2018. “A wise madness”. A virtue-based model for crowd behaviour in Late Antiquity. in C. De Wet and W. Mayer, eds., Reconceiving Religious Conflict: New Views from the Formative Centuries of Christianity, London, Routledge, 2018, 234-258.
Peter Van NuffelenThis chapter1 contributes only indirectly to the study of religious conflict in late antiquity. It is concerned with a form of violence that is often studied under the label " religious violence, " namely riotous behaviour by crowds against buildings, symbols, and individuals of other religious groups. Instead of studying this as a separate form of violence, I seek to embed these phenomena in a wider study of crowd behaviour. The reason is that such " religious violence " assumes the same forms as violence directed against civic, imperial or economic targets. An understanding of crowd behaviour in general is thus an essential preliminary to the study of such phenomena. Besides offering a contextualisation for " religious violence, " I shall seek to analyse crowd behaviour with categories employed by late ancient authors themselves. Whereas modern sociology is commonly preferred as an explanatory framework (section 1), I argue in favour of a virtue-based model, which I briefly ground in the De officiis of Ambrose of Milan (section 2). After setting out how this model helps us to make sense of late ancient descriptions of crowd behaviour and violence (Section 3), I end by showing how such actions were profoundly meaningful, not just in the eyes of the beholders but also in their actual reality. In other words, crowd behaviour is shaped by the geographical and ceremonial contexts in which they took place, as well as by implicit assumptions about how social relations function.
Related papers
Dijkstra, Jitse & Raschle, Christian R. (eds.) (2020). Religious Violence in the Ancient World. From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
ARYS. Antigüedad: Religiones y Sociedades
Religious Violence in Late Antiquity: Current Approaches, Trends and Issues
In: Jitse Dijkstra and Christian Raschle, eds, Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 251-265.
One of the few points on which the multitude of debates that have occurred across the disciplines in recent years agree is that, whether addressing the late ancient past or the global present, the phenomenon we label religious violence is far from simple. The paper outlines some of the current debates and trends with regard to the world of Late Antiquity and introduces a variety of challenges posed by them. A key question these pose is not just whether there is a causal relationship between religion and violence, but whether in trying to unpack religious violence as a perceived phenomenon we are asking the wrong question about, among other things, the relationship between narratives of violence (which in Late Antiquity were prolific) and actual violent action.
Crowd Behaviour and the Destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in 391/392 CE
in J.H.F. Dijkstra, C.R. Raschle (eds), Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Athens to Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2020) 286-305
Religious Violence and Hagiography in Late Antiquity
Sanctity is in many ways a social construct, and hence the profile of saints and the practices that qualify them as such change with the passing of time. The destruction of temples and idols as a way to signal sanctity is a good example of this. The subject came to form part of hagiography in the late fourth century, reached its peak in the Theodosian period, and fell off in the sixth century when Christianization was believed to be complete. Hagiography made iconoclasm one of the most extraordinary expressions of divine power, adding it to the saint's repertoire of miracles and ascetic virtues. The aim of this article is to study the origins and early development of this motif, which legiti-mated — and subtly encouraged — the use of violence in the conversion process. It is within apologetic and polemical contexts that the episodes of the violent destruction of late antique paganism have to be assessed. Keywords religious violence – iconoclasm – hagiography – Late Antiquity In antiquity, both pagans and Christians believed in the capacity of daimones to foresee the future, but they did not agree on which ones truly possessed this ability. In De divinatione daemonum (On the Divination of Demons), written at
Uprisings and Mob Violence in Acts and in the First Century
Themelios, 2023
Acts of the Apostles reports several uprisings and instances of mob violence that occur across Asia Minor, caused by or related to the evangelistic and missionary endeavors of Paul and his companions in the middle of the first century. While the historicity of the events recorded in Acts is an issue of perennial dispute, the disturbances associated with the expansion of the Christian message are presented by the author as historical events. Consequently, a closer and more detailed examination of the major uprisings throughout the text is in order. This article begins with an analysis of extrabiblical records of mob violence and uprisings in the first-century Roman Empire, and then moves to an analysis of five episodes of mob violence recorded in Acts for the purpose of comparing the way that uprisings during the early Imperial period were recorded. The discussion concludes by arguing that Acts reports these events in a manner consistent with the way that other uprisings during this time were reported, and the details in Acts match the social and cultural context of the areas described. As a result, readers should consider the accounts in Acts to have a higher degree of historical reliability.
Violence and belief in late antiquity. Militant devotion in Christianity and Islam. By Thomas Sizgorich. (Divinations. Rereading Late Ancient Religion.) Pp. viii+398. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. £36 ($55). 978 0 8122 4113 6
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2010
"Urban Uprisings in the Roman World: The Social Setting of the Mobbing of Sosthenes." NTS 51 (2005), 416-28.
The unresolved difficulty of Acts 18.12–17 involves finding an adequate explanation for the (seemingly) unprovoked hostile reaction of the crowd toward Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue in Corinth. This investigation places this incident within the larger social context of urban uprisings and mob violence in the Roman world in order to highlight the socioeconomic factors (poverty, overcrowding, etc.) that inevitably gave rise to such frequent outbursts of urban aggression during this period. As such, this study illumines not only Acts 18, but other passages in Acts where mob violence plays a leading role. Whenever a blast of turbulence falls upon the assembly. .. we find jibes and brawling and laughter. Dio Chrysostom Luke's brief account of the mobbing of Sosthenes in Acts 18.12–17 presents historians and exegetes with a fascinating set of questions, not least of which is accounting for the sudden rush of the crowd on Sosthenes, the unsuspecting and unprepared ruler of the synagogue in Corinth. Surprisingly, this issue receives scant discussion in commentaries and secondary literature, with most appealing without argument to an anti-Jewish bias on the part of the assembly and the pro-consul Gallio, who turned a blind eye to the disturbance. 1 While xenophobic 1 E.g. H.
Urban Violence in Fifth Century Antioch: Riot Culture and Dynamics in Late Antique Mediterranean Cities
Concept, 2008
Controllers of Crowds? Popular Mobilization and Episcopal Leadership in Late Roman North Africa (In: MANDERS, E.; SLOOTJES, D. eds. Leadership, Ideology and Crowds in the Roman Empire of the 4th century CE. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2020, p. 151-161).
The fourth century CE witnessed the rise of a new and more assertive type of church leadership, especially in the context of the religious controversies. Developing new forms of communication with ordinary Christians to mobilize their support, they also brought into being new forms of popular power. Scholars have not failed to note this more active engagement of urban crowds in the fourth and early fifth centuries. But their preferred approaches have mainly been ‘top-down’, focusing on the role of leaderships or on the broader structures of social control. We must not forget, however, as scholars of other periods have noted, that it is not enough to point out the existence of social strain or structural conditions to explain popular engagement. We must also remember that ‘contentious politics is not born out of organizers’ heads but is culturally inscribed and socially communicated’ (Tarrow). Taking into account these warnings, the objective of this essay is to apply a more bottom-up approach to study of popular collective action in the cities of North Africa in fourth and early fifth century CE, as revealed in our written sources and more specifically in the works of St Augustine. By starting from the pursuit of the basic principles of collective action as proposed by sociologists and historians of other periods, we may stand a better chance to understand how urban crowds could be mobilized by, against or independently of bishops and to balance the respective roles of leaders and masses in the age of Augustine.
CHAPTER 10
“A Wise Madness”: A Virtue-Based Model for Crowd Behaviour in Late Antiquity
Peter Van Nuffelen
Ghent University
This chapter
Research for this study was started during a fellowship at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg, the Göttingen Institute for Advanced Study, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (2012–2013). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 313153. contributes only indirectly to the study of religious conflict in late antiquity. It is concerned with a form of violence that is often studied under the label “religious violence,” namely riotous behaviour by crowds against buildings, symbols, and individuals of other religious groups. Instead of studying this as a separate form of violence, I seek to embed these phenomena in a wider study of crowd behaviour. The reason is that such “religious violence” assumes the same forms as violence directed against civic, imperial or economic targets. An understanding of crowd behaviour in general is thus an essential preliminary to the study of such phenomena. Besides offering a contextualisation for “religious violence,” I shall seek to analyse crowd behaviour with categories employed by late ancient authors themselves. Whereas modern sociology is commonly preferred as an explanatory framework (section 1), I argue in favour of a virtue-based model, which I briefly ground in the De officiis of Ambrose of Milan (section 2). After setting out how this model helps us to make sense of late ancient descriptions of crowd behaviour and violence (Section 3), I end by showing how such actions were profoundly meaningful, not just in the eyes of the beholders but also in their actual reality. In other words, crowd behaviour is shaped by the geographical and ceremonial contexts in which they took place, as well as by implicit assumptions about how social relations function.
