Maximinus thrax and the politics of race in late antiquity

Greece and Rome

Volumn 55, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 55-82

  Moralee, Jason ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 65749293850     PISSN: 00173835     EISSN: 14774550     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0017383507000319     Document Type: Article

References (102)

1. The terms race and racial are used in this essay following the definitions established in Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton, NJ, 2004), 15-38. Here and throughout his study, Isaac shows that racial prejudice in antiquity was based on the imagined immutability of character as determined by geographical origins.
2. For a recent overview of the pernicious connection between European nationalism and scholarship on barbarian ethnogenesis, see P. J. Geary, The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, NJ, 2002).
3. R. J. C. Young, Colonial Desire. Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London and New York, NY, 1995).
4. The bibliography is immense, so I note here just three titles focused on different regions and nations: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Mixed-Feelings. The Complex Lives of Mixed-Race Britons (London, 2001);
5. Suzanne Bost, Mulattas and Mestizas. Representing Mixed Identities in the Americas, 1850-2000 (Athens, GA, 2005);
6. José F. Buscaglia-Salgado, Undoing Empire. Race and Nation in the Mulatto Caribbean (Minneapolis, MN, 2003).
7. C. Antonaccio, 'Hybridity and the Cultures Within Greek Culture', in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds. ), The Cultures Within Ancient Greek Culture. Contact, Conflict, Collaboration (Cambridge, 2003), 57-74, esp. 59-60;
8. A. S. Jacobs, Remains of Jews. The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford, CA, 2004), 8, 17;
9. D. Boyarin, 'Hybridity and Heresy: Apartheid Comparative Religion in Late Antiquity', in A. Loomba, S. Kaul, M. Bunzl, A. Burton, and J. Esty (eds. ), Postcolonial Studies and Beyond (Durham, NC and London, 2005), 339-58.
10. All of these scholars derive their understanding of the term hybridity from H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York, NY, 1994).
11. For the intersection of the study of antiquity and postcolonial analysis, see now B. E. Goff (ed. ), Classics and Colonialism (London, 2005).
12. P. J. Geary, 'Ethnic Identity as a Situational Construct in the Early Middle Ages', Mitteilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 113 (1983), 15-26.
13. The invention of phantasmal hybrids in late antique religious polemics is made clear by Jacobs (n. 5) and Boyarin (n. 5).
14. M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, second edition, rev. by P. M. Fraser (Oxford, 1966), i. 439, 452.
15. This view is directly challenged by J. Drinkwater, in CAH XII, second edition (Cambridge, 2005), 60.
16. A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602. A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey, orig. pub. 1964 (Baltimore, MD, 1986), i. 21;
17. A. Demandt, Geschichte der Spätantike. Das römische Reich von Diocletian bis Justinian (Munich, 1998), 21.
18. Translations are from Herodian. Historian of the Empire, ed. and tr. C. R. Whittaker, 2 volumes, Loeb Classical Library 454, 455 (Cambridge, MA, 1969-70). The translations have occasionally been adapted. Whittaker translates mixobarbaros as 'semi-barbarous', implying cultural deficiency.
19. R. Hosek, 'Die Mischbevölkerung',' Listy Filologické 106 (1983), 155-9;
20. A. A. Lund, 'Hellenentum und Hellenizität: Zur Ethnogenese und zur Ethnizität der antiken Hellenen',' Historia 54 (2005), 1-17, esp. 13-14.
21. Historiae Dialogus 4: Phocas is here called the Calydonian tyrant, a mixobarbaros anthrôpos, from the Cyclopean race (kuklôpeion genos), and finally a centaur; this series of unfortunate comparisons is repeated at Hist. 8. 10. 4, but with no reference to the Cyclops. Translated by Michael and Mary Whitby, The History of Theophylact Simocatta: An English Translation with Notes (Oxford, 1988), 3, 225.
22. Their translation, to my mind, correctly uses 'mongrel' for mixobarbaros. For the eleventh century use of the term, see C. M. Brand, 'The Turkish Element in Byzantium, Eleventh-Twelfth Centuries,' DOP 43 (1989), 19 and n. 75.
