 Hello everyone, my name is Tom Schmed. I'm a professor, assistant professor of religious studies here at Fairfield and a member of the classical studies program. It is my pleasure to introduce to you Fairfield's own Dr. Giovanni Raffini. Dr. Raffini is a professor of history and classical studies at Fairfield University. His interests are broad and include Roman imperial history, Greco-Roman Egypt, Christian Nubia, as well as network theory. He's written over 30 articles and his many books have been published with New York University, Cambridge University and Oxford University presses, among others. Notable among his monographs are Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt in 2008, Medieval Nubia in 2012, and Life in an Egyptian Village in Lady Antiquity in 2018. I should also add that he has a wonderful website devoted to Nubian historical sources, which is extremely helpful if you're trying to dig into the history of Nubia. The title of his paper is Rome in the Ethiopian and Nubian Imagination. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Raffini. Thank you. I would like to start my talk today by telling you about some Roman emperors and emperorses and some of their close relatives. I do not usually do this sort of thing. I have made my career as Tom indicated, trying to talk about the little people in the small villages out in the middle of provinces and middle of nowhere. But every once in a while I think that going back to the center and looking at the rulers and the ruling classes can be very informative. Today when we talk about Africa's view of Rome is one of those days for me. Now several prominent members of the Roman imperial family made the trip to Ethiopia in the 4th and 5th centuries. One of them, Zah Mikael Aragawi, brought Pekomian monasticism to Ethiopia after a stint as a Pekomian monk in the Egyptian Thebaid. Another Labanos translated portions of the Gospel into ancient Ethiopian or Ge'ez. In the 6th century a Roman nobleman named Pantaleon spread Christianity south of Ethiopia's Merab River. While in Aximite territory he was sufficiently well known that the Aximite emperor Caleb himself paid him a visit. Pantaleon maintained close ties to his Roman colleagues back home including active contact with Garima, the son and heir of the Roman emperor Masfeanos. When Masfeanos died and Garima himself took the throne, Pantaleon was able to convince him to abdicate and join him in Ethiopia. It must have been shortly thereafter that the Aximite emperor Caleb himself made a pilgrimage to Roman territory to Jerusalem. Once there he meets with the Roman emperor and the two men agreed to divide the sovereignty of the world between their two powers and share their royal titles with each other. According to the Quebran Agast they decided that, quote, for love's sake they were to have the royal title jointly. The king of Rome was to bear the name of King of Ethiopia, unquote. At this point the actual Roman historians in the room are probably wondering what's wrong with me and whether I've had some sort of seizure or stroke because none of this is real. The Roman emperor Pantaleon, Masfeanos, Garima, as one of my former students once put it, these are, quote, unquote, nice stories but they are absolutely divorced from reality. There were of course never any Roman emperors with these names and certainly none who ever made the long trip to Aximite Ethiopia. And so what have I been talking about? There were in most cases key figures in Ethiopian history who came to Ethiopia from Rome and then received retroactive promotions. Becoming members of the Roman royal family or Roman emperors or Roman emperorses through generations of retelling in Ethiopia. Now I have been teaching Greco-Roman history for something like 15 years now and I have to the best of my knowledge never once knowingly made up a Roman emperor. Maybe this is a personal failing on my part, who knows. Maybe I've just never had any need to do it. And with that idea in mind it is worth asking what need Ethiopian authors had to make their saints into more substantial figures in Roman history. One possibility I think I can put forth is this. The Roman empire serves as a prestige vehicle for outside observers. Participation in the heights of Romanity elevates the participant and by extension the importance of the civilization or situation in which that participant ultimately finds a home. Now this is a useful suggestion but I think it only gets us so far. It can explain Ethiopia's view of Romans who come to Ethiopia. It does not explain Ethiopia's view of Romans who stay in Rome. In some cases Ethiopia's view of Rome differs from Rome's view of itself. And this leaves us with another puzzle to solve so let's take a look at some examples and see what we can figure out from there. Now that you've been forewarned of what I'm doing. The famous Christian monk Daniel of Scetis had an encounter with Roman royalty that is recorded in Ethiopian tradition. Now this man Daniel he spent 40 years praying in the Egyptian desert living only off herbs. Over time he came to realize that just none of the people around him, none of the monks around him could compete with his level of self-denial. And his pride took hold of him leading him to think in essence that no one in the world could possibly match his piety. At this point an angel came and told him that the emperor Anorius was a far more pious man and that Daniel should seek him out. When