising’ – writing is complicated by ancient techniques of knowledge ordering. My paper will look at some quirks resulting from topical anchoring of received group labels, particularly in cases where the real-life referents were almost or wholly absent, offering remarkable leeway for antiquarian writers. Of particular interest are the two entirely conventional labels ‘druids’ and ‘bards’, who are treated in Late Antiquity in a variety of creative, often ‘ethnicising’ ways: in the Bernese Commenta in Lucanum (1.451), the druids are called both a gens Germaniae and philosophi Gallorum. The last discussed example, from a glossa to Lucan from Cologne, even states Driade Sclavi sunt. The implications could be highlighted from a counterfactual point-of-view: if the modern scholarship did not possess sources to the earlier Greco-Roman tradition of describing the ‘Celtic’ sages – what would have been made of these few references to northern gentes or ἔθνη? While ostensibly little connected to actual ethnicities or identities of the Late Antique world, the case of ethnicised sages forms a curious testimony to the freedoms taken by writers within the Late Antique antiquarianising register when dealing with epistemically vacant labels from the preceding tradition. Not every gens met in the classical sources is a gens, which should be a cause for caution in reading out ethnic identities from literary sources engaged in projects quite separate from either writing ethnography or recording ethnogenesis.
Research Interests: Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Ethnography, History of Geographic Thought, Lucan, Ethnicity, and 7 moreEthnography of Religion, Merovingian period, Commentary Traditions, Latin Glossaries, Scholia, History of Scholarship, Druids, Barbarians societies, Late Antiquity, Ethnogenesis, Funerary World, Goths, Vandals, Sueves, Alans, and Bards
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Ever since Tierney (1960) published his incorporating take on Posidonius’ contributions to the way Greeks and Romans wrote about the continental Celts, and particularly since Nash (1976) issued her influential criticism of his view, the... more
Ever since Tierney (1960) published his incorporating take on Posidonius’ contributions to the way Greeks and Romans wrote about the continental Celts, and particularly since Nash (1976) issued her influential criticism of his view, the debate on the significance of this Hellenistic polymath to ancient Gallic ethnography has been ongoing. The lure of ‘over-Posidonisation’, however, appears to be quite as enduring. The tendency to attribute practically any post-90s BCE galatographic passage, even when very generalised or evidently topical, to Posidonius found perhaps its most inclusive editorial symptom in the 1982 edition of fragments by Theiler (de Gruyter, Berlin). Another trait of this problematic tendency is evident in semi-popularising works about ancient Celts.
The aim of this paper is to issue some further words of caution against reading too much significance into the fragments of Posidonius’ information regarding the Keltoi and Galatai. Reassessing Posidonius’ claims of autopsy as well as his general intellectual and literary milieu will dispel some of the illusion of a single, original contributor to ancient Gallic ethnography. Almost no element of even the most securely attributable Posidonian fragments is without its parallel or predecessor within the tradition of Graeco-Roman literary representation of northern barbarians.
The aim of this paper is to issue some further words of caution against reading too much significance into the fragments of Posidonius’ information regarding the Keltoi and Galatai. Reassessing Posidonius’ claims of autopsy as well as his general intellectual and literary milieu will dispel some of the illusion of a single, original contributor to ancient Gallic ethnography. Almost no element of even the most securely attributable Posidonian fragments is without its parallel or predecessor within the tradition of Graeco-Roman literary representation of northern barbarians.
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That Greeks and Romans of the Imperial Era held strong and predominantly negative views on northern barbarian groups outside the empire is no news; such stereotypical representations are nearly always present when elite literary... more
That Greeks and Romans of the Imperial Era held strong and predominantly negative views on northern barbarian groups outside the empire is no news; such stereotypical representations are nearly always present when elite literary traditions engage in a discourse of cultural difference and ‘xenology’. What is rather less emphasized is the formulaic and conventional nature of the classical ethnographic ‘knowledge’, which not only proved remarkably conservative within the literary tradition, but also seems to reflect a comparative lack of interest from the part of Romans to elaborate ethnographic distinctions beyond the minimal, sometimes ad-hoc needs of imperial and moralising rhetoric. The motifs within the iconosphere of northern (i.e. European) barbarians seems to have remained remarkably interchangeable for remarkably long; the Gauls, Germans, Britons and other smaller groups were conceived through almost identical narrative motifs, and frequently treated en bloc.