23. Translations are from The Scriptores Historiae Augustae, tr. D. Magie, 3 volumes, Loeb Classical Library 139, 140, 263 (Cambridge, MA, 1921-32).
24. They have occasionally been adapted. Hohl's commentary is still useful: Maximini Duo Iuli Capitolini, ed. E. Hohl (Berlin, 1949),
25. but it has been monumentally surpassed by A. Lippold, Kommentar zur vita Maximini Duo der Historia Augusta (Bonn, 1991). For the purposes of this paper it is assumed that the Historia Augusta was written by one author c. 400. See Lippold, 23-54, for a review of the issue of authorship.
26. R. Syme, Emperors and Biography. Studies in the Historia Augusta (Oxford, 1971), 182.
27. Hohl (n. 14), 30. After reviewing the scholarship on the question of the names Micca and Ababa, Lippold (n. 14), 193-206, suggests that both names are indeed possible, but cannot be ascribed to Maximinus' parents with certainty, therefore doubting Hohl's solution.
28. It was never good to be called 'Cyclops'. Cf. Ach. Tat. 2. 23, where an annoying slave has the same nickname. On emperors and their nicknames, but not including the Historia Augusta, see C. Bruun, 'Roman Emperors in Popular Jargon: Searching for Contemporary Nicknames (I)', in L. de Blois et al. (eds. ), The Representation and Perception of Roman Imperial Power, Proceedings of the Third Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Roman Empire, c. 200 B. C. -A. D. 476), Netherlands Institute in Rome, March 20-23, 2002 (Amsterdam, 2003), 69-98.
29. For clarity I will refer to the son (correctly) as Maximus rather than his designation in the literary sources as Maximinus. We know his mother's name only from an inscription and coins: see Syme (n. 15), 192 n. 7. Ammianus (14. 1. 8), without naming her in the surviving Res Gestae, characterizes her as having undue influence on Maximinus, fueling rather than dampening his ferocity. On Caecilia Paulina, see Syme (n. 15), 192 n. 7. Hohl refers to her as 'eine edle Frau', RE 10 (1917), s. v. C. Iulius Verus Maximus Caesar (no. 527), col. 870. See also Lippold (n. 14), 373-4.
30. Aurelius Victor. De Caesaribus, tr. with introduction and commentary by H. W. Bird, TTH 17 (Liverpool, 1994), 28.
31. Syme (n. 15), 183-4.
32. R. Syme, 'The Bogus Names in the Historia Augusta', in A. Alföldy (ed. ), Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium 1964/65, Antiquitas 4. 3 (Bonn, 1966), 268-9, where Toxotius is discussed.
33. Lippold (n. 14), 248-51.
34. Quoted and contextualized by A. D. Momigliano, 'Julius Beloch', tr. T. J. Cornell, in G. W. Bowersock and T. J. Cornell (eds. ), A. D. Momigliano. Studies on Modern Scholarship (Berkeley, CA, 1994), 115.
35. See A. Chauvot, Opinions romaines face aux barbares au IVe siècle ap. J. -C. (Paris, 1998).
36. W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A. D. 550-800). Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 81 and n. 295, calls the biography 'amusing'. When these amusing details were used by Jordanes, Goffart claims: 'This passage [Maximinus' barbarian parentage] is so interesting for reasons alien to the Getica that one tends not to notice that it relates to nothing else in the narrative and is therefore puzzling. But Maximinus' irrelevance to the plot is consistent with his role as a bringer of comic relief. '
37. Sivan has convincingly located the historical circumstances of the original law in the revolt of Firmus, an indigenous rebel in north Africa: H. S. Sivan, 'Why Not Marry a Barbarian? Marital Frontiers in Late Antiquity (The Example of CTh 3. 14. 1)', in R. W. Mathisen and H. S. Sivan (eds. ), Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 1996), 135-45.
38. For a thorough summary of the interpretation of the law, including new conclusions, see Chauvot (n. 27), 131-44.
39. M. Roberts, 'Rome Personified, Rome Epitomized: Representations of Rome in the Poetry of the Early Fifth Century,' AJPh 122 (2001), 533-65. For Claudian and others, the physical condition of Roma, as a personification, is a 'metonymic index of Rome's status' (535).
