Beyond the River, Under the Eye of Rome presents the Danube frontier of the Roman empire as the central stage for many of the most important political and military events of Roman history, from Trajan’s invasion of Dacia and the Marcomannic Wars, to the humbling of the Roman state power at the hands of the Goths and Huns. Hart delves into the cultural and political impacts of Rome’s interactions with Transdanubian peoples, emphasizing the Sarmatians of the Hungarian Plain, whose long encounter with the Roman Empire, he argues, created a problematic template for later dealings with Goths and Huns based on misapplied ethnographic and ecological tropes. Beyond the River, Under the Eye of Rome explores how Roman stereotypical perceptions of specific Danubian peoples directly influenced some of the most politically significant events of Roman antiquity.
Drawing on textual, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence, Hart illustrates how Roman ethnic and ecological stereotypes were employed in the Danubian borderland to support the imperial frontier edifice fundamentally at odds with the region’s natural topography. Distorted Roman perceptions of these Danubian neighbors resulted in disastrous mismanagement of border wars and migrant crises throughout the first five centuries CE. Beyond the River demonstrates how state-supported stereotypes, when coupled with Roman military and economic power, exerted strong influences on the social structures and evolving group identities of the peoples dwelling in the borderland.
About the Author :
Timothy C. Hart is Lecturer of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Review :
"Hart demonstrates nimble dexterity disentangling the relationship of ethnographic tradition to political rhetoric, archaeological evidence to the environment and topography to narratives for migration and settlement...Hart's monograph is a sterling work of scholarship."
"This book’s focus is threefold: to explore the Danube region’s topography, to investigate Greco-Roman literature regarding the peoples of the region, and to examine the archaeological remains left by these peoples to consider what can be learned about them. Summing up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty."
"Timothy C. Hart’s Beyond the River, Under the Eye of Rome, a welcome addition to the field of Roman borderland studies, skillfully combines close reading of Greco-Roman ethnographic texts with environmental analysis and new archaeological data."
“Reading this work, one can only agree that Timothy C. Hart succeeds in shedding new and comparative light on contemporary borderland issues.”
Hart offers an original and highly compelling reconstruction of 'borderland' societies on the Hungarian Plain and east of the Carpathians, and demonstrates how all were misunderstood by later Roman rulers, often to their cost. Unusually well-researched, well-written, and well-illustrated, his book is a major contribution to Danubian and Gothic studies.
Hart's book provides a penetrative analysis of primary and secondary sources, especially in his handling of archaeological materials in aggregate. Focusing on the impact of Greco-Roman intellectual constructs depicting peoples beyond the Mediterranean, he reveals that rather than facing off along a linear frontier, they shared borderlands of change. Outstanding.
"Hart has set a benchmark for scholarship on the Danubian Borderland from the Iron Age to Late Antiquity, one that I hope will encourage similarly rigorous and comprehensive multidisciplinary studies of this consequential border region."
