Customer Reviews

The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey. 2 Vol. Set (Volume 1 and 2)

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A.H.M. Jones' exhaustive and resourceful two-volume work on the "Later Roman Empire," is a definite recommendation for anyone seeking a deeper perspective of the times, although for informal reading it is not suggested. Over three hundred years are covered elaborately in twelve-hundred pages, and also the appendix itself is roughly five-hundred pages, though much of it will not be intelligible to general readers, since much of the information in it is preserved in the original Latin. Jones' work is a fountain head of research material, broken into two parts: the first is a basic overview of the religious, political, and military conditions of the empire; and the second part, which is more bulky and detailed, is an overview of the social, economic, and administrative aspects of the empire. With this, and J.B. Bury's two-volume work on the "Later Roman Empire," one may boast of holding two of the greater achievements in scholarship on this particular area of study.

This mammoth work guides the reader through all aspects of the later Roman Empire showering facts and sources upon him. It is better, perhaps, as a source of reference than as bedtime reading, for its sheer size and density of fact would exhaust all but the most avid and concentrated historians of the period.

The most useful aspect of it must be the incredibly detailed source references, which comprise the fourth volume of his work. This enables those who have not the time or energy to wade through the entire book to use it as the definitive piece of reference for the period.

I would never compare Jones work to Bury, and this is not nonsense like Gibbon.

The revisionist cannot touch this work. It is a brilliant narrative of the grinding, halting, mess of what is commonly known as the End of Rome. It also explains in detail how the Late Empire worked. If you are working on Ammianus for example much of his work is opaque unless you stay up nights reading this monster. I've seen horrific errors because the writer does not have Jones in his head and library.

Search the web. Look in used bookstores. I paid $90 as a grad student back in the 70s for my copy. If you want to understand that bloated ediface of Late Rome you must have these two volumes and read them with a very careful eye. And, yes, read the notes!

Newer is not always better.