Project MUSE®: Journal of Late Antiquity - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Late Antiquity.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2008) through current issue.Latest Articles: Journal of Late AntiquityTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Late Antiquity1942-12731939-6716Latest articles in Journal of Late Antiquity. Feed provided by Project MUSE®From the Editor
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987014
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This issue marks a moment of loss for the field. We mourn the death of Dennis Trout, whose scholarship on late antique Latin literature and poetry has shaped several generations of research, and who for many years also served the Journal of Late Antiquity as a review editor and an associate editor. It is with particular sadness that we note that this volume includes his final article. The From the Editor is followed by an obituary honoring his intellectual legacy, his generosity as a colleague and mentor, and his enduring contribution to the study of Late Antiquity.The other contributions to this issue of the Journal of Late Antiquity share a common concern with re-examining authoritative narratives—legal
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallFrom the Editor2026-04-03text/htmlen-USFrom the Editor2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®78462026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03In Memoriam: Dennis Trout (1953–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987015
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On October 6, 2025, our community of scholars, students, and enthusiasts of Late Antiquity lost one of its brightest and kindest stars, Dennis Trout, a professor in the Department of Classics, Archaeology, and Religion at the University of Missouri. He also served this journal both as a book review editor and as an associate editor. As news of his passing began to spread, reactions from those who knew him were, to a person, sorrowful at his too early departure but also thankful for the opportunity to have known such a gifted and generous human being. As Noel Lenski discusses below, Dennis made significant scholarly contributions to the field, and the impact of his work will be generational.From a personal
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallIn Memoriam: Dennis Trout (1953–2025)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USIn Memoriam: Dennis Trout (1953–2025)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®80512026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Constantine's Law on Sunday Rest: A Reconsideration
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987016
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The law of Constantine on Sunday rest (CJ 3.12.2) stands among the few ancient documents that have crossed the barriers of specialized studies and gained popularity among the general public. Cited in contemporary debate as the legal foundation of the right to weekly rest or as the decree which replaced the Sabbath with Sunday, as well as an imperial reminder to attend the holy mass or to worship the sun on its own day, the text of Constantine's constitution possesses the required flexibility to adapt to various discussions and the necessary ambiguity to support contrasting opinions. It is also enriched by a small but crucial detail, which contributes to its authority in modern discussion: it bears a precise date.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallConstantine's Law on Sunday Rest: A Reconsideration2026-04-03text/htmlen-USConstantine's Law on Sunday Rest: A Reconsideration2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®1594492026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03The Local Scholars of Late Antique Athens
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987017
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"Philosophy has not entirely left the Hellenes; it has not abandoned Athens, Sparta, or Corinth." So wrote Julian, the philosophically inclined nephew of Constantine, in the middle of the fourth century.1 In doing so, he conflates "Hellenes" with those living in the Roman province of Achaia, or rather, by synecdoche, its three most prominent cities: Athens, home of the most prestigious schools in the Mediterranean world; Sparta, long a nexus for Greek identity and a late antique center of culture; and Corinth, lucrative trading center and seat of the provincial government.2 Achaia was already a wealthy province in the third century ce, with little involvement in Rome's numerous frontier or civil wars aside from a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallThe Local Scholars of Late Antique Athens2026-04-03text/htmlen-USThe Local Scholars of Late Antique Athens2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®2248362026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Imperial Borderlands to the North and to the West of the Black Sea (c. 500 to c. 620)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987018
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Historians of the modern world writing in English are quite familiar with the borderlands of empires, a notion that is embedded in post-colonial theory.1 As such, it is rarely, if ever, employed by historians of the more distant past. The borderlands of medieval Europe were in the east, but also in-between.2 However, they are never associated with empires, even when described from imperial perspectives.3 Similarly, among archaeologists dealing with Late Antiquity or the early Middle Ages, "borderlands" is a noun rarely, if ever, modified by an imperial quality.4 Of course, empires have borders and borderlands.5 Nonetheless, the tacit assumption seems to be that the closer one is to the border, the weaker the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallImperial Borderlands to the North and to the West of the Black Sea (c. 500 to c. 620)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USImperial Borderlands to the North and to the West of the Black Sea (c. 500 to c. 620)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®2855062026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Turtur Vera Fuisti: Art, Poetry, and Christian Widowhood in Rome's Coemeterium Commodillae
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987019
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"Our world is only one of many possible worlds."It was most likely between the third and fifth decade of the sixth century that the otherwise unknown Turtura was laid to rest in the Coemeterium Commodillae, a catacomb complex located in the Roman suburbium not far from the extra-mural Basilica of St. Paul (figure 1, map).1 In Late Antiquity—as we
Fig 1
Rome, primary churches and catacombs in the early sixth century, urbs and suburbium (Cora Trout).
