The Best and Most Serious People: Meritocratic Discourse in Late Antiquity

The Best and Most Serious People: Meritocratic Discourse in Late Antiquity

Lee, Trevor

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2026, Greek and Latin

This dissertation investigates the role of merit as a public ideology in the late Roman bureaucracy and imperial apparatus. I argue that the later empire discursively legitimized itself as a functioning meritocracy in which its high officials and emperors had earned their positions through tangible accomplishments and personal virtues. By analyzing the works of Libanius and Synesius of Cyrene, I first observe from an individual perspective how merit justified power and advancement in the public imagination amidst a reality riddled with nepotism, corruption, and failure. The second half of this project examines merit on a systemic level through the broader genre of panegyric and the discourse on bureaucratic venality. By situating the relevant sources within modern ideological theory, I consider how the late Roman culture of merit ultimately legitimized the system of imperial rule and dampened internal criticisms against it. In conjunction with the positive ideal of supposed meritocrats at the head of the imperial apparatus, the normative values embedded within the numerous critiques of poor rulership in our sources inadvertently reinforced the unconscious assumption that late antique society was ideally meritocratic. In this regard, the late Roman ideology of merit's first and foremost function was the continual reproduction of imperial domination.

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Committee: Alan Ross (Advisor); Megan Nutzman (Committee Member); Gaia Gianni (Committee Member); Anthony Kaldellis (Other)