ABSTRACT
The term 'community' has been promiscuously employed in both common sense and technical language. In an essay published in 1933, the sociologist Louis Wirth noted that the word community has been used with an abandon reminiscent of poetic licence. Roman in contrast to non-Roman is one of the most obvious communal' identities found in texts of the sixth to eighth century. The imperial establishment itself was caught up in these shifts in the last thirty years of the sixth century, perhaps in an effort to re-orientate the divergent trends within late Roman culture around the symbolism of the imperial state and the Christ-loving emperors at Constantinople. The military unrest which is described in the sources for this time cannot be connected with any sort of ideological interest, except in the very narrowest sense. There does not appear to be any marked desire to intervene in imperial or provincial politics, except to obtain better conditions.