know from a list of Rome's cemeteries compiled in the seventh century—the catacomb's interlaced network of rooms and galleries was also known as the "Cemetery of Commodilla at Saints Felix and Adauctus on the Ostian Way."2 Remarkably, Turtura was not interred in one
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallTurtur Vera Fuisti: Art, Poetry, and Christian Widowhood in Rome's Coemeterium Commodillae2026-04-03text/htmlen-USTurtur Vera Fuisti: Art, Poetry, and Christian Widowhood in Rome's Coemeterium Commodillae2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®1117952026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03The Armenian Lectionary Reexamined: Questioning a Source for the Liturgy of Late Antique Jerusalem
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987020
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Jerusalem features prominently in many studies of late antique Christian worship. This is due in part to the remarkable influence of the city on the practices of other Christian communities; as a celebrated pilgrimage center and center of liturgical innovation, Jerusalem saw its rites, hymns, and prayers imitated by churches across the Mediterranean and Near East. But it is also due to the fact that we have comparatively more descriptions of Jerusalem's late antique liturgy than of those of other cities.1 By far the most important and comprehensive is a source dubbed the "Early Jerusalem Lectionary," a ritual book in local use that recorded the city's major observances, the liturgical venues (stations) in which
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallThe Armenian Lectionary Reexamined: Questioning a Source for the Liturgy of Late Antique Jerusalem2026-04-03text/htmlen-USThe Armenian Lectionary Reexamined: Questioning a Source for the Liturgy of Late Antique Jerusalem2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®992642026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Sign of the Faithful: Cross Graffiti on Pagan Architecture in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987021
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In Late Antiquity, crosses and other Christian symbols were inscribed on walls, statuary, and other surfaces in cities and at Christian holy sites across the eastern Roman empire.1 Christian graffiti found on "pagan" sacred art and architecture have been the source of particular scholarly interest, in part because of their potential to illuminate interreligious dynamics in this period of religious transition.2 Graffiti crosses carved onto the walls of pagan temples and other architecture related to pagan ritual have often been interpreted as evidence of efforts by Christians to remove or counteract the presence of pagan demons in these spaces.3 This article proposes that a more precise categorization of these
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallSign of the Faithful: Cross Graffiti on Pagan Architecture in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean2026-04-03text/htmlen-USSign of the Faithful: Cross Graffiti on Pagan Architecture in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®2262382026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Silence on the Saints: Isidore of Seville on the Cult of Confessors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987022
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The rise of the confessor saint in a post-persecution Christian landscape has come to appear all but inevitable, in the words of one notable scholar on the cult of saints.1 As opportunities to die for the faith disappeared in the fourth century, new forms of sanctity emerged that did not rely on martyrdom.2 Severe self-discipline became the mark of the new saint, sometimes combined with religious learning and/or leadership.3 What we now call confessor saints were bishops and more frequently monks or those embracing an eremitic lifestyle, who were remembered for leading lives of exemplary Christian virtue. Central to their sanctity was posthumous commemoration, generally involving some kind of devotional activity
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallSilence on the Saints: Isidore of Seville on the Cult of Confessors2026-04-03text/htmlen-USSilence on the Saints: Isidore of Seville on the Cult of Confessors2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®2634232026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03The Crowd in Constantinople in the Late Empire: Lessons for New Rome from the Republican Populus
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987023
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Roman imperial politics in Late Antiquity was characterized by significant popular participation. This claim contrasts sharply with the era's traditional reputation as a nadir of absolute monarchy and unchallenged despotism. However, recent scholarship has demonstrated the pivotal role of mobilized populations in contemporary urban life, especially in Constantinople. These insights have revived longstanding comparisons between popular politics in the New Rome and its distant antecedent, the Roman Republic. Such comparisons are rooted in ancient discourse, which frequently equated the cities and their populaces, including by designating the denizens of Constantinople as the populus Romanus. Yet such links have often