However, through its readings of this indeterminate northern barbarology of the Romans, the subsequent Western reception constructed distinctions that probably did not exist for the ancients in a similar form. This phase decisively began with the German philologists of the Renaissance, such as Beatus Rhenanus, and later in the 18th and 19th centuries became seminally involved in the construction of the major European nations. Hence, the undefined classical literary commonplaces utilized in describing the Gauls, Germans and Britons (to take just three major examples) were transformed into a much more loaded rhetoric of national characteristics: the ‘invented tradition’ of the early national histories for the major European states. In this paper I argue that many elements of cultural and historical ethnography projected into the classical literature on the European barbarians are predominantly later (mis)appropriations of an ethnographic register operating originally in much broader categories in terms of describing the barbarian groups.
However, through its readings of this indeterminate northern barbarology of the Romans, the subsequent Western reception constructed distinctions that probably did not exist for the ancients in a similar form. This phase decisively began with the German philologists of the Renaissance, such as Beatus Rhenanus, and later in the 18th and 19th centuries became seminally involved in the construction of the major European nations. Hence, the undefined classical literary commonplaces utilized in describing the Gauls, Germans and Britons (to take just three major examples) were transformed into a much more loaded rhetoric of national characteristics: the ‘invented tradition’ of the early national histories for the major European states. In this paper I argue that many elements of cultural and historical ethnography projected into the classical literature on the European barbarians are predominantly later (mis)appropriations of an ethnographic register operating originally in much broader categories in terms of describing the barbarian groups.
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Luento annettu osana kurssia 'Kulttuurit kulkevat: antiikin ja Lähi-Idän kulttuurien vuorovaikutus', Helsingin yliopisto, 26.4.2016.
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Vierailuluento Helsingin työväenopiston latinanryhmälle, 26. maaliskuuta 2013.
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Updated in autumn 2018 on the basis of an earlier bibliography, formulated for the course 'Approaches to Religion in the Study of Celtic Cultures' in autumn 2012.
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Esitelmä pidetty Klassillis-filologisen yhdistyksen vuosikokouksen yhteydessä 27. helmikuuta 2018, klo 18.
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I have lately become interested in the knowledge-ordering and rhetorical aspects of the ancient ethnographic, or rather ethnographically presented, information. What is intended by picking a certain selection of ethnicised exemplars? What... more
I have lately become interested in the knowledge-ordering and rhetorical aspects of the ancient ethnographic, or rather ethnographically presented, information. What is intended by picking a certain selection of ethnicised exemplars? What are the implied associations triggered by the selection and ordering? Why are contemporary groups omitted in favour of antiquarian ones – or the other way around? And what was the degree to which the old ethnonyms or ethnic categories remained ‘good to think with’ – or were they replaced by more recently salient group images such as those based on provinces? Today I would in particular like to focus on second- and third-century material which seems to point to enduringly essentialising characterisation of not only the ethnic groups of the empire, but also the inhabitants of the provinces. These groups, I will argue, could be on occasion treated as so many jewels in the diadem of the empire, principally valuable for their range of variation and their consequent emphasis on the qualities – perhaps even the health – of the world-empire.
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In this research seminar paper I will discuss the ways in which the writers and rhetoricians of the High-Imperial era adopted and adapted elements of ethnographic writing into their discourse of cultural belonging. The knowledge-ordering... more
In this research seminar paper I will discuss the ways in which the writers and rhetoricians of the High-Imperial era adopted and adapted elements of ethnographic writing into their discourse of cultural belonging. The knowledge-ordering and social-identity-building aspects of the ancient uses of ethnographic - or rather, ethnographic-looking or ethnographically presented - information are foregrounded. What is intended by picking a certain selection of ethnicised exemplars? What are the implied associations triggered by the selection? Why are contemporary groups omitted in favour of antiquarian ones – or the other way around? And what was the degree to which inherited ethnonyms or ethnic categories were still ‘good to think with’? Another big question, so far quite seldom explored, is the connection and position of ethnographicising gestures within and in relation to the register of technical writing in antiquity.
Throughout the paper I will in particular pay attention to how the Roman administrative divisions, primarily provinces, begin in the High Imperial period to obtain a degree of ‘entitativity’ – the quality of being naturalised entities of stereotyping – and emerge as meaningful frameworks of ‘common knowledge’ instead of the previously more narrowly ‘ethnicised’ categories. This would have highlighted the already-existing Greco-Roman tendency to think about population groups in an ‘essentialising’ fashion; an ideological pattern which resulted both from inherited literary tropes and some of the most elaborate technical theory-building of the ancient world – particularly the climatological, astrological, and physiognomic ones.