40. Claudian, In Gildonem 193.
41. On Gildo, see PLRE I, s. v. Gildo;
42. A. Cameron, Claudian. Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970), 93-123.
43. For a discussion of Stilicho's origins and their political consequences, see J. Matthews, Western Aristocracies and the Imperial Court, AD 364-425, orig. pub. 1975 (Oxford, 1990), 257-83;
44. PLRE I, s. v. Stilicho.
45. For Stilicho's family, see PLRE I, s. v. Serena; PLRE II, s. v. Eucherius 1, s. v. Aemilia Materna Thermantia.
46. Distantes regione plagae diuisaque ponto litora conueniunt nunc per uadimonia ad unum et commune forum, nunc per commercia et artes ad coetum celebrem, nunc per genialia fulcra externi ad ius conubii; nam sanguine mixto texitur alternis ex gentibus una propago. Hoc actum est tantis successibus atque triumphis Romani imperii. This passage is placed into the long tradition of such statements by Roman authors by C. Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 63.
47. Sed tantum distant Romana et barbara, quantum quadrupes abiuncta est bipedi vel muta loquenti. In the treatment of Roma, Prudentius' inconsistency is noted by Roberts, 'Rome Personified' (n. 33), 539.
48. Translated by W. H. Fremantle, NPNF second series, volume 6 (Grand Rapids, MI, 1979), 237.
49. For discussion, see A. Chauvot, 'Remarques sur l'emploi de semibarbarus', in A. Rousselle (ed. ), Frontières terrestres, frontières célestes dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1995), 262.
50. John Chrysostom, De Statuis ad Populum Antiochenum 2. 4-5; 2. 10, tr. in NPNF, first series, volume 9 (New York, NY, 1889), 345, 347. For migades anthrôpoi as 'mixed-race men', cf. Isoc. , Panath. 124. 7. It is also possible that Chrysostom here means 'mixed rabble', e. g. , Isoc. , Arch. 124. 7; Philo, Leg. 200. 3; Strabo 8. 7. 5. Another ambiguous use of the phrase occurs in his De inani gloria 28. Here, immoral words are compared to foreigners, pious words to proper citizens, and Christian bodies to cities. Therefore, we should, according to Chrysostom, bring about a large expulsion of foreigners (xenêlasia): mê migadas tinas kai phthorous anthrôpous epeisienai tois politais toutois.
51. Cf. A. Chaniotis, 'Foreign Soldiers - Native Girls? Constructing and Crossing Boundaries in Hellenistic Cities with Foreign Garrisons', in A. Chaniotis and P. Ducrey (eds. ), Army and Power in the Ancient World (Stuttgart, 2002), 99-113, esp. 110-12 on 'legal boundaries and mixed marriages'.
52. For lists of such unions, see R. C. Blockley, 'Roman-Barbarian Marriages in the Late Empire', Florilegium 4 (1982), 63-79, revising earlier work by Rosario Soraci; more recently, Chauvot (n. 27), 131-6.
53. Translated by Bird, Aurelius Victor, 27. The same sentiment - improper 'mixing' that led to political chaos - is repeated for the reign of Gallienus: 'Thus throughout the whole world the mightiest things were mixed with the small, the lowest with the highest, as if by winds violently gusting from all directions (Caes. 33, tr. Bird, Aurelius Victor, 33). Not surprisingly, just below this Victor mentions Gallienus' 'shameful love-affair with the daughter of Attalus, a king of the Germans, whose name was Pipa. ' The affair is analyzed by Chauvot (n. 27), 415-16.
54. 2, 1 (Thrace, third century). See also the curious report of Apollo's miraculous salvation of Didyma from Scythians (i. e. Goths) in 262/263: IDidy 159.
55. For a survey of Roman attitudes after Adrianople, see Chauvot (n. 27), 383-428.
56. Blockley (n. 45) and Chauvot (n. 27), 132-4, list the epigraphic evidence. For immigrants, see David Noy, 'Immigrants in Late Imperial Rome', in S. Mitchell and G. Greatrex (eds. ), Ethnicity and Culture in Late Antiquity (London, 2000), 15-30.