In this chapter, I defend a weak and a strong thesis. The weak thesis is that the model is adequate so as to help us understand the representations of riots in late ancient sources. In other words, the model shapes representations in historiography, rhetoric, letters, etc. and is thus crucial to help us grasp how crowd behaviour was perceived in late antiquity. This will draw attention to the dissonance between ancient representations and modern analyses, between, on the one hand, a focus on virtue and character and, on the other, one on interests and the state. This dissonance creates epistemological problems, as modern scholars need to find evidence for their sociological understanding of crowds in narratives that have a fundamentally different focus. They tend to solve this problem by discussing emic understandings under the label of “ideology” or “discourse” and by analysing actual behaviour through sociological models.
A good illustration is Richard D. Finn, Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire: Christian Promotion and Practice (313–450) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), who discusses discourse and function of almsgiving separately (189–90, 218–20). The separation of the two levels is strongly defended by Egon Flaig, one of the few ancient historians to articulate his theoretical presuppositions. He sees practices as primary and values and discourse as secondary. In his view, we can study actions separate from thoughts and string practices together into meaningful series that can be studied independently from ideas about humanity or society: Egon Flaig, Den Kaiser Herausfordern: Die Usurpation im Römischen Reich (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1992), 1–20; Egon Flaig, Ritualisierte Politik: Zeichen, Gesten und Herrschaft im Alten Rom (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 163, 260. His model is inspired by that of Pierre Bourdieu, who suggested his theory worked for all periods and who is, for that reason, very popular among historians. For the limited applicability of his theories, see, however, Danilo Martuccelli, Sociologies de la modernité: L’itinéraire du XXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 140–41.
My strong thesis contests this disjunction and argues that the model also shaped actual behaviour and hence is also a model to help understand late ancient crowd action. If the weak thesis is uncontroversial, in contrast to the strong one, I think the former entails the latter. As this chapter will show, a representation is a normative form of perception of the world, that is, it implies value judgements about actions. It is implausible to assume that such value-judgements only impacted on how actions were perceived and not on how individuals acted. Indeed, the actions of individuals are influenced and shaped by what they think and hence by their views and understandings. An ethical view never is merely a judgement on reality: it also entails guidance for future action. A different way of framing the argument would be to say that ancient representations in historiography or rhetoric are at least plausible versions of reality: as these texts seek to persuade their readers that their accounts are truthful, their representations have to be at least realistic. Obviously, they will direct the interpretation of the reader by emphasising certain elements or omitting others, but this can only be a strategy of conviction if the course of action represented are recognised as plausible by the audience. This does not mean that modern sociology is invalid as a mode of analysis but one should be aware of the fact that it relies on very different presuppositions of why individuals act, presuppositions that are not neutral but normative in their own right.
For the view that modern sociology also presupposes a certain view of humanity, which entails certain normative presuppositions, see Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 2007), 23-35. Indeed, we shall see that the virtue-based model relies on presuppositions about humanity and society that are different from those that modern sociology brings to the analysis. Modern sociological theory may offer gains in insight, but also distort our access to antiquity and even prejudge the conclusions. The limits of this chapter do not allow me to expand the theoretical discussion. Scholars who disagree with my strong thesis can hopefully still draw profit from the weak one.
1. Understanding crowd behaviour in late antiquity
Religious violence in late antiquity has received much scholarly attention. This focus goes back to, first, the Reformation, when post-Constantinian violence was seen as a proof of the lapse of the Church, and, second, the Enlightenment, which in its anti-clerical variant emphasised the disruptive role of the Church in society. Such master narratives have heavily influenced scholarship, for example in its tendency to see religiously inspired violence as a new phenomenon in late antiquity and deny its existence in Classical antiquity.
For further discussion, see Wendy Mayer, “Religious Conflict: Definitions, Problems and Theoretical Approaches,” in Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise of Islam, ed. W. Mayer and B. Neil (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 1–19; Jan Bremmer, “Religious Violence between Greeks, Romans, Christians and Jews,” in Violence in Ancient Christianity: Victims and Perpetrators, ed. A. C. Geljon and R. Roukema, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 125 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 8–30; Peter Van Nuffelen, “Religious Violence in Late Antiquity,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence. Vol. 1 (ed. L. Fibinger, G. G. Fagan, and M. Hudson; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), forthcoming [Are page numbers available for this, perhaps? NOT YET, may, after all, not be 2017 for an editor has died]. For a discussion not limited to antiquity, see William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). It has also led to the unreflective use of the category of “religious violence,” denoting a particular form of violence that supposedly can be studied in its own right. Scholars usually understand the term to indicate actions of violence by religious individuals and groups against other religious groups, symbols or objects. Paradigmatic acts are the destruction of temples and synagogues. The blind spot in this approach is, however, that such actions are formally hard to distinguish from other violent actions. Not only temples and cult statues were destroyed, but also palaces and imperial statues. The behaviour of crowds when attacking heretics is also hard to distinguish from how unjust governors were dealt with. “Religious violence,” then, needs to be studied within the context of general violence in late antiquity.
For analyses that show the similarity in forms, see Geoffrey Greatrex, “The Nika Riot: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 117 (1997): 60–86; Troels Myrup Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods: Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2013). For the pervasive presence of violence in antiquity, see Wilfried Nippel, Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 47–69; Jill Harries, Law and Crime in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 108; Cam Grey, Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 153–54: Ari Z. Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Jens-Uwe Krause, Gewalt und Kriminalität in der Spätantike (München: C.H. Beck, 2014). One should add that violence is neither a purely descriptive category (it has a negative charge in modern usage) nor a static one (what counts as violence today is not necessarily violence in antiquity). For sake of clarity I simply assume we know what violence is.
This chapter proposes to do this for one specific type of violence, namely riots. Riots involve crowds, which express their disaffection by gathering, making themselves heard, and possibly committing violent acts. They are prominently reported in all types of sources from late antiquity, indicating that it was perceived to be a noteworthy phenomenon in this period. They also occur everywhere, even though scholarship has tended to privilege Rome and Constantinople.
Hans Peter Kohns, Versorgungskrisen und Hungerrevolten im spätantiken Rom (Bonn: Habelt, 1961); Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); David R. French, “Rhetoric and the Rebellion of A.D. 387 in Antioch,” Historia 47 (1998): 468–84; Gilbert Dagron, L’hippodrome de Constantinople: Jeux, Peuple et Politique (Paris: Gallimard, 2011); Júlio César Magalhâes de Oliveira, Potestas populi: participation populaire et action collective dans les villes de l’Afrique romaine tardive (vers 300–430 apr. J.-C) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012); Rene Pfeilschifter, Der Kaiser und Konstantinopel: Kommunikation und Konfliktaustrag in einer spätantiken Metropole (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013). Historical analyses of such violent collective actions (as sociologists would call them) tend to follow explanations offered in the social sciences. Relying on older theories of collective psychology, it used to be said that crowds behave irrationally and are driven by frenzy.
See these classics: Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1991 = 1895); Elias Canetti, Masse und Macht (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1981 = 1961). It underlies the views of Cameron, Circus Factions, 227; Ramsay MacMullen, “The Historical Role of the Masses in Late Antiquity,” in Changes in the Roman Empire (Yale: Yale University Press, 1990), 250–76; Joaquín Martínez Pizarro, Writing Ravenna: The Liber Pontificalis of Andreas Agnellus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 148. For a critique on such views, see Nicholas Purcell, “The Populace of Rome in Late Antiquity: Problems of Classification and Historical Description,” in The Transformations of Urbs Roma in Late Antiquity, ed. W. V. Harris (Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1999), 135–61, esp. 160. This may now seldom be used as an explanation for crowd behaviour, but the view nevertheless has some value. Ancient sources tend to represent crowds as driven by emotions. This does not mean that crowds behave fundamentally different from individuals, but that that they are more susceptible to be guided by the non-rational parts of the soul. Moreover, in contrast to some of the positions that follow, this view offers an explanation for possible violent behaviour, by suggesting that the irrational behaviour of crowds is already one step in that direction. This is not to say that this is a successful explanation, but other current models of analysis do not always seem to be able to explain why a collective action turns violent.
