UC Santa Barbara

“Ancient elite propaganda” can be defined as the institutional production of information in which ideological messages were communicated among elite groupings. During Late Antiquity, elite propaganda flourished in local areas of the Han Empire and the Roman Empire. Two such local areas, the Qing-Xu-Yan 青-徐-兗 region in China, from the Han period to the Western Jin dynasty (ca. 200 BCE to 300 CE), and the Gallic provinces of the Roman Empire (ca. 1st century BCE to 500 CE), can help to illustrate this point.The present dissertation includes two parts. Part I (Chapters One and Two) focuses on the institutions of local elite propaganda in Late Antiquity. Chapter One examines how the different interactive ethics of Han and Roman elites were expressed through their information institutions, and how such ethics were encoded into propagandistic messages that helped the elite populations ally with more companions. Chapter Two looks into how the interplay of three domains—information dissemination, textual production, and the use of language—reinforced local elite propaganda in the two regions, the Qing-Xu-Yan area and Gaul, and how elite populations of the two regions gradually became definers of not only “appropriate language” but also “good opinions.” Part II (Chapters Three and Four) focuses on the discourse of local elite propaganda in Late Antiquity. Chapter Three examines the sustaining and development of a “meta-discursive master” that dominated the production of local elite discourse, during the early stage of Late Antiquity. The propaganda discourse of local elites, in this period, obtained its power of persuasiveness from the meta-discursive authority of history and ritual. Chapter Four investigates the quasi-paradigmatic shifts in the propaganda discourse of local elite populations during the period of High Late Antiquity and the closing era of Late Antiquity. In the areas of QXY and Gaul, the meta-discursive master gradually disappeared from local elite discourses during High Late Antiquity, which rendered the realm of elite discourse somewhat centerless. When it came to the closing era of Late Antiquity, a new master emerged, and dominated the socio-political discourse of elites. The emergence of this new aesthetic master was based on the changing relationship between local elites and the new ruling group. To conclude, I argue that the triangular relationship between the idea of “truth,” the formation of textual authorities, and the operation of political regimes in Late Antique Eurasia was so complex that the boundary between the so-called “ancient” and “medieval” periods is not as clear as we may have thought.