The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity Ad 395-600 (Routledge History of the Ancient World) - Hardcover

Cameron, Averil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415014204 ISBN 13: 9780415014205

Publisher: Routledge, 1993

Synopsis

The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity AD 395-600 deals with the exciting period commonly known as 'late antiquity' - the fifth and sixth centuries. The Roman empire in the west was splitting into separate Germanic kingdoms, while the Near East, still under Roman rule from Constantinople, maintained a dense population and flourishing urban culture until the Persian and Arab invasions of the early seventh century.
Averil Cameron places her emphasis on the material and literary evidence for cultural change and offers a new and original challenge to traditional assumptions of 'decline and fall' and 'the end of antiquity'. The book draws on the recent spate of scholarship on this period to discuss in detail such controversial issues as the effectiveness of the late Roman army, the late antique city and the nature of economic exchange and cultural life. With its extensive annotation, it provides a lively and often critical introduction to earlier approaches to the period, from Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to the present day.
No existing book in English provides so detailed or up-to-date an introduction to the history of both halves of the empire in this crucial period, or discusses existing views in such a challenging way. Averil Cameron is a leading specialist on late antiquity, having written about the period and taught it for many years. This book has much to say to historians of all periods. It will be particularly welcomed by teachers and students of both ancient and medieval history.

About this title

About the Author:

University of Oxford, UK

Review:

...as a summary of the state of the study, this book is invaluable- comprehensive, insightful, and wonderfully lucid. The endnotes alone make this text a superlative resource for advanced courses and seminars in classical and medieval history...Historians who focus on only one region of the Mediterranean...will be challenged by its breadth of vision, mastery of detail, and up-to-date currency..
– AHNC Journal, Vol. 4, Fall 1996

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0415014204
• ISBN 13: 9780415014205
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288