La aristocracia galorromana ante las migraciones bárbaras del siglo V: la invención del burgundio

Abstract

This paper aims to elucidate the role of late Antique poetry in the social construction of the Barbarian “other”, a crucial point in the identity crisis of the late Roman Empire. To this end, I focus on Sidonius Apollinaris’ (430/431-489 AD) caustic carmen 12, better known as “The Satire of Burgundians” (written around 461 AD). This poem –full of a bitter humour– shows the frustration of a nostalgic aristocrat, who –although eager to preserve the rich cultural legacy of the Roman world– must face the changes necessarily brought up by the appearance of this new “other” on the Western horizon. Ultimately, the poet is even compelled to confess the unfeasibility of his project, the impossibility of poetry. Taking the obvious ideological bias of this literary perspective as a starting point, I try to reconstruct the internal history of Burgundians, one of the most enterprising and creative human groups on the Proto-Germanic scene.