This second edition first published 2015

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Edition history: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2007)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mitchell, Stephen, 1948-

    A history of the later Roman empire, ad 284–641 / Stephen Mitchell. – Second edition.

        pages cm

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-1-118-31242-1 (pbk.)

    1.  Rome–History–Empire, 284–476.    2.  Rome–History–Germanic Invasions, 3rd–6th centuries.    3.  Byzantine Empire–History–To 527.    4.  Europe–History–392–814.    I.  Title.

    DG311.M66 2015

    937'.09–dc23

                                                                            2014011405

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Detail from the Barberini Diptych, ivory tablet with four relief decorated plaques, Byzantine, first half of 6th century. De Agostini Picture Library / G. Dagli Orti / The Bridgeman Art Library.

For Lawrence, Daniel, and Samuel Mitchell, and Polat Aydal, students of science, law, history, and business, shapers of an uncertain future

2.1 The Price Edict of Diocletian

2.2 Statue fragments of Constantine at Rome

3.1 The four rulers of the first tetrarchy

3.2 The Imperial Bath House at Trier

3.3 The Death of Julian

3.4 The Theodosian base at Constantinople

3.5 Ivory diptych of Stilicho, Serena, and Eucherius

4.1 Porphyrius the charioteer

4.2 Church of St Sophia

4.3 Bath building at Tralles on the Maeander (“Üçgözler”)

5.1 The Arch of Constantine

5.2 The Arch of Constantine (detail)

5.3 The obelisk of Theodosius I

5.4 The Theodosian base in the Hippodrome

5.5 The Barberini ivory

5.6 Church of S. Vitale, Ravenna

5.7 Khusro II at Taq-e Bostan

5.8 The Mansio at the Döşeme Boğazi in southern Turkey

5.9 Inscribed rescript of Justinian of 533

5.10 Statue of Oecumenius, erected at Aphrodisias

6.1 Mausoleum of Theoderic at Ravenna

7.1 Mosaic portrait of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, in the Basilica Ambrosiana

8.1 Bronze coin of Constantine depicting the Labarum above a serpent

8.2 Silver Medallion from Ticinum of ad 315

9.1 Arch of Constantine (Rome). Relief of Constantine delivering a speech from the rostra in the forum

9.2 The Golden Gate at Constantinople

9.3 The Theodosian Walls of Constantinople

10.1 Serjilla. A late Roman village in north Syria

10.2 Scythopolis in Palestine

10.3 The fortifications of Dara in Mesopotamia

10.4 The Dominus Iulius Mosaic from Carthage

10.5 Trier. Basilica of Constantine

12.1 Silver hexagram of Heraclius

3.1 The empire of the tetrarchs c.300

3.2 Illyricum. The battleground of the empire

3.3 The administrative dioceses of the empire in 395

4.1 Map of barbarian settlement in the western empire in the mid-fifth century

4.2 The Roman Empire and the barbarian kingdoms around 525

4.3 The Roman–Sassanian frontier in the sixth century

4.4 The new Mediterranean empire of Justinian

6.1 Map of barbarian kingdoms in the west c.500

10.1 Plan of the village of Shivta (Negev)

11.1 The Roman Empire and the East in late antiquity

Maps 3.1, 3.3, 4.2, and 4.4 are adapted from Grosser Historischer Weltatlas I. Vorgeschichte und Altertum (Munich, 1963), 40–3. Map 3.2 is based on N. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan. Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley, 1994), 89. Map 4.3 is based on M. Meier, Justinian. Reich, Religion und Herrschaft (Munich, 2004), endpaper. Map 10.1 is from Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003), 398 fig. 3. Reprinted by permission of the Journal of Roman Archaeology. Map 11.1 is based on G. Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth. Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), endpaper.

3.1    The first tetrarchy

3.2    The Constantinian dynasty (from G. W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate [London, 1978], 35)

4.1    The Theodosian dynasty (from K. W. Holum, Theodosian Empresses [Berkeley, 1982], 133)

5.1    The East Roman high command and the military structure

5.2    Praetorian prefectures, dioceses, and provinces under Justinian (after R. Talbert [ed.], The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World [Princeton, 2000], 102, and A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire II, 1456–61)

5.3    The organization of civilian government at Constantinople (after D. Feissel, in C. Morrisson [ed.], Le monde byzantin I [2004], 79–110)

5.4    The social hierarchy of the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries (from A. Demandt, Die Spätantike [Berlin, 1989], 505)

Reference Works and Journals

Ancient Authors, Works, and Documents (Details of Translations Can Be Found in the Bibliography)

HE = Historia Ecclesiastica (Ecclesiastical History)

There have been many historical accounts of the later Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has stimulated rather than deterred a host of followers, although none has matched the scale and eloquence of that masterpiece. My attempt to find a way through the immense complexities and sheer bulk of the evidence has been guided by four principles. Firstly, my aim throughout has been to focus on the evolution of the Roman Empire from the late third to the early seventh centuries. This book is therefore written, for the most part, from a top-down perspective. In this respect it is much closer to the tradition of scholarship that extends from Gibbon to A. H. M. Jones than to the revolutionary approach to the study of late antiquity, which has been created, with captivating effect, by Peter Brown and his many followers, especially since the publication of Jones' The Later Roman Empire in 1964. However, this work on late antiquity has changed our perceptions of the later Roman Empire ineradicably, and to a large extent supplanted the paradigm of decline and fall, established by Gibbon, that had set a conscious or unconscious framework of interpretation for historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries studying this period. Approaching the period from a background of study in the Hellenistic world and the early Roman Empire, I have attempted, as my second principle, to explain historical developments as transformations in response to circumstances, rather than to interpret them for signs of decadence and collapse.