Most explanations nowadays rely on variations of the following three models. Older scholarship sees the mob as subservient to, and directed by, elite interests. Clashes in the populace are, then, proxy fights for elite interests.
Cf. Neil Smelser, Theory of Collective Behaviour (London: Routledge, 1962), 262–63. For antiquity, see Alfred N. Sherwin-White, “Violence in Roman Politics,” Journal of Roman Studies 46 (1956): 1–10; Peter A. Brunt, “The Roman Mob,” Past & Present 35 (1966): 3–27; Hans Peter Kohns, “Innerstädische Krisen in der römischen Kaiserzeit,” in Macht und Kultur im Rom der Kaiserzeit, ed. K. Rosen (Bonn: Habelt, 1994), 165–79; Rita Lizzi Testa, “Discordia in urbe: Pagani e Cristiani in rivolta,” in Pagani e Cristiani da Giuliano l’Apostata al Sacco di Roma: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Rende, 12/13 Novembre 1993), ed. F. E. Consolino (Messina: Soveria Mannelli, 1995), 115–40; Thomas S. Brown, “Urban Violence in Early Medieval Italy: The Cases of Rome and Ravenna,” in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, ed. G. Halsall (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 76–89; Lellia Cracco Ruggini, “Clientele e violenze urbane a Roma tra IV e VI secolo,” in Corruzione, repressione e rivolta morale nella tarda Antichità, ed. R. Soraci (Catania: CULC, 1999), 7–52. For critique, see Neil McLynn, “Christian Controversy and Violence in the Fourth Century,” Kodai 3 (1992): 15–44; Michael Whitby, “Factions, Bishops, Violence and Urban Decline,” in Stadt in der Spätantike—Niedergang oder Wandel?, ed. J. Krause and C. Witschel (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2006), 441–61. In the case of religious violence, this model ascribes mob behaviour to the direction of the bishop. If the crowd certainly could be manipulated in some instances, such an explanation is not satisfactory, as it tends to deny the agency of the crowd and is therefore forced to discount the ancient evidence that suggests otherwise (see below). A second model emphasises the utilitarian nature of the demands of the crowds: they make specific self-serving demands, such as a better provision of food.
D.K. Gupta and H. Singh, “Collective Rebellious Behavior: An Expected Utility Approach of Behavioral Motivations,” Political Psychology 13 (1992): 379–406. See Zvi Yavetz, Plebs and Princeps (London: Oxford University Press, 1969); Purcell, “The Populace of Rome,” 158–59. In other words, the crowd intervenes with very specific demands and is inherently conservative. This may be true, but late ancient riots do not necessarily stop when demands are fulfilled nor are crowds always acting out of self-interest, as we shall see. A third model starts out from the idea that riots reflect the structural breakdown of society. When “the established organization ceases to afford direction and supply channels for action,” so this view holds, collective action occurs.
Ralph H. Turner and Lewis M. Killian, Collective Behavior, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 30; Bert Useem, “Breakdown Theories of Collective Action,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 215–38. Ian Hernon, Riot!: Civil Insurrection from Peterloo to the Present Day (London: Pluto, 2006). For antiquity, see Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 12–13: Nippel, Public Order, 47.
The omnipresence of riots in late antiquity can, on such an understanding, be read as a sign of the inherent weakness of the state and thus a sign of the decline associated with the period. In a positive interpretation, collective action becomes a source of systemic change, a notion that is now especially popularised by Charles Tilly. In his view, collective action identifies weaknesses in, and promotes improvements of, society and state.
Charles Tilly and Sidney G. Tarrow, Contentious Politics (Boulder, CO.: Paradigm Publishers, 2007). Compare Matthew Arnold and Stefan Collini, Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 181. For the absence of system-changing impulses by ancient crowds, see Paul J. J. Vanderbroeck, Popular Leadership and Collective Behavior in the Late Roman Republic (Ca. 80–50 B.C.), Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology 3 (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1987); Christian Gizewski, Zur Normativität und Struktur der Verfassungsverhältnisse in der späteren römischen Kaiserzeit (München: C.H. Beck, 1988), 243. Maybe this idea has heuristic value for modern Western history but its identification of the people as agents of positive change betrays too much a modern and Whig idea of “democracy” (identifying the people as the main agent of the progress of political history over and against the elites) to be a useful tool for antiquity. We do not see ancient crowds driving, or aiming at, systemic change.
Each of these models highlights important aspects but none of them provides a fully satisfactory explanation of ancient riots. What they all share, however, is a view of humanity that posits that he is driven by interests (as a member of the elite or of a crowd), seeks to obtain and influence power, and functions within social structures that are implied to be those of the state. This betrays that we are dealing with modern theories of humanity. As we shall presently see, the view of humanity and of social relations underpinning late ancient descriptions of riots and crowd behaviour is fundamentally different. Behaviour is judged in function of the social role the agent occupies, a role defined by the relationship between agents and the moral duties this entails. In the case of crowds, the crucial idea is that of a relationship of justice between the crowd and a leader, as theorised by Ambrose of Milan.
2. Crowd, leader, and justice
In the middle of the second book of De officiis, Ambrose comments on the importance of justice for men in leading positions. “Justice, therefore, is a wonderful commendation for men who occupy any responsible position; injustice, on the other hand, induces people to desert them and turn against them.”
Ambrose, Off. 2.18.93: Egregie itaque uiros alicui praesidentes muneri commendat iustitia et contra iniquitas destituit atque impugnat; in Ivor J. Davidson, Ambrose: De Officiis, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1: 320-321.. To illustrate the point, he narrates how the people of Israel turned away from Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, when their demand for a moderation of the rule of his father was rejected by the king. Instead, following the advice of young men, he added to the weight of their yoke.
Provoked by this response, the people replied: “We have no portion with David, no inheritance among the sons of Jesse. To your tents, each of you, O Israel!”—this man will be no ruler or leader to us. So, deserted and forsaken by the people, he only just managed to hold the two tribes together—and even that was achieved only on account of the merits of David.
Ambrose, Off. 2.18.94 (Davidson 1: 320-321): Quo responso exasperati responderunt populi: Non est nobis portio cum Dauid neque hereditas in filiis Iesse. Reuertere unusquisque in tabernacula tua, Israel quoniam hic homo neque in principem neque in ducem erit nobis. Itaque desertus a populo ac destitutus, uix duarum tribuum propter Dauid meritum habere potuit societatem.
To turn the story into an exemplum, Ambrose has adapted the biblical account in small but significant ways.
3 Kings 12:1–16 and 2 Chronicles 10:1–16. He has left out the presence of Jeroboam, the brother and rival of Rehoboam, at the deliberations of the people and has heightened their hardship by the use of the word servitus (slavery). The Book of Kings specifies that Rehoboam followed the advice of the young men with whom he was raised, instead of heeding the elder councillors. Ambrose leaves out this shared education with the young men and focuses the story on the more simple identification of wisdom with age: Rehoboam fails to listen to wise advice. He also renders more explicit that it is the people who decide to reject Rehoboam as their leader. In this way, the story becomes a straightforward illustration of the Ambrose’s argument that a ruler cannot rule unjustly, for this will lead to a rift between him and the people.
Ambrose has modelled the biblical events on those of his own age—or, at least, fourth-century sources contain representations of conflicts between emperor and people that are strikingly similar.
See, e.g., Lactantius, Mort. 26.3 and 44.7 (Alfons Städele, Laktzanz. De mortibus persecutorum. Fontes Christiani 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003, 160, 202); Historia Augusta, Pescennius Niger 2.3 (D. Magie, The Scriptores Historiae Augustae. 3 Volumes. Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1921-1932), 1: 432). He spells out the moral nature of the relationship between ruler and ruled: “It is clear, then, that fairness imparts strength to a rule (imperium) and injustice reduces it to ruins.”
Ambrose, Off. 2.19.95 (Davidson 1: 320-321): Claret ergo quoniam aequitas imperia confirmet et iniustitia dissoluat. Corrupt practice (malitia) is detrimental to a state as much as it is to a family. Kindness (benignitas) is needed, and especially goodwill (benevolentia):
Goodwill is of the greatest assistance here, for it makes us eager to embrace people everywhere with acts of kindness (beneficia), to capture their hearts by performing services for them (officia), and to win their allegiance by showing them favour (gratia).
