Periodisations are inevitable and useful short-cuts in conceptualising the past. But they are often inherited without reflection or a clear idea of their origins; in literature they can endow fashionable aesthetic judgements with lasting canonical force in ways that can be intellectually harmful. Latin is a language with a literary history of over two millennia, with highly differentiated levels of survival from different periods, and with a complex scholarly tradition: its periodisation is both important and challenging. I open with three vignettes of attitudes to Latin literature which in their different ways show the tendency to esteem antiquity above all. I look at six possible ways in which the history of Latin literature has been periodised or could be better periodised, with a recurring focus on two particularly dynamic periods : the last half-century before Christ and the fourth and fifth centuries of our era. An examination of changes in language, metre, prose rhythm, politics, religion and book history is used to challenge and test established periodisations, and to suggest the benefits of a greater acknowledgement of continuities and the longue durée.

Longue durée analysis employs descriptive statistics and data visualization of explore univariate, bivariate, and multivariate trends. These trends tracks historical historical changes in a thinner manner than eventful analysis, but in return they explore such trends over longer time periods and larger numbers of cases. It introduces four graph types: serial scatterplots, contextualized line graphs, developmental typologies, and serial bar graphs that are used to visualize trends. Longue durée analysis frequently redescribes mi-described trends by paying close attention to three sources of misdescription: inadequate baselining, unfreezing of time scales, and mismeasurements. It discusses how using stock instead of flow indicators increases the ability of time series to capture historical changes.

The first chapter addresses the question of how folkloric beings, or godlings, ought to be defined, examining historic definitions of divine beings of a status lower than the greater gods, from Classical literature to contemporary anthropology. Turning to the British context, the chapter then discusses the evidence for the character of pre-Roman Iron Age religion, and assesses whether there is any evidence that elements of pre-Roman religion such as ‘animism’, therianthropic deities and ‘shamanism’ contributed to the distinctive character of godlings and popular religion in Roman Britain and thereafter. The chapter isolates certain characteristic (though not exclusive) features of godlings, including their identity as chthonic, non-human entities; their status as a multiple group rather than a single personality (in many cases); their status as objects of popular rather than official cults and their links with features of the natural landscape such as forests, groves and water sources.

The chapter looks at period boundaries – c. 500, c. 1000 – and ways of transcending them. To position oneself on a boundary is one way, and another is to look for deep continuities. Here additional schemas have been proposed: the re-emergence of a half-submerged system with the recurrence of the conditions that gave rise to it originally, and, above all, the evolution of a sequence of communications (as opposed to a constant idea) like a conversation, from its origin through its twists and turns over many centuries. The history of the first papal jurisprudence’s reception over time can be a ‘part for the whole’, a synecdoche for the changes in history of Western Christianity. Tracing its reception helps to subvert the apartheid of periodization.

Chapter 2 provides the historical and local background to the analysis. It describes political developments in the Central African Republic (CAR), Somaliland, and South Sudan before, during, and after colonization. These changes shape the way these countries’ respective political systems function today. The chapter then moves to the local level and provides a brief description of the key actors and issues at stake in each of the nine local security arenas. These case descriptions on the national and local level will form the basis of the analysis that follows.