Memories of Utopia: The Revision of Histories and Landscapes in Late Antiquity (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies)

These essays examine how various communities remembered and commemorated their shared past through the lens of utopia and its corollary, dystopia, providing a framework for the reinterpretation of rapidly changing religious, cultural, and political realities of the turbulent period from 300 to 750 CE. The common theme of the chapters is the utopian ideals of religious groups, whether these are inscribed on the body, on the landscape, in texts, or on other cultural objects. The volume is the first to apply this conceptual framework to Late Antiquity, when historically significant conflicts arose between the adherents of four major religious identities: Greaco-Roman 'pagans', newly dominant Christians; diaspora Jews, who were more or less persecuted, depending on the current regime; and the emerging religion and power of Islam. Late Antiquity was thus a period when dystopian realities competed with memories of a mythical Golden Age, variously conceived according to the religious identity of the group. The contributors come from a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, religious studies, ancient history, and art history, and employ both theoretical and empirical approaches. This volume is unique in the range of evidence it draws upon, both visual and textual, to support the basic argument that utopia in Late Antiquity, whether conceived spiritually, artistically, or politically, was a place of the past but also of the future, even of the afterlife. Memories of Utopia will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, and art historians of the later Roman Empire, and those working on religion in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. These essays examine how various communities remembered and commemorated their shared past through the lens of utopia and its corollary, dystopia, providing a framework for the reinterpretation of rapidly changing religious, cultural, and political realities of the turbulent period from 300 to 750 CE. The common theme of the chapters is the utopian ideals of religious groups, whether these are inscribed on the body, on the landscape, in texts, or on other cultural objects. The volume is the first to apply this conceptual framework to Late Antiquity, when historically significant conflicts arose between the adherents of four major religious identities: Graeco-Roman ‘pagans’; newly dominant Christians; diaspora Jews, who were more or less persecuted, depending on the current regime; and the emerging religion and power of Islam. Late Antiquity was thus a period when dystopian realities competed with memories of a mythical Golden Age, variously conceived according to the religious identity of the group. The contributors come from a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, religious studies, ancient history, and art history, and employ both theoretical and empirical approaches. This volume is unique in the range of evidence it draws upon, both visual and textual, to support the basic argument that utopia in Late Antiquity, whether conceived spiritually, artistically, or politically, was a place of the past but also of the future, even of the afterlife. Memories of Utopia will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, and art historians of the later Roman Empire and those working on religion in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of figures 9 List of contributors 10 Acknowledgements 13 Abbreviations 15 Map of the Byzantine Mediterranean 500–700 CE 16 PART I Writing and rewriting the history of conflicts 18 1 Curating the past: the retrieval of historical memories and utopian ideals 20 2 Julian’s Cynics: remembering for future purposes 37 3 Memories of trauma and the formation of a Christian identity 53 4 Augustine’s memory of the 411 confrontation with Emeritus of Cherchell 74 PART II Forging a new utopia: holy bodies and holy places 90 5 Purity and the rewriting of memory: revisiting Julian’s disgust for the Christian worship of corpses and its consequences 92 6 Constructing the sacred in Late Antiquity: Jerome as a guide to Christian identity 109 7 Utopia, body, and pastness in John Chrysostom 124 PART III Rewriting landscapes: creating new memories of the past 140 8 Memories of peace and violence in the late-antique West 142 9 Two foreign saints in Palestine: responses to religious conflict in the fifth to seventh centuries 162 10 Remembering the damned: Byzantine liturgical hymns as instruments of religious polemics 173 11 Paradise regained? Utopias of deliverance in seventh-century apocalyptic discourse 188 12 Ausonius, Fortunatus, and the ruins of the Moselle 206 PART IV Memory and materiality 222 13 Spitting on statues and shaving Hercules’s beard: the conflict over images (and idols) in early Christianity 224 14 Athena, patroness of the marketplace: from Athens to Constantinople 249 15 Transformation of Mediterranean ritual spaces up to the early Arab conquests 268 Epilogue 284 Scripture index 294 Index 295