To understand the formation of identities in post-Roman North Africa, it is best to start with a brief discussion of the situation as it stood in the later Roman period. This is partly because we simply know more about the nature of Roman provincial identity than we do about the ideological origins of the successor states, but also because the fifth-century Vandals were heavily influenced by the post-Roman environment in which their shared sense of identity developed. As we shall see, being Vandal was as much about being a man and being an aristocrat as it was about anything else, and to understand these ideals we need to understand what defined these roles within the Roman world.
Roman identity was hardly a straightforward ethnic affiliation, and was based primarily upon political and legal definitions, and upon shared social and cultural practices.14 ‘Roman’ identity itself was never based upon a fiction of shared biological descent among members of a specific group. In an empire which spanned the Mediterranean, different categories of social belonging were needed to create an illusion of cultural cohesion. As recent studies have demonstrated, Roman ethnicity and the expression of Romanitas (‘Romanness’ provides a clumsy approximation) was essentially performed, rather than innate, and was overwhelmingly based upon certain notions of appropriate male behaviour.15 An individual might show himself to be Roman through the manifestation of a number of personal virtues, including courage, dignity and social decorum; he might display his Romanitas through the wearing of certain clothes, undertaking public service and benefaction, spending his leisure time in appropriate fashion and so on. It was such attributes that made a man a Roman, made him an appropriate husband, father, general and politician, and which distinguished him from a woman, child, barbarian or slave. The specific symbols through which this Roman ideal of masculinity was expressed varied in both time and space, and Romanitas is better regarded as an orchestra of different - and constantly changing - variations on a cultural, political and social theme, than as a normative cultural ideal. Roman ethnicity, moreover, did not exclude the maintenance of other ethnic affiliations; indeed contrasting regional identities could affect the form in which Romanitas was expressed in different places and in different circumstances.16 In North Africa, for example, regional identities retained a profound influence throughout the Roman period and beyond.17
This is illustrated by the different ways in which Romanitas was expressed in late Roman Africa. The rapid spread of Christianity within the region had a profound effect upon local and regional identities. Martyr cults increasingly dominated expressions of civic affiliation, and bishops (many of whom came from the old aristocracies) were happy to harness these new loyalties. Christian - and African - identities were also combined in the recognizable name-stock from which Romans within the region drew.18 The spread of the church also threatened to redefine the cultural ideals of the aristocracy. Augustine of Hippo, the ecclesiastical aristocrat par excellence in North Africa illustrated this clearly through his constant criticism of traditional forms of secular evergetism and public activity, whether the observance of long-standing civic rituals, or through the provision of games for the public.19 In spite of this criticism, these traditional modes of cultural display remained. Secular and civic notions of Romanitas survived into the Vandal period, as we shall see, but the conflict that Augustine stirred up recalls the different media through which cultural identity might be expressed in the later fourth and early fifth century.
The emergence of the military aristocracy as a prominent social group was a further significant change within late Roman society.20 From the early fourth century, the increasing frequency with which the emperors were drawn from the Roman army, and the gradual implementation of a service aristocracy structured along more or less military lines, led to dramatic changes in the symbolic display of the Roman aristocracy more generally. Whilst the senatorial toga remained an important symbol of political status, pseudo-military uniform and hunting garb became common among the upper classes.21 By the end of the century, Honorius and Theodosius were issuing laws to insist that senators in the Roman forum adopt their traditional garb, rather than donning the fashionable trousers and tunics of the new elite.22
This militarization of Romanitas was less pronounced within the North African provinces than it was elsewhere in the empire. Africa had never been intensively militarized, and did not experience the same social and political upheaval that had such an effect upon the northern frontier zones within this period. Yet in spite of this insulation, the African aristocracy were aware of the changing world around them. As we have seen, the later fourth century and the first decades of the fifth saw some military activity within the region, as powerful local figures ceded from the empire, or sought to use military authority to make their mark on the centre.23 These social changes had an effect upon the ideal of Romanitas.
Figure 4.2 The hunting mosaic from Bord Djedid, Carthage. © The Trustees of the British Museum
The famous hunting mosaics discovered at Bord Djedid in Carthage illustrate the point particularly well.24 These mosaics were excavated in the mid-nineteenth century from a rich villa on the edge of the city, and three fragments of the largest mosaic are now on display in the British Museum. Each of these sections depicts a rider in trousers, tunic and cloak, one lifting his hand in salutation, another in the act of lassoing a deer, and a third following a hunting dog. For a long time, these hunters were assumed to be Vandals on the strength of their strikingly ‘unRoman’ dress, but recent research suggests precisely the opposite. By the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, clothing of this kind was precisely the means by which Romanitas could be expressed.
World History