he gets to the imperial court he finds the emperor wearing sack cloth and a monk's tunic and doesn't realize it's the emperor. Seeing him later sitting on the throne he doesn't recognize that it's the same man he saw outside. When Anorius reveals himself to him later he describes his life. 40 years eating bread alone and living only from the fruit of his own labor giving anything extra to the poor. And Daniel deeply embarrassed apologizes for his pride and leaves the emperor's presence in tears. Now two months later Anorius tracks him down and the two men complete their spiritual struggle together dying on the same day. I want to stress a crucial point here. This story is something that survives only in the Ethiopian tradition. Daniel does meet Anorius in stories that survive in other languages but the Ethiopian version has details that are unique to it and it alone. Meanwhile the Greco-Roman tradition of secular historians more generally has nothing positive at all to say about the emperor Anorius. Greco-Roman Christian historians speak of the emperor's opposition to gladiatorial combat and his admiration for the monk Telemachus who tried to interject himself between two opposing gladiators. But they say nothing of Anorius living a monastic life of asceticism. The only evidence that comes anywhere close to this claim about Anorius is the 7th century chronicle of John of Nickeu. John of Nickeu like Ethiopia's Daniel tradition credits Anorius with living the quote life of a hermit while in the palace. He wore a hair shirt under silk clothing which forms the imperial dress and he made his bed upon the ground and fasted every day and prayed unquote. Indeed John records that it was the emperor's excessive asceticism that ultimately killed him. John's account also includes the story found in the Greco-Roman tradition that Anorius abolished gladiatorial combat in Rome after the failed attempt at intervention by the monk Telemachus. More curious for the purposes of today's conversation is the story in John of Nickeu that the quote king of India and his subjects requested the god-loving emperor Anorius to appoint them a bishop unquote. Greco-Roman geographical vocabulary is very slippery but I think it's generally agreed that India in this context refers to East Africa generally and to Aksmite Ethiopia specifically. So the story records that Ethiopia had received Christianity as you pointed out through fermentius but now required a new bishop. Anorius quote rejoiced with great joy because they had embraced the faith and turned to God and he appointed them a holy bishop named Theonius unquote. Let me once again stress what I think is a key point here. There is just no evidence from other sources that supports any of this story at all. No evidence at all outside of John of Nickeu claiming that Anorius received an embassy from Ethiopia or appointed a bishop from for Ethiopia. This is problematic. Sources closer to Anorius both in time and in place would be better positioned to record this sort of story and we just don't have it. And in fact on the face of it the story itself does not really make sense. The Christian church in Ethiopia was subordinate to the bishop of Alexandria which itself was governed from Constantinople in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. At no point did Anorius have jurisdiction over Alexandria or Constantinople and in the embassy coming to the Roman Empire in search of a bishop would have stopped in someone else's jurisdiction first before they ever got to Anorius. Now temptation leads us to look almost instinctively for lost literary sources when you find this sort of thing but I think we have to stop being scholars and remember how real people think. The masses have a memory that is outside of book learning. This memory seeps back in to the books themselves untethered to any lost literary source. People tell stories and they make stuff up when they do so. People are easily confused and they might easily swap one name or place for another especially when dealing with times and places that are far removed from their own. Public awareness of the Roman Imperial elites spread in ways that are really no longer easily visible in the literary sources. Mass memory of late antique emperors for example may come from the selling of images of child emperors to the public to legitimize them. Holding such an image in your hand wondering who this boy emperor is what he does what he is alike we might well fill that void with what my student called a nice story unquote. Now some of what we find in the Ethiopian tradition has simple linguistic or historical explanations translating from Greek into Coptic from Coptic into Arabic from Arabic into Ethiopic this can garble many things along the way. There is a Roman Empress Patricia for example who appears in one other part of the Ethiopian Daniel story. Now in the original Greek version of the life of Abba Daniel we meet a patrician woman named Anastasia. Somewhere along the way her status marker patricia gets confused for her name Patricia and she is promoted from nobility to royalty. Now the historical anachronism that turns a Norse emperor in the western half of the Roman Empire into an emperor in the eastern half of the Roman Empire is a product of a later era with no living memory of the Western Empire a period in which Rome could only mean New Rome Constantinople. And of course some of this Ethiopian material presumably does come directly