Imperial Involvement in Education and Theology: Constantine to Constantius II

In 2012, in the village Davidovac situated in south Serbia, 9.5 km south-west from Vranje, archaeological investigations were conducted on the site Crkviste. The remains of the smaller bronze-age settlement were discovered, above which a late antique horizon was later formed. Apart from modest remains of a bronze-age house and pits, a late antique necropolis was also excavated, of which two vaulted tombs and nine graves were inspected during this campaign. During the excavation of the northern sector of the site Davidovac-Crkviste the north-eastern periphery of the necropolis is detected. Graves 1-3, 5 and 6 are situated on the north?eastern borderline of necropolis, while the position of the tombs and the remaining four graves (4, 7-9) in their vicinity point that the necropolis was further spreading to the west and to the south?west, occupying the mount on which the church of St. George and modern graveyard are situated nowadays. All graves are oriented in the direction SW-NE, with the deviance between 3? and 17?, in four cases toward the south and in seven cases toward the north, while the largest part of those deviations is between 3? and 8?. Few small finds from the layer above the graves can in some way enable the determination of their dating. Those are two roman coins, one from the reign of emperor Valens (364-378), as well as the fibula of the type Viminacium-Novae which is chronologically tied to a longer period from the middle of the 5th to the middle of the 6th century, although there are some geographically close analogies dated to the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 5th century. Analogies for the tombs from Davidovac can be found on numerous sites, like in Sirmium as well as in Macvanska Mitrovica, where they are dated to the 4th-5th century. Similar situation was detected in Viminacium, former capital of the roman province of Upper Moesia. In ancient Naissus, on the site of Jagodin Mala, simple rectangular tombs were distributed in rows, while the complex painted tombs with Christian motifs were also found and dated by the coins to the period from the 4th to the 6th century. Also, in Kolovrat near Prijepolje simple vaulted tombs with walled dromos were excavated. During the excavations on the nearby site Davidovac-Gradiste, 39 graves of type Mala Kopasnica-Sase dated to the 2nd-3rd century were found, as well as 67 cist graves, which were dated by the coins of Constantius II, jewellery and buckles to the second half of the 4th or the first half of the 5th century. Based on all above mentioned it can be concluded that during the period from the 2nd to the 6th century in this area existed a roman and late antique settlement and several necropolises, formed along an important ancient road Via militaris, traced at the length of over 130 m in the direction NE-SW. Data gained with the anthropological analyses of 10 skeletons from the site Davidovac-Crkviste don't give enough information for a conclusion about the paleo-demographical structure of the population that lived here during late antiquity. Important results about the paleo-pathological changes, which do not occur often on archaeological sites, as well as the clearer picture about this population in total, will be acquired after the osteological material from the site Davidovac-Gradiste is statistically analysed.

Download Full-text

A new statue-base for Constantius II and the fourth-century imperial cult at Oinoanda

Anatolian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0066154615000101 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 65 ◽

pp. 181-203 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

N.P. Milner

Keyword(s):

Fourth Century ◽

Religious Change ◽

Ordinary People ◽

Imperial Cult ◽

Roman Society ◽

Constantius Ii

AbstractA long-unpublished statue base for the emperor Constantius II was rediscovered at Oinoanda in 2010. It contains information that Oinoanda was a neokoros city, that is, having a special status in the imperial cult. The article attempts to trace the significance of neokoria and of images in the imperial cult in the fourth century AD, an era of rapid religious change when the Christianity of the emperors and many ordinary people co-existed with deep and widespread pagan traditions that flowed throughout Roman society.

Download Full-text

Constantius II. und die Limiganten: Einige Präzisierungen zu Amm. Marc. XIX 11

Klio ◽

10.1524/klio.1992.74.74.422 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 74 (74) ◽

Author(s):

PEDRO BARCELÓ

Keyword(s):

Constantius Ii

Download Full-text

Julian’s Hellenizing Program and the Jews

The Specter of the Jews ◽

10.1525/california/9780520298729.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 11-27

Author(s):

Ari Finkelstein

Keyword(s):

Imagined Community ◽

Cosmic Order ◽

Constantius Ii

chapter 1 offers a framework for understanding the rest of the book. The emperor Julian’s imperial hellenizing program is explained as his attempt to right the cosmic order overturned by Constantine and his son, Constantius II, in order to save the Roman oikoumenē. As a philosopher partially trained in theurgic Neoplatonism, Julian applies these teachings to his imperial program in an attempt to define the correct hierarchy of ethnic gods who ensured the health and success of the Roman oikoumenē and to articulate the correct worship that would gain their beneficence. Ethnographic thinking is introduced as an important element in Julian’s program, and he applies it to the Hellenes, an “imagined community” defined by the emperor; to Jews, who are portrayed as the Judean ethnos, with theurgic ancestral laws that can be mined to develop and sometimes authorize or model Hellenic orthopraxy; and to Christians, as Galileans, a people without any ethnic legitimacy.

Download Full-text

Further Observations on the Dating of Enmann's Kaisergeschichte

The Classical Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0009838800036892 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 375-378 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

H. W. Bird

Keyword(s):

Common Knowledge ◽

The Self ◽

Historia Augusta ◽

Constantius Ii

The significance of the dating of Enmann's Kaisergeschichte in the controversy which has long surrounded the Historia Augusta is common knowledge to all scholars who have more than a nodding acquaintance with the period. Enmann himself concluded that the KG ended with or shortly after Diocletian's accession. This was a necessary hypothesis for Enmann in 1884 because the H.A. had clearly used the KG and the self-proclaimed authorship and dating of the former were generally accepted. None the less in Enmann's opinion the resemblances between Victor and Eutropius continued into the sole reign of Constantius II down to the Battle of Strasbourg in 357 and Enmann was compelled to ascribe this to a ‘continuation’ of the KG.

Download Full-text