New Rome: The Empire in the East

New Rome: The Empire in the East

by Paul Stephenson
New Rome: The Empire in the East

New Rome: The Empire in the East

by Paul Stephenson

eBook

$18.99  $24.95 Save 24% Current price is $18.99, Original price is $24.95. You Save 24%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

A comprehensive new history of the Eastern Roman Empire based on the science of the human past.

As modern empires rise and fall, ancient Rome becomes ever more significant. We yearn for Rome’s power but fear Rome’s ruin—will we turn out like the Romans, we wonder, or can we escape their fate? That question has obsessed centuries of historians and leaders, who have explored diverse political, religious, and economic forces to explain Roman decline. Yet the decisive factor remains elusive.

In New Rome, Paul Stephenson looks beyond traditional texts and well-known artifacts to offer a novel, scientifically minded interpretation of antiquity’s end. It turns out that the descent of Rome is inscribed not only in parchments but also in ice cores and DNA. From these and other sources, we learn that pollution and pandemics influenced the fate of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire. During its final five centuries, the empire in the east survived devastation by natural disasters, the degradation of the human environment, and pathogens previously unknown to the empire’s densely populated, unsanitary cities. Despite the Plague of Justinian, regular “barbarian” invasions, a war with Persia, and the rise of Islam, the empire endured as a political entity. However, Greco-Roman civilization, a world of interconnected cities that had shared a common material culture for a millennium, did not.

Politics, war, and religious strife drove the transformation of Eastern Rome, but they do not tell the whole story. Braiding the political history of the empire together with its urban, material, environmental, and epidemiological history, New Rome offers the most comprehensive explanation to date of the Eastern Empire’s transformation into Byzantium.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780674269453
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 02/08/2022
Series: History of the Ancient World
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 416
Sales rank: 791,694
File size: 15 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgements List of Illustrations List of Maps Introduction Part 1: Life in the Later Roman World Chapter 1. Life at the End of the ‘Lead Age’ Chapter 2. Family and Faith Chapter 3. An Empire of Cities Chapter 4. Culture, Communications and Commerce Chapter 5. Constantinople, the New Rome Part 2: Power and Politics Chapter 6. The Theodosian Age, ad 395–451 Chapter 7. Soldiers and Civilians, ad 451–527 Chapter 8. The Age of Justinian, ad 527–602 Chapter 9. The Heraclians, ad 602–c.700 Part 3: The End of Antiquity Chapter 10. The End of Ancient Civilisation Chapter 11. Apocalypse and the End of Antiquity Chapter 12. Emperors of New Rome Bibliography Notes Index
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews