Antti Lampinen | University of Turku (original) (raw)

Edited volumes by Antti Lampinen

Edward Said, in his seminal book Orientalism, perceived clear links between the ancient Greek and... more Edward Said, in his seminal book Orientalism, perceived clear links between the ancient Greek and Roman stereotypes of the East and the prejudiced European nineteenth-century picture of the Muslim world, which was considered exotic, backward, uncivilised, degenerate and dangerous, in contrast with the western societies that were seen as developed, rational, flexible and, above all, superior. However, the reality is much more complex – shaped by both the imperialist perceptions of defeated enemies embraced by all Middle Eastern empires going back at least to the Assyrians, as well as the intermixed admiration and jealousy of the old ‘Eastern’ traditions of learning. Part of the Greek and Roman stereotypes of the East are rooted in the interaction with eastern imperial ideals, being taken over and further developed in order to strengthen common Hellenic and Roman identities. Due to the subsequent free borrowing of these stereotypes and their application to different societies the Orient has always been a moving ‘(n)everwhere’ with each culture constructing their own Oriental mirages.

The proposed book brings together articles stemming from the XXV Finnish Symposium on Late Antiqu... more The proposed book brings together articles stemming from the XXV Finnish Symposium on Late Antiquity, held in November 2018. The contributions are structured around three thematic sections, all contributing towards a new and interdisciplinary understanding of what the sea as an environment and the pursuit of seafaring meant for Late Antique societies. Part 1 looks at the practicalities of tackling the sea as an environment for purposes of travel, trade, and warfare. Part 2 engages with the questions of seaborne communications networks and islands as the characteristic hubs of the Mediterranean environment. Part 3 broadens this view with an exploration of the Mediterranean as an environment with great metaphorical and symbolic potential. Throughout the volume, the editors and contributors have maintained an emphasis on a multidisciplinary, broad-angled understanding of the Late Antiquity’s human interactions with their environments – built, natural, and imagined alike. Perhaps more than any other type of environment (equaled perhaps only by mountains), the sea has been understood as immovable to a proverbial degree, and indeed as often been envisioned as an entity wholly indifferent to the concerns of humanity. The sea was an exception and a limit to civilization, and that can be perceived on the conceptualizations of phenomena such as shipwrecks, symbolizing the dichotomy of the safe land and the ungovernable sea. Yet it was the sea’s capability of moving – both through actual mobility and through such emotions as fear, hope and pity – that formed one of the primary means of conceptualizing its significance to the Late Antique societies.
In particular, we feel that understanding the role of environment for ancient societies and culture should be pursued across a range of themes, allowing us to discern diachronic trends and continuities. The significance of the sea for both the concrete mobility of goods, people and ideas, as well as the usefulness of the sea as a metaphor and conceptual, occasionally heterotopic, space both elucidated through an approach that looks at the Mediterranean as an environment, and takes appropriate note of the most recent scholarship. Moreover, this volume will benefit from the use of the theoretical approach of the spatial turn that is a theoretical approach that places emphasis on space and place in disciplines linked with social sciences and the humanities. While never ignoring the fact that we are temporally (as well as environmentally) bound beings, during the past few decades, the use of this approach in different fields of
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study has increasingly emphasised the importance of spatiality in understanding the history of the human being and of its relation with the environment. The subject is challenging, because it demonstrates that space is no longer a neutral concept and cannot be considered independent from that which it contains, and therefore neither can it be considered as immune to historical, political and aesthetic changes. Ideas of the reciprocal causal relationship between subjects and their environments have been common currency in spatially oriented disciplines (e.g. archaeology. geography, history, urban studies. This sort of approach can help set forth more nuanced theories regarding the relation between social systems and their environment - in this case, with the maritime cultural landscape – using case studies and methods applied in different disciplines such as archaeology, classics or history.

Contributions in edited volumes by Antti Lampinen

Oriental Mirages. Stereotypes and Identity Creation in the Ancient World, 2024

[Last draft version for the introductory chapter to the volume. For referencing, please use the p... more [Last draft version for the introductory chapter to the volume. For referencing, please use the published version, pp. 11-40. By all means write me an email and ask for a PDF of the final chapter.]

In the ancient world, art, wisdom and culture originated in the East. The Greeks were strongly influenced by the Achaemenid, Assyrian and Egyptian cultures. The way Romans looked at it, after having conquered Greece they had, in turn, brought civilisation home to the previously rustic Rome, or as Horace put it: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio (Ep. 2.1.156–157). However, Empire as an institution and power also originated in the Orient, combined with wealth and abundance. What the Greeks and Romans admired and wished to emulate was therefore often to be found in the Orient. When the Greeks grew stronger and first defeated, then subdued the Persians, they began to look down on them and to emphasise the negative aspects of the ‘barbarians’: autocracy, despotism, weakness, effeminacy, decadence, corruption, greed etc. The East was frequently turned into the opposite of all virtues the Greeks and later the Romans strove for.

The development of stereotypes about the East during antiquity is clearly connected to the need of creating stronger common Hellenic and Roman identities. However, it would be wrong to believe that there existed anything like a monolithic image of the Orient. The picture of the East developed and changed continuously, and during this process many Eastern peoples were characterised interchangeably through the same motifs. There may thus be a need to define a set of different ‘repertoires’ of stereotypes used in different chronological/cultural contexts, beginning from differences between Greek and Roman strains. This is complicated by the fact that part of the stereotypes tended to turn into literary topoi that were repeated numerous times, often even with close to similar formulations. The free borrowing of the ‘Oriental’ stereotypes in the subsequent tradition, and their application to different societies – sometimes by societies which in themselves were stereotyped as ‘Oriental’ by other groups – points to the inescapable conclusion that ‘Orient’ was and has always been a moving ‘(n)everwhere’, and each society in the Western tradition has been prone to construct their own ‘Orients’ and ‘Orientals’.

Oriental Mirages. Stereotypes and Identity Creation in the Ancient World, 2024

[Last draft version for my chapter: for reference purposes, please consult the final published ve... more [Last draft version for my chapter: for reference purposes, please consult the final published version, pp. 279-317. By all means write me an email and ask for a PDF of the final chapter.]

In this chapter I take a diachronic look into the ways in which the Graeco-Roman tradition tended to justify and reify the stereotypes concerning the East and its peoples from the Classical era to the Roman Imperial period. While most of the stereotypes about Eastern groups formed in response to interactions – either warlike or peaceful, sudden or slower – the theoretical explanation structures that were used to reify and explain these were most of the time entirely internal to the Graeco-Roman intellectual tradition. I will also try to offer a preliminary typology of the main strains of stereotypes that had the longest and most influential life within the ancient culturally shared pool of images, thereby combining some broader, theoretical observations with the interpretation of a selection of passages from the Classical to the Imperial era.

Oriental Mirages. Stereotypes and Identity Creation in the Ancient World, 2024

[Last draft version for my chapter: for reference purposes, please consult the final published ve... more [Last draft version for my chapter: for reference purposes, please consult the final published version, pp. 197-231. By all means write me an email and ask for a PDF of the final chapter.]

In this chapter, I propose to approach the ‘Oriental’ from an oblique angle by examining the methods through which an ancient population group was ascribed ‘Oriental’ characteristics, even though they had existing ties to a different macrogeographic pool of ethnic stereotypes. To understand how the characteristics that held a degree of ‘proverbiality’ among ancient audiences were used to trigger associations with the ‘Eastern’ iconosphere, it may be informative to explore a case in which a group of people (or, indeed, individuals) not commonly understood to belong to the ‘Orient’ by their origin were nonetheless presented as possessing or having obtained ‘Oriental’ characteristics. Such representations are, naturally, full of rhetorical and polemical considerations; and it is exactly for this reason they constitute fascinating evidence for the ancient Graeco-Roman ideas of acculturation and essentialism.

Being Pagan, Being Christian in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, 2023

The chapter compares the representation of 'sages' , 'philosophers' or 'wise men' in Ammianus Mar... more The chapter compares the representation of 'sages' , 'philosophers' or 'wise men' in Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae from the late 4th century and in the Cosmographia Aethici of 'Pseudo-Jerome' from the 8th century, with a particular focus on the ways in which these two widely differing texts engage with the idea of 'pagan' or 'barbarian' wisdom traditions and their carriers. In so doing, the chapter compares the two authors' strategies and techniques in representing inherited, non-Greek (or non-Roman) wisdom among the peoples of the world.

Mediterranean Flows: People, Ideas and Objects in motion, 2023

[Uncorrected author proofs: for reference purposes, please consult the final published version] ... more [Uncorrected author proofs: for reference purposes, please consult the final published version]

This chapter explores the ways in which human movement and group membership were debated in the second century CE, primarily among the Greek authors influenced by the cultural phenomenon of the 'Second Sophistic'. It examines, in particular, their expressions of unease at the thought of "Hellenic" identities being diluted as the result of population movements within the empire, as well as the occasional dismissal of such fears. These ideas were enabled by the widely diffused set of theoretical structures that all encouraged the perception of population groups as having essentialistically defined and largely unchanging-though corruptible-characteristics. Turning this human variety and the empire's internal mobility into a tool in moralizing debate was an option that several writers within the sophistic movement took up. After discussing the epistemic basis for such nativist rhetoric, the chapter focuses on three particular cases: Polemon of Laodicea's Hellenic chauvinism, Favorinus of Arles' rejection of nativism while upholding essentialising patterns of thought, and Herodes Atticus' allegorically replete anecdote on the rural strongman Agathion as preserved in Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists.