Ambrose, Off. 2.19.95 (Davidson 1: 320-321 ): Plurimum iuuat beneuolentia quae omnes studet beneficiis amplecti, deuincere officiis, oppignerare gratia.
Beneficia, officia, gratia—these three words express the nature of the relationship that Ambrose envisages between ruler and ruled, indeed between individuals in general. Social relationships rest thus on a moral foundation of benevolence. In the example of Rehoboam, where the relationship is (as we would call it) political in nature, justice is the key virtue. Such a moral foundation renders social relations inherently marked by reciprocity. Although the relationship is hierarchical, the idea is not only that the ruler must be just towards his subjects, but the latter must also be just towards the former. Relations are ruptured when the moral foundation is not respected.
This virtue-based account of political interaction has three features. First, the crowd and the ruler stand in a personal relation. Crucially, the crowd is represented and acts as a person. These persons possess virtues, that is, they are a certain sort of person, in this case one whose character favours justice. Second, Rehoboam occupies a social role: expectations of justice are projected onto him as a ruler. He needs to actualise this role in his concrete dealings with the people. In other words, he has to prove at each instance that he is indeed the kind of person who has justice as a character trait. Although it is not rendered explicit in the story, we may assume that the crowd also performs a social role: it is not a mere aggregation of individuals but it incarnates the role of people. Indeed, it is unlikely that in the story the whole of the people of Israel confronted Rehoboam: the gathered crowd instantiates the whole people. Such social roles come with moral expectations, which shape the occupant of that role and his relations with other individuals, but which also need to be performed and renegotiated. Third, if the relationship is primarily binary, it is embedded in a more complex social web: Ambrose mentions the presence of advisors to the king, who occupy a different social role and are in a different relationship to king and people.
Rehoboam is, in the hands of Ambrose, an exemplum, a vignette that highlights only essential features. Even in this stylised form it reflects an understanding of social relations that contrasts with modern sociological approaches. Whereas Ambrose strictly focuses on the relationship of ruler and people and emphasises its moral dimension, modern analyses tend to see the behaviour of crowds as being determined by the nature of the society and the state in which they take place. In such a view, moral convictions are secondary to practices shaped by social interactions.
This is strongly emphasised for antiquity, in a Bourdeuvian fashion, by Flaig, Ritualisierte Politik. We shall see that in late ancient descriptions of crowd behaviour structures of society and state are implicitly present but not used to explain behaviour. Attention is focused on the binary social relation. Moreover, Ambrose does not have a theory of practice that can be dissociated from a moral theory. For him a description of human action is intrinsically tied to a theory of good behaviour. By contrast, modern scholars tend to separate fact and value,
See the doubts raised about this in G. E. M. Anscombe, Ethics, Religion and Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981). which for historians takes the form of the separation of event and representation.
3. Representations of crowds
After this exposition of the interpretative framework, let us turn to two examples of late antique riots to see, first, what kind of phenomenon we are dealing with and, second, how the framework just delineated works in practice.
After conflicts with his clergy, monks, and the secular élite of Constantinople, John Chrysostom was deposed as bishop of that city by the Synod of the Oak in 403. Notwithstanding strong popular support in the streets, John did not dare to disobey the imperial order to leave for exile, wishing to avoid the additional accusation of sedition. In the account of the church historian Sozomen (writing ca. 445), the people got vent of this, and “rioted and insulted the emperor, the synod, Theophilus [of Alexandria], and Severian [of Gabala].”
Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 8.18.2: ὁ λαὸς ἐστασίαζε, βασιλέα τε καὶ τὴν σύνοδον καὶ μάλιστα Θεόφιλον καὶ Σευηριανὸν ἐλοιδόρουν. (Joseph Bidez, Günther C. Hansen, Sozomenus. Kirchengeschichte. Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller, NF 4. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 373). ] The latter, a sworn enemy of John, defied the crowds and preached a sermon that approved of John’s exile. If Severian had hoped to persuade the crowd of the justice of the decision, he was sorely mistaken: “the people turned mad, renewed their anger and rioted in the extreme.”
Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 8.18.4 (Bidez, Hansen, 373)ἐπὶ τούτοις δὲ ἐνεμέσησε τὸ πλῆθος καὶ τὴν ὀργὴν ἀνενέου καὶ ἀσχέτως ἐστασίαζε. They went to the imperial palace and requested the return of John. “Yielding to the demands of the people, the empress persuaded her husband to agree” and John was recalled.
Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 8.18.5 (Bidez, Hansen, 373): εἴξασα δὲ ταῖς ἱκεσίαις τοῦ δήμου ἡ βασιλὶς πείθει τὸν ἄνδρα ἐπινεῦσαι. See also Pseudo-Martyrius, Epitaphius 79–82 (Martin Wallraff and Cristina Ricci, Oratio funebris in laudem Sancti Iohannis Chrysostomi: epitaffio attribuito a Martirio di Antiochia (BHG 871, CPG 6517). Quaderni della Rivista di bizantinistica 12 (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medievo, 2007, 132-136); Palladius, Dial. 9.162–208 (Anne-Marie Malingrey, Palladios. Dialogue sur la Vie de Jean Chrysostome. Sources Chrétiennes 341 (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1988), 194-200); Socrates of Constantinople, Hist. eccl. 6.16–17 (Günther C. Hansen, Sokrates. Kirchengeschichte. Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller, NF 1 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1995), 338-340). Compare the analysis in Pfeilschifter, Kaiser und Konstantinopel, 301-306. The people received him with chants and acclamations. Against his own wish that a council should first annul his deposition, the people put him on his see again. After a sermon in which John praised the imperial couple, the people also addressed acclamations to them.
Sozomen offers us a compressed and, as a partisan of John,
On Sozomen, see Peter Van Nuffelen, Un héritage de paix et de piété: étude sur les histoires ecclésiastiques de Socrate et de Sozomène (Leuven: Peeters, 2004). slightly apologetic version: he depicts the riot as starting from a manifest injustice and ending with redress. Other sources indicate that it were less the demands of the people than the sudden miscarriage of Eudoxia during the riots, interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure, that decided the issue, a fact that Sozomen decided to ignore.
Pseudo-Martyrius, Epitaphius 66–67 (Wallraff and Ricci, 122-124). A year later, after the second deposition of John, the emperor resisted similar riots but this time used force to quell them.
Palladius, Dial. 10.1–75 (Malingrey, 202-208); Socrates, Hist. eccl. 6.18 (Hansen, 341-343); Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 8.22 (Bidez, Hansen, 378-379); Pseudo-Martyrius, Epitaphius 87–97. (Wallraff and Ricci, 142-152) The 403 riots, as depicted by Sozomen, are an example of how a fifth-century author would see a justified, successful riot, in contrast with the less favourable outcome of 404. Indeed, another supporter of John described the state of the crowd as a “wise madness” (sophron mania).
Pseudo-Martyrius, Epitaphius 110 (Wallraff and Ricci, 166, ). For this expression, see also Theophylact Simocatta, Hist. 1.14.8, 5.5.1, 8.8.12 (Carl de Boor, Theophylacti Simocattae Historiae (Leipzig: Teubner, 1887), 67, 196, 299 LWBIB.L93.08.K.0013). For a similar expression, see Procopius, Bell. 5.10.48 (δίκαια ὀργή) (H.B. Dewing, Procopius in seven volumes. Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1914-1935), 3:106). John Chrysostom, Theod. laps. 2 (Migne PG 47.312) uses θυμός to refer to the people in its dealing with the governor. More generally, the people are associated with lesser levels of virtue: e.g. Dialogue of Political Science 5.40 (M. Mazzuchi, Menae patricii cum Thoma referendario de politica scientia dialogus (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1982), 23) This oxymoron is striking: whereas mania implies a loss of control, sophron hints at the opposite. In other words, the crowd may seem to have been out of control, but it acted for the right cause.
The overall structure of the episode marks a flow from insults to acclamations: the episode opens with the people insulting the emperor and Severian, and concludes with the reconciliation between people and emperor, expressed in acclamations. Insults and acclamations are two sides of the same coin, expressions of positive or negative views, addressed to a particular individual, usually a hierarchically superior one.