57. For Jordanes and his sources, see T. Mommsen's preface to the edition of Jordanes: MGH, AA 5. 1 (Berlin, 1882; Munich, 1982), xxiii-xliv;
58. J. J. O'Donnell, 'The Aims of Jordanes', Historia 31 (1982), 223-10;
59. B. Croke, 'Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes', CP 82 (1987), 117-34, esp. 122-5.
60. Jordanes himself (Getica 15. 83) claimed that the information on Maximinus was derived from Symmachus (c. 485), whose history was indebted to the Historia Augusta, though with obvious additions from Christian authors (Mommsen, Getica, xxxix). Lippold (n. 14), 164-77, summarizes the extensive scholarship on the so-called 'Symmachusfragment', and also cautiously suggests that Jordanes may well have had a copy of the Historia Augusta on hand in Constantinople. For Jordanes' degree of dependence on Cassiodorus, see the following divergent views: sceptical of dependence: J. J. O'Donnell, Cassiodorus (Berkeley, CA, 1979), 47-54;
61. Croke, 'Cassiodorus'; Goffart (n. 28); more accepting of dependence: P. Heather, 'Cassiodorus and the Rise of the Amals: Genealogy and the Goths under Hun Domination', JRS 79 (1989), 103-28, esp. 104-5 and n. 3.
62. Comparison of Cassiodorus' Chronicle and Jordanes' Romana and Getica does not allow us to conclude that Maximinus played any significant role in Cassiodorus' lost history of the Goths. In the Chronicle, Cassiodorus only mentions two factors, political usurpation and persecution (Cassiodorus, Chron. 931). For the opposing view that Maximinus had already become a Gothic hero in Cassiodorus' Gothic History, see H. Usener, Anecdoton Holderi. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in Ostgothischer Zeit (Bonn, 1877), 29, arguing that Cassiodorus had already included the Symmachus fragment in his lost Gothic History;
63. W. Enßlin, Des Symmachus Historia Romana als Quelle für Jordanes, Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Jahrgang 1948, Heft 3 (Munich, 1949), 11-13.
64. This reading of Maximinus as a 'national hero' fundamental to the purpose of the Getica is traditional: e. g. , see F. Giunta, Jordanes e la cultura dell'alto medio evo (Palermo, 1952), 168-9. But note that there are opposing views: Goffart sees the excursus on Maximinus and the information on his barbarian parentage as 'comic relief'. On this and the debate it has sparked, see Goffart (n. 28), 81-82, and his new preface to the paperback edition published in 2005, xviii.
65. Jordanes' creative use of Maximinus is made all the more surprising given that his source, Symmachus, probably adopted the venomous judgment of the emperor in the Historia Augusta; for a profile of Symmachus' conservative senatorial cultural preconceptions, see M. A. Wes, Das Ende des Kaisertums im Westen des Römischen Reichs, Archeologische Studiën van het Nederlands Historisch Instituut te Rome, deel II ('s-Gravenhage, 1967), 110-12. Wes concludes that 'Symmachus, da seine Quelle wenig günstig über Maximinus urteilt, diese negative Bewertung, die aus der ganzen Vita Maximini spricht, sicherlich übernommen hat'. (Symmachus, because his source judged Maximinus with little favour, certainly adopted this negative assessment, which resonates throughout the Vita Maximini. )
66. Croke (n. 49), 126-7.
67. O'Donnell (n. 49), 47; Goffart (n. 28), 22, 68-84; PLRE II, s. v. Germanus 4; PLRE IIIB, s. v. Matasuentha; PLRE IIIA, s. v. Germanus 3 (their son).
68. Syme asserts that this detail was made authoritative by inclusion in the so-called Kaisergeschichte: Syme (n. 15), 189. The epitomators and chroniclers all repeat that Maximinus was the first soldier-emperor, ruling not by the will or authority of the senate: Eutr. , Brev. 9. 1: Maximinus ex corpore militari primus ad imperium accessit sola militum voluntate ('Maximinus was the first from the military to rise to power by the will of the soldiers alone'); Aur. Vic. , Caes. 25. 1: primus e militaribus ('first from the soldiers'); Epit. Caes. 25. 1: ex militaribus ('from the soldiers'); SHA, Max. 8. 1: primum e corpore militari et nondum senator sine decreto senatus Augustus ab exercitu appellatus est ('first from the military and not even a senator to be called Augustus by the army without a decree of the senate'); Jerome, Chron. 2250: primus ex corpore militari, sine senatus auctoritate, ab exercitu imperator electus est ('the first from the military, without the authority of the senate, elected emperor by the army'); Orosius 7. 19. 1-2: nulla senatus voluntate imperator ab exercitu ('emperor by the army, not by the will of the senate'); Cassiodorus, Chron. 931: primus omnium ex corpore militari imperator electus ('first of all elected emperor by the military').
