New Rome : the Empire in the East.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stephenson, Paul.

Series:

History of the Ancient World

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization, Greco-Roman.

Romans--Middle East.

Romans.

Byzantine Empire--History--To 527.

Byzantine Empire.

Byzantine Empire--History--527-1081.

Islamic Empire--History.

Islamic Empire.

Rome--History.

Rome.

Middle East--History--To 622.

Middle East.

Istanbul (Turkey)--History--To 1453.

Istanbul (Turkey).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (481 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2022.

Summary:

A comprehensive new history of the Eastern Roman Empire based on the science of the human past. As modern empires rise and fall, ancient Rome becomes ever more significant. We yearn for Rome’s power but fear Rome’s ruin—will we turn out like the Romans, we wonder, or can we escape their fate? That question has obsessed centuries of historians and leaders, who have explored diverse political, religious, and economic forces to explain Roman decline. Yet the decisive factor remains elusive. In New Rome, Paul Stephenson looks beyond traditional texts and well-known artifacts to offer a novel, scientifically minded interpretation of antiquity’s end. It turns out that the descent of Rome is inscribed not only in parchments but also in ice cores and DNA. From these and other sources, we learn that pollution and pandemics influenced the fate of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire. During its final five centuries, the empire in the east survived devastation by natural disasters, the degradation of the human environment, and pathogens previously unknown to the empire’s densely populated, unsanitary cities. Despite the Plague of Justinian, regular “barbarian” invasions, a war with Persia, and the rise of Islam, the empire endured as a political entity. However, Greco-Roman civilization, a world of interconnected cities that had shared a common material culture for a millennium, did not. Politics, war, and religious strife drove the transformation of Eastern Rome, but they do not tell the whole story. Braiding the political history of the empire together with its urban, material, environmental, and epidemiological history, New Rome offers the most comprehensive explanation to date of the Eastern Empire’s transformation into Byzantium.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Introduction

Part 1: Life in the Later Roman World

1. Life at the End of the ‘Lead Age’

2. Family and Faith

3. An Empire of Cities

4. Culture, Communications and Commerce

5. Constantinople, the New Rome

Part 2: Power and Politics

6. The Theodosian Age, ad 395–451

7. Soldiers and Civilians, ad 451–527

8. The Age of Justinian, ad 527–602

9. The Heraclians, ad 602–c.700

Part 3: The End of Antiquity

10. The End of Ancient Civilisation

11. Apocalypse and the End of Antiquity

12. Emperors of New Rome

Bibliography

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-674-26945-4

0-674-26946-2

OCLC:

1298390070