Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity

The later Roman Empire was shrinking on the map, but still shaped the way historians represented the space around them.

Peter Van Nuffelen (Edited by)

9781108481281, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 August 2019

226 pages, 2 b/w illus. 1 table
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.5 cm, 0.48 kg

'… these individual yet (loosely) related studies offer us different approaches and methodologies to explore a rich and diverse number of texts and authors, some familiar and some less well-known, and to raise questions and to illuminate another aspect of the late antique world.' Fiona K. Haarer, Histos

The Roman Empire traditionally presented itself as the centre of the world, a view sustained by ancient education and conveyed in imperial literature. Historiography in particular tended to be written from an empire-centred perspective. In Late Antiquity, however, that attitude was challenged by the fragmentation of the empire. This book explores how a post-imperial representation of space emerges in the historiography of that period. Minds adapted slowly, long ignoring Constantinople as the new capital and still finding counter-worlds at the edges of the world. Even in Christian literature, often thought of as introducing a new conception of space, the empire continued to influence geographies. Political changes and theological ideas, however, helped to imagine a transferral of empire away from Rome and to substitute ecclesiastical for imperial space. By the end of Late Antiquity, Rome was just one of many centres of the world.

List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: from imperial to post-imperial space in Late Ancient historiography Peter Van Nuffelen
1. Constantinople's belated hegemony Anthony Kaldellis
2. Beside the rim of the ocean: the edges of the world in fifth- and sixth- century historiography Peter Van Nuffelen
3. Armenian space in Late Antiquity Tim Greenwood
4. Narrative and space in Christian chronography: John of Biclaro on East, West, and orthodoxy Mark Humphries
5. The Roman Empire in John of Ephesus' Church history: being Roman, writing Syriac Hartmut Leppin
6. Changing geographies: West Syrian ecclesiastical historiography, AD 700–850 Philip Wood
7. Where is Syriac Pilgrimage literature in Late Antiquity? Exploring the absence of a genre Scott Johnson
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], European history [HBJD]