69. Jordanes, Getica 15. 88, a tradition that appears, without much merit, in Eusebius, HE 6. 28. Eusebius' authority established the persecution as a fact to be copied by Jerome and thereafter frequently repeated, e. g. , Jerome, Chron. 2250; Rufinus, HE 6. 28; Orosius 7. 19. 2, 7. 27. 9; Prosper of Aquitaine, Chron. 820; Isidore, Chron. 297-9; Bede, Chron. 361. For a study of the possible but unlikely victims of this alleged persecution, see G. W. Clarke, 'Some Victims of the Persecution of Maximinus Thrax', Historia 15 (1966), 445-53;
70. for a clever and attractive argument for the historicity of the persecution, see A. Lippold, 'Maximinus Thrax und die Christen', Historia 24 (1975), 479-92.
71. Historians in the middle Byzantine period relied on Dio and Herodian for chronicling the third century. See B. Bleckmann, Die Reichskrise des III. Jahrhunderts in der spätantiken und byzantinischen Geschichtsschreibung. Untersuchungen zu den nachdionischen Quellen der Chronik des Johannes Zonoras (Munich, 1992), 406-7, with specific reference to Maximinus, where he shows that the constitutional subversion was likewise of importance in the eastern chronological traditions. To cite one example, George Syncellus (Chron. ann. 5728), writing at the beginning of the ninth century, notes that Maximinus was a persecutor and a 'tyrant' prone to violent extremes.
72. F. Altheim, Die Soldatenkaiser (Frankfurt, 1939).
73. On Soldatenkaiser, see Matthäus Heil, '"Soldatenkaiser" als Epochenbegriff', in K. -P. Johne, T. Gerdhardt, and U. Hartmann (eds. ), Deleto Paene Imperio Romano. Transformationsprozesse des Römischen Reiches im 3. Jahrhundert und ihre Rezeption in der Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 2006), 416-17 (I thank Christian Witschel for alerting me to this recent publication).
74. V. Lesemann, Nationalsozialismus und Antike. Studien zur Entwicklung des Faches Alte Geschichte 1933-1945 (Hamburg, 1977), 118-23.
75. Altheim (n. 60), 5.
76. W. Enßlin, 'War Maximinus Thrax ein Germane?', RhM 90 (1941), 17.
77. Und ist schließlich diese Gestalt des Maximinus so, daß wir an ihr unsere Freude haben könnten und ihre Einreihung unter die Germanen irgend einen positiven Gewinn für ihre Beurteilung und für unser Geschichtsbild abwerfen könnte? Ich denke, wir haben germanische Gestalten genug, daß wir zu ihrer Ergänzung nicht einen Maximinus Thrax brauchen, der nach Altheim selbst, "das männliche Prinzip in seiner rohesten und naturhaftesten Form verkörperte. "' In CAH XII (1939), Enßlin had already characterized Maximinus as the 'son of a Thracian peasant - only a falsification of history has made him a Goth' (72).
78. F. Altheim, 'Die Abstammung des Maximinus Thrax', RhM 90 (1941), 198: 'Mixobarbaros bezeichnet überall. . . den Mischling'.
79. E. Hohl, 'Die "gotische Abkunft" des Kaisers Maximinus Thrax', Klio 34 (1942), 264-89.
80. F. Altheim, 'Zum letzen Mal: Maximinus Thrax', RhM 91 (1942), 353: 'Ich sehe keinen Anlaß, an meinen Aufstellungen etwas zu ändern. '
81. Noted by Lesemann (n. 61), 127; Enßlin continued to discuss the argument, recapitulating his criticisms in Enßlin (n. 51), 6-9.