Cf. Peter Van Nuffelen, “Playing the Ritual Game in Constantinople under the Theodosian Dynasty,” in Two Romes: From Rome to Constantinople, ed. L. Grig and G. Kelly (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 183–200, 184 with further bibliography. Communication is not unidirectional: Severian challenges the crowd and unwittingly renews its anger, whereas John appeases it. Because the emperor had yielded fully to the demands of the supporters of John, it may seem as if it was not a hard task for the bishop to calm the people. But John was not in full control: even Sozomen admits that he was forced on his see without nullification of his deposition (which would be the pretext for his second exile a year later). John and the crowd found themselves in a situation of give and take. If the crowd responded to a manifest injustice (at least in the eyes of Sozomen), this was clearly not an undisputed fact: Severian takes up the challenge of convincing the crowd that the deposition was justified. With both Severian and John addressing the crowd, we clearly see that it was part of the bishop’s role to appease the people in such circumstances. We also see that there are two opinions about what is exactly just and that attempts at persuasion take place. Yet, the narrative clearly shows John, not Severian, to be the real bishop of the people: he succeeds in calming them and re-establishing the relationship with them.
If Sozomen attributes an important role to verbal and reasoned communication, a quixotic episode of the Nika riot (532), as reported by John the Lydian, highlights other qualities. The Nika riot started with popular demands for the release of prisoners and because of the wavering of Justinian expanded into a popular revolt ending in the popular proclamation of a new emperor. One of the initial demands of the people was the sacking of the praetorian prefect John the Cappadocian. Justinian complied and appointed the patrician Phocas instead.
Procopius, Bell. 1.24.18 (Dewing 1: 224). Phocas: PLRE 2 (5), 881–82. John the Lydian profoundly disliked the Cappadocian for curtailing his career in the administration (or, as he himself would think of it, for overturning long-established tradition). His praise of Phocas is therefore fulsome. John’s panegyric of the new prefect ends in a description of what happened when he left the imperial palace. Whilst Phocas was standing on his chariot, somebody from the still rioting people aimed an arrow at him, but missed.
Untouched, Phocas was clearly shown to be a man of providence. When this had happened, the people started to abandon weapons and disorders, and continuously praised the all-powerful emperor, engaged in celebrations and dances. From the worst disorders and fears they changed to flutes and dances.
John the Lydian, De magistratibus 3.76.6. (Jacques Schamp, Jean le Lydien. Des magistratures de l’état romain. Tome II: Livres II et III. Collection des Universités de France (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2006), 139-140.
As John the Lydian does not say anything about the Nika riot anymore, he can be taken to make the panegyrical suggestion to those of his audience with bad memories that the accession of Phocas marked the end of the riot. We notice the same transition as in Sozomen of a riotous crowd critical of the emperor to one that bursts into acclamations of the emperor. The event that triggered this transformation was, at first sight, entirely fortuitous: a thwarted assassination. Clearly, it is not just the fact that Phocas was not hurt. Had he shown fear and ordered his soldiers to violently seek out the culprit, the riot would not have died down. It was probably his keen exploitation of what could be seen as a miraculous event that triggered the change in the behaviour of the crowd. Phocas, then, performed his role as prefect with self-confidence, sending a message of firmness to the crowd, making it realise that it had overstepped boundaries.
This analysis permits the following conclusions. First, Sozomen and John the Lydian suggest a similar structure to riots: they drift from insults to acclamations, from a rupture of the relationship with the leader to its re-establishment. Throughout the process, communication remains possible. This basic structure can be found in many other episodes.
See, e.g., Libanius, Or. 1.205–10 (Richard Foerster, Libanii opera. 12 Vol. Biblioteca scriptorum graecorum et romanorum teubneriana (Leipzig: Teubner, 1903), 1: 175-176) ; Augustine, Ep. 91.8 and 104 (Alois Goldbacher, S. Aureli Augustini Hipponiensis episcopi Epistulae. Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum 57 (Vienna: Tempsly, 1911), 332-333, 582-591; Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 2.8 (Joseph Bidez and Leon Parmentier, The ecclesiastical history of Evagrius with the scholia (London: Methuen, 1898), 55-59); Chronicle of Zuqnin 3, AD 524/5 (Harrak, 55); John of Nikiu, Chronicle 109.15–7 (Robert H. Charles, The Chronicle of John (London: William and Norgate, 1916), 175). See also note 15 above. The main exception are riots in which communication absolutely breaks down, as in the Nika riot, and which often end in violent suppression. Policing measures and force, nowadays often seen as the only conceivable response to a riot, were recognised as the ultimate but not most useful way of dealing with a crowd.
Benjamin Kelly, “Riot Control and Imperial Ideology in the Roman Empire,” Phoenix 61 (2007): 150–76. Personal intervention and persuasion, by the emperor, bishop or other officials, was evidently the more commendable response.
Second, both episodes revolve around justice: actions by social superiors are challenged by the crowd. If the stories are obviously partisan and suggest which side had justice on its side, it is also clear that justice is not an objective fact but a state of affairs about which one can argue. It needs to be established and agreed upon. This does not mean, however, that the relationship is one of equals. Crowd behaviour is usually associated with lack of intelligence and wisdom, briefly: with mania. This does not imply that the crowd is always wrong: in such circumstances, the leader has to adapt and perform his role by giving in or finding a compromise. In 513, for example, John of Jerusalem upheld the Council of Chalcedon only after being demanded to do so during the procession towards the church where he was to accept the anti-Chalcedonian Severus of Antioch in communion.
Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 56 (Eduard Schwartz, Kyrillos von Scythopolis (Texte und Untersuchungen 49:2 (Leipzig: Heinrichs, 1939), 148-152). Cf. Augustine, Serm. 279 (PL 38, 1275-1280) (with Júlio César Magalhâes de Oliveira, “Vt Maiores Pagani Non Sint! Pouvoir, iconoclasme et action populaire à Carthage au début du Ve siècle (Saint Augustin, Sermons 24, 279 et Morin 1),” Antiquité Tardive 14 (2006): 245–62); Theodore Lector, Hist. eccl. Epitome 484 (Günther C. Hansen, Theodoros Anagnostes. Kirchengeschichte. Die Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller NF 3 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 137-138); Pseudo-Zachariah, Hist. eccl. 5.4f, 7.8lm (Geoffrey Greatrex, ed., The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor. Translated Texts for Historians 55 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), 186, 262); Anonymus Valesianus 2.78 (John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus. Vol. 3. Loeb Classical Library. (London: Heinemann, 1939), 556); John of Ephesus, Comm. b. orient. (PO 17.34); Michael the Syrian, Chronicle 10.20 (Jean-Baptiste Chabot, Chronique de Michel le Syrien. 3 Vols. (Paris: Leroux, 1901), 2: 353-358); Chronicon Paschale a. 498 (Ludwig A. Dindorf, Chronicon Paschale. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (Bonn: Weber, 1832), 608-609. Justice had therefore to be redefined for the specific circumstances and accepted by both sides. Faced with the ubiquity of riots in our sources, it has been suggested that the people had a “right to riot.”
Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 114. This is related to the question about the “constitutional role” of the people in late antiquity: does the informal pressure exercised by the people represent a substitute for the absence of a formal, constitutional role? On this, see Paul Petit, Libanios et la vie municipale à Antioche au IVe siècle après J.-C (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1955), 227; Gizewski, Zur Normativität; Pfeilschifter, Kaiser und Konstantinopel; Dagron, L’hippodrome. As I indicate, I doubt this is the right question to ask. If taken to mean in a modern legal-positivist sense that the people had to right to riot whatever the cause and whatever their grounds, this is mistaken. The action of the crowd had to be focused on justice and, as we have seen, justice was not always considered to be on the people’s side. In the ancient analysis, a riot is rather a regrettable yet possible outcome of a malfunctioning relationship between a group and a leader, that is, a relation of injustice rather than justice.
Third, riots take place within the social relationship between a group and a leader, and both appear as actors in their own right. Late antique crowds can indeed be seen to actively seek to establish the direct, personal relationship that the virtue-based model requires. For example, during a riot in 580 in Constantinople, the dissatisfied people requested a processus from the prefect.
