Rome and New Rome

Another volume has recently emerged in the prestigious series, Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity: Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly, eds., Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2012), 496pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us:

The city of Constantinople was named New Rome or Second Rome very soon after its foundation in AD 324; over the next two hundred years it replaced the original Rome as the greatest city of the Mediterranean. In this unified essay collection, prominent international scholars examine the changing roles and perceptions of Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity from a range of different disciplines and scholarly perspectives. The seventeen chapters cover both the comparative development and the shifting status of the two cities. Developments in politics and urbanism are considered, along with the cities' changing relationships with imperial power, the church, and each other, and their evolving representations in both texts and images. These studies present important revisionist arguments and new interpretations of significant texts and events. This comparative perspective allows the neglected subject of the relationship between the two Romes to come into focus while avoiding the teleological distortions common in much past scholarship.

An introductory section sets the cities, and their comparative development, in context. Part Two looks at topography, and includes the first English translation of the Notitia of Constantinople. The following section deals with politics proper, considering the role of emperors in the two Romes and how rulers interacted with their cities. Part Four then considers the cities through the prism of literature, in particular through the distinctively late antique genre of panegyric. The fifth group of essays considers a crucial aspect shared by the two cities: their role as Christian capitals. Lastly, a provocative epilogue looks at the enduring Roman identity of the post-Heraclian Byzantine state. Thus, Two Romes not only illuminates the study of both cities but also enriches our understanding of the late Roman world in its entirety.

The Eternally Whispering City?

"Rome" looms large in the imagination of all Christians, and not just Catholics. Anyone who has read, e.g., Lutheran or Calvinist polemics of the sixteenth century, or Orthodox polemics of our own day, or, for that matter, certain Catholic dissidents today, knows that "Rome" is often a short-hand for what is as often as not said to be a distant, oppressive, dictatorial, and hopelessly retrograde regime of celibates ruining life for the rest of us. (The best response to that tedious nonsense, I think, was that of Walker Percy: "without 'Rome' what you have is California.") "Rome" thus functions as what Charles Taylor calls a "social imaginary." Too often, however, our imagination about Rome is at a considerable remove from the reality as, e.g., John Allen and Thomas Reese have shown.

Now a new book is out to help us peel back the myriad layers that make up the eternal city: R.J.B. Bosworth, Whispering City: Rome and Its Histories (Yale University Press, 2011), 358pp + 38 illustrations.
About this book, the publisher tells us:

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud claimed that Rome must be comprehended as "not a human dwelling place but a mental entity," in which the palaces of the Caesars still stand alongside modern apartment buildings in layers of brick, mortar, and memory. "The observer would need merely to shift the focus of his eyes, perhaps, or change his position, in order to call up a view of either the one or the other."

In this one-of-a-kind book, historian Richard Bosworth accepts Freud's challenge, drawing upon his expertise in Italian pasts to explore the many layers of history found within the Eternal City. Often beginning his analysis with sites and monuments that can still be found in contemporary Rome, Bosworth expands his scope to review how political groups of different eras—the Catholic Church, makers of the Italian nation, Fascists, and "ordinary" Romans (be they citizens, immigrants, or tourists)—read meaning into the city around them. Weaving in the city's quintessential figures (Garibaldi, Pius XII, Mussolini, and Berlusconi) and architectural icons (the Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica, the Victor Emmanuel Monument, and EUR) with those forgotten or unknown, Bosworth explores the many histories that whisper their rival and competing messages and seek to impose their truth upon the passing crowds. But as this delightful study will reveal, Rome, that magisterial palimpsest, has never accepted a single reading of its historic meaning.