Technology to Save the Empire
(2020) 47th Symposium ICHOTEC “A History of Technology for an Age of Crisis’ — Location: Eindhoven University of Technology (Online) (15.July.2020)
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- Abstract
- The idea of technological, cultural and figurative decline in Late Antiquity has been questioned in the last decades (Bowersock-Brown-Grabar, Interpreting Late Antiquity, 2001). The importance of Late Antiquity as a particular age of flourishing intellectual life and original artistic sensibility has been reassessed (Oleson, Engineering and technology in the Classical world, 2008; Rousseau, A Companion to Late Antiquity, 2009). In the context of transition, the technology theme has been investigated. The interest in innovation in Late Antiquity, both in civil and military domains, has been proven (Lavan-Zanini, Technology in Transition, 2007). The paper aims to demonstrate that in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, the interest in technology not only led to the invention, or discovery, of machines able to solve the problems of the Empire correctly, but it was also perceived as a pivotal matter for the transmission of practical know-how to the new generations. The ultimate goal is to show that even if the perception of crisis fed the idea of an imminent end of time, the confidence in human intelligence never collapsed, as Augustine’s words proved (De Civitate Dei 22. 24). It will be argued that this confidence in technology was a peculiar link between the so-called late antique ‘crisis’ and the idea of State Salvation. In this sense, late antique technology was perceived by contemporaries as a fundamental requirement to grant Imperial survival in its physical and moral integrity. Thanks to literary sources (De Rebus Bellicis, Epitome de Re Militari, Codex Iustinianus, Codex Theodosianus), the paper will analyse some of the remedies suggested to save the Empire and the connection between technology and power. Ultimately, it will be possible to value which remedies were utopian and what kind of technological operation saved the Empire in the complex transition towards the Middle Ages.
- Affiliations
Università di Pisa Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del Sapere
Citations
Limina, V. (2020). Technology to Save the Empire. 47th Symposium ICHOTEC “A History of Technology for an Age of Crisis’, Eindhoven University of Technology (Online). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/101202