The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity: AD 395-600 (The Routledge History of the Ancient World) [Paperback]

Averil Cameron (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415014212 | ISBN-13: 978-0415014212 | Publication Date: November 15, 1993 | Edition: 1

The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity provides both a detailed introduction to late antiquity, and a direct challenge to the conventional views of the end of the empire.

A world expert on the subject, Averil Cameron focuses on the changes and continuities in Mediterranean society as a whole before the Arab conquests of the seventh century.

With modern, in-depth archaeological evidence, this all-round factual, historical and thematic study of the west and eastern empires will become the standard work on the period. With suggested specialized reading, it should already be an essential item on the reading lists of classical studies and archaeology students.

Editorial Reviews

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 the Author

University of Oxford, UK

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (November 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415014212
• ISBN-13: 978-0415014212
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #556,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, October 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity: AD 395-600 (The Routledge History of the Ancient World) (Paperback)

Anyone looking for an introduction to Late Antiquity will find this book not only interesting, but also helpful because it provides a well structured overview of the life in the Mediterranean during Late Antiquity. Unlike other books on the subject, this one is easy to understand for those who are not necessarily experts in Ancient Rome, yet at the same time it deals with the subject in an intelligent manner.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but a difficult slog, January 2, 2008

By 

D. Piraino "Seattle Dan" (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity: AD 395-600 (The Routledge History of the Ancient World) (Paperback)

Many of the books on this subject are far too technical and presume far too much background on the part of the average layman to be readable. This book is understandable, but deals with far too many theroretical issues for my taste. Much better, in my view, is "Justinian's flea" which is about much more than just the first bubonic plague to hit Europe.

One of the biggest issues is the writing, which is rambling and unstructured. Take for example the following sentence in the conclusion, "Not merely was it faced by the 'barbarian invasions' in the west (which, as we saw, were deflected from the east only with some difficulty) and the Persian invasions, followed by the Arab conquests, in the east: changes in central Asia led in the fifth century to danger from the Huns, fortanately dissolved after the death of Attila, and later to the apperance of the Hephthalites, who threatened Constantinople at the end of the rein of Justinian." And don't expect to find Hephtalites in the Index to review their role; it's not in there.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Meditterranean Tales, March 5, 2008

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Retired Reader (New Mexico) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity: AD 395-600 (The Routledge History of the Ancient World) (Paperback)

This excellent book provides a chronicle of the devolution of Roman Imperial Authority from Rome to Constantinople (Istanbul) during the 4th and 5th Centuries. In doing so the author also provides a fascinating look at the transformation of the society and culture of what was always a Mediterranean based Empire.

The tumultuous years from 395 CE through 600 CE saw the effective implosion of Western Roman Empire under pressure from both barbarian invasions and internal contradictions. How this came about and what its consequences were, are two of the threads of this book. Another thread is how the Eastern Roman Empire and especially its capitol, Constantinople, were transformed into the Greek Byzantine Empire. In developing these threads, Cameron does a good deal to clarify both the economic and military conditions of the late Roman Empire. While his expositions are necessarily brief they provide a good understanding of what was actually happening as the last European Empire of ancient times was transformed into something quite different. Rather surprisingly, Cameron does not devote many words to the development of the Western Catholic Church as the spiritual successor to the Western Empire. An interesting thread of this book does discuss is the efforts by the Greco-Roman Emperor Justinian to restore the Mediterranean Sea as a Roman Lake. Justinian succeeded briefly in doing this, but left the Eastern Empire bankrupt and vulnerable to both the Persian Empire and to the Islamic Conquests of the 7th Century.

This book would be a good follow-on to David Potter's, "The Roman Empire at Bay A.D. 180-395" (Amazon.com). The disappearance of the Roman Empire was a long term, complex phenomenon that is made much more understandable by books such as these.