Between the late second and the early fourth century CE, several empresses received the title Mater Castrorum, either in official documents, inscriptions, and coinage or in unofficial honorific or dedicatory inscriptions erected by subjects. Scholars have assumed the title was indicative of a tight-knit relationship between the empresses and the soldiers. Recent studies of the numismatic and epigraphic evidence, however, have demonstrated that, at least in the cases of the early Matres Castrorum, the title was not descriptive of an actual relationship with the military. These studies argue it was the product of dynastic propaganda that prepared a smooth path for successors. Given this new, demonstrated understanding of the title’s original purpose this chapter investigates how the title fits into ideologies that emperors “negotiated” with the constituencies in the Empire. Based on the evidence, we conclude that the meaning and use of the Mater Castrorum title changed over time according to the agenda of those who employed it. The evolution of the title is not surprising, but as with so many aspects of investigations into women and the military, the complexities of its use have not previously been conceived of in this way.

It is striking that Christians were so successful. They had internal dissension; lacked relics; had no common temple; came from less educated classes and the periphery of the empire; Jews and pagans harassed, even persecuted them. Because they did not offer sacrifices, excluding them from offices and festivals, and were unable to maintain certain family traditions they appeared antisocial. Yet Christ-followers succeeded in winning over non-Jews as well. The persecutions welded Christians together, and martyrs served as role models, even to those who had manifested weakness. In areas such as sexual morality, Christians sought to demonstrate that they were superior to contemporaries of other faiths. They also formed transregional networks. The opportunity to gain prestige in Christian communities also attracted people. Various forms of authority competed with each other, especially the charismatic and spiritual authority of those who excelled in ascetic practices. That in the end monarchical bishops were to become the decisive figures in Christianity was by no means clear from the beginning. That Roman emperors would support Christianity was an unlikely development that changed Christianity significantly. But the tradition of a defiant piety that defined the beginnings was not lost, so that Christianity continued to renew itself.

Very few Christians rejected the Roman Empire in principle; rather, many saw it as a prerequisite for their mission because of the peace that the Empire created. Nevertheless, conflicts arose: Few understood why Christians, who worshipped only one God, did not want to sacrifice. In the eyes of contemporaries, this could provoke the gods and endanger social peace, and was a reason for persecution in many places. Many Christians made sacrifices under pressure, but some also became martyrs who gained great prestige. Meanwhile, some Christians entered the service of the state and held public office or became soldiers. They often made compromises that strict Christians criticised. Some seemingly enjoyed the glamour of public duties. That Christians would dominate the empire was by no means a foregone conclusion even at the end of the third century, at the time of Constantine the Great.

This chapter analyzes the abundant sources that record accusations of violence and other abuses committed by advocates in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. While much of this evidence includes rhetorical flourishes that suggest advocates were barbaric tyrants, a close reading of the sources demonstrates that many advocates employed specific strategies to benefit in corrupt ways from their positions. These included abusing their judicial authority, making excessive demands for protection payments from churches’ dependents and treating ecclesiastical estates like their own property. This chapter also tracks disputes between monasteries and advocates that lasted multiple generations, in order to argue that advocates’ corrupt practices were deeply rooted in the challenges churches were continuously confronted with when they needed to grant someone else access to their property in order for that person to provide protection and exercise justice.

This chapter argues that monasteries and churches employed a variety of different strategies to try to counter advocates’ corrupt practices. One of the most popular was forging documents (especially royal privileges) in an effort to alter the terms of their relationships with their advocates. Many ecclesiastics also traveled to the German imperial court or the Papal See in Rome to seek outside support and to request that the ruler or pope remove advocates from their local positions. Requests to the papacy were backed by a growing body of canon law dedicated to the issue of church advocacy. Nevertheless, these strategies were frequently unsuccessful. By the early thirteenth century, it therefore became increasingly common for monasteries and churches to offer their advocates monetary payments in return for those advocates relinquishing all of their rights.

This chapter investigates the dynamics of material and symbolic exchange between Roman emperors and Greek cities, and the role of the emperor in the ideology and practice of civic euergetism in the Greek East, in the middle Roman empire (c. 98–180 CE). It begins by documenting the absence of demonstrable correlations between (1) an imperial visit and an imperial benefaction to a city and (2) an imperial visit and the erection of an honorific statue for the reigning emperor. On this basis it is argued that an imperial visit was not the critical moment for generating reciprocal exchanges between emperor and city, as is normally thought, and that local honours for the emperor were not usually triggered by the provision or even the prospect of specific imperial benefactions to the city. The bulk of the chapter then draws out the implications – both ideological and practical – of this peculiar form of ‘abstract reciprocity’ between Roman emperors and Greek cities, arguing that this type of idealized benefaction and local honorific practice defines this phase in the long history of civic euergetism in the Greek polis.

The Exarchate of Ravenna has usually been seen as peripheral to Carolingian Italy because of its ’alien’ character, stemming from its position as a province of the eastern empire up to 751. This chapter first argues that, while the area retained many distinctive ‘Roman’ institutions that were quite distinct from the those of the old Lombard kingdom, it is unhelpful to regard these as ‘Byzantine’, and that enduring links with Constantinople were limited. The chapter goes on to argue that the area came to play an increasing role in the political and ecclesiastical life of Carolingian Italy, for a number of reasons, including the archbishops’ conflicts with the papacy and the attractiveness of Ravenna’s heritage to rulers keen to enhance their claims to imperial authority. Also, by the late ninth century various factors led to the settlement in the Exarchate of several powerful families of Lombard and Frankish descent.