Discussions of ethnicity in Roman late antiquity (third-seventh century) focus almost exclusively on “barbarians,” primarily the Germanic armies who settled in the western provinces but now also on Arabs and others in east. “Ethnogenesis” is the technical term for the process by which these heterogeneous groups, by coming into contact with the Roman empire, acquired their own discrete ethnic identities. But what about the Romans themselves? Historians do not treat them as an ethnic group, but as a political-legal category of subjects (or citizens) of a vast multi-ethnic empire. Yet later on, in the Byzantine period, the Romans of the east are recognizable as an ethnic group. How did this come about? This lecture will attempt to identify the processes by which the Romans of the east also acquired an ethnic identity during late antiquity.
Speaker
Prof. Anthony KALDELLIS
Department of Classics, University of Chicago
ZOOM Meeting ID: 990 8868 4183
Meeting link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/99088684183