News and Frontier Consciousness in the Late Roman Empire

From about 250-500 C.E., there was a shift in the way Romans conceived of their frontiers, as a model of a defined Roman world - a world with limits - became dominant. Before this period, two broad Roman conceptions of frontiers proliferated and competed: an imperial ideology of imperial rule without limit coexisted with very real and pragmatic attempts, from the Late Republic onward, to define and defend imperial frontiers. Over time, Romans came to see frontiers as territorial and not just as divisions of people. Worldview, reflected in and read into cosmology, geography, myth, sacred texts, and prophecy, was crucial to this shift in thought. Approaching Roman frontiers with the aid of media studies as well as anthropological and sociological methodologies, Mark Graham chronicles and documents this significant transition in ancient thought, which coincided with, but was not necessarily dependent on, the Christianization of the Roman world.