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallThe Crowd in Constantinople in the Late Empire: Lessons for New Rome from the Republican Populus2026-04-03text/htmlen-USThe Crowd in Constantinople in the Late Empire: Lessons for New Rome from the Republican Populus2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®1810272026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Iulianus Toletanus, Opera III: Ars grammatica Corpus Christianorum ed. by José Carracedo-Fraga (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987024
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Presses are encouraged to submit books dealing with Late Antiquity for consideration for review to any of JLA's three Book Review Editors: Irene Soto (irenesotomarin@fas.harvard.edu); John Weisweiler (j.weisweiler@lmu.de); and Damián Fernández (dfernandez@niu.edu).The prestigious collection Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina published by Brepols has now released the first critical edition of the Ars Grammatica by the seventh-century bishop, theologian, and literatus Julian of Toledo. Although the work has previously been the subject of various partial editions—some of them quite recent (cf. pp. xc–xcix)—Carracedo-Fraga has produced the first complete edition whose structure very likely reflects the original
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallIulianus Toletanus, Opera III: Ars grammatica Corpus Christianorum ed. by José Carracedo-Fraga (review)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USIulianus Toletanus, Opera III: Ars grammatica Corpus Christianorum ed. by José Carracedo-Fraga (review)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®106692026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Antigüedad tardía: análisis de la disciplina con Javier Arce by Gisela Ripoll (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987025
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The study of late antique Spain observes a clear diving line: the work written before Javier Arce, and that after. Arce, longtime professor of research in the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), director of the Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología en Roma and now emeritus professor at Université Charlesde-Gaulle Lille 3, steered the study of the later Roman centuries away from the insular nationalism of the Franco and immediately post-Franco years and transformed it into one of the more vibrant strands of European late antique studies. Arce turned 80 on April 21 of this year (the coincidence with Rome's founding does not go unremarked). In honor of this milestone, Gisela Ripoll, herself
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallAntigüedad tardía: análisis de la disciplina con Javier Arce by Gisela Ripoll (review)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USAntigüedad tardía: análisis de la disciplina con Javier Arce by Gisela Ripoll (review)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®102092026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity ed. by Bruce W. Longenecker and David E. Wilhite (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987026
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"The current state of studying ancient Christian history is contested" (p. 3). With this statement, editor David E. Wilhite chimes a tone that resounds throughout the twenty-seven essays in this volume on the history of ancient Christianity. Debate and dissent were common features not only of the texts produced by the earliest Christian communities, whose histories were always agenda-driven, but also by the confessionally inflected scholarship about ancient Christianity written from the sixteenth century onwards. Only in the later twentieth century, argues Wilhite, "has a real opportunity emerged to study the early Christians in historically sound ways" (p. 43). Directed primarily to an audience of specialists, the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallThe Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity ed. by Bruce W. Longenecker and David E. Wilhite (review)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USThe Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity ed. by Bruce W. Longenecker and David E. Wilhite (review)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®77162026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Byzanz: Das neue Rom und die Welt des Mittelalters by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987027
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This work reviewed here is a new, summary introduction to the history of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire written for C. H. Beck's "Geschichte der Antike" series. These short monographs (to date seven in total) offer concise overviews of different phases of ancient history, and are geared to the needs of an undergraduate lecture course or the general reader.To answer the basic question which must be asked of any new historical survey—do we really need another history of topic "X"?—it is worth exploring the interests and particular perspective of the author. Although the book is focused on Byzantine history, its author, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, is not only a Byzantinist but is perhaps better known as a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallByzanz: Das neue Rom und die Welt des Mittelalters by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (review)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USByzanz: Das neue Rom und die Welt des Mittelalters by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (review)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®67002026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Papal Jurisprudence, 385–1234: Social Origins and Medieval Reception of Canon Law by David. L. D'Avray, and: The Power of Protocol: Diplomatics and the Dynamics of Papal Government, c. 400–c. 1600 by David. L. D'Avray (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987028
