Real Meter in Imaginary English:

Woods, Susanne

doi:10.2307/j.ctv6p4mm.19

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…46 Charietto's career should remain in the skeletal form left to history, not filled out with a dramatic reconstruction which makes him an unrecorded player in most scenarios known to involve gentiles across the Roman world from Paris to Antioch 360-362/3. 47 It is unlikely that he ever left the west, or ever commanded a schola.…”

Section: Gentilesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tribuni Scholarum Palatinarum c.A.D. 353–64: Ammianus Marcellinus and the Notitia Dignitatum

Barlow

Brennan

2001

The Class. Q.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In a recent article, Woods compiled what he called an 'almost complete list of [scholae] commanders for the period c. 353-64'. On the basis of his premise 'that there were only five scholae palatinae in existence for the period [c. A.D. 353-64]', 1 he systematized the known tribunes of scholae palatinae and filled in the gaps, often by dramatic reconstruction of the uncertain or lacunose careers of individuals, particularly those whose fathers were recorded in military posts. He appended to his article a table of tribuni, which, if correct, would provide data both for the revision of The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire and for formulating views on the structure and sociology of the late-Roman army. 2 However, his premise that there were five scholae in this period is based on assumptions about the history of the Notitia Dignitatum which are currently under review and on the retrojection into this earlier period of the structure of the scholae as set out in the Notitia Dignitatum, which is a tralatician set of lists, dating in its extant form from the end of the fourth century for the eastern lists and from later dates for the western lists. 3 Further, his reconstructions of careers, built on assumptions about career patterns which are not substantiated, often takes legitimate conjecture beyond the limits of evidence into the field of historical fiction. This paper will investigate both the validity of the premises which underpin Woods's paper, and the plausibility of his historical and prosopographical reconstructions. It will argue that his premise that there were five scholae palatinae A.D. 353-64 is false, that he is wrong to force the pattern of a later text, the Notitia Dignitatum, onto an earlier period of considerable flux for the scholae, and that his speculative identification of tribuni scholarum who are not named as such by Ammianus can rarely be sustained. It aims to set out an alternative framework for reconstructing the history of the scholae and their tribunes in this period, giving primacy to the narrative of Ammianus over what are at best dubious modern constructs. The resulting history may seem more jejune and will certainly be less dramatic, but it should provide a firmer basis for further enquiries.

show abstract

Section: Gentilesmentioning

confidence: 99%