82. T. Frank, 'Race Mixture in the Roman Empire', AHR 21 (1916), 689-708.
83. M. P. Nilsson, 'The Race Problem of the Roman Empire', orig. pub. 1921.
84. reprinted without changes in his Opuscula Selecta, volume 2 (Lund, 1952), 940-64.
85. the 'race problem' was that the empire allowed 'the mixing up of the different races', leading to 'unlimited bastardizing' (941, 957, 960). Curiously, Nilsson notes that Maximinus Thrax and his successors 'in all probability. . . belonged to the refractory people that we know in our times as Albanians' (947).
86. Such ideas are repeated in his Imperial Rome, tr. Rev. G. C. Richards (London, 1926), e. g. , 318, 338 ff. Not all scholars were in thrall to the topic of 'mongrelization': see the critical N. H. Baynes, 'The Decline of the Roman Power in Western Europe: Some Modern Explanations', JRS 33 (1943), 33.
87. For the legacy of Altheim's work, see G. W. Bowersock, review of K. Christ, Romische Geschichte und deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft (Munich, 1982), History and Theory 23 (1984), 376: 'Altheim's work was accomplished with such breathtakingly poor judgment and inaccuracy that most scholars have, in recent times, not even bothered to take account of his work in any serious or detailed way. '
88. Others differ: see, e. g. , R. Frank, review of Alexander Demandt, Der Fall Roms. Die Auflösung des römischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt (Munich, 1984), AHR 90 (1985), 115.
89. Note also the publication of a Festschrift with contributions by reputable international scholars: R. Stiehl and H. E. Stier (eds. ), Beiträge zur alten Geschichte und deren Nachleben. Festschrift für Franz Altheim zum 6. 10. 1968 (Berlin, 1969).
90. J. H. Hall, Hellenicity. Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago, IL, 2002), 13-15.
91. D. K. Buell rightly confronts this passage; ,her Why This New Race. Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York, NY, 2005), 20.
92. M. Dubuisson, 'Remarques sur le vocabulaire grec de l'acculturation', RBPh 60 (1982), 31-2.
93. Hall bases much of his understanding of these hybrid terms on Dubuisson (n. 77).
94. A. Chauvot (n. 42), 255-71.
95. Individuals: Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 18. 13 (Maximinus Daia); Jerome, Ep. 50. 2 (Jerome himself); Jerome, Ep. 123. 16 (Stilicho); SHA, Max. 2. 5 (Maximinus); Jordanes, Getica 15. 84 (Maximinus). Collectivities: Suetonius, Jul. 76. 5 (Gauls); Eutropius 1. 3 (Romans); Salvian, Ep. 4. 20 (Romans and Sabines). Cities: Jerome, Adv. Jov. 1. 48 (Lepcis). Rivers: Symmachus, Laud. in Val. 14 (Rhine); Jerome, Ep. 3. 5 (Rhine).
96. Chauvot (n. 41), 269.
97. Hall (n. 75), 23, 224-6, agreeing with Dubuisson that 'the Hellenistic culturally-based definition of Hellenic identity endured well into the period of Roman rule'.
98. For the history of scholarship on the question of 'racial mixture' and its disastrous consequences for the empire, see Demandt (n. 73), 352-65, 368-93.
99. P. Heather, 'State, Lordship and Community in the West (c. A. D. 400-600)', in A. Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins, and M. Whitby (eds. ), CAH XIV (Cambridge, 2000), 454.
100. See also Hall (n. 75), 9-10; and, for a general theory of peoplehood, applicable in this case, R. M. Smith, Stories of Peoplehood. The Politics of Political Membership (Cambridge, 2003), esp. 102-25.
101. I use the term 'staging' purely metaphorically as a way of discussing how late antique authors used Maximinus as a malleable figure in the plots of their literary productions. I do not use the term to signal that I am reading the sources through the lens of 'performativity'. Such an approach would probably yield conclusions different from my own. For the use of performative analysis in reading late antique and early medieval sources, see J. Martschukat and S. Patzold (eds. ), Geschichtswissenschaft und 'Performative Turn'. Ritual, Inszenierung und Performanz vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit (Cologne, 2003).
102. Nov Jivot Winery, Brestovitza, Bulgaria.