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In 2019, medieval and early modern scholar David L. d'Avray published a companion to fifth-century papal sources to medieval canon law—a secure text-critical base to interpretation, according to the author (2022, p. 1)—ahead of the publication of a study on its social origins and reception before the publication of the Liber Extra by the papacy, around 1234 (see my review in the Journal of Roman Studies 111 (2021): 342–44). This study was finally published in 2022 and was followed quickly the next year by a new study closely linked to the former ones, this time on the role of diplomatics in the dynamics of the papal government up to the seventeenth century. This third book on acts of the bishop of Rome is presented
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallPapal Jurisprudence, 385–1234: Social Origins and Medieval Reception of Canon Law by David. L. D'Avray, and: The Power of Protocol: Diplomatics and the Dynamics of Papal Government, c. 400–c. 1600 by David. L. D'Avray (review)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USPapal Jurisprudence, 385–1234: Social Origins and Medieval Reception of Canon Law by David. L. D'Avray, and: The Power of Protocol: Diplomatics and the Dynamics of Papal Government, c. 400–c. 1600 by David. L. D'Avray (review)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®267392026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Division of Empire: The Reign of the Sons of Constantine by William Lewis (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987029
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When Constantine the Great died in 337, three sons survived to him: Constantine (hereafter Constantine II), Constantius, and Constans. Famously they were not the only claimants to the succession, but it was they who secured the empire. Thanks both to the accidents of survival and more purposive forces of historical erasure, the period 337–350 is a veritable desert of the kind of narrative sources from which political historians like to write history. The rich well of Latin panegyric and triumphant ecclesiastical history that accompanied the tetrarchs and Constantine's rise runs dry, and Ammianus's narrative is lost to us before 354. Accordingly—and in striking contrast to the way in which monographs on Constantine
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallDivision of Empire: The Reign of the Sons of Constantine by William Lewis (review)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USDivision of Empire: The Reign of the Sons of Constantine by William Lewis (review)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®109162026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03Christologie und Kanonistik: Der Dreikapitelstreit in merowingischen libri canonum by Michael Eber (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987030
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The Three Chapters controversy emerged in the mid-sixth century and continued the Christological disputes that had shaped relations between the Franks and the empire since the Council of Chalcedon (451) and the Acacian schism (484–519). It centred on the imperial condemnation of the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edess by the emperor Justinian I. The imperial decision met resistance in parts of the West, especially from Pope Vigilius, who was forcibly brought to Constantinople in 546/7. Although coerced into endorsing the condemnation in 548, Vigilius reaffirmed his opposition in 551 and sought refuge from arrest in the Church of St Peter in Hormisdas in Constantinople.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallChristologie und Kanonistik: Der Dreikapitelstreit in merowingischen libri canonum by Michael Eber (review)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USChristologie und Kanonistik: Der Dreikapitelstreit in merowingischen libri canonum by Michael Eber (review)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®95662026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03What Is Ancient History? by Walter Scheidel (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987031
<p></p>
Ancient history is at a crossroads. The preponderance of evidence, the changing demands of student populations, the mass appeal of pseudo-intellectual narratives, and the worsening institutional crisis have prompted an understandable desire to shift to an interdisciplinary model, away from just Greece or Rome and toward a wider Mediterranean, Afro-Eurasian, or even planetary scope. This has been fueled in large part by the "global" turn and its popularity among academics and administrators alike. Walter Scheidel's self-styled "manifesto," What is Ancient History?, is but one example of a burgeoning literature on what we might call "global antiquity." This work grew out of a plenary lecture he gave at the virtual
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/399/image/coversmallWhat Is Ancient History? by Walter Scheidel (review)2026-04-03text/htmlen-USWhat Is Ancient History? by Walter Scheidel (review)2026-04-032026TWOProject MUSE®112212026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-03