Roman and Visigothic conditions in Spain.

Roman and Visigothic conditions in Spain. EVAN EVAN Expandable Van W. HALEY. Baetica Felix: people and prosperity in southernSpain from Caesar to Septimius Severus Septimius Severus:see Severus. . xix+277 pages, 3 figures. 2003.Austin (TX): University of Texas Press; 0-292-73464-6 hardback $45. KAREN EVA CARR. Vandals to Visigoths: rural settlement patterns inearly Medieval Spain. xiii+269 pages, 37 figures, 14 tables. 2002. AnnArbor Ann Arbor,city (1990 pop. 109,592), seat of Washtenaw co., S Mich., on the Huron River; inc. 1851. It is a research and educational center, with a large number of government and industrial research and development firms, many in high-technology fields such as (MI): University of Michigan (body, education) University of Michigan - A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. Press; 0-472-10891-3 hardback $54.50& 39 [pounds sterling]. Despite the Pact that the vast majority of the population inantiquity dwelt dwelt?v.A past tense and a past participle of dwell. in the countryside, it is the study of towns, perhapsinevitably as classical civilisation defined itself in terms of urbanculture, which has tended to dominate scholarship on the Romanprovinces. Therefore, these two books which examine rural settlement andthe wealth produced from it in the Roman province of Baetica and, moreclosely, the core of that province, the Guadalquivir valley, are to bewelcomed. The two do not join seamlessly, as Haley's work ends inthe early third century and Carr only takes up the tale in themid-fourth century, continuing into the post-Roman period. Wealth Haley begins with a survey of production in the province at the endof the Roman Republic. This centres on agriculture, though mining isalso considered. He then examines changes and development in theJulio-Claudian and Flavian periods. Haley believes that the institutionof the annona [supply] was a powerful stimulus to Baetican exports,characterising the province as having a 'subsidized marketeconomy'; and he sees an archaeological record showing a risingnumber of wealthy rural settlements. Here perhaps a little moreprecision could have been in order. Haley talks of 'first tothird' order settlements, but never closely defines his terms(which are perhaps a bow to Ponsich) and is happy to see rectangularbuildings as 'Romano-Italic' and turres mentioned in theregion as equally Italian. His evidence for doing so appears to bemainly chronological rather than typological (n.9 p. 48) but perhapsthis shows an over-great reluctance to accept the staying power andability to adapt possessed by Iberian culture. Similarly, there is attimes an implication that 'material romanisation' presagescultural change which again is a problematic issue worth more attention. The rise in wealth and production is traced from the Julio-Claudianperiod (where the reign of Claudius is regarded as particularlyimportant) and seen as receiving its most important stimulus from thegrant of ius Latii [Latin Rights] to Spain under Vespasian. Haley arguesthat, from the Flavian period onwards, a substantial proportion of theprovince's population lived permanently on rural sites, noting anapparent decline in the size of some nucleated settlements and theabandonment of others, such as an area of Porcuna. Oddly, Haley seesthis as a tendency of acculturation acculturation,culture changes resulting from contact among various societies over time. Contact may have distinct results, such as the borrowing of certain traits by one culture from another, or the relative fusion of separate cultures. to a Roman way of life but, whileRoman aristocrats were happy to retreat to the countryside, their urbanlife was always of greater importance to them. If anything, Haley'sconclusions here show resistance to Roman cultural norms rather thancomplicity with them. Many of these rural settlements were inhabited, according to Haley,by the honesti of the province, whom he defines as those with sufficientproperty to meet the requirement to be enrolled as local jurymen (5000honesti at Irni, perhaps more elsewhere). These are seen as havingconstituted up to 25 per cent of a town's citizens. Haley thenattempts to identify the wealthy of the province connected toagricultural production and commerce. This proves a difficult task andmuch of the chapter dealing with these individuals is peppered withqualifications and supposition. Overall, Haley believes thatBaetica's enormous trade in olive oil, connected in his view withthe annona, produced a large number of wealthy individuals who stayedoutside the ruling bodies of the province's towns from which theywere disqualified dis��qual��i��fy?tr.v. dis��qual��i��fied, dis��qual��i��fy��ing, dis��qual��i��fies1. a. To render unqualified or unfit.b. To declare unqualified or ineligible.2. from membership. Apart from Augustales and freedmen,Haley believes that wealthy freemen involved in the annona would havebelonged to this category. This is a difficult field, drawing oil areaswhich are still opaque to modern scholarship. The arrangements of theannona are still not fully understood and there is no consensus on themeaning of the tituli picti from Dressel 20 amphorae. While Haley onlyuses secondary sources to make his point about free traders beingdisqualified from membership of town councils, there is an explicit textof the lawyers' Digest which makes his point dating from theSeveran period (50.2.9, Paulus--There can be no