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. 1 From this perspective, the concept of ‘genre’ can be defined in many ways. 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. In this case, one can look at the literary forms that are used to express concepts of identity, not, primarily, in literature, which itself is a construct, but mostly in epigraphical remains, which is the closest that one can get to the sense of identity of the actual people who are being described.