Seafaring and Mobility in Late Antique Mediterranean, 2022

Uncorrected proofs of my contribution into the volume E. Mataix Ferrándiz & A. Lampinen (eds.) 20... more Uncorrected proofs of my contribution into the volume E. Mataix Ferrándiz & A. Lampinen (eds.) 2022, Seafaring and Mobility in Late Antique Mediterranean Contexts (ca. 150-700 CE), Bloomsbury, 49-68. For reference purposes, please consult the final published version of the chapter!

Seafaring and Mobility in Late Antique Mediterranean, 2022

The final proofs (with the final proofs of the cover) to the Introduction in E. Mataix Ferrándiz ... more The final proofs (with the final proofs of the cover) to the Introduction in E. Mataix Ferrándiz & A. Lampinen (eds.), Seafaring and Mobility in the Late Antique Mediterranean Contexts (ca. 150-700 CE), Bloomsbury 2022, 1-9. For reference purposes, please consult the final, published form of the chapter!

Negotiation, Collaboration and Conflict in Ancient and Medieval Communities; C. Krötzl, K. Mustakallio & M. Tamminen (eds.), Routledge, 2022

[Uncorrected pre-print proofs: in referring to the chapter, please consult the final version in t... more [Uncorrected pre-print proofs: in referring to the chapter, please consult the final version in the published volume]

This chapter will discuss some late-imperial texts which either engage explicitly with physiognomical theory or interact in other ways with their
contemporary physiognomical knowledge frame. Its aim is to provide some insights into the ways in which the visible phenotypic differences between the inhabitants of the Later Roman Empire could be turned into a tool for moralising polemic and essentialising argumentation about both neighbours and strangers. It will discuss how a set of mostly fourth-century CE authors directed their diagnostic gaze not only at individuals but also at the multiplicity of the empire’s subject peoples and groups beyond its borders in pursuit of a variety of rhetorical and polemical purposes. These could range from the simple character-assassination of their competitors to formulating strategies for the continued survival of the empire. Such operations seem to have assumed the existence of a fairly widely shared knowledge base that was framed in terms of physiognomical analogies. By examining Late Antique physiognomical texts in their cultural and literary context, it may be possible to garner evidence for this ‘commonly-known’ or proverbial epistemic base about the supposed properties of different peoples and what evidence it might offer regarding the segregating and integrative speech acts that the ‘visually other’ denizens of the Later Empire had to navigate. In pursuing these questions, this chapter will first discuss the epistemology of ancient physiognomy, as well as its second-century heyday, which formed an important background to the late-imperial popularity of the theory. Next, I will discuss the techniques of segregating and integrating individuals and entire population groups by their looks in later-imperial texts ranging from physiognomical treatises themselves into such works of historiography as Ammianus Marcellinus’ Res gestae. Finally, concluding reflections on the epistemic, social and cultural dynamics at play are offered.

Acta Byzantina Fennica, Supplementa, 2021

Teoksessa Tuhannen vuoden kirjavuori: Kirjallisia näkökulmia Bysantin kulttuuriin (toim. P. Houni... more Teoksessa Tuhannen vuoden kirjavuori: Kirjallisia näkökulmia Bysantin kulttuuriin (toim. P. Houni & K. Knaapi, Bysantin tutkimuksen seura ry. 2021), 125-63.

Teoksen lähtökohta on tehdä luotauksia Bysantin kirjallisuuteen, ja sitä kautta esitellä erityisesti, mitä suomalaisessa bysanttilaisen kirjallisuuden tutkimuksen maailmassa nykyisin tapahtuu sekä millaisista näkökulmista ja millaisin metodein, bysanttilaiskauden aineistoja lähestytään.

Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Walking Together & Parting Ways, 2022

These are the final proofs of the chapter, with the author's corrections shown. For reference pur... more These are the final proofs of the chapter, with the author's corrections shown. For reference purposes, please consult the final published version of the chapter (via https://brill.com/view/title/60924). Published in Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Walking Together & Parting Ways, eds. I. Lindstedt, N. Nikki and R. Tuori; Brill: Leiden.

Divination and Knowledge in Greco-Roman Antiquity, 2021

Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body: Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World, 2019

This chapter seeks to study ethnicised physiognomical descriptions or ekphraseis of both individu... more This chapter seeks to study ethnicised physiognomical descriptions or ekphraseis of both individuals and entire population groups, primarily during the High Empire. Traditionally, physiognomical ekphraseis have been examined through the three epistemological fields where physiognomic arguments are thought to be particularly naturalised: philosophy, medical writings, and rhetoric. There is, however, at least one broad literary and ideological register that extends over and
beyond these domains, yet in which physiognomising gestures are frequent: ethnographical writing.

Ekphrastic techniques, for their part, were embedded in the ways in which the Greek and Roman elites communicated about their world. From their early schooling onwards, they were trained in the verbal representation of objects and agents, with plausibility – however commonplace – and vividness as the declared aims. Ethnicised exemplars were commonly used as part of such rhetorical strategies, and they were often presented in common-sense, proverbial guise: as such, they did not aim to convey new information to the audience, but to trigger and evoke the 'already-known'. Thus, I choose to call such ethnically tagged but widely shared views as 'ethnographicising' instead of 'ethngoraphical'. I will seek to show in this article that the empirical claims of ancient physiognomical rhetoric, combined with the anecdotal and wholly stereotypical exempla used therein, produced jointly a powerfully essentialising discourse on the ethnic subjects of the empire.

Translation and Transmission. Collection of Articles, 2019

in: Translation and Transmission. Collection of Articles, J. Hämeen-Anttila & I. Lindstedt (eds.)... more in: Translation and Transmission. Collection of Articles, J. Hämeen-Anttila & I. Lindstedt (eds.). Series: The Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East 3, Ugarit-Verlag, Münster, 139-79.

Based on the workshop ‘Translation and Transmission in the Eastern Mediterranean , 500 B.C. – 1500 A.D.’, held on 25 September 2015 at the Finnish Institute in Rome.

Animo Decipiendi. Rethinking Fakes and Forgeries in Classical, Late Antique, and Early Christian Works, ed. by Antonio Guzmán & Javier Martínez; Barkhuis, Eelde., 2018

The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister is clearly a forged (or at the very least fraudulent) text in t... more The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister is clearly a forged (or at the very least fraudulent) text in the sense that its supposed author/excerptor and occasional narrator, the Hieronymus presbyter who is meant to be identified as St. Jerome, cannot have been who he is presented to be. Neither was there an original text by a pagan sophist “Aethicus” behind the Cosmography. Some parts of the Cosmography might be considered parodies rather than forgeries, but in the absence of any secure reconstructions of its intended audience even this must remain conjectural.

On the whole, the approximation of ethnographical “feel” has been created in the Cosmography from almost the same set of texts that we have at our disposal. Isidore (always used without naming him) and Orosius are the primary sources for the ethnonyms, but Solinus and the Alexander matter are also behind some elements. By seeking to recreate and magnify the “epistemic rush”—complementing textual involution—that was part of the ancient ethnographicizing discourse, the Cosmographer explicitly set out to forge an example of a dis-course that by his time was associated with an earlier period of literature. Combining classical and biblical corroborations for his ethnographic inventions and creatively expanded lists allowed the Cosmographer to forge a style that he believed harked back to previous centuries. The resulting Late Antique feel, with church fathers and pious bishops pruning out the pagan wisdom traditions of self-important philosophers, heretics abounding, and a measureless world of strange peoples stretching out all the way until the Apocalypse, must have become a part of the Cosmographer’s aims at some stage—even if these aims mutated as his bold creation took shape.

Hope in Ancient Literature, History and Art. Ancient Emotions I. Eds. G. Kazantzidis & D. Spatharas; De Gruyter, Berlin & Boston, 2018

This paper looks at the portrayal of northern barbarians’ aspirations from three interconnected a... more This paper looks at the portrayal of northern barbarians’ aspirations from three interconnected angles: first, the hopes for a rebirth or an afterlife that certain northern peoples were supposed to harbour; then, what seems like their yearning or greedy hope for plunder or land; and lastly, their hope for a revenge or reversal. Finally, I will briefly look at how the Greeks and Romans imagined the hopes of the barbarians failing – the turning of hope into hopelessness – as well as the literary conventions and epistemic regimes that buttressed such reversals. The sources used range from the Hellenistic to the Imperial era, but they are unified by their joint technique of projecting affectively or emotively formulated expectations onto the barbarian outgroups of Europe in order to explain their behaviour. For the most part, barbarians were perceived to have internally valid grounds for their hopes – meaning that ‘madness’ or ‘foolishness’ as a characteristic of barbarian action was for the most part used as a metaphor, not a diagnosis of a pathology. In addition to being involved in emotively oriented causation, ‘mindreading’ the barbarians plays a natural role in emotionally charged ingroup communication. By tying the ancient discourse on barbarian hopes and aspirations into the broader ethnographical register, I wish to contribute to the study of the Greek and Roman emotional responses to their encounters with outgroups, as well as to demonstrate how perceptions of intentionality could be elided, in such contexts, with the ascription of collective emotions to outgroups. It is suggested that in the Greek and Roman thinking, hope was for the northerners an unreasonable and untimely expectation of a favourable but often immoral outcome, liable to be revealed as a misidentified or mistimed attempt. By looking at the hopes and hope-like expectations ascribed to the barbarians, it may be possible to discern that in addition to being treated as an emotion – with all the causations this implies – hope could also be debated as a cultural standard, and even used as a help for conceptualising the spread of rationality within the humankind.

