Old Names, New Peoples: Listing Ethnonyms in Late Antiquity

Salvatore Liccardo (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

330 Seiten

2023
Brill (Verlag)
978-90-04-68589-5 (ISBN)

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This volume examines the meanings and functions of designations of peoples ("ethnonyms") in Late Antiquity. By focusing on both textual and iconographic sources, it highlights the interplay between ethnic discourses, political messages, education, and spatial thinking.

No people is nameless, and lists of words are as old as writing systems. And yet, both subjects can appear unpromising to historians. This volume shows the contrary by examining the various meanings and functions of ethnonyms in Late Antiquity: added to catalogues of provinces, they reflect the political messages and the regulating power of the imperial bureaucracy; included in schoolbooks, they mirror educational practices and reveal the geographical and ethnic landscapes taught at school; placed on a map, they help make sense of the world in times of transition.

Salvatore Liccardo, Ph.D. (2019), University of Vienna, is a postdoctoral researcher and team member of the ERC Synergy Grant HistoGenes. His research covers processes of identity formation, ethnic terminology, and geographical knowledge in late antique and early medieval sources.

Preface

List of Figures

Abbreviations

General Introduction

1 Ethnonyms and Ethnicity: Some Methodological Reflections

2 Ethnonyms: Identifying the Sources

3 Listing Ethnonyms alongside Other Cognitive Processes and Literary Strategies

Part 1: Listing and Declaiming Ethnonyms

Introduction

1 Listing in Late Antiquity

2 Aesthetics of Listing – the Example of Decimus Magnus Ausonius

1 The Laterculus Veronensis

1 The Forgotten Attachment: The Ethnic Catalogues

2 The Gentes of the Far North and West

3 The Gentes of the Rhine

4 The Gentes of the Danube

5 The Non-European Gentes

6 Conclusions: Lexical Adaptations and Ethnic Transformations in Late Antique Gaul

Part 2: Listing and Memorizing Ethnonyms

Introduction

1 Lists for Learning

2 Listing Ethnonyms in Schoolbooks – Vibius Sequester and Lucius Ampelius

2 The Cosmographia of Julius Honorius

1 From a Student, for Future Students

2 Gentes of the Eastern Quarter

3 Gentes of the Western Quarter

4 Gentes of the Northern Quarter

5 Gentes of the Southern Quarter

6 Conclusions: The Educational Value and Political Overtones of Lists of Place Names and Ethnonyms

Part 3: Listing and Locating Ethnonyms

Introduction

1 Conceptualizing and Listing Space

2 And yet it moves. Beyond Lists in Late Antique Geography

3 The Expositio totius mundi et gentium

1 A Curious Author and a Peculiar Guidebook of the Roman World

2 A (Partially) Utopian and (Very Much) Ethnic East

3 A (Mostly) Civic terra Romanorum and the gentes barbarorum at Its Borders

4 Ethnic and Spatial Identities in the Expositio

4 The Tabula Peutingeriana and Its Ethnonyms

1 Introduction

2 The Ethnonyms on the Tabula Peutingeriana: General Aspects

3 Beyond the Rhine: Really a Medieval Addition?

4 Ethnic Double Names

5 A (Relatively) Unimaginative Ethnic Landscape

6 Persae: Explicit and Implicit Traces of a Special Ethnonym

7 Conclusions: Ethnonyms and a Geography of Otherness

General Conclusions

Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	11.11.2023
Reihe/Serie	Brill's Series on the Early Middle Ages ; 30
Verlagsort	Leiden
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Gewicht	702 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Mittelalter
ISBN-10	90-04-68589-8 / 9004685898
ISBN-13	978-90-04-68589-5 / 9789004685895
Zustand	Neuware