ABSTRACT
The Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity conferences traditionally have looked both at literal and metaphorical meanings and at different ways of approaching conventional topics. In this spirit, the very concept of 'frontiers' has been expanded to include not only traditional geographical frontiers, but also metaphorical frontiers relating to literature, philosophy and a multitude of other venues. Genres are classifications that are created by conventions that change over time as new genres are introduced and old are discarded. Most usually they apply to forms of literature or art. All Roman citizens had municipal citizenship in a civitas, which was their official patria, even if they were not living there at the time. Ethnic identification, which in the vast majority of surviving instances was manifested in epigraphical remains, most usually on epitaphs. The concept of geographical or ethnic identification overlapped with concepts of citizenship.
