There have been many historical accounts of the later Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has stimulated rather than deterred a host of followers, although none has matched the scale and eloquence of that masterpiece. My attempt to find a way through the immense complexities and sheer bulk of the evidence has been guided by four principles. Firstly, my aim throughout has been to focus on the evolution of the Roman Empire from the late third to the early seventh centuries. This book is therefore written, for the most part, from a top-down perspective. In this respect it is much closer to the tradition of scholarship that extends from Gibbon to A. H. M. Jones than to the revolutionary approach to the study of late antiquity, which has been created, with captivating effect, by Peter Brown and his many followers, especially since the publication of Jones’ The Later Roman Empire in 1964. However, this work on late antiquity has changed our perceptions of the later Roman Empire ineradicably, and to a large extent supplanted the paradigm of decline and fall, established by Gibbon, that had set a conscious or unconscious framework of interpretation for historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries studying this period. Approaching the period from a background of study in the Hellenistic world and the early Roman Empire, I have attempted, as my second principle, to explain historical developments as transformations in response to circumstances, rather than to interpret them for signs of decadence and collapse.
The third of my primary aims in writing this book has been to create as precise a picture as I could of major events and historical processes. This has meant including a good deal of detailed information about dates and geography, to fix those events in time and place. There is a greater emphasis on a historical narrative than has been the case with most recent studies of the period. I have been sparing in developing lengthy and complex explanations of cultural developments and have preferred, as a fourth principle, to let the primary evidence and contemporary witnesses speak for themselves. The numerous quotations from the primary source material, principally from contemporary observers, are included precisely for this purpose. My greatest debt in this respect has been to the small army of scholars, in particular in recent years, who have produced scholarly translations of the literature of late antiquity. These translations, particularly in the series of Liverpool Translated Texts and those from Oxford University Press, contain much of the finest scholarly work on the period, and have made it immeasurably easier to write works of history such as this one. At the same time as trying to do justice to the primary source material, I have aimed to absorb as much as possible of the secondary literature. Much superb work in ancient history has been written about the later Roman period. I have drawn on this bibliography for ideas and information with grateful enthusiasm, and incorporated as much as I could into my notes and bibliographies.
There are specific debts to acknowledge. I am grateful to the University of Exeter, which granted me a year of study leave in 2003/4 during which most of the book was written. Several of the illustrations have been provided by courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute’s branches in Berlin, Istanbul, and Rome, with the particular assistance of Dr Richard Posamentir (Istanbul) and Dr Michael Worrle, as well as my own colleague Professor Barbara Borg. Fergus Millar has encouraged me by advice and example, and channeled a stream of insights emerging from his own work on the Roman Empire of the fifth century. I have benefited from many observations from Wolf Liebeschuetz. Mark Whittow provided invaluable guidance on recent archaeological literature, and Geoffrey Greatrex was an inspirational tutor on Procopius. Al Bertrand commissioned the volume for the Blackwell series in May 2002. I should also like to thank the team that has turned my manuscript into a finished book: Angela Cohen and Louise Spencely (editorial), and Bill MacKeith (index). As I was working on the final chapter I came across a passage from the great Persian Book of Kings by the epic poet Ferdowsi, which seemed curiously apt to the relationship of editor and author.
At Shushtar there was a river so wide that even the fish could not traverse it, and the Sassanian king said to the Roman emperor Valerian, “If you are an engineer, you will build me a bridge as continuous as a cable, such a one as will remain everlastingly in position as a pattern to the wise when we have turned to dust. The length of this bridge, reckoned in cubits, shall be one thousand; you may demand from my treasury all that is required. In this land and region apply all the science of the philosophers of Rum, and when the bridge is completed, you may depart to your home or else remain my guest as long as you live.” In gallant fashion the emperor undertook the task and brought the bridge to completion in three years. (Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, abbreviated translation by R. Levy, London 1967, 143)
Three years later, having completed a survey of the history of Rum, not a thousand cubits but 357 years long from the accession of Diocletian to the death of Heraclius, I shall be glad, like Valerian, to accept the offered respite from a task that has been as satisfying as it has been demanding.
Stephen Mitchell Exeter, April 2006
World History
