This book--written by Damián Fernández, a professor of history at Northern Illinois University --is highly suggestive. There are several reasons for this, which we can group into three. The first is that it proposes a cross-sectional chronological study that reaches across the traditional dichotomy of the political and institutional end of the Roman Empire in the West. The second is that the central theme of the book is the aristocracy, conceptualized not in itself but rather in relation to the late Roman, Suevic and early Visigothic political frameworks in Iberia. The third is that the book focuses on the western part of Iberia, which allows the author to delve into detail in the specific cases he analyzes.
As the author himself points out in the very first sentences of the book, the work is not about analyzing institutions but statehood. As he develops his argument in its pages, he focuses on how these aristocracies adapted to new political realities, and, in turn, how they developed particular discourses. The intellectual support of the discipline of political philosophy and its theoretical models is incorporated concisely (15-20), and it seems to me that the theories of Pierre Bourdieu are of particular weight. [1]
Chronological transversality is seen in the fact that the author has chosen a period that goes from Diocletian's reforms--between the end of the third century and the very first years of the fourth century--up to the reign of Reccared (d. 601). Furthermore, he has chosen to focus on the western area of Iberia, which contains provinces such as Gallaecia, Lusitania, and the western part of Baetica, with occasional incursions into other areas. He has approached literary sources in all their manifestations plus numismatic and epigraphic evidence, as well as the so-called "Visigothic slates" and of course the archaeological evidence--the published records for which have increased greatly in recent years in both quantity and quality. In this sense, it is very important to point out the extent of Fernández's knowledge with regard to very specific bibliography on each site that he mentions, both urban and rural, some of which is found in publications that are difficult to access.
Given the author's approach as I explained it at the beginning of this review, the reader may already be able to predict that the structure of the book is not linear (according to, say, political chronologies or historical events), although there is a chronological thread at its base. This thread is defined--between approximately 300 and 600, as attested in the book's title--by the late Roman period, the Suevic kingdom, the Visigothic kingdom of Gaul that had interests in Iberia, and the beginnings of the definitive consolidation of the Visigothic kingdom in Iberia.
The great theme of the book--the analysis of the aristocracies--is articulated in two parts grouped according to these chronological limits: a first part on the late Roman Empire, and a second on the post-Roman period. The three sections in each part essentially analyze the question of territory, the identity of the aristocracies, and their economic strategies. These define the titles and structure of these chapters: chapters 1, 2, and 3 in the first part and chapters 4, 5, and 6 in the second.
The first part also highlights the evolution of cities, whose topography was adapted to political and social changes. The important role of cities is well known not only in the late Roman period but also in the post-Roman phase, as Michael Kulikowski and Javier Arce have observed. The same is true of the changing relationship between the city and its surrounding rural territory, as studied by Pablo C. Díaz or Damián Fernández himself, among others. [2] Changes in the rural landscape paralleled the increasing power of the aristocracies, both in relation to control of personal dependencies and that of material resources. This is a process that emerged in the late Roman period and increased at the beginning of the Visigothic period.
I would like to highlight the book's high degree of literary and archaeological detail, which the author handles sensitively. This allows him to make use of not only particular verses, fragments of letters, or narrations, but also ceramic imports or items of glass manufacture. His study is systematic and focused on western Iberia, but responds to larger questions articulated with regard to other places in the late Roman and post-Roman West. As the author himself acknowledges, his chosen area is broad but relatively low in urban density when compared with other regions of the ancient world. However, the nuclear issue is admirably set out and developed. I refer in particular to how the aristocracies behaved when presented with different political models in a long cycle of about three centuries ca. 300-600.
The work's key idea, in my opinion, is its demonstration of the active and relevant role played by the aristocracies in statehood. This is not a matter of understanding how the political system (late Roman, Suevic, or Visigothic systems) operated with regard to the aristocracy, but rather the aristocracy's agency within that system. Both elements are needed. In the process of the aristocracies' adaptation to new political realities can be understood processes of identity and symbolic evolution which the author has been able to identify in the archaeological record.
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Notes:
1. See among other excellent works by the same author, D. Fernández, "Persuading the Powerful in Post-Roman Iberia: King Euric, Local Powers, and the Formation of a State Paradigm," in Motions of Late Antiquity: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society in Honour of Peter Brown, ed. Jamie Kreiner and Helmut Reimitz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 107-128.
2. Pablo C. Díaz, "City and Territory in Hispania in Late Antiquity," in Towns and Their Territories between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Gian Pietro Brogiolo, Nancy Gauthier and Neil Christie (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 3-35; Michael Kulikowski, Late Roman Spain and Its Cities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Javier Arce, Bárbaros y romanos en Hispania, 400-507 A.D. (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2005); D. Fernández, "City and Countryside in Late Antique Iberia," Antiquité Tardive 21 (2013): 233-241.