Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

446 16. state, lordship and community in the west
attention of thousands of leading landowners per generation in western
Europe on the state, lost much of their political importance. 29
In sum, the successor states were not copies on a smaller scale of the
Roman empire. As states, they operated in different ways, without largescale
taxation, professional armies or extensive bureaucracies. Hence, the
post-Roman world generated many autonomous, if not independent, local
communities, and a related tendency towards political fragmentation.
Indeed, where early medieval kingdoms did successfully retain their coherence
over the long run, the influence of outside factors can often be
detected. Periods of relative Frankish and Visigothic monarchical power,
for instance, coincided with expansionary campaigns, giving kings access
to additional sources of wealth. Or, the reverse side of the coin, the
Lombards seem to have recreated their monarchy in Italy when the threat
of Frankish invasion made an overall ruler useful. 30 In other circumstances,
however, the élites of post-Roman Europe had much less reason to take
account of the political centre than their Roman predecessors.
3. Court and community in the post-Roman west
None of this means that successor-state kings were powerless, and the
history of post-Roman Europe cannot be understood simply as the failure
of the state. Manipulating and building upon Roman elements other than
taxation, defence and bureaucracy – as well, probably, as non-Roman traditions
(although these are harder to penetrate) – the successor states, to
greater and lesser extents, bonded their constituent landowners together
into political societies based as much on consent as on the calculation of
individual ambition.
Not least, of course, the courts of successor kings remained centres of
patronage, even if royal income was on a reduced scale. And a king’s gifts
could have a more than straightforward significance. A striking feature of the
period is the garnet-encrusted cloisonné jewellery often found in burials, at
least some of it gifts from royal treasuries. The garnet was the precious stone
closest in colour to the imperial purple of Roman emperors and was thus
used by them in their regalia. Justinian appears with some of this jewellery
in the San Vitale mosaic. Apart from being a rich gift, therefore, such jewellery
also made a symbolic claim to power and authority: a manipulation of
the mental heritage created by nearly half a millennium of domination
wielded by purple-clad emperors. 31 To illustrate this further, I will examine,
29 Parthenius: PLRE ii.833–4. General survey: Barnwell (1992). Ostrogothic Italy was something of
an exception, but the Variae of Cassiodorus should not be taken as face-value proof of Roman continuity,
even if Barnwell (1992) ch. 15 pushes his critique too far.
30 The arguments of Reuter (1985) and (1991) can certainly be applied to Merovingian contexts; cf.
Collins (1983b). On Lombard Italy, see Wickham (1981) 28ff.; Harrison (1993) passim.
31 Arrhenius (1985).
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