Studies in Ancient Oracles and Divination (ed. Mika Kajava), Nov 2013

Vieras, outo, vihollinen: toiseuden kuvauksia antiikista uuden ajan alkuun (toim. Marja-Leena Hänninen), 102-126 , 2013

The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World, ed. Maijastina Kahlos, 2012

Oriental Mirages. Stereotypes and Identity Creation in the Ancient World, 2024

[Last draft version for my chapter: for reference purposes, please consult the final published ve... more [Last draft version for my chapter: for reference purposes, please consult the final published version, pp. 197-231. By all means write me an email and ask for a PDF of the final chapter.]

Being Pagan, Being Christian in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, 2023

Mediterranean Flows: People, Ideas and Objects in motion, 2023

Seafaring and Mobility in Late Antique Mediterranean, 2022

Negotiation, Collaboration and Conflict in Ancient and Medieval Communities; C. Krötzl, K. Mustakallio & M. Tamminen (eds.), Routledge, 2022

Acta Byzantina Fennica, Supplementa, 2021

Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Walking Together & Parting Ways, 2022

Divination and Knowledge in Greco-Roman Antiquity, 2021

Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body: Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World, 2019

Translation and Transmission. Collection of Articles, 2019

Based on the workshop ‘Translation and Transmission in the Eastern Mediterranean , 500 B.C. – 1500 A.D.’, held on 25 September 2015 at the Finnish Institute in Rome.

Animo Decipiendi. Rethinking Fakes and Forgeries in Classical, Late Antique, and Early Christian Works, ed. by Antonio Guzmán & Javier Martínez; Barkhuis, Eelde., 2018

Hope in Ancient Literature, History and Art. Ancient Emotions I. Eds. G. Kazantzidis & D. Spatharas; De Gruyter, Berlin & Boston, 2018

Studies in Ancient Oracles and Divination (ed. Mika Kajava), Nov 2013

Vieras, outo, vihollinen: toiseuden kuvauksia antiikista uuden ajan alkuun (toim. Marja-Leena Hänninen), 102-126 , 2013

The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World, ed. Maijastina Kahlos, 2012

Philologia Classica. Lähteitä, lähestymistapoja ja metodeja (toim. Minna Seppänen & Tiina Hiekkalinna), 143-60, 2010

History in Flux, 2021

The Roman preoccupation with the Alps as the 'tutamen' (safeguard) of Italy owed its epistemic im... more The Roman preoccupation with the Alps as the 'tutamen' (safeguard) of Italy owed its epistemic immediacy to a much more recent event—the Cimbric Wars (113-101 BCE). This traumatic episode had reawakened imagery of the northern enemies penetrating the “Wall of Italy,” which in some cases went all the way back to the Mid-Republican narrative traditions of the Gallic Invasions and the much more frequently debated shock of Hannibal’s invasion. The significance of this imagery continued even
beyond the Augustan era, so that remnants of the same Roman insecurity about the “Wall of Italy” being breached, especially by northerners, are preserved in narratives about later Julio-Claudians such as Caligula and Nero. This article first looks at the likely origins of the idea of the Alps as the “Wall of Italy” in Middle-Republican perceptions, projected back onto the past and presenting Rome as predestined to dominate Italy and the Gauls in particular as external intruders in the peninsula. Next, the Late Republican and Augustan stages of the motif is
reviewed, and the impact of the Cimbric Wars on this imagery is debated. Finally, there will be brief discussion of anecdotes found in Tacitus and Suetonius about
later Julio-Claudian episodes in which the fear of a northern invasion breaching the Alps seem to have gripped the Romans.

Mnemosyne, 2019

We discuss analogies between oracular and grammatical interpretation, as reflected in our Greek a... more We discuss analogies between oracular and grammatical interpretation, as reflected in our Greek and Latin sources from the Classical era to the High Empire. The two hermeneutical professions of μάντις and γραμματικός both aim at elucidating the thought (διάνοια) involved in the interpretandum. This is a notion quite frequently made at one level or another in ancient literature, as evidenced for example in writings by Plato, Crates of Mallus, Aristarchus, Cicero, Nigidius Figulus, and Sextus Empiricus.

The article studies the literary representation of subaltern religiosities in the context of Late... more The article studies the literary representation of subaltern religiosities in the context of Late Roman and Early Merovingian ecclesiastical writing in Gaul, and its relationship with Late Antique ideas about the characteristics of rural societies. By projecting an image of an ata-vistic rustic mass of religiously substandard commoners, who moreover were unable to participate constructively in most kinds of religious acculturation, the episcopal hierarchy of Gaul was able to tap into a powerful source of legitimacy for their privileges. These chains of utterances, examined through the acta of church councils and synods and compared with hagiographical writing, gained plausibility from their very participation in a literary tradition of ethno-graphicising expositions of subaltern religiosities. By studying techniques of vicarious memory ascription, knowledge ordering, and both intra-and inter-generic enrichment of ecclesiastical texts, I hope to provide some new angles into the Gallo-Roman and Merovingian ecclesiastical writing on lower-class religiosity, which is too often read as a straightforward reflection of conversion processes among the general population. It is suggested that in some historical contexts, socially unequal memory-ascriptions made within conversion narratives can usefully be examined through comparisons with colonial subaltern studies.

Arctos (Acta Philologica Fennica)

This article attempts to provide a realistic, securely contextualised estimate regarding the form... more This article attempts to provide a realistic, securely contextualised estimate regarding the formation and extent of Posidonius of Apamea's (c. 135-51 BCE) contribution to the Greco-Roman tradition of ethnographic writing about the population groups of Europe - and his much-discussed 'Gallic ethnography' in particular.

The significance of being able to assess correctly the contents and the context of Posidonius' so-called 'ethnography' is obvious, especially when keeping in mind the optimistic and trusting tone that some past reconstructions of his fragments have exhibited. With all the accruing understanding of the tradition of ancient ethnographic writing, a critical eye must be cast at a contribution so often postulated as unsurpassed in its influence.

In this article, I submit the texts usually taken as Posidonian fragments to a reading informed by recent advances in the study of knowledge ordering (e.g. in eds. König & Whitmarsh 2007), information generation 'on the middle ground' (Woolf 2011), and the interplay of Greek writers and Roman audiences (Clarke 1999). There existed a wide range of interlocking 'middle grounds' which the ethnographical writers of the Late Republic navigated, even when they pursued goals to which ethnography was wholly subservient – as ancient ethnography nearly always was. Rather than being a record of his personal observations and meetings with Gauls, to a much greater extent the northern ethnography of Posidonius was constructed through literary processes based on his reading and his conversations with Romans and Greeks.

Studia Celtica Fennica 11, 8-23., 2014

This article seeks to demonstrate that dramatically illustrated examples of the Celts’ sense of j... more This article seeks to demonstrate that dramatically illustrated examples of the Celts’ sense of justice emerge as a minor trope in Greek and Roman ‘lighter literature’. In sources ranging from the Hellenistic to the Imperial era, novelistic narratives taking their cue from the register of lighter literature—with its emphasis on pathos, cultural difference, and romantic themes—feature several barbarian characters, characterised as ‘Celts’ or ‘Galatae’, who act according to a code of conduct that was constructed purposefully as barbarian, archaic, and alien. This set of motifs I venture to call the trope of ‘Celtic justice’. While almost certainly devoid of historical source value to actual judicial cultures of Iron Age Europeans, neither are these references mere alterité. Instead, their relationship with other literary registers demonstrate the literariness of certain modes of thought that came to inform the enquiry of Greek and Roman observers into the Celtic northerners. Their ostensibly ethnographical contents emerge as markers of complex textual strategies and vibrant reception of literary motifs. While lacking ‘anthropological’ source value, these texts demonstrate the variety and intensity with which the contacts between Greeks and Celts affected the epistemic regime of the Mediterranean societies.

