2.2 Migration

Human migration is the permanent change of residence by an individual or a group; it excludes such movements as nomadism, migrant labour, commuting, and tourism, all of which are transitory in nature (source: Encyclopaedia Britannica). It is a very relevant phenomenon today and is at the base of contemporary political debate in most of the Western world. But migration also characterized the way in which societies shaped the word in Classical antiquity: from the establishment of Greek colonial settlements in Southern Italy, Sicily, and the Black Sea to the movement of people to newly founded or existing native settlements following Roman military conquest. This topic will allow you to explore one of the most hotly debated political issues of contemporary society by looking at past.

EPQ Suggested questions

In your EPQ essay you may want to discuss the following questions

How were migration and displacement discussed in Greek and Roman antiquity?
How far did Greek notions about migration and displacement differ from Roman ones?
How far can the archaeological evidence reveal the nature of Roman migration and displacement across the empire?
How are exile and displacement discussed in ancient poetry?

Sources

Sources: the poetry of exile

Alcaeus of Mytilene, Fragments, 130Va,b.
Vergil, The Aeneid
Ovid, Tristia
Ovid, Metamorphoses: Io (Met. 1.583–746); Medea (Met. 7)
Post-Roman authors who were forced to live in exile and wrote on this topic were: the Chinese poets Li Bai (701–762) and Du Fu (712–770), the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), the German writer Bertold Brecht (1898–1956) and the Russian writer and poet Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008).

Sources: migration

The movement of the Huns and the Goths in the Roman Empire: Ammianus Marcellinus’ Roman Antiquities, Book 31

The material culture of ancient migration

Architecture

Hadrian’s Wall
The Sanctuary of Sulis Minerva in Baths offers an excellent example of the interaction between local and imported cults and on the effects of the movement of people on the cultural changes that occurred in Britain after Roman conquest.

Artefacts

Stone relief with the god Cernunnos, sitting between Apollo and Mercury, Reims (France) (open 2.2 Cernunnos pdf)

Artefacts from the Great North Museum, Newcastle

Terracotta statue of Venus (open link) from Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, England, UK (south of Roman Fort). Objects like this reflect the visual impact migration could have on native cultures, that were often (as was mostly the case in the Celtic world) aniconic.

References

Greek migration

Garland, R., 2016. Wandering Greeks: the ancient Greek diaspora from the Age of Homer to the death of Alexander the Great. Princeton University press.
Hornblower, S. and Biffis, G. eds., 2018. The Returning Hero: Nostoi and Traditions of Mediterranean Settlement. Oxford University Press.
Hunter, R., Hunter, R.L. and Rutherford, I. eds., 2009. Wandering poets in ancient Greek culture: travel, locality and pan-hellenism. Cambridge University Press.
Kasimis, D., 2018. The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy. Cambridge University Press.
Kennedy, R.F., 2014. Immigrant Women in Athens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the Classical City. Routledge.
Skinner, J.E., 2012. The invention of Greek ethnography: from Homer to Herodotus. Oxford University Press.

Migration in the Roman empire

A Long Way from Home: Diaspora Communities in Roman Britain https://www.reading.ac.uk/archaeology/research/Projects/arch-HE-Diaspora.aspx
De Ligt, L. and Tacoma, L.E., 2016. Migration and mobility in the early Roman Empire. Brill.
Eckardt, H. and Müldner, G., 2016. Mobility, migration and diasporas in Roman Britain. Millett, M., Revell, L. and Moore, A.J. eds., 2016. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Britain. Oxford University Press.pp.203-223.
Goffart, W.A., 2006. Barbarian tides: the migration age and the later Roman Empire. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Johnson, S.F. and Johnson, S. eds., 2012. The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press.
Pitts, M. and Versluys, M.J. eds., 2014. Globalisation and the Roman world: world history, connectivity and material culture. Cambridge University Press.
Putnam, M. C. 2010. Vergil, Ovid, and the Poetry of Exile. Farrell, J., & Putnam, M. C. (Eds.). A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and its Tradition. John Wiley & Sons., 80-95.
Tacoma, L.E., 2016. Moving Romans: Migration to Rome in the Principate. Oxford University Press.
Whittaker, C.R., 2004. Rome and its Frontiers: the Dynamics of Empire. Routledge.

Ancient writing on exile

Chaniotis, A., 2009. Travelling memories in the Hellenistic world (pp. 249-269). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gaertner, J.F. ed., 2007. Writing exile: the discourse of displacement in Greco-Roman antiquity and beyond (Vol. 83). Brill.
Hardie, P. ed., 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Ovid. Cambridge University Press.
Miller, J.F. and Newlands, C.E. eds., 2014. A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid. John Wiley & Sons.
Whitmarsh, T., 2011. Narrative and identity in the ancient Greek novel: returning romance. Cambridge University Press.

Migration in the contemporary world

Koslowski, Rey. (2002). Human Migration and the Conceptualization of Pre-Modern World Politics. International Studies Quarterly 46, no. 3: 375-99 (open link).
Ritzer, G. ed., 2007. The Blackwell companion to globalization. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Sheppard, E.S. and Barnes, T.J. eds., 2000. A companion to economic geography (pp. 77-89). Oxford: Blackwell.
The Encyclopaedia of Global Human Migration (open link)
The Migrant Museum on Roman migration (open link)
Ueda, R. ed., 2006. A companion to American immigration. Blackwell Pub.
Wastl-Walter, D. ed., 2016. The Routledge Research Companion to Border Studies. Routledge.
Wilson, T.M. and Donnan, H. eds., 2012. A companion to border studies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

Online resources

Course Tablets of Roman Britain (open link)
Vindolanda Tablets (open link)
Website listing evidence for professional associations across the ancient world (open link)
Online Coins of the Roman empire (open link)
Archaeology Data Service (open link)
ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World reconstructs the time cost and financial expense associated with a wide range of different types of travel in antiquity (open link)
Perseus digital library (open link)
The Grove Art Online (open link)