John of Ephesus, Hist. eccl. 3.31–32 (E.W. Brooks, Iohannis Ephesini Historiae ecclesiasticae pars tertia. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 106. Syr. 55 (Leuven: Librairie orientaliste, 1936), 118-122). Cf. Theodore Lector, Hist. eccl. Epitome 467, 469 (Hansen, 134; Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 5.18 (Bidez and Parmentier, 55-59). As such public appearances were occasions when demands could be made, the crowd therefore expressed its wish to communicate. The fourth-century orator Libanius notes how governors who are unwilling to accept petitions, fear to go out into the agora, as acclamations and demands will be shouted at them.
Libanius, Or. 52.8 (Foerster 4: 29). As in the two examples I have discussed, most accounts focus on the leader and his response to the crowd. Yet the crowd often appears as an actor too. Crowds saved prisoners from executions,
John Chrysostom, Incompr. (PG 48.726); Ammianus Marcellinus 29.1.44 (John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus. 3 Vols. Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1935-1939), 3: 212); John Malalas, Chron. 18.71, 18.150 (Ioannes Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia. Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 35 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), 394-401, 431. forced bishops to be consecrated,
Council of Chalcedon, Session 12.31 (Acta Conciliorum oecumenicorum 2.2 ); Theophanes, Chron. AM 6009 (Ioannis Classen, Theophanis Chronographia. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (Bonn: Weber, 1839), 230-232). killed pagans,
John of Ephesus, Hist. eccl. 3.31–32 (Brooks, 118-122). defended orthodoxy,
Liberatus, Breviarium 14, 20 (Acta Conciliorum oecumenicorum 2.4, p. 123, 135). For the methodological point that crowds are actors, see Erika T. Hermanowicz, Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate at the Time of Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 106–7, 113–14, 135–42; Harries, Law and crime, 108. etc. Crowds could pursue a good cause and express just anger, but they always risked loosing control. Facing a crowd could, hence, be dangerous: more than one prefect or bishop lost his life at the hands of an angry mob.
Lactantius, Mort. 51.2 (Städele, 222); Augustine, Serm. 302.13, 16 (PL 38.1388-191), Ep. 15*.2 (CSEL 84, 84), Enarrat. Ps. 39.28 CCsL 38, 445-446, Vit. Christ. 3.3 (PL 50:387a); Socrates, Hist. eccl. 7.15 (Hansen, 360-361); Victor of Vita, Historia 2.15 (C. Halm, Victor Vitensis. Historia persecutionis africanae provinciae. Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Auctores Antiquissimi 3 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1879), 16); John Malalas, Chron. 11.4 (Thurn, 204-205); Pseudo-Zachariah, Hist. eccl. 4.2; Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 2.8, 4.32 (Bidez and Parmentier, 55-59, 181-182); Chronicle of Zuqnin 3 (Harrak, 125).
Fourth, the individuals (bishop, prefect, etc.) to whom the people address their demands have to perform their social role. They do not simply have to exercise power, but to gain command of difficult and unexpected situations by conspicuous actions that establish that they truly are just. Such actions, in turn, reflect awareness of the expectations that come with the role: they have to show that they are “up to it.” A social role is therefore not a mere catalogue of functions and duties: it means performing these duties in accordance with the moral expectations that come with holding that position and in line with the demands of specific situations. In Aristotelian terms, it is all about the exercise of phronesis. This helps us to understand why leaders rarely avoided the crowd, even if it could be life-threatening to confront it: avoiding the crowd implies that one is not up to one’s role. In fact, we see numerous attempts to appease the crowd in a variety of ways: by weeping;
John of Nikiu, Chronicle 120.21–27 (Charles, 194); Michael the Syrian, Chronicle 9.22–23 (Chabot, 2: 196-205). through the performance of humility, e.g. by the deposition of marks of office;
Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 3.44 (Bidez and Parmentier, 146-147). by symbolic gestures; but first and foremost by persuasion.
Libanius, Or. 1.205–10 (Foerster, 173-175); Ammianus Marcellinus 19.10 (Rolfe, 1: 520-522); Historia Augusta, Life of Didius Iulianus 4.8, Life of Maximus and Balbinus 9.2–4 (Magie, 1: 358, 2: 464); Life of Marcellus 34 (Analecta Bollandiana 86, 1968); Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 2.5, 2.8 Bidez and Parmentier, 50-53, 55-59); Chronicon Paschale a. 626 (Dindorf, 715); The Letter of Soterichus in Jitse H.F. and Dijkstra, and Geoffrey Greatrex, “Patriarchs and Politics in Constantinople in the Reign of Anastasius (with a Reedition of O.Mon.Epiph. 59),” Millennium 6 (2009): 223–64, 243. The point that the people (populus rationabilis) will understand arguments is explicitly made in Conference of Carthage of 411, 1.10, 1.80–83 (Serge Lancel, Actes de la conférence de Carthage en 411. Sources chrétiennes194, 195, 224 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1972-1975), 2: 576-586, 3: 688-690)
Fifth, the description of how leaders deal with crowds is suffused with moral valuation. Given that justice lies at the heart of the relationship, the description of actual behaviour is always measured against a standard of good behaviour. Indeed, strong leaders are depicted as succeeding in appeasing the crowd and could even have the authority to admonish it, as did Augustine by preaching a sermon on obedience after facing an unruly congregation.
Augustine, Sermones Dolbeau 5 (François Dolbeau, Augustin d'Hippone, Vingt-six sermons au peuple d'Afrique. Etudes Augustiniennes, Antiquité 147 (Paris: Etudes augustiniennes, 1996), 73-106. Theodore Lector (Hist. eccl. Epitome 467, 469 (Hansen, 134)) depicts Anastasius as a weak leader by showing how he wanted to have the prefect next to him during a public appearance: a strong emperor would have faced the people on his own. The calming of crowds was indeed expected of bishops, as expressly stated by Severus of Antioch:
It is the duty of bishops like you to cut short and to restrain any unregulated movements of the mob, if they should indeed occur, and to set themselves to maintain all good order in the cities, and to keep watch over the peaceful manners and customs of those who are fed by them.
Severus of Antioch, Select Letters 6.1.9 (E.W. Brooks, The sixth book of the select letters of Severus patriarch of Antioch. Vol. 2: Translation (London: Williams and Norgate, 1904), 44-46. For evidence from the Latin early Middle Ages, see Brigitte Beaujard, “La violences et les saints dans les villes de l’Antiquité tardive,” Histoire urbaine 10 (2004): 113–21.
A similar ethos was expected of governors, as one can gather from Libanius.
Libanius, Or. 26.10, 33.11, 41.2, 41.18 (Foerster, 3: 8, 171, 296, 303-304). See also Ammianus Marcellinus 27.3.6 (Rolfe, 3: 14-16). The reverse image is also amply attested: it is a feature of evil leaders to cause riots and incite the mobs. So much is stated explicitly by Leo the Great, who blames the post-Chalcedon riots in Palestine on “false monks.” These are obviously anti-Chalcedonians, but it is significant that he rejects their identity as monks: true monks are instruments of peace. Elsewhere Leo notes that leaders may incite the ignorant mob to riot so as to obscure their own guilt.
Leo the Great, Ep. 109, 124, Hom. 64–65 (PL 54, 357-364, 1014-1018, 1061-1068). Cf. Optatus, Contr. Parm. 1.26, 3.4 (Mireille Labrousse, Optat de Milève. Traité contre les donatistes. Sources chrétiennes 412-413 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1995), 1: 226-230, 2: 36-46); John of Antioch, Chronicle Fr. 321 (Roberto). We see here that the modern idea of bishops or aristocrats as the true instigators of popular riots is rooted in ancient sources,
Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 103. Scholarship on religious violence and conflict generally tends to shift blame away from “ordinary people” towards bishops. Even the more sophisticated approach of Éric Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 CE (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012) results in such a conclusion. This paper suggests matters were more complex. Equally, we should avoid thinking that crowd behaviour was always shaped by claques: in that direction, John H.W.G Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). but depicts as standard behaviour what the sources describe as deviant behaviour.
Crowd manipulation was even legally outlawed: C.Th. 9.33.1 (= C.J. 9.30.1) (20/12/384) (Teodor Mommsen, Paul Meyer, and Paul Krüger, Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905), 486); C.J. 9.30.2 (466) (Paul Krüger, Corpus iuris civilis (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877), 851) The negative connotation of mob violence also explains the contrasting versions we get from some events if they are attested in sources from different camps.