The third of my primary aims in writing this book has been to create as precise a picture as I could of major events and historical processes. This has meant including a good deal of detailed information about dates and geography, to fix those events in time and place. There is a greater emphasis on a historical narrative than has been the case with most recent studies of the period. I have been sparing in developing lengthy and complex explanations of cultural developments and have preferred, as a fourth principle, to let the primary evidence and contemporary witnesses speak for themselves. The numerous quotations from the primary source material, principally from contemporary observers, are included precisely for this purpose. My greatest debt in this respect has been to the small army of scholars, in particular in recent years, who have produced scholarly translations of the literature of late antiquity. These translations, particularly in the series of Liverpool Translated Texts and those from Oxford University Press, contain much of the finest scholarly work on the period, and have made it immeasurably easier to write works of history such as this one. At the same time as trying to do justice to the primary source material, I have aimed to absorb as much as possible of the secondary literature. Much superb work in ancient history has been written about the later Roman period. I have drawn on this bibliography for ideas and information with grateful enthusiasm, and incorporated as much as I could into my notes and bibliographies.

There are specific debts to acknowledge. I am grateful to the University of Exeter, which granted me a year of study leave in 2003/4 during which most of the book was written. Several of the illustrations have been provided by courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute's branches in Berlin, Istanbul, and Rome, with the particular assistance of Dr Richard Posamentir (Istanbul) and Dr Michael Wörrle, as well as my own colleague Professor Barbara Borg. Fergus Millar has encouraged me by advice and example, and channeled a stream of insights emerging from his own work on the Roman Empire of the fifth century. I have benefited from many observations from Wolf Liebeschuetz. Mark Whittow provided invaluable guidance on recent archaeological literature, and Geoffrey Greatrex was an inspirational tutor on Procopius. Al Bertrand commissioned the volume for the Blackwell series in May 2002. I should also like to thank the team that has turned my manuscript into a finished book: Angela Cohen and Louise Spencely (editorial), and Bill MacKeith (index). As I was working on the final chapter I came across a passage from the great Persian Book of Kings by the epic poet Ferdowsi, which seemed curiously apt to the relationship of editor and author.

Three years later, having completed a survey of the history of Rum, not a thousand cubits but 357 years long from the accession of Diocletian to the death of Heraclius, I shall be glad, like Valerian, to accept the offered respite from a task that has been as satisfying as it has been demanding.

The main incentive to prepare an enlarged new edition of this book has come from the abundance of new research and major publications on later Roman and early medieval history since 2005 which have directly or indirectly thrown light on the history of the later Roman Empire. Much of this work, in particular that of Chris Wickham, has been crucially important for restating questions about the decline of the empire and the historical transition to a post-Roman world in Europe and in the Middle East. Within the limits available to me I have tried to address these questions, especially in the new chapter 13, which deals with questions of tax and the state economy, Rome's declining military capability, and the evidence for demographic collapse after the mid-sixth century resulting from repeated outbreaks of bubonic plague. In other sections of the book I have substantially modified the sections dealing with Constantine (chapters 3 and 8) and the Roman state (chapter 5), and enlarged the treatments of Asia Minor and Egypt in chapter 10. Many smaller corrections and additions have been made elsewhere. The bibliography has been updated and the publishers have allowed me to add several new illustrations to the selection provided in the first edition.

Many sections of this book deal with the Near East in late antiquity. Most of the work on the revised second edition was done against a horrifying backdrop of anarchy, violence, and civil war unfolding across the entire Arab Middle East, from Libya and Egypt to Syria and Iraq. It is impossible to contemplate the conflicts that engulfed this region in late antiquity without also calling to mind the bloodshed, political turmoil, and human misery of the present day.

In preparing this edition I owe thanks to many people. Six anonymous users of the first edition provided reports to the publishers and made many valuable suggestions for improvements. Wiley's own team, steered by commissioning editor Haze Humbert, has been as efficient and supportive as the Blackwell group that brought the first edition into print: Ben Thatcher and his successor Allison Kostka (project editors), Ashley McPhee (cover), and Morgan Dale (translation rights). Emma Brown (picture research and permissions) and Giles Flitney (project manager) have put in many hours of detailed work on the illustrations and the text respectively, and I hope that readers will be as grateful for their skill and commitment as I am. For obtaining new illustrations and permissions to use them I am personally grateful to Professor Kay Ehling and Nicolai Kästner (Staatliche Münzsammlung, Munich), Dr Julian Baker (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), and Nihat Erdoğan (Mardin Museum) for their prompt and unbureaucratic assistance. My former student Professor Turhan Kaçar (Pamukkale University) has suggested many detailed corrections while preparing a Turkish translation of the revised version, and has been a constant source of support and encouragement.