IMC 2023: Sessions
Session 808: Taste and Disgust in Late Antiquity, IV: Social Status
Tuesday 4 July 2023, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Postgraduate & Early-Career Late Antiquity Network |
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| Organiser: | Henry Anderson, Department of Classics & Ancient History, University of Exeter |
| Moderator/Chair: | Nicola Ernst, School of Historical & Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland |
| Paper 808-a | Per manum mediatoris: Taste and Discernment in Documentary Shorthand (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Literacy and Orality, Mentalities, Social History |
| Paper 808-b | 'You will find all pleasures and tastes in this book': Influencing Aristocratic Culture in Quodvultdeus of Carthage's Book of the Promises and Predictions of God (Language: English) Index terms: Biblical Studies, Ecclesiastical History, Mentalities, Religious Life |
| Paper 808-c | Public Disgust, Heresy, and Theodosian Court Politics (Language: English) Index terms: Law, Political Thought, Religious Life |
| Abstract | This session seeks to discuss how taste and disgust interacted in regard to the social status of individuals in Late Antiquity. The first paper (Kirsh) argues that previously undeciphered shorthand subscriptions on papyrus contracts reveal the social and cultural tastes of non-elite secretaries. The second paper (Duncan) examines how Quodvultdeus, following the examples of Basil of Caesarea and Augustine, sought to influence and Christianise the cultural tastes of the members of aristocratic social circles in North Africa. The third paper (Anderson) analyses how the disgust towards socially marginalised groups such as heretics trumpeted by early 5th-century imperial governments was often tempered with a pragmatism that saw both heretics and pagans reach high office. |