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WINTER IS COMING: THE BARBARIZATION OF ROMAN LEADERS IN IMPERIAL PANEGYRIC FROM a.d. 446–68
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2019
Extract
The Ostrogothic king Theoderic I (a.d. 475–526) drew on his experience of ruling post-imperial Italy when he famously remarked that ‘The poor Roman imitates the Goth and the rich Goth imitates the Roman’. Written well after the fall of the western Roman empire, these words have prefaced many discussions of the process of Roman and barbarian assimilation and mutual acculturation. This topic has long captured the imagination of scholars, who have approached the topic from many different angles, such as archaeology, religion, prosopography and literature.
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Footnotes
In the course of writing this paper, I have incurred a debt of gratitude to a number of scholars. First, my thanks are due to Anthony Kaldellis and the other students of his seminar on Constantinople in Fall 2015, from which this paper ultimately derives. I greatly appreciated Kaldellis's patience and editorial forbearance as a paper originally on western Roman views of Constantinople morphed into its present form. I am also grateful to the students of Ohio State's coffee hour, who graciously allowed me to present a condensed version of this paper. Finally, my thanks are due to Bruce Gibson and the anonymous reviewers of CQ, whose comments and corrections greatly improved this paper. However, all errors are my own.
References
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15 Pan. Lat. 9(4).18.3–4. Similarly, Hdn. 6.3.7.
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21 Schindler (n. 7), 177.
22 Sid. Apoll. Carm. 5.249–50; Verg. Aen. 6.606–7; Caes. BGall. 4.1.10.
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41 Gal. De temp. 1.627 discusses the similarity of the Celts, Germans, Scythians and Thracians with regard to hair colour because of their cold climate. Thus, the Thracians could have been contaminated by stereotypes of northern barbarians.
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