from lost sources in those earlier languages despite my earlier warning there it is possible if not likely that the stories of the emperor Norius and his reputation for holiness presumably come from such lost sources. Much of Ethiopia's general attitude towards Rome comes inherited via Egypt. This might lead us to say that Ethiopia's view of Rome is not actually Ethiopia's view of Rome but simply one that it is borrowed or appropriated. Maybe I'm not going to argue this point very far. In fact the decision to borrow or appropriate something tells us something itself that Ethiopia found these stories useful in some fundamental way. These sources are lost in Coptic and they're lost in Arabic and they survive in Ethiopic because Christians in Egypt no longer found them useful but Christians in Ethiopia continued to think that they were. But useful how I already gave one answer that Ethiopia used Rome as a prestige vehicle to elevate the importance of its own saints and holy men. But this does not explain the Norius stories which do little to elevate any of Ethiopia's historical figures. I suggested that in this case Rome is not a useful vehicle for elevating Ethiopia but a useful model for Ethiopia to imitate. Put another way the pious emperor Norius as he appears in Ethiopian tradition is a mirror for Ethiopia's church community to hold up to its own emperors to invite its emperors to see themselves in him and to offer Ethiopia's emperors either implicit congratulations or implicit rebuke. I think that these two answers connect quite nicely with two separate strands of Roman elements in the Ethiopian literary tradition more generally. The heroic strand which is exemplified in the Kibernagast and narratives of the greatness of Aksumite kings looks at Rome and sees Ethiopia as present as a great continuation of its great past. The other the confrontational strand in which Ethiopia's church and state stare at each other with suspicion looks at Rome and judges Ethiopia as present as a failure compared to the greatness of its past. Or maybe I'm overthinking things and these are just nice stories who knows. Otto Nugabauer the great scholar of Ethiopian calendars and astronomy once wrote that quote for an Ethiopic author Roman history was of interest only so far as it was directly related to Christianity. Hence the time from Augustus to Vespasian and Titus unquote. I must respectfully disagree. Yes, Ethiopic authors needed to understand Roman chronology to sort out the nativity, the crucifixion and the resurrection, the sequence of events in the Acts of the Apostles. But their interest in Rome and in Roman history did not stop there. It merely skipped 250 years and renewed its interest beginning in the period when Ethiopia itself joins the Christian community. So much for Ethiopia. Now what was going on in Nubia? We have a deep rupture in Nubia, one that creates an ideological gap between ancient and medieval Nubia in a way that we don't have in Ethiopia. Maroitic civilization, what we think of as ancient Kush, the great civilization of Nubian pyramid builders lasted a thousand years before there's just this abrupt collapse of central state power in the 300s AD. What emerges to fill that vacuum in Nubia just south of Egypt is at first a confusing mess. There is a brief but intense competition for control over the Nile Valley between the Nobadai on the one hand and on the other hand the Blemies, nomadic peoples from the deserts east of the Nile. The Blemies were outsiders to the Nile Valley and their attempt to control lower Nubia and the cities and settlements there was not long lasting. The little evidence that we have hints at constant warfare. We have an inscription from Kalapsha hinting at the Nubian view of the world in this period. Silco, who is called a kinglint or basaliskos of the Nobadai in this inscription, narrates his wars against the Blemies who have occupied two centers, Thomas and Tafas. He captured both cities on the third try and the inscription suggests that he claimed control over all of northern Nubia. The ins and outs of this military campaign aren't really the point here. More interesting for our purposes is the fact that this Nubian king calls himself basaliskos or little king, which only really makes sense in relation to some larger or full king. Since there is in this period no longer a Marawitic king, the only real candidate is the Roman emperor. This means that we have a Nubian king describing his own legitimacy in relationship to that of Rome and consciously subordinating himself to it. The image that accompanies the inscription, Silco mounted and crowned by a winged victory while stabbing a defeated enemy, is a type that's recognizable from any number of fourth or fifth century Roman coins. But another male figure just below, presumably another image of Silco himself, wears a traditional double crown and ureas with a ram's head inherited directly from Marawitic royal iconography. So you have royal representation in lower Nubia in this period that is a blend of the Nubian past and the Roman present. Now as these political fragments of Nubia slowly reunited, they borrowed from the Roman past to build a new form of Nubian prestige. At the dawn of the 700s, a Nubian king named Mercurius ruled at Dongola, the capital of Makuria in the Nubian heartland. According to John the Deacon who wrote a few generations later, Mercurius quote was called the new Constantine for he became by his