Studia Celtica Fennica 6, pp. 27-53, 2009

Studia Celtica Fennica 5, 38-53, 2008

Helikon, 2021

Alkuperäisestä artikkelista pois jäänyt kirjallisuusluettelo: - M. Ahonen 2014, ‘Ancient Phys... more Alkuperäisestä artikkelista pois jäänyt kirjallisuusluettelo:

- M. Ahonen 2014, ‘Ancient Physiognomy’, Sourcebook for the history of the Philosophy of Mind. Philosophical Psychology from Plato to Kant, S. Knuuttila & J. Sihvola (eds.), Springer, Dordrecht, 623-31.
- R. Batty 2007, Rome and the Nomads: the Pontic-Danubian Realm in Antiquity, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- D. Braund 2003, ‘The Bosporan Kings and Classical Athens: Imagined Breaches in a Cordial Relationship (Aisch. 3.171-172; [Dem.] 34.36)’, The Cauldron of Ariantas, P. Guldager Bilde, J. Munk Højte & V. F. Stolba (eds.), Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, 197-208.
- B. Bäbler 2002, ‘‘Long-Haired Greeks in Trousers’: Olbia and Dio Chrysostom (Or. 36, ‘Borystheniticus’)’, Ancient Civilizations 8, 311-27.
- R. Delbrück 1912, Antike porträts, Marcus & Weber, Bonn.
- K. Fittschen 1989, ‘‘Barbaren’-köpfe: zur Imitation Alexanders d.Gr. in der mittleren Kaiserzeit‘, BIACS 36, 108-13.
- M. Gleason 1995, Making Men. Sophists and Self-Representation in Ancient Rome, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
- A. Lampinen 2019, ‘Physiognomy, ekphrasis, and the ‘ethnographicising’ register in the second sophistic’, Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body. Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World, J. Cale Johnson & A. Stavru (eds.), De Gruyter, Berlin, 229-271.
- D. Roller 2020, Empire of the Black Sea. The Rise and Fall of the Mithridatic World, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- K. Romiopoulou 1997, Εθνικό Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο. Συλλογή ρωμαϊκών γλυπτών, Tameio Archaiologikōn Porōn kai Apallotriōseōn, Athens.
- R. R. R. Smith 1998, Hellenistic Royal Portraits, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
- B. D. Shaw 1982, ‘‘Eaters of Flesh, Drinkers of Milk’: The Ancient Mediterranean Ideology of the Pastoral Nomad’, Ancient Society 13, 5-31.
- S. Swain (ed.) 2007, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Skholion (Suomen Bysantin tutkimuksen seuran jäsenlehti) 2/2017, 2-8.

Histos 15, 2021

A review/discussion on Der ethnographische Topos in der Alten Geschichte: Annäherungen an ein omn... more A review/discussion on Der ethnographische Topos in der Alten Geschichte: Annäherungen an ein omnipräsentes Phänomen, ed. Michael Zerjadtke; Franz Steiner 2020.

Skholion, 2020

Maijastina Kahlos: Roomalaiset ja barbaarit. Otava: Helsinki 2020. ISBN 978-951-1-33504-7. 245 si... more Maijastina Kahlos: Roomalaiset ja barbaarit. Otava: Helsinki 2020. ISBN 978-951-1-33504-7. 245 sivua. 32,95 €.

Suunnilleen viimeisten kymmenen vuoden kuluessa on julkisessa keskustelussa Suomessa ja muualla tavan takaa käytetty Rooman valtakunnan tuhoa, "barbaarien invaasioita" ja muita vähintäänkin kyseenalaisia analogioita, kun keskustellaan ajankohtaisista, usein vahvan ideologisesti värittyneistä kysymyksistä. Tutkijakunnan velvollisuudeksi on tullut korjata räikeimpiä väärinymmärryksiä ja jopa tahallisia väärintulkintoja. Suomalaisen tutkijayhteisön keskuudesta on erottunut aktiivisella osallistumisellaan erityisesti dosentti Maijastina Kahlos. Onkin suuri onni, että tämä maamme johtava myöhäisantiikin asiantuntija sekä hyvin aktiivinen ja monialainen antiikin barbaarien tutkija on nyt kirjoittanut suurelle yleisölle suunnatun suomenkielisen yleisesityksen roomalaisten ja barbaareiksi kutsuttujen kansojen vuorovaikutuksesta.

Arctos (Acta Philologica Fennica), 2014

Arctos (Acta Philologica Fennica), 2013

Studia Celtica Fennica, 2012

Arctos (Acta Philologica Fennica), 2012

Studia Celtica Fennica, 2011

Given at the Panel 'Ethnographic Discourses across Literary Genres in Classical and Late Antiquit... more Given at the Panel 'Ethnographic Discourses across Literary Genres in Classical and Late Antiquity', of the XIV Celtic Conference in Classics, Coimbra 11-14th July 2023, on 12 July 2023.

This paper explores whether – and in what conditions – the two important Later Imperial historiog... more This paper explores whether – and in what conditions – the two important Later Imperial historiographers Ammianus and Eunapius allow or deny non-Roman groups a degree of agency in terms of futurity and hope. In discussing these dynamics, I am focusing on these writers’ narrativization and causal explanations around the migration and settlement of ‘Gothic’ groups into the Roman empire. Greeks and Romans had long sought to explain such processes of mobility, but it is worth examining whether the closer and more intertwined relations between Romans and non-Romans in the Late Antiquity led to any deepening of how much ‘mindreading’ was directed at the hopes of outgroups. ‘Mind-reading’ outgroup hopes may well have been an increasing concern to the historiographers of the Later Roman Empire, and it will be worth examining whether they might offer evidence for either an entrenchment or a broadening of the received Roman modes of perceiving outgroup volition and futurity.

My opening presentation for the workshop 'Markers of Northernness in Greek Ethnography and Geogra... more My opening presentation for the workshop 'Markers of Northernness in Greek Ethnography and Geography'. This includes a little potted history of the Greek Image of 'Northern' Religion from Herodotus to the High Empire. The treatment is general rather than detailed, so as to set the tone and some relevant themes to the two following days of papers and discussions.

The intertextual links between Lucan’s and Tacitus’ impressive ekphraseis of certain imagined nor... more The intertextual links between Lucan’s and Tacitus’ impressive ekphraseis of certain imagined northern groves have been recognised for a long time and discussed as evidence for the literary connections between different genres in the Late Julio-Claudian and Flavian contexts. Yet a hitherto unexplored aspect of these fascinating and rich passages is the emotional charge that is clearly present in each of them, though subtly manipulated by the writers to serve their more particular points in each context. Holy groves were also a longstanding part of the Roman religion, but during the troubled mid-first century CE, the sacred sites of northern peoples – located at least in the realms of imagination in wooded surroundings – the groves of Gauls (in the case of Lucan) and those among the Germani and Britons (in Tacitus) tend to emerge as compellingly (and perhaps compulsively) elaborated loci horridi.
Reading the Lucanic (Bell. civ. 3.399-425) and Tacitean (Germ. 39; Ann. 1.61; 14.30) passages on Gallic and Germanic holy groves and bringing them into conversation not only with other relevant passages by the same authors but also with the modern theories of the ‘history of emotions’, I hope to cast new light on the role that natural loci horridi of the northern ritual space played in shaping Roman collective anxieties. These, I will argue, had much to do with the imperial power’s anxieties about the loyalties of their northern subjects and ostensible allies, as well as about the capacity of certain types of imagined landscapes to symbolise atavistic religion and resistance to Roman domination. ‘Fear’ is certainly one of the emotions evoked by these landscapes, but I hope to show that this blanket category covers a remarkable emotional range in these passages.

After the disturbances caused in the early 270s BCE by several forays of barbarians – soon called... more After the disturbances caused in the early 270s BCE by several forays of barbarians – soon called either Galatai or Keltoi in our sources – Delphi became an anchor for a vigorous strain of barbaromachic innovations, knowledge-ordering, and mythologization. Resources for these innovations included the tradition of Delphi’s preservation from the alleged Persian attack, the already-existing imagery from ethnographies of northern peoples, ideas about divine epiphany, and some mythistorical narratives such as the brigandage of Orchomenian Phlegyans. The different Hellenistic polities, dynasties and koina had widely differing motives for their use of the Delphic sanctuary as a conceptual hub for narratives of barbarian hubris and the defence of Hellas, but what is common to all is the creative reapplication of existing knowledge base that had connections to either the spatial, ritual or mythical aspects of Apollo’s sanctuary.

This paper will discuss Delphi’s role as an ideological and epistemological hub for Greek and Roman barbaromachic narratives from the Galatian invasions until the Late Republic. Many of the literary sources from the most fertile, Hellenistic period of innovations are fragmentary in nature, but enough has been preserved for us to draw some conjectures about the different uses that the Galatian attack was put to among the Greeks and even in inter-cultural communication. As the ‘new universal barbarians’ (Marszal 2000, 222), Galatae/Galli offered a common template for ancient debates on identity, belonging, piety, ritual, and Hellenicity. The paper will also propose that Delphi may have been instrumental for the Roman adoption of the ethnonym Galli as a common name tag for their North-Italian adversaries. The epistemological anchoring of Roman elite’s barbaromachic posturing on Delphi is clearly visible in the literary and epigraphic sources.

My paper examines a pair of interconnected but apparently quite distinct literary topoi – in them... more My paper examines a pair of interconnected but apparently quite distinct literary topoi – in themselves reflecting a set of influential stereotypes – encountered in Greek literature about foreign peoples on the move. Firstly, the 'gentes vagae', groups of indelibly nomadic barbarians, could be explained to have adopted this subsistence pattern through either climatic or cultural reasons (physis or nomos), but very often the power of the inherited ‘Scythian’ paradigm was so powerful that there was no need to aetiologise their incessant wandering.
Secondly, the so-called 'gentes fugaces', who only truly emerge in the literary tradition after the invasions of the Galatae, but some of the causative reasons for these peoples’ enforced mobility may stem from slightly earlier, when Aristotle and Ephorus were both referring to northern groups having to deal with oceanic inundations. This theme was later taken up as a proposed reason for the Cimbric migrations, though Posidonius, for one, had none of it. For him – and his Roman patrons – the idea of Cimbri as marauding bandits was a powerful delegitimating theme. This points out to the way that the topoi of fugax gens and gens vaga could be swapped if need be; a given author’s polemical or other agendas could recommend one or the other model – such as in the case of Polybius’ “Scythicized” Celts.