Throughout the paper I will in particular pay attention to how the Roman administrative divisions, primarily provinces, begin in the High Imperial period to obtain a degree of ‘entitativity’ – the quality of being naturalised entities of stereotyping – and emerge as meaningful frameworks of ‘common knowledge’ instead of the previously more narrowly ‘ethnicised’ categories. This would have highlighted the already-existing Greco-Roman tendency to think about population groups in an ‘essentialising’ fashion; an ideological pattern which resulted both from inherited literary tropes and some of the most elaborate technical theory-building of the ancient world – particularly the climatological, astrological, and physiognomic ones.
Research Interests: Greek Literature, Latin Literature, Social Identity, Knowledge organization, Race and Ethnicity, and 12 moreStereotypes and Prejudice, Technical Writing, History of Physiognomy, Ancient Greek Rhetoric, Physiognomics, Roman Imperial Ideology, Roman provinces, Social identity theory, Cultural Identities in the Roman World, Ancient astrology, Ethnic Stereotyping, and Climatic Determinism
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Tieteiden yö, 8. tammikuuta 2015 - teemana 'Sattuma / Slumpen'
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Luento Latinankielen opettajien yhdistys ry:n kesäkoulussa, Kuopio 4. elokuuta 2014.
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"Myöhäisantiikin ja merovingiajan gallialaisissa hagiografioissa ja kirkolliskokouksien actoissa kansanomaisen uskonnollisuuden kuva on paitsi moraaliseen paniikkiin vivahtava, myös anakronistinen sekä praksiksen että palvonnan kohteiden... more
"Myöhäisantiikin ja merovingiajan gallialaisissa hagiografioissa ja kirkolliskokouksien actoissa kansanomaisen uskonnollisuuden kuva on paitsi moraaliseen paniikkiin vivahtava, myös anakronistinen sekä praksiksen että palvonnan kohteiden suhteen. Kuvastoa leimaa myös ajallinen pysähtyneisyys: varoitukset demonien ja luonnonkohteiden palvonnan akuuttiudesta eivät näytä millään tavalla vähentyneen yli kolmen vuosisadan kuluessa. Lähiluen tässä esitelmässä eräitä Gallian antikvarisoivassa kirjallisessa ilmastossa tuotettuja lähdetekstejä 400-luvulta 700-luvulle, joissa aiempi klassinen ja myöhäiskeisarillinen traditio pohjoisten kansojen uskonnollisuudesta on selvästi vaikuttanut narratiivin muotoon ja sen motiivien valikoitumiseen. Kirjallisen koulutuksensa myötä klassiset stereotypiat omaksunut kirkollinen eliitti saattoi toki kuvitella maaväestön henkisen ja moraalisen tilan teksteissään kuvaamansa kaltaiseksi, mutta on myös mahdollista että kirkolliskokouksesta toiseen toistuvat varoitukset substandardin uskonnollisuuden jatkuvasta uhasta omaksuivat itsessään formulatorisen luonteen. Hagiografisissa teksteissä tämä motiivien lainaaminen ja suoranainen leikkaa-liimaa –tekniikka on jo hyvin dokumentoitu.
Esitelmäni tarkoituksena on luoda alustava, etupäässä alkuperäislähteisiin ja niiden kirjalliseen kontekstualisointiin keskittyvä preliminäärinen katsaus erääseen lupaavalta vaikuttavaan post doc –aiheeseen. Tämä väitöskirjani kronologista kehystä myöhäisempi ja täten vain muutaman alaviitteen varaan aiemmin jätetty aihe hyötyisi käsittelystä, joka korostaisi gallialaisen kirkollisen eliitin tuottamien tekstien kirjallista traditiosidonnaisuutta sekä yhteyksiä klassillisoivaan topiikkaan. Näin ollen tutkimuskirjallisuuteen, metodologisiaan sekä muihin apuvälineisiin kohdistuvat kommentit ovat erittäin tervetulleita. Etenkin keltologian alalla (Celtic Studies) on lähes systemaattisesti yliarvioitu hagiografisten lähdetekstien ja kirkolliskokousten päätösten todistusvoima mitä tulee esikristillisen uskonnollisuuden säilymiseen Gallian alueella. Osaksi tästä syystä tutkimukseni pyrkii sijoittamaan kansanomaisen uskonnollisuuden aiempaa keskeisemmin antikvarisoivan kirkollisen sivistyneistön mielikuvissa muodostuneeksi artefaktiksi, joka kertoo enemmän antiikin eliitin uskonnollisesti värittyneen retorisen rekisterin jatkuvuudesta kuin esikristillisen kansanuskon säilymisestä. Ymmärrettävä sosiologinen motiivi substandardin kansanuskon konstruoinnille löytynee ’jatkuvan kääntymisen’ (ongoing conversion) legitimoivasta paradigmasta, johon viittaamalla uskonnollisten spesialistien on mahdollista perustella erityisoikeuksiensa säilyttämistä (vrt. Charles Ramble Tiibetin buddhalaisuudesta). Gallian vaikutusvaltaisen ja sosiaalisesti suhteellisen eksklusiivisen eliitin kohdalla tämä vaikutin lienee varsin mahdollinen."