beautiful conduct like one of the disciples unquote. This shows Nubian historical memory building a bond between Roman emperors and Nubian kings. Now Nubians in their own language spoke of Nubia as Dottalo and their king as the Uru of Dottalo, but in other languages particularly in Greek they had a wider range of options. In 883 AD Nubian tombstone referred to the Nubian king Zacharias as Zacharias Augustus. Four years later another Nubian tombstone refers to the Nubian king Giorgius as Caesar. A Nubian monk named Joseph left an inscription also naming the Nubian king Kudanbes Caesar. This inscription dates to April 7, 1322. This is very late. These men have appropriated Roman imperial titles perhaps for prestige reasons or as an attempt to indicate some sort of symbolic continuity with or connection to the original owners of these titles. Here we see Nubia use Rome in a way much like Ethiopia did as a tool or a vehicle to elevate itself, to present itself in relation to its northern imperial neighbor first as a younger brother, Basiliskos or little king, then as a peer and finally as a successor. This is a direct parallel to what Ethiopia does in its own pro-imperial tradition, a tradition culminating in the Quebrnagast in which Ethiopia's kings present themselves first as peers and then as successors to a mighty but then degenerate Roman empire. It is worth asking whether this is a particularly African phenomenon, is there something about African reception or memory of late antiquity about Ethiopian and Nubian modes of transmission of memory that produces this specific effect? While part of me would like to give a positive answer given the theme of this symposium to make Africa special somehow in this case, I tend to think not. Consider two examples. King Atli, a central character in the late medieval old Norse of Vauxanga saga, who is generally believed to be a romanticized version of Attila the Hun. Second, the well-known Ostrogothic king who ruled Italy in the 5th and 6th centuries, Theoterek the Great, who emerges in legend as Dietrich von Bern, a great king forced into exile by his evil uncle, Ermenrich. Dietrich's story survives in a number of old English and old German poems in the Old Norse. So Ethiopia and Nubia remember the Roman world in much the same way that medieval Europe does through a legend that is steeped in oral tradition. So where does all this leave us? I suppose to some degree it depends on whether you are a Roman historian or an African one. In an introductory Roman civ class, I struggle to do better than my own college Roman history textbook did and get from the Gracchi to Nero in the course of a semester. This leaves us precious little time to talk about Rome's afterlife. And when we do, we tend to think of the Renaissance and the long shadow that Rome has cast over the American founding and our own culture in the present. But I think we would do well to remember that Rome's afterlife took other forms and that Rome's shadow can appear in unexpected places. African historians, I think, have a different challenge. I once saw and enjoyed very much a fairly heated exchange between two scholars over the idea of Roman quote-unquote influence over Africa. One of the two remarked that he didn't much like the idea of influence because it created the impression of Romans going off to Africa and then doing things to the Africans. And of course, this just isn't what happened at all. In this story, all of the Romans are dead, right? The people doing the doing are all Africans. So I think we can put this story of Rome in the Ethiopian and Nubian imagination squarely within a broader historiographical trend in which we discover or rediscover African civilizations with active agency and creative control over their own cultures. In this context, Rome is nothing more than a tool, a plaything for Ethiopian and Nubian creativity. Thank you. Now we have time for questions. So is the major distinction to make between the Nubian kings and those in Ethiopia that the Ethiopian kings were not responsible for claiming these titles? It began, it was religious influence that led to the adoption of these titles while in Nubia it was entirely political. In Ethiopia it was an effort to not legitimize up to and never by the religious community to make their leaders better. That's an interesting question and I'm going to sort of choke on that phrase entirely political and stop you right there. Because the more and more I think about all of the cultures I've studied in my career I just don't see the distinction anymore between political and religious and I just get stumped, I can't do it. And anybody who's had me for Roman, Siv or Greek, Siv has probably heard some variation of this rant before that the political and the religious were so deeply intertwined in those civilizations that I can't separate them out. And I wonder if the case is not the same with Ethiopia and Nubia. If I look at the Nubian tradition I see archbishops who are the cousins and brothers of the king. I think, oh yeah, they're religious or political. I don't know how to do it. And the same is true with Ethiopian tradition but in slightly different ways. Some of the key agents of the restoration of the Solomonic dynasty are famous monks and bishops. And so untangling the entirely political part of the question I think almost doesn't work. I've managed to dodge your question completely. Thank you, hold on. And a big round of applause for us.