Compare Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 2.8 (Bidez and Parmentier, 55-59) and Pseudo-Zachariah, Hist. eccl. 4.1–2, 4.6 (Greatrex, 132-136, 141-144); or Pseudo-Zachariah, Hist. eccl. 4.5 (Greatrex, 138-141)and Leo the Great, Ep. 156 and 165 (PL 54, 1127-1132, 1155-1173). The blame is shifted to the other side by claiming they instigated the violence. The shared assumption is that mob violence is something evil. Being able to deal with a crowd was, then, part of the expected behaviour of a leader. What the right course of action was had to be decided on the spot. Given the moral expectations that covered such actions, all our descriptions of riots in the ancient sources are morally charged, that is, in the narrative itself blame and praise is apportioned, even when the judgement is not explicitly expressed.
A point well made by Richard Flower, “Tamquam Figmentum Hominis: Ammianus, Constantius II and the Portrayal of Imperial Ritual,” Classical Quarterly 65 (2015): 822–35 on the famous passage of Constantius II’s entry into Rome (Ammianus Marcellinus 16.10). The same would apply for Ammianus Marcellinus 15.7 (Rolfe, 1: 158-164), the arrest of Peter Valvomeres; cf. John Matthews, “Peter Valvomeres, Re-Arrested,” in Homo Viator: Classical Essays for John Bramble, ed. M. Whitby and P. R. Hardie (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1987), 277–84 and Ammianus Marcellinus 14.7.5–6 (Rolfe, 1: 54) on Gallus. See also Libanius, Or. 56.16 (Foerster,4: 139).
4. The meaning of action
The previous section has added some flesh to the bones of the model as drawn from Ambrose. In the last pages I have already made the transition from presenting the model as a tool to understand late ancient representations to suggesting that it helps to make sense of the actual behaviour of crowds in late antiquity. It helps, I argue, to understand the peculiar features of crowd behaviour as reported by the sources: in other words, we see crowds behave and episodes develop in line with the model. In this section, I shall discuss one peculiar episode from the Chronicon Paschale to argue that there is not just meaning in the narrative but also in the action itself. I shall do so by relating the actions described by the chronicle to other actions.
For the consulship of Basiliscus and Armenarichus, our year AD 465, the Pascal chronicle records the following incident in Constantinople:
In the time of these consuls Menas, who was prefect of the Watch, being accused of evil deeds, was questioned in the Hippodrome by the senate, and at the command of the emperor a boy tripped him up and threw him on his face in the deep part at the Hippodrome turning-post, and the people took hold of him and began to drag him. And the officials, when they saw what had happened, withdrew in fear. And they dragged the man as far as the estate of Studius; and a certain Goth took a stone and struck him on the ear and killed him. And his corpse was dragged by the people as far as the sea.
Translation by Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby, Chronicon Paschale 284–628 AD (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989), 87.
As the chief “police officer,” the further unknown Menas would have had many occasions for mischief and corruption, or he may have been unloved by large swats of the population for confusing strictness with harshness. The trial was distinctively public. The court seems to have been composed of the senate and the emperor,
Arnold H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964), 333 notes that senatorial jurisdiction was characteristic for Constantinople. For other public trials, see Ammianus Marcellinus 26.3.2 (Rolfe, 2: 580); Theodore Lector, Hist. eccl. Epitome 490 (Hansen, 139). and the proceedings were conducted in the hippodrome. This setting consciously made it a popular trial: the hippodrome was in late antiquity the symbolic place for communication between emperor and subject. The hearing therefore probably had the aim of conspicuously redressing a wrong done to the population of Constantinople. Just having the trial conducted in the face of all was not enough for emperor Leo: he wanted to make Menas’ fall from power manifest by the public humiliation of the former praefectus vigilum. The act of tripping up Menas turned out to be a miscalculation: the breach of well-ordered judicial procedure seems to have been taken by the people as the sign that justice was now in their hands. Just like many unlucky officials before him Menas was dragged through the city, from the Hippodrome in the east of the city to the Palace of Studius in the west, stoned, and finally dumped in the sea.
The author of the Pascal Chronicle recorded this event not because this was a noteworthy event for the history of the Roman Empire but as a vignette revealing Leo’s failures as an emperor. Indeed, Leo’s manipulation of the trial backfired. He may have hoped to receive positive acclamations from the crowd and to transform their displeasure at Menas into personal credit. Yet, the emperor misjudged the situation and thus showed a lack of skill and insight in crowd behaviour. As we have seen, it was part of a good leader to be able to deal with a crowd and to control it. Leo, by contrast, fails on all accounts: he first makes himself subservient to it by seeking to please it and then his actions spectacularly backfire.
If, then, there is meaning in the representation, there is also meaning in the action. Menas was far from the only late antique official to die of being “dragged.”
See some of the sources reported in n. 40. The crowd thus drew on what is usually called a repertoire, that is, a set of a stereotypical acts. Yet “repertoire” may convey too static an impression, as if the repertoire was a set of scripts proper to crowd behaviour. In fact, such acts acquire meaning not just by being repeated by crowds, but also, and more importantly by taking place against the background of the ceremonial landscape of late antiquity, and this in two ways.
First, the late antique city was not a neutral landscape, but a geography invested with meaning. The late antique state had a well developed ceremonial life, with a wide range of ceremonies that our sources usually identify with precision, such as the adventus (the arrival of the emperor or an official in a city), the processus (an official journey by the emperor in or out the city), victory celebrations, imperial anniversaries, and consular festivities, including circus games. Both the slow transformations of these celebrations by the progressive Christianisation and the transferral of their forms to ecclesiastical ceremonies, such as the festive transport of relics or the arrival of a bishop, have been documented in detail.
The literature is vast. The following references allow the reader to pursue this topic: Michael MacCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Richard Lim, “People as Power: Games, Munificence, and Contested Topography,” in The Transformations of Urbs Roma in Late Antiquity, ed. W. V. Harris, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 33 (Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1999), 265–81; Brian Croke, “Justinian’s Constantinople,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. M. Maas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 60–86; Bernd Isele, Kampf um Kirchen: religiöse Gewalt, heiliger Raum und christliche Topographie in Alexandria und Konstantinopel (4. Jh.), Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Ergänzungsband Kleine Reihe 4 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2010); Mark Humphries, “Emperors, Usurpers, and the City of Rome: Performing Power from Diocletian to Theodosius,” in Contested Monarchy: Integrating the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century AD, ed. J. Wienand (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 151–68. Such ceremonies usually followed particular routes and took places at particular places, giving these places a particular significance in collective understanding.
Second, these ceremonies provided points of reference for crowds, who often can be seen to mimic and mock official ceremonies.
Peter Van Nuffelen, “The Late Antique State and ‘Mirror Rituals’: Procopius of Caesarea on Riots,” in Continuity and Change: Late Antique Historiography between Order and Disorder, ed. D. Brodka and M. Stachura, Electrum 13 (Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press, 2007), 61–72. We see crowds imitating victory celebrations and parading heads on poles as armies did with dead opponents and usurpers,
Procopius, Bell. 5.10.48 (Dewing 3: 106); John Malalas, Chron. 16.19 (Thurn, 333-334); John of Nikiu, Chronicle 89.64, 107.16 (Charles, 128, 169). Cf. Panegyrici Latini 12 (9) 18.2, cf. 4 (10) 31.5 (C.E.V. Nixon and Barbara Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 603, 623-624); Zosimus, Historia nova 2.17.1 (François Paschoud, Zosime. Histoire nouvelle. Livres I et II. Collection des Universités de France (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003), 87.; Chronicon Paschale a. 401 (Dindorf, 567); Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 3.35 (Bidez and Parmentier,134-135); Procopius, Bell. 5.10.11–12, 8.28.10, 8.35.30 (Dewing 1: 94, 5: 348-350, 414); John of Nikiu, Chronicle 93.4 (Charles, 147); Liber Pontificalis Romae 79 (Louis Duchesne, Le Liber pontificalis : texte, introduction et commentaire. Vol. 1 (Paris: Norin, 1892), 346-347); John Antioch, Chronicle fr. 321 (Roberto). See McCormick, Victory, 35–78. or staging an adventus ceremony for the image of long-defunct bishop.