Esitelmäni tarkoituksena on luoda alustava, etupäässä alkuperäislähteisiin ja niiden kirjalliseen kontekstualisointiin keskittyvä preliminäärinen katsaus erääseen lupaavalta vaikuttavaan post doc –aiheeseen. Tämä väitöskirjani kronologista kehystä myöhäisempi ja täten vain muutaman alaviitteen varaan aiemmin jätetty aihe hyötyisi käsittelystä, joka korostaisi gallialaisen kirkollisen eliitin tuottamien tekstien kirjallista traditiosidonnaisuutta sekä yhteyksiä klassillisoivaan topiikkaan. Näin ollen tutkimuskirjallisuuteen, metodologisiaan sekä muihin apuvälineisiin kohdistuvat kommentit ovat erittäin tervetulleita. Etenkin keltologian alalla (Celtic Studies) on lähes systemaattisesti yliarvioitu hagiografisten lähdetekstien ja kirkolliskokousten päätösten todistusvoima mitä tulee esikristillisen uskonnollisuuden säilymiseen Gallian alueella. Osaksi tästä syystä tutkimukseni pyrkii sijoittamaan kansanomaisen uskonnollisuuden aiempaa keskeisemmin antikvarisoivan kirkollisen sivistyneistön mielikuvissa muodostuneeksi artefaktiksi, joka kertoo enemmän antiikin eliitin uskonnollisesti värittyneen retorisen rekisterin jatkuvuudesta kuin esikristillisen kansanuskon säilymisestä. Ymmärrettävä sosiologinen motiivi substandardin kansanuskon konstruoinnille löytynee ’jatkuvan kääntymisen’ (ongoing conversion) legitimoivasta paradigmasta, johon viittaamalla uskonnollisten spesialistien on mahdollista perustella erityisoikeuksiensa säilyttämistä (vrt. Charles Ramble Tiibetin buddhalaisuudesta). Gallian vaikutusvaltaisen ja sosiaalisesti suhteellisen eksklusiivisen eliitin kohdalla tämä vaikutin lienee varsin mahdollinen."
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An open lecture given in the International Bookshop Arkadia on May 15, 2013.
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Research Interests: Genre and Late Antiquity
Research Interests: Religious Pluralism, Rhetoric of religion, Late Roman Empire, Themistius, Otherness, and 9 moreIdentity and Alterity, Later Roman Empire, Processes of Conversion (Christianization), Constantine the Great, Roman Empire, Early Christianity, Religious Intolerance, Theodosius, Paganism and Christianity, Religious Tolerance, and Othering and Alterity
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Research Interests: Ancient History, Cultural History, Anthropology, Ethnography, Race and Ethnicity, and 13 moreAncient Ethnography, Ancient Geography, Barbarians Perception, Barbarians, Otherness, Imperialism, Alterity, Ancient History of the Iberian Peninsula/Hispania, Ancient Greek Ethnography, Colonialism and Imperialism, Ancient Geography and Ethnography, Narrative Digression, and Archeology of Iberian Peninsula / HispaniaAncient Identity
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Roman historians have long pored over the scattered evidence for rebellion by subaltern groups in different regions and periods, particularly in the light of a growing scholarly focus on resistance in all forms over the past four decades.... more
Roman historians have long pored over the scattered evidence for rebellion by subaltern groups in different regions and periods, particularly in the light of a growing scholarly focus on resistance in all forms over the past four decades. But almost all work has been carried out within the frame of social and/or political history, seeking to understand what actually happened – a heroic task in many cases given the meagreness of the evidence in most cases. Much less attention has been given to understanding the presuppositions and agendas that shape Roman discourse on revolt, though there is ample material for such a study and it ought to be a prerequisite for in-depth social history based on Roman sources. This exploratory workshop aims to build on a few interventions that have sought to shift the focus from revolt to discourse about revolt. The aim is to place the texts themselves centre stage: to explore their categories, explanatory models, narrative devices – and their ulterior motives; to better understand how the Greco-Roman elite understood and/or chose to represent resistance by subaltern groups.