doubt that shippersshould not be made town-councillors). But this also complicates matters,as it comes in a discussion of servile ser��vile?adj.1. Abjectly submissive; slavish.2. a. Of or suitable to a slave or servant.b. Of or relating to servitude or forced labor. blood, implying that shipperswere normally regarded as freedmen, not freeborn. Similarly, theterminology used to define those who are able to claim immunity fromcivic munera [dues] remains unclear. If this immunity was firmlyrestricted to the owners of sea-going vessels, which seems to be theimplications of Digest 50.6.6.5-6, then the disqualification fromentering a town council would be less widespread than Haley appears toenvisage. Haley is aware that this model of settlement does not fit theprovince as a whole and concedes that the province's major urbancentres were heavily populated and that little field survey has yet beendone in the north and west of the province (where there is a large townat Casas de Reina Casas de Reina is a municipality located in the province of Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain. According to the 2005 census (INE), the municipality has a population of 193 inhabitants.[ edit ] Municipalities in Badajoz ), though his text expresses confidence that futurework will yield a similar settlement pattern to the one he detects inthe Guadalquivir valley. While rather dogmatic at times, Haley's view of Baetica, witha large, wealthy 'middling class' living in the countrysideand honesti choosing not to enter civic life (or being unable to do so),is a striking one which, if true, would have important implications forour views of Roman provincial society at large. As such, it is animportant contribution not just to the literature of Roman Baetica butof Roman provincial studies as a whole, and worthy of seriousconsideration. Decline and recovery Carr takes up the tale of the Guadalquivir valley in the mid-fourthcentury. She sees a sharp decline in rural wealth after the collapse ofRoman rule and a partial recovery in the Visigothic period. The villainof the piece for Carr is a 'Vandal kingdom' of Andalucia whichproduced a dramatic systems collapse in the area (Carr describes theimplications of such a collapse, particularly for the poor, at length).It seems difficult to characterise the very brief Vandal occupation ofSouthern Spain as a 'kingdom' as such and this points to amajor weakness of Cards work, namely a lack of historical knowledge.Sadly, the book is riddled with historical errors of fact: Orosius, achampion of Christian Rome, is turned into its opponent; the Holy RomanEmperor Charles V conquers Spain in the sixteenth century; Theodoric issaid to be active in the peninsula in AD 456, after his death whichoccurred in AD 451; the council of Agde In the history of Roman Catholicism in France, the Council of Agde was held 10 September 506 at Agatha or Agde in Languedoc, under the presidency of Caesarius of Arles. It was attended by thirty-five bishops, and its forty-seven genuine canons deal "with ecclesiastical discipline". is transposed to Spain; theFlavian Lex See yacc. 1. (tool) Lex - A lexical analyser generator for Unix and its input language. There is a GNU version called flex and a version written in, and outputting, SML/NJ called ML-lex. Irnitana appears to be moved to the second century AD; andthere are many more such instances. There are also some geographicproblems, such as the Guadiana being described as a tributary of theGuadalquivir. Such errors reflect poorly on the work and on editorialsystems of the press concerned. Carr appears to have no knowledge of therevised version of Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions. It forms an authoritative source for documenting the surviving epigraphy of classical antiquity. 2 and the secondaryliterature cited tends in general to be rather dated and narrow. Perhapsmore worryingly, there is little sense of change over time and distancein the Roman Empire. Late Republican and early Imperial sources, such asVarro and Strabo, are used to illustrate points about the late Empire,which in general seems subsumed by the earlier period. If the history in the work is poor, the core thesis of the work issounder. Carr uses Ponsich's monumental survey of the Guadalquivirvalley and produces a more accurate dating of many of his sites based ona reconsideration of ceramic finds (the lengthy discussion of potterytypes could have been usefully relegated to an appendix). From herstatistical analysis of this material, attractively presented in avariety of tables, Carr does show that the Guadalquivir valley becameeconomically much poorer and more introverted in the fifth century thanit had been previously and that the Visigothic kingdom brought a degreeof recuperation recuperation/re��cu��per��a��tion/ (-koo?per-a��shun) recovery of health and strength. recuperation,n the process of recovering health, strength, and mental and emotional vigor. . However, the context into which those findings are setis weak, and further work is needed to place a convincing framework intowhich Carr's data can be set. A.T. Fear, School of History & Classic, university ofManchester The University of Manchester is a university located in Manchester, England. With over 40,000 students studying 500 academic programmes, more than 10,000 staff and an annual income of nearly ��600 million it is the largest single-site University in the United Kingdom and receives , Manchester M13 9PL, England.