People, Personal Expression, and Social Relations in Late Antiquity (review)

The readers of this journal will be familiar with the many fine contributions Professor Mathisen has made to late antique and Byzantine studies. This present work, however, is not only valuable but unique. Mathisen's purpose is not to offer another in a long series of sourcebooks and readers (e.g., JECS 10 [2002], 421-23), useful as those anthologies may be, but to present a first volume that incorporates extended quotations of sources in translation into his own narrative framework and a second, identically arranged volume, providing the Latin originals with a separate introduction focusing on the Latinity of the sources along with apparatus and textual notes and comments on the text. The result is impressive, encompassing 140 Latin texts from 70 literary and epigraphical sources from Gaul and western Europe, covering the period from the end of the third to the beginning of the seventh centuries C.E.

What clearly distinguishes this work is that in the first volume it presents a succinct survey of the social history of the late antique west seamlessly illustrated with copious quotations from the sources, not the typical introductory paragraph on women, the army, barbarians, etc. followed by pages of snippets from primary texts. Mathisen wisely realized early on (xi) that the translations and the Latin texts would mostly serve two different audiences. The first volume sets the evidence in an integrated historical framework, while the second concentrates on the words of the people of the age themselves. Hence the first volume can stand alone and serve well as a textbook, while the second can cater to a professional audience and those specifically interested in late antique Latin.

The underlying reason for the unique format of this work is Mathisen's desire to illustrate not only the public lives of the male-dominated literary aristocracy but especially the "individual, nonpublic, non-elite sides of society," including women and children, depicting "individuals participating simultaneously in social circles based upon gender, religion, ethnicity, legal and economic status, and family relationships" (2). In order to accomplish this very ambitious task, it was essential to provide the extended historical, cultural, and literary contexts of these voices from history and integrate them into scholarly discussion. A kaleidoscope of personal experiences of late antique men and women becomes microcosmic instances of larger social realities (xi). Mathisen's work thus avoids the overgeneralization and lack of nuance that is the Achilles' heel of many sourcebooks and anthologies. Instead of broad comments followed by brief excerpts left to speak for themselves at simple face value, the author brilliantly weaves his narrative and sources together in an original and effective manner that exists nowhere else to my knowledge. The "connective tissue" (x) of the narrative supplies both fuller context and nuance to the sources quoted, while the extended length of the quotations themselves offers a more complete understanding instead of just the "operative words."

That this work is no ordinary reader is further indicated by its organization. Both volumes are divided into chapters on the aristocracy, the underclass, family, social turmoil, Christianity, elite women, and socially subversive activities. Thus, the work represents a mixture of the more traditional, institutional approach to social history and recent emphases on more fluid and malleable constructs. While some may perhaps be disappointed that sources for "nonpublic and non-elite" sides of society are often writings of the male elite, e.g., letters of bishops, this is a problem for all of ancient history, and it is fair to say that Mathisen has worked hard to ferret out what is in his judgment the best evidence available. Here, too, the context and nuance provided by Mathisen's narrative serves to ameliorate this...