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New Rome: The Empire in the East - Paperback | Diverse Reads

New Rome: The Empire in the East

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A Times of London Book of the Year
Longlisted for the Runciman Award

“The most compelling fusion yet of narrative history with the recent findings of environmental research and scientific data. It will change the way we understand key events and transformations in the Eastern Empire.”—Anthony Kaldellis, author of Romanland

“[A] major contribution…Brings the world of New Rome alive with exceptional learning and a magnificent openness to modern scientific methods that breathe life into conventional narratives of political and social history.”—Peter Brown, New York Review of Books

“A sweeping survey of the disintegration of the western Roman empire and the emergence of Byzantium…This impressive chronicle offers an eye-opening perspective on a period of dramatic change.”—Publishers Weekly

Long before Rome fell to the Ostrogoths in 476 AD, a new city had risen to take its place as the beating heart of the empire, the glittering Constantinople, known as New Rome. In this strikingly original account of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and emergence of Byzantium, Paul Stephenson offers a new interpretation of the forces that coalesced—dynastic, religious, climactic—to shift the center of power to the east. His novel, scientifically minded interpretation of antiquity's end presents evidence found not only in parchments and personalities, but also in ice cores and DNA.

From 395 to 700 AD, the empire in the east was subjected to a series of invasions and pandemics, confronting natural disasters and outbreaks in pathogens previously unknown to the empire’s densely populated, unsanitary cities. Politics, war, and religious strife sparked by the rise of Islam drove the transformation of Eastern Rome, but they do not tell the whole story. Deftly braiding the political history of the empire together with its material, environmental, and epidemiological history, New Rome offers a surprising new explanation of why Rome fell and how the Eastern Empire became Byzantium.

ISBN-13: 9780674294042

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Belknap Press

Publication Date: 11-14-2023

Pages: 464

Product Dimensions: 9.20h x 6.10w x 1.40d

Series: History of the Ancient World

Paul Stephenson is a historian of late antiquity and the author of Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

List of Illustrations viii

List of Maps xii

Introduction 1

Part I Life in the Later Roman World 5

1 Life at the End of the 'Lead Age' 7

2 Family and Faith 30

3 An Empire of Cities 51

4 Culture, Communications and Commerce 75

5 Constantinople, the New Rome 94

Part 2 Power and Politics 127

6 The Theodosian Age, AD 395-451 129

7 Soldiers and Civilians, AD 451 165

8 The Age of Justinian, AD 517-601 192

9 The Heraclians, AD 602-c. 700 236

Part 3 The End of Antiquity 275

10 The End of Ancient Civilisation 277

11 Apocalypse and the End of Antiquity 303

12 Emperors of New Rome 330

Bibliography 355

Notes 357

Index 407