Customer Reviews

Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals

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Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity provides a brief summary of events in chronological order supported by quotation and references. Supplementing this are additional chapters that focus on particular aspects of the two empires. These include the military, the diplomatic and the religious.

Most of the content will be entirely familiar to readers with an interest in the period, and for English-speaking readers, many of the referenced works are in German, which makes checking footnotes and references difficult for the monolingual.

This volume is a good companion to the period, occupying a middle ground between the more detailed source books such as Dodgeon & Lieu's 'The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars: A Documentary History' and a more generalist historical summary. One or two points did grate, for example the use of Wilcox's Osprey book as a source for the Sasanian army, and an acceptance of claims of multiple captures of Ctesiphon in the 3rd Century that have never been substantiated. The authors seem to have a very good grasp of the source material available, covering Syriac and Armenian accounts, together with the later Arab authors such as Masudi and Baladhur as well as the more widely known Western sources such as Ammianus, Procopius and the like.

I would have liked to see more critical analysis of some of the Romano-Byzantine sources, but on the whole I can recommend this book as an excellent summary for the more than casual reader.