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This paper proposes an intellectual history of the idea that the later Roman empire and, subsequently, the whole of Byzantium were less 'free' in comparison to the Roman Republic. Anxiety over diminished freedom recurred throughout Roman history, but only a few specific expressions of it were enshrined in modern thought as the basis on which to divide history into periods. The theorists of the Enlightenment, moreover, invented an unfree Byzantium for their own political purposes and not by examining the facts about its political culture. The second part of the paper proposes that the Byzantines valorized a model of positive freedom as legal-institutional protection against arbitrary oppressive power, including against both barbarian domination and domestic abuses. In contrast to modern thought, which tends to see the imperial position as the chief threat to liberty, the Byzantines viewed it as its bulwark. Yet they too had remedies for oppressive emperors, suggesting that the otherwise well-attested invocations of freedom were not a mere rhetorical trope for them but an actionable cultural norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Confronted with the need for scholarly criteria in properly defining the ad hoc papal institution existent under Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), this paper seeks to clarify the title, office, and jurisdiction of the eleventh-century reforming legate. Discussing the Roman origins of this office through to the twelfth century – taking into account the political, ecclesiastical and legal constraints of the period – questions are raised concerning the extent and nature of legatine authority (especially as the reformers understood it). Contemporary criteria are unclear, but modern scholars can infer some regularities from Gregory VII''s Register and other contemporary sources as to how this office operated in the last quarter of the eleventh century, and ultimately, to understand more clearly how reform was being implemented in the provinces. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper seeks to dispel several myths prevalent in the scholarship on Roman sexuality: that a freed slave was still obligated to serve his former master's sexual demands (I.A.), that the cinaedus cannot be the same as the modern male homosexual because the cinaedus was thought capable of performing cunnilinctus (I.B.), that exoleti were male prostitutes (I.C.), that the Romans were implacably hostile to lesbianism and that they “constructed” the lesbian as a phallic monstrosity (II.). It also draws attention to some neglected, unfamiliar, or misinterpreted evidence--anomalous on the current understanding of Roman sexuality, where women, boys, and lower-class men are supposed to have equal standing as potential passive sexual partners for adult men--for adult men whose sexual partners are exclusively male, and either active or passive: exoleti as active partners (I.C.), a puer delicatus who is prized for a masculine appearance rather than a feminine one (I.D.), and the Warren Cup, which glorifies a world of exclusively male-male sexuality (I.E.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]