Identity and Ethnicity

In this paper, I examine the process of representation in the funerary relief of Fonteia Helena and Fonteia Eleusis, two freedwomen commemorated in Augustan Rome (CIL 6.18524).  I argue that these women are representing themselves as married to each other, and in doing so construct an identity for themselves using the cultural tools available to them.

In his classic 1986 work on The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Anthony D. Smith argued that the Phoenicians are a prime example of his central argument that although the ‘nation’ as a political entity is a modern phenomenon, the kind of ethnic groups united by culture and sentiment that often justify the existence of modern nations can be found in much earlier periods. My suggestion in this paper is that the Phoenicians in fact illustrate a very different phenomenon, in which ancient ethnic groups are constructed by modern national discourse.

This paper offers a revisitation of language choice in the renowned early second-century letters from the soldier Claudius Terentianus to his alleged father, the veteran Claudius Tiberianus. Often taken as an example of “Vulgar Latin”, these Egyptian texts are particularly significant for the study of bilingualism in the Roman army, for Terentianus sends Tiberianus letters in both Latin and Greek alternately, performing what in Sociolinguistics is called "code-alternation".

Scholars of imperial Greek literature have long appreciated the fundamental importance of the classical Greek past for the Second Sophistic movement.  For Philostratus, the author of the Vitae Sophistarum (VS), a core question is who, in the ethnically interconnected Mediterranean, can inherit and claim access to the legacy of this Greek past: is Hellenism inborn or can it be taught?