UC San Diego

“Unbecoming Romans” is an exploration of Romanness as an ethnic identity at the geographic margins of the Eastern Roman state, primarily between the 8th and 10th centuries. It consists of a series of case studies focused on the Central Mediterranean that investigate the expressions and perceptions of Roman identity among populations living in the most distant provinces of Romanía.This study reconnects the inhabitants of Crete, Sicily, Southern Italy, and Central Italy to the broader political and ethnic community of the Romans. Modern scholarship historically has not interpreted these communities through the lens of Romanness, and it has tended to render them as Greeks, Byzantines, or by various local identifiers. This long tradition has been challenged, but its manifestation in specific regions of Romanía and in the provinces more generally has received less attention. The conceptualization of these spaces has been affected by the nature of the sources for the individual provinces, by the reception of their respective histories in more modern national narratives, and by pre-modern notions of identity. By challenging this enduring scholarly tradition that marginalizes the Eastern Romans from their ancient Roman past, this project reconsiders the scholarly view of the Roman provinces as a whole and individually, showing them to be interconnected to the Roman state and its people than previously understood. By recovering the Romanness of those inhabiting these most distant provinces, this project challenges two long-standing ideas about their identity. Namely, it shows these populations expressed their Romanness and that these self-expressions were accepted by others. It accomplishes the recovery of this identity by demonstrating the connections between the populations of the provinces and the rest of Romanía, as evidenced in the literary and material record. In recognizing the Romanness of these populations, this project establishes a point of comparison by which the construction and deconstruction of Roman identity can be further analyzed. My dissertation reveals the multiplicity of ways that being Roman might be expressed and the disconnect that can take place between expressions of identity on the ground and its reception by onlookers, who may be constrained by their own literary and ideological context. Thus, such study allows us to understand how various narratives about the lapsing of Roman identity developed in different circumstances.