Epistula Ibae ACO 4.186–7 and 199–200. For the model, see Chronicon Paschale a. 467 (Dindorf, 595-597). See Symmachus, Relatio 9.4–5 (Jean-Pierre Callu. Symmaque. Tome V: Discours – Rapports. Collection des Universités de France (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2009), 91): the populus welcomes elephants and race-horses as if for an imperial adventus Evagrius Scholasticus records how a crowd under Justinian lacerated a comes Orientis with whips and paraded him through the city, as revenge for him having had some rioters whipped.
Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 4.32 (Bidez and Parmentier,181-182). In an extraordinary display of public discontent, the people of Constantinople stoned Maurice during a procession and in an act of satire on the emperor, they put a bald man with garlic on his head onto an ass.
John of Antioch, Chronicle Fr. 317 (Roberto). For the parading on an ass as an official humiliation and its popular imitations, see Procopius, Bell. 3.3.9 (Dewing 2: 24); Agathias, Histories 4.11.2 (Rudolf Keydell, Agathiae Myrinaei Historiarum libri quinque. Corpus fontium historiae Byzantinae. Series Berolinensis 2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967), 136-137)LWBIB.L93.08.E.0002; John of Ephesus, Hist. Eccl. 3.31–32 (Brooks, 118-122); Michael the Syrian, Chronicle 9.24. An alternative is the camel: Evagrius Scholasticus, Hist. eccl. 2.5 (Bidez and Parmentier, 50-53); John Malalas, Chron. 12.30, 18.47 (Thurn, 230-232, 379); Procopius, Bell. 7.32.3 (Dewing 4: 420), Anecdota 11.37 (Dewing 6:141). Crowds could also imitate ecclesiastical processions. In Nicomedia the local population protested against the imposition of an unwanted bishop by taking to the streets and chanting psalms, as they were wont to do, the church historian Sozomen points outs, during catastrophes.
Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. 8.6.8 (Bidez, Hansen, 359). Cf. Life of Daniel the Stylite 73–75, 83–85 (Hippolyte Delehaye, Les saints stylites (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1923), 70-74, 77-81.
The action of dragging Menas from the hippodrome towards the city gates can, then, be interpreted as an inversion of an adventus ceremony, in which an official entered the city and was acclaimed by the people in a public place like the theatre or hippodrome. Menas is rejected from the city community, whereas the official during the adventus is accepted.
For similar events, see Ammianus Marcellinus 22.11.3–10 (Rolfe, 2: 258-262); Historia Acephala 2.10, 5.13 (Annik Martin, Histoire “acéphale” et index syriaque des lettres festales d’Athanase d’Alexandrie. Sources chrétiennes 317 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985), 148, 166-168); Socrates, Hist. eccl. 3.2.10, 7.15 (Hansen, 194, 360-361); Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 5.7.1–3, 5.9.3–5, 5.10.11–13 (Bidez, Hansen, 202-208); Victor of Vita, Historia 2.15 (Halm, 16). The actions of the crowd thus acquired meaning by being performed against the background of a symbolically mapped landscape of the late antique city.
This example may provide one way to show how the virtue-based model may have shaped crowd behaviour. Most of the public ceremonies were focused on a leader (emperor, governor, bishop) but they also had an important participation by the people. They were, then, occasions when, usually in a staged way, concord between leader and crowd was marked. If these ceremonies marked occasions when relations of justice were acted out (and thus also enacted), riotous behaviour can be seen both as challenges of particular relations and as expressions of a desire to return to a relationship of justice, a relationship that is in line with the ideal that ceremonies displayed. On this understanding, public ceremonies were not cynical displays of propaganda or merely scripted displays of consensus but enactments of ideal relationships.
5. Conclusions
The model sketched in this paper understands crowd behaviour as taking place primarily within a binary social relationship between the crowd and a leader. It presupposes that crowds are agents and, indeed, persons, possessing character traits. Both the leader and the crowd occupy social roles which are defined by a mutual interdependence predicated on justice. These roles are not static, as there can be disagreement about the justice of particular situations and actions. Highly morally charged, social roles need to be actualised in specific circumstances. The conflicts that then arise are acted out within the relationship: the leader aims at persuasion, whilst the people communicates through acclamations, symbolic acts, or even violence. Actions, then, are shaped and judged by normative expectations. A set of expectations governs the actions of the leader, but also that of the crowd. If the behaviour of the latter is usually negatively charged (“madness”), it can, sometimes, make righteous demands on the leader (“wise”). Acephalous crowds do occur, but they are understood as unstable entities that await a return to a stable relationship with a leader.
It will have transpired that the virtue-based model has a more limited focus than modern sociology. In my summary, the terms “society” and “state” are absent and they do not have an explanatory value. Crowd behaviour is described with reference to particular social relationships with leaders, and not with reference to general structures of society and state. If institutions appear, it is through its representatives (emperors, governors, bishops etc.), who are, however, not identified as representatives of institutions but as persons. I do not claim that “state” or “society” are useless concepts for late antiquity, nor that institutions had weakened to be replaced by informal social relations. Rather, it is important to realise that the binary relationship is the primary context in which social realities are perceived in late antiquity. At best, “society” appears as a collection of morally charged social roles connected through relationships.
The relationship is explicitly hierarchical: the crowd is in principle inferior, socially and morally, to its leader (that is, if he fulfils his role properly). In other words, the leader is supposed to be a better character than the crowd. Nevertheless both share the same morality: if there can be debate about what constitutes justice in a particular case, there is no hint that leaders and crowds live by two distinct moral codes.
A disjunction of moral codes is entailed by E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past & Present 50 (1971): 76–136. Both orient themselves onto a shared morality, which is, ideally, supposed to guide behaviour. As a consequence, all descriptions of crowds take place against a background of ideal right behaviour. Because the relationship is moral, it is also content-related. By this I mean that an analysis that sees crowd behaviour primarily as practices that denote acceptance or rejection of the position of the leader,
Flaig, Usurpationen and Ritualisierte Politik. The notion of Akzeptanz lies at the heart of the analysis of the late antique emperor by Pfeilschifter, Kaiser und Konstantinopel. falls short by not seeing that concrete instances of justice and injustice defined the relationship. Acceptance is an epiphenomenon to justice.
We can now understand why late ancient representations of crowds take the shape they have. They have more attention for the development of conflicts and their resolution than for the reasons of the conflict (be they religious, economic, or political). The focus is the binary relationship in which virtue and vice are enacted, and not possible fundamental problems in social structures. This generates obvious problems for modern analysis, which seeks to distil sequences of events from what are prescriptive descriptions and attempts to relate these to social and political structures. This dissonance between ancient and modern interests helps to understand why the modern explanations surveyed in the first section of this paper remain unsatisfactory: whilst they have points of contacts with the model just outlined, none of them covers all its aspects. For example, late antique riots can be said to be caused by a breakdown, but it is situated on the level of the social relation, not on that of society. Selfish motifs are allowed for by the virtue-based model, but as a negatively charged possibility: the pursuance of self-interest conflicts with the moral expectations of social roles. If the model is clearly hierarchical, it highlights the agency of the crowd. It would require much more discussion to set out all implications of a view of society as made up of binary relationships and social roles, but one can see why justice in the virtue-based model does not cover institutions such as slavery, which we would call structural injustice.
Is this is a workable model to explain real behaviour and not just its representation? As my analysis of the Menas episode suggests, crowd behaviour was meaningful. Some of the peculiarities in recorded episodes, such as crowds seeking direct contact with a leader, imply that it did shape behaviour. Its articulation in normative texts, such as De officiis of Ambrose, suggest that it was seen as (at least) a model to direct one’s actions by. Given the fact that this is a model in which the theory of behaviour is normative (that is, it identifies what good and what bad behaviour is, not just was behaviour is), it may be important to stress that my argument that it also shaped real action does not imply that all behaved morally right. Rather, it provides the standards by which one’s action would be judged and people do deviate from moral standards. Rather, by being aware of this normative model, agents at least would anticipate the standard by which they would be measured. But, as we have seen, what was justice in a particular situation could be far from clear. This may be one reason why we see such a multiplication of episodes of crowd behaviour reported in our sources: whilst it may reflect the multiplication of hierarchical relations in late antiquity, with the Church creating a structure that ran parallel to that of society and state, we may understand it also as an increased interest in the quality of leadership.
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