Boatos, crises e oportunidades políticas na antiguidade tardia

Abstract

Compared to the situation prevalent in the Early Empire, the imperial regime of Late Antiquity undoubtedly enhanced its ability to control the flow of political information, by the use of skilled personnel primarily dedicated to collect, collate and retrieve information. Yet even so, the vastness of the empire and the slowness of communications remained the most important challenges to imperial absolutism. From the point of view of the urban plebs or of local political actors, the use of these clandestine news that we call "rumours" could represent an attempt to assess the opening of opportunities for action in a political environment marked by a deep uncertainty. The objective of this paper is to understand how the urban plebs, the religious factions or their leaders perceived (and encouraged) the flow of official or unofficial news about the fate of the ruler as a "window of opportunity" and as a method of mobilizing an action.