ABSTRACT
Professor Liebeschütz recently retired after a distinguished career in Classics at the University of Nottingham during which he published extensively on the late antique period. In this article, Liebeschütz performs three services at once. First, he succinctly summarises Walter Goffart’s lengthy argument about the workings of the techniques of “accommodation.” The reader has already encountered (in selection number 9) Goffart’s introduction to his theory of accommodation. Second, Liebeschütz summarises the arguments of Jean Durliat concerning both the accommodation of the barbarians by means of Roman fiscal mechanisms and the survival of those mechanisms well into the Middle Ages. Finally, Liebeschütz presents a temperate and careful critique of the theories of Goffart and Durliat. The reader will wish to weigh carefully whether what might be called “accommodationism” is becoming the new orthodoxy with only its technical details remaining controversial, or whether “accommodationism” itself seems unproven and unlikely. The reader may also wish to explore the ways in which Goffart and Durliat appear to agree and to disagree about which fiscal mechanisms were used in what ways to accommodate the barbarians.
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