Domination: the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 433

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Through her TV work and writing, Professor Alice Roberts is a powerful and effective advocate for archaeology in the public realm. In Domination, she extends her coverage to explore Christianity in Late Antiquity, unpicking the intimate connection between the spread of the Church and its connection with the Roman state. She paints the Church as first capitalising on its imperial support, but then acting as a conduit for the maintenance of the legacy of Rome, as the Empire saw profound political changes from the 5th century onwards.

Roberts’ avowed humanism is well-known, and the influence of evolutionary biologist and humanist advocate Richard Dawkins’ notion of the ‘meme’ (a unit of cultural practice that is analogous to a ‘gene’) is pervasive. Roberts’ ultimate overriding question is: ‘why is the Church so successful at “reproducing” itself?’. She answers this by arguing that the Church was highly effective in leveraging its official links with the Empire to build its political and economic powerbase. This basic model is uncontroversial. Roberts herself is open throughout the book that this argument has been present in the scholarship for a good 50 years or more. While there is not a developed reference apparatus (this is clearly pitched as a public-facing rather than an academic text), she regularly cites key scholars in the field, and it is clear that much of the book is underpinned by extensive up-to-date research, but there are also noticeable gaps. For instance, to write a book about Late Antiquity without having engaged with any work by Peter Brown certainly has to be categorised as a bit of an oversight.

Surprisingly for a book by an archaeologist and prefaced with a quote that emphasises the value of archaeology in revising established narratives, the book takes a very traditional approach. The story is driven by documentary sources, and the archaeology often feels rather ‘bolted on’. Roberts seems uncomfortable with shades of grey and there is a tendency to see everything in terms of binaries. One example of this is the lumping of everyone above the level of peasant into the category of ‘elites’. Sidonius Apollinaris, an immensely wealthy and well-connected Gaulish aristocrat operating in an international arena, is unequivocally a member of the Late Antique elite. But then we see St Patrick placed into the same social category – and he came from a middling family with probably little to no influence beyond their immediate hometown, unlike the internationally mobile Sidonius. To place Patrick and Sidonius together in the same analytical category (elites) is to stretch the term so far as to render it meaningless – it’s like pairing a Russian oligarch with a local businessman.

There is the same lack of nuance in describing ascetic practices. Roberts is certainly right to note that there was a performative element to some aspects of the hermit lifestyle. Again, it is not a controversial position (and here one badly wishes Roberts had engaged with the work of Peter Brown). But there is more to it than this: whether or not Cuthbert’s hermitage on Inner Farne was visible from the royal site at Bamburgh, it was still an island, and one which even today is challenging to access at many times of year. Life for a hermit there would often have been difficult and unpleasant. Yet the narrative – buttressed by some rather bizarre and anecdotal contemporary parallels – cannot seem to comprehend the notion that any aspect of religious belief might have meaning to the individual beyond the purely performative and external. This is perhaps the crux of book’s problem. By analysing Late Antiquity solely in terms of overarching institutions – the Church and the Empire – it never really engages with or shows interest in individuals, in terms of what they believed or how they expressed this belief.

This book is a classic curate’s egg: it more-or-less effectively sketches out some of the big picture, but in some places its analysis is regrettably limited and in others the texts are simply misrepresented. One can’t help wishing that the author had run towards rather than away from nuance. Such an approach would have provided a more subtle and rounded version of what is an incredibly important story.

REVIEW BY DAVID PETTS

Domination: the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity
Alice Roberts
Simon & Schuster UK, £22
ISBN 978-1398510081