As many contemporary contexts demonstrate, mobility can generate fairly strong – if ill-defined –... more As many contemporary contexts demonstrate, mobility can generate fairly strong – if ill-defined – sources of fear and hostility between different groups of people. The question I will be approaching (even if very tentatively) is whether such considerations can be singled out in our ancient Greco-Roman sources. If identities are both expressed and read as symbols of human beings’ belonging, as one recent study (Ehala 2018) would have it, the obscuring of the signal (or signifier) part of outgroup identities – the visual signs that are cues to (stereotypical) assumptions of the meaning (signified) part of the identities – could threaten the ingroup’s power to identify and distinguish subaltern groups. In the context of an imperial state with plenty of evidence for cultural and phenotypic variance for its urban denizens – such as the Roman Empire – the dominant group could conceivably be motivated by the perceived loss of groupiness (their own and those of subaltern outgroups) to reinforce the distinctness of identities supposedly threatened by mobility. Increased subaltern mobility, then, can be perceived by the cultural insiders of the empire as leading to a crisis in governability, and hence be portrayed as a negative thing.
My paper suggests that in some cases of the High-Imperial material – perhaps particularly those aligned with the interests of the ‘Second Sophistic’ – we are seeing indications of Greek authors either expressing or reacting to fears about increased mobility threatening the distinctiveness of group identities in the Empire. Another potentially relevant concept may be the ‘narratives of reverse colonization’ (Arata 1996, 255-56): if an empire poses, in some ways, a challenge or even a threat to the identity of the imperial people, then mobility within the empire is the lived, structural vector of this threat. This has been theorised very well in the case of the fin-de-siècle European literature produced in the colonising societies of France and Britain, but there is perhaps some heuristic value in seeing whether this might apply to the case of the Roman Empire and its dominant – though interwoven – Greek and Roman identities. In the case of the Greeks, the complex ideas relating to Greek identity/-ies during the Second Sophistic seems even to have cast the Roman rule as an example of ‘mobility of the others’.

A presentation given at the conference "Mediterranean flows: People, ideas and objects in motion", held online by Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies on 10-11 December 2020.

Given at the international online conference 'The (Im)Penetrable Barriers. Borders and Migrations... more Given at the international online conference 'The (Im)Penetrable Barriers. Borders and Migrations in History', Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia, on 17 Oct 2020.

Although the Livian narrative of Hannibal’s crossing is the most famous one of the Late-Republican expressions given to the historical exempla of breaching the Alps, the Roman preoccupation with the Alps as the tutamen of Italy owed their epistemic immediacy to a much more recent event – the Cimbric Wars. This traumatic episode had reawakened imagery of the northern enemies penetrating the ‘Wall of Italy’, which in some cases went back all the way to the Mid-Republican traditions of the Gallic Invasions. Much more demonstrable, however, are the way in which this very theme was back-projected into earlier historical threats, and the enduring significance of this imagery even during the Augustan era. Remnants of the same Roman insecurity about the ‘Wall of Italy’ being breached, perhaps especially by northerners, are even preserved in the historians of later Julio-Claudians, such as Caligula and Nero.
My paper will first look at the likely origins of the idea of Alps as the ‘Wall of Italy’ in the Middle-Republican back-projections of the predestined nature of Rome’s dominance within Italy and the role of Gauls, in particular, as an external intruders in the peninsula. Next, the Late Republican (broadly, but not solely, ‘Livian’) stage of the motif is reviewed, and the impact of the Cimbric Wars (113-101 BCE) on this imagery is debated.

Does Late Antique historiography ever imagine barbarian groups that have left their homelands as ... more Does Late Antique historiography ever imagine barbarian groups that have left their homelands as feeling themselves displaced – and are their motivations, hopes and fears empathised with? Ancient rhetoricians and writers could certainly, when the occasion demanded, empathise with barbarian hopes: while often described as ill-grounded and ultimately futile, it was mostly granted that they acted upon reasoning that seemed rational to themselves – though not necessarily to the Greek or Roman insiders. Setting out of one’s own original home region was imagined to be an act of trust even among outsider groups, and Late-Imperial authors such as Dexippus and Ammianus Marcellinus seem to imply that from a group of people at the mercy of Fate, a degree of opportunism was only to be expected. This is particularly prominent in the case of contemporary groups, whose motivations could have featured higher in the minds of the Romans than those of past historical outgroups.
What do these pieces of the ancient evidence actually allow us to say about the extent of empathy with emigrants and displaced groups in the Late Roman society? They are of course highly partisan pieces of rhetoric, but by definition their arguments needed to have some sort of basis on their audiences’ expectations. My paper offers a set of cases where, by close-reading the texts and relating them to both the ancient theories about emotions and the ancient historiographical tradition, we can uncover some of the dynamics at play. Rhetorical pathos and descriptions of dramatic peripeteiai all played their part in shaping these vignettes; in addition to this, the topos of a gens vaga or a people on the move was already a well-established motif. Overall, however, even with the myriad techniques of ‘othering’ that we see characterising the Late Antique writing about outgroups, the possibility of evoking empathy even towards displaced barbarians seems to have been recognised by Roman historians.

Given at the 5th Finnish History Research Conference, held at the Oulu University on 26 October 2... more Given at the 5th Finnish History Research Conference, held at the Oulu University on 26 October 2019.

Presented on 9 Feb 2019 in the international colloquium "Creating and Strengthening Identities: G... more Presented on 9 Feb 2019 in the international colloquium "Creating and Strengthening Identities: Greek and Roman Stereotypes of the East", held at the Finnish Institute at Athens, Zitrou 16.

Late Antiquity witnessed the ancient world’s third great proliferation of physiognomical argument... more Late Antiquity witnessed the ancient world’s third great proliferation of physiognomical argumentation and theory-building, following the two previous ones in the early-to-middle Hellenistic period and the High Roman Empire of the first half of the second century CE. It was during this latest stage that the physiognomical work of Polemo of Laodicea, a rhetorician and physiognomist of the second century, was translated into Latin by an anonymous writer and excerpted by the ‘iatrosophist’ Adamantius of Alexandria. Ammianus Marcellinus, too, demonstrates a clear interest in physiognomical inferences, both in terms of individuals and entire peoples. This paper will first review briefly the evidence for Late-Antique physiognomical order of knowledge as it applied to entire peoples. The rest consists of a sample of case studies from Adamantius’ Physiognomica, the anonymous Latin De physiognomonia, and Ammianus Marcellinus’ ethnographical sections. Through them, it will be demonstrated that even within the intensely networked and multicultural Later Roman Empire, purported phenotypic distinctions between population groups were rhetorically emphasised in order to put forward physiognomical arguments. This also sustained the image of a ‘more perfect empire’ ruling over a triumphalistically displayed diversity of humankind. The associated physiognomical rhetoric gave free rein to arguments whereby the unitary, ‘perfect’ Greek physiognomy was used as a standard against which all the other peoples of the empire (and the world) were compared – and found wanting. This essentialized diversity could also give rise to arguments (as in Ammianus) about an ‘utilitarian plurality’, where each subaltern population could serve the enduring Roman wor(l)d-power in a particular role according to their ‘ethnic’ characteristics.

When the Early Imperial Roman writers imagined the cultural processes taking place in the newly-c... more When the Early Imperial Roman writers imagined the cultural processes taking place in the newly-conquered Gaul, they frequently had recourse to a rhetoric that can appear strikingly similar to some later, colonial narratives of civilizational improvement and the abolition of nefarious ritual life. I will focus on the possible local informants of those Romans who, according to our literary sources (e.g. Pliny, Suetonius), rooted out the Druidic rites from Gaul. How did a Roman administrator recognize the forbidden ‘Druidic’ parts of Gallic ritual life? Who acted as the subaltern middlemen for the Romans in this process, and did they have any influence on the direction of the Roman gaze? This paper seeks to explore whether we might be able to use colonial analogies, particularly from British India, to aid us in distinguishing the knowledge-generation practices of the Roman administrators in the Early Imperial religious ‘middle grounds’ of Gaul.

Presented in workshop 'Northern Barbarians and their Representation', School of Classics, Univers... more Presented in workshop 'Northern Barbarians and their Representation', School of Classics, University of St Andrews; 21 March 2018.

My paper, though modest in scope, is perhaps overly ambitious in the sense that it seeks to ident... more My paper, though modest in scope, is perhaps overly ambitious in the sense that it seeks to identify and discuss indications of religious affinity and/or affiliation in a text that is only a partial and imperfect in its preservation.The Expositio/Descriptio has been studied primarily as a valuable testimony for Late-Imperial trade and economy, but I will argue that it is well worth the while to go through some of its other significant motifs - such as indications of religious affinity. We need to keep in mind the option that the author was neither Christian nor pagan – inasmuch as such religious affiliations existed in any monolithic way, at all – but belonged to the possibly very sizable portion of the population for whom it was expedient (or sufficient) to remain respectful of all cults and wisdom traditions. The author’s enthusiasm and loyalty seems to be devoted to the flow of goods, services and local specialities in the imperial network, into which the presence of the emperor(s) created notes of particularly heightened intensity. Yet I might want to hold back from decisively judging the writer’s identity as that of a ‘merchant-geographer’; it might be better to understand the network aspects of Expositio as an ‘archival’ ordering principle which was reinforced by contemporary texts – and possibly even by maps.

