Antiquité Tardive - Late Antiquity - Spätantike - Tarda Antichità

Le présent article part d’une considération de caractère général à propos de l’étude de la littérature de l’Antiquité tardive : bien que la période en question ait été réévaluée dans le cadre des sciences de l’Antiquité et quand bien même elle représente désormais un domaine privilégié de la recherche historique et archéologique, diverses sont les raisons qui rendent opaque l’étude de la production littéraire tardoantique. On se réfère ici, d’un côté aux difficultés dues au curriculum académique des spécialistes de littérature tardoantique, de l’autre à l’incompréhension ou, mieux encore, à la dévalorisation de formes expressives différentes, auxquelles normalement, dans une perspective moderne, on n’accorde pas de valeur littéraire au sens propre (illuminant est, en ce sens, le renvoi à Riegl pour l’histoire de l’art). On veut ici souligner la nécessité d’élaborer une méthode d’interprétation esthétique et littéraire différente de celles qui sont adoptées pour la littérature des époques précédentes, mais aussi plus indépendante du paradigme historiographique dominant dans les études sur l’Antiquité tardive.

The project “Mors secundum epigrammata christiana antiqua” is based on the compilation of inscriptions of the third to the sixth century from the Oikumene. These inscriptions speak about death and afterlife and display similarities and differences of ideas about life after death in East and West. Important themes in both West and East are the community with God or Christ, which is already prominent in the early inscriptions from the West, and statements referring to the eternal life, which can generally be found from the fourth century onward. In the East, invocations of God are particularly numerous and show the affectionate interest and solicitude of the living for the post mortem fortune of their dead. However, resurrection and final judgement are not an important theme either in the East nor in the West; the hereafter is depicted very positively, in contrast to the negative or indifferent afterlife of paganism. The refrigerium, a famous theme in the Christian Latin epitaphs of the 3rd and 4th century, does not appear in the grave inscriptions of the East. When merits are mentioned, the persons often belong to elevated social spheres. The forgiveness of sins is rarely mentioned in the grave inscriptions of East or West and hardly ever with reference to the afterlife; clearly, contrary to standard views, it was not important in a funerary context and gains importance only in the Middle Ages.

The Utere Felix fountain decorated with an array of mosaics, sculptures and paintings with marine themes was discovered in 1919 at Carthage near the Byrsa Hill. This little monument, object of polemics between archaeologists, was quickly forgotten to such an extent that its track got lost. Thanks to record documents, it was possible to accurately locate the fountain again in the town plan, to understand its hydraulic operation and to complete the already very precise description made by Raymond Lantier and published in Bulletin du Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques. A comparison with the other preserved stibadia with fountain of the same type, like the one of El Ruedo (province of Cordoba) or at Faragola (Pouilles, Italy) enabled to grasp the peculiarities of this 4th century facility, like the spray of flowers on the seat or the form of the apsis basin with niches and outgoing water jets forming a half circle. The themes of mosaics and paintings decoration are analysed by comparison with decorative arrays coming from monuments of Rome (paintings of the Domus under Farnesina ai Ballauri, Hypogeum of Via Livenza) or from North Africa (houses in Utique, Trifolium House of Dougga, House of the New Hunt or House of the Fishing in Bulla Regia).

Les saints, tant vivants que dans l’au-delà, forment un sujet actuellement très apprécié des études concernant l’Antiquité tardive. Dans le domaine iconographique, l’ensemble le plus magnifique de saints est représenté par les quinze portraits de martyrs en mosaïque conservés sur la coupole de la Rotonde de Saint-Georges à Thessalonique. Étrangement, le discours contemporain de l’iconographie hagiographique néglige largement ces images exceptionnelles. La raison en est probablement de l’incertitude de leur datation. Pourtant, qu’on les place dans les dernières décennies du ive siècle, aux alentours de 450, ou au début du vie siècle, ces mosaïques fournissent une importante information sur l’origine et le développement de la représentation des saints. Cet article pose le problème de la genèse de l’image individualisée du martyr, en particulier la question de son rattachement à une tradition authentique liée à son portrait funéraire. Une des caractéristiques distinctives des images du monument de Thessalonique est la variété des représentations : les portraits des martyrs sont nettement individualisés, différenciés par âge, chevelure, barbe, traits physiognomoniques, couleurs, etc. Toutefois, indépendamment de la question de l’origine et de l’authenticité de ces portraits, les couleurs particulières des tesselles utilisées pour rendre les chevelures et les yeux montrent que, dans la Rotonde, les mosaïstes ont donné la priorité à une esthétique de “lumière colorée’, principe qui leur a permis de représenter la beauté idéale des hommes saints dans l’au-delà.

The decoration of a silver spoon found in the Saône river in Lyons, dated from the 6th century, allows to collocate it in a group which should illustrate the twelve months of the year. This object provides an additional indication of the existence of coherent dozens of spoons, dedicated, for instances, to the Apostles. Two other elements of the decoration on the handle, a cross and an ivy-leaf, give the opportunity to go back over another group of late spoons which use the same patterns, coming mainly from graves in Occident. Their function is again discussed, to dismiss the hypothesis of objects specifically destined for a funeral use.

This survey paper comments on several recent publications: two books about scholars who worked on the Historia Augusta, two editions of aretalogical biographies (Jerome’s Lifes of Monks and Eunapius’ Lifes of Philosophers and Sophists), a volume of papers read in a conference on Ammianus 26-31, a new volume of the Historia Augusta Colloquiums and a book by Fr. Chausson on fictional kinships in late antique imperial families.

During the excavations carried out in the Merovingian necropolis of Cutry (Meurthe-et-Moselle), the archaeologists brought to light a male burial dating from the second half of the 6th century containing an exceptional object: a prestigious spear, datable – by analogy with some other weapons of the same type – of the 5th century. On its blade there is a Latin inscription which so far has not been deciphered. In my article I propose the following reading of this text: HAEC INT[E]R V[ASTAS] STRINGAT VENABVLA SI[L]VAS QVI GAUDET RABID[IS] OBUIU[S I]RE FERIS “Let draw this spear in vast forests Who enjoys to go against the wild animals”. If we suppose that the distich was not copied from an older spear and it was written specifically for the weapon found in the necropolis of Cutry, we cannot but be struck by its correct versification and the construction of the verses which evokes the poetry of Augustean period. The fine workmanship of the spear points unambiguously towards the Gallo-Roman aristocracy whose literary taste is well-known to us owing to the writings of Ausonius, Rutilius Namatianus and Sidonius Apollinaris. However, a comparison between the distich and their works does not deliver obvious analogies. Therefore, the text restored above appears to be a phenomenon: its writing on a prestigious hunting weapon, its impeccable versification, its light form, its Ovidian construction and, finally, its assonances which evoke the medieval léonins – all this make it an exceptional epigram which enriches our knowledge on late antique poetry.