Old Names, New Peoples: Listing Ethnonyms in Late Antiquity

Salvatore Liccardo, Ph.D. (2019), University of Vienna, is a postdoctoral researcher and team member of the ERC Synergy Grant HistoGenes. His research covers processes of identity formation, ethnic terminology, and geographical knowledge in late antique and early medieval sources.

“Old Names, New Peoples is a methodologically innovative and intellectually ambitious contribution to the burgeoning field of late antique studies. Liccardo’s approach – focusing not on the historical content of ethnonyms but rather on their textual uses and epistemological implications – is both refreshing and rigorous.” – Marco Cristini, Università degli Studi di Firenze, in: I Quaderni Del m.æ.S. - Journal of Mediæ Ætatis Sodalicium 23/1 (2025), p. 327 [DOI: https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2533-2325/22836]

• PrefaceList of FiguresAbbreviationsGeneral Introduction1 Ethnonyms and Ethnicity: Some Methodological Reflections2 Ethnonyms: Identifying the Sources3 Listing Ethnonyms alongside Other Cognitive Processes and Literary StrategiesPart 1: Listing and Declaiming EthnonymsIntroduction1 Listing in Late Antiquity2 Aesthetics of Listing – the Example of Decimus Magnus Ausonius1 The Laterculus Veronensis1 The Forgotten Attachment: The Ethnic Catalogues2 The Gentes of the Far North and West3 The Gentes of the Rhine4 The Gentes of the Danube5 The Non-European Gentes6 Conclusions: Lexical Adaptations and Ethnic Transformations in Late Antique GaulPart 2: Listing and Memorizing EthnonymsIntroduction1 Lists for Learning2 Listing Ethnonyms in Schoolbooks – Vibius Sequester and Lucius Ampelius2 The Cosmographia of Julius Honorius1 From a Student, for Future Students2 Gentes of the Eastern Quarter3 Gentes of the Western Quarter4 Gentes of the Northern Quarter5 Gentes of the Southern Quarter6 Conclusions: The Educational Value and Political Overtones of Lists of Place Names and EthnonymsPart 3: Listing and Locating EthnonymsIntroduction1 Conceptualizing and Listing Space2 And yet it moves. Beyond Lists in Late Antique Geography3 The Expositio totius mundi et gentium1 A Curious Author and a Peculiar Guidebook of the Roman World2 A (Partially) Utopian and (Very Much) Ethnic East3 A (Mostly) Civic terra Romanorum and the gentes barbarorum at Its Borders4 Ethnic and Spatial Identities in the Expositio4 The Tabula Peutingeriana and Its Ethnonyms1 Introduction2 The Ethnonyms on the Tabula Peutingeriana: General Aspects3 Beyond the Rhine: Really a Medieval Addition?4 Ethnic Double Names5 A (Relatively) Unimaginative Ethnic Landscape6 Persae: Explicit and Implicit Traces of a Special Ethnonym7 Conclusions: Ethnonyms and a Geography of OthernessGeneral ConclusionsBibliographyIndex