Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Cameron, a renowned late antique scholar, has written an excellent thematic study of the later Roman Empire. While the scholarship is of the highest quality, the book is written so that a layman could read it. As much as I hate endnotes, even that doesn't detract from this book.

Where this book really shines is its thematic arrangement and masterful tone. Cameron expertly deals with issues surrounding the church, urban change, Justinian's era and the Roman army. This book is not a history of the period, so readers looking for a chronological slog are better of elsewhere. Her tone demonstrates mastery of her subject, and is always hinting at the depth of the topics, whilst never going into so much detail that it'll bore most common readers and students.

In sum, this is an excellent thematic treatment of the 4th and 5th centuries. Read this instead of "Justinian's Flea" and you'll actually learn something.