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This paper examines the office-holding, property-accumulation, and patronage of the Ardaburii, the family of the powerful eastern magister militum Fl. Ardaburius Aspar, across the course of the fifth century. It highlights the ways in which the family not only accumulated considerable wealth, influence, and property but also deployed it in traditional Roman ways, such as through civic and ecclesiastical patronage, thereby using wealth as a means to build and maintain power. In this way the Ardaburii were able to counter views of their family as "outsiders," despite their non-Roman ethnic origins and their non-orthodox Christian faith, issues which had little to do with the murder of Aspar and his sons in 471. In addition, it will be argued that the Ardaburii built up such a solid basis of prestige and wealth across the course of the fifth century that, despite the major crisis of Aspar's death, this standing and property were successfully transmitted to their descendants into the sixth century.
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Few political figures of the fifth century could boast the longevity of Fl. Ardaburius Aspar.1 In the course of a career spanning fifty years, studded with the highest military and court appointments, and cut short only by his murder, Aspar firmly established his family as a powerful military and political dynasty within the east Roman state. Modern historians have tended to depict Aspar and his family, the Ardaburii, as outsiders in fifth-century Roman politics, a Germanic clique that elbowed its way into the imperial court.2 In some very real senses this is true-Aspar's family was of Alan and Gothic origins, of non-orthodox Christian faith, and I would suggest even sought to preserve their non-Roman identity in certain important respects for a considerable length of time, rather than seeking integration. Yet in a very significant way the Ardaburii also made themselves very much "insiders" in Roman politics-in their accumulation of power and property through office-holding and judicious marriages with their fellow elites, and through the distribution of their patronage and wealth in traditional ways. It will be argued here that the family's non-orthodox faith and semi-barbarian identity, so frequently seen as barriers to their advancement, in fact had little to do with the murder of Aspar and his...