Today, I would like to offer two rather heterogeneous but definitely city-based case studies on h... more Today, I would like to offer two rather heterogeneous but definitely city-based case studies on how literary considerations affected the ancient elite writers’ descriptions of urban unrest among the lower classes in the fourth and fifth centuries. Rhetorical techniques such as outcasting, polarising the mob’s alleged motives, allegations of partisanship, and explaining unrest through generalised, sometimes ethnicised arguments will all be in evidence. I will not be able to draw many firm or final conclusions, but would rather like to offer broader reflections on two episodes which to me seem worth of further study in the given context. In both cases it appears that outcasting of either social or ethnicised nature is at work.

I will present two case studies of a Late Antique and an Early Medieval text which chose idiosync... more I will present two case studies of a Late Antique and an Early Medieval text which chose idiosyncratic ways of operating between the polarities of Christianity and paganism when describing the wisdom traditions of outgroups or ‘ethnically presented’ past groups. The cases are those of the Res gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus and the Cosmographia Aethici of ‘Pseudo-Jerome’. At the first glimpse, there is barely anything linking these two texts, beyond the fact that both are written in a Latin that is idiosyncratic to say the least. There are, however, some interesting commonalities between my two texts today – and they come particularly to the fore when attention is paid to the way both Ammianus and Pseudo-Jerome handle the theme of barbarian sages and the pagan wisdom tradition – the ‘alien wisdom’ of Arnaldo Momigliano. One important shared aspect is that both of these writers inhabit a doubled role in-between paganism and Christianity. In some ways, the Cosmographia is trying to conjure up the world that Ammianus operated in, but from a Merovingian point of view.

The Cosmographia Aethici is a fascinating and somewhat tricky piece of literary forgery from the... more The Cosmographia Aethici is a fascinating and somewhat tricky piece of literary forgery from the earlier half of the eight century (probably not long after 727). Essentially, the Cosmography is a prosimetrum text of indefinable genre by an unknown author, with some ties to Southern English monastic centres and Irish learned tradition but possibly writing in Northern Italy or Merovingian Francia – a writer pretending to be Saint Jerome engaged in producing an expurgated breviarium of a text originally written by a pagan philosopher Aethicus several centuries prior to Jerome’s time, indeed before Christ (72). This ‘Aethicus’ is said to be a ‘Scythian’ from (H)Istria (2), but whether this means the city of Histria in Scythia Minor, by the Black Sea, or the Istrian peninsula of the Adriatic, seems to fluctuate within the text.

Today I would like to examine, however briefly, the ways in which the Cosmographer manipulates his inherited religious polemics and imagery of pagans. Basically, only a handful of scholars has studied the Cosmographia in the past forty years, and there is much to be said about the ‘ethnographicising gestures’ therein, as well, but today will be about religion. Essentially, the themes of religion and ethnography circumscribe the basic ambiguity of the Cosmography, its fine balancing act between tongue-in-cheek narrative of marvels and a pessimistic, even quasi-apocalyptic reflection on the limits of human knowledge. I think what will emerge will demonstrate the many instances of irony and subversion in the treatment of Aethicus’ supposed material – but also reveal the limits of seeing this text as entirely devoid of seriousness.

The context of the Roman Empire, in addition to fostering the tradition of writing about the ‘bar... more The context of the Roman Empire, in addition to fostering the tradition of writing about the ‘barbarian’ groups outside the empire, proved to be a fertile ground ethnographical or ‘ethnographicising’ accounts about the provincial groups and their past. But why was the religious past of the provincial groups still ‘good to think with’ in the second or third centuries of the empire? What were the primary aims for writers in a wide variety of genres and registers as they referred to the religious practices and antiquities of provincial – essentially subaltern – groups in an ‘ethnicising’ fashion? What difference did the spread of Christianity, with its strong and exclusionary religion-based but occasionally ‘ethnicised’ identity, make?
My paper will focus upon the Roman discourse that sought to portray the provincial groups as ‘remembering’ their pre-Roman pasts even in the context of the High and Late Empire. Memory of the past cults and heroes could, on occasion, be portrayed as a holding of grudge towards the Romans, and some uprisings in the provinces seem to have been imagined to have strong religious, even millenarian, motivations. Generally, however, the empire of peoples, regions, and practices was much more useful for rhetorical or knowledge-ordering purposes if its varietas could be maintained – but for this purpose, it was necessary to relegate the provincials to their ‘ethnic’ roles, about which centuries-earlier material could still be circulated. Such a mind-set is essentially colonial, and thus amenable to readings informed by Subaltern Studies, but it can usefully be studied from the point of view of the Greco-Roman tradition of religious ethnography – or perhaps more aptly ‘ethnographicising outgroup religiosities’. This is the particular ‘relocation of religion’ that my paper explores.
The portrayal of what provincials ‘remember’ about their past displays even broader linkages when bearing in mind that during the second and third centuries the concept of religious communities as an ethnos became a more widespread notion – partly through the increasing Judeo-Christian influence, as well as the recirculation of originally Hellenistic ideas about ‘barbarian wise men’. Both inside and outside the empire, peoples’ religious practices and antiquities were suspended in a rhetorical state of ahistoricity, while the only religious change imaginable was the inexorable progress of Christianity’s linear time. For the pagan writers, on the other hand, exploration of the religious traditions of their own past or those of the far-away foreign groups’ supposed present (as in the case of the Brahmans) appeared as an attractive, prestige-building option.

This paper studies the ways in which – and the aims for which – ‘ethnographicised’ information or... more This paper studies the ways in which – and the aims for which – ‘ethnographicised’ information or topoi are wielded across differing second-century genres in the Greek- and Syriac-speaking East. The paper’s source texts represent four second-century authors (Polemo of Laodicea, Claudius Ptolemy, Lucian of Samosata, and Bardaisan of Edessa), as well as referring to the rebuttal of Celsus by Origen, which casts interesting light upon the monotheistic doctrinal disputes within which ‘ethnicised’ themes became increasingly used during the Later Antiquity. Common to all of these texts is that they stem from the cross-pollinating exchange of ideas, theoretical structures, and rhetorical tropes which took place in the context of the Imperial Eastern Mediterranean, facilitated by common language and almost as widely shared common understanding of how ethnographical-seeming details could help to build a winning argument – no matter what the occasion. Inter-generic interactions are evident in many stages of the ancient tradition of ethnographical and ‘ethnographicising’ writing, but the often antiquarian-seeming elements about population groups that are time and again recirculated in Imperial literature have not been extensively studied in terms of their rhetorical and epistemic underpinnings. Their usefulness seems to be confirmed by their constant presence in a variety of registers, and essentialist – often physiognomic – arguments could be deployed both about individual characters and broader group characteristics alike. The orators of the ‘Second Sophistic’, represented by Polemo and Lucian in this paper, found many uses for the technique of keeping provincials ‘ethnic’ for the purposes of their own arguments. The technical literature represented by Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos – and to a certain extent the surviving evidence for Bardaisan’s Book of the Laws of the Countries – found much use for essentialist representations of provincial character(istic)s. Origen, hailing from Alexandria like Ptolemy did, demonstrates in his rebuttal of Celsus’ True Discourse (Orig. Contra Celsum) the freedom with which the supposed ‘ethnic’ antiquities of a number of peoples could be put to use in expositions which had very little to do with ‘real’ ethnography. Identities and religious affiliations are also crossed among this selection of writers in ways that highlight important dynamics (and ironies) associated with the ‘conditioned co-opting’ of provincial backgrounds into the ranks of cultural/doctrinal insiders. Lucian and Bardaisan are Syrians, but while Lucian is in many ways comparable to Polemo, a native of Laodicea, in his approach to the cultural belonging as a ‘sophist-as-Hellene’, Bardaisan has some points in common with both Ptolemy (in terms of his astrological subject matter), and Origen (in the moralising argumentation that pervades his cultural critique). Social and personal interactions become thoroughly enmeshed in some of the examples of rhetorical one-upmanship and self-fashioning involved, whether we are dealing with sophistic set-pieces or doctrinal disputes. For such agendas, the cultural and phenotypic plurality of the Empire’s provinces formed a common pool of ‘embodied knowledge’, to be used when necessary by the learned writers.

Luento 8.11. Suomen Ateenan-, Rooman- ja Lähi-Idän instituuttien järjestämällä kurssilla "Kypros ... more Luento 8.11. Suomen Ateenan-, Rooman- ja Lähi-Idän instituuttien järjestämällä kurssilla "Kypros kulttuurien kohtauspaikkana".

Luento Avoimen yliopiston kurssilla 'Antiikista keskiaikaan: kulttuurisia ja yhteiskunnallisia mu... more Luento Avoimen yliopiston kurssilla 'Antiikista keskiaikaan: kulttuurisia ja yhteiskunnallisia murroksia myöhäisantiikista varhaiskeskiaikaan', AYHISK-221 6.5.-17.6.2021.

Pidetty 20.5.2021 esinauhoitettuna Zoom-luentona.

Luento annettu osana kurssia 'Kulttuurit kulkevat: antiikin ja Lähi-Idän kulttuurien vuorovaikutu... more Luento annettu osana kurssia 'Kulttuurit kulkevat: antiikin ja Lähi-Idän kulttuurien vuorovaikutus', Helsingin yliopisto, 26.4.2016.

Vierailuluento Helsingin työväenopiston latinanryhmälle, 26. maaliskuuta 2013.

A keynote or introductory talk co-written by Antti Lampinen and Petra Pakkanen, given by Petra Pa... more A keynote or introductory talk co-written by Antti Lampinen and Petra Pakkanen, given by Petra Pakkanen as the Director of the Finnish Institute at Athens in the international workshop 'Protection of the Environment in Armed Conflicts' on 4 May 2023. The workshop was organised by the University of Helsinki Faculty of Law, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Faculty of Law, and Athens Public International Law Center.

Esitelmä Suomen Ateenan-instituutin ystävät ry:lle 23.11.2022

This paper was given at the British School of Athens' Upper House Seminar on 14 November 2022. Th... more This paper was given at the British School of Athens' Upper House Seminar on 14 November 2022. The PDF is that used in the presentation. NB! In comments and conversation after the talk, Professor Olga Palagia argued very convincingly why my tentative proposal for re-identifying the bust of 'Sauromates' is unlikely. Her points, for which I am extremely grateful, outlined two serious objections, in particular: 1) the acanthus leaves of the bust's foot would seem to indicate a funeral context, and hence a dead person; 2) there is no known connection between Herodes Atticus and the likeliest find spot of the bust, the Theater of Dionysus. These are all very valid points that go against my proposal of attribution, although the first part of my paper, dealing with the Attic nativism among the sophists, the moral panic about educational mobility, and the role of the Agathion anecdote for Herodes Atticus' own self-fashioning, remains unaffected.

Comedy has often been put forward as a genre of ancient writing where we may, in some topics and ... more Comedy has often been put forward as a genre of ancient writing where we may, in some topics and subjects, be able to get closer to the broader base of popular opinion than in some other, more clearly elite-centred kinds of writing. This does not, however, apply to all kinds of comedy – or indeed all kinds of elite writing. Yet in terms of Old Comedy – the comic plays as written Aristophanes and his predecessors during the Classical era – this characterisation feels quite apt. The comedies of this period were of course subject to some limitation and conventions stemming from their genre, but they were in constant interaction with the opinion and worldviews of a fairly broad set of (freeborn) audiences of their contemporaries. This talk seeks to kick off the web seminar series by taking a look at Aristophanes’ ways of using ethnic categories and stereotypes as a material for his comedy.

A paper given on 9 June 2021 at the international Zoom seminar series Herodotus Helpline.

A talk (via Zoom) on 25 March 2021 at the AMME Seminar of Ancient Near Eastern Empires centre of ... more A talk (via Zoom) on 25 March 2021 at the AMME Seminar of Ancient Near Eastern Empires centre of excellence, University of Helsinki.

Seminaariesitelmä (Zoom/etänä), Paideia ry., Turku, 15.10.2020. Paperini pureutui helleeniyden... more Seminaariesitelmä (Zoom/etänä), Paideia ry., Turku, 15.10.2020.

Paperini pureutui helleeniyden kapeaan ja nativistiseen käsittämiseen Polemon Laodikeialaisen 'Fysiognomia'-teoksen säilyneissä fragmenteissa sekä muissa Polemoniin viittaavissa keisariajan lähteissä. Tavoitteena oli etsiskellä toisen sofistiikan identiteetinmuodostuksen murtumalinjoja etenkin maskuliinisuuden ja helleeniyden kategorioiden suhteen, ja lopulta pyrkiä selittämään näitä ottaen huomioon mm. Paige DuBois'n, Maud Gleasonin, Tamsyn Bartonin ja Angelos Chaniotiksen debatoimat teoriarakeenteet ja kontekstit.

Bysanttilaiset kirjoittajat kutsuivat kulttuuriaan ja yhteiskuntaansa yleensä yksinkertaisesti ’r... more Bysanttilaiset kirjoittajat kutsuivat kulttuuriaan ja yhteiskuntaansa yleensä yksinkertaisesti ’roomalaiseksi’. Kuitenkin 1000-luvulta eteenpäin he alkoivat myös käyttämään entistä useammin termiä ’ausonit’ – Ausones (Αὔσονες): termiä esiintyy kautta kirjallisten rekisterien aina Johannes Tzetzeen skoliastisista teksteistä Mikael Attaleialaisen historiankirjoitukseen sekä runoteksteihin ja ylistyspuheisiin. Nimi Ausones oli alun pitäen Pohjois-Campaniassa asuneen itaalisen Aurunci-ryhmän kreikankielinen nimitys. Miksi sitten Ausones-nimitys koki vahvan ja melko äkillisen nousun 1000-luvulla, ja miksi Bysantin roomalaiset kokivat sen hyödylliseksi synonyymiksi omalle viralliselle etnonyymilleen, Rhomaioi (Ῥωμαῖοι/Romani)? Tarkastelen tässä paperissa sitä, kuinka Ausones-termiä hyödynnettiin toisaalta 1000-luvun kirjoittamisessa, ja toisaalta taas 1100-1200-luvuilla, jolloin läntinen latinalainen diskurssi pyrki puskemaan bysanttilaisia kohti Graeci/Graikoi-terminologiaa. Voimakkaasti klassillisoivan ryhmänimen herättäminen henkiin kertoo yllättävän monisyisesti ’roomalaisen’ identiteetin muutoksista ja siihen sydänkeskiajan Välimerellä kohdistuneista retorisista paineista.

This paper attempts to detect whether we might look outside the Greco-Roman historiographical tra... more This paper attempts to detect whether we might look outside the Greco-Roman historiographical tradition in order to explain why a very limited set of characteristics and qualities seem to be so widely shared in almost all historical references to Assyrian rulers. It might be interesting to try and find some of the epistemological mooring points in the broader matrix of theoretical explanations about why Assyrians (or indeed Syrians) of the historiography and the commonly shared knowledge pool about early Middle-Eastern history were the way they were. It might help us also to begin to detect what degree of continuation was perceived between the Assyrians of old and the Syrians of the, say, Roman Imperial era.
Within this context, it seems rather interesting and quite relevant to have a look whether the historiographical references to Assyrian figures conform with the sort of ancient explanation models that sought to categorise and explain the ‘national characteristics’ of Assyrian and Syrian groups.

Esitelmä pidetty Klassillis-filologisen yhdistyksen vuosikokouksen yhteydessä 27. helmikuuta 2018... more Esitelmä pidetty Klassillis-filologisen yhdistyksen vuosikokouksen yhteydessä 27. helmikuuta 2018, klo 18.

I have lately become interested in the knowledge-ordering and rhetorical aspects of the ancient e... more I have lately become interested in the knowledge-ordering and rhetorical aspects of the ancient ethnographic, or rather ethnographically presented, information. What is intended by picking a certain selection of ethnicised exemplars? What are the implied associations triggered by the selection and ordering? Why are contemporary groups omitted in favour of antiquarian ones – or the other way around? And what was the degree to which the old ethnonyms or ethnic categories remained ‘good to think with’ – or were they replaced by more recently salient group images such as those based on provinces? Today I would in particular like to focus on second- and third-century material which seems to point to enduringly essentialising characterisation of not only the ethnic groups of the empire, but also the inhabitants of the provinces. These groups, I will argue, could be on occasion treated as so many jewels in the diadem of the empire, principally valuable for their range of variation and their consequent emphasis on the qualities – perhaps even the health – of the world-empire.

In this research seminar paper I will discuss the ways in which the writers and rhetoricians of t... more In this research seminar paper I will discuss the ways in which the writers and rhetoricians of the High-Imperial era adopted and adapted elements of ethnographic writing into their discourse of cultural belonging. The knowledge-ordering and social-identity-building aspects of the ancient uses of ethnographic - or rather, ethnographic-looking or ethnographically presented - information are foregrounded. What is intended by picking a certain selection of ethnicised exemplars? What are the implied associations triggered by the selection? Why are contemporary groups omitted in favour of antiquarian ones – or the other way around? And what was the degree to which inherited ethnonyms or ethnic categories were still ‘good to think with’? Another big question, so far quite seldom explored, is the connection and position of ethnographicising gestures within and in relation to the register of technical writing in antiquity.

Throughout the paper I will in particular pay attention to how the Roman administrative divisions, primarily provinces, begin in the High Imperial period to obtain a degree of ‘entitativity’ – the quality of being naturalised entities of stereotyping – and emerge as meaningful frameworks of ‘common knowledge’ instead of the previously more narrowly ‘ethnicised’ categories. This would have highlighted the already-existing Greco-Roman tendency to think about population groups in an ‘essentialising’ fashion; an ideological pattern which resulted both from inherited literary tropes and some of the most elaborate technical theory-building of the ancient world – particularly the climatological, astrological, and physiognomic ones.

Tieteiden yö, 8. tammikuuta 2015 - teemana 'Sattuma / Slumpen'

Luento Latinankielen opettajien yhdistys ry:n kesäkoulussa, Kuopio 4. elokuuta 2014.

"Myöhäisantiikin ja merovingiajan gallialaisissa hagiografioissa ja kirkolliskokouksien actoissa ... more "Myöhäisantiikin ja merovingiajan gallialaisissa hagiografioissa ja kirkolliskokouksien actoissa kansanomaisen uskonnollisuuden kuva on paitsi moraaliseen paniikkiin vivahtava, myös anakronistinen sekä praksiksen että palvonnan kohteiden suhteen. Kuvastoa leimaa myös ajallinen pysähtyneisyys: varoitukset demonien ja luonnonkohteiden palvonnan akuuttiudesta eivät näytä millään tavalla vähentyneen yli kolmen vuosisadan kuluessa. Lähiluen tässä esitelmässä eräitä Gallian antikvarisoivassa kirjallisessa ilmastossa tuotettuja lähdetekstejä 400-luvulta 700-luvulle, joissa aiempi klassinen ja myöhäiskeisarillinen traditio pohjoisten kansojen uskonnollisuudesta on selvästi vaikuttanut narratiivin muotoon ja sen motiivien valikoitumiseen. Kirjallisen koulutuksensa myötä klassiset stereotypiat omaksunut kirkollinen eliitti saattoi toki kuvitella maaväestön henkisen ja moraalisen tilan teksteissään kuvaamansa kaltaiseksi, mutta on myös mahdollista että kirkolliskokouksesta toiseen toistuvat varoitukset substandardin uskonnollisuuden jatkuvasta uhasta omaksuivat itsessään formulatorisen luonteen. Hagiografisissa teksteissä tämä motiivien lainaaminen ja suoranainen leikkaa-liimaa –tekniikka on jo hyvin dokumentoitu.
Esitelmäni tarkoituksena on luoda alustava, etupäässä alkuperäislähteisiin ja niiden kirjalliseen kontekstualisointiin keskittyvä preliminäärinen katsaus erääseen lupaavalta vaikuttavaan post doc –aiheeseen. Tämä väitöskirjani kronologista kehystä myöhäisempi ja täten vain muutaman alaviitteen varaan aiemmin jätetty aihe hyötyisi käsittelystä, joka korostaisi gallialaisen kirkollisen eliitin tuottamien tekstien kirjallista traditiosidonnaisuutta sekä yhteyksiä klassillisoivaan topiikkaan. Näin ollen tutkimuskirjallisuuteen, metodologisiaan sekä muihin apuvälineisiin kohdistuvat kommentit ovat erittäin tervetulleita. Etenkin keltologian alalla (Celtic Studies) on lähes systemaattisesti yliarvioitu hagiografisten lähdetekstien ja kirkolliskokousten päätösten todistusvoima mitä tulee esikristillisen uskonnollisuuden säilymiseen Gallian alueella. Osaksi tästä syystä tutkimukseni pyrkii sijoittamaan kansanomaisen uskonnollisuuden aiempaa keskeisemmin antikvarisoivan kirkollisen sivistyneistön mielikuvissa muodostuneeksi artefaktiksi, joka kertoo enemmän antiikin eliitin uskonnollisesti värittyneen retorisen rekisterin jatkuvuudesta kuin esikristillisen kansanuskon säilymisestä. Ymmärrettävä sosiologinen motiivi substandardin kansanuskon konstruoinnille löytynee ’jatkuvan kääntymisen’ (ongoing conversion) legitimoivasta paradigmasta, johon viittaamalla uskonnollisten spesialistien on mahdollista perustella erityisoikeuksiensa säilyttämistä (vrt. Charles Ramble Tiibetin buddhalaisuudesta). Gallian vaikutusvaltaisen ja sosiaalisesti suhteellisen eksklusiivisen eliitin kohdalla tämä vaikutin lienee varsin mahdollinen."

An open lecture given in the International Bookshop Arkadia on May 15, 2013.

: That the Greeks and the Romans held distinct, culturally shared ideas about various peoples nor... more : That the Greeks and the Romans held distinct, culturally shared ideas about various peoples north to the Mediterranean zone has long been recognised. What has been perhaps less explored is the way in which the motifs and elements in this ‘ethno(geo)graphic archive’ could be transposed from one population group to others within the broad sweep of the northern expanse. What elements enabled the Greek audiences of different eras to associate groups as distinct as Scythians, Thracians, Celts, Germans and other as belonging to this commonality of northerners? Some commonalities must certainly have been real, but even in these cases the Greek imagination made connections, filled gaps, and provided overarching explanations. Ethnonyms, while sometimes inherited for centuries in the tradition, formed a heuristic tool that was strongly conditioned by ancient practices of knowledge ordering: for instance, name-tags such as ‘Scythians’ have been often characterised as applicable to any group thought to hail from the Pontic North. But the cardinal direction was only one aspect, and interacted with cultural and climatic explanations, among other things. What were the most basic components of this shared ethnographic or geographic ‘northernness’ in the minds of Greek writers and audiences?
This workshop organised by the Finnish Institute at Athens aims to gather together a diverse group of experts on ancient ethnography, geography, and ‘septentriography’ – i.e. writings on the northern parts of the oikoumene – to discuss the parameters of the Greek perceptions of ‘northernness’ from a variety of perspectives. The programme seeks to delve into the elements that made the North and the northerners stand out as an entity or commonality in the Greek thinking from Homer to Late Antiquity and Byzantium, as well as to bring the different aspects of the septentriographic tradition into a fuller conversation with each other. The workshop is closely connected to the institute’s long-standing and ongoing research interest in the interactions between Nordic regions and the Mediterranean, as well as Antti Lampinen’s own current research project on ancient ethnography.
What made the north ‘North’ for the Greeks? What marked a person, people, or a region as ‘northern’? ‘Eaters of flesh, drinkers of milk’ (Shaw 1982) could be found not only in the north; dressing up in animal skins or pelts was imagined as having also been the norm among the very early stages of civilization elsewhere; tattooing was practiced in various lands, as was human sacrifice; other mountain barriers could perhaps match the Rhipaean Mountains in edge-of-the-world symbolism; and there were other blessed peoples in the furthest margins of the world besides the Hyperboreans. Yet ancient explanations of the common qualities of northern groups – both physical and mental – clearly imagined them as parts of a shared whole, and this impression is reinforced by the way in which the tradition transposes ethnographic elements from one population to another. Hazy and interchangeable commonplaces were reshuffled and reused by authors for whom the markers of northernness offered a valuable resource, with immediate purchase in the ‘commonsense ethnogeography’ (cf. Geus & Thiering, eds. 2014) of the north.

Programme of the international colloquium 'Creating and Strengthening Identities: Greek and Roman... more Programme of the international colloquium 'Creating and Strengthening Identities: Greek and Roman Stereotypes of the East', held at the Finnnish Institute at Athens on 8-9 February, 2019.

Roman historians have long pored over the scattered evidence for rebellion by subaltern groups in... more Roman historians have long pored over the scattered evidence for rebellion by subaltern groups in different regions and periods, particularly in the light of a growing scholarly focus on resistance in all forms over the past four decades. But almost all work has been carried out within the frame of social and/or political history, seeking to understand what actually happened – a heroic task in many cases given the meagreness of the evidence in most cases. Much less attention has been given to understanding the presuppositions and agendas that shape Roman discourse on revolt, though there is ample material for such a study and it ought to be a prerequisite for in-depth social history based on Roman sources. This exploratory workshop aims to build on a few interventions that have sought to shift the focus from revolt to discourse about revolt. The aim is to place the texts themselves centre stage: to explore their categories, explanatory models, narrative devices – and their ulterior motives; to better understand how the Greco-Roman elite understood and/or chose to represent resistance by subaltern groups.

History in flux, 2021

The Roman preoccupation with the Alps as the tutamen of Italy owed its epistemic immediacy to a m... more The Roman preoccupation with the Alps as the tutamen of Italy owed its epistemic immediacy to a much more recent event—the Cimbric Wars (113-101 BCE). This traumatic episode had reawakened imagery of the northern enemies penetrating the “Wall of Italy,” which in some cases went all the way back to the Mid-Republican narrative traditions of the Gallic Invasions and the much more frequently debated shock of Hannibal’s invasion. The significance of this imagery continued even beyond the Augustan era, so that remnants of the same Roman insecurity about the “Wall of Italy” being breached, especially by northerners, are preserved in narratives about later Julio-Claudians such as Caligula and Nero. This article first looks at the likely origins of the idea of the Alps as the “Wall of Italy” in Middle-Republican perceptions, projected back onto the past and presenting Rome as predestined to dominate Italy and the Gauls in particular as external intruders in the peninsula. Next, the Late Rep...

The Classical Review, 2016

A preliminary bibliography of research literature on the topic of Ammianus' source value to the e... more A preliminary bibliography of research literature on the topic of Ammianus' source value to the ethnic and social stereotypes of his era

Updated in autumn 2018 on the basis of an earlier bibliography, formulated for the course 'Approa... more Updated in autumn 2018 on the basis of an earlier bibliography, formulated for the course 'Approaches to Religion in the Study of Celtic Cultures' in autumn 2012.